30 April 2004

AUDIO LINK
L. Paul Bremmer Critical of Bush Administration Inattention to Anti-terrorism Program Prior to 9-11
NPR Hourly News, 30 April 2004
In an address to an anti-terrorism conference prior to 9-11, Iraqi Administrator, L. Paul Bremmer declared that it would take a major terrorist event to get the Bush administration to realize that it needed to get organized to face the terrorist threat. In that regard, Mr. Bremmer joins the mounting chorus of O'Niell, Clarke, Woodward, et al, documenting that the Bush Team was too distracted by other concerns before 9-11.

Evangelicals and Politics
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, Week of 23 April 2004
EXCERPT:
BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This week, the second in our series on America's evangelicals. Today, evangelicals and politics, an issue back in the news since President Bush's recent press conference, in which he seemed to some hearers to equate his policies in Iraq with God's will.

Cheney Staff Accused of Role in CIA Leak
By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY
EXCERPT: Vice President Cheney was aware of a meeting held by his staff that started a chain of events that ended with the "effective betrayal of our country," former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson charged Thursday in an interview with USA TODAY.

$660 million for 'zero capability' multinational empire squad...
Bush Administration Mulls 75,000-Strong Foreign 'Peace Force'
Agence-France Press via SpaceWar, 29 April 2004
EXCERPT: US officials are mulling plans to create a 75,000-member international peacekeeping force to intervene in trouble spots around the globe, two senior officials with the George W. Bush administration said Thursday. "What we envision is about a 75,000-person force starting in Africa for training .... people to be available for peacekeeping," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a House of Representatives committee. The pricetag for the program would be "about 100 million dollars the first year and 660 million dollars over the five-year life of this program," which initially would be financed about 80 percent by the US Defense Department and 20 percent by the State Department, Armitage testified. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations that the force could intervene in countries such as Sudan, where civil war has led to the displacement of thousands of people, and along with other world hot spots. "This is an initiative designed to train other country's forces, so that when peacekeeping requirements come up, as they did recently in Liberia or as we're facing one in Haiti today, there are more capable foreign forces to draw, on -- so that we're not constantly turning to our military for tasks that could be performed by others."

E.P.A. Will Not Withdraw Its Mercury Plan
New York Times, 30 April 2004
EXCERPT: Rebuffing pressure from Democrats and environmental groups, the Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday that it would not withdraw its plan for regulating mercury from coal-fired power plants. But the agency's administrator, Michael O. Leavitt, said it would take an additional three months before issuing a final regulation. The new deadline, March 15, 2005, would become especially significant if control of the White House changes in the November election.

Corporate America's CEO Pay Heist
By Allan Maass and Nicole Colson
Socialist Worker via ZNet, 28 April 2004
EXCERPT: THE U.S. economy lost jobs again last year--even though it entered the third year of a "recovery" from recession. But as NICOLE COLSON and ALAN MAASS report, Corporate America¹s biggest bosses couldn¹t resist giving themselves a big fat raise anyway. "I¹M A little embarrassed about it." That¹s what United Technologies Corp. CEO George David had to say about his paycheck for 2003--a cool $70.5 million. He should be embarrassed. But he won¹t be alone. According to Business Week magazine¹s annual review, paychecks for CEOs at the biggest U.S. corporations in 2003 were "off-the-charts amazing." Overall compensation--including salaries, bonuses and long-term compensation deals like stock options--for CEOs at the country¹s 365 largest companies increased by an average of 9.1 percent last year, Business Week found. After two years of declining, the ratio that compares CEO pay to the wages of an average worker was on the rise again--climbing to 301 to 1. That¹s down somewhat from the record heights set at the end of the 1990s "miracle economy" bubble. But the filthy rich bosses of Corporate America are still raking it in--thanks to skyrocketing overall compensation that, from 1990 to 2003, increased eight times faster than the rate inflation, more than six times faster than average workers¹ pay, nearly three times faster than corporate profits and almost double the pace of the booming stock market.

No Democrat is Going to Beat Bushism
An interview with Green Party activist Howie Hawkins
By Derek Seidman
Left Hook, 29 April 2004
EXCERPT: No Democrat is going to beat Bushism because the Democratic Party leadership agrees with the core Bush policies, from tax cuts for the rich to the Patriot Act and the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The term "Bushism" is being used by liberals today the way they used "Reaganism" in the 1980s - as a way to try and scare us into supporting the Democrats. But just as the majority of Democrats in Congress voted in support of Reagan's turn to neoliberal economic policies and the neoconservative post-Vietnam military build-up - and, in fact, supported the initiation of these policies under Carter - the majority of Democrats in Congress today are voting in support of Bush's economic and military initiatives, which do not contradict but amplify Clinton's economic and foreign policies. Bushism turns out to be the Bipartisan Consensus behind neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative foreign policies. These are two sides of the program of corporate domination, with neoliberalism using economic means and neoconservatism enforcing the policies with military means. It is true that there is a left fringe in the Democratic Party, represented consistently by only about 25 Representatives in Congress, who are indeed opposed to this Bipartisan Consensus. But these progressives are totally marginalized in the Democratic Party, defeated by their own Democratic Caucus in Congress on every issue. What is worse is that the Democratic leadership uses these progressives in Congress to put a progressive facade on the Democratic Party that they use to lure progressive voters into voting Democratic. Worst of all is the fact that much of the popular base of voters for a progressive alternative not only buy into this progressive wrapping on a reactionary package, but they accept the self-defeating logic of voting for the lesser evil. The strategy of the supporting the lesser evil leads to supporting what you started out to oppose.

Flattery will get you nothing.
Cheney Praises Fox News Channel
Vice President Calls Network 'More Accurate' Than Others
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 30 April 2004
EXCERPT: Vice President Cheney endorsed the Fox News Channel during a conference call last night with tens of thousands of Republicans who were gathered across the country to celebrate a National Party for the President Day organized by the Bush-Cheney campaign.

29 April 2004

George is Humble, George is Great
"The Jesus Factor"
Frontline tonight on PBS
EXCERPT: As an evangelical Christian, President Bush has something in common with the 46 percent of Americans who describe themselves as being "born again" or having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Often has the president recounted praying about major decisions facing the nation--but what do we actually know about the rudiments of George Bush's faith? To what extent do the president's spiritual beliefs impact or influence his political decision-making? And how closely do Bush's religious views mirror those of the country's burgeoning--and politically influential--evangelical movement?

