20 February 2004

 BushWhackedUSA Comment
Jobs or No Jobs, No Accountability
The President has distanced himself from his own annual economic report forecast for job creation. Seems as though 300,000 new jobs per month was too optimistic and a much too risky projection, in terms of being held accountable. Remember, this is for a period in which Bush will claim full credit for economic growth. Also remember that a similar forecast was made last year to justify tax cuts. The President fell far short with his projection of 1.7 million new jobs. In fact, 400,000 jobs were lost. Seems that generous tax breaks to the super rich "job creators" flowed out of the country for job creation elsewhere. All that remains now is to see if the electorate in the United States of Amnesia will hold President Bush accountable.
SEE ALSO: Bush Administration Does a Number On a Number: 366,000 jobs in the last 5 months. (Talking Points Memo) This is not "good news" because it takes the creation of 150,000 jobs a month just to keep even.
Discuss This and Other Issues at BushWhackedUSA: THE BLOG

Take Action -- A Call to Stop Airing Misleading Bush TV Spots About Medicare
Campaign for America's Future, 20 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Campaign for America's Future also joined Moveon.org and many citizen organizations and members of Congress to demand that major broadcast networks suspend airing the Bush Administration's television ads that misrepresent dramatic changes made to the Medicare system by recently enacted legislation. We questioned the use of public funds to support the television campaign widely characterized as an extension of the Bush-Cheney reelection effort in letters to the heads of all the major television and cable networks.

Bush Rouses the Sleeping Dogs of the Culture War
By Arianna Huffington
AriannaOnline.com, 18 February 2004
EXCERPT: In the last month, the president has traded in his too-tight flight suit for a revival tent, backing a new anti-obscenity crusade, anti-condom sex-ed programs, a renewed commitment to fighting the drug war, and his attorney general¹s efforts to poke around the private medical records of women who¹ve had abortions. He even hinted in his State of the Union that he¹d be willing to endorse a constitutional ban on gay marriage. With Silver Starred John Kerry threatening the president¹s hold on the high ground of national defense, Team Bush has decided it¹s time to switch battlefields and start screaming about Sodom and Gomorrah. And who has time to talk about the 3 million jobs lost on Bush¹s watch when gay couples are trying to make their lifetime commitment legal? Heaven forbid. You would think the Christian right has more pressing matters to worry about. America now has 35 million people living in poverty, many of them working poor. And Christian conservatives are up in arms about gay marriage?
SEE ALSO: Two Steps Back (TomPaine.com)

Howard Zinn: The Ultimate Betrayal
The Progressive, April 2004 Issue
EXCERPT: The Iraqi people, promised freedom from tyranny, saw their country, already devastated by two wars and twelve years of sanctions, were attacked by the most powerful military machine in history. The Pentagon proudly announced a campaign of "shock and awe," which left 10,000 or more Iraqi men, women, and children, dead, and many thousands more maimed. The list of betrayals is long. This government has betrayed the hopes of the world for peace. After fifty million died in the Second World War, the United Nations was set up, as its charter promised, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." The people of the United States have been betrayed, because with the Cold War over and "the threat of communism" no longer able to justify the stealing of trillions of the public's tax dollars for the military budget, that theft of the national wealth continues. It continues at the expense of the sick, the children, the elderly, the homeless, the unemployed, wiping out the expectations after the fall of the Soviet Union that there would be a "peace dividend" to bring prosperity to all. And yes, we come back to the ultimate betrayal, the betrayal of the young, sent to war with grandiose promises and lying words about freedom and democracy, about duty and patriotism. We are not historically literate enough to remember that these promises, those lies, started far back in the country's past.
SEE ALSO: Suicides in Iraq, Questions at Home
By Theola Labbé
Washington Post, 19 February 2004
EXCERPT:  According to William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, who discussed the suicides in a briefing last month, that represents a rate of more than 13.5 per 100,000 troops, about 20 percent higher than the recent Army average of 10.5 to 11. The Pentagon plans to release the findings of a team sent to Iraq last fall to investigate the mental health of the troops, including suicides. The number Winkenwerder cited does not include cases under investigation, so the actual number may be higher. It also excludes the suicides by soldiers who have returned to the United States. For instance, two soldiers undergoing mental health treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington reportedly committed suicide there, in July 2003 and last month. In its weekly report on the treatment of returning battlefield soldiers, the hospital never mentioned the deaths. An official at Walter Reed said the deaths are "suspected" suicides and are being investigated by the Army's criminal division.
SEE ALSO: Ten Percent of Evacuated US Casualties Have Psychiatric Conditions (UPI)
SEE ALSO: A Soldier's Grim Homecoming (Baltimore Sun)
SEE ALSO: Scandal of Gulf War Guinea Pigs (Sunday Post)

Has Bush's Running Mate Gone Lame?
By Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 20 February 2004
EXCERPT: The burly taciturn man at the president's side has always been a reassuring presence to American conservatives. Mr Cheney is only five years older than the president, but when they took office in 2001 he seemed like a father figure. Since then he has become the most powerful vice-president in US history. His staff dwarfs those of his predecessors. Al Gore had one foreign policy adviser; Mr Cheney has more than a dozen. In the White House he has an influential - some believe decisive - say on the strategic issues of the day, from long-term energy policy to invading Iraq. Until recently the only question mark over his job had been his health. At the age of 63 he has had four heart attacks and for the past three years has had a device in his chest to ensure it pumps normally. These days, however, his heart is the least of his worries.

Remaking America in Wal-Mart's Image
By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
The Black Commentator, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: The only competition that exists among the corporate players at the commanding heights of the American economy, is the race to determine who can squeeze the workers first, and hardest. Nothing illuminates this reality more starkly than the southern California supermarket strike and lockout, now in its fifth month. Displaying a class solidarity that would make Mao Tse-tung¹s Army blush a deep red, a united front of grocery chains is determined to destroy the middle class dreams of 70,000 union workers.

Republicans to "Frame" the Demo Candidate Before the Convention
The Republican and Bush campaign will have over $130 million to blitz the airways before the convention. Democrats will have very little to respond.
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post, 20 February 2004
EXCERPT: While the Bush camp is sitting on a $100 million war chest, strategists plan to target the ad blitz to fewer than 20 states -- such as Florida, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico -- that were most closely contested in 2000. By taking the rare step of preparing for a general-election ad blitz five months before the party conventions, the Bush team is following the lead of President Bill Clinton, whose early 1996 commercials helped frame the election by tying GOP nominee Robert J. Dole to unpopular House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The Bush ads would air at a time when Kerry may lack the resources to effectively respond, and in any event the money must be spent before the fall, when both nominees will be limited to $75 million in public financing. From the campaign's Arlington headquarters, McKinnon, a former Democrat, is directing an expanded 12-person media team that includes Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer of New York, veterans of the last Bush campaign; Alex Castellanos of Alexandria, who worked for Dole's 1996 campaign; Fred Davis of Hollywood, who helped elect Sen. Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina; Frank Guerra of San Antonio, who has worked for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R); Scott Howell of Dallas, a former Karl Rove associate; Chris Mottola of Philadelphia, who also worked for Dole's presidential bid; Vada Hill, who is credited with making the talking-dog commercials for Taco Bell; and Madison Avenue adman Harold Kaplan, who has written Kentucky Fried Chicken spots.

19 February 2004

Nobel Laureates, National Medal of Science Recipients, and Other Leading Researchers Call for End to Scientific Abuses
Preeminent Scientists Protest Bush Administration's Misuse of Science
Union of Concerned Scientists, 19 February 2004
EXCERPT: Today, more than 60 leading scientists—including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents—issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels. “Across a broad range of issues, the administration has undermined the quality of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the government’s outstanding scientific personnel,” said Dr. Kurt Gottfried, emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University and Chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Whether the issue is lead paint, clean air or climate change, this behavior has serious consequences for all Americans. Science, to quote President Bush's father, the former president, relies on freedom of inquiry and objectivity,” said Russell Train, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Nixon and Ford, who joined the scientists in calling for action. “But this administration has obstructed that freedom and distorted that objectivity in ways that were unheard of in any previous administration.”
SEE ALSO: Scientists Say Administration Distorts Facts (New York Times)
SEE ALSO: President Bush's Fiscal Year 2005 Budget:
New Priorities Needed (UCS)
SEE ALSO: Restoring Scientific Integrity (UCS)
SEE ALSO: Preeminent Scientists Protest Bush Administration Misuse of Science (RepubliCons)
SEE ALSO: 'Concerned Scientists' Accuse Administration of Manipulation (Fox News)
SEE ALSO:
"A Multigenerational Family of Fibbers"
Democracy Now!, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: An alleged one-year gap in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service during the early 70s has once again come to the mainstream media's attention. The controversy has been dubbed AWOL-gate and is coming under increasing scrutiny. But what is not being widely reported is that AWOL-gate is only the latest in a series of scandals within the Bush family, such as Iraq-gate, Iran-Contra, that date back generations. Well today we take a look at the Bush Dynasty with author and former top Republican strategist Kevin Phillips.
SEE ALSO: David Corn: What Bush's Guard File Reveals (Nation)
SEE ALSO:
National Guard Wrap-Up?
CalPundit.com, 18 February 2004
[This is an excellent summary of what's known and the nature of the void.- bwusa]
EXCERPT: So far, all this shows is that Bush cut a few corners and was less than zealous about finishing his 6-year commitment. Given Bush's age, the tenor of the times, and the winding down of the Vietnam War, this is hardly noteworthy. What is noteworthy, however, is the suspicion that there's more to the story. My email inbox is full to bursting with queries about whether I've heard of some theory or another to explain Bush's six-month absence in 1972 (answer: yes), and if these theories were confined to the tinfoil hat crowd we could just move on. But they aren't, and there are some pretty good reasons for that: ...

Administration Backs Off Specific Forecast on Jobs
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
New York Times, 19 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration backed away on Wednesday from a forecast it made public only last week predicting average job gains of more than 300,000 a month for 2004 but said it remained confident of robust though unspecified job growth for the year. In two news briefings, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, repeatedly declined to endorse the forecast, which was in the Economic Report of the President, a 417-page book sent to Congress last week under Mr. Bush's signature. "The president is not a statistician," Mr. McClellan said at one point. Asked why he would not stand behind the forecast, Mr. McClellan replied: "I think what the president stands behind is the policies that he is implementing, the policies that he is advocating. That's what's important." The shift opened the door to an attack by Democrats, who said that as the presidential campaign heated up the administration was being forced to acknowledge that its economic prescription of tax cuts and free trade had failed to generate the jobs Mr. Bush had promised. A day after Treasury Secretary John W. Snow signaled the administration's unease with the specific job-growth predictions by distancing himself from the forecast, the White House tried to avoid being held to a particular figure for employment growth for this year.

Cheney's Future is Washington's Current Topic
Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune, 19 February 2004
EXCERPT: Vice President Dick Cheney, a man who has cultivated an unblinking image of stern secretiveness and unshakeable discretion, is expected to become far more visible as a campaigner in this presidential election year. Assuming, that is, that he remains on the presidential ticket. "The campaign season is under way," Cheney said recently, "and President Bush and I will be proud to present our vision to voters in every part of this great land." The White House has said that American voters will see more of the low-profile Cheney this year, and not less.

Turning the Tables
Can Kerry stop the bleeding from his Wisconsin wound?
By William Saletan
Slate, 18 February 2004
Courtesy of CalPundit.com
EXCERPT: The pundits are at it again. They're impressed that John Edwards took John Kerry to the wire in Wisconsin. They're surprised that Edwards defied polls suggesting Kerry would blow him out. They're intrigued that Edwards beat Kerry among independents. But a win is a win, they say, and Kerry has won nearly every contest. Among self-identified Democrats, that's true. But among independents and Republicans who have chosen to vote in Democratic primaries, the record is very different. In 10 of the states that have voted so far, the media have conducted systematic exit or entrance polls that clarified how independents voted. In seven of those states, exit polls have also measured how self-identified Republicans voted. What percentages of these voters have Kerry and Edwards won, respectively? Let's look at the numbers: ...

Inspector Bush Shocked to Find Special Interest Influence
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 18 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush-Cheney campaign website has been decrying Senator John Kerry as an "unprincipled" politician "brought to you by the special interests." Perhaps. But it's worth noting that, according to campaign finance records examined by Public Citizen, George W. Bush accepted more lobbyist cash in one year than has Kerry in fifteen.

Eisenhower Was Right
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Future of Freedom Foundation, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: A small article on page A12 of the January 29 issue of the New York Times is revealing with respect to the extent of the power of the military-industrial complex in American life. The article reports that the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, told the House Armed Services Committee that he is going to increase the size of U.S. forces by 30,000. Did Congress authorize the increase? No. And when a few congressmen indicated to the general that they'd be pleased to have Congress authorize the increase, the general responded that Congress didn¹t need to trouble themselves with providing such authority -- that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had already authorized the temporary increase under his "emergency" power -- and that the "emergency" would justify the increase for the next four years. In other words, "Don¹t worry your pretty little heads, elected representatives of the people; the military bureaucracy has the situation well under control. Go back to your knitting." Combine that kind of military power (the power to increase military forces without congressional approval) with the enormous economic dependency on military bases of states and cities all over the country and with the Pentagon's newly claimed power to arrest, jail, and punish American citizens without due process of law and a jury trial, and you might begin to understand what President Eisenhower meant when he warned the American people back in 1961.

Lawsuit Charges EPA Ignoring "Lost" Mercury
BushGreenWatch, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: A lawsuit filed today against the Bush Administration asserts that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is failing to protect the public health, and violating the Clean Air Act, by ignoring tons of unaccounted for mercury emissions each year.

National Debt Tops $7 Trillion
Reuters, 18 February 2004
EXCERPT:  The U.S. government's national debt -- the accumulated debt from past budget shortfalls -- totaled more than $7 trillion for the first time as of Tuesday, according to a Treasury Department report. In its daily financial statement released on Wednesday, the Treasury said the U.S. debt subject to a Congressionally set limit totaled $7.015 trillion, up from $6.983 trillion on Friday. The government was closed on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday.

What's in a Word? Marriage
By George Lakoff
AlterNet, 18 February 2004
Courtesy of
EXCERPT: What's in a word? Plenty, if the word is "marriage." ...Because marriage is central to family life, it has a political dimension. As I discuss in my book Moral Politics, conservative and progressive politics are organized around two very different models of married life: a strict father family and a nurturing parent family. The strict father is moral authority and master of the household, dominating both the mother and children and imposing needed discipline. Contemporary conservative politics turns these family values into political values: hierarchical authority, individual discipline, military might. Marriage in the strict father family must be heterosexual marriage: the father is manly, strong, decisive, dominating – a role model for sons and a model for daughters of a man to look up to. The nurturing parent model has two equal parents, whose job is to nurture their children and teach their children to nurture others. ...
SEE ALSO: Same Sex Marriage is about Love and Equal Rights. What do Right Wingers Have Against Love? (We know they'd rather there not be equal rights.)  by Rob Kall, OpEdNews.com

18 February 2004

Not counting corporate welfare and subsidies for the rich
The Bush Paradox
Wasn't the era of big government supposed to be over?
BY PETE DU PONT
Wall Street Journal Opinion, 18 February 2004
EXCERPT:  ...big government is alive and well and stronger than ever. President Bush... has not worked to achieve... a less bureaucratic government with reduced costs. He hasn't vetoed a single spending bill (or any other bill). Meanwhile he has advocated larger and more intrusive government through steel tariffs (since repealed), increased farm subsidies, a $540 billion Medicare expansion, a 70% increase in education spending, and most recently an omnibus spending bill that funds 8,000 pork-barrel projects around the country. Total federal government spending in the final year of the Clinton administration was $1.864 trillion. The budget President Bush just proposed for the coming fiscal year is $2.4 trillion. That is an annual federal spending increase of 6.5% a year on Mr. Bush's watch while inflation has been running at 1.9%. ...the increase in nondefense discretionary spending--spending on things that the Congress and the president do not have to do but have chosen do anyhow--has exploded: 9% a year in the Bush administration, the fastest such spending growth of any president in the lifetime of the majority of Americans.

An Open Letter to the Justice Department's Lead Investigator for "Plame-gate"
Dear Mr. Prosecutor
by Jim Lobe
AlterNet.org, 17 February 2004

U.S. Prosecutor Sues Ashcroft
AP via CBS News, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism. Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino of Detroit accused the Justice Department of "gross mismanagement" of the war on terrorism in a lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court in Washington. Justice officials said Tuesday they had not seen the suit and had no comment. The suit is the latest twist in the Bush administration's first major post-Sept. 11 terrorism prosecution, which is now in danger of unraveling over allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. Convertino came under internal Justice Department investigation last fall after providing information to a Senate committee about his concerns about the war on terror. His testimony came just months after he helped convict some members of an alleged terrorism cell in Detroit. The government now admits it failed to turn over evidence during the trial that might have assisted the defense, including an allegation from an imprisoned drug gang leader who claimed the government's key witness made up his story.

Who You Calling "Arab"?
Considering today's New York Times story about Arabs. I mean, Muslims. No, brownish people from the Middle East. Or possibly South Asia.
By Jack Shafer
Slate, 17 February 2004
Courtesy of Talking Points Memo

Contesting Values
In 1988, the Democrats got clobbered in an election-year culture war. But that was then. The America of 2004 is a very different place, and the time is ripe to wage a new battle.
Stanley B. Greenberg and Anna Greenberg
The American Prospect, 1 March issue
EXCERPT: In his State of the Union address, President Bush told a rapt nation and the assembled government of the United States that our nation faces grave threats and must live up to its "great responsibilities," which include defending the "pillars of our civilization": our "families and schools and religious congregations." What is more, he warned, America can only be strong if we "value the institution of marriage." Citing the threat of activist judges poised to impose gay marriage on a reluctant nation, Bush vowed to "defend the sanctity of marriage." Through these remarks, Bush made clear his desire to put values at the center of the public debate in 2004. The political calculation hardly seems difficult in light of presumed public prejudices.

Lawmakers Challenge Mad Cow Statement
by IRA DREYFUSS
AP, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: A House committee on Tuesday questioned the government's credibility in the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, quoting three witnesses who denied Agriculture Department claims that the infected Holstein was lame. The worker who slaughtered the cow, the hauler who delivered it and an owner of the slaughterhouse all recalled seeing the infected animal on its feet, rather than it being the nonambulatory "downer" described by USDA officials.

