The New Year in Taxes
NYT, 30 December 2005
A surprise awaits the nation's highest earners when they file their 2006 tax returns. Their taxes are going down again - whether or not Congress passes the investor tax cuts the lawmakers have been promising. On New Year's Day, two additional tax cuts will kick in, allowing people who earn upward of $200,000 a year to claim bigger write-offs for a spouse, their children and other expenses, like mortgage interest on a vacation home.
The bolstered write-offs were enacted in 2001, but with a delayed start date because of their high cost: according to Congressional estimates, the new breaks will cost $27 billion over the short term, exploding to $146 billion from 2010 through 2019. By then, most of the benefits would flow to taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year.
With the nation deep in debt, at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Congress voting last month to slash programs for health care and student loans, and with a debilitating shortfall building in Medicare - the decision by Congress to let these particular tax breaks take effect now is flabbergasting. But it is not out of character.
The Bush family has a long history with this particular part of the tax code. In 1990, the first President Bush - in a move that now seems quaint in its sense of responsibility - had to raise revenue to rein in the budget deficit. He was loath to hike the top tax rate, then 31 percent. So he opted instead for a provision that limited the amount well-heeled Americans could deduct from their taxes for a spouse and dependents, and for certain expenses, like vacation home mortgages. Tax cutters in Congress, known then as supply-siders, were furious.
The second President Bush has been guilty of irresponsibility and fuzzy math when it comes to taxes, but rescinding his father's reasonable legislation was not among his priorities. During his first year in office, however, he set off a tax-cutting frenzy when he proposed to give back the Clinton-era budget surplus via hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts. Congress then added some cuts of its own - including a provision to revoke the limits on write-offs put in place by the elder Mr. Bush.
The provision's effective date was set for Jan. 1, 2006, and, like other tax cuts from 2001, it is scheduled to expire at the end of 2010. Such "phase-ins" and "sunsets" are ploys to cram as many tax giveaways as possible into one law without overtly busting the budget.
Here's where the tale turns absurd: The tax cuts of 2001, followed by those of 2002 and 2003, have busted the budget. The surplus - the original rationale for the tax cuts - is long gone, replaced by a deficit projected to reach $530 billion by 2015, if the cuts are made permanent.
And yet Mr. Bush and Congress persist with tax cuts - for people who don't need the extra help and for purposes that have nothing to do with the country's obvious problems.
It's a heck of a way to begin the new year.

McCain's Retreat
Praise for the president's yielding to John McCain ignored the awful details in fine print
by Nat Hentoff
Village Voice, 23 December 2005
...Newspaper editorials after the McCain-Bush summit meeting cele- brating America's dedication to human rights were glowing: "President Backs McCain on Abuse" ( The New York Times); "Bush Backs Down on Proposed Torture Ban" ( USA Today); "White House, McCain Reach Deal on Terror Suspect Torture Policy" ( The New York Sun); "Principled McCain Prevails Over the White House" ( Financial Times, U.S. edition, December 17/18)
In a few of the stories, those readers going beneath the headlines found harsh revelations of the shell game that McCain and Bush are playing. These discoveries add to the accelerating exposure of how George W. Bush—with the cooperation of the once principled John McCain and of other members of Congress—is engaging in the cruel and inhumane debasing of the values we are fighting for against homicidal terrorists.
To begin, McCain, before his White House rapprochement with the president, had accepted administration language in his human rights amendment to give paid legal counsel and a certain amount of legal protection to interrogators—including the CIA's—accused of abusing prisoners. Their defense would be that a "person of ordinary sense and understanding would not know the practices were unlawful." Also, as at the Nuremberg trials after World War II, the defendants would say they were only following orders.
But as Josh White pointed out in the December 16 Washington Post, if these orders were plainly illegal, they would have to be disobeyed. In that case, what penalties would the commanders themselves, who gave the unlawful orders, face— including the top of the command at the Defense Department, the Justice Department, and the White House?
The Bush administration pressured McCain to accept this additional language in fear that, eventually, courts would decide that U.S. "coercive interrogations" have indeed violated U.S. law and international treaties we have signed. The ACLU and human rights organizations have already filed lawsuits making these claims against high levels of the administration.

Heck of a Job, Bushie
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 30 December 2005
A year ago, everyone expected President Bush to get his way on Social Security. Pundits warned Democrats that they were making a big political mistake by opposing plans to divert payroll taxes into private accounts.
A year ago, everyone thought Congress would make Mr. Bush's tax cuts permanent, in spite of projections showing that doing so would lead to budget deficits as far as the eye can see. But Congress hasn't acted, and most of the cuts are still scheduled to expire by the end of 2010.
A year ago, Mr. Bush made many Americans feel safe, because they believed that he would be decisive and effective in an emergency. But Mr. Bush was apparently oblivious to the first major domestic emergency since 9/11. According to Newsweek, aides to Mr. Bush finally decided, days after Hurricane Katrina struck, that they had to show him a DVD of TV newscasts to get him to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.
A year ago, before "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" became a national punch line, the rising tide of cronyism in government agencies and the rapid replacement of competent professionals with unqualified political appointees attracted hardly any national attention.
A year ago, hardly anyone outside Washington had heard of Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay's position as House majority leader seemed unassailable.
A year ago, Dick Cheney, who repeatedly cited discredited evidence linking Saddam to 9/11, and promised that invading Americans would be welcomed as liberators - although he hadn't yet declared that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes" - was widely admired for his "gravitas."
A year ago, Howard Dean - who was among the very few prominent figures to question Colin Powell's prewar presentation to the United Nations, and who warned, while hawks were still celebrating the fall of Baghdad, that the occupation of Iraq would be much more difficult than the initial invasion - was considered flaky and unsound.
A year ago, it was clear that before the Iraq war, the administration suppressed information suggesting that Iraq was not, in fact, trying to build nuclear weapons. Yet few people in Washington or in the news media were willing to say that the nation was deliberately misled into war until polls showed that most Americans already believed it.
A year ago, the Washington establishment treated Ayad Allawi as if he were Nelson Mandela. Mr. Allawi's triumphant tour of Washington, back in September 2004, provided a crucial boost to the Bush-Cheney campaign. So did his claim that the insurgents were "desperate." But Mr. Allawi turned out to be another Ahmad Chalabi, a hero of Washington conference rooms and cocktail parties who had few supporters where it mattered, in Iraq.
A year ago, when everyone respectable agreed that we must "stay the course," only a handful of war critics suggested that the U.S. presence in Iraq might be making the violence worse, not better. It would have been hard to imagine the top U.S. commander in Iraq saying, as Gen. George Casey recently did, that a smaller foreign force is better "because it doesn't feed the notion of occupation."
A year ago, Mr. Bush hadn't yet openly reneged on Scott McClellan's 2003 pledge that "if anyone in this administration was involved" in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity, that person "would no longer be in this administration." Of course, some suspect that Mr. Bush has always known who was involved.
A year ago, we didn't know that Mr. Bush was lying, or at least being deceptive, when he said at an April 2004 event promoting the Patriot Act that "a wiretap requires a court order. ...When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest.
A year ago, we didn't know for sure that almost all the politicians and pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the president isn't above the law have changed their minds. But now we know when it comes to presidents who break the law, it's O.K. if you're a Republican.

29 December 2005

Spy Agency Removes Illegal Tracking Files
AP via NYT, 29 December 2005
The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most files of that type.
The files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week. Agency officials acknowledged yesterday that they had made a mistake.
Nonetheless, the issue raised questions about privacy at the agency, which is on the defensive over reports of an eavesdropping program.
"Considering the surveillance power the N.S.A. has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington. "But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy."
Until Tuesday, the N.S.A. site created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035.

Supreme Court Is Asked to Rule on Terror Trial
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 29 December 2005
The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to allow for the immediate transfer of Jose Padilla from a military brig to civilian custody to stand trial on terrorism charges, a move that came in response to an appellate court ruling last week that blocked the transfer.
In an unusually strong criticism of a lower court that has historically been a staunch ally, the Justice Department said the earlier order blocking Mr. Padilla's transfer to civilian custody represented an "unwarranted attack" on presidential discretion.
In last week's ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., refused to allow Mr. Padilla to be transferred to civilian custody to face charges in Miami that he had conspired with Al Qaeda to commit terrorist attacks abroad.
The appeals court said that the Bush administration, in charging Mr. Padilla in criminal court in November after jailing him for more than three and a half years as an enemy combatant without charges, gave the appearance of trying to manipulate the court system to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing the case. And it warned that the maneuvering could harm the administration's credibility in the courts.
But Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, in the administration's new filing Wednesday asking the Supreme Court to take up the custody issue, said the Fourth Circuit's decision "defies both law and logic," and he noted that Mr. Padilla himself had sought to be transferred to civilian custody.
In unusually caustic language, the solicitor general said the Fourth Circuit did not have the authority to "disregard a presidential directive." And he said its decision blocking Mr. Padilla's transfer "is based on a mischaracterization of events and an unwarranted attack on the exercise of executive discretion, and, if given effect, would raise profound separation-of-powers concerns."
The Fourth Circuit is widely known as one of the most conservative appellate courts in the country, and it has sided with the Bush administration on a number of issues involving matters of terrorism and national security.
...The Justice Department's application to the Supreme Court came a day after lawyers for Mr. Padilla, in a filing of their own, argued that President Bush had overstepped his authority in jailing their client as an enemy combatant without charges.
In their filing, Mr. Padilla's lawyers also pointed to Mr. Bush's authorization of eavesdropping by the National Security Agency without warrants as another sign of an "unchecked executive branch," raising constitutional questions that they said the Supreme Court needed to resolve.
Mr. Padilla's lawyers argued that the Supreme Court should address the grave issues raised in the case to "ensure the checks and balances that the framers erected to preserve America as a land of liberty under the rule of law."

Homeland Security Is Faulted in Audit
Inspector General Points to FEMA, Cites Mismanagement Among Problems
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post, 29 December 2005
Nearly three years after it was formed, the immense Department of Homeland Security remains hampered by severe management and financial problems that contributed to the flawed response to Hurricane Katrina, according to an independent audit released yesterday.
The report by Homeland Security Inspector General Richard L. Skinner aimed some of its most pointed criticism at one of DHS's major entities, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Katrina and a subsequent storm, Rita, increased the load on FEMA's "already overburdened resources and infrastructure," the report said.
In addition, the report found, "the circumstances created by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita provide an unprecedented opportunity for fraud, waste and abuse," primarily because FEMA's grant and contract programs are still not being managed properly.

Bush Team Rethinks Its Plan for Recovery
New Approach Could Save Second Term
By Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post, 29 December 2005
President Bush shifted his rhetoric on Iraq in recent weeks after an intense debate among advisers about how to pull out of his political free fall, with senior adviser Karl Rove urging a campaign-style attack on critics while younger aides pushed for more candor about setbacks in the war, according to Republican strategists.
The result was a hybrid of the two approaches as Bush lashed out at war opponents in Congress, then turned to a humbler assessment of events on the ground in Iraq that included admissions about how some of his expectations had been frustrated. The formula helped Bush regain his political footing as record-low poll numbers began to rebound. Now his team is rethinking its approach to his second term in hopes of salvaging it.
...Although Rove raised concerns about giving critics too much ground, the younger-generation aides prevailed. Bush agreed to try the approach so long as he did not come off sounding too negative. Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University specialist on wartime public opinion who now works at the White House, helped draft a 35-page public plan for victory in Iraq, a paper principally designed to prove that Bush had one.
Bush went into campaign mode, accusing Democrats of hypocrisy for voting to authorize the war and then turning against it. When Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) proposed pulling troops out of Iraq, the White House issued an unusually harsh and personal response comparing him to liberal filmmaker Michael Moore. The original draft, officials said, had been even tougher.
Within a few days, though, the president shifted tone. Writing off 30 percent or more of the public as adamantly against the war, his advisers focused on winning back a similar-size group that had soured on Iraq but, they believed, wanted to be convinced victory was possible.
...Despite the gain in polls, some advisers see trouble ahead. Bush's top aides are telling friends they are burned out. Andrew H. Card Jr., already the longest-serving White House chief of staff in a half-century, is among those thought to be looking to leave. Rove's fate is uncertain, as he appears likely to remain under investigation in the CIA leak case, people close to the inquiry said.
Some are concerned that although Bush has changed his approach, he has not changed himself. He has been reluctant to look outside his inner circle for advice, and even some closest to Bush call that a mistake because aides have given up trying to get him to do things they know he would reject.

Medical Insurance Industry Falsified Calculations of Malpractice Claims
Study by Consumers Group Suggests Insurers Set Premiums Based on Market, Not Their Losses
By Dean Starkman
Washington Post, 29 December 2005
The insurance industry has long argued that huge losses from malpractice suits -- now running more than $7 billion a year -- have forced it to hike malpractice premiums, which more than doubled last year in some cities and for some specialties.
But a new study by a consumer group shows that losses reported to state regulators -- the figures often cited by the industry -- were much larger than losses actually paid during a nine-year period.
The study, by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a Santa Monica, Calif., advocacy group, found that from 1986 to 1994 the industry reported to regulators losses of $39.6 billion but actually paid only $26.7 billion, 31 percent less. The losses were overstated in each of the nine years.
The study examined a period that ended a decade ago to compare losses insurers reported to regulators as "incurred" with the amount actually paid after malpractice claims had made their way through the court system -- a process that can take nine or 10 years. By that measure, 1994 is the most recent year for which industry-wide data were available.
...About 190 companies offer medical malpractice insurance, writing about $9.4 billion in policies a year. Traditional insurance accounts for only about a third of the market, according to some estimates, because many large providers rely on self-insurance and other arrangements. The United States spends about $1.7 trillion on health care annually.
Proponents of tort reform often present spiking medical malpractice premiums, which can be in the six figures for some specialties, as Exhibit A in arguments for capping damages, an argument that has resonated. So far, 25 states have passed measures that restrict legal remedies in tort cases in some fashion.

A Nation Under God
By John Sugg
Mother Jones, December/January 2006 Issue
News: Let others worry about the rapture: For the increasingly powerful Christian Reconstruction movement, the task is to establish the Kingdom of God right now—from the courthouse to the White House.
...Reconstruction is the spark plug behind much of the battle over religion in politics today. The movement’s founder, theologian Rousas John Rushdoony, claimed 20 million followers—a number that includes many who embrace the Reconstruction tenets without having joined any organization. Card-carrying Reconstructionists are few, but their influence is magnified by their leadership in Christian right crusades, from abortion to homeschooling.
Reconstructionists also exert significant clout through front organizations and coalitions with other religious fundamentalists; Baptists, Anglicans, and others have deep theological differences with the movement, but they have made common cause with its leaders in groups such as the National Coalition for Revival. Reconstruction has slowly absorbed, congregation by congregation, the conservative Presbyterian Church in America (not to be confused with the progressive Presbyterian Church [USA]) and has heavily influenced others, notably the Southern Baptists.
George W. Bush has called Reconstruction-influenced theoretician Marvin Olasky “compassionate conservatism’s leading thinker,” and Olasky served as one of the president’s key advisers on the creation of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Bush also invited Reconstructionist Jack Hayford, a key figure in the Promise Keepers men’s group, to give the benediction at his first inaugural. Deposed House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, though his office won’t comment on his religious views, governs with what he calls a “biblical worldview”—one of Reconstruction’s signature phrases. And, for conspiracy buffs, two heavy contributors to the Chalcedon Foundation—Reconstruction’s main think tank—are Howard Ahmanson and Nelson Bunker Hunt, both of whose families played key roles in financing electronic voting machine manufacturer Election Systems & Software. Ahmanson is also a major sponsor of ultraconservative politicians, including California state legislator and 2003 gubernatorial candidate Tom McClintock.
Yet for all its influence, Reconstruction is almost invisible to the media and secular society. Atlanta is ground zero for most Reconstruction activity—home office to DeMar’s publishing house and home district to movement prophet Larry McDonald, who served four terms in Congress in the 1970s and 1980s—but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has done only one major article on the movement. The entire Lexis-Nexis database includes only 43 articles from all of the U.S. media that make reference to Reconstruction, and only a handful of those explore the movement. “A hundred years ago, newspapers published the sermons preachers preached on Sunday,” notes Ed Larson, a University of Georgia historian. “Everyone knew what the Baptists believed, or the Lutherans or the Presbyterians. That’s no longer the case. And it has worked to the benefit of Reconstructionists as they doggedly pursued their goal.”
Reconstructionists aren’t shy about what exactly it is they are pursuing: “The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise,” Gary North, a top Reconstruction theorist, wrote in his 1989 book, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism. “Those who refuse to submit publicly…must be denied citizenship.”
...Reconstruction’s premises may fly in the face of mainstream Christianity, and some of its leaders’ beliefs would probably surprise even the movement’s own foot soldiers. But what has made the theology such an explosive addition to public life is not its dogma on individual issues so much as its trumpet call to action. This is a faith in which religion is not an influence on politics; it is politics.
...The old left—the Communist Party and its many splinters—used organizing tactics called popular fronts, in which people were recruited through specific causes into a movement tacitly guided by the Party. Reconstruction has married those Leninist tactics to the causes of the right—abortion, evolution, gay marriage, school prayer. Gary North wrote in 1982, in an effort to reach Baptists,“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty…until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” Nowhere at the Restore America rally did anyone hoist a banner for Reconstruction; those attending came to develop a united front supporting such things as displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings. But they were also introduced—and recruited—to the broader program.
...When I last saw Gary DeMar, he was shepherding Roy Moore through a crowd of true believers at the Restore America rally. As they walked by, I asked Moore, “Do you favor a theocracy?” The judge turned and looked at me, shook his head, frowned, and walked away. But DeMar, in our interview, had already answered the question.
“All governments are theocracies,” he said. “We now live in a secular humanist theocracy. I want to change that to a government with God at its head.”

Tidings of Pride, Prayer and Pluralism
Books on religion
Review by JON MEACHAM
NYT, 25 December 2005
...There is not much humility to be found in the pages of Rodney Stark's provocative new book, "The Victory of Reason." If one had been asked to choose in the ninth century A.D. which part of the world would dominate the others for much of the coming millennium, one would almost certainly have put money on the world of Islam - not on Western Europe. Why Europe and its New World colonies rose to pre-eminence after the close of the Middle Ages is arguably the single greatest puzzle of modern history. Stark, however, is not puzzled. His answers are crisp, certain and to the point. Four decades ago the historian William McNeill credited Europe's ascent to its taste for war, its navigational techniques and its resistance to disease; more recently - and more vividly - Jared Diamond argued that guns, germs and steel decided the fate of the world. Now comes Stark, a prolific sociologist of religion, with a different argument. "Christianity," he writes, "created Western Civilization." He believes that the Christian emphasis on reason was the motive force in the West's rise to global dominance: "While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth."
Stark is right to argue that the idea that Christianity is incompatible with reason, a line of thought running from Celsus in the late second century to the philosophes of the Enlightenment, does not withstand historical scrutiny. In many ways, Christianity was a force for good in the West - though as the Inquisition, pogroms and centuries of intolerance show, it could also be a force for evil, a fact believers ought to confront, confess and guard against.
Stark is apparently not one for such confrontation and confession, and therein lies a problem with his argument: he is offering an absolutist answer to one of history's most complex questions. Intent on demolishing the familiar secular thesis that religion impeded progress in economics, science and politics, Stark gets carried away. Crediting Christianity with the good things of life while neglecting the faith's shortcomings, he takes only the most fleeting account of the cultural, philosophical and religious tributaries that helped create the West's mighty river. "Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls," he writes. "Without a theology committed to reason, progress and moral equality" - all of which could describe faiths other than Christianity - "today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: a world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys and pianos. . . . A world truly living in 'dark ages.' " For Stark, Christianity was the only thing standing between us and such a gloomy fate, for, he writes, the Christian love of reason helped create the whole idea of progress in all fields of human endeavor.
Christianity was unquestionably an enormous factor in the story of Western progress. But there were others. Geography (Islam coveted Byzantium, not Europe), economics (Europe was less dependent on the vagaries of agriculture than other parts of the world) and tradition (in the form of the contributions of other cultures) were essential, too. China created gunpowder and paper and the compass; before the monks could preserve the manuscripts of the classics, Islam rescued the works of Aristotle and other ancient philosophers, laid strong foundations in science and medicine and helped create a global market linking Europe with the East through the Islamic world. History did not begin with Augustine or Aquinas. To return to Chesterton, a view like Stark's overlooks the role of tradition - the handing on of the work of previous generations.
Tradition, Chesterton wrote during the Edwardian Age, "means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. . . . We will have the dead at our councils." Stark declines to acknowledge the debt Christians owe their Islamic, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist fathers. He fails to count all the ballots of the dead and does not really care to: in his eyes, the future not only belonged to Christianity -Christianity basically created the future. In the early years of the faith, he writes, "the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme gift from God and the means to progressively increase their understanding of Scripture and revelation. Consequently, Christianity was oriented to the future, while the other major religions asserted the superiority of the past."

28 December 2005

Telling It Like It Isn't
By Robert Fisk
LA Times, 27 December 2005
I first realized the enormous pressures on American journalists in the Middle East when I went some years ago to say goodbye to a colleague from the Boston Globe. I expressed my sorrow that he was leaving a region where he had obviously enjoyed reporting. I could save my sorrows for someone else, he said. One of the joys of leaving was that he would no longer have to alter the truth to suit his paper's more vociferous readers.
"I used to call the Israeli Likud Party 'right wing,' " he said. "But recently, my editors have been telling me not to use the phrase. A lot of our readers objected." And so now, I asked? "We just don't call it 'right wing' anymore."
Ouch. I knew at once that these "readers" were viewed at his newspaper as Israel's friends, but I also knew that the Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu was as right wing as it had ever been.
This is only the tip of the semantic iceberg that has crashed into American journalism in the Middle East. Illegal Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land are clearly "colonies," and we used to call them that. I cannot trace the moment when we started using the word "settlements." But I can remember the moment around two years ago when the word "settlements" was replaced by "Jewish neighborhoods" — or even, in some cases, "outposts."
Similarly, "occupied" Palestinian land was softened in many American media reports into "disputed" Palestinian land — just after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in 2001, instructed U.S. embassies in the Middle East to refer to the West Bank as "disputed" rather than "occupied" territory.
Then there is the "wall," the massive concrete obstruction whose purpose, according to the Israeli authorities, is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from killing innocent Israelis. In this, it seems to have had some success. But it does not follow the line of Israel's 1967 border and cuts deeply into Arab land. And all too often these days, journalists call it a "fence" rather than a "wall." Or a "security barrier," which is what Israel prefers them to say. For some of its length, we are told, it is not a wall at all — so we cannot call it a "wall," even though the vast snake of concrete and steel that runs east of Jerusalem is higher than the old Berlin Wall.
The semantic effect of this journalistic obfuscation is clear. If Palestinian land is not occupied but merely part of a legal dispute that might be resolved in law courts or discussions over tea, then a Palestinian child who throws a stone at an Israeli soldier in this territory is clearly acting insanely.
If a Jewish colony built illegally on Arab land is simply a nice friendly "neighborhood," then any Palestinian who attacks it must be carrying out a mindless terrorist act.
And surely there is no reason to protest a "fence" or a "security barrier" — words that conjure up the fence around a garden or the gate arm at the entrance to a private housing complex.
For Palestinians to object violently to any of these phenomena thus marks them as a generically vicious people. By our use of language, we condemn them.
We follow these unwritten rules elsewhere in the region. American journalists frequently used the words of U.S. officials in the early days of the Iraqi insurgency — referring to those who attacked American troops as "rebels" or "terrorists" or "remnants" of the former regime. The language of the second U.S. pro-consul in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, was taken up obediently — and grotesquely — by American journalists.
American television, meanwhile, continues to present war as a bloodless sandpit in which the horrors of conflict — the mutilated bodies of the victims of aerial bombing, torn apart in the desert by wild dogs — are kept off the screen. Editors in New York and London make sure that viewers' "sensitivities" don't suffer, that we don't indulge in the "pornography" of death (which is exactly what war is) or "dishonor" the dead whom we have just killed.
Our prudish video coverage makes war easier to support, and journalists long ago became complicit with governments in making conflict and death more acceptable to viewers. Television journalism has thus become a lethal adjunct to war.

