Bush's dishonest response about pre-war intelligence

Today CNN quotes President Bush:

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," the president said during a Veterans Day speech in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania.

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war," Bush said. "They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."

Bush has a terrible habit of going on the offensive even when he's in the wrong, as he is in this case. Here, he is conveniently forgetting that much of what his Administration presented as solid fact was already discredited prior to its presentation to the American public, but it was used anyway. He forgets that this wasn't a matter of objective intelligence assessments, but of reports that were assembled by a new special intelligence analysis unit set up for the White House by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith (#3 man in the Pentagon, who resigned on January 26, 2005), David Wurmser's Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, which cherry-picked intelligence to find anything that suggested a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, as documented in James Bamford's book, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies (2004, Doubleday).

It was the Feith/Wurmser group's bogus intelligence which led to Colin Powell making a speech to the UN Security Council filled with errors based on forged documents and testimony from a discredited source, "Curveball." It was a leaked Feith memo of bogus Iraq/al Qaeda links which was the basis of a Stephen Hayes article in the Weekly Standard (expanded into a book, The Connection), which led to Hayes' embarrassment at the hands of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. (I posted specific refutations of a number of Hayes' alleged connections on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board.)

Feith is the man who Gen. Tommy Franks said had a reputation as the "dumbest fucking man on the planet." This opinion was seconded by Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's right-hand man in the State Department, when he resigned in October 2005, saying "seldom in my life have I met a dumber man."

It was a man in Feith's organization, Larry Franklin, who pleaded guilty to passing intelligence information to the Israelis. This is no surprise to readers of Bamford's book--which describes how Feith, Wurmser, and Richard Perle previously worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to draw up a policy on taking a more aggressive stance with Iraq that Israel wisely rejected--but which was then successfully foisted upon the United States through George W. Bush.

Bush's criticism of the Democrats is mostly unfounded--most of the Democrats who voted for the war were deceived by bogus, cherry-picked intelligence put together by the Feith/Wurmser group with the specific intent to deceive them, and that's what needs to be further investigated and demonstrated to the general public that wasn't able to recognize the deception at the time (though the evidence was, to my mind, already pretty clear, as reflected in my postings to the az.general Usenet group prior to and in the months immediately following the invasion of Iraq). On the other hand, as Snopes points out, there were Democrats who already believed Saddam Hussein had WMD and hadn't destroyed it by the mid-nineties.

I find it amazing that Bush has had as much success as he had with the deceptive and dishonest tactics described in the book All the President's Spin. I am happy to see that more and more people are realizing the deception.

I'll be hearing retired lieutenant colonel Karen Kwiatkowski speak this weekend--she is a critic of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq who was former deputy to Feith in the Pentagon who resigned in 2003.

Further Dembski dishonesty about Shallit

William Dembski continues to dig himself a deeper hole with respect to his false claim that Jeff Shallit did not testify in the Dover case because his deposition went badly and was an embarassment to the plaintiffs. In fact, Shallit did not testify because he was a rebuttal witness to Dembski, who withdrew from the case, and because the defense filed a motion to prevent it.

Dembski also continues to claim that the Shallit deposition is somehow being concealed, when in fact it was filed in the case and is a public document. (More at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Sony BMG to "temporarily" stop using rootkit-based DRM

Sony has said it will "temporarily" stop making CDs with the problematic DRM technology. I'm sure they'll make more in the future with a modified version or a new DRM technology.

Sony DRM class action lawsuits

As reported at Brian Krebs' Washington Post blog, there has been a class action lawsuit filed against Sony in California and another one about to be filed in New York. The California lawsuit alleges violations of California's anti-spyware law, the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, and the California Unfair Competition law.

In other news from Krebs, there is now real malware exploiting Sony's DRM to hide itself. Krebs seems to be breaking the key news on this story--there are a number of other related articles on his blog worth reading, such as the one on Sony's past history of cavalier and inconsistent actions on DRM.

The EFF has an analysis of the EULA for Sony's software--it's something no reasonable person should agree to.

Back at Mark Russinovich's blog that exposed this issue and began the controversy, he rebuts a response from First 4 Internet, the implementers of the Sony DRM, and points out more evidence that their software is poorly written and can crash Windows.

A 1952 history of U.S. communications intelligence declassified

The March 1952 document "A Brief History of Communications Intelligence in the United States" by Captain Laurance F. Stafford, USN (Retired) has been declassified by the National Security Agency and released to the public. It was originally classified TOP SECRET SUEDE. The document is a 24-page PDF. The document tells the history of COMINT prior to Pearl Harbor, beginning with the entry of the U.S. into WWI, when Herbert O. Yardley set up MI-8, the "American Black Chamber" to do cryptology work. On a quick scan I didn't see anything that wouldn't already be familiar in broad strokes to readers of James Bamford's The Puzzle Palace or Body of Secrets, though there may be some details not previously public, such as the number of staff working on cryptography.

