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| Bush Slips -- Among Republicans |
| 01.31.04 (6:34 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush Slips -- Among Republicans[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
The record-high turnout in the New Hampshire Democratic primary -- 219,787 Granite State voters took Democratic ballots Tuesday, shattering the previous record of 170,000 in 1992 -- is being read as a signal that voters in one New England state, and most likely elsewhere, are enthusiastic about the prospect of picking a challenger for George W. Bush. And the turnout in the Democratic primary is not even the best indicator of the anti-Bush fervor in New Hampshire, a state that in 2000 gave four critical electoral votes to the man who secured the presidency by a razor-thin Electoral College margin of 271-267.
Many New Hampshire primary participants decided to skip the formalities and simply vote against the president in Tuesday's Republican primary. Thousands of these Bush-bashing Republicans went so far as to write in the names of Democratic presidential contenders.
Under New Hampshire law, only Democrats and independents were permitted to participate in Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary. That meant that Republicans who wanted to register their opposition to Bush had to do so in their own party's primary. A remarkable number of them did just that.
One in seven Republican primary voters cast ballots for candidates other than Bush, holding the president to just 85 percent of the 62,927 ballots cast. In some parts of the state, such as southwest New Hampshire's Monadnock Region, a historic bastion of moderate Republicanism, Bush did even worse. In Swanzey, for instance, 37 percent of GOP primary voters rejected Bush. In nearby Surry, almost 29 percent of the people who took Republican ballots voted against the Republican president, while a number of other towns across the region saw anti-Bush votes of more than 20 percent in the GOP primary.
Few of the anti-Bush votes went to the 13 unknown Republicans whose names appeared on GOP ballots along with the president's. Instead, top Democratic contenders reaped write-in votes.
U.S. Senator John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, who won the Democratic primary, came in second to Bush in the Republican contest, winning 3,009 votes. Kerry name was written in on almost 5 percent of all GOP ballots. Who were these Republicans renegades for Kerry? People like 61-year-old retired teacher David Anderson. A Vietnam veteran, Anderson told New Hampshire's Concord Monitor newspaper that he wrote in Kerry's name because the senator, also a veteran, understands the folly of carrying on a failed war. "I feel a commander, the president of the United States, ought to be a veteran," explained Anderson, who says his top priority is getting U.S. troops out of Iraq
Kerry wasn't the only Democrat who appealed to Republicans. In third place on the Republican side of the ledger was former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who won 1,888 votes, more than 3 percent of the GOP total. Retired General Wesley Clark secured 1,467 Republican votes, while almost 2,000 additional Republican primary votes were cast for North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
In all, 8,279 primary voters wrote in the names of Democratic challengers to Bush on their Republican ballots.
That's a significant number. In the 2000 general election, Bush beat Democrat Al Gore in New Hampshire by just 7,212 votes. Had Gore won New Hampshire, he would have become president, regardless of how the disputed Florida recount was resolved.
The prospect that Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters in New Hampshire, and nationally, might be developing doubts about whether Bush should be reelected is the ultimate nightmare for the Bush political team. White House political czar Karl Rove begins his calculations with an assumption that Republicans will be united in their support of the president's reelection. But the president's deficit-heavy fiscal policies, his support for free-trade initiatives that have undermined the country's manufacturing sector, and growing doubts about this administration's military adventurism abroad appear to have irked not just Democrats and independents, but also a growing number of Republicans.
The Bush White House is taking this slippage seriously. U.S. Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, who beat Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire Republican primary, was dispatched to the Granite State before Tuesday's primary, in order to pump up the president's prospects, as were Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and New York Governor George Pataki. And Bush, himself, jetted into the state on Thursday, effectively acknowledging that state Republican Party chair Jane Millerick was right when she said, "What we have recognized is that New Hampshire is a swing state."
But can the president pull independent-minded Republicans, and Republican-minded independents, back to him? That task could prove to be tougher than the job of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
No one doubts that Democrats in New Hampshire, and elsewhere, are angry with the president. Indeed, if there was one message that has come through loud and clear during the first stages of the race for the Democratic nomination, it was that Democrats in the first-in-the-nation primary state -- like their peers in the first-in-the-nation caucus state of Iowa -- have proven to be less interested in ideological distinctions between Democratic contenders than they are in picking a candidate who will beat Bush.
Exit polls conducted on Tuesday in New Hampshire did not merely sample the opinions of Democrats. They also questioned independent voters, who make up almost 40 percent of the New Hampshire electorate. A Democratic primary exit poll conducted for Associated Press and various television networks found that nine in ten independents were worried about the direction of the U.S. economy. Eight in ten told the pollsters that some or all of the tax cuts pushed by the Bush administration should be canceled. Forty percent of the independents questioned in the poll said they were angry with Bush, while another 40 percent said they were simply dissatisfied with the president.
Bush aides are quick to dismiss the polling numbers.
But how will they dismiss the results of the New Hampshire Republican primary, where every seventh voter cast a ballot for anyone-but-Bush?
[i]John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times. Nichols is the author of two books: It's the Media, Stupid and Jews for Buchanan[/i].
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| CLAIM VS. FACT: Bush Rationale For Invasion Of Iraq ... |
| 01.31.04 (6:32 am) [edit] |
[b]CLAIM VS. FACT: Bush Rationale For Invasion Of Iraq ...[/b]
[b]CLAIM[/b]:
"We gave [Saddam] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore we decided to remove him from power."
- [i]George W. Bush, 7/14/03 [/i][Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... ]
[b]CLAIM[/b]:
“[Iraq] did not let us in.”
- [i]George W. Bush, 1/27/04[/i] [Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... ]
[b]CLAIM[/b]:
“If in fact [Saddam] didn't have them, why on earth didn't he let the U.N. inspectors in and avoid the war?”
- [i]Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts, 1/25/04[/i]
[b]FACT[/b]:
According to the U.S. State Department, U.N. weapons inspectors entered Iraq on November 27th, 2002. These inspectors only left when the invasion began, and were then barred from returning by the Bush Administration after the war.
- [i]State Department, 11/25/02; CBS News, 3/18/03; Sydney Morning Herald, 4/24/03[/i]
[b]Source[/b]:
-[i] The Center For American Progress[/i], http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| HOW BUSH DESTROYED OVER 500 AMERICAN LIVES AND STILL SMIRKS ... |
| 01.30.04 (9:17 pm) [edit] |
[b]Smiling Under the Names of the Dead
[i]Reflections on a Grinning and Blood-Soaked Presidency[/i][/b], http://www.zmag.org/content/s...
[b]Contrasting Images[/b]
[b]Someone really needs to wipe that stupid shit-eating grin off the president's face[/b]. Just look at him in the oval office, smiling in a photograph on page eight of Wednesday's New York Times. George W. Bush looks confident and relaxed in a posh pinstripe suit. He and his good friend Aleksander Kwasniewski, the president of Poland, are sharing a jocular moment between good old boys. Bush II is trading jokes and telling tales: "Alek my boy, if you've never landed on an aircraft carrier..." He looks happy and secure, comfortable and warm.
Good for him. The picture of the smiling presidents is curiously juxtaposed with two very different photographs on the same news page. The first contrasting image shows a dark plume of smoke in an area where three vehicles burned after an attack on a United States convoy in Khaldiya, Iraq. Three U.S. soldiers died in the assault, comprising half of Tuesday's U.S. body count. The second photo shows two grim Shiite women waiting to go through a security check before being permitted to enter a mosque in Baghdad. "As attacks against occupation forces and Iraqis continue," the photo caption reads, "security has tightened throughout the country."
Just two inches above Bush's smiling face is a little rectangular box containing the title "Names of the Dead." "The Department of Defense," the box tells us, "has identified 512 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the death of the following Americans yesterday: CHAPPEL, Keith, 22, Hemet, Calif; HENDRICKSON, Kenneth, 41, Bismarck, N.D.; ROSENBURG, Randy S., 23, Berlin, N.H.; SMETTE, Keith L., 25, Fargo, N.D.; STUGES, William R. Jr., 24, Spring Church, Pa."
The Times has been running these tragic little boxes on a regular basis since the beginning of the invasion or thereabouts. Note the youthful ages of all but one of Tuesday's latest U.S. troop fatalities.
More than 300 of these American solider deaths have occurred, it is worth remembering, after Bush II made his May 1st aircraft carrier landing to proclaim America's "mission accomplished" in what the Times called a "triumphant Reaganesque finale."
[b]Funerals versus Fundraisers: "While Young Peoples' Blood..."[/b]
Here's a short project for an energetic researcher. First, find out how many United States soldier funerals George W. Bush has attended since he ordered his invasion. Second, find out how many big money campaign fundraisers the president has attended since the occupation began. Third, make the relevant elementary comparisons and assess the meaning of the difference.
For background music and historical context, students can listen to Bob Dylan's haunting dirge-like folk rant "Masters of War," recorded 40 years prior to last year's invasion of Iraq and including the following among numerous relevant stanzas:
[i]You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
While the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansions
While young peoples' blood
Flows out of their bodies
And gets buried in the mud
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it bring you forgiveness?
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes it toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul[/i]
[b]A Public Relations Preference for Death Over injury[/b]
Five hundred and twelve is a small number compared to the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died because of the latest one-sided "Iraq war," pitting world history's most powerful military state against a weak and dying regime that posed only minimal risk to even its own neighbors. Five hundred and twelve is slight relative also to the many thousands of U.S. troops that have been injured in Iraq, "keeping the orthopedic surgeons busy" at Walter Reed Hospital since the invasion began. Flown back to the imperial homeland in C-17 transport planes, many among the U.S. wounded have lost one or more limbs after terrible encounters with rocket-propelled grenades, remote-controlled mines, and what the Pentagon calls "improvised explosive devices" (for a chilling account from last fall, see Vernon Loeb, "Iraq's Unspoken Toll: Wounded Troops," available online at drhttp://www.detnews.com/2003/ nation/0309/21/a01-276738 .htm).
The Pentagon does not release the numbers of injured except upon request, only the dead. For propagandistic public relations reasons, it prefers to emphasize noble soldier deaths and flag-draped coffins over the lifelong crippling that has become the fate of thousands of U.S. troops ordered into Iraq. These injured soldiers' fate is further endangered by the Bush administration's moves to cut veterans' benefits and undercut social-security and health-care safety nets for non-affluent Americans.
Still, five hundred and twelve is more than the number of Americans killed in Vietnam at the same time point in the U.S. invasion of that country. And for every single American solider killed, there's an incalculable toll for those left behind: spouses and children who have lost husbands, wives; mothers and fathers who have lost sons and daughters; brothers and sisters who have lost sisters and brothers; friends who have lost friends; and communities who have lost workers, citizens, and taxpayers.
"[b]A Working-Class Military Required to Fight and Die for an Affluent America[/b]"
Who are the dead American troops? Beyond the simple moral truism that they are individuals upon whom others counted and who deserved full lives of their own, it is worth noting that they come overwhelmingly from a specific, disadvantaged part of America's socioeconomic landscape. According to the Times, in a report released early in the Iraq invasion, "a survey of the American military's endlessly compiled and analyzed demographics paints a picture of a fighting force that is anything but a cross section of America." The military, the Times found, "mirrors Working-Class America," resembling "the make up of a two-year commuter or trade school" outside Birmingham or Biloxi far more than that of a ghetto or barrio or four-year university in Boston." It is, "in essence, a working-class military," one that is "require[d] to fight and die for an affluent America."
Even among the officer ranks, noted Northwestern University sociologist Charles C. Moskos, affluent Americans are essentially missing. "The officer corps today," Moskos told the Times, "does not represent nobility. These are not people who are going to be future congressmen or senators. The number of veterans in the Senate and the House," he added, "is dropping every year. It shows you that our upper class no longer serves."
There is no draft, to be sure, but the "volunteer" military is full of people who enter because they lack, by accident of birth, middle- and upper-class pathways to career economic security and more. A key motive is the opportunity to learn a skill and to receive college tuition assistance, something the military offers as a bribe to lure recruits. Just call it the socioeconomic draft, and remember that the United States is by far and away the most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society in the industrialized world.
"It's not fair," noted one young Army private quoted by the Times, "that some poor kids don't have much of a choice but to join if they want to be productive because they didn't go to a good school, or they had family problems that prevented them from doing well, so they join up and they're the ones that die for our country while the rich kids can avoid it." (David M. Halbfinger and Steven A. Holmes, "Military Mirrors Working-Class America," New York Times, March 30, 2003).
[b]Treetops and Grassroots: Ever-Shifting Lies for the Masses[/b]
And why exactly have they been dying and losing limbs in Iraq? At the invasion's outset, the primary reason loudly and clearly propounded by George the Second was to save America and the world from the "grave and growing threat" of attack by Saddam Hussein's monstrous Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's a tough claim these days. David Kay, who recently resigned as the Bush administration's chief weapons inspector, informed the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday that he had found no such weapons and that none will be discovered. As the Times editorial board acknowledged today, "Iraq destroyed its weapons and weapons programs long ago under the pressure of the same United Nations inspectors that Mr. Bush and his aides vilified in the months leading up to the war."
Colin Powell, sent to the United Nations with a doctored dossier of Iraqi doom one year ago, is reduced to shrugging that it is now "an open question" whether Iraq ever had any stockpiles of WMD (see "Powell Casts Doubt on Iraq WMD," BBC News, available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ middle_east/3426703.stm). Yet Kay's findings are pretty much what Powell himself told Egyptian dignitaries on an official state visit to Cairo in February 2001. Saddam "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction," Powell informed his hosts (see John Pilger's documentary film Breaking the Silence, linked at http://www.thememoryhole.org/...), never imagining his cringing Orwellian mission of February 2003.
Now that the terrible weapons have been found non-existent, consistent with the early claims of marginalized war opponents like former leading US weapons inspector Scott Ritter (denounced as a lunatic by White House flaks), the White House simply revises history to suit a new party line. It claims that it operated as best it could on the basis of inherently flawed but best available intelligence on the Iraqi threat. At the same it claims that the real aim behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq was different anyway. The real goal was to liberate the people of that country and to spread "democracy."
Most Iraqis are certainly happy to be rid of Saddam, a longtime U.S.-sponsored butcher whose bloody rein was likely extended by murderous U.S.-led economic sanctions after the first American invasion. But democracy is hardly a serious U.S. objective in Iraq, since US policymakers know quite well that the majority of Iraqis do not wish (imagine) to hand control of their material resources and society to America's money- and power-mad invaders. And while the White House was careful to include liberation and democracy as declared objectives early on (see my "Down The Memory Hole with Weapons of Mass Destruction," ZNet Magazine, April 11, 2003, available online at http://www.zmag.org/content/ showarticle.cfm? Section ID=15&ItemID=3444), those high-minded aims played a distinctly secondary role in the White House's pre-war propaganda campaign, which focused on the supposed imminent threat posed by Saddam's WMD and on false alleged links between Iraq and Islamic terrorism, including absurd implied connections between 9/11 and Saddam's Iraq.
If Bush Junior's overwrought panic-mongering over Saddam's alleged WMD were based on "bad intelligence," moreover, why did all of the intelligence "mistakes" point to invasion? Probably because, as the Times' editorial page further acknowledged today, Bush's neo-imperial aides "had been plotting a war against Iraq practically since Inauguration Day." And as Noam Chomsky pointed out more than thirty years ago in a book dissecting the delusional mindset of the people who planned the Vietnam War (For Reasons of State, 1970), "mere ignorance or foolishness on the part of U.S. policymakers " - i.e. "bad intelligence" - "would lead to random error, not to a regular and systematic distortion" that always points to the supposed necessity of murderous imperial-state aggression. To give one example, the invasion-selective pattern of "systematic distortion" followed by the White House last year mandated that former US Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson 4th be ignored when he informed the CIA after a careful investigation that there was no evidence to support Bush II's claim that Saddam had tried to purchase Nigerian uranium ore as part of an attempt to manufacture nuclear weapons
The real American foreign policy goals beneath the official pretexts given for invading Iraq were to secure and deepen U.S. control of globally strategic raw materials, expand preponderant US military power, and demonstrate America's ability to rule the world on the basis of that power. These core objectives can be readily gleaned from key policy documents, part of a "treetops" discourse wherein the privileged and powerful few speak candidly to one another about the world as they see it and how to increase and sustain the concentration of wealth and power at home and abroad. The "grassroots" discourse spun for the rest of us by these masters of war and policy and their obedient public relations flak agents is very different. It is loaded with fairly tales about America's special mission, duty and concern to "rescue and liberate" the people of the world from the forces of "tyranny" and "oppression," to use Bush II's language in an unusually ambitious neo-Wilsonian speech he gave last November to the misnamed and reactionary National Endowment for Democracy. The most relevant policy documents in this case are the White House's National Security Strategy, unveiled in September 2002 (available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc...) and the Project for a New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources For a New Century, issued in September 2000 (available online at www.newamericancentury.Rebuilding AmericasDefenses.pdf).
[b]Fortunate Son: War Amputations Aren't For Rich Kids[/b]
Of course, while lying is nearly a way of life for most politicians and statesmen, Bush II has taken it to new levels, inspiring a burgeoning literature dedicated to examining his multiple and many-sided deceptions. One among his many fabrications is especially relevant to this discussion: his claim to have served honorably and dutifully in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. David Corn rips this claim to shreds on pages 24 to 27 of his useful book The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (New York, NY: Crown, 2003), where we learn that Dubya used aristocratic family connections to attain a Guard slot meant to keep him out of an overseas bloodbath he preferred to leave to poorer and browner Americans. When he filled out his National Guard application, he checked a box specifically disowning any interest in "overseas duty." Given the opportunity to express his supposed rugged, West-Texas cowboy and capitalist sentiments against "Communist" enemies of American "freedom" in Southeast Asia, he chose the personal homeland security of a quasi-military sinecure. He recoiled in horror at the supposedly elitist anti-war movement but was pleased to egg America's predominantly poor and working-class soldiers on to murder and death from the sheltered sidelines of aristocratic advantage. To make matters worse, Bush went AWOL even from this prized Guard assignment.
Maybe this is part of why Bush II can't bring himself to attend funerals for his predominantly working-class soldiers, whose families lack the big money campaign clout of the pampered Fat Cats who attend his opulent and record-setting presidential fundraisers.
Thirty years later he told the Boston Globe that "I did the duty necessary...any allegations other than that simply are not true." He's been lying out this and just about everything else he can think of ever since.
[b]Decision[/b]
If the American people retain a basic, self-respecting capacity to feel and act upon popular outrage at aristocratic mendacity, then Bush II's expulsion from the corridors of high state power in 2004 should be a foregone conclusion. If the people no longer possess these critical qualities, essential for a democracy worthy of its name, then we are in dangerous historical waters indeed. "When regard for truth has broken down or even slightly weakened," St. Augustine once noted, "all things will remain doubtful."
[i]Paul Street writes and speaks against imperialism, racism, economic injustice and thought control. He can be reached at pstreet@cul-chicago.org[/i].
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| Americans Deserve to Know Why Bush LIED About WMDs!!! |
| 01.30.04 (1:09 pm) [edit] |
[b]Americans deserve to know[/b], http://desmoinesregister.com/...
[b]Why did the Bush administration push WMDs as a justification for war? Congress should find out.[/b], http://www.congress.org
Former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay's report that there is no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should get everyone's attention. Kay isn't part of a liberal think tank. He headed up the Central Intelligence Agency-Pentagon team searching for weapons in Iraq. He was one of President Bush's own. He's credible, and his findings are more reason for Congress to order an investigation into why the Bush administration pushed weapons of mass destruction as a justification for the war in Iraq if those weapons didn't exist.
And push the administration did.
Everyone remembers Bush's State of the Union address last year when he insisted Iraq had weapons. "Let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people, and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him," the president said. The world watched the next month as Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the United Nations Security Council with photographs and transcripts to prove the existence of weapons in Iraq. Americans rallied and other countries joined the fight because they were told Iraq had weapons. They were told Iraq was a threat.
Yet that apparently was not true.
Why did the administration say it was?
Kay blames the intelligence community. He said in a recent interview the CIA "owes the president (an explanation) rather than the president owing the American people." Other reports suggest the administration pressured the intelligence community to find weapons that weren't there.
The breakdown must be found.
Too much is at stake.
More than 500 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq. Thousands have been wounded. A heavy reliance on reservists to fight this war has taken them from their jobs and families for long periods. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent. It's difficult for Americans to question a war now that the United States is in so deep. It's easier, perhaps, to believe that removing Saddam was reason enough to go to war.
But it's the responsibility of Congress to find the truth. A full investigation by an independent commission should be launched to determine what the intelligence community knew, what it reported to the president and how the president interpreted and relayed that information to the American people.
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| U.S. HYPOCRISY: REAGAN/BUSH PAID BRIBES OF WMDs TO IRAQ FOR OIL!!! |
| 01.30.04 (1:05 pm) [edit] |
Which is worse? France ([i]it is unconfirmed rumor spread by Rush Limbaugh and unreputable sources[/i]) taking Oil from Iraq in exchange for peace because they knew that Iraq posed no threat to anyone and had no WMDs, [i][b]OR[/b][/i] the U.S.A. paying BRIBES comprising WMDs to Saddam Hussein in Iraq to massacre people in exchange for OIL???
Is anyone in the U.S.A. able to think beyond the jingoism and consider the hypocrisy of the U.S.A.'s position in Iraq??? Is this just another cover-up in the case of the POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK???
Methinks it is another diversionary tactic to place the blame for the lies and failure in Iraq by the Bush administration onto the French!!! Of course, today Dubya & Cheney simply invade hiterlian-style Iraq and RAPE them of their OIL!!!
[b]Hypocrisy Seen in U.S. Stand on Iraqi Arms Mideast: Officials say American intelligence aided Baghdadís use of chemical weapons against Iran in 1980s.[/b], http://www.codoh.com/newsdesk...
WASHINGTON - A decade before the current showdown over weapons of mass destruction, the United States turned a blind eye when Iraq used American intelligence for operations against Iran that made rampant use of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles, according to senior administration and former intelligence officials.
The attacks against civilian and military targets during the Iran-Iraq War included some of the most pervasive uses of chemical weapons anywhere since World War I.
The combination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and American intelligence eventually helped turn the tide of the eight-year war in Baghdad's favor. The collaboration reached a peak shortly after a secret U.S. estimate projected for the first time that Iran could win one of the century's bloodiest wars.
"We knew [the Iraqis] used chemicals in any major campaign," said a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with the American role. "Although we publicly opposed the use of chemical weapons anywhere in the world, we knew the intelligence we gave the Iraqis would be used to develop their own operational plans for chemical weapons."
Now, 10 years later, the United States is trying to rally world support for the use of military strikes to destroy the same kinds of Iraqi weaponsóon the grounds that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein should not be allowed to use them in the future.
As the U.S. struggles to assemble a new coalition to force Iraq to give up such weapons, Clinton administration officials acknowledge the apparent hypocrisy in U.S. policy. The United States, under President Reagan, "virtually encouraged" the use of chemical weapons a decade ago, noted a frustrated senior Clinton administration official.
But the shift also reflects changes in the political landscape, U.S. officials now argue. In the 1980s, "Saddam Hussein was the great white hope" holding back what was then viewed as a militant Islamic tide from Iran, the administration official said. "They built this guy up and let him do whatever it took to win. And that included the use of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles."
The climax of the relationship was the 1988 Iraqi counterattack at the Faw Peninsula, a swampy but strategic southern oil port captured by Iran in 1986. Iraq lost the peninsula in part because U.S. intelligence misread an Iranian military buildup.
To help regain the peninsula, U.S. intelligence sources provided data on Iran's equipment and troop strength that guided the Iraqi military in designing and staging a dress rehearsal of the offensive, the sources say. Washington had an "additional incentive" to provide detailed data because of its role in the loss of Faw, a former U.S. diplomat said.
Iraq's 1988 counterattack was a rapid success. And the casualties were among the grisliest of the war. Thousands of Iranian troops were killed, many because gas masks did not fit snugly enough over their beards and thus allowed seepage of lethal toxins. Empty syringes, some of which had contained a faulty antidote, were found beside hundreds of bodies, the sources said.
The Reagan administration never actively encouraged Iraq's use of chemical weapons or missiles. And officially, it was neutral in the Iran-Iraq War.
But Washington was well aware that Iraq began using chemical weapons in 1983 and intensified their use in 1986, creating a pattern that made it virtually impossible not to know that Iraq intended to use chemical weapons on the Faw Peninsula, former intelligence officials said.
"By 1986, Iraq had proven itself better at the use of chemical weapons than any fighting force in the world," said a former senior U.S. diplomat involved in Iraq. By 1988, Iraq's use of gases had also repeatedly been documented by U.N. specialists.
"It was all done with a wink and a nod," said a former U.S. intelligence official. "We knew exactly where this stuff was going, although we bent over backwards to look the other way." Washington knew Iraq was "dumping boatloads" of chemical weapons on Iranian positions, he added.
Missiles were also pivotal in turning the war in Iraq's favor, especially when Iraq fired Russian-made Scuds on Iranian civilian areas and major cities, including Tehran. The "war of the cities," during which Iran also targeted Iraq, eventually gave better-equipped Iraq a strong psychological edge in the conflict.
Today, Reagan administration officials contend that they could not have prevented Hussein's use of weapons of mass destruction.
"Get real. We couldn't have stopped him," said a former National Security Councilstaffer. "The Iraqis were fighting for survival."
Policy at the time, said another former Reagan official, recognized that "Hussein is a bastard. But at the time, he was our bastard."
Ironically, the most difficult task initially was persuading the Iraqis to believe U.S. intelligence data.
"We gave them so much help with intelligence in the conduct of overall campaignsóshowing them where Iran was moving troops, where it was most vulnerable, and projecting how to exploit both to their advantage," the former intelligence official said.
At first, Iraq ignored or discarded much of the American data. "It took a long time for them to trust us and listen to us," the official said. "Eventually, it sunk in that we were telling them what they needed to know."
The Faw operation was the high point of a blooming relationship between Baghdad and Washington that was founded on a common fear of and deep enmity toward Iran. It overcame more fundamental differences over Israel that led Iraq to sever relations with the U.S. in 1967.
After relations resumed in 1984, U.S. intelligence agents began to provide data about Iran's military operations, largely from satellite photography. The goal at one stage was to provide a counterweight to the supply of arms and intelligence the Reagan administration was providing to Iran as part of the 1985-86 arms-for-hostages swap, according to Reagan administration officials.
But in 1986, as the Iran-Iraq War began to turn decisively in Iran's favor, the pace of U.S. intelligence information escalated as part of a bid to at least restore Iraq's edge.
The United States was not alone. In advance of the Faw counteroffensive, France, Egypt and Jordan provided help in reorganizing and retraining the weary Iraqi military, Reagan administration officials point out.
And the very countries now most threatened by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction helped pay for them, according to U.S. officials. Of the $100 billion Iraq spent on arms during the 1980s, up to $40 billion was provided by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, either in cash or in free oil.
[i]Robin Wright (Washington Times) Copyright Los Angeles Times [/i]
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| Bush's Budget Betrayal ... |
| 01.30.04 (7:07 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush's Budget Betrayal ... [/b], http://www.mises.org/fullstor...
The [i]Washington Post's [/i]Jonathan Weisman recently scored a front page story about President Bush that would have galvanized D.C. conservatives three years earlier if the same words had been written about President Clinton. Writes Weisman:
[i]Confounding President Bush's pledges to rein in government growth, federal discretionary spending expanded by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, capping a two-year bulge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent, according to preliminary spending figures from congressional budget panels. The sudden rise in spending subject to Congress's annual discretion stands in marked contrast to the 1990s, when such discretionary spending rose an average of 2.4 percent a year. Not since 1980 and 1981 has federal spending risen at a similar clip. Before those two years, spending increases of this magnitude occurred at the height of the Vietnam War, 1966 to 1968 . . . Much of the increase was driven by war in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as homeland security spending after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But spending has risen on domestic programs such as transportation and agriculture, as well[/i].
One recalls the story about the first President Bush around the time that he was breaking his "No New Taxes" pledge—a profile in cowardice that would cost him reelection. While being pestered by reporters about his decision, he told them not to place as much importance in what he said as in what he did. "Read my hips," he told them, paraphrasing one of his signature lines.
This is a lesson that should be applied to George W. as well. While his political rhetoric is on target with an electorate that demands smaller government, his actions bring forth benighted memories of that other activist president from Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Did anyone who voted for Bush think that he would far surpass Clinton in expanding the Leviathan state? In 1999, Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein ominously warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that unless President Clinton's budget plans were defeated by congressional Republicans, government spending would increase by $850 billion over the next decade, on top of the $2.5 trillion increase already called for in current law (much of which was off-budget spending).
Little did Feldstein realize that as he wrote, an even more aggressive spender was preparing a bid for the White House under the banner of fiscal restraint and a more humble foreign policy but who, once elected, would make the reckless Clinton look like the model of probity with respect to domestic and foreign policies. Under the Bush Administration, the national debt will increase by more than $850 billion in two years.
Perhaps Feldstein should have checked with his colleague in the Harvard economics department, Jeffrey Frankel, who would not have been surprised by an even bigger government under a Republican president. In an important paper published last year, Frankel noted the discrepancy between the lips and hips of Republican presidents, resulting from Republican rhetoric creating an impression of fiscal responsibility (the lips), and the actual big government policies pursued by Republicans once they reach office (the hips). In a Financial Times article summarizing the results of his research, Frankel wrote:
[i]Since the 1960s, the Republican and Democrat administrations have switched places on economic policy. The pattern is so well established that the generalization can no longer be denied: the Republicans have become the party of fiscal irresponsibility, trade restriction, big government and bad microeconomics[/i].
[i]Surprisingly, Democrat presidents have, relatively speaking, become the proponents of fiscal responsibility, free trade, competitive markets and neoclassical microeconomics. This characterization sounds implausible. Certainly, it would not be recognizable from the two parties' rhetoric. But compare the records of Presidents Carter and Clinton with those of Presidents Reagan, Bush senior and Bush junior. A simple look at the federal budget statistics shows an uncanny tendency for the deficit to rise during Republican presidencies[/i].
Although Frankel seems ignorant of the role that off-budget revenues had in skewing the budget deficit figures in the late 1990s, and although he seems to buy into the Keynesian consensus that tax cuts are the primary cause of deficits, his point that the budget performances of Republican vs. Democratic administrations are uncanny remains valid. What's going on here?
Historically, the Republican Party has never been the party of fiscal restraint (a point made in response to Frankel by Thornton and Ekelund). It was defined by a neo-mercantile philosophy from its inception as the new Whig party in the 1850s up through the Progressive Era. Thanks to the massive realignment of power from the states and cities toward the federal government during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's devastating 12-year presidency, the GOP was able to remarket itself as the relatively more fiscally responsible party. But that rhetoric never was matched by its actions. This is still true today.
And today, Bush is simply governing within the modern Republican tradition of allowing government to grow by mollifying a base that values a republican form of government that is out-of-step with the needs of the modern corporatist state. To appease this base, they are told that the geopolitical requirements inherent in a post-9/11 world have forced Bush to become a more reckless spender than he otherwise would have been, but that nonetheless, this spending is far less than what would have resulted if a mainstream Democrat were in office.
To the contrary, the events of 9/11 and their aftermath have been manipulated by the political class to weaken the opposition from a growing number of people who, throughout the 1990s, increasingly held the federal government in disrepute. As the 2000 county-by-county political election map indicates, the 35-year expansion of the welfare/warfare states resulted in a country sharply divided between those who depend on ever-expanding wealth transfers and those who fund them.
The Bush counties, in red, could be classified as (to borrow a term from Murray Rothbard) the net taxpayers, while the Gore counties, in blue, could be classified as net tax consumers. Clearly, some side had to give to reduce these tensions because a country so sharply divided between those disgusted with the government and those dependent on it cannot face a stable future.
One of the important political consequences of 9/11, and part of the impetus for the undeclared—and therefore unconstitutional—wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the quelling of resistance to big government that had grown to such a crescendo after the prima facie justification for big government disappeared with the end of the Cold War. The result is that, for the time being, the federal government operates with much less scrutiny than ever before, and that those who would otherwise cheer its dismantlement withhold their fire out of the patriotic imperative not to weaken a president when the country is at war.
That such imperatives are important to the growth of government was pointed out over sixty years ago by Ludwig von Mises in his classic book, Liberalism. But Mises would also certainly agree with the contention of James Bovard in his new book Terrorism and Tyranny that nothing happened on 9/11 to make the federal government more competent.
These conclusions result when one observes the actions, as opposed to listening to the words, of those in power. Reading the lips of would-be caretakers is not enough. We must watch what they do and point out the consequences, with the knowledge that there is a large remnant that still cares.
[i]Christopher Westley, Ph.D., teaches economics at Jacksonville State University. See his Mises.org Daily Articles Archive. Send him MAIL. Read Robert Higgs' Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government[/i].
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| Repugs Nixon/Kissinger's Treason Responsible for 20,000 U.S. Deaths In Vietnam! |
| 01.30.04 (7:02 am) [edit] |
[b]NIXON'S TREASON: He Stopped an Early Peace in Vietnam[/b], http://www.tompaine.com/featu...
A September 2000 biography of Richard Nixon has made media headlines in recent weeks: mostly for the wrong reasons. [i]The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon [/i]by Anthony Summers makes the claim that Nixon beat his wife in 1962 and that in 1974 he was so looped from self-prescribing the mood-altering prescription drug Dilantin that his Secretary of Defense, James R. Schlesinger, had to tell military commanders to confirm all orders emanating from the White House with the Pentagon or the State Department.
The wife-beating story is obviously second hand. No one can possibly verify it except Pat and Dick, and they're dead. Summers tries to puff it up by claiming that Nixon's psychological profile fits that of typical batterers. Nixon may have been a bastard but there's no hard evidence that he was a batterer. Violence against women is serious business, but even Richard Nixon deserves to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
The sources for the Dilantin include Schlesinger himself, as well as Jack Dreyfus, the founder of the Dreyfus Fund, who apparently loved Dilantin so much he gave bottles of one-thousand 100 milligram capsules to all his friends. The Dreyfus story adds to other absurdist stories of the Nixon presidency. Recall Nixon's famous photo-op with Elvis Presley. In order to gain credibility with young people, Nixon deputized Elvis to help fight the war on drugs. Presley, of course, was zonked at the time.
There is a third major accusation that Summers makes in his biography. And this, a consequential historical story, has been ignored by the media. In order to win the presidential campaign of 1968, Summers says, candidate Nixon undermined a serious initiative to end the Vietnam War.
This is not the first time that this charge has been raised.
Tom Wicker, in his 1991 book, One of Us, Richard Nixon and the American Dream, cites, but then dismisses, intelligence reports that "high-level Nixon campaign officials" tried to reach South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu to urge him to oppose a peace initiative that President Johnson was negotiating with the North Vietnamese. To Wicker, it was "hard to believe" that Nixon would undermine an effort to end the war. "Obviously, it would be fatal for the Nixon campaign to be connected with an effort to delay a bombing halt, possibly a peace settlement, for domestic political purposes," Wicker says.
In writing his biography, Wicker ignored Seymour Hersh's 1983 book, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the White House. In it, Hersh describes Henry Kissinger as advising the Democrats on Vietnam policy and then secretly reporting what he knew about peace negotiations to the Nixon campaign.
This contact, between Kissinger and Nixon, is confirmed in RN, Nixon's memoir. According to Nixon, Kissinger warned him in September 1968 that Johnson would call a bombing halt in late October. Johnson and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey had finally come to understand that to win the election they would have to find a way out of the war and, in late October, there was movement in Hanoi and Washington towards starting peace negotiations.
Hersh describes Nixon sending Anna Chennault to lobby South Vietnamese President Thieu to urge him to obstruct the effort to start peace negotiations. Chennault was a vice president of the Republican election finance committee and chairwoman of Republican Women for Nixon. As head of Flying Tiger Airlines, a company originally formed, with CIA backing, to assist Chiang Kai-shek in his war against the Chinese Communists, Mrs. Chennault had high-level contacts in the South Vietnamese government.
This is authenticated in the 1986 book The Palace File by Nguyen Tien Hung and Jerrold Schecter. Hung was an advisor to President Thieu and Schecter was Time magazine's Diplomatic Editor. "During the closing week of the election, Nixon's campaign manager John Mitchell, called [Chennault] 'almost every day' to persuade her to keep Thieu from going to Paris for peace talks with the North Vietnamese," they write. She was successful. Five days before the American election, Thieu announced his refusal to participate in the peace talks.
This is again confirmed by Stanley Karnow in his revised (1991) and updated Vietnam: A History which, in its first edition, was the basis for the PBS series. As Karnow writes, "through one of Nixon's foreign policy aides, Richard Allen, [Kissinger] contacted the Republicans, offering to furnish them with covert information on Johnson's moves. A clandestine channel was set up through Nixon's campaign manger, John Mitchell, and Kissinger guided the Republicans secretly on the Vietnam issue for nearly two months -- thus supplying Nixon with the ammunition to blast Humphrey for 'playing politics with war.'"
Karnow further documents Chennault's advice to Thieu to obstruct the peace negotiations. And he supplies new information that Johnson, suspicious of Nixon's intrigues, was bugging the conversations that Chennault had with Thieu.
Anthony Summers's book provides the authentication for what we already know -- but which the media deems less interesting than gossip about Nixon's marriage or his penchant for mood-changing drugs. Unlike earlier biographers, Summers had access to FBI documents, though much of what Hoover found out is still covered up. Although Johnson ordered the FBI to investigate the Nixon-Chennault-Thieu connection, Hoover told Chennault not to worry, that "the bureau was 'making a show' of obeying Johnson's orders."
Nevertheless, what FBI and other documents show is that in the final days of the 1968 campaign, with peace negotiations in the offering, Nixon urged Thieu to stonewall President Johnson in order to undermine the prospect of peace negotiations. As Nixon told Chennault to tell Thieu, he could expect a "better deal" when Nixon became president.
The question remains why neither Johnson nor Humphrey blew the whistle on Nixon during the last days of the campaign. The fact is that they lacked conclusive evidence of what Nixon was doing. Without a smoking-gun, they themselves would have been accused of unprecedented partisanship and attempting to steal the election. Once Nixon won, such an accusation, still without conclusive evidence, would have greatly compromised the country's Vietnam position.
That Nixon sabotaged peace to win the 1968 election can no longer be dismissed as speculation, theory, or even Nixon-bashing, however. The documents provide the smoking-gun. It's history. It happened.
According to Nixon's memoirs (and verified by the public opinion polls at the time), LBJ's bombing halt and his declared intention to enter peace negotiations, "resulted in a last-minute surge of support for Humphrey" which was "dampened on November 2, when President Thieu announced his government would not participate in the negotiations Johnson was proposing." Nixon won the election by a narrow margin and the war continued.
The media's obsession with private lives instead of public issues is destroying our democracy. It's Nixon's treason and not his marriage or his self-medication that is the major story.
For a citizen, even a candidate, to secretly undermine the affairs of state is a serious crime, perhaps even treason. More than 20,000 American soldiers and millions of Southeast Asians died as a result of Nixon's successful attempt to steal the 1968 election.
[i]By Marty Jezer [/i]
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| Bush, the Deserter, NEVER SERVED HONORABLY ... and ... LIES Us Into WARS!!! |
| 01.30.04 (6:58 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush, the Deserter, NEVER SERVED HONORABLY!!![/b]
[b]Where were you in '72?
[i]Most of us remember...Bush does not[/i]...[/b]
[i]Visit AWOLBUSH.com for the Facts [/i]on http://www.awolbush.com/
[b]and ... LIES Us Into WARS!!![/b]
[i]Refer to [/i]"Ten Appalling LIES We Were Told About Iraq on Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq" on http://www.alternet.org/story...
[b]Bush is responsible for the DEATHS of 519 U.S. Soldiers and Tens of Thousands of Iraqi Civilians in His Insane Lust-N-Rush to War to Enrich His Corporate Cronies [/b]...
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| Perle Must Resign ... Or Be FIRED ... |
| 01.30.04 (6:51 am) [edit] |
[b][b]Perle Must Resign ... Or be FIRED[/b][/b] ... , http://www.antiwar.com/justin...
When Richard Perle, high-visibility neocon and co-author of a recent book that faults the Bush administration for being soft on terrorism, spoke at a rally associated with the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist group once allied with Saddam Hussein, the "mainstream" media was nowhere to be seen. The music-oriented event, billed as a fundraiser for victims of the Iranian earthquake – and, incidentally, calling for "regime change" in Tehran – was held this past weekend, and had generated a fair amount of controversy before the curtain opened on the first act.