17 February 2004

Hi-Tech Voting Machines 'Threaten' US Polls
By Tim Radford and Dan Glaister
Guardian (UK) 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: US voters will go to the polls in November using electronic voting machines which cannot be verified, a computer scientist warned yesterday. David Dill, of Stanford University, told the American As sociation for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle, that 1,600 technologists and 53 elected officials had joined his crusade for a "paper trail" so that electronic voting machines could be checked. In an election for a seat in the Florida house of representatives last month, touch-screen machines recorded 127 blank ballots. The race was won by 12 votes. No recount was possible because there was nothing to recount.... "The system is in crisis," Professor Dill said. "A quarter of the American public are voting on machines where there's very little protection of their votes. I don't think there's any reason to trust these machines." There have also been criticisms of the company which won the contract to supply the machines, Diebold Inc. It has been accused of secrecy, arrogance and political bias. Diebold's chief executive, Walden O'Dell, held a political fundraiser for President Bush last year.

FAIR: Amendment Deception Needs Clarity
Common Dreams Newswire, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: Backers of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage have created a misleading impression of their legislative plan-- a deception that some media outlets have not properly explained to readers and viewers. The dispute centers on the fact that some advocates claim that the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment would permit states to allow civil unions for gays and lesbians. On February 11, ABC World News Tonight correspondent Terry Moran explained that the amendment "would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but allow states to establish civil unions for gay couples." Moran continued by saying that "some conservatives are unhappy that the proposed amendment would allow civil unions for gay couples." But the language of the amendment introduced by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) suggests otherwise: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
SEE ALSO: Anger at Gay Weddings Spills into Court Challenges (Guardian)

How the White House Shelved MTBE Ban
By PETE YOST
AP vis FindLaw, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration quietly shelved a proposal to ban a gasoline additive that contaminates drinking water in many communities, helping an industry that has donated more than $1 million to Republicans. The Environmental Protection Agency's decision had its origin in the early days of President Bush's tenure when his administration decided not to move ahead with a Clinton-era regulatory effort to ban the clean-air additive MTBE. The proposed regulation said the environmental harm of the additive leaching into ground water overshadowed its beneficial effects to the air. The Bush administration decided to leave the issue to Congress, where it has bogged down over a proposal to shield the industry from some lawsuits. That initiative is being led by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.

Law-Breaking Logging Giant Bankrolls Recall Campaign of Prosecutor
By Ralph Nader
Common Dreams, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: From the failed savings and loan bailout racket to the stately giant redwood trees of Humboldt County, California, the story of the predator corporation Maxxam -- Pacific Lumber someday may make a movie on corporate arrogance and abuse. The storyline has taken a bizarre twist today, some years after Maxxam bought out a family-owned lumber company and accelerated, to great opposition, the cutting of these ancient trees. It seems that a newly elected county district attorney, Paul Gallegos, is irritating the lumber giant for bringing a suit charging Pacific Lumber with filing a false timber harvest plan in order to obtain a global logging permit for their property. The company, he charges, had information about the environmental impact of their logging proposal that they were legally obliged to give to the Californian authorities but did not. Richard Wilson of the California Department of Forestry publically declared that if he knew about this withholding of material information at the time he signed off on the permit, he would have rejected the permit application. The owners of Pacific Lumber decided to rid themselves of this prosecution for fraud by starting a recall of the elected Paul Gallegos.
SEE ALSO: Bush Delivers Valentine's Day Gifts to Big Business (BWUSA satire)

U.S. Nears Clash With Governors on Medicaid Cost
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is headed for a confrontation with states over the financing of Medicaid, the nation's largest health program, as federal officials crack down on arrangements used by many states to shift costs to the federal government. The federal action comes as states, struggling with severe fiscal problems, are cutting benefits and restricting eligibility for the program, which serves 50 million low-income people each year. Federal officials and auditors contend that states use creative bookkeeping and other ploys to obtain large amounts of federal Medicaid money without paying their share. Washington and the states split Medicaid costs, with the federal government paying 50 percent and sometimes more than 70 percent. But in many cases, the Bush administration says, states have paid their share with "phantom dollars," instead of state or local tax revenues. State officials acknowledge their desire to make the most of federal Medicaid payments at a time when health costs are soaring. The National Conference of State Legislatures advises its members on "Medicaid maximization" strategies and says such techniques are legitimate and desperately needed to avoid cutting benefits for poor people. The dispute will be high on the agenda when the National Governors Association holds its winter meeting here beginning Saturday.

Police Chiefs Campaign to Fight Senate Bill That Would Protect Gun Dealers
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
New York Times, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: A large number of police chiefs and other law enforcement officials have joined gun control advocates in a campaign to defeat a Senate bill that would grant gun makers and dealers almost total immunity from lawsuits. The bill, which is strongly supported by the National Rifle Association, is scheduled for a Senate vote in early March but could come up for a vote even sooner. As many as 59 senators have signed on as sponsors, only one vote shy of the number needed to defeat any attempt at a filibuster. A similar bill passed easily in the House last fall.

Arabs in U.S. Raising Money to Back Bush
By LESLIE WAYNE
New York Times, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: Wealthy Arab-Americans and foreign-born Muslims who strongly back President Bush's decision to invade Iraq are adding their names to the ranks of Pioneers and Rangers, the elite Bush supporters who have raised $100,000 or more for his re-election. This new crop of fund-raisers comes as some opinion polls suggest support for the president among Arab-Americans is sinking and at a time when strategists from both parties say Mr. Bush is losing ground with this group. Mr. Bush has been criticized by Arab-Americans who feel they are being singled out in the fight against terrorism and who are uneasy over the administration's Palestinian-Israeli policies. Yet the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq have been a catalyst for some wealthy Arab-Americans to become more involved in politics. And there are still others who have a more practical reason for opening their checkbooks: access to a business-friendly White House. Already, their efforts have brought them visits with the president at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., as well as White House dinners and meetings with top administration officials.

The Health of Nations
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: he Economic Report of the President, released last week, has drawn criticism on several fronts. Let me open a new one: the report's discussion of health care, which shows a remarkable indifference to the concerns of ordinary Americans — and suggests a major political opening for the Democrats. According to a recent Gallup poll, 82 percent of Americans rank health care among their top issues. People are happy with the quality of health care, if they can afford it, but they're afraid that they might not be able to afford it. Unlike other wealthy countries, America doesn't have universal health insurance, and it's all too easy to fall through the cracks in our system. When I saw that the president's economic report devoted a whole chapter to health care, I assumed that it would make some attempt to address these public concerns. Instead, the report pooh-poohs the problem. Although more than 40 million people lack health insurance, this doesn't matter too much because "the uninsured are a diverse and perpetually changing group." This is good news? At any given time about one in seven Americans is uninsured, which is bad enough. Because the uninsured are a "perpetually changing group," however, a much larger fraction of the population suffers periodic, terrifying spells of being uninsured, and an even larger fraction lives with the fear of losing insurance if anything goes wrong at work or at home. The report also seems to have missed the point of health insurance. It argues that it would be a good thing if insurance companies had more information about the health prospects of clients so "policies could be tailored to different types and priced accordingly." So if insurance companies develop a new way to identify people who are likely to have kidney problems later in life, and use this information to deny such people policies that cover dialysis, that's a positive step? Having brushed off the plight of those who, for economic or health reasons, cannot get insurance, the report turns to a criticism of health insurance in general, which it blames for excessive health care spending. Is this really the crucial issue? It's true that the U.S. spends far more on health care than any other country, but this wouldn't be a bad thing if the spending got results. The real question is why, despite all that spending, many Americans aren't assured of the health care they need, and American life expectancy is near the bottom for advanced countries.

Terror Groups Flourish in Canada: U.S. Report
CBC, 15 February 2004
Courtesy of Agonist
WASHINGTON - Canada is "a favoured destination" for terrorists and organized crime groups because of lax law enforcement, proximity to the United States and a generous social welfare system, a U.S. report says. Terrorists and organized crime groups "increasingly are using Canada as an operational base and transit country en route to the United States," says the study, Nations Hospitable to Organized Crime and Terrorism.

'Cozy relationship' between church, state and press cited
'Republic' Scribe Says Criticizing Mormons Led to Suspension
By Jennifer Saba
Editor and Publicsher, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT:  Local columnist Dary Matera claims he was suspended from The Arizona Republic in Phoenix because of an opinion piece he wrote criticizing the Mormon Church. The column in question, "Meddling with polygamists," was published last Thursday in the East Valley community section of the Republic (Click for QuikCap). The next day, Assistant Editorial Page Editor Paul Schatt notified Matera that he was suspended indefinitely, according to Matera. "The suits downtown have woke up and they realized that I've been writing a lot of columns that have been controversial," Matera told E&P. He is not on staff but has been regularly contributing to the paper since last April. "The Mormons are very powerful. They're in all aspects of [Arizona] society. What happened here is that the Republic and the government and the church are too cozy right now and that's what is personally disturbing."

16 February 2004

Iraqnophobia: Bush Leaves Pentagon "at the Mercy of Congress"
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: The President's break-the-bank budget turns out, unsurprisingly, to be missing the odd dotted i and crossed t. In particular, the next request for funds for waging war and occupying Iraq, estimated at $50 billion, has not been included in this year's budget. Like the previous two times around ($62.6 billion last spring and $87 billion in November), it will be submitted as a supplemental request in January. Think post-the November election -- perhaps on the theory that out-of-sight is out of mind, as opposed to out of one's mind. But here's the rub -- only the first of many conundrums this administration faces in regards to its Iraq policy -- the military in Iraq (and assumedly Afghanistan, where another American soldier died and a number were wounded yesterday) is only funded through September. Between September and January, the military will have to scrabble for Iraq funds to the tune of about $4 billion a month, which is almost but not quite chump change for the Pentagon. And -- horror of horrors -- as Brookings expert Hanlon put it to Eric Schmitt of the Times, the Pentagon fears being left out on the street, another Bush-era indigent, and worst of all (doesn't this little phrase speak a world about our world) "at the mercy of Congress." I may be no constitutional scholar, but wasn't that the point back when we weren't yet a full-scale military empire?

Tax Cheats: 270,000+ Military Contractors are Currently Evading Taxes
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
The Nation, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: We all know that Halliburton is gouging taxpayers--according to the Pentagon, Vice President Cheney's old company overcharged the US government by as much as $61 million for fuel in Iraq. But now we learn that more than 27,000 military contractors, or about one in nine, are evading taxes and still continuing to win new government business. According to the General Accounting Office, these tax cheats owed an estimated $3 billion at the end of 2002, mainly in Social Security and other payroll taxes, including Medicare, that were diverted for business or personal use instead of being sent to the government.... At a time when $200 million would purchase enough ceramic body armor--the kind that usually works, the kind the Pentagon wouldn't splurge for--to protect almost 150,000 GIs in Iraq, Republicans and Democrats should demand that these tax cheats pay up.

Electoral Arithmetic Makes Bush the Favorite and Binds Him to Bin Laden
In the rush to dethrone Bush, Democrats are choosing the weaker candidate
By Henry Porter
Observer (UK), 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: Rapid studies have found that Kerry's success in winning 11 of the 13 primaries is due not to his innate qualities or his opinions, but that he is viewed by Democrats as the man who can beat Bush. When voters in Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Michigan were asked to set aside the 'can-beat-Bush' factor and think about the issues, Senator John Edwards scored very well indeed, and, as Slate points out: 'Among Republicans and Republican leaners, Kerry's image was on balance unfavourable, while Edwards's image was on balance favourable.' So, the desperation of Democrats to be rid of Bush may paradoxically mean that they pick the candidate who cannot attract the swing voters that decide presidential elections. Among his weaknesses are his 30-year record in DC, littered with lobbyists' cheques and tainted by a Senate voting record that allows him to be characterised as too liberal on defence and security.
SEE ALSO: I Love the Smell of Cowardice in the Morning (Observer)

Energy Bill Still Loaded with Environmental Harm
BushGreenWatch.org, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Senate Republicans this week are trying to revive the energy bill, which failed to pass before Christmas, by removing some of the most controversial tax breaks and subsidies for industry. But the bill, based on the national energy plan drafted in secret by the Cheney Energy Task Force, is still loaded with provisions harmful to the environment and public health. "This bill is still anti-environment and anti-consumer and a disaster to anyone who drinks the water, breathes the air, pays the utility bills or pays their taxes," said Anna Aurilio, legislative director for U.S. PIRG. "We hope that Congress will start over and begin work on an energy policy that makes our electricity supply more reliable, promotes clean, efficient, renewable energy, cuts global warming pollution and moves America forward."
SEE ALSO: Bush Shortchanges Wild Salmon Recovery Efforts (BGW)
SEE ALSO: EPA Weakens Air Pollution Limits on Alaska Oil Operations (BGW)
SEE ALSO: Bush Budget Increases Industry-Supported Programs (BGW)

Wake-up Time
By Eric Alterman and Michael Tomasky
The American Prospect, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: ...the first week of February may have marked a turning point. In that week, the media started raising new questions about the justification for the Iraq War; broke an important story about the administration knowing last fall that the Medicare bill would cost $134 billion more than it let on to its employers (the public); broke another about a probe of alleged bribes at Dick Cheney's Halliburton; and finally, led by The Boston Globe's Walter Robinson, started to take a semi-meaningful look into George W. Bush's disputed National Guard record. Don't start dancing to the music just yet, though. Bad habits die hard, and we've all come to expect too little genuine journalism and far too much of what might be called "journalism-related program activity." ...Election 2004 offers ample opportunity for the ambitious men and women of the Fourth Estate to reassert their power and professional pride. It is in that hope and spirit that we offer the following suggestions for reporters and editors this time around...

Numbers Game
Since McCain-Feingold, "527s" have been invaluable to the Democrats' 2004 strategy. So what are the Republicans trying to do? Eliminate them.
By Harold Meyerson
The American Prospect, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: ..."527s" -- organizations, named for a section of the tax code, that Democratic activists have established to do the voter mobilization and advertising campaigns that the party itself can no longer do under the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. ...They (Democrats) conceived a new range of organizations that would in effect privatize the Democratic Party. The new 527s could still collect those mega-soft-money donations so long as they had no communications with the official party bodies. ...The Republicans, meanwhile, made no discernible efforts to start up 527s of their own -- at least, until November 18 of last year, when three old GOP hands sent a letter to the Federal Elections Commission on behalf of a fake 527 called Americans for a Better Country (ABC). In a diabolically clever ploy, they described in minute detail a vast range of campaign activities that ABC was planning to undertake and asked the FEC to issue a ruling as to the legality of those activities. Of course, there was no ABC. The activities described in the letter were plainly culled from press accounts of the Democratic 527s. The three even asked the commission to tell them the ramifications if they hired "[t]he former chief of staff to a member of the congressional leadership" -- an unmistakable reference to Cecile Richards, who heads one of the Democrats' 527s and who was deputy chief of staff to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi before that. By filing the query to the FEC in ABC's name, the ABC Three ensured that any FEC decision that proscribed some of their hypothetical practices -- and the 527s' real ones -- could not be appealed by the actual 527s, for they had no standing in the case.

Bush Advocates Abstinence-Only Education Despite No Evidence That It Works
By MARK SHERMAN
AP, 13 February 2004
Courtesy of Tapped
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is proposing to double spending on sexual abstinence programs that bar any discussion of birth control or condoms to prevent pregnancy or AIDS despite a lack of evidence that such programs work. A study by researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on declining birth and pregnancy rates among teenagers concludes that prevention programs should emphasize abstinence and contraception.
SEE ALSO: Pork for Prudes (Washington Monthly)

The peril of a pervasive modern monopoly
Experts Warn of Microsoft 'Monoculture'
AP, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: Dan Geer lost his job, but gained his audience. The very idea that got the computer security expert fired has sparked serious debate in information technology. The idea, borrowed from biology, is that Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has nurtured a software "monoculture" that threatens global computer security. Geer and others believe Microsoft's software is so dangerously pervasive that a virus capable of exploiting even a single flaw in its operating systems could wreak havoc. Just this past week, Microsoft warned customers about security problems that independent experts called among the most serious yet disclosed. Network administrators could only hope users would download the latest patch.

14-15 February 2004

How America Doesn't Vote
New York Times, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: One outcome of this year's presidential election is already certain: people will show up to vote and find they have been wrongly taken off the rolls. The lists of eligible voters kept by localities around the country are the gateway to democracy, and they are also a national scandal. In 2000, the American public saw, in Katherine Harris's massive purge of eligible voters in Florida, how easy it is for registered voters to lose their rights by bureaucratic fiat. Missouri's voting-list problems received far less attention, but may have disenfranchised more eligible voters.

