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It looks like Mary Matalin, Chris Wallace and Bill Kristol all got their talking points from the same place for the Sunday shows this week. Matalin, like Wallace claims that we haven't been attacked since 9-11 and then names anthrax attacks as something that was prevented by the CIA after they tortured prisoners.

Uuummmm.... Mary, I hate to break this to you, but we were attacked by anthrax. But then you're fully aware of that already, aren't you? I doubt there's a single person in the Bush administration that has forgotten the event that was enough to scare some Democrats into voting for the invasion of Iraq.

I'm also wondering how many of the "attacks" she rattled off are on the list from Keith Olbermann's The Nexus of Politics and Terror? My guess is more than a few if she was forced to give specifics and maybe had someone besides her DINO husband and that hack John King sitting across the table from her.

As our own Jon Perr pointed out to me, Matalin is doing a good job of carrying water for Dick Cheney and his strategy to assure that torture is never investigated.

Transcript below the fold.

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While discussing the latest revelations from Tom Ridge's new book that the Homeland Security terrorist threat alerts were used for political purposes, Bill Kristol defends what happened just before the election where they decided it would be too obvious if they raised it again and uses that one example to claim that the program was not used for political purposes. Fox just loves them some little neo-con serial liars, don't they? Bill, just because they finally decided they over played their hand doesn't mean they weren't playing politics with the fear card.

Newshounds has the breakdown of just how the alerts were used in the run up to the election. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid:

2001
Oct 11: The FBI warned of imminent terrorist attacks in the US "in the next several days". Of course there was no indication of when or where these attacks would occur. There were no attacks.

Oct 29: The Administration warned of plans to strike the US "in the next week." No specifics such as dates or targets were given. There were no attacks.

Dec 3: Ridge warns that terrorist strikes "could happen within the next few weeks," possibly connected with the Muslim religious festival of Ramadan. There were no attacks.

2002
Jan 17: Ashcroft warns that suicide attacks "might be expected because of confidential information" the US government had received. No dates or places were given. Nothing more was ever heard about the "confidential information." There were no attacks.

Feb 10: The FBI warned there was a threat of "imminent attacks on the US that might happen as early as Feb 12." There were no attacks.

Mar 27: The government issued a warning that American citizens in 4 Italian cities "would be attacked on Easter Sunday." There were no attacks.

May 19: VP Cheney states that he is "certain of new attacks against the US". There were no attacks.

May 21: The FBI warned of imminent threat of� "attacks against the Brooklyn Bridge & the Statue of Liberty". There were no attacks.

Sep 10: The government raised the National Alert Level to orange stating that there would be "strikes against American sites on the anniversary of the Sept 11 attack". Air patrols were instituted & access to government buildings was prohibited. There were no attacks.

2003
Feb 8: Ridge & Ashcroft announced a high National Terror Alert, claiming they had "evidence that terrorists would attack American hotels & apartment buildings." There were no attacks.

Mar 17. National Alert Level raised to orange. No reasons are given. There were no attacks.

Mar 18. The Arizona National Guard was alerted & sent to a nuclear plant because "an attack by al Qaeda agents was imminent". There was no attack.

Dec 21: Ridge raised alert levels & warned that the" threat of imminent attack is now the most serious since 2001". There was no attack.

2004
Apr 2: The Administration warns about "pending terrorist attacks on buses & trains". There were no attacks.

May 26. Ashcroft & Mueller warn of a "plane attack inside the US" & that terrorists "were poised for an immediate attack". There was no attack.

Aug 1: Ridge raised the alert level to orange, claiming knowledge of plots against US financial institutions. It was later discovered that his "knowledge" was 4 years old & very unspecific. There was no attack.

And then of course we have Keith's reporting which at the time I'm surprised didn't get him kicked off of the air at MSNBC on the Nexus of Politics and Fear, which he just updated and my friend and fellow contributor here at Video Cafe CSPANJunkie just posted for me this week.

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h/t C&L'er Mugsy

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After Liz Cheney claims that her father never tried to tie Saddam Hussein to 9-11, while trying to tie Saddam Hussein to 9-11 herself, Mitchell stops her in her tracks for playing fast and loose with the facts. Mitchell then follows with this.

Mitchell: Well, I'm going to go back, I'll do my homework, invite you back so we can talk about this more because I think that there were if not explicit, implicit connections suggesting at various points along the way..one..

Cheney: Well that's not...that's actually not fair Andrea because I think that, you know after 9-11 the issue of Saddam, you know, became a critically important issue for our national security because of his connections to terrorists and because we believed he had stockpiles of WMD. We knew and he did continue to have the technology that he could share with the terrorists. That's a very different thing than saying he was connected to 9-11.

Break out the waaaambulance. Heaven forbid Cheney would want to allow something like a few facts to get in the way of her spin. I don't think we're going to see that follow up interview any time soon.

