15 December 2003

Pentagon Proves a Pipeline to Boeing
By Stephen J. Hedges and Susan Chandler
Chicago Tribune, 14 December 2003
Courtesy of the Agonist
EXCERPT: Boeing Co.'s hiring of an Air Force civilian contracting official in January hardly seemed out of the ordinary. Pentagon employees, both military and civilian, routinely move through the retirement revolving door, government pensions in hand, to start second careers with defense contractors.

With Saddam's Capture, Is Howard Dean Toast?
By William Saleton
Slate, 14 December 2003
EXCERPTS: Dean surged to the front of the Democratic presidential pack by opposing the war in Iraq. As the postwar turned bloody, expensive, and stagnant, it looked like a brilliant bet. But this morning, reporters and analysts seem convinced that the latest card drawn from the deck leaves him with a losing hand.... It's clear from interviews Dean gave to reporters Saturday (written up in Sunday's Washington Post and New York Times) that he's repositioning himself as a more hawkish candidate in the general election. He was planning to claim that position tomorrow in a major foreign policy speech. Now he'll have maximum attention as he does so. Bush's aides would be unwise to assume that Dean can't make their latest triumph vanish into history. They should know.
SEE ALSO: Dean Working to Be Seen as Foreign Policy Centrist (washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo)
SEE ALSO: Interviews with Democratic Candidates (NYT)
SEE ALSO: Clark Calls for Transparent Trial of Saddam (AP)

The Political Consequences of Racist Felony Disenfranchisement
By Paul Street
Black Commentator, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: In a period of painfully close presidential elections, with the most dangerous White House in history hoping to extend its criminal reign, every American vote in 2004 is potentially a matter of life and death for masses of people at home and abroad.  It is exceedingly significant, therefore, that 4.4 million Americans are disenfranchised due to a past or current felony conviction.  No other nation imprisons a larger share of its population or marks so large a share of its population with the lifelong mark of a serious (felony) criminal record. According to the best estimates last year, 13 million Americans ­ fully 7 percent of the adult population and an astonishing 12 percent of the adult male population ­ possess felony records.  At the same time, no other democratic nation denies the vote to a remotely comparable share of its offender and ex-offender population.
SEE ALSO: Find Out How Bush Will Steal Florida in 2004! (Palm Beach Post)

13-14 December 2003

Dean Makes Racial-Political History
By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
Black Commentator, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: Howard Dean¹s December 7 speech is the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years. Nothing remotely comparable has been said by anyone who might become or who has been President of the United States since Lyndon Johnson's June 4, 1965 affirmative action address to the graduating class at Howard University. For four decades, the primary political project of the Republican Party has been to transform itself into the White Man's Party. Not only in the Deep South, but also nationally, the GOP seeks to secure a majority popular base for corporate governance through coded appeals to white racism. The success of this GOP project has been the central fact of American politics for two generations--reaching its fullest expression in the Bush presidency. Yet a corporate covenant with both political parties has prohibited the mere mention of America's core contemporary political reality: the constant, routine mobilization of white voters through the imagery and language of race.
Last Sunday, Howard Dean broke that covenant: "In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way--by dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing out the worst in people. They called it the "Southern Strategy," and the Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using phrases like "racial quotas" and "welfare queens" to convince white Americans that minorities were to blame for all of America's problems. The Republican Party would never win elections if they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America piece by piece to their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few. To distract people from their real agenda, they run elections based on race, dividing us, instead of uniting us.

Capitol Kickbacks: Bribery Allegations in Washington
By Joan Claybrook
TomPaine.com, 12 Decemeber 2003
EXCERPT: Rep. Nick Smith's recent comment that he was bribed on the floor of the House to switch his vote on the Medicare bill generated a tempest of media coverage and insider speculation. As public watchdog groups have said, it deserves immediate attention by the Department of Justice. But Smith¹s isn¹t the only case that deserves Justice¹s scrutiny. Although federal prosecutors have charged two former executives of Westar Energy, the largest electric utility in Kansas, with looting $32 million from the company, no action has yet been taken on evidence indicating a possible criminal bribery scheme by these same Westar executives and members of the U. S. Congress.

Kucinich and Braun Blast ABC for Reducing Campaign Coverage
Democracy NOW!, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: ABC News announced it will stop having producers travel full time with the presidential campaigns of Carol Moseley Braun, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton a day after ABC News' Ted Koppel hosted the democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire. The network says it's a routine coverage decision, but the move has angered Braun and Kucinich -- particularly after the Ohio congressman had a testy exchange with Koppel during Tuesday's debate. Kucinich criticized Koppel for beginning with a question about Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean. Later, he was angered when Koppel asked whether he, Braun or Sharpton are "in this as sort of a vanity candidacy."
SEE ALSO: Dennis Kucinich for President
SEE ALSO: Gore's a Dean Man Now (Nation)

Business as Usual: The Assault on American Workers
By Bracken Hendricks and Skye Perryman
AlterNet, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: This week, the House passed a spending bill that could cut overtime benefits for nearly 8 million Americans. The newest scheme devised by President Bush and his Congressional Republicans reclassifies workers in relatively low paying jobs who have supervisory roles, as being exempt from overtime pay. According to the AFL-CIO, the measure could affect the pocketbooks of our police officers, nurses, retail workers, medical therapists and insurance claims adjusters--cutting into the paychecks of working families. Such a reclassification would allow employers to shift new burdens onto these workers without compensating them for their extra efforts on the job.

Report: $2B Hasn't Stopped Gaps in Bioterror Readiness
By Mimi Hall
USA TODAY, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: Despite a $2 billion federal investment, the nation's public health system is only marginally better prepared today to handle a bioterrorism attack or other health emergency than it was in 2001, a new report shows. The study by the non-profit Trust for America's Health found that efforts to prepare for health emergencies have been hampered by state budget deficits, a shortage of medical workers, red tape and disagreements between state and local officials over who should get the money.

Glittering terms conceal harmful policies
The AARP Ads and the New Medicare Prescription Drug Law
by Edwin Park and Robert Greenstein
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 12 December 2003
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis removes the spin from the AARP's "no spin" advertising about the new Medicare Law. A close examination of AARP's assertions reveals the highly questionable aspects about the legislation they championed.
SEE ALSO: MEDICARE: Stonewalling A Controversy, (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)  EXCERPT: AARP's decision to support the corporate friendly Medicare bill at the expense of seniors has had damning repercussions. According to CEO Bill Novelli, "15,000 members have told the organization to cancel their membership because of the endorsement." And Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, says AARP "is 'really worried' by the reaction, which could erode its position as spokesman for older Americans. 'They've gotten a huge amount of negative press and the early readings on the bill from seniors are not encouraging at all.'" Instead of fighting to amend the legislation to reflect concerns of seniors, however, AARP is planning to use its resources instead for a PR campaign to try to talk seniors into believing the legislation isn't harmful.

12 December 2003

Dearly Deported
Just months after Zeferino Colunga Sr. lost his GI son in Iraq, the government arrested him and sent him back to Mexico.
By Eric Boehlert
Salon.com, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: U.S. Army soldier Zeferino Colunga Jr. died four months ago from a mysterious illness he contracted while serving in Iraq and was buried with full honors in a Texas cemetery. Last week, with the family still in mourning, the soldier's father was deported to Mexico as an illegal immigrant. Now family members wonder if the deportation of Zeferino Colunga Sr. was connected to their public demand for an independent investigation into the young soldier's death.

Efforts to Fight Terror Financing Reported to Lag
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN
New York Times, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: The federal authorities do not have a clear understanding of how terrorists move their financial assets and are still struggling to prevent the flow of money to terror groups, according to a new Congressional report. The report, by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also finds that the Internal Revenue Service has not developed a formal plan for sharing financial information with state authorities about charities under investigation. And the report says the Treasury and Justice Departments have fallen nearly a year behind in developing a plan for attacking money laundering and issues like terrorists' use of black-market gems and gold. It says some agencies have failed to make terrorism financing a high priority or have set unrealistic goals for overhauling their tactics. The report is to be made public on Sunday. The findings come at a time when some government officials and lawmakers say they have grown increasingly concerned about weaknesses in the government's ability to track how terrorists finance their operations.

The New Politics of Medicare
By Paul Starr
The American Prospect, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: The passage of the Republican Medicare overhaul, with its new prescription-drug benefit provided wholly by private insurers, was a huge political victory for the president and an ideological triumph for conservatives. Unlike Bill Clinton 10 years ago, George W. Bush promised an extension of health coverage and has now delivered it. Conservatives, moreover, have succeeded in laying the foundations for privatizing Medicare. Or have they? Even as Bush signed the legislation on Dec. 8, polls showed more Americans opposing it than supporting it, and the reception isn't likely to grow more friendly as the elderly learn more of the details. The bill purports to offer choice to seniors but actually limits their choices in ways that they will likely see as illegitimate.

Labor Rallies for Rights to Form Unions
By LEIGH STROPE
AP in Yahoo!News, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: Several hundred union members rallied outside the Labor Department (news - web sites) on Wednesday, calling for tougher laws to protect American workers and denouncing the Bush administration for what they said were anti-union policies. The rally was one of more than 90 events in 38 states designed to call attention to hurdles workers face when trying to form unions. Just 13.2 percent of the U.S. work force belongs to a union, an all-time low. Labor leaders say they have been unable to stop the steady decline because employers are more aggressive and sophisticated about fighting unions. Penalties are weak for breaking laws that are supposed to protect workers' rights to form unions, they say. In Houston, Wal-Mart employee Larry Lee says that since he started talking about forming a union a few months ago, he has been assigned to work alone in areas of the store away from his co-workers and is monitored when he walks to his car or goes to the bathroom. But he is continuing to try. "The worst thing you can do is not try," said Lee, 42, who stocks shelves at night in a Houston store.

The Halliburton of Medicare?
Center for American Progress, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: Just two days after President Bush signed the new, drug industry-backed Medicare legislation into law, the White House announced the details of the Medicare discount drug card program, in which Medicare will contract with private, pharmaceutical benefit management (PBMs) companies to endorse existing discount cards. The cards have been assailed for not guaranteeing any price discounts, while potentially driving millions to these PBMs. So why, then, is the President so adamant about the cards? For one thing, he has extremely close financial, professional and political ties to AdvancePCS – the company that stands to make a windfall off the program. Specifically, Bush is close friends with David Halbert – CEO of AdvancePCS. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on 8/18/02 "before starting what would become AdvancePCS, David Halbert helped clean up a deal with Harken Energy that had prompted an SEC investigation of George W. Bush." After the investigation, Halbert then invited Bush to become one of the original investors in AdvancePCS – a transaction that made the President up to $1 million.

Bad Wager
Why wage hikes and job growth aren't part of the current economic recovery
By Robert Kuttner
The American Prospect, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: As a new report by the Economic Policy Institute points out, this recovery is like no other recent economic turnaround in the low proportion of income gains that have gone to wages. The EPI, citing Commerce Department data, calculates that in the last seven major recoveries, dating back to 1949, labor compensation at this point in the cycle typically commanded around 61 percent of the new growth in output and in no case less than 55 percent. But in the current recovery, labor compensation is just 29 percent of total income growth. What gets the lion's share? Corporate profits. In the typical postwar recovery, corporate profits got about 26 percent of the pie. This time they are getting 46 percent. That helps explain the stock boomlet, but it won't feel very comforting to the typical worker (who is also the typical voter). The other big job-killer is trade. The trade deficit is now running at an annual rate of more than $500 billion -- about 5 percent of GDP. If America's trade accounts with the rest of the world were balanced, foreigners would be buying more products from the United States, and Americans would have millions more jobs.

How many of these killings did Bush order while governor of Texas?
You Wouldn't Treat an Animal Like This
Three Executions Halted in Texas After Protests by Veterinarians
By Alex Hannaford
Guardian (UK), 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: This week's events in Texas could have huge implications for the death penalty in the United States. Lethal injection is now used throughout the US unless, in certain states, an inmate elects alternative means (electric chair, firing squad, hanging, lethal gas). While it probably won't stop the use of lethal injection altogether, it will certainly delay its use while the supreme court decides what to do.

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Will He Run? Ralph Nader Discusses His Plans for 2004
Democracy NOW!, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: I think that the importance of preserving the attempt to defend the civil liberties of third parties' independent candidates is independently sufficient reason for third parties and independent candidates to run. They're being squeezed out by ballot access, hurdles, by exclusion from debates, by all kinds of barriers. Historically, third party, independent candidates have been the seeds of regeneration of major parties. They have pushed the agenda on a whole host of issues. In the 19th and 20th century, they have got to be exercised. It's really exercising democracy's muscle. Having said that, I'm watching quite carefully the quality of the agenda that the democratic candidates are pushing. [Link includes transcript.]

CEO's Marital Duties Outsourced
The Onion, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: As part of the ongoing trend toward replacing U.S. workers with foreign labor, the marital duties of United Carborundum CEO Howard Reinhardt have been outsourced to his Mexican groundskeeper, industry sources revealed Monday. "It was time for a change," said Reinhardt's wife Melanie, who has been married to the CEO for 17 years and has conducted her sexual business almost exclusively with him since 1984.
SEE ALSO: Poor People Pretty Much Fucked (Onion)

11 December 2003

Crimes Against Nature
Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., National Resources Defense Fund
Rolling Stone Magazine, December 2003
EXCERPT: George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats.
SEE ALSO: AUDIO LINK
Diane Rehm Show, 11 December 2003
Russell Train: "Politics, Pollution, and Pandas" (Island Press)
Russell Train has been both a Republican and an environmentalist for most of his life. He talks about his career at the EPA, the World Wildlife Fund, and other political and conservationist organizations.

Three Denounce Military 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
AP in FindLaw.com, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Two brigadier generals and a rear admiral - all retired - disclosed that they are gay and denounced the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy in interviews with The New York Times. In a story published by the newspaper Wednesday, Army Brig. Gens. Keith Kerr and Virgil Richard and Coast Guard Rear Adm. Alan Steinman said the policy effectively excludes gays from military service and forced them to deceive friends and family. The men were the highest-ranking military officials to disclose their sexual orientation, the Times said. ...The Bush administration and the Pentagon have said there are no plans to abandon the policy.

Pollution Citations Plummet Under Bush
By Seth Borenstein
Philadelphia Inquirer, 9 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is catching and punishing far fewer polluters than the two previous administrations, according to an analysis of 15 years of environmental-enforcement records. Civil enforcement of pollution laws peaked when the President's father was in office from 1989-93 and has fallen ever since, but it has plummeted since George W. Bush took office three years ago. That is according to records of 17 different categories of enforcement activity obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Al Gore: 'If I Had to Do It Over Again, I'd Let It Rip'
By Sidney Blumenthal
Guardian (UK), 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: Since the trauma of the 2000 election, the Democrats have endured a history of loss and defeat, not only of office and programme, but identity, self-confidence and self-respect. As a congressional party that lost its majority in 2002, it has seemed to be in a nightmare that the party is incapable of escaping. Republican bullying has been met almost inevitably by Democratic cowering, the ruthless will to power by timid retreat. Before this spectacle, Democratic voters have felt themselves unrepresented and voiceless. Until the presidential candidacy of Howard Dean, their burning sentiments lacked expression. Now, Al Gore's early endorsement of Dean dramatically amplifies them and partly explains them.
SEE ALSO: Selling Out the Democratic Party (AlterNet)
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK: Democracy NOW! Coverage of the Democratic Debate
SEE ALSO: ABC News Pulls Reporter Off Kucinich Campaign

The Incredible Shrinking Dollar
By Robert B. Reich
TomPaine.com, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: The U.S. dollar is taking a nose dive. Some people think that¹s good news. When the dollar drops, everything we export to the rest of the world becomes cheaper to them‹which means they buy more from us. That¹s why a lot of American businesses are cheering as the dollar continues to drop-and why the Bush administration seems quite content to let it plummet. But there¹s another side to this story. As the dollar drops, almost everything you and I buy from the rest of the world costs us more.
SEE ALSO: Bush Administration Shifts Accounting Methods and Blames Recession on Clinton (Reuters)

America's Hidden Human Rights Problem
By Mark Weisbrot
AlterNet, 9 December 2003
EXCERPT: Unions in the United States find themselves increasingly having to fight for their very existence. This week, on International Human Rights Day (December 10), thousands of union members and their allies around the country will demonstrate for the right to organize. This is something that was supposedly established here in 1935 during the New Deal. But this right has been so eroded in recent decades that ­ to the disgrace of the world's richest democracy ­ it hardly exists at all. That was the conclusion of a 213-page report by Human Rights Watch, one of the world's largest human rights organizations, written three years ago. And it keeps getting worse. Tens of thousands of workers are fired each year for joining or attempting to organize a union, in violation of U.S. law. But the penalties for employers are so slight that they have what Human Rights Watch calls "a culture of near impunity."

Supreme Court Upholds Political Money Law
'Soft Money' Ban, Ad Limits Maintained
By Fred Barbash
Washington Post, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Supreme Court today upheld the most important provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform act of 2002, an attempt to control the unregulated, uncontained and often underground system of fund-raising and spending that now dominates federal election campaigns.
SEE ALSO: O'Connor Swing Vote in Campaign Finance (AP in FindLaw.com)

Report Cites 10 States' Mercury Pollution
Environmental Advocacy Group Uses EPA Data to Pinpoint 'Hot Spots'
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Ten states, including Maryland, have pockets of airborne mercury pollution that pose serious public health risks, especially to pregnant women and their fetuses, according to a new study by an environmental advocacy group. The report by Environmental Defense, based on six-month-old computer modeling data from the Environmental Protection Agency, showed that the vast majority of mercury pollution in these "hot spots" came from nearby coal-fired power plants and other facilities. The finding runs counter to assertions by the utility industry that mercury pollution is globally ubiquitous -- literally carried around the world by the wind -- and cannot be adequately regulated by federal standards.

