Author: briggs

Mary McCarthy once famously declared that every word Lillian Hellman wrote was a lie, including “and” and “the.” I don’t bring this up to get into the feud between two acclaimed writers. Rather, it came to mind when I was thinking about President Bush’s now famous “16 words” in the January 2003 State of the…

Or, a tale of a sneakily different color….the testimony of Bob Woodward, purveyor of deep cover journalism, in which he reveals his conversation with “Cheney’s Cheney” I. Lewis Libby on June 23, 2003 about an 18-page list of questions he wanted Cheney’s Cheney’s Cheney to answer, including one about “yellowcake.” I too, would like to…

2002 was a busy year for the Bush Team…. January 9: Douglas Feith (OOSP) calls Lt. Gen. Jay Garner on the phone…. Feith: Garner, I got a job for you. Garner: Hello? Who is this? Feith: Directive from da Man himself Garner: The president?! Feith: Rumsfeld, you idiot. Da Man. We need you to put…

As the NY Times finally gets its ass in gear and finds some reporters who aren’t owned by their sources to get on the Yellowcake Papers story…we continue with our little tale of aging spies, Italians in love, and the Bush administration’s Alternative Reality Operations (AROs). The Story, Part II: Recipe for a W-r (classified)…

To continue the story of how an aging Italian spy called Rocco, for purposes all his own and not related to Dick Cheney’s need to find the goods on Saddam Hussein in order to justify a war on Iraq, concocted a phony “dossier,” also known as The Niger Papers (or Yellowcake as I like to…

The U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee inquiry may be going nowhere but thankfully we have the Italian Parliament to help us in our journey to enlightenment in the Yellowcake! story. And I have Nur-al-Cubicle to thank for providing a lucid summary of La Repubblica‘s reportage on the government investigation of “The Niger Documents”. The Story,…