Reflections on the "New American" Revolution
Friday, January 30, 2004
Secrecy as Policy: "'How can a democratic people have confidence in elected officials who hide the records of their actions from public view?' "
Will Dubya Dump Dick?: "Ongoing disclosures about Cheney's role in the drive to war in Iraq and other controversial administration plans reveal him as not the much-touted moderate but an extremist who constantly pushed for the most radical policies. But more than just an extremist, Cheney is also viewed as a kind of eminence grise who exercises undue influence over Bush to further a radical agenda, a perception confirmed by recent revelations by former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who described Cheney as creating a 'kind of praetorian guard around the president' that blocked out contrary views. "
AlterNet: Baghdad Is Bush's Blue Dress: "23 former U.S. intelligence experts ? including several who quit in disgust - have been willing to speak out in Robert Greenwald's shocking documentary 'Uncovered.' The story they tell is one of an administration that went to war for reasons that smack of empire-building, then constructed a false reality to sell it to the American people. Is that not an impeachable offense?
After all, the president misled Congress into approving his preemptive war on the grounds that our very survival as a nation was threatened by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. We were told that if we hesitated, allowing the U.N. inspectors who were in Iraq to keep working, a mushroom cloud over New York, to use Condoleezza Rice's imagery, might well be our dark reward."
Fireworks Erupt Over U.S. Role at Genocide Conference: "former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans said U.S. officials had been using the conference to lobby against the International Criminal Court (ICC), the very body created to try crimes against humanity--like genocide. The United States has withdrawn from the Rome Treaty of 1998 that created the ICC.
'I'm distressed to hear that the same old squeeze has been put on the national delegations all over again at this conference,' Evans said. 'And in the otherwise admirable declaration we have emerging from it there is no mention of the International Criminal Court...this is just indefensible.'
Evans continued to berate the Bush administration for blocking global efforts to create such accountability structures. His remarks were greeted with thunderous ovation. "
White House's $135 Billion Deception on Medicare Cost: "Bush administration officials had indications for months that the new Medicare prescription drug law might cost considerably more than the $400 billion advertised by the White House and Congress, according to internal documents and sources familiar with the issue.
The president's top health advisers gathered such evidence and shared it with select lawmakers, congressional and other sources said, long before the White House disclosed Thursday that it believes the program will cost $534 billion over the next decade -- one-third more than the estimate widely used when Congress enacted the measure in November. "
Cheney is "our functional president": "in this White House, evidence and argument have been routinely pushed aside when they got in the way of previously decided political outcomes. That we've heard before. What enriches ''The Price of Loyalty,'' aside from the accretion of persuasive detail, is its assertion that in this administration, a time-honored notion of public service has been deeply corrupted.
... O'Neill smelled at many high-level meetings the odor of a conversation set up in advance to drive the discussion toward the conclusion that Rove and the political team had already settled upon. One example: At a meeting on steel tariffs, which the administration put in place in 2002 against all free-market principle, O'Neill could tell where things were going when the United States trade representative, Robert Zoellick, ''made several oblique references to 'political realities.' '' The pattern repeated itself over and over, on tax cuts and the economy and energy policy and Iraq. In time, O'Neill grew aghast, and went to his old friend Cheney to suggest that the administration try Brandeis briefs. But Cheney -- the book's chief villain and, if Suskind and O'Neill are to be believed, our functional president -- just sat passively. "
Christian foot soldiers battle for Bush: "When the churches become a partisan voting bloc, we compromise our freedom"
Iraqi who gave MI6 45-minute claim says it was untrue: "the Iraqi exile group in London which claims to have supplied MI6 with the intelligence about Saddam's 45-minute capability admitted that the information might have been completely untrue. "
News Analysis: Bush�s Risky Options: "Many intelligence officials continue to argue that real problem was not the ambiguous intelligence about Iraq's weapons capacity, but how Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney chose to use it."
How the UK Government created Iraq's Guilt: "Iraq's guilt, preordained by the government, became a self-fulfilling prophesy that only collapsed when occupied Iraq failed to disgorge that which Rockingham, and the rest of the UK intelligence community, had said must exist. "
Where's the Apology?: "What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things? "
Where's the Apology?: "where are the apologies? Where are the resignations? Where is the investigation of this intelligence debacle? All we have is bluster from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity language from Mr. Bush - and a determined effort to prevent an independent inquiry.
True, Mr. Kay still claims that this was a pure intelligence failure. I don't buy it: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has issued a damning report on how the threat from Iraq was hyped, and former officials warned of politicized intelligence during the war buildup.
... In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America's credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.
Let's look at three examples. First is the Valerie Plame affair. When someone in the administration revealed that Ms. Plame was an undercover C.I.A. operative, one probable purpose was to intimidate intelligence professionals. And whatever becomes of the Justice Department investigation, the White House has been notably uninterested in finding the culprit. ("We have let the earthmovers roll in over this one," a senior White House official told The Financial Times.)
Then there's the stonewalling about 9/11. First the administration tried, in defiance of all historical precedents, to prevent any independent inquiry. Then it tried to appoint Henry Kissinger, of all people, to head the investigative panel. Then it obstructed the commission, denying it access to crucial documents and testimony. Now, thanks to all the delays and impediments, the panel's head says it can't deliver its report by the original May 11 deadline — and the administration is trying to prevent a time extension.
Finally, an important story that has largely evaded public attention: the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general, with broad powers to investigate questionable spending. But the new inspector general's office in Iraq operates under unique rules that greatly limit both its powers and its independence. "
Bush Sidesteps Call for Outside Probe on Iraq WMD: "President Bush on Friday sidestepped demands for outside review of pre-war intelligence on Iraq, but said it was important to know all the facts surrounding White House assertions Iraq's illicit weapons justified the U.S. decision to invade. "
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Editorials Question Bush's Role In "Cooking" Up a War: "The Dallas Morning News, in Bush's home state, which had supported the war, but now declared: 'We feel deceived -- by the CIA, which overestimated the threat, and by the White House, which probably stretched the bad estimates to build a case for war.' If Bush had found other strategic or humanitarian reasons for the war, 'he should have argued the case on that basis,' the editorial said. "
Battle Over 9/11 Panel's Deadline Intensifies (washingtonpost.com): "the Bush administration... objects to granting the commission a later deadline and has long sought to play down criticism of the government's performance before the terrorist strikes. The administration has also not agreed to the panel's requests for direct testimony from President Bush and Vice President Cheney. "
Dump Cheney Now!: "Thanks to David Kay, we now have an amazing image of the president and the dictator, both divorced from reality over weapons, glaring at each other from opposite sides of bizarro, paranoid universes where fiction trumped fact.
... Dick Cheney, who declared that Saddam had nuclear capability and who visited C.I.A. headquarters in the summer of 2002 to make sure the raw intelligence was properly interpreted, is sticking to his deluded guns. (And still trash-talking those lame trailers.)
The vice president pushed to slough off the allies and the U.N. and go to war partly because he thought that slapping a weakened bully like Saddam would scare other dictators. He must have reckoned there would be no day of reckoning on weapons once Saddam was gone.
So it had to be some new definition of chutzpah on Tuesday, when Mr. Cheney, exuding more infallibility than the pope, presented him with a crystal dove. "
Bush Aide's Faulty Rationale for the Iraq Invasion: "'The judgment is going to be the same: This is a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world and it was time to do something about this threat,' [Rice] said. "
Bush did not have support to invade Iraq because Saddam was a dangerous man in a dangerous place. He claimed that Saddam was a danger to the US homeland. He claimed that he had WMD which he could deliver by drone or terrorist. He claimed many things. But getting rid of Saddam was not an excuse for invasion of a non-threatening country. One that was being patrolled by US and UK war planes. One that was attacked by those planes daily. One that had been under severe sanctions for a decade. And one that had been under UN inspection for many years.
Saddam was disgrace to the US when he was an ally. It was then that he did most of the things Bush now criticises him for. But when he did them, the Reagan administration sent Rumsfeld to tell him we would continue to support him. On his terms.
