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| Senator Byrd's Courageous Words Rejecting the Liar Condi Rice for Secretary of State |
| 01.25.05 (12:23 pm) [edit] |
[b]Full remarks of Sen. Byrd on Condoleezza Rice’s nomination[/b]
U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., delivered the following remarks Tuesday as the Senate debated the nomination of Dr. Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the nomination on Wednesday.
The Constitution, in Article Two, Section Two, states that the President “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States…” Recognizing that the Senate’s role of advice and consent is one of the few legislative powers explicitly cited in the Constitution, Senator Byrd believes that it is a power that Senators of both parties must rigorously protect. It is not a ceremonial exercise.
With regard to this nomination, Senator Byrd has been particularly concerned about Dr. Rice’s role in crafting the Bush doctrine of preemption, or the first-strike war. No one denies that the President has the inherent authority to repel attacks against our country, but Senator Byrd believes that the doctrine of first-strike war against another country which does not pose an imminent threat to the United States is unconstitutional.
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In Federalist Number 77, Alexander Hamilton wrote:
“It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing.”
Although Hamilton explains the importance of the role of the Senate in the appointment of officers of the United States, neither he, nor the Constitution, is specific about what criteria Senators must use to judge the qualifications of a nominee. The Constitution only requires that the Senate give its advice and consent. It is therefore left to Senators to use their own judgment in considering their vote. The factors involved in such judgments may vary among Senators, among nominees, and may even change in response to the needs of the times.
The position of Secretary of State is among the most important offices for which the Constitution requires the advice and consent of the Senate. It is the Secretary of State that sits at the right hand of the President during meetings of the Cabinet. The Secretary of State is all the more important today, considering the enormous diplomatic challenges our country will face in the next four years.
I must commend the Foreign Relations Committee for its work in bringing the nomination of Dr. Condoleezza Rice to the Floor of the Senate. Chairman Richard Lugar conducted two days of hearings for this nominee, and the debate that began in the committee on this nomination is now being continued here on the Floor of the Senate. Senator Biden also provided a voice of great foreign policy experience during those hearings. I was particularly impressed by Senator Boxer, who tackled her role on the committee with passion and forthrightness, as did Senator Kerry.
There is no doubt that Dr. Rice has a remarkable record of personal achievement. She obtained her bachelor’s degree at the tender age of 19. Speaking as someone who did not earn a bachelor’s degree until I had reached 77 years of age, I have a special appreciation for Dr. Rice’s impressive academic achievement. She then obtained a doctorate in international studies, and quickly rose through the academic ranks to become Provost of Stanford University.
Dr. Rice has also gathered extensive experience in foreign policy matters. She is a recognized expert on matters relating to Russia and the former Soviet Union. She has twice worked on the National Security Council, once as the senior advisor on Soviet issues, and most recently, for four years as National Security Advisor. Dr. Rice has had ample exposure to the nuances of international politics, and by that measure, she is certainly qualified for the position of Secretary of State.
The next Secretary of State will have large shoes to fill. I have closely watched the career of Colin Powell since he served as National Security Advisor to President Reagan, and we worked together during the Senate consideration of the INF Treaty of 1988. He distinguished himself in his service as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, particularly during the 1991 Gulf War. When his nomination came before the Senate in 2001, I supported his confirmation based upon the strength of his record.
The vote that the Senate will conduct tomorrow, however, is not simply a formality to approve of a nominee’s educational achievement or level of expertise. I do not subscribe to the notion that the Senate must confirm a President’s nominees, barring criminality or lack of experience. The Constitution enjoins Senators to use their judgment in considering nominations.
I am particularly dismayed by accusations I have read that Senate Democrats, by insisting on having an opportunity to debate the nomination of Dr. Rice, have somehow been engaged in nothing more substantial than “petty politics” or partisan delaying tactics. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Senate’s role of advice and consent to presidential nominations is not a ceremonial exercise.
I have stood on this Senate floor more times than I can count to defend the prerogatives of this institution and the separate but equal - with emphasis on the word “equal” - powers of the three branches of government. A unique power of the Legislative Branch is the Senate’s role in providing advice and consent on the matter of nominations. That power is not vested in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or any other committee; nor does it repose in a handful of Senate leaders. It is not a function of pomp and circumstance, and it was never intended by the Framers to be used to burnish the image of a President on inauguration day.
And yet that is exactly what Senators were being pressured to do last week - to acquiesce mutely to the nomination of one of the most important members of the President’s Cabinet without the merest hiccup of debate or the smallest inconvenience of a roll call vote.
And so we are here today to fulfill our constitutional duty to consider the nomination of Dr. Rice to be Secretary of State. Mr. President, I have carefully considered Dr. Rice’s record as National Security Advisor in the two months that have passed since the President announced her nomination to be Secretary of State. That record, I am afraid, is one of intimate involvement in a number of Administration foreign policies which I strongly oppose. These policies have fostered enormous opposition – both at home and abroad – to the White House’s view of America’s place in the world.
That view of America is one which encourages our Nation to flex its muscles without being bound by any calls for restraint. The most forceful explanation of this idea can be found in “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” a report which was issued by the White House in September 2002. Under this strategy, the President lays claim to an expansive power to use our military to strike other nations first, even if we have not been threatened or provoked. There is no question that the President has the inherent authority to repel attacks against our country, but this National Security Strategy is unconstitutional on its face. It takes the checks and balances established in the Constitution that limit the President’s ability to use our military at his pleasure, and throws them out the window.
This doctrine of preemptive strikes places the sole decision of war and peace in the hands of the President and undermines the Constitutional power of Congress to declare war. The Founding Fathers required that such an important issue of war be debated by the elected representatives of the people in the Legislative Branch precisely because no single man could be trusted with such an awesome power as bringing a nation to war by his decision alone. And yet, that it exactly what the National Security Strategy proposes.
Not only does this pernicious doctrine of preemptive war contradict the Constitution, it barely acknowledges its existence. The National Security Strategy makes only one passing reference to the Constitution: it states that “America’s constitution” – that is “constitution” with a small C – “has served us well.” As if the Constitution does not still serve this country well! One might ask if that reference to the Constitution was intended to be a compliment or an obituary?
As National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice was in charge of developing the National Security Strategy. She also spoke out forcefully in support of the dangerous doctrine of preemptive war. In one speech, she argues that there need not be an imminent threat before the United States attacks another nation: “So as a matter of common sense,” said Dr. Rice on October 1, 2002, “the United States must be prepared to take action, when necessary, before threats have fully materialized.”
But that “matter of common sense” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. For that matter, isn’t it possible to disagree with this “matter of common sense?” What is common sense to one might not be shared by another. What’s more, matters of common sense can lead people to the wrong conclusions. John Dickinson, the chief author of the Articles of Confederation, said in 1787, “Experience must be our only guide; reason may mislead us.” As for me, I will heed the experience of Founding Fathers, as enshrined in the Constitution, over the reason and “common sense” of the Administration’s National Security Strategy.
We can all agree that the President, any President, has the inherent duty and power to repel an attack on the United States. But where in the Constitution can the President claim the right to strike at another nation before it has even threatened our country, as Dr. Rice asserted in that speech? To put it plainly, Dr. Rice has asserted that the President holds far more of the war power than the Constitution grants him. This doctrine of attacking countries before a threat has “fully materialized” was put into motion as soon as the National Security Strategy was released. Beginning in September 2002, Dr. Rice also took a position on the front lines of the Administration’s effort to hype the danger of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the Administration used to scare the American people into believing that there was an imminent threat from Iraq. On September 8, 2002, Dr. Rice conjured visions of American cities being consumed by mushroom clouds. On an appearance on CNN, she warned: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Saddam] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Dr. Rice also claimed that she had conclusive evidence about Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons program. During that same interview, she also said: “We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into… Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes… that are really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.”
We now know that Iraq’s nuclear program was a fiction. Charles Duelfer, the chief arms inspector of the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, reported on September 30, 2004: “Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. [The Iraq Survey Group] found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.”
But Dr. Rice’s statements in 2002 were not only wrong, they also did not accurately reflect the intelligence reports of the time. Declassified portions of the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002 make it clear that there were disagreements among our intelligence analysts about the state of Iraq’s nuclear program. But Dr. Rice seriously misrepresented their disputes when she categorically stated, “We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
Her allegation also misrepresented to the American people the controversy in those same intelligence reports about the aluminum tubes. Again, Dr. Rice said that these tubes were “really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.” But intelligence experts at the State Department and the Department of Energy believed that those tubes had nothing to do with building a nuclear weapon, and made their dissent known in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. This view, which was at odds with Dr. Rice’s representations, was later confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and our own CIA arms inspectors.
Dr. Rice made other statements that helped to build a case for war by implying a link between Iraq and September 11. On multiple occasions, Dr. Rice spoke about the supposed evidence that Saddam and Al Qaeda were in league with each other. For example, on September 25, 2002, Dr. Rice said on the PBS NewsHour:
“No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on September 11, so we don’t want to push this too far, but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clear, and we’re learning more…. But yes, there clearly are contact[s] between Al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented; there clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there is a relationship there.”
What Dr. Rice did not say was that some of those supposed links were being called into question by our intelligence agencies, such as the alleged meeting between a 9-11 ringleader and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague that has now been debunked. These attempts to connect Iraq and Al Qaeda appear to be a prime example of cherry-picking intelligence to hype the supposed threat of Iraq, while keeping contrary evidence away from the American people, wrapped up in the red tape of top secret reports.
Dr. Rice pressed the point even further, creating scenarios that threatened tens of thousands of American lives, even when that threat wasn’t supported by intelligence. On March 9, 2003, just eleven days before the invasion of Iraq, Dr. Rice appeared on “Face the Nation” and said:
“Now the al-Qaida is an organization that’s quite dispersed and –and quite widespread in its effects, but it clearly has had links to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists. And what we do not want is the day when Saddam Hussein decides that he’s had enough of dealing with sanctions, enough of dealing with, quote, unquote, “containment,” enough of dealing with America, and it’s time to end it on his terms, by transferring one of these weapons, just a little vial of something, to a terrorist for blackmail or for worse.”
But the intelligence community had already addressed this scenario with great skepticism. In fact, the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002 concluded that it had “low confidence” that Saddam would ever transfer any weapons of mass destruction - weapons that he did not have, as it turned out - to anyone outside of his control. This is yet more evidence of an abuse of intelligence in order to build the case for an unprovoked war with Iraq.
And what has been the effect of the first use of the reckless doctrine of preemptive war? In a most ironic and deadly twist, the false situation described by the Administration before the war – namely, that Iraq was a training ground for terrorists poised to attack us – is exactly the situation that our war in Iraq has created.
But it was this unjustified war that created the situation that the President claimed he was trying to prevent. Violent extremists have flooded into Iraq from all corners of the world. Iraqis have taken up arms themselves to fight against the continuing U.S. occupation of their country. According to a CIA report released in December 2004, intelligence analysts now see Iraq, destabilized by the Administration’s ill-conceived war, as the training ground for a new generation of terrorists. [Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council’s 2020 Project, pp. 94] It should be profoundly disturbing to all Americans if the most dangerous breeding ground for terrorism shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, simply because of the Administration’s ill-advised rush to war in March 2003.
Dr. Rice’s role in the war against Iraq was not limited to building the case for an unprecedented, preemptive invasion of a country that had not attacked us first. Her role also extends to the Administration’s failed efforts to establish peace in Iraq. In October 2003, five months after he declared “Mission Accomplished,” the President created the Iraq Stabilization Group, headed by Dr. Rice. The task of the Iraq Stabilization Group was to coordinate efforts to speed reconstruction aid to help bring the violence in Iraq to an end.
But what has the Iraq Stabilization Group accomplished under the leadership of Dr. Rice? When she took the helm of the stabilization efforts, 319 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq. That number now stands at 1,368 as of today (Tuesday 1/25). More than 10,600 troops have been wounded. The cost of the war has spiraled to $149 billion, and the White House is on the verge of asking Congress for another $80 billion. Despite the mandate of the Iraq Stabilization Group, the situation in Iraq has gone from bad to worse. More ominously, the level of violence only keeps growing, week after week, month after month, and no Administration official, whether from the White House, the Pentagon, or Foggy Bottom, has made any predictions about when the violence will finally subside.
Furthermore, of the $18.4 billion in Iraqi reconstruction aid appropriated by Congress in October 2003, the Administration has spent only $2.7 billion. With these funds moving so slowly, it is hard to believe that the Iraq Stabilization Group has had any success at all in speeding the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. For all the hue and cry about the need to speed up aid to Iraq, one wonders if there should be more tough questions asked of Dr. Rice about what she has accomplished as the head of this group.
There are also many unanswered questions about Dr. Rice’s record as National Security Advisor. Richard Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism advisor, has leveled scathing criticism against Dr. Rice and the National Security Council for failing to recognize the threat from Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the months leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In particular, Mr. Clarke states that he submitted a request on January 25, 2001, for an urgent meeting of the National Security Council on the threat of al Qaeda.
However, due to decisions made by Dr. Rice and her staff, that urgent meeting did not occur until too late: the meeting was not actually called until September 4, 2001. Mr. Clarke, who is widely acknowledged as one of the leading authorities on terrorism in government at that time, told the 9-11 Commission that he was so frustrated with those decisions that he asked to be reassigned to different issues, and the Bush White House approved that request.
Dr. Rice appeared before the 9-11 Commission on April 8, 2004, but if anything, her testimony raised only more questions about what the President and others knew about the threats to New York City and Washington, D.C. in the weeks before the attacks, and whether more could have been done to prevent them.
Why wasn’t any action taken when she and the President received an intelligence report on August 6, 2001, entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States?” Why did Dr. Rice and President Bush reassign Richard Clarke, the leading terrorism expert in the White House, soon after taking office in 2001? Why did it take nine months for Dr. Rice to call the first high-level National Security Council meeting on the threat of Osama bin Laden? As the Senate debates her nomination today, we still have not heard full answers to these questions.
In addition to Mr. Clarke’s criticism, Dr. David Kay, the former CIA weapons inspector in Iraq, also has strong words for the National Security Council and its role in the run up to the war in Iraq. When Dr. Kay appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on August 18, 2004, to analyze why the Administration’s pre-war intelligence was so wrong about weapons of mass destruction, he described the National Security Council as the “dog that didn’t bark” to warn the President about the weakness of those intelligence reports. Dr. Kay continued: “Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole truth…. The recent history has been a reliance on the NSC system to do it. I quite frankly think that has not served this president very well.”
