Blue Spot

Democracy Now! | Ex-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama's Intelligence Transition Team

...questions are already being raised about the people heading Obama’s transition efforts on intelligence policy. John Brennan and Jami Miscik, both former intelligence officials under George Tenet, are leading the review of intelligence agencies and helping make recommendations to the new administration. Brennan has supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition, and Miscik was involved with the politicized intelligence alleging weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the war on Iraq.

MELVIN GOODMAN: OK. John Brennan was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations during the CIA period in the run-up to the Iraq war, so he sat there at Tenet’s knee when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, on black sites, on secret prisons. He was part of all of that decision making.

Jami Miscik was the Deputy Director for Intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war. So she went along with the phony intelligence estimate of October 2002, the phony white paper that was prepared by Paul Pillar in October 2002. She helped with the drafting of the speech that Colin Powell gave to the United Nations—[inaudible] 2003, which made the phony case for war to the international community.

So, when George Tenet said, "slam dunk, we can provide all the intelligence you need,” [inaudible] to the President in December of 2002, it was people like Jami Miscik and John Brennan who were part of the team who provided that phony intelligence. So what I think people at the CIA are worried about—and I’ve talked to many of them over the weekend—is that there will never be any accountability for these violations and some of the unconscionable acts committed at the CIA, which essentially amount to war crimes, when you’re talking about torture and abuse and secret prisons. So, where are we, in terms of change? This sounds like more continuity.

Labels: Afghanistan, anti-war movement, Congress, FISA, Foreign Policy, Gitmo, Impeachment, Intelligence, Iran, Iraq War, Liberals, Obama administration, Obama critics, Pakistan, Rahm Emanuel, WMD

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Prominent Clinton backer and DNC member to endorse McCain « - Blogs from CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, will endorse John McCain for president on Wednesday, her spokesman tells CNN.

The announcement will take place at a news conference on Capitol Hill, just blocks away from the DNC headquarters. Forester will “campaign and help him through the election,” the spokesman said of her plans to help the Republican presidential nominee.

Forester was a major donor for Clinton earning her the title as a Hillraiser for helping to raise at least $100,000 for the New York Democratic senator’s failed presidential bid.

In an interview with CNN this summer, Forester did not hide her distaste for eventual Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

Forester is the CEO of EL Rothschild, a holding company with businesses around the world. She is married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Forester is a member of the DNC’s Democrats Abroad chapter and splits her time living in London and New York.

Labels: Hillary, McCain, Obama, Obama critics, PUMA

FT.com / In depth - Murdoch brokers Obama ‘truce’

Rupert Murdoch brokered a “tentative truce” between his Fox News network and Barack Obama at a secret meeting with the Democratic presidential nominee, accor­ding to the author of a book on the News Corp chairman.

Fox News is seen by the Obama campaign as among its most hostile critics. Mr Obama initially rebuffed efforts by the Kennedy family to secure a meeting with News Corp executives, Michael Wolff writes in the current issue of Vanity Fair.

However, Mr Obama agreed this summer to meet Mr Murdoch and Roger Ailes, president of the Fox News Channel, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.

While the senator for Illinois was “deferential” towards Mr Murdoch, who also owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, he “lit into” Mr Ailes, Mr Wolff reports.

“He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome – just short of a terrorist,” the report states.

Mr Ailes responded that Fox’s coverage might have been more favourable had Mr Obama been more willing to appear on its programmes. The three men agreed upon “a tentative truce”, Mr Wolff writes.

Nick Shapiro, Obama campaign spokesman, said: “They had an open and frank conversation where they got the opportunity to clear the air.”

Fox News has been accused of below-the-belt coverage of Mr Obama this year. One news segment asked whether a fist-bump greeting between Barack and Michelle Obama – a gesture commonly used by American athletes – was a “terrorist fist-jab”. The network also referred to Michelle Obama as Obama’s “baby mama”, slang that refers to a mother who never married her child’s father.

