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JULY 2003 ARCHIVE

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(Banner Headline) PENTAGON REVEALS ITSELF RUN BY MORONS Poindexter's Neoconservatives Run Amuck:  Market-based intelligence prediction program  abandoned under fire Pentagon Abandons Plan for Futures Market on Terror By CARL HULSE New York Times July 29, 2003 EXCERPTS: The Pentagon office that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists has quickly abandoned an idea in which anonymous speculators would have bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups in an online futures market. Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said today that he had conferred with the program's director at the Pentagon, ``and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped.'' One of the two senators, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, said the idea seemed so preposterous that he had trouble persuading people it was not a hoax. ``Can you imagine,'' Mr. Dorgan asked, ``if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in - and is sponsored by the government itself - people could go in and bet on the assassination of an American political figure?'' After Mr. Dorgan and his fellow critic, Ron Wyden of Oregon, spoke out, the Pentagon sought to play down the importance of a program for which the Bush administration has sought $8 million through 2005. The White House also altered the Web site so that the potential events to be considered by the market that were visible earlier in the day at www.policyanalysismarket.org could no longer be seen. True believers in "free market solutions" The Incredible Bush 'Faith-Based' Intelligence Machine Tuesday July 29, 2003 By KEN GUGGENHEIM Associated Press July 29, 2003 Daschle Urges Bush to Stop Terror Market EXCERPTS: The Senate's Democratic leader called on the Bush administration Tuesday to renounce a Pentagon plan for establishing a futures market on acts of terrorism and said apologies should be made to the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. ``This program could provide an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism,'' Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., declared on the Senate floor. ``...This is just wrong.'' Daschle called the proposal a ``plan to trade in death'' and charged it could motivate terrorists to attempt attacks on targets in the United States or against U.S. leaders. ``It is perhaps the most irresponsible, outrageous and poorly thought out of anything I have heard from the administration,'' he said. Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota criticized the market as ``unbelievably stupid." Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?'' he said. The market is a project of a DARPA division called FutureMAP, or ``Futures Markets Applied to Prediction.'' Meanwhile, Bush desecrates American flag.                                                           (AP Photo) Anyone seen Helen lately? Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer February 25, 2001 (posted July 30) EXCERPT: Q (Helen Thomas) Ari, why would this administration choose a man for counterterrorism who is so associated with the dark side of the Iran Contra scandal, Admiral Poindexter? MR. FLEISCHER: When you say, choose him for counterterrorism, can you be more specific? Q He's in the Pentagon, he's been appointed head of DARPA, which is a counterterrorist office, developing plans, demonstrations with information. MR. FLEISCHER: I'm not aware of any appointment. Q Yet. MR. FLEISCHER: Let me just say about Admiral Poindexter, Admiral Poindexter is somebody who this administration thinks is an outstanding American and an outstanding citizen who has done a very good job in what he has done for our country, serving in the military. Q How can you say that, when he told Colonel North to lie? MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think your views on Iran Contra are well-known, but the President does believe that Admiral Poindexter served -- Q It isn't my view, this is the prosecutor for the United States. MR. FLEISCHER: I understand. The President thinks that Admiral Poindexter has served our nation very well Q Really? MR. FLEISCHER: That's the President's thoughts. Q Do you know his record? MR. FLEISCHER: I'm sure you will inform me. Q I don't have to, all you have to do is look it up. US Nobel Laureate Calls For Civil Disobedience Der Spiegel July 29, 2003 (posted July 30) American Nobel Prize laureate for Economics George A. Akerlof lashed out at the government of US President George W. Bush in an interview. Akerlof: I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extraordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign and economic but also in social and environmental policy. This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for people to engage in civil disobedience. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of what kind? Akerlof: I don't know yet. But I think it's time to protest - as much as possible. A Pattern of Deception TomPaine.com July 29, 2003 (posted July 30) EXCERPTS: Did President Bush lie to the American people in his State of the Union Message when he said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"? Technically, no, because "the statement that he made was indeed accurate,'' said National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on July 13. "The British government did say that." Rice speaks the literal truth, just as her boss does, to distort what is meaningful. Outright lying is not the administration's modus operandi; willful deception is. There is much controversy over how the alleged uranium purchase surfaced in the Bush speech. But to me, the strongest candidate is that the 16 words were too tempting to pass up. They fit the president's MO to a T -- unwarranted by the evidence and hence deceptive, yet offering the cover of technical correctness. A hard truth appears to have escaped the notice of the public and received scant attention from the media: Bush is the first president in American history to use deceptive propaganda as his main means of communications in selling his policies. His pattern of deception continues unabated and in direct conflict with the notion of the public's informed consent that is central to American democracy. Senate to Vote on Media Ownership Rules By David Ho The Associated Press Washington Post Tuesday, July 29, 2003 (posted July 30) EXCERPT: Senate critics of sweeping media ownership changes approved by the Federal Communication Commission said Tuesday they have enough support to force a vote on rolling back the decision. Losers in DLC urge right turn... Poll Finds Democrats Lack Crucial Support to Beat Bush Washington Post July 28, 2003 (posted July 30) EXCERPTS: Party Must Strongly Reposition Itself to Regain White Male Voters' Support  ...Mark J. Penn (DLC), who conducted the poll, said that the party's image has regressed since former president Bill Clinton left office and that those weaknesses put Democrats in a weakened position. Penn's poll was used by DLC leaders to press their argument that Democrats must embrace the kind of centrist policies espoused by Clinton to avoid a humiliating defeat in 2004...   Cartoon by Tony Auth in The Philadelphia Inquirer A Wilting Bush By Jim Hightower AlterNet July 28, 2003 (posted July 30) EXCERPTS: The bloom is fading on the rose – the rose being the carefully tended image of our boy Bush, whose professional handlers are constantly fertilizing, misting, polishing, and arranging him for public display. The polls – which the Bushites have been citing as proof that 80 percent of the public is in total lockstep with Glorious George, The Warrior President – have headed south on them. Worse, George's fade is due to the personal factor that matters most for a political figure: Credibility. This is Jim Hightower saying... Having 40 percent of Americans saying aloud that Bush has lied to them is a big and profound number – and it's growing, as more and more Americans are now beginning to admit their suspicions that their Warrior President is a self-serving fraud. From Planning to Execution to Inauguration: The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida Working For Change July 30, 2003 This series is Part 5, from the book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin 2003) by Greg Palast.  It is part of the WorkingForChange campaign, in cooperation with Martin Luther King III of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to prevent the theft of the presidential election of 2004. The New Class War: It's Investors and Corporate Executives Against Everyone Who Works for a Living By Chuck Kelly OpEdNews.com (posted July 30) Using articles from Baron's describing current transitions in the U.S. economy, Chuck Kelly elucidates the message being conveyed by business leaders. It is that the upper income groups of skilled workers and professionals in nearly all segments of the economy will be impacted by globalization. Investors and corporate executives are in a competitive race to eliminate high salary positions and export those jobs to lower paid professionals in developing countries. The result is wholesale destruction of jobs, income and functionality of upward mobility in the American economy. Also: http://www.KellySite.net Dean Plan Pushes Auto Fuel Efficiency By ROSS SNEYD Associated Press in FindLaw July 30, 2003 (posted July 31) EXCERPT: Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is proposing an environmental policy that would push automakers to improve fuel efficiency standards and require that part of the nation's electricity supply come from renewable sources. One day after presenting his economic plan in Iowa, the former Vermont governor planned to lay out his 100-year vision for the environment and criticize President Bush's record in a speech Thursday in San Francisco. The Associated Press obtained excerpts and the broad outlines. "We have a president who seems to regard public resources as gifts to be handed out to special interests," Dean said in prepared remarks. Big Guns: The Plan to Give Immunity to Gun Manufacturers and Retailers Moving Ideas July 30, 2003 EXCERPTS: The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (S. 659) is the Senate version of a House bill (HR 1036) which was approved during the Iraq war with little debate. The bill would give gun manufacturers and retailers special immunity from damages in cases where injury or death results from their failure to use reasonable care in the design, distribution, security or sale of guns. Also protected are gun retailers who fail to take reasonable precautions to secure their inventory. From the Department of Hypocrisy... U.S. May Cut Air Marshals Despite Warning By Leslie Miller, Associated Press Newsday July 30, 2003 Well, apparently the government has money to waste on terror-gambling markets, but not enough to actually prevent terrorism. Even as the Department of Homeland Security issues new warnings that planes could be hijacked any day now withing the United States, according the the A.P., the Transportation Security Administration has moved to reduce funding for air marshals. This comes hot on the heels of the latest terror alert. No one knows yet how many air marshals will lose their jobs, but the TSA needs to cut $104 million from their budget. Doesn't that make you feel safer?   BushWhackedUSA Commentary  Hey! Look out! What's that behind you?! Yet Another Conveniently Timed Terror Alert BushWhackedUSA commentary July 30, 2003 Besieged by controversy over last week's 9/11 report, this week's Pentagon terror-gambling scandal, a year's worth of lies about Iraq, and Bush's inability to recall the order of events during his administration (no, G.W., the inspectors were NOT evicted from Iraq this Spring or ever!), the administration's Department of Homeland Security has just released a vague warning that terrorists could strike in the Eastern U.S., Britain, Italy, Australia or the North Pole, for that matter. Apparently, killing Saddam Hussein's sons did not keep us distracted -- which does not bode well for those who want the rest of us to stop asking all those pesky questions. In other words, the parade of lies, exaggerations and cynical manipulations of the American public marches on. Terror alert, schmerror alert! It's time for the occupation force in the White House to 'fess up and quit gambling with our futures, our safety, our dollars and our nation's integrity. Those are very high, very real stakes, but the administration seems to think this is all a game. A Wilting Bush By Jim Hightower AlterNet July 28, 2003 (posted July 30) EXCERPTS: The bloom is fading on the rose – the rose being the carefully tended image of our boy Bush, whose professional handlers are constantly fertilizing, misting, polishing, and arranging him for public display. The polls – which the Bushites have been citing as proof that 80 percent of the public is in total lockstep with Glorious George, The Warrior President – have headed south on them. Worse, George's fade is due to the personal factor that matters most for a political figure: Credibility. This is Jim Hightower saying... Having 40 percent of Americans saying aloud that Bush has lied to them is a big and profound number – and it's growing, as more and more Americans are now beginning to admit their suspicions that their Warrior President is a self-serving fraud. From Planning to Execution to Inauguration: The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida Working For Change July 30, 2003 This series is Part 5, from the book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin 2003) by Greg Palast.  It is part of the WorkingForChange campaign, in cooperation with Martin Luther King III of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to prevent the theft of the presidential election of 2004. The New Class War: It's Investors and Corporate Executives Against Everyone Who Works for a Living By Chuck Kelly OpEdNews.com (posted July 30) Using articles from Baron's describing current transitions in the U.S. economy, Chuck Kelly elucidates the message being conveyed by business leaders. It is that the upper income groups of skilled workers and professionals in nearly all segments of the economy will be impacted by globalization. Investors and corporate executives are in a competitive race to eliminate high salary positions and export those jobs to lower paid professionals in developing countries. The result is wholesale destruction of jobs, income and functionality of upward mobility in the American economy. Also: http://www.KellySite.net Bush plan will increase logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forest By Seth Borenstein Knight Ridder Newspapers July 28, 2003 (posted July 30) EXCERPT: Something's got to give, and it may be the tall trees. The Bush administration this month took the first steps toward more than doubling the logging of ancient trees in the Tongass and perhaps reviving the area's timber industry. That action shifted the nation's top environmental battleground from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Tongass. "The biggest issue is how we will manage the old-growth stands," said district forester Dale Kanen. That includes about 300,000 acres of trees in areas that can't be cut without new roads. U.S. Forest Service documents show that the timber industry could reap up to 870 million board feet of wood from the now-roadless areas, enough lumber to build more than 43,000 houses. That's more than a quarter million trees. Environmentalists want to save them, fearing a repeat of the massive clear-cutting that left still-ugly patches beside the rough gravel logging roads that cut through this region. Who Can Beat President Doofus? By Molly Ivins The Progressive, August 2003 Issue (posted July 29) EXCERPTS: Meanwhile, in a truly creative demonstration of their problem-solving abilities, White House staffers fixed the entire global warming problem by editing it out of a report on the environment. Way to go, team! Why pay attention to scientists when you can insert a study paid for by the American Petroleum Institute instead? That Karl Rove, just brilliant. As President Bush said on June 4, "I'm the master of low expectations." And he continues to prove it. Now to provide some good cheer. We've got some talent here, people, and most of them compare well to President Doofus. Bush, Republicans Losing Support of Retired Veterans By Steven Thomma Knight-Ridder Newspapers July 27, 2003 (posted July 29) EXCERPT: Normally Republican, many retired veterans are mad that Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress are blocking remedies to two problems with health and pension benefits. They say they feel particularly betrayed by Bush, who appealed to them in his 2000 campaign, and who vowed on the eve of his inauguration that "promises made to our veterans will be promises kept." "He pats us on the back with his speeches and stabs us in the back with his actions," said Charles A. Carter of Shawnee, Okla., a retired Navy senior chief petty officer. "I will vote non-Republican in a heart beat if it continues as is." How pro-Sharon policies come to US Tel Aviv's Influence on American institutions US: the pro-Sharon thinktank Le Monde Diplomatique July Issue (posted July 29) EXCERPTS: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy influences the thinking of the United States government and has a near monopoly on the supply of 'expert' witnesses to the media. After almost two decades of relative moderation, the institute is now drifting towards the Israeli right. ...Bush Jr brought to Washington a clique of Middle East policy makers linked to Israel's Likud party and to neo-conservative, hawkish thinktanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for a New American Century, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), and the Centre for Security Policy (CSP). Vice President Dick Cheney, Undersecretary of State for arms control and international security John Bolton, and Undersecretary of Defence for policy Douglas Feith were all on Jinsa's board of advisers before they entered the Bush administration: in all, 22 CSP associates secured positions in the Bush national security apparatus.   More than access... Money Talks Contributions correlate with outcome of drug reimportation vote By Steven Weiss Capital Eye July 24, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPT: Last night’s House vote on drug reimportation was unusual in that it did not break down along strict party lines, as many votes do. But the vote was anything but unusual in at least one major respect: campaign contributions were a solid indicator of the outcome. Campaign contribution figures show that lawmakers who sided with pharmaceutical interests (voting "no" on the bill) raised an average of nearly three times as much from drug firms as those who took the alternate position (voting "yes"). Members who voted against the bill raised an average of $39,813 in individual and PAC contributions from pharmaceutical manufacturers between 1989 and 2002. Members who voted for the bill raised an average of $13,917 from the industry during that time. The 'Cheney Virus' continues to spread... Hallibuton Milks British Nuclear Submarines for Millions By Solomon Hughes Special to CorpWatch July 25, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPT: "My general impression is that our British colleagues are far ahead of us in the US in the extent to which they have adopted changes in culture, attitude and style of operation that are required for successful privatization efforts," said Cheney, just months before he quit his job at the company to launch a successful bid to become vice-president of the United States. Not surprisingly Cheney's new job as vice-president has coincided with a major increase in military privatization in the United States with Halliburton profiting handsomely from contracts tosupply US troops around the world from Bosnia to Uzbekistan. Meanwhile Halliburton has allegedly been milking their British colleagues for as much money as they can get. The National Audit Office (NAO) was called in to investigate when Devonport project costs budgeted at $904 million in 1997 increased by over 50% by 2002. State Fiscal Relief Funds Do Not Address the Need for Substantial Increases in Child Care Funding By Shawn Fremstad Center On Budget and Policy Priorities July 25, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPT: Child care funding is a major issue in the TANF reauthorization debate. Most states have made cuts in child care programs during the past year, and substantial increases in funding are needed to prevent much larger cuts in the future. A recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for Law and Social Policy estimated that, without increased resources, hundreds of thousands of children in working families will likely lose access to child care assistance in the next few years. Billionaire challenges case for war Reuters July 26, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPTS: Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq. The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth." A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false. Budget Crises in States Slow an Economic Recovery By LOUIS UCHITELLE New York Times July 27, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPTS: Having already stripped the nation of a source of economic growth, the budget crises in California and in almost every other state are now beginning to drag down the national economy, prolonging the weak, jobless recovery, the latest budget numbers show. The cuts in state spending are just starting to be felt, with the impact landing disproportionately on the poor. "We have been shifting a lot of spending for social services from the feds to the states," said Robert M. Solow, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel laureate. "And that means the cuts that are taking place are hurting people at the bottom of the income distribution." Bush faces domestic revolt over Patriot Act ‘sneaks’ Ros Davidson in Los Angeles Sunday Herald July 27, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPTS: George W Bush is facing a bi-partisan attack on the centrepiece of his domestic anti- terrorism programme. In a little-noticed but significant move, Congress has started to gut a key provision of the controversial USA Patriot Act, the main legislative response to September 11. The House of Representatives has unexpectedly voted to ban funding for the anti-terrorism law’s “sneak and peek” or “black bag” warrants. The provision allows police or government agents to search homes secretly or confiscate property . If passed by the Senate and signed by Bush, the change would be the law’s first. Tuesday’s last-minute amendment to a £24 million funding package pulled together conservatives and liberals, including more than half of Bush’s own party members in the House . Cheney's Got Nerve The Progressive July 25, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPT: Dick Cheney surfaces only to break ties in the Senate, raise money for Republican candidates, or speak before such hostile audiences as the American Enterprise Institute, where he was on July 24. There, he repeated the lie that "every measure was taken to avoid a war," and then he recycled some of the old propaganda about Saddam's threat. He cited a now-discredited National Intelligence Estimate as though it were the gospel. Back in March, you (Cheney) said you believed he already had nuclear weapons. Now you're saying he was ten years off? Extremism in defense of extremism The Progressive July 23, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPTS: Democrats have correctly pointed out that Pryor has far right views. He opposed the Supreme Court's recent landmark ruling upholding the rights of gays to consensual sex in the privacy of their homes. -called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination" of constitutional law in U.S. history. -supported the Alabama justice who "has officially sponsored sectarian prayers in the courtroom before juries and who has installed religious displays of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom and in the state judicial building," according to People for the American Way. -he defended the state's "practice of handcuffing prisoners to a hitching post . . . for seven hours without water or bathroom breaks.". -criticized as "political correctness" the Supreme Court's decision requiring the Virginia Military Institute to admit women. Now when Democrats pointed out these positions and opposed him as unfit for the appellate court, how did the Republicans react? They waged a scurrilous campaign accusing the Democrats of being anti-Catholic. Republican Senators, including Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, said Democrats are against Pryor because he's a devout Catholic. According to a New York Times story on July 24, Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, asked, "Are we not saying that good Catholics need not apply?" Nuns inflict grave damage to US WMDs Anti-War Nuns Face Six Years Behind Bars By JUDITH KOHLER Associated Press in Find Law July 25, 2003 (posted July 27) Apparently, Minuteman missile launch silos, protected by sophisticated security systems and hardened to withstand nearby nuclear bombs blasts are not sufficiently constructed to repel the hammer blows and the blood smearing of three enraged nuns. EXCERPTS: Dominican Sisters Ardeth Platte, 66, Jackie Hudson, 68, and Carol Gilbert, 55, were to be sentenced Friday for swinging a hammer at a Minuteman III missile silo and smearing their blood on it in the form of a cross. The three nuns were convicted April 7 of interfering with the nation's defense and damaging government property. CIA Probe Finds Secret Pentagon Group Manipulated Intelligence on Iraqi Threat by Jason Leopold Antiwar.com July 25, 2003 (posted July 27) EXCERPTS: The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating the issue but so far neither the Senate intelligence committee nor any Congressional committee has launched an investigation into the Office of Special Plans. But that may soon change. Based on several news reports into the activities of the Office of Special Plans, a number of lawmakers have called for an investigation into the group. Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, D-California, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter July 9 to Congressman Duncan Hunter, R-California, chairman of the Armed Services committee, calling for an investigation into the Office of Special Plans. Congressman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, also called for a widespread investigation...  