Darwinian Trilemma

William Dembski has posted (from Ian Bibby) the following "Darwinian Trilemma":

1. Science cannot test the proposition that biological features are designed.
2. Darwinism explains the appearance of design in biology not as actual design but as the product of natural selection and random variation.
3. Darwinism is science.

Commentators have offered a number of responses, such as rejecting an apparent equivocation on "design" between premises 1 (an objective feature of nature) and 2 (a psychological appearance).

While I think there's something to this objection, I would also reject premise 1 as stated. Surely there are scientific mechanisms for distinguishing natural features from artifacts of the sorts we are aware of (e.g., forensic science can distinguish at least some murders from deaths by natural causes). What science cannot distinguish is a hypothesis that biological features are the product of evolution from the hypothesis that a divinity created biological features that look just like the product of evolution. Similarly, science cannot distinguish automobiles that are created by people from automobiles that are created by a divine being to look just like automobiles built in a human-built factory, nor can it distinguish human beings who were born of a man and a woman from human beings who are directly created to look exactly as though they were born of a man and a woman (Omphalos included). (In other words, God could choose to work directly, simulating evolution, or indirectly, using evolutionary mechanisms or setting up the initial conditions and letting evolution run its course, and those hypotheses are empirically indistinguishable. Some religious believers advocate a view where events have natural causes, yet are also caused by supernatural beings such as Satan. In such an anti-Ockhamite, unparsimonious view, there is no scientific way to distinguish an event with both natural and supernatural causes from one which didn't have the latter.)

If a God-based hypothesis can be formulated in such a way as to have empirically testable consequences which are distinguishable from evolution, I don't see why it couldn't be science. This means there *could be* an "intelligent design" that qualifies as scientific--but what's been promoted in Dover is simply a renamed creationism, rather than a new field with any scientific content.

The real problem for such God-based hypotheses is that there really are no limits or definitions around what God does or would do--no empirical evidence is ever considered to be evidence against God by the advocates. I think there actually is empirical evidence against many specific gods which have been endorsed through the millenia, including commonly held views of contemporary monotheism. If you say that humans are psychologically similar to God (being created in his image), that God is perfectly rational and desires particular outcomes, then actions (or inaction) inconsistent with those desires, intentions, and facts of the world are evidence against such a God's existence. This gives evidential weight to atheistic arguments such as the argument from evil, the argument from (reasonable) non-belief, arguments based on the dependency of consciousness on physical brains, the facts of evolution, religious disagreement, and on the distribution of religious beliefs (indicative of cultural transmission rather than supernatural intervention).

Dover School Board Swept Out of Office

In yesterday's election, the entire Dover School Board was voted out of office. Four of the new board members were Republicans running as Democrats; the incumbents were all Republicans. Four of the new board members are part of an organization called Dover CARES, which supports the teaching of intelligent design in a context such as an elective comparative religions course but not in the science classroom. The new board will take office on December 5 and have indicated that they will not change policy for a month, which presumably will be after the judge makes a decision in the lawsuit. This will likely mean that the decision (which I fully expect to go against the Dover school board) will not be appealed. More at the Panda's Thumb, Questionable Authority, Pharyngula, and Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Update: Pat Robertson warns the people of Dover that now that they've forsaken God, God will not be there to help them in time of need:

I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.

Nothing like argumentum ad baculum...

A New Explanation for Sea Serpents

Whale penises! Photos here and here. (Hat tip: Pharyngula.) (Note that this explanation doesn't work for the lake monsters like Nessie and Champy.)

Defending Against Botnets

My presentation on "Defending Against Botnets" for ASU's Computer Security Week is online in streaming video and MP3 audio formats.

Unfortunately, the audience was quite small. ASU's Polytechnic Campus is way out east of Phoenix, on the former Williams Air Force Base which ASU purchased and turned into its east campus. It doesn't appear that it has a very large student population yet. I was amused that the streets are named after military figures. To get to the Student Union I drove on a street called Twining, named after General Nathan Twining. Twining is a name well-known to UFO enthusiasts, as his name was used on one of the forged "MJ-12" documents known as the Cutler-Twining memo, and also authored a genuine document that discusses UFOs (and is often misinterpreted by UFO advocates as claiming that crashed saucers have been recovered).

My talk was followed by a talk on Wireless Security by Erik Graham of General Dynamics, which covered threats and defenses for 802.11 and Bluetooth.

Denver Legalizes Possession of Marijuana

Denver voters approved a measure to legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by those 21 and older. Authorities say state laws against possession will still be enforced, and we already know the federal laws will be enforced regardless of what a state wants to do with the drug issue (Raich v. Ashcroft).