6 September 2004

Bush's records were selectively 'scrubbed'
AP Challenges Bush Claim That All Documents Have Been Released
Bush's National Guard File Lacks Required Reports
By Matt Kelley
AP, 6 September 2004
EXCERPT: Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, according to regulations and outside experts, are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973. For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills. No such records have been made public, and the government told The Associated Press (AP) in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all the records it can find. ...Challenging the government's declaration that no more documents exist, the AP identified five categories of records that should have been generated after Bush skipped his pilot's physical and missed five months of training. "Each of these actions by any member of the National Guard should have generated the creation of many documents that have yet to be produced," AP lawyer David Schulz wrote the Justice Department on Aug. 26. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said there were no other documents to explain discrepancies in Bush's files. ...The AP talked to experts unaffiliated with either campaign who have reviewed Bush's files for missing documents. They said it was not unusual for Guard commanders to ignore deficiencies by junior officers such as Bush. But they said missing a physical exam, which caused him to be grounded, was not common. "It's sort of like a code of honor that you didn't go DNF (duty not including flying)," said retired Air Force Col. Leonard Walls, who flew 181 combat missions over Vietnam. "There was a lot of pride in keeping combat-ready status." Bush has said he fulfilled all his obligations. He was in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 to 1973 and was trained to fly F-102 fighters. "I'm proud of my service," Bush told a rally last weekend in Lima, Ohio.
But records of Bush's service have significant gaps, starting in 1972. Bush has said he left Texas that year to work on the unsuccessful Senate campaign in Alabama of family friend Winton Blount.
The five kinds of missing files:
• A report from the Texas Air National Guard to Bush's local draft board certifying that Bush remained in good standing. The government has released copies of those DD Form 44 documents for Bush for 1971 and earlier years, but not for 1972 or 1973. Records from Bush's draft board in Houston do not show his draft status changed after he joined the Guard in 1968. The AP obtained the draft-board records Aug. 27 under the Freedom of Information Act.
• Records of a required investigation into why Bush lost flight status. When Bush skipped his 1972 physical, regulations required his Texas commanders to "direct an investigation as to why the individual failed to accomplish the medical examination," according to the Air Force manual at the time. An investigative report was supposed to be forwarded "with the command recommendation" to Air Force officials "for final determination." Bush's spokesmen have said he skipped the exam because he knew he would be doing desk duty in Alabama. But Bush was required to take the physical by the end of July 1972, more than a month before he won final approval to train in Alabama.
• A written acknowledgment from Bush that he had received the orders grounding him. Texas commanders were ordered to have Bush sign such a document, but none has been released.
• Reports of counseling sessions Bush was required to have after missing more than three training sessions. Bush missed at least five months of Guard training in 1972. No documents have surfaced indicating Bush was counseled or had written authorization to skip that training or make it up later. Commanders did have broad discretion to allow guardsmen to make up for missed training sessions, said Weaver and Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1985. "If you missed it, you could make it up," said Korb, who now works for the Center for American Progress, which supports Kerry.
• A signed statement from Bush acknowledging he could be called to active duty if he didn't promptly transfer to another Guard unit after leaving Texas. The statement was required under a Vietnam-era crackdown on no-show guardsmen. Bush was approved in September 1972 to train with the Alabama unit, more than four months after he left Texas.
Bush was approved to train in September, October and November 1972 with the Alabama Air National Guard's 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group. The only record tying Bush to that unit is a dental exam at the group's Montgomery base in January 1973. No records have been released giving Bush permission to train with the 187th after November 1972.
Walls, the Air Force combat veteran, was assigned to the 187th in 1972 and 1973 to train its pilots to fly the F-4 Phantom. Walls and more than a dozen other members of the 187th say they never saw Bush. One member of the unit, retired Lt. Col. John Calhoun, has said he remembers Bush showing up for training. Pay records show Bush was credited for training in January, April and May 1973; other files indicate that service was outside Texas. A May 1973 yearly evaluation from Bush's Texas unit gave the future president no ratings and stated Bush had not been seen at the Texas base since April 1972. In a directive from June 29, 1973, an Air Force personnel official pressed Bush's unit for information about his Alabama service. "This officer should have been reassigned in May 1972," wrote Master Sgt. Daniel Harkness, "since he no longer is training in his AFSC [Air Force Service Category, or job title] or with his unit of assignment."
SEE ALSO: Bush AWOL Resource Page (BWUSA)

Documenting "Fahrenheit 9/11"
Angry Graham Says Crisis of Intelligence is Ignored
U.S. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida said in his new book that the country has yet to respond effectively to the threat of terrorism.
BY FRANK DAVIES
Miami Herald, 6 September 2004
EXCERPT:  Mild-mannered Sen. Bob Graham, after dealing firsthand with the investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the buildup to the Iraq war, is leaving office an angry man. If one theme emerges from his new book, Intelligence Matters, it's that his Senate colleagues, much of the public and, above all, President Bush are not responding to the crisis of poor intelligence in the face of a serious terrorist threat. ''I usually operate within a relatively narrow emotional spectrum,'' the Florida Democrat wrote in the book, which comes out Tuesday. ``But now my advancing age, or my 11 grandchildren, have changed things. ...Graham said on Meet the Press that the Bush administration ``has taken every step to obfuscate, avoid and cover Saudi Arabia's role in Sept. 11.''
Some revelations in the 272-page book:
• Then-CIA Director George Tenet told Graham in October 2002, when the Senate faced a vote on whether to authorize war, that in Iraq ``there were 550 sites where weapons of mass destruction were either produced or stored. ...It was, in short, a vivid and terrifying case for war. The problem was it did not accurately represent the classified estimate we had received just days earlier,'' Graham wrote, noting that secret estimates, never made public, warned that information was inconclusive. ''It was two different messages, directed at two different audiences,'' Graham recalled. ``I was outraged.''
• An FBI official estimated that there were fewer than 10 al Qaeda operatives in a particular U.S. city because that was the number of open case files he knew about. Another FBI official told the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Graham chaired, that there were only 237 al Qaeda terrorists worldwide known to the FBI, because that's how many had signed a record book that was recovered. ''God damn, the CIA has told us there were between 15,000 and 20,000 al Qaeda recruits who went through the Afghanistan training camps in the 1990s,'' Graham responded. Perhaps Graham's most explosive charge is that a support network for al Qaeda, backed by Saudi officials and Saudi money, aided some of the Sept. 11 hijackers and ``still exists, largely undamaged, within the United States.'' Saudi officials have denied any connection to al Qaeda operatives in the United States. Graham said the FBI and the White House frustrated efforts by the Sept. 11 investigation he co-chaired to thoroughly investigate the connection between two of the hijackers and two Saudis in San Diego, who the CIA believes were Saudi spies.
SEE ALSO: Graham Says U.S. Shielded Saudis from Sept 11 Links (Reuters)
SEE ALSO:
Senator: Commander Told of Military Drain
By WILLIAM C. MANN
AP via The Guardian, 6 August 2004
EXCERPT: A former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman asserted Sunday that the general who ran the war in Afghanistan said more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that his resources were being shifted in preparation for taking on Saddam Hussein. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., contends that just months into combat in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks also told him that fighting terrorism in Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere should take priority over invading Iraq. Graham said Franks told him he thought the United States knew less about the situation in Iraq than did some European governments, and the Bush administration should ask them for advice. The senator, who is retiring at year's end, said his conversation with the now-retired general came in February 2002, when Graham was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Politics of Paranoia and Hatred
By Cathy Young
Boston Globe editorial, 6 September 2004
EXCERPT: What an election year this is. We are fighting a war in Iraq that has deeply divided the country and that even its supporters concede has been badly mismanaged; we are also facing a war against terrorism that President Bush has acknowledged will never be won completely. (He was, of course, quite right, and it's a shame that partisan sniping forced him to retreat from this realistic and courageous statement -- a refreshing contrast to the surreally sunny vision of his acceptance speech.) We are also, bizarrely, reliving another war that divided and scarred the country three decades ago. ...In George Orwell's "1984," the dictatorial regime held events called "Two-Minute Hate," in which the faithful gathered to hurl abuse at a large photo of a dissenter designated as the enemy of the people. Our democracy seems to be headed in that direction. And perhaps the most depressing thought is that, no matter who wins, that's not going to change. We have to brace ourselves for four more years of a political hate-in.