WMD Missing in Iraq, Bush Speeches Reuters By Patricia Wilson July 24, 2003 (posted July 27) EXCERPT: Weapons of mass destruction have proven hard to find in Iraq and now they've disappeared from President Bush's speeches. Iraq Flap Shakes Rice's Image Controversy Stirs Questions of Reports Unread, Statements Contradicted By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen Washington Post Sunday, July 27, 2003 The political right has high hopes for Condi Rice.... EXCERPTS: But she has...become enmeshed in the controversy over the administration's use of intelligence about Iraq's weapons in the run-up to war. She has been made to appear out of the loop by colleagues' claims that she did not read or recall vital pieces of intelligence. And she has made statements about U.S. intelligence on Iraq that have been contradicted by facts that later emerged. The remarks by Rice and her associates raise two uncomfortable possibilities for the national security adviser. Either she missed or overlooked numerous warnings from intelligence agencies seeking to put caveats on claims about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, or she made public claims that she knew to be false. Bush Administration "slow walked" the joint congressional 9/11 intelligence report Frank Sesno talks with Max Cleland PBS Now July 25, 2003 Max Cleland believes the Administration's delay tactics were intended to keep the public from knowing about the absence of evidence of any Iraq-al-Qaeda connection until after the war. EXCERPT: "I am saying that the delay in relating this information (about al-Qaeda) to the American public out of a hearing… series of hearings, that several members of Congress knew eight or ten months ago, including Bob Graham and others, that was deliberately slow walked… the 9/11 Commission was deliberately slow walked, because the Administration's policy was, and its priority was, we're gonna take Saddam Hussein out." In Senate, Stiff Resistance to a Drug-Import Bill LA Times July 26, 2003 EXCERPT: A letter signed by 53 lawmakers decries a measure passed in the House, saying it would remove 'vital' consumer safeguards. Despite the House's surprisingly easy passage early Friday of a bill to let U.S. consumers buy lower-cost prescription drugs from other countries, the measure's opponents — including the Bush administration — seem to have built a solid bipartisan wall in the Senate to stop it. Ex-CIA Agent on Cheney Iraq Speech: "Longest Statement of Disinformation" Ever Fed U.S. Public Democracy Now! July 25, 2003 A must read/listen!! Democracy Now provides first rate information, by showing a video segment of Dick Cheney's speech and then examines the veracity of its content with Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst. Goodman is a professor of international security studies and chairman of the international relations department at the National War College. Mr. Goodman also did a brief critical analysis of the Congressional Report on 9/11. Download the full report and the Phoenix memo at http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/joint-report/ US media fails to report... Bush Administration Blocked 9/11 Committee Probes into the roles of bin Laden family and Saudi royal family Interview with Greg Palast Asia Times July 25, 2003 EXCERPTS: In November 2001, (Greg) Palast discovered that the Bush administration was blocking federal probes into both the bin Laden family and the Saudi royal family. The findings he presented in his report on BBC Newsnight didn't make it into mainstream media across the Atlantic until recent weeks - almost two years later - via a report issued by Republican Thomas H Kean, former New Jersey governor and chairman of the independent commission on September 11, and former Representative Lee Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat and vice-chairman of the commission. The report said that the Justice Department and Pentagon were not providing enough information to the commission's investigation. The Bush administration initially opposed the creation of the commission. "It's taken two years, and it's only coming out now because some white Republicans are saying it," Palast said. "Before then, it couldn't get reported in the US." Palast is disappointed, but not surprised, by what he perceives as US newspapers functioning more as distributors of information that is given to them, rather than aggressively trying to find and pursue leads on their own. "Why aren't papers trying to find that material for themselves?" Other remarks: On the political future of GW: "Once the yellow ribbons fall off of the trees, people will start to wonder where their pensions have gone." On the nature of US media: "It's 'Foxification', they've gone from news to viciousness, barely disguised racism and pseudoentertainment intended to be taken as news - and every station is now trying to follow that formula." Research psychology answers the question: WHAT MAKES A POLITICAL CONSERVATIVE? Report by Kathleen Maclay UC Berkeley News July 22, 2003 (posted July 25) EXCERPT: Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include: * Fear and aggression * Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity * Uncertainty avoidance * Need for cognitive closure * Terror management "From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination," the researchers wrote in an article, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition," recently published in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin. White House Ducks Smear Inquiry The Nation David Corn July 24, 2003 (posted July 25) "Here's the accusation: to punish Wilson and frighten others, administration officials outed Wilson's wife at the risk of damaging government efforts to track and block the spread of WMDs. Here's the White House reply: well, we don't know anything about it, and we're not looking into it." First question for the next White House press briefing: "Scott, has there ever been an attempt or effort on the part of anyone here at the White House to discredit the reputations or reporting of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, his wife, or ABC correspondent Jeffrey Kofman?" Bush Administration Gives Hard Lessons In Tuition Hikes CBS News July 24, 2003 (posted July 25) This story's focus is on Maryland where a 21% tuition hike is taking place this year. Higher educational institutions in most states are being forced to significantly increase tuitions. It will not be uncommon for a graduate to have $30,000 or more in college loans to pay off. Computations are being made on how many students will be denied college degrees this academic year because of tuition and fee increases. There is no doubt many college age students, especially from lower income groups will be left far behind. Lawmakers reject the FCC's move to relax restrictions on big broadcasters House Votes to Restore Media Ownership Cap LA Times July 24, 2003 (posted  July 25) In what the Los Angeles Times calls "a stinging rebuke for expansion-minded conglomerates and for FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell," the House of Representatives votes 400-21 to pass a spending bill that contains an amendment restoring the ownership cap on TV stations. 9/11 Families: Bush Administration withholding information CBS News July 24, 2003 (posted July 25) "They are known as the "Jersey Girls" -- widows who lost their husbands on Sept.11 and found a mission. "I don't want anyone to know what it's like to watch your husband burn alive on television."  "The report is incomplete at best. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. We have clear and convincing money trails linking the Saudi princes to the terrorists. Why that's not finding its way into the report, I don't know. Two years out and there still seems to be a shroud of secrecy," said 9/11 Widow Kristen Breitweiser. Patti Casazza says she knows why. "Geopolitical interests. Saudi Arabia provides a large amount of oil." Asked if she believes the Bush Administration is withholding information, Casazza replied, "They are blacking out info in the report. That is withholding information."   Joint Congressional Inquiry on 9/11 Reports Associated Press in Talking Points Memo July 23, 2003 (posted July 24) EXCERPTS: According to a story just hitting the wires by UPI's Shaun Waterman, the report from the joint congressional 9/11 inquiry, which will be released tomorrow, concludes not only that Iraq had no connection with the 9/11 attacks but that there was no evidence for any Iraq-al-Qaida connection. Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report said... "The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," said Cleland. "What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends." Although the committee completed its work at the end of last year, publication of the report has been delayed by interminable wrangles between the committees and the administration over which parts of it could be declassified. Cleland accused the administration of deliberately delaying the report's release to avoid having its case for war undercut. Kucinich Criticizes Bush on Iraq Flap By MALIA RULON Associated Press in Tampa Bay Online July 23, 2003 (posted July 24) EXCERPTS: Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich assailed the Bush administration Wednesday for allowing a deputy national security adviser to get the president and his top officials "off the biggest hook in town." ROVE SMEAR OPERATION EXPOSED -SENATOR DURBIN BLOWS LID OFF PLOT -BUSH'S CHARACTER ASSASSIN SQUAD -SENATOR: CAMPAIGN OF INTIMIDATION "AS SERIOUS AS IT GETS" -WILL MEDIA WHORES FOLLOW TRAIL OF SLIME TO ROVE? MediaWhoresOnLine July 23.2003 (posted July 24) EXCERPTS: In the bowels of the West Wing, the Bush team has assembled a hit-and-run smear operation to fend off growing public outrage and congressional questions about how it abused intelligence reports in the run-up to the Iraq war. "If any member of this Senate . . . questions this White House policy, raises any questions about the gathering of intelligence information or the use of it, be prepared for the worst," Durbin said. "The White House is going to turn to you and attack you. They are going to question your patriotism." There is an irrefutable pattern here. Drudge has already fingered the White House. Every White House reporter knows that at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue no sparrow falls from any tree without the permission of Commissar Karl Rove, working alongside his henchmen Dan Bartlett and Scott McClelland. Probes Expected in ID of CIA Officer Newsday July 23, 2003 (posted July 24) EXCERPTS: Democrats yesterday denounced the alleged disclosure by administration officials of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, and members of both parties indicated a congressional investigation is likely. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), an Intelligence Committee member, said it plans to investigate who revealed the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, who is married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. In a move that sparked the current controversy over allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger, Wilson revealed two weeks ago that he had warned the Bush administration the reports were unfounded. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the intelligence panel, called the disclosure of Plame's identity "vile" and "a highly dishonorable thing to do; highly, highly dishonorable." He, too, said a probe is probably necessary and accused the White House of strong-arm tactics aimed at those who question their policies. "To go after him [Wilson] is one thing, but to go after his wife is another thing," Rockefeller said. Apology forthcoming Cheney in the Hot Seat? Mother Jones Magazine July 23, 2003 EXCERPTS: New documents from the VP's office prove that Cheney had a marked interest in Iraqi oil -- all the way back in 2001. Will he be forced to explain himself? Dennis Kucinich, Carolyn Maloney, and Bernie Sanders, in a letter written on Monday, have asked Cheney to explain how much he knew and when about the bogus uranium claim that later ended up in Bush's speech. The letter, posted on Tom Paine, calls on Cheney to explain three things: 1) why he made numerous visits to the CIA headquarters, 2) who, exactly, was briefed on Joseph Wilson's report which revealed that the Niger documents were fake (Wilson is the former ambassador to Africa) , and 3) why the bogus claim was still used in the speech. Ahhh! Stevie did it. Wonder why he didn't come forward earlier? It took the Bushies a while to come up with this one. Bush Adviser Apologizes Over Iraq Claim By TOM RAUM Associated Press July 22, 2003 (posted July 23) EXCERPTS: Stephen Hadley, President Bush's deputy national security adviser, on Tuesday became the second administration official to apologize for allowing a tainted intelligence report on Iraq's nuclear ambitions into Bush's State of the Union address. Hadley, in a rare on-the-record session with reporters, said that he had received two memos from the CIA and a phone call from agency Director George Tenet last October raising objections to an allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore from Africa to use in building nuclear weapons. As a result, Hadley said the offending passage was excised from a speech on Iraq the president gave in Cincinnati last Oct. 7. But Hadley suggested that details from the memos and phone call had slipped from his attention as the State of the Union was being put together. "The process failed," said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. Still, Bartlett said that Bush, while perturbed by the developments, "has full confidence in his national security adviser, his deputy national security adviser and the director of central intelligence." Veto threatened...joint conference to decide House Republicans Concede They Cannot Stop Provision to Repeal FCC Ruling Associated Press July 22, 2003 (posted July 23) EXCERPTS: Top Republicans conceded Tuesday they could not stop the House from voting to block the Federal Communications Commission from expanding the number of television stations that companies can own, despite a Bush administration veto threat. Instead, as the GOP-led House moved toward approving legislation to derail the FCC ruling, leading Republicans said they would use leverage from the veto threat to try killing the language when the House and Senate write a final compromise bill. Final passage was expected on Wednesday. "It's easier to deal with it in conference" negotiations between the House and Senate, said No. 3 House GOP leader Roy Blunt of Missouri. "You take the president's comments, it's easier to stop them" at that point. Bush the Believer Washington Post By Richard Cohen Tuesday, July 22, 2003 EXCERPTS: Is George Bush the Iraq war's "useful idiot"? The phrase was coined by Vladimir Lenin to refer to gullible communist sympathizers who swallowed whole the party line. They believed what they were told, and what they were told was mostly lies. The proposals contained in the 1998 letter to Clinton were either bold or reckless, depending on your point of view. Whatever the case, Bush essentially adopted them. But in choosing an unconventional course, he persisted in using the conventional language of self-defense. In fact, he opted for a discretionary war, one waged not so much to preempt terrorism -- although that was part of the mix -- as to reorder the Middle East. Had Bush made the same case for war that his aides did in 1998, that could have been debated. But it was a hard case to make, because Hussein really and truly did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. He posed a distant or theoretical threat -- and not really to America but to our interests and allies. Now Bush stands abandoned by events. No weapons of mass destruction. No nuclear program. No links to al Qaeda. His judgment and his competence are being questioned -- his honesty as well. But the president is no liar. More likely, he is merely an uncritical man who believed what he was told. Lenin knew the type. Round-up of Bush Administration-sponsored domestic spy ops Privacy invasions 'R U.S. Working For Change July 18, 2003 (posted 21 July) Since 9/11, domestic spying projects have become as American as apple pie, the 4th of July and baseball. And like baseball in the age of free agency -- when eligible players can switch teams when their contracts expire -- it's difficult to follow the multitude of spy ops without a scorecard. To list a few: -The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 (Patriot Act II ) -Neighborhood Watch -Highway Watch -Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening Program II (CAPPS II) -Local police departments in a number of cities have re-instituted domestic surveillance programs -E-surveillance, which allows residents to log on to their computers and monitor strategically placed video cams for criminal or terrorist activities. -Terrorism Information Awareness -TIPS (the Terrorist Information and Prevention System was excluded from the final Homeland Security Act bill) -Talon (son of TIPS) -Lifelog For an in-depth look at the state of civil liberties since 9/11, see The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights report called "Imbalance of Powers: How Changes to U.S. Law & Policy Since 9/11 Erode Human Rights and Civil Liberties." Graham Says Bush Statements Warrant Impeachment National Journal - Politics Now July 18, 2003 (posted July 21) Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said Thursday that President Bush's "transgressions" in "the pre-Iraqi war intelligence controversy warrant his impeachment," the Manchester Union Leader reports. Graham said Bush has committed "a more serious transgression of Presidential power" than the "serious personal consensual act" that led to former President Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment. Graham "did not call for Bush to be impeached," PoliticsNH.com reports. "In fact, he said that whether or not Bush should be impeached or not is largely an 'academic' question since the solidly Republican House of Representatives, the only body with the constitutional power to bring up charges of impeachment, would never allow such a measure." Campaign 2004 Dump Bush, Build Independent Politics by Ted Glick Proposals to Build a Progressive Political Movement Z Magazine July/August 2003 Issue (posted July 21) Here are some proposals for how we can best form a strong and more unified independent progressive movement to press for genuine, positive, fundamental change: Truth Squads Wherever Bush Goes Register The “Sleeping Giant” (the disaffected) Popular Education (on Bush policies) Button-Wearing (anti-Bush) Pump Up August 29, 2004 (a day that “The World Says No to Bush”) Defend The Vote (against Jeb Bush-Harris purge of registered non-Republicans) Local Unity-Building Safe-States Green Party Presidential Campaign Ted Glick is the National Coordinator of the Independent Progressive Politics Network (www.ippn.org), although these ideas are solely his.  U.S. Brands on the Run By Karen Lowry Miller NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL July 21 issue (posted July 21) Does the rising tide of anti-Americanism hurt American multinationals? A new global poll offers the first strong evidence that consumers who have turned on America are now turning on American companies, too. Is it the end of an era? Bush Takes a Dive in the Polls CNN.com July 20, 2003 (posted July 21) Although we at BushWhackedUSA don't put much stock in poll numbers, it's interesting to spot the flag-waving news department at CNN posting a story with the headline "Bush's approval rating sags." Bet that's not all that's sagging around the White House when the administration hears that 52 percent of the people polled felt the president is "doing a poor job of handling the economy." Does this mean that the populace is starting to catch on, despite the virtual absence of negative reporting in the mainstream media prior to the start of this month? Bush's overall approval rating is down to 55 percent -- still remarkably high, but it's clear that these first few days of skeptical news reports about Bush's outright lies are starting to have an effect. The "Repair" of "Broken Societies" Begins at Home by Paul Street ZNet.org July 18, 2003 (posted July 21) EXCERPT: Forget for a second that the predominant majority of the politically conscious human race views the United States as the world's chief rogue state (with good reason). Forget also that the US owes Iraq not so much "repair" as reparation -- for the million-plus Iraqis who have died because of American policies, including our murderous encouragement of Iraqi war with Iran in the 1980s, Desert Storm, Desert Fox and the deadly sanctions campaign of the 1990s. Put all that aside, if you can, and consider the degree of aristocratic indifference to homeland realities readily visible in the nation's ghetto-ridden capital (where at least a third of children live in poverty) required to claim that the US is in a position to "repair broken societies." Free Trade the American Way The Rigged Trade Game New York Times July 20, 2003 (posted July 21) Agricultural subsidies in the United States, justified on the basis of saving the family farm, go primarily to large corporate conglomerates. EXCERPTS: So the federal government writes out checks to Iowa corn farmers to supplement their income, and at times insures them against all sorts of risks assumed by any other business. This allows American companies to then profitably dump grain on international markets for a fraction of what it cost to grow, courtesy of the taxpayer, often at a price less than the break-even point for the impoverished third-world farmers. The rigged game is sowing ever-greater resentment toward the United States, the principal architect of the global economic order. In the aftermath of 9/11, Americans have desperately been trying to win the hearts and minds of poor residents of the Muslim world. Somehow, we expect other nations to take our claims to stand for democracy and freedom more seriously than they must take our insincere free-trade rhetoric. By rigging the global trade game against farmers in developing nations, Europe, the United States and Japan are essentially kicking aside the development ladder for some of the world's most desperate people. This is morally depraved. By our actions, we are harvesting poverty around the world. BushWhackedUSA Commentary AMERICA IS NUMBER ONE!!! (when it comes to executing child offenders) by Eric Bosse July 20, 2003 Yup, the good old USA came in on top again! Although executions for crimes committed by children are a violation of international human rights law, a few backwards countries kill their kids anyway. Since 1990, 26 people have been executed around the world for crimes committed while they were children. Those countries include The Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan and the USA. That's it, folks. The rest of the world managed to keep from killing their own children. But wait! It gets better. Let's take a look at the distribution of those 26 executions for underage crimes since 1990: The Democratic Republic of Congo:  1 Iran:  3 Nigeria:  1 Pakistan:  2 USA (drum roll please...):  19!!!!!!!!! That's right. In fact, the only country in the world that committed this sort of heinous, rephehensible, barbaric crime from 1990 through the first half of 1997 was ... you guessed it! ... the United States of America! We did it six times while the entire rest of the world did not do it. But we haven't slowed down the pace that took us to number one. Oh no, we've accelerated the rate of executions for underage crimes, and we remain the world's number one state-sanctioned, legalized murderer of kids. God bless America! Another apology coming? Republican Committee Chairman to Address House on Partisan Clash By David Espo The Associated Press July 22, 2003 (posted 23 July) EXCERPTS: California Rep. Bill Thomas, a powerful committee chairman, intends to speak on the House floor Wednesday about his role in last week's partisan fracas, and several fellow Republicans said they hoped he would express contrition. Who's Unpatriotic Now? By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times July 22, 2003 EXCERPTS: Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden — who really did attack America — and Kim Jong Il — who really is building nukes. And while we're on the subject of patriotism, let's talk about the affair of Joseph Wilson's wife. Mr. Wilson is the former ambassador who was sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to investigate reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases and who recently went public with his findings. Since then administration allies have sought to discredit him — it's unpleasant stuff. But here's the kicker: both the columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine say that administration officials told them that they believed that Mr. Wilson had been chosen through the influence of his wife, whom they identified as a C.I.A. operative. More on Nigergate A White House Smear David Corn The Nation (posted July 22) Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others? It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.   "So the American people are being asked to believe that the bogus cause of war against Iraq, eliminating a nuclear threat, was advanced because a lower level functionary simply overlooked a memo from a higher level functionary?" asked Kucinich, who voted against the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force and has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Iraq war. --Speaking on the House floor, Dennis Kucinich Ohio congressman challenged the president to take responsibility for his actions. Top level Intel briefing prior to 9/11 Experts believed no Iraqi WMDs in 2001 by Roger Ward Canadian Press July 19, 2003, (posted July 20) This story from north of the border reveals that a former Canadian military officer has been trying to tell the world all along that the U.S. knew there were no WMDs in Iraq several months before the 9/11 attacks. Sunil Ram attended a Washington conference entitled "Understanding the Lessons of Nuclear Inspections and Monitoring in Iraq: A "Ten-Year Review" was given in January 2001, at which point American politicians and military officials were informed quite clearly that Iraq had been disarmed. Disaster on the coral reefs in Caribbean The New Zealand Herald July 20, 2003 It might look like a tropical paradise, but underneath the sparkling blue waves something truly grim is happening in the Caribbean. Four-fifths of the coral on Caribbean reefs has disappeared in the past 25 years in a phenomenal saga of destruction, British-based researchers have revealed. Human actions are almost certainly responsible for most of it. And the size of the loss, the first to be accurately quantified over a wide area anywhere, has astonished even scientists who have been studying the global decline of coral.   