NYT: U.S. Concedes Uncertainty on North Korean Uranium Effort.

Check out this McClatchy report on one of the fired US attorneys:

The U.S. attorney from New Mexico who was recently fired by the Bush administration said Wednesday that he believes he was forced out because he refused to rush an indictment in an ongoing probe of local Democrats a month before November's Congressional elections.

David Iglesias said two members of Congress separately called in mid October to inquire about the timing of an ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order to benefit the Republicans. He refused to name the members of Congress because he said he feared retaliation.

Two months later, on Dec. 7, Iglesias became one of six U.S. attorneys ordered to step down for what administration officials have termed "performance-related issues." Two other U.S. attorneys also have been asked to resign.

Iglesias, who received a positive performance review before he was fired, said he suspected he was forced out because of his refusal to be pressured to hand down an indictment in the ongoing probe. ...

Iglesias said the two members of Congress not only contacted him directly but also proceeded to try to wrest details about the case from him. Iglesias would not comment on the case to McClatchy, but the local media has reported on aspects of the ongoing investigation, including allegations that a former Democratic state senator took money to ensure an $82 million courthouse contract would go to specific company.

Congressional questions about ongoing cases are supposed to go through a special office within the Justice Department to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

"I was appalled by the inappropriateness of those contacts," Iglesias said of the calls. ...

Army Times: Wounded Walter Reed patients told to avoid the media. "The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: 'It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place,' referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed."

Marc Perelman: Syrian envoy rips US and Israel for rejecting overtures from Damascus.

The WP's Dafna Linzer and Julie Tate: New Light Shed on CIA's 'Black Site' Prisons.

Check out Kevin Drum's round up of reports on the EFPs -- and some of their parts' apparent origins in the UAE.

Paul Kiel: Pelosi and Cunningham prosecutors strike deal on docs.

Plan B. The Bush administration is working to support a government of national reconciliation in Baghdad, but should that fail, there have been reports that one possible back up plan the administration is mulling is to back the Shiites and Kurds and let the Sunnis fend for themselves -- the so called 80% solution. (And while a Shia tilt is emerging in Iraq, in the wider region, many have reported the administration is working closely with a constellation of mostly Sunni states to counter Iran. Think of it as concentric circles.) How to think about alternative Plan Bs should the surge fail? This Foreign Policy piece by University of Minnesota defense expert Colin Kahl argues for the necessity of thinking about that a few months ahead of the curve:

... There are no good options for addressing Iraq’s ongoing civil war, only three bad ones: Maintain a neutral stance and attempt to use a mix of coercion and security to facilitate national reconciliation; take sides; or let the conflict burn itself out. The president’s new plan—call it Plan A—embraces the first option. But if beefing up the U.S. troop presence in Baghdad and Anbar province fails to limit the violence by this summer, the United States could find itself forced to choose between two competing visions of Plan B: taking sides or getting out.

The first option calls on the United States to take sides in Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian conflict. It is sometimes referred to as the “80 percent solution,” because it sides with the majority Shiites and Kurds in their attempts to bring Sunni insurgents to heel. Neoconservatives and administration hawks who support this strategy say it will produce undeniable facts on the ground for the Sunni minority. For the Sunnis “must come to know that they will lose everything if they don’t abandon violence as their principal political tool,” wrote Reuel Marc Gerecht, a fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, in The Wall Street Journal. Even some realist critics of the administration have suggested this alternative. Since “no American gesture of inclusion and pacification can propitiate the recalcitrant Sunni minority,” it’s time to side with the elected Shiite government, argued Nikolas Gvosdev, editor of The National Interest, and Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent Financial Times editorial. ...

These two possible Plan B’s have different strategic and moral implications. From a national security perspective, taking sides might give the United States at least some influence over events and the policies pursued by the Iraqi government, help prevent the establishment of an al Qaeda safe haven, and deter outside states from intervening out of fear that they would come into conflict with U.S. troops. Staying in the fight might also help maintain U.S. credibility by avoiding the perception that the United States yet again abandoned its Iraqi allies—principally the Shiites and Kurds—or retreated in the face of jihadi attacks.

On the other hand, an orderly withdrawal has its advantages. ...

What's up with the stock market today? Its fall is breaking news ...

Update: Whoah. Word is a computer glitch is at least partly to blame. From Dow Jones/AP:

Report: sudden, sharp Dow decline due to computer glitch

NEW YORK (Dow Jones/AP) _ There's word that the sudden registering of a sharp decline by the Dow industrials heading into the final hour of trading was triggered by a tabulation delay by Dow Jones data systems, which calculates the average.

The Wall Street Journal reports there was a temporary lag in calculation of the index due to a surge in order flows as the market continued to fall -- much like a clogged pipe. Shortly before three p-m, Eastern time, Dow Jones Indexes switched over to a backup system to calculate the average. That registered the huge move almost instantly.

While the glitch wasn't the cause of the decline, it did cause the drop to register far more quickly than it otherwise would have. Other indexes fell at the same time, but more gradually.

Newsweek's Holly Bailey: Rough ride on Air Force Two.

David Ignatius: US Agrees to meeting with Iran and Syria

The Bush administration has agreed to sit around a negotiating table with official representatives of Iran and Syria next month -- as part of a planned regional conference in Baghdad to discuss ways to stabilize Iraq.

In joining the Baghdad conference, the administration is tiptoeing into what has become one of the most contentious issues in the roiling Iraq debate. Critics for months have been urging the administration to end its diplomatic isolation of Iran and Syria and begin a constructive dialogue with them about how to stabilize Iraq. Even former secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has generally supported administration policy on Iraq, argued in an op-ed piece last weekend that it’s time to end the diplomatic quarantine and convene an international conference on Iraq.

The Iraqi government is expected to announce the regional conference as early as Tuesday. The government will invite representatives of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States -- in addition to all of its Mideast neighbors.

Though it will bring together American, Syrian and Iranian representatives, the Baghdad meeting doesn’t signal a direct U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria. A senior State Department official said Monday night that it wasn’t likely there would be separate bilateral meetings with Iran or Syria. Rather, the planned Baghdad meeting is an extension of the administration’s current policy of using the Iraqi government as the channel for discussions with Iran and Syria about Iraqi security.

The Washington Institute's Levant expert David Schenker analyzes Saudi-Iranian mediation on Hizballah.

CNN: Iraqi president Jalal Talabani in intensive care, after doctors put a catheter in his heart.

Note from Fitzgerald's spokesman: "The parties in the Libby trial have been asked to come to the courtroom at 9:45 today (Monday) morning. Thank you." Any guesses?

Update, from Firedoglake: "***BREAKING: There has been exposure of at least one of the jurors to media coverage of the trial. There is discussion going on in chambers with Judge Walton and counsel for both sides as to how to proceed. There will likely be individual voir dire (discussions) with each and every juror now to determine if there is a taint to the jury process. We won't know anything about whether things will proceed until that has concluded. There is a possibility of a mistrial being declared but, again, we will not know anything unless and until the judge and attorneys speak with the jury foreperson and all of the jurors, and make their determination as to how things will or will not proceed from there. More news as we get it.***"

NYT, "Why Have So Many U.S. Attorneys Been Fired? It Looks a Lot Like Politics."

... It is hard to call what’s happening anything other than a political purge. And it’s another shameful example of how in the Bush administration, everything — from rebuilding a hurricane-ravaged city to allocating homeland security dollars to invading Iraq — is sacrificed to partisan politics and winning elections.

U.S. attorneys have enormous power. Their decision to investigate or indict can bankrupt a business or destroy a life. They must be, and long have been, insulated from political pressures. Although appointed by the president, once in office they are almost never asked to leave until a new president is elected. The Congressional Research Service has confirmed how unprecedented these firings are. It found that of 486 U.S. attorneys confirmed since 1981, perhaps no more than three were forced out in similar ways — three in 25 years, compared with seven in recent months. [...]

The charge of politics certainly feels right. This administration has made partisanship its lodestar. The Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran revealed in his book, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” that even applicants to help administer post-invasion Iraq were asked whom they voted for in 2000 and what they thought of Roe v. Wade.

Congress has been admirably aggressive about investigating. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, held a tough hearing. And he is now talking about calling on the fired U.S. attorneys to testify and subpoenaing their performance evaluations — both good ideas.

The politicization of government over the last six years has had tragic consequences — in New Orleans, Iraq and elsewhere. But allowing politics to infect U.S. attorney offices takes it to a whole new level. ...

Jim Hoagland on the Larijani-floated nonpaper David Ignatius referred to last week.

NYT's Julie Bosman: "Publishers say that particularly for the last six months, 'The Daily Show' and its spinoff, 'The Colbert Report,' which has on similarly wonky authors, like the former White House official David Kuo, have become the most reliable venues for promoting weighty books...."

The whole new Seymour Hersh piece is interesting, but check out his interview with Nasrallah, here.

And this:

... The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.

