This speaks for itself.

President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.

The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a “closely held intelligence report” that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president’s briefing in Crawford.

The disclosure appears to contradict the White House’s repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was “historical” in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders.

Sounds like a bombshell, but it’s important to keep a sense of perspective. I’m sure lots of dire warnings were presented to the president many times and he counted on those around him to follow up on them, as any president would. So I am not so quick to say this (if true) proves Bush “knew and did nothing.”

But it certainly blows the whole “We had no idea” argument to bits. If it’s true, Clarke is vindicated and a lot of Condi’s testimony falls on its face. Actually, the administration’s entire line about 911 will have to be re-evaluated.

If Bush wants to run as a steel-nerved war-time president who has always done the right things for national security in a way Kerry the weakling never could, his message has just been dealt a major blow.

Again, I can’t say the NY Times report is true, but it’s made its way onto CNN and Fox News, and we should all know soon enough. What a week.

Update, two days later: As we all know by now, it was completely true, and then some. I like what Kevin Drum had to say about it today:

These are legitimate reasons not to routinely release presidential briefing documents. But this particular briefing was far from routine. In fact, after 9/11 it was of uncommon interest, and yet the White House has been resisting calls to declassify it for nearly two years. Up until a few months ago it was supposedly so sensitive that they wouldn’t even allow the 9/11 commission to see it in private.

Now that we’ve all seen it, though, the national security excuse has been exposed as a sham. I’ve included an image of the entire document below, and aside from the redactions there isn’t a single sentence that couldn’t have been freely released on 9/12/2001 without doing any damage whatsoever to national security.

Too often national security seems to be just a game to this administration. They habitually engage in selective release of classified information when it suits their political purpose, and it’s obvious now that national security likewise had nothing to do with holding back release of the August 6 PDB. Their motivation, as usual, was nothing more than a desire to keep something secret that might have proven embarrassing to a president running for reelection.

Left-leaning journal In these Times has a good article on labor unrest in China, and how the country’s antiquated hukou system is at the heart of the problem.

The key to China’s distinctive suppression of workers, however, is the hukou, or household registration, system. Workers with a rural hukou, the vast majority of new factory workers, can’t compete for better jobs or receive the housing, health and pension benefits reserved for urban residents. They must obtain a bewildering variety of expensive permits to get urban factory jobs. Often these rural migrants—typically young and disproportionately female—pay for jobs. If they leave, they risk losing their “deposits” and permit fees, which together can amount to many months of wages. They effectively become bonded labor, powerless in the face of demands by their employers and confined to the factory and grim dormitories.

This is a topic of particular importance to me, as a good friend of mine from the countryside and now living in Beijing is trapped in the hukou monstrosity of bureaucracy and dead-ends. Those with the urban hukous get all the privileges, while those from rural areas face unbelievable disadvantages.

This is just one part of a rather detailed article on Chinese labor and a petition going around that claims, “China’s unremitting repression of workers’ rights takes wages, health and dignity not only from China’s workers. It also displaces and impoverishes workers—and their families and communities—in the United States and throughout the world.” If labor in China is of interest, you’ll want to read it.

One paragraph of many that caught my eye:

As foreign investment flows into the country and peasants into the cities, the “supply shock” of Chinese manufactured goods is likely to be devastating—especially when quotas for exports of apparel and textiles to the United States and Europe end in December. The United States may lose 650,000 apparel and textile jobs, including about 1,300 textile plants, over the next two and a half years. But according to U.N. Development Program data, dirt-poor Bangladesh and Indonesia will lose up to 1 million apparel and textile jobs to China, and Central America and the Caribbean could lose half that.

Interesting dilemma, and I’m clueless as to solutions. I’ve defended outsourcing in the past, but I read the above paragraph and have to wonder if this is really what globalization is supposed to be about.

Last night wasn’t the best for once-invincible CEO of Enron, Jefferey Skilling.

Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was taken to a hospital early Friday after several people called police saying he was pulling on their clothes and accusing them of being FBI agents, a police source told The Associated Press.

Police found Skilling at 4 a.m. at the corner of Park Avenue and East 73rd Street and determined he might be an “emotionally disturbed person,” said the source, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Police did not charge Skilling with a crime. They took him to New York Presbyterian Hospital for observation. Hospital officials did not immediately return calls for comment….

Skilling was at two bars in Manhattan — American Trash and The Voodoo Lounge — where he allegedly ran up to patrons and pulled open their clothes, the source said.

“He was shouting at them ‘You’re an FBI agent and you’re following me,'” the source said.

Sad, and it certainly warrants a place in news of the weird. And just four years ago he was flying corporate jets, hanging out with presidents and living a life of such palatial royalty I probably couldn’t imagine it. Fate plays some very strange tricks.

I hope everyone’s listening to Al Franken’s new radio station, offering badly needed relief from the tidal wave of noise coming from Limbaugh, Liddy, Mike Reagan, Mike Savage, et. al.

It’s “liberal,” but not radical or extreme. Unlike the right-wing radio nuts, Franken and Co. don’t use gutter language and gross generalities. There’s actually dialogue, an invitation to think. It’s not about riling up the listener and generating rage and feeding on prejudice. (Anyone remember Savage’s famous take on immigrants: “You open the door to them and the next thing you know, they are defecating on your country and breeding out of control.” And he is revered by many as a seer.)

And check the station’s weblog. A great take on Condi’s performance today (but I can’t figure out how to link to it, sorry).

I’m listening to a talk show on Air America right now, and I am really impressed. They actually have a sense of humor. And they’re smart.