10 December 2003

Dennis Kucinich eats Ted Kopple's lunch
Transcript: Democratic Presidential Debate in Durham, N.H.
Washington Post, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: KUCINICH:...Ted, you know, we started at the beginning of this evening, talking about an endorsement. Well, I want the American people to see where the media takes politics in this country. To start with endorsements... (APPLAUSE) We start talking about endorsements, now we're talking about polls, and then we're talking about money. Well, you know, when you do that, you don't have to talk about what's important to the American people. ...I'm the only one up here on the stage that actually voted against the PATRIOT Act and voted against the war -- the only one on this stage. I'm also... (APPLAUSE)... I'm also one of the few candidates up here who's talking about taking our health-care system from this for-profit system to a not-for-profit, single-payer universal health care for all. (APPLAUSE) I'm also the only one who has talked about getting out of NAFTA and the WTO and going back to bilateral trade... (APPLAUSE) ... conditioned on workers' rights, human rights and the environment. Now...I may be inconvenient for some of those in the media, but, you know, I'm sorry about that.

Supreme Court Considers Politics In Redistricting GINA HOLLAND
AP in San Francisco Chronicle, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Supreme Court has a chance to give politicians new rules for the drawing of election districts in a case that questions whether the process has gotten too political. Justices were reviewing a fight from Pennsylvania over a congressional map that essentially redistricted three Democratic House members out of a job. Democratic voters who challenged the plan want the high court to spell out rules limiting partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing districts to favor one party over another. The Supreme Court has made it almost impossible to win a claim that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, although justices left the door open to such claims in a splintered 1986 ruling. The case being argued before the court Wednesday is important because of the high stakes in boundary-drawing for political parties. States must redraw boundaries after every census to reflect population shifts, and redistricting has gotten more sophisticated. Richard Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School, said justices may be "seriously considering giving partisan gerrymandering claims some teeth." Or, after 17 years, they may just feel it's time to revisit the subject, he said. If the high court backs away from its 1986 ruling, as the GOP is urging it to do, Republicans could lock in their control of Congress for years to come, said Nathaniel Persily, a professor and redistricting expert at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Medicare Law Pays Off HMOs First
By MARK SHERMAN
AP in The Guardian, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Health maintenance organizations will receive higher payments under the new Medicare law beginning in March, well before most of the system's clients get significant help with their pharmacy bills. The new prescription drug benefit does not begin until January 2006. Medicare will not cover physical exams for new enrollees until 2005. The HMOs in Medicare, serving 4.6 million older Americans, will receive an additional $1.3 billion in 2004 and 2005 under the law President Bush signed Monday, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

FDA Under Fire for Planned Advice About Mercury in Fish
By Lauran Neergaard
The Associated Press, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Consumer advocates are again urging the government to advise pregnant women to limit tuna consumption, arguing that some varieties contain more potentially harmful mercury than others. But the Food and Drug Administration, which plans to issue new consumer advice on mercury in fish next spring, says stronger warnings are not needed.

Filmmaker David Lynch Helps Indian Guru Build University of Peace
By Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: David Lynch is beaming, and his good-natured smile endures a whole hour in a reception room of a Washington hotel, impervious to all manner of personal intrusions, trick questions and general journalistic cynicism. This is the sense of inner peace that Lynch promises to bring to the rest of the world, which is a pretty extraordinary claim for anyone to make, let alone the creative mind behind some of the darkest, most disturbing films in cinematic history. Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks are extraordinary visions of the world, but they seem intended more to spread a deep questioning unease than universal harmony. That, however, is the film-maker's goal. He has lent his famous name and idiosyncratic hairstyle to a project to raise $1bn on behalf of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru of transcendental meditation who once entranced the Beatles, and who has for the past few decades been striving to build an earthly paradise. This venture has taken many different forms over the years, but almost all of them have involved buying up large swaths of real estate across America.

Stop This Train
Who decides this election—you or Al Gore?
By William Saletan
Slate, 9 December 2003
Courtesy of ML
EXCERPT: What was that again about counting every vote? Three years ago, Al Gore, trailing in the Florida recount, urged the nation to wait until all the votes were tallied. "There are some who would have us bring this election to the fastest conclusion possible. I have a different view," Gore pleaded. Gore's view was that the urge to unite and win must never shortcut the electorate's verdict.

A national security case for Republicans
Case Against Ex-Chaplain Opens Focusing on Affair
By NEIL A. LEWIS
New York Times, 9 December 2003
EXCERPT: Capt. James J. Yee, leaving his military hearing at Fort Benning, Ga., with his daughter, Sarah, 4, after testimony about an extramarital affair. The military opened its case on Monday against Capt. James J. Yee, who was once billed by Pentagon officials as part of a major espionage plot, not with evidence of any significant security breaches but with detailed testimony about a two-month extramarital affair he had with a female officer this year. ...Captain Yee's civilian defense lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, has said the charges were added vindictively as part of an effort to cover up the military's mistake and overreaction. ..."I think it is quite disgraceful that this officer's reputation was tarnished in a way that can never be repaired," Mr. Fidell said on Monday. He said he hoped the presiding judge would recommend dismissal of the charges, which he called "trivial and inconsequential."

Medicare Law's Costs and Benefits Are Elusive
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 9 December 2003
EXCERPT: "In return for a monthly premium of about $35, most seniors without any prescription-drug coverage can now expect to see their current drug bills cut roughly in half," Mr. Bush said in signing the bill Monday. But no one knows whether the legislation will work as intended. The new drug benefit will be offered and managed by private insurers and health plans, under contract with the government. The legislation defines a standard drug benefit, but insurers could vary it. So Medicare beneficiaries could face a dizzying array of options — or perhaps very few, depending on where they live. A major question is whether insurance companies will offer policies covering drug costs and nothing else. Such stand-alone drug coverage is virtually nonexistent. "Seniors are fully capable of making health care choices, and this bill allows them to do just that," Mr. Bush said in signing the bill. But at least 10 percent of elderly Medicare beneficiaries have Alzheimer's or other types of dementia that would make it difficult for them to understand the options, said Stephen R. McConnell, senior vice president of the Alzheimer's Association.

How the game is being played...
Election 2004 - Door by Door
By Christopher Hayes
In These Times, 9 December 2003
EXCERPT: Progressives hit the streets in massive voter outreach--Election Day is a year away and the Democrats don’t yet have a presidential nominee, but for labor activists, environmentalists, pro-choice advocates and other progressives, the battle for the White House is well under way. About a dozen groups—backed by the likes of Emily’s List, the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org—are quietly building an infrastructure to undertake the most extensive door-to-door grassroots voter contact operation in U.S. history. Its potential to turn the election already is well understood on both sides: Longtime activists say they haven’t felt this energized in decades—and Republicans are using congressional hearings to shut down the operation or steal directly from its playbook.

9 December 2003

Republicans Indulging in Pork Along With Power
By Nick Anderson
LA Times, December 8, 2003
EXCERPT: Before they took control of Congress nearly nine years ago, Republicans often mocked the Democratic practice of larding government spending bills with provisions that earmarked funds for pet projects in particular lawmakers' districts and states. ...But more than that, to a degree unseen since their 1995 takeover, the majority Republicans are publicly flaunting their power to use pork for explicitly partisan purposes.

One-Party Rule: White House Wants Congress to Stiff Jobless Americans
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: Logic and custom dictate that we pass government spending bills; otherwise the government eventually (though not immediately) shuts down. So what better place to sneak in the radical Republicans' ugliest schemes? It's hard to have an open and democratic debate about everything in a bill so big, so political atrocities can slip in under the national radar. Members of Congress who want to do the right thing are swept along by events, and forced to choose between swallowing the whole mess -- or choking on seemingly small points, and voting against the continuing functioning of the United States government. That's how the Republicans and the White House have set things up, and they're hoping for a quick, collegial, anonymous show of hands.
SEE ALSO: Budget Passes, Unemployed Passed Over (NYT)

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
"It Really Is Unclear Where The Air Force Begins And Boeing Ends"
Deep ties between Boeing and Washington highlight the revolving door of the military industrial complex
Democracy NOW!, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Financial Times is reporting today that defense contractor Boeing had developed ties with at least six members of an influential civilian Pentagon advisory board as it attempted to win support for an $18 billion contact with the Air Force. Boeing gave millions to separate investment funds run by former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle and former CIA head James Woolsey. Perle is also coming under criticism for writing an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in support of the Boeing deal without disclosing his ties to the project. The ties between Boeing and the Defense Policy Board mark the latest in an ongoing series of potential conflicts of interest that have emerged between Capitol Hill and the arms manufacturer.
SEE ALSO: Perle Article Didn't Disclose Boeing Tie (WP)

Gore to Endorse Dean in Democratic Race
By Ronald Brownstein and Matea Gold
LA Times, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: Former Vice President Al Gore will endorse Howard Dean on Tuesday, culminating the former Vermont governor's transformation from little-known insurgent to the commanding front-runner in the 2004 Democratic presidential race. Sources close to the Dean campaign say Gore, the party's 2000 nominee, will appear with the former Vermont governor Tuesday morning in New York's Harlem neighborhood and then campaign with him later in the day in Iowa. The Dean campaign did not confirm the reports, but by Monday night, the impending endorsement was a subject of open discussion among top Dean supporters, close advisers to Gore and members of other Democratic campaigns. The announcement is sure to provide another burst of momentum for Dean, who has led in the latest polls in Iowa and New Hampshire -- the states where the nominating contests begin in January -- and also has raised more money than any of his rivals.
 

Drug Plan Needs This Fix
Los Angeles Times editorial, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: When he signs a bill today purported to help seniors afford prescription drugs, President Bush is expected to hail it as the biggest step forward for Medicare since the program's 1965 inception. In fact, it is a needlessly complex and unaffordable mess of concessions to one special interest after another. Ramrodded through Congress after only a few early-morning hours of debate, it will offer meager benefits to most seniors. Once the bill is signed, Congress can still fix it around the edges, and House Democrats will make a good start today. They plan to introduce legislation to correct the bill's most shameful flaw: a provision, added at the drug industry's request, that prohibits Medicare from using its immense bargaining clout to reduce prescription prices.

The Uncompassionate Conservative
Dubya's Not Mean. It's Just That He Doesn't Have a Clue
By Molly Ivins
Mother Jones Magazine, December 2003 Issue
EXCERPT: In order to understand why George W. Bush doesn't get it, you have to take several strands of common Texas attitude, then add an impressive degree of class-based obliviousness. What you end up with is a guy who sees himself as a perfectly nice fellow -- and who is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people. ...Bush's lies now fill volumes. He lied us into two hideously unfair tax cuts; he lied us into an unnecessary war with disastrous consequences; he lied us into the Patriot Act, eviscerating our freedoms. But when it comes to dealing with those less privileged, Bush's real problem is not deception, but self-deception.

Surprise! Bush, the Fake Moderate, Lies Again About the Economy
By Jackson Thoreau
OpEdNews.com, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: "For those Americans without jobs, the term 'jobless recovery' is a cruel joke. These troubling long-term unemployment numbers are also a strong indication as to why the Republicans in Congress should extend unemployment benefits before we adjourn for the year. These benefits are set to expire on Dec. 21, and we should not leave Washington without extending them. We owe it to the American people."
So what does Bush do? He celebrates. He pats himself on the back. He accepts more political bribes from his rich cronies, who get paid back in tax cuts, no-bid contracts, intimidated workers who take less pay and benefits, and similar ways. What a cruel joke Bush is.

Abortion Distortion
by REBECCA AYREY
The Nation, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: Having an abortion in an advanced state of pregnancy is often a painful, intimate and difficult experience; women should be supported, not targeted, at such a time. In their haste to appease antiabortion zealots, lawmakers have either failed to see or chosen to overlook several consequences of the "partial birth" ban, which will affect the fate of thousands of American women. First, finding fetal defects in a wanted pregnancy is devastating. I needed the empowerment of simple choices--which exams to undergo, which specialists to consult, what type of abortion to choose--to gain some semblance of control in a helpless situation. With the ban, I worry that choiceless women (maybe including me in a later pregnancy) will be forced to undergo the dreaded induction-of-labor abortion--if even it remains legal. (The broadly written law might also be applied to that procedure.) Worse still, they may be pushed into C-section abortions, which are more dangerous for women. I also worry that prohibiting late-term abortions could have the effect of forcing some women to make choices that aren't right for them, while discouraging others from getting pregnant at all. If a pregnant woman is low risk (as I was), she may not undergo a sonogram, let alone amniocentesis, before eighteen weeks. If defects are discovered, will she be forced to make an immediate decision between abortion and delivering the fetus regardless of the defects' severity? This is an extremely complicated, emotionally fraught decision that a woman cannot make in a split second. Surely, some women will opt out of pregnancy altogether in the face of this dilemma. (Certainly, I am considering it.) Furthermore, if Congress recoils at the gruesomeness of some abortion procedures, I can attest that we who abort are even more appalled by our limited options. Lawmakers should encourage doctors to research better abortion alternatives, instead of abandoning women before accurate, early prenatal care and safer, more humane second- and third-trimester abortions are available.

8 December 2003

Under Bush, Spending Soars
By Ron Hutcheson
Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush came to office saying he was a fiscal conservative, but federal spending has skyrocketed on his watch. And it's not just the Pentagon that's getting more federal dollars. Overall spending is up at least 16 percent since he took office, far more than the 2 percent average annual inflation rate over the same period. According to one recent analysis, the government now spends $20,000 a year for every household in the United States, the most since World War II. In the meantime, the $236 billion federal surplus Bush inherited in January 2001 has turned into a $374.2 billion deficit.

A new era of nuclear weapons
Bush's Buildup Begins With Little Debate in Congress
James Sterngold
San Francisco Chronicle, 7 December 2003
EXCERPT: Congress, with only a limited debate, has given the Bush administration a green light for the biggest revitalization of the country's nuclear weapons program since the end of the Cold War, leaving many Democrats and even some hawkish Republicans seething. ...Reversing a decade of restraint in nuclear weapons policy, Congress agreed to provide more than $6 billion for research, expansion and upgrades in the country's nuclear capabilities. While Congress approved large sums to maintain the existing nuclear arsenal even during the Clinton years, this year's increases will finance multiyear programs to design a new generation of warheads as well as more sophisticated missiles, bombers and re-entry vehicles to deliver them. ...That the change is indeed both "radical" and "fundamental" is about the only thing critics of the administration agree with. "It hasn't been perceived as such, but this is a nuclear revival," said Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Deeply disturbing to critics on both sides of the political spectrum is how little public or congressional discussion has taken place, and how little detailed information the Bush administration has provided on its strategies and plans.

"Miserable Failure" Google Search Leads to Bush
BBC News, 7 Sunday 2003
EXCERPT: Web users entering the words "miserable failure" into the popular search engine are directed to the biography of the president on the White House website.

Under Bush, "Alarming State of Human Rights in the US"
Common Dreams Newswire, 5 December 2003
EXCERPT: US-based rights groups will announce at a press conference on 10 December 2003 in Washington, DC that they are "joining forces" in a US Human Rights Network to address what they see as the "alarming rate of human rights violations in the US" -- saying that "as the US indulges an increasingly unilateralist bent in both domestic and foreign policy, the cost to rights at home and abroad is mounting." The groups, which cover such diverse issues as criminal justice, civil rights, immigration and asylum concerns, and economic rights, will launch the US Human Rights Network amid growing concern domestically and internationally that the US sees itself as exempt from international human rights laws and standards.
SEE ALSO: Secret Terrorist "No Fly" List Might Include Peace Activists (The Nation)
SEE ALSO: McCarthy's (and Ashcroft's) Nemesis (The Nation)

Bush's Phony "Grassroots" School Voucher "Movement"
By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
Black Commentator, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: While the administration starves its own No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation and disrupts local school districts through non-funded mandates, voucher advocates are lavished with taxpayer dollars to discredit the very concept of public education. Bush¹s Education Department, infested with rightwing ideologues, now serves as headquarters and paymaster for the public schools¹ fiercest enemies.