I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)

The former senior intelligence official also told me that Negroponte did not want a repeat of his experience in the Reagan Administration, when he served as Ambassador to Honduras. “Negroponte said, ‘No way. I’m not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. running operations off the books, with no finding.’ ” (In the case of covert C.I.A. operations, the President must issue a written finding and inform Congress.) Negroponte stayed on as Deputy Secretary of State, he added, because “he believes he can influence the government in a positive way.” ...

“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.” ...

NYT: Justice Dept officials do seem to have misled Congress about the reasons for the recent dismissals of several US attorneys.

Of the dismissed prosecutors who have spoken publicly, all have said they were given no reason for their dismissal. At first, most appeared willing to leave quietly with the understanding that they were presidential appointees who could be replaced at any time.

But their willingness to step down without complaint changed abruptly when Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general, said at a Senate hearing earlier this month that most of the dismissals were carried out to correct performance problems, according to associates of several prosecutors.

In recent days, several of the prosecutors have described conflicts with the Justice Department over death penalty cases and pending political corruption investigations as a possible factor in their firings.

Justice versus the US attorneys. Eight US attorneys among a large group notified that they were being dismissed December 7th. Have Justice Department officials misled Congress about the reason for the dismissals?

WP: Remark puts outdoorsman's career in jeopardy. A "case study in how the NRA has trained members to attack their perceived enemies without mercy." Even other members.

WP:

U.S. troops detained the son of Iraq's most powerful Shiite politician Friday as he returned to the country from Iran, keeping him in custody for nearly 12 hours before releasing him, Shiite officials said. The U.S. ambassador apologized for the arrest.

Amar al-Hakim, son of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, was taken into custody at a crossing point and was transferred to a U.S. facility in Kut, according to the elder al-Hakim's secretary, Jamal al-Sagheer.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's largest Shiite party with longtime ties to Iran. He met with President Bush at the White House in December, and his party is part of the Shiite alliance that includes Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. ...

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the arrest was being investigated but stressed that Washington did not mean any disrespect to al-Hakim or his family.

The eldest son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, perhaps the most powerful political leader in Iraq and the head of the dominant Shiite political bloc, was detained by American forces for several hours on Friday after traveling across the border from Iran into Iraq.

Angry advisors to Mr. Hakim denounced the detention as an insult and said American forces had beaten several guards after stopping the convoy on Friday. The son, Amar Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, is himself a senior official in Mr. Hakim’s political movement and has often taken a lead role in building support for his father’s political efforts.

An American military official declined to comment on the beating allegations, but said in an interview Friday night that the son had been detained because he had an expired passport and because he was traveling with people who had a large number of guns.

In an interview after his release at the provincial governor’s office in Kut, Amar al-Hakim showed a passport that had an expiration date of Sept. 17, 2007. Mr. Hakim said the Americans detained him a few miles from the Iranian border shortly before noon on Friday.

"They arrested me and my guards in an unsuitable way, and they bound my hands and blindfolded me," he said. "They took our phones, bags, money, documents and the guards’ weapons, and sent us to an American base."

"They claim the reason for the arrest was because my passport had expired," he said, "but as you can see my passport expires on the 17th of September." ...

Just a thought. Some reports indicate US troops were waiting for him, did they possibly think this was Sadr, also rumored to be in Iran?

The WP's Ignatius: Signals from Tehran:

The title of the two-page Iranian document is "Gentlemen's Agreement." In convoluted English, it lists 11 points of understanding supposedly reached in September between Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani and his European counterpart, Javier Solana, on a temporary, partial, not-quite suspension of uranium enrichment.

What's interesting isn't the purported agreement -- Solana's spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach, insists there wasn't one -- but the fact that the Iranians are circulating the document and signaling through various channels that they want to restart dialogue. Indeed, when Larijani met Solana in Munich this month, "he expressed the willingness to resume talks to prepare final negotiations," according to a source close to Solana.

"We're getting pinged all over the world by Iranians wanting to talk to us," Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in an interview yesterday. The problem, says Burns, is that the Iranians haven't yet said the "magic word," which is that they will actually suspend enrichment in exchange for the suspension of U.N. sanctions.

AP: Padilla unable to stand trial. "Alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla suffers from intense stress and anxiety after being imprisoned in isolation for years and cannot adequately help his lawyers prepare for a criminal trial, a mental expert testified Thursday. ... Padilla's symptoms are most acute when he is asked about his 3 1/2 years in custody at a Navy brig or to review evidence in the case such as transcripts of telephone conversations, she said."

IAEA Iran report (.pdf)

Worth reading: this review of my friend Danny Postel's book, Reading 'Legitimation Crisis' in Iran.

Worth reading: David Ignatius in Doha.

Reuters: Italy's prime minister to resign.

The WP's Dana Priest and Anne Hull on WAMU's Diane Rehme on their story about the other Walter Reed, with the US's Army surgeon general.

BBC: Blair to announce troop pullout from Iraq.

The LAT reports on the pilots identified by alias in the German el-Masri rendition indictment.

Marcy Wheeler is liveblogging the closing arguments in the Libby trial. Part II of prosecution summation: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a case about lying. Not conspiracy, No White House conspiracy, no NBC conspiracy; Libby is not here because of bad conduct of others. He's here because of his own decision. He decided to lie to the grand jury. When you consider all the evidence, the government has established that the defendant lied to the FBI, lied to the grand jury, obstructed justice. Thank you." Defense summation I. Wells: "This was a case about he said, she said." Defense summation II. Defense summation III. Fitzgerald's rebuttal: "It's a he said he said he said he said she said she said she said he said. ... Is this the greatest coincidence in the world."

More: "DX64. fax sent on June 9. Remember he said it went to the Hill. Hannah said Libby was focused on Wilson. Defense put this in through Craig Schmall. On this page, 2-3 of long document. Paragraph 2, talks about report, Niger planned to send several tons of uranium to Iraq. Niger signed agreement. Now we see the third report. Remember she [Judith Miller] said he [Libby] associated third report with Wilson. On 8 March 2002, obtained independently from sensitive source. This is the Joe WIlson trip. How do we know it? Be said he came back on March. How do you know Defendant knew that? How do you know he focused so deep on the weeds that he knew this? Introduces the exhibit where Libby had marked Wilson by this same paragraph. Says that's his handwriting. He's figured out the sensitive source is Joe Wilson."

Fitzgerald: "One more thing that corrborates. THe VP wrote week before that wife sent him on a junket. THe VP moves to number 1 talking point. You just
think it's coincidence that Cheney was writing this. There is a cloud over the VP. He wrote those columns, he had those meetings, He sent Libby off to the meeting with Judy. Where Plame was discussed. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice. That cloud was there. That cloud is something that we just can't pretend isn't there."

Fitzgerald's rebuttal II. " ... Why in the Fall 2003, does Libby not tell VP, by the way I did talk to reporters. Doesnt tell McClellan, by the way, you should know that Rove spoke about the wife. Does he tell the VP, that he talked to Miller? What's the one thing he told, the one person from whom he learned from in the first person. Why is that one fact so important. Why does the one thing, of all the facts in the case, not that I heard it through Rove, all he tells VP that it was Russert. What they tell him, when he saw the note, he goes back and tells the VP, the VP cocked his head.

"Why is the ONLY thing he told anyone is who he said was the source, to the guy who was his source. ... Is this about a bunch of madmen, two men. Or is about somemthing bigger: Is it about someone to whom Wilson's wife wasn't a person, but an argument. He focused on it June 23, July 8, July 7, focused on it when he talked to Addington. His boss thought it was important. His boss thought it was important.

"Did his boss forget about the wife? One of the first thing he wrote, did his wife send him on a junket. They both talked to a briefer about it. You can't believe that 9 witnesses remember 10 conversations the same way. There is no conspiracy. There is no memory problem. He remembers a conversation that did not happen. But forgets all of his. He had a motive to lie, and he lied in a way that exactly matches his motive. You don't forget something on Thursday that you've passed along on Monday and Tueday. You don't forget about important arguments. You know they talked about a cloud over the VP."

Rest of closing arguments tomorrow.

More coverage from Josh Gerstein.

Murray Waas has a scoop.

Check out this Michael May oped in the LAT, "A clue to Washington's cluelessness."

Consider the record. Washington didn't predict the fall of the shah in Iran, or the end of the Cold War, or the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Nor did our pundits (whether left, right or center) predict the war between Vietnam and China after the U.S. lost more than 50,000 service members in the region to prevent the spread of monolithic communism, or, for that matter, China's turn toward becoming a capitalistic and trading giant. There are innumerable other examples in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

Everything is fine as long as nothing much is happening. But when something happens, especially if it's sudden or revolutionary, we usually don't see it coming. Since World War II at least, Washington's success rate at predicting change in countries with which we have a hostile relationship is close to zero.

Why this failure when most of the events mentioned were years in the making? In part, it's that we don't look at the right things. Our intelligence apparatus is better at counting missiles than at following the intricate politics of a central committee or overhearing the street talk in Tehran — or Baghdad. But even good intelligence on those matters would have had a hard time making it into the Washington debate.

