Whiggate Update
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Honorary WHIG Judith Miller released from jail so she can testify against her friends
Here's an excerpt of The ("Liberal") New York Times reporting on one of its own tonight:
The simple combination of four words "White House Iraq Group" has yet to appear anywhere within the pages of the New York Times (at least as revealed by a search of nytimes.com). When the "Paper of Record" finally catches up with the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and Newsday and CNN and Fox News and others and decides that the news about the White House Iraq Group is "Fit to Print", then WHIGGATE Update and True Blue Liberal will report that momentous event to you.
Tags:white house iraq group;WHIG;WHIGgate;Judith Miller ¶ 9/29/2005 11:27:00 PM 0 comments
*"And [The New York Times did not add] Mr. Libby is of course a key member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) that in August and September of 2002 used Judith Miller and this newspaper to lend credibility to their claims about nonexistent Iraqi "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as part of their creation of false rationales for war. Mr. Libby's boss, Richard "Dick" Cheney, was then able to point to this New York Times reporting about "WMDs" to back up the story that the WHIGs were making up out of whole cloth. We sincerely apologize for our role in these crimes against humanity."[...]Ms. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the [Plame leak] inquiry. Her decision to testify was made after she had obtained what she described as a waiver offered "voluntarily and personally" by a source who said she was no longer bound by any pledge of confidentiality she had made to him. Ms. Miller said the source had made clear that he genuinely wanted her to testify.
That source was I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff*, according to people who have been officially briefed on the case. Ms. Miller met with Mr. Libby on July 8, 2003, and talked with him by telephone later that week, they said. [...]
The simple combination of four words "White House Iraq Group" has yet to appear anywhere within the pages of the New York Times (at least as revealed by a search of nytimes.com). When the "Paper of Record" finally catches up with the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and Newsday and CNN and Fox News and others and decides that the news about the White House Iraq Group is "Fit to Print", then WHIGGATE Update and True Blue Liberal will report that momentous event to you.
Tags:white house iraq group;WHIG;WHIGgate;Judith Miller ¶ 9/29/2005 11:27:00 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
"Turkish Women Blast [ex-WHIG] Karen Hughes With Iraq War Criticism" -- The Washington Post
Click Here for the article in today's Washington Post, but here's an excerpt:
It's funny (or not so funny) how residents of the Bush White House Bubble and Echo Chamber® only hear the truth when they leave the country and are forced to listen to people other than each other (or their puppet masters, "Dick" and "Don"). I wonder if any of her Turkish questioners knew that this new State Department Spokesmodel was, despite her Soccer Mom persona, a very key member of the team that brought the Bush Regime to power and of the White House Iraq Group that sold this war to the American people (and frightened Democratic congresspeople) with false information about WMD's and mushroom clouds and rosy scenarios about flower-throwing Iraqis and oil-financed war bills?
Tags:white house iraq group;WHIG;WHIGgate;Karen Hughes
¶ 9/28/2005 04:26:00 PM 0 comments
Click Here for the article in today's Washington Post, but here's an excerpt:
[...]Six of the eight women who spoke at the session, held in Ankara, the capital, focused on the Iraq war.
"War makes the rights of women completely erased and poverty comes after war -- and women pay the price," said Fatma Nevin Vargun, a Kurdish women's rights activist. Vargun denounced the arrest of Cindy Sheehan, the activist mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, in front of the White House Monday at an antiwar protest.
Hughes, looking increasingly pained, defended the decision to invade Iraq as a difficult and wrenching moment for President Bush, but necessary to protect America.
"You're concerned about war, and no one likes war," she said. But, she said, "to preserve the peace sometimes my country believes war is necessary." She also asserted that women are faring much better in Iraq than under the rule of deposed president Saddam Hussein.
"War is not necessary for peace," shot back Feray Salman, a human rights advocate. She said countries should not try to impose democracy through war, adding that "we can never, ever export democracy and freedom from one country to another."