Powers of the President
The Supreme Court has begun hearing arguments about whether George W. Bush can jail American citizens indefinitely if they are suspected of plotting terror. Will the justices give him a blank check?
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek, 29 April 2004
EXCERPT: With pointed and often skeptical questions, Supreme Court justices today gave strong indications that they may reject President George W. Bush’s most audacious claim in the war on terrorism: that he has the power to lock up indefinitely any U.S. citizen whom he suspects may have consorted with Al Qaeda or any of its allies. Predicting U.S. Supreme Court decisions by listening to oral arguments is notoriously hazardous. But perhaps the most telling sign in today’s historic arguments in the cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, two U.S. citizens whom the White House has labeled “enemy combatants,” came unexpectedly when even Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s most forceful conservative, seemed to challenge the Bush administration’s claim of seemingly unlimited powers during wartime.
AUDIO LINKS  (Provided by PBS NewsHour)
Audio of the Supreme Court Arguments
The high court decided to immediately release audio recordings of its arguments in Wednesday's precedent-setting cases:
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld
RealAudio: Part I: Federal public defender Frank Dunham, for Yaser Hamdi
RealAudio: Part II: Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement, for the government
RealAudio: Part III: Dunham's closing statements
Rumsfeld v. Padilla
RealAudio: Part I: Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement, for the government
RealAudio: Part II: Stanford Univ. law professor Jennifer Martinez, for Jose Padilla
RealAudio: Part III: Clement's closing statements
SEE ALSO:
Audio of the Supreme Court Arguments Cheney v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
RealAudio: Part I: Solicitor General Theodore Olson, for the government
RealAudio: Part II: Alan Morrison of Public Citizen, for the Sierra Club
RealAudio: Part III: Paul Orfanedes, for Judicial Watch
RealAudio: Part IV: Olson's closing statements

Show Us the Money
Where did the 9/11 emergency funds go, Mr. President?
By David R. Obey and Robert Byrd
TomPaine.com, 28 April 2004
EXCERPT: On Sept. 14, 2001, just three days after the tragic events of September 11, the Congress of the United States established a $40 billion Emergency Response Fund to assist the victims of those terrorist attacks and to strengthen homeland and national security. In response to the extraordinary events of that day, the Congress chose to grant an extraordinary amount of flexibility to the Executive Branch. However, the terms of the law were clear. Namely, the president was required by law to keep the Congress fully informed through consultation with the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees prior to the expenditure of funds. Also, the administration was required by law to provide Congress with quarterly reports detailing the use of these funds. To the best of our knowledge, as the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee during 2002, we were provided no consultations by the White House, as required by law, about the use of the $20 billion of funds that were made available to the president for allocation. If this is not an accurate view, please advise us of any record of consultations with Appropriations Committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate, as was required by statute prior to the expenditure of these funds. We have numerous concerns about the administration's stewardship of these funds.

The militarization of America
The Military-Academic Complex: Who's the Real National Champion?
By Nicholas Turse
Nation Institute/TomDispatch, 27 April 2004
EXCERPT: Since 1961, thanks to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, we've all been cognizant of the "unwarranted influence" of the military-industrial complex in America. Later in that decade, Senator J. William Fulbright spoke out against the militarization of academia, warning that, "in lending itself too much to the purposes of government, a university fails its higher purposes," and called attention to the existence of what he termed the military-industrial-academic complex or what historian Stuart W. Leslie has termed the "golden triangle" of "military agencies, the high technology industry, and research universities." While we might intuitively accept the existence of a military-academic complex in America, defining and understanding it has never been simple -- both because of its ambiguous nature and its dual character. In actuality, the military-academic complex has two distinct arms. The first is the official, out-and-proud, but oft ignored, melding of the military and academia. Since 1802, when Thomas Jefferson signed legislation establishing the United States Military Academy, America has been formally melding higher education and the art of warfare. The second is the militarized civilian university -- since World War II and the emergence of the national security state, civilian educational institutions have increasingly become engaged in the pursuit of enhanced war-making abilities. In 1958, the Department of Defense spent an already impressive $91 million in support of "academic research." By 1964, the sum had reached $258 million and by 1970, in the midst of the Vietnam War, $266 million. By 2003, however, any of these numbers, or even their $615 million total, was dwarfed by the Pentagon's prime contract awards to just two schools, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University which, together, raked in a combined total of $842,437,294.

Bush Diverting Environmental Funds into Fossil Fuels
The Daily Mislead, 28 April 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush yesterday tried to deflect questions about his environmental record by claiming that he supports efforts to reduce America's fossil fuel usage. He said he had "introduced ideas like a hydrogen-powered automobile, put money behind it and research behind it" so that so that we will be "less dependent on foreign sources of energy" and we will "improve the environment." But Bush's hydrogen-automobile proposal is purposely engineered to be fossil fuel dependent, and it is paid for by taking money out of programs that are actually reducing fossil fuel use.

The Spin Doctor is In: Examining Corporate PR at Bechtel
In the face of criticism over its controversial construction projects, Bechtel has taken media manipulation to the next level, employing a three-pronged approach to weaving a rosy story for the public and investors.
By A.C. Thompson
CorpWatch, 28 April 2004
EXCERPT: The Bechtel Group, Inc., the massive San Francisco-based construction and engineering firm, has played a leading role in some of the most controversial construction projects in modern history: California's San Onofre nuclear reactor, Boston's budget-busting "Big Dig," the failed attempt to rebuild and privatize Bolivia's water system, the ongoing corporate takeover of the London subway system, and now a $3 billion reconstruction job in Iraq. This week, the Associated Press revealed that Bechtel's troubles are far from over: The company has been forced to pay $110,000 to settle safety and environmental violations in recent years, and in Iraq, the subcontractors it hired have shelled out $86 million in fines. A lesser firm would be sunk by all the bad publicity, but somehow the well-connected, privately held corporation always seems to emerge unscathed and ready to score more big-ticket public works jobs. So how does Bechtel do it?

Beyond Voting
Anarchist Organizing, Electoral Politics And Developing Strategy For Liberation
By Chris Crass
ZNet, 28 April 2004
EXCERPT: Presidential elections are often the terrain on which radicals and anarchists debate the merits of electoral politics. This election season is no different. Social movements around the world and in the United States are declaring Bush's defeat at the ballot box a top priority. As radicals, we have consistently opposed the policies of the Bush administration and have mobilized our opposition repeatedly to the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. We know that the Democratic Party shares the majority of the Republican Party's platform. Both candidates represent ruling class worldviews and institutions of domination. What do we do?...
The focus of my argument about electoral politics has been elections on the local and state level. Getting the Bush administration out of the White House is not my primary goal, but nevertheless, it is a goal. Gabriel Sayegh has contributed an important essay "Tear down the prison, get out the vote: an antiracist argument for voting" which presents a strong argument to white radicals to vote against Bush. He writes: "If white activists continue along the line of 'there's no different between the candidates so I won't vote' then we miss the very important ways that the candidates do differ, and how those differences can be leveraged in an effort to build a stronger movement. While Bush and Kerry are certain to serve many of the same corporate masters, there are everyday material realities which, however small they may seem to upper and middle class white people, are indeed enormously significant to those who aren't white or aren't middle/upper class. For instance, Bush's first act in offices was to place a global gag rule on reproductive rights and abortion clinics around the world, effectively undermining the right to family planning services to women around the globe. And who are those women? Poor women of color. That doesn't mean the Democrats are the answer to Bush or the Republicans. It means --not so simply-- that white activists need to be politically savvy enough to understand how those little, narrow nuances that separate the candidates and political parties are not so little and narrow to everyone. For millions of poor people--most of them people of color-- that dime's worth of difference between Republican and Democrat can mean life or death."
How can we use these differences to weaken both party's positions and strengthen ours? For example, the imperialism of the Bush administration favors unilateralism and military force and this is generally opposed by Democrats who under the Clinton administration preferred the imperialism of international trade agreements, diplomacy and more structural state violence like sanctions. How can we move the slogans from focusing on a person to a system: from "Anyone but Bush" to "Everyone Against Empire". If we can bring an anti-imperialist/anti-empire politics into the growing frustration with the US war on Iraq, it can open doors to broader politic engagement against the imperialist agenda of both parties.

