Reflections on the "New American" Revolution
Friday, August 29, 2003
A deadly franchise: "As with all wars on terror, terrorism wasn't the target; it was the excuse to wage the real war: on people who dared to dissent. "
U.S. Suspects It Received False Iraq Arms Tips:Bush won't admit it, but the intelligence community will:
"'We were prisoners of our own beliefs,' said a senior U.S. weapons expert who recently returned from a stint with the survey group. 'We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions.'"
Thursday, August 28, 2003
EPA Backs Away From Issue of Auto Emissions (washingtonpost.com): "Environmentalists said the decision marked an 'abrupt about-face' by the EPA, which testified before Congress in October 1999, during the Clinton administration, that the agency had the necessary authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a global warming pollutant"
Ashcroft Taking Fire From GOP Stalwarts (washingtonpost.com): "many civil liberties advocates and some lawmakers still bristle at Ashcroft's sharply worded testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2001, in which he suggested that critics were aiding terrorists and endangering the safety of U.S. citizens."
Ashcroft Taking Fire From GOP Stalwarts (washingtonpost.com): "'Ashcroft wants more power,' said state Rep. Charles Eberle (R-Post Falls), who has drafted a resolution critical of the Patriot Act. 'What a lot of us in Idaho are saying is, 'Let's not get rid of the checks and balances.' . . . People out here in the West are used to taking care of themselves. We don't like the government intruding on our constitutional rights.'"
Tony Blair's Iraq Dossier: "Mr. Blair claimed an implausibly superfluous role for a leader preparing to take his nation to war. An e-mail note from Mr. Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, reported that the dossier had gone through a 'substantial rewrite' to address points Mr. Blair had personally raised. Mr. Powell earlier told the inquiry that in mid-September last year he had warned Mr. Blair that it would be inaccurate to claim that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Yet one week later, in presenting the dossier to Parliament, Mr. Blair implied just that by saying Mr. Hussein's unconventional weapons programs were 'up and running.' "
Fistfuls of Dollars: "even the government of a superpower can't simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world's evildoers — single-handedly because we've alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it's not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. Someday, when the grown-ups are back in charge, they'll have quite a mess to clean up"
Blair lied: "Tony Blair was forced to admit yesterday that he was personally responsible for Dr David Kelly's identity being disclosed, in direct contradiction to his denial at the time of the scientist's death."
Halliburton's Deals Greater Than Thought (washingtonpost.com): "The practice of delegating a vast array of logistics operations to a single contractor dates to the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and a study commissioned by Cheney, then defense secretary, on military outsourcing. The Pentagon chose Brown and Root to carry out the study and subsequently selected the company to implement its own plan. Cheney served as chief executive of Brown and Root's parent company, Halliburton, from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned to run for the vice presidency.
...Brown and Root's revenue from Operation Iraqi Freedom is already rivaling its earnings from its contracts in the Balkans, and is a major factor in increasing the value of Halliburton shares by 50 percent over the past year, according to industry analysts. The company reported a net profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year, in contrast to a $498 million loss in the same period last year. "
Halliburton's Deals Greater Than Thought (washingtonpost.com): "Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors. "
Well, funny how that happened. The man who pushed hardest for this war was Cheney. And now his company is getting 33% of US spending there. This is so blatant, only the legalistic mind can fail to see the corruption here.
AlterNet: Shifting Sands of Neoconservative Logic: "Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario, and it had been released in draft form the previous October, with a much more detailed version appearing in February 2003. That report said that the administration hadn't planned adequately for a post-Hussein Iraq; it also very presciently rendered the likely results of such poor planning and gave well-considered suggestions for how to either properly shepherd Iraq to stability or, if too late for that, what not to do to make a bad situation worse. The last line of the document's penultimate section wasn't exactly encouraging: 'Without an overwhelming effort to prepare for occupation,' it said, 'the US may find itself in a radically different world over the next few years, a world in which the threat of Saddam Hussein seems like a pale shadow of new problems of America's own making.' "
Needing Help in Iraq, U.S. Weighs How to Get It From U.N.: "the Bush administration is acknowledging that the mounting costs of the operation, in both human and financial terms, are too great for the United States alone to bear.
Until now, the 'vital role' that President Bush has promised for the United Nations has been limited, by American design, to a grudging endorsement of American unilateralism. But now the United States' need for troops and dollars that only other countries can provide is prompting a reconsideration of those old, narrow lines."
President Bush is famous for "not caring what other people think". Well, he went ahead and invaded Iraq in the face of incredible international opposition, and now he realizes we can't afford it. We're losing troops at the rate of hundreds a year and money at billions per month.
This was completely predictable. It was predicted. He has failed. He should resign.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Dossier did not justify war, Taylor told No 10: "A senior Labour MP told the inquiry yesterday that Downing Street's controversial arms dossier on Iraq had failed to provide enough evidence to justify action against Saddam Hussein.
Ann Taylor, the former cabinet minister who was handpicked by the prime minister to chair the parliamentary security and intelligence committee after the last election, outlined her reservations in an email to Downing Street six days before the dossier was published last year.
'Hardest question not answered. Why Saddam Hussein and why now,' Mrs Taylor wrote in the email, which was disclosed to the Hutton inquiry yesterday. "
Mileposts on the road to societal ruin: "Benito Mussolini's definition of fascism: 'Fascism should more properly be called 'corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government and corporate power.' When was the last time we saw this administration do something that involved standing up to some corporate special interest in favor of the great majority of the people?"
Microsoft Using Linux-Based Network in Wake of Attacks: "To protect its flagship Web site from viruses and denial-of-service attacks, Microsoft has asked for help from an unusual place: a network of Linux-based servers. "
I just spent 10 hours trying to get my computers back under my control and able to stay on the web after getting the Blaster worm. Microsoft security is crap. The fact that they can't maintain their websites using their own servers tells you how bad it is. Thanks MS for wasting my time with your crappy software.
Bremer: Iraq Effort to Cost Tens of Billions (washingtonpost.com): "Bush administration is preparing to seek a 'huge' supplemental spending bill from Congress. Administration sources also said the U.S.-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority is running so low on funds that the White House is considering seeking an emergency infusion next month to cover the organization's bills.
Bremer's comments, in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors, came on a day when the Congressional Budget Office said the federal government will post a record deficit next year of $480 billion. Wary of revealing specifics, neither Bremer nor President Bush -- who referred to 'substantial' new costs in a St. Louis speech -- would give details. "
2 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq; Relief Agency Pulls Out: "Two American soldiers were killed in Iraq today and the international relief agency Oxfam said it had pulled its non-Iraqi personnel out of the country because of the worsening violence there.
An Oxfam spokesman cited 'a growing deterioration of the security situation' in Iraq, including the recent attacks on the United Nations headquarters there and the Jordanian Embassy, in explaining the agency's decision.
...The agency spokesman said the organization was urging the United Nations to take over the lead political role in Iraq. "We think that if the U.N. is given a lead role, it will be easier for the United Nations to demonstrate that sovereignty is coming back to the Iraqi people," said Mr. Cox, the Oxfam GB spokesman."
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Administration gambling with US troops lives to advance their agenda at home: "Rumsfeld and Bremer say there is no need for extra troops, what they really mean is that it is preferable to tolerate the current level of casualties and sabotage than it is to expand the security force. They are also gambling on a gradual reduction in violence as those responsible for attacks are rounded up or killed, and hidden supplies of explosives and ammunition start to run out."
NeoConservatives start to panic about failure in Iraq--call for huge US spending in Iraq to make Bush policy succeed: "an editorial in the Weekly Standard called for a huge commitment of more troops, more money and more civilian workers to fend off disaster.