Dean Takes on the Corporate Media Machine
By Norman Soloman
FAIR, 5 December 2003
EXCERPT: Howard Dean is asking for media trouble. On Dec. 1, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination went where few national politicians have dared to go -- directly challenging the media conglomerates. Don¹t get me wrong. Dean¹s record in Vermont hardly reflects an inclination to take on corporate power. His obsession with balancing budgets and coddling big business often led him to comfort the already comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Low-income people suffered the consequences of inadequate social services. But let¹s give the doctor-turned-politician some credit for a new direction. Midway through his Dec. 1 appearance on MSNBC¹s ³Hardball² show, Dean said that he wants to ³break up giant media enterprises.²
SEE ALSO: Howard Dean's Appeal to Youth (NYT)
SEE ALSO: Building a Progressive Majority (The Nation)
SEE ALSO: Vanity Fair's editor is gunning for George Bush (Guardian)

The Democrats' Medicare Disaster
By Lance Selfa
Socialist Worker in ZNet, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: Comparing the GOP¹s ruthlessness in 1994 with the Democratic collapse in last month¹s vote authorizing a prescription drug benefit under Medicare tells a lot about the real nature of liberalism and its chief vehicle, the Democrats. Given the terrible provisions of the law--from billions in pork to the medical industrial pharmaceutical complex to the first steps towards privatization of the program--it would have been right and defensible for Democrats to kill the bill at all costs. Why hand Bush a victory on a "Democratic" issue, especially when the bill is a fraud that will undermine Medicare? No doubt, the millions the pharmaceutical and insurance industry invested in politicians on both sides of the aisle helped woo some Democrats. But it¹s important to recognize that the Democrats had already boxed themselves in.
SEE ALSO: Campaign Contributions Correlated with House Vote (CapitalEye.org)

Bush Gives a Present to Media Mogul Murdoch
By Jeff Chester
The Nation, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush Administration will make sure that no Grinch spoils Rupert Murdoch's holiday season. By the New Year, Murdoch's News Corporation will be in control of the country's largest direct-broadcast satellite service, DirecTV. The takeover of this company, with its 11 million subscribers, will greatly increase Murdoch's power over the American TV landscape. It will also mean that conservatives will have an even greater ability to push their agenda. Both the Justice Department and Michael Powell's FCC are on board to rubber-stamp the arrangement, in deference to the Administration's indebtedness to Murdoch. With Fox News a 24/7 commercial for the Bush White House and with the Weekly Standard's constant cheerleading, Murdoch is an especially valuable friend. This latest deal--which means, as the News Corp. website proudly proclaims, that it rules the skies over "five continents"--should have raised the hackles of Democrats, especially the presidential contenders, who could have pointed to the danger of ever more media consolidation. But sadly, Democratic leaders, unions and progressive advocates have been silent, allowing the merger to sail through the review process.
SEE ALSO: Debating Media Ownership on December 15 (The Nation)

NRA Seeks Status as News Outlet
By Sharon Theimer
AP in Washington Post, 7 December 2003
EXCERPT: Hoping to spend as much as it wants on next year's elections, the National Rifle Association is looking to buy a television or radio station and declare that it should be treated as a news organization, exempt from spending limits in the campaign finance law.

Holding Back: How US Agencies Thwart the Freedom of Information Act
By Jeffrey T. Richelson
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2003
EXCERPT: Although the Freedom of Information Act has been a blessing to academics, journalists, and activists, it is seen as a curse by some in government who would prefer to operate without the scrutiny of prying outsiders, or would like to avoid the effort involved in complying with the law. In their attempts to escape and evade FOIA requirements, they have resorted to a variety of strategies, including unilaterally "rewriting" the law, improperly denying requests in their entirety, and inappropriately declaring that certain documents are automatically exempt.

A Plague of Bioweapons Sweeps the US
By Christopher Scheer
AlterNet, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: In Texas, a scientist respected for his decades of work studying and treating infectious diseases in some of the world's more squalid quarters is hauled in front of a court in chains on bio-terrorism-related charges because he didn't follow government regulations with his samples ­ while his own university uses military funding to genetically engineer plants to produce even more deadly poisons. Meanwhile, two American health workers are killed by a vaccine against a disease which should no longer exist; domestically produced anthrax spores terrorize the nation in one of history's great unsolved crimes; and the writings of respected advisors to our president tout the benefits of developing synthetic viruses that would target specific ethnic groups. Welcome to the confounding, illogical and sometimes deadly space where public health and raw science meet national security and military secrecy.

6-7 December 2003

New Medicare Bill Bars Extra Insurance for Drugs
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: Medicare beneficiaries will not be allowed to buy insurance to cover their share of prescription drug costs under the new Medicare bill to be signed on Monday by President Bush, the legislation says. Millions of Medicare beneficiaries have bought private insurance to fill gaps in Medicare. But a little-noticed provision of the legislation prohibits the sale of any Medigap policy that would help pay drug costs after Jan. 1, 2006, when the new Medicare drug benefit becomes available. This is one of many surprises awaiting beneficiaries, who will find big gaps in the drug benefit and might want private insurance to plug the holes — just as they buy insurance to supplement Medicare coverage of doctors' services and hospital care.

Denial of Purple Heart Medals Raises Questions About Casualty Count
By Patrick Peterson
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 5 December 2003
EXCERPT:
GULFPORT, Miss. - An influential Mississippi congressman has raised the possibility that the Pentagon has undercounted combat casualties in Iraq after he learned that five members of the Mississippi National Guard who were injured Sept. 12 by a booby trap in Iraq were denied Purple Heart medals.

Miserable Failure
Ady Barkan
Filibuster in Columbia Political Review, 5 December 2003
QUOTE: Please type the above words (Miserable Failure) into Google, and then hit "I'm Feeling Lucky." Thank you.

Job Growth Gives Labor Market Minimal Boost
Economic Policy Institute, 5 Deember 2003
EXCERPT: According to today's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation's employers added a fewer-than-expected 57,000 jobs in November, while the unemployment rate edged down slightly to 5.9%. Though payrolls have expanded consistently over the past four months, adding 328,000 jobs since July—82,000 per month—the labor market has yet to achieve growth comparable to that in other parts of the economy.
The unemployment rate has remained between 5.6% and 6.4% since the recovery began two years ago, and this sustained period of relatively high unemployment has led to diminished growth of hourly wages (see figure). Since November 2002, hourly wages are up 2.1% (approximately the rate of inflation), the slowest annual growth rate since March 1987. On a quarterly basis, wages are growing at an annual rate of less than 1.0%, well below inflation. Thus, despite high productivity and profits, many workers are losing ground in the current labor market.

Medicare: No Reform Where Needed
Hospitals Say They're Penalized by Medicare for Improving Care
By REED ABELSON
EXCERPT: "The health care system is perverse," said a frustrated Dr. Brent C. James, who leads Intermountain's efforts to improve quality. "The payments are perverse. It pays us to harm patients, and it punishes us when we don't." Intermountain's doctors and executives are in a swelling vanguard of critics who say that Medicare's payment system is fundamentally flawed. Medicare, the nation's largest purchaser of health care, pays hospitals and doctors a fixed sum to treat a specific diagnosis or perform a given procedure, regardless of the quality of care they provide. Those who work to improve care are not paid extra, and poor care is frequently rewarded, because it creates the need for more procedures and services. The Medicare legislation that President Bush is expected to sign on Monday calls for studies and a few pilot programs on quality improvement, but experts say that it does little to reverse financial disincentives to improving care.

Hey Rummy, how about just a smidgen of propriety?
Perle Lobbied for Boeing's Tanker Bid
By Joshua Chaffin in Washington and Stephanie Kirchgaessner in New York
Financial Times, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: Richard Perle, a prominent Pentagon adviser, lobbied on behalf of Boeing's bid for a controversial $18bn government contract a year after the aerospace company made a $20m investment in the venture capital fund he runs.

Pentagon and Bogus News: All Is Denied
By ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, 4 December 2003
EXCER[T: Early last year Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disbanded the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence after it became known that the office was considering plans to provide false news items to unwitting foreign journalists to influence policymakers and public sentiment abroad. But a couple of months ago, the Pentagon quietly awarded a $300,000 contract to SAIC, a major defense consultant, to study how the Defense Department could design an "effective strategic influence" campaign to combat global terror, according to an internal Pentagon document. Sound familiar?

The US Military: A Creeping Civilian Mission
By David Isenberg
Asia Times, 5 December 2003
EXCERPT: It seems that the United States military coup of 2012 has arrived about 10 years early. Well, okay, not the full-fledged classic coup, led by a general on horseback. But, as they say, close enough for government work. ...In the future, the National Guard will be the lead organization that coordinates military and civilian responses to terrorist threats and attacks against some critical infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants, McHale said. He also said the Pentagon reviewed the Posse Comitatus Act and determined that it would not be a violation to deploy the National Guard to protect critical infrastructure in some circumstances. He said he expects more presidential directives in the future to expand the military's homeland defense role. But the same basic concerns about military involvement still remain relevant. From a civil liberties viewpoint, while members of the armed forces take an oath to uphold and defend the constitution, they are not trained, like the police, to uphold Americans' rights to privacy and due process. Civil libertarians' fears about due process have been heightened since September 11 by the indefinite detention of citizens and immigrants, and by proposals to try them before secret military tribunals.

Fight to Pass Medicare Measure Raises House Speaker's Profile
By CARL HULSE
New York Times, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: the Medicare victory, which will be sealed when President Bush signs the measure on Monday, came at considerable cost. Democrats are vilifying Mr. Hastert and his lieutenants not only for the substance of a proposal that the opponents argue will eventually mean the end of Medicare, but also for the way the vote was conducted and the arm-twisting to force it through.

Employers Balk at New Hiring, Despite Growth
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
New York Times, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: The nation's employers displayed an unexpected reluctance in November to hire more workers, despite the improving economy and rising demand for what they sell. The work force grew by only 57,000 jobs last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday — only a third of what most forecasters had projected. The jobs report pushed down stock prices and interest rates.

5 December 2003

Looking at the Future: Bush Endangers Our Children's Hopes
By Paul Krugman
New York Times, 5 December 2003
EXCERPT: One thing you have to say about George W. Bush: he's got a great sense of humor. At a recent fund-raiser, according to The Associated Press, he described eliminating weapons of mass destruction from Iraq and ensuring the solvency of Medicare as some of his administration's accomplishments. Then came the punch line: "I came to this office to solve problems and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations." He must have had them rolling in the aisles. In the early months of the Bush administration, one often heard that "the grown-ups are back in charge." But if being a grown-up means planning for the future (in fact, if it means anything beyond marital fidelity) then this is the least grown-up administration in American history. It governs like there's no tomorrow.

Beat the Clock: Time and Timing are Everything in the 2004 Election
By Robert Kuttner
TomPaine.com, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: If Bush wins in 2004, a radicalized right wing will have wall-to-wall control of government. It is hard to think of another American election (perhaps 1860) where the consequences were more momentous and the outcome more dependent on luck and timing.
SEE ALSO: The Return of Nader (Guardian)

US Exporting 'Tools of Torture'
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: The administration of US President George W. Bush is violating the spirit of its own export policy by approving the sale of tools to countries known to use them to torture detainees, according to a new report released here Tuesday by Amnesty International. In 2002, US exports of electroshock weapons and restraints that can be used for torture amounted to some $14.7 million and $4.4 million, respectively, according to the report, titled "The Pain Merchants."

Sudden Shift on Detainee
By NEIL A. LEWIS
New York Times, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: When the Pentagon said this week that it would let an American being held as an enemy combatant meet a lawyer, which it had refused to do for months, it appeared on the surface to be a major concession to the critics of the policy of detaining terrorism suspects. But it may be that the action was less of a substantive change than merely a calculated gesture to help the administration shield its policies from criticism and reversal by the courts. The American, Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Louisianan of Saudi descent captured in fighting in Afghanistan, is under indefinite detention in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Viet Dinh, a former assistant attorney general who had a major role in drafting antiterror policies, said in an interview on Wednesday that the decision to give Mr. Hamdi access to a lawyer was "a significant development in the case, one that moves the government to a more sustainable position before the court."

Bush Fails Schools Test
Julian Borger
The Guardian, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT:A Texas education "miracle" that helped establish George Bush as an effective reformer, and later became a model for US schools nationally, may have been a mirage, it was reported yesterday. When Mr Bush was governor, the improvement of low-income pupils in Houston was hailed as a triumph of testing and school accountability. A state test, the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), showed remarkable gains by school students in the 1990s, and the apparent evaporation of a gap between white and minority children.

A Tract for the Times
By Edmund S. Morgan
New York Review of Books, 18 December issue
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson by Gore Vidal, Yale University Press, 198 pp., $22.00

Books By Gore Vidal Referred to in this Review:
Washington, D.C. by Gore Vidal  (1967)Vintage,422 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Burr by Gore Vidal (1973)Vintage, 430 pp., $15.00 (paper)
Lincoln by Gore Vidal  (1984)Vintage,657 pp., $16.00 (paper)
Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays, 1952–1972  by Gore Vidal (1972)Random House, 449 pp. (out of print)
The Last Empire: Essays, 1992–2000 by Gore Vidal (2001)Vintage,465 pp., $16.00 (paper)
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated by Gore Vidal (2002)Thunder's Mouth/Nation Books, 160 pp., $10.00 (paper)
Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta by Gore Vidal (2002)Thunder's Mouth/Nation Books, 197 pp., $11.95 (paper)
EXCERPT: His judgment of the Kennedys in 1967 as "the Holy Family" was that they devoted themselves too exclusively to appearances, the President no less than the others: Not until the second year of his administration did it become plain that Kennedy was not about to do much of anything. Since his concern was so much with the appearance of things, he was at his worst when confronted with those issues where a moral commitment might have informed his political response not only with passion but with shrewdness. (His take on Lincoln)...the first of the modern tyrants—chose to fight the war not on the issue of slavery but on the holiness and indivisibility of a union that he alone had any understanding of. With his centralizing of all power at Washington this "reborn" (sic) union was ready for a world empire that has done us as little good as it has done the world we have made so many messes in. ...Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR took the central power Lincoln had created and used it to build a global empire. FDR deliberately instigated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor so that he could bring an unwilling people into the Second World War. When the Japanese signaled their willingness to surrender, Truman hurried to drop the bomb on them in order to secure our power in Asia. Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, then turned the United States at home into a security state with the National Security Act of 1947 and the Security Council Memorandum number 68 of 1950. ...Vidal does not say so here in this appeal to the people in the name of the Founding Fathers, but his long career of crying wolf has left him with little hope in a people who refused to listen.

4 December 2003

AUDIO LINK
The Power of Partisan Gerrymandering
Diane Rehm Show, 4 December 2003
Republicans are following a national strategy that undermines American representative democracy. What is new is that an old technique ("Gerrymandering") is being used to eliminate opposition and utterly dominate the federal government with a small majority or even a minority of the national population.

AUDIO LINK
Study: Higher Co-Pays Dissuades Drug Use
NPR, 4 December 2003
A new study finds that raising co-payments on prescription drugs causes many people to stop taking their medication. The study examined employer prescription-drug plans that encourage the use of generic varieties by charging more for brand-name medications. NPR's Richard Knox reports.

Health for Sale
By Jeff Madrick
The New York Review of Books, 18 December issue
EXCERPT: The intricacies of such legislative battles as the one concerning drugs for the elderly have distracted Americans from recognizing the scale of change that is now being proposed. Over the last twenty-five years, the attitude that government is often more an impediment to economic growth and social justice than a necessity has taken an ever-deeper hold in America. It is fair to say that a battle to determine the future of America's traditional welfare state is now underway. Always more modest than in Europe, the American "safety net" includes Social Security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, Medicare, poverty relief programs like welfare and Medicaid, industry regulations, and at least some support for unionization. ...Finally, perhaps the biggest question the US should face is whether it is capable of seriously considering a single-payer federal health insurance system to cover all Americans. Such a system is not perfect but works reasonably well at a significantly lower cost per patient in Canada and other countries. The inefficient hybrid system we now have is so costly that it could eventually ruin the economy. Contrary to the promises of its advocates, the enabling state neither automatically promotes economic growth nor enhances the social welfare. It appeals to voters who think their taxes will go down and to powerful corporations who think they will make greater profits from presiding over an increasingly privatized welfare system. The nation has on the whole been worse off as a result.

The People vs. Ashcroft: Removing a Danger to Democracy
By Ron Daniels
ZNet, 3 December 2003
EXCERPT: The case against Ashcroft goes far beyond the USA Patriot Act. In an Executive Order issued after the adoption of this terrifying legislation, Ashcroft assumed the power to detain you or anyone he vaguely suspects of having associated with a "terrorist" or terrorist organization,  indefinitely - no reasonable suspicion, no probable cause, just his opinion based on whatever whim or fancy he chooses at a particular moment.  As a consequence, in the prosecution of the "war against terrorism" Ashcroft's army has engaged in massive "profiling" of Muslims and Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian "looking" individuals. Hundreds of non-citizen "suspects" were rounded up after 9/11 and thrown into detention centers without benefit of counsel or access to their families. Scores of prisoners are also being detained at the military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in violation of the Geneva Convention. And, even U.S. citizens have been detained, defined as "enemy combatants" and denied access to an attorney.

Nader Guages Public Support for Run in 2004
Associated Press, 3 December 2003
EXCERPT: Ralph Nader has not yet decided whether to make another run for the White House, but he has authorized a new exploratory committee to raise money for a potential bid. The Nader 2004 Presidential Exploratory Committee was formed in late October as part of the consumer activist's effort to gauge support for a run, said Theresa Amato, a committee director. "He is using it to test the waters," said Amato, who served as Nader's national campaign manager when he ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2000. She said the organization is part of Nader's overall strategy of "talking to people, calling people, seeing what level of support there is."

Got Mercury?
White House, EPA Move to Ease Mercury Rules
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post, 3 December 2003
EXCERPTS: The Bush administration is working to undo regulations that would force power plants to sharply reduce mercury emissions and other toxic pollutants, according to a government document and interviews with officials. The Nov. 26 document makes the case that the Environmental Protection Agency, under President Bill Clinton, misread the Clean Air Act's requirements and that there are less onerous ways to reduce the emissions.... Environmentalists say the approach would save the utility industry hundreds of millions of dollars while ensuring a relatively high level of mercury pollution for years to come.
SEE ALSO: EPA's New Rules on Mercury Emissions (NPR)

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
75 U.S. Soldiers Shout "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Outside Anti-War Priest¹s House
Democracy NOW!, 3 December 2003
EXCERPT: In a recent article on CommonDreams.org, Father John Dear writes: "I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished, three block long town in the desert of northeastern New Mexico. Everyone in town--and the whole state--knows that I am against the occupation of Iraq, that I have called for the closing of Los Alamos, and that as a priest, I have been preaching, like the Pope, against the bombing of Baghdad.... Suddenly, at 7 a.m., the [soldiers'] shouting got dramatically louder. I looked out the front window of the house where I live, next door to the church, and there they were--all 75 of them, standing yards away from my front door, in the street right in front of my house and our church, shouting and screaming to the top of their lungs, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Their commanders had planted them there and were egging them on."
SEE ALSO: CommonDreams.org

The Great Election Grab
by JEFFREY TOOBIN
When does gerrymandering become a threat to democracy?
The New Yorker, Issue of 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: “There are now about four hundred safe seats in Congress,” Richard Pildes, a professor of law at New York University, said. “The level of competitiveness has plummeted to the point where it is hard to describe the House as involving competitive elections at all these days.” The House isn’t just ossified; it’s polarized, too. Members of the House now effectively answer only to primary voters, who represent the extreme partisan edge of both parties. As a result, collaboration and compromise between the parties have almost disappeared. The Republican advantage in the House is modest—just two hundred and twenty-nine seats to two hundred and six—but gerrymandering has made the lead close to insurmountable for the foreseeable future.