Representative Bob Ney (R-Iowa) – who sounded the alarm on the MEK long ago in Washington – called for an official investigation of the terrorist fundraiser: the Red Cross, originally slated to accept funds raised at the rally, withdrew. So did La Leche International. But Perle claims that he gave the keynote speech at the event anyway, because he was "unaware," as the Washington Post put it, of the group's terrorist connections:
"'All of the proceeds will go to the Red Cross,' Perle said. Informed that the Red Cross had announced before the event it would refuse any monies because of the event's 'political nature,' Perle said: 'I was unaware of that.' Perle declined to say how much he received."
According to the Post, "FBI agents attended it, and, as part of a continuing investigation, the Treasury Department on Monday froze the assets of the event's prime organizer."
Perle claims to have been contacted by the Premiere Speakers Bureau, and, when he requested more information from them about the sponsors, he was told the rally would be in "solidarity with earthquake victims in Iran and an evening for Iranian Resistance." The "Resistance" is one of many well-known pseudonyms of the MEK and is the name of their principal front group: the National Council of Resistance (NCR).
Among the most active and vociferous champions of MEK, of which there are many in Washington, is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), on whose board of advisors Perle sits. Last year, in a widely circulated op ed piece, arguing that the MEK should be taken off the list of terrorist organizations and used to overthrow the regime in Tehran, Daniel Pipes and WINEP director Patrick Clawson wrote:
"Policy toward the MEK has long been quietly but intensely and bitterly debated in Washington. To curry favor with Iranian 'moderates,' the State Department in 1997 designated the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Although 150 members of Congress publicly opposed this designation, a U.S. court of appeals recently upheld it."
As a Washington insider, member of the Defense Policy Board, and champion factional combat fighter, Perle could hardly have been unaware of this debate.
The miasma of malfeasance that surrounds Perle is unseemly in a U.S. government official. To say nothing of the penumbra of malevolence that seems to hover over his very person, like the proverbial clouds of war. The man is an ambassador of ill will for this administration, at home as well as abroad. This speech at an event the proceeds of which were immediately seized and impounded by U.S. Treasury agents is really the last straw. Republicans should be the first to recognize that Perle has become a liability, and realize that he must go.
According to this report [pdf file], a group of former members of the MEK cult held a news conference in Baghdad on the same day as the Washington fundraiser, demanding that "repentant" MEK cadre be allowed to return home to their families in Iran. Many family members had traveled to Iraq to be reunited with their children, and they charged that both the MEK leadership and U.S. military authorities are determined to keep the group's military capacity intact by preventing anyone from leaving "Camp Ashraf," the MEK's main base. The report adds:
"In a bend sinister, top [MEK] officials held meetings a few blocks away from the White House and had contacts with a number of U.S. officials."
It's a "bend sinister," alright. One of the most knowledgeable policy analysts in Washington pleads complete ignorance of MEK and its activities, even though his Pentagon protégé has openly taken up their cause. We're supposed to believe Perle has been completely deaf to a big debate within the administration over the status of the MEK, which is really a fight over what course U.S. policy will take in the future. The neoconservatives in the Pentagon, around Douglas Feith and the Office of Special Plans, have engaged in an ongoing campaign in support of these "reformed" Marxist terrorists as a club to bash Iran. Leading neocons such as Daniel Pipes and Arnold Beichman tout the Rajavi cult as a worthy ally, the latter hailing it as "a legitimate force for democracy and regime change in the Middle East."
Beichman, himself an ex-Communist (or ex-fellow traveler), is naturally sympathetic to his Iranian brethren, but what MEK's defenders leave out is that the group has a history of attacking American targets. As the U.S. State Department reports:
"Bombs were the Mojahedin's weapon of choice, which they frequently employed against American targets. On the occasion of President Nixon's visit to Iran in 1972, for example, the MKO exploded time bombs at more than a dozen sites throughout Tehran, including the Iran-American Society, the U.S. information office, and the offices of Pepsi Cola and General Motors. From 1972-75 … the Mojahedin continued their campaign of bombings, damaging such targets as the offices of Pan-American Airlines, Shell Oil Company, and British organizations."
I wonder if, by Beichman's standards, the relatives and loved ones of the six Americans killed in those attacks have any say on the question of MEK's "legitimacy." Probably not. The MEK fan club avers that the group has since changed its spots: but the State Department says that they have more than the 1970s attacks on them. As Ambassador Francis X. Taylor put it in 2002, in introducing the annual report on global terrorism:
"Iraq also supports the MEK, the Mujahedin-e Khalq that operate into Iran, actively continues to support that. So they are still involved in supporting terrorist activities as we speak, and of course that's why they remain on the state-sponsored terrorism list."
So, let's see if I get this straight: the War Party told us we had to invade Iraq because the evil Saddam had unleashed a campaign of terrorism. Now the neocons want to appropriate the one terror group that definitely was nurtured by Baghdad and use it for our own "democratic" purposes. They're the Good Terrorists, now, because, you see, they're our terrorists.
Rep. Bob Ney doesn't agree, and he is yanking up MEK's terrorist network by the roots, exposing it to the light of day in the Washington Post, where Richard Leiby reports that Ney,
"Who helped put 'Freedom Fries' on House restaurant menus in the run-up to the Iraq war, is championing a new patriotic cause. He wants Fox News to fess up about the controversial past of one of its commentators on Middle Eastern affairs.
"In a letter last week to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Ney identified Alireza Jafarzadeh as the head of an Iranian exile group that the U.S. government lists as a terrorist organization. …'I watch Fox News, I like Fox News, but I was shocked to see him on there,' the congressman told us. Ney demanded that the network inform viewers about Jafarzadeh's background, saying, "I don't think they're fair and balanced on this issue.'"
"Old news," barked Fox spokesman Paul Schur. "Absolutely false," said Jafarzadeh. Since MEK's real headquarters is in Iraq, he cannot possibly be the head honcho of MEK. Besides which, he complained, "Who do you think revealed the major nuclear facilities of the Iranian regime in the past year and a half? It was me."
He's just angling for his own show. Fox News is always so ahead of the curve, so with it. What a brilliant way to have the best terrorism "expert" on television: hire a representative of an officially designated terrorist organization!
What's next for Fox News – will they put Carlos the Jackal on the payroll?
[b]NOTES IN THE MARGIN[/b]
A Russian translation of my December 10, 2003 column, "Now They’re After Putin," has been published in Rossiya, a weekly based in Moscow.
Danish state radio has run a three part series detailing alternative theories of 9/11, the first part of which cites John Laughland’s recent Spectator piece on "conspiracy theories." Parts two and three deal with the "Israeli art students" affair, and make prominent mention of my recent book, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection. I don’t understand Danish, but it sounds good, anyway. I’m told that it is a simple reporting of what I and other writers – Christopher Ketcham and Fox News reporter Carl Cameron are mentioned – have long maintained: that Israeli intelligence knew a lot more than they ever told us about the 9/11 terrorist conspirators. If any of my Danish readers care to give us a translation, write to me care of Antiwar.com.
[i]Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is also the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (1993), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996). He is an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in Auburn, Alabama, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Libertarian Studies, and writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard[/i].
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| US Deaths in Iraq RISE After Saddam Hussein Capture ... |
| 01.30.04 (6:46 am) [edit] |
[b]US deaths rise in wake of Saddam capture[/b], http://news.ft.com/servlet/Co...
US combat deaths in Iraq have risen sharply during January despite a drop in the number of attacks and the capture of former dictator Saddam Hussein over a month ago.
As of Thursday, 33 American soldiers and one civilian had been killed by hostile fire during the month. That compares with 24 US combat deaths in December, and a total of 32 coalition combat deaths.
The figures appear to show that the security situation in Iraq is not improving, contrary to earlier claims from the US military and politicians.
The US casualties are also mounting Afghanistan, where seven US soldiers were killed on Thursday in an explosion near an ammunition dump in the south of the country.
The US military on Thursday declined to confirm or deny the figures for combat deaths in Iraq this month, which were calculated from press releases from US Central Command in Florida. A US military spokesman in Baghdad said figures were only kept for two-month periods, and a computer malfunction made it impossible to calculate an official casualty count for separate months.
Overall, January has been one of the bloodiest post-war months for the coalition. Combat deaths in the first 28 days of January alone exceeded those in every post-war month except October (35) and November (94), according toIraq Coalition Casualty Count - a website devoted to tracking coalition deaths.
Eighteen combat deaths - more than half the January total - occurred in one province, Anbar, in central Iraq, where the restive cities of Falluja, Ramadi, and Khaldiya are located. Nine soldiers were killed when a Blackhawk helicopter was shot down near Falluja on January 8.
Four further fatalities from the two most recent helicopter crashes , on January 23 and 25, are still under investigation to determine if hostile fire was involved.
Only three weeks ago, on January 6, Major General Charles Swannack of the 82nd Airborne Division, who commands Anbar province, declared that the region was largely under control. "I'm here to tell you that we have turned that corner," he told a news conference.
"I also can tell you that we're on a glide-path toward success," he said, adding that attacks against US forces in Anbar province had decreased "almost 60 per cent over the past month".
More recent comments from US officials have been more tentative. Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said on Tuesday that violence was not expected to wane in the immediate future. "Between now and June 30 [the deadline for Iraq's return to self-rule], we should not be surprised if there is continued violence," he said.
US military spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmit said in the same news conference that attacks had indeed decreased, but that combat fatalaties had not.
Iraqi casualties also remain high. More than 300 Iraqi policemen have been killed in shootings, bombings and suicide attacks since May 1, when President George W. Bush declared major combat to be over in Iraq, according to Nouri Badran, interior minister. In the same period, 295 coalition troops have been killed by hostile fire, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
On Thursday, 13 Iraqis were wounded and one killed in a fresh wave of bomb attacks against police and security forces.
[i]By Charles Clover in Baghdad[/i]
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| Bush/Rumsfeld Do NOTHING About Female GIs Raped in Iraq |
| 01.30.04 (6:43 am) [edit] |
[b]Returning female GIs report rapes, poor care[/b], http://www.thestate.com/mld/t...
[i][b]At least 37 allege assaults by U.S. soldiers overseas, little help [/b][/i]
Female troops serving in the Iraq war are reporting an insidious enemy in their own camps: fellow American soldiers who sexually assault them.
At least 37 female service members have sought sexual-trauma counseling and other assistance from civilian rape-crisis organizations after returning from war duty in Iraq, Kuwait and other overseas stations, The Denver Post has learned.
The women, ranging from enlisted soldiers to officers, have reported poor medical treatment, lack of counseling and incomplete criminal investigations by military officials. Some say they were threatened with punishment after reporting assaults.
The Pentagon did not respond to repeated requests for information about the number of sexual assault reports during the conflict. Defense officials would say only that they will not tolerate sexual assault in their ranks.
Members of Congress said they are alarmed by the assault reports, confirming that they have learned of incidents as well.
Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard, a key figure in the investigation of the Air Force Academy rape scandal, said he intends to raise the issue with colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And two Pennsylvania congressmen — Rep. Joseph Pitts and Sen. Arlen Specter — intervened last month on one rape victim’s behalf to bring her home.
“Congressman Pitts is extremely concerned,” spokesman Derek Karchner said. “We have heard that there were cases that hadn’t been reported or were not being investigated.”
Women have served greater combat support roles in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts than ever before, flying fighter jets, serving on patrols and analyzing intelligence data. According to a Department of Defense estimate, women represent 10.4 percent of the total forces who were “in theater” between October 2002 and November 2003. A total of 59,742 women have been or are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As women have returned from duty overseas in recent months, they have sought help from civilian trauma centers and advocates.
“We have significant concerns about the military’s response to sexual assault in the combat zone,” said Christine Hansen, executive director of the Connecticut-based Miles Foundation, which has assisted 31 women.
“We have concerns that victims are not getting forensic exams. Evidence is not being collected in some cases, and they are not getting medical care and other services.”
To protect the soldiers’ privacy, the foundation and other victim advocacy organizations contacted by The Post declined to release details of individual cases — such as locations of the attacks or a breakdown of which military branch was involved — and revealed only general trends.
Many of the victims are women of high rank. Several are officers. Most were stationed in Kuwait, a common launching point for troops occupying Iraq.
Among the most disturbing trends, say the victim advocates, is a disregard for the women’s safety and medical treatment following an assault. Women are being left in the same units as their accused attackers and are not receiving counseling, they say.
“If you don’t even get the victim to a level of medical accessibility, how do you get to anything else, such as evidence collection through forensic exams?” Hansen said. “There appears to be a shortage of criminal justice personnel to help them, too.”
The military environment magnifies intense stress for victims, Hansen said.
“Just by virtue of the fact that they have to salute the individual who attacked them adds tremendous emotional trauma.”
It could take months or years before a more definitive picture of the prevalence of sexual assault during the war takes shape. The Defense Department has not disclosed such statistics in the past.
But some surveys have shown high rates of sexual abuse and harassment among servicewomen in past military conflicts.
• Nearly 30 percent of 202 female Vietnam veterans surveyed in 1990 said they experienced a sexual encounter “accompanied by force or threat of force,” according to the Congressional Record.
• A study of troops in the 1991 Persian Gulf War by Department of Veterans Affairs researchers found that 7 percent of surveyed women reported sexual assaults, while 33 percent reported sexual harassment.
Susan Avila-Smith, a Washington state-based civilian advocate, assisted Danielle, the rape victim who received congressional help to return home. A military intelligence officer who asked that her full name not be used, Danielle said she was assaulted Nov. 28 while in Kuwait.
She was stationed with her Fort Lewis, Wash., unit at Camp Udairi, 15 miles from the Iraqi border, for training before deployment to Iraq. She had finished guard duty at 2:30 a.m. and was stepping into the latrine on the edge of camp when she was hit on the back of the head and knocked unconscious, she said.
She recalled waking to a man raping her. She said the man cut her with a knife and hit her with an object between the eyes, again knocking her unconscious.
When she awoke, the man, who remains unidentified, had left. Danielle said she ran into camp, and a fellow soldier alerted her commanders.
She was driven to an aid station, where a rape examination was performed. She received no other treatment for the injuries to her head, back and knees, she says. She was interviewed for about three hours, she said.
After a few days, she said an investigator scheduled a polygraph exam for her but never followed through.
“I was hysterical,” she recalled. “There I am, all bruised up and beaten, and somebody in my chain of command wanted me to take a test.”
A Fort Lewis spokesman, Jeff Young, said her case is being investigated and that she has received proper health care.
[i]By MILES MOFFEIT and AMY HERDY[/i]
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| The Daily Body Count in Iraq |
| 01.29.04 (8:22 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Daily Body Count in Iraq[/b], http://www.zmag.org/content/s...
It has become a morning ritual, like putting on a kettle of hot water for tea. I wake up, turn on the radio and listen for the casualty report from Iraq. Sure enough, there it is: two soldiers and eight Iraqis killed in Samarra, or three soldiers and six Iraqis killed in Fallujah. Then I look in the newspaper for the names of the US soldiers. While I don't have family serving in Iraq, I know many people who do. As I rifle through the paper, I pray that today's dead are not the children or spouses of my friends. But I realize that no matter what the name in the paper, each morning's death toll has brought terrible anguish to some family, somewhere.
"It's like a game of Russian roulette," said one of my friends whose son is serving in Iraq. "Every day we wonder if our luck will hold out, or if today is the day we take the hit."
Over 350 Americans have lost their lives since President Bush declared an end to major hostilities on May 1. In fact, more Americans have lost their lives since May 1 than during the war. And despite claims by the administration that Saddam's capture has allowed the US military to sweep up Baath loyalists who were attacking them, the attacks continue -- every day. The year closed with a total of 513 deaths, making it the deadliest year for the US military since 1972, when 640 servicepeople were killed in Vietnam.
I fear that the American people been lulled into accepting these daily casualties, processing them as lightly as they do the day's weather report or the sports figures. The fact that the media is banned from covering the flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base or that President Bush has not attended one funeral helps shelter the public from the true horror of this daily carnage. And just recently, the press stopped covering the soldiers' deaths as front-page news.
To the list of those killed we must add the wounded. As the year closed, over 8,000 soldiers had been evacuated from Iraq for treatment at the Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany, where they arrive in the dark of night, hidden from the media. A new generation of young men and women living the rest of their lives in wheelchairs or coping with severe disabilities is another painful legacy of this military intervention.
What is perhaps most distressing for many of the troops and their families is that there is no timeline for their return. While the Bush administration has fixed a firm date for a transition to Iraqi self-rule on July 1, 2004, it intends to keep US troops in Iraq for years to come. Many military families are questioning that logic, particularly after the capture of Saddam Hussein. They say that their job has been done, and it's time for the Iraqis -- and the UN -- to take over.
Some military families who think this way joined me on a recent delegation to Iraq.
Anabelle Valencia braved the treacherous road to Saddam's birthplace, Tikrit, where her 24-year-old daughter Giselle was based. Giselle had been stationed in Germany before being deployed to Iraq; her mother hadn't seen her in three years. During their tearful but joyous reunion, Anabelle heard tales about how her daughter, who drives prisoners in convoys from Tikrit to Baghdad, narrowly escaped death one day when mines blew up all around her truck.
Mike Lopercio had a joyous reunion with his son, Anthony, who is stationed in another anti-American stronghold, Fallujah. But seeing the endless US convoys and patrols barreling through Iraqi cities and towns, Mike realized that the presence of US troops is actually fostering more and more resentment, and greater resistance. The longer they stay, the worse it will get. His son told him, "Dad, they hate us here, they think of us as occupiers and want us to go home."
Fernando Suarez had the most difficult journey of all. He traveled to the lonely, dusty desert of Diwaniya to pay his last respects to his son Jesus, who was killed on March 27 when he stepped on a US landmine. Fernando also visited US troops, schools and hospitals, handing out letters of peace and friendship from American schoolchildren. "I went to Iraq to say goodbye to my son, and to show my love for the Iraqi children and for the troops," Fernando said. "Right now, the best way we can show our love for the troops is to call on George Bush to bring them home."
This past year was a painful one for the thousands of families whose loved ones have died or faced hostilities in Iraq. Let's stop this daily anguish by ending the occupation of Iraq and giving our troops a chance to return to their families.
[i]Medea Benjamin is founding director of the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org). Also see www.bringthemhomenow.org.[/i]
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| Bring On Impeachment Trials for Dubya and Cheney |
| 01.29.04 (6:30 am) [edit] |
[i][b]Bring On [/b][/i]impeachment trials for Dubya and Cheney. Ask Congress to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's LIES about WMDs: http://www.congress.org
Dubya and his corrupt administration lied about non-existent WMDs in Iraq. [i]Recent cover-up [/i]
[b]CLAIM[/b]:
"I think some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent.' Those were not words we used."
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 1/27/04 [Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... ]
[b]FACT[/b]:
"This is about imminent threat."
- White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03 [Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... ]
Of course the Bush administration LIED. Where is the outrage shown when Clinton LIED about Lewinsky's Blue Dress? I'd say the Bush administration's LIES about WMDs that led to war with 519 US Soldiers DEAD and thousands of Iraqis DEAD is much, much WORSE!
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| Even Puppet David Kay Cites Evidence Of Iraq Disarming |
| 01.29.04 (6:19 am) [edit] |
[b]Even Puppet David Kay Cites Evidence Of Iraq Disarming [/b]
After Cheney [i]worked-over [/i]David Kay, the coward doesn't place the blame for the lies where it belongs:-- on Dubya
[b]Action Taken in '90s, Ex-Inspector Says[/b], http://www.washingtonpost.com...
U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq found new evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime quietly destroyed some stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in the mid-1990s, former chief inspector David Kay said yesterday.
The discovery means that inspectors have not only failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but also have found exculpatory information -- contemporaneous documents and confirmations from interviews with Iraqis -- demonstrating that Hussein did make efforts to disarm well before President Bush began making the case for war.
The fact that Iraq disarmed at least partially before 1998 but did not turn over records to U.N. inspectors even when threatened with war has led Kay to conclude that Hussein was bluffing about his weapons capability to maintain an aura of power.
Kay, who will testify this morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview yesterday that inspectors recovered only partial records detailing the destruction of some of Iraq's forbidden weapons. But he said that while the full truth may not be known for years, if ever, that ambiguity should not be used to delay an examination of why the allegations about Hussein's weapons were wrong.
"If the weapons programs existed on the scale we anticipated," Kay said, "we would have found something that leads to that conclusion. Instead, we found other evidence that points to something else." Kay reiterated his view that 85 percent of the Iraq Survey Group's job has been completed and that "the major pieces of the puzzle" have been covered.
"We will be digging up smaller pieces for the next 15 years, but we should not wait for every piece and not be able to begin to reconstruct what happened," he said. Kay added that he is "afraid that ambiguity would be used as a delaying function by some people to delay trying to find out what went wrong."
Kay's revelation that Iraq had documented the destruction of its weapons is the most recent of several disclosures he has made since his resignation Friday as special adviser to CIA Director George J. Tenet that have put the White House on the defensive. Kay's statements have also enlivened the Democratic presidential race and caused a wave of recriminations from the CIA and on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are demanding a probe to determine whether the administration or the intelligence services are to blame for what has turned out to be false accusations about Iraq's weapons programs.
Bush, fielding numerous questions in the Oval Office based on Kay's earlier assertion that there are no weapons stockpiles in Iraq, said yesterday that it is premature to form judgments. "I think it's very important for us to let the Iraq Survey Group do its work so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought."
Though he did not repeat his earlier statements that forbidden weapons may yet be found in Iraq, Bush said: "I said in the run-up that Saddam was a grave and gathering danger -- that's what I said. And I believed it then, and I know it was true now. And as Mr. Kay said, that Iraq was a dangerous place."
In a private meeting between Bush and congressional leaders, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) told Bush it is important to determine what went wrong to produce the flawed prewar weapons charges. Democratic sources said that prompted a testy exchange between Bush and Daschle.
In his interview with The Post, as in his other interviews, Kay put the blame for the flawed weapons charges on the intelligence community, not on the Bush administration. Both the CIA and opposition Democrats -- in Congress and on the campaign trail -- took issue with that position.
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean blamed the White House for the false accusations. "I think the biggest problem with David Kay's resignation is that the vice president evidently went to the CIA and influenced the writing of intelligence reports," he said in a radio interview. "In other words, the administration did cook the books."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said: "We were told by the administration 'they [the Iraqis] have a 45-minute capacity to deploy weapons of mass destruction.' They didn't. We were told that they had aerial devices that could spread these weapons over our troops. They didn't."
Kay's criticism of the quality of prewar intelligence has angered members of the intelligence community. He called U.S. intelligence "inaccurate" Monday on NBC, adding, "We need to understand why that was."
Yesterday, Kay broadened his statement: "Everyone was wrong. Outside experts like myself and other intelligence agencies . . . including the Germans and French believed he [Hussein] had weapons."
U.S. officials criticized Kay for saying that 85 percent of the work was done. One official noted that on Nov. 2, in criticizing a story in The Washington Post, Kay said: "We have much work left to do before any conclusions can be reached on the state of possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program efforts." Another official familiar with the work of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said that there are millions of pages of documents still to be translated from Arabic, that detainees and scientists need to be questioned, and that the review of weapons sites is ongoing.
In the interview yesterday, Kay said the ISG had found some "contemporary documents" that proved Iraq destroyed weapons in the mid-1990s -- steps that were not reported to U.N. inspectors.
Senior Iraqi scientists interviewed by Kay admitted hiding their chemical and biological weapons programs in the early 1990s. In 1995, however, Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamal, who directed the illegal weapons programs, defected. At about that time, the scientists said they tried unsuccessfully to convince U.N. inspectors that they had destroyed their weapons and agents. They tried to "come clean, but we wouldn't believe them," Kay said.
Kay said the Iraqi scientists did not have complete records to back up their claims because the destruction had taken place under pressure to keep it secret from U.N. inspectors. In addition to documents, Kay said, ISG members interviewed people who confirmed some of the destruction, but far from all of it. "That will be impossible, and there will always be some doubts," Kay said.
Kay said he believes Hussein may have been pursuing a course of "constructive ambiguity" before the war, bluffing about having weapons to give the illusion of power and to put up a deterrent. "Saddam wanted to enjoy the benefits of having chemical and biological weapons without having to pay the costs," Kay said.
The retired chief weapons inspector said he has been somewhat surprised by the reaction to his conclusions in recent days. "I thought I was not saying anything more than the obvious," he said.
In response to the Kay revelations, White House officials and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said yesterday that they never claimed that Hussein represented an "imminent" threat.
"I think some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent,' " White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "Those were not words we used. We used 'grave and gathering threat.' "
Though Bush did not use the word "imminent," he said in a major speech in October 2002 that waiting to confront Hussein was "the riskiest of all options." The United States, he said, "must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. . . . We have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring."
More critical information about the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons program is expected to emerge from a report to be released today in London by a senior British judge who investigated the suicide of a scientist who had leaked information about the Blair government's white paper on Iraq. The report is expected to examine the claim that Iraq could prepare to launch its chemical weapons within 45 minutes, a charge Bush had echoed.
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| Army eyes troops in Iraq through 2006 |
| 01.29.04 (6:14 am) [edit] |
[b]Army eyes troops in Iraq through 2006
Top general says service is making plans for that possibility[/b], http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4...
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Army’s top general said Wednesday he is planning for the possibility that the Army may be required to keep tens of thousands of soldiers in Iraq through 2006.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that “for planning purposes” he has ordered his staff to consider how the Army would replace the force that is now rotating into Iraq with another force of similar size in 2005 — and again in 2006.
The decision about when to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq will be made by President George W. Bush and his national security aides, in consultation with American commanders in Iraq. As a service chief, Schoomaker’s role is to ensure that soldiers are trained and equipped for any mission the president requires.
Of the approximately 105,000 troops going to Iraq this winter and spring to replace the 130,000 who have been there since the start of the war, about 80,000 are Army soldiers. The replacement force, which includes 25,000 Marines, is scheduled to spend a full year in Iraq.
Army officials have said that planning for the 2005 rotation of forces into Iraq will begin in February.
The requirement for large numbers of ground forces in Iraq has stretched the Army, which also has major commitments in Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans. Schoomaker said the Army has used emergency authority to go beyond the limit set by Congress on the number of soldiers who can be in uniform. He said the Army now is about 11,000 soldiers above the 482,400 limit.
Exceeding troop limits Schoomaker also said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has authorized the Army to temporarily exceed the limit by as much as 30,000.
But Schoomaker said he was opposed to Congress passing legislation to permanently expand the size of the Army, mainly because it would be too costly.
“I’m adamant that that is not the way to go,” the Army chief said.
Members of the House panel expressed surprise that Rumsfeld had agreed that the Army needed as many as 30,000 more soldiers, since he has publicly opposed a legislative move to expand the service.
Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher said it sounded as if Rumsfeld was accomplishing through the use of his own executive powers the troop increase that he had resisted in Congress.
[b]Concern over stretched Army[/b]
Rep. Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he was concerned that the requirement for large numbers of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan may break the Army.
“This does not mean we should pull back from our commitments,” Skelton said. “We can’t unring the bell. We’re there. We’ve got to win. We’ve got to stabilize that country,” he said of Iraq. “We cannot afford that to evolve into a civil war.”
Even while the Iraq war continues, the Pentagon is planning a new offensive in the two-year-old Afghanistan campaign to try to stop remnants of the Taliban regime and the al-Qaida terrorist network, officials said Wednesday.
Orders have been issued to prepare equipment and supplies, though the operation will not necessarily require additional troops in the region, where about 11,000 Americans are still deployed, a defense official said on condition of anonymity.
[i]© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed[/i].
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| Dubya Turns the U.S.A. Into A Militaristic State |
| 01.29.04 (6:11 am) [edit] |
Dubya turns the U.S.A. into a Militaristic State
Just a few weeks ago, Dubya, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz said that the military does not need more troops. [i]Read on [/i]
[b]U.S. Army Plans Four-Year Boost of 30,000 Forces[/b], http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm...
[b]WASHINGTON (Reuters)[/b] - Strained by operations in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), the U.S. Army will boost its forces by 30,000 through emergency authority it expects to last four years, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker told Congress on Wednesday.
But Schoomaker, testifying to the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, rejected calls from lawmakers for a permanent increase in forces, saying it would undermine efforts to streamline and modernize the Army.
"Right now, I've been given the authority by the secretary of defense to grow the Army by 30,000 people ... under emergency powers," Schoomaker said. He said the authority from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was to last for four years.
The Army is already about 11,000 soldiers over the 482,000 troop limit authorized by Congress under the emergency provision the Pentagon (news - web sites) invoked, largely through "stop-loss" orders that block soldiers from leaving or retiring and through re-enlistment incentives.
Schoomaker told reporters after the hearing the Army would move quickly to add nearly 20,000 more forces, saying, "We want to achieve it as quickly as we can."
He said money for the additional troops would come from the $87 billion emergency spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan Congress passed in November.
Schoomaker said he wanted the additional troops to be incorporated into the Army's efforts to transform itself into a lighter, more mobile force for post-Cold War conflicts.
He rejected mounting demands from Republicans and Democrats in Congress to raise the Army's authorized troop levels, which he said would force the Army to expand permanently before it had made needed structural and operating changes.
"What I stress again is we should not make a commitment for a permanent end-strength (troop) increase at this time," Schoomaker said. He said that would result in the kind of bloated, poorly trained force that plagued the Army in the 1970s.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat, said the Pentagon seemed to be ducking its obvious need for more manpower in order to save money for the Bush administration's priorities, such as developing a missile defense system.
"We cannot put the strain on our military and on our American people just because we insist ideologically to keep the budget the way it is," Tauscher said.
She is pushing legislation to increase the size of the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps for five years at an estimated cost of up to $4 billion.
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| Congress Never Voted For Dubya's Illegal & Immoral War In Iraq! |
| 01.28.04 (7:00 am) [edit] |
Congress never voted for Dubya's illegal and immoral war in Iraq! Dubya should be impeached for his tyrannical war in Iraq waged based upon horrendous LIES!
[b]The First Lie[/b], http://www.guerrillanews.com/...
While all of the Democratic presidential candidates (except Sen. Joseph Lieberman) criticize President George W. Bush for his unilateral recklessness in starting a war against Iraq, they are missing a larger point: The invasion was not just reckless. It was unconstitutional.
It is time to set the record straight. The United States Congress never voted for the Iraq war. Rather, Congress voted for a resolution in October 2002 which unlawfully transferred to the president the decision-making power of whether to launch a first-strike invasion of Iraq. The United States Constitution vests the awesome power of deciding whether to send the nation into war solely in the United States Congress.
Those members of Congress—including certain Democratic presidential candidates—who voted for that October resolution cannot now claim that they were deceived, as some of them do. By unlawfully ceding the war-declaring power to the president, they allowed the president to start a war against Iraq based on whatever evidence or whatever lies he chose. The members of Congress who voted for that October resolution are as complicit in this illegal war as is the president himself.
Imagine this: The United States Congress passes a resolution which states: "The President is authorized to levy an income tax on the people of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to pay for subsidies to U.S. oil companies." No amount of legal wrangling could make such a resolution constitutional. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants the power to levy taxes exclusively to the United States Congress.
Now let us turn to reality. In October 2002, Congress passed a resolution which stated: "The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to 1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and 2) enforce all relevant United States Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." As he determines to be necessary and appropriate.
Congress cannot transfer to the president its exclusive power to declare war any more than it can transfer its exclusive power to levy taxes. Such a transfer is illegal. These are non-delegable powers held only by the United States Congress.
In drafting the War Powers Clause of Article I, Section 8, the framers of the Constitution set out to create a nation that would be nothing like the model established by European monarchies. They knew the dangers of empowering a single individual to decide whether to send the nation into war. They had sought to make a clean break from the kings and queens of Europe, those rulers who could, of their own accord, send their subjects into battle. That is why the framers wisely decided that only the people, through their elected representatives in Congress, should be entrusted with the power to start a war.
The wars of kings and queens of Europe had brought not only havoc and destruction to the lives of those forced into battle and those left to suffer their loss. They had also brought poverty. They were stark symbols that the subjects living under such monarchies lacked any voice or any control over their destiny.
The War Powers Clause of the Constitution emerged from that collective memory: "Congress shall have power...To declare war... " No other language in the Constitution is as simple and clear.
Thomas Jefferson called it "an effectual check to the Dog of war." George Mason said that he was "for clogging rather than facilitating war." James Wilson stated: "This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large."
Several years after the adoption of the Constitution, James Madison would write: "In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
Some might ask how George W. Bush's war against Iraq is different from other U.S wars. Congress has not declared war since World War II. While some of the U.S. military actions since that time have received the equivalent of a congressional declaration, others have not. There have been other violations of the War Powers Clause of the Constitution.
But today we face an extraordinary moment in United States history. The president of the United States launched a premeditated, first-strike invasion of another country, the likes of which this nation has never before seen. This massive military operation sought to conquer and occupy Iraq for an indefinite period of time. This was not a random act of raw power. It was the first salvo of a new and dangerous U.S. doctrine, a doctrine which advocates the unprovoked invasion and occupation of sovereign nations. This new doctrine threatens to destabilize the world, creating a new world order of chaos and lawlessness.
Now more than ever, the Constitution and the rule of law must apply. And, now more than ever, the truth must be told. The first lie about the Iraq war was not that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Qaeda. The first lie told to the American people is that Congress voted for this war.
In the midst of the rushed congressional debate in October 2002, U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) warned that the resolution under consideration was unconstitutional. "We are handing this over to the President of the United States," Byrd said. "When we do that, we can put up a sign on the top of this Capitol, and we can say: 'Gone home. Gone fishing. Out of business.'" Byrd added: "I never thought I would see the day in these forty-four years I have been in this body... when we would cede this kind of power to any president."
The Iraq war is in direct violation of the United States Constitution. The president and the members of Congress who voted for that October resolution should be held accountable for sending this nation into an illegal war.
It is time to hold up the Constitution to the faces of those who dare to defy it. It is time to demand our country back.
[i]John C. Bonifaz is an attorney in Boston and the author of "Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush" (NationBooks-NY, January 2004). This article is reprinted with permission from our friends at Tompaine.com[/i].
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| Why The Media Pimps Are Covering-Up For The Corrupt Bush Whores! |
| 01.28.04 (6:54 am) [edit] |
The media pimps are obviously covering-up for the corrupt Bush whores who will do anything for their corporate cronies. Have you noticed that you've got to seek the truth in the foreign press or in alternative news outlets?
[b]Freedom of the Press is DEAD in America!
Here's why:[/b]
[b]Singleton, Scaife Among Political Contributors[/b], http://www.editorandpublisher...
[b]NEW YORK [/b]While their newspapers are busy covering the elections of 2004, owners and top executives of some of the country's largest papers and chains are busy contributing to candidates -- or at least their money-hungry political parties, according to campaign finance records filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Richard Scaife, the outspoken conservative publisher of the Tribune-Review (Click for QuikCap) in Pittsburgh tops the list with a $25,000 donation to the Republican National Committee last July, while also giving $2,000 to George Bush's re-election campaign and $4,000 to the U.S. Senate bid of Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Pat Toomey.
Across town, William Block Jr., chairman of Block Communications, which owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Click for QuikCap) and The Blade (Click for QuikCap) in Toledo, Ohio, offered two $250 contributions to the Democratic National Committee in 2003.
In other family newspaper finances, George R. Hearst, chairman of the board of The Hearst Corp. of New York gave $1,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, while his cousin, William R Hearst III -- grandson of William Randolph Hearst and former publisher of the San Francisco Examiner -- donated $2,000 to the Joe Lieberman for President campaign and another $2,000 to VenturePac, a political action committee supporting issues related to venture capital firms.
The Murdoch family showed its political leanings with a $2,000 donation to the Bush-Cheney campaign from Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp., who also sent $2,000 to Sen. John McCain's 2004 re-election effort and the same amount to the campaign of California Republican Congressman Bill Thomas.
Wendi Murdoch, his wife, also donated $2,000 to Thomas, while his son, New York Post (Click for QuikCap) Publisher Lachlan Murdoch gave $2,000 to Bush-Cheney.
Also in New York, Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman and co-publisher of the New York Daily News (Click for QuikCap), granted $1,000 to the re-election coffers of California Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos.
William Dean Singleton, CEO and vice-chairman of MediaNews Group, who also serves as publisher of his flagship The Denver Post (Click for QuikCap), gave a $2,000 contribution to Bush-Cheney as well.
Other contributions from members of well-known newspaper families include Michael C. Copley, step-son of retired Copley Newspapers chairwoman Helen Copley, who provided $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign; and William H. Scripps, great-grandson of news pioneer E.W. Scripps, who contributed $2,000 to the president's re-election campaign, as well as $2,500 to the Republican National Committee.
Even Roxanne Pulitzer, the infamous former wife of Herbert Pulitzer, son of newspaper legend Joseph L. Pulitzer, is in the act, giving $250 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
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| 'Boondocks' Cartoonist Calls Condi Rice A 'Murderer'! |
| 01.27.04 (7:24 pm) [edit] |
[b]Cartoonist calls Condi Rice 'murderer' – again: This time 'Boondocks' creator levels charge on national TV[/b], http://www.wnd.com/news/artic...
[b]WASHINGTON[/b] – He did it again, but this time on national TV.
Aaron McGruder http://www.ucomics.com/boondo... , a black syndicated cartoonist who's getting his own prime-time TV series on Fox, called National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice "a murderer" for her role in the Iraq war.
He made the remark as a guest on the nationally syndicated TV show "America's Black Forum," hosted by syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Juan Williams.
The creator of the popular "Boondocks" comic strip reportedly caused some discomfort at an anniversary dinner for the Nation magazine here last month when he told the mostly anti-war audience, "I've met Condoleezza Rice and called her a murderer to her face."
In a Sunday broadcast of the "Black Forum" show, McGruder, speaking from Los Angeles, repeated the epithet, arguing that Rice, as one of the administration's "biggest hawks," advised the president on a war that led to the "slaughter of innocent people in Iraq."
Some of the black panelists assembled in the Washington studio winced at the remarks.
Conservative syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams rebuked the cartoonist, whose strip is syndicated in more than 250 newspapers.
"I can't get over the fact you labeled Miss Rice a murderer," he said.
The low-key McGruder, 29, asserted that he has a right to his opinion.
"She's a murderer because I believe she's a murderer," he said coolly.
NAACP chairman Julian Bond, another panelist, wrote it off to "satire," but added, smiling, "I agree with his politics."
Late last year, McGruder made Rice's love life the topic of his comic.
"Maybe if there was a man in the world who Condoleezza truly loved, she wouldn't be so hell-bent to destroy it," one of his "Boondocks" characters speculates in a strip.
The Washington Post pulled the series on Rice, which ran some five days. The Cincinnati Enquirer dropped the strip altogether.
McGruder, who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, claims Rice, also black, asked him to write her into his strip.
"Boondocks," a hip-hop version of Doonesbury, is distributed by Universal Press Syndicate.
McGruder, who graduated from the University of Maryland with an African-American studies degree, has written a best-selling coffee-table collection of his strips called "A Right to be Hostile."
He's reportedly developing with Sony a prime-time animated series based on "Boondocks" for Fox. It's slated for the fall.
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| Is Ethnic Cleansing of Arabs Getting Legitimacy from a New Israeli Historian? |
| 01.27.04 (12:28 pm) [edit] |
Last night I watched again [b]Alain Resnais' great classic Nuit et Broulliard ("Night and Fog") made in 1956, the first film ever made after WW2 [/b]about the unbelievably horrific atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews. Everyone should watch this film in order never to forget man's inhumanity against his fellow man.
Last summer Israeli soldiers were imprisoned in Israel for refusing to bomb Palestinian settlements killing innocent Palestinian families. They were outraged at what they said was not warfare against real enemies and it was not combat, but instead represented genocide. These brave Israelis refused to support such atrocities.
The Palestinian suicide bombings are barbarous acts of atrocities against innocent Israeli people. Many conscientious Israelis recognize that the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians represents an atrocity too.
There are innocent and good people who are Israeli, and who deserve the right to live in peace and worship in accordance with their faith, providing that they do not commit atrocities against others. There are innocent and good people who are Palestinian, and who deserve the right to live in peace and worship in accordance with their faith, providing that they do not commit atrocities against others. There are innocent and good people who are American, and who deserve the right to live in peace and worship in accordance with their faith, providing that they do not commit atrocities against others.
Last summer, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) visited Israel and told Ariel Sharon that the Palestinians should be wiped out "like cockroaches". This was not widely reported in the American media and press. However, let us hope that most Americans and Israelis, as well as all human beings with a conscience, condemn this hatefulness and outrageous bigotry towards Palestinians and Arabs that is indeed reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
[b]Is Ethnic Cleansing of Arabs Getting Legitimacy from a New Israeli Historian?[/b], http://www.tikkun.org/index.c...
[b]By Baruch Kimmerling, Professor of Sociology at Hebrew U, Jerusalem [/b]
[i][b]Benny Morris's Shocking Interview[/b][/i]
The Israeli historian Benny Morris did it again. Morris is not only a historian with impressive achievements but also an Israeli and international icon. One year after the publication of his book The Birth of Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, published in 1987, he proclaimed himself a ew historian.He become the great guru of a small imaginary group appointed by him and including mainly Avi Shlaim, Uri Milstein and Ilan Papp. Membership in this group varied from time to time according to Morris sympathy or antipathy.
