then that it now overstates for partisan political gain and to keep the sheeple subjugated to their fearmongering rhetoric. Unfortunately, Larry hasn’t yet weighed in on Mukasey’s remarks, though Yellowcake Joe does reflect on a number of shady and/or misguided characters who have chosen to back Obama rather than Clinton, and rehearses his song and dance about the liarliness of the Bush Administration.
Mukasey’s prepared remarks are available here, a speech about aggressive efforts to root out government corruption that focuses mostly on Republican malefactors. It appears that he gives the speech as written, so the video excerpt that Gleen(s) uses must come from Q&A afterwards. There’s really no context to that bit, which is duly reproduced at Olberdouche’s, but strangely enough, in the intro for that bit given by the San Francisco television presenter, she explicitly states that Mukasey’s objection was to the amount of time it required to get the warrants necessary to investigate calls effectively. Of course, Gleen(s) being what they are, it’s not surprising that they think they can create an inescapable prison out of their own sorry shit.
Great American Yypocrites.
UPDATE: It seems they’re right in the regard that there would have been nothing to prevent NSA from eavesdropping on such a call while it waited for wiretap authorization (72 hours). But there’s more . . .
(Political Animal) MUKASEY AND FISA….A couple of weeks ago Attorney General Michael Mukasey told reporters that he was taken aback by how much he’d learned about terrorist activity since taking office. “It’s surprising how varied [the threat] is, how many directions it comes from, how geographically spread out it is,” he said.
A week later he got a little more specific, as reported by Josh Gerstein of the New York Sun:
Officials “shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that’s the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that’s the call that we didn’t know about,” Mr. Mukasey said yesterday as he took questions from the audience following a speech to a public affairs forum, the Commonwealth Club.
“We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went.”….”We’ve got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that,” he said, struggling to maintain his composure.
Glenn Greenwald points out that Mukasey is being plainly misleading here. FISA has always allowed eavesdropping of foreign terrorist suspects, even if they make a call into the U.S. What’s more, NSA is allowed to eavesdrop on any source for 72 hours while they’re working on getting a warrant approved  and in a case like this, a warrant would certainly have been speedily issued. So it’s unlikely in the extreme that FISA was an impediment to our anti-terrorist efforts in this case.
But perhaps even more interesting is whether the incident described by Mukasey ever even took place:
For obvious reasons, the Attorney General’s FISA falsehoods themselves are extremely newsworthy, but it is the story he told about the pre-9/11-planning call from Afghanistan itself that is truly new, and truly extraordinary.
Critically, the 9/11 Commission Report  intended to be a comprehensive account of all relevant pre-9/11 activities  makes no mention whatsoever of the episode Mukasey described. What has been long publicly reported in great detail are multiple calls that were made between a global communications hub in Yemen and the U.S.  calls which the NSA did intercept without warrants (because, contrary to Mukasey’s lie, FISA does not and never did require a warrant for eavesdropping on foreign targets) but which, for some unknown reason, the NSA failed to share with the FBI and other agencies. But the critical pre-9/11 episode Mukasey described last week is nowhere to be found in the 9/11 Report or anywhere else. It just does not exist.
In an update, Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission Executive Director, seems to confirm that the commission never heard about any such call. So did it actually happen?
To be honest, it’s not 100% clear to me from the wording of Mukasey’s answer whether he’s talking about a specific incident or whether he was making up an example on the fly of the kind of call that he says we missed before 9/11. In other words, was he lying in general, or was he lying in particular? Or was he talking about something other than a specific phone tap  like, say, the ability to data mine every call from Afghanistan to the U.S.? Perhaps some enterprising reporter with access to the Attorney General will ask him.
Yes, that would be a good idea. But that’s not what these people want: they want another Congressional Show Trial.
Can you please can the ticker tape posts like our life is on the llne twenty four seven; maybe some like this assault, but I don’t.
It might be helpful if you were to present an argument (beyond personal entitlement) for why your preference should trump others’.
Baracky aside, it’s pretty neat really that Yellowcake Joe’s courtier days are over.
I just noticed at memorandum that Socks was up to like update 14 already.
um, what’s the record, Topsecretk9?
I love it when Gleen DEMANDS that people answer his questions. I remember how that worked out for him with the Colonel Boylan incident. Heh!
well, and, daleyrocks, it’s not like he doesn’t already know the answers.