Animated Cartoon Satire Damage Control, Inc. By Mark Fiore Mother Jones July 18, 2003 What's in a word? Sure, President Bush said "Bring 'em on," and something about uranium. But those were just words. From someone who knows... Why A Special Prosecutor's Investigation Is Needed To Sort Out the Niger Uranium And Related WMDs Mess By JOHN W. DEAN FindLaw Legal News July 18, 2003 (posted July 19) EXCERPTS: Bush repeatedly, in his State of the Union, presented beliefs, estimates, and educated guesses as established fact. Genuine facts are truths that can be known or are observable, and the distance between fact and belief is uncertainty, which can be infinite. Authentic facts are not based on hopes or wishes or even probabilities. Now it is little wonder that none of these purported WMDs has been discovered in Iraq. So egregious and serious are Bush's misrepresentations that they appear to be a deliberate effort to mislead Congress and the public. So arrogant and secretive is the Bush White House that only a special prosecutor can effectively answer and address these troubling matters. Since the Independent Counsel statute has expired, the burden is on President Bush to appoint a special prosecutor - and if he fails to do so, he should be held accountable by Congress and the public. False Start: The Reauthorization of Head Start Moving Ideas July 18, 2003 (posted July 19) For thirty-eight years, the Head Start program has provided proven, comprehensive services to help disadvantaged pre-school children to successfully perform in school. Yet the House's Head Start Reauthorization bill (HR 2210) threatens to compromise the program by offering little additional funding, downplaying Head Start's developmental and other non-academic benefits, allowing religious discrimination against employees, and redirecting needed funding to create experimental state-run programs. According to a recent study by Department of Health and Human Services, 96 percent of parents were satisfied with Head Start's preparation of their kids for kindergarten.  URGENT: Save Head Start. First Casualty of War Returns to Haunt Bush Crusaders Independent Media Center July 18, 2003 (posted July 19) EXCERPT: The man who said "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam.." may be a religious extremist bent on revisiting the Crusades, but George W. Bush and his neo-conservative handlers are far from invulnerable. Finally, the mainstream corporate media is waking up to what independent journalists have been saying all along: The Bush regime is out of control and their rightwing agenda is a threat to the nation. Bush Uranium Lie Is Tip of the Iceberg Press should expand focus beyond "16 words" FAIR Media Advisory July 18, 2003 (posted July 19) Six additional deceptions are noted as examples. EXCERPT: Five months later, the truthfulness of one claim in George W. Bush's State of the Union address has become the focus of growing media scrutiny. The attention media are paying to this single assertion should be part of a larger journalistic inquiry into other misstatements and exaggerations that have been made by the Bush administration about Iraq. Pentagon may punish GIs who spoke out on TV Robert Collier San Francisco Chronicle July 18, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPT: On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he'd been "kicked in the guts, slapped in the face." Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit. The retaliation from Washington was swift. "It was the end of the world," said one officer Thursday. "It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers." First lesson for the troops, it seemed: Don't ever talk to the media "on the record" -- that is, with your name attached -- unless you're giving the sort of chin-forward, everything's-great message the Pentagon loves to hear. Republicans use the "Texas Method" Police called to force Dems in line Washington Post Friday, July 18, 2003 (posted July 19) The day began with a  procedural fight over a pension bill. Committee Democrats complained that the Republican majority had not given them enough time to review a substitute bill that they had received shortly before midnight Thursday.  After using a procedural tactic demanding that Republicans read the legislation line by line, the Democrats moved to a library to strategize. The Republican Chairman, Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) ignored a Democrat who had stayed behind to prevent the Republicans from obtaining unanimous consent to dispense with the reading, and dispensed with the reading anyway. He pushed through the legislation without a single Democratic vote. Then Thomas saying the Democrats did not have a right to occupy the library, called the Capitol Police to evict them. The bill being considered was trivialized by the Washington Post, but here is what the Economic Policy Institute has to say about it. See below: Pension Rule Changes Would Make Retirement More Risky Economic Policy Institute July 15, 2003 (posted July 19) Changes in pension funding proposed by the Bush administration could compromise the security of retirement income for millions of Americans. Economic Policy Institute economist Christian Weller will testified before a U.S. House Committee to detail problems facing pension funding – including how plan contributors are often forced to pay more into their plans during recessions. He will offer a better solution that, unlike the administration's proposal, provides greater stability and security for retirees over the long haul. ESPN football coverage installs a "right wing" formation The American Prospect July 19, 2003 Rush Limbaugh hired for color on ESPN's Sunday pre-game show team this fall. It must be some kind of an "equal opportunity" thing. Rush can't hear very well and he hasn't seen straight for a long, long time. No need to say anything about his mental disabilities. Yes, Liberals, You Won The Culture War Jamin B. Raskin TomPaine.com posted July 19, 2003 In case you didn't notice, America's 20th century "culture war" ended yesterday. Liberalism won. This sweet victory over unreason and sexual prejudice now pushes to front and center stage our venerable struggle over political democracy, which is in crisis today over corporate power, money dominance and the weakening right to participate and vote. Justice Kennedy's magisterial opinion for the Supreme Court striking down anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas will come to mark the end of 30 years of political strife fueled by right-wing rage against sexual modernity. Liberalism has won the final battle Bush 'faith based' privacy rights US snooping plan blocked BBC News July 18, 2003 EXCERPTS: A controversial computer surveillance project that would comb through the personal records of Americans in the search for suspected terrorists has suffered a severe setback. The US Senate has voted to cut funding for the programme, known as Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA), despite pressure from the White House to back it.   Bush Priorities It appears to the committee the [Energy] Department is proposing to rebuild, restart, and redo and otherwise exercise every capability that was used over the past 40 years of the Cold War and at the same time prepare for a future with an expanded mission for nuclear weapons. —A Senate Appropriations Committee report on the Energy Department appropriations bill, explaining the committee’s decision to scale back the Bush administration’s request for new nuclear weapon research funds. From NTI.org Hawks Say the Darndest Things! Commentary by Mark Engler TomPaine.com July 17, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPT: This political damage control can make for fascinating reading because, in proposing their alternative rationales, the hawks are not only revealing a lot about the warped ideology of unilateral military adventurism -- they are making remarkable admissions about why there should be a public investigation into the president's lies. Recession Is Over; Jobs Aren't Trickling Down By DANIEL ALTMAN New York Times July 17, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPT: The recession that began in March 2001 ended eight months later, the National Bureau of Economic Research, an independent group that tracks the business cycle, concluded in a report released yesterday. Cheers, if any, were faint. "We've declared victory over the recession, and we're still laying off a couple hundred thousand workers a month," said Representative Pete Stark of California, ranking Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee. "If it weren't so painful for so many people who are out of work, it would be hilarious. But it isn't. It's not funny." Bush has his "yellowcake" and eats it, too 16 Words The New Republic Online July 17, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPT: In recent days, the administration has responded to these questions with a series of intertwined excuses and obfuscations, many of them contradictory and all of them implausible. For the most part, they fall into three categories: We didn't know the Niger claim was inaccurate; it wasn't actually inaccurate; and, even if it was inaccurate, it doesn't matter.... Tailor-made intel CIA Iraq Reports Were Minimal Until Bush Took Office By Knut Royce NewsDay.com July 17, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPT: During the Clinton administration, the CIA's annual reports to Congress on the global proliferation of weapons of mass destruction routinely cast Iraq as a problematic footnote -- a country worth keeping an eye on but not an alarming threat. But the tone of the reports changed dramatically after George W. Bush became president, with increasingly longer narratives suggesting that Iraq was hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Faked Iraq intel just the tip of the iceberg, says Senator Levin Spacewar.com July 17, 2003 EXCERPT: A leading Democrat in Congress accused the White House Tuesday of a broad pattern of dissembling in making its case for waging war on Iraq. Carl Levin, senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, refuted White House claims that now-discredited reports that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material from Africa was an isolated case of Washington using dodgy pre-war intelligence. "The misleading statement about African uranium is not an isolated incident. There is a significant amount of troubling evidence that it was part of a pattern of exaggerations and misleading statements," he said. What the EPA Isn't Doing Mother Jones July 17,2003 EXCERPT: With America's attention elsewhere, Bush's Environmental Protection Agency continues to do what it does best -- nothing. Given the latest developments, it seems the EPA is sending the message that fresh air and clean drinking water are luxuries. Help open a door...act now! Citizen-centric E-Government In the Public Interest July 16, 2003 (posted July 17) Contracting out what the Federal government does and what government needs is a large part of our economy. The former includes letting corporations perform more military and intelligence functions; while the latter has included buying supplies like fuel, paper, food, medicines and vehicles. Taken together, they amount to spending trillions of dollars over the past decade - your tax dollars. The Bush administration seeks to go further by proposing to contract out the work of nearly 450,000 civil servants in various agencies and departments. Sometimes even the businesses on the receiving end of this "privatization" are a bit shocked. (Following extensive efforts by In the Public Interest the) OMB asked the General Services Administration (GSA) to place a notice and request for comments in the Federal Register (June 6, 2003) on a proposed pilot project "to begin making Federal contracts available to the general public on the worldwide web...to further the Administration's global vision of a citizen-centric E-Government." Your input to the government is needed! Anyone smell the hint of blood? Why Coverage Of Bush Has Taken A Negative Turn By Paul Janensch The Hartford Courant July 17, 2003 EXCERPT: (W)hy are the news media going negative on the Bush administration's Iraq policy? What took the news media so long to give us the bad news? There are several reasons... Cheney, et al, Sidestep Sanctions by Michael Scherer Mother Jones July/August 2003 (posted July 17) EXCERPT: In April, as American tanks approached the outskirts of Baghdad, Pentagon officials suggested that only U.S. companies would be allowed to take part in the postwar reconstruction of Iraq's oil fields. In strategic leaks to the press, the Defense Department offered a rationale for an American-only policy: European firms, they declared, should be excluded because they do business with Iran and other countries that sponsor terrorist organizations and harbor weapons of mass destruction. What defense officials failed to note, however, is that many U.S. companies routinely find ways to bypass economic sanctions and export regulations that bar American citizens and companies from trading with Iran, North Korea, Libya, and Sudan. Taking advantage of legal loopholes, these corporations simply conduct their business through offshore subsidiaries that employ only foreign citizens. AKA Total Information Awareness Congress Still Suspicious of Poindexter Program As Testing Begins CBS July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: The overall bill contains $368.6 billion for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Concerned that the records of millions of law-abiding Americans would be subjected to government scrutiny, Congress earlier this year enacted an amendment offered by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. The Wyden amendment, which expires Sept. 30, bans use of any funds, without further specific consent from Congress, to implement the surveillance program domestically against U.S. citizens. The amendment allows continued research and implementation abroad against anyone and in this country against non-U.S. citizens.  "There appears to be some spillover skepticism from Iraq where they voted to go to war and now are questioning whether that was based on clever use of words or selective use of intelligence." Greenspan Issues Deficit Warning AP in CBS July 16, 2003, (posted July 17) EXCERPTS: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Wednesday that "substantial and excessive" federal budget deficits will over time harm the ability of the U.S. economy to expand strongly enough to drive down the unemployment rate. "There is no question that we need to come to grips with this deficit question." Study: Day Care Kids Aggressive? CBS/AP July 16, 2003 (posted July 17) EXCERPTS: The longer young children spend in day care, the more likely they are to be overly aggressive by the time they reach kindergarten, say researchers who first made the link two years ago. "There is an association between hours and problem behavior, that is, the more time in care, the more problem behaviors.". "We need to make changes in work and in the supports that we offer families rather than turn around and attack the people who are doing their best to earn a living for their children," Human trafficking on the US-Mexican border Changing landscape of an underground trade By Kris Axtman The Christian Science Monitor July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: Jorge Gonzalez, chairman of the economics department at Trinity University in San Antonio said "The reality, is that these immigrants are indispensable to US businesses." It's a fact not lost on lawmakers. At a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Jeff Flake (R) of Arizona said he'll introduce a temporary-worker bill this month, aimed at thinning the ranks of immigrants who turn to smugglers. Such measures, periodically proposed and always controversial, promise farm hands and others "guest-worker status" - to the chagrin of many unions and conservatives. "There is a demand in the US for labor that many Mexicans are willing to supply," he said. "Rather than turning a blind eye to the fact, I support ... allowing these workers legal entry." U.S. May Call National Guard for Iraq Duty Reuters July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: The Pentagon could start a call-up of as many as 10,000 U.S. National Guard soldiers by this winter to bolster forces in Iraq and offset a lack of troops from allies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the U.S. military thin, the report said, and soldiers there still face danger every day. One senior U.S. defense official, asked by the Journal if he had ever seen the Army stretched so thin, said: "Not in my 31 years" of military service. Our Living Constitution Lawrence v. Texas gives new meaning to American freedom By Eric Foner In These Times July 14, 2003 (posted July 16) EXCERPTS: The June 24 Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, overturning a Texas sodomy law is a major victory not only for human rights, but for a view of the Constitution as a “living” document whose protections expand as society changes. It marks a stunning repudiation by a conservative court of the idea that constitutional interpretation must rest on the “original intent” of the Founding Fathers, or on a narrow reading of the document’s text. In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy offered an impassioned reaffirmation of the principle that a constitutional right to privacy prohibits the government from imposing a single moral viewpoint on all Americans. This idea is a relatively recent addition to constitutional law. When intelligence fails Soldiers pay in blood by Stephen Blank Asian Times July 16, 2003 EXCERPT: If US intelligence is distorted for political reasons and becomes unreliable - as some of it has already been officially acknowledged as being - the impact on a battle or campaign could have serious strategic consequences. As is is shown by what is happening in Iraq right now. ...it would be a profound mistake to dismiss these charges as merely reflecting partisan wrangling. The issue here is not the failures of either the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or of British intelligence to get Iraq's nuclear program right. Neither should this episode reflect on whether or not the war itself was justified. That is a whole different subject. Rather, the real issue is the use and misuse of intelligence to support a policy, especially where it appears that the policy was decided on and the intelligence twisted to support it. Uninsured Pay More For Prescription Drugs, Report Says By Julie Ishida Washington Post July 16, 2003 EXCERPT: Uninsured consumers, including millions of seniors without prescription drug coverage, pay an average of 72 percent more than the federal government for medications, according to a survey issued yesterday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Among the highest were prices paid by uninsured people in Baltimore, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia. Senators Move to Block New Media Ownership Rules By Frank Ahrens Washington Post July 16, 2003 EXCERPT: Thirty-five senators have latched onto a little-used law in an attempt to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's new media ownership rules, which opponents say would allow a few corporate giants to gain too much control of the airwaves and other media. Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), the lead sponsor of the resolution, has signed on 28 Democrats and seven Republicans. The measure is co-sponsored by eight senators, including Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) and presidential candidate John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). "We are moving to roll back one of the most complete cave-ins to corporate interests I've ever seen by what is supposed to be a federal regulatory agency," Dorgan said in a statement. Questions On Missile Defense Plans Scientists' Report Questions Technology's Effectiveness By Bradley Graham Washington Post July 16, 2003 An extensive study by a national group of scientists raised serious doubts yesterday about the likely effectiveness of some weapons that President Bush is pursuing in his drive to develop a system for defending the United States against ballistic missile attack. White House Foresees 5-Year Debt Increase Of $1.9 Trillion By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post July 16, 2003 EXCERPT: The federal government will pile up $1.9 trillion in new debt over the next five years and will still be running an annual deficit of $226 billion by 2008, long after White House economists assume current war costs will have subsided and the economy will have recovered, the Bush administration projected yesterday. There has been a dramatic reversal of the government's fiscal fortunes since President Bush took office in 2001. That year, the government posted a $127 billion surplus, and the CBO projected surpluses between 2003 and 2008 totaling $2.9 trillion. That means projections have shot downward by $4.8 trillion. American "democracy" Bush Raises More Money Than All 9 Challengers By Dan Balz and Thomas B. Edsall Washington Post July 16, 2003 EXCERPTS: Bush raised $34.4 million from 105,000 donors during the quarter and, after spending $2.3 million getting his reelection committee underway, emerged with $32.7 million in the bank, including about $671,000 transferred from his 2000 campaign. The nine Democrats jointly raised about $31 million during the same period, underscoring the enormous gap between the money Bush will have available to spend promoting his candidacy between now and his national convention next summer and what the eventual Democratic nominee will have during that same period. Bush will have the capacity to wage a massive media campaign at a time when the Democrats will be either focused on one another or nearly out of money. Kucinich, former intelligence officials question Bush administration MALIA RULON Associated Press in the San Jose Mercury News July 15, 2003 EXCERPT: Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and two former intelligence officials denounced the Bush administration Tuesday for its use of intelligence before the Iraq war. "The administration made a deliberate attempt to influence the opinion of the American people by convincing them that if the United States did not act immediately, the United States would be in imminent danger," Kucinich said. Bush budget deficit forecast only wrong by 50% plus Reuters in Find Law July 15, 2003 EXCERPT: The White House said on Tuesday the federal budget deficit would balloon to a record $455 billion this fiscal year, after absorbing immediate costs from the war in Iraq, and then climb $20 billion higher in 2004, a presidential election year. While White House budget director Joshua Bolten acknowledged that widening deficits were 'a legitimate subject for concern,' he said the gap would begin to shrink from fiscal 2005. The White House also pledged for the first time to cut the deficit in half by 2006. Open Letter to Senator Frist from Ralph Nader Essential Information July 9, 2003 (posted July 15) Contains essential facts that counter the Bush Administration position to limit liability for pain and suffering.. EXCERPTS: Dear Senator Frist: As a graduate of Princeton University and a medical Doctor, you know the meaning of the phrases " in the nationís service," and "first, do no harm." Time to End the Dodginess Intelligence Unglued By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity CounterPunch July 15, 2003 Memorandum to the President By now you are all too familiar with the play-by-play. The Iraq-seeking-uranium-in-Niger forgery is a microcosm of a mischievous nexus of overarching problems. Instead of addressing these problems, your senior staff are alternately covering up for one another and gently stabbing one another in the back. CIA Director George Tenet's extracted, unapologetic apology on July 11 was classic--I confess; she did it. It is now dawning on our until-now somnolent press that your national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, shepherds the foreign affairs sections of your state-of-the-union address and that she, not Tenet, is responsible for the forged information getting into the speech. But the disingenuousness persists. Rice's denials are reminiscent of her claim in spring 2002 that there was no reporting suggesting that terrorists were planning to hijack planes and slam them into buildings. In September, the joint congressional committee on 9/11 came up with a dozen such reports. Praying For Supreme Court Shakeup CBS News July 15, 2003 EXCERPT: Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson urged his nationwide audience to participate in a 21-day "prayer offensive" to pray for God to remove three justices from the Supreme Court so they could be replaced by conservatives. "We ask for miracles in regard to the Supreme Court," Robertson said on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club." Robertson said in a letter on the CBN Web site that the (recent sodomy) ruling "has opened the door to homosexual marriage, bigamy, legalized prostitution and even incest." U.S. Will Defy Court's Order in Terror Case By PHILIP SHENON New York Times July 14, 2003 (posted July 15) EXCERPT: The Justice Department said today that it would defy a court order and refuse to make a captured member of Al Qaeda available for testimony in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. Bush administration officials have said for months that if Mr. Moussaoui's indictment were dismissed, his prosecution would almost certainly be moved to a military tribunal, where Mr. Moussaoui would be expected to have fewer rights to gather testimony from witnesses like Mr. bin al-Shibh. Employers Take United Stand in Insisting on Labor Concessions Steven Greenhouse The New York Times 11 July 2003 (posted July 15) The situation of American workers in several large corporations is a striking illustration of the negative effects of globalization and a more integrated world economy. In large part because of low-cost foreign labor, American corporations are gaining the upper hand in negotiations with worker unions.  In today's economy, much like in the 1980s, American unions are finding little support from the government when they sit down to negotiate contracts with their employers. The Biotech Boom How the biotech industry captured Washington's attention in 10 short years By Sheryl Fred OpenSecrets.org  and  CapitalEye.org July 9, 2003 (posted July 15) Documents the growing economic and political clout of America's biotech industry and explains its influence on government policy. Provides a list of the top twenty biotech political contributors. Partners in Mass Destruction The Dirtiest Dozen Corporations and Nuclear Weapons Reaching Critical Will (posted July 15, 2003) EXCERPT Individual Corporation Profiles: Alliant Bechtel Inc. Boeing British Aerospace Electronics (BAE Systems) British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) General Dynamics IBM Lockheed Martin Mitsubishi Raytheon Siemens TRW University of California New Math The numbers don't lie -- Bush's post-Iraq War ratings are falling fast. By Mary Lynn F. Jones The American Prospect July 14, 2003 (posted July 15) Head Hunter The Bush administration wants to slash Head Start -- and keep you from hearing about it. By Miriam Markowitz The American Prospect July 10, 2003 (posted July 15) George W. Bush is becoming ever more the schoolyard bully. Now that he's cut education spending for college students, he's ready to take on the younger kids with a new bill to gut Head Start.   