Merrill's Stan O'Neal wasn't ready for subprime time, but he was a record-setting fundraiser for Bush

Merrill Lynch's ouster of CEO E. Stanley O'Neal is good timing for the financial behemoth, but it comes a few years too late for America and for thousands of Merrill employees.

He's being driven out for his reckless bundling of subprime mortgages into shaky securities that Merrill aggressively peddled and that are now shaking Wall Street's foundations. Yes, these big financial institutions play funny money with your monthly payments, making millions while you don't see a dime from their monopoly tactics.

Not that this is anything new. The explosion in subprime mortgages is caused in large part by predatory lending practices, which are particularly aimed at black people (O'Neal used to be one of those) and other minorities.

More on O'Neal in a minute, but as I wrote in April 2001 about this financiopathic scheme — "From the Subprime to the Ridiculous" — when the War of Terror was still being waged almost entirely on the domestic front by banks and companies like Merrill:

In those days, Stan O'Neal, while firing thousands of Merrill employees, was recklessly expanding Merrill's subprime bidness.

In 2003, as I previously noted, O'Neal, the highest-ranking black man on Wall Street, was a reckless bundler in another way: He set a fundraising record for George W. Bush's campaign by sending out a letter that generated $279,750 from other rich people in less than three weeks' time, the most in such a such a short period.

O'Neal, one of the nine Bush "Rangers" on Wall Street, was a prime bundler before the term hit its current vogue.

As this moneychanger is being driven from the temple, he'll be dragging along a big bag of cash. Details of that aren't immediately known, but, like most CEOs, he had one helluva deal. For instance, as the New York Times's Eric Dash noted this past April, O'Neal had a particularly sweet clause in his Merrill deal just in case the big company wobbled so much that it fell under the control of another big company:

Hell, that was incentive for him to be reckless enough take Merrill into the toilet. If he had stayed around long enough to really ruin the company to the extent that some other behemoth would take control, he would have gotten a quarter of a billion.

Now O'Neal joins the ranks of former Merrill employees. He probably won't be asked to join them for commiseration drinks. He fired more than 25,000 of them during his tenure.

This oily business of dealing with evil foreign leaders.

New York's tabloids and assorted pols came unglued yesterday about the very idea of Iran's crackpot hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wanting to visit Ground Zero.

Where were they when Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, whose regime boils people to death, was courted by George W. Bush and Mayor Mike Bloomberg?

Don't let your own blood boil at the thought of a bad guy visiting our sacralized 9/11 site. Condemn it, if you want, but Ahmedinejad was just trying to score political points, as our own pols do all the time at Ground Zero. He got what he wanted: The angry U.S. reaction will play well back home in Tehran, especially with the radical mullahs who really run Iran and like to stir up hatred for the "Great Satan."

Do we even have to say that in international politics, enemies today are pals tomorrow, and vice versa, and that the reasons almost always have to do with greed for money and natural resources?

On the other hand, it would be nice if our press at least reported these events. The Uzbek despot Karimov laid a wreath at Ground Zero in 2002, and there was literally not one word in the U.S. press about it at the time — I'm not talking about criticism or praise but any words at all. Nothing.

So Karimov is not a bad enough guy to get you worked up? Saddam Hussein was brown-nosed by Don Rumsfeld in December 1983. There's no reason to condemn Rumsfeld for that; it was just oil politics — just like the oil politics that Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney played when they seized upon the 9/11 attacks to justify invading Iraq.

After all, when Texas oil execs questioned Cheney in 1998, when he was still at Halliburton, about the physical dangers of pursuing oil in turbulent parts of Asia, the future vice president and de facto commander in chief told them:

Saddam is gone, but we still don't really have Iraq's oil. We do, however, have such evil people as the Taliban to deal with, right? Well, the Taliban were hailed as Afghan freedom fighters by Ronald Reagan during their triumphant visit to the White House on March 21, 1983. Reagan said at the time:

That's ancient history, huh? In fact, they were still our pals 14 years later. In late 1997, the Taliban were wined and dined at the homes of Bush's pals, the Houston oil execs, during Dubya's reign as the hangingest governor in U.S. history.

The oil schnooks were buttering up the Taliban for pipelines and other bidness, of course. See Wayne Madsen's "Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team" for details.

At least that courting of the Taliban less than 10 years ago was reported at the time. Of the many words in the mainstream press, my favorites are from a December 14, 1997, story by Caroline Lees in the Telegraph (U.K.), in which she describes the Taliban officials' visit to Unocal vice president Martin Miller's palatial Houston home:

The world has started foreclosure proceedings on the U.S. It's finally happening, much to the detriment of your children and their children.

Bad news out of Saudi Arabia: The archaic but wealthy kingdom is so scared of our imminent recession that it's abandoning our shaky dollar. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph (U.K.) explains this morning:

This stuff is really complicated, and I'm oversimplifying, and many rich schnooks are the ones making the decisions. (Read this good overview of Wall Street's subprime greed by David Ignatius in Beirut's Daily Star.)

The fact is that, no matter how much money the hedge funds and private-equity people are raking in, a recession looms in the U.S. The rest of the planet is a coalition of the unwilling to be dragged down with us.

This attack by the Saudis on our economy may prove to be more damaging to the U.S. in the long run than the mostly Saudi hijackers' attack on the World Trade Center, which, though horrible and deadly, was an attack on only the symbol of our economy. There was no justification for the 9/11 attack. But this economic attack is justified, because of the greedy schmucks and costly war that have helped send our economy spinning out of control.

Here's the rub: Our rich are getting richer, but foreign investors and governments own most of our debt. As the dollar collapses, they are pulling their money out — can't a brother get a dime?! World investors are looking elsewhere; many have a yen for Japan's strong economy.

We're Number Something-Other-Than-1!

Just one example of how relatively poor we are and how this crisis has been building for a long time: In April, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal demanded that Citigroup make "Draconian" cuts in its budget, and 17,000 people lost their jobs. Who cares what some Saudi prince says? Well, he's the huge bank's biggest individual shareholder.

Here's more from the Telegraph on the recent move by Saudi royals:

Our money woes are killing us:

Are the Democrats really sure they want to take over the White House? They will inherit an economy heading south and an unwinnable, tragic war.