Morris basically claimed that all the Israeli historiography that preceded his book and several other writings was completely fabricated, a series of untrue myths designed to serve the Zionist need for legitimacy. Morris, with his great arrogance and unique talent for public relations provoked an immense furor among the old Israeli academic and intellectual establishment and became the hero of many Palestinians and a small group of younger Israeli academics who perceived him as a ebunkerof Zionist lies.
On the other hand he was accused by mainstream Israeli academics and intellectuals with ost-Zionismand subverting the very legitimacy of Israel existence. This triggered endless nonsense and semi-professional and mainly political debates in Israel and abroad about the meaning and extent of ost-Zionism(frequently labeled as nti-Zionismor even ost-modernism that included arbitrarily any serious or less serious critical (or supposedly critical) study on Israeli history, society and politics. Most of this debate caused great damage to Israeli historical, social and cultural research. Books and papers were judged not by their intrinsic values or shortcomings, but by their categorizations as Zionist, post-Zionist or anti-Zionist. Instead of being preoccupied with serious research, people devoted a lot of time and energy to polemics on this futile issue. Younger academics were scared and chose their research projects carefully in order to avoid being identified with one of the "camps.
To Morris credit, it must be said, that he was very little involved in these debates, even if he enjoyed being at the center of the storm. Morris in general loved to leave his moral and ideological attitude toward the events he described ambiguous, and this was a correct position from his positivistic historian point of view, in which role he claims objectivity, even if a careful reading of almost all of Morriswritings reveals a very simplistic and one-dimensional view on the Jewish-Arab conflict. Despite all his iscoveriesabout moral wrongs perpetrated by the Israelis, on the bottom line, he always tended to adopt the official Israeli interpretation of the events (in The Refugee Problem and Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001, but less in Israel Border Wars). Another interesting issue is Benny Morris compulsive dealings with the problems related to ransferof the Arab population, which most of his readers wrongly interpreted as anchored in a deep moral indignation.
As with most of Morris other claims, the pretension to be the first and only Israeli who dealt with the ethnic cleansing of the Arabs reflected a partial reality. His book indeed touched a very central and painful nerve of the Israeli-Jewish current past, the uprooting of about 700,000 Arab Palestinians from the territories that would become the Jewish state, the refusal to allow them back to homes after the war, and the formation of the refugee problem during the period of the 1948 war and after. He also surveyed some atrocities committed by Jews during the inter-communal war that played some role in the oluntaryflight of the Arabs from their villages and neighborhoods. Weirdly enough, Morris devoted a very salient and extensive discussion to the centrality of idea of ransfer(i.e., ethnic cleansing) in Zionist thought, but concluded that the Palestinians had not been expelled by the Israelis in compliance with a master plan or following a consequential policy. This was not precise.
Plan D and the Israelification of the Land
At the beginning of the 1970s. I had begun to work on research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which, I hoped, would produce a Ph.D. thesis in sociology. The subject was the Zionist ideology of land and its relationship to other political doctrines. In the earlier stages of my research, I was shocked to discover that a major urificationof the land (the term thnic cleansingwas unknown in that period) from its Arab Palestinian inhabitant was done during the 1948 War by the Jewish military and para-military forces. During this research I found, solely based on Israeli sources, that about 350 Arab villages were bandonedand their 3.25 million dunums of rural land, were confiscated and became. in several stages, the property of the Israeli state or the Jewish National Fund. I also found that Moshe Dayan, then Minister of Agriculture, disclosed that about 700,000 Arabs who eftthe territories had owned four million dunums of land.
Another finding was that from 1882 until 1948, all the Jewish companies (including the Jewish National Fund, an organ of World Zionist Organization) and private individuals in Palestine had succeeded in buying only about 7 percent of the total lands in British Palestine. All the rest was taken by sword and nationalized during the 1948 war and after. Today, only about 7 percent of Israel land is privately owned, about half of it by Arabs. Israel is the only emocracyin the world that nationalized almost all if its land and prohibited even the leasing of most of agricultural lands to non-Jews, a situation made possible by a complex framework of legal arrangements with the Jewish National Fund, including the Basic Law: Israel Lands (1960), the Israel Lands Law and Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), as well as the Covenants between the Government of the State of Israel and the WZO of 1954 and the JNF of 1961.
Now the remaining puzzle was if this depopulation was a aturalconsequence of the war, which led the Arab populations to flee the country, as Israel officially states all the time while simultaneously accusing the Arab leadership of encouraging this flight, or if it was an intentional Jewish policy to acquire the maximum amount of territory with minimum amount of Arab population. Further research showed that the military blueprint for the 1948 war was the so-called lan D(Tochnit Daleth). General Yigael Yadin, Head of the Operations Branch of the Israeli unified armed forces, launched it on March 10, 1948. The plan expected military clashes between the state- making Jewish community of colonial Palestine with the Arab community and the assumed intervention by military forces of the Arab states. In the plan preamble, Yadin stated:
[i]The aim of this plan is the control of the area of the Jewish State and the defense of its borders [as determined by the UN Partition Plan] and the clusters of [Jewish] settlements outside the boundaries, against regular and irregular enemy forces operating from bases outside and inside the Jewish State[/i].
Furthermore, the plan suggested the following actions, amongst others, in order to reach these goals:
[i]Actions against enemy settlements located in our, or near our, defense systems [i.e., Jewish settlement and localities] with the aim of preventing their use as bases for active armed forces. These actions should be divided into the following types: The destruction of villages (by fire, blowing up and mining) especially of those villages over which we cannot gain [permanent] control. Gaining of control will be accomplished in accordance with the following instructions: The encircling of the village and the search of it. In the event of resistance - the destruction of the resisting forces and the expulsion of the population beyond the boundaries of the State[/i].
The conclusion was that, as in many other cases, what seemed at first glance a pure and limited military doctrine, proved itself in the case of lan Dto comprise far-reaching measures that lead to a complete demographic, ethnic, social and political transformation of Palestine. Implementing the spirit of this doctrine, the Jewish military forces conquered about 20,000 square kilometers of territory (compared with the 14,000 square kilometers granted them by the UN Partition Resolution) and purified them almost completely from their Arab inhabitants. About 800,000 Arab inhabitants lived on the territories before they fell under Jewish control following the 1948 war. Fewer than 100,000 Arabs remained there under Jewish control after the cease fire. An additional 50,000 were included within the Israeli state territory following the Israeli-Jordan armistice agreements that transferred several villages to Israeli rule.
The military doctrine, the base of Plan D, clearly reflected the local Zionist ideological aspirations to acquire a maximal Jewish territorial continuum, cleansed from Arab presence, as a necessary condition for establishing an exclusive Jewish nation-state.
The British colonial regime between 1921 to 1948 provided a political and military umbrella under which the Zionist enterprise was able to develop its basic institutional, economic and social framework, but also secured the essential interests of the Arab collectivity. As the British umbrella was removed, the Arab and the Jewish communities found themselves face-to-face in a zero-sum-like situation. By rejecting the partition plan the Arab community and leadership were confident not only in their absolute right to control the whole country that then had an Arab majority comprising two-thirds of the population, but also in their ability to do so. The Jewish community and leadership appreciated, on the one hand, that they did not have enough power and population to control the entire territory of Palestine and to expel or to rule its Arab majority. Thus, on the other hand, they officially accepted the partition plan, but invested all their efforts towards improving its terms and maximally expanding their boundaries while reducing the number of Arabs in them.
It was impossible, at that stage, to find hard evidence that, despite its far-reaching political consequences and meaning, lan Dwas ever adopted by the olitical level,or even discussed by it. My intuition said that many political and national leaders knew very well that there were some kind of orders and plans that were better not to discuss or present officially. Later Morris findings supported the correctness this intuition. In any case, though, the way that the military operations of 1948 were conducted does not leave any room for doubts that Plan D was indeed the doctrine used by the Jewish military forces during this war, or about the piritand perceptions behind it.
In the Winter of 1974, I submitted my Ph. D. thesis and it was approved by the relevant committee of experts in the Spring of 1975. For many years, I tried to publish it, without success. My senior colleagues at the Hebrew University explained to me with a strain of pity, ell everybody who lived in this country in that period knows precisely what happened, but it is not publishable yet. Perhaps it will be after a hundred years or soSome others kindly advised me to find more interesting topics for research. However, I insisted and finally I found the Institute of International Studies of the University of California at Berkeley ready to publish it. The book was published in 1983 under the title Zionism and Territory: The Socio-Territorial Dimensions of Zionist Politics. Being a ryprofessional text, it did now draw public attention and achieved limited circulation but became well known and widely quoted by a small circle of experts.
The Israeli Demographic Discourse
Morris latest controversy involves the public position he has taken on the possibility of a second act of ethnic cleansing. It is impossible to understand this controversy without understanding the demographic background to it. The issue is a complex one, but stated briefly, if current demographic trends continue, Jews will cease to be the majority population even within pre-1967 Israel within the next 40 to 50 years. A younger Arab population with a far higher birthrate makes this almost inevitable, even if there is continued immigration from the Diaspora. This fact creates a great deal of anxiety among all segments of the Israeli polity.
The radical solution to this dilemma is ransferof the Arab populations. oderateversions of these proposals call for exchanges of territories with their populations. In these scenarios, areas in Israel with large Arab populations like the lower Galilee would be given to a Palestinian state in exchange for Jewish settlements in the territories being incorporated into Israel. More extreme solutions to this dilemma call for forcible expulsions of Palestinians, not only from the occupied territories, but even from Israel itself. This fringe opinion, in the last years has become somewhat respectable.
Formerly, solutions involving transfer were voiced openly only by followers of Meir Kahane. Yet by 1990, another party endorsing oluntary transfer,General Rehavam Ze'evi's Moledet Party, had become part of the Israeli government coalition. The oluntarilywas added only to preserve the party from being accused of inciting a crime. Presently, Moledet (as part of a parliamentary bloc headed by Benny Elon, another supporter of ransfer is again part of the government. In 2002, the National Religious Party chose a new leader, General Effie Eitam, who has called for transfer of hostile Arabs to other countries if a major war presented an opportunity. Indeed, most transfer scenarios, including that newly proposed by Benny Morris, are based on a ar of Armageddon.which would provide the cover for massive ethnic cleansing. The recent American assault on Iraq heightened this atmosphere of nticipation.No wonder that under those circumstances, in which the Israeli government was the most enthusiastic foreign supporter of the war, that a group of Israeli academics published in the Guardian (October 2, 2002) a ysterical warningabout the possible intention to commit such an act under the cover of a regional war.
As the Palestinian armed resistance and terror continued, public opinion polls consistently indicate a perpetual increase in the number of Israelis wishing to expel Palestinians from the occupied territories and even Israeli Arab citizens. For example, according surveys conducted by Asher Arian for Jaffe Center of Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University, in 1991, 38 percent of the Jewish population supported the ransferringof the Palestinians out of the occupied territories through force while 24 percent favored expelling also the Israeli Arabs. In 2002, the percentages rose to 46 and 31 consecutively.
The alternative solution is to use the remaining time to withdrawal from the occupied territories and to achieve a major reconciliation between the Jews and the Arab citizens of Israel and their full integration as individual and ethnic group within the Israeli state on a complete equalitarian basis. Proponents of this solution argue that the vast majority of the Arab citizens of Israel is committed to the Israeli state, its values and culture, and appreciates its potential democracy. Furthermore, this alternative solution is necessary to save Israel from being another pariah-state (like South Africa under Apartheid regime). Benny Morris recent contribution to this controversy is to adopt a solution on the more radical end of a contuum of possible strategies for dealing with the so-called emographic problem.
[i][b]The Outing of Benny Morris[/b][/i]
At the beginning of 2004, Benny Morris industriously prepared a evisedversion of his The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem and a Hebrew version of the Righteous Victims, and toward their publication he published two articles in the Guardian (October 3, 2003 and January 13, 2004) and gave an extensive interview to Haaretz Magazine (January 8, 2004). Basically the three pieces reflected the same ideas; however the Hebrew interview is less subtle and more directed to Morris internal political audience, therefore it is more interesting and calls for a critical reading.
First and foremost, the historian underlined the new findings that justify the new version of Refugee Problem: hat the new material shows [says Morris is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape.After some detailed description of the rape and murder of Palestinian girls, Morris concluded that ecause neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg." Additionally he found that in twenty-four cases, about 800 Palestinians were massacred under different circumstances. And he added:
[i]That can't be accidental. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres[/i].
However, one of the most interesting conclusions of Morris what brings him closer to my findings is that from April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created.
It is not yet ethnic cleansing as a pre-planned part of a military doctrine as I found in the initial research, but just rojected message.However, in another way this is worse then my conclusions because it is openly referred to Ben Gurion himself.
So far it is the ld goodand expected Morris. The restless debunker of Israel sins. However, suddenly the interview took a sharp turn from historiography to philosophy: nder some circumstances expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands." Moreover, if he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleaned the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.
Leave apart for a moment the moral implications of this statement and ask about its factual basis. All previous research by Morris shows that the refugee problem was and still is the core issue in the Jewish-Arab conflict. A ull expulsionpresuming that was possible from a military and international point of view (a very dubious presumption) would only triple the number of refugees. Morris has no answer about how such a cleansing should reduce the suffering and by whom. He knows very well that the absorption of even the imited numberof 700,000 refugees caused famine and epidemics in the ostcountries.
Another crucial point that Morris should know very well was that the conquest of the West Bank would have pulled the only well-trained Arab army into the conflict, the Trans-Jordan Legion. Such a conquest would have violated the tacit agreement between Ms. Golda Meirson and King Abdullah about the partition of the land of Palestine between the Jewish state and the Kingdom. In such a case, the balance of power in the 1948 war would have been different and would have resulted in the same outcome of the war. Ben Gurion was very anxious on this point, and the only battles between the Arab Legion and the Jewish forces were local and took places in the Jerusalem area, the only disputed territory between the sides.
But Morris has abandoned his historian mantle and donned the armor of a Jewish chauvinist who wants the Land of Israel completely cleansed from Arabs. Never has any secular public Jewish figure expressed these feelings so clearly and blatantly as Professor Morris did. And in order to be completely lucid on this point he drew an analogy between Israel and North America: "Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history." I do not know today any American historian or social scientist that agrees that the annihilation of the indigenous population of the continent was a necessary condition for the American nation or the constitution of American democracy. And these are facts and not olitical correctnessas Morris loves to call any arguments he cannot deny.
However the issue is less about what happened in past and more about Morris wishful thinking and prophecy about the future: To the interviewer question if Morris advocates a new ethnic cleansing today he replies: "If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle [Israel], I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances, it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that under other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."
This doomsday scenario drawn by Morris is so fantastical not only because the Palestinian citizens of Israel proved, despite very harsh conditions and generational discrimination their oyaltyto the state, but also because the existence of dense Arab population within the narrow strip of the Holy Land is the best insurance Israel has against being attacked by strategic nuclear or other WMDs. Otherwise, Morris is unable to understand that the moment that nuclear, biological and chemical weapons were used in the context of the Middle East by any side, it is already too late to save anything in the region.
But hatred toward the Arabs, their society and culture crush any logic in Morris thought. The Palestinians are "the barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacksAt the moment, that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers." After thirty five years of oppression, colonization of their land, expropriation of their water, ignoring almost all of their freedoms, administrative detention of tens of thousands of Palestinians, systematic destruction of their social and material infrastructure, it is more than ironic to talk about the Palestinians as barbarians and a sick society. If the Palestinian society is sick, who is responsible for this sickness and which society is sicker and an institutionalized serial killer?
Morris mind is full of contradictions: Before he described the Palestinian arbarismhe described the whole conflict as n comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed.To these one may add the American bombardment of Dresden into rubble and other innumerable atrocious acts committed by the esternerand other non-Arabs to conclude who are the arbarians.Or after describing the rapes and the massacres committed by the Jews he comments that t turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women, and the elderly from the villages. Morris interprets that as proof that many of those who fled the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself, which proves that the Jews were not so much responsible for the cleansing. Morris cannot understand the obvious: what could be more human, in the face of rapes and massacres, than evacuation of women and children from a war zone? So, again the non-human Palestinian victims are responsible for the consequences. To say that he applies a double standard is a serious understatement.
By the same token, Morris fails to ask the right questions about the failed Camp David summit. If the Palestinian strategy is to destroy Israel in phases, why didn't they accept the ost generous offersof Ehud Barak Camp David summit, as was described in the famous interview of Morris with Barak in the New York Review of Books (June 13, 2002)? But one cannot ask for much logic in an emotional outburst by an archivist, when he tries to compose a generalized and coherent picture from his thousands of details. Then he turns to his own prejudices and stereotypes of the Islamic and Arabic culture that happen to be fashionable and well fit the present moods of the Israeli-Jewish and some parts of Western political culture since the September 11 calamity. But the historian is not just a part of the collective mood and expresses it, he also provide historical and intellectual legitimacy to the most primitive and self-destructive impulse of a very troubled society. Perhaps it is indicative that to the interviewer question — "if Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and if Zionism makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it was [from the start] a mistake?" Morris lacks any meaningful answers.
[b]Tikkun[/b], http://www.tikkun.org/
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| Doing Business With The Enemy! |
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[b]Doing Business With The Enemy![/b], http://www.cbsnews.com/storie...
[b](CBS)[/b] Did it ever occur to you that when President Bush says, "Money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations," he's talking about your money -- and every other American's money?
Just about everyone with a 401(k) pension plan or mutual fund has money invested in companies that are doing business in so-called rogue states.
In other words, there are U.S. companies that are helping drive the economies of countries like Iran, Syria and Libya that have sponsored terrorists. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
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"The revenue that is generated from the work that these companies are doing, we believe, helps to underwrite and support terrorism,” says William Thompson, the New York City comptroller who oversees the $80 billion in pension funds for all city workers.
He says he wants everyone with a retirement or investment portfolio to know what these companies are up to: “We're going to increase the public visibility on this issue until these companies change their practices.”
He’s actually identified specific companies that have invested in these rogue countries, including Halliburton, Conoco-Phillips and General Electric. And he points out that New York's pension funds own nearly a billion dollars worth of stock in these three Fortune 500 companies, which have operations in Iran and Syria.
What was Thompson’s reaction when he found out about this? “Anger that there were companies that could be contributing to attacks on our nation,” he says. “You’d think to yourself, well, why would they do that? … I didn't think they could. And more than anything it was, you thought, that the law prevented them from doing this.”
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In fact, U.S. law does ban virtually all commerce with the rogue nations, but there's a loophole that G.E., Conoco-Phillips and Halliburton have exploited: The law does not apply to any foreign or offshore subsidiary so long as it is run by non-Americans.
“These three companies, as far as we were concerned, appear to have violated the spirit of the law,” says Thompson. “In the case of Halliburton, as an example, they have an offshore subsidiary in the Cayman Islands. That subsidiary is doing business with Iran.”
That subsidiary, Halliburton Products and Services, Ltd., is wholly owned by the U.S.-based Halliburton and is registered in a building in the capital of the Cayman Islands – a building owned by the local Calidonian Bank. Halliburton and other companies set up in this Caribbean Island, because of tax and secrecy laws that are corporate friendly.
Halliburton is the company that Vice President Dick Cheney used to run. He was CEO in 1995 to 2000, during which time Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in Iran. Today, it sells about $40 million a year worth of oil field services to the Iranian Government.
In the case of Iran, Thompson says they earn most of their revenues through their oil industry. So what is the connection between that oil business and terrorism and weapons of mass destruction?
“The Iranian Government is receiving dollars from it. And then turning around and exporting terrorism around the world. It benefits terrorism. At least that's our belief,” says Thompson.
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60 Minutes decided to ask Halliburton's subsidiary about its work in Iran. But we weren't allowed to enter the building with a camera. So we went in with a hidden camera, and were introduced to David Walker, manager of the local Calidonian Bank, where the subsidiary is registered.
60 Minutes was expecting to find a bustling business, but, to our surprise, Walker told us that while Halliburton Products and Services was registered at this address, it was in name only. There is no actual office here or anywhere else in the Caymans. And there are no employees on site.
We were told that if mail for the Halliburton subsidiary comes to this address, they re-route it to Halliburton headquarters in Houston.
“If you understood what most of these companies do, you would, they're not doing any business in Cayman per se. They're doing business, international business,” says Walker. “Would it make sense to have somebody in Cayman pushing paper around? I don't know. And some people do it. And some people don't. And it's mostly driven by whatever the issues are with the head office.”
Does that mean the head office is calling the shots? If it is, that would be against the law, which says the subsidiary must be completely independent of the U.S. company. But 60 Minutes’ attempts to ask headquarters in Houston about this were rebuffed.
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In a letter to New York City Comptroller Thompson, Halliburton says its Cayman Island subsidiary is actually run out of Dubai. 60 Minutes went there and learned that it shares office space, phone and fax lines with a division of its U.S.-based parent company -- which raises more legal questions about its independence from Houston. But once again, our inquiries went unanswered.
In its letter to Thompson, Halliburton insists it is complying with all U.S. laws. But he and legal experts we consulted believe they are dancing right along the edge of legality.
“If the intent was to try and prevent United States-based companies from doing business in these "rogue" nations, then it appears as if they've gotten around what the law had intended,” says Thompson, who filed a shareholder’s resolution calling on the company to review and justify its operations in Iran. “Halliburton attempted to block the shareholder resolution. They went to the SEC and asked for permission not to put this before shareholders.”
Did the SEC take it up and rule on it?
“Oh, absolutely. The SEC ruled against Halliburton and said that it had to be put in front of the shareholders,” says Thompson, who plans to file the resolution at the next shareholders meeting in April.
He’s also taking issue with GE and its electrical work in Iran, as well as Conoco-Phillips' gas production business in Syria: “If there are nations that wind up increasing their resources because these companies are doing business there, and we're attacked because of it, it in fact undermines our entire country.”
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Thompson says he decided to open the investigation in the first place at the request of New York City's police and firemen, who were outraged when they learned where their retirement money was going.
“The members of the Fire Department and the Police Department, after September 11th, given the fact that hundreds of them died in the World Trade Center as a result of a terrorist attack, had greater sensitivity than almost anybody,” says Thompson. “And they were the ones who kind of took the lead on this.”
But why do moral issues come into play when talking about pension funds?
“The way we've approached it isn't as on a moral basis, it is as investors,” says Thompson. “And what is in the best long-term interests of our pension funds because we hold stock in these companies.”
What these companies are doing, he says, isn't just a question of ethics - it's financially unsound, and bad for business.
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Roger Robinson, who runs a research firm in Washington that monitors companies working in rogue states, agrees. He cites the case of Talisman Energy, whose reputation was damaged when it did business with the Islamic Republic of Sudan. The negative publicity led to something Wall Street calls "The Sudan Discount of Talisman Stock."
“In other words, the share value or stock price was depressed by some 20, 25 percent by some estimates,” says Robinson, who believes that Halliburton and GE could face the same risk.
Robinson has identified nearly 400 companies that are in most pension portfolios that are doing business in terrorist-sponsoring states. Well over 200, he says, are actually doing business in Iran; of that, more than 60 are doing business in Libya.
He says the companies are funneling tens of billions of dollars worth of capital, technology and know-how to the state-owned oil and gas sectors of these two countries.
Does he ever say to himself that by revealing this information, he’s taking steps to hurt the company and hurt the pension fund?
“I think that it could be looked at another way. We're certainly alerting investors to a genuine new risk category in the markets, every bit as legitimate as environmental risk was through Three Mile Island, Exxon Valdez and superfund legislation,” says Robinson. “So investors, we think, have a right to know. Remember, this is their retirement dollars. They should have a sense of those who invest on their behalf, are there genuine risks there?”
With that question of risk in mind, state treasurers across the country, like David Peterson of Arizona, are using Robinson's database to investigate their pension portfolios.
“I want to find out what projects they're doing and what is specifically the dollars they're investing, where they're going,” says Peterson.
Taken together, state-run pension investments amount to something like $7-trillion dollars.
“Connecticut is working on it,” adds Peterson. “I know Pennsylvania, their legislature passed unanimously that we need to screen, with the approval of their pension system, for these risks.”
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But some of the state treasurers are running into resistance from the pension funds. In Peterson's case, the Arizona State Retirement System refused to tell him anything about its holdings.
“I have asked the pension system. We'd like to know what investments you have, the scope of your investments, what companies you're involved with. We had a legislator ask,” says Peterson. “We actually had an intern from this office ask about what investments holdings do they have in some of these companies. And they just didn't want to provide it to us.”
And Peterson believes that they really don’t have grounds to refuse to give him, as state treasurer, that information.
“They've more just kind of tried to be evasive, and said that it's too hard to get this information,” he says.
This went on for months, but to our surprise, when we asked Arizona's pension fund managers for a list of its holdings, they gave it to us right away. And it confirmed what Peterson had suspected: that Arizonans unwittingly own stock in companies like Halliburton, General Electric and Conoco-Phillips.
“There's about 11 to 14 companies that are on the S&P 500 that are involved in some substantial projects with some of these countries,” says Peterson.
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Congress recently directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to monitor companies operating in rogue nations.
But in New York, Comptroller Thompson isn't waiting. He says he's going to expand his investigation to include Boeing and other companies that do business in terrorist states.
“Those countries depend on dollars from us to live, to do business also,” says Thompson. “If we have, and if we put pressure on the companies, and they can't do business there, and others become embarrassed in doing business or buying oil there, well maybe we can help to force these countries to change their practices.”
Does he think this issue's going away?
“This issue isn't going to go away any time soon, at all,” says Thompson.
Halliburton declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview, but in an e-mail, the company indicated it has no intention of leaving Iran -- or addressing the questions we raised about the independence of its subsidiary.
The company did suggest that Comptroller Thompson is playing politics with pension funds, insisting there is no connection between its operations in Iran and either terrorism or nuclear research.
As for General Electric and Conoco-Phillips, they say they are breaking no laws, and like Halliburton, make no apologies for their business dealings with states that sponsor terrorism.
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| Retreat! Impeach! |
| 01.27.04 (6:23 am) [edit] |
[b]Retreat! Impeach!
White House retreats from weapons claims[/b], http://www.salon.com/news/wir...
The White House retreated Monday from its once-confident claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Democrats swiftly sought to turn the about-face into an election-year issue against President Bush.
The administration's switch came after retired chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he had concluded, after nine months of searching, that Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons. Asked about Kay's remarks, White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to repeat oft-stated assertions that prohibited weapons eventually would be found.
McClellan said the inspectors should continue their work "so that they can draw as complete a picture as possible. And then we can learn -- it will help us learn the truth."
Kay, meanwhile, was called to appear at a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday and agreed to attend, a Senate aide said.
Sen. John Kerry, seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said Bush had misled the nation. "When the president of the United States looks at you and tells you something, there should be some trust," Kerry said from the campaign trail in Keene, N.H. "He's broken every one of those promises."
Howard Dean, another Democratic candidate, said, "The White House has not been candid with the American people about virtually anything with the Iraq war."
The U.S. war against terrorism is Bush's strongest suit against Democrats, and his handling of Iraq has the approval of more than half of Americans questioned in polls. Analysts said it was doubtful the weapons issue would hurt Bush much.
"It depends on how the Democrats play it," said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. "Basically they're dominating the news as much as the president is these days, and if they continue to criticize the president on this, then it begins to hurt a little bit.
"But basically he is doing so well in the polls at this point, on the economy but also even on the war, that I don't see it as a major hit," Thurber said.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle called for an investigation -- either by the Senate Intelligence Committee or an independent commission -- into the "administration's role in the intelligence failures leading up to the war with Iraq."
Sen. Joe Lieberman, another Democratic candidate, campaigning in New Hampshire, also urged an investigation or congressional hearings "on the intelligence that some of us saw directly, and the statements that the administration was making and the emphasis the administration was putting on weapons of mass destruction."
Vice President Dick Cheney, meeting in Rome with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, did not answer when a reporter asked if he felt prewar intelligence was faulty. Cheney was one of the administration's most forceful advocates of war and was outspoken in describing Iraq's alleged threat.
Kerry has questioned whether Cheney tried to pressure CIA analysts who wrote reports on Iraq's weapon programs.
A senior administration official on the Cheney trip said the "jury is still out" on whether the intelligence accurately reflected what kind of weapons were in Iraq.
"Obviously we want to compare the intelligence from before the war with what the Iraq Survey Group learns on the ground," McClellan said.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, traveling in Vienna, Austria, said the Iraq war was justified, even if banned weapons are never found, because it eliminated the threat that Saddam might again resort to "evil chemistry and evil biology."
Saddam's willingness to use such weapons was sufficient cause to overthrow his regime, Ashcroft said, referring to the use of chemical and biological arms against Iraqi Kurds in 1988 and during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
McClellan made the same point. "The decision to remove Saddam Hussein's regime from power was the right decision," he said. "Saddam Hussein was a dangerous and gathering threat, and the president made the right decision to remove him from power."
Even before Kay announced his conclusion, Bush had changed his public rationale about the war as the search for weapons proved fruitless. Bush cast it as a broader war against terrorism, calling Iraq the central front, and said democracy would spread in the Middle East if it took hold in Iraq.
In London, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said it was disappointing that inspectors have not found evidence "of what the whole of the international community believes, and genuinely believed, about weapons programs and weapons stockpiles which Saddam had."
Key, in a weekend interview with National Public Radio, tried to deflect heat from Bush.
Asked whether Bush owed the nation an explanation for the discrepancies between his warnings and Kay's findings, Kay said, "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president owing the American people."
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| Dubya's Massacres in Iraq Continue Today |
| 01.27.04 (6:19 am) [edit] |
[b]Dubya's massacres in Iraq continue unabatted today as 3 more U.S. soldiers are slaughtered in their guerrilla quagmire for their American Empire. Where are the WMD, Dubya?
Roadside Bomb Kills 3 U.S. Soldiers West of Baghdad [/b], http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three American soldiers were killed and another wounded in a large explosion west of Baghdad on Tuesday, the U.S. military said. Hospital staff said two Iraqi civilians also were killed.
The casualties occurred in "a large explosion," a U.S. central command spokesman said. He said he had no idea about the type of the explosion.
The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would give no other details except to say three soldiers were killed and one solider was injured.
Witnesses, however, spoke of two roadside bombs in Khaldiyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, and close to Fallujah. The area is a hotspot of guerrilla activity where several attacks have been carried out against U.S.-led coalition forces.
The witnesses said the first one exploded next to a passing U.S. military convoy followed by a second blast when reinforcements arrived.
"One of our units was ambushed near Fallujah ... involving two coalition vehicles," the military spokesman said earlier.
Abdul Hamid Marzouq, a nurse at a nearby hospital where the casualties were brought, said two Iraqis were killed: Hadi Abd Shehab, the director of agriculture of Khaldiyah, and Hamd Nayef, a taxi driver.
Nayef, who was driving by at the time of the explosion, was injured in the head and face, said Marzouq. He said three people were injured.
Marzouq said Shehab died of a gunshot wound to the stomach. Witnesses said he was shot while standing in his office close the blast scene, and died on way to the hospital.
It was not clear who shot him.
Nameer Mohammed, who said he was standing about 500 yards away when the attack occurred, claimed American soldiers fired randomly after the blasts. This could not be independently confirmed.
Mohammed described seeing a U.S. military vehicle on fire after the first blast. As more American forces came to the scene, another bomb went off, setting fire to a second vehicle, he said.
Mohammed said he carried several injured people to the hospital.
The last serious attack in Khaldiyah took place on Saturday when a car bomb killed three American soldiers at a checkpoint and injured six in addition to several Iraqi civilians. Two other American soldiers were killed in Fallujah the same day.
Khaldiyah and Fallujah are part of the Sunni Triangle, the area in central Iraq (news - web sites) where most of the anti-U.S. attacks by die-hard Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) loyalists have taken place.
The U.S. military says the attacks have reduced in number since Saddam's arrest on Dec. 13.
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| Did the Bush Administration create a new American empire—or weaken the old one? |
| 01.26.04 (8:11 am) [edit] |
[b]Just a reminder ...[/b]
[b]Did the Bush Administration create a new American empire—or weaken the old one?[/b], http://www.newyorker.com/crit...
Last March, after Jacques Chirac, the French President, announced that he would veto any new United Nations resolution sanctioning war against Iraq, the White House saw a chance for a different sort of victory. If a majority of the fifteen Security Council members voted for a new resolution and France vetoed it, the United States could claim that the problem was not American unilateralism but French obstructionism. And that hope set the United States scrambling to line up the votes of Chile, Mexico, Pakistan, and a trio of impoverished states from the west coast of Africa. “No matter what the whip count is, we’re calling for the vote,” President Bush said at a news conference broadcast worldwide on March 6th. “It’s time for people to show their cards, let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam.”
But, apart from Britain, Spain, and Bulgaria, the countries on the Security Council declined to side with the United States. Emissaries threatened and cajoled, to no avail. Pakistan, admittedly, had a restive Muslim population to contend with. But Mexico and Chile said no, too, and so did Cameroon and Guinea and Angola, a country that is heavily dependent on American trade and good will. In the end, Bush didn’t call for a vote.
At the time, this moment of mortification received scant attention; the outbreak of war was imminent. It was a curious spectacle, though. No country in the world could stand in the way of America’s determination to remove Saddam. But the United States seemed powerless to persuade even the smallest nations to legitimatize its power with a symbolic vote.
As hard-liners in the Bush Administration saw it, the real humiliation was that we had sought the approval of a quarrelsome international body in the first place. During the previous year, a growing number of them had become fascinated with the notion of empire. It was time for America, unabashedly and unilaterally, to assert its supremacy and to maintain global order. The U.N. debacle—the mismatch between our diplomatic sway and our military might—could be taken as confirmation of this view. And yet, if our overtures carried so little weight, just what was the nature of our imperial power?
For leftist critics of America’s role in the world, it has long been a baleful article of faith that the United States is an agent of “neo-imperialism,” exerting its power through global capital and through organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. After September 11th, a left-wing accusation became a right-wing aspiration: conservatives increasingly began to espouse a world view that was unapologetically imperialist. You could watch this happening in Washington’s think tanks. Over their lunchroom tables, in their seminar rooms, on the covers of their small magazines, the idea of empire got a thorough airing—particularly among ideologues close to the policymakers planning the war on terror. At a panel discussion in the middle of 2002, I first heard “Middle East reform”—as in making the Middle East democratic and bourgeois—spoken of the way people speak of welfare reform. As the military historian Max Boot wrote in The Weekly Standard, “Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”
Everyone could admit that there were disreputable aspects of the old empire. Yet what would be wrong with a truly enlightened version of foreign rule? “There’s general agreement that there was a mistake that the Brits made, which is that they allowed the imperial administrators to perpetuate a kind of snobbishness over the Western-oriented gentlemen,” one of these conservative thinkers told me last spring, just before the start of the war. “We think these are the lessons we have learned. And that, therefore, imperialism as practiced this time will be different.”
In “Empire,” which appeared last spring, the acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson presented the British Empire as a model of how to secure global stability, foreign investment for developing countries, and simple good government. “What the British Empire proved is that empire is a form of international government that can work—and not just for the benefit of the ruling power,” he wrote. Through more than three hundred slick, illustrated pages, Ferguson mapped the past onto the present, identifying the building blocks of Britain’s empire with their contemporary American analogues. For Britain’s gunboats, America’s F-16s and Tomahawk missiles—always prepared to knock around troublemakers on the empire’s periphery. For Britain’s missionary and social-uplift societies, today’s N.G.O.s. In place of Britain’s long-running policing action against the slave trade, similarly high-minded campaigns against ethnic cleansing.
Why did the British imperium come to an end? The standard histories tell us about great-power rivalries, a diminishing technological gap between overlords and subjects, growing independence movements among the colonized. Some conservative scholars have suggested, however, that the British Empire fell apart because of war-induced impoverishment and national fatigue. Finally, they say, the Brits just lacked will. But in 2002 America had will in abundance, and more money and guns than the British had ever had. Ferguson was challenging us simply to face up to what we already were. In the closing pages of his book, he wrote, “Americans have taken our old role without yet facing the fact that an empire comes with it.” We were, in his view, an empire “that dare not speak its name . . . an empire in denial.”
That empire did not arise overnight. It was, after all, under the cover of American military might that Germany and Japan emerged as prosperous and peaceable democracies. And, especially since the end of the Cold War, the apparatus of American power—the aircraft carriers and fighter wings and Army divisions—has come to encircle most of the planet. As Ferguson notes, a map of the British Royal Navy coaling stations that dotted the globe a century ago looks much like the array of bases the United States maintains today.
An “empire of bases” is what Chalmers Johnson calls it in his new book, “The Sorrows of Empire” (Metropolitan; $25). It is not, for him, an edifying spectacle. Much in Johnson’s account is no different from what might be found in a host of other left-leaning critiques of American power, but the trajectory of his career sets him apart. For decades, Johnson, an Asia specialist, was one of those stock figures of the Cold War: the defense analyst and academic in constant orbit of the C.I.A. Then, late in his career, he began to reconsider his Cold War commitments, particularly in East Asia. The way America garrisoned allied countries like Japan and South Korea put him in mind of the de-facto empire that the Soviets had created in Eastern Europe. Once he made that turn, he never looked back.
By Johnson’s count, in 2001 the United States maintained some seven hundred and twenty-five military installations abroad—an anomalous situation. Foreign troops have never been stationed in this country, and most Americans would probably find the idea of permanent garrisons of German, Mexican, or Indian troops on American soil almost beyond comprehension. And yet in many countries in Europe and East Asia a similar arrangement has been commonplace for generations. A quarter of a million American military personnel (along with a quarter of a million dependents and civilians) are stationed abroad, mostly on the old Cold War frontiers of Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Although, in the last decade, the United States has reduced its military “footprint” in Europe and the Pacific Rim, more bases have sprung up in the new arc of conflict stretching from the Balkans to the Caspian and into Central Asia. Among these are the sprawling Camp Bondsteel, in Kosovo, and the new Camp Stronghold Freedom, in Uzbekistan, each complete with all the amenities of home for the soldiers stationed there and special treaties designed to protect the troops from local law.
President Clinton came to office intending to keep foreign entanglements to a minimum. That isn’t what happened, of course. Despite dire predictions that every military engagement would lead to a quagmire, America found that it could strike with virtual impunity almost anywhere on the globe, and military forays became more common. Back when the superpower rivalry circumscribed America’s ability to use force directly, problems were more likely to be solved through high-stakes diplomacy or covert action. Now there is an overwhelming temptation to play to our strength. America’s diplomatic corps, already menaced by domestic enemies and falling budgets, is no better than those of other great powers. Our military, on the other hand, dwarfs everyone else’s. Hence the progressive militarization of America’s foreign policy.
The trend was accelerated by changes in the structure of the military. The Pentagon had for decades divided the world into a series of regional commands—sometimes known as cincdoms, after the acronym for commander-in-chief, the title held, until recently, by those who command them. (The last of these—centcom, which covers the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the Horn of Africa—was created in 1983.) But a reorganization of the Pentagon in 1986 vastly increased the power of the cincs by having them report directly to the President as well as to the Secretary of Defense, unlike the chiefs of the military’s four services, who report to civilian secretaries. By the late nineties, the officers who led these commands—men like General Wesley Clark, at the European Command; Marine General Anthony Zinni, at centcom; and Admiral Dennis Blair, at Pacific Command—were far more powerful than the various ambassadors who conduct the nation’s diplomatic business in the countries under each cinc’s oversight. Johnson notes that when, in October, 1999, General Pervez Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in Pakistan, President Clinton called in protest and asked that his call be returned. Musharraf called Zinni instead. “Tony,” Musharraf reportedly said, “I want to tell you what I am doing.” So the trend hasn’t been simply a militarization of foreign policy. It has also been a diplomatization of the American military. In the architecture of empire, the cincs functioned like proconsuls or regional managers of Pax Americana, with plenty of money and guns and no little ingenuity.
By the end of the decade, the United States had established two protectorates under the aegis of nato and the U.N., intervened or helped intervene in five countries or provinces (Bosnia, East Timor, Haiti, Kosovo, and Somalia), and practiced some form of gunboat diplomacy against Afghanistan, China, North Korea, Sudan, and, almost constantly, Iraq. These wars were neither defensive nor offensive. They were policing actions, small wars of management—of, in a sense, imperial management, like the “little wars” that were a backdrop to life in Victorian England. Similarly, the United States Treasury worked through the I.M.F. and the World Bank to head off a Mexican financial collapse in 1995, and did much the same thing in 1997 to contain the so-called “Asian flu.” Step by step, America took on the job, often with others but sometimes alone, of enforcing order in almost every corner of the globe.
