The
The Daily Case Against Bush
Archive for February
1-10 2004
 |
|
10 February 2004
AUDIO LINK
Top Bush Aide Is Questioned in
C.I.A. Leak
Jury Out on Bush's Intelligence
Panel
Bush Slip in Public Opinion
Started After News About Iraq Weapons Failure
Sluggish Job Growth May Threaten
Recovery
AUDIO
LINK Trial
of Virginia Terrorism Suspects Opens
AUDIO
LINK Border
Patrol Tactics Spark Outrage
Bar Urges Feds to Stay Out of Gay
Marriage Issue
BOOK
Bush Slashes Research on How to
Decontaminate Buildings
9 February 2004
Feds Win Right to War
Protesters' Records
You Can Make It With Plato
In Rare Talk Show Interview, Bush Defends Decision
on War
The White House: A New Fight Over
Secret 9/11 Docs
The Day Cheney Was Rocked to the
Core
AP Poll Notes Bush Approval Rating
Falls to 47%
7-8 February 2004
Must-Read!
Bush Appoints Intelligence
Commission
U.S. Adds Fewer New Jobs Than
Expected; Jobless Rate Falls
Bush Budget Targets
Environmental Programs for Greater Cuts than Other Domestic Programs
That Big Fat Budget Deficit. Yawn.
Mourning in America:
Conservatives Rewrite Reagan's Legacy
Report Questions Bush Plan for
Hydrogen-Fueled Cars
Online Voting Canceled for
Americans Overseas
Scalia's Blind Eye 6 February 2004
Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe
Has the President's
Economic-Recovery Plan Left the American Worker Behind?
Oh, the Injustice of Being Caught
Hacking
Rumsfeld and Tenet Defending
Assessments of Iraqi Weapons
Making Money on Terrorism
Why is there a One-Year Gap
in Bush's National Guard Duty?
The Greatest Threat to
Defeating Bush Means Democratic Business as Usual
Environmental Botox: Bush
Puts Cosmetic Fix on EPA
Purity of the Powells 5 February 2004
AUDIO LINK
Federal Budget for 2005 in Brief
Bush Gives Less Extension Than
Requested By 9/11 Commission
Look who's angry now...
Kerry Fails to Unite
Democrats
Halliburton Faces Bribes
Inquiry Related to Nigeria
Ethics Concern Raised About
Scalia/Cheney Duck Hunt
Underlying story is that national
anti-tax/government groups spent millions to defeat this measure and
create a template for state by state strategy to "starve the beast"
a la Grover Norquist
|
| 31 January- 1 February |
| • The Awesome Destructive Power of the Corporate Power Media |
| • Slouching Toward Theocracy |
| • A Super Bowl Deficit |
| • How to Hack an Election |
| • Who are These Guys? |
| • Granted Asylum, Tibetan Nun Held in Virginia Jail |
| • Did Richard Perle Just Solicit Donations for Terrorists? |
| • The Halliburton Shuffle |
31 January- 1 February
The Awesome Destructive
Power of the Corporate Power Media
By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
Black Commentator, 28 January 2004
EXCERPT: Howard Dean has joined the list of victims of U.S.
corporate media consolidation. Dean shares this distinction with
Dennis Kucinich and the people of the formerly sovereign state of
Iraq, among many others. Dean was stripped of half his popular
support in the space of two weeks in January while John Kerry tied
in the polls with Carol Moseley-Braun at seven percent just two
months earlier rose like a genie from a bottle to become the
overnight presidential frontrunner. Both candidates were shocked and
disoriented by the dizzying turns of fortune, and for good reason.
Neither Dean nor Kerry had done anything on their own that could
have so dramatically altered the race. Corporate America decided
that Dean must be savaged, and its media sector made it happen. This
commentary, however, is not about the merits of Howard Dean. If a
mildly progressive, Internet-driven, young white middle
class-centered, movement-like campaign such as Dean's flush with
money derived from unconventional sources, backed by significant
sections of labor, reinforced by big name endorsements and surging
with upward momentum can be derailed in a matter of weeks at the
whim of corporate media, then all of us are in deep trouble. The
Dean beat-down should signal an intense reassessment of media's role
in the American power structure.
SEE ALSO:
Black Vote Looms Large in S.C. Race
(Baltimore Sun)
SEE ALSO:
Black Leaders Remind Presidential Race is Far
from Over
(ABC7)
SEE ALSO:
Democrats Turn to Black Voters for Donations
(Boston Globe)
SEE ALSO:
Edwards Says No Reparations for US Slavery
(Reuters)
SEE ALSO:
Should Corporations Be Held Liable for
Slavery?
(CSM)
Slouching Toward Theocracy
By Bill Berkowitz
TomPaine.com, 29 January 2004
EXCERPT: Remember the government's faith-based initiative? One of
President George W. Bush's gifts to his conservative Christian
supporters? This week marks the third anniversary of the initiative,
which‹after being opposed by both liberals and conservatives and
losing its director‹ faded into obscurity. But make no mistake, the
president marches on in his drive to shift social programs from
government to religious groups.
SEE ALSO:
Crichton: "Environmentalism is a Religion
Because I Say So" (MonkeyFist)
A Super Bowl Deficit
New York Times, 31 Octorber 2004
EXCERPT: It's time again for America's ultimate marketing
extravaganza. The Super Bowl telecast tomorrow will feature the
usual slate of ads peddling beer and cars, and not one but several
competing erectile-dysfunction medications. What viewers will not be
able to see is a clever ad that shows children working adult jobs
before stating, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1
trillion deficit?" Enhancing male sexual performance is one thing,
but public policy advocacy is beyond the pale when it comes to
acceptable Super Bowl fare. ...That it is deemed necessary to shield
viewers from pressing public issues while they are being bombarded
with commercial pitches is a sad commentary on the state of our
culture, and of our democracy.
How to Hack an Election
New York Times, 31 January 2004
EXCERPT: Concerned citizens have been warning that new electronic
voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal
elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a
computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers
had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the
machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows
convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting,
starting with voter-verified paper trails. When Maryland decided to
buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable
opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines,
which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to
vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines,
in which computer-security experts would try to foil the safeguards
and interfere with an election. They were disturbingly successful.
It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access
cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to
attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count.
And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able
to change votes from a remote location. Critics of new voting
technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this
state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too
bad to be true. Maryland's 16,000 machines all have identical
locks on two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of
32,000 keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates of
the keys at local hardware stores, although that proved unnecessary
since one team member picked the lock in "approximately 10 seconds."
Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, rushed to issue a
self-congratulatory press release with the headline "Maryland
Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems Equipment for
March Primary." The study's authors were shocked to see their
findings spun so positively. Their report said that if flaws they
identified were fixed, the machines could be used in Maryland's
March 2 primary. But in the long run, they said, an extensive
overhaul of the machines and at least a limited paper trail are
necessary. The Maryland study confirms concerns about electronic
voting that are rapidly accumulating from actual elections.
[emphasis bwusa]
Who are These Guys?
By Keith Andrew Bettinger
Asia Times, 31 January 2004
EXCERPT: Introduction-They don't stand a chance of winning the
Democratic nomination for president, and they know it. So why are
"second tier" candidates such as Dennis Kucinich in the race? They
have their own reasons, of course, but Keith Andrew Bettinger argues
that they also add value to the election process itself.
Did Richard Perle Just Solicit Donations for
Terrorists?
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 30 January 2004
EXCERPT: Imagine if some bugaboo of the right -- Hilary Clinton, say
-- gave the keynote address at a charity event linked to terrorists.
Imagine if three whole days before Senator Clinton lent her name and
her time to the event, The Hill, a quality newspaper that covers
Congress, had come out with a devastating report linking the charity
event to a terrorist organization -- one that has killed Americans,
seized a US Embassy, and worked hand-in-glove with Saddam. Imagine
if The Hill report, under the headline "Terrorists Plan DC
Fundraiser," also revealed that the Red Cross -- the purported
beneficiary of the event -- was having nothing to do with it.
Imagine if two whole days beforehand, one Republican Congressman had
demanded that Attorney General John Ashcroft investigate the
charity, and another who'd been invited to speak announced he
wouldn't. Imagine if, after all that, Senator Clinton...nevertheless
showed up to give a rousing speech -- for a rousing fee. And imagine
if, when confronted afterwards, she insisted she was simply helping
the Red Cross; and then, when informed that the Red Cross days ago
had publicly renounced the event, mumbled, "I was unaware of that."
How long would it be before it was monster news? Before TV anchors
were asking Senator Clinton if she didn't want to distance herself
from the Saddam Hussein-backed terrorists she was associating so
chummily with? Before thousands of e-mail jokes -- all playing one
way or another off the lameness of "I was unaware of that" -- were
clogging up cyberspace? Meanwhile, back in the real world, this
bumbling character was not Hilary Clinton but Richard Perle --
adviser to the Pentagon, key cheerleader for regime change. Perle
spoke last weekend at an event for Iranian earthquake victims --
despite a compelling report in The Hill that the event was favoring
not the Red Cross, but the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group the State
Department considers a terrorist organization; and despite public
complaints by two Republican Congressmen.
SEE ALSO:
Bush Slips Among Republicans
(Nation)
Granted Asylum, Tibetan Nun
Held in Virginia Jail
By David Cho
Washington Post, 27 January 2004
EXCERPT: Sonam always feared her devotion to Buddhism would land her
behind bars in her native China. As it turns out, she is serving a
long term in jail -- not in East Asia but in central Virginia. The
30-year-old Buddhist nun, who grew up in a Tibetan village near the
foot of Mount Everest, fled to the United States in August after
family members had been tortured and friends jailed for their faith,
she said. But when she arrived at Dulles International Airport and
requested asylum, federal immigration officials detained her and
placed her in the local jail in this small city outside Richmond.