Forget the 'Orwellian' style...Bush is not a sinister 'Big Brother', he's just a 'big daddy'
President Sees America as a Child Needing a Parent
By Sarah Schweitzer
Boston Globe, 2 September 2004
EXCERPT: White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said yesterday that President Bush views America as a ''10-year-old child" in need of the sort of protection provided by a parent. Card's remark, criticized later by Democrat John F. Kerry's campaign as ''condescending," came in a speech to Republican delegates from Maine and Massachusetts that was threaded with references to Bush's role as protector of the country. Republicans have sounded that theme repeatedly at the GOP convention as they discuss the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq. ''It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor, Maine, that this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child," Card said. ''I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children." The comment underscored an argument put forth some by political pundits, such as MSNBC talk-show host Chris Matthews, that the Republican Party has cast itself as the ''daddy party."

Corporate/state exploitation of families a national problem
Inmates' Calls Home Costly to Families
By Kim Curtis and Bob Porterfield
AP via Boston Globe, 6 September 2004
EXCERPT:  Telephone companies and California counties have made hundreds of millions of dollars from some of the state's poorest people through high, unregulated phone rates for calls from local jails, an Associated Press investigation has found. The average California county jail inmate's local call home costs more than seven times as much as a 50-cent pay--phone call. It adds up to more than $120 million a year in phone bills for families and friends of county inmates statewide. The inflated rates make service contracts with jails so lucrative that carriers offer counties signing bonuses, nearly $17 million in the case of Los Angeles County. For many, the cost of contact with loved ones is a hardship. And while counties are supposed to spend their share of the money on inmate welfare, the law gives sheriffs wide discretion and much of the money goes to salaries. "It's a gouging of family members, those who have never committed a crime," said Charles Carbone, a lawyer with Prison Focus, a prisoner rights group in San Francisco. Inmates and their families have few options. Regular contact is possible only through highly restricted visits and phone calls out, which must be made by inmates either collect or with special calling cards. Jail phone contracts, unlike those governing the rates of residential users, are not regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission or the Federal Communications Commission. California counties received more than $303 million in revenue from collect calls, calling cards, and signing bonuses over five years, according to information gathered through the California Public Records Act from each of the 57 California counties with jails. Telephone companies defend the high charges, saying that specialized equipment and security features such as call blocking and monitoring are needed in jails. Six companies provide most of the phone service to California's county jails; San Antonio-based SBC Communications is the largest. Of the four companies that agreed to interviews, all refused to discuss how they set rates or how much they earn from inmate calls.

4-5 September 2004

Working Your Way Down
NYT editorial, 5 September
EXCERPT: As they so often do, economic reality and political expediency parted ways with the release of August's employment report on Friday. The reality is that unless President Bush pulls nearly one million jobs out of a hat in the next four months, he will indeed become the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in employment in a single term in the White House. But Mr. Bush is determined to act as if nothing bad is happening on, as he likes to put it, "my watch." And so in his first appearance after the Republican National Convention - in a corner of the sliver of undecided America - he declared that the numbers showed that the economy is "spreading prosperity and opportunity and nothing will hold us back." Nothing, perhaps, except the actual state of the job market. The United States gained 144,000 jobs last month, which is just barely enough to keep up with the number of people entering the work force. True, the job numbers for June and July were revised upward, but they were still weak, and much lower than August's. There was a tiny reduction in the unemployment rate - because the work force became smaller, not because of job creation. Eight million people were unemployed in August, all told, the same as in the month before. Dig beyond the numbers, and the situation is even worse. Even with a slight acceleration in August, average hourly wages for the month are not likely to keep up with inflation (that number comes out in mid-September). As has been the case throughout the current economic recovery, wages are held down by the slow pace of job creation and, to a lesser extent, by the mainly service-oriented jobs available. With ordinary Americans' wages eaten up by inflation and their debt at nosebleed heights, consumer spending - which accounts for two-thirds of economic activity - will not be able to get the economy humming. July's summer sales on cars accounted for virtually all of that month's big-ticket spending - most of it on credit. Already, economic growth in the second quarter has been revised downward a bit and consumer confidence registered an unexpectedly steep decline in August.

Always on the Job, Employees Pay With Health
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
NYT, 5 September 2004
EXCERPT: American workers are stressed out, and in an unforgiving economy, they are becoming more so every day. Sixty-two percent say their workload has increased over the last six months; 53 percent say work leaves them "overtired and overwhelmed." Even at home, in the soccer bleachers or at the Labor Day picnic, workers are never really off the clock, bound to BlackBerries, cellphones and laptops. Add iffy job security, rising health care costs, ailing pension plans and the fear that a financial setback could put mortgage payments out of reach, and the office has become, for many, an echo chamber of angst. It is enough to make workers sick - and it does. Decades of research have linked stress to everything from heart attacks and stroke to diabetes and a weakened immune system. Now, however, researchers are connecting the dots, finding that the growing stress and uncertainty of the office have a measurable impact on workers' health and, by extension, on companies' bottom lines. Workplace stress costs the nation more than $300 billion each year in health care, missed work and the stress-reduction industry that has grown up to soothe workers and keep production high, according to estimates by the American Institute of Stress in New York. And workers who report that they are stressed, said Steven L. Sauter, chief of the Organizational Science and Human Factors Branch of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, incur health care costs that are 46 percent higher, or an average of $600 more per person, than other employees.

The Next Shock: Not Oil, but Debt
By DANIEL GROSS
NYT's Magazine, 5 September 2004
EXCERPT: With oil prices hovering above $40 a barrel, experts have calmed frayed nerves by noting that today's services-driven American economy is much less addicted to the black stuff than yesterday's industrial economy. From 1973 to 2003, after all, the amount of oil and gas needed to create a dollar of gross domestic product fell by half. Structural changes in the economy have let the nation absorb the recent shock of rising crude.
That's the good news. The bad news is that other recent structural changes in the economy - the federal government's shift from surpluses to huge deficits, the national predilection for consumption over saving and housing prices that climb faster than incomes - have increased the country's reliance on another kind of fuel: credit. As a result, the American economic ship, which has weathered the recent run-up in crude oil prices, may be more vulnerable to sudden surges in the price of money. If the rate on 30-year fixed mortgages were to rise from 5.4 percent today to 7.5 percent next February, homeowners could get walloped.

GOP Prism Distorts Some Kerry Positions
By Glenn Kessler and Dan Morgan
Washington Post, 3 September 2004
EXCERPT: Speakers at this week's Republican convention have relentlessly attacked John F. Kerry for statements he has made and votes he has taken in his long political career, but a number of their specific claims -- such as his votes on military programs -- are at best selective and in many cases stripped of their context, according to a review of the documentation provided by the Bush campaign.
As a senator, Kerry has long been skeptical of big-ticket weapons systems, especially when measured against rising budget deficits, and to some extent he opened himself to this line of attack when he chose to largely skip over his Senate career during his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention last month. But the barrage by Republicans at their own convention has often misportrayed statements or votes that are years, if not decades, old.
For instance:
• Kerry did not cast a series of votes against individual weapons systems, as Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) suggested in a slashing convention speech in New York late Wednesday, but instead Kerry voted against a Pentagon spending package in 1990 as part of deliberations over restructuring and downsizing the military in the post-Cold War era.
• Both Vice President Cheney and Miller have said that Kerry would like to see U.S. troops deployed only at the direction of the United Nations, with Cheney noting that the remark had been made at the start of Kerry's political career. This refers to a statement made nearly 35 years ago, when Kerry gave an interview to the Harvard Crimson, 10 months after he had returned from the Vietnam War angry and disillusioned by his experiences there. (President Bush at the time was in the Air National Guard, about to earn his wings.)
• President Bush, Cheney and Miller faulted Kerry for voting against body armor for troops in Iraq. But much of the funding for body armor was added to the bill by House Democrats, not the administration, and Kerry's vote against the entire bill was rooted in a dispute with the administration over how to pay for $20 billion earmarked for reconstruction of Iraq. In remarks prepared for delivery last night, Kerry denounced the Republican convention for its "anger and distortion" and criticized Cheney for avoiding the military draft during the Vietnam era.