Rule of law complicates WOT...
Defense Lawyers in Terror Cases Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
NYT, 28 December 2005
Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.
The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.
The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.
The question of whether the N.S.A. program was used in criminal prosecutions and whether it improperly influenced them raises "fascinating and difficult questions," said Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who has studied terrorism prosecutions.
"It seems to me that it would be relevant to a person's case," Professor Tobias said. "I would expect the government to say that it is highly sensitive material, but we have legal mechanisms to balance the national security needs with the rights of defendants. I think judges are very conscientious about trying to sort out these issues and balance civil liberties and national security."
[A credible WH defense?]
...Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, declined to comment in Crawford, Tex., when asked about a report in The New York Times that the security agency had tapped into some of the country's main telephone arteries to conduct broader data-mining operations in the search for terrorists.
But Mr. Duffy said: "This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches." [SEE BELOW]
...But some Justice Department prosecutors, speaking on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified, said they were concerned that the agency's wiretaps without warrants could create problems for the department in terrorism prosecutions both past and future.
"If I'm a defense attorney," one prosecutor said, "the first thing I'm going to say in court is, 'This was an illegal wiretap.' "
SEE ALSO:
NSA Spied on Diplomats in Push for Iraq War
And the American media ignored it
by Norman Solomon
Antiwar.com, 28 December 2005
Despite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency's domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on UN diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq.
That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the UN Security Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream U.S. media winked at Bush's illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda.
Back then, after news of the NSA's targeted spying at the United Nations broke in the British press, major U.S. media outlets gave it only perfunctory coverage – or, in the case of the New York Times, no coverage at all. Now, while the NSA is in the news spotlight with plenty of retrospective facts, the NSA's spying at the UN goes unmentioned: buried in an Orwellian memory hole.
A rare exception was a paragraph in a Dec. 20 piece by Patrick Radden Keefe in the online magazine Slate – which pointedly noted that "the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed."

Enron Executive Agrees to Plea Deal
Prosecutors Gain Witness Against Lay and Skilling
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post, 28 December 2005
Enron Corp.'s former chief accountant agreed to plead guilty today to criminal conduct that preceded the company's collapse into bankruptcy, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, sealing a deal that gives prosecutors another key witness against former chief executives Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling on the eve of their fraud trial.
Richard A. Causey, 45, who is facing more than two dozen criminal charges, is scheduled to appear in a Houston courtroom at 3 p.m. Eastern time today, according to court records. He reported directly to Skilling for years and participated with Lay on conference calls and analyst meetings in the weeks before Enron fell apart.
...Defense lawyers for Lay and Skilling are almost certain to seek a delay in the trial because of Causey's plea deal, the 16th by a former Enron executive. The company cut thousands of jobs after its December 2001 bankruptcy, which also cost shareholders more than $85 billion in losses.
For more than two years, the former executives have maintained that the fraud was confined to a set of rogue employees led by former chief financial officer Andrew S. Fastow. Fastow pleaded guilty to two criminal charges in exchange for a 10-year prison term. He will be one of prosecutors' key witnesses in the upcoming trial. But Fastow's admission that he skimmed more than $60 million from the company and lied to his superiors could be used to undermine his testimony.

Our Entitlement Paralysis
By Robert J. Samuelson
Washington Post, 28 December 2005
...Democrats correctly saw Bush's proposal as a political attempt to steal their signature issue -- Social Security. For younger voters, the "personal accounts" might make the program a Republican product. It might cease being liberalism's crown jewel. Naturally, Democrats and the AARP denounced Bush's plan. People shouldn't depend on "risky" stocks for Social Security, they said. By July, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 57 percent of the public thought personal accounts a "bad idea." Even many Republicans abandoned Bush.
Doubting Bush's motives is easy, because in 2003, he had engaged in a similar political makeover for Medicare, through his drug benefit. It aimed to ingratiate the president with elderly voters in 2004. But the potential cost is huge. By 2015, the drug benefit could increase Medicare costs by 30 percent, says the CBO. All of Bush's complaints about runaway entitlement spending reek of hypocrisy.
But ascribing today's deadlock exclusively to Bush's clumsy partisanship is too glib. It ignores the many years in which Democrats have shamelessly exploited for political advantage any threats to Social Security and Medicare benefits. It also overlooks the deeper and more intractable source of our stalemate: competing moral claims.
If we were creating Social Security and Medicare today, we'd set different terms. The first baby boomers hitting 60 include George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Diane Sawyer and Susan Sarandon. It's doubtful we'd provide benefits for any of these wealthy people. Indeed, we'd probably be less generous toward many affluent retirees, because we'd question why age alone (not need) should qualify people for government assistance. We'd also note vast changes since 1935 (Social Security's creation) and 1965 (Medicare's):
In 1935, about 6 percent of the population was 65 and over; now, it's nearly 13 percent and headed toward 20 percent in 2030.
Life expectancy at 65 was less than 13 years in 1935; now, it's 18 and rising.
In 1965, one of three payroll jobs was in manufacturing, mining and construction; now, that's one in six.
Health spending increased from 6 percent of national income in 1965 to 15 percent in 2003.
People live longer, are healthier (77 percent of those age 65 to 74 rate their health as "good" or "excellent'') and have less grueling jobs. They can work longer and receive benefits later. We'd set higher eligibility ages. It's too expensive for government to support them for 20 or 30 years. We'd concentrate aid on the neediest and the oldest, including people whose longevity exhausted their savings. We'd regard this as a moral and practical obligation of a decent society.
Well, if that's what present conditions suggest, why do we tolerate a system that automatically pays many people who are well off and in good health? The answer is that people who have been promised Social Security and Medicare benefits believe they have a moral claim to receive them, even if -- absent the promise -- their claim would be dubious. True, people need to plan their futures. But the moral logic also rationalizes self-interest and selfishness. The compromise is to unwind gradually those promises that no longer make sense and are ultimately unworkable.
Until we challenge this moral logic -- the crux of entitlement politics -- public opinion will resist change and our paralysis will continue. The responsibility for this failure is widespread: among liberals, who like massive government programs; among conservatives, who fantasize about "free market" alternatives to Social Security and Medicare; among pundits and "experts," who speak of the "entitlement crisis" in meaningless generalities or incomprehensible technicalities. Our resulting inaction compounds many future dangers of an aging society: higher taxes, slower economic growth, squeezed government spending for non-elderly programs and more conflict between younger taxpayers and older beneficiaries.

27 December 2005

Time for Chemical Plant Security
NYT, 27 December 2005
It is hard to believe, but more than four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress has still not acted to make chemical plants, one of the nation's greatest terrorist vulnerabilities, safer. Last week, Senators Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, unveiled a bipartisan chemical plant security bill. We hope that parts of the bill will be improved as it works its way through Congress, though even in its current form the bill would be a significant step.
If terrorists attacked a chemical plant, the death toll could be enormous. A single breached chlorine tank could, according to the Department of Homeland Security, lead to 17,500 deaths, 10,000 severe injuries and 100,000 hospitalizations. Many chemical plants have shockingly little security to defend against such attacks.
After 9/11, there were immediate calls for the government to impose new security requirements on these plants. But the chemical industry, which contributes heavily to political campaigns, has used its influence in Washington to block these efforts. Senator Collins, the chairwoman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, has held hearings on chemical plant security, and has now come up with this bill with both Republican and Democratic sponsors.
...The burden now falls on the House of Representatives to pass a bill that is at least as tough, and that does not pre-empt the states' authority in this area. A leading antiterrorism expert has described the nation's chemical plants as "15,000 weapons of mass destruction littered around the United States." The American people have waited long enough to be protected from these homegrown W.M.D.'s.

Chalabi Lacks Votes Needed to Win Spot in Iraqi Assembly...No Problem
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri
Washington Post, 27 December 2005
Unexpectedly low support from overseas voters has left Ahmed Chalabi -- the returned Iraqi exile once backed by the United States to lead Iraq -- facing a shutout from power in this month's vote for the country's first full-term parliament since the 2003 invasion.
...However, Chalabi was among the politicians jockeying Monday ahead of meetings that have been scheduled in the Kurdish north this week to bring Shiite Muslims, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and others into post-election talks on forming the next government.
A spokesman for Chalabi's party, which has filed complaints of election irregularities, said he was waiting for the results of the investigation. "What I can say is Dr. Chalabi will have an important role, whether in the government or outside,'' said the spokesman, Haider Mousawi.

Vying for a Voice, Tribe in N. Iraq Feels Let Down
"We believed that Jesus Christ was coming with a force from overseas to save us."
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post, 27 December 2005
When the 101st Airborne first reached this remote village in Iraq's northwestern Sinjar Mountains in 2003, elderly Yazidi tribesmen were thrilled: Their ancient religious prophesy had come true.
"We believed that Jesus Christ was coming with a force from overseas to save us," said the village leader, Khalil Sadoon Haji Jundu, wrapping his gold-trimmed cloak around him against the morning chill. Scrawled behind him on the wall, images of U.S. helicopters and soldiers depicted the arrival of the blue-eyed fighters awaited by the Yazidi, an obscure sect of sun worshipers with roots in Zoroastrianism who have inhabited the valleys of the Sinjar range for centuries.
But more than two years later, as the Yazidis struggle for a political voice and an escape from the poverty they suffered during decades of oppression under President Saddam Hussein, tribesmen such as Jundu say they feel let down.

When the Cutting Is Corrupted
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, 27 December 2005
With indicted superlobbyist Jack Abramoff reportedly ready to cooperate with prosecutors and his partner, Michael Scanlon, already singing, 2006 is expected to be the year of congressional scandals.
Lord knows, a housecleaning in the Capitol is definitely in order. But the Abramoff scandal is just part of the corruption of our political system. There is another level of special-interest influence that cannot be handled by prosecutors: Only the voters can render a judgment on a politics of favoritism that has created a new Gilded Age. It's clear that the national government has placed itself squarely on the side of the wealthy, the privileged and the connected.
Rarely does a single action by Congress serve as so powerful an example of how the system is working. The recent budget bill, which squeaked through the House and Senate just before Christmas, is a road map of insider dealing. It shows that when choices have to be made, the interests of the poor and the middle class fall before the wishes of interest groups with powerful lobbies and awesome piles of campaign money to distribute.
Republican majorities in the Senate and House insisted that they wanted to cut the federal budget. But the Senate and House offered competing plans for achieving savings. When it came time to meld the two proposals, almost every choice congressional leaders made favored the interest groups.
...The good news is that this budget is not law yet. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) used a clever procedural maneuver to force it back to the House for one more vote next year.
When this 774-page behemoth hit the House floor shortly after 1 a.m. on Dec. 19, many members were not fully aware of what was in it. Now that they know, maybe some of the moderate Republicans who caved to their leadership and voted for it will save their party's honor by killing this special-interest mess. If I may borrow from Mr. Barton, doing so would definitely "encourage personal responsibility" among Republican leaders.

White House Prevarications
Washington Post, 27 December 2005
GIVEN ALL THE fuss about what government officials in Washington say off the record, it's surprising how little attention is paid to some of the things they say on the record. Take, for example, the subject of U.S. emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Earlier this month, we noted that the emissions figures cited by U.S. officials attending the international climate change conference in Montreal seemed dubious: Although the negotiators claimed U.S. emissions had fallen by 0.8 percent between 2000 and 2003, that drop actually reflected the recession of 2000-2001, not any substantive environmental policy change. In fact, as we noted, emissions had begun rising again in 2002 and 2003, and they looked set to rise again in 2004 -- to levels higher than they reached in 2000.James L. Connaughton of the White House Council on Environmental Quality disputed our editorial; he noted, among other things, that the 2004 figures had not yet been published. But now the Energy Information Administration, one of two government agencies that tracks climate statistics (the Environmental Protection Agency is the other) has released its 2004 numbers. As many predicted, they show a hefty 2 percent rise in greenhouse gas emissions, the largest growth in five years. Thanks to that rise, U.S. emissions now account for about 25 percent of the world's total. When the EPA figures are released, they are expected to show the same trend, despite the EPA's different methods of calculation.
What, then, of Mr. Connaughton's other claim -- that the Bush administration has put in place "more than 60 mandatory, incentive-based and voluntary federal programs" to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases? An earlier version of that claim was examined two years ago by the Government Accountability Office. Its report, published in October 2003, noted that of the 30 elements of the administration's then-recently proclaimed agenda on greenhouse gases, only three were new programs -- as opposed to existing, repackaged programs -- that were actually intended to reduce future emissions in a measurable way. If it can't get its numbers right, why should we take seriously the White House's declared intention to forge a "constructive and effective approach" to climate change at all?

A Political Debate On Stress Disorder
As Claims Rise, VA Takes Stock
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post, 27 December 2005
The spiraling cost of post-traumatic stress disorder among war veterans has triggered a politically charged debate and ignited fears that the government is trying to limit expensive benefits for emotionally scarred troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the past five years, the number of veterans receiving compensation for the disorder commonly called PTSD has grown nearly seven times as fast as the number receiving benefits for disabilities in general, according to a report this year by the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. A total of 215,871 veterans received PTSD benefit payments last year at a cost of $4.3 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 1999 -- a jump of more than 150 percent.
Experts say the sharp increase does not begin to factor in the potential impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the increase is largely the result of Vietnam War vets seeking treatment decades after their combat experiences. Facing a budget crunch, experts within and outside the Veterans Affairs Department are raising concerns about fraudulent claims, wondering whether the structure of government benefits discourages healing, and even questioning the utility and objectivity of the diagnosis itself.
"On the one hand, it is good that people are reaching out for help," said Jeff Schrade, communications director for the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. "At the same time, as more people reach out for help, it squeezes the budget further."

S.D. Makes Abortion Rare Through Laws And Stigma
Out-of-State Doctors Come Weekly to 1 Clinic
By Evelyn Nieves
Washington Post, 27 December 2005
South Dakota, those on both sides of the abortion debate agree, has become one of the hardest states in the country in which to obtain an abortion. One of three states in the country to have only one abortion provider -- North Dakota and Mississippi are the others -- South Dakota, largely because of a strong antiabortion lobby, is also becoming a leading national laboratory for testing the limits of state laws restricting abortion, both opponents and advocates of abortion rights say.
In 2005, the South Dakota legislature passed five laws restricting abortion, after a bill to ban abortion outright had failed by one vote in 2004. And new laws are virtually assured for the coming year. A 17-member abortion task force, made up largely of staunch abortion opponents, issued recommendations to the legislature earlier this month that included some of the most restrictive requirements for abortion in the country.
The report states that science defines life as beginning at conception and recommends a law that gives fetuses the same protection that children get after birth, thus banning abortion. Until such a ban, the task force recommends requiring that a woman watch an ultrasound of her fetus, that doctors warn women about the psychological and physical dangers of abortion, and that women receive psychological counseling before the abortion, among other measures.
As national leaders on both sides of the abortion debate focus on the upcoming Supreme Court nomination hearings of Samuel A. Alito Jr., they are watching states such as South Dakota pass more and more restrictions that might be upheld by a newly constituted, more conservative Supreme Court.
"Samuel Alito wrote the blueprint 20 years ago on how to dismantle and eventually overturn Roe," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, referring to a memo Alito wrote in 1985 in which he mentioned passing restrictions on abortion as a way to mitigate the effects of Roe v. Wade . "If he is confirmed, Alito could cast the decisive vote that allows additional attacks on women's reproductive freedom from the states to stand.

Remember...his underlying philosophy is that the end justifies the means and that torture works
What Bush Wants to Hear
By David Cole
New York Review of Books via Talking Points Memo, 17 November 2005 issue
Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush's legal policies in the "war on terror" than John Yoo. This is a remarkable feat, because Yoo was not a cabinet official, not a White House lawyer, and not even a senior officer within the Justice Department. He was merely a mid-level attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel with little supervisory authority and no power to enforce laws. Yet by all accounts, Yoo had a hand in virtually every major legal decision involving the US response to the attacks of September 11, and at every point, so far as we know, his advice was virtually always the same— the president can do whatever the president wants.

26 December 2005

No signs of necessary conciliation...
Shiites Decline Sunni Bid for More Iraq Parliament Seats
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
NYT, 26 December 2005
Sunni Arab political leaders asked the main Shiite political block today to give them 10 Shiite seats in the new parliament in an early attempt to defuse tensions over the results of last week's election. The Shiites refused the request.
A small committee headed by two independent Sunnis - Noori Arawi, Iraq's outgoing culture minister, and Zuhair Chalabi, the minister of human rights - met with members of the Shiite group, the United Iraqi Alliance, and relayed the request on behalf of the Sunni parties, said Sami al-Askari, an alliance member who was briefed on the meeting.
It was not clear that Iraqi election rules would permit such a seat donation.
Sunni Arabs have expressed anger over what they say was widespread fraud in the election, and the move by the Sunni block, the largest group of Sunni parties, which is known as the Iraqi Consensus Front, was an effort to prevent a looming deadlock that could lead to months of delays over forming a new government and fuel the insurgency.
SEE ALSO:
Iraqi Court Disqualifies Prominent Sunni Candidates
By Nancy A. Youssef and Huda Ahmed
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 24 December 2005
An Iraqi court has ruled that some of the most prominent Sunni Muslims who were elected to parliament last week won't be allowed to serve because officials suspect that they were high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
Knight Ridder has obtained a copy of the court ruling, which has yet to be circulated to the public.
The ruling is likely to dampen Bush administration hopes that the election would bring more of the disaffected Sunni minority into Iraq's political process and undermine Sunni support for the insurgency. Instead, the decision is likely to stoke fears of widening sectarian divisions in a nation already in danger of descending into civil war.

Another "secret plan?"
No Date Is Set for Troop Withdrawal From Iraq
General Says Insurgency Affects Timing; Powell Calls Current Levels Unsustainable
By Charles Lane
Washington Post, 26 December 2005
As American troops marked their third Christmas in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer said their number could decline in 2006 but that there is no specific target for withdrawals. He cautioned that more troops could be needed to cope with insurgent activity.
Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: "We do not have a plan that specifically says we'll be down below 100,000 by the end of the year. What we have is a plan that allows us to keep what we have today for the foreseeable future and then off-ramps and on-ramps based on conditions on the ground."

Rightwing conservative "threatens the very idea of America"
Yoo Stands by Post-9/11 Writings On Torture, Domestic Eavesdropping
Former Justice Official Says He Was Interpreting Law, Not Making Policy
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post, 26 December 2005
John Yoo knows the epithets of the libertarians, the liberals and the lefties. Widely considered the intellectual architect of the most dramatic assertion of White House power since the Nixon era, he has seen constitutional scholars skewer his reasoning and students call for his ouster from the University of California at Berkeley.
Civil liberties advocates were appalled by a memo he helped draft on torture. The State Department's chief legal adviser at the time called his analysis of the Geneva Conventions "seriously flawed." Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, in a critique of administration views espoused by Yoo, "a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens."
...Yoo has alienated so many influential opponents that he is considered unconfirmable for a judgeship or high office, not unlike a certain conservative jurist rejected by the Senate for the Supreme Court.
...How Yoo, who has never met President Bush or Vice President Cheney, came to be a principal interpreter of laws and the Constitution for the Bush team is a story rooted in his conservative convictions and a network of like-minded thinkers who helped him thrive.
"He has succeeded and won people over and advanced his ideas," said Manus Cooney, who hired Yoo on to the Judiciary Committee staff of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) in 1995. "As far as conservative academics, I don't think there's anyone in the law whose contacts run deeper in the three branches, or higher."
..."He was the right person in the right place at the right time," said Georgetown University's David Cole, a constitutional scholar and administration critic. "Here was someone who had made his career developing arguments for unchecked power, who could cut-and-paste from his law review articles into memos that essentially told the president, 'You can do what you want.' "
SEE ALSO:
A Conservative Smokescreen with a "Duck and Fade"
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 26 December 2005
John Yoo stepped back in the debate over presidential power recently with this opinion column which appeared first in the Los Angeles Times. But read it and tell if me if I'm not right to think that he has taken the opportunity not to engage this debate he's helped spawn but to duck it.
Yet in Yoo's column he doesn't even explore the complicated issue of how and where Congress might constrain the president's war-making power, particularly in areas that are not clearly or traditionally in the military realm. Instead, he chooses to attack a claim no one is making -- that the president cannot use the military until the Congress makes a formal declaration of war.
This is an argument that has no significant following in political or legal-constitutional circles. Simply stated, no one believes anything like that. It's just phony. And he builds from this phony argument to a lengthier straw man version of that which the president's critics make against him.

Posturing or emerging signs oversight?
Officials Want to Expand Review of Domestic Spying
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 25 December 2005
Congressional officials said Saturday that they wanted to investigate the disclosure that the National Security Agency had gained access to some of the country's main telephone arteries to glean data on possible terrorists.
"As far as Congressional investigations are concerned," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, "these new revelations can only multiply and intensify the growing list of questions and concerns about the warrantless surveillance of Americans."
Members of the Judiciary Committee have already indicated that they intend to conduct oversight hearings into the president's legal authority to order domestic eavesdropping on terrorist suspects without a warrant.
But Congressional officials said Saturday that they would probably seek to expand the review to include the disclosure that the security agency, using its access to giant phone "switches," had also traced and analyzed phone and Internet traffic in much larger volumes than what the Bush administration had acknowledged.
"We want to look at the entire program, an in-depth review, and this new data-mining issue is certainly a part of the whole picture," said a Republican Congressional aide, who asked not to be identified because no decisions had been made on how hearings might be structured.

How about that small issue of whether the United States should be preserved as a nation of law?
Powell Speaks Out on Domestic Spy Program
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
NYT, 26 December 2005
Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Sunday that it would not have been "that hard" for President Bush to obtain warrants for eavesdropping on domestic telephone and Internet activity, but that he saw "nothing wrong" with the decision not to do so.
"My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants," Mr. Powell said. "And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that."
But Mr. Powell added that "for reasons that the president has discussed and the attorney general has spoken to, they chose not to do it that way."
"I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions," he said.
Asked if such eavesdropping should continue, Mr. Powell said, "Yes, of course it should continue."
...On Iraq, Mr. Powell repeated earlier statements that differed somewhat from those of Mr. Bush, saying he did not know whether he would have advocated going to war with Iraq if he had known that the country had no stockpiles of illicit weapons.
Referring to the case for going to war if there were no such weapons, Mr. Powell said he would have told the president, "You have a far more difficult case, and I'm not sure you can make the case in the absence of those stockpiles."
Mr. Powell said he expected American troop levels to continue to go down in the coming year out of necessity, because it will become difficult to sustain the current high levels and because the effort to train Iraqis should be successful.
The main worry in Iraq, he said, is the growth of semi-independent militias with allegiance to sectarian groups within the Iraqi military.
Asked if the ethnic divisions in Iraq that were reinforced by the recent elections posed a threat of civil war, Mr. Powell said, "I think it is something we all have to be worried about."

Are 'private sector solutions' a mirage or a rightwing medicine show?
Medicine: Who Decides?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 26 December 2005
Health care seems to be heading back to the top of the political agenda, and not a moment too soon. Employer-based health insurance is unraveling, Medicaid is under severe pressure, and vast Medicare costs loom on the horizon. Something must be done.
But to get health reform right, we'll have to overcome wrongheaded ideas as well as powerful special interests. For decades we've been lectured on the evils of big government and the glories of the private sector. Yet health reform is a job for the public sector, which already pays most of the bills directly or indirectly and sooner or later will have to make key decisions about medical treatment.
...the high-technology nature of modern medical spending has given rise to a powerful medical-industrial complex that seeks to influence doctors' decisions. Let's hope that extreme cases like the one reported in The Times a few months ago, in which surgeons systematically used the devices of companies that paid them consulting fees, are exceptions. Still, the drug companies in particular spend more marketing their products to doctors than they do developing those products in the first place. They wouldn't do that if doctors were immune to persuasion.
So if costs are to be controlled, someone has to act as a referee on doctors' medical decisions. During the 1990's it seemed, briefly, as if private H.M.O.'s could play that role. But then there was a public backlash. It turns out that even in America, with its faith in the free market, people don't trust for-profit corporations to make decisions about their health.
Despite the failure of the attempt to control costs with H.M.O.'s, conservatives continue to believe that the magic of the private sector will provide the answer. (There must be a pony in there somewhere.) Their latest big idea is health savings accounts, which are supposed to induce "cost sharing" - that is, individuals will rely less on insurance, pay a larger share of their medical costs out of pocket and make their own decisions about care.
In practice, the health savings accounts created by the 2003 Medicare law will serve primarily as tax shelters for the wealthy. ...The Brookings study puts it this way: "Most health costs are incurred by a small proportion of the population whose expenses greatly exceed plausible limits on out-of-pocket spending."
Moreover, it's neither fair nor realistic to expect ordinary citizens to have enough medical expertise to make life-or-death decisions about their own treatment. A well-known experiment with alternative health insurance schemes, carried out by the RAND Corporation, found that when individuals pay a higher share of medical costs out of pocket, they cut back on necessary as well as unnecessary health spending.
So cost-sharing, like H.M.O.'s, is a detour from real health care reform. Eventually, we'll have to accept the fact that there's no magic in the private sector, and that health care - including the decision about what treatment is provided - is a public responsibility.