Sonam, who is known by that one name, has been here ever since
except for a brief visit in November to a court room in Arlington
where a federal immigration judge granted her asylum. But even as
she was hugging her attorney in celebration, the lawyer from the
Department of Homeland Security announced that she was appealing the
case. Sonam was then shackled and returned to her cell, where she
waits for her next court date, which is likely to be in the fall at
the earliest, her attorney said. Sonam is among thousands of asylum
seekers who have fled persecution in their homelands only to be
jailed in the United States, a new report by the New York-based
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights shows.
SEE ALSO:
Oregon's Governor May Pardon Norwiegan Woman
From Deportation
(AP)
SEE ALSO:
Bush Launches Human Rights Turkey Tour
(BushWhackedUSA)
The Halliburton Shuffle
By BOB HERBERT
New York Times, 30 January 2004
EXCERPT: Can you spell Halliburton? R-i-p- o-f-f.
War-torn Iraq has been a gold mine for Halliburton, yet another
treasure trove of U.S. taxpayer dollars for a company that has no
peer in the fine art of extracting riches from the government. But
if you go through some of Halliburton's filings with the Securities
and Exchange Commission over the past several years, as I have,
you'll see a company that goes to great lengths — literally to the
ends of the earth — to escape paying its fair share of taxes to the
government that has been so good to it. Annual reports filed with
the S.E.C. since the mid-90's — when Dick Cheney took over as chief
executive and wrote the game plan for garnering government goodies —
showed Halliburton subsidiaries incorporated in such places as the
Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Liechtenstein,
and Vanuatu.
| International |
| 10 February 2004 |
| • Iraqi Militias Resisting U.S. Pressure to Disband |
| • Pakistani Leader Suspected Moves by Atomic Expert |
10 February 2004
Iraqi Militias Resisting U.S.
Pressure to Disband
By EDWARD WONG
New York Times, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: Several of the biggest political parties in Iraq say they
are determined to keep their well-armed militias despite American
opposition to the idea. They contend that the militias remain
necessary in light of the lack of security throughout the country.
Having had scant success so far in persuading the militias to
disband, occupation officials are searching for a new policy that
will help disarm the groups, whose members total in the tens of
thousands, said a senior military official. But less than five
months remain until the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi
government, leaving the Bush administration little time to deal with
what many officials here consider an incendiary problem.
Pakistani Leader Suspected Moves
by Atomic Expert
By DAVID ROHDE and AMY WALDMAN
New York Times, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged for the first time
on Monday that he had suspected for at least three years that
Pakistan's top nuclear scientist was sharing nuclear technology with
other countries, but argued that the United States had not given him
convincing proof. In an hourlong interview conducted here in
English, General Musharraf shared blame for the delay with
Washington, saying it was not until October that American officials
provided him with evidence of the activities of the scientist, Abdul
Qadeer Khan. "If they knew it earlier, they should have told us,"
General Musharraf said. "Maybe a lot of things would not have
happened." At the same time, General Musharraf said he had seen
signs that Dr. Khan was sharing nuclear technology, including
"illegal contacts, maybe suspicions of contacts," and "suspicious
movement" connected to Dr. Khan's laboratory. But he said he was
concerned that investigating Dr. Khan, a national hero in Pakistan
for his role in developing its nuclear weapons, could provoke a
political backlash.
| 9 February 2004 |
| • Blix Says War Leaders Acted Like Salesmen |
|
•
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
Clear-Cut Assertions Were Made Before Arms Assessment Was Completed |
| • $7b Effort to Disarm Ex-Soviet WMDs Slows |
| • Now They Tell Us |
| • The Imperial Imperative |
| • At Least 7 Nations Tied To Pakistani Nuclear Ring |
| • Germans Blame U.S. for Qaeda Acquittal |
| • JIC Alerted Blair Three Times Over Unsafe WMD Claim |
9 February 2004
| Profiles In Courage "We're not going to have any search for scapegoats . . . the final responsibilities of any failure is mine, and mine alone." --President John Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs "Dr. Kay also stated that some prewar intelligence assessments by America and other nations about Iraq's weapon stockpiles have not been conformed (sic). We are determined to figure out why." --President George W. Bush after Iraq War |
Blix Says War Leaders Acted
Like Salesmen
Guardian (UK), 9 February 2004
EXCERPT: The former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix weighed
into the controversy over weapons of mass destruction yesterday when
he accused Tony Blair and George Bush of behaving like insincere
salesmen who "exaggerated" intelligence in an attempt to win support
for war.... "They say some WMDs can be ready to be used within 45
minutes. Well, which ones? "It certainly wasn't nuclear because the
report says that they were not developing nuclear, so they didn't
have them. And what is meant by being ready? Is it a phial of
anthrax that can be tossed at somebody? I mean one can interpret it
in different ways."
SEE ALSO:
Britain Spied on UN Allies Over War Vote
(Observer)
Line by line comparison...
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
Clear-Cut Assertions Were Made Before Arms Assessment Was Completed
By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post, 7 February 2004
EXCERPT: In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for
a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many
of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on
Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended
Thursday. In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal
assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed. Iraq "is a grave
and gathering danger," Bush told the United Nations on Sept. 12,
2002. At the White House two weeks later -- after referring to a
British government report that Iraq could launch "a biological or
chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order" is given
-- he went on to say, "Each passing day could be the one on which
the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX -- nerve gas -- or someday a
nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally." Three weeks later, on the day
the NIE was delivered to Congress, Bush told lawmakers in the White
House Rose Garden that Iraq's current course was "a threat of unique
urgency." On Thursday, summarizing the NIE's conclusions, Tenet
said: "They never said Iraq was an imminent threat." The
administration's prewar comments -- and the more cautious, qualified
phrasings of intelligence analysts -- are at the heart of the debate
over whether the faulty prewar claims resulted from bad intelligence
or exaggeration by top White House officials -- or both.
$7b Effort to Disarm Ex-Soviet
WMDs Slows
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff, 2/8/2004
Boston Globe, 8 February 2004
Courtesy of Agonist
EXCERPT: Twelve years after the collapse of the Soviet Union left
weapons of mass destruction scattered throughout Russia and its
breakaway republics, most of the fallen empire's vast arsenal
remains intact and dangerously underprotected, according to new
military data compiled over the past year. While the United States
has spent more than $7 billion to remove all nuclear warheads from
three former Soviet republics -- Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus --
and has destroyed hundreds of missiles, the task remains less than
half done. Defense Department figures show that fewer than half of
the 13,300 warheads slated for deactivation had been destroyed by
the end of 2003, with prospects for finishing the task stretching
out more than a decade. On Jan. 27, Matthew Bunn of Harvard's
Managing the Atom Project told the Senate that less than half of 600
metric tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium is even
minimally secure. The rest is protected by as little as a rusting
fence and a guard, and it will take 13 years to secure it at the
current pace, he said. Almost none of the Soviet 40,000-ton chemical
weapons stockpile, much in shells that could fit inside a suitcase,
has been destroyed.
Now They Tell Us
By Michael Massing
New York Review of Books, 26 February issue
EXCERPT: Since the end of the war, journalists have found no
shortage of sources willing to criticize the administration. (Even
Colin Powell, in a recent press conference, admitted that, contrary
to his assertions at the United Nations, he had no "smoking gun"
proof of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.) The Washington
Post has been especially aggressive in exposing the administration's
exaggerations of intelligence, its inadequate planning for postwar
Iraq, and its failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Barton
Gellman, who before the war worked so hard to ferret out Iraq's ties
to terrorists, has, since its conclusion, written many incisive
articles about the administration's intelligence failures. The
contrast between the press's feistiness since the end of the war and
its meekness before it highlights one of the most entrenched and
disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality.
Editors and reporters don't like to diverge too sharply from what
everyone else is writing. When a president is popular and a
consensus prevails, journalists shrink from challenging him. Even
now, papers like the Times and the Post seem loath to give prominent
play to stories that make the administration look too bad. Thus,
stories about the increasing numbers of dead and wounded in Iraq
—both American and Iraqi—are usually consigned to page 10 or 12,
where they won't cause readers too much discomfort.
The Imperial Imperative
The United States is the richest and strongest nation in the
world. But can it succeed in Iraq, where so many other empires have
failed?
By Charles M. Sennott
Boston Globe Magazine, 8 February 2004
EXCERPT: "Is America an empire? Yes," says the CPA official as we
sit down with our mounds of chicken a la king on white bread, washed
down with cans of Coke. My host is tall, with eyes the color of a
big Nebraska sky and a demeanor that says country, not city. He
isn't slick. He has that classically American resonance in his
voice, a well-honed sense of sincerity. "Of course, we are an
empire, but we are different," he says. "Our empire is not defined
by territorial ambitions but by ideas. A lot of ideas, like free
trade, like democracy, like copyright laws." Copyright? Was my host
really suggesting that we had carried out one of the largest land
invasions since World War II to protect copyright laws? "Well, yeah,
our empire is about promoting free trade, it's about promoting
democracy and the ownership of ideas. Sure, it's about McDonald's
and Microsoft and everything else. But the reality is we are not
here only to do that. We are here to protect the security of
America. That's what the mission is about. "That, and to help the
Iraqi people build their own future," he adds. But one thing the
American empire apparently did not bring into this palace is freedom
of speech, at least not on-the-record freedom of speech. My host
informs me that it would be impossible for him to give an
on-the-record interview and still talk candidly. So he requests that
his name not be published. I agree.
