Yesterday CIA director, George Tenet, defended his agency's data-gathering efforts regarding pre-war intelligence that ultimately led to the war with Iraq. He sought both to clear up allegations of collusion with the administration, but at the same time toned down the true differences between the initial analysis of Iraq's threat to US interests and the spin used to take us to war.
Democracy Now invited former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman to discuss the disparity between Tenet's speech yesterday and the facts that were presented to the public before the war. Instead of distancing himself from the administration by stating that the CIA presented the intelligence which was later skewed by the administration to lead us to war, Tenet subtely reworded the original case so as to make the conclusions seem rational. Also discussed is the Office of Special Plans, a branch of intelligence gathering answerable only to vice president Cheney himslef. It was primarily this office which supplied the administration with it's faulty data and predictions of Sadaam's capabilities and weapons stockpiles. Side-stepping the traditional data-gathering mechanisms, Cheney's intimate connection with an office deep within the Pentagon is unheard of in US history and is just another troubling aspect of our current administration.

Yes Mickelson's Opus #Scarf in the key of Crochet Major is complete (full length somewhere around 5'6"). Halleluja. Alelulia. Amen. Here is Matthew, the lovely and talented, displaying the finished product. I would like to thank all those who relentlessly refused to accuse me of being an old biddy. I agree, I am a fairly young biddy as biddies go. I will continue biding my biddy time, oh lordy. Like I said before when the scarf was still young, I intend on taking up less arduous crocheting tasks in the future, but am glad that my first project has turned out a success (cross your fingers that it doesn't fall apart in a week). Anyone need a nice penis cozy?

languor LANG-guhr; LANG-uhr, noun:
1. Mental or physical weariness or fatigue.
2. Listless indolence, especially the indolence of one who is satiated by a life of luxury or pleasure.
3. A heaviness or oppressive stillness of the air.

For once, the dictionary.com word of the day perfectly fits me. I think I can apply all three definitions to my current life status. My mind is weary as is my body, I am satisfied by my luxurious lifestyle, yet feel the air heavily preesing in on all sides. Where does this languor come from? Why must I be trapped in its fetid embrace? I think many of us are trapped in our languorous lives of middle-classness. They claim it's freedom, I call it disaffection, from pleasure, pain, and sustenance. It arises from having no physical connection to our own survival, no feelings of a job well done or of actual hard work. Satisfaction comes at a price. Why have they taken it from us? Maybe a better question is why do we allow it to be taken from us? Yet nowadays even so-called satisfying, intellectually stimulating work is distanced from it's own results. Society stratifies everything, we are all but cogs in the great machine pumping out this gizmo or that gyro, to be reassembled elsewhere. The same goes for ideas, parts, maintenance, and service. The direct connection has been lost to the driving wheel of technology. The glue that holds us together has become morphed into a skein of machine parts and motherboards, business plans and outsourcing, overseas and undersea fiberoptics. Where does it end? Has it even yet begun? We certainly shall see, through lenses of disaffected langour.

Well finally there will be an investigation into the nature of pre-war intelligence which has so far turned out to be not much more than a load of horse shit. So-called president Bush said on Sunday that he would appoint memebers of an investigation comittee to examine the pre-war intel. This is where the problem lies though; it is ridiculous that the object (albeit how directly connected he was is yet to be determined)of an investigation appoints his own judges. The other factor that makes me wrinkle my nose is that this probe will undoubtedly focus on intelligence failures within the three departments in control, when I firmly believe that it is not what intelligence was available but how that intelligence was used that got us into a war. Oh, and also (of course) the commission is not expected to report before the presidential election in November. Hopefully once it begins it will almost immediately begin to find faults with the administration, especially as it will be helped along by members of the investigative arms who know where the blame belongs and don't want bush-stains on their shirts. We'll see...

Also, amid sky-rocketing deficit projections ad infinitum, the pentagon's budget has been okayed with huge increases in defense spending and new-weapon procurement with spending on new weapons reaching $114 billion in fiscal year 2009. The plan includes a 13-percent increase in missile defense spending, the woefully inadequate and, in the words of many leading experts, doomed-to-fail mission of protecting America from foreign-launched missiles by intercepting them via land, sea, or space-based missiles of our own. So our schools are failing, medical costs are shooting through the roof, half of us don't have health insurance, half the world hates us, but the Homeland will be secure. Oh joy.

Exhausted more like it. We went skiing, holly, dave, tk and myself. It was totally awesome and beautiful and the weather was perfect and the trails were great and life was magnificent. Oh what a life. We went on two "more difficult" trails (there are only three possibilities: easier, more difficult, and most difficult, apparently use of the superlative in every case is intended as positive reinforcement?) and definately felt the difference between it and the easier one, especially by the time we started the second. My legs are going to be sore as tarnation tomorrow. Speaking of which, is my first day back at the old job with ridiculous hours (2:30-11:00 blah!). That should be intersting. I have a book review to do soon. It will be a double feature about two similarly premised books. I betcha just can't wait. And, with that, ciao amigamis.