24 December 2005

Terrorist creation strategy intensified...
Military Confirms Surge in Airstrikes
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post 24 December 2005
U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have surged this fall, jumping to nearly five times the average monthly rate earlier in the year, according to U.S. military figures.
Until the end of August, U.S. warplanes were conducting about 25 strikes a month. The number rose to 62 in September, then to 122 in October and 120 in November.
...For most airstrikes in Iraq, U.S. crews have been employing 500-pound, precision-guided bombs rather than the 1,000- or 2,000-pound versions used in past conflicts, Peck said. The smaller bombs are intended to reduce the potential for collateral damage.
In limited cases, the 100-pound Hellfire missile is used. "It won't knock down a house, but it can be effective in taking out a car," Peck said.

No oversight...no problem. 'Big Brother' just wants to help.
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
NYT, 24 December 2005
The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.
...Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.
The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.
One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.
The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.
Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.
Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.

No oversight...no problem
U.S. Monitored Muslim Sites Across Nation for Radiation
By Spencer S. Hsu and Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post, 24 December 2005
Clandestine FBI and Energy Department teams have monitored private property in the United States for signs of radiation without warrants, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Officials said the monitoring, which intensified after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, did not require warrants or court orders because it took place from publicly accessible areas or from parking lots or driveways leading to private facilities, which the FBI believes do not carry privacy protections.
...The magazine [U.S. News & World Report], citing unnamed sources who knew about the secret program, said investigators sometimes went onto property under surveillance without a warrant, and some participants were threatened with firing after questioning the legality of the activity.
At its peak, three vehicles monitored 120 sites a day in and around Washington, nearly all of them Muslim targets identified by the FBI, the report said. The magazine said checks were made daily for about 10 months starting in 2002 and resumed during high threat periods.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the FBI does not target any group based on ethnicity, political or religious belief.
...The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 in 2001 that warrants are required for police to use devices that search through walls for criminal activity, striking down the use of a heat sensor that led to marijuana charges against an Oregon man.
"The message they are sending through these kinds of actions is that being Muslim is sufficient evidence to warrant scrutiny," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Soft on crime...oh, just on civil liberties
Alito Urged Wiretap Immunity
Memo Offers Look at Nominee on Privacy
By Jo Becker and Christopher Lee
Washington Post 24 December 2005
Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. once argued that the nation's top law enforcement official deserves blanket protection from lawsuits when acting in the name of national security, even when those actions involve the illegal wiretapping of American citizens, documents released yesterday show.
...The type of absolute immunity that Alito discussed would have shielded attorneys general even when their actions violated constitutional rights.
SEE ALSO:
Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power
NYT, 24 December 2005
With the Bush administration claiming sweeping and often legally baseless authority to detain and spy on people, judges play a crucial role in underscoring the limits of presidential power. When the Senate begins hearings next month on Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, it should explore whether he understands where the Constitution sets those limits. New documents released yesterday provide more evidence that Judge Alito has a skewed view of the allocation of power among the three branches - skewed in favor of presidential power.
...Judge Alito made another bald proposal for grabbing power for the president. He said that when the president signed bills into law, he should make a "signing statement" about what the law means. By doing so, Judge Alito hoped the president could shift courts' focus away from "legislative intent" - a well-established part of interpreting the meaning of a statute - toward what he called "the President's intent."

Capitol's Pariah on Immigration Is Now a Power
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
NYT, 24 December 2005
For nearly a decade, Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, has been dismissed by his critics as little more than an angry man with a microphone, a lonely figure who rails against immigration and battles his own president and party.
So radical were his proposals - calling for a fence along the United States border with Canada, for instance - and so fierce were his attacks on fellow Republicans who did not share his views that many of his colleagues tried to avoid him. Mr. Tancredo said Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, had told him not "to darken the doorstep of the White House."
But last week, the man denounced by critics on the left and on the right suddenly emerged as an influential lawmaker. Pressured by conservative constituents angered by the continuing flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, Republicans rallied around Mr. Tancredo to defy the president and produce the toughest immigration legislation in more than a decade.

Enron Defendant Discusses Plea Deal
Ex-Accounting Chief Could Testify vs. Lay and Skilling
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post, 24 December 2005
Federal prosecutors are engaged in plea negotiations with former Enron Corp. official Richard A. Causey, working toward a deal that could provide crucial momentum for the government heading into the signature trial of the corporate scandal era.
If an agreement is reached, it could be announced in a Houston courtroom as early as next week, according to sources briefed on the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are at a sensitive stage and still could fall apart.
Testimony from Causey, who as chief accountant stood at the center of complicated maneuvers that prosecutors allege helped Enron bury debt and inflate earnings, could help the government substantially streamline its fraud case against former chairman Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling. The three men are scheduled to stand trial in Houston on Jan. 17. They could face decades behind bars if they are convicted on fraud and conspiracy counts.

President Grants Pardons To 11
GOP Donor's Lawyer Included
AP via Washington Post, 24 December 2005
President Bush has granted 11 pardons, bringing to 69 the number of clemency orders he has issued since taking office five years ago, the Justice Department said.
...One of those pardoned, Wendy St. Charles, is a lawyer for a Denver home builder, MDC Holdings, parent of Richmond American Homes, the Denver Post reported. St. Charles was convicted on drug charges in 1984 and sentenced to four years in prison.
MDC's chairman, Larry Mizel, has contributed more than half a million dollars to Republican campaigns along with his wife, Carol, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A company spokeswoman did not immediately return a phone call.
...The Constitution provides the president with the power to grant clemency. A presidential pardon cannot expunge a conviction but it can help a person with a criminal record regain rights such as voting and owning guns.

23 December 2005

Mr. Cheney's Imperial Presidency
NYT editorial, 23 December 2005
George W. Bush has quipped several times during his political career that it would be so much easier to govern in a dictatorship. Apparently he never told his vice president that this was a joke.
Virtually from the time he chose himself to be Mr. Bush's running mate in 2000, Dick Cheney has spearheaded an extraordinary expansion of the powers of the presidency - from writing energy policy behind closed doors with oil executives to abrogating longstanding treaties and using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq, scrap the Geneva Conventions and spy on American citizens.
It was a chance Mr. Cheney seems to have been dreaming about for decades. Most Americans looked at wrenching events like the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and the Iran-contra debacle and worried that the presidency had become too powerful, secretive and dismissive. Mr. Cheney looked at the same events and fretted that the presidency was not powerful enough, and too vulnerable to inspection and calls for accountability.
The president "needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy," Mr. Cheney said this week as he tried to stifle the outcry over a domestic spying program that Mr. Bush authorized after the 9/11 attacks.
Before 9/11, Mr. Cheney was trying to undermine the institutional and legal structure of multilateral foreign policy: he championed the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow in order to build an antimissile shield that doesn't work but makes military contactors rich. Early in his tenure, Mr. Cheney, who quit as chief executive of Halliburton to run with Mr. Bush in 2000, gathered his energy industry cronies at secret meetings in Washington to rewrite energy policy to their specifications. Mr. Cheney offered the usual excuses about the need to get candid advice on important matters, and the courts, sadly, bought it. But the task force was not an exercise in diverse views. Mr. Cheney gathered people who agreed with him, and allowed them to write national policy for an industry in which he had recently amassed a fortune.
The effort to expand presidential power accelerated after 9/11, taking advantage of a national consensus that the president should have additional powers to use judiciously against terrorists.
Mr. Cheney started agitating for an attack on Iraq immediately, pushing the intelligence community to come up with evidence about a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that never existed. His team was central to writing the legal briefs justifying the abuse and torture of prisoners, the idea that the president can designate people to be "unlawful enemy combatants" and detain them indefinitely, and a secret program allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens without warrants. And when Senator John McCain introduced a measure to reinstate the rule of law at American military prisons, Mr. Cheney not only led the effort to stop the amendment, but also tried to revise it to actually legalize torture at C.I.A. prisons.

Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle
Washington Post, 23 December 2005
In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of authority.
The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.
All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics. This unity was reflected in the near-unanimous support for the original resolution and the Patriot Act in those harrowing days after Sept. 11. But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this administration has never seemed to accept. Instead of employing tactics that preserve Americans' freedoms and inspire the faith and confidence of the American people, the White House seems to have chosen methods that can only breed fear and suspicion.
If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11. For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president's justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation.
In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of day.
That is how a great democracy operates. And that is how this great democracy will defeat terrorism.

Remember the Days of All the Terror Alerts? ...Yeah, Election Days
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo. 23 December 2005
...When was the last time there was a major terror alert? They were something like a regular occurence for the eighteen months or so before the 2004 election. And through 2004 the administration pushed the line that al Qaida was aiming to disrupt the elections themselves. But as near I can tell there hasn't been a single one since election day.
Through 2004, of course, critics of the administration routinely questioned whether the frequency and timing of the various terror alerts were not all or in part for political effect.
How do we explain what appears to be a night and day difference between the year prior to November 2004 and the year since in terms of terror alerts and scares?

Yoo, who...and you thought John Ashcroft was dangerous.
Untested Aide Laid Legal Basis For White House Terror Policies
By TIM GOLDEN
NYT, 23 December 2005
Moments after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, lawyers in the Justice Department's elite Office of Legal Counsel began crowding into the office of one of the agency's newest deputies, John C. Yoo, to watch the horror unfold on his television set.
"We all stood around watching this event and he just seemed very calm, like he wasn't going to let these terrorists stop him from doing his work," recalled Robert J. Delahunty, a friend of Mr. Yoo's who worked in the office.
Fearful of another attack and told that all "nonessential personnel" should evacuate, Mr. Delahunty and others streamed out of the department's headquarters and walked home. Mr. Yoo, then a 34-year-old former law professor whose academic work had focused on foreign affairs and war-powers issues, was asked to stay behind, and he quickly found himself in the department's command center, on the phone to lawyers at the White House.
Within weeks, Mr. Yoo had begun to establish himself as a critical player in the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, and an influential advocate for the expansive claims of presidential authority that have been a hallmark of that response.
While a mere deputy assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office, Mr. Yoo was a primary author of a series of legal opinions on the fight against terrorism, including one that said the Geneva Conventions did not apply and at least two others that countenanced the use of highly coercive interrogation techniques on terror suspects. Recently, current and former officials said he also wrote a still-secret 2002 memorandum that gave legal backing to the administration's secret program to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States without federal warrants.
A genial, soft-spoken man with what friends say is a fiercely competitive streak, Mr. Yoo built particularly strong working relationships with several key legal officials in the White House and the Pentagon. Some current and former government officials contend that those relationships were in fact so close that Mr. Yoo was able to operate with a degree of autonomy that rankled senior Justice Department officials, including John Ashcroft, then the attorney general.
More than two years after Mr. Yoo returned to teaching, controversy over some of the legal positions he staked out for the administration in his two years in government has only continued to grow. Last year, an opinion he wrote on interrogations with the head of the legal counsel office, Jay S. Bybee, was publicly disavowed by the White House, a highly unusual step. Now, the revelation of the eavesdropping program has renewed the criticism.

DoD and CIA party reps are losers...
Iraq Election Results Will Pose New Challenges for U.S. Policy
Votes along sectarian and ethnic lines mean Washington must do more to quell tensions and may have to forge ties with Shiite-led Iran.
By Tyler Marshall and Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writers
LA Times, 21 December 2005
The apparent failure of secular, Western-oriented political groups to win many seats in Iraq's four-year legislature puts new pressure on the Bush administration in its efforts to stabilize the country.
In Iraq, U.S. officials will have to intensify their efforts to contain ethnic and sectarian divisions that have deepened over the last year and, if allowed to fester, could push the country toward civil war. And as initial results indicate that the Iraqi government will be led by Shiite Muslims with ties to Iran, U.S. officials also may face pressure to establish their own direct working relationship with Tehran. Both tasks could prove crucial if the administration is to achieve its oft-stated goal of creating a stable, unified, democratic and peaceful country.
...The Bush administration had vocally supported electoral alliances that crossed such lines, including the one led by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite. But all such groups did poorly.
Allawi's Iraqi National List appears to have won only 21 seats, claiming 8% of the popular vote tallied so far, whereas the religious Shiite-based United Iraqi Alliance has apparently garnered 110 seats with an estimated 44% of the vote. Allawi and other groups are expected to pick up more seats in the 275-member parliament once expatriate votes are tallied.
A secular alliance headed by controversial Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, a onetime Pentagon favorite to lead Iraq, scored less than 0.5% of the vote — not enough to win a seat.

Voting Confirms: Iraq Is a Red State
RJ Eskow
Huffington Post 21 December 2005
An election driven by religion. A deeply polarized electorate. Disputed voting results, where the only question is whether the fraud was small-scale or massive. Yes, we have succeeded in exporting American-style democracy to
Iraq. The question of whether it was worth it has been answered - with a solid "no" - by the American people, but they lack leaders who will speak for them. You get the democracy you pay for.
The mission of "exporting democracy" to Iraq had four key goals:
1. To create a US-friendly nation in the region
2. To build a working model of democracy as the neocons conceived it for the Middle East
3. To provide
Israel with an ally in the Arab world (which Chalabi had promised to deliver)
4. To isolate Iran from the Arab world
What have we gotten instead, for the massive loss of American and Iraqi life and the hundreds of billions of dollars spent so far?
1. A country where 82% of the population "strongly opposes" our presence and 45% support armed attacks against US troops
2. A highly conservative, religiously-based electorate that's a far cry from the neocon vision of liberal democracy
3. A country that appears to be drawing closer and closer to Israel's enemies
4. A new ally and sister country to Iran, with similar religious and political beliefs
...Democrats are wrong to say that now that the harm's been done by invasion, we have to stay to fix it. That's a coward's stance. The truth is that harm was done by the invasion, and is made worse with every day we stay. Yet no American leader, Republican or Democrat, will say what needs to be said: We've given the President his war, and we've seen the results. The Iraqis have elected their Iran-friendly, fundamentalist Muslim leadership, as is their sovereign right. Now let's leave the country to those leaders to run as they see fit.

On Opinion Page, a Lobby's Hand Is Often Unseen
By PHILIP SHENON
NYT, 23 December 2005
Susan Finston of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative research group based in Texas, is just the sort of opinion maker coveted by the drug industry.
In an opinion article in The Financial Times on Oct. 25, she called for patent protection in poor countries for drugs and biotechnology products. In an article last month in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal, she called for efforts to block developing nations from violating patents on AIDS medicines and other drugs.
Both articles identified her as a "research associate" at the institute. Neither mentioned that, as recently as August, Ms. Finston was registered as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry's trade group. Nor was there mention of her work this fall in creating the American Bioindustry Alliance, a group underwritten largely by drug companies.
The institute says Ms. Finston's ties to industry should not have prevented her from writing about those issues. Nor is there a conflict, it says, in the work of Merrill Matthews Jr., who writes for major newspapers advocating policies promoted by the insurance industry even though he is a registered lobbyist for a separate group backed by it. "Lobbying is not a four-letter word," said the institute's president, Tom Giovanetti.
But organizations like the institute, which bills itself as an independent, nonprofit research group committed to a "smaller, less intrusive government," are facing new and uncomfortable scrutiny over their links to special interest groups after the disclosure this week that the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff had paid at least two outside writers for opinion articles promoting the work of his clients.
One writer, Peter Ferrara, an advocate of privatizing Social Security who is often quoted by news organizations, including The New York Times, works for the institute as a senior policy adviser.
The other, Doug Bandow, a scholar for the libertarian Cato Institute and a columnist for the Copley News Service, resigned from both after acknowledging that he had received as much as $2,000 an article from Mr. Abramoff for writing in support of his lobbying clients, including Indian tribe casinos. Mr. Abramoff is now the focus of a federal corruption investigation involving his gifts to members of Congress.
The issue of whether supposedly independent writers and researchers are having their work underwritten - directly or indirectly - by lobbyists and other special interests is hardly new.
But the payments by Mr. Abramoff and a closer review of the work of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a group founded in 1987 by a former House Republican leader, Dick Armey of Texas, are evidence that the ties may be much closer than research organizations, conservative and liberal, would prefer to admit.
The Bush administration acknowledged this year that it had paid outside writers, including Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist and television commentator, to promote the Education Department policy known as No Child Left Behind.
Executives in the public relations and lobbying industries say that the hiring of outside commentators to promote special interests - typically by writing newspaper opinion articles or in radio and television interviews - does happen, although it is impossible to monitor since the payments do not have to be disclosed and can be disguised as speaking fees and other compensation.
While major newspapers and magazines usually insist that outside writers disclose conflicts of interest, editors do not routinely conduct background checks, especially for authors affiliated with credible research groups.
Brian Groom, an editor at The Financial Times who handles opinion articles for the newspaper, based in London, said he did not recall being told of Ms. Finston's ties to the drug and biotechnology industries before publishing the article.
The editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, Paul Gigot, said in an interview that "we're absolutely convinced" the paper was not told of Ms. Finston's industry ties. The paper might still have run the article, he said, but with more information about her background.
David Rickey, chairman of the board of ethics of the Public Relations Society of America, an industry group that includes lobbyists, said the industry opposed the use of outside writers to promote a client's interests unless the financial ties were fully acknowledged. "This is going to sound pretty much mom and apple pie," he said. "But if there is a conflict of interest, it must be disclosed."
In announcing the departure of Mr. Bandow last week, the Cato Institute said it required its writers to disclose all affiliations that might influence their work.
Mr. Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation said that he, too, insisted that "anyone working with I.P.I. must disclose any pertinent lobbying relationships and conflicts of interest whenever they act on behalf of I.P.I., including published projects."
But he also suggested it was naïve to see a conflict of interest in the articles by Ms. Finston or by Dr. Matthews. There is no accusation that Ms. Finston or Dr. Matthews, unlike Mr. Ferrara, received direct payments from an outside lobbyist like Mr. Abramoff for an opinion article.
Mr. Giovanetti said it was "no surprise that a person can move back and forth between the worlds of lobbying and public policy, just as a person can move back and forth between policy and politics."
In a brief interview, Ms. Finston said that she left the pharmaceutical manufacturers' association in May and that the filings showing her as a lobbyist as recently as mid-August were in error.
She said that she notified the institute this fall that she would be ending her relationship with it to turn her attention to the American Bioindustry Alliance, the new trade group, but that her articles were already in the pipeline for publication. She said she believed that the papers had been told of her industry ties by the institute. "It's clear that there shouldn't be any subterfuge," she said.
Dr. Matthews, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, said in an interview that he was careful to identify his ties to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, an industry group based in Alexandria, Va., when writing about insurance issues for outside publications.
He noted his affiliation with both the council and the institute in several recent opinion articles, including one published Dec. 5 in USA Today titled, "Medicaid Is Still Welfare." The article recommended that the government allow participants in Medicaid, the federal health program for more than 50 million low-income people, to "move into private insurance." The council's Web site identifies it as an "advocacy organization promoting free-market health insurance reforms."
Dr. Matthews said that while he was identified as a lobbyist in Congressional records, he lived in Texas and "can't think of the last time I was on Capitol Hill talking to a legislator."
Mr. Giovanetti said the institute had a policy of not identifying its individual donors. But he did reveal that it received no money from health insurance companies, lessening a possible conflict of interest in its relationship with Dr. Matthews. Asked if the institute had accepted money from pharmaceutical manufacturers or any drug companies affiliated with Ms. Finston, Mr. Giovanetti would not comment.

Postponing Debate, Congress Extends Terror Law 5 Weeks
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 22 December 2005
In a frantic finish before adjourning for the year, the House and Senate voted on Thursday to extend the broad antiterrorism bill known as the USA Patriot Act by five weeks.
The deal averts the expiration of the law while setting the stage for a partisan clash over civil liberties and national security when lawmakers return to Washington early next year.
The extension was approved by voice vote in sparsely attended sessions in the two chambers.
With most lawmakers having already left town for their holiday vacations, just one senator, John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, was on hand. Mr. Warner presided over a session that lasted four minutes.
The action on the antiterrorism law was taken after the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, threatened to derail a six-month extension passed by the Senate late Wednesday night.
As it wrapped up business for the year, Congress also gave final approval to a $453.3 billion military spending bill that included $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, $29 billion in new aid for hurricane victims, $3.8 billion to prepare for a possible outbreak of avian flu and a governmentwide 1 percent cut in spending.
The Republican leadership stripped language for $2 billion in extra assistance for low-income people to pay their home heating bills.

Tax-Cut Zombies
PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 23 December 2005
If you want someone to play Scrooge just before Christmas, Dick Cheney is your man. On Wednesday Mr. Cheney, acting as president of the Senate, cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of legislation that increases the fees charged to Medicaid recipients, lets states cut Medicaid benefits, reduces enforcement funds for child support, and more.
For all its cruelty, however, the legislation will make only a tiny dent in the budget deficit: the cuts total about $8 billion a year, or one-third of 1 percent of total federal spending.
So ended 2005, the year that killed any remaining rationale for continuing tax cuts. But the hunger for tax cuts refuses to die.
Since the 1970's, conservatives have used two theories to justify cutting taxes. One theory, supply-side economics, has always been hokum for the yokels. Conservative insiders adopted the supply-siders as mascots because they were useful to the cause, but never took them seriously.
The insiders' theory - what we might call the true tax-cut theory - was memorably described by David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, as "starving the beast." Proponents of this theory argue that conservatives should seek tax cuts not because they won't create budget deficits, but because they will. Starve-the-beasters believe that budget deficits will lead to spending cuts that will eventually achieve their true aim: shrinking the government's role back to what it was under Calvin Coolidge.
...at this point starve-the-beast theory looks as silly as supply-side economics. Although a disciplined conservative movement has controlled Congress and the White House for five years - and presided over record deficits - public opposition has prevented any significant cuts in the big social-insurance programs that dominate domestic spending.
In fact, two years ago the Bush administration actually pushed through a major expansion in Medicare. True, the prescription drug bill clearly wasn't written by liberals. To a significant extent it's a giveaway to drug companies rather than a benefit for retirees. But all that corporate welfare makes the program more expensive, not less.
Conservative intellectuals had high hopes that this year President Bush would make up for this betrayal of their doctrine by dealing a death blow to Social Security as we know it. Indeed, he tried. His proposed "reform" would, over time, have essentially phased out the program. And he seemed to have everything going for him: momentum from an election victory, control of Congress and a highly sympathetic punditocracy. Yet the drive for privatization quickly degenerated from a juggernaut into a farce.
Medicaid, whose recipients are less likely to vote than the average person getting Social Security or Medicare, is the softest target among major federal social-insurance programs. But even members of Congress, it seems, have consciences. (Well, some of them.) It took intense arm-twisting from the Republican leadership, and that tie-breaking vote by Mr. Cheney, to ram through even modest cuts in aid to the neediest.
In other words, the starve-the-beast theory - like missile defense - has been tested under the most favorable possible circumstances, and failed. So there is no longer any coherent justification for further tax cuts.
Yet the cuts go on. In fact, even as Congressional leaders struggled to pass a tiny package of mean-spirited spending cuts, they pushed forward with a much larger package of tax cuts. The benefits of those cuts, as always, will go disproportionately to the wealthy.
Here's how I see it: Republicans have turned into tax-cut zombies. They can't remember why they originally wanted to cut taxes, they can't explain how they plan to make up for the lost revenue, and they don't care. Instead, they just keep shambling forward, always hungry for more.

Senator Santorum to Cut Ties Over Evolution Lawsuit
AP via NYT, 23 December 2005
Senator Rick Santorum said Wednesday that he would withdraw his affiliation with the Thomas More Law Center, which had defended the Dover Area School District's policy mandating the teaching of intelligent design in science classes dealing with evolution.
Mr. Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, earlier praised the district for "attempting to teach the controversy of evolution."
But the day after a federal judge ruled the district's policy on intelligent design unconstitutional, calling it a pretext "to promote religion" in public schools, Mr. Santorum told The Philadelphia Inquirer that he was troubled by testimony indicating that religion had motivated some board members to adopt the policy.

22 December 2005

Senate Agrees to a Six-Month Extension of the Patriot Act
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 22 December 2005
With time running short on Capitol Hill, the Senate breathed new life late Wednesday night into the moribund USA Patriot Act, agreeing to extend it by six months. President Bush said he appreciated the move, but it was unclear if the House would approve it.
"No one should be allowed to block the Patriot Act," Mr. Bush said in a statement, referring to a bipartisan coalition of senators who last week derailed a measure to update the act, the nation's main antiterrorism law.
With 16 major provisions of the act set to expire on Dec. 31, the Senate action put an end to a game of brinksmanship between that bipartisan coalition and Mr. Bush. Along with the Senate Republican leadership, Mr. Bush had repeatedly vowed to oppose any short-term extension of the act, but Republican aides said the White House had signed off on the Senate deal.
The bill's future now rests with the House, which comes back into session Thursday. The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, said he had not consulted with House leaders.

