The right-wing fraud of "voter fraud" accusations

Josh Marshall explains the Republican fraud involved in accusations of voter fraud.

Rumors of "wide spread voter fraud" have invariably turned out to be exaggerated,administrative errors or flat out right wing lies designed to justify voter suppression efforts aimed to prevent Democrats from voting.

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Other posts on right wing voter suppression:

• McCain's really, really bad day May 25, 2008
• Texas (Republican) Attorney General practices voter suppression May 19, 2008
• How one Republican rigged elections for the RNC December 20, 2007
• Caging: What Bob Woodward doesn't know (or care) about Voter Suppression November 23, 2007
  
• Another great moment in voter suppression November 22, 2007
  
• Florida Republicans working hard to suppress minority voter registrations November 20, 2007
  
• Vote Suppression is the issue May 26, 2007
  
• "Caging" - an explanation of the term May 23, 2007
  
• Where is the REAL voter fraud? April 12, 2007
  
• More on the New Hampshire phone-jamming incident April 24, 2006
  
• More evidence that the 2004 election was hacked for Bush April 09, 2006

There is a pattern here. This should be enough evidence to demonstrate that the Republicans have a nationwide plan to prevent Democratic voters from casting ballots.

Bush lies in the little things; why should we trust him on anything?

Bush's speech last Thursday night was replete with shifting goals, bad history and more misdirection than a used car salesman trying to push an overpriced wreck. Just what we learned to expect from the person who delivered the famous sixteen words" in his 2003 State of the Union Speech.

But for this speech they aren't even trying to just misdirect the audience with irrelevant facts. This time Bush just flat lied. He stated that there are 36 nations "with troops on the ground" in Iraq at this time. So Spencer Ackerman at TPM Muckraker was finally able to get the list of countries that the White House counted in that 36. Here is an annotated version of the White House's list:

Countries with troops on ground in Iraq

1. Albania
2. Armenia
3. Austrailia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bosnia and Herzegovina
6. Bulgaria
7. Czech Republic
8. Denmark
9. El Salvador
10. Estonia
11. Georgia
12. Japan
13. Kazakhstan
14. South Korea
15. Latvia
16. Lithuania
17. Macedonia
18. Moldova
19. Mongolia
20. Poland
21. Romania
22. Singapore
23. Slovakia
24. Ukraine
25. United Kingdom
26. Tonga [A]

United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (Not listed are countries that are providing forces in other categories)[F]

1. Canada [B]
2. Fiji
3. New Zealand [C]

NATO Training NTM-I

1. Hungary [?][D]
2. Iceland [E]
3. Italy
4. Netherlands
5. Portugal
6. Slovenia
7. Turkey
[Strike-through's, highlighting and footnote markers are mine - Editor WTF-o.]

[A] Tonga has already withdrawn its troops from the MNF-I.
[B] Canada has already withdrawn its single soldier from the UNAM-I.
[C] New Zealand contributes a single individual to UNAM-I.
[D] Hungary's participation cannot at this time be confirmed.
[E] Iceland's single individual is not a soldier. The individual is a Press aide. Besides, that individual is already scheduled to leave Iraq as of October first.

[F] Counting participation in the UNAM-I as "Troops on the ground" is stretching the concept of troops. That organization is a civilian agency.

So the real number is 34 countries with people on the ground in Iraq assuming that Hungary actually does have them there. But the UNAM-I mission cannot by any stretch be considered "troops on the ground." If they were withdrawn, they are not performing a function that would have to be picked up by forces from the MNF-I. That brings the real number as the Bush speech defined it (troops on the ground in Iraq) down to 32 at best.

This was certainly incompetence and probably a lie on the part of Bush's speech writer, and for Bush to present such sloppy material on national TV was a lie on his part. Bush is directly responsible for the accuracy of the material in the speeches he gives, even if he does not write and vet them himself. If it had not been Bush's intent to stretch the apparent international appearance of the military force in Iraq, then he would have used only the twenty-five nations belonging to the Multi-National Force in Iraq in his speech.

Bush is pushing the occupation of Iraq like a sleazy used car salesman in a cheap suit trying to sell a clunker to a rube. Almost as bad is the clear incompetence with which Bush is performing. The easily verified errors and lies in his speech show a level of incompetence that should never occur in the Office of the President and certainly should never appear on National TV.

Is there any wonder that no one except hard core Republicans trusts a single thing that the White House asserts as true?

