Reflections on the "New American" Revolution
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
The White House has the last laugh: "The Clarke episode is symptomatic of a systematic abuse of power."
Americans burned and mutilated by Iraq mob: "Residents say the attacks on the US are not inspired by an attempt to reinstall Saddam, but to exact revenge for what is seen as [the occupation] heavy-handed approach in the town, and the perception that the Sunni Muslims who dominate the town have been excluded from the postwar political process.
Yesterday's incidents reflect a new rise in the level of violence throughout Iraq.
Gen Kimmitt described the attacks as no more than an 'uptick in localised engagements'. But he admitted that the average number of daily attacks on US and coalition troops has risen to around 28, after a lull of several months. "
Rice's contradictory claims:
* RICE CLAIM: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 5/16/02
* FACT: On August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." In July 2001, the Administration was also told that terrorists had explored using airplanes as missiles. [Source: NBC, 9/10/02; LA Times, 9/27/01]
* RICE CLAIM: In May 2002, Rice held a press conference to defend the Administration from new revelations that the President had been explicitly warned about an al Qaeda threat to airlines in August 2001. She "suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
* FACT: According to the CIA, the briefing "was not requested by President Bush." As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed, "the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
* RICE CLAIM: "In June and July when the threat spikes were so high…we were at battle stations." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'" Meanwhile, the Bush Administration decided to terminate "a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Newsweek, 3/21/04]
* RICE CLAIM: "The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: President Bush and Vice President Cheney's counterterrorism task force, which was created in May, never convened one single meeting. The President himself admitted that "I didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism before 9/11. [Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; Bob Woodward's "Bush at War"]
* RICE CLAIM: "Our [pre-9/11 NSPD] plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Gorelick: "There is nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion plan, a military plan." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: "Right." Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]
The Center for American Progress
Bush's Reversal on 9/11 Testimony: "[Bush's] decision to reverse course, dropping his claim of executive privilege preventing public, sworn testimony by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was part of a distinct pattern that has emerged inside this highly secretive White House.
... They wait until a gallon of blood has been shed,' one administration official said."
Enraged Mob in Falluja Kills 4 American Contractors: "The steadily deteriorating security situation in the Falluja area, west of Baghdad, has become so dangerous that no American soldiers or Iraqi security staff responded to the attack ... There are a number of police stations in Falluja and a base of more than 4,000 marines nearby. But even while the two vehicles burned, sending plumes of inky smoke over the closed shops of the city, there were no ambulances, no fire engines and no security.
Instead, Falluja's streets were thick with men and boys and chaos.
Boys with scarves over their faces hurled bricks into the burning vehicles. A group of men dragged one of the smoldering corpses into the street and ripped it apart. Someone then tied a chunk of flesh to a rock and tossed it over a telephone wire.
'Viva mujahadeen!' shouted Said Khalaf, a taxi driver. 'Long live the resistance!'
Nearby, a boy no older than 10 put his foot on the head of a body and said: 'Where is Bush? Let him come here and see this!'"
Guess we are really showing them who is "master", as the new Marine commander aims to do.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
This Isn't America: "This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics — even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power — to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics.
... The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush's terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources - including 'Bush at War,' by Bob Woodward.
And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA Today: 'In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures.' "
Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush: "no president can simply 'stretch, twist or distort' the facts of a case and then expect to avoid resulting consequences. Citing historical precedents, Dean shows how Lyndon Johnson's distortions regarding the truth about the war in Vietnam led to his own subsequent withdrawal for candidacy for re-election in 1968, and how Richard Nixon's attempted cover-up of the truth about Watergate forced his own resignation. "
Bush's Odd Way of "Supporting" the Troops: "The 2003 Bush tax cut for the rich, for example, failed to extend a child tax credit to nearly 200,000 military personnel.
... last August his Administration proposed to cut the combat pay bonus of $150 a month.
... In his 2005 budget, Bush proposes to raise veterans' health care costs--through increased drug co-payments and a new "enrollment fee"--thus driving an estimated 200,000 vets out of the system and discouraging another million from enrolling.
... Military families on food stamps? It's not an urban myth. About 25,000 families of servicemen and women are eligible, and this may be an underestimate, since the most recent Defense Department report on the financial condition of the armed forces--from 1999--found that 40 percent of lower-ranking soldiers face "substantial financial difficulties." Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, reports hearing from constituents that the Army now includes applications for food stamps in its orientation packet for new recruits. "
Monday, March 29, 2004
Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser: "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. "
The War on Clarke: "Clarke has told the uncomfortable truth in his book, and now finds himself the target of the full fury of angry Bush partisans, who insist that fighting terrorism was Bush's highest priority. The evidence shows otherwise. For starters, Clarke presented a memo to Condi Rice outlining the URGENT (this tag is on the document) threat presented by Al Qaeda in January 2001. While Dr. Rice insists she made terrorism a top priority, one of her first decisions in the early days of 2001 was to downgrade Clarke's position as the National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism. How is that making terrorism an elevated priority? It is not. Richard Clarke also requested in January 2001 that President Bush convene a meeting of principal Bush officials (e.g., the secretary of state, secretary of defense and the attorney general) but this meeting was postponed by Dr. Rice until Sept. 4, 2001. That seven-month gap represents time that, in retrospect, could have been used to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
The Clarke bashers also insist that that no more could have been done before 9/11 than what was done during the first eight months of the Bush presidency. Oh? If that was the case, then why did Bush direct the airlines to lock cockpit doors after 9/11? Why did the Bush administration decide to arm pilots, put more air marshals on planes and federalize the security force doing screening at airports? Why did the Bush administration order attacks on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan if, in the words of the Bush spinners, 'we did all that we could do prior to 9/11'? Why did Bush officials establish emergency financial task forces comprised of intelligence and law enforcement officials to hunt down the trails of terrorist financing if all had been done prior to 9/11? The uncomfortable facts show that Richard Clarke proposed many of these measures in the early days of the Bush presidency. Action was taken only in the aftermath of 9/11.
Here is the bottom line—Richard Clarke was right"
Rice Defends Refusal To Testify: "Rice said she has 'absolutely nothing to hide' and 'would really like' to testify but will not because of the constitutional principle."
..."Republican commissioner John F. Lehman, who has written extensively on separation-of-power issues, said that 'the White House is making a huge mistake' by blocking Rice's testimony and decried it as 'a legalistic approach.'
'The White House is being run by a kind of strict construction of interpretation of the powers of the president,' he said on ABC's 'This Week.' 'There are plenty of precedents that the White House could use if they wanted to do this.'"
What do they say? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Seems to be the case here. Sadly our "leaders" are little people entrusted with great power who have made an enormous blunder and are now grasping at straws to cover it up.
We need some great people to stand up beside Clarke and tell the truth. We deserve nothing less than a full account of what Bush did, what he knew and what he failed to do.
Then we can judge for ourselves. That should be how a democracy works, though clearly it's not Bush's policy. His idea of democracy is very traditional, practiced by mushroom farmers all over the world.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Questions: "The Family Steering Committee believes that President Bush should provide sworn public testimony to the full ten-member panel of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States"
I agree. Click on the link above to read the questions they have for Bush. Seems they are asking the real questions he should be answering, such as:
'U.S. Navy Captain Deborah Loewer, the Director of the White House Situation Room, informed you of the first airliner hitting Tower One of the World Trade Center before you entered the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. Please explain the reason why you decided to continue with the scheduled classroom visit, fifteen minutes after learning the first hijacked airliner had hit the World Trade Center.'
9-11 Widows respond to Rush Limbaugh Slanders: "President Bush and his administration have been staunchly opposed to any type of investigation into the murder of 3,000 innocent souls (not to mention the billions in property damage). This, to me, is unimaginable. Who wouldn't want to know how and why all our defensive postures failed so miserably on 9/11? Who wouldn't want to know that these flaws have been properly fixed? Who wants to have the same person/protocol in place today if it didn't work on 9/11? Who wants to be the victim's family member speaking up the next time tragedy strikes?"
