The Daily Case Against Bush

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1-15 April 2005

  National 
73 Democrats Sold Out Consumers
Erasing Debts in Bankruptcy to Get Harder
by Rob Hotakainen
Minneapolis Star Tribune, 15 April 2005
Opponents said that the bill will do nothing to prevent lenders from charging exorbitant fees and that it will hurt people who file bankruptcy only because they've lost jobs or fallen ill.
"This bill is great for credit card companies and banking industries, but bad for everyone else," said Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn. "In fact, it hurts those who most need the second chance offered by bankruptcy."
The overhaul is intended to make it more difficult for consumers to file for bankruptcy under Chapter 7, which allows debtors to erase their debts after they sell some of their assets. It will set up a new "means test" that will send more debtors into Chapter 13, forcing them into court-ordered payment plans. People with incomes above a state's median income who could pay at least $6,000 over five years would be expected to make payments.
Last year, nearly 1.6 million Americans filed for bankruptcy, including 17,076 in Minnesota. The new law could affect between 30,000 and 210,000 bankruptcy filers a year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. Republican leaders were jubilant after eight years of failed attempts to change the law. It's expected to take effect six months after its enactment.
In previous years, bankruptcy bills had passed both the House and Senate, only to stall as members tried to negotiate differences in conference committee. The late Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., often earned praise from consumer advocates for single-handedly holding up the legislation, using procedural tactics.
This time, Republican leaders changed their strategy, preventing opponents from offering amendments and forcing the House to pass the same bill that cleared the Senate on a 74-25 vote. As a result, there will be no conference committee and the legislation can go directly to the White House.
Bush said the bill will make the bankruptcy system "stronger and better," allowing more Americans to have greater access to credit.
Democrats accused Republican leaders of trying to stifle debate. At one point, they moved to adjourn, but their motion failed.
Opponents were left frustrated. "There is less and less democracy in this House," said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.
Others in pipeline:
The bankruptcy bill is the second of half a dozen proposed changes to the legal system. A bill imposing new restrictions on class action lawsuits became law in February. Others are a trust fund to pay victims of asbestos poisoning, caps on medical malpractice awards, and new limits on liability for gun manufacturers.
How Did Your Representative Vote?
 Roll Call 108: To increase profits for credit card companies and banking industries.
Yea 302/Nay 126/Not Voting 7
Opposition Party?
The 73 Democrats Who Sold Out Consumers
Robert Andrews (NJ-1st)
Joe Baca (CA-43rd)
Brian Baird (WA-3rd)
Melissa Bean (IL-8th)
Marion Berry (AR-1st)
Sanford Bishop (GA-2nd))
Dan Boren (OK-2nd)
Leonard Boswell (IA-3rd)
Rick Boucher (VA-9th)
Allen Boyd (FL-2nd)
Dennis Cardoza (CA-18th)
Ed Case (HI-2nd)
Ben Chandler (KY-6th)
Emanuel Cleaver (MO-5th)
Jim Cooper (TN-5th)
Jim Costa (CA-20th)
Bud Cramer (AL-5th)
Joseph Crowley (NY7th)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28th)
Artur Davis (AL-7th)
Jim Davis (FL-11th)
Lincoln Davis (TN-4th)
Chet Edwards (TX-17th
Bob Etheridge (NC-2nd
Harold Ford (TN-9th
Charlie Gonzalez (TX-20th)
Bart Gordon (TN-6th)
Al Green (TX-9th)
Jane Harman (CA-36th)
Stephanie Herseth (SD-At-Large)
Brian Higgins (NY-27th)
Ruben Hinojosa (TX-15th)
Tim Holden (PA-17th)
Darlene Hooley (OR-5th)
Steny Hoyer (MD-5th)
Steve Israel (NY-2nd)
William Jefferson (LA-2nd)		 Ron Kind (WI-3rd)
Rick Larsen (WA-2nd)
Jim Matheson (UT-2nd)
Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4th)
Mike McIntyre (NC-7th)
Kendrick Meek (FL-17th)
Gregory Meeks (NY-6th)
Charlie Melancon (LA-3rd)
Bob Menendez (NJ-13th)
Mike Michaud (ME-2nd)
Alan Mollohan (WV-1st)
Dennis Moore (KS-3rd)
Jim Moran (VA-8th)
John Murtha (PA-12th)
Solomon Ortiz (TX-27th)
Ed Pastor (AZ-4th)
Collin Peterson (MN-7th)
Earl Pomeroy (ND-At-Large)
David Price (NC-4th)
Nick Rahall (WV-3rd)
Silvestre Reyes (TX-16th)
Mike Ross (AR-4th)
Steven Rothman (NJ-9th)
Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-2nd)
John Salazar (CO-3rd)
Allyson Schwartz (PA-13th)
David Scott (GA-13th)
Ike Skelton (MO-4th)
John Spratt (SC-5th)
Ted Strickland (OH-6th)
John Tanner (TN-8th)
Ellen Tauscher (CA-10th)
Gene Taylor (MS-4th)
Mike Thompson (CA-1st)
David Wu (OR-1st)
Albert Wynn (MD-4th)
 
Republicans to Go on Offensive Over Judges
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
YahooNews!, 15 April 2005
Senate Republicans are moving to put some muscle behind their pitch to eliminate judicial filibusters after watching liberals push out TV ads against them in anticipation of a showdown over who sits on federal appeals courts.
"They're ahead of the power curve," Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said of the orchestrated effort by Democrats and groups such as MoveOn.org and People for the American Way. "I think you'll see a greater, stepped-up message on part of the Republicans, to go on offense on this issues."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, after vowing last fall to stop Democrats from blocking the most conservative of President Bush's nominees, will appear in a telecast later this month with leaders of social conservative groups.
According to a flier for the Louisville, Ky., event, it will focus on how judicial filibusters are being used "against people of faith." The telecast is being organized by the Family Research Council, which sponsored a similar event last year opposing gay marriage. First's staff said he will probably record his message for the telecast.
The Tennessee Republican, a likely contender for his party's presidential nomination in 2008, is under pressure to force a Senate showdown before Congress breaks May 27 for a long Memorial Day recess.
To change Senate rules so that Democrats can no longer block Bush's nominees with filibusters requiring just 41 votes, Frist needs a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. He can get that by mustering 50 votes and bringing in Vice President Dick Cheney as the tiebreaker.
The Senate has 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one independent. But a half-dozen GOP senators either have said they oppose or have refused to support changing the rules.
Frist's plan has been dubbed the "nuclear option" because Democrats have promised to retaliate by blocking the rest of Bush's legislative agenda — excluding spending and highway bills and national security measures. His supporters call it the "constitutional option," saying the forefathers never intended to let a minority of the Senate block a president's choices for judgeships.
Democrats blocked 10 of Bush's first-term appeals court nominations through filibuster threats while allowing the confirmation of 34. Bush has renominated seven of the 10. Democrats have said they intend to block their confirmation this time as well, arguing that the nominees' views on abortion, civil rights, the environment or other issues place them well outside the mainstream.
Democracy and process are not Republican values...
Give Democracy Its Due
Washington Post, 15 April 2005
Facing the contentious issue of retooling the nation's bankruptcy laws, the Senate debated the bill for seven days this year, considering scores of amendments. When the House of Representatives took up the topic yesterday, it spent two hours on debate -- and that includes the hour allotted to discussing the rule under which the measure was brought up. Not one amendment could be offered. The bill, in our view, is flawed, although it is not nearly as dangerous as its critics maintain. But even its staunchest proponents should be embarrassed that it was muscled through the House in this kind of Potemkin-democracy way. This process -- or, more precisely, lack of process -- is becoming routine. The House has never mimicked the Senate, with its tradition of unlimited debate, and there are benefits to its less free-wheeling ways. But it did have a tradition of some debate -- a tradition that is increasingly being ignored by the Republican majority. House Republicans are unabashedly improving upon the autocratic excesses they justifiably decried when Democrats were in power. ...The bill, in our view, is flawed, although it is not nearly as dangerous as its critics maintain. But even its staunchest proponents should be embarrassed that it was muscled through the House in this kind of Potemkin-democracy way. This process—or, more precisely, lack of process—is becoming routine.
As for a choice between the values of deliberative democracy and the interests of the credit industry, we know where we come down. Yesterday's sham debate makes clear where House Republicans come down too.
SEE ALSO:
Credit Card Firms Won as Users Lost
They sought new laws but found ways to make money even on people who went bankrupt.
By Peter G. Gosselin
LA Times, 4 March 2005
In the eight years since they began pressing for the tough bankruptcy bill being debated in the Senate, America's big credit card companies have effectively inoculated themselves from many of the problems that sparked their call for the measure. By charging customers different interest rates depending on how likely they are to repay their debts and by adding substantial fees for an array of items such as late payments and foreign currency transactions, the major card companies have managed to keep their profits rising steadily even as personal bankruptcies have soared, industry figures show. As a result, while they continue to press for legislation that would make it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy, the companies have found ways to make money even on cardholders who eventually go broke. At the same time, under the companies' new systems, many cardholders -- especially low-income users -- have ended up on a financial treadmill, required to make ever-larger monthly payments to keep their credit card balances from rising and to avoid insolvency.
Privatizing U.S. Social Security: Those Most in Favor Have Least at Stake, Says Report
by Abid Aslam
Common Dreams, 14 April 2005
The biggest backers of President George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security are those with the least at stake in the government retirement system, economic researchers and advocates said Wednesday.
Chief executive officers (CEOs) of U.S. investment firms supporting Social Security's partial privatization effectively pay into the system for only a few days a year because those payments are capped and most financial industry CEOs get paid enough to enable them to reach the limit in the first few days of January, said a new report from the groups United For a Fair Economy (UFE) and Institute for America's Future. By contrast, they said, ''the average 'Joe' taxpayer pays an effective rate that is more than 201 times the effective rate of the average CEO in this group.''  That is because average taxpayers contribute all year long, paying Social Security taxes on their entire annual earnings without ever reaching the annual cap of $87,900, according to the report, ''Taxpayers for a Day: The Most to Gain, the Least to Lose (.pdf).''
MoveOn.org Announces Counter Attack In Defense of American Middle Class
Common Dreams, 14 April 2005
Campaign Aims at Republican War On the Middle Class
Radio Ads to Target House Members Who Support Bankruptcy Law That Betrays Hardworking Families Bankruptcy Vote Set for Today; Ads To Run in Districts of Republicans and Democrats who Support “Bonanza for Credit Card Companies”
“With solid control of both houses of Congress and the White House, the Republican leadership thinks they’re free to show their true colors – taking from the middle class and giving to the wealthy and corporations,” said Tom Matzzie, MoveOn PAC’s Washington Director. “But we’re going to call the Republican agenda what it truly is: a war on the middle class. Every time the Republicans do something that harms working families to benefit corporate special interests, we’ll be there to let voters know what their representatives are really up to.”
The next stages in the Republican war on the middle class will be Congressional votes later in the week to permanently repeal the estate tax that benefits only the nation’s wealthiest one percent and later this month on a budget that cuts vital health and other services to working families, while exploding the national debt.
“This isn’t about only one piece of legislation,” added Matzzie. “This is about helping America’s middle class understand the full danger that radical Republicans pose to their personal finances and well-being. The American people deserve to know who’s on their side and who’s trying to harm them for the sake of banks and other credit card companies.”
Citizen Works Shines a Light on Corporate Tax Avoidance
Common Dreams, 14 April 2005
April 15 is Tax Day, and if recent trends are any indicator, large corporations will pay only about half of the statutory 35 percent corporate rate in income taxes.
Citizen Works Communications Director and corporate tax expert Lee Drutman had this to say:
“There are effectively two systems of taxation in the United States today. One is for big corporations and the wealthy, who can afford high-priced accountants and lawyers to tell them how to avoid paying taxes, who can afford high-priced lobbyists to help them get special exceptions and loopholes written into the tax code, and who have the means to set up an intricate web of shell corporations in Bermuda and Barbados and the Cayman Islands. The other is for the hard-working Americans, who can barely even afford to go on vacation to Bermuda.”
“When corporations pay less, it means that ordinary citizens are forced to cover more of the tax burden. At a time of rising budget deficits and vanishing social services this is simply unacceptable.”
“It is a basic issue of fairness. Corporations depend on so many of the basic services government provides. A system of courts and law enforcement. Roads and infrastructure. An educational system. They need to pay their fair share to provide for these basic services.”
The following is a summary of studies in the past year describing the extent to which corporations avoid paying federal and state taxes and some of the strategies that they have used...
--In 2002 and 2003, 275 of the biggest U.S. corporations sheltered more than half of their profits from taxes, reporting $739 billion in profits to shareholders but only $363 billion in profits to the IRS, according to Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ). According to CTJ, the 275 corporations paid an effective tax rate of 17.2 percent in 2002 and 2003, less than half of the effective corporate tax rate of 35 percent. That’s down from 26.5 percent in 1988, 21.7 percent in 1998, and 21.4 percent in 2001. Additionally, of the 275 companies CTJ analyzed, 82 either paid no taxes or received a tax refund in at least one of the last three years. In 2003 alone, 46 companies paid zero or less in federal income taxes. These 46 companies, almost one out of six of the companies in the study, reported U.S. pretax profits in 2003 of $42.6 billion, yet received tax rebates totaling $5.4 billion.
Between 2001 and 2003, 28 companies paid negative federal income tax rates over the entire three-year period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $44.9 billion over the three years, included, among others: Pepco Holdings (–59.6% tax rate), Prudential Financial (–46.2%), ITT Industries (–22.3%), Boeing (–18.8%), Unisys (–16.0%), Fluor (–9.2%) and CSX (–7.5%), the company previously headed by current Treasury Secretary John Snow.
--U.S. corporations shifted $75 billion of their profits into tax havens in 2003, depriving the IRS of between $10 billion and $20 billion in expected tax revenue, according to a study in Tax Notes, a tax trade journal. According to the study’s author, Martin A. Sullivan, corporations exploit legal loopholes and tax credits to avoid paying taxes by shifting income into subsidiaries located in no-tax or low-tax countries, such as Bermuda. Sullivan, a former Treasury Department economist, based his study on Commerce Department data.
--The profits that U.S. multinational companies reported from their foreign subsidiaries have grown 68 percent since 1999, reaching $149 billion in 2003, according to a separate study published by Tax Notes. However, the data does not show any commensurate growth of actual economic activity in those tax havens. The implication is that multinationals are merely sheltering more income in tax havens...
The Medical Money Pit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 15 April 2005
A dozen years ago, everyone was talking about a health care crisis. But then the issue faded from view: a few years of good data led many people to conclude that H.M.O.'s and other innovations had ended the historic trend of rising medical costs. But the pause in the growth of health care costs in the 1990's proved temporary. Medical costs are once again rising rapidly, and our health care system is once again in crisis. So now is a good time to ask why other advanced countries manage to spend so much less than we do, while getting better results. ...In 2002, the latest year for which comparable data are available, the United States spent $5,267 on health care for each man, woman and child in the population. Of this, $2,364, or 45 percent, was government spending, mainly on Medicare and Medicaid. Canada spent $2,931 per person, of which $2,048 came from the government. France spent $2,736 per person, of which $2,080 was government spending.
Amazing, isn't it? U.S. health care is so expensive that our government spends more on health care than the governments of other advanced countries, even though the private sector pays a far higher share of the bills than anywhere else.
What do we get for all that money? Not much.
Most Americans probably don't know that we have substantially lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality figures than other advanced countries. It would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that this poor performance is entirely the result of a defective health care system; social factors, notably America's high poverty rate, surely play a role. Still, it seems puzzling that we spend so much, with so little return. ...Why is the price of U.S. health care so high? One answer is doctors' salaries: although average wages in France and the United States are similar, American doctors are paid much more than their French counterparts. Another answer is that America's health care system drives a poor bargain with the pharmaceutical industry. Above all, a large part of America's health care spending goes into paperwork. A 2003 study in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that administrative costs took 31 cents out of every dollar the United States spent on health care, compared with only 17 cents in Canada.
In my next column in this series, I'll explain why the most privatized health care system in the advanced world is also the most bloated and bureaucratic.
Frist Set to Use Religious Stage on Judicial Issue
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT, 15 April 2005
As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.
Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."
Organizers say they hope to reach more than a million people by distributing the telecast to churches around the country, over the Internet and over Christian television and radio networks and stations.
Dr. Frist's spokesman said the senator's speech in the telecast would reflect his previous remarks on judicial appointments. In the past he has consistently balanced a determination "not to yield" on the president's nominees with appeals to the Democrats for compromise. He has distanced himself from the statements of others like the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who have attacked the courts, saying they are too liberal, "run amok" or are hostile to Christianity.