That's because Washington debates tend to be narrow; they fall within a range of acceptable conventional wisdom and close out anything that seems to go out on a limb. We wonder: Is the Soviet Union trying to build a first-strike capability or not? Is Vietnam a tool of Red Chinese expansion? Does Saddam Hussein have nukes? Intelligence is asked to cast light on just those acceptable questions. The assumptions underlying those debates are seldom challenged. They are based on politically acceptable views of the other state and, career-wise, it doesn't pay to challenge them. Indeed, movers and doers in Washington often do not even have time to challenge them. There is little or no intelligence outside the axis of debate.

As a result, any analyst who forecast that, say, the Soviet Union would for its own purposes peaceably release its European satellites, or that the heirs of Mao would turn to capitalism before his body was cold in the grave, would have been quickly marginalized. ...

Fox reports something we noted last week.

Dana Priest and Anne Hull: The other Walter Reed.

"...One amputee, a senior enlisted man who asked not to be identified because he is back on active duty, said he received orders to report to a base in Germany as he sat drooling in his wheelchair in a haze of medication. "I went to Medhold many times in my wheelchair to fix it, but no one there could help me," he said. ...."

The Off the Record Club.

NYT:

Documents captured from Iraqi insurgents indicate that some of the recent fatal attacks against American helicopters are a result of a carefully planned strategy to focus on downing coalition aircraft, one that American officials say has been carried out by mounting coordinated assaults with machine guns, rockets and surface-to-air missiles.

The documents, said to have been drafted by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, show that the militants were preparing to “concentrate on the air force.” The contents of the documents are described in an American intelligence report that was reviewed by The New York Times.

Seized near Baghdad, the documents reflect the insurgents’ military preparations from late last year, including plans for attacking aircraft using a variety of weapons.

Officials say they are a fresh indication that the United States is facing an array of “adaptive” adversaries in Iraq, enemies who are likely to step up their attacks as American forces expand their efforts to secure Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

“Attacks on coalition aircraft probably will increase if helicopter missions expand during the latest phase of the Baghdad Security Plan or if insurgents seek to emulate their recent successes,” notes the intelligence report, which analyzes the recent helicopter crashes.

The American military has said that seven helicopters have been downed since Jan. 20, a figure that exceeds the total number of coalition aircraft shot down in 2006.

After downing the helicopters, the insurgents often laid ambushes for the American ground troops they expected to come to the rescue, sometimes using roadside bombs that they placed in advance. American troops were attacked in five instances in which they rushed to the scene of aircraft that had been shot down, military officials said.

The intelligence report supports the concerns expressed by an American general this month that militants were adapting their tactics in an effort to step up attacks against helicopters. Such strikes have increased since the United States expanded its military operations in Baghdad in August. From December to January, the number of antiaircraft attacks rose by 17 percent, according to an American military report.

NYT:

In the early hours of Jan. 6, Laith al-Ani stood in a jail near the Baghdad airport waiting to be released by the American military after two years and three months in captivity.

He struggled to quell his hope. Other prisoners had gotten as far as the gate only to be brought back inside, he said, and he feared that would happen to him as punishment for letting his family discuss his case with a reporter.

But as the morning light grew, the American guards moved Mr. Ani, a 31-year-old father of two young children, methodically toward freedom. ...

Then, shortly before 9 a.m., Mr. Ani said, he was brought to a table for one last step. He was handed a form and asked to place a check mark next to the sentence that best described how he had been treated:

“I didn’t go through any abuse during detention,” read the first option, in Arabic.

“I have gone through abuse during detention,” read the second.

In the room, he said, stood three American guards carrying the type of electric stun devices that Mr. Ani and other detainees said had been used on them for infractions as minor as speaking out of turn.

“Even the translator told me to sign the first answer,” said Mr. Ani, who gave a copy of his form to The New York Times. “I asked him what happens if I sign the second one, and he raised his hands,” as if to say, Who knows?

“I thought if I don’t sign the first one I am not going to get out of this place.”

Shoving the memories of his detention aside, he checked the first box and minutes later was running through a cold rain to his waiting parents. “My heart was beating so hard,” he said. “You can’t believe how I cried.” ...

After his release from the American-run jail, Camp Bucca, Mr. Ani and other former detainees described the sprawling complex of barracks in the southern desert near Kuwait as a bleak place where guards casually used their stun guns and exposed prisoners to long periods of extreme heat and cold; where prisoners fought among themselves and extremist elements tried to radicalize others; and where detainees often responded to the harsh conditions with hunger strikes and, at times, violent protests.

Through it all, Mr. Ani was never actually charged with a crime; he said he was questioned only once during his more than two years at the camp.

From San Diego reader C:

The American Bar Association White Collar Crime Institute meets in San Diego Mar 1-2, 2007.
Keynote speaker is Alberto Gonzalez.
Topic of [recently dismissed San Diego prosecutor] Carol Lam's presentation: "Lessons Learned from Recent Major Fraud Prosecutions." ...

AP:

Officials of a Navy brig where suspected al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla was held have been ordered to testify at a hearing next week to determine whether his treatment there has left him unfit to stand trial.

It will be the first time Defense Department officials with direct knowledge will speak publicly about Padilla's 3 1/2 years of confinement _ which defense experts say has caused him irreparable mental harm and made it impossible for his lawyers to adequately prepare for trial.

Federal prosecutors fought to keep the officials out of Thursday's competency hearing, arguing that the sole issue to be decided is Padilla's mental state now. ...

But in her ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke sided with defense lawyers, who argued that a Bureau of Prisons mental expert had interviewed the brig officials for his own report which concluded that Padilla is competent. That report has not yet been publicly released. ...

Prosecutors fear that defense lawyers will use the officials' testimony as an excuse to pursue their claims that Padilla, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen originally arrested in May 2002, was tortured during interrogation at the brig. ...

[Padilla] told a psychologist that at the brig that he sometimes begged his guards not to put him in "the cage," but he would not say what went on there. The conditions of his incarceration have rendered him unable to assist in his own defense, his attorneys said.

"When approached by his attorneys, he begs them, 'Please, please, please' not to have to discuss his case," according to psychiatrist Angela Hegarty, who interviewed him for 22 hours. ...

Following its online round table featuring the insights of spooks, think tankers and regional specialists, Harper's sums up some thoughts on prospects for conflict with Iran.

My friends Eric Witte and Kurt Bassuener have an oped in the IHT urging US support for Guinea's democrats. "As Western leaders sit on their hands, Guinea's authoritarian president, Lansana Conté, is going in for the kill, crushing street protests as he tries to stifle his country's brave voices for democracy. Since he declared martial law on Monday, scores of people have been killed in violent clashes between protesters and security forces. The United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the African Union must act quickly to prevent more bloodshed and keep the unrest from spreading to Guinea's fragile neighbors, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Since seizing power in a coup 23 years ago, Conté has sought a veneer of legitimacy through successive fraudulent elections. He runs perhaps one of the more efficient police states in sub-Saharan Africa, financed by the export of bauxite — much of it to North America. Now the aging Conté is ailing, and one way or another, his tenure will soon end. ..." Go read.

ABC: "The Pentagon rejected qualified experts for reconstruction work in Iraq because they were not deemed loyal to the Republican party, according to the former chief of staff of the Washington Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Frederick Smith. 'Some people were overlooked because they didn't meet the political saliva test,' Smith, now retired, told ABC News. Smith said political appointees at the Pentagon, including a special assistant to the secretary of defense and White House liaison, James O'Beirne, led the screening. ... In a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Waxman complained the Pentagon was refusing to cooperate and threatened to issue a subpoena for O'Beirne's testimony and Pentagon documents."

More on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee Iraq hearings from the WSJ's Scot Paltrow:

A congressional investigation into waste in Iraq reconstruction work by U.S. contractors threatens to mushroom into a wider inquiry into Pentagon contracting practices in general.

Under questioning by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Defense Contract Audit Agency chief William Reed confirmed that unsupported and questionable costs found in Iraq reconstruction contracting total more than $10 billion -- nearly three times the previous public estimate.

David Walker, head of the Government Accountability office, Congress's audit agency, said lax contracting practices in Iraq are merely "the tip of the iceberg." They are symptomatic of loose Defense Department contracting practices over all, he said, and he urged the committee and Congress in general to conduct a broad investigation into the way the Pentagon awards and oversees contracts.

Mr. Walker said, "There is no accountability. Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not held accountable."

Marc Perelman: Iranian scientist's death stirs talk of an atomic whodunnit.

Excellent Newsweek piece on the ambiguities of Iran in Iraq and the dangers to the administration of overstating its case.

Justice Dept decides not to forward Rove's former aide to the Senate for confirmation to be Arkansas prosecutor.

WP: Bush, Congress could face confrontation on issue of war powers. More here.

Worth reading: Murray Waas' piece on intelligence leaks.