If Only They Had Invented the Internet
The Failure of Fact-Checking at the Republican Convention
FAIR Media Advisory, 3 September 2004
EXCERPT: It is the function of journalism to separate fact from fiction. In covering the Republican National Convention of 2004, the media made isolated efforts to point out some of the convention speakers' more egregious distortions, but on the whole failed in their vital role of letting citizens know when they are being lied to. To take the example that dominated the convention perhaps more than any other claim: Professional politicians and political correspondents alike know that legislators frequently vote against appropriations for a variety of reasons, even though they do not seek to eliminate the programs being voted on. They know that different versions of the same appropriation are often offered, and that lawmakers will sometimes vote for one version and against another-- not because they suffer from multiple personality disorder, but because that's how they express disagreements about how government programs should be funded.
No one who has spent any amount of time in or around government would find this the least bit confusing. Yet news analysts generally allowed Republican Party leaders to pretend shock that Sen. John Kerry would vote against an $87 billion appropriation for the Iraq War-- as if this meant that Kerry opposed giving troops "money for bullets, and fuel, and vehicles, and body armor," as George W. Bush declared ( 9/2/04). (The references to Kerry voting against body armor were particularly disingenuous, given that the $87 billion only included money for body armor at the insistence of congressional Democrats-- Army Times, 10/20/03.)
And journalists were complacent as Republicans expressed mock bafflement over why Kerry would vote against this bill when he had voted for another version of the bill (or "exactly the same thing," in former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's words-- 8/30/04). The reason that Kerry introduced an alternative bill-- because he wanted to pay for the appropriation by raising taxes on the wealthy rather than through deficit spending-- was well-publicized at the time (Washington Post, 9/18/03). Yet rather than challenging the dishonesty of this centerpiece of the Republican attack on Kerry, CNN's Jeff Greenfield after Bush's speech (9/2/04) called it "one of the most familiar and effective lines of his stump speech."
Bush himself threatened to veto the Iraq spending bill if the reconstruction aid for Iraq it included was in the form of loans rather than grants; by the logic of the Republican convention, Bush "flip-flopped" exactly the same way that Kerry did on the $87 billion by supporting one version of the bill and opposing another. Yet a Nexis search of television coverage of the convention turns up only one reference to Bush's veto of the bill, by Paul Begala on CNN ( 9/1/04). Overwhelmingly, TV pundits covering the convention allowed the charade surrounding the $87 billion to pass without critical comment. But overlooking distortions was the norm in television's coverage of the convention. When Dick Cheney spoke ( 9/1/04), he said of Kerry: "He declared at the Democratic Convention that he will forcefully defend America after we have been attacked.... We cannot wait for the next attack. We must do everything we can to prevent it and that includes the use of military force."

Citing Higher Costs, U.S. Plans Record Rise in Medicare Premium
By GARDINER HARRIS
NYT, 4 September 2004
EXCERPT:  A day after President Bush heralded his efforts to help the elderly cope with increased medical expenses, federal officials announced the largest premium increase in dollars in the Medicare program's history, raising the monthly expense by $11.60 to $78.20. The increase, which amounts to 17 percent, results largely from increased payments to doctors and reflects rising medical expenses generally, officials said. The rise has nothing to do with a program that will start in 2006 to offer prescription drugs, for which beneficiaries must pay a separate premium. The increase immediately became grist for an increasingly contentious presidential campaign. Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, released a statement saying, "After doing nothing about the record increases in the cost of health care over the last four years, George Bush is presiding over a Medicare system that is socking seniors with the largest premium hike in the program's 40-year history."

It's the current lie that matters
George W. Bush's Missing Year
The widow of a Bush family confidant says her husband gave the future president an Alabama Senate campaign job as a favor to his worried father. Did they see him do any National Guard service? "Good Lord, no."
By Mary Jacoby
MoveOn.org via Salon.com, 2 September 2004
EXCERPT: Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush? "The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal." Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said. ...Allison's account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence. Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: "Good Lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way." Allison also confirmed previously published accounts that Bush often showed up in the Blount campaign offices around noon, boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before. (Bush has admitted that he was a heavy drinker in those years, but he has refused to say whether he also used drugs).
SEE ALSO: G.W.'s Top Secret AWOL Mission (BWUSA)

3 September 2004

The Bush Crusade
By James Carroll
Boston Globe via TomDispatch, 3 September 2004
EXCERPT: George W. Bush plumbed the deepest place in himself, looking for a simple expression of what the assaults of September 11 required. It was his role to lead the nation, and the very world. The President, at a moment of crisis, defines the communal response. A few days after the assault, George W. Bush did this. Speaking spontaneously, without the aid of advisers or speechwriters, he put a word on the new American purpose that both shaped it and gave it meaning. "This crusade," he said, "this war on terrorism." Crusade. I remember a momentary feeling of vertigo at the President's use of that word, the outrageous ineptitude of it. The vertigo lifted, and what I felt then was fear, sensing not ineptitude but exactitude. My thoughts went to the elusive Osama bin Laden, how pleased he must have been, Bush already reading from his script. I am a Roman Catholic with a feeling for history, and strong regrets, therefore, over what went wrong in my own tradition once the Crusades were launched. Contrary to schoolboy romances, Hollywood fantasies and the nostalgia of royalty, the Crusades were a set of world-historic crimes. I hear the word with a third ear, alert to its dangers, and I see through its legends to its warnings. For example, in Iraq "insurgents" have lately shocked the world by decapitating hostages, turning the most taboo of acts into a military tactic. But a thousand years ago, Latin crusaders used the severed heads of Muslim fighters as missiles, catapulting them over the fortified walls of cities under siege. Taboos fall in total war, whether crusade or jihad. For George W. Bush, crusade was an offhand reference. But all the more powerfully for that, it was an accidental probing of unintended but nevertheless real meaning. That the President used the word inadvertently suggests how it expressed his exact truth, an unmasking of his most deeply felt purpose. Crusade, he said. Later, his embarrassed aides suggested that he had meant to use the word only as a synonym for struggle, but Bush's own syntax belied that. He defined crusade as war. Even offhandedly, he had said exactly what he meant.

Imperial President
Opposing Bush becomes unpatriotic.
By William Saletan
Slate and NPR's Day to Day, 2 August 2004
EXCERPT: The 2004 election is becoming a referendum on your right to hold the president accountable. That's the upshot of tonight's speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney and Zell Miller, the Republican National Convention's keynote speaker.
The case against President Bush is simple. He sold us his tax cuts as a boon for the economy, but more than three years later, he has driven the economy into the ground. He sold us a war in Iraq as a necessity to protect the United States against weapons of mass destruction, but after spending $200 billion and nearly 1,000 American lives, and after searching the country for more than a year, we've found no such weapons.
If the convention speeches are any guide, Republicans have run out of excuses for blowing the economy, blowing the surplus, and blowing our military resources and moral capital in the wrong country. So they're going after the patriotism of their opponents. Here's what the convention keynoter, Miller, said tonight about Democrats and those who criticize the way President Bush has launched and conducted the Iraq war:

While young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

In [Democratic leaders'] warped way of thinking, America is the problem, not the solution. They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself.

Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

Every one of these charges is demonstrably false...
When patriotism is impugned, the facts go out the window. You're not allowed to point out that Bush shifted the rationale for the Iraq war further and further from U.S. national security—from complicity in 9/11 to weapons of mass destruction to building democracy to relieving Iraqis of their dictator—without explaining why American troops and taxpayers should bear the burden. You're not allowed to point out that the longer a liberator stays, the more he looks like an occupier. You're not allowed to propose that the enormous postwar expenses Bush failed to budget for be covered by repealing his tax cuts for the wealthy instead of further indebting every American child.
If you dare to say these things, you're accused—as Kerry now stands accused by Cheney and Miller—of defaming America and refusing "to support American troops in combat." You're contrasted to a president who "is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America." You're derided, in Cheney's words, for trying to show al-Qaida "our softer side." Your Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts are no match for the vice president's five draft deferments. In his remarks, Miller praised Wendell Wilkie, the 1940 Republican presidential nominee who "made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue." But there are three ways to make national security a campaign issue. One is to argue the facts of a particular question, as Kerry has done on Iraq. The second is to sweep aside all factual questions, as Cheney and Miller did tonight, with a categorical charge that the other party is indifferent or hostile to the country's safety. The third is to create a handy political fight, as Republicans did two years ago on the question of labor rights in the Department of Homeland Security, and frame it falsely as a national security issue in order to win an election. So now you have two reasons to show up at the polls in November. One is to stop Bush from screwing up economic and foreign policy more than he already has. The other is to remind him and his propagandists that even after 9/11, you still have that right.
Listen to this story on NPR's Day to Day.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Convention Speeches
Setting Kerry's record right—again.
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 2 September 2004
EXCERPT: Half-truths and embellishments are one thing; they're common at political conventions, vital flourishes for a theatrical air. Lies are another thing, and last night's Republican convention was soaked in them.
In the case of Sen. Zell Miller's keynote address, "lies" might be too strong a word. Clearly not a bright man, Miller dutifully recited the talking points that his Republican National Committee handlers had typed up for him, though perhaps in a more hysterical tone than anyone might have anticipated. (His stumbled rantings in the interviews afterward, on CNN and MSNBC, brought to mind the flat-Earthers who used to be guests on The Joe Pyne Show.) Can a puppet tell lies? Perhaps not.
Still, it is worth setting the record straight. The main falsehood, we have gone over before (click here for the details), but it keeps getting repeated, so here we go again: It is the claim that John Kerry, during his 20 years in the Senate, voted to kill the M-1 tank, the Apache helicopter; the F-14, F-16, and F-18 jet fighters; and just about every other weapon system that has kept our nation free and strong. Here, one more time, is the truth of the matter: Kerry did not vote to kill these weapons, in part because none of these weapons ever came up for a vote, either on the Senate floor or in any of Kerry's committees.
This myth took hold last February in a press release put out by the RNC. Those who bothered to look up the fine-print footnotes discovered that they referred to votes on two defense appropriations bills, one in 1990, the other in 1995. Kerry voted against both bills, as did 15 other senators, including five Republicans. The RNC took those bills, cherry-picked some of the weapons systems contained therein, and implied that Kerry voted against those weapons. By the same logic, they could have claimed that Kerry voted to disband the entire U.S. armed forces; but that would have raised suspicions and thus compelled more reporters to read the document more closely.

Did you grow up here?
Judge Orders Demonstrators Freed
Jurist Holds City in Contempt of Court, Saying Dozens of People Were Held Without Charges
By Michael Powell and Dale Russakoff
Washington Post, 3 September 2004
EXCERPT: A criminal court judge ordered the release of hundreds of Bush protesters Thursday, ruling that police held them illegally without charges for more than 40 hours. As the protesters began trickling out of jail, they spoke of being held without access to lawyers, initially in a holding cell that had oil and grease spread across the floor. Several dozen of those detained said that they had not taken part in protests. Police apparently swept up the CEO of a puppet theater as he and a friend walked out of the subway to celebrate his birthday. Two middle-age women who had been shopping at the Gap were handcuffed, and a young woman was arrested as she returned from her job at a New York publishing house. Hours before President Bush made his speech to the Republican National Convention, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge John Cataldo held city officials in contempt of court for failing to release more than 500 detained demonstrators by 5 p.m. The judge said that the detentions violated state law, and he threatened to impose a fine of $1,000 per day for each person kept in custody longer than 24 hours without being arraigned. ...Michael Sladek, who owns a film production company in Brooklyn, was arrested in Midtown two evenings ago as he photographed the police and demonstrators. He spent 48 hours in custody without access to a phone before he was charged with obstructing a pedestrian -- an administrative violation -- and released. "For us, it was very clear this was a detention to keep people off the street," Sladek said outside the jail. "And the saddest thing was that so many people had nothing to with protesting the convention." Those coming out of the jail in southern Manhattan said that police never advised them of their right to talk to an attorney. And several people, independent of one another, said police told them that if they signed a document admitting guilt and waiving the right to sue for false arrest, they would be released early. Civil liberties lawyers noted that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) courted the Republican National Convention knowing that massive demonstrations were likely, and that city officials had more than a year to prepare. "It's hard to imagine it's just incompetence, as our city officials do a pretty good job," said Donna Lieberman, chief of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "It seems that we have gotten a kinder, gentler form of preventative detention." Detainees said that after being arrested, they were crowded into makeshift holding cells at a bus cleaning station on the Hudson River piers, where many spent the night awaiting transfer to jail. In some cells, they said, teenage girls and women were kept overnight amid dozens of men. Many protesters spoke of seeing signs at the piers warning of hazardous chemicals. Once in the city jail, detainees said, they were shifted among as many as 10 cells in 48 hours without explanation, unable to sleep. Medics said the New York City Department of Health had asked them to gather samples of the detainees' clothing to test for exposure to toxic chemicals from the holding cell. Medics found numerous cases of rashes and skin infections, apparently as a result of cuts from overly tight handcuffs that were exposed to chemicals. Then there were the many relatives who flooded police stations and courts with phone calls, trying to find their loved ones. Tobi Starin, a teacher in Rockville, heard from a friend that her daughter, Liz, had been arrested while coming home from her job at a publishing house. "It's very disturbing. I kept thinking: 'Oh, she'll get out any hour now,' " said Starin, who called The Washington Post on Thursday. "But it's 44 hours now, and she's still in there."

The Press is "Stunned" By Reaction of Media to Swift Boat Ads
By Jay Rosen
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 1 August 2004
EXCERPT: It's more of an impression gathered, not something easily witnessed in the behavior of reporters and editors here at the Republican convention; but I think the political press has been stunned by the attack on John Kerry's military record, and by the events since August 5, when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began running their ads.
That is the word I would use: stunned.
Here and there it is spoken of outright: "I spotted the headline in the Sunday Tribune's first edition early Saturday afternoon," wrote Michael Miner in the Chicago Reader. He is referring to William Rood's first person account of Kerry's courageous actions as a Swift Boat commander, published Aug. 22. Rood, a Chicago Tribune editor, was a Swift Boat skipper himself. Miner, a journalist, recalls his reaction:
"That's it," I thought, naively, after reading the first few paragraphs. "The issue's off the table."
And he was stunned to discover it wasn't. The same feeling was there when Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe, appearing Aug. 19 on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, told John O'Neill, author of Unfit for Command and one of the veterans making the charges, "You haven't come within a country mile of meeting first-grade journalistic standards for accuracy." That's what "keeps this story in the tabloids," said Oliphant, but of course he was saying this not in the tabloids, but on the very respectable Newshour .I don't mean to say that I know exactly what happened that day. I believe that Mr. O'Neill, like anybody making a personal attack in politics, has to shoulder the burden of proof. It never leaves his shoulders until he satisfies it. And on this story, they haven't even gotten to first base.