Where is the Outrage?
Bush's eyes twinkle and taunt, but our columist wants to see the pain past presidents showed during wartime
By Patti Davis
Newsweek, 27 April 2004
EXCERPT: I have been studying President George W. Bush’s face recently—in newspaper photos, and on television. I’m looking for something very specific: grief. A shadow behind his eyes or a weariness at the corners, a softness to his mouth that suggests he agonizes before making pronouncements, decisions, policies. Some sign that every death in Iraq weighs on him and weighs heavily. So far, I have seen nothing.

28 April 2004

View the MoveOn PAC Bush-Kerry
Comparison Ad

Privacy, aka Secrecy, Abounds in Bush White House
Bush-Cheney 9/11 Interview Won't Be Formally Recorded
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and PHILIP SHENON
New York Times, 28 April 2004
EXCERPT: The White House said on Tuesday that there would be no recording or formal transcription of the historic joint interview of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that the president's counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, would attend the session. The interview, to begin at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday at the White House, will be recorded by two note takers, one from the White House. Under a pact with the White House that allowed all its 10 members in the interview, the commission is permitted to take a note taker, but not a recording device. The panel said it did not press for a formal transcription of the session, letting the White House decide. The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters that the session would not be officially transcribed because the White House considered it a "private meeting" that would include highly classified information.
SEE ALSO:
The Bush Vision of Presidential Power
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 27 April 2004
EXCERPT: There's a deep mystery surrounding Dick Cheney's energy task force, but it's not about what happened back in 2001. Clearly, energy industry executives dictated the content of a report that served their interests. The real mystery is why the Bush administration has engaged in a three-year fight — which reaches the Supreme Court today — to hide the details of a story whose broad outline we already know. One possibility is that there is some kind of incriminating evidence in the task force's records. Another is that the administration fears that full disclosure will highlight its chummy relationship with the energy industry. But there's a third possibility: that the administration is really taking a stand on principle. And that's what scares me. ...Could there be a smoking gun in the records? Well, maybe Mr. Cheney was already divvying up Iraq's oil fields in 2001, but I'd be surprised to find anything that clear-cut. It's more likely that the administration fears that releasing the task force's records would alert the public to the obvious. Those of us who have been following such things know that the Bush administration is so deeply enmeshed in the energy industry that it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Campaign contributions are part of it, but it's also personal: George Bush and Dick Cheney are only two of the many members of the administration who grew rich by relying on the kindness of energy companies. Indeed, the day after the executive director of Mr. Cheney's task force left the government, he went into business as an energy industry lobbyist. In return, the Bush administration has given energy companies a lot to celebrate. One policy decision alone, effectively scrapping "new source review" in regulating power plant pollution, is worth billions of dollars to industry donors. ...As Linda Greenhouse recently pointed out in The New York Times, the legal arguments the administration is making for the secrecy of the energy task force are "strikingly similar" to those it makes for its right to detain, without trial, anyone it deems an enemy combatant. In both cases, as Ms. Greenhouse puts it, the administration has put forward "a vision of presidential power . . . as far-reaching as any the court has seen."

 BOOK REVIEW The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity
by Ambassador Joseph Wilson
BuzzFlash Review, April 2004
EXCERPT: Okay, for the umpteenth time, let's get this straight: In order to send a message to any Bush Cartel whistleblowers and truth tellers, Karl Rove or Scooter Libby (or both) authorized the outing of a CIA operative. But this wasn't just any CIA operative. This was a woman who specialized in tracking the illicit trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction. Okay, you ask, isn't this treasonous hypocrisy? First, they start a war by lying about how threatening a nation is and about that nation having Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then you make inoperable a CIA agent who helps to prevent rogue nations and terrorists from obtaining Weapons of Mass Destruction? In normal nations, wouldn't this be enough to bring about the fall of a government that betrayed its own people, endangered the security of our nation, and started a ruinous war that is creating an exponentially growing pool of terrorists? Yes, but this is the U.S. under the Bush rule.

Special Pentagon Office On WMD Intelligence Promoted Iraq Invasion
By JAMES RISEN
New York Times, 28 April 2004
EXCERPT: Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop in a windowless, cipher-locked room at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries. The men culled classified material, much of it uncorroborated data from the C.I.A. "We discovered tons of raw intelligence," said Michael Maloof, one of the pair. "We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the C.I.A.'s finished reports." They recorded and annotated their evidence on butcher paper hung like a mural around their small office. By the end of the year, as the rubble was being cleared from the World Trade Center and United States forces were fighting in Afghanistan, the men had constructed a startling new picture of global terrorism.  Old ethnic, religious and political divides between terrorist groups were breaking down, the two men warned, posing an ominous new threat. They saw alliances among a wide range of Islamic terrorists, and theorized about a convergence of Sunni and Shiite extremist groups and secular Arab governments. Their conclusions, delivered to senior Bush administration officials, connected Iraq and Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. In doing so, the team also helped set off a controversy over the shaping of intelligence that continues today.
SEE ALSO: A Graphic of Key Players (NYT)

AUDIO LINK
Thinking About Supporting the Troops
NPR's Morning Edition, 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: There is overwhelming support for the Iraq war among U.S. military personnel, but for more complicated reasons than one might think. NPR's Jeff Brady reports.
SEE ALSO: Support the Troops by Bringing Them Home (Seattle Times)

Bush Misleads Seniors on New Drug Cards
MisLeader.org, 27 April 2004
EXCERPT: Less than a year ago, President Bush promised Americans that he would "provide seniors with a drug discount card that saves them 10 to 25% off the cost of all drugs, so they'll start seeing savings immediately" on their medications. But, as the program launches next week, experts have concluded that the cards don't guarantee seniors any savings at all. Additionally, instead of admitting this, the President used millions in taxpayer money to promote the cards through television ads - ads that government regulators later said were misleading. As the New York Times reports, the White House plan locks seniors into the cards they initially choose, then allows the card sponsors "to change their prices on a weekly basis," thus never guaranteeing any benefit at all.

27 April 2004

Sneak and Peak: USA Patriot Act Reaches Further Than You Think
An interview with David Cole by Kim Zetter
Wired News via TomPaine.com, 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: WN: From a civil-liberties perspective, which Patriot Act provisions represent the most egregious violations?
Cole: The provision that authorizes the government to freeze an organization's and individual's assets on the basis of secret evidence that they have no opportunity to confront or rebut (is one example). But the immigration provisions are the most troubling provisions. Sections 411 and 412 give the government power to deny entry to foreign nationals based on pure speech and to deport foreigners, including permanent residents, based on innocent association with any group that the attorney general doesn't like and puts on a blacklist. They allow the attorney general to lock up foreigners without charges and without making a showing to a court that they are dangerous or a risk of flight. Section 218 removes the probable cause requirement for wiretaps and searches whenever the government has a significant foreign intelligence interest in a criminal investigation. It is one of the most questionable provisions in the act constitutionally, and is very likely to be challenged when the government seeks to use evidence obtained in one of these wiretaps. But thus far we haven't got there. The libraries provision (Section 215) gives the government the power to get records from any business without showing that the suspect is a terrorist, a criminal or even a foreign agent. And the "sneak and peek" provision, which allows the government to delay notification to homeowners of searches‹to engage in secret searches whenever the government says that prior notice would undermine the criminal investigation, which they're going to be able to say in every case.
SEE ALSO:
Computer Student on Trial for Aid to Muslim Web Sites
By TIMOTHY EGAN
New york Times, 27 April 2 2004
EXCERPT:
BOISE, Idaho — Not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim students led by a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate held a candlelight vigil in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam. Today, that graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, is on trial in a heavily guarded courtroom here, accused of plotting to aid and to maintain Islamic Web sites that promote jihad. As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he cannot be held criminally liable for what others wrote. Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide "expert guidance or assistance" to groups deemed terrorist. ...Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide "expert guidance or assistance" to groups deemed terrorist.