If America, militarily unchallenged and economically dominant, indeed took on the functions of imperial governance, its empire was, for the most part, loose and consensual. In the past couple of years, however, neo-imperialism, this thing of stealth, politesse, and obliquity, has come to seem, so to speak, too neo. Especially as the war on terror began, hard-liners who were frustrated by Clinton’s bumbling and hesitations saw no reason to deny that America was an imperial power, and a great one: how else to describe a country that had so easily vanquished Afghanistan, once legendary as the graveyard of empires? The only question was whether America would start running its empire with foresight and determination, rather than leaving it to chance, drift, and disaster.
The Bush doctrine, with its tenets of preëmptive war, regime change, and permanent American military primacy, promised a new global order. The best way to think of that order is by analogy with the internal organization of a nation-state. What makes a state a state is its monopoly over the legitimate use of force, which means that citizens don’t have to worry about arming to defend themselves against each other. Instead, they can focus on productive pursuits like raising families, making money, and enjoying their leisure time. In the world of the Bush doctrine, states take the place of citizens. As the President told graduating cadets at West Point in 2002, America intends to keep its “military strengths beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.” In other words, if America has an effective monopoly on the exercise of military force, other countries should be able to set aside the distractions of arming and plotting against each other and put their energies into producing consumer electronics, textiles, tea. What the Bush doctrine calls for—paradoxically, given its proponents—is a form of world government.
The new order envisaged by the Bush doctrine hasn’t quite worked out as it was meant to. That’s because, from the beginning, the White House has acted on the assumption that bold action would make our allies rally behind us and our enemies cower. Building a consensus with our friends before we acted only encouraged quarrelsomeness. The point wasn’t that dictation was superior to consensus; the point was that it created consensus.
Again and again, things didn’t turn out that way. In March, 2002, Dick Cheney, in his only trip abroad as Vice-President before last week, toured Middle Eastern capitals to line up support for the war against Iraq. Foreign leaders used the occasion to denounce the planned attack. A week after Cheney’s return, the Saudis and the Kuwaitis were arranging their first rapprochement with Iraq since the Gulf War. In the months preceding the second Gulf War, a year later, the Administration was castigated for bungled diplomacy with its allies. But the real problem was that, though America could do as it liked, its erstwhile allies didn’t necessarily fall in line.
“Bill Clinton was actually a much more effective imperialist than George W. Bush,” Chalmers Johnson writes darkly. “During the Clinton administration, the United States employed an indirect approach in imposing its will on other nations.” That “indirect approach” might more properly be termed a policy of leading by consensus rather than by dictation. But Johnson is right about its superior efficacy. American power is magnified when it is embedded in international institutions, as leftists have lamented. It is also somewhat constrained, as conservatives have lamented. This is precisely the covenant on which American supremacy has been based. The trouble is that hard-line critics of multilateralism focussed on how that power was constrained and missed how it was magnified.
Conservative ideologues, in calling for an international order in which America would have a statelike monopoly on coercive force, somehow forgot what makes for a successful state. Stable governments rule not by direct coercion but by establishing a shared sense of allegiance. In an old formula, “domination” gives way to “hegemony”—brute force gives way to the deeper power of consent. This is why the classic definition of the state speaks of legitimate force. In a constitutional order, government accepts certain checks on its authority, but the result is to deepen that authority, rather than to diminish it. Legitimacy is the ultimate “force multiplier,” in military argot. And if your aim is to maintain a global order, as opposed to rousting this or that pariah regime, you need all the force multipliers you can get.
The empire-makers of 2002 weakened America’s covert empire because, at a critical level, they didn’t understand how it worked. As Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay note in “America Unbound” (Brookings; $22.95), a new history of Bush’s foreign policy, Administration hawks believe that American global supremacy is possible not only because America is a uniquely just nation but because others around the globe see it as such. The current unipolar state of the world is the best evidence of this: because most countries see American power as being more benign than not, they acquiesce in it. But this acquiescence isn’t irreversible.
In ways that many hawks have been slow to realize, the demise of the Soviet Union has had a paradoxical effect on America’s role in the world. What has made the United States more powerful militarily has made it weaker politically. For half a century, American policymakers had been accustomed to habits of deference from democratic allies in Europe and Asia. Yet fear of the Soviets was responsible for much of that deference. That’s why, in the decade after the Cold War, the makers of our foreign policy recognized that America could best protect its supremacy by making sure that smaller countries felt, even in some small measure, that they had been “dealt in.” This was one function of those balky international organizations, and not the least important objective of international diplomacy.
The current Administration has, of course, taken a different tack. As Fareed Zakaria observed last year, after speaking to government officials in dozens of countries around the world, almost every country that has had dealings with the Bush Administration has felt humiliated by it. America isn’t powerful because people like us: our power is a product of dollars and guns. But when people think that America’s unique role in the world is basically legitimate, that power becomes less costly to exert and to sustain. People around the world have respected and admired American power because of the way America has acted. If it acts differently, the perceptions of American benevolence can start to ebb—and, to judge from any public-opinion poll from abroad over the last year, that’s essentially what has happened. When it comes to political capital, too, this is an Administration with a weakness for deficit spending.
There are signs that the Administration may be capable of adjusting its course. Last month, James A. Baker III was dispatched as an envoy to Europe, ostensibly to negotiate debt restructuring but with an unstated brief of fence-mending. On the Korean peninsula, where our initial “no deals” posturing proved futile, the United States has been working with Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea, and offering North Korea a “multilateral security pledge.” President Bush now speaks about the virtues of “a collective voice trying to convince a leader to change behavior.”
Not all conservatives have been chastened by the setbacks of unilateralism; some have been stoked to greater outrage and resolve. This much is clear from “An End to Evil” (Random House; $25.95), by David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, who helped coin the phrase “axis of evil,” and Richard Perle, a former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. Rising disapproval from abroad doesn’t lead Frum and Perle to question their policies. It just confirms them in the belief that America has even more enemies than it realized.
“An End to Evil” is a call to stay the course in an unremitting battle, and to resist the slide toward appeasement and defeatism. “We have to cast off once and for all the 1970s cynicism that sneered from the back of the classroom at the joiner and volunteer,” the authors write in a typical passage. Their fury is directed almost as much against America’s internal enemies as its external ones. And the fury directed abroad is boundless. The book conveys a general sense that America is at war with Islam itself, anywhere and everywhere: the contemporary Muslim world, with the exception of a few irenic clerics and a few secular intellectuals, is depicted as one great cauldron of hate, murder, obscurantism, and deceit. If our Muslim adversaries are not to destroy Western civilization, we must gird for more battles.
The authors advise toppling more regimes in the Middle East, treating the French and the Saudis as the enemies they are, squeezing China, and launching an air and naval blockade against North Korea. At home, they propose aggressive reform in the State Department, the C.I.A., and the armed forces. “Friends and Foes,” the penultimate chapter, turns out to discuss only foes. In sum, the prescription amounts to war, cold or hot, against pretty much everyone, everywhere, all the time—until everyone relents. And, if that doesn’t do the trick, more war.
The significance of “An End to Evil” is as much in its tone as in its policies. An illuminating contrast can be made with a book published a year ago, William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan’s “The War Over Iraq,” a curiously sunny brief for regime change in Iraq as the cornerstone of a new Pax Americana. The Victorian cant of empire always had a tone of mastery, rather than bellicosity, and the talk of 2002 had just that air of masterful confidence. Great powers, after all, are normally custodians of peace and stability. Why shouldn’t they be? They’re already on top. Historically, it has been “revisionist” powers that have had an interest in upending settled arrangements and sowing unrest. Like Wilhelmine Germany at the start of the last century, they stir up trouble and look for ways to overturn a world system that has held them down. For Perle and Frum, America is the revisionist power in the midst of its own imperium.
In this latest turn of neoconservative thought, the trappings of optimism and the hopeful talk of a liberal-democratic domino effect have been abandoned. Where Ferguson is all cool confidence, Perle and Frum are fire and foreboding. Theirs are not policies that would lead to the end of evil; they might well, in the long run, lead to the end of empire.
Hard-liners like Perle and Frum would do well to remember that America began as an empire, formally and officially. It wasn’t our empire, of course; it was Britain’s. And the story of how Britain lost its first empire may be more instructive for Americans today than how Britain found itself without its second. Americans like to flatter themselves that the seeds of independence were planted with the first spades into the earth of Massachusetts and Virginia. In fact, during the century before the Revolution, Britain’s North American colonies were, by most measures, becoming more Anglicized, more firmly tied to Britain’s monarchy and trade. (The archetype of American homespun virtues, Ben Franklin, spent much of his life trying to make a name in London and find a place for himself in the British establishment.) Britain lost its North American empire through a common mistake: it misunderstood the nature of its power. In particular, it confused the power it had on paper—its claims to sovereignty and dominion—with the nature of the control it exercised on the coast of North America.
Britain’s hold in North America was, at heart, a consensual arrangement. Over more than a century, the home government had reduced most of the settlements to Crown colonies with royally appointed governors. But London did not exercise what historians call government in depth. It had little sway in the family and business networks that held the colonies together. In fact, outside a few port towns, the Crown had to rely on local bigwigs—the New England merchants and Virginia planters—to wield authority in its name.
For years, the status quo persisted. The menace posed by Britain’s imperial rival, France, helped keep the colonies in line. But by the early seventeen-sixties Britain had successfully prosecuted a world war with France, a conflict that began when a twenty-two-year-old lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia named George Washington attacked French troops not far from the site of modern-day Pittsburgh. The conflict quickly spread from North America to the German states, India, and the Caribbean. The Seven Years’ War—which the colonists called the French and Indian War—left Britain the master of North America and the dominant imperial power around the globe, with the most formidable navy the world had ever seen. Still, the war had been costly, and London suddenly looked on America with an eye to just how much wealth it could extract from it.
The result was a dozen years of contention over taxes, which exploded into arguments over principle, and the loss of Britain’s most valuable imperial possessions. Britain believed that the reins of monarchical allegiance would keep its colonies secure; but when it pulled back on those reins, they fell apart. The truth is that, once Britain got to the point of holding on to its colonists by force, it had already all but lost them. Vengeful France, using its runner-up navy to such effect at Yorktown, merely provided the coup de grâce. Britain thought it was at its strongest. Yet by knocking out the rival that drove the colonies into its arms, and then changing the rules, Britain had actually become weaker.
Historical analogies are never perfect. America’s power is far too great to be easily or quickly dislodged. But there are lessons to be learned here, and not just about the French gift for making trouble for great nations at the apex of their power.
-[i] Joshua Micah Marshall[/i]
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| Vietnam Hero Leads Fight To Challenge Bush |
| 01.26.04 (7:04 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush avoided serving in Vietnam while better men served and died. Dubya was AWOL in a drunken state due to substance abuse of alcohol and drugs and went missing for 2 years, partying while others died. Bush isn't fit to send men to fight and die: Bush is a liar and a coward which is why many veterans oppose Bush.[/b]
[b]Vietnam hero leads fight to challenge Bush[/b], http://observer.guardian.co.u...,6903,1130575,00.html
John Kerry walked into the hall to the sound of rapturous cheering. In a casual checked shirt, he smiled and waved to hundreds of adoring fans.
The Vietnam veteran looked at ease with the welcome. Surrounding him were fellow former soldiers who were hosting this campaign appearance in the New Hampshire city of Manchester. Some of them had served under Kerry in his gunboat in the Mekong delta. He hugged them and raised their fists in the air. 'Kerry! Kerry! Kerry!' they chanted.
The object of their worship beamed a confident grin. 'It takes my breath away,' he said. After six months of withering criticism and under-performance, Kerry's push for the White House has finally hit top gear. The Democratic senator from Massachusetts is starting to look like a man who could be president.
Kerry, 60, is now the frontrunner many said he should have been along. He emerged from a stunning victory in the Iowa caucus last week with the momentum that should see him win this week's New Hampshire primary - a tested proving ground for presidential candidates.
Kerry's rise has been mirrored by the spectacular collapse of former Vermont governor Howard Dean's campaign. Only a month ago Dean led Kerry in New Hampshire opinion polls by 30 points. Now he trails by 10. The former family doctor who won American hearts and minds with his straight-talking style is now battling for his political life.
But this is by no means a two-man fight. The New Hampshire primary is one of the most enthralling in recent years. Southern senator John Edwards emerged from Iowa as a 'new Bill Clinton', coming from nowhere to take the second place.
New Hampshire too is where retired General Wesley Clark enters the fray. Clark wears the anti-war mantle - a potential goldmine of votes as the conflict in Iraq drags on.
All four are playing for the highest possible stakes in a potentially career-threatening contest for the future of the Democratic Party. Last week, after brutally critical adverts filled the airwaves of Iowa, an uneasy truce settled between them.
At a key debate all candidates shied away from scoring points against each other. But as the campaign rolls on, one thing is certain - the peace will not last.
In the early hours of last Tuesday as the plane carrying Dean, his campaign workers and the media pack lifted off into the night sky for New Hampshire, one Dean aide let out a heartfelt sigh and said: 'Well, we are out of Iowa.'
Barely. Dean's defeat there was devastating. A true political train wreck. A late slip in the polls had shown all four candidates neck and neck. But when the results came in Dean was third, with less than half the support of Kerry.
Aides termed it a 'murder-suicide' caused by the war between Dean and rival Dick Gephardt. Faced with having to win Iowa, Gephardt went negative on Dean. Dean followed.
The electorate, sick of the negative campaigning, switched to Kerry and Edwards. As a result Gephardt's campaign imploded - he has now dropped out of the race - and Dean's was almost brought down with it. Worse was to come. In conceding defeat, Dean gave a now infamously over-the-top speech, labelled the 'screech heard around the world'.
It was a terrible mistake. America sees the office of President as sacrosanct. Dean's yelling performance was called 'unpresidential' even by his own supporters. He has paid dearly for it. 'It is incredible. Dean has been losing like a point an hour in the polls,' laughed a staffer in a rival campaign.
It has forced a dramatic image rethink just days before the New Hampshire vote. The 55-year-old has toned down his rhetoric. Gone are attacks on rivals. Dean's wife, Judy Steinberg, gave her first ever television interview. She sat, holding hands with Dean, and spoke of her love for her husband and her family life. Dean even made a guest appearance on the David Letterman late-night talk show, poking fun at himself in a comedy sketch.
It is all designed to erase a series of gaffes over the past weeks and repair Dean's image as out-of-control. 'It is the same ideas. Just packaged differently,' one aide said.
It could work. 'No one can write Dean off. That's not yet possible,' said Professor Kenneth Warren, a political science expert at St Louis University. Dean's saving grace is simple - money. His amazing fundraising efforts over the past six months mean he can afford to stay in the race for weeks ahead. The fanaticism of his grassroots campaign also gives him the logistics across the country to do so. This is the '50 state strategy' and only Clark, capitalising on his celebrity, has any equivalent. Dean just needs to remain credible in New Hampshire. In the end, the presidential nominee is decided by the number of delegates each candidate wins in all 50 states. New Hampshire, despite its huge media value, is tiny. Dean is still strong in populous states such as New York and California.
And his supporters still believe. Last week they crammed into a community hall in the town of Lebanon. They arrived an hour early and greeted Dean's appearance with a deafening roar. 'We still believe in you, Howard,' cried one man, prompting a standing ovation.
Dean stuck to his guns but toned down his speech. He concentrated not on the war but on health care, jobs and his fiscally conservative record in Vermont. 'I am not just campaigning to be President. I am campaigning against a system where politicians will say anything to get elected,' he said.
He had his supporters convinced. 'I am sticking with him,' said Dick Nelson, a Lebanon publishing worker.
But that might not be enough. Dean's campaign may have been reduced to its core activist support. The momentum is with Kerry's camp. Kerry is the opposite of Dean. He is the Washington insider, who has served in the Senate for 18 years. He preaches a familiar brand of Democratic liberalism, long associated with the type of New England family from which he hails. He has pitched himself as 'electable', a swipe at Dean's perceived grassroots revolution.
His weakness is his support for the Iraq war. But his strength lies in another war: Vietnam. Kerry was a decorated soldier who returned to become one of the anti-war movement's most eloquent speakers. He is a hero to veterans and peace protesters alike. It is an image he capitalises on. His TV commercials feature testimony from his former comrades-in-arms. They speak movingly of how his leadership saved their lives. Such adverts are thought to have won Kerry vital support in Iowa.
The same technique is now in full swing in New Hampshire. Kerry's camp has a database of more than 30,000 veterans in the state. That is a massive voting block. Usually criticised as a stiff public speaker, he is at ease when talking of Vietnam. 'The heroes are the ones whose names are on the walls,' he said 'Those of us who came home were just lucky.'
As Kerry bounds on to the stage, he is followed by Max Cleland, a wheelchair-bound veteran who lost both legs and an arm in combat but went on to become a senator. Kerry hugged Cleland and praised his bravery. Cleland returned the favour. 'We veterans love John Kerry for many reasons. But the best thing we can call him is brother,' Cleland said. It was powerful, media-friendly stuff. 'I applaud you,' one woman told Kerry. 'You are the next President.'
That was a bit premature, even for Kerry's rejuvenated campaign. New Hampshire is a crowded pond this year and Kerry's new status as frontrunner makes him as much a target as a favourite. And there are other big fish here.
Just eight weeks ago Senator John Edwards was talking to New Hampshire crowds numbering just a few dozen. No longer. Last week, at a meeting on the campus of Dartmouth College, security guards had to close the doors before a dangerous crush developed. Scores milled around outside, straining to hear Edwards speak.
'We can build one America that all of us can be part of,' he intoned in his Southern drawl. Edwards has the same charm and easy manner as Clinton and has a relentlessly sunny attitude. He works crowds brilliantly and his good looks earned him wolf whistles from the students. At 49, he is young too. A lawyer-turned-politician who amassed a huge fortune by defending victims' rights against the some of the biggest companies and institutions in America.
Iowa has given him enough credibility to survive a low placing in New Hampshire until the campaign hits the South on 3 February. South Carolina is Edwards's birthplace. He is a senator from neighbouring North Carolina.
Doing well in the South is his ultimate weapon. It is a Republican stronghold and north-eastern liberals - like Kerry and Dean - traditionally fare badly there. Edwards says he can win the South, not just in the primaries, but against George Bush too. 'The South is not George Bush's backyard. The South is my backyard,' he said.
But he is not the only Southern card in the pack. Wesley Clark is still in the game. The 59-year-old was born in Illinois but raised in Arkansas. He too can put on a Southern drawl when he needs to. Unlike Edwards and Kerry, he was anti-war. Unlike Dean, he is a former military commander who is hard to fault on national security. And like Kerry, Clark is a decorated Vietnam veteran. Clark skipped Iowa, aiming to kickstart his campaign here. That could prove costly. Clark advisers had reckoned on facing Dean. Instead Kerry and Edwards emerged as the hot candidates. It has left Clark facing multiple attacks. He has appeared shaky in televised debates, fumbling questions on abortion and looking uncertain on other issues. Critics say Clark has too little experience for office - although he claims that allows him to steal the outsider label from Dean.
But can this candidate for all seasons win it? Clark is third in most New Hampshire polls. If he can beat Dean to second place, he will emerge with new momentum and challenge Edwards across the South. He could compete with Kerry too, vying for the support of veterans.
Clark can still attract a crowd. He campaigned energetically last week. At each meeting hundreds turned out. Some were vociferous in their choice of which Vietnam veteran they preferred. 'Kerry voted for the war in Iraq,' said Brian Hardy. 'I don't buy what Kerry's selling.'
Clark's message is simple. He will restore America's position in the world and resolve the conflict in Iraq. 'I promise you I would not get into a mess like this again,' he said. Behind him a campaign slogan read: 'New Hampshire is Clark country.' That remains to be seen.
For the moment, everything is still to play for. Polls are scrutinised endlessly but - as in Iowa - they can lie. New Hampshire voters are notoriously volatile, especially in primaries. 'Remember, all these voters are Democrats first, so they have less loyalty to one particular candidate. That's why polls swing so much,' Warren said.
It appears New Hampshire will not prove decisive. The four main candidates are likely to survive until the first 'super Tuesday' on 3 February, when seven states vote. Then comes a steady flow of states until the main Super Tuesday on 2 March, when 10 states, including delegate-rich New York and California, go to the polls.
All along will be a blur of stump speeches, critical adverts and endless criss-crossing of this vast country. The battle could even end up going to the floor of the Democratic convention itself. The one person that would suit best is Bush. He is already campaigning in key swing states, such as New Mexico last week.
His State of the Union address was carefully pitched as an election rally. So was a recent speech to an anti-abortion protest. Bush's campaign coffers have already swollen to more than $100 million. Republican advisers watch the Democratic contest with glee. Whoever emerges from the bloody fight, Bush will be waiting for him.
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| America's Disingenuous War on Terror |
| 01.25.04 (7:12 am) [edit] |
"Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man has a right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has quarrel with mine, although I have none with him?" - [i]Blaise Pascal [/i]
[b]Disregarding the World's New Rules: America's Disingenuous War on Terror[/b], http://antiwar.com/deliso/?ar...
In significant ways, the post-9/11 world is unlike any before it. In previous epochs, when empires that made all the rules and made all others play by them were defeated, their powers of domination were merely transferred to a successor. Today, however, there exists no potential usurper that could possibly replace America's hold on empire. This reality has instead led to a sidelong reshaping of the very structure of the rules of international, and indeed, intranational relations. Thus the age of asymmetric threats, suitcase bombs, computer hacking, bacterial warfare, and terrorism in general. These are not the kind of threats that America has prepared for militarily. And, since the US economy since Eisenhower has been enhanced by a military-industrial complex geared to producing goods for massive conventional warfare, these are not the kind of threats that the economy has prepared for, either.
[b]Purposefully Stalled Reform[/b]
Indeed, the military is in need of reform, and the top brass know it. 9/11 was a boon for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: in the days leading up to it, he had been prepared to announce a humiliating failure in his attempts to reform the military. The reason? He had come up against strong institutionalized pressure to retain bases, troop sizes, and contracts, even when they were clearly counterproductive and indulgent, because congressmen are by the nature of their business forced to lobby for their districts' corporations. When it comes down to it, the entrenched mid-level legislators have as formidable a hold on power as do a Bush or a Rumsfeld.
Despite the current plague of knee-jerk patriotism, the kind that precludes any decrease in defense spending as being anti-American, radical changes in the defense structure – much more radical than Rumsfeld's boldest initiatives – are imperative for dealing with the new and reshaped structure of the rules. Yet threats that require finesse, diplomacy, human intelligence, and subtlety in dealing with them are not part of the American way. Whoever would have once advocated speaking softly has long been bludgeoned by the wielder of the big stick.
[b]A Fundamental Disconnect[/b]
The disastrous invasion of Iraq is just further proof of Washington's willful ignorance in this regard. For no matter how "smart" the bombs, or how flawless the technology used, this war was still the territorial invasion and conquest of a country – publicly justified by recourse to the traditional rhetoric of Modernity – of the political structure of states, the rights of their citizens, and all the other values of the Enlightenment.
The American and British governments' case for war in Iraq disingenuously linked Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the al Qaeda network in general. As everyone knew even before the war, there never were any such links. The motivating factors behind Saddam's belligerence and that of the terrorists were fundamentally different. Ironically, Saddam was always much closer to the Western mindset – he wanted to protect his state from internal fragmentation and outside attack, as does the West, and he repeatedly took recourse to nationalism in exhorting his citizens to defend the motherland, just as we do. It's not difficult, therefore, to see how Saddam was once our friend; his rhetoric was basically Western, as was Iraq's participation in the global economy before 1980. Saddam Hussein reflected, in the form of the traditional enemy, just the distorted figure of the West, the realized failure of its stated values.
As for the terrorists, they aimed at something completely different – to strike a symbolic blow at the heart of the Western-shaped global world order. Yet if Saddam represented the style, they, ironically, represent the substance of the West, using the tools of globalization against the system itself, in support of a completely different rhetoric. It is a bizarre reversal of reality that has ominous implications for the future.
[b]Inapplicable Revenge[/b]
What is the real relation between 9/11 and Iraq, then? The former was a shock, a moral defeat, a symbolic challenge. The latter was the misguided and anachronistic response to it, from an America that has clearly failed to adapt to the new reality. Of course, the base and banal material interests alluded to above have a lot to do with explaining why the war occurred. However, on another level, the war itself could not have gone forward in the absence of a tragic misunderstanding: a sufficient number of people needed to be deceived into believing that the old rules (territorial war between states, the ascendancy of a specific political system, etc.) still held sway rather than the actual, new rules (the rules of terrorism, as seen in 9/11).
Up until now, the Western world has seen a reshaping of the structure of the rules in various cases, but never through human agency. All the major catastrophes that brought earlier civilizations to their knees – earthquakes, volcanoes, plagues, and the like – had their causes in mysterious natural forces. While these events still take place, there is no longer attached to them this ineffable causal factor, one that early cultures often used to justify religion. In the age of positivism and Modernity, we have lost this response to mysterious phenomena of this sort, and indeed that relation to the natural world.
Maybe terrorism is restoring this ancient relation. After all, we are mystified in the same way; we are baffled by "irrational" terrorist violence (but not at the clean, "smart," modern way that America bombs foreign countries). But terrorism doesn't have to make sense, just exist.
[b]9/11 Reassessed: Derrida on the Historical Applications of Terrorism[/b]
Perhaps the most valuable contribution that French philosopher Jacques Derrida has made to our understanding of the post-9/11 world bears relation to this. Derrida poses an interesting question: do the seminal events of 9/11 mark the beginning of the war on terror – as is so often asserted – or rather, the end of something else?
Vassar College philosophy professor Giovanna Borradori interviewed Derrida after the attacks. She transmits his views on the historical application of 9/11 as such:
[i]"…if we look at 9/11 from the standpoint of its continuity with the Cold War, it is easy to see that the hijackers who turned against the United States had been trained by the United States during the era of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan… possibly, said Derrida, 9/11 could be interpreted as the implosive finale of the Cold War, killed by its own convolutions and contradictions[/i]."
Unsurprisingly, the US government is not eager to explore this lineage, as to do so would necessitate a richly deserved criminal investigation into the historical interventionist policies that brought about such a disaster, and which brought Third World hatred of America to a breaking point. Of course, a great many writers have explored this topic already, refusing to bow to governmental pressure and denial of the facts. But this will never deliver the justice it should, because events are moving too fast – and especially because the US government is pushing them so hard. One clear motive for the Iraq invasion becomes, in this sense, attempting to cover up embarrassing investigations by the disastrous creation of new interventions. These in turn yield their own embarrassing investigations, destined however to remain unfinished by the perpetual creation of new interventions. The process could go on to infinity, were American power infinite. Yet it is not. Eventually, the reckoning will come.
[b]The Real Threat: Derrida on Terrorism's Territorial and Non-Territorial Aspects[/b]
Derrida's second point refers obliquely to the change to the structure of the rules we noted above. Again perceiving 9/11 in its historical relation to the Cold War, he posits that as a spectacular, specifically territorial event, it marks the finale of the territory-based wars of the past. This is not to say, of course, that similar attacks will not still occur; we have recently seen symbolic attacks on Jewish and British physical objects in Istanbul, for example. Yet this is not the worst danger of terrorism for Derrida – rather, it is the non-territorial variety, that which makes it truly global and truly sinister. He states:
[i]"…September 11 is still part of the archaic theater of violence aimed at striking the imagination. One day it might be said: 'September 11' – those were the ('good') old days of the last war. Things were still of the order of the gigantic: visible and enormous[/i]!
[i]…(however) nanotechnologies of all sorts are so much more powerful and invisible, uncontrollable, capable of creeping in everywhere. They are the micrological rivals of microbes and bacteria. Yet our unconscious is already aware of this; it knows it, and that's what's scary[/i]."
The US government knows it too, but admitting as much would not reassure the people. Therefore it must substitute the old enemy, and the old war – a specific villain (Saddam) in a fixed place (Iraq) – for the inescapable reality that the rules have been changed. Without an Iraq War thrown into the mix, and without the media whipped up into a subsequent frenzy, the government would have had to publicly confront the unpleasant reality of the new world disorder on two fronts: first, an historical one (the disastrous results of a policy of massive global intervention); and second, the philosophical one (the reality that the "war on terror" is a farce due to terrorism's very non-territorial and globalized nature).
Of course, neither would have reassured the public. Yet the people have a right to know – now more than ever. It is the US government's fundamental dishonesty and willful ignorance of the facts that are harmful to the world's health.
- [i]Christopher Deliso is a freelance writer and Balkan correspondent for Antiwar.com, UPI, and private European analysis firms. He has lived and traveled widely in the Balkans, southeastern Europe and Turkey, and holds a master's degree with distinction in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University. In the past year, he has reported from many countries, including Serbia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Greece, the Republic of Georgia and the Turkey-Iraq border. Mr. Deliso currently lives in Macedonia, and is involved with projects to generate international interest and tourism there.[/i]
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| Iraq: The Case for War Crumbles |
| 01.25.04 (7:07 am) [edit] |
[b]Iraq: The Case for War Crumbles[/b], http://antiwar.com/orig/hunsi...
Contrary to what most Americans believe, the U.S. is in deep trouble in Iraq, and its policies are adrift. Especially ominous are problems surrounding the June 30 plan for elections. If direct elections are held, the Shi’ites, with 60% of the population, will prevail. If, however, their representation is watered down by resort to closed caucuses, as the U.S. wants, the Shi’ites will turn to violence. Either way, tensions among all religious and ethnic factions are mounting. Iraq is edging closer to a civil war, and chaos could engulf the entire region.
Whether the UN can help to stabilize the situation remains unclear. Much depends on how much real independence and power it is granted, if any. Although Iraq is not beyond positive solutions, many knowledgeable observers worry that a UN intervention may be too little, too late. Time is running out, and the situation seems to deteriorate a bit more with each passing day.
To keep a lid on the violence, a new secret police force is being planned by the CIA. It will draw upon feared Mukhabarat (intelligence) operatives, the very ones who bolstered Saddam Hussein’s thuggish regime. "They’re clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in Vietnam," said Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of CIA counter-terrorism. (The Phoenix program was investigated by a Senate committee in the mid-1970s after tens of thousands in Vietnam had allegedly been kidnapped, tortured and murdered.) As battalion commander Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman has remarked, "With a heavy dose of fear and violence and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them."
Not everyone regards a new Phoenix program as compatible with official promises of democracy. The real intent seems to be to continue the occupation by other means. "The presence of a powerful secret police, loyal to the Americans, will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the U.S. wants to set," said John Pike, director of the Washington-based institute, Global Security. Under these circumstances, "the new Iraqi government will reign but not rule."
Meanwhile the death toll in Iraq continues to rise. Over 500 American troops have now lost their lives in combat along with tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens. Less widely reported are the non-fatal American casualties. "Thousands of US soldiers are coming home with their faces blown off, or missing limbs, facing a lifetime in a wheel chair," writes respected commentator Juan Cole, professor at the University of Michigan. "The result is large numbers of permanently maimed vets, who have largely been hidden away from public view." The downing of U.S. helicopters, the brazen attacks on Coalition Authority headquarters, and the continuing failure to restore basic services like water and electricity point to a deteriorating situation. "I’d say there is increasing evidence that the US is not in control in Iraq," states Cole, "and that the place may well be headed toward being a failed state for the near term. When, 9 or 10 months after an army conquers a place, its HQ is not safe from attack, this is always a bad sign."
So far the American public has been tolerant of administration policies, but a shift in support may be just a disaster away. "If things are going well, people aren’t bothered that we haven’t found weapons in Iraq," says William Schneider, a public opinion expert at the American Enterprise Institute. But if a bombing claimed a large number of American troops, or if radical Islamic Shi’ites took control, "overnight people will say, ‘Wait a minute, what are we doing there?’"
Erosion of support would not be surprising given the way that the case for the invasion is crumbling. What antiwar critics insisted before the war has been confirmed at every turn. This January, for example, within the course of one week, the Bush administration had to face the following:
* [b]David Kay resigned [/b]after his inspection team, with nine months to search and a budget of $600 million, [i][b]failed to turn up any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction[/b][/i]. (NYT, 1/08/04)
* The [b]Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute [/b]issued a sharply critical report stating that the war on Iraq was a distraction from America’s real security interests and that it had brought the U.S. army "[i][b]near the breaking point[/b][/i]." (WP, 1/13/04)
* The [b]Washington Post[/b] published an extensive front-page report that "[i][b]Iraq’s Arsenal Was Only On Paper[/b][/i]." Since the first Gulf War, illegal weapons "[i][b]never got past the planning stage[/b][/i]." (WP, 1/07/04)
* A study was released by the [b]Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [/b]stating that "[i][b]administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile program[/b][/i]" by treating possibilities as fact and "[i][b]misrepresenting inspectors’ findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire[/b][/i]." (Boston Globe, 1/09/04)
* George Bush’s [b]former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill [/b]revealed that the president took office fully intending to invade Iraq. In January and February of 2001, at the first meetings of the National Security Council, Bush asked his advisors to find a pretext. "[i][b]It was all about finding a way to do it[/b][/i]," states O’Neill, a life-long Republican and former Alcoa CEO. "[i][b]That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this[/b][/i].’" (Interview, CBS News, 1/11/04)
The O’Neill revelations are the most serious. Invading another country without provocation and without legitimate authority (in this case, explicit authorization from the UN Security Council) is the textbook definition of aggressive war. And aggressive war is a crime that has held a special place in international law as well as in the historic just-war tradition. As Robert Jackson, the American prosecutor at Nuremberg, put it: "Our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."
According to the [b]Nuremberg Tribunal[/b], a war of aggression is "[i][b]the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole[/b][/i]."
If the fog of war is not soon lifted from our hearts and minds, one fears that in the not-too-distant future, we can expect to face additional wars that are equally grievous and illegitimate. Given the potential for (nuclear) catastrophe, they could make Iraq look like that "walk in the park" which pro-war forces told us to expect.
[i]by George Hunsinger[/i]
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| Dubya is the Biggest Corporate Whore in America's History |
| 01.24.04 (7:40 am) [edit] |
Dubya is on record as the biggest corporate whore in America's history ... Check out The [i]Center for American Progress [/i]for the facts on http://www.americanprogress.o... .
[b]Dubya's Stump Speech[/b], http://www.thenation.com/doc....
George W. Bush's State of the Union speech clearly signaled that he plans to run as a wartime, prosperity candidate. By setting the agenda this way, he is trying to force the Democrats to argue why one of them would make a better Commander in Chief and would be better at keeping a vibrant economy going.
To defend this program, Bush once again had to distort it, presenting the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq as a global coalition effort to enforce UN sanctions. He trotted out the mythic threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, except now reality tempered the lie. Gone was the nuclear capacity that threatened mushroom clouds over New York; now Iraq's danger was that it had "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of [concealed] equipment"--not quite on a par with last year's warnings of imminent Armageddon. Explaining why the "war on terrorism" must continue, he conflated terrorist attacks in Bali, Jakarta and elsewhere with the conflict in Iraq--although all evidence suggests that Saddam Hussein, while a brutal dictator, maintained no working relationship with Al Qaeda. In one of the rare moments during the speech when reason prevailed in the chamber, a small round of applause broke out when Bush said--as a prelude to calling for their renewal--that "key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year."
On the domestic side, Bush proposes to take his already extreme policies even further, with permanent tax cuts for the wealthy placing a straitjacket on the budget and making any real domestic initiatives impossible. To give the appearance of caring about soaring healthcare costs, he again urged tax deductions for healthcare expenses and vowed to defend his prescription-drug bill. But that plan, a shameless payoff to drug companies, actually prohibits Medicare from negotiating a better price for seniors. The result, as Consumers Union reports, is that seniors will pay more for their drugs.
Bush hailed his education reforms and spoke compellingly about educating every child. In fact, he has been blasted by educators across the country for shackling school systems with arbitrary tests and standards and shortchanging schools on funds. As part of his empty "Jobs for the 21st Century" label, the President promised more money for community colleges, the very institutions taking it on the chin from the state fiscal crises on which he has turned his back.
Most remarkable, Bush celebrated the economy, claiming that permanent tax cuts will create more jobs and that his budget will "cut the deficit in half over the next five years." The truth is that as many as 3 million jobs have been lost since Bush took office, and according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Bush's budget claims are "essentially an accounting fiction," with the true deficit calculated to rise from $374 billion last year to $500 billion in 2009.
Bush's final remarks were clearly calculated to appeal to his conservative base. Calling for doubling federal funding for abstinence education and for passing laws that would lead to greater funding of religious groups providing social services, he saved his strongest, though carefully hedged, comments for gay marriage. Eschewing the "g"-word and including a vague call to respect individual dignity, Bush nonetheless gave his religious-right supporters what they crave, signaling that he would support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
Although the speech was intended to highlight the President's "homeland" concerns, his domestic menu suffered in comparison with the heated rhetoric dished up on war. Bush will gesture on schools, jobs and healthcare, but he'll run as a wartime President, wrapped in the flag, invoking the courage of our soldiers, scorning his opponents as unwilling to stand the test. High-end tax cuts and pre-emptive war remain this President's platform. The rest is packaging. And this fall, Americans will decide whether to stay that reckless course.
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| A Million Here ... A Billion There ... For Halliburton |
| 01.24.04 (7:33 am) [edit] |
[b]A million here, a billion there...[/b]
Halliburton has fired two employees http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin... of its KBR subsidiary who allegedly took $6 million in kickbacks from a Kuwaiti subcontractor, the company admitted today, after the Wall Street Journal broke the news. "The kickback allegations involve KBR's contract to supply U.S. Army troops in Iraq, not its separate contract to rebuild Iraqi oil facilities and deliver gasoline to civilians. Pentagon auditors are seeking a criminal probe into findings that KBR and Kuwaiti firm Altanmia Marketing Co. overcharged by $61 million for fuel deliveries." This comes just a week after the latest Iraq-related sweetheart contract for Halliburton, $1.2 billion http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/p... in taxpayer dough to retrofit that country's refineries, repair pipelines and boost oil production.
[b]Halliburton Tells Pentagon Workers Took Kickbacks to Award Projects in Iraq[/b], http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
WASHINGTON -- Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL - News) has told the Pentagon that two employees took kickbacks valued at up to $6 million in return for awarding a Kuwaiti-based company with lucrative work supplying U.S. troops in Iraq (news - web sites), Friday's Wall Street Journal reported.
The disclosure is the first firm indication of corruption involving U.S.- funded projects in Iraq and raises new questions about Halliburton's dealings there. The company's work already is being scrutinized because of accusations that the U.S. government was overcharged for gasoline under another controversial contract.
Halliburton has strenuously defended its Iraq work as fairly priced and free of taint. A discovery of kickbacks could expose the company to hefty fines and other punishments such as potential fraud charges. At the least, contracting experts say, Halliburton will be required to reimburse the money.
Any blow could be softened by the fact that Halliburton itself disclosed the misconduct to the Pentagon inspector general's office this week. That disclosure came just days after the top Defense Department auditor asked the office to investigate whether Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root overcharged for fuel deliveries by more than $61 million.
The latest revelation, though, is sure to increase the already intense scrutiny Halliburton has received from congressional Democrats, some of whom charge that the Houston-based company benefited from political favoritism in securing lucrative work in Iraq. The news also is likely to further raise suspicions abroad that Iraq reconstruction work is largely benefiting U.S. companies and their employees.
[i]Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter Neil King Jr. contributed to this report[/i].
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| Ex-U.S. Arms Hunter Kay Says No Stockpiles in Iraq |
| 01.24.04 (7:30 am) [edit] |
[b]Ex-U.S. Arms Hunter Kay Says No Stockpiles in Iraq[/b], http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Kay, who stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for weapons of mass destruction, said on Friday he does not believe there were any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.
"I don't think they existed," Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said.
Kay said he believes most of what is going to be found in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has been found and that the hunt will become more difficult once America turns over governing the country to the Iraqis.
The United States went to war against Baghdad last year citing a threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. No actual banned arms have been found.
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| General Strangelove Says Wars Are "Useful" |
| 01.23.04 (7:06 am) [edit] |
[b]General Strangelove[/b]: One amongst many of the crazy loons who have lied us into War actually says that wars are "[i][b]useful[/b][/i]"?
Why doesn't Congress demand this war-hawks's resignation? Perhaps Schoomaker has forgotten that war is not a game-- and that [b]men shouldn't die [/b]in order to fine-tune and test-out the Pentagon's over-bloated military industrial complex! The fact that the neocon Rumsfeld hasn't loudly contradicted and fired Schoomaker already shows just how scary and ghoulish these neocon neo-nazis really are!
[b]Wars 'useful', says US army chief[/b], http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...
[b]The head of the United States army has said that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have provided a "tremendous focus" for the military[/b].
General Peter Schoomaker said in an interview with AP news agency that the wars had allowed the army to instil its soldiers with a "warrior ethos".
But the general, who became chief of staff in August, denied warmongering saying the army must be ready to fight.
He also said he doubted recruiting more troops was a solution to army stress.
