26 October 2004
Kerry lied about the $200 billion...its $225 billion
Increase in War Funding Sought
Bush to seek another $70 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan
By Jonathan Weisman and Thomas E. Ricks
MSNBC News, 26 October 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion
in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next
year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion
of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said
yesterday. White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton emphasized
that final decisions on the supplemental spending request will not be
made until shortly before the request is sent to Congress. That may not
happen until early February, when President Bush submits his budget for
fiscal 2006, assuming he wins reelection. But Pentagon and House
Appropriations Committee aides said the Defense Department and military
services are scrambling to get their final requests to the White House
Office of Management and Budget by mid-November, shortly after the
election. The new numbers underscore that the war is going to be far
more costly and intense, and last longer, than the administration first
suggested.
A Culture of Cover-Ups
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 26 October 2004
EXCERPT: Aides to John Kerry say that if he wins, he'll replace Porter
Goss as head of the C.I.A. Let's hope so: Mr. Goss has already confirmed
the fears of those who worried about his appointment by placing
Republican staff members from Capitol Hill in key positions and raising
fears about a partisan purge. But the flap over Mr. Goss is only a
symptom of a much broader issue: whether the Bush administration will be
able to maintain its culture of cover-ups. That culture affects every
branch of policy, but it's strongest when it comes to the "war on
terror." Although President Bush's campaign is based almost entirely on
his self-proclaimed leadership in that war, his officials have thrown a
shroud of secrecy over any information that might let voters assess his
performance. Yesterday we got two peeks under that shroud. One was The
Times's report about what the International Atomic Energy Agency calls
"the greatest explosives bonanza in history." Ignoring the agency's
warnings, administration officials failed to secure the weapons site, Al
Qaqaa, in Iraq, allowing 377 tons of deadly high explosives to be
looted, presumably by insurgents. The administration is trying to play
down the importance of this loss, arguing that because Iraq was awash in
munitions, a few hundred more tons don't make much difference. But aside
from their potential use in nuclear weapons - the reason they were under
seal before the war - these particular explosives, unlike standard
munitions, are exactly what a terrorist needs. Informed sources quoted
by the influential Nelson Report say explosives from Al Qaqaa are the
"primary source" of the roadside and car bombs that have killed and
wounded so many U.S. soldiers. And thanks to the huge amount looted -
"in a highly organized operation using heavy equipment" - the insurgents
and whoever else have access to the Qaqaa material have enough
explosives for tens of thousands of future bombs. If the administration
had had its way, the public would never have heard anything about this.
Administration officials have known about the looting of Al Qaqaa for at
least six months, and probably much longer. But they didn't let the
I.A.E.A. inspect the site after the war, and pressured the Iraqis not to
inform the agency about the loss. They now say that they didn't want our
enemies - that is, the people who stole the stuff - to know it was
missing. The real reason, obviously, was that they wanted the news kept
under wraps until after Nov. 2. The story of the looted explosives has
overshadowed another report that Bush officials tried to suppress - this
one about how the Bush administration let Abu Musab al-Zarqawi get away.
An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal confirmed and expanded on
an "NBC Nightly News" report from March that asserted that before the
Iraq war, administration officials called off a planned attack that
might have killed Mr. Zarqawi, the terrorist now blamed for much of the
mayhem in that country, in his camp.
Mainstream media may talk about this for a few
more hours...then back to what Teresa said about Laura
Iraq Explosives Become Issue in Campaign
By DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 26 October 2004
EXCERPT: The White House sought on Monday to explain the disappearance
of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq that American forces were
supposed to secure, as Senator John Kerry seized on the missing cache as
"one of the great blunders of Iraq" and said President Bush's
"incredible incompetence" had put American troops at risk. Mr. Bush
never mentioned the disappearance of the high explosives during a long
campaign speech in Greeley, Colo., about battling terrorism. Instead,
evoking images of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and traveling
with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, at his side, Mr.
Bush made an impassioned appeal to voters to let him "finish the work we
have started."
The Bush Administration's Attack
On Workers And The Eight Hour Day
By Stewart Acuff
ZNet, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: With the message "Give back our hard-earned money! Take back
your overtime pay cut!," several thousand workers on Wednesday, October
5, delivered hundreds of thousands of postcards to the Bush/Cheney
office headquarters in 17 battleground cities against the Bush overtime
pay cut, even taking over their offices in several cities. These workers
are enraged about the fact that the Bush Administration's overtime pay
cut strips up to six million workers of their right to receive overtime
pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. With this new rule,
President Bush has given his corporate friends the green light to stop
paying overtime to hardworking Americans. It's a corporate welfare
handout at workers' expense, and it's just plain wrong. Many of the
workers that participated in Wednesday's actions talked about how they
will personally be impacted by these cuts, saying that they will now be
forced to work longer hours for less and that this is the last thing
they need right now when they're already struggling in this tough
economy. By denying workers their overtime pay, George Bush has taken
the first set of steps toward dismantling the eight-hour workday. With
his effort in manipulating the Department of Labor to rename overtime
protection for professional employees and others, Bush has begun and
signaled his intention to move back the eight-hour workday and its
promise of some measure of leisure for America's workers. Despite the
fact that the United States Senate has repeatedly voted to stop his
efforts, he continues to pursue his radical agenda.
NASA Expert Criticizes Bush on Global
Warming Policy
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
NYT, 26 October 2004
EXCERPT: A top NASA climate expert who twice briefed Vice President Dick
Cheney on global warming plans to criticize the administration's
approach to the issue in a lecture at the University of Iowa tonight and
say that a senior administration official told him last year not to
discuss dangerous consequences of rising temperatures. The expert, Dr.
James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space
Studies in Manhattan, expects to say that the Bush administration has
ignored growing evidence that sea levels could rise significantly unless
prompt action is taken to reduce heat-trapping emissions from
smokestacks and tailpipes. Many academic scientists, including dozens of
Nobel laureates, have been criticizing the administration over its
handling of climate change and other complex scientific issues. But Dr.
Hansen, first in an interview with The New York Times a week ago and
again in his planned lecture today, is the only leading scientist to
speak out so publicly while still in the employ of the government.
Bush Administration Downplays
Mercury Dangers in Favor of Power Industry
BushGreenWatch, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: An interim study released last week by researchers at the
Environmental Quality Institute at the University of North Carolina (UNC)
at Asheville, has found that one-fifth of women of childbearing age have
mercury levels in their hair that exceed federal health standards. Clean
air protections suffered a substantial setback when the administration
delayed a previously scheduled mercury clean-up by 10 years. It also
suppressed data on how American women and their unborn children were
being harmed by mercury exposure, and granted unprecedented influence to
the coal and oil-fired power plants responsible for mercury pollution.
Under the Clean Air Act, utilities would have been required to reduce
mercury emissions by 90 percent over four years. Instead, the Bush
administration proposed scaling back and delaying the clean-up to allow
utilities to cut emissions by just 70 percent over 14 years. The
administration's plan also allows higher polluting companies to purchase
"credits" from those that operate in a cleaner fashion. Environmental
experts argue that such a plan will cause disproportionate harm to the
people who live in proximity to the dirtier plants.
SEE ALSO:
Pentagon Blocking Clean-Up of Toxic Waste
(BushGreenWatch)
SEE ALSO:
Polluters Getting a Pass from EPA
(BushGreenWatch)
25 October 2004
The Billions
Top U.S. Contracting Official Calls for an Inquiry in
the Halliburton Case
By ERIK ECKHOLM
NYT, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: The top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of
Engineers, charging that the Army granted the Halliburton Company large
contracts for work in Iraq and the Balkans without following rules
designed to ensure competition and fair prices to the government, has
called for a high-level investigation of what she described as threats
to the "integrity of the federal contracting program."
The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, said that in at least one case
she witnessed, Army officials inappropriately allowed representatives of
Halliburton to sit in as they discussed the terms of a contract the
company was set to receive. Her accusations offer the first extended
account of arguments that roiled inside the military bureaucracy over
contracts with the company.
In an Oct. 21 letter to the acting Army secretary, Ms. Greenhouse said
that after her repeated questions about the Halliburton contracts, she
was excluded from major decisions to award money and that her job status
was threatened. In response, Army officials referred her accusations to
the Pentagon's investigations bureau for review and promised to protect
her position in the meantime.
Ms. Greenhouse, 62, is a veteran of military procurement and serves the
Corps of Engineers as the principal assistant responsible for
contracting - the top civilian overseeing the agency's contracts. She
also has chief responsibility for reviewing adherence to Pentagon rules
intended to shield awards from outside influence and promote
competition.
The contracts to Halliburton, a Houston-based conglomerate headed by
Dick Cheney before he became vice president, have stirred controversy
and charges of favoritism because some were granted on an emergency
basis, without competitive bidding. The company's operations in Iraq,
involving work for more than $10 billion, have also been dogged by
charges of overbilling and waste and have been an issue in the
presidential campaign.
Bush Exploits Suffering of 9/11, Says
Carter
Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: George Bush has exploited the suffering of September 11 and
turned back decades of efforts to make the world a safer place, the
former president Jimmy Carter says in an interview with the Guardian
published today.
Attacking Mr Bush and Tony Blair over Iraq, Mr Carter calls the war "a
completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements".
He also criticises Mr Bush for "lack of effort" on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and accuses him of abandoning nuclear
non-proliferation initiatives championed by five presidents.
The US "suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack ... and George
Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated
himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic
commander-in-chief, fighting a global threat against America," Mr Carter
says.
"He's repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite
successfully. I think that success has dissipated. I don't know if it's
dissipating fast enough to affect the election. We'll soon know."
Mr Carter, 80, was president from 1977-1981, but did not win re-election
amid the US hostage crisis in Iran. By comparison, support for Mr Bush's
Iraq invasion is widespread, something Mr Carter attributes to a
transformation in America's national mood.
"When your troops go to war, the prime minister or the president change
overnight from an administrator, dealing with taxation and welfare and
health and deteriorating roads, into the commander-in-chief," he says.
"And it's just become almost unpatriotic to describe Bush's fallacious
and ill-advised and mistaken and sometimes misleading actions." Mr Bush
and Mr Blair are blamed for helping to fuel the depth of anti-American
feeling in the Islamic world. Denying any link between his handling of
the Iranian crisis and the present threat, Mr Carter says: "The entire
Islamic world condemned Iran. Nowadays, because of the unwarranted
invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust
adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to
resolve the Palestinian issue, [there is] massive Islamic condemnation
of the United States."
American media organisations, he adds, "have been cowed, because they
didn't want to be unpatriotic. There has been a lack of inquisitive
journalism. In fact, it's hard to think of a major medium in the United
States that has been objective and fair and balanced, and critical when
criticism was deserved".
On nuclear proliferation, the issue that the Democratic contender John
Kerry has identified as the single most serious threat to national
security, Mr Carter attacks Mr Bush for abandoning "all of those long,
tedious negotiations" carried out by presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy,
Nixon, Reagan and himself.
In recent weeks he has also warned of the possibility of a new election
fiasco in Florida.
SEE ALSO:
Carter Says Bush Exploited Sept. 11 Attacks
(Reuters)
The Specter of '94
The Way We Live Now
By JAMES TRAUB
NYT Magazine, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT:
If John Kerry is elected president on Nov. 2, he will face an obstacle
just down the street that could prove as formidable as Iraq: the United
States House of Representatives. Republicans are currently expected to
improve on their 22-seat majority, and even if they don't, the House
will most likely continue to be dominated by a highly conservative and
fiercely partisan leadership team. Put otherwise, the election of 1994,
arguably the most important of the last generation, will trump even the
election of 2004.
Should Kerry win, Hastert and Tom DeLay should have little trouble
blocking his domestic agenda, especially the rollback of tax cuts to the
rich and increased spending on education and health care. Kerry can
count on a pretty frustrating presidency if he is elected. Are there any
grounds for hope that the supposedly bipartisan issue of national
security will be an exception? The answer appears to be, at least in the
House, that there's no such thing as ''bipartisan.'' This month, after
the 9/11 panel produced its report proposing the creation of a powerful
national intelligence director, the Senate, led by Joseph Lieberman, a
conservative Democrat, and Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, passed
a bill incorporating the panel's chief recommendations. In the House,
however, Hastert brazenly ignored comparable legislation proposed by
moderate Republicans as well as Democrats, submitting instead a
''leadership'' bill that in effect grafted discarded portions of the
Patriot Act onto the 9/11 legislation. Even Christopher Smith, a
generally conservative Republican from New Jersey, complained that the
bill would lead to ''bona fide refugees being returned to their
persecutors.''
No one insists more loudly than conservative Republicans that in the
aftermath of 9/11 Americans should put aside partisanship and petty
self-interest in order to stand together against a common enemy. It
turns out, however, that the spirit of '94 eclipses the spirit of 9/11.
Senators Question Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners
By REUTERS in NYT, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: Two senators said on Sunday they were troubled by a report that
U.S. intelligence officials secretly transferred as many as a dozen
detainees out of Iraq in the last six months, possibly violating
international treaties.
In an interview on ABC's ``This Week,'' Sen. John McCain, an Arizona
Republican who has campaigned for President Bush in his re-election bid,
warned against violating international treaties that aim to ensure
humane treatment of prisoners and civilians during a war. ``These
conventions and these rules are in place for a reason, because you get
on a slippery slope and you don't know where to get off,'' McCain, who
was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, said.
``The thing that separates us from the enemy is our respect for human
rights.''
McCain said the report in Sunday's edition of The Washington Post about
the CIA invoking a confidential memo written by the Justice Department
to secretly transfer detainees out of Iraq was ``another argument'' for
revamping the intelligence agency. The U.S. Congress is weighing
legislation that would overhaul U.S. intelligence and create a new
powerful national intelligence director post. The CIA has come under
sharp criticism for intelligence failures before the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks and for its reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction ahead
of the U.S. invasion.
