by TChris

The president recently told Katie Couric that "[o]ne of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." Fabricating a nonexistent connection must indeed be a difficult chore, particularly as evidence disputing the connection continues to grow.

There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. ... It discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that prior to the war Saddam's government ''did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates,'' according to excerpts of the 400-page report provided by Democrats. ...

Bush and other administration officials have said that the presence of Zarqawi in Iraq before the war was evidence of a connection between Saddam's government and al-Qaida.

The report, available here, "also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war."

Have any of you returned home from a trip to find this in your checked luggage? I did today when I went to unpack my suitcase after my trip to Omaha. My problem with it is that I don't believe it's random. Security searched my bag on my out-bound trip (details here) -- what are the chances that 24 hours later, a surreptitious search of the same bag, this time checked, is random? There must have been some kind of coding that flagged it after the outbound flight.

This is particularly odious for traveling lawyers, most of whom are probably like me. On the outbound flight, our client files are in our carry-on luggage. We either want to review them during the flight or know we will need them immediately upon our arrival and can't take a chance on them being delayed or lost by the airline. On the return, however, rather than lug them, we check them.

But those files contain notes we made while meeting with our clients or expert witnesses, print-outs of case-related emails or memos with defense strategy. They are protected by the attorney-client and work-product privileges. In a high-profile case, what's to prevent the TSA officer from scanning them and sending them on to the Justice Department?

Suffice it to say from hereon out I will probably use fedex to return the files rather than check them in my luggage. But for those occasions where there isn't time, I'm going to create a lawyer's version of the TalkLeft 4th Amendment Subway Tote which I will pack on top of the contents of my suitcase. It will contain a warning to TSA that should any of the material in my suitcase wind up in the hands of the Government, they will be responsible for my motion to suppress and the likelihood that someone the Government regards as a serious criminal is likely to walk free. The final line on the tote will be: "Go ahead, make my day."

San Diego has been leading the charge in California against medical marijuana. So it's probably no surprise that a group of federally-funded law enforcement officers and personnel have chosen San Diego for their annual anti-cannabis cabal.

Here's the invitation:

September 5, 2006

To: Invited Guests

Re: National Marijuana Initiative Conference

The National Marijuana Initiative (NMI), funded by the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Program, will hold its annual conference October 31-November 1, 2006 in San Diego, California. This year, the NMI, in partnership with Californian's for Drug Free Youth and its local affiliate the San Diego Prevention Coalition, has expanded the conference for California and other states' Drug Free Community grantees and prevention organizations. For the first time ever, the NMI is inviting prevention professionals to join us for Day 1, and for a new Day 2. An agenda will be sent out within the next few weeks.

All of the HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas) Directors located within the "Marijuana-Seven" states have been invited to participate. The HIDTA and their appropriate state and local law enforcement personnel will share their marijuana investigations and eradication efforts on public lands on Day 1. Day 2 will focus on marijuana prevention efforts.

Via NORML:

98 Percent Of All Domestically Eradicated Marijuana Is "Ditchweed," DEA Admits

Washington, DC: More than 98 percent of all of the marijuana plants seized by law enforcement in the United States is feral hemp not cultivated cannabis, according to newly released data by the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program and the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics.

According to the data, available online here , of the estimated 223 million marijuana plants destroyed by law enforcement in 2005, approximately 219 million were classified as "ditchweed," a term the agency uses to define "wild, scattered marijuana plants [with] no evidence of planting, fertilizing, or tending." Unlike cultivated marijuana, feral hemp contains virtually no detectable levels of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, and does not contribute to the black market marijuana trade.

Previous DEA reports have indicated that between 98 and 99 percent of all the marijuana plants eradicated by US law enforcement is ditchweed.

There are still problems with the comments on TalkLeft. Here's what's happening. Since I haven't been able to restore the comment template, the comments are still open to all. But, many are being directed to the "junk comment" screen and being held. They are mixed in with real junk comments -- which since comments are now open -- now approach 200 an hour. I have to log into the junk comments, find your real comments and unjunk them so they appear on the site, while deleting the junk ones. As you can imagine, this takes a tremendous amount of my time.

In a word, so long as you don't post as "anonymous," your comments will appear, they just may not be instantaneous. I am not filtering for content, point of view, or anything besides name-calling, profanity, links not in html format and the like.

While ABC airs a phony documentary labelled a dramatization, Al-Jazeera airs real, previously unreleased footage -- 90 minutes worth-- of Osama bin Laden meeting with the 9/11 hijackers in the days before the attacks.

The footage, first aired on Thursday, also shows Abu Hafs Al-Masri, Al-Qaeda's then military leader, and Ramzi bin Al-Shaiba, co-ordinator of the 9-11 attacks, meeting in Al-Qaeda's training camps in Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

The tape also says that a previous unknown Arab Islamist, Abu Al-Turab Al-Urduni, supervised the training for the attacks. The video said that the preparation for the attacks included not only flight training but also lessons in street-fighting and how to forge official documents.