Spies Like Us
Robert Reich
American Public Media's Marketplace, 21 December 2005
Listen to this commentary
Commentator Robert Reich says news that President Bush authorized spying on Americans without a court order should be cause for concern for business leaders.

New York Police Covertly Join In at Protest Rallies
By JIM DWYER
NYT, 22 December 2005
Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.
In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.
The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.
Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.
Until Sept. 11, the secret monitoring of events where people expressed their opinions was among the most tightly limited of police powers.

Judge Reportedly Resigns Over U.S. Spy Program
AP via NYT, 21 December 2005
A federal judge has resigned from a special court set up to oversee government surveillance, apparently in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program on people with suspected terrorist ties.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson would not comment Wednesday on his resignation, but The Washington Post reported that it stemmed from deep concern that the surveillance program Bush authorized was legally questionable and may have tainted the work of the court.
An aide to Robertson said the resignation letter submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts was not being released. Robertson did not step down from his district judgeship in Washington.

Senate Defeats ANWR Drilling, Saves Cuts
AP via NYT, 21 December 2005
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the final clashes of a year of partisan conflict, the Senate dealt defeat Wednesday to legislation allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but Republicans salvaged a $39.7 billion package of deficit cuts on Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote.
Legislation providing $29 billion in aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and other storms neared approval. And hours of back-room negotiations yielded a surprise agreement on a Democratic-initiated call for a temporary extension of the anti-terror Patriot Act without changes.
''This has been the saddest day of my life,'' said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, lamenting the demise of legislation to open the wildlife refuge to oil exploration.
Other advocates of drilling said they would try again next year. But with lawmakers eager to leave the Capitol for the holidays, the bill became one of the highest-profile casualties on the Republican legislative agenda.
The agreement on the Patriot Act spelled the likely death of a House-Senate compromise that would have made significant changes in the measure. A Democratic-led filibuster blocked passage last week, as critics said the measure failed to protect the civil liberties of innocent Americans.
In the days of maneuvering that followed, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he would not accept -- and Bush would not sign -- a short-term extension.
Republicans ''tried to play a game of chicken, and they lost the game of chicken,'' said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a leader in the effort to derail the proposed changes.

Judge Rejects Teaching Intelligent Design
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
NYT, 21 December 2005
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that it was unconstitutional for a Pennsylvania school district to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology courses because it is a religious viewpoint that advances "a particular version of Christianity."
In the nation's first case to test the legal merits of intelligent design, the judge, John E. Jones III, issued a broad, stinging rebuke to its advocates and provided strong support for scientists who have fought to bar intelligent design from the science curriculum.
Judge Jones also excoriated members of the Dover, Pa., school board, who he said lied to cover up their religious motives, made a decision of "breathtaking inanity" and "dragged" their community into "this legal maelstrom with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."
Text: The Judge's Ruling
Text: The Orignal Statement by the Dover School Board

21 December 2005

No Clear Victory, or End, to U.S. 'War on Terror'
By ROGER COHEN
International Herald Tribune, 21 December 2005
Perhaps no new entrant into the world's political lexicon is more troubling than "the war on terror."
It's disturbing because, as used by President George W. Bush, it is often equated with past wars. In his radio address on Dec. 17, the president said: "Yet in this first war of the 21st century, one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front."
The subliminal message here is that after the wars of the 20th century, not a scarce commodity, along came a new one - another struggle Americans must fight and win to spread the beacon of liberty, this time in the Middle East.
But at the same time, the president has conceded there can be no clear moment of victory in this war; no act of surrender will be signed by Osama bin Laden (if he's alive) and it's inconceivable that the stateless terrorist movement called Al Qaeda will be vanquished in the same way as the German and Japanese armies in 1945.
To be engaged in a war without end is problematic. It requires patience. It also requires great caution in making claims of exceptional presidential war-making powers, because exceptional personal powers that last forever smack of the kinds of authoritarian regimes the United States has spent a lot of blood and treasure fighting.
On the international front, the president is showing patience. But on the domestic front, he's scarcely showing caution in arrogating wide domestic powers as a commander in chief in a period of potentially endless war.
...A brief signed in 2002 by former Attorney General John Ashcroft sums up the administration's thinking: "The Constitution vests in the president inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."
In effect, if that suspected "agent" is a U.S. citizen, and this citizen calls overseas, Bush believes spies have the right to listen in on the call, or read e-mail, without first making the case there's probable cause to believe this American is up to no good.
That's tantamount to placing domestic security surveillance within the sole discretion of the executive branch - an upsetting of the balance of powers central to the success of American democracy and the preservation of American freedoms.
The policy is doubly disturbing because a special court, established under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, exists precisely so the president can in secret obtain a warrant for spying if convincing evidence is presented.
The president says he has reauthorized this program 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and will "do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from Al Qaeda and related groups."
That could be a very long time given the nature of the war on terror, so long that talk of the "exceptional" nature of such measures becomes meaningless. Infringements of Americans' essential freedoms then become permanent. That's not a good example for the nascent democracy being nurtured by the president's patience.

F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 20 December 2005
Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.
F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.
But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.
One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
..."Just being referenced in an F.B.I. file is not tantamount to being the subject of an investigation," said John Miller, a spokesman for the bureau. "The F.B.I. does not target individuals or organizations for investigation based on their political beliefs," Mr. Miller said. "Everything we do is carefully promulgated by federal law, Justice Department guidelines and the F.B.I.'s own rules."

Legality of Bush Eavesdropping Order Questioned
by Ari Shapiro
NPR's Morning Edition, 20 December 2005
President Bush has claimed that a legal measure passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks gives him the authority to authorize domestic spying. His critics say that another measure, passed in 1978, severely limits such spying.
SEE ALSO:
Spying Program Snared U.S. Calls
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 21 December 2005
A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.
SEE ALSO:
The Squires of Surveillance
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 21 December 2005
Dick and Rummy are holed up in the den of Rummy's Chesapeake Bay retreat, Mount Misery, pawing through sheafs of transcripts of wiretapped telephone conversations, hunting for inside dope.
Chinook helicopters patrol the skies above the red-brick waterfront mansion. Rummy loves the take-no-prisoners lineage of his $1.5 million getaway, built in the 19th century by Edward Covey, an evil slave owner.
Winter weekends by a crackling fire are cozy and conspiratorial, now that the two men have nearby spreads in St. Michaels, Md.
These squires of surveillance while away their evenings sipping from goblets of Glenlivet and perusing the illegally bugged phone conversations of any American they please. Getting in the holiday spirit, they're mining data to revise their naughty and nice lists.

Bush Promises Victory in Iraq - But for Whom?
ericmargolis.com, 19 December 2005
...Fools and megalomaniacs don’t know when to retreat. Just as the distant oil fields of the Caucasus lured Hitler ever east into the wastes of southern Russia and destruction, so Iraq’s oil treasure continues to mesmerize Bush, Cheney & Co. They clearly do not understand, or will not face the fact, that the US cannot afford to keep spending $6.5 billion a month on Iraq and $1 billion monthly in Afghanistan to prop up the little puppet regimes they have created.
The US Army and Marine Corps are being relentlessly ground down in both theaters, and now face not only a crisis of personnel replacements but the massive deterioration of their equipment, from boots to tanks, which is not being replaced.
Democracies are no good at waging long-term guerilla wars. Vietnam showed this to French and Americans, Angola to South Africans, and Lebanon to Israelis.
A majority of Americans no longer believe all the lies about Iraq being pumped out by the Bush White House. They squirm with embarrassment while watching Condoleeza Rice lie through her teeth to Europeans by claiming the US does not kidnap or torture suspects. And they look with concern at their phones, never sure these days of what anonymous federal agency or military group is bugging their calls.
Bush’s latest untruths - that the recent election in Iraq will defeat the Sunni resistance and lead to lasting democracy – are about as believable as Bill Clinton’s prevarications about his sex life.
Perhaps the most galling and persistent of Bush’s lies is the one he repeated last night: that failure to prove Saddam was a threat to world civilization was due to `wrong intelligence.’ Not wrong. No way. This column maintained for years Iraq had no strategic weapons and no links with al-Qaida. So did many veteran CIA officers. We looked at the available evidence and drew the only logical conclusion.
It was not `wrong intelligence.’ War against Iraq was the product of a farrago of lies, distortions and disinformation provided by foreign `allies’ and a domestic fifth column eager for the US to destroy Iraq, both eagerly abetted by the mainstream US media. Bush’s claims Iraq was behind 9/11 or about to attack the US with germ weapons released by drones were as lurid and outrageous as Dr Goebbel’s claims in 1939 that Poland was about to invade Germany. The president who made these ludicrous claims now asks us to believe him about Iraq.
Iraq’s US-engineered elections will more firmly entrench the Iranian-influenced Shia majority in power, marginalize the Sunnis and leave the Kurds virtually independent in all but name, and accelerate the dangerous ethnic division of Iraq.
In spite of the current election, Iraq remains a US colony. Washington controls Iraq’s police, inept sepoy army, and assorted death squads – all of whom serve for money, not out of commitment to the government. The US controls Iraq’s total finances. US firms have been given the right to pump and export Iraq’s oil – 90% of its national income.
The US controls Iraq’s secret police and all communications. American money fuels Iraq’s political parties and almost all of Iraq’s so-called media. Behind every Iraqi minister discreetly stands a group of US `advisors.’ Not since the Soviets occupied Afghanistan have we seen such a reversion to classical colonialism.
The real poll that counts in Iraq is a recent BBC poll that revealed that 65% of all Iraqis – Shia, Sunnis and Kurds, want the US out of Iraq.
Now, we learn in another stinging irony, that the US Army in Iraq has depleted its reserves of M-16 rifle ammo and is currently buying munitions from Israel. One may imagine the reaction in the Muslim World when it is learned that the US is using Israeli bullets to kill Iraqis.

A Bad Idea for Medicaid
Marketplace from American Public Media, 20 December 2005
Listen to this commentary
Healthcare provider and commentator Stefan Kertesz argues against proposed cost-sharing plans for Medicaid patients.

The Unfriendly Skies
Frank O'Donnell
TomPaine.com, 20 December 2005
Frank O'Donnell is president of Clean Air Watch, a 501 (c) 3 non-partisan, non-profit organization aimed at educating the public about clean air and the need for an effective Clean Air Act.
The Bush administration is about to give an early Christmas present to the coal-burning electric power industry—while putting a sooty lump of coal in the stockings of breathers.
Specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to unveil a proposal that will probably shield the power industry from further air pollution cleanup beyond that already planned. By doing this, the EPA will ignore the recommendations of its own outside science advisers and lie to the public about when the outdoor air is safe to breathe.
The proposal involves fine particle pollution, the most lethal of widespread air pollutants. Fine particles are often-invisible emissions from coal burning, diesel engines and many other types of combustion. Experts believe that as many as 60,000 Americans may be dying prematurely each year from inhaling these toxic tidbits, which cause health problems including heart attacks, asthma attacks and lung cancer.
For example, in a new study to be released this week, New York University School of Medicine researchers found that long-term exposure to fine particle pollution—even at levels permissible under current federal standards—helps to clog arteries and cause heart disease.
The EPA, by law, is supposed to review the science involving particle pollution every five years, and update national health standards if necessary to protect public health. The standards are the legally binding goal that is supposed to inform the public what level of pollution is safe to breathe.
In this case, the American Lung Association had to sue the Bush administration to enforce the law. Under a legal settlement, the EPA has to propose new standards by December 20 and issue final standards by next September.
Scientific knowledge has evolved considerably since 1997, when the EPA last set health standards for this pollutant. In fact, there have been about 2,000 studies which collectively point to the need to reduce public exposure to this contaminant. An internal EPA analysis concluded that thousands of people would die early even if the current standards were met.
As a result, EPA staff scientists, the agency’s official outside science advisers and many prominent air pollution researchers have all called on the agency to make the current standards significantly stronger.

Ex-Chief of Qwest Is Indicted
By KEN BELSON
NYT, 20 December 2005
Joseph P. Nacchio, the former chief executive officer of Qwest Communications International, was indicted today on charges of insider trading involving stock sales worth more than $100 million.
The indictment lists 42 counts against Mr. Nacchio involving sales of more than 2.5 million shares of Qwest stock in the first half of 2001. During that time, Mr. Nacchio knew his company was in danger of missing its financial targets, according to the indictment, which was filed by federal prosecutors in Denver.
"Beginning as early as August 2000, Nacchio was specifically and repeatedly warned about the material, nonpublic financial risks facing Qwest and about Qwest's ability to achieve its aggressive publicly stated financial targets," the prosecutors said in the indictment. "Nacchio's stock sales accelerated in January 2001 as he became aware of additional material, nonpublic information."
Each of the 42 counts carries a penalty of up to 10 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $1 million. The government is also demanding that Mr. Nacchio forfeit $100,812,582, or the amount of the proceeds from the stock sales in question.
Qwest's shares hit an all-time high of $64.50 in March 2000, at the peak of the Internet stock bubble. By August 2002, the stock plunged 98 percent to $1.11 after a multibillion-dollar fraud was unearthed at the company.
 Mr. Nacchio was forced by Qwest's board to resign his post in June 2002. In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged him and eight other former Qwest executives with misleading the public about the company's financial prospects between 1999 and 2002.

A true PK champion...
Trying to Tell if Reagan Was a Leader or Was Led
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
NYT, 20 December 2005
In an effort to describe President Ronald Reagan, reporters and biographers have resorted to all sorts of metaphors and images. Garry Wills called him "the perfect Scout," a "Doctor Feelgood," "the demagogue as rabble-soother." Lou Cannon wrote that both conservatives and pragmatists in the Reagan White House treated him "as if he were a child monarch in need of constant protection" - "they paid homage to him, but gave him no respect." Others have described him as a visionary cowboy, a masterly illusionist, "an authentic phony," an "idiot savant," an "amiable dunce," an "ancient king" and the ultimate actor who confused "real life" with "reel life."
Reagan's official biographer, Edmund Morris, was so flummoxed by this man he described as both "a great president" and "an apparent airhead" that he abandoned his efforts to write a serious life of his subject, and instead produced "Dutch" (1999), an embarrassing hodgepodge of fact and fiction narrated by an imaginary alter ego.
Because Reagan has remained so elusive over the years, more symbol than human being, more mythic figure than flesh-and-blood politician, the reader turns in eager anticipation to Richard Reeves's new book, "President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination," the first major portrait of his presidency to be published since his death in 2004.
Mr. Reeves's earlier books on President John F. Kennedy and President Richard M. Nixon provided engrossing and illuminating studies of these two endlessly dissected politicians, simply by giving the reader minutely detailed accounts of what each president knew and when he knew it and what he actually did day to day, month by month. In this volume, Mr. Reeves applies the same technique to Reagan, but once again the Gipper eludes capture - perhaps because the details of so much policymaking in his White House were delegated, perhaps because so many of his appearances were tightly scripted.
...In fact, this volume is at its most useful in reminding us of the disparity between Reagan's mythic reputation as one of the greatest presidents of all time and the rampant speculation, during his second term, about his intellectual disengagement, his memory lapses and his short attention span, and of the disparity between his image as the godfather of today's Republican Party and the reaction in real time by the right wing to his negotiations with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. (George Will asserted, as the Soviet leader left the 1987 Washington summit conference, that that day would be remembered as the day when the United States "lost" the cold war.)
...Although Mr. Reeves writes that he does "not think Reagan was an unwitting tool of a manipulative staff," his book is filled with descriptions of the president's appearing blasé, bored or detached, and descriptions of staff members vociferously pushing their own agendas or careers. He shows us Alexander M. Haig Jr. circumventing the president to order the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, "to abstain rather than veto a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease fire in the Falklands war" (she got the order three minutes after casting the veto). And he shows us Donald Regan, the chief of staff, behaving "as if he were a prime minister rather than a hired hand."
As described by Mr. Reeves, the day-to-day functioning of the Reagan White House was bizarre to say the least: not just in terms of Nancy Reagan's astrologer, who had a hand in setting the president's schedule (Donald Regan first wrote about this in his 1988 White House memoir), but also in terms of the curious interaction (or rather lack of it) between the president and his men. "When the boss did speak in private to the fellows, it was usually cryptic, often confusing," Mr. Reeves writes. "It was the job of everyone else, staff and cabinet included, to figure out what to do about it. His typical cabinet meeting exit lines were: 'Maybe we should sleep on this,' or 'You fellas work it out.' "

20 December 2005

Bush’s Snoopgate
The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek via Talking Points Memo, 19 December 2005
Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.
The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.
No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker.

President Has Unchecked Ignorance of "Checks and Balances"
Press Conference of the President, 19 December 2005
Q Thank you, Mr. President. I wonder if you can tell us today, sir, what, if any, limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a President during a war, at wartime? And if the global war on terror is going to last for decades, as has been forecast, does that mean that we're going to see, therefore, a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I disagree with your assertion of "unchecked power."
Q Well --
THE PRESIDENT: Hold on a second, please. There is the check of people being sworn to uphold the law, for starters. There is oversight. We're talking to Congress all the time, and on this program, to suggest there's unchecked power is not listening to what I'm telling you. I'm telling you, we have briefed the United States Congress on this program a dozen times.
This is an awesome responsibility to make decisions on behalf of the American people, and I understand that, Peter. And we'll continue to work with the Congress, as well as people within our own administration, to constantly monitor programs such as the one I described to you, to make sure that we're protecting the civil liberties of the United States. To say "unchecked power" basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the President, which I strongly reject.
Q What limits do you --
THE PRESIDENT: I just described limits on this particular program, Peter. And that's what's important for the American people to understand. I am doing what you expect me to do, and at the same time, safeguarding the civil liberties of the country.
SEE ALSO:
Sen. Rockefeller's letter to Vice President Cheney.
SEE ALSO:
Regarding Leaked Information on NSA Actions
by Tom Daschle
Center for American Progress, 19 December 2005
Between 2002 and 2004, the White House notified me in classified briefings about NSA programs related to the war on terrorism. The briefers made clear they were not seeking my advice or consent, but were simply informing me about new actions. If subsequent public accounts are accurate, it now also appears the briefers omitted key details, including important information about the scope of the program.
Even with some of the more troublesome - and potentially illegal - details omitted, I still raised significant concern about these actions. As such, I am surprised and disappointed that the White House would now suggest that none of us informed of the program objected.
As a result of the significant legal and security concerns raised by the President's actions, I believe it is incumbent on the President to explain the specific legal justification for his actions, for the Congress to fully investigate these actions, and for the Administration to fully cooperate with that investigation.

Lawlessness and Disorder
By Ed Kilgore
From: Politics at the TPM Cafe, 19 December 2005
The brazen we-make-the-rules-around-here attitude reflected in the Bush administration's domestic spying ukase, and its let's-punish-the-leakers reaction to its exposure, is certainly not just an executive branch phenomenon. Last night's House Republican maneuvers on budget and defense appropriations measures exhibit the same mentality, especially in the strategem that made it possible: a rules change that basically abolished all the rules.
The House's adoption, on a party-line vote, of so-called "martial law," suspending, among other items, the normal requirement that Members have at least 24 hours to read major legislation before they vote on it, was authoritarian even by House GOP standards.
Thanks to martial law, the incredibly convoluted series of decisions made totally behind close doors on the budget bill, turned into a simple loyalty test for partisans. There was a grand total of 40 minutes of debate, which was probably about right since nobody had the chance to read the bill in the first place.
...Democrats have to work harder to expose such shenanigans, and their real-life impact.  The big pattern, then and now, is that Republicans have steadily degenerated from the party of law and order, to the party that is actually contemptuous of the law when it doesn't serve their purposes, and indifferent to constitutional and legislative order when it thwarts their will.  What the Schiavo incident said about the true Republican attitude towards federalism and separation of powers, the "martial law" rule says about the GOP's true interest in rational policymaking and honest debate.  

19 December 2005

Herbert leads with some comforting words about how the Bush administration has suffered a few political setbacks recently. But PK does not find the revelations about secret prisons, secret spying, and congressional action addressing torture at all comforting. The fact is that these practices continue despite having been exposed. The man in charge of interpreting laws and insuring compliance, Alberto Gonzales, has not conceded an inch. Nor have Bush, Cheney or Rice. The only Republican of stature, 'standing in opposition' to Bush is McCain and if you saw his performance on ABC's "This Week" Sunday you should not find any comfort there either. His insistence that the administration had "consulted and received the approval of Congressional leaders" to set aside requirements of 'warrants' for wiretapping was absolutely frightening. What will McCain not say or do to maintain the allegiance of the Bush-Republican Right?
Dangerous Territory
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 19 November 2005
...On Thursday night, The New York Times disclosed that Mr. Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for terrorist activity "without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying."
Warrants? Why bother with warrants?
The Times article reminded me of the famous scene from "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" in which the character played by Humphrey Bogart asks to see the badges of a group of Mexican bandits posing as government officials.
Incredulous, one of the bandits says: "We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges."
Mr. Bush apparently feels the same way about warrants. He said over the weekend that he had no intention of changing his eavesdropping policy.
Stubbornness is a well-known trait of this president. But increasing numbers of Americans are objecting to the administration's contemptuous attitude toward liberty and the law. On Friday, the Senate blocked reauthorization of the Patriot Act because of its dangerous intrusions on privacy and threats to civil liberties.
The domestic eavesdropping authorized by President Bush was an important and at times emotional part of the floor debate over the Patriot Act. "You want to talk about abuses?" said Senator Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat. "I can't imagine a more shocking example of an abuse of power, to eavesdrop on American citizens without first getting a court order based on some evidence that they are possibly criminals, terrorists or spies."
Mr. Feingold worried that we were playing into the hands of terrorists by giving up such quintessentially American values as "freedom, justice and privacy."
The Bush version of American values, as least with regard to the so-called war on terror, has been a throwback to the Middle Ages. Detainees were herded like animals into the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where many were abused and denied the right to challenge - or even hear - the charges against them. Whether they were innocent or guilty made no difference. How's that for an American value?
Others were swept up in that peculiar form of justice called extraordinary rendition. That's when someone is abducted by Americans and sent off to a regime skilled in the art of torture. I spent a little time in Ottawa with Maher Arar, a family man from Canada who was kidnapped at Kennedy Airport and taken to Syria.
He wasn't a terrorist and he hadn't done anything wrong, but that was no defense against the sweeping madness of the Bush antiterror policies.
"It was so scary," Mr. Arar told me. "After a while I became like an animal."
Another blow to America's self- proclaimed standing as a pillar of moral values was the revelation that the C.I.A. has been operating a super-secret network of prisons overseas, presumably for terror suspects. If someone who is innocent gets caught in that particular hell, too bad. The inmates have been deprived of all rights.
This is dangerous territory, indeed. Nightmarish territory. These secret prisons are the dungeons of the 21st century.
The voices against the serial outrages of the Bush administration are growing steadily louder, and that's good news. It's widely understood now that the Bush crowd has gone much too far. When Americans cover their hearts and pledge allegiance, this is not the kind of behavior from their government they usually have in mind. This is not what the American flag is supposed to represent.

