CENSORSHIP: Fox broadcast the EMMY Awards and CENSORED Emmy-winner SALLY FIELDS (for her role as Nora Walker in the show “Brothers & Sisters”).Upon accepting her award–for a role who’s a mother who’s sent a child to war–Fields said. “If the mothers ruled the ruled, there wouldn’t be any goddamned wars!”

WATCH HER SPEECH

INTEREST RATE CUT EXPECTED TODAY
DEBATING BIN LADEN’S VIDEO
PLANNING FOR AN IRAQ EXIT

Was the late Bush-backed sheikh a real sheikh or was he just playing one on TV, like some Saddam double in the days of old? Greg Palast says it was the latter”

The sheik wasn’t a sheik. He was a fake. While proclaiming to Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films that he was “the leader of all the Iraqi tribes,” Abu lead no one. But for a reported sum in the millions in cash for so-called, “reconstruction contracts,” Abu Risha was willing to say he was Napoleon and Julius Caesar and do the hand-shakie thing with Bush on camera.

Notably, Rowley and his camera caught up with Abu Risha on his way to a “business trip” to Dubai, money laundering capital of the Middle East.

There are some real sheiks in Anbar, like Ali Hathem of the dominant Dulaimi tribe, who told Rick Abu Risha was a con man. Where was his tribe, this tribal leader? “The Americans like to create characters like Disney cartoon heroes.”

Then Ali Hathem added, “Abu Risha is no longer welcome” in Anbar.

“Not welcome” from a sheik in Anbar is roughly the same as a kiss on both cheeks from the capo di capi. Within days, when Abu Risha returned from Dubai to Dulaimi turf in Ramadi, Bush’s hand-sheik was whacked.

WAS IT FOR OIL? JUAN COLE THINKS SO

Alan Greenspan confirms that he urged the Bush administration to take out Saddam on grounds of petroleum security for the US, and says one official told him, ‘unfortunately we can’t talk about oil.’ Long-time readers know that I think restructuring the architecture of US energy security was among the major motives for the Iraq War. This thesis does not contradict the Mearsheimer-Walt theory that the Israel lobby and Israeli security formed a major impetus to the war, since US and Israeli interests in energy security overlap. It is just circumstantial, but I see a nexus in the American Enterprise Institute of Exxon-Mobil money and former officials and Neoconservative intellectuals, both with the ear of Dick Cheney.

UNDERNEWS: CIA’S LAST MAN IN VIETNAM SAYS IT’S TIME TO PLAN FOR A QUICK EXIT FROM IRAQ

JEFF STEIN, CQ - No matter President Bush’s assurances of an “enduring relationship” with Iraq, it’s not too soon to plan for a swift evacuation of Baghdad, says the CIA man at the center of the chaos when the Vietnam War ended three decades ago.

The swift retreat of the South Vietnamese Army in the face of an enemy offensive was as much of a surprise to American commanders in Saigon as a complete Iraq government collapse is unimaginable to U.S. leaders today, says Frank Snepp, who was the CIA’s top analyst on communist strategy in Saigon in 1975.

“Wishful thinking is a narcotic, and it doomed us, and a lot of our friends, in Vietnam in the last days,” Snepp said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, where he now works as an investigative producer for KNBC-TV.

“If we want to go through that humiliation again, then we should proceed along with our blinkers intact. That should be one cautionary lesson from the last moments of that war,” he said. “There are others, but that is an overriding one.”. . .

U.S. commanders need to prepare to exit with what friends they have, Snepp said.

“What they need to do is prepare for an endgame. I’m not talking a vague preparation of some possible landing zones and egress routes for American forces and our friends. They have to get down to the nitty-gritty, and talk about how many people can be evacuated by whatever means, whether overland or by airlift, within a particular given time and emergency circumstances.”

In Saigon, U.S. officials feared setting off mass panic by even thinking aloud about evacuation plans, much less making them, right up until North Vietnamese tanks were crunching up the city’s streets. “Then it was too late. We didn’t have time to draw up lists of the people we should be assisting,” Snepp said -

THE ONGOING RIP OFF IN IRAQ—WHERE’S WASHINGTON?

BUSH NAMES RUDY FRIEND TO BE NEXT AG

The NY Times reported that President announced he would mominate Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge from New York, as attorney general.

Who is he?

The Center for American Progress thinks it is progress:

For decades, Judge Mukasey has been a close friend of Mayor Giuliani. He worked beneath Mr. Giuliani both at Patterson Belknap and at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. It was Mr. Mukasey who swore in Mayor-elect Giuliani in 1994 and 1998. Along with Mr. Olson, Judge Mukasey currently advises the Giuliani campaign on judicial matters. Judge Mukasey’s son, Marc, is a partner in the New York office of Mr. Giuliani’s law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani LLP.

Given his close ties to Mr. Giuliani, Judge Mukasey has faced teasing from friends who have told him not to get too comfortable back at his firm given the prospect of a Giuliani presidency, a source said.

Judge Mukasey’s national reputation rests largely on his handling of the nearly year-long trial in 1995 of a blind sheik and nine followers who plotted to blow up landmarks around New York City, including the United Nations.

Given Mukasey’s prior recommendations of support from Schumer and Nan Aron, the head of the liberal judicial activist group Alliance for Justice, the right-wing is sounding concerns that Mukasey isn’t the right choice. Some right-wing groups have reportedly “been drafting a strategy to oppose him.”

AS FOR RUDY

View the ad at: http://pol.moveon.org/giuliani/ ***

MOVE ON CHARGES: Iraq Study Group Asked Him to Leave over Frequent Absences Former Mayor’s Priority Was High-Fee Speaking Gig

A new TV ad attacking Rudy Giuliani for failing to address the Iraq War problem when he had the chance as a member of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) will begin airing this week in Iowa. The former mayor was asked to leave the prestigious committee because of his frequent absences. Rather than meeting his obligation to the group, Giuliani spent his time collecting high fees for speaking engagements all over the country.

CBS: MCAIN TO MOVEON—MOVE OUT OF THE COUNTRY

Arizona Senator John McCain has taken criticism of anti-war group MoveOn.org to a whole new level: He is suggesting that the organization “ought to be thrown out of this country.”

COLIN POWELL’s NEW VIEW ON THE TERRORIST THREAT

[From GQ]: Isn’t the new global threat we face even more dangerous?

COLIN POWELL - What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?

I would approach this differently, in almost Marshall-like terms. What are the great opportunities out there - ones that we can take advantage of? It should not be just about creating alliances to deal with a guy in a cave in Pakistan. It should be about how do we create institutions that keep the world moving down a path of wealth creation, of increasing respect for human rights, creating democratic institutions, and increasing the efficiency and power of market economies? This is perhaps the most effective way to go after terrorists.

OTHER NEWS:

European Court Rejects Microsoft Antitrust Appeal

Europe’s second-highest court upheld today a 2004 antitrust ruling that found the software company had abused its dominance in operating systems.

Iraqi government cancels license of private security firm Blackwater after shootout kills eight civilians;

PREARING FOR MARTIAL LAW

MONKS MARCH IN MYAMAR