In the Tank
The intellectual decline of AEI.
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
The Washington Monthly, December issue
Intellectual dishonesty and falsified data in research work designed to influence conservative sponsored legislation seems not to be a cause for disciplinary action at the right wing American Enterprise Institute. EXCERPT: Plenty of intellectuals offering disputed research lurk in other Washington think tanks, liberal as well as conservative--often B-team refugees from the academy who have not managed to get tenure. But AEI is in a different league, because of the influence its scholars wield in Washington and their consequent power to turn research into government policy.

Armchair Provocateur
Laurie Mylroie: The Neocons' Favorite Conspiracy Theorist.
By Peter Bergen
The Washington Monthly, December issue
EXCERPT: In her book Bush vs. the Beltway, Mylroie approvingly quotes the maxim "we should not love our opinions like our children." It's long overdue that she heed this excellent piece of advice. Saddam is guilty of many crimes, not least the genocidal policies he unleashed on the Marsh Arabs and the Iraqi Kurds, but there is no evidence linking him to any act of anti-American terrorism for the past decade, while there is a mountain of evidence that implicates al Qaeda. Mylroie's researches have proven to be more than merely academic, as her theories have bolstered the argument that led us into a costly war in Iraq and swayed key opinion-makers in the Bush administration, who then managed to persuade seven out of 10 Americans that the Iraqi dictator had a role in the attacks on Washington and New York. So, her specious theories of Iraq's involvement in anti-American terrorism have now become part of the American zeitgeist. Meanwhile, in a recent, telling quote to Newsweek, Mylroie observed: "I take satisfaction that we went to war with Iraq and got rid of Saddam Hussein. The rest is details." Now she tells us.

3 December 2003

A Washington-Style Mafia Bustout
By Josh Marshall
The Hill, 2 December 2003
EXCERPT: The (Medicare) bill is — or seems to be — good politics because it allows the president to check off another campaign promise he’s made good on and it gives big payoffs to many of his party’s favored constituencies, such as HMOs, drug manufacturers and even rural hospitals. ...There’s the rapid run-up in the deficit we’ve noted, repeated instances of breaking political precedents for short-term political gain — like the unprecedented decision to re-redistrict congressional maps in Texas and Colorado — and then of course there’s foreign policy, where decades-old alliances have been wrecked and our military capacities have been vastly diminished all to make way for the invasion of Iraq... Taken together, almost everything we’ve seen since early 2001 points to a decision to rush through as many political goodies as possible and secure as much political power as possible as soon as possible, with little regard for picking up the pieces.

The United States of Militarism: Eisenhower Warned Us
By John L. Graham
Orange County Register, 30 November 2003
EXCERPT: It  was in an article in the National Interest in 1989 that Francis Fukuyama boldly asked if we had reached "The End of History." His notion was that free-enterprise democracy had finally defeated both communism and fascism. There would be no more real arguments about the best way to organize society. That was decided. But now, since George W. Bush's election, the ideological/political battle has begun anew. This time, it's free-enterprise democracy vs. militarism, and so far militarism is winning.
SEE ALSO: GOP: The Party of Big Government (LewRockwell.com)

The 2-Percent Illusion
By Robert Kuttner
A critique of The 2% Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love By Matthew Miller, Public Affairs, 320 pages, $26.00
The American Prospect, 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: To read Miller, you'd think that American politics was deadlocked and that the blockage was roughly symmetrical. But that's hardly the real story of the era since Ronald Reagan. As we all know, the far right has won one victory after another, and even after the Clinton interlude, the center is much farther to the right than it was in 1980. The fact that 42 million people have no health insurance, that too many jobs pay poverty wages and that schools are failing is not the result of partisan deadlock but of conservative hegemony. Liberals have solutions. What they don't have is political power. Even under Clinton, as Miller notes in passing, federal outlays were cut from 22 percent of the gross domestic product to 20 percent. Federal revenue is now at its lowest share of national income since Dwight Eisenhower.

On-Star Online to U.S. Government
By Bob Barr
UPI, 2 December 2003
Courtesy of Antiwar.com
EXCERPT: Now, even my wife agrees that OnStar -- or similar tracking devices installed in non-GM vehicles -- would be a really bad idea. What changed her mind? In addition to the irrefutable eloquence of my arguments, it was a recent story, tucked away in an Internet news service, describing a recent federal court decision that confirms what my own conspiratorial-oriented mind always suspected was true. The FBI and other police agencies have been using these factory-installed tracking systems as a way to eavesdrop on passengers in vehicles, without the folks in the car even knowing the government was listening to their conversations! Unbelievable, you scoff? Nope, it's as real as the genetically engineered smells automobile manufacturers are now putting into their cars.

Colorado Court Rejects Redistricting Plan
By CARL HULSE
New York Times, 2 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Republican effort to redraw the state's Congressional map to the party's advantage, handing Democrats a victory in the first of a series of legal fights that could help determine control of the House. The court, in a 5-to-2 decision, ruled that Colorado's Constitution allowed only one round of Congressional redistricting after each 10-year census. The judges found that the Republican-controlled Legislature exceeded its authority last May when it tried to replace a map imposed by a federal court in 2002 after the House and Senate deadlocked. In Texas, a three-judge panel is scheduled to begin a trial next week consolidating several challenges to the Texas map. The judges on Monday rejected Democratic arguments that Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, who supported the remapping, should be forced along with another Texas congressman to give a deposition about his role. Also this month, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in a Democratic challenge to Pennsylvania's map. At their heart, the redistricting battles are about which party commands the House. Given the relatively narrow Republican majority, a swing of just a seat or two can be crucial. Even top Democrats concede that if the new Texas map stands, Democratic hopes of picking up the dozen seats needed to capture the House in 2004 will be greatly diminished.

2 December 2003

Hack the Vote: Electronic Voting in 2004
By Paul Krugman
New York Times, 2 December 2003
EXCERPT: Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell ‹ who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations ‹ happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.

Media and Democracy: Big Business Means Big Trouble
By Bill Moyers
The Nation, 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: Truth is, when the big broadcasters and publishers lobby Congress, the FCC and the White House for the green light to merge, consolidate and eliminate the competition, they don't bother to report to their readers or viewers what they're up to. They prefer to keep us in the dark.
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK: Moyers' Keynote Address at the National Conference on Media Reform (DNOW!)

Clark's True Colors
By Matt Taibbi
The Nation, 26 November 2003
EXCERPT: You can see something in the eyes of most all the Democratic candidates: the pugnacity of Howard Dean, the idealism of Dennis Kucinich, even (surprisingly) the elaborate sense of humor just under the surface of Joe Lieberman. Not Wesley Clark. His eyes are blank. Like a turtle resting on a rock in the middle of a pond, he simply seems never to move, no matter how long you stare. But then, just as you're about to pack up your picnic basket and go home, you catch him: His head pops out, and he slides off into the water...
SEE ALSO: William Greider: Why I'm for Dean (Nation)

Pharmaceutical Prices
By Ralph Nader
The Nader Page, 28 November 2003
Courtesy of Cursor.org
EXCERPT: If Sam's Club can negotiate for lower pharmaceutical prices, why can't Uncle Sam? Because the approval by the Congress of a new pharmaceutical benefit for Medicare was saddled with a legal provision that prohibits the U.S. government from using its considerable consumer market power to negotiate for lower prices on medicines. Our country already is spending more than 2 percent of GDP on pharmaceutical purchases, and these outlays skyrocketed, long before the Medicare bill was passed. Because the U.S. government is obligated to provide some coverage for pharmaceutical drugs under the new bill, one would think it would seek to at least have the flexibility to restrain corporate patent owners from charging excessive prices for their medicines. In the absence of even the possibility to negotiate lower prices, there will be no price restraints and therefore less money for medicine.

Liberal Radio Group Says It Is Close to Acquiring 5 Stations
By JIM RUTENBERG
New York Times, 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: Democratic investment group planning to start a liberal radio network to counterbalance conservative radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh says it is close to buying radio stations in five major cities. The acquisitions would represent a major move toward making the network real. After its conception was announced in February, many radio analysts and even some Democratic activists predicted that the network would face too many challenges to get off the ground, including finding stations to run its programming and bucking a historical record replete with failed liberal radio attempts. But executives with the newly formed company, Progress Media, said late last week that if all went as planned they would have the network running by early spring, in time to be part of the public dialogue during the presidential campaign season. The executives said the stations they were acquiring reached all radios in 5 of the 10 largest media markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston. They said they would buy stations in other markets in the near future.

Meet the Press
How James Glassman reinvented journalism--as lobbying.
By Nicholas Confessore
Washington Monthly, 20 November 2003
Courtesy of Balkin.com
Decades ago, the corporate right realized they could be more influential by posing as purveyors of scholarly expertise, through advocacy think tanks and policy groups; now they're learning to disguise the same old interests as hip, edgy, New Media journalism. James Glassman's Tech Central Station, the internet magazine that's on the cutting edge of super-sophisticated corporate influence-peddling, is a must-read. EXCERPT: James Glassman and TCS have given birth to something quite new in Washington: journo-lobbying. It's an innovation driven primarily by the influence industry. Lobbying firms that once specialized in gaining person-to-person access to key decision-makers have branched out. The new game is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which officials make policy decisions, which means funding everything from think tanks to issue ads to phony grassroots pressure groups. But the institution that most affects the intellectual atmosphere in Washington, the media, has also proven the hardest for K Street to influence--until now.

1 December 2003

Bush Plans New Nuclear Weapons
By Paul Harris
Observer (UK), 30 November 2003
EXCERPT: The United States is embarking on a multimillion-dollar expansion of its nuclear arsenal, prompting fears it may lead the world into a new arms race. The Bush administration is pushing ahead with the development of a new generation of weapons, dubbed 'mini-nukes', that use nuclear warheads to penetrate underground bunkers.

The High Costs of Rising Incivility on Capitol Hill
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times, 30 November 2003
EXCERPT: Ever since Thomas Jefferson presided over the United States Senate as vice president, the chamber has had not only a tradition of civility but rules requiring it. So there were more than a few raised eyebrows earlier this month when the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Harry Reid of Nevada, marched up to the crowded press gallery and, in a fit of pique at Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, declared, "I've never seen such amateur leadership in all the time I've been in Congress, 21 years." Mr. Reid's remark, uttered in frustration over the Republicans' all-night marathon attacking Democrats for blocking several judicial appointments, was yet another signal that, in 2003, the words civil and Congress may no longer belong in the same sentence.
SEE ALSO: Legislative Invicility (Matt Yglesias)

The Bush Empire
How Four Generations of Arms, Oil, Fascism, and U.S. Government Defiance Made America's First Family
By Charles Shaw
Milk Magazine, November 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush family [is] one of the richest and most influential American political dynasties in all our history. But it is almost shocking how little people actually know about the Bush family, particularly the history of the Bush men. I thought we might look beneath the veneer at the true face of America's political dynasty.

Quiet Power of Vice President Dick Cheney
By Ted Koppel
ABCNews.com, 29 November 2003
EXCERPT: Though Vice President Dick Cheney may stand discreetly in the background, rarely seen or heard from in public, don't underestimate him."His power is unparalleled in the history of the republic, frankly, for that position," said John Hulsman, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank. "Everybody knows that the vice president is going to fundamentally affect the foreign policy of the country," Hulsman added. "[When the vice president's office calls] you better get down there and you better wipe your hands on the side of your jacket on the way in the door." Analysts believe the secretive and conservative Cheney, who did not speak to Nightline for this story, was a driving force behind the Bush administration's aggressive approach to war in Iraq, a role that eventually might cost him. But for now, critics and adversaries in Washington are extremely reluctant to talk publicly about Cheney.

Bush Brother Business Deals Detailed in Divorce
By Jeff Franks
Reuters in FindLaw, 29 November 2003
EXCERPT: Neil Bush, younger brother of President Bush, detailed lucrative business deals and admitted to engaging in sex romps with women in Asia in a deposition taken in March as part of his divorce from now ex-wife Sharon Bush. According to legal documents disclosed on Tuesday, Sharon Bush's lawyers questioned Neil Bush closely about the deals, especially a contract with Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., a firm backed by Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, that would pay him $2 million in stock over five years. Marshall Davis Brown, lawyer for Sharon Bush, expressed bewilderment at why Grace would want Bush and at such a high price since he knew little about the semiconductor business. "You have absolutely no educational background in semiconductors do you?" asked Brown. "That's correct," Bush, 48, responded in the March 4 deposition, a transcript of which was read by Reuters after the Houston Chronicle first reported on the documents.

Under Attack by the FBI
The Boston Globe in IHT, 28 November 2003
EXCERPT: Attorney General John Ashcroft should be the chief protector of the United States Constitution, not its chief threat. By allowing the FBI to ask local police departments to report antiwar activities to the FBI's counterterrorism squads, Ashcroft makes the FBI look unsuited to protect Americans against the terrorist threat from Al Qaeda. That is the effect of the FBI memo to local police forces that was disclosed in The New York Times on Sunday. With this swipe at Americans wishing to exercise their constitutional right to free speech, Ashcroft and the FBI demonstrate an abject failure to understand two vital things: the delicate grandeur of American liberty and the political profile of the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Senator Edward Kennedy was hardly exaggerating when he told ABC's "This Week" that the FBI memo recalled the worst abuses of the Nixon years. "It is absolutely outrageous in terms of what this country is about," Kennedy said. Indeed, some conservatives who do not at all share the political outlook of most of the antiwar protesters have also complained of Ashcroft's use of the so-called Patriot Act to infringe upon Americans' rights.

See previously selected articles in our archives.

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15 December 2003

Saddam is History, But Who is the Real Enemy?
By Jim Lobe and Peyman Pejman
Asia Times, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Neither the US Commander in Chief, President George W Bush, nor the commander of the US forces in Iraq believe that the capture of Saddam Hussein will bring about a quick end to the insurgency. But what should become clearer in the coming weeks and months is whether the insurgency consists largely of Saddam and Ba'ath loyalists, as the US administration insists. And while Saddam's arrest closes a long chapter, it poses new challenges for the US-led forces in their relations with Iraqi officials and people.

WMD Answers Near?
8 minutes ago
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
Yahoo!News, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s capture is already reaping dividends for the U.S. military, providing intelligence that allowed U.S. soldiers to capture several top regime figures and uncover rebel cells in the capital, a U.S. general said Monday. The U.S. military hopes Saddam will clear up allegations that he had chemical and biological weapons and a nuclear weapons program, said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling of the 1st Armored Division. "I certainly think some of that will come out," Hertling said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think we'll get some significant intelligence over the next couple of days."

Saddam Roundup Roundup
Agonist, 14 December 2003
Superb compilation of articles on the web about the capture of Saddam Hussein.
SEE ALSO: Now for Justice to Be Done (Asia Times)

Shias Want UN Decision on Elections
Shia cleric Ayat Allah Sistani wants early elections
Aljazeera.net, 13 December 2003
EXCERPT: Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's highest-ranking Shia cleric, wants the United Nations to rule if early elections can take place in the country, in a new embarrassment to the US occupation authorities. Washington, which has decreed a lengthy delay before proper elections are held in 2005, can ill-afford to snub the religious leader of Iraq's majority community. ...General elections would not take place until March 2005, a date Sistani has rejected as far too late.

U.N. Inspector: Little New in U.S. Probe for Iraq Arms
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post,  14 December 2003
EXCERPT: The United Nations's top weapons inspector says most of the weapons-related equipment and research that has been publicly documented by the U.S.-led inspection team in Iraq was known to the United Nations before the U.S. invasion. Demetrius Perricos, acting chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), said in an interview and in a report to the U.N. Security Council that the only significant new information made public by the U.S. search team was that Iraq had paid North Korea $10 million for medium-range missile technology, which apparently was never delivered.
SEE ALSO:
Iraq's Illegal Weapons Are Clear, Bush Says
Report Frames President's Record
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: The White House said in a year-end report released yesterday that the invasion of Iraq had produced "clear evidence of Saddam's illegal weapons program" and new intelligence about his ties to terrorist organizations.

UN Agencies Threaten to Quit War-Torn Afghanistan
James Astill in Islamabad
The Observer, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: The UN yesterday warned that its agencies will pull out of Afghanistan if American and other Western troops cannot stem a tide of violence that has recently seen 15 aid workers murdered by resurgent Taliban fighters, and most foreign aid workers withdrawn to Kabul.

Army Shells Pose Cancer Risk in Iraq
Depleted uranium causing high radioactivity levels
Antony Barnett
The Observer, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: Depleted uranium shells used by British forces in southern Iraqi battlefields are putting civilians at risk from 'alarmingly high' levels of radioactivity.
Experts are calling for the water and milk being used by locals in Basra to be monitored after analysis of biological and soil samples from battle zones found 'the highest number, highest levels and highest concentrations of radioactive source points' in the Basra suburb of Abu Khasib - the centre of the fiercest battles between UK forces and Saddam loyalists. Readings taken from destroyed Iraqi tanks in Basra reveal radiation levels 2,500 times higher than normal. In the surrounding area researchers recorded radioactivity levels 20 times higher than normal.