We can't afford to keep fighting in Iraq, but we can't afford not to as long as we can't get some sort of international alliance to help calm things down over there.

Mercenaries like Blackwater may have to do all the fighting for us, but we won't be able to pay for them. As for our own soldiers: When we finally bring them home, there may be a full-blown recession and no jobs for them.

This is all tied to our mortgage-market crisis, which is caused by our money men playing dangerous games with the dough you homeowners send to the bank every month.

Here's even more from the Telegraph that warns of an even deeper crisis with the mortgage mess:

That's easy for him to say. He's got a new book to peddle.

Idaho senator Larry Craig hasn't come out of the closet yet but this just in: He's now gone from three key committees — Veterans Affairs, the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, and Energy's Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.

All this because he temporarily served on a two-man public bathroom committee.

Craig's hometown TV station KTVB.com just reported Craig's ouster from the committees. Ouch. He won't be cruising around Boise anytime soon. And he didn't volunteer to leave those posts. In fact, Craig didn't even make the announcement, as the Boise TV channel reports:

An ethics inquiry? That's what I can't understand. If the police report from Minneapolis is true, Craig followed perfectly the ethics of cruising, according to yesterday's ABC News story "Secret Signals: How Gay Men Cruise for Sex". Take a look at the police report, and then read the "Secret Signals" story and tell me that Craig, with all that toe-tapping and hand-signalling, wasn't following the ethics of cruising.

We don't know what tune the formerly gay-bashing Craig will be singing as this saga unfolds, but he and the aforementioned Lott sure made some sweet music together at one point, especially when John Ashcroft was hanging around D.C. Those three and Jim Jeffords were once known as the barbershop quartet The Singing Senators (that's Craig, sandwiched between Lott and Ashcroft, forming a perfect "O" with his mouth).

Ashcroft's penchant for singing started to piss people off when he moved from the convivial old boys' club of the Senate to the halls of the Justice Department in his job as AG. As Glenn Weiser noted in Metroland in August 2002:

Ashcroft's now gone from D.C., and Craig's days as a "singing senator" are clearly over. The self-proclaimed God-fearing Craig had better devote himself to silent prayer, or whatever else he does on his knees.

George W. Bush nicknamed Karl Rove "The Architect," but the POTUS isn't much of a reader, so we need a better definition of the guy who always relished his role as Rasputin.

My dictionary says "rove" is the past tense of "rive":

(Yes, I know that "My dictionary says …" is a hackneyed device, but my dictionary is the OED on CD-ROM, and Rove himself is a hackneyed device, so do me a favor and keep reading.)

The fact is that Rove is definitely not past tense on Capitol Hill, as I noted early yesterday. Later in the day, New York senator Chuck Schumer spoke the obligatory words:

That ship has sailed. As a verb by its intransitive lonesome, "rove" takes on another meaning:

Unfortunately, this political plunderer's shredder is probably overheating right now. We already know that thousands of juicy e-mails describing his plots are out there. But shredding is Rove's name, if you believe the OED, and I do:

For the sake of history, though, Rove is "rove" in a broader sense:

What's the use. Rove's already in transit out of D.C. If issues make you reach for tissues, this definition (of "rive" and thus "rove") is for you:

Whether or not he's ever called back from Texas to testify — and it would probably take a stint at Gitmo to get him to do it — Rove could very well end up as a memorable, if improper, noun. This 15th century usage fits, but it's obsolete:

No, forget "architect," scabs, and all other nouns. To me, Rove will always be a verb, especially in this sense:

Kind of a Robin Hood, except that Rove, as I pointed out yesterday, robs the poor to give to the rich.

What a con he pulled on us marks. Yes, that is true "roving." The OED elaborates:

If Mike Bloomberg winds up running for president (only if Rudy Giuliani doesn't win the GOP nomination), all the money in the world won't save the billionaire New York mayor from the glare of bad publicity.

Unless he stops people from shooting pictures, video, or film. That's exactly what Bloomberg (a one-person Green Party) is trying to do. One of his latest stunts would stunt others' ability to shoot film or video or even pictures on New York's streets.

Of course, in his own case, he likes to choose what pictures to show. For example, Bloomberg's official website showed no photographic evidence back in 2002 that Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, whose underlings have been known to boil people to death, had not only visited New York; the torturer had chatted with Bloomberg in the mayor's office while the two posed for photos (see above). You could find the pictures only on Karimov's Uzbekistan website.

Now, in a city full of film-and-video students armed with digital equipment, Bloomberg's film office has a plan to stop crews as small as two people from taking pictures of anything on city streets. Here's the New York Times's Colin Moynihan the other day in a story about protesters protesting Bloomberg's clampdown:

Yeah, free. Not free to shoot, but free of charge, except for purchasing the insurance. And no hassle, except for having to register with the government before you take pictures on the street.

Bloomberg did a fine job protecting the GOP from the public during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Central Park, the natural spot for half a million protesters, was off-limits, and demonstrators were herded like cattle in a feedlot.

A group called Picture New York is fighting the new restrictions. Sorry, don't have any pictures of them.

Attention, planet Earth: Your future is being decided today at the annual Bilderberg Group conference. This year's five-star resort site is the Klassis Hotel in Silivri, Turkey, 40 miles from Istanbul.

Conspiracy theorists have long thought that the Bilderbergers were a shadowy cabal of pols and industrialists trying to rule the planet and even establish a New World Order.

And some of the attendees would smugly agree with that assessment. That's what Brit author Jon Ronson says in a fascinating CNN Europe report from a couple of years ago that you can view here.

Among this year's attendees at the extremely private (nay, secretive) meetings, according to the Turkish paper Today's Zaman, will be ousted World Bank prexy Paul Wolfowitz, along with the usual cast of characters led by Henry Kissinger.

Let's hope the self-anointed world leaders who are gathering there will shoot some good golf scores. Otherwise, they might take out their frustrations on the rest of us.

Back in the '90s, when the militia movement was gathering steam in the U.S., those right-wing extremists often focused on the Bilderbergers as proof of a coming New World Order.

