Clipmarks | jklugman's 'deception' clips

Unflattering Reagan comment about GWB--false

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:18:02 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: File under "too good to be true"

This is an actual quote that Reagan wrote about George "W" in his diaries, recently edited by author Doug Brinkley and published by Harper Collins

"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his n'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida ; the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."

From the REAGAN DIARIES------entry dated May 17, 1986.

This quote is not from Ronald Reagan and was not published in his diaries.

Tags: bush administration, ronald reagan, george bush, deception

Bush breaks promise to help military families

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:11:14 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

President Bush drew great applause during his State of the Union address last month when he called on Congress to allow U.S. troops to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. "Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them," he said.

A week later, however, when Bush submitted his $3.1 trillion federal budget to Congress, he included no funding for such an initiative, which government analysts calculate could cost $1 billion to $2 billion annually.

Tags: bush administration, promises, deception, military

Senators tried to suppress CIA testimony in Plame affair

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:22:42 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Jim Marcinkowski is a former CIA official who trained with Valerie Plame. He wanted to testify before Senate committees about the exposure of Plame. After he testified before the Republican-led Senate Select Intelligence committee, Pat Roberts declared his testimony secret, so he couldn't testify before the Democratic Policy Committee.

Marcinkowski, the lawyer and deputy city attorney, was stunned. "I sat on the park bench, in a daze. I didn't know what the hell to do. Now it hits me, that is why the Senate Select Intelligence Committee had scheduled their testimony for the day before the Senate Democratic public hearing. Until that happened we didn't hear shit from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. They slapped the secrecy thing on it, that was their intention," to try to prevent Valerie's CIA colleagues from testifying publicly about what had happened to her, and why it was a betrayal of everyone in the CIA.

Clip Source: www.warandpiece.com

Marcinkowski told the senators that the exposure of Plame by her own government was "unprecedented. It was our classmate. We had kept a secret for eighteen years. And we were all betrayed by this White House." Marcinkowski had prepared a statement to deliver in open session before the Senate Democratic Policy committee the next day. "I also said she was covert, and I knew it. And they were taking it very seriously."

After he finished with his testimony and the senators' questions, Marcinkowski went out the back door of the building and walked over to a little park between the Senate office building and Union Station. He sat down to think about what had just happened and his cell phone rang. It was Tom Daschle's staffer, who was setting up the hearing for the next day's Democratic Policy Committee meeting. "And she told me, ‘Jim, Pat Roberts just declared all your testimony to be secret. I don't know what you are planning on saying tomorrow, but he declared it secret.'"

Tags: cia, jim marcinkowski, pat roberts, republicans, senate, deception, secrecy, plame-affair

Pat Tillman's Death: A Look Back in Time

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 20:14:01 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: "Tillman's mother says:

'"The Army used him. They knew right away he was killed by fratricide and used him for their own purposes to promote the war, to get sympathy for the war, for five weeks.'"

Read the whole blog entry for Jeralyn Merritt's argument that the military covered up the circumstances of Tillman's death to counter-act the bad news coming out of Iraq (yes, I know Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan).

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Jeralyn Merritt

Bio

Pat Tillman's Death : A Look Back in Time (11 comments )

The Inspector General of the Pentagon has asked the army to open a criminal investigation into Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan.

The request, which came out of the inspector general's review of four previous investigations of the April 22, 2004, shooting, will likely lead investigators from the Army Criminal Investigation Command to return to Afghanistan and conduct a monthslong investigation into whether Tillman's death may have been a homicide, the result of criminal negligence or an accident, said an Army official who asked to remain anonymous.

Tillman's mother says:

"The Army used him. They knew right away he was killed by fratricide and used him for their own purposes to promote the war, to get sympathy for the war, for five weeks."

Tags: military, deception, pat tillman, iraq

Petraeus wants to drop ban on domestic propaganda

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 01:23:23 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: According to this article, General Petraeus wants to tear down the wall between the military's public affairs operation, which is supposed to truthfully communicate with the US media and public, and the military's information operations, which is given leeway to use deception and propaganda to communicate with foreign populations.