Larijani in Munich. Former US ambassador to NATO Robert Hunter:

At the link is the speech (English translation, which I am told is not very good) that Ali Larijani gave to the Munich Security Conference last Sunday.

http://www.securityconference.de/konferenzen/rede.php?sprache=en&id=195&

I was there. The US executive branch delegation (including Secretary of Defence Gates) absented themselves, except for a deputy assistant secretary of state. There were to be only three questions. The first, by Sen. Lindsay Graham, was about the Holocaust. The second was on human rights in Iran. The third was on whether one could convert to Christianity in Iran. The moderator decided to allow a further question to try getting something serious asked! Ash Carter, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, asked what Larijani would say to a 20 year old Iranian about spending money on a nuclear program instead of on domestic needs.

I was frustrated; so, apparently, was the German moderator. So he called on me. I asked Larijani whether the so-called "grand bargain" offer of 2003 -- a swap of total inspections of nuclear facilities, an end to support for terrorism, an end to support for Hezbollah, in exchange for security guarantees and a lifting of sanctions -- was 1) "authentic" and 2) if so, still something Iran would support. He anwered that he had never before heard the term "grand bargain;" but that Iran did want stability in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to work with others to get Lebanon whole again.

I am told that the Qs and As were carried by one Iranian media website...the first four of them; mine was not carried. Reason? Maybe they don't want the Iranians to know that there was a "grand bargain" proposal. Maybe some other reason.

At Munich: a moment missed to have a decent conversation with Larijani. ....

The office of the vice president and the MEK. Some intriguing redactions in this Libby defense exhibit (.pdf).

Washington Wire: Nevada governor faces FBI probe:

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons accepted unreported gifts or payments from a company that was awarded secret military contracts when Mr. Gibbons served in Congress.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining whether any gifts or payments violated federal contracting rules or were offered in exchange for official acts by Mr. Gibbons, people briefed on the investigation said. Mr. Gibbons, a Republican, represented Nevada for five terms in Congress, where he served on the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees, and was sworn in as governor last month.

The close ties between the congressman and the contractor, Warren Trepp, were disclosed in a Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal article, which revealed that Mr. Gibbons accepted private jet flights and a Caribbean cruise from the software-company owner. Mr. Gibbons says accepting the cruise and flight didn’t violate House ethics rules. [...]

On March 22, 2005, days before Mr. Trepp and his wife embarked on the Caribbean cruise with the congressman and his family, Jalé Trepp sent a reminder to her husband. “Please don’t forget to bring the money you promised Jim and Dawn,” referring to Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons. Minutes later, Mr. Trepp responds, “Don’t you ever send this kind of message to me! Erase this message from your computer right now!” Mr. Gibbons failed to disclose the cruise and travel on Mr. Trepp’s leased private jet, as required by House ethics rules. He later asked the House Ethics Committee for an exemption, but left office before any action was taken.

Walter Pincus:

Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have questioned whether the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq gave political advantage to the Bush administration by making "rapid withdrawal" of U.S. troops the only alternative military option the NIE explored.

The estimate judged that rapid withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq would "almost certainly" increase sectarian violence, intensify Sunni resistance, possibly cause the Iraqi Security Forces to dissolve and allow al-Qaeda to seek a sanctuary to plan attacks inside and outside the country. That assessment came just days before the Senate and House prepared to debate nonbinding resolutions opposing increased troop levels in Iraq.

The WP's Karen DeYoung:

Controversy grew Monday over reports that the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, had told reporters in Australia that while he knew the weapons were Iranian-made, "I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

Frantic telephone calls from Washington to Pace's traveling party ensued. Snow and his counterpart at the State Department, Sean McCormack, were pummeled in daily briefings and directed questions to the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, even as Snow told reporters in Washington he had spoken with Pace and they were on the same page, the general reiterated his view. The discovery of the explosives, Pace said during a news conference in Jakarta, "could not translate to the Iranian government per se is directly involved in doing this."

At another contentious White House briefing, Snow said that he would "push all evidentiary questions to the DNI" -- the director of national intelligence.

The intelligence community, still licking its wounds over faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq, displayed an air of "I told you so" this week and insisted that the Baghdad briefers had gone beyond vetted information.

NPR: US is going to let 7,000 of the two million Iraqi refugees into the US. By contrast, Syria has taken in one million Iraqi refugees, but now says it can take no more. Forty thousand Iraqis are fleeing Iraq every month.

I went to the Nick Burns Iran talk at Brookings. Here are some provisional thoughts on it, and I apologize in advance for any errors. It's a complex policy with different levels and it is consciously being communicated to different audiences -- the American public, Congress, the Washington foreign policy elite, the Iranian government, other foreign governments -- all at the same time. One headline of the talk I expect the Iranian government heard was something that Burns didn't say - which you would have expected him to say, and which the administration has been repeating like a mantra since last spring: "suspend uranium enrichment." At the end, he was asked to clarify, what would it take for the US to sit down with Iran, and his answer would suggest that the US has quietly reduced what it demands Iran do before it would join multilateral talks with it -- suspend uranium enrichment for the duration of negotations in exchange for suspension of international sanctions cobbled together under a Chapter VII UN Security Council resolution passed in December. "Suspension for suspension," Burns said at the end. That would seem to be a sweetening of the deal. He also emphasized that there is a lot more time for diplomacy, and that the P5+Germany offer from last June that would have the internationals help build a civilian nuclear power facility for the Iranians taking the enriched materials off shore is still on the table and they'd like Iran to say yes. In other words, one interpretation of this all (Iran Powerpoint, Bush's Iran comments at his news conference today, Bush's January 10th comments about Iran in his surge speech, Burns today, etc., and that's just the rhetorical part...) is that it's intended to work as coercive diplomacy, as a similar approach has on North Korea, to get Iran to change its behavior, on two fronts, both nuclear and stepping back from its alleged regional destabilization activities. Or else: another UN Security Council resolution after elBaradei is expected to report to the Security Council next week that Iran is not in compliance, getting more countries, banks, investors on board to economically isolate Iran, add more names on the travel ban list, more Iranians scooped up in Iraq, etc. etc., with an exit ramp available for a while, before the prospect of use of that naval air power amassing in the region.

And yet, one can't discount the administration's recent seeming, coordinated effort to deliberately publicly overplay Iran's bad-acting in Iraq as a chief factor for violence there, contrary to the judgment of the recently released NIE on Iraq. It's a concern especially as elements of the administration seem to be making a case to the American public that Iran is more of a factor in Iraq violence than it actually is, and on the administration's specific claim that Iran is in effect killing US soldiers. Construing this as a force protection argument as the administration is doing would conceivably be an effort by the administration to give itself lots of legal wiggle room in terms of authorizing action that would not require Congressional approval....(by their legal construction)....On force protection grounds, you could do a whole lot that you couldn't do on other grounds, especially without Congressional approval. That the administration is making this specific argument about Iran in Iraq is important and shouldn't be overlooked.

So what about the force protection argument? Setting aside for the moment the question of Iranian government agency or lack of compelling evidence of Iranian government agency ... As I noted the other day, at face value, the Pentagon estimate that 170 coalition deaths are due to Iranian-originated materiel would mean that about 5% of the estimated 3,400 coalition deaths in Iraq -- a small fraction -- is due to Iranian-made stuff. I am not sure how many coalition forces deaths are due to vehicular accidents, but I would guess it's not so far off that number, maybe a bit more. Objectively speaking, there would seem to be a genuinely propagandistic quality to the administration campaign to imply without saying directly that Iran is causing say a third or half of the deaths of coalition forces in Iraq, which an observer might detect it has been trying to imply. (That recent internal government estimates may have determined a different trend line within the near term is another factor here). But stepping back, the seemingly disingenuous element to that PR campaign would seem to undercut the credibility of administration officials such as Burns who participates in it when they make the case therefore that this all is about aggressive multilateral diplomacy. If they are self-consciously misleading on point A, are they also misleading on point B -- that this is not leading to war? That's the element of doubt they seem to leave in their multiple audiences' minds, and perhaps deliberately so.

Reading the Foggo indictment, it's clear the major "CIA Contractor" is GTS Inc. (Global Transportation Systems), whose president I interviewed, and who appears to have been being shaken down by Foggo on behalf of Wilkes, and that "Wilkes Subordinate X" is Wilkes' nephew Joel Combs, who headed the Wilkes front company Archer Logistics, which I was the first to report was the Wilkes cut out getting CIA contracts.

Update: Here's a link to relevant stories on the case from the team that broke the Cunningham corruption case at the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Statement from CIA director Michael Hayden to employees on the indictment of former executive director Dusty Foggo on fraud charges:

Former Executive Director K.D. "Dusty" Foggo, who left the CIA last year, has been indicted on several criminal counts related to allegedly improper conduct involving Agency contracts.

Allegations concerning this matter first surfaced inside the CIA, and the Office of Inspector General launched an investigation. Subsequently that investigation became linked to another investigation being supervised by the United States Attorney's Office in San Diego, CA.

At every step of the process, CIA -- through the Offices of Inspector General and General Counsel -- has cooperated closely with other investigative agencies and the Department of Justice. That cooperation continues today.