Truth as a Weapon: "Clarke's argument that the Bush team's misguided adventurism in Iraq has actually spawned more terrorism and diverted resources has panicked the Bushies, who are running as heroic terror warriors. "
Bush's Brand New Enemy is the Truth: "One of the first official acts of the current Bush administration was to downgrade the office of national coordinator for counter terrorism on the National Security Council - a position held by Richard Clarke. Clarke had served in the Pentagon and State Department under presidents Reagan and Bush the elder, and was the first person to hold the counter terrorism job created by President Clinton. Under Clinton, he was elevated to cabinet rank, which gave him a seat at the principals' meeting, the highest decision-making group for national security.
By removing Clarke from the table, Bush put him in a box where he could speak only when spoken to. No longer would his memos go to the president; instead, they had to pass though a chain of command of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, who bounced each of them back.
... Bush protests now: "And had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11, we would have acted." But he had plenty of information. The former deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, the only member of the 9/11 commission to read the president's daily brief, revealed in the hearings that the documents "would set your hair on fire" and that the intelligence warnings of al-Qaida attacks "plateaued at a spike level for months" before September 11. Bush is fighting public release of these PDBs, which would show whether he had marked them up and demanded action.
The administration's furious response to Clarke only underscores his book. Rice is vague, forgetful and dissembling. Cheney is belligerent, certain and bluffing. In Clarke's account, as in the memoir of former secretary of the treasury Paul O'Neill, Bush is disengaged, incurious, manipulated by those in the circle around him; he adopts ill-conceived strategies that he has played little or no part in preparing. Bush is the Oz behind the curtain, but unlike the wizard, the special effects are performed by others. Especially on terrorism and September 11, his White House is at "battle stations" to prevent the curtain from being pulled open."
"Bush knew: "Weeks before September 11, the Central Intelligence Agency reported to the White House that Osama bin Laden's network was planning imminent attacks on U.S. soil which would be 'spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties.' They went on to warn that the 'attack will occur with little or no warning.'
Here's another piece that shows how he's dodging responsibility and lying to us:
"CLAIM: Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people.''
- President Bush, 3/25/04
FACT: On August 6, 2001, President Bush personally received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane.'
- Dateline NBC, 9/10/02
FACT: U.S. and Italian officials were warned in July 2001 that Islamic terrorists had considered 'crashing an airliner into the Genoa summit of industrialized nations.'
- LA Times, 9/27/01
FACT: A 1999 report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council 'warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.' The report specifically said, 'Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House.'
- CBS News, 5/17/02"
White House Whitewash: "Many 9/11 victims' family members believe the 'fix was in' from the very beginning and cite the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the commission's executive director as proof positive.
Zelikow was a Bush-appointee who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; he worked under Jim Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Sr; spent three years on the first President Bush's National Security Council and, as well as working with Condoleezza Rice, wrote two books with her as well."
A Poor Defense (washingtonpost.com): "Mr. Bush himself insouciantly declared that, had he known that terrorists were planning to fly airplanes into buildings, he would have done something to stop it -- a statement that suggested that he has not bothered to reflect on the serious questions the commission is examining. "
This is an important point. Bush is essentially not answering the important questions raised by 9/11. He's not reflecting. He's acting on a gut instinct, informed by what? By his advisors prior agenda to invade Iraq and create a new order in the Middle East, dominated by US military power. He's informed by his religious beliefs, so he sees himself attacking evil, and therefore doing the work of God. So why should he answer to the American people? He's answerable to a higher authority.
Luckily for the rest of us, we still have some powers to investigate the executive branch. And luckily for us, we still have honest people who will come out in public and tell the truth.
I am profoundly grateful to Richard Clarke for telling the truth. I admire his honest acknowledgement of failure. Clearly, when planes are deliberately crashed into the highest towers in NY and the Pentagon, there has been a massive failure. The Bush administration's denial of that has been a continuing insult to the American people. And it's attempt to discredit Clarke now by attacking him personally is a disgrace, pointing only to the weakness of their position.
Bush clearly doesn't take his responsibilities seriously. Check this story out: Iraqi WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke: "Over 500 Americans and literally countless Iraqis are dead because of a war that was supposedly fought to find weapons of mass destruction, and Bush is joking about it."
White House is desperate to muzzle Richard Clarke: "the first annual terrorism report issued by the Bush administration [in April 2001] made scant mention of al-Qa'ida. A senior State Department official told CNN at the time that the Clinton administration 'made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden'. "
Iraqi defector behind America's WMD claims exposed as 'out-and-out fabricator': "A detailed investigation in the Los Angeles Times revealed that the source claiming to have seen mobile bioweapons labs was the brother of one of the senior aides to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who recently boasted how the erroneous information provided by his group achieved his long-cherished goal of toppling Saddam.
The source, given the unintentionally appropriate code name Curveball, was an asset of German intelligence and was never directly interviewed by US officials. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency do not even know exactly who he is, the LA Times reported.
David Kay... described Mr Powell's use of Curveball's information before the UN as "disingenuous"."
Rice Rejects Calls for Public Testimony: "Sharpening his criticism, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke said President Clinton (news - web sites) was more aggressive than Bush in trying to confront al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s organization.
'He did something, and President Bush did nothing prior to September 11,' Clarke told NBC's 'Meet the Press.'
'I think they deserve a failing grade for what they did before' Sept. 11, Clarke said of the Bush administration. 'They never got around to doing anything.'
But Rice said the Bush administration regarded terrorism as 'an urgent problem.'
Clarke said a sweeping declassification of documents would prove that the Bush administration neglected the threat of terrorism in the eight months leading up to the attacks. "
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Op-Ed Contributor: Why Nobody Saw 9/11 Coming: "Ms. Rice, spelling out the foreign policy priorities of a Bush White House, argued that after years of drift under the Clinton administration, United States foreign policy had to concentrate on the 'real challenges' to American security. This included renewing 'strong and intimate relationships' with allies, and focusing on 'big powers, particularly Russia and China.' In Ms. Rice's view, the threat of non-state terrorism was a secondary problem in her to do list' it was under the category of 'rogue regimes,' to be tackled best by dealing 'decisively with the threat of hostile powers.'"
Clarke Book Reignites Debate Over Iraq Invasion (washingtonpost.com): "by invading Iraq . . . the president of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism"
Trust Clarke: He's Right about Bush: "Mr. Clarke's charges have stung the Bush administration not just because of the stature of the accuser, but because at their core, they say that more than two years after the worst terrorist attack in history, the President and his advisers still don't get what happened.
That is the true, and alarming, message of this week's debate. "
Trust Clarke: He's Right about Bush: "Take the charge that the Mr. Bush did not make fighting al-Qaeda a priority before Sept. 11. In late 2001, Mr. Bush told the journalist Bob Woodward that 'there was a significant difference in my attitude after Sept. 11. I was not on point.' Mr. Bush knew Osama bin Laden was a menace. 'But I didn't feel the sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling.'
Or take Mr. Clarke's charge that Mr. Bush immediately sought to link the attacks in New York and Washington to Iraq. According to the notes of national-security meetings that the White House gave Mr. Woodward so he could write his book, Bush at War, the President ended an early debate over how to respond to Sept. 11 by saying, 'I believe Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now.' At a later meeting, he linked Saddam Hussein to the attacks: 'He was probably behind this in the end.'
Those admissions highlight a broader, more troubling point that Mr. Clarke's accusations raise, which is that Mr. Bush does not understand the threat we confront."
Bush never accepts responsibility: "Bush and his aides always refuse to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong. As such, they are always pointing fingers of blame at others. September 11? Blame evil or Bill Clinton -- pretty much the same thing in the Bush administration's collective mind. False information about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction program gets into the State of the Union Address? Blame the CIA or someone, anyone, in Europe. Economic downturn? Blame Democrats in Congress for not backing bigger tax cuts for corporations and more-of-the-same trade policies. False figures on the cost of Medicare reform go to Congress? Blame, well, er, gee, gay marriage? "
U.S. Intends to Keep Force in Iraq: "Mr. Bremer and other top American officials say they believe Security Council Resolution 1511, which conferred the mandate for the American-led alliance, can be used to provide legal justification for the American military command to operate until Dec. 31, 2005. That is when a timetable agreed on by Iraqi leaders envisages the final transition to an elected Iraqi government.
