Coulter On 9/11 Widows: "I Have Never Seen People Enjoying Their Husband's Death So Much"...

(Re-published from June 6, 2006)

This woman is a loose cannon. Then again almost every neocon pundit is a loose cannons. The video is on C&L.

Her new book comes out today so she is making the rounds...

C&L reports: Even her idiotic writing stunned Lauer. The last time she was on the show he treated her as a normal person. I would hope that stops, but NBC and the rest of cable news constantly give her a platform to rant on. When will that end? I think this is the first time Matt actually read anything she wrote.

Here's the transcript:

LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration: " These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process." And this part is the part I really need to talk to you about: "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much." Because they dare to speak out?

COULTER: To speak out using the fact they are widows. This is the left's doctrine of infallibility. If they have a point to make about the 9-11 commission, about how to fight the war on terrorism, how about sending in somebody we are allowed to respond to> No-No-No. We always have to respond to someone who just had a family member die--

LAUER: But aren't they in the middle of the story?...

COULTER: ...Because then if we respond, oh you are questioning their authenticity. No, the story is...

LAUER: So grieve but grieve quietly?

LAUER: What I’m saying is I don’t think they have ever told you, you can't respond.

COULTER: Look, you are getting testy with me. Lauer actually got to her at the end a little bit because he couldn't believe she would write something as repulsive as that. Wake up Matt, NBC and all the other networks. Ann was off from the beginning of the interview. She had trouble responding to Matt's questions about why Bush's poll numbers are in the tank. I'm glad he brought up her Harriet Miers statements.

So...Zarqawi is dead....again

Well, this time it looks real because the military made sure they got a picture of the very dead Zarqawi. I suppose this will make Bush's numbers rise a bit...but I predict they will fall below his record before the fall elections as more facts come out about this administration's obsession with cheating, lying, stealing and pandering.

Why didn't Bush go after Zarqawi at the beginning of the war?

In HuffPo today, Eric Alterman sums it up best: Bush didn't go after Zarqawi because he was useful in developing an argument for war -- even though that argument was based on lies. Tens of thousands have died, trillions have been wasted and who knows how many terrorists have been created as a result of his all-but-criminal negligence. Read all about it here.

Forgive my cyinicism but the timing of these events is so convenient for this administration. So therefore all I can do is keep wearing my tin foil hat, when it comes to these people in power. By the way....has anyone heard anything about the guy that blew up the WTC on 9/11? Oh thats right! It was Bush who said: "So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him..."

Black Hawk Down Revisited - Un-friggin' Believable

Black Hawk Down Revisited - [Sunday Herald] What is it about THIS administration? Why is it that they align themselves with the most evil and insidious of "allies"? The same horrific warlords who dragged US soldiers through the streets of Mogodishu back in 1993 are NOW the Bush Administration's NEW ALLIES in the war on terror. This administration is filled with convicted felons including John "Death Squad" Negroponte. It almost seems as if this administration has aligned itself with "The Darkside" or Satan himself, based on its choices of late. What IS this fascination with bloodlust and torture? Anyway...

The Sunday Herald reports:

THIRTEEN years after President Bill Clinton withdrew forces from Somalia, in the “Black Hawk down” shambles, American security officials are giving clandestine support to the same warlords who mutilated and humiliated US soldiers in 1993.
The American Operation, in breach of the United Nations’ arms embargo on Somalia and therefore in breach of international law, is controlled through the US Embassy in Kenya and Washington’s 1800-strong Combined Joint Task Force in Djibouti, on Somalia’s northern border.

The Combined Joint Task Force, under Admiral Richard Hunt, is an anti-terrorist operation for the troubled Horn of Africa, but most specifically for Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1991 and is seen as an ideal place for al-Qaeda activists to hide and plot attacks.

Somalia is only a short boat ride from Yemen and is a historic doorway to Africa from the Middle East. No visas are needed to enter Somalia and there is no police force. The country has a weak and ineffective transitional government operating largely out of neighbouring Kenya. Most of Somalia is in mayhem and lawlessness, ruled by a patchwork of competing warlords; the capital is too unsafe for even Somalia’s acting prime minister to visit. >>>More

Chertoff to NY: No Icons, No Monuments Worth Protecting

As The Raw Story and ABC News point out: New York City is home to the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, Broadway, the Guggenheim, New York Stock Exchange, United Nations, Rockefeller Center, and a host of other world-famous landmarks. The equally famous, now-lost World Trade Center was the site of the bloodiest terror or foreign attack ever on US soil.

Yet...Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Chief, claims that New York has no icons and therefore will get a 40% reduction in Homeland Security Funds. There has also been a reduction in Homeland Security funds for Washington, DC. There have been increases for Jeb Bush's state of Florida as well as Arnold's state of California. Makes one really wonder...is this about politics or "homeland" security?