``I think we should also need new leadership at the Justice Department
too,'' said Sen. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat. Attorney General
John Ashcroft heads up the department. The Post cited a March 19, 2004,
memo in which the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said the
CIA can take Iraqis out of the country for a ``brief but not indefinite
period'' and can permanently remove those determined to be illegal
aliens. Some specialists in international law say the opinion amounts to
a reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits forcible
transfers of civilians during wartime, the Post said.
Bush Backdoor Taxes:
Public University Tuition Is Up Sharply for 2004
By GREG WINTER
NYT, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: Tuition at the nation's public universities rose an average of
10.5 percent this year, the second largest increase in more than a
decade, according to the latest annual survey by the College Board. Last
year's rise, 13 percent, was the highest.
Private universities and community colleges also increased tuition, by 6
percent and 9 percent, in a year when inflation has been about 2.5
percent. The tuition increases at private and community colleges were
also among the steepest in a decade. It is the first time that the
average tuition at the nation's postsecondary institutions has surpassed
$20,000 for a private college, $5,000 for a public university and $2,000
for a community college. The survey of nearly 2,700 colleges and
universities, released yesterday, did not try to determine the reasons
for the steep increases. But among the many factors cited by its authors
and other higher education experts were shrinking endowments, large
increases in health insurance costs for campus employees and anemic
spending on higher education by states.
Who's His Daddy?
Katrina vanden Heuvel
The Nation, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: Bush famously told Bob Woodward that when it came to going to
war with Iraq he didn't ask his biological father, who had gone to war
with Iraq, for advice. He talked to a Higher Father instead.
In Bush's faith-based presidency, the formulation is simple: Bush
believes in God, God believes in him, and therefore we should, like God,
also believe in Bush. Doubters of the Preacher-in-Chief risk the fires
of hell, according to Dick Cheney, in the form of another terrorist
attack.
As if this weren't frightening enough, it appears Bush may be talking to
the wrong Higher Father. "The Lord told me Iraq was going to be (a) a
disaster, and (b) messy," Pat Robertson told Paula Zahn on CNN. But when
the evangelical leader passed on the divine warning to Bush, the
president's response was: "Oh, no, we're not going to have any
casualties."
The White House has denied Robertson's assertion, but Jay Garner, Bush's
first civil administrator of Iraq, told the New York Times that the
Administration had planned to withdraw troops from the country just 60
days after taking Baghdad, failing to anticipate the insurgency which
has led to more than one thousand American casualties to date.
Bush isn't divinely inspired; he's delusional, drunk with
self-confidence. Robertson, who is a rabid supporter mind you, described
Bush as being "like a contented Christian with four aces. He was just
sitting there, like, I'm on top of the world."
Administration Officials Split Over
Stalled Military Tribunals
By TIM GOLDEN
NYT, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: Interviews with dozens of officials show that the myriad
problems ignited an often fierce behind-the-scenes struggle that set the
Pentagon and its allies in the White House against adversaries at the
National Security Council, the State Department and Justice Department.
The friction among officials like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld;
the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; and Mr. Ashcroft sheds
new light on the internal dynamics of an administration that has shown a
remarkably united public front. In many cases, officials said, the
battles were fueled by the discontent of military, foreign-policy and
other officials who had been excluded from a role in shaping the policy
after Sept. 11. "Anytime you have a process which is not inclusive, you
end up giving people a reason to be opposed to it," said Timothy E.
Flanigan, a former deputy White House counsel who helped craft the legal
strategy. "That was certainly the case here.'' ...Officials on the
National Security Council staff were particularly uneasy. The
discussions that produced the president's Nov. 13 military order had
been dominated by a small circle of White House lawyers overseen by Mr.
Cheney. Ms. Rice, like Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, had been
excluded, officials said, an embarrassing slight given her role as a
mediator on national security issues. Mr. Bush later brought the council
staff back into the process, assigning it to draw up a broader strategy
to deal with the thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan. Two senior
aides, Elliott Abrams and John B. Bellinger III, convened an interagency
group to study the issue. The men made an odd team: Mr. Bellinger, the
council's legal adviser, was a measured former Justice Department
official with a degree from Princeton and a taste for monogrammed dress
shirts. Mr. Abrams, known as a bare-knuckled bureaucratic infighter, was
making his return to government after being convicted of lying to
Congress in the Iran-contra scandal and later pardoned by the first
President Bush. ...But critics insist that the changes the Pentagon has
made at Guantαnamo and to the military commissions amount to
half-measures that will not fix a system that is fundamentally at odds
with the country's legal values. "As soon as the process was set up, it
started to become something they never wanted it to be," said Commander
Sundel. "But it is astounding that a small group of people could create
an entirely new judicial process - without many of the due-process
guarantees we expect - and think it could survive real challenges.''
23-24 October 2004
Will 'Bush's Media Machine' talk about this for
two weeks?
--See MediaMatters.org
Would Kerry Throw Us To The Wolves?
A misleading Bush ad criticizes Kerry for proposing to cut
intelligence spending -- a decade ago, by 4%, when some Republicans also
proposed cuts.
FactCheck.org, 23 October 2004
Summary
A new Bush ad claims Kerry supported cuts in intelligence so deep they
would have weakened America s defenses against terrorists, and shows a
pack of hungry-looking wolves preparing to attack. Actually, the cut
Kerry proposed in 1994 amounted to less than 4 percent, as part of a
proposal to cut many programs to reduce the deficit. And in 1995 Porter
Goss, who is now Bushs CIA Director, co-sponsored an even strong
deficit-elimination measure that would have cut CIA personnel by 20
percent over five years. When asked about that at his confirmation
hearings he didn't disavow it.
Analysis: The Bush ad released Oct. 22 is called wolves, and is a
direct appeal to fear.
SEE ALSO:
When Is a Cut Not a Cut?
(Slate)
'Tickle downers' never miss a chance
Bush Signs $136 Billion in New Corporate Tax Breaks Into Law
AP, 23 October 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush quietly signed the most sweeping rewrite of
corporate tax law in nearly two decades Friday, giving $136 billion in
new tax breaks to businesses, farmers and other groups. Announcing the
action without fanfare aboard Air Force One, the White House said the
new law would help create jobs. The election-year measure was intended
to end a bitter trade war with Europe, and supporters said it provided
critical assistance to beleaguered manufacturers who had suffered 2.7
million lost jobs over the last four years. The legislation also
includes about $10 billion in assistance for tobacco farmers. A Senate
provision that would have coupled the assistance with regulation of
tobacco by the Food and Drug Administration was dropped by the committee
that ironed out differences between the House and Senate. Opponents of
the measure say it will swell the nation's huge budget deficit with a
massive giveaway to multinational companies that move jobs overseas.
They also say it will add to the complexity of the tax system.
SEE ALSO:
A Resignation-on-Principle Opportunity
Brad DeLong's Weblog
EXCERPT:
Here's what Treasury Secretary John Snow said about the bill:
"A myriad of special interest tax provisions that benefit few
taxpayers and increase the complexity of the tax code."
"Overloaded with
special-interest provisions."
"U.S. companies that do not have foreign operations and have already
paid their full and fair share of tax will not be able to benefit from
this provision."
A Treasury Secretary whose advice on tax policy is not taken should
not stick around, for the sake of other Treasury Secretaries who will
come later if for no other reason.
U.S. Campaigns for Treaty to Ban Use
of Embryo Stem Cells
Bush administration's proposal would prohibit human and therapeutic
cloning for medical research. World body is divided on the issue.
By Maggie Farley
LA Times, 23 October 2004
EXCERPT: ...the Bush administration is spearheading a campaign at the
United Nations for a global treaty banning such research and all forms
of human cloning. Critics fear the U.S. move to create a U.N. treaty for
a universal ban might undermine efforts to find cures for such
afflictions as cancer, diabetes and spinal cord damage.
Prosecutor's Lips Still Sealed in
Probe of Leaked Information
Who disclosed to a columnist the name of a CIA operative? A federal
investigation is entering its second year with no conclusion in sight.
By Richard B. Schmitt
LA Times, October 2004
EXCERPT: Time seemed to be of the essence last December when the Justice
Department named a special prosecutor to handle the seemingly
straightforward, if politically delicate, task of investigating whether
a Bush administration official had illegally identified the name of a
CIA operative to a newspaper columnist. "The attorney general and I
agree that all leak investigations must be conducted with energy and
urgency," said James Comey, the deputy attorney general, in announcing
the appointment of a longtime friend and colleague, Patrick J.
Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, to the post.
Today, Fitzgerald's investigation seems plenty energized, although the
urgency he is bringing to the task is open to debate. The probe, which
the Justice Department began on its own in September 2003, is entering
its second year without any clear end in sight. The schedule for a court
fight over subpoenas indicates that the case is unlikely to be resolved
before the Nov. 2 election, and could stretch into 2005. Thus, when
voters go to the polls in less than two weeks, they will probably have
no better idea whether an administration official may have committed a
crime.
Left Far, Far Behind
Kids and schools are being unfairly punished by overly rigid
educational reform.
LA Times editorial, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: The No Child Left Behind Act was a truly bipartisan effort.
Although it is nice to see such harmony in Washington, that also means
neither party is interested in talking about the school reform measure's
serious defects.
President Bush touts the legislation as a great success, ignoring that
it does more to frustrate schools than to help them. Sen. John F. Kerry
is in a bind. He can't attack the law head-on because he voted for it,
and many of his Democratic colleagues helped create it. So he pretends
it would be fine if only Bush had put more money toward education, as
the Democrats wanted. Even if Bush had given schools the extra money,
this fundamentally flawed reform would still be choking on its own
rigidity and out-of-touch definition of success. Not only does it
unfairly punish thousands of schools that are making real progress, it
actually encourages schools to leave more students behind.
Bush's Ideology and Flu Vaccine
Los Angeles Times, 19 October 2004
EXCERPT: Thirty-six thousand Americans die of the flu every year. If
that number rises by just a tenth because we have only half as much flu
vaccine as we need, the increase in deaths will exceed the number killed
by Osama bin Laden on Sept. 11, 2001.
The parallels to 9/11 do not stop there. As in the 2001 catastrophe,
officials of the Bush administration are claiming ignorance as if it
were a virtue. They say they had no idea the vaccine shortage would
happen. They are pinning the blame on neglect by previous
administrations. And they are bragging about everything they are doing
now to prevent this kind of thing in the future. But, as with the 9/11
terrorist attacks, it didn't take long for various filed-and-forgotten
reports to resurface, all of them warning about the danger of a flu
vaccine shortage. Hindsight is cheap, of course. Washington is the
world's leading manufacturer of dire warnings. You can't heed them all.
But there were other hints as well. Lesser flu vaccine screw-ups have
been common in recent years. Clearly, the system was broken. ... The
flu-shot problem could have happened under any president. But it was
more likely to happen under this one because preventive measures
conflict with his ideology.
Washington Post Still Stretching to
Find Kerry Fibs
FAIR Action Alert, 22 October 2004
EXCERPT: On September 30, a
FAIR action alert urged the Associated Press and
Washington Post not to exercise "false balance" in their reporting
on the exaggerations and deceptions coming from the major presidential
candidates. By straining to include an equal number of Bush and Kerry
statements to "fact check," news outlets give the impression that both
sides are equally culpable of deceptive rhetoric.
On October 20, the Washington Post put a new spin on that formula
by suggesting one candidate has increased his output of inaccurate
rhetoric: John Kerry. The Post's Howard Kurtz wrote that "Kerry
has pushed the factual envelope less often than the president-- until
recently," suggesting that Kerry's deceptions now equal or exceed
Bush's.
But the evidence Kurtz presented did not support his charge. He listed
four of Bush's exaggerations, including his characterization of Kerry's
health plan as "government-run," his claim that Kerry "voted for
education reform and now opposes it, " and his repeated use of an
out-of-context Kerry quote as proof that Kerry thinks terrorism is
merely a "nuisance."
But Kurtz presented only two examples of Kerry pushing the "factual
envelope," and neither one makes a convincing case for Kerry's misuse of
facts. Kurtz wrote that Kerry plays loose with the facts when he says
that Bush "has a plan that cuts Social Security benefits by 30 to 45
percent." Kurtz countered this by noting that Bush, "while favoring
allowing younger workers to put part of their benefits in private
accounts, has never put forth a plan-- and has vowed that any change
would not affect current retirees."
But Kerry is not talking about current retirees; the TV ad in question
is based on a Congressional Budget Office study of one of the plans put
forth by Bush's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, and the
possible cuts in benefits would apply to future retirees. It is true
that Bush has not explicitly endorsed any particular privatization
model-- instead describing his commission's proposals as ''a variety of
ideas for people to look at'' (debate, 10/13/04)-- but given that the
contributions being made by workers now go to pay the benefits of
current retirees, any plan that significantly shifts worker
contributions to private accounts will require increased taxes, reduced
benefits or both.
The second Kerry deception, according to the Post, concerns the
military draft. Kurtz wrote that "Kerry said last week that there is a
'great potential' that Bush will reinstate the draft." This is
inaccurate, according to Kurtz, because Bush has issued denials about
reinstating a draft: "The president has repeatedly denied this, and Bush
spokesman Steve Schmidt, in a common campaign refrain, said the charge
shows Kerry 'will do or say anything to get elected.'"
By this logic, the Post would have ruled "inaccurate" a
hypothetical ad in 1988 that asserted that the elder George Bush would
raise taxes-- because he had declared "read my lips, no new taxes." As
any political observer knows, it's hardly "push[ing] the factual
envelope" to suggest that politicians don't always keep their promises--
but by the Post's standards, Kerry is being deceptive if he
doesn't take Bush at his word.