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Explanation of organizational acronyms:

• MNF-I is the acronym for Multi-National Force-Iraq. This replaces the term Bush originally used - "Coalition of the Willing" - and is the military command currently commanded by Gen. David Petreaus.
• NTM-I is the NATO Training Mission - Iraq. This NATO task force providing training to Iraqi Officers and Civilians.
• UNAM-I is the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq. It is the UN organization providing aid to rebuild Iraq.

Did AG Gonzales lie to Congress yesterday?

Let's look at the Hearings yesterday and see if how badly AG Gonzales lied yesterday.

Here is a set of highlight from the Hearings, put together by Talking Points Memo.

Then Spencer Ackerman provides a discussion of his "missteps" in yesterday's testimony.

One point that AG Gonzales made when discussing his attempt to explain why he was in Ashcroft's hospital room trying to get him to override the decision (even though Ashcroft was under the influence of sedating drugs at the time) of the temporary Attorney General Ashcroft had appointed before he entered the hospital. Gonzales blamed his actions (this time) on a meeting with Congressional leaders (the Gang of Eight) who were anxious to have the classified programming doing spying on Americans without a warrant. Rep. Jane Harmon (CA-D) was a member of the Gang of Eight and claims that Gonzales was lying.

Gonzales lied under oath to the Senate

John Solomon of the Washington Post, using documents received from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act, reports that the Attorney General lied to the Senate.

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Articles of Impeachment similar to those being prepared against Bush and Cheney need to also be prepared against the Attorney General - and quickly.

An impeachable crime has already been committed. Further hearings on the nature of civil rights abuse need to be held, but the impeachable offense of lying to the Senate under Oath should cause Gonzales to be removed immediately.

Republican definition of "Perjury Trap"

The White House has finally explained why they don't want any transcripts made of testimony by White House staffers. What if two of them disagree? That's a trap! One of them might actually be accused of lying to Congress and accused of perjury!!

See? They aren't going to LIE to Congress. But if they are CAUGHT lying (which requires a transcript of the testimony) then they might be ACCUSED of lying! That's a trap!

I guess its too late for them to avoid committing criminal acts in the first place, then trying to cover them up by lying, isn't it?

[h/t to Steve Benen at Washington Monthly.]

EmptyWheel on the release of the Intel reports about the Iraq War.

EmptyWheel does her usual excellent job of analysing the way the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) dealt with the long-delayed report on how the Bush administration used the Intelligence that the Intelligence Community (and especially the CIA) provided to them.

The information regarding what an invasion of Iraq would entail was there. The Bush White House and the Republican-dominated Congress ignored the valid and reasonahle information in favor of fantasy tales that were developed and distrubuted by the American Enterprise Institute and the American Standard. But the Republicans hate being caught out by this report. They really panned it.

The substantive complaint against this report comes from Senators Bond, Warner, Hatch and Burr. They dismiss the overwhelming power of the report, firstly, by claiming it's alright if decision makers ignore our own Intelligence Community in favor of the propagandists at the AEI.

While the Intelligence Community's assessments on post-war Iraq likely served as useful tools for policy makers and military planners, it was only one of several useful tools available to it. Other tools included outside academics and experts, media reports, and policy makers' and military experts' own education and experience.

The Republican Senators go on at some length, trying to dismiss the sound analysis the two reports offered by pointing at tactical elements the reports didn't predict--like the use of IEDs. And then they reveal their hand with their biggest complaint: the inclusion of the distribution lists for the two report, showing everyone from Richard Armitage to John Bolton to Dougie Feith to Stephen Hadley to Scooter Libby received the reports (though Senators Hagel and Snowe voted with Democrats to release the distribution lists).

The inclusion of [the distribution lists] is misleading, because the names on such lists are typically either the principals, staff heads or the security managers of a governmental office and there is no way to ensure whether the individuals named on the distribution list actually read the documents sent to their office.

This is the same excuse that Condi has used repeatedly, that she may not have seen the explicit warnings sent to her not to use the Niger claim. Funny how everyone in the Administration seems to have ignored precisely the reports of value, but now they want to duck responsibility for having ignored those reports. (Though they do make an excellent point--that the Committees should have admitted that they, the Committee members, had received the reports as well. I will be calling Rockefeller's office--and probably Feingold, who doesn't usually do purely partisan things--to see if they've got a good explanation.)

