Work Your Brain — 10/03/06

On Terror-steria

mass hysteria
n. A socially contagious frenzy of irrational behavior in a group of people as a reaction to an event.

• The Suntan Menace — The Cunning Realist writes about another incident in our friendly skies where an innocent man is assumed by other passengers to be a terrorist because of “suspicious activities” like going to the toilet when he got on the plane and having an iPod. The most damning piece of evidence was the color of his skin, which was tanned due to the vacation the Jewish father of three was returning from. Mr. Stein was physically attacked by another passenger “claiming” to be a NY police officer and put in a head lock an hour into the flight while he was minding his own business reading a book and sipping his ginger ale. He sounds terribly dangerous. He’s suing the airline for failing to protect him since the cabin crew was aware of the passenger’s obsession with him. He should sue the passenger too.
  

  As someone who travels a lot, owns gadgets, is dark-complected, and even uses the restroom, I keep waiting — with anticipation, I must admit — for some overeager vigilante/Charles Bronson-wannabe to try this crap on me.

• Please step to the white courtesy phone [for a brain] — Mac @ peskyapostrophe reports that a man missed his flight after being detained in an airport in Seattle because he was speaking a foreign language into his cell phone. Hmmmmm… That does sound suspicious. Apparently he was discussing sports, which is really suspicious. The language was Tamil, which is a language largely used in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and the person who called it in was an off-duty airline personnell. The passenger indicated that in the future, he wouldn’t be speaking Tamil into his cell phone in the airport. That’s just a shame.
• The TSA sucks - hey, better detain me — Mac @ peskyapostrophe also has a post about a Wisconsin man who wrote “Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on a plastic bag containing toiletries said he was detained at an airport security checkpoint for about 25 minutes before authorities concluded the statement was not a threat. You know, because Kip Hawley is the head of the Transportation Security Administration. “A TSA spokeswoman acknowledged a man was stopped, but likened the incident to cases in which people inappropriately joke about bombs.” *snort* Talk about going overboard.

On Torture

• Is The U.S. A Rogue State? — Matthew Yglesias (op-ed writer for The American Prospect) @ CBS News wrote a brilliant opinion piece about how in 2003 President George Bush gave a speech indicating that the U.S. was committed to “world-wide elimination of torture” and leading the fight by example. He said it was an inalienable human right to be free of torture. He also said, “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control….Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.” Based on that statement from Bush’s own claims, Yglesias wants to know if the United States is now a rogue state since we now legally torture. Have we now become what we set out to eliminate?
  

  Other countries, of course, practice torture in violation of international law. As has now been clear for a while, we have been in their company for some years. The latest twist, however, is that we now won’t show any shame about it. Rather than simply violating the laws to which we have agreed to adhere, we’re repudiating them, simply denying that the standard by which civilized nations operate apply to us.

  The problems here will be widespread. One of the strengths of democracies on the international scene is precisely that it’s much harder for liberal states to violate agreements. Dictatorships can say one thing and do another with ease. Democracies feature free presses, free speech, the rule of law, independent judiciaries, legislative oversight, and other measures to ensure that laws and treaties are followed. This is, to the conservative mind, a weakness. In their view, cheating is a good thing, and America’s historical difficulty in cheating constitutes a problem. They’re dead wrong. Cooperation is a good thing — the best ticket to prosperity, security, and international peace. Democracies can cooperate with other countries — and especially with other democracies — more credibly and effectively, and that’s one of the reasons the world’s democratic block is so much stronger and more prosperous than the rest of the world.

  But the rule of law is now off the table as far as Bush is concerned. What’s more, insofar as national-security policy is at issue, the United States increasingly doesn’t look like much of a democracy. As the congressional Republicans march in lockstep behind the White House’s torture agenda, they don’t even know what that agenda’s composed of. The Boston Globe reported Saturday that 90 percent of members of Congress don’t know “which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.” Which is just to say that, in practice, absolutely everything would be permitted, since the only people capable of overseeing the interrogation program haven’t done it, won’t do it, and have no intention of doing it in the future.

  Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe’s largest and most powerful rogue state — a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary. The idea that striking such a posture on the world stage will serve our long-term interests is daft. American power has, for decades, rested crucially on the sense that the United States can be trusted and relied upon, on the belief that we use our power primarily to defend the community of liberal states and the liberal rules by which they conduct themselves rather than to undermine them.