What Dr. Kay appears to state was his view that the National Security Council, under the leadership of Dr. Rice, did not do a sufficient job of raising doubts about the quality of the intelligence about Iraq. On the contrary, based upon Dr. Rice’s statements that I quoted earlier, her rhetoric even went beyond the questionable intelligence that the CIA had available on Iraq, in order to hype the threats of aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds, and connections between Iraq and September 11.
In light of the massive reorganization of our intelligence agencies enacted by Congress last year, shouldn’t this nomination spur the Senate to stop, look, and listen about what has been going on in the National Security Council for the last four years? Don’t these serious questions about the failings of the National Security Council under Dr. Rice deserve a more through examination before the Senate votes to confirm her as the next Secretary of State?
Accountability has become an old-fashioned notion in some circles these days, but accountability is not a negotiable commodity when it comes to the highest circles of our nation’s government. The accountability of government officials is an obligation, not a luxury. And yet, accountability is an obligation that this President and his administration appear loath to fulfill.
Instead of being held to account for their actions, the architects of the policies that led our nation into war with Iraq, policies based on faulty intelligence and phantom weapons of mass destruction, have been rewarded by the President with accolades and promotions. Instead of admitting to mistakes in the war on Iraq and its disastrous aftermath, the President and his inner circle of advisers continue to cling to myths and misconceptions. The only notion of accountability that this President is willing to acknowledge is the November elections, which he has described as a moment of accountability and an endorsement of his policies. Unfortunately, after-the-fact validation of victory is hardly the standard of accountability that the American people have the right to expect from their elected officials. It is one thing to accept responsibility for success; it is quite another to accept accountability for failure.
Sadly, failure has tainted far too many aspects of our nation’s international policies over the past four years, culminating in the deadly insurgency that has resulted from the invasion of Iraq. With respect to this particular nomination, I believe that there needs to be accountability for the mistakes and missteps that have led the United States into the dilemma in which it finds itself today, besieged by increasing violence in Iraq, battling an unprecedented decline in world opinion, and increasingly isolated from our allies due to our provocative, belligerent, bellicose, and unilateralist foreign policy.
Whether the Administration will continue to pursue these policies cannot be known to Senators today, as we prepare to cast our votes. At her confirmation hearing on January 18, Dr. Rice proclaimed that “Our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue.” But two days later, President Bush gave an inaugural address that seemed to rattle sabers at any nation that he does not consider to be free. Before Senators cast their vote, we must wonder whether we are casting our lot for more diplomacy or more belligerence? Reconciliation or more confrontation? Which face of this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde foreign policy will be revealed in the next four years?
Although I do not question her credentials, I do oppose many of the critical decisions that Dr. Rice has made during her four years as National Security Advisor. She has a record, and the record is there for us to judge. There remain too many unanswered questions about Dr. Rice’s failure to protect our country before the tragic attacks of September 11, her public efforts to politicize intelligence, and her often stated allegiance to the doctrine of preemption.
To confirm Dr. Rice to be the next Secretary of State is to say to the American people, and the world, that the answers to those questions are no longer important. Her confirmation will most certainly be viewed as another endorsement of the Administration’s unconstitutional doctrine of preemptive war, its bullying policies of unilateralism, and its callous rejection of our long-standing allies.
The stakes for the United States are too high. I cannot endorse higher responsibilities for those who helped set our great country down the path of increasing isolation, enmity in the world, and a war that has no end. For these reasons, I shall cast my vote in opposition to the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice to be the next Secretary of State.
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| KING GEORGE |
| 01.25.05 (5:35 am) [edit] |
When King George V died, we got a day off from school as a sign of mourning. Palestine was then a part of the British Empire, which ruled the country under a League of Nations mandate. To this very day, a central street in Tel-Aviv, not far from my home, bears the name of King George.
George V was followed (after a brief interlude) by George VI, who was until recently the last George in our life. Now we have a new King George, not British but American.
The relationship between the United States and Israel is difficult to define. The USA has no official mandate over our country. It is not a normal alliance between two nations. Neither is it a relationship between a satellite and the master country.
Some people say, only half in jest, that the USA is an Israeli colony. And indeed, in many respects it looks like that. President Bush dances to Ariel Sharon's tune. Both Houses of Congress are totally subservient to the Israeli right-wing - much more so than the Knesset. It has been said that if the pro-Israeli lobby were to sponsor a resolution on Capitol Hill calling for the abolition of the Ten Commandments, both Houses of Congress would adopt it overwhelmingly. Every year Congress confirms the payment of a massive tribute to Israel.
But others assert the reverse: that Israel is an American colony. And indeed, that is also true in many respects. It is unthinkable for the Israeli government to refuse a clear-cut request by the President of the United States. America forbids Israel to sell an expensive intelligence-gathering plane to China? Israel cancels the sale. America forbids a large-scale military action, as happened last week in Gaza? No action. America wants the Israeli economy to be managed according to American precepts? No problem: an American (circumcised, to be sure) has just been appointed as Governor of the Central Bank of Israel.
As a matter of fact, both versions are right: The USA is an Israeli colony and Israel is an American colony. The relationship between the two countries is a symbiosis, a term defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "an association of two organisms living attached to each other or one within the other" (from the Greek words for "living" and "together".)
Much has already been said about the origins of this symbiosis. American Christian Zionism preceded the founding of the Jewish Zionist organization. The American myth is almost identical with the Zionist Israeli myth, both in content and symbolism. (The settlers fleeing from persecution in their homelands, an empty country, pioneers conquering the wilderness, the savage natives, etc.) Both are countries of immigration, with all that this implies for good or ill. Both governments believe that their interests coincide. On Independence Day in Israel, many American flags are to be seen next to the Israeli ones - a phenomenon that is without parallel in the world.
The inauguration of George Bush last week therefore had a special significance for Israel. The state-controlled TV channel broadcast it live. In many respects, the President of the United States is also the King of Israel.
George Bush is a very simple, very violent person with very extreme views, as well as being very much an ignoramus. This is a very dangerous combination. Such people have caused many disasters in human history. Maximilian Robespierre, the French revolutionary who invented the reign of terror, has been called "the Great Simplifier" because of the terrible simplicity of his views, which he tried to impose with the guillotine.
The ideologues who govern the thoughts and deeds of Bush are called "neo-conservatives", but that is a misleading appellation. Actually they are a revolutionary group. Their aim is not to conserve but to overturn. Mostly Jewish, they are the pupils of Leo Strauss, a German-Jewish professor with a Trotskyite past who ended up developing semi-fascist theories and propagating them at the University of Chicago. He illustrated his attitude towards democracy by citing the story of Gulliver: when a fire broke out in the city of the dwarfs, he put the fire out by urinating on them. This is the way, in his view, the small elite group of leaders must treat the ignorant and innocent public, which does not know what is good for them.
In his coronation speech, Bush promised to bring freedom and democracy to every corner of the world. No less, no more. He cited the two countries in which he has already achieved this aim: Iraq and Afghanistan. Both have been devastated by American planes that dropped the message from their bomb doors. Recently, the American soldiers wiped a large city from the face of the earth in order to convince the opponents of "American values". Now Falluja looks as if it had been struck by a tsunami.
It is no secret that the Neo-Cons intend to "bring democracy" to Iran and Syria, thereby eliminating two more traditional enemies of the USA and Israel. Dick Cheney, the Vice-President (certainly no Virtue-President), has already prophesied that Israel may attack Iran, as if threatening to unleash a Rottweiler.
It could have been hoped that after the total debacle in Iraq and the less obvious but equally serious failure in Afghanistan, Bush would shrink from more such actions. But as almost always happens with rulers of this type, he cannot admit defeat and stop. On the contrary, failure drives him on to more extremes, vowing, rather like the captain of the Titanic, "to stay the course."
There is no way to guess what Bush may perpetrate, now that he has been re-elected by his people. His ego has been blown up to giant proportions, reaffirming what the Greek fabulist Aesop said some 27 centuries ago: "The smaller the mind the greater the conceit."
He has kicked out the hapless, feeble Colin Powell (as David Ben-Gurion eliminated Moshe Sharett in preparation for his 1956 onslaught on Egypt) and appointed Condoleezza Rice, his personal servant (as Ben-Gurion replaced Sharett with Golda Meir.)
Now the order is "clear the deck for action". On this deck, Bush is a loose cannon, a danger to everyone around. The results of these elections may be viewed by history as a worldwide catastrophe.
In domestic affairs, he may cause similar disasters. In the name of "American values", he is about to destroy one of the foremost American values: the separation of Church and State. His is the religion of a "born again" convert, a primitive religion without morality and compassion. Imposing this religion on all fields of life - from the prohibition of abortions and same-sex marriages to the revision of schoolbooks - may push society centuries back and void the constitution. After four more years of this, America may be a very different country from the one we loved and admired in our youth.
A friend of mine asserts that there are two souls residing in the American nation, a good and a bad one. That may be true for every nation, including even Israel and Palestine, but in America it is much more extreme. There is the America of Thomas Jefferson (even if he liberated his slaves only on his death), Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, the America of ideals, the Marshall Plan, science and the arts. And there is the America of the genocide perpetrated against the Native Americans, the country of slave traders and the Wild West myth, the America of Hiroshima, of Joe McCarthy, of segregation and of Vietnam, the violent and repressive America.
During Bush's second term, this second America may reach new depths of ugliness and brutality. It may offer the whole world a model of oppression. I would not want my country, Israel, to be identified with such an America. Any advantage we can derive from it may well turn out to be short-term, the damage long-lasting, and perhaps irreversible.
One of the advantages of the US constitution is that Bush cannot be re-elected for a third term. As the popular Israeli song goes: "We survived Pharaoh, we shall survive this, too." Perhaps this could become an anthem for the whole world. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...
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| Bush & Neo-Con Criminals Not Yet Charged With Slashing Lives, Breaking Laws... |
| 01.24.05 (3:00 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" had better get ready for a[i] rocky ride [/i]... The following represents the appalling track-record of scandals perpetrated against us by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] -- Not to worry, none of them seem to involve sex ...[i] Hmmm [/i]...[/b]
[b]Print it out, send it to Harry Reid, or just read it and weep. Here are 34 scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush's presidency - every one of them worse than Whitewater.[/b]
Once upon a time - about five years ago - conservative pundits often talked about "scandal fatigue." Remember scandal fatigue? It was an affliction supposedly either turning voters against Democrats or, alternatively, a weariness in the body politic preventing Republicans from pursuing even more grievances against Bill Clinton. By any objective measure, however, after four years of George W. Bush's presidency, the entire nation should be suffering from utter scandal exhaustion.
Consider the raw materials of scandal that this administration has produced: False claims about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Torture in Abu Ghraib. The virtually treasonous exposure of a CIA agent by White House officials. And those are just the best-known examples.
After all, how many citizens can name all the ongoing investigations of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm? Who remembers that the administration illicitly diverted $700 million from Afghanistan to Iraq? Or that, on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans stole strategy memos from Democrats, while a House Republican said he was offered a bribe during a crucial vote? Even a conscientious citizen cannot be expected to keep score, so Salon has compiled a list.
If the next four years of Bush and the GOP running the federal government are anything like the previous four, however, potential scandals will lead to few political consequences for the Republicans. Bush opponents will likely be disappointed if they are waiting for a renewal of the supposed "second-term scandal jinx" dogging Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Clinton.
After all, Washington Republicans are insulated by a rabidly partisan Congress with no interest in investigating the executive branch (and little taste for disciplining itself). By contrast, presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton each faced an adversarial Congress. As the late Senate Watergate Committee counsel Sam Dash noted in 2003 about congressional oversight: "Although it worked then, it doesn't mean it would work now."
Moreover, Congress allowed the independent-counsel statute, the law that brought us Ken Starr, to expire as Bush assumed office. And the right-wing media - cable news, talk radio, several newspapers - are not about to replicate the drumbeat of scandal they pounded out while Clinton held office. Thus scandals are not a defining part of the GOP's current identity.
The Democrats, terminally cautious even in the minority, seem unlikely to change this dynamic - although Harry Reid, the Democrats' new Senate leader, has announced his party will hold monthly oversight hearings, beginning this January, on "unasked and unanswered questions" about the Bush administration. Reid's project, however, is an uphill battle. The Democrats cannot compel anyone to testify, unlike standard congressional committees, and memorable rhetoric is not a party strength. "This is about honesty and accountability and reforming our federal government," Reid said in the prepared statement the Democratic Policy Committee released about its oversight plans.
Just think: Someone prepared that quote. To put it more bluntly than Reid did: This is about the dozens of scandals occurring while the Republican Party has enjoyed almost complete control over the federal government. This is about the GOP's utter disrespect for the laws of the United States. This is about stopping greed, bribery and influence-peddling.
Indeed, here are 34 Republican scandals worthy of further attention, gathered into one place. The list focuses on scandals involving apparently illegal activity or violations of ethics codes. Not everything that is politically, legally or ethically scandalous constitutes a scandal. It is scandalous, for instance, that House Republicans have further weakened their own ethics committee. But that is not, properly speaking, a political scandal. It is just contemptible governance.
This list is also limited to events of the past four years, or those coming to light in that time. It covers both the executive branch and the Congress, since the latter, especially the Senate, is increasingly a mere adjunct to the White House. However, the items are not arranged in terms of moral or historical gravity. Abu Ghraib might create years of anti-American hatred abroad, but it and some other headline-generating events appear near the end of the list, to help familiarize readers first with lesser-known or now-overlooked scandals. Recall how John Ashcroft broke the law? Know why Dick Cheney wants to keep those energy task force documents secret? Read on. You too, Harry Reid.
[b]1. Memogate: The Senate Computer Theft
The scandal:[/b] From 2001 to 2003, Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee illicitly accessed nearly 5,000 computer files containing confidential Democratic strategy memos about President Bush's judicial nominees. The GOP used the memos to shape their own plans and leaked some to the media.
[b]The problem:[/b] The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act states it is illegal to obtain confidential information from a government computer.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Unresolved. The Justice Department has assigned a prosecutor to the case. The staff member at the heart of the matter, Manuel Miranda, has attempted to brazen it out, filing suit in September 2004 against the DOJ to end the investigation. "A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich," Miranda complained. Some jokes just write themselves.
