19 March 2004

Campaigning on foreign policy, eh?
Bush Campaign Gear Made in Burma
His campaign store sells a pullover from nation whose products he has banned from being sold in the U.S.
By Lauren Weber
Newsday.com, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: The official merchandise Web site for President George W. Bush's re-election campaign has sold clothing made in Burma, whose goods were banned by Bush from the U.S. last year to punish its military dictatorship. The merchandise sold on www.georgewbushstore.com includes a $49.95 fleece pullover, embroidered with the Bush-Cheney '04 logo and bearing a label stating it was made in Burma, now Myanmar.

Bush: "The Great Liberator"
Protests, Even Buttons, Verboten in Crawford
by Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive Online, 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: If you're ever thinking about going down to Crawford, Texas, to protest against Bush, beware. The police do not take kindly to demonstrators there--or legal observers, for that matter. And even if you're just wearing an anti-Bush button, you could get arrested.

Bush: I'm God's Delivery Boy
by Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive Online, 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: Bush's messianic militarism was on full display on March 11, when he addressed, via satellite, the National Association of Evangelicals Convention in Colorado Springs. First, acting as pastor in chief, he said, "You're doing God's work with conviction and kindness, and, on behalf of our country, I thank you." Separation of church and state, anyone? Bush charged right through that wall, citing religion as his basis for opposing stem-cell research, abortion, and same-sex marriage. He also ignored the wall when he returned to his favorite, post 9/11 theme: that God is calling America to free the world, and Bush himself is heeding that call. "America is a nation with a mission," Bush said, not afraid, in this crowd, to connote the crusade he is on. "We're called to fight terrorism around the world," he said, intentionally using the religious term "called," a term he has repeatedly invoked over the last two and a half years. "As freedom's home and freedom's defender, we are called to expand the realm of human liberty," he said. Viewing himself as the Great Liberator, he said, "By our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 50 million people have been liberated from tyranny." And then he laid the religion on thick: "Yet I know that liberty is not America's gift to the world-liberty and freedom are God's gift to every man and woman who lives in this world." Follow the logic here: If God's gift is liberty, and if Bush has liberated millions, then he is God's delivery boy. Now while Bush may invigorate himself by aligning his policies with the presumed wishes of the Almighty, there is something deeply offensive about foisting this theology on our constitutionally secular government.

PBS Gets Picky
by Cynthia Cotts
A Reporter Disses Halliburton, and Newshour Producers Decide His 15 Minutes of Airtime Are Up
Village Voice, 17-23 March 2004
EXCERPT: In a recent Nation cover story, Christian Parenti described hanging out with insurgents in Iraq. That got the attention of producers on News- Hour With Jim Lehrer, and on March 2, Parenti said something live that knocked Lehrer off his chair. Parenti, author of an upcoming book on occupied Iraq, was being interviewed by NewsHour's Ray Suarez. He and Middle East history professor Juan Cole were analyzing the recent suicide bombings in Iraq and various groups that might have been involved. Then something went terribly wrong: Parenti suggested that Halliburton and Bechtel have failed to provide "meaningful reconstruction" and that the U.S. occupation might actually be contributing to the instability in Iraq. Lehrer apparently went ballistic. (See the transcript.)

Duck hunters unite!
Scalia Angrily Defends His Duck Hunt With Cheney
By STEVE TWOMEY
New York Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court bluntly rejected demands today that he step aside in a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney, mocking criticism that a duck hunting trip that the two were on together in January indicated possible favoritism for his longtime friend. ``If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined,'' Justice Scalia wrote in a 21-page memorandum bristling with defiance and offering lessons in the ways of Washington. The Sierra Club, which had formally demanded Justice Scalia's recusal in a case it is pursuing against the vice president, responded to the justice's remarks by saying that it still believed that he should step down from the case but that it would not pursue the issue further. ``It would have been terrific if Justice Scalia had released this information back in January, when the American public first began raising questions about the trip,'' said David Bookbinder, Washington legal director of the Sierra Club.
• Text: Scalia's Memo | Related Documents

Scientist Lauded After Gov't Fires Her
PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: Elizabeth Blackburn's dramatic laboratory discovery made her a scientific superstar and launched a burgeoning cancer research field. Yet it's not her lauded laboratory work that has led to her recent renown in the scientific community. These days, Blackburn is better known as the outspoken advocate of human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning whom the Bush administration fired from the President's Council on Bioethics last month. The 55-year-old scientist has become a cause celebre for many researchers who complain that the White House's science policy is distorted by politics. "I don't feel martyred," the University of California, San Francisco, scientist and native Australian said of her dismissal from the council. "I wear it as a badge of honor." White House officials said Blackburn's two-year term on the council expired in January and that the biologist's contribution would no longer be relevant, since the panel was moving away from discussing human embryonic stem cells and into neurology and behavior. They say politics had no role in her dismissal.

McCain Joins Campaign Fray, Displaying Independent Streak
By TODD S. PURDUM
New York Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: From television advertisements to vice-presidential oratory, the Republican attack against Senator John Kerry this week has been sharp, unsparing and unified: The Democratic candidate is "wrong on defense." On Thursday, one Republican senator's response was just as sharp and unsparing, but much less unified: "No, I do not believe that he is, quote, weak on defense." What kind of Republican would say that? The John McCain kind, of course.

Pass Me Some of that Aspirin, Please
By Molly Ivins
Dallas Star-Telegram, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: How much fun can one administration have? More dead GIs. New record trade deficit. Stock market plunges. Ally in Spain goes down to defeat. The new Spanish prime minister says the occupation in Iraq is a "continuing disaster," and he's pulling his troops out. Still no jobs. And then the guy who was supposed to be the new jobs czar turns out to have laid off 75 of his own workers in 2002 and then built a $3 million factory in China to employ 180 Chinese that same year. Whoever has the aspirin concession at the White House must be making a fortune.

Who's the Man? They Are
George Bush and John Kerry stand shoulder to shoulder in one respect: Macho is good. Very good. It's been that way since Jefferson's day.
By James Rainey
LA Times, 18 March 2004
It was once a late-night comedy riff, comparing a pair of Latin he-men. "¿Quién es más macho, Fernando Lamas o Ricardo Montalban?" The gag on the preening masculinity of two aging stars had its day, then faded away. But an increasingly ornery presidential election season might resurrect the question. To wit: "¿Quién es más macho, George Bush o John Kerry?" If it's not Kerry tossing a football across an airport tarmac, it's President Bush stomping around his Texas ranch in denim and cowboy boots. Bush waves the starter's flag at NASCAR's Daytona 500. Kerry blasts away at pheasant with a double-barreled shotgun. In a campaign that has seen candidate Howard Dean infamously appeal to "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks," many political scientists, historians and gender experts say that a good portion of the presidential image-making in 2004 will center on masculinity. Driving the paternal imperative, they say, is the anxiety many Americans feel because of the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorist attacks at home.

At This Point, the Polls Toll for Bush
By Frank Newport, Frank Newport is editor in chief of the Gallup PolL
LA Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: It's too early to rely on polls to predict exactly what will happen in the 2004 presidential election, but the data we do have, set in the context of recent history, provide some patterns worth watching. First, consider job approval. President Bush has a 50% job approval rating at the moment. Gallup Poll archives since 1952, when modern polling techniques came into play, show that his rating is slightly below those of the most recent successful candidates for reelection. In March of their election years, Bill Clinton had a job approval rating of 52%, Ronald Reagan had a rating of 54% and Richard Nixon had a rating of 53%. The two other successful incumbents since 1952, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, had even higher job approval ratings at this point in 1956 and 1964. (And the losers? Gerald Ford had a job rating of 50% in March 1976, identical to Bush's, while George H.W. Bush's and Jimmy Carter's ratings were 41% and 43% at this time in 1992 and 1980.)
History shows that the incumbent's approval rating can change substantially as the year progresses. The factor to watch is the trend: It won't be auspicious for the president should his ratings drift downward. There are also less-than-positive signs for Bush when we look at a more direct measure: the hypothetical "trial heat" ballot pitting an incumbent against his opponent. In February and so far in March, each trial heat conducted by Gallup shows Kerry beating Bush.

18 March 2004

Mysterious Fax Adds to Intrigue Over the Medicare Bill's Cost
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: Late one Friday afternoon in January, after the House of Representatives had adjourned for the week, Cybele Bjorklund, a House Democratic health policy aide, heard the buzz of the fax machine at her desk. Coming over the transom, with no hint of the sender, was a document she had been seeking for months: an estimate by Medicare's chief actuary showing the cost of prescription drug benefits for the elderly. Dated June 11, 2003, the document put the cost at $551.5 billion over 10 years. It appeared to confirm what Ms. Bjorklund and her bosses on the House Ways and Means Committee had long suspected: the actuary, Richard S. Foster, had concluded the legislation would be far more expensive than Congress's $400 billion estimate — and had kept quiet while lawmakers voted on the bill and President Bush signed it into law. Ms. Bjorklund had been pressing Mr. Foster for his numbers since June. When he refused, telling her he could be fired, she said, she confronted his boss, Thomas A. Scully, then the Medicare administrator. "If Rick Foster gives that to you," Ms. Bjorklund remembered Mr. Scully telling her, "I'll fire him so fast his head will spin." Mr. Scully denies making such threats. These conversations among three government employees — an obscure Congressional aide, a little-known actuary and a high-level official — remained secret until now, and Ms. Bjorklund still does not know who sent the fax. But Mr. Foster went public last week, and details of his struggle for independence within the Bush administration are now emerging, raising questions about whether the White House intentionally withheld crucial data from lawmakers.
SEE ALSO: Inquiry Set on Bribery Claim in Medicare Vote
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
New York Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: The House ethics committee voted on Wednesday to start a formal investigation into accusations of bribery surrounding last November's vote on the Medicare prescription drug law, signaling that an initial fact-finding inquiry might have produced evidence of wrongdoing. The panel, formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, met behind closed doors. Afterward, it issued a statement saying it had established an investigative subcommittee to conduct "a full and complete inquiry" into the bribery claims. The accusations were made by Representative Nick Smith, Republican of Michigan. Mr. Smith, who is retiring, voted against the Medicare bill. Immediately after the vote, he said some lawmakers and groups had tried to induce him into voting for the measure with promises of financial support for the House candidacy of his son. He said there had been no specific offer of money, but his remarks prompted the ethics panel to begin a fact-finding inquiry last month.

President Requires Broad Powers in Wartime, Brief to Court Says
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times, 18 march 2004
EXCERPT: The president should have broad and "robust" authority to imprison enemies in wartime, even if it means locking up American citizens away from the battlefield, the Bush administration told the Supreme Court on Wednesday. The Justice Department urged the court to overturn an appellate ruling last year that found that President Bush had exceeded his constitutional authority in detaining Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the government contends has links to Al Qaeda. Mr. Padilla's case is one of three the Supreme Court will hear next month on the sweeping powers the administration has assumed to fight terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001. ...Mr. Padilla's lawyer, Donna R. Newman, plans to file her brief next month. "The ultimate issue," Ms. Newman said in an interview, "is whether the president has the authority to order the military to detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil outside a zone of battle and to deny him access to a court to review the legality of that detention."

