Sunday, April 04, 2004
U.S. Funds Aid Venezuela Opposition
The United States is using a quasi-governmental organization created during the Reagan years and funded largely by Congress to pump about a million dollars a year into groups opposed to Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, according to officials in Venezuela and a Venezuelan-American attorney.
Some 2,000 pages of newly disclosed documents show that the little-known National Endowment for Democracy is financing a vast array of groups: campesinos, businessmen, former military officials, unions, lawyers, educators, even an organization leading a recall drive against Chavez. Some compare the agency, in certain of its activities, to the CIA of previous decades when the agency was regularly used to interfere in the affairs of Latin American countries.
"It certainly shows an incredible pattern of financing basically every single sector in Venezuelan society," said Eva Golinger, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based attorney who helped obtain the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. "That's the most amazing part about it."
Chris Sabatini, the endowment's senior program officer for Latin America and the Caribbean, acknowledged the organization is handing out $922,000 this year, largely (el - almost entirely) to groups opposed to Chavez, and gave out $1,046,323 last year.
In the wake of disclosures about the National Endowment for Democracy, Chavez has dropped his past caution on the topic and now openly accuses the United States of backing the 2002 coup attempt and bankrolling efforts to destabilize and overthrow his government. He is also threatening that Venezuela, one of the world?s top oil suppliers, might cut off shipments to the United States if the Bush administration persists in its efforts to undermine him.
The group's involvement in Venezuela "is in keeping with a pattern from NED's very origins when the Reagan administration used it to do overtly what it was trying to do covertly in Nicaragua -- undermine the Sandinista revolution," said Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive in Washington. "The difference of course is that Ch?vez was elected and the Sandinistas were a revolutionary government."
Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet Files and an expert on declassified government documents, added: "The NED was created to supplement the activities of the CIA."
Michael Shifter, a former NED grants officer for Latin America who is now an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, said that if the NED is inserting itself into Venezuela under the premise that Ch?vez is a cruel tyrant who is wiping out democracy and must be stopped, the group "is misreading the situation." While Chavez, a former paratrooper who led his own failed coup in 1992, has shown some troubling autocratic tendencies, Shifter said, democracy remains essentially intact.
The jails hold no political prisoners, he said. The opposition-owned press operates freely, with Chavez critics even calling for coups on national television. Tens of thousands of his opponents regularly protest in the streets. International observers considered the elections that brought Chavez to power free and fair. Foreign investors generally are "happy," Shifter said. Despite significant opposition, Chavez retains a strong base of support.
As for the opposition, he added, "there's this ambivalence about democratic methods."
Bush's Godfather policy - if we like you we'll do nothing otherwise we will bring you down.
Some leaders in [Latin America] are wondering privately whether President Bush has retreated from the American commitment to strengthening their political and economic institutions, a policy of Democratic and Republican administrations for two decades.
Shortly before he left office in 2003, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil said in an interview on Mexican television that became famous throughout the region that President Bush "knows nothing about Latin America" and "doesn't have the same web of contacts in the region as previous administrations."
"The first time I talked with President Bush, he showed a complete hands-off attitude" about defending free markets and democratic values, Mr. Cardoso said, adding, "Since we are not a threat, we have been consigned to irrelevance." Today, expressions of such attitudes are a staple in the region's press, and they worry some American experts on Latin America.
To such thinkers a pattern seems to have emerged in which the United States does not come to the rescue of friends of democracy and American policies like Gonzalo S?nchez de Losada in Bolivia or Fernando de la R?a in Argentina, even as it acts to help bring down leaders it cannot stomach, like Mr. Aristide and President Hugo Ch?vez of Venezuela.
As the cases of Argentina, Bolivia and Haiti indicate, the threat to stability today bears little resemblance to the classic Latin American military coup. Instead, the model is one of a popular uproar that forces an elected but unpopular (and in Mr. Aristide's case increasingly autocratic) leader to step down.
So while leaders may no longer look over their shoulders at the barracks, they have to worry about being thrown out of office because an impatient citizenry expects immediate results from a weak state with weak institutions. "That's an extremely disturbing attitude, because it provides no incentive to engage in democratic politics" and "only emboldens and heartens groups that are more interested in violence," said Michael Shifter of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based group.
Bush Plotting To Overthrow Saddam Nine Days After 9/11
George Bush asked for Tony Blair's backing to remove Saddam Hussein from power just nine days after the 11 September attacks, over a private dinner at the White House, a US magazine reported last night.
Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to Washington, was at the dinner table as Mr Blair replied that he would rather concentrate on ousting the Taliban and restoring peace in Afghanistan.
In a 25,000-word article in this month's American edition of Vanity Fair, Sir Christopher recounts Mr Bush as responding: "I agree with you Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq." Mr Blair, Sir Christopher writes, "said nothing to demur" at the prospect.
Sir Christopher's account presents a new challenge to Mr Blair's assertion that no decision was taken on the invasion of Iraq until just days before operations began, in March 2003. It implies regime change in Iraq was US policy immediately after 11 September.
el - It does more than imply but this again is stuff everyone should know. Everyone except Powell connected to foreign and military policy in Bush's cabinet had spend years waiting to get back in power to overthrow Saddam as the start for a new world war for the U.S.. This would be a war to create an unchallenged American Empire and insure a century of world dominance. The war would be to take down any state that had anything objectionable to American right-wing ideology. Non-state threats like al Qaeda were not considered except as being sponsered by states. The Vulcan neo-con radicals in the Bush administration were recreating their glory days of a cold war with the Soviet Union. See Pax Americana doctrine and Project for a New American Century, as they were quite open about developing this.
Chalabi Provided All Four Lying Iraqi Defectors
The Iraqi National Congress, a U.S.-funded group of former Iraqi exiles, supplied the four defectors whose claims that Saddam Hussein had mobile biological warfare facilities now are being questioned by Secretary of State Colin Powell.
One of the defectors was code-named Curveball, senior U.S. officials said, and Curveball was the brother of a top lieutenant to Ahmed Chalabi, the group's leader and now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. U.S. intelligence officials never directly questioned Curveball before the war, they said.
A second defector was determined to be a fabricator, but his claims still found their way into the Bush administration's case for war, according to U.S. officials.
"The other two (defectors) were not as significant," said a senior U.S. official, who like all of those who spoke requested anonymity because the matter remains classified. "Their information appeared corroborative of the overall thing."
Papers on 1964 LBJ - CIA Backed Brazil Coup Declassified
Jim referred me to this AP story: Newsday.com - AP World News
The documents show members of Lyndon B. Johnson's administration actively preparing to aid the coup plotters.
In a March 27, 1964, cable to the State Department, [Ambassador] Gordon requested a naval task and deliveries of fuel and arms to the coup plotters "to help avert a major disaster here."
Gordon said in the cable that Brazil could fall under the spell of a communist-style regime led by President Joao Goulart, "which might make Brazil the China of the 1960s." Mainland China turned communist in 1949 under Mao Zedong.
The documents also reveal what some experts say was a major miscalculation by the CIA.
A CIA cable from Brazil, dated March 30, predicted a military coup "within the next few days." It added, "The revolution will not be resolved quickly and will be bloody."
In fact, the coup was put in motion the next day, March 31, and was over by April 4, when Goulart fled to exile in Uruguay. The entire episode was bloodless.
From 1964 to 1985, Brazil was ruled by a string of five colorless military presidents chosen by their fellow officers. The dictatorship ended in 1985 when a democracy movement swept the country.
el - This is kinda everybody knows this was a CIA coup but the extent this was directed by LBJ is revealed. Not that you really get it from the right-wing AP story. As usual, Jim Lobe provides better background.
"I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do," [LBJ] tells Ball on Mar. 31, 1964, the day before Brazilian President Joao Goulart fled the country.
"We just can't take this one," he says, apparently referring to Goulart, whose populist rhetoric and alleged association with leaders of the Brazilian Communist Party had fostered fears that South America's largest country could turn into a giant Cuba.
"I'd get right on top of it and stick my neck out a little," adds Johnson, who one year later would send thousands of Marines to intervene in civil unrest in the Dominican Republic.
He then calls for "everybody that had any imagination or ingenuity ... (Central Intelligence Agency Director John) McCone ... (Secretary of Defense Robert) McNamara," to ensure that the coup that was already in play in Brazil was successfully concluded.
Much has already been revealed about US support for a military coup.
In 1976, for example, secret documents uncovered by a graduate student at the University of Texas and later published in the Brazilian press offered some details about CIA operations and also confirmed that Washington had deployed a aircraft carrier task force that included destroyers and oil tankers off the Brazilian coast at the time of the coup, presumably to intervene either covertly or overtly on behalf of the coup forces, if Gordon deemed it necessary.
"These documents reflect the degree to which the Johnson administration, starting with the president himself, was willing to intervene to ensure the success of this coup," said Peter Kornbluh, the chief Latin American researcher at the NSA.
"They shed new details about sending arms and ammunition via submarine and appropriating an Esso tanker to support rebels forces, if needed.
"They make it more clear than ever before that the US was prepared to do a great deal – overtly if necessary – if the coup did not quickly succeed, to ensure that Goulart was indeed overthrown," he added.
While the new releases contribute more to what is known about the coup and the US role in it, the record remains far from complete, according to Kornbluh, who said the CIA has failed to disclose documents relating to its operations in Brazil, in contrast to those concerning its actions with respect to the military regimes in Chile and Argentina.
Is Venezuela next?
Someone once asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization.
"It would be nice," he replied.