More Bush lies...
Administration Seeks Deep Cuts In Housing Vouchers and Conversion of Program to a Block Grant
Budget Would Cut Number of Families Assisted by Up to 250,000 in 2005 and Up to 800,000 — or 40% of all Assisted Families — by 2009
by Barbara Sard and Will Fischer
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Administration’s new budget would cut funding for “Section 8” housing vouchers in 2005 by more than $1 billion below the 2004 level. The budget would cut the Section 8 program further in subsequent years. The budget also would make radical changes in the program’s structure. It would replace the voucher program with a block grant to local housing agencies (labeled the “Flexible Voucher Program”) and, in so doing, repeal basic protections for low-income families that were developed on a bipartisan basis and have undergirded the program for decades. The block-grant proposal also would leave the program vulnerable to substantial further funding erosion over time. These cuts are deeper, and the policy changes more sweeping and threatening to the low-income families and elderly and disabled people whom the program serves, than any proposal advanced by any prior Administration during the voucher program’s 30-year history. The program began in 1974, when it was created under the Nixon Administration. The Administration argues that these radical changes are needed to control explosive growth in program costs. The Administration’s own budget projections show, however, that recent cost growth has stemmed largely from temporary factors and that cost growth is expected to slow greatly in 2005 under the existing program structure. The Office of Management and Budget’s own budget projections show that if sufficient funding is provided in 2005 to keep pace with increases in rental costs and the current program structure is maintained, expenditures for the Section 8 program will grow only 1.6 percent in 2005. After adjusting for inflation, this represents a slight decline in spending. [bwusa emphasis]

Bush: Cracks in the Ice?
By Rahul Mahajan
ZNet, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: For at least six months, I have been resisting early pronouncements of Bush's political death. Most of them seemed to be composed of wishful thinking, extrapolating from simple facts -- the disaster of the Iraq occupation, the mostly jobless recovery, the lies about weapons of mass destruction -- to that phenomenally elusive quantity that is public opinion. If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president, then until recently Bush seems to have been made of some special plastic developed by an advanced alien civilization. Sure, he took some hits in the polls, but given that this administration has lied about virtually every aspect of its policy (WMD, tax cuts, budget, ...) and has presided over a series of disasters for the United States from the 9/11 attacks to a failing colonial occupation to economic stagnation to a collapse of the government's fiscal soundness to a collapse of social services, he hasn't done so badly. His job approval ratings remained in general well over 50% and as late as October of last year, 59% of Americans characterized Bush as "honest and trustworthy." Furthermore, the administration has displayed a consistent pattern: Unlike Bill Clinton, who really was obsessed with the polls, Bush has been willing to let his ratings slide, let criticisms and confusion mount to extreme levels, then defuse it all and reset the clock with a well-timed and heavily-hyped intervention. There are signs, however, that this time is different.
SEE ALSO: White House Admits Bush Lied in 2002 State of the Union Address (DNow!)
SEE ALSO: The Fear President (Yahoo!)
SEE ALSO: W's AWOL Spin Update (Nation)

"Anybody But Bush": The Big Abdication
By T. Patrick Donovan
Dissident Voice, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Let me get straight to the point. Following the strategy of "Anybody But Bush" in the upcoming presidential election is equally as dangerous as Bush getting re-elected. Why? There are two basic reasons. First, the "Anybody But Bush" (ABB) movement is predicated on the mistaken and illusory belief that Bush & Co. is an aberration from the American political system, rather than extensions of it. Second, for progressives to submerge ourselves within the ABB tidal wave is a complete abdication of our responsibility as global citizens to agitate around the issues facing this country and the world, rather than once again believing that our work is limited to simply voting for the president every four years.

Personal Responsibility Republicans
Caught Red Handed, Republicans Blame Democrats for Lack of Vigilance
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: So meet the Bush Republicans. Caught sneaking into the files of Democratic colleagues in the Senate, they have blamed ... the Democrats. (When are those awful Democrats going to take personal responsibility for their actions?) Senate Republican staff for many months secretly gamed a Congressional computer server both parties share to download thousands of Democratic internal memorandums. The memos were leaked to conservative outlets like The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal edit page and columnist Robert Novak; they were also allegedly used to prepare some of President George W. Bush's judicial nominees for confirmation hearings. Here's how one of the Republican Senate staffers involved -- who worked for Orrin Hatch and Bill Frist -- manfully takes responsibility: "[The Democratic memos] were inadvertent disclosures that came to me as a result of some negligence on the part of the Democrats' technology staff."
SEE ALSO: Democrats Suggest Inquiry Points to Wider Spying (NYT)

The theft of the 2004 election...
Florida Makes Touchscreen Ballots Exempt from Recounts
AP, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Department of State has notified elections supervisors that touchscreen ballots don't have to be included during manual recounts because there is no question about how voters intended to vote. While touchscreen ballot images can be printed, there is no need and elections supervisors aren't authorized to do so, Division of Elections Director Ed Kast wrote in a letter to Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Kurt Browning. Florida law requires a manual recount of overvotes where too many candidates were chosen, and undervotes where no candidate was chosen in elections where the margin of victory is one-quarter of one percent of the vote. But because the law states that the purpose of a recount is to determine whether there was a "clear indication on the ballot that the voter has made a definite choice," there is no need to review touchscreen ballots, Ed Kast, director of the Division of Elections.
SEE ALSO: U.S. Officials Drop Activist Subpoenas in Iowa (ZNet)
SEE ALSO: Strangling Public Debate (TomPaine.com)

AUDIO/VIDEO
Ashcroft Seeks Hospital Abortion Records
Democracy Now!, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia, Ann Arbor and other cities turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there. Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what anti-abortion groups call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, which was passed last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions. Justice Department lawyers say they want to examine the medical histories of dozens of patients from the last three years to determine if certain abortions were medically necessary. Hospital administrators say the demands violate the privacy rights of their patients. This has resulted in divided interpretations from federal judges in recent days about whether the Justice Department has a right to see the files. A federal judge in New York last week allowed the subpoenas to go forward and threatened to impose penalties, and perhaps even lift a temporary ban he had imposed on the government's new abortion restrictions, if the records were not turned over. He said, "I will not let the doctors hide behind the shield of the hospital."

President Bush to Release Vietnam-era Military Files
AP, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush, trying to calm a political storm, released his Vietnam-era military records Friday to counter Democrats' suggestions that he shirked his duty in the Texas Air National Guard. But there was no new evidence that he was in Alabama during a period when Democrats have questioned whether he showed up for service. Hundreds of pages of documents — many of them duplicates — detailed Bush's service in the Guard from 1968 until 1973. Bush's medical records, dozens of pages in all, were opened for examination by reporters in the Roosevelt Room, but those documents were not allowed to leave the room. The records showed that Bush, a pilot, was suspended from flying status beginning Aug. 1, 1972, because of his failure to have an annual medical examination. His last flight exam was on May 15, 1971. Democrats have questioned whether Bush showed up for temporary duty in Alabama while working on a political campaign during a one-year period from May 1972 to May 1973. Reports differ on which months Bush was in Alabama, but generally, it's believed that he asked for permission to continue his duties at the 187th TAC Recon Group, Montgomery, in May 1972 and returned to his Texas unit after the November election. The White House says Bush went back to Alabama again after that. There were no new documents Friday about Bush's serving in Alabama.
SEE ALSO: Bush Releases National Guard Files (Reuters)

Bush Attack Ad False and Misleading
FactCheck.org, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush campaign sent an e-mail Feb. 12 to six million supporters with a link to an Internet video attacking Kerry for being "unprincipled." The ad claims Kerry got "more special interest money than any other senator," which is false. While it is true that Kerry got $640,000 over the past 15 years from individual lobbyists, that's only one type of special-interest money. And the Bush campaign itself has reported raising $960,000 from individual lobbyists in the past year alone. The ad says Kerry got "millions from executives at HMO's, telecoms, drug companies," which is true -- for Kerry's entire political career. But so far Kerry's presidential campaign has received a small fraction of what the Bush campaign has received from those particular sources. By any definition, Bush's "special interest" money greatly exceeds Kerry's.

Accused U.S. Guardsman a Vocal Gun Proponent
By Chris Stetkiewicz
Reuters, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: A U.S. National Guardsman accused of trying to help Islamic militant al Qaeda forces is a staunch gun advocate and was once arrested for approaching a school toting a rifle and a bayonet, local officials said on Friday. Ryan Anderson, a tank crew member arrested on Thursday as his unit prepared to ship out to Iraq, broke no laws, but drew a swarm of police as he strode toward an Everett, Washington, elementary school in May 1998 on a break from his studies at Washington State University.

13 February 2004

Notable Quote
George W. Bush always said he wanted to be a uniter rather than a divider and he has united the Democratic Party. I have never seen the Democratic Party as united as it is, they're discovering virtues in John Kerry that his mother never knew existed.
     --Mark Shields on PBS News Hour
Courtesy of billmon.org
Discuss This and Other Issues at BushWhackedUSA: THE BLOG

The Real Man
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: To understand why questions about George Bush's time in the National Guard are legitimate, all you have to do is look at the federal budget published last week. No, not the lies, damned lies and statistics — the pictures. By my count, this year's budget contains 27 glossy photos of Mr. Bush. We see the president in front of a giant American flag, in front of the Washington Monument, comforting an elderly woman in a wheelchair, helping a small child with his reading assignment, building a trail through the wilderness and, of course, eating turkey with the troops in Iraq. Somehow the art director neglected to include a photo of the president swimming across the Yangtze River. It was not ever thus. Bill Clinton's budgets were illustrated with tables and charts, not with worshipful photos of the president being presidential. The issue here goes beyond using the Government Printing Office to publish campaign brochures. In this budget, as in almost everything it does, the Bush administration tries to blur the line between reverence for the office of president and reverence for the person who currently holds that office. ...when administration officials are challenged about the blatant deceptions in their budgets — or, for that matter, about the use of prewar intelligence — their response, almost always, is to fall back on the president's character. How dare you question Mr. Bush's honesty, they ask, when he is a man of such unimpeachable integrity? And that leaves critics with no choice: they must point out that the man inside the flight suit bears little resemblance to the official image.

Most Think Truth Was Stretched to Justify Iraq War
By Richard Morin and Dana Milbank
Washington Post, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: A majority of Americans believe President Bush either lied or deliberately exaggerated evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify war, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. ...Barely half -- 52 percent -- now believe Bush is "honest and trustworthy," down 7 percentage points since late October and his worst showing since the question was first asked, in March 1999. At his best, in the summer of 2002, Bush was viewed as honest by 71 percent. The survey found that nearly seven in 10 think Bush "honestly believed" Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Even so, 54 percent thought Bush exaggerated or lied about prewar intelligence. Honesty and credibility have been central to Bush's appeal since the 2000 campaign, when he benefited from disgust over President Bill Clinton's lies about the Monica S. Lewinsky affair and when Bush's campaign accused then-Vice President Al Gore of "saying one thing and doing another." But a number of factors, including the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq and the administration's underestimating of its Medicare prescription drug plan's costs, appear to have undermined perceptions of his credibility. Bush's possible Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), has begun to talk about a "credibility gap." Even some Bush allies say they have been misled about Iraq's weapons, and the current Time magazine cover story asks: "Believe him or not -- does Bush have a credibility gap?" Questions about Bush's use of prewar intelligence, in addition to feeding doubts about his honesty, have sent his performance rating plummeting. Fifty percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing, the lowest level of his presidency in Post-ABC polling and down 8 percentage points from January. The survey found that, for the first time since the war ended, fewer than half of Americans -- 48 percent -- believe the war was worth fighting, down 8 points from last month. Fifty percent said the war was not worth it.
SEE ALSO: Poll: Public's Trust in Bush Dips to the Low Point in His Presidency (AP)
EXCERPT: The public's trust in President Bush is at the lowest point of his presidency, with about half of those surveyed saying he is honest and trustworthy and almost that many saying he is not, according to a poll released Thursday.
The ABC News-Washington Post poll found that 52% felt Bush was trustworthy, while 42% did not. The poll found public support for the war in Iraq slipping and people were about evenly split on whether they approve of the job he is doing as president or not. For the first time in this poll, support for the war dipped just below half, 48%, with an equal share, 50%, saying it was not worth fighting. More than half in the poll, 54%, said that the Bush administration intentionally exaggerated the threat from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but more of that group says administration officials exaggerated the threat than said they lied. ...A tracking poll by the National Annenberg Election Survey found that Bush's overall job approval dropped sharply in late January after David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said he did not think those weapons existed. In other findings in the ABC-Post poll, Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry was ahead of Bush 51% to 43% in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup. ...Almost half in the poll, 47%, said the economy has gotten worse while Bush was president — reflecting recent signs that consumers are growing more anxious about the economy. Only four in 10 said Bush understand the problems of people like them.

Bush Plans To Back Marriage Amendment
Constitution Would Specify Man, Woman
By Mike Allen and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush plans to endorse a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman in response to a Massachusetts court decision requiring legal recognition of gay marriages in that state, key advisers said yesterday. Bush plans to endorse language introduced by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) that backers contend would ban gay marriage but not prevent state legislatures from allowing the kind of civil unions and same-sex partnership arrangements that exist in Vermont and California.

Put this in your phony budget...
Senate Passes Major Highway Bill
By THE AP, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Defying a presidential veto threat, the Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a highway spending bill that would bring jobs and billions of dollars in new construction money to states across the country. The Republican-controlled Senate voted 76-21 to pass a six-year, $318 billion highway and mass transit spending bill, replacing the current six-year program that expires at the end of this month. The vote margin would be enough to override a possible presidential veto.

Criminal Dissent: Bush Administration Goes After Critics
By Bill Berkowitz
TomPaine.com, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: n the early 1970s, Guy Goodwin, a special prosecutor working for U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell--who was soon to become a star player in President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal--convened grand juries across the country to target radicals, anti-war activists, unions and others. Goodwin, characterized by the Center for Constitutional Rights as the "grand inquisitor of the politically motivated grand jury," was a man on a mission. Unlike 30 years ago, the convening of grand juries by John Ashcroft's Department of Justice is only one weapon in the administration's anti-dissent arsenal, Michael Avery, president of the National Lawyers Guild, told TomPaine.com in a telephone interview. "This administration is trying to criminalize dissent, characterize protesters as terrorists and trying to intimidate and marginalize those opposed to its policies," Avery said. The administration has opened the floodgates for all kinds of investigative activities, and now "police agencies across the country are actively engaged in spying and compiling dossiers on citizens exercising their constitutional rights."

Latest on "Bush Guard Gate"

W., as in AWOL: Case NOT Closed
The Nation, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: The key material, which the White House had managed to obtain PDQ from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver--were several pages of microfiche payment sheet summaries that apparently showed Bush was paid several times in the months of October and November 1972 and January and April 1973. McClellan also cited two retirement records that showed Bush had amassed attendance points for these days. This new material did bolster Bush's defense. But it hardly resolved the issue. Nor did it address the most damning elements of the case against Bush. Most notable of these is the May 2, 1973, annual performance review--signed by two superior officers, who were friends of Bush--that noted, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at" his home base unit in Houston for the past year. Bush has said he spent about half of that period reporting to a Guard base in Alabama, while he was temporarily living there. The new records do not explain why the commander of that unit and his administrative officer say they never saw Bush. Nor do they explain why the Bush campaign in 2000 failed to keep its promise to produce the names of people who had served with Bush in Alabama. Nor do these records explain why Bush, who had been trained as fighter pilot, failed to take a flight physical during the year in question and was grounded. Nor do they back up the 2000 Bush campaign's explanation that Bush did not take a flight physical because he was living in Alabama and his personal doctor was in Houston. (Flight physicals are administered by military physicians, and there were flight physicians at the base in Alabama where Bush says he served.) The records hailed by the White House only demonstrate that Bush received payments and credit for a modest amount of days. They do not show what he did and where he did it. Those sorts of records detailing Bush's service should exist, according to military experts. But that is not what the White House handed out. Is it possible Bush received payment and credit for days of service that did not happen?
SEE ALSO: Truth and Consequences (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: White House Releases Files of Bush's Top-Secret AWOL Mission (BushWhackedUSA)
Discuss This and Other Issues at BushWhackedUSA: THE BLOG

Move to "Clean Up" Bush Military File in 90's Is Reported
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
New York Times, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: A retired lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard complained to a member of the Texas Senate in 1998 that aides to Gov. George W. Bush improperly screened Mr. Bush's National Guard files in a search for information that could embarrass the governor in future elections. The retired officer, Bill Burkett, said in the letter to Senator Gonzalo Barrientos, a Democrat from Austin, that Dan Bartlett, then a senior aide to Governor Bush and now White House communications director, and Gen. Daniel James, then the head of the Texas National Guard, reviewed the file to "make sure nothing will embarrass the governor during his re-election campaign." A copy of the letter was provided to The New York Times by a lawyer for Mr. Burkett to support statements he makes in a book to be published this month, which Mr. Burkett repeated in interviews this week, that Mr. Bush's aides ordered Guard officials to remove damaging information from Mr. Bush's military personnel files.

Ex-officer: Bush File's Details Caused Concern
By Dave Moniz and Jim Drinkard,
USA TODAY, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: As Texas Gov. George W. Bush prepared to run for president in the late 1990s, top-ranking Texas National Guard officers and Bush advisers discussed ways to limit the release of potentially embarrassing details from Bush's military records, a former senior officer of the Texas Guard said Wednesday

Where was he and when did he know it?
Bush a No-Show at Alabama Base, Says Memphian
FedEx Pilot Bob Mintz, backed up by a Carolina colleague, recalls no Dubya at Dannelly AFB in 1972.
JACKSON BAKER
Memphis Flyer, 12 February 2004
Courtesy of CalPundit and Atrios
EXCERPT: Two members of the Air National Guard unit that President George W. Bush allegedly served with as a young Guard flyer in 1972 had been told to expect him and were on the lookout for him. He never showed, however; of that both Bob Mintz and Paul Bishop are certain.

Latest on "Plame Gate"

Did Robert Novak willfully disregard warnings that his column would endanger Valerie Plame? Our sources say "yes."
Murray S. Waas
The American Prospect, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Two government officials have told the FBI that conservative columnist Robert Novak was asked specifically not to publish the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in his now-famous July 14 newspaper column. The two officials told investigators they warned Novak that by naming Plame he might potentially jeopardize her ability to engage in covert work, stymie ongoing intelligence operations, and jeopardize sensitive overseas sources. These new accounts, provided by a current and former administration official close to the situation, directly contradict public statements made by Novak. He has downplayed his own knowledge about the potential harm to Plame and ongoing intelligence operations by making that disclosure. He has also claimed in various public statements that intelligence officials falsely led him to believe that Plame was only an analyst, and the only potential consequences of her exposure as a CIA officer would be that she might be inconvenienced in her foreign travels.

Honeymoon Over
Bush has gotten friendly press up until now. These days, things have changed.
Robert Kuttner
The American Prospect, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Last week, in this space, I suggested that President Bush had reached a tipping point in his credibility with the broad public and the mainstream press. I speculated that we would soon see newsmagazine covers depicting Bush in trouble. Well, Time Magazine obliged. Its new cover shows a two-faced Bush, and asks: "Does Bush Have a Credibility Gap?"
Does he ever. The press has at last given itself permission to be tougher on misrepresentations that have characterized the Bush presidency since its beginnings. Bush's hour-long Sunday interview with Tim Russert of Meet the Press crystallized the moment, and underscored just how vulnerable the president suddenly is. That Bush did the interview at all is an indication of panic setting in. This president is not noted for his effectiveness off the cuff. He does well to the extent that he is scripted and not exposed to spontaneous encounters where he might wander "off message." The Russert interview was a reminder that the Democratic candidates get relentless press scrutiny which exposes the most minute inconsistencies, while Bush, hiding behind his role as chief executive, almost never faces close questioning. Indeed, this was the first time in his presidency that Bush has been subject to a string of follow- up questions that could expose either his misrepresentations or his ineptitude at covering them up. Russert successfully walked a tightrope, being as exacting with Bush as he has been with Bush's challengers, without seeming disrespectful to the presidency.