White GOP Elephant: US Pays Billions for Missile Defense System that Can't Hit Squat
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush Administration is quite cheerful about coughing up about $10 billion each year for five years, for a contractor-fattening monstrosity that won't work. (While the ultimate price tag will by some counts run past $1 trillion dollars -- making missile defense a half-dozen times more costly than our war in Iraq to date.) Meanwhile, this same spendthrift White House is balking at shelling out a fraction of that sum for, believe it or not, military equipment for troops under fire in Iraq.

2 Top Democrats Press Bush for Details on 9/11 Spending
By CARL HULSE
New York Times, 2004
EXCERPT: The senior Democrats on the House and Senate appropriations committees pressed the White House on Monday for a full accounting of how the Bush administration had spent $40 billion in emergency money that was provided by Congress just days after the Sept. 11 attacks. Building on a report that the White House had prepared for the invasion of Iraq by diverting $700 million from post-Sept. 11 emergency appropriations, the two lawmakers, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia and Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, said they had "numerous concerns" beyond the $700 million about the use of the emergency money. "When the Congress provided the extraordinary authorities in response to the Al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it expected that tax dollars would be managed carefully so as to provide assistance to the victims of the attack, to secure our homeland and to improve our national security," the lawmakers said in a letter to the White House. Mr. Byrd and Mr. Obey said that contrary to the requirements of law, there appeared to have been no consultation with Congress on how $20 billion specifically handed over to the president for his allocation had been distributed. They also said the administration had not submitted required quarterly reports on the use of the entire $40 billion for almost a year. In asking the White House to detail how the $40 billion had been spent, the lawmakers said, "Transparency in this regard is critical."
Bob Woodward reported in his new book, "Plan of Attack," that the administration had used $700 million to make ready for the Iraq invasion without telling Congress. The administration has said it complied with all spending laws and did not use the bulk of that $700 million until after the House and the Senate had passed resolutions authorizing force against Iraq. Republicans in charge of the appropriations committees, who have raised no objections to the spending, have said they were generally kept abreast of how the emergency money was being used.

Bush Lawyers Try to Gag FBI Whistleblower Over 9/11
By Andrew Buncombe
Independent (UK), 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration will today seek to prevent a former FBI translator from providing evidence about 11 September intelligence failures to a group of relatives and survivors who have accused international banks and officials of aiding al-Qa'ida. Sibel Edmonds was subpoenaed by a law firm representing more than 500 family members and survivors of the attacks to testify that she had seen information proving there was considerable evidence before September 2001 that al-Qa'ida was planning to strike the US with aircraft. The lawyers made their demand after reading comments Mrs Edmonds had made to The Independent. But the US Justice Department is seeking to stop her from testifying, citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege". Today in a federal court in Washington, senior government lawyers will try to gag Mrs Edmonds, claiming that disclosure of her evidence "would cause serious damage to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States". Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who had top secret security clearance, claimed this month that while working in the FBI's Washington headquarters, she saw information proving senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes. She has provided sworn testimony to the independent panel appointed by President George Bush to investigate the circumstances surrounding 11 September.

Justice Dept. Opens Inquiry on Memo Theft
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times, 27 April 2004
EXCERPT: The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into accusations that Republican Congressional aides stole sensitive Democratic memorandums, and the department has tapped David N. Kelley, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, to lead the politically charged case, officials said Monday. The decision to bring in Mr. Kelley, rather than have prosecutors in Washington pursue the case, came after lawmakers from both parties urged the Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor to avoid the appearance of a conflict. The department said in a letter dated Monday that it was confident that Mr. Kelley would conduct the investigation "in a thorough, fair, impartial and professional manner." Several leading Democrats applauded his appointment, with Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York saying it was "a very good first step." The opening of the criminal inquiry increases the significance of the case, which has provoked open hostilities between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in their continuing battle over President Bush's judicial nominations. ...Over at least 18 months, the aides improperly read, downloaded and printed 4,670 files concerning Democratic tactics in opposing many of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees, the report said, and some of the material was leaked to conservative groups supporting the nominees and news media outlets. The sergeant-at-arms suggested that the unauthorized spying could have violated laws against the receipt of stolen property and lying to investigators, among others. The report also suggested that many other Republican aides might have been involved in trafficking in the stolen documents, and Democrats have questioned whether officials at the Justice Department and the White House were also privy to the material in working to support Mr. Bush's nominees and derail Democratic opposition.

Justices Won't Hear Military-College Appeal on Dinner Prayer
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
New York Times, 27 April 2004
EXCERPT: The Supreme Court refused on Monday to consider an appeal by the State of Virginia to permit the state-sponsored Virginia Military Institute to return to the practice of dinner-hour prayers. Two lower federal courts had declared the cadet-led prayers unconstitutional. Only Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist — two short of the necessary four justices — voted to hear the appeal. The court's announcement came after the court debated the case internally for more than two months.

Science be damned!
Bush Administration Muffles New Findings on Snowmobile Noise in Yellowstone
BushGreenWatch, 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush Administration is actively seeking to reopen Yellowstone National Park to snowmobiles. The administration not only overturned a Clinton-era ban on these vehicles in Yellowstone, but also appealed a court ruling that reinstated the ban. The federal judge in that case called the administration's policy "completely politically driven" at the expense of sound science, at odds with the National Park Service's own findings on the machines' impacts on air quality and wildlife. Now, an internal report prepared by Yellowstone staff shows that four-stroke snowmobiles emit enough noise to cause hearing damage. The study findings were finalized last month, but are as yet unreleased. The Bush Administration is championing four-stroke snowmobiles in its ongoing attempt to reverse the snowmobile ban. It has not commented on the new findings publicly or in court. Instead they were revealed to the public last week by the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees, a group of 230 retired employees of the National Park Service.