Jessica Lynch Captures Saddam
Ex-Dictator Demands Back-Pay from Baker
By Greg Palast
GregPalast.com, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was taken into custody yesterday at approximately 8:30pm Baghdad time. Various television executives, White House spin doctors and propaganda experts at the Pentagon are at this time wrestling with the question of whether to claim PFC Jessica Lynch seized the ex-potentate or that Saddam surrendered after close hand-to-hand combat with current Iraqi strongman Paul Bremer III. Ex-President Hussein himself told US military interrogators that he had surfaced after hearing of the appointment of his long-time associate James Baker III to settle Iraq's debts. "Hey, my homeboy Jim owes me big time," Mr. Hussein stated. He asserted that Baker and the prior Bush regime, "owe me my back pay. After all I did for these guys you'd think they'd have the decency to pay up."
SEE ALSO: Capture Does Not Change Lies that Led to War (Buzzflash)

 BOOK REVIEW
From Here to Eternity
The unintended consequences of war.
Ripples of Battle by Victor Hanson
Doubleday, $27.50
Washington Monthly, December issue
By Jon Meacham
EXCERPT: This is not by any means an anti-war argument. It is, instead, a bracing reminder that combat and its wages, while conducted by human beings, are in the end beyond human control. "Battle is the raucous transformer of history," Hanson observes, "because it also accelerates in a matter of minutes the usually longer play of chance, skill, and fate." If, as Winston Churchill once said, "The story of the human race is war," then Hanson is giving us a significant elaboration of the theme: that the ripples of battle are unknowable. In my reading, a key implication of Hanson's case is that insofar as they can, great war leaders should prepare their people for the unexpected. Landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit and standing before a banner reading "Mission Accomplished" when men and women are still under fire at the front is not preparing people for the unexpected; it is spinning them in defiance of history. Churchill, arguably the greatest war leader of all, understood this, once saying: "There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves dwelling in a fool's paradise." From his lips to President Bush's ears.

13-14 December 2003

Pentagon Rules for Inspector General in Iraq Contradict Bush on Profiteering
Talking Points Memo, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: [Paul Wolfowitz] the Deputy Secretary of Defense signed a directive which hamstrung precisely the sort of internal audits of the funds Congress just approved for work in Iraq -- just the sort of crackerjack oversight the president says he loves.
SEE ALSO: Halliburton and Private Contractors Strike It Rich In Iraq (DemocracyNow!)
 AUDIO LINK   Left, Right and Center (KCRW), War Profiteering, etc.

Evidence Shows Bush was Incompetent or Indifferent to the Threat of 9/11
By Regis T. Sabol
Intervention Magazine, December 2003
EXCERPT: Could George Bush have acted to possibly prevent the attacks of 9/11? Yes. Should the American people hold him and his advisors to account for not preventing these attacks? Absolutely! For starters, let¹s take the president and Ms. Rice at their word; they had good reason to suspect that terrorists intended to hijack American airliners, but they had no idea the hijackers intended to kill people. The hijackers, they suspected, would use the airliners to negotiate the release of bin Laden allies who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. Does this mean that hijacking an airliner or airliners with hundreds of passengers did not justify taking immediate action? What did Ms. Rice and the president¹s other advisors think that bin Laden¹s hijackers would do with these planes and their passengers if their demands were not met? Meekly let them go? We¹re talking about a man who had masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center (hint, hint), the bombings of two United States embassies in Africa, and the attack on the S.S. Cole. We¹re talking about a man who has repeatedly urged his followers to kill as many Americans as possible. What were Bush, Rice, et.al. thinking?

America the Innocent: Freedom From Guilt
By Paul Woodward
ZNet, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: As was widely reported (New York Times , BBC ) around the world this weekend, an American airstrike ripped apart an Afghan village and slaughtered nine children. Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, who traveled to the village after the attack was later reported as saying that the surviving villagers had been "understanding" and that "they've been through years of war. They're not happy, but I think it meant a great deal to them that my commander, Gen. [Lloyd] Austin, came out and personally expressed his condolences." CNN reported this under the headline "Afghans understand deaths - U.S. " and referred to "the apparent deaths of nine children in an American airstrike". While the US military is never quick to accept its mistakes, and while it may express regrets but rarely assumes responsibility, CNN is not duty bound to march in lockstep with the Pentagon line.... The bottom line: If an American bomb falls on your house, be assured, it was dropped with the best of intentions.

Cutting James Baker's Ties
New York Times editorial, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: Last week, the White House summoned James Baker III, the Bush family's persuader of last resort, back to public service. His new portfolio is the diplomatically ticklish and economically crucial problem of restructuring Iraq's currently unpayable official debts. As a former secretary of both the State and Treasury Departments and a public and private Middle East deal maker, he is in many ways a supremely qualified choice. Yet as it stands right now, Mr. Baker is far too tangled in a matrix of lucrative private business relationships that leave him looking like a potentially interested party in any debt-restructuring formula. The obvious solution is for him to sever his ties to all firms doing work directly or indirectly related to Iraq.

Washington's Axis of Incoherence
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 13 December 2003
EXCERPT: ...Wednesday's embarrassing and potentially costly snafu is symptomatic of a larger problem faced by an administration that seems increasingly at sea over what to do about Iraq and whose constituent parts are trying desperately to protect their own interests. This has become especially clear over the past month in Iraq itself, where the US military has adopted much more aggressive counter-insurgency tactics in order to reduce insurgent attacks against its own forces, even at the expense of the larger struggle waged by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to win the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis, including the residents of the so-called Sunni triangle. On the one hand, the CPA's job is to convince Iraqis that US troops are there to help them to rebuild and make a transition to democratic Iraq. On the other hand, the military, which lost a record number of troops to hostile fire last month, is now embarked on a military campaign in the region that increasingly apes Israeli tactics. Razor-wire fences, checkpoints, night-time raids and roundups, bombing and the demolition of houses and other buildings have never persuaded Palestinians that Israeli soldiers are in the West Bank to help them.
SEE ALSO: Boomerang Diplomacy (Washington Post editorial)

Iraqi Protesters Oust Appointed Governor
Demonstrators Defy U.S. Occupation With Demand for an Election
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: The demonstrators converged on the provincial governor's office on Sunday with banners, sleeping mats, cooking pots and a simple demand: Iskander Jawad Witwit should quit. After three days and nights of continuous protests, Witwit did just that. But the demonstrators have refused to budge. As soon as Witwit resigned, the local representative of the U.S. occupation authority appointed a former Iraqi air force officer as acting governor. To the protesters, that was unacceptable. The new governor, they insisted, should be chosen not by an American but by Iraqis -- through an election. ..."We don't want to participate," said Bassim Jalal Ibrahim, the council's deputy chairman. "We regard the caucuses as illegitimate." Ibrahim said the council favors holding elections to select a new governor and to pick representatives for the transitional assembly. "I can't understand why the Americans don't want elections," he said. "We deserve to have them."

U.N. Watchdog Suggests Israel Should Discard Nuke Stockpile
AP in USA TODAY, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in an interview published Friday that he believes Israel has nuclear weapons and suggested Israel rid itself of the stockpile to promote Mideast peace.

U.N. Warning: Rising Violence Could End Afghanistan Efforts
AP IN USA Today, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: The United Nations may be forced to abandon its two-year effort to stabilize Afghanistan because of rising violence blamed on the resurgent Taliban, its top official here warned Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. Lakhdar Brahimi said his team could not continue its work unless security improves. He called for more foreign troops to halt attacks that have killed at least 11 aid workers across the south and east since March.

173 to 1: US Stands Alone Against the World
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: It was barely noted in the media, but this week the UN General Assembly voted on a series of resolutions on disarmament and security. And as the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy reports, "The United States consistently voted against the most important resolutions on nuclear and space disarmament." The vote for bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force was 173 yeas against one truculent American nay.

The Same Old Racket in Iraq
To the victors, the spoils: Bush's colonialism will only deepen resistance
By Tariq Ali
Guardian (UK), 13 December 2003
EXCERPT: Iraq remains a country of unbearable suffering, the sort that only soldiers and administrators acting on behalf of states and governments are capable of inflicting on their fellow humans. It is the first country where we can begin to study the impact of a 21st-century colonisation. This takes place in an international context of globalisation and neo-liberal hegemony. If the economy at home is determined by the primacy of consumption, speculation as the main hub of economic activity and no inviolate domains of public provision, only a crazed utopian could imagine that a colonised Iraq would be any different.

The Soldiers Bush Didn't Visit on Thanksgiving
By Joan Vennochi
Boston Globe, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: "My `Bush Thanksgiving' was a little different . . . I spent it at the hospital taking care of a young West Point lieutenant wounded in Iraq. He had stabilization of his injuries in Iraq and then two long surgeries here for multiple injuries; he's just now stable enough to send back to the USA. After a few bites of dinner I let him sleep, and then cried with him as he woke up from a nightmare. When he pressed his fists into his eyes and rocked his head back and forth he looked like a little boy. They all do, all 19 on the ward that day, some missing limbs, eyes, or worse."
SEE ALSO: The Iraq Bush Didn't Visit on Thanksgiving (BWUSA)

12 December 2003

Fill 'er Up -- With Taxpayer Dollars
Congressional watchdog Henry Waxman attacks Dick Cheney's former employer Halliburton for pumping up the price of gas in Iraq.
By Mark Follman
Salon.com, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: (Regarding security costs) The fact of the matter is that the Iraqi state oil company, SOMO, which is also bringing in gasoline from Kuwait, faces the exact same situation. They transport it through the same routes, deliver it to the same depot and receive the same protection from the U.S. military as Halliburton does. Yet the Iraqi company charges only 96 cents per gallon compared to Halliburton's $2.64 per gallon. How is this possible? The administration has not given us an answer to that question. ...The U.S. military is providing the security for the convoys, and the American taxpayers are paying for the U.S. military to do that. If you look at the breakdown of the figures put out by the Army Corps of Engineers, Halliburton is paying $1.21 per gallon to transport gasoline 400 miles from Kuwait to Iraq. This is astounding, especially since Halliburton transports gasoline from Turkey for just 22 cents per gallon. Why does it cost more than five times as much to transport gasoline from Kuwait?
SEE ALSO: U.S. Sees Evidence of Overcharging in Iraq Contract
By DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: A Pentagon investigation has found evidence that a subsidiary of the politically connected Halliburton Company overcharged the government by as much as $61 million for fuel delivered to Iraq under huge no-bid reconstruction contracts, senior military officials said Thursday. The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root, also submitted a proposal for cafeteria services that seemed to be inflated by $67 million, the officials said. The Pentagon rejected that proposal, they said.

A Deliberate Debacle
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: James Baker sets off to negotiate Iraqi debt forgiveness with our estranged allies. And at that very moment the deputy secretary of defense releases a "Determination and Findings" on reconstruction contracts that not only excludes those allies from bidding, but does so with highly offensive language. What's going on? Maybe I'm giving Paul Wolfowitz too much credit, but I don't think this was mere incompetence. I think the administration's hard-liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation. Surely this wasn't just about reserving contracts for administration cronies. Yes, Halliburton is profiteering in Iraq — will apologists finally concede the point, now that a Pentagon audit finds overcharging? And reports suggest a scandal in Bechtel's vaunted school-repair program. But I've always found claims that profiteering was the motive for the Iraq war — as opposed to a fringe benefit — as implausible as claims that the war was about fighting terrorism. There are deeper motives here.

Bush Slap at War Foes Petty, Harmful
Editorial
Dayton Daily News, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration's decision to exclude France, Germany, Russia and Canada from reconstruction contracts in Iraq is amazingly wrong-headed. In a time when all efforts should be focused on healing the wounds the war caused in American relations with potential allies, the White House is pouring salt on those wounds.

Pentagon Report Finds Halliburton Gouging on Fuel Prices
Reuters, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: A Pentagon audit of Halliburton, the oil services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, has found it overcharged for fuel it brought into Iraq from Kuwait, military sources said Thursday. The sources told Reuters that Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton unit which got a no-bid U.S. government contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry, had been notified by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency. So far the company has clocked up $2 billion in business from the March contract.
SEE ALSO: Meanwhile, Iraqi Soldiers Walk Out Over Pay (Guardian)

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
"My Son Stepped on an American Cluster Bomb" (DNOW!)
Father of US Soldier Killed in Iraq Speaks Out
Democracy NOW!, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: A USA Today study has found that the U.S. dropped or fired nearly 11,000 cluster bombs or cluster weapons on Iraq during the invasion and Britain dropped 2,000 more. It is unknown how many Iraqis died from cluster bombs. One estimate puts the total at 370. And the attacks left behind thousands of unexploded bomblets. At least eight U.S. soldiers and an unknown number of Iraqis have been killed by unexploded bomblets. USA Today reports that one of the soldiers killed may have been Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar. He died March 27 after stepping on some type of unexploded ordnance while on reconnaissance patrol outside Baghdad. He was 20 years old. A Marine investigation concluded that the "origin of the ordnance is unknown and really impossible to determine." But the dead Marine's father, Fernando Suarez del Solar has a different account. He says he was contacted by one of his son's friends, who said the Army dropped cluster weapons on March 26 and not all of the submunitions exploded. He is now seeking an official explanation for his son's death.
SEE ALSO: Gulf Troops Put at Risk By Failures (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Apache May Have Been Shot Down, Say US Troops (AP)

Global Warming Kills 150,000 A Year
By Paul Brown
Guardian (UK), 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: At least 150,000 people die needlessly each year as a direct result of global warming, three major UN organisations warned yesterday. The belief that the effects of climate change would become apparent in 10, 20 or 50 years time was misplaced, they said in a report. The changes had already brought about a noticeable increase in malnutrition, as well as outbreaks of diarrhoea and malaria, the three "big killers" in the poorest countries of the world.

It's too soon to stop beating this dead bird...
Bush's Surprise Remarks to Troups During Brave, 150-Minute, After-Dark Jaunt to the Maximum-Security Heart of the "Mission Accomplished" Zone
WhiteHouse.org, 27 November 2003
EXCERPT: Thank you! Thank you! It's great to be here in Baghdad! Well, this impenetrable all-American Christian oasis that just happens to be in Baghdad, anyway. (Applause.) Hope my popping in for a few campaign photos isn't too inconvenient, boys. Besides, I was looking for a warm Thanksgiving dinner that wasn't cooked by the old ball and chain. Now don't get me wrong ­ Laura's Smoked Freedom Fowl is plenty tasty ­ but all the Parliament Menthol ashes in her gravy give me the Hershey Squirts something awful. (Laughter.) Now as you lowly grunts are no doubt acutely aware, today is Thanksgiving, a day when white Republicans with enough money and connections to get out of active combat duty gather comfortably in their sprawling homes to indulge in the uniquely American art of gluttony.
SEE ALSO: White House Leaks Iraq Turkey Photos (BWUSA Exclusive)

11 December 2003

Another Bush Broken Promise:
White House Backs Away From AIDS Funding Commitment
Misleader.org
EXCERPT: It was big, and a nice, surprise—generous, and compassionate. And it was a lie.

Nice ploy, Dubya!
Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals
By DAVID E. SANGER and DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times, 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects. White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq.

Winning hearts and minds?
L. Paul Bremer: Iraqi Civilian Deaths Don't Count
By NIKO PRICE
Yahoo!News, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Iraq's Health Ministry has ordered a halt to a count of civilians killed during the war and told its statistics department not to release figures compiled so far, the official who oversaw the count told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The order was relayed by the ministry's director of planning, Dr. Nazar Shabandar, but the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversees the ministry, also wanted the counting to stop, said Dr. Nagham Mohsen, the head of the ministry's statistics department. "We have stopped the collection of this information because our minister didn't agree with it," she said, adding: "The CPA doesn't want this to be done." A spokesman for the CPA had no immediate response. ...A major investigation of Iraq's wartime civilian casualties was compiled by The Associated Press, which documented the deaths of 3,240 civilians between March 20 and April 20. That investigation, conducted in May and June, surveyed about half of Iraq's hospitals, and reported that the real number of civilian deaths was sure to be much higher.

Six Children, Two Adults Killed Friday
By Pamela Constable and Fred Barbash
Washington Post, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Six children and two adults were crushed to death under a toppled wall Friday during an air and ground assault by U.S. military forces on a farm compound in eastern Paktia Province, U.S. military officials in Afghanistan confirmed Wednesday. The incident came to light only four days after nine children died during an American air assault Saturday on another village compound in neighboring Ghazni Province. In both cases, the U.S. forces were targeting the homes of suspected Islamic extremists but instead inadvertently killed civilians in the area. ...(Lt. Col.) Hilferty, has attributed the civilian deaths to the "fog and friction of war," but he also has acknowledged that "such mistakes could make the Afghan people think ill" of the U.S.-led military coalition.

Pentagon: Many of New Iraq Soldiers Quit
By PAULINE JELINEK\
AP in Yahoo!News, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Plans to deploy the first battalion of Iraq's new army are in doubt because a third of the soldiers trained by the U.S.-led occupation authority have quit, defense officials said Wednesday. Touted as a key to Iraq's future, the 700-man battalion lost some 250 men over recent weeks as they were preparing to begin operations this month, Pentagon officials said. ...The battalion was highly celebrated when the newly retrained soldiers, marching to the beat of a U.S. Army band, completed a nine-week basic training course in early October. The graduates, including 65 officers, were to be the core "of an army that will defend its country and not oppress it," Iraq's American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, said at the ceremony. [Some may have thought the pay was too low and others may have feared threats from insurgents who have targeted Iraqis cooperating with occupation authorities, one Defense Department official said.]

