Reflections on the "New American" Revolution
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Iraq More Than Bush Bargained For: "few Americans have noticed the irony and the humiliation of the Bush administration's seeking the help of the United Nations to pull our chestnuts out of the fire in Iraq. "
The curious mystery of George W Bush's Vietnam war: "On May 2 1973, Richard Nixon was still reeling from the Watergate scandal. American troops were on their way home from Vietnam. And outside Houston, in Texas, a 26-year-old named George Bush, a lieutenant in the National Guard, reported for drill duty as usual at Ellington air force base.
That, at any rate, is the impression given by military payroll records released by the Bush administration on Tuesday. Apparently, however, Lt Bush's superiors at Ellington didn't see it that way. In an annual evaluation of his performance - dated, coincidentally, the very same day, May 2 - they conceded that they couldn't actually evaluate his performance, because they hadn't seen him for months.
Which version is the truth?"
Bush tells Blair: 'get yourself some different lawyers': "The book, Just Law, reveals that the Americans told Britain in the run-up to the war early last year that it should "get yourself some different lawyers".
... 'In the weeks before the war, the British Government conveyed to Washington its concerns about the war, explaining that the preponderance of its legal opinion was that war would be unlawful without a second resolution of the Security Council,' the book says.
Lady Kennedy, who previewed some of the claims yesterday, said the 'preponderance' of legal opinion within the Foreign Office was that war would be unlawful if it was not in self-defence, if there was not an imminent threat directly to the UK, or if there was no second UN resolution. 'I certainly know that ... by the end of January, it was still the position. My source said to me: 'Law is the glue. We have to have a second resolution,'' Lady Kennedy told The Independent"
UN Spying Scandal 'adds to the lies about WMD': "'The stain of this new scandal surely will taint the White House as well. At best, snooping on diplomats at UN headquarters is inhospitable. At worst, it may be illegal. If true, these allegations would, if nothing else, suggest that the Blair and Bush administrations were both desperate and paranoid in their efforts to persuade the world to go to war in Iraq.' "
US Angers Allies with New Middle East Plan: "The Bush administration was behaving 'as if the region and its states do not exist, as if they had no sovereignty over their land', President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, one of Washington's Arab allies, said this week."
The Observer | Special reports | I had no choice, says GCHQ whistleblower: "The GCHQ whistleblower who walked free from court last week after the Government dropped secrecy charges against her says Tony Blair lost all moral credibility when he went to war in Iraq without the backing of the United Nations. "
Army chiefs feared Iraq war illegal just days before start: "Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched, The Observer can today reveal. "
Saturday, February 28, 2004
'Britain and US Shared Transcripts After Bugging Blix's Mobile Phone': "The controversy over alleged British and American 'dirty tricks' at the United Nations deepened yesterday with claims that two chiefs of Iraq arms inspection missions had been victims of spying.
Hans Blix and Richard Butler were said to have been subjected to routine bugging while they led teams searching for Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction. "
Bush Ejects Two From Bioethics Council (washingtonpost.com): "President Bush yesterday dismissed two members of his handpicked Council on Bioethics -- a scientist and a moral philosopher who had been among the more outspoken advocates for research on human embryo cells.
In their places he appointed three new members, including a doctor who has called for more religion in public life, a political scientist who has spoken out precisely against the research that the dismissed members supported, and another who has written about the immorality of abortion and the 'threats of biotechnology.'
The turnover immediately renewed a recent string of accusations by scientists and others that Bush is increasingly allowing politics to trump science as he seeks advice on ethically contentious issues. "
He's pretty crass, isn't he? Just doesn't care, does he? Shameless, I'd say. Dangerous. Even with a supposed separation of powers, the guy does what he likes.
The only good news is that the press are starting to investigate and report on his lies. Take the NPR piece yesterday morning on Mark Racicot's--his campaign manager's--claim that he had "volunteered" for duty in Vietnam.
Well, they found that Bush's records show that he chose "not to serve". And that Racicot's source was an opinion piece in a right wing magazine.
What this means is that the Bush campaign is presenting unsubstantiated opinion as fact.
We shouldn't be surprised. They don't care about facts. They care about their agenda. And they make the facts fit their case.
We've seen it over and over. With the arguments for attacking Iraq. With the air quality reports in NY after 9/11. With the stacking of the "advisory boards" that are meant to give policy makers independent scientific input. Over and over again. That's why I don't believe anything they say at face value. Because it's been proven false, even when there's a kernal of truth, it's spun to be something it's not. And now they are claiming we should re-elect this man. Have they no integrity?
Don't answer that. Vote. It's your only hope of getting rid of him. And bring a friend. We need everyone to vote this time.
But don't stop with Bush. He's part of a system. The GOP leadership and their support organizations all need to be removed from power. To remove Bush without doing so would be like removing an unsightly tumor that's causing pain, but not removing the rest of the cancer that's part of it. You can expect the same tumor to come back, maybe in a different place. But just as deadly.
We have to remove all influences of those who are taking over our government for their own selfish gain, and return it to serving all of us. Most of all we need to get corporate power out of elections. Then remove it from dominance in our government institutions. We need to replace it. How this should be done is a matter for debate. I don't have the answers.
Bin Laden Captured, say Iranians: "Pentagon (news - web sites) and Pakistani officials on Saturday denied an Iranian state radio report that Osama bin Laden was captured in Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan 'a long time ago.' "
At the same time, Rumsfeld says the US is still looking for Bin Laden. Could he possibly be hiding Bin Laden somewhere, ready to produce him in October, to boost Bush right before the election?
Rumsfeld Cool on Bin Laden Hunt (washingtonpost.com): "Afghanistan, Feb. 26 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld Thursday played down reports that U.S. forces were chasing Osama bin Laden and other terrorists with new urgency and might be close to locating the Saudi fugitive and his aides, believed to be hiding in the rugged borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. "
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Billionaires benefit from Bush: "In the United States, billionaires likely gained last year not only from a 20 percent rise in stock prices, but also from reductions in taxes on dividends, capital gains and estate taxes, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.
'High income, high net-worth households have done very well under the Bush administration,' said Zandi."
US Guantanamo system is "fundamentally unfair": "A lawyer appointed by the US military to represent one of the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay to be charged has also voiced his concerned.
'The tribunals don't have the safeguards that one would expect,' he told the BBC's World Today programme.
'This is unlike any system we have seen since at least World War II - except perhaps similar military commissions in other countries that we frequently criticise as fundamentally unfair,' he said. "
UN warning over spy allegations: "British spies would have undermined the United Nations' work if it was true they bugged Secretary General Kofi Annan's office, says a UN spokesman. "
U.S. to Study Importing Canada Drugs but Choice of Leader Prompts Criticism: "the Bush administration said Wednesday that it would conduct a yearlong study of how prescription drugs might be safely imported from Canada. But it then infuriated the critics by selecting Dr. Mark B. McClellan, the commissioner of food and drugs, to lead the study.
Dr. McClellan has adamantly opposed any relaxation of the rules barring drug imports. He says such imports would be unsafe, and his agency has threatened legal action against cities and states that help people import Canadian drugs."
UK Spies Bugged UN Chief, Claims Short: "Iraq is a disastrous mess. Ten thousand Iraqis have died, American troops are dying, some of our troops have died, the Middle East is more angry than ever.
'I'm afraid that the sort of deceit on the route to war was linked to the lack of preparation for afterwards and the chaos and suffering that continues, so it won't go away, will it?'"
UK Spies Bugged UN Chief, Claims Short: "British agents spied on the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in the run-up to the Iraqi war, the former International Development Secretary Clare Short claimed today."