Bush tax cuts working
Retailers Report Disappointing August Sales
AP, 2 September 2004
EXCERPT: The start of the back-to-school shopping season was a disappointment for major retailers, giving the industry a third straight month of listless sales. Higher gasoline prices contributed to the poor showing. ...“Overall, this doesn’t look so good,” said Ken Perkins, president and research analyst at RetailMetrics LLC, a Boston-based independent research company. “There are number of different factors that are coming together to dampen consumer spending.” Retailers found low-to-middle-income shoppers were more frugal in response to higher gas prices and also higher grocery bills. Sales figures were also affected by technical factors, a late Labor Day weekend, which will come a week later than a year ago and will push sales into the September reporting period, and the fact that year-earlier results were boosted by the government’s one-time child care tax credits. But overall, sales were hurt by consumers’ concerns about money and jobs. On Tuesday, the Conference Board reported a larger than expected decline in consumer confidence, and attributed the slide to Americans’ worries about the job market.

Hang on. I know the answer to this one.
Dennis Hastert, Liar or Fool?
The speaker's unseemly habit of slandering George Soros.
By Jack Shafer
Slate, 2 September 2004
EXCERPT: Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert stuck his foot in it while appearing on Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday (Aug. 29), speculating that Democratic Party financier and anti-Bush 527 donor George Soros may be the recipient of illicit drug money. (For the back story, see yesterday's column, "Dennis Hastert on Dope.") Hastert states in a letter to Soros that he's being misread, maintaining that when he told Wallace, "You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where—if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from," the groups he was referring to were the "Drug Policy Foundation, The Open Society, The Lendesmith [sic] Center, and The Andean Council of Coca Leaf Producers." Hastert's explanation is preposterous. Soros gives money to these groups. He doesn't collect money from them. Yesterday, Soros countered Hastert's letter with a new letter repeating his demand for an apology.

2 September 2004

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
NYT's Paul Krugman Speaks on Bush, the Extremist Movement and the Media
DemocracyNow!, 1 September 2004
EXCERPT: we also probably make a mistake if we make too much emphasis on Bush, the individual. I know that there's a particular thing that can drive you wild, which is the description of all of these virtues to a man who manifestly does not possess them, right? The idea of that this guy of all guys is treated as a heroic figure, and is really baffling, but this really is not about Bush. Bush is the guy that the movement found to take them over the top. But it didn't start with him. And it won't end with him, either. What's going on in this country is that a radical movement -- I think we do, mark is entirely right, a radical movement that has been building for several decades finally found their moment and their man in Bush, but you shouldn't think of it as just being him. There's a complete continuity between what's going on now and the campaign of slander and innuendo against Bill Clinton. There's complete continuity going back, really, I think that this is my next book; you need to go back to Goldwater. A lot of this has its roots actually in civil rights. And the people don't like them. So, you really -- but you really have to understand that this is not about one guy. It's not even about one dynasty, although that's a story itself. It's about the coalition between the malefactors of great wealth and the religious right and how they found their man. Don't think of it about as just being about this one guy. How can they get away with it? This is one of the biggest for risk, I think. You may want to know what does the -- what does the Times think about what I write? By and large, they're extremely protective, but they get antsy when I talk about the media. Because they're part of it but it's not possible to deny that the media are a very essential -- or central part of this. Actually -- if you can get hold of it, the American Journalism Review has an interview with Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, the two Knight-Ridder reporters, who during the buildup to the war were providing, by far, the best account. I was going back and saying why did I know that the case for an active Iraqi nuclear program was being cooked up? Why did I know that this was being sold and analysts were being pressured? All of the stuff that many people won't admit but is being treated as a revelation? I think it was actually reading the Knight-Ridder stories above all. They say in talking about it that the story of media failure here is as important as the story of intelligence failure.

GOP's Fierce Attacks Contrast with Democrats' Restraint
By Steven Thomma
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 2 September 2004
EXCERPT:  Republicans are going after John Kerry at their national convention with a vengeance. While at least half of their convention is a respectful salute to President Bush, the other half is a take-no-prisoners broadside at the Democratic senator from Massachusetts that often is downright ridicule. The Republican criticism is designed to ensure that even those voters who don't buy Bush brand will find Kerry a distinctly unappealing alternative. The blunt attack presents a stark contrast to the Democratic National Convention's ginger treatment of Bush. There, Kerry and his forces shied away from much direct criticism of the president, confident that nearly a year of describing him as a liar and a buffoon had already taken its toll. They were also fearful that more criticism might backfire, especially with swing voters who retain an affection for Bush despite misgivings about his policies. Republicans this week had no such qualms, sometimes criticizing Kerry's voting record, sometimes lampooning him as a flip-flopper and always aiming to reinforce the thought that Kerry shouldn't be trusted to keep the country safe or steer its economy.

Young Republicans Support Iraq War, But Not All Are Willing to Join the Fight
By Adam Smeltz
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 2 September 2004
EXCERPT: Young Republicans gathered here for their party's national convention are united in applauding the war in Iraq, supporting the U.S. troops there and calling the U.S. mission a noble cause. But there's no such unanimity when they're asked a more personal question: Would you be willing to put on the uniform and go to fight in Iraq? In more than a dozen interviews, Republicans in their teens and 20s offered a range of answers. Some have friends in the military in Iraq and are considering enlisting; others said they can better support the war by working politically in the United States; and still others said they think the military doesn't need them because the U.S. presence in Iraq is sufficient.

Thoughts from a place where Purple Hearts are a Joke and Bush is our Churchill
By Todd Gitlin
The American Prospect, 1 September 2004
EXCERPT: Nobody here but us good cops
On most channels, the Republican funfest shines forth as a genial display of red-white-and-blue, on-message sincerity. Everyone is so earnest, everyone exudes optimism, all virtues are on parade. Only good cops pass through these pearly gates. When Senator Lindsey Graham introduced John McCain, saying that McCain had always respected other veterans (wink wink), no august commentator was heard to say that this was a dig at John Kerry. Laurels, however, to the ABC World News Tonight and CNN for noting that Virginia delegate Morton Blackwell was passing out Band-Aids adorned with Purple Hearts on the convention floor Monday night. Among those spotted wearing these adorable emblems of Republican compassion were the secretary of the Oregon Republican Party and delegates from Dick Cheney’s own Wyoming. Where are the historians when you need them?

The Steadfast Flip-Flopper
Only George W. Bush can take diametrically opposed positions and call them “principled.”
By Matthew Yglesias
The American Prospect, 31 August 2004
EXCERPT: John Kerry is a flip-flopper. In 2001, for example, he voted for the No Child Left Behind Act, but now he says that federal education spending should be further increased. In 2002, he voted to give the president authority to threaten the use of force in order to get United Nations inspectors back in Iraq, but now he says that the president was wrong to invade Iraq when without a UN mandate when inspectors were already in the country. He's unprincipled, see?  The president, by contrast, is a man of steadfast convictions, as witnessed by the blank gaze he exhibits when speaking. Not one for nuance, George W. Bush papers over the distinction between harsh, accurate advertisements financed by “527” groups capable of raising unlimited funds and harsh, inaccurate advertisements financed by 527 groups capable of raising unlimited funds. No, to him it is a point of principle: The "shadowy groups" must be stopped, whether their charges are accurate or not. It's a bit hard to say what the principle here is, exactly, seeing as the president is apparently untroubled by unlimited fund raising undertaken by political-advocacy groups organized under section 501 of the tax code rather than section 527 of the tax code. Nevertheless, there's got to be one in there somewhere, I’m sure of it. (Just as sure as I am that, if I really thought about it, I could figure out why the president invaded Iraq to halt its nuclear program but literally shrugged at North Korea's.)

