Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis

Source: Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

“It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House,” said one yesterday.

The news comes at a critical point in the world’s negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.

It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a “significant” part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.

“Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises,” said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. “It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat.”

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as “the first real economic crisis of globalisation”.

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: “Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.”

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.

“Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate,” says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.

The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.

Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.

“It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices,” said Dr David King, the government’s former chief scientific adviser, last night. “All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change.”

Re: The George W. Bush Sewage Plant

Kinda insulting for the sewage plant.

Source: Dan Savage, The Stranger.

The question really isn’t “Why didn’t we think of this,” Jen, but “Why don’t we do this too?”

Every time I pass through George H. W. Bush airport in Houston, Texas, or the Reagan National in D.C., this thought runs through my head: One day I’m gonna fly into George W. Bush International Airport and my head is going to explode. The right is aggressive about getting shit named after their ex-presidents—anyone flown into William J. Clinton International Airport lately? or James Carter International?—and the left isn’t. It’s part of their Great Man/Dear Leader/crypto-fascist schtick.

Anyway, you can bet your ass that when Mr. 23% is out of office—oh, blessed day—right-wing sycophants will set about memorializing W by naming airports, highways, federal buildings, flower pots, and children after him. This name-shit-after-W campaign will organized and aggressive and it will have two primary goals: Make right-wingers feel better about voting the moron into office in the first place (exonerating themselves, really, for the damage he’s done to this country) and confuse future generations of voters about just how universally loathed this president was.

So naming naming sewage treatment plants—or other suitably disgusting facilities—after the bastard seems like a great idea to me. The campaign to name shit after W once he’s out of office will be political; a political campaign to name sewage plants after him before he gets out of office is just good defense. And it is not, as some in the comments would have it, a waste of time and effort. Humor has its place at the ballot box. If gathering signatures to memorialize W in this way gets people involved, and if the chance to name a sewage treatment plant after W brings more people to the polls (or their mailboxes) come November, then it’s all to to the good.

So: What shall we name after the bastard?

One nation, underinformed (and one state underwater)

Can we please impeach this goon now? Really, jail is too good for him.

Source: Elanor, the Ethicurean.

Ignoreland

If you’ve read my previous posts on Bush administration attempts to reduce public access to information about toxic substances in agriculture — from CAFO air pollution to pesticides — then the coming rant will sound familiar. Here we go: In addition to cutting funds to monitor stream flows, Bush has axed funding to the National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program, which collects long-term data on groundwater quality and drinking water supplies. NAWQA had 496 water-quality monitoring sites in 2000. Now it has 113. The administration’s 2009 budget proposal cuts funding even further, and the U.S. Geological Survey, which implements the program, estimates that they’ll have to halt the collection of water quality data completely in 29 states as a result.

Also on the chopping block is the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program, which Bush has been trying to eliminate for years. As it happens, this is the program charged with identifying and tracking data on water pollution from pesticides. Bush’s 2009 budget proposal zeros out the program. It’s convenient that the administration has also suspended the Ag Chemical Use Survey; since we won’t know which pesticides are being used on U.S. crops, nor how much, what’s the point in trying to track their presence in our water?

Then there’s the National Stream Water Quality Accounting Network, a collection of monitoring sites that track the concentration of chemicals in major U.S. rivers, including the Mississippi. Its funding has declined in real terms each year since 2002, and the number of monitoring stations has fallen by 92% since 1997. Many of the smaller streams that feed the Mississippi are no longer being tested.

And finally, on a broader note, let’s not forget the role that climate change may have played in the floods (and the more extreme impacts it could have on our food system in the future). According to the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program, precipitation has been rising steadily in the northern hemisphere over the last century, with the Midwest showing the greatest increase — a jump as big as 20% in some areas. Too bad that Bush has cut critical funding for programs that track climate change, including NASA’s climate satellites.

The Iowa floods have turned a big spotlight on the issue of water contamination from industrial ag sources, although arguably they’d been contaminating Iowa’s water for a good long time before the floods came. When Iowans finally dig out and start asking questions about how agrichemical exposure might affect them and their families, though, they won’t find a lot of answers. Nor will residents living down-river.