Woman Accused of Spying Denies Wrong
AP in NYT, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: A woman accused of acting as a paid Iraqi intelligence agent says she is being unfairly punished for getting involved in U.S. foreign policy and trying to stop a war in Iraq. Susan Lindauer told The Associated Press on Wednesday her intention was to persuade Iraq to allow weapons inspections before the war and to get it to cooperate with the war on terror. ``What I did was never illegal,'' she said. ``I never participated in activities that would create violence against this country.'' Herbert Hadad, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, where Lindauer has been indicted, declined to comment. According to the indictment, Lindauer, 40, tried to pass a letter last year to a U.S. government official that outlined her access to members of Saddam Hussein's regime. A government source told the AP the letter's recipient was White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Lindauer's second cousin. The indictment alleges that Lindauer met with an undercover FBI agent posing as a Libyan to discuss helping resistance groups in Iraq. It also claims she met several times with members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, which has been linked to an assassination attempt on former President George Bush. Lindauer pleaded innocent Monday. She had been arrested last week at her Takoma Park home, but has been released on a $500,000 bond and must undergo psychological counseling. If convicted, she faces 25 years in prison.

Unemployment Creeps Up the Education Ladder
Economic Policy Institute, week of 15 March 2004
Workers with college degrees have had a particularly difficult time finding work in the current job market. In recent months, the number of unemployed college graduates has surpassed the number of unemployed adults with less than a high-school degree. Get the facts at a glance in today’s Economic Snapshot.

A Plea to Scrap Mercury Emission Plan
A bipartisan group says the Bush proposal is slanted toward industry and is too weak to protect public health.
By Alan C. Miller and Tom Hamburger
LA Times, 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: A bipartisan group of senators, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency and health, labor and religious groups urged the Bush administration Tuesday to withdraw its controversial proposal to curb mercury emissions from power plants. They said that the plan was too weak to protect public health and that the internal process that produced it was so slanted toward industry that the final rule would not survive legal challenge. In a letter to EPA Administrator Michael O. Leavitt, Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), the ranking minority member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the EPA had violated requirements calling for agencies to review alternatives and disclose their analysis when proposing a major regulation. Jeffords also referred to the proposal's "gross inadequacies in controlling mercury." He called on Leavitt to request an investigation by the agency's inspector general "into the allegations of undue industry influence in the rule-making process." He said it appeared that EPA political appointees and White House officials had worked "to skirt, if not directly violate, the law and rules of ethical behavior."

Pride and Prejudice
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: The election is shaping up as a contest between Pride and Prejudice.
Mr. Kerry is Pride. He has a tendency toward striped-trouser smugness that led him to stupidly boast that he was more popular with leaders abroad than President Bush — playing into the Republican strategy to depict him as one of those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Even when he puts on that barn jacket over his expensive suit to look less lockjaw — and says things like, "Who among us doesn't like Nascar?" — he can come across like Mr. Collins, Elizabeth Bennet's pretentious cousin in "Pride and Prejudice." Mr. Collins always prattles on about how lucky people would be to be rewarded by his patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, with "some portion of her notice" and to receive dollops of her "condescension." Speaking to Chicago union workers last week, Mr. Kerry happily informed them that on the ride over, his wife, Teresa, had said she could live in Chicago. What affability, as Mr. Collins would say, what condescension.
Mr. Bush is Prejudice. Like Miss Bennet, who irrationally arranged the facts to fit her initial negative assessment of Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bush irrationally arranges the facts to fit his initial assessment that 9/11 justified blowing off the U.N. and some close allies to invade Iraq. The president and vice president seem incapable of admitting any error, especially that their experienced foreign policy team did not see through Saddam's tricks. As Hans Blix told a reporter, Saddam had put up a "Beware of Dog" sign, so he didn't bother with the dog. How can they recalibrate the game plan when they won't concede that they called the wrong game plan to start? When he challenged Mr. Kerry to put up or shut up on his claim of support from foreign leaders, Mr. Bush said, "If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you've got to back it up with facts."
If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidency, you've got to back it up with facts, too.

Bush and 9/11: What We Need to Know
By Joe Klein
Time, 13 March 2004
EXCERPT: George W. Bush's most memorable day as President was Sept. 14, 2001, when he stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center, holding a bullhorn in one hand, his other arm slung over the shoulder of a veteran fire fighter from central casting. Bush was pitch perfect that day‹the common-man President, engaged and resolute. This is the image the Bush campaign is probably saving for the last, emotional moments of the election next fall. It is the memory the Republicans want you to carry into the voting booth. It is why the Republican Convention will be held in New York City this year. And it may also be why the White House has been so reluctant to cooperate with the independent commission investigating the events of Sept. 11, 2001. The commission, which will finish its work in midsummer, on the eve of the conventions, will soon question the President about his response to the terrorist threat in the months before 9/11. I asked a dozen people last week‹some intimate with the commission's thinking, some members of the intelligence community, some members of Congress who have investigated 9/11‹what they would ask the President if they could.

Homophobia: Gay and Lesbian Federal Workers Lose Job Protections
By Paul Johnson
365Gay.com, 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: Gay and lesbians in the entire federal workforce have had their job protections officially removed by the office of Special Counsel. The new Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, says his interpretation of a 1978 law intended to protect employees and job applicants from adverse personnel actions is that gay and lesbian workers are not covered. Bloch said that the while a gay employee would have no recourse for being fired or demoted for being gay, that same worker could not be fired for attending a gay Pride event. In his interpretation, Bloch is making a distinction between one's conduct as a gay or lesbian and one's status as a gay or lesbian. "People confuse conduct and sexual orientation as the same thing, and I don't think they are," Bloch said in an interview with Federal Times, a publication for government employees. Bloch said gays, lesbians and bisexuals cannot be covered as a protected class because they are not protected under the nation's civil rights laws.

17 March 2004

US Government Faked Bush News Reports
By Chris Tryhorn
Guardian (UK), 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: TV news reports in America that showed President George Bush getting a standing ovation from potential voters have been exposed as fake, it has emerged. The US government admitted it paid actors to pose as journalists in video news releases sent to TV stations intending to convey support for new laws about health benefits. Investigators are examining the film segments, in which actors pretending to be journalists praise the benefits of the new law passed last year by President Bush, to see if they could be construed as propaganda.
SEE ALSO: Bush Attack Ads Set Negative Tone (Guardian)

Continued confusion over what the 'P' stands for...
Bush EPA Seeks Weaker Control Over Transport of Hazardous Waste
BushGreenWatch, 15 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush Administration is on the verge of approving new transportation regulations (TSR-1) that would exempt various levels of radioactive material from regulatory control while in transit. Public comment on EPA's controversial reclassification proposal closes this Wednesday, March 17. EPA has also joined the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Departments of Energy and Transportation in seeking to redefine radioactive materials, including nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and naturally occurring materials.... The new class of material, categorized as Below Regulatory Concern, would not be subject to radioactive regulatory controls. Exempting radionuclides from regulation, labeling or control during transit will also make it easier for the EPA and NRC to deregulate hazardous nuclear waste. Allowing an increase of unregulated nuclear material on the nation's roads, rails, barges and aircraft is of special concern due to homeland security worries over the transportation of nuclear material possibly enabling a dirty bomb. "Everyone recognizes this as a very serious threat. The last thing we need is to make this easier," Rick Hind, toxics director at Greenpeace, told BushGreenwatch. "This is yet another example of inadequate public health protection in favor of sweetheart deals for industry."
SEE ALSO: Bush EPA Seeks Weaker Rules for Radioactive Waste (BGW)

Florida's Retired Jewish Community Opposes Bush's Re-Election
Guardian (UK), 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: "We were really angry in 2000, but we feel worse now. I'd vote for Mickey Mouse if he was running against George Bush - anyone, but Bush," says May Duke, who is sitting with her husband Sam, in the home of their mutual friend Sam Oser. Appearances can be deceptive. This trio of retired Jewish New Yorkers, enjoying their twilight years in a huge but thoroughly middle-class retirement community in Florida's West Palm Beach, are, by their own admission, getting on a bit. But mention the upcoming presidential contest, and the angry determination that spews forth would do justice to any gathering of committed student activists. They never liked Bush in the first place and at the time of the "butterfly ballot" fiasco, Mrs Duke, 76, was president of the local Democratic Club, which includes the majority of the Jewish residents here at Century Village among its membership. The West Palm Beach ballot was one of several anomalies that turned Florida into the laughing-stock of the western democratic process in November 2000. It was the ballot where it wasn't at all clear to thousands of voters whether they were selecting Al Gore, or the right-wing Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan. He racked up 3,400 votes here, as compared to an average of 400 in other districts.
SEE ALSO: Surge in Nader Support Spells Trouble for Kerry (Guardian)

Post-9/11 Spy Tactics Endanger Political Dissent
By Murray Polner
Newsday via Common Dreams, 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: As we approach the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and the coming spring nationwide demonstrations, not to mention the coming Republican convention in New York City, there is growing apprehension among civil libertarians and ordinary Americans that the FBI is once again dredging up its infamous J. Edgar Hoover legacy of spying on political dissenters who are exercising their constitutional rights. Last October the FBI notified local police agencies to keep close tabs on people and groups opposed to the war and occupation of Iraq. Since it is obvious that the Bush administration loves playing the 9/11 card for political purposes, it is no surprise that efforts are being made to squelch as much domestic dissension as it can. We've been through this wave of repression before in the 20th century with calamitous results, when government snoopers developed a vast spying apparatus during the '20s, McCarthyite '50s, and the '60s, '70s and '80s against nonviolent dissenters who dared challenge the wisdom of U.S. foreign policies. And though the FBI (and others in the government) deny they are hindering free speech or assembly - declaring that they are only concerned with deterring potential criminals and terrorists - their October memorandum nevertheless asked some 17,000 local and state police agencies to keep a very close eye on anti-war demonstrations and report allegedly suspicious activity to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
SEE ALSO: Terror and Taboo in the Homeland (Common Dreams)
SEE ALSO: The Movement's Momentum (TomPaine.com)

16 March 2004

Kerry Assails Bush Record on Security and Terrorism
By DAVID STOUT
New York Times, 15 March 2004
EXCERPT: Senator John F. Kerry attacked President Bush on national security issues today, asserting that Mr. Bush has played politics with the battle against terrorism and that the bombings in Spain show how ineffective his policies have been. "When it comes to protecting America from terrorism, this administration is big on bluster and they're short on action," Mr. Kerry, the Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said. "But as we saw again last week in Spain, real action is what we need. The Bush administration is tinkering while the clock on homeland security is ticking. And we really don't have a moment of time to waste." Mr. Kerry's remarks, delivered to a conference of the International Association of Fire Fighters here, showed that Mr. Kerry is acutely aware that President Bush plans to make the war on terrorism a central theme of his own re-election campaign and to portray the Democrat as soft on national defense.