In short, the Republicans offer a bunch of excuses that, in the private sector, would get someone canned. "I didn't read the reports I was supposed to." "I ignored the company's own intelligence for that which I preferred, but now I don't want to take responsibility for having made that choice."

But in the Bush White House, such excuses don't get you fired, they get you promoted.

Of course the Republicans panned the report. It catches them out. They were spreading the misinformation that led to America's unnecessary attack on Iraq, and were concealing all of the valid information that suggested - even stated flat out - that an attack on Iraq was not a good idea. Now America is in the middle of the disaster they created and the Republicans really hope they can convince the rest of us that there is no real purpose in finding and exposing the idiots who started this damned disastrous war they started for no good reason.

They should not be allowed to get away with it.

How many political lies begin with "It would send the wrong message?"

When you hear a politician state that he will not approve of some action others are proposing because "It will send the wrong message to (someone or some group.)" he is invariably lying. It isn't that it sends anyone any message. It's that he doesn't want the action taken but refuses to tell the true reason why he doesn't want it. Providing education on birth control to teenagers does not give them any message giving permission to have sex. They'll do that either with or without education on birth control The reason that people offer that reason is that their real reason, that getting the girl pregnant is punishment for having sex, is not something they want to be seen to say in public. Providing clean needles to intravenous drug users does not imply approval of illegal drug use. Getting aids is punishment for breaking the rules.

The current case in point - cutting off funds for the Iraq war will neither leave troops in the field with no weapons, armor or fuel, nor will leaving Iraq send any kind of message to America's enemies that we are weak and vulnerable. It might actually send a message that grownups have taken control in Washington, but no one is going to do anything different from what they intended to do because of that revelation. See Glenn Greenwald.

Standard White House lie - "Clinton did it!"

The players in this little drama are a reporter (Q) and the Press Secretary, Dana Perino (MS. PERINO). The setting is another White House Press Briefing.

This scene started when the reporter asked Ms. Perino about the political briefings to political appointees assigned to federal agencies. The first question was:

Q Okay, on the political briefings, there seems — there’s no shortage of political information out there. Why does the White House feel it’s necessary to give these employees these briefings in the first place?

The White House spokesperson first tried misdirection. Note how she fails to answer the question.

MS. PERINO: I think that’s kind of ridiculous question. I mean, there’s — sorry, I usually don’t say those things, but I do think that that one was. Look, there is nothing wrong with political appointees providing other political appointees with an informational briefing about the political landscape in which they are working.

Kudos to the reporter. Here is the followup.

Q I understand. That’s not an answer, as ridiculous as the question was.

She tries more obfuscation, along with belittling.

MS. PERINO: What, you think that we should just look at the CBS/New York Times poll and make our decisions based on that?

This is followed by the reporter trying to frame a more specific question so as to get a real answer, with Ms. Perino doing what I would have to call filibustering. Her responses are a little more closely related to the question than reading the telephone book would be, but not much.

Q It’s 20 briefings –

MS. PERINO: Jim would agree.

Q Well, I’m trying to get to the motivation for this, and it’s 20 briefings –

MS. PERINO: The motivation is to provide people information.

Q But why? Why do they need this information –

MS. PERINO: Why are you asking me these questions? You’re asking information, as well.

Q No, no, but –

MS. PERINO: My point was that you’re asking –

Q Was there any intent to try to tell people that they need to do something about the election, and to take some action?

MS. PERINO: These are information — they’re informational briefings about the political landscape.

Clearly Ms. Perino is wriggling like an eel caught on a fishing line trying to avoid any substantive answer. But she actually used the word "intent" from the question in her answer, and the reporter jumped on this as a possible way to pin her down. So he expands on the idea of "intent" in his next followup.

Q Okay, so there was — there was no intent to do that? Who — did they ask for the briefings, or was it the White House that decided they wanted to give these briefings?

Ms. Perino seems to have decided that this was a way out of her dilemma. Pure non-answers weren't working, and both she and the reporter knew it. Maybe a different type of non-answer?

MS. PERINO: I think it sort of goes both ways. I do know that political appointees around the government — I used to work at an agency, and you are interested in — the reason that you’re here working for the President is that you want to support his policies and his agenda, and so it’s good to get information from time to time.

It was a slightly different tack, so the reporter riffs off of her response to throw in a new question.

Q Well, who’s idea — it was the White House idea, initially, or was it the agencies?