Primary Democrats Find Perfect Vessel In John Kerry
The '60s generation has its candidate.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Wall Street Journal Opinion, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Democrats, from day one of Terry McAuliffe's year-long nomination rondo, wanted a liberal who would be cast in their own likeness. ...In this campaign, John Kerry will surely seek to revive all the post-'60s idealism, rhetoric and moralistic energy embedded inside the primary voters now mustering up around his candidacy. He may sound earnest mouthing his way through the nomination odyssey but believe me, he will be articulate and forceful in the fall. Then he will be speaking with belief and on subjects he knows well.
The vote in 2004 is not just a referendum on the two men running for president. It is a keystone election. (Next time, Hillary Clinton, though liberal, will not run the campaign Mr. Kerry will run if nominated.) With American soldiers fighting overseas, this election offers one last vote on whether the forces put in motion around 1968 will also carry America forward into the new century--or stop, to be replaced, finally, by a new vision.

12 February 2004

Bush Administration Dragging Feet and Stonewalling on Lessons From 9/11
By Gail Sheehy
New York Observer, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Congress has already given [Bush] a big-picture look‹in a scathing 900-page report by the joint House and Senate inquiry into the intelligence failures pre-9/11. But the Bush administration doesn't look at what it doesn't want to see. "It is incomprehensible why this administration has refused to aggressively pursue the leads that our inquiry developed," fumes Senator Bob Graham, the former co-chairman of the inquiry, which ended in 2003. The Bush White House has ignored all but one or two of the joint inquiry's 19 urgent recommendations to make the nation safer against the next attempted terrorist attack. The White House also allowed large portions of the inquiry's final report to be censored (redacted), claiming national security, so that even some members of the current 9/11 commission‹whose mandate was to build on the work of the congressional panel‹cannot read the evidence. Senator Graham snorted, "It's absurd."

Ashcroft uses intimidation tactics on opponents
Justice Dept. Seeks Hospitals' Records of Some Abortions
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there. Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what opponents call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, enacted last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions. The department wants to examine the medical histories for what could amount to dozens of the doctors' patients in the last three years to determine, in part, whether the procedure, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, was in fact medically necessary, government lawyers said. But hospital administrators are balking because they say the highly unusual demand would violate the privacy rights of their patients, and the standoff has resulted in clashing interpretations from federal judges in recent days about whether the Justice Department has a right to see the files. [bwusa italics]

 AUDIO LINK
Democrats and Growing the Economy From the Bottom Up
Market Place Commentary, 11 February 2004
Commentator Robert Reich says, in this election year, Democrats can distinguish themselves from the GOP by reminding voters that in the new global economy, old assumptions no longer apply -- and that the way to economic recovery is by investing at home in America’s chief asset: its people. “The only sure way to grow the American economy is not from the top down, by giving bigger tax breaks to, the rich, but from the bottom up, by making more Americans more productive,” says Reich.
Commentator: Robert Reich

U.S. to Allow 'Enemy Combatant' to See a Lawyer
By DAVID STOUT
The Guardian, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: Jose Padilla, an American citizen accused of supporting Al Qaeda terrorists who has been held incommunicado by the military for more than a year, will be allowed to see a lawyer, the Defense Department said today. A statement by the Pentagon said the department was allowing Mr. Padilla access to counsel "as a matter of discretion and military authority." "Such access is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent," the statement said. The Pentagon said Mr. Padilla's consultations with a lawyer would be "subject to appropriate security restrictions," a phrase that suggested something less than the full, private access to lawyers normally enjoyed by civilian defendants. Mr. Padilla was arrested in May 2002 after arriving at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on a flight from Pakistan and was initially held as a material witness on suspicion of involvement in a plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States. He was subsequently classified as an enemy combatant, a status that the Bush administration has said does not entitle him to counsel, as civilian defendants are. In fact, he is technically not a criminal suspect at all, even though he has been held in a military brig in Charleston, S.C. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled recently that the government lacked authority to hold Mr. Padilla in military custody. The Bush administration is asking the Supreme Court to review the ruling.

Cheney's Future at Stake After Leaking of CIA Agent's Name
Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: Vice President Dick Cheney's political future was at stake yesterday in Washington, where a grand jury investigation was questioning administration officials about his office's role in leaking the name of a CIA operative for political motives. The inquiry has already questioned the president's spokesman and one of his media advisers over the identification of Valerie Plame, which is developing into one of the administration's main headaches in an election year. However, informed sources said last night that three of the five officials who are the real targets of the probe work or worked for Mr Cheney.

George's War
Guardian, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: The events of three decades ago would normally not feature in an election year. In 2000, when the facts of Bush's lost year began to emerge, Democrats had no interest in revisiting Vietnam: they were well aware of their own vulnerabilities in Bill Clinton, the draft dodger. But America is at war again, and Bush is fond of reminding Americans that he is a wartime president. He has ordered troops into battle in Afghanistan and Iraq; he has posed for the cameras in a flightsuit atop an aircraft carrier. At first, such stirring visuals served Bush well. But the White House never reckoned on John Kerry, the Democratic frontrunner, who was, previously, a Navy speedboat captain on the Mekong Delta. His candidacy came back from the dead after a tearful reunion with a former comrade who claimed he had saved his life, turning the flinty New Englander with the chestful of medals into a lovable hero. The Democratic party chairman, Terry McAuliffe, could barely contain his glee. Party operatives began a slow drip-feed of leaks, and so far, the White House seems unable to stop them.
SEE ALSO: Kerry Will Win the Patriot Game (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: President Enters Credibility Gap (TomDispatch)
SEE ALSO: Conservative Freak Out (ZNet)
SEE ALSO: White House Releases More Bush Documents (AP)
SEE ALSO: White House Releases '73 Bush Dental Exam (AP)
SEE ALSO: Yeoman of the Guard
AWOL? Probably not. A draft dodger? No question.
By Josh Levin and Timothy Noah
EXCERPT: The documents released by the White House on Feb. 10 (available here, here, here, here, and here) don't clear up all the questions surrounding President Bush's whereabouts when he was in the Air National Guard. There are still zany discrepancies between documents and discrepancies between documents and the recollections of National Guard officials, and there are still periods when President Bush's whereabouts remain weirdly difficult to establish.

Advantages of being a defense contractor
GAO: Defense Contractors Owe $3B in Taxes
By MARY DALRYMPLE
AP, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: More than 27,000 defense contractors owe a total of $3 billion in unpaid taxes, according to government records reviewed by congressional investigators.
That represents almost 14 percent of the contractors registered with the Pentagon as of February 2003, according to auditors at the General Accounting Office. They tallied total taxes owed by the contractors in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2002. Most of the contractors were small businesses that failed to send to the Internal Revenue Service the taxes withheld from their employees' paychecks for Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes. ``It's more than irritating. It's outrageous,'' said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who asked the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, to look into the problem.

See What Happens When You Don't Read?
Joe Conason
Working For Change, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Awash in good news from his staffers, president projects delusional optimism
"Is he out of his mind?
"Does he have the faintest idea what he's talking about?" So wondered Andrew Sullivan, formerly among George W. Bush's most voluble admirers, after the President's jarring Oval Office interview with Tim Russert last Sunday. The conservative columnist referred specifically to Mr. Bush's strange assertions about federal spending, but the same goggling unreality pervaded his other remarks.

Father Knows Best?
Ellen Goodman
Washington Post, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: Is this what the election will be about? The man who ran as a compassionate conservative in 2000 plans to run as a "war president" in 2004. This is how the president presented himself to Tim Russert and the country again and again: as a man who makes decisions "with war on my mind." If some Americans do not understand how treacherous the world is, if some do not understand that Saddam, with or without weapons of mass destruction, was more dangerous than we thought, well, it's his job to protect us anyway. So George W. Bush now officially offers himself as the father who knows best, and I do not mean that sarcastically.

Ethics Probes May Roll Again
Democrats promise to make the conduct of the GOP-controlled Hill a campaign issue. Republicans warn they will return the fire.
By Mary Curtius
LA Times, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: In the seven years since ethics charges helped destroy the political career of Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, lawmakers have shied away from initiating such investigations and unleashing the political venom they produce. Now, that carefully observed detente is in danger of collapsing as the 2004 election campaign heats up. Democrats promise to make the ethical conduct of the GOP-controlled Hill a campaign issue, and Republicans warn they will return the fire. For some, the end of a truce that they believe has done little more than to ensure ethical lapses go largely unpunished cannot come too quickly. "There is an utterly paralyzed ethics system" on Capitol Hill, said Mark Glaze, a lawyer and public affairs director of the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group that advocates tough campaign finance laws.

Peril in Microsoft's Laxity
LA Times, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Microsoft's announcement Tuesday that it will warn consumers about a "critical" problem in its Windows software — more than six months after it learned about the flaw — illuminates the danger of leaving national cyber-security largely unregulated and unwatched. Microsoft says it waited to publicize the security flaw because it wanted to ensure that a single, downloadable update would solve any related problems. Its "patch" is now available at http://www.Microsoft.com /security/.
But computer security experts such as Marc Maiffet, whose company, eEye Digital Security Inc. of Aliso Viejo, discovered the flaw, deride the half-year delay between eEye's discovery and Tuesday's disclosure as "just totally unacceptable" because it left hundreds of millions of computer users vulnerable to hackers eager to break into their computers and steal their files, delete their data or filch their financial records.

11 February 2004

'The President Recalls Serving'
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: Without further ado, I commend to you a partial transcript of today's White House press briefing. Press Secretary Scott McClellan doggedly insists, based upon the sudden discovery of "additional records" showing that George W. Bush was paid for his service, that the case is now closed on whether our President ever dodged duty in the National Guard. (Which would be kind of redundant, since duty in the guard in those days was often about dodging duty in Vietnam.) But pay stubs aside, no one can account for Bush physically being present, even as some of his commanding officers have said -- in person and in writing back in the day -- that he was a no-show.
SEE ALSO: Drip, Drip, Drip (Talking Points Memo) points out that the new pay records just released by Bush are not "all the military records" which were promised... and that it is an understatement to say that these documents raise more questions than they answer. They show that Bush was on duty the very day that his superiors were documenting that he had not been observed.
SEE ALSO: Bush on Guard Duty--Pay Records Released
(CalPundit.com)
EXCERPT: It's still not clear exactly what he was paid for, of course, and there are still no records at all from May-September 1972, so I'm not sure this really moves the story forward much. To do that, he needs to release his entire record. Every page of it.
SEE ALSO: Bush Guard Records Still Not Complete
(MoveOn.org Press Release)
EXCERPT: Asked by Tim Russert on Sunday, “Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?” and “…anything to show that you were serving during that period?” Bush answered without qualification, “Yes, absolutely.”  ...the Administration only released annual pension point summaries and pay records which apparently showed Bush had intermittently attended meetings and been paid – which was never in dispute -- but with gaps of several months still unanswered. Many of the documents distributed to reporters today were unreadable.  And although other presidential candidates have surrounded themselves with companions from their military service days – “Bands of Brothers” – no one has yet to come forward saying he served in the Air National Guard with Bush in Alabama during 1972, when Bush was there working in a Senate campaign and – so he says – fulfilling his military service obligation.

Looks Like Duckgate
By Peggy Hirsch
TomPaine.com, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: After the revelation that Vice President Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Scalia had been duck hunting together, heretofore called "Duckgate," the propriety of their socializing was questioned, because Scalia will hear Cheney¹s case regarding his energy task force¹s papers. U.S. Code says that "any justice... shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned... where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party... " (28 U.S. Code § 455). But the judge must recuse himself, and there can be no appeal if a Chief Justice refuses; impeachment is the only remedy. The only consolation then is that, as Chief Justice Rehnquist said, "anyone at all is free to criticize the action of a Justice... after the case has been decided." Since it is now after the Supreme Court decision in 2000 that awarded the White House to the Republicans, we are "free to criticize" Scalia¹s failure to recuse himself. "Anyone at all" may now find fault, and I do, because I do not recall hearing in 2000 that Cheney and Scalia were friends. That information was revealed in Duckgate, when newspaper accounts described the two as "long-term friends" or "old friends."

Democrats Say File Hacking By Republicans Could Bring Criminal Proceedings
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: Senate Democrats said yesterday that Republican accessing of Democratic computer files on judicial nominations appears more extensive than they originally thought and could wind up triggering a criminal investigation. Their comments followed a 90-minute closed-door briefing by Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William H. Pickle on progress of his probe into how GOP staffers gained access to Democratic memorandums on strategy for blocking some of President Bush's most conservative appeals court nominees. "The extent and duration of this theft far exceeds anything that I imagined," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), one of at least two senators whose staff memos were obtained by GOP aides and given to conservative publications. Durbin did not elaborate. But Manuel Miranda, who resigned last week as a top aide to Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), said in a "departure statement" yesterday that a young Judiciary Committee staff member "preserved perhaps thousands of documents" from Democratic files on his own computer hard drive. Fourteen memos previously were made public on a conservative group's Web site. Miranda worked for the judiciary panel while the Democratic files were being downloaded -- roughly from 2002 through 2003, according to some sources -- and joined Frist's staff last February. ...In his statement, Miranda suggested that other "counsels and staff" for Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) "came to know about the glitch and that some had concluded that the access was not unlawful." But Democratic senators said after the briefing yesterday that they believed the action broke the law and could lead to criminal proceedings.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: Last Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered yet another disappointing employment report. Since there's a lot of confusion on this subject, let's talk about the numbers. The bureau actually produces two estimates of employment, one based on a survey that asks each employer in a random sample how many workers are on its payroll, the other on a survey that asks each household in a random sample how many of its members are employed. Most experts regard the employer survey as more reliable; even in the midst of the recovery, that survey has contained nothing but bad news. The household numbers look better, but not particularly good. For technical reasons involving seasonal adjustment, many economists expected the January report to show a one-time bounce in both measures. Yet employment as measured by the payroll survey rose by only 112,000 — well short of the increase needed just to keep up with a growing population. If employment were rising as rapidly as it did when the economy was emerging from the 1990-1991 recession, we'd be seeing monthly numbers more like 275,000. Taking a longer view, the payroll numbers tell a dismal story. Since the recovery officially began in November 2001, employment has actually fallen by half a percent, while the working-age population has increased about 2.4 percent. By this measure, jobs are becoming ever scarcer. The household survey, on which the official unemployment rate is based, tells a less dismal but far from happy story. (Why the discrepancy? We don't know.) The number of people who say they have jobs has risen since the recovery began — but has still lagged behind population growth.

Republican Majority Forces 9/11 Panel to Accept Summary of Briefings
Legal Challenge Scrapped; Agreement Angers Some Members, Victims' Families
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks backed away yesterday from a threatened legal showdown with the White House, agreeing to accept a 17-page summary of presidential briefing documents it had sought. The deal will not allow the full 10-member commission to read the original documents, or have access to notes on the documents taken by some of the commission's own members. The summary -- provided to commission members during a closed-door meeting yesterday -- covered several dozen original intelligence documents and was first vetted by the White House, officials said. The limitations prompted at least three Democratic members of the bipartisan panel to vote in favor of issuing a subpoena to the White House for the documents, known as the President's Daily Brief (PDB). But the move was rebuffed by Republicans on the commission and at least one Democrat abstained, according to several commission members. "You either say you didn't have warning prior to 9/11 and you let us see the documents, or you shouldn't claim that," said Democratic commission member Timothy J. Roemer, a former Indiana congressman. "To say there's nothing in the PDBs that gave the president warning and then put together an agreement that only allows one or two commissioners to see the PDBs is not defensible."

Service Chiefs Challenge White House on the Budget
By ERIC SCHMITT
New York Times, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: In an unusual public display of differences with the White House, the top officers of the Army, Marine Corps and Air Force all raised questions on Tuesday about how the Bush administration plans to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan after the current financing runs out at the end of September. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, three of the four chiefs of the armed services expressed concerns about a financing gap, perhaps of four months, for the two missions, whose combined cost is about $5 billion a month. They were left out of President Bush's budget request for the 2005 fiscal year, with the administration saying it would make a supplementary request for up to $50 billion, probably next January — after the elections this year.

OMB Draws a Hit List of 13 Programs It Calls Failures
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: Of the 128 programs that President Bush would curtail or eliminate in his 2005 budget, 13 are on the chopping block for the most basic of reasons: The administration believes they are not getting the job done. They are among 400 evaluated over the last two years in an Office of Management and Budget initiative designed to more directly tie budgets to performance. Officials use the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), a 30-question survey, to evaluate such matters as whether a program is well-designed, resources can be managed effectively and results are reported with accuracy.

Rumsfeld Union Busting in the DOD
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: Hundreds of federal employees are expected on Capitol Hill today to protest a new personnel plan for the Defense Department that union leaders say would strip unions of any meaningful role in protecting the workers' rights and welfare. Members of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, plan to visit key lawmakers this week and urge them to limit Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's plans to overhaul the department's labor relations system. Rumsfeld won authority from Congress last year to rewrite personnel rules affecting nearly 750,000 civilian employees. He argued that managers needed more freedom to rearrange money, workers and weapons in the war on terrorism. Union leaders, who opposed the legislation last year, said yesterday that new labor relations "concepts" released in a 13-page memo last week by the DOD go too far. "This is a union-busting approach to collective bargaining and labor relations," said John Gage, president of the AFGE. "This has nothing to do with national security."

Administration Says Jobs Lost Overseas Are Just Another U.S. Commodity
By Warren Vieth and Edwin Chen
LA Times, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing." ...His advisors acknowledge that international trade and foreign outsourcing have contributed to the job slump. But the report argues that technological progress and rising productivity — the ability to produce more goods with fewer workers — have played a bigger role than the flight of production to China and other low-wage countries. Although trade expansion inevitably hurts some domestic workers, the benefits eventually will outweigh the costs as Americans are able to buy cheaper goods and services and as new jobs are created in growing sectors of the economy, the report (Economic Report of the President) said.