The sheer hypocrisy of the US position -- both tehn and now -- is breathtaking.
Bush Aide Acknowledges Some Flaws in Iraq Intelligence: "'When you are dealing with secretive regimes that want to deceive, you're never going to be able to be positive' about intelligence, Rice told NBC. "
Is this statement about Bush or Saddam? Because it applies to both. Bush's regime is secretive in the extreme, it wants to decieve and we are never going to be positive about it's intelligence.
As with so many of the comments of Bush and his senior "officials" this statement is a projection, a transference of the inner reality of the administration onto their foes. It's pathological.
Bush Aide Acknowledges Some Flaws in Iraq Intelligence: "President Bush's national security adviser acknowledged Thursday some prewar intelligence about Iraq was flawed but brushed aside calls for launching an independent investigation. "
We were all wrong, says ex-weapons inspector: "David Kay, who last week resigned from the Iraq Survey Group, told a Senate hearing yesterday that failures had become too apparent in the US's intelligence-gathering capabilities.
'Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here,' he said.
'I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarised chemical and biological weapons there.'"
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
O'Neill Stands by Bush Criticism in Book: "Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says he stands behind his criticism of the inner workings of the Bush administration, but regrets that some of his 'vivid language' is detracting from serious issues he wants to discuss. "
Another deliberate lie in Bush's state of the union address: "In his 2001 address, Bush declared: 'We owe it to our children and grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire.' In saying that only $2 trillion in debt was being retired, Bush was arguing that $1.2 trillion in debt could not be retired readily because the government securities were not scheduled to mature until after 10 years.
When O'Neill learned on the day of the address of the argument Bush was going to make, he checked with aides and learned that the true amount that could not be retired readily was no more than $500 billion -- $700 billion less than Bush was claiming.
Suskind writes: 'Treasury staffers called the White House. Excerpts of the State of the Union, which included the flawed calculus, had already been disclosed to the press. O'Neill was incensed. How could the White House political staff 'decide to do things like this and not even consult with people in the government who know what's true or not? Who the hell is in charge here?' he ranted. . . . That night, Bush stood before the nation . . . and said something that knowledgeable people in the U.S. government knew to be false.' "
Deeper into Debate on Iraq: "THE DEBATE over America's war with Iraq is not ending. It is really just beginning, as the news out of Iraq continues to illustrate. Eight US soldiers died in weekend fighting and two helicopter crashes in Iraq. According to The New York Times, the Defense Department has identified 506 American service members who have died since the start of the war. The demand for direct elections by a powerful Shi'ite cleric is delaying the drafting of an interim constitution for Iraq; the controversy disrupts the entire timetable for a transfer of power by the United States to an Iraqi government.
And most politically damaging of all, David Kay, the former head of the US weapons search in Iraq, said he resigned because Pentagon and CIA officials no longer considered the weapons search -- America's chief justification for war -- a priority. As of the time of his resignation, Kay said, 'We had found no actual large weapons stockpiles and no indication of a production process that would have produced such stockpiles.' "
White House Emissaries Head Abroad to Recast War: "Washington's efforts to recast its justifications for the war seem unlikely to satisfy critics, or defuse it as an election issue. Democratic presidential candidates have stepped up their attacks on the war. 'We were misled,' said Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who originally backed the war and is heading into today's New Hampshire primary leading the polls.
'Misled not only in the intelligence, but misled in the way that the President took us to war.' "
Yahoo! News - Bush defends war as UN decides to send mission to Iraq to study early polls: "Bush did not sign on to Kay's call for US intelligence agencies to explain how they could have been so wrong, saying instead that he had 'great confidence in our intelligence community.' "
That is correct. The intelligence community didn't fail. It was the political leaders--Bush, Cheney et al.-- who failed. They misused the intelligence. They presented it as evidence, knowing it to be very likely untrue.
This talk of the failure of the intelligence community is another smokescreen for Bush to hide behind. Another way of obscuring the truth. Another deception.
Monday, January 26, 2004
9/11 Panel Faults U.S. For Letting In Hijackers (washingtonpost.com): "The U.S. government fumbled repeated opportunities to stop many of the men responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks from entering the country, missing fraudulent passports and other warning signs that should have attracted greater scrutiny, according to a preliminary report released yesterday. "
Red Ink Realities: "Why, then, do we face the prospect of huge deficits as far as the eye can see? Part of the answer is the surge in defense and homeland security spending. The main reason for deficits, however, is that revenues have plunged. Federal tax receipts as a share of national income are now at their lowest level since 1950.
Of course, most people don't feel that their taxes have fallen sharply. And they're right: taxes that fall mainly on middle-income Americans, like the payroll tax, are still near historic highs. The decline in revenue has come almost entirely from taxes that are mostly paid by the richest 5 percent of families: the personal income tax and the corporate profits tax. These taxes combined now take a smaller share of national income than in any year since World War II. "
The US is Now in the Hands of a Group of Extremists: "We have fallen into a trap. The suicide bombers' motivation seemed incomprehensible at the time of the attack; now a light begins to dawn: they wanted us to react the way we did. "
Federal Judge Rules Part of Patriot Act Unconstitutional (washingtonpost.com): "The Humanitarian Law Project, which brought the lawsuit, said the plaintiffs were threatened with 15 years in prison if they advised groups on seeking a peaceful resolution of the Kurds' campaign for self-determination in Turkey. "
Some analysts say Bush's deficit-cutting plan is an illusion - Jan. 26, 2004: "Like a cowboy-boot wearing David Blaine, President Bush has promised to perform an amazing feat of prestidigitation: he's going to saw the whopping federal budget deficit in half in just five short years.
But some observers warn the budget proposal he will submit Feb. 2, which will include projections of a greatly reduced deficit by 2009, will be little more than smoke and mirrors -- unless he and Congress can show a lot more fiscal discipline than they have recently. "
Congressional Budget Office Projects 10 year Deficit of $2,400 Billion: "Federal deficits will total nearly $2.4 trillion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office projected Monday, a worsening of nearly $1 trillion since its last forecast in last August.
According to numbers obtained by The Associated Press, Congress' nonpartisan fiscal analyst also projected that the red ink would hit a record $477 billion this year."
Iraq War Not Humanitarian, Group Says: "The war in Iraq (news - web sites) cannot be justified as an intervention in defense of human rights even though it ended a brutal regime, Human Rights Watch said Monday, dismissing one of the Bush administration's main arguments for the invasion.
While Saddam Hussein had an atrocious human rights record and life has improved for Iraqis since his ouster, his worst actions occurred long before the war, the advocacy group said in its annual report. It said there was no ongoing or imminent mass killing in Iraq when the conflict began. "
Intelligence Staff had 'absolutely no idea' how many WMD Saddam possessed.": "senior officials of the Defence Intelligence Staff told the Government before the war that they had 'absolutely no idea' how many chemical or biological weapons Saddam possessed."
Cheney Is a Silent Partner No Longer: "Administration sources say Cheney has argued for limiting the role of the United Nations in Iraq at every turn, but said he was willing to be the messenger for multilateralism for the same reason he agreed to the spate of interviews: It was what was most helpful to Bush at the moment."
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Kay: Lack of Iraqi WMD Requires Review: "U.S. intelligence agencies need to explain why their research indicated Iraq possessed banned weapons before the American-led invasion, says the outgoing top U.S. inspector, who now believes Saddam Hussein had no such arms. "
Guantanamo Spy Cases Evaporate (washingtonpost.com): "'The ineptitude at each step of the proceeding is amazing. . . . It seems there's been investigative overreaction in both cases.'