Illustrating the complete and utter absence of intellectual integrity in rightwing think tanks...
Tankers on the Take
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 19 December 2005
Not long ago Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the Institute for Policy Innovation, seemed on the verge of becoming a conservative icon. Before the Bush administration's sales pitch for Social Security privatization fell flat, admiring articles about the Bush plan's genesis often gave Mr. Ferrara credit for starting the privatization movement back in 1979.
Now Mr. Ferrara has become a different sort of icon. BusinessWeek Online reports that both Mr. Ferrara and Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, were paid by the ubiquitous Jack Abramoff to write "op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients."
Now, I never had any illusions about intellectual integrity in the world of right-wing think tanks. It has been clear for a long time that so-called analysts at many of these think tanks are, in effect, paid to support selected policies and politicians. But it never occurred to me that the pay-for-play schemes were so blatant.
In fact, most deals between lobbyists and conservative intellectuals probably aren't that blatant. For the most part, people employed by right-wing think tanks don't have to be specifically paid to support certain positions, because they understand that supporting those positions comes with the job. Senior fellows at Cato don't decide, after reconsidering the issue, that Social Security shouldn't be privatized. Policy analysts at the Heritage Foundation don't take another look at the data and realize that farmers and small-business owners have nothing to gain from estate tax repeal.
But it turns out that implicit deals between think tanks and the interests that finance them are sometimes, perhaps often, supplemented with explicit payments for punditry. In return for Abramoff checks, Mr. Bandow and Mr. Ferrara wrote op-ed articles about such unlikely subjects as the entrepreneurial spirit of the Mississippi Choctaws and the free-market glories of the Northern Mariana Islands.
BusinessWeek Online doesn't mention it, but earlier this year an article by Franklin Foer in The New Republic titled "Writers' Bloc," which tracked Mr. Abramoff's remarkable ability to get his clients favorable treatment on op-ed pages, pointed out that Mr. Ferrara endorsed another odd cause: U.S. friendship with Malaysia. (I've checked, and Mr. Bandow did the same.) I was particularly interested in that one, since a couple of years ago right-wingers accused me of having been a paid agent of the Malaysian regime. I wasn't, but Mr. Abramoff reportedly was.
Mr. Bandow has confessed to a "lapse of judgment" and resigned from Cato. But neither Mr. Ferrara nor his employer believe that he did anything wrong. The president of Mr. Ferrara's institute told BusinessWeek Online that "I have a sense that there are a lot of people at think tanks who have similar arrangements." Alas, he's probably right.
Let's hope that journalists set out to track down those people with "similar arrangements," and that as they do, they don't fall into two ever-present temptations.
First, if the latest pay-for-punditry story starts to get traction, the usual suspects will claim that liberal think tanks and opinion writers are also on the take. (I'm getting my raincoat ready for the slime attack on my own ethics I'm sure this column will provoke.) Reporters and editors will be tempted to give equal time to these accusations, however weak the evidence, in an effort to appear "balanced." They should resist the temptation. If this is overwhelmingly a story about Republican lobbyists and conservative think tanks, as I believe it is - there isn't any Democratic equivalent of Jack Abramoff - that's what the public deserves to be told.
Second, there will be the temptation to ignore the backstory - to treat Mr. Abramoff as a rogue, unrepresentative actor. In fact, before his indictment, Mr. Abramoff wasn't off on his own. He wasn't even a lobbyist in the traditional sense; he's better described as a bag man, running a slush fund for Tom DeLay and other Republican leaders. The point is that there really isn't much difference between Mr. Abramoff's paying Mr. Ferrara to praise the sweatshops of the Marianas and the Department of Education's paying Armstrong Williams to praise No Child Left Behind. In both cases, the ultimate paymaster was the Republican political machine.
And inquiring minds want to know: Who else is on the take? Or has the culture of corruption spread so far that the question is, Who isn't?

18 December 2005

Our beloved 'police state'
In Address, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying
By DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 18 December 2005
President Bush acknowledged on Saturday that he had ordered the National Security Agency to conduct an electronic eavesdropping program in the United States without first obtaining warrants, and said he would continue the highly classified program because it was "a vital tool in our war against the terrorists."
In an unusual step, Mr. Bush delivered a live weekly radio address from the White House in which he defended his action as "fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities."
He also lashed out at senators, both Democrats and Republicans, who voted on Friday to block the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which expanded the president's power to conduct surveillance, with warrants, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The revelation that Mr. Bush had secretly instructed the security agency to intercept the communications of Americans and terrorist suspects inside the United States, without first obtaining warrants from a secret court that oversees intelligence matters, was cited by several senators as a reason for their vote.
...Mr. Bush's public confirmation on Saturday of the existence of one of the country's most secret intelligence programs, which had been known to only a select number of his aides, was a rare moment in his presidency. Few presidents have publicly confirmed the existence of heavily classified intelligence programs like this one.
His admission was reminiscent of Dwight Eisenhower's in 1960 that he had authorized U-2 flights over the Soviet Union after Francis Gary Powers was shot down on a reconnaissance mission. At the time, President Eisenhower declared that "no one wants another Pearl Harbor," an argument Mr. Bush echoed on Saturday in defending his program as a critical component of antiterrorism efforts.
But the revelation of the domestic spying program, which the administration temporarily suspended last year because of concerns about its legality, came in a leak. Mr. Bush said the information had been "improperly provided to news organizations."
As a result of the report, he said, "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country."
...Democrats saw the issue differently. "Our government must follow the laws and respect the Constitution while it protects Americans' security and liberty," said Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and the Senate's leading critic of the Patriot Act.
Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has said he would conduct hearings on why Mr. Bush took the action.
"In addition to what the president said today," Mr. Specter said, "the Judiciary Committee will be interested in its oversight capacity to learn from the attorney general or others in the Department of Justice the statutory or other legal basis for the electronic surveillance, whether there was any judicial review involved, what was the scope of the domestic intercepts, what standards were used to identify Al Qaeda or other terrorist callers, and what was done with this information."
In a statement, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said she was advised of the president's decision shortly after he made it and had "been provided with updates on several occasions."
"The Bush administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval," Ms. Pelosi said. "As is my practice whenever I am notified about such intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings."
In his statement on Saturday, Mr. Bush did not address the main question directed at him by some members of Congress on Friday: why he felt it necessary to circumvent the system established under current law, which allows the president to seek emergency warrants, in secret, from the court that oversees intelligence operations. His critics said that under that law, the administration could have obtained the same information.
The president said on Saturday that he acted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks because the United States had failed to detect communications that might have tipped them off to the plot. He said that two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, "communicated while they were in the United States to other members of Al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late."
As a result, "I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations," Mr. Bush said. "This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security."
Mr. Bush said that every 45 days the program was reviewed, based on "a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland." That review involves the attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, and Mr. Bush's counsel, Harriet E. Miers, whom Mr. Bush unsuccessfully tried to nominate to the Supreme Court this year.
"I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from Al Qaeda and related groups," Mr. Bush said. He said Congressional leaders had been repeatedly briefed on the program, and that intelligence officials "receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization."

This Call May Be Monitored ...
NYT, 18 December 2005
...The mass murders of 9/11 revealed deadly gaps in United States intelligence that needed to be closed. Most of those involved failure of performance, not legal barriers. Nevertheless, Americans expected some reasonable and carefully measured trade-offs between security and civil liberties. They trusted their elected leaders to follow long-established democratic and legal principles and to make any changes in the light of day. But President Bush had other ideas. He secretly and recklessly expanded the government's powers in dangerous and unnecessary ways that eroded civil liberties and may also have violated the law.
In Friday's Times, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau reported that sometime in 2002, President Bush signed a secret executive order scrapping a painfully reached, 25-year-old national consensus: spying on Americans by their government should generally be prohibited, and when it is allowed, it should be regulated and supervised by the courts. The laws and executive orders governing electronic eavesdropping by the intelligence agency were specifically devised to uphold the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.
But Mr. Bush secretly decided that he was going to allow the agency to spy on American citizens without obtaining a warrant - just as he had earlier decided to scrap the Geneva Conventions, American law and Army regulations when it came to handling prisoners in the war on terror. Indeed, the same Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, who helped write the twisted memo on legalizing torture, wrote briefs supporting the idea that the president could ignore the law once again when it came to the intelligence agency's eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mail messages.
"The government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties," he wrote.
Let's be clear about this: illegal government spying on Americans is a violation of individual liberties, whether conditions are troubled or not. Nobody with a real regard for the rule of law and the Constitution would have difficulty seeing that. The law governing the National Security Agency was written after the Vietnam War because the government had made lists of people it considered national security threats and spied on them. All the same empty points about effective intelligence gathering were offered then, just as they are now, and the Congress, the courts and the American people rejected them.
This particular end run around civil liberties is also unnecessary. The intelligence agency already had the capacity to read your mail and your e-mail and listen to your telephone conversations. All it had to do was obtain a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The burden of proof for obtaining a warrant was relaxed a bit after 9/11, but even before the attacks the court hardly ever rejected requests.
The special court can act in hours, but administration officials say that they sometimes need to start monitoring large batches of telephone numbers even faster than that, and that those numbers might include some of American citizens. That is supposed to justify Mr. Bush's order, and that is nonsense. The existing law already recognizes that American citizens' communications may be intercepted by chance. It says that those records may be retained and used if they amount to actual foreign intelligence or counterintelligence material. Otherwise, they must be thrown out.
President Bush defended the program yesterday, saying it was saving lives, hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and the law, and denouncing The Times for disclosing the program's existence. We don't know if he was right on the first count; this White House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security threats that it has lost all credibility. But we have learned the hard way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them.
Mr. Bush said he would not retract his secret directive or halt the illegal spying, so Congress should find a way to force him to do it. Perhaps the Congressional leaders who were told about the program could get the ball rolling.

Elections Do Not a Democracy Make
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 18 December 2005
...Since Bush is going to say Sunday that the Sunni Arab participation in the elections suggests a near end of major guerrilla violence, let me just repeat what I said Thursday: the history of guerrilla insurgencies is replete with groups that simulaneously fought on both the political and paramilitary fronts. Listen to how angry the Sunni politicians are, as they speak out in the wake of the elections, both at Bush and at the Shiites, and you get a sense of how detached the Bush administration remains from reality.
A major Sunni leader whose list (the National Dialogue Council) seems to be doing well, Salih Mutlak, just came on Arabic satellite television and gave a strident anti-American speech. He addressed Bush, warning him not to believe that a fair election had just occurred in Iraq, and denounced the continued US military occupation of his country. He also lashed out at Shiite politicians. Mutlak is a secular Arab nationalist who still praises the Baath Party. Mutlak's emergence as a likely power broker in the Iraqi parliament is good news for Bush?
By the way, the assertion Bush keeps making that the political developments in Iraq will influence the rest of the Middle East is ridiculous to anyone who actually talks to anyone from the region. Arabs mostly believe that Iraq is laboring under an oppressive foreign military occupation. You can't bring up Iraq without them saying, "The Americans are doing such horrible things there." They think of Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, and of the Ministry of Interior's secret torture cells, not of parliamentary debates. Few think the Iraqi elections are aboveboard, and few are very interested in them. In Beirut, the newspapers have been putting a short article on the elections below the fold every day since Wednesday, and that is about it. It isn't even really positioned as important news; the New York Times puts it higher on the page than most Arab newspapers.

Congress Did Not Receive the Same Intel that Bush Had
Memorandum, CRS Report
To: Sen. Dianne Feinstein
From:  Alfred Cumming
Specialist in Intelligence and National Security
Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division
...Congressional Access to Intelligence Information Not Routinely Provided in Four Areas
The executive branch generally does not routinely share with Congress four general types of intelligence information:

• the identities of intelligence sources;
   
• the "methods" employed by the Intelligence Community in collecting and analyzing intelligence;
   
• "raw" intelligence, which can be unevaluated or "lightly" evaluated intelligence, ⁽¹⁸⁾ which in the case of human intelligence ⁽¹⁹⁾ sometimes is provided by a single source, but which also could consist of intelligence derived from multiple sources when signals ⁽²⁰⁾ and imagery ⁽²¹⁾ collection methods are employed; and,
   
• certain written intelligence products tailored to the specific needs of the President and other high-level executive branch policymakers. Included in the last category is the President's Daily Brief (PDB), a written intelligence product which is briefed daily to the President, and which consists of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics. ⁽²²⁾ The PDB emphasizes current intelligence ⁽²³⁾ and is viewed as highly sensitive, in part, because it can contain intelligence source and operational information. Its dissemination is thus limited to the President and a small number of presidentially-designated senior administration policymakers. ⁽²⁴⁾

Health Care for All, Just a (Big) Step Away
By EDUARDO PORTER
NYT, 18 December 2005
You may find it shameful that some 45 million Americans lack health insurance. Well, by reallocating money already devoted to health insurance, the government could go along way toward solving the problem. But you may not like the solution.
Next year, the federal government expects to provide about $130 billion for Americans to buy health insurance. The amount is substantial: it is equivalent to about 11 percent of all federal income tax revenue and more than a fifth of federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid. And it is growing fast: the bill is expected to surpass $180 billion in 2010.
Nonetheless, this financing remains under the political radar because it is provided indirectly - not as direct spending but as a tax break that allows workers to receive health insurance coverage from their employers without having to pay income taxes on whatever it costs.
This provides a powerful incentive to businesses all over the country. The subsidy - supplemented by an additional $11 billion in deductions for medical expenses and billions more in similar tax breaks for health insurance from states and municipalities - helps to explain why 64 percent of Americans under 65 get health insurance through their employers.
Although subsidizing health insurance may seem a worthy effort, a positive contribution to the goal of universal coverage, it is among the most inefficient spending in the nation's fiscal arsenal.

17 December 2005

Behind Power, One Principle as Bush Pushes Prerogatives
By SCOTT SHANE
NYT, 17 December 2005
The administration's legal experts, including David S. Addington, the vice president's former counsel and now his chief of staff, and John C. Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003, have pointed to several sources of presidential authority.
The bedrock source is Article 2 of the Constitution, which describes the "executive power" of the president, including his authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. Several landmark court decisions have elaborated the extent of the powers.
Another key recent document cited by the administration is the joint resolution passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, authorizing the president to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for Sept. 11 in order to prevent further attacks.
Mr. Yoo, who is believed to have helped write a legal justification for the National Security Agency's secret domestic eavesdropping, first laid out the basis for the war on terror in a Sept. 25, 2001, memorandum that said no statute passed by Congress "can place any limits on the president's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing and nature of the response."
That became the underlying justification for numerous actions apart from the eavesdropping program, disclosed by The New York Times on Thursday night. Those include the order to try accused terrorists before military tribunals; the detention of so-called enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret overseas jails operated by the Central Intelligence Agency; the holding of two Americans, Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, as enemy combatants; and the use of severe interrogation techniques, including some banned by international agreements, on Al Qaeda figures.
Mr. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, declined to comment for this article.
...some legal experts outside the administration, including some who served previously in the intelligence agencies, said the administration had pushed the presidential-powers argument beyond what was legally justified or prudent. They say the N.S.A. domestic eavesdropping illustrates the flaws in Mr. Bush's assertion of his powers.
"Obviously we have to do things differently because of the terrorist threat," said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former general counsel of both N.S.A. and the Central Intelligence Agency, who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. "But to do it without the participation of the Congress and the courts is unwise in the extreme."
Even if the administration believes the president has the authority to direct warrantless eavesdropping, she said, ordering it without seeking Congressional approval was politically wrongheaded. "We're just relearning the lessons of Vietnam and Watergate," said Ms. Parker, now dean of the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.
Jeffrey H. Smith, who served as C.I.A. general counsel in 1995 and 1996, said he was dismayed by the N.S.A. program, which he said was the latest instance of legal overreach by the administration.
"Clearly the president felt after 9/11 that he needed more powers than his predecessors had exercised," Mr. Smith said. "He chose to assert as much power as he thought he needed. Now the question is whether that was wise and consistent with our values."
William C. Banks, a widely respected authority on national security law at Syracuse University, said the N.S.A. revelation came as a shock, even given the administration's past assertions of presidential powers.
"I was frankly astonished by the story," he said. "My head is spinning."
Professor Banks said the president's power as commander in chief "is really limited to situations involving military force - anything needed to repel an attack. I don't think the commander in chief power allows" the warrantless eavesdropping, he said.
Mr. Berenson, the former White House associate counsel, said that in rare cases, the presidents' advisers may decide that an existing law violates the Constitution "by invading the president's executive powers as commander in chief."
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 typically requires warrants for the kind of eavesdropping carried out under the special N.S.A. program. Whether administration lawyers argued that that statute unconstitutionally infringed the president's powers is not known.
But Mr. Smith, formerly of the C.I.A., noted that when President Carter signed the act into law in 1978, he seemed to rule out any domestic eavesdropping without court approval.
"The bill requires, for the first time, a prior judicial warrant for all electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purposes in the United States" if an American's communications might be intercepted, President Carter said when he signed the act.
By asserting excessive powers, Mr. Smith said, President Bush may provoke a reaction from Congress and the courts that ultimately thwarts executive power.
"The president may wind up eroding the very powers he was seeking to exert," Mr. Smith said.

Lawmakers Back Use of Evidence Coerced From Detainees
By ERIC SCHMITT and TIM GOLDEN
NYT, 17 December 2005
House and Senate negotiators agreed Friday to a measure that would enable the government to keep prisoners at Guantánamo Bay indefinitely on the basis of evidence obtained by coercive interrogations.
The provision, which has been a subject of extensive bargaining with the Bush administration, could allow evidence that would not be permitted in civilian courts to be admissable in deciding whether to hold detainees at the American military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In recent days, the Congressional negotiators quietly eliminated an explicit ban on the use of such material in an earlier version of the legislation.
The measure is contained in the same military policy bill that includes Senator John McCain's provision to ban the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in American custody worldwide. Mr. Bush reluctantly embraced Mr. McCain's ban on Thursday. The full House is expected to approve the compromise bill soon, with the Senate to follow in the next few days, Congressional officials said.
The juxtaposition of the seemingly contradictory measures immediately led lawyers for Guantánamo prisoners to assert that Congressional Republicans were helping to preserve the utility of coercive interrogations that senior White House officials have argued are vital to the fight against war against terror.
...Thomas B. Wilner, a lawyer who represents a group of Kuwaiti detainees at Guantánamo Bay, said in an interview that the new language would render the McCain restrictions unenforceable at the Cuban prison. "If McCain is one small step forward, enactment of this language would be two giant steps backwards," Mr. Wilner said.
Two of the main Senate sponsors of the measure, Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, defended the changes made to the language that the Senate passed last month, 84 to 14.

Added meaning to 'Libertarian'
Columnist Resigns His Post, Admitting Lobbyist Paid Him
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT and PHILIP SHENON
NYT, 17 December 2005
A senior scholar at the Cato Institute, the respected libertarian research organization, has resigned after revelations that he took payments from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing columns favorable to his clients.
The scholar, Doug Bandow, who wrote a column for the Copley News Service in addition to serving as a Cato fellow, acknowledged to executives at the organization that he had taken money from Mr. Abramoff after he was confronted about the payments by a reporter from BusinessWeek Online.
"He acknowledges he made a lapse in judgment," said Jamie Dettmer, director of communications at Cato. "There's a lot of sadness here."
Copley suspended Mr. Bandow's column.
Efforts to reach Mr. Bandow through the Cato Institute and at home were unsuccessful.
The revelation caps a year of disclosures about partisan payments to seemingly independent writers, including Armstrong Williams, the conservative columnist and television host, who received payments from the federal Education Department at a time when he was promoting the Bush administration's education policies in his columns. The administration has been under mounting pressure to become more transparent in its communications after accounts that it paid for and printed articles in Iraqi periodicals as part of its overseas propaganda effort.
Mr. Bandow did not take government money, but the source of his payments - around $2,000 an article - is no less controversial. His sometime sponsor, Mr. Abramoff, is at the center of a far-reaching criminal corruption investigation involving several members of Congress, with prosecutors examining whether he sought to bribe lawmakers in exchange for legislative help.
A second scholar, Peter Ferrara, of the Institute for Policy Innovation, acknowledged in the same BusinessWeek Online piece that he had also taken money from Mr. Abramoff in exchange for writing certain opinion articles. But Mr. Ferrara did not apologize for doing so. "I do that all the time," Mr. Ferrara was quoted as saying. He did not reply to an e-mail message seeking comment on Friday.
At Cato and similar institutions, adjunct scholars are not always prohibited from accepting outside consulting roles. But at Cato, said Mr. Dettmer, and at the American Enterprise Institute, said a spokeswoman there, rules require scholars to make public all their affiliations, and there is an expectation that scholars will not embarrass the institution.
"Our scholarship is not for sale," Mr. Dettmer said.
Glenda Winders, the vice president and editor of the Copley News Service, said in a statement that the company was immediately suspending Mr. Bandow's column pending further review.
Mr. Abramoff, who built a powerful lobbying business largely through his affluent Indian tribe clients in the late 1990's, paid Mr. Bandow during those years to advance the causes of such clients as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
In one column in 2001, Mr. Bandow extolled the free-market system that had allowed the Marianas to thrive, saying that fighting terrorism was no excuse for "economic meddling" - the same position that Mr. Abramoff was being paid to advance.

16 December 2005

9/11 may have changed everything...but Bush has made certain that it has, especially, changed us.
Ban Torture. Period.
NYT, 16 December 2005
It should have been unmitigated good news when President Bush finally announced yesterday that he would back Senator John McCain's proposal to ban torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment at United States prison camps. Nothing should be more obvious for an American president than to support a ban on torture.
But this is the president who scrapped the rules on the decent treatment of prisoners in the first place and whose lawyers concocted memos on legalizing torture. On closer inspection, the feeling of relief faded fast.
Mr. McCain's amendment is attached to a malignant measure - introduced by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and now co-sponsored by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee - that would do grievous harm to the rule that the government cannot just lock you up without showing cause to a court. This fundamental principle of democratic justice must not be watered down so the Bush administration does not have to answer for the illegal detentions of hundreds of men at Guantánamo Bay and other prison camps.
Mr. Graham's original measure would at least have barred the use of coerced confessions from prisoners like those at Guantánamo. But the current version actually appears to allow coerced evidence. Lawmakers were also discussing language that would strip United States courts, including the Supreme Court, of the power to review detentions. Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law at Yale University, said that Congress had not attacked the courts in this fashion since Reconstruction.
Mr. Bush had barely announced his deal with Mr. McCain before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it crystal clear that the administration would define torture any way it liked. He said on CNN that torture meant the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental harm, and repeated the word "severe" twice. He would not even say whether that included "waterboarding" - tormenting a prisoner by making him think he is being drowned.
Then Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, announced that he would oppose the McCain measure unless the White House guaranteed in writing that it would have no effect on intelligence-gathering. Mr. Hunter's legitimate concerns have already been addressed with a provision that would allow C.I.A. agents to defend themselves against torture charges by saying they were following legal orders. That protection is already provided to uniformed soldiers. The latest objections by Mr. Hunter, who has helped Vice President Dick Cheney try to block Mr. McCain's amendment, are just a smokescreen.
What is at stake here, and so harmful to America's reputation, is the routine mistreatment of prisoners swept up in the so-called war on terror. The Senate voted 90 to 9 for the McCain measure without the extra baggage. And the House passed a nonbinding resolution supporting it. Both should stand firm. The nation and its fighting men and women need moral clarity, not more legalistic wiggle room.

Pentagon Is Said to Mishandle a Counterterrorism Database
By DAVID S. CLOUD
NYT, 16 December 2005
Pentagon analysts appear not to have followed guidelines that require deleting information on American citizens and groups from a counterterrorism database within three months if they pose no security threats, Pentagon officials said on Thursday.
As a result, dozens of alerts on antiwar meetings and peaceful protests appear to have remained in the database, even though analysts had decided that those involved presented no threat to military bases or personnel, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program is classified.
The requirement to delete information after 90 days is in a set of procedures for handling reports entered into the Defense Department database, which is known as the Threat and Local Observation Notice reporting system, or Talon. Pentagon officials on Thursday refused to release the full list of procedures for handling information on citizens.
Details of the database were disclosed this week by NBC News, which said it had obtained a 400-page document on more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country entered into the system in a 10-month period from 2004 to 2005.
A summary of the document put out by NBC said that among the incidents monitored was a "protest against Army recruiters" in Wayne, N.J., last April that the database notes happened "without incident."
Pentagon officials said Thursday that the Talon program was created in 2003 as a central repository of possible threats against military personnel and installations. Tips and other unverified information from military personnel, law enforcement agencies and intelligence entities are entered into the system and evaluated, they said.

Guide to GOP, D.C.
The New Republic, 15 December 2005
Washington, D.C., is the most powerful city in the world, a capital lined with grand monuments and crowded with intimidating VIPs. And, to the average visitor, it can also be a confusing place--one where it's difficult to understand the difference between Viveca Novak and Bob Novak, between a Choctaw and a Coushatta, between Official A and Representative #1. The Rough Guide to GOP D.C. seeks to demystify this town. You won't just visit slabs of marble and imbibe the spirit of democracy; you'll eat and drink in the skyboxes and hotel rooms where democracy is actually subverted (ahem, we mean practiced). You won't just learn about our nation's great legal system; you will snap photos of the actual spots where famous Washingtonians broke the law. While other guides explain how politicians win elections, you'll learn how they abuse power. After five years of George W. Bush's presidency and eleven years of GOP rule in Congress, Republicans have permanently altered the city's culture and character. This is a guide to the new Washington they have created.
...The DeLay plan for modernizing the city is also known as the K Street Project, and it benefits from the simplicity of its intentions: Want to work with the Republicans? Then you'd better hire Republicans at your law firms and lobbying shops--and then donate your money to Grover Norquist, conservative 527s, and other GOP D.C. charities. Nobody had ever dared to think so transparently.
Table of Contents:
A History of GOP D.C.
Before You Leave
Accommodations
Where to Eat
Things to Do
Drinking and Nightlife
Cultural Hints
Local Media
So You Think You're Going to Be Indicted...
Useful Words and Phrases
GOP D.C. Walking Tour
Suggested Reading for Travelers

Drugs, Devices and Doctors
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 16 Decembe 2005
Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, is under siege. And one side effect of that siege is a public relations crisis for the Cleveland Clinic, a celebrated hospital and health care organization.
But the real story is bigger than either the company or the clinic. It's the story of how growing conflicts of interest may be distorting both medical research and health care in general.
Merck stands accused of playing down evidence that Vioxx, a best-selling painkiller until it was withdrawn last year, increases the risk of heart attacks. The most recent accusation of obscuring the evidence came from The New England Journal of Medicine, which discovered that the authors of a Merck-supported paper published in the journal had removed data unfavorable to Vioxx. The journal called on the authors to issue a correction.
Dr. Eric Topol, a famed cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, has been warning about the dangers of Vioxx since 2001. In videotaped testimony at a recent federal Vioxx trial (which ended in a mistrial), he accused Merck of scientific misconduct, and also testified that Merck's former chairman had called the chairman of the Cleveland Clinic to complain about his work - an action Dr. Topol called "repulsive."
Two days after that testimony, according to Dr. Topol, he was told early in the morning not to attend an 8 a.m. meeting of the clinic's board of governors, because the position of chief academic officer, which gave him a seat on the board, had been abolished. A clinic spokeswoman denied that the abrupt elimination of this post had any link to his Vioxx testimony.
A few days later, The Wall Street Journal reported on a web of financial connections between the Cleveland Clinic, its chief executive and AtriCure, a company selling a medical device used in a surgical procedure promoted by the clinic. Dr. Topol - whose demotion also cost him his seat on the conflict-of-interest committee - was "among those who questioned the ties," the newspaper said.
O.K., it's sounding complicated. But the essence is simple: crucial scientific research and crucial medical decisions have to be considered suspect because of financial ties among medical companies, medical researchers and health care providers.