Poll driven gay bashing
Bush Plans To Back Marriage Amendment
Constitution Would Specify Man, Woman
By Mike Allen and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush plans to endorse a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman in response to a Massachusetts court decision requiring legal recognition of gay marriages in that state, key advisers said yesterday. Bush plans to endorse language introduced by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) that backers contend would ban gay marriage but not prevent state legislatures from allowing the kind of civil unions and same-sex partnership arrangements that exist in Vermont and California. Bush's move could put cultural issues at the forefront of an election year that had been dominated by economic and national-security issues. The White House strategy, designed to minimize alienation of moderate voters, calls for emphasizing that Bush is for traditional marriage, not against gay people. Opinion polls have found widely varying support for a constitutional amendment depending on the way the question is phrased, suggesting that voters have ambiguous feelings on the subject. Republican officials said Bush's decision to proceed now was driven partly by his desire to start the general election campaign on a fresh issue, at a time when his credibility has been battered by questions about prewar warnings of unconventional weapons in Iraq, as well as gaps in documents about his National Guard service.

The myth of high cost R&D...big pharma is more into marketing and distribution than research
Big Pharma and The Pipeline Problem
New Yorker, 16 February issue
EXCERPT: Merck is one of history’s most innovative corporations. It devotes three billion dollars a year and ten thousand people to the research and development of new drugs. So here’s a question: How many drugs for diabetes do you think all these men and women, this army of scientists, managed to come up with in the past four years? None. How many anti-cancer drugs? Zero. How many drugs that fight infectious diseases? Zero. Since 2000, in fact, Merck has introduced just three new drugs. Drug development is hard, but, by any measure, eking out less than one product a year is no way to make a living in the major leagues. ...Big pharma’s solution has been a mania for mergers. As the industry joke has it, you know you’re in the pharmaceuticals business when you’ve worked for five companies in the past two years and you’re still sitting at the same old desk. If your own pipeline is low, the thinking goes, buy another one. And so Pfizer bought Warner-Lambert and Pharmacia, Glaxo merged with SmithKline Beecham, and Astra merged with Zeneca. Last month, the French drugmaker Sanofi launched a hostile bid for Aventis. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. The traditional pharmaceutical research model harks back to processes developed by German and Swiss chemical firms in the late nineteenth century, when chemists synthesized and screened thousands of compounds in search of a few potential new drug candidates. Although the methodology is more sophisticated now, success is still in many ways thought to be a matter of brute force: throw hundreds of scientists at a problem and hope for the best. It’s crapshoot economics; a few great successes can pay for myriad failures. So bigger has always been seen as better. Today, though, the advantages of size are trumped by what are called “diseconomies” of scale: inertia, bureaucracy, risk aversion, clock-watching, office politics. Joseph Kim saw a lot of this firsthand, as a scientist at Merck for nine years, and now he likes to compare Merck to the Titanic. ...It turns out that research and development doesn’t scale—that bigger may be worse. That’s why the engines of pharmaceutical innovation have for some time now been smaller biotech firms...

The Wrong Side of History
By Daniel Patrick Welch
Asia Times, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: The world is waiting, too, to see on which side of history post-Bush America will decide to right itself. Will it abandon its insane military buildup and actively disengage from its designs of global domination? The question weighs heavily on the futures of our children. For it does seem, despite its tenacious hold on power and its almost limitless resources, that the administration of President George W Bush is despised not only by most of the world, but also by most of the same electorate that never gave it any mandate in the first place. All this talk of "electability", as if it were some scientific postulate that could actually hold some concrete meaning, all this talk merely inflates defeatism. Bush the mighty cannot be slain! Why not? He's a criminal and a liar, who in any decent society would have been removed from office long ago. The question is, what will replace the Bush junta? It is a sweeping question, one that, given the pummeling the world has taken at its hand these past few years, should be a grand one. Akin to the rebuilding of Europe, say, or the end of the Cold War. There was a similar opportunity then, when we talked of the "Peace Dividend". But it was handled by men with small minds and greedy palms, and the New World Order busied itself instead with more wars and the global dominion of a tiny handful of gigantic corporations roaming the globe, looking for every last pocket of opportunity to pick for cash. Now we face a similar choice, and I suggest we should entrust it to a government whose vision is as broad as the epoch requires. Senator John Kerry, alas, does not fit the bill...

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20 February 2004

 BushWhackedUSA Comment
The "Bush Shuffle" Wins A Big Prize
Armed with definitions of "democracy" as being basically pro-American and "freedom" as an embrace of U.S. style "globalization," Bush and Company won the endorsement of the UN of its early turnover of "authority" in Iraq to a "client government." This was the bottom line for the administration...a single, desperate shot of handing economic and political power to the Iraqis whom it favors as most likely conform to its definitions. Bush will "maintain order," nurture his "seeds of democracy and freedom" and then, hope for the best.
Discuss This and Other Issues at BushWhackedUSA: THE BLOG

Shi'ite Leader in Iraq Attacks Delay in Calling Elections
By Marcus Warren in New York
Telegraph, 20 February 2004
EXCERPT: Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, lined up behind America yesterday in opposing elections before the occupying powers transfer sovereignty to Iraqis this summer. ...Mr Annan's position will strengthen America's hand, but Ayatollah Sistani yesterday demanded a UN resolution to guarantee elections within "a short time". He blamed "delaying tactics by the occupiers" and said the caretaker government must have few powers. He told Der Spiegel magazine: "The institution must not be allowed to make any important political decision which determines the future of our country. Such decisions are the preserve of a government that is freely elected."

Some Iraqis Press for a Larger Governing Council
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and DEXTER FILKINS
New York Times, 19 February 2004
EXCERPT: As prospects for early elections faded, several Iraqi leaders said Thursday that they wanted the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to remain in place after the United States transferred power back to the people on June 30. Plans are already under way to expand the council, they added. The leaders, including representatives from the major ethnic and religious groups and members of the council, said a consensus had emerged to increase the current council of 25 people to as many as 125, and to keep it in power until United Nations-assisted elections could be held in early 2005. Several council members said the plan appeared to have cleared a potentially major obstacle: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, indicated that he would accept an enlarged council as long as this was part of the United Nations recommendation. It was the ayatollah's call for early elections that brought the United Nations to Iraq in the first place. The idea of enlarging the council, which has been in play for weeks, crystallized Thursday after the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said holding elections for an all-new government was impossible before June 30. Mr. Annan said he would not object to the continuation of the council, which emerged from an American-led process over the summer, as long as it was significantly changed. "We have no other choice now," said one of the leaders, Yonadam Kanna, head of the Assyrian Democratic Party and a council member. "We are in the middle of a process and we can't have Iraq go in a random direction. The key now is to reach out to more groups so the people feel we represent them." Although council members have not decided yet how new members should be selected, several agreed that it would be important to demonstrate independence from the Americans to win the people's trust.

The One You've Been Waiting For
By William Rivers Pitt
TruthOut.org, 19 February 2004
EXCERPT: Nicole Frye and Bryan Spry are dead because of George W. Bush. Both died in Iraq. Both were 19 years old. William Ramirez was also 19 years old, as was Holly McGeogh. Luis Moreno and Nathan Nakis, Jeffrey Braun and Jason Wright, Joey Whitener and Steven Acosta and Rachel Bosveld, all were 19 years old when they died in Iraq. Ryan Thomas and Michael Mihalakis were 18 when they died in Iraq. They join the 544 American soldiers who have been killed there in less than a year. They were lied to, as were we all, and now they are forever young in death. The lie they, and we, were fed still sits on the White House website. You can find the lie if you go to www.WhiteHouse.gov and do a search for the page titled "Disarm Saddam Hussein." The page is still there, in all its dishonest glory, even today. The page will tell you that Iraq possesses 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. 500 tons, for those without calculators, equals 1,000,000 pounds. Hide that. This White House page likewise claims Iraq is in possession of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering the 64,000 liters of anthrax and botulinum toxin no one can find, along with the 1,000,000 pounds of sarin, mustard and VX gas no one can find. Better still, the page claims a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that never existed and cannot be proven. Best of all, the page claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program. This was the lie that Bush used in his State of the Union address, to the humiliation of us all. This was the lie that motivated Ambassador Joseph Wilson to speak out on the pages of the New York Times. This was the lie that motivated White House staffers to take revenge against Wilson by exposing his CIA wife, Valerie Plame, thus sparking a federal investigation. This was the lie that might bring down the administration. It is still on the White House website.
SEE ALSO: Disarm Saddam Hussein (WhiteHouse.gov)

Washington's Double Standards Toward Mass Murderers
By Joseph Nevins
Common Dreams, 19 February 2004
EXCERPT: President George W. Bush's promise, when Saddam Hussein was captured, that the former Iraqi dictator would "face the justice he denied to millions" took on a special meaning for me. I had just completed a friend's book manuscript on the events preceding the bloody seizure of power in Indonesia by General Suharto, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. But unlike in the case of Saddam, Washington has no desire that Suharto and his accomplices be held accountable for their crimes. The reasons why, and the fact that the United States is in position to realize its desires, painfully illustrate the poverty of international justice.

Amnesty: "The Wall Violates International Law"
Electronic Intifada, 19 February 2004
EXCERPT: On the eve of the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) opening hearing on the construction of the fence/wall by Israel, Amnesty International calls on the Israeli authorities to immediately dismantle the sections already built inside the West Bank and halt the construction of the fence/wall and related infrastructure inside the Occupied Territories.
The Israeli government objects to the ICJ hearing the case, claiming that the issue is "political". "The construction by Israel of the fence/wall inside the Occupied Territories violates international law and is contributing to grave human rights violations. Therefore, it is appropriate that a court of law examines this matter," said Amnesty International.
SEE ALSO: Is There a Case for Bi-Nationalism? (Dissent)

19 February 2004

Continuing Pattern of Deception
Disappearing the Dead:  Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a ‘New Warfare’
Project for Defense Alternatives, 18 February 2004
(full text .html) (executive summary .html) (full text .pdf)  (executive summary .pdf)
by Carl Conetta. PDA Research Monograph #9
EXCERPT:  [This report] examines the Pentagon’s treatment of the civilian casualty issue in the Iraq and Afghan wars, reviews the "spin" and "news frames" used by defense officials to shape the public debate over casualties, and critiques the concept of a "precision warfare" as misleading. Case studies include the Baghdad bombing campaign. An appendix provides a comprehensive Guide to Surveys and Reporting on Casualties in the Afghan and Iraq Wars.
SEE ALSO:
Report Says Military Distorts War Deaths
By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe, 18 February 2004
EXCERPT: By refusing to make public its estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has undercut international support for the US campaigns in those countries and has made the postwar stabilization of the two societies more difficult, according to an independent report to be released today that accuses the Pentagon of appearing indifferent to the civilian cost of war. The analysis by the Project on Defense Alternatives, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, concludes that the Pentagon has not fully disclosed in recent years accidental deaths and injuries inflicted upon civilian populations by American military forces. Its failure to do so has made it more difficult to predict how local populations will receive the United States after a conflict, the report said. According to the report -- "Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a `New Warfare' " -- the Pentagon's stance has also distorted the national debate over whether to go to war. The report says the US military has wrongly given the impression that its high-tech form of warfare is extremely low risk, creating unrealistic expectations that war produces very low casualties. Ignoring evidence to the contrary, the report says, the Pentagon has also said that estimates of the number of war casualties cannot be known and that such numbers nonetheless would not be meaningful in assessing the overall success of a military operation. "Distortion of the civilian casualty issue can only serve to impede the sober assessment of US policy, policy options, and their consequences," states a draft copy of the report, provided to the Globe. "It is antithetical both to well-informed public debate and to sensible policy making."

Pentagon Forges a "Little America"
Start-up Company With Connections
U.S. gives $400M in work to contractor with ties to Pentagon favorite on Iraqi Governing Council
By Knut Royce and Tom Frank
Newsday.com, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: U.S. authorities in Iraq have awarded more than $400 million in contracts to a start-up company that has extensive family and, according to court documents, business ties to Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite on the Iraqi Governing Council. The most recent contract, for $327 million to supply equipment for the Iraqi Armed Forces, was awarded last month and drew an immediate challenge from a losing contester, who said the winning bid was so low that it questions the "credibility" of that bid. But it is an $80-million contract, awarded by the Coalition Provisional Authority last summer to provide security for Iraq's vital oil infrastructure, that has become a controversial lightning rod within the Iraqi Provisional Government and the security industry. Soon after this security contract was issued, the company started recruiting many of its guards from the ranks of Chalabi's former militia, the Iraqi Free Forces, raising allegations from other Iraqi officials that he was creating a private army. Chalabi, 59, scion of one of Iraq's most politically powerful and wealthy families until the monarchy was toppled in 1958, had been living in exile in London when the U.S. invaded Iraq. The chief architect of the umbrella organization for the resistance, the Iraqi National Congress, Chalabi is viewed by many Iraqis as America's hand-picked choice to rule Iraq. A key beneficiary of both the oil security contract and last week's Iraq army procurement contract is Nour USA Ltd., which was incorporated in the United States last May. The security contract technically was awarded to Erinys Iraq, a security company also newly formed after the invasion, but bankrolled at its inception by Nour. A Nour's founder was a Chalabi friend and business associate, Abul Huda Farouki. Within days of the award last August, Nour became a joint venture partner with Erinys and the contract was amended to include Nour. An industry source familiar with some of the internal affairs of both companies said Chalabi received a $2-million fee for helping arrange the contract. Chalabi, in a brief interview with Newsday, denied that claim, as did a top company official. Chalabi also denied that he has had anything to do with the security firm.

Iraq Bombings Reveal Bigger US Problems
By James P. Pinkerton
LA Times, 18 February 2004
EXCERPT: As a mental exercise, perhaps we should try to imagine ourselves on the scene. Do the American GIs feel they are welcomed? What of the Iraqis? If they really believe that the United States would blow up an American-financed police station, then what are the chances that they will vote for a rational pro-American government anytime soon?

War of Terrorism: The Countryside Murders
By Mike Ferner
Information Clearing House, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: While writing the essay, "Terror by Another Name," I realized that we apply this most potent term in the American political vocabulary very unevenly. We define terrorism as tactics used against us, but deny that it applies to our own actions taken to purposely and unmistakably instill terror. Our denial is compounded daily when the U.S. government promotes and the media report news from a "War on Terrorism." Our "War of Terrorism" deserves its due.

Afghan Elections Could Deepen Ethnic Divide
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 18 February 2004
EXCERPT: With only four months to go before scheduled elections in Afghanistan, a growing number of observers are concerned that balloting might aggravate rising ethnic tensions between the northern and southern parts of the country. Some experts are calling for the elections to be put off until next year. A delay would enable both international donors and the government of President Hamid Karzai to make greater progress in disarming the warlords who still run most of the country and in extending security to rural areas, they argue. These experts fear that the challenges created in preparing the country of some 28 million people for an election will divert attention and scarce resources from more important tasks, particularly in the security realm. But Karzai himself, apparently backed by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, appears determined to forge ahead, at least with presidential elections that he and Washington believe would give the central government greater legitimacy, both internationally and inside Afghanistan.

No End to War
The Frum-Perle prescription would ensnare America in endless conflict.
By Patrick J. Buchanan
The American Conservative, 1 March issue
EXCERPT: On the dust jacket of his book, Richard Perle appends a Washington Post depiction of himself as the “intellectual guru of the hard-line neoconservative movement in foreign policy.” The guru’s reputation, however, does not survive a reading. Indeed, on putting down Perle’s new book the thought recurs: the neoconservative moment may be over. For they are not only losing their hold on power, they are losing their grip on reality. An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror opens on a note of hysteria. In the War on Terror, writes Perle, “There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust.” “What is new since 9/11 is the chilling realization that the terrorist threat we thought we had contained” now menaces “our survival as a nation.” But how is our survival as a nation menaced when not one American has died in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11? Are we really in imminent peril of a holocaust like that visited upon the Jews of Poland? “[A] radical strain within Islam,” says Perle, “ ... seeks to overthrow our civilization and remake the nations of the West into Islamic societies, imposing on the whole world its religion and laws.”

18 February 2004

Guns and Butter
CalPundit, 18 February 2004
[Tapped and CalPundit provide excellent counterpoints to an article by Fareed Zakaria.]
EXCERPT: Over at Tapped, Matt Yglesias points to this Fareed Zakaria column about problems with sustaining our foreign policy:

The greatest threat to America's primacy in the world comes not from its overseas commitments, explains the historian Niall Ferguson in his smart forthcoming book "Colossus": "It is the result of America's chronically unbalanced domestic finances." The mounting federal budget deficits that now stretch out as far as the eye can see will mean--if history is any guide--sharp cutbacks in American military and foreign-affairs spending. We will see a forced retreat of America's foreign policy similar to the years after the Vietnam War--only the cuts this time are likely to be much, much deeper and the resulting chaos far greater.

Democracy How?
Voices from inside Iraq show just how hard the transition will be. By Robert Collier
The American Prospect, 1 March issue
EXCERPT: All the American proposals -- from Bush and the Democrats alike -- share a catch-22: Pacifying Iraq will require broadened international participation and elections, but both of these require a less violent Iraq to be effective. No one has devised a way to defuse the insurgency other than the Bush administration's policy of trying to inflict total military defeat. Instead, all sides seem to have implicitly accepted the administration's strategy of excluding ex-Baathists, radical Sunnis, and radical Shiites from Iraq's power structure -- a policy that seems likely to prolong the armed resistance rather than shorten it. ...During a reporting trip to Iraq in December, I interviewed dozens of Shiite leaders, Sunni clerics, and Baathists of all levels in Baghdad and the nearby cities of Falluja, Samarra, and Sadr City. I asked them two simple questions: What would stop the rebellion? And what would persuade them and the guerrillas to give some breathing space to a new foreign coalition? The answers revealed some sharp differences among the groups, but also important points in common. Together, these commonalities suggest a transition plan that could stop most of the guerrilla attacks, allow the introduction of UN civilian and military forces, and facilitate the withdrawal of large numbers of American troops.
SEE ALSO: Shiite Vote Plan Would Exclude 'Sunni Triangle' (NYT)
SEE ALSO: Coalition Speeds Up Iraqi Elections Plan (Telegraph)

Rifts Widen in Bush's Foreign Policy Team
Backers of Powell's multilateralism clash with go-it-alone conservatives over the administration's direction.
By Howard LaFranchi
Christian Science Monitor, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: When it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration's foreign policy team is speaking with one voice: All the players are saying that despite faulty prewar intelligence, the president's decision to go to war was right.
But behind the unanimity is dissonance in tones and forcefulness that suggests the deeper differences that have been part of the Bush foreign policy since the beginning. The failure to see eye to eye extends to the so-called Bush doctrine of preemptive war - one of the administration's defining policies - and reaches to the president's top foreign-policy players. The continuing differences have only added to President Bush's woes as the White House has grappled with questions of whether what the administration knew about Iraq justified a war. But the bigger issue, some experts say, is what the differences suggest about the administration's ability to confront continuing problems, like North Korea and Iran, especially as Bush enters a battle for reelection.