But the problem is far bigger than Iowa or the Mississippi: we’re all in the same boat thanks to Bush’s attack on pollution monitoring programs. Here’s hoping that boat isn’t a leaky one. You never know what could be in the water.

Political Cortex blog: It’s the Iraq War that’s Killing the Economy, Stupid!

By Bob Kendall.

As billions are going down the drain in Iraq, this wild misadventure is destroying the once strong U.S. dollar.Economic vultures all over the world delight in seeing what was once the world’s economic super power’s financial stability being demolished.

Foreigners are buying out major assets as the dollar dramatically declines. Belgium may buy the biggest brewery in the U.S. In 2007 foreign investors spent $414 billion buying some of the biggest assets of the U.S.A.

There is even talk now of the New York City landmark Chrysler Building being sold.

Perhaps now the U.S. won’t outsource jobs to China, India or Bangladesh.Foreigners who buy out U.S. corporations will have cheap U.S. labor, a labor force anxious to accept jobs they may desperately need to cope with inflation as their currency declines. And they will have to work hard to pay off the $10 trillion debt the Bush Administration generated.

Saudi Arabia and China’s bond buying is keeping us afloat. If the U.S. dollar declines much further, they may decline to buy our bonds, and then what?

We are borrowing from China to pay the Saudis for the oil we are using for our gas guzzling SUV’s.

All this is going on while George Bush enjoyed a week long European whirlwind farewell tour. In every major city, Bush smiles and waves for TV cameras as if he was on a triumphant farewell tour. With Europeans having a lower popularity rating for Bush than even U.S. low ratings, this is strange.

Glancing back at the Vietnam War, which cost the lives of over 59,000 U.S. service personnel, and over 2.5 million Vietnamese and Cambodians, historians have asked in countless Vietnam books -What was the Vietnam War fought for and precisely what was accomplished?

Is Iraq a re-run?

The fear factor drove the Vietnam War fear. It was perpetrated by a media propaganda campaign. Could it be this was the concerted activity of the military-industrial complex that the Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about?

The domino effect was the idea that if the U.S. did not stop the Communists in Vietnam, all of Asia might fall like a row of dominoes into Communist rule.

When the U.S. fled Vietnam and the Communist North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam, all of Asia did not become Communist. The domino effect fear hysteria had been proven false. Even Robert McNamara finally admitted that it was a hopeless war.

How time changes everything! In 2008 China is the biggest trading partner of the U.S.A., with our trade balance to China being in the billions.

The money made possible by the Saudis and China buying U.S. bonds keeps the U.S. functioning economically in 2008.

Don’t talk about Democrats being the big spenders. Not when Bush’s national debt is bigger than all the previous national debts combined – approaching $10 trillion.

Traders today are considering, due to the drastic dollar decline, ceasing to use the battered U.S. dollar as the world’s bench mark currency.

Don’t blame the international currency traders for contemplating this possibility. Blame Bush!

With the British pound now worth twice the value of the U.S. dollar and the Euro over 50 percent higher than the dollar’s value, the U.S. economic plight is quite apparent.

Gas prices go up, up and away, higher than ever. Food prices, college costs, hospital expenses, building materials, autos, everything is going up. The cost of living is skyrocketing, demolishing the American dream as salaries for American workers slump.

What about those Americans who save their money, putting it in banks for safe keeping?

The last Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates to the lowest level in over 40 years. This triggered the home building bubble, with people investing in residential property as if was the stock market.

Now that the bubble has burst and home prices in many areas have drastically descended, the new Fed chief Ben Bernanke cuts the interest rate repeatedly, just like Greenspan did.

Senior citizens on fixed incomes and the U.S. bond buyers, who keep the nation’s economy going, are automatically cheated out of a fair return on their money.

Senior citizens who rely on a fair return on money they have accumulated through a lifetime of hard work, now get a return often less than the inflation rate. This means that banks are using savers and U.S. bond buyers’ money for free.

The 2.5 million mortgage foreclosures, by a strange twist of fate, is the same number of mortgage foreclosures that occurred during the Great Depression.

79 million senior citizens (referred to as baby boomers) are looking forward to retirement with social security and Medicare assistance.

All this is occurring while the U.S. dollar crashes and the cost of living increases, with job layoffs in the auto and airline industries.