The tangled web of US 'intelligence'

The following analysis was written by Tom Engelhardt for The Asia Times Online:

In recent months, among other uproars and scandals, Americans learned:

That the Defense Department has been collecting intelligence on and tracking domestic anti-war activists.

That, since 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) has had a presidentially authorized, law-breaking, warrantless surveillance program to listen in on the international phone calls of possibly tens of thousands of US citizens.

That, with the help of three of the four major US telephone companies, it also has had a data-mining operation - "the largest database ever assembled in the world" - linked, in at least on
case, directly into a major telecommunication carrier's network core ("where all its data are stored"), giving it access to almost all telephone calls made in the United States.

That, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Porter Goss, a President George W Bush-appointed, Vice President Dick Cheney-backed ex-congressman, had whipped out his lie detector and conducted an internal war and purge of an agency viewed by the administration as little better than the axis of evil, tearing its upper ranks apart via numerous resignations and retirements.

That, meanwhile, Goss's third in command, a fellow with the evocative name of Kyle "Dusty" Foggo (think: fog o' intelligence), was being investigated for possibly granting illegal agency sweetheart contracts to a pal already involved in another major Washington corruption scandal (and don't even get me started on those poker games and prostitutes).

That Goss, in turn, was pushed out of the CIA by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte, head of a new uber-intelligence "office" (ODNI) meant to coordinate the whole sprawling "intelligence community", and his second in command, air force General Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA (who oversaw those surveillance and data-mining operations for the administration).

That the president then nominated the active-duty general to take Goss's place as the head of the country's major civilian spy agency - in his Senate hearings, he would offer the following comment on Goss's tenure: "You get a lot more authority when the workforce doesn't think it's amateur hour on the top floor."
That Republican and Democratic senators, having questioned the credibility of a military man who had overseen a patently illegal surveillance program on US citizens for years and then defended it vigorously, promptly collapsed in a non-oppositional heap of praise, and rubber-stamped him director by a vote of 78-15.

That in the ever-upward-rippling CIA-agent-outing case of Valerie Plame - about which a stonewalling Goss said, while still head of the House Intelligence Committee, "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation" - rumors of Karl Rove's indictment continued to circulate; while special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald reserved the right to call the vice president, whose office seems ever more in his sightlines, to testify in former aide I Lewis "Scooter" Libby's trial next year.

All this news involving what we call "intelligence" - and much more - played out on the front pages of US newspapers and on television, replete with copious leaks from within the intelligence community, threats from the White House to prosecute journalists reporting those leaks, outraged press editorials about sundry intelligence topics, and a great deal of heat and noise.

Each scandal came and went, the news spotlight flickering from one to the next; and yet, as Hayden's testimony before the Senate made clear, just about no one seemed to have the urge to ask the obvious "what's it all about, Alfie?" question. Nobody wondered what this thing called "intelligence", over which so many tens of thousands of analysts, code breakers and agents labor with so many tens of billions of the United States' dollars, really is; what sort of knowledge about the planet all those acronymic intelligence organizations really deliver.

The value of the "intelligence community" to deliver this thing called "intelligence", whatever mistakes or missteps might be made, is simply taken for granted. >>>More

BOBBY KENNEDY JR. TO QUESTION 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN MAJOR ROLLING STONE FEATURE ARTICLE!

A curious thing is about to happen tomorrow. ROLLING STONE will have a cover story with an article written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The story will be about voting fraud in Ohio. Here is an excerpt of post at BRAD BLOG about the article:

"A damning and detailed feature article, written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for Rolling Stone and documenting evidence of the theft of the 2004 Presidential Election is set to hit newstands this Friday, The BRAD BLOG can now confirm. The online version of the article will be posted tomorrow (Thursday) morning.The article -- headlined on the cover as "Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?: How 350,000 Votes Disappeared in Ohio" -- has been several months in development and will contend that a concerted effort was undertaken by high-level Republican officials to steal the Election in Ohio -- and thus the country -- in 2004!

(snip)

"Sources have told The BRAD BLOG that Kennedy "does not hold back in this article.One of the election integrity advocates involved in research and development with Kennedy on the story told us a number of weeks ago that "[Kennedy] essentially says everything that those of us who have been contending there was massive chicanery in the '04 election were right, and the media and politicians who ignored it at the time were wrong."We'll have more details and information shortly from the story which includes quotes from Democrats such as Howard Dean and John Kerry, as well as pollster Lou Harris who also questions the validity of the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio according to the article..." >>>MORE

It will be interesting to see MSM's reaction (or lackthereof) to this article.

UPDATE: The Rolling Stone article in its entirety is here.