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Hastert Won't Extend Sept. 11 Panel: "Bush had received a briefing one month before the attacks warning of the possibility of a plot to hijack airplanes. "
Bush 'wanted war in 2002': "George Bush set the US on the path to war in Iraq with a formal order signed in February 2002, more than a year before the invasion, according to a book published yesterday. "
US presidential race a reprise of 2002 Georgia campaign: "With Republicans, including Mr. Chambliss, calling Mr. Kerry soft on defense � the same accusation they used to defeat Mr. Cleland - the presidential race is increasingly turning into a reprise of the 2002 Georgia campaign."
Bush 'wanted war in 2002': "George Bush set the US on the path to war in Iraq with a formal order signed in February 2002, more than a year before the invasion, according to a book published yesterday.
The revelation casts doubt on the public insistence by US and British officials throughout 2002 that no decision had been taken to go to war, pending negotiations at the United Nations. "
Spy case casts fresh doubt on war legality: "the advice given by the Foreign Office Legal Adviser expressed serious doubts about the legality (in international law) of committing British troops in the absence of a second [UN] resolution.' "
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Want a Health Tip? Move to Canada: "'There isn't a single measure in which the U.S. excels in the health arena,' says Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington in Seattle. 'We spend half of the world's healthcare bill and we are less healthy than all the other rich countries.'
'Fifty-five years ago, we were one of the healthiest countries in the world,' Bezruchka continues. 'What changed? We have increased the gap between rich and poor. Nothing determines the health of a population [more] than the gap between rich and poor.' "
Pentagon Excludes Human Rights Observers from Guantanamo Trials: "The Pentagon's refusal to allow human rights groups to monitor upcoming military trials of prisoners held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was sharply criticized today by three leading human rights advocacy organizations. "
... 'The U.S., in the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights, annually criticizes other governments for failing to accommodate trial monitors,' said Alex Arriaga of Amnesty International USA. 'Allowing media coverage while pleading insufficient space for human rights groups smacks of fear of informed criticism, and will only fuel the perception that tribunals will be show trials.' "
President Weighs in On Kerry (washingtonpost.com): "Bush 'begins his campaign on his back foot, because his job ratings are down and his personal image has suffered' because of questions about his National Guard service and the absence of the weapons of mass destruction he had said were stockpiled in Iraq.
In a head-to-head matchup, Kerry beat Bush by 52 percent to 43 percent among registered voters in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Feb. 12. His job approval rating was 50 percent, down from 71 percent on April 30, two weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.
... Bush, saying he looks forward to a spirited campaign, spent much of the speech defending and boasting about what he called "a record of historic achievement." He promised to "win our second term."
"A president needs to step up and make the hard decisions and keep his commitments, and that is how I will continue to lead our country," Bush said. "Great events will turn on this election. The man who sits in the Oval Office will set the course of the war on terror and the direction of our economy."
And that is why regime change--vote democratic in Nov. folks, unless you want eternal war and impoverishment.
Yahoo! News - New Bush AIDS Strategy Assailed by Health Activists: "''It's a go-slow, go-it-alone approach'', noted Paul Zeitz, head of the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA). ''And it's amazing that more than 13 months after the president announced the plan, only now is the first dollar being spent.'
The new strategy paper also failed to clarify a key question--whether Washington will buy life-preserving, anti-AIDS drugs from generic producers, which come mostly from developing countries such as India, Thailand, and Brazil, as opposed to Western, brand name drugs that generally are more expensive.
Many activists are concerned that the administration will buy only brand-name drugs"
Supreme Court OK's Holding of Secret Trials: "We are moving toward an entire system of secret justice,' "
Monday, February 23, 2004
Controversial Terror Research Lives On: "The government is still financing research to create powerful tools that could mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists despite an uproar last year over fears it might ensnare innocent Americans. "
Electronic voting easily manipulated by corrupt insiders : "Touch-screen e-voting machines can be used by corrupt insiders to disrupt or even steal an election, according to the latest state-sponsored study by American legislators.
... The authors of the report presented two weeks ago to the Maryland state authorities said they had expected a higher degree of security.
'We were genuinely surprised at the basic level of the exploits that allowed tampering,' said Michael Wertheimer, security expert for RABA Technologies in Columbia, who oversaw the study. "
Sunday, February 22, 2004
US Still Paying Millions to Group that Provided False Iraqi Intelligence: "The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence President Bush used to argue his case for war.
The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. defense official. "
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us: "A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents. "
Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War: "Chalabi, whose INC received millions of dollars in taxpayer money over the past decade, effectively conspired with his supporters in and around the administration to take the United States to war on pretenses they knew, or had reason to know, were false.
Indeed, it now appears increasingly that defectors handled by the INC were sources for the most spectacular and detailed -- if completely unfounded -- information about Hussein's alleged WMD programs, not only to U.S. intelligence agencies, but also to U.S. mainstream media, especially the 'New York Times', according to a recent report in the New York 'Review of Books'.
Within the administration, Chalabi worked most closely with those who had championed his cause for a decade, particularly neo-conservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld -- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.
Feith's office was home to the office of special plans (OSP) whose two staff members and dozens of consultants were tasked with reviewing raw intelligence to develop the strongest possible case that Hussein represented a compelling threat to the United States.
OSP also worked with the defense policy board (DPB), a hand-picked group of mostly neo-conservative hawks chaired until just before the war by Richard Perle, a long-time Chalabi friend.
... Chalabi, whose family, it was reported this week, has extensive interests in a company that has already been awarded more than 400 million dollars in reconstruction contracts, is signaling his willingness to take all of the blame, or credit, for the faulty intelligence.
But one of the reasons for going to war was suggested quite directly by Garner -- who also worked closely with Chalabi and the same cohort of U.S. hawks in the run-up to the war and during the first few weeks of occupation -- in an interview with 'The National Journal'.
Asked how long U.S. troops might remain in Iraq, Garner replied, ''I hope they're there a long time'', and then compared U.S. goals in Iraq to U.S. military bases in the Philippines between 1898 and 1992.
''One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities)'', he said. ''And I think we'll have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south ... we'd want to keep at least a brigade''. "
CA Pump Prices Sting -- and Could Get Worse: "California refiners are pocketing about 70 cents for each gallon of gasoline they sell - after subtracting the cost of crude oil, their single largest expense. Kloza called the situation 'very extreme,' noting that the gross margin earned by the state's refiners is typically around 25 cents a gallon. "
70 Cents per gallon is a huge margin. Will the Schwarzneggar administration do anything about this?
Friday, February 20, 2004
Republican staff aides improperly obtained confidential strategy memos from a Senate computer: "3,000 Democratic documents were secretly downloaded, read and distributed by some number of Republican aides"
'NY Times' Fails to Acknowledge Its Role in WMD Hype: "Judith Miller and other Times reporters knew, even if CIA analysts did not know the origin of suspect information, that it was provided by exile organizations promoting an American invasion of Iraq.
Incredibly, nevertheless, Miller places the onus on U.S. intelligence for the gross discrepancies between what she reported on Iraqi WMD before the war, and the largely blank sheet of the Iraqi Survey Group submitted by David Kay: 'The fact that the United States so far hasn't found WMD in Iraq is deeply disturbing,' she told Michael Massing in his article 'Now They Tell Us,' in the New York Review of Books (Feb. 26). 'It raises real questions about how good our intelligence was. To beat up on the messenger is to miss the point.' This from a messenger who, in 2002-2003, persisted in publishing shaky and deceptive information that abetted the designs of her high-level administration and INC sources.
But 11 months after the war began, there have been no editors' notes or corrections that single out the 'bum-steer' reports on weapons of mass destruction written mostly by star WMD correspondent Miller, say, between September 2002 and September 2003. Frequently, front-page exclusives were based on INC source information proffered by U.S. government 'officials,' or funneled by defectors and the exile group to the Times directly.
No wonder that it was often impossible to know where the Times left off and the government began, or vice versa, in one 'news' report after another on WMD in Iraq."