To which Ms. Perino responded with what must have seemed safe as she said it, but is simply a lie.

MS. PERINO: I think that these briefings — well, I know the Clinton administration had similar briefings. Where did they originate? I don’t know. I couldn’t give you a date.

Sure she doesn't know when they originated. She is dreaming it up on the spot. But it effectively closes down that line of questioning for the moment because no one at the Press gaggle could do effective real-time fact-checking.

These meetings on government property were clearly violations of the Hatch Act which has been in effect since 1939. It is a basic part of the mechanism of governing this nation. Either the members of the Bush administration knew about the Hatch Act and knew they were violating it, or they did not know and refused to listen when someone told them about it. They were knowingly violating the law. But their spokesperson, Ms. Perino, cannot stand up and say that "Oops. We goofed." This administration does not say that.

Lies are better than admissions of crimes. Ask any modern Republican. Ask Rove. Of course, he'll lie, but ask him anyway.

[Note: the transcript is from Think Progress.]

Why the media failed in the run-up to the war in Iraq

The major American media institutions bought into the lies and deceptions that the White House was peddling to take America to war in Iraq in 2003. Then they spread those lies and deceptions far, wide and deep so that any effort to question them became something only a fool or a traitor to America would try.

The result was the Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld preemptive(?) invasion of Iraq leading to the quagmire that we are now told we cannot leave, because leaving Iraq means that America has lost the war there. For personal reasons of their own, admitting that the war is lost is anathema to George W. Bush and John McCain. Those personal reasons are never stated. They are cloaked in patriotism with the idea that "America" cannot lose the war in Iraq.

We also know that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, that he considered bin Laden and al Qaeda his enemies, and that he had no nuclear weapons program, chemical weapons program or biological weapons program in active or potentially active status. The UN inspection teams had it right in their reports.

Once those lies were recognized generally there have developed several new reasons for why we invaded Iraq and remain there.

• First is that we had to remove a nasty dictator. Saddam was bad, but Mugabe in Zambia is worse, as are the leaders of Sudan who are conducting genocide on the natives of Darfur - but we don't have carrier groups off either coast nor do we have troops on the ground sending back a steady stream of bodybags from either of those countries.
  
• Then there is the idea that we should be there to bring democracy to Iraq. Besides being highly paternalistic, it is something now universally recognized by thinking people that we cannot do that with armed troops. Our very presence caused too much animosity, for one thing. For another, the sectarian strife we unleashed and with the help of al Qaeda sharply increased has made democracy a dream unlikely to be achieved until far in the future if at all. Certainly it will not happen while we have troops in Iraq.
  
• Another reason now given is that if we leave abruptly things will obviously get much worse rapidly. No one bothers to explain how or why they will get worse, but somehow the conditions now must not be as bad as it can get. Again, this his a highly paternalistic view of the Iraqi people. Somehow they won't be able to sort out governing themselves unless we have our Army and Marine Corps on hand to protect their politicians. Clearly they can't make the Iraqi government we foisted on them work. How can they create one of their own? They're just Arab Wogs, right? [The insult, WOGs, apparently is an acronym developed by the British army when they were attempting the idiotic occupation Iraq after WW I. It supposedly stands for "Old Wiley Gentlemen." Looked at that way, is seems more of a compliment than an insult.]
• The other reason for not getting our troops out of Iraq seems to be that Dick Cheney and the NeoCons think that if we admit that we have already lost the occupation we will appear weak to our enemies, such as Iran and North Korea. This is what I wrote on the subject last May 30th:

  This pessimistic view is one that leaves the U.S. in a real bind. As we remain in Iraq we are being bled like a Bull in a bullfight by the picadors before the main bull fight begins. There appears no way to actually change things there in a manner that would result in real peace. But if we leave, our pullout will set off the attempted genocide of the Sunnis by the Shiites, followed by the entry of Sunni Arabs from Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc.
  
  Bush seems to have decided that Iraq can establish a national government that will be able to pacify the situation. The five months it has taken to establish a government after the last election and the fact that no decision has been made on the security positions in that government, plus the fact that the government has no real power outside the Greed Zone of Baghdad makes that an unlikely long shot.
  
  Does the term "No win situation" occur to anyone besides me?

  Nothing has changed since then except to get worse.

So now for these weak reasons our purpose in keeping our nearly depleted Army and Marine troops in Iraq has been reduced to fear of admitting that we have lost the war there, and maybe that we are afraid the Iraqis have to have use there to shoot at so they won't focus even more on each other.