At Least 7 Nations Tied To
Pakistani Nuclear Ring
By Peter Slevin, John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
Washington Post, 8 February 2004
EXCERPT: The rapidly expanding probe into a Pakistani-led nuclear
trafficking network extended to at least seven nations Saturday as
investigators said they had traced businesses from Africa, Asia and
Europe to the smuggling ring controlled by Pakistani scientist Abdul
Qadeer Khan. Three days after Khan confessed on television to
selling his country's nuclear secrets, Western diplomats and
intelligence officials said they were just beginning to understand
the scale of the network, a global enterprise that supplied nuclear
technology and parts to Libya, Iran, North Korea and possibly
others. "Dr. Khan was not working alone. Dr. Khan was part of a
process," said Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based U.N. agency that is
conducting the probe along with U.S. and other Western intelligence
agencies. "There were items that were manufactured in other
countries. There were items that were assembled in a different
country."
Germans Blame U.S. for Qaeda
Acquittal
Ashcroft refused to release information
Richard Bernstein/NYT NYT
International Herald Tribune, 7 February 2004
EXCERPT: ...from the German point of view, the acquittal Thursday of
the defendant, Abdelghani Mzoudi, a 31-year-old Moroccan who was
indisputably a member of the Al Qaeda cell in Hamburg that furnished
several of the September 11 leaders, can be laid directly at the
feet of the United States, which persistently refused to provide the
cooperation needed for a conviction. That hardly promises to improve
the tenor of relations between Germany and the United States, just
at a time when the two countries have been trying, with some
success, to warm up ties virtually frozen in distrust and hostility
because of disagreement over the Iraq war. ...The prosecution's case
against Mzoudi disintegrated essentially over the refusal by the
United States to find a way to satisfy the Hamburg court's request
for access to information gathered during interrogations of captured
Al Qaeda suspects. As the trial of Mzoudi unfolded late last year,
the presiding judge, Klaus Rühle warned that he might have to
dismiss the case altogether if the requests for intelligence
information were ignored. ...Given the American refusal, prosecutors
had to hope that other evidence against Mzoudi would convince the
court of his guilt, and there was other evidence.
JIC Alerted Blair Three
Times Over Unsafe WMD Claim
By Andy McSmith
Independent, 8 February 2004
EXCERPT: Tony Blair was sent three intelligence reports in the six
months during the run up to the Iraq war, including one that warned
him that information on whether Saddam Hussein still held any
chemical or biological weapons was "inconsistent" and "sparse". The
revelation adds to the mystery of how the Prime Minister could tell
Parliament last week that, when war began, he still believed that
Iraq held weapons of mass destruction capable of being deployed in
just 45 minutes.
| 7-8 February 2004 |
| • Not Everyone Got It Wrong on Iraq's Weapons |
| • How Bush and Blair Chose War, Then Chose a Justification |
| • Agency Alert About Iraqi Not Heeded, Officials Say |
| • June Handover of Power in Iraq in Question |
| • God and the President |
| • Torture Files: Iraqi Detainees Allege Abuse |
| • Australia to Double Military Spending in Three Years |
| • Haiti Fatigue?: American Empire in Action |
| • Americas Trade Talks Suspended Amid Impasse |
| • Canadians to Bush: Hope You Lose, Eh |
| • Israeli Attack on Militants Also Kills Boy |
7-8 February 2004
Not Everyone Got It Wrong on
Iraq's Weapons
Scott Ritter
International Herald Tribune, 5 February 2004
EXCERPT: ‘We were all wrong,’’ David Kay, the Bush
administration's former top weapons sleuth in Iraq, recently told
members of Congress after acknowledging that there were probably no
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ...I, for one, was not. I did
my level best to demand facts from the Bush administration to back
up their allegations regarding Iraq’s WMD and, failing that, spoke
out and wrote in as many forums as possible in an effort to educate
the publics of the United States and the world about the danger of
going to war based on a hyped-up threat. In this I was not alone.
Rolf Ekeus, the former head of the UN weapons inspec tors in Iraq,
has declared that under his direction, Iraq was ‘‘fundamentally
disarmed’’ as early as 1996. Hans Blix, who headed UN weapons
inspections in Iraq in the months before the invasion in March 2003,
stated that his inspectors had found no evidence of either WMD or
WMD-related programs in Iraq. And officials familiar with Iraq, like
Ambassador Joseph Wilson and State Department intelligence analyst
Greg Theilmann, both exposed the unsustained nature of the Bush
administration’s claims regarding Iraq’s nuclear capability. The
riddle surrounding Iraq’s WMD was solvable without resorting to war.
For all the layers of deceit and obfuscation, there existed enough
basic elements of truth and substantive fact about the disposition
of Saddam Hus sein’s secret weapons programs to permit the Gordian
knot to be cleaved by anyone willing to try. Sadly, it seems that
there was no predisposition on the part of those assigned the task
of solving the riddle to do so. ...The Bush administration, in its
rush to war, ignored our advice and the body of factual data we
used, and instead relied on rumor, speculation, exaggeration and
falsification to mislead the American people and their elected
representatives into supporting a war that is rapidly turning into a
quagmire. We knew the truth about Iraq’s WMD. Sadly, no one
listened.
SEE ALSO:
Making the Facts Fit the Case for War
(NYT)
SEE ALSO:
It Comes Down to This: What Did Blair Know?
(Independent))
SEE ALSO:
Weapons of Mass Dissembling
(Axis of Logic)
How Bush and Blair Chose
War, Then Chose a Justification
By David Edwards
ZNet, 6 February 2004
EXCERPT: Sometimes it really is possible to fail to see the wood for
the trees. We need to be clear that Tony Blair is claiming that the
threat of Iraqi WMD justified a massive war against Iraq. We are to
believe that after a major conflict in which 88,500 tons of bombs
were dropped in 1991, after eight years of inspections, and after
more than a decade of continuous bombing raids, and of crippling
sanctions imposed under the most intensive and sophisticated
surveillance operation in history, both Blair and Bush received
intelligence suggesting that Iraq was a "serious and current
threat". As we now know, this alleged intelligence is said to have
been related to WMD and links with al-Qaeda that did not exist. We
are to believe, then, that a rush of terrifying information relating
to non-existent perils - a rush so overwhelming that long-standing
policy was abandoned - suddenly emerged to lead Bush and Blair to
believe that nothing less than war was required to avert the danger.
SEE ALSO:
Discuss This Issue and Others on
BushWhackedUSA: THE BLOG
SEE ALSO:
How Spies Chose the Intelligence That
Justified War
(The Observer)
Agency Alert About Iraqi Not
Heeded, Officials Say
By DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times, 6 February 2004
EXCERPT: An Iraqi military defector identified as unreliable by the
Defense Intelligence Agency provided some of the information that
went into United States intelligence estimates that Iraq had
stockpiles of biological weapons at the time of the American
invasion last March, senior government officials said Friday. A
classified "fabrication notification" about the defector, a former
Iraqi major, was issued by the D.I.A. to other American intelligence
agencies in May 2002, but it was then repeatedly overlooked, three
senior intelligence officials said. Intelligence agencies use such
notifications to alert other agencies to information they consider
unreliable because its source is suspected of making up or
embellishing information. Because the warning went unheeded, the
officials said, the defector's claims that Iraq had built mobile
research laboratories to produce biological weapons were mistakenly
included in, among other findings, the National Intelligence
Estimate of October 2002, which concluded that Iraq most likely had
significant biological stockpiles.Intelligence officers from the
D.I.A. interviewed the defector twice in early 2002 and circulated
reports based on those debriefings. They concluded he had no
firsthand information and might have been coached by the Iraqi
National Congress, the officials said. That group, headed by Ahmad
Chalabi, who had close ties to the Pentagon and Vice President Dick
Cheney, had introduced the defector to American intelligence, the
officials said. Nevertheless, because of what the officials
described as a mistake, the defector was among four sources cited by
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his presentation to the United
Nations Security Council last February as having provided
"eyewitness accounts" about mobile biological weapons facilities in
Iraq, the officials said. The defector had described mobile
biological research laboratories, as distinct from the mobile
biological production factories mounted on trailers that were
described by other sources. ...In interviews on Friday,
intelligence officials described the episode as a significant
embarrassment. They said the information provided by the defector
had contributed significantly not only to the National Intelligence
Estimate but to Mr. Powell's presentation to the United Nations last
Feb. 5. [bwusa emphasis]
June Handover of Power in Iraq in
Question
By Evelyn Leopold
Reuters, 6 February 2004
EXCERPT: A June 30 deadline for the transfer of power in Iraq
appeared increasingly in question after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan said on Friday the handover could be put back if all sides
agreed. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was adhering "right
now" to the plan to transfer power in June from the U.S.
administration in Baghdad to a provisional government. Analysts said
time was running out to implement the U.S. plan for a handover,
although some gesture may be made toward sovereignty by June.
God and the President
Someone should ask Bush if he
believes Jews and Muslims are doomed to hell.