A News Corp spokeswoman would not comment on the report. One person at News Corp challenged its subsequent assertion that Mr Murdoch was becoming “embarrassed” by Fox’s strident rightwing positioning as “going a little far”.

Labels: Fox News, Fox propaganda, Murdoch, Obama, Obama critics

Just Say No Deal Coalition on Larry King
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Elizabeth Joyce from the Just Say No Deal Coalition and Hireheels.com appeared on Larry King to discuss why she and many Democrats like her, are not supporting Obama, and what Obama can do to gain her support.

Labels: Just Say No Deal, Obama critics, PUMA

On the Convention - With Clinton All the Way, Now Uneasy About the Next Step - NYTimes.com

DENVER — Both Clintons’ convention speeches are now history, and the sighs of relief from Barack Obama’s team blew through here stronger than the hot winds off the Colorado plains. The Democratic nominee got all the help from his former tag-team rivals that he could have hoped for -- and then some -- in winning over the die-hard Clinton voters he will need in November.

Now “it’s up to him to bring us home,” says Susie Tompkins Buell, one of those Clinton die-hards, and a big Democratic donor. Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech here Thursday night will be his first big chance.

Ms. Buell was quoted in the New York Times earlier this week expressing frustration that Mr. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, doesn’t get the “passion” and “commitment” that Mrs. Clinton’s supporters have for the second-term New York senator and former first lady. If so, he’s not alone.

It’s plain from interviews with voters in the months since Mr. Obama locked up the nomination that lots of Americans don’t get why the Clintonites can’t
“get over it” -- in the oft-used phrase that drives them nuts. Ms. Buell went online today to try to explain the emotional journey that has, finally, put her on Mr. Obama's side. And in interviews here, some Clinton delegates sought to shed some light of their own.

But first, does it matter that many can’t fully embrace Mr. Obama? In what’s certain to be a close election against the Republicans’ nominee-to-be, Senator John McCain, you bet.

Labels: Obama critics, Obama supporters

The man who took a "courageous" stance on the Iraq War is now being criticized by the Left-wing of the party for shifting to the middle on the subject.

Labels: Iraq War, Obama critics

New Books Aim To Unweave the Obama Narrative - washingtonpost.com

In two autobiographies and dozens of speeches, Barack Obama has weaved the narrative that defines his campaign: An introspective boy gradually comes to terms with his mixed-race heritage and emerges with an "unprejudiced" worldview. He enters politics because of his "love of country" and succeeds by staying faithful to his morals and "transcending the partisan divide."

Two weeks before Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for president, conservative author Jerome R. Corsi has attacked his story with a narrative of his own: The son of an "alcoholic polygamist," Obama deals with his abandonment issues and "black rage" by experimenting with drugs and radical thought. He makes a calculated entrance into politics despite having accomplished little and having developed some "anti-American" sentiments. Once in office, he regularly manipulates the political machine and becomes a liberal who will "divide America."

Corsi's "The Obama Nation" lacks major revelations and has been dismissed by Obama's campaign as a series of lies from a serial liar. Parts of the book have also been disproved by the mainstream media. In 2004, Corsi co-wrote "Unfit for Command," in which Swift boat veterans criticized Sen. John F. Kerry's Vietnam War record. That book was also widely disproved.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has started a Web site to help discredit these tactics on Obama's behalf.

Nevertheless, Corsi's book about Obama will debut as a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and threatens the candidate where he could be vulnerable. Ever since Obama introduced himself at the 2004 Democratic convention as the "unlikely" son of a Kenyan goat herder and a white woman from Kansas, he forever married his background to his political future. Corsi and other conservative authors hope that by diminishing one, they can destroy the other.

"The problem with running a campaign that's based on cult of personality is that cracks in the grandiose facade of Obama's life become very damaging," Corsi said in an interview. "That's where you can get a reader's attention and have substantial impact."

Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama, said Corsi's book "is nothing but a series of lies that were long ago discredited." Vietor added: "The reality is, there are many lie-filled books like this in the works cobbled together from the Internet to make money off a presidential campaign."

