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| ISRAEL: TEAR DOWN THAT WALL! |
| 02.29.04 (7:49 am) [edit] |
[b]Mofaz: Court petitions against separation fence aid terrorists [/b]
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Sunday that High Court of Justice petitions against the construction of the separation fence in the Jerusalem area give terrorists more time and opportunities to carry out terror attacks in the capital, Army Radio reported.
During a tour of the Jerusalem Envelope, Mofaz ordered that construction work on the fence also carry on at night, the station said.
"I hope in future [court] sessions, we will be able to clarify some of the issues and then be allowed to continue to build the barrier because it has proven to be very helpful in stopping suicide bombers," Mofaz told reporters.
He also said that he would speak with the prime minister and justice minister on the issue.
Mofaz's comments came after the High Court on Sunday ordered construction work suspended on a section of the West Bank separation fence near the violence-scarred village of Bidu, pending a further hearing next week on a petition by residents of eight Palestinian villages north of Jerusalem. The villagers have asked the court to rule against the erection of the West Bank separation barrier in their area.
On Thursday, two Palestinians were shot dead in Bidu, as Israeli security forces confronted stone-throwing demonstrators protesting against the fence route. A third Palestinian died of a heart attack, reportedly after inhaling tear gas during the demonstration.
In a rare move, residents of the city of Mevasseret Zion, a Jewish town within the pre-1967 Green Line border adjacent to Bidu, on Sunday joined the Palestinian petitioners. The wall route passes alongside the outskirts of Mevasseret.
The court order came as Israeli officials said at the weekend that Israel had submitted to Washington a proposed revised route of the separation fence that was "more logical and shorter." The main revisions were said to involve canceling "finger" intrusions deep into the West Bank.
The petition, submitted by residents of the villages of Biddu, Ein Surik, Qubaibeh, Qatana, Beit Einan, Beit Lekiya, Beit Ajaz and Duku, had asked for an order halting construction of infrastructure work in the area until the court rules on the petition.
The attorney for the villagers, Mohammed Dakhka, said the proposed route of the fence would almost entirely cut off their villages.
[b]Attorney: Army re-examining route[/b]
The court ordered the suspension while the army re-examines the planned route ahead of another hearing next week, said lawyer Dakhka, who represents the Popular Committee Against the Wall. Court officials did not immediately comment.
The committee, which represents Israelis and Palestinians opposed to the barrier, has asked the court to halt construction in the area. It says the planned route of the barrier would effectively imprison 30,000 Palestinians in their towns and villages, Dakhka said. He said the group brought the case after last week's violence.
Dahla said the barrier would encircle the towns and villages and cut them off from Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian commercial capital. Residents, after being issued a permit from the army, would all have to leave from one gate, and a trip to Ramallah that now takes five minutes will take up to three hours after the barrier is completed, Dakhka added.
Israel says the barrier will prevent suicide bombers and other attackers from entering its towns and cities. Palestinians call it a land grab, a tool to seize and annex Palestinian land, effectively preventing the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Israeli opponents of the fence are mounting broader legal challenged to the barrier.
[b]Israel proposes revised fence route[/b]
The revised map of the barrier route was submitted to three U.S. envoys who visited Israel 10 days ago. Israeli officials explained at the time that the country is "very seriously" examining the possibility of re-routing the fence.
The sources said that the main revisions to the original fence route, which was authorized by the government in September 2003, involve canceling "finger" intrusions deep into Palestinian territories at Kedumim, Immanuel and Karnei Shomron. Also, the revisions would scale-down plans for the fence in the Beit Aryeh enclave, near Ben-Gurion International Airport. The revisions, however, do not call for changes in the fence's route around the settlement city of Ariel.
The sources believe that some changes in the fence's route will be made along Route 443 (Modi'in-Jerusalem road) near Beit Horon. The purpose of these changes would be to minimize the number of Palestinians located within the fenced-off area. Last week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the fence route will pass north of Route 443 and near Route 45.
The revised route has yet to be submitted to the Sharon government for approval. It has been submitted to U.S. officials as a possibility, but not as a definite Israeli policy decision.
-[i][b] By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and Agencies[/b][/i], http://www.haaretzdaily.com/h...
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| Damage bill from Israeli raid over $1ml |
| 02.29.04 (7:43 am) [edit] |
[b]Damage bill from Israeli raid over $1ml[/b]
EREZ, Gaza Strip, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The mayor of a Palestinian town estimated on Saturday that the damage bill from an Israeli army demolition of some 120 Palestinian-owned shops on the Gaza-Israel boundary would come to more than $1 million.
Two army bulldozers backed by four tanks on Friday ploughed through the cluster of small buildings and market stands which concealed a 60-metre-long (180 foot) tunnel which Palestinian militants used to carry out a deadly attack against soldiers.
The demolition left more than 400 Palestinians jobless. More than 80 shops leading up to Erez, a heavily fortified Israeli industrial zone on the Gaza-Israel border, were levelled completely and dozens were partially destroyed.
"We need urgent help for these people. They did not do anything," said Ibrahim Hamid, the mayor of the nearby town of Beit Hanoun.
The damage would run to more than $1 million, he said.
The crowded outdoor shopping centre, dubbed by many Palestinians from the area as the "Worker's Market", had sold clothing, electronics, and food and drinks to Palestinian workers who used the Erez crossing to get to their jobs in Israel.
Palestinians expressed surprise when told about the tunnel by reporters at the scene of the demolitions.
"I think this is a lie," said shopkeeper Nabil al-Kafarnah. "They (the army) need to fabricate any news to cover this crime."
Al-Kafarnah, 32, said the army levelled two grocery stores he co-owned with his brother, who was injured in the demolition.
"I have six children and my brother has four. We don't know what we're going to tell them. Our shops are now just empty land."
An Israeli army spokesman said the shops had blocked the entrance to the tunnel, which two Palestinian gunmen used to sneak into the heavily fortified industrial zone on Thursday and kill a soldier before being shot dead by security personnel.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack and confirmed its men had used the tunnel.
Palestinians on Saturday scrabbled through the rubble, searching for any undamaged wares from the destroyed shops. The army spokesman said store-owners could file for compensation. But it is almost unheard-of for the Israeli authorities to compensate Palestinians accused of abetting militants.
"What a miserable situation. I didn't only lose my shop. I also lost $7,000 in goods," said Hamdan al-Muqaiyad, a shopowner who received summary notice to vacate the market lane leading up to Erez before military bulldozers ploughed in on Friday.
[i][b]- By Shadi al-Kashif[/b][/i], http://www.alertnet.org/thene...
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| Are Repugs Rigging Elections Using Electronic High-jinks? |
| 02.29.04 (7:39 am) [edit] |
[b]The Results Are in and the Winner Is . . . or Maybe Not[/b]
Rob Behler isn't saying Max Cleland's Senate seat was stolen by rigged electronic voting machines, but he insists it could have been. Mr. Behler, who helped prepare Georgia's machines for the 2002 election, says secret computer codes were installed late in the process. Votes "could have been manipulated," he says, and the election thrown to the Republican, Saxby Chambliss.
Charlie Matulka, who lost to Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska the same year, does not trust the results in his election. Most of the votes were cast on paper ballots that were scanned into computerized vote-counting machines, which happen to have been manufactured by a company Mr. Hagel used to run. Mr. Matulka, suspicious of Senator Hagel's ties to the voting machine company, demanded a hand recount of the paper ballots. Nebraska law did not allow it, he was informed. "This is the stealing of our democracy," he says.
Defeated candidates who think they were robbed are nothing new in American politics. But modern technology is creating a whole new generation of conspiracy theories — easy to imagine and, unless we're careful, impossible to disprove. The nation is rushing to adopt electronic voting, but there is a disturbing amount of evidence that, at least in its current form, it is overly vulnerable to electoral mischief.
Among the growing ranks of electronic-voting skeptics, Mr. Cleland's loss in 2002 and Mr. Hagel's wins in 1996 and 2002 have taken on mythic status. There is no evidence the wrong man is in the Senate today. The problem is, there is no way to prove the right man was elected, either.
Mr. Cleland's loss was, some say, a surprise. He was said to be leading in the polls before Election Day, but ended up losing decisively. Many political observers attribute his loss to President Bush's strong support for Mr. Chambliss, and attack ads picturing Senator Cleland with Osama bin Laden. But others are suspicious of the new voting machines in Georgia.
In the summer of 2002, Mr. Behler was in a Georgia warehouse, helping prepare thousands of machines for the coming election. He says there were constant problems with the hardware and software, and growing pressure as the election drew near.
Three times while he was there, he says, Diebold, the voting machine manufacturer, sent "patches" — updates in the programming — to be installed on the machines. Later, he says, he heard of a fourth. Bev Harris, an electronic-voting critic who runs www.blackboxvoting.org and is a controversial figure in the elections world, says there were eight. Diebold and Georgia insist there was only one patch, which Diebold says was added "prior to the election, but not last minute."
The Georgia machines do not produce a paper record voters can inspect to ensure a vote was correctly cast. But Georgia says they go through three testing levels, including an outside body that certifies the software. When patches are added late, however, there may not be time for certifying them. Georgia officials concede the one patch they admit to was given only a partial examination by an outside certifying body.
Ms. Harris argues the patches could have turned Cleland votes into Chambliss votes. "You can put in dynamic files that self-destruct after the election," she says. "There would be no evidence."
A final piece of the conspiracy theory is that Diebold's chief executive is an active Republican fund-raiser. It was probably inevitable that given all the elements — late changes, an end run around the vetting process, a manufacturer with political ties, and a surprising outcome — there would be suspicions about the results.
Some of the same factors were present in Nebraska. In his primary race in 1996, Mr. Hagel, who had lived in Virginia for 20 years, beat the state attorney general by nearly two to one. In the general election, he defeated the governor, who had been elected two years earlier in a landslide. In 2002, against Mr. Matulka, he won more than 80 percent of the vote.
What gets conspiracy theorists excited is not just Mr. Hagel's prodigious wins, but his job before jumping into the 1996 race: heading American Information Systems, the manufacturer of the machines that count 85 percent of Nebraska's votes. There is a much simpler explanation than electronic sabotage. Mr. Hagel's campaign in 1996 was widely regarded as stronger than his rivals' campaigns. His next opponent, Mr. Matulka, an unemployed construction worker, was a weak candidate. But when critics like Ms. Harris argue these machines could have been programmed to miscount, the state should be able to come back with irrefutable evidence they were not.
A healthy democracy must avoid even the appearance of corruption. The Georgia and Nebraska elections fail this test. Once voting software is certified, it should not be changed — not eight times, not once. A backup voting method should be available, so if electronic machines fail or are compromised shortly before an election, they can be dropped.
Votes must be counted by people universally perceived as impartial. States should not buy machines from companies that have ties to political parties, and recent company executives should not be running for elections on those machines.
And every voter should see a paper receipt. This "voter-verified paper trail" should be retained, and made available for recounts — a low-tech check on the reliability of electronic voting. Most Americans would not do business with a bank that refused to provide written statements or A.T.M. receipts. We should be no less demanding at the polls.
[b]After all, as Tom Stoppard has observed, "[i]It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting[/i].[/b]"
[i][b]- ADAM COHEN, NY TIMES[/b][/i], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
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| Bush Admin Pushes Grabbing Babies From Poor Women So Wealthy Can Adopt |
| 02.28.04 (5:58 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush Admin Pushes Grabbing Babies From Poor Women So Wealthy Can Adopt[/b]
Hello:
I am one voice joined with others finding their voices for the millions of Mothers and children of adoption wounds. Some have found their voices and some that haven't yet. I have held adopted persons and Mothers in my arms as they sobbed about the pain of being without each other. Many of us Moms are sick and or dying young from the grief of having our children taken from us by adoption brokers. Only in America will a community gather around a woman who's child has been kidnapped and offer validation for her pain and yet will tell a Mother and adopted person that has lost each other to coercion to be grateful for the act of separating them from each other. I have held many Moms and adopted while they sobbed about being hurt from adoption. There are cases where adopted persons and Mothers have committed suicide do to the trauma of adoption. Many adopted teens are in treatment centers. These are the truths you will seldom be told because adoption is very Politically correct now.
We are then told that times have changed. Well, Not really....There's is a push now by President Bush and some of his church-based adoption agencies to bring back the good old days when all a women needed to be was young, no family support and little to no social welfare programs in place to lose her baby to adoption.
Because now there are more choices for women and parental help the government is trying their best to take away those choices to make room for more adoption of infants to wealthy clients of adoption agencies.
First, welfare reform has caused more woman and children to fall into the worst poverty that we have seen in a long time, Second, they want to stop the choice of abortion. There's a real pebble in their shoe and it is what young women have today they didn't have and that is parental support. First our government, furthering the Republican agenda of baby selling baby in America, voted for "The Infant adoption awareness act." But what to do with those pesky parents/grandparents? The answer is HR 7 that would reintroduce "group homes for unwed mothers" We all know that thought control/coercion works best in a closed or non-existent support system. So, Can we say it's starting to look a lot like the 50's, 60's and even past there to some extent? Those of us that were sent away to the Prisons for unwed Mothers do not want to see those horrid places in anyway shape or form emerge again.
Under President Bush's watch we are witnessing going backwards not forward when it comes to the rights of woman and children. It is scaring the heck out of us Moms and many adopted persons that are the direct result of the baby scoop era. We are fearful for the young scared Moms that will fall prey to these adoption brokers. An adoption agency in Texas has just opened a new "campus "just before these bills were passed and President Bush is in tight with this agency. This Texas Adoption agency was saying they have a lot of open beds for pregnant Moms and then comes these bills? Does something smell? Also, one of the big agencies at the National Council for Adoptions has listed as a contact agency an agency that is a big, church run conservative institution.
I read the documents well before they deleted some of them and they stated that they need to focus on white babies because there isn't much of a demand for babies of color. Again, here's the 60's revisited. It was suggested that birth control be taught more to women of color. The reason I believe that many believed the testimony before Congress was because they didn't hear testimony from us Moms and our children about the harm done to us by being separated from each other. Remember these bills are not for the purpose of anything but to bring in more INFANTS. And in truth the government was promised a savings in tax monies although Bush just pushed the 10,000 dollar incentive to adopt, including infants, through. Just think what a single Mom could do with $10,000? Some may say well there are open adoptions now and I say many young Moms are coming forth saying they had never been told their contact could be slammed shut once the adoption became final. And that is exactly what happened. Interestingly, the agencies failed to inform the Moms of this.
All we Moms and adopted children of adoption loss have is our truth and integrity. We don't have the money that the adoption brokers have. We have the resolve to fight for the rights of all women and children poor and middle class that Republicans have such a hatred for. And yet they have no problem taking their children to sell to their friends at the adoption agencies. We hope that our voices are heard for the sake of all women and children.
[b]And we also need your help. Here are a few things you can do to help[/b]:
Write to your congressman/woman and tell them it is not OK to support the separating of Mothers and children for no reason other than they are poor. Ask them what they are doing to preserve familles? Write letters to the editors of your local paper informing parents/grandparents of the intent of our government into separating their children and grandchildren from them. Praise them for showing true family values by keeping their children/grandchildren close to them with love and support.
If you belong to a church or temple ask the congregation to embrace a young Mom and her child into fellowship not for the purpose of removing her child from her but in true support.
Last but Not least, we really need to restore a family friendly administration into office and vote out the Republican agenda of America being good for only the wealthy.
[b]Linda Webber, mommaL3@aol.com Activist for the rights of Mother's and children to be free from adoption coercion[/b]. http://www.opednews.com/webbe...
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| Still lying: Bush bio on State Department web site inflates Guard service record |
| 02.28.04 (5:54 pm) [edit] |
[b]Still lying: Bush bio on State Department web site inflates Guard service record[/b]
Questions remain about President Bush's long-ago service in the Texas Air National Guard. But the basic outline of his Guard service is not in dispute: After a year in flight school, Bush spent five months learning how to fly an F-102 fighter-interceptor and then 22 months as a part-time pilot. He stopped flying in April 1972 -- 30 months before his formal commitment would normally have ended.
Nonetheless, the biography of Bush on the US State Department's website credits him with almost six years in the F-102's cockpit -- two years on active duty flying the plane and nearly four more years of part-time service as an F-102 pilot. The websites of at least five American embassies -- those in Germany, Italy, Pakistan, Vietnam, and South Korea -- use the identical language, even though Bush spent barely two years flying the airplane.
After the 2000 election, when evidence of Bush's abbreviated flying career and his propensity to miss required drills became public, the presidential biography written for the White House website made no mention of the period of Bush's service, only that he served as an F-102 pilot.
[b]The Full Story on [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| 'I was a target, too' - Blix describes run-ins with Bush's spooks |
| 02.28.04 (5:51 pm) [edit] |
[b]'I was a target, too' - Blix describes run-ins with Bush's spooks[/b]
The United Nations spying row widened yesterday when its former weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the Guardian he suspected both his UN office and his home in New York were bugged in the run-up to the Iraq war.
In an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said he expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but to be spied upon by the US was a different matter. He described such behaviour as "disgusting", adding: "It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side."
He said he went to extraordinary lengths to protect his office and home, having a UN counter-surveillance team sweep both for bugs.
"If you had something sensitive to talk about you would go out into the restaurant or out into the streets," he said.
Mr Blix's darkest fears were reinforced when he was shown a set of photographs by a senior member of the Bush administration which he insists could only have been obtained through underhand means.
[b]The Full Story on [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| Where Are Iraq's Pentagon Papers? |
| 02.23.04 (6:13 am) [edit] |
[b]Where are Iraq's Pentagon papers?[/b]
AS MORE and more of our young men and women come home from Iraq crippled or in body bags this election season, Americans ask, with increasing urgency, "Why did we send our children to die in Iraq? Was this war necessary?" Indeed, Tim Russert asked the president precisely that on "Meet the Press" a few weeks ago: "In light of not finding the weapons of mass destruction, do you believe the war in Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity?"
President Bush replied "It's a war of necessity. . . . the man was a threat. . . . the evidence we have uncovered so far says we had no choice."
To the contrary. The evidence uncovered so far says that Saddam was not a threat, to us or his neighbors. Nor -- lacking any evidence of complicity in 9/11 or links to Al Qaeda -- was there a persuasive case that he would have been a significant threat even if he had possessed WMDs.
In order to bolster their arguments and gain congressional, public, and international support, high officials chose to conceal the fact that their belief in the existence of Iraqi WMDs was entirely inferential, reflecting flimsy evidence and testimony from sources whose reliability was highly controversial. This actual state of inadequate information, well known to the US and British intelligence community, was deliberately denied by the highest officials in repeated phrases such as, "we know . . . ," "bulletproof evidence," "beyond any doubt," "Saddam possesses. . . ," "British intelligence has learned," and "these are not assertions, these are facts." The euphemism for such descriptions of the strength of evidence favoring the need to go to war is "exaggeration." A more accurate term is "lies."
I've been here before. On my first full-time day of work as a high-level staff aide in the Pentagon, Aug. 4, 1964, I heard President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara explain our first bombing raids against North Vietnam as a response to "unequivocal evidence" of an "unprovoked" attack on our destroyers "on routine patrol" in the Tonkin Gulf. Already that night I knew, along with many other Pentagon insiders, that each of these statements was a lie.
"Unequivocal"? I had personally read, 10 hours before our bombers were launched, a "Flash" cable from Captain Herrick, commanding the destroyers, which put in doubt all of his cables that had crossed my desk earlier that day reporting up to 21 torpedoes fired at his ships. Attributing the prior reports to "freak weather effects and an overeager sonarman," Herrick recommended that no further action be taken till there had been complete evaluation, including daylight reconnaissance.
Congress was given no hint of this recommendation (which his superiors ignored) or the uncertainties emphasized by Herrick, in the top secret testimony it received from McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk before it passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution three days later with only two dissenting votes. In hearings in February 1968, Senator J. William Fulbright said that if he had known of the Herrick cable alone, he would not have managed the Senate passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, "a great disservice to the Senate" which he regretted "more than anything I have ever done in my life."
He hadn't known of that cable because I, among many others, didn't tell him. I didn't dream of doing such a thing at the time; and if the thought had occurred to me, I'm sure I would have rejected it. Now I wish fervently that I had made those cables -- along with the rest of the contents of my safe in August 1964, demonstrating the equal falsity of the other statements about "unprovoked" attacks, "routine patrols," and "we seek no wider war" -- available to Congress and the electorate that same autumn, before the bombs had started falling. When I finally did so belatedly in 1971, former Senator Wayne Morse, who had cast one of the two dissenting votes in 1964, told me that if I had given him those documents at that time, "The Tonkin Gulf Resolution would never have gotten out of committee. And if it had been brought to a vote, it would never have passed." That's a heavy burden to bear.
However, just as Senators Byrd and Kennedy, the only two remaining in the Senate who voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, learned from an error they have regretted for almost 40 years and tried to warn their current colleagues against repeating it last fall, so can insiders such as I once was do better than I did then. Individuals inside government, from low-level clerks to Cabinet members, have the power -- to be sure, at the risk of their careers -- to tell the truth. There are surely drawers full of documents in Washington right now -- the Pentagon Papers of Iraq -- that, if leaked in bulk, would drastically alter the public discourse on whether we should have sent our children to kill and to die in Iraq, and more urgently, whether we should continue to do so.
I urge patriotic and conscientious Americans who have access to these documents, and who know it is wrong for their bosses to lie to the public about why we are in this war, to consider doing what I wish I had done in 1964 or early 1965, years earlier than I did: Go to Congress and the press; tell the truth, with documents. The personal risks are real, but a war's worth of lives are at stake.
- [i]By Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers[/i].", http://www.boston.com/news/gl...
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| U.S. Paying Group That Gave False Leads! |
| 02.23.04 (6:11 am) [edit] |
[b]U.S. paying group that gave false leads[/b]
[i][b]The Bush administration continues to pay millions to the group that provided some questionable prewar intelligence on Iraq[/b][/i].
[b]WASHINGTON[/b] - The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war.
The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence programs are classified.
The continuing support for the INC comes amid seven separate investigations into prewar intelligence that Iraq was hiding illicit weapons and had links to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. A probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee is now examining the INC's role.
The decision not to shut off funding for the INC's information gathering effort could become another liability for Bush as the presidential campaign heats up. It also suggests that some within the administration are intent on securing a key role for Chalabi in Iraq's political future.
[b]CLOSE TIES[/b]
Chalabi, who built close ties to officials in Vice President Dick Cheney's office and among top Pentagon officials, is on the Iraqi Governing Council, a body of 25 Iraqis installed by the United States to help administer the country following the ouster of Saddam Hussein last April.
The former businessman, who lobbied for years for a U.S.-backed military effort to topple Hussein, is publicly committed to making peace with Israel and providing bases in the heart of the oil-rich Middle East for use by U.S. forces fighting the war on terrorism.
The INC's Information Collection Program started in 2001 and was ''designed to collect, analyze and disseminate information'' from inside Iraq, according to a letter the group sent in June 2002 to the staff of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Some of the INC's information alleged that Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program, which was destroyed by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War, and was stockpiling banned chemical and biological weapons, according to the letter.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by Knight Ridder newspapers, said the information went directly to ''U.S. government recipients'' who included William Luti, a senior official in Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's office, and John Hannah, a top national security aide to Cheney.
The letter appeared to contradict denials made last year by top Pentagon officials that they were receiving intelligence on Iraq that bypassed established channels and vetting procedures.
The INC also supplied information from its collection program to leading news organizations in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, according to the letter to the Senate committee staff.
[b]DUBIOUS CHARGES[/b]
The State Department and the CIA, which soured on Chalabi in the 1990s, viewed the INC's information as highly unreliable because it was coming from a source with a strong self-interest in convincing the United States to topple Hussein.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has concluded since the invasion that defectors turned over by the INC provided little worthwhile information, and that at least one of them, the source of an allegation that Hussein had mobile biological warfare laboratories, was a fabricator. A defense official said the INC did provide some valuable material on Hussein's military and security apparatus.
Even so, dubious INC-supplied information found its way into the Bush administration's arguments for war, which included charges that Hussein was concealing illicit arms stockpiles and was supporting al Qaeda.
No illicit weapons have yet been found, and senior U.S. officials say there is no compelling evidence that Hussein cooperated with al Qaeda to attack Americans.
The Information Collection Program is now overseen by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which took over when the State Department gave it up in late 2002.
- [i]BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY, WARREN P. STROBEL AND JOHN WALCOTT[/i], http://www.miami.com/mld/miam...
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| Thousands of Protestors March Against Israel's Apartheid Wall |
| 02.22.04 (7:09 am) [edit] |
[b]Israel begins dismantling part of W. Bank wall
[i]Palestinians demonstrate as international court decides fence's fate[/i][/b]
BAKA AL-SHARQIYA, West Bank - Israel began dismantling a small section of its controversial West Bank barrier on Sunday, a day before the World Court opens hearings into the legality of the project.
Civilian work crews using wire clippers cut into a five-mile-long electronic sensor fence separating the Palestinian village of Baka al-Sharqiya from the rest of the West Bank.
Military sources said the work would take less than a week to complete.
Israeli Defense Ministry Director-General Amos Yaron said removing the section of the barrier was unrelated to the court hearings in The Hague and was planned months in advance.
But Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid acknowledged in a television intereview that Israel could reap public opinion benefits from changing the barrier’s route, which cuts off Palestinians from their fields, schools and clinics.
The route of the partially constructed barrier, which snakes into the West Bank and is planned to extend for 452 miles, has come under international criticism, including from the United States -- Israel’s main ally.
Israel says completed sections of the barrier -- a network of razor wire and concrete -- are already stopping Palestinian suicide bombers. Palestinians call it a land grab.
[b]Noisy protests[/b]
On Saturday, thousands of Palestinians staged noisy street demonstrations across the West Bank, marching and shooting guns into the air to protest a massive Israeli barrier sealing off parts of the territory.
The demonstrations were among the largest public outpourings of anger at the barrier, which Palestinians fear will ruin chances for establishing an independent state because parts of it dip deep into the West Bank.
Israel says it needs the series of fences, trenches, walls and watchtowers to keep suicide bombers and gunmen from reaching its towns.
The demonstrations came ahead of hearings to start Monday at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Netherlands, to determine if the barrier is legal.
- [i]MSNBC News Services, Associated Press[/i], http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4...
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| Cheney Afloat But Blood is in the Water |
| 02.22.04 (7:04 am) [edit] |
[b]Cheney afloat but blood is in the water[/b]
[i][b]Deepening scandals may make the Vice-President an electoral liability, writes Marian Wilkinson[/b][/i].
Any Nigerian Government investigation into a bribery scandal would usually be dismissed in Washington with outright guffaws, especially if one of the potential witnesses was reported to be the second-most powerful man in America, Vice-President Dick Cheney. But not today.
When the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission announced two weeks ago it was joining the Paris public prosecutor's office in probing $US180 million ($A227 million) in secret payments allegedly paid to Nigerian officials, Cheney's political enemies took note.
The controversial US defence contractor Halliburton owns one of four foreign companies accused in the scandal. The company, MW Kellogg, was bought by Halliburton in 1998 when Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive.
The Nigerian investigation is just the latest controversy swirling about both Cheney and Halliburton. "We've had the Halliburton scandal of the week for a good five weeks and this is the next big one. If you look over the horizon, this is the one that's coming," says Pete Singer, who investigated Halliburton for his new book, Corporate Warriors, which delves into the grey world of private military contractors.
"It's political campaign season and blood is in the water, so you're going to hear about it."
Cheney and Halliburton, the company he led from 1995 until he ran for Vice-President in 2000, are now the target of so many accusations that some political analysts are openly asking whether Cheney has become a electoral liability for President George Bush.
What makes the Nigerian case so sensitive is the publicity it is generating in France. A French investigating magistrate, Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, has been examining the payments behind closed doors since October. His inquiry grew out of the massive corruption scandal surrounding French oil companies in Africa. But bribery allegations involving Halliburton only surfaced recently when a French executive turned state's evidence.
After French newspaper [i]Le Figaro [/i]finally published the Halliburton connection, the company was forced to disclose the investigation in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in New York on February 6.
"A joint venture in which a Halliburton unit participates is under investigation as a result of payments made in connection with a liquefied gas project in Nigeria," the company statement reads. "The Paris prosecutor's office is probing whether the payments were illegal. The US Department of Justice and the SEC have asked Halliburton for cooperation and access to information in reviewing these matters and are reviewing the allegations in light of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."
The statement adds: "If illegal payments were made, this matter could have a material adverse effect on our businesses."
Cheney's office has referred all questions on the Nigerian case to Halliburton. So far there is no evidence the Vice-President personally knew anything about the payments, which were apparently washed through tax shelters in Portugal and Gibraltar. The scheme was first set up several years before Halliburton owned the company involved.
But French and US reports indicate the payments did not stop after the takeover when Cheney was CEO.
The Nigerian investigation is one more blow to Halliburton, just when the company is reeling under daily attacks by the Democrats over corruption, kickbacks and favouritism in its Iraq contracts handed out by the Bush Administration.
But every attack on Halliburton by the Democrats is also squarely aimed at Cheney.
Back in November, Halliburton was basking in the glory of feeding American troops their Thanksgiving dinner in Baghdad when the President dropped in for a visit. Last week, it was forced to announce it would temporarily halt all billing for all meals fed to the troops in Iraq and Kuwait after admitting that it had over-charged the Pentagon $US34.5 million for catering.
The company was also forced to re-pay $US6.3 million after it was caught overcharging for fuel imports into Iraq. Two of its employees received kickbacks from their local Kuwaiti fuel supplier.
This scandal has also engulfed the Kuwaiti oil minister, who this week also announced an investigation. The Pentagon's own Inspector-General is conducting its own probe into the fuel contract.
As each new scandal unfolds, the Democrats on the Hill are calling for an urgent bi-partisan investigation into Halliburton. The Republicans, not surprisingly, are resisting but are, no doubt, watching nervously as Cheney's poll numbers keep falling. Just before the Iraq war, his approval rating was over 60 per cent. Now it has sunk to just 45 per cent.
Cheney repeatedly beats back any attempt to link him with the current Halliburton scandals by saying he severed all his ties with it before the last election.
But Halliburton's lucrative contracts with the Bush Administration in Iraq have become symbolic of the "special interests" in Washington that are increasingly raising the hackles of many voters.
When the US Army Corps of Engineers admitted that on the eve of the Iraq war it had awarded a no-bid $US7 billion contract to Halliburton to re-build Iraq's oil infrastructure, Cheney's former relationship with the company became an easy target for the Democrats.
"I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of, in any way, shape or form, of contracts led by the (Army) Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government," Cheney told [i]Meet the Press [/i]when questioned about Halliburton.
While this may be true, Cheney was the original architect of the relationship between Halliburton and the Pentagon. A report by the [i]Centre for Public Integrity [/i]in Washington points out that when Cheney was Defence Secretary under George Bush snr in 1992, he moved aggressively on plans to outsource military logistics in conflict zones.
The company chosen to draw up those plans was Halliburton, which, in turn, won the first major contracts under the plan, in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti and Rwanda.
Three years later, after Cheney gave up his own bid to run for president in 1995, he was hired by Halliburton to be the company's new CEO.
"Anyone who says these jobs being given to ex-government people isn't about connections is just lying," Singer told[i] The Age[/i].
Cheney got the job "because of who he knows and the doors that he was able to open".
By the time Cheney left Halliburton to run as Bush's Vice-President in the 2000 election, he had earned $US35.1 million from the company. He still gets a deferred salary from Halliburton and owns $US18 million in stock options, but he has pledged this money to charity.
Politically, Cheney is vulnerable on two fronts. His old company is one of the chief financial beneficiaries from the Iraq war. And he was also the Administration's most strident advocate for the war, often exaggerating the evidence for Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Until recently, Cheney maintained a cool detachment from the attacks on him, his office and Halliburton. Even now, while he occasionally chooses to respond to criticism, he remains surprisingly unaffected by the storm clouds gathering over his head.
Cheney gives no indication he is planning an early retirement. A survivor of four heart attacks, Cheney says he is in excellent health. He also knows his exit from the White House would, at this point, only fuel the attacks on Bush's credibility and energise the Democrats.
For now, Cheney brushes off questions about his public image.
"Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" he asked jokingly in a recent interview with [i]USA Today[/i]. "It's a nice way to operate, actually."
- [i]Marian Wilkinson[/i], http://www.theage.com.au/arti...
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| US Soldier on Frontline in Battle for Refugee Status |
| 02.22.04 (7:00 am) [edit] |
[b]US soldier on frontline in battle for refugee status [/b]
[i][b]Family moved to Canada after private refused to fight in 'dehumanising' Iraq war[/b][/i]
US army private Jeremy Hinzman fought in Afghanistan and considers himself a patriot. But when his unit was ordered to Iraq, he refused to go and embarked on a radical journey that could make legal history.
Private first class Hinzman left the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, taking his wife and son to Canada. Officially, he is awol (absent without leave), and, instead of fighting insurgents, he is battling the US military in the Canadian courts.
This month Pte Hinzman, 25, filed legal papers to become the first US soldier objecting to the Iraq war to be granted refugee status in Canada. His case is expected to be a test of new Canadian immigration laws and the country's traditional role of accepting refugees from the US military.
An estimated 250 Americans every year seek refugee status in Canada, the vast majority making mental health claims, according to Jeffrey House, a Toronto criminal defence lawyer who represents Pte Hinzman.
"This is the first time a soldier from the Iraq war is seeking protection. He does not want to fight in Iraq and he will do any lawful thing to stay in Canada."
If he returns to the US, Pte Hinzman could be prosecuted as a deserter, according to Sergeant Pam Smith, a spokes woman for the 82nd Airborne. "We don't have time to go and track down people who go awol," she told the Associated Press. "We're fighting a war."
On the telephone from Toronto, Pte Hinzman said: "I signed up to defend my country, not carry out acts of aggression."
He hopes other soldiers will refuse to serve in Iraq and come to Canada: "I think I am the first, but I encourage others to do the same. I do not want to sound seditious, but there is strength in numbers."
Pte Hinzman told the Fayetteville Observer that he had liked the subsidised housing and groceries offered by the army and the promises of money for college. "It seemed like a good financial decision," he said. "I had a romantic vision of what the army was."
From the start of basic training, he was upset by the continuous chanting about blood and killing, and what he called the dehumanisation of the enemy. "It's like watching some kind of scary movie, except I was in it," he said.
"People would just walk around saying things like 'I want to kill somebody'."
Human rights lawyers and religious counsellors in the US predict that the case is the start of a huge wave of protests and legal moves by military personnel and their families.
Volunteers at the GI Rights Hotline, a legal aid centre for soldiers, are receiving about 3,500 calls a month from military personnel looking to leave the armed forces.
With a growing number of dead and wounded, the Pentagon is struggling to maintain troop levels in Iraq. Nearly 40% of those now deployed are national guard or reserve troops. "These guys are not going to re-enlist, that is for sure," said Giorgio DeShaun Ra'Shadd, a lawyer in Centennial, Colorado, who represents several military families. "Soldiers are fighting to get out of the service."
In late January the Pentagon cancelled retirement dates for an estimated 40,000 soldiers. This unilateral move postpones soldiers' return to civilian life.
Military families erupted in protest at the decision and immediately launched websites and demonstrations.
"Can the US president with the signature of a pen indenture tens of thousands of US citizens? That is the question we are now investigating," said Luke Hiken, a lawyer in San Francisco. "This is a tremendous militarisation of civilian families. Soldiers are now being asked to stay for two more years. This takes civilian families and turns them into military families."
Based on his work with US military personnel in Germany, Mr Hiken estimates that there are "thousands" of soldiers who want to escape from Iraq. "When they brought them home for vacation in the US, about 15%-20% simply never went back. They stayed with their families."
Pte Hinzman said his family was part of his reason for going awol.
"I vowed to myself, to my wife and son, that I would not go to Iraq. To me it was a war fought on false pretenses. Dr Blix [the former chief UN weapons inspector] went time and time again [to Iraq] and he said there are no weapons of mass destruction.
"They are exploiting the events of September 11, based on greed and our need for oil."
- [i]Jonathan Franklin, UK Guardian[/i], http://www.guardian.co.uk/pri...,3858,4863738-103681,00.html
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| Corrupt Bushites Doctor WMD Photos - Now They Doctor John Kerry Photos! |
| 02.21.04 (7:37 am) [edit] |
[b]Doctored Kerry Photo Brings Anger, Threat of Suit [/b]
The photographer who snapped John Kerry attending a 1971 anti-war rally says he and his photo agency intend to track down -- and possibly sue -- whoever doctored and circulated a photo that made it appear that the then 27-year-old Vietnam veteran was appearing alongside actress Jane Fonda.
Ken Light, now a UC Berkeley professor of journalism ethics, says he photographed Kerry at an anti-war rally in Mineola, N.Y., on June 13, 1971. The decorated Vietnam veteran was preparing to give a speech at the rally -- but Fonda was never at the event.
Light's photo gained prominence when someone took it and merged the shot of the now Democratic presidential front-runner with another separate photo of Fonda -- one taken by photographer Owen Franken as the actress spoke to a 1972 rally in Miami Beach, Fla.
The fabricated Kerry-Fonda photo was circulated with an identifying logo of the Associated Press and became the subject of talk show fodder after it was placed on many Web sites as evidence of Kerry's "anti-American" activities after his war service.
Light said this week that the use -- and misuse -- of his copyrighted photo might result in legal action.
"(We're) doing everything possible to track down who it was and bring them to justice,'' said Light, who said the Associated Press also intended to examine the issue of who would use the agency's copyright for fraudulent purposes.
A spokesman for Light's photo agency, Corbis, said its photographers' work and copyrights are treated seriously.
The agency will "investigate this matter and take appropriate action as necessary,'' the spokesman said.
Light, who teaches at the journalism school at UC Berkeley, said he regularly instructed his students on matters of law and photo ethics. But ironically, this year, "I've become the lesson,'' he said, referring to how easy it has become to produce sophisticated and potentially damaging photos via computer.
"With modern technology, anybody can do it,'' he said of the doctored photo of Kerry, now a 60-year-old, four-term Massachusetts senator. "Someone has to be really motivated and understand what they're doing.''
Still, "it's one thing to (create) an image and another to try to make it look like it came right from a newspaper,'' Light said. The addition of the Associated Press logo suggested that whoever fabricated the photo was "definitely more than someone having fun. ... People just see it, and it creates this impression that it really happened."
Light said he was outraged by his almost 33-year-old photo's popping into the news and becoming the subject of such Internet chatter.
"I was completely shocked and a little disappointed there would be this type of fakery in a political campaign,'' he said.
"You become very concerned for democracy when you realize people are so angry, they're desperately trying to find anything to tilt the direction of what people are thinking,'' he said.
- [i]Carla Marinucci[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| W's Reality Gap ... |
| 02.21.04 (7:33 am) [edit] |
[b]W's Reality Gap ...[/b]
George W. Bush is different, very different. Other presidents have misled, deceived, even lied. When Ike was asked his worst mistake, he candidly said, "The lie we told [about the U-2]." LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin were examples of both deception and self-deception.
The problem today is not simply that "Bush is a liar." While only he knows whether he's intentionally saying untrue things, it is a provable fact that he says untrue things, again and again, on issues large and small, day in and day out. The problem is not "16 words" in last year's State of the Union but 160,000 words on stem cells, global warming, the "death tax," the Iraq-9/11 connection and the Saddam-al Qaeda connection, the rise of deficits, cuts to Americorps, the air in downtown Manhattan after 9/11. On and on. It is beyond controversy that W "has such a high regard for the truth," as Lincoln said of a rival, "that he uses it sparingly."
Why this penchant for falsehoods?
First, George W. Bush begins any policy consideration with three fundamental questions: What does the religious right want? What does big business want? What do the neo-conservatives want? If he has stood up to any of these core supporters in the past three years, examples don't come readily to mind. Convinced by political advisor Karl Rove that the way to a second term is to "activate the base," his policy process is more catechismic than empiric – instead of facts leading to conclusions, conclusions lead to "facts."
Second, he is openly uninterested in learning and reading – the Bushes "aren't serious, studious readers" he has said, also admitting that he now reads headlines, not articles. The point is not that he's stupid, only that he knew less about policy and the world as a presidential candidate than the average graduate student in government. Lacking Eisenhower's worldliness or JFK's intellect, however, Bush is prone to grab onto a politically useful intellectual framework like a life preserver and then not let go – whether it's Myron Magnet's sour interpretation of the 60s in "The Dream and the Nightmare" or Paul Wolfowitz's Pollyannaish analysis of the likely consequences of an American invasion of Iraq.
The result: the most radical, messianic and misleading presidency of modern times. Frankly, no one else comes close. It has gotten to the point that President Bush appears to believe that he can do almost anything if he says the opposite: hence "no child left behind," "clean skies law," "healthy forests," and "love the poor" are mantras repeated in the hope that he can bend reality to his will. Arthur Miller calls it "the power of audacity."
Bush himself in the past has aptly called the first Tuesday in November "Reality Day" because talk ends when there's a real result. So what happens on presidential "reality days" when the results are the opposite of his wishful assertions – when we find neither WMD nor cheering crowds in Iraq, when a surplus of $5 trillion becomes a deficit of $4 trillion, when there are so few stem cell lines for scientific research that scientists leave for London, when the ice caps melt due to global warming, when a Supreme Court of largely Republican appointees rules that affirmative action is not "quotas" but desirable – and when the populations of even our allies regard us as a "bungling bully" (in the phrase of the Financial Times).
When Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 were shown how their pie-in-the-sky economics were producing ruinous deficits, they enacted tax hikes to begin to correct the economy. Not Bush 43. Hearing only applause as he shuttles between his financial base to military bases – W retreats into messianic incompetence. "We don't second guess out of the White House," he announces, confusing stubbornness for strength; and he tells the G-8 leaders in 2001, "Look, I know what I believe and what I believe is right."
Whenever President Bush is now confronted with an unacceptable reality, he either changes the subject – is steroid use really more important than the environment? – or expresses confidence in his certainty. "I'm absolutely confident that..." he'll say, as if the issue is his determination rather than his conclusion. One is reminded of Igor in Young Frankenstein, who when asked about the foot-high hump on his back blithely answers, "What hump?"
This is not just a credibility gap but a reality gap. An empirically challenged and uninformed leader in denial and governing on a (right) wing and a prayer, however, is a big problem. What if Bush were president during the missiles of October – would he have been able to avoid a nuclear war? That he squandered a quarter trillion dollars and 4,000 American casualties attacking Iraq because al Qaeda in Afghanistan attacked us is not encouraging.
Just when they're needed, the usual mechanisms to bring a president to his senses are badly malfunctioning. A Congress of the same party now almost never holds adversarial hearings or holds him accountable, unlike how the Republican Congress treated Clinton. And with noteworthy exceptions, most of the media essentially gave him a pass on his eyebrow-raising military and business histories. The early and continuing storyline was that he was a charming guy who made up funny names for reporters and was no pompous prevaricator like his 2000 opponent. It was strange that, until the Niger-uranium fabrication, the media wrote far more about the spectacular deceptions of Jayson Blair than the more consequential deceptions of George W. Bush.
Of course, adding to his immunity is the understandable impulse to rally around a president during a crisis – a crisis the president regularly stokes as in his recent "State of Baghdad address" to the Congress. Or as commentator E.J. Dionne put it, W's slogan might as well be "the only thing we have to fear is the loss of fear itself."
So it comes down to November 2. If the public rewards W with a second term – and with no re-election contest to impose any possible moderating influence – then W's far-right impulses will be vindicated and corroborated. On that "reality day," which will prevail – Bush's certainty or our reality?
- [i]Mark Green, president of the New Democracy Project, is the author, with Eric Alterman, of The Book On Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America [/i]([i]Viking 2004[/i])., http://www.alternet.org/story...
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| EVEN THE NEOCON Mouthpiece FOX NEWS Reports Bush Ratings Fall to 48% ... |
| 02.21.04 (7:28 am) [edit] |
[b]Even the NEOCON Mouthpiece [i]Fox News [/i]Reports ...[/b]
[b]Wow. The [i]Fox News [/i][/b]poll has the president down at 48% approval. For some reason I cannot begin to fathom, the statistic doesn't seem prominently on display on the [i]Fox News [/i]website. http://www.foxnews.com/ ([i]I can't even find it[/i].) But you can see the brutal numerical truth[i] here [/i]on http://www.pollingreport.com/... .
-[i] TalkingPointsMemo[/i], http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
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| Slowly Israel's Apartheid Wall Squeezes Out The Natives ... |
| 02.20.04 (6:49 am) [edit] |
[b]Letter From Jayyous[/b]
The wall took less than a year to be constructed in an arc around much of Jayyous, a village in the occupied West Bank near Qalqilya. Seventy percent of the villagers' farmland--and all their irrigated land--has ended up on the western side of Israel's "security fence." There are gates for Jayyous's farmers to access their land, but Israel has made the ability to do so steadily more difficult--in a process most villagers believe will eventually lead to the confiscation of their ancestral lands.
Jayyous, a town of about 3,000, already lost 20 percent of its lands after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. These lands were redistributed to Israeli farmers. Jayyous was never compensated for its loss. One villager tells how he used to lead his donkey at night to what was once his family's apricot orchards, across the Green Line, and helped himself to the fruit. He called himself and his donkey "the Apricot Liberation Front."
Depending on how the question is considered, there are between five to eight clans, or extended families, in Jayyous. One was Christian until about 100 years ago. Somewhere in the village there used to be churches. The columns on the village's main mosque were salvaged from Roman ruins. There are also Ottoman ruins. Caves, used since time immemorial, dot the northern hillside, some ending up underneath houses in the village. Many of the houses have older stone foundations underneath--up to 1,500 years old. Villagers hid in these caves for twelve days when the Israelis sent trucks in during the Six-Day War in 1967 to cart the people of Jayyous to the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, in a possible prelude to expulsion. After twenty days in the camp, the rest of the villagers walked the ten miles home on foot.
Some of the villagers have eight names, and a few have nine, indicating that their families extend back about 600 years, according to Abdel Latif Khaled, a local hydrologist. It is clear the land has been cultivated for centuries; some of the thousands of olive trees belonging to the village are hundreds of years old. An Israeli arborist reported that the oldest tree he knew of in Israel/Palestine was 1,700 years old but said there may be even older ones ([i]Journal of Palestine Studies[/i], Summer 2003 issue). Villagers refer to these extremely old trees as "Roman trees," indicating they have been there from the time when Jayyous was a Roman garrison town. Some Jayyous residents still possess tattered Ottoman deeds to their lands, which were eventually replaced by British and then Jordanian deeds; all of the land is registered in Jordan. They also have vouchers from the Palestinian Authority's Finance Department. Four hundred dunams (100 acres) are held in common by the Jayyous municipality; before that, they were held by the colonially appointed [i]mukhtar [/i](town elder).
Once, 300 Jayyous farmers went to their lands every day. Then the wall was built. At first the gates were open. Then the Israelis placed locks and chains on them. Then they started locking the gates, only opening them for about fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. On October 2 the Israeli West Bank military commander, Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky, declared the area between the wall and the Green Line to be a closed military zone. The Israelis call this area the "seam zone." The rules of the seam zone require that no Palestinian can enter without a permit issued by Israel. However, Israeli citizens and those eligible to be citizens under the Law of Return are allowed to enter. A sign next to the gate reads in Hebrew, Arabic and English, "He who enters this area without permission endangers his life."
Shareef Omar, a member of the local Land Defense Committee, says he told PA minister Saeb Erekat that accepting the permits was a mistake, and would be another step in losing the rights to their lands. Erekat disagreed, and told Omar, "The farmers have already suffered too much."
On November 14 a stack of hundreds of permits was delivered to the municipality of Jayyous. Mostly the permits were for children, old men and women, and Jayyousians who currently live in places like Canada, Saudi Arabia or Jordan. Conspicuously absent were permits for any of the farmers who had participated in Jayyous's campaign of dozens of nonviolent protests against the wall in the preceding year. Or anyone who had a family member seized by Israel's security forces. Only 30 percent of the farmers who needed them could get permits, and they were issued for two months, until January 14. Of seven numbered items on the permit, the most salient is Number 6: "This permit does not prove your ownership of the land, or if you have a house there, this permit does not prove you are the owner of the house." Many farmers went to the occupation authorities in the Israeli settlement of Kedumim to try to obtain permits, and sometimes hired Israeli lawyers to help. The answers were always the same: "Come back in a couple of days," or "Come back next week." The end result was always the same: "Permit denied." No explanation ever given. In a bit of irony, one farmer, Mahmoud, 29, has a permit to work in Tel Aviv, but not in his own fields. Apparently he is a greater threat to Israel tending his sheep than working construction in Tel Aviv.
Khader Shamasny, 29, has 100 sheep but cannot graze them because he has no permit to get to his lands, and there is little to graze on inside the wall. This does not prevent shepherds from trying to graze their sheep wherever something green can be found inside the town. Some sheep have clearly visible ribs. Their offspring are not surviving as regularly, and they get sick more easily. Abdel Latif Khaled says the people in the village do not have enough protein in their diets as a result.
Shamasny cannot afford to buy feed for his sheep, the price having doubled over the past year. He is thinking of selling them before they starve to death. He talks about taking a job with the Palestinian police--which seems to amount to a sort of workfare in the occupied West Bank. Police wages will not allow Shamasny to feed his sheep, however.
It seems to be part of a deliberate policy not to allow shepherds to graze their flocks. At the south gate, farmers who had permits were not allowed to take their sheep through from November through early January and much of their land is not accessible through the other gate. On January 10, this reporter was asked to accompany farmers to their fields. Also accompanying us was an Israeli-born US national and activist with Jews Against the Occupation, who speaks Hebrew. I explained to the soldier at the gate, a Druze who would not let me through, that under the rules of the seam zone I do not require permission to enter as someone eligible for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. He went to his jeep to call his commander, then came back and told me no dice. So I watched the work crew--many of them Jayyousians with permits hired by farmers without permits to tend to their land and harvest their crops. The soldiers checked them all semi-methodically, and let them through, about thirty people and seven vehicles.
However, the soldiers stopped the last two villagers who tried to enter, boys from Jayyous, aged approximately 12 or 13, with about twenty-five sheep. Without asking for or checking their permits, one soldier said to the boys in Hebrew, in a very aggressive tone, as if he recognized one of them: "No sheep. No sheep. You're not coming to the fence. Go home. You throw stones, you come near the fence. If I see you by the fence today--forget about it. Go home."
Then the soldiers closed the gate and left. The boys told us they did not throw stones, that they had permits and that they had been allowed through before.
At 8 AM we placed a call to Hamoked Lehafganat Haprat, an Israeli human rights group in Jerusalem, which acts a liaison to the occupation authorities. One of the boys, Muhammed, spoke to the organization. Hamoked said they would call the Israelis, and told us to wait.
At 8:15 another jeep arrived. Two soldiers got out, opened the gate and approached us. They were very aggressive and angry. "What time is it? You're late. You're not getting through. Get out of here. Go home." When the shepherds and I insisted they were there on time, the soldiers turned around and went back through the gate. "Are you going to open the gate for them?" I shouted. "Yes," came the reply--but then they shut the gate, and both soldiers aimed their rifles at us and shouted at us to go away. One got down in sniper position. We backed away about twenty yards, and the soldiers left.
At 8:18 we again called Hamoked. They said they would call a higher occupation authority than the last time. But at 8:35 the shepherds gave up and went to try to find some grass on the eastern side of the wall for their sheep. We notified Hamoked, and they said they would protest with Israel's civil administration.
The fence in Jayyous is flanked by a road and dirt track. Israeli army jeeps driving along the length of the road punctuate the night with gunfire in the air.
The children of Jayyous are effectively caged into the village, away from their families' lands, watching their future being taken away. Sometimes they cut the razor wire on the fence, a cat-and-mouse game with the soldiers. They feel they have little to lose. This concerns the mayor, Faiz Selim. "Parents have no money to give their children to go to university, and can't go to their land to work. How can they care for their children?" Mayor Selim keeps the blinds on his window drawn shut, because he can't stand looking at the fruit rotting on his trees on his fields, which are beyond the wall. As he is being interviewed, a farmer comes in and an animated conversation ensues. The mayor later explains that the man is among those who cannot get to his land. The Palestinian Authority has promised to help blunt their losses, but so far no money has come.
When the village's permits expired in January, even fewer farmers were given new ones. Recently Israel delivered a set of new rules for permits. Farmers must now provide pictures for the permits, which will have magnetic strips. They must declare in Kedumim that they will not rent their lands, and that they own the land directly and work it themselves. (It is a common practice for the farmers to rent land and hire additional workers.) If their names do not match those on the title deeds, they have to prove in Israeli court in Kedumim that it is their land. They need the mayor's office to certify they own the land and work on it, and how much land they have. Then, the kicker: After all these conditions are fulfilled, all back taxes on the land must be paid. The Jayyousians stopped paying their taxes in 1995, when the village came under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, which it did not compel the farmers to pay. Now they are required to come up with nine years of back taxes, and send it to a bank account registered in the name of the Palestinian Authority.
This made the people of Jayyous suspicious. Was the PA collaborating with the Israeli authorities? The PA has never shown much concern for the farmers, and is now bankrupt. The Land Defense Committee went to PA ministers and asked them directly if they knew about this condition; they insisted they were never informed. The farmers left hoping that the PA Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala), will be able to negotiate with the Israelis a slightly better deal--maybe to pay only every other year. At 22 shekels a year per irrigated dunam, and 8.5 per unirrigated, very few farmers can afford to pay the back taxes.
Many farmers can't even get the money to buy new plastic to cover their greenhouses. Three years of closures, added transportation costs because 90 percent of the old access roads have been cut off by the wall, difficulties in bringing in their harvests because of restrictive rules, harassment by Israeli security forces--all this has left the farmers with little money. Shareef Omar, the largest landowner in town, will have to come up with $8,000 to pay back taxes on his 175 dunams, a sum he doesn't have. He says many farmers will be forced to sell some of their lands in order to pay the taxes. As of February 4, only three farmers had managed to fill all the requirements and get permits to go to their land.
The wall has created a critical economic crisis in a very short time. About 140,000 olive and fruit trees have been demolished for the path of the wall in the West Bank already, says Abdel Latif Khaled, and about the same number have died behind the wall for lack of care. In one or two generations, says Khaled, it will change the culture of the people in a dramatic way. There is a very intense relationship between Jayyousians and their land. They refer to the very old olive trees as "grandfather trees," and consider them like members of their families; but soon, they may be able to see them only from the roofs of their homes, as most of them now lie on the other side of the fence.
- [i]By David Bloom, The Nation[/i], http://www.thenation.com/doc....
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| Bush's 'INDEPENDENT' Iraq Commission Is Not 'Independent' ... |
| 02.20.04 (6:44 am) [edit] |
[b]Faulty Intelligence[/b]
The commission appointed by President George W. Bush to look into WMD-related “intelligence failures” can be considered “independent” only if the word now means “subordinated and allied.” The members lack the expertise required to uncover what really went wrong, and their limited mandate sidesteps the central question: Did the administration hype intelligence reports to march the United States into war?
Rather than allowing Congress to name the members and determine the scope of their investigation, the intelligence commission was established by executive fiat and is a mixture of centrists and right-wing ideologues—suggesting that Bush is less concerned with unraveling the Iraq fiasco than deflecting criticism until after the November elections.
Co-chairmen are Laurence Silberman, a retired appeals court judge appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan, and Charles Robb, the moderate former governor and senator from Virginia. Other members are: John McCain, who called for the commission’s formation but advocated that it report back after November; Lloyd Cutler, legal counsel for two Democratic administrations; Richard Levin, president of Yale University, alma mater of the Bush clan; Patricia Wald, former chief judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals; and Adm. William Studeman, former deputy director of Central Intelligence and the only appointee with a solid knowledge of intelligence matters.
The cosmetic appearance of bipartianship doesn’t mask the politicking at the commission’s root.
Silberman has proved himself a valued ideological right-wing operative. After serving as deputy attorney general in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he represented the Reagan-Bush presidential campaign team in 1980 as its unofficial ambassador to Iran, secretly meeting with representatives of Ayatollah Khomeini.
As a reward for his service, Reagan appointed him to the Court of Appeals for Washington D.C., the most powerful circuit court in the country. In this capacity, he is best known for voting in 1990 to overturn the convictions of Lt. Col. Oliver North and Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of felonies relating to the Iran-contra scandal.
Silberman’s intervention played a key role in sabotaging the investigation of special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who later described the GOP majority on the U.S. Appeals Court as “a powerful band of Republican appointees [who] waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army, … a force cloaked in the black robes of those dedicated to defining and preserving the rule of law.”
In addition to reversing the Iran-Contra convictions, Silberman tried overturning the independent counsel statute, a decision nullified by the Supreme Court on an 8-1 vote. A decade later, the judge helped right-wing activists pursuing allegations of sexual misconduct by President Bill Clinton and was a strong defender of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. When Clinton attempted to prevent Secret Service agents from being forced to testify before Starr’s grand jury in 1998, Silberman wrote in a legal opinion, “Can it be said that the president of the United States has declared war on the United States?”
Even the seating of McCain, widely regarded as an outspoken maverick Republican, does little to establish the credibility of the panel. Although McCain was an early advocate of a presidential commission “to prevent the United States from ever being misinformed again,” he declined to support Senate bill 1946, introduced last November to establish a congressionally mandated independent commission. He also allayed Bush administration concerns that the commission would influence the November elections by stating that it will take the panel more than a year to complete its work.
McCain is one of the most virulent hawks on Capitol Hill and has not deviated from the neo-conservative line regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Leading up to the war, McCain parroted administration claims on WMDs. On the eve of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly asked McCain, “If you were president, what would you have done differently in the run-up to this war?” The senator answered, “Nothing.”
McCain also suggested that the commission’s findings already are written when he told reporters: “The president of the United States, I believe, did not manipulate any kind of information for political gain or otherwise.”
White House press secretary Scott McClellan emphasized that commission members’ “independence will be spelled out in the executive order that the president will sign.” But the executive order Bush signed on February 6 provided that the panel is “subject to the authority of the President.”
- [i]Nat Parry, In These Times[/i], http://www.inthesetimes.com/c...
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| SUICIDES SPIKE IN IRAQ |
| 02.20.04 (6:38 am) [edit] |
[b]Suicides spike in Iraq[/b]
There were 22 reported suicides among U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq last year. According to the [i]Washington Post[/i], http://www.washingtonpost.com... that number in itself represents a rate of 13.5 per 100,000 troops, which is nearly 20 percent higher than the average in recent years. Further, the article notes that the number given by the military does not include cases under investigation and excludes soldiers who committed suicide after returning home.
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| Two More US Soldiers Killed Today In Iraq: When Will It End? |
| 02.19.04 (6:58 am) [edit] |
[b]Roadside blast kills two U.S. soldiers in Iraq
[i]Attack follows twin suicide bombings on coalition base[/i][/b]
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi in the city of Khaldiyah on Thursday, the U.S. military said.
“Two U.S. soldiers were killed and one wounded at 10:30 this morning (2:30 a.m. ET) in a roadside blast near Khaldiyah,” a military spokesman in Iraq said, adding: “At least one Iraqi was also killed.
He was not certain if the Iraqi was a civilian.
The attack in Khaldiyah came a day after a pair of suicide bombers detonated explosives outside a Polish-run base, killing 10 Iraqis and wounding more than 100 people, more than half of them coalition soldiers.
The two drivers also were killed, according to the U.S. military, but no information about their identities was available.
Later on Wednesday, insurgents fired mortars and rockets at a U.S. base at a prison on the western edge of Baghdad, slightly wounding one soldier, the military said Thursday. U.S. troops killed one Iraqi and detained 55 for questioning, the military added.
[b]Notorious prison[/b]
The incident occurred between 6:30 p.m. and 6:50 p.m. (10:30 a.m. and 10:50 a.m. ET) at the Abu Ghraib prison, the military said. Thirty-three mortars and five rockets were fired during the insurgent attack.
Abu Ghraib was one of Iraq's most notorious prisons during the rule of Saddam Hussein, who detained, tortured and executed many regime opponents there.
The U.S. military uses the prison to house coalition opponents and former regime members.
U.S. troops also reported Wednesday the capture of seven suspected militants believed linked to al-Qaida in a raid in the central city of Baqouba.
Troops from the 4th Infantry Division carried out the raid targeting an “anti-coalition cell” that may have ties to Osama bin Laden’s terror group, a statement from U.S. command said.
Seven suspects specifically targeted in the raid and 15 other people were detained, the statement said.
Baqouba is in the so-called “Sunni Triangle,” north and west of Baghdad, the heartland of anti-U.S. violence in Iraq.
[b]Suicide attacks target coalition[/b]
In the suicide assault Wednesday, the Polish commander of the region, Gen. Mieczyslaw Bieniek, called the bombings near the base in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, a “well-coordinated attack.”
U.S. officials have predicted an increase in attacks as the June 30 date for the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq approaches. Some insurgents fear their campaign could lose steam once power is returned to Iraqis, U.S. officials believe.
However, major differences remain on how to choose a new government.
"The enemy’s strategy is fairly clear,” coalition military commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told reporters Wednesday in Tikrit. “They plan to isolate us from the Iraqi people.”
The bombing happened after 7:15 a.m. when two trucks loaded with explosives approached the front of the coalition base known as Camp Charlie. Guards fired at the vehicles, causing one to explode, said Lt. Col. Robert Strzelecki. The other struck a concrete barrier and exploded.
Eleven homes near the base collapsed in the blast and others were damaged, entire sides blown off. Debris littered the area.
Mohyee Mokheef, a 50-year-old cafe owner, who lives near the camp, said he was having breakfast with his family when he heard a faint first explosion and a second, louder one that shattered the windows in his home.
“I went out and walked toward the base, and I saw about eight damaged houses,” he told The Associated Press. “I saw dead and injured Iraqis lying on the ground.”
Men, women and children were among the dead. The wounded included at least 32 Iraqis and 26 Poles, as well as Hungarians, Bulgarians, Filipinos and an American.
-[i] MSNBC, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report[/i]., http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4...
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| How the Bush team will try to paint John Kerry: Lies, Lies, like Bush's WMD Lies |
| 02.19.04 (6:54 am) [edit] |
[b]How the Bush team will try to paint Kerry [/b]
WASHINGTON — President Bush's campaign strategists believe "Massachusetts liberal" is a potent political epithet. But they don't think it's enough to defeat Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.
So the Bush team, which believes Kerry has the nomination wrapped up, is preparing a broad attack on his record over 19 years in the Senate and what they call his opportunistic reversals on key issues.
The faceoff between Bush and Kerry has begun extraordinarily early in volleys of press releases and Web videos. It will continue for eight months and signals a long, nasty campaign. Decisions being made now will define the territory on which the campaign is fought and establish competing portraits of the two men.
Already, Republicans are depicting Kerry as a product of Washington, beholden to special interests and out of touch with regular Americans. The "Massachusetts liberal" tag that worked so well when the elder George Bush used it to defeat Gov. Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race is just part of the case this Bush will try to make, aides say.
The drawback to the Bush strategy is that much of it has been tried before, most recently by Kerry's rivals for the nomination. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean called Kerry "the handmaiden of special interests," and retired general Wesley Clark said he's "part of the problem" in Washington. Those criticisms have not slowed Kerry in the Democratic primaries. But Bush strategists believe that the sustained attack they began last week will take hold with voters and raise doubts. Bush's campaign will have at least $170 million to spend, much of it on TV ads hammering Kerry's record.
Full-force GOP criticism began as soon as Kerry won the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 19. Four days later, Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie declared him "out of sync" with most Americans and one of the "most liberal members" of the Senate.
The first wave of disparagement is an old political tactic: Define your opponent before he defines himself. Bush's strategists want to negate Kerry's self-portrait of a moderate who fights special interests before that picture is rooted in voters' minds.
"Politicians get in a lot of trouble when they present themselves as different than who they really are," says Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist.
Something personal also is driving the Bush strategy. Some advisers believe the first President Bush dismissed his challenger's chances in his 1992 re-election battle and waited too long to take on Bill Clinton. There will be no repeat of that mistake, they say.
[b]Kerry: 'Bring it on' [/b]
Researchers with the Bush campaign and at the Republican National Committee have examined Kerry's tenure as Massachusetts' lieutenant governor from 1982 to 1984, the 6,500 votes he has cast since he was joined the Senate in 1985, his speeches, his campaign donors and his finances. They have studied his last campaign against a Republican, a 1996 victory over William Weld, who was governor of Massachusetts.
They see Kerry as a traditional candidate and expect him to follow a predictable plan. They expect him to take mainstream Democratic positions and avoid both the centrism of Clinton and the leftist populism of Dean. They also hope he follows a historic pattern: No sitting member of Congress has been elected president since John Kennedy — a Massachusetts Democrat — in 1960.
But Bush's team sees plenty to worry about. Kerry, they say, is a relentless campaigner, an adept debater, a candidate with a history of strong finishes. "I didn't think he ever got below the belt," says Weld, who lost 45%-52%. "His instinct is not to be personally offensive. ... I would anticipate a substantive campaign."
[b]Legislative record a target [/b]
A dozen Bush insiders in the White House, the campaign and key states described the evolving Bush strategy. Most spoke on condition that they not be named. A preview of their lines of attack:
•Kerry has left no footprint on Capitol Hill. "What's he done?" asks Mary Matalin, a Bush campaign adviser. "He's been on the Hill forever, and what does he have to show for it?"
Dean's campaign did the research and e-mailed the results to reporters: Kerry has sponsored 371 bills. Nine became law and six of those were more ceremonial, such as renaming a federal building, than substantive. The others were two bills related to marine research and one providing grants to women who own small businesses.
Kerry campaign staffers didn't dispute the Dean campaign's information, but they argued that it misrepresented Kerry's record. He teamed with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona to reopen U.S. relations with Vietnam in 1995, and they are trying to raise fuel-economy standards and make Internet transactions tax-free. He helped stall Bush's plan to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "Sometimes," Kerry said in a debate Jan. 29, "your accomplishments are not in what you get done, but in what you stop other people from doing."
[b]Reality check[/b]: Kerry has a short list of laws with his name on them. But interviews with people who had just voted in Democratic primaries found experience ranked near the bottom of considerations that determined their vote. In the 2000 election, experience was less important to voters than honesty.
•He switches positions when it's politically expedient. Kerry voted against the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but in 2002, he voted for a resolution authorizing Bush to go to war against Iraq. His explanation: In 1991, he believed the first Bush administration should take more time to try diplomacy before military action. In 2002, he believed this Bush administration had agreed to pursue diplomacy first.
Kerry voted for Bush's education bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, but now says he'd repeal it because it doesn't work. He voted for the USA Patriot Act, which expanded government power to monitor citizens after the Sept. 11 attacks, but now opposes it as too intrusive. He opposed the death penalty for terrorists who kill Americans abroad but now supports it.
[b]Reality check[/b]: Bush's strategists are planning ads focused on some of those things. Campaign manager Ken Mehlman said in an online chat Feb. 9 that Kerry's opposition to Bush's education bill means he wants to "take our nation backward." Some Democrats aligned with other candidates say privately that Kerry will have to come up with better explanations.
•He's on the wrong side of issues that matter most to voters. "We question his judgment in consistently voting to cut defense and intelligence funding critical to our national security," Mehlman says.
After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Kerry voted to cut spending on intelligence by $1.5 billion over five years. In 1996, he voted to cut defense by $6.5 billion. He has since said that some of those votes were mistakes.
Bush's advisers see vulnerability in Kerry's stand on an emotional and divisive issue: gay marriage. In 1996, Kerry voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of gay marriages and allowed states to refuse to recognize those performed in other states. Kerry opposes gay marriage but supports civil unions and partnership rights.
[b]Reality check[/b]: The differences between Bush's priorities and Kerry's are likely to dominate the competition for moderate and independent voters. How this debate plays out will depend on the shape the economy is in, progress in Iraq and whether gay marriage becomes a big campaign issue.
•He's a hypocrite on the Vietnam War. "Hypocrisy is a character issue that we ought to be concerned about," Gillespie said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. The charge is a crucial element of Bush's plan to rebut criticism of his own National Guard service during the Vietnam War. Bush wants to label Kerry, a combat veteran who later opposed the war, a hypocrite. Their case: During a 1971 protest at the U.S. Capitol, Kerry tossed onto the steps his combat ribbons and other veterans' medals, but he kept his own medals. For years, Kerry did not correct the impression that he had discarded his medals in protest.
"Doing something that phony on such a poignant issue of conscience is viscerally unsettling," Matalin says. "What does the capacity to be so calculating say about him?"
Behind the strategy are concerns in Bush's camp about the potential damage of controversy over Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. Although he was honorably discharged, there are questions about how diligent Bush was during his Guard service.
[b]Reality check[/b]: This issue is about more than who did what 30 years ago. Kerry hopes his military record will help him counter doubts about his readiness to be commander in chief. Bush aides wish the media would focus on Kerry's past conduct, not on Bush's.
By 1990, 71% of Americans considered the Vietnam War a mistake. That suggests Kerry's opposition after serving may not be a pivotal issue. But questions about both men's conduct are more about character and credibility, qualities that matter in presidential campaigns.
If he wants to make an issue of Bush's military record, Kerry may be hindered by a remark he made in 1992 amid charges that Bill Clinton had dodged the draft. "We do not need to divide America over who served and how," Kerry said.
•He's a captive of special interests. "Special interests' best friend," was the headline on a GOP press release about Kerry this month. In speeches, Kerry warns lobbyists, "We're coming, you're going, and don't let the door hit you on the way out."
But Kerry has raised more money from lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. He received nearly $640,000 from lobbyists for his four Senate campaigns. For this race, Kerry has raised more than $225,000 from lobbyists.
[b]Reality check[/b]: Last week, Bush's campaign posted a video ad on its Web site and e-mailed it to supporters. The ad, titled "Unprincipled," recites how much money Kerry's campaigns have received from lobbyists. But that criticism may ring false for Bush, who collects considerable lobbyist donations and whose administration has consulted with special interests on energy, health and tax policies. Kerry's campaign responded with a Web ad that said Bush has "taken more special interest money than anyone in history."
•He's the Democrats' default choice, not an inspirational leader. In a Feb. 4 memo, Bush strategist Dowd called Kerry a "safe, old standby ... a traditional Democratic choice after the thrill of the Dean candidacy wore off."
[b]Reality check[/b]: Bush strategists may be counting on a replay of the 1996 campaign. GOP nominee Bob Dole, who like Kerry was a war hero and veteran legislator, generated little excitement and lost to Clinton.
All those points will become familiar themes of Bush's campaign, and he'll still haul out the "Massachusetts liberal" label often. Kerry supports gun control and gay rights. He opposes restrictions on abortion. Bush will emphasize those views to deny him support across the South.
"His problem isn't where he's from, it's where he stands on issues," says Ralph Reed, Bush's campaign chairman for the southeast. "Kerry's record of voting for huge tax increases, opposing a strong defense and undermining our intelligence is out of the mainstream for a majority of voters."
Weld says Bush had better not underestimate Kerry. In the final months of their 1996 campaign, he says, Kerry's campaign "turned on a dime. The ads got sharper, the stump speech got crisper." Weld predicts that "man-to-man combat" lies ahead.
-[i] By Judy Keen, USA TODAY[/i], http://www.usatoday.com/news/...
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| What About The 10,000 Iraqi Civilians Who Are Dead? |
| 02.19.04 (6:47 am) [edit] |
[b]Missing in Action in Iraq
[i]Americans Hear About their 500 Dead Soldiers. What About the 10,000 Dead Iraqi Civilians[/i]?[/b]
It was Mary Vargas, a 44-year-old engineer in Renton, Washington, who carried U.S. therapy culture to its new zenith. Explaining why the war in Iraq was no longer her top election issue, she told Salon that, “when they didn't find the weapons of mass destruction, I felt I could also focus on other things. I got validated.”
Yes, that's right: war opposition as self-help. The end goal is not to seek justice for the victims, or punishment for the aggressors, but rather 'validation' for the war's critics. Once validated, it is of course time to reach for the talisman of self-help: 'closure.' In this mindscape, Howard Dean's wild scream was not so much a gaff as the second of the five stages of grieving: anger. The scream was a moment of uncontrolled release, a catharsis, allowing American liberals to externalize their rage and then move on, transferring their affections to more appropriate candidates.
All of the front-runners in the Democratic race borrow the language of pop therapy to discuss the war and the toll it has taken — not on Iraq (a country so absent from their campaigns it may as well be on another planet) but on Americans. To hear John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean tell it, the invasion was less a war of aggression against a sovereign nation than a civil war within the U.S., a traumatic event that severed Americans from their faith in politicians, from their rightful place in the world, and from their tax dollars.
“The price of unilateralism is too high and Americans are paying it — in resources that could be used for health care, education, and our security here at home,“ Kerry said on December 16. “We are paying that price in respect lost around the world. And most importantly, that price is paid in the lives of young Americans forced to shoulder the burden of the mission alone.“
Conspicuously absent from Kerry's tally are the lives of Iraqi civilians lost as a direct result of the invasion. Even Dean, the “anti-war candidate,“ regularly suffers from the same myopic math. “There are now almost 400 people dead who wouldn't be dead if we hadn't gone to war,“ he said in November. On January 22, updated the number of losses to “500 soldiers and 2,200 wounded.“
But on February 8, while Kerry was campaigning in Virginia and Dean was in Maine, the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the invasion reached as high as 10,000. That number is the most authoritative estimate available, since the occupying authorities in Iraq refuse to keep statistics on civilian casualties. It comes from Iraq Body Count, a group of respected British and U.S. academics that bases its figures on cross referenced reports from journalists and human rights groups in the field.
John Sloboda, co-founder of Iraq Body Count told me that while the passing of the grim 10,000 mark made the British papers and the BBC, it received “scandalously little attention in the United States“ — including from the leading Democratic candidates, even as they hammer Bush on his faulty intelligence. “If the war was fought on false pretences,“ Sloboda says, “that means that every death caused by the war is a death on false pretences.“
And if that's the case, the most urgent question is not, “Who knew what when?“ — but “Who owes what to whom?“ In international law, countries that wage wars of aggression must pay reparations as a penalty for their crimes. Yet in Iraq, this logic has been turned on its head. Not only are there no penalties for an illegal war, there are prizes, with the U.S. actively and openly rewarding itself with huge reconstruction contracts. “Our people risked their lives. Coalition, friendly coalition folks risked their lives and therefore, the contracting is going to reflect that,“ Bush said on December 11.
And when the reconstruction spending has attracted scrutiny, it has not been over what is owed to Iraqis for their tremendous losses, but over what is owed to American taxpayers. “This war profiteering is poison to America — poison to Americans' faith in government and poison to our allies' perception of our motives in Iraq,“ John Edwards said in December. True, but he somehow failed to mention that it also poisons Iraqis — not their faith, or their perceptions, but their bodies.
Every dollar wasted on an over-charging, underperforming U.S. contractor is a dinar not spent rebuilding Iraq's bombed out water treatment and electricity plants. And it is Iraqis, not U.S. taxpayers, who are forced to drink typhoid and cholera infested water, and then to seek treatment in hospitals still flooded with raw sewage, where the drug supply is even more depleted than during the sanctions era.
There is currently no plan to compensate Iraqi civilians for deaths caused by the willful destruction of their basic infrastructure, or as a result of combat during the invasion. The occupying forces will only pay compensation for “instances where soldiers have acted negligently or wrongfully.“ According to the latest estimates, U.S. troops have distributed roughly $2-million in compensation for deaths, injuries and property damage. That's less than the price of two of the 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles launched during the war and a third of what Halliburton admits two of its employees accepted in bribes from a Kuwaiti contractor.
To talk about the price of the Iraq war strictly in terms of U.S. casualties and tax dollars is an obscenity. Yes, Americans were lied to by their politicians. Yes, they are owed answers. But the people of Iraq are owed a great deal more, and that enormous debt belongs at the very center of any civilized debate about the war.
In the U.S., a good start would be for the Democratic candidates to acknowledge some collective responsibility. Bush may have been the war's initiator but in the language of self-help, he had plenty of enablers. They included Kerry and Edwards, among the 27 other Democratic Senators and 81 Democratic Members of the House of Representatives who voted for the resolution authorizing Bush to go to war. They also included Howard Dean who believed and repeated Bush's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Playing its part too was a credulous and cheerleading press, which sold those claims to an overly trusting U.S. public, 76 per cent of whom supported the war, according to a CBS poll released two days after the invasion began.
Why does this ancient history matter? Because so long as Bush's opponents continue to cast themselves as the primary victims of his war, the real victims will remain invisible, unable to make their claims for justice. The focus will be on uncovering Bush's lies — a process geared towards absolving those who believed them, not on compensating those who died because of them. If the war was wrong, then that the U.S., as the main aggressor, must devote itself to making things right.
In the five stages of grieving, there is a step that comes after anger. It's guilt, when the grieving party starts to wonder whether they did enough, if the loss was somehow their fault, how they can make amends. Moving on — the last and final stage — is supposed to come after that reckoning.
[i]- Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Picador) and, most recently, Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (Picador).[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| Eisenhower Was Right |
| 02.18.04 (6:46 am) [edit] |
"War settles nothing." – Dwight D. Eisenhower
[b]Eisenhower Was Right[/b]
A small article on page A12 of the January 29 issue of the [i]New York Times [/i]is revealing with respect to the extent of the power of the military-industrial complex in American life. The article reports that the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, told the House Armed Services Committee that he is going to increase the size of U.S. forces by 30,000.
Did Congress authorize the increase? No. And when a few congressmen indicated to the general that they’d be pleased to have Congress authorize the increase, the general responded that Congress didn’t need to trouble themselves with providing such authority — that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had already authorized the temporary increase under his “emergency” power — and that the “emergency” would justify the increase for the next four years. In other words, “Don’t worry your pretty little heads, elected representatives of the people; the military bureaucracy has the situation well under control. Go back to your knitting.”
Combine that kind of military power (the power to increase military forces without congressional approval) with the enormous economic dependency on military bases of states and cities all over the country and with the Pentagon’s newly claimed power to arrest, jail, and punish American citizens without due process of law and a jury trial, and you might begin to understand what President Eisenhower meant when he warned the American people back in 1961,
[i]In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together[/i].
To gain an excellent understanding of the overwhelming power and influence of the military-industrial complex in American life — and the tremendous damage it has done to our nation — and the threat it poses to the freedom and well-being of the American people, I highly recommend [i]The Sorrows of Empire [/i]by Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and professor emeritus at the University of California. Here’s what Johnson says in his introduction to this insightful book:
[i]As militarism, the arrogance of power, and the euphemisms required to justify imperialism inevitably conflict with America’s democratic structure of government and distort its culture and basic values, I fear that we will lose our country. If I overstate the threat, I am sure to be forgiven because future generations will be so glad I was wrong. The danger I foresee is that the United States is embarked on a path not unlike that of the former Soviet Union during the 1980s. The USSR collapsed for three basic reasons — internal economic contradictions driven by ideological rigidity, imperial overstretch, and an inability to reform. Because the United States is far wealthier, it may take longer for similar afflictions to do their work. But the similarities are obvious and it is nowhere written that the United States, in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must go on forever[/i].
Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, at the Cato Institute wrote, “Chalmers Johnson’s searing indictment of America’s flirtation with imperial foreign policy should be required reading for all concerned citizens. One need not agree with all of his arguments to conclude that [i]The Sorrows of Empire[/i] is an extremely important and disturbing book.”
In fact, if you haven’t read Johnson’s previous book, [i]Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire[/i], I recommend purchasing it as well. In [i]Blowback[/i], which was published shortly before the September 11 attacks, Johnson explained how U.S. foreign policy was destined to produce major counterattacks against the United States.
Once the American people begin to appreciate the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers in opposing an enormous standing military force in their midst as well as the wisdom and foresight of President Eisenhower, we will be able to begin the journey toward making America once again the model for the world in terms of liberty, peace, prosperity, and enjoyment of life.
- [i]Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation[/i]., http://www.fff.org/comment/co...
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| Shiites Fume over Bremer Veto Threat as Violence Continues in Iraq |
| 02.18.04 (6:42 am) [edit] |
[b]Shiites fume over Bremer veto threat as violence continues in Iraq[/b]
Leaders in Iraq's Shiite community warned top US civilian administrator Paul Bremer against the risk of a crisis should he intervene in the drafting of the country's interim constitution.
On the ground, three Iraqi civilians, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed when a stray US mortar round slammed into the backyard of a home near the main US base in Tikrit, a US soldier said.
US commanders described the firings as a "harassment and interdiction" mission aimed at preventing anti-coalition insurgents from setting up positions in meadows across the Tigris river to attack the base -- one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.
Shiite leaders reacted angrily to Bremer's threat to use his veto if the US-appointed interim Governing Council proposes a basic law that challenges the spirit of Western-style democracy.
"Islam is the source of law, and so it should be in a Muslim majority country," said Abdel Mahdi al-Karabali, who represents Shiite spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy Shiite city of Karbala, 110 kilometres (70 miles) south of Baghdad.
"The Iraqi people only can veto the legislation and nobody has the right to interfere in our constitution," he told AFP Tuesday.
The Najaf head of the main Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), also warned against US intervention in the drafting of the country's legal code.
"I think that if one seeks to impose a solution other than what the Iraqi population wants, it would spark a crisis and none of the parties want this to happen," Sheikh Sadreddin al-Kubbanji said.
But Bremer's spokesman minimised the rift between the provisional authority and the Shiites, stressing that the United States was not challenging the principle of Islam as one of the sources for the country's new legal code.
The Governing Council has been charged with writing the temporary constitution, or fundamental law, that will govern Iraq until national elections are held.
But many observers believe that some council members are pushing to implement Islamic rule in the post-occupation era.
Elsewhere, Iraq's deputy interior minister Ahmed Ibrahim confirmed that five men were arrested over the weekend in connection with the murder last year of Governing Council member Akila al-Hashemi.
The foreign ministry official appointed in July 2003 to the Governing Council was hit by three bullets as she left her Baghdad home on September 20, and she died five days later from her wounds.
And Iraq's trade minister said one of his top civil servants was shot dead outside his home last Wednesday in an apparent political assassination.
Hussein Abdul Fattah, the trade ministry's deputy director general for administration, was shot dead in his car as it pulled out on the street, Ali Allawi told AFP.
The US-led coalition on Tuesday posted a new one million dollar bounty for a shadowy Iraqi insurgent and announced new rewards of 200,000 dollars and 50,000 dollars for the handing over of members of Saddam's regime and "terrorist cells".
The coalition's deputy director of operations, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, announced a one million dollar reward for Mohammed Yunis, also known as Mohammed al-Ahmad or Karem al-Sabawi, who ranked on the US military's "blacklist" of Iraq's 200 most-wanted personnel from the ousted leader's regime.
A US soldier was reported killed and another wounded when a bomb exploded as their convoy passed on a road in northern Iraq late Monday, the third such incident in less than eight hours.
According to Pentagon figures, attacks by insurgents have claimed the lives of 261 US soldiers since US President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.
- [i]AFP,[/i] http://sg.news.yahoo.com/0402...
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| Body Count Redux |
| 02.18.04 (6:40 am) [edit] |
"War settles nothing." – Dwight D. Eisenhower
[b]Body Count Redux [/b]
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military released body counts of enemy and friendly dead to the media, which reported them voraciously. Invariably, the military’s data—showing more enemy than friendly dead—was designed to give the illusion that the United States was winning the war. What the data didn’t show was more important: that a tenacious enemy fighting for its homeland would be willing to incur high casualties and outwait an opponent with a short attention span. Similarly, in Iraq, the U.S. military gleefully reports that attacks against U.S. soldiers have dropped by more than half since their peak in November of last year and that firefights between U.S. soldiers and Iraqi guerrillas in Iraqi towns have also diminished. But like the body counts in Vietnam, the American public should be wary of such rosy assessments.
The major reason that fighting between the U.S. military and the insurgents has declined is that the American forces have vacated the field of battle. However unfortunate, with a competitive election coming up this year, the White House knows that the only thing in Iraq that matters to the American public is how many U.S. soldiers are killed and wounded there. Thus, “force protection” has become the number one unstated goal in Iraq. American forces have been pulled out of Iraqi cities and towns and most security functions have been turned over to the amateurish, ill-trained and poorly equipped Iraqi security forces. This same phenomenon occurred in Bosnia in the mid-to late-nineties, when American public support for U.S. involvement in peacekeeping there was lukewarm. American soldiers were ridiculed by the peacekeeping forces of other nations for rarely coming out of their fortified bastions.
What is the result of a policy designed more to avoid a catastrophe before the election than to pacify Iraq? Answer: One of the worst weeks of violence since America’s occupation began. Last week, 125 people were killed in suicide bombings of a police station and an Iraqi Army recruiting station and a violent raid on an Iraqi police station to free prisoners. In addition, guerillas, seemingly tipped off that a VIP would be visiting, attacked the motorcade of John Abizaid, the American general in-charge of all U.S. forces in the Middle East. Most of those attacked or killed in this recent spate of attacks—save the U.S. general—were Iraqi police or military people perceived as collaborating with the American occupation.
Although U.S. officials claim that security in Iraq is improving, a confidential and little noticed report by the American occupation authority itself belies those statements and confirms the intuitive impression that attacks by insurgents are getting worse. The occupation authority’s findings, as reported by London’s Financial Times, state that “January has been the highest rate of violence since September 2003. The violence continues despite the expansion of the Iraqi security services and increased arrests by coalition forces in December and January.” The report concludes that in recent months, attacks against international and nongovernmental organizations, strikes using mortars and explosives (including roadside bombs), strikes in Baghdad and attacks that were non-life threatening have all increased substantially. Also, attacks on military targets rose faster than strikes on their civilian counterparts.
Yet the only recent public indication of underlying security problems was made by Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, who was forced by last week’s mayhem to admit that the indigenous security services would not be ready to guarantee public safety in time for the ostensible mid-year turn over of Iraq to the Iraqis, “I think it’s quite clear the Iraqi security forces, brave as they are, and beaten and attacked as they are, are not going to be ready by July 1.” Ideally suited for his job, Mr. Bremer has a gift for understatement.
So if the Iraqi security forces are in shambles and insurgent attacks are rising, the casual observe might ask why are the Americans pulling back to fortified garrisons outside Iraqi cities? Answer: That policy saves the lives of American soldiers while leaving the Iraqi citizenry to the wolves. Strangely, the U.S. military admits this increased risk to Iraqis. So much for the Bush administration’s high-flying rhetoric about making Iraq a better place for its citizens. If a civil war eventually breaks out—as a U.N. representative recently warned and as the occupation authority worried euphemistically in its report—Saddam Hussein’s regime could seem like the good ole’ days for Iraqis.
So although the Bush administration’s policy may be achieving its primary goal—avoiding a sharp escalation in the U.S. body count before November—the voting public should not mistakenly conclude that the United States is winning this war. A reckless Bush administration—like the Johnson and Nixon administrations during the Vietnam War—has stumbled into a war that it can neither win nor escape from gracefully.
- [i]Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. Having received his Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University, Dr. Eland has served as Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge for the U.S. General Accounting Office (national security and intelligence), and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has testified on NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee.
Dr. Eland is the author of Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy: Rethinking U.S. Security in the Post-Cold War World and forty-five studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology, Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. His popular writings have been published in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune, Washington Post, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, and Chicago Sun-Times. He has appeared on ABC's "World News Tonight," CNN's "Crossfire," Fox News, CNBC, CNN-fn, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, CBC, BBC, and other national and international TV and radio programs[/i]., http://www.antiwar.com/eland/...
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| THE DOUBLE STANDARD IN WHO GETS NUKES |
| 02.17.04 (6:54 am) [edit] |
[b]THE DOUBLE STANDARD IN WHO GETS NUKES[/b]
WASHINGTON --- Twenty years ago, when my family was living and working in Pakistan, a friend took two of our sons on a tour of Islamabad, the new capital city of that old land where some think civilization began. They saw the new Saudi mosque, still under construction, the new library, the new stadium and the president's house designed by Edward Durrell Stone, which looks eerily like another Stone project, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here on the Potomac River.
"The Chinese give us a stadium. You give us a library," said our friend. "We don't want stadiums and museums. We want the bomb!"
And they were getting the bomb. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who lived near us, drove out to a place called Kahuta and used stolen plans and material to slowly piece together the first "Islamic bomb," as our neighbors liked to call it. Everyone knew this, and most of those neighbors saw Khan as a national hero. They thought that, over the historical run, Pakistan would not survive without nuclear weapons to match the nuclear "device" India had tested in 1974.
After all, the two South Asian countries created by the breakup of British India had already fought three wars and seemed ever on the verge of another. The American government knew all this, but looked the other way in the 1980s because Pakistan's land and intelligence services were crucial to U.S. covert support for the mujaheddin, local fighters of holy war who were slowly driving Soviet occupiers from their country.
That was the way of the Cold War. After the Soviets collapsed, both in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and at home, the United States did try to pressure Pakistan to give up its nuclear programs and sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. No chance, said Pakistan's leaders, unless India signed as well. Now, the pressure is off Pakistan again because we need it as an ally in the war against terror and terrorists, many of them trained in Pakistan during and after the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan.
The leaders of Pakistan, including Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir, Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, Nawaz Sharif and now Pervez Musharraf, understood only too well that the Non-Proliferation Treaty was an attempt to maintain Western control of the bomb. Like others in Asia -- except nuclear-empowered China and the Soviets -- Pakistan's leaders understood that the bomb represented both deterrence against its enemies and protection against the West. Nuclear weapons represented modern maturity to Pakistan, which is estimated to have between 30 and 50 nukes. They could be delivered (India would be the target) by missiles obtained from North Korea (news - web sites) in a sinister trade for shipping nuclear plans and parts from A.Q. Khan's operation.
The constant American ally in those parts, Israel, understands, too. Israel, another non-signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, began its bomb program as early as 1949. The first chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission said early on that the bomb was a guarantee that, "We shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter."
By 1974, the American Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) estimated that the Israelis had the makings for 10 to 20 nuclear weapons. That figure now is estimated to be between 100 and 400. The United States, of course, turns away from any thoughts of Israeli weapons.
Along that line of see-no-evil, there was a funny bit on American television during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) and the frenzy over possible "Weapons of Mass Destruction." A Syrian diplomat was being questioned by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" about whether Iraq had shipped WMDs to his country for hiding. No, the Syrian said. But Russert pressed on and his guest said: "Yes, there are such weapons in the Middle East, and I can lead you to them."
"Where, where are they?" said Russert, who was gettting excited.
"They're in Israel!" said the Syrian.
Russert changed the subject. But all that is back in the news because of American and British charges of WMD in Iraq and the disclosure that Pakistan has been selling nuclear knowledge and components. And that story is bigger than American intelligence failures and Pakistani duplicity.
Old-style nonproliferation, which has worked reasonably well -- after all, no bombs have been used in 60 years -- may be coming to the end of its usefulness. President Bush (news - web sites) seemed to recognize that last Wednesday when he said, in a speech to the National Defense University, that stopping the spread of nuclear weapons must move from watching and pressuring countries -- and ignoring the transgressions of our friends -- to watching and breaking up the new transnational black market in knowledge and components for sale around the world.
- [i]By Richard Reeves[/i], http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| Rifts Widen in Bush's Foreign Policy Team |
| 02.17.04 (6:52 am) [edit] |
[b]Rifts widen in Bush's foreign policy team[/b]
[i][b]Backers of Powell's multilateralism clash with go-it-alone conservatives over the administration's direction[/b][/i].
WASHINGTON – When it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration's foreign policy team is speaking with one voice: All the players are saying that despite faulty prewar intelligence, the president's decision to go to war was right.
But behind the unanimity is dissonance in tones and forcefulness that suggests the deeper differences that have been part of the Bush foreign policy since the beginning. The failure to see eye to eye extends to the so-called Bush doctrine of preemptive war - one of the administration's defining policies - and reaches to the president's top foreign-policy players.
The continuing differences have only added to President Bush's woes as the White House has grappled with questions of whether what the administration knew about Iraq justified a war. But the bigger issue, some experts say, is what the differences suggest about the administration's ability to confront continuing problems, like North Korea and Iran, especially as Bush enters a battle for reelection.
With key members of the Bush foreign policy team expected to leave their posts at the end of the term - including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell - some are trying to set the record straight on the role they've played. They are also, clearly, trying to shape the direction things might go in a second term.
"Perhaps a second term would resolve things, but right now there continues to be a very fundamental disagreement," says Karl Inderfurth, a Clinton administration State Department official now at George Washington University. The highly visible rift is between elements "led by the vice-president, the secretary of defense, and his deputy, who hold to a notion of America's unique right to unfettered action, and others, allied with Secretary Powell, who continue to argue for an emphasis on what he has called a 'strategy of partnership' with the international community."
Mr. Inderfurth says that two recent comments typify the internal differences. At a closely watched security conference in Munich last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a spirited defense of the administration's national security strategy that "the higher the risk and the danger, the lower the threshold for action."
Also in recent days, Mr. Powell - who revealed in a Washington Post interview that he might have recommended differently on going to war with Iraq if he knew a year ago what's known now - has preferred to stress that Bush is not looking to respond to threats with force "if there are other ways to solve the problem."
"Here you have the two most prominent cabinet officials," says Inderfurth, "one hyping preemptive action and the other playing it down."
Some observers say the differences, played out in public, hurt the president - especially with Americans paying more attention to foreign-policy questions because of the 100,000 US soldiers in Iraq.
"Presidents always look bad when their main advisers are squabbling publicly over what the White House should be doing or has done," says James Lindsay, a foreign-policy expert with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "It hurts the president especially in this case because he's been under such criticism from Democrats for not coming clean on the intelligence aspects of the Iraq war."
Mac Destler, an expert in US foreign policy at the University of Maryland, recalls that Ronald Reagan, as a candidate against an incumbent president, criticized Jimmy Carter for a foreign policy team that failed to speak with one voice. "The problem for a president is that if [the division] reaches critical mass," he says, "it can end up diluting what should be a political advantage for the incumbent."
But Danielle Pletka, a foreign policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, says the Bush team has been "remarkably unified" on the issue of going to war with Iraq. She suspects that "people are so habituated to hearing about the deep divisions in the administration over foreign policy matters that they are looking for them." That doesn't mean they don't exist - they do on some issues, she says, like North Korea and Iran - just not over the justification of war with Iraq.
How Bush's foreign policy might shift if he is reelected will hinge on key appointments. Powell, who customarily answers questions about his tenure by saying he serves at the pleasure of the president, is not expected to return for a second term.
Many observers say some of Powell's recent actions, like his qualifying his enthusiasm for war and reemphasis on multilateral action, reflect a man trying to set the record straight on his legacy. "He's on his way out, so he's paying a little more attention to his place in history in these final months," says one insider at the State Department. "He's the good soldier as everybody says, but he also knows there are already books being written about him. He wants it remembered that he's the one who convinced the president to go to the UN before going to war, things like that."
Closer to the president, Ms. Rice has said this will be her last year in the White House - though that careful language does not rule out taking the top slot either at State or at the Pentagon. How Bush would fill those positions would reveal the way he wants America to be viewed by the world. Noting that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - dubbed the architect of the Iraq war - would love to take over at State, former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb says "that certainly sends a very different signal than if you pick a Senator [Richard] Lugar or [Chuck] Hagel," two moderate Republicans.
- [i]By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor[/i], http://www.csmonitor.com/2004...
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| Halliburton Likely to Be a Campaign Issue This Fall |
| 02.15.04 (7:16 am) [edit] |
[b]Halliburton Likely to Be a Campaign Issue This Fall [/b]
WASHINGTON — As the accusations and investigations of the Halliburton Company's federal contracts in Iraq expand in size and number, Democrats say they will use the company's ties to the Bush administration as a campaign issue, and Halliburton is responding with television advertisements implying that it is being unfairly singled out.
"We are serving our troops because of what we know, not who we know," declares the 30-second spot, which is running in Washington, Houston and several other cities.
A company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late last month declared that Halliburton's Iraq contracts "will likely be subject to intense scrutiny" in the months ahead, in large part because "the vice president of the United States" is "a former chief executive officer."
"We expect that this focus and these allegations will continue and possibly intensify as the 2004 elections draw near," it adds with understandable prescience.
In recent days, several prominent Democrats have made a point of attacking the White House over Halliburton's contracting troubles, issues that in normal times would hardly rise to the level of prominent national debate.
"At a time when Halliburton is defrauding the federal government and facing serious allegations of bribery, we look forward to taking this debate to George Bush," Senator John Kerry's campaign said in a statement late last week.
And Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Friday demanding that he "immediately begin suspension or disbarment proceedings against the Halliburton Company" because of its contracting problems. The Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle, has made a similar request.
Bill Carrick, who was the media strategist for the presidential campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, said he believed that Halliburton's problems had the power to remain a durable campaign issue because "in a lot of people's minds, it's a surrogate for the larger feeling that the Bush administration is too close to the oil business, and Cheney has in some ways become an elusive figure."
While Bill Dal Col, a Republican consultant, called Halliburton "a good rallying cry" for Democrats that "will help with fund-raising," he added that "it doesn't really have any traction with anyone who is not already opposed to the administration."
Cathy Gist, a Halliburton spokeswoman, acknowledged that "there has been a lot said about the company's contracts in Iraq" but she then pointed out that the Pentagon comptroller, Dov S. Zakheim said in Congressional testimony last week that Halliburton was "doing their best to do the right thing."
In the advertisements, Dave Lesar, Halliburton's chief executive, said: "You've heard a lot about Halliburton lately. Criticism is O.K. We can take it. Criticism is not failure."
Still, Halliburton's troubles continue to multiply. On Thursday, two Democratic members of Congress informed the Pentagon that two former Halliburton employees had come forward with a variety of accusations about wasteful spending of government money, saying Halliburton "routinely overcharged" for its work in Iraq.
"High-level Halliburton officials frequently told employees that the high prices charged by vendors were not a problem because the U.S. government would reimburse Halliburton's costs and then pay Halliburton an additional fee," the two Congressman — Henry Waxman of California and John D. Dingell of Michigan — wrote in a letter to Pentagon auditors.
One of the former employees, according to the letter, said "a Halliburton motto was: `Don't worry about price. It's cost-plus.' "
In the letter, the congressmen said the two men approached Mr. Waxman after leaving jobs with Halliburton for personal reasons last month. The letter said the employees told them Halliburton worked hard to avoid putting purchases out for competitive bidding and therefore overspent for many purchases as well as common items.
One of them, Henry Bunting, had been a buyer for the company in Kuwait for several months. The other, who was not named, also worked for the company for only a few months, said Karen Lightfoot, an aide to Mr. Waxman. Mr. Bunting repeated his accusations on Friday in testimony to Senate Democrats, saying, "There was not concern about price."
Ms. Gist, the Halliburton spokeswoman, said the company took seriously any accusations of improper conduct. Nonetheless, she noted that Halliburton had no record that Mr. Bunting ever called the company hot line for employee concerns about business practices.
The former employees' accusations are the latest in a long string of troubles. On Monday Kuwait's energy minister asked his country's chief prosecutor to investigate accusations of overcharging in relation to Halliburton's contract to import fuel to Iraq from Kuwait. On Wednesday, Kuwaiti legislators demanded a separate inquiry.
Last Friday, Nigeria ordered an investigation into accusations that a Halliburton subsidiary paid $180 million in bribes in an effort to win a natural gas contract there, accusations already being investigated in the United States and France.
Also last week, Halliburton said it would withhold billing for as much as $27.4 million until a debate with the Pentagon was resolved over the cost of supplying meals to troops in Iraq. In addition, the company disclosed last month that two employees had taken kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor who was providing services to American troops. The company reimbursed the government $6.3 million.
The largest controversy remains the debate over whether Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, overcharged the government by $61 million while importing fuel to Iraq. Halliburton says the government-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation pressured Halliburton's subsidiary to buy the fuel from an obscure family-owned company, the Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company, despite its high price.
Scott Saunders, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, which handled bidding on the fuel contract, said Halliburton had solicited bids from three companies, "but the other two could not meet the requirements of the contract," specifically the capability to export large quantities of fuel to Iraq. "So," Mr. Saunders said, "we told K.B.R. to go with" Altanmia.
- [i]Joel Brinkley[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Bush Credibility Gap Grows ... |
| 02.15.04 (7:07 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush credibility gap grows ...[/b]
Bombarded by bad news on the Iraq front and a brewing scandal about his National Guard duty at home, Bush's numbers are continuing to plummet. A new [i]Washington Post-ABC[/i] News[i] poll [/i]( http://www.washingtonpost.com... ) shows that now 54 percent of Americans believe that he lied or made exaggerated claims about Iraq's WMDs programs. Also, less than half of those surveyed (48 percent) think that the war was worth fighting for, and that figure is down 8 points from just last month.
While the breakdown of the numbers reflect the polarized political climate, independents are beginning to swing against the president. [i]The Post [/i]reports, "Three in four Democrats said Bush either lied or exaggerated about what was known about Iraq's weapons, while an equally large majority of Republicans said the president did neither. Slightly more than half of all independents believed Bush had misled the public about Iraq's weapons cache."
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| It's Not the Size of the Report ... |
| 02.15.04 (7:05 am) [edit] |
[b]It's not the size of the report ...[/b]
Perhaps the Bush administration did learn something from the Iraq episode after all. Providing a smokescreen thick enough for lazier or more sympathetic listeners and reporters to fumble through, team Bush 'released' a 'two-inch-thick' stack of mostly irrelevant or previously released papers (tonsils out at 5, hemorrhoid at 21). Wasn't that the line on Saddam's WMD report? In any case, these latest documents have yet to clear him of charges that he did not report for several months of National Guard duty. The Bush administration has a much savvier, if less entertaining, PR team to help chaperone his deceptions through however.
The papers were released at 6:30 pm on Friday before a long holiday weekend which the [i]NY Times calls[/i], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... 'as much an effort at public relations as an attempt to quiet Mr. Bush's critics,' adding that Bush agreed to testify before the 9-11 commission just 30 minutes later.
So what do the new documents show? Well, they do show that Bush received accolades from some superior officers. Pretty good. Except that nobody's alleging that Bush was a substandard pilot. The allegation is that George W. Bush has not accounted for a 5 month period during which time he was meant to report for duty in Alabama. So far no officer has come forward to counter this charge.
[i]The Washington Post[/i], http://www.washingtonpost.com... upon perusal of the 'new' documents commented that 'they provide no evidence that he did any military service in Alabama.' The White House has offered only pay stubs (not very convincing to those who charge that he was able to achieve this feat precisely because he was a child of privilege), a single dentist appointment, and charges of 'partisan conspiracy theories.'
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| YERIAN: PIG-BOY IS BACK IN TOWN!!! |
| 02.14.04 (10:57 am) [edit] |
[b]JAMES YERIAN: PIG-BOY IS BACK IN TOWN!!![/b]
It is infinitely hilarious to watch our sanctimonious [i]hypocrite-in-residence [/i]at Tblog, attack anybody who doesn't fall over in loyal and obedient worship!!!
Idiot diatribes are continually extruded from the fuckwit's various orifices following his troll through the Limbaugh, WND, Fox News and Matt Drudge websites all vomitting orwellian propaganda fed by the fascists and liars in the Bush Crime Family.
Yerian claims to be the Master of the Universe with his all-knowing, all-seeing understanding of the Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution???
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
Witness PIG-BOY using hiterlian tactics to try to intimidate, shout-down and scare off other Tbloggers, for god's sake!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
Yerian has the right to express his opinions no matter how stupid, how idiotic, how wrongheaded or how untruthful they may be. It is up to the rest of us to verify the facts for ourselves.
We all have the right to express our opinions as well.
So, come on, PIG-BOY: You are going to take legal action against [i]jimmytherighteous[/i]? ?? Come after me too!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
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| GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Antonin Scalia |
| 02.14.04 (8:25 am) [edit] |
[b]GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Antonin Scalia[/b]
Welcome back to the [i]BuzzFlash.com [/i][b]GOP Hypocrite of the Week[/b].
You know, the nominees for the [b]GOP Hypocrite of the Week [/b]are pouring in faster than bribes at a Republican fund-raiser.
But this week, instead of pointing out the many neophyte Republican hypocrites out there, we wanted to consider an experienced, accomplished candidate, someone who's done what no person has done before; someone who audaciously straddles the line between administering justice and participating in criminal behavior against democracy. That left us with no choice but [b]Mr. Supreme Court Injustice himself, Antonin "The Fixer" Scalia[/b].
You might think that we chose him because he went and shot a few ducks with the acting President of the United States, Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney, just before he was scheduled to hear a case involving the very same Cheney. And not just any case, but one that many think -- were Cheney forced to reveal the secret meetings of his energy committee -- might bear upon the planning for the war on Iraq, even before the Bush Cartel began chronically lying about all the WMDs they swore were there.
We're also not giving Scalia the Hypocrite nod because the duck hunt was hosted by a big honcho oil man. Nothing like that, in and of itself, would make us cry fowl! Of course, that Cheney, Scalia and big oil symbolize the sordid, anti-American corruption of the Bush administration did give us pause for thought.
But when Scalia was asked to recuse himself from the Cheney energy task force case, Scalia responded that no reasonable person could question his impartiality. Then he later mocked those requesting his recusal by saying: "This was a government issue. It's acceptable practice to socialize with executive branch officials when there are not personal claims against them. That's all I'm going to say for now. Quack, quack."
He actually said, "Quack, quack."
But, talk about a quack. This is a Supreme Court judge who is part of a fifth column of jurists, including the likes of Laurence Silberman, David Sentelle, William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, whose allegiance is to the extreme wing of the Republican Party, not to America. While giving the appearance of administering the law, they consider themselves above the law and the Constitution.
Scalia is the role model for the "activist" judge that Bush and Cheney claim that they deplore.
And Scalia is a hypocrite because he will rule in favor of his extremist buddy, Dick Cheney, against the interests of our nation.
But the thing that really seals his status as a GOP BuzzFlash Hypocrite of the Week is that he's the ultimate master criminal, having stolen an election from the American people in order, he claimed in 2000, not to ruin the reputation of the "presumptive" winner, George W. Bush. No one else can claim that accomplishment, no one in the history of our country. It's all Scalia's.
And now, when charged with a conflict of interest for shooting ducks with Cheney, he acts indignant, as if anyone could challenge such a man of "integrity."
Scalia has only one kind of integrity, the kind that you see among crime families -- honor the boss and do his bidding, or who knows what might happen to you. The next time you go duck hunting, you might just find yourself swimming with the fishies.
Until next week, remember the BuzzFlash slogan: [i]So many Republican Hypocrites, so little time[/i].
- [i]BuzzFlash[/i], http://www.buzzflash.com
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| Dubya's Scrubbed Military Records Released: More Questions, More Gaps ... |
| 02.14.04 (8:22 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush releases his Vietnam-era military files[/b]
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Hundreds of pages of President Bush's Vietnam-era military files were released to the media Friday amid questions about whether he completed his required service in the Air National Guard.
About 400 pages of what officials have been able to find of his military records -- from 1968 to 1973 -- were released early in the evening.
Bush's military service was an issue briefly during the 2000 presidential election, and Democrats have raised the issue anew this election year, focusing on the year that Bush worked in Alabama.
The documents released contained only one statement related to his service between May 1972 and May 1973, after Bush asked for a transfer from Texas to Alabama so he could work on the Senate campaign of family friend Winton Blount.
The statement from a Texas Air National Guard official about Bush's transfer to Alabama was dated May 2, 1973.
"Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report (5/1/72 - 4/30/73). A civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Ala. He cleared this base 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training ... [at] Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama," wrote Lt. Col. William Harris Jr.
Reporters were also allowed to review Bush's medical records from 1968 to 1971 but not to remove them from the Roosevelt Room.
The White House said those records show Bush reported for duty in Texas and Alabama, and was discharged honorably, and that he was in good health and fit to fly. The medical reports were from Texas, Alabama and Georgia.
The other documents are organized into three files: Bush's Texas Air National Guard performance report; a summary on his service that was compiled in 2000; and another summary compiled this year.
Much of the material is repetitive. Personal information -- such as Social Security numbers and medical information about family members -- was blacked out.
Bush decided Friday afternoon to release the papers, the White House said.
Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry's campaign said the release has been long in coming.
"It's good to see that after 10 years of stonewalling, George W. Bush is finally releasing his National Guard records," a campaign statement said. "Does this mean he's now ready to come clean with the American people and release the White House documents on pre-September 11th intelligence? Will he start telling the truth about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction and the rush to war?"
[i]Guardsman remembers[/i]
On Friday, a retired officer with the Alabama Air National Guard told CNN that he witnessed Bush serving his weekend duty in 1972 -- an account that could be significant given the persistent Democratic questions.
Speaking Friday from Daytona Beach, Florida, John B. "Bill" Calhoun said he commanded Bush and that Bush attended four to six weekend drills at Dannelly Field in Montgomery. He said Bush was with the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Alabama in 1972.
The drills consisted of eight-hour shifts Saturdays and Sundays, Calhoun said.
"We didn't have the planes that he could fly," Calhoun said. "But he studied his manuals, he read flying safety regulations, accident reports -- things pilots do quite often when they are not getting ready to fly or if they don't have other duties."
When Bush first arrived, he said he was living in Montgomery and working on the Senate campaign, Calhoun said.
Calhoun said he learned from another person that Bush was the son of George H.W. Bush, who at the time was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Calhoun said he asked the younger Bush if he planned to pursue a political career, and he said, "I don't know, probably."
The retired general said he is not surprised that more servicemen haven't come forward to talk about Bush's time at the base because they're a lot older and may have died, or retired and "gone on with their lives."
Calhoun said he does not have any photographs or documents to prove Bush showed up for duty, but his ex-wife, Patsy Burks, said she remembered Calhoun's account.
"Bill did come home [from the base] and told me that Bush was there," she said "I think what stuck in my head was that he was helping on the Senate campaign.
"What I do know about Bill is that whatever he says is the truth," she added. "This issue came up in the 2000 election. ... Bill did mention in 2000 that he contacted someone and said, 'If you need me to come forward, I will.' And they said, 'We're hoping that won't be necessary.'"
Questions about Bush's Guard service have intensified in recent weeks after Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe charged that Bush was absent without leave from his Guard service from May 1972 to May 1973, after he asked for the transfer.
Retired Lt. Col. Bill Burkett told CNN that in 1997, he overheard Joe Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff while Bush was Texas governor, tell the adjutant general of the Texas National Guard to gather Bush's files and "make sure there wasn't anything there that would embarrass the governor." About 10 days later, Burkett said, he saw many of Bush's files in a trash can. ([i]Guardsman says he saw Bush's Guard records in trash[/i])
Allbaugh reacted angrily to Burkett's charges, calling them "hogwash" and "absolute garbage." Allbaugh, who also served as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he doesn't even know who the "goober" is, referring to Burkett.
Burkett's allegations were posted on Web sites just before the 2000 presidential election but were largely unreported by conventional media, according to USA Today.
[b]But questions have lingered since that year's presidential campaign, after the Boston Globe uncovered a May 1973 evaluation by Bush's commander stating that the first lieutenant had not been seen during the previous year[/b].
- [i]CNN's Suzanne Malveaux and Justine Redman contributed to this report[/i], http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO...
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| Did YOU See Bush??? ... Most Guys In Alabama Didn't!!! |
| 02.14.04 (8:17 am) [edit] |
[b]Claim[/b]: "I served" - Dubya on [i]Meet the Press [/i](02/08/04)
[b]Fact[/b]: He was a deserter & AWOL: a party-boy who got into a [i]Champagne Brigade Unit [/i]by Poppy bumping him to the head of a list of over 500 others who were before him, and [i]even then [/i]he didn't show up!
[b]This guy [/b]says he remembers http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO... Bush at drills in Alabama.
[b]These two [/b]say they never saw him http://www.memphisflyer.com/c... and think they would have if he were there.
[b]Yesterday the [i]AP[/i] contacted more than a dozen former members of Bush's unit and none remembered seeing him[/b] http://www.newsday.com/news/n...,0,2950391.story?coll=ny-nationalnew s-headlines .
"I don't remember seeing him. That does not mean he was not there," said Wayne Rambo, a first lieutenant with the 187th Supply Squadron at the time in question.
- [i]Joshua Micah Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo[/i], http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
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| LAURA BUSH IS 'ON-RECORD' AS A LIAR ... RIGHT-WING HYPOCRITES DON'T CARE ABOUT THEIR OWN LIES!!! |
| 02.13.04 (10:53 am) [edit] |
[b]Apparently the right-wing hypocrites don't give a damn if their own sluts and war criminals[i] LIE [/i]... They only care if Clinton lies about sex ... According to the neocons, it's okay for Laura Bush to lie: What's the big deal about a lie about a POEM? ... What then is the big deal about a lie about SEX? ...
Of course, does anyone give a damn about LIES that Dubya told that led us into a [u]WAR[/u]?
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!!
HA HA HA HA HA!!![/b]
[b]Laura Bush: LIAR & SLUT FOR DUBYA
Dubya, the Deserter & AWOL Coward & Drunkard: LIAR & SLUT FOR CORPORATIONS[/b]
[b]Whopper Told By: [i]Laura Bush[/i]
The first lady lies in order to make the president look ... stupid?[/b]
"President Bush is a great leader and husband—but I bet you didn't know, he is also quite the poet. Upon returning home last night from my long trip, I found a lovely poem waiting for me. Normally, I wouldn't share something so personal, but since we're celebrating great writers, I can't resist.
[i]Dear Laura,
Roses are red, violets are blue, oh my lump in the bed, how I've missed you.
Roses are redder, bluer am I, seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.
The dogs and the cat they miss you too, Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe.
The distance my dear has been such a barrier, next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.
I'm happy to be the inspiration behind this poem"[/i].
—[i][b]Laura Bush[/b], remarks at the National Book Festival in Washington[/i], Oct. 3, 2003.
Q: Now, who could have written that poem, huh? I mean, what ...
A: "Well, of course, he didn't really write the poem. But a lot of people really believed that he did. That evening at the dinner, what some woman from across the table said: "You just don't know how great it is to have a husband who would write a poem for you."
—[i][b]Laura Bush [/b]on NBC's Meet the Press[/i], Dec. 28, 2003.
[b][Of course the poem is a[i] piece-of-shit [/i]that could have been written by the[i] fuckwit [/i]Dubya!][/b]
[b]Comment[/b]. This lie is about an obviously trivial matter [[b]but shows what a slut Laura really is[/b]], and there's something endearing about the first lady's undisguised pleasure at conning so many people. Still, it is not only a lie, but an entirely gratuitous one—Mrs. Bush's remarks about the joys of reading didn't need the anecdote, and arguably were undermined by its mawkishness. Of particular interest is the apparent aim of Mrs. Bush's hoax. Ordinarily, when a surrogate tries to pass off a fake quotation as a president's actual words, the quotation is meant to make the president sound scholarly, or witty, or lapidary. In this case, though, whatever White House staffer prepared Mrs. Bush's remarks obviously strained to make the president's purported love poem sound sufficiently moronic that no one would doubt Bush had written it. Chatterbox doesn't know what to make of this.
[b]Source[/b]:
- [i]Timothy Noah, Slate[/i], http://slate.msn.com/id/20934...
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| Laura Bush, the Liar and Slut for Dubya, the Liar and Slut for Corporations |
| 02.13.04 (10:16 am) [edit] |
[b]Laura Bush: LIAR & SLUT FOR DUBYA
Dubya, the Deserter & AWOL Coward & Drunkard: LIAR & SLUT FOR CORPORATIONS[/b]
[b]Whopper Told By: [i]Laura Bush[/i]
The first lady lies in order to make the president look ... stupid?[/b]
"President Bush is a great leader and husband—but I bet you didn't know, he is also quite the poet. Upon returning home last night from my long trip, I found a lovely poem waiting for me. Normally, I wouldn't share something so personal, but since we're celebrating great writers, I can't resist.
[i]Dear Laura,
Roses are red, violets are blue, oh my lump in the bed, how I've missed you.
Roses are redder, bluer am I, seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.
The dogs and the cat they miss you too, Barney's still mad you dropped him, he ate your shoe.
The distance my dear has been such a barrier, next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.
I'm happy to be the inspiration behind this poem"[/i].
—[i][b]Laura Bush[/b], remarks at the National Book Festival in Washington[/i], Oct. 3, 2003.
Q: Now, who could have written that poem, huh? I mean, what ...
A: "Well, of course, he didn't really write the poem. But a lot of people really believed that he did. That evening at the dinner, what some woman from across the table said: "You just don't know how great it is to have a husband who would write a poem for you."
—[i][b]Laura Bush [/b]on NBC's Meet the Press[/i], Dec. 28, 2003.
[b][Of course the poem is a[i] piece-of-shit [/i]that could have been written by the[i] fuckwit [/i]Dubya!][/b]
[b]Comment[/b]. This lie is about an obviously trivial matter [[b]but shows what a slut Laura really is[/b]], and there's something endearing about the first lady's undisguised pleasure at conning so many people. Still, it is not only a lie, but an entirely gratuitous one—Mrs. Bush's remarks about the joys of reading didn't need the anecdote, and arguably were undermined by its mawkishness. Of particular interest is the apparent aim of Mrs. Bush's hoax. Ordinarily, when a surrogate tries to pass off a fake quotation as a president's actual words, the quotation is meant to make the president sound scholarly, or witty, or lapidary. In this case, though, whatever White House staffer prepared Mrs. Bush's remarks obviously strained to make the president's purported love poem sound sufficiently moronic that no one would doubt Bush had written it. Chatterbox doesn't know what to make of this.
[b]Source[/b]:
- [i]Timothy Noah, Slate[/i], http://slate.msn.com/id/20934...
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| W as in AWOL: Case NOT Closed |
| 02.13.04 (7:24 am) [edit] |
[b]W as in AWOL: Case NOT Closed [/b]
George W. Bush is lucky that Scott McClellan is not his lawyer and that the White House press briefing room is not a courtroom.
On February 10, the Bush White House tried to rid itself of the allegation that Bush ducked out of his Air National Guard Service from May 1972 to May 1973. Two days earlier on Meet the Press, Bush maintained, "I did report, otherwise I wouldn't have been honorably discharged." But he offered no details. He did not describe what drills he did; he did not mention anyone with whom he served during the time in question. When host Tim Russert asked if he would open up his "entire" file and release "everything to settle this," Bush said, "Yeah. Absolutely."
And two days later, McClellan was in the briefing room holding up new documents that he claimed proved Bush had "fulfilled his duties." The key material, which the White House had managed to obtain PDQ from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver--were several pages of microfiche payment sheet summaries that apparently showed Bush was paid several times in the months of October and November 1972 and January and April 1973. McClellan also cited two retirement records that showed Bush had amassed attendance points for these days.
This new material did bolster Bush's defense. But it hardly resolved the issue. Nor did it address the most damning elements of the case against Bush. Most notable of these is the May 2, 1973, annual performance review--signed by two superior officers, who were friends of Bush--that noted, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at" his home base unit in Houston for the past year. Bush has said he spent about half of that period reporting to a Guard base in Alabama, while he was temporarily living there. The new records do not explain why the commander of that unit and his administrative officer say they never saw Bush. Nor do they explain why the Bush campaign in 2000 failed to keep its promise to produce the names of people who had served with Bush in Alabama. Nor do these records explain why Bush, who had been trained as fighter pilot, failed to take a flight physical during the year in question and was grounded. Nor do they back up the 2000 Bush campaign's explanation that Bush did not take a flight physical because he was living in Alabama and his personal doctor was in Houston. (Flight physicals are administered by military physicians, and there were flight physicians at the base in Alabama where Bush says he served.)
The records hailed by the White House only demonstrate that Bush received payments and credit for a modest amount of days. They do not show what he did and where he did it. Those sorts of records detailing Bush's service should exist, according to military experts. But that is not what the White House handed out. Is it possible Bush received payment and credit for days of service that did not happen? Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who served in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, recently wrote that he was routinely paid for Guard duty he never did. Given the other evidence, these pay records are not end-of-story proof.
But what makes the White House case particularly unconvincing is McClellan's performance at the press briefing. It was a remarkable exhibition of dissimulation that deserves to be studied by students of political spin. He avoided remaining questions. He kept insisting that these records meant there was nothing else to discuss. He denied reality and refused to acknowledge there was documentary evidence contradicting Bush's account. He was an automaton: these records showed that he served, these records showed that he served, these records showed that he served.
The first question was a tough one for McClellan. A reporter asked:
The records that you handed out today, and other records that exist, indicate that the President did not perform any Guard duty during the months of December 1972, February or March of 1973. I'm wondering if you can tell us where he was during that period. And also, how is it that he managed to not make the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?
The exchange that followed was not edifying.
A: These records verify that he met the requirements necessary to fulfill his duties. These records --
Q: That wasn't my question, Scott.
A: These payroll records --
Q: Scott, that wasn't my question, and you know it wasn't my question. Where was he in December of '72, February and March of '73? And why did he not fulfill the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?
A: These records -- these records I'm holding here clearly document the President fulfilling his duties in the National Guard. The president was proud of his service. The president --
Q: I asked a simple question; how about a simple answer?
A: John, if you'll let me address the question, I'm coming to your answer.
But McClellan never got there. He did not reveal where Bush had been during those months. And he said nothing about Bush's failure to take a flight physical.
Another reporter, citing the promise made by the Bush campaign in 2000, asked whether the White House had been able to find anyone who could verify Bush's service in Alabama. McClellan replied: "All the information that we have we shared with you in 2000, that was relevant to this issue....[T]here are some out there that were making outrageous, baseless accusations. It was a shame that they brought it up four years ago. It was a shame that they brought it up again this year. And I think that the facts are very clear from these documents. These documents -- the payroll records and the [attendance] point summaries verify that he was paid for serving and that he met his requirements." In other words, the Bush White House had found no one.
Then came this follow-up from a reporter: "I do think this is important. You know, it might strike some as odd that there isn't anyone who can stand up and say, I served with George W. Bush in Alabama....Particularly because there are people, his superiors who have stepped forward...who have said in the past several years that they have no recollection of him being there and serving. So isn't that odd that nobody -- you can't produce anyone to corroborate what these records purport to show?" McClellan answered, "We're talking about some 30 years ago." But there were 600 to 700 people who served at the Alabama base at that time. Surely, if the White House had to find someone who went to grade school with Bush 45 years ago--and class sizes were not that big back then--they could.
McClellan's most unbelievable statements came after a reporter asked him about the annual performance review that indicated Bush had not reported for duty at his home base in Houston for a year. Let's go to the videotape:
Q: The President's officer effectiveness report, filed by his commanders, Lieutenants Colonel Killean and Harris, both now deceased, for the period 01 May '72 to 30 April, '73, says he has not been observed at this unit, where he was supposed to show up and earning these points on these days....The president said he returned to Texas in November of '72. So some of these dates of service, which are in these [payment] records, ought to have been noted by his commanding officers, who, nevertheless, said, twice, he has not been observed here. Can you explain that?
A: I'm not sure about these specific documents. I'll be glad to take a look at them. But these [newly released] documents show the days on which he was paid for his service.....
Q: So he served, but his commanding officers didn't know it?
A: Again, I don't know the specific documents you're referring to. If you want to bring those to me, I'll be glad to take a look at them and get you the answers to your questions.
McClellan didn't know about this specific document? That would be like Martha Stewart's attorney saying he was not familiar with her stockbroker's assistant's contention that she had sold stock on inside information. This document--first brought to public attention in May 2000 by Walter Robinson of The Boston Globe--is at the core of the case against Bush. If McClellan does not know about it, Bush ought to fire him immediately (or name him head of the CIA).
Later in the press briefing, another reporter took a stab at forcing McClellan to deal with Exhibit A.
Q: After all of the things you repeated here, you cannot explain this contradiction, the fact that his payroll records indicate he was paid for a period of time for fulfilling service, and yet his commanding officers at that time wrote that he was not observed. Can you or can you not explain that contradiction?
A:....I said I would glad to go back and look at the document that he's referencing. I have not --
Q: You know the document he's referencing. Everybody does. His commanders --
A: No, I have not -- I have not seen the document he's referencing.
Q: -- are quoted repeatedly for years --
A: You're talking about quotes -- you're talking about quotes from individuals. And we said for years, going back four years ago, that the president recalls serving and performing his duties.
Q: I understand that, but his commanders do not recall it. And, in fact, they say, that he was not observed. So can you explain the contradiction, or can't you?
A: I've seen some different comments he's -- no, I've seen some different comments made over the recent time period.
Q: I haven't seen any different -- different comments...from his [Houston base] commanders, who said he was not observed. Can you explain the contradiction?
A: Look, I can't speak for those individuals. I can speak for the president of the United States. And I can speak --
Q: -- the documents --
A: And I can speak for the fact that the documents that -- as far as we know, all the documents that are available relevant to this issue demonstrate that the president fulfilled his duties. Are you suggesting these documents do not reflect that?
That's the whole issue. A critical document says Bush was gone for a year. It was signed by two superior officers who were also his buddies. As for the documents McClellan held in his hand, reporters asked him if the White House was maintaining that they proved Bush had actually reported for duty in Alabama.
Q: It's your position that these documents specifically show that he served in Alabama during the period 1972, when he was supposed to be there. Do they specifically show that?
A: No, I think if you look at the documents, what they show are the days on which he was paid, the payroll records. And we previously said that the president recalls serving both in Alabama and in Texas.
Q: I'm not interested in what he recalls. I'm interested in whether these documents specifically show that he was in Alabama and served on the days during the latter part of 1972 --
A: And I just answered that question.
Q: You have not answered that question. You --
A: No, I said -- no, I said, no, in response to your question, Keith.
Q: No, so the answer is, "no"?
A: I said these documents show the days on which he was paid. That's what they show. So they show -- they show that he was paid on these days....It just kind of amazes me that some will now say they want more information, after the payroll records and the [attendance] point summaries have all been released to show that he met his requirements and to show that he fulfilled his duties.
Can you believe it? Reporters wanted definitive information stating that Bush had truly been at the Alabama base? That apparently was too much for the press secretary. And when one of the media hounds asked exactly what Bush had done while supposedly serving in Alabama, McClellan countered, "You're asking me to kind of break down hour-by-hour what he was doing during 1972 and 1973. What these documents show is that he was serving in the National Guard and he was paid for that service." No one was requesting an hour-by-hour itemization. But McClellan would only say that Bush "remembers serving during that period and performing his duties." Bush, it seems, has no recollection of what that service entailed. Instructing pilots? Filing papers? Hanging out at the officers' lounge? He won't say.
A reporter asked, "You can't even tell us what kind of drills or what-have-you?" And McClellan resorted to an old dodge: "We addressed all those questions back during the 2000 campaign fully." That was an untrue statement. In 2000, the Bush campaign left much of this unaddressed. Bush did not state then what he had done in Alabama. This reporter noted that most people can "detail" what they did when they worked. But McClellan kept fibbing: "And we did. During the 2000 campaign, we talked about this issue fully."
The Bush gang did not talk about the issues fully then--and it is not doing so now. The currently available records support conflicting accounts. Bush's unwillingness (or inability) to provide any specific recollections is certainly suspicious, as is his refusal to answer questions about his failure to take a flight physical. By releasing the pay sheet summaries and retirement records, Bush has not made good on his pledge to Russert. There likely are other records in his military files that could be of use in settling this dispute--medical records, perhaps. Are there disciplinary records? When Bob Fertik of Democrats.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2000 requesting portions of Bush's military records, he asked for pay stubs. He was turned down by the military, which cited Bush's privacy rights. If Bush and McClellan really want to address this issue "fully," Bush should waive his privacy rights and release all the papers that remain. He did promise to disclose "everything."
Despite McClellan's repeated assertion, the pay sheet summaries and retirement records are not enough. That's especially true when they are waved about by a defender who spins, trims, and ducks and who at key moments is AWOL from the truth.
[b]UPDATE[/b]
On February 11, the White House released a one-page record of a dental exam that Bush received at the Alabama Air National Guard base on January 6, 1973. This is the first documentary indication that Bush was ever present at this base. This document does strengthen Bush's case. But assuming it is legitimate--and I'm not suggesting it is not--it does not seal the deal. Bush has said he returned to Houston from Alabama after the November 1972 election. (He had been working in Alabama on the Senate campaign of a Republican friend of his family, who ended up losing the race.) It certainly is possible that he stayed in Alabama for several months after the election--though he was in Washington, DC, with his family during the Christmas holidays. Still, there are no records covering the time he returned to Houston and the May 2, 1973, annual review that noted he had not been seen at the base.
And as the White House released this document, it declared that it had no intention of opening Bush's entire Guard files. On Meet the Press, Bush had been asked if he would make his whole file available (as had Senator John McCain and retired General Wesley Clark). Bush replied, "Yeah. Absolutely." But now the White House position is less absolute.
Meanwhile, Bill Burkett, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard told The Washington Post this week that in 1997 he was in a National Guard office and overheard Joseph Allbaugh, who was then chief of staff for Governor George W. Bush, tell an officcer he needed to make sure there was nothing embarrassing in Bush's Guard file. Burkett recalled he later spotted items from Bush's file in the trash. Allbaugh and the White House denied these allegations.
Partial releases. Allegations of file-fixing. No explanations for remaining questions. The best way for Bush to reach a final resolution on this controversy would be to release everything in his file--that is, to keep his promise.
- [i]David Corn, DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S NEW BOOK,' The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception' (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough.".[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| Bush's Rough Ride: New Poll Has Bush Losing Against Kerry ... |
| 02.13.04 (7:20 am) [edit] |
[b]You don't think president Bush has had a rough ride over the last few weeks?[/b] Take a look at this new [i]ABC/Washington Post [/i]new [i]poll[/i] http://www.washingtonpost.com... which has him [b]losing[/b] a presidential match-up to John Kerry by a 52%-43% margin among registered voters.
Now, registered voters aren't 'likely voters', though figuring out who counts as a 'likely voter' is difficult so many months out from an election. But that still means that the president is getting knocked by almost ten points by an opponent who is, to most Americans, still largely an unknown quantity.
And the more ominous news comes down in the details. Put simply, a majority of Americans now believe that the president bamboozled them on Iraq. In the more temperate phrasing of the [i]Post[/i]: "A majority of Americans believe President Bush either lied or deliberately exaggerated evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify war." The precise numbers are 21% who say he lied and 31% who say he deliberately exaggerated.
Only 52% find the president "honest and trustworthy". And to borrow the title of the last book of the great J. Anthony Lukas, for Bush, that means big trouble.
Every president has characteristic strengths and weaknesses. For better or worse, by the end of his term of office, Bill Clinton's reputation as a truth-teller was in tatters. But that was never his strong suit with voters anyway. The measure of his enduring strength with voters is best guaged in a question pollsters usually frame as 'does candidate X care about/understand the problems that affect people like you.'
Clinton always did very well on that question. It's the politics of empathy -- a topic which, when it comes to Clinton, one could literally write a whole book.
People never warmed to President Bush as a literary critic or a raconteur. And he's usually done okay, but not great, on the 'care about/understand' question. His strong suit has always been honesty and trusthworthiness -- that and the closely related quality of 'leadership'. If he loses that, politically speaking, he's finished.
Ironically, the [i]Post[/i] notes that President Bush's ratings on honest peaked at 71% in the summer of 2002. I say 'ironically' because the summer of 2002 was really not a high point for honesty or trustworthiness. But I guess that's what folks are starting to realize.
- [i]Joshua Micah Marshall, TalkingPoints[/i], http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
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| CLAIM VERSUS FACT: Dubya On Sending JOBS OVERSEAS ... |
| 02.13.04 (7:18 am) [edit] |
[b]Dubya loves to talk ([i]or dribble[/i]) out of both sides of his lying and stupid mouth:
CLAIM VERSUS FACT: Bush on Sending Jobs Overseas[/b]
[u]CLAIM[/u]: “There are people looking for work because jobs have gone overseas. And we need to act in this country. We need to act to make sure there are more jobs at home, and people are more likely to retain a job.” - [i]President George W. Bush[/i], 2/12/04 [Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... ]
[u]FACT[/u]: In a new report this week President Bush “said the movement of U.S. factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy.” The LA Times notes that Bush, who personally signed the report before it was released, “supports the shift of jobs overseas” despite 8 million Americans being out of work, and analysts predicting “as many as 2 million U.S. white-collar jobs” could be lost from more outsourcing. - [i]Pittsburgh Post Gazette: http://www.post-gazette.com/p... [/i], 2/10/04; [i]LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,2133205,print.story [/i], 2/10/04
[b]Source[/b]:
[i]The Center for American Progress[/i], http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| Bushites Try to Plug President's Service Gap |
| 02.13.04 (7:10 am) [edit] |
[b]Bushites Try to Plug President's Service Gap [/b]
U.S. President George W. Bush may or may not have gone AWOL during his Texas National Guard vacation from Vietnam but one thing's sure: The media did.
Tuesday's sudden — and oh-so-fortuitous — release of his service records during a heated White House press conference had them finally reporting for duty — four years after The Boston Globe's Walter V. Robinson broke the story.
At the time, it was ignored, minimized or pooh-poohed by The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the television networks etc.
A database search of that period turned up some 13,000 references to former President Bill Clinton's having avoided the draft — and only about 50 about Bush's military career. (For more details, check out http://www.awolbush.com.)
Now it has become a campaign issue for the self-styled "wartime president" who refused to fight but did not hesitate to send other people's children to die.
Judging from the polls and his performance on NBC's Meet The Press last Sunday, Bush is flopping around like those 70 pheasant Vice-President Dick Cheney brought down at an exclusive "hunt'' club last fall.
And so, in our inimitable way of coming down from the hills to shoot the wounded, we media types smell blood.
Turns out there was no "imminent" threat of "mushroom clouds," no "smoking gun" connections to Al Qaeda, no nothing. Bush's State of the Union address underwhelmed even conservative pundits; the economy is in trouble, while Bush's talk of "shadowy networks" no longer scores the points it used to.
All the commander-in-chief can offer is fear and loathing, a backward look, and no hope, nor, as his Daddy would say, a "vision thing" for the future.
No wonder that last week, as Nipple Gate thrust itself into the headlines, so many right-wing columnists cleaved to Janet Jackson's breast to fulminate about morality, while pointedly ignoring the administration's many obfuscations.
The way those Jackson kids divert media attention from the administration — recall Michael dominating the news last November as Americans were slaughtered in Iraq — you'd think they were on (Bush strategist) Karl Rove's payroll.
Or maybe it's just a Big Media plot.
Consider this: Yesterday, the Republican-controlled Congress began "indecency" hearings, while the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has taken a new "get tough" stance against the boob tube.
This despite how FCC chief Michael Powell, son of secretary of state Colin, declared three years ago: "I don't want the government as my nanny. I still have never understood why something as simple as turning it off is not part of the answer."
So why the sudden change?
Could it have to do with how, in Philadelphia yesterday, a trial that will decide whether Big Media can get even bigger got underway? Not that you've seen much reporting on that.
But now, with that "wardrobe malfunction" still grabbing headlines, coverage of this far more serious issue will be further ignored.
It's as if the media are willing to have their mouths washed out with soap while whitewashing the real dirty business of concentration. (Yesterday's news that Comcast, the biggest cable company south of the border, has made a $66 billion U.S. hostile bid for media giant Disney promises to concentrate media even more.)
Some observers even speculate that Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean was done in — even CNN now admits it overplayed his "scream" — by the media conglomerates that he promised to break up.
And how coincidental is it that Democrat front-runner John Kerry has received major financial support from News Corp., Viacom and Sony?
There's no question Kerry has milked his military background for political gain, which gained traction for the Bush AWOL story.
Now he's refraining from comment, leaving it to the media to pose the many questions that still need asking. Chief among them:
How come there are many months unaccounted for in Bush's Guard duty records?
Thirty years ago, when President Richard Nixon was in the throes of the Watergate scandal, there was much talk of the 18 1/2 minute gap in the Oval Office tapes, a gap that had supposedly been caused by a secretary's inadvertent erasure.
Yeah, sure.
Now it's a five month gap — yet another credibility gap.
If only the media pounced on this one with the same alacrity they did that other one.
- [i]Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| Move to Screen Bush File in 90's Is Reported |
| 02.13.04 (7:08 am) [edit] |
[b]Move to Screen Bush File in 90's Is Reported[/b]
HOUSTON — A retired lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard complained to a member of the Texas Senate in 1998 that aides to Gov. George W. Bush improperly screened Mr. Bush's National Guard files in a search for information that could embarrass the governor in future elections.
The retired officer, Bill Burkett, said in the letter to Senator Gonzalo Barrientos, a Democrat from Austin, that Dan Bartlett, then a senior aide to Governor Bush and now White House communications director, and Gen. Daniel James, then the head of the Texas National Guard, reviewed the file to "make sure nothing will embarrass the governor during his re-election campaign."
A copy of the letter was provided to The New York Times by a lawyer for Mr. Burkett to support statements he makes in a book to be published this month, which Mr. Burkett repeated in interviews this week, that Mr. Bush's aides ordered Guard officials to remove damaging information from Mr. Bush's military personnel files.
Mr. Bartlett denied on Wednesday that any records were altered. General James, since named head of the Air National Guard by President Bush, also denied Mr. Burkett's account. But Mr. Bartlett and another former official in Mr. Bush's administration in Texas, Joe Allbaugh, acknowledged speaking to National Guard officials about the files as Mr. Bush was preparing to seek re-election as governor.
Both said their goal was to ensure that the records would be helpful to journalists who inquired about Mr. Bush's military experience.
Questions about Mr. Bush's service in the National Guard have arisen in every campaign he has run since his 1994 race for governor. His 2004 re-election campaign is no different, as Democrats have pointed to apparent gaps in his service record with the National Guard.
On Tuesday, the White House released 18 months of payroll records that it says demonstrate that Mr. Bush fully completed his service. And on Wednesday, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the administration was awaiting more records and promised to make public any previously undisclosed information from the file.
Mr. McClellan and other administration officials criticized the Democrats for their attacks on Mr. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. "What you are seeing is gutter politics," Mr. McClellan said. "The American people deserve better. There are some who are not interested in their facts. They are simply trolling for trash."
Mr. Burkett's letter to Senator Barrientos was part of a running battle that he waged with the National Guard after retiring in January 1998. In it, Mr. Burkett complained of "severe retaliation" from General James for what he said was reporting "illegal acts" within the National Guard. He also complained about the government's failure to pay for his medical care after suffering from a tropical disease after a military assignment to Panama in 1997. Before finally winning medical benefits in July 1998, he said, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for depression.
A spokesman for Senator Barrientos, Ray Perez, said on Wednesday that "Mr. Burkett did correspond with this office." Senator Barrientos said he was trying to find the six-year-old records of contacts with Mr. Burkett. Another Texas legislator contacted at the time by Mr. Burkett, Representative Bob Hunter, Republican of Abilene, said Mr. Burkett had appeared before his committee overseeing military affairs and had complained of mishandling of his medical claims but did not mention Mr. Bush's files. He called Mr. Burkett "disgruntled."
In telephone interviews this week from his home near Abilene, Mr. Burkett, 55, a systems analyst with 27 years in the National Guard including service as deputy commandant of the New Mexico Military Academy, said he happened to be in General James' office at Camp Mabry in Austin in mid-1997 and overheard Mr. Allbaugh on a speakerphone telling General James that Mr. Bartlett and Karen P. Hughes, another aide to Governor Bush, would be coming to the Guard offices to review Mr. Bush's military files.
Ms. Hughes, who left the White House in 2002, did not return a call.
Mr. James said though a spokesman that "that discussion never happened" and that he would "never condone falsification of any record." Mr. Allbaugh called the account "pure hogwash," but said he talked to General James about making Mr. Bush's records available to reporters.
"We spoke about a lot of things," Mr. Allbaugh said. "I'm sure we had a conversation with General James where all the records were kept because it was an issue in 1994 and 1998 and would be in 2000. We wanted to make sure we could refer people of your profession where to go."
Mr. Burkett further said that about 10 days later he and another officer walked into the Camp Mabry military museum and saw the head of the museum, Gen. John Scribner, going through Mr. Bush's personnel records. Mr. Burkett said he saw a trash basket with discarded papers bearing Mr. Bush's name. Mr. Burkett said the papers appeared to be "retirement point certificates, pay documents, that sort of thing."
General Scribner dismissed the account. "It never happened as far as I know," he said. "Why would I be going into records?"
Mr. Burkett is quoted at length in a book to come out by the end of the month, "Bush's War for Re-election" by James Moore, a former Texas television reporter and co-author of "Bush's Brain."
The other Guard officer who Mr. Burkett says was with him the day he saw General Scribner going though the records, George Conn, declined in an e-mail message to comment on Mr. Burkett's statements. But Mr. Conn, a former chief warrant officer for the Texas Guard and now a civilian on duty with American forces in Europe, said: "I know LTC Bill Burkett and served with him several years ago in the Texas Army National Guard. I believe him to be honest and forthright. He `calls things like he sees them.' "
A retired officer, Lt. Col. Dennis Adams, said Mr. Burkett told him of the incidents shortly after they happened. "We talked about them several different times," said Mr. Adams, who spent 15 years in the Texas Guard and 12 years on active duty in the Army. He now works for the Texas Department of Public Safety as a security officer guarding the state Capitol.
- [i]Ralph Blumenthal, N.Y. Times[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Bush's Lack of Character! |
| 02.13.04 (7:07 am) [edit] |
[b]The Content of His Character: Bush's Lack of Character![/b]
[b]GEORGE W. BUSH[/b], who describes himself as our "war president," actually knows precious little about war, including the one he launched in Iraq.
In last Sunday's interview with NBC News' Tim Russert, the president revealed that, absent a scripted speech on a TelePrompTer, he is unable to defend his decision to invade and occupy Iraq.
His responses only widened his growing credibility gap. He insisted that he tried every diplomatic alternative to war, even though many of us remember how he raced past U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and the U.N. Security Council in his rush to war. Despite former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's revelation that the Bush administration planned the Iraq war before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and chief weapons inspector David Kay's report that no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered, Bush still insisted that one day, somewhere, WMD will be found.
The president seemed to forget that many of us do, in fact, pay attention to the news. His new justification for the war -- that Iraq might have stockpiled WMD someday and therefore could have endangered the United States - - lacked a certain credibility.
Despite his vague answers, Bush has every reason to assume that he can sail smoothly through this storm.
This is a man, after all, who has been rescued repeatedly -- from the military draft, from a failed oil business -- by the power and prestige of his family's ties.
Consider his military record: The media first raised questions about his spotty attendance in the Texas Air National Guard in the 2000 campaign. But after he assumed the presidency, they gave him a three-year pass.
It took loudmouthed filmmaker and author Michael Moore to force the issue by calling Bush a military deserter. That outlandish and crude accusation, however, did remind many people that Bush is a man who neither fought in nor against the Vietnam War, as so many men of his generation did.
The truth is, Bush essentially skipped Vietnam. Unlike Bill Clinton, he did not protest a war he judged to be morally wrong. Unlike Sen. John Kerry, he did not fight in the war and then protest its bankrupt policy when he returned.
Instead, Bush's father used his influence to get junior moved to the top of a long waiting list at the Texas Air National Guard two weeks before his son graduated from Yale in 1968. As the Washington Post has reported, Bush was accepted for pilot training, even though he received the lowest acceptable grade on the aptitude test.
He later asked for a transfer to Alabama, so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of one of his father's friends. After taxpayers spent a small fortune training him to be a pilot, he was suspended from flying in August 1972 when he inexplicably failed to complete an annual medical exam.
According to records released by the White House, he apparently skipped service in 1972 from April 16 to Oct. 28. In 2000, William Turnipseed, a retired brigadier general, told the Boston Globe, "Had he reported in I would have had some recall and I do not." Still, Bush received credit for his attendance.
He then returned to Texas where two of his superior officers said they couldn't give him annual evaluations because he hadn't shown up.
So why did he receive an honorable discharge, a fact the president will repeat every day, from now until November?
Grant Lattin, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who once served as judge advocate and is now a Washington military law attorney, explained to Salon.com's Eric Boehlert, "Somebody could have missed a year's worth of Guard drills and still end up with an honorable discharge." That's because, says Lattin, "the National Guard is extremely political. ... If George Bush junior is in your unit, you're going to bend over backward not to offend that family. It all comes down to who you know."
When Bush ran for president he asked us to judge him by the content of his character, not by whom he knew. He presented himself as a moral alternative to Washington politicians. He wouldn't lie, he said. He stood for truth, religion and family values. When he persuaded the public to support the war in Iraq, he asked us to trust his moral clarity.
Yet now he faces an erosion of trust by a public that feels it may have been deceived -- about his military record, about the need for a pre-emptive war in Iraq and about the man himself.
Only time will tell if, once again, he will be rescued from being held accountable for his actions.
- [i]Ruth Rosen, San Francisco Chronicle[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| The Bush Administration: Secrecy as Policy |
| 02.13.04 (6:46 am) [edit] |
[b]The Bush Administration: Secrecy as Policy[/b]
George W. Bush’s presidency has been characterized by a zeal for secrecy, an unrelenting push to stem the free flow of information.
One particularly notable example has been the Administration’s effort to undermine the Freedom of Information Act, the 1966 law that grants citizens access—although with some exceptions—to federal agency records. By statute, government FOIA officers may withhold records dealing with classified national security information, trade secrets, personnel or medical issues, and a handful of other matters—decisions that in each case are left to an official’s own discretion (although those denied the requested information may appeal). In October 1993, to better standardize the process and create more openness in government, Attorney General Janet Reno dispatched a memorandum revamping the way the Act would be administered; from now on, the memo directed, FOIA officers should “apply a presumption of disclosure.” To drive home the point, Reno decreed that, in the event of FOIA-related litigation, the Justice Department would no longer defend an agency’s withholding of information merely because there was a “substantial legal basis” for doing so. “Where an item of information might technically or arguably fall within an exemption,” she added, “it ought not to be withheld from a FOIA requester unless it need be.”
But eight years later, in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, Reno’s successor renounced that presumption of disclosure. In a memo to the heads of federal departments and agencies, Attorney General John Ashcroft decreed that a well-informed citizenry may be vital to government oversight, but not at the expense of undermining national security. “Any discretionary decision by your agency to disclose information protected under the FOIA should be made only after full and deliberate consideration of the institutional, commercial, and personal privacy interests that could be implicated by disclosure of the information,” he wrote. And unlike Reno, whose policies engendered more government in the sunshine, Ashcroft promised legal cover for agencies coming down on the side of non-disclosure. “When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records,” his memo added. In other words, Justice would bow out of litigation only if its participation might subsequently imperil the government’s ability to withhold other information.
While 9/11 was the presumed catalyst for the revamped FOIA guidelines, the policy change was actually in keeping with Bush’s historical aversion to the release of government papers. In 1997, for example, Bush successfully championed legislation that allowed the governor of Texas to designate an in-state university or alternate institution, in lieu of the Texas State Library and Archives, as the repository for his or her papers. And he later exploited the law by ordering that his own gubernatorial papers be deposited in the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, at Texas A & M University, which is home to his father’s executive records.
At the time, the shipment of Bush’s documents received scant attention. But the relocation effort later generated consternation among reporters, historians, researchers, and others seeking access to the eighteen hundred boxes of not-yet-cataloged papers. The reason: because records at the presidential library are under the jurisdiction of the National Archives and Records Administration, which is a federal agency, there was confusion whether release of the younger Bush’s papers was bound by the federal Freedom of Information Act or the Texas Public Information Act, which mandates a much speedier response time for requested records.
Bush’s attorney denied that the move reflected a desire to restrict public access to the papers. And in an interview with the Center, Chris LaPlante, the state archivist, also dismissed the conspiratorial claims of open-government activists: he and his colleagues, he said, knew that the governor’s papers were destined for an alternate repository, and they assumed that the Bush library staff were equipped to deal with the documents. But Bush’s action nonetheless imposed weeks-long, even months-long delays on the release of documents. And it left consumer advocacy organizations such as Public Citizen grumbling that the departed Texas governor lacked the legal authority to give away state records or place them beyond the reach of the state’s open-records law. In May 2002, following protracted legal wrangling, Texas Attorney General John Cornyn agreed. He ruled that the disputed papers were indeed state property, and therefore subject to the Texas open-records law.
Meantime, the public at large was being saddled with a variety of new impediments to an open federal government. To wit:
On November 1, 2001, President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, not-so-aptly titled “Further Implementation of the Presidential Records Act.” In truth, the executive order actually overrides the 1978 Presidential Records Act, the Watergate-inspired edict which stipulated that the papers of presidents and vice-presidents would be made available to the public twelve years after their leaving office. Under Bush’s plan, however, former presidents or their heirs may veto the release of their presidential papers, as may the sitting president—a decision that vested George W. Bush with the authority to block release of his father’s papers, for example, or even those of Bill Clinton. Bush’s order drew fervent bipartisan condemnation on Capitol Hill (although not enough to force reinstatement of the ’78 Act), and it particularly rankled librarians and historians. The comments of Steven Hensen, president of the Society of American Archivists, were typical. Writing in the Washington Post, he asked: “How can a democratic people have confidence in elected officials who hide the records of their actions from public view?”
Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration encouraged federal agencies to purge a wide array of potentially sensitive data from their Web sites—a decree that, for a time, removed the entire online presence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and which ultimately resulted in hundreds of thousands of pages being deleted from sites maintained by the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, and other federal entities. “It is no longer possible for families and communities to get data critical to protecting themselves—information such as pipeline maps (that show where they are and whether they have been inspected), airport safety data, environmental data, and even documents that are widely available on private sites today were removed from government sites and have not reappeared,” OMB Watch, which for two decades has been chronicling the activities of the Office of Management and Budget, noted in a paper released in October 2002.
On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed an order that postponed, by three years, the release of millions of twenty-five-year-old documents slated for automatic declassification the following month. What’s more, Executive Order 13292, which amended a Clinton Administration order, granted FOIA officers wider latitude to reclassify information that had already been declassified, and further eliminated a provision that instructed them not to classify information if there was “significant doubt” about the need to do so. While President Bush maintained that the order balanced national security with open government, some were not convinced. For example, the Washington Post quoted Thomas Blanton, executive director of the nonprofit National Security Archive, as saying that the order sends “one more signal from on high to the bureaucracy to slow down, stall, withhold, stonewall.”
When the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press surveyed the post-September 11th landscape, the First Amendment watchdog concluded that the government had embarked on “an unprecedented path of secrecy” that stifled the press’ and the public’s right to know. Among the reporters ensnared by the government’s flight from the traditional culture of openness is John Solomon, deputy bureau chief of the Associated Press. Solomon, who works out of the Washington, D.C. bureau, was twice victimized. In one incident, a package sent by Federal Express to Solomon from another AP bureau was intercepted by the U.S. Customs Service and forwarded to the FBI, where its contents—an eight-year-old, unclassified Bureau lab report previously made public in a court case—were seized and withheld for seven months.
In a previous incident, the Justice Department subpoenaed Solomon’s home phone records in an attempt to unearth his confidential source for a wire service story. Solomon, who only learned about the subpoena months later, told the Center it’s his understanding that the traditional practice of subpoenaing reporters as an absolute last resort in a “leaks” investigation is no longer the department’s modus operandi. “I’m not quite sure it’s gotten the public attention it deserves,” Solomon told the Center. “I don’t think the profession has realized the importance of the change of standards that has occurred as a result of my case.”
- [i]Charles Lewis. Read what the Bush administration would prefer you not know in “The Buying of the President 2004” by Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity. Watch Lewis speak about the buying of our democracy and the secrets of our government-for-sale at [/i]: http://www.connectlive.com/ev...
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| BUSH IS IN TROUBLE: Dubya's Word Is As Good As Used Toilet Paper! |
| 02.12.04 (9:46 am) [edit] |
[b]BUSH IS IN TROUBLE
Dubya's word is as good as used toilet paper![/b]
[u][b]An open letter to George 'I'm a war president!' Bush[/b][/u]:
Dear Mr. Bush,
Thank you for providing the illegible Xeroxed partial payroll sheets (or whatever they were) yesterday covering a few of your days in the National Guard. Now we know that, not only didn't you complete your tour of duty, you were actually paid for work you never did. Did you cash those checks? Wouldn't that be, um, illegal?
Watching the press aggressively demand the truth from your press secretary -- and refusing to accept the deceit, the dodging, and the cover-up -- was a sight to behold, something we really haven't seen since you took office (to watch or listen to the entire press conference, or to read the full transcript, go here).
More than one reporter pointed out that those pieces of paper your press secretary waved at them yesterday mean nothing. Even if they aren't forged documents, getting paid does not necessarily mean you showed up to do your duties. As retired Army Col. Dan Smith, a 26-year veteran, told the AP:
"Pay records don't mean anything except that you're in or you're out," said Smith. "It doesn't necessarily reflect what duty you've actually performed because pay records simply record your unit of assignment and then all of your pay and benefits per pay period."
Mr. Bush, this issue is not going to go away -- and I think yesterday's actions just dug you into a deeper hole. You're probably wondering why the heck this story won't just die. You probably thought that after I brought it up last month and then got slammed by Peter Jennings for uttering the "d" word, the whole matter would just disappear as fast as bag of blow being thrown out the window of a speeding car on a deserted Maine highway.
But your "desertion" didn't go away -- and here's the reason why. You have sent countless numbers of our sons and daughters in the National Guard to their deaths in the last 11 months. You did this while misleading their parents and the nation with bogus lies about weapons of mass destruction and scary phony Saddam ties to al Qaeda. You sent them off to a never-ending war so that your benefactors at Halliburton and the oil companies could line their pockets. And then you had the audacity to prance around in a soldier's uniform on an aircraft carrier proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" -- while the cameras from your re-election campaign ad agency rolled.
THAT is what makes this whole business of you being AWOL so despicable, and makes the grief-stricken relatives want to turn away from you in disgust. The reason your skipping-out on your enlistment didn't matter in the 2000 election was because we were not at war. Being stuck in a deadly, daily quagmire now in 2004 makes your military history-fiction and your fly-boy costume VERY relevant.
You still have not answered the questions surrounding your National Guard "service." Let me repeat them as simply as I can for you (all of them based on the investigative work of the Associated Press and the Boston Globe):
1. How were you able to jump ahead of 500 other applicants to get into the Texas Air National Guard, thus guaranteeing you would not have to go to Vietnam? What calls did your father (who was then a United States Congressman representing Texas) make on your behalf for you to get this assignment?
2. Why were you grounded (not allowed to fly) after you either failed your physical or failed to take it in July 1972? Was there a reason you were afraid to take the physical? Or, did you take it and not pass it? If so, why didn't you pass it? Was it the urine test? The records show that, after the Guard spent years and lots of money training you to be a pilot, you never flew for the rest of your time in the Guard. Why?
3. Can you produce one person who can verify that he served with you in the Guard during the year that your Texas commanders said you did not show up? Why have you failed to bring forth anyone who served with you in the Guard while you were in Alabama? Why hasn't ONE SINGLE PERSON come forward?
4. Can you tell us what you did when you claim to have shown up in Alabama for Guard duty? What were you duties? You were grounded, so what did they have you do instead?
5. Where are the sign-up sheets that would have your name and service number on them for each weekend you showed up? Aaron Brown on CNN told us how, when he was in the reserves, he had to sign in each time he reported, and his guest from the Washington Post said, that's right, and there would be "four copies of that record" in the files of various agencies. Will you ask those agencies to release those records?
6. If you were in fact paid for that time when you apparently went AWOL, will you authorize the IRS to release your 1972-73 tax returns?
7. How did you get an honorable discharge? What strings were pulled? Who called who?
Look, I'm sorry to have put you through all this. I was just goofing around when I made that comment about wanting to see a debate between the general and the deserter. I had no idea that it would lead to this. And there you were, having to suffer through Tim Russert on Sunday, saying weird things like "I'm a war president!" I guess you believe that, or you want us to believe that. Americans have never voted out a Commander-in-Chief during a war. I guess that's what you're hoping for. You need the war.
But we don't. And our troops in the National Guard don't either. I know you see the writing on the wall, so why not come clean now? We are a forgiving people, and though you will not be returned to White House, you will find us grateful for a little bit of truth. Answer our questions, apologize to the nation, and bring our kids home.
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
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| Bush's New Plans for Nukes Hypocritical, Say Experts ... |
| 02.12.04 (7:23 am) [edit] |
[b]New US Plans for Nukes Hypocritical, Say Experts [/b]
Proposed new US curbs on the proliferation of nuclear weapons are fundamentally hypocritical, US academics, military analysts and peace activists said Wednesday.
"(US) President George Bush seems committed to writing a new chapter in the grotesque saga of US nuclear policy: 'do as we say, not as we do'," Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told IPS.
Solomon was responding to a major policy statement by Bush, who told the National Defense University on Wednesday that Washington plans to limit the number of nations permitted to produce nuclear fuel, in its attempt to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
"We must confront the danger with open eyes and unbending purpose," Bush said. "I've made clear to all the policy of this nation: America will not permit the terrorists and dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons."
Solomon said that throughout the nuclear era, "the US president has claimed the right to play 'nuclear God,' proclaiming which nations have a holy right to nuclear weapons, and which nations would be guilty of a terrible sin by acquiring nuclear weapons."
"But even the world's only superpower cannot force the nations of the world to worship the edicts from Washington," said Solomon, co-author of [i]Killing our Own: the Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation[/i].
Currently, there are five declared nuclear powers, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia. The other three countries known to possess nuclear weapons are India, Pakistan and Israel. But U.S. intelligence believes that even North Korea has successfully gone nuclear.
The Bush administration went to war with Iraq last March on the grounds that it had nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. But none have been found so far. The United States has also accused Iran and Syria of developing WMD. Both countries have denied the charge.
Last week the head of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed he helped transfer nuclear technology to Libya. Last December, Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi publicly proclaimed he was dismantling his proposed nuclear weapons programs.
"The Bush administration is being hypocritical by criticizing other countries for nuclear proliferation while it continues to develop nuclear weapons of its own," says Natalie Goldring, executive director of programs on global security and disarmament at the University of Maryland.
"Preventing further proliferation of nuclear weapons is a vital national security. But the Bush administration has undermined its credibility by pursuing new nuclear weapons programs, and moving towards resuming nuclear testing," Goldring told IPS.
She said the Pakistani network might be just the tip of the iceberg. "President Bush is correct to devote more attention to nonproliferation. But we also need to devote the financial resources necessary to control nuclear weapons material. The Bush administration has not done so," she added.
Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told IPS the Bush administration's "rank hypocrisy of nuclear nonproliferation" could not be more apparent.
The United States, he said, is already in "material breach" of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which says, "each of the parties to the treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty of general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."
"The Bush administration also stands in anticipatory breach of the so-called negative security assurances that the United States government gave to the NPT non-nuclear weapons states, that it would not use nuclear weapons against them in return for their renewal and indefinite extension of the NPT," said Boyle, author of [i]The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence[/i].
He said Bush had already ordered the Pentagon to target several non-nuclear weapons states, a move that goes to the very heart of the bargain behind the NPT.
Both Boyle and Solomon also pointed to the US double standard in curbing nuclear weapons in the Arab world but ignoring Israel's nuclear arsenal.
"In the Middle East, the big nuclear elephant in the living room – which Bush refuses to acknowledge as a problem – is Israel," said Solomon.
When former chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix arrived in Baghdad in Nov. 2002, he expressed hope for a "zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East as a whole."
Solomon said Blix was referring to actions taken by the UN Security Council after the 1991 Gulf War that acknowledged the need for a nuclear-free zone for the entire region, including Iran and Israel.
"The US government cannot make a reasonable case as to why it's OK for Israel to have a stockpile of about 200 nuclear warheads but it's not OK for any other nation in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons technology," he said.
"As for the US government, it has arrogantly violated its obligations under the (nonproliferation) treaty by not only failing to work toward nuclear disarmament, but also by continuing to develop even more technologically advanced nuclear weapons, including the current push for 'bunker-busting' nuclear arms that reflect ongoing Pentagon interest in using nuclear weapons for war-fighting," he added.
- [i]Thalif Deen has been Inter Press Service's U.N. Bureau Chief since 1992,. A former Information Officer at the U.N. Secretariat and a one-time member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the General Asssembly sessions, he is currently editor of the Journal of the Group of 77, published in collaboration with IPS. A Fulbright-Hayes scholar, he holds a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University in New York[/i]., http://www.antiwar.com/ips/de...
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| Anxiety Takes Hold of Presidential Aides Caught Up in Leak Inquiry |
| 02.12.04 (7:19 am) [edit] |
[b]Anxiety Takes Hold of Presidential Aides Caught Up in Leak Inquiry[/b]
[b]WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 [/b]— It started almost casually last fall, with F.B.I. agents leaving business cards under doors around the White House, politely calling for appointments and even meeting some officials, without any lawyers present, over a few beers at a nearby bar.
But the investigation into who at the White House leaked the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer has become much more intense in the last few weeks. Some administration officials have been summoned for confrontational interviews. Current and former members of the White House's communications and foreign policy teams have hired lawyers. At least a handful of White House aides have had to appear before a federal grand jury.
At the White House, the topic is rarely discussed openly among those who have already been drawn into the investigation and those who think they may be, people who have been questioned in the case said. The result, they said, is an information vacuum that is being filled to some extent by fear of what current or former colleagues may be telling investigators.
Some officials now find themselves in a bind borne of the potentially huge political stakes of the case. Since the investigation began in September, President Bush http://www.nytimes.com/top/ne... has said repeatedly that he wants to get to the bottom of the matter and that he has directed everyone on his staff to cooperate fully. Some lawyers involved in the case said White House officials were now trapped between that direction from the president and legal advice that they aggressively assert their own rights.
So although White House officials have publicly pledged to help investigators, there is some resistance just beneath the surface. Some people who have spoken with investigators say they have refused to sign statements that would waive any promise of confidentiality they received from reporters. The effort to obtain the statements is apparently intended to deprive journalists who wrote about the leak an ability, if questioned or subpoenaed, to cite the need to protect anonymous sources.
Some people questioned in the case say they have also declined to sign agreements that they will not disclose any information about their encounters with investigators.
At a White House that has largely avoided scandal — and one that has been distinguished by remarkable internal cohesion — the escalating investigation has brought unusual personal stress and the uncertainties that afflict anyone caught up in a full-scale criminal inquiry.
Some White House officials, concerned about what the investigation might mean for themselves or their bosses, have been pumping reporters for information about what they know. Others, so far untouched by the investigation, are sighing with relief.
But like any institution caught up in a criminal inquiry, this one appears intent on getting on with business as usual, and avoiding the spectacle of colleagues' turning on colleagues, even as investigators turn up the pressure.
"The mood is concern, not worry," said one Republican with close ties to the White House. "It's attention, not fear. And so far it hasn't caused any dysfunctional relationships to crop up."
The investigation has already spread through much of the White House. Among those who have been interviewed by the F.B.I. are Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, and powerful behind-the-scenes figures like I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Those who have trooped in to answer questions from the grand jury include Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary; Claire Buchan, a deputy press secretary; Mary Matalin, a former top adviser to Mr. Cheney; and Adam Levine, a former White House communications aide.
Investigators appear to be amassing as much information as they can about how the White House press and political operations work and asking those they question about specific conversations with other White House aides and with reporters.
The goal of the inquiry is to determine who told the syndicated columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was an undercover C.I.A. officer. In a column that appeared in The Washington Post on July 14, Mr. Novak attributed the information to two "senior administration officials." Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a crime.
The case has heated up since December, when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from it and the Justice Department put the matter in the hands of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago. Soon afterward, some administration officials were summoned to interviews at an office building a few blocks from the White House that is customarily used for investigations of national security breaches.
There, a two-member team of prosecutors, referring to specific e-mail messages, notes and phone calls, started asking tough, confrontational questions about the leak and who might have been behind it. Then came the grand jury, where as usual witnesses must answer questions without a lawyer present, not knowing what their colleagues have testified.
- [i]By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DAVID JOHNSTON, The New York Times[/i], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
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| Waiting For The Heads To Roll ... |
| 02.12.04 (7:15 am) [edit] |
[b]Waiting For The Heads To Roll ...
[i]Hard to see how Bush survives Iraq mess otherwise[/i][/b]
[b]WASHINGTON[/b] - I keep waiting for the bloodletting to begin, the ritual slaughter of careers that comes with controversy in the capital. George W. Bush is a loyal man — and loyalty is a good thing — but I don't see how he can survive the searing politics of Iraq (if, indeed, survival is possible at all) without the dramatic departure of some people, maybe even Vice President Dick Cheney.
"WMD" stands for "weapons of mass destruction," of course, but the acronym also could be short for "war means defeat" if the president, as they used to say in various administrations, fails to "get out ahead of the story."
Rather than do that, so far, he's done everything he can to play sitting duck by not blaming anyone for the fact that we went to war in Iraq on what turned out to be (and what some argued at the time was) bogus information about the imminence of the threat.
Maybe, to his credit, Bush accepts the fact that firing every soul in Washington would not solve his problem, which is that it was he — in one of the biggest gambles of the modern presidency — who issued the order to invade Mesopotamia. Still, having established yet another group to study intelligence failures — with a deadline beyond Election Day — Bush will have a hard time ousting (blaming) anyone in the meantime.
I have been traveling the county pretty continuously for the last couple of months and a few sentiments stand out among the many voters — not just Democrats — I've talked to. One is the depth of their love of country, and their upbeat, almost defiantly hopeful attitude now, in the third year after 9/11. On economics, they are angry at the swells, and at the thievery of greedy corporate CEOs, but remain focused more on making money for themselves than on resenting the wealth of others. These deep emotions — patriotism, hunger to succeed financially — don't pose a threat to George Bush this year; in fact, such bedrock American attitudes probably protect him.
[b]All alone on Iraq[/b]
But he's out there all alone on Iraq.
This country simply has no history of going to war half-cocked and trigger-happy. Our ideal is the reluctant warrior; Alan Ladd in "Shane," Gary Cooper in "High Noon." We aren't (and don't think of ourselves as) quick-drawing gunslingers who shoot first and ask questions later. To argue that the best way to keep the peace is to act on the edge of recklessness is Real-politik of a certain chilling sort. But even if it makes some sense in a world full of thugs and terrorists out to destroy us, it isn't the American Way. If we have to change our national character, the president needed to tell us why. He didn't.
And that failure is costing him, because it gave him no safety net to fall into if the WMD weren't found. Polls show the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq are not at the top of voters' concerns. I don't buy it. The sense I get is of Iraq as an undertone, a kind of dirge playing softly beneath the pop charts. Americans tend to judge their presidents on the Big Calls they make, and Bush's decision to go to Iraq was one of the biggest. Voters want to believe that he made such a fateful decision with utmost, even agonizing, care. Now they're not sure that he did, which makes them wonder what the war really was about.
At the least, it seems, he was poorly served. Who can or will be blamed?
George Tenet, the CIA director, is the most obvious candidate for career cancellation. His agency got it wrong, even if it never used the word "imminent" in its reports. But the CIA is the ultimate dangerous nettle; it stings when grasped. Tenet & Co. are the ultimate bureaucratic survivalists, and can leak damaging information on a moment's notice.
[b]Remember Joe Wilson?[/b]
Remember the Joe Wilson story, the one about how the White House had leaked the identity of his CIA-agent wife? The assumption in Washington is that it was a CIA source that gave that story the credibility it needed to wind up on the front page of The Washington Post. And now White House aides are parading before a federal grand jury. "The administration people are scared to death of Tenet," one very well-placed source told me. "He's burned them once, and would do it again."
At the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz would seem to be candidates for departure, but firing them would mean undermining what remains of the rationale for the war: the notion that we can and must make the Middle East safe for democracy, or at least rid it of the root causes of terrorism. What philosophical basis would the Bush Axis of Evil theory have then, and who would defend it?
That leaves Cheney, who, by all accounts, has been the advocate of the war with the closest proximity to, and fund of credibility with, the president himself. As unapologetic and gung-ho as ever, the vice president is a man of conviction, and seems very much to love the behind-the-scenes power role he occupies. The president made it clear months ago that he wanted Cheney to remain on the ticket. "He is unfireable," one White House source told me, and I believe him.
So that leaves President Bush himself — and the judgment about his employment status won't be decided until November, by his own Boss, the American voter.
- [i]Howard Fineman is Newsweek’s chief political correspondent and an NBC News analyst[/i]., http://msnbc.msn.com/id/42355...
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| 9/11 Cover-Up: Bush Hides The Evidence & We Won't Know The TRUTH ... |
| 02.11.04 (10:32 pm) [edit] |
The 9/11 panel has betrayed us and they let Bush get away with hiding the evidence. We won't know the truth because it is covered-up by the White House and the partisan political toadies who decided to "roll-over and play-dead".
[b]9/11 Panel to Accept Summary of Briefings[/b]
[i][b]Legal Challenge Scrapped; Agreement Angers Some Members, Victims' Families [/b][/i]
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks backed away yesterday from a threatened legal showdown with the White House, agreeing to accept a 17-page summary of the presidential briefing documents it had sought.
The deal will not allow the full 10-member commission to read the original documents or to have access to notes on the documents taken by some of the commission's own members. The summary -- provided to commission members during a closed-door meeting yesterday -- covered several dozen original intelligence documents and was first vetted by the White House, officials said.
The limitations prompted at least three Democratic members of the bipartisan panel to vote in favor of issuing a subpoena to the White House for the documents, known as the President's Daily Brief (PDB).
But the move was rebuffed by Republicans on the commission, and at least one Democrat abstained, according to several commission members.
"You either say you didn't have warning prior to 9/11 and you let us see the documents, or you shouldn't claim that," said Democratic commission member Timothy J. Roemer, a former House member from Indiana. "To say there's nothing in the PDBs that gave the president warning and then put together an agreement that only allows one or two commissioners to see the PDBs is not defensible."
The agreement also angered families of Sept. 11 victims, who have criticized the panel for not being more aggressive in its frequent battles with the Bush administration.
The standoff was the second major dispute between the commission and the White House over the PDBs, highly sensitive compilations of intelligence information prepared for the chief executive. After a similar subpoena threat in November, the panel reached a complicated accord that allowed Executive Director Philip D. Zelikow and three commission members to review limited numbers of the documents.
The earlier deal gave the White House the power to approve what would be passed along to the seven commission members without access to the original PDBs. But the White House and the commission deadlocked in recent weeks over what could be handed over.
Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska who recently joined the commission, said "the White House broke its word" on that earlier agreement, and he contended that the latest deal will hurt the commission's effort to issue a complete report.
"We couldn't even get our own notes," Kerrey said. "If all 10 of us had read the documents, it would be much more likely that we would have a report the American people can trust."
But the commission chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and a former New Jersey governor, said the arrangement is the best possible outcome given the time constraints on the commission.
"I think this gives us what we need to do our report," Kean said. "Was it everything I wanted? No. But it's certainly enough to do what we need to do."
"We're pleased to work with them closely and in a cooperative manner," White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said.
Yesterday's agreement follows an announcement last week that President Bush would support a two-month extension of the commission's current May 27 deadline.
An extension would require action by Congress, however, and some key Republicans are opposed to the idea, in part because it would mean the release of the controversial report on the terror strikes in the middle of the presidential election cycle.
John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), said yesterday that Hastert remains opposed to extending the commission deadline. The issue did not come up during a meeting on Monday with the White House, Feehery said.
The Bush administration, which initially opposed the establishment of the independent commission, has frequently clashed with the panel over access to information and witnesses. The commission has issued two subpoenas to federal agencies and is still in the process of negotiating for testimony from Bush, Vice President Cheney, former president Bill Clinton and former vice president Al Gore.
When asked during an appearance on [i]NBC's "Meet the Press"[/i] Sunday whether he would testify before the commission, Bush responded: "Perhaps."
Under the original November agreement with the White House, four commission representatives -- Zelikow, Kean, Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton (D) and member Jamie S. Gorelick (D) -- had access to two dozen PDBs that the White House had preapproved as being relevant to the commission's mandate. In addition, Zelikow and Gorelick were able to comb through several hundred other PDBs from the Clinton and Bush administrations in search of information they deemed relevant.
From notes taken during these reviews, Gorelick compiled the 17-page summary provided to the commission yesterday, which was approved by the White House, officials said. Gorelick, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said the summary provides the commission with "the most important and salient facts" from the documents.
-[i] Dan Eggen, Washington Post[/i], http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
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| Bushy-boy Flip-Flops, Flip-Flops, Flips and Flops! HA HA HA HA HA ... |
| 02.11.04 (7:30 pm) [edit] |
[b]Dubya Flip-Flops, Flip-Flops, Flips and Flops[/b]:
Lie 1 - One day WMDs pose an imminent threat ...
Lie 2 - Next day its "freedom" for Iraqis ...
Lie 3- Next day Saddam Hussein is a madman ...
Flip-n-Flop - Go back to Lie 1 and Circulate Through Lie 3 in an [i]endless loop [/i]of the same tired ole' [i]flip-flop lies[/i] ...
[b]Setting the record straight
[i]Time to draw a line against the rewriting of history[/i][/b]
AUSTIN, Texas -- Just for the record, since the record is in considerable peril. These are Orwellian days, my friends, as the Bush administration attempts to either shove the history of the second Gulf War down the memory hole or to rewrite it entirely. Keeping a firm grip on actual historical fact, all of it easily within our imperfect memories, is not that easy amid the swirling storms of misinformation, misremembering and misstatement. But since the war itself stands as a monument to what happens when we let ourselves get stampeded by a chorus of disinformation, let's draw the line right now.
According to the 500-man American team that spent hundreds of millions of dollars looking for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, there aren't any and have not been any since 1991.
Both President Bush and Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, now claim Saddam Hussein provoked this war by refusing to allow United Nations weapons inspectors into his country. That is not true. Bush said Sunday: "I had no choice when I looked at the intelligence. ... The evidence we have discovered this far says we had no choice."
No, it doesn't. Last week, CIA director George Tenet said intelligence analysts never told the White House "that Iraq posed an imminent threat."
Let's start with the absurd quibble over the word "imminent." The word was, in fact, used by three administration spokesmen to describe the Iraqi threat, while Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld variously described it as "immediate," "urgent," "serious and growing," "terrible," "real and dangerous," "significant," "grave," "serious and mounting," "the unique and urgent threat," "no question of the threat," "most dangerous threat of our time," "a threat of unique urgency," "much graver than anybody could possibly have imagined," and so forth and so on. So, could we can that issue?
A second emerging thesis of defense by the administration in light of no weapons is, as David Kay said, "We were all wrong."
No, in fact, we weren't all wrong.
Bush said Sunday, "The international community thought he had weapons." Actually, the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency both repeatedly told the administration there was no evidence Iraq had WMD. Before the war, Rumsfeld not only claimed Iraq had WMD but that "we know where they are." U.N. inspectors began openly complaining that U.S. tips on WMD were "garbage upon garbage." Hans Blix, head of the U.N. inspections team, had 250 inspectors from 60 nations on the ground in Iraq, and the United States thwarted efforts to double the size of his team. You may recall that during this period, the administration repeatedly dismissed the United Nations as incompetent and irrelevant. But containment had worked.
Nor does the "everybody thought they had WMD" argument wash on the domestic front. Perhaps the administration thought peaceniks could be ignored, but you will recall that this was a war opposed by an extraordinary number of generals. Among them, Anthony Zinni, who has extensive experience in the Middle East, who said, "We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started." After listening to Paul Wolfowitz at a conference, Zinni said, "In other words, we are going to go to war over another intelligence failure." Give that man the Cassandra Award for being right in depressing circumstances.
Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan was equally blunt. Any serving general who got out of line, like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, was openly dissed by the administration.
Suddenly, the administration is left with the only good reason there ever was for getting rid of Saddam Hussein in the first place -- he's a miserable s.o.b. You will recall that this is precisely the argument the administration rejected. Wolfowitz said that human rights violations by Saddam against his own people were not sufficient to justify our participation in his ouster.
Now, according to the president, Saddam Hussein is a "madman." Oh, come on. An s.o.b., yes, but crazy like a fox -- always has been. It wasn't even crazy of him to have invaded Kuwait, given that April Glaspie, the American ambassador at the time, told him, "We have no opinion on your border disputes with Kuwait."
For everyone who ever cared about human rights and longed for years to get rid of Saddam Hussein, this late-breaking humanitarianism on Bush's part is actually nauseating. All the Amnesty International types who risked their lives to report just how terrible Saddam's rule was always had one question about getting rid of him: What comes next?
I don't think there is any great mystery here about how this "mistake" -- such an inadequate word -- was made. For those seriously addicted to tragic irony, consider that the most likely Democratic nominee is now John Kerry, who first became known 33 years ago for asking, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"
[i]Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Molly Ivins Can't Say That Can She?[/i]
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| U.S. Iraq Policy Uncovered |
| 02.11.04 (7:26 pm) [edit] |
[b]U.S. Iraq Policy Uncovered [/b]
Only in the U.S. can the halftime show at the Super Bowl cause more public outrage than a president’s floundering attempts to justify getting more than 500 American soldiers killed and more than 3,000 wounded in an unnecessary invasion and occupation on the other side of the globe. If the American people actually were to pay attention to the President’s remarks on this week’s Meet the Press show, the naked truth about the Bush administration’s Iraq policy could become more exposed than Janet Jackson.
Although in the past, the president has admitted that no connection existed between the September 11 attacks and Saddam Hussein, he and other administration officials, including Vice President Cheney, have repeatedly implied just such a link by associating the invasion of Iraq with the “war on terror.” He continued this Goebbels-like propaganda behavior during the show. The president stated, “I made the decision [to invade Iraq] based upon that intelligence in the context of the war against terror. In other words, we were attacked, and therefore every threat had to be reanalyzed. . . . Every potential harm to America had to be judged in the context of this war on terror.” More specifically, the president later said of Saddam Hussein, “he had the capacity to make a weapon [of mass destruction], and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network.” On the subject of the most important (really the only) weapon of mass destruction, he argued that Hussein “could have developed a nuclear weapon over time—I’m not saying immediately, but over time.”
First, according to former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, the Bush administration’s decision to go after Iraq was made a short-time after the administration took office in early 2001—well before the September 11 attacks.
Second, having the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction is not the same as having weapons ready to use. As a justification for the war, the president and many other administration officials repeatedly emphasized that the Iraqi threat was imminent. In fact, the president had said “The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. Saddam Hussein is a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible.” Furthermore, in 2002, Vice President Cheney had declared, “On the nuclear question, many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire such weapons fairly soon.” Even though Saddam Hussein was cooperating with the international weapons inspectors that he had allowed back into Iraq and the United States had successfully contained the dictator for more than a decade, the threat suddenly became urgent in the summer of 2002 and the containment policy was abandoned in the rush to war.
Third, the president distorted the remarks of David Kay, his own weapons inspector. Indeed, Kay didn’t seem to be very impressed with Iraqi efforts to reconstitute their weapons programs. In fact, it is apparent now that the international weapons inspections had deterred Iraq from restarting large-scale research, development and production of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
Fourth, no one ever mentions that Saddam Hussein only supported terrorist groups that did not focus their attacks on U.S. targets. He supported groups that attacked Iran and Israel. And Hussein would have had little incentive to give super-weapons, which are costly to produce, to unpredictable groups that could get him in trouble with the superpower colossus. Saddam Hussein may have been a ruthless and brutal dictator (there are many in the world), but very few experts had characterized him as the “madman” portrayed by the President Bush. Like Janet Jackson’s costume, the pre-war threat from Iraq is disintegrating before our eyes.
Now, in a seemingly coordinated tack to justify invading non-nuclear Iraq instead of a much more dangerous North Korea, President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and sympathetic voices in the media—for example, Brit Hume of Fox News—are arguing that negotiations with Hussein—unlike those with North Korea—had unsuccessfully run their course. But Hussein never admitted reconstituting banned weapons (probably because he never did) and allowed the international weapons inspectors to return to Iraq. In contrast, North Korea has bragged about violating an agreement with the United States to freeze the North Korean weapons program, withdrew from its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and kicked international weapons inspectors out.
Unlike like the clever plot by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake to generate nationwide gossip, which succeeded brilliantly, President Bush’s backpedaling and scheming to justify an unnecessary war and quagmire will be unlikely to stop tongues from wagging during and after this election year.
[i]Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. Having received his Ph.D. in national security policy from George Washington University, Dr. Eland has served as Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, Evaluator-in-Charge for the U.S. General Accounting Office (national security and intelligence), and Investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has testified on NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee.
Dr. Eland is the author of Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy: Rethinking U.S. Security in the Post-Cold War World and forty-five studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology, Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. His popular writings have been published in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune, Washington Post, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, and Chicago Sun-Times. He has appeared on ABC's "World News Tonight," CNN's "Crossfire," Fox News, CNBC, CNN-fn, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, CBC, BBC, and other national and international TV and radio programs.[/i]
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| Right-Wing Buffoons & As*-Holes Blame Kerry For Vietnam? HA HA HA HA HA ... |
| 02.11.04 (7:17 pm) [edit] |
[b]Are the right-wing buffoons and ass-holes really blaming Kerry for Vietnam? HA HA HA HA HA ...
These neocon liars and fascist mad-dogs will create any lie, fabrication and falsehood in order to "win" ... "win" at all costs ... reminds one of nazis: no respect for truth or life or democracy!!![/b]
John Kerry is a decorated war hero, whose comrades remember [i]he was there[/i]!!!
Shrub Dubya is a drunkard deserter who was AWOL, and whose comrades remember that [i]he was [u]not[/u] there[/i]!!!
[b]Where were you in '72?
Most of us remember...Bush does not...[/b] http://www.awolbush.com/
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| Conservative Charges Bush With Betrayal Of Trust ... |
| 02.11.04 (5:49 pm) [edit] |
"No one has deputized America to play Wyatt Earp to the world." - [i]Patrick J. Buchanan [/i]
[b]The corrupt Bush regime has [i]betrayed our trust [/i]... for they have waged an illegal and immoral war upon a sovereign nation based upon myriad [i]lies, deceptions and falsehoods [/i]...[/b]
Meanwhile, over [i]10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered[/i] http://www.alternet.org/waron... in order to enrich Bush's corporate cronies: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, Lockheed-Martin, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. etc. etc. ...
Consider "[i][b]A Matter of Trust[/b][/i]" by [i]Patrick J. Buchanan[/i] on http://antiwar.com/pat/?artic... :
Most Americans yet believe President Bush did the right thing in ridding Iraq and the world of Saddam Hussein. Yet, how we were persuaded to go to war raises grave questions about the character and competence of those who led us into it.
As we now know, Iraq had no tie to Osama, no role in 9-11, no nuclear program, no weapons of mass destruction, no plans to attack us. Its people did not threaten us and did not want war with us.
By what right, then, did we invade their country, destroy their army and inflict thousands of casualties upon their people?
Comes the answer: We acted under the Bush Doctrine, under which we will not permit the world's worst dictators to acquire the world's worst weapons. To eliminate such threats before they go critical, we reserve the right to take pre-emptive military action and to wage preventive wars.
We cannot wait for tumors to become malignant before cutting them out, Bush was saying. After 9-11, most of America agreed.
But why did Bush choose Iraq? Why not Iran, whose hand in terror attacks was more demonstrable and whose missile and nuclear programs were more advanced? Why not North Korea?
The neoconservatives – Wolfowitz, Perle & Co. – we know, had been plotting war on Iraq and propagandizing for a U.S. invasion for years. But why did Bush sign on? Why did he make Iraq the first target of his doctrine? There was no tie between Saddam and 9-11, and Iraq seemed neither a grave nor an imminent threat.
What appears to have happened is this. Sometime soon after 9-11, the neocons persuaded the president that invading Iraq was the next crucial step in winning the war on terror and evil in which Divine Providence had chosen him to be the Churchill of his generation. And if the country and Congress were unconvinced of the need for war, it was his job to convince them.
And here is where the administration began to cross the line. To persuade us that Saddam was a mortal threat to which the only recourse was war, they needed evidence. But, apparently, there was little or no hard evidence to be had. No smoking guns. Saddam had been corralled in his box for a dozen years. America had flown 40,000 sorties over his country without losing a plane.
The only case that could be made was by extrapolating from the weapons Iraq had had before the Gulf War, which the U.N. had failed to find before it left in 1998. What seems to have happened is this.
Frustrated hawks in the Pentagon, impatient with the CIA's inability to find the evidence to clinch the case for a war they had already decided on, began demanding access to raw intelligence.
They set up their own intelligence unit in the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans. They solicited foreign intelligence agencies and Iraqi exiles to discover evidence that Saddam not only had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, he was working on nuclear ones.
First, they decided on war. Then they sent everyone out on a global scavenger hunt to find the evidence to prove we had no alternative but war. And though the information that came back was suspicious and the sources suspect, at least it pointed, as desired, in the right direction.
And, so, the hawks fed it to their propagandists in the press and "stovepiped" it to the White House, where it soon began to appear in the statements and speeches of the president and his War Cabinet.
Thus, we were told an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague had met with Muhammad Atta before 9-11, that Saddam was buying raw uranium for atomic bombs in Africa, that Iraq was testing drones and fitting them with biological weapons.
Vice President Cheney told "[i]Meet the Press[/i]" that Saddam "has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Condi Rice warned us that if we waited too long for proof it might come in a "mushroom cloud" over an American city.
Upon such "evidence," the White House stampeded Congress and the country into war, a war we now know was utterly unnecessary. We were misled, and the only question that lingers is: Were we deceived?
For if Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and the president were truly relying on the ambiguous intelligence the CIA was providing, whence came their absolute certitude as to the gravity and immediacy of the threat? For the CIA was saying there was no imminent threat.
History will record this as Bush's War. And he seems content with that judgment. But the price of victory has been the lost trust of many of his countrymen and of much of the world. The credibility of yet another administration has been compromised. Was it worth it?
[b]And if it was not the weapons, what was the real reason America went to war on Iraq?[/b]
[i]Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. He is also a founder and editor of the new magazine, The American Conservative. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national television shows, and is the author of seven books. See his MSNBC site http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3... .[/i]
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| The Right's Crime of Massacring Over 10,000 Human Lives!!!!!!!!!!! |
| 02.11.04 (12:21 pm) [edit] |
[b]The right-wing hypocrites should be forced to go fight and die in Iraq. Instead these neocon liars shout about about "[i]loving life[/i]", while cheering as Bush & Co. massacre and slaughter of over 530 US Soldiers and over 10,000 Innocent Iraqis in order to enrich Halliburton, et al.[/b]
[i][b]10,000 Iraqi Civilians Dead ...[/b][/i]
The war and the subsequent occupation have now resulted in the deaths of a staggering 10,000 Iraqi civilians. The group of academics who run Iraq Body Count.org base their estimate on media reports since both the coalition forces and the Iraqi Governing Council forbid counting of civilian casualties. More importantly, the website makes clear just how disproportionate the U.S. response to 9/11 has been: [i]More on [/i]» http://www.alternet.org/waron...
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| Blame Clinton & 9/11:-- War as an "Excuse" for Everything ... |
| 02.11.04 (7:07 am) [edit] |
[i]Blaming "Clinton" and "9/11" [/i]have being the neocons and the right-wingers' orwellian "The [i]Dog Ate My Homework[/i]" excuses of choice ...
[b]War as an Excuse for Everything
[i]Is it Just Me, or is President Bush's Demeanor a bit Napoleonic these Days?[/i] ... But Dubya doesn't have Napoleon's brain-power![/b]
The enemies of the republic are everywhere, he says over and over, and only he stands between them and our utter ruin. Sunday on "Meet the Press," he could say nothing without also referring to military battles he is apparently fit to fight — presumably based on his stealthy stint in the National Guard.
I am a "war president … with war on my mind," he insisted to Tim Russert, dodging the newsman's every question, as if his trainers had assured him that the phrase was a talisman that would ward off all charges of ineptitude and bad-faith leadership. Yet it was hardly clear from his filibustering responses exactly what war it was that Bush thought he was fighting.
Surely he wasn't coming clean on his war against the 90% of Americans who will pay the price in starved government services and, ultimately, higher tax burdens as they pay off Bush's outrageous tax cuts for the super-rich and the corollary soaring budget deficits.
"It's important for people who watch the expenditure side of the equation to understand that we are at war," Bush responded when Russert questioned him about the deficit. That was presumably a reference to the war on terror, the president's handy explanation for every untoward event. But how can he justify spending much of the $400-billion military budget on things like Cold War-era high-tech aircraft and other defense boondoggles to counter the $1.89 box cutters used by the 9/11 terrorists?
And if the war is against Al Qaeda, why haven't we moved decisively against that shadowy movement's sponsors in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? Although Osama bin Laden, 15 of the hijackers and most of the money for the religious schools that fed recruits to Al Qaeda and the Taliban came from Saudi Arabia, the president again insisted perversely on linking Iraq with the attack on this nation — despite having previously admitted that there is no evidence of such a connection.
There is, however, much evidence that Pakistan helped arm and train the Taliban. Yet Bush inexplicably rewarded Pakistan after Sept. 11, 2001, by lifting the sanctions that were in place to punish Pakistan for its nuclear program and sales. Only last week, Pakistan's dictator admitted that his nation was responsible for nurturing the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, Iran and Libya — conveniently blaming the country's leading scientist, whom he then quickly pardoned.
Furthermore, in apparent deference to Pakistan's admitted role in supplying North Korea with the wherewithal for nuclear weapons, Bush has suddenly warmed to that member of his "axis of evil." Whereas the president had referred to Saddam Hussein as a "madman" and a theoretical nuclear threat who could be dealt with only through preemptive invasion, Bush says North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and his actual nuclear threat haven't earned a military response because "the diplomacy is only beginning."
So, if we are not at war with North Korea, Libya or Iran now that we know they got their WMD know-how from our friends in Pakistan, then whom are we at war with? Certainly not Iraq, which the president pronounced as vanquished some nine months ago from the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Sadly, as the transcript of the Russert interview with our 43rd president shows, it is not entirely clear that even he knows for sure what is what anymore.
"I made a decision to go to the United Nations. By the way, quoting a lot of their data — in other words — this is unaccounted-for stockpiles that you thought he had because I don't think America can stand by and hope for the best from a madman … " Bush said. Evidently the president has forgotten that the U.N. Security Council turned down his request to go to war because U.N. inspectors were crawling all over Iraq and were finding nothing.
Now that top weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei — who both told the world before the invasion that Saddam Hussein was a defanged viper — have been vindicated by Bush's handpicked arms inspectors, it is embarrassing to witness the president prattling on in defense of the indefensible. Perhaps it would be less painful for all of us if the CIA could plant some WMD, of which the U.S. possesses a glorious excess, in Iraq as a kindly, face-saving afterthought for the baffled leader of the free world.
- [i]Robert Scheer, LA Times[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| Spin, Spin, Spin. Dodge, Dodge, Dodge. Withhold, Withhold, Withhold ... |
| 02.11.04 (7:03 am) [edit] |
[b]Spin, spin, spin. Dodge, dodge, dodge. Withhold, withhold, withhold[/b]
[i]Spin, spin, spin. Dodge, dodge, dodge. Withhold, withhold, withhold[/i].
Can you think of another verb? No? Me neither. So let's get started.
On [i]Meet the Press[/i], the president was asked if he'd authorize the release of all his service records.
[i]All of them[/i].
And he said, "Yes, absolutely."
He promised. But he keeps on not doing it. He's sure trying to make it look like he is. But he sure ain't.
For some reason he just can't quite bring himself to sign off on the release.
The idea here is that the president waives his rights under the Privacy Act and tells the relevant authorities, 'Release all my service records to whichever reporters or organizations want to see them.'
But he just refuses to do it.
The payment records out today [i]do[/i] give some evidence of what the president was doing during the year in question. But to say they raise further questions is something of an understatement. [Perhaps Bush defrauded the government taking pay [i]and[/i] being absent from duty.]
It's long been known, for instance, that in the late spring of 1973, Bush's commanding officers in Texas reported that they couldn't write an evaluation of him because "he has not been observed" at the base in Houston. That didn't raise any red flags because, though, because they believed he was then serving in Alabama.
Yet these new records seem to say that Bush actually was doing drills in Houston.
In fact, as the [i]Washington Post [/i]notes http://www.washingtonpost.com... , on the very day that his commanding officers were writing that he hadn't been seen on base -- May 2, 1973 -- these new payment records say he was actually on base logging in hours.
Go figure.
The president could clear this up by just authorizing the release of all his service records like he said he would. Now we're on to day three. But he still won't do it.
[i][b]Drip, drip, drip[/b][/i].
- [i]Josh Marshall[/i], http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
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| 10,000 Iraqi Civilians Dead |
| 02.11.04 (6:58 am) [edit] |
[b]10,000 Iraqi Civilians Dead[/b]
The war and the subsequent occupation have now resulted in the deaths of a staggering 10,000 Iraqi civilians. The group of academics who run Iraq Body Count.org base their estimate on media reports since both the coalition forces and the Iraqi Governing Council forbid counting of civilian casualties. More importantly, the website makes clear just how disproportionate the U.S. response to 9/11 has been:
"So far, in the 'war on terror' initiated since 9/11, the USA and its allies have been responsible for over 13,000 civilian deaths, not only the 10,000 in Iraq, but also 3,000-plus civilian deaths in Afghanistan, another death toll that continues to rise long after the world's attention has moved on. "Elsewhere in the world over the same period, paramilitary forces hostile to the USA have killed 408 civilians in 18 attacks worldwide. Adding the official 9/11 death toll (2,976 on 29 October 2003) brings the total to just under 3,500."
- [i]AlterNet.org[/i], http://www.alternet.org/waron...
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| The Mad King George Launches An Insane New Bid To Rule The World! |
| 02.10.04 (8:40 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Mad King George Launches An Insane New Bid To Rule The World![/b]
[i][b]US bids to bring democracy to Arab states[/b][/i]
The Bush Administration has launched an ambitious bid to promote democracy in the "greater Middle East" that will adapt a model used to press for freedoms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
US officials said senior White House and State Department officials had begun talks with key European allies about a plan to be put forward this northern summer at summits of the Group of Eight nations, NATO allies and the European Union. If it gets backing there, the US hopes to win support from Middle Eastern and south Asian countries.
"It's a sweeping change in the way we approach the Middle East," a senior State Department official said. "We hope to roll out some of the principles for reform in talks with the Europeans over the next few weeks, with specific ideas of how to support them."
Details are still vague but US and European officials said the initiative, to be tabled at the G-8 summit hosted by President George Bush in June, would call for Arab and south Asian governments to adopt major political reforms, be held accountable on human rights - particularly women's empowerment - and introduce economic reforms.
As incentives for countries to co-operate, Western nations would offer better political relations, more aid, membership in the World Trade Organisation and security arrangements, possibly something like the Partnership for Peace with former Eastern bloc countries.
The US approach loosely follows the 1975 Helsinki Accords signed by 35 nations, including the US, the Soviet Union and almost all European countries. It was designed to recognise disputed post-World War II borders and provide a means for settling disagreements. Human rights and freedoms became key parts of the treaty, giving the West leverage to promote and protect dissident groups in the Soviet bloc and urge greater freedoms for its residents.
"There is a belief that (Helsinki) contributed to bringing Europe together and played a significant role in tearing down the Soviet Union," a State Department official said. "In the same way, this idea would tear down the attractiveness of (Islamic) extremism."
But, unlike Helsinki, the Administration's "Greater Middle East Initiative" seeks to avoid creating committees to monitor progress and issue report cards, US officials said. It also seeks to avoid appearing to dictate to the Islamic world.
"The idea is not to come out with proposals that say 'This is how the West thinks you guys should live'," said a senior administration official. "That won't work. It is instead about saying 'We hear voices in the greater Middle East region who want democracy and reform, and here are the things we can do to support them'. "
The Administration's general goal is to make Mr Bush's call for political change throughout the Islamic world, as outlined in two speeches last autumn at the National Endowment for Democracy and in London, more attractive.
The Administration had originally pledged that ousting Saddam Hussein and creating a Palestinian state would promote democracy. But now with the Arab-Israeli peace process deadlocked and Iraq's political transition in trouble, the US was effectively leapfrogging both to generate political change in the region, US and European officials said.
European governments generally support the idea, but they have varying degrees of scepticism about whether a Helsinki-like approach will work in the Middle East. Moreover, Arab countries might find political change difficult, and were more likely to be susceptible to Islamic movements, as long as the Arab-Israeli conflict goes unresolved.
US officials said the initiative was no substitute. "We think progress on it will help the peace process, although some of the Europeans are not convinced," a State Department official said.
The European Union is also cautious because of its long-standing talks with Arab nations on the Mediterranean.
"We welcome the goal but we want to see how the Americans plan to get there," a European envoy said. "We've been trying for a while, and efforts at modernisation don't easily seep through to politics."
- [i]Robin Wright, Glenn Kessler, Washington Post[/i], http://www.theage.com.au/arti...
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| Pentagon Seeks Bush's National Guard File ... |
| 02.10.04 (7:09 am) [edit] |
[b]Defense Dept. Seeks Bush's Guard File [/b]
The Defense Department has requested that President Bush's payroll records from his service in the National Guard be sent to Washington from a DOD archive in Colorado, to ascertain whether they can be released to news organizations and public interest groups that have formally requested them in recent days, according to DOD officials.
Bush, in an interview shown Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he would release all his records, including pay stubs, to put to rest political suggestions that he may not have fulfilled his duty near the end of his Guard service, from May 1972 to May 1973. The president also suggested there might not be anything in the records that has not already been in the public domain.
"I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me, and starting in the 1994 campaign for [Texas] governor," Bush said. "And I can assure you in the year 2000 people were looking for those files as well."
Asked in the interview whether he would authorize release of his Guard records, the president said, "Yes, absolutely."
Bush enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, two weeks before graduating from Yale and at the height of the Vietnam War.
At issue is a 12-month period, commencing in May 1972, when Bush moved to Alabama to work on a senatorial campaign. He received permission to transfer to an Alabama unit and was instructed to report to duty there. There is no definitive evidence in his file that he reported to the Alabama unit to perform drills; Bush has said he did report and perform drills.
Bush's personnel records also are vague on what he did in the Texas Guard after returning to Houston after the Senate election he worked on. The first date in the records for 1973 is May 29, when they indicate he attended drills. The records show he attended drills at least 18 times between May 29 and July 30.
In his annual evaluation, covering the period of May 1972 to April 1973, Lt. Col. William D. Harris wrote that he could not evaluate Bush because "he has not been observed" in Houston. Bush left the Guard in October 1973 to attend Harvard Business School.
Bush's service record was explored by the Democrats and the media in 2000 but received new attention recently, when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe called Bush "AWOL" -- absent without leave -- during his time in Alabama.
According to military experts familiar with National Guard records, there are two documents that could indicate whether Bush reported for drills during that year. One is an annual summary of his points, the quantitative measure of his service. The summary includes each date he reported for a drill and how many points he received toward his annual requirement.
His official personnel record, obtained by The Post in 2000, does not include a summary of service for the time in Alabama. There is a sheet, where the name has been torn off, that includes dates for that period, but there is no way to confirm it refers to Bush because his Social Security number has been redacted. Also, no one who served in Bush's Alabama unit at that time has come forward, despite years of publicity on the subject. The brigadier general Bush was to report to in Alabama has said he has no recollection of Bush's doing so.
The other documents that should still be available are Bush's payroll records, which would show what drills Bush was compensated for during that period. Officials said yesterday that the DOD in Washington would review the master copy of Bush's payroll records, which have been stored on microfiche for 30 years at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service in Denver.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday told reporters that everything was made available during the 2000 campaign. "I think that one of the things you can look at that will help address these questions is the annual retirement point summaries . . . They show that the president fulfilled his duties, and that is why he was honorably discharged," he said.
McClellan said that in 2000, the Bush campaign was informed by the Texas National Guard that "they did not have them. Obviously, if there's anything additional, we'll keep you posted."
[i]By Lois Romano, Washington Post Staff writer Dana Milbank and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report[/i]., http://www.washingtonpost.com...
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| Bush Bullied CIA in order to Dupe Us ... |
| 02.10.04 (7:06 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush Bullied CIA in order to Dupe Us ...[/b]
The latest line from Secretary of State Colin Powell and others is that the Iraq war was such a just cause that we would have invaded even if we had known beforehand that no weapons of mass destruction existed.
To some, that might sound like a feeble effort to downplay a massive intelligence failure. I think it's more than that. I think it's the truth.
In effect, the Bush administration is now admitting that WMD were never the reason for the war. They chose to invade Iraq not to protect us from anthrax or nuclear attack, but because they hoped that an invasion would inspire new respect for U.S. power and would allow us to use Iraq as a base from which to transform the entire Arab world.
In the fall of 2002, however, administration officials recognized that honesty was not the best policy. Americans would never support an unprovoked war based on some grandiose ambition and dubious strategic benefit. If Bush officials wanted war, they needed to terrorize the American public into supporting it, and they seized upon the CIA's assessment of Iraqi WMD as the perfect tool for achieving that goal.
But first, the intelligence agencies had to be whipped into playing along.
While the CIA believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, it had also concluded that his stockpiles posed little danger to us or the rest of the world. That widely held view was captured perfectly in remarks by Powell on Feb. 24, 2001:
"Frankly, [sanctions] have worked," Powell told an Egyptian press conference. "[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
To get its war, the administration had to transform what it knew to be a minor, contained annoyance into a threat big enough to scare the American people. The solution it hit upon was ingenious: They fabricated a link between Saddam and Osama bin Laden.
Once again, though, the "realists" at the CIA posed a problem. They knew that no such link existed, and they naively thought their job was to be honest about what they knew. So, CIA Director George Tenet told Congress that it was highly unlikely that Saddam would ever give WMD to terrorists, and CIA analysts confirmed that Saddam and bin Laden were far from allies and, in fact, hated and distrusted each other.
That was true, but back then, the administration was more interested in fear than truth. It began a campaign to force the CIA to toe the company line, a campaign focused in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Pressure was exerted in private, including visits by Cheney to cross-examine analysts at CIA headquarters. It took place in public, as well, as mouthpieces in the conservative press attacked the CIA as Saddam-loving apologists. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even created a whole new intelligence office to reinterpret evidence "overlooked" by the fools at CIA.
Inevitably, the agency gave in, with surrender coming in the form of a letter from Tenet that grudgingly allowed for the possibility of a bin Laden-Saddam link. That was all the administration needed. "Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam," President Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address. "It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known."
A similar sequence of events can be traced involving Iraq's nuclear program. The CIA's honest assessment was that "Iraq has probably continued at least low-level theoretical R&D associated with its nuclear program," but little more.
Again, postwar analysis has confirmed the accuracy of that claim, but again, the administration didn't want accuracy. It wanted scary. It cowed the CIA and other agencies into silence, allowing Cheney, Bush and others to warn that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program, had sought to buy uranium, had tried to acquire ways to enrich that uranium. None of that was true, but it served its purpose.
Looking back, then, the real scandal is not what the CIA got wrong. The real outrage is how much it got right, but was muzzled from telling us.
[i]Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Thursdays and Mondays[/i]., [i]AJC[/i], http://www.ajc.com/news/conte...
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| Watching Propaganda Become Truth |
| 02.10.04 (7:03 am) [edit] |
[b]Watching Propaganda Become Truth [/b]
In 1961, I returned from the Soviet Union with a collection of propaganda posters. I used the posters to illustrate to students how government in a closed society can substitute propaganda for fact.
The most dramatic poster in my collection depicts a fascist who has climbed the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty. A fiery torch in the fascist's hand overlays the stone torch in Liberty's hand, sending forth the flames of war. Bombs are falling on dark-skinned, white-robed Arab women and children.
This was Soviet propaganda's portrait of the attempt in 1956 by Britain, France and Israel to reclaim from Egypt the Suez Canal, an effort that would have succeeded but for President Eisenhower's intervention. The Soviet Union was not about to credit the United States for stopping the invasion.
Looking at the colorful poster, one is struck that a half century later events have turned propaganda into truth. American bombs have been falling on Arabs, killing thousands.
The entire world now knows that the reason Bush and Blair gave for invading Iraq was false. The invasion was a strategic blunder. It has created new enemies for America throughout the Muslim world, and perhaps beyond.
In [i]The Pity of War[/i], Niall Ferguson concludes his history of the First World War: "It was nothing less than the greatest error in modern history." Is Bush's invasion of Iraq the second greatest error in modern history? Has Bush set into motion the unification of hundreds of millions of Muslims under religious leaders?
Michael Polanyi wrote that World War I destroyed Europe. He did not mean merely the destruction of buildings and an entire generation. He meant the war destroyed European culture. After the senseless slaughter, the values rang hollow. Commitments lost their meaning. From the ashes rose Lenin, Stalin and Hitler. With them came alien doctrines that almost extinguished European civilization in the 20th century.
A newly released Heritage Foundation report on the dangers of a dirty bomb brings two questions to mind: (1) why have we so carelessly created enemies motivated to release radioactivity in our cities, and (2) will we see our culture destroyed as we become a police state in a vain attempt to forestall terrorist acts?
Recreating the ancient state of Israel after thousands of years was an audacious act requiring godlike diplomacy. But force took diplomacy's place. As force has intensified, objections to Israel have mounted. The United States has foolishly spent $200 billion creating new enemies for itself and Israel by invading Iraq. Imagine what this enormous sum could have achieved by ensuring the prosperity of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Peace is always cheaper than war.
As we are belatedly learning in Iraq, there are no easy military solutions to terrorism. If there were, Israelis would have achieved security many years ago. Terrorism requires that grievances be acknowledged and addressed. This requires humility. Jacobin arrogance merely stirs the pot. If we keep stirring the pot, we are going to become the least safe people on earth, living in fear not only of terrorists, but also of our own police state.
Bush and Blair diminish themselves daily with their continuing insistence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It is as if they are reincarnations of Lord Curzon, British viceroy of India.
A century ago, Curzon convinced himself that Tibet was filled with Russians and Russian weapons, and had become a threat to British India. Curzon sent off an invasion force that managed to slaughter several hundred Tibetans but failed to find any Russians or weapons. By humiliating the hitherto impenetrable mysterious country, Curzon opened the door for the Chinese. In the same way, Bush's invasion of Iraq has flung open the door for terrorism.
- [i]Dr. Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions[/i]., http://antiwar.com/roberts/?a...
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| GOD AND BUSH ... BUSH AND GOD |
| 02.09.04 (12:13 pm) [edit] |
[b]God and the President[/b]
[b]More damage, destruction, misery, death and carnage has been done on this earth by blasphemous traitors who invoke the name of God ... Read on [/b]
In his late 30s, soon after an evening of talks with evangelist Billy Graham, George W. Bush declared himself a born-again Christian.
Does he therefore believe -- as born-again Christians often do -- that even good and kind people are doomed to Hell, unless they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior?
Does he believe that Jews and Muslims are ultimately damned? If he doesn't believe that, then is he saying one can reject Jesus Christ -- yet still go to Heaven? If he does believe that, then does the inevitable damnation of the majority of humanity ever enter into his Earthly calculations?
Does the President believe that he's doing God's work?
Has he been telling other world leaders that God told him to invade Iraq?
Does he actually hear God's voice? If so, when does this happen for him, and what does it sound like? Does he just receive a message, or does he have actual two-way conversations?
We journalists rarely get a serious crack at this particular President, and so we're all quite excited at the prospect of one of our own sitting down for a full hour with him this weekend. The questions we would ask are piling up (my colleague David Corn has an excellent list here http://www.thenation.com/capi... ), and interviewer Tim Russert will no doubt assemble a menu of narrow facts-and-headlines-drive n inquiries about deficits, desertion and the like.
Me, I want to hear the President explain his exact relationship with his God. He has been talking more and more about God lately; he seems quite sincere, and yet no Washington journalists are interested -- they automatically assume it's a calculated pose. But Bush has made some amazing Moses-and-the-burning-bus h assertions in private, apparently, and these ought to be explored. He has never disputed the story, recounted in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that he himself told the Palestinian leadership, "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam"; and now we have a similar account, courtesy of The Globe and Mail, of Bush telling a bug-eyed Canadian Prime Minister he was carrying out divine commands:
"Though it wasn't publicized at the time, Prime Minister Paul Martin got a sense of [the White House's] sanctimony when he met with Mr. Bush in early January in Mexico. Mr. Bush let the Prime Minister know that he believed himself to be on the side of God and tending to God's mission. The Canadian side, while aware of the President's penchant for religiosity, had been expecting to talk more about softwood lumber than the Ten Commandments. The Canadians didn't expect the morality play. Nor did they expect that, almost in the same breath, Mr. Bush would be filling the air with the f-word and other saucy expletives of the type that would surely leave the Lord perturbed. ... Mr. Martin was somewhat taken aback by what he heard. After the meeting, he was barely out the door before he was asking someone in his entourage what was to be made of all the God stuff. ..."
Let's find out what is to be made of all the God stuff. We've got the prime ministers of Palestine and of Canada saying, via the media, that Bush tells them he and God have some sort of understanding. When the President of Macedonia visited the Oval Office, he and Bush knelt and prayed together. When Bush met Russia's Vladimir Putin, the first topic of discussion was, as Bush described it, their Christian faith (which they each wear on their sleeves).
[b]But as Ira Chernus has observed, "In a democracy, it is the people, not God, who make the decisions." And, "If he truly believes that he hears the voice of God, there is no telling what God might say tomorrow."[/b]
- [i]Matt Bivens, The Nation[/i], http://www.thenation.com/outr...
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| Right-Wing Fascist Propaganda - Bush's Grand Strategy: 10,000 Civilians Massacred! |
| 02.09.04 (11:37 am) [edit] |
[b]The insane neocons and right-wingers are spreading their ugly and false propaganda like horse manure and mad-dog shit.[/b]
How nice for the arm-chair chicken-hawks to lecture us all about the wonderful glories of warfare while their corporate cronies clean-up hundreds of billions of $$$! Of course, neither they themselves, nor their loved ones are doing the fighting, being maimed and injured, or doing the dying!
[b]Bush's Grand Strategy? Makes me want to vomit:[/b]
Consider "[i][b]The terrible human cost of Bush and Blair's military adventure: 10,000 civilian deaths[/b][/i]" by [i]David Randall [/i]on http://news.independent.co.uk... :
[b]UK and US authorities discourage counting of deaths as a result of the conflict. But academics are monitoring the toll and have identified a grim new milestone[/b]
More than 10,000 civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed so far in the Iraqi conflict, The Independent on Sunday has learnt, making the continuing conflict the most deadly war for non-combatants waged by the West since the Vietnam war more than 30 years ago.
The passing of this startling milestone will be recorded today by Iraq Body Count, the most authoritative organisation monitoring the human cost of the war. Since the invasion began in March, this group of leading academics and campaigners has registered all civilian deaths in Iraq attributable to the conflict. They do this in the absence of any counts by US, British, or Baghdad authorities.
Iraq Body Count's co-founder, John Sloboda, said: "This official disinterest must end. We are now calling for an independent international tribunal to be set up to establish the numbers of dead, the circumstances in which they were killed and an appropriate and just level of compensation for the victims' families."
His call was backed by Bob Marshall Andrews, Labour MP for Medway. He said: "These are figures which are airbrushed out of the political equation and yet are central to whether it is possible to create a stable and democratic Iraq."
Iraq Body Count said last night that deaths are only recorded by them when reported by at least two media outlets. Its leading researcher Hamit Dardagan said that its careful, but necessarily incomplete, records are in contrast to "the official indifference" to counting either the Iraqi lives lost or those blighted by injuries.
Neither the US or British military, nor the Coalition Provisional Authority have kept a record of Iraq civilian or military casualties, and Washington and London have both rejected calls for them to compile such totals.
This attitude extends also to the provisional Iraqi government. Until late last year, an official at the Iraqi Health Ministry, a Dr Nagham Mohsen, was compiling casualty figures from hospital records. But, according to a barely noticed Associated Press report, she was, in December, ordered by her immediate superior, director of planning Dr Nazar Shabandar, to stop collating this data. The health minister Dr Khodeir Abbas denied that this order was inspired or encouraged by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority.
Several other groups have attempted to make educated guesses of the war's true total of dead and injured. Among them is Medact, a organisation of British health professionals, most of whom are doctors. In November it published a report on the war's casualties and health problems in post-conflict Iraq. Omitted from this report was a suggestion that the total dead and wounded on both sides could be as high as 150,000-200,000. But in the end it was felt that the lack of scientific basis for this figure would undermine a carefully worded report.
One of the issues confusing any attempt to arrive at an accurate figure for the war's toll is the unknown number of Iraqi military who died. This is in marked contrast to the precise records of coalition service fatalities and injuries, which are kept by service arm, age, circumstance, and, in the case of wounded, by severity. Meanwhile, no one knows Iraqi military deaths to the nearest 20,000. Iraq Body Count concentrates on quantifiable civilian deaths.
On its website, the organisation says: "So far, in the 'war on terror' initiated since 9/11, the USA and its allies have been responsible for over 13,000 civilian deaths, not only the 10,000 in Iraq, but also 3,000-plus civilian deaths in Afghanistan, another death toll that continues to rise long after the world's attention has moved on.
"Elsewhere in the world over the same period, paramilitary forces hostile to the USA have killed 408 civilians in 18 attacks worldwide. Adding the official 9/11 death toll (2,976 on 29 October 2003) brings the total to just under 3,500."
[i]Additional research by Caroline Grant[/i]
[b]Munitions that ended up in the hands of children[/b]
Ali Abdul-Amir was one of many Iraqi civilians injured or killed by munitions left behind or not cleared by both sides in the conflict. At 2pm on 3 May the eight-year-old put a match to a piece of explosive ordnance outside a school in al-Hay al-Askari, a neighbourhood of Nasiriyah. The explosion left him with severe burns and shrapnel injuries (pictured left). Six days later in Baghdad, Muhammad Keun Jiheli, 16, brought a piece of ordnance home to use for cooking fuel. An explosion killed four members of his family. Muhammad suffered burns over 72 per cent of his body, and Jamil Salem Hamid, also 16, received burns over 54 per cent of his body.
Iraqi forces left behind more than 600,000 tons of munitions. Many had been stored in civilian areas, and were not secured or cleared by coalition forces quickly enough to prevent casualties. The town of al-Hilla was the worst affected by cluster submunitions used in battle that failed to explode on impact as intended. Easily discovered and picked up by children, they were still causing death or injury months after the conflict ended.
[i]Research by Bonnie Docherty, Human Rights Watch[/i]
[b]US air raid on Saddam's half-brother kills civilians[/b]
Four-month-old Dina Jabir was the only survivor when American bombs fell on the family home. Her father Zaid Ratha Jabir, 36, an engineer, and his family returned to their home in al-Karrada, Baghdad, on the night of 7 April to gather some belongings. They had been staying a mile away with Dina's great-uncle, Sa'dun Hassan Salih, shown here holding the baby. A strike levelled the Jabir home just after 9pm, killing six people. Dina was found the next day in a neighbour's yard. She had broken arms and legs, shrapnel in her skull and internal injuries, but was alive and would recover. The intended target, Saddam's half-brother Watban Ibrahim Hasan, was captured alive a week later.
[b]Family wiped out by British cluster bombs in Basra[/b]
British forces caused dozens of civilian casualties when they used ground-launched cluster munitions in and around Basra, including a strike in the neighbourhood of Hay al-Zaitun on 25 March. Jamal Kamil Sabir, 25, lost his right leg to a blast while crossing a bridge with his family. His nephew took shrapnel in his knee and his wife still had shrapnel in her left leg two months later because doctors were afraid to remove it while she was pregnant. Submunitions had also fallen on al-Mishraq al-Jadid on 23 March, killing Iyad Jassim Ibrahim, 26, sleeping in the front room of his home, and 10 relatives with him.
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| Not Everyone Got It Wrong on Iraq's Weapons, Mr. Kay ... |
| 02.09.04 (8:08 am) [edit] |
"Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war." – [i]John Adams [/i]
[b]Not Everyone Got It Wrong on Iraq's Weapons, Mr. Kay ... [/b]
[i][b]Former UN inspector[/b][/i]
WASHINGTON ‘We were all wrong,’’ David Kay, the Bush administration's former top weapons sleuth in Iraq, recently told members of Congress after acknowledging that there were probably no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
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Kay insisted that the blame for the failure to find any such weapons lay with the U.S. intelligence community, which, according to Kay, provided inaccurate assessments.
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The Kay remarks appear to be an attempt to spin potentially damaging data to the political advantage of President George W. Bush.
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The president’s decision to create an ‘‘independent commission’’ to investigate this intelligence failure only reinforces this suspicion, since such a commission would only be given the mandate to examine intelligence data, and not the policies and decision-making processes that made use of that data. More disturbing, the commission’s findings would be delayed until late fall, after the November presidential election.
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The fact, independent of the findings of any commission, is that not everyone was wrong.
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I, for one, was not. I did my level best to demand facts from the Bush administration to back up their allegations regarding Iraq’s WMD and, failing that, spoke out and wrote in as many forums as possible in an effort to educate the publics of the United States and the world about the danger of going to war based on a hyped-up threat.
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In this I was not alone. Rolf Ekeus, the former head of the UN weapons inspec tors in Iraq, has declared that under his direction, Iraq was ‘‘fundamentally disarmed’’ as early as 1996. Hans Blix, who headed UN weapons inspections in Iraq in the months before the invasion in March 2003, stated that his inspectors had found no evidence of either WMD or WMD-related programs in Iraq. And officials familiar with Iraq, like Ambassador Joseph Wilson and State Department intelligence analyst Greg Theilmann, both exposed the unsustained nature of the Bush administration’s claims regarding Iraq’s nuclear capability.
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The riddle surrounding Iraq’s WMD was solvable without resorting to war. For all the layers of deceit and obfuscation, there existed enough basic elements of truth and substantive fact about the disposition of Saddam Hus sein’s secret weapons programs to permit the Gordian knot to be cleaved by anyone willing to try. Sadly, it seems that there was no predisposition on the part of those assigned the task of solving the riddle to do so.
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Bush’s decision to limit the scope of any inquiry to intelligence matters, effectively blocking any critique of his administration’s use — or abuse — of such intelligence, is absurd, especially when one considers that the Bush administra tion was already talking of war with Iraq in 2002, prior to the preparation of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) — the defining document on a particular area of the world or specified threat — by the director of Central Intelligence.
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According to a Department of Defense after-action report on Iraq titled ‘‘Operation Iraqi Freedom: Strategic Lessons Learned,’’ a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times in September 2003, ‘‘President Bush approved the overall war strategy for Iraq in August last year.’’ The specific date cited was Aug. 29, 2002 — eight months before the first bomb was dropped.
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The CIA did eventually produce a National Intelligence Estimate for Iraq, but only in October 2002, after Bush had already decided on war. The title of the NIE, ‘‘Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction,’’ is reflective of a predisposition that was not supported either by the facts available at the time, or by the passage of time.
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Stu Cohen, a 28-year veteran of the CIA, wrote in a statement published on the CIA Web site on Nov. 28, 2003, that the Oct. 2002 National Intelligence Estimate ‘‘judged with high confidence that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles in excess of the 150-kilometer limit imposed by the UN Security Council. … These judgements were essentially the same conclu sions reached by the United Nations and a wide array of intelligence services — friendly and unfriendly alike.’’
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Cohen said the October NIE was ‘‘policy neutral’’ — meaning it did not propose a policy that argued either for or against going to war. He also stated that no one who worked on the NIE had been pressured by the Bush White House.
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Cohen is wrong in his assertions. The fact that a major policy decision like war with Iraq was made without the benefit of an NIE is, in and of itself, policy manipulation. I worked with Cohen on numerous occasions during this time, and consider him a reasonable man. So I had to wonder when this intelligence professional, confronted with the totality of the failure of the CIA to accurately assess the WMD threat threat posed by Iraq’s WMD, wrote that he was ‘‘convinced that no reasonable person could have viewed the totality of the information that the intelligence community had at its disposal — literally millions of pages — and reached any conclusions or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached.’’
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I consider myself also to be a reasonable person. Like Cohen and the intelligence professionals who prepared the October 2002 NIE, I was intimately familiar with vast quantities of intelligence data collected from around the world by numerous foreign intelligence services (including the CIA) and on the ground in Iraq by UN weapons inspectors, at least until the time of my resignation from Unscom in August 1998. Based on this experience, I was asked by Arms Control Today, the journal of the Arms Control Association, to write an article on the status of disarmament regarding Iraq's WMD.
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The article, ‘‘The Case for Iraq’s Qualitative Disarmament,’’ was published in June 2000 and received broad coverage. Its conclusions were dismissed by the intelligence communities of the United States and Britain. But my finding — that ‘‘because of the work carried out by Unscom, it can be fairly stated that Iraq was qualitatively disarmed at the time inspectors were withdrawn [in December 1998]’’ — was an accurate assessment of the disarming of Iraq's WMD capabilities, much more so than the CIA’s October NIE or any corresponding analysis carried out by British intelligence services.
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I am not alone in my analysis. Ray McGovern, who heads a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or VIPS, also takes umbrage at Cohen’s ‘‘no reasonable person’’ assertion. ‘‘Had he taken the trouble to read the op-eds and other issuances of VIPs members over the past two years,’’ McGovern told me, he would have found that ‘‘our writings consistently contained conclusions and alternative views that were indeed profoundly different — even without having had access to what Stu calls the ‘totality of the information.’ And Stu never indicated he thought us not ‘reasonable’ — at least back when many of us worked with him at CIA.’’
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The fact is that McGovern and I, together with scores of intelligence professionals, retired or still in service, who studied Iraq and its WMD capabilities, are reasonable men. We got it right.
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The Bush administration, in its rush to war, ignored our advice and the body of factual data we used, and instead relied on rumor, speculation, exaggeration and falsification to mislead the American people and their elected representatives into supporting a war that is rapidly turning into a quagmire. We knew the truth about Iraq’s WMD. Sadly, no one listened.
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[i]By Scott Ritter. Mr. Ritter was chief UN inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 and is the author of ‘‘Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America.’’ This comment was distributed by Global Viewpoint for Tribune Media Services International[/i].
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| The White House: A New Fight Over Secret 9/11 Documents |
| 02.09.04 (8:04 am) [edit] |
[b]The White House: [i]A New Fight Over Secret 9/11 Documents[/i][/b]
[i][b]Squaring off: Bush may be coming to blows with the 9-11 commission over access to his top secret intelligence briefings [/b][/i]
Feb. 16 issue - The White House is facing a new battle with the federal panel investigating 9/11. To mollify the panel chair, former governor Thomas Kean, President George W. Bush last week reversed course and agreed to a two-month extension that is supposed to ensure a final 9/11 report by July. But that might not be enough. Commission sources tell [i]NEWSWEEK[/i] that panel members are fed up with what one calls "maddening" restrictions by White House lawyers on their access to key documents. Unless the panel gets to see the docs, the report "will not withstand the laugh test," a commission official says. The panel is threatening to force a showdown soon—by voting to subpoena the White House.
The documents at the heart of the dispute are the so-called presidential daily briefs, or PDBs—the daily intelligence brief given to Bush by a senior intelligence official, usually the CIA director or his deputy. White House lawyers have guarded the documents as the "crown jewels" of executive privilege. But last year Kean and other commissioners complained they couldn't write their report without seeing exactly what Bush, and Bill Clinton before him, had been told about the threat of Al Qaeda. The White House then agreed to a complex deal that would allow four panel officials to review the PDBs and then brief the full 10-member panel. But the arrangement hasn't stopped the wrangling. The four-member team asked to look at 360 PDBs dating back to 1998; White House counsel Alberto Gonzales permitted them to see just 24, arguing that only those that specifically mentioned possible domestic attacks or airplane hijackings were relevant. (One panel member was allowed to read all 360—but couldn't share the contents with colleagues.) The team was permitted to write brief summaries of the PDBs they did read. But White House lawyers objected to some of the wording. The bickering has meant the full panel has yet to be told anything about the PDBs—even while it was conducting interviews with top officials, like last Saturday's with national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice. The restrictions are especially infuriating, one source notes, because at least some of the PDBs appear to have been selectively shared by the White House two years ago with author Bob Woodward for his sympathetic book "Bush at War." White House officials insist they are protecting the principle of confidential advice for the president and have given the panel "unprecedented" access to sensitive material. "We are doing everything we can to cooperate with the commission," a White House spokeswoman says. Still, some commission officials see an element of politics. While the commission's work has uncovered no smoking gun, sources say, the cumulative impact of the intelligence documents and other material is damning—showing far more screw-ups by both Clinton and Bush officials than the public has yet to learn.
- [i]By Michael Isikoff, Newsweek[/i], http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4...
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| Bush Sets Narrow Limits on Inquiry: Broader Scope Needed for Iraq Panel |
| 02.09.04 (8:01 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush Sets Narrow Limits on Inquiry[/b]
[i][b]Critics urge broader scope for Iraq panel[/b][/i]
WASHINGTON -- President Bush has established a narrow charge for his new independent commission on U.S. intelligence capabilities, directing the panel to focus on flawed prewar intelligence assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and other nations.
But the commission may quickly find itself pressured to explore broader events and discussions that formed the tangle of spy data and policymaking leading up to the March 20 invasion of Iraq.
Those uncharted lines of inquiry that administration critics are urging the group to address include:
- The role of Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff, including Cheney's visits to the CIA to review intelligence reports and his trips to Capitol Hill to describe, in closed briefings, the prewar dangers posed by Iraq.
- The role of George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, who in an impassioned defense of his agency and its work Thursday said Bush "gets his intelligence from one person and one community--me."
- The reliance on questionable human sources, including Iraqi defectors and foreign opposition leaders, who had much to gain from U.S. intervention.
- The role of the Pentagon, especially its consumption of intelligence reports by newly established groups such as the Office of Special Plans, which was formed to plan for postwar Iraq. Like Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a strident proponent for ending the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein, once saying of Iraq's weapons: "We know where they are." Rumsfeld explained to the Senate last week that he meant the U.S. knew where Iraq's weapons sites were located--not the weapons themselves.
- The objections raised by those within the administration, particularly at the State Department, where a good bit of the intelligence on Iraq was discounted as untrustworthy.
Bush charged his panel to "examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction," comparing what has and has not been found in Iraq to date to what his administration believed existed before the war.
It could be a challenge for this commission. Only one of its seven members, retired Adm. William Studeman, has been involved directly in intelligence work. Studeman was once deputy director of the CIA.
One of the panel's co-chairmen, Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator from Virginia, was a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The panel's other four members include two federal jurists, commission co-chairman Laurence Silberman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, and Patricia Wald, a former member of the same court. The others are Lloyd Cutler, a former White House counsel during the Clinton and Carter administrations, and Richard Levin, president of Yale University. Two other members will be named later.
Administration critics were quick to charge that with the post-election deadline Bush set for a report--it is due in March 2005--the commission is a thinly disguised attempt to shelve the growing controversy over prewar intelligence and the decision to go to war in Iraq.
"This is the most ill-prepared snow job I have seen in a long time," said Ivo Daalder, a National Security Council adviser in the Clinton administration and now a Brookings Institution fellow. " . . . The commissioners he has named know absolutely nothing about the subject matter."
Asked about the report's deadline in a "Meet the Press" interview to air Sunday, the president said the commission needed time for its work.
"There is going to be ample time for the American people to assess whether or not I made ... good calls--whether I used good judgment, whether or not I made the right decision in removing Saddam Hussein from power," Bush said.
He also said in the interview that Tenet's job was safe.
Others weighing the commission's prospects said the panel could bring measured focus to the issue of U.S. intelligence-gathering and its shortcomings.
"I'm happy with the commission so far," said W. Patrick Lang, a former top Defense Intelligence Agency official who has been a frequent critic of the administration. "They took a more sophisticated approach and decided to pick people who probably will really want to do the job."
As for the members' lack of direct intelligence experience, Lang said: "That's good. They don't need it. Intelligence is a matter of applied logic and reason."
Though once insistent that weapons of mass destruction would be uncovered in postwar Iraq, Bush and some prominent members of his administration have recently backed away from such claims.
Even so, the president says the war was justified, no matter how the search for weapons concludes.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said that he might not have supported the war had he known what he knows now about Iraq's weapons programs, a statement he later recanted.
Tenet also raised doubts about what the administration once portrayed as a near-certainty. The CIA director said last week that his analysts described Hussein, who was captured in December, as an unpredictable despot with a history of deploying deadly unconventional weapons. But no one from his agency, Tenet said, told the administration that the Iraqi threat "was imminent."
The starting point for the new panel's work undoubtedly will be the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, an assessment that was quickly drafted in the fall of 2002 at the request of Congress.
At the time, Bush was seeking congressional approval for the authority to wage war if Iraq refused to comply with United Nations resolutions demanding weapons inspections. But some lawmakers wanted to know how dire the Iraqi threat really was.
In just a few weeks, Tenet's team of analysts brought together the evidence they had compiled, much of it based, according to intelligence officials, on information gathered by UN weapons inspectors in Iraq. Those inspections had been halted four years earlier, suggesting that some of the CIA's evidence was outdated.
The estimate states that the CIA has "high confidence" that "Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles" and that "Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material."
Tenet said Thursday that the analysis "concluded that in some of these categories Iraq had weapons, and that in others where it did not have them, it was trying to develop them."
"Analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs, and those debates were spelled out in the estimate," he said.
But some former intelligence officers and congressional critics say the intelligence estimate made far too much of Iraq's weapons capabilities and had few of the caveats typically found in such documents to qualify intelligence sources.
"The estimate was wrong, at the end of the day," said Larry Johnson, an ex-CIA analyst. "But even though the estimate was wrong, there's nothing in the estimate that would lead you to the conclusion that you should invade Iraq immediately."
The report, though, formed the basis for the administration's strongest claims about Iraq, especially in Congress, where Bush won important support for the war in October 2002.
Cheney, a former member of the House, proved to be particularly effective at lobbying his former colleagues. But since then, some lawmakers have expressed doubts about the briefing they received before the war vote.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is among them. Nelson said he voted for the war after he and his colleagues were told that Iraq had developed unmanned aerial vehicles that could be launched from ships and disperse deadly chemical agents. The likely targets, they were told, included cities along the East Coast.
"Not only was that false," Nelson said in a recent interview, "but they also did not tell me, and I only found out recently and after the fact, that there was a huge dispute over the veracity of this claim" within the intelligence community.
"What I'm trying to find out," he asked, "is why would they tell me something that was false?"
- [i]By Stephen J. Hedges, Washington Bureau, Chicago Tribune[/i], http://fairuse.1accesshost.co...
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| Academy of Sciences Calls for Universal Health Care by 2010 |
| 02.08.04 (3:29 pm) [edit] |
[b]Academy of Sciences Calls for Universal Health Care by 2010 [/b]
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 — The president and Congress should immediately begin work to achieve health insurance coverage for all Americans by 2010, the National Academy of Sciences said on Wednesday.
"It is time for our nation to extend coverage to everyone," the academy's Institute of Medicine said, in a report intended to put the issue back atop the national agenda.
The report, summarizing three years of work by a panel of 15 experts, concluded, "Universal insurance coverage is an important and achievable goal for the country."
The academy is an independent, nonpartisan body chartered by Congress. It did not endorse a specific legislative proposal or estimate the cost of its recommendations. But Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, who was co-chairwoman of the panel, said, "The economic cost to the country from the poorer health and premature deaths of uninsured people is in the range of $65 billion to $130 billion a year."
The report pointed out that because uninsured people received much less medical care than those with insurance, they tend to be sicker. About 18,000 people die each year as a result of not having insurance, it said.
Since President Bill Clinton's plan for universal coverage failed in 1994, Congress has taken steps to expand coverage for children and for people who lose or switch jobs.
But the panel said such incremental steps were inadequate. "Comprehensive reform of the health insurance system, rather than expansion of the safety net, is essential," it said.
Most of the options considered by the panel assume that private insurers will continue to provide coverage for millions of Americans. But the report said that "federal leadership and federal dollars are necessary," and it suggested a larger federal role than many conservatives would accept. For example, it said, the federal government should set nationwide standards to establish "a uniform minimum level for coverage and benefits."
Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, said that universal coverage by 2010 was "not realistic."
At a meeting with reporters on Monday, Mr. Thompson said: "I just don't think it's in the cards. I don't think, administratively or legislatively, that it's feasible."
On Wednesday, Mr. Thompson added that the Bush administration was "committed to helping as many Americans as possible, as quickly as possible."
Bob Dole, the former Republican leader of the Senate, endorsed the academy's call to action.
"If properly framed, the lack of coverage for 43 million Americans can be one of the big, big issues in the election" this year, Mr. Dole said.
Another Republican, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, commended the panel. But he said, "I am concerned that the report may not focus enough on the reasons why health care costs continue to rise and how to pay for any reform."
Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, said he hoped to reignite a national debate on ways to guarantee health insurance for all. "It's doable," Mr. Daschle said. "It's essential. This is, I believe, the single most important domestic issue facing our country."
Dr. Arthur L. Kellermann, co-chairman of the panel, said: "This is not just an issue for the uninsured or the least fortunate among us. It's a matter of enlightened self-interest for everyone."
- [i]By Robert Pear[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Russert Gives Dubya A Blow Job, While Dubya Gives US A Snow Job |
| 02.08.04 (11:17 am) [edit] |
[b][i]Timmy-boy [/i]Russert was on his knees giving Dubya a [i]Blow Job[/i], while Dubya was giving U.S. a [i]Snow Job [/i]in today's free commercial propaganda spot on "Meet the Press" given to the Bush machine in return for corporate bribes at U.S. taxpayer expense.[/b]
[b]War and propaganda[/b]
Latest exposures indicate that the US/UK led aggression against Iraq fits into a propaganda paradigm. The exposures reveal the true extent of a deep-rooted scheme to invade Iraq fabricating intelligence information used to justify the war, thanks to the piercing boldness of David Kay and 'Powell's doubt' and the roles played by the western media and the vibrancy of their democracies. The exposures should prompt the world to ask the governments of the United States and United Kingdom as to why they invaded Iraq. It is an international responsibility. Whatever Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair are telling the world publicly have been proved to be lies; and the international community should act immediately so that they cannot change the voices.
The Iraqi threat bogey rationalised Washington's acting in self-defence, pursuant to Article 51 of the UN Charter, although there was no evidence to prove that Iraq constituted a threat to the US in specific terms. Bypassing the charter, the US UK coalition resorted to using the doctrine of pre-emption as well as prevention to destroy Iraq as a countervailing power to Israel in the Middle East. Saddam's patronisation of the Palestinian upsurge so flabbergasted Washington's Jewish lobby that the war became unavoidable. In an emotional rush towards the war, the US did not bother to show an iota of respect to Article 33 of the Charter that necessitates the obtainment of facts in any disputed situation where the claims of self-defence are made on one side and rebutted by the other. The US/UK coalition also violated Article 37(1) of the Charter that requires of disputing parties to refer the matter to the UNSC upon exhaustion of other means stipulated in Article 33 such as negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, etc.
Bush insisted on no talks with Saddam. As well, the US and the UK invoked the cease-fire resolution of April 1991 ((Resolution 687), in which the UNSC linked the easing or lifting of sanctions to the disarmament of Iraq. As it is evident now, Iraq did not possess any WMD to pose a threat to the US. The warmongers -- Bush and Blair -- find themselves nakedly exposed before the world.
- [i]Sirajul Islam, Social sciences researcher and consultant Pisciculture Housing Society, Shyamoli, Dha[/i], http://www.thedailystar.net/2...
[b]Other source[/b]:
CLAIM vs. FACT: The President on Meet the Press, http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| Dubya Is Slouching Toward Theocracy ... |
| 02.08.04 (7:27 am) [edit] |
[b][i]Dubya Is [/i]Slouching Toward Theocracy ...[/b]
"If the presidency is a 'bully pulpit' as Teddy Roosevelt claimed," Stephen Mansfield writes in the introduction to his recently published book "The Faith of George W. Bush," "no one in recent memory has pounded that pulpit for religion's role in government quite like the forty-third president." Bush's "unapologetic religious tone" and his willingness to "speak of being called to the presidency, of a God who rules in the affairs of men, and of the United States owing her origin to Providence," also separate him from recent predecessors.
In mid-January, while on a two-state fundraising trip – during which he squeezed in a few minutes to honor the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – the president stopped by at Union Bethel A.M.E. Church, a mostly African American church in New Orleans, to once again sing the praises of his faith-based initiative. He told the audience that since he had been unable to garner congressional support for his faith-based initiative, he issued executive orders; recently putting the finishing touches on regulations instructing all federal agencies not to discriminate against religious groups. This executive order makes religious groups eligible for $3.7 billion in Federal program funds dispersed through the Justice Department primarily for programs supporting victims of crime, the prevention of child victimization, and safe schools.
Last week marked the third anniversary of the president's creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). Over the past three years, executive orders were issued, Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives were established at seven federal agencies, web sites were created, technical assistance to religious organizations was given at seminars and conferences, guidebooks helping religious groups apply for government funds were published, and billions were earmarked for faith-based institutions.
But it hasn't been all smooth sailing for Team Bush. Conservatives and liberals initially opposed the president's initiative; many conservatives eventually got on board, while liberals continue to object to what they characterize as violations of the separation of church and state and the potential for discriminatory hiring practices by many religious organizations fundamentally opposed to hiring gays and lesbians. John DiIulio, the longtime criminologist and political scientist hired to run the OFBCI, resigned after only six months on the job and later was the subject of an Esquire magazine interview highly critical of the administration. A major crisis developed when the Washington Post revealed that top administration officials had tried to solicit support from the Salvation Army by offering a firm commitment that any legislation would allow religious organizations to sidestep state and local anti-discrimination measures barring discriminatory hiring practices on the basis of sexual orientation. And Congress still hasn't developed a comprehensive faith-based legislative package.
On balance, however, the administration has achieved much more than people think. A White House-issued Press Release dated January 15 proudly pointed to seven "Milestones" in the life of the president's faith-based initiative – from its launch in January 2001 through this month's $3.7 billion executive order. As originally conceived, Bush's faith-based initiative was to be the centerpiece of his administration's domestic agenda, spearheading the final attack on the New Deal and the War on Poverty, transferring a host of government programs from government agencies to the religious sector.
In August 2001, the administration laid the groundwork for doling out money to religious institutions by publishing a report entitled "Unlevel Playing Field," "documenting regulatory and administrative barriers that effectively discriminated against faith-based and community groups in the Federal grants process."
Sixteen months later Bush issued an executive order "directing agencies to take steps to ensure that all policies (including guidance, regulations, and internal agency procedures) are consistent with the 'equal treatment' principles."
During his 2003 State of the Union address, the president proposed an initiative aimed at mentoring children whose parents are in prison, along with a $600 million program "to help addicted Americans find needed treatment from the most effective programs, including faith-based institutions."
In September 2003, HUD received $8 billion for housing programs, and HHS nearly $20 billion for social service programs, a portion of which are competitive grants thus allowing religious institutions to bid to provide services.
The administration also discovered what it calls "religious hiring rights," another way of skirting anti-discrimination laws while and providing back door support for faith-based organizations.
In a position paper titled "Protecting the Civil Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Organizations: Why Religious Hiring Rights Must Be Preserved," Team Bush argued that religious organizations receiving government grants have the right to hire anyone they please. At least two pieces of legislation with "religious hiring rights" provisions were under consideration by Congress last year: "The School Readiness Act of 2003," H.R. 2210, allows religious organizations receiving government funds for providing Head Start services to discriminate in their hiring practices. That bill is now before the Senate Education Committee.
The $4 billion Workforce Reinvestment and Adult Education Act – passed by the full House on a party-line 220-204 vote – also included a similar faith-based exemption. In November, the Senate passed a version that removed the employment-discrimination exemption; it is now being taken up by a House-Senate conference committee.
"Government should not fear faith-based programs. We ought to welcome faith-based programs and we ought to fund faith-based programs," Bush told parishioners at Union Bethel A.M.E. Church in mid-January. "Many of the problems that are facing our society are problems of the heart."
In his recent State of the Union address, the president rolled out another round of faith-based initiatives including encouraging "healthy marriages" among the poor, spending more on abstinence-only sex education for America's teens, and a faith-based release and reentry program for prisoners.
[b]Brother Bush's Faith-based Prison [/b]
This past Christmas Eve, Florida Governor Jeb Bush presided over the opening of the nation's first full-fledged faith-based prison. The Governor participated in the dedication ceremonies – featuring a Roman Catholic mass and speeches by Bush and several clergy members – that officially opened the remodeled Lawtey Correctional Institute.
Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections, noted that since "faith-based dorms" already exist in 10 Florida prisons, "operating an entire faith-based prison was the next logical step." The idea for an entire prison – a medium-security facility designed to house 800 men – devoted to faith-based programs came from state Corrections Secretary James V. Crosby, Ivey said.
The prison works with inmates convicted of felonies such as burglary, holdups, car thefts and assaults and eighty percent of them are within three years of release, Ivey said. Inmates represent at least 26 different religious faiths including Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, Rastafarians, adherents of American Indian beliefs, and Buddhists.
"This is not just fluffy policy. This is serious policy," Gov. Bush told the London Daily Telegraph.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State are taking the governor seriously. In mid-January, the watchdog group filed a freedom-of-information request with Florida's Department of Corrections to learn more about the program.
The recently passed Omnibus Spending Bill contains $100 million for the Access to Recovery drug treatment program announced in SOTU 2003, $50 million for the mentoring of the children of prisoners, and $48 million for the Compassion Capital Fund (CCF), the White House announced.
Seven federal agencies have established Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives including the Departments of Justice, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development and the Agency for International Development.
And the initiative is spreading to the states. By the end of January, Team Bush expects at least 20 governors will have faith-based offices or liaisons. In addition, the U.S. Conference of Mayors has opened a faith-based office, as have 180 mayors, including the mayors of Philadelphia, Miami, San Diego, and Denver.
-[i] By Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com[/i], http://www.alternet.org/story...
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| Oil and Democracy Don't Mix |
| 02.08.04 (7:23 am) [edit] |
[b]Oil and Democracy Don't Mix[/b]
At a 1996 energy conference in New Orleans, Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton said, "The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments."
Laying the blame on the divine is a stretch, but it seems that the vice president is right: Democracy and oil do not mix. Just look at the United States' top 10 oil suppliers. Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are repressive regimes with deplorable human rights records. Mexico and Venezuela, while democracies, are marked by instability, inequality and civil strife. Iraq remains at war and under occupation. Only Norway, Canada and the United Kingdom are fully functioning democracies.
Why don't oil and democracy mix? At least part of the answer can be found in Washington's policy of providing military aid and training to leaders who guarantee an uninterrupted flow of oil, defending it against all threats – even those coming from their own citizens.
Since the beginning of the war on terrorism in 2001, the United States' top 10 sources of oil imports have experienced a 350 percent increase in U.S. military aid and training. In 2003, the United States plans to provide these countries with $58 million in military assistance. In fiscal year 2001, their military assistance totaled $12.2 million.
A large part of the increase is explained by Washington's rewarding of regimes like Algeria and Nigeria for their ability to cloak domestic repression in the rhetoric of the "war on terrorism." As the United States looks ahead to a never ending war on terrorism and growing dependence on foreign oil, this dynamic will become increasingly common.
Africa accounts for 16 percent of U.S. oil imports, and the National Intelligence Council predicts an increase to 25 percent by 2015. Hunger for this oil, combined with the need to collect allies in the war on terrorism, led the Bush administration to adopt a "see no evil" position toward human rights problems and inequality in the continent's oil-rich nations.
This policy is so entrenched that William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and North African affairs, remarked with admiration while on a 2002 trip there, "Washington has much to learn from Algeria on ways to fight terrorism." Burns must not have read his own State Department 2002 Human Rights Report, which notes that Algerian "security forces committed extra-judicial killings, tortured, beat or otherwise abused detainees." Algeria has proven oil reserves of more than 9.2 billion barrels and is considered underdeveloped in terms of production, representing a golden opportunity for U.S. companies.
And so, in spite of persistent human rights abuses, relations between Washington and Algiers are warming. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has visited the White House twice and officials are discussing establishment of an American military base in Algeria. Emboldened by this, Algerian generals are pushing for access to previously denied lethal technology like combat aircraft.
Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States, and with the discovery of new deep-water oil reserves right off the coast U.S. strategic interest is growing.
In July 2003, as President Bush departed for Africa, Gen. James Jones, the U.S. commander responsible for African operations, announced that Washington was negotiating long-term use of a "family" of military bases across Africa and predicted a much bigger role for U.S. military in the Gulf of Guinea, right off the Nigerian coast.
Washington's desire for Nigerian oil and territory triggered deeper military relationships. During the reign of Gen. Sani Abacha military ties were frozen. But since his death in 1999, the thaw has been quick. That year, Nigeria purchased $74,000 in U.S. weaponry. By 2001, the United States delivered thousands of times that – a total of $3.1 million. Military aid also skyrocketed, from $90,000 in 1999 to more than $4 million for 2003.
How increased military aid will improve human rights and efforts toward democratization is unclear. The State Department's Human Rights Report found that the Nigerian "military and security forces committed extrajudicial killings."
Military aid is also increasing in areas that do not supply the United States with oil – yet. The seven countries that make up the Caspian region – Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – are rich in oil, but the West is still trying to figure out how to extract and transport it. In the meantime, the region became strategically important for other reasons – its proximity to Afghanistan and its eagerness to aid in the war on terrorism.
Uzbekistan granted the U.S. permission to establish a "semi-permanent" military base in its territory, other countries offered "fly-over rights," troops, intelligence and rhetorical support for the war on terrorism. In exchange, the handful of dictators, generals and presidents-for-life that rule the Caspian nations were granted reprieve from their international pariah status. Tens of millions in U.S. military aid quickly followed.
Collectively, these countries are slated to receive almost $40 million in U.S. military aid in 2004. In 2001, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan were under U.S. sanctions and received no military aid. The other five nations received a collective total of $12.3 million in military aid. In other words, military aid from the United States will increase more than 200 percent in just three years – not including Congress' $70 million Special Supplemental for Caspian countries in 2002.
In the Caspian, and in most of the other countries where U.S. military aid and training markedly increased in the past three years, the weapons are not being used to defend borders from impending invasions. Rather, military resources are used to squash indigenous movements for self-determination, undermine campaigns for human rights, punish those who call for democracy and government accountability, and protect leaders who came to power illegitimately. There are a few exceptions to the "oil and democracy don't mix" maxim, and they are instructive. Norway, the United Kingdom and Canada are major oil suppliers to the United States, but were established democracies with diversified economies before getting into oil exploration. Replicating these successes in other oil-rich countries will require a radical revision of U.S. military and energy policy. Now would be a good time to start.
- [i]Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center, a project of the World Policy Institute[/i]., http://www.alternet.org/story...
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| Dubya Gets A "Pass" From The Press ... |
| 02.08.04 (7:20 am) [edit] |
[b]Press Pass[/b]
As Bush's approval rating struggles below 50%, the Bush team is fixin' for a fight. Or, more precisely, they're preparing for a vigorous (and focus group tested) PR campaign. The first commercial, er appearance, will be on Tim Russert's "Meet The Press" Sunday morning. According to an [i]AP report[/i], http://story.news.yahoo.com/n... this appearance is one front in a two-pronged 'offensive' which includes Bush surrogates smearing Kerry. Bush's job is to 'correct mischaracterizations of the president and his record.' For those who watch the program, don't expect any hardballs from host Tim Russert.
[i]More [/i]» on http://www.alternet.org/elect...
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| Bush's Top-Gun Photo-Op on "Meet the Press" Tomorrow!!! |
| 02.07.04 (9:20 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush makes another phony top-gun photo-op appearance on "Meet the Press" tomorrow!!! Will Tim Russert give Dubya as [i]tough a grilling [/i]as he has the Democratic candidates for president? Somehow I doubt it!!![/b]
[b]Eight Questions for George Bush[/b], http://www.alternet.org/story...
Tim Russert, the Grand Inquisitor of Sunday morning, is scheduled to have George W. Bush in the witness chair for a full hour on the next Meet the Press. He's a lucky man – Russert, that is. This will be high drama, as the nation's politerati – and millions of others – watch to see if Russert gives Bush the hot-seat treatment.
There is, of course, much to ask Bush about. Did he decided to use military force against Iraq before 9/11? Where are the WMDs he insisted were there? Why is he using phony budget numbers? Did he engage in less-than-proper business dealings before he entered politics? Why he has misled the public while promoting his policies on stem cells research, global warming, and missile defense? Why has he opposed certain homeland security measures and not adequately funded others? It's a long list, and I'm sure Russert is busy preparing his own queries. But in an unsolicited act of kindness, I have crafted eight questions for Russert – several on matters in the news, a few on issues that have received less attention. And, Tim, since you always like to display your source material when you ask the tough questions, feel free to call me, and I'll send you the citations or the clips. Unlike many of Bush's WMD assertions, these questions are based on real evidence.
1. - In October 2002, during a speech in Cincinnati, you said that Saddam Hussein had a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons. But the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq did not report there was any "massive stockpile" of bioweapons in Iraq. And this past Thursday, CIA director, George Tenet said, "We said we had no specific information on the types or quantities of [biological] weapons, agent, or stockpiles at Baghdad's disposal." [i]So if the CIA did not say there was a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons in Iraq, what was your basis for asserting a stockpile existed? Did you know something the CIA did not? Did you overstate the intelligence[/i]?
2. - In December 2002, you said, "We do not know whether or not [Hussein] has a nuclear weapon" – a remark suggesting that Hussein might have one. But the National Intelligence Estimate said that he did not have a nuclear weapon and that it would take Iraq five to seven years to produce a nuclear weapon – and then only if its nuclear weapons program was "left unchecked." This past week, Tenet said, "We said Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear weapon." [i]Was it not misleading to tell the public that "we don't know" whether Iraq had a nuclear weapon, when, in fact, we did know[/i]?
3. - Before the war, you said Hussein was "dealing" with al Qaeda. On May 1, you called Hussein an "ally" of Al Qaeda. At a press conference in July 2003, you were asked to provide evidence to back up your claims that Hussein had been working with al Qaeda. You replied,
"Yes, I think, first of all, remember I just said we've been there for 90 days since the cessation of major military operations. Now, I know in our world where news comes and goes and there's this kind of instant – instant news and you must have done this, you must do that yesterday, that there's a level of frustration by some in the media. I'm not suggesting you're frustrated. You don't look frustrated to me at all. But it's going to take time for us to gather the evidence and analyze the mounds of evidence, literally, the miles of documents that we have uncovered."
That is, you said that investigators were still looking for evidence. But the question was, what evidence did you have at the time that you made those prewar claims that al Qaeda and Hussein were in cahoots? You did not answer that question then. [i]Can you tell us what evidence you had for saying that Hussein was an "ally" of al Qaeda[/i]?
4. - In July 2001, US intelligence produced a warning that read, "Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that UBL [Usama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."
This was less than two months before the horrific 9/11 attacks. According to the final report of the joint inquiry on 9/11 conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees, this warning was prepared for "senior government officials." The committees did not publicly say who received the report, and they said this was because the CIA would not permit them to tell the public which "senior government officials" were warned. The committees were angry about being gagged this way. But committee sources did tell reporters that this report was sent to the White House.
[i]Why wouldn't your administration tell the public who saw this warning? Did you or any of your national security team see this report? If so, what did you or they do in response? If this report did not make it to you or your senior aides, wouldn't you consider that a terrible mistake and want to find out who was responsible for that[/i]?
5. - In your Air National Guard records, your annual performance review, dated May 2, 1973, says that you did not report for duty to your home base for an entire year. When this was disclosed during the 2000 campaign, your campaign said that you had spent part of that time doing service at an Air National Guard base in Alabama. But the commander of that base said – and recently confirmed – that you never showed up there. In 2000, your campaign promised to produce the names of people whom you served with in Alabama and who could vouch for your presence at the base there. It never did so. [i]Why not? Can you now give us names of men or women with whom you served in Alabama[/i]?
6. - During the year in question, you lost your flight status and were grounded for failing to submit to an annual physical examination. In 2000, your campaign aides said that was because you were in Alabama at the time and your personal doctor was in Houston. But the Boston Globe noted, "Flight physicals can be administered only by certified Air Force flight surgeons." Not personal physicians. And there were military physicians stationed in Alabama, where you were living for part of that year. [i]Why did you not take a flight physical? Why did your campaign put out an explanation that was wrong[/i]?
7. - By your own account, you returned to Houston after the November election of 1972. Yet the records show you did not report in to your Air National Guard base there for six months – not until after that performance review noted you had been missing for a year. [i]Why not? What were you doing during that time[/i]?
8. - When you ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1978 in Texas, you gave an interview to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper. You were asked about your position on abortion, and this is how that newspaper reported your answer: "Bush said he opposes the pro-life amendment [which would outlaw abortion] and favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question." Sixteen years later, when you ran for governor in Texas in 1994, you campaigned as an antiabortion conservative. Few people seem to realize your position on abortion changed 180 degrees. [i]Please tell us, when did you change your view on abortion and why[/i]?
[i]David Corn, The Nation[/i], http://www.alternet.org/story...
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| Co-Chair of Bush Iraq Panel Part of Neocon Network |
| 02.07.04 (9:13 am) [edit] |
[b]Co-Chair of Bush Iraq Panel Part of Neocon Network [/b]
[b]President George W. Bush's choice to [i]co-chair [/i]his commission to investigate intelligence failures prior to the Iraq War is a longtime, right wing political activist closely tied to the [i]neo-conservative network that [u]led the pro-war propaganda[/u] campaign[/i][/b].
Federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman, who will share the chairmanship with former Virginia Democratic Senator Charles Robb, also has some history in covert operations.
In 1980, when he served as part of former Republican president Ronald Reagan's senior campaign staff, he played a key role in setting up secret contacts between the Reagan-Bush campaign and the Islamic government in Tehran, in what became known as the "October Surprise" controversy.
(Former president George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, was Reagan's vice-president for two terms, 1981–89).
Rewarded with his appeals court judgeship several years later, Silberman helped advise right-wing activists during the 1990s on strategies for pursuing allegations of sexual misconduct by then-Democratic president Bill Clinton, according to various accounts.
Besides Silberman and Robb, a conservative Democrat who also has strong ties to neo-conservatives through the Democratic Leadership Council, Bush chose five other commission members and indicated that two more have yet to be named.
The five include Arizona Republican Senator John McCain; former White House counsel for Clinton and former president Jimmy Carter, Lloyd Cutler; Yale University President Richard Levin; former deputy Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, Admiral William Studeman and retired appeals court judge Pat Wald.
In announcing the panel, Bush rejected appeals by the opposition Democrats in Congress that they be given a role in deciding its membership in order to enhance its credibility.
He also appeared to limit the commission's mandate to study only the mistakes made by the intelligence community in assessing Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
Bush said the commission will submits its report by Mar. 31, 2005, well after the presidential elections in November.
"Last week, our former chief weapons inspector, David Kay ... stated that some prewar intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapons stockpiles have not been confirmed," Bush said. "We are determined to find out why."
Democrats said the mandate was too limited. "The president is not allowing (the commission) to look into the growing number of questions millions of Americans are asking about the administration's statements and actions before the Iraq war," said Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
"That investigation still needs to be done."
Democrats have charged that political pressure from leading administration figures, notably Vice President Dick Cheney, contributed to the intelligence failures, as did officials' public exaggerations of the intelligence community's assessments in order to persuade the public to support the war.
Democrats and other analysts had also wanted the commission to take up the administration's prewar charges that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein worked closely with the al-Qaeda terrorist group.
"The independent commission ... should seize upon its mandate to investigate 'related 21st century threats' and the biggest failure in the justification for the Iraq war: unproven allegations of links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein," said Charles Peña, a foreign-policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that has strongly opposed the Iraq war, despite its generally Republican orientation.
Yet, Bush's appointments surprised several observers by their ideological diversity and reputations for independence.
"Overall, this is a much more professional, much more balanced group than I expected," said Mel Goodman, a former top Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst, who has frequently charged the administration with distorting and exaggerating the intelligence on Iraq.
"It looks like the pragmatists in the White House must have said, 'it's important that we get good names, so we're not attacked'," added Goodman, who teaches at the National War College. He said much will now depend on who is appointed as the panel's staff director.
While a Republican who has often taken neo-conservative positions, McCain, who opposed Bush in the 2000 Republican primary elections and has frequently clashed with him on key issues, is considered fiercely independent.
During his tenure at the CIA, Studeman was well respected among analysts. In contrast to a number of other senior officials, "Studeman was an honest man," said Goodman, whose public charges that former CIA chief Robert Gates had slanted assessments of Soviet power and intentions in the late 1980s created a sensation in Washington.
Cutler, a top adviser to both Carter and Clinton, has enjoyed a strong reputation for independence and thoughtfulness over several decades, while Wald, who was appointed to the bench by Carter, is considered a strong-willed liberal Democrat, who after retirement served as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
The appointment of both Silberman and Wald to the commission is seen as particularly curious, because they are known not to get along. In his controversial book, [i]Blinded by the Right[/i], former right-wing journalist David Brock said Silberman gave "false information" to him about Wald whom, according to Brock, "(Silberman) hated with a passion."
Brock depicts Silberman as a major, if discreet, figure in the right-wing network that harassed Bill and Hillary Clinton for various alleged scandals during the 1990s. Brock, who describes Silberman as his "mentor," has since admitted that many of his attacks on Democrats were based on little or no evidence.
"A consummate Washington insider for more than two decades," Brock wrote, "Larry would often preface his advice to me with the wry demurrer that judges shouldn't get involved in politics – 'that would be improper,' he'd say – and then go ahead anyway."
"He was a behind-the-scenes adviser to the conservative editors of the [i]Wall Street Journal [/i]editorial page, and he delighted his conservative audiences with his acid critiques of the liberal press," added Brock.
Silberman has also reportedly been known as aggressive and sometimes abusive, even in his written opinions. He once accused Clinton of "declaring war on the United States" by permitting his aides to attack Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in the Whitewater case, while, during an argument with another appeals court judge, he is reported to have said, "if you were 10 years younger, I'd be tempted to punch you in the nose."
But it is his role in the 1980 election that is perhaps most intriguing about Silberman's appointment.
He is alleged to have set up and participated in a mysterious meeting in Washington on Oct. 2, 1980 – one month before the election – with Reagan's top foreign policy adviser, then-Marine Lieutenant Colonel Robert McFarlane (Reagan's national security adviser during the Iran-Contra scandal), and at least one Iranian arms dealer.
It was the culmination of a series of secret meetings – never reported to the U.S. government – between Reagan campaign officials and Iranians who purported to represent the government of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The precise purpose of those meetings has never been resolved, but one school of thought, propounded most effectively in the early 1980s by Carter's top National Security Council adviser on Iran, was that the Republican campaign was trying to ensure that Tehran would not make a deal with Carter to release US Embassy hostages who were being held in Iran until after the November elections.
In return, Iran would be covertly supplied with U.S.-made weapons via Israeli middlemen, according to the theory.
Reagan officials, including Silberman, have vehemently denied this version of events.
Nonetheless, it appears that Silberman was a key conduit to Iran during the early 1980s.
According to one source, after he received his judicial appointment, Silberman passed along his Iranian contacts to Michael Ledeen, a close associate of Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), who played a key role with McFarlane in the transfer of US weapons to Tehran in the deal that gave rise to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Several years later, Silberman cast the deciding vote on a three-judge panel in a decision that resulted in dismissing the criminal convictions of Admiral John Poindexter and Lt. Col. Oliver North for lying to Congress in connection with the scandal.
[i]Jim Lobe, works as Inter Press Service's correspondent in the Washington, D.C., bureau. He has followed the ups and downs of neo-conservatives since well before their rise in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.[/i], http://antiwar.com/lobe/?arti...
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| Not Only Do They Lie, But The Bushies Can't Even Count!!! |
| 02.07.04 (3:11 am) [edit] |
[b]Not Only Do They Lie, But The Bushies Can't Even Count!!!
Pentagon: Eight deaths weren't reported[/b]
[b]WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Eight U.S. troops were not counted in the overall casualty numbers for operation in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Pentagon officials, who cited an audit by the Department of Defense[/b].
Pentagon officials said the names were discovered in the audit conducted after Defense Department officials found that casualty numbers appeared to be wrong.
There was no immediate answer by the services -- which have the authority to release names of the dead -- as to why the names were not originally reported.
All of the names released Friday by the Pentagon were listed as being killed by nonhostile injuries.
One name, separate from the eight, was changed from being killed during the Iraq operation to being killed during the Afghanistan operation.
The increase raises the total number of dead in the Afghanistan operation from 108 to 112.
The overall number of dead during the Iraq operation rises from 529 to 532.
A Marine and two sailors were added to the casualty list for Afghanistan. They are:
• Marine Corps Pfc. James R. Dillon Jr., 19, of Grove City, Pennsylvania. He died in Kuwait on March 13, 2003, of an injury not suffered in combat. He was assigned to the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California.
• Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Jason Profitt, 23, of Charlestown, Indiana. He died while in the Red Sea on March 17, 2003, of an injury not suffered in combat. He was assigned to the USS Deyo, home-ported in Norfolk, Virginia.
• Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Darrell Jones, 22, of Wellston, Ohio. He died in Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates, on October 8, 2003, of an injury not suffered in combat. He was assigned to the USS Higgins, home-ported in San Diego, California.
Two soldiers, a sailor and an airman were added to the casualty list for Iraq. They are:
• Army Spc. Tamarra J. Ramos, 24, of Quakertown, Pennsylvania. She died October 1, 2003, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, of an injury not suffered in combat. She was assigned to the 3rd Armor Medical Company, Medical Troop Regimental Support Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Carson, Colorado.
• Army Sgt. Linda C. Jimenez, 39, of Brooklyn, New York. She died at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on November 8, 2003. On October 31, 2003, Jimenez fell and was injured. She was taken to the 28th Combat Support Hospital and later evacuated to Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center. Subsequently, she was moved to Walter Reed, where she later died. Jimenez was assigned to the 2nd Squadron Combat Support Aviation (Maintenance), 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Fort Polk, Louisiana.
• Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class David Sisung, 21, of Phoenix, Arizona. He died in the Persian Gulf on June 6, 2003, of an injury not suffered in combat. He was assigned to the USS Nimitz, home-ported in San Diego, California.
• Air Force Master Sgt. David A. Scott, 51, of Union, Ohio. He died of an injury not suffered in combat on July 20, 2003, in Doha, Qatar. He was assigned to the 445th Communications Flight, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
Pentagon officials also said that the examination disclosed that the announcement of the death of Army Pfc. Kristian E. Parker was incorrectly characterized at the time as occurring during the Iraq operation. Parker was serving as part of the Afghanistan operation when he died.
Details of how each service member died have not been disclosed.
- [i]From Mike Mount, CNN Washington Bureau[/i], http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/02...
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| SCHIZOID DELUSIONS: World-Wide Media Conspiracy to Hide WMDs? HO HO HO! |
| 02.07.04 (1:41 am) [edit] |
Schizoid delusions are being circulated that there is a world-wide conspiracy by the [i]media and press [/i]to hide the massive stockpiles of WMDs that Dubya has actually already found in Iraq!!!
HO HO HO!!! HO HO HO!!! HO HO HO!!!
Yes, even people like the ultra-right wing extremists Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Ann Coulter, the Israeli press and the media lap dogs who are in love with Dubya and have given a pass to George W. Bush are in on the conspiracy!!!
Isn't it a wonder that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, Powell, Rumsfeld and the neocons are also in on the conspiracy and are hiding this crucial evidence!?!?!?!
HO HO HO!!! HO HO HO!!! HO HO HO!!!
For your information:
[b]Annan, Powell differ on impact of US data on Iraq[/b], http://www.khaleejtimes.com/D...§ion=focusoniraq
UNITED NATIONS - Secretary of State Colin Powell said “no apologies” were needed for intelligence used to justify the Iraq war but UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that the questionable US weapons data could jeopardize future similar actions.
Annan and Powell spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a UN conference on Friday that pledged $520 million to finance reconstruction in Liberia, $200 million from Washington.
”The bar has been raised,” Annan said. “People are going to be very suspicious when one talks to them about intelligence. And they are going to be very suspicious when we try to use intelligence to justify certain actions.”
A year ago, on Feb. 5, Powell made a dramatic presentation to the UN Security Council, arguing that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was reconstructing its nuclear arms program as well as building advanced missiles.
“I don’t think any apologies are necessary,” he said when asked about the quality of intelligence used during his unsuccessful attempt to persuade council members of the need to invade Iraq.
Powell said President George W. Bush’s action to go to war, was totally justified by the information that he was provided. ”We don’t have to worry about now is whether there are any weapons of mass destruction or a Saddam Hussein in Iraq to use them,” he said.
Bush is scrambling to limit the political fallout after the former chief US weapons hunter David Kay concluded that prewar intelligence about Iraq’s having stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was wrong.
Powell said in a Washington Post interview this week he did not know if he would have supported the invasion if he had been told Iraq had no banned weapons.
But in New York Powell said “the intelligence base on which our decision rested was a solid intelligence base.”
What the United States was not sure of was “the nature of the stockpiles and these were still being examined,” he said.
”We said that this was a regime led by a dictator who had every intention of keeping his weapons-of-mass-destructi on programs going, and anyone who thinks he didn’t is just dead wrong. And there is no evidence to suggest that that was an incorrect judgment, Powell said.
Powell later accused critics of politicizing the US failure to find weapons of mass destruction said it is getting on his nerves.
“Yeah, it does get on your nerves when you see people trying to use this for straightforward political purposes Powell told Fox television.
Powell on Friday also had lunch with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, his chief antagonist in the Security Council over the invasion.
“We had a major disagreement last year, but you know, disagreements come and disagreements go,” Powell said.
But on specific issues there was open disagreement.
Villepin restated his resistance to sending NATO troops to Iraq, saying such a move would have to wait at least until after the United States handed back sovereignty to Baghdad.
And Powell refused to commit the United States to supporting a UN peacekeeping force for the Ivory Coast despite Villepin’s plea that the mission was urgent for the West African nation to recover from its civil war.
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| Kerry, A Deocorated War Hero Who Saved Lives VERSUS Dubya, Drunken Slob Humping Sluts in Hotel Rooms |
| 02.06.04 (7:09 pm) [edit] |
[b]John F. Kerry is a decorated war hero who saved the lives of his comrades-in-arms ... VERSUS Dubya, a drunken slob who was a deserter and AWOL during Viet Nam, swilling booze in a blind stupor and humping sluts in hotel rooms while better men DIED![/b]
[b]THE TORN DOCUMENT[/b]....So what's the deal with the George Bush AWOL story? There are a million tedious details, but as near as I can tell here's the nub of the whole thing.
Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard in 1968 and in May 1972 asked for a transfer to Alabama because he wanted to work on a political campaign there. His transfer was approved and off to Alabama he went. The problem is that he doesn't seem to have actually performed any of his required guard duty either in Alabama or after he returned to Texas. He just blew it off. There are several bits of evidence for this:
His chronological service record shows no duty between May 1972 and October 1973.
Bush was supposedly in Alabama between May 1972 and November 1972, but the commanding officer of the Alabama unit says he doesn't remember Bush ever showing up. "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do not," he said. "I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered."
In August 1972 Bush was suspended from flying because he never showed up for his required annual physical.
Bush supposedly returned to Texas in November 1972, but the annual effectiveness report from his Texas unit that covers his entire period of service from May 1972 through May 1973 says "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of the report."
Case closed, right? Bush was AWOL. And for normal people at least, this would have been a serious problem, prompting an official investigation and a transfer to active duty, or possibly even a dishonorable discharge.
But wait. Although there are no records showing that he attended drills in Alabama, there is one piece of evidence demonstrating that Bush showed up for drills after he returned to Texas: the infamous "torn document." Here it is: http://www.calpundit.com/arch...
This document supposedly records Bush's attendance record in Texas from May 1972 to May 1973. However, the astute observer will note several things about this document:
[i]* It is strategically torn along its left edge.
* There is no name on the document, only a single letter: W. Does it say "1LT BUSH GEORGE" just before the initial? Maybe, but the page has been torn so there's no way to tell.
* The Social Security number is blacked out.
* The tear eliminates the year and month of all the dates. (The date at the bottom right is just a note added by a reporter.)[/i]
In other words, there's really no evidence that this document refers to George W. Bush or even that it refers to the period 1972-73. But it's even worse than that: it turns out that this document wasn't even part of Bush's original service file.
Rather, back in 1999 the nascent Bush campaign, which was apparently already worried about his service record, hired Albert Lloyd Jr., a former Texas Air National Guard personnel director, to help make sense of Bush's file. Lloyd "scoured" the archives and found the document above, which he says contains Bush's Social Security number beneath the redaction. It has since been inserted into Bush's file. (In fact, there are two versions of this document. If you're really a masochist, see here for more details.)
So that's the story. The torn document wasn't originally part of Bush's service file and is basically laughable as a piece of evidence since it contains no names or dates. What's more, there's specific evidence that his superiors in Texas say he wasn't around for the entire period from May 1972 through May 1973. (On the other hand, as TomPaine.com points out, the last date on the torn document and the first two dates on Bush's 1973-74 attendance record seem to match up with the dates on this document ordering him to attend drills during May and June of 1973. That's the best evidence there is that the torn document is genuine.)
If the torn document is genuine, it means Bush attended Guard drills when he got back to Texas starting in November 1972. But even Lloyd seems to believe that at the very least he was AWOL while he was in Alabama:
Lloyd said it is possible that since Bush had his sights set on discharge and the unit was beginning to replace the F-102s, Bush's superiors told him he was not "in the flow chart. Maybe George Bush took that as a signal and said, 'Hell, I'm not going to bother going to drills.'
"Well, then it comes rating time, and someone says, 'Oh...he hasn't fulfilled his obligation.' I'll bet someone called him up and said, 'George, you're in a pickle. Get your ass down here and perform some duty.' And he did," Lloyd said.
That would explain, Lloyd said, the records showing Bush cramming so many drills into May, June, and July 1973. During those three months, Bush spent 36 days on duty.
Was Bush just a victim of sloppy paperwork? It's hard to say, although Phil Carter has some ideas about ways to track down corroborating evidence for Bush's side of the story. And at least one person thinks there's much worse than bad recordkeeping at work here:
"His records have clearly been cleaned up," says author James Moore, whose upcoming book, "Bush's War for Re-election," will examine the issue of Bush's military service in great detail. Moore says as far back as 1994, when Bush first ran for governor of Texas, his political aides "began contacting commanders and roommates and people who would spin and cover up his Guard record. And when my book comes out, people will be on the record testifying to that fact: witnesses who helped clean up Bush's military file."
Of course, much of this controversy could be defused if Bush just voluntarily released his complete service record. If he did that, for example, the Social Security number wouldn't be blacked out on the torn document. Apparently, though, there's something in his record bad enough that it's worth keeping parts of it under wraps (or redacted) despite the problems it's caused. What do you think it is?
[b][i]POSTSCRIPT[/i][/b]: It's hard to keep all the details correct on this story. If I've made any mistakes, however, I'm sure that Bob Somerby and his encyclopedic memory will set me straight.
The complete set of known documents related to Bush's service record is here on http://www.awolbush.com/ .
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| PANIC-STRICKEN DUBYA: Looking for Tim Russert To Bail Him Out! |
| 02.06.04 (6:35 pm) [edit] |
[b]DUBYA IS LOOKING FOR HIS BUDDY TIM RUSSERT TO BAIL HIM OUT OF HIS MESS ON "MEET THE PRESS":[/b]
[b]Eight Questions for George Bush[/b], http://www.alternet.org/story... :
Tim Russert, the Grand Inquisitor of Sunday morning, is scheduled to have George W. Bush in the witness chair for a full hour on the next Meet the Press. He's a lucky man – Russert, that is. This will be high drama, as the nation's politerati – and millions of others – watch to see if Russert gives Bush the hot-seat treatment.
There is, of course, much to ask Bush about. Did he decided to use military force against Iraq before 9/11? Where are the WMDs he insisted were there? Why is he using phony budget numbers? Did he engage in less-than-proper business dealings before he entered politics? Why he has misled the public while promoting his policies on stem cells research, global warming, and missile defense? Why has he opposed certain homeland security measures and not adequately funded others? It's a long list, and I'm sure Russert is busy preparing his own queries. But in an unsolicited act of kindness, I have crafted eight questions for Russert – several on matters in the news, a few on issues that have received less attention. And, Tim, since you always like to display your source material when you ask the tough questions, feel free to call me, and I'll send you the citations or the clips. Unlike many of Bush's WMD assertions, these questions are based on real evidence.
1. - In October 2002, during a speech in Cincinnati, you said that Saddam Hussein had a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons. But the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq did not report there was any "massive stockpile" of bioweapons in Iraq. And this past Thursday, CIA director, George Tenet said, "We said we had no specific information on the types or quantities of [biological] weapons, agent, or stockpiles at Baghdad's disposal." [i]So if the CIA did not say there was a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons in Iraq, what was your basis for asserting a stockpile existed? Did you know something the CIA did not? Did you overstate the intelligence[/i]?
2. - In December 2002, you said, "We do not know whether or not [Hussein] has a nuclear weapon" – a remark suggesting that Hussein might have one. But the National Intelligence Estimate said that he did not have a nuclear weapon and that it would take Iraq five to seven years to produce a nuclear weapon – and then only if its nuclear weapons program was "left unchecked." This past week, Tenet said, "We said Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear weapon." [i]Was it not misleading to tell the public that "we don't know" whether Iraq had a nuclear weapon, when, in fact, we did know[/i]?
3. - Before the war, you said Hussein was "dealing" with al Qaeda. On May 1, you called Hussein an "ally" of Al Qaeda. At a press conference in July 2003, you were asked to provide evidence to back up your claims that Hussein had been working with al Qaeda. You replied,
"Yes, I think, first of all, remember I just said we've been there for 90 days since the cessation of major military operations. Now, I know in our world where news comes and goes and there's this kind of instant – instant news and you must have done this, you must do that yesterday, that there's a level of frustration by some in the media. I'm not suggesting you're frustrated. You don't look frustrated to me at all. But it's going to take time for us to gather the evidence and analyze the mounds of evidence, literally, the miles of documents that we have uncovered."
That is, you said that investigators were still looking for evidence. But the question was, what evidence did you have at the time that you made those prewar claims that al Qaeda and Hussein were in cahoots? You did not answer that question then. [i]Can you tell us what evidence you had for saying that Hussein was an "ally" of al Qaeda[/i]?
4. - In July 2001, US intelligence produced a warning that read, "Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that UBL [Usama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."
This was less than two months before the horrific 9/11 attacks. According to the final report of the joint inquiry on 9/11 conducted by the House and Senate intelligence committees, this warning was prepared for "senior government officials." The committees did not publicly say who received the report, and they said this was because the CIA would not permit them to tell the public which "senior government officials" were warned. The committees were angry about being gagged this way. But committee sources did tell reporters that this report was sent to the White House.
[i]Why wouldn't your administration tell the public who saw this warning? Did you or any of your national security team see this report? If so, what did you or they do in response? If this report did not make it to you or your senior aides, wouldn't you consider that a terrible mistake and want to find out who was responsible for that[/i]?
5. - In your Air National Guard records, your annual performance review, dated May 2, 1973, says that you did not report for duty to your home base for an entire year. When this was disclosed during the 2000 campaign, your campaign said that you had spent part of that time doing service at an Air National Guard base in Alabama. But the commander of that base said – and recently confirmed – that you never showed up there. In 2000, your campaign promised to produce the names of people whom you served with in Alabama and who could vouch for your presence at the base there. It never did so. [i]Why not? Can you now give us names of men or women with whom you served in Alabama[/i]?
6. - During the year in question, you lost your flight status and were grounded for failing to submit to an annual physical examination. In 2000, your campaign aides said that was because you were in Alabama at the time and your personal doctor was in Houston. But the Boston Globe noted, "Flight physicals can be administered only by certified Air Force flight surgeons." Not personal physicians. And there were military physicians stationed in Alabama, where you were living for part of that year. [i]Why did you not take a flight physical? Why did your campaign put out an explanation that was wrong[/i]?
7. - By your own account, you returned to Houston after the November election of 1972. Yet the records show you did not report in to your Air National Guard base there for six months – not until after that performance review noted you had been missing for a year. [i]Why not? What were you doing during that time[/i]?
8. - When you ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1978 in Texas, you gave an interview to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper. You were asked about your position on abortion, and this is how that newspaper reported your answer: "Bush said he opposes the pro-life amendment [which would outlaw abortion] and favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question." Sixteen years later, when you ran for governor in Texas in 1994, you campaigned as an antiabortion conservative. Few people seem to realize your position on abortion changed 180 degrees. [i]Please tell us, when did you change your view on abortion and why[/i]?
[i]David Corn is Washington editor of the Nation[/i].
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| ECONOMIST.com: George Bush's Budget - An Election Year Farce |
| 02.06.04 (5:57 pm) [edit] |
[b]From the Conservative ECONOMIST.com[/b]:
[b]George Bush's budget
[i][u]An election-year farce[/u]:
Nice glossy brochure, not much fiscal responsibility
[/i][/b]
ELEVEN days after Congress at last approved a budget for the current fiscal year, which began in October, George Bush presented Congress with a $2.4 trillion budget for the next. Think of it as a campaign brochure, complete with glossy pictures of the president bringing relief to the elderly, restoring the environment and exhorting the young. As a way to unveil the three main themes of Mr Bush's re-election strategy—fighting the war on terror, protecting the “homeland” and getting the credit for a recovering economy—the brochure is a tour de force. As an exercise in fiscal responsibility, it is a charade.
For the armed forces and homeland defence come big proposed increases in spending, up by 7% and 10% respectively. Nothing short of “transformation” is proposed in order to win the war on terror. A Republican Congress is unlikely to begrudge Mr Bush the money.
A bigger problem are those puckerish conservatives who believe that almost any domestic spending by the federal government is wickedness incarnate. This group complains that, since he came to office, Mr Bush has betrayed the vision of Ronald Reagan with a “big-government conservatism” that has increased spending wildly.
In this budget, the president makes his peace with this pinched lot. He proposes that total discretionary spending increases by only 3.9%—less than the rise in average household income. To achieve that, he plans to restrict any increase in discretionary spending not related to homeland security or defence to just 0.5%. Money will be cut for school drop-outs, illiterate prisoners and so on: 65 “major” programmes in all are to be cut, a welcome assault for conservatives on the parasites ([i]Democrats, if they vote at all[/i]) on the state. On the other hand, money will be raised for wholesome programmes like one supporting “healthy marriages”. And best of all, as far as the puckerers are concerned, his temporary tax cuts are to be made permanent.
And there is more. While many of the Reagan flame-keepers agree with Dick Cheney that “deficits don't matter”, other Republicans have become increasingly unsettled by a budget deficit now forecast at $520 billion this fiscal year, or over 4.5% of GDP. To this camp, the president promises that spending restraint, by reimposing long-term budget caps, combined with higher revenues from faster economic growth will halve the deficit by 2009. By then, the deficit will be back below its long-run average, as a proportion of GDP.
If this all looks too good to be true, it is. For once, the administration has not fiddled the books by relying on unrealistically high growth rates in the coming years [[i]I disagree[/i]]; but it has[i] relied on other fibs[/i] [i.e. LIES!]. For a start, the budget does not factor in the future costs of keeping soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan: even Mr Bush's own budget director says costs could be as much as $50 billion for Iraq alone in 2005. Then the usual implausible savings are found from “waste, fraud and abuse”. Third, all the president's cuts are to fall on the one-fifth of the total budget that counts as domestic discretionary spending—hardly likely to happen in an election year.
Mr Bush's most culpable failing lies in his refusal to think beyond the 2009 horizon. Take, first, the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which Mr Bush wants to make permanent at a ten-year cost, when other new proposals for tax-free savings schemes are added in, of $1.25 trillion. The cuts may well have provided a welcome economic stimulus at a time when confidence was knocked by recession and terrorist attack. But after 2009, these cuts will equal three-quarters of the total deficit, even by the administration's own numbers.
This matters, because soon after that date, some very predictable things happen, thanks to a demographic bulge as the baby-boom generation reaches retirement. The surplus on government-retirement accounts, which currently subsidises federal spending by over $250 billion a year, will vanish. The costs of Medicare, the health programme for the elderly, will soar. Mr Bush has aggravated the problem by pushing through a Medicare prescriptions law whose ten-year cost has now jumped to $530 billion. The idea that Mr Bush will ever tackle these issues—even in a second term—looks fanciful. [i.e. LIES!]
- [i]The Economist[/i], http://www.economist.com/worl...
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| The Noxious Bush Family Doctrine: FUCK OVER AMERICA!!! |
| 02.06.04 (5:35 pm) [edit] |
[b]Get Me Rewrite![/b]
Right now America is going through an Orwellian moment. On both the foreign policy and the fiscal fronts, the Bush administration is trying to rewrite history, to explain away its current embarrassments.
Let's start with the case of the missing W.M.D. Do you remember when the C.I.A. was reviled by hawks because its analysts were reluctant to present a sufficiently alarming picture of the Iraqi threat? Your memories are no longer operative. On or about last Saturday, history was revised: see, it's the C.I.A.'s fault that the threat was overstated. Given its warnings, the administration had no choice but to invade.
A tip from Joshua Marshall, of www.talkingpointsmemo.com, led me to a stark reminder of how different the story line used to be. Last year Laurie Mylroie published a book titled "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the C.I.A. and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror." Ms. Mylroie's book came with an encomium from Richard Perle; she's known to be close to Paul Wolfowitz and to Dick Cheney's chief of staff. According to the jacket copy, "Mylroie describes how the C.I.A. and the State Department have systematically discredited critical intelligence about Saddam's regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction."
Currently serving intelligence officials may deny that they faced any pressure — after what happened to Valerie Plame, what would you do in their place? — but former officials tell a different story. The latest revelation is from Britain. Brian Jones, who was the Ministry of Defense's top W.M.D. analyst when Tony Blair assembled his case for war, says that the crucial dossier used to make that case didn't reflect the views of the professionals: "The expert intelligence experts of the D.I.S. [Defense Intelligence Staff] were overruled." All the experts agreed that the dossier's claims should have been "carefully caveated"; they weren't.
And don't forget the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created specifically to offer a more alarming picture of the Iraq threat than the intelligence professionals were willing to provide.
Can all these awkward facts be whited out of the historical record? Probably. Almost surely, President Bush's handpicked "independent" commission won't investigate the Office of Special Plans. Like Lord Hutton in Britain — who chose to disregard Mr. Jones's testimony — it will brush aside evidence that intelligence professionals were pressured. It will focus only on intelligence mistakes, not on the fact that the experts, while wrong, weren't nearly wrong enough to satisfy their political masters. (Among those mentioned as possible members of the commission is James Woolsey, who wrote one of the blurbs for Ms. Mylroie's book.)
And if top political figures have their way, there will be further rewriting to come. You may remember that Saddam gave in to U.N. demands that he allow inspectors to roam Iraq, looking for banned weapons. But your memories may soon be invalid. Recently Mr. Bush said that war had been justified because Saddam "did not let us in." And this claim was repeated by Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Why on earth didn't [Saddam] let the inspectors in and avoid the war?"
Now let's turn to the administration's other big embarrassment, the budget deficit.
The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.
The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.
I'd like to think that the administration's crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won't let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough?
- [i]Dr. Paul Krugman, New York Times[/i], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
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| New York City Wants Easing of Patriot Act |
| 02.06.04 (7:37 am) [edit] |
[b]New York City Wants Easing of Patriot Act [/b]
New York, the city most affected by the 9/11 attacks almost two and a half years ago, has become the latest U.S. municipality to formally urge major reforms to the USA PATRIOT Act to eliminate threats to basic civil rights and due-process protections.
The New York City Council voted Wednesday to urge local agencies not to subject New Yorkers to secret detentions without access to counsel and the New York Police Department (NYPD), in particular, to protect the free-speech rights of individuals and refrain from enforcing federal immigration laws or engage in racial or ethnic profiling.
The measure, known as Resolution 60, was approved by voice vote and also calls upon the New York delegation in Congress to "actively work for the repeal of those sections of the USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA) and related federal actions that unduly infringe upon fundamental rights and liberties."
"The city of New York – perhaps more than any city in America – is keenly aware of why we are engaged in a war on terror," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "With its diverse population, it is fitting and proper that the nation's largest city has joined millions across the country in demanding that America can, and must, be both safe AND free," she added.
Passage of the resolution came two weeks after the Los Angeles City Council passed a similar resolution by a 9-2 margin. The Jan. 21 vote was depicted as a direct rebuff to President Bush, who had called for extending and expanding the Patriot Act during his State of the Union Address the night before.
In so doing, Los Angeles, the country's third largest city, and now New York have joined a growing list of 250 municipalities, counties and states encompassing nearly 50 million people across the country that have approved measures over the past two years that urge far-reaching reform of the USAPA to ensure basic rights and due process.
Other jurisdictions that have approved such resolutions include Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago, the nation's second largest city, as well as small communities from Alaska to North Carolina and Maine. The state legislatures of Hawaii, Alaska, and Vermont have also approved similar measures.
The main focus of their objections includes the sweeping powers given to the Justice Department to round up, detain, and summarily deport immigrants without filing charges or providing them with access to attorneys, or, in some cases, even to their family members; the use of racial and ethnic profiling by federal agencies in targeting suspects; and the granting of unprecedented powers to the FBI to secretly obtain information with little or no judicial review about individuals, ranging from their financial records to their book-borrowing patterns from local libraries.
Late last year, the Bush administration indicated it will seek a further expansion of those powers in a new act, as well as an extension of the USAPA beyond its December, 2005, expiration date. At the same time, the administration managed to push through new powers for the FBI enabling it to search and seize business records without court approval from securities dealers, currency exchanges, travel agencies, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other business that, in the government's eyes, has a "high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters." Under the 2001 USAPA, such powers were limited to business records held by banks, credit unions and similar financial institutions.
The ACLU, a leader in national and grassroots efforts to oppose the USAPA's more far-reaching provisions and related legislation, has been joined by a wide coalition of other groups from across the political spectrum. Indeed, some of the strongest opposition to USAPA has come from the political right, including Americans for Tax Reform and the Eagle Forum, among others.
The coalition's common denominator has been the fear that USAPA has upset the delicate balance between security and liberty and now threatens individuals' privacy and constitutional freedoms.
More than 90 organizations had endorsed the New York resolution, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the New York Public Library Guild, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. At the council's hearings held earlier, a number of family members of NYPD and NYFD officers who died on 9/11 testified in support of the resolution.
"The fact that the resolution passed in New York City, site of the devastating 9/11 attacks, sends a resounding message that New Yorkers are not willing to trade their freedom for policies that do not make them any more safe," said Laura Murphy, head of the ACLU's Legislative office here. "The City of New York paid a higher cost than most cities, but New Yorkers are standing up and refusing to sacrifice their fundamental freedoms."
Among the 34 cosponsors of the resolution was Council Member Alan Gerson, whose district includes the site of the World Trade Center.
The impact of the City Council's vote on security is likely to be put to a major test when the Republican National Convention meets in New York Aug. 30 to Sept. 2. Large-scale protests are expected.
([i]One World[/i])
- [i]Jim Lobe, works as Inter Press Service's correspondent in the Washington, D.C., bureau. He has followed the ups and downs of neo-conservatives since well before their rise in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.[/i], http://antiwar.com/lobe/?arti...
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| Say What You Will About John Kerry ... |
| 02.06.04 (7:34 am) [edit] |
[b]Say What You Will About John Kerry ...[/b]
But he has drained the rosy hues from the [b]Bushies' cheeks[/b]. They're so scared of Dubya's war record that they've preemptively appropriated [b]Kerry's defense of Clinton's draft-dodging[/b]. The foreign policy irrelevance of a Bush/Kerry contest aside, this could be a delightful campaign!
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| The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources |
| 02.06.04 (7:31 am) [edit] |
[b]The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources[/b]
Ninety-five days before the invasion of Iraq began, I sat in the ornate Baghdad office of the deputy prime minister as he talked about the U.N. weapons inspectors in his country. "They are doing their jobs freely, without any interruption," Tariq Aziz said. "And still the warmongering language in Washington is keeping on."
The White House, according to Aziz, had written the latest UN Security Council resolution "in a way to be certainly refused." But, he added pointedly: "We surprised them by saying, 'OK, we can live with it. We'll be patient enough to live with it and prove to you and to the world that your allegations about weapons of mass destruction are not true.'"
Speaking that night in mid-December 2002, Tariq Aziz – dressed in a well-cut business suit, witty and fluent in English – epitomized the urbanity of evil. As a high-ranking servant of a murderous despot, he lied often. But not that time.
With knee-jerk professional reflexes, American journalists assumed that Iraqi officials were lying about weapons of mass destruction – and also assumed that officials such as George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and (especially) Colin Powell were being truthful. Overall, the news media helped to create a great market for war.
An author who soared in that bullish market was Kenneth Pollack, the former CIA analyst whose 2002 book "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq" was a media-driven smash. A frequent presence on national television, Pollack eagerly promoted a book and a war at the same time. He called for a "massive invasion" of Iraq.
Now, in the current issue of the Atlantic magazine, Pollack has a long essay with a somewhat regretful tone. "What we have learned about Iraq's WMD programs since the fall of Baghdad leads me to conclude that the case for war with Iraq was considerably weaker than I believed," he writes. "I had been convinced that Iraq was only years away from having a nuclear weapon – probably only four or five years. That estimate was clearly off, possibly by quite a bit."
But most journalists and pundits touted such estimates as reasonable because the media pros were predisposed to believe the pronouncements from administration officials. Now we're told that only hindsight has provided us the chance to see how wrong those estimates were. That's nonsense.
Extensive information, poking huge holes in key deceptions, was readily available at the time – but major U.S. media outlets are still reporting as though Bush's pre-war claims were credible when they were made. In reality, any "intelligence failure" was dwarfed by a contemporaneous media failure.
(If you have any doubt that the Bush gang's WMD claims could have been recognized as transparently bogus from the start, take a look at dozens of news releases assembled during many prewar months by my colleagues at the Institute for Public Accuracy. Those releases, from 2002 and the first months of 2003, remain posted at www.accuracy.org without any change in wording.)
In late January, Senate committees heard testimony from the man who headed the 1,400-member weapons inspection team in Iraq during the last half of 2003. Longtime hawk and Bush 2000 campaign supporter David Kay declared: "Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong." And: "It is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there."
A week later, on Feb. 4, the Pentagon's Donald Rumsfeld appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee and simply drew from an inexhaustible supply of fog: "It was the consensus of the intelligence community, and of successive administrations of both political parties, and of the Congress, that reviewed the same intelligence, and much of the international community, I might add, that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction."
In the grand tradition of manipulatively farcical commissions appointed by a president to assess his devious actions, a front-page New York Times article reported with delicate euphemisms that Bush's new panel will "examine American intelligence operations, including a study of possible misjudgments about Iraq's unconventional weapons."
"Possible" – as though there's still any question about the prewar intelligence verdicts proclaimed by the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell.
"Misjudgments" – as though the White House hadn't summoned any and all pseudo-evidence to rationalize its from-the-outset determination to invade Iraq.
After 27 years as a CIA analyst, Ray McGovern knows a few things about propaganda. He notes that "the 'investigation' is slated to go past the election. Members will be picked by the president, and the scope is unconscionably wider than is necessary." McGovern contends that "the key question for 2004 is whether the administration's stranglehold on the media can be loosened to the point where the electorate can wake up, take away the president's driver's license and put an end to the reckless endangerment."
The media war of 2004 is well underway. To the victor goes the White House.
[i]Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You[/i]., http://antiwar.com/orig/solom...
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| Bush Administration Distorted Intelligence Reports |
| 02.06.04 (7:28 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush Administration Distorted Intelligence Reports[/b]
If you listen only to weapons inspector David Kay, you would have the impression that the Bush administration was nothing but an innocent victim of poor intelligence information.
The intelligence agencies told the policy makers the Iraqis had all those weapons of mass destruction, and the administration did what it had to do and invaded Iraq. Simple as that.
Not so fast. There are two distinctly different aspects to the story here. One is Kay's tale of misjudgments and mistakes by the intelligence community. You can't blame that on the Bush administration. And that's what is going to be the subject of a more thorough investigation. Fine.
But the other story is how the Bush administration handled the intelligence information it was given. There's always an interaction between the producers of intelligence and the consumers, and it's a crucial relationship. This is the area in which I believe the Bush administration is vulnerable. It took a difficult circumstance - very uncertain intelligence information - and made it much worse by selectively using the information it was given, pressuring intelligence officials to give it only what it wanted to hear, using raw, unvetted intelligence data, and exaggerating and distorting the uncertain information it did have. This is bad stuff.
Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA Persian Gulf expert and then National Security Council member in the Clinton administration, says in an Atlantic Monthly article that he received numerous complaints from friends in the intelligence community about the manner in which the Bush administration handled intelligence information.
Pollack writes, "Administration officials reacted strongly, negatively and aggressively when presented with information or analysis that contradicted what they already believed about Iraq.... Many (officials) believe the CIA analysts tended to be left-leaning cultural relativists who consistently downplayed threats to the United States. They believed the agency, not the administration, was biased, and they were acting simply to correct that bias."
The Pentagon actually created a separate office to deal with Iraq intelligence issues, the Office of Special Plans. Pollack says that OSP "cherry-picked" the intelligence it passed on, selecting reports that supported the administration's pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest. It also passed on raw intelligence to senior administration officials without having it properly vetted by intelligence analysts - a cardinal sin in the intelligence world. And the OSP gave great credence to reports of WMD from members of the Iraqi National Congress, the Iraqi exile group closely aligned with Pentagon officials. The intelligence community was highly skeptical of much of that information, but was ignored.
The administration also used some of the unvetted intelligence in important speeches and pronouncements to the public. On Sept. 24, 2002, President George W. Bush, in his weekly radio address, warned Iraq "would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year." The intelligence community warned that was an absolute worst-case scenario and unlikely to happen. But the administration discarded the caveats. Just check the transcript of Vice President Dick Cheney on "Meet the Press" Sept. 14, 2003, or Undersecretary of State John Bolton at an international conference on Nov. 1, 2002.
My conclusion isn't that the administration was either duped or sloppy about the intelligence information. Instead, it did not care what the intelligence said or how ambiguous it might be. It was going to invade Iraq because it believed that was the right policy, damn the intelligence, damn what it has done to our credibility throughout the world.
Maybe, if the administration had been right about WMD, it would have gotten away with its distortions and exaggerations. But it was wrong, and it shouldn't be let off the hook.
- [i]James Klurfeld, Newsday.com[/i], http://www.newsday.com/news/c...,0,2316807.column?coll=ny-news-colum nists
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| Dubya Is A Liar And An Abortionist! |
| 02.05.04 (4:12 pm) [edit] |
[b]The hypocritical neocon propagandists are trying to use abortion as a [i]wedge-issue [/i]while they are the very swindlers, liars and thieves that cause the high abortion rates among desperate women with no hope and who are living in dire poverty! Don't be played for[i] suckers [/i]by the corrupt Bush administration![/b]
[b]Definition of a LIAR[/b]: [i]One who lies or utters falsehoods[/i]. A Lie: [i]An untrue statement made with the intent of deceiving[/i].
[b]Definition of an ABORTIONIST[/b]: [i]One who causes abortion[/i]. An Abortion: [i]Partial or complete arrest of development in anything[/i].
Dubya[i] lied [/i]about non-existent WMDs in Iraq that supposedly posed an imminent threat to our national security.
Dubya is responsible for the massacres and slaughters (i.e. [i]the abortion[/i]) of 519 US Soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqis, in an illegal and immoral war based upon lies.
[b]Go back to the beginning [/b]...
[b]The First Lie[/b], http://www.tompaine.com/featu...
While all of the Democratic presidential candidates (except Sen. Joseph Lieberman) criticize President George W. Bush for his unilateral recklessness in starting a war against Iraq, they are missing a larger point: The invasion was not just reckless. It was unconstitutional.
It is time to set the record straight. The United States Congress never voted for the Iraq war. Rather, Congress voted for a resolution in October 2002 which unlawfully transferred to the president the decision-making power of whether to launch a first-strike invasion of Iraq. The United States Constitution vests the awesome power of deciding whether to send the nation into war solely in the United States Congress.