"You aren't stronger because you have more people," he said, adding that expanding the army was similar to pouring water on sand.
Many senior military figures have expressed concern about "overstretch", a problem which has become particularly acute in post-war situations like Iraq which require more troops than combat.
But General Schoomaker says the answer could be to expand combat strength by freeing troops from other assignments.
'Silver lining'
General Schoomaker said the attacks on America in September 2001 and subsequent events had given the US army a rare opportunity to change.
"There is a huge silver lining in this cloud," he said.
"War is a tremendous focus... Now we have this focusing opportunity, and we have the fact that [terrorists] have actually attacked our homeland, which gives it some oomph."
He said it was no use having an army that did nothing but train.
"There's got to be a certain appetite for what the hell we exist for," he said.
"I'm not warmongering, the fact is we're going to be called and really asked to do this stuff."
[b]Yes you are a warmonger, Schoomaker: you're also an asshole![/b]
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| Osama bin Laden Captured? Is He Being Held For An OCTOBER Surprise? |
| 01.23.04 (6:54 am) [edit] |
Unconfirmed reports are that Osama bin Laden has been captured?
If so, is he being held for an OCTOBER surprise just before the November election? Are we again being manipulated in order that we vote on the basis of emotional stunts and cynical ploys, instead of on the Bush administration's lousy track-record?
This is at least ONE VOTER that won't be fraudulently manipulated by Dubya!
[b]Report: bin Laden held[/b], http://interestalert.com/bran...%20News
BERLIN, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has been captured, Germany's [i]Die Welt [/i]newspaper reported Thursday.
The newspaper, on its Web site, cited "unconfirmed reports" as the basis for its report.
Bin Laden is the Saudi dissident blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people. He was believed to be hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
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| The New American Century |
| 01.23.04 (6:46 am) [edit] |
[i][b]Arundhati Roy [/b][/i]has been attacked by the extreme right wing conservatives who don't want him or other intellectuals to be allowed to speak out, and are drafting "enemy lists" in an attempt to [i][b]ban[/b] free thinkers [/i]from speaking out at Universities and other Public Forums!
I urge you to listen to [i][b]Tariq Ali's [/b][/i]insightful assessment of the [i]American Empire [/i]and our failure in Iraq on http://webcast.berkeley.edu/e... ...
[b]The New American Century[/b] http://www.alternet.org/story...
[i]Editor's Note: This article was adapted from Arundhati Roy's January 16 speech to the opening plenary of the World Social Forum in Mumbai[/i].
In January 2003 thousands of us from across the world gathered in Porto Alegre in Brazil and declared – reiterated – that "Another World Is Possible." A few thousand miles north, in Washington, George W. Bush and his aides were thinking the same thing.
Our project was the World Social Forum; theirs, to further what many call the Project for the New American Century.
In the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these things would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking about the good side of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police an unruly world. The new missionaries want order at the cost of justice. Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy at any price. Occasionally some of us are invited to "debate" the issue on "neutral" platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?
In any case, New Imperialism is already upon us. It's a remodeled, streamlined version of what we once knew. For the first time in history, a single empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony. It uses different weapons to break open different markets. There isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF checkbook. Argentina's the model if you want to be the poster boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep. Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value to Empire, or have a "market" of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, God forbid, natural resources of value – oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal – must do as they're told or become military targets. Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be fomented or war will be waged.
In this new age of empire, when nothing is as it appears to be, executives of concerned companies are allowed to influence foreign policy decisions. The Center for Public Integrity in Washington found that at least nine out of the thirty members of the Bush Administration's Defense Policy Board were connected to companies that were awarded military contracts for $76 billion between 2001 and 2002. George Shultz, former Secretary of State, was chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is also on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about a conflict of interest in the case of war in Iraq he said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." In April 2003, Bechtel signed a $680 million contract for reconstruction.
This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again across Latin America, in Africa and in Central and Southeast Asia. It has cost millions of lives. It goes without saying that every war Empire wages becomes a Just War. This, in large part, is due to the role of the corporate media. It's important to understand that the corporate media don't just support the neoliberal project. They are the neoliberal project. This is not a moral position they have chosen to take; it's structural. It's intrinsic to the economics of how the mass media work.
Most nations have adequately hideous family secrets. So it isn't often necessary for the media to lie. It's all in the editing – what's emphasized and what's ignored. Say, for example, India was chosen as the target for a righteous war. The fact that about 80,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989, most of them Muslim, most of them by Indian security forces (making the average death toll about 6,000 a year); the fact that in February and March of 2002 more than 2,000 Muslims were murdered on the streets of Gujarat, that women were gang-raped and children were burned alive and 150,000 driven from their homes while the police and administration watched and sometimes actively participated; the fact that no one has been punished for these crimes and the government that oversaw them was re-elected...all of this would make perfect headlines in international newspapers in the run-up to war.
Next thing we know, our cities will be leveled by cruise missiles, our villages fenced in with razor wire, US soldiers will patrol our streets, and Narendra Modi, Pravin Togadia or any of our popular bigots will, like Saddam Hussein, be in US custody having their hair checked for lice and the fillings in their teeth examined on prime-time TV.
But as long as our "markets" are open, as long as corporations like Enron, Bechtel, Halliburton and Arthur Andersen are given a free hand to take over our infrastructure and take away our jobs, our "democratically elected" leaders can fearlessly blur the lines between democracy, majoritarianism and fascism.
Our government's craven willingness to abandon India's proud tradition of being non-aligned, its rush to fight its way to the head of the queue of the Completely Aligned (the fashionable phrase is "natural ally" – India, Israel and the United States are "natural allies"), has given it the leg room to turn into a repressive regime without compromising its legitimacy.
A government's victims are not only those it kills and imprisons. Those who are displaced and dispossessed and sentenced to a lifetime of starvation and deprivation must count among them too. Millions of people have been dispossessed by "development" projects. In the past fifty-five years, big dams alone have displaced between 33 million and 55 million in India. They have no recourse to justice. In the past two years there have been a series of incidents in which police have opened fire on peaceful protesters, most of them Adivasi and Dalit. When it comes to the poor, and in particular Dalit and Adivasi communities, they get killed for encroaching on forest land, and killed when they're trying to protect forest land from encroachments – by dams, mines, steel plants and other "development" projects. In almost every instance in which the police opened fire, the government's strategy has been to say the firing was provoked by an act of violence. Those who have been fired upon are immediately called militants.
Across the country, thousands of innocent people, including minors, have been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and are being held in jail indefinitely and without trial. In the era of the War against Terror, poverty is being slyly conflated with terrorism. In the era of corporate globalization, poverty is a crime. Protesting against further impoverishment is terrorism. And now our Supreme Court says that going on strike is a crime. Criticizing the court is a crime too, of course. They're sealing the exits.
Like Old Imperialism, New Imperialism relies for its success on a network of agents – corrupt local elites who service Empire. We all know the sordid story of Enron in India. The then-Maharashtra government signed a power purchase agreement that gave Enron profits that amounted to 60 percent of India's entire rural development budget. A single American company was guaranteed a profit equivalent to funds for infrastructural development for about 500 million people!
Unlike in the old days, the New Imperialist doesn't need to trudge around the tropics risking malaria or diarrhea or early death. New Imperialism can be conducted on e-mail. The vulgar, hands-on racism of Old Imperialism is outdated. The cornerstone of New Imperialism is New Racism.
The best allegory for New Racism is the tradition of "turkey pardoning" in the United States. Every year since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the US President with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the President spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press. (Soon they'll even speak English!)
That's how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys – the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like me) – are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they're for the pot. But the Fortunate Fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the WTO – so who can accuse those organizations of being anti-turkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee – so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalization? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?
As part of the project of New Racism we also have New Genocide. New Genocide in this new era of economic interdependence can be facilitated by economic sanctions. New Genocide means creating conditions that lead to mass death without actually going out and killing people. Denis Halliday, who was the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq between 1997 and 1998 (after which he resigned in disgust), used the term genocide to describe the sanctions in Iraq. In Iraq the sanctions outdid Saddam Hussein's best efforts by claiming more than half a million children's lives.
In the new era, apartheid as formal policy is antiquated and unnecessary. International instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex system of multilateral trade laws and financial agreements that keep the poor in their bantustans anyway. Its whole purpose is to institutionalize inequity. Why else would it be that the US taxes a garment made by a Bangladeshi manufacturer twenty times more than a garment made in Britain? Why else would it be that countries that grow cocoa beans, like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, are taxed out of the market if they try to turn it into chocolate? Why else would it be that countries that grow 90 percent of the world's cocoa beans produce only 5 percent of the world's chocolate? Why else would it be that rich countries that spend over a billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries like India withdraw all agricultural subsidies, including subsidized electricity? Why else would it be that after having been plundered by colonizing regimes for more than half a century, former colonies are steeped in debt to those same regimes and repay them some $382 billion a year?
For all these reasons, the derailing of trade agreements at Cancun was crucial for us. Though our governments try to take the credit, we know that it was the result of years of struggle by many millions of people in many, many countries. What Cancun taught us is that in order to inflict real damage and force radical change, it is vital for local resistance movements to make international alliances. From Cancun we learned the importance of globalizing resistance.
No individual nation can stand up to the project of corporate globalization on its own. Time and again we have seen that when it comes to the neoliberal project, the heroes of our times are suddenly diminished. Extraordinary, charismatic men, giants in the opposition, when they seize power and become heads of state, are rendered powerless on the global stage. I'm thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero of the World Social Forum last year. This year he's busy implementing IMF guidelines, reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the Workers' Party. I'm thinking also of the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Within two years of taking office in 1994, his government genuflected with hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a massive program of privatization and structural adjustment that has left millions of people homeless, jobless and without water and electricity.
Why does this happen? There's little point in beating our breasts and feeling betrayed. Lula and Mandela are, by any reckoning, magnificent men. But the moment they cross the floor from the opposition into government they become hostage to a spectrum of threats – most malevolent among them the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight. To imagine that a leader's personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will dent the corporate cartel is to have no understanding of how capitalism works or, for that matter, how power works. Radical change cannot be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people.
At the World Social Forum some of the best minds in the world come together to exchange ideas about what is happening around us. These conversations refine our vision of the kind of world we're fighting for. It is a vital process that must not be undermined. However, if all our energies are diverted into this process at the cost of real political action, then the WSF, which has played such a crucial role in the movement for global justice, runs the risk of becoming an asset to our enemies. What we need to discuss urgently is strategies of resistance. We need to aim at real targets, wage real battles and inflict real damage. Gandhi's salt march was not just political theater. When, in a simple act of defiance, thousands of Indians marched to the sea and made their own salt, they broke the salt tax laws. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire. It was real.
While our movement has won some important victories, we must not allow nonviolent resistance to atrophy into ineffectual, feel-good, political theater. It is a very precious weapon that must be constantly honed and re-imagined. It cannot be allowed to become a mere spectacle, a photo opportunity for the media.
It was wonderful that on February 15 last year, in a spectacular display of public morality, 10 million people on five continents marched against the war on Iraq. It was wonderful, but it was not enough. February 15 was a weekend. Nobody had to so much as miss a day of work. Holiday protests don't stop wars. George Bush knows that. The confidence with which he disregarded overwhelming public opinion should be a lesson to us all. Bush believes that Iraq can be occupied and colonized as Afghanistan has been, as Tibet has been, as Chechnya is being, as East Timor once was and Palestine still is. He thinks that all he has to do is hunker down and wait until a crisis-driven media, having picked this crisis to the bone, drops it and moves on. Soon the carcass will slip off the bestseller charts, and all of us outraged folks will lose interest. Or so he hopes.
This movement of ours needs a major, global victory. It's not good enough to be right. Sometimes, if only in order to test our resolve, it's important to win something. In order to win something, we need to agree on something. That something does not need to be an overarching preordained ideology into which we force-fit our delightfully factious, argumentative selves. It does not need to be an unquestioning allegiance to one or another form of resistance to the exclusion of everything else. It could be a minimum agenda.
If all of us are indeed against imperialism and against the project of neoliberalism, then let's turn our gaze on Iraq. Iraq is the inevitable culmination of both. Plenty of antiwar activists have retreated in confusion since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Isn't the world better off without Saddam Hussein? they ask timidly.
Let's look this thing in the eye once and for all. To applaud the US Army's capture of Saddam Hussein, and therefore in retrospect justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq, is like deifying Jack the Ripper for disemboweling the Boston Strangler. And that after a quarter-century partnership in which the Ripping and Strangling was a joint enterprise. It's an in-house quarrel. They're business partners who fell out over a dirty deal. Jack's the CEO.
So if we are against imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the US occupation and that we believe the United States must withdraw from Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has inflicted?
How do we begin to mount our resistance? Let's start with something really small. The issue is not about supporting the resistance in Iraq against the occupation or discussing who exactly constitutes the resistance. (Are they old killer Baathists, are they Islamic fundamentalists?)
We have to become the global resistance to the occupation.
Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the US occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for Empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons. It certainly means that in countries like India and Pakistan we must block the US government's plans to have Indian and Pakistani soldiers sent to Iraq to clean up after them.
I suggest we choose by some means two of the major corporations that are profiting from the destruction of Iraq. We could then list every project they are involved in. We could locate their offices in every city and every country across the world. We could go after them. We could shut them down. It's a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past struggles to bear on a single target. It's a question of the desire to win.
The Project for the New American Century seeks to perpetuate inequity and establish American hegemony at any price, even if it's apocalyptic. The World Social Forum demands justice and survival.
For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war.
[i]Arundhati Roy lives in New Delhi, India. She is the author of "The God of Small Things" and "Power Politics" (South End Press).[/i]
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| War profiteering exposed ... |
| 01.23.04 (6:39 am) [edit] |
[b]War profiteering exposed ...[/b]
The magazine[i] Southern Exposure [/i] http://www.southernstudies.or... has put together a special issue scrutinizing the role of companies like Halliburton in the Iraq campaign. Their conclusion? "A team of investigative reporters in Iraq have found a pattern of waste, fraud and abuse among U.S. companies receiving multi-billion-dollar 'reconstruction' contracts in the country, including massive over-charges for projects; shoddy work or a failure to complete tasks; and ignoring local experts who contend they could do the job better and cheaper." [i]More [/i] http://www.alternet.org/waron...
[i]AlterNet's "War on Iraq News Log" [/i]on http://www.alternet.org
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| Secrecy Reigns at Global Economic Forum: Cheney, Ashcroft to Represent U.S. |
| 01.22.04 (6:51 am) [edit] |
[b]Secrecy Reigns at Global Economic Forum
[i]Cheney, Ashcroft to Represent U.S.[/i][/b]
[i]by Jim Lobe[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/h...
WASHINGTON - On the eve of this year's [u]World Economic Forum[/u] (WEF) http://www.weforum.org/ , the annual get-together of global business and government movers and shakers in Davos, Switzerland, a major environmental group is calling on the meeting to open its doors to public scrutiny.
Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) charged that both the guest list and the private agenda have been kept secret by WEF's organizers although most of the issues taken up in conference rooms at the exclusive ski resort--including plans to resume international trade negotiations that broke down last September at a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Cancun, Mexico--affect hundreds of millions of people around the world.
It said the WEF's secrecy constituted a threat to democracy.
While the WEF claims to act in the public interest, said Tony Juniper, FoEI's vice chairman, "behind closed doors and the WEF's public-relations gloss, there is a different reality."
The theme of this year's meeting, in which more than 2,000 representatives from the world's biggest companies are expected to participate, is "Partnering for Security and Prosperity," a subject that will be highlighted in WEF's ''Open Forum," that runs parallel to the confidential talks.
This year's WEF, which runs from Wednesday through Saturday, is taking place on the heels of the World Social Forum (WSF), an annual convention of representatives of thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which, in contrast to the Davos-based group, have taken a generally skeptical--if not confrontational--view of corporate-led economic globalization.
The WSF, which until this year met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, drew between 50,000 and 80,000 participants from some 132 countries to discuss a range of issues, such as trade, debt, labor, foreign investment, and the impact of the U.S.-led "war on terrorism" on freedoms and development in poor countries.
Unlike the WEF, all WSF discussions are open to the public and media coverage.
Many of the WSF's featured speakers this year cautioned their audience against assurances by the Davos group that opening economies to foreign corporate investment will ensure future prosperity.
"Foreign investment enters a country and produces an economic boom," noted Joseph Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist currently at Columbia University. "But soon the investment moves out, leaving the country with worsened economic and political conditions."
Similarly, Amnesty International's Secretary General, Irene Khan, addressing the Mumbai meeting, appeared to address the WEF, as well, when she called for corporations to support binding international treaties that will require them to uphold human rights in their operations. Amnesty will also be participating directly at the WEF conference, which has invited prominent NGOs to some of its discussions.
"Economic globalization has expanded the reach of corporate power, and it is more urgent than ever that companies be brought within the rule of human rights law," she said. "Voluntary initiatives by themselves are not enough-voluntary approaches only work for the well-intentioned. The historical reality is that some form of legal framework is necessary to restrain abuses."
FoEI echoed that message with respect to the environment. "It is time big business was held to account," said Juniper. "We need global regulations to ensure that companies do not put profit above the needs of the environment and local communities," he said.
Such messages are unlikely to be well-received by WEF members, who have long promoted the use of voluntary initiatives to encourage corporations to respect human rights and environmental norms.
NGOs are particularly concerned that this year's back-room meetings will focus more, however, on how to revive the WTO trade negotiations than on corporate accountability to the global public and the environment.
"When business leaders claim to be acting in the interests of security and prosperity," said Juniper, "they mean security to protect the prosperity of the multinational companies who rule the world rather than the greater peace and security of the world."
CEOs still claim that what is good for large corporations is good for society, but world leaders should face up to the fact that this is not the case," noted Nur Hidayati, the head of Friends of the Earth in Indonesia.
Indeed, a poll of some 43,000 people that was commissioned by the WEF and carried out by the Gallup organization found that most ordinary people around the world feel "unsafe, powerless and gloomy" about the future and their own economic situation compared to a decade ago, when global economic integration was not nearly so advanced.
In one remarkable finding, the survey found that most people in the 52 countries that were polled "felt they have little or no personal impact on the economic, political and social factors that affect daily life..."
A second report released last week by the WEF's Global Governance Initiative also found that the world was failing to meet minimum goals set forth by the United Nations at its Millennium Summit in 2000 to reduce global poverty and promote the health and education of the world's poor.
"The WEF is keen to show that it is acting for the greater good, but even their own reports expose the reality," said Juniper who called for the business leaders to squarely confront their own responsibility for the widespread gloom, deteriorating environmental conditions, and the failure to address to the plight of the more than one billion people who live in poverty.
The WEF said more than 30 heads of state or government, including Jordan's King Abdullah, Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski; Argentine President President Nestor Kirchner; Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo; Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf; Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin; and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are scheduled to participate, as well as former President Bill Clinton, top European Union (EU) officials, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Vice President Dick Cheney, on a rare trip outside the United States, will lead the U.S. delegation, which will also include Attorney General John Ashcroft.
At least half of the participants will be business leaders, including the CEOs or chairpersons of some 800 leading companies according to WEF's organizers, who said some 18 union leaders and representatives of 54 NGOs will also be taking part.
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| User's Guide to the Bush's "State of the Union" ... |
| 01.22.04 (6:46 am) [edit] |
[b]User's Guide to Bush's "State of the Union" ...[/b]
[i]Stephen Zunes[/i], http://www.guerrillanews.com/...
[b]George W. Bush[/b]: "[i]As we gather tonight, hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure[/i].”
Though no one should question the commitment and bravery of American servicemen and women, their missions – invading and occupying foreign countries and engaging in high altitude bombing and urban counter-insurgency operations that kill civilians – has brought more fear than hope, delivered more violence than justice, and has created an unprecedented level of anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and beyond that has actually made America less secure.
“[i]We have faced serious challenges together and now we face a choice: We can go forward with confidence and resolve or we can turn back to the dangerous illusion that terrorists are not plotting and outlaw regimes are no threat to us[/i].”
This assumes that those who believe that the Bush Administration’s policies are illegal, immoral and counter-productive are living under illusions that deny the dangers from terrorists and despots. This rhetorical device ignores the many strategic analysts and ordinary Americans who have no pretense about the forces arrayed against the United States yet believe the country must choose better means to protect itself than continuing the policies of the Bush Administration.
“[i]The first to see our determination were the Taliban, who made Afghanistan the primary training base of al Qaeda killers…. Businesses are opening, health care centers are being established, and the boys and girls of Afghanistan are back in school. With help from the new Afghan Army, our coalition is leading aggressive raids against surviving members of the Taliban and al Qaeda[/i].”
While life has improved markedly in the capital of Kabul, the vast majority of Afghanistan is under the grip of warlords, ethnic militias, opium magnates and overall lawlessness. While women and girls are now legally able to attend school and go out of their houses unaccompanied, many are now too afraid to do so because of the breakdown of law and order. Furthermore, the “aggressive raids” the United States is leading are unfortunately not just against “surviving members of the Taliban and al Qaeda,” but often end up being against innocent villagers. Indeed, more Afghan civilians have been killed from U.S. bombing raids than American civilians were killed from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“[i]Since we last met in this chamber, combat forces of the United States … and other countries enforced the demands of the United Nations, ended the rule of Saddam Hussein and the people of Iraq are free[/i].”
The United Nations did not demand an invasion of Iraq or an end of Saddam’s regime. It demanded that the Iraqi government destroy its weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems and open up to intrusive inspections to confirm that it had done so. Iraq eventually came into compliance with these demands, allowing UN inspectors to return to conduct unimpeded inspections anywhere in the country in 2002 and apparently eliminating its WMDs and delivery systems some years earlier. An invasion was not necessary for Iraq to comply with the demands of the United Nations since it had already done so. While the people of Iraq are free from Saddam Hussein’s rule, they are not free. They are living under a foreign military occupation and the United States occupation authorities has thus far rejected popular demands by the Iraqis for direct elections to choose their own government.
“[i]Having broken the Ba'athist regime, we face a remnant of violent Saddam supporters. …These killers, joined by foreign terrorists, are a serious, continuing danger… We are dealing with these thugs in Iraq, just as surely as we dealt with Saddam Hussein's evil regime[/i].”
While Ba'athists are apparently taking the dominant role leading the armed resistance to the U.S. occupation, increasing numbers of Iraqis fighting U.S. forces are not supporters of the former regime, but are non-Baathist nationalists who resent their country being controlled by a foreign army. If U.S. forces were simply battling remnants of the old regime and some foreign supporters, it would largely be a mopping up operation where attacks would be decreasing over time. Instead, the resistance has been growing. While those planting bombs in crowded civilian areas are undeniably thugs and terrorists, the vast majority of attacks are against uniformed foreign occupation forces which – while most unfortunate – are generally recognized as legitimate acts of resistance under international law.
“[i]Today our coalition is working with the Iraqi Governing Council to draft a basic law, with a bill of rights. We are working with Iraqis and the United Nations to prepare for a transition to full Iraqi sovereignty by the end of June[/i].”
Unfortunately, the Bush Administration and its handpicked Iraqi Governing Council are trying to set up a government through regional caucuses that they can control, rejecting popular demands for direct elections. Under this system and with U.S. occupation forces remaining in the country, it would be a stretch to consider the establishment of such a government “full Iraqi sovereignty.” The United Nations has thus far been understandably reluctant to support the establishment of what many would see as a puppet regime.
“[i]As democracy takes hold in Iraq, the enemies of freedom will do all in their power to spread violence and fear. They are trying to shake the will of our country and our friends, but the United States of America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins. The killers will fail, and the Iraqi people will live in freedom[/i].”
By defining the U.S.-occupation as “democracy” and those who are fighting the occupation as “enemies of freedom” who “are trying to shake the will of our country,” President Bush is trying to make Americans and others who are calling for a U.S. withdrawal appear to be unprincipled cowards.
"[i]Last month, the leader of Libya voluntarily pledged to disclose and dismantle all of his regime's weapons of mass destruction programs, including a uranium enrichment project for nuclear weapons… Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not. And one reason is clear: For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible and no one can now doubt the word of America[/i].”
This is misleading on several counts. First of all, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs were well-developed, whereas Libya’s WMD efforts were in their infancy. Secondly, there was no direct diplomacy between the United States and Iraq in the twelve years prior to the invasion: there were sanctions, threats, and air strikes. Most importantly, the implication that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was what led Libya to give up its program flies in the face of logic: not only did Iraq give up its W MD programs through United Nations efforts prior to the U.S. invasion, but – despite dismantling its weapons and opening up to inspections – the United States invaded anyway.
“[i]Let us be candid about the consequences of leaving Saddam in power…Already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day[/i].”
Last year, President Bush falsely claimed Iraq had large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. At most, all he can claim now is that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.” These were virtually all legal and inconsequential remnants of old programs, not new WMD programs starting up again that posed a potential threat. With strict sanctions remaining in place against the importation of military equipment, dual use technologies and raw materials to Iraq that could be used for WMD development (which, unlike the economic sanctions, were strongly supported worldwide) it is hard to imagine how Saddam Hussein could have ever re-started his WMD programs.
“[i]Had we failed to act, Security Council resolutions on Iraq would have been revealed as empty threats, weakening the United Nations and encouraging defiance by dictators around the world[/i].”
Not only does it appear that Iraq was apparently in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions at the time of the U.S. invasion, there are more than ninety UN Security Council resolutions currently being violated by countries other than Iraq, the vast majority by governments supported by the Bush Administration. U.S. policy has done far more than Saddam Hussein in weakening the authority of the United Nations.
“[i]The world without Saddam Hussein's regime is a better and safer place[/i].”
Putting aside the fact that previous Republican administrations helped keep the regime in power during the 1980s (its most dangerous and repressive period), many of Iraq’s neighbors and independent strategic analysts believe that a weak and disarmed Iraqi regime – even under Saddam’s oppressive rule – represented a better and safer environment than the current situation where Iraq is torn by guerrilla warfare, terrorist attacks, separatist movements, and a rising tide of Islamic extremism.
“[i]Some critics have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized. This particular criticism is hard to explain to our partners in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, the Netherlands, Norway, El Salvador, and the 17 other countries that have committed troops to Iraq[/i].”
Despite some notable exceptions, most of the 34 countries contributing to the U.S. occupation have sent only very small and highly-specialized units (such as medical teams or construction workers) and have done so only under diplomatic pressure and financial incentives. Americans make up over 85% of the occupation forces and have control over virtually all of the political, military and reconstruction operations by these other countries. By contrast, most of those who are calling for internationalizing the operations in Iraq are advocating placing Iraq under a United Nations trusteeship similar to that which guided East Timor to independence following the 1999 Indonesian withdrawal.
“[i]From the beginning, America has sought international support for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have gained much support. There is a difference, however, between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the objections of a few. America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people[/i].”
In reality, it was not a few nations, but an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations that opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Furthermore, public opinion polls show that even in countries whose governments did support the U.S. invasion, the majority of these countries’ populations opposed it. It is highly unlikely that there would be any opposition in the United Nations Security Council or anywhere else for the U.S. government to “defend the security of our people.” The invasion of Iraq, however, was not about defending the security of the American people but an illegal act of aggression, according to the United Nations Charter, which has been signed and ratified by the United States and virtually every country in the world.
”[i]As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny, despair, and anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friends[/i].”
The unfortunate reality is that the United States is not pursuing a “strategy of freedom,” but continues to be the primary military, financial and diplomatic supporter of the majority of tyrannical regimes in the Middle East. The United States supplies the equipment and training for internal security forces for dictatorial governments in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Uzbekistan that crush popular movements for reform as well as providing the military equipment for occupation armies that suppress movements for national self-determination from Western Sahara to the West Bank.
“[i]Our aim is a democratic peace, a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our special calling: This great republic will lead the cause of freedom[/i].”
No country has given more military and economic support to more dictatorships and occupation armies in the Middle East and in the world as a whole than has the United States. The monetary value of U.S. military aid to Middle Eastern countries is six times our economic aid. The top commercial export from the United States to the Middle East is not consumer items, high technology or foodstuffs but armaments. Virtually all the recipients of such weaponry are governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses. Unfortunately, U.S. policy has little to do with peace or freedom.
Perhaps even more disheartening than these misleading statements by President Bush during his State of the Union address is that, in their formal responses to Bush’s speech, Democratic Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle failed to challenge them other than a vague appeal for stronger diplomatic efforts. None of the analysts on the major networks challenged these misleading statements either. Meanwhile, the two Democratic presidential contenders who dominated the Iowa caucuses the previous evening were senators who have largely supported Bush Administration policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East.
President Bush can get away with such misleading rhetoric because he knows the mainstream media and the Democratic Party will allow him to do so. Unless the American public demands greater accountability from the news media and the Democratic Party leadership, George W. Bush will have four more opportunities to make similar State of the Union speeches.
[i][b]Stephen Zunes [/b]is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project and is the author of "Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism" (Common Courage Press, 2003)[/i]
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| U.S. Rep Costello Calls for Cheney's Impeachment ... |
| 01.21.04 (6:59 am) [edit] |
[b]U.S. Rep Jerry Costello Calls for Cheney's Impeachment ... [i]Too bad they're not calling for Dubya's Impeachment also[/i] ... [i]They ought to call for U.S. Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia's Impeachment too [/i]... Read on ...[/b]
[b]Costello pushes hearings on Cheney[/b], http://www.belleville.com/mld...
U.S. Rep Jerry Costello has called for impeachment hearings against U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during Congress' session that begins today.
Costello called for hearings Saturday while on the Iowa caucus campaign trail with fellow U.S. House of Representatives member and presidential candidate Dick Gephardt, according to the Drudge Report.
Costello questioned the award of billions of dollars of contracts to Cheney's former corporation Haliburton to extinguish fires and rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure after the war.
"Can you imagine what the Republicans would be doing to a Democratic president who was a CEO of a company that now has gotten billions of dollars worth of contracts -- no-bid contracts -- without competition?" Costello, D-Belleville, was quoted as saying.
"There would be hearings day after day. And my prediction to you is that you will see in this session of Congress ..., there will not only be hearings, but I think there ought to be impeachment hearings."
So far, Haliburton has earned more than $2 billion from the war contracts.
Cheney headed Haliburton from 1995 to 2000, when he quit to become George W. Bush's running mate.
Costello delivered the speech at the Sundance Lodge in Clinton, Iowa, on Saturday afternoon after Gephardt's plane was grounded due to the fog.
Costello, who was in Burlington, Iowa, on Monday, could not be reached for comment Monday.
Bob Krajnovich, who hosted the event for Gephardt, said he heard Costello's speech.
"He talked about the war contracts at the end, when he was taking questions from the audience. He was really fired up," Krajnovich said.
An audience member also asked Costello about a meeting between then-energy trading giant Enron officials and Cheney -- just as Cheney was forming energy policy.
The General Accounting Agency sued Cheney after he refused to release documents about who and when he met with before formulating the country's energy policy.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided to hear Cheney's appeal.
[i][b]The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that Cheney spent last week duck hunting in Louisiana with one of the Supreme Court Justices who may decide the case -- U.S. Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia[/b][/i].
Costello, who serves on the energy subcommittee, was elected to Congress in 1988.
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| Resistance to Patriot Act Gaining Ground ... Even Amongst Republicans ... |
| 01.21.04 (6:55 am) [edit] |
[b]Resistance to Patriot Act Gaining Ground ... Even Amongst Republicans ... [/b], http://www.boston.com/news/lo...
[b]Foes of the Mad King George organizing in communities[/b]
More than two centuries ago, the patriots of Brewster shut down the Colonial courts on Cape Cod in one of the first acts of resistance against the tyrannical rule of King George III.
Now, deliberately evoking its Revolutionary history, Brewster Town Meeting has formally condemned the antiterrorist USA Patriot Act, united against the laws of a different leader named George.
While the act is largely symbolic -- federal law enforcement agencies, not local governments, enforce the Patriot Act's new search, seizure, and detention provisions -- the grass-roots opposition has forged an unlikely alliance of people angry at Washington's domestic handling of the war on terror. In Brewster, anger at the Patriot Act has drawn together libertarians, an antitax group, and a Unitarian congregation, as well as a more traditional coalition of civil libertarians and antiwar activists.
A similar story has already played out in 16 Massachusetts communities, and 16 more, including Salem, Waltham, Watertown, Gloucester, Beverly, and Bedford are preparing measures against the Patriot Act this spring.
Opponents of the antiterrorism measure say the nascent bipartisan groundswell in communities across the nation signals a growing dissatisfaction with the expansion of federal powers -- and will reshape the national debate if it continues to accelerate with support from disparate groups, from gun owners to librarians to fiscal conservatives.
The burgeoning nationwide movement has prompted three state governments, and 236 communities in 37 states, to pass resolutions against the Patriot Act. If the backlash continues to grow, opponents of the Patriot Act believe, their momentum will force Congress and the White House to address some of the law's unpopular elements.
"If anyone takes time to read the Patriot Act, there's no question that our First Amendment rights are being eroded," said James Geisler, treasurer of the Brewster Taxpayers Association, a 52-year-old group whose mission is to curtail government spending.
His family has been Republican "for a hundred years," Geisler said. But it was loyalty to the Constitution, not party politics, that drove the Taxpayers Association's board of directors to support the ultimately popular Brewster resolution.
Across the Commonwealth, Republicans, gun lobbyists, and libertarians have taken up the call against the Patriot Act. So have a cadre of previously apolitical people such as Jake Beal, 25, a self-described computer nerd who is now leading the drive for a resolution against the Patriot Act in Somerville.
"It's the first political issue I've taken an active stand in," said Beal, an MIT graduate student who characterizes himself as a conservative Democrat.
He was spurred to action after hearing the sheriff in his hometown of Portland, Maine, describe the federal government's new powers at a forum one year ago. The sheriff said immigration officials took a detainee suspected of terrorist activity to an undisclosed location and never told the detainee's family -- or local law enforcement officials -- where the suspect was taken or what charges he faced.
The Somerville group has collected 1,200 petition signatures and said the City Council is likely to consider the measure next month.
"These local efforts will build up the pressure nationally," Beal said. "Wouldn't you like to live in a community where you know that nobody is going to get `disappeared' by the federal government?"
Local resolutions aren't the only vehicle of grass-roots fervor.
Dozens of Commonwealth libraries have purged lending records -- or stopped keeping them -- to protect patrons from federal agents newly empowered to monitor their reading habits.
"What people read is their own business, and as professional librarians we don't feel it's appropriate to share that information," said Ann Montgomery Smith, librarian at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and president of the Massachusetts Conference of Chief Librarians of Public Higher Educational Institutions.
At her university library, Smith changed the computer system so that lending records are erased as soon as a book is returned.
The US Department of Justice says that such alarm over the Patriot Act is unfounded. Attorney General John Ashcroft, in Boston in September on a nationwide speaking tour to rally support for the legislation, said critics misrepresent the law.
Federal law enforcement officials in Massachusetts have said that they rarely, if ever, use the most controversial provisions of the act -- such as the measure allowing federal agents to secretly subpoena library records, or "sneak-and-peek" warrants that allow investigators to conduct a secret search.
Those assertions have done little to allay the increasing anxiety over the Patriot Act, which in New England has drawn in equal measures on strains of Yankee independence, social libertarianism, and liberal progressivism.
In New Hampshire last week, the Legislature began debating a bill to nullify the Patriot Act, sponsored by four Republican representatives who see the legislation as part of a larger trend of federal law overwhelming the independence of states.
The Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union is quietly paving the way for a statewide resolution, said Nancy Murray, who follows the issue for the union. Murray said that as more and more municipalities pass resolutions, state lawmakers will be compelled to follow suit. Alice Weiss, 62, began the petition drive that led to Brewster's resolution. She found that people she considered politically conservative quickly made it a common cause once they read the Patriot Act. It was after a session in the library studying the text of the bill with Weiss that the conservative Taxpayers Union secretary decided to back the anti-Patriot Act campaign.
"This is not a liberal town," Weiss said. "I was amazed at the support we got."
[i]Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.[/i]
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| George W Bush and the Real State of the Union |
| 01.20.04 (7:14 am) [edit] |
[b]George W Bush and the Real State of the Union[/b]
[i][b]Today the President gives his annual address. As the election battle begins, how does his first term add up?[/b][/i]
232: Number of American combat deaths in Iraq between May 2003 and January 2004
501: Number of American servicemen to die in Iraq from the beginning of the war - so far
0: Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender to the Allies in May 1945
0: Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush administration has allowed to be photographed
0: Number of funerals or memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq
100: Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003
13: Number of meetings between Bush and Tony Blair since he became President
10 million: Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, setting an all-time record for simultaneous protest
2: Number of nations that Bush has attacked and taken over since coming into the White House
9.2: Average number of American soldiers wounded in Iraq each day since the invasion in March last year
1.6: Average number of American soldiers killed in Iraq per day since hostilities began
16,000: Approximate number of Iraqis killed since the start of war
10,000: Approximate number of Iraqi civilians killed since the beginning of the conflict
$100 billion: Estimated cost of the war in Iraq to American citizens by the end of 2003
$13 billion: Amount other countries have committed towards rebuilding Iraq (much of it in loans) as of 24 October
36%: Increase in the number of desertions from the US army since 1999
92%: Percentage of Iraq's urban areas that had access to drinkable water a year ago
60%: Percentage of Iraq's urban areas that have access to drinkable water today
32%: Percentage of the bombs dropped on Iraq this year that were not precision-guided
1983: The year in which Donald Rumsfeld gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs
45%: Percentage of Americans who believed in early March 2003 that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 11 September attacks on the US
$127 billion: Amount of US budget surplus in the year that Bush became President in 2001
$374 billion: Amount of US budget deficit in the fiscal year for 2003
1st: This year's deficit is on course to be the biggest in United States history
$1.58 billion: Average amount by which the US national debt increases each day
$23,920: Amount of each US citizen's share of the national debt as of 19 January 2004
1st: The record for the most bankruptcies filed in a single year (1.57 million) was set in 2002
10: Number of solo press conferences that Bush has held since beginning his term. His father had managed 61 at this point in his administration, and Bill Clinton 33
1st: Rank of the US worldwide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per capita
$113 million: Total sum raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, setting a record in American electoral history
$130 million: Amount raised for Bush's re-election campaign so far
$200m: Amount that the Bush-Cheney campaign is expected to raise in 2004
$40m: Amount that Howard Dean, the top fund-raiser among the nine Democratic presidential hopefuls, amassed in 2003
28: Number of days holiday that Bush took last August, the second longest holiday of any president in US history (Record holder: Richard Nixon)
13: Number of vacation days the average American worker receives each year
3: Number of children convicted of capital offences executed in the US in 2002. America is only country openly to acknowledge executing children
1st: As Governor of Texas, George Bush executed more prisoners (152) than any governor in modern US history
2.4 million: Number of Americans who have lost their jobs during the three years of the Bush administration
221,000: Number of jobs per month created since Bush's tax cuts took effect. He promised the measure would add 306,000
1,000: Number of new jobs created in the entire country in December. Analysts had expected a gain of 130,000
1st: This administration is on its way to becoming the first since 1929 (Herbert Hoover) to preside over an overall loss of jobs during its complete term in office
9 million: Number of US workers unemployed in September 2003
80%: Percentage of the Iraqi workforce now unemployed
55%: Percentage of the Iraqi workforce unemployed before the war
43.6 million: Number of Americans without health insurance in 2002
130: Number of countries (out of total of 191 recognized by the United Nations) with an American military presence
40%: Percentage of the world's military spending for which the US is responsible
$10.9 million: Average wealth of the members of Bush's original 16-person cabinet
88%: Percentage of American citizens who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of 2003 cut in capital gains and dividends taxes
$42,000: Average savings members of Bush's cabinet are expected to enjoy this year as a result in the cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes
$42,228: Median household income in the US in 2001
$116,000: Amount Vice-President Cheney is expected to save each year in taxes
44%: Percentage of Americans who believe the President's economic growth plan will mostly benefit the wealthy
700: Number of people from around the world the US has incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
1st: George W Bush became the first American president to ignore the Geneva Conventions by refusing to allow inspectors access to US-held prisoners of war
+6%: Percentage change since 2001 in the number of US families in poverty
1951: Last year in which a quarterly rise in US military spending was greater than the one the previous spring
54%: Percentage of US citizens who believe Bush was legitimately elected to his post
1st: First president to execute a federal prisoner in the past 40 years. Executions are typically ordered by separate states and not at federal level
9: Number of members of Bush's defense policy board who also sit on the corporate board of, or advise, at least one defense contractor
35: Number of countries to which US has suspended military assistance after they failed to sign agreements giving Americans immunity from prosecution before the International Criminal Court
$300 million: Amount cut from the federal program that provides subsidies to poor families so they can heat their homes
$1 billion: Amount of new US military aid promised Israel in April 2003 to offset the "burdens" of the US war on Iraq
58 million: Number of acres of public lands Bush has opened to road building, logging and drilling
200: Number of public-health and environmental laws Bush has attempted to downgrade or weaken
29,000: Number of American troops - which is close to the total of a whole army division - to have either been killed, wounded, injured or become so ill as to require evacuation from Iraq, according to the Pentagon
90%: Percentage of American citizens who said they approved of the way George Bush was handling his job as president when asked on 26 September, 2001
53%: Percentage of American citizens who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president when asked on 16 January, 2004
[b]Source:[/b]
CommonDreams on http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| Young Repug Brown Shirts in Iowa Try Out for the Tom DeLay Beer Hall Putsch Squad |
| 01.19.04 (8:33 pm) [edit] |
[b]You've got to read [i]this one [/i] http://www.buzzflash.com/cont... , just to see how far Herr Fuhrer Dubya and his SS Squad of thuggish houligans are willing to go![/b]
[b]Young Republican Brown Shirts in Iowa Try Out for the Tom DeLay Beer Hall Putsch Squad[/b], http://www.buzzflash.com/cont...