  An America prepared to casually toss out the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian diplomacy, along with basic human decency and the rule of law as side helpings, is not a country others are going to want to cooperate with.

  Hat tip: Sean Aqui.

• How long till they come and take your favorite blogger away? — Punkass Mac @ PunkAssBlog.com expresses concern that the inclusion of the term “leftist terrorist” in the NIE report may eventually lead to serious problems for leftist bloggers once the new torture/detainee legislation passes. Pain-in-the-ass lefty bloggers can be labeled as having “leftist terrorist agendas” and disappear into some CIA black prison or Gitmo.

On Iraq

• Batiste — Gregory @ The Belgravia Dispatch wrote an excellent piece, quoting former Major General John Batiste’s testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee which presented a rather scathing review of Rumsfeld’s competence as a wartime leader. Gregory’s analysis is dead on, suggesting that the Bush-Chenney Administration is all talk but no real muscle to back it up, meaning they haven’t or can’t put the resources in to match their own rhetoric.
  

  That is to say, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika are only pretending to have the sang-froid and will and staying power and Churchillian courage to prevail in Iraq. But they are being dishonest with us. They are empty suits, presiding over a failing strategy, none of them with the energy or intellectual courage to own up and demand either that the nation sacrifice and devote adequate resources to the effort, or failing that pursue a convincing alternative strategy. Of course, it’s not all their fault, as they are bowing to some realities, one suspects. If Bush gave a speech calling for re-institution of the draft, or implemention of a war tax, or even less dramatic moves but nevertheless ones that demanded more sacrifice (sending another 50,000 troops in, with casualty rates inevitably increasing, especially if we adopted less conservative force postures in keeping with best counter-insurgency practice) one presumes the nation would turn on the war all the faster (though if such moves changed the tenor of the war for the better perhaps support would not drop as much as one might suspect, although one would need real leaders at the helm explicating the need persuasively, which we don’t). Worth noting too, Rove would allow none of it, with midterms looming in November.

  Regardless, what we have now is not quite ’stay the course’, or the comically desperate sounding ‘adapting to win’, or some such soundbite. What we are doing, really, is half-assing along as best we can without truly summoning all the national reservoirs of power (military, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian) to really have a real go at prevailing, assuming one believes there is still a shot at eking out a victory, an issue where intelligent people (as the previous thread indicated) can disagree. At some point, we either step up, talk to the Iranians and Syrians so as to get more intelligent about pursuing a regional strategy, make clear and signal to Iraqis we’re there to truly prevail by sending in more forces, and otherwise get more serious (more robust force posture to truly “clear”, not via endless rounds of whack-a-mole, but with a convincing footprint and level of sustained effort through entire areas of concern simultaneously, more funds for reconstruction and infrastructure to effectively “build”, increasing American embeds operating with both Iraqi Army and even Police units so as to help develop more of an indigenuous “hold” function, and so on)–or we need to think much more about pursuing an intelligent withdrawal strategy–if perhaps we don’t think the additional effort is worth it (perhaps presiding over a confederation, but holding out the prospects of a unitary state in the future, a la Dayton, is worthy of more thought). Either way, the rough status quo, with a couple soldiers dying a day, dishonors their sacrifice, because it is a sacrifice made in vain. And our leaders are not honest enough to come clean with us about this, or if they think they are being honest with us, it is only because they are living in a deluded fantasy land where fundamentalist-style verities reign, rather than the grim realities presented by the empirical evidence around them.

  Hat tip: John Cole.

Have an opinion on these topics to share or found a post you want to add? Add your opinion or the post link to the comments section. My inquiring mind wants to know!

Tags: John Batiste, Senate Democratic Policy Committee, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Iraq, War, stay the course, adapting to win, propaganda, American soldiers, Middle East, Seth Stein, American Airlines, mass hysteria, terrorism, rogue state, The American Prospect, CBS News, torture, War Crimes Act, Geneva Convention, Congress, Seattle, Tamil, TSA, Kip Hawley, leftist terrorist agenda, NIE report, Guantanamo Bay

Work Your Brain — 09/02/06

First Some Fun

• Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
  

  11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.

In Memory Of Katrina

• But you can keep them for the birds and bees — Mac @ PeskyApostrophe wonders about all of that Katrina aid money the U.S. asked for and got from other countries last year. She comes to the same conclusion I did.
  

