I can’t add anything to this indictment of a shallow, image-conscious man in over his head. And I

don’t just mean Brownie. mjh

Winners of Katrina contracts defend deals By HOPE YEN,

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

[E]-mails show that Brown, who had been planning to step down from his post when the storm hit,

was preoccupied with his image on television even as one of the first FEMA officials to arrive in New Orleans, Marty Bahamonde, was

reporting a crisis situation of increasing chaos to FEMA officials.

“My eyes must certainly be deceiving me. You look

fabulous – and I’m not talking the makeup,” writes Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs to Brown on 7:10

a.m. local time on Aug. 29.

“I got it at Nordstroms,” Brown writes back. “Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I go

home?” An hour later, Brown adds: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god.”

A

week later, Brown’s aide, Sharon Worthy, reminds him to pay heed to his image on TV. “In this crises and on TV you just need to

elbow.”

Small wonder Bush and Cheney want the CIA exempt from rules limiting torture. Aren’t you the least

surprised the CIA runs a prison system?

Will we recognize when we cross the line from “a strong executive” to a

dictatorship? mjh

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Debate Is Growing

Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11
By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer

The

CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according

to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up

by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan

and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and

former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in

the CIA’s unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even

basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with

overseeing the CIA’s covert actions.

NOW. Transcript. October 28, 2005 | PBS

BRANCACCIO: Former

House Majority Leader Tom Delay wrote a letter yesterday to supporters. And he said it’s all linked, the allegations of financial

impropriety involving Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and the Fitzgerald investigation. His quote to his constituents, “We are

witnessing the criminalization of conservative politics.” What do you make of that?

CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: I would

respectfully disagree. I think we’re looking at when you do something illegal you get caught. And this is what’s

happened with Scooter Libby, at least, the allegation.

There’s enough there that the prosecutor feels that he can make a case and

from all that we’ve seen in the notes that– that Scooter Libby took that tell one thing whereas his– testimony at the grand jury was

something different which is kind of mind-boggling in the first place. That tells you that there’s something real here. And that’s

about illegal activity. …

I can’t imagine a thought process that said to Scooter Libby, “Go ahead and say to the grand jury

that you heard about Valerie Plame first from the press when you have your own notes that you know are being turned over under discovery

that show that you heard it from the Vice-President.” I don’t understand the thinking the went into that. It’s going to be very

interesting to see how they handle this and what the Vice-President does. Because this is his right hand person. And clearly he didn’t

act without– the Vice-President being very involved in whatever he did.

What the ‘Shield’ Covered Up By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Has anyone

noticed that the coverup worked?

In his impressive presentation of the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby last week,

Patrick Fitzgerald expressed the wish that witnesses had testified when subpoenas were issued in August 2004, and “we would have been

here in October 2004 instead of October 2005.”

Note the significance of the two dates: October 2004, before President Bush was

reelected, and October 2005, after the president was reelected. Those dates make clear why Libby threw sand in the eyes of prosecutors,

in the special counsel’s apt metaphor, and helped drag out the investigation.

As long as Bush still faced the voters, the White

House wanted Americans to think that officials such as Libby, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney had nothing to do with the leak

campaign to discredit its arch-critic on Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

And Libby, the good soldier, pursued a brilliant

strategy to slow the inquiry down. …

Bush and his disciples would like everyone to assume that Libby was some kind of lone

operator who, for this one time in his life, abandoned his usual caution. …

What exactly transpired in the meetings between

Libby and Cheney on the Wilson case? It is inconceivable that an aide as careful and loyal as Libby was a rogue official. Did Cheney set

these events in motion? This is a question about good government at least as much as it is a legal matter.