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 6 February 2004
EXCERPT: In his late 30s, soon after an evening of talks with
evangelist Billy Graham, George W. Bush declared himself a
born-again Christian. Does he therefore believe -- as born-again
Christians often do -- that even good and kind people are doomed to
Hell, unless they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior? Does
he believe that Jews and Muslims are ultimately damned? If he
doesn't believe that, then is he saying one can reject Jesus Christ
-- yet still go to Heaven? If he does believe that, then does the
inevitable damnation of the majority of humanity ever enter into his
Earthly calculations? Does the President believe that he's doing
God's work? Has he been telling other world leaders that God told
him to invade Iraq? Does he actually hear God's voice? If so, when
does this happen for him, and what does it sound like? Does he just
receive a message, or does he have actual two-way conversations? We
journalists rarely get a serious crack at this particular President,
and so we're all quite excited at the prospect of one of our own
sitting down for a full hour with him this weekend. The questions we
would ask are piling up (my colleague David Corn has an excellent
list here), and interviewer Tim Russert will no doubt assemble a
menu of narrow facts-and-headlines-driven inquiries about deficits,
desertion and the like.
SEE ALSO:
8 Questions for George W. Bush
(David Corn, The Nation)
Torture Files: Iraqi
Detainees Allege Abuse
By Ben Ehrenreich
LA Weekly, 6 February 2004
EXCERPT: Though they have received minimal attention in the U.S.
press, allegations of mistreatment of detainees have been surfacing
persistently for at least the last six months. The allegations range
from generalized neglect--unsanitary conditions and exposure to the
elements--to beatings, electric shock and other forms of torture. It
was not until early this month, though, that the U.S. military's
Central Command released a brief and tersely worded statement
announcing, "An investigation has been initiated into reported
incidents of detainee abuse at a Coalition Forces detention
facility."
Australia to Double Military
Spending in Three Years
Guardian (UK), 5 February 2004
EXCERPT: Australia will more than double its defence budget over the
next three years under plans that will turn the country into one of
the world's major military powers. The government has revealed it
intends to increase overall spending by £21bn over the next 10
years. The proposal highlights the country's determination to
position itself as a key ally of Washington in conflicts around the
world, and could place Australia behind Japan and Saudi Arabia as
the biggest military spender outside Europe and the UN security
council. Describing the plan as a "quantum leap forward" for the
Australian defence force (ADF), the defence minister, Robert Hill,
said involvement in the Middle East, East Timor, and the Solomon
Islands made it more difficult for the military to meet its targets.
Haiti Fatigue?: American
Empire in Action
By Mickey Z
ZNet, 6 February 2004
EXCERPT: A February 5, 2004 New York Times editorial declared
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's second presidency "is declining into
despotism." Reporting from the land of Supreme Court-decided
elections, the Times (fresh off suggesting Sharpton and Kucinich go
away quietly) laughingly offered this solution to the people of
Haiti: "make sure that the next presidential election, due late next
year, is fair and on time." At the core of this helpful advice are
"student" protests. Much like US-backed Venezuelan opposition
commandeering the label of "unions," those seeking to oust Aristede
are cleverly calling themselves "students." Haitian opposition, says
Richard Dufour of the World Socialist Website, "comprises most of
the business establishment, remnants of the political machine of the
Duvalier dictatorship, and disgruntled Aristide supporters."
Misinformation reigns.
"The Haitian press, most notably Radio Metropole, Radio Vision 2000,
Radio Kiskeya, Radio Caraibe and Tele-Haiti, have shown themselves
to be wanton whores in the campaign to sow confusion and panic among
the people," says Kevin Pina, associate editor of Black Commentator.
"The Washington-forged opposition grows lighter in color and more
brazen with each passing day, while former Haitian military leaders
prance hand in hand with Haiti's traditional economic elite,
intellectuals and artists. The poor black majority, who cannot read
or write and continue to support the constitutional government of
President Aristide, has been deliberately made indescribably poorer
in an effort to force them to turn against their own interests."
(Here in America, we can read and write but still put up little
resistance against tactics designed to turn us against our own
interests.)
Americas Trade Talks Suspended
Amid Impasse
Reuters, 6 February 2004
EXCERPT: Talks to forge a trade pact for the Americas broke down on
Friday over disputes about agriculture market access and export
subsidies, but negotiators said they would return to the table in
March. "Simply, there is an impasse in the negotiations," Argentine
Trade Secretary Martin Redrado told a news conference of South
American Mercosur trade bloc nations. ...While they made progress on
procedural questions, they could not bridge divisions over
agriculture issues. The Mercosur bloc of nations, led by Brazil and
Argentina, wants a total opening of markets to agricultural and
other products, while the United States, Canada and other countries
seek exclusions.
After Hutton, the Verdict: 51 Per
Cent Say Blair Should Go
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
Independent, 7 February 2004
EXCERPT: Tony Blair's loss of public trust after the war on Iraq and
the Hutton report is underlined today by a poll for The Independent
showing more than half of voters want him to resign. The NOP poll,
conducted this week, shows that 51 per cent want the Prime Minister
to quit and 54 per cent believe he lied to the nation over the
threat posed by Saddam Hussein. ...The Government's dossier
stated that "intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able
to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an
order to do so". Press reports at the time which suggested the claim
involved ballistic missiles capable of striking British interests in
Cyprus went uncorrected by the Government. Geoff Hoon, the Defence
Secretary, and the former foreign secretary Robin Cook added to the
pressure on Mr Blair when they revealed they had been told the
weapons were short-range mortars. [bwusa italics]
Canadians to Bush: Hope You Lose,
Eh
By Jonathon Gatehouse
MacLean's Magazine, 6 February 2004
EXCERPT: According to a new poll, only 15 per cent of us would vote
for the President February 9, 2004-Maybe it's that smug little
smile. His penchant for fantastically expensive military photo-ops.
Or the swaggering, belt-hitching walk that cries out for a pair of
swinging saloon doors. And though, God knows, we have too many of
our own syntactically challenged politicians to be casting stones,
shouldn't the leader of the free world know that "misunderestimate"
isn't a word? Yes, we're caviling, but clearly there is something
about George W. Bush that gets under the skin of Canadians.
For a safer world...
Israeli Attack on Militants Also Kills Boy
By GREG MYRE
New York Times, 8 February 2004
EXCERPT: An Israeli helicopter fired a missile on Saturday morning
that killed a Palestinian militant traveling in a car and a
12-year-old boy who was walking by on a busy street in Gaza City,
Palestinian doctors and the Israeli military said. Nine other
Palestinians were injured.
| 6 February 2004 |
| • Hold Bush to His Lie |
| • Banking on Empire: Mortgaging Iraq's Future |
| • Confronting the Theocracy of Evil |
| • Bush May Have Struck a Deal to Ignor WMD Black Market Ties for Musharraf Support to Pursue al Qaeda |
| • Howard Calls for Blair to Resign |
6 February 2004
Hold Bush to His Lie
By Naomi Klein
The Nation, 4 February 2004
EXCERPT: If you believe the White House, Iraq's future government is
being designed in Iraq. If you believe the Iraqi people, it is being
designed at the White House. Technically, neither is true: Iraq's
future government is being engineered in an anonymous research park
in suburban North Carolina. On March 4, 2003, with the invasion just
fifteen days away, the United States Agency for International
Development asked three US firms to bid for a unique job: After Iraq
was invaded and occupied, one company would be charged with setting
up 180 local and provincial town councils in the rubble. This was
newly imperial territory for firms accustomed to the friendly
NGO-speak of "public-private partnerships," and two of the three
decided not to apply. The "local governance" contract, worth $167.9
million in the first year and up to $466 million total, went to the
Research Triangle Institute (RTI), a private nonprofit best known
for its drug research. None of its employees had been to Iraq in
years.
SEE ALSO:
Don't Be Fooled Again
(Guardian)
SEE ALSO:
US May Delay Iraq Handover
(Reuters)
Banking on Empire:
Mortgaging Iraq's Future
By Mitch Jeserich
CorpWatch, 4 February 2004
EXCERPT: Iraqi ministries will now be able to borrow billions of
dollars to buy much-needed equipment from overseas suppliers, but
only by mortgaging the national oil revenues through a bank managed
by New York-based multinational JP Morgan Chase. Hussein al-Uzri,
president of the Trade Bank of Iraq, which is managed by JP Morgan
Chase, announced last week in Kuwait City, that the bank had raised
$2.4 billion in export guarantees for trade between Iraq and foreign
companies and governments. "Those oil revenues will be used to
support the Iraq Trade Bank letters of credit," said David Chavern,
a senior official with the U.S. Export-Import Bank, when he
addressed attendees at a recent briefing organized by Equity
International for potential investors in Iraq. "And we will ensure
those letters of credit for the U.S. exporter." The management
contract, which is worth $2 million over two-and-a-half years, was
awarded to a consortium of thirteen banks representing fourteen
countries, led by JP Morgan, last July after a competitive bidding
process against four other international consortia. JP Morgan Chase,
which was formed from the merger in December 2000 of one of the
world's largest commercial banks, the Chase Manhattan Corporation,
and the investment bank J.P. Morgan & Company, declined to comment
about its role in the Trade Bank of Iraq.
Confronting the Theocracy of
Evil
By Scott Ritter (former UN weapons
inspector)
AlterNet, 5 February 2004
EXCERPT: The 'theocracy of evil' establishes a deeply ingrained
mindset that may be the reason why the U.S. intelligence community
failed to accurately assess Iraq's WMD capabilities; why Congress
failed to adequately debate the issue of Iraq before voting to go to
war; and why the American public willingly allowed itself to be
drawn into a war without demanding more proof to back up the Bush
administration's allegations. If Saddam is evil, such thinking
holds, then he surely intends to acquire WMD, and as such every bit
of data collected regarding Iraq must be assessed with that
assumption foremost in mind. ''
SEE ALSO:
The Threatening Record
(TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO:
Nixon's Children
(TP)
Bush May Have Struck a Deal
to Ignor WMD Black Market Ties for Musharraf Support to Pursue al
Qaeda
Reuters, 5 February 2004
Courtesy of Agonist
EXCERPT: Washington appears to have agreed to stand by Pakistan's
embattled president and not push for a full investigation into the
military's role in selling nuclear secrets that could undermine one
of its most important allies in the Muslim world. U.S.
administration officials say they are satisfied with assurances from
Musharraf of no further proliferation, and do not seem to want to
unsettle a man who survived two assassination attempts late last
year. "No doubt the U.S. is concerned, but it has to walk a
tightrope," said Andrew Tan of the Institute of Defence and
Strategic Studies in Singapore. "The U.S. will have to balance its
wish for disclosure against the possibility that Musharraf may be
destabilised in doing so." ...The U.N. nuclear watchdog is unlikely
to be satisfied quite so easily, even if it too is treading
carefully.