  I’m appalled at a variety of things when it comes to the Katrina rebuilding effort and FEMA’s role in it all, but this is a whole new level of incompetence. As part of my new job, I am now involved in grant-writing. In a good portion of grants, the grantee expects a report as to how the money was used. While I’m sure these gifts did not come with any reporting requirements, if one of our grantees found out their money had been either wasted or didn’t got to the program for which it was intended that would pretty much guarantee they’d never give money to us again. And you have to wonder if, should another emergency situation arise, these countries would think twice about giving aid money to the U.S. if we’re not going to use it and use it wisely.

• First the Flood, Now the Fight — Spencer S. Hsu @ WashingtonPost.com wrote a special report on the butting of heads between FEMA and state and city officials in the rebuilding of the Gulf States and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA swears it’s not trying to be difficult but the process seems to be designed to wear down those requesting help until they just give up and either take what little they’ve been given, which isn’t much if anything.
  

  Through hundreds of such disputes large and small, the most costly disaster in U.S. history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

  Current and former officials at all levels blame FEMA workers’ inexperience with eligibility rules, weaknesses in U.S. disaster laws and inconsistent treatment by Congress for much of the wrangling. The huge scale of the storm and honest disagreement over whether federal or local taxpayers should pay the tab add to the conflict.

  “Disasters should be difficult to declare. . . . But once you get them, FEMA should not worry about cutting costs,” said Daniel A. Craig, who stepped down in October as head of FEMA’s recovery division and is now consulting for New Orleans. “Public entities are eligible for everything they have lost due to the disaster. It is not up to FEMA to cut corners or makes sure money is saved.”

  Gil H. Jamieson, FEMA’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery, agreed that “we’re in this to rebuild the city” and added: “We are not in it to delay for the sake of delay. Are there folks who sometimes hose it up? Absolutely. But I think we’re doing a good job of helping it recover.”

  The disputes come as the costliest part of the recovery begins: restoring water, power, roads, bridges, schools and other public facilities along the Gulf Coast. Agency veterans said the spending will have more impact on the physical rebuilding of the Gulf area than anything else FEMA does over the next decade, possibly eclipsing its role in aiding individual victims of the storm.

  The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, for instance, sustained $446 million in storm losses, said Executive Director Marcia St. Martin. But FEMA has committed just $113 million so far.

  FEMA notes that New Orleans promised U.S. environmental regulators $640 million in repairs before Katrina, and that the antiquated system is too big for the Crescent City’s reduced population.

  “That’s what makes a city — if you don’t have water, sewer and drainage, you don’t have a city,” lamented Robert Jackson, spokesman for the sewer board. “The money so far only scratches the surface of the devastation.

  Hat Tip: Susie @ Suburban Guerrilla

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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld

Illinois & California Introduce Impeachment Bills

In Illinois:

SPRINGFIELD — Leave it to the Democratic-controlled state Legislature to find an obscure way to attempt to oust President Bush.

State Rep. Karen Yarbrough (D-Maywood) has sponsored a resolution calling on the General Assembly to submit charges to the U.S. House so its lawmakers could begin impeachment proceedings.

It would be the first state legislature to pass such a resolution, though the measure faces a dim future in a Republican-controlled Congress.

[…]

To support her legislation, Yarbrough is relying on a provision from Jefferson’s Manual, a procedural handbook written by Thomas Jefferson as a supplement to U.S. House rules.

[…]

Jefferson wrote that there are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion, including “charges transmitted from the legislature of a State.”

If Yarbrough’s resolution passes the General Assembly, it would go to the U.S. House, where it likely would be referred to the Judiciary Committee, said a spokesman for the Committee on U.S. House Administration.

“It’s up to that committee to decide what action it will take, if any,” committee spokesman Jon Brandt said. “[The resolution] does not, in and of itself, start a process.”

Nevertheless, a handful of cities and state Democratic committees have adopted impeachment resolutions similar to Yarbrough’s. Vermont Democrats agreed earlier this month to urge lawmakers to approve it at the state level.

These groups hope the measures generate dialogue that will eventually lead to impeachment. [“Resolution to push Bush impeachment bill” (Chicago Sun-Times)]

And from California:

California Assemblyman Paul Koretz of Los Angeles (where the LA Times has now called for Cheney’s resignation) has submitted amendments to Assembly Joint Resolution No. 39, calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney. The amendments reference Section 603 of Jefferson’s Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature.