The plan, the American officials say, will require the Security Council to review the resolution before it expires in October."
Insiders Offer Unflattering Accounts of Bush's Decision-Making Style: "Accounts from insiders in the Bush White House describe a tightly controlled, top-down organization that pushes a predetermined agenda, shuns dissenting views and discourages open debate.
Tell-all books from former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, as well as accounts from other administration insiders, shed light on President Bush's decision-making style. Critics say the flip side of the legendary discipline at the Bush White House is a near-complete disregard for alternative opinions that sometimes leads to trouble.
In Clarke's view, Bush's reliance on a small circle of aides blinded the president to threats from al-Qaida terrorists and the negative consequences of invading Iraq. O'Neill said the tightly held decision-making process foreclosed any meaningful discussion about the impact of the bigger federal deficits that resulted from Bush's tax cuts.
... 'George Bush tends to make decisions on the basis of hunch and intuition, and then pulls together groups that confirm his decisions,' said Paul C. Light, the director of the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research center. 'The only people who are invited to be on the team are people who agree with him.' "
Backroom Boy Who Had the President Running Scared: "One way and another, even by the brutal standards of this White House, the [GOP] wrecking operation has been unprecedented.
But the stakes could not be higher. Mr Clarke's central charge - that before 9/11 the administration was so obsessed by Iraq that it took its eye off the al-Qa'ida threat - trumps the most powerful single card in Bush's campaign for re-election."
Bush "expressed frustration" at continued terror warnings: "In May, according to private testimony from Ms Rice, Mr Bush expressed frustration as George Tenet, the CIA director, warned again of terrorist threats in his daily briefing.
By July, so nervous were intelligence specialists that two unidentified CIA officers dealing with al-Qa'ida contemplated resignation in order to go public with their fears. But, by the end of July, the 'chatter' had subsided. Wrongly, Mr Tenet concluded that any attacks had been postponed.
Mr Clarke was so upset his advice was not being followed that he prepared to ask for a new post. In June, a new presidential draft on ambitious covert action against al-Qa'ida was circulating. But nothing happened.
The next, and penultimate, key date is 6 August 2001. That day Mr Bush, on holiday at his Texas ranch, received his top-secret 'President's Daily Briefing', or PDB. The document contained the CIA's latest assessment of the terrorist threat, including renewed intelligence that hijacked aircraft might be used in an attack. Calls for its release have been resisted.
On 4 September � the day the new blueprint for action against al-Qa'ida was approved � Mr Clarke wrote to Ms Rice asking how she would feel if hundreds of Americans were killed in a terrorist attack. A week later, the Eastern seaboard was attacked. "
Fault Lines: Where Does the Buck Stop? Not Here: "ACCEPTING responsibility is an essential part of everyday life, something every parent and child, every boss and worker, every friend and colleague wrestle with, or know they should. But for a president it is quite rare, and at least in the view of some historians and government experts, getting rarer, as a national culture of shifting blame permeates American politics.
... "Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you." The words of apology were unmistakable, but the face was hard to place. It belonged to none of the recognizable leaders of the government - not President Bush or Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Powell or Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. Here was a middle-aged man with disappearing white hair and an American flag pinned in his left lapel: a former middle-level foreign policy official of three presidential administrations named Richard A. Clarke.
... The mea culpa appeared deeply meaningful to the bereaved families, who thronged around Mr. Clarke when he completed his testimony. But President Bush offered no similar statement, nor did Bill Clinton, for whom Mr. Clarke had also worked.
... Within hours after the World Trade Center towers crumbled, Bush and Clinton partisans began blaming each other for the failure to stop Al Qaeda, and have been doing so ever since in any venue they can find.
The record is actually surprisingly clear, that there was a series of moments stretching back from Sept. 11 across at least eight years when more aggressive actions might have produced a different outcome that crisp, blue morning. For example:
In 1997 a commission led by Vice President Al Gore recommended steps to tighten airline security, including tougher screening of passengers and stronger locks on cockpit doors. Civil libertarians and the airline industry resisted.
Osama bin Laden, while hardly a household name, was well known as a threat. (Indeed, this newspaper ran a front-page series about him just as the Bush administration was entering office.)
The World Trade Center was already clearly marked as a target, from the bombing in 1993, and the idea to use planes as missiles was known from a disrupted plot to bring down the Eiffel Tower.
So who is responsible for not putting all this together, for failing to avert the tragedy? The airline industry? The Central Intelligence Agency? Richard Clarke? Mr. Bush? Mr. Clinton?"
Bush is shameless. Admitting he did something wrong is the last thing he will do. Being exposed is the thing he is most afraid of. Hence the character assasination of Richard Clark.
Bush has been hiding behind the image of a tough guy leader. In reality he's been a reactionary bully who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.
Some of the blame for not preventing 9/11 must fall on his shoulders. He was repeatedly informed of an urgent threat, and repeatedly didn't respond.
He was informed that Al Qaida was responsible and wanted to attack Iraq when there was no connection. He invaded Afghanistan but didn't defeat the Taliban or Al Qaida, and then withdrew much of effort to invade Iraq. Now Al Qaida is virtually unrestrained in their ability to cause massive terrorist attacks. And the Taliban is reasserting control in Afghanistan. Iraq is a lawless playground for terrorists to attack our troops and civilian contractors. Saddam has gone, but Bush has achieved the inconceivable: Iraqi's wish for the 'security' that they had when saddam was in power.
Bush wants to be judged on his record. But what a record of contemptible failures! Ignored the threat of Al Qaida, made Saddam look like a better leader than him, abandoned the Israeli / Palistinian peace process, ran up the greatest deficits in history, cut taxes and went to war saying it would be virtually self financing, destroyed our clean air protections, failed to defend basic infrastructure against terror at home. And that is just the beginning.
Bush, if you ran on your real record, you would be put in jail.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction: spoof :): "These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed"
Leaders of G.O.P. Try to Discredit a Critic of Bush, Powell Backs Clarke: "Republican Congressional leaders said Friday that they would seek to declassify past Congressional testimony from Richard A. Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, in an effort to demonstrate that the former aide had lied this week about Mr. Bush's record.
... Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. In a television interview, Mr. Powell said that Mr. Clarke had "served his nation very, very well" and was "an expert in these matters," referring to counterterrorism."
Thursday, March 25, 2004
On 9/11 Panel, Bob Kerrey Seconds the Emotion (washingtonpost.com): "Citing Rumsfeld's testimony and Rice's recent news interviews about a Bush plan to fight al Qaeda before Sept. 11, Kerrey says, 'I was briefed this morning on that plan, and I would say fortunately for the administration it's classified because there's almost nothing in it. . . . I mean, it's not, in my judgment, what it was sold to be, and I just -- I have to say that for the record. I would love to get Dr. Rice in front of this commission in the public to have her answer a series of questions about that.' "
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
'A tragic lapse into a blame game': "'President George Bush failed the country in its hour of greatest need, according to his administration's top anti-terrorism adviser during the crisis. Richard Clarke ... has levelled a powerful charge that must be answered with something more than the usual White House smears ...
'[Mr Clarke's report on 9/11 was] based on all available intelligence evidence and cleared by both the CIA and the FBI, [and] showed no Iraq connection to 9/11. However, Mr Clarke said, 'We sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the national security adviser or deputy. It got bounced and sent back, saying, 'Wrong answer ... Do it again.'' If what Mr Clarke says is true, the American people would be wise to bounce this president right out of office come November.' "
Rumsfeld Counters 9/11 Panel Findings: "President Bush said Monday that he would have acted before Sept. 11 'had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on Sept. 11.''