Howard Calls for Blair to Resign
BBC News, 5 February 2004
EXCERPT: Prime Minister Tony Blair should resign because he failed
to ask "basic questions" on claims made in his Iraq dossier, Michael
Howard has said. The Tory leader seized on Mr Blair's admission he
did not know the claim Iraq could use weapons within 45 minutes
referred to battlefield arms. ...Cabinet minister Margaret Beckett
branded his criticisms as "nitpicking". ...Downing Street says it
never claimed Iraq could fire long-range chemical or biological
missiles within 45 minutes.
| 5 February 2004 |
| • There Was No Failure of Intelligence |
| • Daddy's Boys: Bush I Crew Sent in to Rescue Bush II |
| • UK Intelligence Chief's Bombshell: 'We Were Overruled on Dossier' |
| • US Foreign Aid Budget Takes on Cold War Cast |
| • UN to Mediate A Consensus |
| • The U.S. Begs for UN Backing in Iraq |
| • The Trouble With CAFTA |
| • Kissinger: The Founding Father of Preemption |
| AUDIO LINK Exporting Democracy: The Debate Over the U.S.'s Role on the World Stage |
5 February 2004
There Was No Failure of
Intelligence
By Sidney Blumenthal
Guardian (UK), 5 February 2004
EXCERPT: Before he departed on his quest for Saddam Hussein's fabled
weapons of mass destruction last June, David Kay, chief of the Iraq
Survey Group, told friends that he expected promptly to locate the
cause of the pre-emptive war. On January 28, Kay appeared before the
Senate to testify that there were no WMDs. "It turns out that we
were all wrong," he said. President Bush, he added helpfully, was
misinformed by the whole intelligence community which, like Kay,
made assumptions that turned out to be false. Within days, Bush
declared that he would, after all, appoint a commission to
investigate; significantly, it would report its findings only after
the presidential election. Kay's testimony was the catalyst for this
u-turn, but only one of his claims is correct: that he was wrong.
The truth is that much of the intelligence community did not fail,
but presented correct assessments and warnings, that were overridden
and suppressed. On virtually every single important claim made by
the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious
dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from
several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public
as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war
resolution.
SEE ALSO:
British Officers Knew on Eve of War That Iraq
Had No WMDs
(Scotsman)
MUST-READ!
Daddy's Boys: Bush I Crew Sent in to Rescue Bush
II
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch.org, 4 February 2004
EXCERPT: Among those being considered for the commission are Robert
Gates, CIA director under Daddy Bush; William Perry, former
Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton and a hard-line "realist";
former CIA director William H. Webster; and the CIA's David A. Kay,
who started this ball rolling by pronouncing weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq DOA, but then gave the president a helping hand
by focusing everyone on the intelligence agencies not the
administration, and broke bread with uncurious George only two days
ago. Among this gallery of clinkers, probably the single most
important name to surface, on Monday on the front page of the New
York Times no less -- a name I've been waiting a while to see -- was
Brent Scowcroft.... If Scowcroft, who co-authored a book with the
elder Bush and is considered his alter ego in the world, has now
surfaced as a major consultant of Bush the Younger, then a
triumvirate of Daddy's Boys -- family fixer James Baker, supposedly
off to alleviate Iraqi indebtedness, Robert Blackwill, now sitting
somewhere in the White House helping Condoleezza Rice coordinate
Iraq policy, and Scowcroft -- are all back in town. Since Baker's
recent high-profile travels around the world on the debt-relief
question, he seems to have mysteriously dropped from sight. In this
Oedipus wrecks of an administration, the psychological tug-of-war
between son and father has gotten far too little attention in our
media. Whatever's been going on in the Bush family has surely been
weirder than anybody's been willing to let on.
blogger
SEE ALSO:
Bush Accused of Undermining Iraq WMD Inquiry
from the Beginning
(DNOW!)
UK Intelligence Chief's Bombshell:
'We Were Overruled on Dossier'
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
Independent, 4 February 2004
EXCERPT: The intelligence official whose revelations stunned the
Hutton inquiry has suggested that not a single defence intelligence
expert backed Tony Blair's most contentious claims on Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction. As Mr Blair set up an inquiry yesterday into
intelligence failures before the war, Brian Jones, the former
leading expert on WMD in the Ministry of Defence, declared that
Downing Street's dossier, a key plank in convincing the public of
the case for war, was "misleading" on Saddam Hussein's chemical and
biological capability. Writing in today's Independent, Dr Jones, who
was head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the
Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) until he retired last year, reveals
that the experts failed in their efforts to have their views
reflected.
US Foreign Aid Budget Takes on
Cold War Cast
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 4 February 2004
EXCERPT: If the "war on terror" is beginning to look increasingly
like the Cold War, then US President George W Bush's fiscal year
(FY) 2005 foreign-aid request will not change that impression. While
Bush is proposing to increase funding for his two key anti-poverty
initiatives, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), which funds
initiatives to improve the economies and standards of living in
developing countries, and anti-AIDS money for African and Caribbean
countries, he is also cutting funds for other key humanitarian and
development accounts. ...at a time when the administration's focus
is centered on the "war on terror", it remains clear that
humanitarian programs such as these will fall by the wayside when it
comes to military and security spending.
UN to Mediate A Consensus
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
LA Times, 4 February 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush pressed Kofi Annan, the United Nations
secretary general, on Tuesday to have his aides mediate among
quarreling factions in Iraq and forge a consensus behind a plan that
would allow the transfer of sovereignty to a government in Baghdad
by June 30, administration officials said. They said that without
rapid progress on the political issues, the White House might agree
to postpone Iraqi self-rule, but several officials said such a step
would be a "last resort." Mr. Annan has been given a dozen options
for the transfer of sovereignty, the officials said, ranging from
holding direct elections before June 30 to overhauling radically the
unwieldy caucus system that is supposed to choose a new national
assembly by that date.The Bush administration had previously frozen
the United Nations out of the transition process in Iraq. After the
meeting, Mr. Annan said the United Nations team heading soon to Iraq
to assess the possibility of direct elections would expand its
agenda. "We are going to go there to help the Iraqis, to help them
establish a government that is Iraqi, a government that will work
with them to assure their future, in terms of political and economic
destiny," he said. He said he thought that the United Nations had "a
chance to help break the impasse which exists at the moment, and
move forward." The administration's plans for Iraq have been stymied
by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's rejection of the proposed
caucuses and by divisions within the Iraqi Governing Council.
The U.S. Begs for UN Backing in
Iraq
By Phyllis Bennis
Foreign Policy In Focus, 3 February 2004
Courtesy of AsiaTimes.com
EXCERPT: The U.S. is eager for the UN to return to Iraq to provide
political cover for its occupation. The quagmire on the ground in
Iraq plus recognition that the rest of the world, and most Iraqis
themselves, reject Washington 's claim of legitimacy, is the basis
for the Bush administration reversing its earlier anti-UN positions
to beg the international organization for help.
...So, What Should Be Done
1) There should be an immediate end to U.S. occupation, and
withdrawal of American troops. Because the U.S. invasion destroyed
the governing capacity in Baghdad and undermined security for
civilians throughout much of the country, the withdrawal of the U.S.
forces should be followed by a temporary combined mandate for the
United Nations, Arab League, and OIC (Organization of the Islamic
Conference) to provide direct support for Iraq's reclaiming of
sovereignty. That would include election assistance, humanitarian
and reconstruction aid (including control over all international
funds, including those coming from the U.S. Congress, designated for
Iraqi rebuilding), and peacekeeping/security deployment.
2) The UN investigation team should reject the artificial
U.S.-imposed June 30th deadline, and broaden its mandate to examine
what conditions would have to change before an election could be
organized, assess what time frame would be required to accomplish
those changes, and determine whether any election conducted under
foreign military occupation could be free and fair.
The Trouble With CAFTA
By Mark Engler
Foreign Policy In Focus, 3 February 2004
EXCERPT: On December 17 officials from Guatemala, Honduras, El
Salvador, and Nicaragua finished negotiations with the United States
on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). CAFTA is a bad
deal, one that promises to extend the harmful impacts of NAFTA to
Mexico's weaker southern neighbors. At the same time, boosters like
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick are premature in declaring
victory for their hemispheric "free trade" agenda. A week of intense
negotiations in Washington demonstrated that developing countries
are not as easily browbeaten as in the past. And the coming fight to
stop ratification of the agreement will likely show opponents of
corporate globalization to be in a stronger position than ever.