"Executive Excess" Report: CEO Pay Soars at Companies That Send Jobs Overseas
Biggest Convention Sponsors & Political Donors Also Pay CEOs More
United for a Fair Economy, 1 September 2004
EXCERPT: CEOs at companies that outsource the most US jobs are rewarded with bigger paychecks, according to a new report, “Executive Excess 2004: Campaign Contributions, Outsourcing, Unexpensed Stock Options and Rising CEO Pay.”
Average CEO compensation at the 50 firms outsourcing the most service jobs increased by 46 percent in 2003, compared to a 9 percent average increase for all CEOs at the 365 large companies surveyed by Business Week. Top outsourcers earned an average of $10.4 million in 2003, 28 percent more than the average CEO compensation of $8.1 million. From 2001 to 2003, the top 50 outsourcing CEOs earned $2.2 billion while sending an estimated 200,000 jobs overseas.
Political contributions also appear to pay off. CEOs of the 69 companies that sponsored this summer’s Democratic and Republican National Conventions saw their pay jump 52 percent in 2003, far outpacing the 9 percent raise for the average large company CEO. Similarly, the 38 CEOs who have personally raised at least $100,000 for either the Bush or Kerry presidential campaigns earned an average of $15.2 million in 2003, 88 percent more than the average large company CEO.
One sign of the political clout of corporate leaders is the current effort in Congress to block new rules that would require corporations to report all stock option grants as expenses in their financial statements. Current accounting rules have encouraged lavish options grants to executives. The report calculates that corporations have claimed an estimated $3.9 billion in tax deductions related to stock options exercised by 350 leading CEOs since 1997.
After two years of narrowing, the CEO-to-worker wage gap is rising again. The CEO pay to worker pay ratio reached 301:1 in 2003, up from 282:1 in 2002. If the minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay since 1990, it would today be $15.76 per hour, rather than the current $5.15 per hour.

The Opportunity Costs of the Iraq War
The American Prospect, 25 August 2004
EXCERPT: The Iraq war continues to be a drain on the American taxpayers' pocketbooks. So far, the war has cost the United States $144.4 billion, including $25 billion in the administration's FY05 defense budget signed into law earlier this month. An additional $60 billion is expected in a supplemental request after the November elections. According to the Defense Department, the cost of containing Saddam Hussein over 12 years was only $30 billion.  While no one disputes the evil and oppressive nature of Saddam Hussein's regime, as the 9/11 Commission made clear in its final report, Iraq was not involved in the planning or execution of the September 11 attacks and did not have a "collaborative operational relationship," according to its final report. The September 11 attacks necessitated an increase in homeland security funding – the administration's request for the coming fiscal year is $47.5 billion. However, according to the Center for American Progress, many homeland security priorities are presently under-funded or unfunded – port security, airline cargo screening and community policing programs. More could be done to better secure or eliminate nuclear weapons, material and technology to prevent terrorists from developing and exploding nuclear or dirty bombs. While progress is being made in Afghanistan, increased aid faster will give democracy its best chance of taking hold and help eliminate the flourishing drug trade in Afghanistan that funds global terrorist activities. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken their toll on our troops. A larger Army and more special operations forces would take some of the current strain off the National Guard and reserves and improve the military's ability to eliminate actual terrorist safe havens in the future. These are just a few proposals that would have represented a better investment in America's security than the $144.4 billion Iraq "war of choice.
Download a PDF version of this report
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
Fortress America
NPR's Fresh Air, 1 September 2004
Listen to Journalist Matthew Brzezinski, 'Fortress America'
Brzezinski has reported on the nation's homeland security since Sept. 11, for magazines including Mother Jones and The New York Times Magazine. His new book is Fortress America: An Inside Look at the Coming Surveillance State (out later this fall).
SEE ALSO:
The Neglected Home Front
Stephen E. Flynn
Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004
(revisited)
A FAILURE TO PROTECT
The United States is living on borrowed time -- and squandering it. The attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon highlighted just how open the United States is to unconventional attacks. The widespread economic and social disruption that flowed from the suicidal acts of just 19 terrorists also exposed the Achilles' heel of the world's sole superpower. The transportation, energy, information, financial, chemical, food, and logistical networks that underpin U.S. economic power and the American way of life offer the United States' enemies a rich menu of irresistible targets. And most of these remain virtually unprotected.

Panel Says Conrad Black Ran a 'Corporate Kleptocracy' and Particularly Criticizes Richard Perle, DoD Senior Advisor
By FLOYD NORRIS
NYT, 31 August 2004
EXCERPT: Conrad M. Black ran a "corporate kleptocracy" for his own benefit at Hollinger International, the publisher of The Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers, and the board of directors failed in its responsibilities to monitor what he was doing, a committee of that board concluded in a report filed on Monday in federal court in Chicago and made available today. " Hollinger wasn't a company where isolated improper and abusive acts took place," said the report, largely written by Richard C. Breeden, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Rather, it said, Hollinger was "an entity in which ethical corruption was a defining characteristic." ...The report was particularly critical of the audit committee of the board, which it said had not performed its duties to monitor what was going on. But the report saved its harshest criticism for Richard Perle, the former Reagan administration official and current member of a Pentagon advisory board. It said it did not consider Mr. Perle to have been an independent director and called on him to return $5.4 million in pay he received after "putting his own interests above those of Hollinger's shareholders."

1 September 2004

BushWhackedUSA Special Section Bush Campaign Lies With Verbosity, Without Hesitation Listen to Bush on the Today Show answer Matt Lauer's question and then, listen to Marc Racicot, the Bush-Cheney campaign chairman explain Bush's answer to NPR. Karl Rove followed up on the ABC News tonight with similar language. Looks like the Bush Team is back on message. Clearly, Bush cannot be truthful even when he wants to be. The "War On Terrorism" was a misnomer intended to justify extraordinary and extra-legal actions, foreign and domestic. It's doubtful anyone on the Bush Team really considered the implications of prosecuting a war against a tactic employed by so many enemies, let alone what it might take to 'win.' Complete context is included on the above mp3 file. For the entire audio/video of each interview go to NBC Today Show, 30 August 2004 "My Job is to Confront Problems" and launch 'Bush Interview" and NPR's All Things Considered, 31 August 2004 Bush-Cheney Campaign Chair: Goals of the Convention

At Least 900 Arrested in City as Protesters Clash With Police
By DIANE CARDWELL and MARC SANTORA
NYT, 1 September 2004
EXCERPT: A series of demonstrations rippled across Manhattan last night when protesters tried to converge on the Republican National Convention, as a day of planned civil disobedience erupted into clashes with police officers and led to the arrest of more than 900 people. The wave of confrontations - which included a brawl with the police at the New York Public Library, marauding crowds cursing at delegates in Midtown and the detention of hundreds of protesters near ground zero - created a day of disorder in a convention week already marked by sustained protests against the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. Yesterday's incidents stood in contrast to the enormous, mostly orderly antiwar march that drew hundreds of thousands of people to Manhattan on Sunday. Many of those protesting yesterday had purposefully avoided seeking permits for their rallies but had publicized their plans well in advance, leading hordes of police officers in cars, bikes, scooters and vans to flood various parts of the city primed to pre-empt disorder before it could occur. The day's arrests brought the convention-related total to more than 1,460. The protesters gathered at various locations, many with the goal of descending on the convention site at Madison Square Garden. But at the various staging areas - near ground zero, in Union Square, in Herald Square near Macy's, and outside the New York Public Library - the police began making arrests, sending the crowds into a frenzy. These confrontations followed several other events, some of which went off without incident, and the police said their aggressive actions prevented even more widespread disruptions. ...Protesters and civil liberties lawyers expressed concerns over what they said had been unfair and overzealous tactics in dealing with demonstrators who may not have had permits but were not violent. "It's an example of the police suckering the protesters," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to the arrest of some 200 protesters who said they thought they were abiding by an agreement they had negotiated with the police as they marched from ground zero on Fulton Street. "It was a bait-and-switch tactic," she added, "where they approved a demonstration and the protesters kept up their end of the bargain. They undermined people's confidence in the police, and that's a serious problem as we go forward."
SEE ALSO:
How George Bush and His Republicans Mobilized Half a Million People
Streets of Rage
by Tom Robbins & Jennifer Gonnerman
Village Voice, 1 September 2004
EXCERPT: All week, people have invoked his name in anger and ridicule in documentaries, art shows, poetry readings, even die-ins, all part of the convulsion of creative dissent that his presidency has unintentionally unleashed. As George W. Bush steps forward on the red, white, and blue stage at the Garden this week to accept his party's nomination, he will claim many accomplishments for his first term in office. There is one, however, he will never mention: that fear and hatred of his regime have managed to turn even ordinary Americans into full-fledged activists committed to his ouster, while at the same time regalvanizing a progressive movement in American politics that had sputtered along for years without clear direction.