'Make no mistake,' the magazine said. 'The president's vision will, in the coming months, either be launched successfully in Iraq, or it will die in Iraq ... the future course of American foreign policy, American world leadership, and American security is at stake. Failure in Iraq would be a devastating blow to everything the United States hopes to accomplish.'
Unfortunately for President Bush, this is true. He has left no face-saving escape route for himself or his country."
Monday, August 25, 2003
Yahoo! News - U.S. May Drop Bid for New U.N. Resolution: "the administration has been sending contradictory signals about whether a larger force is needed in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Veteran of Foreign Wars convention in San Antonio on Monday that the United States 'can afford whatever military force level is necessary and appropriate for our national security.'
He said that if Gen. John Abizaid, who heads the U.S. Central Command, believes additional troops are needed, 'he will have additional troops, let there be no doubt about it.' "
Rumsfeld is shifting responsibility for troop deaths to his subordinate, Gen. Abizaid. Now its Abizaid who is at fault for not requesting more troops. Rumsfeld will give him whatever he asks for, so he's not responsible. That's real leadership; tell your subordinate he can't have more resources, he's got to make do with what Rumsfeld gave him. And then publicly say, "Oh, he can have whatever he needs." Right!
HIGHTOWER: Thieves in High Places: "something has gone terribly wrong in our country. The essense of democracy � our power to control the decisions that affect us � has steadily been pilfered by corporate kleptocrats. They have gathered up our democratic powers piece by piece, taking these powers into their own private fiefdoms. These elites, backed by the political elites they have bought, now effectively control everything from our wages to war, from what's on the 'news' to who gets elected.
This has not taken place by 'pure chance,' but through deliberate filching � which has now devolved into wholesale looting. These Thieves in High Places, as I call them in my new book, have pulled of a slow-motion coup, radically wrenching America from being a people's republic to Kleptocrat Nation. "
DOJ / FBI/ CARNIVORE / Misc. SURVEILLANCE PEOPLE: Please note the following Official DOJ Paranoia Notice, AKA constitutional "disclaimer" and "claimer";
I realize you have a job to do, and I am glad you have a job that is probably really well paid, with great benefits. As someone who has been having a lot of trouble getting work for 2 years, I realize how important that is.
I know that many of you are truly motivated to protect America. Nevertheless, as you do your job, please note that NOTHING I am saying here means I support terrorists or terrorism.
I don't have any money to spare for a lawyer, and I don't want to be investigated, harassed or arrested. But I do want to speak my truth, which is my right as a US citizen. At least, I was led to believe that in the past. Maybe you changed the law on that and it's no longer true? I am not sure, because since 9-11, I haven't heard any of you in government really speak up for that right. (Hint: I hear it's in the first amendment, US constitution!)
On the other hand I have heard John Ashcroft pontificate about being careful about what you say. As he rounded up thousands of people and held them incommunicado in jails around the country without access to lawyers for months. So, even though some of you may consider me a disgusting liberal who won't make the cut in the Rapture, maybe you can understand why i feel a certain amount of uncertainty my rights under our present government and need for an official DOJ Paranoia "Dis-claimer" / "Claimer"?
My truth is that I am outraged by this administration and what I see as its arrogance, lies, deceptions and hidden agendas. I am disgusted by its policies and the results of those policies in enriching the rich, impoverishing the poor, polluting the environment, and attacking other countries on phony grounds, in complete disregard for the rest of the world.
I object to all violence, whether perpetrated by people with a grudge against Americans, British, Irish, Iraqi, Palestinian, Israelis or anyone else. That includes acts based on hateful, misguided Islamic, Christian, Jewish or political thinking. I object to the misuse of government power and the lies that are told to support such abuses.
I am a patriot who opposes the USA Patriot Act. I don't feel protected by your prosecutions in secret. I don't feel safer with the government arresting people and holding them without access to lawyers for months. (No. I feel a lot more afraid. My risk of experiencing an attack from a terrorist is a lot less than the risk of my rights being infringed by my own government's policies.) You should be extending the rights of US citizens--that is the appropriate response to terrorists who want to destroy America--not restricting them.
As a separate, but related issue: I don't agree that Bush should have the right to order the CIA to kill people secretly.
I don't believe your arguments in favor of the powers you seek to preserve in the Patriot Act, or the additional powers you seek in a new extension of the Patriot Act.
You don't need more powers. This administration needs to do a better job with those it had before 9-11. If it did an effective job, the WTC would still be standing now, because the CIA knew that the leaders of 9-11 were in the US. And the FBI had serious leads that were not followed up on. Talk to Colleen Rowley again. Put her in charge. And give the rest of us a break.
You would do well to read the newspapers. They don't give a lot of intelligence information, but if you read them you'll find enough truth to expose a lot. For example, Condoleezza Rice said for many months after 9-11 that no one expected terrorists to fly airplanes into buildings. But I had read about such worries in the press long before 9-11. And guess what, the congressional inquiry found that you guys had known about such plans since 1994. So it seems you don't read even your own briefings let alone the newspapers. That is a shame, and any one with any honor would resign after such an admission of negligence. But i have given up expecting any honor from you.
I don't trust you. I believe you have a hidden agenda, and that is what you are really pursuing. The "war on terror" is being used as a smokescreen. There are elements that are necessary, but overall my sense is that you are using it for your own purposes, not to protect us from terrorism. The Patriot Act is a case in point. And a great example of totalitarian doublespeak.
I would expect totalitarian dictatorships such as North Korea, the Soviet Union or China to use spurious, ideological arguments to hide the reality of its actions, mis-lead their peoples and motivate them to attack others. And I would expect my government to oppose such actions, reveal the truth of such corruption, and to help those who were oppressed.
It disgusts me that this administration or any "elected" government would use the most serious terrorist attacks on this country to further abuse the American people by undermining the constitution that it swore on the bible to defend, and to advance its prior agenda--all justified by the fears that terrorists created in the American people on 9-11, and their congressional representatives.
That puts this administration, astonishingly, on the same side as the terrorists in acting AGAINST America--whether you see that or not--like ghouls, waving the bodies of innocent, murdered people to scare people, in order to get your way.
To the administration I want to say: your "way" is a very narrow way indeed, which benefits only a very small minority of very wealthy people in the US. Those are the people who you care about. Because they give you power. And power is what you deserve. After all you're the chosen ones, right?
Yes, you are as transparent as that.
You seem to think you are Robin Hoods. Justified in stealing to give to those who need help. But Robin Hood is celebrated because he stole from the RICH and gave to the POOR. Remember?
It hasn't escaped notice that you hide your thefts from the poor and middle income people. You put out misleading calculations and numbers that make it seem like you are giving everyone a tax break. Too bad if they only pay payroll taxes, because their incomes are so low. Those millions of people are so lucky that they don't need a tax break. And giving any relief to them wouldn't stimulate the economy, in your Alice in Wonderland world.
In anyone else's world, the greedy rich already have enough. They don't need much more from the government. And I am claiming my rights under the constitution to express that, and anything else that seems to be true to me.
So stop reading my blog and my email. Go and find some terrorists. OK? They may be in Montana, planning to attack the Sheriff. They may be in Michigan with the militia's. They may be living with FBI agents/informers, such as some of the 9-11 hijackers were. Remember that?
And the next time you go invading a country where we have no business going with the world's most powerful armed forces, please be sure to think through the consequences. American soldiers' lives depend on it.
This is the end of my DOJ Paranoia Disclaimer / Claimer. The end of my citizen's rant. Thank you for reading this. You can go back to your work now.
