Things I probably shouldn't be reading early on Sunday morning

Last night I went with some friends to see Mongol, which turned out to be excellent. "The untold story of Genghis Kahn", as the title tells us, is a Hollywood-type epic spoken entirely in Mongolian (or at least I assume it's Mongolian - it was some language I don't recognize at all) with English subtitles. It borrows at times from Lord of the Rings for the battle scenes, and from Kurasawa for the central character's development. Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano gives an extraordinary performance as the man who brought the thundering hordes to half the world. Asano has been compared to Toshiro Mifume, for good reason.

Please be warned that there's a lot of violence (as you can expect), and blood spurts wildly as if Sam Peckinpah himself had been doing the battle scene choreography.

Here's the trailer,


After the movie we had something to eat outdoors at Panera. It was a lovely summer night with an indigo blue sky, and lots of people were walking about. Unfortunately if I have dinner late in the evening I don't sleep well, so this morning I was totally awake by 6AM.

So I got up and checked Memeorandum, where the top story,
Inside a 9/11 Mastermind's Interrogation, tells us that the NYT has revealed the full name of the CIA man who managed to get Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to talk. Funny how the Times and other media were full of outrage when Valerie Plame, who used to drive into the CIA parking lot every morning with the top down of her Mercedes, was "outed", but they have no problem in outing anyone else employed by the CIA.

I agree with Macsmind,

The identity of CIA employee is classified, and although illegal under the Intelligence Identities Protections ACT, the CIA did ask that his name not be published. Therefore the Ny Times is in legal jeopardy for publishing his name.

The CIA should immidately ask the DOJ to look into it.

By the way, I wonder if these clowns who rallied in defense of Plame will speak up now?

More at Pirates' Cove

After that one needs something lighter, so of course I went to Denny's, who always has wonderful music, and came across (language probably NSFW) Mashuk-Akva Term spa story:

Hey honey, let's go to the spa and have a few enemas. What a vacation!

Denny managed to beat Charles to an enema.

I checked my email and found that Maria, who spent many years in Russia, had sent me pictures of toilet signs from around the world. I like this one:


This is the second day in a row that I have posted on scatological items. I blame the lack of sleep.

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The WSJ's Five Best Books on sailing, selected by Sir Robin Knox-Johnson, the first person to sail solo and nonstop around the world:




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Today's shoes: Coach Josie Signature Ballet Flat Shoes in black.



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Traitor dies, victim of Cuban healthcare system

The man responsible for the deaths of several CIA operatives died in Cuba, after botched surgery:

Ex-CIA agent Philip Agee dead in Cuba

HAVANA - Renegade former CIA agent Philip Agee, whose naming of agency operatives helped prompt a U.S. law against exposing government spies, has died in Cuba, his wife said Wednesday. He was 72.

Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years working mostly in Latin America at a time when leftist movements were gaining prominence and sympathizers. His 1975 book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," cited alleged misdeeds against leftists in the region and included a 22-page list of purported agency operatives.

The list created an uproar around the world and helped prompt Congress to pass a law against naming clandestine U.S. agents abroad. It also led the State Department to strip Agee of his U.S. passport.

Free healthcare system, you say?

His wife, Giselle Roberge Agee, said Agee was hospitalized in Havana on Dec. 16 and underwent surgery for perforated ulcers. He died Monday because of a related infection and his remains were cremated.

A month's worth of free healthcare for a medical condition that here in the USA would have probably been cured with antibiotics (assuming it was a peptic ulcer) that Cubans don't have access to and he coudln't import a Spanish surgeon like Fidel.

May God forgive him.

UPDATE, Thursday 10 January,
A Traitor's Death

UPDATE, Friday 11 January
Reuters Recants: Agee Not A "Whistle-blower"



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The "Blame the CIA Game" is back!

For a while there it had died (no doubt because of the CIA's clear mishandling of a number of things), but hey! A good game never dies; it just keeps turning up like a bad penny.
(emphasis added to all items)

In Cuba:
Via Babalu, the Cuban government bulldozed a church in the town of El Salado

Fue destruido con un Buldózer utilizado por la policía, el local de la Iglesia Evangélica Reforma Apostólica, en la ciudad de Santiago de Cuba, nos informaba por teléfono desde la oriental ciudad, Juan Ramón Rivero Despaigne, activista de los derechos humanos.
"La iglesia se encuentra ubicada en las calles Nico, #3, en el pueblo El Salado. Todos sus miembros son acusados por el Gobierno de agentes de la CIA. El pastor Alain Toledano sigue celebrando los cultos en el lugar en donde fue destruida su iglesia", concluyó Rivero Despaigne.
(my translation:)
The police bulldozed the locale used as a church by the Reform Apostolic Evangelical Church in the city of Santiago de Cuba, we are told by phone by Juan Ramon Rivero Despaigne, human rights activist.