It's not what you do, it's how you look

Being There
What does 9/11 tell us about Bush? Nothing.
By William Saletan
Slate, 31 August 2004
EXCERPT: For the past month, a group of veterans funded by a Bush campaign contributor and advised by a Bush campaign lawyer has attacked the story of John Kerry's heroism in Vietnam. They have argued, contrary to all known contemporaneous records, that Kerry was too brutal in a counterattack that earned him the Silver Star, and that he survived only mines, not bullets, when he rescued a fellow serviceman from a river. President Bush, who joined the National Guard as a young man to avoid Vietnam, has been challenged to denounce the group's charges. He has refused.
Now the Republican National Convention is showcasing Bush's own heroic moment. As John McCain put it last night: "I knew my confidence was well placed when I watched him stand on the rubble of the World Trade Center with his arm around a hero of September 11 and, in our moment of mourning and anger, strengthen our unity and our resolve by promising to right this terrible wrong and to stand up and fight for the values we hold dear."
Pardon me for asking, but where exactly is the heroism in this story? Where, indeed, is the heroism in anything Bush has done before 9/11 or since?

The Neglected Home Front
Stephen E. Flynn
Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration ...has neglected to protect the homeland, even though Americans in the United States are the ones most vulnerable to future attacks. The government must do more to safeguard critical U.S. infrastructure and mobilize the American public to help. For starters, it should create a semi-independent federal agency tapping into private resources that would develop and enforce security standards.

Bush's 'Few and Rich Owners'-ship Society
by Christian E. Weller
Center for American Progress, 27 August 2004
EXCERPT: As New York City braces for the Republican convention, Republican strategists are trying to design an economic program that resonates with the electorate. And once again, they seem to be pushing for – guess what?! – tax cuts: making the president's tax cuts permanent and creating an "ownership society" through tax cuts for people to put money away for retirement, health insurance, education, and other more nebulous purposes.
Who could possibly oppose an ownership society? It raises notions of responsibility through planning and foresight, a better and brighter future through savings, and homes with white picket fences in safe neighborhoods. These are laudable goals that public policy should indeed strive to help American families achieve. But the president's proposals will not get you there. Instead, those who already own a lot of wealth and who don't need help in accumulating more will reap large tax benefits, while middle-class families will lose important benefits.

The GOP Doesn't Reflect America
Michael Moore, Filmmaker
USA Today, 31 August 2004
EXCERPT: Welcome, Republicans. You're proud Americans who love your country. In your own way, you want to make this country a better place. Whatever our differences, you should be commended for that.But what's all this talk about New York being enemy territory? Nothing could be further from the truth. We New Yorkers love Republicans. We have a Republican mayor and governor, a death penalty and two nuclear plants within 30 miles of the city. New York is home to Fox News Channel. The top right-wing talk shows emanate from here — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly among them. The Wall Street Journal is based here, which means your favorite street is here. Not to mention more Fortune 500 executives than anywhere else.
You may think you're surrounded by a bunch of latte-drinking effete liberals, but the truth is, you're right where you belong, smack in the seat of corporate America and conservative media.
Let me also say I admire your resolve. You're true believers. Even though only a third of the country defines itself as "Republican," you control the White House, Congress, Supreme Court and most state governments. You're in charge because you never back down. Your people are up before dawn figuring out which minority group shouldn't be allowed to marry today. Our side is full of wimps who'd rather compromise than fight. Not you guys.

Music for the Convention -- by Kyle McMahon bush.lies (Listen Now) Give Me Your Trust © 2004 luv.n.light publishing / ASCAP written by: kyle. mcmahon Includes clips of George W. Bush's speeches from 2000-2004, taken from royalty free, public domain audio. Produced & created by: kyle. mcmahon

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Talks to Disarm Shiites Collapse
By DEXTER FILKINS and ERIK ECKHOLM
NYT, 1 September 2004
EXCERPT: Talks to disarm hundreds of insurgents in the roiling Sadr City ghetto in Baghdad collapsed Tuesday, after a tentative peace pact was abruptly canceled by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Leaders of the Mahdi Army, the rebel force led by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and two well-placed Iraqi sources said an agreement had been reached late Monday that called for the disarming of the rebel force and a halt in American military operations in Sadr City. Mahdi Army commanders and other Iraqi sources said Tuesday that Dr. Allawi backed out of the agreement on Tuesday morning. The failure of negotiations raised the prospect of more violence from Mr. Sadr's Shiite insurgency, meaning the Iraqi government may not be able to direct its full political and military resources to quelling the continuing Sunni insurgency in other parts of the country. Also on Tuesday, a militant Islamic group announced a mass killing in Iraq, showing pictures of 12 dead Nepalese laborers for a Jordanian company. The agreement on Monday on Sadr City, reached after several days of negotiations, had come on the heels of the withdrawal of Mr. Sadr's forces from Najaf last week after the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful religious leader. "Last night there was a deal," said Yusef al-Nasiri, the leader of the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. "This morning there was supposed to be a press conference. But then Allawi surprised us, and he has taken us back to zero." Simultaneous news conferences scheduled by Dr. Allawi and the Mahdi Army to announce their earlier deal were called off. Mr. Nasiri said he had been told by one of the government's negotiators, Qassim Daoud, the minister of state, that Dr. Allawi had objected to the restrictions placed on Americans soldiers operating in the area. Under the agreement, the Americans would be limited to performing reconstruction work; anything more aggressive than that would require the permission of the Iraqi government.

12 Nepalese Hostages 'Executed in Iraq'
Associated Press via The Guardian, 31 August 2004
EXCERPT: A video purporting to show the execution-style murder of 12 Nepalese workers kidnapped in Iraq was posted today on a website linked to an Islamist militant group.
If confirmed, the killings would mark the largest number of foreign hostages killed at one time by insurgents in Iraq who have seized more than 100 hostages in recent months.

