Ex-CIA agent says WMD intelligence ignored�|�Reuters.com CBS said the CIA’s intelligence source was former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and that former CIA Director George Tenet delivered the information personally to US President George W Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top White House officials in September 2002. They rebuffed the CIA three days later. “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy,” the former CIA agent told CBS. US allegations that Saddam had WMD and posed a threat to international security was a main justification…

AP Wire | 04/20/2006 | Legendary pilot Scott Crossfield killed in small plane crash RANGER, Ga. – Legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first person to fly at twice the speed of sound, was found dead Thursday in the wreckage of a single-engine plane in the mountains of northern Georgia, his son-in-law said. Searchers with the Civil Air Patrol and others discovered the wreckage of the plane Thursday afternoon but didn’t immediately identify the body inside. In the 1950s, Crossfield flew numerous experimental planes at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and was a key figure in the development of the…

Nevada Thunder ? Blog Archive ? Enemy of the Planet Has Exxon Mobil’s war on climate science actually changed policy for the worse? Maybe not. Although most governments have done little to curb greenhouse gases, and the Bush administration has done nothing, it’s not clear that policies would have been any better even if Exxon Mobil had acted more responsibly. But the fact is that whatever small chance there was of action to limit global warming became even smaller because Exxon Mobil chose to protect its profits by trashing good science. And that, not the paycheck, is the real scandal…

Cost of Illegal Immigration May Be Less Than Meets the Eye – New York Times But before concluding that immigrants are undercutting the wages of the least fortunate Americans, perhaps one should consider Ohio. Unlike California, Ohio remains mostly free of illegal immigrants. And what happened to the wages of Ohio’s high school dropouts from 1980 to 2004? They fell 31 percent. This would have been interesting to know yesterday when we were sitting around the family dinner table debating the immigration issue at my husband David’s parents’ house. If you’re an American high-school dropout, you’ve got a whole lot…

Immigrants Rally in Scores of Cities for Legal Status – New York Times Talk of the marches has been burning up the airwaves on talk radio and cable news networks and has appeared in Internet blogs and conservative publications. Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, described the protests with marchers carrying foreign flags as “ominous” in “their hint of a large, unassimilated population existing outside America’s laws and exhibiting absolutely no sheepishness about it.” Brit Hume, the news anchor on Fox News, described the marchers, particularly those carrying Mexican flags, as “a repellent spectacle.” Really, Mr. Hume? Your perception…

Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin passed this one along – I’ve been waiting for Sy Hersh to drop another shoe ever since his post Abu Ghraib speaking engagements, when he warned of even bigger Big Bad Stuff to come. And advised an interviewer that if he had a second passport, to keep it handy. You know… if Hersh is accurate about this story, the United States of America is contemplating using nuclear weapons against Iran, as one of many possible options (or threatened options) to pre-emptively end their own nuclear weapons program. If this country drops the Bomb, it will no…

Utah

This was another story I spotted the other day, but didn’t have time to finish (okay, shouldn’t really have started it at work, and then didn’t get around to publishing it til now. Chicago Tribune | U.S. Will Pass on Rights Council, for Now UNITED NATIONS — The United States has decided not to seek a seat on the new U.N. Human Rights Council for now, preferring instead to see how it takes shape, a U.S. official said Thursday. “We’re going to take a wait and see attitude,” the U.S. official said, speaking in from Washington on condition of anonymity…

This week’s big news was the revelation that “Scooter” Libby testified to the grand jury that he had been given clearance by President Bush via Vice President Cheney to leak classified information about Valerie Plame’s work with the CIA to Judith Miller of the New York Times. I wanted to compare and contrast several different news sources that covered this story. Just how fair and balanced is our national media? I looked around for several different sources and found some different takes on it. Here’s how Editor and Publisher, a site by and for journalists, ran the story: New Court…

Chicago Tribune | U.S. Rolls Out Nuclear Plan The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation’s decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity. The plan calls for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation’s massive system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War. Until now, the nation has depended on carefully maintaining aging bombs produced during the Cold War arms race, some several decades old. The administration, however, wants the capability to turn out 125 new nuclear bombs per year by 2022, as…