The church is located at Streets # 3 and Nicon in the town of El Salado. The [Cuban] government is acussing all the members of the church of being CIA agents. Pastor Alain Toledano continues to celebrate worship services at the location where the church was torn down, Rivera Despaigne reports.

In Venezuela:
Simon Romero reports that Chavez came up with a fake CIA memo, which his cronies were too cheap to find someone to translate into English in order to give it a whiff of authenticity:

Mr. Chavez and senior officials here have exhibited increasingly erratic behavior. Mr. Chavez has lashed out at leaders in Colombia and Spain and asked for an investigation into whether CNN was seeking to incite an assassination attempt against him.

Reports of such plots are not in short supply here. The main state television network broadcast coverage this week of a memorandum in Spanish that it claimed had been written by the C.I.A. in which destabilization plans against Mr. Chavez were laid out. American involvement in Venezuelan politics remains a particularly delicate issue here, after the Bush administration tacitly supported a coup in 2002 that briefly ousted Mr. Chavez.

"We reject and are disappointed in the Venezuelan government's allegations that the United States is involved in any type of conspiracy to affect the outcome of the constitutional referendum," Benjamin Ziff, a spokesman for the United States Embassy here, said in a statement.

A C.I.A. spokesman called the document "a fake," while analysts, including investigators who had previously uncovered financing of Venezuelan opposition groups by the United States government, expressed doubts about the authenticity of the memo.

"I find the document quite suspect," said Jeremy Bigwood, an independent researcher in Washington. "There’s not an original version in English, and the timing of its release is strange."

One of the surest signs of a tyrant is his eagerness to play the "Blame the CIA Game". When that fails, blame the White House (and of course, blame Bush).

More on Venezuela's countdown to tyranny later today.


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Al-Qaeda in the Caribbean, Sandy Berger, and today's items

Via PJM, Al-Qaeda's Inroads into the Caribbean

The Jammat al-Muslimeen (Muslim Group) is Trinidad and Tobago’s most notorious Muslim organization. Although Trinidad’s ethnically and religiously diverse population, split roughly between descendants of African slaves and indentured servants from India and a sizable “mixed” community, includes Sunni and Shi’a Muslim immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East, the Jammat is known almost exclusively as a Black Sunni Muslim organization comprised mainly of Afro-Trinidadian converts to Islam. The group is led by Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, a former police officer who was born Lenox Philip. The Jammat is best known for its violent 1990 attempt to overthrow the Trinidadian government over grievances related to land ownership, social and economic inequality, and government corruption [5].
...
The Waajihatul Islaamiyyah (Islamic Front), headed by Omar Abdullah, himself a Black Muslim convert, has also been identified as a potential threat by U.S. intelligence and Trinidadian authorities. Like the Jammat al-Muslimeen, the Wajithatul Islamiyyah is comprised mostly of Afro-Trinidadian converts to Islam. Local sources allege that Abdullah harbors extremist leanings. The Waajihatul has been accused of publishing material expressing support for al-Qaeda, but Trinidadian authorities have not provided conclusive evidence of any direct links with the group. He is often outspoken in his criticism of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the Trinidadian government’s policy towards Muslims. Trinidadian authorities also tie Abdullah to local crime and other illicit dealings [9].

The Jamaat al-Murabiteen (Almoravids, after the African Muslim dynasty that ruled Morocco and Spain in the 11th and 12th Century) and the related Jammat al-Islami al-Karibi (Caribbean Islamic Group) are associated with one time Jamaat al-Muslimeen chief of security Maulana Hasan Anyabwile, formerly Beville Marshall. He split with Abu Bakr in 2001 over what Trinidadian sources allege was a personal rift with the group’s leader. Anyabwile hosted a radio show where he was known to criticize Trinidadian Hindus, Indian Muslims, and his former Jamaat al-Muslimeen associates for their purported failure in improving the lot of Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago. Local sources also allege that he is an extremist [10].

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Via Mike, Sandy Berger and the Clinton Cover-Up - Why It Matters

Berger had access to Archives documents that could be critical to understanding what information the Clinton Administration had, what options it considered, and what decisions it took on these sensitive subjects. In addition to primary documents, Berger had access to copies, and the only plausible reason for taking five copies of a single memo is that some had original notes on them from key officials, maybe from Berger or President Clinton.

