Her campaign's not dead yet, it just keeps rising from the Grave.

Where's a Vampire Slayer when you need one?

Despite the grand pronouncemnts of Timmeh this Democratic Primary Battle isn't over yet.  Yes, we know Hillary can't win mathematically, I stated this elemental fact on Sunday.  Tuesday didn't change the fact that Hillary would need an average of 68% of both the pledged and uncommitted Super-delegates to reach the magic number, it just made the media stop ignoring that her campaign's new pant-suite was translucent.

The question now is just how long this trail of tears death march back to a unified democratic party need to be?  Just how are we going to implement our own Truth and Reconcilliation Commission?

For months, Joseph C. Wilson, former diplomat of the Clinton administration and husband of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, has written negative articles about Barack Obama, without so much as a passing glance from the mainstream media. The attacks are so vitriolic, so ridiculous, and so outside of the realm of his expertise, that I have been responding to his attacks on The Huffington Post. My responses have yet to find their way through the censors.

Darrell Issa's (R-CA) stunning statement reducing the 9/11 attack on the United States to a "simple" plane crash is just the latest outrage from the execrable California Republican.  After all, the one-time accused car thief turned car alarm magnate attacked the families of dead Blackwater contractors, accused Valerie Plame of perjury and played a vital role in purging a U.S. attorney, just to name a few others.  Yet less than five years after he cried like a baby while announcing his withdrawal from the California governor's race, Darrell Issa mysteriously remains a force in American politics.

Here, then, are the Top 10 Moments from Darrell Issa's Hall of Shame:

Joseph Wilson, an unabashed supporter of (and surrogate for) Senator Hillary Clinton, posted an article today on Huffington Post in which he calls Senator Barack Obama's national security credentials into question.  In doing so, he brings in Willie Horton Rev. Jeremiah Wright to attack Sen. Obama's "judgment".

I find the use of Rev. Wright as a cudgel against Sen. Obama to be absolutely shameless.  Sen. Clinton should be taking a strong stand, not just against the exploitation of this controversy, but against the fact that there is even a controversy at all.  She's playing into the same smear campaign that went after her and her husband for eight years, and that went after John Kerry four years ago.  It needs to stop.

Is this what it's come to with Hillary and her supporters? It's not enough to draw differences between Hillary and Obama, but they have to paint Obama as "dangerous"? And from Joseph Wilson,no less? The title alone of his piece at the Huffington Post -  Obama's Shallow Credentials on National Security Are Dangerous for the Country - is enough to make me wretch at the thought that we fought so fervently to defend his honor when the Bush Administration ruined his wife's career.

"I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

-- Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton is absolutely right:  she has a Lifetime of Experience.   For her all whole life, she's been experiencing things.   She turned 60 years old this year, and for 60 of those 60 years, she has been alive and things have been happening in her life.   Do you understand?   She has been experiencing things.  

(more...)

Had not seen this before, though it came out just before the Potomac Primary.   It's now cited on Raw Story.   Joseph Wilson isn't a high-powered politician or a media icon, but I found the endorsement interesting both because I respect his efforts to uncover (part of) the truth in Iraq leading up to the war as well as his conduct afterwards and because it captures some of my reasoning for supporting Hillary Clinton as well.

   It's been quite a while since I've posted here at Kos. It is unfortunate that it would be under such circumstances that I had to return. But my heart was broken, and it is my hope that the people who caused my wound will bare witness to the pain they have caused.

   I climbed out of bed today, turned on my computer, and thought I woke up in some alternate reality ah-la Stargate SG-1 or something. Two of the men I revere most within the anti-Iraq War movement, Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson(full article) and Former Intelligence Officer Larry Johnson(full diary), have decided to author unfair, and unsupported by fact, hit-pieces on Senator Barack Obama. Beyond simple disagreement, they have chosen to personally attack a candidate that has shown keen, and timely judgment on the war in Iraq, and the actions the Bush administration has taken, in the name of our country.

   It pains me to commit what I’m about to write, but I feel that I must; I have no other way to clear my conscience. Be all my sins remember’d.

The UK's Sunday Times has another article today, Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe, in their series about the penetration of US agencies by a criminal network of Turkish, Israeli and US government officials stealing nuclear secrets and selling them on the black market to the highest bidder.

The focus of this new Times article is the original outing of Brewster Jennings, the CIA cover company that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for. The article confirms that Marc Grossman, former # 3 State Dept official, and former Ambassador to Turkey, warned his Turkish associates to be wary of Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front operation. This disclosure occurred in the summer of 2001, two years prior to the outing of Valerie Plame.

