gassedhisownpeople

PUBLICIZING YOUR BLOG

In Uncategorized on February 6, 2007 at 11:04 am

PUBLICIZING YOUR BLOG

ICE Free Tag Generator - Add tags to each blog entry to increase
exposure in Technorati (and other services), as well as tags that allow
people to easily subscribe using Simpy, Delicious, and other tools
(scroll to the bottom of this entry to see examples of the
possibilities).

http://www.egmstrategy.com/ice/tag-generator.cfm

Add subscribe buttons – These subscription buttons will
help visitors add your blog entry to visitors’ Simpy, Delicious accounts
.

http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/blog/archives/2006/07/entry_1728.htm

Bloglines Subscribe Button – Get a bloglines account and then put
subscribe buttons on your site for Bloglines:

http://bloglines.com/about/subscribe

iTunes Subscribe button – Save this graphic, insert it into your
blog, then add this link (but customize the italicized part with your
own RSS feed, of course).
Be sure to leave the ?format=pcast
at the end:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/mguhlin-podcasts?format=pcast

Technorati Tags - Go to Technorati and get your own account, then
follow directions to get the Technorati code to add to your blog page.
It will look something like this:

<script type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://embed.technorati.com/embed/q3gvitatm7.js”></script>

http://www.technorati.com/signup/

TRACKING BLOG SUBSCRIBERS AND HITS:

Feedburner.com – Lets you track who’s subscribed to your RSS Feeds

http://feedburner.com

FeedBlitz – Allows people to subscribe to email versions of blog
entries
http://www.feedblitz.com

BlogPatrol - Get a hit counter for your blog (tracks unique IP
Addresses)

http://www.blogpatrol.com

StatCounter - Put this code on every page, and you can find out
which of your blog entries are popular by counting the hits, etc.

http://www.statcounter.com

ClustrMaps - See visitors as red dots on your map of the world;
works like a hit counter, too.

http://www.clustrmaps.com

GeoVisitors – Allows you to see who has visited your blog in the
last 24 hours on a global map.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/

COMMENTING AND CHAT

Haloscan - Enable commenting on your blog if it lacks that feature

http://www.haloscan.com

Gabbly.com - online chat

http://www.gabbly.com

BLOGROLLS, LINKROLLS, AND MORE

Blogrolling - lets you organize and easily share other blogs you
read (this attracts traffic to your blog)

http://www.blogrolling.com/

OR,

Bloglines.com – if you are a a Bloglines.com user, you can turn
your list of subscribed blogs into your blogroll. This prevents have to
use a separate service (like Blogrolling previously mentioned) to show a
list of subscriptions. I’ve now switched to this from Blogrolling (check
the right sidebar on the FRONT
page of this blog.

http://bloglines.com/help/share?tip=4

Simpy - let’s you bookmark sites and then share the list with
others. Alternatives include Del.icio.us and Blinklist. I like Simpy
most of all, though.
http://www.simpy.com

http://del.icio.us

http://www.blinklist.com


Read this quick how-to to add buttons that let people add your
blog/entries to their bookmarks. You can create linkroll in your blog by
following these instructions.

WikiSpaces.com – get your own wiki for free. Tell them you’re an
educator and they remove all advertising

http://www.wikispaces.com

Library Thing – Lets you create and share your virtual
booklist/reading with book covers, etc.

http://www.librarything.com/

MAKING A PODCAST

You can easily use free, web-based tools to create a podcast, as opposed
to the more traditional use of Audacity, Acid, or Garageband.

Slapcast.com – Allows you to publish 3 audio files as podcasts,
whether by uploading an MP3 file or calling a 1-888 number to record
your podcast. After 3 podcasts, you have to pay $4.95 a month or
subscribe to their service. Still, not a bad way to get started.

http://slapcast.com/

Clickcaster.com - Allows you to record/publish your podcasts,
then sell them. Requires an account.

http://clickcaster.com

Odeo Studio – Allows you to create MP3 audio via a Web interface.
You can also upload sound files, as well as record via phone. Includes
syndication, etc.

http://studio.odeo.com/create/home

OurMedia – If you insist on using Audacity and/or other tools,
then you should consider OurMedia and Internet Archive. I use both for
publishing my audio.

http://www.ourmedia.org/help/publish-audio

Internet Archive – Very easy to contribute audio if you’ve
created it already (that is, you have an MP3 saved on your computer).
Follow instructions to create an account and then use the
CC Publisher tool, or go to the web site below to contribute.

http://www.archive.org/contribute.php

PUBLICIZING YOUR PODCASTS

Use any
one of the 13 services mentioned to publicize your podcasts, or, search
them for podcasts to listen to


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WALTER PINCUS AND NICK KRISTOF FIRST CAUGHT THE SMELL OF WILSONGATE

In Uncategorized on February 6, 2007 at 6:55 am

washingtonpost.com

CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data

Bush Used Report Of Uranium Bid

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, June 12, 2003; Page A01

A key component of President Bush’s claim in his State
of the Union address last January that Iraq had an active nuclear
weapons program — its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger — was
disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in
early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former
government official. But the CIA did not pass on the detailed results
of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies,
the officials said.

