Another nail in the coffin of the Pelosi plane tale.
The GOP Rep. who took the lead in pushing the bogus story now admits he didn’t know or care if it was true.
DSCC asks what’s up with terror financier who says he’s member of NRSC’s “inner circle.”
Ahhh, the Alishtari case, the
man who just kept giving to the Republican party and now the story that just keeps giving.
Here at the right you see the man himself. And if you click this link you’ll see the ‘press release‘ the Republican National Committee sent out when Mr. Alishtari was appointed to the NRCC’s ‘Business Advisory Council’.
Alishtari had the document posted on his company’s website GlobalProtector.Net.
His site also apparently had copies of signed photos from President Bush as well as a note from President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush thanking Alishtari for contributing to the Republican party.
From what we’ve heard the NRCC and NRSC still won’t say whether they plan to return Alishtari’s money.
(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader PK.)
Late Update: The latest we hear is that the NRCC is saying they don’t want to rush to judgment but want due process for Alishtari. They’ll cough up the money if and when he’s convicted.
Even Later Update: It seems that before Mr. Alishtari got hit with those terror financing charges, his site hosted a photograph of him meeting former GOP Rep. and now CNN Yakmaster J.C. Watts.
Read the National Republican Congressional Committee’s statement on Alishtari, urging against “rushing to judgment” on the guy just because he’s been indicted for supporting terrorism, here.
Jessica Valenti, Executive Editor of Feministing.com, joined TPMCafe’s Coffee House today. Here’s her first post.
Tony Snow: Note how Bush feels about the troops — not what he says or does.
John Kerry on Britain’s phased withdrawal: âAmericaâs leading ally in Iraq has decided that a timetable for the phased redeployment of troops is the only responsible policy to help force Iraqis to stand up for Iraq. After years of touting Prime Minister Blairâs resolve, the Administration should now pay attention to his new policy. This announcement makes it all the more inexplicable that the President and leading Republicans actually want to send more American troops into the middle of an Iraqi civil war.â
In an email I got this evening, here’s how Peter Bergen introduced the new article he’s written with Paul Cruickshank on Iraq and Jihadist terrorism …
Paul Cruickshank of NYU’s Center on Law and Security and I coauthored this attached study which we believe is the first attempt to measure the effect of the Iraq war on jihadist terrorism. The headline– a sevenfold increase in jihadist terrorist attacks since the beginning of the Iraq war compared to the period after the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of iraq in March 2003. Much of that increase is accounted by jihadist terror attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we also found enormous increases in the Arab world outside Iraq and some real increases in attacks against US NATO allies. The only good news was in Southeast Asia where there was a 67% drop, but that had little to do with events in Iraq.
Here’s the article.
If you approach the Iraq War in common sense terms rather than as an exercise in ideological grandiosity and historical narcissicism, the results are not surprising. Grim, but not surprising.
Today’s Must Read: controversy rages over a rape case in Iraq, and Prime Minister Maliki, apparently a stranger to the phrase “damage control,” does what he can to further inflame the situation.