The FBI warned the CIA about Grossman's activities and Brewster Jennings was dismantled shortly thereafter.

Where Have You Been?

On December 21, the Huffington Post published an article by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson entitled "The Real Hillary I Know - and the Unreal Obama". In the article, which promoted Hillary Clinton's candidacy, Wilson associated himself with Wes Clark and Dick Holbrooke as early opponents of the Iraq War. He also made denigrating comments about Senator Barack Obama.

One can only guess why Joe Wilson would write such a provocative article. And while they also back Hillary Clinton, why have Clark and Holbrooke not publicly distanced themselves from Joe's characterization of Obama?

On Friday, right-wing mouthpiece and failed Bush Labor nominee Linda Chavez demonstrated the Iron Law of Republican scandal management.  Claiming the CIA official purportedly responsible for destroying detainee interrogation tapes "deserves a medal," Chavez showed the conservative commitment to rewarding those who conceal White House wrong-doing.  The corollary, of course, is the GOP Payback Principle: those exposing Bush administration criminality should be prosecuted.

PREFACE: FYI, former ambassador Joseph Wilson has posted his commentary, "The Real Hillary I Know -- and the Unreal Obama," at No Quarter.  It's powerful testimony, and full of examples from the foreign policy expert.

::::::::::::::

   I know some of you have been unhappy with my posts of late -- and one of our dearest regulars telephoned me about it last night. I care very much what you think. You deserve a short explanation: I'm scared to death the Democrats are going to nominate a smart young guy because he's a "symbol" -- who isn't vetted sufficiently, doesn't have enough experience (yet), and doesn't get nearly the press scrutiny that Sen. Clinton gets. Joe Conason writes vividly about the scrutiny. And ...

A weekend online editorial from the Wall Street JournalAnother Iran Curveball- once again demonstrates the potency of the neo-con Kool Aid years after it has been drunk.

President Bush has been scrambling to rescue his Iran policy after this week's intelligence switcheroo, but the fact that the White House has had to spin so furiously is a sign of how badly it has bungled this episode. In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy (to undermine) four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency. Recall the internal disputes over post-invasion Iraq, the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi by the State Department and CIA, hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joseph Wilson's bogus accusations, and so on. Mr. Bush has too often failed to settle internal disputes and enforce the results.

By L C Johnson (bio/blog)

Former Presidential spokesliar, oops, I mean spokesman, Scott McClellan, reminded us this week that the fish rots from the head.  McClellan drops the truth bombshell that implicates George Bush and Dick Cheney in the sordid outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.  CNN reports that:

Amid a swelling controversy about the leak of Valerie Wilson's name, McClellan went to the White House podium in October 2003 and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved. . .

There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened," which is to be released in April. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

On October 7th, 2003, President Bush famously declared of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official."  Now we have more insight as to Bush's misplaced confidence that the truth would remain hidden.  In his new tell-all book, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan claims President Bush himself played an instrumental role in the failed cover up.

'Indignation Gap' Rhetoric Used Widely By Right-Wing  Pundits

Accusing progressives of fighting President Bush instead of fighting the actual foreign threats to America is a debate tactic used widely by radical right-wing pundits.  Surprisingly, former ambassador Joe Wilson--widely viewed as a progressive hero--used the debate tactic this week to chide Barack Obama's stance on Iran.

PREFACE:

A group of distinguished intelligence and military officers, diplomats, and law enforcement professionals delivered an urgent message this morning to the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling on them to hold the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey until he takes a clear position on the legality of waterboarding.

Their message strongly endorses the view of former judge advocates general that waterboarding "is inhumane, is torture, is illegal.” The intelligence veterans added it is also a notoriously unreliable way to acquire accurate information.

They noted that the factors cited by the president and Mukasey as obstacles to his giving an opinion on waterboarding can be easily solved by briefing Mukasey on waterboarding and on C.I.A. interrogation methods.

Via MAL Contends

The truth won, if your scoreboard is reality.

When the Bush rightwingers betrayed national security and blew the cover of a non-official cover CIA officer involved in keeping nuclear weapons technology out of the hands of countries like Iran, The Nation's (07/16/2003) David Corn (that crazy leftist, bring back HUAC) sounded the alarm.

As the first journalist to point out what amounts to treason, Corn deserves a few I-told-you-sos. And Corn sets the record straight in his piece, Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong:

Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong

MAL Contends