How did we get to this point? The incompetence of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld has been widely discussed in great detail. The failures of the major media have been decried, but with a lot less specificity. Until now. Now Gary Kamiya has written an excellent indictment of the media and published it in Salon. [Sit through the Day-Pass. It is short, and the article is worth the trouble!]

Then follow that up by reading Glenn Greenwald's discussion of the really bad lies that ABC News told America - repeatedly - about the Anthrax attacks on Americans and the (nonexistent) connection to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. This is the second of his discussions. It includes ABC's defense of its' indefensible actions in misdirecting the American public.

Poll: Public wants aggressive Dem investigation of Republican crimes, corruption

I hope the Comgressional Democrats read this set of polls. The public wants the criminal actions and corruption of the Bush administration investigated.

The story that investigating the Republicans will cause a blowback on the Democrats is frankly B*llsh*t. The real blowback will be on the Democrats if they don't thoroughly investigate the garbage the Republicans have been pulling for the last six years.

Voter Fraud? The Republicans lie to suppress Democratic votes

Here is something the Washington Post got correct. (Obviously not written by Fred Hiatt.) It is an editorial published today. First, remember that the US attorney for Washington State, John McKay, was fired because he failed to bring indictments against Democrats for voter fraud in the extremely narrow (under 100 votes) win by the Democratic candidate for Governor.

Allegations of voter fraud -- someone sneaking into the polls to cast an illicit vote -- have been pushed in recent years by partisans seeking to justify proof-of-citizenship and other restrictive ID requirements as a condition of voting. Scare stories abound on the Internet and on editorial pages, and they quickly become accepted wisdom.

But the notion of widespread voter fraud, as these prosecutors found out, is itself a fraud. Firing a prosecutor for failing to find wide voter fraud is like firing a park ranger for failing to find Sasquatch. Where fraud exists, of course, it should be prosecuted and punished. (And politicians have been stuffing ballot boxes and buying votes since senators wore togas; Lyndon Johnson won a 1948 Senate race after his partisans famously "found" a box of votes well after the election.) Yet evidence of actual fraud by individual voters is painfully skimpy.

Before and after every close election, politicians and pundits proclaim: The dead are voting, foreigners are voting, people are voting twice. On closer examination, though, most such allegations don't pan out. Consider a list of supposedly dead voters in Upstate New York that was much touted last October. Where reporters looked into names on the list, it turned out that the voters were, to quote Monty Python, "not dead yet."

Or consider Washington state, where McKay closely watched the photo-finish gubernatorial election of 2004. A challenge to ostensibly noncitizen voters was lodged in April 2005 on the questionable basis of "foreign-sounding names." After an election there last year in which more than 2 million votes were cast, following much controversy, only one ballot ended up under suspicion for double-voting. That makes sense. A person casting two votes risks jail time and a fine for minimal gain. Proven voter fraud, statistically, happens about as often as death by lightning strike.

Yet the stories have taken on the character of urban myth. Alarmingly, the Supreme Court suggested in a ruling last year ( Purcell v. Gonzalez) that fear of fraud might in some circumstances justify laws that have the consequence of disenfranchising voters. But it's already happening -- those chasing imaginary fraud are actually taking preventive steps that would disenfranchise millions of real live Americans.[Editor - Highlighting is mine.]

Remember, this is individual voter fraud being discussed in this editorial. The Republican allegations of individual voter fraud is primarily a set of allegations to be used to justify installing rules to require forms of identification not usually carried by many non-Republican voters. These rules are primarily intended to suppress the total vote by non-Republicans.

Gonzales is doing exactly what Bush wants/expects - he's lying for Bush.

Once again, Josh Marshall clarifies what the repeated lies out of the Deparment of Justice proves without any doubt. Gonzales lied, when caught crafted a new lie to cover it, and was caugut again and lied again. so why does George W. Bush keep him on?

It's not friendship. It's the fact that Alberto is doing exactly what George w. Bush expected him to do and wants him to do. Bush's entire administration is a set of lie stacked on lie stacked on lie. That's who is holding the White House.

Bush.is.the.worst.President.ever.

Another Republican Lie

You know, someone should do a website or blog that did nothing except record the lies that come out of the Republican Party. I don't think I could, though. There are SO MANY!

Here is another at TPM Muckraker.