Just trust us...
Bush Said to Let U.S. Tap Calls Without Courts
By JAMES RISEN
and ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 16 December 2005
Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."
Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.
...Several national security officials say the powers granted the N.S.A. by President Bush go far beyond the expanded counterterrorism powers granted by Congress under the USA Patriot Act, which is up for renewal. The House on Wednesday approved a plan to reauthorize crucial parts of the law. But final passage has been delayed under the threat of a Senate filibuster because of concerns from both parties over possible intrusions on Americans' civil liberties and privacy.
Under the act, law enforcement and intelligence officials are still required to seek a F.I.S.A. warrant every time they want to eavesdrop within the United States. A recent agreement reached by Republican leaders and the Bush administration would modify the standard for F.B.I. wiretap warrants, requiring, for instance, a description of a specific target. Critics say the bar would remain too low to prevent abuses.

We are all Israelis now...
House Votes for 698 Miles of Fences on Mexico Border
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
NYT, 16 December 2005
House Republicans voted on Thursday night to toughen a border security bill by requiring the Department of Homeland Security to build five fences along 698 miles of the United States border with Mexico to block the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into this country.
The amendment to the bill would require the construction of the fences along stretches of land in California, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona that have been deemed among the most porous corridors of the border.
The vote on the amendment was a victory for conservatives who had long sought to build such a fences along the Mexican border. But the vote was sharply assailed by Democrats, who compared the fences to the Berlin Wall in Germany. Twelve Republicans also voted against the amendment.

The Man Who Said No to War [and Militarism] - Senator Eugene McCarthy
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 15 December 2005
...In an address at Berkeley in October 1967, before he announced that he was running for president, McCarthy explained why, in terms of foreign policy, it was important to view the war in a context that was much larger than Vietnam.
He said the debate over Vietnam was really about "a kind of projection of American foreign policy over the next 40, 50 or 100 years in which, I think, we're called upon for the first time to make a kind of decision as to whether or not we conceive of our role as a kind of continuous performance demonstration that we can police the planet, or whether we're prepared to try to direct it by way of the influence of our ideas and of our nonmilitary potential."
"This," he said, "is the substance, I think, of a greater debate than Vietnam."

[David Brooks astutely identifies the essence of materialism in Christian spirituality and explains, albeit unintentionally, why this religion is a pillar of rightwing ideology...also, why a true conservative is incapable of the personal transformation needed to "pass through the eye of a needle."]
The Holy Capitalists
By DAVID BROOKS
NYT, 15 December 2005
What explains success? What forces drive some nations and individuals to move forward and grow rich while others stagnate? These happen to be the most important questions in the social sciences today.
In the scholarly arena, you see an array of academic gladiators wielding big books and offering theories.
Over here are the material determinists. Jared Diamond, with his million-selling "Guns, Germs, and Steel," says the West grew rich not because of any innate superiority, but because Europeans happened to have the right kinds of plants. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, with his tome, "Civilizations," argues that success is determined by climate and geography.
Over there are the cultural determinists. Thomas Sowell argues that ethnic groups develop their own skills and values and thrive or suffer as they compete, conquer and migrate. In his great opus, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations," David Landes shows how cultural mores shaped European empires and the Industrial Revolution.
Now another academic heavyweight has entered the arena. In his new book, "The Victory of Reason," the Baylor sociologist Rodney Stark argues that the West grew rich because it invented capitalism. That's not new. What's unusual is his description of how capitalism developed.
The conventional view, embraced by most of his fellow cultural determinists, is that during the Renaissance and Reformation, Europeans shook off the authority of the Catholic Church. When a secular world was created alongside the sacred one, when intellectual freedom replaced obedience to authority, capitalism and scientific advances were the result.
That theory, Stark says, doesn't fit the facts. In reality, capitalism developed in the Middle Ages, and the important innovations were made by people in the belly of the faith. Religion didn't stifle economic and scientific ideas - it nurtured them.
Stark is building upon the recent research that has reversed earlier prejudices about the so-called Dark Ages. As late as 1983, the esteemed historian Daniel Boorstin could write a chapter on the Middle Ages entitled "The Prison of Christian Dogma."
But the more we learn, the more we realize that most of the progress we link to the Renaissance or later years actually happened during the Middle Ages. Roughly a hundred years before Copernicus, Jean Buridan (circa 1300-1358) wrote that the Earth is an orb rotating on an axis. Buridan, a rector of the University of Paris, was succeeded by Nicole d'Oresme (1323-1382), who explained why the rotation of the Earth doesn't produce wind.
Other medieval Scholastics made the same sort of discoveries in economics and technology. Five hundred years before Adam Smith, St. Albertus Magnus explained the price mechanism as what "goods are worth according to the estimate of the market at the time of sale."
Catholic monasteries emerged as capitalist enterprises, serving not only as manufacturing and trading centers, but also as investment houses. And engineers invented or commercialized a vast array of technologies: the compass, the clock, the round-bottom boat, wagons with brakes and front axles, water wheels, eyeglasses, and so on.
These innovations and discoveries, Stark argues, were not made by the newly secular, but by people who had a distinctly Christian sense of the sacred. Catholic theology had taught them that God had created the universe according to universal laws that reason could discover. It taught that knowledge and history moves forward progressively, so people should look to the future, not the past.
The church recognized the dignity of free labor at a time when most other cultures did not. It valued private property and emphasized the essential equality of human beings despite their unequal incomes and stations.
This history is important today. (And not only because Albertus Magnus knew more about reconciling faith and reason 700 years ago than the bogus culture warriors do now.) It's important because whether we are dealing with poverty around the world or at home, it is not enough to simply liberate people and assume they will automatically pursue economic prosperity. People need to be instilled with certain beliefs, like the belief that the future can be better than the present and that individuals have the power to shape their own destiny.
Ideas and culture drive civilizations. The Catholic Church nurtured one of the most impressive economic takeoffs in human history. Today, as Catholicism spreads in Africa and China, it's important to understand the beliefs that encourage people to work hard and grow rich.

15 December 2005

Present at the Disintegration
By KANAN MAKIYA
NYT, 11 December 2005
Any government that emerges from the coming elections will be fatally undermined in at least three ways.
First, the Constitution establishes a supremely powerful Parliament, which can ride roughshod over the executive. While that Parliament, as it is designed in the Constitution, looks like a democratic institution, it doesn't work like one. Rather, it is an artificially constructed collection of ethnic and sectarian voting blocs. If the experience of the interim government is any guide, the few people who control those blocs are the ones who will wield real power, and they will do so largely through handpicked committees and backroom wheeling and dealing. Because this cabal of powerbrokers also chooses the president and the prime minister and can dismiss them with a simple majority, there will be no check on the tyranny of majorities operating under the aegis of the legislature.
Second, executive power is divided between the president and the council of ministers, guaranteeing that major decisions will be met with the same tension and paralysis that have plagued the present government. Both the president and the prime minister (it is assumed, though not explicitly stated, that these two posts will be apportioned out to a Kurd and a Shiite Arab, as they are at present) can separately present bills to Parliament - a sure recipe for conflict. And both the president and the prime minister can be fired after a no-confidence motion endorsed by a parliamentary majority. At a time of civil war and pervasive violence, in other words, no one person or institution can be said to be in charge of the executive branch of the federal government.
Third, the Constitution encourages the transformation of governorates and local administrations into powerful, nearly sovereign regions that, with the exception of Kurdistan, have no underlying basis for unity. And while the articles dealing with the functioning of the federal government are poorly worded and intended to dissipate executive power, the 10 articles of Section 5, on the powers and manner of formation of new regions, are a model of clarity and have been drafted with the sole purpose of encouraging new regions to be created at the expense of the federal union.
This guarantees that the more Iraqi provinces opt for regional status, and get it, the more the federal state will shrivel up and die. Moreover, with the exception of those who reside in provinces without oil (or in Baghdad, which cannot join a region), it is in the interest of every populist demagogue to press for regional status, because it is at that level that the lawmaking that truly affects day-to-day life will take place.
The powers of the new regions will be enormous. Not even the Iraqi Army can travel through one without the permission of the regional Parliament. And should there be any doubt about where the whip hand will lie on any issue not explicitly addressed in the Constitution, Article 122 states: "Articles of the Constitution may not be amended if such amendment takes away from the power of the regions ... except by the consent of the legislative authority of the concerned region and the approval of the majority of its citizens."
...There is nothing wrong with having strong regions within a federal union. Unfortunately the new Iraqi Constitution fails to inject the glue that would hold such a union together: the federal government. It sets up a regional system with big short-term winners (Shiite Arabs and Kurds) and big short-term losers (Sunni Arabs). It even allocates extra oil and gas revenues to the regions that generate them, on the implicit assumption that because of the political inequities of the past, the state owes the Sunnis of the resource-poor western provinces less than it does the Shiites and Kurds. But these provinces are not significantly better off than other parts of Iraq.
Iraq's Sunni Arabs voted solidly against the Constitution not because they are Saddam Hussein loyalists, nor because they hate the Kurds and Shiites (as some of the insurgents do); they voted against it because by doing away with the central state, which they had championed during the previous 80 years, and penalizing them for living in regions without oil, the Constitution became a punitive document - one that began to seem as if it was written to punish them for the sins of the Baath.
What is wrong with pursuing the Constitution to its logical conclusion: the breakup of Iraq? Nothing, if that breakup is consensual and does not entail an escalation in the violence tearing the country apart. But such is not the case. The debate in Parliament over the Constitution was extremely polarized and artificially cut short by the majority. Moreover, if a mere 83,283 people in the province of Nineveh had voted no instead of yes, the draft constitution would have been defeated.
Sunni opposition to the new order will continue. Crushing it by force, as some Shiite hotheads in the Parliament's majority bloc are calling for, will be an extremely bloody business. Even if the long-term outcome of an all-out Iraqi civil war is not in doubt, the body count and destruction would make Lebanon's war look like a picnic. No moral person can condone the parliamentary majority that makes this happen.
The 2003 Iraq war has indeed brought about an irreversible transformation of politics and society in Iraq. But this transformation has not consolidated power, as the great revolutions of the past have tended to do (in France, Russia and even Iran), nor is it distributing power on an agreed upon and equitable basis, as happened after the American Revolution and as Iraqi liberal democrats like myself had hoped would happen after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Rather, it is dissipating it. And that is a terrifying prospect for a population whose primary legacy from the Saddam Hussein era is a profound mistrust of government in all its forms.
By ceding and dismissing centralized power, Iraqis may end by ceding all their power. Iran in the short run, and the Arab world in the long run, will fill the vacuum with proxies, turning the dream of a democratic and reborn Iraq into a dystopia of warring militias and rampant hopelessness.
...What people like myself failed to appreciate, or understand, before 2003, were the powerful forces driving toward purely ethnic and sectarian criteria for the definition of the "parts" of the new federal idea. The consequence of those forces has been a tremendous weakening of the political idea of Iraq, which the new Constitution has converted into hostility toward central government per se.
A decentralized, federal state system that devolves power to the regions is not the same as a dysfunctional one in which power at the federal level has been eviscerated. The former preserves power while distributing it; the latter destroys it. At the moment Iraqis have a dysfunctional and powerless state. The Constitution does not fix this; it makes it worse.
What began as an American problem is today an Iraqi one. To steer the country away from anarchy and manage the furies that have been unleashed, the following measures need to be undertaken by the new Iraqi Parliament the moment it reconvenes after the elections:
• Recognize that at the moment only Kurdistan fulfills the conditions for being a region. Using the Kurdish experience as a model, the Constitution must define the minimum conditions that need to be met by any group of provinces that desire to form themselves into a region. Then set a moratorium of 10 years on the establishment of new regions, this being the time necessary to crush the insurgency, establish properly accountable institutions of law and order and ensure that those applying for such status have met the criteria.
• Limit the size of any new region formed after the 10-year period to a maximum of three governorates and fix the existing unmodified boundaries of the 18 governorates of Iraq as the basis for the establishment of new regions.
• Delete Article 109, which allocates extra oil revenues to the regions that generate them. There is no defensible case for imposing special reparations on the Sunni populace for the crimes of Iraq's former leaders.
• Appoint a committee of expert constitutional lawyers to make the necessary amendments reconciling the legislature with the executive and the different parts of the executive with each other. This is not a matter that can be resolved by the politicians alone.
Democracy is not reducible to placing an Iraqi seal of approval upon a situation that is manifestly worsening by the day. The 79 percent of people who voted in favor of a constitution that promotes ethnic and sectarian divisions are unwittingly paving the way for a civil war that will cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Nothing is worth that.
Without the return of real power to the center, the ascent of sectarian and ethnic politics in Iraq to the point of complete societal breakdown cannot be checked. We cannot fight the insurgency, rebuild Iraq and live in any meaningful sense as part of the modern world without a state. There are no human rights, no law, and no democracy without the state; there is only anarchy and a state of insecurity potentially much worse than what Iraqis are experiencing today. For democracy to emerge out of the current chaos in Iraq, the state must be saved from the irresponsibility of the Iraqi parties and voting blocs that are today killing it.
SEE ALSO:
'Present at the Disintegration'
Talk of the Nation, 12 December 2005
Is the new Iraq constitution a recipe for civil war? As part of an ongoing series on Sunday opinion pieces, Neal Conan talks with a prominent expatriate who says Iraqi political elites have failed the fledgling democracy.
Guest:
Kanan Makiya, president of the Iraqi Memory Foundation; wrote the op-ed piece "Present at the Disintegration" for Sunday's New York Times

Analysis: Bush's Path Forward Has Many Ifs
By DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 15 December 2005
It took a thousand days after he ordered the invasion of Iraq for President Bush to describe in considerable detail his strategy for transforming the country and the region, and to lay out the benchmarks that he said Wednesday would lead to "complete victory."
Yet in four recent speeches and an accompanying strategy document he has made his case, some of his aides concede, just as his ability to control events in Iraq may be about to erode.
American officials fully expect that for months after the Iraqi election on Thursday the American ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, will remain the critical behind-the-scenes power in the creation of a factious coalition to run the country.
But it is the longer term - the next year - that worries many of Mr. Bush's advisers and the United States military. Amid insurgent attacks and warnings of civil war, the government may take months to form, and many officials wonder whether that lag will distract the Iraqis from leaping the hurdles that Mr. Bush wants them to clear before he will begin withdrawing American forces next year.
Taken together, Mr. Bush's speeches and document lay out just how high those hurdles are: building a new government strong enough that "terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy," Mr. Bush said; strong enough to make sure terrorists cannot use Iraq as a place to plot attacks against the United States; and with an Iraqi security force strong enough to protect its own people.
In the speeches, Mr. Bush has been cautiously optimistic. He has acknowledged, however, that almost nothing in Iraq has gone according to plan in these past 33 months.
Participants in some of the briefings he has received in the Situation Room in recent weeks say that acknowledgment is in keeping with the far more somber tone of the briefings. Military commanders have described possible situations that range from the best case - drawing American troops down to about 100,000 before the American elections in November - to keeping them at far higher numbers if the new Parliament turns to chaos, civil war threatens, or political leaders are assassinated.
"We've either built ourselves an exit ramp," one senior official involved in the discussions said this week, "or we've built ourselves a box."

Iraq's Perilous, Pricey Campaign
Violence pushes Iraqi politicians to rely on technology instead of shoe leather for Thursday's vote.
By Ilene R. Prusher
The Christian Science Monitor, 13 December 2005
Gearing up for their first free parliamentary election since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis are watching the battle for ballots in prime time, in an unprecedented campaign that features television among the essential tools to drum up support.
Fear of violence that has targeted both campaign foot soldiers and senior politicians has resulted in relatively little standard canvassing. There are few mass rallies or door-to-door visits, and only rare moments of shaking hands and kissing babies.
Instead, much of the battle for hearts and minds is taking place over the airwaves, where people can watch and listen safely from home.
But that makes campaigning costly - and many Iraqis say that as a result, only parties with outside financing can mount an effective public-relations campaign.
...Iraq's election season has turned into something of a free-for-all. There are no limits to how much airtime one can buy, nor on what can be said on air.
It's also permissible to give away free gifts. One of the most high-profile lists, the United Iraqi Alliance, an umbrella of 14 religious Shiite groups whose main parties now control the government, has been giving out business portfolios and calendars, along with other freebies that are aimed at bolstering their image as capable professionals, rather than fundamentalists.
...airtime goes to those who can pay. The price is about $10 a second, a high price for most in Iraq. Ahmad Chalabi, a one-time friend of the Bush administration and a candidate with enormous visibility ahead of Thursday's national ballot, has about 10 ads running on the station every day, Mr. Kamel says.

Bush's Strategy, Iraq's New Army Challenged by Ethnic Militias
Bloomberg.com, 13 December 2005
President George W. Bush's strategy for transforming Iraq is threatened by the growth of sectarian militias that are undercutting Iraq's nascent national army and fueling ethnic violence, according to analysts and former U.S. officials.
The Defense Department's intelligence agency says there are dozens of loosely organized Shiite armies in southern Iraq, Kurdish militias in the north that function like a regular army, and as many as 20,000 Sunni fighters who are part of the violent insurgency in Iraq's four central provinces.
Bush insisted yesterday that Iraq was moving steadily toward political unity even amid violence and turmoil. Fears ``that Iraq could break apart and fall into civil war'' are unjustified, he said during a speech in Philadelphia.
Some analysts don't share his optimism. ``The situation continues to deteriorate,'' said Anthony Cordesman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. ``It's a matter of the militias, new political organizations, Shiite groups'' and Iraqi security forces becoming ``forces for revenge or reprisal.''
...``The most important force in Iraq for breaking up the country and preventing a strong central government isn't the insurgency, it's the Kurds, and the second most important force is the Shiites,'' said James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica, California-based policy research group.
``The Kurds are the main proponent of a weak central government, and the Shiites are tending toward the Kurd view of strong regions and weak central governments,'' Dobbins said. ``The Kurdish Pesh Merga is the biggest militia in the country, and the second-biggest are Shiites, and they are in control of the parties that are going to win the election. If Iraq begins to divide, the insurgents themselves would comprise a third, Sunni militia.''

Senate Is Set to Require White House to Account for Secret Prisons
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 15 December 2005
The Senate is poised to approve a measure that would require the Bush administration to provide Congress with its most specific and extensive accounting about the secret prison system established by the Central Intelligence Agency to house terrorism suspects.
The measure includes amendments that would require the director of national intelligence to provide regular, detailed updates about secret detention facilities maintained by the United States overseas, and to account for the treatment and condition of each prisoner. The facilities, established after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, are thought to hold two dozen to three dozen terrorism suspects, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is said to be the mastermind of the attacks.
An agreement reached Wednesday between Democrats and Republicans called for the measure to be approved by unanimous consent, but it was unclear on Wednesday night when a final vote might occur.
While the C.I.A. has provided limited briefings to members of Congress about the detention facilities, the information has generally been shared with only a handful of Congressional leaders, who are prohibited from discussing the information with their colleagues.

House Defies Bush and Backs McCain on Detainee Torture
By ERIC SCHMITT
NYT, 14 December 2005
In an unusual bipartisan rebuke to the Bush administration, the House on Wednesday overwhelmingly endorsed Senator John McCain's measure to bar cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners in American custody anywhere in the world.
Although the vote was nonbinding, it put the Republican-controlled House on record in support of Mr. McCain's provision for the first time, at the very moment when the senator, a Republican, is at a crucial stage of tense negotiations with the White House, which strongly opposes his measure.
The vote also likely represents the lone opportunity that House members will have to express their sentiments on Mr. McCain's legislation. The Senate approved the measure in October, 90 to 9, as part of a military spending bill. But until Wednesday, the House Republican leadership had sought to avoid a direct vote on the measure to avoid embarrassing the White House.
The vote was on a motion to instruct House negotiators, who had just been appointed to work out differences between the House and Senate spending bills, to accept the Senate position on the McCain amendment.
The House bill, providing $453 billion for military programs, has no provision like Mr. McCain's, but if the negotiators follow these instructions to the letter, the final bill passed by Congress will.

Is it still called 'insurance?'
Health Plan Shopping
Marketplace, 14 December 2005
AUDIO LINK
It's the end of the year and many of us are shopping for a new health plan. Consumer Advocate Jamie Court warns us that we better read the fine print.

14 December 2005

We have met the enemy and...
Pentagon Spying on Citizens
MSNBC, NBC Evening News, 13 December 2005
AUDIO LINK (mp3 file)
Ever since 9/11 the Pentagon has been authorized to expand its intelligence collection to inside this country. Now NBC News has obtained a secret Pentagon database that indicate the U.S. military is collecting information on American peace activists and monitoring protests against the Iraq war to a degree that is drawing sharp criticism tonight.

Iraqi Torture Greater Than Feared
UPI, 14 December 2005
Officials found more than 120 victims of abuse in inspections of Iraqi Interior Ministry detention centers, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Tuesday.
At 13, the number of torture victims is far greater than previously disclosed, Khalilzad told The Washington Post.
An unnamed Iraqi official told the newspaper at least 12 Baghdad detainees suffered bones broken, pulled out fingernails, electric shocks and cigarette burns. A 13th victim was starved to "bones and skin," he said.
The discoveries fueled accusations by Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority that forces backing Iraq's new Shiite-dominated government have used kidnappings, torture and killings in unwarranted detentions.
Iraq's transition government again promised to stop abuses in its 1,000-plus detention centers.
U.S. President George Bush condemned torture tactics.
"Those who committed these crimes must be held to account," Bush said in a Philadelphia appearance Monday.
Officials declined to say whether torture victims were Sunnis, saying they feared political fallout in Thursday's Iraqi national elections.

U.S. Under Scrutiny for Kidnappings
By KATRIN BENNHOLD
NYT, 14 December 2005
Preliminary evidence suggests that American agents kidnapped people in European countries, held them there temporarily, and illegally transferred them across the countries' borders, a European investigator said Tuesday.
The investigator, Dick Marty, said he believed that the United States was no longer holding detainees in Europe, having transferred them to North Africa in early November, after The Washington Post reported that the C.I.A. maintained prisons in at least eight countries, including some in Eastern Europe.
Mr. Marty, who is investigating those reports and whether European governments had turned a blind eye to United States breaches of European rules on human rights, emphasized the preliminary nature of his report. According to the statement released Tuesday, it is based primarily on published information, continuing legal proceedings, talks with some of the nongovernmental organizations and individuals involved - including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - and discussions with journalists.
On that basis, Mr. Marty said in his interim report, "the elements we have gathered so far tend to reinforce the credibility of the allegations concerning the transport and temporary detention of detainees - outside all judicial procedure - in European countries." The report added, "Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards."
He sharply criticized the United States for failing to give a full accounting of its actions, notably during Ms. Rice's visit to Europe last week. But he also said he believed there was some degree of collaboration from European officials. Human Rights Watch has identified Poland as the site of the C.I.A.'s main base for holding and interrogating terrorist suspects and has said Romania was a key transit point for detainees. Both countries have denied the charges.
Washington and a number of European capitals have also come under pressure to account for dozens of C.I.A. flights on the continent, some of which are thought to have transported suspects to countries with a record of torture and cruel treatment.
[The Nature of Rice's Success in Europe]
...At least eight European Union member states, many of which have started their own investigations, demanded a clarification from the United States last month. Many decided to accept Ms. Rice's response for now. But until Mr. Marty publishes his final conclusions, officials say, the issue will not go away.
"We were given assurances by the Americans, and we don't have the intention to demand more," said a French diplomat, who in accordance with French practice spoke on condition of anonymity. "But we'll see what the Council of Europe investigation finds out."
Mr. Marty said the Legal and Human Rights Committee of the council would next debate the issue at the end of January.
SEE ALSO:
Council of Europe Probe Backs Claims of CIA Prison Flights
Forbes.com, 13 December 2005
The CIA appears to have abducted suspects in Europe and illegally transferred them to other countries, according to the preliminary results of a Council of Europe investigation released today.
'Legal proceedings under way in certain countries appear to show that individuals were abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal assistance procedures,' the Swiss senator who leads the inquiry, Dick Marty, said as he presented his findings to date.
The rapporteur's comments, made at a meeting of the Council of Europe's human rights committee, were released in an official statement from the 46-member rights and democracy body.
Marty said the results of his investigation added weight to reports that the CIA flew terror suspects to and from secret prisons in Europe, and called for European governments to fully investigate the claims.