Rightwing Bush Administration-Israeli Likud Links Spread
F.B.I. Interviews 2 Suspected of Passing Secrets to Israel
By DAVID JOHNSTON
NYT, 1 September 2004
EXCERPT: Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted interviews with two officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are suspected of passing classified information from a Pentagon analyst to Israeli intelligence, government officials and a lawyer for the committee said on Tuesday. On Friday, F.B.I. agents visited the two officials of the group, Steven Rosen, the organization's director of foreign policy issues, and Keith Weissman, one of its experts on Iran, said Nathan Lewin, a lawyer for the pro-Israel lobbying group, known as Aipac. The interviews took place about the same time that news organizations began reporting the existence of the F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation, officials said. The F.B.I. interviews were halted when each of the men asked to be represented by a lawyer before answering more questions. A Washington defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said he had been hired to represent the employees, but would not discuss the case. Aipac has said in a statement that the organization is cooperating with investigators but that the accusations against its employees are baseless. The F.B.I. interviews with Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were confirmed by American government officials who have been briefed about the case. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were first identified in Israeli press accounts. The authorities said that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew Lawrence A. Franklin, the Defense Department analyst who is suspected of giving them classified information related to American policy toward Iran. Mr. Franklin is a lower-level analyst who works on Iranian issues in the office of Douglas J. Feith, under secretary of defense for policy.
SEE ALSO:
2d Probe at the Pentagon Examines Actions on Iraq
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | August 31, 2004
Boston Globe, 31 August 2004
EXCERPT: The Pentagon office in which an analyst is the focus of an investigation into the possible passing of secret documents to Israel is at the heart of another ongoing probe on Capitol Hill. The broader probe is trying to determine whether Defense Department officials went outside normal channels to gather intelligence on Iraq or overstepped their legal mandate by meeting with dissidents to plot against Iran and Syria, according to Bush administration and congressional officials. Senate Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee staff members say inquiries into the Near East and South Asia Affairs division have found preliminary evidence that some officials gathered questionable information on weapons of mass destruction from Iraqi exiles such as Ahmed Chalabi without proper authorization, which helped build President Bush's case for an invasion last year. The investigators are also looking into a more serious concern: whether the office engaged in illegal activity by holding unauthorized meetings with foreign nationals to destablize Syria and Iran without the presidential approval required for covert operations, said one senior congressional investigator who has longtime experience in intelligence oversight.
SEE ALSO:
Feith Based Initiative
Laura Rozen
WarandPiece,com, 31 August 2004
Courtesy of TomPaine.com
EXCERPT: We know there is an FBI investigation of Larry Franklin, an Iran analyst who works in the office of Doug Feith, the undersecretary of Defense for Policy, for allegedly giving classified US documents to the lobby group Aipac. And we know there is a second investigation, by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, of a secret back channel between officials from Feith's office and the former Iran contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, which my colleagues and I reported on over the weekend.
Today, we learn from the Boston Globe's Brian Bender that there is yet a third investigation, also from the Hill, by the House Judiciary committee, of the activities of Feith's office. And this one, now in the preliminary stages, focuses not just on the DoD-Ghorbanifar Iran back channel we reported on, but also on whether yet another official in Feith's office, Michael Maloof, was involved in a back channel whose purpose was to destabilize Syria..
SEE ALSO: Franklin Met with Naor Gilon (Informed Comment)
SEE ALSO:
The Pentagon and Israel
by James Ridgeway
Village Voice, 31 August 2004
EXCERPT:
What is one to make of this? If it's not a Democratic maneuver to keep Jews away from Bush, then maybe it's a run by old-line conservatives to get rid of pro-Israel neoconservatives, who they feel are ruining Bush's re-election chances with their nutball Middle East policies, which after failure in Iraq are now aiming to lock the U.S. into a war with Iran. Or maybe, as others suggest, the story marks the surfacing of a hidden Pentagon back channel to Iranian dissidents, out of which Rumsfeld's foreign office hopes to bring about regime change there. Whatever the meaning, Rudy Giuliani, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, and 60 members of Congress rushed to reassure Jewish voters, by joining Bernice Manocherian, president of AIPAC, at a panel discussion where she labeled the charges against AIPAC "outrageous."  [BWUSA emphasis]

Republican Convention "We did not seek this War"
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 31 August 2004
EXCERPT: The speech-makers kept saying "we did not seek this war," and that it was imposed on us, and by God we were going to keep hitting back. That is, the rhetoric was that of righteous anger, of the avenging victim. While this argument works with regard to Afghanistan (which the US did not invade, only providing air cover to an indigenous group. the Northern Alliance), it is hollow with regard to Iraq. Only by confusing the "war on terror" with the war on Iraq could this rhetoric be even somewhat meaningful, and it is not a valid conflation. No American president has more desperately sought out a war with any country than George W. Bush sought out this war with Iraq. Only Polk's war on Mexico, also based on false pretexts, even comes close to the degree of crafty manipulation employed by Bush and Cheney to get up the Iraq war. Intelligence about weapons of mass destruction was deliberately and vastly exaggerated, producing a "nuclear threat" where there wasn't even so much as a single gamma ray to be registered. Innuendo and repetition were cleverly used to tie Saddam to Usama Bin Laden operationally, a link that all serious intelligence professionals deny.
Bush is characterizing the Iraq war as a "catastrophic success". This is the line that the US military succeeded so well so fast against Saddam's army that chaos naturally ensued.
Democrats are having a lot of fun with the phrase, but the real problem is that that analysis of what went wrong is incorrect. The Bush administration simply mismanaged Iraq. It dissolved the Iraqi army, throwing the country into chaos. That army was not gone and would have gladly showed up at the barracks for a paycheck. It pursued a highly punitive policy of firing and excluding members of the Baath Party, which was not done in so thorough-going a manner even to Nazis in post-war Germany. It canceled planned municipal elections, denying people any stake in their new "government," which was more or less appointed by the US. It put all its efforts into destroying Arab socialism in Iraq and creating a sudden free market, rather than paying attention to the preconditions for entrepreneurial activity, like security and services. It kept changing its policies-- early on it was going to turn the country over to Ahmad Chalabi in 6 months. Then that plan was scotched and Paul Bremer was brought in to play MacArthur in Tokyo for a projected two or three years. Then that didn't work and there would be council-based elections. Then those wouldn't work and there would be a "transfer of sovereignty." All this is not to mention the brutal and punitive sieges of Fallujah and Najaf and the Abu Ghuraib torture scandal, etc., etc.
So it wasn't a catastrophic success that caused the problem. It was that Iraq was being run at the upper levels by a handful of screw-ups who had all sorts of ulterior motives, and at least sometimes did not have the best interests of the country at heart. And Bush is the one who put them in charge.

What Went Wrong in Iraq
Larry Diamond, Past Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad
Foreign Affairs, September/October 2004
EXCERPT: Summary: Although the early U.S. blunders in the occupation of Iraq are well known, their consequences are just now becoming clear. The Bush administration was never willing to commit the resources necessary to secure the country and did not make the most of the resources it had. U.S. officials did get a number of things right, but they never understood-or even listened to-the country they were seeking to rebuild. As a result, the democratic future of Iraq now hangs in the balance.
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
The Balancing Act in Iraq
NPR's Talk of the Nation, 31 August 2004
Interview with John Burns of the NYT and Larry Diamond.

Taking Stock After a Pre-emptive War
Najaf peace deal shows why U.S. troops must leave Iraq
San Francisco Chronicle, 31 August 2004
Courtesy of TomPaine.com
EXCERPT: Sometimes U.S. officials even admit that they started this fight. Take this April remark from General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shortly after al-Sadr's followers took up arms. Then-U.S. administrator Paul Bremer had just closed al-Sadr's newspaper and arrested his chief adviser. "What contributed to this was our offensive action," Myers told reporters at a press conference. "(We) shut down his newspaper. Went after one of his lieutenants (adviser Mustafa) Yakoubi, and it was not unanticipated or unexpected that we would find some resistance to that. They think they can stop progress for 25 million Iraqis. That's not going to happen." But is it possible that it was precisely the progress al-Sadr's forces were making that made his presence so annoying to the United States? Before the U.S. military branded al-Sadr a criminal, his followers had organized elections in many of Iraq's poor Shiite slums and in smaller cities such as Najaf, forcing out local governments appointed by the North Carolina contractor, Research Triangle International. While big U.S. firms (Halliburton, Bechtel et al.) have failed to fix Iraq's electricity grid and telephone system, al-Sadr's organization has done its best to build a functioning society. In a report issued in September last year, the International Crisis Group (headquartered in Brussels) credited al-Sadr's organization for keeping the peace in primarily poor, Shiite sections of Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

5 Afghans Die in Strike Laid to U.S. Force
By AMY WALDMAN
NYT, 1 September 2004
EXCERPT: At least five civilians were killed, including two children, and eight were wounded by American airstrikes in northeastern Afghanistan on Monday night, the local governor said Tuesday in a telephone interview.