NIE, Bill Clinton Interview, Right Wing Propaganda Blitz, Condoleezza, Hillary, Hurricanes, PR Administartion, Spys R Us, Emily Perez and D.C. Greed.

The combination of the National Intelligence Estimate and Bill Clinton's interview on FoxNews has really stirred up the right wing anthill.

Hardly suprising, since both, pretty well blows away the BS that they've been spoon-feeding the American people for years.

On top of these two blows to right wing propaganda, the President decided to release parts of the NEI to prove that his little adventure into Iraq hasn't made the terrorist problem worse.

Here's what the President released, see for yourself if you think it helped or hurt his argument. And keep in mind that the White House would probably only release what they thought would make them look good. This should give you some idea of what the rest of the report looks like.

With these attacks on the right wing's fantasyland of lies, their propaganda department brought out the big guns. They trot out Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who promptly states that Clinton's statements were "flatly false." She went on to say, and this is the clincher,

"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton
administration did in the preceding years."

"We were not left a
comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida,"

Let's check the veracity of Condi's statements.

The Bush Administration cancelled or cut back Operation CATCHERS MITT, the
highly classified ongoing CIA and FBI operation that tracked al-Qaeda operatives
known to be inside the U.S. during the summer of 2001. This was done without
notifying the existing counter-terrorism policy board in Washington, then headed
by Richard Clarke, a Clinton holdover.

This fatal decision by Bush's
national security staff was part of the planned revamping of the Clinton
counter-terrorism program, and ongoing operations were put on hold or cut off
entirely while Rice and Hadley worked with CIA Director Tenet on the
Administration's new al-Qaeda strategy.

NEW YORK, March 21 PRNewswire -- Newsweek has learned that in the months before
9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called
"Catcher's Mitt" to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States, after a
federal judge severely chastised the FBI for improperly seeking permission to
wiretap terrorists. During the Bush administration's first few months in office,
Attorney General John Ashcroft downgraded terrorism as a priority, choosing to
place more emphasis on drug trafficking and gun violence, report Investigative
Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas in the
March 29 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 22).

Richard
Clarke, former counterterrorism chief of the national-security staff, tells
Newsweek that at an April 2001 top-level meeting to discuss terrorism, his
effort to focus on Al Qaeda was rebuffed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz. According to Clarke, Wolfowitz said, "Who cares about a little
terrorist in Afghanistan?" The real threat, Wolfowitz insisted, was
state-sponsored terrorism orchestrated by Saddam Hussein.

And according to Richard Clarke, Bush's former top anti-terrorism adviser, the Bush Administration didn't take Al Queda seriously.

Clarke also tells CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl that White House officials
were tepid in their response when he urged them months before Sept. 11 to meet
to discuss what he saw as a severe threat from al Qaeda.

"Frankly," he
said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the
grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He
ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop
9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."

Clarke went on to say, "I think he's
done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton jumps in and turns it into a catfight. The question is why did the Democrats wait five years to call the right on their lies.

"I think my husband did a great job in demonstrating that Democrats are not
going to take these attacks," Hillary Clinton said. "I'm certain that if my
husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report
entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside the United States' he would have
taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current
president and his national security team."

Think Progress has more here.

I mean really, how can anyone with two functioning brain cells to rub together, believe
anything from an administration that blocked the release of a report that says
global warming is causing more and bigger hurricanes?

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that
suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of
hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.

The same administration that has to rely on public relation campaigns because they have no positive results to show.

BAGHDAD A public relations company known for its role in a controversial
U.S. military program that paid Iraqi newspapers for stories favorable to
coalition forces has been awarded another multimillion dollar media contract
with American forces in Iraq.

The idea is to use the information to
"build support" in Iraqi, Arabic,
international and U.S. audiences for what
the military describes as its goals in
Iraq, such as destroying the
insurgency and helping Iraqis build a democracy,
according to contract
documents.

"I wish that our problem in Iraq was that the military wasn't
getting good
PR," Andrews said. "The problem seems to be that the country is
sliding into
civil war."

The administration that is more concerned with being able to spy on the American people,
than do anything that might benefit the American people.

At administration insistence, Senate negotiators agreed to steer legal
rulings about the president's broad surveillance to the Court of Review, a
little-known appeals court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act.
The three-judge court has rendered only one opinion in its 30-year
history, and
that opinion included its view that the president has inherent
constitutional
authority to eavesdrop without warrants as part of the U.S.
effort against
terrorism.

And why would anyone believe an administration whose lies led to the death of the first minority female command sergeant in the history of the U.S. Military Academy. Emily Perez.

"For me, yeah, like, it's just an eye-opener," agreed Meghan Venable-Thomas, 21,
a senior who also ran track and sang in the choir with Perez, who graduated last
year. "She was like a little superwoman . . . so full of energy and life, and
she was just willing to do anything."

Finally, Washington D.C. remains oblivious to everything except, "What can I get out of it." My apologies to all those hard working government employees, who take their jobs seriously and actually care.

A Web site documenting the salaries of the roughly 20,000 Capitol Hill
employees went live last week -- and almost as soon came crashing down.

No, it didn't get shut down by a judge's order claiming that private
information had been leaked. By law, the salaries of Hill staffers have long
been available in thick books in the offices of the House and Senate clerks. The
site came down because of the rush of traffic from computers housed in Congress
-- and elsewhere.

"I've heard some people say they're gong to use this information as
leverage," said a House staffer who has worked on the Hill for six years.
"There's no uniformity to what people make."

Another House aide said he wished the site was available when he was
negotiating his job three years ago. "Negotiating a salary for a new job is
never a totally comfortable process, and this information would certainly give
you a leg up as a job candidate," the aide said.