Bush's Feminine Side: Patriarchy in Disguise
By Suzanne Goldenberg
Guardian (UK), 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: George and Laura Bush invited a number of their closest Afghan and Iraqi women friends to a reception at the White House the other day. In his remarks, Mr Bush was nostalgic about his first meeting with the guest of honour: Raja Habib Khuzai, one of three women on the US-appointed Iraqi governing council. Apparently she turned up for her audience at the Oval Office weeping tears of joy, declaring: "My liberator." It is a fairly safe guess that would not be a typical female reaction to meeting Mr Bush. On the very first day of his presidency, he imposed a ban on US foreign aid to any agency offering abortion advice. A year later, the US government withheld more than $30m for a United Nations population control programme because it espoused "reproductive rights". It also opposed UN measures to help girls and women raped during times of war in case that assistance included advice about the morning-after pill or abortion. Programmes for Aids victims have been advised not to mention the word "condom". At home, the White House closed its office for women's outreach, the labour department's network of women's offices and other agencies monitoring gender discrimination at the workplace. Last September, Mr Bush proposed diverting $2bn in welfare funds to programmes promoting marriage. Two months later, he presided over the most significant retreat on abortion rights in 30 years by signing into law a ban on late terminations. But with an election next November, that record is inconvenient. Mr Bush would much rather be remembered in his new role as the global saviour of downtrodden women, the liberator of Ms Khuzai and so many other hapless, hijab-wearing millions.
SEE ALSO: Depraved Indifference: Patriarchy and Women's Health (ZNet)

After November: Four More Years of Camp Bush?
By Tom Englelhardt
TomDispatch, 15 March 2004
EXCERPT: There are a few obvious things to say about the last three-plus years and what we might expect from round two. As a start, in its foreign and domestic policies, the Bush administration has shown a consistency of approach that, until the election loomed and the President's poll figures began to drop, might have been termed (to steal a word from a friend) implacable. As we now know from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, among others, the leading figures in this administration arrived in office as radical nationalists in an imagined world of one -- intent on whacking Saddam's Iraq; largely uninterested in terrorism; hooked on a form of "privatization" that redirected money from the public coffers to the pockets of its corporate friends; convinced of an old Chinese revolutionary slogan, that power comes from the barrel of a gun; ready to put the military in command and scale even the heavens themselves with new forms of globe-girdling weaponry; and armed with a mobilizing imperial vision of how the world works, of where its arteries are and how exactly to control the flow of blood, or more accurately, energy. A number of them like the President and vice-president had spent significant parts of their lives connected to energy industries and, from Enron to Halliburton, had fed off that industry's money. Uniquely, the President was able to name as his national security advisor a woman who, while she was on Chevron's board of directors, had had an oil tanker named after her.
SEE ALSO: Dumping Crude: Pentagon Insiders Ready to Revolt (TomPaine.com)

Audiences for US Journalists Decline
Reuters, 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: Most American news media are experiencing a steady decline in audiences and are significantly cutting their investment in staff and resources, according to a report issued yesterday. The study on the state of the US news media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is affiliated to Columbia University's graduate journalism school, found that only ethnic, alternative and online media were flourishing. "Trust in journalism has been declining for a generation," said the project director, Tom Rosenstiel. "This study suggests one reason is that news media are locked in a vicious cycle. As audiences fragment, newsrooms are cut back, which further erodes public trust."

15 March 2004

Powerful argument in radio address...
Bush Says Economic Critics Want to Hurt Families
Reuters in FindLaw.com, 15 March 2004
EXCERPT: Without using his name, President Bush accused Democratic presidential rival John Kerry and other critics on Saturday of wanting to punish American families and workers with old, ineffective economic policies. ...A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll suggested 57 percent of Americans wanted their next president to steer the country away from the course set by Bush and gave him only 39 percent support on his handling of the economy.

European Union Antitrust Ruling Judges Microsoft Abusive Monopolist
By PAUL MELLER
New York Times, 15 March 2004
EXCERPT: Top antitrust regulators from the 15 nations in the European Union gave unanimous backing today to a draft ruling by the European Commission that officials say finds that Microsoft abused its dominance in operating software. A European Commission spokeswoman, Amelia Torres, said after a closed-door session: "The member states have unanimously backed the commission's draft decision." She did not elaborate. With today's backing, the clock on the five-year-old antitrust case against Microsoft begins to run down. In less than two weeks, barring a last-minute settlement, the European Commission is expected to declare Microsoft an abusive monopolist, impose a fine of $100 million to $1 billion and order the company to make fundamental changes to the way it sells software in Europe. Such a ruling would be a significant setback for Microsoft after it overcame its most serious legal challenge by settling a sweeping antitrust case in the United States in 2001. And it would be the defining moment in the five-year tenure of Mario Monti, Europe's top antitrust regulator, whose term ends in the fall.

Bush Administration Erodes High-Tech Privacy Protections
AP, 15 March 2004
EXCERPT: When Congress curtailed Pentagon research it feared would ensnare innocent Americans in the terrorism fight, it also allowed the Bush administration to eliminate two projects to protect citizens' privacy from futuristic tools. As a result, the government is quietly pressing ahead with research into high-powered computer data-mining technology without the two most advanced privacy protections developed for those terror-fighting tools. ... The project was the brainchild of retired Adm. John Poindexter, who was driven from the Reagan administration in 1986 over the Iran-Contra scandal. Some 15 years later, he was summoned back by the Bush administration to develop data-mining tools for the fight against terrorism.

Did the Saudis Buy a President?
Review of Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud
Salon.com, 12 March 2004
EXCERPT: How much money has flowed from the House of Saud to the Bush family and its friends and allies over the years? No one will ever know -- but the number is at least $1.477 billion. If the Saudis had been happy with the presidency of George H.W. Bush -- and they were -- they must have been truly ecstatic, in the summer of 2000, that his son was the Republican candidate for president. Indeed, the relationship between the two dynasties had come a long way since the seventies when Saudi banking billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem bin Laden had flown halfway around the world to buy a secondhand airplane from James Bath, George W. Bush's old friend from decades before. Even bin Mahfouz's subsequent financing of the Houston skyscraper for James Baker's family bank or the Saudi bailout of Harken Energy that helped George W. Bush make his fortune were small potatoes compared with what had happened since. The Bushes and their allies controlled, influenced or possessed substantial positions in a vast array of companies that dominated the energy and defense sectors. Put it all together, and there were myriad ways for the House of Bush to engage in lucrative business deals with the House of Saud and the Saudi merchant elite.
SEE ALSO: Newcomers Fuel Bush Money Machine (NYT)

The Politics of Self-Pity
By Maureen Dowd
New York Times, 14 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush has made the theme of his re-election campaign a whiny "not my fault." His ads, pilloried for the crass use of the images of a flag-draped body carried from ground zero and an Arab-looking everyman with the message, "We can fight against terrorists," actually have a more fundamental problem. They try to push off blame for anything that's gone wrong during Mr. Bush's tenure on bigger forces, supposedly beyond his control. One ad cites "an economy in recession. A stock market in decline. A dot-com boom gone bust. Then a day of tragedy. A test for all Americans." Mr. Bush's subtext is clear: If it weren't for all these awful things that happened, most of them hangovers from the Clinton era, I definitely could have fulfilled all my promises. I'm still great, but none of my programs worked because, well, stuff happens." It's as if his inner fat boy is complaining that a classic triple cheeseburger from Wendy's (940 calories and 56 grams of fat, 25 of them saturated, and 2,140 milligrams of sodium) jumped out of its wrapper and forced its way down his unwilling throat, topped off by a pushy Frosty (540 calories and 13 grams of fat, 8 of them saturated). Mr. Bush has been in office over three years. It's time to start accepting some responsibility.

Anti-Outsourcing Cry Unnerves Corporate Giants
By Indrajit Basu
Asia Times, 13 March 2004
EXCERPT: The issue of outsourcing and the resulting political backlash found its way into the corporate boardrooms of global giants, perhaps for the first time, as chief executive officers of top multinational companies including General Electric (GE) and Gillette spent the week discussing the backlash as a risk factor and its impact on their businesses. And worse, for top Indian software companies in the United States, the backlash is increasingly turning explosive. Until now, the outsourcing row has only been a political issue in the run-up to the US presidential elections. Early this week, both GE and Gillette cited the outsourcing backlash as a risk factor for their growth and said the competitiveness of a number of US companies would be severely affected by legislation barring outsourcing and the emergence of a protectionist climate in the US. While GE warned of its impact in the initial public offering (IPO) filing for Genworth Financial, a GE subsidiary, as well as in its annual report, Gillette so far has kept its concerns limited to the pages of its annual report.

Paige appeases "terrorists?"
U.S. Set to Ease Some Provisions of School Law
By SAM DILLON
New York Times, 14 March 2004
EXCERPT: Education Secretary Rod Paige says the Bush administration is working to soften the impact of important provisions of its centerpiece school improvement law that local educators and state lawmakers have attacked as arbitrary and unfair. Tomorrow, the Education Department will announce policies relaxing a requirement that says teachers must have a degree or otherwise certify themselves in every subject they teach, Dr. Paige said in an interview on Friday. Officials are also preparing to offer new flexibility on regulations governing required participation rates on standardized tests, he said. Those changes would follow the recent relaxation of regulations governing the testing of special education students and those who speak limited English. They appear devised to defuse an outcry against the law, known as No Child Left Behind, in thousands of local districts, especially in Western states where powerful Republican lawmakers have called the law unworkable for tiny rural schools. Legislatures in Utah, Virginia and a dozen other states, many controlled by Republicans, are up in arms about what they see as the law's intrusion on states' rights. They have approved resolutions in recent weeks protesting or challenging the law.

13-14 March 2004

"These guys are the most crooked, lying group I've ever seen"
Bush Administration Ordered Medicare Plan Cost Estimates Withheld
By Tony Pugh
KnightRidder, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan. When the House of Representatives passed the controversial benefit by five votes last November, the White House was embracing an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that it would cost $395 billion in the first 10 years. But for months the administration's own analysts in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had concluded repeatedly that the drug benefit could cost upward of $100 billion more than that. Withholding the higher cost projections was important because the White House was facing a revolt from 13 conservative House Republicans who'd vowed to vote against the Medicare drug bill if it cost more than $400 billion.
SEE ALSO: Gag Rules (The Nation)
SEE ALSO: Official Says He Was Told To Withhold Medicare Data (Washington Post)
EXCERPT: Yesterday, congressional Democrats called for an ethics investigation and dispatched a bitter letter to President Bush, who frequently cites the new Medicare law as one of his proudest domestic accomplishments. Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) demanded a new vote on the measure, which barely passed the House and Senate, saying that "members of Congress were called to vote under false pretenses." A Republican who helped forge the law, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), joined in the criticism. He said, "Government analysts with relevant information should never be muzzled." ...Internal documents and federal officials made clear that the White House had known of the higher cost estimates for months. Until now, it has not been apparent the lengths to which Bush aides who negotiated the bill with Congress went to keep the figures private. Foster, who was deputy chief actuary for the Social Security Administration for 13 years before becoming the chief Medicare actuary in 1995, said his office has a tradition of providing technical assistance to Congress "on an independent, nonpartisan basis."