Kerry Questions Bush Attendance in Guard in 70's
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGOREN
New York Times, 27 April 2004
EXCERPT:  In a day of piercing and personal exchanges, John Kerry questioned on Monday whether President Bush skipped National Guard duty 30 years ago, while Vice President Dick Cheney disparaged Mr. Kerry as an opportunist unfit to lead the nation in wartime. Mr. Kerry had previously declined to join other Democrats in raising questions about Mr. Bush's National Guard attendance record. But during a contentious interview on national television on Monday, when pressed on whether he threw away his Vietnam war medals in a protest in 1971, he defended himself and attacked the president.
SEE ALSO:
Bush, Kerry Campaigns Trade Accusations on Defense Spending
Agence-France Press, 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: The campaigns of President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry accused each other Monday of backing foolhardy cuts in defense spending as security issues clung to center stage of the race for White House. Bush's Republicans unveiled a new television ad and a "Winning the War on Terror Tour" highlighting Kerry's Senate votes against such weapons systems as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, B-2 Stealth bomber and F/A-18 fighter jet. The Democrats countered by accusing the White House of "hypocrisy," saying that Vice President Dick Cheney had tried to cut 81 major weapons programs while defense secretary from 1989 to 1993, including many the Republicans are using against Kerry. The exchange came as both Bush and Kerry campaigned Monday on the theme of jobs, and it highlighted how prominently security concerns were likely to play along with the economy in the November 2 election.
SEE ALSO:
More Bush Distortions of Kerry Defense Record
Latest barrage of ads repeats misleading claims that Kerry "repeatedly opposed" mainstream weapons.
FactCheck.org, 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: Bush ads released April 26 recycle some distortions of Kerry's voting record on military hardware. We've de-bunked these half-truths before but the Bush campaign persists. The ads -- many targeted to specific states -- repeat the claim that Kerry opposed a list of mainstream weapons including Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Apache helicopters, and also repeat the claim that he voted against body armor for frontline troops in Iraq. In fact, Kerry voted against a few large Pentagon money bills, of which Bradleys, Apaches and body armor were small parts, but not against those items specifically.

Pro-Choice, Anti-Exploitation
DNC's Kicking Ass, 25 April 2004
EXCERPT: Hundreds of thousands of women, men, and children marched in Washington, DC today in solidarity for a woman's right to choose. In peaceful protest of the right-wing policies of the Bush administration, the streets were filled with color, enthusiasm, hopefulness, and a commitment to electing John Kerry to the White House in November. The size and spectacle of the march was inspiring. Meanwhile, unable to defend their right-wing policies on the merits, the Bush White House reached yet again into its 9/11 bag of tricks. Bush apologist Karen Hughes today said:

I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. President Bush has worked to say, "let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions." And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

If campaigns could be reduced to mathematical formulae, Bush's would be easy: September 11 + everything. Where does it end?

Stumping for Bush?
Lieberman: Leave Iraq War Out of Politics
By Lolita C. Baldor
Associated Press, 27 April 2004
EXCERPT: Sen. Joe Lieberman on Monday urged an end to partisan bickering over the Iraq war, saying such debate hurts U.S. efforts on the battlefield by demoralizing soldiers and encouraging the enemy.
BUSHWHACKEDUSA ASKS: If war isn't a political issue, then what is, Joe?
SEE ALSO: Howard Dean on Women's Rights, Elections, Iraq and Israel's Assassination Policy (Democracy Now)

College President 'Disappointed' by Cheney Speech
SCOTT CHARTON
Associated Press, 26 April 2004
Courtesy of Talking Points Memo
EXCERPT: Westminster College's president said Monday he was so "surprised and disappointed" by Vice President Dick Cheney's attacks on John Kerry during a speech that he is inviting the Democrat to visit for a reply. Fletcher Lamkin told The Associated Press that Cheney's staff approached him last week about using Westminster as the backdrop "for a major foreign policy address. Nothing was said about a stump speech." In a campus-wide e-mail after the speech, Lamkin said: "I must admit that I was surprised and disappointed that Mr. Cheney chose to step off the high ground and resort to Kerry-bashing for a large portion of his speech."

26 April 2004

This Government Doesn't Trust the People
The last thing it wants to do now is fight an image war at home
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek, 3 May issue
EXCERPT: Somewhere at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, a public-affairs officer is awaiting his fate. This still-unnamed but totally clueless representative of the Air Force Air Mobility Command apparently never got the memo saying that the Pentagon and White House wanted No Pictures (Got that? No Pictures!) of flag-draped caskets arriving at Dover Air Force Base from Iraq. He didn't quite understand that the American people cannot be trusted with absorbing the consequences of war. Had he just bucked that pesky Freedom of Information Act request one or two more levels up the chain of command, he would not now be contemplating his transfer to ... well, the 732d is in Alaska and the 729th no doubt has a place for him in the Azores. The poor soul has plenty of company in newsrooms across the country, where red-faced editors are kicking themselves over one Russ Kick, a self-styled "information archeologist" from Tucson, Ariz. Through pluck and luck, Kick pried loose 361 moving Air Force photos that have already become iconic images of the Iraq war. Once again, the Internet, in this case a tiny site called thememoryhole.org, scooped major news organizations. That's because this particular form of censorship, which began in 1991 under Defense Secretary Dick Cheney but was only sporadically enforced until Cheney returned to Washington, is now a priority. Body counts, especially when displayed so powerfully, are seen as a more potent threat than any militia in Fallujah. "The military is so concerned they will have to fight without the support of the American people that they will do anything they can to limit the release of information or images they fear would erode that support," says Robert Hodierne, senior managing editor of Army Times Publishing.

Questions Grow over When Soldiers Will Come Home
By Guy Dinmore
Financial Times (UK), 24 April 2004
EXCERPT: Two images of American troops returning home from Iraq dominated US media this week: carnival celebrations at Fort Hood, Texas, for the 4th Infantry Division, which nabbed Saddam Hussein; and the first pictures provided by the Pentagon since the war began of flag-draped coffins. Those pictures, from Dover air force base, Delaware, where the caskets arrive, were obtained by a First Amendment activist through a freedom of information act request, and posted on the internet at www.thememoryhole.org. Since 1991, the Pentagon has prohibited news media from covering the arrival of war dead, saying it wants to protect their dignity and the privacy of grieving families. Even so, spiralling violence and the Pentagon's U-turn over troop numbers are fuelling questions over how long American soldiers will have to stay. Nancy Lessin, one soldier's mother, co-founded Military Families Speak Out with her husband in November 2002 to stop the looming war. Since then 1,500 other military families have joined their Bring Them Home Now campaign. "We are flooded with e-mails from military families," she told the FT. "We certainly think there's a growing segment of the American population that sees this situation going downhill as long as there is a military occupation." President George W. Bush may dismiss the Vietnam quagmire analogy, but ordinary Americans do not, Mrs Lessin insists. "Bush's statement that no one is dying in vain in Iraq is exactly what we said in Vietnam."

D.C. Rally on Rights Fills Mall
Protesters hit Bush over women's health
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | April 26, 2004
Boston Globe, 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: Hundreds of thousands of abortion-rights advocates swarmed the National Mall yesterday in what some said might have been the largest women's rights rally in history. Angered by what they said were the Bush administration's attempts to roll back abortion rights, protesters traveled from around the country -- and from overseas -- to chant anti-Bush slogans and hold signs in support of abortion rights. US park police declined to give an estimate of the crowd, but the rally filled the entire mile-long expanse of the National Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and spilled onto adjacent streets. Organizers said the crowd exceeded 1 million.