The resolution, in the words of Koretz’s press release, “bases the call for impeachment upon the Bush Administration intentionally misleading the Congress and the American people regarding the threat from Iraq in order to justify an unnecessary war that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives and casualties; exceeding constitutional authority to wage war by invading Iraq; exceeding constitutional authority by Federalizing the National Guard; conspiring to torture prisoners in violation of the ‘Federal Torture Act’ and indicating intent to continue such actions; spying on American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Agency Surveillance Act; leaking and covering up the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, and holding American citizens without charge or trial.”

Koretz submitted amendments gutting AJR No. 39, a resolution unrelated to impeachment, to the Assembly Rules Committee. The Rules Committee may take up the bill this week for referral, allowing him to formally introduce the amended resolution.

AJR 39 is a bill introduced in January by Koretz calling for a moratorium on depleted uranium:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/bill/asm/ab_0001-0050/ajr_39_bill_20060104_introduced.html

“At both the state and national levels,” Koretz said, “we will be paying for the Bush Administration’s illegal actions and terrible lack of judgment and competence for decades—not only in the billions of dollars wasted on the war and welfare for the rich, but in the worldwide loss of respect for America and Americans. Bush and Cheney must be impeached and removed from office before they undertake even deadlier misdeeds, such as the use of nuclear weapons. There are no bounds to their willingness to ignore the Constitution and world opinion—we can’t afford to wait for the next disaster and hope that we can survive it.”

For more information and to thank this American hero, contact Paul Michael Neuman in Koretz’s District Office: (310) 285-5490 paul.neuman@asm.ca.gov or go here:
http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a42/Contact.htm [“California Becomes Second State to Introduce Bush Impeachment” (ImpeachPac)]

Tags: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Illinois, California, Impeachment, ImpeachPac, AJR 39, HJR0125

Another 9-11 Conspiracy Theory Points The Fickle Finger At Cheney

He is a former Lieutenant Colonel for the United States Air Force who flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. He has received the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security. Dr. Robert Bowman was the former head of the Star Wars program under Presidents Ford and Carter and even was the first to coin the term in 1977.

Oh, and recently, he’s gone public with his opinion that the government’s presented version of what happened on September 11, 2001 isn’t the truth and that he suspects that the architect behind the scenes is Vice President Dick Cheney.

In an interview with The Alex Jones Show aired nationally on the GCN Radio Network, Bowman (pictured below) stated that at the bare minimum if Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were involved in 9/11 then the government stood down and allowed the attacks to happen. He said it is plausible that the entire chain of military command were unaware of what was taking place and were used as tools by the people pulling the strings behind the attack.

Bowman outlined how the drills on the morning of 9/11 that simulated planes crashing into buildings on the east coast were used as a cover to dupe unwitting air defense personnel into not responding quickly enough to stop the attack.

“The exercises that went on that morning simulating the exact kind of thing that was happening so confused the people in the FAA and NORAD….that they didn’t they didn’t know what was real and what was part of the exercise,” said Bowman

“I think the people who planned and carried out those exercises, they’re the ones that should be the object of investigation.”

[…]

Bowman agreed that the US was in danger of slipping into a dictatorship and stated, “I think there’s been nothing closer to fascism than what we’ve seen lately from this government.”

Bowman slammed the Patriot Act as having, “Done more to destroy the rights of Americans than all of our enemies combined.”

Bowman trashed the 9/11 Commission as a politically motivated cover-up with abounding conflicts of interest, charging, “The 9/11 Commission omitted anything that might be the least bit suspicious or embarrassing or in any way detract from the official conspiracy so it was a total whitewash.”

“There needs to be a true investigation, not the kind of sham investigations we have had with the 9/11 omission and all the rest of that junk,” said Bowman.

Asked if the perpetrators of 9/11 were preparing to stage another false-flag attack to reinvigorate their agenda Bowman agreed that, “I can see that and I hope they can’t pull it off, I hope they are prevented from pulling it off but I know darn good and well they’d like to have another one.”