Poster Boy: 'Culture of Life'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/JOHN BAZEMORE

Bomber 'So Proud'
AP via Toronto Sun, 14 April 2005
RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST Eric Rudolph pleaded guilty yesterday to the deadly bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and three other attacks across the Southern U.S. Rudolph, 38, entered his pleas during back-to-back court appearances -- first in Birmingham and later in Atlanta -- after working out a plea bargain that will spare him from the death penalty. He will get four consecutive life sentences without parole. The four blasts killed two people and wounded more than 120.

Majority Leader Asks House Panel to Review Judges
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 14 April 2005
Deflecting all questions about his ethical conduct and political future, Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, on Wednesday stepped up his crusade against judges, announcing that he had instructed the Judiciary Committee to investigate federal court decisions in the Terri Schiavo case and to recommend possible legislation. At a crowded news conference, Mr. DeLay said he would not entertain questions about his political activities. It was his first question-and-answer session with reporters since one fellow Republican, Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, called for him to resign his leadership post and another, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, said he should explain himself to the American people. "I'm not here to discuss the Democrats' agenda," Mr. DeLay declared.
True to Ritual, House Votes for Full Repeal of Estate Tax
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
NYT, 14 April 2005
For the fourth time in four years, the House voted on Wednesday to repeal the federal estate tax permanently, a central element of President Bush's economic agenda. The measure, approved by a vote of 272 to 162, stands little chance in the Senate because of the threat of a filibuster, which Democrats have used to block similar bills in the past. But Senate Republican leaders are exploring the possibility of a compromise, and Democratic leaders have said they are willing at least to talk about the matter.
On the road to 'plutocracy'
Estate Tax Repeal Is So Not Hot
Center for American Progress, 13 April 2005
The federal deficit exceeds $400 billion, critical government programs are on the chopping block and tens of thousands of U.S. troops are fighting abroad without adequate equipment. What's on the agenda of the House of Representatives today? More tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. The right-wing leadership in the House has scheduled a vote on the permanent repeal of the estate tax, which was paid last year by just 30,627 of the wealthiest Americans. (That's less than 1 percent of everyone who died.) Under current law, the first $1.5 million of all estates are tax free. Tell Congress to get its priorities straight and vote against the estate tax repeal. FISCAL SUICIDE: No one who is serious about fiscal responsibility can vote to repeal the estate tax. Although very few Americans pay the estate tax, repealing it would do serious damage to the federal deficit. The estate tax repeal would cost more than $1 trillion over the first ten years after the full repeal goes into effect. You can find out how much you would pay in estate taxes with this handy calculator. Unless you are reading this from your Lear Jet, however, it's probably zero.
Fifteen NYSE Traders Indicted
Investors Were Cheated, U.S. Says
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post, 14 April 2005
Fifteen current and former traders at the New York Stock Exchange were criminally charged yesterday with cheating investors out of the best prices for their stock trades in what could be unparalleled abuse of their position at the world's largest and most prestigious stock market. The exchange also faces disciplinary action for failing to adequately police its sprawling floor, where 1,366 traders handle an average of 1.6 billion shares a day. The traders are accused of getting in between orders to buy and sell, taking for themselves the best prices and depriving investors who ordered the trades of at least $32.5 million.
Senate Republicans dissolving minority power - Rules changed for 'Blue Slip,' Rule IV, 'filibusters' and 'holds'
Republicans May Hasten Showdown on Judicial-Nomination Filibusters
By CARL HULSE
NYT, 13 March 2005
As the fight over the federal judiciary spread across Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans said Tuesday that they might quicken their push to prevent Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees. Senior lawmakers and party officials said that while Republican leaders had been expected to put off any confrontation over Senate rules until next month at the earliest, they might now force a confrontation within the next two weeks. "It's possible," though "that does not mean it will happen," said Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for the majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee. Mr. Frist is under increasing pressure from some conservative Republicans to move ahead with a floor fight to change the rules so that filibusters, which require 60 votes to be cut off, could not be mounted against judicial nominations. It is unclear whether he has the votes to adopt the change, however, even by a bare majority. Among those pushing for the change is Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, No. 3 in the Republican leadership. ..."The Republican abuse of power," Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said, "has been pushed by extremists who want to punish an independent judiciary and simultaneously obliterate checks and balances, effectively making the U.S. Senate a rubber stamp for judicial nominees."
DeLay Asks Colleagues in Senate to Blame Dems
Embattled House majority leader also takes news media to task
MSNBC News, 13 April 2005
Recent news reports about DeLay have disclosed that his wife and daughter were paid approximately $500,000 in recent years by political organizations under his control, and have raised questions about the financing of three overseas trips he took
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, hoping to hold support among fellow Republicans, urged GOP senators Tuesday to blame Democrats if asked about his ethics controversy and accused the news media of twisting supportive comments so they sounded like criticism. Officials said DeLay recommended that senators respond to questions by saying Democrats have no agenda other than partisanship, and are attacking him to prevent Republicans from accomplishing their legislative program. One Republican said the Texan referred to a “mammoth operation” funded by Democratic supporters and designed to destroy him as a symbol of the Republican majority. ...One senior Republican spoke sympathetically of DeLay after the closed-door meeting. “I hope he survives, and I hope he will stay in there and do his job,” said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. “The power of prayer is the only thing that will sustain you” in the circumstance DeLay is in, Lott added, and he spoke disparagingly of any Republicans who fail to stand by the Texan.
Nuclear Plants Not Keeping Track of Waste
GAO Study Faults Federal Government for Failing to Implement Safeguards
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post, 12 March 2005
Pervasive problems plague the control of radioactive waste at the nation's nuclear power plants, in part because the federal government has been sluggish in instituting and enforcing safeguards, according to a federal report issued yesterday. The Government Accountability Office's indictment of the nuclear facilities and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the most comprehensive reckoning to date of problems that have begun to emerge at a number of plants in recent years.
U.S.: Pay Gap Widens Between CEOs and Workers
by Abid Aslam
OneWorld.net via CommonDreams, 12 April 2005
The chief executives of major U.S. corporations enjoyed double-digit pay raises last year, adding to a record of ''jaw-dropping'' compensation largely undisturbed by recent years' falling profits and share prices and a wave of scandals involving management chicanery, the country's leading labor federation said in a new survey.
Chief executive officers (CEOs) were being enriched at the expense of working families' retirement savings, the AFL-CIO said in its Executive Pay Watch study, released Monday as a Web site. The latest annual update aimed to rally support for labor and other investors who plan to force some 140 companies to confront pay issues at annual shareholders' meetings in coming months. ''We have seen a tremendous amount of interest among workers in holding CEOs and their boards accountable,'' said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the 13-million-member labor federation. ''They are rightfully outraged when they learn about jaw-dropping executive compensation packages. It's time to put the brakes on runaway CEO pay.''
Study Finds Shortcoming in New Law on Education
By GREG WINTER
NYT, 13 April 2005
The academic growth that students experience in a given school year has apparently slowed since the passage of No Child Left Behind, the education law that was intended to achieve just the opposite, a new study has found.
In both reading and math, the study determined, test scores have gone up somewhat, as each class of students outdoes its predecessors. But within grades, students have made less academic progress during the school year than they did before No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2002, the researchers said.
A Misinformed Public: The Real Problem
CommonDreams, 12 April 2005
by Dean Baker, David Rosnick, and Mark Weisbrot
The Washington Post has criticized us for arguing that there is little point in addressing the projected Social Security shortfall, when rising health care costs pose a much greater threat to the living standards of future generations (“Comparatively Major,” Washington Post Editorial Board, 4-10-05). The Post does not deny that rising health care costs pose a much greater problem, rather it contends that this fact is irrelevant and should not stand in the way of addressing the problem posed by the projected Social Security shortfall.
The Post is of course welcome to its opinion on political priorities, but we feel the most important issue is that the public has been badly misled on both the size of the projected Social Security shortfall and the inefficiency of the U.S. health care system. This is in large part the result of powerful interests: some who have grossly exaggerated the size of the projected Social Security shortfall, and others who have sought to sideline an honest discussion of our health care crisis. We trust a well-informed public to be able to properly prioritize issues for themselves; our role is to ensure that whatever debate takes place be as fully informed as possible.
Fear & Favor 2004 — FAIR's Fifth Annual Report
How power shapes the news
By Peter Hart and Julie Hollar
FAIR, Extra! March/April 2005
The PR agency’s promises are a stark reminder that the news is, in many ways, a collision of different interests. The traditional tenets of journalism are challenged and undermined by other factors: Advertisers demand “friendly copy,” while other commercial interests work to place news items that serve the same function as advertising. Media owners exert pressure to promote the parent company’s self-interest. Powerful local and national interests demand softball treatment. And government power is exerted to craft stories, influence content—and even to make up phony “news” that can be passed off as the real thing.
Journalists, on the whole, understand these pressures all too well. A survey of media workers by four industry labor unions (Media Professionals and Their Industry, 7/20/04) found respondents concerned about “pressure from advertisers trying to shape coverage” as well as “outside control of editorial policy.” In May, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a survey of media professionals that found reporters concerned about how bottom-line pressures were affecting news quality and integrity. In their summary of the report, Bill Kovach, Tom Rosensteil and Amy Mitchell wrote that journalists “report more cases of advertisers and owners breaching the independence of the newsroom.”
The Fear & Favor report is an attempt to illustrate this growing encroachment on journalism with real examples that have been made public—not an exhaustive list by any means, but a reminder that such pressures exist, and that reporters serve the best interests of citizens and the journalistic profession by coming forward with their own accounts.
'Bush Style Freedom' in full bloom
Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest
By JIM DWYER
NYT, 12 April 2005
Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue. "We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed," the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. "I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own."
Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.
During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.
A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention. For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors. In the bulk of the 400 cases that were dismissed based on videotapes, most involved arrests at three places - 16th Street near Union Square, 17th Street near Union Square and on Fulton Street - where police officers and civilians taped the gatherings, said Martin R. Stolar, the president of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Those tapes showed that the demonstrators had followed the instructions of senior officers to walk down those streets, only to have another official order their arrests. Ms. Thompson of the district attorney's office said, "We looked at videos from a variety of sources, and in a number of cases, we have moved to dismiss."
'Congressional deliberation'
Military Bill Carries Range of Extra Spending
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYT, 12 April 2005
As the Senate began to debate President Bush's request for more than $80 billion in supplemental military spending on Monday, senators seized a chance to pack pet projects into an unstoppable bill, adding provisions dealing with oil drilling, forest services, a new baseball stadium for Washington and economic assistance to Palestinians.
On Monday night, others were seeking to incorporate changes to immigration laws as well. Senator Thad Cochran, the Mississippi Republican who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the draft "a straightforward bill" that "meets the needs of our fighting forces overseas" and "addresses emergency requirements here at home." His own addition to the spending bill was a measure giving Mississippi control of the mineral rights and the ability to permit certain drilling below the Gulf Islands National Seashore in the Gulf of Mexico. Some environmental groups have opposed the measure. In a statement, Mr. Cochran said that the provision "removes the cloud of confusion over who owns the mineral rights to the Mississippi barrier islands" while "allowing the National Park Service to continue its good work in preserving the natural and historic features of the Gulf Island National Seashore."
Democrats charged Republicans with using emergency supplemental bills to circumvent the budget debate. "The White House has turned on its head the definition of an emergency supplemental appropriation," Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, said. "This is not truth in budgeting. Tactics like this hide the real costs of the war."
Falling Fortunes of the Wage Earner
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
NYT, 12 April 2005
Beginning in the mid-1990's, pay increases for most workers slowly but steadily outpaced the rate of inflation, improving the living standards for nearly all Americans. But an unexpected reversal last year in those gains has set off a vigorous debate among economists over whether the decline is just a temporary dip or portends a deeper shift that may cause the pay of average Americans to lag for years to come.
Even though the economy added 2.2 million jobs in 2004 and produced strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell for the year, after adjusting for inflation - the first such drop in nearly a decade. "Pay increases are not rebounding, even though the factors normally associated with higher pay have rebounded," said Peter LeBlanc of Sibson Consulting, a division of Segal, a human resources consulting firm. The problem is not with the jobs themselves. Most economists dismiss as overblown the widespread fear that the number of jobs will shrink in the United States because of foreign competition from China, India and other developing nations. But at the same time many of these economists argue that the increasing exposure of the American economy to globalization, along with other forces - including soaring health insurance costs that leave less money for raises - is putting pressure on wages that could leave millions of workers worse off. "We're in for a long period where inflation-adjusted wages will be under acute pressure," said Stephen S. Roach of Morgan Stanley. "That's a most unusual development in a period of high productivity growth. Normally, real wages track productivity."
SEE ALSO:
Pensions: Big Holes in the Net
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
NYT, 12 April 2005
In the world of pension law, rules and regulations abound to protect participants, and no fewer than three federal agencies are charged with their enforcement. But when a problem arises, pensioners can still find themselves on their own. "There is no federal agency enforcing participants' rights," Michael S. Gordon testified in the McDonald case in 2001. Mr. Gordon, who died in 2004, was a principal architect of the federal pension law known as Erisa, or the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, in his six years as minority counsel to the Senate Labor Committee in the 1970's. "As a practical matter," Mr. Gordon said, "Erisa's enforcement of participants' rights has been placed entirely on the shoulders of the participants themselves." As the number of Americans nearing retirement grows and concerns about the pension system persist, shortcomings in the law's enforcement are drawing increasing attention. In a series of recent semi-annual reports, the Labor Department's inspector general has cited evidence that many companies have miscalculated the benefits paid by certain plans. The department referred the matter to the Internal Revenue Service, which has not acted. The inspector general has also repeatedly challenged the quality of pension-plan annual audits, to no avail, and issued a stream of warnings that the consultants who provide advisory services to pension plans may be bilking them. "We continue to identify multimillion-dollar abuses by plan service providers whose complex financial schemes may impact more than one benefit plan," the inspector general said in the report for 2004.
Bush's Free market ideology enforced at high cost to the poor
States Told Not to Steer Beneficiaries to Drug Plans
By ROBERT PEAR
NYT, 8 April 2005
The Bush administration has told states that they cannot steer Medicare beneficiaries to any specific prescription drug plan, even if state officials find that one or two insurance plans would provide the best deals for elderly people with low-incomes. States like Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania have for years had their own programs to help elderly people with drug costs. In some cases, the state coverage is superior to what Medicare will offer. Many states want to continue those programs to supplement the Medicare drug benefit that becomes available in January. A federal advisory commission said recently that states should be allowed to enroll their low-income Medicare beneficiaries in "one or more preferred prescription drug plans." This would help ensure "continuity of care," it said. But in a memorandum to state officials, the Bush administration rejected that recommendation. State programs that steer people to a specific drug plan are "contrary to Medicare policy goals" and "may violate federal fraud and abuse laws," said the memorandum, signed by Leslie V. Norwalk, deputy administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. By enrolling low-income people in a preferred plan, Ms. Norwalk said, state officials are violating beneficiaries' freedom of choice and undermining competition among insurers.
States Ask Court to Force EPA Action on Greenhouse Gases
By John Heilprin
Associated Press via ENN, 11 April 2005
A coalition of 12 states and several cities asked a federal appeals court Friday to make the Environmental Protection Agency reconsider its decision not to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases as air pollutants. The case has big potential implications for numerous federal and state programs under the Clean Air Act, as well as for the auto industry. Along with other forms of transportation, motor vehicles account for about a third of all U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions -- the chief gas scientists blame for global warming.
DLC Misleadership
Patrick C. Doherty
TomPaine.com, 8 April 2005
...the Democratic Party has little time to waste on such misleadership. The Millennium Assessment and the Goldman Sachs research paper suggest that America may face a severe economic, energy or ecological crisis before or between the next two federal elections. If that happens, Democrats need to be ready to step into the fray with an alternative that is both narrative and strategy—a narrative to explain how we got to this place and a strategy to move forward.
In that narrative, Islamic extremism will be understood for what the 9/11 Commission says it is: a symptom in large part caused by 50 years of inadequate U.S. policy in the Middle East. And our strategy of course must address the real—but not existential—threats wrought by these policies. But in the face of the much larger threat from energy insecurity, crushing deficits, climate change and ecosystem depletion, the second-order threat from Al Qaeda cannot become the centerpiece of the Democratic platform.
Whether they are cynically promising that a Democratic administration will kill more terrorists, or whether they are simply ignorant of more massive global threats—Beinart, Marshall and their intellectual brethren in the Democratic Leadership Council confirm the worst suspicions of average Americans: that neither party has a clue about how or where to lead America.
It's time for a progressive grand strategy.
Bush reverses trend...
Wages Lagging Behind Prices
Inflation has outpaced the rise in salaries for the first time in 14 years. And workers are paying a bigger share of the cost of their healthcare.
By Nicholas Riccardi
LA Times, 11 April 2005
