Salon …

Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.

“Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where ‘blacks knew their place,'” said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. “He used the N-word on a regular basis back then.”

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word “nigger” to describe blacks. “It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used,” the teammate said.

A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word “nigger,” though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. “My impression of him was that he was a racist,” the third teammate said.

Shocked, right?

News junkies will well remember former Congressman Bill McCollum, the Florida Republican who was a leader of the drive to impeach President Clinton. In what may be a sign of the trouble facing Republicans, the 10-term congressman and two-time U.S. Senate candidate is now struggling to separate himself from a relatively obscure Democrat in the race for Florida Attorney General.

The Montana Senate race is obviously a key seat for both parties, but it’s turning out to be a pretty colorful race to boot. Last night, Conrad Burns debated his Democratic challenger, state Senate President Jon Tester, who has been pounding on Burns for his connections to Jack Abramoff. Burns was repeatedly interrupted by catcalls at the last debate, so the Republicans were prepared this time. Well, sort of, according to the Great Falls Tribune:

The Abramoff issue, along with that of Iraq, has been raised in previous debates. But Saturday’s confrontation covered new ground, including a who’s-been-better-to-Butte discussion, and clear delineations on the Patriot Act.

Burns highlighted his history of bringing federal money to Butte; indeed, the debate was co-sponsored by the Resodyn Corp., the beneficiary of some of that federal largesse. When Burns was introduced, those in the roughly 60 seats reserved for Resodyn employees comprised the majority of those who stood and applauded him. Despite Republican appeals for Burns’ supporters within 100 miles to attend the debate, the crowd seemed largely made up of Tester’s backers, many of them wearing yellow “Fire Burns” T-shirts.

The incumbent U.S. Senator gets embarrassed in the prior debate, his party puts out the call for supporters, and they still get outnumbered this time around, despite stacking the audience with employees from a company beholden to Burns? I’d say Burns is in trouble.

There’s a pretty good rundown on last night’s debate and the race generally here, though the part about Burns helping to create the blogosphere is, well, a bit of a stretch.

I don’t know if it’s because maybe fewer journalists these days are ex-military or what the reason, but not nearly enough attention has been paid to the degree to which our torture policy runs counter to decades of U.S. military doctrine and training.

So go read this piece about the views of retired brass on Bush’s torture program, based in part on their first-hand combat experiences.

Poor Mike Wallace. His son gets handed his hat by an ex-President, and 60 Minutes goes peppy (or is it “perky”?), all on the same day.

A nod to TPM alum Matt Yglesias:

Bush, Cheney, and those around them remind me of Nietzsche’s line about staring too long into the abyss. They’ve become transfixed, hypnotized almost, by the evils they believe themselves to be fighting. Obsessed to the point where they’ve clearly developed an admiration for the brutal methods, ruthless dishonesty, and utter secrecy with which the enemies of liberalism conduct themselves.

Liberal democracy isn’t a fluke occurrence that just so happens to have survived despite its drawbacks. It’s actually a superior method of organizing a state. The idea that the country is being run by people who don’t understand that is sad and frightening. The idea that the very same people claim to be embarked upon a grand mission to spread our system of government around the world is like a horrible tawdry joke . . .

Today’s NYT report describing a U.S. intelligence assessment that the Iraq invasion has worsened global terrorism (no surprise there) is “not representative” of the entire assessment, the White House says.

So what does the entire asssessment say? The White House won’t say exactly. The report is still classified. But Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte offers that the assessment concludes that if the U.S. succeeds in stabilizing Iraq “fewer jihadists will leave Iraq determined to carry on the fight elsewhere.”

The implication of course is that regardless of whether we succeed in Iraq, jihadists will leave determined to carry on the fight. It’s just that if we fail, more will leave determined to fight.

Excellent. Our strategic objective now is to demoralize some of the jihadists.

I’ve gotten several emails in response to the earlier post on whether military action against Iran may happen before the election. Most have focused on the political dynamic, but I’m most interested in the nuts and bolts of whether we are in a position to pull such a thing off logistically.