They were kinda correct. Fortunately, however, with attendees like Wolfowitz (and such weak goniffs as New York governor George Pataki, who went last year), I wouldn't put too much stock in their plans. Wolfie, as it was noted earlier by the Washington Post during his final daze at the World Bank, was such a poor administrator at the Pentagon and bank that he couldn't organize a two-car funeral.

About the same time that Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov's regime was boiling to death and torturing its prisoners, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was rolling out the red carpet for the guy right here in New York City.

Funny, isn't it? If you're a\ New Yorker who wants to protest the Republican National Convention, you're unfairly labeled an "extremist," and the mayor orders you herded like cattle and prevents you from gathering en masse in public parks. But if you're a foreign dictator whose troops—U.S. trained, by the way—slaughter protesters who are unfairly labeled as "extremists," the mayor not only gives you free run in the city but poses for pictures with you.

Karimov is getting a new roasting from a just-released investigation into last month's Andijan massacre of protesters. But he's been a bad boy for quite a long time.

This heavily photographed visit by Karimov took place in March 2002. George W. Bush, Don Rumsfeld, and others kissed his butt at the White House—the U.S. built a base in Uzbekistan for the "war on terror" and ships prisoners there for interrogation in what's called "rendition"—and then Karimov headed to New York City, where he's strongly supported by the Jewish emigres from Bukhara.

You won't find words or pictures about Karimov's visit (at least I couldn't) on the city's official web site, nyc.gov. Leave it to Karimov himself, however, to gloat about it on his own official pages. He bragged about talking with U.S. newspaper editors, World Bank chief Jim Wolfensohn, and Condi Rice, and he noted that he himself laid a wreath at ground zero.

U.S. officials' and corporations' disgraceful ties to this despot are longstanding. Unlike former U.K. ambassador to Tashkent Craig Murray, who spoke out against the Karimov regime's torture and suppression, our diplomats have done little but kiss Karimov's butt. They have a lot of explaining to do in light of new confirmation that last month's bloodbath in Andijan, in the restive Fergana Valley of Central Asia, was indeed a massacre of protesters—men, women, and children—by Karimov's government.

An investigation by Human Rights Watch, released this week, has found that, contrary to what Karimov has said, the May 13 protest, which began when prisoners' relatives and friends stormed a prison and freed hundreds, was not a rebellion by Islamic "extremists" but by businessmen and entrepreneurs and that government troops slaughtered at least hundreds of Uzbek protesters among a crowd of thousands. From HRW's full report, "Bullets Were Falling Like Rain":

Islam was barely mentioned in the speeches in Bobur Square, other than in the form of complaints against the imprisonment of people on charges of "Islamic extremism." Interviews with numerous people present at the demonstrations consistently revealed that the protesters spoke about economic conditions in Andijan, government repression, and unfair trials—and not the creation of an Islamic state. People were shouting "Ozodliq!" ("Freedom!"), not "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is Great!").

The Andijan massacre has been likened to Tiananmen Square in '89. Naturally, we're not on the side of the protesters in Uzbekistan. Karimov's regime has had close ties to Enron, Halliburton, ABB (Rumsfeld's old company), and a host of other corporations, including Newmont Mining, a huge gold producer. The resources-rich country, packed with 25 million Muslims, is still ruled Soviet-style by former Commie leader Karimov. That won't last long.

And once again we're on the wrong side. It's not only lefties who say that. Just today, the Council on Foreign Relations released a bi-partisan report, In Support of Arab Democracy: Why and How. Yes, it focuses on Arabs, not Uzbeks, but Islam is of course a prime topic, and the report bluntly says of the Middle East's view of the U.S.:

Many in the region simply cannot understand why a country whose democratic institutions they so much admire provides political, economic and military aid to absolute monarchs and military dictators.

This holds true in Central Asia, as well, which not only is overwhelmingly Muslim but also is, practically without exception, ruled by tinpot despots like Karimov and Dick Cheney's pal in Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Also on the side of despots, apparently, are the leaders of New York's 40,000 Bukharan Jews, many of whom live in central Queens. As Walter Ruby wrote late last month in the Daily News:

This community, which left Uzbekistan for New York en masse during the early 1990s, has maintained strong commercial and personal ties with the old country.

For the most part, its members appear to be standing by Karimov for now, despite widespread media reports that his army responded to a uprising and prison break in the Uzbek city of Andijan by firing on protesters and killing 500 or more people, including innocent civilians.

In a sense, their support of Karimov is understandable. He's a secular leader and hasn't cracked down on Jews because they pose no threat to his control, as the huge numbers of Muslims do. That's the analysis of Forum 18, an Oslo-based Christian human-rights group whose reports appear to be thorough and even-handed. Here's how Forum 18's Igor Rotar, surveying religious freedom in Uzbekistan back in July 2003, described the situation:

Uzbekistan's constitution upholds freedom of religion and the separation of religion and state, yet in practice the government exerts harsh control over the life of virtually all religious communities, with Muslims under the tightest control. At the same time the government also tries to restrict the spread of Protestant, Jehovah's Witness, Hare Krishna, and other religions regarded as non-traditional in the country. The Russian Orthodox and Jews experience the least pressure.

No doubt that's why New York's Bukharan Jews like Karimov—or at least fear him less. As Ruby wrote in a May 27 story for The Jewish Week:

The United States, several prominent Bukharan leaders said, should stand by Karimov in this crisis for fear that Islamists might take over the country and persecute the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 Jews remaining there. But these leaders contend that Karimov must change course and allow more democracy and economic liberalization.

However, the recent statements of support emanating from Queens are far removed from reality. As Ruby wrote:

Boris Pincus, founder and president of the American Association of Central Asian and Caucasian Countries, who days before the eruption of the deadly riot in Andijan met with a State Department official to urge continued strong U.S. support for Karimov, stands by that position. …

Asked if he thought it was unconscionable to support a leader whose troops apparently massacred hundreds of civilians, Pincus replied, “I have serious doubts about the accuracy of the Western media reports. When I spoke by phone last week to the leader of the small Jewish community in Andijan, he told me that most of those killed were shot by the Islamic extremists who started the uprising, not the army.’

