Political Jackass

From Reuters: U.S. State Department investigators looking into the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad last month offered immunity deals to Blackwater security guards, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The investigators from the agency’s investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, did not, however, have the authority to offer such immunity grants, the newspaper said, citing U.S. government officials.

The offers represent a potentially serious investigative misstep that could complicate efforts to prosecute Blackwater employees involved in the incident, the newspaper said.

The officials, who were not identified, said Justice Department prosecutors, who do have the authority to offer such deals, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, the newspaper said.

Most of the Blackwater guards who took part in the Sept. 16 incident were offered what officials described as limited-use immunity, the report said.

Limited-use immunity means the private security guards were promised they would not be prosecuted for anything they said in interviews with the authorities as long as their statements were true, the Times said.

North Carolina-based Blackwater has about 1,000 employees in Iraq who protect U.S. diplomats and other officials.

The FBI took control of the investigation from the State Department early this month.

A Justice Department spokesman had no comment. A State Department official said the department does not comment on ongoing investigations and referred questions to the FBI.

Foreign contractors in Iraq are immune from prosecution under Iraqi law under a decree issued by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004.

A private watchdog group is asking the White House to show immediately that it has not destroyed archives of at least 5 million e-mails that were improperly deleted from internal servers. So far, the Bush administration has refused to provide such assurances.

A motion filed Friday by the National Security Archive seeks to compel the White House to hand over records that show it has maintained backup tapes of the deleted e-mails, as required by presidential record-keeping laws. A nearly identical case from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another watchdog, seeks similar assurances that the Bush administration has not permanently erased the millions of e-mails exchanged among scores of White House aides.

“What we want is to find out what e-mails have been saved, and what e-mails are missing and how we can recover the e-mails that are missing from the backup tapes,” Meridith Fuchs, general counsel for the Security Archive, told RAW STORY. “They have every interest in delaying, we have every interest in speeding it along.”

As President Bush nears the end of his second term, the groups say it is vital that the White House demonstrate precisely what archives it has and be prevented from destroying any more records that will prove invaluable to historians studying how the administration operated.

“We need information so we can take steps to preserve all possible sources of e-mails deleted from the White House servers,” Fuchs said in a news release.

So far, the White House has told the groups only that it is preserving any records it had in its possession as of September of this year, when the cases were filed. Justice Department lawyers, representing the administration, have argued against court orders that would open the possibility of contempt proceedings if the records were destroyed; the administration also has refused to document how long its archives go back.

A lawyer familiar with the proceedings told RAW STORY that the NSA and CREW proceedings are “totally on the same page,” and are expected to be combined into a single court case.

A federal magistrate recommended that a federal judge order the White House to preserve all its e-mails, and the judge’s recommendation could come as soon as this week, the lawyer said. Feuch’s called the magistrate’s recommendation “encouraging,” but she said it wouldn’t affect the archives’ case unless or until the two are combined.

The lawsuits are not seeking the contents of White House e-mail exchanges, rather they demand that the White House Office of Administration provide general information about what was archived over what period of time.

Bu$hCo needs you to fight so they make more money. They are considering reinstating the draft to fight in their mis-handled war that should have never happened to begin with.

A top U.S. military officer in charge of co-ordinating the U.S. war effort in Iraq said yesterday that it makes sense to consider a return of the draft to meet the U.S. military’s needs.

Lieutenant-General Douglas Lute, said the all-volunteer military is serving “exceedingly well” and the administration has not decided a draft is needed.

But in an interview with National Public Radio, he said, “I think it makes sense to certainly consider it, and I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table.” source

Most Americans see President George W. Bush as too inflexible on the war in Iraq and prefer that the Democratic-run Congress have the final word on when to withdraw U.S. forces, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed on Monday.

I guess when you fuck up for this long people start to lose faith in you, huh? Too bad BushCo doesn’t care about what the American people think and still do whatever they want.

Nearly 80 percent of those polled said Bush is not willing enough to change policies over the unpopular war that has taken a huge toll on his approval ratings, the Post reported.

The poll was conducted last week, after Senate Democrats failed to advance a plan that would force Bush to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq by April 2008.

More than six in 10 Americans — 62 percent — said Congress should have the final say on when to pull out U.S. forces, compared with 31 percent who said the decision should rest with Bush, the poll showed.

Not surprising. Again, this doesn’t matter to BushCo. They think they are above the law. Hell, Cheney doesn’t even think he belongs in any branch. One minute he’s claiming Executive Privilege on his documents and transcripts, and the next minute saying he’s part of the Legislative Branch. Don’t you love how they mold the government to whatever scandal they are facing this week?

The percentage of Americans seeing Bush as too rigid on Iraq has climbed 12 percentage points since December, the Post said.

Probably because people are finally seeing BushCo have no plan on getting out of Iraq. Remember that sign, Mission Accomplished? If this is accomplished, then I’d hate to see what failure is. (source)

Vice President Dick Cheney blocked the promotion of a Justice Department official involved in a bedside standoff over President Bush’s eavesdropping program, a Senate committee learned Wednesday.

In a written account, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey said Cheney warned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that he would oppose the promotion of a department official who once threatened to resign over the program.

Gonzales eventually decided against trying to promote Patrick Philbin to principal deputy solicitor general, Comey said.

“I understood that someone at the White House communicated to Attorney General Gonzales that the vice president would oppose the appointment if the attorney general pursued the matter,” Comey wrote. “The attorney general chose not to pursue it.

Read more…

A record number of Americans disapprove of the war in Iraq, and a clear majority now favors the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces, even if civil order has not been restored there — potentially a tipping point in public attitudes on the war.

While solutions remain vexing, for the first time ABC News/Washington Post polls show a narrow majority of Americans support setting a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Two-thirds oppose George W. Bush’s troop surge; most oppose it strongly.

It all makes for a continued hard slog for the president: Just 36 percent approve of his job performance overall, very near his career low of 33 percent last month. Bush hasn’t seen majority approval in more than two years — the longest run without majority support for any president since Harry Truman from 1950-53.

While rooted in Iraq, Bush’s problems with credibility and confidence reach beyond it. Sixty-three percent of Americans don’t trust the administration to convey intelligence reports on potential threats from other countries honestly and accurately. And 58 percent lack confidence, specifically, in its ability to handle current tensions with Iran. read more…

Democrats, now a majority in Congress, fired a symbolic shot across President George W. Bush’s bow yesterday, passing a toughly worded but non-binding resolution that opposes sending thousands more U.S. soldiers into Baghdad’s violent cauldron.

It was the first anti-war vote since Sept. 11, 2001, a rare rebuke of a sitting president’s foreign policy and one that could set the stage for a showdown over Iraq between Democrats in Congress and the beleaguered President.

“Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush, announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq,â€? the resolution said. Read More…

Sen. John Kerry on Saturday blamed Republicans for squelching Senate debate on the Iraq war and warned that President Bush’s plan for more troops in Iraq is a mistake.

“Another 21,000 troops sent into Iraq, with no visible end or strategy, ignores the best advice from our own generals and isn’t the best way to keep faith with the courage and commitment of our soldiers,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in his party’s weekly radio address.

Kerry branded Bush’s proposal for additional forces as “nothing more than the escalation of a misguided war.”

The Pentagon is in the midst of implementing Bush’s order to raise troop levels by 21,500, part of a plan to help quell sectarian violence in Baghdad. read more here