Lady Blu Blount
© Keeley 2006 Hawaii
By logging in to LiveJournal using a third-party service you accept LiveJournal's User agreement
IT turns out we’ve been reading the wrong Bob Woodward book to understand what’s going on with President Bush. The text we should be consulting instead is “The Final Days,” the Woodward-Bernstein account of Richard Nixon talking to the portraits on the White House walls while Watergate demolished his presidency. As Mr. Bush has ricocheted from Vietnam to Latvia to Jordan in recent weeks, we’ve witnessed the troubling behavior of a president who isn’t merely in a state of denial but is completely untethered from reality. It’s not that he can’t handle the truth about Iraq. He doesn’t know what the truth is.
( Collapse )Tuesday, December 5th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/05/1452228Robert Gates, President Bush's nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense is facing his Senate confirmation hearings today. We speak with two former CIA analysts who worked with Gates at the Agency. Ray McGovern was Gates' CIA branch chief in the early 1970s and Jennifer Glaudemans is a former CIA analyst who was asked to testify at the 1991 confirmation hearings for Gates when he had been nominated to be CIA Director. [includes rush transcript]
Gates served as CIA Director during the Bush Senior Administration. He was first nominated to serve under President Reagan but the nomination had to be withdrawn because of stiff opposition in the Senate.
Observers are predicting a swift confirmation, with little opposition expected from Democrats. But Gates is not without controversy -- questions have swirled around his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal and his role in the US government's arming of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. He was also accused of skewing intelligence to suit the Reagan administration's anti-Soviet views. Newly declassified government documents also reveal Gates advocated for President Reagan to bomb Nicaragua in 1984 in an effort to topple the Sandinista government. At the time Gates was deputy director of the CIA.
Today we are joined by two former CIA analysts who worked with Robert Gates at the agency. Ray McGovern served in the CIA for 27 years and was Gates' branch chief at the CIA in the early 1970s. Jennifer Glaudemans is a former CIA analyst who was asked to testify at the 1991 confirmation hearings for Gates when he had been nominated to be CIA Director. She worked in the CIA's office of Soviet analysis back when Gates was the agency's deputy director for intelligence and chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
The lame-duck Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee seems determined to force through confirmation of Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. The hurry is synthetic -- and totally unnecessary.
I know, I know -- everyone but Barney the dog wants Rumsfeld out of the Pentagon tout suite. According to a Pentagon spokesman, however, Gates has commitments that would preclude his taking the reins at the Pentagon until January. So, senators, relax already. Let Rumsfeld spend December at one of his houses in Taos, while you do your homework. There is no exaggerating the importance of the Gates candidacy.
Moved by the spirit of the season, people who know a stylish soundtrack when they hear it share their iPod holiday playlists — tracks guaranteed to transform even the dreariest family get-together into an A-list happening.
D.J. Felix Cutillo
Something’s Gotta Give Robin McKelle
C’est si bon (D.J. Cam remix)
Arielle Dombasle
Go to Mexico Cassandra Wilson
Tell Me Jimmy Cobb
Anna (El Negro Zumbon) Pink Martini
One Evening (VV Mix) Feist
Bittersweet Samba (Mocean Worker remix) Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
Happy Feet Paolo Conte
Comment Te Dire Adieu? Françoise Hardy