http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1121981,00.html
US military 'brutalised' journalists
News agency demands inquiry after American forces in Iraq allegedly
treated camera crew as enemy personnel
Luke Harding in Baghdad
Tuesday January 13, 2004
The Guardian
The international news agency Reuters has made a formal complaint to the
Pentagon following the "wrongful" arrest and apparent "brutalisation" of
three of its staff this month by US troops in Iraq.
The complaint followed an incident in the town of Falluja when American
soldiers fired at two Iraqi cameramen and a driver from the agency while
they were filming the scene of a helicopter crash.
The US military initially claimed that the Reuters journalists were "enemy
personnel" who had opened fire on US troops and refused to release them
for 72 hours.
Although Reuters has not commented publicly, it is understood that the
journalists were "brutalised and intimidated" by US soldiers, who put bags
over their heads, told them they would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and
whispered: "Let's have sex."
At one point during the interrogation, according to the family of one of
the staff members, a US soldier shoved a shoe into the mouth one of the
Iraqis.
The US troops, from the 82nd Airborne Division, based in Falluja, also
made the blindfolded journalists stand for hours with their arms raised
and their palms pressed against the cell wall.
"They were brutalised, terrified and humiliated for three days," one
source said. "It was pretty grim stuff. There was mental and physical
abuse."
He added: "It makes you wonder what happens to ordinary Iraqis."
The US military has so far refused to apologise and has bluntly told
Reuters to "drop" its complaint. Major General Charles Swannack, the
commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, claimed that two US soldiers had
provided sworn evidence that they had come under fire. He admitted,
however, that soldiers sometimes had to make "snap judgments".
"More often than not they are right," he said.
On January 2 Reuters' Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Falluja
stringer Ahmed Mohammed Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar
al-Badrani turned up at the crash site where a US Kiowa Warrior helicopter
had just been shot down, killing one soldier.
The journalists were all wearing bulletproof jackets clearly marked
"press". They drove off after US soldiers who were securing the scene
opened fire on their Mercedes, but were arrested shortly afterwards.
The soldiers also detained a fourth Iraqi, working for the American
network NBC. No weapons were found, the US military admitted.
Last night the nephew of veteran Reuters driver and latterly cameraman Mr
Ureibi said that US troops had forced his uncle to strip naked and had
ordered him to put his shoe in his mouth.
"He protested that he was a journalist but they stuck a shoe in his mouth
anyway. They also hurt his leg. One of the soldiers told him: 'If you
don't shut up we'll fuck you.'"
He added: "His treatment was very shameful. He's very sad. He has also had
hospital treatment because of his leg."
Last August a US soldier shot dead another Reuters cameraman, Mazen Dana,
after mistaking his camera for a rocket launcher while he filmed outside a
Baghdad prison.
An internal US investigation later cleared him of wrongdoing. During the
war last April another of the agency's cameramen, Ukrainian Taras
Protswuk, was killed after a US tank fired a shell directly into his room
in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, from where he had been filming.
Last night Simon Walker, a spokesman at Reuters head office in London,
confirmed that the agency had made a formal complaint to the Pentagon last
Friday.
He said: "We have also complained to the US military. We have complained
about the detention [of our staff] and their treatment in detention. We
hope it will be dealt with expeditiously."
A spokeswoman for the US military's coalition press and information centre
in Baghdad hung up when the Guardian asked her to comment.
The top US military spokesman in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt,
later admitted that they had received a formal complaint and that there
was an on-going investigation into the incident.
Journalists based in Baghdad have expressed concern that the US military
is likely to treat other media employees in Iraq as targets.
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Subject: [pjnews] French Judge Wants Cheney to Testifty in Halliburton
Scandal
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>From Fenton Communications / moveone.org
No Wonder He's Always Underground!
FRENCH JUDGE WANTS CHENEY TO TESTIFY IN HALLIBURTON SCANDAL
Probe of Bribes and Money-laundering Points to KBR at Time When VP Ran the
Company
A French judge is threatening to subpoena-- and even to prosecute-- the
Vice President of the United States in a huge scandal involving
Halliburton, when its CEO was Richard Cheney.
At the center of the controversy is a $6 billion gas liquification factory
built in Nigeria on behalf of Shell Oil by a French petroengineering
company, Technip, in partnership with Halliburton subsidiary Kellog Brown
& Root. Cheney is wanted for questioning about an untraceable 120 million
pounds (US$216 million) that may have been siphoned from the project in
1995 and used to bribe officials in several countries.
The conservative French newspaper LeFigaro reported last month that a
prominent French investigative judge, Renaud van Ruymbeke, wants testimony
from Cheney and will subpoena him if he does not come forward voluntarily.
The former director general of Technip, Georges Krammer, reportedly has
told Judge Van Ruymbeke that there was a "black box" used to pay $180
million in "commissions" in connection with the project.
A similar report appeared in London's Daily Express on Jan. 4.
A U.S. law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, has forbidden the use of
bribery in overseas business operations since the 1970s. France passed a
similar law in 2000.
The Sydney, Australia, newspaper Morning Herald ran a dispatch that says
the judge had ruled out prosecuting Cheney in connection with the bribery,
but might yet pursue charges of misuse of corporate funds.
Cheney, arguably the most secretive official of the Bush Administration,
continues to receive compensation from Halliburton under a deferred salary
and stock options deal that the Congressional Research Service held
constituted a continuing relationship with the giant oil service and
construction company. Halliburton and Cheney have been criticized for the
awarding of non-competitive contracts to the firm during the Bush
presidency.
Halliburton said it is cooperating in a Securities and Exchange Commission
investigation that a foreign subsidiary in Nigeria made "improper payments
of approximately $2.4 million." The company claims to have fired several
employees in connection with the case.
Reports on this burgeoning scandal have appeared in French and British
publications but only in one U.S. newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, in
the state where Cheney lived prior to becoming vice-president and where
Halliburton is headquartered.
This information can be found on the Misleader Web site:
http://www.misleader.org
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Subject: [pjnews] When Are Nazi Comparisons Deplorable?
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Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
http://www.fair.org/activism/hitler-ads.html
ACTION ALERT:
When Are Nazi Comparisons Deplorable?
For Fox News, only when Republicans are the target
The controversy over comparisons between George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler
in two ads submitted to the anti-Bush ad contest run by the online
activist group MoveOn.org says less about the state of left discourse than
it does about the double standards at Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
News Corp's Fox News Channel started the controversy on January 4, airing
Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie's complaint about the
Bush/Hitler comparison. "That's the kind of tactics we're seeing on the
left today in support of these Democratic presidential candidates,"
Gillespie charged, calling such tactics "despicable."
The whole next day (1/5/04), this was a major story on Fox News Channel.
John Gibson asked, "What about the hating Bush movement, the MoveOn.org
and George Soros sponsoring these ads that compare Bush to
Hitler?"--before being corrected that the ads were not sponsored by MoveOn
(or Soros, a funder of the group), and were taken down in response to
complaints.
Sean Hannity accused a guest: "You guys on the left are going so far over
the cliff. You're making comparisons to the president and Adolf Hitler."
Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway said on Hannity's show, "This is the
hateful, vitriolic rhetoric that has become the Howard Dean Democratic
Party." Bill O'Reilly cited the ads as evidence that "right now in America
the Democratic party is being held captive by the far, far left."
It should be noted that however hyperbolic, comparisons to Hitler and
fascism are not unknown in the American political debate. Rush Limbaugh
has routinely called women's rights advocates "femi-Nazis," and references
to "Hitlery Clinton" are a staple of right-wing talk radio. Republican
power-broker Grover Norquist on NPR (10/2/03) compared inheritance taxes
to the Holocaust.
Closer to home for Fox News, on the very same day that Gibson, Hannity and
O'Reilly were talking about the Hitler/Bush comparison as evidence of the
left's extremism, a column ran in the New York Post that described
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean as a follower of Josef
Goebbels, referred to him as "Herr Howie," accused him of "looking for his
Leni Riefenstahl," called his supporters "the Internet Gestapo" and
compared them to "Hitler's brownshirts."
The New York Post, like Fox News Channel, is part of News Corporation,
Rupert Murdoch's conservative media empire. And this piece wasn't just put
up on the Post's website as part of a contest--it was written by a
right-wing commentator who frequently appears in the Post's pages, Ralph
Peters, and selected for the op-ed page by the Post's own editors. So it's
more than a little embarrassing that these blatant Nazi comparisons were
being made in the Post while the paper's corporate sibling was denouncing
such comparisons as a sign of derangement.
So what did the Murdoch organization do? Fox appears to have completely
ignored the Post's own Nazi analogies--there's no reference to the column
whatsoever in the cable channel's transcripts. And the New York Post seems
to have sent the column down the memory hole--clicking on a link that used
to go to Peters' story gives you a "page not found" message, and the text
isn't found in the Nexis media database. (Ironically, in light of this
Orwellian disappearing act, the column also compared Dean to Big Brother.)
In the interview that started the brouhaha, the RNC's Gillespie was asked
if he would oppose similar attacks on Democrats. He replied: "If they
stoop to the kind of despicable tactic like morphing a candidate into
Adolf Hitler, yes, absolutely, I will tell you right here on the air. Have
me back if any organization does that, I would repudiate it."
The same organization that interviewed him did that, through another of
its branches, the very next day. So far, Fox News hasn't had him back on
to condemn the New York Post.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACTION: Please ask the New York Post whether it stands by the column it
published describing Howard Dean as a Nazi, or if it owes Dean an apology.
And ask Fox News Channel why they didn't criticize that column, even
though its hosts repeatedly condemned such analogies that same day--when
they involved George W. Bush.
CONTACT:
Fox News Channel
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
Phone: 1-888-369-4762
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
New York Post
1211 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 100036
Phone: 1-212-930-8000
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The ads submitted to MoveOn.org comparing Bush to Hitler can be found at:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/bush-hitler-ads.htm
The New York Post column describing Dean as a Nazi can be found in a
Google cache at:
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:J_H4rB-m2bcJ:www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/4965.htm+Ralph+Peters+Dean+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
----------
FAIR
(212) 633-6700
http://www.fair.org/
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: [pjnews] Green Party "Terrorist" Not Allowed to Fly
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17540
Green Party "Terrorist" Not Allowed to Fly
By Frederick Sweet, Intervention Magazine
January 12, 2004
Art dealer Doug Stuber, who ran Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential
campaign in North Carolina in 2000, was pulled out of an airline boarding
line and grounded this past holiday season. He was about to make an
important trip to Prague to gather artists for Henry James Art in Raleigh,
N.C., when he was told (with ticket in hand) that he was not allowed to
fly out that day.
When he asked why not, he was told at Raleigh-Durham airport that because
of the sniper attacks, no Greens were allowed to fly overseas on that day.
The next morning he returned, and instead of paying $670 round trip, was
forced into a $2,600 "same day" air fare. But it's what happened to Stuber
during the next 24 hours that is even more disturbing.
Stuber arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. and his first flight wasn't due
out until nearly six hours later. He had plenty of time. At exactly 10:52
in the morning, just before boarding was to begin, he was approached by
police officer Stanley (the same policeman who ushered him out of the
airport the day before), who said that he "wanted to talk" to him. Stuber
went with the police officer, but reminded him that no one had said he
couldn't fly, and that his flight was about to leave.
Officer Stanley took Stuber into a room and questioned him for an hour.
Around noon, Stanley had introduced him to two Secret Service agents. The
agents took full eye-open pictures of Stuber with a digital camera. Then
they asked him details about his family, where he lived, who he ever knew,
what the Greens are up to, and other questions.
At one point during his interrogation, Stuber asked if they really
believed the Greens were equal to al Qaeda. Then they showed him a Justice
Department document that actually shows the Greens as likely terrorists –
just as likely as al Qaeda members. Stuber was released just before 1 PM,
so he still had time to catch the later flight.
The agents walked Stuber to the Delta counter and asked that he be given
tickets for the flight so that he could make his connections. The airline
official promptly printed tickets, which relieved Stuber, who assumed that
the Secret Service hadn't stopped him from flying. Wrong! By the time
Stuber was about to board, officer Stanley once again ushered him out the
door and told him: "Just go to Greensboro, where they don't know you, and
be totally quiet about politics, and you can make it to Europe that way."
In Greensboro, after Stuber showed his passport he was told that he could
not fly overseas or domestically. Undeterred, he next traveled an
hour-and-a-half to Charlotte. In Charlotte, the same thing happened. Then
Stuber drove three hours to his home after 43 hours of trying to catch a
flight.
Stuber said he could only conclude that the Greens, whose values include
nonviolence, social justice, etc., are now labeled terrorists by the
Ashcroft-led Justice Department.
Questions about how one gets on a no-fly list creates questions about how
to get off it. This is a classic Catch-22 situation. The Transportation
Security Agency says it compiles the list from names provided by other
agencies, but it has no procedure for correcting a problem. Aggrieved
parties would have to go to the agency that first reported their names.
But for security reasons, the TSA won't disclose which agency put someone
on the no-fly list.
Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and
Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
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Subject: [pjnews] Banned Assault Weapons May Be Coming Back
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>From the Desk Of...
Michael Douglas
Banned Assault Weapons May Be Coming Back. The NRA is Trying to End the
Ban and Gut the Brady Bill.
Ten years ago a progressive coalition of citizens and legislators passed
two major gun safety laws: a ban on assault weapons and the Brady
bill-named for
President Reagan's press secretary who survived being shot in the head.
These two laws played a key role in the remarkable reduction in violent
crime and
make America a safer place.
But today, the National Rifle Association is leading an aggressive
campaign to gut the protections of the Brady Bill and to end the assault
weapons ban.
First, NRA lobbyists inserted text into an unrelated spending bill that
would require that records of gun purchases be destroyed within 24 hours.
The FBI and
other law enforcement agencies say this would make it harder to catch
violent criminals.
And the NRA is also pushing hard to prevent Congress from renewing the
landmark Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. Letting the ban expire would put
military-style, rapid-fire assault weapons that have been banned for the
last ten years back on the street. Police departments, victims' rights
advocates, and community groups across the country fear the consequences
of getting these killers back into the hands of criminals.
Lastly, the NRA wants to prevent victims of gun crimes from seeking
redress from negligent gun dealers like Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, which
armed the D.C.
snipers and sold 67 other guns used in crimes. The NRA thinks the victims
and their families shouldn't get their day in court.
To send an email (text below) to your Representative urging him or her to
defend the Brady Bill, maintain the assault weapons ban, and preserve the
rights of gun crime victims, go to:
http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283&l=266
POWERFUL LETTER TO THE EDITOR FEATURE
Letters to the editor are another powerful way to influence your
Congressmembers. This feature uses state-of-the-art technology to make it
really easy for you to send a letter to the editor. Click here to give it
a try: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283&l=267
StoptheNRA has a great website on these issues at:
http://www.NRAblacklist.com
Sincerely,
Michael Douglas
========
Here is the letter we'll send to your Senators and Congressmember:
Dear Senator/Representative:
Ten years ago a coalition of citizens and legislators passed the Brady
Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban. These bills have made our streets and
our homes safer.
Now the NRA is campaigning to undermine these important laws. I urge you
to help protect my family and me by:
1. Renewing and strengthening the Assault Weapons Ban.
2. Keeping the courthouse door open for victims of gun crimes; don't give
special immunity to gun dealers.
3. Keeping background record checks for 90 days for any gun purchases.
This legislative session getting tough on crime means standing firm
against the NRA.
Sincerely,
(We will insert your name and address here.)
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Subject: [pjnews] Nader: Too Much
=?iso-8859-1?q?=93Vision=94_Without_Hearing?=
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see also: http://www.sfbg.com/38/15/news_ed_nader.html
Presidential Campaign Fever: Too Much “Vision” Without Hearing
By Norman Solomon
The father of President Bush the Second called it “the vision thing”
-- which he was widely presumed to lack. By early 1987, Time
magazine reported, George H. W. Bush was using that phrase “in clear
exasperation.” Then, as now, journalists seemed to clamor for
presidential candidates to seem visionary.
Many politicians have grandly quoted from the Book of Proverbs:
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The biblical
invocation plays into the media-fed notion that great leaders succeed
when they persevere according to their own lights.
But such popularized concepts of political leadership -- encouraged
by countless journalists -- are long on vision and short on hearing.
With apparent self-assurance, politicians often have a way of
filtering out the messages they don’t want to hear, even from their
own supporters.
President Lyndon Johnson epitomized the alpha and omega of a leader’s
visionary determination. To his enormous credit, he pushed hard for
civil rights legislation soon after becoming president. But
meanwhile, he plunged ahead with the Vietnam War -- and he didn’t
want to hear what many people, including some in his own
administration, were trying to tell him. Johnson had “the vision
thing” down, all right -- and, as a result, Vietnam became a place of
mass carnage.
The news media are at their best when telling leaders what they don’t
what to hear. But candidates for president rarely seem to be good
listeners. On the contrary, the preoccupations with polls and focus
groups are about searching for buzzwords and facile images.
Candidates attaining mass-media favor are up the rungs in efforts to
appear visionary and “presidential.” Yet a capacity to be caught up
in one’s own vision tells us nothing about the quality of leadership
-- which should include an eagerness to hear.
For decades, one of the most important public voices of clarity has
come from Ralph Nader. First known as a “consumer advocate” in the
1960s, his focus soon broadened to include the fundamental
imperatives of fighting corporate power and promoting genuine
participatory democracy. When he ran for president in 1996 and more
vehemently in 2000, he seemed to embody a cause much greater than
himself. Nader was a leader with a keen sense of hearing ordinary
people -- including activists strategically at work to improve our
country.
But now, Nader seems to be so transfixed with his own vision that
he’s much less inclined to be listening. Many who supported his
previous presidential campaigns (myself included) are opposed to a
2004 Nader race -- and aghast that he’s on the verge of deciding to
go ahead with it.
Last month, Nader announced that he won’t seek the Green Party
presidential nomination but may run as an independent. He plans to
make a decision by the end of January.
Early this month Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive
magazine, wrote that “above all, today there is a recognition, even
among many Greens, that the risk of another four years of Bush may be
too great to bear.” Referring to Nader’s prospective independent
presidential campaign, Rothschild added: “There is no groundswell of
grassroots support for such a move; it is almost totally
individualistic.”
In politics, with media coverage devoting an inordinate amount of
attention to individual personas, mainstream news outlets frequently
present the individual as the engine that pulls history forward. But
progressive leadership can’t be successful when it is out of sync
with social movements.
Often it’s much more difficult to challenge those you hold in high
regard than those you disdain. So far, many progressive leaders and
journalists who don’t think twice about denouncing George W. Bush or
criticizing Democratic presidential candidates have hesitated to make
public their private negative views of a Nader presidential campaign
this year.
Overall, we’re acculturated to perceive stubbornness -- adherence to
a “vision” -- as a sign of strength. Sometimes it is. But at other
times it is a weakness. Allies can assist us to distinguish between
the two. That’s what friends are for -- to help us understand when we
might be truly visionary and when we’re just seeing things.
_______________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author of “Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t
Tell You.”
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Subject: [pjnews] US Stars Hail Iraq War Whistleblower
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0118-01.htm
Published on Sunday, January 18, 2004 by the Observer/UK
US Stars Hail Iraq War Whistleblower
GCHQ worker Katharine Gun faces jail for exposing American corruption in
the run-up to war on Saddam. Now her celebrity supporters insist it is
Bush and Blair who should be in the dock.
by Martin Bright
She was an anonymous junior official toiling away with 4,500 other
mathematicians, code-breakers and linguists at the Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham.
But now Katharine Gun, an unassuming 29-year-old translator, is set to
become a transatlantic cause célèbre as the focus of a star-studded
solidarity drive that brings together Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn
and senior figures from the US media and civil rights movement, including
the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Gun appears in court tomorrow accused of breaching the Official Secrets
Act by allegedly leaking details of a secret US 'dirty tricks' operation
to spy on UN Security Council members in the run-up to war in Iraq last
year. If found guilty, she faces two years in prison. She is an unlikely
heroine and those who have met her say she would have been happy to remain
in the shadows, had she not seen evidence in black and white that her
Government was being asked to co-operate in an illegal operation.
The leak has been described as 'more timely and potentially more important
than The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, the celebrated whistleblower
who leaked papers containing devastating details of the US involvement in
Vietnam, in 1971. Ellsberg has been vocal in support of Gun. She was
arrested last March, days after The Observer first published evidence of
an intelligence 'surge' on UN delegations, ordered by the GCHQ's partner
organization, the National Security Agency.
Legal experts believe that her case is potentially more explosive for the
Government than the Hutton inquiry because it could allow her defense team
to raise questions about the legality of military intervention in Iraq.
The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is likely to come under pressure to
disclose the legal advice he gave on military intervention - something he
has so far refused to do.
At a hearing last November, Gun's legal team indicated that she would use
a defense of 'necessity' to argue that she acted to save the lives of
British soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
At the time Gun, who was sacked after her arrest and whose case is funded
by legal aid, said in a statement: 'Any disclosures that may have been
made were justified on the following grounds: because they exposed serious
illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government who attempted
to subvert our own security services; and to prevent wide-scale death and
casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an
illegal war.'
She added: 'I have only ever followed my conscience.'
Sean Penn and Jesse Jackson have already signed a statement of support for
Gun and a broader campaign will be launched later this year. They are
joined by Ellsberg, who is keen to travel to Britain soon to meet Gun.
Other signatories of the statement, to be released in the coming weeks,
include Linda Foley, president of the Newspaper Guild, and Ramona Ripston
of the American Civil Liberties Union, both in their personal capacities.
The statement is a glowing tribute to the publicity-shy GCHQ mole who has
avoided all media attention since her arrest: 'We honor Katharine Gun as a
whistleblower who bravely risked her career and her very liberty to inform
the public about illegal spying in support of a war based on deception. In
a democracy, she should not be made a scapegoat for exposing the
transgressions of others.'
The statement also pays tribute to the transatlantic opposition to the war
in Iraq, which it links to historical campaigns against oppression. 'There
has been much talk in recent months about the "special relationship"
between the US and British governments, which led the world to war, but
history tells us of another "special relationship" - between people of
good will in the United States and Britain who worked together in
opposition to slavery and colonialism, and most recently against the push
for war on Iraq. It is in the spirit of friendship between our peoples in
defense of democracy that we sign this statement.'
The leaked memorandum - dated 31 January 2003 - from Frank Koza, chief of
staff of the NSA's Regional Targets section, requested British
intelligence help to discover the voting intentions of the key 'swing six'
nations at the UN. Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Chile, Mexico and Pakistan
were under intense pressure to vote for a second resolution authoring war
in Iraq.
The disclosure of the 'dirty tricks' memo caused serious diplomatic
difficulties for the countries involved and in particular the socialist
government in Chile, which demanded an immediate explanation from Britain
and America. The Chilean public is deeply sensitive to dirty tricks by the
American intelligence services, which are still held responsible for the
1973 overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende. In the
days that followed the disclosure, the Chilean delegation in New York
distanced itself from the draft second resolution, scuppering plans to go
down the UN route.
Opposition politicians are already increasing pressure on Tony Blair to
release Goldsmith's legal advice. Parliamentary answers last week to Lord
Alexander of Weedon QC, the Tory head of the all-party legal reform group
Justice, show that the Government recognizes there are precedents for
disclosure.
In 1993, government legal advice in the arms-to-Iraq affair was disclosed
to the Scott inquiry and advice concerning the 1988 Merchant Shipping Act
was disclosed when Spanish fishermen argued that it breached EU law. The
government response of Baroness Amos would appear to be an open invitation
to Gun's defense team: 'In both cases, disclosure was made for the
purposes of judicial proceedings.'
But she continued: 'It has been made clear in a number of parliamentary
questions that the Attorney General's detailed advice would not be
disclosed in view of a long-standing convention, adhered to by successive
governments, that advice of law officers is not publicly disclosed. The
purpose of the convention is to enable the Government, like everyone else,
to receive full and frank legal advice in confidence.'
A summary of the legal advice published on 17 March last year showed that
Goldsmith believed that UN Resolution 678, which authorized force against
Iraq to eject it from Kuwait in 1990, could be used to justify the
conflict. This position has been fiercely criticized by most experts in
international law, who argue that 678 applied specifically to the threat
posed to the region by Saddam in 1990. Alexander has accused Goldsmith of
'scraping the bottom of the legal barrel' and described the use of 678 as
'risible'.
When the details of the GCHQ disclosure were published in The Observer on
2 March last year, there was considerable media speculation that Goldsmith
was set to resign over the issue of his legal advice over the war. Foreign
Office legal experts were known to be split on the issue.
A key figure could prove to be 54-year-old Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy
legal adviser to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who stepped down on 21
March. Wilmshurst is said to have left her post because she would not
agree to Goldmith's legal advice.
Since leaving her post she has not spoken about the crucial discussions in
the Foreign Office last March. Many believe that a second whistleblower
could prove fatal to the Government.
· For full details, go to http://accuracy.org
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Subject: [pjnews] Clear Channel Radio gags an antiwar conservative
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http://www.amconmag.com/1_19_04/article3.html
The American Conservative
February 2, 2004
How to Lose Your Job in Talk Radio:
Clear Channel gags an antiwar conservative.
By Charles Goyette
“Imagine these startling headlines with the nation at war in the Pacific
six months after Dec. 7, 1941: “No Signs of Japanese Involvement in Pearl
Harbor Attack! Faulty Intelligence Cited; Wolfowitz: Mistakes Were Made.”
Or how about an equally disconcerting World War II headline from the
European theater: “German Army Not Found in France, Poland, Admits
President; Rumsfeld: ‘Oops!’, Powell Silent; ‘Bring ’Em On,’ Says Defiant
FDR.”
It seems to me that when there is reason to go to war, it should be
self-evident. The Secretary of State should not need to convince a
skeptical world with satellite photos of a couple of Toyota pickups and a
dumpster. And faced with a legitimate casus belli, it should not be hard
to muster an actual constitutional declaration of war. Now in the absence
of a meaningful Iraqi role in the 9/11 attack and the mysterious
disappearance of those fearsome Weapons of Mass Destruction, there might
be some psychic satisfaction to be had in saying, “I told you so!” But it
sure isn’t doing my career as a talk-show host any good.
The criterion of self-evidence was only one of dozens of objections I
raised before the elective war in Iraq on my afternoon drive-time talk
show on KFYI in Phoenix. Many of the other arguments are familiar to
readers of The American Conservative.
But the case for war was a shape-shifter, skillfully morphing into a new
rationale as quickly as the old one failed to withstand scrutiny. For a
year before the war, I scrambled to keep up with the latest incarnations
of the neocon case. Most were pitifully transparent and readily exposed.
(Besides the aluminum tubes and the trailers that had Bush saying,
“Gotcha,” does anyone remember those death-dealing drones? Never have
third-world, wind-up, rubber-band, balsa-wood airplanes instilled so much
fear in so many people.) Still, my management didn’t like my being out of
step with the president’s parade of national hysteria, and the war-fevered
spectators didn’t care to be told they were suffering illusions. So after
three years, I was replaced on my primetime talk show by the Frick and
Frack of Bushophiles, two giggling guys who think everything our
tongue-tied president does is “Most excellent, dude!” I have been
relegated to the later 7–10 p.m. slot, when most people, even in a
congested commuting market like Phoenix, are already home watching TV.
Why did this happen? Why only a couple of months after my company picked
up the option on my contract for another year in the fifth-largest city in
the United States, did it suddenly decide to relegate me to radio Outer
Darkness? The answer lies hidden in the oil-and-water incompatibility of
these two seemingly disconnected phrases: “Criticizing Bush” and “Clear
Channel.”
Criticizing Bush? Well then, must I be some sort of rug-chewing liberal?
Not even close. As a boy, I stood on the grass in a small Arizona town
square when Barry Goldwater officially began his 1964 presidential run.
And I was there for the last official event of the Goldwater campaign. My
job was to recruit and manage my fellow junior-high and high-school
conservatives in a phone bank operation, calling supporters to fill up as
many buses as possible to help pack the stadium—a show of strength for the
nation’s television viewers. Of course that’s an insignificant role to
play in a presidential campaign, but it was pretty heady stuff for a
14-year-old kid from Flagstaff.
I broke with Goldwater in 1976 over his decision to back Gerald Ford
instead of Ronald Reagan for the Republican presidential nomination. Ford
was a perfectly decent, if ordinary, Republican (who could have taught the
big-spending W. Bush a thing or two about the use of the veto!). But I
took my conservatism seriously. Reagan was clearly the champion of the
conservative cause.
Perhaps I’m just anti-military? No. I am proud of my honorable service and
of the Army Commendation Medal I was awarded. I also spent a good deal of
time in the 1980s as a member of the Speakers Bureau of High Frontier,
promoting Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, a defense policy unlike
today’s in that it was actually designed to defend the American people.
I have been a Republican precinct committeeman; my county Republican Party
elected me its “Man of the Year” in 1988; I have written speeches for
conservative candidates and office holders; and I have been employed by
statewide and national political organizations and campaigns, including
the National Conservative Political Action Committee. Despite my
disappointment in Goldwater for not supporting Reagan, I was there when a
small band of the faithful—no more than four or five of us—gathered for a
potluck dinner to support the creation of a brand-new public-policy think
tank named after “Mr. Conservative.” The enterprise blossomed, and I was
honored several months ago to serve as Master of Ceremonies for the
Goldwater Institute’s 15th Anniversary Gala.
I can assure you then that my criticism of Bush has been on the basis of
long-held conservative principles. It begins with respect for the wisdom
of the Founders and the Constitution’s division of power and delegation of
authority, and extends to an adherence to the principles of governmental
restraint and fiscal prudence. It proved to be a message that was more
than a little inconvenient for my employer.
Clear Channel Communications, the 800-pound gorilla of the radio business,
owns an astonishing 1,200 stations in 50 states, including Newstalk 550
KFYI in Phoenix, where I do the afternoon program … or did until last
summer. The principals of Clear Channel, a Texas-based company, have been
substantial contributors to George W. Bush’s fortunes since before he
became president. In fact, Texas billionaire Tom Hicks can be said to be
the man who made Bush a millionaire when he purchased the future
president’s baseball team, the Texas Rangers. Tom Hicks is now vice
chairman of Clear Channel. Clear Channel stations were unusually visible
during the war with what corporate flacks now call “pro-troop rallies.” In
tone and substance, they were virtually indistinguishable from pro-Bush
rallies. I’m sure the administration, which faced a host of regulatory
issues affecting Clear Channel, was not displeased.
Criticism of Bush and his ever-shifting pretext for a first-strike war
(what exactly was it we were pre-empting anyway?) has proved so serious a
violation of Clear Channel’s cultural taboo that only a good contract has
kept me from being fired outright. Roxanne Cordonier, a radio personality
at Clear Channel’s WMYI 102.5 in Greenville, S.C., didn’t have it as good.
Cordonier, who worked under the name Roxanne Walker, was the South
Carolina Broadcasters Association’s 2002 Radio Personality of the Year.
That apparently wasn’t enough for Clear Channel. Her lawsuit against the
company alleges that she was belittled on the air and reprimanded by her
station for opposing the invasion of Iraq. Then she was fired.
They couldn’t really fire me, at least without paying me a substantial sum
of money, but I was certainly belittled on the air for opposing the war.
The other KFYI talk-show hosts—so bloodthirsty that they made Bush
apologists and superhawks Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity sound
moderate—vilified me almost daily. As a former radio-station owner myself,
it was a little hard to believe management would allow one of their key
hosts to be trashed day in and day out on their own airwaves. After all,
we sell radio time on the basis of its ability to influence people’s
behavior. A wiser programming approach would have been to showcase me as
an object of curiosity, with a challenge to listeners to see if they could
discover where I had gone wrong or how I was missing the imminent threat
Iraq posed to the American people. No doubt the constant vilification I
received and my heterodoxy on the war cost me audience during the
interlude. It was certainly enough to get pictures of me morphing into
those of the French president posted on the Free Republic Web site during
the “freedom fries” silliness. A banner there read, “Boycott Charles
Chirac Goyette at KFYI radio Phoenix, AZ! Protest against the Charles
Goyette Show from 4-7pm at KFYI for his leftist subervsive [sic]
Bush-bashing rants. Turn off KFYI radio for the Charles Goyette Show! No
liberal scum talk shows on KFYI!” Radio does provoke people, doesn’t it?
One Clear Channel executive had me take an unexpected day off for the sin
of reporting the breaking news on March 27, 2003, that neocon hawk Richard
Perle, of the Defense Policy Board, had relinquished his chairmanship
under scrutiny of his business dealings and for blaspheming that Donald
Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense since Robert McNamara. So
great were these transgressions that the radio gods themselves must have
been aghast at my impiety. I explained in conference-room confrontations
that both positions were completely respectable points of view. The
comparison with McNamara had been made repeatedly in subsequent days in
the mainstream media. I specifically cited “The McLaughlin Group” the
following Friday and the New York Times the following Monday, and in
describing the Perle resignation, I relied upon details from both Seymour
Hersh in the New Yorker and from syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington.
“Well, then,” they explained, the problem was “the emotionalism” of my
remarks. Imagine that, emotionalism in talk radio? I reminded them that
for years we had run promotions identifying KFYI as “the Place with More
Passion,” where the Charles Goyette Show was positioned as “Fearless Talk
Radio!”
Clear Channel made it clear—“With you, I feel like I’m managing the Dixie
Chicks,” said my program director—that they would have liked to fire me
anyway. While a well-drafted contract made that difficult, it did not
prevent them from tucking me away outside prime time.