For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut. The growth in wages in 2004 and the first two months of this year trailed inflation, compounding the squeeze from higher housing, energy and other costs. ...With benefits factored in, workers' total compensation did outpace inflation in 2004, even if they didn't see it in their paychecks. But employers also are requiring workers to pay a greater share of their premiums.
"Healthcare has eroded the wage base," said Janemarie Mulvey, chief economist with the Employment Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank in Washington. "In the long run, we can't continue like this. If healthcare keeps crowding out wages forever, something's got to give."
The squeeze is especially intense on the 47% of the workforce whose employers don't directly provide their health insurance. For lower-income workers, who are more likely to be uninsured, the falling value of their wages is even more serious because they're more likely to live paycheck to paycheck. And rising food and energy prices take a proportionately higher toll on the poor than on the rich.
Ailing Health Care
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 11 April 2005
Those of us who accuse the administration of inventing a Social Security crisis are often accused, in return, of do-nothingism, of refusing to face up to the nation's problems. I plead not guilty: America does face a real crisis - but it's in health care, not Social Security.
Well-informed business executives agree. A recent survey of chief financial officers at major corporations found that 65 percent regard immediate action on health care costs as "very important." Only 31 percent said the same about Social Security reform. But serious health care reform isn't on the table, and in the current political climate it probably can't be. You see, the health care crisis is ideologically inconvenient. Let's start with some basic facts about health care...
First, America's traditional private health insurance system, in which workers get coverage through their employers, is unraveling.
...Second, rising Medicare spending may be a sign of progress, but it still must be paid for - and right now few politicians are willing to talk about the tax increases that will be needed if the program is to make medical advances available to all older Americans.
...Finally, the U.S. health care system is wildly inefficient. Americans tend to believe that we have the best health care system in the world. (I've encountered members of the journalistic elite who flatly refuse to believe that France ranks much better on most measures of health care quality than the United States.) But it isn't true. We spend far more per person on health care than any other country - 75 percent more than Canada or France - yet rank near the bottom among industrial countries in indicators from life expectancy to infant mortality.
...To get effective reform, however, we'll need to shed some preconceptions - in particular, the ideologically driven belief that government is always the problem and market competition is always the solution. The fact is that in health care, the private sector is often bloated and bureaucratic, while some government agencies - notably the Veterans Administration system - are lean and efficient. In health care, competition and personal choice can and do lead to higher costs and lower quality. The United States has the most privatized, competitive health system in the advanced world; it also has by far the highest costs, and close to the worst results.
Over the next few weeks I'll back up these assertions, and talk about what a workable health care reform might look like, if we can get ideology out of the way.
2 in GOP Take Aim at DeLay
House majority leader, facing questions over trips he took, is urged to 'lay out what he did.'
By Mary Curtius
LA Times, 11 April 2005
The near-solid wall of public support that Republicans have displayed for beleaguered House Majority Leader Tom DeLay began to crack Sunday, with a Senate leader saying the Texas Republican needed to "lay out what he did and why he did it" and a House member calling on him to step down from his leadership post. ...David Donnelly, the Public Campaign Action Fund's political director, said Sunday that Santorum's and Shays' comments showed there were "Republicans putting some distance between themselves and Tom DeLay. It creates some safe space for others who are contemplating doing the same."
SEE ALSO:
Inquiries of Top Lobbyist Shine Unwelcome Light in Congress
By PHILIP SHENON
NYT, 11 April 2005
Jack Abramoff, one of Washington's most powerful and best-paid lobbyists, needed $100,000 in a hurry. Mr. Abramoff, known to envious competitors as "Casino Jack" because of his multimillion-dollar lobbying fees from the gambling operations of American Indians, wrote to a Texas tribe in June 2002 to say that a member of Congress had "asked if we could help (as in cover) a Scotland golf trip for him and some staff" that summer. "The trip will be quite expensive," Mr. Abramoff said in the e-mail message, estimating that the bills "would be around $100K or more." He added that in 2000, "We did this for another member - you know who."  Mr. Abramoff did not explain why the tribe should pay for the lavish trip, nor did he identify the congressmen by name. But a tribe spokesman has since testified to Congress that the 2002 trip was organized for Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Administration Committee, and that "you know who" was a much more powerful Republican, Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader and old friend of Mr. Abramoff's. Both lawmakers have said they believed that the trips complied with House travel rules.
SEE ALSO:
With Friends Like These...
A lunchtime chat with a lobbyist close to Tom DeLay suggests he may be headed for hotter water.
Newsweek, 18 April issue
"Everybody is lying," Abramoff told a former colleague. There are e-mails and records that will implicate others, he said. He was noticeably caustic about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. For years, nobody on Washington's K Street corridor was closer to DeLay than Abramoff. They were an unlikely duo. DeLay, a conservative Christian, and Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, traveled the world together and golfed the finest courses. Abramoff raised hundreds of thousands for DeLay's political causes and hired DeLay's aides, or kicked them business, when they left his employ. But now DeLay, too, has problems—in part because of overseas trips allegedly paid for by Abramoff's clients. In response, DeLay and his aides have said repeatedly they were unaware of Abramoff's behind-the-scenes financing role. "Those S.O.B.s," Abramoff said last week about DeLay and his staffers, according to his luncheon companion. "DeLay knew everything. He knew all the details."
It is a Washington melodrama that has played out many times before. When political figures get into trouble and their worlds collapse, they look to save themselves by fingering others higher in the food chain. Will Abramoff attempt to bargain with federal prosecutors by offering up DeLay—and does he really have the goods to do so? Abramoff has at times hinted he wanted to bargain—possibly by naming members who sought campaign cash for legislative favors, says a source familiar with the probe. But Abramoff's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, says, "There have been no negotiations with the Justice Department." Lowell cryptically acknowledges that Abramoff has been "disappointed" and "hurt" by the public statements of some former friends, but insists his client is currently "not upset or angry with Tom DeLay." Still, if Abramoff's lunch-table claims are true, he could hand DeLay his worst troubles yet.
A Political Tornado in Kansas
Phill Kline, the state's attorney general, often preaches from pulpits as he pushes a conservative agenda aimed at curbing abortions and gay rights.
By Stephanie Simon
Times, 11 April 2005
Atty. Gen. Phill Kline predicts a more righteous future for this nation. A future shaped in Kansas. In his future, women facing unwanted pregnancies would receive support, not abortions. Gay couples would not defile marriage by exchanging vows. And citizens with God in their hearts would stand up as one to insist that their government reflect their morality.
These are Kline's values. They seem to him essential Kansan values too. And so he promotes them at every turn, hoping to light a fire. "Study Kansas history," he said the other day, words tumbling out in an eager rush. "We were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement, prohibition…. Then we got conservatism and recognized the importance of faith." Kline beamed. "In many ways," he said, "Kansas leads the nation on social issues. And always will." Endorsing a key element of Kline's vision, Kansas voters last week overwhelmingly approved a far-reaching ban on gay marriage. Kline had promoted the amendment as a way to rein in "activist judges" who would "deny you the right to define family."
Bush's Neglect of Consensus May Be Kindling Fiery Senate Showdown
Ronald Brownstein
LA Times, 11 April 2005
George W. Bush may be more comfortable operating with a lower public approval rating than any president in modern times. That sounds like a source of strength, but it also may be a weakness that is pushing Bush and the GOP toward a dangerous confrontation with Senate Democrats over the courts.
Every White House says the president isn't concerned about his polls. In Bush's case that actually seems true. At this point early in their second terms, each of his reelected predecessors since Dwight D. Eisenhower received positive job performance marks from more than half the country in Gallup surveys. Almost all polls show Bush's approval rating below, sometimes well below, the 50% level. Yet "the Bush people are very comfortable operating at this margin," says veteran GOP pollster Bill McInturff.
That attitude partly reflects Bush's belief that a key to leadership is resolve, regardless of public opinion. From that perspective, poor poll ratings can become a badge of honor. But the calm also reflects a political calculation among Bush's strategists. In their eyes, mass opinion doesn't matter as much as the attitude of the voters motivated to turn up on election day. As long as the president pleases his base, strategists believe they can produce an electorate that is more sympathetic to Bush and the GOP than the country is generally. That means Bush and his party can survive ratings with the general public that might sink other presidents.
Bush Nominee for UN Ambassador Faces Test
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP via LA Times, 10 March 2005
Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton faced tough questioning Monday from Senate Democrats on his nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Republicans were looking for swift approval from the Foreign Relations Committee. President Bush's selection of Bolton last month has stirred controversy because of his expressions of disdain for the United Nations and the blunt criticism he has leveled at North Korea and other countries and arms control treaties. Bolton, 56, has served in the past three Republican administrations and been one of his party's strongest conservative voices on foreign affairs issues. He is now the administration's arms control chief. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended Bolton by saying that "not everybody is given to subtlety and indirection." She said Bolton is a good negotiator and would be great in the U.N. environment. Republicans control the Foreign Relations Committee by 10-8, but most if not all panel Democrats are expected to oppose the nomination. One of them, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said Bolton has not been an effective arms negotiator and speaks to people in a condescending, inflammatory way. "That's not the kind of representative of America that we want in the United Nations," Nelson said. Committee Democrats also have circulated a portion of a 2-year-old Senate Intelligence Committee report questioning whether Bolton pressured a State Department intelligence analyst who tried to tone down language in a Bolton speech about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities. On television talk shows Sunday, committee Democrats Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Joe Biden of Delaware and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia cited the alleged pressure and other alleged incidents as among reasons they will oppose Bolton's nomination. Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., hopes for a vote on Bolton's nomination Thursday. A tie could keep the panel from recommending Senate approval. ...Bolton would replace John Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, who resigned after half a year as U.N. ambassador.
When a Food Marketer Helps Devise Nutrition Advice
By KIM SEVERSON
NYT. 10 April 2005
At a time when the government is increasing its use of public relations techniques to promote its agenda, its hiring a company with a stable of food industry clients to sell the national nutrition plan has some public health advocates concerned. Government nutrition guidelines and the icon that illustrates them are more than keys to healthy eating. They can be powerful marketing tools for the food industry; a favorable nod toward one food group or another can result in millions of dollars in sales, food manufacturers say. They also influence federal food programs costing $46 billion a year, including food stamps and meals for schoolchildren.
Several former or current Porter Novelli clients offered formal comment on the guidelines and the new icon at government hearings last year. The Campbell Soup Company suggested that processed foods be given better standing than in the current pyramid. The Dole Food Company said fruits and vegetables should have a starring role. And as soon as the guidelines were released in January, Porter Novelli account executives used them as a hook to promote client products like California almonds. The company's current and former clients also include McDonald's and the Snack Food Association. And while no one expects Porter Novelli to subvert the government's nutrition message by giving its own clients' products a bump, some nutritionists and public health advocates worry about subtle ways in how the message is shaped. The government's main tool for defining a healthful diet, they say, should be kept out of the hands of marketers with close ties to the industry.
Union Seeks Wal-Mart Files About Payments
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
NYT, 10 April 2005
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union called on Wal-Mart Stores yesterday to release all documents connected with accusations that its former vice chairman, Tom Coughlin, had obtained improper expense account reimbursements to finance secret anti-union activities. The union's call for release of the materials comes two weeks after Mr. Coughlin resigned, accused by Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, of taking $100,000 to $500,000 through expense account abuses.
Kerry Says Trickery Foiled Many Voters
AP via NYT, 11 April 2005
Many voters in last year's election were denied access to the polls through trickery and intimidation, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts told a voters' group on Sunday. "Last year, too many people were denied their right to vote; too many who tried to vote were intimidated," Mr. Kerry said at an event sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts. He cited examples of trickery. "Leaflets are handed out saying Democrats vote on Wednesday, Republicans vote on Tuesday," Mr. Kerry said. "People are told in telephone calls that if you've ever had a parking ticket, you're not allowed to vote."
The Beast That Feeds on Boxes: Bureaucracy
By SCOTT SHANE
NYT, 10 April 2005
In the long and dispiriting history of American intelligence failure, from Pearl Harbor to the 2001 attacks to Iraqi weapons, one chronic culprit is that "giant power wielded by pygmies," as Balzac put it: bureaucracy.
Critical discoveries by code breakers, F.B.I. agents and the C.I.A. were lost on the way up the long ladder that separates rank-and-file spies from top decision makers. But who has ever resisted the impulse to add rungs to the ladder, always with the sturdiest intentions?
"I've been studying bureaucracy for 40 years," said James Q. Wilson, a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, "and I can't remember a single commission that proposed cutting back."
Little surprise, then, that after two independent commissions and multiple Congressional committees studied the shortcomings of the 15 intelligence agencies, they proposed more bureaucracy. Much, much more bureaucracy.
A Culture of Death, Not Life
By FRANK RICH
NYT, 10 April 2005
What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living.
When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles.
This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million.
...If there's one lesson to take away from the saturation coverage of the pope, it is how relatively enlightened he was compared with the men in business suits ruling Washington. Our leaders are not only to the right of most Americans (at least three-quarters of whom opposed Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case) but even to the right of most American evangelical Christians (most of whom favored the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, according to Time magazine). They are also, like Mel Gibson and the fiery nun of "Revelations," to the right of the largely conservative pontiff they say they revere. This is true not only on such issues as the war in Iraq and the death penalty but also on the core belief of how life began. Though the president of the United States believes that the jury is still out on evolution, John Paul in 1996 officially declared that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis."
We don't know the identity of the corpse that will follow the pope in riveting the nation's attention. What we do know is that the reality show we've made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right's growing theocratic crusade.
Public Forums are No place for Bush's Thought Police
Josh Marshall
The Hill, 7 March 2005
Let’s face facts: On the president’s two-month-long Social Security privatization road show, Americans who show any sign that they are not loyal supporters of the president are systematically barred from attending or expelled from his public forums, even if they give no sign that they plan to disrupt the proceedings or act inappropriately in any way. During the presidential campaign, this sort of behavior may have been just embarrassing — after all those were private, campaign-funded events. But these events are taxpayer-funded public forums. So it really amounts to a violation of people’s constitutional rights. Yes, yes, I know that the White House still says these are isolated incidents, with the proverbial “overzealous” volunteer getting carried away with himself or local officials operating outside the White House’s control. But that’s just not credible anymore; the evidence is too clear.
Let me note some examples...
So, as I said, let’s face facts. This is White House policy — to ban American citizens from taxpayer-funded public forums on the basis of their political beliefs.
They’re doing it because they think they can get away with it.
Which makes sense — because so far they have.
Bush Less Popular than Dick Nixon
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 7 April 2005
Could Iraq be the undoing of both major political parties that backed the war in the West? President Bush is suffering from the worst poll numbers of any second-term president in the spring after his reelection since World War II. If the rest of his second term goes like this, it could hand the Democrats the White House in 2008. Editor and Publisher put the poll in historical context and found that Bush is relatively unpopular.
The Tom DeLay Scandals
A score card.
By Nicholas Thompson
Slate, 7 April 2005
Tom DeLay, the second-ranking member of the House of Representatives, has long been a bogeyman to the left for his outrageous rhetoric, strong-arm tactics, and shady dealings. The congressman's supporters and Republican colleagues had been pledging complete fealty, and stories about his dirty linen had stayed on the back pages. But if criticizing DeLay used to be suicidal, recently it's become fashionable. A new Zogby poll shows that the formerly loyal constituents of Sugar Land, Texas, have turned on DeLay, and Republicans have begun muttering about pushing him out. The telltale sign that the piranhas smell blood in the water came when Wednesday's New York Times fronted a story about the well-funded involvement of the congressman's wife and daughter in his operations. The core of the story was old and the Times would likely have buried it a year ago. But the man known as "the hammer" is turning into a nail. Here's a score card of the key multiplying scandals involving DeLay. Each malefaction is rated on a scale of one to 10 for its stench and the trouble it will possibly cause.
DeLay Defense Fund Donations Slow
Aides say drop due to reduction in legal fees; political attacks mount
By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
Dallas Morning News, 7 April 2005
 Donations to Majority Leader Tom DeLay's defense fund have slowed considerably in the last few months. Some of his critics hope to cut the money flow even more with a new line of attack launched Wednesday demanding that corporate donors stop covering his legal bills. The Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust took in about $50,000 during the first quarter of 2005 – far below the pace that pumped in $430,000 during the second half of last year.
Facing State Protests, U.S. Offers More Flexibility on School Rules
By SAM DILLON
NYT, 8 April 2005
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings offered greater flexibility to states on Thursday in meeting the requirements of the Bush administration's education reform law, calling the changes a major policy shift. In her first national response to growing resistance among state officials to the law, known as No Child Left Behind, Ms. Spellings sought to set a new, more cooperative tone. She compared the law's tempestuous first years to those of an infant's experiencing "the terrible 2's."
Many Wary of GOP's Moral Agenda
Poll: Public disliked Schiavo intervention
By Susan Page
USA TODAY, 7 April 2005
The controversy over Terri Schiavo has raised concerns among many Americans about the moral agenda of the Republican Party and the political power of conservative Christians, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds. In the survey, most Americans disapprove of the efforts by President Bush and Congress to draw federal courts into the dispute over treatment of the brain-damaged Florida woman. She died last week.
Some old stereotypes about the two parties have been reversed:
•By 55%-40%, respondents say Republicans, traditionally the party of limited government, are “trying to use the federal government to interfere with the private lives of most Americans” on moral values.