The new report by Human Rights Watch, which was pieced together by heavy reporting, puts the lie to that.

In any case, we won't be serenading Karimov through New York City again any time soon. He'll be pretty busy for awhile, probably until his regime falls.

You'd have be Deep Throat to swallow what Dick Cheney is trying to force down us these days—I'm talking about his current lies concerning Iraq.

This morning's excellent piece on A1 of the Washington Post lays it out, although the story by Jim VandeHei and Peter Baker is a lot more dynamic than the hack headline: "Bush's Optimism on Iraq Debated." They start out with this:

President Bush's portrayal of a wilting insurgency in Iraq at a time of escalating violence and insecurity throughout the country is reviving the debate over the administration's Iraq strategy and the accuracy of its upbeat claims.

While Bush and Vice President Cheney offer optimistic assessments of the situation, a fresh wave of car bombings and other attacks killed 80 U.S. soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis last month alone and prompted Iraqi leaders to appeal to the administration for greater help. Privately, some administration officials have concluded the violence will not subside through this year.

Yeah, no shit. The current wave of suicide bombings is more intense than it's been in Chechnya or Israel, as Carol J. Williams of the Los Angeles Times recently pointed out.

Today's Post story noted that Cheney told CNN early last week that the insurgency is in its "last throes" and that the U.S. is making "major progress" in Iraq.

Well, I didn't believe him back in 2002, either, so I'm not surprised that he's still lying about the Iraq debacle. Too bad he got over on us by cooking the intelligence books.

And most of the press went along with it. The New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller, who covered the pre-invasion Bush like a kindergartner's cuddly little blanket, and her colleague James Dao fanned the dung-fueled war flames back on August 26, 2002, by writing:

Vice President Dick Cheney today presented the administration's most forceful and comprehensive rationale yet for attacking Iraq, warning that Saddam Hussein would "fairly soon" have nuclear weapons.

Mr. Cheney said a nuclear-armed Mr. Hussein would "seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

Bumiller and Dao went on to write:

The vice president's remarks, to a Nashville convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, came as White House advisers said they were increasingly concerned about the news accounts and the growing debate in Congress and among former high-ranking foreign policy officials over the administration's plans for Iraq.

Mr. Cheney's speech … appeared intended to quell the confusion and present the administration as united behind the central idea that [Saddam] Hussein must be ousted, sooner rather than later.

"What he wants is time, and more time to husband his resources to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons program, and to gain possession of nuclear weapons," Mr. Cheney said.

The risks of inaction, he said, "are far greater than the risk of action."

Colin Powell's speech of lies to the U.N. was months away—you remember, that was the one for which the Bush regime borrowed trucks from Hanna-Barbera to illustrate the danger we faced from Iraq.

But August 2002 was a crucial time. That was when Cheney and Bush were twisting the British government's arms, as the Downing Street Memo and other documents reveal, and both regimes, having already decided to invade Iraq, were working really hard at coming up with enough bullshit to get over on us.

It didn't work on everybody. On October 7, 2002, three Knight-Ridder reporters noted the strong dissent within the Bush administration about the justifications for war. In a Miami Herald story, Warren Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay, and John Walcott just about summed up the whole situation by writing:

While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals, and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.

These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses—including distorting his links to the Al Qaeda terrorist network—have overstated the extent of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.

They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Hussein poses such an immediate threat to the United States that preemptive military action is necessary.

"Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Still, that kind of reporting was drowned out by the mostly lame networks and cable talk shows. Too bad.

No matter what anyone says, the propaganda war from that crucial period is important today, if we're to try to sort through the Bush regime's current lying about Iraq.

The Post's VandeHei and Baker show how the Bush regime now finds itself—and 150,000 or so U.S. soldiers—trapped by those pre-war lies:

The disconnect between Rose Garden optimism and Baghdad pessimism, according to government officials and independent analysts, stems not only from Bush's focus on tentative signs of long-term progress but also from the shrinking range of policy options available to him if he is wrong. Having set out on a course of trying to stand up a new constitutional, elected government with the security firepower to defend itself, Bush finds himself locked into a strategy that, even if it proves successful, foreshadows many more deadly months to come first, analysts said.

Are we going to believe these post-invasion lies too? Reminds me of what we used to say in the Watergate era, that Nixon had to see Deep Throat twice before he finally got it down pat.

But Watergate was just a gag compared with the serious bloodletting in Iraq.

Now that Uzbekistan is finally boiling over, it's heartening to know that millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used by dictator Islam Karimov to kill his rebelling citizens.

You didn't know that? It's old news. In 2002, British ambassador to Tashkent Craig Murray publicized Karimov's appalling torture—and the fact that the U.S. and Great Britain used Uzbekistan to torture terrorism suspects—and the British Foreign Office fired him and tried to silence him. But the press picked up on Murray's courageous rendition of Karimov's sordid abuses. Back in May 2003, Nick Paton Walsh of the Guardian (U.K.) pointed out the hell that Uzbeks endure:

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.

The U.S. condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in Central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.

The U.S. is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500 million in aid. The police and intelligence services—which the State Department's website says use "torture as a routine investigation technique"—received $79 million of this sum.

Mr. Karimov was President Bush's guest in Washington in March [2002]. They signed a "declaration" which gave Uzbekistan security guarantees and promised to strengthen "the material and technical base of [their] law enforcement agencies."

You didn't know about Karimov's visit? EurasiaNet's Kenan Aliyev explained at the time:

Uzbek President Islam Karimov is maintaining a low profile during his visit to the United States, apparently out of a desire to keep controversy over Uzbekistan’s human-rights record to a minimum.

Karimov was scheduled to meet with U..S Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld early March 13, then travel to New York for several appointments, including a discussion with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

On March 12, Karimov had a 45-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush. After the meeting, Karimov left the White House without pausing to speak with gathered journalists. In general, Uzbek Embassy representatives have been reluctant to divulge information about the visit, and media access to members of the visiting Uzbek delegation has been extremely limited. U.S. officials have likewise provided only general information concerning the Karimov visit, declining to reveal specifics about discussions.

