Buh-bye!

Maryland tosses Diebold, for two very important reasons:

1. Don't Work.
2. Cost Too Much.

I heartily encourage the rest of the US to follow suit.

Next Up: Nuking Iran

Ex-U .N. inspector: Iran’s next And it'll be a nuke. There's nothing else left.

Ritter described how the U.S. government might justify war with Iran in a scenario similar to the buildup to the Iraq invasion. He also argued that Iran wants a nuclear energy program, and not nuclear weapons. But the Bush administration, he said, refuses to believe Iran is telling the truth.

[...]

Ritter also predicted the military strategy for war with Iran. First, American forces will bomb Iran. If Iranians don’t overthrow the current government, as Bush hopes they will, Iran will probably attack Israel. Then, Ritter said, the United States will drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. ”

It's the only way we can go to war with anyone else right now. We don't have the manpower -- oh, unless you want a draft, and the Bush Administration loves their high-tech movie-plot weapons anyway -- God, I bet Bush'll hit that little red button and make a pious-sounding speech on TV that's really all about the size of the Presidential Weenie.

They Decided to Invade, Then Picked The Data to Lie With

Teasing out the horror of the Bush Administration: The Irrelevance of Intelligence, and "Rational Actors", where the author confirms that the decision to invade Iraq had nothing to do with intelligence, bad or otherwise.

I underscore these points: the Bush administration was repeatedly told that Saddam was being kept "in his box," and that the best policy was one of aggressive inspections and the avoidance of war. The Bush administration was repeatedly told that the prospects for Western-style democracy in Iraq were very bleak, and that Iraq's economy and infrastructure would require the expenditure of massive amounts of U.S. funds if they were to recover. The Bush administration was repeatedly warned that, in the aftermath of an invasion, it was highly probable that violence would be directed against the American forces -- and that violence would also ensue between the various factions within Iraq.

Not only did the Bush administration misrepresent and lie about all of this to the American public and to the world: it did not make any plans at all to deal with even one aspect of these momentous problems.

Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq: Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says

"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made...."

Lying About FISA

The Administration's new FISA defense is factually false

Glenn Greenwald notes, Gen Hayden's excuse for the Administration bypassing getting FISA warrants "is because the 'probable cause' standard for obtaining a FISA warrant was too onerous (and prevented them from obtaining warrants they needed to eavesdrop)".

Well, that's obviously bullshit, as Greenwald points out, since the Administration, when previously offered a chance to change that very standard, said "oh, no, we're fine."