•By 53%-40%, they say Democrats, who sharply expanded government since the Depression, aren't trying to interfere on moral issues.
...Americans by 53%-34% say they disapprove of Bush's handling of the Schiavo case. Congress' rating on Schiavo is worse: 76% disapprove, 20% approve. By more than 2-to-1, 39%-18%, Americans say the “religious right” has too much influence in the Bush administration. That's a change from when the question was asked in CBS News/New York Times polls taken from 2001 to 2003. Then, approximately equal numbers said conservative Christians had too much and too little influence.
Revelation
"The things that Tom has been criticized about in one way or another every member of Congress could be criticized about."
      --Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 3 House Republican
The Passion of the Tom
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 7 April 2005
Before, Republicans just scared other people. Now, they're starting to scare themselves.
When Dick Cheney tells you you've gone too far, you know you're way over the edge.
Last week, the vice president told The New York Post's editorial board that Tom DeLay should not have jumped ugly on the judges who refused to order that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube be reinserted. He said he would "have problems" with the DeLay plan to get revenge on the judges: "I don't think that's appropriate."
Usually, the White House loves bullies. It embraces John Bolton, nominated as U.N. ambassador, even though, as The Times reports today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is reviewing allegations that Mr. Bolton misused intelligence and bullied subordinates to help buttress W.M.D. hokum when he was at State.
But there's some skittishness in the party leadership about the Passion of the Tom, the fiery battle of the born-again Texan to show that he's being persecuted on ethics by a vast left-wing conspiracy. Some Republicans are wondering whether they need to pull a Trent Lott on Tom DeLay before he turns into Newt Gingrich, who led his party to the promised land but then had to be discarded when he became the petulant "definer" and "arouser" of civilization. Do they want Mr. DeLay careering around in Queeg style as they go into 2006?
SEE ALSO:
 AUDIO LINK
 Scathing Views of  Rep. Tom DeLay and the Republican Party Expressed by Conservatives
NPR's Diane Rehm Show, 6 April 2005
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay faces ethics investigations in Congress and criticism related to the Terri Schiavo controversy. Diane and her guests talk about DeLay's leadership and the Republican Party.
Guests:
Matthew Continetti, staff writer for "The Weekly Standard"
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union
Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
 DeLay May Be in Danger Zone with Colleagues, Constituents
All Things Considered, April 6, 2005
NPR's senior news analyst examines the recent woes of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, saying that a politician's troubles usually begin when he embarrasses his own party.
Needles and Threats
More tough talk about pulverizing the judiciary.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Slate, 5 April 2005
Cornyn's analogy between disgruntled defendants and angry conservatives is perfectly apt. In both cases, angry citizens refuse to accept the fact that sometimes one loses in court and childishly react by taking the law into their own hands. Whether an unhinged individual pulls out a gun or an unhinged senator rationalizes such vigilantism is merely a question of degree, not kind. In both cases, the suggestion is that the rule of law means nothing if you don't get the outcome you desired.
So, again, the question I raised last Friday: How do Republicans possibly benefit politically from these broadsides against the judiciary as a whole? The narrowly targeted attacks on "liberal activist judges" were playing well all year; polls showed that the public really bought the idea. The suggestion that judges appointed by Democrats were all unprincipled laid the perfect groundwork for unleashing the "nuclear option" in the Senate. So, what possible purpose is there to these 11th-hour attacks on the entire bench? Why would anyone support doing away with the filibuster if all judges—and not just the liberal ones—are inherently corrupt and evil?
A few speculative possibilities: Perhaps, now that they control Congress and the presidency, the only target left to the right-wingers really is the judiciary. They feed on outrage, after all, and that was running somewhat dry. Or perhaps they truly feel that they can't control the judicial branch—since even staunchly Republican judges got it "wrong" in both the Schiavo cases and in Roper. In other words, it's no longer enough to pack the courts with Republican appointees; they are already packed that way. This latter fact sets up the argument that only the most extreme right-wing ideologues can ever be confirmed in the future; since even moderate Republicans are all eventually corrupted on the bench. Or maybe the plan all along was to simply subordinate the judicial branch to the popular will; using a cocktail of court-stripping legislation, impeachment threats, and term limits to ensure that the co-equal independent judiciary is only co-equal and independent when it comes to reviewing a handful of disputes over federal fishing law. If that really is the long game, it's awfully shortsighted. Crippling the whole judiciary will, in the long run, create a lot more problems than it resolves.
Connecticut to Sue U.S. Over Cost of Testing Law
By SAM DILLON
NYT. 6 March 2005
The State of Connecticut will sue the federal government over President Bush's signature education law, arguing that it forces Connecticut to spend millions on new tests without providing sufficient additional aid, the state's attorney general announced yesterday. Although a handful of local school districts, in Illinois, Texas and other states, have filed legal challenges to the law, known as No Child Left Behind, Connecticut would be the first state to do so.
No Politics, Please—We're Spies
The intelligence commission's laughable conclusion about the politicization of the CIA.
By Jacob Weisberg
Slate, 5 April 2005
The report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction is a government document well worth reading. With impressive precision, the commission shows how massive ineptitude at every spy agency fostered the Bush administration's mistaken assessment of Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical capabilities. The report undermines the popular notion that Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was responsible for feeding all the crappy intelligence to the White House. As it happens, blinkered and uncommunicative bureaucrats at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and elsewhere were fully capable of delivering junk intelligence without any outside help. Following the trend begun by the 9/11 commission, the authors lay out their case in lucid, even vigorous prose. On one central point, however, the report is utterly, laughably, embarrassingly unpersuasive: that our world-altering intelligence screw-up was not the result of political pressure from the White House. "The Commission has found no evidence of 'politicization' of the Intelligence Community's assessments concerning Iraq's reported WMD programs," the document declares. But all you need is the report itself to see just how obviously intelligence was politicized.
'Oversight" Joke
White House Has Tightly Restricted Oversight of C.I.A. Detentions
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 6 April 2005
The White House is maintaining extraordinary restrictions on information about the detention of high-level terror suspects, permitting only a small number of members of Congress to be briefed on how and where the prisoners are being held and interrogated, senior government officials say. Some Democratic members of Congress say the restrictions are impeding effective oversight of the secret program, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency and is believed to involve the detention of about three dozen senior Qaeda leaders at secret sites around the world. By law, the White House is required to notify the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of all intelligence-gathering activities. But the White House has taken the stance that the secret detention program is too sensitive to be described to any members other than the top Republican and Democrat on each panel.
Stench rising
Political Groups Paid Two Relatives of House Leader
By PHILIP SHENON
NYT, 6 April 2005
The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees, according to a detailed review of disclosure statements filed with the Federal Election Commission and separate fund-raising records in Mr. DeLay's home state, Texas. Most of the payments to his wife, Christine A. DeLay, and his only child, Dani DeLay Ferro, were described in the disclosure forms as "fund-raising fees," "campaign management" or "payroll," with no additional details about how they earned the money. The payments appear to reflect what Mr. DeLay's aides say is the central role played by the majority leader's wife and daughter in his political career.
SEE ALSO:
A 3rd DeLay Trip Under Scrutiny
1997 Russia Visit Reportedly Backed by Business Interests
By R. Jeffrey Smith and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post, 6 April 2005
A six-day trip to Moscow in 1997 by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the trip arrangements. ...The expense-paid trip by DeLay and four of his staff members cost $57,238, according to records filed by his office. During his six days in Moscow, he played golf, met with Russian church leaders and talked to Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, a friend of Russian oil and gas executives associated with the lobbying effort.
DeLay also dined with the Russian executives and two Washington-based registered lobbyists for the Bahamian-registered company, sources say. One of those lobbyists was Jack Abramoff, who is now at the center of a federal influence-peddling and corruption probe related to his representation of Indian tribes.
House members bear some responsibility to ensure that the sponsors for their travel are not masquerading for registered lobbyists or foreign government interests, legal experts say. House ethics rules bar the acceptance of travel reimbursement from registered lobbyists and foreign agents.
Bush diminishes 'good faith and trust' of US
Bush Renews Focus on His Plan for Revamping Social Security
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
NYT,  6 April 2005
President Bush tried on Tuesday to refocus attention on what he called the "accelerating problem" of Social Security, despite a surge of outside forces that have intruded on his 60-day publicity blitz for his plans to overhaul the program. He visited the Treasury Department's Bureau of the Public Debt accounting office here on Tuesday, a trip orchestrated to show that there is no physical vault containing workers' payments into Social Security. "You see, a lot of people in America think there's a trust, in this sense: that we take your money through payroll taxes and then we hold it for you, and then when you retire, we give it back to you," Mr. Bush said. "But that's not the way it works."
 SEE ALSO:
So How Much Debt has President Bush Run Up on his Watch?
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 6 April 2005
This page on the Bureau of Public Debt website gives some month by month and year by year benchmarks. ...a bit less than $2 trillion of debt piled up on President Bush's watch. (According to the recently released Trustees' report, the Trust Fund currently has just under $1.7 trillion in it.) Now, federal debt is divided into "public debt" and "intragovernmental holdings", which means debt held in various government Trust Funds. Social Security and Medicare are the big trust funds. But there are several smaller ones too. Over that same period I mentioned above, the total of these 'Intragovernmental Holdings' went from just under $2.5 trillion to just over $3.2 trillion. Now, remember, that's not all the Social Security Trust Fund. It's all the trust funds combined. But if the Social Security Trust Fund is worthless then the other trust funds must be worthless too. So that means that President Bush (his administration) has borrowed some $700 billion of your payroll taxes that he now says will never be paid back. In fact, just last year (2004), on the president's watch, $156 billion (and change) of your Social Security payroll tax dollars went for what he calls worthless pieces of paper. ...The Social Security Trust Fund is now at about $1.7 trillion. And President Bush says there's no way that can or will be paid back. But just in his first term he's racked up about two-thirds that much money in new debt. And he'll easily exceed that number in his second term. And that'll amount to maybe a couple trillion dollars that even President Bush concedes will be paid back to all those bond purchasors here and abroad.
If we hadn't gone on President Bush's red ink binge, that would be more than enough cash to pay back all the money owed to the Social Security Administration. Do you understand what Al Gore was talking about now with the 'lockbox'? Yeah, exactly.
Instead we got President Bush who's run up a ton of debt that he just wants to walk away from. And he keeps borrowing more and more every day.
Justifiable Homicide?
Senator Links Violence To 'Political' Decisions
'Unaccountable' Judiciary Raises Ire
By Charles Babington
Washington Post, 5 April 2005
Sen. John Cornyn said yesterday that recent examples of courthouse violence may be linked to public anger over judges who make politically charged decisions without being held accountable. In a Senate floor speech in which he sharply criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, Cornyn (R-Tex.) -- a former Texas Supreme Court justice and member of the Judiciary Committee -- said Americans are growing increasingly frustrated by what he describes as activist jurists. "It causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions," he said. Sometimes, he said, "the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policymaker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people." Cornyn continued: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."
Patriot Act Changes to Be Proposed
Gonzales Will Seek to Respond to Critics, Get Law Renewed
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post, 5 April 2005
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will propose some "technical modifications" to the controversial USA Patriot Act today in an effort to address the concerns of critics and ensure that the anti-terrorism legislation is renewed by Congress later this year, according to a Justice Department official. In an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales will support changes in the law concerning secret warrants for financial documents, library data and other business records, according to the Justice official. The changes would clearly limit the use of such warrants to national security investigations and would allow targets to mount legal challenges to the search, the official said. The proposal marks a significant shift for the Justice Department, which under Attorney General John D. Ashcroft had refused to entertain proposed changes to the legislation. It also marks an acknowledgment of the growing clout of critics of the law, who come from both the political left and right, and have persuaded scores of communities around the country to pass resolutions condemning the act.
An Academic Question
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 5 April 2005
Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider. But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why? One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering. But there's also, crucially, a values issue. In the 1970's, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the "party of ideas." Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the "party of theocracy." Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on "leftists" struggling against "mainstream society," professors who act as "dictators" and turn the classroom into a "totalitarian niche." His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact.
In its April Fools' Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution just because it's "the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time," saying that "as editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence." And it conceded that it had succumbed "to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do."
The editorial was titled "O.K., We Give Up." But it could just as well have been called "Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days." Thirty years ago, attacks on science came mostly from the left; these days, they come overwhelmingly from the right, and have the backing of leading Republicans.
Scientific American may think that evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, but President Bush declares that "the jury is still out." Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a "gigantic hoax." And conservative pundits like George Will write approvingly about Michael Crichton's anti-environmentalist fantasies.
Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.
Introducing The Constitution Restoration Act
Say Hello To Taliban America And Goodbye To Godless Judges, Courts And Law
By W. David Kubiak
ZNet, 3 April 2005
Tired of waiting for the Second Coming to enforce Christ's rule on Earth? Fortunately, so is your Congress and they know how to "bring it on." Just when you thought the corporatist/Christian Coalition had milked the 9/11 "surprise" for all it was worth in powers, profits and votes, we regret to report that you may have to think again. Just in case you've briefly fallen behind on your rightwing mailing lists, you might have missed the March 3rd filing of Senate bill S. 520 and House version is H.R. 1070, AKA the "Constitution Restoration Act" (CRA). In the worshipful words of the Conservative Caucus, this historic legislation will "RESTORE OUR CONSTITUTION!", mainly by barring ANY federal court or judge from ever again reviewing "any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." [Emphasis demanded - see full text here.]  In other words, the bill ensures that God's divine word (and our infallible leaders' interpretation thereof) will hereafter trump all our pathetic democratic notions about freedom, law and rights -- and our courts can't say a thing. This, of course, will take "In God We Trust" to an entirely new level, because soon He (and His personally anointed political elite) will be all the legal recourse we have left. This is not a joke, a test, or a fit of libertarian paranoia. The CRA already has 28 sponsors in the House and Senate, and a March 20 call to lead sponsor Sen. Richard Shelby's office assures us that "we have the votes for passage." This is a highly credible projection as Bill Moyers observes in his 3/24/05 "Welcome to Doomsday" piece in the New York Review of Books: "The corporate, political, and religious right's hammerlock... extends to the US Congress. Nearly half of its members before the election-231 legislators in all (more since the election)-are backed by the religious right... Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups."
SEE ALSO:
Welcome to Doomsday
By Bill Moyers
New York Review of Books, 24 March 2005
There are times when what we journalists see and intend to write about dispassionately sends a shiver down the spine, shaking us from our neutrality. This has been happening to me frequently of late as one story after another drives home the fact that the delusional is no longer marginal but has come in from the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis. Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true, while ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The combination can make it impossible for a democracy to fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable challenges.
"Nuclear Option" Possible In the Next Two Days
Joan Bokaer Founder,
TheocracyWatch News Item, 3 April 2005
It could come as soon as tomorrow or Tuesday. Vice President Cheney could end the filibuster in a devious way. A vote will be called to confirm William Myers <here> for the U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit. Cheney might declare a filibuster unconstitutional. To read about the possible scenario go to: <here> If Cheney and his friends on the theocratic right in the U.S. Senate succeed, then Democrats and moderate Republicans will have lost the only leverage left in the U.S. Senate. The Supreme Court is at stake. Cheney will have pulled off a coup, and very few people will have known it happened! We must not let Cheney take away the filibuster. If he gets away with it, we need to get a million people to the streets of DC quickly and spontaneously! We should shut down the city until the Senate re-instates the filibuster. People may not understand what happened with Cheney and the filibuster, but millions of people understand something is deeply wrong in Washington. If the word gets out through grass roots organizations, blogs, the press, etc. I predict a million people will show up. This action must have two components: it must be non-violent, and it must have a specific goal - to reinstate the filibuster - with an understanding that we will go home when our goal is reached. But then, maybe the theocratic right will not succeed with their so-called nuclear option and we can all stay home and work on our spring gardens.
If You Build It, They Will Kill
Nick Turse
TomDispatch, 3 April 2005
As representatives of a superpower devoted to (and enamored with) war, it's hardly surprising that the Pentagon and allied corporations are forever planning more effective ways to kill, maim, and inflict pain -- or that they plan to keep it that way. Whatever the wars of the present, elaborate weapons systems for future wars are already on the drawing boards. Planning for the projected fighter-bombers and laser weapons of the decades from 2030 to 2050 is underway. Meanwhile, at the Department of Defense's (DoD's) blue-skies research outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), even wilder projects -- from futuristic exoskeletons to Brain/Machine Interface initiatives -- are being explored.
Such projects, as flashy as they are frightening, are magnets for reporters (and writers like yours truly), but it's important not to lose sight of the many more mundane weapons currently being produced that will be pressed into service in the nearer term in Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other locale the U.S. decides to add to the list of nations where it will turn people into casualties or "collateral damage" in the next few years. These projects aren't as sexy as building future robotic warriors, but they're at least as dangerous and deadly, so lets take a quick look at a few of the weapons our tax dollars are supporting today, before they hurt, maim, and kill tomorrow.