And there are, in fact, credible reasons to believe that Bush policies
might require a draft in a second term. As Paul Krugman pointed out in a
recent column (New York Times, 10/19/04), a study commissioned by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld found that the U.S. has "inadequate
total numbers of troops and lack of long-term endurance" (Navy Times,
10/4/04). And Bush constantly stresses that he is more willing to take
pre-emptive military actions than his opponent-- actions that would be
difficult if not impossible to undertake without a draft, given how
stretched U.S. troops already are.
The Nature of Bush's
"Safer World" and the Absurdity of "Fighting Terrorists
in Iraq so We Don't Have to Fight Them Here"
Jihadist terrorism has always posed what strategists call
an "asymmetric threat," capable of inflicting catastrophic harm
against a much stronger foe. But the way it operates, they said,
is changing. Students of al Qaeda used to speak of it as a network
with "key nodes" that could be attacked. More recently they have
described the growth of "franchises." Gordon and Falkenrath
pioneered an analogy, before leaving government, with an even less
encouraging prognosis.
Jihadists "metastasized into a lot of little cancers in a lot of
different countries," Gordon said recently. They formed "groups,
operating under the terms of a movement, who don't have to rely on
al Qaeda itself for funding, for training or for authority. [They
operate] at a level that doesn't require as many people, doesn't
require them to be as well-trained, and it's going to be damned
hard to get in front of that."
...Marc Sageman, a psychologist and former CIA case officer who
studies the formation of jihadist cells, said the inspirational
power of the Sept. 11 attacks -- and rage in the Islamic world
against U.S. steps taken since -- has created a new phenomenon.
Groups of young men gather in common outrage, he said, and a
violent plan takes form without the need for an outside leader to
identify, persuade or train those who carry it out. Much the same
pattern, officials said, preceded deadly attacks in Indonesia,
Turkey, Kenya, Morocco and elsewhere. There is no reason to
believe, they said, that the phenomenon will remain overseas.
--Washington Post, 22 October 2004 |
100 Facts and 1 Opinion:
The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration
by Judd Legum
The Nation, 20 October 2004
General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman
Get Big Breaks in New Corporate Tax Bill
by Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times
CorpWatch.org, 19 October 2004
EXCERPT: A little-noticed provision in the sweeping corporate tax bill
that passed Congress last week would reduce taxes at two major military
contractors by nearly $500 million over the next 10 years.
The provision, which primarily benefits General Dynamics and Northrop
Grumman, would allow shipbuilders to postpone their taxes for years on
profits from building ships and submarines for the Navy.
The new provision would benefit a handful of major shipyards, all owned
by one of the two military conglomerates. They include the Bath Iron
Works in Maine acquired by General Dynamics in 1995 and the company's
Electric Boat division in Groton, Conn., as well as the Northrop-owned
Newport News shipyard in Virginia.
The new tax break would reverse a rule that Congress imposed as part of
the sweeping tax overhaul of 1986, when lawmakers in both parties were
incensed that major military companies often paid no income taxes
despite earning billions of dollars providing major weapons systems to
the military.
Under the bill, Navy shipbuilders would be allowed to once again defer
paying most federal income taxes on a project until the contract was
completed. Because it takes about five years to build an aircraft
carrier and three years to build a destroyer, the shipyards would be
able to delay their tax bills for years, allowing more opportunity to
offset taxes against future losses.
The measure's primary sponsor was Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican
of Maine, who said she was determined to protect Bath Iron Works, one of
her state's largest employers.
AUDIO
LINK
Porter Goss Sits on CIA Reports that Names Names
Matt Rothschild
The Progressive, 22 October 2004
Porter Goss Goes on a Long Sit
MP3 file
(1mb)
RealAudio file
(1mb)
22 October 2004
University of Maryland study confirms:
Bush Supporters Corner Market on Ignorance
|
Bush Supporters
Corner Market on Ignorance
The Blind Leading the Blind
Michelle Goldberg
Salon.com, 21 October
2004
EXCERPT:
Even if they don't like to say
it out loud, lots of Democrats think that George Bush's supporters
are a horde of ignoramuses. Now comes evidence that they're right! A
remarkable
new report, titled "The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry
Supporters," from PIPA, the Program on International Policy
Attitudes at the University of Maryland, suggests that rank and file
Republicans are more benighted than even the most supercilious
coastal elitist would imagine.
Analyzing data from a series of nationwide polls, the report finds
that a majority of Bush supporters believe things about the world
that are objectively untrue, while the majority of Kerry supporters
dwell in the reality-based community. For example, Bush backers
largely think that the president and his policies are popular
internationally. Seventy-five percent believe that Iraq was
providing "substantial" aid to al-Qaida, and 63 percent say clear
evidence of this has been found. That, of course, would be news even
to Donald Rumsfeld, who earlier this month told the Council on
Foreign Relations, "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong,
hard evidence that links the two." Though its language is
dispassionate, the report lays responsibility for this epidemic of
ignorance at the White House's door. "So why are Bush supporters
clinging so tightly to these beliefs in the face of repeated
disconfirmations?" it asks. "Apparently one key reason is that they
continue to hear the Bush administration confirming these beliefs."
Indeed, it says, "an overwhelming 82% [of Bush supporters]
perceive the Bush administration as saying that Iraq had WMD (63%)
or a major WMD program (19%). Only 16% of Bush supporters perceive
the administration as saying that Iraq had some limited activities,
but not an active program (15%) or had nothing (1%). The pattern on
al Qaeda is similar. Seventy-five percent of Bush supporters think
the Bush administration is currently saying Iraq was providing
substantial support to al Qaeda (56%) or even that it was directly
involved in 9/11 (19%). Further, 55% of Bush supporters say it is
their impression the Bush administration is currently saying the US
has found clear evidence Saddam Hussein was working closely with al
Qaeda (not saying clear evidence found: 37%)."
These people aren't going to be swayed by the argument that Bush has
alienated America's allies and left the country isolated in the
world, because they don't believe this to be the case. "Despite a
steady flow of official statements, public demonstrations, and
public opinion polls showing that the US war against Iraq is quite
unpopular, only 31% of Bush supporters recognize that the majority
of people in the world oppose the US having gone to war with Iraq,"
the study says. Bush supporters also think that world public opinion
favors Bush's reelection. In a poll taken from Sept. 3-7, the study
says, "57% of Bush supporters assumed that the majority of people in
the world would prefer to see Bush reelected, 33% assumed that views
are evenly divided and only 9% assumed that Kerry would be
preferred." In fact, a PIPA
study released in early September found that a majority or
plurality of people from 32 countries preferred Kerry to Bush. PIPA
surveyed 34,330 people, ages 15 and above, from regions all over the
world. A Pew poll released this spring similarly found that "large
majorities in every country, except for the U.S., hold an
unfavorable opinion of Bush." Bush supporters are also mistaken
about the president's own positions (a pattern of misapprehension
that an
earlier PIPA report also documented). "Majorities incorrectly
assumed that Bush supports multilateral approaches to various
international issues -- the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the
treaty banning land mines (72%); 51% incorrectly assumed he favors
US participation in the Kyoto treaty -- the principal international
accord on global warming ... Only 13% of supporters are aware that
he opposes labor and environmental standards in trade agreements --
74% incorrectly believe that he favors including labor and
environmental standards in agreements on trade. In all these cases,
there is a recurring theme: majorities of Bush supporters favor
these positions, and they infer that Bush favors them as well."
According to the report, this reality gap is something new in
American life. "So why do Bush supporters show such a resistance
to accepting dissonant information?" it asks. "While it is normal
for people to show some resistance, the magnitude of the denial goes
beyond the ordinary. Bush supporters have succeeded in suppressing
awareness of the findings of a whole series of high-profile reports
about prewar Iraq that have been blazoned across the headlines of
newspapers and prompted extensive, high-profile and agonizing
reflection. The fact that a large portion of Americans say they are
unaware that the original reasons that the US took military action
-- and for which Americans continue to die on a daily basis -- are
not turning out to be valid, are probably not due to a simple
failure to pay attention to the news." The analysis says that the
roots of this denial could lie in the trauma of 9/11 and people's
desire to hold on to their image of Bush as a "capable protector."
It offers no guidance, though, on how ordinary Republicans might
be coaxed back to reality. And while "The Separate Realities of
Bush and Kerry Supporters" may be perversely satisfying to Democrats
in its confirmation of blue-state prejudices, it carries a pretty
disturbing question for all rational Americans: How can arguments
based on fact prevail in a nation where so many people know so
little? [BWUSA emphasis]
SEE ALSO:
Bush
Supporters Are Shockingly Ignorant of the Truth
--Believe Iraq
Had WMD or Major Program,
--Supported al Qaeda
--Agree with Kerry Supporters Bush Administration Still Saying This
is the Case
--Agree US Should Not Have Gone to War if No WMD or Support for al
Qaeda
--Bush Supporters Misperceive World Public as Not Opposed to Iraq
War,
Favoring Bush Reelection
Program on International Policy Attitudes, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress
saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush
supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a
major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume
that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume,
incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD
program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.
Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was
providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that
clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush
supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts,
and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the
9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters
have exactly opposite perceptions.
These are some of the findings of a new study of the differing
perceptions of Bush and Kerry supporters, conducted by the Program
on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, based on
polls conducted in September and October
SEE ALSO:
George Bush
and His Supporters
The
Nation, 21 October 2004
That's pretty
remarkable. There are only two issues on which even a majority of
Bush supporters know Bush's actual position. As the PIPA report
blandly puts it, "Apparently in the absence of evidence to the
contrary, Bush supporters assume Bush feels as they do." That's
true, and it's been the essence of George Bush since 2000. He won
the primary and the election that year by being the friendly face of
movement conservatism, a guy who seemed much more moderate than he
really was. And now, even four years later, he still looks to his
supporters much more moderate than he really is. If the electorate
understood just how conservative Bush really is, he wouldn't have a
snowball's chance of winning the election this year. What's more,
this goes beyond George Bush: it's actually one of conservatism's
greatest weaknesses. On a wide range of issues the environment,
Social Security, Medicare, abortion, and so forth conservatives
are unable to get support for their actual positions, so they're
forced to couch their conservative policies in surprisingly liberal
terms. We're environmentalists! We want to save Social Security!
We're tolerant of gays!
In the long term, though, this is disastrous, since eventually
they'll either have to surrender and adopt genuine liberal policies
or else come clean about their conservatism and get swamped at the
polls. But that's for the future. In the meantime, the compassionate
conservative schtick is working pretty well. I wonder how much
longer they can pull it off? |
Leading Economic Indicator Index
Declines
Report suggests economic growth will slow-Conference Board
MSNBC, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: The Index of Leading Economic Indicators, a widely watched
barometer of future economic activity, edged lower in September for the
fourth month in a row, indicating a slowing in economic growth, a
private research group reported Thursday.
The Conference Board said that its indicator of upcoming activity in the
economy fell 0.1 percent last month, following declines of 0.3 percent
in August and 0.3 percent in July. The group said that while the
weakness over the last several months in the economy has become more
widespread, the declines in the indicator are not yet large enough nor
have they lasted long enough to suggest that the current economic
expansion is ending. The index is closely followed because it is
designed to forecast the economy's health over the coming three to six
months. Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein called the September
decline a "clear signal that the economy is losing momentum heading into
2005."
Middle Income Families Have Less Cash in
Their Pockets
Trends in Incomes, Wages, Taxes, and Health Spending of
Middle-Income Families, 2000-03
by Lawrence Mishel, Michael Ettlinger, and Elise Gould
Economic Policy Institute, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: The economic well-being of middle-income families has changed
significantly over the last few years, largely as a result of three
important dynamics. First, the recession that started in March 2001 was
followed by an unusually long periodtwo and a half yearsof job losses,
despite an increase in output of goods and services. Although employment
has grown since September 2003, it has not done so at a sufficient rate
to diminish the substantial labor slack generated by the downturn in
2001 (Mishel et al. 2004). Consequently, pre-tax incomes fell for three
years in a row, leaving the typical household with $1,535 less income in
2003 than in 2000, a drop of 3.4%. This decline in income was primarily
the result of lost work opportunities from fewer family members working
and fewer hours worked per worker (fewer weeks per year and fewer hours
per week). A second dynamic influencing family economic well-being is
the income tax reductions legislated at the federal level, primarily
those of 2001 and 2003. It is important to assess the degree to which
shifts in taxation have offset the recession-induced income losses.
Finally, the health care costs facing families have surged as insurance
premiums and out-of-pocket costs have grown rapidly over the past few
years (Families USA, September 2004).
Health Care: U.S. Spends More,
Gets Less
Economic Policy Institute Snapshot, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: By every measure, the United States spends more money on health
care than any other industrialized country: nearly five thousand
dollars per capita on health expenditures. The United States
spends over two and a half times the average health expenditures of the
29 other nations in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development), adjusted for purchasing-power parity. The next
largest spender on health is Switzerland at $3,288 per capita.
At the same time, the United States is lagging behind in the actual
health of the population. Life expectancy is a standard measure
used to compare health status across populations. In terms of life
expectancy, the United States ranks 21st out of 30, with an average life
expectancy of 77.1 years. This is 4.3 years behind the highest ranked
nation. (See
graphic)
Both Parties Call on C.I.A. to Issue
Report on Agency
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence
Committee have called on the Central Intelligence Agency to release an
internal report examining the agency's performance in the run-up to the
Sept. 11 attacks, Congressional officials said on Wednesday. The
leaders, Representatives Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, and
Jane Harman, Democrat of California, have not made the letter public,
and their offices declined to comment on any request. But one Democratic
member of the panel, Representative Rush D. Holt of New Jersey,
mentioned the request in a written statement in which he said the C.I.A.
"should avoid any appearance of holding back this report for fear that
it would reflect badly on the administration." The review, by the
agency's inspector general, an independent internal investigator, was
sought in December 2002 by the joint Congressional committee that
investigated intelligence failures leading up to the attacks of Sept.