So I’m a talk-show war casualty. My contract expires in a few more months
and—my iconoclasm being noted—it is not likely it will be renewed. Among
the survivors at my station: one host who wanted to nuke Afghanistan (he
bills himself as “your voice of reason and moderation”) and another who
upon learning that 23-year-old Mideast peace activist Rachel Corrie had
been run over by an Israeli bulldozer shouted, “Back up and run over her
again!” As he doesn’t quite get some of the important distinctions in
these debates, such as that Iranians should not be called Arabs, we would
hope that he’s not taken too seriously. Likewise my replacements in the
afternoon drive slot, brought in for glamorizing the war and billed as
“The Comedy Channel meets Talk Radio.” If you remember the “Saturday Night
Live” skit “Superfans” with Mike Myers and Chris Farley—“Who’s stronger,
God or da Bulls?” “Da Bulls!”—then you get the idea. Only instead of “da
Bulls,” it’s three hours every afternoon of “da Bush!” Expect to hear more
insightful topics like “So Who’s Tougher: Michael Jordan or Donald
Rumsfeld?”
I’ve seen how war fever infects a people. And I was in a no-win situation,
with an audience pre-screened by virtue of 11 hours a day of screaming war
frenzy—unlistenable for the uninfected—that surrounded my time slot. So I
knew there would be a personal price for opposing the war, and I was
prepared to pay it. But as a lover of the rough and tumble of public
debate and the contest of ideas, I am disappointed at what is happening in
my industry. At least at Clear Channel, there’s only one word for the
belief that talk radio is still a fair and fearless search for the truth:
“Un-Bull-ieveable!”
____________________________________
Charles Goyette was named “Best Talk Show Host of 2003” by the Phoenix New
Times.
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Subject: [pjnews] Martin Luther King: Terrorist?
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17594
Martin Luther King: Terrorist?
By Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
January 19, 2004
Let's not mince words. Were Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. alive today, he
would be at risk for being imprisoned indefinitely, without charges or
access to legal counsel, as an "enemy combatant."
He would be decried, by powerful figures inside and outside government, as
at worst a domestic terrorist, at best a publicity seeking menace whose
criticisms of America gave comfort to our unseen enemies.
King would not have the opportunity to engage in repeated nonviolent civil
disobediences. Media would be quickly bored by the spectacles; a nation
accustomed to police violence against protesters yawns at the tanks,
rubber bullets, chemical weapons, and "preventive" arrests now commonly
used against those who employ the same tactics King himself once used. The
felony charges against King would put him away for years – if he were
allowed to stand trial at all.
The powerful black religious networks that produced King and so many other
courageous civil rights leaders would be attacked by federal prosecutors
as providing financial support for terrorism. Church groups' tax
exemptions would be lifted; records would be seized. Charges would be
brought, perhaps under federal RICO statutes or Patriot Act provisions.
The FBI harassment that hounded King throughout his career would today be
fiercer, and subject to no judicial oversight.
In an era where a federal holiday has served to both commemorate and
sanitize the history of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., white America has
forgotten just how radical and controversial a figure he was in his time.
Many of these charges – domestic terrorist, commie dupe, publicity hound –
were leveled against King during the 14 long-but-so-short years of his
national prominence. The police were violent. The church groups were
criticized.
The differences, today, are twofold. First, our government has granted
itself enormously greater legal powers to crush dissent. And, secondly,
much of the public, taught by years of government rhetoric and media
sensationalism to dismiss dissenters as violent and illegitimate, is
predisposed to let the government get away with it. Moral appeals by
leaders like King would have far less chance of success. We no longer
grant presumed moral authority to either religious leaders or to those
wronged by the world; in today's media-saturated, scandal-obsessed age,
King's moral failings (e.g., his various affairs) might well be used to
undermine his movement.
Moreover, today, we've heard it all before. The world is brought to our
doorstep, teeming with suffering, each day. Sadly, as our planet's woes
have become more immediate, and America's role in its inequalities more
obvious to those who would look, many of us have chosen to tune out – out
of fear, or boredom, or despair that we ordinary people can do little to
change things.
Ordinary people can change the world, of course – King is one of our
country's shining examples, still recent enough that many of us were alive
during his lifetime. But as his holiday becomes sanitized, and his image
becomes lionized beyond all recognition, it has become harder and harder
to draw personal inspiration from his story – or his politics.
This year, even more than in the past, it has become essential to remember
that King did far more than have a dream. Along with Mohandas Gandhi, he
was one of the two most internationally revered symbols of nonviolence in
the 20th century. He spent his adult life defying authority and
convention, citing a higher moral authority. He gave hope and inspiration
for the liberation of people of color on six continents.
King is not a legend because he believed in diversity trainings and civic
ceremonies. He is remembered because he took serious risks and, as the
Quakers say, spoke truth to power. Unfortunately, we don't hear his
powerful indictments of poverty, the Vietnam War, and the
military-industrial complex. Today, as American soldiers fight two major
wars on the far side of the world, and the U.S. military wades quietly
into a half dozen more – all in non-white countries – they're more timely
than ever.
But it's not likely we'll hear much on the networks of King pronouncing
the spiritual death of a country that would spend so much to kill and so
little to help people live. That's a little too touchy nowaways.
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Subject: [pjnews] He Came Not to Praise King But...
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Published on Monday, January 19, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
He Came Not to Praise King But ...
by Timothy McDonald
Martin Luther King Jr.'s 75th birthday should have been an occasion for
serious reflection on his life, his teachings, his legacy and his service.
Instead, in Atlanta, we were forced to deal with an insult: an uninvited,
insincere visit by President Bush to lay a wreath at King's tomb.
The King Center quickly made it clear that it had not extended the
invitation, and Bush's visit caused great consternation among King
anniversary planners, who questioned the timing, motive and intent of this
self-initiated presidential visit.
Many of us remembered that it was on King's birthday last year that this
same president, on national television, launched his attack against
affirmative action by directing his administration to join the legal case
against the University of Michigan's admissions policy. To follow that
action by laying a wreath on King's tomb this year represented the height
of hypocrisy for many of us in the civil rights community. It was
obviously nothing more than a photo opportunity designed to woo black
voters to the Republican Party. Coming in an election year, it was a
blatant attempt to use King's image for political gain.
And here's the most offensive part: After a brief "official business"
visit to the grave site — read: taxpayers foot the bill — Bush rushed off
to a $2,000-a-plate fundraiser that same evening, picking up a cool $1.3
million in Atlanta for his reelection campaign.
There's a reason African American voters overwhelmingly turn out for
Democrats. King's philosophies could not be more different from Bush's.
King, a man of peace, was one of the first to publicly oppose the Vietnam
War. Bush, by contrast, has unilaterally and preemptively declared war
upon another country, causing hundreds of American soldiers to lose their
lives and costing the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars.
You have to ask how that is consistent with the life and teachings of
King.
Three million jobs have been lost since 2001, and 9 million Americans are
out of work. How would King feel about this? The poverty gap has widened
under this president. Tax cuts have benefited the wealthiest Americans at
the expense of the poorest, and certainly King — who spent his final years
decrying poverty in the United States — would not support such policies.
King dedicated his life to racial harmony; Bush's policies have caused an
even greater divide between the races.
It is time for protest, and about 1,000 people did so at King's tomb
Thursday. The greatest expression of our commitment to King's dream is to
redress our government when we feel it to be wrong. This is what makes our
nation strong.
If President Bush was serious about honoring King, his rhetoric would be
reflected in his policies. King would be honored by an America that not
only talks about "no child left behind" but works for smaller classes,
provides adequate funding for education, higher salaries for teachers and
a public education system that is not treated like an unwanted stepchild.
King would be thrilled by a health-care system that took care of all of
its citizens and a livable wage for all working Americans. King would work
for campaign finance reform that does not allow the rich to buy elections,
and he would strive to ensure that every vote is counted. King would not
risk the lives of soldiers and use war as a pretext to secure oil.
On this 75th birthday anniversary, the veil of deception and arrogance was
uncovered, and hope was reborn through protest, dissent and redress of our
government.
The dream lives on.
Rev. Timothy McDonald, pastor of the First Iconium Baptist Church in
Atlanta, is president of the African American Ministers in Action program
of People for the American Way.
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Subject: [pjnews] What if the Senators Had Voted on $87 Billion Iraq
Appropriation?
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>From True Majority:
So George Bush delivered his version of the State of the Union.
Well as you might imagine, there's another way to look at things.
Without the benefit of spin-masters, focus groups, or donors whispering in
my ear, we've come up with a simpler and more straightforward way to look
at what's going on with our nation's government based on where they
actually spend our money.
Let's just say Oreo cookies are a key ingredient.
Check it out at http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283&l=275
---------------
Society of Professional Journalists FOI Alert: Jan. 20, 2004
WHAT IF THEY HAD VOTED? SPJ CONDUCTS ITS OWN $87 BILLION VOICE VOTE ON
IRAQ SPENDING
FOI COMMITTEE SEEKS EACH SENATOR'S STAND ON IRAQI APPROPRIATION
For more information, contact SPJ Freedom of Information Committee Co-chairs:
Charles Davis: 573/882-5736 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Joel Campbell: 801/422-2125 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Remember the $87 billion investment in Iraq made after a secret pact in
the United States Senate resulted in a "voice vote" attended by precisely
six senators?
SPJ did.
After SPJ President Gordon "Mac" McKerral and SPJ's Freedom of Information
Committee condemned the use of a pre-arranged, non-existent voice vote to
approve the Administration's $87 billion Iraq operations and
reconstruction spending request, SPJ FOI Committee volunteers decided to
do the Senate's work for it.
SPJ volunteers called each member of the United States Senate, asking them
to state for the record their vote on the appropriation bill. The results
are posted on the SPJ Web site at http://www.spj.org/foia_senvote.asp, and
represent dozens and dozens of phone calls by 15 loyal SPJ volunteers.
"The mere act of taking a voice vote on such a crucial matter of public
policy diminishes the stature of the U.S. Senate," McKerral said.
"And then to have senators refuse to state their positions -- after the
fact mind you -- should make their constituents wonder who those senators
really serve. SPJ is going to keep the light shining on this kind of
behavior. I'm borrowing a line from Sting for those who would denigrate
the process of open government -- at any level. `Every step you take,
every move you make' SPJ will be watching you."
The "vote" - actually a representation of how the senators would have
voted, had there been a vote - is noteworthy for its disclosure of the
many senators who chose, after repeated attempts by SPJ callers, not to
disclose how they would have voted.
"SPJ members were shocked to learn that the Senate decided to conduct a
voice vote to approve such a massive investment in what has become a topic
of national debate and discussion," said Charles N. Davis, executive
director of the Freedom of Information Center at the University of
Missouri School of Journalism and co-chair of SPJ's FOI Committee. "When
we decided to conduct our own vote, busy journalists were eager to take
the time to call senators. It's a shame that we still have so many
senators unwilling to vote for the record."
The effort began in early November, when National Public Radio's senior
news analyst, Daniel Schorr, pointed out in his November 5 "All Things
Considered" commentary that it was the biggest such emergency
appropriation ever sought by a president. Any of the six senators present
could have suggested the absence of a quorum and called for absent members
to return for a recorded vote; none did. Schorr said that the
understanding that there would be no recorded vote to provide some future
embarrassment had been worked out in advance by majority and minority
leaders Bill Frist and Tom Daschle.
Schorr observed:
"Now if you want to know how your senator voted, or would have voted, on
the multibillion-dollar Iraq package, you'll have to ask him or her and
hope that he or she will tell you."
The six senators who voted publicly on the bill were:
* Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.
* Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I.
* Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.
* Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii
* Harry Reid, D-Nev.
* Ted Stevens, R-Alaska
At the Senate's vote, Byrd shouted a loud "No!" The other five voted "yes."
As SPJ's letter to Vice President Cheney stated, "the embrace of secrecy
in a vote of such national and international interest reflects poorly on
the world's model for democratic governance."
No legislative body in the 50 states, from the smallest city council or
school board to the state legislatures themselves, would be allowed to
approve the most modest appropriation off the record, much less one of
historic proportions and consequence. The United States Senate's approach
to the Iraq spending approval flies in the face of traditions we have come
to regard as fundamental: that Congress serves at the mercy of the people,
and that people have a civic duty to monitor the actions of their elected
representatives. "
SPJ urges its members to continue to discuss this issue, and to encourage
editorial writers and commentators to continue to discuss any and all
future secret votes.
The Society of Professional Journalists works to improve and protect
journalism. SPJ is dedicated to encouraging the free practice of
journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior. Founded in
1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, and based in Indianapolis, SPJ promotes the free
flow of information vital to a well-informed citizenry; works to inspire
and educate the next generation of journalists; and protects First
Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press.
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Subject: [pjnews] Kidnapping Soars in Iraq
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see also:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/01/15/MNGK14AC301.DTL
Cheney's grim vision: decades of war
In a forceful preview of the Bush administration's expansionist military
policies in this election year, Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday
painted a grim picture of what he said was the growing threat of a
catastrophic terrorist attack in the United States and warned that the
battle, like the Cold War, could last generations...
...He also said the administration was planning to expand the military
into even more overseas bases so the United States could wage war quickly
around the globe...
http://tinyurl.com/2q6mw
Thousands March in Iraq to Demand Early Elections
----------------
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=481314
Gangsters operate own prisons as kidnapping soars in Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
15 January 2004
Kidnapping is now the crime of choice among gangsters in Baghdad.
Colonel Feisal Ali, a veteran Baghdad policeman, said: "Criminals who used
to steal gold and jewellery now specialise in kidnapping because it is
easier and more profitable. Some actually maintain their own private
prisons."
Even the very moderately wealthy in Baghdad are terrified that kidnappers
will strike at them or their families. They drive their children to school
fearing that, otherwise, they will be seized at the school bus stop. Some
of the richer businessmen have sent their children out of the country to
Jordan or the Gulf.
Col Ali, the head of the anti-kidnap unit of the Iraqi police - which has
17 officers and 15 men - said that kidnapping really got under way in
June.
Criminals, many of them released by Saddam Hussein under an amnesty in
2002, realised that the police force had collapsed. He said: "Before the
war, kidnapping made up only about 1 per cent of serious crime, but now it
is 70 per cent." Even criminals themselves are not safe. Col Ali said he
had arrested a man the previous day who confessed to having kidnapped
another criminal who had looted a bank during the fall of Baghdad in
April. He only released the bank robber in return for $10,000 (£5,400).
Kidnappers have also become more professional. They often insist that the
family of the kidnap victim purchase a Thuraya satellite telephone through
which to conduct negotiations, because the call is impossible for the
Baghdad police to trace.
Many of the victims are children. Eleven-year-old Sara was grabbed as she
waited for a bus and held in a room with four other kidnap victims while
kidnappers asked her father for $20,000, later reduced to $5,000. She was
released but is traumatised by the experience.
Not everybody survives. The owner of an animal food factory in east
Baghdad was kidnapped. According to a member of his family, $7,000 was
demanded and paid after three months. The relative said: "But all we got
back was his dead body and we think they killed him just after he was
captured."
Some victims have disappeared. While we were waiting in another part of
the police headquarters, a woman dressed in black accompanied by two
children said her husband had been an intelligence officer under Saddam
Hussein and had been kidnapped three months before. She had received one
phone call asking for $50,000 but, otherwise, there was silence.
Col Ali admitted that the families of most kidnap victims do not tell the
police what has happened because they fear their relatives will be killed
if they do so. Asked how he would deal with organised crime, he said,
showing a certain nostalgia for the methods of the old regime: "I would
hang those responsible for kidnapping in front of their own houses and I
am confident that crime would be reduced to 10 per cent of its present
level." The serious crime organisation of the Iraqi police is housed in a
school in the Amariyah quarter of Baghdad because their old headquarters
was destroyed. Several weeks ago the new premises was attacked by two
suicide bombers, though without effect, and is protected by an obstacle
course of concrete barriers and containers filled with earth.
The police headquarters still has an improvised air but the police said
they are now receiving vehicles, weapons and flak jackets from the
Americans. Some complain that no sooner have they sent criminals to Abu
Ghraib prison than they are released by the US. But Colonel Anwar Abdul
Jabbar, the head of the organised crime division of the police, said: "I
have arrested 400 criminals and I don't know any that have been released
from Abu Ghraib without my knowledge. This is really just an excuse used
by policemen who don't have a case."
The campaign against organised crime in Iraq is largely supervised by the
US. American military police officers could be seen stomping in and out of
police offices at Amariyah. At one moment, a thick American accent could
be heard bellowing angrily on the other side of a partition wall,
shouting: "Don't you realise we are working our arses off for you!" An
Iraqi policeman, giggling slightly, confided later that the relative of a
kidnap victim had told the American officer that Iraq was better off under
Saddam, precipitating the outburst.
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Subject: [pjnews] Dean Supporters, Don't Give Up ... from Michael Moore
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January 20, 2004
Dean Supporters, Don't Give Up ... from Michael Moore
This morning I picked up the newspaper and read this quote from a young
woman who had worked as a volunteer for Howard Dean in Iowa:
"All the phone-calling we did, we'd have people who’d say, 'I'm a Dean
supporter,
I’m a Dean supporter,’" said Kelly Chambers, Dr. Dean's captain in
Precinct No. 83.
"But when it came to caucus night, we only had 11 people show up for Dean.
It just
seems like all my hard work's been for nothing."
I was crushed when I read this. Her despair, her sense of "what's the
use?" was
something I'm sure many Dean supporters are feeling today. I can see, just
from
surfing the web, the debilitating affect the landslide loss in Iowa had on
so many
people who had placed so much hope in the man who created a grassroots
revolution
and was unrelenting in his attacks on Bush and on the war. If having the most
volunteers, the most money (all small contributions from average
citizens), and the
boldest message can't win an election, say Dean's followers, then we might
as well
just give up.
As one who does not support Dean, I would like to say this to you: DON'T
GIVE UP.
You have done an incredible thing. You inspired an entire nation to stand
up to
George W. Bush. Your impact on this election will be felt for years to
come. Every
bit of energy you put into Dr. Dean's candidacy was -- and is -- worth it.
He took
on Bush when others wouldn't. He put corporate America on notice that he
is coming
after them. And he called the Democrats out for what they truly are: a
bunch of
spineless, wishy-washy appeasers who have sold out the working people of
America.
Everyone in every campaign owes you and your candidate a huge debt of thanks.
Though I am backing Clark because I personally prefer his manner and his
stands on
everything from jailing polluters to taxing the rich (not to mention his
electability), the worst thing that could happen now would be for the Dean
revolution to come to an end. If you have backed or worked for Dean, you must
understand the remarkable things you have done and what you have
accomplished:
1. 55% of those who voted in Iowa on Monday said that this was the FIRST
TIME they
had ever voted in a Caucus!!! That is a STUNNING statistic. Although the vast
majority ended up going for Kerry and Edwards, I am convinced that the
electorate in
that state was invigorated by the Dean campaign -- whose entire message
was that you
CAN make a difference. Just the fact that you have people thinking this
way is a
gift you have given to America, a nation where the majority, in the past,
have given
up and refused to vote. I believe that you and Howard Dean will be
credited with
waking up a near-dead voting public. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
2. On top of first time voters, the overall turnout in Iowa was DOUBLE
what it was
four years ago. DOUBLE! To double the number of Democrats who showed up in
Iowa this
week means that many independents, Greens, and former Republicans have
seen enough
of the mess created by George W. Bush. And it was Dean in Iowa who, until
the attack
ads against him began, focused his whole campaign on educating voters on
what the
Bush presidency has truly done to America. The number one reason people
gave last
night for coming out in zero-degree weather in Iowa, ahead of the war and the
economy and health care, was "Bush must go." This can only mean good
things for the
turnout come next November.
3. The number of young people -- the age group with historically the lowest
percentage of voters -- also doubled on Monday night. Again, you have to
credit the
Deaniacs for this. Thousands of young people from around the country
poured into
Iowa to knock on doors and talk politics. Although Kerry and Edwards got
the youth
vote, I believe it was the Dean youth who made it cool to be political
again, and
the effect of their enthusiasm was contagious.
4. 75% of those voting in Iowa said that they are "anti-war." And who do
we have to
thank for that? Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich. They put the war and its
illegality
and immorality on the Iowa map in this election year. They pushed Kerry
and the rest
to take strong anti-war stands (even though Kerry, et. al. had initially
voted for
the war). Some changed their positions, which we welcomed (Edwards and
Kerry voted
against the $87 billion Bush got to continue the war). Although Kerry got
the most
anti-war votes and Dean and Edwards split the rest, Dean was the man who
converted
them. Those who chugged through the streets and farms of Iowa preaching peace
deserve our gratitude.
Of course, the problem here, as I pointed out with all due respect in my last
letter, is that for whatever reason, Dean himself is not going to give middle
America the comfort level they need in choosing who they want in the Oval
Office.
Dean, as good and as right as he is, just isn't the man, on a personal
level, to get
Job One done: Bush Removal. That's OK. Moses was not allowed into the
Promised Land.
But he was still Moses.
So, we now have two Democratic candidates at the top who voted for the
war. We have
two at the bottom who have been anti-war -- Kucinich, who got 1% of the
vote in Iowa
and Al Sharpton who got 0%. And then we have Howard Dean who, after a year of
campaigning in every Iowa county (where it seemed practically everyone met
him at
least once), could only scrape together 18% of the delegates.
And then there is Wesley Clark, who is backed by George McGovern, the
anti-Vietnam
War presidential candidate and the conscience of a generation. He said
Clark is the
one candidate whose plan will end the war and bring the troops home. Clark
may be,
now, the anti-war vote's best chance. I believe he is.
But in the meantime, let's tip our hats to Deaniacs everywhere. They've
set the tone
and the bar and have jump-started the movement to save our country. Good
friends in
the Dean camp, please don't give up. We need you now and we will need you in
November. And, to Precinct 83 Captain Kelly Chambers, all your hard work
has NOT
been in vain. We cannot win without you.
One year from today, at 12:01 PM, Bush leaves office. But only if the
revolution you
ignited continues beyond this week.
Yours,
Michael Moore
http://www.michaelmoore.com
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush Seeks U.N. Help for Iraq
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31620-2004Jan20.html
World Opinion Roundup:
Hat in Hand, Bush Seeks U.N. Help
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 20, 2004; 9:07 AM
The Bush administration's plans for post-war Iraq never envisioned
anything like yesterday's meeting in New York. U.S. officials asked for
the United Nations to help extricate the United States from a country it
liberated from Saddam Hussein's thuggish tyranny just nine months ago. The
guarded response of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, as reported by The
Washington Post, only underscores how much U.S. policymakers have lost the
ability to control events in Iraq, according to international online
commentators.
"This is not the first American return to the United Nations," the editors
of Le Monde noted on Monday. "But it is the most spectacular." This is the
same U.N. whose "relevance" President Bush said was in doubt if it
declined to support the U.S. attack on Saddam Hussein's regime last March.
The editors of the leftist Parisian daily said the White House came to the
meetings in New York seeking to unravel a "Gordian knot" of problems in
Iraq.
"To whom to give power? By which process? Can one reject the claims of the
Shiite majority which seeks elections without disqualifying the legitimacy
of the next government? Can one cede power without provoking hostilities
from the Kurds or the Sunnis?"
To answer these questions, the chief of the U.S. occupation L. Paul
Bremer, the chief U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, and Governing
Council President Adnan Pachachi beseeched the United Nations to back U.S.
resistance for quick elections to create a new government. Annan has
acknowledged that elections before May would be impractical. The U.S.
request yesterday implicitly recognized that the United Nations is now the
best hope of U.S. officials seeking to create a stable and democratic
Iraq.
The conflict, according to Jonathan Steele, veteran correspondent of The
Guardian pits the Bush administration officials against the religious
leadership of Iraq's Shiites, who constitute an estimated 60 percent of
the country's population.
"Washington's plans for handing power to an unelected group of Iraqis are
being strongly challenged by Iraq's majority Shia community," Steele
writes. "The occupiers who invaded Iraq in the name (partly) of bringing
democracy are being accused of flouting democracy themselves."
As recently as November, Bremer came up with a plan that had no role for
the United Nations, Steele notes. Instead, the U.S. prepared for a series
of caucuses in each of Iraq's 18 provinces to pick a government that would
assume power next summer.
"Not surprisingly, the Shia leadership smells a rat," says Steele, an
impassioned critic of the war from the start. "After generations of being
excluded from power, first by the British occupiers in 1920, and then by
successive Sunni governments up to the one led by Saddam, they are angry."
If the U.S. caucus plan is successfully implemented, Steele says, Bush can
"claim mission accomplished.
"Barely a year after the invasion, Iraqis would have a legitimate
government at last. It would invite US troops to stay, but these could
gradually be reduced in number or pulled back to bases in Iraq, as new
Iraqi security forces were built up. U.S. casualties would fall, the
invasion would have been legitimized."
"Washington's plan for a transfer of power is a façade," Steele concludes.
"The real intent is to get Bush re-elected and continue the occupation by
indirect means. The UN should have no part of it."
But, as Le Monde says, Annan's decision is "difficult."
The United Nations "does not wish to show unwillingness, but to supervise
the 'caucuses' and to guarantee their regularity would be very
hypothetical, not only because it would be necessary for the U.N. to have
personnel in the 18 provinces. To send a mission would also seem to be a
false good idea, especially because, in contrast to Afghanistan, the U.N.
does not have political experience in Iraq and knows little about the
local persons in charge."
Annan's decision is also hard, says the Italian daily La Stampa because
Sunday's suicide bombing outside U.S. occupation headquarters in downtown
Baghdad highlights the precarious security situation in the country. The
blast that killed 24 people might have been "a bloody warning to Annan not
to send his people back to Baghdad," the paper wrote."
"There will be no peace in Iraq unless an Iraqi administration is
introduced which will be acceptable to Shiites, Sunnites and Kurds alike,"
argued Germany's Neuste Nachrichten on Monday. "The United States has to
pull back, while the United Nations and Europe have to get involved, the
time has come to solve the transatlantic row."
The Dresden daily said that the U.N., France and Germany are right in
asking for an assurance from the United States. They should make sure that
their involvement in Iraq will not be a guise under which the U.S. will
continue to pursue its unilateral geopolitical and economic interests.
"There is only one basis for the involvement of the U.N. and of 'old
Europe' and that's a U.N. mandate," the German daily says.
But is President Bush prepared to make a deal with his once and future
friends at the United Nations to put Iraq back together?
Today's cartoon in the Sydney Morning Herald is skeptical.
It portrays a youthful George Bush playing with his toys. The pieces of a
"Rebuild Afghanistan" kit are scattered on the floor. Nearby lie the
abandoned pieces of an "Iraq reconstruction" toy kit. The American
president, meanwhile, is playing with a toy box labeled "Build your own
mission to Mars."
The caption reads, "Young George had such a short attention span."
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Subject: [pjnews] Why the US is running scared of elections in Iraq
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0122-01.htm
CIA Officers Warn of Iraq Civil War, Contradicting Bush's Optimism
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1127690,00.html
The US-led coalition in Iraq is on the verge of bowing to Shia Muslim
pressure for direct elections before the handover of power on June 30, the
Guardian has learned. According to British officials, the Blair
government has been swayed by Shia arguments and the US is also shifting
ground...
---------------------
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1126178,00.html
Why the US is running scared of elections in Iraq
Washington's plan to transfer power without a direct vote is a fraud
Jonathan Steele ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Monday January 19, 2004
The Guardian
The occupation of Iraq continues to get worse for George Bush and Tony
Blair. The deaths of at least 20 people in a suicide bomb attack outside
the coalition headquarters in Baghdad yesterday morning underlines the
spiralling unrest in the country. The toll of US casualties since Saddam
Hussein's capture is higher than in the same period before it. Angry
protests over unemployment and petrol shortages have erupted in several
cities in the south, in areas under British control.
Above all, Washington's plans for handing power to an unelected group of
Iraqis is being strongly challenged by Iraq's majority Shia community. The
occupiers who invaded Iraq in the name (partly) of bringing democracy are
being accused of flouting democracy themselves.
Oh yes, and then there's the small matter of the weapons of mass
destruction on which Saddam increasingly appears to be the man who had
truth on his side. When he said he had destroyed them years ago, he,
rather than Bush and Blair, was the man not lying.
While the Hutton inquiry looms as the main Iraq worry for the prime
minister, the primary problem for Bush is the chaos in Iraq. His plans for
minimising Iraq as an election issue are in tatters. They relied on three
things: the capture of Saddam; a reduction in the toll of US dead and
maimed; and the start of a process of handing power to Iraqis.
The first was accomplished in December when the former dictator's
successful eight-month evasion of massive hunting parties came to an end.
But instead of it leading to a collapse of resistance, US casualties have
gone on growing. Bush's always dubious argument that Saddam was running
the insurgency from various well-hidden quarters has fallen apart.
Baathists who did not want to be seen as defending a hated leader were
freed from that image. Other branches of the resistance were never Saddam
supporters. It also transpires that Saddam rejected part of the
resistance. Although he called for jihad against the occupiers in the
tapes slipped out to al-Jazeera and other Arab media, he was writing more
careful private notes to his friends. He urged them to beware of the
fundamentalists - an ironic sign that even in his months of beleaguered
clandestinity, he remained faithful to the secular principles which had
made him attractive to western governments in the 1980s, when the main
enemy was seen as Iran.
With casualties stubbornly continuing to remain high, the US is now
banking on its project for transferring power to Iraqis this summer. This
is an acceleration of Washington's earlier plans. The UN security council
resolution it pushed through unanimously last October called on Iraq's
governing council to draw up a timetable for drafting a constitution and
holding elections. It also called for the UN "to strengthen its vital role
in Iraq".
But the White House has a habit of ignoring the UN resolutions it
sponsors. Just as it went to war without a second resolution, after
getting unanimity on one which most member states did not feel contained a
trigger, the October 2003 resolution was also ignored. A month after it
was passed, the US came up with a plan which made no mention of any role
for the UN and cobbled together an extraordinary process of "caucuses" to
pick a government.
At least in Iowa, the Democratic party caucuses involve elections. Not in
the US plan for Iraq. The US is proposing that "notables" in each province
attend these caucuses to appoint an assembly which would select a
government. Not surprisingly, the Shia leadership smells a rat. After
generations of being excluded from power, first by the British occupiers
in 1920, and then by successive Sunni governments up to the one led by
Saddam, they are angry.
Their spiritual head, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has repeatedly
denounced the plan. He wants direct elections. His legitimate fear is that
the US wants to control the selection of a government because it thinks
the wrong people will win, in particular the Shia. Washington is also
worried that Sunni fundamentalists and even some Baathists might do well
in the poll.
The other new element in the US plan was that power would be transferred
to the new government at the end of June. This would allow Bush to claim
mission accomplished. Barely a year after the invasion, Iraqis would have
a legitimate government at last. It would invite US troops to stay, but
these could gradually be reduced in number or pulled back to bases in
Iraq, as new Iraqi security forces were built up. US casualties would
fall, the invasion would have been legitimised, and Messrs Dean and Clark
would have to shut up.
Now the whole thing is in ruins. Ayatollah Sistani refuses to drop his
opposition, and people were out on the street in Basra last week to
support his line. Protests may spread to other Shia cities. The latest
allegations of US and British torture of detainees will only inflame
passions. Worst of all for Washington, Sistani has made it clear that no
government which is undemocratically appointed will have the right to ask
American troops to stay.
Washington is trying to argue that if there are to be direct elections,
the transfer of power will have to be delayed. Sistani rejects that. His
supporters say the oil-for-food ration-card lists which covered the whole
Iraqi population can easily be used in place of the poll cards which
Washington says would take at least a year to prepare. Unlike Afghanistan,
with its remote villages and months of snow which make polling stations
hard to deploy and staff, Iraq's geography is no obstacle to quick
elections.
The moment of truth for the administration is also one for the United
Nations. Having snubbed the UN for so long, the White House is turning to
Kofi Annan at a meeting in New York today to bail it out. Like his Shia
forebears who refused to meet the British after 1920 for fear of being
denounced as stooges and sell-outs, Sistani refuses to talk to Paul
Bremer, the top US envoy, or his British colleagues. He meets Iraqis who
bring messages from the coalition authorities, and he meets the UN. So
Washington is pressing the UN either to go and persuade Sistani that
elections are impossible, or to monitor the caucuses and give them its
seal of approval.
Annan should resist the poisoned chalice. He should support the concept of
direct elections. It need not mean a delay in sovereignty for Iraq. Five
months are not too long to prepare a vote. Alternatively, the UN should
offer to take over responsibility for the entire transition to Iraqi rule,
as many member governments originally hoped.
Washington's plan for a transfer of power is a facade. The real intent is
to get Bush re-elected and continue the occupation by indirect means. The
UN should have no part of it.
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Subject: [pjnews] Commentator Paul Loeb on Dean and Kucinich
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http://www.soulofacitizen.org/articles/Dean.htm
DEAN AND KUCINICH
By Paul Rogat Loeb
Like many progressives, I’ve felt torn between Howard Dean’s and Dennis
Kucinich’s respective strengths. I’ve resolved this conflict so far by
embracing my indecision and giving money to both. Kucinich has spoken out,
eloquently and thoughtfully, taking stands that challenge the conventional
wisdom of our time, and point toward powerful long-term alternatives.
Dean’s stands are more cautious, but he’s revived the Democratic Party by
being willing to challenge Bush on a host of key issues, and brought more
ordinary citizens into electoral politics than any Democratic politician
in years. When Dean says, “America is not Rome,” it contrasts starkly with
an administration that’s tried its best to make us the world’s imperial
policeman.
A year ago, a surging global peace movement offered hope, but I saw little
to cheer me on the U.S. electoral front. The most prominent Democratic
candidates--Kerry, Gephardt, and Lieberman--had just finished helping give
Bush his victory on the war vote. In Gephardt’s case, he helped write the
resolution, line up the House votes, and take the political postures
(literally standing with Bush in a supportive photo op) that made
resistance from the Senate far more difficult. Kerry lambasted Bush’s
unilateral policies, then turned around and supported them—a piece of
political calculation based solely, as far as I can tell, on some
astonishingly craven notion of Presidential electability. If possible,
Lieberman was more hawkish than Bush on Iraq from the beginning--which
shouldn’t surprise us, since Lieberman gained his Senate seat by using the
financial support of William F. Buckley to bait moderate Republican Lowell
Weickert for being soft on Cuba, and no Democratic Senator north of the
Mason-Dixon line has a more conservative record than Lieberman. Although
Edwards seemed a decent new face, he also voted for the war and belongs to
the Democratic Leadership Council, which has counseled endless
accommodation ever since Bush was handed the White House.