TPM Reader GH thinks not:

Iranians have aced us in a major respect. The largest bunkerbuster we have is good for maybe 100 feet of compacted earth. Iranians have been burying sensitive installations, including about 45 nuclear processing sites, under 200 feet of layered dirt and concrete. We simply cannot, at this time, do a damn thing about it. But a much larger bomb is under development with a contract end date of about a year from now. Assume we can beat that, still leaves us somewhere next summer.

Our support capacity is stretched to breaking. All the airlift (C5 and C17) is pretty well engaged in Iraq and Iran. Can’t insert troops you cannot support. Critical hardware (up armored humvees, Strykers, etc) all in use. Hard to scrape up the hardware, even if you activated all the reserves, etc. Shades of WWII, where guys trained with broomsticks, because we did not have enough rifles. This country’s logistics capacity is awesome, but it is not “poof” overnight . . .

Still, we have been gearing up for this for a long time. Look at the federal authorization bill over the last few years. Many $ on intel assets in and around the area. We have so many satellites flying over, that there are traffic jams. There is the political drumbeat, which signals preparation of the populace, and the need for Repugs to be the party in control in time of war. Americans do not like to change horses in wars.

Such a war would be no fun, for sure, but I have no confidence these clowns will get it right. Likely they will start shooting just as soon as they can get it loaded. And that is about a year off, minimum.

Do yourself and your country a favor this morning.

Call up your representative and senators — Republican or Democrat, it doesn’t matter — and tell them you want the April National Intelligence Estimate (“Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States”) released to the public. Now. Before the election. So the public can know what the White House has been keeping from them.

I know the title is a mouthful. So just to be clear, that is the April National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) widely reported on this weekend, which concludes that the Iraq War is making the threat of terrorism worse, not better.

This issue was knocking around on the Sunday shows yesterday, with folks like Majority Leader Frist insisting it’s just not so. But I haven’t seen this episode yet called for what it is — a cover-up.

An NIE isn’t some random government white paper. It represents the consensus judgment of the entire US intelligence community, with input from all the different agencies, from CIA and DIA to INR and FBI and all the others. In other words, this is the collaborative judgment of the people actually fighting the War on Terror.

For the last six weeks and, in fact, the last six months, the White House and the president have been engaged in a coordinated campaign to convince the public that despite the setbacks and mistakes, the war in Iraq is a critical component of fighting the War on Terror. Making that argument is their plan for the next six weeks until the election. All the while, they’ve been sitting on a report that says that’s flat wrong, a lie and that precisely the opposite is the case.

That’s a cover-up in every meaningful sense of the word, a calculated effort to hide information from and deceive the public. And it’s actually a replay of what happened in late 2002, when the White House kept the Iraq WMD NIE’s doubts about Iraqi weapons programs away from the public.

The president has made very clear he wants the next six weeks to be about Iraq and the War on Terror. By all means, let’s do it. But first the president has to come clean about what he’s keeping hidden from the public — the fact that the people he has fighting the War on Terror are telling him that what he’s telling the public about Iraq and the War on Terror flat isn’t true.

Late word from the White House is that the Times report is “not representative of the complete document.” Well, then, by all means, let’s get a look at the whole thing so the public can get the big picture and find out who’s telling the truth.

So pick up the phone and tell your reps and senators what you think. Then ask them whether they support releasing the April Iraq/Terrorism NIE to the public before the November election. Yes, or no. You may hear excuses that it can’t be released because it’s classified. But that’s plain bull. Reports like this are routinely and without much difficulty released in redacted versions which remove any specific information that might reveal what intel types call ‘sources and methods’.

Let us know what you hear. And in particular let us know your rep or senator’s answer. Do they support releasing the NIE or not? We’ll share it with the rest of our readers.

Top Republicans disagree over telling Americans what kinds of torture would be done on their behalf under the new compromise bill. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.