[b]2. Doctor Detroit: The DOJ's Bungled Terrorism Case
The scandal:[/b] The Department of Justice completely botched the nation's first post-9/11 terrorism trial, as seen when the convictions of three Detroit men allegedly linked to al-Qaida were overturned in September 2004. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft had claimed their June 2003 sentencing sent "a clear message" that the government would "detect, disrupt and dismantle the activities of terrorist cells."
[b]The problem:[/b] The DOJ's lead prosecutor in the case, Richard Convertino, withheld key information from the defense and distorted supposed pieces of evidence - like a Las Vegas vacation video purported to be a surveillance tape. But that's not the half of it. Convertino says he was unfairly scapegoated because he testified before the Senate, against DOJ wishes, about terrorist financing. Justice's reconsideration of the case began soon thereafter. Convertino has since sued the DOJ, which has also placed him under investigation.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Let's see: Overturned convictions, lawsuits and feuding about a Kafkaesque case. Nobody looks good here.
[b]3. Dark Matter: The Energy Task Force
The scandal:[/b] A lawsuit has claimed it is illegal for Dick Cheney to keep the composition of his 2001 energy-policy task force secret. What's the big deal? The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has suggested an explosive aspect of the story, citing a National Security Council memo from February 2001, which "directed the N.S.C. staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of ... 'operational policies towards rogue states,' such as Iraq, and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'" In short, the task force's activities could shed light on the administration's pre-9/11 Iraq aims.
[b]The problem:[/b] The Federal Advisory Committee Act says the government must disclose the work of groups that include non-federal employees; the suit claims energy industry executives were effectively task force members. Oh, and the Bush administration has portrayed the Iraq war as a response to 9/11, not something it was already considering.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Unresolved. In June 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back to an appellate court.
[b]4. The Indian Gaming Scandal
The scandal:[/b] Potential influence peddling to the tune of $82 million, for starters. Jack Abramoff, a GOP lobbyist and major Bush fundraiser, and Michael Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), received that amount from several Indian tribes, while offering access to lawmakers. For instance, Texas' Tigua tribe, which wanted its closed El Paso casino reopened, gave millions to the pair and $33,000 to Rep. Robert Ney (R-Ohio) in hopes of favorable legislation (Ney came up empty). And get this: The Tiguas were unaware that Abramoff, Scanlon and conservative activist Ralph Reed had earned millions lobbying to have the same casino shut in 2002.
[b]The problem:[/b] Federal officials want to know if Abramoff and Scanlon provided real services for the $82 million, and if they broke laws while backing candidates in numerous Indian tribe elections.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Everybody into the cesspool! The Senate Indian Affairs Committee and five federal agencies, including the FBI, IRS, and Justice Department, are investigating.
[b]5. Halliburton's No-Bid Bonanza
The scandal:[/b] In February 2003, Halliburton received a five-year, $7 billion no-bid contract for services in Iraq.
[b]The problem:[/b] The Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting officer, Bunnatine Greenhouse, objected to the deal, saying the contract should be the standard one-year length, and that a Halliburton official should not have been present during the discussions.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The FBI is investigating. The $7 billion contract was halved and Halliburton won one of the parts in a public bid. For her troubles, Greenhouse has been forced into whistle-blower protection.
[b]6. Halliburton: Pumping Up Prices
The scandal:[/b] In 2003, Halliburton overcharged the army for fuel in Iraq. Specifically, Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root hired a Kuwaiti company, Altanmia, to supply fuel at about twice the going rate, then added a markup, for an overcharge of at least $61 million, according to a December 2003 Pentagon audit.
[b]The problem:[/b] That's not the government's $61 million, it's our $61 million.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The FBI is investigating.
[b]7. Halliburton's Vanishing Iraq Money
The scandal:[/b] In mid-2004, Pentagon auditors determined that $1.8 billion of Halliburton's charges to the government, about 40 percent of the total, had not been adequately documented.
[b]The problem:[/b] That's not the government's $1.8 billion, it's our $1.8 billion.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The Defense Contract Audit Agency has "strongly" asked the Army to withhold about $60 million a month from its Halliburton payments until the documentation is provided.
[b]8. The Halliburton Bribe-Apalooza
The scandal:[/b] This may not surprise you, but an international consortium of companies, including Halliburton, is alleged to have paid more than $100 million in bribes to Nigerian officials, from 1995 to 2002, to facilitate a natural-gas-plant deal. (Cheney was Halliburton's CEO from 1995 to 2000.)
[b]The problem: [/b]The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials.
[b]The outcome:[/b] A veritable coalition of the willing is investigating the deal, including the Justice Department, the SEC, the Nigerian government and a French magistrate. In June, Halliburton fired two implicated executives.
[b]9. Halliburton: One Fine Company
The scandal:[/b] In 1998 and 1999, Halliburton counted money recovered from project overruns as revenue, before settling the charges with clients.
[b]The problem:[/b] Doing so made the company's income appear larger, but Halliburton did not explain this to investors. The SEC ruled this accounting practice was "materially misleading."
[b]The outcome:[/b] In August 2004, Halliburton agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine to settle SEC charges. One Halliburton executive has paid a fine and another is settling civil charges. Now imagine the right-wing rhetoric if, say, Al Gore had once headed a firm fined for fudging income statements.
[b]10. Halliburton's Iran End Run
The scandal:[/b] Halliburton may have been doing business with Iran while Cheney was CEO.
[b]The problem:[/b] Federal sanctions have banned U.S. companies from dealing directly with Iran. To operate in Iran legally, U.S. companies have been required to set up independent subsidiaries registered abroad. Halliburton thus set up a new entity, Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., to do business in Iran, but while the subsidiary was registered in the Cayman Islands, it may not have had operations totally independent of the parent company.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Unresolved. The Treasury Department has referred the case to the U.S. attorney in Houston, who convened a grand jury in July 2004.
[b]11. Money Order: Afghanistan's Missing $700 Million Turns Up in Iraq
The scandal:[/b] According to Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack," the Bush administration diverted $700 million in funds from the war in Afghanistan, among other places, to prepare for the Iraq invasion.
[b]The problem:[/b] Article I, Section 8, Clause 12 of the U.S. Constitution specifically gives Congress the power "to raise and support armies." And the emergency spending bill passed after Sept. 11, 2001, requires the administration to notify Congress before changing war spending plans. That did not happen.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Congress declined to investigate. The administration's main justification for its decision has been to claim the funds were still used for, one might say, Middle East anti-tyrant-related program activities.
[b]12. Iraq: More Loose Change
The scandal:[/b] The inspector general of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq released a series of reports in July 2004 finding that a significant portion of CPA assets had gone missing - 34 percent of the materiel controlled by Kellogg, Brown & Root - and that the CPA's method of disbursing $600 million in Iraq reconstruction funds "did not establish effective controls and left accountability open to fraud, waste and abuse."
[b]The problem:[/b] As much as $50 million of that money was disbursed without proper receipts.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The CPA has disbanded, but individual government investigations into the handling of Iraq's reconstruction continue.
[b]13. The Pentagon-Israel Spy Case
The scandal:[/b] A Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, may have passed classified United States documents about Iran to Israel, possibly via the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a Washington lobbying group.
[b]The problem:[/b] To do so could be espionage or could constitute the mishandling of classified documents.
[b]The outcome:[/b] A grand jury is investigating. In December 2004, the FBI searched AIPAC's offices. A Senate committee has also been investigating the apparently unauthorized activities of the Near East and South Asia Affairs group in the Pentagon, where Franklin works.
[b]14. Gone to Taiwan
The scandal:[/b] Missed this one? A high-ranking State Department official, Donald Keyser, was arrested and charged in September with making a secret trip to Taiwan and was observed by the FBI passing documents to Taiwanese intelligence agents in Washington-area meetings.
[b]The problem:[/b] Such unauthorized trips are illegal. And we don't have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The case is in the courts.
[b]15. Wiretapping the United Nations
The scandal:[/b] Before the United Nations' vote on the Iraq war, the United States and Great Britain developed an eavesdropping operation targeting diplomats from several countries.
[b]The problem:[/b] U.N. officials say the practice is illegal and undermines honest diplomacy, although some observers claim it is business as usual on East 42nd Street.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Little fuss here, but a major British scandal erupted after U.K. intelligence translator Katherine Gun leaked a U.S. National Security Agency memo requesting British help in the spying scheme, in early 2003. Initially charged under Britain's Official Secrets Act for leaking classified information, Gun was cleared in 2004 - seemingly to avoid hearings questioning the legality of Britain's war participation.
[b]16. The Boeing Boondoggle
The scandal:[/b] In 2003, the Air Force contracted with Boeing to lease a fleet of refueling tanker planes at an inflated price: $23 billion.
[b]The problem:[/b] The deal was put together by a government procurement official, Darleen Druyun, who promptly joined Boeing. Beats using a headhunter.
[b]The outcome:[/b] In November 2003, Boeing fired both Druyun and CFO Michael Sears. In April 2004, Druyun pled guilty to a conspiracy charge in the case. In November 2004, Sears copped to a conflict-of-interest charge, and company CEO Phil Condit resigned. The government is reviewing its need for the tankers.
[b]17. The Medicare Bribe Scandal
The scandal:[/b] According to former Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.), on Nov. 21, 2003, with the vote on the administration's Medicare bill hanging in the balance, someone offered to contribute $100,000 to his son's forthcoming congressional campaign, if Smith would support the bill.
[b]The problem:[/b] Federal law prohibits the bribery of elected officials.
[b]The outcome:[/b] In September 2004, the House Ethics Committee concluded an inquiry by fingering House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), saying he deserved "public admonishment" for offering to endorse Smith's son in return for Smith's vote. DeLay has claimed Smith initiated talks about a quid pro quo. The matter of the $100,000 is unresolved; soon after his original allegations, Smith suddenly claimed he had not been offered any money. Smith's son Brad lost his GOP primary in August 2004.
[b]18. Tom DeLay's PAC Problems
The scandal:[/b] One of DeLay's political action committees, Texans for a Republican Majority, apparently reaped illegal corporate contributions for the campaigns of Republicans running for the Texas Legislature in 2002. Given a Republican majority, the Legislature then re-drew Texas' U.S. congressional districts to help the GOP.
[b]The problem:[/b] Texas law bans the use of corporate money for political purposes.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Unresolved. Three DeLay aides and associates - Jim Ellis, John Colyandro and Warren RoBold - were charged in September 2004 with crimes including money laundering and unlawful acceptance of corporate contributions.
[b]19. Tom DeLay's FAA: Following Americans Anywhere
The scandal:[/b] In May 2003, DeLay's office persuaded the Federal Aviation Administration to find the plane carrying a Texas Democratic legislator, who was leaving the state in an attempt to thwart the GOP's nearly unprecedented congressional redistricting plan.
[b]The problem:[/b] According to the House Ethics Committee, the "invocation of federal executive branch resources in a partisan dispute before a state legislative body" is wrong.
[b]The outcome:[/b] In October 2004, the committee rebuked DeLay for his actions.
[b]20. In the Rough: Tom DeLay's Golf Fundraiser
The scandal:[/b] DeLay appeared at a golf fundraiser that Westar Energy held for one of his political action committees, Americans for a Republican Majority, while energy legislation was pending in the House.
[b]The problem:[/b] It's one of these "appearance of impropriety" situations.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The House Ethics Committee tossed the matter into its Oct. 6 rebuke. "Take a lap, Tom."
[b]21. Busy, Busy, Busy in New Hampshire
The scandal:[/b] In 2002, with a tight Senate race in New Hampshire, Republican Party officials paid a Virginia-based firm, GOP Marketplace, to enact an Election Day scheme meant to depress Democratic turnout by "jamming" the Democratic Party phone bank with continuous calls for 90 minutes.
[b]The problem:[/b] Federal law prohibits the use of telephones to "annoy or harass" anyone.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Chuck McGee, the former executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, pleaded guilty in July 2004 to a felony charge, while Allen Raymond, former head of GOP Marketplace, pleaded guilty to a similar charge in June. In December, James Tobin, former New England campaign chairman of Bush-Cheney '04, was indicted for conspiracy in the case.
[b]22. The Medicare Money Scandal
The scandal:[/b] Thomas Scully, Medicare's former administrator, supposedly threatened to fire chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster to prevent him from disclosing the true cost of the 2003 Medicare bill.
[b]The problem: [/b]Congress voted on the bill believing it would cost $400 billion over 10 years. The program is more likely to cost $550 billion.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Scully denies threatening to fire Foster, as Foster has charged, but admits telling Foster to withhold the higher estimate from Congress. In September 2004, the Government Accountability Office recommended Scully return half his salary from 2003. Inevitably, Scully is now a lobbyist for drug companies helped by the bill.
[b]23. The Bogus Medicare "Video News Release"
The scandal:[/b] To promote its Medicare bill, the Bush administration produced imitation news-report videos touting the legislation. About 40 television stations aired the videos. More recently, similar videos promoting the administration's education policy have come to light.
[b]The problem:[/b] The administration broke two laws: One forbidding the use of federal money for propaganda, and another forbidding the unauthorized use of federal funds.
[b]The outcome:[/b] In May 2004, the GAO concluded the administration acted illegally, but the agency lacks enforcement power.
[b]24. Pundits on the Payroll: The Armstrong Williams Case
The scandal:[/b] The Department of Education paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote its educational law, No Child Left Behind.
[b]The problem:[/b] Williams did not disclose that his support was government funded until the deal was exposed in January 2005.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The House and FCC are considering inquiries, while Williams' syndicated newspaper column has been terminated.
[b]25. Ground Zero's Unsafe Air
The scandal:[/b] Government officials publicly minimized the health risks stemming from the World Trade Center attack. In September 2001, for example, Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman said New York's "air is safe to breathe and [the] water is safe to drink."
[b]The problem:[/b] Research showed serious dangers or was incomplete. The EPA used outdated techniques that failed to detect tiny asbestos particles. EPA data also showed high levels of lead and benzene, which causes cancer. A Sierra Club report claims the government ignored alarming data. A GAO report says no adequate study of 9/11's health effects has been organized.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The long-term health effects of the disaster will likely not be apparent for years or decades and may never be definitively known. Already, hundreds of 9/11 rescue workers have quit their jobs because of acute illnesses.
[b]26. John Ashcroft's Illegal Campaign Contributions
The scandal:[/b] Ashcroft's exploratory committee for his short-lived 2000 presidential bid transferred $110,000 to his unsuccessful 2000 reelection campaign for the Senate.