Democracy in Latin America might also prove nice if the United States would allow it to occur. Traditionally, when Latin Americans elect governments that show even vague intentions of redistributing the lopsided national wealth toward the poor, U.S. officials get their knickers in a twist and force new elections: the pro-U.S. candidate then emerges. But Washington’s rhetorically concealed fusion between popular elections and imperial appointments hardly assures Latin American stability.
Indeed, since 1999, seven hemispheric heads of state have left office before finishing their terms. In October, four months before U.S. and French officials dispatched Haiti's elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, pro U.S. President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado fled Bolivia to Miami. Massive popular protests erupted against his pro-American economic policies. Similarly, Paraguay's Raul Cubas had to quit when faced with heavy opposition, some of it turbulent.
Ecuador's pro free trade president, Jamil Mahuad, also got 86’d. Peruvians sort of elected the fascistic Alberto Fujimori, currently exiled in Japan and facing criminal charges in Peru – and also hoping to return to Peru to grab the presidency again. President Alejandro Toledo, who replaced the disgraced Fujimori, followed U.S. dictates on free trade that has created deep unrest. In December 2001, Argentina's economy collapsed and Fernando De la Rua resigned in the face of popular revolts against neo-liberal policies. Pro-U.S. economic (free trade) policies caused the undoing of these regimes.
"Pro-U.S.," however, hardly describes Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, the current target for covert destabilizing.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Powell: Iraq biological labs intelligence was shaky
No shit, Sherlock.
I had this over a year ago. I have reported numerous times (link to a summary debunking this year) his entire presentation did not hold water and was discredited point by point shortly after it was given.
I had this over a year ago. I have reported numerous times (link to a summary debunking this year) his entire presentation did not hold water and was discredited point by point shortly after it was given.
Here's where things seem to stand in Iraq:
-In less that three months, the US is supposedly handing power over to an Iraqi interim government. [el - Right now, there is no plan or agreement to whom.]
-In the Sunni Triangle, a lot of people obviously don't like the US.
-The majority of relatively moderate Shiites, led by Ayatollah Sistani, aren't too happy about the lack of elections prior to the establishment of Iraq's new regime.
-The more radical Shiites, whom firebrand Moqtada Sadr has been trying to rally, have just been given a boost by Bremer's decision to padlock one of their newspapers. (Juan Cole notes a large protest demo in Baghdad that was overshadowed by yesterday's news from Fallujah.)
-We're not far from spending $250 billion on operations in Iraq (counting the war itself and money not yet included in the President's budget request). That's compared to less than $2 billion on reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda did have a base. (Another tip of the hat to Cole for that trenchant point.)
-Condoleezza Rice, who was tasked last fall with overseeing America's postwar effort in Iraq, is a little distracted these days.
-Ahmed Chalabi, a crook who STILL has the ear of the DOD and hundreds of thousands in monthly payments from the US Treasury, money that helped buy trumped up stories of Iraq's WMD in the past, is still on track to become Iraq's Prime Minister. [el - Despite having 0.1% support and being the most distrusted leader in a British poll of Iraqis.]
-The American media, pushed by gleeful Democrats who are very good at scoring points against Bush's past mistakes but very bad at articulating how we get out of this mess, aren't paying much attention to any of this.
If you, like I, was an opponent of the Iraq War--because we didn't believe there was a connection between Iraq and 9-11 or al-Qaeda, because we didn't believe Saddam presented an imminent threat to the US, because we believed the UN inspections were steadily working to contain any WMD ambitions he might have, because we feared the post-war chaos and sectarian competition that would be unleashed inside Iraq (with us as the overseers), and because we felt that any humanitarian intervention to overthrow Saddam should have included a much broader UN-mandated coalition of forces--it's tempting to just sit back and watch Bush and Crew stew in their own juices. This mess is their creation, after all.
Revenge of the WarBots
Wow, from tex on anti-war blog: Many civilians have been killed in Iraq and up to now the Nuke Fallujah crowd hasn't protested. Four American missionaries were gunned down in Mosul just last month, two of them women, eliciting no warbot retaliation strikes. It can't be the grisly nature of the deaths, because American corpses have been defiled by crowds in Iraq before, most notably the incident in Mosul last November. No one seemed to think Mosul should be nuked.
So, what is special about these four mercs?
[It is] because they are having difficulty dealing with their own responsibility for the deaths of those four Americans. Since there are no weapons of mass destruction and no credible proof that Hussein had anything to do with 9-11, there is no real reason that those four should have been there in the first place. Nevertheless they were there, why? I say they died in large part because of the mindless jingoism espoused by the likes of Bruce and O’Reilly. People in this country are constantly advocating that the government take some kind of action, but they never want to take any responsibility for the results of the actions that they advocate.
The warbots see the meltdown of all the justifications for their Excellent Iraqi Adventure, the roach-like scrambling for cover as the "War President" and his courtiers try to stonewall and evade the 9/11 commission, the military deaths mounting, the civilian deaths mounting, the pervasive anti-Americanism growing in intensity world-wide but most notably in Muslim and Arab countries, and their illusions of "democracy-building" shattering as the deadline for "Iraqi sovereignty" rushes toward them like a runaway freight train even as Iraq spirals into chaos and lawlessness. In the midst of this debacle, Fallujah rebels create a scene so horrible that it's like waving a neon flag in the face of the most tuned-out American and yelling "Look at this disgusting, bloody, violent mess over here! It's getting worse every day!"
Own it, warbots. We tried to warn you. We protested, we railed and wrote arguments against the war, but you wouldn't listen. Now, those mercs killed in Fallujah were your responsibility. You put them there, with your cakewalking, rosepetal fantasies and ridiculous misconceptions about Iraq. The blood of all the dead from your illegal, unjustified war in Iraq - both "coalition" and Iraqi - is on your hands.
Daily Kos was attacked and smeared across the blog right-wing community because of his stand that it is not surprising that mercenaries are killed and vilified.
The Death of Bush's Compassionate Conservatism
Polls Show President's 'Compassion' Rating Falling Steadily
The Post poll found Americans split over whether Bush has governed in a compassionate way, with 49 percent saying he has and 45 percent saying he has not. That is down sharply from February 2003, when a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that 64 percent of Americans thought he had governed compassionately.
While a majority of Americans (58 percent) say Bush has governed as expected, the Post poll showed that the rest are about twice as likely to say the president has been less compassionate (25 percent) than to say he has been more compassionate (13 percent). Forty-four percent now believe Bush cares most about serving upper-income people, an increase from 31 percent in September 1999 and 39 percent in July 2000. Forty-one percent believe Bush cares equally about all people, with small numbers saying he favors the poor or the middle class.
el - I would have to say that Bush's promises to govern compassionately and to change the tenor of American politics were beyond misleading to the point of being lies. But I knew that in 2000.
Economist cover story and picture
Better Ways to Attack Bush on Atrios
Another Reason to Love the Economist on Kos
I love the hot air and no cojones bits. "Even when Clinton was under impeachment, no magazines showed an arrow pointing directly at his Little Adviser."
Bush I thought atheists aren't citizens
At a news conference in Chicago on August 27, 1987, which I covered as a fully credentialed journalist, I asked Vice President Bush several questions. In response to one question, Bush said, "I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God."
More quotes from that news conference here.
Top Ten Questions You're Afraid To Ask Condoleezza Rice
10. "Did Bush ever hurt himself trying to pronounce your name?"
9. "At cabinet meetings, who besides you and Cheney wear lipstick?"
8. "Do you know Leeza Gibbons?"
7. "Do you own a condo?"
6. "Did you ever try the 'Condoleezza Rice' at Chi-Chi's?"
5. "As a souvenir, did you keep any of Saddam's beard lice?"
4. "Hey, where'd you get that cool Halliburton sweatshirt?"
3. "Who told CNN that Letterman faked the footage of the bored kid next to Bush?"
2. "About those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -- did you check Baghdad Mini-Storage?"
1. "What kind of job will you and Bush be looking for in January 2005?"
More Baghdad Today
The Ugly American's Quagmire
'Do you have any rooms?" we ask the hotelier. She looks us over, dwelling on my travel partner's bald, white head.
"No," she replies.
We try not to notice that there are 60 room keys in pigeonholes behind her desk - the place is empty.
"Will you have a room soon? Maybe next week?"
She hesitates. "Ahh ... No."
We return to our current hotel - the one we want to leave because there are bets on when it is going to get hit - and flick on the TV: the BBC is showing footage of Richard Clarke's testimony before the September 11 commission, and a couple of pundits are arguing about whether invading Iraq has made America safer.
They should try finding a hotel room in this city, where the US occupation has unleashed a wave of anti-American rage so intense that it now extends not only to US troops, occupation officials and their contractors but also to foreign journalists, aid workers, their translators and pretty much anyone else associated with the Americans. Which is why we couldn't begrudge the hotelier her decision: if you want to survive in Iraq, it's wise to stay the hell away from people who look like us. (We thought about explaining that we were Canadians, but all the American reporters are sporting the maple leaf - that is, when they aren't trying to disappear behind their newly purchased headscarves.)
The US occupation chief, Paul Bremer, hasn't started wearing a hijab yet, and is instead tackling the rise of anti-Americanism with his usual foresight. Baghdad is blanketed with inept psy-ops organs like Baghdad Now, filled with fawning articles about how Americans are teaching Iraqis about press freedom. "I never thought before that the coalition could do a great thing for the Iraqi people," one trainee is quoted as saying. "Now I can see it on my eyes that they are doing good things for my country and the accomplishment they made. I wish my people can see that, the way I see it."