Taliban Spies Keep Strong Grip on Southern Afghanistan
By James Astill
Guardian (UK), 11 December 2003
EXCERPT: "As soon as we leave the base, we see lights flashing down the highway for miles," one senior officer said. "Whenever we enter the town the horns start hooting. The enemy intelligence network is on top of every move we make." Across impoverished southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban's tribal homeland, the same desperate pattern is emerging. Military analysts and aid agency bosses in Kabul say America's two-year military campaign has failed to root out the Taliban or to bring peace. "The Taliban are getting stronger; they're regrouping, reorganising, and we're getting a lot of fire right now," said Sergeant Ken Green, a National Guardsman seconded to US special forces.
SEE ALSO: US Air Strikes Kill 15 Afghan Children (Guardian)

Bush is Feeling the Sting of the Iraq Invasion
By David Corn
TomPaine.com, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Bush is stuck in a hole of his own digging. Pulling out of Iraq and leaving the Iraqis to their own devices (and to the mercy of the murderous Ba'athist thugs) would be an immoral act. But staying in Iraq as occupiers seems at this moment a problematic position as well. A few days ago, the New York Times noted on the front page that the United States has adopted Israel-like tactics in Iraq: jailing the relatives of suspected insurgents, demolishing buildings that might have been used by the anti-American guerrillas, surrounding whole villages in barbed wire. And the article quoted Captain Todd Brown, a company commander in the area of one fenced-in village, observing, "You have to understand the Arab mind. The only thing they understand is force- force, pride and saving face." Bush can deliver noble speeches pledging a decades-long U.S. commitment to democracy in Iraq and the Middle East. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz can articulate lofty reasons for the occupation of Iraq. But Captain Brown (and others like him) are the ones who are, in a way, making the policy in Iraq with their attitudes and their interactions with Iraqis. I don't begrudge Brown his hard-ass position, for he has been placed in a tough spot. What is chilling is that his remark may be a more accurate description of the realities of U.S. policy in Iraq than anything concocted by a White House speechwriter.

Corporate Colonialism
By Francis Thicke
Progressive Populist, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Frances Moore Lappe (Hope's Edge, 2002) makes the case that often politicians and corporations use terms that leave us suffering from "hypocognition." Hypocognition results when a term is used to conjure up all-positive images to prevent us from understanding what is really going on. For example, hypocognition makes it hard for the public to believe there can be anything wrong with "globalism" or "free trade," which sound like the apple pie and motherhood of the 21st century. It is easy for the press to portray those who protest against "free trade" as fringe lunatics. Ms. Lappe coined the term "primitive marketism" as a more appropriate name for what has become the accepted standard of world trade over the last 20 years -- that the single principle of highest return to existing wealth is the sole driver of the world-wide system of production and exchange. That leaves cultural integrity, human rights, environmental protection, and even the ability of people to feed themselves as inconsequential to multinational corporations reaching around the world for opportunities for the highest return to existing wealth.

Who is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani?
Council on Foreign Relations, 5 December 2003
Courtesy of the Agonist
EXCERPT: The most important Shiite cleric in Iraq, a nation that is 60 percent Shiite. This means the reclusive 73-year-old leader wields a tremendous degree of influence over the nation’s future, experts say.

The Privatisation of War
Ian Traynor
The Guardian, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: Private corporations have penetrated western warfare so deeply that they are now the second biggest contributor to coalition forces in Iraq after the Pentagon, a Guardian investigation has established.
While the official coalition figures list the British as the second largest contingent with around 9,900 troops, they are narrowly outnumbered by the 10,000 private military contractors now on the ground. The investigation has also discovered that the proportion of contracted security personnel in the firing line is 10 times greater than during the first Gulf war. In 1991, for every private contractor, there were about 100 servicemen and women; now there are 10. The private sector is so firmly embedded in combat, occupation and peacekeeping duties that the phenomenon may have reached the point of no return: the US military would struggle to wage war without it.

UN Rules Out Early Return to Iraq
Annan says the UN has some tough choices to make
BBC, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: The UN is to run its Iraq operations from Cyprus or Jordan because it is too dangerous to return to Baghdad.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said in a report that his staff will move back to Iraq only if a future UN role there justifies the risks. The report released on Wednesday also names New Zealander Ross Mountain as Mr Annan's new interim envoy to Iraq. He replaces Sergio Vieira de Mello who died along with 21 others when the UN's Baghdad HQ was blown up in August.

10 December 2003

Excerpts of Iranian Activist Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize Lecture
AP in San Francisco Chronicle, 10 December 2003
Excerpts from the English translation of Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize lecture Wednesday in Oslo, Norway. The speech was delivered in Farsi, her native language.

Bush Rejects New North Korea Offer on Nukes
By SOO-JEONG LEE
AP in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: North Korea announced Tuesday it would freeze its nuclear weapons projects in return for the United States providing energy aid and removing Pyongyang from a list of countries that sponsor terrorism. President Bush rejected the offer. The North's terms amounted to a response to a plan offered a day earlier by the United States, Japan and South Korea for ending the standoff over the communist state's nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang's counterproposal comes as the other nations race to arrange another round of six-way talks.

Administration with a vision...sweet revenge
U.S. Bars Iraq Contracts for Nations That Opposed War
By DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times, 9 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying the step "is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States." The directive, which was issued by the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, represents perhaps the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq.

Major Afghan Offensive Launched Six Months After Rumsfeld Announced End to Combat Operations in Iraq
CNN, 9 December 2003
EXCERPT: The U.S. military has launched a major ground operation in Afghanistan in an effort to eliminate the remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban regime overthrown in 2001. Military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty described "Operation Avalanche", which began over the weekend, as the largest ground operation yet in Afghanistan.
SEE ALSO: 2 May 2003: Rumsfeld Declares End to Afghan Combat (WP)

The Saudi Connection: How Billions in Oil Money Spawned a Global Terror Network
By David E. Kaplan
USNews, 15 December 2003 issue
EXCERPT: The CIA's Illicit Transactions Group isn't listed in any phone book. There are no entries for it on any news database or Internet site. The ITG is one of those tidy little Washington secrets, a group of unsung heroes whose job is to keep track of smugglers, terrorists, and money launderers. In late 1998, officials from the White House's National Security Council called on the ITG to help them answer a couple of questions: How much money did Osama bin Laden have, and how did he move it around? The queries had a certain urgency. A cadre of bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorists had just destroyed two of America's embassies in East Africa. The NSC was determined to find a way to break the organization's back. Working with the Illicit Transactions Group, the NSC formed a task force to look at al Qaeda's finances. For months, members scoured every piece of data the U.S. intelligence community had on al Qaeda's cash. The team soon realized that its most basic assumptions about the source of bin Laden's money--his personal fortune and businesses in Sudan--were wrong. Dead wrong. Al Qaeda, says William Wechsler, the task force director, was "a constant fundraising machine." And where did it raise most of those funds? The evidence was indisputable: Saudi Arabia.

Miami: A Dangerous Victory
By Starhawk
ZNet, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: For those of us who participated in the protests against the FTAA, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, in Miami the third week in November, it's a bit hard to feel victorious. We are bruised, battered, worried about companeros still in jail, and grieving for Jordan Feder, a young medic who died of meningitis after the action. We've been harassed, arrested, tear gassed, pepper sprayed, hit, beaten, assaulted, lied about, and in some cases literally tortured and sexually assaulted in jail, and we've stared directly into the naked red gaze of the New American Fascism. Nevertheless we have had a significant victory that we need to understand and recognize, not least because it throws us into a new and very dangerous phase of activism.

High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
New York Times, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show.

Democracy in Iraq, Acts I and II
by Patrick Basham
Cato Institute, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: The good news is that the Bush administration now acknowledges the failure of its initial democratization policy in Iraq. The bad news is that the White House now thinks it has a better idea. The reality is that President Bush, having rhetorically raised the democratic bar sky high, can guarantee the Iraqi people, at best, nothing more than Afghanistan-style democracy, and that's nothing to brag about.
Act 1 of the attempt to democratize Iraq, which you may have forgotten by now, unfolded as follows:

9 December 2003

Jihad Has Worked - The World is Now Split in Two
Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: Perhaps the war on Afghanistan was necessary - but the war on Iraq was not. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. The US is fighting on two fronts, in control of neither country. Much of the resistance in Iraq to the US is from Saddam loyalists or criminal or tribal groups. But the US and British claim there are also elements of al-Qaida. Instead of the war on Iraq, Bush would have been better, as Blair continually advised him, to deal first with Israel-Palestine. Although the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, last week showed interest in the Geneva accord, the work of the Israeli-Palestinian peace camp, Bush has dropped any pretence of a US that acts as an independent arbitrator in the conflict. He has placed himself alongside Sharon. He has said he supports the creation of a Palestinian state, but shows no desire to use America's political and financial power over Israel to try to bring it about. The resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, however, is the only immediate way of reversing the dangerous polarisation of the world that Bin Laden seeks.

Isolation Play
Will UN weapons inspections thwart American attempts to isolate Iran?
By Robert Collier
The American Prospect, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: The U.S. failure to find weapons of mass destruction after the war in Iraq has dealt a severe blow to the Bush administration in its attempts to take a hard line on Iran at the United Nations. A resolution adopted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 26 gave the administration almost none of what it wanted -- namely, condemnation and punishment of Iran for its alleged work to develop nuclear weapons.

The President's New Crusade
By Paul Starr
The American Prospect, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Iraq War began with two justifications. One was protecting America's security; the other, bringing democracy to Iraq. With the failure to find weapons of mass destruction or connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the security rationale has grown increasingly doubtful. Unable to substantiate the claims about Iraq that his administration originally put before the world, the president has elevated the democratic rationale in a defensive, rhetorical escalation. The sequence of Bush's positions raises doubts about how seriously we ought to take his new principles. As a presidential candidate, he disparaged nation building, deplored the use of the military as peacekeepers and attacked interventions based on human rights on the grounds that national security should be our overriding concern in foreign affairs. Some might say of his turnabout, "Better late than never -- what's wrong with his conversion to Wilsonian idealism?"

Israel Trains US Assassination Squads in Iraq
By Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 9 December 2003
EXCERPT: Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq. US forces in Iraq's Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centres of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops. But the secret war in Iraq is about to get much tougher, in the hope of suppressing the Ba'athist-led insurgency ahead of next November's presidential elections.
SEE ALSO: Making a Killing in the New Iraq (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Israel Trains US Assassination Squads in Iraq (Antiwar.com)

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Don't miss this analysis!
Saving President Bush: Send in James Baker
Amy Goodman speaks with investigative journalist Greg Palast, author Dan Briody and editor Mark Ames
Democracy NOW!, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: Baker is a lawyer-politician who is a former White House Chief of Staff, Treasury Secretary, Secretary of State and various other things. He is a trusted friend of the Bush family and has been called up before in times of political need. He ran Bush Senior¹s presidential campaigns and was President George W Bush¹s man in Florida during the recount in 2000. Baker is now a senior partner in the law firm of Baker Botts, which is deeply involved in the fight for the oil and gas of the Caspian Sea and is senior counselor to the powerful investment firm the Carlyle Group. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Baker was reportedly at a Carlyle investor conference with members of the bin Laden family in the Ritz Carlton in Washington D.C. And his law firm Baker Botts is defending the Saudi government in a lawsuit filed by the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
SEE ALSO: Palast: Bush's Business Partner Slices Up Iraq (GregPalast.com)

U.N. Calls for Inquiry Into Afghan Attack
American officials say they are investigating the U.S. airstrike that killed nine children, who were playing within a walled compound of a home.
By Hamida Ghafour and Jonathan Peterson
LA Times, December 8, 2003
EXCERPT: The top United Nations official in Afghanistan called Sunday for a swift investigation into a U.S. airstrike that left nine Afghan children dead, saying that such attacks would increase Afghans' feeling of insecurity and fear. In a statement, the U.S. military said Sunday that it regretted the deaths and was conducting its own probe into the bombing Saturday that targeted what a U.S. Army spokesman called a known terrorist. Ground forces who checked the scene of the airstrike later discovered the bodies of nine children near the dead terror suspect, the military said. But Afghans contended that the Taliban militant whom U.S. forces wanted to kill had escaped.

Moving Targets
Will the counter-insurgency plan in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The New Yorker, 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that the main target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies. A new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members, Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to report by January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination. The revitalized Special Forces mission is a policy victory for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has struggled for two years to get the military leadership to accept the strategy of what he calls “Manhunts”—a phrase that he has used both publicly and in internal Pentagon communications. Rumsfeld has had to change much of the Pentagon’s leadership to get his way. “Knocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things,” a Pentagon adviser told me, referring to Afghanistan and Iraq. ...One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the war against the Iraqi insurgency from Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East. According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq. Israeli commandos are expected to serve as ad-hoc advisers—again, in secret—when full-field operations begin. (Neither the Pentagon nor Israeli diplomats would comment. “No one wants to talk about this,” an Israeli official told me. “It’s incendiary. Both governments have decided at the highest level that it is in their interests to keep a low profile on U.S.-Israeli coöperation” on Iraq.)

U.S. Hegemony: Continuing Decline, Enduring Danger
by Richard B. Du Boff
The Monthly Review, December issue
EXCERPT: “Global hegemony” might be defined as a situation in which one nation-state plays a predominant role in organizing, regulating, and stabilizing the world political economy. The use of armed force has always been an inseparable part of hegemony, but military power depends upon the economic resources at the disposal of the state. It cannot be deployed to answer every threat to geopolitical and economic interests, and it raises the danger of imperial overreach, as was the case for Britain in South Africa (1899–1902) and the United States in Vietnam (1962–1975). ...The war on Vietnam coincided with the first splinterings of American hegemony, and the “war on terrorism” will accelerate the decline. The United States can no longer control a multipolar world through unilateral action, military or otherwise; it can only bring devastation and disruption and prevent any other rules of the game from materializing, if it so chooses. To resist the new American imperialism is to give hope to its victims, and to progressive forces now stirring in the developing world, as well as in the first.

American Apocalypse
By Robert Jay Lifton
The Nation, 8 December 2003
Courtesy of TomDispatch.com
EXCERPT: The apocalyptic imagination has spawned a new kind of violence at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We can, in fact, speak of a worldwide epidemic of violence aimed at massive destruction in the service of various visions of purification and renewal. In particular, we are experiencing what could be called an apocalyptic face-off between Islamist forces, overtly visionary in their willingness to kill and die for their religion, and American forces claiming to be restrained and reasonable but no less visionary in their projection of a cleansing warmaking and military power. Both sides are energized by versions of intense idealism; both see themselves as embarked on a mission of combating evil in order to redeem and renew the world; and both are ready to release untold levels of violence to achieve that purpose.

Dirty Bomb Warheads Disappear
Stocks of Soviet-Era Arms For Sale on Black Market
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post, 7 December 2003
EXCERPT:
TIRASPOL, Moldova -- In the ethnic conflicts that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters in several countries seized upon an unlikely new weapon: a small, thin rocket known as the Alazan. Originally built for weather experiments, the Alazan rockets were packed with explosives and lobbed into cities. Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world's first surface-to-surface dirty bomb. The radioactive warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared.

8 December 2003

Congressman Doubts Pentagon's Casualty Count
By Patrick Peterson
Knight Ridder, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: An influential Mississippi congressman has raised the possibility that the Pentagon has undercounted combat casualties in Iraq after he learned that five members of the Mississippi National Guard who were injured Sept. 12 by a booby trap in Iraq were denied Purple Heart medals.

Bush family ally drafted to help Iraq
James Baker, Ex-Secretary of State, to Seek Support of Major World Leaders
By Mark Matthews
Baltimore Sun, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: With continued instability in Iraq posing one of the biggest threats to his re-election, President Bush tapped yesterday a trusted family troubleshooter, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, to enlist support from major world leaders for Iraq's transition to self-governance. ...A lawyer-politician who served as secretary of state under the president's father and secretary of the Treasury and White House chief of staff under Ronald Reagan, Baker has long experience negotiating with world leaders. Winning debt relief for Iraq likely will involve dealing with broad questions of what post-war Iraq will look like, as well as the demands and grievances of a long list of creditor nations. ...Baker is now a senior partner in the law firm of Baker Botts and senior counselor of the Carlyle Group, an investment firm.

WMD: Mission Destraction
By Mark Hosenball
Newsweek, 15 December issue
EXCERPT: Defense sources say that several weeks ago, Pentagon policymakers were asked to approve an order that would formally expand the mission of the survey group to include counterterrorism-intelligence collection. But some Defense officials complain that top Pentagon brass has been slow to approve the order. Administration officials confirm the survey group’s main mission remains hunting WMD, but say local commanders can temporarily shift team members to counterterrorism in emergencies.
Some Pentagon cynics think the Bush administration may not want to publicly alter the survey group’s mission, since it might be seen as an admission that the WMD hunt was fruitless. A Defense official conceded that few U.S. intelligence analysts now believe the survey group is ever likely to find any significant Iraqi WMD stockpiles.