Homeless people roam the streets, begging for sustenance. A recent CNN report disclosed that the U.S.A., representing only 5 percent of the world’s population, uses two-thirds of the world’s drug market.

Dante J. Driver of Seattle wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the Letters to the Editor on June 18:

“The Federal Reserve has actually been pursing inflationary fiscal and monetary policy since the eighties. Profligate government spending by both parties and historically low tax and interest rates have pumped cash into the economy that fueled the technology, real estate (and arguably the current commodity bubbles).”

More than one hundred years ago, in speaking of American, British historian Lord Macaulay warned, “Your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the empire came from without and your Huns and vandals will have been engendered within your own country, by your own institutions.”

Disaster in Iowa, Bush is MIA yet AGAIN

Source: Larisa Alexandrovna, at-Largely.

Nearly three years ago as people were drowning in NOLA, the so-called leader of this nation dashed eagerly from one side of the country to another -fund-raising for his party- without a moment’s care for his fellow Americans in their time of crisis. In fact, whenever a national crisis has occurred, Bush has been conspicuously absent. During the fourth or fifth day of the Katrina massacre and the missing leadership of this nation, I wrote the following:

We have no leadership, no captain at the helm as it were. We are, in effect, being led from disaster to disaster by a headless horseman run amok with stuffed pockets and an empty conscience.

We are here, again. This time in Iowa, where tens of thousands of Americans are without a home, many dead, many injured and once again, during this national crisis Bush is busy playing voodoo politics (This time in Europe).

Here is what is happening in Iowa:
More national guard troops deploy into disaster territory
Iowa in a drinking water emergency
Culver City, 36,000 homeless
Des Moines is mostly underwater
Death toll as of today at 20 (from what they have been able to determine in the chaos)
83 Iowa Counties declared disaster zones

Where is the god-damn president of this nation? After Bush was told on 9/11 that the nation was under attack, he did not even turn around to ask if the attack happened to be nuclear. He ate cake with John McCain while the people in and around NOLA died, begging for help. He is once again MIA in a time of crisis now. Is it that George W. Bush does not consider Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, and New York as part of the Union? I remember Kanye West saying “George Bush does not care about black people,” and thinking it probably right. But I have come to reconsider that opinion. It is not that George Bush does not care about black people in particular, he simply does not care about Americans. It is that simple. His legacy – on which he often opines with great pride – will be a single ground zero, like a crater the size of the moon, filled with ashes, bones, bodies, and the stench of lies and decaying flesh.

And the media? Well, you don’t even have to wonder. Tim Russert has passed and therefor all news will be suspended until further notice.

Bush Tries to Raid Salmon Disaster Funds

Good lord, I can’t wait for this rotten administration to be out of office.

Source: Dan Bacher, t r u t h o u t.

West Coast representatives and leaders of fishing groups are outraged over an attempt by the White House to yank $70 million in disaster funding from commercial and recreational fishermen in order to pay for the 2010 US Census.

The Bush administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on Monday, June 9, sent a proposal to Congress to amend the president’s budget and take back $70 million of the $180 million West Coast representatives had put into the farm bill for disaster assistance for fishermen devastated by fishing closures off California and Oregon and in Central Valley rivers.

West Coast Democrats reacted to the proposal by sending an angry letter to President Bush. They called “unconscionable” his proposal to deny the disaster funding to fishermen and use it to pay for a failed contract with the Harris Corporation. Harris, assigned to do the 2010 Census, was forced due to serious mismanagement to abandon its plans for using handheld computers to conduct the census and will have to conduct a costly paper census.

“This proposal is especially egregious when you consider that your administration’s water policies on all of the Pacific Northwest’s major salmon rivers are the reason this disaster funding is needed in the first place,” the letter said.

The representatives noted that three different courts have found the administration’s water plans for the Sacramento, Klamath and Columbia/Snake Rivers to be illegal and in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“These failed policies have resulted in over 80,000 dead adult salmon in the Klamath River, record low returns to the Sacramento and Columbia/Snake River systems, two fishery disaster declarations issued by the secretary of commerce and two years of fishing closures impacting thousands of families and small businesses,” the letter continued. “The states of California, Oregon and Washington estimated this year’s closure alone will have a $290 million impact on these fishing communities. Scientists expect similar low returns to the Sacramento next year and another closed season for most of the West Coast.”

