Mr. Cheney has not been deposed, and his involvement in the arrest remains uncertain. But one of the three agents assigned to him, Daniel McLaughlin, said in his deposition that Mr. Reichle’s description was backward.

Mr. McLaughlin said Mr. Reichle, who has since been transferred to Guam, asked him in a call several hours after the encounter to say that there had been an assault to bolster justification for the arrest.

The Secret Service has standing offices in Guam? Is getting sent there like the Air Force sending you to McMurdo Station?

Secret Service: Detailed Look at ’06 Turmoil - New York Times

That NIE, made public Dec. 3, embarrassed the administration by concluding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003, which seemed to undermine years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush and other senior officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

That same intelligence structure that was privately saying Iraq didn't have WMD in 2002 but was overruled by the White House is now saying Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program now, and what's the White House saying? Yes they do.

We've been down this road before, and it goes to Candy Mountain.

Bothersome Intel on Iran | Newsweek Periscope | Newsweek.com

“We noticed that one of them was hovering right over the intersection in front of our checkpoint,” he wrote. “There was a small amount of white smoke coming up from the intersection. I grabbed my radio and asked one of the guard towers what the smoke was. He answered that it looked like one of the helicopters dropped a smoke grenade on the cars in the intersection. I asked him why were they doing that, was there something going on in the intersection that would cause them to do this. He said, nope, couldn’t see anything. Then I said, well what kind of smoke is it?

“Before he could say anything, I got my answer. My eyes started watering, my nose started burning and my face started to heat up. CS! I heard the lieutenant say, “Sir that’s not smoke, it’s CS gas.”

Just plain out of control.

2005 Use of Gas by Blackwater Leaves Questions - New York Times

Turkish warplanes hit Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq early Sunday, Turkey's military said, the first such attack since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

As predicted, the war starts to widen.

Turkish planes hit rebel targets in Iraq - Yahoo! News

The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of U.S. questioners

Oddly, that's a valid reason to have destroyed them, but given how often things have been done with a stated purpose that is then demonstrated to be bullshit, I can't say I buy it. Of course, it also protects the identities of questioners from the courts who may be interested as well.

Hayden says CIA videotapes destroyed - Yahoo! News

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

Yep, all that work to "free" Iraq, and what do we get? The Chinese telling us we can't even watch our own asses. The hard way.

The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced | the Daily Mail

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

THIS is how we're fighting the Global War On Terror. These are your, and my, tax dollars at work. This is... WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS??? Jesus Christ, enough with the inane police state! Enough with the sheer stupidity of these morons. Enough! They've stolen the phone records, stuck people in jails, sent people to be tortured in lovely vacations spots like SYRIAN JAILS, who we won't even talk to about the bogus GWOT, and now we're spending money to track... GROCERIES??? This is beyond lunacy.

CQ Politics | FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here

What happened this time? Military officials admit there were unidentified "planning and coordination problems" even before it got to execution, “primarily between the operators and the generals who give the go-orders” added an intelligence official. A company of the 82nd Airborne was brought in since a Ranger team trained in special operations was not available. But the combination of the “dark side” — the SEALs — and the conventional — the 82nd Airborne — didn't work. "They didn't gel," said the military official. There was "a lack of responsiveness to the intelligence and a lack of aggressiveness."

To quote Demolition Man...

Lenina Huxley: Let's go blow this guy.
John Spartan: Away! Blow this guy *away*!
Lenina Huxley: Whatever.

Bin Laden may have just escaped U.S. forces - Nightly News with Brian Williams - MSNBC.com

A principal architect of Iraq’s interim constitution, who resigned in August as one of the country’s top diplomats, has laid out a devastating critique of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the U.S. occupation, telling NBC News that, functionally, “there is no Iraqi government.”

But, but, we've turned the corner! The surge is working! The...

We've seen this play before. The first time it was called Little Big Horn starring George Armstong Custer, the second Khartoom starring Chinese Gordon, and recently it was called Dien Bien Phu starring Henri Navarre. The reviews haven't come in yet but Petreaus has given a bravura performance so far.

Ex-top envoy calls Iraqi government a failure - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com

Former Chief Executive Joseph Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.

Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records.

So really, the wiretaps have NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11. This is something they wanted and used that as their excuse to get it.

Pre-9/11 wiretap bid is alleged - Los Angeles Times