A comparative view of the fire bombing of Dresden and 9/11
 AUDIO LINK
Extremely Loud And Incredilby Close
JONATHAN FOER
NPR'S Weekend Edition - Sunday, 3 April 2005
Twenty-eight year old author Jonathan Foer found his first critical success at age 25, with his novel "Everything is Illuniated". Now, three years later, Foer reported to have received a million dollar advance for his latest novel, "Extremely Loud And Incredilby Close". The book tells the story and pain of a man whose father died on September 11th.
Few See Gains From Social Security Tour
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
NYTR, 2 April 2005
Midway through their 60-day coast-to-coast blitz to promote fundamental revisions in Social Security, President Bush and others in his administration have been unable to pry loose any Democratic senators from the solid wall of opposition. As a consequence, Republican lawmakers are beginning to doubt whether the president can succeed in establishing individual investment accounts under Social Security.
At What Cost?
To keep health coverage, more workers are cutting back on food, heat and other necessities. Still, many of them eventually will lose the battle.
By Daniel Costello
LA Times, 4 April 2005
Doctors Lobbying to Halt Cuts to Medicare Payments
By ROBERT PEAR
NYT, 3 April 2005
Doctors are mobilizing a nationwide lobbying campaign to stave off cuts in their Medicare fees as Congress hunts for ways to rein in the soaring cost of the insurance program. Because of a quirk in federal law, Medicare will cut payments to doctors by 4 percent to 5 percent in each of the next six years, Bush administration officials say. "This is a very difficult problem," Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said last week. "Unless something changes, there will be quite substantial reductions in physician fees." Doctors said that if the cuts took effect, they would be less likely to treat Medicare patients because the payments would not cover the costs of care.
In the Name of Politics
By JOHN C. DANFORTH
BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube.
Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand alone. Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions common to conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the Republican Party.
Christian activists, eager to take credit for recent electoral successes, would not be likely to concede that Republican adoption of their political agenda is merely the natural convergence of conservative religious and political values. Correctly, they would see a causal relationship between the activism of the churches and the responsiveness of Republican politicians. In turn, pragmatic Republicans would agree that motivating Christian conservatives has contributed to their successes.
High-profile Republican efforts to prolong the life of Ms. Schiavo, including departures from Republican principles like approving Congressional involvement in private decisions and empowering a federal court to overrule a state court, can rightfully be interpreted as yielding to the pressure of religious power blocs.
In my state, Missouri, Republicans in the General Assembly have advanced legislation to criminalize even stem cell research in which the cells are artificially produced in petri dishes and will never be transplanted into the human uterus. They argue that such cells are human life that must be protected, by threat of criminal prosecution, from promising research on diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes. ...The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.
When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification with a religious movement. While religions are free to advocate for their own sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is to hold together as one people a very diverse country. At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another.
Bush is Hostage to Religious Right, Says Top Republican
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Guardian, 31 March 2005
One of the most respected figures in the Republican political establishment turned on his own party yesterday, accusing the leadership of falling hostage to the religious right.
In an opinion piece in yesterday's New York Times, John Danforth, a former senator and US ambassador to the United Nations, writes: "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians."
Mr Danforth's credentials in the party, as a three-term senator from Missouri's heartland and as the minister chosen by Ronald Reagan to officiate at his state funeral in June 2004, are well established.
His broadside against the party's rightward shift in recent years appeared to crystallise growing unease over the increasingly political nature of religion in public life in the US - prompted by the public feud over the fate of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who spent her 13th day without food or water in a hospice following the removal of her feeding tube. That affair has split the US right, and in recent days Republicans have tried to distance themselves from the controversy because of negative public reaction.
Bush and His Commission Throw a "Curve Ball"
 Intelligence Analysts Whiffed on a 'Curveball'
Report says one Iraqi defector singlehandedly corrupted prewar weapons estimates.
By Greg Miller and Bob Drogin
LA Times, 1 April 2005
Prewar claims by the United States that Iraq was producing biological weapons were based almost entirely on accounts from a defector who was described as "crazy" by his intelligence handlers and a "congenital liar" by his friends. The defector, code-named "Curveball," spoke with alarming specificity about Iraq's alleged biological weapons programs and fleet of mobile labs. But postwar investigations showed that he wasn't even in the country at times when he claimed to have taken part in illicit weapons work.
Despite persistent doubts about his credibility, Curveball's claims were included in the Bush administration's case for war without so much as a caveat. And when CIA analysts argued after the war that the agency needed to admit it had been duped, they were forced out of their jobs.The disclosures about Curveball and the extensive role he played in corrupting U.S. intelligence estimates on Iraq were included in a devastating report released Thursday by a commission established by President Bush to evaluate U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. The 601-page document is a sweeping assessment of U.S. intelligence failures that identifies breakdowns in dozens of cases involving multiple countries and terrorist organizations.
SEE ALSO:
To Err Is Human
Organizational reforms can't prevent people from being wrong.
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 31 March 2005
Intel officials gave him what he wanted
The presidential commission on the WMD-intelligence fiasco issued its 601-page report today, and it turns out to be a bit of a fiasco itself. The report starts out strong, with its headline-grabbing charge that all of America's spy agencies—the CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI, and so forth—were "dead wrong" in their judgments that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. However, as you scroll through the pages (drowning yourself in caffeine to stay awake), three things become clear:
First, the report presents only a few new facts about the case, though this may be due more to timing than to discretion; other probes and press stories have uncovered most of the omissions and malfeasances since President Bush (reluctantly) created the commission 14 months ago.
Second, its authors are either startlingly naive or disingenuously deceptive about the political context behind the intelligence errors.
Third, and most dismaying, the report's recommendations for improving the "intelligence community" have little bearing on its analysis of what went wrong. Had all its proposed reorganizations been in place four years ago, there's nothing that suggests the agencies—or the Bush administration—would have reached more accurate conclusions. Reading beyond the executive summary reveals that the intelligence failure on Iraq had little to do with management, interagency disputes, or sloppy organizational charts. Rather, the main causes were twofold. First, on many points, well-placed intelligence analysts were simply wrong; it's as plain as that, and it's hard to see how any reshufflings or new directives might have overwhelmed human fallacy. Second, everyone knew President Bush was gearing up for war; he, therefore, wanted, needed, to find Iraq worthy of invasion; and the heads of intelligence, doubling as administration appointees, accommodated that disposition. ..."Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us agreed that this was not part of our inquiry."
SEE ALSO:
Memo to the Community on the Silberman-Robb Report
 Caroline Wadhams and Ken Gude
Center for American Progress, 31 March 2005
Investigation Lacks Analysis of Bush Administration's Use of Pre-War Intelligence  
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction Report, released today, provides important insights into why "the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."  However, it fails to paint a complete picture of the breakdown that led to the invasion of Iraq because it was "not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence Community."  Thus, the American public is left without any assurance that the same mistakes will not be repeated when confronting regimes such as Iran and North Korea.
 