Who Is to Blame for the Creation of Palestinian Refugees?: "In an interview that caused an uproar in Israel, Mr. Morris told the newspaper Haaretz he now believed that 'without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.' He also said, stunningly, that 'there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing.'
This is in stark contrast with what he argued 15 years ago after unearthing details of transfers and massacres by Israelis. At the time, he said that recognizing Israel's role in the creation of the refugee problem was central for peace to come. His work, coming on the eve of the 1990's peace effort, was highly influential.
Mr. Morris, speaking by telephone from Jerusalem, says he is not defending massacres or rapes. He is simply arguing that they were not on a very large scale, compared with many other massacres in history. And, in looking at 1948 and the ongoing violence today, he can't help suspecting that if more Palestinians had been driven away then, there would be greater peace today.
All this suggests that while Mr. Morris is an important historian, he is a less clear-eyed political analyst. It also shows just how far public discourse in Israel has moved in a few years."
Has Bush's running mate gone lame?: "In the past two months so much ground has fallen from under [Cheney's] feet that some Republicans are quietly musing whether his cardiac record might provide a suitable cover for his eventual withdrawal from the Bush ticket. "
Thursday, February 19, 2004
FEC Moves to Regulate Groups Opposing Bush (washingtonpost.com): "The Federal Election Commission decided yesterday that many of the political committees raising 'soft' money to campaign against President Bush are subject to regulation, but it postponed deciding how tough the restrictions should be.
... Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, in contrast, said the ruling will put out of business "groups like America Coming Together [ACT], the Media Fund, Partnership for America's Families and the MoveOn.org Voter Fund." All are pro-Democratic groups organized under Section 527 of the tax code. "
U.S. Presidential Politics and Self-Rule for Iraqis: "'It's not as if the Iraqis don't have television,' Mr. Feldman added. 'Everybody in Iraq believes that these deadlines are chosen by American electoral politics. Regardless of whether the June 30 deadline originated in Baghdad or Washington, it clearly reflected a coordinated administration policy to jump-start the process. That's an extremely high risk strategy.'"
News Analysis: The Transfer: U.S. Presidential Politics and Self-Rule for Iraqis: "It makes no sense, many experts say, to set a fixed date to hand over sovereignty before having any idea of what sort of government will be given power on that date.
'This is entirely a schedule dictated by Karl Rove,' said an Arab diplomat who maintains close contacts with the administration, referring to the White House's political director. 'Anyone who thinks otherwise is na�ve.'"
Bush Administration Accused of Suppressing, Distorting Science: "A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents, on Wednesday accused the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes.
Among prominent scientists who on Wednesday endorsed a letter and report critical of the Bush administration's use of science are:
-David Baltimore, winner of Nobel Prize for medicine, president of the California Institute of Technology.
-Lewis Branscomb, former director of the National Bureau of Standards under President Nixon, current professor of science and public policy at Harvard University.
-Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University population biologist.
-Gerald Fischbach, former director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, dean of Columbia University's faculty of medicine.
-Neal Lane, former science adviser to President Clinton, former director of the National Science Foundation, now an astronomy professor at Rice University in Houston.
-Leon Lederman, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and former director of the Fermi National Lab.
-Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State University zoologist and former president of the AAAS.
-F. Sherwood Rowland, atmospheric scientist at the University of California-Irvine, past president of AAAS.
-Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health, Nobel Prize winner for medicine, current CEO of the Memorial-Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
-E.O. Wilson, Harvard University ecologist."
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Yahoo! News - White House Backs Off Job-Growth Forecast: "The White House backed away Wednesday from its own prediction that the economy will add 2.6 million new jobs before the end of this year, saying the forecast was the work of number-crunchers and that President Bush (news - web sites) was not a statistician.
Bush, himself, stopped short of echoing the prediction.
"I think the economy's growing, and I think it's going to get stronger," said Bush, the nation's first MBA president."
Joint Chiefs Bypassed in Decision to Disband Iraqi Army: Pace: "WASHINGTON - The Joint Chiefs of Staff were not consulted on the US decision to disband the Iraqi army shortly after the end of major combat operations in Iraq last May, General Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said.
Pace said Paul Bremer, the head of the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, ordered the army disbanded on his own authority.
'Those of us in Washington did not second guess those who were on point,' he said at a question and answer session here at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'We were not asked for a recommendation, or for advice.' "
Old MacDonald Had a Judge: Quack, Quack. So Much for the Constitutionally Mandated Separation of Powers: "Scalia - with his waterfowl impression - may have been trying to preempt protesters he thought were going to perform their own impromptu noises. Nevertheless, by arrogantly trying to make a joke out of his unethical behavior, Scalia has again made a mockery of the enormous responsibility the Constitution places on our highest court.
After all, it was Scalia who led the Supreme Court with flimsy legal logic to validate the dubious 2000 Florida election results that were the difference in placing the current president in power. This time he may have gone too far in shredding the Supreme Court's vaunted reputation of impartiality.
'I'm surprised he's sticking by his guns. I would hope he does see the light,' Georgetown University law professor Paul Rothstein said of Scalia's stubbornness to acknowledge what is simple common sense: If you are a longtime friend of the vice president and are accepting free junket flights from him, you best remove yourself from the fray when it comes time to rule on a decision that may damage his career.
Finally, we should remember what the legal case in question is about: transparency in government, which is one of the taproots of democracy. "
CIA Intelligence Reports Seven Months Before 9/11 Said Iraq Posed No Threat To U.S., Containment Was Working: "CIA Director George Tenet testified before Congress in February 2001 that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United States or to other countries in the Middle East. "
Prosecutor in Terror Case Sues Justice Department: "The federal prosecutor who won the first and only jury-trial conviction in the war on terrorism sued the Department of Justice (news - web sites) on Tuesday, claiming that he was never given adequate support in the case and that senior government officials seemed more interested in publicity than in seeing justice served.
Richard G. Convertino, a 14-year veteran of the U.S. attorney's office in Detroit, also alleged in his lawsuit against Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and other department administrators that Washington officials acknowledged that they were 'enjoying' undeserved credit for keeping the country safe from domestic terrorism."
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Even Bush Officials Offer Cautions on White House Jobs Forecast: "Treasury Secretary John W. Snow distanced himself on Tuesday from the Bush administration's official prediction that the nation would add 2.6 million jobs by the end of this year.
That prediction, which is far more optimistic than that of many private sector forecasters, was part of the annual economic report released last week by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and was immediately echoed by Mr. Bush himself.
... Unemployment and the nation's surprisingly sluggish pace of job creation has become a significant political weakness for Mr. Bush, who is on track to be the first president since Herbert Hoover to end his first term with fewer jobs than when he started.
The nation has lost about 2.5 million jobs in the last three years..."
Venezuela's Chavez Says U.S. Backed Coup: "Chavez accused the United States of ``deceiving the world, deceiving the very people of the United States, deceiving the people of Europe'' when it said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
``They are hatching a similar deception about Venezuela,'' he said.
He said he had evidence that Washington was involved in an April 2002 coup that ousted him for two days. He said the Bush administration ``had a responsibility in the massacre'' that helped trigger the coup, and that U.S. military personnel were involved alongside rebel Venezuelan military. "
BusinessWeek: What Bush vs. Saddam Is All About: "Is this really a President who turned centuries of international law on its head, who misled Americans with justifications for invasion that have turned out to be spectacularly false, sent other sons and daughters into a war that continues to kill one or two of them every day, has concocted half-baked plans for rebuilding a land torn asunder, and plunged the U.S. budget into an ocean of red ink so he could figuratively stare into Saddam's eyes and say, 'You tried to kill my father. Prepare to die.'
Bush has some explaining to do if he is to be reelected. "
Few Americans See Caskets Come Home: "Carolyn Hutchings, whose son, Marine Pvt. Nolen Ryan Hutchings, 20, was killed the same day and in the same area as Gifford, also was critical of the policy of denying media coverage at Dover.