Out of respect for the legal proceedings that are underway, and to ensure the protection of classified information and Agency equities, the Office of General Counsel reminds all Agency employees that they should not publicly comment on this case.

(Having been among those on the early end of a bit of bureaucratic push back from said agency about whether I should publish anything about Foggo and his connections to Wilkes at all, I am not so sure the investigation into Foggo was initially internally generated.)

Cheney released as a witness.

Indictments of Foggo and Wilkes expected to come around noon Pacific Time/3pm EST.

Update from the AP:

The CIA’s former No. 3 official and a defense contractor were charged Tuesday with fraud and other offenses in the corruption investigation that sent former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham to prison.

The indictment named Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, executive director of the CIA until he resigned in May, and his close friend, San Diego defense contractor Brent Wilkes, both 52, according to two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because grand jury proceedings are secret.

In a separate indictment, Wilkes was charged with conspiring to bribe Cunningham in return for government contracts. A man who was described as a co-conspirator in Cunningham’s 2005 plea agreement, John T. Michael, was also charged.

Harper's Ken Silverstein is running the first of a three-part series interviewing former governmental and regional experts on the prospect of war with Iran.

According to staff, White House spokesman Tony Snow is expected to comment on Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace's repeated statements that there's no evidence that it is Iranian government policy to arm Iraqi militants.

Here we go. (Very rough typing as the briefing goes, will get the transcript up later when it's available):

Snow: I believe this was a Pentagon briefing. Typically when Pentagon does it the Joint Chiefs know about it.

People are trying to womp up a fight that doesn't exist.

There is a core of information that everyone agrees upon.

Number 1, weapon of Iranian manufacture...
Iranians involved...
Iranians on the ground

EFPs in fact are directly associated with Quds forces which are part of IRGC which are part of the Iranian government.

Quds force official part of Iranian government. Bears official responsibility and accountability as would expect of any sovereign government.

I am telling you what intel indicates.

Calm down.

I am telling you, I am talking to him (Pace).

Q: I am talking to him too.

Snow: You better. I think you will find out the intel does indicate, as he said. Let me pose you with two possibilities. That Quds forces part of IRGC are associated with this.

Let me ask a second question to you. I don't know what's more frightening. That Quds force is under Iranian government control or isn't.

What is beyond dispute, and Pace doesn't disagree with this, give him a day (he's been traveling), that in fact we generally agree on basics of situation.

Armaments from Iran made way to Iraq

Iranian forces are in Iraq.

These armaments are being used to kill our people.

We're doing everything we can to protect our people.

What Pace may be saying. And this is where gets to [semantics]: do we have a signed peace of paper from Khamenei or Ahmadinejad signing off on this? No.

Are Quds forces part of government.

So question is, I think this is a semantic dispute about members of the government.

No. You have explosive ....

The Quds force is behind it, is associated with it.

Q: Chairman of JC and admin seem to be on different page.

Snow: I am going to let Pace put it all together.

Question: It seems to be reasonable question for American people

Snow: We're not on separate pages.

I was parsing yesterday..

Question is do we know that senior Iranian officials? No.

It's an opaque government.

But it is part of Rev Guard and that's part of government.

Snow: What he (Pace) said was accurate too. Are you trying to lay this at feet of Governinng Council? Answer is no. He was trying to be very precise in how he answered question. I was trying to be careful too. We know Quds forces are part of governmment.

Snow: If you had someone operating with elite military unit committing act of violence, would you say sponsored government had some specific responsibility?

Snow: I saw the stupidest headline in the world at the NYT. We're not going to war with them. Let me make that clear. We're committed to diplomacy with Iran. But we're also committed to protecting our forces.

We know weapons from Iran.
We know Quds force part of government.
Therefore the question is who wrote the orders.

Trying to do this - Iranian officials if deny it, fine. Let's make sure they become engaged in making sure none of that stuff comes across the border.

Intel community believes Quds force is involved. I would direct you to the DNI.

I am not going to go any further.

Q: Do you think on background Iran dossier briefing has backfired?

Snow: No.....I think what's happening is that everyone trying to create a narrative here. Problem before is that nobody found weapons of mass destruction. You cannot say that we did not find EFPs. We have them there.

What everyone trying to figure out. Weaponry made its way from Iran to Iraq, it's killing Americans, .....

There is intel that links the Quds force to it.

I am not going to characterize it as (direct evidence).

Finding of intel community is that it is linked to the Quds Forces.

Q: That's kind of a no.

Snow: My hands are tied. I don't want to get too far in front of this.

How long 'til they get Pace on the same page?

NYT: "North Korea agreed today to close its main nuclear reactor in exchange for a package of food, fuel and other aid from the United States, China, South Korea and Russia. The breakthrough, announced by the Chinese government after intense negotiations, came four months after North Korea tested a nuclear bomb."

Buses explode near the stronghold of former Lebanese president Amine Gemayel, killing 12. Gemayel was here for meetings with the administration last week. More here.

Dana Milbank: "Libby must believe himself to be in desperate legal straits to have six journalists serve as his character witnesses."

Siobhan Gorman: Costly NSA initiative has a shaky takeoff.

WP: "Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he has no information indicating the Iranian government is directing the supply of lethal weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq. 'We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran,' Pace told the Voice of America during a visit to Australia. 'What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this.'" More from McClatchy.

McClatchy Baghdad bureau contributor Dulaimy:

I wonder if the U.S. government has ever asked the Iraqi government the following question:

If the war started between U.S. and Iran, on which side the Iraqi government will be?

Please notice that the prime minister and the majority of the current Iraqi government were exiles before the U.S. led invasion in 2003 and if it wasn’t the U.S. these guys will be outside the country.

What do you think their answer will be?

Please remember the Iraqi government is an Islamic government led by Islamist. Many of them were living in Iran for more than 25 years.

Many members of the current Iraqi government prefer to speak to you in Persian rather than Arabic

Now can you imagine on which side they will prefer to be.

Um Yass is one of my neighbors, a widow who has three young sons; she fought for them to ensure a decent life for them.

Unfortunately the wave of violence reached her because she is Sunni living in a typical Shiite area, and as all Sunni families who received threat she moved from the neighborhood.

Despite her efforts to protect her family, her two older sons got killed and dumped in one of the garbage fields, the poor lady has only one left and out of fear for the him, the decision came that he should be send him to Syria. ...

Just out: a reporter's notebook on the hearing on the Defense Department Inspector General review of the Pentagon policy shop Friday, that highlights some of what seemed to be missing from the report, and rumors of other investigations to come:

One possibility to keep in mind is that the DoD IG’s office may have other ongoing investigations related to Pentagon activities that may not have been reported to Congress. An office spokesman, Gary Comerford, wouldn't confirm or deny any other specific reviews. But it's worth noting that members of Congress have requested that the Defense Department Inspector General investigate other, related questions -- such as connections between the Iraqi National Congress and U.S. persons, and what work the Rendon Group did for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. ...

France 24: Abu Omar released from Egypt, but cannot go to Milan to testify in the trial on his extraordinary rendition since he is still under investigation in Italy. Update from the WP's Nora Boustany: Abu Omar to sue US, Italy.

Paul Pillar, Carl Ford, James Carafano and Mike Isikoff on WAMU's Diane Rehm show on "politics and pre-war intelligence."

So Multi National Forces-Iraq spokesman Major General William Caldwell was reportedly one of the anonymous briefers in Baghdad yesterday on the Iran in Iraq claims. It's hard to understand how the identity of the briefers can be confused with possibly endangering sources and methods for the information that is being presented at what was after all an international press conference.

Update: Here's Bill Gertz's take on the report, entitled "Iranian support for lethal activity in Iraq." Muck's posted the 16 slides.

More: Given the kerflaw that's followed the 16 words, you think anyone considered 16 slides perhaps an unlucky number? Couldn't they have gone with 15? 17? They started with 200.

Longtime RFERL Iran analyst Bill Samii writes in the Christian Science Monitor: Iran's foreign policy is not so revolutionary anymore. "In practice, and despite Ahmadinejad's rantings, Tehran now prefers greater pragmatism in its foreign relations. Therefore, continuing assistance to Hizbullah has less to do with duplicating Iran's theocracy and assisting a 'liberation movement' than it does with a desire to have an armed ally on Israel's border that can be mobilized in a time of war. Tehran is working with Saudi Arabia to preclude a renewed outbreak of sectarian clashes in Lebanon because it recognizes the harm this does to Hizbullah's domestic standing. When Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani visited Damascus on Jan. 21 and when Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Mualem visited Tehran two days later, the avoidance of Shiite-Sunni strife was a major aspect of their talks. There is no question that Iran continues its involvement with armed groups throughout the Middle East, and it also works bilaterally with neighboring states in order to gain regional dominance at the expense of the US. Iran will work with Shiite or Sunni entities in this quest. But these allies are unlikely to put their own survival on the line in the interest of Iran's ambitions. If Washington is serious about ending Iranian interference in Lebanon and elsewhere, it must make clear to those cooperating with Iran that their survival is at stake, and it should use all available diplomatic tools to communicate to Iran the danger that Iran faces. Ahmadinejad may speak irrationally, but there are other national leaders in Tehran with a firmer grasp on reality."