 

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  International   
Aren't those UN scandals terrible... 
Pentagon's War Spending Hard to Track
Reuters, 15 April 2005
The Defense Department is unable to track how it spent tens of millions of dollars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the U.S. war on terrorism, Congress's top investigator said on Wednesday. The department "doesn't have a system to be able to determine with any degree of reliability and specificity how we spent" tens of millions in war-related emergency funds set aside by Congress, Comptroller General David Walker told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee. Walker heads the Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan audit and investigative arm. He disclosed the accounting gap as part of a broader indictment of Pentagon business practices.
Congress approved $25 billion in extra defense spending for fiscal 2005, which ends on Sept. 30. Lawmakers were moving to approve $81 billion more this week outside the normal budget process, including about $75 billion for war-related Defense Department operations.
While there was no doubt that appropriated funds were spent, "trying to figure out what they were spent on is like pulling teeth," Walker said, referring to an accounting effort he said was under way for Congress.
The Defense Department had no immediate comment.
Twin Car Bombs Kill 15 in Baghdad
A ministry building and a police convoy are the likely targets. But most victims are civilians.
By Solomon Moore
LA Times, 15 April 2005
Two car bombs exploded Thursday 100 yards from each other during a traffic jam, killing at least 15 Iraqis in the deadliest attack in the capital since the national election Jan. 30. The explosions appeared to target an Interior Ministry building and a six-car Iraqi police convoy, but most of those killed were civilians caught in morning traffic. The blasts wounded 38 people, many of whom received severe burns.
International Economics: Bush Disarms, Unilaterally
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NYT, 15 April 2005
One of the things that I can't figure out about the Bush team is why an administration that is so focused on projecting U.S. military strength abroad has taken such little interest in America's economic competitiveness at home - the underlying engine of our strength. At a time when the global economic playing field is being flattened - enabling young Indians and Chinese to collaborate and compete with Americans more than ever before - this administration is off on an ideological jag. It is trying to take apart the New Deal by privatizing Social Security, when what we really need most today is a New New Deal to make more Americans employable in 21st-century jobs. ...Economics is not like war. It can be win-win. But you need to be at a certain level to be able to claim your share of a global pie that is both expanding and becoming more complex. Tax cuts can't solve every problem. This administration - which often seems more interested in indulging creationism than spurring creativity - is doing a very poor job of preparing the country for that next level.
Double Standard at work...
Cuban Anti-Castro Terrorist Seeking Asylum
BY MADELINE BARO DIAZ
South Florida Sun-Sentinel via KC Star, 13  April 2005
CORAL GABLES, Fla. -  A Cuban exile accused of plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro and of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 could go before U.S. immigration officials within a week, his attorney said. Coral Gables attorney Eduardo Soto said federal immigration officials likely would quickly interview Luis Posada, 77, because of his high profile. Earlier this week, Soto mailed U.S. authorities an asylum application on Posada's behalf and on Wednesday Soto mailed a petition seeking Posada's release into the United States, which would allow him to remain in the country while he applies for permanent residency. Posada crossed the Mexico-Texas border about a month ago, Soto said. Posada served in the U.S. Army and participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. According to a biography distributed by Soto, in the 1960s Posada worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and over the years has carried out various operations against Castro's government. "He has served the interests of the United States during three decades, if not four," Soto said. "He is a man who we believe today has a well-founded fear of persecution because of his political beliefs because of his membership in a particular social group, and we believe that he is in danger anywhere other than the United States of America." Soto, who is working pro bono, acknowledged that he has taken on a tough case, given Posada's status as an accused terrorist. The Venezuelan government wants the United States to extradite Posada to face trial on charges that he bombed the Cubana jetliner, killing 73 people aboard. After Venezuelan courts twice acquitted him, Posada escaped prison in 1985 while awaiting his third trial. The Cuban government, which has no official diplomatic ties with the United States but has a close relationship with Venezuela, also wants him for his alleged involvement in the plane's bombing and a string of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997 in which an Italian tourist died, among other attacks.
SEE ALSO:
Anti-Castro Figure Seeks Asylum in U.S.
NPR's All Things Considered, 13 April 2005
Melissa Block talks with Ann Louise Bardach about Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, who is seeking political asylum in the U.S. Carriles has a history working for the CIA. He has also served prison time for the deadly bombing of a Cuban airliner and been implicated in a plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
U.N. Pick Called Bully Who Abused His Power
By Sonni Efron
LA Times, 13 Aprill 2005
The State Department's former intelligence chief testified Tuesday that John R. Bolton was a "serial abuser" of underlings who tried to remove an intelligence analyst who disagreed with him and was "a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy." But it appeared that the testimony of Carl W. Ford Jr., former assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had not changed any votes on Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Republicans control the panel 10 to 8 and were seen as likely to approve him.
President Bush's choice of Bolton has alarmed Senate Democrats, who view the nominee as a foe of the U.N. and as a symbol of failed U.S. intelligence practices.
An outspoken conservative who has been a harsh critic of the U.N., Bolton testified Monday that if confirmed he would carry out the president's policies and work closely with allies at the U.N. while trying to reform the world body.
The testimony by Ford, who said he was a conservative Republican, was solicited by Democrats to impeach Bolton's character.
Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, the only committee Republican known to be wavering, was still inclined to vote in favor of Bolton, Chafee spokesman Stephen Hourahan said Tuesday. Chafee had "not made up his mind" and was "going to spend some time reading written testimony" from other witnesses, Hourahan said.
Democrats signaled that they might try to subpoena more witnesses — who are still in the administration and may not testify voluntarily — to buttress their arguments that Bolton retaliated against analysts who would not change their assessments. A committee vote could come Thursday or by early next week, possibly sending the nomination to the Senate floor, where Bolton is likely to win confirmation on a party-line vote. Democrats could mount a filibuster to block Bolton's nomination, but they did not indicate Tuesday that they planned to do so.
SEE ALSO:
Questioning Mr. Bolton
NYT, 14 April 2005
The longer John Bolton's Senate hearing for the post of United Nations representative went on, the more outrageous it seemed that President Bush could have nominated a man who had made withering disdain for that world body the signature of his career in international affairs. Some fear that the aim is to scuttle the United Nations. It's more likely, but just as disturbing, that this is another example of Mr. Bush's rewarding loyalty rather than holding officials accountable for mistakes, especially those who helped build the case for war with Iraq. ...Some of Mr. Bolton's Republican allies tried the "no harm, no foul" ploy, saying his misbehavior shouldn't count because he had ended up giving an accurate speech. Others said the issue was just a question of management style. But they are wrong. With America's credibility as low as it is, the last thing the nation needs is a United Nations envoy who tries to force intelligence into an ideological construct.
Sharon Asks U.S. to Pressure Iran to Give Up Its Nuclear Program
By DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 14 April 2005
Spreading photographs of Iranian nuclear sites over a lunch table at the Bush ranch in Texas on Monday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel urged President Bush to step up pressure on Iran to give up all elements of its nuclear program, according to senior American and Israeli officials.
Ironies of Iraq Today:
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 12 April 2005
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is afraid that the new Shiite religious government in Iraq will purge ex-Baathists placed in the army and intelligence services by US ally Iyad Allawi, a long-term CIA asset. Rumsfeld said that competent persons should be retained. This is the same Rumsfeld whose own deputy, Douglas Feith, set up a grossly incompetent cell in the Pentagon to cherry-pick intelligence and produce a false image of Iraq as bristling with weapons of mass destruction and in league with al-Qaeda.
Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old firm, has been accused of doing shoddy work on the oil facilities in southern Iraq. After yesterday's admission by Bechtel that its work on energy and water facilities was now falling apart, this report raises the question of whether US reconstruction billions tossed to the private sector have bought anything useful at all for Iraq.
What Democracy? A Brief Look at U.S. Foreign Policy
by Marc Pilisuk and Neil Wollman
CommonDreams, 12 April 2005
We are told that no matter one’s stand on the legitimacy of attacking Iraq or Afghanistan, such U.S. interventions have brought significant steps toward democracy there and elsewhere. But is the Bush administration correct to assert that spreading democracy is, and has been, the role of the U.S. in the world? A brief review of outcomes in both Iraq and Afghanistan--as well as the history of U.S. interventions over decades—suggests a different role, one involving U.S. based global corporate interests.
Democratic Occupation
by Neve Gordon
Baltimore Sun, 11 April 2005
Israel's occupation is crucial for understanding Iraq for two essential reasons.
First, like Israel, the United States has made a distinction between the occupied inhabitants and their resources. The Bush administration's idea is to allow the Iraqis to manage themselves and in this way to cut the cost of the occupation while at the same time continuing to control the rich oil fields. The important question now is which U.S. corporations will profit most from the expected 200 percent increase in Iraqi oil production - from 2.1 million to 6 million barrels a day.
Second, whereas Israel was certainly not the first country to stage elections in an occupied context, it was the first power to reintroduce this practice in a post-colonial age so as to legitimize an ongoing occupation. The Bush administration found this strategy useful because it fits extremely well with the narrative about "spreading freedom" to the Middle East.
Since one cannot promote freedom and install a puppet government at the same time, Mr. Bush was adamant about holding elections. The crux of the matter is that the goal of these elections is not to transfer power and authority to the Iraqi people, but rather to legitimize ongoing U.S. control in the region.
Therefore, the current debate among liberals about whether the elections in Iraq followed the minimum procedures informing a fair democratic process is actually beside the point. Even if Jimmy Carter had approved the elections, the Iraqis would still have no say, for example, about the deployment of foreign troops in their country.
When all is said and done, the new democratic government in Iraq is being created to manage the local population so that the occupying power's economic elite can enjoy the spoils.
US Accused of Seizing Iraqi Women to Force Fugitive Relatives to Give Up
by Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Guardian, 11 April 2005
American forces were yesterday accused of violating international law by taking two Iraqi women hostage in a bungled effort to persuade fugitive male relatives to surrender. US soldiers seized a mother and daughter from their home in Baghdad two weeks ago and allegedly left a note on the gate: "Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention." It was signed Bandit 6, apparently a military code, and gave a mobile phone number. When phoned by reporters an American soldier answered but he declined to take questions and hung up.
More US Troops Questioning Iraq Duty
by Christian Henderson
Al Jeerzera via CommonDreams, 11 April 2005
As the number of US dead or wounded in Iraq continues to rise, there is growing disquiet in the US army about serving in the two-year-old war. US army figures indicate that since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, about 5500 military personnel have absconded. In 2003 an independent advisory service for US military personnel, the GI Rights Hotline, received 32,000 calls, twice as many as in 2001, from soldiers wanting to leave the military. Some refuse to serve for political reasons, others are just unwilling to go to a country where 1500 US soldiers have been killed and more than 11,000 wounded. Many soldiers who object have already spent time in Iraq and become disillusioned by their experiences.
Bush Supports Plan by Sharon for a Withdrawal From Gaza
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
NYT, 12 April 2005
...Both the Americans and Israelis seemed content to leave any attempt to bridge their differences for another day. They concentrated instead on ensuring that Mr. Sharon succeed with his plan for withdrawal from Gaza and that the transition to Palestinian control of Gaza be an opportunity for building trust between Israelis and Palestinians
SEE ALSO:
Perspectives on Bush-Sharon Meeting
Palestinian State? Nuclear Weapons; Christian Zionism; Home Destruction
CommonDreams, 11 April 2005
NASEER ARURI, naruri@aol.com, http://www.tari.org Author of the book "Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Roles in Israel and Palestine," Aruri is chancellor professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. He said today: "At the rhetorical level, both leaders pay lip service to the creation of a Palestinian state. And yet, both are committed to positions at variance with the existence of a truly independent and contiguous state. Both have declared the so-called Disengagement Plan of Ariel Sharon as the only game in town. ... The 'Disengagement Plan' will serve as a model for a political settlement in the West Bank where contiguity has been ruled out by the so-called separation wall, which is rapidly consolidating most of the settlement blocs and rendering the West Bank a fragmented area unsuitable for a viable Palestinian state. ... A drastic reversal of these impediments is the only path towards peace, and that requires a solution under impartial and international auspices."
SEE ALSO:
A Palestinian Prison-State?
by Jeff Halper
Boston Globe, 11 April 2005
In peace-making, as in law, business, and other areas of life, the devil is in the details. The crux of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not over a Palestinian state. The ''quartet" of the Middle East road map -- Europe, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States -- all agree that a Palestinian state must emerge. Even Ariel Sharon himself, the father of the settlements and a fervent proponent of the Greater Land of Israel ideology, has come to understand the need for a Palestinian state in order to relieve Israel of the 4 million Palestinians living in the occupied territories. No, the problem is not a Palestinian state, but a viable Palestinian state. ...Israel needs only 5 to 15 percent of the occupied territories to retain complete control and confine the Palestinians to a prison-state. Israel could control the borders, Palestinian movement, all the water and most of the agricultural land, the Jerusalem area (which, because of tourism, represents almost half the Palestinian economy), the country's airspace, and even its communications sphere. The Palestinians could get 85 to 95 percent of the actual territory and, like inmates of a prison, still be locked into a series of cells called a ''state."
This, it appears, is what awaits Abbas in the next few months. The euphoria generated around the ''moderate and pragmatic" Abu Mazen in this ''post-Arafat era" is intended to put him in a corner, to place expectations of concessions upon him that he cannot possibly fulfill. Coordinated, as always, with the Americans, Sharon will spring his Generous Offer: Gaza plus 60-75 percent of the West Bank and a symbolic presence in East Jerusalem. Sounds OK, and fleshed out on a map it will look OK to most people abroad who have no way of evaluating the issue of viability. But it will lock the Palestinians into the cantonized entity toward which Sharon has been tirelessly and openly working this past quarter century. It will be a new apartheid.
If Abbas says ''yes," he will be the quisling leader Israel has hoped for. Two things will happen: Abbas will win the Nobel Peace Prize (sharing the stage proudly with Sharon and Bush), and he will be assassinated. Say ''no," and Sharon will pounce: ''See?!" he will proclaim, ''the Palestinians have refused yet another generous offer! They obviously do not want peace!" And Israel, off the hook, will be free to expand its control of the occupied territories for years to come.
The Chinese expression has it: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The generous offer, though fictitious, worked once. It is the responsibility of everyone seeking a just and endurable peace to ensure that it does not happen again. Viability is the devil in the details.
US Millions in Iraq Wasted
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 11 April 2005
The true cost of the Iraq misadventure is consistently underestimated by the Bush administration, which does not even include the extra funds in the budget deficit! They even sneak the wounded soldiers back into this country so that the public does not get an accurate sense of the war's human costs for Americans.
So in light of the complete disinterest of the US government in the quality of life in much of the United States, an item like the below is especially maddening.
T. Christian Miller of the Los Angeles Times reports that:

"Iraqi officials have crippled scores of water, sewage and electrical plants refurbished with U.S. funds by failing to maintain and operate them properly, wasting millions of American taxpayer dollars, according to interviews and documents.
Hardest hit has been the effort to rebuild Iraq's water and sewage systems, a multibillion-dollar task considered to be among the most crucial components of the effort to improve daily life for Iraqis. Of more than 40 such plants run by the Iraqis, not one is being operated properly, according to the Bechtel Group, the contractor at work on the project.
The power grid faces similar problems.

Miller quotes Bechtel and others as saying that Iraqis lack training and are lazy, explaining why the refurbished plants are not being kept up.
But there is another possible explanation. The American contractors that did the work, did it in the American way. The Iraqi engineers and technicians had their own techniques and equipment and spare parts. After the Gulf War in 1991, they were able to get the electricity grid back up, using indigenous methods, in less than a year.
It was widely alleged that the Americans spent far too much on the work done, and that local Iraqi firms could have done it better, cheaper and more quickly. And the problem of putting in a lot of unfamiliar American equipment may well be that Iraqi technicians don't know how to work it or keep it up without special training.
Miller doesn't appear to have spoken to any of the Iraqi engineers at the plants, who might have been able to say something about all this. The Iraqi bureaucrats to whom he spoke complained that they did not have the money it took to keep up the facilities. (Since sabotage of oil pipelines has been very successful, this excuse may well be true).
Someone with knowledge of the matter also suggested to me that some problems may derive from just jerry-rigging a patchwork of old, dilapidated French, German and Russian equipment, hastily and somewhate haphazardly, and that this method, too, might be producing the subsequent failures.
North Korea Deals a Blow to Arms Talks
By JOSEPH KAHN
NYT, 11 April 2005
The North Korean government has disavowed a commitment to negotiate a step-by-step elimination of its nuclear weapons program with the Bush administration but may freeze the production of nuclear bombs under strict conditions, said an American specialist on North Korea who completed a visit there this weekend.
The specialist, Selig S. Harrison of the Center for International Policy in Washington, said in an interview that he had been informed by several top-ranking North Korean leaders that the United States must pledge to respect the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity before any freeze could be discussed. The Bush administration has rejected conditions for resuming negotiations. "We have lost the opportunity to negotiate a step-by-step agreement that would lead to the eventual dismantling of their nuclear program," Mr. Harrison said in Beijing after returning from Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. "They are no longer willing to discuss that possibility."
Thousands of Shiites Stage Anti-U.S. Rally in Baghdad
AP via NYT, 9 April 2005
Tens of thousands of supporters of a militant Shiite cleric filled central Baghdad's streets Saturday and demanded that American soldiers go home, marking the second anniversary of Baghdad's fall with shouts of ``No, no to Satan!'' To the west of the capital, 5,000 protesters issue similar demands in the Sunni Triangle city of Ramadi, reflecting a growing impatience with the U.S.-led occupation and the slow pace of returning control to an infant Iraqi government. Mahdi Army militiamen searched people entering the demonstration area as Iraqi policemen stood to the side.
Protesters burned the U.S. flag as well as cardboard cutouts of Bush and Saddam. Three effigies representing Saddam, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- all handcuffed and dressed in red Iraqi prison jumpsuits that signified they had been condemned to death -- were placed on a pedestal, then symbolically toppled like the Saddam statue two years before. Others acted out reports of prison abuse at the hands of American soldiers. Photos released last year showing U.S. soldiers piling naked inmates in a pyramid at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison have tarnished the military's reputation both here and around the world.
``Force the occupation to leave from our country,'' one banner read in English.

URGENT ACTION:
BootCAT!