[b]The problem:[/b] The maximum for such a transfer is $10,000.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The Federal Election Commission fined Ashcroft's campaign treasurer, Garrett Lott, $37,000 for the transgression.
[b]27. Intel Inside ... The White House
The scandal:[/b] In early 2001, chief White House political strategist Karl Rove held meetings with numerous companies while maintaining six-figure holdings of their stock - including Intel, whose executives were seeking government approval of a merger. "Washington hadn't seen a clearer example of a conflict of interest in years," wrote Paul Glastris in the Washington Monthly.
[b]The problem:[/b] The Code of Federal Regulations says government employees should not participate in matters in which they have a personal financial interest.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, spurning precedent, did not refer the case to the Justice Department.
[b]28. Duck! Antonin Scalia's Legal Conflicts
The scandal:[/b] Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refused to recuse himself from the Cheney energy task force case, despite taking a duck-hunting trip with the vice president after the court agreed to weigh the matter.
[b]The problem:[/b] Federal law requires a justice to "disqualify himself from any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."
[b]The outcome:[/b] Scalia stayed on, arguing no conflict existed because Cheney was party to the case in a professional, not personal, capacity. Nothing new for Scalia, who in 2002 was part of a Mississippi redistricting ruling favorable to GOP Rep. Chip Pickering - son of Judge Charles Pickering, a Scalia turkey-hunting pal. In 2001, Scalia went pheasant hunting with Kansas Gov. Bill Graves when that state had cases pending before the Supreme Court.
[b]29. AWOL
The scandal:[/b] George W. Bush, self-described "war president," did not fulfill his National Guard duty, and Bush and his aides have made misleading statements about it. Salon's Eric Boehlert wrote the best recent summary of the issue.
[b]The problem:[/b] Military absenteeism is a punishable offense, although Bush received an honorable discharge.
[b]The outcome:[/b] No longer a campaign issue. But what was Bush doing in 1972?
[b]30. Iraq: The Case for War
The scandal:[/b] Bush and many officials in his administration made false statements about Iraq's military capabilities, in the months before the United States' March 2003 invasion of the country.
[b]The problem:[/b] For one thing, it is a crime to lie to Congress, although Bush backers claim the president did not knowingly make false assertions.
[b]The outcome:[/b] A war spun out of control with unknowable long-term consequences. The Iraq Survey Group has stopped looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
[b]31. Niger Forgeries: Whodunit?
The scandal:[/b] In his January 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
[b]The problem:[/b] The statement was untrue. By March 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency showed the claim, that Iraq sought materials from Niger, was based on easily discernible forgeries.
[b]The outcome:[/b] The identity of the forger(s) remains under wraps. Journalist Josh Marshall has implied the FBI is oddly uninterested in interviewing Rocco Martino, the former Italian intelligence agent who apparently first shopped the documents in intelligence and journalistic circles and would presumably be able to shed light on their origin.
[b]32. In Plame Sight
The scandal:[/b] In July 2003, administration officials disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative working on counterterrorism efforts, to multiple journalists, and columnist Robert Novak made Plame's identity public. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had just written a New York Times opinion piece stating he had investigated the Niger uranium-production allegations, at the CIA's behest, and reported them to be untrue, before Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.
[b]The problem:[/b] Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act it is illegal to disclose, knowingly, the name of an undercover agent.
[b]The outcome:[/b] Unresolved. The Justice Department appointed special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to the case in December 2003. While this might seem a simple matter, Fitzgerald could be unable to prove the leakers knew Plame was a covert agent.
[b]33. Abu Ghraib
The scandal:[/b] American soldiers physically tortured prisoners in Iraq and kept undocumented "ghost detainees" in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
[b]The problem:[/b] The United States is party to the Geneva Conventions, which state that "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever."
[b]The outcome:[/b] Unresolved. A Pentagon internal inquiry found a lack of oversight at Abu Ghraib, while independent inquiries have linked the events to the administration's desire to use aggressive interrogation methods globally. Notoriously, Gonzales has advocated an approach which "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." More recently, Gonzales issued qualified support for the Geneva Conventions in January 2005 Senate testimony after being nominated for attorney general. Army reservist Charles Graner was convicted in January 2005 for abusing prisoners, while a few other soldiers await trial.
[b]34. Guantánamo Bay Torture?
The scandal:[/b] The U.S. military is also alleged to have abused prisoners at the U.S. Navy's base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. FBI agents witnessing interrogations there have reported use of growling dogs to frighten prisoners and the chaining of prisoners in the fetal position while depriving them of food or water for extended periods.
[b]The problem:[/b] More potential violations of the Geneva Conventions.
[b]The outcome:[/b] An internal military investigation was launched in January 2005.
[b]Source:[/b]
The Scandal Sheet, By Peter Dizikes, Salon.com, http://www.truthout.org/docs_...
[b]Courtesy of WinstonSmith on http://winstonsmith.tblog.com...[/b]
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| BUSH'S FRAUD: No Foreign Observers to Monitor Iraq Vote |
| 01.23.05 (6:00 am) [edit] |
[b]Only One Outsider From International Mission May Assess Elections on Site[/b]
When 1 million Palestinians voted for a successor to Yasser Arafat, 800 international observers poured into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to monitor the polling. Former president Jimmy Carter and former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt led one team. A former French prime minister led another, and there were two U.S. congressional delegations.
When 8 million Afghans voted in October, at least 122 international observers from across Europe and Asia monitored the presidential election -- and declared it an "orderly and transparent process."
But in Iraq, where 14 million people are eligible to vote, the elections next week may have only one outsider from the hastily organized International Mission for Iraqi Elections to evaluate the balloting. If reluctant governments change their minds at the last minute about letting their officials go to Iraq, a handful of others may show up. But, even then, none is likely to tour polling stations or to be publicly identified, mission and U.S. officials said.
The violence in Iraq means that its elections will be the first among dozens of transitional elections over the past two decades -- since democracy began to sweep through eastern Europe, the old Soviet Union, Latin America and Africa -- that will not have an international observer force touring polling stations to assess the vote's credibility, election experts say.
There will be no neutral outside group deployed across Iraq to determine whether voters are impeded, ballot boxes are stuffed, any party tries to interfere with the process or votes are counted fairly. No congressional delegation will monitor the polls, and the European Union announced last week that it had declined an invitation from Iraq to send observers. The Carter Center, which has monitored more than 50 elections overseas, also decided not to send observers.
"That means you don't have an independent voice that can really report credibly on the quality of the election -- in a context where there are already extremely difficult circumstances and doubts about the process," said David Carroll of the Carter Center, who was an observer in the Palestinian elections. Among those doubts are whether the insurgents will succeed in keeping people away from polling places with threats of violence and whether the minority Sunnis will participate in sufficient numbers for the balloting to be called successful.
Iraq's escalating violence has forced the International Mission for Iraqi Elections to headquarter its operation outside Iraq -- in neighboring Jordan -- a fact the group is not keen to publicize because of fears it could be targeted there, too. And even then, fewer than two dozen election experts from Albania, Australia, Bangladesh, Britain, Canada, Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Mexico, Panama and Yemen will participate. Their limited mission will be to sift through data provided by Iraq to evaluate the elections, according to mission and U.S. officials.
"I applaud the [mission's] effort, but if they're not on site, they will not be credible in judging either the participation in or the results of Iraq's election," said Frederick D. Barton, a monitor or election trainer in Haiti, Poland and Ethiopia in the 1990s and now co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Iraq does have about 6,000 of its own first-time monitors culled from 150 organizations, but that figure is low -- one for every 2,300 registered voters. The Palestinians had 21,000 observers -- about one for every 50 voters. And Afghanistan had 5,300 observers, 22,000 party agents and 52,000 candidate agents.
The International Mission for Iraqi Elections was pulled together just last month to provide a stamp of international legitimacy. "The idea was that the elections would go ahead but there would be so much cynicism and doubt in the outside world that unless there was a credible and objective organization involved to evaluate it and provide expert opinion, even a relatively good election could be put in doubt," said Les Campbell, an expert on the Middle East who is working on Iraq's elections for the National Democratic Institute.
Now, with the international mission largely on the outskirts of the elections, the balloting is already facing criticism. "Any attempt to present the elections as valid is an attempt to fool the world," Giulietto Chiesa, an Italian member of the European Parliament, told reporters after the EU decision not to send representatives to Iraq.
The international mission, chaired by Elections Canada chief Jean-Pierre Kingsley, says it can still provide an overview from outside by reviewing data on 10 issues provided by Iraq's election commission. "There's no doubt that an international presence does something," Kingsley said in an interview.
"But our experts can look at the laws and tell us what is good or needs to be improved. We'll weigh the voter registration and how it was done -- and the system to handle complaints. We'll look at the process of listing parties and access to the media and voter education," he said. "We'll have a good idea of how the elections went."
But mission and U.S. officials describe the mission's work with words such as "audit" and "assess" rather than "monitor" or "observe."
Like most of the nations whose elections chiefs or officials are part of the new international mission, Canada has barred Canadians from going into Iraq -- at least for now. Countries with representatives on the mission team -- which is also supposed to "assess" the constitutional referendum in the fall and the elections in December for a permanent government -- are reviewing the dangers daily to see whether other experts can be dispatched before the Jan. 30 vote, mission and U.S. officials say.
In the absence of outside observers, election experts are concerned that voter turnout may be used as a barometer of the elections' credibility. "I hope we don't resort to saying that in the U.S. we only get 15 percent in local elections, 35 percent in gubernatorial elections and 55 percent in presidential elections, and therefore even a low vote is credible," Barton said. "This is not an honest standard in a country that finally gets a chance to vote on its future." - http://www.washingtonpost.com...
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| HIDING NEO-CON WAR CRIMES: Soldiers Ordered to Hand in All Photos |
| 01.23.05 (5:47 am) [edit] |
"In a war you have to let your men retaliate," said Mick Helm, a builder who was a Queen's Lancashire Regiment lance corporal at 19 and served in Northern Ireland.
"Your job is to get prisoners and get information from them. Break them down quickly. You have to move fast and hard. We were certainly allowed to put sacks over prisoners' heads in our day. Nothing wrong with that."
Mr Helm's views may well reflect those of ordinary soldiers, but the Army will not welcome them at a time when it is battling accusations of widespread abuse. Senior officers in the QLR, stung by the regiment being identified in the fake abuse pictures published by the Daily Mirror last year, and anticipating cases such as the court martial now being held in Germany, have ordered their men to hand in all personal photographs taken in Iraq, even snaps given to their families at Christmas.
The father of a QLR man said: "It's hard to understand the panic about those pictures. We had to hand in marvellous pictures of my lad being mates with dozens of friendly Iraqi lads. The pictures actually proved that our soldiers were doing good work. I had about 50, showing them fighting on the Shatt al Arab waterway and in friendly gatherings with people they liberated."
An unrepentant Mr Helm said: "I know all about what you get from treating prisoners well. That doesn't mean you haven't got to dish it out. I think QLR morale is down because they have been changing the Army to suit the soldiers, instead of changing the soldiers to suit the Army. " - http://news.independent.co.uk...
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| A BELLICOSE BUFFOON |
| 01.21.05 (6:24 am) [edit] |
[b]A bellicose Bush[/b]
It sure was hard to take Bush's second inaugural address.
The vainglory, the sanctimony, the cant.
How else to react to a laugher like, "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling"?
What, pray tell, is Bush doing in Iraq, then?
How else to take a line like, "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one"?
But America's vital interests, as defined by this president and several before him, are to protect oil supplies, ensure corporate profits, and to fight terrorism. And if that means coddling Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, or winking at General Musharraf in Pakistan, or sleeping with dictators in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, Bush has no problem with that (see "Beyond Ukraine: Bush Sides with Dictators," by Amitabh Pal, in the February issue of The Progressive).
How else to stomach Bush's religiosity? He mentioned "the image of the Maker of Heaven and Earth," and he said that though "God moves and chooses as he wills," history "has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty."
If God is the author of liberty, Bush certainly sees himself as that author's agent. "Because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom," he said. "By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well--a fire in the minds of men."
Then, in a creepy way, Bush fell in love with the fire metaphor. Early in his speech, he alluded to 9/11 as "a day of fire." But here he embraced the fire of liberty. "It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."
If that isn't messianic, I don't know what is.
And to linger over the image of an untamed fire burning those who stand in Bush's way is not pleasant, to say the least. It also conjures up "the Lake of Fire" and the Armageddon that is so much a part of the rightwing evangelical liturgy.
In megalomaniacal fashion, Bush boasted of being the champion of all oppressed people everywhere. "American's influence is not unlimited, but fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable," he said, "and we will use it confidently in freedom's cause."
He set the country on a worldwide crusade, though this time he was prudent enough not to use the word. "All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors." And he warned "the rulers of outlaw regimes" that their days were numbered.
To Iran and North Korea, this was more than a murmur of war. It was war cry.
Bush seemed animated only when he was on the warpath. He discussed domestic issues in the most fleeting way, barely touching the bases of schools, Social Security, and health insurance. Jobs and the environment, among other issues, did not clutter the regal mind.
"We will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal," he said. But the thrust of his economic programs these last four years, and every indication of his programs to come, is to increase the ranks of the poor and widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
He stressed the need for "private character" even as the government's public character becomes coarser and more indifferent.
He tossed out a veiled reference to protecting the fetus ("even the unwanted have worth") and hinted at defending the exclusive institution of heterosexual marriage (as when he referred to "ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever").
But he skated over these sections with little of the enthusiasm he displayed for his martial darts.
Fortunately, a few faint voices of genuine freedom could be heard before Bush finished, These brave dissidents, exercising their First Amendment rights, managed to heckle the President and throw him slightly off pace as he came to the end.
These voices, and those of protesters along the parade route, serve as a reminder to Bush that he is not king, not yet. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| Why Bushy-boy & Repugs Continue To Get Away With Mass-Murder!!! |
| 01.17.05 (1:03 pm) [edit] |
[b]Holding WMD Liars Accountable [/b]
Now that the Bush administration has finally stopped wasting millions of tax dollars each month on the futile search for the weapons of mass destruction it promised would be found in Iraq, it is time for an accounting.