I don't understand why we tolerate the use of deception in any kind of public communications whatsoever, with the US public or with the publics of other countries.

Via Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise

Clip Source: www.concordmonitor.com

ince the end of the Vietnam War, the military's public-affairs officials have tried to rebuild the Defense Department's credibility by putting distance between themselves and Pentagon efforts that use deception, propaganda and other methods to influence foreign populations.

A 2004 memo by Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, codified the separation between public affairs, which communicates with the media and the public, and "information operations," which attempts to sway people in other countries.

But Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has asked for changes that would allow the two branches to work more closely together. His request has unleashed a debate inside the Pentagon between those who say the separation has made the Defense Department less agile and those who believe that restructuring the relationship would threaten to turn military spokesmen into propagandists.

Tags: david petraeus, deception, propaganda, military

Reports of progress in Iraq challenged

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 12:58:26 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

If violence is down in Baghdad, analysts said, it is likely because the Shiite militias operating there are waiting out the buildup in U.S. troops, nearly all of whom are being deployed in the capital. At the same time, Sunni insurgents have escalated their operations elsewhere.

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

President Bush on Tuesday cited "encouraging signs" of military and political progress in Iraq as his new strategy gets underway. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted that "things are going reasonably well." And on Thursday, Rice's special coordinator for Iraq, David M. Satterfield, described a "dramatic decrease" in sectarian attacks in Baghdad since Bush's plan was announced in January.

But a number of analysts and critics said this week that some of those signs indicate less progress than the administration has suggested. Sectarian attacks in Baghdad are down at the moment, but the deaths of Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops have increased outside the capital. Though Iraqi leaders have agreed on a new framework law for oil resources, the details of how the oil revenue will be divided among competing Iraqi groups remain unresolved.

Tags: iraq, bush administration, deception, fubar, civil war, news, politics, war

How bad are things in Iraq?

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 02:58:47 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: www.brendan-nyhan.com

January 27, 2007

How bad are things in Iraq?

Very, very bad. Here's a disturbing fact mentioned in passing during a NPR report that aired on Monday about kidnappings in Iraq:

Some people now tattoo telephone numbers on their arms, so if they are killed their families can be contacted.

And here's Vice President Cheney on CNN two days later:

Bottom line is that we've had enormous successes [in Iraq] and we will continue to have enormous successes.

It must be fun to live outside the reality-based community.

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05:40 PM | Permalink

Tags: bush administration, iraq, fubar, civil war, civil-war, incompetence, deception

Pentagon covering up extent of Iraq injuries

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:47:38 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Via Max Sawicky

Clip Source: www.insidehighered.com

Shooting the Messenger

The central argument of the new Bilmes paper is that so many soldiers are being injured that the costs of caring for them over their lifetimes is likely to be $350 billion, or up to twice that, depending on how long the war lasts. The high cost is the result of huge advances in military medicine that have greatly reduced the chances that a soldier injured in Iraq will die. As a result, the ratio of injuries to deaths — 16:1 by her estimate — is higher than in any other war in U.S. history. (By comparison, in Vietnam the ratio was 2.8:1 and in World War II the ratio was 1.6:1.)

What set off the Pentagon was Bilmes’ estimate for the current number of injured of 50,500. William Winkenwender Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, called the Los Angeles Times, Bilmes, and David T. Ellwood — dean of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government — to complain that the real figure is less than half that — just over 22,000. When Bilmes was asked where she got her data, she pointed out that it came from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which in turn gets its data from the Pentagon.

The Pentagon investigated further and found that the VA “misunderstood” the Pentagon’s reports, according to Cynthia Smith, a Department of Defense spokeswoman. She acknowledged that the VA had been using numbers consistent with what Bilmes reported, but said that once the Pentagon explained “the error,” the Veterans Affairs department changed its Web site so its injury numbers are consistent with those of the Pentagon.

Why the misunderstanding and the “error"? The original figures from Veterans Affairs were for “non-mortal” injuries. But that doesn’t include only those who are shot at in combat. That includes people who get sick, people who are in accidents and so forth — a group of people that is as large as those injured in combat. The Pentagon doesn’t want those people counted.