Even now, prosecutors have not made final determinations that some of the documents Halabi was charged with possessing were, in fact, classified -- and, if they were, what level of security applied to them. As a result, his lead civilian attorney, Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., said he has only a hazy picture of why his client was arrested last July. "
Saturday, January 24, 2004
Backtracking: Powell Casts Doubt on Iraq WMDs: "US Secretary of State Colin Powell has conceded that Iraq may not have possessed any stocks of weapons of mass destruction before the war last year. "
Of course the White House fears free elections in Iraq: "Of course the White House fears free elections in Iraq
'The people of Iraq are free,' declared President Bush in his state of the union address on Tuesday. The previous day, 100,000 Iraqis begged to differ. They took to Baghdad's streets, shouting: 'Yes, yes to elections. No, no to selection.' "
Friday, January 23, 2004
Va. Seeks To Leave Bush Law Behind (washingtonpost.com): "The Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates sharply criticized President Bush's signature education program Friday, calling the No Child Left Behind Act an unfunded mandate that threatens to undermine the state's own efforts to improve students' performance.
By a vote of 98 to 1, the House passed a resolution calling on Congress to exempt states like Virginia from the program's requirements. The law 'represents the most sweeping intrusions into state and local control of education in the history of the United States,' the resolution says, and will cost 'literally millions of dollars that Virginia does not have.'
The federal law aims to improve the performance of students, teachers and schools with yearly tests and serious penalties for failure. In his State of the Union speech Tuesday, Bush said that 'the No Child Left Behind Act is opening the door of opportunity to all of America's children.'
... No Republicans voted against the resolution, a fact that House Education Chairman James H. Dillard II (R-Fairfax) said is proof that "the damn law is ludicrous." "
Here we have more evidence of the disconnection between Bush and reality. He claims that the "No Child Left Behind" law is opening the door of opportunity, when it's actually ruining their education in many ways.
I am reminded of what ex-Treasury Sec. O'Neill said about Bush. He's disengaged in cabinet meetings. He doesn't think about issues. He is guided by Rove and Cheney to do what will help him get elected. And he is clearly shameless about lying. He will say black is white and, repeat it ver and over and intimidate anyone who points out the truth. This is what we have for a President. God help America.
Iraq Survey chief resigns saying Iraq never had stockpiles: "the US official at the helm of the hunt for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction asserted Iraq did not have large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
Resigning from his post after nine fruitless months in charge of the Iraq Survey Group he said he did not think there had been a large-scale weapons programme inside Iraq since 1991.
David Kay, a hardline CIA of ficial close to the Republicans also criticised President George Bush for failing to give him adequate support. "
Precedents provide reasons for pessimism on Iraq
: "Richard Perle, the influential conservative defense analyst and adviser to the administration, has been on tour to talk about his new book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. Mr. Perle thinks that, contrary to the impression given by all those bombs going off and Shiites massing to protest against us, American policy is working just fine. But when he is asked for precedents that suggest the United States can succeed at occupying and transforming Iraq, he replies with airy nonchalance, 'I don't think there are relevant precedents.'
Actually, recent history is replete with examples of military powers intervening in other countries and finding themselves faced with violent opposition. What Mr. Perle might say if he wants to be precise is that there are no precedents that bode well for this undertaking.
Milt Bearden, a 30-year CIA veteran and former manager of clandestine operations, has surveyed the record and notes a sobering fact about the 20th century: 'Every nationalist-based insurgency against a foreign occupation ultimately succeeded.' Not some of them; not most of them. Every one of them."
Ex-Arms Hunter Kay Says No WMD Stockpiles in Iraq: "David Kay stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for banned weapons in Iraq on Friday and said he did not believe the country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.
In a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found.
'I don't think they existed,' Kay said. 'What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the nineties,' he said. "
Halliburton Fires Accused Employees: "Halliburton employees have been accused of taking up to $6 million in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor that was supplying U.S. soldiers in Iraq, new trouble for Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.
A Halliburton spokeswoman said the company fired the employees involved and reported the problem to the Pentagon "
Cheney Is Adamant on Iraq 'Evidence': "Vice President Dick Cheney revived two controversial assertions about the war in Iraq on Thursday, declaring there was "overwhelming evidence" that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Al Qaeda and that two trailers discovered after the war were proof of Iraq's biological weapons programs.
The vice president stood by positions that others in the Bush administration have largely abandoned in recent months, as preliminary analysis of the trailers has been called into question and new evidence — including a document found with Hussein when he was captured — cast doubt on theories that Iraq and Al Qaeda collaborated.
... 'There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government,' Cheney said in an interview on National Public Radio. 'I am very confident that there was an established relationship there.'
That assertion appeared at odds with the recent words of other senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who said in an interview this month that he had 'not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence' of connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
Thursday, January 22, 2004
CIA Officers Warn of Iraq Civil War, Contradicting Bush's Optimism: "CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said Wednesday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment that President Bush gave in his State of the Union address."
Op-Ed Columnist: Democracy at Risk: "Fortune magazine rightly declared paperless voting the worst technology of 2003, but it's not just a bad technology - it's a threat to the republic."
Ex-C.I.A. Aides Ask for Leak Inquiry by Congress: "The unmasking of Ms. Plame is viewed within spy circles as an unforgivable breach of secrecy that must be exhaustively investigated and prosecuted, current and former intelligence officials say. Anger over the matter is especially acute because of the suspicion, under investigation by the Justice Department, that the disclosure may have been made by someone in the White House to punish Ms. Plames's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for opposing administration policy on Iraq. "
Bush sh*t: "Amy Goldstein writes in The Washington Post that 'the president depicted [his worker retraining] proposals, totaling about $550 million next year, as heirs to a major revision of public education that he pushed through Congress his first year in office.
' 'No child should be left behind in the education system,' Bush said, invoking the name of the 2001 education law. 'No worker left behind because we haven't created a flexible system in order to get skills.' '
But, Goldstein writes, 'critics noted that Bush had tried each of the past three years to cut the Labor Department's job-training efforts for adults by as much as 10 percent.'"
How the White House deals with Bush's "angry, grumpy" moods: Chief of staff Andy Card says, "The president has to have time to eat, sleep and be merry, or he'll make angry, grumpy decisions. So I have to make sure he has time to eat, sleep and be merry. But I also have to make sure he has the right time to do the right thing for the country, and that he gets the right information in time, rather than too late"
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Defiant Bush says US needs no permission for war, defends Iraq invasion: "For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible -- and no one can now doubt the word of America,' the president said in remarks prepared for delivery. "
This is really amazing. Almost everything Bush is quoted as saying in this article is false. Take this one sentence and the assertion that "no one can now doubt the word of America". Sadly, almost everyone in the world outside the US now doubts the word of this administration. See some of the stories below.
When I read his comments I see how completely misinformed he is. He doesn't read the newspapers. He is briefed by his inner circle. And he is clearly mis-informed, and completely careless of the truth. This is gross negligence and should be an impeachable offence.
Kurds turn against US after losing control over oil-rich land: "Iraqi Kurds, the one Iraqi community that has broadly supported the American occupation, are expressing growing anger at the failure of the United States and its allies to give them full control of their own affairs and allow the Kurds to expel Arabs placed in Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein.
Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, told The Independent in an interview that the Kurds had been offered less autonomy 'than we had agreed in 1974 with the regime of Saddam Hussein'. "
Iraqis Want Saddam's Old US Friends on Trial: "'Saddam should not be the only one who is put on trial. The Americans backed him when he was killing Iraqis so they should be prosecuted,' said Ali Mahdi, a builder."
George W. Bush a Divider After All: "Bush fails not only on our terms -- according to what we would like to see in a U.S. president -- but in his own terms as well, as judged by the aspirations he expressed for the United States during his election campaign. "
"... As Bush embarks on his re-election campaign, it is [a] vast catalog of failure that constitutes the true state of the Union."
Bush: Going for Broke: "The striking thing about the "visionary" proposals floated in advance of the State of the Union is their transparent cynicism and lack of realism. Mr. Bush has, of course, literally promised us the Moon — and Mars, too. And the ever-deferential media have managed to keep a straight face.
But that's just the most dramatic example of an array of policy proposals that don't withstand even minimal scrutiny. Mr. Bush has already pushed through an expensive new Medicare benefit — without any visible source of financing. Reports say that tonight he'll propose additional, and even more expensive, new initiatives, like partial Social Security privatization — which all by itself would require at least $1 trillion in extra funds over the next decade. Where is all this money going to come from?