Missile Defense Called Unproven
So far, testing is unrealistic, GAO finds
Saturday, April 24, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle, 24 aPRIL 2004
Courtesy of Antiwar.com
EXCERPT: A congressional audit of the Bush administration's efforts to build a nationwide defense against ballistic missile attack warned Friday that the system, due to be fielded later this year, will be "largely unproven" because of a lack of realistic testing. The report, by the General Accounting Office, said the eight flight intercepts attempted so far have been largely "repetitive and scripted," and that critical parts of the system have yet to be flight-tested together. Some elements that were to be part of the initial deployment phase have been deferred because of developmental glitches and production delays, the report noted. Nevertheless, the cost in 2004 and 2005 for developing and fielding the initial system -- which is to include 20 missile interceptors along with several ground- and sea-based radars -- rose by $1.12 billion to $7.36 billion over the past year, the report disclosed. The report's title -- "Actions Are Needed to Enhance Testing and Accountability" -- summed up the GAO's concerns.

Cheney/Bush Joint 9/11 Testimony Raises Speculation
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post, 26 April 2004
EXCERPT: Chairman Thomas H. Kean, asked at a news conference a few weeks ago about the White House's requirement that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appear together before his commission on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, quipped: ''Well, we recognize that Mr. Bush may help Mr. Cheney with some of the answers." Kean's remark sparked laughter among the assembled reporters because it turned upside down the assumption of the question, and of much of official Washington: that the White House requested the joint appearance, scheduled for April 29, so Cheney could coach Bush on his answers. While Bush has declined to explain the rationale for the joint meeting, Democrats charge that Cheney is a ''ventriloquist," and even a number of independent observers say it appears that the two men are trying to keep their stories straight. Bush, asked twice at his recent news conference why he and Cheney required a joint appearance, declined to discuss the decision, saying, ''It's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them
SEE ALSO: A Tale of Two Heads (BWUSA)

Business as Usual: Media Still Lets Bush Off Easy
By Jonathan Schwarz
TomPaine.com, 23 April 2004
EXCERPT: In March 2003, the United States swept into Iraq based on WMD evidence that was equal parts foam-flecked hype and brazen fabrication. This was obvious at the time, but for the most part, the U.S. media failed to point it out. Today, thank God, things are completely different. Now if the Bush administration were to make false statements about banned weapons in Iraq, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the networks would be all over them like a cheap biochemical suit. Ha ha! No, just kidding, of course. Nothing has changed since the media swallowed the WMD garbage in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The administration is still making blatantly false statements about banned weapons in Iraq, and the American media still won't call them on it. In fact, the media barely seem to notice--even when the false claims are made by President Bush, on primetime television. Here's a statement by Bush at his April 13 press conference: "[Iraq] had long-range missiles that were undeclared to the United Nations." If this were true, it would be very important indeed. In addition to biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, the United Nations had forbidden Iraq from possessing any missile with a range greater than 150 km. (This is why before the war, UNMOVIC, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, ordered the destruction of Iraq's al-Samoud missiles, even though Iraq had declared them, and the al-Samouds could just fly a few miles over the limit.) So if Iraq had such hidden missiles, they would be the first and only banned weapons of any kind we've found in Iraq. But unfortunately for President Bush, it wasn't true. According to all the information released by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, Iraq possessed the same number of undeclared long-range missiles as I do: zero.

Bob Woodward: The President's Man?
The journalist who helped bring down one US President in the Seventies now has another on the run with his book on the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. But is he too close to the corridors of power?
By Paul Harris
The Observer, 25 April 2004
EXCERPT: The headline in last week's New York Observer summed it up. 'You're back, Bob!' it blared. Quite so. Not since his Watergate heyday has America's most famous journalist dominated the headlines as much as last week. Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack, chronicled the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in minute detail and with access to the President himself. Woodward had unearthed enough startling information for a week's worth of front-page stories. Across America and then the world, news editors scratched their heads as to what to splash with first. Should it be that Bush first planned the invasion in November, 2001? A deal with the Saudis to cut oil prices? A gaping split between Colin Powell and Dick Cheney? Or any of a dozen other newsworthy angles. Political junkies lapped it up and many breathed a sigh of relief. Woodward's previous book on Bush was slammed by some as a hagiography on Bush's reaction to 11 September. Some had feared Woodward was a busted flush. No longer. But, in a slightly Woodwardian way, there is a story behind the story. While the Democrats have seized on the book's revelations, many Republicans are smiling too. Bush comes across well in the book. He is decisive and firm. He also frequently cites God and his religious faith. Democrats quickly forget how well that plays in the battleground states of the Midwest.

Renewed Focus on Scalia Trip
Justice's 2002 ruling on redistricting cleared the way for hunting partner Rep. Charles W. 'Chip' Pickering to retain his seat in Congress.
By Richard A. Serrano and David G. Savage
Times, 25 April 2004
EXCERPT:
HATTIESBURG, Miss. — It's turkey season in Mississippi, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was tramping through the countryside here this month in pursuit of the big birds. His hunting partners, as usual, included Charles W. Pickering Sr., the federal judge who President Bush recently elevated to the U.S. court of appeals; and his son, Rep. Charles W. "Chip" Pickering, a four-term Republican member of Congress. For turkey hunters, this country is unrivaled. "Mississippi is a great place to hunt and we have an abundance of turkeys," the younger Pickering said. "My father and Justice Scalia are good friends and colleagues." Scalia typically combines his hunting trips to Mississippi with speeches to local schools. It was one of those speaking appearances that landed Scalia in the news earlier this month. His aversion to having his public remarks tape-recorded led a federal marshal to seize recordings from two reporters invited to cover his speech at a Christian school here. The justice later apologized. But that was not the first time Scalia ruffled feathers here. Two years ago, as the justice who oversees legal appeals from the deep South, Scalia played a key role in a messy congressional redistricting fight that resulted in the younger Pickering keeping his seat in Congress.

The Vexations Of Voting Machines
Kinks in e-voting systems have given rise to a backlash. Are the machines reliable enough?
By VIVECA NOVAK
Time Online, 3 May 2004 issue
EXCERPT: Jeffrey Liss had finished making his selections on Maryland's Democratic-primary ballot and strolled out of the polling place at Chevy Chase Elementary School on the morning of March 2, Super Tuesday. On the sidewalk, he spied a campaign poster for Senator Barbara Mikulski, who is running for her fourth term. Funny, he thought, he didn't remember voting in the Senate race. Liss went back inside to talk to an election official. And another, and another. He was told he must have overlooked the Senate race on the electronic touch-screen voting machine. But Liss, a lawyer, finally persuaded a technician to check the apparatus. Sure enough, it wasn't displaying the whole ballot. According to voter complaints collected by Mikulski, who won in the primary, her race didn't appear on ballots in at least three Maryland counties. As a result of snafus like that, a group of voters in the state last week sued to bar use of the machines in November's balloting. And the people of Maryland are not the only ones having second thoughts about electronic voting...

Actually, George Tenet has testified that there was no relation between Saddam and 9/11. What is interesting here is how completely honest and aboveboard Chafee was being, in taking on the Neocon Consensus. That consensus has been adopted by the Right of the Republican Party as its election playbook, and it is repeated on Fox Cable News, on rightwing talk radio, at Republican fundraisers, dinners, and in television interviews all through the Red States. So far the Republican Right has been able to keep its partisans with it on these matters. You might think that a Republican like Chafee standing up for the truth is a good sign. And it is, of course, in some ways. But the Associated Press worries that centrist Republicans like Chafee and Spector are a "dying breed."

