Pull up another chair at the table.

Reed-Abramoff emails tie Sen. Cornyn (R-Bush) to Gambling-funded Anti-Gambling Crusade Scam-o-rama.

What a sorry, sorry, unfortunate president -- caught in his lies, his half-truths, his reckless disregard ... caught with, well ... caught with time. Time has finally caught up to him. And now he doesn't have the popularity to beat back all the people trying to call him to account. He could; but now he can't. So he's caught. And his best play is to accuse his critics of rewriting history, of playing fast and loose with the truth -- a sad, pathetic man.

Chronicling the full measure of the Bush administration's mendacity with regards to the war is a difficult task -- not because of a dearth of evidence for it but because of its so many layers, all its multidimensionality. It's almost like one of those Russian egg novelties in which each layer opened reveals another layer beneath it. Hard as it may be, in the interests of getting Mr. Bush past the phases of denial and anger, let's just hit on some of the main themes.

1. Longstanding effort to convince the American people that Iraq maintained ties to al Qaida and may have played a role in 9/11. This was always just a plain old lie. (And if you want to see where the real fights with the Intelligence Community came up, it was always on the terror tie angle and much less on WMD.) The president and his chief advisors tried to leverage Americans' horror over 9/11 to gain support for attacking Iraq. Simple: lying to the public the president was sworn to protect.

2. Repeated efforts to jam purported evidence about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program (the Niger canard) into major presidential speeches despite the fact the CIA believed the claim was not credible and tried to prevent the president from doing so. What's the explanation for that? At best a reckless disregard for the truth in making the case for war to the American public.

3. Consistent and longstanding effort to elide the distinction between chem-bio-weapons (which are terrible but no immediate threat to American security) and nuclear weapons (which are). For better or worse, there was a strong consensus within the foreign policy establishment that Iraq continued to stockpile WMDs. Nor was it an improbable assumption since Saddam had stockpiled and used such weapons before and, by 2002, had been free of on-site weapons inspections for almost four years. But what most observers meant by this was chemical and possibly biological weapons, not nuclear weapons. Big difference! The White House knew that this wasn't enough to get the country into war, so they pushed the threat of a nuclear-armed Saddam for which there was much, much less evidence.

4. The fact that the administration's push for war wasn't even about WMD in the first place. Scarcely a week goes by when I don't get an email from a reader who writes, "I always knew that Saddam didn't have WMDs. How is that you, with all your access and reporting, didn't know that too?" Good question. They were right. And I was wrong. But like many things in this reality-based universe of ours, this was a question subject to empirical inquiry. No one really knew what Saddam was doing between 1998 and 2002. And US intelligence made a lot of very poor assumptions based on sketchy hints and clues. But the solution, at least the first part of it, was to get inspectors in on the ground and actually find out. That is what President Bush's very credible threat of force had done by the Fall of 2002. But once there the inspectors began making pretty steady progress in showing that many of our suspicions about reconstituted WMD programs didn't bear out, the White House response was to begin trying to discredit the inspectors themselves. By early 2003, inspections had shown that there was no serious nuclear weapons effort underway -- the only sort of operation which could have represented a serious or imminent threat. From January of 2003 the administration went to work trying to insure that the war could be started before the rationale for war was entirely discredited. They wanted to create fait accomplis, facts on the ground that no subsequent information or developments could alter. The whole thing was a con. It wasn't about WMD.

Beneath these top-line points of dishonesty, there were second order ones, to be sure -- claims that the entire war would cost a mere $50 billion, insistence that the whole operation could be managed by only a fraction of the number of troops most experts believed it would take. Of course, these may be categorized as willful self-deceptions or gross irresponsibiity. And thus they are properly assigned to different sections of the Bush-Iraq Lies and Deceptions (BILD) bestiary than the cynical exploitation of lies and attempts to confuse proper.

In the president's new angle that his critics are trying to 'rewrite history', those critics might want to point out that his charge would be more timely after he stopped putting so much effort into obstructing any independent inquiry that could allow an accurate first draft of the history to be written. In any case, he must sense now that he's blowing into a fierce wind. The judgment of history hangs over this guy like a sharp, heavy knife. His desperation betrays him. He knows it too.

Newsweek poll: Bush at 36%.