The CIA’s failure to share what it knew, which has not been
disclosed previously, was one of a number of steps in the Bush
administration that helped keep the uranium story alive until the eve
of the war in Iraq, when the United Nations’ chief nuclear inspector
told the Security Council that the claim was based on fabricated
evidence.

A senior intelligence official said the CIA’s action was the result
of “extremely sloppy” handling of a central piece of evidence in the
administration’s case against then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. But,
the official added, “It is only one fact and not the reason we went to
war. There was a lot more.”

However, a senior CIA analyst said the case “is indicative of larger
problems” involving the handling of intelligence about Iraq’s alleged
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and its links to al
Qaeda, which the administration cited as justification for war.
“Information not consistent with the administration agenda was
discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously
scrutinized,” the analyst said.

As the controversy over Iraq intelligence has expanded with the
failure so far of U.S. teams in Iraq to uncover proscribed weapons,
intelligence officials have accused senior administration policymakers
of pressuring the CIA or exaggerating intelligence information to make
the case for war. The story involving the CIA’s uranium-purchase probe,
however, suggests that the agency also was shaping intelligence on Iraq
to meet the administration’s policy goals.

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), former chairman of the Select Committee on
Intelligence and a candidate for president, yesterday described the
case as “part of the agency’s standard operating procedure when it
wants to advance the information that supported their [the
administration’s] position and bury that which didn’t.”

Armed with information purportedly showing that Iraqi officials had
been seeking to buy uranium in Niger one or two years earlier, the CIA
in early February 2002 dispatched a retired U.S. ambassador to the
country to investigate the claims, according to the senior U.S.
officials and the former government official, who is familiar with the
event. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity and on condition
that the name of the former ambassador not be disclosed.

During his trip, the CIA’s envoy spoke with the president of Niger
and other Niger officials mentioned as being involved in the Iraqi
effort, some of whose signatures purportedly appeared on the documents.

After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA
that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the
envoy’s conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because
the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong,” the former U.S.
government official said.

However, the CIA did not include details of the former ambassador’s
report and his identity as the source, which would have added to the
credibility of his findings, in its intelligence reports that were
shared with other government agencies. Instead, the CIA only said that
Niger government officials had denied the attempted deal had taken
place, a senior administration said.

“This gent made a visit to the region and chatted up his friends,” a
senior intelligence official said, describing the agency’s view of the
mission. “He relayed back to us that they said it was not true and that
he believed them.”

Thirteen months later, on March 8, Mohamed ElBaradei, director
general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, informed the U.N.
Security Council that after careful scrutiny of the Niger documents,
his agency had reached the same conclusion as the CIA’s envoy.
ElBaradei deemed the documents “not authentic,” an assessment that U.S.
officials did not dispute.

Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation have
described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi
agents and officials in Niger. The documents had been sought by U.N.
inspectors since September 2002 and they were delivered by the United
States and Britain last February.

The President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a panel of
nongovernment experts that is reviewing the handling of Iraq
intelligence, is planning to study the Niger story and how it made its
way into Bush’s State of the Union address on Jan. 28. In making the
case that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program, Bush declared
that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

That same month, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice also mentioned Iraq’s alleged
attempts to buy uranium, and the story made its way into a State
Department “fact sheet” as well.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the
Government Reform Committee and a leading administration critic, wrote
the president June 2 asking why Bush had included the Niger case as
part of the evidence he cited against Iraq. “Given what the CIA knew at
the time, the implication you intended — that there was credible
evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa — was simply false,”
Waxman said.

The CIA’s decision to send an emissary to Niger was triggered by
questions raised by an aide to Vice President Cheney during an agency
briefing on intelligence circulating about the purported Iraqi efforts
to acquire the uranium, according to the senior officials. Cheney’s
staff was not told at the time that its concerns had been the impetus
for a CIA mission and did not learn it occurred or its specific results.

Cheney and his staff continued to get intelligence on the matter,
but the vice president, unlike other senior administration officials,
never mentioned it in a public speech. He and his staff did not learn
of its role in spurring the mission until it was disclosed by New York
Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on May 6, according to an
administration official.