Tags: iraq, military, bush administration, coverup, deception, soldiers, via:maxspeak

List of times Bush admin suppressed information

Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:40:01 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: www.tpmmuckraker.com

Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us

By Paul Kiel - December 18, 2006, 11:46 AM

Just how many different ways has the Bush Administration tried to hide once-public information sources from the public record? Help us count the ways.

Tags: bush, politics, bush administration, deception, democracy

White House Caught Doctoring "Mission Accomplished" Video

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:39:46 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: It looks like the White House has cropped the video of Bush delivering his speech announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq to eliminate the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was displayed behind him.

Via Brainshrub and digg

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

White House Caught Doctoring "Mission Accomplished" Video

Tags: bush administration, iraq, deception, mission accomplished, politics

Settlements grow on Arab land, despite vow to US

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:45:12 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

Three years ago, in talks with the Americans, Israel promised that all new construction in the older settlements would take place near existing neighborhoods. The idea was that construction would be limited to meeting the needs of the settlements' natural growth, and bringing to an end the out-of-control expansion over territory.

In practice, the data shows that Israel failed to meet its commitments: many new neighborhoods were systematically built on the edge of areas of the settlement's jurisdiction, which is a much larger territory than the actual planning charts account for.

Clip Source: www.haaretz.com

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m

_{Last update - 10:13 24/10/2006}

Settlements grow on Arab land, despite vow to U.S.

_{By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent}

A secret, two year investigation by the defense establishment shows that there has been rampant illegal construction in dozens of settlements and in many cases involving privately owned Palestinian properties.

The information in the study was presented to two defense ministers, Amir Peretz and his predecessor Shaul Mofaz, but was not released in public and a number of people participating in the investigations were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

According to security sources familiar with the study, the material is "political and diplomatic dynamite."

Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, assistant to the Defense Minister, retired earlier this month. Spiegel was also in charge of the various issues relating to the territories, which Dov Weisglass, chief of staff in prime minister Ariel Sharon's office, promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in writing that Israel would deal with. These commitments included illegal settlement building, improvements in the conditions of Palestinian civilians, and a closer oversight over the conduct of soldiers at IDF roadblocks.

"Everyone is talking about the 107 outposts," said a source familiar with the data, "but that is small change. The really big picture is the older settlements, the 'legal' ones. The construction there has been ongoing for years, in blatant violation of the law and the regulations of proper governance."

Tags: israel, deception, palestine, settlements, promises

The deceptive advocacy of Stephen Moore

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:45:24 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Stephen Moore just wrote this editorial touting his statistical "expertise" to cast doubt on the Lancet study showing that the number of deaths in Iraq have increased by 650,000 since the US invasion.

See also Tim Lambert on Moore's editorial.

Clip Source: www.spinsanity.org

The deceptive advocacy of Stephen Moore

By Brendan Nyhan and Ben Fritz
September 22, 2003

Among the many opinion journalists writing about economics, Stephen Moore stands out - and not for good reasons. A prominent conservative anti-tax activist in Washington, Moore is president of the Club for Growth, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a columnist and contributing editor to National Review. As such, he appears frequently on TV and in print arguing on behalf of tax cuts and against increased government spending. However, his career has been marked by a pattern of errors, deception and falsehood, many of which have been exposed by print and online commentators.

Tags: stephen moore, statistics, deception, conservatives, cato, iraq

"Have we done compassion or haven't we?"

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:30:00 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks:

Bush's entire 2000 campaign was organized around the "compassionate conservative" theme. Yet midway through his first term, Bush had no idea whether he was living up to his label--and his aides wouldn't even tell him the truth was quite the opposite.

Clip Source: www.tnr.com

10.19.06

"HAVE WE DONE COMPASSION OR HAVEN'T WE?":

Forgive me if you have, but I hadn't seen this great anecdote from David Kuo's juicy book, Tempting Faith, an insider's account of the Bush White House's corrupt "faith-based" policymaking. It deals with a controversial December 2002 Esquire piece in which Bush's former faith-based czar, John DiIulio, was quoted trashing Bush's policy operation as hollow and Bush's overall "compassionate conservative" agenda as having accomplished nothing. After the article appeared, writes Kuo:

A West Wing friend called to say the president heard about the article as he walked from the Oval office of the OEOB. He was angry. "Well," he yelled through the stairwell, "is he right or isn't he? Have we done compassion or haven't we? I wanna know."