Bush's Latest Election Ad 'Plays on Fears of Arabs'
By Suzanne Goldenberg
Guradian (UK), 13 March 2004
EXCERPT: The re-election campaign of President George Bush provoked a new controversy yesterday, with a television ad campaign using a picture of an olive-skinned man to illustrate terrorism. As a voiceover warns that Mr Bush's presumptive opponent, John Kerry, is soft on terrorists, a split-screen shows people at an airport, and a young man with flickering eyes who turns menacingly towards the camera. The ads are the most aggressive so far - targeting John Kerry by name. Arab Americans said the campaign played on racism and fear, and could inflict further damage on a community marginalised after September 11. "When they turn around and say John Kerry would be soft on terror, they don't use a picture of Osama bin Laden. They use a young good-looking, Middle Eastern male turning around looking furtively," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, which called on the Republicans to change the ads. Amid the furore, there were suggestions yesterday that Mr Bush's strategists are seeking such controversies to shore up Christian Right support.
SEE ALSO: How GOP Plans to Sabotage Democratic Funding (TomPaine)

AUDIO/VIDEO
No Bush Left Behind: When Barred From Banking, Why Not Bank on Education?
Democracy Now!, 12 March 2004
EXCERPT: After Neil Bush was banned from banking activities for his role in the Savings and Loan scandal in the late 1980s, he decided to bank on education and founded Ignite Incorporated. Ignite sells software to help students prepare to take comprehensive tests required under the No Child Left Behind act that was pushed through by Neil's older brother - President Bush.
SEE ALSO: A Debate on the Privatization of Education (DNow!)
SEE ALSO: Turn the Paige: Dismiss Education Secretary (Nation)

Bipartisan Call to Scrap Voting by Touch-Screen in California
Perata joins Irvine senator in post-primary call for changes
Paul Feist
Chronicle Sacramento Bureau, 12 March 2004
Courtesy of The Agonist
EXCERPT: Two state lawmakers on Thursday called on Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to halt the use of electronic voting in the November election, citing glitches in Alameda County and Southern California during last week's primary election. The bipartisan request from state Sens. Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Ross Johnson, R-Irvine, followed reports that voters were turned away from some polling places because of malfunctions and that confusion among poll workers in Orange County led thousands of voters to receive -- and cast -- the wrong electronic ballots. The lawmakers said they are ready to pursue urgency legislation to suspend touch-screen voting in November if the secretary of state doesn't order the counties that switched to electronic voting to go back to paper balloting. "There was an alarming number of system failures where voters were disenfranchised,'' said Perata, chairman of the Senate elections committee. Perata and Johnson said that for the fall election, officials in the 14 counties that use electronic voting should print additional ink-and-paper absentee ballots. Touch-screen and other computerized voting machines should be used only when the bugs are worked out, they said, and when they are able to produce a paper receipt of the votes cast. "The fundamental key to democracy is that everyone's vote counts and everyone's vote is counted. No one can assert that last week's election met that fundamental test,'' Johnson said. Since the 2000 presidential election, many elections officials across the country have moved to computerized voting as they replace antiquated punch- card systems. But some initial glitches and concerns over possible voter fraud have accompanied the transition to electronic voting.

Hollywood Disaster Film Set to Turn Heat on Bush
By Dan Glaister
Guardian (UK), 13 March 2004
EXCERPT: Here's the pitch: a dullish candidate, outflanked by his opponent's serious money, attacked for his liberal leanings, is swept to an unlikely victory thanks to a blockbuster movie that focuses on the effects of big business and the agro-industrial complex. Audiences throw their popcorn aside, pick up their ballot papers and realise that they too can make a difference. The studio behind the movie: 20th Century Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch. The director: Roland Emmerich; no Martin Sheen-style bleeding heart Democrat but the brawn behind Independence Day. It sounds unlikely, but this summer might just see an alliance of commerce, populist entertainment and feel-good concern combine to weaken President George Bush and hand votes to his expected Democrat rival John Kerry.

12 March 2004

Sharing Bush’s Pain: The 9/11 Ad Campaign and Iraq Fictions
by David Corn
LA Weekly, Week of 12 March 2004
(Courtesy of Antiwar.com)
EXCERPT: The first controversy of the Bush-Kerry face-off occurred when the president’s re-election campaign premiered its initial television commercials. The largely platitudinous spots aim to depict George W. Bush as the Grand Leader without any mention of specifics. They cite the recession and September 11 and proclaim that Bush had delivered “steady leadership in times of change.” What caused the fuss was the Bush campaign’s use of 9/11 footage showing the charred remains of the World Trade Center and rescue workers removing the dead. Firefighters (including officials of the firefighters union, which supports John Kerry) and relatives of 9/11 victims howled about Bush’s appropriation of 9/11. Bush’s spinners defended the ads, with Karen Hughes, a top campaign adviser, saying, “It’s a reminder of our shared experience as a nation.” Thanks for that public service. But how many sentient Americans had to be reminded that 9/11 happened? Days after the ads appeared, Bush provided a better justification. “How this administration handled that day, as well as the war on terror, is worthy of discussion,” he said. “I look forward . . . to the debate about who [is] best to lead this country in the war on terror.” Bush is right. September 11 should be an issue in the 2004 campaign — perhaps the issue. No better measure of his presidency exists. Sure, Bush kicked butt in Afghanistan, routing the Taliban and smashing part of al Qaeda’s infrastructure and leadership. But that was the easy part (and saying so does not diminish the sacrifice of Americans wounded or killed in Afghanistan). Going after Osama bin Laden’s protectors was not a tough call. But the rest of Bush’s response to 9/11 ought to be judged. ...At a minimum, the Bush foes need to be as sharp in their attacks on Bush as the Army War College and Reagan’s secretary of the Navy.

Persistently Weak Job Growth Leads to Labor Force Contraction
Economic Policy Institute, Week of 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: The lack of available jobs in the current economy has caused a decline in the number of people either working or seeking work. This labor force contraction is an indication that the job market is far weaker than the 5.6% unemployment rate implies. For an analysis of the February report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, see this month's Jobs Picture.

It's the Economic Team, Stupid
The administration's recent economic gaffes should frame John Kerry's campaign.
By David Kusnet
TomPaine.com, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: Yes, Kerry's been running a great campaign, Democrats from every faction have been rallying behind him, and the latest USA Today/CNN Gallup poll has him beating President Bush by 52 percent to 44 percent with a 50 percent to 42 percent lead on the question of who'd handle the economy best.
But Kerry, the Democrats, and their allies have failed to capitalize as much as they could on a string of five gaffes on economic issues by Bush administration officials. In the best known blunder, Greg Mankiw, the Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters that outsourcing American jobs to other countries is "a good thing" because "more things are tradable than in the past." While Mankiw was talking about technical and professional jobs moving overseas, his staff showed they don't care any more about manufacturing jobs. On page 73 of this year's Economic Report of the President, there's a box headlined, "What is manufacturing?" It helpfully suggests that making hamburgers in fast-food restaurants may be a form of manufacturing. Maybe economic advisers are supposed to be academics who aren't afraid to ask interesting questions or offer unorthodox answers. But the Secretary of Labor is supposed to care about workaday realities, like jobs and paychecks. So it came as a shock when Bush's Labor Secretary, Elaine Chao, dismissed a question from CNN about disappointing job growth. "The stock market, after all, is the final arbiter," Chao replied. "And the stock market was very strong this morning in response to the news that we have just received."
SEE ALSO: Conservatives Eat Their Words (TomPaine.com)

A Watchdog Sees Flaws in Bush's Ads on Medicare
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Wednesday that advertisements and brochures prepared by the Bush administration to publicize a new Medicare law, although not illegal, misrepresented the prescription drug benefits that would be offered to millions of elderly and disabled people. The fliers and advertisements do not violate restrictions on the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes," but they are flawed by "omissions and other weaknesses," said the legal opinion by Anthony H. Gamboa, general counsel of the accounting office. For example, Mr. Gamboa said, the administration did not point out that beneficiaries might be charged up to $30 for drug discount cards that become available in June. Likewise, he said, the administration incorrectly suggested that the law set a premium of $35 a month for drug coverage, beginning in 2006. That amount, he said, is only an estimate and ignores the penalties that could be imposed on people who delay enrolling. The administration plans to spend more than $22 million on the advertisements and brochures, which publicize drug benefits, new coverage for preventive health services and new insurance options. Medicare officials said the advertisements and fliers were a way to educate beneficiaries, as the law requires. Democrats said the advertisements were campaign commercials for President Bush, who has taken credit for delivering drug benefits long promised by lawmakers of both parties.

Report Finds Reverse Environmental Justice by Bush's EPA
BushGreenWatch, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to provide adequate protection to minorities and low-income families who are disproportionately affected by pollution, according to a report released last week by EPA's Inspector General (IG). The IG's report concludes that an Executive Order on Environmental Justice, signed by President Clinton 10 years ago, has yet to be adequately carried out. Moreover, the report discloses that the Bush Administration reinterpreted the order two years ago -- without authority to do so -- to shift emphasis away from the very populations the order was written to protect. The administration then defended its action by stating that it would provide environmental justice to "everyone." The IG's report dismissed this defense as misleading.

Police Coverup Alleged After Mass Arrests in D.C.
Washington Post, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey and other police officials conspired to deflect blame and cover up evidence of their wrongdoing during the mass arrests of anti-globalization demonstrators in September 2002, according to a D.C. Council committee that investigated the incident. The Judiciary Committee criticized police for not telling protesters to disperse during the demonstrations and then arresting them for failing to obey the nonexistent order. Hundreds of protesters and bystanders were arrested. In the months afterward, Ramsey changed his account of whether he had approved the arrests, according to a copy of the committee report obtained yesterday.

In Rebuff to Bush, Senate Raises Bar for Tax Cuts
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Senate dealt a surprising election-year rebuke on Wednesday to the White House goal of new tax cuts as it narrowly backed a new rule to require at least 60 votes to approve any tax cuts in the next five years. Four Republican senators — Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, John McCain of Arizona and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — joined Democrats in the 51-to-48 vote. Mr. Bush has called on Congress to make permanent his tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire at the end of the decade. Republicans in Congress had already sidestepped action on his request this year, in an election campaign in which voters are concerned about the $478 billion budget deficit. But under the amendment approved on Wednesday night, any tax cuts — or spending increases — in the next five years will require 60 votes for approval in the Senate, unless supporters are able to find spending cuts or other tax increases to make up for the money that would be lost, said Senator Russell D. Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who sponsored the amendment.

Think Again: Spinning Social Security
by Matthew Yglesias
March 11, 2004
EXCERPT: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan dropped a bomb on American politics during his Feb. 25 testimony to the House Budget Committee where he proclaimed the nation's finances to be in such dire straights that cutting Social Security benefits was the only viable path out of the quagmire. So well regarded is the "maestro," as Bob Woodward's 2000 hagiography termed him, by the nation's press corps that it was left to a Washington Post letter writer to point out that his remarks were an exercise in brazen hypocrisy. ...Maintaining the current system would cause federal spending to rise by 2 percent of GDP over the next 30 years. Not only is this less than the cost of making the Bush tax cuts permanent, a step Greenspan has endorsed, but increasing federal spending by this amount would leave the total public-sector share of the economy below where it stood under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush – hardly a pair of radical socialists. There is nothing unsustainable about maintaining a government of this size unless you're monomaniacally dedicated to the tax cut agenda which has reduced federal revenues to an unprecedented low share of national output. Faced with an honest choice, the American people would prefer a restoration of the pre-Bush tax code to drastic cuts in the retirement system, which is exactly why advocates of such cuts don't want to give it to people. Greenspan may be good at his job – maintaining price stability by setting interest rates – but when he steps out of that role he's just another conservative hack, and it's time for the press to start treating him like one.

American Progress Files Amicus Curiae Brief in Cheney v. U.S.
 District Court
Center for American Progress, 11 March 2004
Download today's Amicus Curiae Brief in PDF.
EXCERPT: Today the Center for American Progress joined with four leading library associations, the nation's largest archival association, and four other public interest organizations in a friend of the court brief in the case of Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, et. al., v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  The case concerns the request by the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch for disclosure of who, outside of the government, participated in the vice president's National Energy Policy Development Group.  Vice President Cheney has refused to disclose any information about the group. John D. Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress, said, "Our democratic system depends on public confidence in the workings of our government.  'Undisclosed locations' may thrive without sunshine, but our democracy cannot." Joining the Center in filing the brief are the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Center for American Progress, Common Cause, the National Security Archive, People for the American Way, the Society of American Archivists, and the Special Libraries Association.