 On April 13th the Caterpillar Inc. will hold its annual shareholders meeting in Chicago. A member of our community [BootCAT], who owns shares in Caterpillar, will be attending, carrying petitions that ask stockholders to stop selling Caterpillar bulldozers to Israel that "are being used to destroy homes, lives and and property in violation of US and international law."
"Since 1967 Israel has used Caterpillar bulldozers to demolish nearly 9,000 Palestinian homes, leaving more than 50,000 people homeless. Since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, Israel has razed the homes of 12,737 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the past two years the Israeli army deployed Caterpillar bulldozers to uproot 200,000 Palestinian olive trees." - from the Stop Caterpillar National Campaign.
 Act now to stop the Caterpillar Corporation from selling its D9, D10, and D11 bulldozers to Israel to illegally destroy Palestinian homes and farm lands. Learn how you can get involved, petition CAT shareholders, or boycott CAT products. To better understand why read the articles below:
Follow the Money [Or Not...]
Watchdogs are warning that corruption in Iraq is out of control. But will the United States join efforts to clamp down on it?
Newsweek, 4 April issue
...The administration's reluctance to prosecute has turned the Iraq occupation into a "free-fraud zone," says former CPA senior adviser Franklin Willis. After the fall of Baghdad, there was no Iraqi law because Saddam Hussein's regime was dead. But if no U.S. law applied either, then everything was permissible, says Willis. The former CPA official compares Iraq to the "Wild West," saying he delivered one $2 million payment to Custer Battles in bricks of cash. ("We called Mike Battles in and said, 'Bring a bag'," Willis told Congress in February.) Willis and other critics worry that with just $4.1 billion of the $18.7 billion spent so far, the U.S. legal stance will open the door to much more fraud in the future. "If urgent steps are not taken, Iraq ... will become the biggest corruption scandal in history," warned the anti-corruption group Transparency International in a recent report. Grassley adds that if the government decides the False Claims Act doesn't apply to Iraq, "any recovery for fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars ... would be prohibited." ...More than U.S. money is at stake. The administration has harshly criticized the United Nations over hundreds of millions stolen from the Oil-for-Food Program under Saddam. But the successor to Oil-for-Food created under the occupation, called the Development Fund for Iraq, could involve billions of potentially misused dollars. On Jan. 30, the former CPA's own inspector general, Stuart Bowen, concluded that occupation authorities accounted poorly for $8.8 billion in these Iraqi funds. "The CPA did not implement adequate financial controls," Bowen said. U.S. officials argue that it was impossible, in a war environment, to have such controls. Yet now the Bush administration is either ignoring or stalling inquiries into the use of these Iraqi oil funds, according to reports by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, and others.
Power Struggles Stall Iraqi Provincial Councils
National Assembly is finally moving forward, but some local bodies are caught up in bitter and sometimes bloody political rivalries.
By Edmund Sanders
LA Times, 6 April 2005
As Iraq's National Assembly gathers today to name a president after weeks of political squabbling, less publicized post-election battles are still raging at the local level in several of the nation's 18 provinces. In Najaf province, a power struggle between the outgoing governor and his successor has fueled armed clashes in recent weeks between two rival security forces. Newly elected council members in Diyala province are afraid to gather for their first meeting, mindful that eight of their predecessors were assassinated, a council member said. In northern Al Tamim province, home of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, newly elected Turkmens and Arabs are boycotting council meetings, claiming that the Kurdish majority is refusing to share power. And in the southern province of Basra, an ultra-conservative religious party that came in a distant second in the local election has won control of the council by forging alliances with other slates, sidelining the winner, which was one seat short of a majority.
"The councils are in a much bigger mess than the National Assembly," said Kamil Chaderchi, deputy minister of public works and municipalities.
"And no one is paying attention."
Resisting the Economic War ['Privatization'] in Iraq
Interview with Hassan Juma ’ a Awad, head of Basra Oil Union
By Greg Muttitt of Platform.
CorportateWatch (UK) Newsletter, dated 23 April 2005
Following the elections at the end of January, it seems the way may now be open to privatise Iraq ’ s biggest and most strategic asset: oil. But while the UK and USA are carefully playing the politics at a government level, Iraq ’ s occupiers may face a greater obstacle in the oil industry ’ s workers.
Two years on from the invasion of Iraq, it’s easy to feel cynical. Every day we are bombarded with new reports of violence in Iraq, of our government’s dishonesty, and of the rapid privatisation of the country.
Meeting Hassan Juma’a Awad, the head of the Basra Oil Union, was a perfect antidote to those feelings. In Hassan I found a source of hope, that things in Iraq could change for the better.
The Basra Oil Union – which is independent of any political or religious affiliation –has been a powerful force in Iraq's largest industry. Representing 23,000 workers in the oil industry in the south of Iraq, it grew out of the South Oil Company (SOC) Union, and now combines ten trade union councils in nine Iraqi oil companies in Basra, Amara and Nassiriyah.
“The opinion of all [Iraqi] oilworkers is that they are against privatisation”, states Hassan. “We see privatisation as economic colonialism. The authorities are saying that privatisation will develop our sector and be useful. But we do not see it as development at all; we view any plan to privatise the oil sector as a big disaster”.
Sovereignty over its oil reserves is key to Iraq’s future development, Hassan argues. “Oil must stay in the hands of Iraqis, because oil is the only national resource that we have which is of great value, and our economy depends on it”.
Half-Hearted?
Pentagon Drafting Policy for Detention
Doctrine Addresses Wartime Prison Abuse
By Josh White
Washington Post, 8 April 2005
Pentagon officials are developing an overarching doctrine for wartime prison operations that would detail a strict chain of command and clearer detention rules, seeking to eliminate the confusion that contributed to detainee abuse in Iraq, according to a draft of the policy that is working its way to the secretary of defense...
Human Rights Watch, an independent group that has been monitoring detainee abuse, sharply criticized the draft yesterday, saying the provision on enemy combatants gives military officials a way to circumvent international law. Should members of dozens of listed terrorist groups or "anyone affiliated with these organizations" come under U.S. control, the document says, they could be held as enemy combatants. They would still be "entitled to be treated humanely," the document says, "subject to military necessity."
..."Instead of correcting current violations of the Geneva Conventions, these guidelines would shred the conventions further," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a written statement. He sent a letter to Rumsfeld yesterday urging him to modify the document to avoid further mistreatment of detainees. "This policy could strip hundreds of thousands of people worldwide -- including civilians -- of their basic rights not to be arbitrarily detained," he said.
Human Rights Watch also said the draft could cause more "ghost detainees" to disappear within the military detention system, as some enemy combatants might not receive serial numbers if they are not considered official prisoners of war. The CIA housed such ghost detainees at prisons in Iraq, including several under an agreement with Army officials at Abu Ghraib. The draft, however, states that "all detainees arriving from any and all sources and agencies shall be inprocessed and receive [a serial number] immediately upon arrival."
Though the document initially was scheduled to arrive on Rumsfeld's desk by April 16, the final coordinating draft, dated March 23, was several months later than expected. It is not expected to be complete until later this year. A defense official familiar with the document's development said the draft probably will change before it is presented as policy, has not yet gone through a legal review and is waiting for combatant commanders' comments, as well.
Saving Mexico by Ruining It
The attack on Mexico City's mayor is backfiring.
By Denise Dresser
LA Times, 8 April 2005
Today, Mexico is a country divided. Today, the mantra of Mexico's political and economic elites has become "anybody but Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador," the mayor of Mexico City who they perceive as a dangerous, polarizing demagogue — but who is the front-runner for the presidency in 2006.
The ruling classes fear him and what they believe he will do if he wins: nationalize, overspend, jeopardize Mexico's hard-won economic gains. They're determined to stop him. But in doing so, they are tearing apart a country where political stability cannot be taken for granted. They are undermining the democracy it took so long to achieve. They are wreaking havoc in Mexico in their attempt to save it from the left.
The proceedings this week against Lopez Obrador are not about the rule of law. They're about kicking a popular left-wing front-runner out of the presidential race. As a result of shrewd patronage politics and savvy political positioning, Lopez Obrador is the most popular politician in the country. That makes him dangerous to an array of vested interests and explains why he has so many powerful enemies obsessed with bringing him down, including President Vicente Fox.
Columbia U. Prof. Rashid Khalidi: "Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom Are Necessary For Unpopular and Difficult Ideas"
DemocracyNow, 7 April 2005
Another debate about academic freedom has been playing out at New York's Columbia University. After months of closed-door hearings, last week a faculty committee at Columbia released a report that largely cleared professors of Middle Eastern studies of charges that they were intimidating students and stated that there was no evidence of anti-Semitism at the school. However, the panel did criticize Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, saying that he told a student to leave his class after she defended Israel's conduct toward Palestinians. Professor Massad denies the charge.
SEE ALSO:
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 7 March 2005
What the [NYT's] editors mean by "anti-Israeli" is not spelled out. But generally the term means any criticism of Israel. (You can criticize Argentina all day every day till the cows come home and nobody cares in the US, but make a mild objection to Ariel Sharon putting another 3500 settlers onto Palestinian territory in contravention of all international law and of the road map to which the Bush administration says it is committed, and boom!, you are branded a racist bigot. And if you dare point out that Sharon's brutality and expansionism end up harming America and Americans by unnecessarily making enemies for us (because we are Sharon's sycophants), then you are really in trouble.
Easy to Kill, Hard to Defeat
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 7 April 2005
The US military thought that it had defeated the Mahdi Army by late May 2004. Then when fighting broke out again in August, the militia fought tenaciously in Najaf and seemed to come from nowhere. One reporter told me that the US generals in Iraq were frantically trying to discover how Muqtada had recruited so many new fighters in only a couple of months. But that's easy. The fighters in August were the angry cousins of the ones killed in May. In Iraq you can't let a thing like foreigners killing your cousin pass without action. Young men who had been on the fence now picked up guns and rpg launchers. Their lack of professional fighting skills ensured their military defeat, but by holing up in the shrine of Ali they gained political capital outside Najaf itself. If Sistani had not intervened, and had Allawi gone ahead with plans to invade the shrine of Ali, it could well have provoked a Shiite social revolution against the interim government and against the Americans. Mahdi Army militiamen are easy to kill, hard to defeat.
Obstructing Kofi's Vision
Traci Hukill
TomPaine, 5 April 2005
Kofi Annan has a plan for making the world a safer and more humane place for its 6 billion inhabitants. He knew he'd have to compromise with the United States on terrorism and Israel, and he did. But he didn’t think he’d be facing John Bolton.
Annan released his report on revamping the United Nations on March 21 in a report called In Larger Freedom . Annan did not limit himself to finding ways to improve the U.N.’s transparency and efficiency. Quite the opposite. The secretary-general delivered a blueprint for the biggest overhaul in the United Nations 60-year history. The 65 recommendations he came up with are united under the banner of securing peace, human rights and relief from poverty for all people—a visionary new mission for the organization.
The White House was not so keen. The administration expressed its distaste for Annan’s competing global vision by nominating the swaggering U.N. critic Bolton to be its chief envoy. Under Bolton, the U.S.-U.N. delegation will no doubt welcome the select few proposals that are of use to America. But Bolton’s blind unilateralism, the national preoccupation with terrorism and the Congressional unwillingness to share money or agree to constraints on U.S. behavior mean that many of the most meaningful reforms will meet their demise.
...Annan’s goal of peace, human rights and decent living standards for all is an inspiring global rallying cry, but it’s also inspired because it stands up for the principle of enlightened self-interest. Global threats are interconnected; you can’t have peace when people live in grinding poverty, you can’t be safe from distant epidemics in an age of air travel and you can’t ignore failed states where terrorists are setting up ropes courses. Improving life for the rest of the world is the best insurance policy against America’s multiple nightmares becoming reality. But the Bush administration has chosen a different path. With Bolton at the negotiating table, the United States will pursue its narrow, neoconservative national interest. The enlightenment, it seems, is dead.
Israel Defends Settler Plan
By Matt Spetalnick
Reuters via YahooNews, 6 April 2005
Israel signaled on Wednesday it was sticking to a plan to extend its largest West Bank settlement to Jerusalem, despite President Bush's demand for a halt to all Jewish settlement expansion. The controversy threatened to create tensions between the two close allies ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's talks with Bush in the United States next week. Palestinians fear the settlement expansion would largely cut off the West Bank, which would form the bulk of a future state, from the eastern Arab part of Jerusalem, which they want as its capital -- a demand Israel rejects.
Democracy Starts At Home
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
TomPaine, 6 April 2005
When all is said and done, George Kennan was right: America’s most powerful tool in international affairs is our example. Highlighting the hypocrisy of a leader who promotes democracy abroad while weakening it at home, Joe Stiglitz describes our domestic democracy deficit in detail.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is professor of economics at Columbia University and was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Clinton and chief economist and senior vice president at the World Bank. His most recent book is The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade.
The Bush administration has put expansion of democracy at the center of its foreign policy. This is a far nobler calling than simply expanding American hegemony. The question is, does Bush really mean it, and does he genuinely understand what democracy means?
The Bush administration praised Saudi Arabia’s municipal elections, but what about the rights of women—including their voting rights? It welcomed (if it did not actively participate in) the toppling of Venezuela’s democratically elected leader, but it continues to support Pakistan’s military dictator. It criticizes Russian President Vladimir Putin, but only after he goes against business interests. And it may raise concerns about media concentration in Russia, but remains silent about media concentration in Italy.
There is a taint of hypocrisy in a more fundamental sense. The Bush administration is right to emphasize the importance of elections, without which democracy is inconceivable. But democracy entails more than periodic elections, and the legitimacy of elections depends on the public’s confidence in the electoral process itself. In this respect, the last two American presidential elections have hardly been models for the world.
...America’s democracy remains the envy of much of the world, and it is good that the Bush administration now champions the expansion of democracy forcefully. But the administration would be far more credible—and have far more success—if it took a closer look at home, if it examined its own practices more honestly, and if it engaged in a broader discussion of what democracy really means.
18 American Soldiers Killed in Desert Helicopter Crash
By Tom Coghlan
Telegraph, 7 April 2005
At least 18 American soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan yesterday, the biggest single loss of US life since Operation Enduring Freedom began in autumn 2001. The army Chinook came down in bad weather in featureless desert near the south-eastern city of Ghazni. Afghan officials said the bodies were all in US military uniform. The army said last night that 18 people, including crew members and passengers, were listed on the flight manifest and that two remained unaccounted for.
How Many Government Agencies Does It Take To Teach Soldiers Arabic?
A pathetic case of Pentagon incompetence.
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 6 April 2005
Remedial education: Does Rummy know what "urgent" means?
I've just read one of the funniest and saddest government documents I've run across in years. Published by the Pentagon (the source of most such things) under the title "Defense Language Transformation Roadmap," it details the official plan for improving foreign-language skills among U.S. military personnel. The plan is meant to fill an urgent need. It was ordered by the deputy secretary of defense, administered by the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, and coordinated with the service secretaries, combat commanders, and Joint Chiefs of Staff. And to read it is to see, with your own increasingly widening eyes, the Pentagon's (or is it the federal government's?) sheer inability to get anything done on time.
The document—only 19 pages, so take a look—traces, all too clearly, the project's shameful chronology. It got under way in November 2002—over a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—when the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness was directed to have the military departments review their requirements for language professionals (interpreters, translators, area specialists, and so forth). This review was a bust—or, in the document's more delicate language, it "resulted in narrowly scoped requirements based on current manning authorizations instead of … projected needs."
So, in August 2003—in other words, after another nine months—the undersecretary tried again, directing a formal review of the Defense Language Institute Foreign-Language Center. The resulting study "articulated the needs for qualitative improvement in language skills." What a surprise!
Standby...this report just out
Bush Team 'Causing Chaos in Arab World'
By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
Telegraph, 6 April 2005
A group of Arab intellectuals endorsed by the Bush administration turned their wrath on America yesterday, accusing it of undermining reform in the Arab world by backing Israel, weakening the United Nations and creating chaos in Iraq. President George W Bush has made the promotion of democracy in the Middle East a key priority, saying that reform was the best means of undermining violent Islamist groups. He eagerly seized on the work of the same Arab scholars who drew up a report in 2002 that bemoaned the "democratic deficit" in a region ruled by all-powerful kings, princes, sheikhs and presidents for life. But their latest "Arab Human Development Report", issued under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), will make much less comfortable reading in Washington. "As a result of the invasion of their country, the Iraqi people have emerged from the grip of a despotic regime that violated their basic rights and freedoms, only to fall under a foreign occupation that increased human suffering," said the authors. They said America's repeated veto - or threat of veto - at the UN Security Council to block resolutions critical of Israel's policy towards Palestinians "has pushed many people in the region to lose hope of obtaining justice from global governance and could exacerbate a tendency towards extremism". A UNDP spokesman denied claims that the US had blocked publication of the report earlier this year. But he admitted that publication had been delayed because of disagreements among the authors, and UNDP's demands for changes.