Corporate CEOs Use Clout to Pad Bush's Pockets by Thomas B. Edsall and Mike Allen Washington Post 14 July 2003 The Washington Post offers a glimpse into the ways CEOs pressure their employees and clients to buy corporations a piece of the White House. EXCERPT: At two Bush fundraising events in California last month, [Steven Burd, chairman, president and chief executive of Safeway, Inc.] filled 10 tables with Safeway suppliers, including rice farmers, strawberry growers and a cheese manufacturer, plus representatives of Breyers ice cream, Sunkist produce and Del Monte canned goods who paid $2,000 to hear Bush talk. Each donor wrote a four-digit "solicitor tracking code" assigned to Burd on his check so that the Safeway CEO will receive credit from Bush campaign officials and they can keep a running tally of his efforts. The possible rewards, depending on how much money he can bring in, include cocktails with campaign architect Karl Rove, dinner with Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans and photo opportunities and sessions with the president. Response to an editorial by Charles Krauthammer Perverse Conservatism in the Washington Post July 14, 2003 Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer attempted to refute the entirety of "left-liberal foreign policy" on Friday 11 July 2003. By claiming that liberals" automatically oppose all military interventions that serve American "strategic interests" but support military actions that do not serve the same interests, Krauthammer indulged in oversimplification that verged on feeble-mindedness. One begins to wonder if the international consensus, supported by a majority of the American people as well as a vast majority of the world's population, has been forgotten entirely by those on the right who buy into Bush administration lies, even after they have been disproved. Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program Tuesday, 8 July 2003 (posted July 14) This is a detailed examination of proposed touch screen voting systems. Putting the Duh! in Fundamentalism The New American July 13, 2003 EXCERPTS: Note this bizarre report in the new issue of arch-conservative journal, The New American. A somewhat popular campaign to express Christian values in the European Union constitution displeases the The New American editors. Calling the EU an "atheistic superstate," they condemn Poland's president Aleksander Kwasniewski as a "former" communist and claim his efforts to bring Christianity to the EU's constitution are a "cynical, calculated pose." This begs the question, "Just how pious must one be to please the political Right?" Anyway, there's a cool looking ad for the John Birch Society further down the left-hand side of the page. Bush's Battle Against Evil: A Bottomless Void Commentary by James Carroll TomPaine.com July 13, 2003 EXCERPTS: The greatest power the earth has ever seen is now expressly mobilized against the world's most ancient mystery. What human beings have proven incapable of ever doing before, George W. Bush has taken on as his personal mission, aiming to accomplish it in one election cycle, two at most. ... Having forthrightly set out to rid the world of evil, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, has the United States, willy-nilly, become an instrument of evil? ... Is evil the thing, perhaps, that forever inclines human beings to believe that they are themselves untouched by it? Moral maturity, mellowed across the distance of history, begins in the acknowledgement that evil, whatever its primal source, resides, like a virus in its niche, in the human self. There is no ridding the world of evil for the simple fact that, shy of history's end, there is no ridding the self of it. New rules shield makers of antiterror gear By Shaun Waterman UPI Homeland and National Security Editor July 11, 2003 (posted July 13) EXCERPTS: The Department of Homeland Security issued regulations Friday protecting firms that make or sell anti-terror equipment from lawsuits. The regulations implement the Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies -- or SAFETY -- act, part of the massive Homeland Security law passed by congress last year. Under the act, suits arising out of terrorist acts cannot be brought in state courts, where some critics of tort law argue judges and juries are too favorable to plaintiffs and too generous with awards. Instead anyone wanting to sue the makers or sellers of such products would have to use the federal courts. In addition, the act eliminates punitive damages -- designed to punish guilty defendants -- from such cases and expands the so-called "government contractor defense" to anyone making or selling anti-terror equipment, even if their customers are all in the private sector. US officials change reason for invading Iraq -again News Insider July 10, 2003 (posted July 12) EXCERPT The US administration has abruptly revised its explanation for invading Iraq, as Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asserted that a changed perspective after the September 11 terrorist attacks —not fresh evidence of banned weapons— provoked the war. Senate GOP Blocks Minimum Wage Hike By Helen Dewar Washington Post July 12, 2003 EXCERPT Senate Democrats yesterday launched a new drive to raise the minimum wage but ran into a roadblock from Republicans. The minimum wage was last increased in 1997 under a two-step process approved by Congress in 1996. In a speech to the Senate, Kennedy said that minimum wage employees working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, earn $10,700 a year, or $4,500 below the poverty line for a family of three. The value of the increase that Congress approved seven years ago has eroded to the point that their wages are worth less now than they were before the last increase, he added. Bush, Rice Blameless Tenet Accepts Responsibility for Clearing Statement By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank Washington Post July 12, 2003 EXCERPT President Bush and his national security adviser yesterday placed full responsibility on the Central Intelligence Agency for the inclusion in this year's State of the Union address of questionable allegations that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa. Tenet noted that even before the White House proposed including the information in Bush's January speech, the agency had kept it out of other public speeches by government officials and congressional testimony because "we had questions about some of the reporting." Cheney Task Force Loses Place To Hide Dan Ackman, Forbes July 9, 2003 (posted July 11) EXCERPT In the battle over the records of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, the Bush Administration has been trying every defense except one: executive privilege. But it has been dancing around it. Yesterday, the administration lost a preliminary battle to keep task force records secret, though the court invited the vice president to test the one privilege he has refused to invoke. But in the Judicial Watch case, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the task force last October to produce the energy documents--or at least detail the reasons why they were privileged. Rollback in Food Ad Rules By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP in Newsday July 11, 2003 EXCERPT Food packages may soon advertise possible health benefits before they're fully proved, under a program aimed at speeding information about nutrition discoveries to consumers -- but one critics fear will lead to quackery. Until now, the Food and Drug Administration has enforced a very strict standard about what health benefits could be claimed on food labels. Before oatmeal could boast heart-healthy labels, for example, there had to be significant scientific consensus that oatmeal's fiber helps maintain low cholesterol levels. Under the new program, to start Sept. 1, the FDA will allow certain foods to make "qualified health claims" -- similar to what the courts have allowed for more loosely regulated dietary supplements. (bwusa italics) At best, it means wishy-washy health advice will suddenly appear on foods, confusing consumers, said Bruce Silverglade of the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is talking with Waxman about a possible legal challenge. "This action represents the biggest rollback in food-labeling standards in 20 years," said Silverglade. CBS Poll: U.S. Losing Control in Iraq CBS News July 10,2003 EXCERPT With U.S. troops continuing to take casualties in Iraq, less than half of Americans now believe the U.S. is in control of the situation there -- a dramatic decline from April, when 71 percent thought it was. For the first time a majority now says the Bush administration overestimated the extent of the Iraqis’ weapons. Less than half now say Iraq was a threat that required immediate action. And while 54 percent still believe that removing Saddam Hussein from power was worth the costs of war, that figure, too, has declined from 65 percent in May. Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False CBS News July 10, 2003 EXCERPT Senior administration officials tell CBS News the President’s mistaken claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was included in his State of the Union address -- despite objections from the CIA. Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin. CIA officials warned members of the President’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. Criticism grows as Iraq's postwar costs escalate By Deborah McGregor in Washington Financial Times July 10, 2003 EXCERPT Emboldened by the furore over the White House admission that Mr Bush relied on faulty intelligence in the January State of the Union address, several Democrats On Thursday stepped up their criticism of what they view as Mr Bush's increasing "credibility gap". John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who alone among nine Democratic presidential contenders has battlefield experience, urged Mr Bush to "step forward and tell the truth" about the long-term commitment and cost of keeping US troops in Iraq. Howard Dean, another contender and a former Vermont governor who has been outspoken in his opposition to the war, said those in the administration who misled the nation on prewar intelligence "should resign". Food Makers Trim Fat as Lawsuits and Regulations Loom By DAVID BARBOZA New York Times July 9, 2003 Finally, something healthy and nutritious from PepsiCo and Kraft Foods? DLC Division ThomPaine.com July 9, 2003 EXCERPT The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has made its way by sowing division in the Democratic party. So it comes as no surprise that on July 2, its founder Al From and new president Bruce Reed ventured yet again into the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal to warn its readers of the perils of a liberal Democratic presidential nominee. Given its location and its platitudes, the article should be viewed more as a fundraising pitch to the DLC’s corporate sponsors than a serious political analysis. Cheney Task Force Loses Place To Hide Dan Ackman, Forbes July 9, 2003 (posted July 11) EXCERPT In the battle over the records of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, the Bush Administration has been trying every defense except one: executive privilege. But it has been dancing around it. Yesterday, the administration lost a preliminary battle to keep task force records secret, though the court invited the vice president to test the one privilege he has refused to invoke. But in the Judicial Watch case, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the task force last October to produce the energy documents--or at least detail the reasons why they were privileged. Rollback in Food Ad Rules By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP in Newsday July 11, 2003 EXCERPT Food packages may soon advertise possible health benefits before they're fully proved, under a program aimed at speeding information about nutrition discoveries to consumers -- but one critics fear will lead to quackery. Until now, the Food and Drug Administration has enforced a very strict standard about what health benefits could be claimed on food labels. Before oatmeal could boast heart-healthy labels, for example, there had to be significant scientific consensus that oatmeal's fiber helps maintain low cholesterol levels. Under the new program, to start Sept. 1, the FDA will allow certain foods to make "qualified health claims" -- similar to what the courts have allowed for more loosely regulated dietary supplements. (bwusa italics) At best, it means wishy-washy health advice will suddenly appear on foods, confusing consumers, said Bruce Silverglade of the consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is talking with Waxman about a possible legal challenge. "This action represents the biggest rollback in food-labeling standards in 20 years," said Silverglade. CBS Poll: U.S. Losing Control in Iraq CBS News July 10,2003 EXCERPT With U.S. troops continuing to take casualties in Iraq, less than half of Americans now believe the U.S. is in control of the situation there -- a dramatic decline from April, when 71 percent thought it was. For the first time a majority now says the Bush administration overestimated the extent of the Iraqis’ weapons. Less than half now say Iraq was a threat that required immediate action. And while 54 percent still believe that removing Saddam Hussein from power was worth the costs of war, that figure, too, has declined from 65 percent in May. Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False CBS News July 10, 2003 EXCERPT Senior administration officials tell CBS News the President’s mistaken claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was included in his State of the Union address -- despite objections from the CIA. Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin. CIA officials warned members of the President’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. Criticism grows as Iraq's postwar costs escalate By Deborah McGregor in Washington Financial Times July 10, 2003 EXCERPT Emboldened by the furore over the White House admission that Mr Bush relied on faulty intelligence in the January State of the Union address, several Democrats On Thursday stepped up their criticism of what they view as Mr Bush's increasing "credibility gap". John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator who alone among nine Democratic presidential contenders has battlefield experience, urged Mr Bush to "step forward and tell the truth" about the long-term commitment and cost of keeping US troops in Iraq. Howard Dean, another contender and a former Vermont governor who has been outspoken in his opposition to the war, said those in the administration who misled the nation on prewar intelligence "should resign". Food Makers Trim Fat as Lawsuits and Regulations Loom By DAVID BARBOZA New York Times July 9, 2003 Finally, something healthy and nutritious from PepsiCo and Kraft Foods? DLC Division ThomPaine.com July 9, 2003 EXCERPT The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has made its way by sowing division in the Democratic party. So it comes as no surprise that on July 2, its founder Al From and new president Bruce Reed ventured yet again into the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal to warn its readers of the perils of a liberal Democratic presidential nominee. Given its location and its platitudes, the article should be viewed more as a fundraising pitch to the DLC’s corporate sponsors than a serious political analysis. Quote 'We live in a country full of problems we don't deserve and solutions we don't apply.'That gap, I call the Democracy gap. If we had an engaged democracy, with millions of people spending a little time throughout the year on various issues, then solutions such as affordable housing, universal health care, a living wage, environmental clean-up would connect. We have the solutions -- they're here and there. But they're not everywhere where they should be. We have to bring politics down to daily life. If it stays abstract and ideological, then the forces of propaganda are going to prevail.'  Ralph Nader interview in the Sunday Hearld Savage Fired by MSNBC FAIR-L ACTIVISM UPDATE Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting Media analysis, critiques and activism July 7, 2003 (posted July 8) EXCERPT Michael Savage's MSNBC show, The Savage Nation, was cancelled today because of homophobic remarks made by the host on the July 5 edition of the show, according to an Associated Press (AP) report Bush Ratings High in US, Plummet Elsewhere Norman Solomon Z Magazine (posted July 8) EXCERPT So, why do most people in the U.S. seem somewhat positive about Bush, while the figures indicating a “favorable view of the U.S.” are low in one country after another —only 48 percent in Britain, 31 percent in France, 28 percent in Russia, 25 percent in Germany, 14 percent in Spain, and 12 percent in Turkey? In large measure, the answer can be summed up with one word: media.  Overall, the U.S. news media do a great job of telling us how wonderful top U.S. leaders are as they direct our stride across the planet. The contrast with evil-doers —especially on our TV sets—could hardly be more plain.  During the war, the London- based Guardian reported, the Pentagon dropped 1,500 cluster bombs —weaponry that fires small pieces of metal, which slice through human bodies. Unexploded cluster bombs are now detonating, sometimes in the hands of Iraqi children. As it did during Gulf War I, this spring the U.S. government fortified some munitions with depleted uranium, which leaves fine-particle radioactive dust that has been linked to cancer and birth defects. Those are important stories, known to many news watchers on several continents, but not in the United States. Dynasties! by Kevin Phillips Inequality.org (posted July 8) EXCERPT Maybe its time for a new set of Fourth of July orations. Only at first blush is there silliness to the idea of the United States becoming a hereditary economic aristocracy. When you think about it, there is evidence for serious concern. Episode by episode, none of the Bushes' Enron involvement seems to be illegal. Before 2000-01, moreover, the ties weren't overwhelming in any one national administration. However, the only way that a chronicler can seriously weigh the Enron-Bush tie is by a yardstick the American press has never really employed: the unseemliness of a sixteen- or seventeen-year interaction by the members of an American political dynasty in promoting and being rewarded by a single US corporation based in its home state. As for economic and political dynastization, the United States is not the first republic to tilt in this direction. Rome did, and in the eighteenth century even the once proudly middle-class Dutch Republic let many of its offices become hereditary. Let's hope Americans do not also allow political and economic inheritance to displace democracy. In the USA... Economic Inequality = Political Inequality A "Startling Accumulation" In the Top 400 Income Group Inequality.org July 1, 2003 (posted July 8) The latest IRS data shows how well the wealthy were doing before the latest tax cuts. "So much money in so few hands," writes Tom Herman of the Wall Street Journal. He's talking about the 400 highest-earning taxpayers, who racked up a combined $70 billion of adjusted gross income in 2000 – an average of $174 million each, or nearly four times the comparable 1992 figure of $46.8 million. More than two-thirds of this "startling accumulation of wealth at the very top of the income pyramid" was the result of capital gains. Meanwhile, the top 400's tax burden plunged from 26.4 percent to 22.3 percent, on average. (It had risen briefly, peaking at 29.9 percent in 1995.) All this was before two rounds of Bush tax cuts skewed toward the wealthy. If the latest cuts had been in effect in 2000, the average member of the 400 would have saved another $8.3 million in taxes, bringing the tax rate down to just 17.5 percent. [In 1992 the richest 400 made 0.52 percent of U.S. income and in 2000 they made 1.09 percent, more than doubling their share of the pie in nine years.] White House Proposal to Expand Laboratory Capacity Suffers From Undue Secrecy, Poor Oversight Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Global Security Network July 8, 2003 EXCERPT A Bush administration proposal to build new laboratories throughout the United States to conduct research on biological weapons agents has come under criticism for undue secrecy from residents in the proposed areas where the new laboratories would be built, United Press International reported last week. In addition, the proposal has also been criticized for giving more people access to dangerous agents and for poor oversight Doctors Increased Insurance Premiums Tied to Lower Stock and Bond Returns, Not Lawsuits as Claimed by Right Wing Public Citizen July 7, 2003 (posted 8 July) EXCERPT On eve of Senate vote, new government data debunk claims of malpractice "crisis" New government data show that both the number and amount of payments to medical malpractice victims declined in 2002, casting further doubt on the assertion that lawsuits are responsible for doctors’ insurance premium increases. The U.S. Senate is expected to vote Wednesday on legislation that would significantly limit patients’ ability to hold medical providers accountable for negligence. The bill, S. 11, would arbitrarily cap the amount of non-economic damages available to malpractice victims at $250,000, which would penalize those most harmed by doctors and other health care providers. The bill’s proponents claim that malpractice insurance rates are rising because of malpractice awards to patients, but all available data show that the legal system has no impact on insurance rates. Rather, insurance rates are tied to investment returns from the bond and stock markets and to the competitive economics of the insurance cycle. "It’s clear from these numbers that the insurance premium increases over the past year are not tied to lawsuits," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "The only thing that correlates with the premium increases is the decline in malpractice insurers’ investment income." 2003 Energy Bill Threat to America's Health and Security Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI) June 17, 2003 (posted July 7) The Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI) today called for immediate revocation of the Energy Policy Act of 2003 because of massive public opposition to nuclear power, the danger of nuclear terrorism, and the ever present potential for devastating accidents. Calling the legislation one of the most dangerous initiatives in more than two decades, the organization pointed to the many dangers associated with the nuclear power industry that are being kept from the public eye. While the reporting to date has concentrated on the loan guarantees and the high risk for default that would incur billions of taxpayer dollars, little has been mentioned about additional problems that imperil the public, or the historical reasons why no nuclear plant has been ordered in the U.S. since 1978. 'Not enough Americans are rolling up their sleeves as active citizens and as a result, they are watching their country be hijacked by giant corporations and their political allies in Washington. With 9/11, the politicians have seen a political advantage. We are moving away from democracy and into a plutocracy. This is an extremely serious condition.'      