. "
Bush campaign opens with State of the Union address: "In his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday evening, President Bush will in effect launch his campaign to be re-elected. "
President Bush, please heed these words: "we must learn to live as brothers or we will be forced to perish as fools":
"... today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake,
to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge
of change. The large house in which we live demands that we
transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world-wide
brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together
we will be forced to perish as fools.
We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf
between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the
great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the
spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and
technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the
poorer we have become morally and spiritually."
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
MLK's vision is good common sense. But how far have we come, since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, which is when he made this statement?
My take on the current administration is that they are "the richer, materially, and the poorer morally and spiritually." They exude hubris, or poverty of spirit, which enables them to claim the high ground, while systematically looting the nations wealth for themselves and their (extremely wealthy) supporters.
Their idea of the large house we live in is one in which they live, surrounded by security fences and patrolled by jet fighters to keep "the enemy" out. "Enemy" who are captured are stripped of their rights, sent to Guantanamo and held without legal representation, at their command, possibly being put to death.
Their idea of brotherhood is the world doing what they tell it to. A world which is rightly afraid of them, because they use our awesome military might "liberally" against anyone we choose, on false pretences.
Their idea of liberty is one in which there is no justice, except in so far as it pleases them. There is no honesty. They can say what they like and manipulate the truth to support their ends. That is the freedom they seek. And they will trample anyone else's freedom that gets in their way.
Well, that's no freedom. That is dictatorship. But they can't see that. Therefore they need to be removed from office this year. And once a new President is elected, they need to accept the will of the people. But I seriously doubt if we will have a fair election this time. And I really wonder if Bush will accept a defeat.
Monday, January 19, 2004
The Bush tax cuts benefit the rich, and the Bush people stand to gain hugely themselves: "$10.9 million: Average wealth of the members of Bush's original 16-person cabinet
88%: Percentage of American citizens who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of 2003 cut in capital gains and dividends taxes
$42,000: Average savings members of Bush's cabinet are expected to enjoy this year as a result in the cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes
$42,228: Median household income in the US in 2001
$116,000: Amount Vice-President Cheney is expected to save each year in taxes
44%: Percentage of Americans who believe the President's economic growth plan will mostly benefit the wealthy
$300 million: Amount cut from the federal programme that provides subsidies to poor families so they can heat their homes
$1 billion: Amount of new US military aid promised Israel in April 2003 to offset the "burdens" of the US war on Iraq
58 million: Number of acres of public lands Bush has opened to road building, logging and drilling"
George W Bush and the real state of the Union: "232: Number of American combat deaths in Iraq between May 2003 and January 2004
501: Number of American servicemen to die in Iraq from the beginning of the war - so far
0: Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender to the Allies in May 1945
0: Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush administration has allowed to be photographed
0: Number of funerals or memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq
100: Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003
2: Number of nations that Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into the White House
9.2: Average number of American soldiers wounded in Iraq each day since the invasion in March last year
1.6: Average number of American soldiers killed in Iraq per day since hostilities began
16,000: Approximate number of Iraqis killed since the start of war
10,000: Approximate number of Iraqi cililians killed since the beginning of the conflict
$100 billion: Estimated cost of the war in Iraq to American citizens by the end of 2003"
Why the US is running scared of elections in Iraq: "The occupation of Iraq continues to get worse for George Bush and Tony Blair. The deaths of at least 20 people in a suicide bomb attack outside the coalition headquarters in Baghdad yesterday morning underlines the spiralling unrest in the country. The toll of US casualties since Saddam Hussein's capture is higher than in the same period before it. Angry protests over unemployment and petrol shortages have erupted in several cities in the south, in areas under British control.
Above all, Washington's plans for handing power to an unelected group of Iraqis is being strongly challenged by Iraq's majority Shia community. The occupiers who invaded Iraq in the name (partly) of bringing democracy are being accused of flouting democracy themselves.
Oh yes, and then there's the small matter of the weapons of mass destruction on which Saddam increasingly appears to be the man who had truth on his side. When he said he had destroyed them years ago, he, rather than Bush and Blair, was the man not lying. "
"... Washington's plan for a transfer of power is a facade. The real intent is to get Bush re-elected and continue the occupation by indirect means. The UN should have no part of it. "
Cheney -- "the evil genius": "Cheney said he's effective working behind the scenes and doesn't believe voters will choose the next president based on running mates. 'Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?' he said. 'It's a nice way to operate, actually.' "
Not-So-Special Counsel: "It seemed as if the Justice Department was finally--after months of delay--bowing to requests from Democrats calling for an independent inquiry aimed at discovering who in the Administration blew Valerie Wilson's cover, possibly compromising national security. Not quite. In naming Fitzgerald a 'special counsel,' Comey violated (or disregarded) the department's own regulations. Those regulations state, 'The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.' Fitzgerald was a current Justice Department employee and thus ineligible to be a 'special counsel.' Comey could have chosen Fitzgerald to run the investigation without bestowing upon him the 'special counsel' title. But the point was to create the impression that the Administration had taken action to guarantee that this sensitive investigation would be free of political manipulation.
Calling Fitzgerald a "special counsel" is false advertising. Moreover, a presidential appointee (Fitzgerald) remains in charge, and another presidential appointee (Comey) is overseeing his work. Fitzgerald does have a reputation for being relentless and independent. Still, he does not bring to the post the standing that would be afforded by a high-profile and accomplished attorney with no current ties to the Justice Department. "Jim Comey and Pat Fitzgerald are close friends," says a former US Attorney. "I highly respect them both. But I can't imagine Pat doing something Jim wouldn't want. This is different from having the investigation led by somebody not beholden to the department." "
O'Neill Has Done His Country a Favor: "The central question his book raises isn't really the loyalty a cabinet officer owes a president. It's the loyalty a president and his inner circle owe to the country and to its democracy. If O'Neill is telling the truth - and we have no reason to doubt his veracity - there's serious doubt about the loyalty of this administration to America. "
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Shells found near Basra were not chemical weapons: "Three dozen mortar shells found buried in southern Iraq did not contain chemical blister agents as initially reported, the Danish army said yesterday.
The conclusion, after a week of tests by British, US and Danish experts, is a further blow to the dwindling hopes of finding the barred chemical, biological or nuclear weapons whose alleged existence was the official reason for the 20 March invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
... With every passing day it seems more likely that Iraq did destroy its WMD stockpiles in the early 1990s after the Gulf War in 1991 - just as Baghdad claimed. "
Arms Issue Seen as Hurting U.S. Credibility Abroad (washingtonpost.com): "In last year's State of the Union address, President Bush used stark imagery to make the case that military action was necessary. Among other claims, Bush said that Hussein had enough anthrax to 'kill several million people,' enough botulinum toxin to 'subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure' and enough chemical agents to 'kill untold thousands.'
Now, as the president prepares for this State of the Union address Tuesday, those frightening images of death and destruction have been replaced by a different reality: Few of the many claims made by the administration have been confirmed after months of searching by weapons inspectors.
... "The foreign policy blow-back is pretty serious," said Kenneth Adelman, a member of the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Board and a supporter of the war. He said the gaps between the administration's rhetoric and the postwar findings threaten Bush's doctrine of "preemption," which envisions attacking a nation because it is an imminent threat.
The doctrine "rests not just on solid intelligence," Adelman said, but "also on the credibility that the intelligence is solid." "
Yahoo! News - Worst attack on US seat in Iraq kills 25, hits plans to woo UN back: "Some 25 people were killed and some 130 wounded in a suicide blast outside coalition headquarters in Baghdad in the boldest assault yet on the symbol of US power in Iraq and a blow to Washington's plans to seek the United Nations' return to the country. "
Saturday, January 17, 2004
Trip With Cheney Puts Ethics Spotlight on Scalia: "Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force.