Weapons 'Capacity' of Iraq Challenged
By Charlie Savage
Boston Globe, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: Prewar Iraq was highly unlikely to produce a device that could easily inflict mass casualties -- despite President Bush's current assertion that Saddam Hussein had the "capacity" to make a weapon of mass destruction, former weapons inspectors and former national security officials say. Bush's assertion about Iraq's capabilities, which he made repeatedly during his interview last week on the NBC television program "Meet the Press," is a central prong of his administration's defense that the war was justified despite the failure to find stockpiles of unconventional weapons. It is a theme to which Bush is likely to return often in this election year. And it marks Bush's first characterization of the Iraq threat since the testimony of his former chief weapons inspector, David Kay. "David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons," Bush said. "Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons." But Kay did not describe Iraq's production capacity so clearly in either his interim public report last fall or in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 28. In an interview last week, he told the Globe that although Iraq had pesticide equipment that could be switched to produce fine-grain anthrax in a lab, it would have remained a challenge to deliver it in a way that would inflict mass casualties.

'Al-Qaeda' Missive Holds Mixed Message
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 18 February 2004
EXCERPT: A letter purportedly written to senior al-Qaeda leaders by a key associate, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, appears to undermine a major thesis of hardcore neo-conservatives who led the United States drive to war in Iraq.

Pakistan's Extremist Religious Schools 'In Mourning' for Taliban's Collapse
Nothing at the spartan madrassahs has been changed, reports David Blair in Charsadda
Telegraph, 18 February 2004

Pakistan Opposition Charges Atomic Cover-Up
By SALMAN MASOOD and DAVID ROHDE
New York Times, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: Ten days after President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Pakistan's top nuclear scientist for sharing nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea and Libya, the upper house of Parliament debated the issue for the first time on Monday night. General Musharraf's government has rebuffed requests from opposition political parties to call a joint session of Parliament to discuss the issue. The rejection led to an intense four-and-a-half-hour debate in the usually staid Pakistani Senate. Opposition parties accused the military-dominated government of hiding the army's role in the proliferation scheme; humiliating the scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan; appeasing the United States; and bypassing the elected legislators

National Security: A Strategy of Hope, Leadership, Engagement and Strength
by Gordon Adams
Center for American Progress, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: U.S. national security strategy today is rooted in fear: fear of terrorists, fear of weapons of mass destruction, fear of ricin in the mailbox. For reassurance and protection, as the new budget suggests, the nation is asked to turn to the Department of Defense, the armed services, and the Department of Homeland Security. In the long run, however, a national security strategy rooted in fear only begets more fear, not real security. The result of a security policy based on fear, the use of military power abroad and the Patriot Act at home is a growing requirement for more military and more homeland defense. The U.S. military is the best in the world and the only one with a global mission and global capabilities. It is an essential tool of security policy. However, a "one note" strategy, where the military is the first recourse, ensures that that our forces will be endlessly overstretched. The contribution of the military - winning wars when needed and backing up strong diplomacy to achieve our security goals – is most effective when it is embedded in a strategy based on hope, leadership and global engagement with all the tools of American statecraft. Such a strategy calls on all the tools of American statecraft, merging our considerable military power with skilled diplomacy, accurate intelligence and sound economic strategy. It is this synergy that enables America to lead and to attract others to join us in addressing fundamental security problems.

What the World is Saying...About Iraq
Center for American Progress, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: With the number of coalition casualties steadily rising, the inability of military forces to prevent attacks on civilians, the delay in providing basic services, and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, support for the war in Iraq is being tested. Given the rush to war, the lack of formal United Nations approval, the opposition of many traditional allies, and the failure to adequately plan for post-conflict occupation, many are skeptical about the future of Iraq. The following is a sample of editorial commentary from around the world.

17 February 2004

Americans die for Iraqi independence?
Three US Soldiers Killed, Bremer Says He Has Final Say on Iraq's Basic Law
AFP via Yahoo!News, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: Three US soldiers were killed in separate attacks around Iraq, while US overseer Paul Bremer warned he could veto the country's temporary constitution if it did not fit the American vision of democracy. ...Earlier Monday two US soldiers were killed and five others wounded in separate roadside bomb blasts within an hour of each other in Baghdad and the northeastern city of Baquba. According to Pentagon figures, attacks by insurgents have claimed the lives of 261 US soldiers since US President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1. Meanwhile, US civil administrator Bremer signaled he was willing to use his power of veto if the US-appointed Governing Council drafted a temporary constitution that challenged the spirit of Western-style democracy. The Governing Council has been charged with writing the temporary constitution or fundamental law that will govern Iraq until national elections are held. But many observers believe that some council members are pushing to implement Islamist rule in the post-occupation era. "The Transition Administrative Law will establish equal rights. The text of the current draft establishes Islam as the state religion, but says it will be a source of inspiration for the law," Bremer told reporters Monday. He vowed the new law would protect civil liberties in line with the agreement he reached with the Governing Council last November that set June 30 as the final day of the US-led occupation. "Our position is clear, and the text that is in there now is as I say. It can't become law until I sign it," Bremer said. Violence also raged on against Iraqi civilians when an explosion killed two children and wounded four others Monday at a school in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.
SEE ALSO:
New Attacks Kill 2 Children and 2 U.S. Soldiers
By NEELA BANERJEE
New York Times, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: A homemade bomb exploded today in the corner of a crowded grammar school playground in northern Baghdad, killing two children and wounding three others, according to the United States military. When Iraqi police arrived at the scene, they discovered a second bomb at the Asmaa elementary school, or what the military called an "improvised explosive device," near the site of the blast, and called in a United States army bomb squad, which successfully defused it, the military added. Two separate attacks today also killed two American soldiers and wounded several others. On Sunday, the military reported that three American civilians were wounded and one killed when their Iraqi taxi was ambushed on the drive from Hilla in the south to Baghdad. The Americans were part of a religious group, the military said, without adding further details. It remained unclear today if the explosion at the yard of an all-boys school in the mostly Shiite, working-class al-Jawadin quarter is a tactical shift by insurgents to strike a deeper chord of fear among Iraqis, by attacking what should be the safest of havens and the most helpless of victims. Since the summer, rumors have periodically spread through Baghdad that schools would be targeted by bombers, but today's incident appears to be the first of its kind.
SEE ALSO: Iraqi Shiites Prepare for Compromise on Elections (AFP in Yahoo!News)

Iraqi Panel Pivots on U.S. Plan: Caucuses Rejected For Interim Rule
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: Most members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council no longer support the Bush administration's plan to choose an interim government through caucuses and instead want the council to assume sovereignty until elections can be held, several members have said. The caucus proposal, which the council endorsed in November, is a cornerstone of the administration's plan to end the civil occupation of Iraq this summer. Seeking to lay the foundation for a political system that would shun extremism and keep the country united, the administration had wanted a transitional government selected by carefully vetted local caucuses to run Iraq through the end of 2005. But with Iraqi religious leaders demanding that voting occur much sooner -- and with a growing expectation here that the United Nations will call for elections by the end of this year or early next year -- a majority of Governing Council members have quietly withdrawn support for the caucus plan.

U.S. Soldiers Killed; Iraqis Debate Handover
By REUTERS, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: Two U.S. soldiers were killed in roadside bomb blasts in Iraq Monday and at least one child died in a grenade explosion near a school, the U.S. military and Iraqi police said. In Baghdad, Iraq's U.S.-installed Governing Council began a debate on the thorny issue of how to manage the handover of power from U.S. occupation forces to Iraqis. Officials also announced international donors would meet this month in Abu Dhabi to start channeling $15 billion in aid pledged to reconstruct Iraq. The attacks on two U.S. convoys in Baghdad and the town of Baquba, 40 miles to the north, happened 20 minutes apart. Five soldiers were also injured. U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police arrested two men after the Baquba explosion and were investigating whether the bomb was detonated by a cell phone. In northwest Baghdad, at least one child was killed and one hurt when a grenade in a rubbish bin exploded as they played near Al Jiwadain school, Iraqi police said. A U.S. military spokesman said two people were killed and three wounded. The military also said gunmen had ambushed an American religious group in Iraq Saturday, killing one person and wounding three. ``They were traveling in an Iraqi taxi from Babylon to Baghdad when people in a white sedan ambushed them with small arms fire,'' a spokesman said. It was not clear which church group they represented.

UN Criticizes Vague 'Terror' Laws in Several Countries
Al Jazeera, 17 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention report on Monday particularly criticised the "imprecise definitions of crimes" in anti-terror legislation and the use of military tribunals and special courts of law. The UN group's criticisms come as the United States finds itself under increasing fire for its extrajudicial procedures for detainees held at its Guantanamo military base on Cuba.

AUDIO/VIDEO
Rep. Maxine Waters Charges US is Encouraging a Coup in Haiti
Democracy Now!, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: In Haiti, anti-government gangs and militias are working with opposition groups and former army officers in an effort to overthrow the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide. There is concern that Washington is once again working behind the scenes to foment a coup. For weeks, Haiti has seen armed gangs attacking government forces and supporters in various towns and cities across the country. Pro-government supporters have been defending Aristide. There have been a series of armed battles that have resulted in at least 40 deaths. Haiti has no army and has a dwindling police force numbering only a few thousand. On Sunday, several thousand demonstrators clashed with Aristide supporters as they marched through the streets of the capital, Port-au-Prince. Police used tear gas to keep the two sides apart. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yvon Neptune told the BBC that the government planned to launch an attack to regain control of Gonaives, the fourth-largest city in Haiti. Anti-government gangs are thought to control about 11 towns and cities across the country.

Pakistan: How Washington Helped Create a Nuclear Rogue State
By Norm Dixon
ZNet, 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: As proof continues to mount that US President George Bush's administration systematically lied about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify invading the oil-Rich Persian Gulf country, it has been revealed that Pakistan, one of Washington's closest allies, has been peddling nuclear weapons technology for more than a decade. On February 4, Abdul Qadeer Khan, dubbed the "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb by the corporate press' cliche mills, appeared live on national television. He confessed that he single-handedly commanded a complex trade network in nuclear weapons technology with Iran, North Korea and Libya, which has operated since at least 1989. In a carefully scripted address, Khan stated that "there was never, ever any kind of authorisation for these activities from the government". Within 24 hours, Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf announced that Khan had been pardoned on the recommendation of the military-dominated National Command Authority, which controls Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, and cabinet. Washington was equally quick to absolve Pakistan's military government of all responsibility, describing the pardoning of Khan as an internal matter. Associated Press reported on February 8 that, according to Pakistan's foreign ministry, US Secretary of State Colin Powell phoned Musharraf on February 6 to express "appreciation over the results of the investigations and the manner in which they were conducted."

The 'International Community' and the Apartheid Wall
By Samer Elatrash
ZNet, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: The twin spectres of "politicizing" the UN and damaging the "fragility" of non-existent peace talks between General Sharon and the decrepit Palestinian Authority are again being invoked, this time to scuttle the upcoming deliberations in the International Court of Justice at the Hague on the legality of Israel's separation barrier in the occupied West Bank. Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham announced his government's opposition to sending the matter before the International Court at press conference last month, opining: "it's not time for the court to take this as a legal question", and that the matter should be left to "discussions between the parties, as mandated by the (UN) Security Council." True, the 700 km long matrix of walls, electronic fences and trenches that threatens to bring about a humanitarian disaster in the already throttled West Bank raises some "legal questions", according to Canada's deputy ambassador at the UN Gilbert Laurin, who nonetheless points to "the highly charged environment" as grounds for opposing the hearings that are scheduled to start this February.

Provisions in CAFTA Restrict Access to Medicines
Latin American and Caribbean countries urged not to include such provisions in FTAA
Medicines San Frontieres press release, 12 February 2004
Courtesy of Texas Fair Trade Coalition
EXCERPT: Under CAFTA, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua will be obliged to extend pharmaceutical patent terms beyond the 20 years required in World Trade Organization (WTO) rules; prevent the marketing approval of generic medicines if a patented version of the product is registered; and grant additional exclusive marketing rights by prohibiting drug regulatory agencies to use original pharmaceutical test data for the registration of generic medicines, a restriction referred to as "data exclusivity." These same provisions, all of which exceed WTO standards, are in the draft FTAA agreement, and will severely restrict or block generic competition, the only proven mechanism for reducing the prices of medicines. Provisions related to marketing authorization are particularly worrisome. For instance, if an existing AIDS drug is not registered in one of the five CAFTA countries because the manufacturer has no interest in the market, under CAFTA, registration of generics would be prevented for five years, even if the drug is not patented, and until the end of the patent term if it is. Unlike with patents, which authorities can redress through compulsory licensing, there is no recourse to provisions restricting marketing authorization. "People with HIV/AIDS in Central America do not have five years or more to wait for affordable AIDS drugs to become available," said Antonio Girona, Head of Mission for MSF's AIDS treatment program in Honduras. "Thousands are dying now, and many will die within one or two years of first developing symptoms of AIDS."

16 February 2004

Iraq, Neighbors Stress UN Role, Fighting Terror
By Haitham Haddadin
Reuters, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: Iraq and its six neighbors concluded talks in Kuwait Sunday with a call for a central role for the United Nations in Iraq, including supervision of elections and of the transfer of power to Iraqis. In a final statement after a two-day meeting, they also said it was vital to eliminate "all terrorist and other armed groups from Iraqi territory that constitute a danger for the neighboring states." That was a clear reference to anti-U.S. fighters operating in Iraq, including the al-Qaeda network headed by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, which Washington blames for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. ...Iraq and its neighbors Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Kuwait, affirmed "the importance of enhancing the role of the U.N. so that it can assume its central responsibilities throughout the transitional process in Iraq." The statement said these responsibilities include "preparing the ground for the withdrawal of occupying powers as soon as possible, and providing advice and technical expertise for formulating the constitution, holding elections, and expediting the transfer of power."

Joint US, British Spy Operation Wrecked Peace Move
Observer (UK), 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: A joint British and American spying operation at the United Nations scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq, The Observer can reveal. Senior UN diplomats from Mexico and Chile provided new evidence last week that their missions were spied on, in direct contravention of international law. The former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told The Observer that US officials intervened last March, just days before the war against Saddam was launched, to halt secret negotiations for a compromise resolution to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work.
SEE ALSO: British-US Spying Games on the Road to War (Observer)

Chaos and War Leave Iraq's Hospitals in Ruins
By Jeffrey Gettleman
New York Times, 14 February 2004
EXCERPT: At Baghdad's Central Teaching Hospital for Children, gallons of raw sewage wash across the floors. The drinking water is contaminated. According to doctors, 80 percent of patients leave with infections they did not have when they arrived. Doctors say they have been beaten up in the emergency room. Blood is in such short supply that physicians often donate their own to patients lying in front of them. "The word 'big' is not enough to express the disaster we are facing," said Ahmed A. Muhammad, the hospital's assistant manager. To be sure, Iraq's hospitals were in bleak shape before the American-led invasion last year. International isolation and the sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 had already shattered a public health care system that was once the jewel of the Middle East. Crucial machines stopped working. Drugs were in short supply. Conditions eased a bit once the United Nations oil-for-food program started in 1996, but the country still suffered, especially the children. But Iraqi doctors say the war has pushed them closer to disaster. Fighting and sabotage have destroyed crucial infrastructure and the fall of Saddam Hussein precipitated a breakdown in social order. "It's definitely worse now than before the war," said Eman Asim, the Ministry of Health official who oversees the country's 185 public hospitals. "Even at the height of sanctions, when things were miserable, it wasn't as bad as this. At least then someone was in control."
SEE ALSO: Sanctions: The Cruel and Brutal War Against the Iraqi People (FFF)

Why the US Practices Double Standards
By Mahmood Mamdani
Daily Nation via I.C.H., 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: It is now clear that in the years following September 11, 2001, the US government did everything it could to hide the role of the Pakistani military in proliferating weapons of mass destruction, while at the same time exaggerating that possibility with regard to Iraq, which possessed no such weapons. Why are certain regimes allowed to reform while others are tagged as evil and considered incapable of reform? Was this an intelligence failure, as the Bush administration alleges, or was it a political failure, an attempt to shape intelligence to serve a political agenda that first came together during the Reagan administration? 

A New Deal for the World's Poor
By Gordon Brown and Jimm Wolfensohn
Guardian (UK), 16 February 2004
EXCERPT: Five years ago, every world leader, every major international body and almost every single country signed up to eight millennium development goals - at the heart of which is a definitive commitment to ensuring education for every child, the elimination of avoidable infant and maternal deaths and the halving of poverty. But by next year, the first goal, for girls' education, will go unmet - and world leaders face a stark choice. Either resources are made available now to tackle poverty, or targets set in a fanfare of publicity will once again be missed and the world's poor left further behind. Seventy countries will have failed to achieve universal primary education by our target date. Yet the promise we made on education for sub-Saharan Africa was to be met by 2015 - not, as now predicted, 2129.