Neither the testimony by Rumsfeld nor the protestations by Bush answer the criticism that the Bush administration ignored bin Laden and the threat of the al-Qaida terror network. focusing instead on Iraq and Saddam Hussein.
Republican Poll: On their home page, GOP.com, they ask: "Do you support a jobs and growth plan that gives taxpayers an average $1083 more a year? "
Well, how many people are going to say no to that? Only 25.2%, after I voted no. 71.2% said yes. And so would I, if I didn't know that the word "average" hides the incredible bias in those tax cuts towards the extremely wealthy. And that Bush's tax cuts aren't creating any jobs. All in all, a very unworthy measure of public support.
The Book on Richard Clarke: "Clarke was viewed as a hawk and 'true believer' by many within the Clinton administration, and Clarke himself says he is an independent who is registered as a Republican.
You can't accuse him of being passive or too liberal on foreign policy," said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA (news - web sites) official who worked with Clarke in the Reagan years."
Monday, March 22, 2004
White House Counters Ex-Aide (washingtonpost.com): "a Republican official said the campaign was bracing for a tidal wave of negative publicity from the Clarke book. The campaign's defense strategy was that although Clarke could not be roundly refuted on the facts, enough doubt about the issue could be raised by portraying him as reckless and partisan. "
9/11 hijackers could have been stopped, says ex-aide: "Bush's failure to put his administration on 'battle stations' in anticipation of an attack meant vital clues were missed. He compared his actions with those of former US president Bill Clinton in similar circumstances in late 1999.
'In December 99 we get similar kinds of evidence that al-Qaida was planning a similar kind of attack. President Clinton asks the national security adviser to hold daily meetings with the attorney-general, the CIA, FBI,' Mr Clarke said.
'They go back to their departments from the White House and shake the departments out to the field offices to find out everything they can find. It becomes the number one priority of those agencies. When the head of the FBI and CIA have to go to the White House every day, things happen and by the way, we prevented the attack [an al-Qaida millennium bomb plot aimed at Los Angeles airport].
'Contrast that with June, July, August 2001, when the president is being briefed virtually every day in his morning intelligence briefing that something is about to happen, and he never chairs a meeting and he never asks Condi Rice to chair a meeting about what we're doing about stopping the attacks. She didn't hold one meeting during all those three months.
'Now, it turns out that buried in the FBI and CIA there was information about two of these al-Qaida terrorists who turned out to be hijackers [Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi],' he said. 'The leadership of the FBI didn't know that, but if the leadership had to report on a daily basis ... to the White House, he would have shaken the trees and he would have found out those two guys were there. We would have put their pictures on the front page of every newspaper and we probably would have caught them."
White House Counters Clarke Criticism (washingtonpost.com): "Clarke said that after debating for a week after Sept. 11 whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan, the administration decided that 'they had to do Afghanistan first' because it was obvious that al Qaeda, which was based in Afghanistan, was behind the attacks.
This is outrageous. I had heard that they wanted to use 9/11 to attack Iraq, but the thought of them debating whether or not to attack the people who actually attacked us, or Saddam Hussein is criminal. How could they be so calculating, when people were still in shock in NY and all around the country. Read on for more: But he said the response 'was slow and small' and the Bush administration did not go all out to send troops into Afghanistan and eliminate al Qaeda and bin Laden because it was holding back a larger effort for Iraq.
'We should have put U.S. special forces in immediately, not many weeks later,' Clark told ABC. 'U.S. special forces didn't get into the area where bin Laden was for two months, and we tried to have the Afghans do it. You know, basically the president botched the response to 9/11. He should have gone right after Afghanistan, right after bin Laden. And then he made the whole war on terrorism so much worse by invading Iraq.'
Clarke added: 'U.S. soldiers went to their deaths in Iraq thinking that they were avenging 9/11, when Iraq had nothing to do with it. . . . They died for the president's own agenda, which had nothing to do with the war on terrorism. And in fact, by going into Iraq, the president has made the war on terrorism that much harder. He's diverted resources from protecting our vulnerabilities here at home, like our railroads. He's inflamed the Arab world and created a whole new generation of al Qaeda terrorists. "
Clarke: president botched the response to 9/11 (washingtonpost.com): "basically the president botched the response to 9/11. He should have gone right after Afghanistan, right after bin Laden. And then he made the whole war on terrorism so much worse by invading Iraq"
FBI Budget Squeezed After 9/11 (washingtonpost.com): "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. "
US HHS tries to block cheap Aids drugs: "US drug companies want the money promised for President George Bush's Aids plan to be spent on their products.
The American department of health and human sciences has now convened a conference in Botswana at the end of the month that will question the WHO's approval process for generic drugs, known as 'pre-qualification'. "
MSNBC - White House at war with ex-terrorism chief: "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11," Clarke said."
CBS News | Did Bush Press For Iraq-9/11 Link? | March 22, 2004�11:20:07: "After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.
'Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq,' Clarke said to Stahl. 'And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
'Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.
'I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection.'
Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
... 'The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.
"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'
"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."
Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'
"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."
The horror is true. I wrote about it. I analysed events and came to the conclusions that this is how Bush operates. But it's still incredible. I am stunned. Bush is as feckless as this.
Yahoo! News - Memoir Criticizes Bush 9/11 Response: "'What was unique about George Bush's reaction' was the additional choice to invade 'not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq.' In so doing, he estranged allies, enraged potential friends in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and produced 'more terrorists than we jail or shoot.'
'It was as if Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq,' ' Clarke writes."
Memoir Criticizes Bush 9/11 Response: "The president, he said, 'failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks.' The rapid shift of focus to Saddam Hussein, Clarke writes, 'launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide.'
Among the motives for the war, Clarke argues, were the politics of the 2002 midterm election. 'The crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to 'run on the war,' ' Clarke writes. "
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Carter blasts Bush on Iraq 'lies': "There was no reason for us to become involved in Iraq recently. That was a war based on lies and misinterpretations from London and from Washington, claiming falsely that Saddam Hussein was responsible for [the] 9/11 attacks, claiming falsely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And I think that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair probably knew that many of the allegations were based on uncertain intelligence ... a decision was made to go to war [then people said] 'Let's find a reason to do so'.'
Before the war Mr Carter made clear his opposition to a unilateral attack and said the US did not have the authority to create a 'Pax Americana'. During his Nobel prize acceptance speech in December 2002 he warned of the danger of 'uncontrollable violence' if countries sought to resolve problems without United Nations input."
Why force will never bring peace: "'The days when humanity can hope to save itself from force with force are over. None of the structures of violence - not the balance of power, not the balance of terror, not empire - can any longer rescue the world from the use of violence, now grown apocalyptic. Force can only lead to more force, not peace"
Bush's Distortions Misled Congress in Its War Vote: "A year ago, the United States went to war in Iraq because President Bush and his administration convinced Congress and the country that Saddam Hussein was an urgent threat that required immediate military action. The nation has paid a high price for that decision ever since.
The case for war was based on two key claims: that Hussein was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, and that he had close ties to the Al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the atrocities of Sept. 11. Both claims proved to be demonstrably false. "
Iraq attack: any excuse will do: "�A former senior White House aide claimed yesterday that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld almost immediately urged George W. Bush to consider bombing Iraq after the 11 September terrorist attacks.
Richard A. Clarke, the counter-terrorism co-ordinator at the time, recounts in a forthcoming book details of a meeting the day after the attacks when officials considered the American response. Even then, he said, they were certain that al-Qaeda was to blame and there was no hint of Iraqi involvement.
'Rumsfeld was saying we needed to bomb Iraq,' Clarke said. 'We all said, 'No, no, al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan.'' "
Iraq: Blair and Bush seek new UN backing: "'We will have to cover the continuing multinational force and endorse that as being the clear wish of the Iraq people. And we'll need to look forward to what is going to be this enhanced UN role post 30 June.' "
The irony of going to the UN security council and getting a "mandate" that expresses the "the clear wish of the Iraq people" says a lot about the cynicism of Bush and Blair. They are trying to use the UN as cover for continued occupation--it's their last resort for legitimacy. And so they undermine it further.