While Scalia and Cheney are avid hunters and longtime friends, several experts in legal ethics questioned the timing of their trip and said it raised doubts about Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially.
But Scalia rejected that concern Friday, saying, 'I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned.'
Federal law says 'any justice or judge shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be questioned.' For nearly three years, Cheney has been fighting demands that he reveal whether he met with energy industry officials, including Kenneth L. Lay when he was chairman of Enron, while he was formulating the president's energy policy."
Friday, January 16, 2004
'US Lied About Deaths of Journalists in the Palestine Hotel': "The shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by an American tank, which killed two journalists and injured two others, was an act of 'criminal negligence', said a report by an international media watchdog.
Reporters Sans Fronti?res (RSF) accused US authorities of concocting lies to hide what had happened on 8 April last year, and a subsequent official 'investigation' was nothing more than a whitewash. They said the Bush administration must bear some responsibilities for the deaths as US forces entered the Iraqi capital, as well as the 'cover-up' which followed.
... The report charges General Buford Blount, their commander, of bearing a "heavy responsibility for not providing the necessary information that would have prevented the deaths of the journalists"."
U.S. Still Holds Child Detainees at Guantanamo: "A spokeswoman for the military task force holding the prisoners told Reuters last August that prison camp commander, Brig-Gen. Geoffrey Miller, would recommend the three boys be sent home, and this was confirmed by Miller a month later.
other teen-agers, aged between 16-18, were also being held at the U.S. base along with the older prisoners. The military official declined to provide any details on detainees aged between 16-18."
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Recovery Trickles Down Very Slowly (washingtonpost.com): "'If you have investments already, and if you have a job already, the last 12 to 18 months have been very nice to you,' said Gary Burtless, a labor economist at the Brookings Institution. 'The stock market has done well. You can refinance your mortgage. You can finance your new cars at very favorable rates, and prices haven't been rising.
'But if you are looking for a new job or had the misfortune of losing a job, for those folks, life is much, much tougher. It's just so damned hard to get employment.' "
A Rebel Republican: "One of the tacit operating assumptions of the Bush administration is that the checks and balances have been checked. But that implacable wall has been cracked by an insider's surprising confessions.
... O'Neill's threat is to a president unusually dependent in an election campaign on fear and credibility to sustain a sense of power and inevitability. He sounds an alarm against an unfit president who lacks 'credibility with his most senior officials', behind whom looms a dark 'puppeteer', as O'Neill calls the vice-president, and a closed cabal.
... Bush appears as a bully, using nicknames to demean people; he is querulous (when Bush waits impatiently for a cheeseburger, he summons his chief of staff. "'You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?' ... He all but raced out of the room"); he is manipulated ("'Stick to principle' is another phrase that has a tonic effect on Bush" - used by his senior adviser Karl Rove to push for additional tax cuts); he is incurious; and, above all, he is intently political. When Bush holds forth it is often to show that he's not Clinton. He informs his NSC that on Middle East peace "Clinton overreached", but that he will take Ariel Sharon "at face value" and will not commit himself to the peace process: "I think it's time to pull out of that situation." Powell is "startled".
The "inscrutable" Cheney emerges as the power behind the throne, orchestrating leaks to undermine opposing views. He uses tariffs as "political bait" for the midterm elections. When O'Neill argues that out-of-control deficits will cause a "fiscal crisis", Cheney "cut him off. 'Reagan proved deficits don't matter,' he said ... 'This is our due.'" In the end, Cheney fires O'Neill, the first vice-president to dismiss a cabinet member. "
Kennedy Says War in Iraq Was Choice, Not Necessity: "Bush 'broke the basic bond of trust between government and the people.' He also accused the administration of marketing the war like a 'political product' to help elect Republicans.
'We are reaping the poison fruit of our misguided and arrogant foreign policy,' Mr. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a speech before the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy organization in Washington. 'The administration capitalized on the fear created by 9/11 and put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy.'"
Overtime Pay For Millions of Americans in Peril: "The Bush administration has touted the new overtime rules as a long overdue update of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, pointing out that they would extend overtime pay eligibility to an estimated 1.3 million low-income workers.
Under federal law, hourly employees are entitled to time-and-a-half pay (150 percent of the normal rate) if their work week extends beyond 40 hours.
But a study last year by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a non-partisan Washington think tank, found the new rules would also remove overtime pay protection from some eight million workers by reclassifying them as executives, professionals"
White House 'Rush to War' was 'Reckless,' Argues New Book: "In an interview with the Atlantic Monthly, and in a new book ''Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong,' Pollack says that, while the war was not a 'strategic mistake,' as the removal of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s malignant influence from the region provided some good, the Bush administration's 'justifications and explanations for war were at best faulty, at worst deliberately misleading.'
... Pollack's most scathing criticism falls on the Bush Administration and, particularly, its tendency to misstate the facts of the case when trying to persuade the country to go to war. In his eyes, the Administration consistently engaged in "creative omission," overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had evidence to the contrary. "
Saddam 'wary of jihad fighters': "A signed document found when Saddam Hussein was captured show him warning his followers to be wary of Arab militants, say US officials.
Iraq's ex-leader seems to have feared foreigners might hijack the insurgency for their own ends, the officials say.
The New York Times, which got hold of the leaked document, said it challenges President Bush's claim of close links between Iraq and al-Qaeda."
US war in Iraq 'strategic error': "A report published by the US Army War College has criticised the war against Iraq as a strategic error.
It also suggests that the Bush administration's global war on terror may be unsustainable. "
Panel Urges Health Care Coverage for All by 2010 (washingtonpost.com): "'The lack of health insurance for tens of millions of Americans has serious negative consequences and economic costs not only for the uninsured themselves but also for their families, the communities they live in, and the whole country,' the 16-member committee concluded, after more than three years of research that produced six reports. 'The situation is dire and expected to worsen. The Committee urges Congress and the Administration to act immediately to eliminate this longstanding problem.' "
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
Required Reading On Dean (washingtonpost.com): "I strongly recommend a little paperback published by a team of reporters for the Rutland (Vt.) Herald titled 'Howard Dean: A Citizen's Guide to the Man Who Would Be President.' The publisher is Steerforth Press.
The nine contributors have covered Dean during the span of years that he held office in Vermont -- as legislator, lieutenant governor and governor. Their views are balanced -- closer to the Lou Cannon model on Reagan than any of the other examples I have cited -- and I could detect no personal bias in any of their individual chapters.
The Dean who emerges from these pages is a more complex and interesting politician than the man on the stump this past year -- less strident and in many respects more impressive. "
Yahoo! News - Kennedy Says Iraq War a Political Product: "The Iraq war was a 'political product' marketed by the Bush administration to win elections, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a speech Wednesday.
As a result, Kennedy said, Bush and the Republicans in Congress 'put the state of our nation at risk, and they do not deserve another term in the White House or in control of Congress.' "
The "hardliners" as they like to call themselves--NeoConservatives, Extremists on the right--may not like us to know it, but this is the truth about the Iraq war. It is a political war. A war of choice. A war driven by the political agenda of a few extremists. A war hitched to the coat tails of the public's outrage over 9/11, but having not caused by 9/11 or terror concerns at all. It's a war of misplaced patriotism. A deplorable war. A war that is causing war. Not protecting us from any dangers at all.
God, please help us to get rid of this gang who is leading us to more and more violence. Or put love in their hearts and peace back in their minds.
U.S. Soldiers' Suicide Rate Is Up in Iraq: "U.S. soldiers in Iraq are killing themselves at an unusually high rate, despite the work of special teams sent to help troops deal with combat stress, the Pentagon's top doctor said Wednesday."
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Iraqis shoot down third American helicopter: "The capture of Saddam has had little impact on the resistance, and the massive firepower of the American ground forces is acting as a recruiting sergeant for the guerrillas. "
Callous Bush Comments on Palestinians: "Mr Bush is quoted as telling the assembled NSC, adding: 'We're going to tilt back towards Israel.' The President then brushed aside concerns by Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, about possible 'dire consequences' for the Palestinians if the US pulled back.