GOP Targets It's Own Moderates
AP in truthout.og, 23 April 2004
EXCERPT:  Sen. Arlen Specter's fight for his political life against a conservative challenger is more than a tight primary race, it stands as a struggle for survival of a dying breed: moderate Republicans in an increasingly polarized Senate. The four-term incumbent has the second-most centrist voting record in a GOP class largely made up of conservatives elected to the Senate following the 1994 "Republican Revolution" that gave the GOP control of the House and Senate. His independent ideology and willingness to side with Democrats on social and economic issues have long irked rank-and-file conservatives who are now cheering on Republican Rep. Pat Toomey in Tuesday's primary. Public polls this week show the primary race has narrowed to as few as 5 percentage points. Acknowledging that "we have lost a lot of our centrist senators," Specter hopes he won't be the next. "The polarization causes a problem in the way the Congress is functioning with very bitter disputes in the House and almost as bitter disputes in the Senate," Specter said. "We have been dysfunctional for a long period of time. And that hurts the country when you don't have centrists who can walk across the aisle to transact the public's business."

24-25 April 2004

The Wrong Debate on Terrorism
By RICHARD A. CLARKE
New York Times, 25 April 2004
EXCERPT: The last month has seen a remarkable series of events that focused the public and news media on America's shortcomings in dealing with terrorism from radical Islamists. This catharsis, which is not yet over, is necessary for our national psyche. If we learn the right lessons, it may also prove to be an essential part of our future victory over those who now threaten us. But how do we select the right lessons to learn? I tried to suggest some in my recent book, and many have attempted to do so in the 9/11 hearings, but such efforts have been largely eclipsed by partisan reaction.
One lesson is that even though we are the world's only remaining superpower — as we were before Sept. 11, 2001 — we are seriously threatened by an ideological war within Islam. It is a civil war in which a radical Islamist faction is striking out at the West and at moderate Muslims. Once we recognize that the struggle within Islam — not a "clash of civilizations" between East and West — is the phenomenon with which we must grapple, we can begin to develop a strategy and tactics for doing so. It is a battle not only of bombs and bullets, but chiefly of ideas. It is a war that we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement.
I do not pretend to know the formula for winning that ideological war. But I do know that we cannot win it without significant help from our Muslim friends, and that many of our recent actions (chiefly the invasion of Iraq) have made it far more difficult to obtain that cooperation and to achieve credibility. What we have tried in the war of ideas has also fallen short. It is clear that United States government versions of MTV or CNN in Arabic will not put a dent in the popularity of the anti-American jihad. Nor will calls from Washington for democratization in the Arab world help if such calls originate from a leader who is trying to impose democracy on an Arab country at the point of an American bayonet. The Bush administration's much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative, therefore, was dead on arrival.
We must also be careful, while advocating democracy in the region, that we do not undermine the existing regimes without having a game plan for what should follow them and how to get there. The lesson of President Jimmy Carter's abandonment of the shah of Iran in 1979 should be a warning. So, too, should we be chastened by the costs of eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein, almost 25 years after the shah, also without a detailed plan for what would follow. Other parts of the war of ideas include making real progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue, while safe-guarding Israeli security, and finding ideological and religious counter-weights to Osama bin Laden and the radical imams. Fashioning a comprehensive strategy to win the battle of ideas should be given as much attention as any other aspect of the war on terrorists, or else we will fight this war for the foreseeable future. For even when Osama bin Laden is dead, his ideas will carry on. Even as Al Qaeda has had its leadership attacked, it has morphed into a hydra, carrying out more major attacks in the 30 months since 9/11 than it did in the three years before.
The second major lesson of the last month of controversy is that the organizations entrusted with law enforcement and intelligence in the United States had not fully accepted the gravity of the threat prior to 9/11. Because this is now so clear, there will be a tendency to overemphasize organizational fixes. The 9/11 commission and President Bush seem to be in a race to propose creating a "director of national intelligence," who would be given control over all American intelligence agencies. The commission may also recommend a domestic security intelligence service, probably modeled on Britain's MI-5. While some structural changes are necessary, they are a small part of the solution. And there is a risk that concentrating on chain-of-authority diagrams of federal agencies will further divert our attention from more important parts of the agenda. This new director of national intelligence would be able to make only marginal changes to agency budgets and interactions. The more important task is improving the quality of the analysts, agents and managers at the lead foreign intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition, no new domestic security intelligence service could leap full grown from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security. Indeed, creating another new organization while we are in a key phase in the war on terrorism would ignore the lesson that we should have learned from the creation of Homeland Security. Many observers, including some in the new department, now agree that the forced integration and reorganization of 22 agencies diverted attention from the missions of several agencies that were needed to go after the terrorists and to reduce our vulnerabilities at home. We do not need another new agency right now. We do, however, need to create within the F.B.I. a strong organization that is vastly different from the federal police agency that was unable to notice the Al Qaeda presence in America before 9/11. For now, any American version of MI-5 must be a branch within the F.B.I. — one with a higher quality of analysts, agents and managers. Rather than creating new organizations, we need to give the C.I.A. and F.B.I. makeovers. They cannot continue to be dominated by careerists who have carefully managed their promotions and ensured their retirement benefits by avoiding risk and innovation for decades. The agencies need regular infusions throughout their supervisory ranks of managers and thinkers from other, more creative organizational cultures. [italics by BWUSA]

Bush Seeks Unprecedented Power for Energy Task Force Secrecy and Holding Detainees at Guantanamo
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
New York Times, 25 April 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration's effort before the Supreme Court to shield the names of private citizens who helped devise its energy policy might appear on the surface unrelated to its defense, in cases also before the court, of the detention of those the administration has classified as enemy combatants. But the legal arguments are strikingly similar, projecting a vision of presidential power in both war and peace as far-reaching as any the court has seen and posing important questions of the constitutional separation of powers. Just as the administration is arguing in the detainee cases for the exercise of presidential authority without judicial interference in policies related to the war on terrorism, it is making sweeping claims in the energy case for the existence of a constitutionally protected "zone of autonomy" for presidential advice received in the ordinary course of proposing legislation.
SEE ALSO: The Bush Presidency and Power:
The Guantanamo Cases, the Cheney Case, and the 9/11 Hearings (FindLaw.com)

Why a General Should Never, Never, Never Be Secretary of State
Powell needed to speak up about war objections
By Helen Thomas
WPBF News, 23 April 2004
EXCERPT: The administration's "with-us-or-against-us" attitude has made Powell's caution unwelcome in the Oval Office. To keep his credibility intact within the administration, Powell sometimes goes to extremes to show that he, too, is with the Bush program. He has insisted in recent interviews that he is "glad" the United States attacked Iraq and happy that the nation has a president who was willing to take out a ruthless dictator. Since publication of Woodward's book, Powell has stepped up his support of the president. He has denied Woodward's claim that he was out of the loop when Bush made his decision to go to war. On the contrary, he said, he helped develop the war plans. At the same time, Woodward claims that Prince Bandar bin Sultan -- Saudi Arabia's longtime ambassador to Washington -- was briefed about the war plan and shown a map of the planned attack before Powell had seen it.
Not so, Powell insists. But Bush told Woodward that he didn't consult Powell very often because he said he already knew what the secretary thought. When Powell told the president he had his support, Bush replied that it was "time to put your uniform on."