11 March 2004

John Kerry: "These Guys Are the Most Crooked, Lying Group I've Ever Seen" Republican Response: Kerry's Angry, harsh...
By Rob Kall
OpEdNews.Com, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: Remember during the 2000 elections when, thinking himself off-mike, Bush and Cheney had this exchange?
Bush "There's Adam Clymer -- major league asshole -- from the New York Times," Bush said.
Cheney, "Yeah, big time," returned Cheney.
The media didn't label Bush or Cheney as foul-mouthed, nasty creeps. The democrats didn't either. Back then, Bush was also making a big deal about civility in the campaign. Now we know, when he says he's going to do the right thing, he does the opposite, or does it with a twist that pays off one crony or another.

Follow the Leader: What DID Bush Do on 9/11?
By John Prados
TomPaine.com, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: Three days after the attacks President Bush finally went to New York. This sorry record is not one of steady leadership, nor does it show a decisive president willing to override poor advice. The official record of Presidents of the United States, the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, which would have to have recorded Bush¹s statements of the morning and afternoon of 9/11, never appeared for the week of September 11, 2001. The remarks appeared only much later on the White House website. President Bush also went to extraordinary lengths to shield from public scrutiny his inaction on the terrorist threat before 9/11, including denial of documents to congressional investigators and a public commission, the use of secrecy rules to suppress embarrassing information and the manipulation of the scope of inquiry and its deadline to ensure investigators had minimal time in which to review the key issue of Bush¹s leadership on terrorism. In contrast to this disturbing performance, George Bush went on to take every opportunity to harness 9/11 in service of his political agenda, contrary to his own promises of 2002. A carefully orchestrated World Trade Center speech on the first anniversary of the attacks, the use of the Statue of Liberty as backdrop for a 9/11 commemoration a year later, now the Bush political ads. This is leadership of a different kind.
SEE ALSO: Squandering the Trauma of 9/11 (Guardian)

Common Cause
Democrats of all stripes are quickly coming together to beat the Republicans.
By Mary Lynn F. Jones
The American Prospect, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: After the 2000 presidential election, liberals and centrists blamed one another for Al Gore's loss. Liberals argued that Gore's populist message helped his campaign. Centrists countered that Gore went too far to the left to attract enough votes to win. No more. The party's two branches are putting aside their differences to achieve a common goal: ousting President Bush from office and stopping his agenda on Capitol Hill. "There is more Democratic unity than I've ever seen," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). He attributes the lack of dissension to Democrats "correctly recogniz[ing] how terrible it would be for every liberal value" if Bush is reelected. Of course, as Frank pointed out to me, it's often easier to be united in opposition to an agenda than in support of one. That's what Republicans are experiencing now. Deficit hawks are furious about out-of-control spending and the projected $521 billion deficit. Moderates are unhappy about Bush's proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. And Bush has resorted to throwing bones to the evangelicals -- such as the gay marriage ban and recess appointments of two conservative judges, Charles Pickering, Sr. and William Pryor -- to motivate them to turn out this fall. But the more encouraging news is that Democrats are working together as a party. That's happening in the presidential campaign -- the Democratic National Committee is having supporters sign a "unity pledge" to kick Bush out of office -- as well as in Congress.

Kerry Offers Monthly Debates
By Patrick Healy
Boston Globe, 10 march 2004
EXCERPT: John F. Kerry yesterday proposed a series of monthly "issues" debates with President Bush during the long run-up to Election Day, while twisting Bush's reelection slogan of "steady leadership" to suggest that the rigid policies of the current White House are harming Americans. ...Noting he told Bush a week ago that he wanted a "really terrific discussion about the real issues" during the campaign, Kerry added yesterday, "I'm willing to have a great discussion with the country. If the president wants to have a debate a month on just one subject, and we go around the country, I think that'd be a great idea. Let's go do it." The idea drew strong applause from Kerry's audience of 250 at the senior citizens' center in Evanston, Ill. A senior Bush campaign official, speaking on condition of anonymity, rebuffed Kerry's offer yesterday, saying the president would stick to the "tried and true" format of "a series of debates in the fall." Kerry also took direct aim for the first time at the Bush campaign's reelection mantra by substituting the word "stubborn" for "steady" in describing the president's leadership on a host of domestic and foreign issues. "He stubbornly insists on tax cuts as he steadily loses jobs in this country," Kerry said of Bush. "He stubbornly refuses to fund education as he steadily makes schools and students across the country and teachers suffer. He stubbornly refuses to allow the importation of drugs from Canada, while steadily the prices are going up."

Lack of Domestic Demand is Not the Cause of Manufacturing's Woes
Economic Policy Institute, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: Some economists have claimed that lack of demand on the part of U.S. consumers is to blame for the loss of manufacturing jobs. This week's Snapshot shows that U.S. demand for manufacturing products is in fact on the rise, and explains why increased trade deficits are responsible for the decline of the manufacturing sector.

Drains & Bathtubs: US Faces 1 in 3 Chance of Nuclear Disaster
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: When you think about 68 reactors across the United States whose key backup systems have been fatally flawed for years, from the moment they began operations, you start to realize that to wrangle over whether Davis-Besse got off easy is to wrestle a straw man. Of course they got off easy, and of course it's an outrage. But the real question is: What about all of the other reactors -- and what about those government regulators, who let Davis-Besse skirt so close to disaster, and who now are sleep walking through similar dangers at nuclear plants from coast to coast?

AUDIO/VIDEO
Is Electronic Voting a Threat to Democracy?
Democracy Now!, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts swept all four Southern Democratic primaries yesterday, winning about 77 percent of the votes in Florida and Mississippi and more than 65 percent in Louisiana and Texas. Many of the people that headed to the polls yesterday used electronic voting machines for the first time to cast their vote. And in the upcoming presidential election, millions more American voters are projected to use electronic voting machines. But concerns over security flaws in voting machines have sparked wide-ranging public debate. In one case, a special election to fill Florida state House seat 91, 134 Broward County voters managed to use 2-year-old touch-screen elecronic voting equipment without casting votes for any candidate. Already, malfunctioning software has caused confusion or possibly faulty vote tallies in races across the country and the lack of a paper trail to record votes has failed to provide a way for a meaningful recount to be conducted. Now for the first time, international monitors will be in the U.S. to make sure votes are cast and counted correctly.
SEE ALSO: Florida...Again? (Nation)

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19 March 2004

Nine Die in Attacks as Invasion Anniversary Nears
By Mark Magnier
LA Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: A series of car bombings, mortar attacks and assassinations left nine people dead across Iraq Thursday as military officials braced for further attacks in the run-up to Saturday's one-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Authorities said the milestone was an added cause for vigilance although they couldn't tell whether a rash of attacks this week have been coordinated.

Flashlight on the Potomac
by Kareem Fahim
Village Voice, 17-23 March 2004
EXCERPT: M.Cherif Bassiouni, the noted international law professor, said in a recent interview that the Bush administration's proposal for reforming the Arab world, called the Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI), reminded him of an Arab folktale featuring Goha, a mythical character whose misadventures are the basis of popular adages. In one of these fables, a man on his way home late at night stumbles upon Goha, who is crawling around the ground on his hands and knees, bathed in the glow of a solitary street lamp. The man asks what he's doing. Looking for his watch, Goha replies, and gestures toward the other end of the street, which is pitch black. Puzzled, the man peers down the street, seeing nothing but darkness. "So, why are you looking here?" he asks. "Because here," Goha replies, "there is light." Bassiouni laughed. "This initiative was tailored entirely in the 'light' of the Potomac," he said. "But what this administration has lost—namely credibility—is still out there in the dark somewhere. This will be received as demeaning and insulting. It will spend money that will go down the drain. It uses all the wrong people, the wrong means, and the wrong tools. When it fails, people in Washington will just say the Arab world is doomed."

AUDIO LINK
U.S. and Its Allies
NPR's Diane Rehm Show, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: A recent survey indicates that anti-American sentiment is on the rise in a number of European and Middle Eastern countries. We'll talk about the survey and new strains on the U.S. led coalition in Iraq.
Listen Now
Ivo Daalder, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, co-author of "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy" (Brookings, Nov 2003)
David Frum, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute and co-author of "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror"
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

• Brookings Institution
• American Enterprise Institute
• Pew Research Center

America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy

An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror

Iraq: One Year Later
Strained U.S.-European Relations Turn Pragmatic
By Jeffrey Fleishman
LA Times, 18 March 2004
Europe can't shake the bowlegged cowboy peeking out from a too-big Stetson, arms bent and ready to draw. This political caricature of President Bush endures, even as transatlantic relations have improved from the derision and backbiting that one year ago marked the beginning of the Iraq war. A lot has happened in that year. While the U.S. has been preoccupied with securing Iraq, Europe, in many ways, has set its own course. Perhaps more than the U.S. itself, Europe understands that the Sept. 11 attacks changed U.S. priorities and that Washington's old friends are often overshadowed by new strategic alliances. The terrorist bombings in Madrid last week — possibly orchestrated by Islamic extremists to punish Spain for supporting the Iraq war — are forcing some European nations to reevaluate their partnerships with the U.S. The leader of the newly elected Socialist Workers Party in Spain has vowed to withdraw the nation's 1,300 troops from Iraq, a prospect that would undermine U.S. efforts to build an international coalition. The specter of terrorism and differences over world security are turning the Cold War-era transatlantic friendship into steely pragmatism. The continent has a two-dimensional view of the U.S. Although most people in London, Paris, Berlin and other capitals feel an affinity for Americans, that closeness does not extend to a White House seen as rash and militaristic at a time when globalization needs patience and diplomacy. "The last four years have been hell," said Francois Heisbourg, a foreign policy expert at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. "The Bush administration's view of things is, 'You're either a poodle or an enemy.' The Bushies don't tend to forget."

The New Strategy for Terror
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
New York Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: There was a cold and calculating logic behind the Madrid bombings, one that we are likely to see again in the coming months. The terrorists have turned the Bush doctrine on its head. After the attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush declared that any nation that harbored terrorists would be considered just as culpable as the terrorists themselves. Putting that doctrine into action, the United States toppled the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan, who had given shelter to Al Qaeda members. Now, the militants have developed their own cruel variant. Their plan is to attack any allies or international institutions cooperating with the Americans in Iraq. The aim is to pick away at the coalition until it is reduced to a few token deployments and one lonely and overstretched superpower — one that the militants hope will grow weary of its deployments in the Middle East. This is both a cunning strategy and a matter of simple expediency. Whatever relationship may have existed between the Saddam Hussein regime and terror groups before the American-led invasion, both the United States and its militant foes now agree on one thing: Iraq counts. The Bush administration has argued that a democratic Iraq will be a catalyst for positive change in the Middle East, while terrorists like Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi have cast the American intervention there as an attempt to impose an alien set of values on Arabs and to protect Israel.

President Bush, VP Cheney, and Top Advisors Made over 200 Misleading Public Statements on Iraq Threat
Committee On Government Reform Minority Office, 18 March 2004
A detailed report and accompanying searchable database released by Rep. Waxman identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice in 125 separate public appearances. See Iraq On the Record.