Iraq Delays Hand Halliburton $1 Billion
By Oliver Morgan
Observer (UK), 7 December 2003
EXCERPT: Halliburton, the engineering group formerly run by US vice-president Dick Cheney, has been given $1 billion worth of reconstruction work in Iraq by the US government without having to compete for it, thanks to repeated delays in opening up a key contract to competition.
SEE ALSO: Bechtel Fails Reconstruction of Iraq's Schools (CorpWatch)

Iraq Morass, Like Afghanistan, Will Take Years to Fix
By Peter Beaumont
Observer (UK), 7 December 2003
EXCERPT: Does Ambassador Paul Bremer and the CPA have any idea who really speaks for Iraqis? Seen from a distance, it seems a facile question. The hand-picked Iraqi governing council - in theory at least - is designed to represent the ethnic and nascent political diversity of Iraq. But examine Iraq's cities and governates close up and it no longer seems such a stupid question. For who speaks for Iraqis at a local level - as in Afghanistan - is a constellation of competing interest groups and local elites which make the issue of a smooth transition to democratic governance fraught not only with difficulties but real danger.
SEE ALSO: US Air Strike in Afghanistan Kills Nine Children (AP)

America the Ungrateful
By Dr. Khaled M. Batarfi
Arab News, 7 December 2003
EXCERPT: While changing lanes is acceptable in politics as in road traffic, sudden and aggressive change is reckless driving. America these days is the world's most dangerous driver, according to global polls, including ones conducted in allied Europe. Its foreign policies are regarded as selfish, uncivilized, and ungrateful. Just like John F. Kennedy ‹ who said "What's mine is mine, what's yours is negotiable" ‹ George W. Bush is basically telling us: What America does is right, what you do is subject to our judgment. International law, therefore, including its ultimate supervisor, the UN, is either a tool to legitimize American interests or "irrelevant".

EU Deals a Blow Against Bush's Steel Tariffs
By William Keegan
Observer (UK), 8 December 2003
EXCERPT: At a time when the European Union's enemies can hardly conceal their glee at its apparent disunity, and when champions of that cause are close to despair, Brussels has won a resounding victory. I refer to President George W Bush's decision to lift the steel tariffs he imposed early last year in an action that drove a coach and horses through the free trade agenda that the US had pursued for so long. Bush's action was obviously illegal at the time, and duly declared so by the World Trade Organisation. The EU threatened retaliatory action, and hit Bush where it hurt. While Bush was conscious of his own electoral considerations in the key steel states, in the words of David Sanger of the New York Times, the retaliatory tariffs threatened by Brussels also 'targeted electoral battleground states - from textile mills in the Carolinas to farmers in the Mid-West - with a precision that Karl Rove, the President's political adviser, must have grudgingly admired.'

Turtles All the Way Down: The Flat Earth Theory of Victory in Iraq
By Richard Cummings
LewRockwell.com, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: We are winning the war in Iraq. We are winning the war in Afghanistan. Bush went to war because Saddam Hussein had WMDs he could use against us within 48 hours. And the earth is flat.
SEE ALSO: The Madness of George II (LewRockwell.com)

6-7 December 2003

Funds for Iraq Are Far Short of Pledges, Figures Show
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
New York Times, 7 December 2003
EXCERPT: Six weeks after organizers of an international donors conference in Madrid said that more than $3 billion in grants had been pledged to help Iraq with immediate needs, a new World Bank tally verifies grants of only $685 million for 2004. The vast gap seems to have occurred largely for two reasons: some countries, like Japan, changed the nature of their commitment after the conference from immediate aid to slower, long-term help; and some that had left their intentions unclear were incorrectly assumed to be giving immediate aid. ...The largest portion of the loans pledged in Iraq were from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But aid experts say the monetary fund loans, at least, will not be available until Iraq's debt restructuring is worked out. On Friday, President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James A. Baker III to lead the effort to renegotiate Iraq's debt, estimated at $100 billion to $120 billion. Iraq also owes $100 billion in reparations.

Steel
Filibuster in Columbia Political Review, 5 December 2003
EXCERPT: It's quite amazing that the White House is trying to spin the recent decision to eliminate steel tariffs as an economic - and not political - calculation. It's really a case-in-point about the Administration's up-is-down syndrome. Here's Bush's statement from the Post:  "I took action to give the industry a chance to adjust to the surge in foreign imports and to give relief to the workers and communities that depend on steel for their jobs and livelihoods," Bush said. "These safeguard measures have now achieved their purpose, and as a result of changed economic circumstances it is time to lift them" (Italics added).
This after apparently painful debate inside the Administration about whether it would be more hurtful to 2004 election chances to suffer the ire of the steel industry in the swing states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, or to suffer in important electoral districts that would be hurt by targeted counter-tariffs imposed by the EU and Japan. (Districts such the citrus-growing ones in Florida). But it's no surprise, really, because this White House never admits it made a mistake. And it never never admits it was beaten.

Baker Is Named to Restructure Iraq's Huge Debt
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
New York Times, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush turned Friday for assistance on Iraq to the man who helped him win the contested election in 2000, naming former Secretary of State James A. Baker III as his personal envoy to restructure more than $100 billion in Iraq's foreign debt. The appointment of Mr. Baker, a longtime Bush family confidant and troubleshooter, was, in effect, a public admission by the White House that the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq is a more urgent problem than officials acknowledge. Over Mr. Baker's decades of friendship with the Bush family, both father and son have turned to him when things have gone wrong, and Mr. Baker has for the most part delivered.

US Under Pressure to Back Claims Over Iraq Firefight in Samarra
By Phil Reeves in Baghdad
The Independent, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: Pressure is mounting on the United States military to support its claim to have killed 54 Iraqi guerrillas in the biggest battle since George Bush declared an end to major combat seven months ago. Scepticism about the US's version of the death toll has been expressed within upper echelons of the occupation authorities. A US combat leader who was involved in the battle has also denounced the military's account of the battle. ...The credibility of the US military was dented in April after it supplied inaccurate information about the killing of 14 Iraqis in Fallujah by the 82nd Airborne Division, when its soldiers opened fire on demonstrators . In the aftermath of the killings US Central Command said that it was unable to say whether any Iraqis had been killed. However, in Samarra the US army says its soldiers performed fixed procedures for counting those killed and wounded.

Do Americans Know the Score?
By Derrick Z. Jackson, 12/3/2003
Boston Globe, 6 December 2003
In the early weeks of America's invasion of Iraq, Central Command spokesman Frank Thorp said, "We cannot look at combat as a scorecard." This was because we did not count Iraqi military or civilian casualties. Until this week. Suddenly, the military is hawking scorecards, saying that 54 guerrillas have been killed.The military now figures you can't tell who's winning the war without one.

The Geneva Initiative: A Blueprint for Israeli-Palestinian Peace
Discussion sponsored by the Brookings Institution
4 December 2003
Moderated by:
Martin S. Indyk
Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings
Panel:
Yossi Beilin (Former Minister of Justice, Israel), Yasser Abed Rabbo, (Former Minister of Information and Culture, Palestinian Authority), Daniel Levy, (Israeli Delegate), Nabil Kasis,
Palestinian Delegate
Read the full event transcript (PDF—102KB)
Geneva Model-Accord (read the text)

Bush Cuts Steel Tariffs, Declares Victory
Dan Ackman
Forbes, 4 December 2003
Courtesy of RJ
EXCERPT: President George W. Bush yesterday reversed himself by lifting steel tariffs, thus yielding finally to international law as agreed to in the World Trade Organization (WTO) accords and avoiding what is somewhat hysterically called a potential trade war. The administration's action has been hailed as a victory for free trade and for international law. It is--but only a half victory. In March of 2002, when the steel tariffs were first announced, my colleague Mark Lewis summarized the law and politics of this situation: "Bush must be well aware that his new steel tariffs and quotas are likely to be struck down by the World Trade Organization," Lewis wrote. "But he also knows that it will take perhaps two years for the case to be filed, argued and decided. Since his protectionist measures are only supposed to be in effect for three years anyway, Bush could then accept the WTO decision with a show of reluctance, shrugging his shoulders and saying, 'Hey, I tried,' to his steel-industry supporters." While the WTO was several months faster than Lewis or anyone expected, the president said he did not just try, but that he succeeded. Otherwise, Lewis got it exactly right.

Wal-Mart Invades, and Mexico Gladly Surrenders
By TIM WEINER
New York Times, 6 December 2003
EXCERPT: The company that ate America is now swallowing Mexico. Wal-Mart, the biggest corporation in the United States, is already the biggest private employer in Mexico, with 100,164 workers on its payroll here as of last week. Last year, when it gained its No. 1 status in employment, it created about 8,000 new positions — nearly half the permanent new jobs in this struggling country. Wal-Mart's power is changing Mexico in the same way it changed the economic landscape of the United States, and with the same formula: cut prices relentlessly, pump up productivity, pay low wages, ban unions, give suppliers the tightest possible profit margins and sell everything under the sun for less than the guy next door.

5 December 2003

Scrapped
The Economist Global Agenda, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: George Bush has announced the dismantling of America’s tariffs on imported steel, while promising to shield domestic companies from dumping. The tariffs have done their job, he says. Have they? George Bush's decision last year to slap illegal tariffs on imported steel risked sparking a trade war with the European Union and other big steel traders, such as Brazil, South Korea and Japan. But Mr Bush seemed prepared to pick that fight in order, as he saw it, to save the American steel industry—an industry stuttering along with too many companies, operating on too small a scale, with too many pensions to pay. On Thursday December 4th, however, the president’s fight came to an end with the announcement that the tariffs were being dismantled, 16 months earlier than originally planned. But this was no defeat, you understand. On the contrary, Mr Bush has, in effect, declared victory and gone home.

US Forces Accused of Iraq 'Massacre'
By Peter Spiegel in Baghdad and Nicolas Pelham
Financial Times, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: The US army came under renewed pressure on Wednesday over its conduct in a battle at the weekend in the central Iraqi town of Samarra, as Iran's senior religious leader accused the American forces of "a savage massacre" in which 54 locals were reportedly killed.

UN Arms Inspectors Say No Access to US-UK Info on Iraq
SpaceWar.com, 3 December 2003
EXCERPT: UN weapons inspectors have still not been given a key report by US and British experts who have scoured post-war Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction, UN documents revealed on Wednesday. UNMOVIC, the UN arms team which monitored Baghdad's weapons programmes and left on the eve of the war, said it thus could not assess the interim report from the US-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which was completed in October. Controversy has raged over whether the regime of Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), cited as a main reason for the US-led war that brought down Saddam.

A militia for each political leader...
Iraqi Political Parties Will Form Militia to Work With American Forces
By EDWARD WONG
New York Times, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: The American-led administration in Iraq has agreed with leaders of the country's top political parties to create a militia group made up of troops picked in equal numbers by the parties, party officials and members of the Iraqi Governing Council said Wednesday. Iraqi political leaders from all factions have long argued that American soldiers were ill-equipped to gather intelligence on resistance fighters. The foreign administrators, though, were reluctant to form a large militia, the Iraqis said, mainly because of their distrust of the Iranian-trained Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But the deteriorating security situation seems to have swung the opinion of the occupiers, Iraqi officials said. The make-up of the militia has raised concerns among some Governing Council members. Ghazi Yawar, a council member who does not represent any political parties, said forming a militia of soldiers from different parties could lead to violent factionalism. He added that the Governing Council was not consulted about this and that only council members representing the largest parties — ones that would contribute soldiers — took part in talks on the militia with Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior American commander in the Middle East. "I am very outraged," he said. "How many people are running Iraq? I'm very upset. This can lead to warlords and civil war. Should I form my own militia? I can have 20,000 people or more here. But that is not what I want to do."

Appointment in Samarra: Lies and Exaggeration Bring Back Memories of Vietnam
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.com, 3 December 2003
Courtesy of ZNet
EXCERPT: There was a lot of firepower and a lot of shooting. That much we know for sure; that much the TV photos of pock-marked buildings and riddled cars indicate. But was it, as American spokesmen claimed (ABC News, 12/2), a "significant victory", with a group of sixty-plus well-coordinated rebels being crushed by Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and 100 heavily armed American troops in the largest battle of the occupation era, or was it a case of Americans shooting wildly into civilian areas when facing tiny groups of guerrillas, twelve in all, attacking convoys bringing new Iraqi money to banks in Samarra as a (supposed) spokesman for the guerrillas claimed to Agence France Presse on Dec. 2?

The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner
In Iraq Picture, Bush Is Holding the Centerpiece
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 4 December 2003

                                                         AP Photo
Find the fake dinner turkey.

Explaining this photo op: "This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him."

Talking Points Memo said:
The explanation is worse than what's being explained (by the White House). Fake scenes are good because they capture deeper truths about the president "that people know [are] true." That's classic. Sorta like how the Santa Claus story captures the deeper meaning of Christmas or that other story about the Stork.
Great.
Josh Marshall, TPM

Fox News' Occupation Critic
by David Corn
Common Dreams, 4 December 2003
Courtesy of ML
Retired Major Bob Bevelacqua is a Fox News military analyst. Yet he has been one of the harsher critics in the media of the Bush administration's postwar actions. "Major Bob," as he is called on air, answers questions put to him by David Corn, a regular columnist for The Nation magazine.

A New Plan Roils an Old Conflict
MSNBC News, 1 December 2003
Courtesy of Talking Point Memo
EXCERPT: Yet the initiative officially signed and delivered on Monday has changed the conflict’s dynamic by focusing attention on the failures of all three men to take the hard decisions or conceive creative solutions to its many dilemmas. Even if it does go the way of Camp David, Oslo, the Saudi plan and countless other efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this accord has at least forced governments who may have judged it possible to live with the status quo for now react to what has become a challenge to their authority.

Former Israeli Intelligence Official Criticizes Israeli Assessments on Iraq
By Peter Enav
AP, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: A former Israeli intelligence officer charged Thursday that Israeli agencies produced a flawed picture of Iraqi weapons capabilities and substantially contributed to mistakes made in U.S. and British pre-war assessments on Iraq. The comments of reserve Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom represented an unusual criticism of the Israeli intelligence community, long regarded as one of the world's best. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Brom served in Israeli military intelligence for 25 years, and acted as the deputy chief of planning for the Israeli army. Career officers in Israel traditionally maintain close ties with military colleagues even after retirement. Brom's research was conducted under the aegis of Israel's leading strategic affairs think tank, Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center. Brom said he was directing his remarks at Military Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the Mossad intelligence agency. The army declined to comment. The Mossad did not immediately return a message.

Delusions in Baghdad
By Mark Danner
New York Review of Books, 18 December issue
EXCERPT: As I write, 423 Americans have died in Iraq since the United States invaded in March and more than 2,300 have been wounded there, many grievously; and the rate at which Americans are being killed and wounded is increasing. But while these tolls are having a discernible effect on President Bush's popularity among Americans, the major goal of this kind of warfare is not only to kill and wound Americans but to increase Iraqi recruits, both active and passive, who will oppose the occupation; its major product, that is, is political. "The point," said General Swannack, "is to get the Americans to fire back and hopefully they'll get some Iraqi casualties out of that and they can publicize that." After first estimating the guerrilla strength in and around Falluja at 20,000, the general revised his figure: "Probably about a thousand people out there really want to attack us and kill us and another nineteen thousand or so really really don't like us." Such estimates vary wildly around Iraq, depending on whom you ask. General Sanchez recently put the total number of the opposition nationwide at five thousand. Whatever the numbers, the guerrillas' main business is to make them grow, particularly the number of strong sympathizers; and all evidence suggests that thus far they are succeeding.

Put the Blame on Cheney for U.S. Mess in Iraq
James Klurfeld
NewsDay.com, 4 December 2003
Courtesy of ML
EXCERPT: ...the White House exerted enormous pressure on the CIA to produce intelligence that coincided with its policy predilections. This is very dangerous, of course. And, given Bush's lack of background, it's easy to understand why he might not have understood how intelligence can be misused. It was Cheney, the seasoned, solid expert in national security matters, who was supposed to make certain the intelligence was straight, who was going to protect the president's credibility. But it turns out he was the one pushing for information to confirm his preconceived notions. Yes, the buck stops with the president, but the more I learn about what happened behind the scenes the more I say put the blame on Cheney

4 December 2003

U.S. subverts prospect of direct elections
Plan to Hold Census by Summer Not Revealed to Iraq "Governing Council"
By JOEL BRINKLEY
New York Times, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: Iraqi census officials devised a detailed plan to count the country's entire population next summer and prepare a voter roll that would open the way to national elections in September. But American officials say they rejected the idea, and the Iraqi Governing Council members say they never saw the plan to consider it.

Arab Population in U.S. Nearly Doubles
By Sarah Freeman
AP in Boston Globe, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Arab population in the United States has nearly doubled in the past two decades, according to the Census Bureau's first report on the group. The bureau counted nearly 1.2 million Arabs in the United States in 2000, compared with 860,000 in 1990 and 610,000 in 1980. About 60 percent trace their ancestry to three countries: Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. The census report stops at 2000...so there is no data to measure the impact of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But tighter immigration procedures imposed after then have reduced the flow of Arabs to the United States. While earlier Arab immigrants came from countries with large Christian populations, newer arrivals come from heavily Muslim countries such as Iraq and Yemen.

Kyoto Protocol in Peril
The New York Times, 4 December 2003
EXCERPT: The news from Moscow on Tuesday was not good — Russia, a senior official said, had decided not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Combined with President Bush's decision two years ago to abandon the pact, Russia's rejection would have effectively killed it. Then yesterday came word that it might have been a false alarm, a negotiating tactic to strengthen Moscow's leverage in economic talks with the European Union, and that Russia was indeed "moving toward" ratification. Let us hope this is the case. The 1997 protocol has many flaws. It is, however, the only international response to the global warming problem thus far devised, and at the very least it provides a plausible framework for collective international action. One would never know this by listening to the Bush administration. Indeed, it can be argued that Russia would not be having second thoughts about the Kyoto accord had Mr. Bush himself decided not to bail out. Under the terms of the agreement, Russia — whose economy collapsed in the 1990's, and whose global-warming emissions were thus well below the limits imposed by the treaty — would have profited handsomely from selling unused emissions credits to countries with booming economies. But the market for these credits, and Russia's potential economic gains, diminished sharply when the United States, which would have been a major buyer of credits, pulled out.