Marine's Body Shipped as Freight
FreeMarketNews.com, 12 December 2005 -
The Bush administration's continued war on Iraq continues to anger those who ought to be its constituents. San Diego 10News reports that dead soldiers are being shipped freight to avoid publicity and perhaps to save costs. As 10News puts it: "Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag - greeted by a color guard. But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners - stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo."
The story tells of John Holley and his wife, Stacey, who discovered that the body of their only child, Matthew, who died in Iraq last month, would be arriving at Lindbergh Field via freight. "When someone dies in combat, they need to give them due respect they deserve for (the) sacrifice they made," John reportedly said. He and his wife, both Army veterans themselves, made some calls, and with the help of their representative, Sen., Barbara Boxer, Matthew was greeted with honor and respect. "Our familiarity with military protocol and things of that sort allowed us to kind of put our foot down - we're not sure other parents have that same knowledge," Stacey is quoted as saying.
The couple is now engaged in a campaign to "make sure every fallen hero gets the proper welcome." Reporters from 10News called the Defense Department for an explanation, where they reached a representative who said she "did not know why this is happening." - ST

A Religious Protest Largely From the Left
Conservative Christians Say Fighting Cuts in Poverty Programs Is Not a Priority
By Jonathan Weisman and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post, 14 December 2005
When hundreds of religious activists try to get arrested today to protest cutting programs for the poor, prominent conservatives such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will not be among them.
That is a great relief to Republican leaders, who have dismissed the burgeoning protests as the work of liberals. But it raises the question: Why in recent years have conservative Christians asserted their influence on efforts to relieve Third World debt, AIDS in Africa, strife in Sudan and international sex trafficking -- but remained on the sidelines while liberal Christians protest domestic spending cuts?
Conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family say it is a matter of priorities, and their priorities are abortion, same-sex marriage and seating judges who will back their position against those practices.
...At issue is a House-passed budget-cutting measure that would save $50 billion over five years by trimming food stamp rolls, imposing new fees on Medicaid recipients, squeezing student lenders, cutting child-support enforcement funds and paring agriculture programs. House negotiators are trying to reach accord with senators who passed a more modest $35 billion bill that largely spares programs for the poor.
At the same time, House and Senate negotiators are hashing out their differences on a tax-cutting measure that is likely to include an extension of cuts in the tax rate on dividends and capital gains.
To mainline Protestant groups and some evangelical activists, the twin measures are an affront, especially during the Christmas season. Leaders of five denominations -- the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church USA and United Church of Christ -- issued a joint statement last week calling on Congress to go back to the drawing board and come up with a budget that brings "good news to the poor."

Curbing Lobbyist Perks
Marketplace AM, 12 December 2005
AUDIO LINK
Congressional representatives turned lobbyists have special perks regular influence peddlers don't. But a new bill could level the playing field. Nancy Marshall Genzer has more.

"Dictionary of Republicanisms"
Diane Rehm Show, 13 December 2005
The editor of The Nation magazine discusses the current issue dedicated to the issue of torture, and a new book's satirical look at what she calls the "Orwellian doublespeak" of political leaders.

13 December 2005

Fraud, Bribery and Kickbacks...
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 13 December 2005
Earlier today we linked to the Washington Post's graphic detailing who got money from Jack Abramoff, his lobbying associates and his clients.
There's quite a lot to say about their run-down. Let me try to hit on a few points -- ones we plan on delving into in much more depth in the coming weeks and months.
First, ask yourself, if there was so much money spread around in both parties, why is it that of all the staffers and members of Congress either under indictment or under investigation, every single one seems to be a Republican?
Liberal bias in the Gonzales Justice Department? Probably not.
Let me suggest two very general answers which should put us back on some surer understanding of what this scandal is about -- both in the sense of big-picture substance and the legal direction it is likely to take.
First, lobbyists and their clients give money all over the place. That may be a problem in itself. But that's not the reason Jack Abramoff and his various cronies are in trouble. They're in trouble because they broke a lot of laws -- some to do with fraud and kickbacks, others to do with bribery, others to do with giving de facto inducements to congressional staffers, etc.
If a restaurant is run as a cover for a money-laundering operation, a list of everyone who ate there in the last five years doesn't tell you much about how the scheme went down. It may provide some clues, but not much more. You want to know how the money was laundered. A similar logic applies here.
Second, most of what happened in this scandal didn't happen with 'hard money', i.e., regulated contributions to federal campaigns and campaign committees.
Consider one example. The Post's graphic charts political giving from Abramoff, his associates and clients from 1999 through 2004. The total sum was roughly $5.3 million. During little more than half that period of time (1999-2002) Abramoff funnelled some $4.2 million to just one guy -- his old buddy Ralph Reed.
Certainly there's more to this scandal than these two numbers juxtaposed. But it gives you a sense of how much of the pie the Post discussion covers.
As I've written before, Jack Abramoff wasn't just a crooked lobbyist, he was running a slush fund. It can't be understood outside of the political machine he was part of.

An Imperial Presidency
Bush's travel schedule seems to involve as little contact as possible with the country he is in.
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek, 19 December 2005 issue
President Bush's most recent foreign trips, to Latin America and Asia, went off as expected. He was accompanied by 2,000 people, several airplanes, two helicopters and a tightly scripted schedule. He met few locals and saw little except palaces and conference rooms. When the program changed, it was to cut out dinners and meetings. Bush's travel schedule seems calculated to involve as little contact as possible with the country he is in. Perhaps the White House should look into the new teleconferencing technologies. If set up right, the president could soon conduct foreign policy without ever having to actually meet foreigners.
It's not that President Bush doesn't like foreigners. He does, some of them anyway. He admires Tony Blair, Junichiro Koizumi and Ariel Sharon, as well as a few others. But even with them—the "good men"—he doesn't really have a genuine give-and-take. Most conversations are brief, scripted and perfunctory. The president rarely talks to any foreign leader to get his opinions or assessment of events. Churchill lived in the White House for days while he and Franklin Roosevelt jointly planned allied strategy. Such collaboration with a foreign leader is unthinkable today. Insider accounts of Tony Blair's involvement with the Iraq war suggest that Blair was, at best, informed of policy before it took effect.
It is conventional wisdom that this lack of genuine communication with the world is a unique characteristic of George W. Bush.

Beyond The War Spin
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, 13 December 2005
...The neat summary of the new Republican home-front offensive was the tag line on a Republican National Committee ad: "Our country is at war. Our soldiers are watching and our enemies are too. Message to Democrats: Retreat and Defeat is not an option." Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert helpfully explained: "The Democratic Party sides with those who wish to surrender."
Attacks of this sort on Democrats are effective because Democrats help make them so. Democrats are so obsessed with not looking "weak" on defense that they end up making themselves look weak, period, by the way they respond to Republican attacks on their alleged weakness. Oh my gosh, many Democrats say, we can't associate ourselves with the likes of Howard Dean or Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader who recently called for a troop withdrawal within six months. Let's knife them before Karl Rove gets around to knifing us. Talk about a recipe for retreat and defeat.
But the Democrats' problem is not just one of political tactics. It's also rooted in a simple reality: Democrats in both houses of Congress have been divided on this war from the very beginning. House Democrats are, on the whole, more dovish than Senate Democrats. And the party's rank and file are, on the whole, more dovish than its congressional wing.
There is no magic solution to this problem, and Republicans will continue to exploit it. But if they do nothing else, Democrats have to stop being defensive in the face of Republican attacks. To suggest that the United States might be stronger if it found a way out from under an open-ended commitment in Iraq is neither weak nor unpatriotic. For a party to have differences over how to solve the seemingly intractable problems the Bush policy has created in Iraq is neither surprising nor feckless.
And to question this administration's optimistic claims is simply good sense in light of what has happened in Iraq up to now. After all, it's the administration's wildly optimistic assumptions that led us to fight a war with too few troops, too little planning, and Rodney King-like expectations that the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds would all just get along. In any event, why shouldn't Democrats be divided on the war? So is the rest of the country. And so are Republicans.
What's gone largely unnoticed is that while Democrats show their divisions on the war in Congress, Republicans are more divided at the grass roots. In the most recent New York Times/CBS News Poll, 76 percent of Democrats favored reducing our commitment to Iraq -- 40 percent were for pulling all the troops out, 36 percent for decreasing their numbers -- while 13 percent favored keeping current troop levels and 6 percent preferred increasing their ranks. Among Republicans, 16 percent favored increasing our troop levels, while 37 percent would keep them constant. On the other side, 41 percent supported decreasing our commitment, including the 10 percent who were for full withdrawal.
These are remarkable numbers: 16 percent of Republicans are more hawkish than the president, 41 percent are more dovish. Even in the president's own party, a majority has doubts about our current course.
The real patriots are not those who fall into line behind everything Bush says. They are the Republican and Democratic doubters who have pressured Bush into realizing that he has limited time in Iraq and an imperative to speak more realistically. In his speech yesterday, Bush actually admitted that "things did not always go as planned" in Iraq and that last January's elections "were not without flaws." From an administration that never admits mistakes, that's progress.
Message to Democrats: Buck up. Message to Republican ad makers: Democracy is about improving government through the uninhibited exchange of ideas. And, yes, our soldiers and enemies are watching.

Gerhard Schroeder's Sellout
Washington Post, 12 December 2005
IT'S THE SORT of behavior we have -- sadly -- come to expect from some in Congress. But when Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, announced last week that he was going to work for Gazprom, the Russian energy behemoth, he catapulted himself into a different league. It's one thing for a legislator to resign his job, leave his committee chairmanship and go to work for a company over whose industry he once had jurisdiction. It's quite another thing when the chancellor of Germany -- one of the world's largest economies -- leaves his job and goes to work for a company controlled by the Russian government that is helping to build a Baltic Sea gas pipeline that he championed while in office. To make the decision even more unpalatable, it turns out that the chief executive of the pipeline consortium is none other than a former East German secret police officer who was friendly with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, back when Mr. Putin was a KGB agent in East Germany. If nothing else, Mr. Schroeder deserves opprobrium for his bad taste.
But the announcement should also raise questions in German voters' minds about the real reasons Mr. Schroeder was so keen to see this pipeline project launched. The pipeline has cost Germany diplomatically by infuriating its Central European and Baltic neighbors. They point out that the Russian government chose to use the sea route rather than run a new pipeline alongside one that already exists on land, despite the far greater expense. The only possible reason for doing so was political: The Baltic Sea pipeline could allow Russia, a country that has made political use of its energy resources, to cut off gas to Central Europe and the Baltic states while still delivering gas to Germany. Many have wondered why Germany chose to go along with this project. Could it have been because the former chancellor realized that he was, in effect, creating his own future place of employment?

12 December 2005

Politics Über Alles
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 12 December 2005
A week ago it was reported that Justice Department lawyers had concluded at the time that the DeLay redistricting plan of 2003 violated the Voting Right Act, but that senior DOJ officials overruled that finding and okayed DeLay's plan anyway.
Justice Department officials have now instituted a policy to assure this never happens again. They have, as reported in today's Post, "barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics."
It's the Bush model: politics over expertise and/or law. Whether it's at the Pentagon, the CIA, Justice or the EPA hardly matters. The formula is consistent throughout.
SEE ALSO:
Bush Threatens U.N. Over Clinton Climate Speech
By Greg Sargent
New York Magazine, 11 December 2005
Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity.
Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said.
The threat set in motion a flurry of frantic back-channel negotiations between conference organizers and aides to Bush and Clinton that lasted into the night on Thursday, and at one point Clinton flatly told his advisers that he was going to pull out and not deliver the speech, the source said.
“It’s just astounding,” the source told New York Magazine. “It came through loud and clear from the Bush people—they wouldn’t sign the deal if Clinton were allowed to speak.” Clinton spokesman Jay Carson confirmed the dustup took place and that the former president had decided not to go out of fear of harming the negotiations, but Carson declined to comment further.
On Friday afternoon, Clinton did end up speaking at the conference, a global audience of diplomats, environmentalists, and others who were in the final hours of a two-week gathering devoted to discussing the future of the protocol, the existing emissions-controls agreement. In 1997, Al Gore, then vice-president, helped negotiate the protocol, but it never passed the Senate. In 2001, it was formally renounced by the Bush administration, which argues that cutting greenhouse-gas emissions would hurt the American economy.
Some delegations at the conference appear ready to move forward and renegotiate the agreement without the Bush administration. But environmentalists and conference organizers are holding out hope that the administration will reconsider and sign on to the treaty or take steps to implement tougher climate-control standards. Both options would be considered an improvement over current U.S. commitments. But the specter of Clinton’s speaking caused the Bush administration to threaten to walk away.
In his Friday speech, Clinton blasted the Bush administration’s opposition as “flat wrong.”
But the speech almost didn’t happen.
...A White House spokesman couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
SEE ALSO:
Military's Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive
By JEFF GERTH
NYT, 11 December 2005
The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company.
In state of the art studios, producers prepare the daily mix of music and news for the group's radio stations or spots for friendly television outlets. Writers putting out newspapers and magazines in Baghdad and Kabul converse via teleconferences. Mobile trailers with high-tech gear are parked outside, ready for the next crisis.
The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden.
"We call our stuff information and the enemy's propaganda," said Col. Jack N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, during a tour in June. Even in the Pentagon, "some public affairs professionals see us unfavorably," and inaccurately, he said, as "lying, dirty tricksters."
The recent disclosures that a Pentagon contractor in Iraq paid newspapers to print "good news" articles written by American soldiers prompted an outcry in Washington, where members of Congress said the practice undermined American credibility and top military and White House officials disavowed any knowledge of it. President Bush was described by Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, as "very troubled" about the matter. The Pentagon is investigating.
But the work of the contractor, the Lincoln Group, was not a rogue operation. Hoping to counter anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, the Bush administration has been conducting an information war that is extensive, costly and often hidden, according to documents and interviews with contractors, government officials and military personnel.
The campaign was begun by the White House, which set up a secret panel soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate information operations by the Pentagon, other government agencies and private contractors.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of most of the activities, the military operates radio stations and newspapers, but does not disclose their American ties. Those outlets produce news material that is at times attributed to the "International Information Center," an untraceable organization.
Lincoln says it planted more than 1,000 articles in the Iraqi and Arab press and placed editorials on an Iraqi Web site, Pentagon documents show. For an expanded stealth persuasion effort into neighboring countries, Lincoln presented plans, since rejected, for an underground newspaper, television news shows and an anti-terrorist comedy based on "The Three Stooges."
SEE ALSO:
Death of an American City
NYT, 11 December 2005
We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.
We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.
There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.
At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

Iraq Prison Raid Finds a New Case of Mistreatment
By EDWARD WONG
NYT, 12 December 2005
American and Iraqi forces raiding an Iraqi government detention center last Thursday in Baghdad discovered more than 600 prisoners packed into a cramped space, 13 of them mistreated so badly they had to be taken to a hospital, a senior American official said early Monday.
The raid was the second in the past month in which American forces have uncovered mistreatment of prisoners at the hands of Interior Ministry officials. On Nov. 15, soldiers with the Third Infantry Division, charged with controlling Baghdad, entered a ministry bunker in central Baghdad and found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured. Most of those prisoners were Sunni Arabs.
The detention center raided Thursday, situated to the east of the Tigris River, is run by a commando unit from the Interior Ministry, which oversees the country's police forces, said the senior American official, Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill, a spokesman for the American detention system in Iraq. When members of the search team entered the building, he said, they found "overcrowded" conditions that prompted them to begin transferring the prisoners.
"Thirteen of them were removed due to medical reasons and sent to a hospital," the colonel said in a telephone interview, declining to specify exactly what signs of abuse or torture, if any, the prisoners might have exhibited. Iraqi officials are still investigating the findings, he added. A total of 625 prisoners had been kept in the center.
Sunni leaders immediately denounced the Shiite-led government after the Nov. 15 discovery, and some have repeatedly raised the issue during campaigning for the parliamentary elections on Thursday.
The Interior Ministry is run by Bayan Jabr, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading religious Shiite party that has an Iranian-trained armed wing called the Badr Organization. Many Iraqi officials have said the ministry has recruited heavily from Badr and other Shiite militias, and there is growing evidence that such forces are abducting, torturing and killing Sunni Arabs.

One Man's Arabia
Review by GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
NYT's Book Review, 11 December 2005
'The Great War for Civilisation,'
by Robert Fisk
...there is plenty here to make us think again about where the region is heading, and why. Some of Fisk's points are very telling. Next time the president informs us of the noble and beneficent cause of democracy, read Fisk on Algeria, which did indeed have democratic elections, only they were unfortunately won by the wrong party in the form of the Islamic extremists.
And as a break from the latest grim news coming out of Baghdad, have a look at what a correspondent for Fisk's old paper, The Times of London, said about Iraq. Many people "think that the local inhabitants will welcome us because we have saved them," and that the country only needs developing to repay our expenditure, but this is clearly wrong, since "we are asking the Arab to exchange his pride and independence for a little Western civilization."
That was written in September 1919. Another commentator said that in Iraq we have been led "into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. . . . Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. . . . We are today not far from a disaster." The writer was none other than T. E. Lawrence - in August 1920. Did someone say what goes around comes around?

Iraq's Sunnis Urge Talks with Rebels
U.S. pullout alone won't avert civil war, they say
- Robert Collier
San Francisco Chronicle, 11 December 2005
As the Bush administration and congressional Democrats argue over whether and when to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sunni Arabs with extensive knowledge of the insurgency say that troop withdrawal by itself will not halt the violence consuming the country.
In interviews conducted by telephone from the United States and in Iraq, political and religious leaders and other prominent Sunni Arabs warned that if a unilateral U.S. withdrawal is not accompanied by other steps, including negotiations with insurgent groups, an all-out civil war between the majority Shiites and the Sunnis could result.
These Sunni Arabs, all of whom are strong opponents of the U.S. military presence, expressed concern about a possible anti-Sunni crackdown after Thursday's elections, which surveys suggest will be won by a Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance. Such fears have been sparked by speculation that the new government may give free rein to the alliance's Badr Corps militia, which has been accused by Sunnis and some U.S. officials of recent death-squad style killings of Sunnis.
Late last month, U.S. troops raided a secret Interior Ministry compound run by the Badr Corps and said that scores of Sunni prisoners had been tortured, a charge the Iraqi interior minister denied. The political leader of the Badr Corps, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, criticized the U.S. raid as "major interference" and demanded a harsher approach to the counterinsurgency war, including the arrest of Sunni political leaders who are suspected of ties to the insurgency.
"If Iraq is going to be under control of those evil people in the alliance, you will see a lot more bloodshed, there will be total chaos, you will find no moderates left in Iraq," said Dr. Hatem Mukhlis, an Iraqi American medical doctor who leads the Assembly of Patriots, a Sunni-led coalition of secular parties.
Under the Sunnis' worst-case scenario, President Bush would begin a pullout of American ground troops soon after the election, claiming the new government increasingly capable of handling the country's security. This, the Sunnis interviewed say, could lead to Shiite-led scorched-earth counterinsurgency campaigns in Sunni areas, backed by U.S. air raids, intelligence and logistics.

Accepting Nobel, ElBaradei Urges a Rethinking of Nuclear Strategy
By WALTER GIBBS
NYT, 11 December 2005
The world should stop treating the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea as isolated cases and instead deal with them in a common effort to eliminate poverty, organized crime and armed conflict, the director general of the United Nations' nuclear monitoring agency said Saturday in accepting the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.
The director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said a "good start" would be for the United States and other nuclear powers to cut nuclear weapon stockpiles sharply and redirect spending toward international development.
"More than 15 years after the end of the cold war, it is incomprehensible to many that the major nuclear weapon states operate with their arsenals on hair-trigger alert," Dr. ElBaradei, 63, said.
Despite some disarmament, he continued, the existence of 27,000 nuclear warheads in various hands around the world still hold the prospect of "the devastation of entire nations in a matter of minutes."

10 December 2005

Video and Text of What You Did Not Hear Harold Pinter Say
Harold Pinter – Nobel Lecture
Art, Truth & Politics
NobelPrize.org, 8 December 2005
...As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.
The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.
But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.
Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.
But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.
The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.
I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.
The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'
Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.
Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.
Finally somebody said: 'But in this case “innocent people” were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'
Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.
As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.
I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'
The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.
The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.
The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.
I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.
Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.
The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.
But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'
It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.
The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.
What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.
The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.
We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.
Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.
Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.
The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.
Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.
I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.
The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.
The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.
Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force – yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.
I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.
'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'
A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection – unless you lie – in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.
I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.

U.S. Rebuffs Red Cross Request for Access to Detainees Held in Secret
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
NYT, 10 December 2005
The United States said Friday that it would continue to deny the International Committee of the Red Cross access to "a very small, limited number" of prisoners who are held in secret around the world, saying they are terrorists being kept incommunicado for reasons of national security and are not guaranteed any rights under the Geneva Conventions.
Adam Ereli, the State Department's deputy spokesman, said the United States would not alter its position after the president of the International Red Cross said in Geneva that his organization was holding discussions to gain access to all detainees, including those held in secret locations.
Mr. Ereli said that the Geneva Conventions requiring humane treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to certain terrorism suspects seized as "unlawful enemy combatants," but that, in any case, the United States treats most of them as prisoners of war.
"We're going the extra mile here," Mr. Ereli said, by allowing the Red Cross access to Al Qaeda suspects and others held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. The Red Cross also has access to prisoners held in Iraq.
Aside from those detainees, about two or three dozen terrorism suspects, including a handful of top Al Qaeda operatives, are said by current and former intelligence officials to be held in secret locations.
On Thursday in Geneva, John Bellinger, the senior legal adviser of the State Department, acknowledged that the International Red Cross does not have access to all detainees held by American forces but declined to discuss the existence of secret detention centers.
The Red Cross has recognized that some of those held by the United States are not prisoners of war, and do not have the full protection of the Geneva Conventions. But it has argued that no prisoners, not even those alleged to be terrorists, should fall into what it calls a "black hole" outside any protection under international humanitarian law. A central purpose of the Red Cross is to visit prisoners and protect their human rights.

Doctor Links Merck Trial to His Demotion
By ALEX BERENSON
NYT, 10 December 2005
Less than a week after his videotaped lambasting of Merck was played in a Houston federal courthouse, Dr. Eric Topol, a prominent cardiologist, has lost his title as chief academic officer of the Cleveland Clinic's medical college.
In the courthouse yesterday, jurors continued deliberating whether Merck's painkiller Vioxx had caused the death of a Florida main in 2001.
Dr. Topol said yesterday that he believed that his demotion might be related to his testimony in that case, the third Vioxx lawsuit to reach trial. Dr. Topol has questioned Vioxx's safety for years and said in his testimony, played in court last Saturday, that he believed that Merck acted irresponsibly and committed scientific misconduct when it promoted Vioxx.
"The hardest thing in the world is just trying to tell the truth, to do the right thing for patients, and you get vilified," he said yesterday. "No wonder nobody stands up to the industry."

A Republican Tom DeLay Problem
NYT, 10 December 2005
It may be dawning on House Republicans that Representative Tom DeLay's time as their majority leader is truly over, despite the bold Texan's resolve to regain his grip on Congress. Whatever the outcome of his trial on felony charges of laundering political money, Mr. DeLay's root problem has been laid bare. It is outsized hubris, which is ever clearer to the public and ever more a G.O.P. millstone.
The question for the Republicans - many of them entangled in Mr. DeLay's bountiful network of fund-raising riches - is how fast they can learn from all this. When, if ever, will they enact believable reforms of Congress's big-money wallow?
Mr. DeLay's downfall came by his own hand, with a successful scheme to bankroll Texas election victories so a Statehouse majority would gerrymander five more G.O.P. seats for him in Congress. The partisan map was faulted as illegal by civil rights staff members at the Justice Department, but they were overruled by Republican appointees. This is political hubris on a national scale, directed at the heart of democracy.