Kissinger: The Founding Father of
Preemption
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 5 February 2004
EXCERPT: While critics and supporters of the Bush administration's
preemption doctrine have described it as unprecedented in United
States diplomacy, the release of a 34-year-old memo advocating
"regime change" in Chile shows that the policy has been around for
quite some time. The eight-page document by then-national security
adviser Henry Kissinger to former president Richard Nixon also
suggests that Washington's destabilization of Chilean president
Salvador Allende Gossens was not largely motivated by any direct
military or subversive threat the Allende government then posed or
might pose in the future to the US. Kissinger, who couched his
arguments carefully for maximum effect, suggests - just two days
after Allende was inaugurated - that his main concern with the new
president was the fear that, were he to successfully consolidate
power, his government could serve as a "model" for left-wing
movements in other countries, including Western Europe. "The example
of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile would surely
have an impact on - and even precedent value for - other parts of
the world, especially in Italy," the memorandum warns Nixon just
hours before a critical National Security Council meeting in which
Kissinger urged his boss to reject the modus vivendi or passive
approach recommended by the State Department. "The imitative spread
of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect
the world balance and our own position in it," according to
Kissinger, who became secretary of state two years later.
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
Exporting Democracy: The Debate Over the
U.S.'s Role on the World Stage
NPR's Justice Taking
The war in Iraq has stirred the long-standing debate over whether
the United States should impose democracy on other nations -- even
those with brutal dictators. NPR's Margot Adler moderates a
Justice Talking
debate on the subject between former State Department official
Morton Halperin and Clifford D. May, president of a think tank on
terrorism.
blogger
| 4 February 2004 |
| • The Lie Factory |
| • The True Intelligence Failure |
| • The Current Iraq Intelligence Failure |
| • Powell and White House Get Together on Iraq War |
| • Bush Barking Up the CIA's Tree |
| • A Deadly Plague of Slums |
4 February 2004
The Lie Factory
By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest
Mother Jones, January/February 2004 Issue
EXCERPT: Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a
secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is
the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus
intelligence and led the nation to war. ...
SEE ALSO:
Office of Special Plans
(Center for Cooperative Research)
SEE ALSO:
Karen Kwiatkowski: Archives
(LewRockwell.com)
SEE ALSO:
The Intelligence Chain
(MJ.com)
SEE ALSO:
The Spies Who Pushed for War
(Guardian)
The True Intelligence
Failure
By Rahul Mahajan
ZNet, 3 February 2004
EXCERPT: We are now witnessing...the Bush administration as Brer
Rabbit, the stunning lack of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as
the Tar Baby, and an odd coalition of Democratic politicians and the
last forlorn remnants of the middle-of-the-road mainstream press,
usually referred to by conservative ideologues as "the liberal
media." Within weeks of David Kay¹s report that the Iraq Survey
Group that no WMD had been found (and after many administration
attempts to spin the report, using phrases like
"weapons-of-mass-destruction-related program activities"), the issue
started to snowball and, just as it was gaining momentum, it was
massively diverted into the question of "intelligence failures." ...
And now George W. Bush is right in the middle of the briar patch: a
"bipartisan commission," appointed by himself, that will investigate
those intelligence failures. And where, in all of this, is that ugly
little three-letter word lie (no, not oil that¹s a different
article)? The archipelago of lies about WMD is now too massive for
mortal mind to comprehend....
SEE ALSO:
Powell Expresses Doubts About the Invasion
(Guardian)
SEE ALSO:
Crucial Testimony That Triggered Inquiries
(Guardian)
SEE ALSO:
How Did We Get it So Wrong?
(Guradian)
SEE ALSO:
Israel Knew Iraq Had No WMD
(AP)
The Current Iraq Intelligence Failure
U.S. officials say they're winning the
intelligence war against Iraqi insurgents--but where's the evidence?
By John Prados
TomPaine.com, 3 February 2004
EXCERPT: The recent reports of the creation of a new security
service in Iraq suggest an advance in the intelligence war there,
but evidence suggests the opposite may well be true. First, the idea
of a new agency is not new, as the United States authorities and CIA
have been recruiting former Iraqi intelligence officers since last
summer. Moreover, this is not the first time we have heard
pronouncements of progress that do not concord with facts on the
ground. While little is yet known about the new service, a look at
the intelligence war in Iraq, including the capture of Saddam
Hussein, suggests that intelligence about the insurgency is weak at
best, and not necessarily improving.
Powell and White House Get
Together on Iraq War
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
New York Times, 3 February 2004
EXCERPT: The White House and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
scrambled on Tuesday to present a united front about the war in
Iraq, a day after Mr. Powell said he was not sure if he would have
recommended an invasion had he known Saddam Hussein did not have
stockpiles of banned weapons. After telling The Washington Post in
an interview on Monday that the absence of weapons stockpiles
"changes the political calculus" about whether to go to war, Mr.
Powell told reporters on Tuesday, in comments coordinated with the
White House, that "the bottom line is this: the president made the
right decision." Mr. Powell's comments to The Post clearly irritated
some White House officials, who have complained before that Mr.
Powell sometimes strays from the official line on national security
issues. Repeating a line that Mr. Powell had used to describe
himself during a dispute with the White House on another topic three
years ago, one administration official said on Tuesday that the
secretary was "a little forward on his skis again." Mr. Powell's
comments focused attention again on the longstanding foreign policy
conflicts within the administration that have often pitted Mr.
Powell against Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld. Mr. Powell's statements highlighted the contrast
between his sometimes measured support for the war and the more
full-throated justifications offered by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld.
"There definitely appears to be some jockeying going on around
here," said one administration official. "There's a high degree of
frustration and it does creep out."
Bush Barking Up the CIA's Tree
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 4 February 2004
EXCERPT: So was the intelligence tail wagging the policy dog, or was
it the other way around? President George W Bush, in appointing a
panel to look into the flaws in US intelligence in the run-up to the
invasion of Iraq, surely already knows the answer. But he doesn't
want it made public just yet, not with elections coming up.
...Wounded by the total collapse of its prewar contentions that
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction, the administration of US President George W Bush has
embarked on a strategy of diversion and delay. It hopes to divert
attention from the role played by senior administration officials in
influencing and exaggerating the intelligence assessments of the
Iraqi threat in the runup to the war by focusing debate instead on
flaws in the intelligence, and how it can be improved in the future.
The administration hopes to delay until well after the November
presidential elections the reporting deadline for a proposed
commission that will study the fiasco.
A Deadly Plague of Slums
By Mike Davis
Tom Dispatch, 3 February 2004
EXCEROT: Breakneck urbanization, a soaring demand for poultry and
pork, and what Science magazine recently characterized as "denser
concentrations of larger poultry farms without appropriate
biological safeguards" create optimum conditions for the rapid
evolution of viruses and their promiscuous passage from one species
to another. ... A true pandemic would probably overwhelm the world
long before a vaccine could be developed and produced in large
quantities. The potential accelerators of a new plague are the huge
slums of Asia and Africa. Concentrated poverty, indeed, is one of
the most important variables in any model of how a pandemic might
grow.
| 3 February 2004 |
|
• A Definitive Report WMD in Iraq - Evidence and Implications |
| • WMD-gate: Bush Wants to Scapegoat CIA |
| • President to Order Inquiry Into Iraq Intelligence Lapses |
| • Iraq War 'Increased Terror Threat' |
| • Strange Sightings and Eerie Quotes From Our Ridiculous Planet |
| • The WMD Blame Game |
| • Job Description for the Next Pope |
| • Case Closed |
3 February 2004
WMD-gate: Bush Wants to Scapegoat
CIA
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 2 February 2004
EXCERPT: Badly wounded by the total collapse of its prewar
contentions that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles
of weapons of mass destruction, the administration of President
George W. Bush has embarked on a strategy of diversion and delay.
..."This is damage control," said one Congressional aide, who added
the president's reelection chances might well hinge on whether he is
able to pull off the strategy. "Bush wants to get this out of the
headlines and into a commission that won't say anything until he's
reelected." Bush, who is helped by the fact that Republicans control
key committees in Congress, appears able to count as well on David
Kay, whose statements after he resigned as the man in charge of the
U.S. hunt for weapons of mass destruction (WMD), in Iraq last week
set off the White House's latest maneuvers. ...But, in absolving the
administration of the charge of pressuring the intelligence
community's analysts to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq's
alleged WMD programs, Kay threw Bush a life preserver. But to
veteran intelligence analysts, Kay's life preserver could more
accurately be called a lie preserver.
President to Order Inquiry Into
Iraq Intelligence Lapses
By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times, 1 February 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush will establish a bipartisan commission
in the next few days to examine a broad overhaul of American
intelligence operations, using the case of what went wrong in their
assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as part of a look
at the difficulties in penetrating secretive regimes and stateless
groups that target the United States, senior administration
officials said today. Mr. Bush will issue an executive order
establishing the group in coming days, but it will not report back
until after the November elections and may take a year and a half or
more to reach its conclusions, officials said.
Iraq War 'Increased Terror Threat'
BBC, 2 February 2004
EXCERPT: Britons are more - not less - likely to be the target of
terrorist attacks as a result of the war in Iraq, an influential
group of MPs claims. The Foreign Affairs Committee says British
interests are under threat in the short term because of the
conflict. It also claims a failure to find weapons of mass
destruction has "damaged the credibility" of the US and UK's war
against terrorism. There was a "crisis of confidence" in the
security services, one MP said.
Strange Sightings and Eerie
Quotes From Our Ridiculous Planet
Self-described 'evil genius' Dick
Cheney Spotted
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch, 2 February 2004
EXCERPT: You might say that the vice president, suddenly under
attack by the Democrats as the symbol of an extremist administration
and with his poll numbers in free fall, had been flushed out, like
one of those game birds he and Supreme Court Justice Scalia hunted
together recently.... Cheney, in the light of day, seemed to be
blinking hard and looking just a little unsteady, though our press
managed to explain all this in slightly encoded, exceedingly polite
language, meant to carry a punch mainly for your basic insider or
news jockey.