Domestic terrorists: "They seemed normal but plotted to kill thousands": "Critics say the case shows that the authorities, obsessed with Islamic terrorists, have ignored the deadly assortment of domestic extremists. America's right-wing groups, though diminished in numbers since 1995, have become bent on acquiring weapons capable of mass slaughter.
'The radical right is going to seek ever more deadly and extreme forms of weapons,' said Daniel Levitas, author of The Terrorist Next Door. Levitas estimates that far-right groups have about 25,000 members, with 10 times as many sympathisers. The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), which monitors hate groups, has identified 708 of them. Since Oklahoma City, more than 30 plots by US terrorists have been uncovered, including attacks on oil refineries, politicians and army bases.
Just last month, a letter laced with ricin, a lethal nerve toxin, was sent to the Senate. One had been sent to the White House last November. Both are similar to one found in South Carolina earlier still, signed by someone called Fallen Angel. And the anthrax attacks of two years ago have still not been solved: the perpetrator is thought to be an American."
C02 Hits Record Levels, Researchers Find: "Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano.
... Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases.
The climatologists forecast continued temperature rises that will disrupt the climate, cause seas to rise and lead to other unpredictable consequences
... The 1997 Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) would oblige ratifying countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions according to set schedules, to minimize potential global warming. The pact has not taken effect, however.
The United States, the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, signed the agreement but did not ratify it, and the Bush administration has since withdrawn U.S. support"
What exactly does al-Qaeda want?: "we should be asking: 'Why do they feel that they have to act in the way that they do?' "
He's asking about Al-Qaeda, but maybe we should be asking this about Bush and his crowd. Why do they think it's ok to act the way they do? And why are they so shameless about the way they ride over everyone else? Lies don't matter. All that matters is being "strong" and cutting taxes for the rich.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Limits Urged on Eating Tuna: "University of Arizona toxicology professor Vas Aposhian resigned from the [FDA advisory] panel, saying the advisory did not reflect the experts' view that children and childbearing women should not eat albacore tuna, and should eat less light tuna than the advisory recommends. "
What is it about this administration that they are willing to lie about things that will kill you? They did it in NY after 9/11, when they said the air was safe. They did it by gutting clean air regulations on polluting power stations. And even something as simple as food with mercury in it... they just can't give the truth. They don't care about the American people... they are expendable if profits are at stake. But they pretend to get angry when terrorists kill them. I dont' expect others would put it like this, but what conclusion do you draw from the fact that the Bush crowd would deliberately do things that WILL kill thousands of americans every year, such as allowing more air pollution?
What do you make of the fact that they have done nothing to stop gun violence in the US, when that kills more than 20,000 Americans a year? More children die from gun violence in the US, EVERY YEAR than died in 9/11. But when 9/11 happened, they invade Iraq. (Which had nothing to do with 9/11, or terror threats to the US.)
I think everyone agrees that Bush mis-speaks. Hardly a speech goes by that doesn't need to be spun by his staff afterwards. Most people on the planet think he's a bloody liar. But let's not judge him by his words. Let's judge him by his actions.
He spent more than $150 Billion so far in Iraq. He spent $0 more on stopping gun violence in the US. His attorney general refused to allow 9/11 investigators to use gun purchase records in their investigation.
Don't try to tell me that Bush cares about Americans. No. He hates foreigners. And he loves profits. That's the truth. He loves death. But doesn't want any foreigners to kill us. Thanks Papa. You make me feel so safe. I know that if a foreigner kills me, you will declare war. So long as it's a country that you hate. (If its a nuclear proliferator that you like, such as Pakistan, you'll sell it F-22's and helicopter gunships instead. I guess I'll have to take my chances.) But when it comes to me dying from air pollution, or a gun that was legally purchased in the US. Well, you'll pass legislation proteccting the utilities and gun makers from responsibility or accountability.
Bush, I dont' hate you. But I am really angry about your abuses. You are unconscious and would deny everything i have said. You don't deserve to be in power, because you won't be held accountable for your actions. Go in peace. But go. Now, if possible. But by November 9, for sure.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Clinton Aides Plan to Tell Panel of Warning Bush Team on Qaeda: "Ms. Rice has refused a request to testify at the hearings next week"
McCain Defends Kerry's Record on National Security (washingtonpost.com): "Republican Sen. John McCain yesterday defended Sen. John F. Kerry's record on national security, undercutting the Bush-Cheney campaign's latest attacks on the Democratic presidential challenger and frustrating conservatives hoping for a unified front against the Massachusetts senator.
'I do not believe that he is, quote, 'weak on defense,' ' McCain (Ariz.) said on NBC's 'Today' show. "
Clinton Aides Plan to Tell Panel of Warning Bush Team on Qaeda: "Clarke said that the White House considered bombing Iraq in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, even when it became clear that Al Qaeda was responsible."
Clinton Aides Warned Bush Team on Qaeda: "Senior Clinton administration officials called to testify next week before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks say they are prepared to detail how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation - and how the new administration was slow to act. "
Budget's red ink colors turmoil in GOP: "the GOP is struggling with itself over how--and how much--to close the gap between federal revenues and spending.
Already the White House effort to make Bush's tax cuts permanent appears to be in jeopardy, at least for this year. Pressure is growing on the president to veto a popular transportation bill that could test the White House's resolve in getting spending under control.
'There is a real fight over the heart and soul of the Republican Party over the deficit,' said Stan Collender, a longtime budget analyst and head of the Washington office of Financial Dynamics, an international communications company.
A deficit that could exceed a record $500 billion this year is giving the GOP some pause and Democrats some live political ammunition. But few Republicans see the deficit issue as a major threat to Bush's re-election bid. "
Bush deal suspected: "As part of that deal, the administration's critics argue, General Musharraf would deliver the al-Qaida leadership in time for the US presidential elections in November. In return, Pakistan would avoid the sanctions that would normally be applied against 'rogue states' so deeply implicated in nuclear proliferation. "
The war was a huge mistake: the world is a less secure place: "the big winner has to be al-Qaida. Osama must still be laughing in his cave and his recruiting offices are full to overflowing and he has a great target (of the US and its allies in Iraq) - I mean, what more could the man want. He's got an opponent who's absolutely happy to play his game.
... the supposed link between Saddamites and al-Qaida types - which was one of the excuses for the war but for which there was no evidence - has actually come about as a consequence of the war."
... (The war in Iraq) has done and continues to do a lot of damage to transatlantic relations and that relationship is far and away the most important one in terms of the stability of international society. It wasn't worth the damage that has been done.
The other point is at the same time, nothing is being done in Israel and that remains an open and festering sore, undermining the credibility of the US as an interlocutor in the Middle East. "
The Americans are trapped: "The Americans are trapped: not able to withdraw and not able to go forward. We see that they control the heavens above Iraq but cannot control a single street in Falluja. America will not be able to withdraw to their bases, because the minute they leave the streets the Iraqi resistance will take over. The puppet security forces are no match for the resistance in terms of weaponry or morale.
So the US can't withdraw and their determination not to allow elections - because the result would not be of their liking - makes a mockery of the whole thing. In the end, the state is an armed body of men, but the state in Iraq will have to be guarded for the foreseeable future - like Karzai in Kabul - by the occupying army. And an occupying army that has to guard its puppets 24 hours a day can hardly credibly claim that it has given power away."
US occupation plans: "the US is planning to construct what will be the world's largest embassy in Iraq, with maybe 3,000 people. The military plans to maintain permanent bases and a substantial US military presence as long as they want it. "
Scalia Refusing to Take Himself Off Cheney Case: "Justice Scalia said it was not improper that he hunted ducks in Louisiana with Mr. Cheney in January, just three weeks after the court agreed to consider the case.
Justice Scalia not only justified his participation in the case, he also disclosed new details of the trip. 'I never hunted in the same blind with the vice president,' he wrote.