'That's crap. I'm sorry, that's crap,' she said of the government's desire to protect families' privacy. 'Everybody knew my son had died,' she said. 'Why not acknowledge it? We already knew. ... Why not acknowledge it? He died for his country.'
She said local news media covered her son's arrival at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in South Carolina, but public ceremonies and national coverage of the totality of the deaths is lacking.
'That's all you hear on TV, it's a count,' said Hutchings, her voice quavering. 'It's nothing but a count.'
She said she received a 'typed, generic letter' of condolence from President Bush.
'I'm sure everybody got the same one,' Hutchings said. 'I'm not impressed at all.'"
Iraqis Angered As Bremer Says He Has Final Say on Iraq's Basic Law: "Iraqis chafed at the bit of coalition political control, with overseer Paul Bremer being warned of a possible crisis if he vetoes an Islamic constitution for Iraq and a report that the interim Governing Council is backing away from a deal on transferring sovereignty. "
OK. Bush says he invaded Iraq to bring democracy there. Big goal. But what is he actually doing? First step: He appointed a Governing Council. Second step: replace democratic elections with appointees to caucus' that will appoint representatives to caucus'. Third step: veto his governing council's choice of legal system.
Bush's policies are more like George III's, in his relationship with the colonists in New England in the 18th Century, than anything close to what we would think of as democracy.
When is Bush going to cancel our elections? That's surely the next logical step--in Bushworld. And because he would not be able to get away with that in 2004, the question becomes, how will his people subvert the election and rig the result in Nov.?
Research in Italy Turns Up a New Form of Mad Cow Disease: "there have been recent reports of unusual types of mad cow disease in France and Japan, and scientists say the discovery of new forms suggests that many cases of 'sporadic' human disease - by far the most common kind, responsible for about 300 deaths a year in the United States - are not spontaneous at all, but come from eating animals."
No excuse for inaction here, though that is pretty much what the industry and the Dept of Agriculture-dominated by meat industry lobbyists-are offering. Another reason for regime change: food security. Meaning, food for human consumption rather than maximizing industrial profits.
Monday, February 16, 2004
9/11 Families Valentines Letter to President Bush: "we ask you to stop exploiting the tragedy of September 11 for political gain and to join us in responding to that tragic day in a manner that brings about genuine healing and peace for Americans and the rest of the world.
... "You claim that September 11th made you a war president. But this is not true. By responding to the terrorism of 9/11 with an unending 'war on terror,'and a doctrine of pre-emptive war, you and your administration chose this path. After September 11, the entire world reached out to the United States with compassion. Rather than building on that good will and ushering the world into a new era of mutual cooperation, an effort that would have required true statesmanship and a willingness to deal honestly with the root causes of terrorism, you appealed to our fears and to the worst in human kind. Your domestic and foreign policies have reduced our nation's leadership, leaving us less secure, less free, less respected and less able to deal effectively with the genuine threat of 21st century terrorism. " "
Bush Won't Meet With All 9/11 Panelists: "The White House said Saturday that President Bush plans to meet with only a limited number of representatives from the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, despite a statement issued Friday that suggested he would meet with the whole panel."
More than 40 million people lack health insurance: "The Economic Report of the President has only negative things to say about efforts to hold down drug prices. It talks at length about insurance reform, but it mainly complains that we rely too much on insurance; it says nothing about either expanding coverage or reducing insurance-company overhead. Its main concrete policy suggestion is a plan for tax-deductible health savings accounts, which would be worth little or nothing to a vast majority of the uninsured."
Bush desperate to get troops out before elections in November: "As the violence continued in Iraq yesterday, the head of the American occupation administration admitted the US was waiting for the United Nations to find a way out of the impasse on handing over power to Iraqis. Speaking on two American talk shows, Paul Bremer admitted the US was now pinning its hopes on the UN, an organisation it had written off as irrelevant at the time of the invasion of Iraq. Rejected by the Americans and forced to flee Iraq last year after two bombings, the UN is suddenly back in the frame in Iraq.
US hopes of getting at least partly out of the quagmire that Iraq has become and handing power to an Iraqi interim administration by President Bush's deadline of 30 June are looking more troubled than ever after Saturday's attack in Fallujah, in which insurgents stormed an Iraqi police station, killing at least 21, and an Iraqi army garrison.
The US administration is desperate to get its troops out of harm's way before Mr Bush faces re-election in November."
News: "'It is large-hearted and courageous people who are not diminished by saying: 'I made a mistake'. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair would recover considerable credibility and respect if they were able to say: 'Yes, we made a mistake'.'
The archbishop will link Mr Bush's support, when he was Governor of Texas, for capital punishment with a new philosophy behind the invasion of Iraq. He will say: "It may not be fanciful to see a connection between this and the belligerent militarist policies that have produced a novel and dangerous principle, that of pre-emption on the basis of intelligence reports that in one particular instance have been shown can be dangerously flawed and yet were the basis for the United States going to war"
Senate's Iraq Probe to Include Bush, Aides: "The move puts claims made by President Bush and other senior officials in his administration squarely in the sights of the committee's investigation, and could add to the White House's political troubles as it tries to keep questions about the war from becoming a drag on Bush's reelection campaign. "
Bush a No-Show at Alabama Base, Says Memphian: "Two members of the Air National Guard unit that President George W. Bush allegedly served with as a young Guard flyer in 1972 had been told to expect him and were on the lookout for him. He never showed, however; of that both Bob Mintz and Paul Bishop are certain."
British - American Spy Operation Wrecked Peace Move: "A joint British and American spying operation at the United Nations scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq, The Observer can reveal.
Senior UN diplomats from Mexico and Chile provided new evidence last week that their missions were spied on, in direct contravention of international law. "
Hi-Tech Voting Machines 'Threaten' US Polls: "US voters will go to the polls in November using electronic voting machines which cannot be verified, a computer scientist warned yesterday.
David Dill, of Stanford University, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle, that 1,600 technologists and 53 elected officials had joined his crusade for a 'paper trail' so that electronic voting machines could be checked.
In an election for a seat in the Florida house of representatives last month, touch-screen machines recorded 127 blank ballots. The race was won by 12 votes. No recount was possible because there was nothing to recount.
In an election in Indiana last year, an electronic system recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters. "
Bush supports $5 Trillion in new debt: "Social Security also must be restructured to let workers put part of their retirement funds in private accounts, the report argues. Doing so could add nearly $5 trillion to the national debt by 2036, the president's advisers note, but the additional borrowing would be repaid 20 years later, and the program's long-term health would be more secure. "
Bush economic report praises 'outsourcing' jobsIn a new report this week President Bush “said the movement of U.S. factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy.” The LA Times notes that Bush, who personally signed the report before it was released, “supports the shift of jobs overseas” despite 8 million Americans being out of work, and analysts predicting “as many as 2 million U.S. white-collar jobs” could be lost from more outsourcing.
Media de-regulation encourages more consolidation, not more competition: "The reason given by giants to merge with other giants is to compete more efficiently with other enlarging conglomerates. The growing danger, however, is that media giants are becoming fewer as they get bigger. The assurance given is 'look at those independent Internet Web sites that compete with us' ? but all the largest Web sites are owned by the giants.
How are the media covering their contraction? (I still construe the word 'media' as plural in hopes that McCain will get off his duff and Bush will awaken.) Much of the coverage is 'gee-whiz, which personality will be top dog, which investors will profit and which giant will go bust?'
But the message in this latest potential merger is not about a clash of media megalomaniacs, nor about a conspiracy driven by 'special interests.' The issue is this: As technology changes, how do we better protect the competition that keeps us free and different?
You don't have to be a populist to want to stop this rush by ever-fewer entities to dominate both the content and the conduit of what we see and hear and write and say. "
Nice to see that I agree with William Safire on some things. Good job, Bill.