'Maybe that's the best way to get things back in balance,' Mr Bush is said to have shrugged in reply. 'Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things.' "
Bush calls for liberty for Cubans: "'Together we will succeed, because the spirit of liberty still thrives, even in the darkest corners of Fidel Castro's prisons,' Bush said Monday. "
Bush is the guy who has incarcerated hundreds of people in legal limbo for years on Cuba--at Guantanamo Bay. Now he seems like a hypocrite when he criticises Castro. That is how degrading his policies are. He has sunk lower than the dictators he claims superiority over.
Monday, January 12, 2004
Bush besieged by war college: "Mr Record traces the failings of the war on terrorism to its very conception, arguing that a world view which saw purveyors of weapons of mass destruction, leaders of rogue states, and terrorist organisations as part of the same threat has eroded its ability to defend the American heartland.
Entering into an open-ended guerrilla conflict in Iraq has drained its military and financial resources and cost the country dear in international diplomacy, the report says, while emphatically failing to advance the war on terror.
'Operation Iraqi Freedom may have expanded the terrorist threat by establishing a large new American target set in an Arab heartland,' it says. "
US military 'brutalised' journalists: "... it is understood that the journalists were 'brutalised and intimidated' by US soldiers, who put bags over their heads, told them they would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and whispered: 'Let's have sex.'
At one point during the interrogation, according to the family of one of the staff members, a US soldier shoved a shoe into the mouth one of the Iraqis.
The US troops, from the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Falluja, also made the blindfolded journalists stand for hours with their arms raised and their palms pressed against the cell wall.
'They were brutalised, terrified and humiliated for three days,' one source said. 'It was pretty grim stuff. There was mental and physical abuse.'
He added: 'It makes you wonder what happens to ordinary Iraqis.' "
Army War College Report Blasts War on Terror: "Institute's report warns anti-terror campaign may launch 'open-ended and gratuitous conflict.'
'The global war on terrorism as presently defined and conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in an endless and hopeless search for absolute security,' Record wrote, concluding his 56-page monograph. 'The United States may be able to defeat, even destroy, Al Qaeda, but it cannot rid the world of terrorism, much less evil.' "
Anyone who has heard Richard Perle's interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, will probably agree that the hardliners behind and inside the Bush administration are pushing for "open-ended and gratuitous conflict".
All Republican, all the time--Sowing the Seeds of GOP Domination (washingtonpost.com): Republican thought leader and activist Grover Norquist "has a programming plan, and it is all Republican, all the time. "
As the USA becomes more and more a one-party state under the supreme leader George Bush II, Norquist and others behind the scenes, such as Karl Rove, are seeking a one-party state.
Now, the US is based on a constitutional system that is designed to have separation of powers, to check and balance power. A one-party state is designed to concentrate all power, without checks and balances, so that what the party says is what the nation does.
No longer will the Congress decide the law of the land. New laws will be passed by the GOP. No longer will the Courts decide what laws mean. Court cases will be decided by the GOP. No longer will the executive be concerned with administration and policy setting. That will be set by the GOP.
The GOP effort is therefore highly radical. It's nothing less than an attempt to subvert the US constitution. If you want to know what is happening to your democracy, understand this. The GOP is taking it away from you, systematically and effectively.
If they consolidate their power in 2004, it may be the end of the America you believe in. We will be living in a Soviet-style one-party state, where the supreme ruler's whim is what drives policy, and only a very small elite prosper, where justice is something that supports the party rather than the rule of law, and where individual rights are gutted in favor of the collective.
In this one party state, the collective consists of the owners of large amounts of stock and other tax-favored assets. They are the people. They are represented by Bush, or whomsoever they elect. And what he says will be the national policy.
Forget about checks and balances. Forget about your rights. Forget about the middle class. You are becoming a serf. Your existence now depends on the patronage of the powerful. And the powerful are the GOP. That is what you have to look forward to.
The irony is inescapable as these conservatives, decrying others as Evil or Bolsheviks, as they try--and succed--in gutting our constitutional protections. But if you are a conservative, you should be astonished. Your party is being hijacked by terrorists. They are aiming your party right for the constitution just as surely as an suicide bomber. And if you are supporting them, shame on you.
What is needed now is a leader who empowers the ordinary people. Someone who breathes life back into our democracy, rather than stifling it with extreme power plays. Someone who governs for the good of the people, rather than a rich minority.
Consider supporting Howard Dean, financially and with your votes. He's the only one that is really bringing politics out of the "special interest" miasma that is killing our country. His desire for 2 million people to donate $100 is a sign that he represents a move towards democracy. Because it spreads his roots beyond those who normally buy access and distort policy with their influence.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
Blair says weapons may never be found in Iraq as Bush aims under spotlight: "British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested that Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction may never be found in Iraq as unrest flared again in the British-run southern sector of the country.
US President George W. Bush's justification for the war on Iraq was also expected to come under the spotlight with revelations he was intent on ousting Saddam long before the September 11 attacks on the United States. "
News: "The Ugolotti story is only one in the relentless stream of disclosures emerging from an investigation that is forging ahead in Italy at blinding speed. With nine alleged ringleaders in the multibillion-euro Parmalat fraud behind bars for interrogation, and the investigation of 25 others (including Mr Ugolotti) under way, prosecutors hope that a trial may begin within a month."
The contrast between the investigation of Parmalat and Enron is staggering. In Italy, where regulations are weak, the CEO, Chairman and CFO are all in jail, after a month. In Houston, the CEO, Chairman and CFO are all free. Only the CFO faces charges, after more than two years.
Why are Ken Lay and Jeffery Skilling not facing charges, by now?
Powell Admits No Hard Proof in Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda: "Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no 'smoking gun' proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of Al Qaeda.
'I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection,' Mr. Powell said, in response to a question at a news conference. 'But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.'
Mr. Powell's remarks on Thursday were a stark admission that there is no definitive evidence to back up administration statements and insinuations that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, the acknowledged authors of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although President Bush finally acknowledged in September that there was no known connection between Mr. Hussein and the attacks, the impression of a link in the public mind has become widely accepted ? and something administration officials have done little to discourage. "
Confessions of a White House Insider: "Loyalty is perhaps the most prized quality in the White House. In the book,The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill O'Neill suggests a very dark understanding of what happens to those who don't show it. 'These people are nasty and they have a long memory,' he tells Suskind. But he also believes that by speaking out even in the face of inevitable White House wrath, he can demonstrate loyalty to something he prizes: the truth. 'Loyalty to a person and whatever they say or do, that's the opposite of real loyalty, which is loyalty based on inquiry, and telling someone what you really think and feel?your best estimation of the truth instead of what they want to hear.' That goal is worth the price of retribution, O'Neill says. Plus, as he told Suskind, 'I'm an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me.' "
Those WMDs: Bush's Case Weakens Further: "CIA expert on WMD said he 'remained convinced that the work we did was well-grounded.' But he also said 'we judged that [Hussein] did not have nuclear weapons--indeed, would not have them until very late in the decade.' [Stuart Cohen, the vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council who supervised the production of a prewar National Intelligence Estimate who "concluded Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, went on Nightline to defend the CIA's work on Iraq's WMDs."]"
Saturday, January 10, 2004
Ex-Aide Paul O'Neill: Bush Planned Iraq Invasion Before 9/11: "The Bush Administration began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported.
O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. 'It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this. ''
That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O'Neill talks to Correspondent Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/PT"
The Observer | Special reports | Mustard gas found by Iraq weapon hunters: "coalition military spokesmen said the weapons were likely to be a leftover from the Iran-Iraq war fought during the Eighties when mustard gas was widely used. The gas blisters the skin painfully and can be lethal if it is breathed in. Victims die in excruciating agony. "
Friday, January 09, 2004
U.S. Companies Added Few Workers in December: "Employers added only 1,000 new workers to the nation's payrolls last month, the Labor Department reported today, providing further evidence that the economic recovery is continuing to elude the labor market.