P.S. Let's put an end to all these wars we declare. Jesus did tell us clearly to, "love thy enemies," and I believe that's one of the most important parts of the bible. He didn't tell us to go to war when we were attacked. He said to turn the other cheek.
I am not expecting you to turn the other cheek, but let's seek love in our own hearts--and in the process we'll probably find out how we are at war within ourselves--and treat each other more lovingly. God knows, as human beings we need all the help we can get.
Let's create a vision that empowers everyone, and develop policies that will make it happen. That will create security for us. That would be a worthy way to spend the defence budget.
Top DOJ Official Stepping Down | CBS News | August 11, 2003: "Thompson has been at the forefront of the government's campaign to detect and prevent terrorists from acting after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He also headed a task force appointed by President Bush to crack down on corporate fraud, overseeing prosecutions against officials at Enron Corp., HealthSouth Corp. and others.
Prosecutors have won more than 250 corporate fraud convictions, charged 354 people with corporate crime and obtained fines, forfeiture and restitution worth more than $85 million, the administration said. "
What a truely pathetic list of results. This is the federal government we are talking about. In a time of multi-billion dollar corporate crimes (Enron, WorldCom etc.) they have obtained restitution of only $85 M. The Attorney General of NY, Elliot Spitzer, has obtained more than 10 times as much, with how much fewer resources. Just shows you how little this administration does to protect us from criminal corporate actions.
Mis-leaders: Prosecutors Playing Patriot Game? | August 22, 2003 12:10:37: "The Justice Department is urging U.S. attorneys to press members of Congress who opposed a controversial anti-terrorism provision in the USA Patriot Act, the Washington Post reports.
.. part of a broad publicity campaign to defend the Patriot Act from charges that it violates civil liberties, according to internal department documents obtained by the newspaper.
The director of the executive office for United States Attorneys, Guy A. Lewis, encouraged federal prosecutors, in an Aug. 14 memo, 'to call personally or meet with . . . congressional representatives' ...
A list of names and phone numbers of House members was included with the memo, with the names of those who voted in favor of the amendment marked by an asterisk
Democrats are questioning whether the campaign violates the Anti-Lobbying Act, which bans government employees from most legislative lobbying. "
Whether or not this is illegal, it clearly indicates the way in which this administration is systematically undermining the separation of powers.
Ashcroft's attempts to preserve the Patriot act is a good example of the strategy of this admin. As it seeks to accumulate unprecedented executive powers, it undermines our constitutional rights and protections. And they will do and say anything that they think will get them what they want.
I am just glad that some of the media and some members of congress have the guts to report the facts and expose the hypocracy of this gang of mis-leaders.
Sunday, August 24, 2003
Ex-Park Service Workers Say Bush Reneges on Promises (washingtonpost.com): "In an Aug. 15 letter to President Bush and Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, the 123 former employees contend that the administration has sacrificed preservation for profit in its policies on park maintenance, air pollution enforcement, road development and snowmobile use on federal lands and encouraged the movement of park service jobs to the private sector.
'[Y]ou are strangling the very core of park stewardship, sidestepping the important issues that are facing the parks and ignoring the operational budgets of the parks,' wrote the former employees, including four past directors of the park service. 'We are seeing evidence at every turn that when private for-profit interests vie with resources of the park, the private interests, and not principle, governs.'"
In related news, Abuse of Power claimed in the Dept. of Interior: Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles. is accused of conflicts of interests and a campaign has been launched to have him fired. It is reported he still receives $284,000.00 a year from his old firm, National Environmental Strategies.
"During his confirmation hearings, Griles signed a recusal document promising not to lobby on behalf of his former clients. According to documents obtained using the Freedom of Information Act, however, he has lobbied on behalf of those clients to loosen regulations surrounding coalbed methane development in the Rocky Mountain West. Coalbed methane development threatens to waste over one trillion gallons of public water in the arid West pollute groundwater and destroy animal habitats.
Further violating his recusal, Griles has met with numerous former clients and business partners associated with issues from which he supposedly recused himself. Time and time again, the deputy secretary has favored industry demands over environmental protection. He has allowed – and is continuing to allow – public land to be used by private interests for private gain. Once depleted and spoiled, the bulk of this land will be incapable of being restored to its original condition, or anything close.
During the Reagan administration, Griles was involved in selling 17,000 acres of federal land to a private company for $42,000, well below market value. Several months later, the buyers resold the land, and turned a $37 million profit. "
Yahoo! News - Rumsfeld Seeking to Bolster Force Without New G.I.'s: "Mr. Rumsfeld told Congress he wanted to transfer to civilians or contract workers an estimated 300,000 administrative jobs now performed by people in uniform.
While some on Capitol Hill reject that total as high, one senior Pentagon official said that if even one-sixth of those jobs were converted, then the equivalent of more than two Army divisions could enter the fighting force without any increase in the number of paid military personnel. "
Rumsfeld claims that having civilians do the admin will free up two divisions. But think about that for a minute--a couple of seconds even. Is he honestly suggesting that he is going to send two divisions of administrative people into battle? What will they fight with, typewriters and NCR forms?
No. They will be laid off. They will hire mercenaries to do more of the fighting. And raise the "defense" budget to pay for it all.
I don't think that privatization will help, it will enrich GOP supporters however, and that is the reason for all this.
Privatization is part of the administration's secret strategy; replace government with privatized services. It is well documented by analysts that these services end up costing much more than they did before they were privatized. Leading to fewer services and more profit for the private providers. And, if you have been reading this blog you will know that the private contractors who the Pentagon has hired to supply the troops in Iraq have been criticised severely for failing to deliver, leading to rationing of water for example.
We're getting snowed again. They are using the war on terror to do everything they wanted to do anyway. That disgusts me. It's like using murdered people for their private gain.
Into the quagmire: "After the latest attacks on coalition forces and now UN personnel the US must be wondering why the original script, so persuasive in its simplicity, has become so distorted and bitter. Instead of freedom there has been a struggle of sectional, if not national, liberation against the occupying forces. What was supposed to be a re-enactment of the landing on the Normandy beaches in 1944 looks like the descent into the Vietnam quagmire after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. "
..."Can the Americans, torn between the need to impose order while preaching the gospel of liberty, learn anything from previous occupations? The passage from occupation to liberation in France in 1944 was relatively smooth, for two reasons. First, while leading political figures associated with the puppet Vichy regime were purged, local government continued virtually intact. The playing-card figures are being rounded up in Iraq, but it would be unwise to purge everyone who has been identified with the previous regime. Deals will have to be done with politicians and notables who are not squeaky clean, because only they can provide the infrastructure that the country desperately needs. Second, the transition from dictatorship to democracy promised by the coalition must proceed as fast as possible. Of course there are risks in holding elections, but democracy, as Abraham Lincoln said, is government of the people, by the people, for the people, not on behalf of the people, for the Americans. "
Experts Doubt U.S. Claim on Iraqi Drones: "U.S. weapons experts in Baghdad came to one conclusion: Despite the Bush administration's public assertions, these unmanned aerial vehicles weren't designed to dispense biological or chemical weapons. "
..."The unproven U.S. assertion regarding Iraq's UAV programs is one among many.
American weapons hunters, like their U.N. counterparts, haven't reported finding any chemical, biological weapons or nuclear weapons in Iraq so far.
The lack of success in uncovering unconventional weapons, after warnings that Iraq posed an immediate danger, has led critics and some former government analysts to suggest the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam. "
Saturday, August 23, 2003
Bush's Energy Policy Stalled (washingtonpost.com): "when Democrats proposed funding to modernize the grid during consideration of spending bills in 2001, the ideas were shot down by the White House and its allies on the Hill.