Cheney: Willing dupe in Ahmad Chalabi's big con: "Retracing the rush to war, the names Cheney and Chalabi are entwined in bold relief.
... Chalabi ... hoodwinked his pals Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle into believing Iraq would be a flowery cakewalk to democracy.
... His group, the Iraqi National Congress, tried to spin our government and media through its "information collection program." Intelligence officials now say that the prewar information provided to Washington by this group was suspect and useless, even disinformation.
But here's the wild thing: the propaganda program was underwritten by U.S. government funds. So Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week — and a precious human cost. Cops dealing with their snitches check out the information better than the Bush administration did.
"
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Bush backs off pledge to open his entire military file: "White House officials yesterday backed off Bush's unqualified pledge Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press' to open his entire military file.
Also, the Boston Globe says that Bush's suspension from flying should have triggered an investigation, according to guard regulations.
And USA Today and the New York Times both give a lot of play to one man's allegation that Bush advisers in the late 1990s discussed ways to limit the release of potentially embarrassing details from his military records.
Reporters are still asking lots of questions about the period between May 1972 and May 1973. Bush as a young man received a coveted position in the Texas Air National Guard -- coveted because it protected him from being drafted and sent to Vietnam. He stopped flying in 1972, however, and critics have accused him of shirking his duty, particularly during a period when he was working for a political campaign in Alabama. "
The curious mystery of George W Bush's Vietnam war: "in the spring of 1972 he requested permission to switch units to one in Alabama, so he could work, on his off days, on the senatorial campaign of a Bush family friend. The request was denied: the sleepy Alabama unit could hardly provide the young fighter pilot with 'equivalent training', as required. The Boston Globe's groundbreaking investigation on the topic, published during the 2000 campaign, quoted the unit's commander as saying: 'We met just one week night a month ... We had no airplanes. We had no pilots. We had no nothing.'
Despite being denied permission to switch, however, Bush seems to have gone to Alabama anyway: from May 1972, the records show, his attendance at the Texas base started to become sketchy, then non-existent. He missed a routine medical examination, and was banned from flying.
He surfaced again in the autumn, making another request to join a different Alabama unit. This time, he was given permission to serve in Alabama - and that's certainly what, back in Texas, they thought he was doing. His superiors, charged with writing an annual appraisal of Lt Bush in May 1973, explained that he 'has not been observed at this unit during the period of report' because he was doing equivalent service in Alabama.
Retired colonel Earl W Lively, the operations officer for the Texas air National Guard at the time, says Bush would have had an easy ride there. 'Alabama didn't care. He wasn't contributing anything to that unit. He just had to show up there, so that's that. He performed what his commander required of him, and his commander gave him, in effect, a leave from his duty to go do his civilian occupation elsewhere.'
But did he serve in Alabama at all? The state g"
The curious mystery of George W Bush's Vietnam war: "when it came to his military service, according to National Guard records that are not clearly refuted by this week's White House releases, Bush simply fell off the radar. "
U.N. Aide Backs Calls for Elections in Iraq: "elections are the best means to enable any people to set up a state that serves their interest"
Kean feels the wrath of irate 9/11 families: "The meeting was scheduled to last two hours but ran much longer. Through the door, the relatives could clearly be heard shouting at Kean. 'Who is hiding what?' said one participant. 'You've got the power, why don't you use it,' said another.
The panel on Tuesday agreed to accept a 17-page summary of the presidential briefing documents culled by a four-member commission group and edited by the White House. The highly sensitive materials came from documents prepared by the CIA for Presidents Clinton and Bush from 1998 until Sept. 20, 2001.
Casazza, echoing sentiments of other family members, said the restricted access to the White House documents 'raises questions about the integrity of the report.' "
Kean feels the wrath of irate 9/11 families: "Emerging from their closed-door meeting with Kean, which was punctuated by shouts and table-pounding, family members expressed unhappiness that Kean appeared to have been pre-empting the investigation.
'I don't know how he can say that before more public hearings are held and top administration officials are questioned under oath,' said Mindy Kleinberg of East Brunswick, a 9/11 widow. She called Kean's published remark 'very offensive' and added he had 'prejudged the work of the commission. "
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Largest U.S. Cable Operator Makes Bid for Walt Disney: "The Comcast Corporation, the largest cable television operator in the United States, made a $54.1 billion unsolicited takeover bid today for the Walt Disney Company, the storied family entertainment colossus. "
Well, this should please the Republicans. More consolidation. More control of more media by fewer corporations. Wonderful news for our Republic. Fewer people to decide on what we get to read and hear and see. Fewer people for our busy President to have to listen to. Fewer people to influence on what the President wants them to say, and what he wants them to censor. Good news.
Fed Chairman Warns of Budget Deficit: "'Federal budget deficits could cause difficulties even in the relatively near term,' Greenspan told the House Financial Services Committee.
'Should investors become significantly more doubtful that the Congress will take the necessary fiscal measures, an appreciable backup in long-term interest rates is possible,' Greenspan said. "
E-Commerce News: Trends: More Job Searchers Just Quit Looking: "About 4.7 million Americans want jobs but are not looking for work, up from 4.6 million in January of 2003, according to the Department of Labor. There are a variety of reasons they may be unable to look for work. They may be unable to job hunt because they don't have a car or can't find child care.
... While some are trying to develop new skills or make career changes, others are so demoralized that they're doing nothing."
Cyber-Campaign Demands Congress Censure Bush: "''This country is now going through the worst intelligence scandal in its history'', said Melvin Goodman, a former top CIA analyst who teaches at the National Defense University here.
Calling the administration's allegations about Hussein's alleged WMD programs and ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist group a ''campaign of deceit'', he charged that the Office of Special Plans (OSP) established by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, ''was engaged in falsifying intelligence information'' that was then leaked to the press and sent via Cheney's office to the White House.
''The reasons we were given for going to war were false'', added Larry Johnson, a career CIA officer who served as deputy director of the State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism in the 1990s.
''The Bush administration engaged in a deliberate campaign of information warfare, which employed erroneous and misleading information as part of a broader strategy to build public opinion for an invasion'', he said."
Bush's Rhetoric On Iraq Should Be Studied by Iraq WMD Commission: "David Kay, the former chief U.S. arms inspector in Iraq, said yesterday that President Bush's new commission on intelligence should study how the president and his senior policymakers used the information they received from intelligence agencies.
... Bush's executive order creating the commission last week spelled out the panel's areas of inquiry, and did not list among them the question of whether the administration accurately portrayed the information in intelligence reports.
... The Sept. 11 commission, which had a White House letter sent to all agencies calling for their full cooperation, nonetheless has been forced to use its subpoena power twice to get documents from the Bush administration."
Military Costs: Service Chiefs Challenge White House on the Budget: "the top officers of the Army, Marine Corps and Air Force all raised questions on Tuesday about how the Bush administration plans to pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan after the current financing runs out at the end of September.
Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, three of the four chiefs of the armed services expressed concerns about a financing gap, perhaps of four months, for the two missions, whose combined cost is about $5 billion a month.
They were left out of President Bush's budget request for the 2005 fiscal year, with the administration saying it would make a supplementary request for up to $50 billion, probably next January ? after the elections this year."
Bush left fighting critics on two fronts: "Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist, wrote yesterday that he barely turned up for his stint in the guard after six months' basic training. 'For two years or so, I played a perfectly legal form of hooky,' he wrote. 'To show you what a mess the guard was at the time, I even got paid for all the meetings I missed.'
Mr Bush's present travails date from January 20, when he delivered a weak state of the union address. His evasion on the Vietnam war echo his statements on Iraq.
Yesterday the erosion of his credibility appeared to have reached a critical point when Mr O'Reilly seemed to lose faith in the White House, saying in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America: 'I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this.'"