I’d vote for any of these candidates over Bush, especially since it seems
like we’ll mercifully be spared the choice of Lieberman. But their
timidity has carried a cost. From the beginning of Bush’s term, I saw
leading Democrats, including these candidates, cave time and again, from
refusing to filibuster ultra-right cabinet nominees like John Ashcroft, to
equivocating on massively regressive tax policies, to voting for the
Patriot Act without even reading it. They might as well have rewritten the
classic words from Martin Luther King and the Book of Amos to say, “Let
meekness roll down like tepid waters, and politeness like a flowing
stream.”
In the November 2002 elections, as Democratic leaders repeatedly
capitulated to Bush, ordinary citizens, who would have made a difference
had they volunteered to get out the vote, instead stayed home. Everywhere
I went, traveling throughout the country lecturing, I saw morale
plummeting among those who rejected Bush’s agenda. How could people
enthusiastically back a party that seemed terrified to move more than a
fraction beyond Bush’s ever more damaging positions. Without the
commitment of passionate volunteers, race after critical race went
Republican by the narrowest of margins.
Dennis Kucinich, to his profound credit, was bucking this trend. As the
head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, he did his best to organize
opposition to Bush’s domestic and foreign policies. He organized
significant numbers of Democratic Senators and Congressional
representatives to oppose the Iraq war. He’s continued to speak out on
the need for equitable tax policies, justice in global trade rules, and
how a $400-billion-a-year military budget makes us less safe, not more.
He’s helped give voice to a vision of a different America that I find
compelling and powerful.
But it’s hard to imagine Kucinich winning the nomination, let alone the
Presidency. He’s served only briefly in the House, and as he’s
acknowledged, no House member has been elected President since James
Garfield. Kucinich’s stands, though they’d be unremarkable in Western
Europe, are probably too radical for our corrupted political culture. And
I keep having nightmares of potential Republican attack ads hammering away
at his being a vegan—using this stand to make the 99% of Americans who
aren't vegans and the 95% who aren't vegetarians feel like he looks down
on them for eating a piece of chicken or drinking a glass of milk: “This
is a man who’s so far out of the mainstream,” they might say, “he wants to
confiscate your macaroni and cheese.”
Although Kucinich has defeated Republican incumbents for the state
legislature and for his Congressional seat, this was in a local context
where people knew him personally, and recognized his integrity,
intelligence, and track record. National politics is far more susceptible
to manipulation. Kucinich’s campaign has continued to raise important
issues, in the most far-reaching way. He’s articulated a powerful vision
of where we need to go as a country. But his support base has been largely
confined to those who voted Green in 2000 or seriously considered doing
so. Kucinich is raising critical issues as long as he is in the race, and
this may influence the nomination of someone else who’s decent. But
backing him will have only an indirect impact on who that someone else
will be.
When Howard Dean first challenged the then-pending Iraq war, it was a
welcome contrast from the front-line Democratic contenders. But his
campaign initially seemed almost as improbable as those of Kucinich, Al
Sharpton, and Carol Moseley-Braun. I was hoping for someone with greater
visibility to jump in—like Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois or Russ
Feingold of Wisconsin. But as Dean continued to speak out, he began
building a citizen’s movement. By challenging Bush in a way that he
presented as utterly mainstream (being a doctor helps), by challenging the
Democratic party to return to its roots, and most importantly, by refusing
to take a path of timidity, he’s galvanized people’s hopes, giving them
something to believe in and act on. He’s succeeded less because of
particular policy positions (which, aside from the war, are not so
different from those of the other “mainstream” Democratic candidates),
than because he’s willing to fight for them, and challenge Bush’s
astonishingly regressive path.
Combined with a clearly expressed belief in the power of ordinary citizens
to make history, Dean’s momentum has been a direct product of his
feistiness. Rather than concentrating on focus-group-honed minutiae that
the Republicans can easily switch to their advantage (think of the
prescription drug bill), he’s taken on the core questions of who pays our
taxes, how we treat our environment, whether we have health care, and how
we relate to the rest of the world. He’s challenged Bush on basic
premises, not just minute particulars. He’s offered a clear choice instead
of the usual blurred one. And with the help of an Internet-savvy campaign
staff, he’s emphasized again and again that his campaign will prevail only
through the massive participation of ordinary citizens, which has made
people feel valued enough to participate.
In recent years, grassroots Democratic campaigns have been fueled almost
entirely by participants from existing citizen movements, like
environmental and labor activists. The Party has added almost nothing.
That Dean’s campaign is actually drawing new people in, as well as
mobilizing old stalwarts, is a powerful contribution to democracy, the
kind that’s essential if we’re going to turn this country around.
Movement-based campaigns aren’t always electable. That’s the critique
levied by the pundits and the Democratic right, together with the
laughable baiting of Dean as a crazed leftist. But there’s no way a
Democratic candidate can beat Bush without vast numbers of ordinary people
going beyond their normal routines and comfort zones to help take key
issues to their fellow citizens. Beyond this, Dean differs from defeated
Democratic standard-bearers in a way that vastly increases his chances of
winning: He’s willing to fight. Critics keep raising the specter of George
McGovern, Walter Mondale, and Michael Dukakis. McGovern was indeed the
candidate of a powerful social movement, but was strangely inept at
fighting back. As Nixon baited him unmercifully over his presumed lack of
patriotic courage (Republicans have been playing that game for years),
McGovern never even mentioned that he’d flown 35 missions as a B-24 bomber
pilot during World War II, risking his life every time. Maybe he felt that
responding to such despicable attacks was beneath him, but he allowed
Nixon to define the terms of debate, and that, combined with the
withdrawal of key Democratic sectors like organized labor, made his loss
almost inevitable.
Neither Walter Mondale nor Michael Dukakis represented social movements.
Both were mainstream candidates backed by party leaders in opposition to
Jesse Jackson’s insurgent campaigns. But again, neither was willing to
stand up and fight when unfairly baited. They yielded, equivocated, and
spent most of their energy grasping for salable images, like Dukakis’s
ill-fated attempt to create a photo-op by peeking out of the turret of a
tank. They neither stood up to the Republican attacks, nor presented
clear and passionate alternatives.
Howard Dean, by contrast, is willing to fight back--an essential quality
when facing a political machine as ruthless as the current Republicans. He
may sometimes shoot from the hip too much. But from the beginning, he’s
stood up for his beliefs. He’s challenged the Republicans on base
premises, which will be necessary to have even a shot of unseating Bush.
And he’s done this, by and large, without apologizing or
equivocating--without giving legitimacy to policies driven by greed and
arrogance rather than wisdom. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to unseat
Bush with any of the candidates. If we defeat him, the forces that put him
in power are hardly going to disappear from the scene. But the best chance
we have is to speak the blunt truths about how radically destructive this
administration has become to our democracy, and that’s what Dean is doing.
He’s passionately involving enough ordinary citizens to have a shot at
defeating the politics of money, manipulation, and fear.
I gave my first contribution to Howard Dean last June, then several others
since. I’ve also contributed to Kucinich. We’re all going to have to give
a whole lot more in time, money, and creativity to overcome Bush’s massive
support from the greediest interests in our country. In a month, my state
(Washington) holds its caucuses, so I have to make a choice. Wesley Clark
has now joined the other candidates as a new alternative, and I appreciate
Clark’s willingness to stand up for dissent and highly progressive recent
tax proposals. I think he’d make a strong Vice Presidential candidate. But
I’m leery of his praise for the Bush administration just three years ago,
of his support for the School of the Americas, and his votes for Ronald
Reagan and the first George Bush. I’m worried that he’s equivocated just a
bit too much on Iraq. The other major candidates have shown no more
courage in the past year that they’ve been running, and in some cases
quite the opposite, like Kerry’s and Lieberman’s baiting Dean for favoring
an even-handed stance toward Israel and the Palestinians.
This leaves me with Dean or Kucinich. If Kucinich’s role is to raise the
best possible issues, even if he’ll never get nominated, I can see
arguments for helping him stay in the fray, particularly in states where
delegates are allocated proportionately. If Howard Dean wins, there will
still be plenty of work for ordinary citizens in building grassroots
support for the best of his proposals and challenging him on those we
don’t support, and come up with creative alternatives. I don’t agree with
Dean’s every stand, but I’m tremendously heartened that a Democratic
candidate who stands for something is actually leading the pack. It’s a
vast improvement from a year ago, and to the degree the other major
Democratic candidates are now speaking out against Bush, Dean deserves
much of the credit. If he can keep building enough momentum to lock up the
nomination early on and focus entirely on distinguishing his vision from
that of George Bush, this gives him a greater chance of winning. And
because he’s willing to fight and involve new people, he has a decent
shot. To me, that’s a gamble worth risking. Whether its promise is
fulfilled may depend on what the rest of us do from this point onward.
____________________
Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a
Cynical Time. This August, Basic Books will publish his new anthology on
political hope, The Impossible Will Take a Little While. See
http://www.paulloeb.org
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Subject: [pjnews] Economic crisis, threats of Jihad,
and more violence in Iraq
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0120-07.htm
Iraqis Want Saddam's Old US Friends on Trial
If Iraqis ever see Saddam Hussein on trial, they want his former American
allies shackled beside him...
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-The-Impact.html
Bush Could Face Fallout Over Iraq Deaths
http://snipurl.com/3z9e
Bush to seek billions for Iraq after election
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush may seek an additional $40 billion
or more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year -- on
top of
the $400-billion military budget he will send to Congress next month,
congressional sources and budget analysts said on Wednesday. But Bush is
unlikely to send the request to Congress until after the November
presidential election to minimize any political damage, the sources
said...
-------------
http://electronicIraq.net/news/1330.shtml
15 January 2004
Iraq Diaries:
Economic crisis, threats of Jihad, and more violence in Iraq
by Dahr Jamail
The big news today is the plummeting value of the US dollar in Iraq. Here
are some figures to give you an idea of the current financial crisis in
Iraq:
2 months ago: $1 = 1,950 Iraqi Dinars (ID)
The value continued to drop, and 2 days ago the value was: $1 = 1,410 ID
Yesterday: $1 = 1,100 ID
Keep in mind that all Iraqis working for the CPA are paid in US dollars.
In addition, all of the severance pay for Iraqi ex-Army personnel,
unemployment payments, and a large percentage of Iraqis are paid in US
dollars.
When an Iraqi ex-Army man was being paid $60 per month by the CPA, this
translated to 120,000 IDs 2 months ago. Now he makes 60,000 IDs. At the
same time the cost of basic food products has been rising, and continues
to rise. How is this man going to make ends meet?
Imagine if your pay scale remained the same at your job, yet in two months
time the value of the US dollar dropped by 50%, so it now took you twice
as much money to buy food and pay your mortgage? Getting a second job
would be impossible, because unemployment is 60% in your country and
rising.
Khalil Abrahim works as a carpenter. He had a business agreement with a
man to repair his home and make him some furniture. They agreed on an
amount to be paid for the work at 1,100,000 Iraqi Dinars ($550 US), made a
little over two months ago when the exchange rate was 2000 IDs per US
dollar. Khalil was advanced 400,000 ID ($200), and used this money to buy
his supplies.
He finished the job the day before yesterday, and went to collect his
money. The man told Khalil he would pay him the remaining amount, ($350),
at the rate of exchange that day, which was 1410 ID per US dollar. So both
men lose money. If Khalil is paid at the rate of 1410 ID, he will lose
$103.25 (205,500 ID). If the man who hired him pays him at the original
exchange rate of 2,000 IDs per dollar, he will lose the same amount.
Unable to reach a compromise thus far, Khalil remains unpaid, and doesn't
know how to resolve the situation.
This is but one example of a problem plaguing businesses, big and small,
in Iraq on the day, ironically, that Iraqi currency with the face of
Saddam Hussein on it is no longer valid.
Where will this lead? How will this be resolved?
Mr. Shuker is a Jordanian business man who does much work with the Iraqi
government. He bought several containers of televisions to import to Iraq
to sell, at $20,000 per container of TV's. If he sells these in Iraq, he
will lose money on his merchandise now. He told me he cannot do any
business now with the dollar so low. Any transaction he makes will lose
him large amounts of money.
When the ID was over 2,000 per US dollar, businesses and the government of
Kuwait bought heaps of them and took them out of the country. Now, because
of the physical lack of IDs in Iraq, their value has risen strongly
against the US dollar. Think about the disparity now caused that
businesses in Iraq have to deal with.
If the CPA does not step in to resolve this economic crisis, the
likelihood of crime increasing in an already abysmal security situation is
very high.
Meanwhile, food costs continue to rise and there is no solution to the
rampant unemployment problem.
All of this with the backdrop of tens of thousands of people (mostly Shia)
demonstrating in Basra today, demanding democratic elections within the
next 2 or 3 months. At the demonstrations Ali al-Hakim al-Safi, a senior
Basra cleric, told the crowd that the Shia people would seek their goals
by peaceful means at first, but were prepared for other measures if
necessary. He stated,
"We do not need to use violence to get our rights while there are still
peaceful ways we can work together, but if we find peaceful means are no
longer available to us we will have to seek other methods."
Thus the specter of Jihad looms over Iraq.
At the same time, violence continues to the north of Baghdad. 14 people
died in various attacks on US troops. 8 Iraqis were killed during an
attack on US troops near Samarra. On a road between Samarra and Tikrit
guerrillas attacked vehicles carrying KBR employees, killing three men as
well as wounding a US soldier and US civilian.
Also last night, a soldier with the 101st Airborne Division died in a
'non-hostile incident' in Mosul.
_______________-
Dahr Jamail is a freelance journalist and political activist from
Anchorage, Alaska. He has come to Iraq to bear witness and write about how
the US occupation is affecting the people of Iraq, since the media in the
US has in large part, he believes, failed to do so.
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Subject: [pjnews] No Water? Drink Coke!
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17592
No Water? Drink Coke!
Naeem Mohaiemen, AlterNet
January 17, 2004
Several years ago, I was leafing through a health magazine and came across
a piece about Coca-Cola. According to the story, Coke, like many other
soft drinks, contains additives that eat away at tooth enamel. Ever since
then, I've avoided all soft drinks. This habit presents an etiquette
problem whenever I visit Bangladesh. Along with milky cups of tea,
Coke-with-ice is the most frequently offered drink to visitors. My refusal
of Coke is often seen an snobbishness, or some faddish "health
consciousness."
This subcontinental love affair with Coke may soon change drastically. If
campaigners assembled at this week's World Social Forum in Mumbai, India
are successful, Coca-Cola will soon be hit by a global boycott of
unprecedented scale and ferocity. Although the Indian Campaign to Hold
Coke Accountable has already been in motion for a year, the WSF meet is
globalizing the project. At issue are Coca-Cola's production practices in
India, which are draining out vast amounts of public groundwater, turning
farming communities into virtual deserts. Completing the cycle of abuse,
the plants are also pumping out toxic sludge as waste product. The
controversy has been aggravated by recent tests that showed levels of
toxic substances in Indian Coke, which are higher than FDA-approved
standards for Coke-additives in the US.
Organizers consider Coca-Cola to be one of the most abusive transnationals
(TNC) operating in India today. They are particularly irked by the way
that Coke, a huge foreign investor in India, has used its commercial clout
to bully the government into bending the rules regarding local ownership.
After a year of Indian protests, Coca-Cola's PR department simply said
they were the "target of a handful of extremist protesters." For good
measure, the corporate website says, "Local communities have welcomed our
business as a good corporate neighbor."
But at the end of the WSF, Coke may be facing an organized campaign that
cannot be easily dismissed. One of the key benefits of highlighting the
Coke case at the WSF meet is the opportunity to link up with similar cases
worldwide and turn the project into a global boycott. Since international
capital benefits from a borderless world, activists want to create a model
where their clout is also increased by the free flow of information
between world community groups. In the process they are linking up with
campaigners in Colombia, who have targeted Coke for very different abuses.
At WSF, the campaign has generated strong feedback from American and
European organizers, many of whom see the red-and-whites of Coke as a
symbol for businesses that work without accountability.
Draining Local Water
There are now several Indian communities that have lodged complaints
against Coca-Cola factories. The most celebrated of these is the
Plachimada village in Kerala state, home of one of Coca-Cola's biggest
bottling plants in India. This was one of the first villages to allege
that the plant was draining water from wells, drying up ponds and
destroying the livelihood of more than 2,000 farm families.
Researchers found that the plant had drilled 65 bore holes into the
ground, siphoning off a million gallons of water a day. In addition, they
also found that Coke was washing bottles with chemicals which were then
released, without treatment, into local ground water. British NGO
Actionaid has investigated the village and concluded that it was a
thriving agricultural community until the arrival of the bottling plant in
1998. Under pressure from activists, 300 of whom were arrested during
various protests, the local panchayet announced that it would cancel the
plant's operating license.
Coke has vigorously fought back against the allegations, submitting
scientific studies and appealing the panchayet's decision. The plant
manager, N Janadhanan, indignantly told the AP that, "The villagers are
not suffering and we are not exploiting the water resource." But in
admission of the severe crisis, Coke now sends around water tankers each
morning to supply the villager's with minimum amounts of water. The
company is appealing the decision in Indian courts, with activists also
determined to press on with their demands.
Another dark spot is Mehdiganj (UP), where Coke built a bottling plant in
1995. Two tube wells draw hundreds of thousands of liters of ground water
each day. Geologists have estimated that the company's voracious
consumption may have lowered the groundwater level as much as 40 feet. The
area's water crisis was further aggravated by the World Bank-funded Golden
Quadrangle superhighway project, which shut off the water pipeline from a
neighboring area. The Coke plant's proximity to the holy city of Benares
has created further controversy. The factory's waste product was being
disposed in a nearby canal that emptied into the holy Ganges River.
Local Indians were enraged when they discovered that polluted waste was
being dumped into the Ganges. Until recently, there was no clear way to
test for Coke-related pollution in the vast Ganges. But in order to make
way for the superhighway, construction workers dislodged Coke's waste
disposal canal. The company then began disposing its waste products into
neighboring fields and mango groves. At this point, the level of toxic
waste became readily obvious to local residents. Although Coca-Cola
officials claim they use ecological filters, this was easily refuted by
looking at waste-submerged areas. In an area of 20 acres covered with
factory waste, grass, neem trees, wheat, paddy and chickpea crops had all
been destroyed. Health crises were also created by the stagnant waste,
including a mosquito epidemic and mysterious rashes on the bodies of local
villagers.
Villages Fight Back
Fighting to stop the TNC giant, local villagers have organized groups with
slogans like "Coca-Cola Bhagao, Gaon Bachao" ("Save the village, chase
away Coke"). Dalits (the so-called "untouchable" caste) and indigenous
peoples are playing a key role in leading protests. Unlike past top-down
activism, these campaigns are primarily village-organized, with national
globalization activists bringing access to press and linkages with other
affected villages.
As a result of linking affected communities, the Mehdiganj-Perumatty
campaigns have been joined by Wada (Thane) and Sivaganga (Tamil Nadu) --
also sites of Coca-Cola factories. In a preemptive move, residents of
Sivaganga protested against plans to set up a factory near their village.
A key aspect of the organizing has been the training of local youth groups
in non-violent resistance. Although protestors may employ Gandhian
tactics, the responses are not always so gentle. At the Mehdiganj plant,
police and gun-carrying private security guards beat protestors.
The Indian campaigns have begun to get results, although not always in the
direct areas targeted. As a result of sustained anti-Coke campaigning,
other parts of the company's business practices have also come under
inspection. In April 2003, Coca-Cola was targeted for boycott to protest
the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. As a result of that protest, Coke sales
dropped 50 percent in states such as Kerala, which was declared a
"Coca-Cola and Pepsi-free zone."
Later, a local court found the Mehdiganj plant guilty of illegally
occupying a portion of village common property resources and evading
payment of land revenue. The court also noted that the plant was illegally
receiving subsidized electricity because the occupied land was classified
as "agricultural." Recently, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)
ordered its regional officer to investigate the Mehdiganj claims of toxic
waste. In Madurai, the CPCB also ordered the company to stop disposing its
"sludge" in agricultural fields because a "metal" element had been
discovered in tests.
Finally, in a case that has generated even more negative publicity,
independent tests discovered traces of a pesticide in Coke bottles. A
Joint Parliamentary Committee is now investigating the case and the Indian
Parliament has already banned Coke from its cafeteria.
Coke's Clout
While activists have cheered on these apparent signs of progress, it would
be naïve to say they have "Coke on the run" (as one reporter claimed).
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola is a multi-billion dollar company, and although
the Indian protests are a major irritant, the company has the resources to
dig in for the long haul. Like BP and many other new-breed TNCs, they also
have the foresight to make a few strategic concessions in order to take
the steam out of the campaign.
In addition, Coca-Cola enjoys a favored relationship with the government,
and in the history of its interaction with the Indian state, it has always
maintained the upper hand. In 1977, Coke was ordered to increase Indian
ownership of its operations. Rather than giving in, the company left
India. It made the reasonable estimate that one day India would need the
foreign investment and ask them to return. Two decades later, as India
opened its doors to massive liberalization of the economy, Coca-Cola
returned triumphantly. It then rapidly began buying up all the local
brands that had sprung up in the intervening years.
Today Coke is one of the largest Foreign Direct Investors (FDI) in India,
rivaled only by other giants like GM, Ford, Pepsi, Hughes Electronics, and
until recently, Enron. The company's clout with the local government is
without parallel. In an unprecedented move, Coke was able to pressure the
government to reverse its own rules on Indian ownership of Coke
operations. Under the terms of the special dispensation, Coke would sell
49 percent of the company to local shareholders, but retain 100 percent of
voting rights. This unheard of "compromise" was garnered by the direct
intervention of US Ambassador Blackwill and Commerce Assistant Secretary
Lash.
Acknowledging the economic bargaining power and entrenched position of
Coke in India, organizers are using the WSF meet as a tool to turn their
campaign global. In this project, one of the templates is the Colombian
campaign against Coke. That campaign is spearheaded by Colombia trade
union SINALTRAIN, which brought a suit against Coke in the U.S. alleging
that their local bottler hired death squads to kill union organizers at
bottling plants. Colombian speakers have been traveling across the U.S.
and Europe, urging colleges and towns to boycott Coca-Cola.
Initiatives to remove Coke from college-owned cafeterias are being debated
at over 20 American universities, including Columbia, Hofstra, NYU,
Fordham, University of Vermont and UC Berkeley. Bard College and Lake
Forest College have already cancelled their contracts with Coke. The
financial impact of getting cut off from the nation's next generation of
consumers is no trivial matter to the company. At UC Berkeley alone, Coke
pays $1 million per year for a 10-year contract that gives it exclusive
rights to sell its products on campus.
In Ireland, the boycott has spread outside campuses into surrounding
towns. After University College Dublin removed Coke products from student
union stores, Irish businesses like John Hewitt Bar and Belfast Tourist
Center also removed Coke products. Finally in an audacious move that
could, if successful, really hurt Coke's pocketbook, Corporate Campaign
announced a campaign to force SunTrust Banks to divest its 130 million
shares of Coca-Cola stock.
J.P. Morgan analyst John Faucher, who follows Coca-Cola, was quoted
dismissing the boycotts: "I find it hard to believe this could turn into
anything that would have a significant impact on the company." But the
organizers plan to use the WSF meet as a catalyst to disprove this
orthodoxy and shake Coke at its foundation. Their demands include shutdown
of offending plants, compensation to affected communities and provision of
clean drinking water.
But even if the activists were only able to enforce a change in Coke's
business practices, it would be a major victory against a powerful TNC.
Amit Srivastava of Global Resistance has been in Mumbai for weeks
preparing for the Coke campaign's meetings at the WSF. Explaining the
objectives of the campaign he said, "Of course, Coke is not the only one
doing this. We are also talking about Pepsi and Indian companies that
engage in similar practices. This is also about community rights over
national resources versus corporate and private control over the same.
Coca-Cola is just one example of many when corporate power is allowed to
do what it wants freely."
Sujani Reddy, who is helping with the media coverage of the campaign,
framed the issues in another manner: "The Coca-Cola campaign maps the
processes of globalization really well. The liberalization of the Indian
economy has created this global middle-class as a consumer class. Now,
Coke as a product has a symbolic value, associated with Americana and
cosmopolitanism. So, this moment is a perfect symbol for how the middle
class' own consumption has toxic elements in it."
In a battle over big business, symbolism is a key leverage point for
activists. After the WSF meet ends, organizers plan to focus on
campaigning against Coke in its hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. If the
campaign can leverage Coke's own symbolism against itself, the giant
corporation may find itself with much more than a simple "PR problem" on
its hands.
Naeem Mohaiemen ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is editor of Shobak.org.
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see also:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/7745223.htm
Move along, nothing to see here: Bush and Hastert oppose extending 9/11
inquiry
--------------------
http://www2.observer.com/observer/pages/conason.asp
What’s Bush Hiding From 9/11 Commission?
by Joe Conason ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
In an election year, a Republican President seeking his second term can be
expected to propose more tax cuts and, in this era of right-wing
profligacy, considerably more spending as well. Informed critics calculate
the costs of George W. Bush’s latest proposals in the trillions of
dollars—a vague yet substantial sum that will come due sometime during
what budgetary jargon denotes as "the out years," meaning long after Mr.
Bush has departed the White House.
Excessive spending and tax breaks always elicit more applause than
controversies over the global "Axis of Evil," Niger’s phantom yellowcake
and Iraq’s weapons of mass disappearance. So do such perennially popular
topics as improved health care, the protection of heterosexual marriage
and, in the immortal words of the President’s father, jobs, jobs, jobs.
Estimates of future deficits depend on whether the President actually
tries to send astronauts to live on Mars and the moon, or abandons that
vision in deference to disapproving poll numbers. In short, bread and
maybe circuses.
What Mr. Bush understandably chose not to highlight, however, is his
administration’s continuing determination to undermine, restrict and
censor the investigation of the most significant event of his Presidency:
the attacks on New York and Washington of Sept. 11, 2001.
The President is fortunate that until now, the bipartisan National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has received far
less attention than controversies over the design for a World Trade Center
memorial. At every step, from his opposition to its creation, to his
abortive appointment of Henry Kissinger as its chair, to his refusal to
provide it with adequate funding and cooperation, Mr. Bush has treated the
commission and its essential work with contempt.
In the latest development, the President’s aides refused additional time
for the 9/11 commission to complete its report. Although the original
deadline in the enabling legislation is May 27, the commissioners recently
asked for a few more months to ensure that their product will be "thorough
and credible."
Earlier this month, Thomas Kean—the former New Jersey governor who has
chaired the commission since Mr. Kissinger recused himself—explained why
the commission needs more time. As the genial Republican told The New York
Times, he is only permitted to read the most important classified
documents concerning 9/11 in a little closet known as a "sensitive
compartmented information facility" (or SCIF). He cannot photocopy the
documents, and if he takes notes about them, he must leave the notes in
the SCIF when he leaves.
Other recent statements by Mr. Kean, which he subsequently modified,
suggest that the White House has ample reason to worry about what the
commission’s report will say. In December, he told CBS News that he
believes the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented—and that incompetent
officials were at fault for the failure to uncover and frustrate the plot.
Following the creation and staffing of the commission, many months passed
before the administration agreed to let Mr. Kean look at any of those
crucial documents. The commission still has hundreds of interviews to
conduct, and millions of pages to examine, before its members begin to
draft their conclusions.
But the President’s political advisers, concerned about the political
impact of the commission’s report, are unsympathetic to its requests for
additional time—and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who would have to
approve an extension, is perfectly obedient to his masters in the White
House. According to Newsweek, the administration offered Mr. Kean a
choice: Either keep to the May deadline, or postpone release of the report
until December, when its findings cannot affect the election.
Mr. Bush doesn’t want his re-election subject to any informed judgment
about the disaster that reshaped the nation and his Presidency. But why
should such crucial facts be withheld from the voters? What does the
President fear?
Perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Kean provided a clue to the answers in his
Times interview. Asked whether he thinks the disaster "did not have to
happen," he replied, "Yes, there is a good chance that 9/11 could have
been prevented by any number of people along the way. Everybody pretty
well agrees our intelligence agencies were not set up to deal with
domestic terrorism …. They were not ready for an internal attack." Then,
asked whether "anyone in the Bush administration [had] any idea that an
attack was being planned," he replied: "That is why we are looking at the
internal papers. I can’t talk about what’s classified. [The] President’s
daily briefings are classified. If I told you what was in them, I would go
to jail."
But the commission’s final report may well indicate what the President was
told in his daily briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, when he was sunning himself in
Crawford, Tex.—as well as the many warnings he and his associates were
given by the previous administration. That kind of information could send
him back to Crawford for a permanent vacation.
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Subject: [pjnews] The New Pearl Harbor: the Bush Administration and 9/11
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http://www.deceptiondollar.com/news/911BookReview.htm
Book review: The New Pearl Harbor: Was the Bush Administration Complicit
in 9/11?
by Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether
Until recently I dismissed the suggestions that the Bush administration
might have been complicit in allowing 9/11 to happen as groundless
"conspiracy theory." I regarded the federal investigative bureaucracies as
suffering from a "lock the barn door after the horse has escaped"
syndrome. American government agencies seemed to me to be full of
repressive energy and exaggerated overreach after some atrocity had
occurred, but remarkably incompetent when it came to preventing something
in advance. There is no question that the Bush administration has profited
greatly from the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
but I did not imagine that they could have actually known they were being
planned and deliberately allowed them to happen.
Thus it was with some skepticism that I agreed to read the new book
written by David Ray Griffin, a process theologian from the Claremont
School of Theology (Claremont, California), that argues the case for just
such complicity. This book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions
about the Bush Administration and 9/11, is due for release in January,
2004. Griffin admits that he too was skeptical toward such suggestions
until he began to actually read the evidence that has been accumulated by
a number of researchers, both in the United States and Europe. As he
became increasingly convinced that there was a case for complicity, he
planned to write an article, but this quickly grew into a book.
The first startling piece of evidence that Griffin puts forward is
establishing the motive among leaders in the Bush administration for
allowing such an attack. Already in 2000 the right-wing authors of the
"Project for the New American Century: Rebuilding America's Defenses,"
opined that the military expansion they desired would be difficult unless
a "new Pearl Harbor" occurred. They had outlined plans for a major
imperial expansion of American power that included a greatly increased
military budget and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, primarily to secure
oil supplies, but also to control the region generally. But they believed
that the American people would not have the will for such actions without
some devastating attack from outside that would galvanize them through
fear and anger to support it. In short, they had already envisioned
facilitating a major attack on the United States in order to gain the
public support for their policy goals.
Griffin then shows the considerable evidence that the Bush administration
knew in advance that such an attack was being planned, despite claims by
the administration that such an attack was completely unanticipated. As
early as 1995 the Philippine police conveyed to the U.S. information found
on an Al-Queda computer that detailed "Project Bojinka" that envisioned
hyjacking planes and flying them into targets, such as the World Trade
Center, the White House and the Pentagon. By July of 2001 the CIA and the
FBI had intercepted considerable information that such an attack was
planned for the Fall. Leaders of several different countries, including
the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as leaders of Russia, Britain, Jordan,
Egypt and Israel, conveyed information to the United States that such an
attack was being planned. It appears not only that all these warnings were
disregarded, but that investigations into them were obstructed.
The actual events of September 11 leave many puzzling questions. Standard
procedures for intervention when a plane goes off course were not followed
in the case of all four airplanes. Within ten minutes of evidence that a
plane has been hyjacked [sic] standard procedures call for fighter jets to
intervene and demand that the plane follow it to an airport. If the plane
fails to obey, it should be shot down. There was time for this to happen
before the plane was over New York City in the case of the first jet and
more than ample time in the case of the second. Moreover when the order
was finally given to intervene, it was not to McGuire Air Force Base in
New Jersey, seventy miles from New York City, but from Otis Air National
Guard in Cape Cod.
Griffin also examines unexplained issues about the other two planes. Eye
witnesses and on-site evidence suggests that a missile or guided fighter
aircraft, not a large commercial plane, crashed into the Pentagon.
Moreover the part of the Pentagon that was hit was not where high ranking
generals were working, but an area under repair with few military
officials. Flight #93 was the only plane shot down, although only after it
appeared passengers were on the verge of taking control. Griffin also
examines the conduct of President Bush on that day, giving considerable
evidence that he knew of the first crash immediately after it happened,
but delayed his response for some half a hour, nonchalantly continuing
with a photo op with elementary school children.
These are only a few details of the myriad data that Griffin assembles to
show that, not only did the Bush administration have detailed information
that such attacks were going to occur on September 11 and failed to carry
through protective responses in advance, but that they also obstructed the
standard procedures to intervene in these events on the actual day it
happened.
Griffin concludes the book with some considerable evidence of the way the
Bush Administration has obstructed any independent investigation of 9/11
since it occurred, both withholding key documents and insisting that the
official investigation, when it was set up, limit itself to
recommendations about how to avoid such an event in the future, and not
focus on how it actually was able to happen. Griffin writes in a precise
and careful fashion, avoiding inflammatory rhetoric. He argues for a high
probability for the Bush Administration's complicity in allowing and
facilitating the attacks, based not on any one conclusive piece of
evidence, but the sheer accumulation of all of the data. He concludes by
calling for a genuinely independent investigative effort that would
examine all this evidence. He himself plans to send the book to the Kean
Commission presently charged with that task, even though he has doubts
about its real independence.