Deterring terrorists?
Addressing the Unthinkable, U.S. Revives Study of Fallout
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
New York Times, 19 March 2004
EXCERPT: To cope with the possibility that terrorists might someday detonate a nuclear bomb on American soil, the federal government is reviving a scientific art that was lost after the cold war: fallout analysis. The goal, officials and weapons experts both inside and outside the government say, is to figure out quickly who exploded such a bomb and where the nuclear material came from. That would clarify the options for striking back. Officials also hope that if terrorists know a bomb can be traced, they will be less likely to try to use one.

18 March 2004

US's Foes Set to Pounce
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times, 17 March 2004
KARACHI - While the United States-led coalition makes its latest attempt to round up Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters on the Pakistan-Afghan border, new evidence is reinforcing the certainty that the Afghan resistance isn't just sitting around waiting to get caught, and nor is the International Islamic Front going to relent in its determination to wreak havoc on the US and its allies elsewhere. High-level sources tell Asia Times Online the Afghan resistance movement and the International Islamic Front - a loose umbrella for a network of cells dedicated to jihad against America - have finalized plans to enter a decisive phase of their offensive, aimed at forcing the US-led coalition out of Afghanistan by inflicting injuries on the interests of the US and its allies both on and off the battlefield.
SEE ALSO: AUDIO LINK
Metastasis?
Experts: Bin Laden Tip of Terror Threat
NPR's Morning Edition, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: U.S. forces are redoubling efforts to capture Osama bin Laden and root out other al Qaeda leaders still on the loose. But recent attacks in Iraq and Spain reveal the threat posed by smaller groups, which may or may not answer to bin Laden. Experts question whether capturing bin Laden would really weaken militant terrorist cells. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports.

Al Qaeda, the Movement
Madrid bombings suggest that the group's ideology is spreading
By Peter Bergen
Peter Bergen, a fellow of the New America Foundation is the author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden" (Touchstone, 2002).
LA Times, 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: The attacks in Madrid Thursday morning suggest that the Al Qaeda network remains very much in business. Despite the fact that two wars have been fought in the name of winning the "war on terrorism" and untold billions of dollars have been spent in an effort to break the back of Al Qaeda, the attacks came as a total surprise, killing more than 200 people. Any normal organization that had suffered the loss of its base in Afghanistan and that had lost most of its top leaders in the last 2 1/2 years would have gone out of business. But Al Qaeda, which has emerged as the chief suspect in the Madrid bombings, is not a normal organization. Al Qaeda is not like some Mafia family; if you capture or kill all the members of a Mafia family, it will simply cease to exist. Since Sept. 11, Al Qaeda the group has been morphing into Al Qaeda the ideological movement, and although it is a relatively simple matter to arrest people, it's altogether another thing to arrest the spread of ideas.

Talking Points: Iraq's Bogus Constitution
By Phyllis Bennis
ZNet, 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: The signing of the interim Iraqi "constitution" by the Governing Council represents a significant step in U.S. efforts to legitimize its invasion and occupation of Iraq. By achieving the codification in a U.S.-supervised process of an ostensibly "Iraqi" legal document, the U.S. as occupying power is hoping that its planned June 30th "transfer of power" will be accepted globally as the "restoration of sovereignty to Iraq." In fact, that "transfer of power" will not end the U.S. occupation, will not lead to the withdrawal of U.S. troops, and will not result in any real sovereignty for Iraq. The constitution itself implies recognition of its impotence, as it recognizes that all "laws, regulations, orders, and directives" issued by the U.S. occupation authorities will remain in force. The new Iraqi constitution lacks legitimacy. It was drafted under U.S. supervision by a body hand-chosen by the U.S. military occupation authorities, and subject to final approval by the U.S. proconsul, Paul Bremer. Its acceptance by the Iraqi population remains uncertain; its ability to actually set the terms for laws to govern the country during the interim period after June 30 remains unknown; its relevance to any truly independent government created after the interim period remains in doubt. As a result, any examination of the Constitution must include its legitimacy/illegitimacy, as well as the content of its provisions.

AUDIO LINK
Former U.N. Weapons Inspector Hans Blix Says Bush Administration Lacked "Critical Thinking"
Fresh Air, 17 March 2004
In his new book, Disarming Iraq, Blix writes about what happened in the months leading up to the war in Iraq last year. Blix, formerly the head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, has been named chairman of the newly formed International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction, which began its work in January 2004.

Israel's Oppression of Palestinians: By Any Means Necessary
By Ghada Karmi
Guardian (UK), 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: Israel's deputy defence minister, Ze'ev Boim, recently wondered whether there was a genetic defect that made Arabs terrorists. "What is it with Islam in general and the Palestinians in particular?" he asked on Israel army radio. "Is it some sort of cultural deficiency? Is it a genetic defect?" The dismay this arouses will be discounted by some of Israel's friends simply as evidence of the extreme nature of its present government, with its barrier wall and its "transfer" enthusiasts. If only Sharon and his hardliners were replaced by moderates, they say, we could return to a halcyon pre-Likud past that promised peace and coexistence. But to believe this is to misunderstand the nature of Israel's dominant ideology - of which Ariel Sharon and his minister are nothing more than devoted servants. It is not he that is the problem, but the Zionism he espouses.
SEE ALSO: Recent Coverage of Iraeli-Palestinian Conflict (Guardian)

Honduras to Withdraw Troops
The Age, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: Honduras plans to follow Spain's lead and withdraw 370 troops from a Spanish-led humanitarian and peacekeeping brigade in June, Defence Secretary Federico Breve said. The decision marked an about-face from the day before, when President Ricardo Maduro said he would not pull his soldiers from Iraq. The announcement "coincides with the decision of the prime minister-elect of the Spanish government," Breve said. ...Honduras sent its first contingent of 370 soldiers to Iraq in August, and replaced it with a second group of the same size last month. The country had said from the beginning it would only commit its troops for a year

NATO Peacekeepers Regroup After Violent Clashes in Kosovo
AP in New York Times, 18 March 2004
EXCERPT: NATO sent reinforcements to Kosovo on Thursday after 22 people were killed and hundreds injured in fighting between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in the worst violence since the province's 1999 war. Arsonists torched several Serb houses in Obilic, an ethnically mixed town west of the provincial capital of Pristina, on Thursday, forcing U.N. police and NATO troops to evacuate dozens of Serbs. The breakdown in order illustrated the failure of U.N. and NATO efforts to snuff out ethnic hatreds and set the province on the path of reconciliation. Bracing for more trouble, NATO mobilized extra units Thursday, sending about 350 troops to the province, mostly from Bosnia and Italy to beef up the 18,500 NATO-led peacekeepers now in Kosovo. The new tally of casualties Thursday was given by Angela Joseph, a spokeswoman for the U.N. police. Sixty-one police officers, including 40 members of the U.N. special police unit, were injured during the clashes, she said.

Blast Destroys Baghdad Hotel; At Least 27 Dead
AP in USA Today, 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: A thunderous car bomb shattered a five-story hotel housing foreigners in central Baghdad on Wednesday night, killing 27 people and leaving a jagged, 20-foot-wide crater just days before the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
SEE ALSO: Blast Shatters Baghdad Hotel, 27 Reported Dead (LA Times)
SEE ALSO: Flocking to Iraq on a Mission of Faith (LA Times)

Kuwaiti Company Wins Pentagon Contract Despite Inquiry
Yahoo!News, 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Defense Department awarded a $40 million contract for Iraq (news - web sites) fuel deliveries to a Kuwaiti company at the center of a controversy involving alleged overbilling, Wednesday's Wall Street Journal reported. Altanmia Commercial Marketing Co. received a fixed-price award from the Defense Energy Support Center to supply southern Iraq with gasoline, diesel and kerosene from April through June, the Pentagon said. The Justice Department and Pentagon auditors are investigating whether criminal misconduct occurred in a contract that Halliburton Co. and Altanmia won last year to supply oil to southern Iraq. Auditors allege the government may have been overcharged by as much as $60 million. ...Tuesday's award prompted fresh criticism on Capitol Hill. "Altanmia dramatically reduced its transportation prices to win this contract," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), who has been investigating Iraq reconstruction spending. "This raises many questions about why Halliburton was charging taxpayers so much more for the very same services." Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall countered that the company wasn't able to negotiate as a good a deal because the terms of its Kellogg, Brown & Root contract were different. The Pentagon's decision to return to Altanmia, she added, "validates the decision last year to use Altanmia" in Halliburton's contract.

17 March 2004

The Best--Or Worst--of Bush's Iraq Whoppers
By David Corn
The Nation, 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: For months now I have been contemplating a grand project: chronicling every misleading statement George W. Bush and his crew uttered before the war about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the supposed operational connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. I covered much of this in my book The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. But there was only so much room I could devote to the task; I had to reserve space for Bush's untruthful remarks about tax cuts, global warming, missile defense, homeland security, the energy bill, Enron and many other topics. Sadly, I was forced to highlight only the most illustrative examples of Bush's pre- and postwar dis- and misinformation. In the months since my book was published, I have often come across various Bush administration assertions about Iraq that have made me exclaim, "Shoot, I wish I had this one earlier." Several Democratic members of Congress, including Senators Carl Levin and Ted Kennedy, have recently assembled decent compilations. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace put out a report in January that presented a good sampling of the best--or worst--of the administration's false remarks about Iraq's WMD and the al Qaeda-Iraq relationship. But the prize goes to Representative Henry Waxman. He just released a report that identifies 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in 125 separate public appearances. There's even an on-line database.
SEE ALSO: Waxman's Online Database (House.gov)
SEE ALSO: Untruth and Consequences: Chalabi's Whoppers (TomPaine.com)

Chomsky, Others Interviewed Before, During, After Iraq War
Guardian (UK), 16-17 March 2004
EXCERPT: n February 2003 we interviewed a selection of people with links to Iraq -anti-war protesters, Middle East experts, Iraqi refugees and politicians - to find out their views on the coming war. In May 2003 we talked to them again about the aftermath of the conflict. Now, a year on from the attacks on Iraq, we interviewed them for a third time to find out their hopes and fears for a post-Saddam Iraq. We will be publishing a selection of interviews every day this week in the run-up to the anniversary of the start of the conflict on Saturday, including Noam Chomsky, George Galloway, former weapons inspector Tim Trevan and former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Hans von Sponeck.
SEE ALSO: Chomsky on Iraq (Guardian)
EXCERPT: Right after the war, by April, polls demonstrated pretty clearly that Americans thought the United Nations, not the United States, ought to have prime responsibility for reconstruction, political and economic, in the post-war period. There's little support for the government's efforts to maintain what amounts to a powerful, permanent, military and diplomatic presence in Iraq. In fact, it is little discussed, probably for that reason. Not very many people are aware of the fact that the US is planning to construct what will be the world's largest embassy in Iraq, with maybe 3,000 people. The military plans to maintain permanent bases and a substantial US military presence as long as they want it. The facts are reported, but marginally. Most people don't know about it. The orders to open the Iraqi economy up to foreign takeover are again known to people who pay close attention, but not to the general population. The general population offers little support for the long-term effort to ensure that Iraq remains a client state with only nominal sovereignty and a base for other US actions in the region. Those commitments have only a very shallow popular support and that's more of a reason for the objections, the uneasiness about policy, than the number of casualties.