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
9/11 Panel Accepts Summary of Briefings Under White House Restrictions (washingtonpost.com): "The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks backed away yesterday from a threatened legal showdown with the White House, agreeing to accept a 17-page summary of presidential briefing documents it had sought.
The deal will not allow the full 10-member commission to read the original documents, or have access to notes on the documents taken by some of the commission's own members. The summary -- provided to commission members during a closed-door meeting yesterday -- covered several dozen original intelligence documents and was first vetted by the White House, officials said. "
Bush credited for Guard drills: "Bush accumulated 41 service points by appearing for duty on 24 days between May 1972 and May 1973. He received 15 'gratuitous' points for being in the military, for a total of 56 points. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Albert. C. Lloyd Jr., a former personnel director for the Texas Air Guard, said in an interview last night that the minimum number of points required for any year was 50, although most Guardsmen logged substantially more."
Pentagon Clip Service's Clips Clipped (washingtonpost.com): "Senior Pentagon managers have repeatedly ordered the department's widely read clipping service to exclude articles critical of the military and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to officials familiar with the practice. "
Bush Aides Testify in Leak Probe (washingtonpost.com): "Officials interviewed by the FBI include Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser; McClellan; Matalin; Levine; White House communications director Dan Bartlett; former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer; I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Cheney's chief of staff; and Cathie Martin, a Cheney aide, according to the sources. "
Yahoo! News - Army Changes Explanation on Halliburton: "After stating that a multi-agency team of government experts evaluated Halliburton Co.'s new Iraq contract, the Army Corps of Engineers now says it alone picked the company despite allegations that it overcharged U.S. taxpayers. "
Doubts, Dissent Stripped from Public Version of Iraq Assessment: "The public version of the U.S. intelligence community's key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's intentions, a review of the document and its once-classified version shows.
As a result, the public was given a far more definitive assessment of Iraq's plans and capabilities than President Bush and other U.S. decision-makers received from their intelligence agencies. "
Bush credited for Guard drills amid questions about his attendance at those drills: "the documents seem unlikely to resolve questions about whether Bush shirked his duty during his tour as a fighter-interceptor pilot for the Texas Air Guard during the Vietnam War. That is because some of the dates on the service list fell during a period in the fall of 1972 when Bush was reassigned to a guard unit in Alabama. The commander of the Alabama unit has said Bush did not appear for duty at his assigned unit there.
Bartlett said the Guard drills Bush is listed as attending in January and April 1973 were probably conducted at Bush's home base in Houston. But on May 2, 1973, Bush's two commanders at Ellington Air Force Base wrote that they could not evaluate his performance for the prior 12 months because he had not been there. Two other Bush superiors said in interviews four years ago that they do not believe Bush ever returned to his Houston base from Alabama."
GEORGE W. BUSH: NOT ONE WITNESS HE SERVED LAST YEAR IN GUARD: "of the hundreds of men who served in George W. Bush's unit during the period in question, not one can recall seeing Bush."
Facing Questions, White House Releases Bush Military Data: "The records released today - some of them smudged and hard to read - showed that Mr. Bush was not paid for National Guard service from December 1972 to February or March 1973, a time in which Mr. Bush lost his active-flight status.
'Where was he in December of '72, February and March of '73?' a questioner persisted. 'Why didn't he fulfill the medical requirement to remain on active flight duty status in 1972?'"
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Bush: Lost in Credibility Gulch: "'It's not too much to ask that the president of the United States speak the clear truth about his policies and their implications. Mr. Bush would do himself and his country a favor by establishing a closer relationship with reality and a more intense commitment to the truth."
Blix doubts on Iraq intelligence: "Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said Britain and the US dramatised intelligence information to bolster the argument for the Iraq war.
He told the BBC those who drafted the UK's Iraqi arms dossier acted like salesmen trying to 'exaggerate the importance' of their wares. "
In Bush's Policies, Business Wins (washingtonpost.com): "For three years, President Bush has been willing to anger environmentalists, civil libertarians of the right and left, unions, trial lawyers and conservative advocates of free markets. But one group that almost always comes out a winner when Bush sets policy is the business community, from Fortune 500 corporations to small, family-run companies. "
Bush Defends Decision on Iraq, Service Record (washingtonpost.com): "President Bush acknowledged today that he was apparently wrong in stating on the eve of war with Iraq that there was "no doubt" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
... Reacting for the first time since the old controversy was revived by Democratic charges that he was 'AWOL' during Vietnam, Bush said he would 'absolutely' release records such as pay stubs that would, if found, indicate more precisely how often he reported for duty. "
Blair knew better than to go to war on the word of a spy: "It is absurd that SIS's '45 minute' claim should have travelled from Vauxhall to Downing Street and thence from the prime minister to the nation on the word of a single unchecked source - the very methodology that has cost Andrew Gilligan his career. Only at the interface between intelligence and government could such a nonsense as the 45-minute claim have happened without somebody crying foul."
How spies chose the intelligence that justified war: "What is now clear, critics in the intelligence community believe, is that the operation in the run-up to war became not a search for truth but an exercise in wish fulfilment, as Iraqi defectors pursuing personal and group agendas fed the spooks precisely the kind of intelligence they knew they were looking for. "
Yahoo! News - "War president" Bush keeps election year sights on bin Laden: "'I'm a war president' in an interview with NBC television.
'I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind. Again, I wish it wasn't true, but it is true. And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is. And I see dangers that exist, and it's important for us to deal with them.' "
He sees dangers that don't exist and declares war on them. (Eg. Saddam's threat to the US. When Saddam was a threat to Iraqi's, the US supported him and provided technology for creating WMD.)
Bush also sees dangers that do exist and declares them to be allies. (Eg. Pakistan, sponsor of the Taliban and nuclear weapons proliferator.) So what are we to make of his constant dissembling and deceptions?
That he can't be trusted. He needs a shrink, not four more years.
Children's Defense Fund: "For less than one-third the cost of making the tax cuts permanent we could provide health insurance to America's 9 million uninsured children, provide Head Start for every eligible child, and pay the salaries of 100,000 more teachers to reduce class size. Instead this year's budget further cuts children's access to child care, affordable housing, and underfunds education for disadvantaged children. For the sake of our children, we count on Congress to reject this ill-advised budget.'"
Saturday, February 07, 2004
News: "Robert David Steele, a former CIA operative, said: 'Yes, I think there was an intelligence failure, but I don't think there can be an intelligence failure without a preceding policy failure. In the absence of adequate intelligence we allowed political mendacity to fill a vacuum.'"
Co-Chair of Bush Panel Part of Far Right Network: "Brock depicts Silberman as a major, if discreet, figure in the right-wing network that harassed Bill and Hillary Clinton for various alleged scandals during the 1990s. Brock, who describes Silberman as his ''mentor'', has since admitted that many of his attacks on Democrats were based on little or no evidence. "
Cheney was Rocked to the Core: "What the albatross was to the ancient mariner, Cheney is fast becoming to George W Bush's re-election chances. "
10,000 civilian deaths in Bush and Blair's military adventure: : "More than 10,000 civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed so far in the Iraqi conflict, The Independent on Sunday has learnt, making the continuing conflict the most deadly war for non-combatants waged by the West since the Vietnam war more than 30 years ago."
Blair alerted three times over unsafe WMD Intelligence: "the intelligence services had already reported, before the war began, that Iraq's ballistic missiles had probably been dismantled, and that the presence of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq was making it difficult for Iraq to threaten anyone with weapons of mass destruction.
The document added: 'The JIC assessments produced in October and December 2002 and again in March 2003 reflected this point. In December 2002, the JIC specifically pointed out that Iraq's ability to use chemical and biological weapons (CBW) might be constrained by the difficulty of producing more whil. UN inspectors were present."
Friday, February 06, 2004
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq (washingtonpost.com): "In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday. "
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq (washingtonpost.com): "In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday. "
Secret Obsessions at the Top: "When a country's capital is in the grip of hard-line ideologues who demand a certain kind of intelligence, they'll get it. The result is an intelligence failure. And, more fundamentally, it's a political failure by the top leaders themselves.