Labels: Obama critics, personal attacks - mudslingling

Here's Diane Mantouvalos from hireheels.com on Fox & Friends promoting Just Say No Deal. I met Diane in Philadelphia while campaigning for Hillary right before the Pennsylvania primary. While we were there, Diane and I and a group of other bloggers and supporters, got a chance to invade Obama territory and crashed some local Philly lounges. What a great time.

Way to go Diane! Keep up the good work. Looking forward to seeing the caucus-fraud doc. Keep us posted.

Labels: Fox News, Hillary, Just Say No Deal, Obama critics, PUMA

New Yorker Obama Cover Sparks Uproar, Politico: Campaign Calls Magazine Cover Art "Tasteless And Offensive" - CBS News

Barack Obama's campaign is condemning as “tasteless and offensive” a New Yorker magazine cover that depicts Obama in a turban, fist-bumping his gun-slinging wife.

An American flag burns in their fireplace.

The New Yorker says it's satire. It certainly will be candy for cable news.

The Obama campaign quickly condemned the rendering. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”

The issue, which goes on sale Monday, includes a long piece by Ryan Lizza about Obama’s start in Chicago politics.

Labels: Obama, Obama critics

Obama backers on the left are doing the wincing now -- chicagotribune.com

The cries of pain came not from Obama or Jackson but from the American political left, from scribes and liberal editorial writers and broadcast analysts and eager bloggers. The true believers who evangelized that Obama would transcend politics as we knew it are suffering a Barackian hangover.

Greedily, they drained the kegs once full of sweet Obama Kool-Aid, drained them to the dregs and mopped up the remains with stale crusts. The inevitable happened—the pain that comes as everything finally becomes clear, in the rosy-fingered light of a terrible dawn.

Obama used them to crush the Clintons, but now the left is finally realizing it's been betrayed, on issue after issue, with Obama changing his positions in order to defeat a tired and disillusioned Republican Party in November.

They're at the dance now and he's the one with the keys and he's the only ride they've got. And they don't like it.

He has flip-flopped again and again, on campaign finance, on government eavesdropping of overseas phone calls, on gun control and even Iraq. Future President Obama now says he'll listen to his generals about when to withdraw. He didn't say he'd listen to the commissars of the blogosphere.

And his cheerleaders are beginning to realize that Obama may not be the Arthurian knight in shining armor, that he may not be Mr. Tumnus, the gentle forest faun of our presidential politics. Months after his inauguration, after he makes Billy Daley the secretary of the treasury and Michael Daley the secretary of zoning and promotes Patrick Fitzgerald to become the attorney general of Mars, the political left may figure out that Obama is a Chicago politician.

"Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake," wrote Bob Herbert in The New York Times. "But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader—more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most. . . . Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He's lurching right when it suits him, and he's zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that's guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash."

This panic of the left—particularly among many political media types—is profoundly instructive to foreigners seeking to understand American character. The American media elite chose to portray Obama as some kind of knight in armor. They're analysts. Yet they were desperate to believe in a political fairy tale from Chicago. Somewhere in this desperate yearning is an answer.

Obama is not their fool. And he's not weak. He got down on one knee to the Chicago Democratic Machine and didn't make any waves and asked that it make him a U.S. senator. He lectured the Africans about political corruption and kept his mouth shut about corruption in Chicago, and the national press ignored the inconsistency and pampered and protected him. He waited and he's ready and now they're worried? Too late, boys and girls.

I don't mean to pick on Mr. Herbert, an elegant writer. His is but one of many voices, stunned on the side of the road, wondering what happened. I felt the same Kool-Aid hangover, and the same whiplash, but from the opposite direction years ago, when I was run down in the middle of a paragraph by a clown car driven by Karl Rove.

The Bush White House became the champion of big government, of big spending, of Jack Abramoff and of perjury under oath. The clowns boiled out of the car and I watched them go, taking the Republican Party with them, dragging it out into the desert, where they'd dug a big hole and stuffed it with Kool-Aid-addled conservatives.

So I have some sympathy for those on the left when it comes to Obama. They feel jilted, and the story was of a growing sense of betrayal, until Rev. Jackson whispered his desire to remove Obama's valuables.