'He's the president, and the Congress is Republican,' said William W. Hogan, research director of Harvard University's Electricity Policy Group. 'The buck stops there. They didn't think the grid was that high a priority, and they wanted to bundle those issues with other things they wanted.'
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the House energy committee, said, 'The debate over the Bush energy bill so far has been dominated by the president's demand that the government get out of the way of big oil.' "
US casualties in Iraq number in the thousands, but that's classified so you'll never find out the truth: "Trying to ascertain totals of U.S. wounded in Iraq is a much more difficult task. According to report in the Guardian, the Pentagon puts the number of wounded at 827 but reporter Julian Borger claims that 'unofficial figures are in the thousands.' Central Command in Qatar claims 926 wounded, but 'that too is understated,' Borger writes. Lieutenant-Colonel Allen DeLane, who is in charge of the airlift of the wounded into Andrews air base, recently told National Public Radio that 'Since the war has started, I can't give you an exact number because that's classified information, but I can say to you over 4,000 have stayed here at Andrews, and that number doubles when you count the people that come here to Andrews and then we send them to other places like Walter Reed and Bethesda, which are in this area also.'
Regarding U.S. casualties, the president said that Americans 'suffer when we lose life,' and that the country 'grieves with those who sacrifice.'
A report issued August 7th by the Iraq Body Count (IBC) claims that nearly 20,000 civilians have been wounded in the Iraq war. 'The maimed civilians of Iraq have been brushed under the carpet,' the IBC report said. According to IBC, there have been close to 7,800 deaths since the beginning of the U.S. invasion. In this new report, derived from data gathered from over 300 published reports, the IBC claims that 'three times as many injuries as deaths have been reported.' "
Yahoo! News - EPA Watchdog Rips White House on NYC Air: "The White House 'convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones' by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley.
'When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement,' the report says, adding that the EPA had yet to adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin.
In all, the EPA issued five press releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 reassuring the public about air quality. But it wasn't until June 2002 that the EPA determined that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels — well after respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers cleaning dusty offices and apartments. "
What is the distinction here between what the White House and EPA did, and criminal conduct? I don't get it. They deliberately mislead millions of people about their health. And they did that in the name of "security"?
More people die as a result of polluted air and water every year than died in the 9-11 terrrorist attacks. So if the administration is really concerned with making the US population safer, they would make the air and water safer. But their actions consistently show they would prefer to cut costs for polluters than cut the death rate from polluted air and water.
When will the administration begin to understand that security includes health as well as safety?
And when will they be held to account for their deliberate endangerment of the US people?
Friday, August 22, 2003
Emails show how No 10 constructed case for war: "Within the space of a fortnight and with almost no new evidence - other than the now infamous '45-minute warning' - Mr Blair's aides turned British policy towards Iraq upside down.
For more than 10 years, British policy was to contain Saddam by keeping him weak through sanctions, imposition of no-fly zones and diplomatic isolation. He was regarded as a potential threat but not a pressing one. He dealt with his own people brutally but, with regard to the threat posed to his neighbours and the west, he was in his box and, as long as the US and British planes remained in the region, he could be kept there.
By the time the dossier was published, Saddam had become someone that had to be dealt with as a matter of urgency, one intent on aggression towards his neighbours and the west. Downing Street had produced a new narrative. "
Palestinians Vow Revenge Against Israel for Killing of Militant Leader (washingtonpost.com): "Abu Shanab, considered the most moderate of Hamas' senior leaders, was killed Thursday along with two bodyguards when an Israeli military aircraft fired between three and six missiles at his car in central Gaza City. About 30 bystanders were injured in the attack, Palestinian hospital authorities said.
Israeli military officials said the killing was in retaliation for a suicide bombing by a Hamas terrorist aboard a crowded bus in Jerusalem on Tuesday that killed 21 people and injured more than 100.
Immediately following the attack on Abu Shanab, three major Palestinian militant groups announced the end of a seven-week cease-fire, raising the possibility of a new cycle of attacks and retaliatory strikes that could kill the new U.S.-backed peace initiative called the 'road map.' "
This is clearly a major crisis in one of the most important foreign policy initiatives the US is promoting now. So why is Bush still on vacation/fund-raising in Oregon and Washington state? Is his vacation/re-election more important than peace in the middle east? Apparently, it is.
RTÉ News: US military hopes to release children: "The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has said the US military is hoping to release three children it is holding there.
Interviews conducted with the children, who are aged between 13 and 15, reveal they may have been coerced into fighting in Afghanistan. "
Why are we holding children in Guantanamo Bay for God's sake? And why exactly would the commander be "hoping" to release them?
They should never have been taken there. And they should be released immediately.
2 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq: "135 American soldiers have died in Iraq since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1. A total of 273 American soldiers have died in Iraq since the beginning of military operations, the news service said. "
What exactly are "major combat operations"and why are they significant? Clearly the end of major combat operations is not related to increasing safety and stability in Iraq. It is not connected to the end of US casualties. It doesn't mean a decrease in terror. It hasn't meant we could find any WMD--the supposed reason for the invasion. And it hasn't resulted in the end of Saddam Hussein--the new, retrospective rationale for the war.
So what is our fearless leader doing when he says we will stay in Iraq? Setting us up for more terrorist attacks, more US troop deaths? Or is he just trying to get re-elected? Because what he is doing this month, besides taking a vacation, is raising money for re-election. Not doing the job of President of the United States.
All he has to say when asked about the facts of the occupation is that it's just politics. No. What you are doing Mr. Bush, is pure politics. Your justifications and claims of trivial "successes" in Iraq are as cynical as can be. You are being asked to address the facts, and you won't do that. You'll just deign to inform us that you are optimistic.
Sorry, but your optimism doesn't count when the results of your policies are: the deaths of thousands of people, incalculable costs, and increasing risks of terrorism.
Draft of Air Rule Is Said to Exempt Many Old Plants: "After more than two years of internal deliberation and intense pressure from industry, the Bush administration has settled on a regulation that would allow thousands of older power plants, oil refineries and industrial units to make extensive upgrades without having to install new anti-pollution devices, according to those involved in the deliberations.
The new rule, a draft of which was made available to The New York Times by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, would constitute a sweeping and cost-saving victory for industries, exempting thousands of indus trial plants and refineries from part of the Clean Air Act. The acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency could sign the new rule as soon as next week, administration officials have told utility representatives."
This administration is really a throwback to a previous era. It's like the old wild west railroad barrons have reincarnated and are working their way through all the infrastructure of social advancement and safety. Now we have a gunslinger foreign policy. We have pro-pollution "clean air" regulations, we have "economic growth" policies that claim to advance the rest of us by making the rich richer, at our expense mind you.
It's sick making. But just more of the same. And the apathy and the acceptance with which the average American accepts this shit is amazing. It's also the biggest threat that we face, because none of this looting and pillaging would be possible without public support.
Those of us who see through the lies of the administration need to find a way to communicate to those who are ignorant, or at least enough to get rid of Bush in 04.
That's a big challenge. I don't know how to do it. I just hope events such as the debacle in Iraq will show even the blindest soul how foolish and dangerous this crowd is.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Schwarzenegger Assured, Vague (washingtonpost.com): "Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first news conference today told voters that taxes and overspending have dimmed the California dream -- and he pledged to set things right if elected governor.
But he continued to avoid specifics when asked to detail what kind of deep cuts he would seek to balance the books in a state reeling from record deficits and almost rock-bottom credit. 'The public doesn't care about figures,' Schwarzenegger said. "
Right!
Another carpetbagger in office is all we need.
Israeli Missile Strike Kills Hamas Official (washingtonpost.com): "Israel killed a senior Hamas political leader in a missile strike Thursday, two days after a suicide bombing of a bus in which 20 people died, including six children. Hamas, along with Islamic Jihad, formally abandoned a truce declared eight weeks ago.