Former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith on Fox News Sunday: my office never said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. Perhaps he has forgotten this leaked Feith memo, cited favorably by the Vice President, and published by the Weekly Standard: "OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ...." More here.

The Iran in Iraq case was apparently briefed in Baghdad today. More here. Cell phones were taken away so reporters could not get pictures for more independent analysis of what was shown. But it's worth pointing out that 170 coalition forces killed by materiel allegedly made in Iran means almost 3,000 US soldiers -- almost 20 times that, or about 95% -- killed by something else. More here and here.

NYT:

Returning to the White House after the Memorial Day weekend in 1975, the young aide Dick Cheney found himself handling a First Amendment showdown. The New York Times had published an article by Seymour M. Hersh about an espionage program, and the White House chief of staff, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was demanding action.

Out came the yellow legal pad, and in his distinctively neat, deliberate hand, Mr. Cheney laid out the “problem,” “goals” while addressing it, and “options.” These last included “Start FBI investigation — with or w/o public announcement. As targets include NYT, Sy Hersh, potential gov’t sources.” [...]

Among the goals Mr. Cheney methodically listed in considering a response were enforcement of the espionage laws, discouraging “the NYT and other publications from similar action,” locating and prosecuting the people who leaked to The Times and demonstrating “the dangers to nat’l security which develop when investigations exceed the bounds of propriety.”

Mr. Cheney also sensed an opportunity. Congressional investigations of the C.I.A., including one by a select committee led by Senator Frank Church, were under way in the post-Watergate era.

Under the heading “Broader ramifications,” Mr. Cheney wrote: “Can we take advantage of it to bolster our position on the Church committee investigation? To point out the need for limits on the scope of the investigation?”

More immediately, Mr. Cheney considered possible responses to the article. One was to “seek immediate indictments of NYT and Hersh.” A second was to get a search warrant “to go after Hersh papers in his apt.”

Update: I got to introduce Hersh at an event a few months ago and asked him about the administration's threats to prosecute the press. And paraphrased his answer was something like, in an earlier time, he and his editors felt like they had something called the First Amendment, and anyone tried to give them a hard time, you would tell them to screw off. But maybe you'd say it more nicely than that, he added. If it ever got to him, it was hard to detect.

This soft roll-out of the Iran in Iraq case continues.

WP: Senators battle over significance of Pentagon report on Intelligence.

Just out: "The Politics of Iran Intelligence," at National Journal. Unfortunately, it's subscription only, but here's a brief excerpt:

Amid the continued political fallout over the faulty intelligence case for going to war in Iraq, the Bush administration is newly cautious about the specific intelligence it plans to present to the public to back up its claims that Iran is fighting a kind of proxy war with the United States in Iraq.

At least twice in the past month, the White House has delayed a PowerPoint presentation initially prepared by the military to detail evidence of suspected Iranian materiel and financial support for militants in Iraq. The presentation was to have been made at a press conference in Baghdad in the first week of February. Officials have set no new date, but they say it could be any day.

Even as U.S. officials in Baghdad were ready to make the case, administration principals in Washington who were charged with vetting the PowerPoint dossier bowed to pressure from the intelligence community and ordered that it be scrubbed again. The officials understand that the press will scrutinize the information intensely, that the intelligence "dots" that the administration has assembled about Iran in Iraq can be connected multiple ways, and that the public is wary of any possible intervention in Iran. "The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated, and we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts," National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was quoted as saying by the Los Angeles Times on February 2.

A White House official who declined to be named told National Journal that the presentation was sent "back into the interagency process ... with all the usual agencies involved, both in Washington and Baghdad." Asked if it was the intelligence community that was most cautious about how to interpret the facts in the Iran dossier, the White House official said only, "It's, frankly, their job to be sure of the facts and to make sure the information is accurate, and to give their best advice about how to interpret it."

The delay in the briefing demonstrates the crosscurrents running through the administration, the intelligence agencies, and Congress over Iran. ... The debate is still simmering over who was at fault in the prewar intelligence failures: the policy makers or the intelligence community.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, for example, is moving aggressively to vet the intelligence community's analytical products on Iran. [...]

"Even if this PowerPoint presentation eventually gets made public ... what does this show us as to where Iran is really coming from?" [former National Intelligence Council Middle East analyst Paul] Pillar asked. "What is the larger significance? Even if Iranian assistance to an Iraqi group is proven to everyone's satisfaction, the [administration's] policy never rested on that. The policy [is being driven by a] much larger sense of Iran as the prime bete noire in the region, and that is why the administration is trying to put together these coalitions with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Sunni states, that we've been reading about. None of this hinges [on the Iran dossier]. We are not going to call this off if we can't prove that Iran is furnishing munitions to Iraqi groups. ..."

Went to a small dinner tonight at the Nixon Center featuring the former president of Lebanon Amine Gemayel, whose son Pierre was assassinated in Beirut in November. Former president Gemayel had met with Bush earlier in the day. The status of the conversation shifted from on the record to on background at the end, and he declined to answer my question in any case. (What did the White House tell him about its policy, especially in the context of the reports of the US working with Sunni allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Israel to counter Iran in places such as Lebanon and Iraq). In any case, I guess I can share my thought walking away from the event: proxy war, meet your proxy. One suspects, the military support is flowing, the money is flowing, to forces to counter Hezbollah, some of it in coordination with Saudi Arabia. Back in early December I had met with a former Lebanese intelligence official who formerly worked for Gemayel, who was in town meeting contacts and in total despair that the US was going to let the Lebanese government fall to Hezbollah-led actions. Things seem to have changed quite fast, and perhaps one should not underestimate how much President Bush's party having lost the November elections might have figured in the calculations of the leadership of Saudi Arabia and a constellation of related actors to shift into a more activist gear to shore up their interests in the region, including countering Hezbollah's efforts to take down the Lebanese government.

More here from the WP on the DoD IG report.

In reaction to the Defense Department Inspector General report on its investigation of the activities of the office of former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, delivered to the Senate Select Intelligence committee today, chairman Rockefeller sends this out tonight:

The Inspector General’s report makes it clear in plain language that the actions of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy were inappropriate.

Individuals in that office produced and disseminated intelligence products outside of the regular intelligence channels. These intelligence products were inconsistent with the consensus judgments of the Intelligence Community. This office did this without coordinating with the Intelligence Community and as a result policy makers received distorted intelligence.

Section 502 of the National Security Act of 1947 requires the heads of all departments and agencies of the U.S. government involved in intelligence activities ‘to keep the congressional oversight committees informed.’

The IG has concluded that this office was engaged in intelligence activities. The Senate Intelligence Committee was never informed of these activities. Whether these actions were authorized or not, it appears that they were not in compliance with the law.

In the coming days, I will carefully review all aspects of the report and will consult with Vice Chairman Bond to determine whether any additional action by the Senate Intelligence Committee is warranted.

Some of the Pentagon's prewar intelligence work, including a contention that the CIA underplayed the likelihood of al-Qaida connections to Saddam Hussein, was inappropriate but not illegal, a Defense Department investigation has concluded.

In a report to be presented to Congress on Friday, the department's inspector general said former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith had not engaged in illegal activities through the creation of special offices to review intelligence. Some Democrats also have contended that Feith misled Congress about the basis of the administration's assertions on the threat posed by Iraq, but the Pentagon investigation did not support that.

Two people familiar with the findings discussed the main points and some details Thursday on condition they not be identified.

Some background here, here and here.

McClatchy: U.S. faced with a mammoth Iraq refugee crisis.

Delco Times: Former congressman Curt Weldon appointed chief strategic officer of Exton, PA-based defense contractor, Defense Solutions, Inc.

US News: The "floodgates of fraud" reporting have opened at the National Reconnaissance Office.

Worth reading: Steve Simon's new report for the Council of Foreign Relations, After the Surge. Some key points:

The United States has already achieved all that it is likely to achieve in Iraq: the removalof Saddam, the end of the Ba’athist regime, the elimination of the Iraqi regional threat, the snuffing out of Iraq’s unrequited aspiration to weapons of mass destruction, and the opening of a door, however narrow, to a constitutionally based electoral democracy. Staying in Iraq can only drive up the price of these gains in blood, treasure, and strategic position. Any realistic reckoning for the future will have to acknowledge six grim realities:

• The United States cannot determine political outcomes or achieve its remaining political aims via military means. American military forces have not brought the violence to an end or under control and will not do so in the future. In the absence of the understanding and the intelligence needed to operate effectively in the complex and violent political situation in Iraq, this should not be surprising.