U.S., Under Fire, Eases Its Stance in Climate Talks
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
NYT, 10 December 2005
The United States dropped its opposition early Saturday morning to nonbinding talks on addressing global warming after a few words were adjusted in the text of statements that, 24 hours earlier, prompted a top American official to walk out on negotiations.
At the same time, other industrialized nations that have signed on to the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty binding them to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, agreed to start meeting to set new deadlines once the existing pact's terms expire in 2012.
Such is the nature of progress in the 17-years-and-counting effort by the world's nations to act in the face of scientists' conclusions that emissions from burning essential fuels like coal and oil are raising temperatures and could potentially disrupt climate patterns and inundate coasts.

9 December 2005

Suicide Bomber Hits Bus in Baghdad, Kills 40, Wounds 70
By MARIA NEWMAN
NYT, 9 December 2005
A bomb set off by a suicide bomber exploded on a bus this morning as it was about to set off to the south from a major bus terminal in Baghdad, killing at least 30 people and wounding 25 others, and scattering debris and broken glass into the surrounding business district.
Most of those who died were on board the bus, which was headed to the southern Shiite city of Nasiriyah, and other casualties came from a crowd gathered around a nearby food stall, police and interior ministry officials said.
The bus terminal, equivalent to New York City's Port Authority bus terminal, was the site of a series of car bomb explosions in August, when 43 people were killed, and 89 were injured, during the height of rush hour.
Those bombs appeared to be aimed at Shiite Arabs boarding buses and shared taxis bound for cities in the south, and further inflamed sectarian tensions.
In today's explosion, a passenger boarded a bus with explosives strapped to his waist.

Qaeda-Iraq Link U.S. Cited Is Tied to Coercion Claim
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 9 December 2005
The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.
The fact that Mr. Libi recanted after the American invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the C.I.A. in March 2004 has been public for more than a year. But American officials had not previously acknowledged either that Mr. Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that Mr. Libi contended that his statements had been coerced.
...The question of why the administration relied so heavily on the statements by Mr. Libi has long been a subject of contention. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, made public last month unclassified passages from the February 2002 document, which said it was probable that Mr. Libi "was intentionally misleading the debriefers."
The document showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had identified Mr. Libi as a probable fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons.
Mr. Levin has since asked the agency to declassify four other intelligence reports, three of them from February 2002, to see if they also expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility. On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. Levin said he could not comment on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Libi's detention because the matter was classified.

How Money, the GOP and Power Politics Is Destroying Democracy in America
Off Center
Book by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Even though most Americans are politically moderate, American politics is careening to the right. Why? And what can be done?
The Republicans who run American government today have defied the normal laws of political gravity. They have ruled with the slimmest of majorities, yet transformed the nation’s governing priorities. They have strayed dramatically from the moderate middle of public opinion, yet faced little public backlash. Again and again, they have sided with the affluent and the ultra-conservative, while paying little heed to the broad majority of Americans. And more often than not, they have come out on top. In OFF CENTER: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy (Yale University Press; publication date October 20, 2005; $25), Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson provide a groundbreaking explanation of the Right’s new might—and make clear why this troubling state of affairs can and must be changed.
Should we simply blame President George W. Bush and his administration?
No. Bush has abetted the trends that Hacker and Pierson describe, but he is hardly the only politician who has headed off center. The story that the authors tell is not of one powerful leader overriding public sentiment and democratic procedures. It is actually more troubling: It is the story of a systemic weakening of the bonds between ordinary voters and elected politicians.
Can American politics be brought back to the center?
Yes—if Americans understand the stakes. Hacker and Pierson call for new reforms to increase the political resources of the middle and to make elections more competitive and politicians more accountable. With some important reforms, they believe the center can hold.
SEE ALSO:
Interview with Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson on NPR's Fresh Air
SEE ALSO:
The tangled web of the Abramoff Scandal
Interview with Philip Shenon reporter for The New York Times.
Fresh Air from WHYY, 30 November 2005
The grand jury investigation of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff has taken many twists and turns in recent months. While investigators are still determining the extent of Abramoff's influence with lawmakers of both parties, an associate of Abramoff's has pled guilty to conspiracy.
Michael Scanlon, who became Abramoff's business partner after being an aide to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), admitted to conspiring with an unnamed lobbyist to defraud clients of millions of dollars and to bribe a member of Congress and other officials.
As part of his plea deal, Scanlon agreed to repay $19.6 million to the Indian tribes that were his clients. The tribes paid Abramoff and his firm $80 million in fees. Reporter Philip Shenon has been covering the case for The New York Times.
The main investigation is continuing -- and it has broadened to include Abramoff's ties with congressmen and a White House budget official among others. Court papers filed earlier this month allege that Scanlon and Abramoff sought to offer and provide things of value, including money, meals, trips and entertainment, to public officials in return for agreements to perform official acts.
The latest revelation in the story concerns Senate Indian Affairs Committee Vice Chairman Byron Dorgan. A lawyer for the Louisiana Coushatta Indians has told The Associated Press that in 2002, Abramoff instructed the tribe to send $5,000 to Sen. Byron Dorgan's political group. The suggestion came weeks after the North Dakota Democrat supported an Indian school construction program.

GOP Control of the 4th Branch of Government: Lobbyists
Tracking Influence's Money Trail
Alex Knott interviewed by Terry Gross
Fresh Air from WHYY, 8 December 2005
Hundreds of recent trips made by White House officials are underwritten by private entities. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, the total spent over one seven-year span totaled nearly $1.5 million.
Alex Knott, a political editor at the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, produced the research, which details the expenses shouldered by federal contractors, lobbyists and other groups.
Knott covers politics and lobbying at the Center for Public Integrity, which researches and reports on public policy issues.
SEE ALSO:
Traveling Executive Class
Federal contractors, lobbying companies and outside groups spend almost $1.5 million to sponsor trips for White House employees
By Alex Knott
LobbyWatch, 30 November 2005
White House staffers such as Karl Rove have a lot more options than most ordinary folks when they want to get away for a while. Whether it's for trips to the snowy ski slopes of Colorado or the sandy beaches of Key West, plenty of corporations and other organizations are willing to pick up the tab in exchange for priceless face time with some of the most powerful people in Washington, D.C.
But Rove, President Bush's closest advisor, is far from alone.
SEE ALSO:
The Ethics Truce Lives On
By Melanie Sloan
From: TPMCafe Special Guests
...Congress has a constitutional obligation to police itself, but members are full of excuses as to why they can't or won't file ethics complaints. The truth is that the Democratic leadership doesn't allow anyone to file a complaint for fear of retaliation, not exactly a profile in courage. Congressional inaction on ethics has forced the Department of Justice to criminally investigate conduct once left to the jurisdiction of the ethics committees. It is abundantly clear that the House leadership - both Democratic and Republican - will take ethics seriously only when we, as citizens and voters, force them to.

Before 9/11, Warnings on bin Laden
By SCOTT SHANE
NYT, 9 December 2005
More than three years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, American diplomats warned Saudi officials that Osama bin Laden might target civilian aircraft, according to a newly declassified State Department cable.
The cable was one of two documents released Thursday by the National Security Archive, a research organization at George Washington University that obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act. The other was a memorandum written five days after the 2001 attacks by George J. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, to his top deputies, titled "We're at War."
The June 1998 cable reported to Washington that three American officials, the State Department's regional security officer, an economics officer and an aviation specialist had met Saudi officials at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh to pass along a warning based on an interview Mr. bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of Al Qaeda, had just given to ABC News.
They said he had threatened in the interview to strike in the next "few weeks" against "military passenger aircraft," mentioning surface-to-air missiles. The cable said there was "no specific information that indicates bin Laden is targeting civilian aircraft," but added, "We could not rule out that a terrorist might take the course of least resistance and turn to a civilian target."
Part of the Tenet memo had been reported previously in Bob Woodward's 2002 book, "Bush At War." The eight-paragraph Tenet letter was a call to arms, declaring "a worldwide war against Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations" and saying that the effort would require "our absolute and total dedication."
The 2001 document echoed an earlier memo about Al Qaeda that Mr. Tenet had sent on Dec. 4, 1998, to top C.I.A. officials and other intelligence agencies, stating: "We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort." But the national 9/11 commission concluded last year that the 1998 memo had "little overall effect" on mobilizing the agencies to fight terrorism.

Can Marketing Overcome Iraq Mistakes?
By Ron Elving
NPR's Watching Washington, 8 December 2005
Finding itself embattled over the war in Iraq, the Bush administration has launched a major offensive -- not on the war front, but on the home front.
The president has now given two speeches reintroducing the nation to his view of the situation in Iraq, a view propounded at length in "Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," a 35-page document released last week.
Vice President Dick Cheney is aggressively out on the stump, too, while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld huddles with small groups of legislators on Capitol Hill.
The upbeat tone of all this, the pounding of the word victory and the brave show of commitment are all designed to convey and instill one thing: Confidence.
Among the several administration thinkers involved in producing this offensive was Peter D. Feaver, a political scientist from Duke University and a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve. Feaver and his Duke colleague Christopher Gelpi argue that Americans can be re-energized at this stage of the war. They say Americans are not as casualty-averse as is often supposed and will accept sacrifice, in blood and treasure, so long as they see it leading to success.
The problem with the war in Iraq, then, is that the vision of victory has been too vague, too uncertain or simply too remote.
To combat this perceived problem, the new approach combines a dash of realism with a strong restatement of stoicism. The realism reaches for credibility, in part by admitting some mistakes were made. Without dwelling on any specifics, Mr. Bush alluded to errors in the rebuilding of Iraq in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations this week.
It was far from a searing self-critique, to be sure, but it represented a reversal in the longstanding White House attitude of "never explain, never apologize." The vice president and secretary of defense have also made similar, if grudging, admissions.
Having made this concession, however, the new approach quickly returns to the main themes the administration has pursued over the past two years. To wit:
• Iraq has become the central front in the war on terror.
• We cannot lose the war on terror, so we cannot abandon its central front.
• Without U.S. troops, Iraq would be in chaos, bringing a return to tyrannical rule.
• An abandoned Iraq would become a safe haven and base of operations for al Qaeda.
Never mind for the moment that any or all of these statements may be, in varying degrees, debatable. The point of the new approach is to set forth these clear points and to hammer them home with assurance. Doing so will make more Americans aware of what we are doing in Iraq, and why. The theory presumes this will make more of them supportive.
With more people buying in at home, the troops will feel better about being in Iraq and will fight more effectively. Iraqis will be trained more quickly and take over the military and civil struggle sooner. The U.S. presence can be reduced and eventually ended. Increased confidence at home leads directly to victory. Believing it will happen makes it so.

Tax Cut Showdown
NYT, 9 December 2005
The House of Representatives passed two major tax-cut bills this week. One deserves to become law; the other deserves to die. It will be up to the Senate to make sure that happens.
On Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would shield millions of taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax next year. The relief is expensive - costing nearly $30 billion - but it's critical. Without it, many middle-class Americans, who were never the intended target for the alternative tax, would be suddenly forced to pay higher taxes when they filed their 2005 tax returns. (The alternative tax was intended to stop rich people with lots of shelters from escaping their tax burden entirely, but it has not been changed to reflect inflation or the tax cuts passed under President Bush.)
The good news ended there. The House irresponsibly neglected to include any offsetting tax increases to help pay for the tax relief. (The Senate's tax bill includes $19 billion in offsetting tax increases.) Even more egregious, the House passed yet another tax bill a day later that would drain the Treasury of $56 billion of additional revenue over the next five years. Of that total, $21 billion would be used to extend, through 2010, special low tax rates for investors' dividends and capital gains. Those rates are set to expire at the end of 2008.
The extension is both unaffordable and gratuitous. Most of the benefits would flow to taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year. That's morally reprehensible at a time when the House and the Senate are moving toward an agreement to cut as much as $45 billion over five years from domestic programs like Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child-support enforcement. And it comes at a time when the government is already borrowing extensively for all manner of undertakings, like the war in Iraq and the new prescription drug benefit for Medicare.
The Republican House leaders are also plotting to make it easier to get the unnecessary tax cuts for investors through the somewhat more responsible Senate. To date, moderate Senate Republicans have blocked the budget-busting investor tax breaks. The Senate tax bill, passed last month, includes alternative tax relief, but does not extend the preferential rates for investment income.
In a cagey maneuver, the House leaders have organized their legislation so the popular measure on the alternative minimum tax can stand on its own when it gets to the Senate, while the unwise tax reductions for investors can be inserted into a fast-track tax bill, which will, under special rules, be protected against any filibusters when it comes up for a final vote in the Senate. That will make it far easier for senators to abandon all restraint and vote for the House agenda.
It's not certain that the Senate will go along with this plan. The right course is clear: responsible senators should approve alternative minimum tax relief, but stand firm against machinations that would tart up the tax code with additional giveaways for the wealthiest Americans. Rampant tax cutting must be stopped in the face of deficits, looming budget obligations and the painful sacrifices being demanded of the poor.

The Promiser in Chief
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 9 December 2005
Sometimes reconstruction delayed is reconstruction denied.
A few months after the invasion of Iraq, President Bush promised to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and economy. He - or, at any rate, his speechwriters - understood that reconstruction was important not just for its own sake, but as a way to deprive the growing insurgency of support. In October 2003 he declared that "the more electricity is available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become."
But for a long time, Iraqi reconstruction was more of a public relations exercise than a real effort. Remember when visiting congressmen were taken on tours of newly painted schools?
Both supporters and opponents of the war now argue that by moving so slowly on reconstruction, the Bush administration missed a crucial window of opportunity. By the time reconstruction spending began in earnest, it was in a losing race with a deteriorating security situation.
As a result, the electricity and jobs that were supposed to make the killers desperate never arrived. Iraq produced less electricity last month than in October 2003. The Iraqi government estimates the unemployment rate at 27 percent, but the real number is probably much higher.
Now we're losing another window of opportunity for reconstruction. But this time it's at home.
Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush made an elaborately staged appearance in New Orleans, where he promised big things. "The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region," he said, "will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen."
Such an effort would be the right thing to do. We can argue about details - about which levees should be restored and how strong to make them - but it's clearly in the nation's interests as well as local residents' to rebuild much of the regional economy.
But Mr. Bush seems to have forgotten about his promise. More than three months after Katrina, a major reconstruction effort isn't even in the planning stage, let alone under way. "To an extent almost inconceivable a few months ago," a Los Angeles Times report about New Orleans says, "the only real actors in the rebuilding drama at the moment are the city's homeowners and business owners."
It's worth noting in passing that Mr. Bush hasn't even appointed a new team to fix the dysfunctional Federal Emergency Management Agency. Most of the agency's key positions, including the director's job - left vacant by the departure of Michael "heck of a job" Brown - are filled on an acting basis, by temporary place holders. The chief of staff is still a political loyalist with no prior disaster management experience.
...Funny, isn't it? Back during the 2000 campaign Mr. Bush promised to avoid "nation building." And so he has. He failed to rebuild Iraq because he waited too long to get started. And now he's doing the same thing here at home.

CIA 'Emptied Secret Jails' Before Rice Europe Trip
By Alec Russell in Washington and Kate Connolly in Berlin
Telegraph (UK), 7 December 2005
The CIA last month emptied two secret prisons in Eastern Europe of terrorist suspects in a frantic effort to defuse the "rendition" controversy ahead of Condoleezza Rice's visit to Europe, sources in the agency have claimed.
Eleven leading al-Qa'eda suspects were transferred to a new CIA facility in North Africa, current and former officers told ABC television.

Medical Journal Criticizes Merck Over Vioxx Data
By ALEX BERENSON
NYT, 9 December 2005
An influential medical journal accused Merck yesterday of misrepresenting the results of a crucial clinical trial of the painkiller Vioxx to play down its heart risks.
..."They did not disclose all they knew," Dr. Curfman said. "There were serious negative consequences for the public health as a result of that."
In criticizing Merck and the study's authors at a time when the company's credibility is at issue in lawsuits, the journal is taking an extraordinary step. The publication is well respected and widely read by doctors and scientists, with a circulation of almost 200,000.
Merck said in its statement that it had acted properly and promptly disclosed the results of the Vigor study, which found that the drug was more likely to cause heart problems than another pain drug. The November 2000 article "fairly and accurately described the results of the study," the company said.
But Dr. Curfman said the study's authors had originally included some data unfavorable to Vioxx, then deleted it. Lawyers for plaintiffs said they believed that the journal's allegation would undercut the company's defense.
...In the editorial, "Expression of Concern," the journal said that the authors of the study had deleted some data about strokes and other vascular problems suffered by patients in the Vigor trial two days before it submitted the results to the publication.
The authors, some of whom worked for Merck, also underreported the number of heart attacks suffered by patients taking Vioxx, claiming that there were 17 heart attacks when there were actually 20, the journal said. The authors have been asked to correct the study, the journal said.
The authors of the Vigor study included independent researchers and Merck scientists, among them Dr. Alise Reicin, who has been a crucial figure in the company's courtroom defense. The study's results showed that patients taking Vioxx were four times as likely to suffer heart attacks as those taking naproxen, an older painkiller, which is known by the brand name Aleve. In fact, 20 patients taking Vioxx suffered heart attacks, compared with 4 taking naproxen, a ratio of five-to-one.
...The memo also shows that Dr. Reicin and Dr. Shapiro knew of strokes and serious vascular problems suffered by patients taking Vioxx, Dr. Curfman said.
Dr. Curfman said that, separately, he and other editors had examined the diskette on which the article was sent to the journal and found that the study's authors deliberately removed information about strokes and vascular problems two days before they submitted the study.
"There was some methodical editing of the manuscript to remove data," he said.
The information in the memo appears to contradict extensive testimony that Dr. Reicin gave in July in Angleton, Tex., in the first Vioxx suit to reach trial, said W. Mark Lanier, the plaintiff's lawyer in that case. Dr. Reicin should be investigated for perjury for her testimony, Mr. Lanier said.
"It totally destroys Reicin as a witness," Mr. Lanier said. "I think her testimony in the past is going to really come back and bite her."

8 December 2005

Sharing the Sacrifice, or Ending It
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 8 December 2005
If it is true, as President Bush and many others have argued, that horrific consequences will result if American forces are pulled from Iraq in the near future, then how is it that we are even considering a significant drawdown of troops in advance of next fall's Congressional elections?
...As it stands now, the United States is incapable of defeating the insurgency with the forces it has in Iraq. So it is beyond preposterous to think that Iraq can be pacified in a year or 18 months or two years by a fledgling, underequipped Iraqi Army and a hapless police force riddled with brutal, partisan militias.
What's more, the U.S. military itself is in danger of cracking under the strain of this endless Iraq ordeal. Troops are being sent into the war zone for their third and fourth tours, which is hideously unfair. The more times you roll the dice, the more likely snake eyes will pop up.
Even with lowered standards, the Army can't meet its recruitment goals. And the National Guard and Reserves have been all but exhausted by the war effort.
The combination of troop shortages, declining public support for the war and the Republicans' anxiety over next year's elections all but ensures some substantial reduction in U.S. forces in Iraq over the next eight to 12 months.
And yet the hawks say we must continue the fight. Well, wars fought with one eye on the polls and one eye on the political calendar get lots of people killed for nothing.
If this war is worth fighting, it's worth fighting right. And that means mobilizing not just the handful of troops who have borne the burden of this wretched conflict, but the entire nation. Taxes would have to be raised, the military expanded, the forces in Iraq bolstered and a counterinsurgency strategy developed that would have some chance of actually defeating the enemy.
To do that would require implementing a draft. It's easy to make the case for war when the fighting will be done by other people's children.
If this war is as important as the hawks insist it is, the burden should be shared by all of us. The youngsters sacrificed on the altar of Iraq should be drawn from the widest possible swath of the general population.
If most Americans are unwilling to send their children to fight in Iraq, it must mean that most Americans do not feel that winning the war is absolutely essential.
The truth is that no one knows for sure what will happen if we pull our troops out of Iraq. Many of those who insist that the sky will fall were insisting three years ago that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that invading U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators.
The public initially supported this war because the administration was very effective at promoting the canard that Iraq was somehow linked to Al Qaeda and involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Now the hawks must once again bear the burden of persuasion. They must persuade the public that the U.S. should continue indefinitely fighting this war, which has embedded us in such a hellish predicament and taken such a horrendous toll.
If it's not worth fighting, then we should be preparing an orderly exit now.

Murtha Says U.S. Fighting 'Insurgents' Not 'Terrorists'
AP via NYT, 7 December 2005
...Bush's effort to rebuild support on Iraq comes as polls show Bush's approval rating at the lowest of his presidency: 37 percent in a recent AP-Ipsos poll, with a majority of Americans now saying the war was a mistake.
One of the administration's harshest critics in recent weeks has been Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a longtime hawk on military matters who now wants U.S. troops to pull out of Iraq.
Murtha suggested Tuesday that the administration was trying to justify the U.S. presence in Iraq by saying it was necessary to fight terrorism. Instead, Murtha said the problem was insurgents rebelling against the U.S. presence and U.S.-backed government.
''When you fight an insurgency, you have to win the hearts and minds of the (Iraqi) people, and we've lost the hearts and minds of the people,'' Murtha told NBC's ''Today'' show. Once the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, he said, the Iraqis themselves would take care of terrorist groups.
Cheney argued differently.
''Some have suggested by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq in September 2001 and the terrorists hit us anyway.''
If the U.S. suddenly pulled out of Iraq, ''that nation would return to the rule of tyrants, become a massive source of instability in the Middle East and be a staging area for ever greater attacks against America and other civilized nations,'' the vice president said.
Cheney was one of the administration's most forceful advocates of toppling Saddam's regime before the war that has now lasted 2 1/2 years. And he has lately been one of the most vocal defenders of Bush's appeals to stay the course in Iraq.

War Crimes Made Easy
How the Bush administration legalized intelligence deceptions, assassinations, and aggressive war
by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
TomDispatch, 7 December 2005
How has the Bush administration gotten away with such apparently illegal acts as hiding intelligence reports from Congress, creating secret prisons, establishing death squads, kidnapping people and spiriting them across national borders, and planning unprovoked wars? Part of the answer lies in the administration's deliberate effort, initiated even before Sept. 11, 2001, to tear down any existing legal and institutional means for preventing, exposing, or punishing violations of national and international law by American officials.
Back in 2002, Adriel Bettleheim wrote in the Congressional Quarterly that Vice President Dick Cheney "considers it the responsibility of the current administration to reclaim those lost powers for the institution of the presidency." Indeed, the Bush administration has tried to remove all conceivable restrictions on the "imperial presidency," setting its sights in particular on dismantling the Freedom of Information Act, the Intelligence Oversight Act, and the War Powers Resolution. Restoring limits on the power of the executive branch to conceal information, tell (and hide) lies, make war at its own discretion, or kidnap, torture, and kill without interference from Congress, the courts, and the public will be crucial tasks, if future Abu Ghraibs are to be prevented.

George Lakoff on Moral Politics:
How Liberals and Conservatives Think
Prof. George Lakoff
University of California Television
UC Berkeley professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics George Lakoff explores how successful political debates are framed by using language targeted to people's values instead of their support for specific government programs in this public lecture sponsored by the Helen Edison Series at UC San Diego.
Watch it now using RealPlayer.

How Big Pharma transformed the drug market
The Great American Medicine Show
Prof. Nancy Tomes
University of California Television
Today's controversies over pharmaceutical promotions to physicians and prescription drug ads aimed at consumers are but the latest chapters in a long running controversy over the proper place of drug advertising in American medicine. Professor Nancy Tomes from SUNY-Stoney Brook explores the complex relationships between modern medicine and modern advertising. Since the late 1800s, doctors and lay people alike have worried about the impact of advertising on the doctor-patient relationship. Prior to the prescription drug revolution of the 1940s, concern about such advertising focused exclusively on its impact on patients. But once physicians became a focal point for industry advertising after 1950, concerns about advertising's impact on their prescribing habits also became prominent. Fears that the U.S. was turning into a nation of pill popping patients and pill pushing physicians were widespread by the 1960s. In strikingly similar ways, consumer advocates and physician reformers sought to counter the growing power of the commercial "medicine show" through new forms of information, education, and professional standard making. But while sharing many common points of concern, medical and lay critics of drug advertising in the 1970s remained deeply divided over issues of patient autonomy and control. The lecture concludes with some observations on recent developments in the American "medicine show" and the prospects for change in the future.
Watch it now using RealPlayer.

Voice Of God Revealed To Be Cheney On Intercom
the Onion, 7 December 2005 | Issue 41•49
Telephone logs recorded by the National Security Agency and obtained by Congress as part of an ongoing investigation suggest that the vice president may have used the Oval Office intercom system to address President Bush at crucial moments, giving categorical directives in a voice the president believed to be that of God.
While journalists and presidential historians had long noted Bush's deep faith and Cheney's powerful influen