Ahmed Chalabi made the round of Sunday news shows this morning and denied passing on sensitive U.S. info to Iran.

“It’s not true. It’s a false charge,” Chalabi said on ABC’s “This Week” television program. “It’s a smear.”

Iran also denies the charges:

Iran denies any intelligence sharing Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said suggestions that Chalabi had passed sensitive U.S. intelligence to Iran were baseless. “We have not received any classified information, neither from Chalabi nor any member of the Iraqi Governing Council,” Asefi said.

Chalabi blamed George Tenet for the smear:

Chalabi said the CIA, which had viewed his Iraqi National Congress group with skepticism for years, was trying to discredit him and that CIA Director George Tenet was behind the accusation that he gave American secrets to Iran. “We never provided any classified information from the U.S. to Iran, and neither I nor anyone in the INC. And that is a charge being put out by George Tenet,” Chalabi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”

Chalabi challenged the Tenet to bring his information before Congress:

Thinking about attending the Republican National Convention in New York this summer? From our pal Deb in Chicago, who got it from her uncle, who got it from...

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CONVENTION SCHEDULE
New York, NY

6:00 PM Opening Prayer led by the Reverend Jerry Fallwell

6:30 PM Pledge of Allegiance

6:35 PM Burning of Bill of Rights (excluding 2nd amendment)

6:45 PM Salute to the Coalition of the Willing

6:46 PM Seminar #1: Iraq Stratergies-Voodoo/DooDoo WMD

7:30 PM First Presidential Beer Bong

7:35 PM Serve Freedom Fries

7:40 PM EPA Address #1: Mercury-It's what's for dinner!

8:00 PM Vote on which country to invade next

8:10 PM Call EMTs to revive Rush Limbaugh

8:15 PM John Ashcroft Lecture: The Homos are after your Children!!

Cheers to the United Kingdom which has announced that it will boycott the trial of Saddam Hussein if the death penalty is sought.

Government policy and the European Convention on Human Rights lay down that the British cannot hand the prisoners over if there is any risk of them being executed. The death penalty has been suspended in Iraq, on British insistence, but is expected to be reintroduced.

....Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International, said: "The death penalty is arbitrary, cruel and wrong... The UK authorities must obtain assurances that prisoners will not face the death penalty before handing them over to another authority."

....Bill Rammell, a Foreign Office minister, said last week, in a written answer to a question from the Tory MP Andrew Robathan, who wants the death penalty re-introduced in the UK, that the British authorities will have to refuse to supply any evidence that might help send the former president to his death.

[Ed. A few people emailed us they were getting error messages trying to comment on this post. It happened to us as well, so we're closing the comments so we don't frustrate any more readers. We have no idea why it's happening, but rest assured we haven't done anything to keep anyone from commenting.]

A military police commander at Abu Ghraib prison will testify that the top US general in Iraq witnessed some of the abuses.

The lawyer, Capt. Robert Shuck, said he was told that Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and other senior military officers were aware of what was taking place on Tier 1A of Abu Ghraib. Shuck is assigned to defend Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II of the 372nd Military Police Company. During an April 2 hearing that was open to the public, Shuck said the company commander, Capt. Donald J. Reese, was prepared to testify in exchange for immunity. The military prosecutor questioned Shuck about what Reese would say under oath.

"Are you saying that Captain Reese is going to testify that General Sanchez was there and saw this going on?" asked Capt. John McCabe, the military prosecutor. "That's what he told me," Shuck said. "I am an officer of the court, sir, and I would not lie. I have got two children at home. I'm not going to risk my career."

Stirling Newberry, posting at Daily Kos, tells us what to remember about Ahmed Chalabi:

Bush Sr. Created the INC
Clinton fired the INC in 1996 after a failed coup attempt and bad information.
The Republican Congress brought them back.
The civilian leadership of DoD - Wolfowitz, Perle and Rumsfeld - made Chalabi the key player.
The INC had no presence in Iran until after Bush took office, and only had a relationship with Iran of any consequence after Hakim's assassination.
Chalabi and Dawa formed an alliance, causing Chalabi to shift towards Islamicism.
The attempt to cashier Chalabi is clearly attached to either building his prestige, or to distance Bush from him - either way, he needs to be pinned on Clinton.
The PNACers cannot distance themselves from him - he is the key figure in the creation of their Iraq.
Chalabi associates have a track record of getting big contracts from the Iraq war, and a track record of overpromising and under delivering.
Chalabi is a convicted felon, and no amount of seething charm will change this. Switzerland doesn't go after people at Saddam's request - so long as the money is clean when they get it, they will do business with almost anyone.

The latest scandal to hit the Bush Administration following Abu Ghraib is that of the fall of Ahmed Chalabi. Josh Marshall of TalkingPoints Memo is covering it, his latest is here and here.