SEE ALSO:
Halliburton in $16M Food Probe
(Reuters)
SEE ALSO:
Condi Rice Acting Like Foreign Policy Ninny on
Iraq
(Pasadena Star News)
The WMD Blame Game
By Mark Engler
AlterNet, 2 February 2004
EXCERPT: In the face of growing public and Congressional pressure,
President Bush has reversed his opposition to an independent
investigation of flawed U.S. intelligence about Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction. Will Americans finally get the critical
examination they deserve into the fraudulent claims used by the
administration to justify its "preemptive" war? Don't count on it.
Early indications suggest that the commission is being crafted by
the White House primarily to deflect blame for its deceptions about
the threat posed by Iraq.
SEE ALSO:
The Lie Factory
(Mother Jones)
Job Description for the Next Pope
By R. Scott Appleby
Foreign Policy.com, Jan-Feb issue
EXCERPT: To ensure the vitality of the Catholic Church, the successor to
John Paul II must embrace science, reject globalization, reach out to the
Islamic world—and brush up on economics.
Case Closed
Now we know Iraq no longer had weapons of mass
destruction when we invaded. So how did the Bush administration get
everything wrong?
The American Prospect, 30 January 2004
EXCERPT: Some nonproliferation experts say Cheney's recent comments indicate
that the administration was never so much concerned with whether Saddam
Hussein actually had weapons of mass destruction as they were looking for a
plausible excuse to go to war. "This was never a debate over weapons," says
Carnegie's Cirincione. "It was a debate over war. A year ago, we had
[Hussein] surrounded, with tens of thousands of troops outside his borders
and hundreds of inspectors inside his borders. He wasn't going anywhere.
Now we know his regime was in a death spiral. "We do know this: that what
the Bush administration told us about the threat posed by [Hussein] wasn't
true. What we don't know is how many of these officials knew it wasn't
true." [bwusa emphasis]
| 2 February 2004 |
| • Twin Bombings in Northern Iraq Kill at Least 56 |
| • US Officials Knew in May Iraq Possessed No WMD |
| • Kay Questions U.S. Pre-Emptive Strike Doctrine |
| • The Political Bias of David Kay |
| • G.I.'s to Pull Back in Baghdad, Leaving Its Policing to Iraqis |
| • U.N. Election Team Seeks Order in Iraqi Chaos |
| • Bush, Blair Nominated for Nobel Prize |
2 February 2004
Twin Bombings in Northern Iraq Kill at
Least 56
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New York Times, 1 February 2004
EXCERPT:
IRBIL, Iraq -- Two suicide bombers struck the offices of two U.S.-backed
Kurdish parties in near-simultaneous attacks Sunday as hundreds of Iraqis
gathered to celebrate a Muslim holiday. At least 56 people were killed and
more than 235 were wounded, officials said. One Kurdish minister said the
death toll could exceed 100. The U.S. command in Baghdad put the casualty
toll at 56 dead and more than 200 were injured. Kurdish officials said 57
were dead and the count could go higher. The attack was believed to be the
deadliest since an Aug. 29 car bombing in the holy city of Najaf killed
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and more than 100 others as they emerged
from Friday prayers. It was also believed to have been the first in which
the suicide attackers wired bombs to themselves and detonated them while on
foot, akin to the suicide attacks by Palestinian militants in Israel.
US Officials Knew in May Iraq
Possessed No WMD
Observer (UK), 1 February 2004
EXCERPT: Senior American officials concluded at the beginning of last May
that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, The Observer
has learnt. Intelligence sources, policy makers and weapons inspectors
familiar with the details of the hunt for WMD told The Observer it was
widely known that Iraq had no WMD within three weeks of Baghdad falling,
despite the assertions of senior Bush administration figures and the Prime
Minister, Tony Blair. The new revelation came as White House sources
indicated that President George Bush was considering establishing an
investigation into the intelligence, despite rejecting an inquiry the
previous day.
SEE ALSO:
Bush Yields to Pressure for WMD Inquiry
(Guardian)
SEE ALSO:
Blair Alone After Bush WMD Move
(Guardian)
SEE ALSO:
A Half-Truth Is Still Dishonesty
(Guardian)
The Political Bias of David Kay
New York Times, 2 February 2004
EXCERPT: Yet for others, Dr. Kay's honesty stopped short of the White House
gates. Administration critics have accused the president and his advisers of
exaggerating intelligence reports, cherry-picking data that was most helpful
to their war strategy and pressuring analysts to view Iraq as an imminent
threat. Dr. Kay holds that, based on the information provided to the
administration, "it was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent
threat." Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who keeps a long list of
administration claims made to justify the Iraq war, accused Dr. Kay of
trying to shield the president. "He is trying quite clearly to put the
responsibility on the intelligence community and deflect it from the
administration," Senator Levin said in an interview. "He obviously supports
the president." Dr. Kay, who calls himself a political independent, does not
see it that way. "I think from the record it's the intelligence community
that abused the president," he said. "In general the flow of intelligence
turned out not to be true." Nowhere, perhaps, are Dr. Kay and his findings
more of a topic for discussion than at the C.I.A. Melvin A. Goodman, who
served 20 years in the C.I.A. and now teaches at the National War College,
said intelligence officers were complaining that Dr. Kay had bowed to
political pressures. "They feel the way he aimed his remarks at the C.I.A.
exclusively — and let the administration off the hook — was totally
one-sided and unfair," said Mr. Goodman, who insists that analysts felt
pressured to provide the most dire data to the policy makers. "He caved."
Yet many administration defenders, including some of the staunchest
supporters of the war, say Dr. Kay got it right. "The president is a
consumer of intelligence, not a producer of it," said Richard Perle, a
resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an ardent proponent
of the war. "I have long thought our intelligence in the gulf has been
woefully inadequate."
Kay Questions U.S. Pre-Emptive Strike
Doctrine
By Jackie Frank
Reuters, 1 February 2004
Courtesy of the Agonist
EXCERPT: The former top U.S. weapons hunter in Iraq (news - web sites),
David Kay, said on Sunday flaws in U.S. intelligence in prewar Iraq brought
into question President Bush (news - web sites)'s policy of pre-emptive
strike against countries deemed a threat to the United States. ..."If you
cannot rely on good, accurate intelligence that is credible to the American
people and to others abroad, you certainly can't have a policy of
preemption," Kay said on Fox News Sunday. "Pristine intelligence -- good,
accurate intelligence -- is a fundamental benchstone of any sort of policy
of preemption to even be thought about."
SEE ALSO:
The Bush Doctrine
(HarryBrowne.org)
G.I.'s to Pull Back in Baghdad, Leaving
Its Policing to Iraqis
By THOM SHANKER
New York Times, 2 February 2004
EXCERPT: American commanders have ordered a sharp reduction in the presence
of occupation troops in Baghdad, senior officers announced Sunday. The most
visible role of policing the capital is being turned over to local forces
while American troops pull back to a ring of bases at the edge of the city.
U.N. Election Team Seeks Order in Iraqi
Chaos
By WARREN HOGE
New York Times, 2 February 2004
EXCERPT: It is a highly atypical mission for the division, which usually
insists on months of surveys of local conditions and brings a rigor to the
task that has gained the United Nations an international reputation as the
most credible and trusted outside judge of elections. That reputation was
surely considered by the Bush administration when it discarded its
longstanding reluctance to involve the world organization in Iraq and to ask
in mid-January for an emergency mission by United Nations experts to try to
rescue the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority's stalemated plan
for political transition. In an interview, Ms. Perelli said she could not
discuss the specifics of the coming trip. But others at the United Nations
said they felt the United States and its coalition partners had little
understanding of the political dynamics of Iraq and had miscalculated in
promising to hold a caucus-based vote setting up the transfer of authority
to the Iraqis by June 30. A senior United Nations official who has recently
met with top Bush administration officials said he had told them that their
belief in the power of quick elections to bring stability to countries with
no history of democracy was "simplistic." "We know from our experience that
these things have to be gradual — it is naïve of them to think otherwise,"
he said.
Bush, Blair Nominated for Nobel Prize
Jang Group of Newspapers, 2 February 2004
Courtesy of Antiwar.com
EXCERPT:
OSLO: Nominations for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize have flooded in with the
European Union, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony
Blair all known to be on the list. "The nominations are streaming in," Geir
Lundestad, the director of the Nobel Institute and influential secretary of
the Nobel Committee tasked with selecting the Nobel laureate, told AFP.
"There are a lot of new names that have been proposed by presidents and
heads of government, but also by people a little less eminent," he said,
remaining tight-lipped on the names of the nominees. The name of the
laureate will be announced in October.
|
Bush Administration Quotes About Iraq's WMDs |
| 31 January- 1 February |
| • Bush Administration Misled, Not Intelligence |
| • Where's the Apology? |
| • The Definition of 'Imminent' |
| • Monsanto's Chapati Patent Raises Indian Ire |
| • BA Cancels Seven Flights to Washington, Miami |
| • At Least 9 Killed in Iraq Explosion |
| • AUDIO/VIDEO LINK White House Goes on Offensive After Kay Admits Iraq Intelligence "Almost All Wrong" |
| • Smiling Under the Names of the Dead |
31 January- 1 February
Bush
Administration Misled, Not Intelligence
Powell's Case, a Year Later: Gaps in Picture of
Iraq Arms
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times, 1 February 2004
EXCERPT: In an interview on Friday, Mr. Goss, the House intelligence
committee chairman, said: "We simply didn't have enough dots. Our collectors
had not given us that kind of close-in plans and intentions information that
you've got to have." Other officials, including some still serving in the
administration, argue that Mr. Powell presented a case that paid too little
attention to information that might have undermined the worst-case
conclusions the administration was highlighting. "They took every piece of
information that proved their point and listed it," a former senior
intelligence official who took part in the prewar debates said, referring to
the senior C.I.A. officials whose analytical conclusions formed the basis of
Mr. Powell's presentation. "They would disregard or make fun of any contrary
evidence. They forgot they were making mere guesses, and even guesses have
to be taken with caution. They didn't hedge or caveat. Instead they would
say we're right and you're wrong and it's a matter of national security."