Unfortunately, the Iraqi people recently saw another version of press freedom when Bremer ordered US troops to shut down a newspaper run by supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr. The militant Shia cleric has been preaching that Americans are behind the attacks on Iraqi civilians and condemning the interim constitution as a "terrorist law." So far, al-Sadr has refrained from calling on his supporters to join the armed resistance, but many here are predicting that closing down the newspaper - a nonviolent means of resisting the occupation - was just the push he needed. But then, recruiting for the resistance has always been a specialty of the presidential envoy to Iraq: Bremer's first act after being tapped by Bush was to fire 400,000 Iraqi soldiers, refuse to give them their rightful pensions, but allow them to hold on to their weapons - in case they needed them later.
While US soldiers were padlocking the door of the newspaper's office, I found myself at what I thought would be an oasis of pro-Americanism, the Baghdad Soft Drinks Company. On May 1 this bottling plant will start producing one of the most powerful icons of American culture: Pepsi-Cola. I figured that if there was anyone left in Baghdad willing to defend the Americans, it would be Hamid Jassim Khamis, the Baghdad Soft Drinks Company's managing director. I was wrong.
"All the trouble in Iraq is because of Bremer," Khamis told me, flanked by a line-up of 30 Pepsi and 7-Up bottles. "He didn't listen to Iraqis. He doesn't know anything about Iraq. He destroyed the country and tried to rebuild it again, and now we are in chaos."
These are words you would expect to hear from religious extremists or Saddam loyalists, but hardly from the likes of Khamis. It's not just that his Pepsi deal is the highest-profile investment by a US multinational in Iraq's new "free market". It's also that few Iraqis supported the war more staunchly than Khamis. And no wonder: Saddam executed both his brothers and Khamis was forced to resign as managing director of the bottling plant in 1999 after Saddam's son Uday threatened his life. When the Americans overthrew Saddam, "you can't imagine how much relief we felt", he says.
"It's not the war that caused the hatred. It's what they did after. What they are doing now."
The Axles of Evil and Other White House Secrets
Jim sends me this rant by Sebastian
I don’t watch presidential speeches or political speeches in general. I didn’t watch
Clinton’s speeches and I certainly don’t watch Bush’s.
Here’s why. Politician’s speeches are written by speechwriters. Who are speechwriters you say? Speechwriters are clever, well educated, well spoken articulate men and women who write intelligent, reasoned and generally well though out speeches for their pig ignorant, inbred, bone-headed politician/employers.
Would the nation not be better served if the speechwriters held power instead of their pig ignorant, inbred, bone-headed politician/employers? Why yes, but the speechwriters lack the necessary personality deficits and psychoses essential for success in public life.
When you hear a well turned phrase or line coming out of the mouth of your favorite politico you can be assured that it was composed by some speechwriter sweating away in a windowless back office.
Before, this fact, while undoubtedly true, was hard to prove as the speechwriter took a
solemn and required oath to preserve forever the true depth of his boss’s ignorance from the public. Now however, thru the glory of email and specifically the forward button we know the true author of “Bush’s” axis of evil line. It is, trumpet blast, David Frum
former Canadian journalist and author and until recently Whitehouse speechwriter.
Frum's wife, Danielle Crittenden, also a Canadian and currently a journalist, expressed
her glee at her husband’s authorship of the phrase in an e-mail to her friends.
Washington D.C. being what it is, one of said friends forwarded the email to the online
political magazine, Slate, which published it.
Not that I’m implying that “Axis of Evil” is any great moment in the history of rhetoric
or that policy behind it makes any sense. It’s just that the chance of Bush coming up with
it all by his lonesome is about as likely as his being able to define or pronounce
antidisestablishmentarism.
Having said all this; I would like to say that if president Clinton had been handed a
speech by his speechwriters which contained the phrase “Axis of Evil” I don’t think it
would have been necessary to explain that to him that; at least in this case, the word
“Axis” did not refer to the part of the pickup truck that the wheel bolts onto.
Broken US troops face bigger enemy at home
Bush's War grinding up veterans who face cost cutting at home
A stretched Pentagon is sending unfit soldiers back to Iraq long before they are ready to serve again.
The Guardian has uncovered more than a dozen instances in which ill or injured soldiers were sent to war by a US military whose resources have been stretched near to breaking point by the simultaneous fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In its investigation, the Guardian learned of soldiers who were deployed with almost wilful disregard to their medical histories, and with the most cursory physical examinations. Soldiers went to war with chronic illnesses such as coronary disease, mental illness, arthritis, diabetes and the nervous condition, Tourette's syndrome, or after undergoing recent surgery.
One sergeant major was shipped out two months after neck surgery, despite orders from his military doctor for six months' rest. "The nurse told me to put my hands above my head and said you are good to go," he told the Guardian. A female supply sergeant said she was sent to Kuwait under medical advice not to walk more than half a mile at a time, or carry more than 50lb. Both had to be medically evacuated within weeks; the sergeant major required surgery on his return.
In some cases, the wounded were recycled with alarming speed. A mechanic, who suffered brain damage last June when his vehicle was hit by a suicide bus, was sent back to Iraq in October despite reported blurred vision and memory loss. He returned with his unit last month, and medical evaluations showed he had continued bleeding from the original head injury.
15,000 soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have filed for disability claims. Some 12,000 have sought medical treatment from facilities run by the department of veterans affairs. About 4,600 have sought psychological counselling. That demand threatens to overwhelm a veterans' healthcare system that has received no new funding since the Iraq war began.
The drain on combat-ready soldiers - and the costs of carrying those damaged by this war - are becoming logistical nightmares for military planners. The Pentagon has already been forced to extraordinary measures. Last year, it locked up the service contracts of National Guard members and army reservists, preventing them from leaving the military when their time is up.
Gerry Mosley, 49, a first sergeant in a transportation unit, was injured jumping off a truck that came under fire. By the time he was medically retired on March 17, he was taking 56 pills a day for shoulder, back and spinal conditions, post-traumatic stress disorder, and Parkinson's which was not diagnosed when he was shipped out.
Mosley also developed an abiding anger against an institution he served for 31 years, accusing the army of trying to shirk responsibility for his condition now he was surplus to requirements.
"I went to Iraq and fought the enemy, not knowing I was going to come back to the United States and fight a bigger enemy," he says.
Link provided by Editerette13
A stretched Pentagon is sending unfit soldiers back to Iraq long before they are ready to serve again.
The Guardian has uncovered more than a dozen instances in which ill or injured soldiers were sent to war by a US military whose resources have been stretched near to breaking point by the simultaneous fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In its investigation, the Guardian learned of soldiers who were deployed with almost wilful disregard to their medical histories, and with the most cursory physical examinations. Soldiers went to war with chronic illnesses such as coronary disease, mental illness, arthritis, diabetes and the nervous condition, Tourette's syndrome, or after undergoing recent surgery.
One sergeant major was shipped out two months after neck surgery, despite orders from his military doctor for six months' rest. "The nurse told me to put my hands above my head and said you are good to go," he told the Guardian. A female supply sergeant said she was sent to Kuwait under medical advice not to walk more than half a mile at a time, or carry more than 50lb. Both had to be medically evacuated within weeks; the sergeant major required surgery on his return.
In some cases, the wounded were recycled with alarming speed. A mechanic, who suffered brain damage last June when his vehicle was hit by a suicide bus, was sent back to Iraq in October despite reported blurred vision and memory loss. He returned with his unit last month, and medical evaluations showed he had continued bleeding from the original head injury.
15,000 soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have filed for disability claims. Some 12,000 have sought medical treatment from facilities run by the department of veterans affairs. About 4,600 have sought psychological counselling. That demand threatens to overwhelm a veterans' healthcare system that has received no new funding since the Iraq war began.
The drain on combat-ready soldiers - and the costs of carrying those damaged by this war - are becoming logistical nightmares for military planners. The Pentagon has already been forced to extraordinary measures. Last year, it locked up the service contracts of National Guard members and army reservists, preventing them from leaving the military when their time is up.
Gerry Mosley, 49, a first sergeant in a transportation unit, was injured jumping off a truck that came under fire. By the time he was medically retired on March 17, he was taking 56 pills a day for shoulder, back and spinal conditions, post-traumatic stress disorder, and Parkinson's which was not diagnosed when he was shipped out.
Mosley also developed an abiding anger against an institution he served for 31 years, accusing the army of trying to shirk responsibility for his condition now he was surplus to requirements.
"I went to Iraq and fought the enemy, not knowing I was going to come back to the United States and fight a bigger enemy," he says.
Link provided by Editerette13
Friday, April 02, 2004
Teen charged with sexually abusing herself
State police have charged a 15-year-old Latrobe girl with child pornography for taking photos of herself and posting them on the Internet.
Police said the girl, whose identity they withheld, photographed herself in various states of undress and performing a variety of sexual acts. She then sent the photos to people she met in chat rooms.
A police report did not say how police learned about the girl. They found dozens of pictures of her on her computer.
She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.
el - wasn't child porn laws supposed to be about protecting children, not charging them with making it?
Tbogg
...Isn't the fact that the Iraqi people wouldn't want us occupying their country one of the main reasons that those of us who didn't want this stupid war cited back in those days prior to Shock & Awe & Bluster & Death? As someone once said: an attack on a soveriegn country will make the people of that country support their leader no matter how horrible, evil, or inept that person is.
Just look at what happened after 9/11.
The Whistleblowers
What do all these flip-floppers have in common? Not subject matter: DiIulio worked on social policy, O'Neill on economics, Clarke on national security. Not party: Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt are Democrats; O'Neill is a Republican; Clarke worked for President Reagan and both Bushes as well as for President Clinton. The only thing they have in common is that they all cooperated with this administration before deciding they'd been conned. Flip-flopping, it turns out, is the final stage of trusting George W. Bush.
How Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt got whiplash. They supported tax cuts in 2001 when Bush challenged them to give back some of the surplus. Then the surplus vanished, Bush demanded more tax cuts, and they decided they'd been conned. They supported Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education bill in 2001. Then the administration withheld money for it, and they decided they'd been conned. They supported the Patriot Act after 9/11 when Bush urged them to trust law enforcement. Then the Justice Department took liberties with its new powers, and they decided they'd been conned. They voted for a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq after the administration promised to use the resolution as leverage toward U.N. action, reserving unilateral war as a last resort. Then Bush ditched the United Nations and went to war, and they decided they'd been conned.
When the administration offered them a supposedly $400 billion Medicare bill stuffed with goodies for health insurers and drug companies, they said no. But lots of fiscally conservative House Republicans said yes. Now, thanks to yet another flip-flopping Bush administration whistleblower, those Republicans have discovered that the real bill, concealed by the White House, will be $150 billion higher than advertised. You don't have to be a Democrat to feel conned.
Mogadishu Deja Vu
This is surely one of the ugliest incidents involving American citizens that I can ever remember. And it certainly does beg the question -- why are we there? In an entire city not a single individual came to the aid of Americans -- not one. Is this the thanks we get for sending our young men and women to die there? Ostensibly to secure 'democracy' for these people? These people who behave like crazed murderous beasts?
WHERE WAS THE AIR NATIONAL GUARD?
Ted Rall asks the real question about 9/11.
Once it became obvious that at least four passenger jets had been hijacked--at one point that Tuesday morning, Clarke says the FAA thought it had as many as "eleven aircraft off course or out of communications"--why didn't our government intercept them?
The notion of a hijacked passenger jet meandering over the northeastern United States, unmolested for more than an hour before blasting away a chunk of the Pentagon, should appall anyone whose taxes contributed to the quarter of a trillion dollars spent on defense that year. And if you stop and think about it, there was actually two hours in which something could have been done.
Fifteen minutes after taking off from Boston at 7:58 am, American Airlines flight attendant Madeline Sweeney telephoned a flight services manager back at Logan airport to report that two of her colleagues had been stabbed and a passenger had had his throat cut by Middle Eastern men. "This flight has been hijacked," she concluded, maintaining her professional composure as Los Angeles-bound Flight 11 veered south toward Manhattan. Meanwhile, up in the cockpit, the pilot was frantically clicking his transmission button to tell air traffic controllers what was happening.
"Billionaires for Bush" coming to Houston!
The national chapter of "Billionaires for Bush" wants to starts some activities here in the Prez's back yard!
http://billionairesforbush.com/index.php
Are you tired of the way that billionaires get discriminated against?
. . . How Halliburton is getting screwed by the government?
. . . The way that corporations don't have enough power and money?
. . . Unfair attacks on oil companies?
. . . Not enough wars for you?
Then this is the group you MUST join. It's time for for American's most significant oppressed group, billionaires, to organize to fight for our rights.
Remember, "no billionaire left behind."
Bush's Biggest Failure
The Texas Observer -- Peak Oil Is Passing With No Plan
Democrats are attacking George W. Bush on many fronts: the lousy intelligence that led to the Second Iraq War, his go-it-alone foreign policy, the faltering economy, the paucity of new job creation, his penchant for deficit spending, his questionable record while serving in the Texas Air National Guard, and even his syntax and invention of words like “nucular.” All of those things are being used to bludgeon Bush.
But all of them pale when compared to the most important issue in America today: energy. George W. Bush’s greatest failure as the 43rd president of the United States has been his lack of serious action on energy policy at a time when the world desperately needs leadership from America. Global energy consumption is soaring. Oil and gas production is faltering. Almost every month, new studies come out that corroborate the harm being done to the world’s atmosphere by carbon dioxide, which comes from the burning of fossil fuels. And yet, Bush has done nothing to address America’s long-term energy needs or deal with the greenhouse gas problem.
The unfortunate truth about America in 2004 is that it is in the same position as it was in 1973, when the first OPEC-induced oil shocks paralyzed the country. Despite three decades of rhetoric, six different presidents, and a plethora of promises, America still doesn’t have a viable long-term energy policy. It never has. America has been stuck in the same misguided trance that has paralyzed policy makers since the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to shut off the flow of oil to America in early 1973. Despite all that has happened since then—additional OPEC price hikes, two wars in Iraq, and the Saudi-funded attacks on America on September 11, 2001, to name just a few—America’s policy-makers are still afflicted with acute energy myopia and a firm belief that we can produce ever-increasing amounts of energy to fill our gas tanks. And George W. Bush and his cronies are the blindest of them all.
Cheney’s report can be summed up thusly: America doesn’t need more efficiency or renewable energy because there’s always going to be plenty of oil available. We can produce our way out of our energy predicament. There’s only one problem with that thinking: It’s not true.
On January 9, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the second largest oil company on earth, announced that it had overbooked its proven reserves by 20 percent and that it would write down its asset base to reflect that fact.
The bad news hasn’t stopped. A short time after announcing that its reserves were far less than it had claimed, Shell announced that its oil and gas production fell by 2 percent in 2003, that it would be flat for all of 2004, and that production would fall again in 2005. The other major oil companies had similar results. In late January, Irving-based ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, announced that despite record profits of $21.5 billion in 2003, its total oil and gas production fell 1 percent. The company said that it produced less energy even though it spent about $20 billion exploring for new oil and gas deposits. California-based ChevronTexaco told a similar story. It, too, had a huge profit of $7.2 billion, but its total oil and gas output fell 2 percent, even though it spent over $4 billion exploring for new energy deposits.
Indeed, a quick look at ExxonMobil’s annual reports shows that the company’s energy production has been flat or declining for the last six years. In 1998, the company’s production of oil and gas totaled 4.27 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. (The oil equivalent figure combines total oil and gas production into one figure.) In 2003, the oil giant produced 4.20 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Oil production in the Persian Gulf has been flat since 1997. According to the Energy Information Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy, the entire region produced about 18 million barrels of oil per day in 2002, about the same amount as five years earlier.
I could provide many more examples of why world oil supplies are tightening, but the simple truth is that Hubbert’s Peak is upon us. The issue is being discussed at virtually every major energy conference and industry gathering. And it’s happening at a time when demand for energy is increasing dramatically. In January, the International Energy Agency estimated that worldwide demand is growing by nearly 2 percent per year. In February, ExxonMobil predicted that worldwide energy demand will have grown by 40 percent by 2020. In short, more and more people on planet Earth are vying for fewer and fewer resources. The surge in demand is coming primarily from two of the fastest growing countries on Earth: China and India.
World oil markets might be able to absorb China’s burgeoning demand if energy demand in the United States slows down or declines. But it isn’t. Instead, it’s rising. Between 1990 and 2000, America’s total energy consumption increased by 16 percent, to the equivalent of nearly 48 million barrels of oil per day. America’s share of world energy consumption is rising, too. From 1990 to 2000, U.S. energy use increased from 25.3 percent to 27.3 percent of total world consumption. In 2000, Americans burned more fuel than all of the countries of Europe combined.
The United States is actually driving backward when it comes to fuel efficiency. Vehicles made in America today are about 7 percent less efficient (on a miles per gallon basis) than they were in 1987.
The Bush’s Administration’s decision to ignore the looming global energy crisis verges on criminal. Bush has certainly earned a place in American history. His misbegotten rush to send American troops into the Second Iraq War will likely be the headline for his entry in the history books. But there should be another entry: one recalling that Texas oil man George W. Bush was the president who, when faced with Hubbert’s Peak and the myriad of dangers that came with it, kept his head firmly up his own tailpipe.
This White House Will Lie About Anything
And the media will cover for them.
Letterman poked fun at Bush by showing a video of a kid falling asleep during a speech Bush made in Florida. The White House called CNN, which was replaying the story, and said the tape was doctored. Letterman proved it wasn't and denounced them for saying it was. CNN says they misspoke, it wasn't the White House that called. Letterman says he knows it was.
Story here and here.
The White House -- any White House -- dodging questions is nothing new. More disturbing is CNN's apparent disregard in this case for the public's right to the true story. For a news organization, that obligation ought to trump everything else -- including any internal embarrassment over missing the bucket completely on what should have been a slam dunk.
Daryl Kagan offered yet another elaboration, stating that the White House did not ever call CNN to allege the tape was faked and served up an apology -- not to viewers, but to Letterman. But an apology is not an explanation, and there have to be a few hundreds of thousands of baffled CNN devotees still wondering how you get something like that wrong twice in two hours.
Flying Blind With No End In Sight
Herbert - There were 4,000 marines stationed near Falluja when Wednesday's gruesome attack occurred. But Marine commanders, as The Times's Jeffrey Gettleman reports, decided they would not intervene to stop the mutilation of the bodies. The atrocity unfolded without interference.
On that same day five soldiers were killed when their convoy rolled over a bomb buried in the road in a town 15 miles west of Falluja. A major trade show in Baghdad that was supposed to be held next week to showcase investment opportunities in the new Iraq had to be postponed yesterday because of security concerns.
We are mired in a savage mess in Iraq, and no one knows how to get out of it. More than 600 U.S. troops are already dead. The rest of the world has decided that this is an American show, so we're not getting much in the way of help. (Even the Saudis have been sticking their fingers in Uncle Sam's eye, leading the effort by OPEC to cut oil production.) President Bush won't come clean about the financial costs of the war. His mantra remains: tax cuts, tax cuts.
We're flying blind. There's no evidence that the president or anyone in his administration knows what the next act of this great tragedy will be.
Unemployment Rate Really Over 7%
Unemployed Dropping Out of Labor Pool
The share of the U.S. population working or actively seeking a job has fallen to 65.9 percent, the lowest level in 16 years. Economists say the weak jobs market is causing people to give up their searches and drop out of the labor pool at an unusual pace.