He also recounted other cases in which presidents and justices socialized without concerns about appearance. Citing historical accounts, he wrote of a time when Justice Harlan F. Stone 'tossed around a medicine ball with members of the Hoover administration mornings outside the White House,' and when Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson 'played poker with President Truman.' And who could forget those days when Justice John Marshall Harlan and his wife sang hymns at the White House with President Rutherford B. Hayes or when Justice Byron R. White skied in Colorado with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy? "
This is pathetic. Did any of these justices hear cases which allege impropriety on the part of the person that they were taking a trip/skiing/playing poker with? That's the issue here. Scalia is going to hear the case of a man who is accused of misusing executive privilege, to hide the improper influence of energy companies.
He should be removed from his position, because he clearly cannot see the public interest.
French Official: War Made World Dangerous: "Assertions by the administration of President Bush that ousting Saddam would make the world a safer place proved not to be true, de Villepin said.
'Terrorism didn't exist in Iraq before,' de Villepin said. 'Today, it is one of the world's principal sources of world terrorism.' "
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Off the Mark on Cost of War, Reception by Iraqis (washingtonpost.com): "Wolfowitz, in February 2003, dismissed reports that Pentagon budget specialists had put the cost of reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion during the first year -- in retrospect, relatively accurate forecasts. In testimony to Congress on March 27, 2003, Wolfowitz said Iraq 'can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.' In fact, the administration has already sought more than $150 billion for the Iraq effort.
In its predictions a year ago, the Bush administration similarly underestimated the resistance the United States would face in Iraq. 'I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators,' Vice President Cheney said in a March 16 interview.
... By yesterday, 574 American and 100 other coalition troops had died in Iraq. As many as 6,400 Iraqi soldiers are believed to have died in combat, and the insurgency continues to claim the lives of Iraqi civilians. "
Poland 'Misled' on Iraq, President Says (washingtonpost.com): "President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a key Washington ally, said Thursday he may withdraw troops early from Iraq and that Poland was 'misled' about the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. "
First Old Europe, now New Europe. When will Americans wake up: you've been suckered.
Accountability is the essence of democracy: "By voting for a new government, in other words, the Spaniards were enforcing the accountability that is the essence of democracy. But in the world according to Mr. Bush's supporters, anyone who demands accountability is on the side of the evildoers. According to Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, the Spanish people 'had a huge terrorist attack within their country and they chose to change their government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists.'
So there you have it. A country's ruling party leads the nation into a war fought on false pretenses, fails to protect the nation from terrorists and engages in a cover-up when a terrorist attack does occur. But its electoral defeat isn't democracy at work; it's a victory for the terrorists. "
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Spain Campaigned to Pin Blame on ETA: "Beginning immediately after the blasts, Aznar and other officials telephoned journalists, stressing ETA's responsibility and dismissing speculation that Islamic extremists might be involved. Spanish diplomats pushed a hastily drafted resolution blaming ETA through the U.N. Security Council. At an afternoon news conference, when a reporter suggested the possibility of an al Qaeda connection, the interior minister, Angel Acebes, angrily denounced it as 'a miserable attempt to disrupt information and confuse people.'
'There is no doubt that ETA is responsible,' Acebes said.
Within days, that assertion was in tatters, and with it the reputation and fortunes of the ruling party. Suspicion that the government manipulated information -- blaming ETA in order to divert any possible link between the bombings and Aznar's unpopular support for the war in Iraq -- helped fuel the upset victory of the Socialist Workers' Party in Sunday's elections. By then, Islamic extremists linked to al Qaeda had become the focus of the investigation."
237 specific misleading statements on Iraq by Bush and officials: "Today Rep. Waxman released a new report, 'Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq.' The report and accompanying searchable database provide a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five officials most reponsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. The report and database identify 237 specific misleading statements made by these officials in 125 separate public appearances.
The Iraq on the Record database and report are located at http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/"
Bush's Campaign Emphasizes Role of Leader in War: "A year after ordering the invasion of Iraq, President Bush is moving the war to the forefront of his re-election effort ... and a new television advertisement questioning Senator John Kerry's support of the troops."
So the guy who was AWOL sends troops into Iraq and casts himself as a great war president. Great. But he's more like a surgeon who cuts of the wrong leg.
Wrong war! Incompetent President. Misleads us to win support for his agenda. Dangerous man. Makes us afraid to get our support. Must lose.
Almudena Grandes: 'Making politics with horror and blood': "The government of Jose Mar�a Aznar, setting itself up as defender of the motherland in the name of a rancid ultra-nationalism bordering on the most genuinely Spanish fascist ideology, had so tightened the cords of political life that it had created an unbreathable atmosphere for anyone in disagreement with its slogans."
Sounds like the kind of atmosphere Bush wants to create in the US for anyone who disagrees with him.
"... while the bodies were still warm, and so many corpses unburied, it began to become clear that the Spanish government was making politics with horror and blood.
... faced with horror, only honesty is befitting, there is no room for fear. It is important that no one is mistaken. On Sunday, the Spanish people voted bravely, they voted with rage and they voted according to their conscience. Spain has not humiliated herself before the attacks of terrorists, she has risen up against a government which humiliated her every day by using terrorism as an electoral weapon. Spain has shown that she is a decent country. The Socialist party has won the elections, but never was a victory so desired been at the same time as sad as this one. "
Right wing commentators in the US decry the spanish vote as appeasement. Even the washington post leans in that direction. Shame. The same people who claim they invaded Iraq to "create democracy" are bitter about a real democratic election. The people of Spain are not soft on terror, and they are not going to be manipulated by their government either. A great day for democracy, though the circumstances couldn't be sadder.
God Bless Spain!
Spain accused of easing up on terror watch: "Spain cut the number of police units responsible for watching radical Islamists in the months before last week's Madrid bombings, reducing numbers by up to a half in some cities and sending them back to ordinary police work, it was claimed yesterday. "
Parallels with Bush: send troops to occupy a soveriegn nation, fail on homeland security intelligence. Ease up on hunting the terrrorists who vow to attack us, invade a soveriegn nation that was no threat to us.
I can only hope that the US votes in November do as the Spanish did and get rid of those who exploited the terrrorist attacks against us to pursue their own agenda.
Spanish firm on withdrawal from Iraq: "'The occupation is ... a fiasco,' said Mr Zapatero in a radio interview, adding that there have been more deaths since the end of the war than during last year's US-led invasion and that the United Nations was still not in control.
Others may urge Spain to keep its 1,300 peacekeeping troops in Iraq, but 'fighting terrorism with bombs ... with Tomahawk missiles, isn't the way to defeat terrorism,' he said. 'Terrorism is confronted by the state of law ... that's what I think Europe and the international community have to debate.'"
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
HHS Starts Probe Into Medicare Estimates (washingtonpost.com): "The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general is launching an inquiry into whether Bush administration officials committed any wrongdoing last year by withholding from Congress internal analyses showing that Medicare prescription drug legislation the White House supported would cost significantly more than lawmakers believed.
... The controversy escalated late last week when the Medicare program's longtime actuary, Richard S. Foster, said Scully had threatened to fire him in June if he answered lawmakers' requests for data about the fiscal implications of the Medicare bill. The administration did not disclose until January that its calculations suggested the law would cost $534 billion over the next decade, compared with the Congressional Budget Office's prediction of $395 billion. Foster said that as early as last spring, his analyses consistently had shown the bills would cost $500 billion to $600 billion. "
Mistrust of U.S. Abroad Rising Fast: "Mistrust of the United States, particularly U.S. President George W. Bush, has grown steadily in western Europe over the ten months, while anti-American sentiment in the Arab world remains pervasive, according to a major new public-opinion poll of nine countries, including the United States, by the four-year-old Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP) released here Tuesday.
Large majorities in each of the eight foreign nations surveyed believe Washington pays little or no attention to their country's interests when making its foreign policy decisions, according to the latest report sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
Majorities ranging from 50 percent (Britain and Russia) to 67 percent (Morocco) said they believed the impact of the Iraq war hurt, rather than helped, the global efforts to stop terrorism, while between 45 percent (Britain) and 78 percent of people (France) outside the U.S. said they had lost confidence in the trustworthiness of the U.S. as a result of the Iraq war.
