Morning News Roundup (10 Apr)

First off, a summary of the big news from the weekend.

Bombing Iran

• Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker, asserts that the BushCo Gang "has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack," which includes possible use of nuclear bunker busters. [see previous post for excerpts; New Yorker]
  
  
• In response to that, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dismissed use of nukes as "completely nuts" and questioned the reliability of the reports' source. [News24] And a senior BushCo administration official downplayed prospects for American military action, calling the latest reports "ill-informed," but stopped short of an outright denial. [NYTimes]
  
  
• The WaPo weighs in with a report that doesn't cover the usage of nuclear weapons, but makes clear that the BushCo Gang is seriously considering bombing Iran's nuclear program sites (see previous post for excerpts, which includes thoughts from Paul Krugman).
  
  
• Also check out a video of Sy Hersh on CNN's Late Edition over at Crooks and Liars or ThinkProgress. And then take a look (via Veredictum) at Fox and Friends (that's really what they call their morning show) taking down Seymour a notch, with the show's blonde talking head smiling as she notes that Richard Perle once referred to Hersh as "the biggest terrorist in our country."
  

Presidential Leakage/Niger Yellowcake Party

• In continued reading of the filing by Special Prosecuter Patrick Fitzgerald in the PlameGate case, the WaPo notes that it contains descriptions for the first time of a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq (aka, Joseph Wilson).
  
  
• In a classic "don't tell me what you're going to do, I need deniability" moment, a senior administration official confirmed for the first time on Sunday that President Bush had ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq, But the official said that Mr. Bush did not designate Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., or anyone else, to release the information to reporters. [NYTimes]
  
  
• The London Times puts faces to the forgeries of the Niger yellowcake uranium documents and follows the trail from Italy to France to the UK (see previous post for excerpts).
  
  
• But Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo, who has followed this line of the story very closely over the last couple of years, notes several holes in the story, including this big one:
  

  According to the story in the Times, the documents go from the Nigerien Embassy to Martino, to the French and then to the UK. Martino later sells them to an Italian journalist just a few months before the war.
  
  Only, that's not how it happened. It's a simple chain of custody issue. Read up on the story and you'll find that the US didn't get the documents from the British or from the French. They got them from ... right, SISMI. The Italians sent details of the documents and then text transcriptions of them to Washington in late 2001 and early 2002. And everyone else got them, either directly or indirectly, from the Italians as well.
  
  Once you add that fact to the mix you realize the story in the Times just doesn't add up.

• Senator Arlen Specter, chair of the Judiciary Committee, talked to the belly of the beast (aka, Brit Hume of FoxNews) and stated that "the President of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people." See the video and transcript over at ThinkProgress.
  
  
• And USAToday's editorial from yesterday focuses on the hypocrisy of the BushCo Gang over leaking:
  

  There's nothing unusual about the White House spinning facts to make itself look good. But leaking classified information, then decrying other leaks and sending prosecutors to hunt down the leakers just underscores the absurdity of the entire exercise.
  

Alright, what else have we got:

• A new WaPo/ABC news poll puts the President's approval rating at 38%, "down 3 percentage points in the past month and his worst showing in Post-ABC polling on this key measure since he became president. Sixty percent disapproved of his performance." I have a feeling he hasn't quite hit bottom yet.
  
  
• Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, a three-star Marine Corps general who was the military's top operations officer before the invasion of Iraq, expressed regret at not more forcefully challenging his superiors in the march to the Iraq war and called for Don Rumsfeld to step down. [NYTimes story; see full article at Time magazine]
  
  
• The Bush administration has settled on the idea of sending as many as several hundred NATO advisers to help bolster African Union peacekeeping troops in their efforts to shield villagers in Sudan's Darfur region from fighting between government-backed Arab militias and rebel groups. [Boston Globe]
  
  
• Organizers of the National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice -- or La Marcha, as some volunteers are calling it -- said it could draw as many as 180,000 people to the Washington Mall and hundreds of thousands more in nearly 100 cities nationwide. [WaPo] The Seattle march will start at St. Mary's Church, 611 20th Ave. S., at 3:30 p.m. and end at the downtown federal building at the intersection of Second Avenue and Marion Street. Motorists and bus riders should change their routes to avoid traffic congestion from the protest, which is expected to end around 5 p.m. [Seattle P-I]
  
  
• French President Jacques Chirac announced that his government was abandoning a youth jobs plan that has sparked million-strong protests. Several unions indicated on Monday that they would be satisifed with the measure being replaced. [Agence France Presse]