So to me, the administration's recent effort to blame the intelligence community for the Iraq mess is as misleading as the drive to war itself. Nothing the C.I.A. did was as harmful as the way administration officials systematically misled Americans about the incomplete and often contradictory mountain of intelligence.
For example, in September 2002 the Defense Intelligence Agency issued a still-classified report saying 'there is no reliable information' on whether Iraq had chemical weapons. Yet in the same month Donald Rumsfeld was telling a House committee the opposite: 'We do know that the Iraqi regime currently has chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and we do know they are currently pursuing nuclear weapons.'"
Still Smoke and Mirrors: "Taking his cue from Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, in testimony before Congress on Wednesday, also stressed the need for additional time. And yesterday, in an unguarded moment, Rumsfeld gave the game away, when he disparaged David Kay's judgment on the status of the search for WMD:
'Kay said we're about 85 percent complete. Tenet said what I said: there's work yet to be done.
' Indeed, Tenet says what Rumsfeld and Cheney say. Tenet is the quintessential team player, an attribute antithetical to his statutory duty to tell the emperor when he had no clothes on. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, like Cheney a frequent visitor to CIA Headquarters, recently told the press "George Tenet is so grateful to the president [presumably for not firing him on Sept. 12, 2001] that he will do anything for him."
Are you surprised that intelligence has been politicized? "
Bush Names Iraq Panel (washingtonpost.com): "The panel, which will be co-chaired by Robb and Silberman, will have 'full access' to all necessary intelligence agencies, Bush said. "
But no access to those who used the intelligence to make the case for war!
The problem with the case for war is not that the intelligence was bad, it that it was misused by the chicken hawks. Looking only at the intelligence angencies, the panel will be looking at only one end of the problem.
Center for American Progress - In Their Own Words: Iraq's 'Imminent' Threat - Page: "the Administration's efforts to claim it never hyped the threat in the lead-up to war is belied by its statements.
'There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.'
President Bush, 10/7/02"
Iraq was 'the most dangerous threat of our time.'
President Bush, 7/2/03
'This is about imminent threat.'
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03
"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
• President Bush, 10/2/02
"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is."
• President Bush, 10/2/02
"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined."
• President Bush, 9/26/02
"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02"
Bush's Guard service: What the Record Shows: "A detailed Globe examination of the records in 2000 unearthed official reports by Bush's Guard commanders that they had not seen him for a year. There was also no evidence that Bush had done part of his Guard service in Alabama, as he has claimed. Bush's Guard appointment, made possible by family connections, was cut short when Bush was allowed to leave his Houston Guard unit eight months early to attend Harvard Business School."
Thursday, February 05, 2004
Scalia Was Cheney Hunt Trip Guest; Ethics Concern Grows: "Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney on a small government jet that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here last month to hunt ducks.
The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney's upcoming case before the Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the high court agreed to take up Cheney's bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force. "
Bush: Creating Islamic Republics?: "Republicans: You may think the results of the Democratic primaries indicate that Americans aren't interested in foreign policy. All they care about are domestic issues, like health care and taxes, and that's what the president should focus on. Maybe. But be careful. You could wake up in November and find that while Mr. Bush focused on the home front, his foreign policy created the 'Islamic Republic of Iraq' and the 'Islamic Republic of Palestine.'
... it's a real possibility, given the Bush team's failure so far to create a political process that can forge, empower and legitimize a moderate center in Iraq or in Palestine — a center that can counter the rising power of Hamas and Hezbollah among Palestinians and that of the Shiite and Sunni clergy in Iraq."
CIA Boss: Iraq Never an Imminent Threat: "In his first public defense of prewar intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet said Thursday that U.S. analysts had never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat, the main argument used by President Bush for going to war.
... In the months before the war, Bush and his top aides repeatedly stressed the urgency of stopping Saddam Hussein. In a Sept. 12 speech to the United Nations (news - web sites), he called Saddam's regime "a grave and gathering danger." The next day, he told reporters that Saddam was "a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible.""
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Chicken Hawks Coming Home to Roast?: "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strong-armed the CIA, sifted through raw, unconfirmed reports, and massaged the data until he got the story he wanted.
... According to the White House, the deficit, now $521 billion, will be cut roughly in half over the next five years. But the administration achieves this feat by excluding future costs of occupying and rebuilding Iraq, by claiming large savings from waste and fraud as yet to be identified, and by proposing general program cuts so unpopular that Congress is sure to reject them.
Even as Bush proposes making his 10-year tax cuts permanent, the budget projects only over the next five years. Deficits, of course, dramatically increase after year five. Even in the fifth year (FY 2009), the budget leaves out about $160 billion in costs that the administration favors and is expected to propose in future budgets, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Bush's Medicare cost estimate was off by hundreds of billions.
... Without the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq war, the deficits would be well under 2 percent of GDP, and entirely manageable.
... The Federal Reserve added insult to injury at its latest meeting by hinting at interest-rate increases later in this election year -- caused by rising deficits.
Even Bush's appalling Vietnam record -- pulling strings to get into a National Guard unit and then neglecting to show up much of the time -- is now fair game. "
Daddy's Boys: "let's keep in mind what we learned from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill the other week. In this administration's first National Security Council meetings in February 2001, the subject of al Qaeda wasn't even on the table, but the taking down of Saddam Hussein and war in Iraq was. From the beginning, the issue was never 'intelligence.'
... In the "intelligence community," significant figures questioned everything. Take, for instance, Greg Thielmann, before the war director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research who recently commented (Charles M. Sennott and Farah Stockman, 'Drawing their own picture', the Boston Globe):
"'[David A.] Kay says we all got it wrong. Well, that's not the case…The White House was not interested in information other than that which substantiated its case.' After 25 years in government service, Thielmann, 53, said he chose early retirement last fall, in part because of his frustration with the Bush administration. 'They took every piece of information, and all the way up the line, it was made less qualified and more alarming. That is why the American people were so misled about the nature of the Iraqi threat.'""
How Did We Get It So Wrong?: "The intelligence community's overestimation of Iraq's WMD capability is only part of the story of why we went to war last year. The other part involves how the Bush administration handled the intelligence. Throughout the spring and fall of 2002 and well into 2003 I received numerous complaints from friends and colleagues in the intelligence community, and from people in the policy community, about precisely that.
... The CIA, the state department, and the uniformed military services would present one version, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Office of the Vice President would present another. These views were too far apart to allow for compromise. As a result, the administration found it difficult, if not impossible, to make important decisions. And it made some that were fatally flawed, including many relating to postwar planning, when the OSP's view - that Saddam's regime simultaneously was very threatening and could easily be replaced by a new government - prevailed.
... we should recognize that the administration's rush to war was reckless even on the basis of what we thought we knew in March 2003. It appears even more reckless in light of what we know today. "
Op-Ed Columnist: Sex, Lies and Bush Tapes: "President Bush's budget policies have mortgaged America, yet instead of repairing the damage, he is intensifying the harm by trying to make his tax cuts permanent. And this week he presented a budget that is so dazzlingly deceitful it does not even attempt to include the bills for our presence in Iraq.
In the 2000 campaign, I covered Mr. Bush a bit, so this week I dug out tapes of his speeches. On those tapes, he claims that he will leave the great bulk of the surplus intact: 'My plan is to take a portion of the projected surplus, a little over $1 trillion of the $4 trillion surplus, and give it to the people who pay the bills.'
The reality is that under Mr. Bush, surpluses have completely vanished. Granted, he had help from a bad economy. But spending has increased more rapidly than under any president since Lyndon Johnson, and Mr. Bush refuses to pay for it. I've seen that story before � in Argentina.