Then the left joined in with the right, and with the viewers of Fox News in the front row—representing those Reagan Democrat votes Obama will need in November—we all pounded Jackson, righteously, in Obama's name.

Labels: flip-flop, Obama, Obama critics, Obama supporters

Will the real Obama please stand? The headline in The Washington Post was intriguing: "Obama's Ideology Proving Difficult to Pinpoint." The article turned out to be a charitable discussion of whether the Democratic nominee is moving away from leftist positions he took during the primaries and toward the political center for the general election.

Of course he is. Enough to produce, as someone put it, whiplash. So let's give the topic a headline that directly addresses the doubts: Just who is Barack Obama?

Is he the inspirational juggernaut of the early primaries, the man who promised "change we can believe in" and a new era in American politics? Or is he one more politician whose actions often contradict his words?

Put another way, what does he believe in?

Damned if I know.

Once upon a time, I thought I did. Obama was the graceful rookie from Illinois who came out of nowhere to become the rock star of '08. His biracial heritage, Harvard Law School education and vast ambition created the perfect image of a post-racial, post-ideological agent of change. He would not be tied to the old ideas or the old ways of doing things.

It was a promise, exquisitely delivered, that allowed him to grab an early delegate lead and hold on to narrowly defeat Hillary (The Invincible) Clinton.

But there were hints Obama was not what he claimed.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a big one. By the end of the primaries, Obama was stumbling and on the defensive. And now he has become yet another candidate altogether in the post-primary period.

On defining issues - security wiretapping, gun control, campaign finance, Iran and Iraq - he has done partial or full about-faces. Hardly a day goes by that he doesn't attack John McCain in typical partisan fashion.

And when he denies with a straight face that he's changing anything, Obama gives new meaning to chutzpah.

The changes have been so dramatic that many liberal activists are expressing buyers' remorse. Some are demanding their contributions back and vow not to support Obama until he adopts his old positions.

For me, a centrist Democrat and a hawk on security, most of his new positions are better than those he abandoned. But they're not believable. They create doubts about whether he has core beliefs.

Someone who can shift positions so quickly on so many important issues that will face the next President comes off as a man who doesn't have fixed convictions. Pragmatism has to be guided by principles. A man who believes in everything believes in nothing, and that's a formula for chaos in the White House.

Labels: Obama, Obama critics

Washington Wire - WSJ.com : Obama, Clinton Split on FISA Vote So much for unity? New York Sen. Hillary Clinton split with former rival Sen. Barack Obama today, voting against a controversial surveillance measure the expected Democratic nominee supported.

Obama has taken considerable flack from liberal activists since announcing a couple weeks ago that he would support the measure, which expands government surveillance powers in the United States.

Obama said he would work to eliminate a provision to grant conditional immunity to phone companies alleged to have participated in the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program, but amendments attempting to pare back or strip immunity from the surveillance bill were defeated Wednesday, as expected.

Obama won the nomination, in part, by running to Clinton’s left, but he has been tacking right since clinching the nomination in early June–which today landed him to Clinton’s right on the spy bill, which overhauled the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Obama’s own campaign Web site has become a hotbed of debate over his support for the compromise bill, spawning four groups in which opponents of Obama’s position vastly outnumber supporters—22,957 to 38. The “Get FISA Right” group blog on MyBarackObama.com was flooded with disappointed supporters after Wednesday’s vote, with more than 60 writing in within 90 minutes of the vote.

Labels: Domestic spying, FISA, Hillary, Obama, Obama critics, Surveilance

Bloomberg.com: Politics July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is trying to claim the political center, following in the footsteps of previous nominees including Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980. Yet the Illinois senator has a higher hurdle than most: a consistently liberal voting record.

In recent weeks, Obama said he supports gun-ownership rights, backs legislation giving immunity to telephone companies that participated in an anti-terrorism surveillance program and would consider cutting corporate taxes. On July 3, he said he would ``continue to refine my policies'' on the Iraq War.

