Gee, Jay, How's That Intel Report Coming?

Monday Update: 69 82 Iraqis Killed, 73 75 Wounded

Are there no honest men (or women) in Washington?

Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.

The surge in contributions came from a Who's Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon, starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports.

So, I guess that means that the administration gets exactly what it wants in the FISA capitulation bipartisan compromise bill, including immunity for the telecos. Chalk another one up for Cheney. His pet Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee has come through for him again, with a little help in the spare change department. For a Rockefeller, this guy comes cheap.

More on Jello Jay under the fold.


I mean, didn't you think that it was all too convenient that Jay Rockefeller (D-Verizon) always seemed to cave when it looked like standing up to the dodges, lies and secrecy of the administration was the right prescription. Now the excuse is that they're too busy looking the other way on domestic spying to stand up to President 24%.

Well, now we know. don't we. They never were going to seriously look into the manipulation of intel leading up to the war and release the so-called Phase II report. You did hear that they were "shelving" that, didn't you?

The Phase II investigation is supposed to focus on two things: "examining the role of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and...contrasting the statements of public officials with what the intelligence community was saying at the time."

Oh, that's right. I forgot it was just supposed to quietly go away and only live on in myth, like the Kennedy assassination investigation into that magic bullet thingy. But come on. I don't need Jay Rockefeller to tell me they fixed the intelligence around the policy -- that they were going to trump up some reason to go to war against Iraq even before 9/11. They didn't need Curveball to con them into invading. He was just conveniently available to add to their house of cards.

Of course in a nation where 33% of the people STILL believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11, and 41% are pretty sure there was some kind of direct connection between the hijackers and Iraq, people like me will always believe that Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrams cooked up enough smoke and mirrors at Cheney's direction to make Bush believe what HE will always believe -- that there was some sort of rational explanation why we went into Iraq in the first place.

No doubt in some twisted corners, twisting the intelligence was seen as a patriotic duty.

Allowing this administration and their buddies to get off -- again -- scott free, is beyond the usualy spinelessness of the Democratic Leadership, something we've grown accustomed to ever since Pelosi's "Off the Table" moment. But hey, I've always wondered what a guy named Rockefeller was doing in the Democratic Party anyway. True, his clan were never really considered true conservatives, and 42 Grand is chump change to the Rockefeller family.

But a populist? Someone who was going to "take it to the man," he is not. BooMan is livid about the Intel Committee finding better things to do . . . than their job . . .

I call bullshit. Where is the urgency? You call this 'absolute committment'? I call it a total whitewash. At this point we should be moving onto Phase III: How the Intelligence Community is using psychological operations to maintain support for a failed war. And Phase IV: How the intelligence is being fixed around the policy of obliterating Iran.

We've seen this before...it was called Iran-Contra, and it was far less serious that what we are facing now. I saw Fred Thompson, on a post-debate show last night, tell Alan Colmes that Iran is trying to take over the entire Middle East and that we are therefore justified in spending hundreds of billions on discretionary defense spending. He told Colmes 'to read something' and then he might understand that our budget problems are all about entitlements and have nothing to do with preventing the 1000-year Persian empire.

The Republicans are out there in some alternate reality...a reality that has no connection to reality. Their ideology is dangerous. And the Democrats are covering their ass.

This has to stop.

Thanks to Avedon, you can read a little bit more on Rockefellers new BFF's at Democracy Now.