You can be sure that the next regime in charge of Uzbekistan will remember not only that Karimov's government has boiled prisoners to death but also how the Bush regime has propped him up. Bill Clinton's crew would occasionally condemn human-rights abuses in Uzbekistan, but our military help to Karimov began during Clinton's regime, as Bob Kaiser of the Washington Post reported back in August 2002 in a prescient piece titled "U.S. Plants Footprint in Shaky Central Asia":

During the 1990s the United States began to quietly build influence in the area. Washington established significant military-to-military relationships with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Soldiers from those countries have been trained by Americans. Uzbekistan alone will receive $43 million in U.S. military aid this year. The militaries of all three have an ongoing relationship with the National Guard of a U.S. state—Kazakhstan with Arizona, Kyrgyzstan with Montana, Uzbekistan with Louisiana. The countries also participated in NATO's Partnership for Peace program.

"We wanted to extend our influence in the region, and promote American values, too," said Jeffrey Starr, a Pentagon official who was responsible for these relationships during the second Clinton administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense.

Under Bush's handlers, any half-hearted attempts to pressure Karimov were forgotten after 9/11, and we stepped up our training of Karimov's military.

The Uzbek people will remember that—in their nightmares. As the U.N. news service IRIN reports from a refugee camp (see photo) across the border in Kyrgyzstan:

The refugees told IRIN they wanted to stay in Kyrgyzstan in order to escape persecution in Uzbekistan.

"What we witnessed in Andijan was slaughter—a regime capable of that is capable of anything," said a woman who had left her two children behind in the city when she fled for her life early on Saturday morning.

The next government of Uzbekistan will be Islamic—you can bet on it. As Bagila Bukharbayeva of the Associated Press writes this morning from Korasuv:

The leader of a group of rebels claiming to control this Uzbek border town said Wednesday that he and his supporters intend to build an Islamic state and would fight back if government troops attempt to crush their revolt.

"We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Koran," Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press while leaning down from the back of a horse.

That's just one town and one horseman. But this is no game. Robin Williams (see photo) won't be back here any time soon. This is just another chapter in the Great Game, and we're on the wrong side, in a more obvious way than we were in the recent (and successful) populist revolt against Kyrgyz dictator Askar Akayev. Akayev didn't get our strong support because he balked at cooperating with the Bush regime's War of Terror. Karimov, on the other hand, has been one of our stalwarts, a part of the "coalition of the willing."

That must be troubling to the thousands of U.S. soldiers stationed in Uzbekistan, especially at Karshi-Khanabad, where the New York-flavored troops have given the "streets," where they pitch their tents and build permanent structures, such names as Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and the Long Island Expressway. (That's old news, too, reported by the Washington Post's Kaiser.)

Here in America, New Yorkers complain about the traffic jams on the L.I.E. as they go to the Hamptons for polo matches. But in Uzbekistan, the New York-based soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division, who proudly travel on their own L.I.E., are faced with horsemen of a different color.

How much longer will we be keeping our permanent-looking base at Karshi-Khanabad? Will it survive if Uzbekistan, currently ruled by a hardline secular regime, is taken over by a hardline Islamic regime?

Our soldiers sit in the midst of 25 million angry Muslims long repressed by a dictator we're arming and have kept in power. A question for Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney: Will you dispatch troops from the base to help Karimov "maintain order"?

The dictator is keeping his usual tight grip on information, so we don't know what's happening with this inevitable, bloody revolt against his rule. As IRIN puts it:

A Western diplomat, who wished to remain anonymous, told IRIN that a government-organized trip to Andijan—the scene of mass killings by Uzbek forces on Friday—had been "completely stage managed by Tashkent" in order to prevent foreigners and journalists from gaining information to support claims that more than 500 people were gunned down in and around the city's central square. "We were not allowed to talk to local people, see hospitals or morgues, or move freely around the city," the diplomat said.

Sooner or later, though, Karimov will fall, and we may still be clutching at his coattails as he plummets.

Our high-priced spread of "democracy" is leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of 25 million angry Muslims in Uzbekistan as an ominous revolt spreads across Central Asia.

Not even a major clampdown on information by Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov can stop the news of his goonish behavior—CNN reports tonight about the blood in the streets, with 500 corpses laid out on the pavement in the city of Andijan, in the fertile Fergana Valley in eastern Uzbekistan.

By the way, in the coming months, as Central Asia's corrupt "republics" crumble, you'll be reading all about the strategically key Fergana Valley, by the way.

Neighboring Kyrgyzstan's dictator, Askar Akayev, has already been driven out. Karimov is thrashing in the final throes of his torturous and tortured reign and, wouldn't you know it, we've been his richest uncle lately.

What's worse for our future credibility with Uzbekistan's next generation of leaders is that Karimov's goons have been cracking heads in the act of defending the U.S. embassy in the capital, Tashkent, according to death-defying dispatches filed by the Institute of War & Peace Reporting's project director in Uzbekistan, Galima Bukharbaeva.

Every new report from Uzbekistan presages the likely overthrow of Karimov—he's unlikely to be hanging with Don Rumsfeld any more—not that Karimov won't be hanging.

For evidence backing that observation, go back a few days to the intrepid IWPR journalist Bukharbaeva's report of the cruel, vindictive, and sorry-ass behavior of the dictator's domos.

It was May 4, and a group of about 70 peasants—mostly women, and some with children—had trekked to Tashkent to demand that the government return a farm it wrongly seized—they were also incensed about having to live in poverty, and they called for government officials to resign. The peasants headed to the U.S. embassy and camped right outside, hoping to stir the U.S. State Department into action. Good luck. The U.S. ambassador, Jon Purnell, has said barely anything about Karimov's insane tortures of the citizenry—unlike his former British counterpart, Craig Murray. On the scene of the protest, Bukharbaeva wrote:

The group set up tents on the pavement outside the embassy compound and said they would remain there until their demands were met. They chose the venue because they said they would seek asylum in the U.S. if their own government refused to respond.

Placards and banners called on government officials to resign and called for an end to poverty.

Although the protest clearly reflected local concerns rather than opposition politics, and there were so many women and children present, the authorities resorted to tough measures.

No surprise, considering that Karimov's government has been known to boil people to death.