I personally found Griffin's book both convincing and chilling. If the
complicity of the Bush Administration to which he points is true, then
Americans have a far greater problem on their hands than even the more
ardent anti-war critics have imagined. If the administration would do
this, what else would they do to maintain and expand their power?
-----------------------------
(Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether has been a pioneer Christian feminist
theologian for over three decades and is among the most widely read
theologians in the world. Her book, Sexism and God-Talk, a classic in the
field of theology, remains the only systematic feminist treatment of the
Christian symbols to date. With wide-ranging scholarship, Dr. Ruether has
written and edited over thirty books and hundreds of articles and
reviews.)
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush on Mars? Republican Space Policy Questioned
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Bush's Space Odyssey
By Michelle Ciarrocca, January 19, 2004
In response to President Bush's proposed space odyssey, one must ask why?
Why now, at a time of ongoing war and record budget deficits? Why head off
into space at a time when any number of domestic issues -- from health
care to unemployment and education -- are more urgent priorities?
Bush's vague plan to "gain a new foothold on the Moon" and send astronauts
to Mars, may seem benign, even visionary. Speaking at NASA headquarters,
Mr. Bush explained, "mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason
we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea." However,
if we look beyond the rhetoric, there is cause for concern. Anyone
familiar with recommendations from a commission on military uses of space
chaired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, before his appointment, or
the U.S. Space Command's strategic planning documents, is raising
eyebrows.
The Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and
Organization was released in January of 2001. Chaired by Rumsfeld until
his appointment as Bush's Secretary of Defense, the commission claimed
that the U.S. is at risk of a "space Pearl Harbor" due to a lack of
"celestial" military preparedness. It also made a number of concrete
recommendations ranging from the need to develop new technologies to
defend U.S. space assets, to ensuring the U.S. can deploy weapons in
space. The Commission's findings and recommendations are echoed in the
U.S. Space Command's strategic master plan, posted on its web site, which
lays out the overall goal of U.S. domination of space to protect U.S.
interests and investments. The document warns, "we cannot fully exploit
space until we control it."
Although President Bush has made no mention of the military implications
of his new proposal for a Moon base and a Mars mission, the President's
sudden emphasis on space could mark the first step down a dangerous path.
The Space Command's strategic plan clearly states, "this capability
(space) is the ultimate high ground of U.S. military operations. Air Force
doctrine views air, space, and information as key ingredients for
dominating the battlespace and ensuring superiority." As Bruce Gagnon,
director of Global Network Against Nuclear Power and Weapons in Space,
aptly noted "there is legitimate reason to question the plan for the
establishment of bases on the moon. The military has long eyed the moon as
a potential base of operations as warfare is moved into the heavens."
What also needs to be discussed is the fact that no fewer than eight
Pentagon military contractors were represented on Rumsfeld's space
commission. Companies such as Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC), the Aerospace Corporation, Litton Industries, Boeing
Corporation, Northrop Grumman and Alliant Techsystems, were represented on
the commission -- all companies that stand to benefit from the
commission's findings. In addition to this previous commission's
recommendations, Bush has decided to form a new presidential commission to
look at how to make his vision a reality. Heading this commission will be
Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., a former Air Force secretary, AND current
board member of Lockheed Martin -- one of the nation's top aerospace and
military contractors.
Meanwhile, over at the Air Force, the assistant secretary in charge of
acquiring military space assets as part of Rumsfeld's new emphasis on
space as a place for exerting strategic dominance is none other the Peter
B. Teets, a former chief operating officer at Lockheed Martin. On at least
one occasion, Teets has told gatherings of corporate, military, and
Pentagon officials that the weaponization of space is inevitable. It may
or may not be inevitable, but if representatives of companies who stand to
profit from it continue to be put in charge of our space policy, the
likelihood of an arms race in space will be a lot higher. The Bush
administration's heavy reliance on defense executives with interests in
military space ventures calls into question the objectivity of the panel's
recommendations. The true intent of President Bush's rallying cry to
further space exploration could simply be in the name of science, but
these issues need to be seriously discussed beforehand.
Michelle Ciarrocca is a Research Associate at the World Policy Institute
__________________
The Arms Trade Resource Center was established in 1993 to engage in public
education and policy advocacy aimed at promoting restraint in the
international arms trade.
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms
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Subject: [pjnews] Taking Liberties
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/0120-02
Resistance to Patriot Act Gaining Ground
----------------
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040112&s=cole
Taking Liberties
by DAVID COLE
[from the January 12, 2004 issue]
Even in times of national emergency--indeed, particularly in such
times--it is the obligation of the Judicial Branch to ensure the
preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the Executive
Branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens
alike." So wrote the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on December
18, ruling that foreign nationals held as "enemy combatants" at Guantánamo
Bay Naval Base have a right to seek court review of the legality of their
detention. The same day, a Court of Appeals on the other coast ruled that
the President acting alone lacks authority to detain US citizens as "enemy
combatants."
Never before has the Administration suffered such setbacks to its domestic
war on terrorism. And the backlash has been growing. On December 3 a Court
of Appeals ruled unconstitutional significant portions of the federal
statute criminalizing "material support" to designated "terrorist
organizations." The statute has been the linchpin of most of the Justice
Department's terrorism prosecutions precisely because it does not require
proof of individual involvement in, or support of, actual terrorism--only
proof of some "support" to a proscribed group. The court held that the
prohibitions on providing "personnel" and "training" to such groups
impermissibly penalized constitutionally protected activity.
On December 9 the military embarrassingly admitted that it did not even
know whether supposedly secret information seized from Capt. James Yee,
the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo, was classified. Yee had been
arrested and detained for more than two months, with much fanfare about
national security breaches at Guantánamo, for allegedly taking his own
notes off the base in a notebook. Meanwhile, in one of the most vindictive
prosecutions in years, the military is prosecuting Yee for committing
adultery and having pornographic images on his computer, hardly matters of
national security.
For all John Ashcroft's blustering, only one 9/11 terrorism case has
actually gone to trial--and the outcome of that trial has now been called
into serious question. The case, tried in Detroit, resulted in a mixed
verdict this past June. Two defendants were convicted of conspiracy to
support some unspecified terrorist act in the unspecified future, and two
others were acquitted on the terrorism charges. On December 16 the federal
district judge in the case formally admonished Ashcroft for interfering
with the trial by violating a gag order and officially praising the
government's principal witness while the jury was deliberating. And on
December 12 the judge held a hearing on whether to vacatethe convictions
altogether on the ground that federal prosecutors had failed to disclose
evidence that the same witness had lied on the stand.
These developments suggest why the Administration has sought to avoid any
meaningful review of its detention of enemy combatants. Due process,
checks and balances, and judicial review all have the potential to reveal
error and abuse. And when the government launches a "preventive"
law-enforcement strategy based on predictions about future behavior rather
than actual evidence of illegal conduct, error and abuse are bound to
follow.
As the Ninth Circuit said, courts have an "obligation" to "prevent the
Executive Branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and
aliens alike." Precisely to avoid the confining effects of that
"obligation," the Administration has insisted that the more than 650
people held at Guantánamo have no right to any judicial review or even to
a hearing before military officers. It has similarly argued that US
citizens designated by the President as "enemy combatants" can be held
indefinitely, incommunicado, without access to courts or lawyers. In
essence, it has argued that when it comes to detentions in the war on
terrorism, the President is above the law.
Now two courts have squarely rejected that view. The Ninth Circuit held
that the Guantánamo detainees have a right to go to court to make sure the
President is acting within the law. And the Second Circuit held that
absent authorization from Congress, US citizens captured on US soil may
not be detained as "enemy combatants" at all. In both cases, the courts
have insisted that in a constitutional democracy, the rule of law has an
essential role.
The Guantánamo issue is already before the Supreme Court in another case,
which will be decided by June. The Court is also virtually certain to take
up the question of whether US citizens may be held as "enemy combatants."
Will the Supreme Court live up to the "obligation" identified by the Ninth
Circuit? It was willing to step in to protect the rights of George W. Bush
as he sought to block a recount in order to be selected President with
fewer votes than his opponent. But how will it respond to the
Administration's argument that Bush ought to enjoy not only the powers of
a President in a system of checks and balances but the prerogative of a
king, unfettered by the limits of law?
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Subject: [pjnews] Dick Cheney's Distortions on Iraq and Haliburton
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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1130773,00.html
Stress Epidemic Strikes American Forces in Iraq:
The war's over, but the suicide rate is high and the army is riddled with
acute psychiatric problems
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0125-08.htm
Female GIs Report Rapes in Iraq War
37 seek aid after alleging sex assaults by U.S. soldiers
--------------------
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0123-02.htm
Cheney's Latest Distortions
from the Center for American Progress
In January 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney did a round of media
interviews with NPR and others in which he reinforced his claims of a
connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. To back these claims up,
he cited documents already discredited as “inaccurate” by the Bush
Administration.
SADDAM-AL QAEDA CONNECTION
CHENEY CLAIM: "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection
between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I am very confident that there
was an established relationship there." - Vice President Cheney, 1/22/04
FACT: According to documents, "Saddam Hussein warned his Iraqi supporters
to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to
battle U.S. troops. The document provides another piece of evidence
challenging the Bush administration contention of close cooperation
between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda terrorists." [NY Times, 1/15/04]
FACT: "CIA interrogators have already elicited from the top Qaeda
officials in custody that, before the American-led invasion, Osama bin
Laden had rejected entreaties from some of his lieutenants to work jointly
with Saddam." [NY Times, 1/15/04]
FACT: "Sec. of State Colin Powell conceded Thursday that despite his
assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no 'smoking gun' proof
of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and
terrorists of al-Qaeda.'I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence
about the connection,' Powell said." [NY Times, 1/9/04]
FACT: “Three former Bush Administration officials who worked on
intelligence and national security issues said the prewar evidence tying
Al Qaeda was tenuous, exaggerated and often at odds with the conclusions
of key intelligence agencies.” [National Journal, 8/9/03]
FACT: Declassified documents “undercut Bush administration claims before
the war that Hussein had links to Al Qaeda.” [LA Times, 7/19/03].
FACT: “The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the United
Nations Security Council to track Al Qaeda told reporters that his team
had found no evidence linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.” [NY Times,
6/27/03]
FACT: "U.S. allies have found no links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.'We have
found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda,' said Europe's top
investigator. 'If there were such links, we would have found them. But we
have found no serious connections whatsoever.’" [LA Times, 11/4/02]
YASIM ALLEGATION
CHENEY CLAIM: “Abdul Rahman Yasim arrived back in Iraq and was put on the
payroll and provided a house, safe harbor and sanctuary. So Saddam Hussein
had an established track record of providing safe harbor and sanctuary for
terrorists.” – Vice President Cheney, 1/22/04
FACT: “Even if the new information holds up — and intelligence and law
enforcement officials disagree on its conclusiveness — the links tying
Yasin, Saddam and al-Qaeda are tentative.” [USA Today, 9/17/03]
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
CHENEY CLAIM: "You ought to go look at an article that Stephen Hayes did
in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago, that goes through and lays
out in some detail, based on an assessment that was done by the Department
of Defense and forwarded to the Senate Intelligence Committee some weeks
ago. That's your best source of information” to justify the Saddam-Al
Qaeda claim. – Vice President Cheney, 1/9/04
FACT: “Reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new
information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter
to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate. Individuals who leak
or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to
national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal.” [DoD,
11/15/03]
------------------
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=23898
Claim vs. Fact: Cheney, Halliburton & the Government
January 23, 2004
Vice President Dick Cheney has gone to great lengths to claim that there
are very few connections between Halliburton and the U.S. government. He
has also claimed that scrutiny of Halliburton only comes from political
opponents who are “desperate.” In each of his claims, the facts tell a
very different story.
Government Contracts
CLAIM: “The government had absolutely nothing to do with [my economic
success at Halliburton].”
– Dick Cheney, 10/5/00
FACT: “Cheney's comment left out how closely Dallas-based Halliburton's
fortunes are linked to the U.S. government. The world's largest oil
services firm is a leading U.S. defense contractor and has benefited from
financial guarantees granted by U.S. agencies. During Cheney's five years
as chairman and chief executive, Halliburton was identified as a potential
participant in 10 loans or loan guarantees valued at a total of $1.8
billion awarded by the U.S. government. Additionally, during Cheney's
tenure, the U.S. Defense Department granted Halliburton contracts valued
at about $1.8 billion, according to department records.” In 1999 alone,
“the Pentagon ranked Halliburton the No. 17 recipient of ''prime contract
awards'' with $657.5 million.”
– Bloomberg News, 10/6/00
CLAIM: “I wouldn't know how to manipulate the [government contract]
process if I wanted to.”
– Dick Cheney, 1/22/04
FACT: “A report by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity
suggested that Halliburton essentially cashed in - doubling the value of
its government contracts - on Cheney. The company took in revenue of $ 2.3
billion on government contracts ,” which was “up $1.2 billion from the
five-year period before he arrived.”
– LA Times, 10/19/00 ; Chicago Tribune, 8/10/00 ; AFP, 12/14/03
Charges Against Halliburton
CLAIM: “Cheney said, ‘Halliburton gets unfairly maligned simply because of
their past association with me.' He said allegations of corruption stem
from ‘desperate' political opponents who ‘can't find any legitimate policy
differences to debate. He said critics haven't produced any evidence to
support their claim, which he said is unfounded.”
– Dow Jones, 1/22/04
FACT: Halliburton itself has acknowledged that it “accepted up to $6
million in kickbacks” in its no-bid contract work in Iraq . Additionally,
it is the Bush Administration – not “political opponents” that is looking
into allegations that the company overcharged the government by $61
million. And it is the Bush Administration that " repeatedly warned the
company that the food it was serving the 110,000 U.S. troops in Iraq was
'dirty'” with an audit finding "blood all over the floor" of its kitchens,
"dirty pans," and "rotting meats ... and vegetables."
– Boston Globe, 1/23/04; CBS, 12/12/03;
Cheney's Continued Links to Halliburton
Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say that he has no ties to
Halliburton since joining the GOP ticket in 2000. He also promised to
clear himself from any conflict of interest should he become Vice
President. In each of his claims, the facts tell a very different story.
CLAIM: “But what I'll have to do, assuming we're successful [in the
election], is divest myself, that is, sell any remaining shares that I
have in the company.”
– Dick Cheney, 7/30/00
FACT: A congressional report found that Cheney still owns “more than
433,000 Halliburton stock options,” including “100,000 shares at $54.50
per share, 33,333 shares at $28.125 and 300,000 shares at $39.50 per
share.”
– CNN, 9/25/03
CLAIM: “I severed my ties with Halliburton when I became a candidate for
Vice President in August of 2000.”
– Dick Cheney, 1/22/04
FACT: Along with the 433,000 stock options, “ Cheney still receives about
$150,000 a year” from Halliburton.
– CNN, 10/25/03
CLAIM: “What happens financially [by joining the GOP ticket], obviously,
is I take a bath , in one sense.”
– Dick Cheney, 7/25/00
FACT: Halliburton “has agreed to let Mr. Cheney, the Republican
vice-presidential candidate, retire with a package worth an estimated $20
million, according to people who have reviewed the deal.”
– NY Times, 8/12/00
Conflict of Interest
CLAIM: “I'll do whatever I have to do to, Sam, to avoid a conflict of
interest. I will eliminate the conflict. I can assure you, I've said
repeatedly, I will not tolerate or be party to a conflict of interests
while I'm vice president. I'll do whatever I have to do to resolve that
conflict.”
– Dick Cheney, 8/27/00
FACT: A congressional report found that “the more than 433,000 stock
options he possesses ‘is considered among the 'ties' retained in or
'linkages to former employers' that may 'represent a continuing financial
interest' in those employers which makes them potential conflicts of
interest.”
– CNN, 9/25/03
Cheney's Tenure at Halliburton
Vice President Dick Cheney has told many stories about his time at
Halliburton. And even as criticism mounts over Halliburton's treatment of
U.S. troops and taxpayers, he continues to say he is proud of the company.
CLAIM: “I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq even
arrangements that were supposedly legal. We've not done any business in
Iraq since the sanctions were imposed and I had a standing policy that I
wouldn't do that.”
– Dick Cheney, 8/27/00
FACT: “According to oil industry executives and confidential United
Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed
contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and
spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer
of the Dallas-based company. Two former senior executives of the
Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no
policy against doing business with Iraq . One of the executives also says
that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts,
he is certain Cheney knew about them. The Halliburton subsidiaries joined
dozens of American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq
increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion
in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth more than
$40 billion.”
– WP, 6/23/01
Halliburton's Reputation
CLAIM: “Halliburton is a fine company, and I'm pleased that I was
associated with the company.”
– Dick Cheney, 8/7/02
FACT: Halliburton has acknowledged that it “accepted up to $6 million in
kickbacks” in its contract work in Iraq . It is also under scrutiny over
allegations of overcharging the government by $61 million in Iraq – a
practice the company was previously fined $2 million for. The company also
potentially faces criminal charges in a $180 million international bribery
scandal during the time Cheney was CEO of the company. The Pentagon has
also " repeatedly warned the company that the food it was serving the
110,000 U.S. troops in Iraq was 'dirty'” with an audit finding "blood all
over the floor" of its kitchens, "dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad
bars and rotting meats…and vegetables."
– B. Globe, 1/23/04; CBS, 12/12/03 & 4/12/03; W. Post, 1/21/04; AFP, 12/14/03
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0126-09.htm
Federal Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0126-08.htm
Courts Seen Chipping Away at Anti-Terror Powers
----------------
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17526
Personal Voices: Bullies at the Border
By Glenn Walton, Rabble
January 9, 2004
I've crossed many borders in my life: I've been held up for 12 hours at
the Bulgarian-Turkish border while my travelling companions, home-coming
Turks, negotiated the size of the bribe to be paid to the border
officials; I've had my car inspected at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin by
suspicious East German police; and once, when I'd lost my passport and had
to go to Germany from Italy to get it replaced, I drove around Switzerland
because that non-European Community member would have required the missing
document, whereas member state Austria didn't.
But the border I've crossed the most is the American one, usually by car
between St. Stephen, New Brunswick and Calais, Maine, on my way to visit
my sister in Boston. Normally it's a quick drive-through – a couple of
questions about destination and duration of stay, and you're off. Over the
holidays, however, our travelling companion, a friend from Italy, was
called into the customs building for questioning and then, for good
measure, we too were subjected to the drill.
It wasn't pretty.
No one, of course, minds security measures meant to root out terrorists,
and it's good to see border officials taking the task seriously. But the
questioning we were put through crossed its own lines: We were badgered,
patronized, treated like disobedient children – and long after it had to
be apparent to everyone that we weren't terrorists and had nothing to
hide. After an hour of this unnecessary treatment we left the building
humiliated and angry and cursing George W. Bush, who presided over the
whole ritual in the form of a huge grinning photograph.
It was particularly disturbing that the guy who went after us did so with
gusto, even glee, obviously enjoying his job. He clearly got off on our
helplessness, and expected absolute obsequiousness. Realizing that any
hint of amusement or anger is enough to trigger an arbitrary and
dismissive judgment, I'm pretty good at stifling my feelings, so after a
series of questions, one of which loonily concerned my “status” as a child
living in Washington D.C. in the 1960s, I was patronizingly pronounced “a
nice person.” But our friend from Italy, her hackles up, made the mistake
of asking if the questioning would take long, and, branded rude and
disrespectful, was whisked off into another room for interrogation.
While she was out of our sight, another woman, already on the verge of
tears, was separated from her bus tour companions, led out, and badgered
for all to hear about being unemployed.
“Who do you think you are, going on vacation when you don't have a job?
Why should we let you into our country?” etc, etc. She reappeared crying,
was given a final talking-to, then allowed to get back on the waiting bus,
but I'm sure her vacation to the land of the free, home of the brave, was
irrevocably coloured by her humiliation at the border.
What was so unsettling about the whole experience was the realization that
as a white professional with no criminal record, I got off easily. But
what of people, not terrorists, but of another race and class, without the
verbal skills to defend themselves against this sort of arbitrary but
official abuse? They're sitting ducks for the kind of sadist now
apparently being given free rein all over the world. From Iraq to
Guantanamo to Calais, Maine, Bush's bullies are detaining and
interrogating in the name of homeland security, and people less lucky than
I have been held in military prisons on mere suspicions, without trial,
without recourse.
Something unpleasant and dark has been let out of the bag by post-9-11
hysteria, and it won't be going back in for the foreseeable future.
Fortunately a U.S. court recently informed the White House that detention
without trial is unconstitutional, and it will be interesting to see how
that case makes it way through the courts.
In the meantime, be forewarned: They're waiting for you at the border.
Make sure you're rich and white and respectful, just the way the president
wants you to be. But be prepared to be treated like a disobedient
five-year old anyway.
Glenn Walton is a filmmaker and writer in Halifax.
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An editorial note:
If any of you clicked on the link
(http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17540) for the article I sent
out yesterday (http://snipurl.com/44jc), you would have seen this notice
on the Alternet website:
Dear Readers:
Our apologies, but we have taken this article off our site after the
author voiced his unhappiness with it.
The Editors
An astute reader did some searching around the web and found that there
were apparently some problems with this story. Here's a follow-up written
by the author: http://snipurl.com/44ja . I found this suprising, since
Alternet is generally a pretty reputable and reliable place. Upon closer
examination, however, as well as a comparison with the original article
the author wrote (http://snipurl.com/41q6)-- from which Alternet's version
was taken-- it appears that the article was substancially excerpted and
details were removed, which may have been unethical, but the story of the
Green party "terrorist" not being allowed to fly was not a hoax and did,
in fact, happen. And there are unfortunately many more examples of this
kind of thing happening:
http://www.progressive.org/feb04/roths0204.html
Protester = Criminal?
by Matthew Rothschild
In many places across George Bush's America, you may be losing your
ability to exercise your lawful First Amendment rights of speech and
assembly. Increasingly, some police departments, the FBI, and the Secret
Service are engaging in the criminalization--or, at the very least, the
marginalization--of dissent.
"We have not seen such a crackdown on First Amendment activities since the
Vietnam War," says Anthony Romero, executive director of the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
This crackdown took a violent turn in late November at the Miami protests
against the Free Trade Area of the Americas and at an anti-war protest at
the Port of Oakland last April. In both cases, the police used astonishing
force to break up protests. But even when the police do not engage in
violence, they sometimes blatantly interfere with the right to dissent by
preemptively arresting people on specious grounds.
Sarah Bantz is a member of the Missouri Resistance Against Genetic
Engineering. Last May, she and several hundred others were gathering in
St. Louis to protest against Monsanto and the World Agricultural Forum,
which was meeting there.
On May 16, the first day of the protest weekend, Bantz and a small group
of other activists went to the Regional Chamber and Growth Association to
give their pitch on how biotech was hurting local farmers. After that
meeting, she and her fellow activists piled into her van, but they were
able to get only about a mile down the road when something unusual
happened.
"All of a sudden there was one police car and then another, and I was
pulled over," she recalls. "One officer came around and asked me to get
out of the vehicle, which I did. The cop started to look through the van
without permission. I had some Vitamin C pills sitting out, so they
decided that was a drug and they were going to arrest me. They put me in
cuffs and put me in the back of the car. They really had no grounds for
arresting me, but I spent ten hours in jail." One reason they cited, along
with the vitamins, was her failure to wear a seatbelt.
Bantz was scheduled to deliver three speeches at what organizers called
their Biodevastation 7 Conference. "I gave none of them," she says. "For
one, I was in jail, and for another I was talking to the police about why
they detained me. And I was too frazzled to give the third. It was all
unbelievable."
That same day, the Flying Rutabaga Bicycle Circus expected to take part in
the protests. "We are a group of concerned bicyclists, puppeteers,
musicians, farmhands, clowns, cheerleaders, activists, eaters of food, and
drinkers of water," the circus says on its web page. "We are united in a
quest to seek out food (that's our fuel) that is not tampered with by
biotechnology companies. We ride for diversity, organic farming, and
biojustice everywhere."
But they weren't allowed to ride in St. Louis.
"We set off on our bicycles for our first performance, a small skit, to
let the protesters know about our Caravan Across the Corn Belt tour," says
Erik Gillard, one of the Flying Rutabagas, who was riding with eight
others. "We were following traffic rules when a big police paddy wagon
pulled up with its light on. Gradually, more police officers arrived, and
they told us we had to leave our bicycles. We were all arrested for
operating our bicycles without a license."
There is no such offense in St. Louis, the ACLU of Eastern Missouri says.
Afterward, Police Chief Joe Mokwa said the arresting officer was
"overenthusiastic," according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
After a while, the police changed the charge to "impeding the flow of
traffic on a bicycle," Gillard says. "It was written up for some
intersection ten blocks from where we were all picked up." He says the
police detained the group for six or seven hours. "All of our journals
that contained phone directories or e-mail lists or information about
where we were going to stay were taken and never returned," he says.
Also on the same day, the police raided the Bolozone, an activist group
home where many of the cyclists were staying. Reminiscent of police raids
in Washington, D.C., during the 2000 World Bank-IMF protests, this one
succeeded in detaining people prior to the demonstration.
One of the residents of the Bolozone, Kelley Meister, a political activist
and artist who identifies herself as an anarchist, was there the morning
of that raid.
"I was out in the alley painting a sign," says Meister, "and one cop car
drove up and then four more. Two officers came toward me, and I said, 'Hi,
can I help you? I live here.'
"And they said, 'This building is condemned.' And they started to walk
past me.
"I said, 'Do you have a warrant? I don't give you permission to enter my
house.'
"The reply was, 'We don't need a warrant. This building is condemned.' "
The St. Louis housing inspector, who came with the police, brought a
condemnation notice with him, she says.
The owner of the building, Dan Green, had been working cooperatively with
the city for months while rehabbing it, according to Denise Lieberman,
legal director of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. The timing of the raid
makes it clear that the police used a "bogus housing inspection to conduct
a criminal search without a warrant," she says.
"They arrested me and two of the cyclists, and charged us with occupying a
condemned building," Meister says. "They put us in handcuffs, and placed
us in a police van. I could see them carrying things out of the house,
such as art from my room and bags of stuff. I was taken to the station and
held for fifteen hours. Some of the others were held for twenty hours."
The police did not let Meister back in her home for five days. "When we
finally got inside, we realized that they had ransacked the house from top
to bottom," she says. The police also confiscated the bikes, puppets,
props, posters, and banners of the Rutabaga Circus cyclists who had been
staying at the Bolozone. When they got their bikes back after the weekend
was over, many of their tires were slashed, Gillard says.
Meister says she's considering suing the police. And so is the ACLU of
Eastern Missouri.
Richard Wilkes, public relations officer for the St. Louis Police
Department, says "the department really doesn't have a response" to the
allegations about raiding the house or detaining protesters or cyclists.
"None of those things had anything to do with preventing people from
protesting," he says.
It's not every day that a sitting judge will allege he saw the police
commit felonies. But that's what Judge Richard Margolius said on December
11 in regard to police misconduct in Miami during the protests against the
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in late November.
Judge Margolius was presiding over a case that the protesters brought
against the city. In court, he said he saw the police commit at least
twenty felonies, Amy Driscoll of the Miami Herald reported. "Pretty
disgraceful what I saw with my own eyes," he said, according to the paper.
"This was a real eye-opener. A disgrace for the community."
Police used tasers, shock batons, rubber bullets, beanbags filled with
chemicals, large sticks, and concussion grenades against lawful
protesters. (Just prior to the FTAA protests, the city of Miami passed an
ordinance requiring a permit for any gathering of more than six people for
longer than twenty-nine minutes.) They took the offensive, wading into
crowds and driving after the demonstrators. Police arrested more than 250
protesters. Almost all of them were simply exercising their First
Amendment rights. Police also seized protest material and destroyed it,
and they confiscated personal property, demonstrators say.
"How many police officers have been charged by the state attorney so far
for what happened out there during the FTAA?" the judge asked in court,
according to the Herald. The prosecutor said none. "Pretty sad commentary,
at least from what I saw," the judge retorted.
Even for veterans of protests, the police actions in Miami were unlike any
they had encountered before. "I've been to a number of the
anti-globalization protests--Seattle, Cancún, D.C.--and this was
different," says Norm Stockwell, operations coordinator for WORT, the
community radio station in Madison, Wisconsin. "At previous events, the
police force was defensive, with heavy armor hoping to hold back protests.
In Miami, police were in light armor and were poised to go after the
protesters, and that's what they did. They actually went into the crowds
to divide the protesters, then chased them into different neighborhoods."
Stockwell says some reporters were mistreated, especially if they were not
"embedded" with the Miami police.
"I got shot twice [with rubber projectiles], once in the back, another
time in the leg," reported Jeremy Scahill of Democracy Now! "John Hamilton
from the Workers Independent News Service was shot in the neck by a
pepper-spray pellet." Ana Nogueira, Scahill's colleague from Democracy
Now!, was videotaping some of the police mayhem when she was arrested,
Scahill said. "In police custody, the authorities made Ana remove her
clothes because they were pepper sprayed. The police forced her to strip
naked in front of male officers."
John Heckenlively, former head of the Racine County Democratic Party in
Wisconsin, says he was cornered by the police late in the afternoon of
November 20. Heckenlively and a few companions were trying to move away
from the protest area when "a large cordon of police, filling the entire
block edge to edge, was moving up the street," he says. "As they
approached, an officer told us that we should leave the area. We informed
him that was precisely what we were attempting to do, and seconds later,
he placed us under arrest."
Police kept Heckenlively in tight handcuffs behind his back for more than
six hours, he says, adding that he was held for a total of sixty hours.
Trade unionists were particularly outraged at the treatment they received
in Miami. John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, wrote Attorney General John
Ashcroft on December 3 to urge the Justice Department to investigate "the
massive and unwarranted repression of constitutional rights and civil
liberties that took place in Miami."
Sweeney wrote that on November 20, police interfered with the federation's
demonstration "by denying access to buses, blocking access to the
amphitheater where the rally was occurring, and deploying armored
personnel carriers, water cannons, and scores of police in riot gear with
clubs in front of the amphitheater entrance. Some union retirees had their
buses turned away from Miami altogether by the police, and were sent back
home."
Blocking access to the rally was the least of it. After the march, "police
advanced on groups of peaceful protesters without provocation," Sweeney
wrote. "The police failed to provide those in the crowd with a safe route
to disperse, and then deployed pepper spray and rubber bullets against
protesters as they tried to leave the scene. Along with the other peaceful
protesters, AFL-CIO staff, union peacekeepers, and retirees were trapped
in the police advance. One retiree sitting on a chair was sprayed directly
in the face with pepper spray. An AFL-CIO staff member was hit by a rubber
bullet while trying to leave the scene. When the wife of a retired
Steelworker verbally protested police tactics, she was thrown to the
ground on her face and a gun was pointed to her head."
The ACLU of Greater Miami is planning on filing several suits against the
Miami Police Department, says Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, president of the
group. "This was a clear abuse of power by the police, and an
indiscriminate use of force," she says. "People who were retreating were
being shot in the back with rubber bullets. One photojournalist, Carl
Kesser, was filming the police, and he was hit in the head with a beanbag
above his eye socket. If it had hit him a little bit lower, he could have
lost his eye. The police were using tasers on people who were down, who
were already restrained. These police officers were using these weapons as
if they were Pez dispensers. They acted like as long as it wasn't a
firearm, they could use the weapons to their hearts' content."
"We did what we had to do based on the situation at the time," says Miami
Police Officer Herminia Salas-Jacobson. "If anyone has any concerns or
questions, we've asked them to come forward, and we will address each one
on an individual basis."
The police used $8.5 million of the $87 billion Congress appropriated for
the Iraq War to patrol the streets of Miami. Police Chief John Timoney
thanked his officers for their "remarkable restraint." And he won praise
in some law enforcement quarters for what is being called the Miami Model.
By the way, Timoney was the police commissioner in Philadelphia during the
2000 Republican Convention, and his tactics then raised questions about
the violation of protesters' civil liberties. Nonetheless, Timoney has
consulted with the Democratic National Committee on security issues for
the Democratic Convention in Boston this summer.
continued...
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Subject: [pjnews] 2/2 Protest At Your Own Risk
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http://www.progressive.org/feb04/roths0204.html
Protester = Criminal?
by Matthew Rothschild
continued...
Seven months before the FTAA in Miami, police used brutal force on the
West Coast. At the Port of Oakland on the morning of April 7, more than
500 anti-war demonstrators gathered to protest against two shipping
companies that were involved in George Bush's Iraq War.
The police responded by firing rubber bullets, wooden pellets, and tear
gas into the crowd. Nine members of Local 10 of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union were injured, as were at least thirty-one
demonstrators. These forty individuals have filed a class action lawsuit
against the city of Oakland and several Oakland police officers.
"I was hit on the back of the right calf as I attempted to run away from
the police fire," wrote Willow Rosenthal, one of the plaintiffs, in her
statement. "The entire back of my calf was blood red and swollen with a
circular mark of broken skin about three quarters of an inch across in the
center. The calf was numb about three inches around the point of impact,
and I wasn't able to walk without assistance."
Another plaintiff, Scott Fleming, was "shot five times in the back,
shoulder, and under his arms with wooden dowels fired directly at him as
he fled," the suit says. The police also allegedly attacked at least two
legal observers and two people videotaping the event.
"This was the most outrageous incident of unprovoked mass police violence
the National Lawyers Guild has seen in our twenty years of providing legal
support to Bay Area demonstrations," said National Lawyers Guild attorney
Rachel Lederman, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, in a press
release.
This case hopes "to reestablish the constitutional principle that the
police cannot choose to impose the price of serious physical injury on
persons engaging in nonviolent protest activities," said Alan Schlosser,
legal director of the ACLU of Northern California, which is part of the
case, as well.