Also, Israeli troops raided the West Bank towns of Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarem in search of militants. In the West Bank city Hebron, troops blew up the home of the Jerusalem bus bomber, a routine punishment intended as deterrent. "
Where will all this end? It's like a race to the bottom. Only the extremists on both sides win.
"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." Ghandi.
Yahoo! News - NO ETHICS? NO EXPERIENCE? NO PROBLEM!: "WorldCom's MCI division never figured out how to build a cell network in the U.S., and ultimately gave up trying. But who needs experience when you have tasty political connections? Before 2000 WorldCom donated equally to Democrats and Republicans in order to land cell service contracts with U.S. occupation armies in Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan (news - web sites). Now it's leveraging a $45 million deal with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) into a Halliburtonesque sweetheart contract to build the first national mobile phone network in Iraq, where more than 2 million new customers are expected to sign up right away.
The Pentagon's rush to protect WorldCom from a scrappy Bahraini-based competitor, Batelco, which has built cell networks in the Middle East, has exposed yet another unholy alliance between corporate America and the Bush Administration. Demonstrating the brand of lightening-quick entrepreneurship traditionally treasured by free-market-loving Americans, Batelco raced into Iraq after the U.S. invasion and installed cell towers throughout Baghdad. With half of land lines out of service and Saddam's 1990 plan to build cell towers stymied by U.N. trade sanctions, Baghdadis welcomed the new service. But the CPA shut down Batelco and threatened to confiscate its $5 million of equipment. "
Yahoo! News - NO ETHICS? NO EXPERIENCE? NO PROBLEM!: "WorldCom's MCI division never figured out how to build a cell network in the U.S., and ultimately gave up trying. But who needs experience when you have tasty political connections? Before 2000 WorldCom donated equally to Democrats and Republicans in order to land cell service contracts with U.S. occupation armies in Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan (news - web sites). Now it's leveraging a $45 million deal with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) into a Halliburtonesque sweetheart contract to build the first national mobile phone network in Iraq, where more than 2 million new customers are expected to sign up right away.
The Pentagon's rush to protect WorldCom from a scrappy Bahraini-based competitor, Batelco, which has built cell networks in the Middle East, has exposed yet another unholy alliance between corporate America and the Bush Administration. Demonstrating the brand of lightening-quick entrepreneurship traditionally treasured by free-market-loving Americans, Batelco raced into Iraq after the U.S. invasion and installed cell towers throughout Baghdad. With half of land lines out of service and Saddam's 1990 plan to build cell towers stymied by U.N. trade sanctions, Baghdadis welcomed the new service. But the CPA shut down Batelco and threatened to confiscate its $5 million of equipment. "
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Bush in talks to bolster UN role: "An official familiar with the conference agenda said it was unlikely the hawks were ready to compromise over the administration negotiating US command and control of the occupation force and the unquestioned authority of Paul Bremer's coalition provisional authority.
Instead, the administration hawks hope that Tuesday's attack will shock the international community into making a greater military and economic contribution to Iraqi stability. 'They are grasping this attack as an opportunity to get more people aboard,' the official said."
I find that repugnant. They are using terrorist attacks to leverage their position at the UN. How can they use such attacks for their own ends, while claiming to be fighting terrorism?
Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Private passion: "President George Bush described last week's power cuts, which affected up to 100 million people, as a 'wake-up call'. Arguably, though, the alarm first went off in the California emergy crisis of 2001, and the president simply hit the snooze button.
At the time, several members of Congress put suggested a $350m (£220m) repair package to improve the transmission system. The White House opposed it, and congressional Republicans, taking their cue, killed the measure.
In the wake of the recent devastating blackout, the administration blamed Congress for failing to agree on Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy plan, but that plan was more about oil (and where it might be found in Alaska) than about power lines. "
News: "Washington began to be deserted by its allies on the ground after Tuesday's devastating truck bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
It was also revealed that Iraqi officials had warned the US of a possible attack before the bomb, which killed 20 people including the UN envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello."
Brian Cloughley: What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?: "Conditions in US jails in Iraq are quite as awful as they were under the previous horrible regime, and, exactly as under that fascist domination, ordinary citizens have disappeared, their place of detention unknown to their families. The Geneva and Hague Conventions have been totally ignored by the occupying power in a fashion that is not just despicable but completely at odds with the declaration by Bush that 'democracy is being restored to Iraq'. Democracy? Is it within the Bush definition of democracy that, as recorded by Amnesty International, and reported from first-hand by Associated Press, that a civilian detainee 'was bound and blindfolded, kicked, forced to stare at a strobe light [presumably after removal of the blindfold] and blasted with 'very loud rubbish music'.' (He was released without charge.)
In the interests of democracy (or so one must presume) the occupying power shut down the newspaper Al-Mustaqilla (The Independent) for undisclosed reasons. On 21 July tanks blocked off the approaches to its building, then soldiers and Iraqi policemen broke into the premises where 'They turned everything upside down, confiscated the newspaper's safe (with 1.5 millions ID in it), the computers and personal documents of the chairman, Mr. Abdul-Sattar Alshalan. They arrested Mr. Alshalan, who is currently imprisoned at an unknown location.' It is flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions to refuse to provide details of the whereabouts of prisoners to next of kin. Mr Alshalan and thousands of others are being kept in confinement by the US Army without any notification of their location or physical condition being made available to relatives or the International Red Cross. "
Brian Cloughley: What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?: the US occupation administrator, L Paul Bremer, [said] that 'we' ought to 'remind ourselves of a range of rights that Iraqis enjoy today because of the coalition's military victory.' Well, here is a description of some of the rights of women and children: 'Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: 'If you want your family released, turn yourself in.' Such tactics are justified, he said.'
Since when were wives and children deemed non-civilians? Are children to be used as bargaining counters? This is totally against the Geneva Conventions and against all human decency. The Nazis did this, dammit. It was one of their preferred tactics in occupied territories. Are the wife and children of Colonel Hogg considered combatants, just because he wears uniform? "
Robert Fisk: The Ugly Truth of Camp Cropper: "here's a story to shame us all. It's about America's shameful prison camps in Iraq. It's about the beating of prisoners during interrogation.
'Sources' may be a dubious word in journalism right now, but the sources for the beatings in Iraq are impeccable. This story is also about the gunning down of three prisoners in Baghdad, two of them 'while trying to escape'. But most of all, it's about Qais Mohamed al-Salman. Qais al-Salman is just the sort of guy the US ambassador Paul Bremer and his dead-end assistants need now. He hated Saddam, fled Iraq in 1976, then returned after the 'liberation' with a briefcase literally full of plans to help in the restoration of his country's infrastructure and water purification system.
He's an engineer who has worked in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is a Danish citizen. He speaks good English. He even likes America. Or did until 6 June this year.
That day he was travelling in Abu Nawas Street when his car came under American fire. He says he never saw a checkpoint. Bullets hit the tyres and his driver and another passenger ran for their lives. Qais al-Salman stood meekly beside the vehicle. He was carrying his Danish passport, Danish driving licence and medical records.
But let him tell his own story..."
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Blair knew: Iraq no threat: "One of the prime minister's closest advisers issued a private warning that it would be wrong for Tony Blair to claim Iraq's banned weapons programme showed Saddam Hussein presented an 'imminent threat' to the west or even his Arab neighbours.
In a message that goes to the heart of the government's case for war, the Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, raised serious doubts about the nature of September's Downing Street dossier on Iraq's banned weapons.
'We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat,' Mr Powell wrote on September 17, a week before the document was finally published.