Americans not actively seeking work when the Labor Department conducts its survey of households are not counted as unemployed. Those people say they have stopped looking because of frustration or personal responsibilities, such as deciding to attend school.
That growing trend has caused the participation rate to fall 1.2 percentage points since the start of the recession in March 2001. This is the first time the participation rate has fallen 27 months into an economic recovery.
"Normally in a recovery the participation rate would rise,'' said Sung Won Sohn, Wells Fargo's chief economist. "People hear about the improving economy and more job opportunities so they actually come out of the woodwork. We are seeing the opposite of what's been normal in the past. That's why the jobless rate has really become somewhat of a misleading indicator.''
If those people who want jobs but aren't looking were counted, the unemployment rate would be more than 7 percent, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.
"To me, that is much more representative of the state of the job market,'' he said. "It doesn't feel like a 5.6 percent job market. It feels like more of a 7 or a 7 and a half percent job market.''
Administration Smears Without Fear
Krugman - Look, I understand why major news organizations must act respectfully toward government officials. But officials shouldn't be sure — as Mr. Wilkinson obviously was — that they can make wild accusations without any fear that they will be challenged on the spot or held accountable later.
And administration officials shouldn't be able to spread stories without making themselves accountable. If an administration official is willing to say something on the record, that's a story, because he pays a price if his claims are false. But if unnamed "administration officials" spread rumors about administration critics, reporters have an obligation to check the facts before giving those rumors national exposure. And there's no excuse for disseminating unchecked rumors because they come from "the White House," then denying the White House connection when the rumors prove false. That's simply giving the administration a license to smear with impunity.
Earthquake For California Desert by September?
A state earthquake council has given a qualified endorsement to a prediction by a group of scientists who believe that a temblor of magnitude 6.4 or greater will occur in the Southern California desert sometime in the next five months.
The scientists piqued interest after they forecast the magnitude-6.5 San Simeon quake in December and the magnitude-8.1 quake last year off Japan's Hokkaido island. In both cases, the group set wide parameters in place and time.
The team bases its predictions on long chains of small earthquakes recorded in the area.
The team of scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, predicts that a quake will occur within a 12,000-square-mile area east of Los Angeles by Sept. 5. The zone includes a large swath of the Mojave Desert, the Coachella Valley, the Imperial Valley and eastern San Diego County.
Emergency officials in Victorville said last month they were aware of the prediction and generally advise residents to be prepared for any disaster.
Basic preparedness would include a 72-hour survival kit with necessities, such as water, food, clothing, blankets, a flashlight, a radio and batteries.
An evacuation plan, important phone numbers and a list of places to go are also suggested.
Democracy Taking Root In Iraq
In response to this week’s violence in Fallujah, the White House, reminiscent of those McNamara days, says, "These are horrific attacks by people who are trying to prevent democracy from moving forward, but democracy is taking root."
Of course it is. It’s taking root in its ugliest form – mob rule, insecurity of Iraqi people of all ethnic and religious groups, demagoguery and yellow journalism manipulated by those jockeying for political power.
Yellow journalism in Iraq – rumor-mongering and manipulation of local fears in pursuit of certain political ends – is something we Americans deal with every day here at home. One honorable and brave and lonely American reporter has pointed out that Randolph Hearst had nothing on the mainstream press of modern America. In Iraq, we lock down newspapers and arrest the evildoers. In Washington and New York, they are entertained with degrading jokes, expensive dinners and continued favored access to the administration’s key policymakers.
One year after their order systems were blasted into the past, most Iraqis wait, worry and wonder. But for those in the Anbar Province, they act democratically. Which is to say, the "will of the people" is expressed. Which is to say, using makeshift bombs and a motley array of Cold War weaponry, the people come together to kill Americans and the Iraqis who work with them.
el - Unfortunately Col. Karen is right, these appeared to be the people, not terrorists, an ugly vicious mob of people.
Bush Aides Block Clinton's Papers From 9/11 Panel
The White House confirmed on Thursday that it had withheld a variety of classified documents from Mr. Clinton's files that had been gathered by the National Archives over the last two years in response to requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement failures before the attacks.
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said some Clinton administration documents had been withheld because they were "duplicative or unrelated," while others were withheld because they were "highly sensitive" and the information in them could be relayed to the commission in other ways. "We are providing the commission with access to all the information they need to do their job," Mr. McClellan said.
The commission and the White House were reacting to public complaints from former aides to Mr. Clinton, who said they had been surprised to learn in recent months that three-quarters of the nearly 11,000 pages of files the former president was ready to offer the commission had been withheld by the Bush administration. The former aides said the files contained highly classified documents about the Clinton administration's efforts against Al Qaeda.
Mr. Lindsey, who is Mr. Clinton's liaison to the National Archives, said he was surprised to discover from the archives in later months that the Bush administration, after reviewing the Clinton documents gathered by researchers there, had decided not to turn over most of the material.
He said he had read through many of the 10,800 pages that were collected and believed them to be valuable to the work of the panel.
"They involved all of the issues — Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, terrorism, all of the areas with the commission's jurisdiction," he said.
Late Night Political Jokes
"Not only will Condoleezza Rice testify, but President Bush has also agreed to meet with the (9/11) commission. He's going to testify, but he said he wants have Dick Cheney there with him. Why does he want Cheney with him? What? Does he have a learner's permit to be president and have to have an adult with him." —Jay Leno
"Michael Jackson was in Washington, DC and met with a number of Congressmen. He's pretty smart. He knows he's going to have to lie under oath pretty soon, so why not get some expert advice?" —Jay Leno
"Former Vice President Al Gore has purchased his own cable television channel. It's going to be the Al Gore TV network. He said it's going to be a lot like C-SPAN, but less exciting." —David Letterman
"Even Jessica Simpson is voting for John Kerry. You know Bush is in trouble when his own people are turning on him." —Craig Kilborn
Ditzy pop star Jessica Simpson, who is known for her idiotic verbal gaffes, delivered a doozy during a recent tour of the White House, the Washington Post reports. Upon being introduced to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Simpson gushed, "You've done a nice job decorating the White House." Sounds like she could be presidential material.
"The price of gas in California is going crazy. In fact, today I did something smart. I bought a gallon as an investment." —Jay Leno
"It's really getting ugly between the White House and this former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke. ... Clarke accused President Bush of subterfuge, an accusation President Bush both denied and had to look up." —Jay Leno
"They say that Saddam is stonewalling, he's refusing to talk, he's not giving out any information. No, wait a minute, that's Condoleezza Rice." —David Letterman
"John Kerry is quite an athlete. He's in Idaho and they showed him snowboarding. Did you see it on the news? Man he is a good snowboarder. He was going downhill faster than Howard Dean." —Jay Leno
"It's interesting. I see all these political ads and all these commentators say it's our job as Americans to vote. Let me tell you something, with Bush in charge of the economy, this might be the only job you have all year." —Jay Leno
"There was an article in the paper today that said America is really a place where losers can actually come out ahead. This is true, like Clay Aiken, who lost on 'American Idol,' he's a big star now. ... Trista lost on 'The Bachelor,' she's got her own dating show now. ... George Bush lost the election and became president of the United States." —Jay Leno
Weekly tracking compiled by Daniel Kurtzman
Unemployment rate unchanged at 5.7 percent
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 308,000 in March. This is the first real job growth for the administration.
The unemployment rate, 5.7 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, 8.4 million, were essentially unchanged in March. Both measures remained below their recent highs of June 2003. Unemployment rates for the major worker groups--adult men (5.2 percent), adult women (5.1 percent), teenagers (16.5 percent), whites (5.1 percent), blacks (10.2 percent), and Hispanics or Latinos (7.4 percent)--showed little or no change over the month.
In March, the number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons increased to 4.7 million, about the same level as in January. These individuals indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time jobs.
The number of persons who were marginally attached to the labor force totaled 1.6 million in March, about the same as a year earlier. These individuals wanted and were available to work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed, however, because they did not actively search for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
Household data continues to contradict establishment data. The survey of households indicates that employment went down 3,000. That unemployment went up 182,000 and the number NOT in labor force also went up 14,000.
Average hourly earnings went up $0.02 and average weekly earnings went down $0.88.
Inside the numbers - the trash smells.
Left, Right, and Center
The only talk radio with all three sides, a weekly confrontation over politics, policy and popular culture.
Without Reservation
Karen Kwiatkowski on Dick Clarke
Clarke accurately describes the Cold Warriors in the Bush administration with "It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier." I and many others observed the same thing, at a lower level within the Pentagon.
The White House faces a grave and growing danger. Its attack machine is activated against Clarke, but, preferring character assassination over basic truth, it will be hard to sustain. Clarke's public stance of honor and credibility has real staying power, and it has already inspired and heartened both new witnesses and the mainstream media to seek and reveal the truth.
This truth is damaging to that single horse the administration is riding in this election race. The economy, the budget, the debt, veteran's benefits, military readiness, Medicare and social security crises, education, immigration – all are issues where the administration has sorely disappointed conservatives like me, as well as liberals and independents, in every state. If the war on terror horse stumbles, the administration falls.
Clarke accurately describes the Cold Warriors in the Bush administration with "It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier." I and many others observed the same thing, at a lower level within the Pentagon.
The White House faces a grave and growing danger. Its attack machine is activated against Clarke, but, preferring character assassination over basic truth, it will be hard to sustain. Clarke's public stance of honor and credibility has real staying power, and it has already inspired and heartened both new witnesses and the mainstream media to seek and reveal the truth.