Now the I.M.F. has warned that the U.S. budget and trade deficits are a threat to the global economy."
Bush's 'Preventive War' Doctrine Under Siege: "the failure to find weapons and the clouds over prewar intelligence are... feeding US allies' doubts on the rationale for war, and solidifying opposition to the administration's stated right to preemptive war.
... In a televised interview this week, former chief US weapons inspector David Kay said, "If you cannot rely on good, accurate intelligence that is credible to the American people and to others abroad, you certainly can't have a policy of preemption.""
Iraqi Insurgency Is as Lethal as Ever Since Hussein's Capture: "Nearly two months after the capture of Saddam Hussein, the casualty rate among U.S. soldiers and Iraqis in insurgent attacks has accelerated, and much of this nation's Sunni Muslim heartland remains a perilous zone of conflict � with bouts of violence also striking the Kurdish north and the Shiite south.
The most recent spate of bloodshed includes bombings last weekend in the northern cities of Irbil and Mosul as well as last month's suicide attack outside the main U.S. compound in Baghdad, blasts that claimed well over 100 lives.
Iraqi security forces, civilians and others deemed collaborators are now the major targets, and although attacks on U.S. troops have diminished in number, they remain lethal: 45 soldiers were killed in January, according to unofficial tallies, compared with 40 in December. "
Intelligence Chief's Bombshell: 'We Were Overruled on Dossier': "The intelligence official whose revelations stunned the Hutton inquiry into the death of government scientist David Kelly has suggested that not a single defense intelligence expert backed Tony Blair's most contentious claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction."
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Powell doubts Iraq invasion was right choice: "On Monday, three days after Mr Kay admitted there was no arsenal, Mr Bush told reporters it was too soon to comment. 'First of all, I want to know all the facts,' he said. 'What we don't know yet is what we thought and what the Iraqi survey group has found, and we want to look at that.' "
Bush Accused of Undermining Investigation: "one test of Mr Bush's sincerity would be the mandate granted to the commission to review data put forward by the offices of the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in addition to the information gathered by the intelligence services. Analysts will also closely scrutinize the make-up of the commission to see how many national security and non-proliferation experts are among its ranks, and whether the technical experts chosen are known Republicans.
Mr Cheney's reported involvement in the formation of the commission has already been the subject of concern. The commission is not expected to report until mid-2005 preventing any political fallout from the inquiry during this election year. "
U.S. Lawmakers Warn of Brewing Crisis Over Women's Rights in Iraq: "Iraqi women, who were among the most liberated in the Arab world under the country's legal system, are seeing their rights stripped away by the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), according to 44 U.S. lawmakers who are calling on President Bush to take urgent steps to address what they call a 'brewing women's rights crisis.' "
Questions About Bush's Guard Service: "Bush 'enjoyed preferential treatment' that allowed him to get a coveted Texas Air National Guard assignment during the Vietnam War.
But the issue of whether Bush actually shirked his military duties in 1972, when he transferred to an Alabama unit, is murkier. There do not appear to be any records of his service there."
Powell Says Lack of WMDs Changes War Decision (washingtonpost.com): "Powell replied: '... it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world.' He said the 'absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get.' "
Monday, February 02, 2004
Credibility of war on terror has been damaged: "The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has damaged the credibility of Britain and the US in their battle against international terrorism, a committee of MPs warned yesterday."
Ex-Arms Inspector Now in Center of a Political Maelstrom: "David A. Kay, the arms inspector who changed his mind about the existence of unconventional weapons in Iraq, is perplexed by all the fuss he has caused. The weapons are simply not there, he says; it is empirical.
... He described the intelligence breakdown as a systems failure and said only an independent investigation would be able to set things right. He warned of "the difficulties we have of closed orders in secret societies to reform themselves.""
Sunday, February 01, 2004
$100 Billion here, $125 Billion there, Bush's Shameless Deception and Carelessness Knows No Bounds: "Amy Goldstein reported in the Post yesterday that administration officials had a pretty good idea as the bill was being debated that they would deem the $400 billion figure unrealistic. So which would be worse -- that the president knew, or that he didn't? Either way, the bottom line is the same, namely that this is an administration that doesn't give a hoot about the bottom line. "
Let's face it. The guy is insane. And he's running the asylum.
Deficit Is $521 Billion In Bush Budget: "President Bush's $2.4 trillion budget for the fiscal year that begins in October will leave the government $521 billion in the red. But by trimming domestic spending and eliminating up to 65 federal programs, the White House expects to cut the deficit to $237 billion by 2009, White House officials said yesterday.
...congressional sources said they expect Bush to request deep cuts in energy, agricultural and environmental programs."
Cutting the deficit to $237 Billion by 2009 is meant to be an achievment? This guy had a surplus when he was appointed. He's running up a $2 Trillion deficit, and all the media say is that he'll reduce the deficit by half in 6 years? And we're meant to believe that?
This is completely outrageous. Most of that money is going into the pockets of people earning $1 Million a year, so he's borrowing about $1 Trillion that we'll have to pay back to give to the richest people on the planet. It's sheer robbery. It's the biggest heist in history.
Bush Retreats into a spider hole as his cover is blown: "Bush has lately found many of his rationales for the war in Iraq being challenged. Just as Kay has undermined the WMD rationale, a report published by the Army War College challenged the notion that the war in Iraq was part of the overall war on terrorism, while the group Human Rights Watch has disputed Bush's notion that the Iraq war was a humanitarian mission. Vice President Cheney has implicitly acknowledged that the Iraq war has not spurred peace in the Middle East, saying peace is not possible while Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) remains in power."
How Bush Hides His Mistakes on Iraq: "Most everybody in a position to know has agreed that a huge mistake has been made.
'We were almost all wrong,' David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, testified last week.
'In this case, there's no question that there was an intelligence failure, in some form or another,' Sen. Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record) (R-Miss.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said yesterday on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'Clearly this is not the immediate threat many assumed before the war,' is how Charles Duelfer, Kay's replacement, put it a few months ago when he noted 'the apparent absence of existing weapons stocks.'
Bush will announce this week that he is creating, by executive order, a bipartisan independent panel of at least nine members that will make a report in 2005, the White House confirmed yesterday. But those close to the president say he is doing so while continuing to avoid any explicit public acknowledgment that the intelligence was wrong. Why the reluctance to state what appears increasingly obvious as Kay spent the past 10 days dashing prospects that significant weapons stockpiles would be found in Iraq? Although the tactic may appear to be obtuse, there is a real strategy behind the Bush response -- and one that has been used before, to great effect.
Bush aides have learned through hard experience that admitting error only projects weakness and invites more abuse. Conversely, by postponing an acknowledgment -- possibly beyond Election Day -- the White House is generating a fog of uncertainty around Kay's stark findings, and potentially softening a harsh public judgment."
Bush to Seek Intelligence Failures Probe: "'We need to open this up in a very nonpartisan, outside commission, to see where we are,' Hagel said. The issue is not just shortcomings of U.S. intelligence, he said, but 'the credibility of who we are around the world and the trust of our government and our leaders.' "
Not only has the Bush administration revealed its callow motives, undermined our relations with the rest of the world and destabilized the international order--making US citizens less safe almost everywhere in the world--but get this: the UN inspections disarmed Hussein!
Yes, the same UN that the hardliners rubbished and ridiculed. The same UN which Bush said he was defending by invading Iraq. Wrong! Those softliner UN inspectors defanged Hussein years before Bush was appointed President. How are they going to spin that one, those hateful UN haters? UN sanctions, inspections disarmed Iraq: UN nuclear watchdog: "UN sanctions against Iraq and weapons inspections 'disarmed' former President Saddam Hussein's regime, the UN's chief nuclear weapons inspector said in a magazine interview.
'I think the sanctions worked, and more importantly, the inspections worked,' Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Newsweek. 'A combination of sanctions and inspections managed to disarm Iraq.' "