An hour later we got the first and only call from the deputy chief of staff Josh Bolton's office requesting an urgent "compassion meeting." In the two years since the transition, it was the first time the president's senior staff fully engaged in the compassion agenda....

The president's question first needed to be answered. He wanted to know how much we had spent on compassion programs in his first two years in office. We made some calls and did some calculations and discovered that if we applied his definition of compassion to federal social servoices programs, we were actually spending about $20 million a year less on them than before he had taken office. That number never actually made it to the president. The question was deemed, "still in process of being accounted for."

Kuo adds a great coda to the episode:

Two hours after the Bolten call, Jim Towey, John Bridgleland, Margaret Spellings and her new deputy Jay Lefkowitz, Mike Gerson, Pete Wehner, I, and a member of the domestic policy staff in charge of compassion issues met to figure out what to do. Suddenly everything was on the table. "We gotta get some compassion stuff out there now," Margaret said. "What have we got?"

Tags: bush administration, deception, hypocrisy, margaret spellings, david kuo, compassionate-conservatism

Republican Senator: We're in Iraq "for us", not "for the Iraqis"

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 01:19:04 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: justworldnews.org

'Just World News' by Helena Cobban

Why are we in Iraq? (DeWine quotable)

Posted by Scott Harrop at October 1, 2006 04:39 PM

MR. RUSSERT: Here's two poll questions that I think caught the attention of a lot of Americans. Let me start with Senator DeWine.
"Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout." "Most Iraqis." "A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers."

And then this poll. "Iraqis back attacks on U.S. troops. About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces ... [according to] the poll done for University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes."

Senator DeWine, if they want us out, and they're in favor of attacking us, why are we still there?

SEN. DeWINE: Tim, I was shocked by that as well. But you know, on reflection, this is their country. There's a lot of things going wrong. You blame someone who is there. Still does not change that we're not in Iraq primarily for the Iraqis. We're in Iraq for us. We're--have to do what we have to do, and it goes back to what the three generals--three military leaders said. It would be a total disaster for us to leave. It is in our self-interest, the interest to protect American families, that we are in Iraq. That's why we're there.

Come again? Its "their country" - but, if they don't want us there, then oh never mind, "we're not in Iraq primarily for the Iraqis. We're in Iraq for us."

Let's see now, whatever happened to promoting democracy? Was that just for us?

Tags: mike dewine, ohio, iraq, democracy, hypocrisy, deception

Congressman slandered teen sex slave for Abramoff

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 00:12:40 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: www.tpmmuckraker.com

For Abramoff, Lawmaker Slandered Teen Sex Slave

By Paul Kiel - September 25, 2006, 2:56 PM

A Texas congressman is denying charges he slandered a foreign sex slave at the behest of Jack Abramoff. But documents obtained by TPMmuckraker contradict the Republican's claims.

In November of 1997, Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) publicly questioned the credibility of a teenage girl's claims that she'd been the victim of the sex trade in the Northern Mariana Islands. The statement, which Rep. Hall entered into the Congressional Record, was prepared by Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist for the islands.

"[S]he wanted to do nude dancing," Hall's statement said of the fifteen-year-old girl. She had earlier told federal investigators that she'd been forced to work for a local nightclub in a nightly live sex show. You can read the entirety of Hall's statement here.

Press accounts at the time detailed how the girl had been taken from her parents in the Phillippines, and forced to perform sex acts on stage and before video cameras at a Northern Marianas sex club. A 1998 Department of Labor report confirmed those reports.

Hall's challenger in Texas' 4th District, history professor Glenn Melancon, has made the episode a campaign issue. "When investigators discovered child prostitution and forced abortions on the Mariana Islands, Congressman Ralph Hall was paid for covering it up and publicly attacking one of the raped children," read postcards his campaign distributed to voters.

Tags: jack abramoff, ralph hall, texas, northern mariana islands, corruption, deception