Anyway, 50 plainclothes cops and an array of fire trucks, ambulances, and police vans converged on the scene. Here's Bukharbaeva again:

At 11:20 in the evening, when some of the adults and children were asleep inside the tents, two buses drew up and about 50 people armed with truncheons jumped out. Some were in police uniform and others in camouflage, but most were in plain clothes.

The demonstrators were so intimidated that they put their hands in the air and called out that they would stop their protest action and go home immediately.

Their pleas were ignored and the security forces waded in, beating people apparently indiscriminately.

Reports of various broken bones couldn't be confirmed, but the protesters were dragged away, and so were some journalists. A Tashkent cop rescued the journalists. The farmers, who had traveled a long way from their homes in southwestern Uzbekistan, were sent back home. The IWPR report continued:

A spokesman for the Uzbek interior ministry, Vyacheslav Tutin, said the following day that all the participants in the protest had been put on buses and sent back home. The spokesman said 11 men, 13 women, and 19 children were detained in all.

Tutin said it was the protesters’ own fault if security forces behaved in a heavy-handed way, because earlier in the day, police and National Security Service officers had been stoned by the crowd.

Speaking before the evening police assault, protesters said they had thrown stones that morning, but only when members of the security forces attempted to grab a 9-month-old baby from its mother’s arms. They said police retreated after this initial intervention.

Caught in the middle was the U.S. embassy, which issued a statement saying the protesters were simply "exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly accorded them in United Nations conventions," as the IWPR reporter put it. women in the war zone.

That's funny. No such message was forthcoming last summer from U.S. officials when Americans were prevented from protesting at Republican Square Garden during the GOP convention.

Karimov always insists that he's fighting terrorists, but the whole damn country wants to give him the bum's rush. As a United Press International story after the Tashkent protest noted:

"Having trusted Karimov's promises, we were left with nothing," one protester said. "We can't study. We have no food to eat. We were left on the street with nothing."

After the group threatened to set up a tent city, police encircled them, and soon after, several protesters were beaten and bloodied by batons, the report said.

The Tashkent protesters were probably lucky that they were merely sent home—if, indeed, that's what happened to them. They had come to Tashkent hungry and stayed that way. As the IWPR's Bukharbaeva wrote:

It did appear that the protesters were an unusually vulnerable group. They began their action without providing themselves with food and water. For the first few hours, residents of a nearby apartment block supplied them with tea and water until police ordered them to stop, so by the evening they were in no fit state to go on.

A foreign observer present on the scene said it made no sense to use crude force against such an unthreatening group of people who could easily have been persuaded to end their protest.

"Brute force against a group of women and children and the deployment of resources en masse may, on the one hand, demonstrate the power of the state. On the other hand, it may be a sign of cowardice," said the Westerner, who asked not to be named.

Karimov's regime won't last much longer, unless the U.S. intervenes in his behalf—there's a huge U.S. base in the country. But even Rumsfeld and the other handlers of George W. Bush are unlikely to overtly offer the dictator support at this point. Uzbekistan is headed for a major revolution, if the Uzbeks who talked to Bukharbaeva are correct: Tolib Yakubov of Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan condemned the way the police had acted, and said it seemed inevitable both that the regime would grow ever more repressive and that people would continue protesting against it.

"There’s no other option—either for them or for us," he said.

Lynndie England's life has degenerated into little more than a double-wide soap opera. But before you wash your hands of her, feast on this link between her and last week's holier-than-thou National Day of Prayer—and to the Bush campaign chest and predatory lending. Connect the dots and you'll see there's a chicken in every plot:

• Before enlisting in the Army, the Abu Ghraib poster girl worked in a chicken-processing plant an hour's drive from her Fort Ashby, West Virginia, trailer, according to USA Today.

• The most popular such plant for Fort Ashby residents—it's exactly 59 minutes away, according to MapQuest—is the huge Pilgrim's Pride chicken-processing complex in Moorefield, West Virginia.

• In July 2004, PETA released a video— secretly shot inside the Pilgrim's Pride plant in Moorefield—that showed murder most fowl:

Workers were caught on video stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls. Workers also ripped the animals’ beaks off, twisted their heads off, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painted their faces, and squeezed their bodies so hard that the birds expelled feces—all while the chickens were still alive.

This stomach-turning stuff—and its link to England's home state—was noted at the time by several bloggers, including those on Digestible News.

Say, that "stomping" sounds familiar. I wrote about that technique last summer in "You Flinched!"—an item about testimony from an Abu Ghraib soldier.

Also last summer, Princeton ethicist Peter Singer made the connection between the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the torture of chickens at Moorefield. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece he co-wrote (and that was re-posted by Dangerous Citizen), Singer noted:

The sickening images echo the snapshots and videotapes that found their way out of another inhumane facility: Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In both Baghdad and Moorefield, W.Va., a simple cruel dynamic was at work. When humans have unchecked power over those they see as inferior, they may abuse it. Slaughterhouse workers do not expect to be chastised for hurting animals. And the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib clearly did not expect punishment, or they would not have posed for photographs. In both instances, laws or treaties that should have protected against the abuses were unknown or ignored. That is not surprising: Where much abuse is allowed, the protections that do exist are unlikely to be taken seriously.

The Department of Justice has considered in detail when prisoners in the war on terror may be exempt from the humane protections of the Geneva Convention. The government has long since made that leap with animals. Chickens, for example, are exempt from the U.S. Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.

Singer didn't mention Lynndie England, but I'll bet she didn't treat chickens any better than she treated Iraqis.

• Pilgrim's Pride is the second largest chicken producer in the country. Here's how Reuters (through Yahoo's page on the company) puts it:

During fiscal year ended October 2, 2004 (fiscal 2004), the company sold 5.3 billion pounds of dressed chicken and 310.2 million pounds of dressed turkey and generated net sales of $5.4 billion.

Its profit margins were gross:

For the 26 weeks ended 4/2/05, revenues rose 13% to $2.74 billion. Net income totaled $104.9 million, up from $43.2 million. Revenues reflect an increase in chicken sales. Net income also reflects an increase in gross profit margins.