This story has me fuming. College repukes storm a Dem event and shove women around!!!!!
"[i]One of the bush supporters shoved Jett, and she pushed back in anger[/i]."
I am DU-er, and this story is making the rounds there. Below is a link to the Iowa story, with "snips" - as well as links to the "Iowa Federation of College republicans" including contact info for the perps. I'd really like to see something about this on your site. Info below, and THANKS! for what you are doing!!!!!
[i]The story . . .[/i]
"[i][b]Political Rallies End in Brawl[/b][/i]", http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/...
[[i]As of this posting, the following article was removed from this television station's website[/i]]
A Democratic rally at Drake's Olmstead Center, urged young Iowans to get out and vote. It was targeted toward high school and college students. A group known for not voting. The rally featured comedian Janene Garafalo and classic rock star Joan Jett, but it got a surprise visit from some unwanted guests.
A group of college republicans at their Midwest caucus leadership conference heard about the rally and stormed in.
"There are seven of us who worked really hard at putting this conference together, said Jason Cole of the college republicans. "so, we met, discussed and majority ruled. We went down there."
What they didn't discuss is what to do if things get out of hand. ONE OF THE BUSH SUPPORTERS SHOVED JETT AND SHE PUSHED BACK IN ANGER. Ole said that was the decision of one person, and not at all representative of what the conference was trying to do.
Campus security did show up break things up. The concert did resume as planned. In fact, Jett wrapped up her day with two more performances. One in Fort Dodge, the other in Marshalltown.
[[i]END OF ARTICLE FROM TELEVISION STATION[/i]]
[b]A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY[/b]
* * *
[b]BuzzFlash Note[/b]: [i]This action by Iowa Young Republicans recalls the Brown Shirt storming of the Miami-Dade recount vote during the election of 2000 in Florida. At that time, some Tom DeLay Congressional staff thugs interfered with the voting process during a presidential election by intimidating an election board. In Iowa, apparently some Young Republican thug wannabes decided to show their idol Tom DeLay that they are "Brown Shirt" material for the 2004 election[/i].
[i][b]BuzzFlash message to the Republicans: If you don't want to be called Nazis, stop acting like storm troopers. This is a democracy, you creeps[/b][/i].
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| Dr. King's Dream: Freedom, Not Space Travel |
| 01.19.04 (11:52 am) [edit] |
[b]Where are the great leaders of the 1960s like John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy with a vision of a great society for all of our people? They were tragically assassinated and we were subsequently saddled with mediocre and petty minded men with criminal intentions to abuse the noble role of government in order to enrich themselves off of the misery of our people.
The powerful interests who have hijacked our nation will never permit populist leaders who envision a better world for all of our people to rise to power again. Why? Greed, Greed, Greed![/b]
[b]Dr. King's Dream: Freedom, Not Space Travel [/b]by [i]Ira Chernus[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
One day he calls us to the moon and on to Mars. "We may discover resources on the moon or Mars that will test our limits to dream," he says. The next day he lays a wreath at the grave of our most famous dreamer, Martin Luther King, Jr. That's George W., master of the symbolic gesture.
Dr. King would have understood. He knew a thing or two about symbolism. And the symbol he used better than any other was the word "America." His dream was a dream for all Americans, a future all of us could share.
He never asked white Americans to change our own dreams or values or vision of what our nation should be. He asked us only to live up to our own ideals and be what we claimed to be: the land of the free, where every person has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What could be more 100% apple-pie American than that?
Dr. King summed up his dream in the unforgettable image of black and white children joining hands to proclaim the essential American ideal -- freedom -- in the words of an old "Negro" spiritual: "Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." If you whites want to be what you claim to be, he said, you'll have to hold blacks' hands and use words that blacks invented. That is pure genius. As a master of symbolism, he was second to none.
But Dr. King was also a very practical political leader. He had his own thoughts about space travel. "If our nation can spend 35 billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and 20 billion dollars a year to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God's children on their own two feet right here on earth."
That was not just fancy rhetoric. In the same speech, in 1967, he called for the government to provide every American a guaranteed annual income. And he backed it up with hard-headed economics. Poverty is caused by "dislocations in market operations and the prevalence of discrimination," he explained. If we want prosperity for ourselves, all our people "must be made consumers."
"The poor transformed into purchasers" would be free to get better housing and education, because they'd be able to pay for it. The multiplier effect would bring that money back to the rest of us in higher incomes. The costs we all share to pay the price of slums and illiteracy would fall. And he cited economist John Kenneth Galbraith's estimate of the annual cost of a guaranteed income: exactly the annual cost of the U.S. mission to the moon.
If Dr. King were alive at 75, wouldn't he be asking us the same question: Do we really want to spend tens, maybe hundreds, of billions on space travel while 20% of our children are growing up in a poverty that we all pay for, one way or another? A guaranteed annual income makes as much economic sense now as it did in 1967, and far more sense than journeys to outer space.
Why isn't it happening? Perhaps because, when white Americans talk about freedom, they usually don't mean what Dr. King meant. For most whites, freedom means a fantasy of pure go-it-alone, do-it-yourself individualism. It's the freedom to get rich, and to starve. It's freedom from all limits. It's the kind of freedom we imagine our ancestors found out in America's very own version of Never-Land: the frontier.
Now there is only one frontier left, the final frontier: space. In his speech to NASA, Bush conjured up a dream of space travel representing "the finest values of our country: daring, discipline, ingenuity and unity." He talked about Lewis and Clark, "the risk-takers and visionaries." "The desire to explore and understand is part of our character." Exploring space "lifts our national spirit," the president concluded.
He also talked about all the knowledge we would gain. But he couldn't say quite what it might be: "We'll make many technological breakthroughs. We don't know yet what those breakthroughs will be. But we can be certain they'll come."
This is the same man who said, before 9/11, "We know we have enemies. We don't know who they are. But we know they are out there." Maybe that's just a coincidence. But maybe it says a lot about why Bush thinks space travel lifts our national spirit.
The old fantasy of the frontier is not just about free rugged individuals getting free of dislocations in the market and discrimination. It's also a dream of conquering nature and the enemies who lurk behind nature's every tree and hill. The frontier myth makes sense only if there is an enemy to test yourself against, to let you show your daring, discipline, and ingenuity by giving the enemy a simple choice: surrender or die. On the frontier, it's the freedom of the civilized versus the freedom of the "savages." And the civilized have the guns to insure their victory. That sense of victory is what lifts our national spirit.
Bush thought that Iraq would be his great frontier. Now that it is turning into his creeping quagmire, he is counting on the symbol of space to make us forget Iraq, and the shrinking job pool too.
Dr. King would not want the president to get away with it. In his 1967 speech, he linked an imperialist U.S. war and economic dislocation directly to the wasteful moon mission. Today, he would remind us how all the pieces of the dismal Bushite puzzle fit together in the same way.
And he would remind us that those little black and white children did not join hands to conquer an enemy. They would not need any conquest to prove their freedom. Indeed, Dr. King knew that they, and we, would not be truly free until we realize that we have no enemies. We have only fellow travelers on this spaceship earth, who need our resources, our care, and our love to let them fulfill their dreams just as we would fulfill ours. It is the suffering of our fellow human beings that truly tests our limits to dream, dreaming of our unlimited opportunities to help alleviate their suffering. That's the final frontier.
So much of the suffering is caused or increased unnecessarily by America's urge to conquer. If conquest is the only way we can lift our national spirit, we are truly the poor of the earth. If we want the kind of freedom that Dr. King dreamed of, the kind of freedom that can let America fulfill its highest promise, we have to do it right here on earth.
[i]Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder[/i].
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| OPO (Other People's Oil) |
| 01.18.04 (6:01 am) [edit] |
Shrub Dubya, Cheney and Rice have no interests, absolutely no interests in OIL, despite their patronage by the Big Oil Corporations! If you believe that, Jeb Bush has some Florida swamp land to sell you! Oh, and Neil Bush has some shares in Diebold Election Systems to sell you too!
[b]OPO (Other People's Oil)[/b], [i]Michael Klare[/i], http://www.guerrillanews.com/...
When first assuming office in early 2001, President George W. Bush’s top foreign policy priority was not to prevent terrorism or to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction—or any of the other goals he espoused later that year following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Rather, it was to increase the flow of petroleum from suppliers abroad to U.S. markets. In the months before he became president, the United States had experienced severe oil and natural gas shortages in many parts of the country, along with periodic electrical power blackouts in California. In addition, oil imports rose to more than 50% of total consumption for the first time in history, provoking great anxiety about the security of the country’s long-term energy supply. Bush asserted that addressing the nation’s “energy crisis” was his most important task as president.
He and his advisers considered the oil supply essential to the health and profitability of leading U.S. industries. They reasoned that any energy shortages could have severe and pervasive economic repercussions on businesses in automobiles, airlines, construction, petrochemicals, trucking, and agriculture. They deemed petroleum especially critical to the economy because it is the source of two-fifths’ of the total U.S. energy supply—more than any other source,—and because it provides most of the nation’s transportation fuel. They also were cognizant of petroleum’s crucial national security role as the power for the vast array of tanks, planes, helicopters, and ships that constitute the backbone of the U.S. war machine.
“America faces a major energy supply crisis over the next two decades,” Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham told a National Energy Summit on March 19, 2001. “The failure to meet this challenge will threaten our nation’s economic prosperity, compromise our national security, and literally alter the way we lead our lives.”
The energy turmoil of 2000-2001 prompted Bush to establish the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), a task force of senior government representatives charged with developing a long-range plan to meet U.S. energy requirements. To head this group, Bush picked his closest political adviser, Vice President Dick Cheney. A Republican Party stalwart and a former secretary of Defense, Cheney had served as chairman and chief executive officer of the Halliburton Co., an oilfield services firm, before joining the Bush campaign in 2000. As such, Cheney availed himself of top executives of energy firms, such as Enron Corp., for advice on major issues.
As the NEPDG began its review of U.S. energy policy, its members saw the United States was faced with a grave choice between two widely diverging paths. It could continue down the road it had long been traveling, consuming increasing amounts of petroleum and—given the irreversible decline in domestic oil production—becoming ever more dependent on imported supplies. Or, it could choose an alternate route of reliance on renewable sources of energy and gradually reducing petroleum use.
Clearly, the outcome of this decision would have profound consequences for society, the economy, and the nation’s security. Following the same path would bind the United States ever more tightly to Persian Gulf suppliers and to other oil-producing countries, with a corresponding impact on U.S. security policy. Pursuing an alternative strategy would require a huge investment in new energy-generation and transportation technologies, resulting in the rise or fall of entire industries. Either way, the public would experience the impact of this choice in everyday life and in the dynamics of the economy as a whole. No one, in the United States or elsewhere, would be left entirely untouched.
The National Energy Policy Development Group wrestled with this dilemma and completed its report during the early months of 2001. After a careful review, Bush anointed the report as the National Energy Policy (NEP) and released it on May 17. At first glance, the NEP, or the Cheney report as it is often called, appeared to reject the path of increased reliance on imported oil in favor of renewable energy. The NEP “reduces demand by promoting innovation and technology to make us the world leader in efficiency and conservation,” the president declared as he released it. However, for all its rhetoric about conservation, the NEP does not propose a reduction in oil consumption. Instead, it proposes to slow the growth in U.S. dependence on imported petroleum by boosting production at home through the exploitation of untapped reserves in protected wilderness areas.
The single most important step proposed in the NRP was increasing domestic oil production by drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), an immense, untouched wilderness area in northeastern Alaska. While this proposal has generated enormous controversy in the United States because of its deleterious impact on the environment, it also has allowed the White House to argue that the administration is committed to a policy of energy independence. However, careful examination of the Cheney report leads to an entirely different conclusion. Aside from the ANWR proposal, nothing in the NEP would contribute to a significant decline in U.S. dependence on imported petroleum. In fact, the very opposite is true: The basic goal of the Cheney plan is to find additional external sources of oil for the United States.
In the end, Bush made a clear decision regarding future U.S. energy behavior. Knowing that nothing can reverse the long-term decline in domestic oil production, and unwilling to curb the country’s ever-growing thirst for petroleum products, he elected to continue down the existing path of ever-increasing dependence on foreign oil.
[b]Conservation Initiative: Fact or Fiction?[/b]
The fact that the Bush energy plan envisions increased rather than diminished reliance on imported petroleum is not immediately apparent from the president’s public comments on the NEP, or from the first seven chapters of the Cheney report itself. It is only in the eighth and final chapter, “Strengthening Global Alliances,” that the true intent of the administration’s policy becomes fully apparent. Here, the tone of the report changes markedly from a professed concern with conservation and energy efficiency to an explicit emphasis on securing more oil from foreign sources. The chapter begins, “U.S. national energy security depends on sufficient energy supplies to support U.S. and global economic growth.” The report further states, “We can strengthen our own energy security and the shared prosperity of the global economy,” by working with other countries to increase the global production of energy. It is a mandate to “make energy security a priority of our trade and foreign policy.”
The Cheney report is very guarded about the amount of foreign oil that will be required. The only clue provided by the report is a chart of net U.S. oil consumption and production over time. According to this illustration, domestic oil field production will decline from about 8.5 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2002 to 7.0 mbd in 2020, while consumption will jump from 19.5 mbd to 25.5 mbd. That suggests imports or other sources of petroleum, such as natural gas liquids, will have to rise from 11 mbd to 18.5 mbd. Most of the recommendations in Chapter 8 of the NEP are aimed at procuring this 7.5 mbd increment, equivalent to the total oil consumed by China and India.
One-third of all the recommendations in the report are for ways to obtain access to petroleum sources abroad. Many of the 35 proposals are region- or country-specific, with emphasis on removing political, economic, legal, and logistical obstacles. For example, the NEP calls on the secretaries of Energy, Commerce, and State “to deepen their commercial dialogue with Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and other Caspian states to provide a strong, transparent, and stable business climate for energy and related infrastructure projects.”
The Cheney report will have a profound impact on future U.S. foreign and military policy. Officials will have to negotiate for these overseas supplies and arrange for investments that will increase production and exports. They must also take steps to ensure that wars, revolutions or civil disorder do not impede foreign deliveries to the United States. These imperatives will be especially significant for policy toward the Persian Gulf area, the Caspian Sea basin, Africa, and Latin America.
Applying the Cheney energy plan will have major implications for U.S. security and military policy. Countries expected to supply petroleum in the years ahead are torn by internal conflicts, harbor strong anti-American sentiments, or both. Efforts to procure additional oil from foreign sources are almost certain to lead to violent disorder and resistance in many key producing areas. While U.S. officials might prefer to avoid the use of force in such situations, they may conclude that the only way to guarantee the continued flow of energy is to guard the oil fields and pipelines with soldiers.
To add to Washington’s dilemma, troop deployments in the oil-producing areas are likely to cause resentment from inhabitants who fear the revival of colonialism or who object to particular U.S. political positions, such as U.S. support for Israel. Efforts to safeguard the flow of oil could be counter-productive, intensifying rather than diminishing local disorder and violence.
[b]Persian Gulf [/b]
The United States currently obtains only about 18% of its imported petroleum from the Persian Gulf area. But Washington perceives a strategic interest in the stability of energy production there because its major allies, including Japan and Western Europe, rely on imports from the region. Also, the gulf’s high export volume has helped to keep world oil prices relatively low, benefiting the U.S. economy. With domestic production in decline, the NEP observes, the Persian Gulf “will remain vital to U.S. interests.”
The United States has played a significant role in Persian Gulf affairs for a very long time. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt forged an agreement with Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi dynasty, to protect the royal family against its internal and external enemies in return for privileged access to Saudi oil. In subsequent years, the United States also agreed to provide security assistance to the Shah of Iran and to the leaders of Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These agreements have led to the delivery of vast quantities of U.S. arms and, in some cases, the deployment of combat forces to these countries. (The U.S. security link with Iran was severed in January 1980, when the Shah was overthrown by militant Islamic forces.)
U.S. policy with regard to the protection of Persian Gulf energy supplies is unambiguous: When a threat arises, the United States will use whatever means are necessary to ensure the continued flow of oil. This principle, known as the Carter Doctrine, was first articulated by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Shah of Iran. It has remained part of U.S. policy ever since. In accordance with the principle, the United States used force in 1987 and 1988 to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers from Iranian missile and gunboat attacks, and then in 1990 and 1991 to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
In explaining the need to use force on these occasions, U.S. officials have stressed the importance of Persian Gulf oil to domestic economic stability and prosperity. “Our strategic interests in the Persian Gulf region, I think, are well known, but bear repeating,” then-Secretary of Defense Cheney told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 11, 1990, five weeks after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In addition to other security ties to Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, he said, “We obviously also have a significant interest because of the energy that is at stake in the gulf.” Iraq possessed 10% of the world’s oil reserves and acquired another 10% by seizing Kuwait, he explained. The occupation of Kuwait also placed Iraqi forces within a few hundred miles of another 25% located in eastern Saudi Arabia. “Once [former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein] acquired Kuwait and deployed an army as large as the one he possesses, he was clearly in a position to be able to dictate the future of worldwide energy policy, and that gave him a stranglehold on our economy and on that of most of the other nations of the world as well,” he noted. Cheney insisted that the United States had no choice but to employ military force in the defense of Saudi Arabia and other friendly states in the area.
Once Iraqi forces were driven from Kuwait, the United States adopted a policy of containment of Iraq, enforcing severe economic sanctions and “no-fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq to weaken the Hussein regime and to prevent any new attacks on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. At the same time, Washington substantially expanded its military presence and bases in the Persian Gulf area in order to facilitate future U.S. military operations in the region. Most importantly, the Department of Defense sent vast quantities of munitions to Kuwait and Qatar so that troops could be rushed into combat without waiting weeks or months for the arrival of their heavy equipment.
By early spring of 2002, the Bush administration concluded that the policy of containment was not sufficient to eliminate the threat Hussein posed to U.S. interests and that more aggressive action was required. Although Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction was cited as the main reason for acting in this manner, Cheney gave equal importance to U.S. energy security in his much-quoted speech of Aug. 26, 2002. “Should [Hussein’s] ambitions [to acquire weapons of mass destruction] be realized, the implications would be enormous for the Middle East and the United States,” he told the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror and a seat at the top of 10% of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, [and] directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region.”
Officials told the public that oil had nothing to do with the motives for the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “The only interest the United States has in the region is furthering the cause of peace and stability, not in [Iraq’s] ability to generate oil,” White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said in late 2002. But a closer look at the administration’s planning for the war reveals a very different picture. In a January briefing by an unnamed “senior Defense official” on U.S. plans for protecting Iraqi oil fields in the event of war, the Pentagon leadership revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks and his staff “have crafted strategies that will allow us to secure and protect those fields as rapidly as possible in order to preserve those prior to destruction.”
The senior official, who presumably was Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, indicated that the Bush administration sought to capture Iraq’s oilfields intact to provide a source of revenue for the reconstruction of the country. Under the Hussein regime, Iraq was a major oil supplier to the United States. It provided an average of 566,000 barrels per day in 2002, or 5% of total imports. Many in Washington hope to obtain far more oil from Iraq in the future. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Iraq possesses proven reserves of 112.5 billion barrels, more than any other country except Saudi Arabia, and it is thought to possess another 200 billion barrels in undeveloped fields. Iraq could become a leading oil supplier in the decades ahead, if a stable government is established that opens territory to exploitation by U.S. firms.
Such an outcome is far from assured. Policy makers face the challenge of ensuring that Saudi Arabia and other gulf producers increase oil supplies enough to meet growing U.S. and international demand. Another challenge will be protecting the Saudi regime against internal unrest and insurrection.
The need to increase Saudi production is particularly pressing. With one-fourth of the world’s known oil reserves, an estimated 262 billion barrels, Saudi Arabia is the only country other than Iraq capable of satisfying ever-increasing petroleum demands. According to the Department of Energy, Saudi Arabia’s net petroleum output must grow by 133% over the next 25 years, from 10.2 mbd in 2001 to 23.8 mbd in 2025, in order to meet anticipated world requirements at the end of that period. Expanding Saudi capacity by 13.6 mbd, which is the equivalent of total current production by the United States and Mexico, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. It also will create enormous technical and logistical challenges. Western analysts believe the best way to achieve this increase is to persuade the Saudis to allow substantial U.S. oil-company investment. The Cheney report calls for exactly that. However, any effort by Washington to apply pressure on Riyadh is likely to meet with significant resistance from the royal family, who nationalized oil holdings in the 1970s and is fearful of being seen as overly subservient to the United States.
The strong U.S. ties to the Saudi royal family are unpopular with the regime’s many opponents. Additionally, growing numbers of young Saudis have turned against the United States because of its close ties to Israel and what is seen as Washington’s anti-Islamic bias. It was from this milieu that Osama bin Laden recruited many of his followers in the late 1990s and obtained much of his financial support. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Saudi government cracked down on some of these forces, but underground opposition to the regime’s military and economic cooperation with Washington persists. Finding a way to eradicate this opposition while persuading Riyadh to increase its oil deliveries will be one of the most difficult challenges facing U.S. policy makers in the years ahead.
[b]Caspian Sea Basin [/b]
Although the United States will remain dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf area for a long time to come, officials seek to minimize this dependency to the greatest degree possible by diversifying the nation’s sources of imported energy. “Diversity is important, not only for energy security but also for national security,” President Bush declared on May 17, 2001. “Over-dependence on any one source of energy, especially a foreign source, leaves us vulnerable to price shocks, supply interruptions, and in the worst case, blackmail.” To prevent this, the administration’s energy plan calls for a substantial U.S. effort to boost production in a number of non-gulf areas, including the Caspian Sea basin, the West Coast of Africa, and Latin America.
The one that is likely to receive greatest attention from policy makers is the Caspian Sea basin, consisting of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and adjacent parts of Iran and Russia. According to the Department of Energy, this area houses proven reserves (defined as 90% probable) of 17 to 33 billion barrels of oil, and possible reserves (defined as 50% probable) of 233 billion barrels. If the amounts were confirmed, they would constitute the second largest untapped reserves after the Persian Gulf area.
To ensure that much of this oil will eventually flow to consumers in the West, the U.S. government has made strenuous efforts to develop the area’s petroleum infrastructure and distribution system. The United States first sought access to the Caspian’s oil supplies during the Clinton administration. Because the Caspian Sea is land-locked, its oil and natural gas must travel by pipeline to other areas. Tapping the resources requires the construction of long-distance export lines.
The administration was reluctant to see Caspian oil flow through Russia on its way to Western Europe, since that would allow Moscow a degree of control over Western energy supplies. Transport through Iran was prohibited by U.S. law because of that country’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. So Clinton threw his support behind a plan to transport oil and gas from Baku in Azerbaijan to Ceyhan in Turkey via Tbilisi in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Before leaving office, he flew to Turkey to preside at the signing ceremony for a regional agreement permitting construction of the $3 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
While concentrating on the legal and logistical aspects of procuring Caspian energy, the Clinton administration also addressed the threat to future oil deliveries posed by instability and conflict in the region. Since many of these states were wracked by ethnic and separatist conflicts, the administration initiated a number of military assistance programs aimed at strengthening their internal security capabilities. This entailed providing arms and training along with conducting joint exercises.
Building on Clinton’s efforts, the Bush administration sought to accelerate the expansion of Caspian production facilities and pipelines. “Foreign investors and technology are critical to rapid development of new commercially viable export routes,” the Cheney report affirms. “Such development will ensure that rising Caspian oil production is effectively integrated into world oil trade.” Particular emphasis is placed on completion of the BTC pipeline and on increasing the participation of U.S. companies in Caspian energy projects. The administration also sought to build an oil and gas pipeline from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan on the east shore of the Caspian to Baku on the west shore to channel more energy from Central Asia to the BTC system.
Until September 11, 2001 U.S. involvement in the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia had been restricted mostly to economic, diplomatic, and military aid agreements. To combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan however, the Department of Defense deployed tens of thousands of combat troops in the region and established military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. The administration recalled some of these troops but apparently plans to maintain bases and a permanent military presence. This is supposedly intended to assist in the war against terrorism, but it is also to safeguard the flow of petroleum. The administration deployed military instructors to Georgia to provide counter-insurgency training for special units that will eventually guard the Georgian segment of the BTC pipeline.
The White House has high hopes for the development of Caspian Sea energy supplies, but many obstacles remain. Some of these are logistical: Until new pipelines can be built, transport of large quantities of oil to the West will be tough. Other obstacles are political and legal: The authoritarian regimes that predominate in the former Soviet republics are riddled with corruption and reluctant to adopt the legal or tax reforms needed to attract large-scale Western investment. But when all is said and done, the major problem facing the United States is that the Caspian basin is no more stable than the Persian Gulf. Any effort to ensure the safety of energy deliveries will require the same sort of military commitments that the United States has long made to its principal energy suppliers in the gulf.
[b]West Africa [/b]
Another area the Bush administration views as a promising source of oil is West Africa. Although African states accounted for only about 10% of global oil production in 2000, the Department of Energy predicts that their share will rise to 25% by 2020. That will add 8.3 mbd to global supplies, welcome news in Washington. “West Africa is expected to be one of the fastest-growing sources of oil and gas for the American market,” the Cheney report observes.
The administration expects to concentrate its efforts in Nigeria, its neighboring states in the Gulf of Guinea, and Angola. As in the Caspian region, however, U.S. hopes to obtain additional oil from Africa could be frustrated by political unrest and ethnic warfare. Indeed, much of Nigeria’s production was shut down during the spring of 2003 because of ethnic violence in the Delta region, the site of much of Nigeria’s onshore oil. Local activists have occupied offshore oil facilities to bargain for community project funding. Crime and vandalism have also hampered Nigeria’s efforts to increase oil production.
The United States is not likely to respond to these challenges by deploying troops. That undoubtedly would conjure up images of colonialism, provoking strong opposition at home and abroad. But Washington is willing to step up military aid to friendly regimes in the region. Total U.S. assistance to Angola and Nigeria amounted to some $300 million in fiscal years 2002 through 2004, a significant increase over the previous three-year period. In fiscal 2004, Angola and Nigeria also became eligible to receive surplus arms under the Pentagon’s Excess Defense Articles program. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense has begun to secure rights for the establishment of naval bases in the region, most notably in Nigeria and the islands of Sao Tomé e Principe.
[b]Latin America [/b]
Finally, the Cheney plan calls for a significant increase in U.S. oil imports from Latin America. The United States already obtains a large share of its imported oil from the region. Venezuela is now the third largest supplier of oil to the United States, after Canada and Saudi Arabia; Mexico is the fourth largest, and Columbia is the seventh. As indicated by Secretary of Energy Abraham, “President Bush recognizes not only the need for an increased supply of energy, but also the critical role the hemisphere will play in the administration’s energy policy.”
In presenting these aspirations to governments in the region, U.S. officials highlight their desire to establish a common framework for energy development. “We intend to stress the enormous potential of greater regional energy cooperation as we look to the future,” Abraham told the Fifth Hemispheric Energy Initiative Ministerial Conference in Mexico City on March 8, 2001. “Our goal [is] to build relationships among our neighbors that will contribute to our shared energy security; to an adequate, reliable, environmentally sound, and affordable access to energy.” However sincere, these comments mask the fact that the “cooperation” is essentially aimed at channeling more and more of the region’s oil supplies to the United States.
The energy plan emphasizes acquisition of additional oil from Mexico and Venezuela. “Mexico is a leading and reliable source of imported oil,” the Cheney report observes. “Its large reserve base, approximately 25% larger than our own proven reserves, makes Mexico a likely source of increased oil production over the next decade.” Venezuela is considered vital because it possesses large reserves of conventional oil and houses vast supplies of so-called heavy oil, a sludge-like material that can be converted to conventional oil through a costly refining process. According to the NEP, “Venezuelan success in making heavy oil deposits commercially viable suggests that they will contribute substantially to the diversity of global energy supply and to our own energy supply mix over the medium to long term.”
But U.S. efforts to tap into abundant Mexican and Venezuelan energy supplies will hit a major snag. Because of a long history of colonial and imperial predation, these two countries have placed their energy reserves under state control, establishing strong legal barriers to foreign involvement in domestic oil production. While they may want to capitalize on the benefits of higher volume exports to the United States, Latin American countries are likely to resist more U.S. participation in their energy industries and any significant increase in oil extraction.
The NEP calls on the secretaries of Commerce, Energy, and State to lobby their Latin American counterparts to eliminate or soften barriers. However, in Mexico, reform bills to ease entry of private oil companies have encountered stiff resistance in Congress. In Venezuela, a new Constitution adopted in 1999 bans foreign investment in the oil sector, and in 2003, President Hugo Chávez fired managers of the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. who favored links with foreign firms.
[b]Bush Energy, Military Plans Linked [/b]
In its pursuit of petroleum, the United States is intruding in the affairs of the oil-supplying nations. In the process, it exposes itself to increased risk of involvement in local and regional conflicts. This reality has already influenced U.S. relations with the major oil-producing nations and is sure to have an even greater impact in the future.
At no point does the NEP acknowledge this. Instead, it focuses on the economic and diplomatic dimensions of the energy policy. However, the architects of the Bush-Cheney policy know that ensuring access to some oil sources may prove impossible without the use of military force. The administration’s military strategy takes up the slack with heavy emphasis on bolstering capacity to project firepower to key battlefields abroad. “The United States must retain the capability to send well-armed and logistically supported forces to critical points around the globe, even in the face of enemy opposition,” states its Quadrennial Defense Review.
These critical points would necessarily include areas that are petroleum sources. Whether or not the administration consciously linked energy with its security policy, Bush undeniable prioritized the enhancement of U.S. power projection at the same time he endorsed increased dependence on oil from unstable areas.
As a result, a two-pronged strategy governs U.S. policy toward much of the world. One arm of this strategy is to secure more oil from the rest of the world, and the other is to enhance the capability to intervene. While one of these objectives arises from energy preoccupations and the other from security concerns, the upshot is a single direction for U.S. dominance in the 21st Century. It is this combination of strategies, more than anything else, that will anchor the United States’ international relations for years to come.
[i]Michael T. Klare, author of "Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict" and the forthcoming "Petropolitics" (Metropolis Books, 2004) is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. This article is reprinted with permission from our friends at Foreign Policy in Focus[/i].
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| Halliburton Profits From $2-$7 Billion Contracts For "Operating" Iraqi Oil Fields ... |
| 01.17.04 (9:08 pm) [edit] |
[b]Who says Halliburton isn't profitting from Iraqi Oil? ... Hmmm ... How much "profit" they choose to reap ([u]based upon their management's discretionary spending[/u]) after they have paid their executives fat pay packages, campaign contributions to Dubya/Cheney, huge bonuses, etc., only god knows! But that is a question of how they decide themselves to spend all of this revenue generated by American taxpayers and Iraqi Oil! The facts simply don't support the neocon propaganda:[/b]
Although the US Government supposedly "cancelled" Halliburton's "oil contracts", they subsequently re-routed these contracts to "operate" the Iraqi Oil Fields back to KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton. One suffers whipflash while observing cancellations one day http://uk.news.yahoo.com/0312... and new contracts awarded the next http://english.aljazeera.net/... . We're being "played like fiddles" by [b]the Bush administration who have awarded $2-$7 Billion in no-bid, no-competition, no-audit and no-accountability contracts to Halliburton, any way you slice the cake! And it's a big cake![/b]
[b]Halliburton's role in post-war Iraq includes operating Iraqi oil fields, new documents have revealed[/b]. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/bu...
Previously, the US Army Corps of Engineers had described the contract given to Halliburton - run by US Vice President Dick Cheney between 1995 and 2000 - as putting out fires at oil wells during the conflict.
The emergency contract for firefighting and capping Iraqi oil wells was awarded to Halliburton without a bidding process in March.
Responding to questions from a US Congressman, the US Army Corps of Engineers has revealed that the contract included "operation of facilities and distribution of products".
In a letter to senior Democrat Henry Waxman on Friday, Army Corps Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers added the contract with Halliburton's subsidiary KBR was a "bridge" to one that is open to other bidders.
"We will limit orders under this contract to those services required prior to the availability of competitively awarded contracts," he wrote
[b]'Helping out' [/b]
Halliburton said the wider role for its subsidiary KBR was announced on 24 March, when the deal was made public.
"KBR's initial task involves hazard and operational assessment, extinguishing oil well fires, capping oil well blowouts, as well as responding to any oil spills," the original Halliburton statement said.
"Following this task, KBR will perform emergency repair, as directed, to provide for the continuity of operations of the Iraqi oil infrastructure," it continued.
The Halliburton spokeswoman said KBR was currently assisting Iraq's oil ministry.
"Only now, over five weeks after the contract was first disclosed, are members of Congress and the public learning that Halliburton may be asked to pump and distribute Iraqi oil under the contract," said senior Democrat Henry Waxman, who received the confirmation from the US Army.
[b]New deal [/b]
Mr Waxman sits on the House of Representatives' committee on government reform.
Mr Cheney's office has repeatedly denied the vice president had a role in awarding the contract.
The US government has been criticised for its handling of the reconstruction of Iraq because only a select group of US companies have been invited to bid for the contracts.
The US Army Corps of Engineers said the Halliburton deal was a temporary measure before a contract was put out to tender in the coming months.
It expects a replacement contract to be signed by the end of August.
[b]The US Army said in early April that Halliburton had been paid $50.3m out of the contract that could be worth up to $7bn over two years.[/b]
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| I’ll Be Voting For Wesley Clark: Good-Bye Mr. Bush |
| 01.17.04 (6:40 am) [edit] |
[b]I’ll Be Voting For Wesley Clark: Good-Bye Mr. Bush[/b] [i]by Michael Moore[/i], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
Many of you have written to me in the past months asking, "Who are you going to vote for this year?"
I have decided to cast my vote in the primary for Wesley Clark. That's right, a peacenik is voting for a general. What a country!
I believe that Wesley Clark will end this war. He will make the rich pay their fair share of taxes. He will stand up for the rights of women, African Americans, and the working people of this country.
And he will cream George W. Bush.
I have met Clark and spoken to him on a number of occasions, feeling him out on the issues but, more importantly, getting a sense of him as a human being. And I have to tell you I have found him to be the real deal, someone whom I'm convinced all of you would like, both as a person and as the individual leading this country. He is an honest, decent, honorable man who would be a breath of fresh air in the White House. He is clearly not a professional politician. He is clearly not from Park Avenue. And he is clearly the absolute best hope we have of defeating George W. Bush.
This is not to say the other candidates won't be able to beat Bush, and I will work enthusiastically for any of the non-Lieberman 8 who might get the nomination. But I must tell you, after completing my recent 43-city tour of this country, I came to the conclusion that Clark has the best chance of beating Bush. He is going to inspire the independents and the undecided to come our way. The hard core (like us) already have their minds made up. It's the fence sitters who will decide this election.
The decision in November is going to come down to 15 states and just a few percentage points. So, I had to ask myself -- and I want you to honestly ask yourselves -- who has the BEST chance of winning Florida, West Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, Missouri, Ohio? Because THAT is the only thing that is going to matter in the end. You know the answer -- and it ain't you or me or our good internet doctor.
This is not about voting for who is more anti-war or who was anti-war first or who the media has already anointed. It is about backing a candidate that shares our values AND can communicate them to Middle America. I am convinced that the surest slam dunk to remove Bush is with a four-star-general-top-of- his-class-at-West-Point-R hodes-Scholar-Medal-of-Fr eedom-winning-gun-owner-f rom-the-South -- who also, by chance, happens to be pro-choice, pro environment, and anti-war. You don't get handed a gift like this very often. I hope the liberal/left is wise enough to accept it. It's hard, when you're so used to losing, to think that this time you can actually win. It is Clark who stands the best chance -- maybe the only chance -- to win those Southern and Midwestern states that we MUST win in order to accomplish Bush Removal. And if what I have just said is true, then we have no choice but to get behind the one who can make this happen.
There are times to vote to make a statement, there are times to vote for the underdog and there are times to vote to save the country from catastrophe. This time we can and must do all three. I still believe that each one of us must vote his or her heart and conscience. If we fail to do that, we will continue to be stuck with spineless politicians who stand for nothing and no one (except those who write them the biggest checks).
My vote for Clark is one of conscience. I feel so strongly about this that I'm going to devote the next few weeks of my life to do everything I can to help Wesley Clark win. I would love it if you would join me on this mission.
Here are just a few of the reasons why I feel this way about Wes Clark:
1. Clark has committed to ensuring that every family of four who makes under $50,000 a year pays NO federal income tax. None. Zip. This is the most incredible helping hand offered by a major party presidential candidate to the working class and the working poor in my lifetime. He will make up the difference by socking it to the rich with a 5% tax increase on anything they make over a million bucks. He will make sure corporations pay ALL of the taxes they should be paying. Clark has fired a broadside at greed. When the New York Times last week wrote that Wes Clark has been “positioning himself slightly to Dean’s left," this is what they meant, and it sure sounded good to me.
2. He is 100% opposed to the draft. If you are 18-25 years old and reading this right now, I have news for you -- if Bush wins, he's going to bring back the draft. He will be forced to. Because, thanks to his crazy war, recruitment is going to be at an all-time low. And many of the troops stuck over there are NOT going to re-enlist. The only way Bush is going to be able to staff the military is to draft you and your friends. Parents, make no mistake about it -- Bush's second term will see your sons taken from you and sent to fight wars for the oily rich. Only an ex-general who knows first-hand that a draft is a sure-fire way to wreck an army will be able to avert the inevitable.
3. He is anti-war. Have you heard his latest attacks on Bush over the Iraq War? They are stunning and brilliant. I want to see him on that stage in a debate with Bush -- the General vs. the Deserter! General Clark told me that it's people like him who are truly anti-war because it's people like him who have to die if there is a war. "War must be the absolute last resort," he told me. "Once you've seen young people die, you never want to see that again, and you want to avoid it whenever and wherever possible." I believe him. And my ex-Army relatives believe him, too. It's their votes we need.
4. He walks the walk. On issues like racism, he just doesn't mouth liberal platitudes -- he does something about it. On his own volition, he joined in and filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the University of Michigan's case in favor of affirmative action. He spoke about his own insistence on affirmative action in the Army and how giving a hand to those who have traditionally been shut out has made our society a better place. He didn't have to get involved in that struggle. He's a middle-aged white guy -- affirmative action personally does him no good. But that is not the way he thinks. He grew up in Little Rock, one of the birthplaces of the civil rights movement, and he knows that African Americans still occupy the lowest rungs of the ladder in a country where everyone is supposed to have "a chance." That is why he has been endorsed by one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Charlie Rangel, and former Atlanta Mayor and aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young.
5. On the issue of gun control, this hunter and gun owner will close the gun show loophole (which would have helped prevent the massacre at Columbine) and he will sign into law a bill to create a federal ballistics fingerprinting database for every gun in America (the DC sniper, who bought his rifle in his own name, would have been identified after the FIRST day of his killing spree). He is not afraid, as many Democrats are, of the NRA. His message to them: "You like to fire assault weapons? I have a place for you. It's not in the homes and streets of America. It's called the Army, and you can join any time!"
6. He will gut and overhaul the Patriot Act and restore our constitutional rights to privacy and free speech. He will demand stronger environmental laws. He will insist that trade agreements do not cost Americans their jobs and do not exploit the workers or environment of third world countries. He will expand the Family Leave Act. He will guarantee universal pre-school throughout America. He opposes all discrimination against gays and lesbians (and he opposes the constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage). All of this is why Time magazine this week referred to Clark as "Dean 2.0" -- an improvement over the original (1.0, Dean himself), a better version of a good thing: stronger, faster, and easier for the mainstream to understand and use.
7. He will cut the Pentagon budget, use the money thus saved for education and health care, and he will STILL make us safer than we are now. Only the former commander of NATO could get away with such a statement. Dean says he will not cut a dime out of the Pentagon. Clark knows where the waste and the boondoggles are and he knows that nutty ideas like Star Wars must be put to pasture. His health plan will cover at least 30 million people who now have no coverage at all, including 13 million children. He's a general who will tell those swing voters, "We can take this Pentagon waste and put it to good use to fix that school in your neighborhood." My friends, those words, coming from the mouth of General Clark, are going to turn this country around.