This truth is damaging to that single horse the administration is riding in this election race. The economy, the budget, the debt, veteran's benefits, military readiness, Medicare and social security crises, education, immigration – all are issues where the administration has sorely disappointed conservatives like me, as well as liberals and independents, in every state. If the war on terror horse stumbles, the administration falls.
Democracy Now interview with Sibel Edmonds
She says the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before Sept. 11 and calls Condoleezza Rice's claim the White House had no specific information on a domestic threat or one involving planes "an outrageous lie." [includes rush transcript]
"We had not one, but we had many specific informations."
"Attorney General Ashcroft on October 18, 2002, personally asserted State Secret Privilege in my case. I would read two sentences here: 'To prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive national security information, Attorney General Ashcroft today asserted the State Secret Privilege in Sibel Edmonds' case. This assertion was made at the request of the F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller,' in papers filed today, and they are citing the reason that because this case would create substantial risks of disclosing classified and sensitive national security information that could cause serious damage to our country's security. They are citing that this privilege is very rare and is asserted to prevent certain information getting -- becoming public or hurting diplomatic relations. I would underline this phrase, diplomatic relations several times."
"You see, after September 11, these people -- people from the F.B.I., came forward and they blamed everything on shortage of budgets and shortage of personnel. And they said, we failed, and these were the major causes. These were the reasons. That is not accurate. We were told during the time that these people were going on TV and they were begging for people to apply for translation positions because we had this shortage, what was going on behind the scenes was exactly opposite. We were being asked not to do these translations, and let the documents pile up, because within a month or so, they were scheduled to go in front of the Senate and Congress and ask for increased budgets. In doing so, they needed to give numbers of pages, numbers of documents and audios that they were not translated due to the shortage, and needed to be translated, and that they were urgent, and in order to do so, we had to increase that number, the number of pages and the number of audio. "
GOP House Defies Bush - Over Pork Spending
In using the popular transportation bill to advertise his tough position on spending, the president appears to have badly miscalculated the mood of members of his own party. Sweetening the House measure are about 3,000 parochial projects for home districts -- double the number approved in the previous long-term bill, passed in 1997.
They include a $15 million earmark to build a road to a gold mine in Alaska; $3 million for a river walkway in Montgomery, Ala.; and $250,000 to construct a transportation museum at a Cleveland high school.
At the same time, GOP lawmakers from Florida, Ohio, Michigan and other states seen as battlegrounds in the presidential election are demanding major changes in a highway aid formula that, they say, shortchanges their states. In tense sessions with House GOP leaders this week, some Republicans from those states indicated that they might vote against the bill unless the disparities are corrected.
Rather than forcing House Republicans into line, as in the past, the White House's veto threats provoked an unprecedented revolt by congressional Republicans.
el - I suspect some element of payback for Bush lying about Medicare Drug Bill costs.
US 'knew' air attack coming
US officials knew months before September 11, 2001 that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was planning to use aircraft to carry out a terrorist attack, a former FBI translator has alleged.
Sibel Edmonds told the Independent newspaper, in an interview published on Friday, that a claim by US President George W Bush's national security advisor Condoleezza Rice that there had been no such warnings was "an outrageous lie".
"President Bush said they had no specific information about September 11 and that is accurate but only because he said September 11," Edmonds told the Independent.
There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.
Iraq Survey
Apart from right and wrong, do you feel the US-led coalition force invasion -
Base = All respondents %
Humiliated Iraq 41.2
Liberated Iraq 41.8
Difficult to say 17.0
Total 100.0
Only 6.5% think the US should be a model for Iraq.
Ahmed Chalabi is trusted by 0.2% of the people to be a leader for Iraq. He has the largest percentage 10.3%, who do not trust him at all.
42.8% have no confidence at all in U.S. U.K. occupying forces, 23.5% have very little.
17.3% think attacks on coalition forces are acceptable, 13.6% think that attacks on the Coalition Provisional Authority are acceptable, 13.2% think that attacks on foreigners working for the CPA are acceptable, even 1.5% think that attacks on the new Iraq police are acceptable.
el - One out of six Iraqis think that attacking US and UK troops is acceptable, way to liberate Iraq and bring democracy Dubya.
Travel to Baghdad Blog
Several Iraq blog digests today.
I've got some friends in my local Pub who once went to Medallin in Cuba at the height of the cocaine war between the DEA / CIA and the Cuban Drug cartel. I was always jealous of the stories that they told so maybe I want to go one better than them.
Maybe it's for the money. We are being very well paid.
Maybe I'm just mad!
I think it's a combination of all of the above, but whatever the reasons, I'm going to Baghdad, and I've agreed with my best mate and co - worker Fiona (Fi) to keep a diary of my thoughts for her brothers web - site.
I've never done this kind of thing before, (allowing my thoughts to be scrutinized by others) but a deal's a deal, so here is my first ever 'blog' as she insists I call it.
After delays, arguments, second thoughts, third thoughts and more delays, we have finally been given our flight details.
Shit, it's really happening!
I'm actually going to travel into a warzone.
I've never really been one to study current affairs in any great depth, but when you're about to embark on a journey to one of the most dangerous places on earth via one of the most hazardous roads on earth, I think only a fool would ignore the news.
I wish I'd ignored the news.
I wish I didn't have satellite TV. Too much information.
It seems like I'm phoning Fi every couple of hours with more bad news. But she's determined to go, no matter what. She's got some balls that bird, I can tell ya.
Our boss has given us the chance to back out due to the increased hostilities, but, we're going to Baghdad, and Nothing can stop us.
A Girl, A Toolkit, Iraq
Sallah tells us that Fallujah is the only place in Iraq where (even during Saddam’s regime) there was never a ruling Governor. It’s a real rebel town. Based on the traditional tribal system (which still exists). They are very proud and dignified people who WILL NOT accept within their multi – tribal society, working out their own co – existence, that there should be a person promoted to such a position that does not respect this equality and the diversity. The first Governor lasted a day before he was shot dead, the second, two. Rebel town.
On the way into Baghdad, he told us that both Fallujah and Ramadi were the most dangerous places for Westerners, as the US forces had come down hard on them, showing no respect for their traditions, beliefs, culture, dignity, intelligence… or the fact that they were actually, really, human beings.
So we find ourselves stopped by the US forces on the highway. Sallah (who speaks very good English) calls to a GI to find out if the road is being closed. The charmer he speaks to doesn’t take his hand off his automatic rifle and tells him to stay in lane. This is traffic control, GI style.
A conversation in Arabic between the Fixer and the driver. Next thing we know, we are off – roading, trying to find a different route. We can hear automatic gunfire.
And it sounds quite close.
Raed in the Middle
Violence is never the answer.
The extremely shallow foreign police of the American administration gives wrong indications, it proved for everyone in the Middle East region that violence is the only language that they understand…
I was watching one of the public discussion programs at Al-Jazeera channel, where an extremely angry man was shouting:
Americans are democratic for themselves, but for us? not at all. They don’t even know the meaning of diplomacy and politics. The only language they understand is the language of explosions. Tell me… why did Americans withdraw from Somalia? Because of peace talks or because of killing their soldiers brutally? Why did Israel, the untouchable daughter of the Americans, go out of Lebanon? Wasn’t that because of the unbearable pressure of Hizb Allah? Why did Americans leave Lebanon in the early eighties? Wasn’t that because a car bomb killed some dozens of their soldiers and civilians?
I would like to have a different answer for Mr. Extremist, but I just wish I could.
Tales from an Occupied Colony
Baghdad Burning
On a cold night in November, M., her mother, and four brothers had been sleeping when their door suddenly came crashing down during the early hours of the morning. The scene that followed was one of chaos and confusion- screaming, shouting, cursing, pushing and pulling followed. The family were all gathered into the living room and the four sons- one of them only 15- were dragged away with bags over their heads. The mother and daughter were questioned- who was the man in the picture hanging on the wall? He was M.'s father who had died 6 years ago of a stroke. You're lying, they were told- wasn't he a part of some secret underground resistance cell? M.'s mother was hysterical by then- he was her dead husband and why were they taking away her sons? What had they done? They were supporting the resistance, came the answer through the interpreter.
How were they supporting the resistance, their mother wanted to know? "You are contributing large sums of money to terrorists." The interpreter explained. The troops had received an anonymous tip that M.'s family were giving funds to support attacks on the troops.
It was useless trying to explain that the family didn't have any 'funds'- ever since two of her sons lost their jobs at a factory that had closed down after the war, the family had been living off of the little money they got from a 'kushuk' or little shop that sold cigarettes, biscuits and candy to people in the neighborhood. They barely made enough to cover the cost of food! Nothing mattered. The mother and daughter were also taken away, with bags over their heads.
Umm Hassen had been telling the story up until that moment, M. was only nodding her head in agreement and listening raptly, like it was someone else's story. She continued it from there - M. and her mother were taken to the airport for interrogation. M. remembers being in a room, with a bag over her head and bright lights above. She claimed she could see the shapes of figures through the little holes in the bag. She was made to sit on her knees, in the interrogation room while her mother was kicked and beaten to the ground.
M.'s hands trembled as she held the cup of tea Umm Hassen had given her. Her face was very pale as she said, "I heard my mother begging them to please let me go and not hurt me - she told them she'd do anything- say anything- if they just let me go." After a couple hours of general abuse, the mother and daughter were divided, each one thrown into a seperate room for questioning. M. was questioned about everything concerning their family life- who came to visit them, who they were related to and when and under what circumstances her father had died. Hours later, the mother and daughter were taken to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison- home to thousands of criminals and innocents alike.
