Molly Ivins on the Downing Street Memo

I cannot let this astounding Downing Street memo go unmentioned.

On May 1, the Sunday Times of London printed a secret memo that went to the defense secretary, foreign secretary, attorney general and other high officials. It is the minutes of their meeting on Iraq with Tony Blair. The memo was written by Matthew Rycroft, a Downing Street foreign policy aide. It has been confirmed as legitimate and is dated July 23, 2002. I suppose the correct cliche is "smoking gun."

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. (There it is.) The NSC (National Security Council) had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." After some paragraphs on tactical considerations, Rycroft reports, "No decisions had been taken, but he (British defense secretary) thought the most likely timing in U.S. minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the U.S. congressional elections.

Sydney Blumenthal: The Good Soldier's Revenge

In Colin Powell's battle to block Bush's nominee to the UN, far more is at stake than John Bolton's unsuitability.
(The Guardian)

U.S. Lawmakers Seek Wal-Mart Pay Data

In a letter sent on Thursday afternoon to Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer Lee Scott, lawmakers said the company pays female hourly workers 40 cents less an hour than men and pays female managers nearly $5,000 less a year than their male counterparts.

Written by Connecticut Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro (news, bio, voting record), the letter was signed by 50 of her colleagues.

The letter said women comprise 72 percent of the work force at the world's biggest retailer, but only fill one-third of its management positions.
(Reuters)

White House Sleepovers Included Large Number of Donors

The Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan watchdog group, said that while the practice of inviting donors to spend the night at the White House and the presidential retreat isn't new, it doesn't look any better than when it sparked a scandal during the Clinton administration.

"It sounds like to a certain degree the White House and Camp David are being used as they have been for quite a while - as a way to reward fundraisers and big givers."
(USA Today)

Panel Sends Bolton Nomination to Senate

The Foreign Relations Committee voted 10-8 along party lines to advance Bolton's nomination without the customary recommendation that the Senate approve it. The procedural move spared Bush outright defeat in the Republican-led committee but still represented an embarrassing setback early in his second term.

The pivotal vote came from Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich (news, bio, voting record), who said Bolton was a sometime bully whose short fuse would have gotten him fired in the private sector.

"This is not behavior that should be endorsed as the face of the United States to the world community at the United Nations," Voinovich said. "It is my opinion that John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be."
(AP)

Pat Buchanan Outrages With WWII Comments...Again

"That is more or less saying they fought for the wrong reasons and the sacrifice was futile," said Veterans of Foreign Wars spokesman Jerry Newberry. "Buchanan apparently hasn't given much thought to what the world would have looked like if Hitler and his henchmen would have succeeded."

Buchanan did not return calls yesterday.

Former Mayor Ed Koch offered this blunt rebuttal: "I believe that no decent human being should ever sit down at the same table with Pat Buchanan and I am shocked that otherwise responsible, respectable citizens share platforms with him on Sunday shows."
(Newsday)

Garrison Keillor: Confessions of a Listener

The deregulation of radio was tough on good-neighbor radio because Clear Channel and other conglomerates were anxious to vacuum up every station in sight for fabulous sums of cash and turn them into robot repeaters. I dropped in to a broadcasting school last fall and saw kids being trained for radio careers as if radio were a branch of computer processing. They had no conception of the possibility of talking into a microphone to an audience that wants to hear what you have to say. I tried to suggest what a cheat this was, but the instructor was standing next to me. Clear Channel's brand of robotics is not the future of broadcasting. With a whole generation turning to iPod and another generation discovering satellite radio and Internet radio, the robotic formatted-music station looks like a very marginal operation indeed. Training kids to do that is like teaching typewriter repair.
(The Nation)

Kabul Blast Signals Return of Forgotten Taliban Insurgency

A United Nations employee has been killed in a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, after the worst week of fighting further south in Afghanistan for nine months.

About 70 Taliban fighters and 10 government security personnel have also been killed and seven US soldiers wounded in two battles, confounding hopes that the Taliban insurgency may be petering out.

In Kabul, a bomber apparently ran into an internet café, popular with foreigners, and detonated a grenade which killed himself and two others, and wounded six. One of the dead was a Burmese engineer who had worked for the UN for about a year, the first UN employee to be killed in Afghanistan since 2001. He was checking e-mails when the attack happened at the Park internet café in the city centre on Saturday.
(The Independent)

Ari Berman: Inflate and Intimidate

A major showdown looms large this week, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee scheduled to vote Thursday on John Bolton's nomination as America's new UN ambassador. The Bush Administration, with Chairman Richard Lugar's assistance, is withholding crucial information describing how Bolton tried to spy on colleagues through National Security Agency intercepts and how he skewed intelligence on Syria. The lack of cooperation may prompt Democrats to postpone the vote.

One thing is certain: a flurry of new allegations has surfaced since the Foreign Relations Committee postponed a vote on Bolton three weeks ago. Each has reinforced his reputation as a unilateral uber-hawk who intimidates subordinates, ignores orders, exaggerates intelligence and consistently favors ideology over expertise. Here's a rundown of the most recent allegations. For the backstory, read here, here and here.

** Bolton repeatedly exaggerated the extent of Syria's weapons capabilities and threat to the United States and the greater Middle East, clashing with the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

N.H. May Charge Poorest for Medicaid

As states struggle to cut Medicaid costs, New Hampshire has proposed going further by making the poorest of the poor — even families with no income at all — contribute to their coverage.
(AP)

UN challenges U.S. Congress on Oil, Food Probe

The United Nations won the firstround of a skirmish against the U.S. Congress on Monday when a federal judge temporarily blocked a former investigator from distributing documents on the oil-for-food program for Iraq.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina in Washington issued a 10-day restraining order against the investigator, Robert Parton, a former FBI agent, so both sides could have time to resolve the issue.

The restraining order was sought by Paul Volcker, head of a U.N.-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee (ICC) investigating fraud in the $67 billion humanitarian program.
(Reuters)

Five Years Later, Clinton's Favorability Ratings

Still Higher Than Bush's

William Jefferson Clinton: 53% Favorability Rating
George W. Bush: 52% Favorability Rating
(Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll; April 25-26, 2005)

Reid: Bush is a "Loser"

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid called President Bush "a loser" during a civics discussion with a group of teenagers at a high school on Friday.


"The man's father is a wonderful human being," Reid, D-Nev., told students at Del Sol High School when asked about the president's policies. "I think this guy is a loser."

Sen. Biden Asks Rice for Bolton Documents

The top Democrat on the Senate committee considering the nomination of John R. Bolton as United Nations ambassador scolded Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday for ignoring Democratic requests for additional information about the embattled nominee.

In a curt letter to Rice, Sen. Joseph Biden D-Del., reiterated his requests for State Department documents related to charges that Bolton tried to bend or ignore government intelligence findings that did not suit his hard right ideology.