But it’s not that Mukasey misspoke, he LIED. Gleen makes the distinction, you see. Hillary misspoke about Tuzla according to Broadway Joe Wilson, but Mikasey lied about the call from Afghanistan. It’s these layers of nuance we conservatives are not expected to understand because we are not sufficiently progtrssive or some bullshit.
I don’t not know why you all read that Gleen guy, with his heavy Mego factor. my eyes glaze over. But there’s a point there some where.
Not a big fan of Joe Wilson either as he authorized or suggested that Bush let the Saudi’s fly back to arabia even while all Americans were forced to the ground in the hours after 9/11. which I think was a mistake…..but the Bush’s wanted someone high up in the civil service advice on what to do, and Joe gave them the implausible answer…like was it meant to embarrass the President or what? Of course, GW Bush like his dad always sucked up to the Saudi money all the time..but that took the ‘yellow cake’. Apparently, Joe was doing the same,,,when he admitted that as senior policy adviser he suggested that the Saudis (royal family and ben Ladins) be allowed to fly their jets out of the States for no damn good reason I can think of. (Admittedly I heard him say that on some talk show…fwiw.)
Anyway, this is breeched gun blasting in his face. Clinton’s have betrayed countless Democrats through the years and aren’t listening to such whining from this guy who was working for the Bush’s up ’til when his wife got skewered. However, he has an interesting career worthy of a read. Apparently, GW’s dad had kind and thoughtful things to say for Joe Wilson’s amusing stance against Saddem Hussein prior to the first Gulf war:
“In the wake of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, he became the last American diplomat to meet with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, telling him in very clear terms to leave Kuwait (Wilson, The Politics of Truth 107–27). When Hussein sent a note to Wilson (along with other embassy heads in Baghdad) threatening to execute anyone sheltering foreigners in Iraq, Wilson publicly repudiated the dictator by appearing at a press conference wearing a homemade noose around his neck and declaring, “If the choice is to allow American citizens to be taken hostage or to be executed, I will bring my own fucking rope.” Despite Hussein’s threats, Wilson sheltered more than 100 Americans at the embassy and successfully evacuated several thousand people (Americans and other nationals) from Iraq. For his actions, he was called a “a true American hero” by President George H. W. Bush.”
you don’t get any nuance, d-rocks,true…
Sure, how dare anybody ask questions and expect the answers from our officials, it is not like we live in USSR or China here or something, right ?
And whatever J.Wilson said about Clinton, how is that relates to AG and Glenn?
The situation is very simple(and inconvenient for the advocates of the vast unchecked executive power ) either AG lied(which 9/11 commission members seems to imply) or the administration did a bang up job at preventing terrorism .
Keep playing though, d-rocks…
yes, Dan, that TV presenter sure explained it all, especially the point that NO warrant were needed to intercept the call from Afghanistan.
And it sure leaves some inquiring minds with question,- why nothing has been done about this call?
Unless, of course, AG just blatantly lied to us…
I am sorry.
But here is the actual link in the die hard neocon NY Sun to what AG actually said and not the talking doll on TV.
sashal–
Aren’t you confusing the situation as it stood pre=9/11 with the way it stood under the Patriot Act?
no, Dan.
no confusion.
Isn’t that simple?
The fact in question is AG’s claim about the call from Afghanistan. If that happened, then administration is responsible for not following up on this because, contrary to AG lies(that’s another one) warrants were not needed even before 9/11 for the calls from outside USA.
Or he is lying about the existence of the call, just to make a case for the administration for FISA changes and immunity.
I am on my way to gym, Dan.
I will read your reply later, promise..
Oh, btw, great gob on Yy pocrites.
I really appreciated it, for ESL speaker it is great fun to see what you guys can come up with every now and then. I am serious , great job..
later…
sashal:
Speaking of terrorism if Bill Clinton had spent as much time and energy in the Oval Office dealing with Osama Bin Laden as he did with his pants down around his ankles we would not be having this discussion.
Besides, there isn’t any terrorism, there are only chickens coming home to roost.
I mean really, when it comes to screw ups at least the Bushies are men about the whole thing. I can remember the 90’s, the years of the Food for Oil scam, the endless weapons inspectors melo dramas, the attacks on Americans all over the world, attacks on aspirin factories and it seems to me that the previous administration was more concerned with Y2K and Obama of course was hanging out with bag men and terrorists and who ever else would help him get elected. At least the Bushies tried to protect the American people for all the good it did them with the paranoid fantasy driven left.