Iraqi Politician Frustrated by Lack of Aid from US
Rory McCarthy, 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: Mohammed Hassan al-Balwa arrives at the city council's office, just off Falluja's main street, as workmen are putting in place the final sections of a vast, concrete blast wall, the unmistakable signature of insecurity in the new Iraq. Mr Hassan, the council's chief for the past two months, is furious. For days he has been arguing against the wall, but to no avail. "It makes me so upset," he says. Already he is making plans to move out and set up his own office in a private building nearby, without a security wall. To Iraqis, the walls symbolise the allies of America, and in a town like Falluja, the frontline of the insurgency against the US military occupation, that is the last thing Mr Hassan wants people to think of him.

Getting ready for the 'Osama October Surprise'...
Pakistani Forces Kill Dozens in Al-Quaida/Taliban Crackdown
Guardian (UK), 17 March 2004
EXCERPT: Pakistani troops killed 24 suspects yesterday during a fierce crackdown on al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives in the rugged tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, an army spokesman said. At least eight paramilitary soldiers were killed and 15 wounded in Kaloosha, a village near Wana and just a few miles from the Afghan border, said army spokesman General Shaukat Sultan. "We believe that 24 suspected terrorists have been killed," Gen Sultan said. Most of those killed were apparently Pakistani tribesmen suspected of sheltering the terrorists. But Gen Sultan said that several of the dead were also foreigners presumed to be al-Qaida members. There was no indication that any senior al-Qaida or Taliban leaders were among them.
REMEMBER: Pakistan's Nuke Proliferation Unpunished So US Could Hunt Bin Laden (AFP)
REMEMBER: Seymour M. Hersh: The Deal (New Yorker)

16 March 2004

Coming to an election near you in 2004?
New Spanish Leader Accuses Bush and Blair of Lying
Giles Tremlett
Guardian (UK), 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: Spain's new prime minister, the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, yesterday followed his dramatic election triumph with a pledge to bring troops home from Iraq and accusations that Tony Blair and George Bush lied about the war. "Mr Blair and Mr Bush must do some reflection ... you can't organise a war with lies," he said in his first radio interview after ousting the ruling conservative People's party in a Sunday election dominated by the terror attacks on trains that killed 200 Madrid commuters last week. "The Spanish troops will come back," he added. His stinging comments caused political shockwaves across Europe and in the US. Sunday would go down in history as "the day when Islamist fundamentalism was seen as dictating the outcome of a European election", said Wilfried Martens, the head of the European People's party, an umbrella group for European conservative parties. Jonathan Eyal, the director of studies at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said if al-Qaida were responsible for last week's bombs, Spain had become the first country "to have a prime minister owing his position to Bin Laden".
SEE ALSO: Political Fallout Likely to Embolden Al-Quaida
Armed guards are planned for Olympic athletes, but the US presidential election campaign is seen as prime target for attack
Guardian (UK), 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: Asa Hutchinson, US undersecretary of homeland security, offered Washington's assessment of al-Qaida's strength in the aftermath of the Madrid attacks. "It clearly shows increased ability on their part and certainly it is going to cause the international community to take it even more seriously than in the past," he said. Mr Hutchinson said he was satisfied there was a connection between al-Qaida and the Madrid attacks but his department had not seen anything to indicate that America would be hit next with a large attack. But Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaida, one of the most detailed accounts of the organisation to be published, predicted that al-Qaida would be intent on launching an attack in the US during the presidential election campaign. "They realise it will be difficult but they will try to do it. A group like al-Qaida has the ability to infiltrate," he said.
SEE ALSO: Socialists Oust Pro-War Party in Spain (Democracy Now!)
SEE ALSO: Power Balance Blown Apart (Guardian)

And Bush running on his foreign policy record?
Attack on US Consolate in Pakistan Foiled
Guardian (UK), 16 March 2004
EXCERPT: An attack on the US consulate in Karachi was thwarted yesterday when a bomb was discovered in a van parked next to the building two days before a visit to the country by Colin Powell, the US secretary of state. The vehicle contained a large blue water tank filled with 200 gallons of liquid explosive. A police official said that prompt action to remove the van from the area had "saved this place from big destruction".

Defying Washington: Haiti's Aristide Arrives in Jamaica
Democracy Now!, 15 March 2004
EXCERPT: Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman reports that Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has arrived in the Caribbean nation of Jamaica. Moments after his plane touched down at Norman Manley International Airport at approximately 2:20 pm EST, Aristide and his wife Mildred were escorted to a helicopter, which transported them to an undisclosed location on the island nation.
SEE ALSO: Aristide Back in the Caribbean (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Haiti Freezes Diplomatic Ties with Jamaica (ChannelNewsAsia)

Revealed: Britons Tortured and Abused in Guantanamo
By David Rose
Observer (UK), 14 March 2004
EXCERPT:  Among other disclosures, the three men revealed:
· How early in their ordeal they survived a massacre perpetrated by Afghanistan's Northern Alliance troops who herded hundreds of prisoners into lorry containers and locked them in, so that people started to suffocate. Iqbal described how only 20 of 300 prisoners in each container lived, and then only because someone made holes in its side with a machine gun - an action which killed yet more prisoners;
· The existence of a secret super-maximum security facility outside the main part of Guantanamo's Camp Delta known as Camp Echo, where prisoners are held in tiny cells in solitary confinement 24-hours a day, with a military police officer permanently stationed outside each cell door. The handful of inmates of Camp Echo include two of the four remaining British detainees, Moazzem Begg and Feroz Abbasi, and the Australian, David Hicks;
· That they endured three months of solitary confinement in Camp Delta's isolation block last summer after they were wrongly identified by the Americans as having been pictured in a video tape of a meeting in Afghanistan between Osama bin Laden and the leader of the 11 September hijackers Mohamed Atta. Ignoring their protests that they were in Britain at the time, the Americans interrogated them so relentlessly that eventually all three falsely confessed. They were finally saved - at least on this occasion - by MI5, which came up with documentary evidence to show they had not left the UK;
· That their first interrogations by British investigators - from both MI5 and the SAS - took place in December 2001 and January 2002 when they were still being held at a detention camp in Afghanistan. Guns were held to their heads during their questioning in Afghanistan by American soldiers, and physical abuse and beatings were rife. At this point, after weeks of near starvation as prisoners of the Northern Alliance, all three men were close to death.
SEE ALSO: How We Survived Jail Hell (Observer)
SEE ALSO: Torture Used by US in Guantanamo Bay (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Torture at Guantanamo (ZNet/Independent)

AUDIO/VIDEO
Defying Washington: Haiti's Aristide Arrives in Jamaica
Democracy Now!, 15 March 2004
EXCERPT: Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman reports that Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has arrived in the Caribbean nation of Jamaica. Moments after his plane touched down at Norman Manley International Airport at approximately 2:20 pm EST, Aristide and his wife Mildred were escorted to a helicopter, which transported them to an undisclosed location on the island nation.

Haiti's Murderous Army Reborn
By Jean Carles Moise
Pacific News Service via ZNet, 14 March 2004
EXCERPT: Editor's Note: A mayor from northern Haiti currently in hiding says that the Haitian army is back in force, shooting people and burning homes. How could this happen, he asks -- and where are they getting the all the heavy weaponry?

Bush Administration Falls Out of Line with World Consensus on Destructive Effects of Globalization
By Joseph Stiglitz
Guardian via Common Dreams, 12 March 2004
EXCERPT: The gap between the emerging consensus on globalization, which this report reflects, and the Bush administration's international economic policies, helps explain the widespread hostility towards America's government. ... Bilateral agreements form the basis of enhanced ties of friendship between countries. But America's intransigence in this area is sparking protests in countries, such as Morocco, which face the threat of such an agreement; it is also forming the basis of long-lasting resentment.

"No nuts left behind..."
Army Sent Mentally Ill Troops to Iraq
By Mark Benjamin
United Press International. 12 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Army appears to have "inappropriately" deployed soldiers to Iraq who already were diagnosed with mental problems, according to documents obtained by United Press International. More than two dozen suicides by U.S. troops in Iraq, and hundreds of medical evacuations for psychiatric problems, have raised concerns about the mental health of soldiers in Operation Iraqi Freedom. An Army Medical Department after-action report obtained by UPI suggests that the Army sent some soldiers to war who were mentally unfit in the first place. "Variability in predeployment screening guidelines for mental health issues may have resulted in some soldiers with mental health diagnoses being inappropriately deployed," the report said. That could "create the impression that some soldiers develop problems in theater, when, in some cases, they actually have pre-existing conditions." The October 2003 report said the Army should consider quickly changing course to prevent deploying more soldiers with mental problems. In a massive troop rotation now under way, more than 100,000 troops are heading to the region. "Perhaps stricter predeployment screening is required to keep at-risk soldier from deploying," the report said.

Try Bush as a Global Pirate
By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
Black Commentator, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush men have the Madness Touch. Their very presence warps conventional notions of reality. Thus, the new "prime minister" of Haiti appears as surprised as the rest of his countrymen when conveyed the title by an "eminent" rump of persons chosen by the occupying power. The man picked for the job on Tuesday, business consultant Gérard Latortue, doesn¹t even arrive in Haiti from his home in Boca Raton, Florida, until Wednesday. U.S. Marines believe they have killed Haitian gunmen in battle, but seem unconcerned as to their identities. Half a world away, the constitutional head of state, elected with overwhelming popular support in a process deemed free and fair by the entire international community, is held captive by an African military dictator after being kidnapped by the world's superpower in cahoots with the former colonial master of his country. The world searches for terminology to describe the high crimes of the Bush regime in Haiti and the Central African Republic, and of course, Iraq ­ even as endless additional criminal contingencies take shape in the planning rooms of the Pentagon. The Bush men seem determined to methodically teach the planet that Washington is a threat to the very concept of international order ­ that they are Pirates.