The stagnation in job creation occurred even though the nation's unemployment rate fell to 5.7 percent in December from 5.9 percent in November.
... David Rosenberg, chief economist at Merrill Lynch, noted that with the revisions the economy had failed to generate more than 100,000 jobs for 11 straight months.
"This is a streak that has never happened before, outside of recessions, at any time over the past 50 years, Mr. Rosenberg wrote."
He added that at this stage of an economic expansion, the "typical" monthly increase in payroll employment is 145,000. "
So where are all these unemployed people going, when they "fall off" the unemployment rolls, since most didn't get jobs? "the lower number is due to the fact that the overall labor market shrank by 309,000 workers in December, the government said. "
What this doublespeak means is that 300,000 adults who were formerly working are still unemployed.
More graphically, the population of San Francisco, for example, probably has about 300,000 working adults among its half million inhabitants. Suddenly, their benefits ran out, and they "fell off" the employment rolls. The whole city is unemployed without benefits!
Now, if you were an editor, and the whole city was unemployed, would you lead with the politicians acting like they have done some great miracle. "The unemployment rate has dropped again!" Or would you say, this is outrageous! Three years into the Bush administration, two years into the greatest tax cuts in history, with the biggest budget deficit in history, the whole popluation of SF is unemployed, and the government cuts off it's benefits. Get the bums out!
What a hollow sham. This country has never seemed so like the Soviet Union to me, as it does under this "conservative" Bush regime.
It's a one party state. It's radical. It's careless of the truth and the law. Citizens are losing their civil liberties. It forces client states to do what it wills or invades those it wants to. It kills or imprisons people without trial or due process. It lies, misleads, twists the truth, employs shameless propaganda, and pursues policies that will ruin the country. Is it now the evil empire?
'US Climate Policy Bigger Threat to World than Terrorism': "'In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism,' Sir David says.
The Bush administration was wrong to pull out of the Kyoto protocol, the international effort to limit the emission of greenhouse gases, and wrong to imply the protocol could adversely affect the US economy, Sir David says. 'As the world's only remaining superpower, the United States is accustomed to leading internationally co-ordinated action. But the US government is failing to take up the challenge of global warming.
'The Bush administration's strategy relies largely on market-based incentives and voluntary action ... But the market cannot decide that mitigation is necessary, nor can it establish the basic international framework in which all actors can take their place.'
Results of a major study showed yesterday that more than a million species will become extinct as a result of global warming over the next 50 years. Sir David says the Bush administration is wrong to dispute the reality of global warming. The 10 hottest years on record started in 1991 and, worldwide, average temperatures had risen by 0.6C in the past century."
What about some environmental security? Here in the "Homeland" we're dying by the tens of thousands every year from the effects of pollution for example. There's an asthma epidemic among kids. We're spending hundreds of billions on the FEAR that thousands or tens of thousands of us might die in a terrorist attack. But we know for sure that at least that many of us will die from environmental problems this year. And what does Bush do? Well he protects polluters, he allows more pollution, he encourages dirty fuels and dirty manufacturing and mining.
What the administration is doing is illegal in many cases. The courts have stopped them doing some of this. For example, gutting the clean air laws to favor polluters in the midwest. But these favors for campaign contributors should be criminal offences. And Bush should be seen for what he is, the greatest snake oil salesman in history.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
I.M.F. Says Rise in U.S. Debts Is Threat to World's Economy: "Prepared by a team of I.M.F. economists, the report sounded a loud alarm about the shaky fiscal foundation of the United States, questioning the wisdom of the Bush administration's tax cuts and warning that large budget deficits pose "significant risks" not just for the United States but for the rest of the world.
... The danger, according to the report, is that the United States' voracious appetite for borrowing could push up global interest rates and thus slow global investment and economic growth."
Carnegie Group Says Bush Made Wrong Claims on WMD: "The report concludes that 'administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programs'. "
The key word here is "systematically." Clearly, this was no accident. Information has become a weapon of war, as this story makes clear.
"In the past, propaganda involved managing the media. Information dominance, by contrast, sees little distinction between command and control systems, propaganda and journalism. They are all types of "weaponized information" to be deployed. As strategic expert Colonel Kenneth Allard noted, the 2003 attack on Iraq "will be remembered as a conflict in which information fully took its place as a weapon of war.
... information operations would attempt to "disrupt, corrupt or usurp" adversarial decision-making. "In other words," notes retired US army colonel Sam Gardiner, "we will even go after friends if they are against what we are doing or want to do." "
The question in my mind is: When the information being provided to US citizens is weaponized, surely they are waging war on us, the people they are meant to be protecting?
The Big Brother Behind the Compassionate Conservative Click to see a great cartoon. Bush's agenda is so complete, and so well hidden, you have to admire the people who can reveal it all in one stroke. In the same vein, look at MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" political ad finalists. And tell all your friends about them too.
U.S. security too harsh, too unilateral: "Steve Flynn of the Council on Foreign Relations said, 'The tool we need more than anything else (to fight terrorism) is greater international cooperation in finding who the bad guys are. That requires carrots, not sticks.'"
Nine Die in Iraq Chopper, Possible Missile Strike: "Nine U.S. soldiers were killed Thursday when a Black Hawk helicopter went down in Iraq and dozens more had a narrow escape from a suspected missile strike that caused a huge C-5 transport plane to make an emergency landing.
... One local man who said he witnessed the incident told Reuters Television that the helicopter was in flames before it crashed. Some news reports said it appeared to have been struck by a rocket. U.S. spokesmen said an investigation was still in progress."
"The deaths brought to at least 495 the number of Americans killed in Iraq from hostile and non-hostile causes since the start of the war in March, according to the U.S. Central Command and the Department of Defense," reports AP.
Report says Bush administration exaggerated Iraq's weapons threat: "President George W. Bush's administration 'systematically' exaggerated the threat presented by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), according to a report released Thursday by an influential Washington think-tank.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the United States also misrepresented the findings of UN weapons inspectors in a bid to justify its case for war against Iraq last year. "
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Iraq contracts 'won by Bush donors': "most of the contractors gave more money to Mr Bush's 2000 presidential campaign than to any other in the last 10 years.
The report covers 70 companies and individuals who between them have won reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq worth up to $8bn.
According to the CPI, these firms and individuals have made political donations worth at least $49m since 1990."
US deficit may pose 'global risk': "Excessive fiscal deficits in the US could hurt the long-term sustainability of the American and global economies, the International Monetary Fund warned.
Recession, tax cuts and high spending for the war on terrorism have resulted in large deficits, the IMF said. "
Iraq attack injures 35 US troops: "The United States military in Iraq says that 35 of its soldiers have been wounded in a mortar attack on a base west of the capital, Baghdad. "
One of them later died. God help them all, and their families. And all the rest of us. After all, why are our troops getting killed? I want to know. And right now, I don't know. Bush has given different answers, but keeps to the same policy.
This changing mission stinks. Without knowing why we're there, we'll never know if its worth being there. And being there means our brothers and sisters are dying, losing limbs and vision etc. The rest of us are being asked to pay $87 Billion this year. That will be borrowed abroad, and paid back with interest for 30 years. Is that a good investment?
What I don't get about the patriots who supported this war is the hypocrisy about "supporting the troops". If they support the troops, why are they sending them to get killed and attacked? I mean they keep changing the mission. First it was to make America safer from WMD attacks. Then it was to remove Saddam. Then it was to install a democracy. What's the real reason? Just so you can feel powerful?
And I am not finished with the hypocrites. Why are they allowing our troops to come home wounded to lie in lousy cinder block buildings, waiting months for therapy and medical treatments, and having to pay for their own food? Why are they cutting benefits to GI's? Why are you such hypocrites? How can you use people so cruelly. How can you congratulate yourselves on defending America when you are stealing America blind? I am so sick of these lies and deceptions. They have to stop. That will make America safer than war in Iraq.