Democracy Cannot Coexist with Bush's Failed Doctrine of Preventive War
by Benjamin R. Barber
Common Dreams, 3 December 2003
EXCERPT: In his historic speech at the National Endowment for Democracy recently, President Bush embraced a new doctrine, a "formal strategy of freedom" in the Middle East — and he did it just in the nick of time. For although the war in Iraq is won, the peace has been lost, and that other Bush doctrine, the "preventive war" doctrine, is in disarray. The United States can neither withdraw with honor — anarchy, civil war and renewed tyranny probably would result — nor stay and fight on into a Vietnam-style quagmire, which is what the new Baathist-terrorist alliance is obviously hoping for. Bush's dilemma was evident in his Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad — a couple of hours with his fortressed troops but not a minute with the "liberated" Iraqis. The only alternative to withdrawal or quagmire is for the U.S. to succeed in its campaign for genuine democratization, which is the option the president has chosen. Unfortunately, he has done so without relinquishing preventive war or the faulty logic behind it.

Civilian Deaths Raise Iraqi Fears, Anger
By Vivienne Walt, Globe Correspondent, 12/3/2003
Boston Globe, 3 December 2003
EXCERPT: Sifting through hospital records and newspaper reports, the Cambridge-based Project on Defense Alternatives last month estimated that about 200 Iraqi civilians had been killed by American firepower since May 1, the date President Bush declared major combat over. The project's co-director, Carl Conetta, said that the figure excludes deaths since US forces launched their biggest offensive since April, Operation Iron Hammer, last month. A recent report released by Human Rights Watch in New York said the organization's researchers in Baghdad had found "credible" reports of 94 civilian deaths by American firepower in the capital alone, between May 1 and Oct. 1. The report said five of those deaths have been investigated above division level -- the level that can order court martials or grant substantial compensation. In four of those cases, soldiers were deemed justified in killing the civilians. The fifth is still under investigation. The 82d Airborne is investigating the al-Jumaidy deaths. Exacerbating the issue is a sense among soldiers that they will not be punished for using excessive force, says the report.

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Did the U.S Lie About What Happened in Samarra?
Democracy NOW!, 3 December 2003
EXCERPT: Widely differing accounts are emerging over a battle Sunday between U.S. troops and Iraqi resistance fighters in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra. The U.S. Army said that either 46 or 54 guerillas were killed in the clashes and another 16 wounded in what it described as the bloodiest fire-fight since the official end of the war. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt later admitted that the U.S. figures are only estimates and that U.S. forces had not recovered a single body from the scene. Iraqi accounts differ sharply. The director of the local hospitals says they received the bodies of only eight civilians, including those of a woman and child as well as 60 others wounded. U.S. military officials denied their forces had overreacted and fired indiscriminately, as charged by senior police, hospital and municipal officials in the Samarra.
SEE ALSO: Pentagon Didn't Count Iraqi Deaths Until This Weekend (Common Dreams)

Cruisin' for a Bruisin' with Hugo: Chavez vs. the FTAA
Venezuela's President Unveils a Plan for PetroSur, a Latin American OPEC
By Greg Palast
GregPalast.com, 29 November 2003
EXCERPT: Hugo Chavez has an attitude problem. Only last April the Venezuelan president escaped a kidnapping by the Chairman of the nation's Chamber of Commerce. This weekend, Chavez is facing a recall petition by the angry rich of Venezuela. He also faces the wrath of an angry rich American president who does not appreciate Chavez' bad attitude toward globalization a la Rumsfeld. Annoying the moneyed and the powerful is Chavez' gift. And this week, at the meeting of the Congress of Andean Parliaments, he unwrapped a special surprise, a renewed proposal for PetroSur, functionally, a Latin American OPEC.

3 December 2003

Phase Three: Civil War in Iraq
By Simon Tisdall
Guardian (UK), 3 December 2003
EXCERPTS: What really happened in Samarra? According to US military spokesmen, a series of ambushes on coalition convoys by the Saddam Fedayeen militia was repulsed with unprecedented, devastating enemy losses. The official, estimated casualty toll in Sunday's fighting in the town, north-west of Baghdad, was 54 "enemy combatants" dead, 22 wounded and one captured, against five American wounded. This is indeed unusual. In most combat situations, the number of wounded normally exceeds the number killed.... Unofficial accounts tell a different story, suggesting that many of the dead were civilians, not insurgents. One shopkeeper said that once under attack, American soldiers began shooting wildly and in all directions. After seeing two civilians shot down, he said he was so incensed that "if I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself".

Is Thomas Friedman Even Listening?
Columnist wrongly attacks Bush protesters for ignoring same-day bombing
Fair Action Alert, December 2, 2003
EXCERPT: In Thomas Friedman's November 30 New York Times column, he chides anti-war activists participating in a protest against George W. Bush's visit to London for not acknowledging the bombing of British targets in Istanbul that had occurred on the same day (11/21/03) just hours before. ...Friedman appeared to base his analysis of the protest's message on a survey of signs carried by activists in the march; he complained that none that he saw made any reference to the killings in Istanbul. It is difficult, of course, to respond to a breaking news event on a handheld sheet of cardboard-- particularly since they are often painted the day before a march. If Friedman had actually listened to what the speakers at the rally had to say, however, he would have heard plenty of discussion of the day's violence.

The Bottom of the Barrel: Oil is Running Out
By George Monbiot
Guardian (UK), 2 December 2003
Courtesy of ZNet
EXCERPT: Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don't talk about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilisation in denial. Oil itself won't disappear, but extracting what remains is becoming ever more difficult and expensive. The discovery of new reserves peaked in the 1960s. Every year, we use four times as much oil as we find. All the big strikes appear to have been made long ago: the 400 million barrels in the new North Sea field would have been considered piffling in the 1970s. Our future supplies depend on the discovery of small new deposits and the better exploitation of big old ones. No one with expertise in the field is in any doubt that the global production of oil will peak before long. The only question is how long.

Unofficial Mideast Peace Plans Get Global Backing
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 2 December 2003
EXCERPT: If the success of the unofficial Israeli-Palestinian peace plan launched amid great fanfare in Geneva on Monday were dependent on international goodwill, it could be implemented tomorrow. With three Nobel Peace Prize laureates – including former US president Jimmy Carter – in attendance, as well as messages of support sent from leaders from around the world, including a video hookup with former South African president Nelson Mandela, the so-called "Geneva Initiative" was signed by former ministers Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo before more than 300 Israelis and Palestinians. But the question that remains to be answered was whether the Initiative, as well as a parallel citizen's petition, known as the "People's Voice" project, initiated by former Israeli intelligence chief Ami Ayalon and a prominent Palestinian leader, Sari Nusseibeh, can generate sufficient international and domestic pressure to achieve a breakthrough for both sides.

Iraqis Do Not Trust U.S.-Led Forces
By Gideon Long
Reuters in The Mirror, 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: Nearly 80 percent of Iraqis have little or no trust in U.S.-led occupying forces and most place their faith in religious leaders instead, according to a major survey published in Britain. Nearly half regard the removal of former president Saddam Hussein as the best thing to have happened in the last 12 months while a third said the war, bombings and defeat of the Iraqi army in April was the worst. "Interestingly, there appears no obvious link between best and worst thing," the authors of the survey said on Monday. "The very troops which liberated Iraqis from Saddam are the most mistrusted institution in Iraq today." The survey, published by independent British research consultancy Oxford Research International (ORI), samples the views of 3,244 Iraqis, interviewed in their own homes in October and early November.

Death Takes No Holiday in Iraq
As Bush and others enjoyed photo ops on Thanksgiving, the carnage went on
By Robert Scheer
Working for Change, 2 December 2003
EXCERPT: ...don't for a moment accept the logic of the administration's apologists that there is no responsible alternative. There is: Turn this mess back over to the U.N. Security Council -- which was doing a constructive job of disarming and feeding Iraq before its role was abruptly ended by Bush's preemptive invasion.

2 December 2003

US Keeps Its Iraqi Bases Covered
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 2 December 2003
EXCERPT: Now that the Bush administration has decided to sharply accelerate the transfer of full sovereignty to an Iraqi government, why does it not invite the United Nations to help with the transition? At this point, an invitation appears logical. At a minimum, it would give the occupation greater international legitimacy and encourage other countries to contribute both troops and more reconstruction assistance, easing Washington's burden. The move would clearly boost Bush's re-election chances. Two-thirds or more of US voters, according to a string of polls dating back a full year, have consistently supported giving the UN control over post-war Iraq. After all, the costs of the occupation in US blood and treasure represent by far the greatest threat to Bush's chances next November. So why then, the reluctance to ask the world body for help?

Iraqis Challenge U.S. Account of Battle, Accuse Soldiers of Spraying Fire at Random
By Michael Howard and Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: Iraqi officials in Samarra yesterday challenged US military accounts of a bloody battle on Sunday, accusing American soldiers of spraying fire at random on the city streets, killing several civilians. US army spokesmen claimed that up to 54 Iraqi guerrillas had been killed when they tried to ambush two armoured convoys bringing new banknotes to two Samarra banks, triggering the biggest pitched battle in Iraq since May 1, when President George Bush declared "major combat operations" over.

Credentials Vs. Credibility
By Nina Burleigh
TomPaine.com, 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: As nature abhors a vacuum, so too do American crises abhor an absence of experts. The great Middle Eastern democracy experiment is well-ventilated by professional observers. But anybody who scrutinizes the latest crop of experts, especially on ‘what now’ in Iraq, can only wonder if anyone knows the difference between credentials and credibility. Take the recent Second Annual Columbia Seminar on Art in Society in New York City, where panelists vented on the subject of "Cultural Heritage in War: Moral and Military Choices," where any perspective other than one voiced by Iraqis prevailed. Or The New York Times op-ed page, where there’s no shortage of experts about what to do next—who confidently opine with little regard of the impact on Iraqis themselves. What’s notable about the latest crop of opinion-makers is they are the ‘war of ideas’ corollary to the doctrine of military pre-emption: their views are not debatable, and their stature relies solely on ties to America’s intellectual establishment. A dispassionate observer might ask, ‘Why are these guys even getting a podium?’

The Squawking Chicken
By Tom Engelhardt
ZNet, 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: At Baghdad International Airport, the President has his triumphant photo-op moment, while in Baghdad our top commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez announces that attacks against American troops (but not Iraqis who work with us) have "dropped sharply" in the last two weeks, the weeks of Operation Iron Hammer.... In the last two days, however, 2 Japanese diplomats and their driver, 7 Spanish intelligence agents, 2 South Korean electricians contracted by a U.S. company to lay power lines at an electricity transmission station near Tikrit, a Colombian civilian working for defense contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, and two American soldiers patrolling on the border with Syria have died in a new round of attacks -- and that's without mentioning the many dead Iraqis or wounded Americans. Whether by inadvertence, planning, or more likely a combination of the two, these attacks, like past ones, hit at countries - Japan, South Korea, Spain - where support for American operations is embroiled in controversy and deeply unpopular, clearly attempting to strip away allies and further isolate the occupation forces and their Iraqis.
SEE ALSO: Purported Bush Tape Raises Fear of New Attacks (Satire from ZNet)

Sorrows of Empire
By Chalmers Johnson
ZNet, 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: The United States has been inching toward imperialism and militarism for many years. Disguising the direction they were taking, American leaders cloaked their foreign policy in euphemisms such as "lone superpower," "indispensable nation," "reluctant sheriff," "humanitarian intervention," and "globalization." However, with the advent of the George Bush administration in 2001, these pretenses gave way to assertions of the Second Coming of the Roman Empire. "American imperialism used to be a fiction of the far-left imagination," writes the English journalist Madeleine Bunting, "now it is an uncomfortable fact of life."

1 December 2003

Bush can't lineup his own puppets...
U.S. Plan May Be in Flux as Iraqis Jockey for Postwar Leverage
By Robin Wright and Walter Pincus
Washington Post, 30 November 2003
Courtesy of Talking Points Memo
EXCERPT: The latest plan to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq is barely two weeks old, but it already faces an array of problems that has led Iraqis and Iraq experts to question its prospects for creating a stable democratic government by July 1. U.S. officials, meanwhile, are developing fallback options. But the Bush administration's decision to hand over the reins in seven months has limited U.S. leverage to solve problems during this delicate period, Iraq experts say. Despite his power on paper, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer is effectively a lame duck, and everyone who disagrees with the U.S. plan knows it.
The U.S. plan effectively gives the Governing Council a kind of remote control because it will have the deciding vote in local caucuses that will pick a national assembly. "The Governing Council has a veto, and that's a bad system," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst at the National Defense University. "It's also such a complicated formula that it seems almost guaranteed to keep power in the hands of the few, and that would not be a good thing for Iraqis to have as the first taste of elections. If they get a bad taste they may not want to do it again." The controversy was underscored yesterday when Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani rejected the caucuses and insisted on a nationwide election, "so the assembly will emanate from the desire of the Iraqi people and will represent them fairly without its legitimacy being tarnished in any way," he said in a statement to The Washington Post. [BWUSA italics]

U.S. Repels Ambushes While U.S. Picked Governing Council Rethinks Turnover Agreement
MSNBC News, 30 November 2003
EXCERPT: The fighting came as the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council said Sunday it is rethinking an agreement with Americans for a power handover by July, with officials saying the council has set up a committee to assess the best way to choose a provisional legislature. A delay or unraveling of the agreement would be a major setback for Iraq’s U.S.-led administration.

Body Bag Count Puts Strains on Coalition
By Giles Tremlett and Duncan Campbell
Guardian (UK), 1 December 2003
EXCERPT: A weekend of bloodshed across Iraq saw November chalk up new and grim records, including the highest number of casualties among coalition troops and the deadliest single month for America's armed forces since the 1991 Gulf war. The killings of seven Spanish military intelligence officers in an ambush at Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, together with the deaths of two more US soldiers brought the monthly toll of coalition dead to 111. It also brought to 79 the number of US troops killed in Iraq, outstripping the total for September and October. The flow of body bags back to the US and other countries made its mark on the political arena, with the Democratic party presidential candidate Wesley Clark, a former Nato supreme commander, yesterday describing Iraq as "a distraction from the war on terror".

Imperial Folly: On Landing in "Baghdad"
TomDispatch.com, 29 November 2003
EXCERPT: The ritualistic presidential trips abroad of this administration were all flipped on their head yesterday when the President visited "Iraq" (or at least the beleaguered American version of it at Baghdad International Airport). Previously on his imperial peregrinations, he had imposed his "bubble" world on whole cities -- from Manila to Sydney to London -- shutting them down and buttoning them up, emptying them of anything like normal life as he passed through their streets and institutions untouched. Yesterday, on his two-hour turn-about at Baghdad International, he shut himself down, slipping out of his house in an unmarked car, sending out such complex and heavily preplanned disinformation that he reputedly fooled his own parents, who arrived at the Crawford ranch for a Thanksgiving meal with their missing son. He then rode a blacked-out Air Force One into Baghdad International, shut down the airport till he left, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye.

The Trouble With Democracy in the Middle East
by Patrick Basham and Christopher Preble
CATO Institute, 29 November 2003
EXCERPT:  In his recent speech before the National Endowment for Democracy, President Bush pledged that the United States would embark on a decades-long commitment to bring democracy to the Middle East. But democracy is not a gift President Bush can bestow on people in distant lands. Although the goal is laudable, the Bush administration will be disappointed with its effort to establish a stable liberal democracy in any Middle Eastern nation. That's the verdict rendered by history, the contemporary reality of the region, and our own government experts.

Apartheid Lives
We are in grave danger of losing sight of what Israel was supposed to be
By Ruaridh Nicoll
The Observer, 30 November 2003
EXCERPT: It is one of the great errors to equate the Israeli treatment of Palestinians with the Nazi's treatment of the Jews. Instead, it was odd and unsettling to see those young soldiers carry guns through a place such the Yad Vashem. To travel now is to be offered the opportunity of visiting any number of Holocaust museums. The images become familiar, if no less harrowing. Almost despite myself, I began to pick out the differences in emphasis.

U.S.-Funded Iraqi Network Losing Ground to Arab Stations
CNN, 30 November 2003
EXCERPT: One of the chief U.S. weapons in the battle to win Iraqi hearts and minds is Al-Iraqiya -- a Pentagon-funded TV station with an optimistic, pro-American slant. Announcers on Al-Iraqiya, which reaches 85 percent of Iraqis, decry the guerrillas attacking U.S. military and Iraqi civilian targets as "terrorists." Problem is, those Iraqis fortunate enough to have satellite dishes generally consider Al-Iraqiya stodgy and slow on breaking news. They prefer Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the flashy networks on which anti-American fighters are branded "resisters." Recently, condemnation has focused on the Qatar- and Dubai-based networks. The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council shut down Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya for "inciting murder" by broadcasting a voice said to belong to deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The State Department approved of the temporary closure, but groups advocating press freedom were enraged by it. Americans and their allies also show little love for Al-Jazeera. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has branded both networks "violently anti-coalition." He said a separate, U.S.-owned satellite station would begin broadcasting next month, aiming to capture Arab viewers from the other stations. But Al-Iraqiya has critics, too. Many see it as a pawn of the U.S.-led occupation authorities.

Spanish Agents, Japanese Diplomats Killed in Iraq
November has highest coalition death toll since war began
CNN, 29 November 2003
EXCERPT: Japan is sending investigators to Iraq on Sunday to determine how two of its diplomats were killed near Tikrit and Spain is sending senior intelligence officials to recover the bodies of seven of its agents who were ambushed south of Baghdad. Those deaths this weekend come at the end of a month that has seen the highest number of killings of U.S.-led coalition military forces since the war began.

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