First off, let's be clear about the fact that there was never any credible evidence to suggest that Iraq had a serious WMD program -- let alone the "stockpiles" of already-produced weaponry that the president and his aides suggested. Twenty-three members of the Senate and 133 members of the House rejected the intensive lobbying by the administration and the pliable press for the use-of-force resolution that Bush would use as his authorization to launch a preemptive war. Among those who voted "no" were the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and key members of the Senate and House committees responsible for intelligence, armed services and foreign relations -- all of whom had followed the issue for years and saw no evidence of a threat sufficient to justify an invasion of Iraq. Former President Jimmy Carter and others with long-term knowledge of the issues involved were critical of the rush to war, as were dozens of prominent players in the nation's political, foreign service, intelligence and military elites.
So the suggestion that there was broad acceptance of the premise that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs, or was deep into the process of developing them, is absurd. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had access to the same information as those who recognized that there was not a sufficient threat to merit military action by the United States. They chose to dismiss that information, and instead to peddle as genuine a fabricated threat.
When we look at what they said, however, it is clear that some pushed the lies more aggressively than others.
To be sure, Bush said outrageous things. For instance, in February, 2002, he told the admittedly gullible folks at the American Enterprise Institute, "In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world -- and we will not allow it."
Unless he was referring to someone other than Saddam Hussein, Bush was wrong. Dramatically wrong. But not, arguably, as wrong as Vice President Dick Cheney when he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on August 26, 2002, that, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Ouch, that's really wrong. Why, that's almost as wrong as when Cheney told an Air National Guard event in Denver on December 1, 2002, that, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or a terrorist individual." Or when Cheney appeared on NBC-TV's Meet the Press on March 16, 2003, to say of Saddam Hussein: "we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
Long after it had become clear that the invading forces of the United States were not going to turn up any of the promised weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Cheney continued to promote the lie. Even after the arms inspector David Kay's report raised damning doubts about Iraq's ability to produce WMDs, Cheney told a crowd in Denver on November 7, 2003, that Saddam Hussein had "cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them."
Cheney's refusal to back off the WMD claim actually became an embarrassment to the Bush reelection campaign when the president was forced to say publicly in 2004 that he could not confirm the statements his own vice president was making.
So if even Bush backed away from Cheney, where was the vice president getting these crazy ideas?
Gee, could have been the national security advisor? Condoleezza Rice, the Dr. Strangelove of the Bush administration, spent much of 2002 promoting the fantasy that Iraq posed a nuclear threat. Famously, she declared on CNN on September 8, 2002, that, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Don't expect Bush or Cheney appear before a Congressional committee to explain themselves anytime soon. But, conveniently, Rice will have to do so this week, as part of the process of reviewing her nomination to serve as Secretary of State. It seems as if this might be an appropriate point for Congress to begin holding the administration accountable. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| MLK Jr. In His Own Words |
| 01.17.05 (12:22 pm) [edit] |
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours." The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words ring true four decades after he spoke them.
[b]From "Beyond Vietnam," April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City[/b].
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men [in the ghettos] I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked – and rightly so – what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
... Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.
... Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. ... I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. ... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
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[b]From the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 1964. King was 35 when he won the Nobel Peace Prize[/b].
I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.
I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.
"And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid."
I still believe that we shall overcome.
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[b]From "Strength To Love," 1963[/b].
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
[b]The entire article [/b] http://www.alternet.org/story...
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| PARTY FOUL!!! |
| 01.11.05 (4:31 pm) [edit] |
President Bush certainly deserves to celebrate.
After all, he accomplished what his father could not -- the defeat of Saddam Hussein and a bid into the exclusive fraternity of two-term presidents.
And he did it all with an unwavering confidence in his beliefs that inspired (or frightened) more than 59 million Americans to vote for him.
We agree -- it's George W. Bush's time to bask in the sun, put on his inaugural cowboy hat (featuring a solid gold "W" buckle), raise his right hand and officially commit the nation to four more years of his administration.
Ah, but every party has its pooper.
In this case, what should hold Bush back from outright, late-1970s-esque partying are not the typical issues that have recently plagued his presidency -- slim chances of peaceful elections in Iraq, an imposing national deficit, unstable oil prices, a struggling dollar and a divided nation -- but rather, something that he certainly seemed to have a grasp on, particularly after the election.
Morality. Specifically, the morality of hosting a grand spectacle celebrating himself in a time when so many innocent people's lives -- at home, in Iraq and in the tsunami-devastated regions of South Asia -- are in flux.
If the war in Iraq, to paraphrase John Kerry, was "wrong place, wrong time," then a $40 million inauguration featuring lavish fireworks, a western-themed swearing in, a parade and nine balls is most assuredly "in bad taste, at a bad time."
The Presidential Inauguration Committee raised more than $4.5 million last week for the Jan. 18-19 event, upping its total to $18 million, or about half of what the $40 million extravaganza would cost.
And yes, "extravaganza" is a good way to describe the proceedings.
All told, 11 donations of $250,000 (including Cinergy Corp, AT&T, UPS, Bank of America, Bristol-Meyers Squibb), one of $225,000 (Oracle), 13 of $100,000 (including Pepsi-Cola Co.), two of $50,000 and eight of $25,000 were sent as a pat-on-the-back gesture for the big man himself.
The issue here isn't the propriety of corporations donating such large amounts of cash for what will essentially be a night of heavy partying and Republican self-indulgence.
Rather, it is the impropriety of that money's use. These corporations, who have every legal right to pledge this money, ought to at least match these donations in some way to help tsunami relief. Or military wives. Or AIDS research. Or aid to Iraq. Or anything that could be described as "less than self-serving."
This isn't about liberal sour grapes or "a global test." It's about doing the right thing in a time where this money could be allotted a more useful, moral purpose -- impacting the lives of those who need it, instead of pampering those who don't.
Editorials serve as a platform for Barometer editors to offer commentary and opinions on current events, both national and local, grand in scale and diminutive. Opinions here are a reflection of the Editorial Board's majority. - http://barometer.orst.edu/vne...
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| IMPEACH WAR CRIMINAL BUSHY-BOY, THE TORTURER:-- Iraq murder, torture & abuse "went on until July" |
| 01.05.05 (6:43 am) [edit] |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi prisoners continued at least three months after the Abu Ghraib scandal was revealed, according to accounts by alleged victims published in the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
Vanity Fair writer Donovan Webster, in a report on 60 hours of interviews he conducted with 10 former detainees including a 15-year-old boy, quoted several accounts of mistreatment that included Iraqi prisoners being sexually assaulted by American soldiers or being hooded, beaten, subjected to electric shock and kept in cages or crates.
One man said he was hung naked from handcuffs in a frigid room while soldiers threw buckets of ice water on him.
Webster added that several of the people he interviewed said their mistreatment took place in July, three months after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke in late April.
The article published on Tuesday said the former detainees interviewed by Webster are suing two American companies that provided translators and interrogators to forces in Iraq and that their firsthand accounts comprise "hundreds, if not thousands, of separate Geneva Convention violations."
Vanity Fair said that the accounts of abuses were impossible to independently verify. The magazine quoted a U.S. military spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq as dismissing the assertions that prisoners were held illegally, kept in wooden boxes, handcuffed and blindfolded and subjected to sexual threats, abuse and assault.
In one example cited in the article, a 15-year-old Iraqi identified only as N said he was pulled from a wooden crate he'd been forced to crouch inside, wearing handcuffs and blacked-out ski goggles, for 11 days and taken to the bathroom against his will where he was sexually assaulted.
He said he was again sexually assaulted two days later in the prison north of Baghdad but let go later in the day when a soldier apologized to him for being illegally detained and gave him $50 (27 pounds). N had been held with several members of his family who also said they were mistreated. - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/0501...
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| IMPEACH WAR CRIMINAL BUSHY-BOY, THE TORTURER:-- Iraq murder, torture & abuse "went on until July" |
| 01.05.05 (6:41 am) [edit] |
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi prisoners continued at least three months after the Abu Ghraib scandal was revealed, according to accounts by alleged victims published in the latest issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
Vanity Fair writer Donovan Webster, in a report on 60 hours of interviews he conducted with 10 former detainees including a 15-year-old boy, quoted several accounts of mistreatment that included Iraqi prisoners being sexually assaulted by American soldiers or being hooded, beaten, subjected to electric shock and kept in cages or crates.
One man said he was hung naked from handcuffs in a frigid room while soldiers threw buckets of ice water on him.
Webster added that several of the people he interviewed said their mistreatment took place in July, three months after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke in late April.
The article published on Tuesday said the former detainees interviewed by Webster are suing two American companies that provided translators and interrogators to forces in Iraq and that their firsthand accounts comprise "hundreds, if not thousands, of separate Geneva Convention violations."
Vanity Fair said that the accounts of abuses were impossible to independently verify. The magazine quoted a U.S. military spokesman for detainee operations in Iraq as dismissing the assertions that prisoners were held illegally, kept in wooden boxes, handcuffed and blindfolded and subjected to sexual threats, abuse and assault.
In one example cited in the article, a 15-year-old Iraqi identified only as N said he was pulled from a wooden crate he'd been forced to crouch inside, wearing handcuffs and blacked-out ski goggles, for 11 days and taken to the bathroom against his will where he was sexually assaulted.
He said he was again sexually assaulted two days later in the prison north of Baghdad but let go later in the day when a soldier apologized to him for being illegally detained and gave him $50 (27 pounds). N had been held with several members of his family who also said they were mistreated. - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/0501...
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| Iraqi Minister Says Election May be Delayed ... |
| 01.04.05 (4:15 am) [edit] |
MILITANTS continued their campaign to disrupt Iraqi elections yesterday, detonating a series of bombs and killing at least 16 people.
In a further setback to the elections planned to be held on 30 January, Hazim al-Shaalan, Iraq’s defence minister, said he favoured delaying the poll if Sunni Muslims were not planning to take part.
Mr Shaalan said Iraq was asking Egypt to intervene to try to persuade the Sunnis to vote.
"If there is any difficulty in them taking part, then the question of postponing them [the elections] for another period arises. That, I believe, is the safest and most proper way, so that all sectors and the full spectrum of Iraqi society can take part in elections on one day," he said.
Several Iraqi groups, mainly Sunnis, have argued in favour of postponing the elections. The once-privileged minority faces the prospect of the vote cementing the new-found political power of the long-oppressed Shiite majority.
Two of yesterday’s deadly attacks were centred in the restive Sunni heartland north of Baghdad, raising further questions among Iraqis about how the country’s fledgling security forces will be able to protect voters if they can barely protect themselves.
Baghdad was rocked by two further explosions, including one detonated by a suicide bomber posing as a taxi driver who killed two policemen and a civilian near the party headquarters of Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister.
The secular Shiite leader was not inside the building in Baghdad’s western district of Harithiya when the blast occurred.
The second car bomb attack took place in Balad, about 50 miles north of the capital. It killed four Iraqi National Guard soldiers and wounded 14. The driver of the car bomb died in the blast.
The third strike occurred in Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit, killing at least six National Guard troops and injuring four others in a roadside explosion, police said.
A car bomb exploded later yesterday at a United States-manned checkpoint at the entrance to Green Zone, the heavily fortified area that houses the US Embassy and Iraqi government offices.
US troops surrounded a burning four-wheel-drive vehicle at the scene and three bodies were seen burning inside. The nationalities of the victims were not immediately known. - http://news.scotsman.com/inte...
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| Iraqi Minister Says Election May be Delayed ... |
| 01.04.05 (4:13 am) [edit] |
MILITANTS continued their campaign to disrupt Iraqi elections yesterday, detonating a series of bombs and killing at least 16 people.
In a further setback to the elections planned to be held on 30 January, Hazim al-Shaalan, Iraq’s defence minister, said he favoured delaying the poll if Sunni Muslims were not planning to take part.
Mr Shaalan said Iraq was asking Egypt to intervene to try to persuade the Sunnis to vote.
"If there is any difficulty in them taking part, then the question of postponing them [the elections] for another period arises. That, I believe, is the safest and most proper way, so that all sectors and the full spectrum of Iraqi society can take part in elections on one day," he said.
Several Iraqi groups, mainly Sunnis, have argued in favour of postponing the elections. The once-privileged minority faces the prospect of the vote cementing the new-found political power of the long-oppressed Shiite majority.
Two of yesterday’s deadly attacks were centred in the restive Sunni heartland north of Baghdad, raising further questions among Iraqis about how the country’s fledgling security forces will be able to protect voters if they can barely protect themselves.
Baghdad was rocked by two further explosions, including one detonated by a suicide bomber posing as a taxi driver who killed two policemen and a civilian near the party headquarters of Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister.
The secular Shiite leader was not inside the building in Baghdad’s western district of Harithiya when the blast occurred.
The second car bomb attack took place in Balad, about 50 miles north of the capital. It killed four Iraqi National Guard soldiers and wounded 14. The driver of the car bomb died in the blast.
The third strike occurred in Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit, killing at least six National Guard troops and injuring four others in a roadside explosion, police said.
A car bomb exploded later yesterday at a United States-manned checkpoint at the entrance to Green Zone, the heavily fortified area that houses the US Embassy and Iraqi government offices.
US troops surrounded a burning four-wheel-drive vehicle at the scene and three bodies were seen burning inside. The nationalities of the victims were not immediately known. - http://news.scotsman.com/inte...
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| In the World According to Neo-Con Fascists, Criticizing Bush is "Playing Politics" ... Hmmm... |
| 12.31.04 (9:30 am) [edit] |
[b]Have you noticed that in the world of the neo-con fascist traitors who lack a comprehension of our national history, that any criticism of Bush's War Crimes (hundreds of U.S. Soldiers & tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians slaughtered to enrich the Mad King George, the Asshole) are characterizied as "playing politics"... Hmmm ... Are you so stupid you buy this crap??? ... I hope not!!![/b]
Anyway, here is some food for thought for year-end:
[u][b]'Goodbye to 2004, another year of living stupidly'[/b][/u]
One of the blessings of having been around a long time is that in any dark moment of our national life you can usually think of another moment that, if you put your mind to it, seemed almost as dark or maybe darker: McCarthyism, Watergate, the disaster of Vietnam.
But never in the memory of the living generation have the errors, falsifications and unreason of policy come in such rapid and overwhelming succession that each buries its predecessor before it's even partially absorbed, much less understood.
The result is an historic dynamic of error, dishonesty and corruption that's far more frightening than any individual event. The counterpoint of revelations of flawed and myopic foreign policy decisions against the deepening quagmire overseas is itself so overwhelming that most people must have trouble keeping track of it.
In the traditional pace of things, each of these events would be a scandal:
* The unnecessary disaster in Iraq - the haste in getting into it, the inadequate preparation and resources to pursue it - now partly acknowledged even by the president and his "stuff happens" secretary of defense.