Alexander Cockburn has an in-depth, insightful review at Counterpunch.

Why the US Turned Against Their Former Golden Boy -- He was Preparing a Coup! What He Did as a Catspaw for Tehran: How He Nearly Bankrupted Jordan; the Billions He Stands to Make Out of the New Iraq.

The story becomes more important following the Bush Administration's decision to raid Chalabi's home and seize his files and amidst reports that Chalabi was giving American military secrets to Iran. As to the connection between Rumsfeld and Chalabi, go here.

TChris has been following Chalabi as well, here, here and here.

Kevin Drum at Political Animal forecast Chalabi's demise in April.

This story has legs, keep an eye on it.

Michael Moore's new anti-Bush film, Fahrenheit 911, has won the coveted Cannes Film Festival Palme D'Or award:

Michael Moore's controversial polemic Farenheit 9/11 became the first documentary for nearly 50 years to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival last night. The film, which contains scathing attacks on the business dealings of President George Bush as well as the first footage of American soldiers torturing prisoners in Iraq, beat off competition from more famous directors, including Wong Kar-Wai, Emir Kusturica and the Coen brothers to scoop top prize. Moore, who was given a standing ovation by the Cannes crowd, told them: 'I'm completely overwhelmed by this. Merci.'

More here. The official Cannes festival website news of the award is here.

by TChris

The NY Times argues that proposed changes in the Model Code of Judicial Conduct would make it easier for judges to follow the lead of Justice Scalia by declining to remove themselves from cases in which they would appear to have a bias, so long as they pronounce themselves to be fair.

The bar panel's newly unveiled proposals for revamping the Model Code of Judicial Conduct would actually weaken the core provision that requires judges to avoid not just actual impropriety in all their activities, but also the appearance of impropriety. Although the new version retains the appearance standard, it waters it down by saying that violations will not "ordinarily" lead to professional discipline unless there are charges of other rule violations. Intentionally or not, as Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont aptly noted last week in a letter to the bar association's president, Dennis Archer, that transforms a crucial ethical mandate into "an ancillary add-on" and significantly diminishes its moral force and deterrence value.

The proposed revisions give judges some other breaks. They would weaken the requirement that judges refrain from deciding cases in which they have an economic interest, often through ownership of stock in one of the corporate parties to a suit.

Even more baffling, the commission has deleted the current instruction to judges to resolve any ambiguity in the Code of Conduct in a way that advances public trust in the judiciary's "integrity, independence and impartiality." Practically and symbolically, that deletion is a real mistake.

by TChris

What do you think about when you're stuck in traffic?

A third of German motorists fantasize about sex when stuck in traffic while only 10 percent think of finding an alternate route, according to a motor club survey published Thursday.

Common (more than 5 percent) but less stimulating thoughts: how much fuel is left, what am I going to eat next, my job sucks, and I've really gotta go to the bathroom.

by TChris

Law students at Berkeley aren't happy that a law professor helped the Bush administration find a loophole in treaties and conventions that prohibit the abuse of prisoners.

A legal memo written by law professor John Yoo "contributed directly to the reprehensible violation of human rights in Iraq and elsewhere," according to a petition being circulated among students and faculty at Berkeley's Boalt School of Law.

Yoo drafted the memo during his service as deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

The Jan. 9, 2002, memo co-written by Yoo ... argued that the normal laws of armed conflict didn't apply to al-Qaida and Taliban militia prisoners because they didn't belong to a state.

The student petition says that Yoo should resign if he doesn't repudiate the memo, declare his opposition to torture, and encourage the Bush administration to comply with the Geneva Conventions. Boalt's interim dean, Robert C. Berring Jr., says that Yoo's work as a lawyer outside of the school won't affect his academic position, contends that faculty members are entitled to take extreme positions, and notes that Yoo isn't the only conservative on a diverse faculty.

Via Atrios, who just saw some of the runners go by his local Starbucks, check out the Run Against Bush movement --find one in your area and sign up.

Run Against Bush is a grassroots campaign dedicated to removing George W. Bush from office. Members all across the country are wearing t-shirts that proclaim "Run Against Bush" as they:
-Go for walks
-Go for jogs
-Run in road races
-Go for bike rides
-Volunteer for other political organizations
-Run their weekend errands

When you join, you get this t-shirt.

We're hoping to raise some money for them. You can join through our page here.

Renowned author and photographer Susan Sontag has an excellent article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, "The Torture of Others." Some highlights:

The issue is not whether a majority or a minority of Americans performs such acts but whether the nature of the policies prosecuted by this administration and the hierarchies deployed to carry them out makes such acts likely.

....So, then, is the real issue not the photographs themselves but what the photographs reveal to have happened to ''suspects'' in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken -- with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the Second World War took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare, as may be seen in a book just published, ''Photographing the Holocaust,'' by Janina Struk. If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans grinning beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.