Now, before those of you who are Dean or Kucinich supporters start cloggin' my box with emails tearing Clark down with some of the stuff I've seen floating around the web ("Mike! He voted for Reagan! He bombed Kosovo!"), let me respond by pointing out that Dennis Kucinich refused to vote against the war resolution in Congress on March 21 (two days after the war started) which stated "unequivocal support" for Bush and the war (only 11 Democrats voted against this--Dennis abstained). Or, need I quote Dr. Dean who, the month after Bush "won" the election, said he wasn't too worried about Bush because Bush "in his soul, is a moderate"? What's the point of this ridiculous tit-for-tat sniping? I applaud Dennis for all his other stands against the war, and I am certain Howard no longer believes we have nothing to fear about Bush. They are good people.
Why expend energy on the past when we have such grave danger facing us in the present and in the near future? I don't feel bad nor do I care that Clark -- or anyone -- voted for Reagan over 20 years ago. Let's face it, the vast majority of Americans voted for Reagan -- and I want every single one of them to be WELCOMED into our tent this year. The message to these voters -- and many of them are from the working class -- should not be, "You voted for Reagan? Well, to hell with you!" Every time you attack Clark for that, that is the message you are sending to all the people who at one time liked Reagan. If they have now changed their minds (just as Kucinich has done by going from anti-choice to pro-choice, and Dean has done by wanting to cut Medicare to now not wanting to cut it) – and if Clark has become a liberal Democrat, is that not something to cheer?
In fact, having made that political journey and metamorphosis, is he not the best candidate to bring millions of other former Reagan supporters to our side -- blue collar people who have now learned the hard way just how bad Reagan and the Republicans were (and are) for them?
We need to take that big DO NOT ENTER sign off our tent and reach out to the vast majority who have been snookered by these right-wingers. And we have a better chance of winning in November with one of their own leading them to the promised land.
There is much more to discuss and, in the days and weeks ahead, I will continue to send you my thoughts. In the coming months, I will also be initiating a number of efforts on my website to make sure we get out the vote for the Democratic nominee in November.
In addition to voting for Wesley Clark, I will also be spending part of my Bush tax cut to help him out. You can join me, if you like, by going to his website to learn more about him, to volunteer, or to donate. To find out about when your state’s presidential primaries are, visit Vote Smart.
I strongly urge you to vote for Wes Clark. Let's join together to ensure that we are putting forth our BEST chance to defeat Bush on the November ballot. It is, at this point, for the sake of the world, a moral imperative.
Yours,
Michael Moore
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| Dubya's Exit Plan in Iraq is a Shambles |
| 01.17.04 (6:38 am) [edit] |
[b]Dubya's Exit Plan in Iraq is a Shambles[/b]
[b]In Search of Rescue[/b], http://www.washingtonpost.com...
WITH ITS STRATEGY for Iraq on the verge of unraveling, the Bush administration has belatedly embraced an idea it should have accepted long ago: that a political transition conducted by the United Nations is more likely to be accepted by Iraqis than one imposed unilaterally by the United States. On Monday U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer and the head of the Iraqi Governing Council will meet with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to ask for stronger U.N. backing for the U.S. plan to turn over sovereignty in June to an Iraqi government chosen through regional caucuses. The hope is that Mr. Annan can help overcome the objections of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiite leader who has been demanding direct democratic elections. It seems unlikely, however, that the Bush administration will rescue its transition without yielding to more changes in its plans.
We have long favored the internationalization of Iraq's postwar management. But it may be too late for the U.N. bailout the Bush administration now appears to seek. Mr. Annan is reluctant to put his organization at the service of a predetermined U.S. strategy, and one letter from the secretary general has already failed to change the mind of Mr. Sistani. If Mr. Annan's continuing concerns about security can be satisfied, the organization may prove valuable in helping Iraqis write a constitution and prepare for elections in the coming months and years. But with or without the United Nations, the Bush administration and its Iraqi allies will have to come to terms with Mr. Sistani, whose tenacity in advancing his agenda they have repeatedly underestimated.
The public exchanges between the occupation authority in Baghdad and the Najaf-based cleric have tended to obscure the real issues. In consistently demanding elections, Mr. Sistani seeks to ensure that Iraq quickly comes under the governance of the Shiite majority -- and that the clergy is consulted when key decisions are made about Iraq's future. Mr. Sistani is widely described as favoring the separation of governmental and religious power, but he has also said that Iraq's future laws should not contradict Islamic law. It's unclear whether or for how long he's prepared to accept a U.S. military presence in Iraq -- but he has said that any deployment agreement must be reached with a new government, not the current Governing Council.
Mr. Bremer has answered that it would be impossible to organize and conduct general elections in time for the scheduled June transfer of power, but the United States -- like Mr. Sistani -- is also weighing issues of control. The indirect caucus procedure favored by the administration and the Governing Council would maximize their chances of preserving influence. Mr. Bremer said Friday that the administration would consider changes to its selection plan, but not the timetable -- a stance that seemed to limit the possibilities for compromise.
All the options in Iraq come with considerable risks. But it seems to us the greatest of these would attach to a decision by the United States to press ahead in choosing a government over the opposition of the Shiite clergy. An Iraqi administration led by followers of Mr. Sistani might prove less amenable to cooperation with Washington, and might alienate the Iraqi Sunni and Kurdish populations. The United States must continue to insist that any government that takes power commit itself to democracy and respect for religious and ethnic minorities and human rights. But a democratically chosen government would at least have a genuine popular mandate and thus a better chance of stabilizing the country. If a democratic choice by Iraqis would produce leaders closer to Mr. Sistani than to the Iraqi Governing Council, then the Bush administration would do better to let such leaders emerge now and to begin looking for ways to work with them.
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| 500th US Soldier Killed in Iraq |
| 01.17.04 (6:35 am) [edit] |
[b]3 GIs Killed, Pushing Iraq Toll to 500[/b], http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
TIKRIT, Iraq - The number of American service members who have died in the Iraq (news - web sites) conflict since war started last March reached 500 Saturday after a roadside bomb exploded near Baghdad, killing three U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi civil defense troopers.
Two Americans also were wounded when a Bradley Fighting Vehicle hit the explosive device and caught fire on a road near Taji, about 20 miles north of the Iraq capital, said Lt. Col. Bill MacDonald, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division.
Those killed and wounded had been part of a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol looking for roadside bombs, a frequent attack method by insurgents targeting the U.S.-led occupation, MacDonald said. Three men fleeing in a white truck were detained, and soldiers found bomb-making material in the vehicle, he added.
Also Saturday, the military said a U.S. soldier died from a non-hostile gunshot wound south of Baghdad. The incident occurred Friday evening near Diwaniyah south of Baghdad, the command said in a statement. No further details were released.
The deaths raised to 500 the number of U.S. forces who have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq started March 20. Of those, 346 died as a result of hostile action and 154 of non-hostile causes, according to Defense Department figures in addition to those reported Saturday.
Most of the deaths — both combat and non-combat — have occurred since President Bush (news - web sites) declared an end to major fighting on May 1.
The loss of American life in Iraq has surpassed the U.S. death toll of the first Gulf War (news - web sites) of 1991, when about 315 Americans died in the operation to drive Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s forces from Kuwait. That figure includes combat and non-combat deaths suffered during the military buildup and the war itself.
The ongoing operation in Afghanistan (news - web sites) has killed 100 American forces, less than a third of them by hostile fire.
U.S. officials dismiss most of the attacks by Iraqi insurgents as militarily insignificant, and figures show the number of attacks has declined sharply since the military adopted aggressive tactics following an upsurge in violence last fall. The Bush administration strongly defends the U.S. role in Iraq.
Bush said during a visit to London in November that the failure to build democracy in Iraq "would throw its people back into misery and turn that country over to terrorists who wish to destroy us."
Yet reaching the 500 threshold could again raise questions among the American public about Bush's Iraq policy as the U.S. presidential campaign cranks up, some analysts said.
"I think it's symbolic in the sense that maybe a lot of people who have not paid attention in recent weeks ... will say, 'I thought that we were in much better shape than this,' and, 'What's going on?'" Lawrence J. Korb, vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations and an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, told The Associated Press.
"I don't think it will lead to demands for withdrawal or anything like that, but I think it will lead people to ask, 'What's going on,' and, 'What's the end game here? When does it end?'"
MacDonald said the remote-controlled bomb, planted on an access road, was made up of two 155 mm artillery rounds and other explosives.
Abed Ali, who lives nearby, told AP that he rushed to the scene after hearing the loud explosion and saw the Bradley burning. The explosion left a large crater. Young Iraqi men could be seen picking through the wreckage of the destroyed vehicle.
Separately, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq has ordered a criminal investigation into reports of abuse of prisoners at a coalition detention center.
A military statement Friday gave no indication about the scope of the alleged abuse, saying simply that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez ordered a probe "into reported incidents of detainee abuse at a coalition forces detention facility." The statement did not specify the facility.
"The release of specific information concerning the incidents could hinder the investigation, which is in its early stages," the statement said.
In Washington, Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said it is a criminal investigation and that the reports of abuse were deemed "very serious and credible."
Di Rita declined to provide details other than to say the alleged abuse happened at detention centers in Baghdad.
The announcement followed allegations by Amnesty International and former prisoners of harsh treatment of detainees arrested by U.S. and coalition forces since the Iraq war began last March.
The coalition is believed to be holding about 12,800 detainees for various offenses, including attacks on U.S. and allied troops. Earlier this month, three U.S. Army reservists were discharged for abuse of prisoners at the Camp Bucca detention center in southern Iraq.
On the political front, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, the country's most influential Shiite Muslim leader, demanded that members of a new provisional legislature be chosen by voters. The Americans want them selected by regional caucuses.
Doubts over the American plan for transferring power to Iraqi hands by July 1 have loomed over the U.S.-led occupation this week, with the Americans pointing to sporadic violence as evidence the country is not ready for direct elections.
U.S. officials insist al-Sistani's demand for elections is unfeasible given Iraq's security situation. Many Shiites suspect the Americans simply want to manipulate the caucuses to make sure favored Iraqis win seats.
L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, said in Washington that the United States will revise its plan to create self-rule in Iraq, but he rejected postponement of a June 30 deadline for ending the occupation and handing over power.
"The Iraqi people are anxious to get sovereignty back, and we are not anxious to extend our period of occupation," Bremer said after meeting with Bush and senior U.S. officials.
Bremer, and an Iraqi delegation led by Adnan Pachachi, current chairman of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, plan to confer with Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) on Monday in New York.
In other developments:
[i]France, a leading opponent of the war, said it wants to help to train Iraq's next generation of police officers — once power is transferred to a sovereign Iraqi government. But Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said Friday that the question of sending in French troops is "not a current topic."
An advance team of Japanese soldiers arrived Saturday in Kuwait for training at a U.S. military base before they cross overland to Iraq on a humanitarian mission that puts soldiers from Japan in a combat zone for the first time since World War II. [/i]
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| Is Bush Doomed? |
| 01.17.04 (6:31 am) [edit] |
[b]Is Bush Doomed?[/b], http://antiwar.com/article.ph...
[b]Fear must be coursing through President Bush's veins as he realizes the Iraqi trap in which the neocons have placed him. [/b]Bush is caught between an Iraqi civil war and a wider insurgency.
Desperate to extricate himself from the weekly carnage well before the November election, Bush can neither deliver on his promise of democracy via direct elections nor impose his plan for an Iraqi assembly elected indirectly by caucuses.
If Bush delivers on his democracy promise, the Shi'ites with 60% of the population will be elected, and the country will break out in civil war. If he tries to water down Shi'ite representation with his plan for an assembly elected indirectly by caucuses, the so far peaceful Shi'ites are likely to join the violence.
If the Shi'ites become violent, the insurgency would be too large to be contained by our present occupying force. Moreover, the outbreak of a general rebellion in Iraq would spill over throughout the Middle East where unpopular secular rulers are sitting on a smoldering Islam. Our puppet in Pakistan would likely bite the dust. Israel would then face countervailing Muslim nukes.
If you think more US troops are needed now in Iraq, imagine how many more would be required to deal with a wider conflagration. Where would they come from? The US military is already so thinly stretched that soon 40% of the occupying troops will be drawn from the National Guard and reservists, resulting in tremendous disruption in the affairs of tens of thousands of families.
Pilots and troops are shunning the cash bonuses offered for reenlistments. The troops recognize a quagmire even if their neocon overlords cannot. The only source of troops is the draft.
A Shi'ite insurgency that brought back the draft would deprive Bush of reelection. A civil war with the prospect of a Kurdish state would bring in the Turks. On January 14 Turkish prime minister Erdogan said that Turkey will intervene in the event of Iraq's disintegration.
The Shi'ites and the Turks are forming an alliance as both have the same interest in maintaining the geographical integrity of the Iraqi state. The US could come dangerously close to military conflict with a NATO ally.
All of this was perfectly clear well in advance of the ill-considered invasion. If Bush wasn't smart enough to see it, why didn't his National Security Advisor or his Secretary of State? How did a handful of neocon ideologues hijack US foreign policy?
Bush did not campaign on a neocon policy of conquest in the Middle East. There was no public debate over this policy. The invasion of Iraq was the private agenda of the neocons.
Why have the neocons not been held responsible for their treason in abusing their presidential appointments to substitute their personal agenda for America's agenda?
Bush has been the neocon's puppet for so long that he is now stuck with responsibility for their horrible mistake. With no way of his own to get out of his trap, his arrogance toward the "irrelevant" UN and our doubting allies has disappeared. Come bail me out, he pleads.
Bush, desperate to be extricated before doom strikes him is experiencing a reality totally different from the chest-thumping of neocon megalomaniacs, such as Charles Krauthammer, who declared the US so powerful as to be able to "reshape, indeed remake, reality on its own."
Bush now knows that he lacks the power to deal with the reality of Iraq. Indeed, Bush cannot even deal with his own appointees.
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| Clark's Comeback |
| 01.16.04 (7:12 am) [edit] |
Clark's Comeback. If Dubya had been asked the same question, he would have stupidly smirked something dumb and stood by with his thumb-up-his-ass!
"Clark, when asked by a woman at a Dartmouth rally whether he was really a Republican in sheep's clothing, zinged back, '[i]I never really thought of Democrats as sheep[/i].'"
- Wesley Clark http://www.time.com/time/maga...,9171,1101040119-574925,0 0.html
Go Dems Go!
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| U.S. Media Blackout of Cheney/Halliburton Under Criminal Investigation |
| 01.16.04 (7:07 am) [edit] |
What does it say about the U.S. media that we have a blackout of Cheney/Halliburton who are under a criminal investigation?
[b]A Nigerian Contract at the Heart of a Corruption Affair[/b], http://www.globalpolicy.org/n...
A judicial investigation has been opened with regard to “the bribery of a foreign public official”, for the first time in France. It focuses notably on the French company Technip and the American Halliburton, which were associated in a Nigerian operation. Such an international inquiry is possible since the 1997 adoption of an OECD convention on the “fight against the corruption of foreign public officials in commercial negotiations” which came into effect in French law in 2000. It’s within this new judicial framework that the Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke is conducting his investigations and the Paris court contemplates an eventual indictment of the present United States’ Vice President, Richard Cheney, in his capacity as former CEO of Halliburton. The investigations concern 180 million dollars of commissions paid on the occasion of a gas complex bid in Nigeria. The hypothesis of an eventual indictment of Dick Cheney is officially contemplated by French justice. According to projections of the case, he could be charged with “eventual complicity in supplying the means or the orders or the reception (of stolen goods)”, for the misappropriation of public property. If such a prospect is not on the agenda, it is possible since the opening of the judicial inquiry October 8 for “the bribery of foreign public officials and misappropriation of public property” targeting the American company Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) which is the principal subsidiary of Halliburton, known for having obtained more than 2 billion dollars worth of Iraq reconstruction contracts from the American government and over which Richard Cheney presided as CEO from 1995 to 2000. Concretely, Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke is trying to identify the beneficiaries of 180 millions dollars of commissions paid during the bidding for a gas complex construction contract in Nigeria for an amount estimated at 6 billion dollars or three times that of Iraq….
Revealed by Le Figaro June 2, the affair may be summarized as follows: in the beginning of the 90s, the construction of one of the biggest gas liquefaction factories in the world was decided for the eastern part of the Niger delta, on Bonny Island. The initiator of the project- the realization of which is being pursued today-, Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) brought together four main shareholders: the Nigerian National Oil Company (49%), Shell (25.6%), TotalFinaElf (15%) and Agip International (10.4%). Shell remains the uncontested leader of the undertaking. In a second stage, four companies were designated to build the gigantic industrial complex. The French Technip, the Italian Snamprogetti, the American KBR, the Japanese JGC were consequently united in a joint venture dubbed TSKJ (for the four initials of the groups involved). But this structure was dominated by Halliburton’s subsidiary. The story gets complicated in November 1994, with the creation by this consortium of a subsidiary on the Portuguese island of Madeira where all businesses are exempt from corporate taxes. This Portuguese subsidiary was dubbed LNG Servicos – Technip, KBR, Snamprogetti and JGC, all enjoying equal shares. However, LNG Servicos specifically, officially charged with the “administrative follow-up” of the file, would sign a series of commercial support contracts with another company, domiciled in Gibraltar and called Tri Star. The three principal contracts were concluded in 1995, December 2001 and June 2002 and determined the amounts for remuneration of Tri Star’s services. In total, Tri Star received 180 million dollars. For what real service provided? That’s what Judge Van Ruymbeke is trying to clarify. First certainty: the only Tri Star official is Jeffrey Tesler, a reputable London lawyer. However it appears that he was designated on KBR’s sole authority. In a March 17 letter, William Chaudan, one of LNG Servicos’ directors, presented as “very close” to Halliburton, writes: “Tri Star was engaged on KBR’s recommendation over Technip’s opposition (...). Jeffrey Tesler has a professional and personal relationship with KBR since the ‘80s; the two parties wanted to pursue their collaboration.” In the same letter, Chaudan praises Tesler’s qualities and, in particular, “the vast extent of his contacts, the result of thirty years’ work in Nigeria where he counseled many prominent people.” Technip, which wanted to impose another intermediary, therefore had to accept Halliburton’s. But KBR’s praises, however, do not explain why the American company and therefore, finally, the consortium, needed recourse to the services of a “commercial assistant” to which the Snamprogetti Italians would, besides, be opposed. Dan Etete, former Oil Minister to Nigeria’s ex-dictator Sani Abacha, interrogated Thursday December 4 as a state’s witness by Judge Van Ruymbeke, explained that in substance the overall control of this gas operation was under Shell and KBR, the first with responsibility for gas exploitation and the second with responsibility for the realization of the industrial complex. Dan Etete, who claimed that he “feared for his life”, indicated that Shell and KBR were extremely well established in Nigeria and had close relationships with the ruling power. In consequence, he didn’t see any necessity for them to have an intermediary. This statement confirms the two companies’ stranglehold on the operations and reinforces the questions about the reality of Jeffrey Tesler’s services, as well as those about the true purpose of the sums paid to him.
From this angle, Renaud Van Ruymbeke has launched double letters rogatory to Switzerland and Monaco about two of Jeffrey Tesler’s bank accounts, through which the 180 million dollars transited. This way, the magistrate hopes to follow the thread back to the true beneficiaries of the funds. It is to be emphasized that during the first payments, the lawyer had indicated his UBP branch in Geneva account number to LNG Servicos before resorting to the Monaco account. A source close to the inquiry confirms that this change in banks coincides with the start of a judicial procedure in Switzerland targeting Sani Abacha’s assets there. In fact, justice suspects that the English lawyer is the key man in a system of “corruption of foreign public officials”, some part of the 180 million dollars having served to remunerate eminent Nigerians. This offence, created during the 1997 adoption of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) convention on “the fight against bribery of foreign public officials in commercial negotiations”, is being enforced for the first time since it came into effect in France in 2000. In this affair of presumed “international bribery” the only contract targeted is the one posterior to this date- that of June 2002-, a time when Dick Cheney had left Halliburton for the Vice-Presidency of the United States. However, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke is also targeting the misappropriation of public property, including eventual kickbacks to certain members of the joint venture. In this framework, the magistrate will therefore be able to go back to the origin of the affair in 1995 and to the role played by each of the four companies. Neither the examination of state’s witness Daniel Burlin, former Technip finance director, nor that of Jean Desseilligny, the General Manager, have brought significant elements to the investigating magistrate, the company’s managers throwing all responsibility for the dubious set-up onto the Americans. In the next few days, the questioning of the French group’s representatives in the Portuguese company LNG Servicos could turn out to be more fruitful. It seems, however, to be confirmed that the initiative and the establishment of the occult system of commissions essentially come from KBR- during a period when Dick Cheney presided over the Halliburton Group-, even if its associates could not have remained ignorant of what was going on. Could part of the money paid to Jeffrey Tesler been given to highly placed Americans or to American political groups? That’s what Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke must still verify. Consequently, events could accelerate in the coming weeks. The Technip entourage explained to Le Figaro that they knew nothing about an eventual bribery or misappropriation of funds, describing KBR as “a Halliburton sub-subsidiary” and asserting that Jeffrey Tesler had effected “remarkable and important work”. In fact, the French group, associated with the American company in numerous other industrial operations around the world, contemplates the commercial consequences judicial developments against Halliburton or its subsidiary KBR could have with anxiety.
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| The opposite of Pax Americana is... |
| 01.15.04 (9:40 am) [edit] |
[b]The opposite of Pax Americana is... [/b]
[i]by Tom Engelhardt[/i], http://www.zmag.org/content/s...
The other day I wrote a dispatch in part about a new U.S. intelligence term, "extraordinary rendition," applied when our agents turn a "person of interest" (read: terrorist suspect) over to some friendly, or less than friendly, country ready to put the screws to him for us; in other words, torture-by-proxy. I commented then that our language, often a-boil, is now roiling with new words, phrases, images, euphemisms, acronyms, all bubbling up into the media from the darkside where the Bush administration loves to dwell. Collectively, they are little signs, signals to the rest of us, of things going on often just beyond sight. If you could write them all down and somehow connect the dots, you'd have an image of our world and a devil's dictionary. Accordingly, I launched a little "contest" for nominees for the best new words and phrases from Bushworld and was quickly inundated with suggestions.
Consider what follows -- a mix of candidates suggested by others and terms that happened to catch my own eye -- as scattered notes on our evolving language, notes toward someone else's future dictionary:
The easiest of these to categorize are the opposites that fit the Orwellian war-is-peace model. A number of people, for instance, sent in the term "free speech zone," which I also used in a recent dispatch. This is a fenced-off area, designated by the local police at the behest of the Secret Service, often miles from wherever the President will appear. There you can "protest" his policies to no avail whatsoever -- or else. They are the equivalents of that childhood conundrum about the tree falling in the forest, and should obviously be called "muzzle zones" or "deep-six zones" or something of the sort.
Here's one I noticed recently: "US Visit" -- this is the name the Department of Homeland Security has given its new fingerprinting and photographing program for visitors from abroad (who don't happen to come from 27 lucky, mostly European countries). It should obviously be called the "US Don't Visit" Program.
The Brazilians, who happen not to be among those lucky 27, responded by instituting a cumbersome fingerprinting and photographing process for American visitors to their country, even (gasp!) diplomats, and of course we promptly expressed outrage. I found the following wonderful paragraph of Bushworld logic in the New York Times the other day in a piece by Christopher Marquis headlined "News Analysis: Latin American Allies of U.S.: Docile and Reliable No Longer," (1/9/04):
"On the security front, Brazil has been equally adamant. When the administration began requiring photos and fingerprints of foreign visitors who are from countries that require visas to [the] United States, a Brazilian judge took umbrage and ordered the same treatment for American visitors to Brazil. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday argued that Brazil's action was discriminatory, while the administration's position was universal, with admitted exceptions."
"Universal, with admitted exceptions" -- shouldn't that enter the language? It catches something of our one-way-street of an imperial planet.
Among new or relatively new terms suggested by readers, many are already old friends and bosom companions, remarkably deeply embedded (whoops… see below) in our lives. These would include:
The "USA Patriot Act," which manages to patriotically reduce our liberties (or as one reader wrote, "stands for legislation that seriously endangers the rights our patriotic ancestors fought for and really makes me crazy").
"Regime change," a very cool and neutral term indeed for a global policy of overthrowing the governments of countries whose leaders we don't care for -- by armed invasion if need be.
"Homeland," a word that feels like it was borrowed from the Germans as a replacement for "our country," "our land" or just the plain old "U.S." It's an over-combined word -- both "home" and "land" as if one or the other weren't good enough -- meant to offer a double dose of emotion. And isn't it just the perfect term to link to "security" for real emotional wallop. Put them together and you have "homeland security," a distinctly un-American duo (or is it actually trio?) -- as in the Department of Homeland Security which should clearly be either the "U.S. Insecurity Department" or the "Homeland Paranoia Department."
In a country which now officially prefers not home, or land, or security but "Homeland Security" and a vast repressive bureaucracy to go with it, along with a labyrinthine color-coding system that's always turned up to hot -- Quick, what's the color below yellow? -- a surprising number of new terms are militarized. But perhaps this isn't really so startling, given the last years. Certainly, money creates its own realities which have to be named or renamed or acronymed or euphemized -- and a Pentagon budget of $400 billion-plus (without even the supplemental Iraq and Afghan war funds added in) should buy you plenty of Scrabble tiles.
A number of readers, for instance, noted the replacement of the Vietnam era term "body bags" with "transfer tubes," which manages to sound both ethereal and pneumatic and goes so well with the general playing down of funerals to which our president does not go. Transfer tubes -- you can almost hear the whoosh that sends it to the opposite end of some strange spectrum of history from body bags, no less deaths, casualties, mangled limbs, war.
Or how about a term we've grown used to -- it's already beginning to migrate elsewhere -- "embedded." It was a Pentagon application. Journalists, as we all remember so well, were to be "embedded" in military units invading Iraq. As a word, it has both the feeling of "in bed with," and encased in concrete. It's hard and soft at once and has something of the ring of that other strange term, "soft targets" (sent in by another reader), meaning human beings. (While the allied and somewhat older term, "collateral damage" bears the same relation to the killing of civilians as "transfer tubes" does to Vietnam's "body bags.") Embedded is one of those soft-hard terms that manage to take the edges off the reality being described without entirely doing away with it. As with so many terms in Bushworld, "embedded" stands at the end of a long history that began in Vietnam where, at least as myth has it on the right, reporters roamed free and so destroyed our war effort.
If you think for a second that this version of Vietnam history isn't still on the minds of top figures in this administration and in the military, just check out the following quote from Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, American commander in Iraq, from a front-page New York Times portrait by John Burns ("Challenge for Bootstrap General Is Winning Over the Wary Iraqis," 1/11/04):
"'It's about gaining and retaining the consent of the people,' General Sanchez said to the officers who gathered in front of a satellite map of the Abu Saida area in the dim interior of the command post. 'That's what we're here for, fighting a war, and building a nation.'
"It is a task that General Sanchez believes is within grasp. In a conversation at his headquarters in the Republican Palace in Baghdad a few days before the trip to Abu Saida, he said that despite the scale of warfare that has disappointed and even shocked many Americans, allied forces here could fail only if the political will of the United States faltered. 'I really believe that the only way we are going to lose here, is if we walk away from it like we did in Vietnam,' he said. 'If the political will fails, and the support of the American public fails, that's the only way we can lose.'"
That description of the Vietnam War may indeed be fantasy, but embeddedness has turned out to be remarkably descriptive -- and the program remarkably successful -- from the Pentagon's point of view, part of what's now called, according to David Miller, "information dominance." Miller recently wrote in the British Guardian (1/8/04):
"In the past, propaganda involved managing the media. Information dominance, by contrast, sees little distinction between command and control systems, propaganda and journalism. They are all types of 'weaponized information' to be deployed. As strategic expert Colonel Kenneth Allard noted, the 2003 attack on Iraq 'will be remembered as a conflict in which information fully took its place as a weapon of war'. Nor is information dominance something dreamt up by the Bush White House. It is a mainstream US military doctrine that is also embraced in the UK. According to US army intelligence there are already 15 information dominance centres in the US, Kuwait and Baghdad."
And, of course, in a world of "weaponized information," as Miller says, "unfriendly" information must be targeted.
Some of the terms of our militarized moment like embedded are already moving elsewhere. (I was told, for instance, that reporters at recent demonstrations in Miami against the free-trade negotiations were "embedded" with the police.) Take "shock and awe," whose official debut was the spectacular televised bombing of downtown Baghdad as our most recent war began. These fireworks, the son et lumière of our age, represented a production which cost multimillions to mount and were a ratings success, being watched by multimillions. Now, a reader reports, that "shock and awe" was recently used by NASA to describe reactions to the photos just sent back from Mars. This is how language migrates, of course, and how, assumedly, a new lingo of information dominance will slowly infiltrate our world, transforming it and being transformed by it.
Here's one I like: "Footprint." It's used for what Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, calls the "U.S. global defense posture." (Of course, as with the opposites rule above, you need to read this as "global offense" since our "defense" now rather aggressively straddles the planet.) "Posture" is a term used often and it seems to fit so well with "footprint," since obviously if you stand correctly, starting with those feet, you're bound to have a good global posture. But here's the strange thing, it turns out that, imagistically speaking, the Pentagon doesn't have footprints or even feetprints, despite our hundreds and hundreds of global bases and all those "forward deployed" troops meant to "to project power" into distant "theaters." They have only a global "footprint" -- one giant foot on which we are evidently imagined to be balancing, towering (or perhaps even teetering) above this tiny world of nations. It sounds precarious to me and it's an image that runs into some conceptual problems when applied to localities, as in a speech Feith gave to the Center for Strategic and International Studies on December 3, when he said:
"Our key Asian and Pacific allies are investing in new technologies, playing roles in Afghanistan and Iraq, coordinating with us regarding global and regional threats, such as the North Korean nuclear program, and working with us to rationalize the US troop 'footprint' in their countries to keep the alliances sustainable and capable well into the 21st Century… [and again later in the speech] Realigning the U.S. posture will also help strengthen our alliances by tailoring the physical US 'footprint' to suit local conditions."
Let's tailor that footprint just a little more… so that the unfortunate phrase "crush underfoot" doesn't come to mind.
I bring this up in part because a reader, who prefers anonymity, sent in an e-note which amused me, about "little footprints," a term I had never -- for reasons that will be clear -- run across. He wrote:
"It supposedly is a military term, derisively referring to [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld's aspirations to make his mark on history. I came across the expression this way. [A relative], who was an Army officer… into the early nineties, met up this past year with one of his old army buddies. This person has remained in the Army and… was stationed at the Pentagon. The term reflects dissent in the officer ranks with the Bush administration's Iraq policy. (It also supposedly reflects the fact that Rumsfeld is a short person.)"
Anger in the military at Rumsfeld, the neocons, and the postwar mess in Iraq is indeed at the boiling point. Only yesterday, for instance, Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post reported ("Study Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror's Scope," 1/12/04):
"A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an 'unnecessary' war in Iraq and pursuing an 'unrealistic' quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat. The report, by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is 'near the breaking point.'"
We are certainly in a grim and yet inventive new world of names and terms. For instance Barton Gellman in his recent Washington Post piece, "Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper" (1/7/04), offers this passage on one group of Americans searching for the WMD that wasn't:
"The survey group's most exotic line of investigation sought evidence that Iraq tried to create a pathogen combining pox virus with cobra venom. A 1986 study in the Journal of Microbiology reported that fowlpox spread faster and killed more chickens in the presence of venom extract. Investigators received a secondhand report that Iraq sought to splice them together. Such an artificial life form -- created by inserting genetic sequences from one organism into another -- is called a 'chimera,' after the fire-breathing monster of Greek mythology commingling lion, serpent and goat."
Well, the ancient Greeks had to be good for something, didn't they? Otherwise why did they come up with all those strange gods and bizarre creatures anyway? Oh, this particular "chimera" was investigated by "Team Pox."
Perhaps this is all, to pick up a term suggested by another reader, "the new normal" (as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights grimly calls it). Certainly, our language is being driven in new directions by destruction. Sometimes in the process it's badly wounded. Al, a reader, sent in the following passage from the Washington Post (Michelle Faul, 1/8/04, AP) as an illustration:
"Earlier Wednesday, U.S. troops said they destroyed a home in Fallujah, the center of the anti-American insurgency west of Baghdad, where enraged neighbors said a married couple was killed and their five children were orphaned. The neighbors insisted the couple was innocent in an attack on the troops that led them to shell the house.
"The 82nd Airborne Division said its paratroopers acted after receiving 'two rounds of indirect fire' around 9 p.m. Tuesday.
"'Paratroopers from our Task Force engaged the point of origin with a grenade launcher and small arms, causing two personnel to flee into a nearby building, which was also engaged and destroyed,' division spokeswoman Capt. Tammy Galloway said in a statement. 'The building was searched and no weapons or personnel were found. Upon questioning, civilians in the area reported two dead personnel were taken to a nearby hospital,' the statement said."
Al provides the following possible translation: "Two personnel": two people (apparently in this case a civilian couple fleeing from the firefight); building "engaged": blown up."
Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst who was one of the founders of VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), served up -- to my mind -- an especially vivid image of this moment, showing that we, too, can push the language a little. It should, I believe, lead to the creation of a new acronym: DWIWP. In a recent piece at the Tompaine.com website he wrote:
"It came at the very end of a long New York Times report of Jan. 2 regarding the havoc caused at Dulles airport in Washington, D.C. because of heightened concern there of a terrorist attack. 'In a footnote, the director of security at Dulles airport was arrested Thursday on suspicion of drunk driving.'
"Dulles airport's director of security, former Secret Service agent Charles Brady, was pulled over on suspicion of being drunk at the wheel at the very height of the emergency! What a telling metaphor for malfeasance at a more senior level, I thought to myself. While President George W. Bush may no longer be drinking, the year 2003 showed him to be DWI in a far more dangerous sense -- driving while intoxicated with power… The top story of 2003, in my view, deals with official malfeasance, the difference between Brady and Bush, and the reasons why the latter has not yet been pulled over for reckless endangerment on an international scale."
So let's start using DWIWP (like drip with the "r" replaced) -- drunk while intoxicated with power. Or even DWIPANOTPHO -- drunk while intoxicated with power and no one to pull him over.
And all of this, I assure you, is just to stick a toe in the waters of our moment. I haven't even gone wading -- just my footprint on the beach and my big toe forward deployed to our linguistic waters. On my shelf I have -- and find myself quite satisfied with -- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. But if the next edition reflects the new normal, it's going to be far fatter and I'm not so sure that "American Heritage" will be part of the title any more.
[b]And the opposite of Pax Americana is…[/b]
At the end of my previous dispatch on language, I wrote: "Even in high school I didn't exactly have that linguistic touch when it came to Latin (or any other language but English, sadly) and I've made a fool of myself with a Latin phrase at this site before, so let me just ask, what's the opposite of Pax Americana and shouldn't it enter our lives?"
And this throwaway paragraph was the one that got the most responses and the single response that most caught my fancy. A number of readers suggested that the opposite would be "Pox America."
Chris Daniels offered the following:
"Assuming that the opposite of Peace is War, the opposite of Pax Americana would be Bellum Americanum. But it seems to me that war is a word that is traditionally associated with courage and honor and sacrifice. I think we need more than one word. The opposite of Pax Americana is Cupiditas Stultitiaque Americana: American Greed and Folly."
Michael wrote aptly:
"Not to enter the contest, and from about as Latin-less reader as you claim to be: surely the proper Latin tag to respond to Pax Americana is Tacitus's solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant --'they create a desolation and call it peace.'"
And Hugo, whose last name I don't have, wrote the contest winner: "The opposite of Pax Americana is good night's sleep."
I know, I know (don't write in)... the award should have been for an already existing word or phrase from Bushworld, but the judges have decided. It's he who gets the promised "fabulous trip for two nowhere. (Given airports, alerts, cancelled flights, no-fly lists and the like, believe me, that's a good offer.)"
[[i]This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing and author of The End of Victory Culture and The Last Days of Publishing[/i].]
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| Stupid Jenna Bush Behaves Like A Spoiled Ne'er-Do-Well ... |
| 01.15.04 (9:31 am) [edit] |
[b]Stupid Jenna Bush behaves like a spoiled ne'er-do-well. Like Father, Like Daughter!#%*(? [/b]
The [i]Washington Post [/i]story in question reads in part:
That summer of 2001, Jenna tried to sweet-talk a bartender into serving her, but when he saw the guys with the earpieces, he asked her to leave. Jenna, according to an account in U.S. News & World Report, was furious. She yelled at her agents, then fled. When they caught up with her, the magazine said, she taunted them: "[i]You know if anything happens to me, my dad would have your a[/i]--."
[b]We're becoming like Merry Ole' England, where our Imperial Royal Family is above scrutiny, no matter how bady they behave![/b]
Newssite scolded over Jenna Bush query: McClellan says question about daughter's comment 'uncalled for', http://www.wnd.com/news/artic...
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| The Awful Truth: With BC-Bush-O'Neill |
| 01.14.04 (6:47 am) [edit] |
[b]The Awful Truth: With BC-Bush-O'Neill[/b]
[i]Selected quotes from "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill" by Ron Suskind[/i]:
"This meeting was like many of the meetings that I would go to over the course of two years. The only way I can describe it is that, well, the president is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection." -- Paul O'Neill, describing a March 19, 2001, Cabinet meeting to discuss the California energy crisis.
"There's been too much gaming of the system until it is broke. Capitalism is not working! There has been a corrupting of the system of capitalism." -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, speaking of mounting corporate scandals during a February 2002 meeting of the president's working group on corporate governance.
"If you can't do the right thing when you're at 85 percent approval, then when can you do the right thing? I think it's time to say no." -- Mitch Daniels, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, arguing unsuccessfully at a Feb. 11, 2002, White House meeting that the administration should reject requests by the steel industry for protective tariffs.
"Won't the top-rate people benefit the most from eliminating the double taxation of dividends? Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" -- President Bush, during a Nov. 26, 2002, White House meeting, questioning the wisdom of eliminating taxes individuals pay on corporate dividends.
"I'm not willing to say I want to return to private life because I'm too old to begin telling lies now." -- Paul O'Neill, after being informed by Vice President Dick Cheney of Bush's decision to remove his as treasury secretary with the suggestion that O'Neill say he wanted to return to private life.
[b]With BC-Bush-O'Neill, The Associated Press[/b], http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...
[b]The Awful Truth[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...
So far administration officials have attacked Mr. O'Neill's character but haven't refuted any of his facts. They have, however, already opened an investigation into how a picture of a possibly classified document appeared during Mr. O'Neill's TV interview. This alacrity stands in sharp contrast with their evident lack of concern when a senior administration official, still unknown, blew the cover of a C.I.A. operative because her husband had revealed some politically inconvenient facts.
Some will say that none of this matters because Saddam is in custody, and the economy is growing. Even in the short run, however, these successes may not be all they're cracked up to be. More Americans were killed and wounded in the four weeks after Saddam's capture than in the four weeks before. The drop in the unemployment rate since its peak last summer doesn't reflect a greater availability of jobs, but rather a decline in the share of the population that is even looking for work.
More important, having a few months of good news doesn't excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to deny.
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| Dubya Admits That He Is A Liar! |
| 01.13.04 (7:06 am) [edit] |
Dubya admits that he is a liar, but the [i]corporate-owned [/i]media is yawning because they want their own private [i]Commander-in-Thief [/i]to continue to steal from the American people on their behalf.
Remember that as late as March 2003, Bush repeated over and over again, that "Saddam Hussein could save himself", if he would [i]hand-over his weapons-of-mass destruction[/i]. This was a blatant lie on Dubya's part.
The White House's ludicrous defense that Dubya exhausted all the possibilities and only went to war as a last resort is laughable garbage: the only thing Dubya exhausted was all the possible [i]LIES[/i] that the American people would swallow!
[b]Bush admits he targeted Saddam from the start: Comments could boost criticism of president's case for war against Iraq[/b], http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...
WASHINGTON -- President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he was mapping preparations to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as soon as he took office.
Bush's comments came in response to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's contention in a new book that the chief executive was gunning for Saddam nine months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and two years before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Bush's comments appeared likely to stoke campaign claims by Democratic rivals for the White House that the president was planning to attack Iraq, possibly in retaliation for Saddam's attempted 1993 assassination of his father, former President Bush.
"The stated policy of my administration toward Saddam Hussein was very clear -- like the previous administration, we were for regime change," Bush told a joint news conference in Monterrey, Mexico, with Mexican President Vicente Fox. "And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with (enforcing a no-fly zone over Iraq) and so we were fashioning policy along those lines."