11. The purpose, that panel said, should be to determine "whether and to
what extent personnel at all levels should be held accountable" for any
mistakes that contributed to the failure to disrupt the attacks.
Voting and Counting
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: If the election were held today and the votes were counted
fairly, Senator John Kerry would probably win. But the votes won't be
counted fairly, and the disenfranchisement of minority voters may
determine the outcome. ...Last week I described Greg Palast's work on
the 2000 election, reported recently in Harper's, which conclusively
shows that Florida was thrown to Mr. Bush by a combination of factors
that disenfranchised black voters. These included a defective felon
list, which wrongly struck thousands of people from the voter rolls, and
defective voting machines, which disproportionately failed to record
votes in poor, black districts.
One might have expected Florida's government to fix these problems
during the intervening four years. But most of those wrongly denied
voting rights in 2000 still haven't had those rights restored - and the
replacement of punch-card machines has created new problems.
After the 2000 debacle, a task force appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush
recommended that the state adopt a robust voting technology that would
greatly reduce the number of spoiled ballots and provide a paper trail
for recounts: paper ballots read by optical scanners that alert voters
to problems. This system is in use in some affluent, mainly white
Florida counties.
But Governor Bush ignored this recommendation, just as he ignored state
officials who urged him to "pull the plug" on a new felon list - which
was quickly discredited once a judge forced the state to make it public
- just days before he ordered the list put into effect. Instead, much of
the state will vote using touch-screen machines that are unreliable and
subject to hacking, and leave no paper trail. Mr. Palast estimates that
this will disenfranchise 27,000 voters - disproportionately poor and
black.
Bush's Blinkers
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 22 October 2004
EXCERPT: There are consequences, often powerful consequences, to turning
one's back on reality. The president may believe that freedom's on the
march, and that freedom is God's gift to every man and woman in the
world, and perhaps even that he is the vessel through which that gift is
transmitted. But when he is crafting policy decisions that put people by
the hundreds of thousands into harm's way, he needs to rely on more than
the perceived good wishes of the Almighty. He needs to submit those
policy decisions to a good hard reality check. ...We may think
there are real-world consequences to the policies of the president, real
pain and real grief for real people. But to the White House, that kind
of thinking is passι. The White House doesn't even recognize that kind
of reality.
21 October 2004
Gore Summarizes the Case Against Bush
Monday, October 18 , 2004 at 12:30pm
Gaston Hall, Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.
EXCERPT: The essential cruelty of Bushs game is that he takes an
astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political
proposals then cloaks it with a phony moral authority, thus misleading
many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the
world. And in the process he convinces them to lend unquestioning
support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their
communities. Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion
and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to
take what rightfully belongs to the citizenry of America and give as
much as possible to the already wealthy and privileged, who look at his
agenda and say, as Dick Cheney said to Paul ONeill, this is our due.
The central elements of Bushs political as opposed to religious --
belief system are plain to see: The public interest is a dangerous
myth according to Bushs ideology a fiction created by the hated
liberals who use the notion of public interest as an excuse to take
away from the wealthy and powerful what they believe is their due.
Therefore, government of by and for the people, is bad except when
government can help members of his coalition. Laws and regulations are
therefore bad again, except when they can be used to help members of
his coalition. Therefore, whenever laws must be enforced and regulations
administered, it is important to assign those responsibilities to
individuals who can be depended upon not to fall prey to this dangerous
illusion that there is a public interest, and will instead reliably
serve the narrow and specific interests of industries or interest
groups. This is the reason, for example, that President Bush put the
chairman of Enron, Ken Lay, in charge of vetting any appointees to the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Enron had already helped the Bush
team with such favors as ferrying their rent-a-mob to Florida in 2000 to
permanently halt the counting of legally cast ballots. And then Enron
went on to bilk the electric rate-payers of California, without the
inconvenience of federal regulators protecting citizens against their
criminal behavior. Or to take another example, this is why all of the
important EPA positions have been filled by lawyers and lobbyists
representing the worst polluters in their respective industries in order
to make sure that theyre not inconvenienced by the actual enforcement
of the laws against excessive pollution. In Bushs ideology, there is an
interweaving of the agendas of large corporations that support him and
his own ostensibly public agenda for the government he leads. Their
preferences become his policies, and his politics become their business.
Sucking Democracy Dry
by Rick Perlstein
The End of Democracy
Losing America's birthright, the George Bush way
Village Voice, 19 October 2004
EXCERPT: Once upon a time, not too long ago, the president of the United
States declared that the war on terrorism was the most important issue
in this year's presidential campaign. Then every time his opponent
brought up this most important of issues, George W. Bush cried foul,
accusing John Kerry of hindering the war on terrorism. (America might be
a democracy, but that doesn't mean the Democrat has a right to
campaign.) The president's campaign enlisted the taxpayers' servants as
agents of his re-election, with Secret Service officers submitting
attendees at Bush rallies to ideological X-rays, and election officials
systematically suppressing the franchise of groups most likely to vote
Democratic. Meanwhile the president, who earned some 500,000 votes less
than his opponent, busied himself ramming through a radical legislative
program as if he had won by a landslidehis congressional deputies all
but barring deliberative input from the opposition party in order to do
it and gaming the legislative apportionment system in ways, as the
counsel to one Texas representative bragged in an e-mail to colleagues,
that "should assure that Republicans keep the House no matte[r] the
national mood."
The Art of Stealing Elections
By Robert Kuttner
Boston Globe, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: THE REPUBLICANS are out to steal the 2004 election -- before,
during, and after Election Day. Before Election Day, they are employing
such dirty tricks as improper purges of voter rolls, use of dummy
registration groups that tear up Democratic registrations, and the
suppression of Democratic efforts to sign up voters, especially blacks
and students. On Election Day, Republicans will attempt to intimidate
minority voters by having poll watchers threaten criminal prosecution if
something is technically amiss with their ID, and they will again use
technical mishaps to partisan advantage. But the most serious assault on
democracy itself is likely to come after Election Day. Here is a flat
prediction: If neither candidate wins decisively, the Bush campaign will
contrive enough court challenges in enough states so that we won't know
the winner election night. The right stumbled on a gambit in 2000, which
could become standard operating procedure in close elections: If the
election ends up in the courts, all courts eventually lead to the
Supreme Court, which, as we learned, can overrule state courts -- and
pick the president. This year is even more ripe for abuse, because the
2002 Help America Vote Act, a "reform" written substantially to
Republican specifications, toughened ID requirements. It also gave
voters a right to cast "provisional" ballots if their names are missing
from the rolls. Good impulse, but someone, ultimately a court, must
decide whether they should have been permitted to vote, and that's
almost impossible to resolve on Election Day. In addition, states are
experimenting with a variety of new voting systems, to avoid a repeat of
the technical glitches that made it easy for Republicans to steal
Florida in 2000. And experiment is the right word; much of this
technology isn't ready for prime time.
US Wealth Gap Grows for Ethnic
Minorities
by Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
CommonDreams.com, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: The wealth gap between white households and Hispanic and
African-American families in the US has widened significantly, with the
last recession inflicting a heavy toll on minority households, a new
study said yesterday. An analysis of US census data by the Pew Hispanic
Center revealed that the 2001 economic downturn deepened a legacy of
economic discrimination, with Hispanics and African-Americans harder hit
and taking longer to recover. By 2002, that produced a further
deterioration of the economic divide, where minorities own only a
fraction of the wealth enjoyed by whites. The median net worth of white
households was $88,651, or 11 times greater than Hispanic families
($7,932) and 14 times greater than African-American families ($5,988.)
"We have always known about the wealth gap, but what is new and
disturbing is that the gaps are increasing," said Roderick Harrison, a
demographer at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
"What you are seeing here are the historic disadvantages of black and
Hispanic populations from generations ago being carried over."
2004 Deficit Hits Record $214 Billion
By ALAN FRAM
Associated Press, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: The federal deficit surged to a record $413 billion in
2004, the Treasury Department (news - web sites) announced Thursday,
injecting the figure into a presidential campaign in which the two
parties have clashed over President Bush (news - web sites)'s management
of the economy and the budget. ...the final deficit figure easily
surpassed the previous record in dollar terms a revised $377 billion
deficit that was run up last year. The government's 2004 budget year ran
through Sept. 30.
Frozen by Oil-Price Fears
Another week, another record: the benchmark price of oil breached $55
per barrel on Monday. Americans face a bleak and expensive winter.
Central bankersand even oil exportersare worried too.
The Economist, 19 October 2004
EXCERPT: The spike in oil prices, up by over 60% since the start of the
year, is, in turn, raising fears for the global recovery. Even oil
exporters are worried. The high prices they currently enjoy will slow
economic growth next year, warned the Organisation of the Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Monday. If oil remains expensive, the
cartel pointed out, people will buy less of it. This timely reminder of
the laws of supply and demand took some of the steam out of the oil
markets. But the cost of a barrel remains well above $50. The
anxiety is not confined to the petrol pump. About 7.7m American
households, most of them in the north-east, rely on oil to warm their
homes. In a cold snap, they draw on stockpiles of heating oil, amassed
at various points around the country. But those stocks may not be piled
high enough this year. According to government figures released last
week, America has about 50m barrels of high-sulphur heating oil in its
inventories. This time last year, it had 54m. In and around New York
harbour, which receives oil imports and distributes them to New York,
New Jersey and New England, stocks stand at little more than 75% of
their levels last year (18.1m barrels compared with 23.9m). To heat
their homes, New Englanders will have to pay 28% more this winter than
last, the governments Energy Information Administration predicts.
Flu Vaccine Policy Becomes Issue for
Bush
By DAVID E. SANGER and GARDINER HARRIS
NYT, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: With polls showing that Florida is once again too close to
call, President Bush on Tuesday assured the state's flu-wary retirees
that "we have millions of vaccines doses on hand for the most vulnerable
Americans" as his administration said that 2.6 million more doses would
be available by January. Mr. Bush spoke as the flu vaccine shortage
moved to center stage in the campaign and as his secretary of health and
human services, Tommy G. Thompson, said that Aventis Pasteur, the only
company approved this year to sell flu vaccines, would be able to make
the extra doses of flu vaccines available so the total would be about 58
million doses in all. That figure is still just 60 percent of the
expected demand this year for flu vaccine, but Mr. Thompson said at a
news conference that those doses combined with stocks of anti-flu drugs
would be enough to keep Americans safe.
Democrats have seized on the vaccine shortage to accuse the
administration of being unable to protect Americans - from either
illness or terrorism. "If you can't get flu vaccines to Americans, how
are you going to protect them against bioterrorism?'' Senator John
Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, asked in an interview with
National Public Radio. "If you can't get flu vaccines to Americans, what
kind of health care program are you running?''
Robertson Says Bush Predicted No Iraq
Toll
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: The evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has set off a
partisan fight by telling a television interviewer that President Bush
serenely assured him just before the invasion of Iraq, "Oh, no, we're
not going to have any casualties." Mr. Robertson, offering that account
in an interview televised Tuesday night on CNN, said Mr. Bush made the
comment when they met in Nashville in early 2003. At that meeting, he
said, he warned the president to prepare the public for casualties.
SEE ALSO:
No Casualties? White House Disputes Robertson
Comment
(CNN)
"Even if he stumbles and messes up -- and he's had his share of stumbles
and gaffes -- I just think God's blessing is on him," Robertson said.
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
God & The Presidency: An In-Depth Examination Of
Faith In The Bush White House
DemocracyNow!, 20 October 2004
Journalist Ron Suskind examines how Bush's belief in God has impacted
his presidency, how some of Bush's supporters believe he is an
instrument of God and the growing concern among many non-Evangelical
Republicans. One former Reagan/Bush official says, "Just in the past few
months. I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up
close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort
of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do." We
also speak with Esther Kaplan author of the new book, "With God On Their
Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy, and
Democracy in George W. Bush's White House."
Uncivil War
Stolen Honor rewrites the history of the Vietnam War.
By Dana Stevens
Slate, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: In perhaps the ultimate instance of the pot calling the kettle
black, the Sinclair Broadcasting Company posted a press release on its
Web site stating that they will not air the controversial anti-Kerry
film, Stolen Honor. This Friday, they will run "a special one-hour news
program" titled A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media. This
film, which will draw from portions of Stolen Honor, purports to explore
"the use of documentaries and other media to influence voting. .... The
program will also examine the role of the media in filtering the
information contained in these documentaries, allegations of media bias
by media organizations that ignore or filter legitimate news and the
attempts by candidates and other organizations to influence media
coverage." Now that Sinclair, the country's largest single owner of
television stations, has been forced to back down (perhaps less by
national outrage than by a $90 million dollar stock loss), the company
wants the public to know that it's shocked, simply shocked, that a media
outlet mightcan you imagine?abuse its power for political purposes.
This press release, a masterpiece of bald-faced corporate hypocrisy,
also works as an unintentional humor piece. CEO David Smith bizarrely
denies that the documentary was ever meant to be broadcast in its
entirety: "At no time did Sinclair ever publicly announce that it
intended to do so."
The Politics of Consumption
By Philip Cushman
Special to The Seattle Times, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: Yes, the presidential race has been ugly. But the accusations,
smears and spin of the current campaign, although disgusting, are only
reflections of a much larger problem. The plain truth is that we are
in the process of destroying American democracy.
Election processes have been reduced to long (and nasty) advertising
campaigns, candidates into consumer items. You might say, "What's wrong
with that? As a consumer society, we get pretty much everything we want,
and probably we get the politicians we deserve." But do we really get
whatever we want? You could have fooled me: We look insecure,
unsatisfied, angry, confused.
A democracy needs a thoughtful, informed citizenry. But, of course,
advertising does not exist to inform, it exists to sell products and it
will do so in any way possible. When candidates are products, voters
inevitably are reduced to customers, honesty and fair play disappear,
and then the whole process takes place on television during commercial
breaks. Press conferences, like articulate candidates in unscripted
debates or informative news programs, disappear; only good actors are
needed. In such a world, there can be no effective democracy.