"Overall, it was peaceful, but a small element began throwing things at
the officers, and that's when the command officers decided to deploy less
lethal munitions," says Officer Danielle Ashford of the Oakland Police
Department. "Our chief has launched an internal review and has reassessed
our crowd control policy to minimize injuries to all involved parties."
What happened in St. Louis, Miami, and Oakland "comes on the heels of more
than two years of federal actions and policies that are antagonistic to
free speech," says the ACLU's Romero.
One of these was Attorney General John Ashcroft's May 30, 2002, lifting of
the Justice Department's strict guidelines curtailing domestic spying.
Those guidelines dated back to the Ford Administration, but now the FBI is
free once again to spy on protesters and to infiltrate their meetings in
public places. This has raised fears of a return to the days of
COINTELPRO, the FBI's counterintelligence program that spied on Martin
Luther King and Malcolm X and infiltrated the Black Panthers and the
American Indian Movement.
One of the most disturbing developments, says Romero, is "the easy
conflation of dissenters with criminal suspects or even potential
terrorists." He points to the FBI Intelligence Bulletin of October 15,
2003. This bulletin, which The New York Times exposed, refers to
"extremist elements" who engage in "aggressive tactics." But it doesn't
limit its attention to lawbreakers. "Even the more peaceful techniques can
create a climate of disorder, block access to a site, draw large numbers
of police officers to a specific location in order to weaken security at
other locations, obstruct traffic, and possibly intimidate people from
attending the events being protested," it says. And it does not
distinguish between "extremists" and "activists." It says that "activists
often communicate with one another using cell phones"--a dazzling insight.
They also may use recording equipment "for documenting potential cases of
police brutality and for distribution of information over the Internet,"
it says.
Using cell phones or filming police brutality or disseminating information
over the Internet can hardly be construed as illegal activity. But the FBI
memo says, "Law enforcement agencies should be alert to these possible
indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to
the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force."
Equating protesters with terrorists is not confined to FBI headquarters.
Mike Van Winkle, spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information
Center, told the Oakland Tribune last year: "You can make an easy kind of
link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause
that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have
terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against
that is a terrorist act."
On February 8, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting Evansville,
Indiana, to campaign for Representative John Hostettler at the local civic
center.
Environmentalist John Blair was walking on a public sidewalk nearby and
was carrying a sign that read: "Cheney: 19th C. Energy Man."
Police ordered him to move to a "protest zone" more than a block away, and
Blair refused, so they arrested him.
"I was arrested for nothing more than exercising my rights as a citizen in
what I thought was a free country," Blair wrote in an article for
Counterpunch, which broke the story.
Blair was at first charged with disorderly conduct. Then the prosecutor
increased the charge to a Class A misdemeanor of resisting law
enforcement, which could have cost him a year in jail.
But the case against Blair was quickly dropped. "I didn't think the
evidence established a case that would be successful in court," says Stan
Levco, prosecuting attorney for Vanderburgh County, Indiana. But he adds:
"I don't think they were wrong to arrest him under the circumstances. They
thought it was a safety issue, and I wouldn't second-guess them."
Blair is suing for $50,000 in damages. "They shouldn't even have
approached me in the first place," he says. "Carrying a sign isn't an
illegal act in America. At least it wasn't before Bush-Cheney."
Blair's experience was hardly unique. Local police, on orders of the
Secret Service, have literally been marginalizing critics of the President
or Vice President into so-called protest zones far out of earshot and
eyesight, the ACLU says.
On September 23, 2003, the ACLU sued the Secret Service for engaging in a
"pattern and practice" of discriminating against those who disagree with
government policies.
On September 2, 2002, in Neville Island, Pennsylvania, "protesters were
sent to a 'designated free speech zone' located on a large baseball field
one-third of a mile away from where President Bush was speaking," an ACLU
fact sheet notes. "Only people carrying signs critical of the President
were required to enter and remain. Many people carrying signs supporting
the President and his policies were allowed to stand alongside the
motorcade route. . . . When retired Steelworker Bill Neel refused to enter
the protest zone and insisted on being allowed to stand where the
President's supporters were standing, he was arrested for disorderly
conduct and detained until the President had departed."
Similarly, when President Bush came to St. Louis on January 22, 2003, to
tout his economic plan, one woman with a "We Love You President Bush" sign
was allowed to stand near the building where the President was speaking.
But Andrew Wimmer, who was standing next to her, was arrested for holding
a sign saying "Instead of war invest in people."
Ann Roman, spokeswoman for the Secret Service, says, "We don't comment on
pending litigation, but we don't make any distinction on the basis of
purpose, message, or intent of any particular group or individual."
Eleanor Eisenberg is the executive director of the Arizona ACLU, but that
did not stop police from arresting her on September 27, 2002. That day,
Bush came to the Civic Center in Phoenix to raise money for two Republican
candidates. A crowd of 1,500 protesters gathered across the street. But
all of a sudden and for no discernible reason, the police, both on
horseback and on foot, charged into the crowd, says Eisenberg.
"Shortly after the police started their charge, I saw them dragging a
young man into the street and grinding his face into the pavement and
being very abusive," she says. When Eisenberg, in her official capacity,
went over to see what was going on, "a police officer whacked me with his
horse's flank and sent me flying. And the next thing I know, I was being
arrested."
Randy Force of the Phoenix Police Department says, "We stand by the facts
in the police report on this case." That report states that the Secret
Service ordered the area cleared and that police told Eisenberg "she was
standing in a restricted area." It claims "she started taking photographs
of other citizens being involved in disorderly conduct." After giving
Eisenberg three orders to move, one police officer gave her "a small shove
with his horse to move her," the report states.
"When you connect the dots--the FBI bulletin treating protesters as
terrorists, the pattern and practice of the Secret Service of corralling
protesters in zones far away, the actions in Miami and San Francisco and
elsewhere--you see an increasingly hostile environment for groups that are
expressing views that are divergent from the Bush Administration's," says
ACLU Executive Director Romero. "Clearly, the government has put in place
key policies and practices that try to shut down those that disagree with
it."
Lieberman of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri puts it this way: "Law
enforcement officers are telling people, if you have dissenting views you
should think twice about expressing them. And if you don't agree to be
invisible, you're going to be liable for criminal prosecution under
whatever guise we can think of."
Looking back on her experience with the police in St. Louis at the World
Agricultural Forum, Sarah Bantz strikes a philosophical note. "I guess I
learned my lesson," she says.
And what is that lesson? "That these issues I keep hearing about--of the
increased use of police and military force in this country--are real.
They're not happening in the future; they're happening today."
------------------------------
Matthew Rothschild is Editor of The Progressive.
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Subject: [pjnews] Media, Congress Should Challenge White House Deception
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see also:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1132043,00.html
Daniel Ellsberg: US and British officials must expose their leaders' lies
about Iraq - as I did over Vietnam...
http://snipurl.com/45cv
U.S. intelligence agencies need to explain why their research indicated
Iraq possessed banned weapons before the American-led invasion, says the
outgoing top U.S. inspector, who now believes Saddam Hussein had no such
arms...
-------------------
WIN WITHOUT WAR CALLS ON MEDIA, CONGRESS TO CHALLENGE SYSTEMATIC WHITE
HOUSE DECEPTION OF PUBLIC
Administration Succeeds in Misleading
53% of Public With Untruths about WMDs, Terrorism
'Widespread Belief in Proven Falsehoods A National Scandal'
The National Director of Win Without War today called on the media to more
aggressively challenge the White House's ongoing promotion of proven
falsehoods regarding the Iraq invasion and weapons of mass destruction.
Failure to do so, he claimed, has led a majority of Americans to believe
as fact erroneous claims the administration continues to repeat.
"Having successfully misled the world about the reasons for going to war,
the Bush Administration now seems to believe that it can distort its way
out of embarrassing disclosures that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons
of mass destruction stockpiled and that there was no meaningful linkage
between Osama bin Laden and Saddam," said former Congressman Tom Andrews,
National Director of the anti-war organization.
A Gallup Poll last month showed 53% of Americans still believe Saddam
Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the
U.S., largely because of exaggerated claims by the Administration to
support its invasion of Iraq. The Administration continues to speak of
the linkage in the face of clear evidence that it is wrong.
Media is Part of the Solution
"When 53% of the American people believe a lie, it is cause for alarm. It
is the responsibility of a free press and the legislative branch of
government to set them straight. The American people are not stupid.
They are victims of what appears to be a carefully calibrated, conscious
effort by the White House to make people believe that which is not true.
Americans are confused because the Administration wants them that way,"
Andrews said.
"The media shares responsibility for this alarming problem and is a key to
its resolution. It has a special obligation to expose the truth and call
the deceptions what they are. For starters, reporters need to be informed
and ready to challenge misstatements," he said.
Andrews cited as an example the Thursday interview of Vice President
Cheney with National Public Radio's Juan Williams. Cheney reiterated the
tired claim that military trailers found in Iraq were bio-weapons labs on
wheels. He called them, once again, "conclusive evidence" that Saddam had
a significant WMD program.
"Mr. Williams let this stand. By not questioning or challenging this
claim, he left NPR's audience reason to accept a lie as the truth!"
Andrews said. The former Maine Congressman said Congress also was failing
to exercise its responsibility. "As an equal, separate branch of
government the Congress has an obligation-- no matter which party
controls it-- to be a watchdog over actions and claims by the executive
branch. Truth should not be partisan."
In a January 9 interview, Cheney quoted an article in The Weekly Standard
as his "best source" on ties between Saddam and Osama. But the Defense
Department dismissed the article as inaccurate and said information leaked
to the writer was harmful, "deplorable and (possibly) illegal."
"It is time for the Bush White House to take responsibility and admit that
it was wrong when it told the American people that weapons of mass
destruction and links between Saddam and the terrorism of 9/11 were
legitimate reasons for invading and occupying Iraq," said Andrews. "But
whether it does so or not, the media and the Congress should be speaking
out and exposing White House deceptions."
____________________
Win Without War is a coalition of national organizations representing
broad constituencies that aim to keep America safe by advocating that
international cooperation and enforceable international law provide the
greatest security for the United States and the world. The coalition
offers a mainstream, patriotic voice for engaging opinion makers,
activating concerned citizens and communicating to the media.
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Subject: [pjnews] Hamas proposes 10-year truce for Israeli pullback
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fwd...
From: "Bill Thomson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Dear Friends,
It has been reported that on Monday (1/26/04), Sheik Rantissi, the
spiritual leader of Hamas, offered Israel a 10-yr. truce if Israel
withdraws to its 1967 borders. Remember that on 3/29/02, the Arab
League unanimously supported a Saudi initiative which offered
"Israel not just peace, but normalization, not just with its
neighbors, but with the whole Arab world, based on Israeli
withdrawal from most of the territories it captured in 1967, not
all of them." So here we have two similar offers, which thus far
have been met with absolute silence from both Israel and its
surrogate parent, the United States. While it would be easy to
dismiss these offers out of hand due to Israel's annexation of
some of the disputed territory (as both Israel and the US did with
the Arab League Declaration), we must insist that our governments
investigate this latest offer as a basis for a permanent
settlement to the ongoing crisis. For those who have followed
this porcess, it is impossible to underestimate the significance
of Sheik Rantissi's offer. It represents a sea change in the
stated position of HAMAS (although in informal contacts with HAMAS
over several years I have heard several similar offers).
Some years ago, the Israeli UN Ambassador, Abba Eban said, "The
Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity".
Let us hope the same will not be said of Israel and the United
States.
Please contact the individuals, governments and organizations
below and urge them to pursue this important initiative. And also
ask the US media why
it is not covering this crucial story.
Peace,
Bill
*****************************************************************
I have not been able to confirm this story, but Reuters is a very
reputable news organization. -- Bill
Hamas proposes 10-year truce for Israeli pullback
January 26, 2004, 05:32 AM
A top official of the main Palestinian militant group, Hamas, has said it
could declare a 10-year truce with Israel if the Jewish state withdrew
from territory
occupied since 1967.
Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi said late yesterday that Hamas had come to the
conclusion that it was "difficult to liberate all our land at this stage,
so we accept a phased liberation". "We accept a state in the West Bank,
including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. We propose a 10-year truce in
return for (Israeli) withdrawal and the establishment of a state," he said
in a telephone interview from hiding in the Gaza Strip.
His comments appeared to strengthen signs of a big political shift by a
faction sworn to destroy Israel and now seeming to move closer to the aims
of Yasser
Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Israel dismisses any talk of Hamas
moderation as a smokescreen for military preparations by a group at the
forefront of suicide bombings.
Rantissi said any such new proposal would not mean that Hamas recognised
Israel or spell the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas has led
a suicide
bombing campaign that has killed hundreds of Israelis during more than
three years of violence. It has rejected peace talks and demanded that a
Palestinian
state be formed on all the land that was Palestine under the British
mandate preceding the creation of Israel more than five decades ago.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, said recently that the
group could accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip
territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, but he gave no indication
how long that might ensure peace. Rantissi said the truce could last 10
years, though "not more than 10 years". Israel dismisses any hint that
Hamas might be softening its stance, particularly after a suicide bombing
killed four Israelis at a border crossing on January 14.
Israeli officials also say it would be impossible to return to pre-1967
borders, emphasising that the Palestinians could not expect East
Jerusalem, some major Jewish settlements or other land deemed vital for
security. Rantissi said discussion within Hamas on accepting a state in
just the West Bank and Gaza was not new, but that "the movement has taken
a decision on this."
*****************************************************************
CALL and FAX and EMAIL TODAY!!!!
You can easily find how to contact for your own U.S. Senators and
Congresspeople at http://government.aol.com.
To begin, here are four important people to address in the United States. Use
phone AND fax AND email:
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvanian Avenue
Washington, DC 20500
Phone: (202) 456-1111 -- Fax: (202) 456-2461 -- E-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Vice President Dick Cheney
(The White House, as above)
Condoleezza Rice
National Security Advisor
(The White House, as above)
Secretary of State Colin Powell
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520
Phone: (202) 647-6575 -- Fax: (202) 261-8577 -- E-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can call the Capital switchboard toll-free: 1-800-839-5276 and ask to be
connected to your member of Congress.
---------------------------------------------
UNITED NATIONS
Secretary General Kofi Annan
United Nations, Room 2-3800
NY, NY 10017
(212) 963-4475, Fax: (212) 963-0071
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ISRAEL:
Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: +972 2 651 2631
Shaol Mofaz, Israeli Minister of Defense:
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs:
Fax: +972-2-5303367
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MEDIA SOURCES:
ABC News - 212-456-4040
CBS News - 212-975-3691
NBC News - 212-664-4971
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Subject: [pjnews] Dishonor Guard: Press Coverage of Bush's Military Record
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http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2004/01/waldman-p-01-26.html
Dishonor Guard
The press is lining up to defend George W. Bush's National Guard record --
by stubbornly refusing to discuss the facts.
Paul Waldman
When Michael Moore called George W. Bush a "deserter" at a January 18
rally for Wesley Clark, he stepped way over the line, injecting into the
public discourse a scurrilous charge with no basis in fact, the kind of
defamation that has rightly earned the moniker "political hate speech"
from Republicans.
Or at least that's what you'd think if you listened to reporters' comments
on Moore's statement. Speaking for his colleagues, ABC's Peter Jennings
told Clark during Thursday's debate, "That's a reckless charge not
supported by the facts. And I was curious to know why you didn't
contradict him, and whether or not you think it would've been a better
example of ethical behavior to have done so."
Clark declined to do so, saying he didn't know enough about it.
Unfortunately, most Americans don't either -- because reporters have
refused to tell them. But the press consensus has been reached: Moore's
charge was beyond the pale, and General Clark made a big mistake by not
repudiating it.
"Clark should have distanced himself from the remark," wrote The Boston
Globe. On FOX News, Chris Wallace said Clark's failure to do so was the
one place in the debate when "my reporter's antenna went up. And I
thought, 'This is news' Doesn't that raise questions of perhaps being a
little amateur?" Clark, the United Press International's story about the
debate contended, "may have stumbled most when he was quizzed as to why he
stayed silent when documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, who has endorsed
him, called Bush a deserter in Clark's presence and Clark did not
immediately condemn the remark or disassociate himself from it."
If you've been reading the news, though, you may've a hard time figuring
out just what Moore was talking about. The New York Times referred
obliquely to "Bush's attendance record with the National Guard in Texas,"
while National Public Radio offered that the charge "refer[red] to his
time in the Texas Air National Guard." The Los Angeles Times gave a
non-explanation, writing, "Bush served as a pilot in the Texas National
Guard during the Vietnam War, a relatively safe posting. In 1972, Bush was
allowed to transfer to the Alabama National Guard for three months so he
could work on the campaign of a Senate candidate there."
But with the notable exception of those who came across a brief story by
The Washington Post's David Broder, who actually explained the
controversy, the typical news reader would be hard pressed to discern
that, depending on what your definition of "desertion" is (call it AWOL if
you like), Moore was exactly right.
So some clarification may be in order. In 1972, Bush was training as a
pilot in the "Champagne Unit" of the Texas Air Guard, a spot secured for
him (along with the sons of other prominent Texans like Lloyd Bentsen,
John Tower and John Connolly, as well as some members of the Dallas
Cowboys football team) by Ben Barnes, then the speaker of the Texas House
of Representatives. Bush requested a transfer to a unit in Alabama so that
he could work on a Senate race there, and a transfer he was granted.
This is where it gets interesting. When asked in 2000, Bush claimed he had
"some recollection" of performing service in Alabama, but there is no
evidence -- no Guard records, that is, and the word of no one who would
have served with him (despite an exhaustive search by the Bush campaign)
-- that Bush ever showed up in Alabama for duty.
After the 1972 election, Bush returned to Houston, whereupon he should
have reported for duty with his unit at Ellington Air Force Base. But in
May of 1973, his superiors there reported that they were unable to conduct
his yearly evaluation because "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit
during the period of this report. A civilian occupation made it necessary
for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 May
1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non-flying status
with the 187 Tac Recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama." Which he wasn't.
Finally, there is the question of whether Bush ever completed his
obligations to the Guard before being discharged. In 2000, his campaign
claimed that he crammed in 36 days of duty with his Houston unit during
his last three months. The only evidence his team could provide, however,
was a torn page listing drills performed -- with no dates and without
Bush's name. But given that Bush's official records show no service
whatsoever between May of 1972 and his discharge in October of 1973 (by
which time he was attending Harvard Business School), one cannot conclude
that there is any evidence that he satisfied the obligations of his
service. When the National Guard Review asked Bush during 2000 what he'd
learned in the Guard, he responded, "[T]he responsibility to show up and
do your job."
One can certainly quibble about whether Bush's failure to show up in
Alabama and his apparent failure to fulfill his obligations makes him a
"deserter" or not, but that question is one of semantics. (The most
generally accepted definition of the term involves abandonment during
wartime; the reader may decide whether Bush's service in the defense of
Corpus Christi from the Vietcong would qualify as combat duty.) But to say
the charge is, in Peter Jennings' words, "not supported by the facts" is
simply false.
If this story is news to you, you're not alone. In the 2000 campaign -- in
which journalists were supposedly vetting the candidates' records to
ferret out the good and the bad -- there was little interest in Bush's
Vietnam record. If one compares the coverage given in 1992 to Bill
Clinton's efforts to avoid Vietnam with that given to Bush's similar
situation, the disparity is rather striking.
In 1992, there were no fewer than 526 stories about Clinton and the draft
in major American newspapers. In all the news outlets covered by
Lexis-Nexis, there were 950 stories about the subject. But when the 2000
election rolled around, reporters were decidedly less curious about the
topic. There were 77 stories in 1999 and 38 stories in 2000 in major
papers about Bush and the National Guard. In all news outlets, there were
258 stories in 1999 and only 98 in 2000.
In other words, during their respective election years, there were nearly
10 press stories about Clinton's efforts to avoid serving in Vietnam for
every one story about Bush's efforts to avoid serving in Vietnam. In major
papers, there were almost 14 Clinton stories for every Bush story. The
only major newspapers that investigated the issue with any vigor were The
Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times.
And on television? The three networks did a grand total of one, count 'em,
one story about Bush and Vietnam during the 2000 campaign. And that story,
on NBC, consisted mostly of Bush's denials that he had been given special
consideration to get into the Guard. The question of whether he went AWOL
was not mentioned.
So we come to 2004, and among the Democratic candidates are two Vietnam
veterans, each carrying medals for the bravery he showed and the blood he
shed. The contrast with President Bush is a stark one, and we'll no doubt
be hearing more about it should Clark or John Kerry become the Democratic
nominee. But if the way they've handled the issue since Michael Moore's
comments is any indication, reporters will work hard to make sure Bush
doesn't have to answer any difficult questions about what he did -- or
didn't -- do when his country called on him to serve.
Paul Waldman is the executive editor of The Gadflyer, a new progressive
Internet magazine. His latest book is Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush
Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You.
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Subject: [pjnews] White House Changes Story on Iraq Statements
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0129-09.htm
Iraq Commission Could Pose Serious Threat to Bush
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0129-01.htm
WMD: Now It is Bush's Turn to Face Uncomfortable Truths
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17655
Kay Testimony Impeaches Bush
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0128-09.htm
Editorials Question Bush's Role In "Cooking" Up a War
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0129-06.htm
UK: Demands Grow for Inquiry into the Case for War as Hutton is Accused of
a 'Whitewash'
----------------
http://www.moveon.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jessica Smith
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Fenton Communications, 202-822-5200 x234
It Depends On What Your Definition of "Imminent" Is:
President & Advisors Repeatedly Hyped Threats from Saddam's WMD Program
Public Record Refutes White House Denials
President George W. Bush, who on the eve of war told the country that
there was "no doubt the Iraqi regime continues to possess the most lethal
weapons ever devised," completely changed his story, as the White House
began to back away from its WMD assertions.
As the New York Times reported Tuesday, "White House officials are no
longer asserting that stockpiles of banned weapons would eventually be
found" after their weapons inspector, David Kay said he "doesn't think
[WMD] existed" after the 1991 Gulf War. The President's back-peddling
calls into question whether America was deliberately misled into war.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan tried to change the subject by
claiming the entire WMD issue was not important because the Bush
Administration had never said Iraq was an immediate threat. McClellan said
in yesterday's Washington Post: "The media have chosen to use the word
'imminent' to describe the Iraqi threat -- not the Bush Administration.
"Having successfully misled the world about the reasons for going to war,
the Bush Administration now seems to believe that it can distort its way
out of embarrassing disclosures that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons
of mass destruction stockpiled and that there was no meaningful linkage
between Osama bin Laden and Saddam," said former Congressman Tom Andrews,
National Director of the anti-war organization Win Without War.
But the fact is, in making its case for war, the Administration repeatedly
said Iraq was an "imminent threat":
Scott McClellan
"This is about an imminent threat," said Scott McClellan on February 10,
2003, when speaking about the United Nations' need to stand with the
United States.
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030210-8.html)
Ari Fleisher
On May 7, 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked: "Didn't we
go to war because we said WMD were a direct and imminent threat to the
U.S.?"
He replied: "Absolutely."
Donald Rumsfeld
Similarly, on November 14, 2002, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld said:
"I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11
and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on
September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or
three months before or six months before? When did the attack on September
11 become an imminent threat? Now, transport yourself forward a year, two
years or a week or a month...So the question is, when is it such an
immediate threat that you must do something?"
V.P. Dick Cheney
On August 29, 2002, Vice President Cheney said: "Iraq is busy enhancing
its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they
continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are
offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale,
developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any
one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is
to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness."
President George Bush
And, the President, himself, said of Saddam Hussein and WMD:
"This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly
imagined." (September 26, 2002)
"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America." (November 3, 2002)
"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." (October 2, 2002)
"There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is." (October 2, 2002)
The backtracking is reverberating throughout the Bush Administration.
While Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations last year
that "our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of
between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent," he said this weekend
that it could actually be "zero tons." While Powell told the United
Nations in 2003 that Iraq "can produce anthrax," that it might "have
produced 25,000 liters" and showed a video of an Iraqi plane that dumping
"2,000 liters of simulated anthrax" as proof, he now says they might have
produced no anthrax at all.
Similarly, Vice President Dick Cheney is also changing his story. Cheney--
who said "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass
destruction...to use against our friends, against our allies, and against
us" -- now says the war was only about Iraq's "efforts to acquire weapons
of mass destruction." He then cited a leaked classified report his own
Administration has already labeled "inaccurate" and "deplorable" as the
"best source" of proof that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were linked.
This week, David Kay and the Administration threw up their hands and tried
to place the burden of no WMD on the intelligence community.
AP reports that finding no WMD "was always a strong possibility in the
eyes of experts who knew the record of U.N. inspections, but Bush
Administration officials never acknowledged it." In fact, as the New
Yorker reports, senior Administration officials deliberately "bypassed the
government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence." The Atlantic
Monthly noted that the White House even went a step further, setting up a
secretive "Office of Special Plans" to "cherry-pick intelligence that
supported its pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest."
For further research and citations, visit: http://www.misleader.org
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Subject: [pjnews] Iraqi civil war looms, CIA warns
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http://www.news-leader.com/today/0122-Iraqicivil-275613.html
Published January 22, 2004
Iraqi civil war looms, CIA warns Bush, aides
"Very bad possibilities have been outlined," source says.
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder
Washington — CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a
path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said Wednesday,
contradicting the upbeat assessment President Bush gave in his State of
the Union address.
The CIA officers' bleak assessment was delivered verbally to Washington
this week, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because
of the classified information involved.
The warning echoed growing fears that Iraq's Shiite majority, which has
until now grudgingly accepted the U.S. occupation, could turn to violence
if its demands for direct elections are spurned.
Meanwhile, Iraq's Kurdish minority is pressing its demand for autonomy and
shares of oil revenue.
"Both the Shiites and the Kurds think that now's their time," said one
intelligence officer. "They think that if they don't get what they want
now, they'll probably never get it. Both of them feel they've been
betrayed by the United States before."
These dire scenarios were discussed at meetings this week by Bush, his top
national security aides and the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul
Bremer, said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity.
Another senior official said the concerns over a possible civil war
weren't confined to the CIA but are "broadly held within the government."
Officials are scrambling to save the U.S. exit strategy after concluding
that Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Husseini
al Sistani, is unlikely to drop his demand for elections for an interim
assembly that would choose an interim government by June 30.
Bremer would then hand over power to the interim government.
The CIA hasn't yet put its officers' warnings about a potential Iraqi
civil war in writing, but the senior official said he expected a formal
report "momentarily."
"In the discussion with Bremer in the last few days, several very bad
possibilities have been outlined," he said.
Bush, in his State of the Union address Tuesday, insisted that an
insurgency against the U.S. occupation "will fail, and the Iraqi people
will live in freedom."
"Month by month, Iraqis are assuming more responsibility for their own
security and their own future," he said.
In an interview with Knight Ridder on Wednesday, a top cleric in Najaf
appeared to confirm fears of potential civil war.
"Everything has its own time, but we are saying that we don't accept the
occupiers getting involved with the Iraqis' affairs," said Sheikh Ali
Najafi, whose father, Grand Ayatollah Bashir al Najafi, is one of the four
most senior clerics. "I don't trust the Americans — not even for one
blink."
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Subject: [pjnews] Women in Iraq Decry Decision To Curb Rights
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see also:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L22508070.htm
U.S. and British leaders George W. Bush and Tony Blair are wrong to
retroactively justify the invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds, a
global rights group said on Monday. New York-based Human Rights Watch
criticised the West for turning a blind eye to Saddam Hussein's atrocities
-- such as the 1988 massacre of Kurds -- at a time when the level of
slaughter could have justified armed intervention...
---------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21321-2004Jan15.html
Women in Iraq Decry Decision To Curb Rights
Council Backs Islamic Law on Families
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 16, 2004; Page A12
BAGHDAD, Jan. 15 -- For the past four decades, Iraqi women have enjoyed
some of the most modern legal protections in the Muslim world, under a
civil code that prohibits marriage below the age of 18, arbitrary divorce
and male favoritism in child custody and property inheritance disputes.
Saddam Hussein's dictatorship did not touch those rights. But the
U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council has voted to wipe them out, ordering
in late December that family laws shall be "canceled" and such issues
placed under the jurisdiction of strict Islamic legal doctrine known as
sharia.
This week, outraged Iraqi women -- from judges to cabinet ministers --
denounced the decision in street protests and at conferences, saying it
would set back their legal status by centuries and could unleash emotional
clashes among various Islamic strains that have differing rules for
marriage, divorce and other family issues.
"This will send us home and shut the door, just like what happened to
women in Afghanistan," said Amira Hassan Abdullah, a Kurdish lawyer who
spoke at a protest meeting Thursday. Some Islamic laws, she noted, allow
men to divorce their wives on the spot.
"The old law wasn't perfect, but this one would make Iraq a jungle," she
said. "Iraqi women will accept it over their dead bodies."
The order, narrowly approved by the 25-member council in a closed-door
session Dec. 29, was reportedly sponsored by conservative Shiite members.
The order is now being opposed by several liberal members as well as by
senior women in the Iraqi government.
The council's decisions must be approved by L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S.
administrator in Iraq, and aides said unofficially that his imprimatur for
this change was unlikely. But experts here said that once U.S. officials
turn over political power to Iraqis at the end of June, conservative
forces could press ahead with their agenda to make sharia the supreme law.
Spokesmen for Bremer did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
"It was the secret way this was done that is such a shock," said Nasreen
Barawi, a woman who is Iraq's minister for social welfare and public
service. "Iraq is a multiethnic society with many different religious
schools. Such a sweeping decision should be made over time, with an
opportunity for public dialogue." There is no immediate threat of the
decision becoming law, Barawi said, "but after June 30, who knows what can
happen?"
In interviews at several meetings and protests, women noted that even
during the politically repressive Hussein era, women had been allowed to
assume a far more modern role than in many other Muslim countries and had
been shielded from some of the more egregiously unfair interpretations of
Islam advocated by conservative, male-run Muslim groups.
Once Hussein was toppled, several women noted wryly, they hoped the new
authorities would further liberalize family law. Instead, in the process
of wiping old laws off the books, they said, Islamic conservatives on the
Governing Council are trying to impose retrograde views of women on a
chaotic postwar society.
Although it remained unclear which members of the council had promoted the
shift of family issues from civil to religious jurisprudence, the decision
was made and formalized while Abdul Aziz Hakim, a Shiite Muslim who heads
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was chairing the
council under a rotating leadership system.
This week, several moderate council members spoke strongly against the
decision in public forums, calling it a threat to both civilized progress
and national unity. Nasir Chaderchi, a lawyer and council member who heads
the National Democratic Party, criticized the council's action at a
professional women's meeting Thursday. "We don't want to be isolated from
modern developments," Chaderchi told the gathering of the Iraqi
Independent Women's Group. "What hurts most is that the law of the tyrant
Saddam was more modern than this new law." He said he hoped women would
continue to protest until the order was reversed.
The council's new policy decree was brief and vague, mentioning neither
particular family issues nor individual branches of Islamic law that would
replace current civil law. But lawyers and other experts from Iraqi
women's groups said the ambiguity of the decision was especially
worrisome, since rival Islamic sects in Iraq espouse different policies
for women's legal and marital rights.
Some critics said the proposed law might exacerbate tensions between Sunni
and Shiite Muslims, already divided over other power-sharing issues in
postwar Iraq, and could even destroy families that have intermarried
between the two strains of Islam. Under Hussein, they said, the universal
application of civil family law prevented such issues from sparking
sectarian strife.
Zakia Ismael Hakki, a female retired judge and outspoken opponent of the
new order, said Thursday that since 1959, civil family law had been
developed and amended under a series of secular governments to give women
a "half-share in society" and an opportunity to advance as individuals, no
matter what their religion.
"This new law will send Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages," Hakki
said. "It will allow men to have four or five or six wives. It will take
away children from their mothers. It will allow anyone who calls himself a
cleric to open an Islamic court in his house and decide about who can
marry and divorce and have rights. We have to stop it."
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Subject: [pjnews] Search for Illegal Aliens Alienates City
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0130-05.htm
Published on Friday, January 30, 2004 by the Portland Press Herald (Maine)
Homeland Security?
Search for Illegal Aliens Alienates City
by Bill Nemitz
Their boss insists that they're not trying to act like jerks. It's just
that the border patrol agents who descended on Portland last weekend are
new to Maine and, this being the dead of winter and all, they apparently
can't help themselves.
"A lot of our agents are just off the southern (U.S.) border and there's a
different atmosphere down there," said Monte J. Bennett, assistant chief
patrol agent for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection in Houlton.
"There are a lot more numbers down there. Things are more aggressive."
In other words, if you're an immigrant in Maine these days, you'd best
double-check your papers before you go anywhere and learn to say "Yes,
sir" and "No, sir" to anyone in a black uniform and boots. And oh yes, try
not to look suspicious.
"My business is down 80 percent since Saturday," lamented Juan Gonzalez,
owner of La Bodega Latina Grocery Store on Congress Street. "Customers
call me on the phone saying, 'Is it clear? Can we come down?' People are
really afraid."
According to bureau spokesman Bennett, what happened Saturday in Portland
was a typical "transportation sweep" in which federal agents - many
recently transferred here as part of a south-to-north shift in homeland
security forces - visited Portland's airport, train and bus stations in
search of illegal aliens.
They netted 10 people whose papers failed to pass muster. At the same
time, they left Portland's hard-won reputation as an immigrant-friendly
city in tatters.
Nasir Ahmed was behind the counter at Amei Halaal Market on St. John
Street when agents walked in and told everyone, employees and customers
alike, to get out their passports and green cards. Ahmed said some patrons
eating lunch in the Somali market bolted out the back door - not because
they were undocumented, but because they were scared to death.