* The mess in an underfunded Homeland Security regime that requires every airline passenger to remove his shoes and risk a humiliating frisking, grants government snoops broad new powers, locks up suspects without legal rights, but can't properly vet its own Cabinet secretary-designee.
* The huge tax cuts, most of them for the rich, in a professed time of war, which supposedly requires no sacrifice from anyone other than the troops overseas. Among those men and women, even those who make it home in good physical health, a large percentage will need extended psychological help for the emotional battering they've undergone.
* The ballooning federal deficit resulting in large part from those tax cuts, the decline of the dollar to record lows against the Euro and the nation's concomitant decline in economic and political influence. At some point, federal borrowing will require interest rates high enough that they will choke us.
* The ongoing failure to launch a massive energy conservation program through higher auto efficiency standards and higher gas taxes to reduce our dependency on the very regimes that finance terrorism and which represent the most undemocratic forces on earth.
* The growing visa and security barriers to foreign scholars and students, once a mainstay of the nation's economic and scientific superiority, and the shrinking federal support for low income students in the face of the growing technical power and attractiveness of universities in China, India, Canada and Europe.
* The increasingly dysfunctional health care system, which with every "reform" becomes more costly, corrupt, inefficient and unfair.
* The fiscally destructive proposals for privatizing Social Security in the effort to take it down the same road.
Much of the debate of the past year has been about the national intelligence system - the need to create better coordination among the various federal intelligence agencies that in some cases can't even communicate internally. But the bigger problem, of course, is the other, more common kind of intelligence, and what seems to be the proud national repudiation of its use.
The president's critics, among them some former high officials in his own White House, say he doesn't want to know - that he wants only to be told whatever fits with his ideology, preconceptions and intentions. So now he is converting the whole Cabinet into a den of good news bears who will never tell him he has no clothes. One White House official, asked a question that included the word reality, swiftly answered that this government makes its own reality.
But what of the rest of us? Has the accumulation of stupidity simply overwhelmed us? Are we so fearful of the much-proclaimed terrorism threatening us, has it fatally dulled our critical faculties? Are we so locked into dutiful acceptance of each successive explanation of failure that we are rendered mute?
Is the great values revival myth now our surrogate for reason? As in the Orwellian state, we quickly forget even the immediate past. It was less than four years ago that we were told that tax cuts were advisable because budget surpluses weren't good for us, then that tax cuts were urgent to stimulate the economy, and now that they should be permanent.
Likewise that Iraq would be won and democracy installed once we reached Baghdad, then that it would happen once Saddam was caught, then when sovereignty was transferred, then when elections are held and now that it will take a few more years because, oops, the Iraqi security forces (read mercenaries) aren't up to the job.
We always recovered from our bouts of national craziness before. But rarely has the national march of folly generated a momentum of inattention, denial and forgetfulness as this one has. As the New Year begins, can we still embrace the collective vision for our children that we can do things better, more wisely and more humanely? Or will we be frozen in our national stupidity forever? - http://www.sacbee.com/content...
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| Billions for Pork as Science is Slashed!!!!! |
| 12.31.04 (7:43 am) [edit] |
[i][b]Damn the future, the GOP wants to buy votes today.[/b][/i]
Does cutting taxes force Congress to spend less money? So far under President Bush, the answer has been a resounding no. Now there's some evidence that Congress actually may be tightening the purse strings. Unfortunately, what it has done so far doesn't exactly prove the conservative case.
The new evidence is that Congress voted last month to cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, or NSF, which supports basic scientific research. This means that next year the NSF will have about 1,000 fewer research grants. This comes at a time when scientific experts worry that the United States is losing its worldwide primacy in science and technology.
Now, some of you righties may be saying to yourselves, "Great! We scaled back another big government program." But, remember, Republicans over at least the last decade have flaunted their support of science and technology. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used to go on about dinosaur research and giving poor people laptop computers. Bush grandly promised a new mission to land humans on Mars in his last State of the Union address.
And the GOP commitment to science, at least until recently, very much included the NSF. Two years ago, the Republican Congress voted to double the foundation's budget by 2007. At the time, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard wrote that the White House considered the NSF to be one of the few "programs that work." Its grants go out on a competitive basis.
Mitch Daniels, then Bush's budget director, told Barnes that the NSF "has supported eight of the 12 most recent Nobel Prize awards earned by Americans at some point in their careers."
Still, you say, don't we face a huge deficit now? Indeed we do, but cutting support for scientific research is an incredibly mindless way to solve that problem. Deficits are bad because they represent a form of borrowing against the future. Every dollar we spend beyond our means today is one less dollar that we'll have to spend someday down the road. But scientific research is an investment in future prosperity. Cutting the NSF budget is like a family in debt pulling its children out of college but keeping its country club membership.
And this turns out to be utterly typical of the way conservatives practice fiscal restraint. Their strategy of "starving the beast" — trimming down government by depriving it of revenue — is not supposed to chop down spending per se; it's supposed to get rid of waste. As it happens, though, waste has flourished while Washington has sacrificed lots of necessary spending.
The former category includes big programs such as the $180 billion in agricultural subsidies Bush approved in 2001, or last year's Medicare bill featuring tens of billions in subsidies for healthcare industries. It also includes garden variety pork, such as money for the Punxsutawney (Pa.) Weather Museum or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. (Both projects were deemed vital in the same budget that trims the NSF.)
The NSF is not the only worthwhile project that has gotten stiffed. It's not even the only project that conservatives consider worthwhile that has gotten stiffed.
Crucial aspects of homeland security — such as inspecting incoming ships for nuclear material and hiring enough immigration agents to track down illegal immigrants from the Middle East — are getting far less than needed to ensure that Americans are protected from terrorism. Even the denizens of the conservative Heritage Foundation have complained about the Bush administration's stinginess on homeland security.
Why are bad programs driving out the good? Because budget pressure, the pressure of the deficit by itself, does not guarantee that Congress will make good choices. The Republicans' preferred plan, which we've seen through Bush's first four years, is to say yes to everybody: tax cuts and spending programs can buy a lot of votes. If they must cut back, they'll keep the programs that help Republicans win election, including the home-state pork, and cut out virtuous programs that don't have the same political muscle. Like the NSF.
Of course, this isn't an unalterable law of nature. If the governing party has some sense of responsibility, it will fund programs on the basis of the national interest rather than on the basis of which ones have the most powerful lobby.
That's what President Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, said he was doing when he promised to go after "weak claims, not weak clients." By that he meant he would try to cut out programs with a shaky rationale, not those that merely lacked powerful backers in Washington. The GOP's operating principle today is just the other way around. - http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,1,7598975.column
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| Billions for Pork as Science is Slashed!!!!! |
| 12.31.04 (7:40 am) [edit] |
[i][b]Damn the future, the GOP wants to buy votes today.[/b][/i]
Does cutting taxes force Congress to spend less money? So far under President Bush, the answer has been a resounding no. Now there's some evidence that Congress actually may be tightening the purse strings. Unfortunately, what it has done so far doesn't exactly prove the conservative case.
The new evidence is that Congress voted last month to cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, or NSF, which supports basic scientific research. This means that next year the NSF will have about 1,000 fewer research grants. This comes at a time when scientific experts worry that the United States is losing its worldwide primacy in science and technology.
Now, some of you righties may be saying to yourselves, "Great! We scaled back another big government program." But, remember, Republicans over at least the last decade have flaunted their support of science and technology. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used to go on about dinosaur research and giving poor people laptop computers. Bush grandly promised a new mission to land humans on Mars in his last State of the Union address.
And the GOP commitment to science, at least until recently, very much included the NSF. Two years ago, the Republican Congress voted to double the foundation's budget by 2007. At the time, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard wrote that the White House considered the NSF to be one of the few "programs that work." Its grants go out on a competitive basis.
Mitch Daniels, then Bush's budget director, told Barnes that the NSF "has supported eight of the 12 most recent Nobel Prize awards earned by Americans at some point in their careers."
Still, you say, don't we face a huge deficit now? Indeed we do, but cutting support for scientific research is an incredibly mindless way to solve that problem. Deficits are bad because they represent a form of borrowing against the future. Every dollar we spend beyond our means today is one less dollar that we'll have to spend someday down the road. But scientific research is an investment in future prosperity. Cutting the NSF budget is like a family in debt pulling its children out of college but keeping its country club membership.
And this turns out to be utterly typical of the way conservatives practice fiscal restraint. Their strategy of "starving the beast" — trimming down government by depriving it of revenue — is not supposed to chop down spending per se; it's supposed to get rid of waste. As it happens, though, waste has flourished while Washington has sacrificed lots of necessary spending.
The former category includes big programs such as the $180 billion in agricultural subsidies Bush approved in 2001, or last year's Medicare bill featuring tens of billions in subsidies for healthcare industries. It also includes garden variety pork, such as money for the Punxsutawney (Pa.) Weather Museum or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. (Both projects were deemed vital in the same budget that trims the NSF.)
The NSF is not the only worthwhile project that has gotten stiffed. It's not even the only project that conservatives consider worthwhile that has gotten stiffed.
Crucial aspects of homeland security — such as inspecting incoming ships for nuclear material and hiring enough immigration agents to track down illegal immigrants from the Middle East — are getting far less than needed to ensure that Americans are protected from terrorism. Even the denizens of the conservative Heritage Foundation have complained about the Bush administration's stinginess on homeland security.
Why are bad programs driving out the good? Because budget pressure, the pressure of the deficit by itself, does not guarantee that Congress will make good choices. The Republicans' preferred plan, which we've seen through Bush's first four years, is to say yes to everybody: tax cuts and spending programs can buy a lot of votes. If they must cut back, they'll keep the programs that help Republicans win election, including the home-state pork, and cut out virtuous programs that don't have the same political muscle. Like the NSF.
Of course, this isn't an unalterable law of nature. If the governing party has some sense of responsibility, it will fund programs on the basis of the national interest rather than on the basis of which ones have the most powerful lobby.
That's what President Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, said he was doing when he promised to go after "weak claims, not weak clients." By that he meant he would try to cut out programs with a shaky rationale, not those that merely lacked powerful backers in Washington. The GOP's operating principle today is just the other way around. - http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,1,7598975.column
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| Billions for Pork as Science is Slashed!!!!! |
| 12.31.04 (7:35 am) [edit] |
[i][b]Damn the future, the GOP wants to buy votes today.[/b][/i]
Does cutting taxes force Congress to spend less money? So far under President Bush, the answer has been a resounding no. Now there's some evidence that Congress actually may be tightening the purse strings. Unfortunately, what it has done so far doesn't exactly prove the conservative case.
The new evidence is that Congress voted last month to cut the budget for the National Science Foundation, or NSF, which supports basic scientific research. This means that next year the NSF will have about 1,000 fewer research grants. This comes at a time when scientific experts worry that the United States is losing its worldwide primacy in science and technology.
Now, some of you righties may be saying to yourselves, "Great! We scaled back another big government program." But, remember, Republicans over at least the last decade have flaunted their support of science and technology. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used to go on about dinosaur research and giving poor people laptop computers. Bush grandly promised a new mission to land humans on Mars in his last State of the Union address.
And the GOP commitment to science, at least until recently, very much included the NSF. Two years ago, the Republican Congress voted to double the foundation's budget by 2007. At the time, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard wrote that the White House considered the NSF to be one of the few "programs that work." Its grants go out on a competitive basis.
Mitch Daniels, then Bush's budget director, told Barnes that the NSF "has supported eight of the 12 most recent Nobel Prize awards earned by Americans at some point in their careers."
Still, you say, don't we face a huge deficit now? Indeed we do, but cutting support for scientific research is an incredibly mindless way to solve that problem. Deficits are bad because they represent a form of borrowing against the future. Every dollar we spend beyond our means today is one less dollar that we'll have to spend someday down the road. But scientific research is an investment in future prosperity. Cutting the NSF budget is like a family in debt pulling its children out of college but keeping its country club membership.
And this turns out to be utterly typical of the way conservatives practice fiscal restraint. Their strategy of "starving the beast" — trimming down government by depriving it of revenue — is not supposed to chop down spending per se; it's supposed to get rid of waste. As it happens, though, waste has flourished while Washington has sacrificed lots of necessary spending.
The former category includes big programs such as the $180 billion in agricultural subsidies Bush approved in 2001, or last year's Medicare bill featuring tens of billions in subsidies for healthcare industries. It also includes garden variety pork, such as money for the Punxsutawney (Pa.) Weather Museum or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. (Both projects were deemed vital in the same budget that trims the NSF.)
The NSF is not the only worthwhile project that has gotten stiffed. It's not even the only project that conservatives consider worthwhile that has gotten stiffed.
Crucial aspects of homeland security — such as inspecting incoming ships for nuclear material and hiring enough immigration agents to track down illegal immigrants from the Middle East — are getting far less than needed to ensure that Americans are protected from terrorism. Even the denizens of the conservative Heritage Foundation have complained about the Bush administration's stinginess on homeland security.
Why are bad programs driving out the good? Because budget pressure, the pressure of the deficit by itself, does not guarantee that Congress will make good choices. The Republicans' preferred plan, which we've seen through Bush's first four years, is to say yes to everybody: tax cuts and spending programs can buy a lot of votes. If they must cut back, they'll keep the programs that help Republicans win election, including the home-state pork, and cut out virtuous programs that don't have the same political muscle. Like the NSF.
Of course, this isn't an unalterable law of nature. If the governing party has some sense of responsibility, it will fund programs on the basis of the national interest rather than on the basis of which ones have the most powerful lobby.
That's what President Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, said he was doing when he promised to go after "weak claims, not weak clients." By that he meant he would try to cut out programs with a shaky rationale, not those that merely lacked powerful backers in Washington. The GOP's operating principle today is just the other way around. - http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,1,7598975.column
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| The Neoconnerie: Of Lice and Fleas ... |
| 12.30.04 (5:56 am) [edit] |
There's blood in the water and the neoconservatives in and around the administration are thrashing about like sharks. They've thrown Donald Rumsfeld over the side, and to many, their treachery is evidence that Rumsfeld can't possibly be one of them, a neoconservative.
The iconic Robert Novak has been particularly vocal in his attack on the secretary of defense's neoconservative credentials. In Rumsfeld's defense, I'll say this: his resistance to sending more troops to Iraq notwithstanding, his conduct during two years of war has never led me to doubt his dedication to the death and destruction that have accompanied the administration's democratic crusade in Iraq.