Finally, just who do you think really purchases the candidate? Certainly
not the average voter. Today, enormous sums of money are needed in order
to fund the advertising, marketing, public-image-management (and dirty
tricks) campaigns that we call elections. It is said that
representatives in the House have to raise an average of $100,000 per
day when they are on recess in order to defend their seat every two
years.
Wealthy contributors are the only ones who can really take advantage of
this, gaining access and leverage that bring in financial windfalls that
dwarf their contributions. For instance, the Bush administration allows
big corporate contributors, like Enron, to help write the legislation
that regulates them. Westar Energy contributed $25,000 to House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority, and then requested
and initially received a special exemption in an energy bill, which it
wrote and DeLay supported.
Today, we have a system of government based on what comes dangerously
close to legalized bribery. There is only one thing that can be done
about it: We must radically change our electoral process somehow, we
must decommercialize it. Unfortunately, the courts have ruled against
banning political ads. So we must increase our efforts to institute a
governmental agency that would force political ads to be scrupulously
honest and accurate, both in fact and in spirit, before they could be
released to the public. This would cut down considerably on the number
of ads produced. Real debates and informative programming, not stylized
sound-bite opportunities, could then be required. This might be the only
way to institute meaningful campaign-finance reform. By preventing
deceitful and misleading ads, we would curtail the need for the
collection of enormous war chests because we would erase their reason
for being. Today, we are watching our democratic republic devolve
into a crass, swaggering, self-deceiving empire. But surely we can
summon the courage to fight against these anti-intellectual,
authoritarian, fundamentalist forces before their revanchist fantasies
erase whatever democratic future still remains. Radical Muslim
terrorists are not democracy's only enemy. [BWUSA emphasis]
Back
to Archive Index |
26 October 2004
Is No Amount of Incompetence Enough to Sink Bush?
He went into Iraq because of a threat of WMD but neglected to secure equipment used to make nuclear
weapons. Tons of material that can be used for
'dirty bombs' was lost. Now, he's missing a 380 ton stock pile
of high explosives useful to
trigger nuclear bombs.
Does anyone feel more safe?
Bush is Making us Safer?
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: The complete lack of interest of the Bush administration in
actually securing dangerous materials connected to the old,
abandoned Iraqi nuclear program has long belied Bush's stated
concern with Iraq's alleged weapons as a pretext for the war.
James Glanz, William J. Broad and David E. Sanger with Khalid
al-Ansary reveal in the New York Times today that the Bush
administration allowed 380 tons of super-powerful explosives to
disappear from al-Qaqaa, one of Iraq's sensitive military
installations, after the war in spring of 2003. These are not
ordinary bombs. This explosive material, HMX and RDX, can be used to
detonate atomic bombs, collapse buildings, and form warheads for
missiles. A pound of it brought down a passenger jet over Lockerbie,
Scotland.
A lot of the roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of US troops
and maimed thousands have been made of HMX and RDX, as suggested by
how infrequently the guerrillas have blown themselves up in planting
them. HMX and RDX are favored by terrorists because they are stable
and will only explode via a blasting cap.
Incredibly, the International Atomic Energy Commission and European
Union officials warned Bush before the war that these explosives
needed to be safeguarded.
Inquiry Into Ambush Opens; Iraqi
Forces Feared Infiltrated
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
NYT, 26 October 2004
EXCERPT: Iraqi officials opened an investigation on Monday
into the role played by infiltrators in the ambush on Sunday that
left 49 Iraqi National Guard trainees dead in the face of growing
indications that insurgents are being given inside information about
the movements of Iraqi security forces. Meanwhile, fresh violence in
Baghdad struck troops from Estonia and Australia, two countries that
had largely managed to avoid bloodshed during the occupation. United
States military officials have long been skeptical of the loyalty of
the Iraqi security forces, having seen some American-trained Iraqi
soldiers take up arms against occupation forces during fighting in
April. But on Monday, even senior Iraqi government officials
conceded that it was very possible that insurgents staged the attack
with help from members of the Iraqi security forces. One adviser to
the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said that as many as 5
percent of the Iraqi government's troops are insurgents who have
infiltrated the ranks or their sympathizers.
Bombings Across Iraq Kill Eight
Associated Press, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: Bombings struck four coalition and Iraqi military convoys
and a provincial government office Monday, killing at least eight
people, including an American soldier and an Estonian trooper in the
Baghdad area. Coming a day after the bodies of nearly 50 Iraqi
military recruits were found massacred, the bombings occurred as a
U.N. agency confirmed that several hundred tons of explosives were
missing from a former Iraqi military depot in an insurgent hotspot
south of Baghdad. The revelation raised concerns the explosives fell
into the hands of insurgents who have staged a spate of bloody car
bombings, although there was no evidence to link the missing
explosives directly to the attacks.
Chaos, Murder and Mayhem:
The Unreported Daily Reality in Iraq
By Haifa Zangana
The Guardian (UK), 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: An average of 100 Iraqis are killed every day. Kidnapping
for profit or revenge is widespread. Young girls are sold to
neighbouring countries for prostitution. Madeline Hadi, a
nine-year-old girl, was kidnapped from her father's car in the al-Doura
district of Baghdad. Zinah Falih Hassan, a student in al-Warkaa
secondary school, also in Baghdad, was kidnapped on her way back
from school. Asma, a young engineer, was abducted in Baghdad. ...
Mahnaz Bassam and Raad Ali Abdul Aziz were kidnapped last month
along with two Italian aid workers and subsequently released. Unlike
the Italians, the two Iraqis did not receive media attention in the
west. No one prayed for them. And aid workers are not the only
victims - 250 university professors and scientists have been killed
in the past year, according to the Union of University Lecturers,
and more than 1,000 academics have left the country. Iraqi
journalists are also frequently harassed, threatened and attacked by
occupying troops. This year, 12 of the 14 journalists killed were
Iraqi, and six Iraqi media workers were also killed. Many
journalists have also fled the country. More than 100 Iraqi doctors
and consultants have been killed or kidnapped in the past year. ...
There are indeed reasons for all this chaos, murder and mayhem.
Those reasons lie in the nature of invasion, war and, most crucially
of all, occupation. The US-led occupation forces presented
themselves as champions of liberation, freedom and democracy. What
they have achieved is chaos, collective punishment, assassinations,
abuse and torture of prisoners, and destruction of the country's
infrastructure. The "sovereign" interim government has, like the
Iraqi Governing Council before it, proved to be the fig leaf
shielding the occupying forces from Iraqis' frustration and outrage.
Powerless, and with no credibility among Iraqi people, the interim
government's failure is disastrous. In addition to the lack of
security, there is not the slightest improvement in electricity
supply, the availability of clean water, employment, or health and
education services. Fighting between occupying troops and various
Iraqi groups has become widespread in more than 12 cities. Without
the consent of the Iraqi people, Ayad Allawi and President Ghazi al-Yawer
declared that it was the wish of the populace that the occupying
troops remain. They also stood aside while F16s and helicopter
gunships showered densely populated areas in Sadr city, Falluja,
Samraa, Najaf, Kut, Kufa, Tel Afar and elsewhere. The resistance in
Falluja is now so persistent that Iraq's director of national
intelligence admitted: "We could take the city, but we would have to
kill everyone in it."
Official Charges
Interference on Behalf of Halliburton in Army Contracts
Agence-France Presse, 26 October
2004
EXCERPT: The US Army Corps of Engineers's top civilian contracting
official has accused the corps' leaders of interfering on behalf of
Halliburton Co. in awards of billion-dollar no-bid contracts in Iraq
and the Balkans, the official's lawyer said Monday. Bunnatine
Greenhouse, the corps' principal assistant in charge of contracting,
called for an independent investigation in a letter to acting US
Army Secretary Les Brownlee, a copy of which was made available to
AFP by congressional sources. The interference in the contracting
process "directly impact the integrity of the federal contracting
program as it relates to a major defense contractor," the letter to
Brownlee said. Brownlee referred the accusations to the Pentagon's
inspector general for review and possible action, an army lawyer
said in a letter responding to the Greenhouse call for an
investigation. Coming a little more than a week before the November
2 elections, the latest allegations are certain to stoke political
charges of administration favoritism toward the oil services giant,
which was once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
U.S. Ruling Drops Rights of Some
Captured in Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has
concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured
by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of
the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday. The
opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important
exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since
March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to
prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said. They
said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A.
to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in
Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured
in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States
has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply. The
officials outlined the opinion on Monday in response to a report in
The Washington Post over the weekend that the Central Intelligence
Agency had secretly transferred a dozen non-Iraqi prisoners out of
Iraq in the past 18 months, despite a provision in the conventions
that bars civilians protected under the accords from being deported
from occupied territories.
25 October 2004
Bush Team Lets High Explosives Go Missing In Iraq
Then Attempts Cover-Up
Report Says Bush Team Allowed Saddam's High
Explosives To Be Looted --Then They Went Into Cover-up Mode
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT:
This has been rumored in Washington for several days. And now the
Nelson Report has broken the story. Some 350 tons of high explosives
(RDX and HMX), which were under IAEA seal while Saddam was in power,
were looted during the early days of the US occupation. Like so much
else, it was just left unguarded. Not only are these
super-high-yield explosives probably being used in many, if not
most, of the various suicide and car bombings in Iraq, but these
particular explosives are ones used in the triggering process for
nuclear weapons. In other words, it's bad stuff.
...What also emerges in the Nelson Report is that the Defense
Department has been trying to keep this secret for some time. The
DOD even went so far as to order the Iraqis not to inform the
IAEA that the materials had gone missing. Informing the IAEA, of
course, would lead to it becoming public knowledge in the United
States. I quote from Chris Nelson's summary ...
Despite pressure from DOD to keep it quiet, the IAEA and the
Iraqi Interim Government this month officially reported that
350-tons of dual-use, very high explosives were looted from a
previously secure site in the early days of the US occupation in
2003. Administration officials privately admit this material is
likely a primary source of the lethal car bomb attacks which cause
so many US and Iraqi casualties. In the first presidential
candidate debate, on foreign policy, Democratic nominee John Kerry
charged that captured munitions and weapons were being turned
against Coalition Forces, with US troops suffering 90% of the
casualties. But the specifics of the losses from the Al Qa Qaa
bunker and building complex, only now being reported, were
apparently unknown outside of DOD and the US occupation
authorities. The Bush Administration barred the IAEA from any
participation in the Iraq invasion and occupation process, and
blocked IAEA requests to help in the search for WMD and other
dangerous materials. As part of the UN sanctions regime still in
place when the US invaded, the IAEA had under seal 350 tons of
RDX and HDX explosives, since singly, and in combination, these
materials can be used in the triggering process for a nuclear
weapon. However, the explosives were allowed to remain in Iraq due
to their conventional use in construction, oil pipe lines, and the
like. Since the explosives went missing last year, sources say DOD
and other elements in the Administration sought to block the IAEA
from officially reporting the problem, and also tried to stop the
new Iraqi Interim Government from cooperating with the IAEA.
SEE ALSO:
Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site
in Iraq
NYT, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: American weapons experts say their immediate concern is
that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against
American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX,
could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear
apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same
type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the
bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September
1999 that killed nearly 300 people. The explosives could also be
used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international
nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even
sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb
- the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to
obtain.
SEE ALSO:
NYT Article Treads Lightly
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: The Times story treads lightly over the question of
whether the explosives in question have played a substantial role
in the various suicide bombings, car bombings and sundry other
attacks in Iraq over the last year.
They also say little about Pentagon pressure on the Iraqis not to
report the disappearance of the explosives to the IAEA.
In its place seems to be an administration version of events in
which no one was put in charge of ascertaining what happened to
the al Qa Qaa materials, then Iraqis mentioned it to Bremer in May
but he seems not to have passed on word to anyone else, then Condi
was told "within the past month" but it's not clear whether she
told the president.
If that's true, you've really gotta marvel at the chain of command
this crew has in place. The whole thing is "I forgot", "I didn't
know", "I didn't tell anybody", "It wasn't my responsibility",
"What?" and so on.
There are even moments of refreshing candor like this line:
"Administration officials say they cannot explain why the
explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the
occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they
found throughout the country."
As I wrote earlier, there are very good reasons to disbelieve this
Keystone Cops explanation for what happened. There was a much more
concerted effort to keep hidden what had happened here, including
pressure on Iraqi officials not to report the disappearance of
these materials to the IAEA.
But even if you accept this explanation on its face, I think it's
almost worse.
Think about it ...
The explosives at al Qa Qaa were one of the primary -- and
much-publicized -- concerns of non-proliferation officials at the
IAEA and elsewhere prior to the war. During and after the war
there was apparently no effort to secure the facility or catalog
its remaining contents. Then no one realized there was a problem
until more than a year later when someone told Jerry Bremer. But
he didn't tell anyone in Washington, or at least no one remembers.
And then Condi Rice only found out about it within the last month,
but it's not clear she told anyone (i.e., the president or other
principals) either.
Four more years...
How
to Make New Enemies
By ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI
NYT, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: It is striking that in spite of all the electoral fireworks
over policy in Iraq, both presidential candidates offer basically
similar solutions. Their programs stress intensified Iraqi self-help
and more outside help in the quest for domestic stability.
Unfortunately, these prescriptions by themselves are not likely to
work. Both candidates have become prisoners of a worldview that
fundamentally misdiagnoses the central challenge of our time.
President Bush's "global war on terror" is a politically expedient
slogan without real substance, serving to distort rather than
define. It obscures the central fact that a civil war within Islam
is pitting zealous fanatics against increasingly intimidated
moderates. The undiscriminating American rhetoric and actions
increase the likelihood that the moderates will eventually unite
with the jihadists in outraged anger and unite the world of Islam in
a head-on collision with America. After all, look what's happening
in Iraq. For a growing number of Iraqis, their "liberation" from
Saddam Hussein is turning into a despised foreign occupation.