Bush said al-Qaida's surprise Sept. 11 attacks on the United States put him on a hair trigger to take pre-emptive action against Iraq rather than await evidence of a new threat to Americans.
"September the 11th made me realize that America was no longer protected by oceans and we had to take threats very seriously no matter where they may be materializing," Bush said.
A president's "most solemn obligation" is to protect the United States, Bush said, adding: "I took that duty very seriously."
Democratic presidential candidates seized upon O'Neill's comments. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said the accusation of a ready-to-go effort to oust Saddam "calls into question everything that the administration put in front of us."
Asked about O'Neill's contention that the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration in January 2001 discussed ousting Saddam, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan didn't deny that account.
McClellan tried to focus attention on Bush's claims of success in Iraq rather than preparations to oust Saddam.
Bush "exhausted all possible means to resolve the situation in Iraq peacefully" before launching the invasion in March, McClellan said. Saddam defied a "final opportunity to comply" with U.N. demands to disarm, prompting Bush to take action "in the aftermath of Sept. 11th (because) it's important to confront threats before it's too late."
Bush, who fired O'Neill as treasury secretary in December 2002, said he "appreciated" O'Neill's nearly two years of service in the administration.
McClellan said the O'Neill book appeared to be "more about trying to justify personal views and opinions than it does about looking at the results that we are achieving on behalf of the American people."
McClellan said the White House was "not in the business of selling or promoting or critiquing books," adding: "It's just not something this administration gets caught up in."
O'Neill told CBS News' "60 Minutes" program Sunday night that "from the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go."
O'Neill, who headed Alcoa before joining the Bush administration in 2001 as treasury secretary, gave the interview as part of an effort to promote a new book, "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill." The book was written by Ron Suskind with O'Neill's cooperation, including providing access to some 19,000 notes and documents.
Treasury Department spokesman Rob Nichols said Treasury officials had asked for an investigation into how a possibly classified document appeared in O'Neill's televised CBS interview.
Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe accused the White House of launching "an all-out attack on the man Bush once praised as a straight shooter," adding: "Implied in O'Neill's allegations is that the president of the United States and his administration may have consistently lied to the American people in making the case for war against Iraq."
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| Blair admits weapons of mass destruction may never be found |
| 01.11.04 (7:23 pm) [edit] |
[b]Blair admits weapons of mass destruction may never be found[/b], http://www.guardian.co.uk/Ira...,2763,1120996,00.html
[i][b]
· PM shows first doubts on central reason for war
· Asked was he wrong on WMD, he says: 'I don't know' [/b][/i]
Tony Blair yesterday signalled that weapons of mass destruction may never be found in Iraq, in his first admission of fallibility over the central justification he gave for going to war with Iraq.
In his most downbeat assessment of the contentious issue so far, the prime minister said he did not know whether WMD would be unearthed, and conceded that this flew in the face of widespread initial expectations.
"I do not know is the answer," he admitted. "I believe that we will but I agree there were many people who thought we were going to find this in the course of the actual operation ... We just have to wait and see".
The prime minister's admission - the latest shift in a gradual lowering of expectations - came in a wide-ranging interview on BBC 1's Breakfast with Frost programme.
Asked by the veteran broadcaster if the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - the basis on which he took the country to war - was wrong, he replied: "Well, you can't say that at this point in time".
He said that he had acted on intelligence on Saddam Hussein's programmes, and stressed that, throughout the conflict, the chief of defence staff, General Sir Michael Walker, had also believed this.
"The chief of defence staff and other people were saying well, we think we might have potential WMD finds here or there. Now these things didn't actually come to anything in the end - but I don't know is the answer."
Mr Blair's uncharacteristically flat response, in an interview in which he was bullish about top-up fees and the Hutton inquiry, spoke volumes about his diminishing certainty that WMD would be found. He pointedly failed to refer to the weekend discovery of 36 shells containing chemical agents in the Iraq desert north of Basra, believed to be remnants from the Iran-Iraq war.
The prime minister's admission of doubt marks a significant shift in his public stance on the weapons issue.
In September 2002, he told the Commons that "Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programme is active, detailed and growing", a stance with which he persisted as he took the nation to war in March last year.
As recently as last June, he told MPs he had "no doubt" they would "find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction", though he watered down this claim to "WMD programmes" the following month.
But with the Iraq Survey Group which is leading the hunt reporting in September that it had uncovered no weapons of mass destruction, he slid further, to speaking about evidence of "clandestine laboratories".
A similar erosion of confidence has been evident within the intelligence community. "There may be small quantities, and maybe not," a well-placed Whitehall official said yesterday, in stark contrast to the note struck by the joint intelligence committee and MI6 before, during and immediately after the war.
Britain's intelligence community now realise they face a huge credibility problem which could have far-reaching and damaging consequences already manifested by the widespread scepticism that greeted the decision over the new year to cancel British Airways flights to the US.
Senior Whitehall officials are now falling back on the argument that ministers, in their determination to go to war, should never have relied so much on intelligence in the first place.
Intelligence, they say, is almost always a question of assessment and judgment, and not hard facts.
That should have been clear when the government published its Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002, they imply.
Political opponents reacted to Mr Blair's shift in ground with a mixture of bemusement and derision.
"Once again Tony Blair is hedging his bets," said the shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram. "The prime minister should come clean, and explain whether his previous claim to have evidence of weapons of mass destruction was yet another fabrication, and if not what that evidence was."
Paul Keetch, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said it was "disingenuous" to blame intelligence reports when the prime minister had taken the decision to embark on the conflict. "Intelligence is not an exact science. But if he is now saying he's unsure whether there were WMD or not, one would have assumed that uncertainty would have been apparent at the time," he said.
The Labour backbencher Jeremy Corbyn, a fierce opponent of the war, described Mr Blair's shift in language as "ridiculous".
"Ten months ago, he told us that he was absolutely certain there were weapons of mass destruction. He's now saying ... they might not find them. This is ridiculous. We were taken to war on the basis there was a real threat."
The admission of doubt is particularly significant for Mr Blair because, unlike President George Bush, he put WMD, rather than regime change, at the centre of his justification for war.
Mr Blair must now brace himself for the Hutton report into the death of the Iraqi arms specialist Dr David Kelly, which is expected by the end of the month. Yesterday, he vowed he would not hide from any criticisms - a charge put by the Conservative leader, Michael Howard.
It would be absurd for him not to respond to the report on the day it was published, he said, though he refused to confirm he would lead the debate in the Commons a week later.
"I can assure you I have no intention of hiding away from this at all," he said. "On the contrary, I am enthusiastic about being at long last able to debate these issues on the basis of an objective, independent judgment by a judge, rather than speculation."
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| Dubya Planned Ouster of Saddam Hussein in Early '01? |
| 01.10.04 (4:29 pm) [edit] |
[b]Dubya Planned Ouster of Saddam Hussein in Early '01? ... [/b]Will a congressional investigation be called? Probably not, Dubya has a Republican rubber-stamp Congress in his pocket!
[b]Saddam Ouster Planned Early '01?[/b], http://www.cbsnews.com/storie...
[b](CBS)[/b] The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported.
That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider. O'Neill talks to CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl in the interview, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," he tells Stahl. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do is a really huge leap."
O'Neill, fired by the White House for his disagreement on tax cuts, is the main source for an upcoming book, "The Price of Loyalty," authored by Ron Suskind.
Suskind says O'Neill and other White House insiders he interviewed gave him documents that show that in the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam's downfall -- including post-war contingencies such as peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq's oil.
"There are memos," Suskind tells Stahl, "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'"
A Pentagon document, says Suskind, titled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," outlines areas of oil exploration. "It talks about contractors around the world from...30, 40 countries, and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq," Suskind says.
In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" says O'Neill in the book.
CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller reported Saturday that, as the White House sees it, O'Neill's remarks are those of a disgruntled former official, and it should not have come as a surprise to O'Neill that the U.S. advocated Saddam's ouster.
In fact, a senior administration official tells CBS News it would have been irresponsible not to plan for Saddam's eventual removal.
As for the charge that there were early plans to invade Iraq, Knoller says the official calls that "laughable." Suggesting that O'Neill doesn't know what he's talking about on this matter, the official told CBS News O'Neill had enough problems in his own area of expertise, so, "Why should anyone believe he has a credible understanding of foreign policy?"
Another senior administration official told CBS News Saturday, "No one ever listened to the crazy things he said before, why should we start now?"
Separately, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan added Saturday, "We appreciate his service. While we're not in the business of book reviews, it appears the world according to Mr O'Neill is more about justifying his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we're achieving on behalf on the American people.
"The president is going to continue to be forward-looking and focus on building on the results we've achieved on the economy and efforts to make the world safer and a better place."
According to CBS News Reporter Lisa Barron in Baghdad, "The Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of former exiles, says it's not surprised by O'Neill's remarks. Spokesman Entifadh Qanbar tells CBS News that the Bush administration opened official channels to the Iraqi opposition soon after coming to power, and discussed how to remove Saddam. The group opened an office in Washington shortly afterwards."
Suskind also writes about a White House meeting in which he says the president seems to be wavering about going forward with his second round of tax cuts. "Haven't we already given money to rich people ... Shouldn't we be giving money to the middle," Suskind says the president uttered, according to a nearly verbatim transcript of an Economic Team meeting he says he obtained from someone at the meeting.
O'Neill, who was asked to resign because of his opposition to the tax cut, says he doesn't think his tell-all account in this book will be attacked by his former employers as sour grapes. "I will be really disappointed if [the White House] reacts that way," he tells Stahl. "I can't imagine that I am going to be attacked for telling the truth."
O'Neill also is quoted saying in the book that President Bush was so disengaged in cabinet meetings that he "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people."
Also, as saying the administration's decision-making process was so flawed that often top officials had no real sense of what the president wanted them to do, forcing them to act on "little more than hunches about what the president might think."
"It's revealing," said Stahl on The Early Show Friday. "I would say it's an unflattering portrait of the White House and of the president -- and specifically, about how they make decisions."
A lack of dialogue, according to O'Neill, was the norm in cabinet meetings he attended. And it was similar in one-on-one meetings, says O'Neill. Of his first such meeting with the president, O'Neill says, "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage [him] on...I was surprised it turned out me talking and the president just listening...It was mostly a monologue."
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| U.S. Media Ignores EU Criminal Investigation of Cheney |
| 01.09.04 (6:32 pm) [edit] |
Why are the U.S. media ignoring the EU criminal investigation of Cheney? The right-wing corporate-owned media seems to have overtaken the distribution and reporting of stories in the mainstream press in the U.S.A.
[b]Cheney Target of Criminal Investigation [/b] http://www.alternet.org/story...
[i]By David J. Sirota, The Progress Report[/i]
Though neglected by major media in the United States, international news sources report that French law enforcement authorities have made Vice President Dick Cheney the target of a criminal investigation for his role in a massive bribery scandal during his time as CEO of Halliburton. Le Figaro, one of France's biggest (and most conservative) newspapers, reports "an investigative judge is looking into allegations of corruption during construction of a natural gas complex in Nigeria by Halliburton and" a French oil company. According to a gas and oil trade publication (picked up by the international AP newswire on October 11, 2003) the judge is "looking into who may have benefited from nearly $200 million in potentially illegal commissions allegedly handed out from 1990 to 2002." In May, Halliburton admitted that, under Cheney's stewardship, it paid "$2.4 million in bribes to Nigerian officials to get favorable tax treatment." Halliburton now says it is cooperating with a simultaneous review by the Security and Exchange Commission.
The London Financial Times reports the investigation specifically focuses on the criminal charges of "misuse of corporate funds" and "corruption of foreign public agents." The Sydney Australia Morning Herald reports the investigative judge is specifically targeting Cheney for his "alleged complicity in the abuse of corporate assets."
Though the investigation is being spearheaded by French law enforcement, the UK Guardian notes, it would be prosecuted under international laws agreed to by the United States in a 35-nation treaty signed in 1997, meaning the consequences could be very real. The treaty, "under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, aims to fight corporate attempts to buy the favors of public authorities abroad." Not coincidentally, the London Financial Times points out that the Bush Administration is using similar agreements to aggressively "seek the extradition and pressing claims against senior French finance industry executives connected with the Credit Lyonnais purchase of Executive Life, the failed Californian insurer."
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| HALLIBURTON'S BUILT-IN GOUGE |
| 01.07.04 (11:48 am) [edit] |
[b]HALLIBURTON'S BUILT-IN GOUGE[/b]
[i]by Jim Hightower[/i], http://www.jimhightower.com/a...
Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, keeps getting stuck in its own Iraqi sand pit – and Cheney and his sidekick George W are stuck there, too.
Halliburton, which continues to pay about $150,000 a year to its old CEO Cheney, was first in line to get multi-billion-dollar, no-bid contracts from the Bush-Cheney regime for occupying and rebuilding Iraq. But don't think that any political favoritism was involved. No, no, Bush officials say, it's just that Dick's old company was the only one in the whole wide world qualified to do the job. Imagine, the only one.
And what a job it has done! Take it's contract for providing gasoline to Iraqis. An audit shows that the Houston-based giant has already gouged us taxpayers by as much as $61 million on this no-bidder. It's been charging the Pentagon $2.64 a gallon to haul gasoline from nearby Kuwait. Well, yes, say the Bushites, that's expensive, but, hey, it's costly to deliver gas in a combat zone.
Before you swallow that, though, note that the Pentagon's own energy support center delivers gasoline from Kuwait to Iraqi pumps in exactly the same war conditions for under a buck-twenty a gallon – less than half of Halliburton's charge. And Iraqi's own state oil company does the same job for under a dollar a gallon.
Caught in Halliburton's web of deceit, George W is now trying to get on the high road, declaring that "If there's an overcharge... we expect that money to be repaid." Repaid? What about charging his and Cheney's no-bid cronies with fraud?
But here comes the real stinker: Halliburton's contract from the Bushites actually gives the company an incentive to overcharge us taxpayers. It guarantees a profit to Halliburton of between two and seven percent of its costs – meaning that the more cost it can put into each gallon, the more profit Halliburton gets.
It's a built-in gouge, brought to us by Bush and Cheney, who like to claim that they're running our government like a business.
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| THE LITTLE RED HEN, THE BIG FAT PIG & THE DUMB LITTLE DONKEY |
| 01.06.04 (2:21 pm) [edit] |
Once upon a time,
there lived on a farm,
a lot of farm animals & creatures,
along with the little red hen,
the big fat pig & the dumb little donkey.
The big fat pig was lazy, but greedy and very very clever,
the dumb little donkey labored hard, but was getting skinny with little to eat,
the little red hen was curious, and sat & watched the other farm animals & creatures,
but especially she watched intensely,
the big fat pig & the dumb little donkey.
The big fat pig told the dumb little donkey that it must work harder,
the big fat pig told the dumb little donkey that pigs were better at "brain" work and that he would refuse to do the "brain" work unless he was handsomely rewarded,
the big fat pig told the dumb little donkey that donkeys were better at "pulling the load" and that the donkey would get its reward in donkey heaven.
The big fat pig tried the same story on the little red hen,
but the little red hen just cackled and cackled and cackled,
the little red hen cackled so hard that her sides hurt.
One day, the little red hen could see that the dumb little donkey was going to die of starvation,
she could see that the dumb little donkey was exhausted and could no longer "pull the load",
without proper food and care,
the little red hen felt badly and didn't like living in the farm yard watching,
the big fat pig getting fatter, fatter and fatter,
and the dumb little donkey becoming sickly, skinnier and wasting away to nothing.
So the little red hen finally went up to the big fat pig,
she asked why don't you give some food to the dumb little donkey?
she told the big fat pig that he was so fat that he couldn't move anymore, and,
that the big fat pig didn't need any more food,
but the big fat pig was greedy, mean & belligerent.
The big fat pig told the little red hen,
that without the incentive of riches, he would stop doing the "brain" work,
the little red hen challenged the big fat pig to stop doing the "brain" work,
and the big fat pig indeed stopped doing the "brain" work.
The little red hen then went over to the dumb little donkey and said,
the big fat pig has stopped doing the "brain" work,
and the dumb little donkey said that he must continue,
to "pull the load" anyway,
and together the little red hen, the other farm animals & creatures, and even the dumb little donkey,
stopped and together they figured out the "brain" work.
The little red hen then said to the dumb little donkey,
what difference does it make since our "brain" work is as good as the big fat pig's "brain" work,
so let's take the load and eat from it ourselves,
instead of handing over the fruits of our labors to the big fat pig,
thus, the little red hen and the dumb little donkey,
together with all of the other farm animals & creatures,
sat down and ate the first meal they had in peace.
The big fat pig sat back & stared & blinked.
Without the big fat pig,
life went on, the dumb little donkey continued to "pull the load",
the little red hen continued to be curious & scratch around,
the other farm animals & creatures made their own way in accordance with their natures,
and life was better for all,
without the big fat pig, who had fooled others into thinking that unless he was incentivized by taking the fruits of all of their labors,
that they would be without his "brain" work.
The "brain" work wasn't as hard as the big fat pig had pretended,
and indeed, the others were incentivized to work,
because they did what their natures led them to do,
and they profitted far more from working together,
than from allowing the big fat pigs to
steal all of their food and use them as dumb little donkeys.
Most of the farm animals & other creatures finally realized that,
they would only live happily ever after,
with eternal vigilence, to ever after,
beware of the big fat pigs.
(The little red hen had known that from the beginning,
but it was always hard to remind the dumb little donkey,
because he kept forgetting.)
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| US Coalition forces Above the Law, According to the CPA |
| 01.06.04 (12:22 pm) [edit] |
[b]US Coalition forces Above the Law, According to the CPA[/b]
[i]Dahr Jamail[/i]
01/05/04: (ICH) On Saturday a car was sprayed with gunfire from US soldiers while trying to pass a US convoy in Tikrit. According to Agence France Presse, "Police in Tikrit and Salahaddin province, along with the car's sole survivor, have insisted a US convoy opened fire on a blue Chevrolet Caprice as it tried to pass, riddling it with bullets and killing the driver, a second man, a woman and her nine-year-old child."
One month ago a tank drove over a prominent Shiite Muslim cleric in the Sadr City, a suburb of Baghdad and killed him. The CPA described this as a "traffic accident."
40 Iraqi demonstrators throughout Iraq were shot dead by US soldiers during the aftermath following the capture of Saddam Hussein.
During the Anglo-American Invasion of Iraq, on April 7th Americans killed the al-Jazeera correspondent in Baghdad. On the same day, the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad was attacked and its cameraman was killed, along with a cameraman from Spain's Tele 5 channel.
How have the Coalition Forces in Iraq been getting away with killing Iraqi civilians, religious leaders, demonstrators, and foreign journalists? It almost appears as though they are above the law.
According to CPA Order Number 17, which deals with the status of the coalition personnel, they appear to be just that-above the law.
According to section 2 of this document, subheading number four, "All Coalition personnel shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of their Parent States and, they shall be immune from local criminal, civil, and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of arrest or detention."
Just in case Coalition personnel commit an act for which there are no criminal sanctions in their Parent State, subheading five states, ".the CPA may request from the Parent State waiver of jurisdiction to try such act or acts under Iraqi law. In such cases, no Legal Process shall be commenced without the written permission of the Administrator of the CPA. (Paul Bremer)
How convenient.
For the record, Coalition Contractors and Sub-Contractors enjoy many of these same 'immunity' benefits as well. Later in said document, "In respect of acts or omissions of Coalition contractors and sub-contractors as well as their employees not normally resident in Iraq.no Iraqi or CPA Legal Process shall be commenced without the written permission of the Administrator of the CPA." (Paul Bremer)
Again, quite convenient.
So, if an Iraqi civilian, religious leader, demonstrator or foreign journalist is killed, one would assume there would at least be the option of their family and/or loved ones being able to file a claim for damages, yes?
Well, section 6 of said document, pertaining to claims, states, "Third party claims including those for property loss or damage and for personal injury, illness or death or in respect of any other matter arising from or attributed to Coalition personnel or any persons employed by them, whether normally resident in Iraq or not and that do not arise in connection with military combat operations, shall be submitted and dealt with by the Parent State whose Coalition personnel, property, activities or other assets are alleged to have caused the claimed damage, in a manner consistent with the national laws of the Parent State."
The inherent 'grey area' of whether a death is related to a military combat operation or not is always in question as well.
I don't enjoy reading legalese any more than the next person, but I read this as saying if an Iraqi suffers damages from Coalition personnel, or anyone working for the Coalition, then the claim must be taken up by their 'Parent State.'
This is Iraqis 'Parent State', being that we are in Iraq.
Yet the document says that Coalition personnel and people working for the Coalition are immune to Iraqi law.
So where are Iraqis to file their claim?
As I've heard countless Iraqis say, as well as seen painted on so many walls throughout Baghdad,
"Where are our human rights?"
[i]Dahr Jamail, is an independent American journalist reporting from Iraq[/i]
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| A NEW YEAR BRINGS SAME OLD BUSH |
| 01.05.04 (4:04 pm) [edit] |
Thanks to our own [b]Useful Idiot[/b], I'm relaying the following article to you:
[b]A NEW YEAR BRINGS SAME OLD BUSH [/b]by Bill Gallagher
Wake up. Rise up. Shake off the holiday haze as we must to keep up with the ever-steady maneuvers of Bush and company. The new year should bring new focus on what they've been up to these recent weeks and the significant events that have occurred and have been given scant attention from the more-oblivious-than-usual mainstream American media.
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is delving into important areas and the hearings set to begin later this month could provide some major revelations about what U.S. intelligence agencies knew in the months preceding the Saudi-financed al-Qaeda operations.
Thomas Kean, the Republican chairman of the commission appointed by President Bush, told CBS News some things that are sending shudders through the White House. Kean said of the commission's work, "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea of what wasn't done and what should have been done. ... This was not something that had to happen."
That's not what the Bush crowd wants to hear, especially in this election year. Remember this well. George W. Bush and all his minions did everything they could to prevent the creation of an independent commission in the first place and, after buckling in, they have done everything possible to thwart and frustrate the probe.
The administration makes it difficult to get any information out of the federal agencies targeted in the investigation and it's only with the use and threat of subpoenas that the commission has gotten relevant documents.
High on the list of people the commission wants to hear from is National Security Adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and she doesn't want to testify the way others will be required to.
Commission members want to question her about the remark she made in 2002 that no one "could have predicted that they would use a hijacked airplane as a missile." That claim runs smack in the face of years of intelligence provided to the National Security Council that pointed to al-Qaeda's interest in airplane attacks.
"Time" magazine has learned that Dr. Rice, aka Concealeeza and Queen Condi, doesn't want the indignity of raising her hand and swearing to tell the truth. And she also wants to avoid the discomfort of being required to testify under oath in public. Gee, I wonder why?
Rice is simply inept and is the worst national security adviser any president has ever had. She is usually treated with kid gloves in the media, which avoids the obvious conclusion about her performance: Under the Rice watch, our nation has never been more insecure.
Her job is to sort through sensitive information and arbitrate conflicting fact-finding to make sure the president knows what's going on around the world and what to do about it. The analysis is supposed to be objective and the information developed free from any political tones.
Rice has failed miserably in that role and she has largely abrogated much of her job to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney, who shape intelligence and national security priorities to fit their preconceived conclusions.
Rice, though, is the public face for Bush and the boys, and in that capacity she has shown herself to be little more than a third-rate political flack with glib answers that often fail the test of scrutiny and time.
Rice, along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Secretary of State Colin Powell, is a charter member of the Pinocchio pack that convinced the Congress and most of the American people that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to our national security and war was justified to protect us from annihilation.
Rice added some of the most frightening rhetoric to that monumental lie. Beating the war drum before the invasion of Iraq, Rice spoke of Saddam Hussein and his intentions. "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," Rice warned ominously.
The only mushroom Saddam got close to was in a dark corner of his spider-hole. His nuclear weapons program was nonexistent. Rice also offered this whopper about her peace-loving boss: "The president has always said that war is his last choice, not his first." She said this with a straight face. Perhaps Dr. Rice was preoccupied or out of the room when Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other war-mongers began plotting the invasion of Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001. They, in fact, had been hoping for years for any reason they could sell for regime change in Iraq.
It was their first choice, and Bush and his "brain" adviser, Karl Rove, immediately saw the political advantage of going after the well-defined Saddam and making him the culprit for Sept. 11. Rice helped sell that great canard and she continues to sell the nonsense that we are safer from terror with Saddam in the slammer.
She knows this was a war of choice and war was the first choice. She compromised her office and her own integrity, using phony claims of national security to create the pretext to go after Saddam.
Rice doesn't want the commission and the world to know how flawed her judgments and advice have been before and after Sept. 11. Her testimony could usher her exit from the White House. What she really wants is a prestigious academic or foundation appointment, speaking fees, book deals and corporate board appointments to protect the international oil interests she has served so well.
Rice craves respectability and the money to feed her shoe-shopping addiction. Give it to her. Our nation will be safer with her departure.
The Sept. 11 commission's quest for the truth could have a rival for intriguing information -- the trial of Saddam Hussein. It should be done under international auspices, and seeking the death penalty will only strengthen his followers and add to the violence U.S. occupation forces face daily in Iraq. But since George W. wants Texas justice and an execution in Iraq, that's what's going to happen.
What will be interesting, if allowed, is Saddam's recalling his days of being America's darling in the region when he was waging war against the Iranians. At that time, Rumsfeld was Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Saddam, sipping scotch with the dictator, bringing him gifts, providing military aid and intelligence support for his murderous regime.
Rumsfeld even looked the other way when Saddam used poisonous gas on those troublesome Kurds. Not a big matter when Rummy's real concern was to help Saddam defeat Iran.
Maybe Rumsfeld himself should testify at the trial and explain how he helped create the monster, and how some of the bloodiest years of Saddam's rule and oppression of his people came when he was our "friend."
The day of Saddam's capture, Rumsfeld went on a gloating bender, explaining how great it was to have finally snatched his old pal.
ABC's Peter Jennings and CBS's Leslie Stahl both interviewed Field Marshall Rumsfeld about the capture, but neither dared to even mention the Reagan-Rummy-Saddam axis.
I guess these millionaire crypto-journalists didn't want to offend such a powerful man on his triumphant day. Or perhaps they were just unaware of Rumsfeld's intimacy with Saddam. Either way, it's disgraceful. No wonder so many Americans don't have a clue about the sordid history of that relationship.
During the December doldrums, a terribly underreported story developed that actually points to Halliburton's innocence of charges the company was engaged in price-gouging and war profiteering through a Pentagon contract to provide gasoline in Iraq.
Cheney's old outfit got a $1.2 billion deal to deliver fuel to our oil-rich colony. Halliburton got some heat when Pentagon auditors learned the company was paying $2.27 per gallon for gasoline from a Kuwaiti company that could be purchased for $1.18 per gallon from Turkey.
Howls of outrage were heard everywhere and Democrats in Congress demanded an explanation and investigation. But it turns out Halliburton may have been squeezed to buy the higher-priced fuel.
The Wall Street Journal reported Halliburton executives were pressured to buy the more expensive fuel from Kuwait and the pressure came from the U.S. Embassy there. In an incredible statement, Thomas A. Crum, chief operating officer for Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root unit, told the Journal, "There's been considerable pressure here on our people from the embassy encouraging us to buy as much fuel as we can from Kuwait, telling us it's a political issue."
Let's check out the politics. Kuwait helped in the invasion of Iraq and Turkey did not. So we reward the Kuwaitis and punish the Turks, squandering the American taxpayers' money in the process.
Since the stated reasons for the war have faded, the administration's new line is that deposing the dictator Saddam will help spread the seeds of freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East.
Kuwait is a chunk of oil-rich desert corrupt British map-makers carved out to present to the Sabah family, which paid the bribes to get the land. The country, under Sabah rule, is run by rich despots who exploit foreign workers and disdain freedom.
Turkey, on the other hand, is a democracy, although not exactly on the Western model. Turkey is our NATO ally and, during the Cold War, stood firmly against the Soviet Union. Turkey has good relations with Israel and its government is secular and resists Islamist extremists, unlike Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, for instance.
Many Turkish political leaders wanted to allow U.S. troops to use its territory to invade Iraq. But the Turkish parliament, fearing problems with the Kurds, among other things, nixed the plan. Democracies can be unpredictable.
So it looks like someone in the Bush administration decided to reward the dictators in Kuwait and punish the Turks for having the nerve to follow their democratic institutions. That sends an interesting message to other nations in the region.
Our viceroy in Iraq, J. Paul Bremer, jumped off the script, and perhaps accidentally debunked British Prime Minister Tony Blair's claims that weapons hunters had discovered "massive evidence of clandestine laboratories" in Iraq and that Saddam had attempted to "conceal weapons."
One of those tricky British reporters asked Bremer for his assessment of the claims without bothering to tell him Blair had made them. Not true, Bremer proclaimed, stating emphatically that the United States' chief weapons inspector found nothing of the sort.
"I don't know where those words come from, but that is not what David Kay has said. I have his report, so I don't know who said that. ... It sounds like someone who doesn't agree with the policy sets up a red herring and then knocks it down."
When informed the words were Blair's, Bremer quickly backpedaled and said, yes, indeed, that weapons inspectors did find in Iraq "clear evidence of violation of UN Security Council resolutions relating to rockets," but still a far cry from the prime minister's wild and unsubstantiated claims. Bremer's lapse into truth and candor was given very little media play on the U.S. side of the Big Pond.
The Bush administration wants these issues to go away.
The death and suffering in Iraq continue with Saddam behind bars. Al-Qaeda thrives and can strike at any time. The morphing of the war on terror from bin Laden to Saddam has eroded U.S. credibility around the world and America's new role as the great enforcer makes our nation less safe and secure.
At home, on the fiscal front, the Bush policies of reckless spending and borrowing are heading the U.S. Treasury for disaster. The Bush tax policies are best described as offering a preferential option for the rich.
In spite of all this, the president is a heavy favorite to win re-election. He has the advantage of incumbency, more money than anyone can imagine, and will skillfully play the politics of fear to try to convince people he is indispensable.
Televangelist Pat Robertson says God has already informed him George W. will win re-election in a "blowout." God actually tried to relay the inside information to Jerry Falwell, but he put the Lord on hold to take a call from Karl Rove.
If God, indeed, is whispering into the ears of the right-wing religious zealots, those who think the Bush presidency is an abomination are certainly heading to damnation.
But maybe, just maybe, the American people will finally catch on and send George W. Bush in the direction he richly deserves in November -- on the path to political perdition.
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| TAKE BACK OUR NATION FROM FASCISTS WHO ARE DESTROYING US: GET RID OF DUBYA! |
| 01.04.04 (12:19 pm) [edit] |
[b]If you are worried about Fascists and the rise of Big Brother: Get Rid of Dubya![/b]
The Bush administration is acting like a fascist regime by enacting un-democratic legislation designed to slowly but surely: unravel our protections under the law and undermine the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Moreover, Dubya is a fascist who has handed our nation over [i]lock, stock and smoking barrel[/i], to corporations to exploit as they see fit. Hell, in the United States of Amnesia, corporations have more rights that the People:
[b]USA Patriot Act: A Dreadful Act II: [u]Secret proposals in Ashcroft's anti-terror war strike yet another blow at fundamental rights[/u][/b] [i]by Jack M. Balkin [/i]
Just as the Bush administration is preparing a preemptive strike on Iraq, its Justice Department has been preparing yet another preemptive strike -- a new assault on our civil liberties.
For months, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and his staff have been secretly drafting the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, designed to expand even further the new government powers for domestic surveillance created by the 2001 USA Patriot Act. Justice Department officials have repeatedly denied the existence of the draft bill, dubbed the "Patriot Act II," but a copy leaked out recently and has been posted on a Web site, www.publicintegrity.org.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the government has rounded up hundreds of people in secret and refused to disclose even their names, on the spurious grounds that this protects their privacy. As drafted, the measure would remove existing protections under the Freedom of Information Act, making it easier for the government to hide whom it is holding and why, and preventing the public from ever obtaining embarrassing information about government overreaching.
Another section would nullify existing consent decrees against state law enforcement agencies that prevent the agencies from spying on individuals and organizations. These consent decrees were crafted because state and local governments illegally invaded the privacy of American citizens and repeatedly violated their civil rights. To make matters worse, the proposed bill prevents courts from issuing injunctions to block future abuses.
Perhaps the most troubling section would strip U.S. citizenship from anyone who gives "material support" to any group that the attorney general designates as a terrorist organization. Citizenship is the most basic right for all Americans, one from which other rights -- such as the right to vote, to participate in politics and even to live in this country -- all flow. Under our Constitution, Americans can't be deprived of their citizenship, and the rights that go with it, unless they voluntarily give it up.
The measure would get around that constitutional guarantee through a legal loophole. It presumes that anyone who provides "material support" to an organization on the attorney general's blacklist -- even if that support is otherwise lawful -- has intended to relinquish citizenship and therefore may be immediately expatriated.
The McCarthy era demonstrated that the attorney general could wield enormous power to harass innocent Americans by designating legal organizations as subversive. The proposed act creates a similar danger: Give a few dollars to a Muslim charity Ashcroft thinks is a terrorist organization and you could be on the next plane out of this country.
The Bush administration claimed last year that the original Patriot Act gave it the tools it needed to fight the war on terror at a minimal cost to civil liberties. These new proposals show, however, that the administration still is not satisfied. It now seems clear that there is no civil right -- even the precious right of citizenship -- that this administration will not abuse to secure ever-greater control over American life. The Bush administration and Ashcroft have become addicted to secrecy and are drunk on power; the more they obtain, they more they demand.
We are fortunate that these proposals came to light now. Otherwise, the administration probably would have revealed them only after it began its war with Iraq, when political opposition would be inhibited by support for our troops. The proposals would not help our war with Iraq, but they would help our government cover up its mistakes.
It is frightening to think that our leaders would try to undermine our civil liberties through a cynical manipulation of public opinion in time of war. It would be even more frightening if they succeeded.
[i]Jack M. Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, is author of "The Laws of Change" (Schocken Press, 2002).[/i]
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| Are the Bushes serial liars? |
| 01.03.04 (5:37 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Nation [/b] http://www.thenation.com published the following article:
About three months ago, First Lady Laura Bush, in a speech to the National Book Festival, told a charming anecdote about her husband. Here, according to the White House website, is what she had to say:
"We delight in great works of literature and especially in the works of budding new artists. President Bush is a great leader and husband -- but I bet you didn't know, he is also quite the poet. Upon returning home last night from my long trip [to Europe], I found a lovely poem waiting for me. Normally, I wouldn't share something so personal, but since we're celebrating great writers, I can't resist:
[i]Dear Laura,
Roses are red,
violets are blue
oh my lump in the bed,
how I've missed you.
Roses are redder,
bluer am I
seeing you kissed
by that charming French guy.
The dogs and the cat
they miss you too,
Barney's still mad you dropped him,
he ate your shoe.
The distance my dear
has been such a barrier,
next time you want an adventure,
just land on a carrier. [/i]
It was such an awful poem that it actually rang true, and therefore kinda treacly sweet.
Now it turns out that this was a bizarre falsehood. A lie. Interviewed on "Meet the Press" over the weekend, Laura Bush was shown the video clip of her remarks -- in one of those let-our-hair-down moments the television journalists so love. Anchor Tim Russert teasingly turned to Mrs. Bush for comment:
MR. RUSSERT: Now, who could have written that poem, huh? I mean, what ...
MRS. BUSH: Well, of course, he didn't really write the poem. But a lot of people really believed that he did. That evening at the dinner, what some woman from across the table said: "You just don't know how great it is to have a husband who would write a poem for you."
Gee, I wonder if some people really believed that George Bush wrote that silly poem because Laura Bush said: Hey, my husband wrote me this silly poem, and normally I wouldn't share it because it's so personal, but I can't resist.
This hardly qualifies as "an outrage." It's more just weird. Think about it. If George Bush didn't write that poem -- who did?
Did they do some focus group of how a significant percentage of women around America would find a bit of POTUS doggerel wistful and sweet? Did the White House's crack political team than assign some poor junior staffer the miserable job of ghosting it? Did he start by interviewing Mrs. Bush about pet names and pillow talk (she confirmed for Russert that her husband has indeed called her his "lump in the bed")? Is there a file somewhere labeled SENTIMENTAL SWING-VOTER CHICKS of the early drafts?
Now that you know Bush didn't write it, look at the poem again. Can't you just hear some crapulous Republican operative in a rumpled suit croaking instructions? "Make sure you get their damned mutt Barney into it, those soccer dames love the dogs. But if there's gonna be a dog, you gotta mention the cat! Everybody knows that, kid! Put in some vague bedroom imagery -- somethin' about the bed. Nothing too explicit! And, uh, get in a slap at the French -- that French-bashing stuff is really going over well. Something about how they're so prissy, kissin' hands and all ..."
So who wrote George Bush's love poem to Laura Bush?
I suspect we'll just have to add it to all of the other mysteries -- like who lied in George Bush's State of the Union speech, and who had manual-labor-like relations with that doggoned "Mission Accomplished" banner, and which jerk at the White House unmasked a CIA agent to punish her husband, and why lie to Ground Zero rescue and cleanup workers, and how the President's brother got all that free sex and money when visiting Asia ...
[b]What is wrong with the Bushes? Laura Bush should have refused to collaborate in a scheme to read the childish and dumb poem. How pathetic![/b]
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| More proof of the link between Saddam and Osama |
| 01.03.04 (5:17 pm) [edit] |
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[image]CarteBlanche_87834 931.gif[/image]
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| A Brief List of Bush's Lies |
| 01.03.04 (2:19 pm) [edit] |
Following is a brief selection of just some of the "distortions" of the Bush administration preceding the invasion of Iraq:
[b][i]George W Bush on March 19th [/i][/b]
“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
“[The regime of Saddam Hussein] has aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda.”
“The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country or any other.”
“Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed.”
[b][i]Bush March 6th [/i][/b]
“Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents to avoid detection by inspectors. In some cases, these materials have been moved to different locations every 12 to 24 hours or placed in vehicles that are in residential neighborhoods.”
[b][i]Hans Blix March 7th [/i][/b]
“Intelligence authorities have claimed that weapons of mass destruction are moved around Iraq by trucks and, in particular, that there are mobile production units for biological weapons... Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities. Food testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen, as well as large containers with seed processing equipment. No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found.”
[b][i]Bush March 6th [/i][/b]
“In New York tomorrow, the United Nations Security Council will receive an update from the chief weapons inspector. The world needs him to answer a single question: Has the Iraqi regime fully and unconditionally disarmed as required by Resolution 1441 or has it not?”
[b][i]Blix March 7th [/i][/b]
“Against this background, the question is now asked whether Iraq has cooperated ‘immediately, unconditionally and actively’ with UNMOVIC, as required under paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002). The answers can be seen from the factual descriptions I have provided. However, if more direct answers are desired, I would say the following:
“The Iraqi side has tried on occasion to attach conditions, as it did regarding helicopters and U-2 planes. Iraq has not, however, so far persisted in these or other conditions for the exercise of any of our inspection rights. If it did, we would report it.
“It is obvious that, while the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long-standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as ‘active’, or even ‘proactive’, these initiatives 3-4 months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute ‘immediate’ cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance. They are nevertheless welcome and UNMOVIC is responding to them in the hope of solving presently unresolved disarmament issues.”
[b][i]Bush March 6th [/i][/b]
“We will help that nation to build a just government after decades of brutal dictatorship. The form and leadership of that government is for the Iraqi people to choose.”
[b][i]Bush February 6th [/i][/b]
“The Iraqi regime has actively and secretly attempted to obtain equipment needed to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
“Firsthand witnesses have informed us that Iraq has at least seven mobile factories for the production of biological agents, equipment mounted on trucks and rails to evade discovery. Using these factories, Iraq could produce within just months hundreds of pounds of biological poisons.”
“The Iraqi regime has acquired and tested the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction.”
[b][i]Colin Powell February 5th [/i][/b]
“Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspections resumed.
“Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts, and the Iraqis themselves, argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.”
[b][i]Naji Sabri, Former Iraqi Foreign Minister September 16, 2002[/i] [/b]
“The Government of the Republic of Iraq has based its decision concerning the return of inspectors on its desire to complete the implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and to remove any doubts that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction. This decision is also based on your statement to the General Assembly on 12 September 2002 that the decision by the Government of the Republic of Iraq is the indispensable first step towards an assurance that Iraq no longer possesses weapons of mass destruction”
[b][i]Bush September 12, 2002 [/i][/b]
“If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles and all related material.”
[b][i]Bush February 22nd [/i][/b]
“The primary goal is to make it clear to Saddam that we expect him to be a peaceful neighbor in the region and we expect him not to develop weapons of mass destruction. And if we find him doing so, there will be a consequence”
[b][i]Tariq Aziz September 15, 2002 [/i][/b]
“The way Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair are conducting their campaign against Iraq means doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.”
[b][i]Ari Fleischer September 6th [/i][/b]
“There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest.”
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