His remarks urging caution contrasted with the chilling language used by Mr Blair in a passionate speech in the Commons as he launched the dossier a week later.
He described Iraq's prog-ramme for weapons of mass destruction as 'active, detailed, and growing ... It is up and running now'. "
Chaos as a Strategy Against the U.S.: "President Bush was defiant today. He said: 'Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam's brutal regime. The civilized world will not be intimidated, and these killers will not determine the future of Iraq.'
Speaking at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., he added that the assailants were 'the enemies of every nation that seeks to help the Iraqi people.'
But the problem now posed for American forces in Iraq is an acute one. Put simply, if Iraqis are afraid and unconvinced that their situation is improving, their hostility to the United States may grow.
The attacks on foreign embassies and the headquarters of international organizations, as well as water and oil pipelines, appear specifically devised to halt improvements in the quality of life for average Iraqis.
'The goal is to deny the American occupation force the ability to pacify Iraq, to prevent the Americans from winning the hearts and minds of the people,' said Loren Thompson, a military affairs analyst with the Lexington Institute. 'If Iraq is in constant chaos, the United States can never move on to the next stage.'"
Bush really knows how to handle those terrorists. First he tells them to bring it on. And they clearly have. Now he says, from his holiday home, that they will not determine the future of Iraq. Wrong again. They are calling the shots.
Bush has put our troops on the ground in Iraq. Now our soldiers are terrorist targets. The UN has been in Iraq, feeding millions for years since 1991. Now the UN is a terrorist target. Now the former govt. of Iraq is destroying the infrastructure of its own nation in order to attack the US occupation. The Iraqi people are terrorist targets.
What does all that mean? It means the situation is spiralling out of control. It means we haven't won. We haven't defeated Saddam Hussein. We are still fighting him. Only now we have even more casualties. And our troops are panic-ing, shooting civilians and journalists. To furthur complicate matters, Arab terrorists are being drawn in by the prospect of being able to attack our troops on their home territory.
We haven't improved the lot of the people Bush said he would liberate. Their lives are much worse now than they were 6 months ago. And their prospects are worse for the forseeable future.
Monday, August 18, 2003
The Road to Ruin: "President Bush now says that 'our grid needs to be modernized . . . and I've said so all along.' But two years ago Tom DeLay blocked a modest Democratic plan for loan guarantees for system upgrades, calling it 'pure demagoguery.' And press reports say that despite the blackout, the administration will bow to pressure from Senate Republicans and put on ice the only part of its energy plan that had any relevance to the blackout, a FERC proposal for expanded oversight of the transmission system."
British inquiry demonstrates the hollowness of the case for war in Iraq: Just before it was published, Tony Blair's chief of staff wrote about the British dossier on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: "The dossier is good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced. The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam ... We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat. In other words it shows he has the means, but it does not demonstrate that he has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the West.'"
Exactly. There was no threat to the west from Saddam Hussein. Awful as he was, the US and UK manufactured spurious triggers for war. And now they have created a situation in Iraq where their famously fast victory is slipping away just as rapidly. And the losers? Again, the Iraqi people first and foremost. But western democracy is a close second.
AlterNet: The Untold Story of the Civilian Death Toll: "The stories of Iraqi civilian casualties are published and broadcast in the Arab and other international media, and the sources for these stories are none other than Western news agencies such as Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France Press (AFP). But these wire services' reports of civilian deaths rarely appear in U.S. newspapers.
On June 6, for example, the Arab and international press published a report from Reuters estimating the average Iraqi casualty count due to U.S. cluster bombs at 15 per day. The report quoted an official at Mines Advisory Group, who said his organization counted 80 killed and 500 injured between April 10 and June 5, 2003. Another article published July 6, based on information from Reuters and AFP, described a bomb that killed seven Iraqis and injured 40 of the new Police Academy trainees. This incident went entirely unnoticed in American media. "
BUSH AND THE SAUDIS SITTIN' IN A TREE . . . KAY EYE ESS ESS EYE EN GEE: "a document marked 'Secret' and '199I' (meaning 'national security') which found its way out of the offices of the FBI in into the office of our BBC/Guardian newspaper team. It indicates (and whistleblowers confirmed) that, prior to the September 11 attack, the Bush Administration held back agents of the FBI from tracking two members of the bin Laden family."
Will the CIA Protect the White House?: "Bush officials lashed out at former Ambassador Joseph Wilson by telling journalists--including conservative columnist Robert Novak--that Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA operative working in the field of weapons counterproliferation. Novak and others reported what they were heard from these administration sources. Their stories either blew her cover or falsely branded a woman, who is known to friends as an energy analyst in a private firm, as a CIA officer.
For an investigation to proceed, it appears, the CIA--and that probably means CIA chief George Tenet--has to ask for one, and Attorney General John Ashcroft (or an underling) has to greenlight it. Will either of these two Bush allies be willing to take on the White House and trigger an inquiry that could embarrass, if not threaten, the Bush administration? "
Yahoo! News - Reporters Fault U.S. Troops in Iraq Death: "Mazen Dana, 43, was shot and killed by U.S. soldiers Sunday while videotaping near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. The U.S. Army said its soldiers mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "
Yahoo! News - U.S. Has World's Highest Incarceration Rates: "More than 5.6 million Americans are in prison or have served time there, according to a new report by the Justice Department (news - web sites) released Sunday. That's 1 in 37 adults living in the United States, the highest incarceration level in the world. ... If current trends continue, it means that a black male in the United States would have about a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison during his lifetime. For a Hispanic male, it's 1 in 6; for a white male, 1 in 17. "
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Troubles Temper Triumphs in Iraq (washingtonpost.com): "Four months after the fall of President Saddam Hussein's government, the overall U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq has encountered a similar mix of success and failure. Although the occupation authority has compiled a lengthy list of achievements -- from setting up municipal councils in 85 percent of the country's towns to distributing monthly food rations and allowing Iraqi judges to dismiss suspects arrested by American soldiers -- glaring troubles persist. Electricity production still is well below prewar levels. The unemployment rate is 60 percent. Fuel is in short supply, causing hours-long waits at gas stations. Murders, carjackings and other violent crimes are rampant.
Those problems have fueled complaints on the streets of Baghdad and other cities that the Americans are not working, spending or devolving authority fast enough. "
Bush blamed for chaos which led to blackouts: "Writing in The New York Times, President Clinton's energy secretary, Bill Richardson, accused the Bush White House and the Republican-controlled Congress of stalling on legislation to force power companies to take measures guaranteeing grid reliability. Very similar criticisms were voiced by some of the leading contenders for next year's Democratic presidential nomination.
'Just two years ago, [President Bush] and his allies in Congress blocked a Democratic proposal to invest $350m in upgrading America's electrical grid system,' said the Florida Senator Bob Graham. 'The blackout is further evidence that America needs to invest in its infrastructure.'"
Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Editorial / Opinion / Op-ed / America's worst side in Iraq: "America is nearly two years into invasions in which we have killed more civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan than the number who died in the United States on 9/11. Yet we have no Osama, no Saddam, no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear weapons plants, no peace.
In the 2000 presidential debates, Bush said he would stop 'extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions.' Bush is now so obsessed with nation-building that he is blind to how killings of Iraqi civilians by US soldiers devalue Iraqis even as he claims to liberate them.
Witness the witless comments made last week by the American commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. Sanchez told The New York Times that he decided to scale back his self-described 'iron-fisted' raids in the search for loyalists to Saddam Hussein after the new Iraqi leaders told him that too many innocent families were brutalized by US soldiers.
'When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family,' Sanchez said."