The video shows Osama meeting with Ramzi Binalshibh, as well as footage of two of the hijackers, Hamza el-Ramdi and Wael el-Shemari.

The men said that their actions were inspired by an urge to avenge the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya.

I haven't found the video online, if you have, let us know where.

In the anti-climactic news of the day, Richard Armitage received Patrick Fitzgerald's blessing Tuesday to disclose what we all knew -- that he was one of those who told Robert Novak and Bob Woodward that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA.

Armitage was rueful nonetheless, and disclosed that he had written a letter of resignation as the State Department's No. 2 official and closest adviser to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't feel that I let down the president, the secretary of state, the Department of State, my family and friends and for that matter, the Wilsons," he said. "I consider myself someone who's valued the ability to keep state secrets," he said. "This was bad."

But, he did not tell Novak she was an "operative" or what she did there -- or even that Wilson's wife had been responsible for the CIA sending Wilson to Niger.

by TChris

Three presidential claims, three probable lies. It was just another day at the Bush White House.

In defending the Central Intelligence Agency's secret network of prisons on Wednesday, President Bush said the detention system had used lawful interrogation techniques, was fully described to select members of Congress and led directly to the capture of a string of terrorists over the past four years. A review of public documents and interviews with American officials raises questions about Mr. Bush's claims on all three fronts.

TalkLeft wrote about torture in the secret prisons here and here. As to briefing Congress:

A North Carolina appeals court has reversed the denial of a suppression motion which had yielded 130-165 months to the defendant. The text of the opinion is here.
The money quote is on page 9:

"We conclude that Officer Correa exceeded the scope of defendant's consent when he inspected defendant's genitals."

[Hat tip Scribe.]

The Path to 9/11, which tries to shift the blame for 9/11 will be viewed by tens of millions on ABC Sunday and Monday without commercial. It is pure Republican propoganda and packed with lies, aimed at influencing the upcoming November elections. As a friend e-mailed me earlier today:

"Path to 9/11" is a docudrama written by a little know arch-conservative, Cyrus Nowrasteh. The main advisor to the film was former Republican Governor Tom Kean. There were no Democratic advisers. In the run up to the showing, several media personalities and political officials have been sent copies of the film to review. This includes Rush Limbaugh and several rightwing bloggers. Requests from progressive media has been denied. Formal requests from high level Clinton administration officials have been denied.

Bill Clinton is justifiably outraged:

A furious Bill Clinton is warning ABC that its mini-series "The Path to 9/11" grossly misrepresents his pursuit of Osama bin Laden - and he is demanding the network "pull the drama" if changes aren't made. ....[Madeline]Albright and former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger also dashed off letters to Iger, accusing the network of lying in the miniseries and demanding changes.

Clinton pointedly refuted several fictionalized scenes that he claims insinuate he was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to care about bin Laden and that a top adviser pulled the plug on CIA operatives who were just moments away from bagging the terror master, according to a letter to ABC boss Bob Iger obtained by The Post.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

About the "fictionalized" scene where the Clinton Administration refused to kill or apprehend Osama bin Ladin even though The New Kids on the Block had "The Tall One" in their sights, Tom Kean has said:

The incident was a fictionalized composite. It was "representative of a series of events compacted into one," he replied to Ben-Veniste at the time. In a phone interview a few days later, he added, "It's reasonably accurate."

When I write my "dramatizations" of actual events I like to stick to plausible events that I can distort and mislead about. I know President Bush likes to too. Think about the "yellowcake" dramatization. Apparently there is uranium in Niger. Uranium is used to make nuclear weapons. Iraq is a country. Saddam was the brutal leader. See? At least we can be "faithful" to "events."

So the 9/11 Commission has a million page report that takes too long to read and who can really be bothered with actually knowing the facts, so I figured the "spirirt of the essence" of the 9/11Report could be found in the Cliff Notes, um, I mean Execuitive Summary of the Report. I'm sure we can find the spirit of the essence the the New Kids capturing Osama and then having to let him go because Clinton was, um, "distracted." Let's go see.

Via Think Progress:

Over 50,000 ThinkProgress readers have written ABC in the last 48 hours about "The Path to 9/11." We're going to keep the pressure on ABC, but we're also broadening our focus today to the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC.

Disney's Chairman of the Board is former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-ME). Senator Mitchell has a long and distinguished career both inside and outside government and he knows how important it is to accurately represent historical events.

We need to remind him that 9/11 was a national tragedy, and that politicizing and flagrantly misrepresenting the facts about 9/11 is wrong.

Senator George J. Mitchell
T: (212) 335-4600
T: (212) 335-4500
F: (212) 335-4605

(Remember to be polite, and please copy us so we can keep track your comments.)

ABC is feeling the pressure. Let's keep it up.