Nationalism is blending with religious fanaticism into a potent brew
of hatred. The rates of desertion from the American-trained new
Iraqi security forces are dangerously high, while the likely
escalation of United States military operations against insurgent
towns will generate a new rash of civilian casualties and new
recruits for the rebels. The situation is not going to get any
easier. If President Bush is re-elected, our allies will not
be providing more money or troops for the American occupation. Mr.
Bush has lost credibility among other nations, which distrust his
overall approach. Moreover, the British have been drawing down their
troop strength in Iraq, the Poles will do the same, and the
Pakistanis recently made it quite plain that they will not support a
policy in the Middle East that they view as self-defeating. In fact,
in the Islamic world at large as well as in Europe, Mr. Bush's
policy is becoming conflated in the public mind with Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon's policy in Gaza and the West Bank. Fueled by
anti-American resentments, that policy is widely caricatured as a
crude reliance on power, semicolonial in its attitude, and driven by
prejudice toward the Islamic world. The likely effect is that
staying on course under Mr. Bush will remain a largely solitary
American adventure. This global solitude might make a re-elected
Bush administration more vulnerable to the temptation to embrace a
new anti-Islamic alliance, one reminiscent of the Holy Alliance that
emerged after 1815 to prevent revolutionary upheavals in Europe. The
notion of a new Holy Alliance is already being promoted by those
with a special interest in entangling the United States in a
prolonged conflict with Islam. Vladimir Putin's endorsement of Mr.
Bush immediately comes to mind; it also attracts some anti-Islamic
Indian leaders hoping to prevent Pakistan from dominating
Afghanistan; the Likud in Israel is also understandably tempted;
even China might play along. For the United States, however, a new
Holy Alliance would mean growing isolation in an increasingly
polarized world. That prospect may not faze the extremists in the
Bush administration who are committed to an existential struggle
against Islam and who would like America to attack Iran, but who
otherwise lack any wider strategic conception of what America's role
in the world ought to be. It is, however, of concern to moderate
Republicans.
The trash is piling up
For Bush, Bad News Is Bad News
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 25 October 2004
EXCERPT: Here's George W. Bush's problem. How does a president win
re-election when all the news the voters are seeing is bad? Polls
show the president running even or slightly ahead of Senator John
Kerry. But bad news is piling up like mounds of trash in a garbage
strike, and that's never good for an incumbent. The war in Iraq is a
mind-numbing tragedy with no end in sight. Dozens of Iraqi army
recruits were slaughtered Saturday in one of the deadliest attacks
yet against the Iraqi security forces. Yesterday an American
diplomat was killed in a mortar attack near the Baghdad airport. The
latest horrific video to come out of the war zone shows the
kidnapped British-Iraqi aid worker, Margaret Hassan, trembling,
weeping and begging for her life. "Please help me," she says. "This
might be my last hours." American troops have fought valiantly, but
cracks in their resolve are beginning to show. "This is Vietnam,"
said Daniel Planalp, a 21-year-old Marine corporal from San Diego
who was quoted in yesterday's New York Times. "I don't even know why
we're over here fighting."
Iraq: 26 Killed on Horrific Day of
Violence
By David Randall in London and Alistair Lyon in Baghdad
The Independent, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: Suicide bombers killed at least 22 members of Iraq's
fledgling security forces yesterday amid a spate of insurgent
attacks across the country that also left six US servicemen injured,
four civilians dead and a sabotaged pipeline that was still blazing
at nightfall.
Bombs
Interview of Kenneth Pollack by DEBORAH SOLOMON
NYT Magazine, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: Q- In your new book, ''The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict
Between Iran and America,'' you seem to have abandoned your hawkish
stance. Your last one, ''The Threatening Storm,'' helped persuade
many reluctant Democratic policy makers to support the invasion of
Iraq.
I made a mistake based on faulty intelligence. Of course, I feel
guilty about it. I feel awful.
It's nice to hear at least one American say that he's sorry.
I'm sorry; I'm sorry!
In ''The Persian Puzzle,'' you suggest that it would be foolish to
try and initiate regime change in Iran.
I am very pessimistic about our ability to persuade the Iranians to
fundamentally change their behavior and to do it in a rapid period
of time. Americans are this kind of bugaboo in the Iranian political
psyche. And we have damaged our ability to generate international
support.
But as a former C.I.A. analyst and a scholar of Middle East
policy at the Brookings Institution, how do you propose that we
prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? I'd prefer not to
have an Iran with nuclear weapons, but if it happens, I think we can
probably deal with it.
Your use of ''probably'' does not inspire confidence.
It's hard to imagine how the Iranians would see it in their
interest to give nuclear weapons to a terrorist group. They hate Al
Qaeda as much as we do.
What about North Korea?
I am more concerned about weapons in the hands of North Korea
than in the hands of Iran, because North Korea does strike me as a
truly bizarre country.
What about Pakistan? Might they use their weapons?
My fear is that if Pakistan collapses, who knows?
Will everyone have nuclear weapons eventually? What about, say,
Albania?
I would be surprised if Albania gets them in my lifetime. But
as long as nuclear weapons remain the primary deterrent against
aggression, different countries are going to have an incentive to
acquire them, and I think the numbers will continue to grow.
US now fighting
for the creation of an Islamic state?
Religious Leaders Ahead in Iraq Poll
U.S.-Supported Government Is Losing Ground
By Robin Wright
Washington Post, 22 October 2004
EXCERPT: Leaders of Iraq's religious parties have emerged as the
country's most popular politicians and would win the largest share
of votes if an election were held today, while the U.S.-backed
government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is losing serious
ground, according to a U.S.-financed poll by the International
Republican Institute.
More than 45 percent of Iraqis also believe that their country is
heading in the wrong direction, and 41 percent say it is moving in
the right direction.
Within the Bush administration, a victory by Iraq's religious
parties is viewed as the worst-case scenario. Washington has hoped
that Allawi and the current team, which was selected by U.S. and
U.N. envoys, would win or do well in Iraq's first democratic
election, in January. U.S. officials believe a secular government
led by moderates is critical, in part because the new government
will oversee writing a new Iraqi constitution.
"The picture it paints is that, after all the blood and treasure
we've spent and despite the [U.S.-led] occupation's democracy
efforts, we're in a position now that the moderates would not win if
an election were held today," said a U.S. official who requested
anonymity because the poll has not been released.
U.S. officials acknowledge that the political honeymoon after the
handover of political power on June 28 ended much earlier than
anticipated.
23-24 October 2004
Dozens of Iraqi Soldiers Found
Shot to Death
By EDWARD WONG
NYT, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: Policemen discovered on Sunday morning the bodies of about
50 Iraqi soldiers who were killed in an ambush by insurgents the
previous night in a remote part of eastern Iraq, Iraqi officials
said. The bodies were found near the Iranian border, about 30 miles
east of the restive city of Baquba, which has been wracked by
guerilla warfare since the American invasion. The soldiers were
going home on leave. It is unclear who killed them, or how such a
brazen and deadly ambush could have been mounted by guerillas on
American-trained Iraqis.
Kerry's Account of Tora Bora
Supported by Reports - Bush Team Is Clearly Misstating Facts
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 23 October 2004
EXCERPT: Looking over various reporting on Tora Bora from the winter
and spring of 2001/2002, it seems clear that most major news outlets
ran stories which flatly contradict what the Bush campaign is now
saying on the subject (see this earlier
post for more details.)
I'd be curious whether, in reporting the Bush campaign's current
denials about what happened at Tora Bora, any major news outlet has
made reference to their own earlier reporting which makes it
clear that, as nearly as such things can be known, what the
president is saying is simply not true. Indeed, not only is what the
president's campaign is saying not true, but as the
April 2002 WaPo piece,
discussed here, makes clear, what Kerry is charging is backed up
to the letter by the administration's own formal and informal
after-action analyses and reports about the mistakes made at Tora
Bora.
It's really that clear cut.
16 Killed in Bombing at Police
Checkpoint
Forty people are hurt in the suicide attack. Four Iraqi guardsmen
die in a separate explosion and gunmen kill two drivers in a supply
convoy.
By Monte Morin
LA Times, 24 October 2004
BAGHDAD A suicide car bomb detonated Saturday outside the gates of
a Marine base in western Iraq, killing at least 16 Iraqi police
officers and wounding 40 people at a police checkpoint.
In northern Iraq, there were several bloody attacks, including one
in Mosul that killed two truck drivers.
'Everything changed after 9/11'
After Terror,
a Secret Rewriting of Military Law
By TIM GOLDEN
NYT, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: In early November 2001, with Americans still staggered by
the Sept. 11 attacks, a small group of White House officials worked
in great secrecy to devise a new system of justice for the new war
they had declared on terrorism. ...The story of how Guantαnamo and
the new military justice system became an intractable legacy of
Sept. 11 has been largely hidden from public view. ...Military
lawyers were largely excluded from that process in the days after
Sept. 11. They have since waged a long struggle to ensure that
terrorist prosecutions meet what they say are basic standards of
fairness. Uniformed lawyers now assigned to defend Guantαnamo
detainees have become among the most forceful critics of the
Pentagon's own system.
Foreign policy officials voiced concerns about the legal and
diplomatic ramifications, but had little influence. Increasingly,
the administration's plan has come under criticism even from close
allies, complicating efforts to transfer scores of Guantαnamo
prisoners back to their home governments. To the policy's
architects, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
represented a stinging challenge to American power and an imperative
to consider measures that might have been unimaginable in less
threatening times. Yet some officials said the strategy was also
shaped by longstanding political agendas that had relatively little
to do with fighting terrorism. [BWUSA emphasis]
More ghost 'war crimes'
Detainees Secretly Taken Out Of
Iraq
Practice Is Called Breach of Protections
By Dana Priest
Washington Post, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department drafted a
confidential memo that authorizes the agency to transfer detainees
out of Iraq for interrogation -- a practice that international legal
specialists say contravenes the Geneva Conventions.
One intelligence official familiar with the operation said the CIA
has used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly
transporting as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last
six months. The agency has concealed the detainees from the
International Red Cross and other authorities, the official said.
The draft opinion, written by the Justice Department's Office of
Legal Counsel and dated March 19, 2004, refers to both Iraqi
citizens and foreigners in Iraq, who the memo says are protected by
the treaty. It permits the CIA to take Iraqis out of the country to
be interrogated for a "brief but not indefinite period." It also
says the CIA can permanently remove persons deemed to be "illegal
aliens" under "local immigration law."
Some specialists in international law say the opinion amounts to a
reinterpretation of one of the most basic rights of Article 49 of
the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians during
wartime and occupation, including insurgents who were not part of
Iraq's military. The treaty prohibits the "[i]ndividual or mass
forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons
from occupied territory . . . regardless of their motive." The 1949
treaty notes that a violation of this particular provision
constitutes a "grave breach" of the accord, and thus a "war crime"
under U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice
Department draft. ...Michael Byers, a professor and international
law expert at University of British Columbia, said that creating a
legal justification for removing protected persons from Iraq "is
extraordinarily disturbing." "What they are doing is interpreting an
exception into an all-encompassing right, in one of the most
fundamental treaties in history," Byers said. The Geneva Convention
"is as close as you get to protecting human rights in times of
chaos. There's no ambiguity here."
Jews, Israel and America
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT, 24 October 2004
EXCERPT: Iwas speaking the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS News's
"60 Minutes" about the mood in Iraq. He had just returned from
filming a piece there and he told me something disturbing. Scott had
gone around and asked Iraqis on the streets what they called
American troops - wondering if they had nicknames for us in the way
we used to call the Nazis "Krauts" or the Vietcong "Charlie." And
what did he find? "Many Iraqis have so much distrust for U.S. forces
we found they've come up with a nickname for our troops," Scott
said. "They call American soldiers 'The Jews,' as in, 'Don't go down
that street, the Jews set up a roadblock.' "
Bush's Incredible Misjudgment about his own "War On Terrorism"
Bush and his aides most often deflect questions about recent
global polls that have found sharply rising anti-U.S.
sentiment in Arab and Muslim countries and in Europe, but one
of them addressed it in a recent interview. Speaking for the
president by White House arrangement, but declining to be
identified, a high-ranking national security official said of
the hostility detected in surveys: "I don't think it
matters. It's about keeping the country safe, and I don't
think that matters."
...Downing, Bush's first counterterrorism adviser after
Sept. 11, said in a 2002 interview that hunting down al Qaeda
leaders could do no more than "buy time" for longer-term
efforts to stem the jihadist tide. This month he said, "Time
is not on our side." "This is not a war," he said. "What
we're faced with is an Islamic insurgency that is spreading
throughout the world, not just the Islamic world." Because it
is "a political struggle," he said, "the military is not the
key factor. The military has to be coordinated with the
other elements of national power."
...Most officials interviewed said Bush has not devised an
answer to a problem then-CIA Director George J. Tenet
identified publicly on Feb. 11, 2003 -- "the numbers of
societies and peoples excluded from the benefits of an
expanding global economy, where the daily lot is hunger,
disease, and displacement -- and that produce large
populations of disaffected youth who are prime recruits for
our extremist foes."
The president and his most influential advisers, many
officials said, do not see those factors -- or U.S. policy
overseas -- as primary contributors to the terrorism threat.
Bush's explanation, in private and public, is that terrorists
hate America for its freedom.
Sageman, who supports some of Bush's approach, said that
analysis is "nonsense, complete nonsense. They obviously
haven't looked at any surveys." The central findings of
polling by the Pew Charitable Trust and others, he said, is
that large majorities in much of the world "view us as a
hypocritical huge beast throwing our weight around in the
Middle East."