Very interesting news out of Italy this morning, and news which appears to confirm a theory advanced recently by a poster at theleftcoaster.com (big coup for him, about which I'll explain more later). As you know, I've reported that the second report from Italian intelligence to the CIA about the Niger-Iraq story, the report in February of 2002, was a text transcription of what would later turn out to be one of the forged documents.

But there's one more small detail, reported this morning in La Repubblica. The report sent over from Italy removed the out-of-date names (one of the key reasons they were spotted later as forgeries) and replaced them with the correct names. In other words, there seems to have been a conscious effort to cover up the fact that the documents were bogus, to clean them up, as it were.

This raises a number of questions, which I'll try to address in a subsequent post. I'm running between meetings this morning. But for now one more detail.

La Repubblica has confirmed that three days after SISMI sent its original report to the CIA on October 15th, 2001, Nicolo Pollari himself followed up with another report on October 18th. This follow-up was in response to a CIA query about the quality of the sourcing behind the report on the 15th.

Pollari told the CIA that the report was quite credible and that the information originated with a woman working for SISMI in the Niger Embassy in Rome.

More soon on what this all means.

James Tobin, phone-jamming czar, finally to go on trial December 6th.

Frist manages to mix being a doofus with immoral embrace of torture.

Rewarded with a choice headline.

CNN/AP Headline: "Frist concerned more about leaks than secret prisons."

Ouch! Fox poll: Bush at 36%.

Drudge reports this as an excerpt from Arthur Sulzberger discussing the Judy Miller debacle from an appearance this evening on Charlie Rose ...

THIS PALES BY COMPARISON TO THE JASON BLAIR, IT'S NOT EVEN ON THE SAME SCALE. JASON BLAIR AND THE ISSUES THAT FLOW FROM THAT, THOSE WERE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES INVOLVING NOT JUST A REPORTER, BUT A WHOLE SERIES IN "THE NEW YORK TIMES." THAT WAS HARD. AND MY FAMILY STOOD BY ME LIKE A BULLWARK. AND THEY DID THIS TIME, TOO.

He really doesn't get it, does he?

Sure, Jayson Blair's transgressions were open-and-shut journalistic capital offenses. No question it was terrible and that his career was over. But, honestly, what were the real world consequences of his misdeeds? Pretty minimal.

And the Miller fiasco? Well, yes, more complicated. But the real world consequences? Immeasurably greater. And the paper's dragged out, compromised way of dealing with the whole mess? He really doesn't seem to grasp what happened.

Quote of the Day ...

Rep. David Dreier (R-CA): "We are not cutting Medicaid for those truly in need."

Apparently they're only cutting benefits for upper and middle-income Medicaid beneficiaries.

Today's an example of one of the reasons I'm eager to have a blog-reporter not just literally up on capitol hill but more generally following all the ins and outs of what's going on up there.

What we're seeing today are the cascading effects of the breakdown of Republican party discipline, beginning with the collapse of the president's popularity (especially the rather sudden recognition of that fact within Washington) and echoing out from there.

Moderate Republicans have toed the Bush line because they've believed he could protect them, as indeed he has. They don't believe that now. So a lot of them don't want to go into the election next year with ANWR drilling hanging over them.

They balk on the left and then in response the 'wingers on the other right refuse the compromises they've agreed to. Suddenly the whole thing starts to pull apart since there's no centripetal force, no organizing power to hold things together -- sort of like Hobbesian state creation run in reverse.

The recognition has sunk in: The president is unpopular and weak. And it's every Republican for him or herself.

And did I mention, pass the popcorn?

From a knowledgeable observer on the hill ...

Two important developments today point to the Bush administration’s collapse of support on Capitol Hill. The first involves the House dropping ANWR from their spending reconciliation bill because 22 moderate Republicans refused to support the measure on the floor if included (no telling yet whether it will pass even w/ ANWR dropped bc of food stamp and child support collection cuts). The next involves the postponement of the tax reconciliation mark up in the Senate Finance Committee, where Olympia Snowe (generally prone to caving after getting the call from Andy Card) refused to buckle and support extension of the capital gains and dividend tax cuts – a signature WH priority. Tax cuts used to be a cakewalk for the WH, now they cant even get them out of committee.