In Abu Ghraib, they were seperated and M. suspected that her mother was taken to another prison outside of Baghdad. A couple of terrible months later- after witnessing several beatings and the rape of a male prisoner by one of the jailors- in mid-January, M. was suddenly set free and taken to her uncle's home where she found her youngest brother waiting for her. Her uncle, through some lawyers and contacts, had managed to extract M. and her 15-year-old brother from two different prisons. M. also learned that her mother was still in Abu Ghraib but they weren't sure about her three brothers.
M. and her uncle later learned that a certain neighbor had made the false accusation against her family. The neighbor's 20-year-old son was still bitter over a fight he had several years ago with one of M.'s brothers. All he had to do was contact a certain translator who worked for the troops and give M.'s address. It was that easy.
Abu Hassen was contacted by M. and her uncle because he was an old family friend and was willing to do the work free of charge. They have been trying to get her brothers and mother out ever since. I was enraged- why don't they contact the press? Why don't they contact the Red Cross?! What were they waiting for?! She shook her head sadly and said that they *had* contacted the Red Cross but they were just one case in thousands upon thousands- it would take forever to get to them. As for the press- was I crazy? How could she contact the press and risk the wrath of the American authorities while her mother and brothers were still imprisoned?! There were prisoners who had already gotten up to 15 years of prison for 'acting against the coallition'... she couldn't risk that. They would just have to be patient and do a lot of praying.
By the end of her tale, M. was crying silently and my mother and Umm Hassen were hastily wiping away tears. All I could do was repeat, "I'm so sorry... I'm really sorry..." and a lot of other useless words. She shook her head and waved away my words of sympathy, "It's ok- really- I'm one of the lucky ones... all they did was beat me."
On a cold night in November, M., her mother, and four brothers had been sleeping when their door suddenly came crashing down during the early hours of the morning. The scene that followed was one of chaos and confusion- screaming, shouting, cursing, pushing and pulling followed. The family were all gathered into the living room and the four sons- one of them only 15- were dragged away with bags over their heads. The mother and daughter were questioned- who was the man in the picture hanging on the wall? He was M.'s father who had died 6 years ago of a stroke. You're lying, they were told- wasn't he a part of some secret underground resistance cell? M.'s mother was hysterical by then- he was her dead husband and why were they taking away her sons? What had they done? They were supporting the resistance, came the answer through the interpreter.
How were they supporting the resistance, their mother wanted to know? "You are contributing large sums of money to terrorists." The interpreter explained. The troops had received an anonymous tip that M.'s family were giving funds to support attacks on the troops.
It was useless trying to explain that the family didn't have any 'funds'- ever since two of her sons lost their jobs at a factory that had closed down after the war, the family had been living off of the little money they got from a 'kushuk' or little shop that sold cigarettes, biscuits and candy to people in the neighborhood. They barely made enough to cover the cost of food! Nothing mattered. The mother and daughter were also taken away, with bags over their heads.
Umm Hassen had been telling the story up until that moment, M. was only nodding her head in agreement and listening raptly, like it was someone else's story. She continued it from there - M. and her mother were taken to the airport for interrogation. M. remembers being in a room, with a bag over her head and bright lights above. She claimed she could see the shapes of figures through the little holes in the bag. She was made to sit on her knees, in the interrogation room while her mother was kicked and beaten to the ground.
M.'s hands trembled as she held the cup of tea Umm Hassen had given her. Her face was very pale as she said, "I heard my mother begging them to please let me go and not hurt me - she told them she'd do anything- say anything- if they just let me go." After a couple hours of general abuse, the mother and daughter were divided, each one thrown into a seperate room for questioning. M. was questioned about everything concerning their family life- who came to visit them, who they were related to and when and under what circumstances her father had died. Hours later, the mother and daughter were taken to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison- home to thousands of criminals and innocents alike.
In Abu Ghraib, they were seperated and M. suspected that her mother was taken to another prison outside of Baghdad. A couple of terrible months later- after witnessing several beatings and the rape of a male prisoner by one of the jailors- in mid-January, M. was suddenly set free and taken to her uncle's home where she found her youngest brother waiting for her. Her uncle, through some lawyers and contacts, had managed to extract M. and her 15-year-old brother from two different prisons. M. also learned that her mother was still in Abu Ghraib but they weren't sure about her three brothers.
M. and her uncle later learned that a certain neighbor had made the false accusation against her family. The neighbor's 20-year-old son was still bitter over a fight he had several years ago with one of M.'s brothers. All he had to do was contact a certain translator who worked for the troops and give M.'s address. It was that easy.
Abu Hassen was contacted by M. and her uncle because he was an old family friend and was willing to do the work free of charge. They have been trying to get her brothers and mother out ever since. I was enraged- why don't they contact the press? Why don't they contact the Red Cross?! What were they waiting for?! She shook her head sadly and said that they *had* contacted the Red Cross but they were just one case in thousands upon thousands- it would take forever to get to them. As for the press- was I crazy? How could she contact the press and risk the wrath of the American authorities while her mother and brothers were still imprisoned?! There were prisoners who had already gotten up to 15 years of prison for 'acting against the coallition'... she couldn't risk that. They would just have to be patient and do a lot of praying.
By the end of her tale, M. was crying silently and my mother and Umm Hassen were hastily wiping away tears. All I could do was repeat, "I'm so sorry... I'm really sorry..." and a lot of other useless words. She shook her head and waved away my words of sympathy, "It's ok- really- I'm one of the lucky ones... all they did was beat me."
Bush Credibility Finally Taking Hits
The latest CBS News poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday, shows declines in the president's approval ratings in a number of policy areas, but especially changes in the evaluation of the president's handling of terrorism.
Six in ten Americans are following the hearings closely; 56 percent say the administration is cooperating with the panel. But what the administration is saying does not receives high marks: 59 percent say it is hiding something it knew before Sept. 11, and 11 percent even say it is lying. Only one in four think the administration is telling the entire truth.
The president receives a 49 percent approval rating overall; his approval ratings on the economy, foreign policy, and Iraq are lower – and the lowest approval ratings he has received in these policy areas.
So far, the impact on the campaign is mixed. Nationally, the president appears to have lost ground in the last two weeks, trailing Democrat John Kerry among registered voters by five points, 48 percent to 43 percent. However, the election won't be determined by the size of the Democratic or Republican margins in states like Texas, New York and California, the largest states. There are 18 battleground states where the campaigns are already focusing their attention and their advertising campaigns. In those states, the race is tighter, with Mr. Bush receiving 47 percent to Kerry's 45 percent.
U.S. Firms Keep Billions Overseas Away From US Taxes
Large US Companies Are Expanding Jobs Overseas And Shelter Income There
With sales up 5 percent last year, Merck & Co. was not satisfied: To hold down costs, the pharmaceutical giant shed 3,200 jobs as 2003 drew to a close, and announced that an additional 1,200 positions would go this year.
But Merck's picture abroad was quite different. It made 1,300 new hires in 2003 outside the United States, on top of the 900 brought on the year before. Company documents indicate that Merck had a cumulative $18 billion in foreign earnings untaxed by the end of last year, $3 billion more than in 2002. And the company said it had no intention of ever paying U.S. taxes on that burgeoning sum.
"Foreign earnings of $18.0 billion . . . have been retained indefinitely by subsidiary companies for reinvestment," Merck's annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said. "No provision is made for income taxes that would be payable upon distribution of such earning."
Last week, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the likely Democratic nominee for president, made such lucrative income-tax deferrals a focal point of his campaign, asserting that they are driving companies to expand abroad. Merck's numbers appear to back that up, and so do those of several other big U.S. companies.
By the end of its 2003 fiscal year, Hewlett-Packard Co. had "indefinitely" deferred taxation on $14.4 billion of foreign earnings, according to SEC filings, a move that helped lower its effective tax rate from the statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent to 12 percent.
Domestic employment at Intel Corp. slipped by more than 3,300 people last year, but it grew by more than 4,300 abroad. By the end of 2003, the company had $7 billion in cumulative foreign earnings, $700 million more than it had sheltered in 2002, according to SEC filings. The semiconductor powerhouse stated that it "intends to reinvest these earnings indefinitely in operations outside the U.S."
The U.S. tax code is actually encouraging the movement of jobs overseas.
"This is a big deal," agreed Robert S. McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice, who has inveighed against foreign tax deferral for years. As a company, he said, "you may go to India or China or Ireland for the wage differentials -- there's nothing we can do about that. But we don't have to pay you to go there."
"This is a largely broken system, rife with abuse," said Gene B. Sperling, a former economic aide to President Bill Clinton who advises Kerry and is an architect of the candidate's plan.
"There is a real problem here," said Gary C. Hufbauer, an international tax expert at the Institute for International Economics, who is skeptical of Kerry's proposal. "U.S. firms doing business in the U.S. are taxed more heavily than many of their foreign competitors. That's demonstrably true."
Under Kerry's plan, U.S.-based companies would have to pay taxes immediately on virtually all foreign profits that are not taxed by another country. Firms could still defer taxation on profits from subsidiaries set up abroad to serve local markets, but if a U.S. company sets up overseas to ship goods back home, taxes would be due in full.
Girls Gone Riled: Will Single Women Break Bush's Heart?
ARIANNA ONLINE - Why don't single women vote?
As a group, single women feel particularly detached from the political process. They don’t believe that politicians listen to them or care about their problems. Compared to the big money interests that dominate our politics, they feel powerless to effect real change. They are also turned off by the overwhelmingly negative tone of modern campaigns.
If John Kerry is going to capture the hearts and votes of this crucial voting bloc, he’s going to have to offer them more than sweet talk and the policy equivalent of a dozen roses.