--Washington Post, 22 October 2004 |
Afghanistan, Iraq: Two Wars
Collide
By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post, 22 October 2004
EXCERPT: In the second half of March 2002, as the Bush
administration mapped its next steps against al Qaeda, Deputy CIA
Director John E. McLaughlin brought an unexpected message to the
White House Situation Room. According to two people with firsthand
knowledge, he told senior members of the president's national
security team that the CIA was scaling back operations in
Afghanistan.
That announcement marked a year-long drawdown of specialized
military and intelligence resources from the geographic center of
combat with Osama bin Laden. As jihadist enemies reorganized,
slipping back and forth from Pakistan and Iran, the CIA closed
forward bases in the cities of Herat, Mazar-e Sharif and Kandahar.
The agency put off an $80 million plan to train and equip a friendly
intelligence service for the new U.S.-installed Afghan government.
Replacements did not keep pace with departures as case officers
finished six-week tours. And Task Force 5 -- a covert commando team
that led the hunt for bin Laden and his lieutenants in the border
region -- lost more than two-thirds of its fighting strength.
The commandos, their high-tech surveillance equipment and other
assets would instead surge toward Iraq through 2002 and early 2003,
as President Bush prepared for the March invasion that would extend
the field of battle in the nation's response to the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks.
Bush has shaped his presidency, and his reelection campaign, around
the threat that announced itself in the wreckage of the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. Five days after the attacks, he made it
clear that he conceived a broader war. Impromptu remarks on the
White House South Lawn were the first in which he named "this war on
terrorism," and he cast it as a struggle with "a new kind of evil."
Under that banner he toppled two governments, eased traditional
restraints on intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and
reshaped the landscape of the federal government.
As the war on terrorism enters its fourth year, its results are
sufficiently diffuse -- and obscured in secrecy -- to resist easy
measure. Interpretations of the public record are also polarized by
the claims and counterclaims of the presidential campaign. Bush has
staked his reelection on an argument that defense of the U.S.
homeland requires unyielding resolve to take the fight to the
terrorists. His opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), portrays the
Bush strategy as based on false assumptions and poor choices,
particularly when it came to Iraq.
The contention that the Iraq invasion was an unwise diversion in
confronting terrorism has been central to Kerry's critique of Bush's
performance. But this account -- drawn largely from interviews with
those who have helped manage Bush's offensive -- shows how the
debate over that question has echoed within the ranks of the
administration as well, even among those who support much of the
president's agenda.
Interviews with those advisers also highlight an internal debate
over Bush's strategy against al Qaeda and allied jihadists, which
has stressed the "decapitation" of the network by capturing or
killing leaders, but which has had less success in thwarting
recruitment of new militants.
...at least a dozen current and former officials who have held
key positions in conducting the war now say they see diminishing
returns in Bush's decapitation strategy. Current and former
leaders of that effort, three of whom departed in frustration from
the top White House terrorism post, said the manhunt is important
but cannot defeat the threat of jihadist terrorism. Classified
government tallies, moreover, suggest that Bush and Vice President
Cheney have inflated the manhunt's success in their reelection bid.
Bush's focus on the instruments of force, the officials said, has
been slow to adapt to a swiftly changing enemy. Al Qaeda, they said,
no longer exerts centralized control over a network of operational
cells. It has rather become the inspirational hub of a global
movement, fomenting terrorism that it neither funds nor directs.
Internal government assessments describe this change with a
disquieting metaphor: They say jihadist terrorism is
"metastasizing." [BWUSA emphasis]
Pentagon Exaggerated Risk Posed by
Iraq: US Senator
AFP via YahooNews, 22 October 2004
EXCERPT: A senior Democratic senator released a report alleging that
the US Pentagon exaggerated the military risks posed by Iraq before
the US-led war there to support a decision already taken by the
White House to invade the country.
In a statement, Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate
Armed Services Committee, said a months-long probe conducted by his
staff of prewar intelligence showed that the US Defense Department
tailored its analysis to the George W. Bush administration's liking,
after "assessments of the intelligence community did not make a
sufficiently compelling case" for invasion.
Levin, who began his inquiry in June 2003, concluded that defense
officials had found only "a relatively weak" relationship between
Saddam and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, rather than the
substantial one that the Bush administration cited as a
justification for invading Iraq. Levin said the Pentagon analysis
presented to the White House -- and in particular intelligence
supplied by the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
Douglas Feith -- inflated the risks "to support the policy goal of
removing Saddam Hussein." Levin called for tougher congressional
legislation and better legislative oversight of intelligence
assessments, the reliability of which he said have been undermined.
Our War on Terrorism
Howard Zinn
The Progressive, November issue
EXCERPT: I am calling it "our" war on terrorism because I want to
distinguish it from Bush's war on terrorism, and from Sharon's, and
from Putin's. What their wars have in common is that they are based
on an enormous deception: persuading the people of their countries
that you can deal with terrorism by war. These rulers say you can
end our fear of terrorism--of sudden, deadly, vicious attacks, a
fear new to Americans--by drawing an enormous circle around an area
of the world where terrorists come from (Afghanistan, Palestine,
Chechnya) or can be claimed to be connected with (Iraq), and by
sending in tanks and planes to bomb and terrorize whoever lives
within that circle.
Since war is itself the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on
terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory. Is it strange, or
normal, that no major political figure has pointed this out?
...The highly respected International Institute for Strategic
Studies in London has reported that "over 18,000 potential
terrorists are at large with recruitment accelerating on account of
Iraq."
With the failure so obvious, and the President tripping over his
words trying to pretend otherwise (August 30: "I don't think you can
win" and the next day: "Make no mistake about it, we are winning"),
it astonishes us that the polls show a majority of Americans
believing the President has done "a good job" in the war on
terrorism.
Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Turns to
Terrorism
Did he deceive the Pentagon or was he pushed to extremes?
By Lisa Myers and the NBC Investigative Unit
MSNBC, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: In the tribal area of Waziristan, Pakistani helicopter
gunships and commandos hunt one of the country's most wanted
militants Abdullah Mehsud a feared Taliban commander who is
allegedly tied to al-Qaida. Mehsud's men recently took Pakistani
soldiers and two Chinese engineers hostage.
A video given to NBC News by a contact in the region shows Mehsud at
a hideout last week, playing to the camera. He urges fellow
militants by radio to prepare for a suicide mission.
"Once you tie the bombs tightly to your bodies, then you should be
ready for suicide. Once I give you the order, go and act," says
Mehsud in the video.
Later, in a confrontation with Pakistani troops, one hostage and
five of Mehsuds men were killed.
The Mehsud story is more than a bit embarrassing for the United
States. Until last March, Mehsud was in prison at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba having been captured fighting with the Taliban in
Afghanistan. However, a Pentagon review board decided to release
him, ruling Mehsud was not a security threat.
Global Warming Effects Faster Than
Feared - Experts
By Maggie Fox
Reuters, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: Recent storms, droughts and heat waves are probably being
caused by global warming, which means the effects of climate change
are coming faster than anyone had feared, climate experts said on
Thursday. The four hurricanes that bashed Florida and the Caribbean
within a five-week period over the summer, intense storms over the
western Pacific, heat waves that killed tens of thousands of
Europeans last year and a continued drought across the U.S.
southwest are only the beginning, the experts said. Ice is melting
faster than anyone predicted in the Antarctic and Greenland, ocean
currents are changing and the seas are warming, the experts said.
"This year, the unusually intense period of destructive activity,
with four hurricanes hitting in a five-week period, could be a
harbinger of things to come," said Dr. Paul Epstein, associate
director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at
Harvard Medical School. Epstein and colleagues called a telephone
news conference to raise their concerns, which they have also laid
out before Congress in recent weeks. "The weather patterns are
changing. The character of the system is changing," Epstein said.
"It is becoming a signal of how the system is behaving and it is not
stable."
22 October 2004
Estimates by U.S. See More Rebels
With More Funds
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
NYT, 22 October 2004
EXCERPT: Senior American officials are beginning to assemble a
new portrait of the insurgency that has continued to inflict
casualties on American and Iraqi forces, showing that it has
significantly more fighters and far greater financial resources than
had been estimated. When foreign fighters and the network of a
Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, are counted with
home-grown insurgents, the hard-core resistance numbers between
8,000 and 12,000 people, a tally that swells to more than 20,000
when active sympathizers or covert accomplices are included,
according to the American officials. These estimates contrast
sharply with earlier intelligence reports, in which the number of
insurgents has varied from as few as 2,000 to a maximum of 7,000.
The revised estimate is influencing the military campaign in Iraq,
but has not prompted a wholesale review of the strategy, officials
said. In recent interviews, military and other government officials
in Iraq and Washington said the core of the Iraqi insurgency now
consisted of as many as 50 militant cells that draw on "unlimited
money'' from an underground financial network run by former Baath
Party leaders and Saddam Hussein's relatives. Their financing is
supplemented in great part by wealthy Saudi donors and Islamic
charities that funnel large sums of cash through Syria,
according to these officials, who have access to detailed
intelligence reports. Only half the estimated $1 billion the
Hussein government put in Syrian banks before the war has been
recovered, Pentagon officials said. There is no tally of money
flowing through Syria to Iraq from wealthy Saudis or Islamic
charities, but a Pentagon official said the figure is "significant."
[BWUSA emphasis]
Ex-CIA Chief Tenet Calls War on
Iraq "Wrong"
Editor & Publisher, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: The guest speaker was famous, and he was visiting a small
town far from the spotlight of network TV cameras and the reach of
big-name reporters from national newspapers. In other words: It was
a perfect scenario for a local reporter to snag an exclusive. And
Anna Clark, 24, correspondent for The Herald-Palladium of St.
Joseph, Mich., was there to grab it. Addressing the Economic Club of
Southwestern Michigan Wednesday night, George Tenet, former director
of central intelligence, called the war on Iraq "wrong," according
to Clark's article on Thursday, although it was unclear whether he
meant the war itself or mainly the intelligence it was based on.
Three Strikes on Iraq
by P.J. Crowley
Center for American Progress, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: If it's three strikes you're out of the old ball game, then
last week's Iraq Survey Group report, together with the earlier
findings of the 9/11 Commission, conclusively expose the Bush
administration's rationale for invading Iraq why we did, when we did
and how we did as a series of swings and misses.
Strike one: The 9/11 Commission said there was no link between Iraq
and Sept. 11 and "no collaborative operational relationship" between
Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
Strike two: The Iraq Survey Group reported that there were no
weapons of mass destruction and there had not been for several
years.
Strike three: Most interestingly, the Iraq Survey Group, while
acknowledging that Saddam maintained aspirations, assessed that Iraq
was less capable of building weapons of mass destruction in 2003
than it was in 1998, when U.N. inspectors were kicked out and the
U.S. retaliated with the Desert Fox strikes at Iraq's weapons
infrastructure.
In other words, the combination of sanctions (admittedly badly
administered), inspections and limited military action employed
between 1991 and 2003 actually worked. Saddam was not a grave and
gathering threat, but a regional problem who was effectively
contained and in decline.
Pentagon Official Distorted
Intelligence, Report Says
By Douglas Jehl
IHT/NYT, 22 October 2004
EXCERPT: As recently as January 2004, a top Defense Department
official misrepresented to Congress the view of American
intelligence agencies about the relationship between Iraq and Al
Qaeda, according to classified documents described in a new report
by a Senate Democrat.
The report said that a classified document prepared by Douglas Feith,
the undersecretary of defense for policy, did not accurately reflect
the intelligence agencies' assessment of the relationship, despite a
Pentagon claim that it did.
In issuing the report, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top
Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he would
ask the panel to take "appropriate action" against Feith. Levin
described the Jan. 15 communication from Feith as part of a pattern
in which the Defense Department official, in briefings for Congress
and the White House, repeatedly described the ties between Iraq and
Al Qaeda as far more significant and extensive than the intelligence
agencies had assessed.
The broad outlines of the role played by Feith as a champion of the
view that Iraq and Al Qaeda were closely linked have been disclosed
previously. The view, a staple of the Bush administration's public
statements before the Iraq invasion in March 2003, has since been
discredited by the Sept. 11 commission, which concluded that Iraq
and Al Qaeda had "no close collaborative relationship."
Bush administration officials have defended Feith's prewar efforts
as reflecting a legitimate effort to develop an alternative analysis
of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda. But the report by
Levin includes new details showing that Feith's accounts to the
White House and Congress through early 2004 deviated from the
intelligence agencies' assessments to a degree that the Pentagon
official did not acknowledge.
SEE ALSO:
Pentagon Reportedly Skewed
C.I.A.'s View of Qaeda Tie
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: As recently as January 2004, a top Defense Department
official misrepresented to Congress the view of American
intelligence agencies about the relationship between Iraq and Al
Qaeda, according to a new report by a Senate Democrat. The report
said a classified document prepared by Douglas J. Feith, the under
secretary of defense for policy, not only asserted that there were
ties between the Baghdad government and the terrorist network, but
also did not reflect accurately the intelligence agencies'
assessment - even while claiming that it did. In issuing the report,
the senator, Carl M. Levin, the senior Democrat on the Armed
Services Committee, said he would ask the panel to take "appropriate
action'' against Mr. Feith. Senator Levin said Mr. Feith had
repeatedly described the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as far more
significant and extensive than the intelligence agencies had.
K Street Lobbyists Carry Water for
OPEC
Disclosure filings indicate massive spending on lobbying by
oil-rich countries
By Kevin Bogardus
Center for Public Integrity, 22 October 2004
 EXCERPT:
As a trading bloc, The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries is one of the world's most powerful. Yet political
influence here in Washington, even for the oil-rich nations, does
not come cheap. Since mid-2003, OPEC members will have spent at
least $13.3 million in lobbying the U.S. federal government and
currying favor with the American public, according to a Center for
Public Integrity analysis of foreign agent lobbying disclosure
records filed with the U.S. Department of Justice. Unlike garden
variety lobbying forms by U.S.-based clients and representatives,
the foreign agent forms are extremely detailed. They even include
details on specific meetings, who attended, and what was discussed.