For Berger to risk jail and disgrace, to then give up the right to practice his profession merely in order to avoid having to answer questions, he must be hiding something important. And if it is that important to him, it is also important to us.

The most likely explanation is that the material Berger destroyed points to a terrible mistake by Berger himself, by President Clinton, or by both. In dealing with al-Qaeda, did they overlook a critical piece of information or miss a chance to stop 9/11? Did the Administration's failure to take a more aggressive posture encourage al-Qaeda's later attacks?

When Fox News' Chris Wallace raised the possibility that Clinton's Administration might have done something more to prevent 9/11, Bill Clinton went into an inexplicable rage on national television. Wallace touched a nerve. So did the DC Bar.

Knowing what information Berger destroyed also might alter views of the current Bush Administration. Was the early support from both Bill and Hillary Clinton for going to war against Saddam based on something we don't know yet that was available to insiders in the Clinton Administration? Was it something that could come back to haunt Hillary and ruin her chances of winning Bill's third term?

--------------------------------------------------Via Maria, Senators Rebuke Joe Wilson Claims

The committee found that internal intelligence community notes of meetings in which Valerie Plame participated "did not mark her name with a (C) as would be required to indicate that her association with the CIA was classified," as both Plame and her husband have said. These aren't the only instances where Wilson's account did not square with the facts, the senators found.

Wilson has said in his book and in numerous public appearances that reports he reviewed from the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, "indicated that there was nothing to the Niger-Iraq uranium story . . . This too is untrue," the committee found. On the contrary, Owens-Kirkpatrick wrote a cable to the State Department which said that the initial CIA reporting of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal "provides sufficient details to warrant another hard look at Niger's uranium sales."

Although Nigerien officials insisted in meetings with the Americans that no uranium would be sold to rogue nations, "we should not dismiss out of hand the possibility that some scheme could be, or has been, underway to supply Iraq with yellowcake from here," she wrote.

Perhaps the most damning conclusion of the Senate report has been known for nearly three years, but has remained classified until now. In the initial July 2004 report, the Senate committee reported that the intelligence community "used or cleared the Niger-Iraq uranium intelligence fifteen times before the President's State of the Union address and four times after, saying in several papers that Iraq was ‘vigorously pursuing uranium from Africa.'"

Despite that finding, Democrats led by Michigan Sen. Carl Levin blasted President Bush for the "16 words" in the January 2003 speech that described Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, calling them an effort to "cherry-pick" intelligence and to "mislead" the country and the world in a "rush to war."

In fact, the U.S. intelligence community continued to believe in the veracity of the Niger uranium story for many months after the speech, and didn't call back its original reporting until June 2003 — well after the liberation of Iraq.

Meanwhile, via Larwyn, Plame To Sue CIA - The Irony And The (Near) Ectasy--------------------------------------------------
Please listen to my podcast with Neo-Neocon, and tell your friends.

Hitchens on Tenet

George Tenet was in the Clinton administration, and he was in the Bush administration. And now he's selling his book.

But Hitchens has the skinny: A Loser's History: George Tenet's sniveling, self-justifying new book is a disgrace

Notice the direct quotes that make it clear who is the author of this brilliant insight. And then pause for a second. The author is almost the only man who could have known of Zacarias Moussaoui and his co-conspirators—the very man who positively knew they were among us, in flight schools, and then decided to leave them alone. In his latest effusion, he writes: "I do know one thing in my gut. Al-Qaeda is here and waiting." Well, we all know that much by now. But Tenet is one of the few who knew it then, and not just in his "gut" but in his small brain, and who left us all under open skies.

Read it all.

From Roger L. Simon's comments, former intelligence officers ask for Tenet's to return his Medal of Freedom.

Time to dismantle the CIA? Update For now, Scrappleface dismantles Tenet. Cassandra, however, says it best,

I can forgive Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, and Richard Clarke for failing to kill Osama bin Laden, for weighing the risks and benefits differently than I do, or even did. I can forgive them for not singling out one Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks", even though on his watch the World Trade Center had already been attacked, and acting to remove the threat.

What I cannot forgive is the lying and historical revisionism of Bill Clinton and his Clinton-era holdovers who contradict their own past statements in a transparent attempt to shift the blame from an administration which had EIGHT YEARS to do something about al Qaeda and numerous opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden to an incoming administration which, during a time of transition following a contested election, only had EIGHT MONTHS and, according to the head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, no opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden.