tBlog - X-Files

X-Files

Blog For Free!

Archives
Home
2005 January
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
2004 June
2004 May
2004 April
2004 March
2004 February
2004 January

My Links
Information Clearing House
Winston Smith's Daily Journal
Sam Adams' CounterPoint

tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images

Sponsored
Blog

The State of Corporate Welfare

09.30.04 (4:27 pm) [edit]

[b]Don't you know that Bush/Cheney & the Repug's Corporate Welfare for the Rich far outspends/outcosts and outweighs any assistance provided to our citizens in need? Take your blinders off people and see the truth-- The redistribution of wealth from those families struggling to make ends meet to make corporate hogs and rich fat-cats hyper-wealthy is both morally bankrupt and fiscally irresponsible! It used to be called slavery![/b]

"The $150 billion for corporate subsidies and tax benefits eclipses the annual budget deficit of $130 billion. It's more than the $145 billion paid out annually for the core programs of the social welfare state: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), student aid, housing, food and nutrition, and all direct public assistance (excluding Social Security and medical care)." -

Check out the [b]CORPORATE WELFARE INFORMATION CENTER [/b] http://www.corporations.org/w...

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely: Cheney's Halliburton Pimps!!!

09.30.04 (4:20 pm) [edit]

Where's Osama bin Laden? Iraq's WMD's? Enron's Ken Lay? Who mailed the anthrax? Why did Bush choose to go into a second grade classroom full of children [15 minutes] after learning of the hijackings and the first attack? After Andy Card told him of the second attack (tho he says he "saw it on TV" before going in), why did he continue to sit for his photo-op an additional 20 minutes, reading about a pet goat, at the same time human beings were jumping to their deaths, and another two known hijacked planes were still in the air? Why weren't fighter jets scrambled to intercept? Who in the White House exposed Valerie Plame? Why are we in Iraq? Where's the evidence? Who profits? Did the civilians-in-charge have an exit plan, or chaos by design? Is our military becoming privatized? Will there be a draft? Where did veteran's benefits go? Where's the funding for Homeland Security? Why are the 9/11 and Cheney Energy Task Force investigations stonewalled despite numerous subpoenas (Visit Halliburton, Cheney's Pimp who paid him bribes for no-bid contracts at your expense!)? What is the Bush family's relationship with the bin Laden, Saudi Royal and Hinckley families? Why are past and current public records (from this administration) sealed from the public?

[b]Check out [/b] http://hometown.aol.com/__121...+6r2fAFcbwEc7b02Eq3zVT3

ACTUALLY, Nobody has Shifted More on Iraq than Dubya (Bush Supporters=Idiots)!

09.30.04 (10:40 am) [edit]

[b]Record shows Bush shifting on Iraq war

President's rationale for the invasion continues to evolve [/b]

President Bush portrays his position on Iraq as steady and unwavering as he represents Sen. John Kerry's stance as ambiguous and vacillating.

"Mixed signals are the wrong signals,'' Bush said last week during a campaign stop in Bangor, Maine. "I will continue to lead with clarity, and when I say something, I'll mean what I say.''

Yet, heading into the first presidential debate Thursday, which will focus on foreign affairs, there is much in the public record to suggest that Bush's words on Iraq have evolved -- or, in the parlance his campaign often uses to describe Kerry, flip-flopped.

An examination of more than 150 of Bush's speeches, radio addresses and responses to reporters' questions reveal a steady progression of language, mostly to reflect changing circumstances such as the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction, the lack of ties between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and the growing violence of Iraqi insurgents.

A war that was waged principally to overthrow a dictator who possessed "some of the most lethal weapons ever devised'' has evolved into a mission to rid Iraq of its "weapons-making capabilities'' and to offer democracy and freedom to its 25 million residents.

The president no longer expounds upon deposed Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's connections with al Qaeda, rarely mentions the rape and torture rooms or the illicit weapons factories that he once warned posed a direct threat to the United States.

In the fall of 2002, as Bush sought congressional support for the use of force, he described the vote as a sign of solidarity that would strengthen his ability to keep the peace. Today, his aides describe it unambiguously as a vote to go to war.

Whether such shifts constitute a reasonable evolution of language to reflect the progression of war, or an about-face to justify unmet expectations, is a subjective judgment tinged by partisan prejudice.

Yet a close look at the record makes it difficult to support Bush campaign chairman Ken Mehlman's description of the upcoming debate as a "square-off between resolve and optimism versus vacillation and defeatism.''

A careful reading of Bush's statements on Iraq reveals many instances of consistency, just as The Chronicle's examination of Kerry's words found consistency in the Democratic challenger's statements. Over and over, Bush stated that the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the way Americans -- including the commander in chief -- viewed the threat of terrorism and lowered the threshold of risk Americans were willing to accept.

"Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take,'' Bush said in a well-received speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Sept 12, 2002.

Bush echoed those words earlier this month as he accepted his party's nomination for president a few miles away, at Madison Square Garden in New York:

"Do I forget the lessons of September the 11th and take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our country? Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time.''

Yet the more specific explanation of a mission that has cost more than 1, 000 American lives, thousands of Iraqi lives and well over $100 billion has undergone a transformation.

Prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Bush focused on weapons of mass destruction and stated the U.S. goal in straightforward terms.

"Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. And in order to disarm, it would mean regime change,'' Bush said at a news conference two weeks before he took the nation to war.

"And our mission won't change,'' Bush continued. "Our mission is precisely what I just stated.''

Six weeks later, speaking to workers at an Army tank plant in Ohio, the goal seemed to expand.

"Our mission -- besides removing the regime that threatened us, besides ending a place where the terrorists could find a friend, besides getting rid of weapons of mass destruction -- our mission has been to bring humanitarian aid and restore basic services and put this country, Iraq, on the road to self- government.''

Last month, speaking to supporters at a campaign event in Wisconsin, Bush put it more plainly: "The goal in Iraq and Afghanistan is for there to be democratic and free countries who are allies in the war on terror. That's the goal.''

In the course of the campaign, such shifts have been characterized by Bush's opponents as lies.

"He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war,'' Kerry said during a speech at New York University last week in which he said Bush has offered 23 different rationales for going to war. "If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded.''

The count comes from a study conducted by an honors thesis written by a University of Illinois student, which actually attributed 19 rationales -- none mutually exclusive -- to Bush and four others to members of his administration.

Most of the rationales were on the table from the beginning. What changed was the emphasis.

Bush voiced no doubt from the beginning that Hussein possessed chemical, biological and potentially nuclear weapons.

"Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks, to build and keep weapons of mass destruction,'' Bush said in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

By the following year, after no such weapons had been discovered and evidence suggested that much of the intelligence was wrong, Bush had toned down such talk and begun to speak of the "threat'' of Hussein developing such weapons.

In his State of the Union address last January, Bush spoke of Hussein's "mass destruction-related program activities."

"Look, there is no doubt that Saddam Husein was a dangerous person,'' the president told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an interview several weeks before that speech. "And there's no doubt we had a body of evidence providing that. And there is no doubt that the president must act, after 9/11, to make America a more secure country.''

Sawyer asked the president about the distinction between the "hard fact that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons.''

"So what's the difference?'' Bush responded. "The possibility that he could acquire weapons, if he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.''

"What would it take to convince you he didn't have weapons of mass destruction,'' Sawyer persisted.

"Saddam Hussein was a threat,'' Bush responded. "And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.''

In the months since, Bush has changed his standard speech to reflect that failure to discover the weapons.

"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq,'' Bush said in July in Tennessee. "We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.''

There are a few instances where the president's words contradict developments or his previous statements.

On March 6, 2003, for example, Bush insisted during a prime-time news conference that he would offer a resolution before the United Nations calling for the use of force against Iraq even if other nations threatened to veto it.

"No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote,'' Bush said.

A few days later, after it became apparent that the measure would not only be vetoed but might fail to win a majority of the Security Council, the Bush administration dropped its demand for a vote.

The president also said last month on NBC's "Today Show'' that "I don't think you can win'' the war on terrorism, explaining instead that the nation could greatly minimize the likelihood of terrorist attacks. The comment came after months of asserting the United States was winning, and would ultimately triumph, in its war on terror. The statement appeared to be little more than an inelegant way of adding nuance to his explanation, and the president quickly retreated from the words the following day.

Some statements now look off-base after developments in Iraq, such as Bush's response in the first days of the war after learning that Iraqis may have captured some Americans.

"I do know that we expect them to be treated humanely, just like we'll treat any prisoners of theirs that we capture humanely,'' Bush said, many months before American soldiers committed the atrocities at the Abu Ghraib prison.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

President Bush on Iraq
Sept. 12, 2002

Speech before the U.N. General Assembly

"Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence. To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take.''

Sept. 19, 2002

Response to a reporter's question

"If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force. ... This is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It's a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration's ability to keep the peace. That's what this is all about.''

Oct. 7, 2002

Speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Cincinnati

"Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. ... Knowing these realities, American must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.''

March 6, 2003

News conference

"Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. And in order to disarm, it would mean regime change.''

March 17, 2003

Address to nation (two days before invasion)

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. The danger is clear: Using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other.''

May 1, 2003

Aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. ... The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on."

Nov. 11, 2003

Veterans Day address

"Our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan is clear to our service members -- and clear to our enemies. Our men and women are fighting to secure the freedom of more than 50 million people who recently lived under two of the cruelest dictatorships on earth. Our men and women are fighting to help democracy and peace and justice rise in a troubled and violent region. Our men and women are fighting terrorist enemies thousands of miles away in the heart and center of their power, so that we do not face those enemies in the heart of America.''

Aug. 16, 2004

Speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Cincinnati

"Even though we did not find the stockpiles that we thought we would find, Saddam Hussein had the capability to make weapons of mass destruction, and he could have passed that capability on to our enemy, to the terrorists. It is not a risk after September the 11th that we could afford to take. Knowing what I know today, I would have taken the same action." - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...

[b]READ ALSO: "No clue: Poll finds that Bush supporters misread his foreign policy positions"[/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Amputated Limbs, Burst Eyeballs, Broken Bodies: The REAL Cost of War Bush, Won't Let America See!

09.30.04 (10:35 am) [edit]

[b]Bellaciao (European site)[/b] "At the U.S. military hospital on a wooded hilltop here [in Germany], the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives. TheyÃ?Â¢??re the seriously wounded U.S. soldiers who arrive daily at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a growing human toll that belies American election talk of improving times in Iraq. They're the maimed and the scarred that hospital staff believe are largely invisible to an American public ignorant of their suffering. "They have no idea what's going on here, none whatsoever," says Col. Earl Hecker, a critical care doctor who trained at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. The broken bodies move some of the hospital's military staff to question a war producing the most American casualties since Vietnam.And they reduce the chief surgeon to tears. "It breaks your heart," says Lt.-Col. Ronald Place." AMERICA DON'T YOU CARE???

[b]Read article: [/b] http://www.democrats.com/view...

Amputated Limbs, Burst Eyeballs, Broken Bodies: The REAL Cost of War, Bush Won't Let America See!

09.30.04 (10:34 am) [edit]

NO CLUE: New Poll Reveals Bush Supporters Are Idiots Who Get Bush Positions WRONG!!!

09.30.04 (10:30 am) [edit]

As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush’s positions, though to a smaller extent than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry’s positions correctly. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.”

Majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (84%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the International Criminal Court (66%), the treaty banning land mines (72%), and the Kyoto Treaty on global warming (51%). They were divided between those who knew that Bush favors building a new missile defense system now (44%) and those who incorrectly believe he wishes to do more research until its capabilities are proven (41%). However, majorities were correct that Bush favors increased defense spending (57%) and wants the US, not the UN, to take the stronger role in developing Iraq’s new government (70%).

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

NO CLUE: New Poll Reveals Bush Supporters Are Idiots Who Get Bush Positions WRONG!!!

09.30.04 (10:29 am) [edit]

NO CLUE: New Poll Reveals Bush Supporters Are Idiots Who Get Bush Positions WRONG!!!

09.30.04 (10:26 am) [edit]

BUSH'S BLOODBATH: U.S. Veterans Protest War in Bush's Hometown

09.30.04 (10:22 am) [edit]

CRAWFORD — Military veterans came to President Bush's adopted hometown Tuesday to speak against the administration's Iraq policies.

Three veterans' groups opposed to the war as well as a Republican group supporting Sen. John Kerry for president were represented at a sparsely attended news conference at the Crawford Peace House. The former service members say Bush is misleading the public about Iraq and drew comparisons with the Vietnam War.

"It's just a sad reality the country finds itself in," said Manuel Sustaita, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam from Waco, of the war in Iraq. "I, for one, am insulted by this administration trying to deceive the American public."

Sustaita, 60, represented Veterans for America, an organization founded by the four Bolanos brothers of El Paso. All four brothers served in Vietnam and are backing Kerry. The group is sponsoring "The Last Patrol," a caravan of veterans traveling through the southwest, showing support for the Democratic presidential contender. The Kerry supporters will arrive at 11 a.m. today in Waco at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 2148 at 301 Tennessee Ave.

Paul McDaniel, of Waco, who fought in the Army in Vietnam, said veterans are beginning to speak out more about the war in Iraq. They are doing so, despite doctrine learned in the military that "yours is not to ask why, yours is to do and die," said McDaniel, 54, a member of the Veterans for Peace organization.

He also read a statement from a group of Iraq veterans opposed to the war. That organization chided the administration's conduct in what it called an "illegal invasion of Iraq."

"Because of our government's failed policies, it is (soldiers') lives that are being put on the line," said Michael Hoffman, a Marine Corps veteran of the 2003 Iraq invasion and co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War. "It is (soldiers) who are asked to make this ultimate sacrifice. A sacrifice that over 1,000 Americans have made. But we still cling to this failure. It should be painfully obvious that the occupation is not the solution to what is happening in Iraq."

McDaniel said the administration's attempts to let Iraqis take over more of the burden at the present stage of fighting is reminiscent of the failed "Vietnamization" policies by the U.S. in Vietnam.

"The Iraqis are nowhere near ready to take on combat missions or to have free elections," said McDaniel.

Lindsay Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., said the veterans have fought for the right to express their opinion. But she said the president's policy on Iraq is a key to keeping terrorists from the U.S. heartland.

"If we don't fight in places like Baghdad and Kabul, we will be fighting in places like Kansas City," Taylor said in a phone interview, adding the administration simply has a difference of opinion with the anti-war veterans.

Also adding to the mix of voices at the small news briefing was a statement from a group called Republicans for Kerry that claimed Bush was leading the party in the wrong direction. Joshua Collier, resident volunteer of the peace house, read the statement of a member of that Republican group. He said opposition to the Bush administration's policies in Iraq were not limited to any political party.

"The questions are much larger than politics," said Collier, 24. "People are moving across party lines. Like the Peace House, the truth is nonpartisan."

Though big Bush banners and signs are highly visible throughout Crawford's small downtown area, the dissent coming from the house that is a focal point for peace groups is not totally unique in the president's back yard.

Kerry won the endorsement of Crawford's weekly newspaper over the town's famous resident. The Lone Star Iconoclast, with a circulation of 425, said Texans should rate the candidates not by hometown or political party but where they take the country.

The paper was established in 2000 and endorsed Bush that year.

Taylor said the veterans supporting Kerry at the Crawford event do not reflect the general feelings of Texans toward the president, who is expected to have no problem at all carrying his home state.

"Unfortunately for them, I think the president enjoys very, very strong support in Texas," Taylor said. "I don't know how well their message resonates." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

BUSH'S BLOODBATH: U.S. Veterans Protest War in Bush's Hometown

09.30.04 (10:21 am) [edit]

BUSH'S BLOODBATH: Families of Iraq War Dead Target Bush in Ads

09.30.04 (10:18 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON - Angered by President Bush's policy in Iraq, a group of military families whose relatives died there is targeting the president in new television ads to be aired ahead of the Nov. 2 election.

"I think the American people need to know that we have been betrayed in this rush to war," said Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey is among the more than 1,000 U.S. troops who died in the war.

Sheehan is joining a small group of military families in Washington on Wednesday to launch new political ads by an interest group called RealVoices.org, http://www.realvoices.org/ which supports Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's bid for the White House.

"It's important that we get our troops home from Iraq as soon as possible so no other families have to go through what we are going through," said Sheehan of Vacaville, California.

The ads are expected to be aired nationally in the coming weeks and in battleground cities of Las Vegas, Orlando and Albuquerque.

In one ad, Sheehan is seen sobbing as she tells the story of her son, 24-year-old Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, who died in the arms of one of his friends in Iraq on April 4, 2004.

Al Zappala is active in "Military Families Speak Out" (www.mfso.org), a group that opposes the U.S. war in Iraq and has about 1,700 families among its members. He is in Washington for the ads and to attend a peace march on Saturday.

Zappala's son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed on April 26 in Iraq and was the first Pennsylvania National Guard soldier to die in action since World War II.

"I feel so let down by the Bush administration," said Zappala, who said Military Families Speak Out was a non-partisan group.

[b]OPPOSING VIEWS[/b]

Another group, "Military Moms with a Mission," is campaigning in 30 cities across America to tell people why they should vote for Kerry.

"They are traveling the country telling people their stories and why George Bush has let them down. Many are frustrated that George Bush is not telling the truth about the reality in Iraq," said Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton.

Countering this campaign to support Kerry are similar groups who back Bush and his policy in Iraq.

Retired Air Force Capt. Linda Bergin is campaigning on behalf of military families and others in New Jersey and says Bush is the only leader capable of leading America following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

She said many veterans and people still in the military felt Kerry had been disloyal, particularly after he returned home from Vietnam and criticized the U.S. presence there.

"People are heartbroken their people are over there but out of respect of their child, they want to support the president," she said.

Nancy Kennon, founder of the group "Security Moms For Bush," said many military families had contacted her Web site (www.moms4Bush.com) to lend their support and were sick of the negative message pushed by the Kerry campaign.

"I have got some letters from active military moms and they have been saddened by the negative spin," said Kennon, who lives in Westchester, New York. She is the mother of young twin daughters and does not have a child in the military.

The Bush campaign could not immediately be reached for comment on the new ads. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

BUSH'S BLOODBATH: Families of Iraq War Dead Target Bush in Ads

09.30.04 (10:13 am) [edit]

Evidence Indicates That Wellstone Crash Was No Accident!!!

09.29.04 (10:25 pm) [edit]

Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone was a serious man who cared profoundly about his fellow citizens. He took courageous stands against an administration that he viewed with profound suspicion, arguing eloquently against tax cuts for the rich, the subversion of the Constitution, and violating international accords. He would have led the opposition to the war in Iraq if only he had had the chance. Everyone knew it and he may have died because of it.

For nearly a year now, evidence has been accumulating about the event that ended the life of this magnificent human being. Whatever caused the crash was not the plane, the pilots or the weather. In spite of what you may have heard, the plane was exceptional, the pilots well-qualified and the weather posed no significant problems. Even the National Transportation Safety Board's own simulations of the plane, the pilots and the weather were unable to bring the plane down.

This means we have to consider other, less palatable, alternatives, such as small bombs, gas canisters or electromagnetic pulse, radio frequency or High Energy Radio Frequency weapons designed to overwhelm electrical circuitry with an intense electromagnetic field. An abrupt cessation of communication between the plane and the tower took place at about 10:18 a.m., the same time an odd cell phone phenomenon occurred with a driver in the immediate vicinity. This suggests to me the most likely explanation is that one of our new electromagnetic weapons was employed.

The politics of the situation were astonishing. The senator was pulling away from the hand-picked candidate of the Bush machine. Its opportunity to seize control of the U.S. Senate was slipping from its grasp. Its vaunted "invincibility" was being challenged by an outspoken critic of its most basic values. Targeted for elimination, he was going to survive. Here's one man's opinion: Under such conditions, the temptation to take him out may have been irresistible.

Among the striking indications that something was wrong with the NTSB in its inquiry into the causes of the crash is that Carol Carmody, a former employee with the CIA, the head of the team, announced the day after that the FBI had found no indications of terrorist involvement. Yet it is the responsibility of the NTSB to ascertain the cause of the crash, which has yet to be determined to this very day.

So how could the FBI possibly know?

The FBI's prompt arrival was peculiar. As Christopher Bollyn of American Free Press reported (www.rumor
millnews.net, Oct. 29, 2002), "According to Rick Wahlberg, then St. Louis County sheriff, a team of FBI agents was quickly on the crash site about noon, less than an hour after (assistant manager Gary) Ulman and the (fire) chief had first located the site and found a way to access the wreck. This FBI team had come from the distant Twin Cities in record time!"

When Bollyn "asked Ulman if he had notified the FBI about the accident, Ulman said he had not spoken with the bureau at any time. Asked how the FBI got to the site so quickly, Ulman said that he assumed they had come from Duluth. AFP contacted the Duluth office of the FBI and was told that the team of 'recovery' agents had not come from Duluth but had traveled from the FBI office in Minneapolis."

I calculate that this team would have had to have left the Twin Cities at about the same time the Wellstone plane was taking off.

Gary Ulman confirmed to me that the FBI had been on the scene no later than 1 p.m.

I have reviewed the log books maintained by the Sheriff's Department at Eveleth and have discovered that they are grossly incomplete and cannot confirm when the FBI showed up.

The FAA has told me that its records of private aircraft arriving in Duluth that morning have been destroyed, even though they might verify the FBI's early arrival.

And the NTSB has canceled sessions where it would ordinarily take input from the public.

Michael Ruppert (fromthewilderness.com, Nov. 1, 2002) has reported, "The day after the crash I received a message from a former CIA operative who has proven extremely reliable in the past and who is personally familiar with these kinds of assassinations. The message read, 'As I said earlier, having played ball (and still playing in some respects) with this current crop of reinvigorated old white men, these clowns are nobody to screw around with. There will be a few more strategic accidents. You can be certain of that.' "

If you think that's a stretch, consider: Hundreds of young Americans have been put in harm's way by a war that was promoted on the basis of lies about weapons of mass destruction, collaboration with Osama bin Laden, and Sept. 11.

Some 3,000 Americans were killed when the Twin Towers collapsed, and yet the president and the vice president of the United States have done everything they can to obstruct a open and honest investigation of the causes of that traumatic event. And when a leak from his own administration leads to the exposure of a CIA operative concerned with weapons of mass destruction, the President tells us "we may never know."

This is a corrupt administration.

One of the oddest events since the election is that Wellstone's successor in the U.S. Senate, Norm Coleman, has been placed in charge of the Senate Investigations Committee.

That is an extraordinarily sensitive responsibility to be placed upon a freshman senator with no previous experience. My guess would be that it has never happened before. But the reasoning behind it may not be that difficult to fathom: Would anyone be less inclined to pursue the Wellstone death?

One man's opinion: The evidence presented here and elaborated elsewhere in detail establishes a prima facie case that this death was no accident, that the motives were political and begs the question: Was the White House involved?

An investigation by the St. Louis County prosecutor would be most welcome.

In the chorus of memories for a man who made a difference, let us bear in mind that truth is our only defense against an onslaught of lies that have dominated a media that appears too weak or too complicit to resist.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

JIM FETZER, a professor in the philosophy department at University of Minnesota Duluth, is the editor of three books on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy: "Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK" (October 1997); "Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now that We Didn't Know Then" (August 2000); "The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK" (September 2003). - http://www.duluthsuperior.com...

Bush, Kerry Tied in Nationwide Investor's Business Daily Poll

09.29.04 (10:14 pm) [edit]

(Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry are in a statistical dead heat in a nationwide poll taken for Investor's Business Daily.

Kerry has the support of 46 percent of 649 likely voters and Bush is the choice of 45 percent in a poll taken for the newspaper by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence from Sept. 22-27. The results are within the poll's plus or minus 4 percentage point margin of error. A Sept. 14-18 Investor's Business Daily poll showed Bush with a 3 point lead over Kerry.

In a three-way race which includes independent candidate Ralph Nader, Bush and Kerry are tied at 45 percent each among likely voters, with Nader garnering 2 percent. Eight percent of the respondents said they were undecided. Nader has qualified for the ballot in at least 37 states, according to his campaign.

Among 907 registered voters, 44 percent back Kerry, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, and 44 percent back Bush in both the two-way and three-way races.

The Investor's Business Daily poll differs from surveys taken by the Washington Post/ABC News and CNN/USA Today/Gallup, which showed Bush, 58, with a lead of at least 6 percentage points over Kerry. Those polls surveyed voters through Sept. 26.

``All the recent polls show a tighter race,'' said Raghavan Mayur, president of Oradell, New Jersey-based TechnoMetrica. ``The beheading of Americans in Iraq and also high oil prices are factors that could be impacting the results.''

Crude oil prices closed at a record today after exceeding $50 a barrel during trading. Last week two American hostages were beheaded in Iraq. - http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap...

Karl Rove has a history of smearing his opponents with outright lies ...

09.29.04 (9:36 pm) [edit]

[b]So now we get some details[/b] about how the Rove treatment works -- and not just speculation, but with descriptions from former Rove staffers who helped organize some of his trademark whispering campaigns.

An article out this week in [i]The Atlantic Monthly [/i]focuses specifically on a series of races Rove ran in Texas and Alabama in the 1990s.

The Alabama races in particular haven't gotten that much national press attention in the past. And one of the most lizardly passages in the article describes how Rove launched a whispering campaign against one Democratic opponent suggesting that the candidate -- a sitting Alabama state Supreme Court Justice, who had long worked on child welfare issues -- was in fact a pedophile ...

[i]When his term on the court ended, he chose not to run for re-election. I later learned another reason why. Kennedy had spent years on the bench as a juvenile and family-court judge, during which time he had developed a strong interest in aiding abused children. In the early 1980s he had helped to start the Children's Trust Fund of Alabama, and he later established the Corporate Foundation for Children, a private, nonprofit organization. At the time of the race he had just served a term as president of the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. One of Rove's signature tactics is to attack an opponent on the very front that seems unassailable. Kennedy was no exception.

Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out—he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take[/i]."

This is just one snippet from the piece. But when you read the whole thing, what happened in South Carolina in 2000 and what's happening now with Kerry and the Swift Boat business will all seem a lot more clear. - http://www.talkingpointsmemo....

[b]Despicable ...[/b]

Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush

09.29.04 (11:48 am) [edit]

[b]by George Soros

Prepared text of speech delivered September 28, 2004

National Press Club, Washington, DC[/b]

This is the most important election of my lifetime. I have never been heavily involved in partisan politics but these are not normal times. President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values. That is why I am sending you this message. I have been demonized by the Bush campaign but I hope you will give me a hearing.

President Bush ran on the platform of a "humble" foreign policy in 2000. If we re-elect him now, we endorse the Bush doctrine of preemptive action and the invasion of Iraq, and we will have to live with the consequences. As I shall try to show, we are facing a vicious circle of escalating violence with no end in sight. But if we repudiate the Bush policies at the polls, we shall have a better chance to regain the respect and support of the world and to break the vicious circle.

I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of government prevails. I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.

When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society. I started in South Africa in 1979 and established a foundation in my native country, Hungary, in 1984 when it was still under communist rule. China, Poland and the Soviet Union followed in 1987. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I established foundations in practically all the countries of the former Soviet empire and later in other parts of the world and in the United States. These foundations today spend about 450 million dollars a year to promote democracy and open society around the world.

When George W. Bush was elected president, and particularly after September 11, I saw that the values and principles of open society needed to be defended at home. September 11 led to a suspension of the critical process so essential to a democracy - a full and fair discussion of the issues. President Bush silenced all criticism by calling it unpatriotic. When he said that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," I heard alarm bells ringing. I am afraid that he is leading us in a very dangerous direction. We are losing the values that have made America great.

The destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was such a horrendous event that it required a strong response. But the President committed a fundamental error in thinking: the fact that the terrorists are manifestly evil does not make whatever counter-actions we take automatically good. What we do to combat terrorism may also be wrong. Recognizing that we may be wrong is the foundation of an open society. President Bush admits no doubt and does not base his decisions on a careful weighing of reality. For 18 months after 9/11 he managed to suppress all dissent. That is how he could lead the nation so far in the wrong direction.

President Bush inadvertently played right into the hands of bin Laden. The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified. It was President Bush's unintended gift to bin Laden.

War and occupation create innocent victims. We count the body bags of American soldiers; there have been more than 1000 in Iraq. The rest of the world also looks at the Iraqis who get killed daily. There have been 20 times more. Some were trying to kill our soldiers; far too many were totally innocent, including many women and children. Every innocent death helps the terrorists' cause by stirring anger against America and bringing them potential recruits.

Immediately after 9/11 there was a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for us worldwide. It has given way to an equally widespread resentment. There are many more people willing to risk their lives to kill Americans than there were on September 11 and our security, far from improving as President Bush claims, is deteriorating. I am afraid that we have entered a vicious circle of escalating violence where our fears and their rage feed on each other. It is not a process that is likely to end any time soon. If we re-elect President Bush we are telling the world that we approve his policies - and we shall be at war for a long time to come.

I realize that what I am saying is bound to be unpopular. We are in the grip of a collective misconception induced by the trauma of 9/11, and fostered by the Bush administration. No politician could say it and hope to get elected. That is why I feel obliged to speak out. There is a widespread belief that President Bush is making us safe. The opposite is true. President Bush failed to finish off bin Laden when he was cornered in Afghanistan because he was gearing up to attack Iraq. And the invasion of Iraq bred more people willing to risk their lives against Americans than we are able to kill - generating the vicious circle I am talking about.

President Bush likes to insist that the terrorists hate us for what we are - a freedom loving people - not what we do. Well, he is wrong on that. He also claims that the torture scenes at Abu Graib prison were the work of a few bad apples. He is wrong on that too. They were part of a system of dealing with detainees put in place by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and our troops in Iraq are paying the price.

How could President Bush convince people that he is good for our security, better than John Kerry? By building on the fears generated by the collapse of the twin towers and fostering a sense of danger. At a time of peril, people rally around the flag and President Bush has exploited this. His campaign is based on the assumption that people do not really care about the truth and they will believe practically anything if it is repeated often enough, particularly by a President at a time of war. There must be something wrong with us if we fall for it. For instance, some 40% of the people still believe that Saddam Hussein was connected with 9/11 - although it is now definitely established by the 9/11 Commission, set up by the President and chaired by a Republican, that there was no connection. I want to shout from the roof tops: "Wake up America. Don't you realize that we are being misled?"

President Bush has used 9/11 to further his own agenda which has very little to do with fighting terrorism. There was an influential group within the Bush administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney that was itching to invade Iraq long before 9/11. The terrorist attack gave them their chance. If you need a tangible proof why President Bush does not deserve to be re-elected, consider Iraq.

The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish -- if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not necessity, in spite of what President Bush says. The arms inspections and sanctions were working. In response to American pressure, the United Nations had finally agreed on a strong stand. As long as the inspectors were on the ground, Saddam Hussein could not possibly pose a threat to our security. We could have declared victory but President Bush insisted on going to war.

We went to war on false pretences. The real reasons for going into Iraq have not been revealed to this day. The weapons of mass destruction could not be found, and the connection with al Qaeda could not be established. President Bush then claimed that we went to war to liberate the people of Iraq. All my experience in fostering democracy and open society has taught me that democracy cannot be imposed by military means. And, Iraq would be the last place I would chose for an experiment in introducing democracy - as the current chaos demonstrates.

Of course, Saddam was a tyrant, and of course Iraqis - and the rest of the world - can rejoice to be rid of him. But Iraqis now hate the American occupation. We stood idly by while Baghdad was ransacked. As the occupying power, we had an obligation to maintain law and order, but we failed to live up to it. If we had cared about the people of Iraq we should have had more troops available for the occupation than we needed for the invasion. We should have provided protection not only for the oil ministry but also the other ministries, museums and hospitals. Baghdad and the country's other cities were destroyed after we occupied them. When we encountered resistance, we employed methods that alienated and humiliated the population. The way we invaded homes, and the way we treated prisoners generated resentment and rage. Public opinion condemns us worldwide.

The number of flipflops and missteps committed by the Bush administration in Iraq far exceeds anything John Kerry can be accused of. First we dissolved the Iraqi army, then we tried to reconstitute it. First we tried to eliminate the Baathists, then we turned to them for help. First we installed General Jay Garner to run the country, then we gave it to Paul Bremer and when the insurgency became intractable, we installed an Iraqi government. The man we chose was a protégé of the CIA with the reputation of a strong man - a far cry from democracy. First we attacked Falluja over the objections of the Marine commander on the ground, then pulled them out when the assault was half-way through, again over his objections. "Once you commit, you got to stay committed," he said publicly. More recently, we started bombing Falluja again.

The Bush campaign is trying to put a favorable spin on it, but the situation in Iraq is dire. Much of the Western part of the country has been ceded to the insurgents. Even the so-called Green Zone (a small enclave in the center of Baghdad where Americans live and work) is subject to mortar attacks. The prospects of holding free and fair elections in January are fast receding and civil war looms. President Bush received a somber intelligence evaluation in July but he has kept it under wraps and failed to level with the electorate.

Bush's war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq. Afghanistan is slipping from our control. North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and other countries are pursuing nuclear programs with renewed vigor and many other problems remain unattended.

By invading Iraq without a second UN resolution, we violated international law. By mistreating and even torturing prisoners, we violated the Geneva conventions. President Bush has boasted that we do not need a permission slip from the international community, but our actions have endangered our security - particularly the security of our troops.

Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties. Having to fight an insurgency saps their morale. Many of our troops return from Iraq with severe trauma and other psychological disorders. Sadly, many are also physically injured. After Iraq, it will be difficult to recruit people for the armed forces and we may have to resort to conscription.

There are many other policies for which the Bush administration can be criticized but none are as important as Iraq. Iraq has cost us nearly 200 billion dollars -- an enormous sum. It could have been used much better elsewhere. The costs are going to mount because it was much easier to get into Iraq than it will be to get out of there. President Bush has been taunting John Kerry to explain how he would do things differently in Iraq. John Kerry has responded that he would have done everything differently and he would be in a better position to extricate us than the man who got us in there. But it won't be easy for him either, because we are caught in a quagmire.

It is a quagmire that many predicted. I predicted it in my book, The Bubble of American Supremacy. I was not alone: top military and diplomatic experts desperately warned the President not to invade Iraq. But he ignored their experienced advice. He suppressed the critical process. The discussion about Iraq remains stilted even during this presidential campaign because of the notion that any criticism of our Commander-in-Chief puts our troops at risk. But this is Bush's war, and he ought to be held responsible for it. It's the wrong war, fought the wrong way. Step back for a moment from the cacophony of the election campaign and reflect: who got us into this mess? In spite of his Texas swagger, George W. Bush does not qualify to serve as our Commander-in-Chief.

There is a lot more to be said on the subject and I have said it in my book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, now available in paperback. I hope you will read it. You can download the chapter on the Iraqi quagmire free from www.georgesoros.com

If you find my arguments worth considering, please share this message with your friends.

I would welcome your comments at georgesoros.com . I am eager to engage in a critical discussion because the stakes are so high. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush

09.29.04 (11:46 am) [edit]

Families of Iraq War Dead Target Bush in Ads

09.29.04 (11:44 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON - Angered by President Bush's policy in Iraq, a group of military families whose relatives died there is targeting the president in new television ads to be aired ahead of the Nov. 2 election.

"I think the American people need to know that we have been betrayed in this rush to war," said Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey is among the more than 1,000 U.S. troops who died in the war.

Sheehan is joining a small group of military families in Washington on Wednesday to launch new political ads by an interest group called RealVoices.org, which supports Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's bid for the White House.

"It's important that we get our troops home from Iraq as soon as possible so no other families have to go through what we are going through," said Sheehan of Vacaville, California.

The ads are expected to be aired nationally in the coming weeks and in battleground cities of Las Vegas, Orlando and Albuquerque.

In one ad, Sheehan is seen sobbing as she tells the story of her son, 24-year-old Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, who died in the arms of one of his friends in Iraq on April 4, 2004.

Al Zappala is active in "Military Families Speak Out" (www.mfso.org), a group that opposes the U.S. war in Iraq and has about 1,700 families among its members. He is in Washington for the ads and to attend a peace march on Saturday.

Zappala's son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed on April 26 in Iraq and was the first Pennsylvania National Guard soldier to die in action since World War II.

"I feel so let down by the Bush administration," said Zappala, who said Military Families Speak Out was a non-partisan group.

OPPOSING VIEWS

Another group, "Military Moms with a Mission," is campaigning in 30 cities across America to tell people why they should vote for Kerry.

"They are traveling the country telling people their stories and why George Bush has let them down. Many are frustrated that George Bush is not telling the truth about the reality in Iraq," said Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton.

Countering this campaign to support Kerry are similar groups who back Bush and his policy in Iraq.

Retired Air Force Capt. Linda Bergin is campaigning on behalf of military families and others in New Jersey and says Bush is the only leader capable of leading America following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

She said many veterans and people still in the military felt Kerry had been disloyal, particularly after he returned home from Vietnam and criticized the U.S. presence there.

"People are heartbroken their people are over there but out of respect of their child, they want to support the president," she said.

Nancy Kennon, founder of the group "Security Moms For Bush," said many military families had contacted her Web site (www.moms4Bush.com) to lend their support and were sick of the negative message pushed by the Kerry campaign.

"I have got some letters from active military moms and they have been saddened by the negative spin," said Kennon, who lives in Westchester, New York. She is the mother of young twin daughters and does not have a child in the military.

The Bush campaign could not immediately be reached for comment on the new ads. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Families of Iraq War Dead Target Bush in Ads

09.29.04 (11:42 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON - Angered by President Bush's policy in Iraq, a group of military families whose relatives died there is targeting the president in new television ads to be aired ahead of the Nov. 2 election.

"I think the American people need to know that we have been betrayed in this rush to war," said Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey is among the more than 1,000 U.S. troops who died in the war.

Sheehan is joining a small group of military families in Washington on Wednesday to launch new political ads by an interest group called RealVoices.org, which supports Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's bid for the White House.

"It's important that we get our troops home from Iraq as soon as possible so no other families have to go through what we are going through," said Sheehan of Vacaville, California.

The ads are expected to be aired nationally in the coming weeks and in battleground cities of Las Vegas, Orlando and Albuquerque.

In one ad, Sheehan is seen sobbing as she tells the story of her son, 24-year-old Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, who died in the arms of one of his friends in Iraq on April 4, 2004.

Al Zappala is active in "Military Families Speak Out" (www.mfso.org), a group that opposes the U.S. war in Iraq and has about 1,700 families among its members. He is in Washington for the ads and to attend a peace march on Saturday.

Zappala's son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed on April 26 in Iraq and was the first Pennsylvania National Guard soldier to die in action since World War II.

"I feel so let down by the Bush administration," said Zappala, who said Military Families Speak Out was a non-partisan group.

OPPOSING VIEWS

Another group, "Military Moms with a Mission," is campaigning in 30 cities across America to tell people why they should vote for Kerry.

"They are traveling the country telling people their stories and why George Bush has let them down. Many are frustrated that George Bush is not telling the truth about the reality in Iraq," said Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton.

Countering this campaign to support Kerry are similar groups who back Bush and his policy in Iraq.

Retired Air Force Capt. Linda Bergin is campaigning on behalf of military families and others in New Jersey and says Bush is the only leader capable of leading America following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

She said many veterans and people still in the military felt Kerry had been disloyal, particularly after he returned home from Vietnam and criticized the U.S. presence there.

"People are heartbroken their people are over there but out of respect of their child, they want to support the president," she said.

Nancy Kennon, founder of the group "Security Moms For Bush," said many military families had contacted her Web site (www.moms4Bush.com) to lend their support and were sick of the negative message pushed by the Kerry campaign.

"I have got some letters from active military moms and they have been saddened by the negative spin," said Kennon, who lives in Westchester, New York. She is the mother of young twin daughters and does not have a child in the military.

The Bush campaign could not immediately be reached for comment on the new ads. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

WHY I WILL VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT

09.29.04 (11:32 am) [edit]

THE Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3®ˆ years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great.

Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we "always have." We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them.

As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration's decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

The fact is that today's "Republican" Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word "Republican" has always been synonymous with the word "responsibility," which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.

Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. America, though recognized as the leader of the community of nations, has always acted as a part of it, not as a maverick separate from that community and at times insulting towards it. Leadership involves setting a direction and building consensus, not viewing other countries as practically devoid of significance. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance.

In the Middle East crisis of 1991, President George H.W. Bush marshaled world opinion through the United Nations before employing military force to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. Through negotiation he arranged for the action to be financed by all the industrialized nations, not just the United States. When Kuwait had been freed, President George H. W. Bush stayed within the United Nations mandate, aware of the dangers of occupying an entire nation.

Today many people are rightly concerned about our precious individual freedoms, our privacy, the basis of our democracy. Of course we must fight terrorism, but have we irresponsibly gone overboard in doing so? I wonder. In 1960, President Eisenhower told the Republican convention, "If ever we put any other value above (our) liberty, and above principle, we shall lose both." I would appreciate hearing such warnings from the Republican Party of today.

The Republican Party I used to know placed heavy emphasis on fiscal responsibility, which included balancing the budget whenever the state of the economy allowed it to do so. The Eisenhower administration accomplished that difficult task three times during its eight years in office. It did not attain that remarkable achievement by cutting taxes for the rich. Republicans disliked taxes, of course, but the party accepted them as a necessary means of keep the nation's financial structure sound.

The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small business. Today's Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for the loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in the direction of a society of very rich and very poor.

Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will vote for him enthusiastically.

I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely because it carries the label of the party of one's parents or of our own ingrained habits.

[b]John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served on the White House staff between October 1958 and the end of the Eisenhower administration. From 1961 to 1964 he assisted his father in writing "The White House Years," his Presidential memoirs. He served as American ambassador to Belgium between 1969 and 1971. He is the author of nine books, largely on military subjects[/b].

WHY I WILL VOTE FOR JOHN KERRY FOR PRESIDENT

09.29.04 (11:30 am) [edit]

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN

09.28.04 (3:13 pm) [edit]

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.

The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

[b]PASS IT ON ... http://www.thismodernworld.co... [/b]

[b]Courtesy of DamnedYankee http://damnedyankee.tblog.com... [/b]

NEW POLL: Strong Majority of Americans Oppose Bush's Neo-Con Warmongerings

09.28.04 (5:49 am) [edit]

[b]Poll Finds A Nation Chastened by War [/b]

WASHINGTON - Three years of the Bush administration's ''war on terrorism'' appears to have reduced the appetite of the U.S. public and its leaders for unilateral military engagements, according to a major survey released Tuesday http://www.ccfr.org/globalvie... by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR).

Indeed, the survey, the latest in a quadrennial series going back to 1974, found that key national-security principles enunciated by President George W Bush since the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon are opposed by strong majorities of both the public and the elite.

While supporting the idea that Washington should take an active role in world affairs, more than three of every four members of the public reject the notion that the United States ''has the responsibility to play the role of world policeman'' and four of every five say Washington is currently playing that role ''more than it should be''.

In addition, overwhelming majorities of both the public and the elite said that the most important lesson of 9/11 is that the nation needs to ''work more closely with other countries to fight terrorism'' as opposed to ''act more on its own''.

Similar majorities of both the public and leaders rejected Bush's notion of pre-emptive war. Only 17 percent of the public and 10 percent of leaders said that war was justifiable if the ''other country is acquiring weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that could be used against them at some point in the future''.

Fifty-three percent of the public and 61 percent of leaders said that war would be justified only if there is ''strong evidence'' the country is in ''imminent danger'' of attack. For about 25 percent of both the public and the leaders, war would be justified only if the other country attacks first.

The CCFR survey, which because of its rich detail and consistency over the past 30 years is generally taken more seriously than others that are conducted more sporadically, queried nearly 1,200 randomly selected members of the public during the second week of July.

A second survey of 450 ''leaders with foreign policy power, specialization, and expertise'' -- including U.S. lawmakers or their senior staff, university faculty, journalists, senior administration officials, religious leaders, business and labor executives, and heads of major foreign policy organizations or interest groups -- posed the same questions to determine where there may be gaps between the views of the elite and the public at large.

The last CCFR survey was taken in 2002, and normally the next one would not be held until 2006. But the council decided to commission one for 2004, in part due to ''the significant role foreign policy issues are playing in American political life and the 2004 presidential election'', according to Marshall Bouton, CCFR's president.

The council also collaborated with similar efforts by partner organizations in Mexico and South Korea, the conclusions of which will be released in the coming days.

While terrorism and other security threats still loom large in the public's mind, according to this year's survey, ''there is a lowered sense of threat overall compared to 2002'', when foreign policy concerns, particularly terrorism, topped the list of foreign-policy issues that most concerned the public.

''Protecting American jobs'' was the most frequently cited goal of foreign policy in the 2004 poll (78 percent called it a ''very important'' goal), followed by preventing the spread of nuclear weapons (73 percent), and combating international terrorism (71 percent).

For the elite respondents, on the other hand, nuclear non-proliferation and terrorism topped the list, while protecting U.S. jobs ranked eighth out of 14 options.

As for ''critical threats'', three out of four public respondents chose international terrorism, but that was down 10 points from two years ago. Two of three chose WMD, but that was also down by about 17 points from 2002, and virtually all other threats cited in the survey declined substantially.

Thus, ''Islamic fundamentalism'', which was considered a ''critical threat'' by 61 percent of the public in 2002, was cited by only 38 percent this year, while the ''development of China as a world power'', cited by 51 percent in 2002, claimed only 33 percent in 2004.

While, for the public, foreign policy issues virtually across the board were seen as less important than in 2002, that was not true for the foreign-policy elite, which rated ''combating world hunger'', securing energy supplies, improving the global environment, and, most striking, improving the standard of living of less developed nations, significantly higher than two years ago.

In addition, 40 percent of the elite now consider ''strengthening the United Nations'' as a ''very important goal'' of U.S. foreign policy, up 12 percent from 2002. Conversely, the percentage of leaders who cited ''maintaining superior power worldwide'' as a very important goal, fell from 52 percent in 2002 to only 37 percent in 2004, the first time it has received less than majority support since the question was first asked in 1994.

A more chastened approach to foreign policy also showed up in declining support on the part of both the public and the elite for maintaining military bases abroad, particularly in hot spots like the Middle East and states linked to terrorist activities.

More than two-thirds of both the public and the leaders agreed the United States should withdraw from Iraq if a clear majority of Iraqi people want it to do so. As to whether Washington should remove its military presence from the Middle East if a majority of people there desire it, 59 percent of the public said yes, but only 35 percent of the elite agreed.

A majority of the public said Washington should not press Arab states to become more democratic; two-thirds said they opposed a Marshall-type Plan of economic aid and development for the region.

Large majorities of the public and the elite favor regaining traditional constraints on the use of force by individual states, including the United States, and oppose new ideas for making them looser, as often proposed by the Bush administration. At the same time, they favor giving wide-ranging powers to states acting collectively through the United Nations.

Thus, majorities of both the public and leaders oppose states taking unilateral action to prevent other states from acquiring WMD, but support such action if the UN Security Council approves. In the specific case of North Korea, for example, two-thirds of respondents said it should be necessary for Washington to get the council's approval before taking military action.

A majority of the public opposes the United States or any other nation having veto power on the Security Council.

The survey also found strong support for U.S. participation in a wide range of international treaties and agreements, some of which have been rejected or renounced by the Bush administration.

Thus 87 percent of the public and 85 percent of the elite said they would favor the terms of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; 80 percent of both groups said they favored the landmine ban; 76 percent of the public and 70 percent of the elite said they support U.S. participation in the International Criminal Court; and 71 percent of both groups said they back U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming.

Two-thirds of the public and three-quarters of the elite agreed that, in dealing with international problems, Washington should be more willing to make decisions within the UN, even if this means that its views will not prevail.

Asked what specific steps should be taken for strengthening the world body, three-quarters of the public and two-thirds of leaders said the UN should have a standing peacekeeping force.

A majority of 57 percent of the public and a plurality of 48 percent of the elite said the United States should make a general commitment to abide by World Court decisions rather than decide on a case-by-case basis. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

NEW POLL: Strong Majority of Americans Oppose Bush's Neo-Con Warmongerings

09.28.04 (5:47 am) [edit]

Swagger vs. Substance ...

09.28.04 (5:41 am) [edit]

Let's face it: whatever happens in Thursday's debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.

But what will the print media do? Let's hope they don't do what they did four years ago.

Interviews with focus groups just after the first 2000 debate showed Al Gore with a slight edge. Post-debate analysis should have widened that edge. After all, during the debate, Mr. Bush told one whopper after another - about his budget plans, about his prescription drug proposal and more. The fact-checking in the next day's papers should have been devastating.

But as Adam Clymer pointed out yesterday on the Op-Ed page of The Times, front-page coverage of the 2000 debates emphasized not what the candidates said but their "body language." After the debate, the lead stories said a lot about Mr. Gore's sighs, but nothing about Mr. Bush's lies. And even the fact-checking pieces "buried inside the newspaper" were, as Mr. Clymer delicately puts it, "constrained by an effort to balance one candidate's big mistakes" - that is, Mr. Bush's lies - "against the other's minor errors."

The result of this emphasis on the candidates' acting skills rather than their substance was that after a few days, Mr. Bush's defeat in the debate had been spun into a victory.

This time, the first debate will be about foreign policy, an area where Mr. Bush ought to be extremely vulnerable. After all, his grandiose promises to rid the world of evildoers have all come to naught.

Exhibit A is, of course, Osama bin Laden, whom Mr. Bush promised to get "dead or alive," then dropped from his speeches after a botched operation at Tora Bora let him get away. And it's not just bin Laden: most analysts believe that Al Qaeda, which might have been crushed if Mr. Bush hadn't diverted resources and attention to the war in Iraq, is as dangerous as ever.

There's also North Korea, which Mr. Bush declared part of the "axis of evil," then ignored when its regime started building nuclear weapons. Recently, when a reporter asked Mr. Bush about reports that North Korea has half a dozen bombs, he simply shrugged.

Most important, of course, is Iraq, an unnecessary war, which - after initial boasts of victory - has turned into an even worse disaster than the war's opponents expected.

The Kerry campaign is making hay over Mr. Bush's famous flight-suit stunt, but for me, Mr. Bush's worst moment came two months later, when he declared: "There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on." When they really did come on, he blinked: U.S. forces - obviously under instructions to hold down casualties at least until November - have ceded much of Iraq to the insurgents.

During the debate, Mr. Bush will try to cover for this dismal record with swagger, and with attacks on his opponent. Will the press play Karl Rove's game by, as Mr. Clymer puts it, confusing political coverage with drama criticism, or will it do its job and check the candidates' facts?

There have been some encouraging signs lately. There was a disturbing interlude in which many news organizations seemed to accept false claims that Iraq had calmed down after the transfer of sovereignty. But now, as the violence escalates, they seem willing to ask hard questions about Mr. Bush's fantasy version of the situation in Iraq. For example, a recent Reuters analysis pointed out that independent sources contradict his assertions about everything "from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections."

Mr. Bush is also getting less of a free ride than he used to when he smears his opponent. Last week, after Mr. Bush declared that Mr. Kerry "would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today," The Associated Press pointed out that this "twisted his rival's words" - and then quoted what John Kerry actually said.

Nonetheless, on Thursday night there will be a temptation to revert to drama criticism - to emphasize how the candidates looked and acted, and push analysis of what they said, and whether it was true, to the inside pages. With so much at stake, the public deserves better. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

DEBATE HALLIBURTON

09.28.04 (5:38 am) [edit]

George W. Bush is ready to debate John Kerry.

The chronically underestimated president, who invariably prevails in face-to- face showdowns with his general election opponents, has been cramming for weeks. According to Bush aides, the president listens to tapes of Kerry's past debate performances and speeches while he is traveling and during his daily workouts. He has imported a lanky, boring New Englander, New Hampshire U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg, to play the role of Kerry during practice debates at the ranch in Crawford, Texas. And he is now memorizing poll-tested one liners crafted to devastate the Democratic challenger and capture the headlines on the day after Thursday's debate in Coral Gables, Florida.

For his part, Kerry is prepping at a resort in Wisconsin. After two weeks of honing an increasingly aggressive message regarding the crisis in Iraq and the mismanaged war on terrorism, he will go into the first of three critical debates feeling confident. But if all Kerry does is wrestle Bush for the tough-on-terror mantle, that confidence will prove misplaced.

In a foreign policy debate that plays out within the lines defined by White House political czar Karl Rove, the best Kerry can hope for is a draw. Predictable punches will not upset Bush's delivery of the simple basic themes -- "battling against evil," "taking the fight to the terrorists," "safer now than on Sept. 11" -- that have allowed him to maintain relatively broad support in the face of increasingly awful news from around the world.

To knock Bush off message, Kerry will need to come into the debates with a message for which Bush is unprepared. And Kerry will have to hammer away on that message until it supplants Bush's mantras in the mind of the voting public.

So what should Kerry talk about? One word: Halliburton.

Kerry should make the crony capitalism that has allowed Vice President Dick Cheney's corporation to become the dominant player in the management of the botched occupation and reconstruction of Iraq a part of every answer to every question. The Democrat should explain to Americans, again and again and again, that one of the primary explanations for the fact that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has turned out badly is the determination of this administration to assure that Halliburton be the primary profiteer in the region.

No corporation has gained more from the invasion of Iraq than Halliburton. Since the war began, it has moved from No.19 on the U.S. Army's list of top contractors to No. 1. Last year, the company pocketed $4.2 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars. And that's merely the take so far; the company's Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) subsidiary has collected what the Washington Post describes as "one of the contracting plums of the war: a classified no-bid deal worth up to $7 billion to do the restoration work."

Yet, by any measure, Halliburton and KBR have done a horrible job of managing the occupation and the reconstruction. The company has been investigated and fined for wrongdoing, and few days go by without new evidence surfacing to suggest that Halliburton either is massively corrupt or massively inept--or, and this is the most likely explanation, a messy combination of the two. Things are so bad that Halliburton officials are now talking about spinning off KBR in order to try to salvage what is left of the parent corporation's reputation.

Kerry has promised that, "As president, I will stop companies like Halliburton from profiting at the expense of our troops and taxpayers." Referencing that fact that Cheney continues to receive money from Halliburton--$178,437 in 2003 alone--Kerry adds, "I will stop companies from receiving no-bid contracts from the government when the president or vice president is still receiving compensation from that company."

That's a message Kerry should take into the debates. Bush wants to talk about "fighting against evil." Kerry should oblige him by forcing the president to address the evil of war profiteering -- and the crime of handing no-bid contracts to a company that is funneling money into the vice president's bank account. - http://www.thenation.com/theb...

21st CENTURY SCHIZOID MEN

09.28.04 (5:32 am) [edit]

In the foreseeable future, I think all statements, events and appearances arising from this Administration should be exclusively covered by "The Medical Channel" and filed under schizophrenia.

Depending on who you paid attention to this past week, Iraq is either under siege by terrorists or not, national elections will be held or not, more troops are needed to insure peace or not and America is safe or not. Bush and his pals were slipping on so many verbal banana peels that the entire week resembled a political Keystone Cops movie.

On a Sunday talk show, Iraq's Ayad Allawi said: "Foreign terrorists are still pouring in, and they're trying to inflict damage on Iraq to undermine Iraq and to undermine...the democratic process in Iraq, and, indeed this is their last stand."

A few days later, Bush stated that "there are a handful of people who are willing to kill in order to stop the process. And that's what you're seeing on the TV screens." So, which is it? Bush's handful or Allawi's tidal wave of terrorists?

With Allawi touring the country like Bush's running mate, the verbiage has been fast and furious and fairly bizarre. While chants of "Death to America" and "Go Home" echo through the streets of Iraq, Bush shrugged it all off by saying. "I saw a poll that said the 'right track-wrong track' in Iraq was better than here in America.

"It was pretty darn strong. I mean, the people see a better future."

Joe Lockhart, of the Kerry campaign was flummoxed by this statement. "Did Bush really just say that?" he asked, incredulously.

"That's what I call unhinged from reality."

It gets better. The "poll" Bush cited was conducted by the International Republican Institute, a group aimed at advancing democracy. They said 51% of Iraqis (presumably the ones still alive) felt they were heading in the right direction, 31% said they weren't. In July, a CIA poll said 90% of Iraqis viewed US forces as occupiers and half viewed the insurgents as liberators.

Unhinged? And then some.

John Kerry noted the schizoid nature of the comments, saying: "The prime minister and the president are here obviously to put their best face on the policy, but the fact is that the CIA estimates, the reporting, the ground operations and the troops all tell a different story."

In response to Kerry's comments, both Bush and Cheney came close to branding them "seditious." Cheney took the lead with "John Kerry is trying to tear down all the good that has been accomplished, and his words are destructive to our effort in Iraq and in the global war on terror. (NOTE: Two independent fights that, thanks to our invasion, are now kissin' cousins.)

"I must say I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Senator Kerry showed for this man of courage, when he rushed to hold a press conference and attack the prime minister, a man America must stand beside to defeat the terrorists."

Not to be outdone, Bush screwed on his best "revival tent" face and declared: "You can embolden an enemy by sending mixed messages."

At a whistle stop, he explained: "You cannot lead the war on terror if you wilt when times are tough...What kind of a message does it send our troops, who are risking their lives and who see firsthand the mission is hard, but know the mission is critical to our success. ... We will not waver."

Allawi, caught up in the throes of "stayin' the course" (as opposed to "stayin' alive," which many Iraqis aren't), chimed in with: "When political leaders sound the sirens of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourages more violence."

Welcome to the Republican Party, Meester Prime Minister. Welcome to America. Where dissent is now considered sedition.

Now, as to the upcoming elections? Bush says they will happen. A national referendum. Allawi says they will happen. Rumsfeld? He says they will happen...kinda.

"Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country - in some places you couldn't because the violence was too great. So be it. Nothing's perfect in life. You have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet."

Hmmm. Do you also bet having a fragmented election will also fragment a country? Can you say "Civil War?" (Rumsfeld, please note: we didn't handle our own Civil War all that well in terms of casualties and, come to think of it, the Reconstruction period wasn't all that hot, either.)

He later turned on the gasbag full blast: "Is it dangerous? You bet. Will there be elections? I think so. Might there be some portion of the country where the terrorists decide they're going to mess things up? Possibly. Does that mean that there won't be elections? No."

Are we tired of you asking yourself inane questions and then waffling on the answers to the inane questions you just asked yourself? You bet. Possibly. I think so.

Allawi also waffled on the elections a tad, saying that out of the 18 provinces in Iraq "14 to 15 are completely safe." He went on to say that the elections probably will not be the best. He added that the possibility of partial elections was in the mix. By the by, it's always a good sign when the ruler of a country has to waffle on how many provinces are safe. Perhaps buying a calculator is in order. Or a map?

Kerry, amazed at the weird rhetoric, summed it up thusly: "The United States and the Iraqis have retreated from whole areas of Iraq. There are no-go zones in Iraq today. You can't hold an election in a no-go zone."

Shhh. You're making sense.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, apparently away from all media all week, weighed in saying that the January elections will definitely encompass the entirety of Iraq. "I think we're going to have an election that is free and open, and that has to be open to all citizens. We've got to do our best efforts to get in troubled areas. ...I think we're going to have these elections in all parts of the country. I know of no changes and no plan."

The key words there are "no plan."

Kerry weighed in on this flim-flammery, stating: "We have an administration in disarray. The secretary of defense saying one thing and being corrected. The president saying one thing and being contradicted by the prime minister. The secretary of state saying one thing and being contradicted by the president."

Clearly, Kerry has not signed the loyalty oath.

In terms of securing the elections that will or won't happen kinda, sorta, maybe? Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. troops in the Middle East, said that more troops will be needed. Maybe. He said that they probably will be Iraqi peacekeepers.

Or not. "I don't foresee a need for more American troops, but we can't discount it."

So, we maybe, sort of, have to send or not..uh....oh, forget it.

And, now, a word from our President, who claims that Abizaid hasn't mention this "more boots on the ground" factoid to him, "But if he were to say that, I'd listen to him."

Meanwhile, back at Schizoid Central: Rumsfeld who, while admitting that more troops might be necessary, within twenty-four hours of that admission, added that we could begin WITHDRAWING troops before there is peace in Iraq. "Any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and US forces would obviously be, I think, unwise because it has never been peaceful and perfect, and it isn't likely to be."

Translation: the door to Hell has been opened and it can't be closed any time soon.

Question: When is it safe to say that we screwed up in a major way and, now, want out in the worst way?

So, who will answer these tough questions? Not Bush, who quipped, re: Iraq: "Talk to the leader. I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America where it's nice and safe and secure."

The same day Bush touted our coziness, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft urged federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials to keep up efforts to thwart a possible attack by al-Qaida in the weeks leading up to the November elections stateside.

Said a senior Justice Department official: "Given that the intelligence was pegged to an attack between now and the election, the closer we get to the election, obviously the smaller the window gets and the greater our concern gets. We are engaged in a full-court press in every corner of the country to try to detect and disrupt the attack that we're worried about."

You can't read mere newspapers to figure all this out. You need a Quija Board. D'oh!

In-between dueling Administration quotes, Kerry and Edwards remained voices of sanity (remember those?). After noting that "Iraq is now what it was not before the war, a haven for terrorists," Kerry went on to say "I don't view these (Bush) people as conservatives. I actually view them as extreme, and I think their policies have been extreme, and that extends all the way to Iraq, where this president, in my judgment, diverted the real war on terror - which was Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida - and almost obsessively moved to deal with Iraq in a way that weakened our nation, overextended our armed forces, cost us $200 billion and created a breach in our oldest alliances."

But aside from that? We're doing okay.

Edwards was more succinct: "George W. Bush needs to come back to planet Earth and get out of fantasy land."

And, after fantasy land? How about getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Remember the description "unhinged?"

How does this grab you? At the same time as six more hostages were snatched, the aging mother of a British hostage pleaded for his life on television and the 1,043rd American died, the Republican House took a bold step. It voted to protect the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance from further court challenges, including any posed by the Supreme Court.

Fantasy land.

Unhinged.

Delusional.

The Bush team working for you!

It's time to put The Hemlock Society on your speed-dial list.- http://mkanejeeves.com/

21st CENTURY SCHIZOID MEN

09.28.04 (5:26 am) [edit]

MUST READ: 'The effect of the war in Iraq on America's security'

09.28.04 (5:19 am) [edit]

[b]By Senator Ted Kennedy

Remarks delivered at The George Washington University, September 27, 2004[/b]

Thank you Steve, for that generous introduction. Your many years of impressive leadership at GW have benefited the students, the faculty, and the whole city. I commend you as well for your support for the DC public schools, and your commitment to help them in their time of need, and increase opportunities for their students. Thank you for all you do so well.

I'm honored to be at GW today, and to have this opportunity to speak to all of you at this defining moment for our nation. Five weeks from tomorrow, the American people will decide the next President of the United States. The consequences of the election will be enormous for our country here at home and our role in the world. Every American has a responsibility to vote, and I know you'll approach that responsibility with the seriousness it deserves.

President Bush's record on Iraq is clearly costing American lives and endangering America in the world. Our President won't change, or even admit how wrong he's been and still is. Despite the long line of mistakes and blunders and outright deception, there has been no accountability.

Most of you will probably be voting for the first time, as will many other college students throughout America. One of the few positive results of the Vietnam War is the irresistible momentum it gave Congress thirty-four years ago to pass legislation lowering the voting age to 18. Long-standing opposition crumbled in the face of one simple truth-"Old enough to fight, old enough to vote." Hopefully, because of the war in Iraq, young voters in communities across America will finally be moved to help our democracy work, by going to the polls in the large numbers long expected.

My topic today, as you can guess, is the war in Iraq. In another presidential election campaign 24 years ago, a Republican governor named Ronald Reagan posed the defining question to the American people in that election, when he asked, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" That simple question has even greater relevance now than when Ronald Reagan asked it.

The defining issue today is our national security. Especially in this post-9/11 world, people have the right to ask Ronald Reagan's question in a very specific and all-important way-are we safer today because of the policies of President George W. Bush?

Any honest assessment can lead to only one answer, and that answer is an emphatic no. President Bush is dead wrong and John Kerry is absolutely right. We are not safer today. And the reason we are not safer is because of President Bush's misguided war in Iraq.

The President's handling of the war has been a toxic mix of ignorance, arrogance, and stubborn ideology. No amount of Presidential rhetoric or preposterous campaign spin can conceal the truth about the steady downward spiral in our national security since President Bush made the decision to go to war in Iraq. If this election is decided on the question of whether America is safer because of President George Bush, John Kerry will win in a landslide.

Enough time has now passed to make us sure of that verdict, beyond any reasonable doubt.

Shakespeare stated the enduring age-old principle eloquently and wisely when he wrote: "Time's glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light."

No issue is more important today. The battle against terrorism is a battle we must win. Even those who opposed the war in Iraq understand that we cannot cut and run, that this is an American issue. But to remain silent in the face of mounting failures by this President and this White House is to weaken our security even further, and we cannot let that happen.

I thank God that President Bush was not our President at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Even after 9/11, it is wrong for this President or any president to shoot first and ask questions later, to rush to war and ignore or even muzzle serious doubts by experienced military officers and experienced officials in the State Department and the CIA about the rationale and justification for the war, and the strategy for waging it.

We all know that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. We've known it for more than 20 years. We're proud, very proud, of our troops for their extraordinary and swift success in removing Saddam from power. But as we also now know beyond doubt, he did not pose the kind of immediate threat to our national security that could possibly justify a unilateral, preventive war without the broad support of the international community. There was no reason whatsoever to go to war when we did, in the way we did, and for the false reasons we were given.

The Administration's insistence that Saddam could provide nuclear material, or even nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda has been exposed as an empty threat. It should have never been used by George W. Bush to justify an ideological war that America never should have fought.

Saddam had no nuclear weapons. In fact, not only were there no nuclear weapons, there were no chemical or biological weapons either, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind.

Nor was there any persuasive link between Al Qaeda and Saddam and the 9/11 attacks. A 9/11 Commission Staff Statement put it plainly: "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." The 9/11 Commission Report stated clearly that there was no "operational" connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

Secretary of State Colin Powell now agrees that there was no correlation between 9/11 and Saddam's regime. So does Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Nonetheless, President Bush continues to cling to the fiction that there was a relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. As the President said in his familiar Bush-speak, "The reason that I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

That's the same logic President Bush keeps using today in his repeated stubborn insistence that the situation is improving in Iraq, and that we and the world are safer because Saddam is gone.

The President and his administration continue to paint a rosy picture of progress in Iraq. Just last Wednesday, he referred to the growing insurgency as "a handful of people." Some handful!

Vice President Cheney says we're "moving in the right direction," despite the worsening violence. Our troops are increasingly the targets of deadly attacks. American citizens are being kidnapped and brutally beheaded. But Secretary Rumsfeld says he's "encouraged" by developments in Iraq.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina doesn't buy that, and he has said so clearly: "We do not need to paint a rosy scenario for the American people."

Neither does Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Vietnam veteran and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He stated unequivocally last week, "I don't think we're....winning. The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq."

The National Intelligence Estimate in July, although not yet made public, made this point as well-and made it with such breathtaking clarity that for the good of our country, unnamed officials discussed it with the press. The New York Times said the estimate "spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq." According to the same New York Times report and other reports, the National Intelligence Estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of next year. The worst case scenario is that Iraq plunges into outright civil war. The best case scenario it says-the best case-is an Iraq with violence still at current levels, with tenuous political and economic stability. Yet President Bush categorically rejected that description, saying the CIA was "just guessing." Last week, he retreated somewhat. He said he should have used "estimate," instead of "guess."

In other words, the best-case scenario, between now and the end of 2005-2005--is that our soldiers will be bogged down in a continuing quagmire with no end in sight. President Bush refuses to give the time of day to advice like that by the best intelligence analysts in his Administration, but the American people need to hear it.

The outlook is bleak, and it's easy to understand why. It's because the number of insurgents has gone up. The number of their attacks on our troops has gone up. The sophistication of the attacks has gone up. The number of our soldiers killed or wounded has gone up. The number of hostages seized and even savagely executed has gone up.

Our troops are under increasing fire. More than a thousand of America's finest young men and women have been killed. More than seven-thousand have been wounded.

In August alone, we had 863 American casualties. Our forces were attacked an average of 70 times a day-higher than for any other month since President Bush dressed up in a flight suit, flew out to the aircraft carrier, and recklessly declared "Mission Accomplished" a year and a half ago.

The President, the Vice President, the National Security Council, Secretary Rumsfeld, and other civilian leaders in the Pentagon failed to see the insurgency that took root last year and that began to metastasize like a deadly cancer. How could they not have noticed that?

Perhaps because they were still celebrating their mission accomplished.

For two years, terrorist cells have been spreading like cancer cells. Any doctor who let that happen would be guilty of malpractice. Is it only coincidence that one of the principal domestic priorities of the Bush Administration is to protect doctors from malpractice lawsuits?

In many places in Iraq today, it is too dangerous to go out, even with guards. The State Department does not attempt to conceal the truth, at least in its travel warnings. Its September 17th advisory states that Iraq remains "very dangerous."

As much as 15 to 20% of the country has inadequate security. Whole cities are considered "no-go" zones for our troops-presumably to avoid even greater casualties until after the election.

We continue to use so-called "precision" bombing in Iraq, even though our bombs can't tell whether it's terrorists or innocent families inside the buildings they hit.

What is helping to unite so many Iraqi people in hatred of America is their emerging sense that America is unwilling - not just unable - to rebuild their shattered country and provide for their basic needs. Far from sharing President Bush's unrealistically rosy view, they see up-close that their hopes for peace and stability are receding every day. Inevitably, more and more Iraqis feel that attacks on American forces are acceptable, even if they would not resort to violence themselves.

For every mistake we make, for every innocent Iraqi child we accidentally kill in another bombing raid, the ranks of the insurgents climb, and so does their fanatical determination to stop at nothing to drive us out. An Army Reservist described the deteriorating situation this way: "For every guerilla we kill with a 'smart bomb,' we kill many more innocent civilians and create rage and anger in the Iraqi community. This rage and anger translates into more recruits for the terrorists and less support for us."

The Iraqi people's anger is also fueled by the persistent blackouts, the power shortages, the lack of electricity, the destroyed infrastructure, the relentless violence, the massive lack of jobs and basic necessities and services.

By any reasonable standard, our policy in Iraq is failing. We are steadily losing ground in the war. The American people are seeing through the White House smokescreen more clearly every day - seeing the catastrophic failures resulting from the Bush Administration's gross incompetence in managing so many aspects of our occupation of Iraq. We can't go on like this.

Before the war, President Bush and his advisers manipulated, mishandled, and misled the American people about the intelligence, because they were so focused - so blindly focused - on removing Saddam Hussein from power.

They bungled the pre-war diplomacy on Iraq, insulted our friends, and left us more isolated in the world than ever before in our history, unable to obtain real allied support.

They failed to plan for the possibility that the liberation of Iraq would not be the cakewalk they predicted. They arrogantly rejected the counsel, the cautions, and the expertise of the professionals in the State Department most familiar with planning for post-war and post-conflict conditions.

Our soldiers were not adequately trained for the missions thrust upon them. Month after month, our courageous troops could not get even enough armored vests of their own or enough armor for their humvees to protect themselves on patrol. What kind of leadership is it, when month after month, our troops on patrol are so urgently in need of protective armor that they call home in desperation and ask their loved ones to buy armor at the local store and fed-ex it to them in Iraq?

The Administration shrugged when the massive looting began after the fall of Saddam. Secretary Rumsfeld said, "Stuff happens." They foolishly disbanded the Iraqi army, but let them keep their weapon and left ammunitions depots unguarded, creating a bonanza for the insurgents. The Bush Administration has yet to effectively train a new Iraqi army, or even provide the existing units with adequate equipment.

President Bush's repeated insistence that the United States will stay in Iraq "as long as necessary and not one day longer" now has a hollow and tragic ring to our men and women in uniform and their increasingly worried families. They deserve to hear more from our President than happy talk like that.

President Bush speaks about his commitment to genuine sovereignty for Iraq, so that the Iraqi people can govern themselves. But many signs on the ground strongly suggest that we are preparing a long-term military presence. We are also building and staffing the largest American embassy in the world, a huge additional permanent American presence.

Yet another serious failure is the way the Bush Administration has so badly botched every aspect of the reconstruction of Iraq. These failures have also inflamed tensions and created serious dangers as well. Seeds of the insurgency were sown in the earliest days of reconstruction, when we failed to guarantee the openness and the fairness of the reconstruction process. Our failure to have Iraqis perform as much of the reconstruction work as possible may have created huge profits for American contractors, but it also created huge numbers of disgruntled Iraqis, who are easy prey for insurgents to recruit and even pay to kill our soldiers.

The contracts themselves have led to incredible absurdities. Cement is being imported at a far higher cost that what Iraqis could manufacture for themselves. What kind of reconstruction policy is that?

As more evidence of gross mismanagement, the Bush Administration can't account for 8 billion dollars in Iraqi oil funds, apparently because so many of those dollars went to phantom Iraqi soldiers and phantom policemen. Thousands of them magically appeared on payrolls of the new Iraqi government, but they never existed. Eight billion dollars is just lost? Who is being held accountable?

The Administration has also mismanaged the 18 billion dollars approved by Congress a year ago for the reconstruction. Despite the vast need, only a tiny fraction of that amount has actually been spent. Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the highly respected chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says the slow rate of spending "means that we are failing to fully take advantage of one of our most potent tools to influence Iraq." Of the bungled reconstruction work, he says, "This is the incompetence in the Administration."

Why has the reconstruction effort been so disastrous? Only partly because the security situation is so dangerous. A more fundamental reason is emerging. The Bush Administration tried to carry out the reconstruction with its ideology, instead of an honest strategy. Instead of trying seriously to create jobs for Iraqis, they tried to carry out a plan to privatize virtually every part of the Iraqi economy. It's Republican ideology run amuck. It's bad enough that they're trying to do that to the American economy. It's preposterous to try and do it in Iraq.

The Administration didn't anticipate the obvious result of precipitously opening up Iraq's economy to foreign competition after decades of stagnation. They thought they could use Iraq as an experiment in laissez-faire economics. But the result has been far fewer jobs for Iraqis and far greater support for insurgents. Meanwhile, Vice President Cheney's friends at Halliburton were among the first in line for the gravy train.

Across Iraq, these blunders unleashed forces so powerful and so violent that the Administration didn't even know what hit them. Their disastrous economic strategy was clearly a major factor in the rise of the armed resistance, and it never should have happened.

Twelve years ago, the first President Bush lost his campaign for re-election, because he couldn't understand how deeply the American people felt about the troubled economy. The fundamental concern of that time was summed up in four blunt words, "It's the economy, stupid." The fundamental concern of today takes one less word to sum up -"It's Iraq, stupid."

In the dirtiest tactic so far in the Presidential election campaign, Vice President Cheney claims that Al Qaeda wants John Kerry to win this election. It's despicable to say something like that. It is not unpatriotic to tell the truth to the American people about the war in Iraq. In this grave moment for our country, to use the words of Thomas Jefferson, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

Most likely, Mr. Cheney's ugly charge is a desperate and cynical attempt by the Bush campaign to immunize President Bush, in case another terrorist attack takes place in our country on his watch, in the remaining days before the election.

Another brazen tactic is being used as well. How dare President Bush accuse John Kerry of flip flops on the war in Iraq. My response is "Physician, heal thyself." President Bush is the all-time world-record-holder for flip flops. Nothing John Kerry has said remotely compares with the President's gigantic flip flops on the reasons he went to war in Iraq.

The President keeps saying America and the world are safer today and better off today because Saddam Hussein is gone. In any meaningful sense, he's wrong. A brutal dictator is gone because of the war in Iraq, and that's good. But no matter how many rhetorical double-twisting back flips President Bush performs, his disingenuous claim that the war has made America safer is wrong-- and may well be catastrophically wrong.

Let's count the ways that George Bush's war has not made America safer.

Number One: Iraq has been a constant perilous distraction from the real war on terrorism. There was no persuasive link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. We should have finished the job in Afghanistan, finished the job on Al Qaeda, and finished the job on Osama bin Laden.

Number Two: The mismanagement of the war in Iraq has created a fertile and very dangerous new breeding ground for terrorists in Iraq and a powerful magnet for Al Qaeda that did not exist before the war. We can't go a day now without hearing of attacks in Iraq by insurgents and Al Qaeda terrorists, and our troops are in far greater danger because of it.

Number Three: Saddam Hussein may be behind bars, and that's a significant plus for America and the world, as President Bush says. But the war in Iraq has clearly distracted us from putting Osama bin Laden behind bars-- and that's a huge minus. The President likes to talk about school reform, so let's try a little third grade math. If you add a significant plus and a huge minus, you don't wind up with a plus.

Number Four: Because of the war, the danger of terrorist attacks against America itself has become far greater. Our preoccupation with Iraq has given Al Qaeda more than two full years to regroup and plan murderous new assaults on us. We know that Al Qaeda will try to attack America again and again here at home, if it possibly can. Yet instead of staying focused on the real war on terror, President Bush rushed headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq

Number Five, and most ominously: The Bush Administration's focus on Iraq has left us needlessly more vulnerable to an Al Qaeda attack with a nuclear weapon. The greatest threat of all to our homeland is a nuclear attack. A mushroom cloud over any American city is the ultimate nightmare, and the risk is all too real. Osama bin Laden calls the acquisition of a nuclear device a "religious duty." Documents captured from a key Al Qaeda aide three years ago revealed plans even then to smuggle high-grade radioactive materials into the United States in shipping containers.

If Al Qaeda can obtain or assemble a nuclear weapon, they will certainly use it - on New York, or Washington, or any other major American city. The greatest danger we face in the days and weeks and months ahead is a nuclear 9/11, and we hope and pray that it is not already too late to prevent. The war in Iraq has made the mushroom cloud more likely, not less likely, and it never should have happened.

Number Six: The war in Iraq has provided a powerful new worldwide recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. We know Al Qaeda is getting stronger, because its attacks in other parts of the world are increasing. In the eight years before 9/11, Al Qaeda conducted three attacks. But in the three years since 9/11, it has carried out a dozen more attacks, killing hundreds in Spain, Pakistan, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the world.

Number Seven: Because of the war, Afghanistan itself is still unstable. Taliban and Al Qaeda elements roam the country. A dangerous border with Pakistan, where terrorists can easily cross continues to be wide open. President Hamid Karzai is frequently forced to negotiate with warlords who control private armies in the tens of thousands. Opium production is at a record level, and is being used to finance terrorism. Our troops there are in greater danger. Free and fair elections there are in greater danger. The war in Iraq has stretched our troops thin to the point where we can't provide enough additional forces to stop the rising drug trade and enable President Karzai to gain full control of the country and root out Al Qaeda. How can we afford not to do that?

Number Eight: We've alienated long-time friends and leaders in other nations, whom we heavily depend on for intelligence, for border enforcement, for shutting off funds to Al Qaeda, and for many other types of support in the ongoing war against international terrorism. Mistrust of America has soared throughout the world. We're especially hated in the Muslin world. The past two years have seen the steepest and deepest fall from grace our country has ever suffered in the eyes of the world community in all our history. We remember the enormous goodwill that flowed to America in the aftermath of September 11th, and we should never have squandered it.

Does President Bush ever learn? His chip-on-the-shoulder address to the United Nations last week was yet another missed opportunity to turn the page and start regaining the genuine support of the world community for a sensible policy on Iraq.

In fact, the President's arrogance toward the world community has left our soldiers increasingly isolated and alone. We have nearly ninety percent of the troops on the ground in Iraq. More than ninety-five percent of the killed and wounded are Americans. Instead of other nations joining us, initially supportive nations are pulling out. The so-called coalition of the willing has become the coalition of the dwindling.

Number Nine: Our overall military forces are stretched to the breaking point because of the war in Iraq. As the Defense Science Board recently told Secretary Rumsfeld, "Current and projected force structure will not sustain our current and projected global stabilization commitments." Our troops in Iraq are under an order that prevents them from leaving active-duty when their term of service is over. Lt. Gen. John Riggs said it clearly: "I have been in the Army 39 years, and I've never seen the Army as stretched in that 39 years as I have today."

That fact makes it harder for us to respond to threats elsewhere in the world. As John McCain warned last week, if we have a problem in some other flash-point in the world, "it's clear, at least to most observers, that we don't have sufficient personnel."

The war has also undermined the Guard and Reserve. The average tour for reservists recalled to active duty is now 320 days. In the first Gulf War, it was 156 days. In Bosnia and Kosovo, 200 days. A survey by the Defense Department last May found that reservists, their spouses, their families, and their employers are less supportive now of remaining in the military than they were a year ago. Since Guard members are also first-responders for any terrorist attack in the United States, our homeland security as well is being weakened because of their loss. Surely, no one in America wants the legacy of George W. Bush to be that America reinstated the draft.

In the words of the person for whom this city and this distinguished university are named, "There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well-prepared to meet the enemy." George Washington would be appalled at how unprepared the war in Iraq has made us to produce peace-and we should be appalled as well.

Number Ten: The war in Iraq has undermined the basic rule of international law that protects captured American soldiers. The Geneva Conventions are supposed to protect our forces, but the brutal interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have lowered the bar for treatment of POWs and endangered our soldiers throughout the world.

Number Eleven: While President Bush has been pre-occupied with Iraq, not just one, but two, serious nuclear threats have been rising-from North Korea, and Iran. Four years ago, North Korea's plutonium program was inactive. Its nuclear rods were under seal. Two years ago, as the Iraq debate became intense, North Korea expelled the international inspectors and began turning its fuel rods into nuclear weapons. At the beginning of the Bush Administration, North Korea was already thought to have two such weapons. Now they may have eight or more-- and the danger is far greater.

Iran too is now on a faster track that could produce nuclear weapons. The international inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium at two nuclear sites, and Iran admitted last March that it had centrifuges to enrich uranium. The international community might be more willing to act, if President Bush had not abused the U.N. resolution passed on Iraq two years ago, when he took the words "serious consequences" as a license for launching his unilateral war in Iraq. Now, after that breach of faith with the world community, other nations now refuse to trust us enough to enact a similar U.N. resolution on Iran--because they fear President Bush will use it to justify another reckless preventive war.

Number Twelve: While we focused on the non-existent nuclear threat from Saddam, we have not done enough to safeguard the vast amounts of unsecured nuclear material in the world. According to a joint report by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Harvard's Managing-the-Atom-Project , "scores of nuclear terrorist opportunities lie in wait in countries all around the world" - especially at sites in the former Soviet Union that contain enough nuclear material for a nuclear weapon and are poorly defended against terrorists and criminals. As former Senator Sam Nunn said, "The most effective, least expensive way to prevent nuclear terrorism is to secure nuclear weapons and materials at the source." How loudly does the alarm bell have to ring before President Bush wakes up?

Number Thirteen: The neglect of the Bush Administration on all aspects of homeland security because of the war is frightening. We're pouring nearly five billion dollars a month into Iraq - yet we're grossly short-changing the urgent need both to strengthen our ability to prevent terrorist attacks here at home, and to strengthen our preparedness to respond to them if they occur. As former Republican Senator Warren Rudman, Chairman of the Independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, said recently, "Homeland security is terribly under-funded, and we cannot allow that to continue." Chemical plants across the country have been called "ticking time bombs," highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Police, firefighters, and other first responders have seven billion dollars less in basic equipment they urgently need. Our hospitals are unprepared for a bioterrorist attack. Our land borders, our seaports, our shipping containers, our railroads, our transit systems, our waterways, our nuclear power plants-none of these have sufficient funds for protection against terrorist attacks, even though the Bush Administration has put the nation on high alert for such attacks five times in the past three years.

You can't pack all these reasons why America is not safer into a 30-second television response ad or a news story or an editorial. But as anyone who cares about the issue can quickly learn, our President has utterly no credibility when he keeps telling us that America and the world are safer because he went to war in Iraq and rid us of Saddam.

President Bush's record on Iraq is clearly costing American lives and endangering America in the world. Our President won't change, or even admit how wrong he's been and still is. Despite the long line of mistakes and blunders and outright deception, there has been no accountability. As election day draws closer, the buck is circling more and more closely over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Only a new President can right the extraordinary wrongs of the Bush Administration on our foreign policy and our national security.

On November 2nd, the American people will decide whether or not they still have confidence in this President's leadership. When we ask ourselves the fundamental question whether President Bush has made us safer, there can be only one answer: no, he has not. That's why America needs new leadership.

We could have been, and we should have been, much safer than we are today. We cannot afford to stay this very dangerous course. This election cannot come too soon. As I've said before, the only thing America has to fear is four more years of George Bush. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

MUST READ: 'The effect of the war in Iraq on America's security'

09.28.04 (5:16 am) [edit]

DEMOCRATS.COM'S TROOP NEWS

09.28.04 (5:12 am) [edit]

As a thank you to US troops around the world for your ongoing sacrifices and hard work, we will be presenting a special "news log" for our troops and their families, which will appear on Saturdays, hopefully in a regular manner. Sections include: "White Knights" (military heroes of the week), "Officers and Leaders Behaving Badly," "Bits n 'Pieces" and "Humor."

[b]Read more:[/b] http://democrats.com/view.cfm...

A'W'OL BUSH'S MESS: IRAQ IS A BLOODBATH!!!

09.27.04 (8:17 am) [edit]

[b]Iraq Now World's Most Hostile Environment-Analyst[/b]

DUBAI (Reuters) - The Iraqi insurgency has reached a critical new level with radical Sunni and Shi'ite groups spreading beyond their traditional bases in the world's "most hostile environment," a security analyst said on Sunday.

Paul Beat, director of International Asset Protection at London-based Control Risks Group, said the violence of recent weeks, with militants seizing foreign hostages from the heart of Baghdad and staging a spate of suicide bombings, marked a new stage in the conflict.

"Terrorists are operating in larger and larger groups and becoming more and more daring," Beat, a former counter-terrorist specialist in the British army, told Reuters on the sidelines of the forum in the United Arab Emirates on Iraq reconstruction.

"They're launching bigger, multiple attacks. Now they use one vehicle at the entrance (to compounds) to knock out guards and then drive a second bomb through to get inside," he said.

In another example, a grisly videotape of the beheading of a U.S. hostage this month showed white curtains billowing from the breeze as light flooded in from an open window -- suggesting little attempt by militants to conceal their activities, Beat noted.

"The Sunni extremists have moved out of their traditional strongholds of Falluja and Ramadi and are operating all over west and central Iraq with increasing boldness," Beat told potential Iraq investors at the seminar.

"The Mehdi militia are operating all over south Iraq and there's increasing evidence of them operating in the center and north of Iraq," he said, describing Iraq as currently the world's "most hostile" environment.

The Mehdi Army of rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr relinquished control of the southern city of Najaf last month after a stand-off with U.S. troops, but Sadr has refused to disarm the Shi'ite militia.

Falluja, in the Sunni Muslim heartland of Iraq, has long been a center of anti-U.S. activity since U.S.-led forces invaded last year to end the rule of Saddam Hussein.

Beat said working in Iraq was still possible for companies but that people heading there now needed armed protection.

"There are large areas of Baghdad which are no-go for the coalition, and a lot of parts of Basra which are now no-go too," he said, adding that a steady flow of international firms setting up in Iraq had all but dried up.

Beat concluded his gloomy assessment saying it would only be possible to gauge the country's long-term security prospects after the U.S. elections in November and Iraqi elections, scheduled for January. - http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...

A POEM: AN ODE TO BUSH'S BIOGRAPHY

09.27.04 (8:13 am) [edit]

[b]AN ODE TO BUSH'S BIO[/b]

Bush, the Congenital Ne'er-Do-Well,
Money-Grub's Puppet & Our Prez from Hell,
Body-and-Soul, He's Happy to Sell,
Private War Profits From US: Pray Do Tell.

Bush Plays Affirmative Action Game,
Hence 'Skull-and-Bones' Scented Dog's Fame,
Drunken Stupors Then Came & Test Scores, The Same,
Frat Cheaters' Secrets: Hide All Future Blame.

Daddy's Connections in Vietnam War,
Bush AWOL Direction: Head for That Bar,
As Buddies-in-War Lose Their Lives Or Don Scar,
Party-boys Chug Champagne, Ah the Battle is Far.

Bush Failures Abound Over & Over in Business,
Texas Taxpayers Fund Bail Out Scams with Finesse,
Sports Stadiums Rise Fast as Poor Left Bereft in Duress,
Sell-off of Sports Teams Enrich, and Citizens Left With A Mess.

But, Kenny-boy Lay (Enron) Finances Election,
And Mediocrity Bush Suddenly Gubernatorial Selection,
Families and Children are Left With Hopeful Fiction,
As Executions & Swindlers Skyrocket in Fascist Direction.

Banana Repubs Dance With Visions of Coup d'Etat,
And Then Rig the Election by Fixing the Stat,
A Brother in Florida, and Rove Tips His Hat,
With Anton Scalia, We've Got Gore Pinned to the Mat.

Trapped Now in Long, Hard, Slog, Muck & Mire: Blame Clinton Lores,
But It's Halliburton's Veep Cheney's Consortium of Whores,
For Whom Neo-Con PNAC Groupies Plan S'Mores of Them Wars,
As They Conjure Up Nightmares, Turned into Our Chores.

Generations of the Future to Payback Bush's Debts,
Innocents Dying Each Day, in Misguided Bets,
That if They Survive It's A Fight for All Future Gets,
But Instead, They'll Come Home To A Nation of Neo-Con Pets.

Wake-up From This Nightmare, Stop Fiascos & Duns,
Before Bush Bankrupts Us All, Takes the Money & Runs,
We Deserve Better, If We Would Stop Worshipping Guns,
And Demand A Vision For All:--
... Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness ...
Will "We the People" Someday See Our Day In The Sun?

[b]Courtesy of WinstonSmith http://winstonsmith.tblog.com... [/b]

Flip-Floppin' Away A'W'OL Bush's Friggin' Flips Are Fuckin' Flops For America!!!

09.27.04 (6:30 am) [edit]

[b]The Bush Record: Top 10 Bush Flip Flops

1. Bush Flip-Flops on Independent 9/11 Commission[/b]

Bush Flip: Initially Opposed to Independent 9/11 Commission
Bush opposed an independent inquiry into 9/11, arguing it would duplicate a probe conducted by Congress. In July 2002, his administration issued a "statement of policy" that read "...the Administration would oppose an amendment that would create a new commission to conduct a similar review [to Congress's investigation]." [Statement of Administration Policy, Executive Office of the President, 7/24/02; LA Times, 11/28/02]

Bush Flop: Bush Relented and Appointed Independent Commission
President Bush finally agreed to support an independent investigation into the 9/11 attacks after "the congressional committees unearthed more and more examples of intelligence lapses, the administration reversed its stance." [Los Angeles Times, 11/28/02]

[b]2. Bush Flip-Flops on Independent WMD Commission[/b]

Bush Flip: Refuses to Call for Independent Bipartisan Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction
"President Bush said on January 30, 2004, 'I want to know the facts' about any intelligence failures concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged cache of forbidden weapons but he declined to endorse calls for an independent investigation." [AP, 1/30/04]

Bush Flop: Bush Appoints WMD Investigation Commission
President Bush named a nine-member bipartisan commission to investigate U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities in February 2004. The AP noted, "Bush had initially opposed a commission, but agreed to do so as calls grew from Republican lawmakers as well as Democrats." The Los Angeles Times reported, "The White House opposed that panel initially, then backed down under pressure, and some say administration officials now regret doing so because the administration has become locked in a series of embarrassing battles with the Sept. 11 commission." The New York Times noted Bush "gave the panel until March 2005, well after the November elections, to submit its conclusions." [NY Times, 2/7/04; LA Times, 2/1/04; AP, 2/6/04]

[b]3. Bush Flip-Flops on Time He'll Spend With 9/11 Commission[/b]

Bush Flip: Would Meet For Only One Hour With 9/11 Commission
McClellan: Obviously, as part of this, the President will be meeting with the chairman and vice chairman at some point in the near future. We are still working on the exact time of that meeting. We have discussed with the commission what we believe is a reasonable period of time to provide the chairman and vice chairman with answers to all of their questions.
Q: Is that the one-hour time frame?
McClellan: That's what I'm referring to. [WH Press Briefing, 3/9/04]

Bush Flop: White House Says No Time Limit on President's Testimony
"President George W. Bush will privately answer all questions raised by the federal commission investigating the September 11 attacks, the White House said, suggesting that Bush might allow the interview to extend beyond the one-hour limit originally offered to the panel by the White House. 'He's going to answer all the questions they want to raise,' said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, whose remarks suggested that the White House was softening its negotiating stance toward the bipartisan commission. 'Nobody's watching the clock.'" [WH Press Briefing, 3/9/04; International Herald Tribune, 3/11/04]

[b]4. Bush Flip-Flops On Calling For A U.N. Vote On Iraq War[/b]

Bush Flip: U.S. Will Seek U.N. Vote For War With Iraq
Bush: ...yes, we'll call for a vote.
Question: No matter what?
Bush: No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It's time for people to show their cards, let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam. [Bush News Conference, 3/6/03, emphasis added]

Bush Flop: Bush Attacked Iraq Without U.N. Vote
Bush "failed to win explicit [security] council approval for the use of force" in Iraq. Two days before bombs began to fall in Iraq, the Bush administration withdrew its resolution from the UN Security Council that would have authorized military force. Bush abandoned his call for a vote after it became clear that the US could muster only four votes in support of force. [Washington Post, 3/21/03; Los Angeles Times, 3/18/03]

[b]5. Bush Flip-Flops on Department Of Homeland Security[/b]

Bush Flip: Bush Thought Homeland Security Cabinet Position Was "Just Not Necessary"
In October 2001, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush opposed creating Office of Homeland Security position for Ridge. "[T]he president has suggested to members of Congress that they do not need to make this a statutory post, that he [Ridge] does not need Cabinet rank, for example, there does not need to be a Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security is because there is such overlap among the various agencies, because every agency of the government has security concerns," Fleischer said. [White House Press Briefing, 10/24/01]

Bush Flop: Bush Decides to Support Homeland Security
The New York Times reported, "Bush initially resisted Democratic proposals for a Cabinet-level agency. But once he endorsed it, the president pushed Congress for fast action as it debated such issues as whistle-blower protections, concerns over civil liberties and collective bargaining for department employees."

In remarks to Homeland Security Department employees, Bush claimed credit for supporting the Department: "In just 12 months, under the leadership of your President...you faced the challenges standing up this new Department and you get a -- and a gold star for a job well done." [New York Times, 2/28/03; Bush Remarks at One-Year Anniversary of DHS, 3/2/04]

[b]6. Bush Flip-Flops on Gay Marriage[/b]

Bush Flip: It's Up to the States to Decide
In a 2000 presidential primary debate, candidate George W. Bush said gay marriage was a state's issue, saying, "The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into." [Presidential Primary Debate, 2/15/00]

Bush Flop: Bush Supports Constitutional Amendment That Restricts States' Rights
Bush: "If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action is needed, because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country." [Bush, 2/24/04]

[b]7. Bush Flip-Flops on Using Military For Nation Building[/b]

Bush Flip: Bush Promised Not to Use Military for Nation Building
In a campaign rally in Tennessee, then-Presidential candidate Bush criticized the Clinton administration for using the military in nation-building missions. Bush said, "I'm worried about an opponent who uses nation-building and the military in the same sentence. See, our view of the military is for our military to be properly prepared to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place." [Governor George W. Bush, 11/6/00]

Bush Flop: President Used Military for Nation Building in Afghanistan and Iraq
After the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush met with soldiers stationed in Afghanistan at the White House and thanked them for their nation building efforts. A senior administration official said, "The administration, with its international partners, is doing something akin to nation-building." The plans for a post war Iraq also included nation building measures and, according to the Baltimore Sun, "Secretary of State Colin L. Powell confirmed...that Bush was considering, among other options, installing a U.S.-led occupation government if Hussein's regime is removed." [Baltimore Sun, 10/19/02]

[b]8. Bush Flip-Flops on Hybrid Automobiles[/b]

Bush Flip: Bush Mocked Gore's Tax Credit for Hybrid Cars
"'How many of you own hybrid electric gasoline engine vehicles? If you look under there, you'll see that's one of the criteria necessary to receive tax relief. So when he talks about targeted tax relief that's pretty darn targeted,' Bush told the Arlington Heights rally, drawing laughs." [Chicago Sun-Times, 10/29/00]

Bush Flop: Bush Supported Investing in Hybrid Cars
In his State of the Union speech, Bush said, "Tonight I am proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. ... Join me in this important innovation, to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy." [White House, "President Delivers 'State of the Union,'" 1/28/03]

[b]9. Bush Flip-Flops on Assault Weapons Ban[/b]

Bush Flip: Bush Supports Extending Assault Weapons Ban
Ashcroft: "It is my understanding that the president-elect of the United States has indicated his clear support for extending the assault weapons ban, and I will be pleased to move forward with that position." [Confirmation Hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/17/01]

Bush Flop: Bush Opposes Extension of Assault Weapons Ban
"The White House is opposing addition of gun show and assault weapons restrictions to a bill shielding firearms makers and dealers from lawsuits, prompting angry complaints from Democrats that President Bush is reneging on earlier support for the two proposals...In a statement [on February 24, 2004], the White House urged passage of the lawsuits measure without amendments that might delay its enactment. 'Any amendment that would delay enactment of the bill beyond this year is unacceptable,' the statement said. Democrats interpreted this as an effort to undermine support for the gun-control measures. 'For the president to say he is for the assault weapons ban but then act against it is a flip-flop if there ever was one,' said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), one of several sponsors of the assault weapons proposal in the Senate." [Washington Post, 2/26/04]

[b]10. Bush Flip-Flops on Steel Tariffs[/b]

Bush Flip: Bush Imposes Steel Tariffs
"President Bush on [March 5, 2002] slapped punishing tariffs of 8% to 30% on several types of imported steel in an effort to help the ailing U.S. industry, drawing criticism from American allies and mixed reviews at home. 'An integral part of our commitment to free trade is our commitment to enforcing trade laws to make sure that America's industries and workers compete on a level playing field,' Bush said in a statement issued by the White House." [USA Today, 3/5/02]

Bush Flop: Bush Rescinds Steel Tariffs
"Facing a potential global trade war, President Bush on [December 4, 2003] lifted tariffs he imposed on foreign steel 21 months ago, declaring the U.S. steel industry healthy and ready to compete despite the industry's claim that it needs more time to recover." [Chicago Tribune, 12/5/03] - http://www.democrats.org/spec...

A'W'OL Bush's Same Ole' Campaign Slogan: "I AM STUPID! I AM STUPID! I AM STUPID!"

09.27.04 (6:24 am) [edit]

[b]The Misunderestimated Man

How Bush chose stupidity.[/b]

The question I am most frequently asked about [i]Bushisms[/i] is, "Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?"

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is yes and no.

Quotations http://slate.msn.com/id/76886... collected over the years in [i][b]Slate[/b][/i] may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos," "arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile.

And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.

[b]More[/b] ... http://slate.msn.com/id/21000...

'WASHINGTON TIMES' Runs Correction of Intentional Misquote of Kerry Statement

09.27.04 (6:17 am) [edit]

[b]W. Times: [/b]"Due to erroneous information from Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican, an item in the Inside the Beltway column in yesterday's editions incorrectly quoted Sen. John Kerry in a 1997 appearance on CNN's "Crossfire" as arguing for a unilateral, pre-emptive war against Iraq. In reference to a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding access to Iraqi weapons sites, Mr. Kerry actually said: "I think that's our great concern [-] where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity [-] but in a sense, they're now climbing into a box and they will have enormous difficulty not following up on this if there is not compliance by Iraq." Trouble with the "correction-after-the-fac t" strategy is that as the Times WELL KNOWS, very few readers look at the corrections - the initial smear is what will stick and that is what the Times and the other corporate media liars count on.

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.washtimes.com/nati...

'WASHINGTON TIMES' Runs Correction of Intentional Misquote of Kerry Statement

09.27.04 (6:17 am) [edit]

[b]W. Times:[/b] "Due to erroneous information from Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican, an item in the Inside the Beltway column in yesterday's editions incorrectly quoted Sen. John Kerry in a 1997 appearance on CNN's "Crossfire" as arguing for a unilateral, pre-emptive war against Iraq. In reference to a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding access to Iraqi weapons sites, Mr. Kerry actually said: "I think that's our great concern [-] where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity [-] but in a sense, they're now climbing into a box and they will have enormous difficulty not following up on this if there is not compliance by Iraq." Trouble with the "correction-after-the-fac t" strategy is that as the Times WELL KNOWS, very few readers look at the corrections - the initial smear is what will stick and that is what the Times and the other corporate media liars count on.

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.washtimes.com/nati...

A POEM: "An Ode to Bush's Bio" ...

09.27.04 (6:12 am) [edit]

LIAR PREZ A'W'OL BUSH: No Credibility Left (Except Among the Brain-Dead!)

09.27.04 (6:03 am) [edit]

The weekend spin was once again blown off the map by nature. All three of the nation's cable "news" network spent some of Friday and all of Saturday obsessed with hurricane porn: live reports from the east coast of Florida as Hurricane Jeanne approached and swept across the state.

That was a fortunate turn of events for former Texas Governor George W. Bush and appointed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. The latter had spend a couple days in the US trying to whitewash the calamitous qWagmire that is his nation as his patron Mr. Bush unconvincingly predicted that Iraq would hold free elections in January.

By Friday, it was clear from the morning papers, the broadcast's network newscasts, and even the general tenor of what passes for cable "news" that only the most sycophantic, propagandistic, back-the-Bush-Boy-at-all- costs pundits (meaning the likes of Bob Novak, Joe Scarborough and almost everyone at FAUX News Channel) were acting as if they believed the hype. And judging from the tone in their voices and the looks on their faces, they didn't believe it either.

The press has finally figure out that with about a month and a week to go before Election Day, Iraq is indeed a big issue -- and only a moron would believe things are going well in Saddam's former fiefdom.

Hurricane Jeanne continued to be a breaking story as the Sabbath Gasbags went live this Sunday morning. Topic one, though, was Iraq; topic two, the presidential race, got little play in comparison, and even the continuing flap over those supposedly forged documents featured in a CBS 60 Minutes II segment a couple weeks ago got only passing mention, always in the form of a cheap-shot slur of Dan Rather or CBS News, but never in the context of analyses that indicate that completely blows apart the "analysis" by political operative bloggers and concludes that the two questionable documents carry all the hallmarks of genuine memos to file (http://imrl.usu.edu/bush_memo...).

[b]And speaking of CBS, I only caught a few minutes of Face the Nation -- [/b]a short segment in which Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) actually called Shemp W. McFlightsuit and his appointed Iraqi sock puppet Allawi "liars" -- three times in less than forty seconds!

Poor Bob Schieffer's eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets. He tried his damnedest to be "tough" with Kennedy -- no doubt in reaction to the attacks on CBS' integrity by hard-right operatives and their flock of sheeple that have been stuffing CBS News and affiliate inboxes with demands that Dan Rather be fired or resign. Schieffer's attack questions backfired badly -- ol' Ted, who knows a few things about dealing with very hard questions, not only held his ground but landed a few punches to the hard right. Bob's colleague, Karen Tumulty, looked to be visibly chafing after Ted blasted Emperor Junior for having no factual or rhetorical clothes.

One honestly gets the feeling that Washington journalists and the punditariat just cannot handle politicians daring to speak unvarnished assessments that are not couched in Beltwayspeak.

Meanwhile, here's what Jane and Sherrie saw.

-- [b]JJB[/b]

[b]Meet the Press: Iraq... the violence continues? Well, yeah, Tim![/b]

Guests: Gen. John Abizaid and a not-so-balanced panel of Bob Novak, Doris Kearns Goodwin, William Safire and David Broder

Tim Russert sounded a little too chipper asking the "tough" questions in the opening intro to Meet the Press. His first guest was Gen. Abizaid, who spent most of the interview channeling the Kevin Bacon character from Animal House during the final parade sequence: "Remain calm! All is well!"

Rather than going through the entire interview as it happened, let's take a look at the obvious "bullet points" Abizaid rattled off:

-- "We are, in fact, moving in the direction that will allow Iraq to emerge as a democratic and representational state, one of the first to emerge in the Middle East." (It might've been nice if Abizaid specified them: Cyprus and Israel.)

-- "Our military activities there have moved [democracy] ahead in a positive manner." (Really? How? We don't see any "democracy" -- in fact, all we seem to see is insurgency with no controlling authority. The more accurate term is civil war -- with our kids stuck in the middle.)

-- "I'm positive that we can move the military activity forward to allow for good, stable elections to take place." (After the Florida fiasco, one wishes the US had good, stable elections for the highest office in the land.)

-- "We have moved very fast in building Iraqi security institutions that will be able to work with us in providing a stable atmosphere for the elections." (... as opposed to "moved effectively.")

-- "Iraq will emerge as an independent nation that will set the standard for good government in the region." (... but probably not until the US gets the hell out and an international force assumes the task of securing and stabilizing the nation.)

-- "I think the number of foreign fighters in Iraq is probably below 1,000.... There is foreign terrorist activity such as Zarqawi. There is activity by al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq." (Of course, it's the native insurgents who are the far bigger problem, but Tim, bless his black heart, had to inject the meme of "foreign fighters" into the discussion.) Later, Tim permutated the issue by asking about the borders of Iraq (read: with Iran and Syria). Abizaid: "I think we could ask the same question about the United States border with Mexico." (Right -- as if everyone crossing over from Mexico has an AK47 or a Kalashnikov. That sort of bad analogy only plays to racism and xenophobia.)

-- Then, almost as a passing point: "I still think that the primary problem that we're dealing with is former regime elements of the ex-Ba'ath Party that are fighting against the government and trying to do anything possible to upend the election process."

-- "We need to take a deep breath and we need to look at what's happening in the region as opposed to the reports of one or two journalists that happen to think that everybody in Iraq is in the resistance." (So the military is trying to cast the free press as corrupt and unwilling to tell the "good news." C'mon, General -- the MTP audience is not exactly composed of rubes. If we wanted our intelligence insulted, we'd watch "Crank Yankers" on Comedy Central, and at least have a laugh or two in the process.)

-- "The enemy wants to break our will. They are experts at manipulating the media. They have yet to win a single military engagement in that country." (Golly -- you could apply that line to Bush and Rove and it would still make sense!)

--"If we're successful out here, debate will be part of the future of Afghanistan, it'll be part of the future of Iraq and it will be part of the future of all of the Middle East.... I think to the extent that we can help them help themselves to that end, we will be enormously successful." (In other words, the US intends to intervene elsewhere. That'll require a bigger military. That'll require a draft. Abizaid is practically giving the Democrats a winning message.)

-- "Look over to Afghanistan right now where we're getting ready for elections within two weeks. It certainly is not going to be a perfect election, and I don't think that Iraq will have a perfect election. And if I recall looking back at our own election four years ago it wasn't perfect either." (Wow! So the US is no better than Afghanistan when it comes to free elections!) "That the election will be able to be held in the vast majority of the country under good circumstances is our goal." (Oh, we see -- elections that are less that full, free and fair are just hunky-dory.)

-- "The important point for all of us to understand is that the Iraqi security forces have ever since March of '03 gone under a very, very extensive renovation, shall we call it." (No, let's call it what it actually is: a complete and utter screw-up by a Pentagon that had no detailed plan -- none at all -- to rebuild anything but the petrobusiness infrastructure and phone system -- and they couldn't even get that right!)

-- "The key for us is to build an Iraqi security institution that'll... protect the country of Iraq. And in most of the country right now, Iraqi security forces perform that function." (Is he actually on the same planet that we are?)

There was also a surprising and ominous comment by Abizaid: -- "It's not just in Iraq, and sometimes we tend to look at Iraq through a soda straw, and also Afghanistan through a soda straw, whereas we really have a problem of terrorism that is ideologically motivated throughout the entire Middle East and Central Asia that has to be faced, and it's got to be faced with the will and the perseverance of the American armed forces and the American people." (Translation: the present administration wants to take on terrorist organizations using the same military model that has us bogged down in the qWagmire.)

And take special note of this last exchange:

Tim: "General -- should the American people be prepared? Should they brace themselves for a long and bloody fall and winter leading up to the elections in January?"

Abizaid: "Tim, the American people need to brace themselves for a long war in the Middle East and Central Asia, and they need to brace themselves for a long war in the Middle East and Central Asia, because the battle is being waged out here between extremists and moderates."

Got that, everyone?

Abizaid is telling the nation to get ready for a protracted war in the Middle East. A protracted MILITARY war -- not that sharp-focus, highly mobile, special forces small-skirmish, stop-the-cash-flow, intelligence-based interdiction "war on terror" that George the Lesser promised.

This, my friends, is what you can expect if that Bush Boy wins or steals another term in office. And that is without doubt the big story of this pundit Sunday.

Following the break, the balanced (snort!) and unrehearsed (narf!) panel of David "Whore" Broder, Bill "Nixon's innocent!" Safire, Bob "Betrayer of Plame" Novak and Doris Kearns "Love That LBJ" Goodwin took turns telling viewers how badly John Kerry was handling his campaign and how he had better be careful not to make Dim Son look stupid during the debates. You might as well have been watching FOX -- at least over there, they know enough to crack a smile and the guys and gals are far cuter.

-- [b]Jane Grice

Squeak, Squeak -- It's This Week[/b]

It is getting more and more interesting to listen to what the Republicans are saying vis-à-vis Iraq and the War on Terror.

Little George Stepanopoulos, host of ABC's This Weak, began, of course, with the latest news on Hurricane Jeanne and the tie-in that the first debate between Gutless and Kerry will be held on Wednesday in Florida.

Assuming, I guess, that they can find a dry spot.

From a natural disaster we segued right into a man-made disaster, the current status on the ground in Iraq.

First up was Secretary of State Colin ("Of course I believe what I'm saying!!!") Powell, who did his best to put a happy face on the news. Georgie played the clip of John Kerry announcing that he would have made Al Qaeda his priority, not Saddam Hussein. Little George asked Powell about the report today in the Washington Post that Iraq is becoming more deadly by the minute, with upwards of 70 attacks a day. He pointed out that Prime Minister Allawi had said this week that Baghdad is a safe place, which is a bit of a stretch, inasmuch as there were 20 attacks on Americans and Iraqis in Baghdad on Wednesday alone. In the face of such broad and intensifying attacks, isn't the Prime Minister a bit out of touch?

Powell immediately said that Al Qaeda is indeed a priority for the Bush administration, and said we are safer today than we were before we went into Afghanistan. George asked him why America didn't go into Tora Bora full bore and capture Osama when they had the chance. Powell gritted his teeth and said that nobody really knew for sure if Osama was actually in Tora Bora, and it was important for the Afghan troops to take Tora Bora. He also said that Afghanistan is well under control. Well, Georgie wondered, what about the president of Pakistan saying that the situation in Iraq had increasingly made the other nations in the Middle East less willing to cooperate with America? Powell tried to look sincere as he said these problems would all be overcome "in due course". He said that free elections would be held very soon in Afghanistan and in Iraq,

Georgie said "but...but...but... the battles are getting more intense, aren't they?" Powell didn't even hesitate. "Yes, things are getting worse, but they're getting worse because the insurgents don't want elections to go forward, and they are going to go forward on schedule."

Apparently this was just the opening Georgie had been looking for, because right on cue, up popped the tape of Rumsfeld explaining to Congress that if fourteen out of 18 provinces were okay, the election could go ahead. Of course, it wouldn't be a PERFECT election, but hey, any election was better than no election, and we were determined to have an election even if only three quarters to four fifths could vote.

Yeah, Rummy, those of us who remember 2000 know all about imperfect elections. Apparently you do too, since you seem to be determined to follow that model.

"So, Mr. Secretary," asked Georgie, "is Rumsfeld right?"

It is fairly common knowledge that Rumsfeld and Powell have a less than, uh, perfect relationship. Powell only stuttered a little as he spoke about the several months during which we can solidify the election process, the goal is a full and free election throughout the country, but at any rate it isn't up to US whether there is an election or not, Prime Minister Allawi will have to judge what the situation is at the end of the year and it's up to him as to whether or not elections go ahead.

Georgie asked about the comments of Shi'ite Ayatollah al-Siatani that he may have to boycott the elections, and the remarks of the Sunni Ayatollah that they may have to boycott the elections as well. How will that be a positive development?

Powell said that this a good debate, and debate is a good thing, eighteen months ago nobody in Iraq could have a debate and hey, it really isn't up to us if the election takes place, anyway. He went on to add that the United Nations would work with Iraq to make sure the elections take place. He did not, however, mention that the United Nations had offered to send 36 individuals to cover 2,600 polling places.

George asked about reports that the Bush Administration intends to re-institute the draft after the election. Once again, Powell, who apparently has discovered the delight of wearing blinders, said he certainly wasn't aware of any plans to institute the draft, we have all the volunteers we need and, um, uh, the current force is producing all the manpower that we need. He stressed that the Iraqi troops now number upwards of 100,000 trained and ready to go -- which is in direct contradiction to the testimony of a junior secretary two weeks ago that not one Iraqi had actually completed the training program. And he rhapsodized about the Iraqis standing in line to volunteer for the security force, without mentioning the fact that these volunteers are now the insurgency's favorite targets when the car bombs come rolling by.

He ended his interview by saying once again that he didn't know what Gutless is planning in the immediate future, but we must persevere.

Right after the break Georgie presented Madeleine Albright, looking très chic in her stylish hip boots and coordinating shovel as she cleaned up Colin's act. She said she hated to disagree with Colin, but Afghanistan was not even nearly finished -- there are Taliban-inspired attacks and warlords all over the place. We have taken our eye off the ball and diverted too many of our assets and personnel to Iraq. Where is Osama?

Madeleine apparently wanted to be agreeable with General Franks, but she couldn't do that, either. She thought it was a major mistake to divert so much of our force to Iraq, particularly since we now know there was no connection between Al Qaeda, Iraq and 9/11.

Georgie asked her about a speech given by Theresa Heinz Kerry, during which Theresa opined that she fully expected the Bush Administration to announce that they had captured Osama, in an October Surprise. Madeleine said it could happen -- the administration doesn't even MENTION Osama anymore, and the big question is whether or not we are safer now than we were prior to 9/11.

George pushed her a little, asking her if she was saying that she thought the administration might actually do the Osama thing. Madeleine said she would be very surprised but didn't sound like she meant it.

When George asked her what she thought of Rummy's view of election, she took off. The whole purpose of the election, she said, was to get a legitimate government operational in Iraq. If some provinces are unable to participate, it would be like California, Texas and Florida being unable to vote in November.

I thought to myself, "Geeze, Maddy, don't give em any ideas!"

Albright continued, saying that if everyone in Iraq cannot vote, an election would be pointless, and there would certainly be no legitimacy to the winners. If there are no poll watchers, no monitors, and no UN it would be a wasted gesture, and she pointed out that the UN is unwilling to involve themselves because of security issues.

George asked her what the difference would be in the way the war is handled if Kerry wins. Madeleine said the difference would be Kerry himself. She stated that George Bush has lost all credibility, that nobody at the UN believed what he said and he could not get the world's cooperation. Kerry, she said, could go to our allies, listen to their concerns and get their help, while Bush was unable to do so because his remarks do not pass the reality test.

George asked her if she thought the Bushies intended to reinstate the draft, and she said she didn't know, but that clearly there is a back-door draft, with the activation of so many units of the reserves and the National Guard and the involuntary extensions of tours of duty. She stated that the National Guard and the reserves are our first responders to terrorism and wondered how we can be safer and how national security could be trusted if so many of the first responders were out of the country, and that homeland security was not secure for just that reason.

That was the finale of Albright's appearance. After a break we moved to the panel discussion, featuring Cokie Roberts, Rahm Emmanuel, James Fallows, Stewart Stevens and George Will discussing the debate this week and what expectations are. Several clips of prior debate appearances of Gutless and Kerry were played, and a discussion of strengths and weaknesses ensued.

James Fallows, expert on the debates, said that Kerry's strength was his courtroom quickness and ability to think on his feet, while Bush's strength is making clear what he believes and why. As far as weaknesses go, Gutless tends to get testy when he is contradicted and rattled if too many details are mentioned at once. Kerry, of course, needs to get briefer and crisper in his responses, and not meander all over the page.

Stevens, an adviser to Gutless' campaign, said that the president's first order of business should be to clarity what he wants to do during his second term and how he wants to do it. Bush, he said, is very good at saying what he means.

Cokie said that Kerry introduced himself to the country at the convention and then immediately had to deal with the swift boats controversy. This is a new opportunity, now that swift boats have been basically discredited, to present himself, to let people know who he is and see if they are comfortable with him.

Rahm Emmanuel, former Clinton aide and currently US congressman, said that the debate was an enormous leveler, and that would give Kerry an edge.

And heeeeeeere came George Will, announcing that this would be a debate of two delusional optimists -- Bush trying to make us believe that things were really going well in Iraq and Kerry convinced that he could get support from those allies who had given short shrift to Bush. He is quite obviously unenchanted with both candidates and makes no effort to appear differently.

Little Georgie said that Bush has committed Kerry's voting record in Congress to memory and intends to use it during the debate. Rahm said that would be a good thing and provide Gutless with a rendezvous with reality.

Cokie pointed out that married women seemed to be more inclined to vote for Gutless because of the "Security Mom" phenomenon. All agreed that to succeed John Kerry would have to stop appearing as though he is debating himself, and to present himself coherently and concisely.

Stevens finally said that every time Kerry speaks he contradicts himself. He said that 37 days before the election is a little late to be defining yourself. To which Rahm replied that this is about measuring the man and not checking the boxes.

The end play was a discussion about Gutless not wanting the candidates to question each other directly, and what would happen if Kerry did that? Stevens thought it would show Kerry being a poor sport (!!!!) and not following the rules. Rahm thought that in the 2000 election Gore was perceived as bullying Gutless and it was a good idea for that perception to not be made again.

It was a fairly lackluster discussion, with no fireworks. Again, George Will is going out of his way to be seen as neutral in this contest, and I haven't figured out why.

Stay tuned, boys and girls. Somebody might self-destruct in the debate, and it'll be interesting to see who blinks first.

-- [b]Sherrie Gogerty Geeting[/b] - http://americanpolitics.com/2...

Osama bin Laden is Rooting for A'W'OL Bushy-boy, the Incompetent Asshole!!!

09.27.04 (5:59 am) [edit]

[b]Bush or Kerry: Who's Really Osama's Boy?

Even now, Bin Laden sits in his cave, studiously reading position papers.[/b]

Where does Osama bin Laden stand on gay marriage? What are his views on the privatization of Social Security and stem cell research? Is he concerned about judges who place their personal opinions ahead of the Constitution? Or does he care more about corporations that outsource good American jobs to foreign countries?

As you may or may not have noticed, we're suddenly having a national debate about who Bin Laden and Al Qaeda support for president. Fair enough. Bin Laden's opinion, if only we could know it, would probably affect the judgment of fellow voters more than that of any other independent thinker except, of course, John McCain. So far, the Bin Laden debate has been pretty one-sided, with a string of Republican public officials claiming that terrorists are rooting for Kerry, and some bloggers and a columnist or two suggesting that he may prefer Bush.

My favorite among the Republican mind readers is House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, who said last week, "I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another," which is an assertion that no one will disagree with. But he continued, saying that Al Qaeda "would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops."

Like many Americans, Hastert seems to be confusing Bin Laden with Saddam Hussein. This is a confusion the Bush administration and his campaign wish to encourage, and the president himself may even share. To describe John F. Kerry's position on Iraq as "file a lawsuit" is merely witless and unfair. To describe his position on Bin Laden that way is mystifying.

In fact, the administration's response to Sept. 11 — focusing on Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with it — might well be a point in the president's favor as Bin Laden sits in his cave studying documents from the League of Women Voters and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, trying to make up his mind.

If there is one thing we knew about Bin Laden before the start of the Iraq war, it was that he wasn't in Iraq. With the invasion of Iraq, Bin Laden got all the benefits of being America's public enemy No. 1, but none of the disadvantages.

He got an explosion of anti-Americanism around the world, potential recruits lined up out the cave door and around the block for future suicide missions, swell new opportunities for terror in the chaos of Iraq itself, and the forcible retirement of Hussein, whom he never cared for. He got more than 1,000 Americans dead and hundreds of billions of infidel dollars gone — results that would make any terrorist episode a huge success — without having to lift a finger. And meanwhile, every bomb dropped on Iraq was a bomb not dropped on him. What's not to like?

True, Bin Laden probably does hold it against Bush that, when not distracted by Iraq, the president has been trying to kill him. That kind of thing can't help but cloud a fellow's judgment. It is all very well for civics textbooks to tell us that, when voting, we should put selfish personal interests aside and think of the greater good. But it may well be difficult to concentrate on those frightening CBO projections of the structural deficit in 10 years when there is an even more frightening din of bombs exploding and there was just a direct hit on a cave three caves down and one to the right.

But Bin Laden cannot help but notice that so far, Bush has failed to kill him. And he has no reason to suppose that a President Kerry would enjoy announcing his death or capture to the world any less than Bush would. So for Osama — just as for many voters in this election — the choice comes down to the lesser of two evils.

The difference between Osama bin Laden's endorsement and John McCain's (well, one of many differences) is that McCain's presumably has a positive effect and Bin Laden's has a negative one. If Bin Laden wants to help his candidate, he must hide — or even disguise — his preference. This makes any argument or evidence about that preference inherently self-defeating. If he is honorary chairman of the annual "Kabul Salutes W" dinner and gala, does that mean he supports Bush or does it mean he wants people to think he supports Bush, which really means that he doesn't support Bush?

Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said recently that terrorists in Iraq "are trying to influence the election against President Bush." In saying so, Armitage is trying to influence the election in favor of Bush. But he has no evidence other than their actions. And if their very actions send a clear message that they are trying to defeat Bush, then the effect of those actions will be to help Bush.

So even if Armitage is right, he's wrong.

At least Bin Laden is probably concentrating on what really matters in this election. He is not spending a lot of time comparing ancient typewriter fonts, or reviewing the circumstances of Kerry's third Purple Heart. In that sense — and only in that sense — he may be a good influence. - http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,0,7925600.column?coll=la-news-comme nt-opinions

SLIMEBALL DUBYA BUSH is Giving Latin America the Willies Too!!!

09.27.04 (5:50 am) [edit]

[b]'You Scare Us'

Bush is Giving Latin America the Willies[/b]

by Carlos Fuentes

LONDON — The United States is strong. Latin America is weak. This is the basic truth that shapes their relationship. There is no irrational animosity toward the U.S. in Latin America. There is a measure of suspicion balanced by enormous admiration for the culture of Herman Melville to Walt Whitman to William Faulkner, of Hollywood and jazz, of Eugene O'Neill to Arthur Miller. Nor is there envy of the United States. Latin America is deeply aware of its cultural values. Our personality is not assailed by gringo fashions. We absorb and adapt to the cultures of the world, including that of the U.S.

The problem lies in foreign policy. Too often, the United States is seen as a benevolent Dr. Jekyll at home and a malevolent Mr. Hyde abroad. The wars against Mexico (1846-1848) and Spain (1898), Teddy Roosevelt's "big stick," Woodrow Wilson's well-intentioned but counterproductive intervention in Mexico during its revolution, incessant and arrogant meddling in Central America. Not an easy menu to swallow. One moment shines through, however: Franklin Roosevelt's "good neighbor" policy, his decision to win Latin American support during World War II through negotiation rather than confrontation.

And after that war, a limpid admiration for the Roosevelt and Truman policies of international cooperation through organizations based on the rule of law. "We all have to recognize," Harry Truman said in 1945, "[that] no matter how great our strength … we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please." The United Nations was a creation of U.S. diplomacy. Its principles were clearly stated and universally accepted. Even when the U.S. violated them in practice during the Cold War, the principles were never renounced.

This brings us to what Latin Americans find so shocking about the Bush administration. Instead of multilateralism, unilateralism. Instead of diplomacy and negotiation and a search for consensus and the use of force only as a last resort, the barbaric principle of preventive war.

U.S. support for brutal dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in the name of anti-communism caused great suffering. The overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile. The Central American wars in the 1980s and their high body counts. These Latin American grievances were balanced by a perception that the U.S. never formally renounced the principles of international law and the hope that it would reaffirm them again.

What is alarming about the Bush administration is its formal denunciation of the basic rules of international intercourse. With us or against us, President Bush declares starkly and simplistically. The U.S. acts according to its own interests, "not those of an illusory international community," asserts national security advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Is it strange that many Latin Americans should see in these statements an aggressive denial of the only leverage we have in dealing with Washington: the rule of law, the balance obtained through diplomatic negotiation?

Not only out of self-interest, but also as participants in the global society, many Latin Americans worry that U.S. unilateralism is incompatible with the multilateralist nature of globalization. This was the warning issued by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo at last year's Harvard commencement. Add Chilean President Ricardo Lagos' perception that the world community is postponing the urgent global agenda of creating an adequate social-program fund, strengthening human rights and overcoming the chasms between haves and have-nots. And top it with former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's plea to the French National Assembly: Fight vigorously against terror but also against the underlying causes of terror: hunger, ignorance, inequality and distorted perceptions of other cultures.

Fortunately, these composite voices of Latin American statesmen found a powerful echo in North America, when former President Clinton warned that you do not defeat terror if you do not figure out how to work with an interdependent world.

These voices, these warnings, these hopes have been disowned by the Bush administration. "With us or against us," Bush has said. It hardly matters. Offensive as these words are to the international community, I believe that Latin America, in particular, will not forget the outright deceptions of the Bush era: the shifting rationales for an unnecessary war and a disastrous postwar occupation; the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; the targeting of one tyrant (Saddam Hussein) among many (Kim Jong II, Robert Mugabe, Moammar Kadafi); the utter lack of foresight that an occupied Iraq would rise against the foreign occupiers and try to fashion its own political future out of its complex religious, tribal and cultural realities, all of them ignored by the neoconservatives in Washington.

But while not forgetting these mistakes and deceptions, we would put the accent on the restoration of the rule of law, the thrust of cooperation and the attention due to 3 billion human beings living in poverty, ignorance and illness. When Bush and his bellicose minions are gone, these problems will still be around. We in Latin America should try to bring them forward as the real agenda for this troubling century.

[b]Carlos Fuentes is the author, most recently, of "Contra Bush," which will be translated into seven languages[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

SLIMEBALL DUBYA BUSH is Giving Latin America the Willies Too!!!

09.27.04 (5:46 am) [edit]

EUROPE TO BUSH: 'GO AWAY!' (Even the British Prefer Kerry for President!)

09.27.04 (5:43 am) [edit]

"Why Bush must be beaten," screamed the headline of Le Nouvel Observateur, a left-leaning French newsweekly. Smaller type above the U.S. president's half profile provided the answer: "His re-election will be a catastrophe for the world and for America."

That sentiment may have been expressed more bluntly than the opinions of many Europeans, yet it captured the passions on this continent over who will occupy the White House come January.

Poised halfway between the political wrangling in Washington over the war in Iraq and the suicide bombs and kidnappings in Baghdad, Europeans have rarely felt so involved in a U.S. presidential race.

Many Europeans, analysts and regular citizens alike, argue that their own security is increasingly at risk, while violence spirals in Iraq and anti- Western hostility hardens in Europe's backyard -- the Arab world.

Some on the continent have suggested, only half-jokingly, that with one superpower remaining in a globalized world, Europeans ought to have a say in who should be America's next president.

"Americans will choose their president, and the rest of the world will have to live with that decision," said Bernhard May, a senior analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. "All we can do is talk to people."

Perhaps mirroring sentiments on the other side the Atlantic, Europeans who dislike Bush are not necessarily strong supporters of John Kerry.

"Europe is get-rid-of-Bush country, which is not quite the same as Kerry country," said Guillaume Parmentier, head of the Center on the United States at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris.

He said the continent's hostility toward Bush began long before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, dating back to Bush's decision in 2001 to reverse President Bill Clinton's support for the Kyoto Protocol on global warming -- a cherished cause for many European politicians. "Iraq just made it worse," Parmentier added.

Yet European's good-guy, bad-guy approach to the presidential race is simplistic, say some analysts. "In substance, there is no such black-and-white picture," said May, a specialist on German-American relations.

May points out that Kerry has already made clear his belief that Europe should participate more in Iraq's reconstruction. The Democratic candidate has called for sending European troops to help with January's elections in Iraq. The county's first democratic elections will probably require thousands of peacekeeping troops to secure election monitors and polling sites amid escalating violence.

Europeans might find it hard to provide such help, because tens of thousands of their soldiers are already deployed in Afghanistan and the Balkans. Yet it would be harder for the continent's leaders to refuse the man they greatly prefer for president over Bush, says May.

"If Kerry is elected, he'll present us with this challenge perhaps in his very first week in office," May said. "Bush won't put the same kind of pressures on Europeans to help out. He's been rebuffed before."

A survey published this month by the Program on International Policy Attitudes in Washington, which conducts polls on global issues, found that Europeans overwhelmingly opposed Bush's re-election. Kerry was the favored candidate even in Britain, the Bush administration's closest ally. There, 47 percent of those interviewed said they would choose Kerry, compared with 16 percent for Bush.

Not surprisingly, anti-Bush feelings were strongest in countries whose governments have based their foreign policies on refusing to join the U.S.- dominated coalition in Iraq. In Germany, 74 percent said they would back Kerry, compared with 10 percent for Bush, while in France only 5 percent said they would vote for Bush, and 63 percent said they supported Kerry.

Both French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rejected Bush's requests to support military action in Iraq last year and have staked their leadership in Europe on that stance.

In Spain, Kerry's lead over Bush was only slightly narrower: 47 to 7 percent. Spain's Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, won election last March almost entirely on the promise to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. Zapatero's predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, was a frequent White House visitor and had a growing personal relationship with Bush at the time he was ousted.

Europe's complex feelings about U.S. politics are hardly new. The two continents have for centuries looked to each other for cultural inspiration as near-mirrors of each other through the years. But this year's campaign has brought a new tension over Americans' political choices.

"There's this usual tradition of a love-hate relationship," said Jean- Gabriel Fredet, one of two journalists who wrote the mid-September Nouvel Observateur cover story pleading for Bush's defeat. "But now there's a growing anxiety about the world's sole superpower," he said in an interview. "Excuse the cliche, but it's true."

Fredet's article listed numerous reasons why Bush should go: "unprecedented" American isolationism since 2000; "unequaled arrogance" in Bush's leadership style; intolerant religious fervor; and the growing millions of Americans without proper health insurance. On a continent with largely free health services, many Europeans cite that last reason as their major dislike for the U.S. system and are often dumbfounded about why Americans do not push politicians for universal health care.

Despite the overwhelming support among Europeans, Fredet says that few people expect dramatic changes if Kerry defeats Bush.

"Of course we believe Kerry will change things only in a slight way," he said. "But at least he will do it in a more polite way." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

EUROPE TO BUSH: 'GO AWAY!' (Even the British Prefer Kerry for President!)

09.27.04 (5:40 am) [edit]

The Repug Hog-n-Slob: Incurious George is a National Joke

09.27.04 (5:36 am) [edit]

OK, how many out there feel that the sitting U.S. president is an embarrassment?

Forget politics, for a minute, and be honest. Ever slink down in your seat when at the national convention your local chairman addressed the masses and got exposed as a doofus in over his head? Worst yet, your child gets his big moment before the packed house at the stage-play and his light goes completely out?

This shame may well be that nagging ache in the lower mesentery that Americans are beginning to feel - but not yet admit - about their 43rd president.

The latest exhibition occurred Tuesday when President George W. Bush addressed the United Nations. Bush's most devoted defenders are joining his parents, who've known all along, that his finger on the nuclear trigger endangers the very future of the republic. That sucking sound you heard last week was these earnest patriots collectively slinking down in their seats.

As the world witnessed the bloodiest days of his Iraq occupation, Bush rose before the General Assembly and walked, as only he can walk, straight through the looking glass. "Freedom is finding a way in Iraq," the president said, even as militants separated the second American hostage from his head in as many days. Preceding Bush at the UN rostrum, Secretary General Kofi Annan had warned the world body "the rule of law is at risk around the world."

No such risks concerned Bush on his stroll behind the looking glass. Still, it was not just the disconnect of this president from reality that exposes the republic. The fault-line runs much deeper and it is as structural as it is personal. The structural must await another visit, but the personal is unfolding apace.

As the secret to each of us lies in our childhood, so too is it with Bush. Far more important than what Bush did with his lost days in the Alabama National Guard is how little prep-school "Georgie" was conditioned to solve problems and deal with the real world. His parents, of course, are aware of their oldest child's manifest shortcomings and must be horrified at the prospects of the rest of us discovering them.

Despite the best efforts of the media, the public is gaining insight into their president as the facts leak out and as Kitty Kelley's "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," tops the sales chart. Laying aside Bush's raucous drinking, the cocaine charges and his lifelong exploitation of his "legacy," his formative years are instructive indeed about the president who started a needless war to beat his chest as a "war president." His background explains as well the president who is unimaginably ignorant of the history, culture and aspirations of the 191 nations that he addressed the other day at the General Assembly.

The macho swagger we saw at the UN podium was not so much Texas cowboy as wannabe athlete. "Georgie" could dribble a basketball with but one hand, and, unlike his father, could hit a baseball not at all. So he settled for the Yale cheerleading squad with the reputation of a "jock sniffer."

Foreshadowing his flirtation with war, Bush opted for the trappings. "He wasn't the stud jock that everyone liked," recalled Ken White, a classmate at Yale, in Kelley's book. "But he did have a bad-boy swagger that's appealing to other guys," an attraction that continues at least among white guys. "He smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes to be macho."

This pseudo-macho scion of a prominent political family took every advantage of class privilege that got him to third base under the delusion that he had hit a triple. At Andover, Yale and Harvard business school, this swaggering mediocrity nestled at the bottom of every class, perplexed by achievers not of his class, to say nothing of his race. At Andover, Bush reportedly sported on his wall a Confederate flag that might have repelled Andover's two blacks, and perhaps the one Puerto Rican, in its class of 290.

It was, however, Bush's towering lack of intellect that defined him. "That (Bush) coasted on his family name was understandable," said Yale frat brother Tom Wilner. "Lots of guys do that. But Georgie, as we called him then, has absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn't interested in ideas or books or causes. He didn't travel; he didn't read the newspapers; he didn't watch the news ... How he got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me."

Chasing down bogus war records and irrelevant cocaine tips, the media have missed the boat on the background of the gloating "war president." It was Wilner who loosed the most salient line in Kelley's book: "Hell, it's not George's substance abuse that bothers me as much as his lack of substance."

Is this not cause for national embarrassment? Think about it. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Impeach Bush: Millions of US Citizens Blocked from Voting on 2nd Nov!!!

09.26.04 (9:59 am) [edit]

[b]Millions Blocked from Voting in Election[/b]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts.

The largest category of those legally disenfranchised consists of almost 5 million former felons who have served prison sentences and been released.

In total, 13 percent of all black men are barred from voting due to a felony conviction, according to the Commission on Civil Rights. Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

"This has a huge effect on elections but also on black communities which see their political clout diluted. No one has yet explained to me how letting ex-felons who have served their sentences into polling booths hurts anyone," said Jessie Allen of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Conservatives disagree. "Society is not required to turn a blind eye to the fact that someone has a criminal record. Someone who was not willing to follow the law and was sent to prison should not be in a position to make the law for others by electing lawmakers," said Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity think tank.

Millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost due to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have cataloged numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout.

"There are individuals and officials who are actively trying to stop people from voting who they think will vote against their party and that nearly always means stopping black people from voting Democratic," said Mary Frances Berry, head of the U.S. Commission on Human Rights.

[b]'DISCOURAGED' FROM VOTING [/b]

Vicky Beasley, a field officer for People for the American Way, listed some of the ways voters have been "discouraged" from voting.

"In elections in Baltimore in 2002 and in Georgia last year, black voters were sent fliers saying anyone who hadn't paid utility bills or had outstanding parking tickets or were behind on their rent would be arrested at polling stations. It happens in every election cycle," she said.

In a mayoral election in Philadelphia last year, people pretending to be plainclothes police officers stood outside some polling stations asking people to identify themselves. There have also been reports of mysterious people videotaping people waiting in line to vote in black neighborhoods.

Minority voters may be deterred from voting simply by election officials demanding to see drivers' licenses before handing them a ballot, according to Spencer Overton, who teaches law at George Washington University.

"African Americans are four to five times less likely than whites to have a photo ID," Overton said at a recent briefing on minority disenfranchisement.

Courtenay Strickland of the Americans Civil Liberties Union testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last week that at a primary election in Florida last month, many people were wrongly turned away when they could not produce identification.

[b]BLACKS' BALLOTS REJECTED [/b]

The commission, in a report earlier this year, said that in Florida, where President Bush (news - web sites) won a bitterly disputed election in 2000 by 537 votes, black voters had been 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected and were often prevented from voting because their names were erroneously purged from registration lists.

Additionally, Florida is one of 14 states that prohibit ex-felons from voting. Seven percent of the electorate but 16 percent of black voters in that state are disenfranchised.

In other swing states, 4.6 percent of voters in Iowa, but 25 percent of blacks, were disenfranchised in 2000 as ex-felons. In Nevada, it was 4.8 percent of all voters but 17 percent of blacks; in New Mexico, 6.2 percent of all voters but 25 percent of blacks.

Penda Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, which seeks to ensure fair multiracial elections, recently reported that registrars across the country often claimed not to have received voter registration forms or rejected them for technical reasons that could have been corrected easily before voting day if the applicant had known there was a problem.

Beasley said that many voters who had registered recently in swing states were likely to find their names would not be on the rolls when they showed up on Election Day. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

100 Children Per Day Die in Iraq, Most Due to Malnutrition and Consequences of Bush Bombing

09.26.04 (9:56 am) [edit]

[b]Zaman Daily:[/b] "In one month, 3000 children died in Iraq; on average, that is 100 per day. Though many are innocent victims of incessant clashes, most succumb to malnourishment and unsanitary living conditions [caused in large part by the systematic destruction of Iraq's infrastructure via the pre-invasion bombing, trashing sewage and water purification plants]. The shortage of drugs and modern equipment is worse than when Saddam Hussein was in power - when international embargoes isolated the country. Shells and shrapnel, grenades and bombs are other factors affecting the health of children. According to disclosures from the Health Care Ministry, children are suffering from diseases that were never reported before the war. Rimad Cuburi, a doctor in one of the country's largest children's hospitals, said the ailments arouse from some of the American weaponry." So this is what the Bush and his media goons are so eager to perpetuate at all costs? The slaughter of children?

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.zaman.com/?bl=inte...

A Month of Shame, or, "GOP to Working Americans: Drop Dead"

09.26.04 (5:24 am) [edit]

The last 30 days or so were dominated by horse race coverage, RNC coverage, typewriter coverage, and (finally and thankfully) a growing awareness of the rapid deterioration of the already unstable situation in Iraq. But to my mind, the most memorable events of this last month didn't get the ink that those other issues did. The last 30 days provided us with two signature moments that really epitomize the unrelenting desire of the Republican Party to destroy the middle class of this country. First, in late August, the Bush Labor Department torched 60 years of overtime law to enact the biggest middle-class pay cut in American history http://www.dailykos.com/story... . And now, in late September, the Republican Congress -- unsatisfied with merely slashing workers' pay -- has raised taxes on the poorest working Americans http://www.washingtonpost.com... .*

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.dailykos.com/story...

GWB: PRESIDENT OR CON-MAN?

09.26.04 (5:14 am) [edit]

BAGHDAD YEAR ZERO

09.26.04 (5:12 am) [edit]

It was only after I had been in Baghdad http://harpers.org/Iraq.html#... or a month that I found what I was looking for. I had traveled to Iraq a year after the war began, at the height of what should have been a construction boom, but after weeks of searching I had not seen a single piece of heavy machinery apart from tanks and humvees. Then I saw it: a construction crane. It was big and yellow and impressive, and when I caught a glimpse of it around a corner in a busy shopping district I thought that I was finally about to witness some of the reconstruction I had heard so much about. But as I got closer I noticed that the crane was not actually rebuilding anything—not one of the bombed-out government buildings that still lay in rubble all over the city, nor one of the many power lines that remained in twisted heaps even as the heat of summer was starting to bear down. No, the crane was hoisting a giant billboard to the top of a three-story building. SUNBULAH: HONEY 100% NATURAL, made in Saudi Arabia.

Seeing the sign, I couldn’t help but think about something Senator John McCain had said back in October. Iraq, he said, is “a huge pot of honey that’s attracting a lot of flies.” The flies McCain was referring to were the Halliburtons and Bechtels, as well as the venture capitalists who flocked to Iraq in the path cleared by Bradley Fighting Vehicles and laser-guided bombs. The honey that drew them was not just no-bid contracts and Iraq’s famed oil wealth but the myriad investment opportunities offered by a country that had just been cracked wide open after decades of being sealed off, first by the nationalist economic policies of Saddam Hussein, then by asphyxiating United Nations sanctions.

Looking at the honey billboard, I was also reminded of the most common explanation for what has gone wrong in Iraq, a complaint echoed by everyone from John Kerry to Pat Buchanan: Iraq is mired in blood and deprivation because George W. Bush didn’t have “a postwar plan.” The only problem with this theory is that it isn’t true. The Bush Administration did have a plan for what it would do after the war; put simply, it was to lay out as much honey as possible, then sit back and wait for the flies.

* * *

The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished belief of the war’s ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bush’s Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists.

Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.

The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based.

* * *

Torturers believe that when electrical shocks are applied to various parts of the body simultaneously subjects are rendered so confused about where the pain is coming from that they become incapable of resistance. A declassified CIA “Counterintelligence Interrogation” manual from 1963 describes how a trauma inflicted on prisoners opens up “an interval—which may be extremely brief—of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. . . . [A]t this moment the source is far more open to suggestion, far likelier to comply.” A similar theory applies to economic shock therapy, or “shock treatment,” the ugly term used to describe the rapid implementation of free-market reforms imposed on Chile in the wake of General Augusto Pinochet’s coup. The theory is that if painful economic “adjustments” are brought in rapidly and in the aftermath of a seismic social disruption like a war, a coup, or a government collapse, the population will be so stunned, and so preoccupied with the daily pressures of survival, that it too will go into suspended animation, unable to resist. As Pinochet’s finance minister, Admiral Lorenzo Gotuzzo, declared, “The dog’s tail must be cut off in one chop.”

That, in essence, was the working thesis in Iraq, and in keeping with the belief that private companies are more suited than governments for virtually every task, the White House decided to privatize the task of privatizing Iraq’s state-dominated economy. Two months before the war began, USAID began drafting a work order, to be handed out to a private company, to oversee Iraq’s “transition to a sustainable market-driven economic system.” The document states that the winning company (which turned out to be the KPMG offshoot Bearing Point) will take “appropriate advantage of the unique opportunity for rapid progress in this area presented by the current configuration of political circumstances.” Which is precisely what happened.

L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003, until he caught an early flight out of Baghdad on June 28, admits that when he arrived, “Baghdad was on fire, literally, as I drove in from the airport.” But before the fires from the “shock and awe” military onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, describes Bremer’s reforms as “an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world.”

The tone of Bremer’s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the country’s borders to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was “open for business.”

One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. “Getting inefficient state enterprises into private hands,” he said, “is essential for Iraq’s economic recovery.” It would be the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But Bremer’s economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to entice foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set of laws unprecedented in their generosity to multinational corporations. There was Order 37, which lowered Iraq’s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. There was Order 39, which allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. Even better, investors could take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country; they would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed. Under Order 39, they could sign leases and contracts that would last for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign banks to Iraq under the same favorable terms. All that remained of Saddam Hussein’s economic policies was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining.

If these policies sound familiar, it’s because they are the same ones multinationals around the world lobby for from national governments and in international trade agreements. But while these reforms are only ever enacted in part, or in fits and starts, Bremer delivered them all, all at once. Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in the world to being, on paper, its widest-open market.

* * *

At first, the shock-therapy theory seemed to hold: Iraqis, reeling from violence both military and economic, were far too busy staying alive to mount a political response to Bremer’s campaign. Worrying about the privatization of the sewage system was an unimaginable luxury with half the population lacking access to clean drinking water; the debate over the flat tax would have to wait until the lights were back on. Even in the international press, Bremer’s new laws, though radical, were easily upstaged by more dramatic news of political chaos and rising crime.

Some people were paying attention, of course. That autumn was awash in “rebuilding Iraq” trade shows, in Washington, London, Madrid, and Amman. The Economist described Iraq under Bremer as “a capitalist dream,” and a flurry of new consulting firms were launched promising to help companies get access to the Iraqi market, their boards of directors stacked with well-connected Republicans. The most prominent was New Bridge Strategies, started by Joe Allbaugh, former Bush-Cheney campaign manager. “Getting the rights to distribute Procter & Gamble products can be a gold mine,” one of the company’s partners enthused. “One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out thirty Iraqi stores; a Wal-Mart could take over the country.”

Soon there were rumors that a McDonald’s would be opening up in downtown Baghdad, funding was almost in place for a Starwood luxury hotel, and General Motors was planning to build an auto plant. On the financial side, HSBC would have branches all over the country, Citigroup was preparing to offer substantial loans guaranteed against future sales of Iraqi oil, and the bell was going to ring on a New York?style stock exchange in Baghdad any day.

In only a few months, the postwar plan to turn Iraq into a laboratory for the neocons had been realized. Leo Strauss may have provided the intellectual framework for invading Iraq preemptively, but it was that other University of Chicago professor, Milton Friedman, author of the anti-government manifesto Capitalism and Freedom, who supplied the manual for what to do once the country was safely in America’s hands. This represented an enormous victory for the most ideological wing of the Bush Administration. But it was also something more: the culmination of two interlinked power struggles, one among Iraqi exiles advising the White House on its postwar strategy, the other within the White House itself.

* * *

As the British historian Dilip Hiro has shown, in Secrets and Lies: Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ and After, the Iraqi exiles pushing for the invasion were divided, broadly, into two camps. On one side were “the pragmatists,” who favored getting rid of Saddam and his immediate entourage, securing access to oil, and slowly introducing free-market reforms. Many of these exiles were part of the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project, which generated a thirteen-volume report on how to restore basic services and transition to democracy after the war. On the other side was the “Year Zero” camp, those who believed that Iraq was so contaminated that it needed to be rubbed out and remade from scratch. The prime advocate of the pragmatic approach was Iyad Allawi, a former high-level Baathist who fell out with Saddam and started working for the CIA. The prime advocate of the Year Zero approach was Ahmad Chalabi, whose hatred of the Iraqi state for expropriating his family’s assets during the 1958 revolution ran so deep he longed to see the entire country burned to the ground—everything, that is, but the Oil Ministry, which would be the nucleus of the new Iraq, the cluster of cells from which an entire nation would grow. He called this process “de-Baathification.”

A parallel battle between pragmatists and true believers was being waged within the Bush Administration. The pragmatists were men like Secretary of State Colin Powell and General Jay Garner, the first U.S. envoy to postwar Iraq. General Garner’s plan was straightforward enough: fix the infrastructure, hold quick and dirty elections, leave the shock therapy to the International Monetary Fund, and concentrate on securing U.S. military bases on the model of the Philippines. “I think we should look right now at Iraq as our coaling station in the Middle East,” he told the BBC. He also paraphrased T. E. Lawrence, saying, “It’s better for them to do it imperfectly than for us to do it for them perfectly.” On the other side was the usual cast of neoconservatives: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (who lauded Bremer’s “sweeping reforms” as “some of the most enlightened and inviting tax and investment laws in the free world”), Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and, perhaps most centrally, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Whereas the State Department had its Future of Iraq report, the neocons had USAID’s contract with Bearing Point to remake Iraq’s economy: in 108 pages, “privatization” was mentioned no fewer than fifty-one times. To the true believers in the White House, General Garner’s plans for postwar Iraq seemed hopelessly unambitious. Why settle for a mere coaling station when you can have a model free market? Why settle for the Philippines when you can have a beacon unto the world?

The Iraqi Year Zeroists made natural allies for the White House neoconservatives: Chalabi’s seething hatred of the Baathist state fit nicely with the neocons’ hatred of the state in general, and the two agendas effortlessly merged. Together, they came to imagine the invasion of Iraq as a kind of Rapture: where the rest of the world saw death, they saw birth—a country redeemed through violence, cleansed by fire. Iraq wasn’t being destroyed by cruise missiles, cluster bombs, chaos, and looting; it was being born again. April 9, 2003, the day Baghdad fell, was Day One of Year Zero.

While the war was being waged, it still wasn’t clear whether the pragmatists or the Year Zeroists would be handed control over occupied Iraq. But the speed with which the nation was conquered dramatically increased the neocons’ political capital, since they had been predicting a “cakewalk” all along. Eight days after George Bush landed on that aircraft carrier under a banner that said MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, the President publicly signed on to the neocons’ vision for Iraq to become a model corporate state that would open up the entire region. On May 9, Bush proposed the “establishment of a U.S.-Middle East free trade area within a decade”; three days later, Bush sent Paul Bremer to Baghdad to replace Jay Garner, who had been on the job for only three weeks. The message was unequivocal: the pragmatists had lost; Iraq would belong to the believers.

A Reagan-era diplomat turned entrepreneur, Bremer had recently proven his ability to transform rubble into gold by waiting exactly one month after the September 11 attacks to launch Crisis Consulting Practice, a security company selling “terrorism risk insurance” to multinationals. Bremer had two lieutenants on the economic front: Thomas Foley and Michael Fleischer, the heads of “private sector development” for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Foley is a Greenwich, Connecticut, multimillionaire, a longtime friend of the Bush family and a Bush-Cheney campaign “pioneer” who has described Iraq as a modern California “gold rush.” Fleischer, a venture capitalist, is the brother of former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Neither man had any high-level diplomatic experience and both use the term corporate “turnaround” specialist to describe what they do. According to Foley, this uniquely qualified them to manage Iraq’s economy because it was “the mother of all turnarounds.”

Many of the other CPA postings were equally ideological. The Green Zone, the city within a city that houses the occupation headquarters in Saddam’s former palace, was filled with Young Republicans straight out of the Heritage Foundation, all of them given responsibility they could never have dreamed of receiving at home. Jay Hallen, a twenty-four-year-old who had applied for a job at the White House, was put in charge of launching Baghdad’s new stock exchange. Scott Erwin, a twenty-one-year-old former intern to Dick Cheney, reported in an email home that “I am assisting Iraqis in the management of finances and budgeting for the domestic security forces.” The college senior’s favorite job before this one? “My time as an ice-cream truck driver.” In those early days, the Green Zone felt a bit like the Peace Corps, for people who think the Peace Corps is a communist plot. It was a chance to sleep on cots, wear army boots, and cry “incoming”—all while being guarded around the clock by real soldiers.

The teams of KPMG accountants, investment bankers, think-tank lifers, and Young Republicans that populate the Green Zone have much in common with the IMF missions that rearrange the economies of developing countries from the presidential suites of Sheraton hotels the world over. Except for one rather significant difference: in Iraq they were not negotiating with the government to accept their “structural adjustments” in exchange for a loan; they were the government.

Some small steps were taken, however, to bring Iraq’s U.S.-appointed politicians inside. Yegor Gaidar, the mastermind of Russia’s mid-nineties privatization auction that gave away the country’s assets to the reigning oligarchs, was invited to share his wisdom at a conference in Baghdad. Marek Belka, who as finance minister oversaw the same process in Poland, was brought in as well. The Iraqis who proved most gifted at mouthing the neocon lines were selected to act as what USAID calls local “policy champions”—men like Ahmad al Mukhtar, who told me of his countrymen, “They are lazy. The Iraqis by nature, they are very dependent. . . . They will have to depend on themselves, it is the only way to survive in the world today.” Although he has no economics background and his last job was reading the English-language news on television, al Mukhtar was appointed director of foreign relations in the Ministry of Trade and is leading the charge for Iraq to join the World Trade Organization.

* * *

I had been following the economic front of the war for almost a year before I decided to go to Iraq. I attended the “Rebuilding Iraq” trade shows, studied Bremer’s tax and investment laws, met with contractors at their home offices in the United States, interviewed the government officials in Washington who are making the policies. But as I prepared to travel to Iraq in March to see this experiment in free-market utopianism up close, it was becoming increasingly clear that all was not going according to plan. Bremer had been working on the theory that if you build a corporate utopia the corporations will come—but where were they? American multinationals were happy to accept U.S. taxpayer dollars to reconstruct the phone or electricity systems, but they weren’t sinking their own money into Iraq. There was, as yet, no McDonald’s or Wal-Mart in Baghdad, and even the sales of state factories, announced so confidently nine months earlier, had not materialized.

Some of the holdup had to do with the physical risks of doing business in Iraq. But there were other more significant risks as well. When Paul Bremer shredded Iraq’s Baathist constitution and replaced it with what The Economist greeted approvingly as “the wish list of foreign investors,” there was one small detail he failed to mention: It was all completely illegal. The CPA derived its legal authority from United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, which recognized the United States and Britain as Iraq’s legitimate occupiers. It was this resolution that empowered Bremer to unilaterally make laws in Iraq. But the resolution also stated that the U.S. and Britain must “comply fully with their obligations under international law including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907.” Both conventions were born as an attempt to curtail the unfortunate historical tendency among occupying powers to rewrite the rules so that they can economically strip the nations they control. With this in mind, the conventions stipulate that an occupier must abide by a country’s existing laws unless “absolutely prevented” from doing so. They also state that an occupier does not own the “public buildings, real estate, forests and agricultural assets” of the country it is occupying but is rather their “administrator” and custodian, keeping them secure until sovereignty is reestablished. This was the true threat to the Year Zero plan: since America didn’t own Iraq’s assets, it could not legally sell them, which meant that after the occupation ended, an Iraqi government could come to power and decide that it wanted to keep the state companies in public hands, or, as is the norm in the Gulf region, to bar foreign firms from owning 100 percent of national assets. If that happened, investments made under Bremer’s rules could be expropriated, leaving firms with no recourse because their investments had violated international law from the outset.

By November, trade lawyers started to advise their corporate clients not to go into Iraq just yet, that it would be better to wait until after the transition. Insurance companies were so spooked that not a single one of the big firms would insure investors for “political risk,” that high-stakes area of insurance law that protects companies against foreign governments turning nationalist or socialist and expropriating their investments.

Even the U.S.-appointed Iraqi politicians, up to now so obedient, were getting nervous about their own political futures if they went along with the privatization plans. Communications Minister Haider al-Abadi told me about his first meeting with Bremer. “I said, ‘Look, we don’t have the mandate to sell any of this. Privatization is a big thing. We have to wait until there is an Iraqi government.’” Minister of Industry Mohamad Tofiq was even more direct: “I am not going to do something that is not legal, so that’s it.”

Both al-Abadi and Tofiq told me about a meeting—never reported in the press—that took place in late October 2003. At that gathering the twenty-five members of Iraq’s Governing Council as well as the twenty-five interim ministers decided unanimously that they would not participate in the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned companies or of its publicly owned infrastructure.

But Bremer didn’t give up. International law prohibits occupiers from selling state assets themselves, but it doesn’t say anything about the puppet governments they appoint. Originally, Bremer had pledged to hand over power to a directly elected Iraqi government, but in early November he went to Washington for a private meeting with President Bush and came back with a Plan B. On June 30 the occupation would officially end—but not really. It would be replaced by an appointed government, chosen by Washington. This government would not be bound by the international laws preventing occupiers from selling off state assets, but it would be bound by an “interim constitution,” a document that would protect Bremer’s investment and privatization laws.

The plan was risky. Bremer’s June 30 deadline was awfully close, and it was chosen for a less than ideal reason: so that President Bush could trumpet the end of Iraq’s occupation on the campaign trail. If everything went according to plan, Bremer would succeed in forcing a “sovereign” Iraqi government to carry out his illegal reforms. But if something went wrong, he would have to go ahead with the June 30 handover anyway because by then Karl Rove, and not Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, would be calling the shots. And if it came down to a choice between ideology in Iraq and the electability of George W. Bush, everyone knew which would win.

* * *

At first, Plan B seemed to be right on track. Bremer persuaded the Iraqi Governing Council to agree to everything: the new timetable, the interim government, and the interim constitution. He even managed to slip into the constitution a completely overlooked clause, Article 26. It stated that for the duration of the interim government, “The laws, regulations, orders and directives issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority . . . shall remain in force” and could only be changed after general elections are held.

Bremer had found his legal loophole: There would be a window—seven months—when the occupation was officially over but before general elections were scheduled to take place. Within this window, the Hague and Geneva Conventions’ bans on privatization would no longer apply, but Bremer’s own laws, thanks to Article 26, would stand. During these seven months, foreign investors could come to Iraq and sign forty-year contracts to buy up Iraqi assets. If a future elected Iraqi government decided to change the rules, investors could sue for compensation.

But Bremer had a formidable opponent: Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the most senior Shia cleric in Iraq. al Sistani tried to block Bremer’s plan at every turn, calling for immediate direct elections and for the constitution to be written after those elections, not before. Both demands, if met, would have closed Bremer’s privatization window. Then, on March 2, with the Shia members of the Governing Council refusing to sign the interim constitution, five bombs exploded in front of mosques in Karbala and Baghdad, killing close to 200 worshipers. General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, warned that the country was on the verge of civil war. Frightened by this prospect, al Sistani backed down and the Shia politicians signed the interim constitution. It was a familiar story: the shock of a violent attack paved the way for more shock therapy.

When I arrived in Iraq a week later, the economic project seemed to be back on track. All that remained for Bremer was to get his interim constitution ratified by a Security Council resolution, then the nervous lawyers and insurance brokers could relax and the sell-off of Iraq could finally begin. The CPA, meanwhile, had launched a major new P.R. offensive designed to reassure investors that Iraq was still a safe and exciting place to do business. The centerpiece of the campaign was Destination Baghdad Exposition, a massive trade show for potential investors to be held in early April at the Baghdad International Fairgrounds. It was the first such event inside Iraq, and the organizers had branded the trade fair “DBX,” as if it were some sort of Mountain Dew?sponsored dirt-bike race. In keeping with the extreme-sports theme, Thomas Foley traveled to Washington to tell a gathering of executives that the risks in Iraq are akin “to skydiving or riding a motorcycle, which are, to many, very acceptable risks.”

But three hours after my arrival in Baghdad, I was finding these reassurances extremely hard to believe. I had not yet unpacked when my hotel room was filled with debris and the windows in the lobby were shattered. Down the street, the Mount Lebanon Hotel had just been bombed, at that point the largest attack of its kind since the official end of the war. The next day, another hotel was bombed in Basra, then two Finnish businessmen were murdered on their way to a meeting in Baghdad. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt finally admitted that there was a pattern at work: “the extremists have started shifting away from the hard targets . . . [and] are now going out of their way to specifically target softer targets.” The next day, the State Department updated its travel advisory: U.S. citizens were “strongly warned against travel to Iraq.”

The physical risks of doing business in Iraq seemed to be spiraling out of control. This, once again, was not part of the original plan. When Bremer first arrived in Baghdad, the armed resistance was so low that he was able to walk the streets with a minimal security entourage. During his first four months on the job, 109 U.S. soldiers were killed and 570 were wounded. In the following four months, when Bremer’s shock therapy had taken effect, the number of U.S. casualties almost doubled, with 195 soldiers killed and 1,633 wounded. There are many in Iraq who argue that these events are connected—that Bremer’s reforms were the single largest factor leading to the rise of armed resistance.

Take, for instance, Bremer’s first casualties. The soldiers and workers he laid off without pensions or severance pay didn’t all disappear quietly. Many of them went straight into the mujahedeen, forming the backbone of the armed resistance. “Half a million people are now worse off, and there you have the water tap that keeps the insurgency going. It’s alternative employment,” says Hussain Kubba, head of the prominent Iraqi business group Kubba Consulting. Some of Bremer’s other economic casualties also have failed to go quietly. It turns out that many of the businessmen whose companies are threatened by Bremer’s investment laws have decided to make investments of their own—in the resistance. It is partly their money that keeps fighters in Kalashnikovs and RPGs.

These developments present a challenge to the basic logic of shock therapy: the neocons were convinced that if they brought in their reforms quickly and ruthlessly, Iraqis would be too stunned to resist. But the shock appears to have had the opposite effect; rather than the predicted paralysis, it jolted many Iraqis into action, much of it extreme. Haider al-Abadi, Iraq’s minister of communication, puts it this way: “We know that there are terrorists in the country, but previously they were not successful, they were isolated. Now because the whole country is unhappy, and a lot of people don’t have jobs . . . these terrorists are finding listening ears.”

Bremer was now at odds not only with the Iraqis who opposed his plans but with U.S military commanders charged with putting down the insurgency his policies were feeding. Heretical questions began to be raised: instead of laying people off, what if the CPA actually created jobs for Iraqis? And instead of rushing to sell off Iraq’s 200 state-owned firms, how about putting them back to work?

* * *

From the start, the neocons running Iraq had shown nothing but disdain for Iraq’s state-owned companies. In keeping with their Year Zero?apocalyptic glee, when looters descended on the factories during the war, U.S. forces did nothing. Sabah Asaad, managing director of a refrigerator factory outside Baghdad, told me that while the looting was going on, he went to a nearby U.S. Army base and begged for help. “I asked one of the officers to send two soldiers and a vehicle to help me kick out the looters. I was crying. The officer said, ‘Sorry, we can’t do anything, we need an order from President Bush.’” Back in Washington, Donald Rumsfeld shrugged. “Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

To see the remains of Asaad’s football-field-size warehouse is to understand why Frank Gehry had an artistic crisis after September 11 and was briefly unable to design structures resembling the rubble of modern buildings. Asaad’s looted and burned factory looks remarkably like a heavy-metal version of Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, with waves of steel, buckled by fire, lying in terrifyingly beautiful golden heaps. Yet all was not lost. “The looters were good-hearted,” one of Asaad’s painters told me, explaining that they left the tools and machines behind, “so we could work again.” Because the machines are still there, many factory managers in Iraq say that it would take little for them to return to full production. They need emergency generators to cope with daily blackouts, and they need capital for parts and raw materials. If that happened, it would have tremendous implications for Iraq’s stalled reconstruction, because it would mean that many of the key materials needed to rebuild—cement and steel, bricks and furniture—could be produced inside the country.

But it hasn’t happened. Immediately after the nominal end of the war, Congress appropriated $2.5 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq, followed by an additional $18.4 billion in October. Yet as of July 2004, Iraq’s state-owned factories had been pointedly excluded from the reconstruction contracts. Instead, the billions have all gone to Western companies, with most of the materials for the reconstruction imported at great expense from abroad.

With unemployment as high as 67 percent, the imported products and foreign workers flooding across the borders have become a source of tremendous resentment in Iraq and yet another open tap fueling the insurgency. And Iraqis don’t have to look far for reminders of this injustice; it’s on display in the most ubiquitous symbol of the occupation: the blast wall. The ten-foot-high slabs of reinforced concrete are everywhere in Iraq, separating the protected—the people in upscale hotels, luxury homes, military bases, and, of course, the Green Zone—from the unprotected and exposed. If that wasn’t injury enough, all the blast walls are imported, from Kurdistan, Turkey, or even farther afield, this despite the fact that Iraq was once a major manufacturer of cement, and could easily be again. There are seventeen state-owned cement factories across the country, but most are idle or working at only half capacity. According to the Ministry of Industry, not one of these factories has received a single contract to help with the reconstruction, even though they could produce the walls and meet other needs for cement at a greatly reduced cost. The CPA pays up to $1,000 per imported blast wall; local manufacturers say they could make them for $100. Minister Tofiq says there is a simple reason why the Americans refuse to help get Iraq’s cement factories running again: among those making the decisions, “no one believes in the public sector.”[1]

This kind of ideological blindness has turned Iraq’s occupiers into prisoners of their own policies, hiding behind walls that, by their very existence, fuel the rage at the U.S. presence, thereby feeding the need for more walls. In Baghdad the concrete barriers have been given a popular nickname: Bremer Walls.

As the insurgency grew, it soon became clear that if Bremer went ahead with his plans to sell off the state companies, it could worsen the violence. There was no question that privatization would require layoffs: the Ministry of Industry estimates that roughly 145,000 workers would have to be fired to make the firms desirable to investors, with each of those workers supporting, on average, five family members. For Iraq’s besieged occupiers the question was: Would these shock-therapy casualties accept their fate or would they rebel?

* * *

The answer arrived, in rather dramatic fashion, at one of the largest state-owned companies, the General Company for Vegetable Oils. The complex of six factories in a Baghdad industrial zone produces cooking oil, hand soap, laundry detergent, shaving cream, and shampoo. At least that is what I was told by a receptionist who gave me glossy brochures and calendars boasting of “modern instruments” and “the latest and most up to date developments in the field of industry.” But when I approached the soap factory, I discovered a group of workers sleeping outside a darkened building. Our guide rushed ahead, shouting something to a woman in a white lab coat, and suddenly the factory scrambled into activity: lights switched on, motors revved up, and workers—still blinking off sleep—began filling two-liter plastic bottles with pale blue Zahi brand dishwashing liquid.

I asked Nada Ahmed, the woman in the white coat, why the factory wasn’t working a few minutes before. She explained that they have only enough electricity and materials to run the machines for a couple of hours a day, but when guests arrive—would-be investors, ministry officials, journalists—they get them going. “For show,” she explained. Behind us, a dozen bulky machines sat idle, covered in sheets of dusty plastic and secured with duct tape.

In one dark corner of the plant, we came across an old man hunched over a sack filled with white plastic caps. With a thin metal blade lodged in a wedge of wax, he carefully whittled down the edges of each cap, leaving a pile of shavings at his feet. “We don’t have the spare part for the proper mold, so we have to cut them by hand,” his supervisor explained apologetically. “We haven’t received any parts from Germany since the sanctions began.” I noticed that even on the assembly lines that were nominally working there was almost no mechanization: bottles were held under spouts by hand because conveyor belts don’t convey, lids once snapped on by machines were being hammered in place with wooden mallets. Even the water for the factory was drawn from an outdoor well, hoisted by hand, and carried inside.

The solution proposed by the U.S. occupiers was not to fix the plant but to sell it, and so when Bremer announced the privatization auction back in June 2003 this was among the first companies mentioned. Yet when I visited the factory in March, nobody wanted to talk about the privatization plan; the mere mention of the word inside the plant inspired awkward silences and meaningful glances. This seemed an unnatural amount of subtext for a soap factory, and I tried to get to the bottom of it when I interviewed the assistant manager. But the interview itself was equally odd: I had spent half a week setting it up, submitting written questions for approval, getting a signed letter of permission from the minister of industry, being questioned and searched several times. But when I finally began the interview, the assistant manager refused to tell me his name or let me record the conversation. “Any manager mentioned in the press is attacked afterwards,” he said. And when I asked whether the company was being sold, he gave this oblique response: “If the decision was up to the workers, they are against privatization; but if it’s up to the high-ranking officials and government, then privatization is an order and orders must be followed.”

I left the plant feeling that I knew less than when I’d arrived. But on the way out of the gates, a young security guard handed my translator a note. He wanted us to meet him after work at a nearby restaurant, “to find out what is really going on with privatization.” His name was Mahmud, and he was a twenty-five-year-old with a neat beard and big black eyes. (For his safety, I have omitted his last name.) His story began in July, a few weeks after Bremer’s privatization announcement. The company’s manager, on his way to work, was shot to death. Press reports speculated that the manager was murdered because he was in favor of privatizing the plant, but Mahmud was convinced that he was killed because he opposed the plan. “He would never have sold the factories like the Americans want. That’s why they killed him.”

The dead man was replaced by a new manager, Mudhfar Ja’far. Shortly after taking over, Ja’far called a meeting with ministry officials to discuss selling off the soap factory, which would involve laying off two thirds of its employees. Guarding that meeting were several security officers from the plant. They listened closely to Ja’far’s plans and promptly reported the alarming news to their coworkers. “We were shocked,” Mahmud recalled. “If the private sector buys our company, the first thing they would do is reduce the staff to make more money. And we will be forced into a very hard destiny, because the factory is our only way of living.”

Frightened by this prospect, a group of seventeen workers, including Mahmud, marched into Ja’far’s office to confront him on what they had heard. “Unfortunately, he wasn’t there, only the assistant manager, the one you met,” Mahmud told me. A fight broke out: one worker struck the assistant manager, and a bodyguard fired three shots at the workers. The crowd then attacked the bodyguard, took his gun, and, Mahmud said, “stabbed him with a knife in the back three times. He spent a month in the hospital.” In January there was even more violence. On their way to work, Ja’far, the manager, and his son were shot and badly injured. Mahmud told me he had no idea who was behind the attack, but I was starting to understand why factory managers in Iraq try to keep a low profile.

At the end of our meeting, I asked Mahmud what would happen if the plant was sold despite the workers’ objections. “There are two choices,” he said, looking me in the eye and smiling kindly. “Either we will set the factory on fire and let the flames devour it to the ground, or we will blow ourselves up inside of it. But it will not be privatized.”

If there ever was a moment when Iraqis were too disoriented to resist shock therapy, that moment has definitely passed. Labor relations, like everything else in Iraq, has become a blood sport. The violence on the streets howls at the gates of the factories, threatening to engulf them. Workers fear job loss as a death sentence, and managers, in turn, fear their workers, a fact that makes privatization distinctly more complicated than the neocons foresaw.[2]

* * *

As I left the meeting with Mahmud, I got word that there was a major demonstration outside the CPA headquarters. Supporters of the radical young cleric Moqtada al Sadr were protesting the closing of their newspaper, al Hawza, by military police. The CPA accused al Hawza of publishing “false articles” that could “pose the real threat of violence.” As an example, it cited an article that claimed Bremer “is pursuing a policy of starving the Iraqi people to make them preoccupied with procuring their daily bread so they do not have the chance to demand their political and individual freedoms.” To me it sounded less like hate literature than a concise summary of Milton Friedman’s recipe for shock therapy.

A few days before the newspaper was shut down, I had gone to Kufa during Friday prayers to listen to al Sadr at his mosque. He had launched into a tirade against Bremer’s newly signed interim constitution, calling it “an unjust, terrorist document.” The message of the sermon was clear: Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani may have backed down on the constitution, but al Sadr and his supporters were still determined to fight it—and if they succeeded they would sabotage the neocons’ careful plan to saddle Iraq’s next government with their “wish list” of laws. With the closing of the newspaper, Bremer was giving al Sadr his response: he wasn’t negotiating with this young upstart; he’d rather take him out with force.

When I arrived at the demonstration, the streets were filled with men dressed in black, the soon-to-be legendary Mahdi Army. It struck me that if Mahmud lost his security guard job at the soap factory, he could be one of them. That’s who al Sadr’s foot soldiers are: the young men who have been shut out of the neocons’ grand plans for Iraq, who see no possibilities for work, and whose neighborhoods have seen none of the promised reconstruction. Bremer has failed these young men, and everywhere that he has failed, Moqtada al Sadr has cannily set out to succeed. In Shia slums from Baghdad to Basra, a network of Sadr Centers coordinate a kind of shadow reconstruction. Funded through donations, the centers dispatch electricians to fix power and phone lines, organize local garbage collection, set up emergency generators, run blood drives, direct traffic where the streetlights don’t work. And yes, they organize militias too. Al Sadr took Bremer’s economic casualties, dressed them in black, and gave them rusty Kalashnikovs. His militiamen protected the mosques and the state factories when the occupation authorities did not, but in some areas they also went further, zealously enforcing Islamic law by torching liquor stores and terrorizing women without the veil. Indeed, the astronomical rise of the brand of religious fundamentalism that al Sadr represents is another kind of blowback from Bremer’s shock therapy: if the reconstruction had provided jobs, security, and services to Iraqis, al Sadr would have been deprived of both his mission and many of his newfound followers.

At the same time as al Sadr’s followers were shouting “Down with America” outside the Green Zone, something was happening in another part of the country that would change everything. Four American mercenary soldiers were killed in Fallujah, their charred and dismembered bodies hung like trophies over the Euphrates. The attacks would prove a devastating blow for the neocons, one from which they would never recover. With these images, investing in Iraq suddenly didn’t look anything like a capitalist dream; it looked like a macabre nightmare made real.

The day I left Baghdad was the worst yet. Fallujah was under siege and Brig. Gen. Kimmitt was threatening to “destroy the al-Mahdi Army.” By the end, roughly 2,000 Iraqis were killed in these twin campaigns. I was dropped off at a security checkpoint several miles from the airport, then loaded onto a bus jammed with contractors lugging hastily packed bags. Although no one was calling it one, this was an evacuation: over the next week 1,500 contractors left Iraq, and some governments began airlifting their citizens out of the country. On the bus no one spoke; we all just listened to the mortar fire, craning our necks to see the red glow. A guy carrying a KPMG briefcase decided to lighten things up. “So is there business class on this flight?” he asked the silent bus. From the back, somebody called out, “Not yet.”

Indeed, it may be quite a while before business class truly arrives in Iraq. When we landed in Amman, we learned that we had gotten out just in time. That morning three Japanese civilians were kidnapped and their captors were threatening to burn them alive. Two days later Nicholas Berg went missing and was not seen again until the snuff film surfaced of his beheading, an even more terrifying message for U.S. contractors than the charred bodies in Fallujah. These were the start of a wave of kidnappings and killings of foreigners, most of them businesspeople, from a rainbow of nations: South Korea, Italy, China, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey. By the end of June more than ninety contractors were reported dead in Iraq. When seven Turkish contractors were kidnapped in June, their captors asked the “company to cancel all contracts and pull out employees from Iraq.” Many insurance companies stopped selling life insurance to contractors, and others began to charge premiums as high as $10,000 a week for a single Western executive—the same price some insurgents reportedly pay for a dead American.

For their part, the organizers of DBX, the historic Baghdad trade fair, decided to relocate to the lovely tourist city of Diyarbakir in Turkey, “just 250 km from the Iraqi border.” An Iraqi landscape, only without those frightening Iraqis. Three weeks later just fifteen people showed up for a Commerce Department conference in Lansing, Michigan, on investing in Iraq. Its host, Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, tried to reassure his skeptical audience by saying that Iraq is “like a rough neighborhood anywhere in America.” The foreign investors, the ones who were offered every imaginable free-market enticement, are clearly not convinced; there is still no sign of them. Keith Crane, a senior economist at the Rand Corporation who has worked for the CPA, put it bluntly: “I don’t believe the board of a multinational company could approve a major investment in this environment. If people are shooting at each other, it’s just difficult to do business.” Hamid Jassim Khamis, the manager of the largest soft-drink bottling plant in the region, told me he can’t find any investors, even though he landed the exclusive rights to produce Pepsi in central Iraq. “A lot of people have approached us to invest in the factory, but people are really hesitating now.” Khamis said he couldn’t blame them; in five months he has survived an attempted assassination, a carjacking, two bombs planted at the entrance of his factory, and the kidnapping of his son.

Despite having been granted the first license for a foreign bank to operate in Iraq in forty years, HSBC still hasn’t opened any branches, a decision that may mean losing the coveted license altogether. Procter & Gamble has put its joint venture on hold, and so has General Motors. The U.S. financial backers of the Starwood luxury hotel and multiplex have gotten cold feet, and Siemens AG has pulled most staff from Iraq. The bell hasn’t rung yet at the Baghdad Stock Exchange—in fact you can’t even use credit cards in Iraq’s cash-only economy. New Bridge Strategies, the company that had gushed back in October about how “a Wal-Mart could take over the country,” is sounding distinctly humbled. “McDonald’s is not opening anytime soon,” company partner Ed Rogers told the Washington Post. Neither is Wal-Mart. The Financial Times has declared Iraq “the most dangerous place in the world in which to do business.” It’s quite an accomplishment: in trying to design the best place in the world to do business, the neocons have managed to create the worst, the most eloquent indictment yet of the guiding logic behind deregulated free markets.

The violence has not just kept investors out; it also forced Bremer, before he left, to abandon many of his central economic policies. Privatization of the state companies is off the table; instead, several of the state companies have been offered up for lease, but only if the investor agrees not to lay off a single employee. Thousands of the state workers that Bremer fired have been rehired, and significant raises have been handed out in the public sector as a whole. Plans to do away with the food-ration program have also been scrapped—it just doesn’t seem like a good time to deny millions of Iraqis the only nutrition on which they can depend.

* * *

The final blow to the neocon dream came in the weeks before the handover. The White House and the CPA were rushing to get the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution endorsing their handover plan. They had twisted arms to give the top job to former CIA agent Iyad Allawi, a move that will ensure that Iraq becomes, at the very least, the coaling station for U.S. troops that Jay Garner originally envisioned. But if major corporate investors were going to come to Iraq in the future, they would need a stronger guarantee that Bremer’s economic laws would stick. There was only one way of doing that: the Security Council resolution had to ratify the interim constitution, which locked in Bremer’s laws for the duration of the interim government. But al Sistani once again objected, this time unequivocally, saying that the constitution has been “rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people.” On June 8 the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that endorsed the handover plan but made absolutely no reference to the constitution. In the face of this far-reaching defeat, George W. Bush celebrated the resolution as a historic victory, one that came just in time for an election trail photo op at the G-8 Summit in Georgia.

With Bremer’s laws in limbo, Iraqi ministers are already talking openly about breaking contracts signed by the CPA. Citigroup’s loan scheme has been rejected as a misuse of Iraq’s oil revenues. Iraq’s communication minister is threatening to renegotiate contracts with the three communications firms providing the country with its disastrously poor cell phone service. And the Lebanese and U.S. companies hired to run the state television network have been informed that they could lose their licenses because they are not Iraqi. “We will see if we can change the contract,” Hamid al-Kifaey, spokesperson for the Governing Council, said in May. “They have no idea about Iraq.” For most investors, this complete lack of legal certainty simply makes Iraq too great a risk.

But while the Iraqi resistance has managed to scare off the first wave of corporate raiders, there’s little doubt that they will return. Whatever form the next Iraqi government takes—nationalist, Islamist, or free market—it will inherit a shattered nation with a crushing $120 billion debt. Then, as in all poor countries around the world, men in dark blue suits from the IMF will appear at the door, bearing loans and promises of economic boom, provided that certain structural adjustments are made, which will, of course, be rather painful at first but well worth the sacrifice in the end. In fact, the process has already begun: the IMF is poised to approve loans worth $2.5? $4.25 billion, pending agreement on the conditions. After an endless succession of courageous last stands and far too many lost lives, Iraq will become a poor nation like any other, with politicians determined to introduce policies rejected by the vast majority of the population, and all the imperfect compromises that will entail. The free market will no doubt come to Iraq, but the neoconservative dream of transforming the country into a free-market utopia has already died, a casualty of a greater dream—a second term for George W. Bush.

The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible. Bremer’s reforms unleashed forces that the neocons neither predicted nor could hope to control, from armed insurrections inside factories to tens of thousands of unemployed young men arming themselves. These forces have transformed Year Zero in Iraq into the mirror opposite of what the neocons envisioned: not a corporate utopia but a ghoulish dystopia, where going to a simple business meeting can get you lynched, burned alive, or beheaded. These dangers are so great that in Iraq global capitalism has retreated, at least for now. For the neocons, this must be a shocking development: their ideological belief in greed turns out to be stronger than greed itself.

Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban: the one place on Earth where they could force everyone to live by the most literal, unyielding interpretation of their sacred texts. One would think that the bloody results of this experiment would inspire a crisis of faith: in the country where they had absolute free reign, where there was no local government to blame, where economic reforms were introduced at their most shocking and most perfect, they created, instead of a model free market, a failed state no right-thinking investor would touch. And yet the Green Zone neocons and their masters in Washington are no more likely to reexamine their core beliefs than the Taliban mullahs were inclined to search their souls when their Islamic state slid into a debauched Hades of opium and sex slavery. When facts threaten true believers, they simply close their eyes and pray harder.

Which is precisely what Thomas Foley has been doing. The former head of “private sector development” has left Iraq, a country he had described as “the mother of all turnarounds,” and has accepted another turnaround job, as co-chair of George Bush’s reelection committee in Connecticut. On April 30 in Washington he addressed a crowd of entrepreneurs about business prospects in Baghdad. It was a tough day to be giving an upbeat speech: that morning the first photographs had appeared out of Abu Ghraib, including one of a hooded prisoner with electrical wires attached to his hands. This was another kind of shock therapy, far more literal than the one Foley had helped to administer, but not entirely unconnected. “Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not as bad as it appears,” Foley told the crowd. “You just need to accept that on faith.”

Notes

1. Tofiq did say that several U.S. companies had expressed strong interest in buying the state-owned cement factories. This supports a widely held belief in Iraq that there is a deliberate strategy to neglect the state firms so that they can be sold more cheaply--a practice known as "starve then sell."

2. It is in Basra where the connections between economic reforms and the rise of the resistance was put in starkest terms. In December the union representing oil workers was negotiating with the Oil Ministry for a salary increase. Getting nowhere, the workers offered the ministry a simple choice: increase their paltry salaries or they would all join the armed resistance. They received a substantial raise.

[b]Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and writer/producer of The Take, a new documentary on Argentina’s occupied factories[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

BAGHDAD YEAR ZERO

09.26.04 (5:09 am) [edit]

MORE IRAQI CIVILIANS Killed by US Forces Than By Insurgents, Data Shows

09.26.04 (5:05 am) [edit]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.

According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher.

During the same period, 432 American soldiers were killed.

Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians. Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government.

That suggests that more aggressive U.S. military operations, which the Bush administration has said are being planned to clear the way for nationwide elections scheduled for January, could backfire and strengthen the insurgency.

American military officials said "damage will happen" in their effort to wrest control of some areas from insurgents. They blamed the insurgents for embedding themselves in communities, saying that's endangering innocent people.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, an American military spokesman, said the insurgents were living in residential areas, sometimes in homes filled with munitions.

"As long as they continue to do that, they are putting the residents at risk," Boylan said. "We will go after them."

Boylan said the military conducted intelligence to determine whether a home housed insurgents before striking it. While damage would happen, the airstrikes were "extremely precise," he said. And he said that any attacks by the multinational forces were "in coordination with the interim government."

The Health Ministry statistics indicate that more children have been killed around Ramadi and Fallujah than in Baghdad, though those cities together have only one-fifth of the Iraqi capital's population.

According to the statistics, 59 children were killed in Anbar province - a hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency that includes the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah - compared with 56 children in Baghdad. The ministry defines children as anyone younger than 12.

"When there are military clashes, we see innocent people die," said Dr. Walid Hamed, a member of the operations section of the Health Ministry, which compiles the statistics.

Juan Cole, a history professor at University of Michigan who specializes in Shiite Islam, said the widespread casualties meant that coalition forces already had lost the political campaign: "I think they lost the hearts and minds a long time ago."

"And they are trying to keep U.S. military casualties to a minimum in the run-up to the U.S. elections" by using airstrikes instead of ground forces, he said.

American military officials say they're targeting only terrorists and are aggressively working to spare innocent people nearby.

Nearly a third of the Iraqi dead - 1,122 - were killed in August, according to the statistics. May was the second deadliest month, with 749 Iraqis killed, and 319 were killed in June, the least violent month. Most of those killed lived in Baghdad; the ministry found that 1,068 had died in the capital.

Many Iraqis said they thought the numbers showed that the multinational forces disregarded their lives.

"The Americans do not care about the Iraqis. They don't care if they get killed, because they don't care about the citizens," said Abu Mohammed, 50, who was a major general in Saddam Hussein's army in Baghdad. "The Americans keep criticizing Saddam for the mass graves. How many graves are the Americans making in Iraq?"

At his fruit stand in southern Baghdad, Raid Ibraham, 24, theorized: "The Americans keep attacking the cities not to keep the security situation stable, but so they can stay in Iraq and control the oil."

Others blame the multinational forces for allowing security to disintegrate, inviting terrorists from everywhere and threatening the lives of everyday Iraqis.

"Anyone who hates America has come here to fight: Saddam's supporters, people who don't have jobs, other Arab fighters. All these people are on our streets," said Hamed, the ministry official. "But everyone is afraid of the Americans, not the fighters. And they should be."

Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by multinational forces and police; the remaining third died from insurgent attacks. The ministry began separating attacks by multinational and police forces and insurgents June 10.

From that date until Sept. 10, 1,295 Iraqis were killed in clashes with multinational forces and police versus 516 killed in terrorist operations, the ministry said. The ministry defined terrorist operations as explosive devices in residential areas, car bombs or assassinations.

The ministry said it didn't have any statistics for the three provinces in the north: Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, ethnic Kurdish areas that generally have been more peaceful than the rest of the country.

The Health Ministry is the only organization that attempts to track deaths through government agencies. The U.S. military said it kept estimates, but it refused to release them. Ahmed al Rawi, the communications director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, said the organization didn't have the staffing to compile such information.

The Health Ministry reports to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whom the United States appointed in June.

Iraqi health and hospital officials agreed that the statistics captured only part of the death toll.

To compile the data, the Health Ministry calls the directors general of the 15 provinces and asks how many deaths related to the war were reported at hospitals. The tracking of such information has become decentralized since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime because both hospitals and morgues issue death certificates now. And families often bury their dead without telling any government agencies or are treated at facilities that don't report to the government.

The ministry is convinced that nearly all of those reported dead are civilians, not insurgents. Most often, a family member wouldn't report it if his or her relative died fighting for rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia or another insurgent force, and the relative would be buried immediately, said Dr. Shihab Ahmed Jassim, another member of the ministry's operations section.

"People who participate in the conflict don't come to the hospital. Their families are afraid they will be punished," said Dr. Yasin Mustaf, the assistant manager of al Kimdi Hospital near Baghdad's poor Sadr City neighborhood. "Usually, the innocent people come to the hospital. That is what the numbers show."

The numbers also exclude those whose bodies were too mutilated to be recovered at car bombings or other attacks, the ministry said.

Ministry officials said they didn't know how big the undercount was. "We have nothing to do with politics," Jassim said.

Other independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqis have been killed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations.

Iraqis are aware of the casualties that are due to U.S. forces, and nearly everyone has a story to tell.

At al Kimdi Hospital, Dr. Mumtaz Jaber, a vascular surgeon, said that three months ago, his 3-year-old nephew, his sister and his brother-in-law were driving in Baghdad at about 9 p.m. when they saw an American checkpoint. His nephew was killed.

"They didn't stop fast enough. The Americans shot them immediately," Jaber said. "This is how so many die."

At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: "I don't know why."

U.S. officials said any allegations that soldiers had recklessly killed Iraqi citizens were investigated at the Iraqi Assistance Center in downtown Baghdad.

"There is no way to refute" such stories, said Robert Callahan, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. "All you can do is tell them the truth and hope it eventually will get through." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

MORE IRAQI CIVILIANS Killed by US Forces Than By Insurgents, Data Shows

09.26.04 (5:03 am) [edit]

A Month of Shame, or, "GOP to Working Americans: Drop Dead"

09.25.04 (5:18 pm) [edit]

Former Senator alleges White House 9/11 cover-up

09.25.04 (4:32 pm) [edit]

[b]Sen. Bob Graham co-chaired the joint congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, which preceded the broader commission investigation.

The other co-chairman was Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican who is now Bush's nominee to head the CIA. [/b]

Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence that might have linked Saudi Arabia to the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Graham's charges, made in a new book and at a news conference arranged by the John Kerry campaign, were rejected by Republicans as "bizarre conspiracy theories." The Saudis said Graham's claims were unsubstantiated and reckless.

Kerry has called for an independent investigation into the charges made by Graham, a former rival for the Democratic nomination.

Graham's statements support Kerry's claims that Bush is too close to the Saudi royal family and unwilling to pressure it to crack down on the financing of terrorists. But they are at odds with the findings of the independent Sept. 11 commission, which Kerry has strongly supported. The commission said it found no evidence that the Saudi government financed al-Qaida.

Graham said the commission "has given us its conclusions without giving us the facts upon which those conclusions were established."

The Florida senator co-chaired the joint congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, which preceded the broader commission investigation.

The other co-chairman was Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican who is now Bush's nominee to head the CIA.

Republican National Committee Communications Director Jim Dyke said that when Graham was a presidential candidate, his "bizarre conspiracy theories and calls for the president's impeachment [over the Iraq war] so undermined his credibility it is difficult to understand why the Kerry campaign would now lend him a platform to launch his latest accusations -- accusations already disproved by the 9/11 Commission."

The cover-up charge stems from the FBI's refusal to allow inquiry staff to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of Sept. 11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

In his book "Intelligence Matters," Graham said an FBI official wrote to Goss and Graham in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source. Nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena or a notice of deposition on the source."

In his telephone news conference, Graham called the letter "a smoking gun. " He said, "The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House."

The joint inquiry report last year also noted its lack of access to Shaikh, placing responsibility on "the FBI, supported by the attorney general and the administration."

The inquiry's report added to suspicions about a Saudi role in the plot.

The Bush administration refused to allow the release of a 28-page section dealing with foreign support for hijackers. That section was believed to center on Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.

In its report, the independent commission said it found "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded" al-Qaida.

It also found no evidence that Osama Basnan, a Saudi man who lived in San Diego, provided money to the two hijackers. - http://www.unknownnews.org/04...

Global Corporate Hegemony

09.25.04 (3:55 pm) [edit]

[b]Corporate Fascism ushered in by the NeoCons and the Blue Bolsheviks, the Corporate Rulers' Useful Idiots [/b]

There are few studies more likely to induce deep sleep than trying to follow the doings of Communists. The core of their beliefs is the rejection of God and the exaltation of man, but being human they cannot erase their spirituality completely, so they must find new gods, and the gods of Communism, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Mao, have been the most unattractive, fractious and bloodthirsty divinities until the advent of Osama.

In such difficult times as these, for nobody should doubt that these are truly historic times, it’s maybe pertinent to ask ourselves, what became of anti-Communism? Why has a movement that so energised society for decades withered on the vine? Did we really think that Communism died with the Soviet Union? It surely hasn’t. Our difficult times are being directed and influenced by people who at some time in their lives have either been Communists or who have no compunction about using Communist language. Red Bolshevism is dead as a political force in sane societies. What has taken its place is equally dangerous – the Blue Bolshevism of neo-conservatism.

A useful essay outlining the Trotskyite roots of neo-conservatism is

Stephen Schwartz’s Trotskycons, published in the June 11 2003 edition of National Review Online. Schwartz is a popular Internet pundit who has worn many hats during the course of his life, which have been duly recorded by his long-standing antagonist Srjda Trifkovic. As well as being a convert to Islam, something he doesn’t usually tell his readers, he has admitted to involvement with the KLA in Kosovo. Therefore, when reading him, one must be careful to determine whether it is Stephen Schwartz, Suleyman Ahmed or Comrade Sandalio that’s speaking. He’s probably cultivating crossover appeal.

These aren’t guys who queue at the job-window, waiting for some Johnny Friendly to shout ‘Everybody works today!’ Instead, they began life as Trotskyites in the ‘30’s in the school advocated by the philosopher Max Shachtman – according to Schwartz, ‘they belonged to or sympathized with a trend in radical leftism that followed the principle of opposition to the Soviet betrayal of the revolution to its logical end’. In layman’s terms, this began as a house fight with the Stalinists.

According to Schwartz, the first individuals to formally break from Trotskyism were James Burnham, a founder of National Review, and Irving Kristol of Encounter. Described by the hatchet man David Frum as the only person willing to take the title of ‘neo-conservative’, Irving Kristol is the father of Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, along with National Review the main ideas-engine of neo-conservatism. The Weekly Standard is published by News Corporation, the ultimate owners of Fox News. No doubt in the interests of the ideological purity all Bolsheviks crave, Schwartz absolves Bill Kristol, Richard (‘The Five Million Dollar Man’) Perle and Paul Wolfowitz from any taint of Shachtmanism.

Having left Trotskyism, the neo-conservatives gravitated firstly to the Democrats. However, they still could not tame the fractious beasts within, and started to leave the Democrats in 1972, in opposition to the nomination of George McGovern. Using the classic Trotskyite tactic of ‘entryism’, they began to fill more and more positions of influence within the Republican Party, until now they have come to dominate it. Not bad for people who only started voting Republican in 1980.

For Schwartz, Trotsky is not an ambivalent figure. He lauds Burnham and the Elder Kristol for the fact that ‘they did not apologize, did not grovel, did not crawl and beg forgiveness for having, at one time, been stirred by the figure of Trotsky.’ That’s nice. He’s even more forthcoming on his own opinion of Trotsky as it stands at the moment, describing him a figure of ‘moral consistency’ who, ‘if nothing else, took responsibility for the crimes of the early Bolshevik regime.’

One of those crimes was, of course, the massacre of White Russian military that he orchestrated at the Kronstadt naval base outside St. Petersburg. This is Schwartz’s spin on Kronstadt –

“It is certainly true that Trotsky’s role at Kronstadt was abominable. It is also true that very few people today know or care about Kronstadt, which may or not be bad.’

That as chilling a sentence as I can remember reading. However, he really gets into his stride when he gets going on the subject of the Blue Bolsheviks not of the past, but of the present, and the role they played in supporting interventionist Iraqi War. Step forward that onetime most ardent of Bolsheviks, Christopher Hitchens.

For the life of me, I can’t work out what voodoo Hitchens has worked on you guys over there. He once wrote a column on the subject of Churchill for The Atlantic Monthly called ‘The medals of his defeats’. He made reference to his father’s service as a naval officer on H.M.S. Jamaica and the role he played in helping sink the German destroyer Scharnhorst during the Battle of the Atlantic. He described it ‘a far better day’s work than any I have ever done’. I wouldn’t disagree with that for a second.

However, because of a brilliant skill with words developed at an English public school and the University of Oxford, Hitchens has achieved a level of recognition that his beliefs or former beliefs do not merit. Like Stephen Schwartz, like David Horowitz, like all Bolsheviks Red or Blue, the natural flow of his temper is toward the extreme. It doesn’t matter what extreme. In Horowitz’s case the extreme can be reached after years of soul-searching and repenting what he believed before, his massive learning and energy then channelled into fighting his four noblest of fights, for academic freedom, for the defence of Israel, against the spread of radical Islam and the dirtiest one of all, against the people he once admired and associated with, but it’s still extreme.

It’s hardly surprising then that Hitchens should attach himself to the war against radical Islam with the gusto that he has – it’s a competing ideology. To the mind of Hitchens, Osama is a threat to the hearts and minds of Muslims who would otherwise be attracted to the doctrine he has devoted his life to. Their insistence on the promotion of the rational at all costs means that when a crazy like Osama crosses their path, they can’t get it into their heads that this guy can’t be reasoned with. Many of them say they do get it, but they don’t really. It’s hardly surprising, then, that an extremist like Hitchens has been a lecturer at a White House that’s full of them. It’s hardly surprising that Horowitz has given him the airtime he’s had on Front Page Magazine, which has also carried the thoughts of Comrade Sandalio on a regular basis.

Anyone who is still proud to call themselves a Dutch Reagan or Margaret Thatcher anti-Communist needs to oppose these people. These guys have nothing new or exciting to offer, only war, ideology and then some more of the same. The man whose coat tails many of them rode, Dutch Reagan, was a liberal New Deal Democrat who became the most committed anti-Communist of all time, ending it up largely smashing it. But Dutch never followed Trotsky. He didn’t ever try to justify Kronstadt or sing ‘The Internationale’. The ‘Internationale’, when sung in English to the tune of ‘O Tannenbaum’, ends with the phrase,

‘[i]When cowards flinch, and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the Red Flag flying here’[/i].

Neoconservatives called the Spanish people cowards after the Madrid bombing. David Frum calls conservatives who oppose his beliefs ‘unpatriotic’. Is all of this familiar?

With apologies for my bad Russian, it’s time they followed their mentor’s advice and consigned themselves to the dustbin of history. - http://www.washingtondispatch...

AMERICANS ARE DUMBER THAN POSTS!

09.25.04 (5:46 am) [edit]

In the international war of words you might be led to believe that it was a citizen from one of the many nations displeased with America, or one of its long-standing detractors that uttered these words. You know, like maybe a French citizen on the European continent, upset with our reckless unilateralism. Possibly an Iranian, Syrian, or Palestinian citizen in the Middle East distraught with our overt heavyhandedness and partiality. Or maybe a North Korean citizen in Asia, reacting to our jingoistic threats. Think so? Then think again.

The setting was the checkout line at my local grocery store. Behind me in the line was a middle aged, fairly well dressed white male. He appeared to be a decent and upstanding citizen. He was an American. Our eyes were both directed at the headline on one of those incredible news magazines that adorn the checkout stand begging for our attention. You know, the ones with headlines like 'Bush Abducted By Aliens, and 'Theresa Heinz-Kerry Slimed By Aliens With Ketchup.' Really, the latter was an actual headline in one of these papers. This particular one, complete with photos of Bush and Kerry, screamed 'November Elections Canceled!'

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

INVESTIGATORS Find Saddam-Scale Imprisonment Abuse, Torture, Rape in US-Run Systems in Iraq

09.25.04 (5:43 am) [edit]

[b]TNS:[/b] "American legal investigators have discovered evidence of abuse, torture and rape throughout the US-run prison system in Iraq. A Michigan legal team meeting with former detainees in Baghdad during an August fact-finding mission gathered evidence supporting claims of prisoner abuse at some 25 US-run detention centers, most of them" thus far unrreported and unlisted." The investigators report that the US has set up prisons across the country, converting everything from horse stables to elementary schools to "detention centers." The sheer numbers of detention camps and the abuse systematically occuring in them is disturbingly reminiscent of Saddam's regime - is it any wonder the insurgency is gaining momentum?

[b]Read article:[/b] http://newstandardnews.net/co...

INVESTIGATORS Find Saddam-Scale Imprisonment Abuse, Torture, Rape in US-Run Systems in Iraq

09.25.04 (5:43 am) [edit]

INVESTIGATORS Find Saddam-Scale Imprisonment Abuse, Torture, Rape in US-Run Systems in Iraq

09.25.04 (5:40 am) [edit]

INVESTIGATORS Find Saddam-Scale Imprisonment Abuse, Torture, Rape in US-Run Systems in Iraq

09.25.04 (5:39 am) [edit]

LIAR, LIAR: Bush & Puppet Allawi's 'Dog-n-Pony Show' by Karl Rove Unconvincing

09.25.04 (5:36 am) [edit]

I was channel-surfing yesterday evening- trying to find something interesting to watch. I flipped vaguely to Al-Arabia and Bush's inane smile suddenly flashed across the screen. Now, normally, as soon as I see his face, I instantly change channels and try to find something that doesn't make me quite as angry. This time, I stopped to watch as Allawi's pudgy person came into view. It's always quite a scene- Bush with one of the alledged leaders of the New Iraq.

I prepared myself for several minutes of nausea as Bush began speaking. He irritates me like no one else can. Imagine long nails across a chalk board, Styrofoam being rubbed in hands, shrieking babies, barking dogs, grinding teeth, dripping faucets, honking horns -- all together, all at once -- and you will imagine the impact his voice has on my ears.

I sat listening, trying not to focus too much on his face, but rather on the garbage he was reiterating for at least the thousandth time since the war. I don't usually talk back to the television, but I really can't help myself when Bush is onscreen. I sit there talking back to him -- calling him a liar, calling him an idiot, wondering how exactly he got so far and how they're allowing him to run for re-election. E. sat next to me on the couch, peeved, "Why are we even watching this?!" He made a jump for the remote control (which I clutch to shake at the television to emphasize particular points) -- a brief struggle ensued and Riverbend came out victorious.

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

LIAR, LIAR: Bush & Puppet Allawi's 'Dog-n-Pony Show' by Karl Rove Unconvincing

09.25.04 (5:32 am) [edit]

BUSH'S WAR CRIMES: Flouting the UN Charter, Invading Iraq ...

09.23.04 (4:34 am) [edit]

President Bush went before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday to defend his administration's decision to invade Iraq.

Bush said the U.S. delivered the Iraqi people from "an outlawed dictator" and the U.S. mission was "not to retreat, it is to prevail." The sentiments sounded noble, but there still is the matter of the legality of the U.S. invasion itself.

Almost unnoticed last week in the American press was a statement UN Secretary General Kofi Annan made to the BBC World Service. Annan was asked he thought the U.S.-led invasion was illegal because it didn't have the approval of the United Nations. He said yes, that "it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

According to the UN Charter - a treaty signed by 192 of the world's 196 sovereign states, including the U.S. - it is a crime for a nation to attack another nation unless there is a clear and present danger to that nation's security.

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

BUSH'S WAR CRIMES: Flouting the UN Charter, Invading Iraq ...

09.23.04 (4:33 am) [edit]

55 REASONS TO VOTE "FOR" OR "AGAINST" BUSH & REPUGS IN 2004??? ...

09.23.04 (4:31 am) [edit]

. You think [b]$900/month ($10,800/year)[/b] is a fair price for a health insurance policy. You are unaware that health insurance premiums have increased 60% since Bush took office. You haven't heard that by the time you retire your employer will NOT be offering retirement health benefits for you and your spouse.

. You are already retired and don't believe that your former life long employer would have the cruelty or the legal power to simply drop you and all of its retirees from its health insurance policy. You think you are set for life.

. You are against big Federal and State programs like Medicare and Medicaid and would rather pay the $60,000 a year on your own for a nursing home when one of your elderly parents or your spouse gets too sick to live at home. You don't believe it can happen to you.

. You believe that it is more likely that a fanatical, religious, Muslim terrorist will attack your home and family rather than a nursing home will attack your entire life savings and confiscate the home of your parents---the home you grew up in.

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

55 REASONS TO VOTE "FOR" OR "AGAINST" BUSH & REPUGS IN 2004??? ...

09.23.04 (4:31 am) [edit]

THE GAP:-- CHRISTIANS FAULT BUSH'S PHONY 'COMPASSION'

09.23.04 (4:28 am) [edit]

Christians for Kerry/Edwards takes a hard-hitting look at Bush's "compassion gap." A Christian writer has unearthed a quote from President George Washington, which sounds like our country's first president would have taken Bush to the woodshed for failing to prevent the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. In 1775, General Washington penned a letter to Colonel Benedict Arnold, putting this officer on notice that he would be held accountable for the conduct of his soldiers as they marched through a foreign country (Canada). General Washington charged Arnold to ensure that his soldiers "look with compassion" on the local residents and respect their religion. "Bush ignored the example of President George Washington and utterly failed to 'look with compassion' upon people of another country. The Iraqi occupation has disintegrated into a festering quagmire that breeds terrorists. As a result, America is more hated and less safe."

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.christiansforkerry...

THE GAP:-- CHRISTIANS FAULT BUSH'S PHONY 'COMPASSION'

09.23.04 (4:26 am) [edit]

THE GAP:-- CHRISTIANS FAULT BUSH'S PHONY 'COMPASSION'

09.23.04 (4:24 am) [edit]

Neo-Con Goons 'Pissin'-their-Pants' Cause A'W'OL Bush's "Bounce"=A Big THUD!!!

09.22.04 (2:44 pm) [edit]

Today's Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 269 vs. Bush 253 (Map of the USA) http://www.tblog.com/template...

Wall Street Journal: Karl Rove Planted CBS with Copies of Actual Docs to Frame Kerry!!!

09.22.04 (2:37 pm) [edit]

[b]Not really folks! [i]But it could be true![/i] It's about as true as the bull-shit the neo-con propagandists are vomitting all over the place! No evidence exists to-date of who is really behind the document plant-- although the[i] irony [/i]is that the DOCS ARE TRUTHFUL about A'W'OL Bush![/b]

[b]INSIDE JOB: Did CBS Dupe the American Public, Dan Rather, and the Kerry Campaign to Aid Bush?[/b]

"You know the old saying "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is"? Well that adage should have gone off like an alarm bell when CBS first announced it would air a story on Bush's Texas National Guard Duty. Not only would they have an interview with Ben Barnes, they announced, but they would present HARD DOCUMENTATION supporting the story. Now, after "reviewing all the evidence," I have myself come to the conclusion that the entire story was, in essence a Kerry campaign "ambush" engineered by CBS itself, working in concert with a White House insider, most likely Karl Rove. Why would CBS do such a thing? Because although CBS may appear to "lose the battle" by airing a deeply flawed story, it stands to win the war. Winning the war - as in getting get Bush reelected.

[b]Read article:[/b] http://www.democrats.com/view...

Former CIA Agent Says Bush to Blame for 9/11

09.22.04 (2:33 pm) [edit]

Former CIA agent Ray McGovern went over what he considers the failures of the intelligence community and current administration over the past few years. He has 27 years of experience as a CIA analyst to draw upon and has dealt with every administration from Kennedy to Bush Sr.

"It's difficult for people to learn the truth about things like Iraq," said McGovern, a member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which is comprised of more than 40 former employees of agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Army Intelligence, the FBI and the National Security Agency.

"We have hundreds of years worth of experience in government service and intelligence to draw on so we feel a civic responsibility to do our best to spread as much truth as we can this fall," McGovern said.

He began his lecture by describing the CIA. He explained that the agency is supposed to be the one place in government with no political agenda, and could be very disastrous if it obtains one.

McGovern told a story about CIA officials who gave false information about enemy troop numbers in Vietnam to President Johnson. The lie led to a surprise of U.S. forces by the Tet Offensive in 1968. In this war of attrition, the agency wanted to make it look like the United States was doing better than it really was, McGovern said.

"Picture the Vietnam Memorial in Washington; it's a big 'V' shape. Now picture it with just one side of the 'V'. It might have been that way if some people had told the truth," McGovern said.

He also criticized the 9/11 Commission's final report, saying the committee was comprised of political extremists who couldn't reach a consensus.

"It wasn't a bipartisan commission; it was more like a bipolar commission," McGovern said. "To say that no one could prevent 9/11 was a bold-faced lie. It basically let the president and everyone responsible off the hook."

He went on to talk about the faulty intelligence attorney general John Ashcroft used when he announced that terrorist attacks may occur before or around election time, saying that elections might have to be postponed if the United States is attacked.

"There might be a real or staged terrorist attack in order to postpone the elections," McGovern said. "This might seem outlandish; I hope it is."

He mentioned how the Bush administration wanted to involve the country with the war in Iraq for certain reasons other than fear of weapons of mass destruction, which was just a more media-friendly explanation for the war.

"I have initials for why I think we went to war in Iraq," McGovern said. "O.I.L. O-I-L, O is for oil, I is for Israel and L is for logistics, as in when we have Iraq we have a foothold and a number of bases strategically placed in the Middle East so we can be in control over there and also to protect Israel."

Next he brought up civil liberties in the United States and how they have declined in the past few years.

"I used to say when I was a kid growing up when someone told me not to do something, 'It's a free country,'" McGovern said. "I ask you to think about it now."

In the audience was Nahla al-Arian, wife of imprisoned former professor Sami al-Arian. She explained to McGovern how she and her husband came to America to be free and described their current situation. Then she asked him why the government would target Palestinian activists.

His initial response was just, "I'm sorry," then he paused to collect his thoughts and said that things like that come all the way from the top down.

McGovern had a speaking engagement at the University of Florida later in the afternoon, and will also be lecturing at UCF soon on his and the VIPS's quest to spread the truth.

"No one has a corner on the truth. We don't have a corner on the truth, but it is certain that Fox News does not," McGovern said. "That most people get their 'news' from Fox News is extremely troubling." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Read [b]"Government Insider Says Bush Authorized 911 Attacks" [/b] http://rense.com/general57/aa...

BUSH'S ELECTION RIGGING: Millions Blocked from Voting in U.S. Election

09.22.04 (2:28 pm) [edit]

WASHINGTON - Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts.

The largest category of those legally disenfranchised consists of almost 5 million former felons who have served prison sentences and been deprived of the right to vote under laws that have roots in the post-Civil War 19th century and were aimed at preventing black Americans from voting.

But millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost due to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have cataloged numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout. Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

"There are individuals and officials who are actively trying to stop people from voting who they think will vote against their party and that nearly always means stopping black people from voting Democratic," said Mary Frances Berry, head of the U.S. Commission on Human Rights.

Vicky Beasley, a field officer for People for the American Way, listed some of the ways voters have been "discouraged" from voting.

"In elections in Baltimore in 2002 and in Georgia last year, black voters were sent fliers saying anyone who hadn't paid utility bills or had outstanding parking tickets or were behind on their rent would be arrested at polling stations. It happens in every election cycle," she said.

In a mayoral election in Philadelphia last year, people pretending to be plainclothes police officers stood outside some polling stations asking people to identify themselves. There have also been reports of mysterious people videotaping people waiting in line to vote in black neighborhoods.

Minority voters may be deterred from voting simply by election officials demanding to see drivers' licenses before handing them a ballot, according to Spencer Overton, who teaches law at George Washington University. The federal government does not require people to produce a photo identification unless they are first-time voters who registered by mail.

"African Americans are four to five times less likely than whites to have a photo ID," Overton said at a recent briefing on minority disenfranchisement.

Courtenay Strickland of the Americans Civil Liberties Union testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last week that at a primary election in Florida last month, many people were wrongly turned away when they could not produce identification.

[b]BLACKS' BALLOTS REJECTED[/b]

The commission, in a report earlier this year, said that in Florida, where President Bush won a bitterly disputed election in 2000 by 537 votes, black voters had been 10 times more likely than non-black voters to have their ballots rejected and were often prevented from voting because their names were erroneously purged from registration lists.

Additionally, Florida is one of 14 states that prohibit ex-felons from voting. Seven percent of the electorate but 16 percent of black voters in that state are disenfranchised.

In other swing states, 4.6 percent of voters in Iowa, but 25 percent of blacks, were disenfranchised in 2000 as ex-felons. In Nevada, it was 4.8 percent of all voters but 17 percent of blacks; in New Mexico, 6.2 percent of all voters but 25 percent of blacks.

In total, 13 percent of all black men are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, according to the Commission on Civil Rights.

"This has a huge effect on elections but also on black communities which see their political clout diluted. No one has yet explained to me how letting ex-felons who have served their sentences into polling booths hurts anyone," said Jessie Allen of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Penda Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, which seeks to ensure fair multiracial elections, recently reported that registrars across the country often claimed not to have received voter registration forms or rejected them for technical reasons that could have been corrected easily before voting day if the applicant had known there was a problem.

Beasley said that many voters who had registered recently in swing states were likely to find their names would not be on the rolls when they showed up on Election Day.

"There is very widespread delay in the swing states because there have been massive registration drives among minorities and those applications are not being processed quickly enough," she said. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...