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Looting in the USA: "'This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy.' In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerloff (George Akerloff, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics,) added, 'What we have here is a form of looting.' "
Who is behind the violence in Iraq?: "There has been a steady stream of attacks since the occupation began - targeting utilities and oil facilities, but mostly US troops.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed these as isolated and fragmented acts, but in mid-July the new Centcom commander, John Abizaid, said coalition forces were facing what looks like a systematic guerrilla war.
Main areas of attack
The violence appears to be well-organised and continuous. It benefits from a general atmosphere of discontent, wounded national sensibilities, penalised marginal groups, Arab and Iranian media agitation, good funding, and the CPA's self-imposed isolation from the public and the cultural blunders it has made in dealing with local communities.
Although political and ideological violence is still detached from mainstream institutional engagement or peaceful street politics, it may well gain strength if and when hardships continue. "
How much are our economic policies costing us?: "I.B.M. is considering shifting white-collar positions to India, where a competent novice computer programmer costs $5,000 a year instead of $60,000. Such a move would help keep the firm competitive and mean lower prices for consumers. But which consumers, you might ask. Laid-off I.B.M. managers? I wish the candidates would address this paradox instead of recycling rah-rah capitalist nostrums and nostalgic tariff schemes: at what point does remaining competitive dry up and dissipate the disposable incomes being competed for? "
45-minute claim on Iraq was hearsay: "Tony Blair's headline-grabbing claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so was based on hearsay information, the Guardian has learned.
The revelation that the controversial claim is even weaker than ministers and officials have been saying will embarrass No 10, already reeling after the first week of the Hutton inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly."
Yahoo! News - Saboteurs cut key Iraqi oil pipeline to Turkey: "Iraq (news - web sites)'s top oil official admitted he could not guarantee oil exports after saboteurs blew up part of a key pipeline to Turkey, just two days after crude had started flowing again.
"There is a void in security," acting oil minister Thamer Ghadhban told reporters here, describing an act of "sabotage" on Friday in which an explosion cut the pipeline from Baiji in northern Iraq to the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan. "
Seems like Bush's policy is continuing to fail in Iraq. They can't even secure the one area that they have tried to protect since the invasion began: the oil infrastructure and oil fields.
Friday, August 15, 2003
Yahoo! News - Scientists Had Warned of Weak Power Grid: "Scientists and engineers with the National Research Council (news - web sites) warned the White House and Congress about the vulnerability of the power grid as recently as November, saying nationwide weaknesses needed to be repaired — and fast.
Little has been done, despite a chorus of experts who've pushed since well before Sept. 11 to fix a grid that's riddled with threadbare links and plagued by chronic shortages.
'The power grid has not gotten much more than important conversations since Sept. 11,' said Paul Gilbert, a member of the National Academy of Engineering (news - web sites), which worked on the report for the National Research Council. "
Anyone else notice a pattern here?
"Little has been done". Those are the operative words--the Bush admin has been ineffective in addressing basic problems. Just as it didn't act on warnings pre 9/11, Bush has not responded to warnings of basic problems that have resulted in the loss of power to a number of Americans equivalent to the population of the UK.
What will he do? Send more work to his buddies. Be sure of that. More emergency contracts for Bechtel and Halliburton?
Thursday, August 14, 2003
California Recall: The Coup Inside a Circus: "Bush isn't staying entirely out of the election. His liaison in California, businessman Gerald Parsky, summoned representatives of potential Republican candidates to his office Tuesday to discuss how the GOP could help recall Davis"
Twilight Zone Economics: "Since November 2001 ? which the National Bureau of Economic Research, in a controversial decision, has declared the end of the recession ? the U.S. economy has grown at an annual rate of about 2.6 percent. That may not sound so bad, but when it comes to jobs there has been no recovery at all. Nonfarm payrolls have fallen by, on average, 50,000 per month since the 'recovery' began, accounting for 1 million of the 2.7 million jobs lost since March 2001.
...Just to keep up with population growth, the U.S. needs to add about 110,000 jobs per month. When it falls short of that, jobs become steadily harder to find. At this point conditions in the labor market are probably the worst they have been for almost 20 years."
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 'It was punishment without trial': "Hundreds of Iraqis civilians are being held in makeshift jails run by US troops - many without being charged or even questioned. And in these prisons are children whose parents have no way of locating them. Jonathan Steele reveals the grim reality of coalition justice in Baghdad "
The Iraq War Could Become The Greatest Defeat In United States' History: "The majority of the Iraqi people know that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein and helped furnish all kinds of terrible chemical and biological weapons to his regime in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. The Iraqi people know that in the first Gulf War the U.S. engaged in the devastating destruction of the life-sustaining infrastructure of Iraq, including the bombing of multi-purpose dams and sanitation facilities that resulted in the deaths of many thousands of Iraqis. Iraqis know we dropped depleted uranium warheads on Iraq in that war and also in the most recent war this year which has contaminated their land and caused thousands of deaths from cancer. Iraqis are also a bit unhappy with Americans because they realize that U.S. instigated economic sanctions that probably caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi people. "
Yahoo! News - U.S. Apologizes for Sparking Baghdad Protest: "The U.S. Army said Thursday it had apologized for provoking furious protests in a Baghdad slum neighborhood, but Shi'ite residents vowed more violence unless American troops withdrew from the district. "
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
U.S. Abandons Idea of Bigger U.N. Role in Iraq Occupation: "'The administration is not willing to confront going to the Security Council and saying, 'We really need to make Iraq an international operation,' ' said an administration official. 'You can make a case that it would be better to do that, but right now the situation in Iraq is not that dire.'
The administration's position could complicate its hopes of bringing a large number of American troops home in short order. The length of the American occupation depends on how quickly the country can be stabilized and the attacks and uprisings brought under control."
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Civilian contractors hired by the Army failed to show up: "The U.S. military has shifted many tasks traditionally performed by soldiers into the hands of such private contractors as Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary. The Iraq war and its aftermath gave this privatized system its first major test in combat � and the system failed.
According to the Newhouse News Service, 'U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up.' Not surprisingly, civilian contractors � and their insurance companies � get spooked by war zones. The Financial Times reports that the dismal performance of contractors in Iraq has raised strong concerns about what would happen in a war against a serious opponent, like North Korea."
Thanks for the M.R.E.'s: "Letters published in Stars and Stripes and e-mail published on the Web site of Col. David Hackworth (a decorated veteran and Pentagon critic) describe shortages of water. One writer reported that in his unit, 'each soldier is limited to two 1.5-liter bottles a day,' and that inadequate water rations were leading to 'heat casualties.' An American soldier died of heat stroke on Saturday; are poor supply and living conditions one reason why U.S. troops in Iraq are suffering such a high rate of noncombat deaths?
The U.S. military has always had superb logistics. What happened? The answer is a mix of penny-pinching and privatization — which makes our soldiers' discomfort a symptom of something more general.
Colonel Hackworth blames 'dilettantes in the Pentagon' who 'thought they could run a war and an occupation on the cheap.' But the cheapness isn't restricted to Iraq. In general, the 'support our troops' crowd draws the line when that support might actually cost something. "
Monday, August 11, 2003
Federal Judge Expresses Concern About Death Penalty: "'In the past decade,' the judge, Mark L. Wolf, wrote, 'substantial evidence has emerged to demonstrate that innocent individuals are sentenced to death, and undoubtedly executed, much more often that previously understood.'
He cited the exonerations of more than 100 people on death row based on DNA and other evidence."
News: "The abd al-Kerim family didn't have a chance. American soldiers opened fire on their car with no warning and at close quarters. They killed the father and three of the children, one of them only eight years old. Now only the mother, Anwar, and a 13-year-old daughter are alive to tell how the bullets tore through the windscreen and how they screamed for the Americans to stop.