More to follow.

GOP imploding on Capitol Hill. More soon.

It just occurred to me that even if Democrats manage to totally blow this coming election cycle and don't make substantial pick-ups in November, we're still virtually guaranteed twelve months of watching Republicans furiously working to find ways to stab each other in the back.

So, really, even the fall-back is pretty decent.

Just a thought.

You've probably already seen this article in today's New York Times on Justice Department interest in an offer Jack Abramoff apparently made to President Omar Bongo of Gabon to set up a meeting with President Bush for the sum of $9 million.

This makes me curious again to know more about the foreign lobbying and foreign business dimensions of Abramoff's work.

For instance, documentary evidence made available to us shows that in the summer of 2004 (after the scandal phase of Abramoff's career was well underway), he was working with Marina Nevskaya and her company Naftasib to secure oil exploration and drilling concessions from The National Oil Company of Liberia.

Abramoff spokesman Andrew Blum had no comment when asked today about the Abramoff-Nevskaya-Liberia dealings.

Nevskaya and Naftasib, you may remember, are the ones that underwrote the DeLay/Abramoff 'fact-finding' trip to Moscow in 1997.

Anyone know more about this Liberian oil exploration angle to the Abramoff story? I'm all ears.

We've had a number of emails in from folks asking how they can contribute money to support the new site we're launching (described here yesterday). First, let me assure that we will go to great lengths to help facilitate your desire to contribute funds for our new project. But not quite yet.

As I mentioned yesterday, Sunday is the fifth anniversary of Talking Points Memo. (Here was the first post.) So next week is 5th Anniversary week here at TPM and we're going to be holding a fundraiser to support the expanded coverage we're planning of scandal-ridden Capitol Hill and the 2006 election cycle.

More on all of this shortly.

Just out from Roll Call (sub. req.) ...

With Jon Corzine (D) trading in his title of Senator for governor-elect of New Jersey, the formal jockeying to replace him accelerated Wednesday, as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus formally endorsed Rep. Bob Menendez (D) for the post.

Corzine will have the power to appoint his Senate successor once he is inaugurated as New Jersey’s chief executive on Jan. 17, but has been mum on his plans for succession during the duration of the gubernatorial campaign and in the hours since his election victory on Tuesday.

But New Jersey Representatives eager for Corzine’s appointment broke their silence Wednesday, with a vengeance.

“I’d like to say my own record of 31 years of service in New Jersey, my understanding of average New Jerseyans and my leadership in the House would make me a valuable addition to the U.S. Senate,” Menendez said in an interview.

Will be interesting to watch.

The Italian Connection, Part III

I discussed in installments one and two of this series my early reporting on the origins of the Niger forgeries and how we later learned the identity of, and made contact with, the man at the center of the drama: Rocco Martino. As I discussed in the earlier installments I was working with a team from 60 Minutes, sharing sources, each of us pursuing the Niger story for publication in our separate mediums.

I first met Martino at a restaurant in mid-town Manhattan in early June 2004. He’d come to New York to be interviewed for the upcoming segment on 60 Minutes and also, per our arrangement, to be interviewed by me. I should add that in this conversation and in the subsequent ones I will describe I always spoke to Martino through a translator, though there were occasional moments, and more over time, when it seemed he had some working command of English.

In the various press accounts that have appeared over recent months Martino is often described as ‘dapper’ or refined in appearance. And that is largely correct. In fact there was a genteel quality in his appearance and manner that belied the scrounging, always-desperate-for-money life which we learned he had led.

Martino was in his mid-sixties, thickly-built and robust for his age. In notes I took when I met with him for the final time two months later I described him as “all gray on the sides, salt & pepper on top, dark complected, thick mustache, mainly grey, S&P in middle, thick features, delta nose, bags chiseled under eyes.”

In its essential outline, Rocco’s story was a simple one. From the beginning, he insisted that he did not forge the documents. And he never claimed to have direct knowledge about who did. But the trail led back to SISMI – Italian military intelligence – through a former colleague named Antonio Nucera, a SISMI colonel working in the '8th division', which worked on counter-proliferation and weapons of mass destruction.