"How would you feel if you went to McDonald's and got asked for ID while
you were eating your food? That's what happened here," Ahmed asked. "Now,
less people come in. We lost a lot of customers."
Mohammed Barre, who was in the store at the time, said much of the anxiety
could have been avoided if the agents had clearly identified themselves
(several eyewitnesses said they didn't) and, before coming through the
door, had taken the chips off their shoulders.
"Unfriendly," Barre replied when asked to describe the agents' demeanor.
"Very unfriendly."
Bennett insisted that the operation targeted only Portland's
"transportation hubs," not its immigrant enclaves. He added, however, that
the agents will investigate anything "that needs investigating."
Would two stores with foreign names, frequented by people with dark skin,
each a block or two from the Vermont Transit bus station "need
investigating"?
"Based solely on that, no," Bennett replied. "They go more by people's
mannerisms."
Thus, we are asked to believe, it was a citywide outbreak of "mannerisms"
that attracted agents to Amei Halaal Market, La Bodega Latina and even the
Preble Street Resource Center, where director Mark Swann has vowed that
the next time agents show up, they'll be asked for a search warrant.
(Lest we all think the agents' attitudes began and ended with immigrants,
consider my daughter's welcome Saturday upon arriving in Portland by bus
from Boston: After she gave a border agent her license, he demanded her
passport. She correctly told him that U.S. citizens don't need passports
for interstate travel. "Let me give you a word of advice," he replied
tersely. "You need to learn to watch your mouth.")
Where all this tension goes from here is anyone's guess.
Meetings are already being held among Portland's immigrant elders and
leaders. And the Latino Health and Community Service has called off its
Feb. 14 health fair because, director John Connors explained, "I'm not
going to put up posters telling these guys we're going to have a bunch of
minorities and immigrants showing up at a particular time and place."
Bennett calls such fears unfounded. If confronted by a federal agent, he
said, all anyone has to do is "be friendly, be straightforward and answer
their questions."
And above all, watch your mannerisms.
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Subject: [pjnews] The BBC at War
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http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=311&row=0
BBC AT WAR
M'LORD HUTTON BLESSES BLAIR'S ATTACK ON BBC'S INVESTIGATION OF IRAQ WAR
CLAIMS
By Greg Palast
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
He did not say, "hello," or even his name, just left a one-word message:
"Whitewash."
It came from an embattled journalist whispering from inside the bowels of
a television and radio station under siege, on a small island off the
coast of Ireland: from BBC London.
And another call, from a colleague at the Guardian: "The future of British
journalism is very bleak."
However, the future for fake and farcical war propaganda is quite bright
indeed. Today, Lord Hutton issued his report that followed an inquiry
revealing the Blair government's manipulation of intelligence to claim
that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass murder threatening imminent attack
on London.
Based on the Blair government's claim, headlines pumped the war hysteria:
SADDAM COULD HAVE NUCLEAR BOMB IN YEAR, screeched the London Times. BRITS
45 MINS FROM DOOM, shrieked the Sun newspaper.
Given these facts only a sissy pacifist, a lunatic or a Saddam fellow
traveler would fail to see that Prime Minister "Winston" Blair had no
choice but to re-conquer it's former Mesopotamian colony.
But these headlines were, in fact, false, and deadly so. Unlike America's
press puppies, BBC reporters thought it their duty to check out these life
or death claims. Reporters Andrew Gilligan and Susan Watts contacted a
crucial source, Britain's and the United Nation's top weapons inspector.
He told reporter Watts that the Weapons of Mass Destruction claims by
Blair and our own President Bush were, "all spin." Gilligan went further,
reporting that this spin, this "sexed up" version of intelligence, was the
result of interventions by Blair's PR henchman, Alistair Campbell.
Whatever reading of the source's statements, it was clear that
intelligence experts had deep misgivings about the strength of the
evidence for war.
The source? Dr. David Kelly. To save itself after the reports by Gilligan
and Watts, the government, including the Prime Minister himself, went on
an internal crusade to out the name of its own intelligence operative so
it could then discredit the news items.
Publishing the name of an intelligence advisor is serious stuff. In the
USA, a special criminal prosecutor is now scouring the White House to find
the person who publicly named a CIA agent. If found, the Bushite leaker
faces jail time.
Blair's government was not so crude as to give out Dr. Kelly's name.
Rather, they hit on a subterfuge of dropping clues then allowing reporters
to play '20 questions' - if Kelly's name were guessed, they'd confirm it.
Only the thickest reporters (I name none here) failed after more than a
couple tries.
Dr. Kelly, who had been proposed for knighthood was named, harangued and
his career destroyed by the outing. He then took his own life.
But today is not a day of mourning at 10 Downing Street, rather a day of
self-congratulations.
There were no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear warheads just short
of completion, no "45 minutes to doom" bombs auguring a new London blitz.
The exile group which supplied this raw claim now calls the 45 minute
story, "a crock of shit."
Yet Blair's minions are proclaiming their vindication.
This is not just a story about what is happening "over there" in the
United Kingdom. This we must remember: David Kelly was not only advisor to
the British but to the UN and, by extension, the expert for George W.
Bush. Our commander-in-chief leaped to adopt the Boogey Man WMD stories
from the Blair government when our own CIA was reticent.
So M'Lord Hutton has killed the messenger: the BBC. Should the reporter
Gilligan have used more cautious terms? Some criticism is fair. But the
extraordinary import of his and Watts' story is forgotten: our two
governments bent the information then hunted down the questioners.
And now the second invasion of the Iraq war proceeds: the conquest of the
British Broadcasting Corporation. Until now, this quasi-governmental
outlet has refused to play Izvestia to any prime minister, Labour or Tory.
As of today, the independence of the most independent major network on
this planet is under attack. Blair's government is "cleared" and now
arrogantly sport their kill, the head of Gavyn Davies, BBC's chief, who
resigned today.
"The bleak future for British journalism" portends darkness for
journalists everywhere - the threat to the last great open platform for
hard investigative reporting. And frankly, it's a worrisome day for me.
I'm not a disinterested by-stander. My most important investigations, all
but banned from US airwaves, were developed and broadcast by BBC
Newsnight, reporter Watts' program.
Will an iron curtain descend on the news? Before dawn today, I was reading
Churchill's words to the French command in the hours before as the Panzers
breached the defenses of Paris. Churchill told those preparing to
surrender, "Whatever you may do, we shall fight on forever and ever and
ever." This may yet be British journalism's Finest Hour.
*****
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy. His reports for BBC Newsnight and The Guardian
papers and other writings may be viewed at http://www.GregPalast.com.
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Subject: [pjnews] Saddam trial could reveal US's dirty secrets
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http://snipurl.com/472j
Saddam trial could reveal US's dirty secrets
January 25 2004 at 11:00AM
AP / SAPA [South African Press Assn.]
Washington - Saddam Hussein's loyalists may not be the only ones edgy
about the prospect of a war crimes trial for the former Iraqi leader.
Vexing questions also could surface about how much the United States
helped Iraq during its eight-year war with Iran - and whether it tried to
stop Iraqi atrocities.
Among the questions that could arise in any such trial:
What did US officials know about products shipped to Iraq that could have
been used for weapons?
What intelligence did they provide Iraq that could have been used for
chemical attacks?
How hard did Donald Rumsfeld try to persuade Saddam Hussein to stop using
chemical weapons against Iran?
Rumsfeld, now defence secretary, met with Saddam and other top Iraqi
officials during visits to Baghdad in 1983 and 1984, when he served as
President Ronald Reagan's envoy.
Saddam and officials from his government could describe their dealings
with Americans as they defend themselves from charges stemming from the
Iran and Kuwait wars and the repression against Kurds and other Iraqis.
The Iraqi Governing Council is creating a tribunal and some international
jurists have called for a United Nations court.
"I don't think there's going to be much there that a leading Iraqi is
going to be able to say, 'Hey, we had significant, witting cooperation
from the United States government in our program of weapons of mass
destruction,"' said Richard Murphy, head of the State Department's Near
Eastern affairs bureau in the 1980s.
But testimony could provide embarrassing new details about American
assistance to Iraq, what US officials knew about Iraqi atrocities and what
they did - or didn't do - to stop them.
"I think there will be a dramatic embarrassment factor for the US
government," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security
Archives, a foreign policy research centre. Blanton and other analysts
said the embarrassment could be even worse for countries with closer
relations to Iraq, such as France.
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Saddam's pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction, support of terrorists and human rights abuses
became grounds for war. But in the 1980s, the United States had a more
pressing concern: Iran.
After the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran, US and Arab leaders
feared that if Iran defeated Iraq, Iran could threaten other countries in
hopes of spreading its strict form of Islam.
Iraq was seen more favourably even though it started the war and Saddam
was clearly a dictator. It was a secular nation, influential among Arab
states. It had vast oil reserves and offered lucrative opportunities for
US businesses. The United States also wanted to prevent Iraq from becoming
too close to the Soviet Union.
Many details about the US-Iraqi relationship are already known through
congressional investigations, court proceedings and declassified
documents.
"I think most of the embarrassing stuff has already come out," said
Geoffrey Kemp, a National Security Council specialist on Iraq under
Reagan.
But the historical record isn't complete. Questions remain about
Rumsfeld's visits, which came at a time when the United States already was
well aware of Iraq's use of chemical weapons.
Declassified documents indicate that Rumsfeld did not raise the issue with
Saddam in their December 1983 meeting, although Rumsfeld said he did raise
it during a one-on-one meeting with foreign minister Tariq Aziz.
Rumsfeld returned to Iraq in March 1984 to try to smooth relations after
the United States condemned Iraq's use of chemical weapons. He was
instructed to stress US interests in preventing an Iranian victory and in
improving relations with Iraq, despite the condemnation. What he told Aziz
is unknown because notes of the meeting remain classified.
Aziz is now in US custody.
David Mack, who held various top Middle East positions in the State
Department in the 1980s and '90s, said he doubts Iraqis would have heeded
any warnings not to use chemical weapons.
"In general I think there is a high degree of exaggeration about the
degree to which we could have done anything about Iraqi bad behaviour," he
said.
During the war, the Reagan administration worked aggressively to prevent
other nations from shipping arms to Iran, but did little to prevent
conventional arms from going to Iraq.
Questions have been raised about whether the United States not only
ignored foreign arms shipments to Iraq, but actually encouraged or even
arranged them. A former National Security Council official, Howard
Teicher, said in a 1995 court affidavit that the CIA made sure Iraq
received weapons from non-US manufacturers.
The affidavit was filed in the case of a company accused of illegally
exporting to Chile material used in Iraqi cluster bombs. A defendant
claimed the CIA had arranged the deal, but the court rejected the argument
after viewing classified documents.
While prohibiting US arms sales to Iraq, the Reagan administration allowed
exports of products that could be used for civilian or military purposes.
Questions remain about whether pesticides or helicopters were used to make
or spray chemical weapons.
Questions also linger about whether the United States may have
inadvertently helped Saddam's biological weapons program. US officials
have acknowledged that in the 1980s, the government and private companies
sent to Iraq strains that could be used for biological weapons, including
anthrax and the West Nile virus. Iraq claimed the samples were for medical
research, but they were sent to sites believed to be part of Iraq's
biological weapons program.
Perhaps the most sensitive issue is intelligence sharing.
US officials have acknowledged providing intelligence on Iran, but what
information they provided isn't clear. Teicher claimed in the affidavit
that the United States provided strategic military advice to Saddam. In
one example, he alleged that Reagan used then-Vice President George Bush
to send a message that Iraq should step up its bombing of Iran.
Blanton said the biggest question is whether the United States provided
intelligence that could have been used for chemical attacks against Iran.
Top officials from that era deny that happened.
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Subject: [pjnews] The Buying of the President
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from IPA, the Institute for Public Accuracy...
The Buying of the President 2004
The Center for Public Integrity has released "The Buying of the President
2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and His Democratic Challengers --and
What They Expect in Return." Among the findings:
GEORGE W. BUSH: The top career donor for Bush is the scandal-ridden Enron
Corp. The President's campaign has already raised more money than any
other candidate in history in the year before the election, $85.2 million
(numbers are as of Sept. 30, 2003). His personal assets are $8,837,079 -
$21,936,000. Bush, who has signaled an interest in Social Security
privatization, numbers financial firms Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse
First Boston, UBS Paine Webber and Goldman Sachs Group among his top ten
patrons.
WESLEY CLARK: Campaign has raised over $3 million; there is insufficient
data on his personal wealth. His top patron is Citigroup. Acxiom, a
company that was seeking Homeland Security contracts, paid Clark hundreds
of thousands of dollars for his help in persuading the government to buy
the company's wares. Clark was a registered lobbyist while he served as a
military analyst on CNN, and was still a lobbyist when he declared his
candidacy.
HOWARD DEAN: Campaign has raised over $25 million; personal assets are
$2,194,036 - $5,061,000. In his 11 years as governor, Dean did not propose
a law requiring financial disclosures for legislatures or executive branch
officials. Vermont is one of just three states with no such disclosure
laws.
JOHN EDWARDS: Campaign has raised more than $14 million; personal assets
are $8,707,072 - $36,500,000, largely from suing for medical malpractice.
Most of his largest contributors are law firms.
JOHN KERRY: Campaign has raised over $20 million; personal assets are
$198,794,683 - $839,038,000 (almost all through his wife's wealth). Top
patrons include Fleet Boston Financial Corp., Time Warner and law firms.
He wrote letters to the FCC asking it to delay its spectrum auction,
keeping in line with his brother's law firm, which represents the
telecommunications industry and has given the senator more than $222,000.
DENNIS KUCINICH: Campaign has raised over $3 million; personal assets are
$2,002 - $32,000. Top patrons are unions. Accepted a $6,000 expenses-paid
trip to Croatia from the Praxis Peace Institute.
JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: Campaign has raised over $11 million; personal worth is
$320,061 - $1,536,000. Top patrons are Citigroup, The Hartford Financial
Services Group Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group. After receiving hundreds of
thousands of dollars from biotechnology companies, Lieberman hired the
industry's top lobbyist for his staff and co-sponsored bills on which the
industry lobbied.
AL SHARPTON: Campaign has raised over $200,000; there is insufficient data
on his personal wealth. His previous runs for office show his campaigns
extended more than $10,000 in personal loans.
For more info, see http://www.bop2004.org
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Subject: [pjnews] Where's Bush's Apology?
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see also:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/013104C.shtml
Iraq War Questions Gain Momentum:
Democratic candidates step up attacks on Bush, and GOP lawmakers urge a
frank response. Analysts see a risk to the president's credibility.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/013104A.shtml
McCain Wants WMD Inquiry
----------------
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/013104I.shtml
Where's the Apology?
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 30 January 2004
George Bush promised to bring honor and integrity back to the White
House. Instead, he got rid of accountability.
Surely even supporters of the Iraq war must be dismayed by the
administration's reaction to David Kay's recent statements. Iraq, he
now admits, didn't have W.M.D., or even active programs to produce
such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right. (But
Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr.
Bush declared that the war was justified — under U.N. Resolution
1441, no less — because Saddam "did not let us in.")
So where are the apologies? Where are the resignations? Where is the
investigation of this intelligence debacle? All we have is bluster
from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity language
from Mr. Bush — and a determined effort to prevent an independent
inquiry.
True, Mr. Kay still claims that this was a pure intelligence failure.
I don't buy it: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has
issued a damning report on how the threat from Iraq was hyped, and
former officials warned of politicized intelligence during the war
buildup. (Yes, the Hutton report gave Tony Blair a clean bill of
health, but many people — including a majority of the British public,
according to polls — regard that report as a whitewash.)
In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and
America's credibility has been badly damaged — and nobody is being
held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as
I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price
for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling
inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently
sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to
check up on their performance.
Let's look at three examples. First is the Valerie Plame affair. When
someone in the administration revealed that Ms. Plame was an
undercover C.I.A. operative, one probable purpose was to intimidate
intelligence professionals. And whatever becomes of the Justice
Department investigation, the White House has been notably
uninterested in finding the culprit. ("We have let the earthmovers
roll in over this one," a senior White House official told The
Financial Times.)
Then there's the stonewalling about 9/11. First the administration
tried, in defiance of all historical precedents, to prevent any
independent inquiry. Then it tried to appoint Henry Kissinger, of all
people, to head the investigative panel. Then it obstructed the
commission, denying it access to crucial documents and testimony.
Now, thanks to all the delays and impediments, the panel's head says
it can't deliver its report by the original May 11 deadline — and the
administration is trying to prevent a time extension.
Finally, an important story that has largely evaded public attention:
the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies
normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general,
with broad powers to investigate questionable spending. But the new
inspector general's office in Iraq operates under unique rules that
greatly limit both its powers and its independence.
And the independence of the Pentagon's own inspector general's office
is also in question. Last September, in a move that should have
caused shock waves, the administration appointed L. Jean Lewis as the
office's chief of staff. Ms. Lewis played a central role in the
Whitewater witch hunt (seven years, $70 million, no evidence of
Clinton wrongdoing); nobody could call her nonpartisan. So when Mr.
Bush's defenders demand hard proof of profiteering in Iraq — as
opposed to extensive circumstantial evidence — bear in mind that the
administration has systematically undermined the power and
independence of institutions that might have provided that proof.
And there are many more examples. These people politicize everything,
from military planning to scientific assessments. If you're with
them, you pay no penalty for being wrong. If you don't tell them what
they want to hear, you're an enemy, and being right is no excuse.
Still, the big story isn't about Mr. Bush; it's about what's
happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the
C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their
friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn't.
What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to
get away with such things?
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Subject: [pjnews] Locked Down and Out in Rural Georgia
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17478
Personal Voices: Locked Down and Out in Rural Georgia
By Lynn Hamilton, AlterNet
January 2, 2004
A scratchy burst of static warns me that an announcement is about to burst
in, unheralded, on my loud speaker.
"Attention, teachers. This is a lock down. Put your garbage cans in the
hall outside the room," demands an anonymous voice in a tone about as
pleasant as that of a grackle squawk. It's my first lock down. As an
American I was, of course, brought up to be obedient to which ever voice
threatens to be the ugliest, so, without stopping to ask why, I pick up
the nearest waste can and put it out in the hall. My students, better
versed in lock down protocol than I, are handing another garbage pail, one
I was preparing to overlook, up to the front of the classroom. I place
that one out in the hall, too. I clamp down on the impulse to quip, "If
you have any drugs or guns on you, for god's sake, throw them in the waste
basket now."
I try to resume teaching, but the next minute a man in a safety blue shirt
with weapons hanging off his sides has marched into my classroom and told
all my students to get out in the hall and line up against the wall. They
are told to take everything out of their pockets and hold it in their
hands.
Sound like a maximum security prison? A cadet academy in Serbia? Well,
it's not. This is all taking place at Effingham County High School, a
public school in Springfield, Georgia. Once students are lined up against
the wall, the inspector in safety blue goes down the line, taking wallets
out of their hands and opening them up. Wallets in which students keep
personal items like money, identification, and family pictures. Students
are also told to raise their arms so that an airport-style detector can
search them for heavy metals. To complete the picture of unwarranted
search and seizure, a German Shepherd is pacing the hall, sniffing. The
total procedure takes only about seven or eight minutes.
As the last of my twenty-nine students files back into the room,
psychologically ready to do anything but learn, Safety Blue heckles me:
"You get paid by the student?" Much has been said about the loss of civil
rights in the aftermath of September 11. Less is said about the aftermath
of the Columbine shootings, an event which has reverberated through my
coastal Georgia community with appalling implications for civil liberties
that no one seems prepared to question.
One of the scariest things about my first lock down was that, on returning
to the classroom, only one student said something like, "Yeah, that was a
really heinous violation of my civil rights." Another student pointed out
that lock downs like this are useless. When he got to school and saw all
the police cars already there, he said to himself, "Well, there's going to
be a lock down." If he'd had drugs or guns, he had ample opportunity to
throw them out the window or make a U-turn and head back home. Other
students thought it was no big deal – a small price to pay for feeling
safe. And, anyway, they're used to it, now. They're desensitized. They're
desensitized to lock downs the way I've become desensitized to airport
security measures, though those are much less invasive, probably because
the airline industry is expected to show a profit. Also because airports
are under the close and constant scrutiny of affluent grown ups who will
tolerate only so much rudeness and delay in the name of public safety
A quick romp through Lexis Nexis shows that other communities are debating
how much invasion of privacy their students should endure in the name of
preventing a recurrence of Columbine. Schools in Lordsburg, New Mexico had
to quit using drug dogs in what the American Civil Liberties Union argued
were unreasonable searches. The Lordsburg school system settled the matter
before it went to court. In Seattle, however, the local ACLU decided not
to challenge new public school searches utilizing a labrador retriever.
Another thing I found interesting is that the term "lockdown," though
widely used in public schools across America, means very different things
in different regions. In the Columbus, Ohio area, "lockdown" refers to
timed drills in which teachers herd students into their classrooms, turn
off the lights, and close blinds. The purpose of these drills is to be
prepared in the case of an emergency – like a violent attack on the
school, whether perpetrated by students or terrorists.
A Manassas, Maryland newspaper described local schools as staging a
"lockdown" when the schools cancelled outdoor activities, locked the
doors, and asked for identification of anyone entering the buildings. This
was a one-time event, implemented at the advice of the local police in
response to an actual threat. By contrast, the Effingham County lockdowns
are conducted randomly, i.e. without the demonstrable cause that our law
generally requires to justify a search and an invasion of privacy. One
thing that troubles me is that these lockdowns are not scrutinized by the
public at large, as are airport security measures. I worry about adults
with self-esteem issues using our post-Columbine fear as an excuse to
indulge in power trips at students' expense. I do understand that
Columbine was an unthinkable tragedy, and one we should take some
reasonable precautions to prevent in the future. If we need metal
detectors in schools and we need students to walk through them five days
of the week, then let's install 'em. Nobody wants to say it these days,
but freedom walks hand in hand with risk. You can't have absolute security
and the kind of freedom our founding fathers believed in at the same time.
Certainly, some freedoms have to abridged in public schools. But the
community should be in a constant dialog with schools about just how much
freedom can be withdrawn from students. And students should participate in
the dialogue.
I see no point in teaching students about America's leading role in global
freedom and civil rights when they aren't witnessing any of that first
hand. How can we expect the next generation to grow up eager to fight for
freedom when they haven't tasted any?
Lynn Hamilton is the editor of the Tybee News, a community newspaper
serving coastal Georgia, and an occasional contributor to Alternet.
Contact her at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: [pjnews] Censure Bush for misleading us
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see also:
http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Research/2004WMD.htm
UNRAVELING THE KNOWN UNKNOWNS: Why No Weapons of Mass Destruction Have
Been Found in Iraq
A Special Report from the British American Security Information Council
http://www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/iraqintell/home.htm
WMD IN IRAQ: EVIDENCE AND IMPLICATIONS
This new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
investigates what the intelligence community understood about Iraq's WMD
programs before the war and outlines policy reforms designed to improve
threat assessments, deter transfer of WMD to terrorists, and avoid
politicization of the intelligence process.
THE WAR ON TERRORISM
A new report from the U.S. Army War College calls Bush's war on terror
"unfocused" and the war in Iraq "unnecessary." The report, "Bounding the
Global War on Terrorism," released in December, warns that the U.S. is "on
a course of open-ended and gratuitous conflict with states and non-state
entities that pose no serious threat to the U.S." Author Jeffrey Record
also notes, "The global war on terrorism as presently defined and
conducted is strategically unfocused, promises much more than it can
deliver, and threatens to dissipate U.S. military and other resources in
an endless and hopeless search for absolute security."
Download the full report:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/shoulders/report011204.pdf
Or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] to request a copy.
-----------------
http://www.moveon.org
During the buildup to war, President Bush said the United States "must not
ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we
cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in
the form of a mushroom cloud.... We have every reason to assume the worst,
and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring." 1
On the eve of sending troops into battle, Bush asserted that "intelligence
gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq
regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons
ever devised." 2
Now David Kay, the CIA's chief weapons inspector, has testified before
Congress that these weapons do not exist.
In an attempt to evade responsibility for the misleading statements that
pushed the nation into war, Bush has announced plans to form an
independent inquiry to look into what went wrong. An inquiry would serve
the Bush administration well: it would envelop the issue in a fog of
uncertainty, deflect blame onto the intelligence services, and delay any
political damage until 2005, after the upcoming election. 3
But the facts need no clarification. Despite repeated warnings from the
CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, President Bush and his
administration hyped and distorted the threat that Iraq posed. 4 And now
that reality is setting in, the President wants to pin the blame on
someone else. We can't let him.
Congress has the power to censure the President -- to formally reprimand
him for betraying the nation's trust. If ever there was a time for this,
it's now. Join our call on Congress to censure President Bush at:
http://www.moveon.org/censure/
It's clear that we've been misled:
David Kay said last week, "I'm personally convinced that there were not
large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction," and "We
don't find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would
expect to find if the production was going on." 5 Kay said these things
shortly after resigning from his post as Bush's chief weapons inspector in
Iraq.
Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union address, said, "the British
government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa." 6 Yet Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was
sent to Niger in February 2002 to determine whether Iraq was trying to
purchase uranium materials there, concluded that "intelligence related to
Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi
threat." 7
A CIA report in February 2003 said: "We do not have any direct evidence
that Iraq has used the period since [1998] to reconstitute its Weapons of
Mass Destruction programs." 8
It's also clear that the misleading was deliberate:
The respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently found
that the administration "systematically misrepresented the threat" from
Iraq. 9
The basis for President Bush's African uranium claim was known at the time
to be forged and not credible.10 "Top White House officials knew that the
CIA seriously disputed the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium
in Africa long before the claim was included in Bush's January address to
the nation," according to the Washington Post.11
Secretary of State Colin Powell became alarmed at the level of
intelligence distortion. When he read the first draft of his speech to the
UN -- prepared for Powell by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff
-- he was so upset that he lost his temper, throwing several pages in the
air and declaring, "I'm not reading this. This is bullsh--."12
Our democracy only works when we know the truth. We now know President
Bush and his administration deliberately misled Congress and the American
people. Censure is the least we should expect in response.
The independent inquiry will need a year or more to come to a conclusion,
according to the Bush administration. It took less time than that for the
country to go to war. We don't need more investigation, we need
accountability, and we need it now.
Join our call on Congress to censure President Bush at:
http://www.moveon.org/censure/
We'll be holding a press conference in Washington on Thursday, announcing
our campaign for Censure. If you sign on now, we can count your signature
at the press conference. Please sign on right away.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
- Adam, Carrie, Eli, James, Joan, Laura, Noah, Peter, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn.org Team
Tuesday, February 3, 2004
Footnotes:
1. Washington Post, January 28, 2004
2. Official White House transcript, March 17, 2003
3. Washington Post, February 2, 2004
4. An excellent, comprehensive rundown on the Bush administration's
deliberate distortion of intelligence is available from the Center for
American Progress
5. New York Times, January 26, 2004
6. Official White House transcript, January 28, 2003
7. Joseph Wilson Op-Ed, New York Times, July 6, 2003
Note: Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, had her CIA cover blown, possibly
by the White House, in apparent retaliation for Wilson's contradicting
the White House's line on WMDs.
8. MSNBC News, Oct. 24, 2003
9. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report, "WMD in Iraq:
Evidence and Implications", January, 2004
10. New York Times, July 8, 2003
11. Washington Post News Service, July 23, 2003
12. US News & World Report, June 9, 2003
Note: This article with the Powell quote is available for purchase
from the US News & World Report archives for $2.95.
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Subject: [pjnews] Two Loud Words About September 11th
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see also:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1130341,00.html
German Trial Hears How Iranian Agent Warned U.S. of Impending al-Qaida Attack
---------------
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/010504A.shtml
Two Loud Words
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 05 January 2004
There have always been 'third-rail' issues in American politics,
subjects that, if touched upon, will lead to certain political death.
For a long while, and until very recently, Social Security was one of
these issues.
A new one, surrounding the attacks of September 11, has been born in
this political season. If September 11 is discussed, the only allowable
sub-topic to be broached is whether or not the Bush administration is
capable of keeping us safe from another onslaught.
Friday's edition of the Boston Globe had a case in point on the front
page. An article titled 'For Bush, Readiness is Key Issue' stated that,
"In speech after speech, President Bush has emphasized his
administration's pledge never to forget the lessons of Sept. 11. He says
the top goal of his administration is to prevent another attack." The
Globe article contained, in the next paragraph, the standardized
rejoinder: "And while Democratic opponents of the administration are
unanimous in their hope that that vulnerability is not exposed with
deadly results, they have also argued that Bush has done far too little
to protect the country from another attack. He has refused to adequately
reimburse state and local officials for homeland security costs, they
argue, and has ignored dangerous gaps in air cargo and port security."
Thus, the 'preparedness-gap' becomes the whittled-down talking point du
jour. This is a whiff of colossal proportions, the implications of which
will echo down the halls of history unless someone develops enough spine
to speak the truth into a large microphone. The talking point is not
difficult to manage. It was splashed in gaudy multi-point font across
the front page of the New York Post in May of 2002.
Two words: 'Bush Knew.'
It is, frankly, amazing that this has fallen down the memory hole.
Recall two headlines from that period. The first, from the UK Guardian
on May 19, 2002, was titled 'Bush Knew of Terrorist Plot to Hijack US
Planes.' The first three paragraphs of this story read:
"George Bush received specific warnings in the weeks before 11 September
that an attack inside the United States was being planned by Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda network, US government sources said yesterday. In a
top-secret intelligence memo headlined 'Bin Laden determined to strike
in the US', the President was told on 6 August that the Saudi-born
terrorist hoped to 'bring the fight to America' in retaliation for
missile strikes on al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1998. Bush and his
aides, who are facing withering criticism for failing to act on a series
of warnings, have previously said intelligence experts had not advised
them domestic targets were considered at risk. However, they have
admitted they were specifically told that hijacks were being planned."
Another story on the topic came from the New York Times on May 15, 2002,
and was titled 'Bush Was Warned bin Laden Wanted to Hijack Planes.'
Unlike the Guardian piece, the Times chose to lead the article with the
Bush administration's cover story, one the administration has stuck with
to this day:
"The White House said tonight that President Bush had been warned by
American intelligence agencies in early August that Osama bin Laden was
seeking to hijack aircraft but that the warnings did not contemplate the
possibility that the hijackers would turn the planes into guided
missiles for a terrorist attack. 'It is widely known that we had
information that bin Laden wanted to attack the United States or United
States interests abroad,' Ari Fleischer, the president's press
secretary, said this evening. 'The president was also provided
information about bin Laden wanting to engage in hijacking in the
traditional pre-9/11 sense, not for the use of suicide bombing, not for
the use of an airplane as a missile.'"
Yes, we were warned, said the Bush administration, but who could have
conceived of terrorists using airplanes for suicide bombings?
A lot of people, actually.
According to a Time Magazine story that appeared on Friday, National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice is balking at requests to testify
before Thomas Kean's September 11 commission under oath. She also wants
her testimony to be taken behind closed doors, and not in public. The
crux of her hesitation would appear on the surface to be her comments of
May 16 2002, in which she used the above-referenced excuse that no one
"could have predicted that they would try to use a hijacked airplane as
a missile." If that excuse is reflective of reality, why does she fear
to testify under oath?
Perhaps Ms. Rice fears testifying because too many facts are now in
hand, thanks in no small part to the work of 9/11 widows like Kristen
Breitweiser, which fly in the face of the administration's demurrals.
For example, in 1993, a $150,000 study was commissioned by the Pentagon
to investigate the possibility of an airplane being used to bomb
national landmarks. A draft document of this was circulated throughout
the Pentagon, the Justice Department and to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. In 1994, a disgruntled Federal Express employee broke
into the cockpit of a DC-10 with plans to crash it into a company
building in Memphis.
That same year, a lone pilot crashed a small plane into a tree on the
White House grounds, narrowly missing the residence. An Air France
flight was hijacked by members of the Armed Islamic Group, which
intended to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower. In September 1999, a
report titled "The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism" was prepared
for U.S. intelligence by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the
Library of Congress. It stated, "Suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda's
Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high
explosives (C-4 and Semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the
CIA, or the White House."
Throughout the spring and early summer of 2001, intelligence agencies
flooded the government with warnings of possible terrorist attacks
against American targets, including commercial aircraft, by al Qaeda and
other groups. A July 5, 2001 White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast
Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS had a top counter-terrorism
official, Richard Clarke, state that "Something really spectacular is
going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick,
who is a three-star general, was a deputy National Security Advisor in
the late Clinton administration. He stayed on into the Bush
administration. When the Bush administration came in, he wrote a memo
about terrorism, al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The memo said, "We will
be struck again." As a result of writing that memo, he was not invited
to any more meetings.
In a late November truthout interview, former Clinton advisor Sidney
Blumenthal said, "Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in
the National Security Council. He has since left. Clark urgently tried
to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al
Qaeda. Right at the present, the Bush administration is trying to
withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of
the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August
6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and
one of the few, briefings on terrorism. I believe he told Richard Clarke
that he didn't want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was
panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks.
Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible."
"The public has a right to know what happened on August 6," continued
Blumenthal, "what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of
them did, and what Richard Clarke's memos and statements were. Then the
public will be able to judge exactly what this presidency has done."
George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his
administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another
attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to
date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal
with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be
less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our
defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through
policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is
one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history:
Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to
such excellent effect.
Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went
on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as
well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have
been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.
This administration must not be allowed to ride their criminal
negligence into a second term. Someone needs to say those two words.
Loudly. After all, Bush has proven with Social Security, and with
September 11, that third rails can be danced across. All it takes is a
little boldness.
-------
William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is a New
York Times and international best-selling author of three books - "War
On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest Sedition is
Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too: The Paradox of
Patriotism," available in August from Context Books.