Ralph Nader interview in the Sunday Hearld Insurers Want Changes to Medicare Bill BY THERESA AGOVINO Associated Press in the Kansas City Star July 6, 2003 (posted July 7) EXCERPT As Congress begins work on a final Medicare reform bill, insurance companies are looking for changes they say must be made to ensure their support and participation - which are critical to any plan's success. Health insurers say for them to turn a reasonable profit, the government must pay them more to administer health maintenance organizations for Medicare beneficiaries. In addition, they want an easing of the requirements set out for the creation of a new type of plan for Medicare enrollees. (bwusa italics) This week, senators and congressmen will begin the arduous process of crafting compromise legislation from the different Medicare bills approved by the House and Senate last month. Republican Enviros Blast Bush for Withholding Information Environmental News Service in One World.net July 2, 2003 (posted July 6) EXCERPT Withholding of vital environmental information is getting to be a bad habit with the Bush administration, REP America, the national grassroots organization of Republicans for environmental protection, said today. REP America reacted to published reports that the administration withheld an analysis showing a Senate bill to clean up power plant pollution would be significantly more effective and cost only marginally more than the administration's "Clear Skies" plan. Short of Votes, Senate G.O.P. Still Pushes Malpractice Issue By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG New York Times July 5, 2003 (posted 6 July) EXCERPT A bill that would impose strict limits on jury awards in medical malpractice cases — a central element of President Bush's plan to revamp tort law — appears headed for defeat in the Senate. But the majority leader, Bill Frist, intends to introduce the measure on Monday anyway, forcing a vote that could be used against Democrats in the next election. Report Calls U.S. Agencies Understaffed for Bioterror By DAVID JOHNSTON New York Times July 5, 2003 (posted July 6) EXCERPT The government is likely to be overwhelmed in the event of a bioterrorism attack because of serious shortages in skilled medical and scientific personnel, according to a study by a public service advocacy group. Don't Let Congress Sell Out Consumers! Energy Bill Guts Citizen Protections Public Citizen (posted July 6, 2003) EXCERPT The Senate is considering regressive energy legislation that repeals vital protections for electricity ratepayers, commits billions of taxpayer dollars to build new nuclear power plants, subsidizes dirty fossil fuel industries, and permanently puts taxpayers on the hook for cleanup costs in the event of a catastrophic nuclear power plant accident. S.14, "The Energy Policy Act of 2003," sponsored by Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico, points in the wrong direction. At a time when the U.S. needs safe, clean, affordable energy, this bill harms consumers, adds security risks and increases pollution. Now is the time to urge your senator to oppose this bill. Click here to learn more and take action! Fear Factory: The Bush administration's dangerous manufacturing of post-9-11 dread Jim McDermott, D-WA The American Prospect July 5, 2003 EXCERPT Here's how it works: Throw a hundred claims against the wall and poll every night to see what sticks. Leak stories that are later discredited. Get a graduate student's dissertation and plagiarize it. Lift paragraphs from a war-industry magazine. Every so often, raise the danger level to code "yellow" or "orange." Give the people a rest. Then start all over again. Mix it all up and put an official seal on it. Now it seems true, despite the skepticism of intelligence professionals. Had Enough of the Flag Yet? Frank Rich New York Times July 5, 2003 EXCERPT As patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, so the coercive patriotism of this historical moment is the last refuge of cynics. In "The Story of American Freedom," the historian Eric Foner observes that a similar phenomenon occurred a little over a century ago, uncoincidentally enough, in tandem with "America's triumphant entry onto the world stage as an imperial power" during the Spanish-American War. It was in the 1890's that "rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance and the practice of standing for the playing of `The Star-Spangled Banner' came into existence," as well as Flag Day. Our leaders were then professing to spread democracy to Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines with the same blithe self-assurance that our current leaders promise to bring the American way to Iraq and its neighbors. Malpractice Bill Is Likely to Lose Key Senate Vote By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG New York Times July 5, 2003 A bill that would impose strict limits on jury awards in medical malpractice cases — a central element of President Bush's plan to revamp tort law — appears headed for defeat in the Senate. But the majority leader, Bill Frist, intends to introduce the measure on Monday anyway, forcing a vote that could be used against Democrats in the next election. The bill, similar to one the House passed in March, would limit awards for pain and suffering to $250,000. The bill has no Democratic sponsors, and Republican leaders, including Dr. Frist and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican whip who will manage the bill on the floor, concede they do not have the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. News, but good news? Democrats Beat Bush at 2nd Quarter Campaign Fundraising Rob Kall OpEdNews.com July 5, 2003 EXCERPT Mainstream media ignored the positive news for Democrats and report Bush crushed all the individual candidates. Individually, none of the 10 declared and undeclared democratic presidential primary candidates came close to matching the money George W. Bush raised-- a reported $34 million. But add them all up and it looks like they either beat him or came very, very close. Dear Clarence Thomas: It Happened on July 4, 1776 by Thom Hartmann Common Dreams July 3, 2003 (posted July 5) EXCERPT In his dissent in the Texas sodomy case, Clarence Thomas wrote, "just like Justice Stewart, I 'can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy,' or as the Court terms it today, the 'liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.'" Hopefully Americans - including Clarence Thomas - will realize that the Constitution doesn't grant rights but instead constrains government. Our rights predate any government, a fact recognized when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. We must teach our children and inform the world about the essentials of human rights and how our constitutional republic works - deriving its sole powers from the consent of We, The People who hold the rights - if democracy is to survive. Public services at risk as US states face financial crisis Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles July 5, 2003 The Guardian California and many other states are being forced to cut basic services. $300 Billion Deficits, As Far As the Eye Can See by Richard Kogan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities July 2, 2003 (posted July 5) In March of this year, the Congressional Budget Office projected that large deficits in 2003 and 2004 would be followed by falling deficits thereafter, a budget surplus within five years, and large and growing surpluses within ten years. Even accounting for the recently enacted tax cuts and supplemental appropriations to fund the Iraq war, CBO’s projections imply steadily improving budgets. But such a conclusion would be considerably too optimistic: CBO’s figures omit as much as $4.4 trillion in costs over the next ten years, costs that result from legislation that Congress is likely — and in many cases, virtually certain — to enact. With these extra costs, the deficit over the ten year from 2004 through 2013 would total $4.1 trillion. FCC Action Alert: Senate Takes the First Step - Now Let’s Talk to the House! Common Cause Action Center July 5, 2003 Last Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee took the first step in overturning the FCC decision by approving Senate Bill S.1046, and adding several amendments that, if approved and passed into law, could address the creation of a more independent and less monopolized media. 6 Could Be Facing Military Tribunals U.S. Says Detainees Tied to Al Qaeda By John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer July 4, 2003 President Bush designated six suspected al Qaeda terrorists as eligible for trial before military tribunals yesterday, bringing the United States nearer to its first prosecution of enemy prisoners since the aftermath of World War II. They have been held as "enemy combatants" a special status created to avoid legal and human rights provisions of the Geneva Conventions for "prisoners of war." Group claims victory in Wal-Mart change By HELEN JUNG SEATTLE (AP by Salon) July 3, 2003 EXCERPT Victory wasn't supposed to come this easy. Pride Foundation, a Seattle-based philanthropic group for gay and lesbian issues, spent more than two years talking with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. about making it company policy not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The foundation was preparing to draft a shareholders resolution to further pressure the Bentonville, Ark.-based company. Then word came that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and private employer, was making the change voluntarily. The company announced Wednesday that it is including gays and lesbians among groups protected by its anti-discrimination policy. Alaska Test Bed Construction Is on Schedule Global Security Newswire July 3, 2003 Construction of a missile defense test bed at Fort Greely, Alaska — a planned component in the U.S. Ground-based Missile Defense System — is proceeding on schedule for a planned fiscal 2004 deployment, U.S. Missile Defense Agency officials said this week. This is part of the Bush "proceed, whether it works or not " construction scheme for the nations second attempt to install an anti-ballistic missile system. Ties to pharmaceutical industry ignored Bush selects head of AIDS program By Deb Reichmann WASHINGTON (AP by Salon.com) July 3, 2003 EXCERPT President Bush's new global AIDS coordinator is a former drug company executive whose selection won praise for his management skills but raised concerns about his ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Bush on Wednesday named Randall Tobias to direct a $15 billion international AIDS program. The former chief executive officer for Eli Lilly & Co. will coordinate all the administration's international AIDS/HIV activities for all government departments and agencies as well as religious-based community groups. U.S. News Won't Retract Fiction Presented as Fact FAIR Action Alert July 3, 2003 The political right continues its relentless efforts to discredit the US legal system and deny access of citizens when business interests, property and profits may be jeopardized. "In a June 16 editorial, U.S. News & World Report editor Mort Zuckerman provided anecdotes to make the point that nowadays "anyone...can haul anybody into court for just about anything." But Zuckerman's facts turned out to be fiction-- and now U.S. News is refusing to issue a correction." Bush Concerned About Jobless Rate Rise Reuters July 3, 2003 No action planned other than the top heavy tax cut package already enacted. Money for access/influence documented... Trading In Favors: Soft money documents imply quid pro quo between donors and politicians By Alex Knott and Aubrey Bruggeman Center For Public Integrity July 2, 2003 EXCERPT Legislative favors, increased access to federal lawmakers and instructions on how to use loopholes to evade federal contribution limits...Such situations appear in many of the more than 40,000 documents the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia subpoenaed during the discovery process, which the Center obtained in electronic form for a two-week study. ...a recently released internal RNC memo entitled “Why People Give” spells out the connections. “People expect something in return,” states the document used to solicit donations. ... And Human Rights For All? Arianna Huffington July 2, 2003 With Saddam's weapons of mass destruction nowhere to be found, the president's Iraq talking points now center on the humanitarian upside of having ousted the Butcher of Baghdad. His speeches are liberally peppered with mentions of "mass graves," "torture chambers," and encomiums to "freeing the people of Iraq from the clutches of Saddam Hussein." He's all but doused himself in the sweet-smelling scent of human rights and put on an Amnesty International t-shirt. Poor Pay for States' Woes By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet July 2, 2003 EXCERPT Bush claims that an improved economy and his tax cut will ignite the economic miracle that will save the states from financial ruin. If the turnaround comes, and there is much doubt when or even if it will, the poor will have already paid, and paid dearly for the state's budget woes. MoveOn and Dean Make the Big Leagues By Don Hazen, AlterNet July 1, 2003 EXCERPT MoveOn.org, the online activist group, and Howard Dean, the upstart presidential candidate, appear to be on parallel paths reinforcing each other's success, even as they change the ground rules of presidential politics. Rage. Mistrust. Hatred. Fear. Uncle Sam's enemies within Sunday Herald June 29, 2003 While the US fights a war on terror, it is also systematically crushing its citizens' rights. Neil Mackay on the alarming rise of a new tyranny.

Scientists Still Deny Iraqi Arms Programs U.S. Interrogations Net No Evidence By Walter Pincus and Kevin Sullivan Washington Post July 31, 2003 EXCERPTS: Despite vigorous efforts, the U.S. government has been unsuccessful so far in finding key senior Iraqi scientists to support its prewar claims that former president Saddam Hussein was pursuing an aggressive program to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, according to senior administration officials and members of Congress who have been briefed recently on the subject. The sources said four senior scientists and more than a dozen at lower levels who worked for the Iraqi government have been interviewed by U.S. officials under the direction of the CIA. Some scientists have been arrested and held for months, others have made deals in return for information and at least one has agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq. David Kay, the CIA's representative in Iraq to coordinate the search for weapons of mass destruction, returned to Washington this week and met with President Bush on Tuesday. Kay is scheduled to appear today before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Administration officials said they expect Kay to tell the senators there have been no breakthroughs but that progress is being made in understanding Hussein's weapons programs and research that could be associated with them. The United States is still interviewing lower-level Iraqi security and intelligence officials associated with the programs, but the searching of alleged weapons sites has all but halted, officials said. Collateral Language: An Interview with Noam Chomsky By David Barsamian ZMagazine, July/August 2003 Posted July 30 EXCERPT: The New York Times ran an interesting article about Carl Rove, the president’s manager—basically his minder, the one who teaches him what to say and do. It describes what Carl Rove is doing now. He was not directly involved in the war planning, but neither was Bush. This was in the hands of other people. But his goal, he says, is to present the president as a powerful wartime leader, aimed at the next presidential election, so that the Republicans can push through their domestic agenda, which is what he concentrates on, which means tax cuts—they say for the economy, but they mean for the rich—tax cuts and other programs which he doesn’t bother enumerating, but which are designed to benefit an extremely small sector of the ultra-wealthy and privileged and will have the effect of harming the mass of the population. But more significant than that—it’s not outlined in the article—is to try to destroy the institutional basis for social support systems, try to eliminate things like schools and Social Security and anything that is based on the conception that people have to have some concern for one another. That’s a horrible idea, which has to be driven out of people’s minds. The idea that you should have sympathy and solidarity, you should care whether the disabled widow across town is able to eat, that has to be driven out of people’s minds. America is a Religion by George Monbiot Information Clearing House July 29, 2003 (posted July 30) EXCERPT: What is lacking in the Pentagon and the White House is not intelligence (or not, at any rate, of the kind we are considering here), but receptivity. Theirs is not a failure of information, but a failure of ideology. To understand why this failure persists, we must first grasp a reality which has seldom been discussed in print. The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: "Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, "come out," and to those in darkness, "be free".'" So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. "Stonewalling" The 9/11 Report Raises More Serious Questions About The White House Statements On Intelligence By JOHN W. DEAN FindLaw July. 29, 2003 (posted July 30) EXCERPT: Bluntly stated, either the Bush White House knew about the potential of terrorists flying airplanes into skyscrapers (notwithstanding their claims to the contrary), or the CIA failed to give the White House this essential information, which it possessed and provided to others. Bush is withholding the document that answers this question. Accordingly, it seems more likely that the former possibility is the truth. That is, it seems very probable that those in the White House knew much more than they have admitted, and they are covering up their failure to take action. Coalition of the willing, but destitute US signs up helpers for Iraq operation By Vernon Loeb Sydney Morning Herald July 30, 2003 EXCERPT: The United States has named 30 governments that have agreed to help in Iraq by contributing to military or police operations. Some of the countries are unable to pay for their own contributions so they are talking to the US about financial assistance, said the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher. The US is anxious to muster as much international support as possible for its forces in Iraq, who face daily attacks and are costing about $US1 billion ($1.5 billion) a week. The list of governments willing to contribute includes many of those who supported the US invasion of Iraq in March, and none of the main opponents. Bush takes a back seat, again... Sharon: Israel Will Continue to Build Security Fence By Barry Schweid The Associated Press Washington Post July 29, 2003 (posted July 30) Bush stopped short of pressing the Sharon to halt construction of the fence but, instead, urged him to consider the consequences of such actions on the peace process. EXCERPT: For his part, Bush declared: "America is firmly committed to the security of Israel as a Jewish state and we are firmly committed to the safety of the Israel people. My commitment to the security Israel is unshakable." Back to Afganistan: Karzai rule is limited Why the US needs the Taliban By Ramtanu Maitra Asia Times July 30, 2003 EXCERPTS:...after a half-hearted effort that lasted for almost 18 months, the Bush administration has come to realize that it is impossible to keep Pakistan as a friend and simultaneously keep the Northern Alliance-backed government in power in Kabul. The "puppet" Pashtun leader in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, does not have the approval of Pakistan and the majority of the rest of the Pashtun community straddling both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. So, either one has Pakistan as a friend with an Islamabad-backed Pashtun group in power in Kabul, or one gets Pakistan as an enemy. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind how the Bush administration would act when confronted with such a choice. Emerging quagmire Anti-US resistance spreads through Iraq By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times July 30, 2003 EXCERPTS: As attacks against US targets in central Iraq increase, many factors in the north and south are combining to add to the woes of the US occupiers, the US-appointed administration, and their supporters. Since US President George W Bush declared the end of the war, anti-US resistance has taken on new faces. Trained Republican Guards and fedayeen have regrouped, and Sunni Islamic groups have formed circles of resistance. So far, the Shi'ites have been watching and waiting. The belief had been that if they were given adequate representation in a new administration, they would be unlikely to go against US interests. However, the emegence of a figure like Moqtada Sadr (a Shi'ite militant iman) reveals that there are many ambitious men in the southern region who have big obsessions and designs and they are growing in appeal in the Shi'ite community. Anti-US cleric rallies recruits for Islamic army Stirrings of discontent grow in Shia south as fiery young leader claims force of 10,000 Jonathan Steele in Najaf The Guardian July 31, 2003 Around 10,000 young men have come forward to join an "Islamic army" in the holy city of Najaf, according to Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiery cleric who is trying to become the unchallengeable leader of Shia opposition. Sharon: Fence will build friendship MSNBC News July 30,2003 (posted July 31) EXCERPT: Israeli leader rejects Arafat’s claim that it’s a new ‘Berlin Wall’ Despite growing objections from Palestinian officials, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon defended the construction of a security fence that cuts into parts of the West Bank, telling NBC News that “a good fence will bring, I believe, good friendship.” Sharon’s interview, broadcast Wednesday, followed his meeting at the White House on Tuesday with President Bush. DeLay Says Palestinians Bear Burden for Achieving Peace Information Clearing House from New York Times JAMES BENNET July 30, 2003 (posted July 31) EXCERPTS: Calling himself "an Israeli at heart," Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, told Israeli legislators today that the burden for achieving peace here rested with the Palestinians, who he said must eradicate terrorism. Speaking a day after President Bush met at the White House with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, Mr. DeLay said that Mr. Bush "made clear that the prospects of peace are the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority," which must "fight terror and dismantle terrorist capabilities." Mr. Bush also urged Mr. Sharon to ease restrictions on Palestinians and to restrain Israel's own actions. Yet Mr. DeLay, while declaring that Palestinians "have been oppressed and abused," said that the culprit — and "their enemy" — was Yasir Arafat, not Israel. "Israel is not the problem," he said. "Israel is the solution." He dismissed a three-month suspension in attacks announced by the main Palestinian factions, saying that "murderers who take 90-day vacations are still murderers."  Audio Link Searching for Bin Laden NPR Morning Edition July 30, 2003 Host Bob Edwards talks to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer about her piece, "The Search for Osama. Did the government let bin Laden's trail go cold?" Some in the intelligence community say the war in Iraq is draining attention and resources from the war on al Qaeda and that the United States is more likely to find Saddam Hussein than Osama bin Laden. "It sure didn't sound murky before the war" Wolfowitz: "Terrorism intelligence intrinsically murky" By Walter Pincus Washington Post Monday, July 28, 2003 (posted July 29) EXCERPTS: When asked about the administration's use of intelligence on Iraq's weapons that led to the war, Wolfowitz talked for the first time about the "nature of terrorism intelligence as intrinsically murky." "Boy, it sure didn't sound murky before the war," Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said on CBS's "Face the Nation" when asked about the Wolfowitz statement. "There were clear connections we were told between al Qaeda and Iraq. There was no murkiness, no nuance, no uncertainty about it at all." Chavez Warns of Possible Coup Attempt YellowTimes.org July 28, 2003 (posted July 29) EXCERPT: A week after a massive anti-Chavez protest in Caracas, the Venezuelan president is claiming an assassination plot is being formed to oust him. The scheme, said President Hugo Chavez, is being hatched in the Dominican Republic. He has asked the island country's government to assist him in foiling the plotters. State-sponsored lies By IGNACIO RAMONET Le Monde Diplomatique July Issue (posted July 29) EXCERPT: It's like the story of the thief who yelled "Stop, thief!" The dossier against Saddam Hussein that President George Bush presented to the UN General Assembly on 12 September 2002 was called A Decade of Lies and Deceit. Worsening Situation in Iraq Egypt critical of US efforts YellowTimes.org July 27, 2003 (posted July 29) EXCERPTS: In a further blow to U.S. aspirations in Iraq, American ally Egypt strongly criticized U.S. efforts in Iraq. President Hosni Mubarak told Egyptian TV that the dissolving of the Iraqi army, the firing of all those who worked in the Iraqi government, and the distancing of all Baath party members has helped further deteriorate the situation in Iraq, increase unemployment and violent crime. Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said that the newly U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council has no legitimacy in and outside Iraq. "This new council does not represent anything and does not represent the Iraqi people," he told reporters on Saturday. The Egyptian statements are likely to cause a stir in the Middle East as Egypt has been long looked to for political guidance in the area. America to the rescue! Human Rights Group Reports Abuses By Afgans, Some Backed By U.S. By Carlotta Gall New York Times July 28, 2003 (posted July 29) EXCERPTS: The report, which is being released on Tuesday, accused soldiers, police officers, commanders and even current cabinet ministers of responsibility for much of the violence, which, it said, was occurring across Afghanistan. The perpetrators are people who came to power after the United States-led intervention that overthrew the Taliban government in 2001, and who are now abusing their authority, the report said. "The United States in particular bears much of the responsibility for the actions of those they have propelled to power, for failing to take steps against other abusive leaders, and for impeding attempts to force them to step aside," it said. "Their continued funding, joint operations and fraternizing with warlords has sent, at best, mixed messages about their goals and intentions." ... The most serious abuses described involved armed robbery, abduction, rape and assaults on civilians, often committed by members of the police, military and intelligence services with the knowledge of high-level commanders, the report said. Soldiers and police officers are accused of extortion, arbitrary arrests, beatings, holding people for ransom in "private prisons" and possible torture. Villagers in Paghman, west of Kabul, recounted in the report how they patrolled their houses at night to deter armed robbers, many of them local policemen and soldiers loyal to Abdul Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, who is a member of the Northern Alliance. Often the robberies involved rape, but rape is so taboo that Human Rights Watch did not obtain firsthand accounts from any victims.  