Now will we will touch the bottom of this swamp.

“With respect to the U.S. Attorneys, there has been, I think, a bit of a witch hunt on Capitol Hill as they keep rolling over rocks hoping they can find something,” In an interview with Larry King, Cheney calls the persecuted prosecutor probe a “witch hunt,” and defends loyal capo Alberto Gonzales as “a good man, a good friend, on a difficult assignment.” (In another interview yesterday, he also claimed the Libby jury was wrong.) I doubt anyone really needs a credibility check at this point, but just in case: Cheney is also the guy who told us “we’d be greeted as liberators,” the Iraq insurgency “is in the last throes,” that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction” and is amassing them to use against” us, that the administration is learning “more and more“ about pre-9/11 connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and that the evidence of said connections is “overwhelming.” Simply put, Dick Cheney is an inveterate teller of untruths, and I wouldn’t trust him to walk Berkeley at this point, much less run the country. Impeach him already. (Cheney pic via this post.)

Bad Feith Reporting.

A new report by the Pentagon’s inspector general argues that former undersecretary of defense and Dubya war hawk Douglas Feith misrepresented intelligence findings during the lead-up to Iraq. Not a big surprise there, but it’s good to get Pentagon confirmation. “Feith’s office, it said, drew on ‘both reliable and unreliable’ intelligence reports in 2002 to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq ‘that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration.’”

Where do we go now?

Apparently none too pleased with the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, the Dubya administration tries to conjure up alternative policies for Iraq: “The major alternatives include a short-term surge of 15,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to secure Baghdad and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces. Another strategy would redirect the U.S. military away from the internal strife to focus mainly on hunting terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda. And the third would concentrate political attention on supporting the majority Shiites and abandon U.S. efforts to reach out to Sunni insurgents.“

Did he eat the spinach?

A new intelligence report, which the French and Saudis are currently trying to confirm, suggests Osama Bin Laden may be dead or dying as a result of contracting a “serious water-borne illness” while on the run. I suppose that’s good news, although it’d be vastly more preferable if he were brought to justice alive. The lack of a body means Bin Laden could easily become a Zapata-like rallying symbol for aspiring terrorists for decades to come. Update: No confirmation as of yet.

Al Liars.

“‘Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden,’ the former Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, told the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was asked about Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda’s leader…’He specified that if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the U.S., he would have allied with North Korea or China,’ says a passage in the nearly 400-page report.” A new Senate intelligence report confirms what has become patently obvious: There was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the war. “Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a member of the committee, said the long-awaited report was ‘a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration’s unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts’ to link Saddam to al-Qaida.”

Terror Firma.

A day after Scotland Yard announces it managed to prevent a major terrorist incident (with the help of Pakistan), terror is back on the menu here at home, with the GOP invoking 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 and Lieberman — absolutely wallowing in shamefulness now — actually calling Lamont’s recent victory a boon for plane-bombers. This was a terrifying near-event indeed — were it not for top-notch intel work by British authorities, the world might’ve experienced another horrific day akin to September 11 in very short order. But, look closely, and you’ll find this plot by homegrown British terrorists bears the likely marks of Al Qaeda, which, last I recall, we left somewhere near Afghanistan to go dink around in Iraq. Crossover Joe and the GOP can shout terror to the heavens, but the fact is that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are more of a threat to us today because of Dubya’s non-sequitur Iraq sideshow. Make no mistake: America is less safe because Dubya and the neocons chose to cut and run in Tora Bora so they could prosecute their war of choice in Baghdad.

Zarqawi Zapped.

I was traveling yesterday during the big news: With the aid of cellphone surveillance and an Al Qaeda informer who suggested tracking “spiritual adviser” Sheikh Abd al-Rahman, the US military dropped two 500-lb bombs on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leading Iraq insurgent (and Al Qaeda poster boy for the administration.) Undoubtedly good news for our efforts in Iraq (and, lord knows, Dubya needed some good news in the worst way, particularly in the wake of Haditha.) Still, this big kill obviously doesn’t answer the big questions about Iraq’s stability, or our continued involvement in the region: “‘The immediate aftermath of this will probably be an upsurge of violence’ as Sunni insurgents hurry to show that Zarqawi’s killing has not broken the resistance, said Michael Clarke, an expert on terrorism at the International Policy Institute of King’s College London. ‘In the medium term, in the next month or two, it will probably help to downgrade sectarianism,’ Clarke said by telephone. ‘But the dynamic of sectarian violence is probably past the point of no return.’” And, of course, while this strike will hopefully be a stunning blow to Al Qaeda in Iraq, what of the original Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and around the world? We’re nearing five years since 9/11, and Osama’s still out there…

McCain-Feingold on the Road.

“‘There seems to be a disconnect between the rhetoric in Washington about what this is all about and what we hear here,’ Feingold said. McCain responded that he did ‘not want to get into a back-and-forth with one of my best friends.’” While visiting Baghdad, Senators McCain and Feingold argue “cordially and pointedly” over Iraq. “Feingold…said he was dismayed not to hear any of the military commanders he met with mention al-Qaeda as a source of the problems in Iraq. The Bush administration and U.S. officials here often point to the radical group as a major source of instability in the country.“

Framing a Guilty Man?

“In all the years I have been on the bench, I have never seen such an egregious violation of a court’s rule on witnesses.” In keeping with this administration’s penchant for cutting corners on civil liberties (and playing right into the hands of America’s critics), the trial of Al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker,” appears on the verge of mistrial after it comes out that government lawyer Carla Martin blatantly coached witnesses. Said Judge Leonie Brinkema: “This is the second significant error by the government affecting the constitutional rights of this defendant and, more importantly, the integrity of the criminal justice system in this country.” Update: Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick tries to explain the strange “medical malpractice” reasoning at work in this death penalty case.

Night (and Day) Watch.

“I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan.” With the recent release of detainee names, the NYT looks more closely at exactly who’s being held at Guantanamo Bay, including several folks, it seems, who were guilty of the heinous crime of wearing the wrong timepiece, a “Casio model F-91W watch. According to evidentiary summaries in those cases, such watches have ‘been used in bombings linked to Al Qaeda.’“