California Representatives Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo, Doris Matsui, Lois Capps, Lynn Woolsey and Sam Farr; Oregon Representatives Peter DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, Earl Blumenauer and David Wu, and Washington Representatives Jim McDermott, Brian Baird, Rick Larsen and Jay Inslee signed the letter.

“To suggest that the money to pay for this contract mistake is diverted from emergency disaster payments is yet another blow delivered by your administration to the fishing families and small businesses in the Pacific Northwest,” they stated. “It is a clear sign that your administration is not committed to protecting these river systems and has no interest in helping the fishing communities and economies reliant on them.”

Dick Pool, president of Pro-Troll Fishing Products and coordinator of Water for Fish [www.water4fish.org], said news of the attempted raid of the disaster relief was “very distressing considering the devastating financial impact that the salmon fishing closure is having on the recreational and commercial fishing industries of California.”

“I’m not surprised to see Bush trying to take away needed money from our community,” said Mike Hudson, president of the Small Boat Commercial Fisherman’s Association and coordinator of the SalmonAid Festival that took place in Oakland on May 31 and June 1. “Through his actions over the last few years, he has told us time and again that we don’t matter to him. What would you expect from a man who wants to declare dams as natural structures and lets rivers run dry? That he would allow a dime to find its way into the pockets of hard-working people who oppose these dams, diversions and pollution of our waters?“

The Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations continue to blame “ocean conditions” for the sudden and unprecedented collapse of Sacramento River fall run chinook salmon, while a broad coalition of recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, Indian Tribes and conservationists contends that increased water exports from the California Delta and declining water quality play a major role in the collapse. The Central Valley fall chinook population has declined from over 800,000 fish in 2002 to under 60,000 this year.

The decline of the Central Valley fall run chinook parallels the collapse of four pelagic (open water) species – delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile striped bass and threadfin shad – in recent years. A panel of state and federal scientists has pinpointed changes in water exports as the No. 1 reason for the collapse, followed by toxics and invasive species.

More recently, two studies conducted by Richard Dugdale, a San Francisco State University oceanographer, contend that ammonia from Sacramento’s treated sewage discharge may be killing Delta smelt and other species (Stockton Record, June 11).

Fortunately, it is unlikely that the White House will be able to push Bush’s proposal through Congress, based on strong opposition from both Democrats and Republicans.

“This request is a slap in the face to the scores of salmon fishermen in Oregon who are struggling to make ends meet in the wake of the largest salmon closure in West Coast history,” said Senator Gordon H. Smith (R-Oregon). “Rest assured there will be a strong bipartisan effort to ensure that these cuts don’t go through.”

Propaganda alert: Get Osama Bin Laden before I leave office, orders Dubya

Signs of the Times wondered if they’ll rustle up a patsy to kill so Bush could take credit. I’m always suspicious when I see news “stories” about Osama bin Forgotten, since in all likelihood the dude is dead already.

Source: Sarah Baxter, Times Online.

President George W Bush has enlisted British special forces in a final attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden before he leaves the White House.

Defence and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source.

Bush arrives in Britain today on the final leg of his eight-day farewell tour of Europe. He will have tea with the Queen and dinner with Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah before holding a private meeting with Brown at No 10 tomorrow and flying on to Northern Ireland.

The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.

The hunt was “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, according to a UK special forces source. It involves the use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with Hellfire missiles that can be used to take out specific terrorist targets.

One US intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam war.

America rarely acknowledges the use of Predator and Reaper drones, but the most recent known strike was on a suspected Al-Qaeda safe house in the Pakistani province of North Waziristan earlier in June. Villagers said the house was empty.

Intelligence on the whereabouts of Bin Laden is sketchy, but some analysts believe he is in the Bajaur tribal zone in northwest Pakistan. He has evaded capture for nearly seven years. “Bush is swinging for the fences in the hope of scoring a home run,” said an intelligence source, using a baseball metaphor.

A Pentagon source said US forces were rolling up Al-Qaeda’s network in Pakistan in the hope of pushing Bin Laden towards the Afghan border, where the US military and bombers with guided missiles were lying in wait. “They are prepping for a major battle,” he said.