Tags:white house iraq group;WHIG;WHIGgate;Karen Hughes
¶ 9/28/2005 04:26:00 PM 0 comments
Friday, September 23, 2005
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Honorary WHIG of the Week, Former FEMA Director (and current war profiteer) Joe Allbaugh
No, Joseph Allbaugh is not an honorary WHIG of the Week so we could run this picture and make the obligatory joke about his hairline being a disaster area (though he is living proof that looks don't count if you want to be counted in among the in crowd at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue), or to point out the fact that his old boss obviously had a crush on him.
He and his college roommate and current FEMA chief Mike "Brownie" Brown are in the news this week because of the massive failures of FEMA in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but it's not even that connection that this blog is interested in, though it is the reason he came to our attention.
We're more struck by how he's just one more piece of the tight inbred nexus of war dreamers, planners, sellers, and profiteers who gave us the current quagmire in Iraq that will still be a disaster long after we're celebrating Fat Tuesday again in the Big Easy. Here's Josh Marshall writing in The Hill on October 1, 2003 (around the time we realized that the "Mission" was not quite as "Accomplished" as we had been told by the guy dressed up like a Naval Aviator for his aircraft carrier photo opportunity).
Marshall's article goes on to talk about connections between Iraq War II profiteers and others with close WHIG connections like the Chalabi family and Pentagon Iraq Group (PIG) leader Doug Feith. The real reason for giving Allbaugh this honor on this dishonorable week for FEMA is because the membership in the White House Iraq Group may not be limited to those names in the few published accounts about the group. Why wouldn't the third leg of Bush's unattractive Iron Triangle be privy to the actions of the other leg, WHIG Hughes, and the hypotenuse, WHIG Rove? The fact that Allbaugh attempted to sell those connections to make a buck between the Tigris and Euphrates (when he should have been concentrating on the Mississippi) is probably not a crime in Bushite Corporate America®. But it probably should be.
Tags:white house iraq group;WHIG;WHIGgate;FEMA;Allbaugh ¶ 9/08/2005 12:20:00 PM 0 comments
No, Joseph Allbaugh is not an honorary WHIG of the Week so we could run this picture and make the obligatory joke about his hairline being a disaster area (though he is living proof that looks don't count if you want to be counted in among the in crowd at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue), or to point out the fact that his old boss obviously had a crush on him.He and his college roommate and current FEMA chief Mike "Brownie" Brown are in the news this week because of the massive failures of FEMA in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but it's not even that connection that this blog is interested in, though it is the reason he came to our attention.
We're more struck by how he's just one more piece of the tight inbred nexus of war dreamers, planners, sellers, and profiteers who gave us the current quagmire in Iraq that will still be a disaster long after we're celebrating Fat Tuesday again in the Big Easy. Here's Josh Marshall writing in The Hill on October 1, 2003 (around the time we realized that the "Mission" was not quite as "Accomplished" as we had been told by the guy dressed up like a Naval Aviator for his aircraft carrier photo opportunity).
The Bush Crony Full-Employment Act of 2003=The Hill.comHaley Barbour, of course, is now the Governor of Katrina-ravaged Mississippi. Surely a coincidence, but a coincidence that would have some poetic justice if it weren't for the human lives lost and ruined.
[...] Remember Joe Allbaugh? He’s part of what they used to call President Bush’s Iron Triangle — Allbaugh, Hughes and Rove.
In chronological order, he was Bush’s chief of staff when Bush was governor of Texas, his campaign manager when he ran for president and his Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director after that.
So you could say they were pretty close.
A couple weeks before the beginning of the war, Allbaugh left his job at FEMA to get into the business of securing pricey Iraqi reconstruction contracts for high-flying clients.
Allbaugh’s new firm is called New Bridge Strategies. But it’s actually an outgrowth of Haley Barbour’s lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith & Rogers. [...]
Tags:white house iraq group;WHIG;WHIGgate;FEMA;Allbaugh ¶ 9/08/2005 12:20:00 PM 0 comments
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Please contribute to Katrina's victims through the NAACP Disaster Relief Fund
Click here to give your contribution for Katrina relief through the NAACP. George W. Bush will have trouble taking credit for their aid, since he is still the only President in their history not to have addressed the organization.
¶ 9/03/2005 11:41:00 AM 0 comments