And yes, she's completely full of it.

Men may not be necessary to Maureen Dowd, but a professional ethicist appears to be.
TPM:

Maureen Dowd in today's NY Times:

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

TPM's Josh Marshall on Thurs:

"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

Almost verbatim. Look, we bloggers take shortcuts and copy and paste others all the time. I do it because there are a whole host of people out there who write better than I. But we GIVE CREDIT when we do it, as I did above when acknowledging that this post came from TPM. For a Pulitzer Prize winner to lift work done by bloggers and pass it off as her own on the pages of the NY Times is just not cool.

UPDATE: MoDo admits to HuffPo that she lifted the words and will give Josh Marshall proper credit...but I'm puzzled by her alibi:

josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now.

i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.

but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.
we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.

Now am I mistaken, or did MoDo just excuse her plagiarism by saying that she actually was trying to plagiarize her friend?

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Dick Cheney just can't keep out of the spotlight. He can't do it. Implementing torture and attacking Iraq for no good reason just wasn't enough for him. He has to keep coming back for more. The man with the lowest approval ratings since the Nixon era now thinks he has to attack President Obama as soon as he sits in the Oval office and he does it the cowardly way. With Sean Hannity. He goes after President Obama because he has denounced torture and released the CIA memos. That means Darth Cheney has to defend his own treacherous policy along with the implementation of it.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney last month formally asked the Central Intelligence Agency to de-classify top secret documents he believes show harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding helped prevent terrorist attacks against U.S. targets, according to source familiar with the effort.

On Monday, Cheney disclosed the request to Sean Hannity of Fox News' "Hannity." The request was made in late March, before President Barack Obama unsealed top-secret memos about past interrogation techniques last week...

“The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work,” he told Fox News Sunday.

“I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven't announced this up till now, I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”

Joe Gandleman has a good take on Cheney and Gingrich.

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On Meet the Press Richard Wolffe takes Rich Lowry to task for his statements about how important no attacks on US soil are as opposed to attacks overseas and how that lack of concern is extremely short sighted and unfortunately David Gregory makes sure Lowry gets to spew some more right wing talking points in response to Wolffe without giving him a chance to respond.

Full transcript to follow.

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The conservative panel of David Brody, Stephen Hayes, Amy Holmes and Brian Debose on CNN's "The After Party" have themselves a little wing-nut delusion festival over how George Bush will be remembered. Hayes continues to perpetuate the myth that George Bush has kept us safe from a terrorist attack. Holmes has a big chuckle over whether Dick Cheney admitting to torture will be a problem for them or not and thinks it won't matter since Bush has only got a month left in office. I guess she thinks there is some statute of limitations on what's been done that expires when Bush leaves office or that The Hague won't deal with if our country and the Obama administration sadly does not. And Brian Debose seems to think that torturing prisoners is legal but maybe not moral and that is his only concern with what's happened. Rough transcript for anyone that can't watch the video:

Brody: Alright let's move on to President Bush, his legacy. He's on the magical mystery tour now, whatever he's doing and do you get a sense Steve, what is this going to be like exactly for George Bush? How will he be remembered? Is this going to be a Harry Truman type situation where he wasn't looked upon all that great coming out of office but maybe give it ten, fifteen, fifty, seventy five years?

Hayes: Well I think that's their hope but they're certainly not taking any chances so I think the Bush administration and his top advisers have been working now for more than six months to help shape this legacy. They've been working on this thing called the Bush Legacy Project where they've been meeting regularly talking about the kind of things that they want to highlight to the country as he's on his way out.

I mean I think, you know it was easy to listen to the progressives sort of down play the fact that we haven't been attacked since 9-11. But if you look back at the public opinion polls taken at the time you know some eighty percent of Americans thought we'd not only be attacked again but we'd be subject to a major catastrophic attack. It's a big deal and it's because of his policies that we haven't been attacked.

Brody: This administration has taken some major hits over waterboarding and torture, especially Dick Cheney. Let me play a clip of Dick Cheney this week on ABC.

[Cut to video.]

Brody: Amy, how much of a problem is this for the administration?

Holmes: With one month to go, not very much and when you look at Gitmo even in the New York Times a few weeks ago said well letting them out, that could be a little tricky. Do we want to throw them into our Federal court system where they could maybe use it against us. Rendition is difficult because these countries actually don't want these guys. These are actual real terrorists that are down there. And we don't have any easy answers and all of the sudden the New York Times figured that out now that Barack Obama is going to be the Commander in Chief.

Debose: That has been the argument all together. The only problem I have with some of the messaging that has come out with respect to Dick Cheney is trying to defend the morality of torture and other things that went on versus the legality. You can defend the legality. Morally that is something totally different and I don't like the merger of those two things. That's, that's the only thing that's really been problematic.