As Martino told me in a subsequent conversation, once he’d become far more candid, he had known Nucera for more than twenty-eight years. They’d first met not long before Martino had entered SISMI in 1976. And they’d remained in regular contact after he left the organization a decade later.

As Martino described it, their ongoing contact served two purposes. Nucera was Martino’s point of contact for the on-going work he did for SISMI for years after leaving the service. And Nucera was also the conduit through whom he kept SISMI abreast of his work for other clients – a key issue, since some were intelligence agencies of other countries.

SISMI is notorious for being riven by factionalism and deeply politicized. But Martino described Nucera as apolitical, a man who followed orders, not someone who would get involved in something like the documents caper on his own account or out of a personal ideological motivation. Whatever Nucera’s role, Martino believed he would have been acting on orders from above.

The chain of events leading to the documents began when Nucera approached Martino with a proposition. Nucera explained that SISMI had long had a woman working in the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, in spy jargon, a SISMI ‘asset’. Earlier she had been employed at another African Embassy in Rome, then too working for SISMI. Now, though, the agency was done with her.

But Martino, being in the business of buying and selling information, could perhaps take her on. She could provide information on immigration from Niger and Islamist groups in Western Africa. He would pay her, as SISMI had. And she would pass on to him, as she once had to SISMI, documents she copied or stole from the Embassy.

Martino met with the woman and ironed out just such an arrangement.

That was in March 2000.

The documents, which would later become notorious as the ‘forged dossier’, didn’t come to Martino in a single bundle. They came slowly over many months. First came the ‘codebook,’ then other documents included the dossier, some of which were genuine. The purported ‘accord’ came last, some time late in 2001.

In the next installment, how Martino initially withheld key information, new evidence that corroborated his story and SISMI's role, and how SISMI began campaigning against the planned story on the Niger papers even before it appeared.

In the Post, Walter Pincus suggests members of the senate intel committee are making some progress in coming up with a roadmap for pursuing 'phase two' of the Iraq WMD investigation, the part focused on how administration officials used the intelligence they were provided.

A little earlier this evening I linked to this post from young DC blogger Kris Lofgren who got into the AEI Chalabi speech today and managed to score a few moments of quality time with Christopher Hitchens to boot.

In his post he tells us ...

Hitchens then turned the subject back to Chalabi, his good friend. I asked him if he thought Chalabi had been passing American intelligence to the Iranians. "No," he insisted. "It's possible that with his training, you know, at [The University of] Chicago that with his own ability he was able to crack the codes. He is a mathematical genius. His expertise is cryptology. It is possible that he broke the codes himself." (This is a paraphrase since I was walking down M Street and crossing Connecticut Avenue all while being amazed that I was having an actual conversation with Christopher Hitchens at the time). Now, I don't believe this for one second. Why would Chalabi be trying to break American codes in his spare time anyway? Who does that if they are friendly to us? Suspicious, I say.

Now, I have to confess that I'm so pitiful at math that in high school I could barely crack a passing grade in trig. In fact, on more than one occasion I failed to crack it entirely. But why go into that?

In any case, even a math fool like me knew enough to laugh out loud when I read that. I'd love to hear Hitchens give a ten minute description of how he thinks modern cryptography works exactly.

Then TPM Reader TT wrote in with even more laughs ...

In that article you linked to by the blogger who saw Chalabi speak at the AEI, Hitchens claims that Chalbi may have broken our or the Iranians' codes (it isn't clear which) himself. That is quite simply the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life. Chalabi would have about the same chance of breaking our or the Iranians' codes as of building his own nuclear bombs.

Moreover, Chalabi did not specialize in cryptology but in group theory. There is no evidence that he is a mathematical genius, either -- his publication record is not impressive.

I am a research mathematician who works in an areas pretty close to cryptology.

Quite simply, there is no way to take anything Hitchens says seriously ever again. Next to him, Scotty Mac is a paragon of credibility.

Aside from Hitchens' speculation that Chalabi sat around using our diplomatic or military codes (some encrypted diplomatic cables he'd pulled out of the air, I assume) as some brainiac's version of a Rubik's Cube to pass the time while he wasn't busy with embezzlement or forgery, this really is an example of the dingbat personality cult Chalabi managed to assemble around himself in DC.

Has Hitchens run his theory past Ahmad himself?