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Ed. Note- Um Haider is an Iraqi woman whose son Mostafa barely survived a
1999 US missile attack (her other son Haider was killed). Mostafa's left
hand was so badly mangled that two fingers and part of his palm had to be
amputated. More significantly, the blast had lodged more than 30 pieces of
missile fragments in his head, his torso, his back, his butt and his
liver, only a few of which could be removed. With one of the fragments
migrating toward his spine, he faced possible paralysis if it was not
removed soon, and there were no doctors in Iraq skilled enough to perform
the delicate surgery. The Chicago-based humanitarian group Voices in the
Wilderness-- which has long worked for an end to the UN/UN sanctions
against Iraq-- took up the cause, securing visas and raising the necessary
funds for Um Haider to take her son to the US to undergo surgery. To read
the rest of their story, see:
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/23/features-fremon.php
---------------
http://vitw.us/weblog/archives/000496.html
January 22, 2004
A Hajj not to Mecca but to Home
Christopher Allen-Docot
On the morning of Saturday January 17th Um Haider and Mostafa crossed the
border of Jordan and entered into American military occupied Iraq. They
were heading home, after 9 months in the US, to a "liberated" Iraq where
people are afraid to be out after dark and American military helicopters
buzz the skyline at low altitudes like giant mosquitoes carrying a venom
(the weapons not the G.I.s) worse than malaria or the West Nile Virus. Um
Haider would soon see that while much has changed in Iraq, too much
remains the same and some of what has changed has done so for the worse.
Our journey back began on a difficult note as we missed our flight due to
a combination of a snafu by the counter agents at the airport, being
flagged for extra security screening, and then being sent to customs by a
TSA officer concerned about the money we were carrying. The TSA officer
was a courteous and young guy and he offered to escort us to Customs in an
effort to expedite things so we wouldn't miss the flight. While in Customs
he told me he had recently returned from a tour of military duty in Iraq,
in the same breath he noticed Mostafa's hand and asked what had happened.
I explained the story of the bombing of their Basra neighborhood in 1999
and how Mostafa lost part of his hand and his brother to the blast. The
TSA officer didn't respond immediately; but after a pause he related to
mixed feelings of his participation in the war. His mind and gut were in
conflict. He had pledged an oath to defend the American Constitution and
to obey his chain of command but in so doing I suspect his gut was telling
him he was doing something wrong. This young man now wrestles with the
image of kids like Mostafa while those who made the decision to send him
off protect themselves by distance and blindness.
On Friday the 18th the people at the Royal Jordanian counter at O'Hare
were dealing with a crush of pilgrims on the Hajj vying for every last
seat on the flights to Amman. We had arrived at the airport hours before
the rush hoping to get on the flight. Thankfully the people at RJ
recognized their error of the previous evening and found three seats for
us on an otherwise completely booked flight with a long waiting list. The
flight to Amman was unremarkable except for the wonderful behavior of
Mostafa on a crowed 14-hour flight. (My kids often fuss over a 14-minute
car ride to their grandmother's house!)
Upon approaching the border with Iraq there are thousands of refugees
living in tents set up by the UN High Commission on Human Rights. The
refugees are Kurds, Iraqi's and Palestinians. Some are seen as
collaborators with the former regime, others belonged to families, groups
or political parties that are now facing retribution for one reason or
another in a society that transformed from a police state to a lawless one
overnight. After the typical wrangling on the Jordanian side of the border
we drove across the quarter mile of "no man's land" with a fair amount of
trepidation about whom we would encounter. It turns out we met nobody in
particular. On the Iraqi side of the border we were met by a handful of
young Iraqi's. They looked at our passports but without computers or
electricity they could not and did not check our identities. We traveled
with several large duffel bags filled to the brim with clothing, school
supplies and toys. We could have been carrying bodies, or gold or grenades
for all the border agents knew; nonetheless the bags weren't even glanced
at. The only sign of the American military presence at this arrival side
of the Iraqi border were 4 G.I.'S who couldn't have been older than 25. We
were through the Iraqi side of the border in 5 minutes. (Any folks who
traveled to Iraq with us in the past can pick yourself up off the floor
now. Gone are the 4+ hours at the V.I.P. lounge drinking tea flavored
sugar water and breathing second hand smoke.) Welcome to liberated Iraq
where anyone it seems can go with anything they want; no visas, no
searches, no security, no wonder there are foreign fighters joining the
resistance to the occupation.
>From the border we headed East across a vast expanse of desert. This land
is almost entirely uninhabited. Every hundred miles or so there will be a
few shepherds and a herd of sheep and goats and a truck stop but otherwise
the land is flat, treeless, and strewn with rocks as far as the eye can
see in every direction. When the oil beneath this land runs out I can
easily imagine massive wind and solar farms generating clean electricity
for the people of Iraq and perhaps beyond. During this drive more evidence
of the new Iraq surfaces. For dozens of miles at a stretch high intensity
electrical towers have been toppled and the cables looted. We pass an
occasional rusted and bombed out vehicle and rough spots in the road where
there may have been fighting. At one point we have to detour off the road
and across the hardpan surface of the desert to go around a bridge that
was bombed during the war. The bridge is of simple construction. It spans
a natural culvert in the desert. Workers have not managed to repair this
bridge despite months of activity. A foreshadowing of what we will soon
find in Baghdad and Basra.
On the outskirts of Baghdad we see more clear evidence of the "liberated"
Iraq: new billboards along the highway median strip advertising all sorts
of electronic devices and Italian furniture. (I am reminded that Um Haider
had a home full of Italian furniture, which she sold of piece by piece
during the sanctions era to buy food for her family.) The newness of the
billboards is striking juxtaposed as they are between highway guardrails
crushed by American tanks, which remain un-repaired. The home of Um
Haider's mother and 2 of her sisters (our first destination) is in the
north end of Baghdad. During the war the women moved into this home
because the home they were in was near the airport and the headquarters
for the former Iraqi secret police and thus not a safe place to be.
We are traveling with a cell phone and a "Thuraya" satellite phone but we
are unable to call the home for directions because the phone exchanges for
Baghdad are still not operational. Nearly a year after the war people in
Baghdad, who can afford to do so, are able to sit at an internet café and
send emails via satellite around the world, but they are unable to call
across the city. Shortly after the war a telecommunications company was
awarded the contract to replace Iraq's antiquated and largely destroyed
phone system with a digital wireless system. All around Baghdad and Basra
signs have appeared in the last two weeks advertising the latest cell
phones in anticipation of the new system. Yet still the service is not
available. A contact who does business with the telecommunications company
reports that the system is ready to be operational but he reports that for
an unknown reason the CPA is holding up it's inauguration. What remains is
a capital city whose residents are unable to telephonically communicate
with one another. Most NGO in Iraq were given cell phones by the CPA; but
these phones only work with each other. Similarly, businesspeople in
Baghdad and some of the wealthy carry Thuraya satellite phones, but these
too are able to only communicate with other Thuraya phones or with
exchanges outside Iraq. Even when the new system comes on line it will be
of little help to the vast majority of Iraqi's who will remain too poor to
access it. It remains to be seen if the promise of liberation will extend
to the poor of society or if the "regime change" will have any impact on
their lives beyond their freedom to protest the squalor and disrepair
which their liberators are partially, if not largely, responsible for.
Driving through Baghdad today is a challenge and at times life risking
experience. Due to wartime damage, looting, and sporadic electricity we
did not encounter a single functional traffic signal. Few intersections
ware manned with Iraqi police and those that were only a slightly more
choreographed vehicular chaos. After asking for directions from folks on
the street we finally found the street we were looking for though we were
unsure of the house. Amazingly the first house Um Haider approached was
her mother' s home. The gate opened to a shriek of joy as this matriarchy
was reunited. While Um Haider was busy hugging her mother, sisters and
niece American tanks rambled by at the end of the street.
Inside the home, the TV was on. The home, like thousands of other homes in
today's Baghdad, has satellite television service. No longer does the
television broadcast the state sanctioned "news" and the ridiculous music
video praising Saddam; the B-grade American movies, though, are still
broadcast only now they are probably not pirated versions. The B.B.C. was
broadcasting live footage of Palestinians, themselves an occupied people,
nonviolently protesting the continued construction of Israel's apartheid
wall through the West Bank and around Bethlehem. Before the power went out
I thought the television had become a mirror into the future. After a
wonderful meal of grilled fish and doma (stuffed vegetables) I left Um
Haider and Mostafa to be with their family in Baghdad until she contacted
me that it was time for her to head to Basra. Traveling to my hotel I was
taken by how much more run down and littered the streets of Baghdad are
now than they were as recently as March. I drove past several government
buildings that had been completely destroyed by the bombings and by
several private offices that had been looted. The hotel district along the
river between Abu Nuwas street and Sadoun St. looks jarringly similar to
parts of occupied Palestine. The Baghdad, Sheraton and Palestinian hotels
are completely surrounded by 10 foot high concrete barriers and coils of
razor wire. Abu Nuwas street, once one of the busiest in Baghdad, is now
closed to vehicular traffic along this stretch. Inside the barriers are
American soldiers and a Bradley fighting vehicle (a little tank). To enter
this area and these hotels everyone and every bag is searched. This scene
is repeated everywhere the Americans have set up a base including in the
dormitories of a university they seized thereby displacing the students.
On Monday we departed to Basra before sunrise. Um Haider's husband Salah
had earlier traveled to Baghdad and joined us for the trip to Basra.
During the ride to Basra Mostafa was happily and safely ensconced in the
back seat of our GMC between his parents. They chatted the entire 6 hours
we drove in Arabic. I hope that in so doing Mostafa did not take notice of
the conditions we drove past. For hundreds of miles the galvanized steel
guardrails of the highway have been looted and not yet replaced. We passed
by the rusting hulks of dozens of Iraqi artillery pieces, tanks and
trucks. We also passed a few such American remnants of war. The historic
Tigris and Euphrates rivers define the geography of Iraq and thus land
travel requires many bridges. It would seem that the Americans had a field
day on bridges as we went over several temporary one-lane bridges during
our journey. Several convoys of gasoline tankers with military escort
passed us in the other direction. Iraq is not yet able to refine it's own
oil and is currently importing gas from Kuwait. This reality has created
long lines and heated arguments at gas stations, which are also under
armed protection, around the country. During our trip in from Jordan we
also passed a good number of convoys bringing hundreds of new automobiles,
consumer goods, grain, wire, pipes, and thousands of head of cattle into
the country. During the ride Sattar, our driver and dear friend, explained
to me a little bit of the meaning and history of the Hajj. It has much to
do with honoring the example of Abraham who was willing to submit to God's
will under even the most trying of circumstances and who shunned the
worship of idols, which had infected the people. In Arabic hajj literally
means "a resolve" as in "to resolve to some magnificent duty". Making the
Hajj to Mecca is an obligation of all Moslems who are physically and
financially able to do so. Um Haider was on a different sort of Hajj. She
was a pilgrim returning to a dangerous and difficult existence "to resolve
to the magnificent duty" of caring for her children who remained in Iraq
while she was in the States.
The culture shock of traveling from the safety and abundance of the United
States to the utter destitution of Basra is immense. Nobody goes out after
dark in Basra beyond the small-lighted area down town. People are being
kidnapped off the street and ransomed for as little as $2000. $2000 for a
human life! Iraqi Shi'ia's returning from a generation of living in Iran
have shot at the Christian owners of the city's few liquor stores. The
Chaldean bishop reports that there are not significant worries about
persecution of Christians yet there were three bullet holes in the steel
gates to the church courtyard. Children as young as three and four can be
found begging on the streets, on the sidewalks are the prostrate bodies of
other children "liberating" themselves from the liberation by pickling
their brains sniffing glue. Mounds of garbage left uncollected for months
extend for blocks. The scent of festering rot hangs in the air. It will be
a long time before freedom is something more than an abstract idea for the
people of Basra; especially if the languid pace of reconstruction is not
accelerated.
Arriving at Um Haider's home was obviously a momentous occasion for the
family. Cheers of joy greeted her. Her sister-in-law grabbed her and wept
in an extended embrace. Meanwhile Mostafa said a quick hello to his
brother and sister and ran out the door to play in the street with his
friends as if he had never left. Um Haider next saw her other surviving
son and her teenaged daughter and hugged them both. Um Haider's daughter
was not wearing the hijab. Her hair was dark and long and her cheeks full.
Looking at her I imagined Um Haider as a younger woman, before her husband
was traumatized fighting in 2 wars, before her nation was impoverished by
sanctions, and before her son was killed by one of our bombs.
Before departing Iraq I watched an American movie on Iraqi TV. During a
break a clip from the movie "Free Willy" was shown. In the clip the whale
is leaping out of its pen, over a boy, and into the ocean and freedom.
There is no dialogue during the spot but it ends with the message in block
letters: "Welcome to Freedom". I am doubtful that is a sentiment
resonating with Um Haider today.
When I left Um Haider she was not despondent over her situation. Rather
she expressed thanks to God for protecting her family during the war and
thanks to all the people in the States who helped her and supported her
during her stay. She has completed her special hajj; she is back with her
family. Now it is our turn to make a hajj, to be pilgrims for an honest
peace, true freedom, and an expeditious reconstruction of Iraq. We must
travel to our Congressional offices to lobby for change, our houses of
worship to pray for better understanding, and our weapons factories to
demand disarmament. We must also journey inside ourselves to question what
does freedom actually mean and how can we help bring about a free and
nonviolent world.
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Subject: [pjnews] America's Prison Habit
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/46a9
Inmates' 'Do Not Pass Go' Card: Ex-convicts -- many of them barred from
government benefits and good jobs -- are denied a second chance in the
U.S. They frequently return to jail.
--------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43362-2004Jan23.html
America's Prison Habit
By Alan Elsner
Saturday, January 24, 2004; Page A19
After 25 years of explosive growth in the U.S. prison system, is this
country finally ending its love affair with incarceration? Perhaps, but as
in any abusive relationship, breaking up will be hard to do.
Since 1980 the U.S. prison and jail population has quadrupled in size to
more than 2 million. In the process, prisons have embedded themselves into
the nation's economic and social fabric. A powerful lobby has grown up
around the prison system that will fight hard to protect the status quo.
There are some positive signs, as set forth in Vincent Schiraldi's Nov. 30
article in the Outlook section. Fiscal pressures may indeed slow the
growth of the vast U.S. prison system. But reversing the trend of the past
quarter-century is another matter.
Major companies such as Wackenhut Corrections Corp. and Corrections Corp.
of America employ sophisticated lobbyists to protect and expand their
market share. The law enforcement technology industry, which produces
high-tech items such as the latest stab-proof vests, helmets, stun guns,
shields, batons and chemical agents, does more than a billion dollars a
year in business.
With 2.2 million people engaged in catching criminals and putting and
keeping them behind bars, "corrections" has become one of the largest
sectors of the U.S. economy, employing more people than the combined
workforces of General Motors, Ford and Wal-Mart, the three biggest
corporate employers in the country. Correctional officers have developed
powerful labor unions. And most politicians, whether at the local, state
or national level, remain acutely aware that allowing themselves to be
portrayed as "soft on crime" is the quickest route to electoral defeat.
In the past two decades, hundreds of "prison towns" have multiplied --
places that are dependent on prisons for their economic vitality. Take
Fremont County, Colo., where the No. 1 employer is the Colorado Department
of Corrections, with nine prisons, and No. 2 is the Federal Bureau of
Prisons with four. Towns that once might have hesitated about bringing a
prison to town now rush to put together incentive packages. Abilene, Tex.,
offered the state incentives worth more than $4 million to get a prison.
The package included a 316-acre site and 1,100 acres of farmland adjacent
to the facility.
Buckeye, 35 miles west of Phoenix, was a sleepy little desert outpost with
a population of about 5,000 until it competed successfully for a major
state prison. After that the state upgraded the road leading to the town
and the population began to explode. A new movie theater and a $2.5
million swimming complex opened. Because Buckeye was sitting on ample
supplies of water, it suddenly became prime real estate. Mayor Dusty Hull
reckons the town will reach 35,000 in five years.
According to the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service,
245 prisons sprouted in 212 rural counties during the 1990s. In West
Texas, where oil and farming both collapsed, 11 rural counties acquired
prisons in that decade. The Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions
in the country, got seven new prisons. Appalachian counties of Virginia,
West Virginia and Kentucky built nine, partially replacing the collapsing
coal-mining industry. If the prisons closed, these communities would
quickly collapse again.
When states try to cut prison budgets, they quickly come up against
powerful interests. In Mississippi in 2001, Gov. Ronnie Musgrove vetoed
the state's corrections budget so he could spend more money on schools.
The legislature, lobbied by Wackenhut, overrode the veto.
In fiscally distressed California, about 6 percent of the state budget
goes to corrections. Yet no senior politician, including Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger, has dared challenge the power of the 31,000-member
California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which pours a third of
the $22 million it collects each year in membership dues into political
action committees.
Even efforts by some states to speed up the release of nonviolent
offenders are unlikely to reduce the total prison population by much. The
Bureau of Justice Statistics has found that two-thirds of those released
from prison on parole are re-arrested within three years. Released
prisoners face institutional barriers that make it difficult for them to
find a place in society. Welfare reform legislation in 1996 banned anyone
convicted of buying or selling drugs from receiving cash assistance or
food stamps for life. Legislation in 1996 and 1998 also excluded ex-felons
and their families from federal housing.
Most inmates leave prison with no money and few prospects. They may get
$25 and a bus ticket home if they are lucky. Studies have found that
within a year of release, 60 percent of ex-inmates remain unemployed.
Several states have barred parolees from working in various professions,
including real estate, medicine, nursing, engineering, education and
dentistry. The Higher Education Act of 1998 bars people convicted of drug
offenses from receiving student loans. Prisoners are told to reform but
they are given few tools to do so. Once they are entangled in the prison
system, many belong to it for life. They may spend stretches of time
inside prison and periods outside but they are never truly free.
Last year Robert Presley, secretary of California's correctional agency,
noted that after several years of decline, crime rates were rising again
and his state's prison population had resumed its growth. Maximum-security
inmates made up the fastest-growing segment. Despite the building boom of
the previous 20 years, prisons were at an average of 191 percent of
capacity. This hardly sounds like a recipe for a falling prison
population.
Alan Elsner is author of the forthcoming book "Gates of Injustice:
America's Prison Crisis" (to be released in March).
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Subject: [pjnews] Making a Killing in Iraq
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http://www.southernstudies.org/
OCCUPATION, INC.
War profiteers in Iraq pursue quick fixes and high profits by overcharging
for shoddy work, while Iraqis protest that they could do the work better
and cheaper. Welcome to the reconstruction racket.
By Pratap Chatterjee and Herbert Docena
The giant steam turbine at the Najibiya power plant is quiet. If the
Russian engineers who built the original equipment over 30 years ago
stopped by to take a look, they might have a hard time recognizing the
machinery: over the years Iraqi engineers have replaced many of the
original blue parts with a patchwork of white and grey makeshift
materials.
Across the street the lights go out. Yaruub Jasim, the general director of
electricity for the southern region, a kindly-looking man in his sixties
dressed neatly in a grey suit, is apologetic. “Normally we have power 23
hours a day but today there is a problem. We should have done maintenance
on these turbines in October, but we had no spare parts and no money.”
The needed parts were supposed to be supplied by Bechtel, a
California-based company in charge of repairing the power system under a
contract to restore Iraq’s infrastructure. The contract was issued without
competing bids last April, before an end to major conflict was declared by
President Bush, and also covers sewage, water and school systems. The
contract is worth over a billion dollars and growing, making Bechtel’s
business in Iraq second only to Texas-based Halliburton.
Just days before our visit in mid-December, the United States government
announced its decision to exclude the countries who opposed the war from
winning reconstruction contracts in Iraq. The political ramifications of
this ban, and whether it would cover parts suppliers and sub-contractors
or not—weighs heavily on Jasim’s mind.
“Three out of four of our power stations were built in Russia, Germany,
and France. Unfortunately, Mr Bush prevented the French, Russian, and
German companies from [getting contracts in] Iraq three days ago,” he
says.
As we walk around the power plant, we notice four brand-new
industrial-sized York air-conditioners. “We got those air conditioners two
weeks ago—Bechtel sent them to us because our equipment was malfunctioning
over the summer, but they haven’t installed them and we don’t need them in
the winter,” says Hamad Salem, the plant’s manager. The delay is due to a
dispute over whether Bechtel or the power plant itself is responsible for
installing the air conditioners.
WHO HAS THE POWER?
The engineers in southern Iraq are lucky to only have to explain why the
power fails once a day. Their colleague in Baghdad—Mohsen Hassan, the
technical director for power generation at the ministry of electricity—has
to explain to visitors why there is no power, frequently for over ten
hours a day, in the capital city which houses a quarter of Iraq’s
population.
A quiet, unassuming man, Hassan wears a checked shirt, no tie, and a brown
jacket that might be seen on any street in this city.
“Bechtel has put us in a very difficult position. My minister has said to
them if the people get angry, don’t blame us. You know electricity is the
first (biggest) problem in Iraq, they must solve this as soon as
possible. Under Saddam we fixed everything quickly but we didn’t worry
about quality. We didn’t work the standard way, it was very irregular.”
“The Americans have very high standards, ours are very low,” he adds,
holding out his hands and bringing them closer together to illustrate his
point. “We need to meet in between.” We ask him why Bechtel is so slow, as
surely this is a company that is very capable, having built the Saudi
Arabian electricity system from scratch. “These are unusual
circumstances,” says Hassan. “No security, there is sabotage, the system
is upset.”
One of the reasons that Bechtel has taken so long is because its
electrical team spent two months simply examining power plants,
substations, and high-voltage lines before they started any work,
infuriating the Iraqi staff, who say they could have told the company what
was necessary. Theft and sabotage has been another problem—as soon as
Bechtel started replacing 10 sabotaged electrical towers near Nassiriya,
another 10 were destroyed nearby.
Bechtel denies responsibility for the situation. "A lot of people thought
the United States was going to come in with a dump truck of money," Cliff
Mumm, head of Bechtel's Iraq effort, recently told the San Francisco
Chronicle. "To just walk in and start fixing Iraq - that's an unrealistic
expectation."
This reasoning is echoed by U.S. government officials. On a visit to the
U.S. Agency for International Development office in the heavily guarded
Baghdad convention center next to the Republican Palace, we encounter
three Secret Service officers with assault rifles in the central atrium,
walking in step, facing different directions, scanning the area
constantly. In the center of the imaginary circle they create is an older
man in a blazer. He looks like a career politician, and smiles as he chats
to the woman walking beside him.
“This looks so splendid,” he proclaims, gesturing at the convention
center. We ask the Secret Service guy who he is, perhaps a member of
Congress? “No, he’s Ambassador Ted Morse, who runs Baghdad and its
suburbs.” I step up and ask him if he will speak to me for a few minutes
about the infrastructure problems in the city. He smiles genially. “Of
course.”
Morse focuses relentlessly on the positive. “When we came here, the entire
city was still without light. The entire city was insecure and there was
fighting going on. But now, in terms of the whole city, there has been
tremendous, tremendous progress.”
When we tell him that we have talked to the power plant managers, and they
have a different story to tell, he insists that everything will be
resolved in time. “Six months is a little unrealistic to ask for it
[reconstruction] to be over. The bottleneck is sheer time. If you look at
how much time it took to rebuild Bosnia, in Sierra Leone, in Rwanda, in
Cambodia, in Burundi, in Timor. Wherever you have had a true conflict
situation, there is an impatience in that people think it could be done
immediately. Never in the world can it be done immediately. It cannot.
It’s just a physical engineering constraint and it has nothing to do with
Bechtel.”
Mohsen Hassan tells a different story. “We, the Iraqi engineers, can
repair anything,” he says. “But we need money and spare parts and so far
Bechtel has provided us with neither. The only thing that the company has
given us so far is promises. We have brought the power generation up to
400 megawatts without any spare parts, but we will need something more
than words if we want to provide this city with the 2,800 megawatts that
it demands.”
Iraqis point out that the previous regime got things up and running again
after the first Gulf war in a matter of months, even though the damage was
much more extensive because the United States and Britain deliberately
bombed the power infrastructure. This time the invasion avoided targeting
power plants, but more than twelve years of United Nations sanctions have
taken their toll.
The complaints are not limited to electricity. Telephones don’t work
because U.S. and British planes bombed many of the exchanges, and to date
Bechtel has yet to repair them. And the water system is also in a state of
major disrepair, according to Sa’ad Mohammed, the director general of the
water department for Baghdad.
“From the beginning, the U.S. considered Iraq like Afghanistan—without
infrastructure and expertise,” he told us. “But when they came here, they
realized the Iraqis are very different. The biggest problem is that the
money allocated for water and sewage from the $18 billion US budget is not
enough.” he told us.
Yet activists have long warned that the twelve-plus years of United
Nations sanctions had severely impacted utilities because it was
practically impossible to buy spare parts. A report by the New York-based
Global Policy Forum in August 2001 states: “Civilian infrastructure has
suffered disproportionately from the lack of maintenance and investment.
For example, Iraq’s electrical sector is barely holding production steady
at one-third of its 1990 capacity even though government expenditure in
the sector consistently exceeds plans. Electrical shortages, worst during
the hot summers, spoil food and medicine and stop water purification,
sewage treatment, and irrigated agriculture, interfering with all aspects
of life.”
SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN
The situation in Iraq’s schools—which Bechtel was supposed to have
repaired over the summer—is not much better. Complaints about shoddy or
undone school repairs have recently brought high-level outside scrutiny.
An internal study by U.S. Army personnel, surveying Iraqi education
ministry staff and school principals and recently leaked to Cox
Newspapers, strongly criticized Bechtel’s attempts to renovate Iraqi
schools.
"The new fans are cheap and burned out immediately upon use. All inspected
were already broken," wrote a U.S. soldier. "Lousy paint job. Major
clean-up work required. Bathrooms in poor condition," wrote another about
a different school.
Much of the criticism focuses on Bechtel's Iraqi subcontractors. "The
contractor has demanded the schools managers to hand over the good and
broken furniture. The names of the subcontractors are unknown to us
because they did not come to our office," wrote an Iraqi school planner.
"In almost every case, the paint jobs were done in a hurry, causing more
damage to the appearance of the school than in terms of providing a finish
that will protect the structure. In one case, the paint job actually
damaged critical lab equipment, making it unusable."
Bechtel officials defend their work. "The people at Bechtel really care
about this one. We've all got kids. We've all been to school. In a country
with a lot of hurt, this is meaningful. So, it's a system, it's people who
care and it's being done in the middle of chaos, chaos evolving into
something more orderly and more Iraqi," Bechtel's Gregory Huger, a manager
in the reconstruction program, told a Cox reporter.
To find out for ourselves, we visit four Baghdad schools (all listed as
renovated by Bechtel), beginning with Al-Harthia, a low white building
that houses 570 elementary school students. Here we meet Huda Sabah
Abdurasiq, who loses no time in showing us all that is wrong. The rain
leaks through the ceiling, shorting out the power. The new paint is
peeling and the floor has not been completely repaired, she says.
Most shocking to Huda is the price tag: “I could fix everything here for
just $1,000. Mr. Jeff [a Bechtel sub-contractor] spent $20,000!” she
fumes. She went to the district council and complained and then marched
off to the convention center to confront the military. “They were very
angry and spoke to our councilmember Hassan but nothing happened. And we
have no receipts for money spent. It’s useless, they won’t do a thing,”
she says.
We head over to Al-Wathba school, easily in the worst condition of all the
schools we visit. Ahmad Abdu-satar, a friendly man in a dapper suit who
has worked here for two years, shows us the toilets and sinks: new brass
taps and doors are painted a dark blue but the sinks are in a terrible
state, they don’t look like they have been touched in a decade. There is
no new paint on any of the walls, and, like the previous school, the
playground is flooded.
”I’ve been thinking of turning it into a swimming pool,” he remarks
sarcastically. “Honestly, nothing has changed since Saddam’s time. I ask
you, would American children use these toilets?” We tell him that budgets
have been slashed in America and teachers fired en masse, but he repeats
his question: “I ask you, would American children use these toilets?” We
are forced to concede that the answer is no.
”We have no books, no stationary, nothing. At least we had that in
Saddam’s time. Yes, our salaries have gone up, but so have prices. When I
asked the contractor why they didn’t finish the job, they said: we don’t
work for you, we work for the Americans.”
We stop briefly at the Al Raja’a school, but it is still being repaired.
Jamal Salih, the guard, shows us around, then complains that he had asked
the contractor to fix his house, but they refused. We take a peek inside,
surprising his two daughters and wife who are busy preparing a meal of
potato chips for lunch. The workers also invite us to join them for their
falafel lunch, but we decline and hasten to the last stop of the day
before the school closes at one p.m.
This is Hawa school, run by Batool Mahdi Hussain. Hussain is a tall woman,
dressed all in brown, including her traditional Islamic headscarf. She
appears young for the 11 years she has spent at this school, which she
recently took over when the parents voted her in as headmistress after the
war. Like the two previous headmistresses, she is eager to talk and show
us around.
She is also bitter about the contractors. The school has a fresh coat of
paint on the outside with all of the characters from the Disney version of
Aladdin, complete with the genie and the prince.
But, she says, things are worse than under Saddam. “UNICEF painted our
walls and gave us new Japanese fans. They painted the cartoons outside.
When the American contractors came, they took away our Japanese fans and
replaced them with Syrian fans that don’t work,” she says angrily.
We are joined by the school guard, Ali Sekran, who speaks a few words of
English. He repeatedly uses his AK-47 as a pointer to help Hussain
illustrate all the problems. We pray that the gun isn’t loaded.
The headmistress takes us to the toilets where a new water system has been
installed, pipes, taps and a motor to pump the water. The problem is the
motor doesn’t work so the toilets reek with unflushed sewage. She then
uncovers a new drain cover to show us that it is nothing but a cover. She
walks quickly, not waiting for the camera to catch up, a whirlwind of
show-and-tell. “These doors, the hinges are broken. We were supposed to
get steel doors, we got wooden doors. The new paint is peeling off. There
isn’t enough power to run our school.”
We notice a brand new blackboard. Hussain says that the teachers paid for
it out of their own pocket. As we bid farewell, she walks us out of the
gate and points to the construction debris in the road.
“They didn’t even take their rubbish with them. They gave us no papers to
tell us what they had done and what they did not do. We had to pay to haul
the trash. Honestly, the condition of our school was better before the
contractors came.
Bechtel Baghdad spokesman Francis Canavan says the company has “received
inquiries" on a number of the schools it contracted to repair. He says
Bechtel has directed its subcontractors to make repairs, and is witholding
10 percent of the subcontractors' payment to ensure that repairs will be
made.
But the United States Agency for International Development (AID) is
unapologetic about the state of the schools. An official spokesperson
tells us: “If you are going to do a slam article that complains that the
paint is peeling on a school that we didn’t fix, I don’t see why I should
talk to you. I don’t even know that you went to schools that were fixed by
AID—26 of the 52 schools that have submitted complaints were not even part
of our contract.” We assure her that we only visited schools that were
listed by Bechtel, showing her Bechtel’s own list. She acknowledged the
list with bad grace, clearly rattled by numerous news reports of the
failure of the school repair program which officials had hoped would bring
them much-needed positive publicity.
MAKING A KILLING
To its credit, Bechtel is one of the few companies that has made extensive
use of local contractors and holds regular meetings to explain how to get
work from them. It is also the most accessible to the international press,
being the only company to maintain offices at the Baghdad convention
center where the U.S. military holds trainings, meetings, and press
conferences for the outside world.
However, the company is not as accessible to ordinary Iraqis. Getting to
Bechtel’s offices isn’t easy. It takes half an hour on a good day to get
through three body searches and a maze of barbed wire, sandbags, solid
concrete road blocks, and soldiers, designed to keep out suicide bombers.
Visitors to the basement of the convention center where Bechtel keeps its
offices might meet Maniram Gurung outside the United States consul’s
office. Standing in front of photographs of Bush, Cheney, and Powell,
Gurung watches American soldiers, Iraqi government officials, and
contractors hurry by in the business of nation-building.
For the retired Gurkha rifleman from Kathmandu, Nepal, this guard duty is
yet another boring but well-paying job, allowing him to send $1,300 home
to his family, a small fortune in his country. It’s not as much as he used
to earn when he had to retire from the British Army in 1990 at $2,500 a
month, but it helps pay the bills. And there are some advantages—this job
is only for six months whereas in the British Army he could only go home
from his rotation in exotic locales like Brunei and Hong Kong once every
three years.
But Gurung is not a member of the coalition forces—his red badge
identifies him as an employee of a private security company called Global
Risk. Some 500 Gurkhas and 500 Fijians make up the bulk of this British
company’s armed staff, and as a security force for the CPA, they face just
as much danger and resentment as the soldiers. In early August a Gurkha
was killed by a bomb in Basra. Today they are confined to their barracks
at night, eight men to a trailer home, and food is strictly “English” (a
euphemism to mean Western food), provided by Kellogg, Brown & Root
sweatshop cooks from India whose base pay is just three dollars a day.
Why all this security? Almost every day a U.S. soldier is killed by the
well-hidden but determined Iraqi resistance, and in recent weeks they have
started to target the companies that are profiting from the occupation.
This summer, a Bechtel engineer and four guards were attacked by a crowd
that hurled giant chunks of ripped-up concrete at the business executives
in the SUV they were traveling in, shattering most of the windows.
Today U.S. and European businessmen travel with caution in what has become
the unofficial transportation of the war profiteers: shiny new white GMC
Suburbans. Often their vehicles are flanked by two other SUVs filled with
gun-toting private security guards.
While guards like Gurung make a relatively princely salary by Middle
Eastern standards, their Iraqi counterparts make far less. Mohammed
al-Husany, the ever cheerful head of security at the Palestine Hotel’s
outer barricade, tells us that he makes just 100 dollars a month, not
enough to support his wife and two kids. “I want a job with the American
companies. I have a second degree black belt in karate and I know how to
fire every kind of weapon. AK-47s, M-16s, all of them. But my friends who
work for Halliburton’s security make $400 dollars a month and the American
security guards even more,” he confides to us.