Not a big fan of Joe Wilson either as he authorized or suggested that Bush let the Saudi’s fly back to arabia even while all Americans were forced to the ground in the hours after 9/11. which I think was a mistake…..
Amazing. It’s like performance art almost.
datadave – That was an epic pile of horse shit. Brava!
Daleyrocks” I love it when Gleen DEMANDS that people answer his questions.
That is so my favorite thing.
Comment by datadave on 4/4 @ 1:26 am #
Were you drunk when you typed that?
N.O’Brain – Unfortunately, that appears to be his default position. Foreign substances are not required for dd to reach the depths of his stoopidity.
“Not a big fan of Joe Wilson either as he authorized or suggested that Bush let the Saudi’s fly back to arabia even while all Americans were forced to the ground in the hours after 9/11. which I think was a mistake…..
Amazing. It’s like performance art almost.”
Naw, it’s just a straight up lie.
Not a big fan of Joe Wilson either as he authorized or suggested that Bush let the Saudi’s fly back to arabia…
Wasn’t it Richard Clarke who recommended that action?
Apropos of nothing, John Cole has referred to the infamous sock puppet as Glenzilla twice recently.
Datadave and snopes are disjoint, evidently.
thanks, Dan.
Great update
thx Benjamin…you are probably correct…but since they hate both Joe and Richard almost as much as me….you might be right which is why …eh appended w/ fwiw
some talk show I heard, kind of like reading here…fwiw.
Where’s the cheering for Bush/McCain? It’s all negativity here.. Come on guys, I told you it’s unlikely Obama will be president…but keep up the negativity and maybe he’ll be the Leader of Positivity. Yeah!
thx Benjamin…you are probably correct…but since they hate both Joe and Richard almost as much as me….you might be right which is why …eh appended w/ fwiw
According to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Clarke gave the final okay for the members of the bin Laden family living in the U.S. to fly to Saudi Arabia on Sept. 14, 2001. Clarke had initially claimed under oath someone in the Bush Administration had asked for the flight and he consulted with the FBI [8]; later He admitted that he alone authorized the flight. He told reporters “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.†[9]
“According to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Clarke gave the final okay for the members of the bin Laden family living in the U.S. to fly to Saudi Arabia on Sept. 14, 2001.”
Ummm, dude, you are an idiot.
Sept. 14, 2001 was when flights were allowed again after the terrorist attack.
Plus, all the Saudis allowed the FBI to vet all the people being evacuated back the the sandbox.
So take your conspiracy theory in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one really has something in it.
Not only did Richard Clarke, give the approval for the Saudi ahuttle flights, but he was the negotiator of the basing
rights in Arabia; that got Bin Laden all
hot and bothered. In addition, he blocked at least one hit on Bin Laden in 1999; because it interfered with an
arms deal with the UAE.
Now Glenn’s understanding of risk, is a little uncalibrated. Previously he represented a Nazi (excuse me; Christian
Identity) preacher Matt Hale, who wanted
to be a lawyer; supply you own joke here, despite thinking every non white
as “mud people” if I understand the theology. By the standards of pre 9/11
America; there was little to hold Mohammed Atta on; a German educated urban planner with a pilot’s license; who attended a disreputable (by some
views)church. McCarthyism, Separation
of Church & State, Racism, Solipcism
would be just some of the defenses in the multi million dollar class action law suit.
Shhhh….I think dave’s making a case for Guantanamo. Quiet; I want to see where he’s going with this.
…but the moment it connects to an American phone, which is what we’re talking about here, the Gleen(s) lose their shit and start screeching about shredded Constitution and executive power run amok.
Jamie Gorelick? Who’s that? I have no idea what
you’reI’m talking about.FISA does not and never did require a warrant for eavesdropping on foreign targets)
…but the moment it connects to an American phone, which is what we’re talking about here, the Gleen(s) lose their shit and start screeching about shredded Constitution and executive power run amok.
Well said.
I know this is somewhat OT, so I apologize in advance.
It’s reported that as part of some anti-terrorist training of local law enforcement and fire fighters (first responders), FEMA is going around making presentations that categorize the Founding Fathers of America as terrorist- presumably as a way to educate the local first responders on how to distinguish terrorist from non-terrorist. Complete with X-tian bashing.
The instructor ask : “Who was the first Terrorist Organization in America? “…..
I’m speechless.
Here is the Youtube link of an excerpt from the presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGZjR9NIHJk
I don’t see anything remotely FEMA related about it, Victor. Without some more detail as to who, what, when and where, I’d be disinclined to get exited about it. What you really want to worry about is this.
