When I turned in my timecard early this morning, I had worked 58 hours this past week. Considering that fact, you're all lucky that Hoystory didn't go dark for much of the week. OK, you're not lucky, I'm a news/blogging junkie and couldn't help myself. After all, with the nasty cold (which I'm almost over) I couldn't sleep anyway.

So, you'll have to forgive me if I take this time to do a little catching-up.

Last week, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern "spoke truth to power" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. You can read the background on the event with video and transcripts courtesy of the Gateway Pundit.

I'll pull out a couple of the juicier parts of the Gateway Pundit compendium:

First, the "Rumsfeld lied" angle on weapons of mass destruction. McGovern charged Rumsfeld lied when he said that the U.S. knew where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were. Rumsfeld claimed that he never said that, but many in the media dug up a pre-invasion interview where Rumsfeld did say that. Thanks to the wonders of the information age, we don't have to count on the mainstream media telling us the entire story. Here is Rumsfeld's complete answer, which makes Rumsfeld's "lie" look a lot less like a lie.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, weapons of mass destruction. Key goal of the military campaign is finding those weapons of mass destruction. None have been found yet. There was a raid on the Answar Al-Islam Camp up in the north last night. A lot of people expected to find ricin there. None was found. How big of a problem is that? And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Not at all. If you think -- let me take that, both pieces -- the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

(The interview is usually truncated here. But when one reads the rest, you'll see that Rumsfeld has qualified his position.)

Second, the facilities, there are dozens of them, it's a large geographic area. It is the -- Answar Al-Islam group has killed a lot of Kurds. They are tough. And our forces are currently in there with the Kurdish forces, cleaning the area out, tracking them down, killing them or capturing them and they will then begin the site exploitation. The idea, from your question, that you can attack that place and exploit it and find out what's there in fifteen minutes.

I would also add, we saw from the air that there were dozens of trucks that went into that facility after the existence of it became public in the press and they moved things out. They dispersed them and took them away. So there may be nothing left. I don't know that. But it's way too soon to know. The exploitation is just starting.

McGovern also receives a lot of automatic credibility because he is a former CIA analyst. The media usually doesn't mention that the man is also a nut.

On Wisconsin Pubic Radio (2/7/05) 27-year-CIA veteran Ray McGovern said he "used to be an agnostic" on the issue of official complicity in 9/11, but that Dr. David Ray Griffin's new book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions has made a believer of him. McGovern is now fully convinced that the 9/11 Commission Report was an egregious cover-up and the case needs to be re-opened. McGovern is working with a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, who represent the tip of a very large iceberg of insiders who are appalled at what has been going on and are hoping to do something about it.

According to the same website, McGovern was one of the 100 wingnuts to sign a petition asking the U.S. government twelve questions that supposedly help illuminate the government’s role in 9/11. The twelve questions are preceded by this text:

…we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.

And now you know the rest of the story.