Elite Israeli Troops Reject Gaza Violence
By Conal Urquhart
Observer (UK), 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: The three men sitting in the corner of a busy cafe are unremarkable as they talk among themselves, sipping coffee and blending with the rest of the customers. But they are members of a remarkable group, the Sayeret Matkal, Israel's equivalent of the SAS. And what makes them even more extraordinary in a society that holds its armed forces in such high esteem - in fact, what has earned them damnation from all over the country - is that they told their commanders that they refuse to serve in the Palestinian territories. They and 10 others wrote to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, saying they could no longer serve, 'out of a deep sense of foreboding for the future of Israel as a democratic, Zionist and Jewish state'. The letter stated that they would not take part in violating the rights of millions of Palestinians or provide a shield for Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. It concluded: 'We have long ago crossed the boundary of fighting for a just cause, and now we find ourselves fighting to oppress another people. We shall no longer cross this line.' Since then they have been villified and supported in the Israeli media and have received death threats.
SEE ALSO: Failed Predictions (Ha'aretz, via ZNet)
SEE ALSO: The BBC and Ethnic Cleansing (ZNet)

Bush Raises Spectre of Ballistic Missile Attack
ABC News, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: President George W Bush says the United States continues to face the possibility of attack from ballistic missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction. Mr Bush says this is the reason the US is developing and employing missile defences to guard its people. In his weekly radio address to the nation, Mr Bush warned of more attacks like those of September 11.

The Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy
By Mel Goodman
Foreign Policy In Focus, February issue
EXCERPT: The Defense Department has moved aggressively to eclipse the State Department as the major locus of U.S. foreign policy. In its campaign for war with Iraq, the Bush administration perpetuated the greatest misuse of intelligence in U.S. history.
The current White House has initiated and escalated a worldwide and continuous war on terrorism that has increased everyone’s insecurity.

14-15 February 2004

The Thief of Baghdad
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: During the early 90's, when Mr. Cheney was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Chalabi was in a full courtship press with Washington's conservative and journalistic elites. He saw them as a springboard for his triumphant return to Iraq. After 9/11, his passionate desire to take out Saddam coincided with that of conservatives. All they needed for their belli was a casus, so Mr. Chalabi obligingly conned the neocons. He hoodwinked his pals Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle into believing Iraq would be a flowery cakewalk to democracy. A wily expert in the politics of the bazaar, he knew he had to sell his scheme on what was good for Americans and their security. He was happy to funnel information to the vice president that painted a picture of Saddam hunkered on a hair-raising stockpile of W.M.D. His group, the Iraqi National Congress, tried to spin our government and media through its "information collection program." Intelligence officials now say that the prewar information provided to Washington by this group was suspect and useless, even disinformation. But here's the wild thing: the propaganda program was underwritten by U.S. government funds. So Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week — and a precious human cost. Cops dealing with their snitches check out the information better than the Bush administration did.
SEE ALSO: WMD Scandal: The Arab Silence Perplexing (Arab News)
SEE ALSO: Five Steps to Better Spying
By STANSFIELD TURNER
New York Times, 15 February 2004
EXCERPT: In the debate over America's prewar intelligence failures in Iraq, there are two important questions. First, is there someone the president could fairly blame? And second, does the president have the power to repair whatever problems exist? In both cases the answer is no. No single government official had the authority to prevent the misjudgments about Iraq's weapons programs. And under the present rules no single official has the authority to set things right. These problems grow out of a flaw in the National Security Act of 1947, which created the office of director of central intelligence. That law charged the director with coordinating our national intelligence apparatus, which is now a $30-billion-a-year enterprise with 15 semi-autonomous agencies. The law, though, gave the director no real authority to manage many of these disparate entities. In effect, America's spy agencies have been without a chief executive for the last 50 years. Short of the president, there is no one officer in charge.

The Bloody Price of Occupation
By Tariq Ali
Guardian (UK), 14 February 2004
EXCERPT: The whole world knows that Bush and Blair lied to justify the war, but do they know the price being paid on the ground in Iraq? First, the blood price - paid by civilians and others this week as every week. More than 50 people died on Tuesday when a car bomb ripped through Iraqis queuing to join the police force. The US military blamed al-Qaida loyalists and foreign militants for this and other suicide bombings. But occupations are usually ugly. How then can resistance be pretty? Second, the price of internal conflict. Religion is the politics of the unarmed opposition to the occupation. What we are witnessing on the streets of Baghdad and Basra is a struggle for power within the Shia community. What should be the character of the new Iraqi state? And, as the UN continues to dither over the timing of elections, when will this come about? Third, and related to this most pressing question of elections, is the price of confusion. An intricate web of pacts and pay-offs is being constructed between the American occupiers and their assorted interest groups, but how long this will last is an open question.
SEE ALSO: Military and Economic Trends in Postwar Iraq (New York Times)
A statistical (graphical) analysis of the occupation from the Brookings Institute.
SEE ALSO: Hanging on a Handover (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: UN Says US Should Overhaul Plan for Iraq (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Iraqi Shi'ites Warn of Problems if Polls Delayed (Reuters)
SEE ALSO: Cronkite: Iraq Vietnam Parallels Inescapable (MaineToday)

More evidence that Bush makes the world a safer place...
World Bank Condemns Third World Defense Spending
By David Fickling
Guardian (UK), 14 February 2004
EXCERPT: The president of the World Bank condemned the amount developed countries spend on defence yesterday, saying it was "madness" compared with the sums committed to aid projects. James Wolfensohn told an audience in Australia: "We are spending 20 times the amount on military expenditure than what we are spending on trying to give hope to people." He added: "If a Martian came to earth and read the [UN's] millennium development goals, and then looked at what we're doing, you'd think we were mad. We are spending a trillion dollars a year on defence. We talk about freeing trade and we've got $300bn to $350bn being spent in ... agricultural subsidy or tariffs, and we're spending maybe $50bn on development. The world is spending less now that it was spending 40 years ago, percentage wise, in terms of development. We have got it tremendously wrong in the way in which we are addressing the questions of poverty, development and its importance."

Bush's Nuclear Hypocrisy
By Robert Jensen
Common Dreams, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: The old "arms race" between the former Soviet Union and the United States may be over, but has the United States -- the nuclear giant of the world, and hence the nation in the strongest position to take a leadership role -- acted in "good faith" to eliminate its own nuclear weapons and encourage others to do the same? Do the actions of the United States since that treaty went into effect in 1970 indicate any intention to honor its provisions? Sadly, the answer is no. Instead, the United States -- with its overwhelming military advantage in the world, conventional and nuclear -- seems bent on continuing to create, and threaten the use of, nuclear weapons.

The Fantasy of Democracy in an Arab State
By Robert Fisk
Independent via Information Clearing House, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: For democracy, read fantasy. Iraq is getting so nasty for our great leaders these days that anything - and anyone - is going to be thrown to the dogs to save them. The BBC, the CIA, British intelligence - any journalist that dares to point out the lies that led us to war - get pelted with more lies. The moment we suggest that Iraq never was fertile soil for Western democracy, we get accused of being racists. Do we think the Arabs are incapable of producing democracy, we are asked? Do we think they are subhuman? This kind of tosh comes from the same family of abuse as that which labels all and every criticism of Israel anti-Semitic. If we even remind the world that the cabal of neo-conservative, pro-Israeli proselytisers - Messers Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, et al - helped to propel President Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld into this war with grotesquely inaccurate prophecies of a new Middle East of democratic, pro-Israeli Arab states, we are told that we are racist even to mention their names. So let's just remember what the neo-cons were advocating back in the golden autumn of 2002 when Tony was squaring up with George to destroy the Hitler of Baghdad. They were going to re-shape the map of the Middle East and bring democracy to the region. The dictators would fall or come onside - thus the importance of persuading the world now that the preposterous Gaddafi is a "statesman" (thank you, Jack Straw) for giving up his own infantile nuclear ambitions - and democracy would blossom from the Nile to the Euphrates. The Arabs wanted democracy. They would seize it. We would be loved, welcomed, praised, embraced for bringing this much sought-after commodity to the region. Of course, the neo-cons got it wrong.

Operation Sweatshop Iraq
By Pratap Chatterjee
CorpWatch.org, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: These men work quietly together serving meals in the dining room that seats some 300 people. Sprawled out at the tables are uniformed soldiers and Secret Service men with earpieces -- guns never more than an arm's length from their reach -- smartly dressed secretaries from military contracting firms and men in dark business suits, chatting loudly about the business of running a country. The restaurant workers were brought together by a company named Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton of Houston, Texas. Halliburton has contracts in Iraq worth more than $8 billion that range from cooking meals, delivering mail, building bases to repairing Iraq's oil industry. The company can't hire workers fast enough to fulfill their commitments, but the pay scales fluctuate wildly depending on the country of citizenship of the employee. Americans, who work at dead-end, low-wage jobs at home, get paid handsomely even by US standards. Iraqi salaries start at $100 a month and imported South Asian workers get three times that. Meanwhile Halliburton is being investigated by the US military for overcharging US taxpayers to the tune of at least $16 million.

Occupation Grows More Tolerable to America as U.S. Deaths Decrease, Iraqi Civilian Deaths Sore
Guerrilla Raid in Restive Iraq Town Leaves 22 Dead
Reuters, 14 February 2004
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi
EXCERPT: Scores of gunmen firing mortars and grenades stormed security compounds in the Iraqi town of Falluja on Saturday, killing 14 policemen in one of the most daring raids in 10 months of U.S. occupation. ...U.S. warplanes circled overhead and dropped heat balloons to divert heat-seeking missiles in the aftermath of the attacks, though no U.S. troops appeared on the ground. Pools of blood were still visible near the police station hours afterwards. Guerrillas have killed more than 600 Iraqi security and police personnel since April in an attempt to undermine U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take over security of the country. The violence in Falluja came during one of the bloodiest weeks since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein on April 9.

On Foreign Policy, Kerry Sees Strength in Alliances
By Carol Giacomo
Reuters, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: John Kerry is offering American voters a far different vision of the U.S. role in international affairs than President Bush, one that much of the world may find more familiar and more comforting. The Democratic senator from Massachusetts, now leading in the race for his party's presidential nomination, has accused Bush of extremism in waging the "most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in modern history. "While insisting he would never cede U.S. security to any nation or institution and will use force when necessary, Kerry envisions a "new era of alliances (because) even the only superpower on earth cannot succeed without cooperation and compromise with our friends and allies." ..."Intoxicated with the pre-eminence of American power," the Bush team has abandoned fundamental tenets like "belief in collective security, respect for international institutions and international law, multilateral engagement and the use of force not as a first option but truly as a last resort," the senator said. Kerry pledged to restore diplomacy as a tool of U.S. foreign policy, treat the U.N. as a "full partner," renew bilateral talks with North Korea and "replace unilateral action with collective security of a genuine nature." He says he would appoint a presidential ambassador to breathe new life into the moribund Middle East peace process and name a separate presidential envoy for the Islamic world who would seek to strengthen moderate Islam. Kerry would reconsider Bush's decision to deploy a missile defense system and produce a defense budget that "would be different but might not necessarily be smaller," said foreign policy adviser Rand Beers, who resigned last year as Bush's counter-terrorism special assistant to join Kerry's campaign.
SEE ALSO: Wall Street Journal Opinion response in their Best of the Web newsletter: Wow, that'll throw a scare into our enemies.

U.N. Warns Against a Hasty Vote, but Iraqis Address the Issue
By NEELA BANERJEE
New York Times, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: The United Nations special envoy to Iraq departed Friday, warning that the country faced a significant chance of civil strife, and leaving unresolved the contentious question of holding elections before the June 30 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis. The rift over elections has broadened fissures between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Muslims, a trend that the envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, described as part of a trend of rising communal tensions that pose "very, very serious dangers." Sunni Arabs, a minority that has long ruled Iraq, worry that swift elections could bring the Shiite majority to power and unleash a backlash against them.

Do As I Say
Bush's empty nuke-proliferation rhetoric.
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: It would have been breathtaking had Bush told his audience of military officers that, as a token of our commitment and a recognition of the sacrifices involved, he was terminating all programs to develop new U.S. nuclear weapons. It wouldn't have cost him much to do so; these mini-nukes won't give us a real edge anyway. But he would have reaped extraordinary political and diplomatic gains; his nonproliferation proposal would have taken on a sheen of legitimacy. This leads to the radical shift in mind-set that Bush must undergo if his new policy is to have real meaning. Much of the world views Bush as indifferent, even hostile to the obligations of international treaties, laws, and fixed alliances. A stepped-up effort in nonproliferation will require continuous cooperation between the United States and the leaders of at least 40 other nations, many of whom view Bush as an opportunist who does not take them or their interests seriously. If Bush wants to lead in this realm, he has to show—by deeds, not just words—that he's worthy of being followed, that he can give as well as take.

13 February 2004

The Costs of Empire: Counting the Dollars and Cents (Part 2 of 2)
By David Isenberg 
Asia Times, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: ...bear in mind that the deployment of military forces abroad means negotiating complicated legal arrangements, euphemistically called Status of Forces agreements, so that US forces remain largely immune from host country laws. The United States has yet to begin serious negotiations with Iraqis on an agreement to guarantee that American troops in Iraq will remain immune from arrest and prosecution by local authorities once a new Baghdad government takes over in June. This was a way of life for 19th century imperialists, who, for example, carved out little extraterritorial enclaves all along the coast of China. This was certainly the case of the collapsed empire of the Soviet Union, whose military men led privileged lives elsewhere in the communist bloc. This is the peacetime way of life of the US military, whose forces abroad are largely shielded from local judgments. Increasingly, if the Bush administration has its way (thanks to bilateral agreements forced on other nations), American soldiers in wartime will be responsible to no other body, certainly not to the new International Criminal Court, for crimes of war or crimes against humanity. (from Part 1)
To paraphrase the well-known saying of former US Senator Everett Dirksen, a division sent here, a division over there, and pretty soon you are talking about real empire. However, a real empire costs money, lots of money; especially when it involves stationing or deploying military forces around the world. (from Part 2)
SEE ALSO: IRAQ INDEX
Tracking Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Iraq
Iraq Index PDF
Brookings Institution, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Iraq Index is a statistical compilation of economic and security data. This resource will provide updated information on various criteria, including crime, telephone and water service, troop fatalities, unemployment, Iraqi security forces, oil production, and coalition troop strength.
Download a PDF version of all charts which includes complete source information. (PDF-236kb) The index will be updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
SEE ALSO: Halliburton Accused of Wasting Tax Money
By LARRY MARGASAK
AP, 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: According to Waxman and Dingell, Bunting and the unidentified whistleblower contend:
--Top Halliburton officials frequently told employees that high prices charged by vendors were not a problem because the U.S. government would reimburse the costs and then pay the company an additional fee.
--Higher than necessary prices were paid for ordinary vehicles, leased for $7,500 a month, and for furniture and cellular telephone service.
--Halliburton tried to keep as many purchase orders as possible below $2,500 so its buyers could avoid the requirement to solicit quotes from more than one vendor.
--Supervisers provided buyers with a list of preferred Kuwaiti vendors, including companies that charged excessive prices. Buyers were not encouraged to identify alternative vendors. Congressional Democrats and the party's presidential candidates have made Halliburton's extensive government contracts a major election issue, contending the business showed favoritism toward Cheney's former company.
Discuss This and Other Issues at BushWhackedUSA: THE BLOG

U.N. Team Backs Cleric's Demand for National Election
By Alissa J. Rubin, Charles Duhigg and Maggie Farley
LA Times, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: A team of U.N. election experts met with Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric Thursday and expressed support for his demand for a direct vote to choose a new government. But there was no consensus on how soon elections could be held. In an example of the violence still roiling Iraq and threatening any voting, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy carrying Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, as he visited the town of Fallujah. Neither Abizaid, nor Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division who was also in the convoy, were injured. Following Thursday's meeting between U.N. envoy Lakdar Brahimi and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in the city of Najaf, officials at the world body indicated that they may be leaning toward recommending national elections but delaying the process beyond July 1, the date Washington has set to hand over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government. U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan "understands that there is a consensus emerging ... that direct national elections are the best way to establish a parliament and government in Iraq that are fully representative and legitimate," Fred Eckhard, Annan's spokesman, said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Kay: Bush Administration Hampering Intelligence Reform
AP in USA TODAY, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is hampering efforts to improve intelligence by clinging to the false hope that weapons of mass destruction may be found in Iraq, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector said Thursday.  ..."My only serious regret about the continued holding on to the hope that eventually we'll find it is that it eventually allows you to avoid the hard steps necessary to reform the process," David Kay said in an interview with The Associated Press. President Bush and other officials insist weapons could still be discovered. In an interview on NBC's Meet the Press last weekend, Bush said, "They could be hidden, they could have been transported to another country." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has also said he believes weapons could still be uncovered. Kay said the administration could fear the political costs of acknowledging error. "I suspect if I had their jobs I'd probably, to keep my sanity, be an eternal optimist about some things," he said. ...Asked whether analysts believed their findings had been distorted, Kay said: "Were some people uncomfortable about some of the rhetoric? I think the fair answer to that is 'yes.'" He stressed that analysts are generally uncomfortable with any change to their wording, but understand that is the nature of political rhetoric. "Politicians choose the best possible argument that will support the course of action they've decided on regardless of whether it's foreign policy or not," he said. "Is that cherry picking? That's the nature of the political process."

Bush's ally in the "war on terror"...
Uzbek Mother who Publicised 'Boiling' Torture of Son gets Hard Labour
Guardian (UK), 13 February 2004
EXCERPT: The elderly mother of a religious prisoner allegedly boiled to death by Uzbekistan's secret police has been sentenced to six years in a maximum security jail after she made public her son's torture. Fatima Mukhadirova, 63, a former market vegetable seller, is the mother of Muzafar Avazov, who died in the notorious Jaslik high security jail in 2002. She was convicted of attempting to "overthrow the constitutional order". ... Uzbekistan has provided the US and UK with an essential military base for operations in neighbouring Afghanistan, and receives more than $100m (£53m) a year in American aid, for being an ally in the "war on terror".

The Blame Game: Bush and the MIA WMDs
By David Corn
The Nation, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: David Kay, the recently resigned chief WMD hunter who has declared that it is unlikely Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction in the years before the war, uttered these words while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28. They were meant to explain the tremendous gap between the prewar claims that Iraq was loaded with weapons of mass destruction and the reality that Kay says he found: no actual weapons and "no indication of a production process that would have produced [WMD] stockpiles." Embarrassed by Kay's disclosures, defenders of the invasion of Iraq have wrapped themselves in his we-were-all-wrong pronouncement. President Bush has said, "We all thought [WMDs] were there." White House press secretary Scott McClellan--who as of this writing has not been able to say the word "wrong"--has repeatedly maintained that "our intelligence was based on views shared by intelligence agencies around the world and the United Nations." It's a variant of Kay's we-all-blew-it explanation. The intent is clear: If everyone was wrong about the WMDs, then no one--especially not Bush--is to blame now.

 AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Bush Appoints Iran-Contra Figure To Head Up Iraq "Intelligence" Probe
DemocracyNow!, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: ...an in-depth look at Judge Laurence Silberman, the man President Bush appointed as co-chair of the commission to investigate intelligence failures prior to the Iraq invasion. Silberman is a longtime Republican operative who is said to have orchestrated President Reagan's "October Surprise," overturned Oliver North's Iran-Contra conviction and helped pursue sexual misconduct allegations against President Clinton. ...The impartiality of the commission has also come into question.[includes transcript]
SEE ALSO:
Vital Speech
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid Says the Commission on Intelligence Failings is a Farce.
U.S. Sen. Harry Reid
The American Prospect, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush has named U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman as co-chairman of a commission to look into the shortcomings in the intelligence provided to the administration prior to the Iraq war -- much to the dismay of U.S. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. He took the Senate floor Wednesday to express his concerns about the appointment. Here is an unofficial transcript of his remarks -- provided by the senator's office:
"I was relieved that the President decided he was going to appoint an independent panel to review what took place in our going to Iraq, but after he made the decision to do that and appointed the panel, it was obvious it was just a hoax. "Look at who is the co-chair of this panel. One of the most partisan people in all America is a man by the name of Judge Silberman. He is a person who wears proudly the label of a partisan, even though he hides it as often as he can from the public.

U.S. Wary of Iranian Influence in Iraq
By Barbara Slavin
USA TODAY, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is increasingly concerned about a buildup of Iranian spies and militants in Iraq and about Iran's support for groups with a history of anti-U.S. terrorism.
Although the administration has not openly criticized Iran about the influx recently, four high-ranking U.S. military and State Department officials, who spoke on condition they not be named, said they worry that Iran is trying to influence, and possibly disrupt, plans for a transition to Iraqi rule. Iran is setting up civilian and armed cells in Iraq to intimidate Iraqis and covertly influence elections, says one of the four officials, a high-level officer with the U.S. military command in Baghdad. Because the topic is so sensitive, U.S. officials won't discuss it on the record. Iranian officials deny trying to manipulate the transition or set up terrorist cells in Iraq. "None of these accusations have any foundation," says Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. "We seek a stable Iraq, the return of sovereignty and the establishment of a democratic and representative system." ...State Department officials say the Iranian presence in Iraq could be a form of insurance policy to deter the Bush administration from efforts to undermine the Iranian regime, which is facing a surge of protests from moderates. Two years ago, President Bush labeled Iran a member of an "axis of evil" for its support of Palestinian and Lebanese militants and efforts to develop nuclear weapons.Mindful of Iran's leverage in Iraq, the United States has recently been more conciliatory.

12 February 2004

Iraq Was a Failure of Leadership, Not Intelligence
By P.J. Crowley
TomPaine.com, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Notwithstanding the president¹s shifting rationale for war, the major problems we confront in Iraq have much less to do with the quality of intelligence than the decisions that President Bush made about whether to invade and how we went about it militarily and diplomaticly [sic]. ... That said, the needless challenges we face now‹ongoing casualties, the spiraling cost of occupation, the unanticipated insurgency and the loss of international credibility‹have everything to do with how the administration approached this "war of choice" and presented its case: there was an imminent threat and stockpiles existed; the United Nations was part of the problem; we didn¹t need or couldn¹t wait for allies; our soldiers would be treated as liberators; and reconstruction would soon pay for itself. Since those claims were made, no weapons of mass destruction have been found; more than 500 soldiers have died; civil war is a real possibility; and we will undoubtedly spend more than $250 billion before stability is restored.
SEE ALSO: Rumsfeld 'Unaware' of WMD Claims (BBC)
SEE ALSO: Pentagon Eager to Wash Hands of Iraq Mess It Created (K-R)

Of Paradise and Power
By Howard Zinn
ZNet, 9 February 2004
EXCERPT: I suppose it is part of the corruption of contemporary language that an analysis of American foreign policy by a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace should argue for the right of the United States to use military force, regardless of international law, and international opinion, whenever it unilaterally decides its "national interest" requires it. Robert Kagan's book OF PARADISE AND POWER is important, not because it's logic is unassailable, or his values admirable, but because it serves as intellectual justification for the foreign policy of the United States, and therefore (as the New York Times reviewer put it) demands "serious attention". That attention it has received, with the major media rushing to review it, mostly with admiration. Kagan's chief concern in OF PARADISE AND POWER is that Europe (representing Paradise, an unrealistic place where diplomacy, compromise and law replace war as a solution for international problems) is suspicious of Power, wielded by a "realistic" United States.

Like an ostrich with its head in the sand...
Israel 'Poised to Boycott Barrier Hearings'
Guardian (UK), 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Legal advisers in Israel today recommended that Ariel Sharon's government should boycott forthcoming international hearings on Israel's West Bank separation barrier, according to reports. Political sources in Jerusalem told Reuters that the recommendation was likely to prompt cabinet members to veto Israel's participation in the hearings. They will take place at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and are due to begin on February 23. A final decision - which will be made by a committee of five cabinet members hand-picked by Mr Sharon, Israel's prime minister - is expected tomorrow. The ICJ is poised to begin hearings in response to a request to investigate the legality of the barrier. The request was made last year by the UN general assembly. Both Israeli and Palestinian legal negotiators have been invited to present their arguments to the court, which will make a non-binding ruling on the matter.
SEE ALSO: 14 Palestinians Killed in Gaza; Hamas Vows Revenge (SFC)

24 Hours in Iraq: 102 dead, Al-Qaida Bombers Blamed
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: The US military in Iraq last night sought to blame al-Qaida loyalists and foreign militants for a series of recent suicide bombings, including two attacks that killed more than 100 Iraqis in 24 hours. Under pressure to explain the sudden escalation in violence, commanders also released details of a 17-page letter they claim was written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian fugitive allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden. The document suggests militants led by Zarqawi have been attempting to incite a civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims in order "to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us". A $10m reward has been offered for his capture.

Strikes at 'Collaborators' Sow Fear but Not Flight
Campaign to intimidate Iraqis working for the occupation is blunted by economic need.
By Alissa J. Rubin
LA Times,12 February 2004
EXCERPT: The bombings outside an Iraqi army recruitment center and a police station this week were among the deadliest attacks on Iraqi civilians since Saddam Hussein's government fell in April. But in the last few weeks, insurgents have also shot translators for the U.S.-led occupation and opened fire on laundresses at a U.S. military base as they were commuting to work. The insurgents appear to be increasingly targeting Iraqis perceived to be collaborators — people seen as supporting or advancing American interests, including the U.S.-backed plan for a new Iraqi government. The killings appear aimed at discouraging Iraqis from helping to create a new political order. However, the results thus far are mixed. In some cases, those who survive quit their jobs en masse, as the surviving laundresses did. Yet, in a surprising number of instances, Iraqis have persevered undeterred.

Signed, sealed and delivered...
Iraq Takes Step Toward WTO
The nation is formally approved as an observer to the international trade organization.
Associated Press, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Iraq was formally approved Wednesday as an observer to the World Trade Organization, a first step toward gaining membership. The WTO's ruling General Council agreed by consensus to accept the Iraqi application. Observer status gives the nation the right to attend meetings and hold some talks with WTO members. Observers have no formal say in decisions by the body, which sets rules on international trade, but neither are they bound by them. Ahmad Mukhtar, director-general of foreign economic relations at Iraq's Trade Ministry, thanked the 146-member WTO for its approval. "After decades of isolation, Iraq is beginning to rejoin the international community and your decision today sends a positive signal to the people of Iraq that they are welcomed back and that the world really cares about their welfare," he said.

Freedom and Independence of War Crime Court Threatened By U.S., U.K.
Many suspects may go untried
Ian Traynor
The Guardian, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: Some war crimes suspects in the former Yugoslavia are likely to escape international justice because of a drive by Washington, with strong British backing, to curb the powers of Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Under American plans to reconfigure the way power is wielded at the tribunal, judges would decide who goes into the dock, for the first time in the court's 10-year history. Tribunal judges are blocking indictments submitted by Ms Del Ponte, sources said, while awaiting the outcome of the power struggle which could see far fewer suspects tried. Ms Del Ponte is angry at the fresh attempt to rein her in, after she was taken off the war crimes tribunal for Rwanda last year. A draft security council resolution by Britain, which is opposed by Russia, France, and Germany, would transfer some of her powers to the tribunal's judges, jeopardising the freedom and independence of the investigation and prosecution service at the tribunal. Critics said the move was an attack on Ms Del Ponte because of her refusal to bow to political pressure. They said the prosecutor's office had gained great expertise during the last 10 years, while the judges in The Hague are not qualified to decide who should be tried. Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said: "This is clearly an attack on the prosecutor. They want to put the prosecutor on a very short leash."

CIA Alters Policy After Iraq Lapses:
Analysts to Receive Details About Sources
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: The CIA is making changes in how it handles intelligence after identifying specific problems in its disputed prewar assessment that Iraq's Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, officials said yesterday. CIA Director George J. Tenet, whose agency's performance is under intense scrutiny, has ordered an end to the long-standing practice of withholding from analysts details about the clandestine agents who provide the information that analysts must evaluate, officials said. The changes were ordered after an internal CIA review revealed several occasions when CIA analysts mistakenly believed that Iraq weapons data had been confirmed by multiple sources, when in fact it had come from a single source, Jami A. Miscik, deputy director for intelligence, said in a speech yesterday to the agency's analysts. The misunderstanding arose because CIA operatives had given analysts ambiguous information. In other cases, Miscik said, analysts believed they were looking at information that came from a reliable source who had direct knowledge, but subsequent review showed the agent with the good reputation was actually supplying information from other parties "about whom we know little." Tenet is "adamant this must change," Miscik told the analysts. "We are not brushing aside the agency's duty to protect sources and methods, but barriers to sharing information must be removed. "Analysts can no longer be put in a position of making a judgment on a critical issue without a full and comprehensive understanding of the source's access to the information on which they are reporting," Miscik said, according to a text of her speech given to The Post. ...According to a senior intelligence official, the Bush version added "more sensitive operational information" and dropped some of the accompanying graphics that helped in understanding the substance of the material. In addition, the Bush PDB gets a more limited distribution within the agency, leaving some senior analysts unaware of what has been sent to the White House.

Halliburton Faces Iran Inquiry
David Teather
The Guardian, 12 February 2004
EXCERPT: Halliburton, the company formerly run by Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, was last night facing another investigation, this time over possible business dealings with Iran.
The oil services company said it had received a letter from the US treasury department, informing it that an inquiry into allegations that Halliburton might have broken trade embargoes had been reopened. The investigation relates to when Mr Cheney was running the company. He was chief executive between 1995 and 2000 before quitting to run for office with George Bush, taking with him a $36m (£19m) severance package.

Ex-judge On Iraq Inquiry 'Involved in Cover-up'
Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: Laurence Silberman, a retired judge nominated by the Bush administration as the co-chairman of the commission investigating pre-war intelligence on Iraq, was involved in a major cover-up during the Reagan era, his critics alleged yesterday. Mr Silberman sat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which approved the expanded surveillance powers for the justice department under the controversial Patriot Act. President Bush named him as the senior Republican on a nine-member bipartisan commission examining how and why US intelligence had been so wrong about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. It will report next spring - well after the November elections. Democrats are sceptical about Judge Silberman's presence. Nan Aron, head of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal pressure group, said: "This is not a statesman of the sort the president should be seeking to preside over this crucial and sensitive investigation." Judge Silberman is most notorious in American liberal circles for his 1990 judgment overturning the conviction of Colonel Oliver North, who admitted his central role in the Iran-Contra affair, in which proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran were diverted illegally to the Contra anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. Col North, who coordinated the payments from the White House, denied President Reagan knew what was going on. He became a martyr for the American far right and the dismissal of his conviction caused uproar. Judge Silberman cast one of the two votes in the appeals court that set him free. He is now a media commentator. The Republican-appointed special prosecutor in the case, Lawrence Walsh, later wrote that Mr Silberman should have been disqualified for his bias and his sympathy for Col North's cause. As a former Reagan advisor, Mr Silberman took part in a meeting between top Republicans and Iranian government representatives during the 1980 election campaign, when the Carter administration was trying to negotiate the release of American hostages in Tehran. Those negotiations failed but the hostages were freed five minutes after President Reagan's inauguration, provoking Democrat claims of a secret deal to delay the release in return for military aid.

11 February 2004

Campaign to Censure Bush
by MoveOn.org
EXCERPT: President Bush told our nation that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Now that the chief weapons inspector has revealed that that simply is not true, President Bush seeks to avoid responsibility by creating an investigation that will focus on the CIA. That's why we believe:

"Congress must censure President Bush
for misleading the country
about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

Privatizing War Makes War Easier...
and More Likely
Contract Sport
by JANE MAYER
What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?
New Yorker, 16 February issue
EXCERPT: Vice-President Dick Cheney is well known for his discretion, but his official White House biography, as posted on his Web site, may exceed even his own stringent standards. It traces the sixty-three years from his birth, in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1941, through college and graduate school, and describes his increasingly powerful jobs in Washington. Yet one chapter of Cheney’s life is missing. The record notes that he has been a “businessman” but fails to mention the five extraordinarily lucrative years that he spent, immediately before becoming Vice-President, as chief executive of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil-and-gas-services company. The conglomerate, which is based in Houston, is now the biggest private contractor for American forces in Iraq; it has received contracts worth some eleven billion dollars for its work there.

Truck Bomb Kills 50 on a Crowded Iraqi Street
Many Victims Were Awaiting Interviews for Police Posts
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: A truck bomb exploded Tuesday in this central Iraqi city about 30 miles south of Baghdad, ripping through a crowded street where dozens of people were waiting to be interviewed for jobs on the police force, killing at least 50, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

Rifts Increase Iraqis' Fear for the Future
By NEELA BANERJEE
New York Times, February 10, 2004
EXCERPT: The closer Iraqis get to sovereignty, the more they voice fears that ethnic and religious differences could fracture their nation. Generations of colonialism followed by Saddam Hussein's rule drove fissures through Iraqi society that are now widening as politicians and clerics appeal to religion and ethnicity in advancing their demands. In the angry clamoring of Shiite and Sunni Muslims, and of Arabs, Turkmens and Kurds in the north, many Iraqis, foreign diplomats and allied military officers say they discern the first smoke of broad communal strife.

Bush Administration Threatened by Possible OPEC Decision
Guardian (UK), 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush expressed alarm last night after oil cartel Opec threatened to undermine his chances of a second term in the White House by announcing a surprise cut in production from April. The price of crude jumped sharply on futures markets after Opec, at a meeting in Algiers, decided to cut supplies to the global economy by up to 10%. With Mr Bush already facing a strong challenge from the Democrats over his handling of the economy, the unexpected news brought an immediate riposte. "It is our hope that producers do not take actions that undermine the American economy and American workers - and American consumers for that matter," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy. The Bush administration is concerned that higher fuel prices will eat into disposable incomes, raise business costs and add to a $500bn (£267bn) annual trade deficit that is already undermining the dollar.

AUDIO/VIDEO
Did Bush Spike Probe of Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove?
Democracy Now!, 10 February 2004
EXCERPT: BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast and Tariq Ali discuss how the Bush administration stopped an investigation that might have revealed Pakistan's top nuclear scientist helped share nuclear secrets with Iran, North Korea and Libya. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he long suspected his country's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was sharing nuclear secrets with other countries. This according to an hourlong interview with the New York Times. Khan stunned the country last week when he confessed on television to selling nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Khan invented Pakistan¹s nuclear bomb and is considered to be a national hero. He claimed he had acted without authorization from the government and begged forgiveness. Musharraf pardoned him days later. At one point Musharraf suggested politics might have played a part in overlooking any suspected wrongdoing on Khan¹s part saying "It was extremely sensitive. One couldn't outright start investigating as if he's any common criminal." But the reasons for the delayed investigation may run deeper.
SEE ALSO: Tariq Ali on Pakistan's Nuclear Program and Other Issues (DNow!)

Kay-mazing!
Study of Rhetoric On Iraq Is Urged
Kay: Panel Should Check for Distortion
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: David Kay, the former chief U.S. arms inspector in Iraq, said yesterday that President Bush's new commission on intelligence should study how the president and his senior policymakers used the information they received from intelligence agencies. "The charges are out there," Kay said during a talk at the U.S. Institute of Peace, "and if there was misuse or distortion, we need to know it."  ...Bush's executive order creating the commission last week spelled out the panel's areas of inquiry, and did not list among them the question of whether the administration accurately portrayed the information in intelligence reports. The panel was directed to investigate prewar intelligence collection and the analysis of deposed president Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and to compare that analysis with what has since been found by the Iraq Survey Group and other agencies. ...Unlike the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which was established by a congressional resolution, the executive order creating the intelligence commission does not mention subpoena power or the authority to take testimony under oath or even hold public hearings.

Potential Tragedy of Miscalculation
by Henry C K Liu
Asia Times, 11 February 2004
EXCERPT: Recent US policy is based on egregious misunderstanding of China's determination on the Taiwan issue, and this wrong-headed reckoning could lead to a military conflict with no winners - and Japan would be drawn in through its US military bases. ...US calculations on military intervention over Taiwan rest on strategic considerations. The MacArthur doctrine of the military importance of Taiwan to US interests in Asia had been framed in a Cold War geopolitical context of a hostile China - that was a given. In the new post-Cold War geopolitical context, the US military advantage from hanging on to Taiwan is more than neutralized by the creation of a resultant hostile China out of a friendly one, foreclosing the prospect of a strategic partnership for a stable Asia. Cordial US-China relations would spell more security to the United States than US control of Taiwan could ever offer. Thus the United States has no intrinsic strategic interest in Taiwan, except diplomatic credibility that may affect US strategic defense commitments to Japan and South Korea. US policy on Taiwan, disguised as defense for democracy and capitalism, is really held hostage to the traditional Japanese view of the importance of Taiwan for Japanese security.

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