• Operating out of the Pilgrim's Pride home office in Pittsburg, Texas, the company's owner, Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim (see photo), is one of the country's major individual donors to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. He was a "Minor League Pioneer" for Bush in 2000 and a "Major League Pioneer" for Bush in 2004, according to Texans for Public Justice.

Recall the company's history: In 2002, TPJ reminds us, Pilgrim's Pride recalled 27 million pounds of meat after one of its plants was thought to be the source of "a listeria outbreak that killed eight people, caused three miscarriages, and hospitalized dozens of victims." Heavily fined by environmental regulators for illegally discharging massive amounts of chicken shit and other filth, Pilgrim's Pride was at the same time "the 10th largest recipient of federal agricultural subsidies from 1995 through 2002," adds TPJ.

• Bo Pilgrim wears his fundamentalist Christianity on his sleeve and on his butcher's apron. As Marv Knox of the Baptist Standard quoted him as saying in 2002:

There's no doubt that God wanted me to exemplify being a Christian businessman. I have that feeling, and I am forever conscious of that. I'll go out and make lots of talks around the country. There's where I give Jesus credit for everything I am.

Start of digression: Knox tried to get Pilgrim to solve an age-old puzzle. Here's the exchange:

Knox: With all your history in chickens, do you know why the chicken crossed the road?

Pilgrim: I wish I could give you the answer. I guess everybody has a different answer, but I never really coined an answer for why the chicken crossed the road.

End of digression.

• Last year, Bo Pilgrim, who controls more than 60 percent of his huge, publicly traded company, put Keith W. Hughes on its board of directors.

Hughes was the CEO of Associates First Capital, a subprime lender accused of predatory lending.

Associates First was so notorious that in 2000, the giant company's last year of independent existence, the United Methodist Church's pension fund, the Priests of Sacred Heart, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word brought a shareholders resolution to try to get the company to investigate itself for predatory lending and clean up its act. The resolution failed.

The government's case against Associates First was settled only after Citigroup swallowed Hughes's company and coughed up $215 million to the Federal Trade Commission to pay off 2 million former customers. At the time of the 2002 settlement, it was the largest in FTC history.

• Last Thursday (May 5), George W. Bush hosted the annual National Day of Prayer ceremony in the East Room of the White House. The first speaker was Shirley Dobson, wife of right-wing radio evangelist James Dobson. Shirley Dobson is also chairman of the National Day of Prayer—yes, she calls herself "chairman" and "Mrs. Shirley Dobson."

After the choir stopped singing, Shirley Dobson stepped to the microphone in the White House, fawned over the Bushes for a little bit and officially launched the National Day of Prayer. (You can watch her performance, and Bush's speech, on the White House site.)

Millions of Americans, she said, "will seek the grace of God" today. She added:

For example, Pilgrim's Pride, one of America's largest producers of chicken products, is holding prayer observances in 56 of its facilities in 17 countries.

It was the only company she mentioned. (She did say that 150,000 people were supposed to gather at Daytona Beach Speedway to try to crash the pearly gates. Yee-haw!)

With the saccharine tone and sing-song cadence of a beauty pageant contestant's spiel, she praised Pilgrim's Pride but scolded the rest of us.

That scolding stuff is a familiar rap by the right-wing Christians—it's all explained by Shirley Dobson on her "Prayerfully Yours" page of the National Day of Prayer website:

As sinners saved by grace we must realize not only that we don't deserve God's favor, but that we do deserve His wrath! The miracle of God's grace is that He extends mercy to us in spite of our wickedness and rebellion against Him. Put another way, "mercy" is not getting what we deserve, and "grace" is getting what we don't deserve.

We need not look very far to see that our country stands in desperate need of God's healing touch. We have killed over 40 million babies since 1973, and saturated ourselves and our children with pornography and filth. We have numbed ourselves with drugs and alcohol, and taught our kids that premarital sex is a good thing if it is simply done right. We have pursued materialism and false security, while ignoring the Architect of our souls.

As a nation, we have rebelled against the Creator. Our culture is steeped in immorality and self-sufficiency and is growing increasingly hostile toward religious expression.

Self-sufficiency? Have we fallen that far?

I know some chickens that could use "God's healing touch." But anyway, back to the White House. To her audience in the East Room, Mrs. Shirley Dobson toned it down a little bit, saying that her dictionary defines "grace" as something that's "undeserved," and adding:

Almighty God continues to bless America despite the fact that we corporately and individually have turned our backs on Him in many ways.

But our Creator is patient with us, granting His favor and forbearance even though we don't deserve it.

Speak for yourself, Mrs. America.

The president, of course, is a key part of any Christian puppet show. When Bush took the microphone, he smiled at the Dobsons and said:

I want to thank Shirley Dobson, the chairman of the National Day of Prayer. Thank you for organizing this event and thank you for your wonderful comments.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To escape from these religious nuts. The rest of us humans could also use a wing and a prayer.

Just a few days before yesterday's deadly attack on a U.S. mess tent in Mosul, Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard "Quag" Myers, the nation's top uniformed military leader, was in the general area, doing his job by hauling around and publicly hosting a USO tour starring the likes of John Elway and Robin Williams.

Nanu-friggin'-nanu. What planet is the Bush regime from?

Myers wasn't only ushering celebrities around Asia on the "chairman's aircraft." He was signing footballs (see photo) for Iraq-bound U.S. troops in Kuwait.

Myers showed he's a take-charge guy—he don't need no machine to sign his name.

At this point in our imperial history, Myers and the other Pentagon dreamers of this nightmare actually expected to be jabbing corncob pipes into their mouths and accepting the surrender signatures of humbled and grateful natives. Instead, the Iraq Debacle, as you can see from the heavy smoke on your TV screens, is turning chronic.

Tom Ricks of the Washington Post says as much this morning in his analysis titled "Precision of Base Attack Worries Military Experts." Increasingly, the establishment U.S. press is getting right to the point about the deadly nonsense of our foreign policy. Here's how Ricks starts his piece:

In April 2003, as the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was ending, the Pentagon projected in a formal planning effort that the U.S. military occupation of the country would end this month.