'We never did anything to the Americans and they just killed us,' the heavily pregnant Ms abd al-Kerim said. 'We were calling out to them 'Stop, stop, we are a family', but they kept on shooting.'
The story of how Adel abd al-Kerim and three of his children were killed emerged yesterday, exactly 100 days after President George Bush declared the war in Iraq was over. In Washington yesterday, Mr Bush declared in a radio address: 'Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people ... All Americans can be proud of what our military and provisional authorities have achieved in Iraq.'"
God Bless their souls. This is a tragic way to die, and a shame to all Americans.
Why are we there, exactly?
US admits it used napalm bombs in Iraq: "American pilots dropped the controversial incendiary agent napalm on Iraqi troops during the advance on Baghdad. The attacks caused massive fireballs that obliterated several Iraqi positions.
The Pentagon denied using napalm at the time, but Marine pilots and their commanders have confirmed that they used an upgraded version of the weapon against dug-in positions. They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy.
A 1980 UN convention banned the use against civilian targets of napalm, a terrifying mixture of jet fuel and polystyrene that sticks to skin as it burns. The US, which did not sign the treaty, is one of the few countries that makes use of the weapon. "
US Govt. targets American activists -- secret airport ban revealed by TSA: "After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports.
The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the relatively well-publicised 'no-fly' list, which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.
The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to learn more, is that the second list has been used to target political activists who challenge the government in entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged the existence of the list in response to a Freedom of Information Act request "
Sunday, August 10, 2003
America's ruling party is pursuing a strategy of denial and deception: "Before last year's elections Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, wrote a remarkable memo about how to neutralize public perceptions that the party was anti-environmental. Here's what it said about global warming: 'The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science.' And it advised Republicans to play up the appearance of scientific uncertainty.
But as a recent article in Salon reminds us, this appearance of uncertainty is 'manufactured.' Very few independent experts now dispute that manmade global warming is happening, and represents a serious threat. Almost all the skeptics are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the oil, coal and auto industries. And before you accuse me of a conspiracy theory, listen to what the other side says. Here's Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma: 'Could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.'
The point is that when it comes to evidence of danger from emissions ? as opposed to, say, Iraqi nukes ? the people now running our country won't take yes for an answer. "
Treasury takes its marching orders from White House political operatives: "Treasury has an elaborate computer model designed to evaluate who benefits and who loses from any proposed change in tax laws. For example, the model can be used to estimate how much families in the middle of the income distribution will gain from a tax cut, or the share of that tax cut that goes to the top 1 percent of families. In the 1990's the results of such analyses were routinely made public.
But since George W. Bush came into power, the department has suppressed most of that information, releasing only partial, misleading tables. The purpose of this suppression, of course, is to conceal the extent to which Mr. Bush's tax cuts concentrate their bounty on families with very high incomes. In a stinging recent article in Tax Notes, the veteran tax analyst Martin Sullivan writes of the debate over the 2001 cut that 'Treasury's analysis was so embarrassingly poor and so biased, we thought we had seen the last of its kind.' But worse was to come."
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Simon Tisdall: The US is starting a nuclear fight that will be hard to stop: "Bolton went nuclear, verbally speaking, only hours before North Korea finally acceded to longstanding US demands for multilateral talks on its nuclear arms ambitions. South Korean officials were relieved that the North had not used Bolton's broadside as an excuse for further prevarication. But like the rest of us, they were left wondering whether Bolton had launched a deliberate pre-emptive strike against the nascent diplomatic process.
This raises a key question, as America's twin confrontations with North Korea and Iran over nuclear arms accelerate towards a crunch in the next few weeks. In a nutshell, peaceful, internationally supportable, diplomatic solutions to both disputes are available. Their outlines may be clearly discerned; the mechanisms by which they can be achieved are more or less in place. But does the US actually want to cut a deal?
...compromises may not suit the likes of Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon, and other hardliners, including perhaps Bush himself - who has professed personal loathing for Pyongyang's communist leader. For them, it seems, nothing less than Kim's overthrow will ultimately suffice, although it may have to wait until a second Bush term. "
Saturday, August 02, 2003
Attacks Intensify In Western Iraq (washingtonpost.com): "With a mix of rocket-propelled grenades, mines and ambushes, guerrillas launched at least eight attacks against U.S. forces in western Iraq overnight and this morning, breaking a relative calm in towns along the Euphrates River and fueling suspicions that Islamic militants -- including foreigners -- were involved, U.S. officials and residents said.
At least four assailants were killed and three U.S. soldiers wounded in the attacks, which began Thursday night and lasted into the late morning today, said Sgt. Keith O'Donnell, a military spokesman. U.S. officials were surprised by their intensity, he said, and were trying to determine whether they were coordinated. Until today, attacks had averaged three or four a week, he said. "
U.S. Cool To New U.N.Vote (washingtonpost.com): "Despite increasing pressure to 'internationalize' the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, the Bush administration is not actively pursuing a new U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing broader international participation out of concern that greater U.N. involvement could reduce U.S. control.
... administration officials acknowledge that they have concerns about any resolution that would diminish the authority enjoyed by L. Paul Bremer, the chief civilian reconstruction official, and U.S. military commanders to manage the postwar situation in Iraq.
... The administration also believes Resolution 1483 already gives most nations the "political cover" they need to become involved in Iraq"
The phrase, "Political cover" speaks volumes about the state of mind of our administration. Nations are not contributing troops because they are concerned about the US policies in Iraq. To contribute troops they want to see a change in US policy. Involving the UN would be significant shift in US policy in the direction of legalizing the occupation. But the administration won't do that, because it wants unfettered power there.
That's pretty much what they want here too. I'm glad congress has started to wake up to the deceptions that they have suffered. They are starting to ask questions and demand answers. At last.
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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The sheep turn on Wolfie: "Spill all the facts? This crowd? Fat chance. The administration has recently shown ingenious new talent for insidious secrecy. President Bush refused to declassify the 28-page redaction about the Saudi government's role in financing the hijackings, even though the Saudi foreign minister flew to the US to ask the president to do that. (You know you're in trouble when the Saudis are begging you to be more open.) "
Berlusconi outraged by Economist: "The Economist sent Mr Berlusconi an 'open letter' urging him to reply to detailed questions and documentary evidence concerning the judge-bribing case against him.
It said Mr Berlusconi was 'an outrage against the Italian people and their judicial system' and was Europe's 'most extreme case of the abuse by a capitalist of the democracy within which he lives and operates'. "
Friday, August 01, 2003
Grabbing the Nettle: "North Korea was always more terrifying than Iraq, and now the situation is getting worse.
While President Bush has said he won't tolerate a nuclear North Korea, it looks as if that may be where we are headed. Part of the problem is that the administration is still groping for a policy on North Korea.
"We have an attitude, not a policy," said Donald Gregg, a former ambassador to South Korea who is president of the Korea Society in New York."
State of Decline: "the federal government is now running a deficit equal to a third of its spending — worse than California. The administration says it will never, ever contemplate increasing taxes; it says it will narrow the deficit through spending restraint, but has never said what spending it intends to restrain. "
Unemployment Rate "Drops" to 6.2 Percent: "The nation's unemployment rate declined to 6.2 percent in July and nearly half a million discouraged Americans stopped looking for a job."
These unemployment figures are so bogus. When they say the unemployment rate has dropped, they mean SHORT term unemployment dropped. The LONG term unemployed increased, by 500,000! So the government can claim it is reducing unemployment just by cutting off unemployment benefits. See! The GOP is brilliant, they can cut spending and unemployment in one easy strike. Inhuman too, isn't it?
