New York protests

Slideshow at MSNBC

GOP harvests sour apples in New York

Nothing like the smell of democracy in late summer...

Yahoo! News - FBI Probes if Official Spied for Israel

Feith & Libby in hot water. Looove it!

WASHINGTON - The FBI (news - web sites) is investigating whether a Pentagon (news - web sites) analyst fed to Israel secret materials about White House deliberations on Iran. The investigation could strain U.S.-Israeli relations and muddy the Bush administration's Middle East policy.

No arrests have been made, said two federal law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation. A third law enforcement official, also speaking anonymously, said an arrest in the case could come as early as next week.

Two of those officials raised the possibility the government might not bring espionage charges, but rather lesser ones that could include the mishandling of sensitive government material.

The officials refused to identify the Pentagon employee under investigation but said the person is an analyst in the office of Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon's No. 3 official.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush (news - web sites) on a campaign visit in Dayton, Ohio, said he was not in a position to discuss a continuing investigation."

Nebraska GOPer abandons Bush on war

The outgoing congressman of Nebraska's 1st CD, Republican Doug Bereuter, is apologizing to constituents for his war vote.
In a dramatic departure from the Bush administration, Republican Rep. Doug Bereuter says he now believes the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified.

"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action," Bereuter wrote in a letter to constituents in the final days of his congressional career.

That's especially true in view of the fact that the attack was initiated "without a broad and engaged international coalition," the 1st District congressman said.

"Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified."

As a result of the war, he said, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened."
Bereuter was no slouch back-bencher, either, he was a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Ooops

Four more years...

Journalists harassed by Iraq police

A reporter tells us in his blog:

Back to Iraq 3.0: Bad day in Najaf:

"Until tonight. I was on the roof trying to get my BGan to connect when Najaf’s finest burst onto the roof with a Kalashnikov and order me and the other journalists down to the lobby. The cops had raided the hotel and forced all the journalists out onto the street. We were terrified. The cops yelled at us and pointed their weapons toward us. Several large trucks were waiting and knew we would be loaded onto them. Then they started shooting.

“Yella, yella” they ordered us. BANG BANG! They fired their weapons just over our heads forcing us to crouch. The foreign journalists and the Arab media were separated into separate trucks and we were all brought to the police station at gunpoint. On the way, they continued to scream at us and point their weapons in our faces. I tried to put my money in my bag, but a young police officer thrust his Kalashnikov at me and rifled through my bag.

Finally, we made it to the police station. My friend Phillip urged me to ride it out, be calm, smile a little. Then we were herded into the police chief’s office for the most bizarre press conference of my life.

The Shrine would be stormed tonight, he said, and we would be allowed to get on a bus and go visit it tomorrow to see the damage the Mahdi Army had done to it. The Sistani protesters in Kufa were really Mahdi guys and they had to be killed. Oh, and thank you for coming.

A few of us put up a fight, demanding why they couldn’t just invite us down for a presser instead of kidnapping us. Oh, no, the commander said, that must have been a mistake. I just asked them to bring you to me… There was no order to brandish weapons, push journalists around and fire into the air. One cop, a lieutenant, just smiled at us when we pointed our fingers at him and said he was the one leading the raid, yelling and pointing his side arm at us.

These are Najaf’s finest. They’re like the old regime, only less disciplined. They’re terrifying and they’re the most dangerous element in this conflict. The Americans and the Mahdi Army have pretty set positions and you know they’re not targeting journalists. But the police here have been engaging in a systematic intimidation of us for three weeks now. The governor of Najaf has reportedly threatened to jail journalists who don’t write down exactly what he says when he says it in interviews.

So we were returned to the hotel on bus. This was another warning to stop covering the Mahdi Army. To get out. My office manager in Baghdad is urging me to leave, but I really want to stay. I’m unsure what to do, and the cops’ unpredictability is unnerving.

The same story was on the Washington Post, tucked up at the end of a 2 page article about Najaf...

"On Wednesday night, policemen from the chief's security detail barged into a hotel in Najaf and arrested more than 50 Iraqi and foreign journalists at gunpoint. The police officers beat some of the reporters and fired assault rifles in the lobby. After the journalists were brought to the main police station, Jazaeri denied they had been arrested and insisted they had simply been summoned for a news conference."