I do question, however, the motives of assorted Republican hacks desperately invested in distinguishing one administration lackey from the next.
Their aim? To saddle some with all the blame for the actions of a commander in chief who, "with unidirectional, God-inspired gusto," lied the nation to war. If Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice are indeed recovering neoconservatives, the signs are sure to reveal themselves sometime soon (a possibility that doesn't diminish their culpability in the illegal, immoral, and idiotic invasion of Iraq).
The first of such signs might be the cancellation of the White House's Weekly Standard subscription. Before, one hopes, this intellectually degraded publication greases the skids for an American assault on Iran's uranium enrichment facilities.
Proliferation experts from the U.S. State Department, France, Israel, and the IAEA all agree that, in secrecy and in violation of treaty commitments, the Iranians have been, as the IEEE's Spectrum reported in June 2004, "assembling the nuclear wherewithal with a speed and determination not seen since the heyday of Iraq's infamous nuclear weapons program of the 1980s." With "some of the world's largest reserves of fossil fuels," Iran's energy needs are not the cause of the urgency. The specter of an American army advancing on – and conquering – Iraq is.
In what reads like a remarkably unsophisticated policy paper, Reuel Marc Gerecht counsels in the Standard against any peaceful solutions to Iran's growing nuclear capabilities, for no real reason but that negotiations and inspections indicate a defensive "pre-9/11 mindset," while Gerecht prefers the purity of preemption.
Iran's burgeoning nuclear enhancement program is indeed worrisome, which is precisely why the "insights" of neoconservatives such as Gerecht must be avoided at all costs. Their failure to predict the shape Iraqi nationalism would take in response to an American invasion hasn't humbled them in the least. In fact, their prognostications about Iranian patriotism evince the same grandiose but out-of-focus "vision" they've imposed on Iraq, with calamitous consequences.
Duly, our neoconservative Nostradamus Gerecht predicts a favorable outcome in the event the U.S. decides to launch a missile attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. "Iranians are not nationalist automatons – they are among the most profound, cynical patriots imaginable," he patronizes. Americans can carpet bomb Iran's nuclear plants to their heart's content. There's no danger this will dissipate the average Iranian's detestation for the mullahs and spur an insurgency against the U.S.
The psychological and political savvy! The sweep of ideas….
Has Gerecht ever considered that loathing both the clerics and the carpet bombers are not mutually exclusive sentiments? Naturally not. Our neoconservative doesn't draw his analysis from objective reality, but from a countervailing narrative he has concocted. A filament of this faith, for example, is that it is impossible to hate Saddam Hussein and, simultaneously, fight the American forces. Thus, neoconservatives insist that the growing, pan-Islamic guerrilla insurgency in Iraq is Sunni dominated – manned chiefly by disgruntled Ba'athists.
This neat but nutty bifurcation has allowed Gerecht to conclude that Iranians, due to their general disdain for the ruling ayatollahs, will not oppose an American strike. Or that Iran's Shi'ite Muslims – also a religious majority – will never put aside their theological differences and make common cause with their Iraqi Shi'ite brethren against the U.S.
"What a preemptive attack would certainly do is provoke another debate [in Iran] about the competence of a ruling clergy who led the nation into a head-on collision with the United States," Gerecht maintains.
Let's see if I've grasped this last neoconservative plot line: After we've "preemptively" pulverized their installations, Iranians, who already "have a very jaundiced view of the United States," will turn on their own rather than on us.
If these fantasies seem too deranged to be true, if it appears I've exaggerated neoconservative cretinism, I apologize. I didn't mean to suggest there has been no neocon learning curve. Gerecht has allowed for a corrective course of action: even if Iranians do embrace "vulgar" nationalism rather than deracinated democratic internationalism, we Americans can always … crush them.
Now, Gerecht's neocon credentials are beyond doubt, while Rumsfeld's depend on who you talk to. But so what? As Dr. Johnson said, "There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea." Neocon or not, louse or flea, a pest is a pest.
[b]Ilana Mercer is a columnist for Antiwar.com. Her new book is Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture. To learn more about Ilana and her work, please visit her website: http://www.ilanamercer.com/ .[/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/mercer...
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| The Neoconnerie: Of Lice and Fleas ... |
| 12.30.04 (5:56 am) [edit] |
There's blood in the water and the neoconservatives in and around the administration are thrashing about like sharks. They've thrown Donald Rumsfeld over the side, and to many, their treachery is evidence that Rumsfeld can't possibly be one of them, a neoconservative.
The iconic Robert Novak has been particularly vocal in his attack on the secretary of defense's neoconservative credentials. In Rumsfeld's defense, I'll say this: his resistance to sending more troops to Iraq notwithstanding, his conduct during two years of war has never led me to doubt his dedication to the death and destruction that have accompanied the administration's democratic crusade in Iraq.
I do question, however, the motives of assorted Republican hacks desperately invested in distinguishing one administration lackey from the next.
Their aim? To saddle some with all the blame for the actions of a commander in chief who, "with unidirectional, God-inspired gusto," lied the nation to war. If Bush, Rumsfeld, and Rice are indeed recovering neoconservatives, the signs are sure to reveal themselves sometime soon (a possibility that doesn't diminish their culpability in the illegal, immoral, and idiotic invasion of Iraq).
The first of such signs might be the cancellation of the White House's Weekly Standard subscription. Before, one hopes, this intellectually degraded publication greases the skids for an American assault on Iran's uranium enrichment facilities.
Proliferation experts from the U.S. State Department, France, Israel, and the IAEA all agree that, in secrecy and in violation of treaty commitments, the Iranians have been, as the IEEE's Spectrum reported in June 2004, "assembling the nuclear wherewithal with a speed and determination not seen since the heyday of Iraq's infamous nuclear weapons program of the 1980s." With "some of the world's largest reserves of fossil fuels," Iran's energy needs are not the cause of the urgency. The specter of an American army advancing on – and conquering – Iraq is.
In what reads like a remarkably unsophisticated policy paper, Reuel Marc Gerecht counsels in the Standard against any peaceful solutions to Iran's growing nuclear capabilities, for no real reason but that negotiations and inspections indicate a defensive "pre-9/11 mindset," while Gerecht prefers the purity of preemption.
Iran's burgeoning nuclear enhancement program is indeed worrisome, which is precisely why the "insights" of neoconservatives such as Gerecht must be avoided at all costs. Their failure to predict the shape Iraqi nationalism would take in response to an American invasion hasn't humbled them in the least. In fact, their prognostications about Iranian patriotism evince the same grandiose but out-of-focus "vision" they've imposed on Iraq, with calamitous consequences.
Duly, our neoconservative Nostradamus Gerecht predicts a favorable outcome in the event the U.S. decides to launch a missile attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. "Iranians are not nationalist automatons – they are among the most profound, cynical patriots imaginable," he patronizes. Americans can carpet bomb Iran's nuclear plants to their heart's content. There's no danger this will dissipate the average Iranian's detestation for the mullahs and spur an insurgency against the U.S.
The psychological and political savvy! The sweep of ideas….
Has Gerecht ever considered that loathing both the clerics and the carpet bombers are not mutually exclusive sentiments? Naturally not. Our neoconservative doesn't draw his analysis from objective reality, but from a countervailing narrative he has concocted. A filament of this faith, for example, is that it is impossible to hate Saddam Hussein and, simultaneously, fight the American forces. Thus, neoconservatives insist that the growing, pan-Islamic guerrilla insurgency in Iraq is Sunni dominated – manned chiefly by disgruntled Ba'athists.
This neat but nutty bifurcation has allowed Gerecht to conclude that Iranians, due to their general disdain for the ruling ayatollahs, will not oppose an American strike. Or that Iran's Shi'ite Muslims – also a religious majority – will never put aside their theological differences and make common cause with their Iraqi Shi'ite brethren against the U.S.
"What a preemptive attack would certainly do is provoke another debate [in Iran] about the competence of a ruling clergy who led the nation into a head-on collision with the United States," Gerecht maintains.
Let's see if I've grasped this last neoconservative plot line: After we've "preemptively" pulverized their installations, Iranians, who already "have a very jaundiced view of the United States," will turn on their own rather than on us.
If these fantasies seem too deranged to be true, if it appears I've exaggerated neoconservative cretinism, I apologize. I didn't mean to suggest there has been no neocon learning curve. Gerecht has allowed for a corrective course of action: even if Iranians do embrace "vulgar" nationalism rather than deracinated democratic internationalism, we Americans can always … crush them.
Now, Gerecht's neocon credentials are beyond doubt, while Rumsfeld's depend on who you talk to. But so what? As Dr. Johnson said, "There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea." Neocon or not, louse or flea, a pest is a pest.
[b]Ilana Mercer is a columnist for Antiwar.com. Her new book is Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture. To learn more about Ilana and her work, please visit her website: http://www.ilanamercer.com/ .[/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/mercer...
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| The Buck Never Stops At The Top!!!!! |
| 12.30.04 (5:46 am) [edit] |
The FBI has blown the whistle on the Defense Department's military investigators by accusing them of abusive treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The FBI was especially outraged that the interrogators of suspected terrorists had posed as FBI agents.
Administration officials usually are pretty clubby folks who close ranks in times of trouble. But apparently, the FBI was not ready to take the fall for the Pentagon's atrocious treatment of some prisoners of war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled the Pentagon's behavior as "tantamount to torture."
The big question is why President Bush has tolerated inhumane treatment of detainees and why he has not ordered a full stop to this shaming of the United States.
He has to accept some of the blame for rejecting the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners of war for so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, site of a U.S. Navy base and the prison holding some 550 people from 40 different nations.
There are indications that prison guards and interrogators thought they were following orders from higher ups when they abused some detainees.
The FBI didn't complain publicly against the Department of Defense but a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union has smoked out memos written by FBI agents about the treatment of the detainees.
The records claimed the FBI learned that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved the impersonation of the FBI.
An ACLU attorney said the methods adopted by the military were "illegal, immoral and counterproductive."
The documents showed that FBI agents were particularly upset with what they saw as physical and mental abuse of the detainees, including the sticking of lighted cigarettes in their ears, choking, beatings, temperature changes, hooding, the use of dogs and other forms of harassment.
One detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag.
One of the agents complained that the military's aggressive interrogation was "beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice."
In Iraq, an agent observed "serious abuses of civilian detainees," including strangulation, beatings and other physical harm and humiliations.
One detainee was described as "almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him." The agent surmised that the prisoner "had apparently been literally pulling his own hair."
Another report said soldiers at Guantanamo spat upon a detainee and beat him when he tried to protect himself. At one point, the soldiers beating the prisoner "grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious, the report said.
Describing an assault on a detainee, an agent wrote: "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public," the Defense Department will not be held accountable and the FBI will be left "holding the bag."
The morbid accounts run counter to the administration's claim there has been no torture at the Guantanamo prison. It's incredible that the abuses continued even after the photos of the mistreatment of the Abu Ghraib prisoners shocked the world.
The administration has blamed free lancing by low-ranking reservists for the brutality. No top commander has been fingered for the disgrace.
This is an administration where the buck never stops at the top. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House acknowledges condoning such practices.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters last Tuesday that the president "expects that any allegations of abuse are taken seriously and fully investigated, and that corrective measures are taken to make sure that abuse does not occur again. That's what the president expects."
McClellan added the president has made it clear that, "We are a nation of laws and a nation of values, and we adhere to our laws and values."
He also said Bush feels that "people need to be held accountable and brought to justice if they're involved in wrongdoing" and that corrective measures are in place to prevent it from happening again.
American taxpayers have spent millions to improve the U.S. image in the Middle East and to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world, which opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
But it will all be for naught unless the president makes an unequivocal statement that all prisoners and detainees we hold anywhere will be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and the standards of the Red Cross. - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...
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| Bush's Torture At The Top: But, The Buck Never Stops At The Top!!! |
| 12.30.04 (5:43 am) [edit] |
The FBI has blown the whistle on the Defense Department's military investigators by accusing them of abusive treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The FBI was especially outraged that the interrogators of suspected terrorists had posed as FBI agents.
Administration officials usually are pretty clubby folks who close ranks in times of trouble. But apparently, the FBI was not ready to take the fall for the Pentagon's atrocious treatment of some prisoners of war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled the Pentagon's behavior as "tantamount to torture."
The big question is why President Bush has tolerated inhumane treatment of detainees and why he has not ordered a full stop to this shaming of the United States.
He has to accept some of the blame for rejecting the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners of war for so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, site of a U.S. Navy base and the prison holding some 550 people from 40 different nations.
There are indications that prison guards and interrogators thought they were following orders from higher ups when they abused some detainees.
The FBI didn't complain publicly against the Department of Defense but a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union has smoked out memos written by FBI agents about the treatment of the detainees.
The records claimed the FBI learned that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved the impersonation of the FBI.
An ACLU attorney said the methods adopted by the military were "illegal, immoral and counterproductive."
The documents showed that FBI agents were particularly upset with what they saw as physical and mental abuse of the detainees, including the sticking of lighted cigarettes in their ears, choking, beatings, temperature changes, hooding, the use of dogs and other forms of harassment.
One detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag.
One of the agents complained that the military's aggressive interrogation was "beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice."
In Iraq, an agent observed "serious abuses of civilian detainees," including strangulation, beatings and other physical harm and humiliations.
One detainee was described as "almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him." The agent surmised that the prisoner "had apparently been literally pulling his own hair."
Another report said soldiers at Guantanamo spat upon a detainee and beat him when he tried to protect himself. At one point, the soldiers beating the prisoner "grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious, the report said.
Describing an assault on a detainee, an agent wrote: "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public," the Defense Department will not be held accountable and the FBI will be left "holding the bag."
The morbid accounts run counter to the administration's claim there has been no torture at the Guantanamo prison. It's incredible that the abuses continued even after the photos of the mistreatment of the Abu Ghraib prisoners shocked the world.
The administration has blamed free lancing by low-ranking reservists for the brutality. No top commander has been fingered for the disgrace.
This is an administration where the buck never stops at the top. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House acknowledges condoning such practices.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters last Tuesday that the president "expects that any allegations of abuse are taken seriously and fully investigated, and that corrective measures are taken to make sure that abuse does not occur again. That's what the president expects."
McClellan added the president has made it clear that, "We are a nation of laws and a nation of values, and we adhere to our laws and values."
He also said Bush feels that "people need to be held accountable and brought to justice if they're involved in wrongdoing" and that corrective measures are in place to prevent it from happening again.