All 11 member countries of the petroleum cartel have lobbyists
representing their interests in Washington, including some of city's
premier political power brokers. "[OPEC] acts as a price regulator
and indirectly affects American politics," said Michael Klare, the
author of Blood and Oil and a professor of peace and world security
studies at Hampshire College. "If prices go too high, that has
implications for the economy. If prices go too low, that has
implications for the Texas producers because their costs are too
high." The group's members have hired high-powered law firms and
advocacy shops such as Hill & Knowlton and Barbour Griffith & Rogers
to lobby legislators. They have contracted political consultants to
devise elaborate media campaigns to win over public opinion. And
they have wined and dined lawmakers on Capitol Hill and in the White
House, all in the hopes of swinging U.S. foreign policy their way.
Must be from another country...
Iowan with Anti-Bush Button Says He Was Warned a Sniper Would Take
Him Out
Progressive Magazine, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: John Sachs is a high school senior in Johnston, Iowa, a
northern suburb of Des Moines. Sachs got a ticket at school to go
see Bush speak in nearby Clive one day in early October. It was
billed as a question and answer session with the President.
So he and two friends, Alex Grasso and Tim Stewart, went to the
event.
"I was wearing this pin that said 'Bush-Cheney '04: Leave No
Billionaire Behind,' and we were walking in the line going up to the
metal detector, and one of the Bush staffers saw my pin and
literally pulled me out of the line," Sachs says. "He said, 'Come
with me. Let me see that pin.'
"So I pulled my shirt toward him so he could read it.
"He read it and said, 'Give me the pin.'
"So I took it off and gave it to him."
Sachs says the Bush staffer told him he could go back in line. But
then the staffer pulled him aside again.
"Are you a Bush supporter?"
"Well, not really."
"So why are you here?"
"I'm here to see my President, and ask questions of my President."
Then the staffer gave Sachs a chilling warning, he says. According
to Sachs, here's what the Bush staffer said: "Know if you protest
that it won't be me taking you out. It will be a sniper."
That shook Sachs up.
"I was really scared," he says. Nevertheless, he kept going through
the line and made it past the metal detector. He says the Bush
staffer and a Secret Service agent followed him into the Seven Flags
event center. "They put us in an area of the event center where the
bleachers would eclipse us if we did any protests," he says. "I was
able to sit there through the President's speech. But I was in a
state of shock. I was looking at the ceiling for a sniper.
Seriously, I was scared." Nothing violent happened at the event,
fortunately. After it was over, Sachs went up to the Bush staffer.
"I asked him for my pin back, and he said he lost it," Sachs
recalls.
The Bush campaign did not return a call for comment.
21 October 2004
White House Opposes Provision in
Senate Bill to Create Counterproliferation Center
By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: With House and Senate lawmakers set to meet today to
develop a compromise intelligence reform bill for final approval,
the White House has come out against a provision in the Senate
version that would create a national counterproliferation center.
Earlier this month, the House and Senate each approved separate
versions of legislation intended to implement the intelligence
reform proposals put forth this summer by the Sept. 11 commission
chiefly the creation of a national director of intelligence to
oversee the U.S. intelligence community and the creation of a
National Counterterrorism Center to conduct counterterrorism-related
intelligence analysis and operational planning. During final debate
on its bill, the Senate approved an amendment by Majority Leader
Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) that would create a similar center to focus on
counterproliferation efforts.
As the National Counterterrorism Center focuses on the customers
and users of these dangerous technologies and materials (the
terrorists), the NCPC [National Counterproliferation Center] will be
focusing on the suppliers and brokers of these items. The NCPC will
endeavor to stop these activities before they ever reach the bad
guys, Frist said in a statement earlier this month.
In a letter sent yesterday to two members of the House-Senate
conference committee developing a compromise bill, the White House
came out against the creation of a counterproliferation center,
saying instead that it preferred to wait for the recommendations of
a presidential commission established in February to examine WMD-related
intelligence.
Bush Fundamentalizes the Middle
East
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: Since Bush began acting aggressively in the region, the
United Action Council of (often pro-Bin Laden!) fundamentalist
parties in Pakistan has come to power by itself in the Northwest
Frontier Province, in coalition in Baluchistan, and has 17% of the
seats in parliament! Despite Pakistan's unwarranted reputation for
"fundamentalism," in fact most Pakistanis are Sufis or
traditionalists who dislike fundamentalism, and the latter parties
seldom got more than 2-3% of seats in any election in which they
ran. Until Bush came along.
In Iraq, a whole series of Muslim fundamentalist parties-- al-Da`wa,
the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Sadrists,
the Salafis, and now al-Qaeda, have been unleashed by Bush. They
seem likely to win any election held in Iraq, since the secularists
remain disorganized.
In the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan now slated for spring
2005, the Taliban or the cousins of the Taliban are likely to be a
major party, benefiting from the Pushtun vote.
We could go on (a similar story of new-found fundamentalist strength
could be told for Indonesia, e.g.) The real legacy of Bush to the
Muslim world will likely not be secular democracy, but the
provocation of Muslim publics into voting for the Muslim
fundamentalists on a scale never before seen in the region. But then
since Bush wants to subvert the separation of religion and state in
the United States, with his theologically (!) driven stem cell
policy and his hand-outs to cults like the Moonies, at least he is
being consistent when it comes to his Middle East policy.
Agency Halts Aid Projects in Iraq
Care International has suspended its aid operations in Iraq, after
the director of the charity's work there was kidnapped.
BBC News, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: A video of Margaret Hassan has been broadcast on al-Jazeera
TV station, showing her with her hands tied behind her back. She was
abducted by an unnamed group on her way to work in Baghdad. Mrs
Hassan's friend, film-maker Felicity Arbuthnot, described her as "an
extraordinary woman". In the UK Parliament on Wednesday, Prime
Minister Tony Blair said the whole of the House was thinking of Mrs
Hassan. Ms Arbuthnot added: "Margaret is one of those slender people
with a spine of steel. "She stayed there through the 1991 war, the
bombings last year, all the horrors of the embargo. "She has
tremendous presence. If there is anybody who can build a rapport
with whoever these people are, she will." Mrs Hassan's husband
Tahseen Ali Hassan has told al-Jazeera the family has received no
word from her captors. Geoffrey Dennis, chief executive of Care
International UK, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We have heard
so far nothing at all. We are doing everything we can.
'CATASTROPHIC SUCCESS'
Debate Lingering on Decision to Dissolve the Iraqi
Military
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
NYT, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: When Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus flew to Baghdad on June
14, 2003, he had a blunt message for the American-led occupation
authority. As the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, General
Petraeus had been working tirelessly to win the support of Iraqis in
Mosul and the neighboring provinces in northern Iraq.
But the authority's decree to abolish the Iraqi Army and to forgo
paying 350,000 soldiers had jolted much of Iraq. Riots had broken
out in cities. Just the day before, 16 of General Petraeus's
soldiers had been wounded trying to put down a violent
demonstration.
Arriving at the huge Abu Ghraib North Palace for a ceremony, General
Petraeus spied Walter B. Slocombe, an adviser to L. Paul Bremer III,
who headed the authority. Sidling up to him, General Petraeus said
that the decision to leave the soldiers without a livelihood had put
American lives at risk.
More than a year later, Mr. Bremer's disbanding of the Iraqi Army
still casts a shadow over the occupation of Iraq. The American
military had been counting on using Iraqi soldiers to help rebuild
the country and impose order along its borders. Instead, as a
violent insurgency convulsed the nation, United States forces found
themselves deprived of a way to put an Iraqi face on the occupation.
While Mr. Bremer soon reversed himself on paying salaries to the
ex-soldiers, his decision to formally dissolve the Iraqi military
and methodically build a new one, battalion by battalion, still
ranks as one of the most contentious issues of the post-war.
Mr. Slocombe argues that the move was necessary to establish an
Iraqi military that was not tainted by corruption and was acceptable
to ethnic groups that had long been repressed by Saddam Hussein's
military. He also says that it was the only possible course because
so many Iraqi soldiers had fled their posts and drifted back into
the population and military bases had been picked clean by looters.
But senior American generals were privately urging a much different
approach, according to interviews with military and civilian
officials. Top commanders were meeting secretly with former Iraqi
officers to discuss the best way to rebuild the force and recall
Iraqi soldiers back to duty when Mr. Bremer arrived in Baghdad with
his plan.
"It was absolutely the wrong decision," said Col. Paul Hughes of the
Army, who served as an aide to Jay Garner, a retired three-star
general and the first civilian administrator of Iraq. "We changed
from being a liberator to an occupier with that single decision,''
he said. "By abolishing the army, we destroyed in the Iraqi mind the
last symbol of sovereignty they could recognize and as a result
created a significant part of the resistance."
Former CIA Official Blasts Premise for Iraqi
Invasion
A former Central Intelligence Agency expert is
traveling across the United States on a mission to explain what he
describes as "prostituted intelligence" created at the request of
the Bush administration to push the Congress to approve the Iraqi
invasion.
Aljeerzera, 16 October 2004
EXCERPT: Ray McGovern, who used to serve under seven U.S. presidents
and retired in 1990 as a CIA senior analyst, spoke to University of
Missouri-Columbia students. "I am here because of dangerous signs
that the intelligence process is corrupted," McGovern told a foreign
policy class on Thursday. McGovern admits he is a conservative, yet
he is a harsh critic of the Bush administration. "These people are
dangerous ideologues," McGovern said. He likened the White House top
staffers to "the terrible, impractical people" of the Soviet era
with a narrow-minded view of the world. "If there is no more four
years for them, whoever comes in, it couldnt possibly be any
worse," he said.
At Odds: Bery Different Worldviews
By Howard LaFranchi
Christian Science Monitor, 20 October 2004
EXCERPT: When George W. Bush accused John Kerry this week of
approaching the world with a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set, it was - to the
president's way of thinking - the ultimate put-down. But in many
ways that view captures the stark differences separating the two
men, not only in how they define themselves, but also in their
visions for America's role in the world. Both candidates have
settled on foreign policy as their preferred campaign workhorse for
distinguishing themselves from each other. It is Sept. 11, 2001, and
the broad issues emanating from that day - national security,
terrorism, religious extremism, weapons proliferation, American
relations with the world - that provide the line of demarcation. Mr.
Bush, whose sense of mission in the presidency was transformed by
that day, not only sees everything in terms of Sept. 11, but
considers as dangerous anyone who does not. Senator Kerry sees such
a view of the world as promoting a "vision of fear," and espouses a
more traditional foreign policy emphasizing multilateral
cooperation. In a sense, campaign 2004 is a battle of George Bush
against George Bush - that is, George Bush the absolutist opposing
George Bush - the first President Bush - the pragmatist and
internationalist. The fact that both candidates have settled on the
same issue as the defining theme of the campaign could simplify
decision making for voters, some analysts add. It also makes voters
think beyond more traditional bread-and-butter issues. "This
election is about security - how you define it and how you achieve
it. It's not one [candidate] saying, 'I'm the healthcare guy,' and
the other, 'I'm the jobs or something-else guy,' " says John Hulsman,
a foreign-policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
"They're both saying Iraq and the war on terror is the seminal
issue. It forces voters to decide which narrative you believe in."
Indeed, the two "narratives" differ starkly. Bush uses Iraq and the
war on terror to define himself as resolute, certain of what is
right and wrong, and unchanging when the going gets tough. In
contrast, he uses foreign-policy issues to portray Kerry as
indecisive, malleable, accommodating of foreign viewpoints, and even
dangerous to the extent that he would approach terrorism less as a
war and more as a law-enforcement challenge. Bush's vision is one of
a new world of danger, driven home by the events of Sept. 11, the
antidote to which is freedom for individuals in the image of
American individual freedoms. He sees America leading the world best
by sticking to principles and working with movable and ad hoc
alliances that fit a situation rather than with static international
institutions that constrain the United States. For his part, Kerry
uses Iraq to portray himself as considered and measured, but
confident enough to recalibrate policy when experience reveals
corrections to be necessary. In contrast, he suggests Bush is rash
and stubborn, as well as dangerous in that he has tarnished
America's global image and weakened willingness to cooperate with
the US. Kerry also uses Bush's shifting rationale for war and his
optimistic portrayal of Iraq today to cast doubts on the president's
honesty. As Kerry senior adviser Mike McCurry told The Washington
Post recently, "Iraq is a way for Kerry to talk about candor. The
candor to acknowledge the things that need to be addressed."
A Schoolgirl Riddled with Bullets.
And No One is to Blame
Questions remain after Israeli unit commander is cleared of
Palestinian pupil's death
Chris McGreal in Rafah
The Guardian, 21 October 2004
EXCERPT: The undisputed facts are these: it was broad daylight,
13-year-old Iman al-Hams was wearing her school uniform, and when
she walked into the Israeli army's "forbidden zone" at the bottom of
her street she was carrying her satchel. A few minutes later the
short, slight child was pumped with bullets. Doctors counted at
least 17 wounds and said much of her head was destroyed. Beyond that
there is little agreement between the army top brass and Palestinian
witnesses as to how Iman came to die last week, or even among
members of the military unit responsible for killing the child in
Gaza's Rafah refugee camp. Palestinian witnesses described the
shooting as cold-blooded. They say soldiers could not have failed to
see they were firing at a child, and she was killed as she already
lay wounded and helpless. "Some soldiers were lying on the ground
and shooting very heavily toward her," said Basim Breaka, who saw
the killing from her living room. "Then one of the soldiers walked
to her and emptied his clip into her. For sure she died on the
second or third bullet. I could see her lying on the ground, not
moving. I can't imagine why that soldier wanted to shoot her after
she was dead." This week an army investigation cleared the unit's
commander after some of his own soldiers accused him of giving the
order to shoot knowing the target was a young girl, and of then
emptying the clip of his automatic rifle into her.
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