Moreover, significant majorities in France (82 percent), Germany and Jordan (69 percent), Turkey (66 percent), and Russia and Pakistan (61 percent) said they believed that U.S. and British leaders deliberately lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before the war, as opposed to having been given bad intelligence. In Britain, 41 percent believed that they lied, while in the U.S. the percentage was 31 percent.
''The credibility of the United States is sinking and the numbers who believe that Bush and Blair lied to them is incredibly serious,'' noted Albright. "
USDA accused of altering the official report on Mad Cow animal's condition: "Phyllis K. Fong, the USDA inspector general, told Congress earlier this month that she is conducting an investigation into whether officials had falsified documents and that it could lead to criminal charges.
...The growing controversy in the background of yesterday's decision has focused on whether the infected animal detected in Washington state in December was a downer. Veneman said then that the cow definitely could not walk -- a statement that reassured the public that the animal was sick and had been identified by a well-functioning surveillance system.
But the hauler who picked up the cow said later that it had walked onto the trailer, and he and two workers at the slaughterhouse have said that it stood when it arrived. One of the employees, slaughterer David Louthan, has accused the USDA of altering the official report on the animal's condition. That accusation is being investigated as a possible criminal act, Fong said in a congressional hearing this month.
The question of whether the cow was a downer has also been at the heart of the debate over the surveillance system. USDA officials have said that testing a limited number of animals, most of them downers, is sufficient to tell whether the disease is present.
But in the Washington case, Tom Ellestad, the slaughterhouse owner, has said that many of the brain samples he supplied to the USDA were not from downers, and that the USDA knew that to be the case. In a long account of the entire BSE incident he wrote with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistle-blower group, Ellestad said his company had contracts with suppliers making clear that he would accept only animals that could walk onto the trailer that takes them to slaughter."
Yahoo! News - New Leader In Spain Calls Iraq 'Disaster': "'The war has been a disaster; the occupation continues to be a disaster,' Zapatero told a radio interviewer. At a news conference later, he called the Iraq war 'an error.' He added, 'It divided more than it united, there were no reasons for it, time has shown that the arguments for it lacked credibility, and the occupation has been poorly managed.'
He pledged to continue to combat international terrorism, but said the fight should be conducted with 'a grand alliance' of democracies and not through 'unilateral wars,' a clear reference to Iraq."
News: "Two hours before the polls closed in Madrid, Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national security adviser, was on network television proclaiming her belief that 'the Spanish people understand that they've had strong and good leadership in Jose Maria Aznar and his government'. "
Wrong again, Condi. It's becoming a pattern,,, what ever she says is wrong, misleading or displays incompetence. Now she's trying to interfere in other countries' elections, with the arrogant idea that she knows what "the Spanish people understand". God, what did we do to deserve this crowd in power in Washington?
Bush: Weak on Terror: "The truth is that Mr. Bush, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
This reluctance dates back to Mr. Bush's first months in office. Why, after all, has his inner circle tried so hard to prevent a serious investigation of what happened on 9/11? There has been much speculation about whether officials ignored specific intelligence warnings, but what we know for sure is that the administration disregarded urgent pleas by departing Clinton officials to focus on the threat from Al Qaeda.
After 9/11, terrorism could no longer be ignored, and the military conducted a successful campaign against Al Qaeda's Taliban hosts. But the failure to commit sufficient U.S. forces allowed Osama bin Laden to escape. After that, the administration appeared to lose interest in Al Qaeda; by the summer of 2002, bin Laden's name had disappeared from Mr. Bush's speeches. It was all Saddam, all the time.
This wasn't just a rhetorical switch; crucial resources were pulled off the hunt for Al Qaeda, which had attacked America, to prepare for the overthrow of Saddam, who hadn't. If you want confirmation that this seriously impeded the fight against terror, just look at reports about the all-out effort to capture Osama that started, finally, just a few days ago. Why didn't this happen last year, or the year before? According to The New York Times, last year many of the needed forces were tied up in Iraq.
It's now clear that by shifting his focus to Iraq, Mr. Bush did Al Qaeda a huge favor. The terrorists and their Taliban allies were given time to regroup; the resurgent Taliban once again control almost a third of Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda has regaine"
Out with the old: "The retired travel agency owner has no party allegiances, but she is mad as hell at the president too: 'I hate him. What is this war really for? We should be going after the terrorists, not letting our poor guys die in Iraq. These bombings in Spain have everyone shivering in their boots in Europe now. He has no ideas - none I can agree with.' "
Poll finds pessimism about U.S. direction: "60% said they were dissatisfied with 'the way things are going in the United States at this time.' Except for a survey two weeks before the invasion of Iraq a year ago, that is the most negative reading since 1996. "
Mercury Emissions Rule Geared to Benefit Industry, Staffers Say: "Political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) bypassed agency professional staff and a federal advisory panel last year to craft a rule on mercury emissions preferred by the industry and the White House, several longtime EPA officials say.
The EPA staffers say they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies called for under a standing executive order. At the same time, the proposal to regulate mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants was written using key language provided by utility lobbyists. "
Monday, March 15, 2004
Liars Lose -- The Lessons of Regime Change in Spain: "I can't vote for these thugs again who led us into a war nobody wanted. They lied about the weapons in Iraq, and they're lying again today. How dare they manipulate the dead?' "
Reining in Our Weaponry: Is U.S. Air Force Lost in Space?: "There is a high- powered faction within the administration that sees space as the next 'high frontier' to be dominated by the U.S. military, and a critical future enabler of the pre-emptive strike strategy articulated by the White House in the wake of Sept. 11.
... the service's gloves came off with the Feb. 17 release of the new U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan. The document details a stunning array of exotic weapons to be pursued over the next decade: from an air-launched missile designed to knock satellites out of low orbit, to ground- and space- based lasers for attacking both missiles and satellites, to "hypervelocity rod bundles" (nicknamed Rods from God) designed to burst from space into the atmosphere at high speeds and slam into deeply buried bunkers. Far from being aimed solely at the protection of U.S. space capabilities, such weapons are instead intended for offensive, first-strike missions."
Bush Fears the Truth will Set him Free: "the White House finds the specter of well-informed voters pretty frightening"
The West Was Warned. Now It Is Paying The Price Of The "War On Terror": "our own leaders are wilfully leading us into a period of appalling suffering because they will not address the causes of injustice in the Islamic world"
Newspaper owner interferes in news coverage: "two top editors of Florida's Jupiter Courier quit after charging that parent Scripps Co. ordered a tilt in political coverage"
Former supporter's 'radio jihad' against President Bush influences millions: "Declaring a 'radio jihad' against President Bush, syndicated morning man Howard Stern and his burgeoning crusade to drive Republicans from the White House are shaping up as a colossal media headache for the GOP, and one they never saw coming.
'The pioneering shock jock, 'the man who launched the raunch,' as the Los Angeles Times once put it, has emerged almost overnight as the most influential Bush critic in all of American broadcasting, as he rails against the president hour after hour, day after day to a weekly audience of 8 million listeners. Never before has a Republican president come under such withering attack from a radio talk-show host with the influence and national reach Stern has . . .
'Stern had strongly backed Bush's war on Iraq, but in the past two weeks, he has derided the president as a 'Jesus freak,' a 'maniac' and 'an arrogant bastard,' while ranting against 'the Christian right minority that has taken over the White House.' Specifically, Stern has assailed Bush's use of 9/11 images in his campaign ads, questioned his National Guard service, condemned his decision to curb stem cell research and labeled him an enemy of civil liberties, abortion rights and gay rights.
... 'Our research shows many, many people in the 30- to 40-year-old range who were Bush supporters are rethinking that position and turning away from Bush because of what Howard Stern has been saying,' says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine...
