Anti-Islam Bigotry = Good For Al Qaeda

You can feel the lava under this very thorough Frank Rich column. Just one tiny bit:

After 9/11, President Bush praised Islam as a religion of peace and asked for tolerance for Muslims not necessarily because he was a humanitarian or knew much about Islam but because national security demanded it. An America at war with Islam plays right into Al Qaeda’s recruitment spiel. This month’s incessant and indiscriminate orgy of Muslim-bashing is a national security disaster for that reason — Osama bin Laden’s “next video script has just written itself,” as the former F.B.I. terrorist interrogator Ali Soufan put it — but not just for that reason. America’s Muslim partners, those our troops are fighting and dying for, are collateral damage. If the cleric behind Park51 — a man who has participated in events with Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, for heaven’s sake — is labeled a closet terrorist sympathizer and a Nazi by some of the loudest and most powerful conservative voices in America, which Muslims are not?

The One Billionth Call For Impeachment

How much more do they need?

A former top CIA official, Robert Richer, told a journalist, on the record, that senior Bush administration officials ordered the production of a letter that made it appear that Saddam Hussein was tied to the attacks of 9/11. That fake letter was leaked to the press, and was used to justify the Iraq War. Richer, being in a position to know such things, believes it came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Suskind's new book asserts that senior Bush officials ordered the CIA to forge a document "proving" that Saddam Hussein had been trying to manufacture nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al Qaeda. The alleged result was a faked memorandum from then chief of Saddam's intelligence service Tahir Jalil Habbush dated July 1, 2001, and written to Hussein.

The bogus memo claimed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad but also discussed the arrival of a "shipment" from Niger, which the Administration claimed had supplied Iraq with yellowcake uranium -- based on yet another forged document whose source remains uncertain.

The memo subsequently was treated as fact by the British Sunday Telegraph, and cited by William Safire in his New York Times column, providing fodder for Bush's efforts to take the US to war.

That former top CIA official, Robert Richer denied it when the story came out, and the journalist basically said, "Fine. Here's the transcript of the tape I made of you saying it."

Ron: Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?

Rob: No, no, no. What I remember is George saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes. But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.

Ron: Yeah, right.

Rob: But he didn't say that specifically. I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.

That's evidence. That's credible evidence that the Vice President HIGH crime.

CNN Headline: Bin Laden's Driver Found Guilty

CNN's article:.

A U.S. military jury found Osama Bin Laden's former driver guilty of five counts of material support to a terror organization in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

In a split verdict, jurors found Salim Hamdan not guilty of conspiracy to aid a terror organization, in this case al Qaeda.

There were eight charges in all, and Hamdan was acquitted of conspiracy, the most serious one. How does that justify "...Found guilty in Terror Trial," which is the headline on their home page? (Link goes to BBC article that also says "found guilty".)

Last line in the BBC article:

However, defence lawyers had feared a guilty verdict was inevitable and said the system was geared to convict.

In George Bush's pentagon? No way!

More here, with at least a (homepage) headline that reflects reality, "Bin Laden's Driver Found Guilty in Split Verdict."

"This is not a day the administration should glory in. It's a day that America should be ashamed of," deputy chief defense counsel Michael Berrigan said after testimony ended in the two-week trial. "Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, this process will go away and we'll have real trials."

The NYTimes says he faced only two charges. How weird. The BBC and CNN both say eight.

Sheesh! The LATimes says there were ten charges! Does anybody actually know?