Instead, December 2004 brought one of the deadliest single incidents of the war for U.S. forces. More than 80 casualties were suffered yesterday by U.S. troops, civilian contractors, and Iraqi soldiers when a U.S. base near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was blasted at lunchtime.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon propaganda machine's Jim Garamone, one of the government's permanently embedded reporters, wrote Saturday (December 18) that "reactions were fantastic" to the USO trip by Myers, Elway, Mork, and the other celebrities, who included the unrememberable Blake Clark ("the unintelligible coach in Waterboy") and boss-lookin' Leeann Tweeden:

On the way over to the Middle East, the chairman's aircraft stopped at Shannon, Ireland, to refuel. A planeload of American servicemembers were coming back to the States for rest-and-recuperation leave. As John Elway came out of the ramp from the plane, a lifelong Denver Bronco fan recognized the former quarterback.

"Oh my God, it's John Elway," the sergeant yelled at a volume that could be heard back across the Atlantic Ocean. And he added an expletive when he noticed Williams.

I can think of one, too. Anyway, not even Williams could stop the merriment:

Another soldier spotted Myers. "Are those four stars on his collar?" he asked. Immediately, Myers, Williams, Clark, Elway, and Tweeden were surrounded by a group in desert camouflage. Digital cameras appeared, pads of paper came out, and the soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen talked and laughed with the celebrities.

In Kuwait, units preparing to go into Iraq took time from their training to take in the show. At Camp Virginia—named for the site of one of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001—about 3,000 servicemembers packed in around a stage to see the show.

Each show followed the same lineup. Myers was introduced by local commanders. He would take the stage and thank the servicemembers for their contributions. He would turn the proceeding over to Tweeden.

Tweeden—dressed in modified desert camouflage—served as emcee. She spoke about the USO and previous experiences on tours to entertain the troops. Then she would introduce Elway.

The two-time Super Bowl winner spoke about the teams he had been on. Then he told the servicemembers that they were part of an unbeatable team and that he was proud to be affiliated with them. Then Elway proved he could still sling a football, tossing out souvenirs all the way to the edges of the crowds.

After which, the celebrity general would sign the footballs. Mission accomplished.

The sweetest sweetheart deal in the annals of cities sucking up to baseball owners is unraveling. Darn those poor people in Washington for raining on the big cigars' skyboxes.

The D.C. Council, the public body that tries to run Washington, just couldn't bring itself to OK the financing deal for building a stadium that will house the Washington Nationals (the ex-Expos of Montreal).

The lead owner of the new Nationals? Fred Malek, longtime pal of the Bush family and a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group. (Suzan Mazur recounts a hilarious story about how Malek got Dubya on the Carlyle board—and how the board later dumped him.)

Back to bidness: The council's move blindsided everyone, including D.C.'s mayor. To prove this is no game, the enraged Major League Baseball hierarchy (the only sports org in which one of the owners, Bud Selig, is the commissioner) pulled a Milton Bradley. The owners are now threatening that the entire deal may be off.

The original deal called for the public to bend over for the owners. The council merely insisted that the fat cats pour in more of their own money and use less of the public's.

Makes sense, considering that D.C. is basically the poorest of America's large cities. As I've pointed out a few times, America's national pastime—milking the poor to help the rich—is in great shape, and sometimes America's other national pastime squeezes our udders, too.

That's particularly painful in D.C., because the income gap between rich and poor is wider there than in any other big burg.

Since the deal was unveiled this past summer, the Washington Post has been doggedly following the disgusting financial details. One of the latest pieces of news goes like this: Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf was the chief negotiator of the deal to bring baseball back to D.C. Now it turns out that his son Michael is in line to profit from a huge contract to plan the stadium.

Here's how the Post's Thomas Heath and David Nakamura laid it down:

[Michael] Reinsdorf is the managing director and co-founder of International Facilities Group, a consulting firm started in 1995 to "provide development and management services to municipalities and professional sports owners," according to the company's Web site.

The agreement Mayor Anthony A. Williams signed in September with Major League Baseball calls for the city to build a stadium near the Navy Yard and South Capitol Street in Southeast Washington. As part of the $440 million cost, the pact calls for the city to pay an estimated $3.7 million for baseball's consultant on the stadium, also known as the team representative.

Mark Tuohey, chairman of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, acknowledged in an interview that IFG has been discussed as a front-runner for the team representative job. IFG has been working for several months on the renovation of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, where the Washington Nationals are to play their first three seasons. And the company has advised the District on financial estimates for the proposed stadium. Major League Baseball has paid the roughly $100,000 fee for IFG's services so far, city officials said.

Hope this all works out, and Washington gets the team, even if it requires this disgraceful bit of corporate welfare. Better for Dubya to be distracted by baseball (which you know he will be) than to have him available to front the neocons' foreign and domestic policies. Go to the games, Bush, and leave us alone.

What a remarkable series of conversations it must have been: Alberto Gonzales grilling Bernie Kerik.

If you believe this morning's New York Times, Bush's nominee as attorney general conducted "hours of confrontational interviews" with Kerik, to make sure none of the little Napoleon's cream filling had spilled into places it shouldn't have. (See photo of tough guy Gonzales below.)

The Times' Elisabeth Bumiller pins her tale to an unnamed "government official." I hesitate to believe it only because Bumiller also describes the White House as "normally careful." I think she means "normally careful" only in vetting potential nominees, which means that the White House is careful about whom it trusts and picks? Uh-huh. In her same story, she points out that the White House was careless in dispensing top-security information after 9/11: Kerik, while still the NYPD commissioner, was put on the list even though he neglected to fill out the basic form to start the security-check process. I wouldn't call that "normally careful." If Bumiller means "normally careful" in general—no, she can't mean that.

Anyway, this is how Bumiller sketched Gonzales's personal vetting of Kerik:

Mr. Gonzales, who is himself in the middle of a background review as Mr. Bush's nominee for attorney general, spent hours grilling Mr. Kerik, the official said. As with other nominees, the sessions were aggressive and designed to make Mr. Kerik uncomfortable enough to reveal possible embarrassing events in his record. Even so, he apparently withheld some pertinent facts. Mr. Gonzales declined to comment.

Well, let's see. Gonzales was a key figure in OK'ing the tor