"Anecdotally, those daily phone calls from listeners -- mostly men -- who tell Stern they usually don't vote, but this year they're definitely going to vote against Bush (and it's usually against, Bush not for Sen. John Kerry) cannot be comforting to the Bush/Cheney '04 strategists.""
News Analysis: Blow to Bush: An Ally in Spain Is Rejected by Antiwar Voters: "Zapatero rode to victory by denouncing Mr. Bush's approach to the world, and that he pledged to bring home Spain's 1,300 troops in Iraq in July."
Political Memo: New York Offers a Lesson on Using 9/11: Tread Lightly: "'Use me if you want to get to the truth; do not use me to play your political games.'"
3 Brutalised by American captors at Guantanamo Bay: "Three Britons released from Guantanamo Bay last week claim they were interrogated by the British Secret Service, as well as brutalised by their American captors.
Rhuhel Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, and Shafiq Rasul, 26, all from Tipton, West Midlands, alleged that MI5 officers and Foreign Office officials took part in some of the 200 interrogations during their two-year detention at the US naval base in Cuba. They earlier claimed that they were beaten by US guards and ordered to answer questions at gunpoint. For three months they claimed they were held in solitary confinement when they had to survive on tiny portions of food, described by one of the men as 'nouvelle cuisine American-style'.
The boyhood friends, in interviews with two Sunday newspapers, said that they were visited at least six times by MI5 and Foreign Office staff. Mr Rasul said: 'Every time the Foreign Office [staff] came, we asked about what was going on, and whether we had solicitors. His reply was, 'I don't know, all I know is what's been on TV. Your case hasn't been on TV'.' But their detention had received massive publicity and their families' lawyers had been in regular contact with the Foreign Office.
Mr Rasul was visited in September by the Foreign Office and MI5. When Mr Rasul asked about his legal status, the Foreign Office official told him: 'You should ask the MI5 guy who's coming tomorrow.' He did, but the MI5 officer said: 'You should have asked Martin from the Foreign Office.'"
The damage done by Blair and Bush: "In his speech in Sedgefield on March 5, Tony Blair went as far as he has been yet to admitting the dubious legal nature of the Iraq war. Though he was at pains to point out that the invasion was justified within the traditional scope of international law, he added that 'it may well be that under international law as presently constituted, a regime can systematically brutalise and oppress its people and there is nothing anyone can do ... This may be the law, but should it be?' Blair seemed to be echoing Pentagon official Richard Perle's confession of last November: 'I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.'
... Blair has skilfully turned liberal criticism on its head, so that opposition to the war on legal grounds equates to support for the old, amoral international order. But there are many who fear that far from being the midwife of global justice, this attitude to international law could derail attempts at progressive reform and render Britain a weaker and less effective advocate of human rights overseas."
GI to test morality of war: "after five months in hiding, Mejia plans to surrender Monday in Boston on the eve of the war's first anniversary, and he aims to become the first Iraq war veteran to publicly challenge the morality and conduct of the conflict. "
Privacy Protecting Programs Killed: "Two cutting-edge computer projects designed to preserve the privacy of Americans were quietly killed while Congress was restricting Pentagon data-gathering research in a widely publicized effort to protect innocent citizens from futuristic anti-terrorism tools.
As a result, the government is quietly pressing ahead with research into high-powered computer data-mining technology without the two most advanced privacy protections developed to police those terror-fighting tools. "
Spanish PM-elect vows to pull troops out of Iraq, lashes Bush: "'The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster,' Zapatero, 43, told Cadena Ser radio Monday.
Spain's Socialists won 43 percent of the ballots to 38 percent for the PP, largely because of the near-total public opposition to the war, Zapatero said.
...
Many voters had expressed anger at [current Spanish PM] Aznar, who had previously announced he was retiring after the elections. He was jostled and booed at Sunday while some protesters shouted "Aznar: your war, our dead."
Zapatero, making good on an pre-election pledge, said that barring new developments in Iraq before June 30 -- the date the United States has promised to hand power over to an Iraqi provisional government -- Spain's 1,300 troops in Iraq "will return home". "
"Bush and Blair, both of whom are facing elections in coming months, need to engage in 'self-criticism,' Zapatero said.
'You can't bomb a people' over a perceived threat, Zapatero said in comments coming five days before the first anniversary of the March 20 start of the war.
'You can't organise a war on the basis of lies,' he said, alluding to Bush's and Blair's insistence the war was justified by their belief -- so far unfounded -- that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat.
'Wars such as that which has occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate,' he said. "
Sunday, March 14, 2004
G.I. Toll Is Rising as Insurgents Try Wilier Bombs and Tactics: "One American soldier was killed early Sunday when his convoy west of Baghdad was blasted by a roadside explosive. Three soldiers died Saturday when their patrol in southeast Baghdad also fell victim to a homemade bomb.
Those deaths, announced by a military spokesman on Sunday, followed an attack on Saturday with an improvised explosive device and small-arms fire in Tikrit that left two soldiers dead.
Explaining the number of deaths this weekend from improvised explosive devices, military officers in Iraq said the lethality and effectiveness of those weapons had intensified. "
Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising Medicare Law: "Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.
The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.
The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, 'In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting.'
But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government."
Bush Medicare Ads Misleading: GAO: "The General Accounting Office Wednesday said that the Bush Administration's $22 million taxpayer-funded campaign to sell its new prescription drug law to the public misrepresents benefits millions of people will receive.
GAO General Counsel Anthony Gamboa said President Bush's Medicare advertisements are flawed by omissions and other weaknesses, use a political tone, and can be considered an attempt to persuade the public to the administration's point of view."
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Wealthiest 1% of Americans hog 90% of all gains in income: "today, the gulf between rich and poor is the widest it has been in nearly 70 years. The percentage of national income going to the middle class has also shrunk. Since 1980, the average after-tax income of the wealthiest 1% rose by more than 200%, increasing by $567,000 in real dollars. In stark contrast, the average after tax income of middle-income households rose by only 15% during the same period, increasing by just $5,500. And the average after-tax income of the working poor rose by an even smaller percentage, just 9%, growing by a mere $1,100.
In fact, in recent years, 90% of all gains in personal income have gone to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. The number of Americans living in poverty is growing."
Op-Ed Columnist: 117 Deaths Each Day: "The most deadly are automobiles, which kill 117 Americans a day, or nearly 43,000 a year. Then comes flu, which (along with pneumonia, its associated disease) kills 36,000 people. Third is guns: 26,000 deaths. Fourth, food-borne illness: 5,000. And finally, terrorism, which in a typical year claims virtually no U.S. lives - with horrific exceptions like 2001. But antiterrorism efforts get most of the attention and the resources.
... we need a balance in confronting threats, and I don't think we've found it. Watch President Bush's campaign ads, and it's clear that he's overwhelmingly focused on the war on terrorism — in 2001, he called it "my primary focus." As he put it this year, "I'm a war president."
... But America is too complex to have national policy reduced to the single overarching priority of counterterrorism."
The war on terror is a form of terror: "The Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in Copenhagen was the first to provide systematic medical care for torture victims, and to research its effects. 'We thought that the aim of torture was to obtain information,' states the centre's Dr Inge Genefke. 'But no. The main aim of torture is to break down, to destroy the identity, the personality.'
After years of research, the centre concluded: 'The target group of government-sanctioned torture are leaders of ethnic minorities, human rights fighters, union members, politicians, student leaders, journalists and others.'
These were all selected because they were leading personalities, pursuing goals inimical to government policies. Once broken, these victims 'are full of anxiety, depressions ... their families suffer. Others are intimidated, afraid of being exposed to the same treatment, and do not dare to follow their more courageous exemplars.'
... The war on terror is a perfect state of psychosis within which the darkness can extend itself. It has no defined boundaries, no fixed territorial enemies: it takes what yesterday were deemed to be simple crimes, and extends them mentally to incriminate whole populations, social groups or religions.
There is only one antidote to this creeping sickness: the insistence upon universal human rights, within whose spirit torture was outlawed by the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture. Forbidden are any officially sanctioned acts "by which severe pain or suffering,whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person". "