American taxpayers have spent millions to improve the U.S. image in the Middle East and to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world, which opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
But it will all be for naught unless the president makes an unequivocal statement that all prisoners and detainees we hold anywhere will be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and the standards of the Red Cross. - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...
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| Blood-thirsty Bushy-boy, the Sadistic Torturer: The Buck Never Stops At The Top!!!!! |
| 12.30.04 (5:42 am) [edit] |
The FBI has blown the whistle on the Defense Department's military investigators by accusing them of abusive treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The FBI was especially outraged that the interrogators of suspected terrorists had posed as FBI agents.
Administration officials usually are pretty clubby folks who close ranks in times of trouble. But apparently, the FBI was not ready to take the fall for the Pentagon's atrocious treatment of some prisoners of war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled the Pentagon's behavior as "tantamount to torture."
The big question is why President Bush has tolerated inhumane treatment of detainees and why he has not ordered a full stop to this shaming of the United States.
He has to accept some of the blame for rejecting the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners of war for so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, site of a U.S. Navy base and the prison holding some 550 people from 40 different nations.
There are indications that prison guards and interrogators thought they were following orders from higher ups when they abused some detainees.
The FBI didn't complain publicly against the Department of Defense but a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union has smoked out memos written by FBI agents about the treatment of the detainees.
The records claimed the FBI learned that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved the impersonation of the FBI.
An ACLU attorney said the methods adopted by the military were "illegal, immoral and counterproductive."
The documents showed that FBI agents were particularly upset with what they saw as physical and mental abuse of the detainees, including the sticking of lighted cigarettes in their ears, choking, beatings, temperature changes, hooding, the use of dogs and other forms of harassment.
One detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag.
One of the agents complained that the military's aggressive interrogation was "beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice."
In Iraq, an agent observed "serious abuses of civilian detainees," including strangulation, beatings and other physical harm and humiliations.
One detainee was described as "almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him." The agent surmised that the prisoner "had apparently been literally pulling his own hair."
Another report said soldiers at Guantanamo spat upon a detainee and beat him when he tried to protect himself. At one point, the soldiers beating the prisoner "grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious, the report said.
Describing an assault on a detainee, an agent wrote: "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public," the Defense Department will not be held accountable and the FBI will be left "holding the bag."
The morbid accounts run counter to the administration's claim there has been no torture at the Guantanamo prison. It's incredible that the abuses continued even after the photos of the mistreatment of the Abu Ghraib prisoners shocked the world.
The administration has blamed free lancing by low-ranking reservists for the brutality. No top commander has been fingered for the disgrace.
This is an administration where the buck never stops at the top. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House acknowledges condoning such practices.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters last Tuesday that the president "expects that any allegations of abuse are taken seriously and fully investigated, and that corrective measures are taken to make sure that abuse does not occur again. That's what the president expects."
McClellan added the president has made it clear that, "We are a nation of laws and a nation of values, and we adhere to our laws and values."
He also said Bush feels that "people need to be held accountable and brought to justice if they're involved in wrongdoing" and that corrective measures are in place to prevent it from happening again.
American taxpayers have spent millions to improve the U.S. image in the Middle East and to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world, which opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
But it will all be for naught unless the president makes an unequivocal statement that all prisoners and detainees we hold anywhere will be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and the standards of the Red Cross. - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...
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| In Bushy-boy's Bizarro World: The Buck Never Stops At The Top!!!!!! |
| 12.30.04 (5:36 am) [edit] |
The FBI has blown the whistle on the Defense Department's military investigators by accusing them of abusive treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The FBI was especially outraged that the interrogators of suspected terrorists had posed as FBI agents.
Administration officials usually are pretty clubby folks who close ranks in times of trouble. But apparently, the FBI was not ready to take the fall for the Pentagon's atrocious treatment of some prisoners of war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled the Pentagon's behavior as "tantamount to torture."
The big question is why President Bush has tolerated inhumane treatment of detainees and why he has not ordered a full stop to this shaming of the United States.
He has to accept some of the blame for rejecting the Geneva Conventions on humane treatment of prisoners of war for so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, site of a U.S. Navy base and the prison holding some 550 people from 40 different nations.
There are indications that prison guards and interrogators thought they were following orders from higher ups when they abused some detainees.
The FBI didn't complain publicly against the Department of Defense but a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union has smoked out memos written by FBI agents about the treatment of the detainees.
The records claimed the FBI learned that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had approved the impersonation of the FBI.
An ACLU attorney said the methods adopted by the military were "illegal, immoral and counterproductive."
The documents showed that FBI agents were particularly upset with what they saw as physical and mental abuse of the detainees, including the sticking of lighted cigarettes in their ears, choking, beatings, temperature changes, hooding, the use of dogs and other forms of harassment.
One detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag.
One of the agents complained that the military's aggressive interrogation was "beyond the bounds of standard FBI practice."
In Iraq, an agent observed "serious abuses of civilian detainees," including strangulation, beatings and other physical harm and humiliations.
One detainee was described as "almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him." The agent surmised that the prisoner "had apparently been literally pulling his own hair."
Another report said soldiers at Guantanamo spat upon a detainee and beat him when he tried to protect himself. At one point, the soldiers beating the prisoner "grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious, the report said.
Describing an assault on a detainee, an agent wrote: "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public," the Defense Department will not be held accountable and the FBI will be left "holding the bag."
The morbid accounts run counter to the administration's claim there has been no torture at the Guantanamo prison. It's incredible that the abuses continued even after the photos of the mistreatment of the Abu Ghraib prisoners shocked the world.
The administration has blamed free lancing by low-ranking reservists for the brutality. No top commander has been fingered for the disgrace.
This is an administration where the buck never stops at the top. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House acknowledges condoning such practices.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters last Tuesday that the president "expects that any allegations of abuse are taken seriously and fully investigated, and that corrective measures are taken to make sure that abuse does not occur again. That's what the president expects."
McClellan added the president has made it clear that, "We are a nation of laws and a nation of values, and we adhere to our laws and values."
He also said Bush feels that "people need to be held accountable and brought to justice if they're involved in wrongdoing" and that corrective measures are in place to prevent it from happening again.
American taxpayers have spent millions to improve the U.S. image in the Middle East and to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world, which opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
But it will all be for naught unless the president makes an unequivocal statement that all prisoners and detainees we hold anywhere will be treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and the standards of the Red Cross. - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...
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| A Not So Wonderful Life |
| 12.19.04 (5:31 am) [edit] |
EXTERIOR BRIDGE OVER POTOMAC RIVER - NIGHT
CLOSE SHOT - Rummy is standing by the railing, staring morosely into the water. The snow is falling hard. Feeling a tap on his shoulder, he wheels around and wrestles an old man with wings into a headlock.
OLD MAN: Ouch! Tut, tut. When will you learn that force doesn't solve everything?
RUMMY: Who the dickens are you?
OLD MAN: Clarence, Angel First Class. I've been sent down to help you.
RUMMY, squinting: You're off your nut, you old fruitcake. You can't help me. I was a matinee idol in this town, a studmuffin. Now everyone's turned on me - Trent Lott, Chuck Hagel and that dadburn McCain.
CLARENCE: No more self-pity, son. I'm going to show you what the world would have been like if you'd never been born.
Clarence, who can fly now, takes Rummy's hand and they soar over the icy Potomac to the Pentagon. Beneath the glass on the desk of the defense secretary is a list of members of Congress and their phone numbers.
RUMMY: Who put that there?
CLARENCE: Sam Nunn. He's the defense secretary. Sam consults with Congress. Never acts arrogant or misleads them. He didn't banish the generals who challenged him - he promoted 'em. And, of course, he caught Osama back in '01. He threw 100,000 troops into Afghanistan on 9/11 and sealed the borders. Our Special Forces trapped the evildoer and his top lieutenants at Tora Bora. You weren't at that cabinet meeting the day after 9/11, so nobody suggested going after Saddam. No American troops died or were maimed in Iraq. No American soldiers tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. No Iraqi explosives fell into the hands of terrorists. There's no office of disinformation to twist perception abroad. We're not on the cusp of an Iraq run by Muslim clerics tied to Iran. Here's Sam. He's with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
GENERAL SHINSEKI: We got some good news today on the National Guard, sir. Recruiting is up 40 percent. With the money we saved killing that useless missile defense system, we up-armored all our Humvees.
RUMMY, fists and jaw clenched: Grrrrrrr...I want to see Wolfie!
CLARENCE: Sam never hired any of those wacko neocons. Wolfowitz is a woolly headed professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a consultant to Ariel Sharon. Richard Perle was never in charge of the Defense Policy Board, so he was unable to enrich himself through government connections, or help Ahmad Chalabi con the administration. Perle stayed an honest man, running a chain of soufflé shops. His soufflés were so fluffy he became known as the Prince of Lightness. Doug Feith never worked here, either, so he never set up the Office of Special Plans to spin tall tales about W.M.D. and Qaeda ties to Saddam. And he never bungled the occupation because there was no occupation. Without you to swoon over in a book, neocon doyenne Midge Decter became a fallen woman, like Violet.
RUMMY, dyspeptic: Holy mackerel! Take me to Dick!
CLARENCE: Dick and Lynne run a bait, tackle and baton-twirling shop in Casper, Wyo. You didn't exist, so you never gave him those jobs in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and he never ran for Congress or worked for Bush 41 or anointed himself 43's vice president. W. chose Chuck Hagel as his running mate. So without you and Dick there to dominate him, he was guided by his dad and Brent Scowcroft, who kept Condi in line. Colin Powell was never cut off at the knees and the U.N. and allies were never bullied. There was never any crazy fever about Iraq or unilateralism or "Old Europe." Here's Colin now, heading for the Oval Office.
POWELL: Merry Christmas, Mr. President. With the help of our allies around the world, we have won the war on terror. And Saddam has been overthrown. Once Hans Blix exposed the fact that Saddam had no weapons, the tyrant was a goner. No Arab dictator can afford to be humilated by a Swedish disarmament lawyer.
RUMMY: Goodness gracious, I've heard enough now. I'm going home. Unless you're going to tell me my wife is an old maid, because I wasn't around to marry her.
CLARENCE: Oh, no. Joyce lives across the street from your old house on Kalorama Road. She's happily married to the French ambassador.
"Auld Lang Syne" swells as we FADE OUT.
[b]Maureen Dowd, NY Times[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...
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| A Not So Wonderful Life |
| 12.19.04 (5:31 am) [edit] |
EXTERIOR BRIDGE OVER POTOMAC RIVER - NIGHT
CLOSE SHOT - Rummy is standing by the railing, staring morosely into the water. The snow is falling hard. Feeling a tap on his shoulder, he wheels around and wrestles an old man with wings into a headlock.
OLD MAN: Ouch! Tut, tut. When will you learn that force doesn't solve everything?
RUMMY: Who the dickens are you?
OLD MAN: Clarence, Angel First Class. I've been sent down to help you.
RUMMY, squinting: You're off your nut, you old fruitcake. You can't help me. I was a matinee idol in this town, a studmuffin. Now everyone's turned on me - Trent Lott, Chuck Hagel and that dadburn McCain.
CLARENCE: No more self-pity, son. I'm going to show you what the world would have been like if you'd never been born.
Clarence, who can fly now, takes Rummy's hand and they soar over the icy Potomac to the Pentagon. Beneath the glass on the desk of the defense secretary is a list of members of Congress and their phone numbers.
RUMMY: Who put that there?
CLARENCE: Sam Nunn. He's the defense secretary. Sam consults with Congress. Never acts arrogant or misleads them. He didn't banish the generals who challenged him - he promoted 'em. And, of course, he caught Osama back in '01. He threw 100,000 troops into Afghanistan on 9/11 and sealed the borders. Our Special Forces trapped the evildoer and his top lieutenants at Tora Bora. You weren't at that cabinet meeting the day after 9/11, so nobody suggested going after Saddam. No American troops died or were maimed in Iraq. No American soldiers tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. No Iraqi explosives fell into the hands of terrorists. There's no office of disinformation to twist perception abroad. We're not on the cusp of an Iraq run by Muslim clerics tied to Iran. Here's Sam. He's with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
GENERAL SHINSEKI: We got some good news today on the National Guard, sir. Recruiting is up 40 percent. With the money we saved killing that useless missile defense system, we up-armored all our Humvees.
RUMMY, fists and jaw clenched: Grrrrrrr...I want to see Wolfie!
CLARENCE: Sam never hired any of those wacko neocons. Wolfowitz is a woolly headed professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a consultant to Ariel Sharon. Richard Perle was never in charge of the Defense Policy Board, so he was unable to enrich himself through government connections, or help Ahmad Chalabi con the administration. Perle stayed an honest man, running a chain of soufflé shops. His soufflés were so fluffy he became known as the Prince of Lightness. Doug Feith never worked here, either, so he never set up the Office of Special Plans to spin tall tales about W.M.D. and Qaeda ties to Saddam. And he never bungled the occupation because there was no occupation. Without you to swoon over in a book, neocon doyenne Midge Decter became a fallen woman, like Violet.
RUMMY, dyspeptic: Holy mackerel! Take me to Dick!
CLARENCE: Dick and Lynne run a bait, tackle and baton-twirling shop in Casper, Wyo. You didn't exist, so you never gave him those jobs in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and he never ran for Congress or worked for Bush 41 or anointed himself 43's vice president. W. chose Chuck Hagel as his running mate. So without you and Dick there to dominate him, he was guided by his dad and Brent Scowcroft, who kept Condi in line. Colin Powell was never cut off at the knees and the U.N. and allies were never bullied. There was never any crazy fever about Iraq or unilateralism or "Old Europe." Here's Colin now, heading for the Oval Office.
POWELL: Merry Christmas, Mr. President. With the help of our allies around the world, we have won the war on terror. And Saddam has been overthrown. Once Hans Blix exposed the fact that Saddam had no weapons, the tyrant was a goner. No Arab dictator can afford to be humilated by a Swedish disarmament lawyer.
RUMMY: Goodness gracious, I've heard enough now. I'm going home. Unless you're going to tell me my wife is an old maid, because I wasn't around to marry her.
CLARENCE: Oh, no. Joyce lives across the street from your old house on Kalorama Road. She's happily married to the French ambassador.
"Auld Lang Syne" swells as we FADE OUT.
[b]Maureen Dowd, NY Times[/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...
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