Bush's Believe It or Not
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 23 April 2004
EXCERPT: US public perceptions about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al-Qaeda and stocks of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continue to lag far behind the testimony of experts, boosting chances that President George W Bush will be re-elected, according to a survey and analysis released on Thursday. ..."The analysis suggests that if the public were to more clearly perceive what the experts themselves are saying on these issues, there is a good chance this could have a significant impact on their attitudes about the war and even on how they vote in November," he (Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, which conducted the survey) added.  The survey and analysis found a high correlation between those perceptions and support for Bush himself in the presidential election in November. Among the 57 percent of respondents who said they believed Iraq was either "directly involved" in carrying out the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon or had provided "substantial support" to al-Qaeda, 57 percent said they intended to vote for Bush and 39 percent said they would choose his Democratic foe, Senator John Kerry. Among the 40 percent of respondents who said they believed there was no connection at all between Saddam and al-Qaeda or that ties consisted only of minor contacts or visits, on the other hand, only 28 percent said they intended to vote for Bush, while 68 percent said their ballots would go to Kerry.

Bring Out Your Dead
Pictures of flag-draped coffins could kill Bush's re-election hopes
By Mark Lawson
The Guardian, 24 April 2004
EXCERPT: American elections are frequently a duel between two photographs. The candidate tries to find the right picture, the snap which encapsulates his campaign: the young Bill Clinton shaking hands with JFK, or Ronald Reagan with his hand on his heart in front of a flag. His opponent hopes for the emergence of the wrong picture, the snap they didn't want on the poster: Gary Hart with a floozy on a yacht; Michael Dukakis looking like an Action Man model in a tank. George Bush has so far struggled to locate his chosen photo: the turkey he was pictured serving in Iraq proved embarrassingly to be fake, the "Mission Accomplished" banner under which he parked his plane on an aircraft carrier now looks ludicrously premature. President Bush's handlers might have consoled themselves that there was at least no risk of a bimbo picture coming out but, this week, there was much worse. America started to see the photographs Bush was dedicated to suppressing. Enclosed in the patriotic blaze of Old Glory, the coffins lie in rows in a hanger at Dover airforce base in Delaware. Each flagged casket contains the remains of another member of the American services killed in Iraq. The Pentagon refused to allow photo-opportunities for the soldiers' last posts. But, in a development which must have made Bush wish he lived under the British system of state secrecy, 350 of these censored images of the dead have been released to an internet lobbyist under freedom of information legislation.
SEE ALSO: Bush Privacy of Families Outweighs Photos of [Unidentified] Coffins (AP)
SEE ALSO: Number of US Troops Wounded in Iraq has Skyrocketed This Month (AP)

Legislators Wary of Electronic Voting
By Rachel Konrad
Associated Press, 23 April 2004
EXCERPT: A growing number of federal and state legislators are expressing doubts about the integrity of the ATM-like electronic voting machines that at least 50 million Americans will use to cast their ballots in November. Computer scientists have long criticized the so-called touchscreen machines as not being much more reliable than home computers, which can crash, malfunction and fall prey to hackers and viruses. Now, a series of failures in primaries across the nation has shaken confidence in the technology installed at thousands of precincts. Despite reassurances from the machines' makers, at least 20 states have introduced legislation requiring a paper record of every vote cast.

Wal-Mart is Too Big
But not according to America's antitrust laws.
By Robert B. Reich
The American Prospect via Marketplace, 21 April 2004
EXCERPT: Wal-Mart is America's largest corporation, with a whopping $256 billion in sales last year. It's also the largest employer in the United States, with over a million American workers. And that's not including millions more Americans who work for companies that exclusively supply Wal-Mart. Is Wal-Mart too big? Not according to America's antitrust laws, which consider only one thing - whether a company is so big it drives competitors out, thereby forcing consumers to pay more. Wal-Mart is huge but it still represents only 8 percent of retail sales in America. That's not nearly enough to reduce competition. And no one can accuse Wal-Mart of forcing consumers to pay too much. The company's entire strategy is to charge consumers as little as possible, by using computerized ordering and distribution systems, paying its employees extremely low wages, and squeezing its suppliers. These cost-cutting measures may hurt local retailers that can't meet Wal-Mart's low prices, and they're not popular with all employees and suppliers, but Wal-Mart consumers are the clear beneficiaries. Yet there's another tradition of American antitrust that may be relevant here. We don't hear much about it any longer, but a century ago antitrust was also concerned about companies becoming so large they distorted the political process. In fact, the danger to democracy posed by large corporations was the primary reason for antitrust laws being enacted in the first place. By this criterion, Wal-Mart may indeed be too big. Its size gives it huge political clout. Recently, when its plan to open 40 "super-centers" in California ran into a buzz saw of local political opposition, Wal-Mart responded in kind - even financing local ballot initiatives to overturn zoning laws. In March, following one hard-fought campaign, voters in Contra Costa County reversed a county ordinance banning super-centers. Nationally, Wal-Mart's Political Action Committee is now the second-largest in the country, doling out giant contributions to political candidates. And its lobbying muscle in Washington keeps growing.

Shedding More Light on Bush's War Party
Georgie Anne Geyer
Chicago Tribune, 23 April 2004
EXCERPT: It would be strange if it were not so, well, "Washington." The American mission in Iraq is falling apart, and the White House now tacitly admits that, far from leaving on June 30, as President Bush and his war party have repeatedly promised the American people, the United States is in Iraq to stay for a long, long time. And while the American military endures its worst trial of fire yet, here in Washington the attention is all on what led up to the Iraq invasion. We Americans are inveterate chest-beaters, and here we go again. But the vehicle this time is not only congressional hearings on intelligence failures but, more and more, the books. Yes, indeed, the books have electrified Washington--from Paul O'Neill's sacrilegious accounts of dealing with "W," to Richard Clarke's conspiratorial stories of the White House, and now, Bob Woodward's new "Plan of Attack" and James Mann's "Rise of the Vulcans."

A Controversial Choice for the Position of Archivist of the United States: Part of the Bush Administration's Secrecy Strategy?
By JOHN W. DEAN
FindLaw.com, 23 April 2004
EXCERPT: On April 8, the U. S. Senate received the President's nomination for a new Archivist of the United States -- historian Allen Weinstein. For most Americans, this is an obscure post. But the Weinstein nomination has rightly been gathering increasing attention. Indeed, within the archival and historical communities, the nomination has sent sirens screaming and bells clanging. No fewer than nine professional organizations that deal with government records have expressed concern -- faulting Weinstein for his excessive secrecy. As I have argued in my latest book, President Bush has had a problem with excessive secrecy for quite awhile. As Governor of Texas, he made sure to block any later access to his gubernatorial records. As President, he has tried to seal off the government from scrutiny in numerous ways. Such secrecy is not a partisan matter. Rather, it is an issue of good government versus bad government -- and secrecy smells of bad government. Why is President Bush so eager to switch archivists? Bruce Craig of the National Coalition for History explains that the Administration is likely motivated both by "the sensitive nature of certain presidential and executive department records expected to be opened in the near future," and also by "genuine concern in the White House that the president may not be re-elected." ...Now it appears Bush is doing what he did in Texas, on a national level.

Dad ... What's a Terrorist?
Surely even a child can understand the difference between good and evil.
By David Campbell
The Age, 23April 2004

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