Those members of Congress—including certain Democratic presidential candidates—who voted for that October resolution cannot now claim that they were deceived, as some of them do. By unlawfully ceding the war-declaring power to the president, they allowed the president to start a war against Iraq based on whatever evidence or whatever lies he chose. The members of Congress who voted for that October resolution are as complicit in this illegal war as is the president himself.
Imagine this: The United States Congress passes a resolution which states: "The President is authorized to levy an income tax on the people of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to pay for subsidies to U.S. oil companies." No amount of legal wrangling could make such a resolution constitutional. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants the power to levy taxes exclusively to the United States Congress.
Now let us turn to reality. In October 2002, Congress passed a resolution which stated: "The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to 1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and 2) enforce all relevant United States Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." As he determines to be necessary and appropriate.
Congress cannot transfer to the president its exclusive power to declare war any more than it can transfer its exclusive power to levy taxes. Such a transfer is illegal. These are non-delegable powers held only by the United States Congress.
In drafting the War Powers Clause of Article I, Section 8, the framers of the Constitution set out to create a nation that would be nothing like the model established by European monarchies. They knew the dangers of empowering a single individual to decide whether to send the nation into war. They had sought to make a clean break from the kings and queens of Europe, those rulers who could, of their own accord, send their subjects into battle. That is why the framers wisely decided that only the people, through their elected representatives in Congress, should be entrusted with the power to start a war.
The wars of kings and queens of Europe had brought not only havoc and destruction to the lives of those forced into battle and those left to suffer their loss. They had also brought poverty. They were stark symbols that the subjects living under such monarchies lacked any voice or any control over their destiny.
The War Powers Clause of the Constitution emerged from that collective memory: "Congress shall have power...To declare war... " No other language in the Constitution is as simple and clear.
Thomas Jefferson called it "an effectual check to the Dog of war." George Mason said that he was "for clogging rather than facilitating war." James Wilson stated: "This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large."
Several years after the adoption of the Constitution, James Madison would write: "In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
Some might ask how George W. Bush's war against Iraq is different from other U.S wars. Congress has not declared war since World War II. While some of the U.S. military actions since that time have received the equivalent of a congressional declaration, others have not. There have been other violations of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution.
But today we face an extraordinary moment in United States history. The president of the United States launched a premeditated, first-strike invasion of another country, the likes of which this nation has never before seen. This massive military operation sought to conquer and occupy Iraq for an indefinite period of time. This was not a random act of raw power. It was the first salvo of a new and dangerous U.S. doctrine, a doctrine which advocates the unprovoked invasion and occupation of sovereign nations. This new doctrine threatens to destabilize the world, creating a new world order of chaos and lawlessness.
Now more than ever, the Constitution and the rule of law must apply. And, now more than ever, the truth must be told. The first lie about the Iraq war was not that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Qaeda. The first lie told to the American people is that Congress voted for this war.
In the midst of the rushed congressional debate in October 2002, U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) warned that the resolution under consideration was unconstitutional. "We are handing this over to the President of the United States," Byrd said. "When we do that, we can put up a sign on the top of this Capitol, and we can say: 'Gone home. Gone fishing. Out of business.'" Byrd added: "I never thought I would see the day in these forty-four years I have been in this body... when we would cede this kind of power to any president."
The Iraq war is in direct violation of the United States Constitution. The president and the members of Congress who voted for that October resolution should be held accountable for sending this nation into an illegal war.
It is time to hold up the Constitution to the faces of those who dare to defy it. It is time to demand our country back.
[i]John C. Bonifaz is an attorney in Boston and the author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush. (NationBooks-NY, January 2004)[/i]
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| Deserter Dubya To Drop Criminal Cheney: LET'S DROP 'EM BOTH! |
| 02.05.04 (1:56 pm) [edit] |
The deserter and AWOL drunkard, cowardly war criminal and greedy war-profiteer Dubya is rumored to have decided to drop the criminal Veep-N-Creep Cheney: I SUGGEST THAT WE DROP BOTH OF THESE CROOKS!
[b]Number Two, To Go[/b]
[b]GOP inner circles are buzzing with the rumor [/b]that President Bush is planning to drop Dick Cheney from his re-election ticket and replace him with 9/11 action hero Rudy Giuliani.
As one firmly committed to making sure Bush doesn't get another four years in office, all I can say to this is: Please, Mr. President, say it ain't so!
Cheney is the Democrats' best—though sorely underutilized—weapon. A loose-lipped loose cannon who threatens to torpedo the Bushie ship of state every time he half-opens his mouth. If only we start paying attention.
Perhaps sensing that Broadway Rudy is warming up in the bullpen, Cheney has begun upping his public profile. After rarely venturing out of his secure, undisclosed location—aka Republican fund-raisers—he has given a rash of high-profile interviews over the past month.
And thank God for that: the Most Powerful Number Two In History just can't help telling it like he sees it, and the way he sees it is very, very telling. And frightening.
Take his recent, evidence-be-damned assertions regarding Iraqi WMD and a Saddam/Al Qaeda connection.
While even Rummy, Condi, and Wolfowitz, the administration's true believers, are splitting verbal hairs trying to back away from their apocalyptic prewar claims—"Did I say 500 tons of sarin and 25,000 liters of anthrax? I meant 'weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.'"—Cheney has reloaded and is firing away with both barrels.
To his hawkish eyes, a lone pair of souped-up flatbed trucks are "conclusive evidence" of Saddam's WMD, and a memo the Pentagon has labeled "inaccurate" provides, according to Cheney, "overwhelming evidence" that the former Butcher of Baghdad and Osama bin Laden had "an established relationship."
You want conclusive, overwhelming evidence? How's this? Captured 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has told U.S. interrogators that bin Laden had rejected the idea of working with Saddam; documents found in Saddam's spider-hole show he had warned his supporters to be wary of teaming up with foreign enemies of America; and former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay has told the world that Iraq didn't have any WMD at the time we invaded.
Not good enough for our man Dick. Like a Flat-Earther who has sailed around the world 10 times but keeps waiting to topple off the edge, Cheney has got his story and he's sticking to it.
He even continues to serve up that thoroughly moldy chestnut about head hijacker Mohammed Atta hooking up with an Iraqi spy in Prague, despite the fact that the FBI has long since concluded that Atta was actually tooling around Florida in a rental car at the time of the alleged meeting.
In a new biography of Tony Blair, an aide to the British prime minister accuses Cheney of having "waged a guerilla war against" Blair's attempts to seek U.N. approval of the invasion of Iraq, and calls the vice president "a visceral unilateralist."
He's also a visceral corporate apologist.
Remember when the idea of having a CEO vice president was a campaign selling point? Now we see that the only thing being sold is the public good. Exhibit A is the way Cheney's corporate cronies at Halliburton have benefited from having a friend in the very highest of places.
In the blink of an eye and the toppling of a statue, the company has gone from facing looming losses to scoring billions in no-bid and no-ceiling contracts tied to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
As for the rest of us, we've been rewarded with a company that squanders our tax dollars at every turn.
The latest outrage came with this week's revelation that Halliburton has consistently overbilled the Pentagon for meals at Camp Arifjan, a U.S. military base in Kuwait. According to auditors, the Pentagon paid the company $16 million for nearly four million meals that were never served. And Camp Arifjan is just one of more than 50 dining facilities in Kuwait and Iraq the company serves. Maybe Halliburton can steal a page from McDonald's playbook and put up a giant golden H outside their mess halls, with a sign keeping tabs on the number of meals they billed taxpayers for but didn't actually provide: "Over 4 million Never Served!" And they can add a kicker to those "Halliburton, proud to serve our troops" TV spots they've been running: "... and even prouder of the money we rake in by not serving them!"
This phantom-food fiasco comes fast on the heels of news that two Halliburton employees had pocketed more than $6 million dollars in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor—which had followed fast on the heels of accusations the company had overcharged the government more than $100 million for gasoline.
Pardon me for bringing this up, but shouldn't that be three strikes and you're out? Instead, we get yet another example of how there are two sets of rules in our country—one for the elites (and the former companies of the elites) and one for everybody else. When caught with its hand in the taxpayer-funded cookie jar, Halliburton doesn't get tossed in the brig for life; it merely apologizes, pays back the money it's pilfered, and goes on to win another hefty cost-plus contract.
Despite this avalanche of sleazy profiteering and corporate misconduct, Cheney stubbornly insists on defending his erstwhile company —from which he still receives a hefty deferred salary ($162,392 in 2002), and in which he still holds 433,333 stock options. "They get unfairly maligned," he said late last month, "simply because of their past association with me."
No, they get maligned because they can't seem to keep themselves from gouging American taxpayers. It makes one wonder what the company would have to do for Cheney to feel criticism of Halliburton was justified—cater John Kerry's victory party?
If Cheney's relationship with Halliburton represents the evils of crony capitalism, then his relationship with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia epitomizes the evils of crony democracy.
It's not just that Cheney and Scalia had dinner and went on a duck-hunting trip together while the Supreme Court was being asked to overturn a lower court's decision requiring Cheney to reveal the names of his energy task force members. It's that these guys can't, for the life of them, see why anybody would have a problem with this overly cozy state of affairs.
Why bother with "justice for all" when you've got hunting buddies who don't give a flying duck about fairness, impartiality or the public's right to know?
On the upside, this behavior turns a blazing spotlight on the defining traits of the Bush White House: secrecy and arrogance.
"I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned," said Scalia, responding to questions about the propriety of a sitting judge rubbing elbows—and blowing small game birds out of the air—with a named party and material witness in a case he's about to hear. That ranks right up there with Justin Timberlake's claim that the boob shot seen 'round the world was due to a "wardrobe malfunction."
For all these reasons and more, anyone who wants to see Bush back home in Crawford come January 2005 should rush right out to their local Bush re-election campaign office and start the chant: "Ho, ho... hey, hey... Dick Cheney's got to stay!"
[i]Arianna Huffington is a syndicated columnist and author of Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America (Random House, 2003).[/i], http://www.tompaine.com/featu...
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| Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe |
| 02.05.04 (1:52 pm) [edit] |
[b]Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe[/b]
Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.
According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.
The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.
The case centers on Valerie Plame, a CIA operative then working for the weapons of mass destruction division, and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who served as ambassador to Gabon and as a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad in the early 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, he was head of African affairs until he retired in 1998, according to press accounts.
Wilson was sent by the Bush administration in March 2002 to check on an allegation made by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address the previous winter that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from the nation of Niger. Wilson returned with a report that said the claim was "highly doubtful."
On June 12, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus revealed that an unnamed diplomat had "given a negative report" on the claim and then, on July 6, as the Bush administration was widely accused of manipulating intelligence to get American public opinion behind a war with Iraq, Wilson published an op-ed piece in the Post in which he accused the Bush administration of "misrepresenting the facts." His piece also asked, "What else are they lying about?"
According to one administration official, "The White House was really pissed, and began to contact six journalists in order to plant stories to discredit Wilson," according to the New York Times and other accounts.
As Pincus said in a Sept. 29 radio broadcast, "The reason for putting out the story about Wilson's wife working for the CIA was to undermine the credibility of [Wilson's] mission for the agency in Niger. Wilson, as the last top diplomat in Iraq at the time of the Gulf War, had credibility beyond his knowledge of Africa, which was his specialty. So his going to Niger to check the allegation that Iraq had sought uranium there and returning to say he had no confirmation was considered very credible."
Eight days later, columnist Robert Novak wrote a column in which he named Wilson's wife and revealed she was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." Since Plame was working undercover, it exposed her and, in the opinion of some, ruined her usefulness and her career. It also violated a 1982 law that prohibits revealing the identity of U.S. intelligence agents.
On Oct. 7, Bush said that unauthorized disclosure of an undercover CIA officer's identity was "a criminal matter" and the Justice Department had begun its investigation into the source of the leak.
[i]Richard Sale is an intelligence correspondent for UPI, a sister wire service of Insight magazine[/i]., http://www.insightmag.com/new...
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| U.S. Image Abroad Will Take Years to Repair, U.S. Official Testifies |
| 02.05.04 (8:01 am) [edit] |
[b]U.S. Image Abroad Will Take Years to Repair, U.S. Official Testifies[/b]
WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — Margaret D. Tutwiler, in her first public appearance as the State Department official in charge of public diplomacy, acknowledged Wednesday that America's standing abroad had deteriorated to such an extent that "it will take us many years of hard, focused work" to restore it.
Ms. Tutwiler, the former ambassador to Morocco, was recently tapped to try to address rising hostility toward the United States in much of the Muslim world.
In testimony before a House appropriations subcommittee, she agreed with the main findings of an independent panel that American outreach has suffered from budget cuts and neglect since the end of the cold war.
"Unfortunately, our country has a problem in far too many parts of the world," she said, "a problem we have regrettably gotten into over many years through both Democrat and Republican administrations, and a problem that does not lend itself to a quick fix or a single solution or a simple plan."
The findings were the result of an extensive bipartisan study led by Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and Syria. The panel asserted that American prestige had dwindled, that much of its charity was overlooked and that its overall approach lacked strategic direction.
"The bottom has indeed fallen out of support for the United States," Mr. Djerejian, speaking after Ms. Tutwiler, told the subcommittee in his first public presentation of the report.
The report, requested by the subcommittee's Republican chairman, Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, was released in October. It identified systemic problems, including a lack of Arabic speakers in the State Department — only five Americans are fluent and "TV ready," Mr. Djerejian said. It also noted the decline in the number of public diplomacy officers, from 2,500 in 1991 to 1,200 in 2003. The report urged a greater role for America's private sector, especially its media companies, in developing creative new ways to reach out to Arab youths.
The report, and Republicans on the subcommittee, urged placing a public diplomacy coordinator in the White House, with access to the president and a team that would scrutinize foreign perceptions.
But Ms. Tutwiler refused to embrace calls for the new position.
She also said she was determined to work within the existing budget of about $600 million for worldwide public diplomacy, which includes a wide range of efforts, including exchange programs, partnerships between American embassies and local institutions, distributing textbooks and supplying textbooks to local schools.
Mr. Wolf called the administration's overall response to the report "lackluster" and "disappointing."
Representative Jim Kolbe, an Arizona Republican, cited polls showing that only 15 percent of Indonesians, 7 percent of Saudis and 15 percent of Turks have a favorable image of America — despite their governments' friendly relations with Washington.
He urged Ms. Tutwiler to be bolder in pressing her case with top administration officials. A former State Department spokeswoman and a close associate of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Ms. Tutwiler is seen as having powerful connections.
But Ms. Tutwiler replied: "My answer would be, based on experience of having worked in three White Houses that that would be less than well received, in all candor."
- [i]By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS, New York Times[/i], 02/05/04, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
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| PROTEST NOW: 'Embedding' CIA Agents Within Local Police Departments |
| 02.05.04 (7:56 am) [edit] |
[b]PROTEST NOW[/b]: Bush is trying to turn the USA into a 3rd world military junta! Write to Congress on http://www.congress.org
[b]'Embedding' CIA Agents Within Local Police Depts[/b]
[b]H.R. 3439[/b], making its way through Congress, would authorize the federal government to "embed" CIA agents within local police departments to blur the distinction between local cops and feds.
The [b][i]Campaign to Demilitarize the Police [/i][/b]is organizing to stop the bill, and has been targeting the bill's author, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), with protest actions.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P454" title="http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P454" target="_blank"http://www.antiwar.com/blog/i...
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| Insurgent Iraqis Vow to Take Over Cities |
| 02.05.04 (7:53 am) [edit] |
[b]Insurgent Iraqis Vow to Take Over Cities [/b]
RAMADI, Iraq - A coalition of insurgent groups has vowed to take over cities vacated by U.S. troops, and warned of "harsh consequences" for Iraqis who resist, according to pamphlets circulating in this hotbed of anti-American resistance.
The pamphlets, signed by Muhammad's Army and other insurgent groups, began appearing Saturday in Ramadi and nearby Fallujah — both part of the dangerous Sunni Triangle region.
"America is getting ready to withdraw its forces from our country with its tail between its legs ... pressured by rockets and explosive devices," the statement said.
The pamphlets, replete with Quranic verses and threats of "harsh consequences" for anyone firing on the insurgency's fighters, said Iraqis who did not collaborate with the Americans would be allowed to form city councils once U.S. forces are gone. Every council will name candidates to run in general elections, the pamphlet said.
It appeared highly unlikely that U.S. forces would allow events envisioned in the pamphlets or that American troops would be drawn down to such low levels while the insurgency remain powerful.
Once the Americans withdraw, a three-day curfew will be imposed in "liberated areas," the statement said, adding that hospitals and humanitarian organizations would be excluded.
Despite the threats, U.S. officials have expressed confidence Iraqi police will be able to handle the security situation.
Muhammad's Army appears to be an umbrella group for former Iraqi intelligence agents, army and security officials, and Baath Party members, U.S. officials say. It has been linked to several attacks against coalition forces.
The U.S. Army has said it will gradually reduce its presence in Iraqi cities and hand over control to Iraqi security forces. The Army has so far given a detailed withdrawal plan only for the capital, Baghdad, which it envisages to be virtually free of U.S. troops by May.
While pulling back from densely populated areas such as Baghdad, U.S. forces will remain nearby and ready to rapidly respond to civil disorder, U.S. officials have said.
U.S. commanders say the security situation is improving and the number of insurgent attacks including roadside bombings and hit-and-run firing are coming down. Still, the monthly U.S. casualty rate has remained steady with 251 soldiers dying in hostile action since May 1.
- ([i]AP[/i]), http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| Don't Be Fooled Again By The "Investigations" ... |
| 02.05.04 (7:50 am) [edit] |
Don't be fooled again by the "investigations": When Bush and Cheney are allowed to appoint their own committee [i]and[/i] assign their own scope-and-definition for the review [i]and[/i] preclude the White House from all inquiry, then it is a ludicrous [i]WHITEWASH.[/i]
[b]Don't be fooled again [/b]
[i][b]Critics of the war must voice their misgivings about the Butler inquiry's terms of reference - right now [/b][/i]
Where do you even start? Perhaps with the comedy of George Bush demanding "to know the facts" about Iraq's non-existent arsenal of weapons of mass destruction - casting himself as an aggrieved American voter, somehow hoodwinked into the war with Iraq. No doubt we should brace ourselves for Bush pounding his fist on the table, demanding to know "who ordered this goddamned war anyway?" And to think, he could have known all the facts without firing a single shot - if only he had let Hans Blix and his team of UN inspectors finish their work.
Or perhaps we should begin with the hilarious sight of Colin Powell, who exactly a year ago treated the UN security council to a show-and-tell exposé of Saddam's terrifying arsenal, now admitting that, had he known Baghdad had no WMD, he would have had his doubts about going to war. With rather elegant understatement, he concedes it would have changed "the political calculus".
Maybe the right starting point is closer to home, with the alternative comedy of Tony Blair insisting as late as last week there could be no inquiry, no inquiry, no inquiry - until Bush ordered one in Washington and suddenly London saw the entire question in a new light. Now there is to be an inquiry. What was an unnecessary, ludicrous proposal last week when the Tories and Lib Dems demanded it is suddenly a rather good idea now that Mr Bush has smiled upon it.
The government says the trigger was the Senate testimony of Bush's handpicked weapons inspector, David Kay - he who quit as head of the Iraq Survey Group because, he concluded, Iraq's WMD were a mirage. That, says the government, made an inquiry "inevitable". In which case, why was it not signalled as soon as Dr Kay testified last Wednesday? Or even a week earlier when he quit? The truth is that Tony Blair is going into this inquiry the way he went into the war itself: as Tonto to the American Lone Ranger, Mini-Me to George Bush's Dr Evil.
Too cynical? Maybe so. But after last week's experience, deep scepticism is the required mode. For the Hutton episode was something of a loss of innocence for those who had preferred to assume the best of Britain's top institutions. Government allies have assailed the Hutton report's critics with this repeated refrain: "If you think Hutton is such a bad judge, why didn't you say so earlier? You were perfectly happy to accept him when you thought he was going to give Blair a kicking." There is power to this argument, but there is a response. It is that many who suspected the Iraq war was fought on a false basis believed the inquiry system would be fair; that a senior judge would take account of all the evidence he heard, not ignore large chunks of it. These doubters hesitated to rake over the law lord's previous judgments, check out the cases he fought as an advocate, or root out telling details in his biography. Such suspicion would suggest a lack of faith in the ability of a judge to assess each case, and each piece of evidence, on its own merits. For our system to work, all of us have at least to accept the ground rules, don't we?
It turns out we were too trusting. We somehow ignored the injustice of a system that allows the man under suspicion - in this case, the prime minister - to pick the judge who will judge him. We did not probe deeply into why Brian Hutton might have taken Charles Falconer's fancy. We did not parse the precise wording of Hutton's remit because we assumed he would be fair.
Well, we won't get fooled again. Critics of the war should not wait till this latest inquiry into Iraqi WMD is over before they voice their misgivings - only to be accused of questioning the ref's credentials after the match. We should express our concerns right now.
Begin with the remit. After Hutton, we should all be on our guard for narrowly drawn terms of reference that handily exclude any discomfort for the government. Having learned our lesson, what do we spot in yesterday's Commons announcement by Jack Straw? For one thing, there is an ambiguity, arising from a poor bit of wording. The panel is "to examine any discrepancies between the intelligence gathered, evaluated and used by the government before the conflict, and between that intelligence and what has been discovered by the Iraq Survey Group since the end of the conflict". It sounds nerdy, but the meaning of that clumsy sentence all turns on the second "and". One reading is that it allows the inquiry to probe the difference between the raw intelligence and the way it was "used" by the government to make the case for war. Alternatively it could mean the inquiry is only to investigate the difference between the raw data and the actual picture on the ground.
The latter interpretation would favour the government, by putting the spies in the dock alone, forcing them to explain why their estimate proved so wrong - and skipping over the politicians' role entirely. You don't have to be a cynic to expect that this is precisely how the new committee will define its terms. After all, Straw said there was no need to examine the way government processed and presented the intelligence it received - no need because those issues had been so "comprehensively covered by Lord Hutton".
Both Blair and Straw further stressed that the committee would have to stay out of such terrain, not straying into "the political judgment that led us to war". Straw tried to wrap this up in quasi-constitutional mumbo-jumbo, suggesting that for a committee to investigate such a question would represent a usurpation of parliament. That is nonsense. The committee could simply find out whether the case which was put to MPs - and which persuaded many waverers to vote for war a year ago - was sound or bogus. That would be a service to parliament, not a threat.
The Lib Dems saw through this trick, and are to be applauded for refusing to sanction it with their presence on the committee. But the rest of the personnel are worth looking at. We should not wait till his report to note that Lord Butler was until fairly recently a faithful servant of Blair's; that he defended Whitehall chicanery during the arms-to-Iraq affair; and that he took the word of Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken on trust. Nor is it outrageous to observe that Ann Taylor has hardly been distinguished by her independence from the Labour leadership or that Michael Mates has had his own embarrassments. Above all, this group is allowed to do all its work in secret - which will be mightily convenient to those who have set it up.
Of course, I could be misjudging the process entirely. It might deliver a report that at last gets to the truth of how we came to fight a war over weapons that did not exist. If it does, that will prove a pleasant surprise. Until then, we should remain watchful and wary.
- [i]Jonathan Freedland[/i], http://politics.guardian.co.u...,9115,1140508,00.html
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| It's 2004: AWOL Deserter Dubya Plays War Games & Kills Thousands |
| 02.04.04 (2:10 pm) [edit] |
[b]It's 2004:
AWOL Deserter during Vietnam Dubya loves to play war games and has killed 528 US soldiers and thousands of Iraqis. Who the hell is this drunkardly coward to play his illegal war games waged on a load of lies lies lies lies lies?[/b]
[b]Kerry calls on Bush to settle questions on military record[/b]
TUCSON -- Democratic presidential front-runner John F. Kerry, who has turned his decorated Vietnam War service into a theme of his campaign, said yesterday that President Bush and the US military should settle questions -- raised recently by Kerry allies -- about whether Bush completed his military service requirement in the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970s.
Before attending a campaign rally here that drew 2,000 people, on the eve of today's presidential primary in Arizona and six other states, the Massachusetts senator said that the matter of Bush's military service record was "a question that I think remains open." Kerry added that he lacked "the facts" to make a judgment about accusations that Bush ended his military commitment prematurely.
"It's not up to me to talk about them or to question them at this point," Kerry said of the accusations. "I don't even know what the facts are. But I think it's up to the president and the military to answer those questions."
Kerry also said he was not sure if he would exploit Bush's military record as an issue in the fall general election if he were to become the Democratic nominee. "I don't know yet, I haven't made up my mind," Kerry told reporters on the tarmac of the Tucson airport.
Yet two prominent Democrats with ties to Kerry -- Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe and former senator and Vietnam veteran Max Cleland -- have ratcheted up their attacks on Bush's military record, with McAuliffe saying on television Sunday that Bush had been "AWOL" at times during his guard service. Cleland, speaking at a veterans' rally with Kerry on Friday, said the nation should not have a president "who didn't even complete his tour stateside in the guard." Kerry said yesterday he did not ask allies to attack Bush on his military record.
At a rally yesterday morning in New Mexico -- which also votes today -- Kerry received the endorsement of Eliot Spitzer, the attorney general of New York and a well-regarded opponent of white-collar crime, who flew west to endorse Kerry at a time when the candidate has been under attack for receiving more than $600,000 in individual donations from lobbyists over the last 15 years.
[i]Patrick Healy can be reached by e-mail at phealy@globe.com[/i]. http://www.boston.com/news/na...
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| Dubya Plans His October Surprise: "Capture" Of Osama bin Laden ... |
| 02.04.04 (12:04 pm) [edit] |
[b]An election forecast: We’ll get bin Laden
Sen. Grassley sees terrorist nabbed by Nov. 2 vote [/b]
He doesn’t bother to attend secret CIA briefings of his fellow senators because he seldom learns anything he hasn’t read in the newspapers, but Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is convinced the U.S. will track down the elusive mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks before November.
“Obviously, he’ll be caught between now and the election,” Grassley said Monday when asked if he’s disappointed that Osama bin Laden hasn’t been killed or captured.
“I think they’re on his trail now in a way they haven’t been all year,” Grassley said. “It will happen because we will be able to divert more resources [to hunting down bin Laden].”
Grassley, who’s an overwhelming favorite to win a fifth term in November, declined to say why he’s so confident that bin Laden will be brought to justice. But it certainly didn’t come from one of those secret CIA briefings.
“I think it’s legitimate for me to question all of our intelligence information because that I never learned anything from those briefings that I hadn’t learned in the newspapers. If they don’t know anything more than they’re telling us, what’s the use of having an intelligence agency, and why bother to brief us?”
Although President Bush’s re-election prospects would no doubt be boosted if bin Laden is found, Grassley said Democrats may have a better chance if Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) wins his party’s presidential nomination rather than the current front-runner, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.).
“ I would say that Senator Kerry is more of a threat than [Howard] Dean but less of a threat than Senator Edwards” because of the latter’s strength in the South, he said.
[i]UNDER THE DOME, By Jeff Dufour and Albert Eisele[/i], http://www.hillnews.com/under...
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| One Nation, In Distress - Poverty & Homelessness Rise Under Bush |
| 02.04.04 (7:37 am) [edit] |
[b]One Nation, In Distress [/b]
President Bush has been in office for a little over two years. While there has been an enormous amount of discussion lately about a possible war with Iraq (which I oppose), not enough is being heard about the issues that affect the standard of living of average Americans. How have we been doing economically since President Bush took office? What role should Congress play in improving the economy for the middle-class and working families of our country? Some facts:
Unemployment has increased to 5.6 percent, from 3.9 percent, since President Bush took office. In the last two years, 2,365,000 jobs have been lost in the private sector. In 2001, real median household income fell 2.2 percent, the first decline in household earnings in a decade.
The trade deficit continues to rise and is now over $400 billion, including a $100 billion trade deficit with China. More and more of the products we buy come from abroad. In the last several years the United States has lost 1.7 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs, just under 10 percent of our entire manufacturing workforce. Under our current disastrous trade laws, companies are continuing to throw American workers out on the street as they race to China, Mexico and other developing countries in search of cheap labor.
Poverty is increasing. In 2001, 1.3 million more Americans slipped below the official poverty line, the first increase in poverty since 1993. Homelessness is also rising, as lower-income people are increasingly unable to find affordable housing. Requests for emergency shelter increased by an average of 19 percent in 2002, the largest annual increase since 1990.
The stock market continues to decline. Between Dec. 29, 2000, and the end of the third quarter of 2002, the total market value of all U.S. equities dropped by 38 percent — some $6.65 trillion dollars. Almost a third of households have stock market investments through employer retirement plans. The precipitous drop in the stock market has meant that many Americans have been forced to postpone their retirement plans.
The rate of bankruptcies has skyrocketed. In the last two years the United States has had the highest rate of bankruptcy cases in history, increasing 23 percent since 2000. Companies with hundreds of billions in assets have filed for Chapter 11.
The health care crisis is getting worse. Last year health insurance premiums increased by 12.7 percent. The average premium for families is now $7,954 a year. These cost increases, as well as the growth of unemployment, had much to do with another 1.4 million Americans losing their health insurance last year. Today, over 14 percent of Americans lack health insurance, and many more are underinsured.
With 38 percent of those on Medicare having no prescription drug coverage, the cost of medicine continues to skyrocket. The 50 most frequently used drugs by seniors increased 7.8 percent — triple the inflation rate. Many seniors are unable to afford the medicine their doctors prescribe, while others pay for their prescriptions by cutting back on food and heat.
Pension and health insurance anxiety is growing among older workers and retirees. A Bush proposal that would make it easier for corporations to convert the pensions they promised their workers into cash balance plans means that millions of older employees could face a substantial reduction in the retirement benefits they had expected. Recently, bankrupt Bethlehem Steel announced it wouldn’t be paying 95,000 workers their promised health care and life insurance benefits.
The government deficit and national debt are rapidly increasing. Before President Bush took office the government had a surplus of $127 billion and was paying down the national debt. Now, the president’s budget for next year calls for a deficit of more than $300 billion, and that does not include the money that would be spent on a war and occupation of Iraq. A large deficit could lead to massive cutbacks in Medicaid, Medicare, veterans’ needs, education and other programs needed by millions of Americans.
Where do we go from here? The president continues to believe that tax breaks for the rich are an effective economic stimulus. I strongly disagree. I believe that the tax breaks given to millionaires and billionaires have more to do with campaign contributions than with job creation. Two years ago the president provided almost 40 percent of his tax breaks to the richest 1 percent. This amounted to a $53,123 tax break for people earning more than $373,000 a year. Now he is proposing more huge tax breaks for the very same people, while less than 10 percent of the benefits would go to the bottom 80 percent of wage earners.
Instead of catering to the needs of the very rich, it’s high time that Congress and the president developed policies to protect the average American. Among many other things, we should: raise the minimum wage to a living wage; fundamentally change our trade policies to increase manufacturing jobs; lower the cost of prescription drugs; and establish a strong prescription drug benefit under Medicare. We should also strengthen Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and veterans programs; increase funding for education and child care; and create millions of new jobs by building affordable housing and improving our infrastructure.
The wealthy in this country are doing just fine. They don’t need more tax breaks. It’s the rest of the people, the vast majority of Americans, who are in economic trouble, and President Bush and Congress should start focusing on their needs.
[i]By US Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-VT[/i]., http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| Bush's 'Preventive War' Doctrine Under Siege |
| 02.04.04 (7:33 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush's 'Preventive War' Doctrine Under Siege [/b]
WASHINGTON – As questions mount around the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the intelligence that was used to justify going to war, one of the first casualties may be the Bush administration's doctrine of preventive war.
That is just one way the controversy over the use of intelligence to justify war is likely to impact US foreign policy. Already the wisdom of waging war against a gathering but unexercised threat is being questioned in Congress and among weapons experts.
But the failure to find weapons and the clouds over prewar intelligence are also feeding US allies' doubts on the rationale for war, and solidifying opposition to the administration's stated right to preemptive war.
"People who opposed this war feel vindicated and will feel even stronger about the risks of the doctrine of preventive war, that you have to base it on intelligence that may be flimsy, inaccurate, or can be interpreted in different ways," says Jens Van Scherpenberg at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
Calling the last year "difficult for everybody," a European diplomat in Washington says, "We see validation of the importance of inspections, the priority of cooperation, and we will emphasize that as the right way to go forward." Still, to the extent the administration holds to its first-strike policy even in the absence of a proven, imminent threat, defining differences between the US and some allies will continue.
"There is a lasting schism" between the US and some of its allies over the use of military force, fed by specific differences over defense spending, adds Mr. Van Scherpenberg. But he and others in antiwar countries say the underlying differences, while too deep to go away, will be played down in coming months as Europe seeks to repair relations with Washington, and Washington continues to press for international help in postwar Iraq.
European leaders may be hoping the White House has learned from what they believe are the pitfalls of preemptive military action - a doctrine first outlined in the Bush administration's national security strategy of August 2002.
Some experts argue that British Prime Minister Tony Blair - and even Mr. Bush - will be hesitant to repeat the Iraq venture because of public opposition and political scrutiny. In short, observers note, antiwar leaders may not feel compelled to focus on the doctrine's liabilities since others in Washington already are.
In a televised interview this week, former chief US weapons inspector David Kay said, "If you cannot rely on good, accurate intelligence that is credible to the American people and to others abroad, you certainly can't have a policy of preemption."
And in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Bob Graham (D) of Florida, former chairman of the Sentate Select Committee on Intelligence, said "if we continue to rely on preventive or pre-emptive military actions as a central part of our strategy, it is critical that we have accurate intelligence to justify that the threat to be preempted is imminent."
The added importance of accurate intelligence when it is being used to justify war, and flaws in intelligence on Iraq, are prompting action on both sides of the Atlantic. Bush this week ordered creation of a commission to examine intelligence shortcomings, and Mr. Blair opted for a similar investigation.
Those steps, and others that US allies see as retreats from a first-strike doctrine, or as "peace feelers" toward them, may improve working conditions between allies.
Also easing tensions are recent statements by Secretary of State Colin Powell, first acknowledging that weapons of mass destruction may not have existed in Iraq, and Tuesday stating in an interview that a clear absence of stockpiled weapons might have affected his recommendation for war. Still, he told the Washington Post that he believed Saddam Hussein's Iraq did have an intent and capability that justified action, and that history would vindicate the war.
At the same time, there is hope in some European capitals that the administration is shifting its emphasis to building alliances.
"France always felt the doctrine of preemptive action was impracticable, and while that view has not changed, the emphasis now is on improving relations with the US," says Philippe Moreau Defarges, an international-relations expert at the French Institute for International Relations.
Washington's emphasis last year on war was seen as deleterious to the sharing of intelligence, since governments disagreed on how intelligence should be used. But Mr. Moreau Defarges says Paris wants to heal relations with Washington and, in turn, improve counterterrorism and international economic policies - so the French government will not make an issue of Iraq at this time.
"Look at the recent cancellation of some commercial flights from Paris to the US," he says. "There a strong signal from the French government saying, 'We want to cooperate.' " Though the French are no more likely to go along with preemptive war, he continues, they feel reassured that the US has reached the limit of its own doctrine. "Look at North Korea: That is a more dangerous threat, but the US is not talking about waging war there."
Indeed, though a tougher stance may be required in North Korea, any action would be made more difficult by doubts about the Iraq war, says David Mepham of the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research. "The chance of getting public support will be reduced," he says. "The lack of credibility brought on by going to war in Iraq on the basis of inaccurate intelligence has undermined public trust and made the world more insecure."
[i]By Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Shows No Sign of Slowing |
| 02.04.04 (7:31 am) [edit] |
[b]U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Shows No Sign of Slowing [/b]
[b]WASHINGTON (Reuters)[/b] - The U.S. death toll in Iraq is showing no sign of slowing, with attacks on American troops by insurgents becoming more sporadic but often more lethal, analysts said on Tuesday.
Despite proclamations by commanders about progress against the resistance -- Army Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno said the insurgents had been "brought to their knees" -- analysts said there was little reason to believe U.S. casualties will decline any time soon during this U.S. presidential election year.
"I would expect that the overall rate of U.S. casualties will probably remain about the same barring a massive deterioration in the overall security environment, for instance if Shi'ites and Sunnis begin to go at it or Kurds and Iraqi Arabs begin to go at it, and U.S. forces get caught in the middle," said Cato Institute defense analyst Ted Carpenter.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, has forecast increased violence in Iraq as the United States aims to return sovereignty by the end of June.
"There's more casualties ahead. There's more fighting ahead," Abizaid, who commands U.S. troops in the region, said last week. "But there's nothing out there that I see militarily that we can't handle."
There has been an upturn in U.S. fatalities in the past 2-1/2 weeks, bringing to 526 the American death toll in Iraq since the invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein was launched last March.
Analysts noted that the U.S. death toll is relatively low compared to previous wars.
[i][b]'PAINFUL EXPERIENCE' [/b][/i]
"From the American standpoint, I suppose, it's better to be bled slowly than rapidly, but even being bled slowly is a very painful experience, and that's what's happening," Carpenter said.
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said there were an average of 23 attacks per day against U.S. troops over the past week, down from more than 50 per day in November. A week ago, Kimmitt put the figure at 18 per day.
Analysts said the U.S. death toll has climbed steadily even as the number of attacks has fallen because successful strikes by insurgents now often cause more fatalities than those staged months ago.
[i]Continue on [/i] http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...
By Will Dunham, Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...;jsessionid=PYNDUDYGCMWIQ CRBAE0CFEY?type=topNews&s toryID=4275008
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| Funny How Neocon Fascists Call Anyone Opposed To Poverty: Communists |
| 02.03.04 (10:46 pm) [edit] |
Some of the neocon fascists call anyone opposed to poverty, homelessness, joblessness or the corporations: (1) swindle of investors, (2) exploitation of workers, (3) poisoning and/or injuring consumers, and, (4) plundering the environment: [i]communists, marxists, socialists, etc[/i].
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
These neocon fascists fail to comprehend that our nation was not devised in order for corrupt capitalists and corporate robber-barons to rape the rest of us senseless!
Programs to help others does not represent communism. In fact, these unChristian hypocrites are liars and dangerous propagandists who fail to recognize that capitalism in its extreme form is FASCISM. To oppose a system that promotes the General Welfare of all of our citizens as per the U.S. Constitution is actually TREASON.
But then, perhaps I am only arguing with a pre-pubescent teenage boys whose hormones are raging, because their intellects sure as hell [i]ain't[/i]!
Grrr!
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| US: Homeless DIE in Frigid Weather |
| 02.03.04 (2:19 pm) [edit] |
[b]US: Homeless die in frigid weather[/b]
While the US news media has provided ample coverage of the near-record cold wave, very little is being said this winter about the loss of lives and suffering among those forced to live on the streets. The toll has been particularly harsh during January, which has seen ice, snow and subfreezing temperatures settle in over much of the eastern half of the country. The severe weather has brutally exposed a deepening social crisis of poverty and unemployment that has left record numbers homeless.
Homeless shelters from Maryland to Colorado and throughout the Northeast have been filled to overflowing. In New York City, the homeless population has set new records, with over 38,000 people seeking aid from the city. In Kansas City, Missouri, the largest homeless shelter reported that it was filled and attempting to collect extra mattresses on Saturday.
In Omaha, Nebraska, a homeless shelter administrator told KETV Channel 7 News that it was feeding as many as 1,000 homeless and poor people a night as temperatures fell below zero. “Frankly, we’re maxed out,” said the administrator, Candace Gregory. “When it’s this cold, they do come in off the streets from living in their cars or under the bridge or in the campground.”
An administrator at the homeless shelter in the town of Salisbury on the eastern shore of Maryland told the local paper, the Daily Times, “We turn a lot of people away—about 200 to 250 a month.” Of those denied shelter, he added, 60 percent had come together with their children. He attributed the growth in the homeless population to recent layoffs at a Tyson Foods plant and the shutdown of a Black & Decker factory.
Among those turned away and those who do not make it into the shelters, there have been a mounting number of fatalities.
In Chicago, a homeless man became the eighth known victim of hypothermia in the city since October. Pradeep Damera’s frozen body was found on January 22 on the Bank One Plaza downtown. The 33-year-old man had been reported missing some two weeks earlier by relatives in the central Illinois city of Bloomington.
Damera’s death follows on the heels of two others. On January 18, children playing in the snow came upon a lifeless Raymond Greenwald, thought to be in his forties, under a footbridge in River West Park. The next day, an unidentified homeless man, estimated to be between 45 and 55, was found in the stairwell of a West Belle Plain Avenue apartment building. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be cold exposure and alcohol intoxication.
In nearby Milwaukee, Wisconsin, two homeless men have died in the cold this month. Ira Porter, age 44, was found dead in a trash bin on January 20, and four days later, John MacDonald, age 53, was found dead in a truck.
Further loss of life can be expected sooner rather than later, as temperatures dove below zero degrees Fahrenheit across Chicago Friday morning, the coldest temperatures in over four years there.
Along the East Coast, the bitter cold persists as well. New York City, for instance, has seen the coldest January since 1977. On January 16, the temperature plunged to 1 degree Fahrenheit, tying a 110-year-old record for the date. There have been eight days so far this month when the mercury fell into the single digits, with wind chills of 25 degrees below zero and lower, creating conditions in which frostbite can set in on bare skin after only 10 minutes.
Four homeless men are known to have frozen to death in New York City during the last month. Other cases may simply have gone unreported.
Police divers pulled the body of the 23-year-old Miguel Flores, a homeless immigrant from Honduras, out of an icy lake in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on January 24, six days after neighborhood dog-walkers had seen him fall through. He presumably had been unable to read the warning signs posted about the thin ice.
Nobody reported him missing from the nearby shelter where he had been staying since December. Officials explain the lack of any report or search by saying it is common for homeless people to miss their curfews. Flores had lost all of his papers when his wallet was stolen. His body was identified by a card bearing his name and the name of the shelter where he was staying.
On January 16, an unidentified man was found frozen in the Van Cortland Village section of the Bronx. A few days earlier, a homeless New York man died after starting a fire in a vacant Brooklyn warehouse to keep warm. The fire ended up killing him when it got out of control.
On January 11, another homeless man was found dead in an outdoor encampment built under a Bronx expressway that about a dozen people called home. Two days after that, Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the encampment torn down, saying at a press conference that the outdoors was no place to sleep.
Bloomberg’s concern is not for the homeless people themselves, a number of whom refuse to be re | |