While it isn’t refined or genteel or even very nice, this little rock song/video certainly managed to crack me up. Impolite and irreverent, yes, but there’s not a word in it that isn’t true.

Via Ellen at Crackpot Chronicles — thanks!

No cause for alarm; it’s just a small band of thugs.

(Lifted from Whiskey Bar.)

This just in, and if true, it is absolutely devastating.

THOUSANDS of Sunni and Shiite Muslims forced their way through US military checkpoints Thursday to ferry food and medical supplies to the besieged Sunni bastion of Fallujah where US marines are trying to crush insurgents.

Troops in armoured vehicles tried to stop the convoy of cars and pedestrians from reaching the town located 50 kilometers west of Baghdad.

But US forces were overwhelmed as residents of villages west of the capital came to the convoy’s assistance, hurling insults and stones at the beleaguered troops.

Some 20 kilometers west of Baghdad, a US patrol was attacked just moments before the Iraqi marchers arrived. Armed insurgents could be seen dancing around two blazing military vehicles.

Two US Humvees tried to stop the marchers but were forced to drive off as residents joined the marchers, shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater).

US troops again blocked the highway further west, but were forced to let the Iraqis past as they came under a hail of stones.

I keep hearing on TV — from Rumsfeld, Bremer and all the Fox News staff — that we are up against a small group of thugs. Something here absolutely doesn’t click. As John Kerry wondered aloud today, to whom do we turn Iraq over come June 30? I’ve got a sickening feeling that a lot of those marching against us are the very ones we went to iraq to liberate, at an awful cost in terms of American lives, money and our national reputation.

What now?

[Link via Atrios.]

Update: Good analysis of how we got into this mess. Did we really need to shut down that newspaper? Was it worth it?

Joseph Kahn’s latest article in the NY Times hits the ground running with the first paragraphs.

When asked why China, with its surging economy and rising power, has not yet begun to democratize, its leaders recite a standard line. The country is too big, too poor, too uneducated and too unstable to give political power to the people, they say.

The explanation is often delivered in a plaintive tone: China really would like to become a more liberal country, if only it did not have unique problems requiring the Communist Party to maintain its absolute monopoly on power for just a while longer.

The case of Hong Kong suggests it could be a great deal longer.

I look at this article, and I’d like to quote just about every line. (Kahn, for example, refers to HK as “by far the richest place in which citizens do not have the right to elect their own leaders, with Kuwait, its nearest competitor, ranking 34th.”) So be sure to read the whole thing.

The money quote for me:

In Mao Zedong’s day, the problem would have been solved easily enough, by calling democrats counterrevolutionaries and mobilizing the masses to silence them. But China faces a conundrum today. It does not have a revolutionary ideology that its own leaders believe is superior to democratic rule. The masses are too busy making money to be mobilized.

So officials search for reasons why the time is not yet right, or the conditions are not yet suitable, or the procedures are not yet finalized. They present themselves as sympathetic to the democratic impulse who are troubled only by questions of implementation.

That’s important. The leaders send out signals that they’d like democracy, they really really would. But then for this reason and this reason and this reason it’s just not the right time, and besides, China is so big, it just isn’t feasible. Hah. It all goes back to the the first emperor: government’s role is to keep itself in power, not to do favors for its population. So democracy scares them shitless, as well it should.

But I went on at length about this just a few days ago. Read the Kahn article to see what one of the most respected correspondents in China has to say about the CCP and democracy — don’t just take my word for it.

One point I’ve alluded to before is that doing business in China is almost inevitably dirty. Bribes and graft and corruption are the norm, and I don’t know how a foreign business could get very far without playing by China’s unwritten rules of business. This is the “dirty little secret” of doing business there — the fact that literally all of the respected big-name companies making forays into China are breaking their own rules and sullying their own integrity. But from a pragmatic perspective, they simply have to. No bribe, no business.

This anomaly is hinted at in some of the articles now coming out about Lucent allegedly firing four senior executives in China for corruption.

Revelations that Lucent Technologies Inc’s senior executives in China may have violated US law banning the payment of bribes overseas is unlikely to be an isolated case in a country where corruption is common despite government campaigns to stamp it out, analysts said.

It is common for companies bidding for business in China to offer all kinds of financial incentives to potential customers, including foreign education for senior executives’ children, gifts of residential property or a car or paid overseas travel.

Industry sources said one company in the telecoms sector provided senior executives of one of its customers free holidays and a company car to drive their children to school.

There’s really no choice. I remember organizing an event where we had to put up a tent, and my client had to go back twice and bribe the fire chief with more than $10,000 (USD) to get the permit. (You need a permit for everything in China. It’s part of the graft system.) This type of corruption is built into the bureaucracy, and it keeps bureaucrats loyal to the party despite their crummy salaries. I hope Lucent isn’t thinking that it can succeed in China without playing the corruption game.

You’d think they’d be the ones who know best:

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism.

Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks.

Some also left because they felt President Bush had sidelined his counterterrorism experts and paid almost exclusive heed to the vice president, the defense secretary and other Cabinet members in planning the “war on terror,” former counterterrorism officials said.

“I’m kind of hoping for regime change,” one official who quit told Reuters.

Every day Richard Clarke seems a bit more vindicated.

Due to lack of evidence and zero signs that the Republicans are taking the course I posted about recently, I am retracting the entire post and admitting that I got sucked into the noise created by two over-zealous bloggers whom I usually respect (and still do; we all screw up sometimes).

If their prediction materializes in the future, I’ll come back and take out the strikethroughs and retract this retraction. But for now, there simply isn’t enough to go on. Apologies.