[…]

In addition, from the very start we have put forth eminently credible individuals only for them to be ignored by the establishment media. Physics Professors, former White House advisors and CIA analysts, the father of Reaganomics, German Defense Ministers and Bush’s former Secretary of the Treasury, have all gone public on 9/11 but have been uniformly ignored by the majority of the establishment press. [“Former Head of Star Wars Program Says Cheney Main 9/11 Suspect” (Infowars.com)]

By the way, Bowman is currently running for Congress in Florida’s 15th District.

Just thought I’d add this theory to my collection.

Hat tip to Preemptive Karma.

Tags: Conspiracy Theories, 9/11, Dick Cheney, Dr. Robert Bowman, Osama bin Laden

Impeachment Resolutions Are A Go

The rumblings of a disgruntled America are starting…

February 28, 2006
San Francisco,CA

The City and County of San Francisco became the first large municipality to call for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, by a 7-3 vote.

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Tags: politics, George W. Bush, San Francisco, Impeach, Dick Cheney, Vermont, Iraq, spying on Americans

Chenney’s History of Denial

This morning, listening to an NPR story about Chenney’s denial that he even knew who Joseph Wilson was before the newspaper article revealing Wilson’s wife’s identity was published and I suddenly flashed back to the Vice Presidential debate last fall:

I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.
– Vice President Dick Chenney to then-Senator Edwards, September 30, 2004 [“2004 Vice Presidential Debate”]

Of course, they’d met before…

Addressing the National Prayer Breakast, Cheney said: “Thank you. Thank you very much. Congressman Watts, Senator Edwards, friends from across America and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world, Lynne and I honored to be with you all this morning.” [FDCH Political Transcripts, Cheney Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, 2/1/01] [“Cheney LIES LIES LIES (Daily Kos)”]

Really that was a childish tactic on Chenney’s part. But apparently, it’s one he’s used to using.

I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson.
– Vice President Dick Chenney, September 14, 2003 [“Meet the Press”]

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. [“Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Notes Show”]

It’s not a warm-fuzzy feeling to know that your Vice President has a history of lying and denying. If he lies about “small stuff” like this, how can we trust anything that comes out of his mouth?

Tags: Dick Cheney, Joe Wilson, lie

True or False — Grand Jury Indicts Bush & Others?

I’ve seen this in a couple places on the internet the last couple of days. As I haven’t seen it yet printed in any “official” sites, I don’t know how true it is (and these days it’s really hard to tell who’s telling the truth and who’s not…which I think was the GOP’s plan all along.)

Federal Whistle Blower Claims Chicago Grand Jury Indicted Bush And Others For Perjury and Obstruction Of Justice; U.S. Attorney’s Office Says ‘No Comment,’ Refusing To Confirm Or Deny Alleged Indictments

That headline comes from the Artic Beacon, which hails itself as “the last frontier of truth”. As I just stumbled on them, I can’t say one way or another if that’s true.

Although the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago is staying silent, it is well known that Fitzgerald is digging deep into an assortment of serious improprieties among many Bush administration figures based, in part, on subpoenaed testimony provided by former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

According to federal whistleblower Tom Heneghen, who recently reported on www.truthradio.com, Powell testified before the citizen grand jury that President Bush had taken the U.S. to war illegally based on lies, which is a capital crime involving treason under the U.S. Code.

“Regarding the Powell testimony, there is no comment,” said Sanborn.

However, sources close to the federal grade jury probe also allegedly told Heneghen a host of administration figures besides Bush were also indicted, including Vice-President Richard Cheney, Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, imprisoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller and former Senior Cheney advisor Mary Matalin.

Heneghen, unavailable for comment and first reported by internet reporter Tom Flocco, allegedly also told sources White House Advisor Karl Rove was indicted for perjury in a major document shredding operation cover-up and that Prime Minister Tony Blair was also indicted for obstruction of justice charges.

The article goes on to discuss a whole Watergate-type conspiracy involving bomb scares and attempts to get Fitzgerald, who is “Special Counsel to investigate the CIA- Valerie Plame case,” fired.

As much as I want this to be true, I hate to admit that I need more “reliable’ confirmation. I mean, Kenneth Star’s investigation was daily big news and so far, I haven’t heard a peep, even on NPR, my most trusted source…though lately, I’ve been wondering about them too.

Tags: Patrick Fitzgerald, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Andrew Card, Scooter Libby, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Judy Miller, Karl Rove, PlameGate, Conspiracy Theories