...Mr. Powell's case at the United Nations was supposed to be bulletproof:
he had thrown out President Bush's own assertions, since discredited, that
Iraq sought uranium in Africa, and he tossed away pictures of Iraqi "nuclear
mujahedeen" when he concluded that the C.I.A. could not identify them.
...Congressional officials involved in inquiries into the intelligence
community findings say they believe that the suspicious activities were
indeed legitimate, and they say that what Mr. Powell described as
decontamination vehicles may have been nothing more than fire trucks. One
former senior government official cited the episode as an example of an
underlying flaw in the administration's working assumptions. Across the
board, he said, the prewar assessment was based on "an analysis of Saddam
that if he didn't have something to hide, he wouldn't have been behaving the
way he did. That's a dangerous assumption for any intelligence agency to
make," he said, "but that's what we did."
Already, the overestimation of Iraq's abilities has raised a fundamental
question in Congress and among America's allies: how can a nation threaten
to act pre-emptively against another government if the evidence of what kind
of a threat it poses — and how imminent the threat may be — is so far off
the mark? That question has been the subtext of Dr. Kay's comments, and the
explicit issue that Mr. Bush's Democratic challengers have raised.
"Intelligence played a critical role in the judgments in this case, more so
than in a lot of previous problems, where it was just one of several factors
impacting on policy," said Mr. Kerr, the former C.I.A. official heading the
internal review. "Maybe that's the lesson, maybe intelligence has to be
looked at with a different eye," he said. "Maybe we are going to have to
admit that there are some problems that are intractable in terms of knowing
answers to problems. I think you need some realistic balance." Mr. Kerr
contends that there were plenty of caveats placed on intelligence reports on
Iraq by analysts who recognized the limitations of the evidence. But often
their warnings were relegated to footnotes or buried in lengthy reports.
SEE ALSO:
The Mirror Has Two Faces
(NYT)
An excellent piece by Maureen Dowd
Where's the Apology?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 30 January 2004
George Bush promised to bring honor and integrity back to the White House.
Instead, he got rid of accountability. Surely even supporters of the Iraq
war must be dismayed by the administration's reaction to David Kay's recent
statements. Iraq, he now admits, didn't have W.M.D., or even active programs
to produce such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right.
(But Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr.
Bush declared that the war was justified — under U.N. Resolution 1441, no
less — because Saddam "did not let us in.") So where are the apologies?
Where are the resignations? Where is the investigation of this intelligence
debacle? All we have is bluster from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity
language from Mr. Bush — and a determined effort to prevent an independent
inquiry. True, Mr. Kay still claims that this was a pure intelligence
failure. I don't buy it: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has
issued a damning report on how the threat from Iraq was hyped, and former
officials warned of politicized intelligence during the war buildup. (Yes,
the Hutton report gave Tony Blair a clean bill of health, but many people —
including a majority of the British public, according to polls — regard that
report as a whitewash.)
The Definition of 'Imminent'
By Russ Baker
TomPaine.com, 30 January 2004
EXCERPT: Have you noticed? Team Bush is in training for the upcoming
political Olympics. In recent days, we've seen vigorous
demonstrations of hedging, ducking and furious backpedaling. Plus
that most esoteric of sports: hair splitting. At issue, of course,
is the Bush administration's attempt to escape responsibility for
starting a war over something that did not exist. Namely, the vast
stores of weapons of mass destruction that the White House claimed
Saddam Hussein had and was supposedly in imminent danger of using.
Instead of admitting that the pretext for war was an overhyped mass
of un-intelligence, White House spokesman Scott McClellan has been
ordered to celebrate minute distinctions, telling journalists Jan.
27 that it was the media‹not the administration‹that employed the
word 'imminent.' "We used 'grave and gathering' threat," McClellan
said, apparently managing not to crack a smile.
SEE ALSO:
Three Deadliest Months in a Row for US Troops
in Iraq
(Lunaville)
SEE ALSO:
Now Bush Admits to WMD Doubts
(Guardian)
Monsanto's Chapati Patent
Raises Indian Ire
By Randeep Ramesh
Guardian (UK), 30 January 2004
EXCERPT: Monsanto, the world's largest genetically modified seed
company, has been awarded patents on the wheat used for making
chapati - the flat bread staple of northern India. The patents give
the US multinational exclusive ownership over Nap Hal, a strain of
wheat whose gene sequence makes it particularly suited to producing
crisp breads. Another patent, filed in Europe, gives Monsanto rights
over the use of Nap Hal wheat to make chapatis, which consist of
flour, water and salt. Environmentalists say Nap Hal's qualities are
the result of generations of farmers in India who spent years
crossbreeding crops and collective, not corporate, efforts should be
recognised.
SEE ALSO:
Bush's Ties to Monsanto
(OrganicConsumers.org)
SEE ALSO:
Monsanto Contributed to Ashcroft's Campaign
(Open Secrets)
SEE ALSO:
Monsanto Donated $1,000 to Bush's Texas
Campaign, Received 58 'Privileged Audits' and Zero Violations
(txpeer.org)
BA Cancels Seven Flights to Washington,
Miami
AP, 31 January 2004
EXCERPT: British Airways and Air France on Saturday announced the
cancellation of seven flights to and from the United States because of
security concerns.
BA canceled four flights between Heathrow Airport and Washington on Sunday
and Monday and one from Heathrow to Miami on Sunday. Air France canceled two
Paris-to-Washington flights. There are no plans to raise the terror alert in
the United States because of the latest threats, Homeland Security
Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. "We remain concerned about al-Qaeda's
desire to target aviation, especially international aviation," said
Roehrkasse said.
At Least 9 Killed in Iraq Explosion
AP, 31 January 2004
EXCERPT: A car bomb exploded Saturday outside a police station in Iraq's
third largest city, killing at least nine people and wounding 45, witnesses
and hospital staff said. Witnesses in Mosul saw severed limbs and
decapitated bodies on the street in front of the police station. Windows of
buildings were shattered and plumes of smoke could be seen in the area.
Staff at the Republican Hospital in Mosul said nine people including
civilians and policemen were killed and 45 others were injured.
Seven US Soldiers Killed in
Afghanistan
Reuters, 29 January 2004
EXCERPT: An explosion near an arms cache in southern Afghanistan killed
seven U.S. soldiers on Thursday in one of the deadliest blows in months to
American forces hunting Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas. U.S. Central
Command said in a statement the soldiers were killed when working near an
ammunition dump in the southern province of Ghazni on Thursday afternoon.
Another U.S. soldier was missing and an interpreter was also injured, the
statement said.
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
White House Goes on Offensive After Kay Admits Iraq
Intelligence "Almost All Wrong"
Democracy Now!, 30 January 2004
EXCERPT: The comments of former chief US weapons inspector David Kay since
his resignation last week have become a premiere issue in the debate over
the Bush administration's justification for invading Iraq. The former
weapons inspector has also become a major reference point for the Democratic
candidates vying for the party's nomination.... The White House has sent
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on the offensive in a series of
interviews with large media outlets. In a significant shift from the
administration's prewar allegations about Saddam Hussein's possession of
weapons of mass destruction, Rice has been saying, "When you are dealing
with secretive regimes that want to deceive, you're never going to be able
to be positive."
SEE ALSO:
Bush Administration Quotes About Iraq's WMDs
(Lunaville)
SEE ALSO:
Neglecting Intelligence, Ignoring Warnings
(CAP)
Smiling Under the Names of the Dead
Reflections on a Grinning and Blood-Soaked
Presidency
By Paul Street
ZNet, 30 January 2004
EXCERPT: Someone really needs to wipe that stupid shit-eating grin off the
president's face. Just look at him in the oval office, smiling in a
photograph on page eight of Wednesday's New York Times. George W. Bush
looks confident and relaxed in a posh pinstripe suit.... The picture of the
smiling presidents is curiously juxtaposed with two very different
photographs on the same news page. The first contrasting image shows a dark
plume of smoke in an area where three vehicles burned after an attack on a
United States convoy in Khaldiya, Iraq. Three U.S. soldiers died in the
assault, comprising half of Tuesday's U.S. body count. The second photo
shows two grim Shiite women waiting to go through a security check before
being permitted to enter a mosque in Baghdad. "As attacks against
occupation forces and Iraqis continue," the photo caption reads, "security
has tightened throughout the country." Just two inches above Bush's smiling
face is a little rectangular box containing the title "Names of the
Dead."... The Times has been running these tragic little boxes on a regular
basis since the beginning of the invasion or thereabouts. Note the youthful
ages of all but one of Tuesday's latest U.S. troop fatalities. More than 300
of these American solider deaths have occurred, it is worth remembering,
after Bush II made his May 1st aircraft carrier landing to proclaim
America's "mission accomplished" in what the Times called a "triumphant
Reaganesque finale."
|
Bush Administration Quotes About Iraq's WMDs |