12 March 2004

A very different problem...
Iraqi Police Likely Killed U.S. Civilians
By P. Mitchell Prothero
UPI, 11 March 2004
(Courtesy of The Agonist)
EXCERPT: Iraqi Police were likely responsible for Tuesday's murders of two U.S. civilian employees of the occupation government, local investigators said. The murders of Fern Holland, 33, a women's rights advocate, another unidentified American and their Iraqi translator outside the southern Iraqi town of Hilla Tuesday afternoon were committed by men in Iraqi police uniforms, according to witnesses. And local police officials insist they were actually police and not imposters. The two American victims are the first Coalition Provisional Authority civilians killed in Iraq, CPA officials said. In more than a dozen separate interviews with police officials and local eyewitnesses -- few of whom would speak on the record but told a basically similar version of what happened Tuesday -- a story has emerged that is very different from the one reported Wednesday. The version told to UPI Thursday is also supported by physical evidence at the crime scene. Coalition officials told reporters Wednesday that the car carrying the three victims had been stopped by a phony checkpoint on the road between the Iraqi towns of Hilla and Karbala, about 90 minutes south of Baghdad. After stopping the vehicle, imposter police opened fire on the car, killing the three, according to that account. Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez - the American commander of coalition military forces in Iraq -- and the Polish defense minister told reporters Wednesday that they believed imposter police set up a phony roadblock. But Iraqi Police commanders in Hilla -- who investigated the scene and arrested five men in uniform -- insist that a very different sequence of events took place...
SEE ALSO: Bush's Iraqi Terrorism Laboratory; Was it Worth it?  (OpEdNews,com)

The Last Thing Iraq Needs is a US Election Campaign
Bush wants a show of success but doesn't care about the reality
By Martin Woollacott
Guardian (UK), 12 March 2004
EXCERPT: As the presidential campaign sharpened in America, it was to be expected that the Bush administration's Middle East policies, already misguided in critical ways, would be further distorted. There is the race towards an arbitrarily chosen date this summer on which sovereignty will be handed to the Iraqis, a change that may prove either cosmetic or convulsive, perhaps both. There is the push to subsume Ariel Sharon's plans for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and a unilateral division of the West Bank into a supposed resumption of the peace process. And, thirdly, there is the effort to create a grand scheme under which the industrialised countries are to aid in the democratisation of the whole Middle East. What the three have in common is that they are designed to suggest to the American electorate that American policies are proceeding effectively, that other countries are willingly sharing the burden, and that the United Nations is on board. What they also have in common, beyond the intention of spiking John Kerry's guns, is their limited substance, their intention of involving America's allies in a show of alleged progress, and the fact that they could prove counterproductive. This is dubious ground, on which the EU, Russia and the UN should tread with care.
SEE ALSO: The Empire Backfires (ZNet/TomDispatch)
SEE ALSO: Pentagon Won't Give War Costs (AZDailySun)

Madrid Bombings Carry al-Qaida Hallmark
By Claude Salhani
UPI , 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: "It's a declaration of war against democracy," said Pat Cox, the president of the European Parliament, of Thursday's attacks in Madrid. On that point there is no debate. What is debatable, however, is who is responsible for the senseless slaughter of innocents. While all fingers in Spain are pointing at the Basque separatist movement ETA as the perpetrators of Thursday's atrocious train bombings that left some 186 dead and 600 wounded, the attacks carry all the markings of al-Qaida and its jihadi affiliates. For starters the Brussels-based World Observatory of Terrorism, an independent think tank affiliated with the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, points to five major reasons that cast doubt on the involvement of ETA. ...discounting the Istanbul bombings, al-Qaida has not struck in the West since 9/11, and Osama bin Laden and his followers have been largely on the defensive. This would be the perfect time for them to show their supporters and the Western powers that they are still very much a force to be reckoned. In many ways, Spain was the ideal target. It's a Western European nation, a member of NATO, a U.S. ally and a participant in the war in Iraq. Furthermore, given Spain's experience in combating terrorism over the years, it was far from being a "soft target."
As one German intelligence officer lamented, "now the war has reached Europe."
SEE ALSO: Bush's Iraqi Terrorism Laboratory; Was it Worth it?  (OpEdNews,com)

Al Jazeera Goes to Jail
By Christian Parenti
The Nation, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: Donald Rumsfeld has called Al Jazeera's coverage "outrageous" and "inexcusably biased" and implied that he'd like to see the satellite channel thrown out of Iraq. So far the American military has bombed the network's offices in both Baghdad and Kabul, killing one employee; arrested and briefly jailed twenty-one of Al Jazeera's reporters; and now has imprisoned and allegedly abused and humiliated Hassan and Darwish in ways that the UN convention on such matters would consider torture. At the same time that the US military is harassing Al Jazeera reporters, other parts of the US government, including the State Department, are attempting to answer Al Jazeera in its own language and format. On February 14 the United States launched a nominally independent, US-funded Arabic-language satellite channel called Al Hurra, which means "the free one." The purpose of this effort is to address the lack of popular support for the US occupation in Iraq, as well as the deepening crisis of American legitimacy throughout the Arab world; polls from the region indicate that more and more people hate the United States every day.

Those Who Deny the Crimes of the Past
Reflections on American Racist Atrocity Denial, 1776-2004
By Paul Street
ZNet, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: There are many indications that the United States is nowhere near ready to repudiate imperial arrogance, racism, and criminality so that it might join or help create a real world community.  One such indication is the brazen chutzpah with which it has restored fascist thugs to power in the Haiti, standing by while U.S.-friendly henchman butcher supporters of a president that American military personnel kidnapped "back to Africa" because he was too closely aligned for American corporate tastes to the nation's millions of desperately impoverished citizens.  If one of those citizens is to be believed, and his eyewitness testimony...is richly consistent with a long record of U.S. military conduct...some U.S. Marines are posing for souvenir photographs with murdered victims of Haiti's new death squads. Another depressing sign is the United States' failure to include Arab victims in its ongoing presidential candidate "debate" over the wisdom and morality of George W. Bush's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.  At the height of his anti-war campaign for the Democratic domination, Howard Dean said that "there are now almost 400 people dead who wouldn't be dead if we hadn't gone to war" (New York Times, November 4, 2003), ignoring careful investigations showing that more than 7800 Iraqi civilian non-combatants died during the invasion.
SEE ALSO: Mickey Z: Support the Good Guys (ZNet)

AUDIO/VIDEO
In-Depth: The Full Story of Aristide's Kidnapping
Democracy Now!, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: Just back from the Central African Republic, Kim Ives, an editor of the Haitian newspaper Haiti-Progres, discusses the events surrounding President Aristide's overthrow. Ives spoke with Aristide in his native Creole and was able to piece together what is probably the most comprehensive picture of what Aristide says happened to him and his wife the morning they were forced out of Haiti.

Faces of Globalization: A Dilemma in India
UPI, 11 March 2004
EXCERPT: Introduction: It's good for the economy; it creates employment, lots of it, and working nights at India's back offices is pleasing and financially rewarding for a huge number of young Indians. However, while India's money-spinning industry of taking service jobs from overseas is turning out to be a source of discomfort for U.S.

11 March 2004

US Fingerprints on Haiti
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
Christian Science Monitor via ZNet, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: If the circumstances weren't so calamitous, the US-orchestrated removal of former President Jean- Bertrand Aristide from Haiti would be farcical. According to Mr. Aristide, US officials in Port-au- Prince told him that rebels were on the way to the presidential residence and that he and his family were unlikely to survive unless they immediately boarded an American-chartered plane standing by to take them to exile. The US made it clear, he said, that it would provide no protection for him at the official residence, despite the ease with which this could have been arranged.... here are several tragedies in this surrealistic episode. The first is the apparent incapacity of the US to speak honestly about such matters as toppling governments. Instead, it brushes aside crucial questions: Did the US summarily deny military protection to Aristide? Did the US supply weapons to the rebels, who showed up in Haiti last month with sophisticated equipment that last year reportedly had been taken by the US military to the Dominican Republic, next door to Haiti? Why did the US abandon the call of European and Caribbean leaders for a political compromise, a compromise that Aristide had already accepted? Most important, did the US bankroll a coup in Haiti, a scenario that, based on the evidence, seems likely? Only someone ignorant of American history and of the administrations of the elder and younger George Bushes would dismiss these questions.
SEE ALSO: Port-Au-Prince as Seen by an 18 Year-Old (ZNet)

Study Faults Media Coverage of WMD
Editor & Publisher, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: A new study of how the media has covered the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), released today, concludes, "Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent administration's perspectives on WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats and policy options." The other three main conclusions of the study conducted by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and the University of Maryland: Too few stories offered alternative perspectives to the "official line" on WMD surrounding the Iraq conflict; most journalists accepted the Bush administration linking the "war on terror" inextricably to the issue of WMD; and most media outlets represented WMD as a "monolithic menace" without distinguishing between types of weapons and between possible weapons programs and the existence of actual weapons. The complete study, directed by Susan Moeller and titled "Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction," is available at the CISSM Web site. The authors of the study state that, "Poor coverage of WMD resulted less from political bias on the part of journalists, editors, and producers than from tired journalistic conventions." They also declare that the British media "reported more critically on public policy than did their American colleagues." ...He adds that "the American media did not play the role of checking and balancing the exercise of power that the standard theory of democracy requires." Among those writers singled out for praise in the study are Barton Gellman, Walter Pincus, Michael Getler and Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, and David Sanger and William Broad of The New York Times. It also cites articles in E&P by William Jackson Jr. exploring Judith Miller's controversial WMD coverage in the New York Times.

The U.S. Press and the 'Heroes in Error'
Despite recent articles about the role of defectors in misleading U.S. intelligence agencies over the alleged presence of WMD in Iraq, not a single national newspaper saw fit to follow up on a damning admission by Ahmad Chalabi in The Daily Telegraph of London.
By William E. Jackson Jr.
Editor & Publisher, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: Despite recent articles in several newspapers about the role of defectors and exile groups in misleading U.S. and British intelligence agencies over the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, not a single national paper saw fit to follow up on a damning admission by Ahmad Chalabi in The Daily Telegraph of London on Feb. 19. Was it to avoid giving another news outlet credit for a scoop; or is it simply too embarrassing to go there? That is, to investigate the role of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader in pre-war propaganda might involve the retracing of the steps by which one's own paper was tricked into reporting bogus intelligence in the buildup to war. With hundreds of Americans already dead and thousands wounded -- on the overriding premise that Saddam Hussein possessed illicit WMD that threatened the United States -- Chalabi, in an interview from Baghdad, brazenly argued in the Daily Telegraph that the ends justified the means. Disinformation about the weapons, even though later discredited, achieved the aim of persuading the Americans to overthrow Saddam and occupy Iraq. Shrugging off charges that he had deliberately misled, Chalabi was quoted as boasting: "We are heroes in error ... Our objective has been achieved ... What was said before is not important." It is now well established that some newspapers, including The New York Times, depended on the INC and defectors for exclusives on the alleged presence of WMD in Iraq. But only one major news outlet, Knight Ridder, has incorporated the Daily Telegraph interview with Chalabi into its recent WMD reporting.

Blowback: US- and Israeli-Style
By Ivan Eland
Common Dreams, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: Israel recently launched its deadliest attack against the Palestinians in more than a year. In a muscular raid against two Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza strip, the Israelis used heavy armor and helicopter gun ships allegedly to attempt to seize weapons and arrest Palestinian attackers, which had fired mortars at nearby Jewish settlements but had injured no settlers. The Israeli incursion killed 14 Palestinians, including three unarmed youths, and injured 83 people, including 40 under the age of 18. But the Israelis made no arrests for the mortar attacks and seized no weapons. Israel and its imitator, the United States, have both launched an aggressive ³war on terrorism² that is liable to undermine their long-term security.
SEE ALSO: Chomsky Interviewed on Bush, Iraq and Israel (ZNet)

Pillar Fight: The "New" U.N. Blames the Poor
By Mickey Z
ZNet, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: With at least a billion people on the planet subsisting on the equivalent of one US dollar a day or less, a March 8 report issued by the U.N. commission explained that its "new pillars" includes "access to bank loans, encouraging job skills and training, and setting up simpler, fairer rules and regulations can all help small-scale business flourish." Conveniently, Forbes magazine just announced there are 587 individuals and family units worth $1 billion or more...an increase from 476 in 2003. All together, the world's billionaires are worth $1.9 trillion...a total higher than the gross domestic product of the 170 poorest countries combined. Score one for better access to bank loans, I guess. "While the rich continue to accumulate wealth for themselves, millions upon millions of people around the world are trying to survive under conditions of unspeakable degradation," writes Jamie Chapman at the World Socialist Website. "One estimate puts the cost of satisfying the entire world's need for food and sanitation at $13 billion-less than 1 percent of wealth of the world's billionaires."
SEE ALSO: IMF Maintains Facade of Power (Guardian)