When the British government published an intelligence document on
Iraq in September 2002 claiming that Baghdad had “sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa,” the former ambassador called the
CIA officers who sent him to Niger and was told they were looking into
new information about the claim, sources said. The former envoy later
called the CIA and State Department after Bush’s State of the Union
speech and was told “not to worry,” according to one U.S. official.

Later it was disclosed that the United States and Britain were
basing their reports on common information that originated with forged
documents provided originally by Italian intelligence officials.

CIA Director George J. Tenet, on Sept. 24, 2002, cited the Niger
evidence in a closed-door briefing to the Senate intelligence committee
on a national intelligence estimate of Iraq’s weapons programs, sources
said. Although Tenet told the panel that some questions had been raised
about the evidence, he did not mention that the agency had sent an
envoy to Niger and that the former ambassador had concluded that the
claims were false.

The Niger evidence was not included in Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell’s Feb. 5 address to the Security Council in which he disclosed
some intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons programs and links to al
Qaeda because it was considered inaccurate, sources said.

Even so, the Voice of America on Feb. 20 broadcast a story that
said: “U.S. officials tell VOA [that] Iraq and Niger signed an
agreement in the summer of 2000 to resume shipments for an additional
500 tons of yellow cake,” a reference to the uranium. The VOA, which is
financed by the government but has an official policy of editorial
independence, went on to say that there was no evidence such shipments
had taken place.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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Why truth matters

In Uncategorized on February 6, 2007 at 6:52 am

Why truth matters

 Nicholas Kristof:

 When I raised the Mystery of the
Missing W.M.D. recently, hawks fired barrages of reproachful e-mail at
me. The gist was: “You *&#! Who cares if we never find
weapons of mass destruction, because we’ve liberated the Iraqi
people from a murderous tyrant.”

But it does matter, enormously, for American
credibility. After all, as Ari Fleischer said on April 10 about W.M.D.:
“That is what this war was about.” I rejoice in the
newfound freedoms in Iraq. But there are indications that the U.S.
government souped up intelligence, leaned on spooks to change their
conclusions and concealed contrary information to deceive people at
home and around the world. Let’s fervently hope that tomorrow we
find an Iraqi superdome filled with 500 tons of mustard gas and nerve
gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 29,984
prohibited munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several
dozen Scud missiles, gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, 18 mobile
biological warfare factories, long-range unmanned aerial vehicles to
dispense anthrax, and proof of close ties with Al Qaeda.

Those are the things that President Bush or his aides
suggested Iraq might have, and I don’t want to believe that top
administration officials tried to win support for the war with a
campaign of wholesale deceit. Consider the now-disproved claims by
President Bush and Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from
Niger so it could build nuclear weapons. As Seymour Hersh noted in The
New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so
amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously.
I’m told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a
year ago the vice president’s office asked for an investigation
of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was
dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at
the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department
that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had
been forged.

The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister
whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of
office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program
was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The
envoy’s debunking of the forgery was passed around the
administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President
Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway. “It’s
disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were
bamboozled because they knew about this for a year,” one insider
said.

Another example is the abuse of intelligence from
Hussein Kamel, a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein and head of Iraq’s
biological weapons program until his defection in 1995. Top British and
American officials kept citing information from Mr. Kamel as evidence
of a huge secret Iraqi program, even though Mr. Kamel had actually
emphasized that Iraq had mostly given up its W.M.D. program in the
early 1990’s. Glen Rangwala, a British Iraq expert, says the
transcript of Mr. Kamel’s debriefing was leaked because insiders
resented the way politicians were misleading the public.

Patrick Lang, a former head of Middle Eastern affairs in
the Defense Intelligence Agency, says that he hears from those still in
the intelligence world that when experts wrote reports that were
skeptical about Iraq’s W.M.D., “they were encouraged to
think it over again.” “In this administration, the pressure
to get product `right’ is coming out of O.S.D. [the Office of the
Secretary of Defense],” Mr. Lang said.

He added that intelligence experts had cautioned
that Iraqis would not necessarily line up to cheer U.S. troops and that
the Shiite clergy could be a problem.

“The guys who tried to tell them that came to understand that this advice was not welcome,” he said.

“The intelligence that our officials was given
regarding W.M.D. was either defective or manipulated,” Senator
Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico noted. Another senator is even more blunt
and, sadly, exactly right: “Intelligence was manipulated.”
The C.I.A. was terribly damaged when William Casey, its director in the
Reagan era, manipulated intelligence to exaggerate the Soviet threat in
Central America to whip up support for Ronald Reagan’s policies.
Now something is again rotten in the state of Spookdom.

New York Times.

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