Book Review WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION By Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber Reviewed by World-Information.org July 28, 2003 EXCERPT FROM THE REVIEW: One large chapter of the book is dedicated to “true lies” – lies that are not identified as such because the surrounding information landscape has been modified in such a way as to blur the difference between truth and lie, or because they are simply elevated to the status of truths by official declarations. However, simply repeating distorted or misleading information can also be very effective – in the disinformation buildup before the war, it managed to convince 79 % of the US population that Iraq was possessing, or about to possess, exactly those nuclear weapons that now no one can find. Perhaps this is a perfect illustration of what Donald Rumsfeld, quoting Winston Churchill, meant when he referred to lies as the “bodyguards of truth.” Additional link: http://www.prwatch.org/books/wmd_reviews.html Say, mi casa, su casa in Arabic Four corners Sunday Herald Foreign Editor David Pratt July 27, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPTS: Who would be Nawaf Zaidan? Having betrayed his guests – Saddam’s sons – for an uncool $15 million a head, one can only guess at when or where he will have the peace of mind to spend his blood money. While Washington talks of Saddam’s days being numbered, so too does the count continue on the number of US soldiers dying in that process. It’s a painful paradox for the Pentagon’s planners; the harder they try to lay the ghost of Iraq’s Ba’athist past to rest, the more resistance against US forces seems to galvanise. “Now I am with the fedayeen, now I want to fight the Americans,” was how one young Iraqi expressed the feeling of an increasing number on the streets of Baghdad yesterday. ...America’s faltering campaign in Iraq is giving new meaning to the term “burden of proof”. Crunch time - Liberia The Economist Global Agenda July 28, 2003 EXCERPT: America is stationing more than 2,000 marines off the coast of Liberia, where rebel and government troops are battling for control of the capital city. This half-measure will not stop the fighting The Pentagon appears to be behind America’s foot-dragging. Officials there, despite their eager denunciations of Saddam Hussein’s brutality, have little love for humanitarian missions. Making the most of the ceasefire The Economist Global Agenda July 28, 2003 EXCERPTS: President Bush must press the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers to make the most of the current lull in fighting and push on with the peace process. Otherwise, they risk its collapse America and Israel realise they must help Mr Abbas to strengthen his position among his own people. He faces serious challenges from both the Palestinian old guard—especially from Yasser Arafat, the PA president and veteran leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation—and from young, militant leaders who have emerged since the start of the second intifada ...to build support for Mr Abbas and for the peace process would be to relax its security cordons around many towns in the occupied territories. These isolate Palestinian communities from each other and the outside world, adding to the considerable hardships they are suffering. (Also) Israel has yet to make significant progress on one of its main obligations in the road map: dismantling the scores of Jewish settlements built in the West Bank... The Bush "Just War" Doctrine (mis-information may justify military action) U.S. Must Act on 'Murky' Data to Prevent Terror, Wolfowitz Says By BRIAN KNOWLTON, International Herald Tribune July 27, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPTS: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, defending the Bush administration's justification of the Iraq war, said today that intelligence on terrorism is by its nature "murky," and that the United States may have little choice in the future but to "act on the basis of murky intelligence" if terror attacks are to be prevented. North Korea nuclear arms claims "exaggerated": South Korean president AFP in SpaceWar.com Jul 27, 2003 (posted July 28) EXCERPTS: South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said Sunday that claims that North Korea is very close to developing a nuclear weapon are "exaggerated" and that planned multilateral talks are the best way to address Pyongyang's demands for US security guarantees. "Both of our governments (Washington and Seoul) think that North Korea's claims are exaggerated, specifically, the argument that it has already completed reprocessing of plutonium, and that it is very close to developing a nuclear weapon," he said in an interview with the ABC television network on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, Nuclear Breakout New York Times Editorial July 27, 2003 EXCERPT: Alarming as they are, the nuclear bomb making programs of North Korea and Iran are part of a much bigger problem. The international controls that contained the spread of nuclear weapons for decades are crumbling. Major repairs are needed, and the Bush administration, preoccupied with Iraq and wrongly viewing the nuclear challenge as limited to a few rogue states, is not pressing hard enough for them. Sanctions led to devastation in Iraq Were Sanctions Right? By DAVID RIEFF New York Times Magazine July 27, 2003 EXCERPT: As the war in Iraq recedes, the challenges of occupying and rebuilding the country seem to grow more daunting with every passing day. It is becoming clear, though, that Iraq's devastation is not primarily the result of American bombing during the war or of the looting that followed it, but of the economic crisis that befell the country before the first shot was fired. Bush deploys 'support force' in Liberia By Peter Spiegel in London and Michael Peel Financial Times July 25 2003 EXCERPTS: President George W. Bush on Friday ordered three US warships to the war-torn west African country of Liberia, but warned that any American troops were only a stop-gap measure until the United Nations could generate its own peacekeeping force. Mr Bush said the troops, which he insisted would be deployed in "limited numbers", will support an African-led force being put together by a confederation of 15 countries, known as the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). Mr Bush said a political solution would be left to the UN.  Audio Link Al-Qaeda link in Iraq, post-Saddam NPR's Talk of the Nation July 24, 2003 (posted July 25) Terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" that now there's a link: "Iraq has become a real magnet for al-Qaeda...It's common sense, if you're interested in killing Americans in a place that's right in the middle of the Middle East, Iraq is that place." Guerrilla attacks may increase New Zealand Herald Robert Fisk July 24, 2003 (posted July 25) EXCERPTS: ...there is a fundamental misunderstanding between the American occupation authorities in Iraq and the people whose country they are occupying. The United States believes that the entire resistance to America's proconsulship of Iraq is composed of "remnants" of Saddam's followers, "dead-enders", "bitter-enders" - they have other phrases to describe them. Their theory is that once the Hussein family is decapitated, the resistance will end. But the guerrillas who are killing US troops every day are also being attacked by a growing Islamist Sunni movement which never had any love for Saddam. Much more importantly, many Iraqis were reluctant to support the resistance for fear that an end to American occupation would mean the return of the ghastly old dictator. If he and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish - on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans. Iraqi Fighters: Yankees Go Home CBS News July 21, 2003 (posted July 25) EXCERPTS: In an exclusive interview with CBS News, three men who claim to have participated in several recent and deadly attacks on U.S. soldiers say they're not doing it for love of Saddam -- but instead for God and their country. U.S. officials blame "remnants of Saddam's regime" -- "dead enders" they call them -- for the unending attacks. "Why do you fight? Why do you attack American soldiers?" Hawkins (CBS) asked. "This is occupation, so we fight against the occupation," said a fighter. We feel happy now (with Saddam gone) because we can speak freely, but at the same time we don't want Saddam neither, or America. We just want the American soldiers to leave our country," reported the translator. Threats (to kill all Americans) from these men won't frighten anyone away, but their fanaticism and fervor suggests that they'll put up a fight -- for some time to come. Bush says problems aren't over for Iraq Brian Knowlton International Herald Tribune July 23, 2003 (posted July 24) But president hails deaths of Saddam's sons as reassuring Brian Knowlton International Herald Tribune July 23, 2003 (posted July 24) EXCERPTS: President George W. Bush said Wednesday that the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons Qusay and Uday should reassure Iraqis "that the former regime is gone and will not be coming back." But the president acknowledged continuing problems with armed holdouts - "the enemies of Iraq's people," he called them - and he appealed to other countries to provide both military and financial support to the American-led forces.  N.Korea May Go Nuclear, Say Tokyo Sources By Teruaki Ueno and Martin Nesirky Reuters July 23, 2003 EXCERPTS: North Korea could declare itself an atomic power soon if the United States does not respond to its proposals for ending a nuclear controversy, diplomatic sources in Tokyo said amid increasing shadow-boxing ahead of likely talks. The United States said Tuesday it was considering fresh talks with Communist North Korea and China on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions if they were followed by broader discussions with Japan and South Korea. But White House spokesman Scott McClellan played down a Washington Post report that said the United States was considering offering North Korea a formal security guarantee in return for ditching its nuclear program. "We never take options off the table," he said, referring to military action if diplomacy fails. China, spurred by North Korea's apparent drive to enhance its nuclear arsenal, has been pushing hard for a re-run of the three-way talks it hosted in Beijing in April. Abbas' Future May Rest on D.C. Visit By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press in Tampa Bay Online July 23, 2003 EXCERPTS: Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas could be ousted by the Palestinian parliament unless he returns from Washington with substantial concessions from Israel, the Palestinian information minister said Wednesday. Although violence is markedly down since Palestinian militant groups declared a temporary halt to attacks on Israelis on June 29, frustrations are building on the Palestinian side about the halting progress along the U.S.-backed "road map," a blueprint meant to lead to Palestinian statehood by 2005. Israel has pulled out of parts of Gaza and the West Bank town of Bethlehem, but troops remain in other Palestinian towns. Israel also has dismantled few West Bank settler outposts and has not frozen construction in established settlements, as required by the plan. Israel refuses to release more than a few hundred of the estimated 7,700 Palestinian prisoners held for alleged involvement in terrorism. "Bring on" the other "cranky" ones... With Hussein's Heirs Gone, Hopes Rise for End to Attacks By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER New York Times July 22, 2003 (posted July 23) EXCERPTS: (This is) an important victory in the campaign to control, and even end, the guerrilla-style insurgency. The attack that killed Qusay and Uday Hussein could set off an immediate wave of retribution attacks, officials said, but the deaths should also embolden more Iraqis to come forward with critical information to energize the American military's antiguerrilla operations. The attack may also validate arguments by senior American commanders who have resisted calls from some lawmakers and other critics to increase the number of troops on the ground... Judith Yaphe, an Iraq specialist at the National Defense University, said...News of the two sons' deaths "is not going to stop all of the attacks against us." But, she added, "it could weaken, it could lower the degree of them." She cautioned, though, that "there are going to be some people who are going to be cranky no matter who is alive or dead, because they have nothing to lose." To the victor go the spoils U.S. Said to Seek Help of Ex-Iraqi Spies on Iran By NEELA BANERJEE with DOUGLAS JEHL New York Times July 22, 2003 (posted July 23) EXCERPT: Relying on the help of an Iraqi political party, the United States has moved to resurrect parts of the Iraqi intelligence service, with the branch that monitors Iran among the top priorities, former Iraqi agents and politicians say. Liberia Dilly-Dallying Matthew Rothschild Progressive Radio by the Progressive Magazine July 22, 2003 (posted July 23) Is the Bush Administration overlooking a compelling humanitarian aspect to taking action.  Audio Link MP3 file (1mb) RealAudio file (1mb) COALITION OF DECEIT Justin Riamondo Antiwar.com July 21, 2003 (posted July 22) EXCERPT: Dead UK govt' scientist feared 'Dark actors playing games,' but who are they – and why did they want to drag us into war? The "dark actors" in this tale of disinformation and competing spy agencies are shadowy, elusive creatures who wield enormous power with no compunctions about the consequences. Some are Americans, some British: others are Israelis. We have said all along in this space (Antiwar.com) that the one country that stood to benefit from the war was not the U.S., but Israel. The war in Iraq, as Professor Paul W. Schroeder pointed out in The American Conservative, "Would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state." Bush in new threat to Iran and Syria Duncan Campbell The Guardian July 22, 2003 EXCERPT: President George Bush issued a strident new warning to Iran and Syria yesterday, accusing them of harbouring terrorists and hinting at the consequences. "This behaviour is completely unacceptable," he said. Setting America above the Law YaleGlobal July 18, 2003 (posted July 22) EXCERPT: The US and Egypt recently signed a bilateral agreement guaranteeing the immunity of each other's officials and military personnel from prosecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Cairo's decision to exempt the US personnel from Court jurisdiction has angered those who uphold the need for an encompassing, multilateral judicial institution. Cairo was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the ICC, but the Egyptian government has delayed ratification for some time now, apparently upset that the ICC drafters have refused to include aggression and terrorism-related crimes in the court's jurisdiction. In signing the bilateral agreement with the US, some worry, Cairo is only further undermining the ICC's goals and bolstering America's efforts to exempt itself from international justice. The United States has signed similar agreements with 45 countries and withdrawn military aid from those who refuse to sign. The Bush Administration argues that it is only seeking to protect US soldiers stationed abroad from being unfairly prosecuted on politically motivated charges. Bush humility or compassion? Wrong on Rights Harold Hongju Koh YaleGlobal July 18, 2003 (posted July 22) The Bush Administration would exempt US corporations from responsibility for their abusive behavior abroad. EXCERPT: A powerful recourse for human rights victims is in danger, says Harold Hongju Koh, Professor of International Law at Yale University and former US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In response to a lawsuit brought by Burmese citizens against the US energy company Unocal, the Bush White House has filed a brief in a California Federal Court to overhaul a centuries-old law that provides foreigners recourse against gross human rights violators in US courts. Koh maintains that the White House's insistence that the law undermines foreign policy, threatens corporations, and jeopardizes the war on terror is injurious both to human rights world-wide and to the policy and corporate interests it ostensibly promotes. He points out that the law both ensures American companies the protection of high US legal standards and permits the trial of those who violate the human rights of Americans, including terrorists and their sponsors. If the White House is truly committed to protecting humanitarian and corporate rights, Koh says, it should support multilateral efforts to establish international corporate conduct standards instead of discrediting a vital legal tool. White House Credibility Defense Shifting By JENNIFER LOVEN Associated Press Writer Associated Press in Findlaw July 21, 2001 EXCERPT: The White House defense of President Bush's now-disavowed claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa has evolved over the last two weeks: blame others, stonewall, bury questions in irrelevant information and, above all, hope it will go away. So far, none has worked. Senators: Bush Credibility Rests in Probe By WILLIAM C. MANN Associated Press Writer Associated Press in Findlaw July 21, 2003 EXCERPT: The credibility of President Bush and the nation are at stake with the information that led the United States into the Iraq war, two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee say (Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition."). WASHINGTON'S BATTLE PLAN Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace U.S. is paying the price for missteps made on Iraq By Mark Fineman, Robin Wright and Doyle McManus Los Angeles Times July 18, 2003 (posted July 21) EXCERPT: Secretly, they gathered in an auditorium in the nation's snowbound capital — uniformed generals, assistant Cabinet secretaries, war college professors with top security clearance, and senior planners from the Pentagon, the U.S. Central Command and dozens of other federal agencies. (It was basically a follow-on analysis of the lessons learned from the Iraq invasion and occupation strategy.) "It's not true there wasn't adequate planning. There was a volume of planning. More than the Clinton administration did for any of its interventions," said Rand's (James) Dobbins. "They planned on an unrealistic set of assumptions," he said. "Clearly, in retrospect, they should have anticipated that when the old regime collapsed, there would be a period of disorder, a vacuum of power They should have anticipated extremist elements would seek to fill this vacuum of power. All of these in one form or another have been replicated in previous such experiences, and it was reasonable to plan for them." Looking back from the third floor of the Pentagon, Feith dismissed such criticism as "simplistic." Despite initial problems, he said, progress is being made, with order returning to most of the country and a new Iraqi governing council in place. Still, he and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely — to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly. "We're going to get better over time," promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. "We've always thought of post-hostilities as a phase" distinct from combat, he said. "The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum. This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," he said. "We'll get better as we do it more often."  Office of Special Plans Behind Phony 'Intelligence' by Jason Leopold Antiwar.com July 19, 2003 (posted July 21) When George Tenet, the director of the CIA, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week about dubious intelligence data on the Iraqi threat that made it into President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, he said an ad-hoc committee called the Office of Special Plans, set up Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other high-profile hawks rewrote the intelligence information on Iraq that the CIA gathered and gave it to White House officials to help Bush build a case for war, according to three Senators on the intelligence committee. Read more about the Office of Special Plans: Selective Intelligence by SEYMOUR M. HERSH The New Yorker Issue of 2003-05-12 and The spies who pushed for war The Guardian Julian Borger  July 17, 2003 (posted in bwusa July 18) The Next Debate: Al Qaeda Link By DANIEL BENJAMIN and STEVEN SIMON New York Times July 20, 2003 (posted July 21) The Iraq-Al Qaeda connection the administration asserted seems more uncertain than ever. This is not only a question of political accountability — it also bears on our nation's fundamental approach to security. United States policy changed dramatically when the Bush administration, lacking compelling evidence of an Iraq-Qaeda link, decided to base the Qaeda part of its pro-war argument on a hypothetical situation. "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists," President Bush said in October. "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." But this scenario is extremely unlikely. For years now the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism have had no confidence that they could carry out attacks against the United States undetected. That is why this brand of terrorism has been on the wane. What They Knew | The Hunt for Evidence In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat By THE NEW YORK TIMES July 19, 2003 (posted July 20) This article was reported and written by James Risen, David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker. The Bush Administration tried to have it every way. Intelligence was 'sketchy,' or 'darn good,' 'new information,' 'old information seen in a new light of 9/11,' 'inconclusive' but 'convincing.' This recounting of who said and knew what, when, leaves little doubt -- somebody was trying to "hornswoggle" somebody, as they say down in Crawford. North Korea Hides New Nuclear Site, Evidence Suggests By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER New York Times July 19, 2003 (posted July 20) EXCERPT: American and Asian officials with access to the latest intelligence on North Korea say strong evidence has emerged in recent weeks that the country has built a second, secret plant for producing weapons-grade plutonium... Invasion began early... U.S. Attacked Iraqi Defenses Starting in 2002 By MICHAEL R. GORDON New York Times July 19, 2003 (posted July 20) American air war commanders carried out a comprehensive plan to disrupt Iraq's military command and control system before the Iraq war, according to an internal briefing on the conflict by the senior allied air war commander. Known as Southern Focus, the plan called for attacks on the network of fiber-optic cable that Saddam Hussein's government used to transmit military communications, as well as air strikes on key command centers, radars and other important military assets. The strikes, which were conducted from mid-2002 into the first few months of 2003, were justified publicly at the time as a reaction to Iraqi violations of a no-flight zone that the United States and Britain established in southern Iraq. But Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the chief allied war commander, said the attacks also laid the foundations for the military campaign against the Baghdad government. A Chronicle of Confusion in the Hunt for Hussein's Weapons By JUDITH MILLER New York Times July 19, 2003 (posted July 20) On paper, the Pentagon's plan for finding Iraq's unconventional weapons was bold and original. But the "ground truth," as soldiers say, was this: chaos, disorganization, interagency feuds, disputes within and among various military units, and shortages of everything from gasoline to soap plagued the postwar search for evidence of Iraq's supposed unconventional weapons. Iraq row over fate of seized scientists Jonathan Steele The Observer July 20, 2003 American efforts at finding top Iraqi scientists who can attest to Saddam Hussein hiding weapons of mass destruction have turned out to be as fruitless as the search for the weapons themselves. The continued detention of leading Iraqi scientists and other officials by US forces is swiftly turning into a major human rights row. The Red Cross is urging the US to clarify status of three dozen prisoners held in unknown conditions near Baghdad   Common Law Presidents have lied about foreign policy so often that it's almost a common-law right. —George Washington University historian Leo Ribuffo in the Christian Science Monitor Hat in hand or just a hand out? U.S. May Be Forced to Go Back to U.N. for Iraq Mandate By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS New York Times July 18, 2003 (posted July 19) Administration officials contend that they are being practical, but within their ranks are policy makers sharply critical of the United Nations and those who would consider it humiliating to seek its mantle after risking American lives in the invasion that ousted Mr. Hussein. The administration's quandary deepened today, when Russia announced that it would consider sending peacekeeping troops but only with a United Nations mandate that set out a specific mission and timetable. Something to Hide? By David Ignatius Washington Post July 18, 2003 (posted July 19) EXCERPTS: Saddam Hussein's science adviser, Amir Saadi (the seven of diamonds in the coalition's deck of cards) surrendered voluntarily to U.S. authorities in Baghdad on April 12. He was the first senior Iraqi official to do so. Because he had never been a member of the Baath Party, U.S. officials were hopeful that he would provide honest information. "He wanted to make himself available to the coalition forces for questioning and cooperation," said Saadi's German-born wife, Helma, in an e-mail message this week. One of Saadi's American supporters agrees: "He has everything to gain by being honest, and absolutely nothing to gain from continued deception." Saadi's silence, I suspect, is evidence that the Pentagon and the White House have concluded that any public release of his testimony would undercut their position. After all, this White House is so desperate to protect President Bush on WMD issues that it is prepared to sacrifice CIA Director George Tenet. If Saadi's testimony could help the president, surely we would have heard it by now. White House releases Iraq weapons report Christian Science Monitor July 19, 2003 EXCERPT: The White House declassified portions of an October 2002 intelligence report to demonstrate that President Bush had ample reason to believe Iraq was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. But the material also reflects divisions and uncertainties among intelligence agencies as to Saddam Hussein's activities. The State Department, for instance, expressed deep skepticism over claims that Saddam was shopping for uranium ore in Africa to use in making atomic bombs – an allegation that wound up in Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union address but which administration officials have since repudiated. Scientist's Death Savage Blow to UK Government By Paul Majendie Reuters July 19, 2003 EXCERPT: British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government was shaken to the core by the death of a scientist ensnared in a vitriolic row between the BBC and the Labor administration over the Iraq war. As British media tore into the government's handling of the affair, Blair called Saturday for an end to speculation over the tragedy of David Kelly, suspected as the "mole" behind a BBC report alleging that Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell "sexed up" a dossier on the case for war. The Syrian Bet Did the Bush Administration burn a useful source on Al Qaeda? by SEYMOUR M. HERSH The New Yorker July 18,2003 (posted July 19) Hersh examines US use of military power and intimidation and the complete disregard for Syrian cooperation and information that may have been useful against Al Queda and its Saudi Arabian supporters. Will the UN bail out Bush? By Jim Lobe July 19, 2003 Asia Times EXCERPT:  Make no mistake: US President George W Bush is in big trouble. Whereas a week ago, Americans were talking about the dread "V" word - for Vietnam - this week the dreaded "W" word - for Watergate - was back in vogue, even as the "V" word was still in use. Watergate plus Vietnam is about the worst combination for a sitting president that anyone could possibly imagine. US won't take India's 'No' for an answer By Sultan Shahin Asia Times July 19, 2003 EXCERPT: Ever since the United States sought Indian military help to continue its three-month-old occupation of Iraq, speculation about the carrots and sticks attached to the request have been rife. As New Delhi dithered, suspicions grew stronger, despite denials of pressure from both sides, that the incentives were substantial, as were the potential punishments.   March 2001 contingency plans? Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map of iraqi Oilfields July 17, 2003 (posted July 19) Judicial Watch, the conservative public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org. The US needs allies - but is too proud to pay the price Martin Woollacott The Guardian July 18, 2003 The US is in danger of moving from a unilateralism it freely chose to an isolation it neither desired nor expected. As the costs and difficulties of reconstructing Iraq come home to Washington, it looks as if America is going to be left to bear the burden without the major aid from its friends and allies, other than Britain, that it now desperately wants. An over-confident administration had at first assumed it would not need much help from others in Iraq. They then concluded they did need it but that it would not be too difficult to drum up. Now they are realising they are unlikely, at least in the near future, to get soldiers and financial help from other countries in anything like the quantities they had hoped. Missionary position In the US, Blair takes too much on trust The Guardian July 19, 2003 For those who say they simply cannot fathom Tony Blair's apparently willing subservience to George Bush's Washington, his speech to this week's joint session of the US Congress offers a clue. Mr Blair sees the world not as it is but as he thinks it should be. His motivation is as much moral and emotional as it is intellectual. "I feel a most urgent sense of mission about today's world," he told America's leaders. Media Patrol Cursor.org July 18, 2003 EXCERPTS: The U.S. State Department received copies of what would turn out to be forged Niger documents in October 2002, reports the Washington Post, contradicting earlier Bush administration claims that it did not have them before the State of the Union speech. The documents were distributed to the CIA and other agencies within days, but the U.S. government waited four months to turn them over to U.N. weapons inspectors. The White House official who pushed for the inclusion of the uranium claim in President Bush's speech, has been identified as Robert Joseph. Who is he? A weapons expert who this week denied being the main source for the BBC story claiming that the British government "sexed-up" intelligence on Iraq, has reportedly been found dead. Bush refuses responsibility for his own speech and takes the position with Blair that it makes no difference what was said to justify Iraq War. Blair's address to US Congress and following Bush/Blair news conference. New York Times July 18, 2003 Drowning pair attempt to save each other Bush at His Side, Blair Is Resolute in War's Defense By RICHARD W. STEVENSON New York Times July 17, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPT: Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain stood shoulder to shoulder with President Bush today in defending the war to depose Saddam Hussein, saying the conflict was justified even if allied forces find no banned weapons in Iraq. 'Time running out' to secure Iraq BBC News July 18, 2003 EXCERPTS: US troops are under pressure in Iraq, as are their leaders at home A high-level advisory team sent to Iraq by the United States Defence Department says the window of opportunity to establish law and order is rapidly closing. It says urgent action is needed in the next three months to achieve progress in providing security, basic services, and political and economic opportunity for the Iraqi people. Iraq has been beset by problems with security and basic services since the end of the conflict and the team says that, without rapid change, there is a growing potential for real chaos. Troop morale low in Iraq One News Jul 17, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPTS: Fed up with being in Iraq and demoralised by their role as peacekeepers in a risky place, a group of US soldiers aired their plight on US television on Wednesday and said they had lost faith in the Army. Told several times they would be going home only to have their hopes dashed this week, a small group of soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, spoke of poor morale and disillusionment with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "If Donald Rumsfeld were here, I'd ask him for his resignation," one disgruntled soldier told ABC's "Good Morning America" show. Asked by a reporter what his message would be for Rumsfeld, another said: "I would ask him why we are still here. I don't have any clue as to why we are still in Iraq." Also read Troop morale in Iraq hits 'rock bottom' Soldiers stress is a key concern as the Army ponders whether to send more forces. By Ann Scott Tyson Christian Science Monitor July 7, 2003 (posted July18) EXCERPT: US troops facing extended deployments amid the danger, heat, and uncertainty of an Iraq occupation are suffering from low morale that has in some cases hit "rock bottom." In one Army unit, an officer described the mentality of troops. "They vent to anyone who will listen. They write letters, they cry, they yell. Many of them walk around looking visibly tired and depressed.... We feel like pawns in a game that we have no voice [in]." C.I.A. Uproar New Details Emerge on Uranium Claim and Bush's Speech By JAMES RISEN and DAVID E. SANGER New York Times July 17, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPTS: More details came to light today about how disputed language about Iraq's possible designs on African uranium appeared in President Bush's State of the Union address. The words in the January address were the subject of testimony before a Senate Committee on Wednesday. Never Mind the Torture Mother Jones July 18,2003 EXCERPTS: These must be proud days for Islam Karimov, dictator of Uzbekistan and newly-anointed defender of freedom and democracy in Central Asia. Indeed, in the eyes of some on the right wing, Karimov appears to have joined the pantheon of distinguished international freedom fighters. In his commitment to the war on terror, the central Asian tyrant has proved himself the equal of right-wing heroes like Angolan warlord and conflict diamond smuggler Jonas Savimbi, who -- with CIA backing and apartheid South Africa's help -- prolonged his country's civil war for decades. Or perhaps he's more like Nicaragua's thuggish Contras, whom Ronald Reagan compared to America's Founding Fathers. Back then, of course, our unsavory allies abroad were fighting communism. Now they're battling Islamic terrorists -- or in Karimov's case, any political opposition at all, Islamic or not. Bush as historical "revisionist" President Defends Allegation on Iraq by Dana Priest and Dana Milbank Washington Post July 14, 2003 (posted July 18) EXCERPT: The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective. In the face of persistent questioning about the use of intelligence before the Iraq war, administration officials have responded with evolving and sometimes contradictory statements. The matter has become increasingly charged, as Democrats demand hearings about Bush's broader use of intelligence to justify the Iraq war. Many Humanitarian Crises Ignored CBS News July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: The World Disasters Report, issued annually by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said 24,500 people died in natural and man-made catastrophes, ranging from earthquakes to plane crashes, in 2002. The figure does not include war. Amid these deaths, the 239-page study said international aid made a general shift toward "high profile aid efforts in politically strategic conflicts," mostly linked to the U.S.-led war on terror. Aid to Afghanistan, for example, tripled after the Sept. 11 attacks even though the humanitarian needs were unchanged. Meanwhile, suffering countries like Angola, Somalia and Congo have been all but ignored, the report said. "Humanitarian aid does not deal an equal hand to all those suffering under the shadow of conflict, disease or disaster," said federation Secretary-General Didier Cherpitel in his introduction to the study. The underlying story... The spies who pushed for war The Guardian Julian Borger  July 17, 2003 (posted 18 July) Bush's shadow intelligence unit (Office of Special Plans - OSP)  is revealed. Plausible reasons are documented for  the Bush administration's 1) unflinching support of Ariel Sharon's Likud government policy, 2) the Iraq war, 3) "uranium-gate" and 4) why Bush can't be straight about it.   Bush administration exaggerates Syria WMD threat, says CIA The Miami Herald July 15, 2003 (posted July 17) EXCERPTS: In a new dispute over interpreting intelligence data, the CIA and other agencies objected vigorously to a Bush administration assessment of the threat of Syria's weapons of mass destruction that was to be presented Tuesday on Capitol Hill. After the objections, the planned testimony by Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, a leading administration hawk, was delayed until September. Bolton was prepared to claim that Syria's supposed development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons posed a threat to the region. Media Underplays U.S. Death Toll in Iraq Soldiers Dead Since May Is 3 Times Official Count By Greg Mitchell July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: Any way you look at it, the news is bad enough. According to Thursday's press and television reports, 33 U.S. soldiers have now died in combat since President Bush declared an end to the major fighting in the war on May 2. This, of course, is a tragedy for the men killed and their families, and a problem for the White House. But actually the numbers are much worse -- and rarely reported by the media. According to official military records, the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq since May 2 is actually 85. This includes a staggering number of non-combat deaths. Even if killed in a non-hostile action, these soldiers are no less dead, their families no less aggrieved. And it's safe to say that nearly all of these people would still be alive if they were still back in the States. A Web site called Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx) is tracking the deaths, by whatever cause, of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, based on official Pentagon and CENTCOM press releases and Army Times and CNN casualty trackers. War on terror 'hurts poor' By Alex Kirby BBC News Online July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: The world stands accused of double standards in its thirst to end the scourge of international terrorism. Aid donors and relief agencies, a report says, are concentrating increasingly on politically strategic countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. They are neglecting emergencies in poor countries in Africa and elsewhere, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. It adds that the developed world spends too much trying to exclude asylum seekers, and too little helping them. Administration grows desperate. Only 10 of 70 nations asked willing to assist US in Iraq Pullout in Afghanistan worries Germany By Nicholas Kralev THE WASHINGTON TIMES July 17,2003 EXCERPTS: Germany expressed concern yesterday that some European countries, apparently acting under U.S. pressure to help the coalition forces in Iraq, have pulled their troops out of Afghanistan, leaving behind a still dangerous environment. While resisting the Bush administration's calls for contributions to the security effort in Iraq, Berlin said it was ready to provide humanitarian assistance. More Cover for Peacekeeping Nations Debated By Colum Lynch Washington Post July 17, 2003 EXCERPT: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that he has begun discussions with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and some of his foreign counterparts on whether to seek a new U.N. Security Council mandate that would provide additional cover to states considering participation in peacekeeping in Iraq. Shades of Viet Nam U.S. Forces in Iraq Facing'Guerrillas' By MATT KELLEY Associated Press July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: Still, Abizaid's use of the term "guerrilla warfare" was a striking departure for a top military leader. As recently as last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials refused to use the term, saying attacks on U.S. forces were too sporadic and disorganized to qualify as a guerrilla campaign. Abizaid credited attackers with improved organization, tactics and financing as he suggested American soldiers may face deployments of a length seldom seen since the Vietnam War. Tenet Says White House Official Insisted Questionable Information Be Included in Speech By Ken Guggenheim Associated Press July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: CIA Director George Tenet told members of Congress a White House official insisted that President Bush's State of the Union address include an assertion about Saddam Hussein's nuclear intentions that had not been verified, a Senate Intelligence Committee member said Thursday. "And there was this negotiation between the White House and the CIA about just how far you could go and be close to the truth and unfortunately those sixteen words were included in the most important speech the president delivers in any given year," Durbin added. Tenet - described as "very contrite." The Bush buck may not stop anywhere Iraq: Who takes the blame? By Jim Lobe Asia Times July 17, 2003 EXCERPTS: Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld has become distinctly testy, while Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz seems almost to have disappeared from public view, and Vice President Dick Cheney hasn't been heard from in weeks. Outgoing White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has been reduced to barnyard epithets when asked about how a reference to forged documents about alleged Iraqi purchases of African uranium made it into President George W Bush's State of the Union address in January, while the headline in the USA Today on Monday says "CIA director [George Tenet] nudged toward the plank". Evidence mounts...names, dates, places Iraq: Schemers have their way By Jim Lobe Asia Time July 16,2003 EXCERPTS: With demands for a full-scale investigation of the manipulation of intelligence by the administration of President George W Bush mounting steadily, it appears increasingly clear that key officials and their allies outside the administration decided to use the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as a pretext for going to war against Iraq within hours of the attacks themselves. Within the administration, the principals appear to have included Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney and his national-security advisor, I Lewis Libby, among others in key posts in the National Security Council and the State Department. Outside the administration, key figures included close friends of both Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, including Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief James Woolsey - both members of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB); Frank Gaffney, head of the arms industry-funded Center for Security Policy; and William Kristol, editor of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard and chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), among others. Worry not, privatization will take care of it! Water Water Everywhere Who Will Get the Drops to Drink? Free Speech TV July 16, 2003 EXCERPT: A worldwide crisis over water is brewing. According to the United Nations, 31 countries are now facing water scarcity and 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water. Water consumption is doubling every 20 years and, at the same time, water sources are rapidly being polluted, depleted, diverted and exploited by corporate interests ranging from industrial agriculture and manufacturing to electricity production and mining. The World Bank predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will suffer from lack of clean and safe drinking water. Bush Faced Dwindling Data on Iraq Nuclear Bid By Walter Pincus Washington Post July 16, 2003 EXCERPT: ...a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.   Another Bush-Rice Initiative US to give missiles to Taiwan The Courier-Mail (Austrailia) July 13, 2003 (posted July 15) EXCERPT: The US will deliver 200 advanced air-to-air missiles to Taiwan after it had held them in a US air base for three years to avoid upsetting China, a news report said today. When it agreed to sell the AIM-120C advanced medium range air-to-air missiles to Taiwan in 2000, Washington decided to hold the weapons in the United States to avoid giving the island air supremacy over China or provoking Beijing into accelerating its pursuit of a similar capability. Dug-Up Iraqi Parts' Potential Faces Doubt ABC News July 14, 2003 EXCERPT: A top U.N. weapons hunter says it would have been "virtually impossible" for Iraq to revive a nuclear bomb program with equipment recently dug up from a Baghdad backyard, as the Bush administration contends. N Korea 'on path to war with US' BBC News July 15, 2003 EXCERPT: A senior American politician has warned that North Korea and the United States could go to war as early as this year over Pyongyang's alleged nuclear weapons programme. William Perry, who served as defence secretary under former President Bill Clinton, told the Washington Post newspaper the key issue was that North Korea appeared to have begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods, a key step towards building up its nuclear arsenal. "I have thought for some months that if the North Koreans moved toward processing, then we are on a path toward war," he said. Pattern of Corruption By PAUL KRUGMAN New York Times July 14, 2003 (posted July 15) EXCERPT: More than half of the U.S. Army's combat strength is now bogged down in Iraq, which didn't have significant weapons of mass destruction and wasn't supporting Al Qaeda. We have lost all credibility with allies who might have provided meaningful support; Tony Blair is still with us, but has lost the trust of his public. All this puts us in a very weak position for dealing with real threats. Did I mention that North Korea has been extracting fissionable material from its fuel rods? How did we get into this mess? The case of the bogus uranium purchases wasn't an isolated instance. It was part of a broad pattern of politicized, corrupted intelligence. Is Iraq Becoming a New Vietnam? Orville Schell YaleGlobal 14 July 2003 (posted 15 July) EXCERPT: Is the American occupation of Iraq turning into a Vietnam-style quagmire? With American casualties mounting almost daily and the Bush Administration hinting at increasing troop levels, it is a question that will be asked. "Iraq may be witnessing the beginning of a people's war that is hauntingly reminiscent of the genre perfected by Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh." He says that despite people's loathing of Saddam Hussein, few countries have ever welcomed foreign air strikes, invasion, and occupation, and that history is replete with occasions when nationalism trumped even a people's loathing of dictatorship to challenge interlopers. The Two Faces of George Bush in Africa by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman CommonDreams.org July 11, 2003 (posted July 14) EXCERPT: Among the key U.S negotiating aims, announced U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, is to "establish standards that reflect a standard of [patent] protection similar to that found in U.S. law and that build on the foundations established in the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS Agreement)." Pushing for equivalent patent standards in Africa will severely limit countries' ability to take appropriate measures to address HIV/AIDS and other serious health problems. It also happens to run contrary to repeated U.S. promises. Adjusting to Empire Commentary by Yiffat Susskind ZNet 12 July 2003 (posted July 14) EXCERPT: There has always been a tension in American political culture between the ideals of a democratic republic and the pursuit of foreign empire – but never more so than today. The Bush Administration, guided by a small group of neo-conservative ideologues, has dragged the US into blatant pursuit of empire, triggering a crisis in American identity. Historically, US presidents have invoked America’s founding mythology to create a public perception of US foreign policy as a series of moral imperatives. Bill Gates': Killing Africans for Profit and PR and Mr. Bush's Bogus AIDS Offer GregPalast.com Monday July 14, 2003 Bill Gates and George Bush II are perpetrating deceit of the cruelest kind with their AIDS programs. Both projects are generally described by the media as compassionate and generous. Instead, Greg Palast says, they are designed to protect personal and corporate interests and will only work to deny access of a majority of African AIDS patients the cheap drugs that Nelson Mandela and others are pushing for. Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to his writings for Britain's Observer and Guardian newspapers, and view his investigative reports for BBC Television's Newsnight, at www.GregPalast.com. Wanted! Dead or Alive When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy By THOMAS POWERS New York Times July 13, 2003 (posted July 14) EXCERPTS: The campaign to kill him (Saddam Hussein ), frankly admitted and discussed by high officials in the White House, Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency, has committed the United States for the first time to public, personalized, open-ended warfare in the classic mode of Middle Eastern violence — an eye for an eye, a life for a life. ...that effort (to kill the deposed leader) inevitably reopens a long-simmering American argument over assassination, never embraced openly in so many words but never repudiated once and for all. Despite much tough talk of killing enemies since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration still shrinks from using the word assassination, and much of the public continues to oppose it as both dangerous and wrong — dangerous because it commits the United States to a campaign of murder and countermurder, and wrong because hunting people down, however it plays in the movies, excuses murder by calling it something else. Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in October By Walter Pincus and Mike Allen Washington Post July 13, 2003 (posted July 14) EXCERPTS: CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials. The Best-Laid Plans By Richard Wolffe and T. Trent Gegax NEWSWEEK July 21 Issue (posted July 14) EXCERPTS: From electricity to the Iraqi Army, the administration’s postwar planning focused on the wrong problems. Asked if the Army had a template for peacekeeping in Iraq, V Corps commander Lt. Gen. William Wallace laughed softly to himself. “Well,” he answered, “we’re making this up here as we go along.” They had no choice. Bush advisers never guessed that the postwar reconstruction would be so difficult. Pentagon Plan 5030, a new blueprint for facing down North Korea US News July 21 Issue (posted July 14, 2003) EXCERPTS: By Bruce B. Auster and Kevin Whitelaw Within the past two months, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has ordered U.S. military commanders to devise a new war plan for a possible conflict with North Korea. Elements of the draft, known as Operations Plan 5030, are so aggressive that they could provoke a war, some senior Bush administration officials tell U.S. News. Belgium law change condemned BBC News July 14, 2003 EXCERPTS: Human rights groups have attacked the Belgian Government's decision to withdraw a controversial war crimes law. The US-based organisation, Human Rights Watch has accused Belgium of giving in to pressure from the United States. India rules out its troops for Iraq By Sudha Ramachandran Asia Times July 14, 2003 EXCERPTS: India, after foot dragging for over two months, will not send its troops to participate in a "stabilization force" in Iraq. Wary of the negative political and electoral fallout of sending its troops, especially in the context of the recent revelations regarding the Central Intelligence Agency's use of false information in the leadup to the war on Iraq, the government turned down the American invitation. Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said that such a deployment could be considered only under a United Nations mandate. US urged not to forget Afghanistan Afghan Minister Affirms Commitment to Hold Elections Next Year VOA News July 14, 2003 EXCERPTS: Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah urged the United States not to forget about Afghanistan. "We will remind everybody that Afghanistan is the biggest, the biggest, test for the United States and the international community," he said. "We cannot afford failure in Afghanistan. It is the credibility of the international community, the United States as the lead member of the coalition, which is at stake. NATO is due to take authority over international forces in Afghanistan on August 11. This will be the Alliance's first so-called "out-of-area" operation in its 54-year history. US threat to cut NATO funding proves effective... Belgium scraps war crimes law BBC News July 13, 2003 EXCERPT: Belgium's new government has confirmed it is repealing a controversial law which gives the courts power to try all cases of war crimes no matter where they were committed or by whom. N Korea 'reprocesses' nuclear rods By Charles Scanlon BBC News July 13, 2003 EXCERPT: North Korea is claiming to have reprocessed nuclear fuel rods that could produce enough plutonium for several atom bombs, according to a South Korean news agency. American satellites and spy planes have been keeping watch, but US officials concede their intelligence is imperfect. South Korea's intelligence agency also believes the process has begun, but there is still confusion and ambiguity. White House was warned by CIA of dubious intelligence used in speech By Jonathan S. Landay Knight Ridder Newspapers July 12, 2003 (posted July 13) EXCERPT Making his case for war with Iraq, President Bush in his State of the Union address this year accused Saddam Hussein of trying to buy uranium from Africa even though the CIA had warned White House and other officials that the story didn't check out. A senior CIA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the intelligence agency informed the White House on March 9, 2002 - 10 months before Bush's nationally televised speech - that an agency source who had traveled to Niger couldn't confirm European intelligence reports that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from the West African country. Despite the CIA's misgivings, Bush said in his State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." No real planning for postwar Iraq KnightRidder Washington Bureau July13, 2003 EXCERPT The small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department who dominated planning for postwar Iraq failed to prepare for the setbacks that have erupted over the past two months. The officials didn't develop any real postwar plans because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the country's leader. The Pentagon civilians ignored CIA and State Department experts who disputed them, resisted White House pressure to back off from their favored exile leader and when their scenario collapsed amid increasing violence and disorder, they had no backup plan. The disenchanted U.S. officials today think the failure of the Pentagon civilians to develop such detailed plans contributed to the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq. "We could have done so much better," lamented a former senior Pentagon official, who is still a Defense Department adviser. While most officials requested anonymity because going public could force them out of government service, some were willing to talk on the record. Muslim call to thwart capitalism By Mark McCallum In Granada, Spain July 12, 2003 (posted July 13) An Islamic conference in the Spanish city of Granada has called on Muslims around the world to help bring about the end of the capitalist system. The call came at a conference titled 'Islam in Europe' attended by about 2,000 Muslims. Blair seeks new powers to attack rogue states By Andy McSmith and Jo Dillon The Independent 13 July 2003 EXCERPT Tony Blair is appealing to the heads of Western governments to agree a new world order that would justify the war in Iraq even if Saddam Hussein's elusive weapons of mass destruction are never found. It would also give Western powers the authority to attack any other sovereign country whose ruler is judged to be inflicting unnecessary suffering on his own people. A Downing Street document, circulated among foreign heads of state who are in London for a summit, has provoked a fierce row between Mr Blair and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. 