• Leaving U.S. forces in Iraq under today’s circumstances means the United States is culpable but not capable—that is, Washington bears substantial responsibility for developments within Iraq without the ability to shape those developments in a positive direction. In consequence, Iraqi support for the U.S. presence has collapsed. Polls indicate that most Iraqis want the United States to pull out. Moreover, the Iraq war has fueled the jihad and apparently been a godsend to jihadi recruiters—and the process of self-recruitment—as indicated by the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the global war on terror. More broadly, the Iraq war has had a very damaging effect on the U.S. reputation in the Arab and wider Islamic world. Authoritative opinion surveys show this as well. The continued presence of U.S. forces is thus a severe setback in the canonical war of ideas, which the Bush administration has correctly assessed as crucial to American interests.

• The ongoing war has empowered and advanced the interests of the chief U.S.
rival in the region, Iran. At this stage, the best way to regulate Iran’s attempts to exploit its advantages is to negotiate with Tehran either bilaterally or in a multilateral framework while protecting Americans in Iraq against Iranian attack.

• By siphoning resources and political attention away from Afghanistan, a continuing military commitment to Iraq may lead to two U.S. losses in southwest Asia.

• The Iraq war constrains the U.S. military, making it very difficult if not impossible to handle another significant contingency involving ground forces. It also damages the U.S. military, making it difficult for Washington to credibly employ coercive policies against others in the near to medium term even once the United States has disengaged from Iraq. Furthermore, the military commitment in Iraq impedes the U.S. ability to address other important international contingencies, in part because of the limitations of the U.S. military but also because of the preoccupation with Iraq at the highest decision-making levels. In short, U.S. interests in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region can be more effectively advanced if the United States disengages from Iraq. Indeed, the sooner Washington grasps this nettle, the sooner it can begin to repair the damage that has been done to America’s international position. Staying longer means more damage and a later start on repair.

• The implosion of domestic support for the war will compel the disengagement of U.S. forces; it is now just a matter of time. Better to withdraw as a coherent and at least somewhat volitional act than withdraw later in hectic response to public opposition to the war in the United States or to a series of unexpectedly sharp reverses on the ground in Iraq. The United States should therefore make clear now to the Iraqi government that, as the results of the anticipated surge become apparent, the two sides will begin to negotiate a U.S. military disengagement from Iraq. That would entail withdrawing the bulk of American forces from Iraq within twelve to eighteen months (that is to say, over the course of calendar year 2008); shifting the American focus to containment of the
conflict and strengthening the U.S. military position elsewhere in the region; andengaging Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, members of the UN Security Council, and potential donors in an Iraq stabilization plan.

Since the surge is a fait accompli, according to the vice president, and its results will be known very soon, in the view of General Petraeus, there is little point in proposing that negotiation of a drawdown begin immediately. ....

The Post has put up the audio of Libby grand jury testimony. March 5, 2004 grand jury testimony, March 24, 2004.

John Judis: "Everyone figured the Texas oilmen in the White House would at least know how to handle energy policy. Unfortunately, the laugh's on us."

Check out this scooplet from the Libby trial. Evidence introduced today apparently revealed that Paul Wolfowitz has been identified as leaking the still classified NIE to the WSJ editorial page, as a kind of surrogate for Libby. "The fact that Libby had Wolfowitz do it enabled the WSJ to make the ... claim that the information did not come from the White House."

AP Breaking News: New Baghdad security plan is underway. More here and here.

Lee Feinstein: Building capacity to avoid more Darfurs.

Russia levels new charges at imprisoned former Yukos chief Khodorovsky as he comes up for possible parole, to prevent him from running for office in 2008.

Alleged Duke Cunningham co-conspirator's secret CIA water contract, exposed. Honest to goodness, I was the first to report on this contract well over a year ago:

The Prospect [has learned] that Wilkes’ company received at least one CIA contract – to supply CIA employees in Iraq with water, early into the invasion. Sources say such a contract may have been facilitated not only by the hundreds of thousands of dollars Wilkes steered to Cunningham, but also by the fact that Wilkes’ university roommate and long time friend is a recently promoted top CIA manager, K. “Dusty” Foggo. A career CIA operations support officer, Foggo was somewhat controversially appointed by incoming CIA director Porter Goss -- Cunningham’s former colleague on the House intelligence committee -- last year to be the executive director of the Agency, in effect, the CIA’s #3 official and day to day administrative manager of the $5 billion agency. (See Jason Vest’s profile and this Walter Pincus piece for background). An intelligence source says that Wilkes even jokes about Foggo having a virtual office (“a playpen”) in Wilkes’ company’s offices in the Washington, D.C. suburbs of Chantilly, Virginia. Wilkes’ attorney Michael Lipman wouldn’t comment on whether government investigators were reviewing any CIA contracts ADCS might have received, he also declined to say whether Wilkes was cooperating with the investigation. Wilkes has not yet been indicted.

Nick Kristof has some questions for Vice President Cheney, concerning the Libby case:

...What did you mean when you wrote, in a note to Scott McClellan that has been entered into evidence, “not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy the Pres (the Pres crossed out). that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others.”

First, you wrote that it was “the Pres.” who had asked Mr. Libby to do this, and then you crossed out those two words. Did President Bush indeed ask that Mr. Libby take charge of the effort to discredit Ambassador Wilson? And is it true, as was hinted at in the trial, that the White House tried to block the release of this document?

NYT:

An Iranian diplomat was abducted Sunday evening when his convoy was stopped by men with official Defense Ministry identification in the Karrada neighborhood here, senior Iraqi and American officials said Monday.[...]

The vehicle with the diplomat was not caught, though. [...]

The abduction of the Iranian took place in a largely Shiite section of the city not far from where a truck bomb killed at least 135 people on Saturday and where residents have complained that the slow pace of the increase in American troops has left them open to attacks.

The men captured in the chase by Iraqi forces on Sunday were Iraqis with Defense Ministry identification, Iraqi and American officials said, raising serious questions about whether government forces themselves were involved in the abduction.

A senior Iraqi official said that the credentials initially appeared to be genuine but that investigators later received conflicting information about whether the men had been dismissed from the ministry but somehow kept their identification. [...]

The Iranian Embassy has not publicly acknowledged the kidnapping. But in an indication of how high tensions between Iran and the United States have risen over the American raids, the embassy privately voiced suspicions that the kidnapping of its diplomat might have been done at the behest of American forces in Baghdad, an Iraqi official said.

American Embassy and military spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment that were made after midnight on Monday in Baghdad.

Big US-Iraqi offensive planned in Baghdad in coming days. Wash Times:

A U.S.-Iraqi offensive against militants in Baghdad will begin within days and take place on a scale never seen during four years of war, American officers said yesterday.

A military spokesman, meanwhile, acknowledged for the first time that hostile fire was probably to blame for the crashes of four helicopters in the past two weeks, and said the U.S. command has ordered changes in flight operations.

Briefing a small group of foreign reporters, three American colonels who are senior advisers to the Iraqi army and police in Baghdad said a command center overseeing the crackdown in the capital would be activated today.

"The expectation is the plan will be implemented very soon thereafter," a senior adviser to the 9th Iraqi army division said at a U.S. military base in Baghdad.

"It's going to be an operation unlike anything this city has seen," Col. Doug Heckman added. "It's a multiple-order magnitude of difference, not just a 30 percent, I mean a couple hundred percent" larger than previous offensives.

Larry Diamond and Leonard Weiss oped: "Congress should not wait. It should hold hearings on Iran before the president orders a bombing attack on its nuclear facilities, or orders or supports a provocative act by the U.S. or an ally designed to get Iran to retaliate, and thus further raise war fever."

Tom Ricks reports on Petraeus' dream team.

NYT: After Deadly Blast in Iraq, Shiites Assail US Policy.

31 Days in Iraq. This chart of all the people killed in Iraq in January, by Columbia University doctoral student Adriana Lins de Albuquerque and graphic designer Alicia Cheng, ran in the NYT oped page today. "In January more than 1,900 people — soldiers, security officers and civilians — were killed in the insurgency in Iraq, up from 800 in January 2006. Many corpses showed signs of torture, meaning the victims were probably killed by religious and tribal death squads. ... This map, based on data from the American, British and Iraqi governments and from news reports, shows the dates, locations and circumstances of deaths for the first month of the year."

The last scene from Jeff Stein's Spy Talk shows Negroponte's diplomatic skills:

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. John F. Tierney got a lesson on Iraqi politics at a Jan. 18 House Intelligence Committee hearing featuring erstwhile DNI chief John D. Negroponte. ...

REP. TIERNEY: Given that Prime Minister al-Maliki is a member of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) — hardly a democracy group, and that was a party formed in Iran in the early ’80s — if we want to talk about our support for his being in office right now, and what intelligence leads us to believe that he’ll be acting more in our interest than in the Shi’ite militias or Iran’s interest? Better discussed in classified?

AMB. NEGROPONTE: Well, except for the record to make a small correction there, which is that he’s actually a member of the Da’wa party —

REP. TIERNEY: Da’wa party, you’re right.

AMB. NEGROPONTE: — he’s not a member of SCIRI.

REP. TIERNEY: You’re right. I’m sorry on that.

