The Daily Mirror (UK) reports that it has been gagged by Britain's top law chief from publishing more of the secret memo detailing a threat by President Bush to bomb al-Jazeera tv network.

The Attorney General warned that publication of any further details from the document would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act. He threatened an immediate High Court injunction unless the Mirror confirmed it would not publish further details. We have essentially agreed to comply.

The five-page memo - stamped "Top Secret" - records a threat by Bush to unleash "military action" against the TV station, which America accuses of being a mouthpiece for anti-US sentiments.

Background here. [hat tip Patriot Daily.]

Congressman Murtha blogs today over at Huffington Post. 78% of the responses he's received to his call for bringing the troops home have been positive. He's now calling for a White House meeting.

Murray Waas' latest article concerns a presidential briefing paper written 10 days after September 11, 2001 that says,"U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda."

The highly classified CIA assessment was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president's national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers, according to government records.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

This is pretty amazing. A memo has been uncovered that shows Bush planned to bomb an al Jazeera tv network and Tony Blair talked him out of it.

A source told the Mirror: "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush. "He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do -- and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Another source said: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men." A spokesman for Blair's Downing Street office said: "We have got nothing to say about this story. We don't comment on leaked documents."

Bush calls the claim "outlandish."

Court TV Extra will be live streaming the trial of Saddam Hussein that begins Monday. They charge $5.95 a month for the service.

by TChris

Despite administration protests that it is "irresponsible" to suggest that the U.S. should establish a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, the idea finds support among Iraqi leaders.

Reaching out to the Sunni Arab community, Iraqi leaders called for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and said Iraq's opposition had a "legitimate right" of resistance.

Shouldn't an administration that has frequently labeled post-invasion Iraq a sovereign nation respect the wishes of its leaders?

Rolling Stone brings us John Rendon, the man Bush used to sell the War in Iraq. The story begins in December, 2001:

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

The subject was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, whom as we now know, told a very false tale.

Here's an interesting development.

The Justice Department is deciding whether to pursue an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing over how a division of the Halliburton Co. was awarded a contract in Iraq. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., released a letter Friday from Defense Department Assistant Inspector General John R. Crane that said the department's Defense Criminal Investigative Services is investigating the allegations and "has shared its findings with the Department of Justice."

The letter also said the Justice Department is in the process of considering whether to pursue the matter.

No comments from Halliburton because "As the investigation is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time."

by TChris

It’s a familiar story: facing a stiff sentence, a defendant hopes to gain the government's favor (and “earn” a lesser penalty) by pointing the finger of blame at someone else. When there’s nobody else to blame, the desperate defendant makes something up, perhaps sensing from investigators’ questions that they have a target in mind.

Pvt. Michael Williams, convicted of murdering unarmed Iraqis, told an Army investigator that his platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Erick J. Anderson, gave him the order to kill. Now Williams says he did so only in exchange for a reduction of his life sentence to 25 years.

"I just felt that pressure of getting a life sentence instead of 25 years," Williams said. "It's just a lot of my fear."

by TChris

Dick Cheney stands at the intersection of the war in Iraq and secret meetings with oil company executives to shape energy policy. The administration’s consistent denials that the war had anything to do with oil may unravel if the oil executives are placed under oath and compelled to answer questions about the meeting with Cheney -- questions they evaded during their unsworn congressional testimony.

The Senate is demanding that executives from Big Oil return to testify about a secret meeting with Cheney on energy policy that took place soon after Bush came to office. The Big Oil men denied knowledge of the gathering in earlier testimony. But that testimony was not under oath so they cannot be charged with perjury. Cheney has been vigorously trying to keep secret what happened at this meeting. It is suspected the vice president and the oil companies hammered out an aggressive energy policy, and possibly discussed the administration’s plans to go to war in Iraq, well before 9-11.

by TChris

Rep. John Murtha, described in the linked AP story as “one of Congress' most hawkish Democrats,” today announced his support for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

"It is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region," Murtha said.

How long before the Bush administration brands this decorated Vietnam War veteran as unpatriotic?

by TChris

Apparently adopting the “lie and deny” strategy that served the Bush administration well until lies spawned the threat of indictments, Iraq’s interior minister “accused critics Thursday of exaggerating reports of torture at a lockup seized by U.S. troops last weekend, saying inmates included both Shiites and Sunnis and only a handful showed signs of abuse.” Not so, says Catherine Philp, who reports that the interior minister was “extremely defensive and not very convincing.”

"Sunni groups have been trying to present evidence - photographs, videos and testimony - for months, but they have only been taken seriously now that the Americans have become involved. …

"I've been collecting testimony today from people who have been held in all sorts of centres: interestingly, none of them was held in the Jadriya prison - they were all held in other places, which have apparently not been declared. It suggests that this is just the tip of the iceberg. …

"Now it has become much more publicly clear that the Shia have been waging their own form of civil war through their security services and death squads.

The interior minister's spin is unlikely to succeed in light of torture photos that are appearing in the Iraqi press.