One Utah

In Mistakes were made (but not by me) , Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson discuss the psychological process of self justification as it relates to initiation.
In particular, they cite a study in which students, to join a conversation, had to go through an initiation process; for one group it was relatively easy, for [...]

Via Think Progress: Today marks seven years since the day President Bush received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” (PDF) What did Bush do? He stayed on vacation the rest of August.
The Bush administration finally scheduled a long-delayed meeting to discuss al Qaeda with Richard [...]

I reprint this article in its entirety. Rich alerted me to conspiratorial possibilities and suddenly, the guy commits suicide. Read it here or there, and lets see what ABC does.
(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)
The FBI’s lead suspect in the September, 2001 [...]

At “Camp Justice” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the U.S. military is currently conducting the first American war crimes trial since World War II — of Salim Hamdan, a citizen of Yemen and a former driver for Osama bin Laden.
To call this proceeding a kangaroo court would run the risk of insulting marsupials everywhere.
From Glenn [...]

From Think Progress:
This morning, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) held a press conference to express their “pleasure” about President Bush’s statement this morning regarding what he described as “encouraging news from Iraq” and “the success of the surge.”

Warning! - malarkey levels unsafe for logical comprehension:
LIEBERMAN: That’s why Senator Graham and I [...]

I don’t know how many times we have to tell you people. The idea of fighting terrorism with law enforcement agencies belongs to an outmoded, naive September 10 mentality. People who think that Al Qaeda’s attacks on the USA could have been stopped by the FBI (if the top brass listened to their [...]

Only 15 senators voted to block the FISA bill: Biden (D-DE) - Boxer (D-CA) - Brown (D-OH) - Cantwell (D-WA) - Dodd (D-CT) - Durbin (D-IL) - Feingold (D-WI) - Harkin (D-IA) - Kerry (D-MA) - Lautenberg (D-NJ) - Leahy (D-VT) - Menendez (D-NJ) - Sanders (I-VT) - Schumer (D-NY) - Wyden (D-OR). Senators Clinton, [...]

Via Radar:
According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ [...]

Sorry, this has nothing to do with President Bush’s upcoming visit to Utah, later this month. Instead, it’s a remarkable glimpse of a mind that is fixated on what I would call the opposite of reality. Back in April 2003, Josh Marshall warned that the neocon strategy for the entire Middle East could [...]

The Bush administration’s plan for rigged 9/11 terrorist show trials to coincide with the 2008 presidential election has run into legal difficulties.
Charges have been dropped against the “20th hijacker,” Mohamed al-Qahtani. He allegedly came to the United States to take part in the September 11, 2001 attacks, but he was denied entry to the [...]

Today our friend and fellow blogger Frank Staheli, with a little help from HBO, reminded me of something important– what used to be the foundation stone of American foreign policy, in fact. Frank coined a term, “the Radical Islamic Monster,” in an attempt to somehow explain who our nation is supposed to be fighting [...]

The Government Accountability Office released a report (PDF) today concluding that the United States has no plan to combat al Qaeda and other terrorist threats in Pakistan. The GAO found that “[t]errorists are still operating freely in Pakistan along the country’s Afghanistan border, despite the U.S. giving Pakistan more than $10.5 billion in military and [...]