The main operations in Pakistan are being undertaken by Delta, the US army special operations unit, and the British SBS.

Special forces are being sent to capture or kill Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters based on intelligence provided by the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and its US counterpart, the Security Co-ordination Detachment.

The step-up in military activity has increased tensions between Pakistan and the US. A senior Pakistani government source said President Pervez Musharraf had given tacit support to Predator attacks on Al-Qaeda.

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said last week that the US would “partner [the Pakistanis] to the extent they want us to” to combat insurgents.

Pakistan lodged a strong diplomatic protest last week over what it claimed was an airstrike on a border post with Afghanistan that killed 11 of its troops.

The United States declined to accept this version of events. “It is still not exactly clear what happened,” said Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser.

MSNBC poll: 89% agree Bush should be impeached

The other 11%: private contractors and other war profiteers.

675,159 responses as of 6/11/08 at 3:45 GMT.

Source: MSNBC.

What will it take for Americans finally to put an end to this Bush administration?

By Greg Smith , PR Wire.

The Senate Report on Prewar Intelligence, published Thursday, doesn’t break any new ground-but it does make the case that President George W. Bush and his advisers deliberately disregarded conflicting intel and misled Americans on the severity of the Iraqi threat.

More than 4,090 Americans and countless innocent Iraqi citizens have Died since “Shock and Awe.” As Senator Barack Obama has said many times throughout his Primary campaign, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent “on a war that should never have been waged and should never have been authorized,” and yet, Americans choose to channel-surf while their country slips further and further into debt-a debt that will likely never be repaid.

During the Nixon era, Americans demanded impeachment for an office break-in. Our current president authorized unlawful entry into Americans’ homes, provided the American-Stazi doesn’t get caught. In fact, the Patriot Act put the CIA firmly back in the business of spying on Americans and allows law enforcement to enter your home without your knowledge.

During the Clinton administration, Americans demanded the impeachment of a president for consensual sex between two willing, adult participants, or was it rather that Bill Clinton lied about it (the “sex with that woman”)?

Unlike our nation’s first president, this president cannot tell the truth (or the difference between truth and falsehood) and yet, Americans collectively ignore his repeated falsehoods, his repeated assaults on their liberty, and the destruction of our Commonwealth aided and abetted by a commercially driven media that submits to White House pressure to deceive Americans and which has, as a whole (with few exceptions), traded the American “Dream” for the nightmare in which we all-at home and abroad-exist today.

With this report, we have confirmation that our government lied us into war. We-all Americans-are responsbile for allowing this deadly charade to continue. Every death, from this point forward, is on our collective hands.

When is enough. . .enough?

Why Won’t the Press Call Bush a Liar?

By: Jill Hussein C., Brilliant at Breakfast.

Why is the press still reluctant to tell the truth about George W. Bush’s run up to war — that is a bald-faced liar who deliberately lied to the very Americans he’s supposed to serve because he wanted to get into a war that he thought would give him a Great Legacy™ and fatten the pockets of himself and his cronies in the bargain?

Now that the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has come out, this is no longer the exclusive province of bloggers and “kooks.” It is absolute truth, that this president betrayed the trust of the American people in a way no other president has done in my lifetime — not even Nixon. And yet, as he plays out the string of his ghastly, destructive, miserable presidency, the press still won’t call him a liar.

Today’s headlines:

• The New York Times: “Bush Overstated Evidence on Iraq, Senators Report“
• San Francisco Chronicle: “White House scolded on prewar claims“
• Detroit Free Press: “Officials’ Iraq claims unsupported, report says“
• Washington Post: “Bush Inflated Threat From Iraq’s Banned Weapons, Report Says“
• Bloomberg: “Bush Oversimplified Iraq Intelligence, Report Says“
• Reuters: “Bush misused Iraq intelligence – US Senate report“

“Inflated.” “Misused.” “Overstated.” “Exaggerated.” Even the report refuses to use “The L Word”:

“Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false premises,”

Richard Clarke weighed in on Countdown last night:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24994797#24994797

Let’s not surgarcoat it: This president is a liar. A shameless bold-face liar. And that is to our eternal shame.