Luckily for Kerry, what he needs to do to attract single women voters is exactly the same thing he needs to do to attract the rest of the electorate: Provide a bold moral vision of what America can be. A vision that brings hope and soul back to our politics and appeals to more than voters’ narrow self-interests and unspoken prejudices.
Polls show that single women don’t see themselves as tied to any political party. But they do see themselves as part of the larger American community, and are deeply concerned about the well-being of their neighbors and the nation as a whole. “This year, politicians of any stripe ignore these women at their peril,” says Christina Desser, co-director of Women’s Voices.
Single women are fed up and desperately want change. Now it’s up to John Kerry to empower these Girls Gone Riled and convince them to kick George Bush to the curb.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
GOP Grandmother Attacks Perry
Sounding like a challenger in the 2006 governor's race, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn gave Gov. Rick Perry a verbal pasting Wednesday, asserting that her Republican colleague needs pressure to act on public education and reverse health care cuts.
Advocates are poised today to mark the fourth anniversary of the Texas Children's Health Insurance Program by bemoaning an enrollment drop of nearly 120,000 children to 388,000 participants since last summer.
Lawmakers tightened CHIP access last year to save money. Changes include a 90-day waiting period between signing up and enrollment, increased co-payments, and requiring families to enroll their children every six months rather than annually.
Strayhorn said Perry should free up $583 million in available funds to restore CHIP, and also return benefits such as eyeglasses and hearing aids to adult Medicaid recipients.
She said Perry also should tell his appointed commissioner of health and human services to cancel plans to restrict CHIP access based on family assets, a change coming next month projected to whittle enrollment by an additional 4,700 children.
Top Focus Before 9/11 Wasn't on Terrorism - Obvious
On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday" -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals.
The speech was postponed in the chaos of the day, part of which Rice spent in a bunker. It mentioned terrorism, but did so in the context used in other Bush administration speeches in early 2001: as one of the dangers from rogue nations, such as Iraq, that might use weapons of terror, rather than from the cells of extremists now considered the main security threat to the United States.
The text also implicitly challenged the Clinton administration's policy, saying it did not do enough about the real threat -- long-range missiles.
Rice's text noted that Bush appointed Cheney to oversee a coordinated national effort to protect against a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction.
el - the Cheney coordinated national effort never met.
In April 2002, Rice followed through on her postponed Sept. 11 speaking engagement at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. But the speech she delivered did not contain any of the original text, former U.S. officials said.
In the revamped speech, Rice's focus was on the threat of international terrorists -- and missile defense was mentioned only once, almost in passing.
"An earthquake of the magnitude of 9/11 can shift the tectonic plates of international politics," she noted.
Majority Report Radio Blog
Janeane and I want you to be a part of what we’re doing. We welcome all your comments, suggestions, gripes etc.
White House Scripted Some Clarke Questions on 9/11 Panel
White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales called commissioner Fred F. Fielding, one of five GOP members of the body, and, according to one observer, also called Republican commission member James R. Thompson. Rep. Henry A. Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, wrote to Gonzales yesterday asking him to confirm and describe the conversations.
Waxman said "it would be unusual if such ex parte contacts occurred" during the hearing. Waxman did not allege that there would be anything illegal in such phone calls. But he suggested that such contacts would be improper because "the conduct of the White House is one of the key issues being investigated by the commission."
The 9/11 Widows Who Created and Still Dog the Panel
Since the commission began its work, the Sept. 11 relatives, who call themselves the Family Steering Committee, have dogged its every move. When the panel complained of a lack of money, they lobbied for a bigger budget — and won. When the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, refused to grant the panel an extension, they headed to Washington again, and the speaker retreated. "Public pressure by the 9/11 families," Mr. Hastert's spokesman, John Feehery, said about the reversal. "There is no doubt about that."
For every battle they have won, though, the families have lost others. The commission rejected their calls to subpoena classified intelligence briefings and to fire its executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, who co-wrote a book with Ms. Rice. The families also complained that last week's hearings deteriorated into a partisan spat over a book by Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism official. "They were right on that one," Mr. Kean conceded.
So the Jersey girls are not congratulating themselves now on Ms. Rice. "There are no victories here," Ms. Casazza said. Ms. Breitweiser added: "A victory implies that this is a game. And this is not a game."
Before Sept. 11, the Jersey girls (the nickname, which distinguishes the women from their New York and Connecticut counterparts, was popularized in song by Bruce Springsteen) knew little about government and less about politics. The closest Ms. Casazza came to foreign affairs was processing visa applications for French trainees while working for the cosmetics company Lancôme. Ms. Van Auken could not keep the two chambers of Congress straight.
"I remember saying to Patty: `Which one is the one with more people, the Senate or the House?' " she recalled.
The story of how they helped move a seemingly immoveable bureaucracy is at once the tale of a political education, and a sisterhood born of grief.
We should be ashamed of CNN and the New York Times
Many example from recent Clake coverage by the Daily Howler.
...To state the obvious, Blitzer knew that this presentation was fake, designed to mislead Wolf’s viewers. Even if Blitzer wasn’t prepared to deal with this clowning at the time it occurred, didn’t he have an obligation to explain the facts at some later point? But this is a major problem facing the press as this White House spreads strings of fake, phony stories. Did Kerry “vote for higher taxes 350 times?” Everyone knows that this claim is pure crap. But very few members of the press have had the courage to deal with this problem.
How dumb is this White House willing to be? And just how far will journalists go to accomodate the Bush camp’s stupid stories? On Tuesday, we presented an example from David Sanger’s laughable piece in the New York Times (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/30/04). The White House wanted you to think that Clarke’s book was packed with mistakes. So a White House aide listed problems with Clarke’s first chapter—and Sanger obediently typed them on up. The first example that Sanger provided? At one point, Clarke quotes the aide, Franklin Miller, saying this: “What can I do?” But Miller said that didn’t sound right—more likely, he would have said: “How can I help?” And yes, this actually went in the Times, the first item in a long story which ran with a photo of Clarke. (Sanger included six examples in all.)
You’ll note that Clarke isn’t quoted here; Sanger helpfully paraphrases (he “describes the Situation Room as sparsely populated”). Of course, most of Sanger’s readers didn’t have Clarke’s book. But we do. Here’s what Clarke writes:
CLARKE (page 10): The White House compound was empty now except for the group with Cheney in the Easy Wing bomb shelter and the team with me in the West Wing Situation Room: Roger [Cressey], Lisa [Gordon-Hagerty] and Paul [Kurtz] from my counterterrorist staff, Frank Miller and Marine Colonel Tom Greenwood and a half dozen Situation Room staff.
So let’s count the people in the room:
Richard Clarke
Roger Cressey
Lisa Gordon-Hagerty
Paul Kurtz
Frank Miller
Tom Greenwood
A half dozen staffers
Those familiar with life on the planet will note that this adds up to a dozen! Tell us again why American citizens should tolerate people like Sanger.
Of course, when Clarke’s book appeared, so did the propaganda; White House slugs fed nonsense to scribes, and scribes ran to type the scripts up. All these scripts were designed to suggest that Dick Clarke has just made this sh*t up. Eric Alterman comments aptly on the oddness of this “Richard Clarke food-fight:”
ALTERMAN: [T[he ferocity of the argument is odd. Clarke is not really revealing anything we did not already know. So far, I’ve not heard anything—absent insidery detail—that I did not include in my chapter on the subject in The Book on Bush, including for instance, the fact that Cheney’s alleged commission on terrorism never once met. This is not news. I read it in The Washington Post, I believe, which is why I knew it.
Indeed, many disputed points in Clarke’s book have been supported in other venues (as Kakutani notes in today’s review). In particular, many of Clarke’s “controversial” points are supported by Bob Woodward’s Bush at War.
Woodward’s book quite clearly supports a number of Clarke’s “controversial” statements. Let’s cite four examples:
Before September 11 occurred, was Bush detached from the War on Terror?
When Clarke returned to the White House on September 12, did he really find Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz trying “to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq?”
Did Rumsfeld really say that “there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets?”
Was Bush “testily” hoping to connect Iraq to 9/11?
All these points caused consternation when Clarke’s deeply-troubling book appeared. Indeed, eager “journalists” manned battle stations, hoping to win free bottles of White House perfume by suggesting that Clarke was just making sh*t up. But all four statements are strongly supported by passages in Woodward’s Bush at War. Powdered lackeys just luvved Bush at War—but it supports much of what Clarke has said.
Charlie McCarthy Hearings
Dowd - While we continue to hold to the principles underlying the Constitutional separation of powers, that the appropriate and patriotic action for the Commission is to shut down and stop pestering us, the President is prepared, in the interest of comity and popularity, to testify, subject to the conditions set forth below.
The President at all times, even on trips to the men's room, will be accompanied by the Vice President.
The Commission must agree in writing that it will not pose any questions directly to the President. Mr. Bush's statements will be restricted to asides on Dick Cheney's brushoffs, as in "Just like he said," "Roger that" and "Ditto."
The Commission must not, under any circumstances, ask the Vice President why American soldiers and civilians in Iraq are being greeted with barbarous infernos rather than flowery bouquets.
Finally, we request that when the President finishes with this painful teeth-pulling visit, the Commission shall offer him a lollipop.
el - After denying gay marriage, Bush wants the right for he and Cheney to hold hands to testify.
Desert Badger Game
Was Bush going to sacrifice a pilot to have an Iraq war?
This was a pointless media campaign that began shortly after Bush took office about how Iraq was attacking our planes. The problem, if it was a problem, was they never hit them. Of course, they were tracking our planes because we kept attacking Iraq targets. It has now been alleged that Bush really wanted one to be hit just after 9/11 to provide an excuse to launch his war.
OpEd News has more.
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