Obama built his candidacy on the support of his party's liberal base, which favors restrictions on guns and wiretapping, raising taxes for companies, and pulling U.S. forces from Iraq. As an Illinois state legislator, he voted against a law carving out self-defense exceptions to local handgun bans; as a U.S. senator, he opposed business tax cuts and extending warrantless eavesdropping, and backed tougher gun laws. On Iraq, he has long focused on ending the war and withdrawing troops.

The candidate is now trying to fend off Arizona Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, who needs to try to ``unmask Obama as an old-style liberal in a flashy new costume,'' said Trent Duffy, a former aide to President George W. Bush and a partner at the Washington communications firm HDMK.

`Seeming Authenticity'

At the same time, changing positions may present risks by endangering one of Obama's biggest assets, his ``seeming authenticity,'' said Mark Corallo, a strategist who worked on Republican Fred Thompson's presidential bid.

Obama, 46, rejects the notion that he is trying to move to the center.

``I get tagged as being on the left and when I simply describe what have been my positions consistently, then suddenly people act surprised,'' Obama told reporters in Ohio on July 1. There haven't ``been substantial shifts,'' he said.

Gun control emerged as an issue last month after the Supreme Court struck down Washington's handgun ban. McCain, 71, quickly praised the decision.

Obama was on the defensive because of past support for more restrictive laws. In addition to the 2004 state vote on the self- defense bill, which critics said might eviscerate local handgun bans, Obama in 2005 voted as a U.S. senator to expand the types of banned ammunition and against a measure protecting gun makers and sellers from lawsuits.

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Labels: General Election 2008, Obama, Obama critics

Obama Fails to Put Out the FISA Fire in His Own House | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

In an unprecedented attempt to put out a fire in his own house, Senator Barack Obama yesterday issued a response to supporters who had been protesting his position on government surveillance. The release was followed by an 90 minute interchange on MyBarackObama.com between campaign officials and supporters (though as far as I could tell, the campaign officials made no comments themselves but just read the comments being made, leaving it unclear who was actually reading and for how long)..

Unfortunately, there was nothing in Obama's response that addressed the harsh criticism some of his supporters have voiced. I could go into detail on why the statement stinks, but since this is the Internet I don't have to, since I can instead direct you to the excellent point-by-point analysis offered by Glenn Greenwald. My focus here will be the novel political dynamic unleashed by the Obama campaign's social networking site, MyBarackObama.com.

These are uncharted waters we are dealing with here. Yesterday I asked the question whether 18,000 people protesting on the campaign's own web site (out of hundreds of thousands) were a lot or a little. Apparently they were enough to get the attention of the campaign and the candidate.

The comments were a mix of people who were star-struck that Obama had noticed them and written a reply, people who felt any criticism on the site was inappropriate, people who just spouted typical Internet invective at each other, but then an awful lot of extremely informed and thoughtful people who did not back down an inch.

Some defending Obama's position questioned whether the protestors were really from the Obama camp or were Republicans who had logged on to wreak havoc. However, since MyBarackObama.com is a full-fledged social networking site, one can check the profile of each commenter, see how long they have been active on the site, what action groups they are part of, and so on. It appeared that many angry critics were people who had put a lot of time and money into the campaign.

The whole episode raised more questions than it answered. Certainly what is going on here is something new. There are going to be many more controversial issues. A presidential candidate can't always be having to log on to the Internet to defend himself from his own supporters. I am reminded The Obama campaign promised to give its supporters new Internet tools to empower them to make the campaign their own. Now that it as done so, the leadership has to be wondering if it was a good idea. of the musicians who have figured out how to make modest livelihoods marketing their music directly to fans over MySpace, only to discover that doing requires spending hours every day maintaining the sort of direct relationship fans on social networking sites expect.

On the other hand, overall this has to be considered a victory for, and an extension of, democracy. This is a clear-cut case of a candidate promising one thing and doing another. Turns out that in the age of the online campaign there will be a higher price for this time-honored activity.

Labels: Domestic spying, FISA, Intelligence, Obama, Obama critics, Obama supporters