Busholini's targeting of journalists is a desperate, pathetic, outrage. The truth definitely hurts our petty tyrant.

Small wonder Srgrena, the Italian journalist/ hostage, was shot at on her way to the Baghdad airport. She was doing the story on our use of white phosphorous in Falluja.

Accidents, my ass. Can you believe the infantile, cowardly lying of this team whenever they get caught at their Fascist moves? They have neither courage or convictions. But maybe Patrick Fitzgerald can help us with the convictions, SOOONER, rather than later.

At this point, I hope our Demander-in-Chief does stay the course all the way to impeachment.

Steve, please give our deep regrets to Yosri Fouda.

For those of use who are not insiders, can someone explain if or how Gaffney is integrated into this administration? Does he pop off as a lone gunman wingnut, or does he hang out at Camp David and Crawford?

Dare we hope that this "Iraq affair" will awaken real journalism?

If any good has come out of it where Americans are concerned it is this, that the Bush administration has exposed to any American willing to look, just how our government really works rather than the idealisms that we were taught as children.

The word "corrupt" quickly comes to mind.

But is that not what we the voters, the citizens, get for allowing ourselves to be so easily distracted?

Whoever said it is correct, "Freedom is not free".

Hi Steve,

Frank Gaffney was one of the most bellicose proponents of this illegal and immoral war, appearing on all the cable stations. This guy is dangerous. To even consider that Bush would listen to him is beyond belief. Bush must be as off his rocker as Gaffney. It makes me wonder who we really have as president.

Roberto in Utah

> Roberto in Utah

Man, it's got to be politically lonely being
an informed political realist living in
Utah. I noticed that Utah is one of five or
six states where approval of the job G.W. Bush
is doing as president is over 50%. If Bush loses
Utah all is pretty much lost for him. As it is
his political capital is in the same state as his
oil companies. But this time it does not look
like anyone, least of all Daddy, is going to bail
his sorry ass out.

Ian

Frank Gaffney is one of the most horrible and offensive human beings in Washington. Yes, he was a vocal and forceful supporter of the war, but, no, he does not work for this Administration and he really can't be considered an insider. He last held a job in the Pentagon (at the Deputy Assistant Secretary level) in the middle of the Reagan Administration. Since then, he's been sitting on the outside, talking to anyone who will listen, and making a general nuisance of himself. He often gets invited to speak on panels or testify before Congress, but often because its hard to find anyone else who holds his off-the-wall opinions. He also was almost single-handedly responsible for the sinking of Mort Halperin's nomination to the Clinton Pentagon. He blanketed the Senate with faxes that were full of lies and distortions. But it worked. I don't know anyone who takes him seriously anymore, but that doesn't make him any less hateful.

My organization will not invite him to participate in anything because he has a nasty habit of insulting and demeaning other people on the panels when he appears.

I guess if Gaffney feels so strongly that Al-Jazeera should be taken off the air as a propaganda machine, then he shouldn't be too upset if the same were to happen to Fox News. At least, it shouldn't be unexpected.

Just because he feels that his point of view is right and theirs is wrong, doesn't mean he should be allowed to effectively censor them. I can't stand Fox News, but I respect their right to broadcast and deliver their message. The same should be said for Al-Jazeera. Propaganda is propaganda, no matter the political basis for it. And the Bush administration is all about propaganda.

Steve C. is always on point. Last week my wife told me there was this absurd "former Reagan official" speaking for the Bush administration on BBC world service. I thought it was Kenneth Adelman, who is pretty outrageous, but couldn't find this official’s name anywhere on the BBC website. Next day, I come into work and checked out Washington Note and there's Gaffney's name up in lights. Steve C. has got things locked down.

You can watch "Why We Fight" online at

http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_cover-ups.htm

Great film. By the same guy who made "The Crimes of Henry Kissinger". BTW is anyone surprised that Kissinger is speaking out against "pre-maturely" withdrawing US troops from Iraq. Isn't this the same guy who sat around and bickered over the shape of the negotiation table while Vietnamese and American's died and didn't get troops out until years later?

Quite interesting to compare the rhetoric of various neo-con ideologues now that 'the great beast', public opinion, has gone south on them and their entire project.

Some striking differences are becoming apparent: Perle seems more comfortable playing the role of the dissembler, taking the Zionist, pro-Likud (as opposed to pro-Israel) emphasis of his worldview undergound and appealing -- rather crudely, one might say; apparently he can't do any better -- to elite audiences.

Gaffney on the other hand has chosen to go with denial and deception. Why acknowledge that the doctrine you've helped to push and promote for so long has utterly, spectacularly and rather dramatically failed if you can instead just go on demonizing South American heads of state and advocate a new round of Reaganesque adventures à la Grenada when Iraq is burning, mercenaries are playing shoot-em-up with civilians and torture is regarded as official American policy around the world?

Thanks for some of the "backgrounders" and observations on Gaffney. This guy looks, sounds, and I can imagine smells, like a total goon. Helps add context to his red meat flack jobs for the noise machine. Surprised he didn't turn to a career in interrogations where he could really give vent to his inner demons.

Quite why the administration would allow Gaffney to spout his nonsense is beyond me. When it comes to suggesting that it's perfectly ok for the US to bomb its key allies, at the expense of losing crucial basing and airspace rights, you're actively imperilling your good faith position.

It just goes to show how desperate the PR game has become - and there is no apparent thought for the damage it is going to do to US relationships with the wider world. The message to allies is: if we choose to, we'll eat you.

I have seen Frank Gaffney several times recently on BBC World being interviewed as if he fairly reprsents the American point of view - most recently on Chavez of Venezuela. I'm shocked that the BBC is using such an ideologue so regularly and seeming to treat his views as mainstream.

This guy is trash! I am amazed that he was involved with any administration, I just know him as the “Channel 11” (WB NYC) news anchor. Before he got his CNN gig he hit then dragged a pedestrian a few blocks, it turns out he was drunk.

Got to love the internet. I confused Frank Gaffney with Jack Cafferty and it was all done anonymously

Here's a profile of Gaffney. Links to sources are at the bottom of the page.

When he's not declaring Chavez a mortal threat to the free world and urging coups and assassinations in Venezuela, he predicts pending doom in form of an electromagnetic pulse launched by, you guessed it, Iran, against the US. No kidding.

Details from Jeffrey Lewis and Nick Schwellenbach.

And his pal Bill Gertz is promoting Gaffney's new 'book' War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World in the Washington Times.