US death toll at the mercy of insurgents
Iraq Rebels Hit Back After US Offensive
By Adrian Blomfield in Baghdad
Telegraph, 6 April 2005
The US military claimed a fresh victory in its offensive against Iraq's insurgency yesterday, striking a militant hideout with helicopter gunships and artillery. But the insurgents kidnapped a senior Iraqi general, one of their most notable coups in the past two years, and detonated bombs across the country.

US troops in Iraq

US troops deploy in Baghdad after an explosion

The violence seemed typical of the seesaw security situation recently. US gains in the coalition's struggle to impose its authority were balanced by setbacks elsewhere. Two Iraqi battalions mounted an operation to search for weapons in eastern Diyala province on Monday but insurgents returned fire from well-entrenched positions. Fighting lasted most of yesterday.
...Forty US servicemen were killed in March, the lowest monthly total since February last year, as rebels focused attacks on members of the Iraqi security forces. But a senior American officer said that the fighters had again stepped up attacks on coalition targets this week.
Nine US soldiers have been killed in five days and 44 were hurt in an assault on Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad at the weekend.
There has been no respite in attacks against Iraqi military targets. Gunmen dragged Gen Jalal Mohammed Saleh, the commander of the interior ministry's armoured brigade, and his bodyguards from their cars in the Baghdad suburb of Mansur.
Insurgents are holding dozens of foreigners but most of the seized are Iraqis. The interior ministry said that 5,000 Iraqi citizens had been taken hostage since the end of the war was declared two years ago but many had been freed after ransoms were paid.
Al-Qa'eda's wing in Iraq released a video of a young Iraqi soldier being beheaded. A second group posted footage of the execution of another Iraqi serviceman.
The Real Iraq: As Described in the Middle East Press
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 4 April 2005
If you spend any time reading Arabic newspapers, the main conclusion you draw about Iraq is that it just isn't like the typical American imagination of it. I've extracted a few paras. (from a long set of summaries) from the BBC World Monitoring for April 3 and 4 from the Iraqi press below. Each of the entries has a "what in the world?" factor as I read them, just because you don't see this sort of thing in the US media...
Israel Considers Barring Palestinian Workers
By Andrea Stone
USA TODAY, 6 April 2005
The Israeli government is considering a plan that would prohibit Palestinians from working within Israel's borders, according to two senior Israeli officials. ...The proposal comes as the international community is trying to bolster the Palestinian economy in the West Bank and Gaza. Unemployment and poverty there have soared since the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, began in September 2000. Vice Premier Shimon Peres, speaking Tuesday in an interview before leaving for the United States to promote economic aid for the Palestinians, said freezing out Palestinian workers "doesn't make any sense," but he confirmed that Israeli planners have discussed the idea.
IRAQ: Compensation for Fallujah Residents Slow - Locals
IRIN via Reuters, 5 April 2005
 Compensation for residents of Fallujah city, some 60 km from the Iraqi capital, is happening at a slow pace, local people say. Government studies suggest that 70 percent of buildings were destroyed in the city during the last conflict between US troops and insurgents. This left thousands of families still encamped on the outskirts of the city, waiting for a government solution to their problem. Two-thirds of the city's population is said to have fled when the fighting started between November 2004 and January 2005. Based on studies, each family will receive a sum of money, depending on the damage and size of their property.
The Price of Infallibility
By THOMAS CAHILL
NYT, 5 April 2005
...John Paul II's most lasting legacy to Catholicism will come from the episcopal appointments he made. In order to have been named a bishop, a priest must have been seen to be absolutely opposed to masturbation, premarital sex, birth control (including condoms used to prevent the spread of AIDS), abortion, divorce, homosexual relations, married priests, female priests and any hint of Marxism. It is nearly impossible to find men who subscribe wholeheartedly to this entire catalogue of certitudes; as a result the ranks of the episcopate are filled with mindless sycophants and intellectual incompetents. The good priests have been passed over; and not a few, in their growing frustration as the pontificate of John Paul II stretched on, left the priesthood to seek fulfillment elsewhere.
Assault on Abu Ghraib May Signal New Tactics
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post, 5 April 2005
 Insurgent groups led by foreigners and Iraqis asserted Monday that guerrilla leader Abu Musab Zarqawi's organization was responsible for a major assault on Abu Ghraib prison Saturday that U.S. officers called one of the most sophisticated attacks of the insurgency. ...Insurgent commanders said Monday that the prison assault represented a shift in tactics and that more attacks on U.S. installations would follow. "These operations will be different from the old ones, the car bombs, the IEDs,'' said Abu Jalal, a top commander in the extremist group Mohammed's Army, using the common abbreviation for improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs. Mohammed's Army is one of dozens of home-grown armed groups believed to be fighting the U.S. occupation in Iraq. "We are going to use the same method that they used when they attacked Iraq," said Abu Jalal, who uses a nom de guerre and described himself as a former general in the Iraqi military during Saddam Hussein's rule. "The old military officers know very well that the attacks on the bases of the enemy army weaken the morale of the soldiers and frighten them. The soldier feels safe when he goes back to his base. If he is attacked in the place that feels safe, that place is really hell," Abu Jalal said. If Zarqawi was behind the attack, it was unclear where or when his movement acquired the tactical expertise to directly confront U.S. Marines. Abu Jalal denied that former military officers in Mohammed's Army had served as advisers, saying, "It was 100 percent Zarqawi." The statement on the radical Web site said "sources with the enemy" had helped provide information to plot the attack. Abu Jalal said the attack had been launched to free a commander of Zarqawi's group and associates held at Abu Ghraib.
The exploitation produced by inhuman capitalism is a real evil and that's the kernel of truth in Marxism. ...These seeds of truth in Marxism shouldn't be destroyed...shouldn't be blown away by the wind. The supporters of capitalism in its extreme forms tend to overlook the good things achieved by communism. ...Blind capitalism can crush the human spirit.
    -- Pope John Paul II, ardent anti-communist

AUDIO LINK
A Pope's Long Stand Against Communism
Sylvia Poggioli 
Weekend Edition, 3 April 2005
 NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports on the role Pope John Paul II played in the fall of communism.
Speaker of Iraqi Parliament Elected Amid Rancor
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 3 April 2005
Two more US servicemen were killed by guerrilla attacks over the weekend, and the Green Zone took mortar fire near the Iraqi parliament again, during a recess, on Sunday. This news comes a day after a car bomb and mortar attack on Abu Ghraib prison, left 44 US troops wounded along with over a dozen Iraqis.
Enough security to allow a meeting of the parliament was achieved, however, only by closing major bridges in and out of Baghdad and placing restrictions on the circulation of drivers in the capital. Member of parliament and cleric, Shaikh Hussein al-Sadr, warned that such measures invonvenience Baghdadi shopkeepers and others and could produce dislike for the parliament if they continued (ash-Sharq al-Awsat). Meanwhile, journalists complained about being locked out of the proceedings. And women deputies, a little less than a third of the total, complained that they were not being offered any important cabinet or executive posts in the negotiations for the formation of a government.
Deadlock Risks Disillusion, U.S Warns Iraqis
Legislators' prolonged failure to form a new government threatens reforms and may encourage insurgents, an official says.
By Paul Richter
LA Times, 3 April 2005
Increasingly worried about the failure of elected Iraqi representatives to form a new government, the Bush administration is warning that the political gridlock in Baghdad is threatening the country's progress toward democracy and encouraging insurgents to continue their attacks.
Even as U.S. officials publicly praise Iraq's Jan. 30 election as a model of Middle East reform, they have begun privately advising leaders in Baghdad that the delay in selecting officials for a new government has caused Iraqis to lose confidence in the legislators they elected, a senior Bush administration official said.
Curveball the Goofball
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 3 April 2005
Organizations organically respond to please the boss. Bosses naturally surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear. When King Lear's favorite daughter spoke frankly to him, and refused to fawn like her sisters, she was instantly banished. Insincerity pays.
It is absurd to have yet another investigation into the chuckleheaded assessments on Saddam's phantom W.M.D. that intentionally skirts how the $40 billion-a-year intelligence was molded and manufactured to fit the ideological schemes of those running the White House and Pentagon.
As the commission's co-chairman, Laurence Silberman, put it: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policy makers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."
Huh? That's like an investigation into steroids in baseball that looks only at the drug companies, not the players who muscled up. We don't need a 14-month inquiry producing 601 pages at a cost of $10 million to tell us the data on arms in Iraq was flawed. We know that. When we got over there, we didn't find any.
This is the fourth exhaustive investigation that has not answered the basic question: How did the White House and Pentagon spin the information and why has no one gotten in trouble for it? If your kid lied and hid stuff from you to do something he thought would be great, then wouldn't admit it and blamed someone else, he'd be punished - even if his adventure worked out all right for him. When the "values" president and his aides do it, they're rewarded. Condoleezza Rice was promoted to secretary of state. Stephen Hadley, Condi's old deputy, was promoted to national security adviser. Bob Joseph, a national security aide who helped shovel the uranium hooey into the State of the Union address, is becoming an under secretary of state. Paul Wolfowitz, who painted the takeover of Iraq as such a cakewalk that our troops went in without the proper armor or backup, will run the World Bank. George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. when Al Qaeda attacked and when Saddam's mushroom cloud gained credibility, got the Medal of Freedom. Then the president appoints a compliant Democrat and a complicit conservative judge to head an inquiry set up to let the president off the hook. ...The report warns the president to watch out for the "headstrong" intelligence agencies. If only the commission had concerned itself with headstrong officials at a higher level. Then its 601 pages would be worth reading.
SEE ALSO:
'Curveball' Debacle Reignites CIA Feud
The former agency chief and his top deputy deny reports that they were told a key source for Iraqi intelligence was deemed unreliable.
By Bob Drogin and Greg Miller
LA Times, 2 April 2005
A bitter feud erupted Friday over claims by a presidential commission that top CIA officials apparently ignored warnings in late 2002 and early 2003 that an informant code-named "Curveball" — the chief source of prewar U.S. intelligence about Iraqi germ weapons — was unreliable. Former CIA Director George J. Tenet and his chief deputy, John E. McLaughlin, furiously denied that they had been told not to trust Curveball, an Iraqi refugee in Germany who ultimately was proved a fraud. But the CIA's former operations chief and one of his top lieutenants insisted in interviews that debates had raged inside the CIA about Curveball's credibility, even as then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell vouched for the defector's claims in a crucial address to the United Nations Security Council on the eve of war. "The fact is there was yelling and screaming about this guy," said James L. Pavitt, deputy director of operations and head of the clandestine service until he retired last summer. "My people were saying: 'We think he's a stinker,' " Pavitt said. But CIA bioweapons analysts, he said, "were saying: 'We still think he's worthwhile.' " Pavitt said he didn't convey his own doubts to Tenet because he didn't know until after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that Curveball was "of such import" in prewar CIA assessments provided to the president, Congress and the public. "Later, I remember the guffaws by myself and others when we said, 'How could they have put this much emphasis on this guy? … He wasn't worth [anything] in our minds," Pavitt said. Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA European Division, said he and other senior officials in his office — the unit that oversees spying in Europe — had issued repeated warnings about Curveball's accounts.
A Final Verdict on Prewar Intelligence: No One is Accountable
By TODD S. PURDUM
NYT, 1 April 2005
It found no evidence that intelligence had been politically twisted to suit preconceptions about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, and made no formal judgments about how top policy makers had used that intelligence to justify war. Yet in its own way, the presidential commission on intelligence left little doubt that President Bush and his top aides had gotten what they wanted, not what they needed, when they were told that Saddam Hussein had a threatening arsenal of illicit weapons.
"It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom," the commission said. But that understated indictment is about the extent of the commission's effort to explain the responsibilities of the nation's highest officials for one of the worst intelligence failures of modern times.
So the latest and presumably the last official review of such questions leaves unresolved what may be the biggest question of all: Who was accountable, and will they ever be held to account for letting what amounted to mere assumptions "harden into presumptions," as Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman of the commission, put it.
A full accounting awaits the work of historians. But already some people have been judged, albeit it indirect ways, while others have been rewarded, even promoted. Some who foresaw potential disaster were punished or pushed aside, while the president and vice president were given new terms.
President Bush's election-year order creating the commission (and a schedule that assured it would report well after the election) did not authorize it to investigate how policy makers had used the intelligence they received. In the end, the commission reserved by far its sharpest criticism for the agencies that provided the intelligence, blaming them over and over again in its 601-page unclassified report for "poor tradecraft and poor management."
SEE ALSO:
After 14-Month Inquiry, Many Questions Remain
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post, 1 April 2005
Judge Laurence H. Silberman, co-chairman of the commission that released its report on U.S. intelligence failures yesterday, was given "full and complete access" to whatever information he needed. But when it came to what questions President Bush asked of the CIA, Silberman learned everything he needed to know from Bob Woodward.
"Actually, if you read the Woodward book, it would appear that the president did ask tough questions," Silberman said in a news conference hosted by the White House. Why would the commission, with unfettered access to the government's most sensitive documents, rely on a book anybody can buy at Borders?
We Can't Remain Silent
By BOB HERBERT
NYT, 1 April 2005
At dinner on a rainy night in Manhattan this week, I listened to a retired admiral and a retired general speak about the pain they've personally felt over the torture and abuse scandal that has spread like a virus through some sectors of the military.
During the dinner and in follow-up interviews, Rear Adm. John Hutson, who is now president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., and Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a lawyer in private practice in New York, said they believed that both the war effort and the military itself have been seriously undermined by official policies that encouraged the abuse of prisoners.
Both men said they were unable to remain silent as institutions that they served loyally for decades, and which they continue to love without reservation, are being damaged by patterns of conduct that fly in the face of core values that most members of the military try mightily to uphold.
"At some point," said General Cullen, "I had to say: 'Wait a minute. We cannot go along with this.' "
The two retired officers have lent their support to an extraordinary lawsuit that seeks to hold Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ultimately accountable for policies that have given rise to torture and other forms of prisoner abuse. And last September they were among a group of eight retired admirals and generals who wrote a letter to President Bush urging him to create an independent 9/11-type commission to fully investigate the problem of prisoner abuse from the top to the bottom of the command structure.
 

 

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