20 Lies About the War By Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker The Independent 13 July 2003 EXCERPT Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath. 1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks 2 Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together 3 Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons programme 4 Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons 5 Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War 6 Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus 7 Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox 8 US and British claims were supported by the inspectors 9 Previous weapons inspections had failed 10 Iraq was obstructing the inspectors 11 Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes 12 The "dodgy dossier" 13 War would be easy 14 Umm Qasr 15 Basra rebellion 16 The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch 17 Troops would face chemical and biological weapons 18 Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD 19 Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis 20 WMD were found Canadians vote Bush least-liked president By SHAWN McCARTHY The Globe and Mail July 12, 2003 EXCERPT U.S. President George W. Bush is the most unpopular American president in recent memory among Canadians, with more than 60 per cent saying they have an unfavourable opinion of him, according to a new poll "George Bush as president will probably be the best thing that ever happened to Canadian nationalism. He totally personifies the essence of the side of the United States that Canadians tend to dislike — the anti-intellectual Texan in a Stetson, social conservative." Iraq falling apart News24.com July 7, 2003 (posted July 12) EXCERPT Dr Eva-Maria Hobiger, working in Basra described a "disastrous humanitarian and security situation" in Iraq, the Catholic press agency Kathpress reported on Thursday. Hobiger, running a project named "Aladdin's Lamp" for children with cancer, said people were forced to drink polluted and poisonous water from rivers. The number of typhus and cholera cases had increased sharply, she said. There were no medicines for the chronically ill. In Baghdad there were large supplies, but the distribution system had collapsed completely, she added. Hobiger said that despite the horrors and cruelty of the Saddam Hussein regime, many Iraqis were longing for a return to former conditions. Among the younger, educated sectors of the population there was a huge suicide rate, she said. Poorer and more simple people were increasingly sympathizing with radical Islamist groups. Justice System Wins Few Hearts, Minds In Iraq By Héctor Tobar LATimes July 12, 2003 EXCERPT Many Iraqi detainees are held in harsh conditions without due process guarantees. U.S. says the 'deficiencies' are temporary. Pact signed on intercepting N Korean weapons By Bob Burton Asia Times July 12, 2003 EXCERPT CANBERRA - Ten governments offered on Thursday their support for US moves aimed at North Korea - to intercept shipping, air or land transport of possible materials associated with weapons of mass destruction or missiles capable of delivering them. After two days of talks hosted in Brisbane by the Australian government, the meeting approved a statement that endorsed the possibility that one or more of the nations involved in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) could intercept shipments, including those on the high seas. Bremer a quick study in colony building By Pepe Escobar Asia Times July 12, 2003 EXCERPT "We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or ... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country. We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country." This is US proconsul in Iraq Paul Bremer, speaking from Baghdad last Saturday. "I appeal to you, O Iraqis, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, Shi'a or Sunni, Christians or Muslims, it is your duty to expel the aggressor invaders from our country." This is allegedly Saddam Hussein in his new audio-tape broadcast by Lebanon's al-Hayat-LBC channel (only a few days after the July 4 tape broadcast by al-Jazeera). The question is inescapable: whom are Iraqis listening to? The "occuliberator" or the invisible former dictator? For Pentagon masters and their faithful lieutenant Bremer, there is no such thing as legitimate Iraqi indigenous resistance to foreign occupation. But Asia Times Online has reported that the resistance spirit previously confined to the Sunni belt around Baghdad has also "contaminated" Shi'ite religious leaders. Whatever the spin, and whatever the cost - at least in the short to medium term - in US casualties, the game plan remains to occupy and control Iraq for years. Support for Bush Declines As Casualties Mount in Iraq By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane Washington Post July 12, 2003 EXCERPT Public support for President Bush has dropped sharply amid growing concerns about U.S. military casualties and doubts whether the war with Iraq was worth fighting, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Bush's overall job approval rating dropped to 59 percent, down nine points in the past 18 days. That decline exactly mirrored the slide in public support for Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, which now stands at 58 percent. Iraq weapons unlikely to be found, say UK inside sources BBC News July 12, 2003 EXCERPT Senior UK sources no longer believe weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, the BBC has learned. BBC political editor Andrew Marr said last night that "very senior sources" in Whitehall had virtually ruled out the possibility of finding the weapons. Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the admissions were a "dramatic development" and ex-Prime Minister John Major has called for a full independent inquiry into the basis for war. US warned over Iraq law enforcement By Jimmy Burns in London Financial Times July 11, 2003 EXCERPT The law enforcement operation in Iraq could disintegrate unless US forces stop "kicking ass" and take a more conciliatory attitude towards civilians, senior UK police advisers have told their government. Some UK officials have been appalled by the language and tactics used by the US security supremo, Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner dubbed the "Baghdad terminator" because of his uncompromising style. "The Americans need to learn that civil policing is not about 'kicking ass', it is about democracy. There are going to be problems if we continue with our different philosophies and different approaches to law enforcement," one UK official said. Digging for dirt Jim Lobe Asia Times July 11, 2003 EXCERPT Having come clean over "one little flaw" in its evidence against Saddam Hussein's purported weapons of mass destruction, Washington, rather than set minds at rest, has got people thinking that maybe it's time to dig a bit deeper. White House 'lied about Saddam threat' Julian Borger July 10, 2003 The Guardian EXCERPT A former US intelligence official who served under the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war accused the White House yesterday of lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides. This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude ... 'We know the answers - give us the intelligence to support those answers'. At a press conference yesterday, Mr Thielmann said that, as of March 2003, when the US began military operations, "Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbors or to the United States". The Abduction of Modernity Part 2: That old time religion Asia Times By Henry C K Liu July 10, 2003 EXCERPT Those who argue that modernity is a product of the West forget that its predominant religion, Christianity, endured centuries of ignorance and intolerance, and that enlightenment and innovation were long the domain of the world's two other major faiths, Islam and Buddhism. Bush Skirts Question on 'Evidence' By RICHARD W. STEVENSON New York Times July 9, 2003 President Bush brushed aside questions today about the accuracy of a piece of evidence he used to justify war with Iraq, by saying he was "absolutely confident" he made the right decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power by force. ACTION ALERT—CALL CONGRESS TODAY! URGE THEM TO VOTE NO ON HARMFUL FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS WITH CHILE AND SINGAPORE Texas Fair Trade Coalition Notification July 9, 2003 EXCERPT On July 10th at 2 PM EST the US House Ways and Means committee members will be "marking up" and voting on free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore. These agreements fail to provide any meaningful protection for workers or the environment in the US or in Chile and Singapore. At the same time, they grant new powers to corporations to challenge public health and safety laws, establish offshore sweatshop havens, and drastically change immigration policy leading to abuse of workers in all three countries. What's worse, these trade agreements are being touted as a model for future regional trade agreements including the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Iraq Occupation Cost Overrun International Herald Tribune July 9, 2003 EXCERPT Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put a price tag Wednesday on the costs of U.S. operations in Iraq — $3.9 billion a month — that was considerably higher than previous estimates, as he faced tough questioning from senators who want other countries to absorb far more of the coalition’s human and financial costs. In addition to the cost figure for Iraq, which Rumsfeld provided after repeated, pointed requests from members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said that operations in Afghanistan were costing $900 million to $950 million a month — a figure he revised upward from $700 million even in the course of the day. Even last month, members of Congress were citing estimates of $3 billion a month for Iraq and $500 million for Afghanistan. The ongoing attacks on U.S.-led forces have added to pressure to broaden the coalition. The Michigan senator (Carl Levin) had used his opening statement to call strongly for greater international participation. ‘‘The whole world has a stake in the stability of Iraq,’’ he said. ‘‘It is a mystery to my why apparently we have not reached out to NATO and to the United Nations as institutions. Their support could bring significant additional forces, such as German and French forces through NATO, and Indian and Egyptian forces through a UN endorsement.’’ .A greater role for international troops might make the coalition a less appealing target, Levin said. ‘‘It would be harder for those Saddam loyalists to sustain attacks on forces wearing NATO or UN patches on their shoulders,’’ he said. Rumsfeld replied that ‘‘we have reached out to NATO,’’ and that the alliance was assisting Poland, the third-largest coalition partner after the United States and Britain. Pipe(line) Dreams Mother Jones July 9, 2003 EXCERPT In the face of guerilla attacks that are killing soldiers on an almost daily basis, US and British troops in Iraq seem to be having a hard enough time with the safekeeping of their own lives, never mind the country's ramshackle infrastructure. The troops' inability to secure the oil and energy infrastructure in Iraq has left oil pipelines and electricity facilities vulnerable to sabotage. As a result, international oil prices are rising, and the administration's promise to fund Iraq's reconstruction with oil revenues has started to ring a bit hollow . The power of silence By Gorill Husby and Guri Wiggen Asian Times July 10, 2003 EXCERPT The level of self-censorship in the media has risen not just during the Iraq war but also since September 11, says Robert Fisk from The Independent newspaper published in Britain and John Pilger, Australian broadcaster and film maker. Pilger and Fisk both spoke to Inter Press Service on visits to Oslo recently. Pilger was to receive the US$100,000 Sophie Prize for 30 years of work to expose deception and war against humanity. Fisk gave a lecture at Fritt Ord, a Norwegian media foundation. "Propaganda is not found just in totalitarian states," Pilger said. "There at least they know they are being lied to. We tend to assume it is the truth. In the US, censorship is rampant." Pilger said. "Lies were transformed into themes for public debate. The true reason was of course - as we all now know - not to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and remove their alleged weapons of mass destruction, but to achieve the real Anglo-American aim; to capture an oil-rich country and to control the Middle East." The Abduction of Modernity Asia Times By Henry C K Liu July 9, 2003 EXCERPT Western thinkers, many of whom cannot speak or read any non-Western language, are held back in their analysis of modern civilization by the assumption that modernity is an exclusive characteristic of the West. At a time when the sole superpower is resurrecting the practice of imposing national will by military might, Henry C K Liu examines this assumption in a series of articles.  Bush Admission of Incorrectness Looks More Like a Lie Former U.S. Envoy Says Bush Administration “Twisted” Intelligence Related to Nuclear Weapons Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Global Security Network July 8, 2003 EXCERPT A former U.S. ambassador to Gabon who was involved in an attempt to verify whether Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Niger prior to the war said in a New York Times opinion piece yesterday that the Bush administration “twisted” some intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program (see GSN, July 3).“Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat,” Joseph Wilson wrote. White House Acknowledges Bush Should Not Have Included Uranium Purchase Claim in State of the Union Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Global Security Network July 8, 2003 EXCERPT The Bush administration yesterday acknowledged that President George W. Bush should not have included a claim in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium in Africa (see GSN, July 7). “Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq’s attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," a senior Bush administration official said last night in a statement authorized by the White House. Book Review We Didn't Start the Fire: Capitalism and Its Critics, Then and Now Sheri Berman review of The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought. Jerry Z. Muller. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, 487 pp. $30.00 From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2003 (Posted 7 July, 2003) EXCERPT The Mind and the Market shows that complaints about capitalism are older and more respectable than most of the antagonists in today's globalization debates realize. Now and in the past, the real debate about markets has focused not simply on their economic potential but also on the broader impact they have on the lives of individuals and societies. Critics have worried, and still worry, not about whether unleashing markets will lead to economic growth, but about whether markets themselves will unleash morally and socially irresponsible behavior while eviscerating long-standing communities, traditions, and cultures. BBC board considers Iraq row BBC News July 6, 2003 (posted 7 July) EXCERPT BBC bosses are meeting to discuss the corporation's continuing row with the government over claims Number 10 "sexed up" a dossier on Iraqi weapons. Both the BBC and Downing Street are standing firm over their interpretation of reporter Andrew Gilligan's 19 May story about the dossier. He reported that a senior intelligence official told him that extra prominence was given, at Downing Street's request, to a claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes. New blow to Blair over Iraq By SIMON WALTERS and JASON LEWIS London - The Advertiser July 7, 2003 EXCERPT BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair's claim that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction will be found eventually was dealt a massive blow last night after it was revealed that the Foreign Office no longer believes they exist. Senior Government sources have told The Mail On Sunday that the Foreign Office has given up hope of finding chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. The source said: "We live in hope but we just can't find them. Most people at the Foreign Office don't think we ever will. The Prime Minister still thinks they will be found – perhaps he has more information." The disclosure is a major embarrassment to Mr Blair on the eve of tomorrow's publication of a Commons report into the row over whether the Government lied in the run-up to the war with Iraq. Bush plans bases to gird Africa Eric Schmidt in Washington and James Copnall in Dakar The Observer Sunday July 6, 2003 EXCERPT As George Bush prepares to leave for a whistle-stop tour of Africa, it has been revealed that he has ordered the US military to plan for a massive expansion of its presence on the continent. The Pentagon aims to secure aircraft refuelling agreements in Uganda and Senegal, two of the five nations Bush will visit. As officials consider whether to send US troops into Liberia to oversee a tentative ceasefire, the Pentagon is working on strengthening ties with Morocco and Tunisia. Arab countries of the Maghreb and in sub-Saharan Africa will be the main focus of new basing agreements and training exercises intended to combat a growing terrorist threat in the region. The Pentagon also wants to set up army bases in Mali and Algeria, which US forces could use for training or for strikes on terrorist targets. Violence in Iraq Spreads Beyond Military By JIM KRANE Associated Press Writer in the Guardian July 7, 2003 EXCERPT (AP) - The point-blank shooting of an unarmed British reporter on a Baghdad street and a grenade attack on a U.N. compound raised concern Sunday that Iraq's worsening insurgency - until now targeting only coalition troops and Iraqis accused of U.S. collaboration - will spread to Westerners in general. Opps, sorry Rummy Top General Says Iraqi Resistance Is Far From 'Monolithic' By BRIAN KNOWLTON, International Herald Tribune as in the NYTimes July 6,2003 EXCERPT Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today that despite the string of deadly attacks on coalition forces, the resistance in Iraq was far from "monolithic" or nationwide, instead appearing fragmented and limited to a small triangular area from Baghdad to the north and west. Criticism of the war and its aftermath was further fueled when a former United States diplomat said publicly that the Bush administration might willfully have ignored his conclusion, made on a C.I.A.-sponsored fact-finding trip to Niger, that Iraq almost surely did not seek uranium from that African country, despite administration claims that it had. The diplomat, Joseph Wilson, said that the administration appeared to have "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat" by saying repeatedly that Baghdad had and was pursuing weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons have been found. The Poles know it's the oil Poland seeks Iraqi oil stake BBC News July 3, 2003 (posted 5 July) EXCERPT Poland, which has sent troops to support the US-led forces in Iraq, has acknowledged its "ultimate objective" is to acquire supplies of Iraqi oil. The Polish Foreign Minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said his country had never disguised the fact that it sought direct access to the oilfields. Might makes right, the cowboy way... Equal in the Eyes of What Law? Mother Jones News July 5, 2003 EXCERPT In its latest attempt to muscle other countries into submission, Washington has blackballed 35 countries that have refused to behave. Washington wants US troops over seas to have blanket immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court. Unless they refuse to prosecute US troops on their soil, countries that have received aid from the US will now be cut-off. Millions die, Bush is silent Salon.com By Laura McClure July 4, 2003 EXCERPT The Congo's descent into a vortex of murder and destruction is the globe's worst human crisis. But as he travels in Africa this week, the president will ignore it. Problems, problems July 4, 2003 From The Economist Global Agenda EXCERPT There are signs that the American public is beginning to get nervous about the stream of bad news and casualties coming from Iraq: an opinion poll this week put the number of Americans who believe things are not going well there at 42%, up from 13% at the beginning of May, when Saddam was toppled. Such is the level of disquiet that Mr Bush was forced to address public concern in a speech on July 1st. “The rise of Iraq, as an example of moderation and democracy and prosperity, is a massive and long-term undertaking,” he said. That wasn't quite what the American public signed up for before the war, though. US multilateralism? Bringing regime change to Africa From The Economist Global Agenda July 4, 2003 EXCERPT On Thursday July 3rd, four days before setting out on his first official visit to Africa, Mr Bush called, in his strongest terms to date, for Liberia’s president, Charles Taylor, to step down immediately, or else. Mr Bush’s officials let it be known that a contingent of up to 2,000 American troops is being readied for dispatch to Liberia. This time, American armed intervention has the full backing of both the United Nations and France. The French, and several West African states, have offered to contribute to a peacekeeping force for Liberia. (bwusa italics) Given that the president has his hands full trying to rebuild Iraq, brokering the peace talks in the Middle East and facing down North Korea and Iran over their nuclear ambitions, it is rather surprising that he has found the time to tackle some of Africa’s problems. Surprising but welcome. U.S. Soldier Killed, 18 Hurt in Two Attacks in Iraq -- 11 Iraqis Killed in Later Battle Purported Hussein Audio Tape Surfaces By Jamie Tarabay Associated Press Writer July 4, 2003 EXCERPT The incidents cast a shadow over the July 4 holiday for U.S. troops stationed in Iraq but many said they planned to continue celebrations despite the renewed violence. "We should be celebrating with our families. It is sad. Everybody wants to go home. I am glad that we came here to liberate Iraq, but I think it is time for soldiers to see their families," said Sgt. Thas Eagans from Irving, Tex. Israelis Kill Militant, Block Gaza Highway Reuters July 3, 2003 EXCERPT In the West Bank, Palestinian security sources said Israeli soldiers killed a member of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction in the town of Qalqilya. In Gaza on Thursday, an Israeli bulldozer placed cement barriers on the north-south highway to block Palestinian traffic for almost six hours. On Monday, Israel raised peace hopes by clearing the way to Palestinians for the first time in two-and-a-half years. An Israeli military source said the highway closure followed the firing of an anti-tank missile that wounded three Israelis at the Kfar Darom Jewish settlement in Gaza overnight. Dollar "ultimate weapon" for US U.S. Offers $25 Million Reward for Saddam's Capture Reuters July 3, 2003 EXCERPT More than three months after a U.S.-led war on Iraq toppled Saddam, there is still no sign of the former Iraqi president -- who ruled over Iraq for a quarter of a century -- or his sons. U.S.-led forces have come under attack increasingly in recent weeks, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has blamed the resistance on die-hard Saddam loyalists, unspecified foreigners and people he has said were "influenced by Iran." At least 23 U.S. and six British troops have been killed by hostile fire since President Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1, and Iraq remains awash with guns despite a mid-June arms surrender deadline set by U.S. forces. Internal review backs CIA on Iraq, but notes lack of details By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay Knight Ridder Newspapers July 2, 2003 EXCERPT The CIA was justified in telling President Bush and top aides last fall that Saddam Hussein was still seeking weapons of mass destruction, but the agency often lacked precise, up-to-date information about the threat that those weapons posed, an internal CIA review has found. The report, while broadly backing the spy agency, is likely to provide ammunition to critics who say the White House exaggerated the Iraqi threat beyond what was known by U.S. intelligence agencies. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top officials rarely, if ever, mentioned uncertainties about the state of Saddam's weapons programs or the quality of U.S. intelligence when making the case last fall and spring for an invasion of Iraq. U.S. Faces Long Stay In Iraq, Bush Says -- Americans' Faith in Postwar Success Fading By Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writer July 2, 2003 EXCERPT ...some lawmakers are accusing the administration of understating the task ahead. At least 31 U.S. and British military personnel have been killed and 178 wounded in combat in Iraq in the nine weeks since Bush announced that major combat operations had ended. Before the war, Bush spoke optimistically about a clean transformation of Iraq, arguing that U.S. troops would not remain in the region "for one day longer than is necessary." Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said last week that the U.S. presence in Iraq would be necessary for "at least five years" and criticized Bush's rhetoric. "This idea that we will be in just as long as we need to and not a day more -- we've got to get over that rhetoric," he said. "It is rubbish. We're going to be there a long time. We must reorganize our military to be there a long time." Amid reports of lawlessness and anti-U.S. violence in Iraq, Americans have begun to show ambivalence about the mission. In a Gallup poll for USA Today and CNN, only slim majorities of 56 percent thought that the postwar situation was going well and that the war was worthwhile... (In a poll by the) University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, 71 percent said they believed that the Bush administration implied that Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, while 25 percent believed, incorrectly, that Iraq was directly involved in the attacks.

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