AMB. NEGROPONTE: And also I would add, lest we leave the wrong impression, these people who run the government of Iraq were popularly elected. I mean, this Shi’a —

REP. TIERNEY: Right.

AMB. NEGROPONTE: He emerges from this Shi’a majority that was—

REP. TIERNEY: But if we want to explore that in depth, we’d best do it in classified?

AMB. NEGROPONTE: Yes.

REP TIERNEY: Thank you.

LAT: Evidence is still inconclusive on Iran involvement in Iraq.

I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but Secretary Gates arranged a sentence today in a way that seemed to imply that Iranian supplied materiel is responsible for 70% of US casualties in Iraq. In his press conference today, he said:

I think the principal area where we have seen evidence of Iranian involvement is in providing these EFPs, these very powerful IEDs, to the -- either or both the technology and the weapons themselves that have been killing American soldiers. And so our effort is aimed at uprooting the networks that are providing these EFPs. We're also trying to uproot the networks that provide the IEDs as well that are being provided -- or being used by al Qaeda and others. These darn things account for about 70 percent of our casualties. And so there's a huge effort under way to try and uproot these networks and try and stop this. So that's the principal area.

But back up. Other sources have recently indicated that approximately 85% of US troop casualties in Iraq are attributed to the Sunni insurgency. And EFPs are only a subset of IEDs killing US troops in Iraq. Is Gates deliberately trying to suggest otherwise? Or was it unintentional, the likelihood that some listeners will mistakenly assume that 70% of US casualties are due to Iranian-supplied IEDs? The small matter of the failure to mention that he hasn't told you how many of the IEDs are allegedly Iranian-supplied EFPs?

I called the Pentagon. They said that is not what Gates intended to imply. A spokeswoman told me tonight, "What we have been saying generally is that about 70% of our casualties have been because of IEDS. Not that 70% are coming from Iran." How many of the IEDs killing US troops are thought to come from Iran? For that, she said, I would have to ask the insurgents. You don't have an estimate, I asked? No. A small percentage, large percentage? No answer. Call Centcom (which I will).

If you think such rhetorical devices are not effective, check out this USA Today piece from the other day. Entitled, "US blames Iran for new bombs in Iraq," it concludes:

IEDs are the largest killer of U.S. troops in Iraq. According to Pentagon figures through Jan. 20, they have killed 1,327 troops and wounded 11,861 others.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week, "We are trying to uproot these networks that are planting IEDs that are causing 70% of our casualties."

McClatchy's Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay report:

The Bush administration is stepping up its confrontation with Iran, accusing the Islamic regime in Tehran of supplying arms to Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq for attacks on U.S. forces.

But the White House’s failure to document its case, its acute credibility deficit, and a new U.S. intelligence finding that outside meddling is “not likely” a major cause of the bloodshed are raising questions about President Bush’s intentions. Further, U.S. government data shows that Sunni Muslim insurgents commit most of the anti-U.S. violence in Iraq.

Moreover, the administration lacks proof that Iranian weapons shipments into Iran are sanctioned by the theocratic leadership or are being carried out by rogue elements, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirmed on Friday.

“I don’t know that we know the answer to that question,” said Gates.

AP:

A senior Pentagon official resigned Friday over controversial remarks in which he criticized lawyers who represent terrorism suspects, the Defense Department said.

Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Charles ''Cully'' Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, told him on Friday that he had made his own decision to resign and was not asked to leave by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Stimson said he was leaving because of the controversy over a radio interview in which he said he found it shocking that lawyers at many of the nation's top law firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

''He believed it hampered his ability to be effective in this position,'' Whitman said of the backlash to Stimson's comments.

Defense Secretary Gates today, via Reuters: "The United States is not planning for a war with Iran and instead is trying to stop them from contributing to the violence in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday. 'The President has made clear, the Secretary of State has made clear, I've made clear ... we are not planning for a war with Iran,' he told reporters."

More from Agence-France Press:

... Gates acknowledged that this deployment, coupled with newly aggressive efforts to crack down on alleged Iranian networks funneling weapons used against US forces in Iraq, had fueled speculation of a coming US-Iran war.

"But really the purpose of that (deployment) is simply to underscore to our friends, as well as to our potential adversaries in the region, that the United States has considered the Persian Gulf and that whole area and stability in that area to be a vital American national interest," he said.

"And that has been the case for decades, under many, many presidents. And we simply want to reinforce to our friends in particular that they can count on us having a presence and being strong in their area in protecting our interests and in protecting theirs," the defense chief told reporters.

Gates drew a distinction between US efforts "in Iraq" to crack down on any Iranian backing for groups behind attacks on US as well as Iraqi troops or civilians, and the pressure on Iran to freeze sensitive nuclear work.

"We are doing the latter strictly through the diplomatic process. It seems to be showing some progress, at least the diplomatic process is working," the defense secretary said.

Unclassified 9 page version of the new NIE on Iraq, available here (.pdf).

This key judgment stands out:

"Iraq’s neighbors influence, and are influenced by, events within Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq’s internal sectarian dynamics. Nonetheless, Iranian lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants clearly intensifies the conflict in Iraq. Syria continues to provide safehaven for expatriate Iraqi Bathists and to take less than adequate measures to stop the flow of foreign jihadists into Iraq."

This too: "The Intelligence Community judges that the term 'civil war' does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term 'civil war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements."

My quick read sense: this does nothing to bolster the administration's case for surge, except to argue against the wisdom of a 'rapid' withdrawal. Otherwise, totally bleak. Offers very little support that this will succeed.

More here.

Global warming skepticism -- for a fee. Go read this.

The WP on the NIE:

A long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, presented to President Bush by the intelligence community yesterday, outlines an increasingly perilous situation in which the United States has little control and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, according to sources familiar with the document.

In a discussion of whether Iraq has reached a state of civil war, the 90-page classified NIE comes to no conclusion and holds out prospects of improvement. But it couches glimmers of optimism in deep uncertainty about whether the Iraqi leaders will be able to transcend sectarian interests and fight against extremists, establish effective national institutions and end rampant corruption.

The document emphasizes that although al-Qaeda activities in Iraq remain a problem, they have been surpassed by Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence as the primary source of conflict and the most immediate threat to U.S. goals. Iran, which the administration has charged with supplying and directing Iraqi extremists, is mentioned but is not a focus.

David Ignatius, "A Failed Cover-Up; What the Libby Trial Is Revealing."

Why was the White House so nervous in the summer of 2003 about the CIA's reporting on alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger to build a nuclear bomb? That's the big question that runs through the many little details that have emerged in the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The trial record suggests a simple answer: The White House was worried that the CIA would reveal that it had been pressured in 2002 and early 2003 to support administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and that in the Niger case, the CIA had tried hard to resist this pressure. The machinations of Cheney, Libby and others were an attempt to weave an alternative narrative that blamed the CIA.

Who's training some of the militia members the US is so concerned about? How about -- the US. McClatchy:

The U.S. military drive to train and equip Iraq's security forces has unwittingly strengthened anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been battling to take over much of the capital city as American forces are trying to secure it.

U.S. Army commanders and enlisted men who are patrolling east Baghdad, which is home to more than half the city's population and the front line of al-Sadr's campaign to drive rival Sunni Muslims from their homes and neighborhoods, said al-Sadr's militias had heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that they've trained and armed.

Spencer Ackerman gets word: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence just announced that an unclassified version of the long awaited NIE on Iraq will be released tomorrow at 12:30pm.

Here's a link to the WBUR/NPR On Point show I was on today with Ron Suskind, Lou DuBose, and Jonathan Turley. It was about the power of the vice president, but touched on as well the question of whether the administration is convincing even itself that most of its problems in Iraq are because of Iran.

Escalation in Iraq? War with Iran? Mike Tomasky calls for action on a far more immediate concern: the local DC NPR affiliate's decision to drop news on Sundays. Leaving us in the far less sensitive hands of Wolf Blitzer, Tim Russert, and the Fox News Channel Sunday round table.

LAT:

The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials promised last week to provide evidence of Iranian activities that led President Bush to announce Jan. 10 that U.S. forces would begin taking the offensive against Iranian agents who threatened Americans.

But some officials in Washington are concerned that some of the material may be inconclusive and that other data cannot be released without jeopardizing intelligence sources and methods. They want to avoid repeating the embarrassment that followed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when it became clear that information the administration cited to justify the war was incorrect, said the officials, who described the internal discussions on condition of anonymity.

"We don't want a repeat of the situation we had when [then-Secretary of State] Colin L. Powell went before the United Nations," said one U.S. official, referring to Powell's 2003 presentation on then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons program that relied on evidence later found to be false. "People are going to be skeptical."

The current debate pits some U.S. diplomatic and military officials in Iraq, who are seeking to compile an aggressive case on Iran, against other officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who are urging greater caution, according to the officials, who spoke in the last several days.

Do we really know who's who in Iraq? Check out Farah Stockman's report in the Boston Globe, about the atomization of Iraq's militias.