U.S. Security Needs Anger Some Europeans: "Denmark's Transportation Minister, Flemming Hansen, told the Politiken newspaper that 'putting armed guards on passenger planes is the same as saying that the terrorists have won.' "
Case Yields Chilling Signs of Domestic Terror Plot: "Critics of the Bush administration say federal officials and the mainstream media are suffering from tunnel vision — that they are so focused on international threats that they have failed to give sufficient attention to threats at home."
Yahoo! News - Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper: "A sad look crossed Abdul Noor's face when he tried to explain his bafflement at suspicions that Iraq had secretly rebuilt -- "reconstituted," as the Bush administration put it in the summer and fall of 2002 -- a nuclear weapons program. He and his colleagues still know what they learned, Abdul Noor said, but their material condition is incomparably worse than it was when they began in 1987. "We would have had to start from less than zero," he said, with thousands of irreplaceable tools banned from import. "The country was cornered," he said. "We were boycotted. We were embargoed. The truth is, we disintegrated.'"
Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper: "Late last month, fresh evidence emerged on a very old question about Iraq's illegal arms: Did the Baghdad government, as it said, rid itself of all the biological arms it produced before 1991? The answer matters, because the Bush administration's most concrete prewar assertions about Iraqi germ weapons referred to stocks allegedly hidden from that old arsenal.
The new evidence appears to be a contemporary record, from inside the Iraqi government, of a pivotal moment in Baghdad's long struggle to shield arms programs from outside scrutiny. The document, written just after the defection of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s son-in-law on Aug. 8, 1995, anticipates the collapse of cover stories for weapons that had yet to be disclosed. Read alongside subsequent discoveries made by U.N. inspectors, the document supports Iraq's claim that it destroyed all production stocks of lethal pathogens before inspectors knew they existed."
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
'The best recovery money can buy': "for the moment George Bush is riding high on an economic revival that everyone knows means trouble via the twin budget and trade deficits in the medium term. As for the fiscal stimulus, more and more commentators are noticing that it is not just tax cuts that are boosting the US economy but vast increases in military - or, in the case of lucrative contracts in Iraq, militarily-induced - spending. That 1950s-style military industrial complex is back.
Yet it was Eisenhower himself who cautioned back in 1953: 'Every gun that is made, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.' "
U.S. Medical evacuations from Iraq near 11,000: "The total number of wounded soldiers and medical evacuations from the war in Iraq is nearing 11,000, according to new Pentagon data provided in response to a request from United Press International.
The military has made 8,581 medical evacuations from Operation Iraqi Freedom for non-hostile causes in addition to the 2,273 wounded -- a total of 10,854, according to the new data. The Pentagon says that 457 troops have died.
The Pentagon's casualty update for Operation Iraqi Freedom listed on its Web site, however, does not reflect thousands of the evacuations.
It is a toll the country has not seen since Vietnam, said Aseneth Blackwell, former national president of Gold Star Wives of America, Inc., a support group for people who lose a spouse from war.
'It is staggering,' said Blackwell.
Blackwell, who lost her husband in 1969 in Vietnam, sometimes visits Walter Reed Army Medical Center where some Iraq veterans get medical care. 'To see these guys walking around up there with an arm missing, a leg missing, that is when it hits you in the face,' said Blackwell."
Allegations that Bush was Warned in Advance of Al Qaeda Plan to Use Planes to Attack Us: "Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in the National Security Council. He has since left. Clark urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. Right at the present, the Bush administration is trying to withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. I believe he told Richard Clarke that he didn't want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible."
White House Seeks Secrecy on Detainee: "'It just emphasizes our point that we're living in frightening times. People can be arrested, thrown in jail and have secret court proceedings, and we know absolutely nothing about it.' "
US army battles to keep soldiers: "The US army is introducing a series of measures to prevent soldiers serving in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan from leaving the service.
Those who were planning to retire or leave in the next few months will now have to remain with their unit.
Soldiers whose terms of enlistment have expired will be offered up to $10,000 to serve another three years.
... it is another sign of the strain the US army is under because of the operation in Iraq."
Monday, January 05, 2004
Bush deficits threaten crisis of confidence: "'Facing a record budget deficit, Bush administration officials say they have drafted an election-year budget that will rein in the growth of domestic spending without alienating politically influential constituencies.' Needless to say, the proposed spending cuts — focused only on the powerless — are both cruel and trivial. "
Sunday, January 04, 2004
US Soldiers Ransack Sunni Mosque: "'Americans might have the latest technology, but they make little effort to understand people's souls,' he said. "
Quarantining Dissent: How the Secret Service Protects Bush from Free Speech: "When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, 'The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us.'
The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a 'designated free-speech zone' on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech.
The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign. "
The world is now split in two: "Bin Laden has not achieved his third objective either: the destruction of Israel. In spite of its suffering at the hands of suicide bombers, Israel is in the ascendant, with strict controls over the daily lives of Palestinians, frequentassassination of suspected bombers and other militants, and a continued land grab in the West Bank. But the one-sided nature of the conflict and the emotions it arouses beyond its boundaries have helped Bin Laden achieve the fourth and most important of his objectives: polarisation.
... Bin Laden's September 11 attacks are mainly to blame for this polarisation. But the responses of George Bush have exacerbated this, with his two wars and the failure to tackle the Israel-Palestinian conflict. "
Jihad has worked - the world is now split in two: "There is a tendency in the west to play down - or ignore - the extent of Bin Laden's success. The US and UK governments regard mentioning it as disloyal or heretical. But look back on interviews by Bin Laden in the 1990s to see what he has achieved. He can tick off one of the four objectives he set himself, and, arguably, a second. "
Did Mr Ridge exaggerate the threat?: "'There has been a lot of dissent about this,' said the source, who has close contact with CIA officials. 'There isn't any substantiated information about an attack on the United States itself. Everything seems to point towards an attack on Saudi Arabia or the Arabian peninsula.' "
Saturday, January 03, 2004
Flashback: nobody squares politicians like Enron: "Any American with half a brain says that it does not matter how citizens vote because corporate funding of parties ensures that the political class and permanent government will always put the business interest before the public interest. And if one man can embody the decay of American democracy, then Kenneth Lay, Enron's founder, is it. "
G.I. Is Killed By Mortar Fire at Iraq Base, 2 Others Wounded: "On Friday night and until nearly dawn on Saturday, Baghdad resounded to a cacophony of warfare that made it hard for anybody watching and listening from a balcony on the Palestine Hotel near the city center to reconcile the bedlam with the phrase some American officers still prefer for the hostilities here, 'a low-intensity conflict.'"
Friday, January 02, 2004
Bulgarian Troops Refuse to Go to Iraq: "More than two dozen Bulgarian soldiers are refusing deployment in Iraq, following the deaths of five countrymen in an attack in the Mideast country, a senior military official said Friday. "
Will the French Indict Cheney?: "The suspected bribe money was mostly ladled out between 1995 and 2000, when Cheney was Halliburton's CEO. The Journal du Dimanche reported on December 21 that 'it is probable that some of the 'retrocommissions' found their way back to the United States' and asked, did this money go 'to Halliburton's officials? To officials of the Republican Party?' These questions have so far gone unasked by America's media, which have completely ignored the explosive Le Figaro headline revealing the targeting of Cheney. It will be interesting to see if the US press looks seriously into this ticking time-bomb of a scandal before the November elections. "
A year of official deception: "2003 was a year when our democracy was degraded by official deception. These are some of the more egregious lies promoted by our government... "
Thursday, January 01, 2004
Bad News Bearers: Up To No Good? (washingtonpost.com): "establishment journalists are obsessed with bad news because the elites they serve benefit from fear-mongering. Politicians hurl charges about how awful things have become, which gets them booked on talk shows. Interest groups seize on sky-is-falling reports to boost their fundraising. And newshounds themselves feel empowered because crises get their adrenaline flowing.
Journalists, Easterbrook says in an interview, 'want their own work to be seen as important, as we all do. If you present something as scandalous or dangerous or frightening, that's more compelling than a story about something that's gone well.' "