You know, in theory, the gleeens seem to have something resembling a point. Having said that, after all of their caterwalling over imagined loss of Rights, chicken little “the sky is falling” claptrap, and just general douchebaggery, they have poisoned the pool so much that I just assume they are lying now. Sad. I denounce myself. and all of the gleeeeens.
[…] his latest follow-up to Mukasey’s comments, Gleen(s) state the following: This morning I interviewed Kate Martin, the director of the Center […]
Pablo, you just blew my mind, criticizing Reagan’s little concentration camp plans. Maybe most of you aren’t
“Thanitoids” after all…considering your musical tastes.
I’ve been screaming at you all about that kind of thing for awhile now. Reagan, with Oliver North developed those concentration camps built by KBR mainly to suhjugate a growing class of complainers and Leftists who were against Reagan’s antienvironmental and antiTerrorist methods esp. in Latin America. As a growing segment of dissident’s were clamoring to stop the atrocities by US services in El Salvador and our proxies there where 100K+ civilians were slaughtered, certain people were arguing for concentration camps, esp. Oliver North for domestic “terrorists” like Earth Firsters and CASA members. Vineland anyone? Pynchon got it right, me thinks (he’s is hilarious about picking on the backstabbing and sexual skullduggery within the Left too) . but Nancy Reagan deserves some credit for booting North outta the White House. Mr. Reagan had the longest case of Alzhiemer’s ever. That Fascist dude, Oliver North, really wanted to use those concentration camps soo badly.
as for leftist gals getting weak in the knees seeing ol Ollie stand up to authentic war heroes like that Japanese American Senator for Hawaii…? (with his unplanted attorney protecting him) the character Brock Vond comes to mind, as I knew liberal ladies who were swooning over the ultimately freedom-hating reactionary guy in a uniform.
“Later events in the novel reveal an uncanny resemblance between operations set up by Brock Vond in the early 70s and those arranged by FEMA in the 80s, and indeed, Pynchon seems to have modeled Brock after FEMA’s real-life director under Reagan, retired National Guard General Louis Giuffrida.” …anyway, my theory about Oliver North is personal experience…but the writer above seems to be more knowledgable. Louis Giuffrida? Definitely an indictment of Reagan/Bush tactics to reduce freedom and force compliance. IMO, his most accessable work, Pynchon’s I mean. Even if the critics and probably Jeff didn’t like it.
What are you on this afternoon, dd?
Jeebus, dd is insane. He reminds me of the NWO loons convinced Clinton was going to hand the US over to the UN. They’d even located the camps (in Michigan, natch) where they’d imprison the resisters!
Rob..I am glad you’re supportive of a multinational approach to international relations. And you’re not as anti-Clinton as the usual winger who’s spouting off about One World Govt. (which I wouldn’t mind if it was Fair and honest and democratic.) Do you support McCain’s anti UN initiatives?
You know the really surreal part of this story was that the Guardian had
assigned the review of Vineland to Salman Rushdie ;who missed his deadline
because of his little matter with the
Ayatollah. So to some up, while chronicling some imaginary threat, Salman almost lost his head; probably
to the Quds force hit team; headed by Ahmadinejad’s buddies. By the way, Vond of Ed Meese, who was the boogeyman in the 80s, partially because he prosecuted
those ‘free spirits’ in Oakland. His son, Colonel Meese, is an advisor to General Petraeus
yeah, narciso, thanks for at least reading the bit about Vineland. A pretty amazing book actually. Zaniness included. I am not some deep Pynchon fan but I can’t beat the style he has if a little “mad”. If it made sense all the time it wouldn’t be a novel and also too slow to read like a research paper, thus the punning, digressions, queer wordings >>>>> just fun to read. I noticed that about Salman Rushdie who also liked it…not sure other reviews were said to be ‘bad’ as mostly the ones the mattered were good. Interesting wiki
some other stuff:
“I came,” she said, “hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy.”
“Cherish it!” cried Hilarius, fiercely. “What else do any of you have? hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.”
the Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
from a collection of quotes at http://www.mat.upm.es/~jcm/alter.html
#32
Relax, Slart. We’re never in any danger of dd actually making a point, with, you know, actual facts.
I support anything that weakens or eliminates that power-mad pack of corrupt dictators. Any body that covers up the involvement of its “peace keepers” in slavery and child prostitution deserves to be dismantled and have its boosters clubbed to death with the bricks.