Not that the security and barricades have prevented all Iraqi resisters.
Did we see the bombing of the hotel last week?, he asks. “The rockets went
just one meter over my head,” he says, imitating the sound of the missile.
“They fired it from a donkey cart. Now no more animals allowed around
here.”
But as far as we have been able to determine, most Iraqi security guards
rarely make over $100 a month for five 12-hour shifts a week. Their
employers, however (and there are dozens of Western security companies in
Iraq today), make a killing selling their services. A contract seen by
Southern Exposure from Group 4 Falck, a British security company, offered
the CPA two armed guards 24 hour a day for any building for $6106 a month,
of which the Iraqi guards’ salaries amounted to just 10 percent of the
costs.
WAR PROFITEERING?
The three employees of Kellogg, Brown, and Root (a Halliburton
subsidiary), standing at the base of a stairwell at the convention center
chatting on their tea break, are excited. Khaled Ali tries several times
to pronounce the word “congratulations” but fails. Exasperated, he turns
to me to ask if there is a better word. I suggest slapping his friend on
the back and saying: Good job! Well done! But he shakes his head
violently. “No, I cannot say that—Mr. Lewis is an American, my boss. I
must say something more polite.”
We start talking. Khaled Ali is an engineer in charge of construction at
the convention center, Sabah Adel Mostafa is an interpreter, and Daoud
Farrod is a supervisor. Farrod is older but the first two are in their
late twenties. They are friends and live in the same neighborhood. Every
morning Halliburton sends a car to pick them up and bring them to work at
8 a.m. and take them back at 4 p.m.
They are enthusiastic about their work. “It’s my first job. I was not able
to practice my English before. And the [previous government] pay was just
$10 a month,” Mostafa tells me. Ali says it his first job, too. “And you
are in charge of all the construction here?” I ask. He nods proudly,
beaming when we say “Congratulations!” Mostafa earns $200 a month, right
in the middle of the typical pay scale for Halliburton’s Iraqi workers,
which ranges from $100 to $300 a month. By comparison, Houston engineers
can make as much as $900 a day.
If the local staff gets paid so little, the question is what happens to
the rest of the money? To date, Halliburton has made over $2.2 billion
from the war in Iraq but, unlike Bechtel, most of this money is not for
fixing Iraq’s destroyed and crumbling infrastructure. Some 42% is spent on
combating oil fires and fixing oil pipelines, 48% is for supporting the
needs of the occupying army (such as housing and transportation for
troops), leaving just 10% for meeting community needs in Iraq.
Breaking down the numbers reveals some startling details: Halliburton has
spent $40 million to support the unsuccessful search for weapons of mass
destruction—enough to support 6,600 families in Iraq for a year (at $500 a
month, the number cited by many Iraqis as necessary for a decent standard
of living).
Other numbers are just as startling—Halliburton’s net profit for the
second quarter of 2003 was $26 million, which contrasts markedly with the
company’s net loss of $498 million in the same quarter of 2002. Most of
its new income is from the contracts in Iraq. “Iraq was a very nice boost”
for the company, an analyst told The Wall Street Journal.
Easily the most controversial contract that the company has won in Iraq is
for fuel transportation. The importing of gasoline has proved to be among
the most costly elements of the reconstruction effort. Although Iraq has
some of the biggest oil reserves in the world, production has ground to a
halt because of pipeline sabotage, power failures, and an outdated
infrastructure affected by more than twelve years of United Nations
sanctions.
The United States has been paying Halliburton an average of $2.64 a gallon
to import gasoline to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are
paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show. In some cases
Halliburton has even charged the government as much as $3.09 a gallon.
Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokesperson, defends the company's astronomical
charges for gasoline. "It is expensive to purchase, ship, and deliver fuel
into a wartime situation, especially when you are limited by
short-duration contracting.”
The prices Halliburton is charging for gasoline were first uncovered by
two Democrats in Congress, John Dingell of Michigan and Henry Waxman of
California. Documents they recently obtained from the Army Corps of
Engineers show that Halliburton gets 26 cents a gallon for its overhead
and fee, but this does not include the company’s profits, which will be
determined at the end of the contract and may be as high as 9 percent,
depending on the Army’s evaluation of the services provided.
"I have never seen anything like this in my life," said Phil Verleger, a
California oil economist and the president of the consulting firm PK
Verleger told the New York Times. "That's a monopoly premium—that’s the
only term to describe it. Every logistical firm or oil subsidiary in the
United States and Europe would salivate to have that sort of contract."
Meanwhile, Iraq's state oil company, SOMO, pays 96 cents a gallon to bring
in gasoline. Both SOMO and Halliburton's subcontractor deliver gasoline to
the same depots in Iraq and often use the same military escorts.
The good news about Hallliburton’s overcharging is that these prices have
not been passed on to Iraqi consumers directly. The price of fuel sold in
Iraq, set by the government, is 5 cents to 15 cents a gallon, the same
price as before the war.
Yet these numbers are cold comfort to most Baghdad citizens, because there
is very little gasoline available for sale. One must spend at least four
hours to buy gas at the pump and often much longer.
The bad news for Iraqis is that the money for Halliburton's gas contract
has come principally from the United Nations oil-for-food program (now
called the Iraq Development Fund), money that should rightfully be spent
on food and basic necessities for the Iraqi people rather than paid to
Halliburton for expensive oil imports, though some of the costs have been
borne by American taxpayers.
An internal Pentagon audit has confirmed the overcharging, indicating that
Halliburton billed the government an extra $61 million for gasoline (and
also attempted to overcharge by $67 million for dining services for the
military).
On our way back from our interviews, we pass yet another line for
gasoline: it stretches around the block and all the way across the bridge
over the river. We decide to chat with the men waiting in line. We are
quickly surrounded by angry people.
”We were a rich country—now our very wealth has been stolen by the
Americans,” says one. “Under Saddam we never had to wait in line for
benzene [the local word for gas or petrol], now we must spend half a day
and then sometimes they run out,” says another. The popular theory is that
Americans are re-selling the high quality Iraqi gasoline to other
countries or keeping it for themselves. “They sell us Turkish or Kuwaiti
or Saudi oil. This is bad for our engines and creates more pollution.” One
little boy joins the fray: “George Bush Ali Baba, George Bush Ali Baba.”
(Ali Baba is the popular local term for thief, popularized by the U.S.
military to refer to looters. Now, according to the New York Times, Iraqis
use the term to refer to occupation forces.)
Just a block away from the gas station, it is possible to buy black market
gasoline for one dollar a gallon—ten times more than at the pump. We
decide to buy from the black marketers, and ask the man why he chooses to
sell the money at such a high mark-up. “Listen, I used to be an electrical
engineer. Now I have no job. Who will feed my wife and three children?” he
asks.
As we leave the neighborhood we meet yet another military patrol, which
looks like a movie set for a Vietnam war movie transplanted to the 21st
century. Three Humvees with soldiers covered from head to toe in
camouflage and full face masks, each facing a different direction, crawl
along the road behind a tank. These guys have their fingers on the
trigger; you can almost see them scowl.
Yet despite all this private security and the tens of thousands of troops,
life for ordinary Iraqis has unquestionably become far worse: two blocks
from our hotel, a man was shot in the head and lay bleeding. A passerby
discovered him and took him to the police station, but the police refused
to investigate.
”What has happened to Iraq? We are in a state of chaos, this is a complete
breakdown of our civilization. The other day I was called in to have my
passport stamped by the occupation authorities. Me, an Iraqi citizen, I
have to have my existence verified by these Americans. And I have to bribe
the man to get an interview. When I told the Americans that I had to pay a
bribe, they told me I shouldn’t have and I said: well, if you paid him a
decent salary, maybe he wouldn’t have to ask for a bribe. But no, they pay
people the same as under Saddam.”
PROPAGANDA FOR THE PEOPLE
Dressed in regulation camouflage khakis, the G.I. from the First Armored
Battalion was causing a minor traffic jam by handing out newspapers in the
middle of traffic at the Sahar Antar (Sahar means roundabout) in the Al
Adamiyah neighborhood. His fellow soldiers watched warily from their
Humvee and Bradley convoy parked to the side, just in case anyone decided
to take a potshot at their colleague.
We gasped as we flipped open our copy of Baghdad Now, a bilingual
newspaper issued by the military. Two headlines read “Operation Iron
Hammer Nets Terrorists” and “Iraqi-American Friendship on the rise.”
Pratap had a flashback to Cold War propaganda in India 20 years ago
(“Soviet-Indian Friendship on the rise”). Similarly, a page five article
on the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the dedication of a renovated
engineering building reminded us of the filler articles one might see in
newspapers from the former Soviet bloc.
On the front cover was a photo of an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC)
soldier toting an M-16 and looking as menacing as possible. A page six
article headlined “Iraq’s New Defenders” started, “In addition to the new
national army being formed to defend Iraq’s borders in the post-Saddam
world, the ICDC has been created to aid in policing the nation’s cities.”
No mention of poor salaries here, although more than half of the new
recruits to the Iraqi army have already quit because of low pay.
Writes Colonel Brad May of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, “Iraq is for
the people of Iraq. Everyday I see more and more signs that this statement
is true. The Iraqi people are well on their way to leading their country
into the future: children walk to school, buses crowd the street carrying
people to their destinations, and street vendors compete against each
other for your business.”
We show this paper to Dr. Aziz, who runs a small printing business just
outside the Sheraton hotel in Baghdad. He glances at it and grimaces. He
explains that the American government should stop telling the Iraqi people
how lucky they are and start fixing the problems, otherwise even their
supporters are going to start protesting. “Please tell your readers that
we are a civilized people and we cannot tolerate this any more.”
_________________
Pratap Chatterjee is managing editor for Corpwatch (www.corpwatch.org) in
Oakland, California, and Herbert Docena works for the Bangkok office of
Focus on the Global South (www.focusweb.org). This piece was made possible
in part due to support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the
Fund for Constitutional Government, and the Bob Hall Investigative Action
Fund.
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This has been circulating around the internet...
George W. Bush
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
LAW ENFORCEMENT:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the
influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's
license suspended for 30 days.
My Texas driving record has been "lost" and is not available.
MILITARY:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a
drug test or answer any questions about my drug use.
By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty
in Vietnam.
COLLEGE:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader.
PAST WORK EXPERIENCE:
I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I began my career in the oil business in
Midland, Texas in 1975. I bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil
in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock. I
bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land
using taxpayer money. With the help of my father and our right-wing
friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected
governor of Texas.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS:
I changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making
Texas the most polluted state in the Union. During my tenure, Houston
replaced Los Angeles as the most smog-ridden city in America.
I cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in
borrowed money. I set the record for the most executions by any governor
in American history. With the help of my brother, the governor of
Florida, and my father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became
President after losing by over 500,000 votes.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:
I am the first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal
record.
I invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one
billion dollars per week.
I spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.
I shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.
I set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any
12-month period.
I set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.
I set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S.
stock market.
In my first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
I'm proud that the members of my cabinet are the richest of any
administration in U.S. history.
My "poorest millionaire, "Condoleeza Rice, had a Chevron oil tanker named
after her.
I set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by a U.S. President.
I am the all-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most
corporate campaign donations.
My largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of my best friends,
Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S.
History, Enron.
My political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to
assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.
I have protected my friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation
or prosecution. More time any money was spent investigating the Monica
Lewinsky affair than has been spent investigating one of the biggest
corporate rip-offs in history.
I presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to
intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.
I presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
I changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded
government contracts.
I appointed more convicted criminals to administration than any President
in U.S. history.
I created the Department of Homeland Security, the largest bureaucracy in
the history of the United States government.
I've broken more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.
I am the first President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove
the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.
I withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.
I refused to allow inspector's access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees
and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.
I am the first President in history to refuse United Nations election
inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).
I set the record for least number of press conferences of any President
since the advent of television. I set the all-time record for most days on
vacation in any one-year period. After taking off the entire month of
August, I presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.
I garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center
attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in
the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.
I have set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously
protest me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for
protest against any person in the history of mankind.
I am the first President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked,
pre-emptive attack and the military occupation of a sovereign nation. I
did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S.
citizens, and the world community.
I have cut health care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty
benefits for active duty troops and their families -- in wartime.
In my State of the Union Address, I lied about our reasons for attacking
Iraq, then blamed the lies on our British friends.
I am the first President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%)
view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.
I am supporting development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster," a WMD.
RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
All records of my tenure as governor of Texas are now in my father's
library, sealed and unavailable for public view.
All records of SEC investigations into my insider trading and my bankrupt
companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
All records or minutes from meetings that I, or my Vice-President,
attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and
unavailable for public review.
PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN 2004.
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Subject: [pjnews] Democrats Demand the Truth on WMDs
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0205-09.htm
Progress by US Forces Undermined by Frequent Attacks on Iraqis
------------
Take Action!
Democrats Demand the Truth on WMDs
David Kay, the man responsible for the weapons search in Iraq, that
finally caught the attention of the Administration, and the world, made an
important recommendation -- that an independent inquiry be established so
that we can better understand how our intelligence could have been so
wrong.
So, the Bush Administration has finally begun to acknowledge the colossal
intelligence failures that led us to war in Iraq... and what is Bush going
to do about it? He's going to "name a panel." Well you know what? That's
simply not enough. The Bush Administration has shown no capacity to ever
accept criticism or
to admit failure. It is impossible to believe, with the very credibility
of the Administration's purpose for going to war at stake, that a panel
appointed by the President with no input from Congress and with no input
from Democrats will be independent at all.
The Administration has already proved its independent commission will be
anything but independent. It has been reported that the Bush
Administration will prohibit the "independent" panel from exploring the
misuse of intelligence information by top Bush Administration officials.
Instead, for political purposes, the
President wants to both create a commission and to tie its hands at the
same time. The real goal, it seems, is to shield the White House itself
from accountability in an election year. That's not right, and it won't
address the fundamental problems that led us to war. And such an approach
will not restore the
credibility of our intelligence in the eyes of the American people and the
world community.
Last summer I first offered legislation to establish an independent
commission to investigate intelligence issues related to Iraq and over
5,000 of you signed the petition to Senate Democrats to KEEP FIGHTING FOR
THE TRUTH. Well today I ask you to join us again. But this time we won't
ask - we will demand.
The panel being thrown together by the Administration will be limited in
its mandate and will shield Administration officials from any
accountability. Well, it was not the intelligence community who:
* convinced the American people to send their sons and daughters to war.
* presented to the American people the image of a mushroom cloud, or
announced on the eve of war that Saddam Hussein had, quote,
"reconstituted" nuclear weapons and was an immediate and imminent threat
to the U.S.
These decisions and pronouncements were made by the Bush Administration
and no serious investigation can exclude those decision makers from its
scope.
Please join me today! Sign the petition and tell President Bush that ONLY
an independent commission, with members appointed by both parties and with
involvement from Congress, can conduct a sufficiently thorough
investigation, and produce findings that would be widely accepted as
credible.
Yours truly,
Senator Jon Corzine
You can take action on this alert via the web at:
http://action.dscc.org/campaign/wmdtruth/dukk6grzjtd5db
Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
http://action.dscc.org/campaign/wmdtruth/forward/dukk6grzjtd5db
We encourage you to take action by March 6, 2004
Democrats Demand the Truth on WMDs
Your letter will be addressed and sent to:
President George W. Bush
----THIS LETTER WILL BE SENT IN YOUR NAME----
Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],
The stakes could not be higher. Over one hundred and thirty thousand brave
Americans are currently serving in Iraq, fighting a war that was justified
with claims that Saddam Hussein posed a dire and immediate threat to the
United States. They are fighting an insurgency that they and the American
people were
assured would not happen. And they are fighting virtually alone, largely
because the Administration insisted that UN inspections were ineffective
and that further diplomacy was pointless. You must allow Congress to
establish an independent commission, with members appointed by both
parties who could conduct a thorough investigation, and produce findings
that would be widely accepted as credible.
America's national security demands that we begin to learn the lessons of
Iraq and Americans demand that we learn the truth.
----END OF LETTER TO BE SENT----
Sincerely,
[your name]
--------------------------------------------------
If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for
DSCC at: http://action.dscc.org/DSCCSenate/join.html?r=mdzsmi619QBTE
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Subject: [pjnews] Leave No Worker Behind
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17704
Leave No Worker Behind
By Ruth Rosen, San Francisco Chronicle
February 1, 2004
Cynthia Hernandez, a petite and pretty 21-year-old grocery worker, felt
exhilarated, rather than weary, after traveling by bus from Los Angeles to
Northern California. Riding with her were her 2-year-old daughter, 50
other union members and religious leaders of all denominations from
Southern California.
She was part of the "Grocery Workers' Justice Pilgrimage," representing
70,000 workers who have been striking Safeway and have been locked out
from other Southern Californian supermarkets for the last four months.
They're struggling to keep their health-care benefits, a problem that will
eventually affect many middle-class workers.
The pilgrimage journeyed north to persuade Steven Burd, president,
chairman and CEO of Safeway, who lives in Alamo, to return to the
negotiating table. Knowing that Burd is a devout evangelical Christian,
religious leaders hoped to "change his heart" and to appeal to the faith
he professes.
They also came to deliver 10,000 cards – written by shoppers, children and
congregants – that asked Burd to resume bargaining until labor and
management reach a fair settlement that protects the health care of all
workers.
As the bus arrived in Alamo on a chilly but sunny morning Wednesday, they
were warmly greeted by Northern Californian religious leaders and
community supporters. Together, they held a prayer vigil in front of
Alamo's Safeway.
"Mr. Burd, lift up your eyes and see the people who are suffering, " said
a rabbi. "We need affordable health care," said a minister. After each
religious leader spoke, the crowd of several hundred chanted, "Do not
close your ears to the cry of the needy."
The 4-month-old strike has, in fact, devastated the lives of many workers,
some of whom have lost their homes and had their cars repossessed. Many
can no longer feed their families and are deeply in debt. "I don't know
how I'll pay the rent next month," Hernandez told me. "I have nothing
left."
Then, the peaceful crowd marched toward Burd's home, chanting "Health care
now!" To their delight, passing drivers honked in solidarity and a few
neighbors rushed out of magnificent homes to offer unexpected words of
support.
Because only a small delegation of religious leaders were allowed to climb
the private road to the gated Alamo Ridge community, the striking workers
never saw the wooded forests and rolling hills that shelter the 15
families who live in this exclusive enclave.
Stationed at the gate was Guy Worth, who would only describe himself as
"Mr. Burd's personal representative," but who turned out to be a Safeway
security guard. He received the bins of cards and then, much to his
evident discomfort, found himself drawn into a prayer circle with
religious leaders.
On the way back, I asked Hernandez what we in Northern California should
understand about the grocery workers' strike.
"What happens to us," she said, "will happen to everyone else in the
country. If our strike is broken, then employers will know they can end
health care for all workers."
The grocery workers oppose Safeway's effort to raise the amount they must
contribute to their health-care costs. The union also refuses to accept a
"two-tier" system in which future employees will receive lower wages and
benefits than current workers.
With a turnover rate of 30 percent a year, grocery workers would soon be
reduced to the kind of subsistence-level pay earned by nonunion workers at
Wal-Mart, which, says Safeway, is why the corporation, to stay
competitive, must curtail wages and benefits.
"It's a race to the bottom," said Hernandez, as she wheeled her sleeping
daughter in her stroller. "If we 70,000 workers don't get decent wages and
health-care benefits, some of us will end up on welfare and most of us
will use the public health care system. And who's going to pay for all
these public services? The taxpayers, of course! Well, I don't want to
live like that. Why shouldn't our employer pay a living wage and health
benefits so that we can retain our dignity as workers?"
The Rev. Carol Been, a Lutheran minister in the Bay Area, echoed
Hernandez's sense of urgency. "There's a race to see which employer can
pay the least to its workers and the real issue, of course, is health
care."
The striking workers certainly know that. So, by the way, did voters in
New Hampshire's primary, who told pollsters that health care was even more
important than the economy and the war in Iraq.
Workers such as Hernandez are desperately trying to hang on to their
middle-class dignity. They deserve our support. There, but for good
fortune, go the rest of us – and probably sooner than we may realize.
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17484
Fortress America
By Farai Chideya, AlterNet
January 6, 2004
I'm glad I got to see the world before it closed up shop.
In the past decade, I've been lucky enough – blessed enough – to travel to
four continents. The countries I've toured are a literal A to Z, as I
road-tripped from coast-to-coast in America and hiked through the
mountains of Zimbabwe. And now, both within and without our nation,
prospects for mind-expanding travel are narrowing to the aperture of a
pin, or perhaps to the invisible width of a bit of data.
Today [01/06], the United States began photographing and fingerprinting
non-U.S. citizens as they entered the country. The program, US-VISIT
(United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) is
budgeted at $380 million. An estimated 24 million individuals each year
will have to pass two finger scans and have their photographs taken as
they enter the United States. The government's hope is that it will catch
terrorists and those who overstay their visas.
In the words of Homeland Security director Tom Ridge, "As the world
community combats terrorism ... you're going to see more and more
countries going to a form of biometric identification to confirm
identities." Biometrics is a developing, and lucrative, arena of
technologies that map and quantify the body digitally.
Ironically, the International Biometric Industry Association had scheduled
its annual conference for September 11, 2001, in Orlando, Florida. The
association re-scheduled the conference, with a keynote called "Homeland
Security and Biometrics," for February 2002. Since then, the financial
prospects for biometrics firms have soared. In much the same way that the
war on Iraq has improved the fortunes of military outsourcing firms like
Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root, our nation's response to
the September 11 attacks is feeding the coffers of biometrics firms – for
an uncertain reward.
This holiday season, the United States blocked or delayed several
international flights into the country because of security concerns.
Ultimately, no arrests were made, and the government admits there may have
been no terrorist plot to begin with. In fact, some of the flights had
spelling errors on their passenger manifests that caused the delays. More
specifically, a test of the US-VISIT program in Atlanta screened over
20,000 passengers and found just 21 people with suspicious records. None
of them were suspected terrorists – rather, they had been convicted of
prior offenses including statutory rape.
On the one hand, no one wants criminals entering the United States. But at
a cost of $380 million dollars a year, this program is wildly expensive
and does not seem to net its target of terrorists (who may well have
sophisticated ways of foiling the system). Instead, it may deter
legitimate tourists and hurt an already ailing airline industry.
And moves like this one do not just affect non-estadounidenses. The
tightening of global travel restrictions sends a message to Americans that
the world is as closed to us as the United States appears to be to those
on the outside. They add to the already rampant paranoia that the world is
merely a dangerous (and not also a wondrous) place and the only safe haven
is a gated community within a shuttered nation. Our country is becoming a
fortress of our own devising, both psychologically and tangibly. For
example, last week Brazil began fingerprinting and photographing American
visitors as a tit-for-tat.
"At first, most of the Americans were angered at having to go through all
this," said Wagner Castilho, a press officer for the Brazilian federal
police. "But they were usually more understanding once they learned that
Brazilians are subjected to the same treatment in the U.S."
We can't expect special treatment on the global stage. If we restrict
access to the United States, others will restrict our access to the world.
And that would be a devastating shame. In an era of terror, anger and
recriminations, one of the healing balms is a one-on-one connection with
people of other nations. We cannot heal the rifts in this fractious world
by hiding in our domain. No screening program will make us absolutely
secure. And if we retreat – attempting to become an island fortress – we
will endanger not only our humanity, but our long-term security as well.
Farai Chideya is the founder of Pop and Politics.
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http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1181
America's Empire of Bases
By Chalmers Johnson
As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do
not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world
through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are
often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This
vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica
actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its
own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class.
Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one
can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations
or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our
constitutional order.
Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies,
technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other
nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating
some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names
sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John
F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt,
Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and
Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to
monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are
saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.
Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which
design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now
well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the
Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services to build
and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to
keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters,
well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable vacation
facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the
military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example,
while the Defense Department was ordering up an extra ration of cruise
missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing tank shells, it also acquired
273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its 1999 order and
undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa,
Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach,
Florida.
At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases
It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases.
Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive.
According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for
fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real
estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about
130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its
territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least
$113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a
figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries
-- and an estimated $591.5 billion to replace all of them. The military
high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed
personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense
civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired
foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks,
hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases
4,844 more.
These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the
actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to
mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the
site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since
by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S.
military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called
arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.
For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American
military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only
one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine
Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186
acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city.
(Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon
similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and
espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently
disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the
actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different
bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the
Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been
distinctly on the rise in recent years.
For their occupants, these are not unpleasant places to live and work.
Military service today, which is voluntary, bears almost no relation to
the duties of a soldier during World War II or the Korean or Vietnamese
wars. Most chores like laundry, KP ("kitchen police"), mail call, and
cleaning latrines have been subcontracted to private military companies
like Kellogg, Brown & Root, DynCorp, and the Vinnell Corporation. Fully
one-third of the funds recently appropriated for the war in Iraq (about
$30 billion), for instance, are going into private American hands for
exactly such services. Where possible everything is done to make daily
existence seem like a Hollywood version of life at home. According to the
Washington Post, in Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, waiters in white
shirts, black pants, and black bow ties serve dinner to the officers of
the 82nd Airborne Division in their heavily guarded compound, and the
first Burger King has already gone up inside the enormous military base
we've established at Baghdad International Airport.
Some of these bases are so gigantic they require as many as nine internal
bus routes for soldiers and civilian contractors to get around inside the
earthen berms and concertina wire. That's the case at Camp Anaconda,
headquarters of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, whose job is to
police some 1,500 square miles of Iraq north of Baghdad, from Samarra to
Taji. Anaconda occupies 25 square kilometers and will ultimately house as
many as 20,000 troops. Despite extensive security precautions, the base
has frequently come under mortar attack, notably on the Fourth of July,
2003, just as Arnold Schwarzenegger was chatting up our wounded at the
local field hospital.
The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist towns in the
Bible Belt rather than the big population centers of the United States.
For example, even though more than 100,000 women live on our overseas
bases -- including women in the services, spouses, and relatives of
military personnel -- obtaining an abortion at a local military hospital
is prohibited. Since there are some 14,000 sexual assaults or attempted
sexual assaults each year in the military, women who become pregnant
overseas and want an abortion have no choice but to try the local economy,
which cannot be either easy or pleasant in Baghdad or other parts of our
empire these days.
Our armed missionaries live in a closed-off, self-contained world serviced
by its own airline -- the Air Mobility Command, with its fleet of
long-range C-17 Globemasters, C-5 Galaxies, C-141 Starlifters, KC-135
Stratotankers, KC-10 Extenders, and C-9 Nightingales that link our
far-flung outposts from Greenland to Australia. For generals and admirals,
the military provides seventy-one Learjets, thirteen Gulfstream IIIs, and
seventeen Cessna Citation luxury jets to fly them to such spots as the
armed forces' ski and vacation center at Garmisch in the Bavarian Alps or
to any of the 234 military golf courses the Pentagon operates worldwide.
Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld flies around in his own personal Boeing
757, called a C-32A in the Air Force.
Our "Footprint" on the World
Of all the insensitive, if graphic, metaphors we've allowed into our
vocabulary, none quite equals "footprint" to describe the military impact
of our empire. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers
and senior members of the Senate's Military Construction Subcommittee such
as Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) are apparently incapable of completing a
sentence without using it. Establishing a more impressive footprint has
now become part of the new justification for a major enlargement of our
empire -- and an announced repositioning of our bases and forces abroad --
in the wake of our conquest of Iraq. The man in charge of this project is
Andy Hoehn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. He and his
colleagues are supposed to draw up plans to implement President Bush's
preventive war strategy against "rogue states," "bad guys," and
"evil-doers." They have identified something they call the "arc of
instability," which is said to run from the Andean region of South America
(read: Colombia) through North Africa and then sweeps across the Middle
East to the Philippines and Indonesia. This is, of course, more or less
identical with what used to be called the Third World -- and perhaps no
less crucially it covers the world's key oil reserves. Hoehn contends,
"When you overlay our footprint onto that, we don't look particularly
well-positioned to deal with the problems we're now going to confront."
Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up
colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base. By
following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about
our ever larger imperial stance and the militarism that grows with it.
Militarism and imperialism are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Each
thrives off the other. Already highly advanced in our country, they are
both on the verge of a quantum leap that will almost surely stretch our
military beyond its capabilities, bringing about fiscal insolvency and
very possibly doing mortal damage to our republican institutions. The only
way this is discussed in our press is via reportage on highly arcane plans
for changes in basing policy and the positioning of troops abroad -- and
these plans, as reported in the media, cannot be taken at face value.
Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, commanding our 1,800 troops occupying
the old French Foreign Legion base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti at the
entrance to the Red Sea, claims that in order to put "preventive war" into
action, we require a "global presence," by which he means gaining hegemony
over any place that is not already under our thumb. According to the
right-wing American Enterprise Institute, the idea is to create "a global
cavalry" that can ride in from "frontier stockades" and shoot up the "bad
guys" as soon as we get some intelligence on them.
"Lily Pads" in Australia, Romania, Mali, Algeria . . .
In order to put our forces close to every hot spot or danger area in this
newly discovered arc of instability, the Pentagon has been proposing --
this is usually called "repositioning" -- many new bases, including at
least four and perhaps as many as six permanent ones in Iraq. A number of
these are already under construction -- at Baghdad International Airport,
Tallil air base near Nasariyah, in the western desert near the Syrian
border, and at Bashur air field in the Kurdish region of the north. (This
does not count the previously mentioned Anaconda, which is currently being
called an "operating base," though it may very well become permanent over
time.) In addition, we plan to keep under our control the whole northern
quarter of Kuwait -- 1,600 square miles out of Kuwait's 6,900 square miles
-- that we now use to resupply our Iraq legions and as a place for Green
Zone bureaucrats to relax.
Other countries mentioned as sites for what Colin Powell calls our new
"family of bases" include: In the impoverished areas of the "new" Europe
-- Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria; in Asia -- Pakistan (where we already
have four bases), India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines,
and even, unbelievably, Vietnam; in North Africa -- Morocco, Tunisia, and
especially Algeria (scene of the slaughter of some 100,00 civilians since
1992, when, to quash an election, the military took over, backed by our
country and France); and in West Africa -- Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and
Sierra Leone (even though it has been torn by civil war since 1991). The
models for all these new installations, according to Pentagon sources, are
the string of bases we have built around the Persian Gulf in the last two
decades in such anti-democratic autocracies as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar,
Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
Most of these new bases will be what the military, in a switch of
metaphors, calls "lily pads" to which our troops could jump like so many
well-armed frogs from the homeland, our remaining NATO bases, or bases in
the docile satellites of Japan and Britain. To offset the expense involved
in such expansion, the Pentagon leaks plans to close many of the huge Cold
War military reservations in Germany, South Korea, and perhaps Okinawa as
part of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's "rationalization" of our armed
forces. In the wake of the Iraq victory, the U.S. has already withdrawn
virtually all of its forces from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, partially as a
way of punishing them for not supporting the war strongly enough. It wants
to do the same thing to South Korea, perhaps the most anti-American
democracy on Earth today, which would free up the 2nd Infantry Division on
the demilitarized zone with North Korea for probable deployment to Iraq,
where our forces are significantly overstretched.
In Europe, these plans include giving up several bases in Germany, also in
part because of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's domestically popular
defiance of Bush over Iraq. But the degree to which we are capable of
doing so may prove limited indeed. At the simplest level, the Pentagon's
planners do not really seem to grasp just how many buildings the 71,702
soldiers and airmen in Germany alone occupy and how expensive it would be
to reposition most of them and build even slightly comparable bases,
together with the necessary infrastructure, in former Communist countries
like Romania, one of Europe's poorest countries. Lt. Col. Amy Ehmann in
Hanau, Germany, has said to the press "There's no place to put these
people" in Romania, Bulgaria, or Djibouti, and she predicts that 80% of
them will in the end stay in Germany. It's also certain that generals of
the high command have no intention of living in backwaters like Constanta,
Romania, and will keep the U.S. military headquarters in Stuttgart while
holding on to Ramstein Air Force Base, Spangdahlem Air Force Base, and the
Grafenwöhr Training Area.
One reason why the Pentagon is considering moving out of rich democracies
like Germany and South Korea and looks covetously at military
dictatorships and poverty-stricken dependencies is to take advantage of
what the Pentagon calls their "more permissive environmental regulations."
The Pentagon always imposes on countries in which it deploys our forces
so-called Status of Forces Agreements, which usually exempt the United
States from cleaning up or paying for the environmental damage it causes.
This is a standing grievance in Okinawa, where the American environmental
record has been nothing short of abominable. Part of this attitude is
simply the desire of the Pentagon to put itself beyond any of the
restraints that govern civilian life, an attitude increasingly at play in
the "homeland" as well. For example, the 2004 defense authorization bill
of $401.3 billion that President Bush signed into law in November 2003
exempts the military from abiding by the Endangered Species Act and the
Marine Mammal Protection Act.
While there is every reason to believe that the impulse to create ever
more lily pads in the Third World remains unchecked, there are several
reasons to doubt that some of the more grandiose plans, for either
expansion or downsizing, will ever be put into effect or, if they are,
that they will do anything other than make the problem of terrorism worse
than it is. For one thing, Russia is opposed to the expansion of U.S.
military power on its borders and is already moving to checkmate American
basing sorties into places like Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The
first post-Soviet-era Russian airbase in Kyrgyzstan has just been
completed forty miles from the U.S. base at Bishkek, and in December 2003,
the dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, declared that he would not
permit a permanent deployment of U.S. forces in his country even though we
already have a base there.
When it comes to downsizing, on the other hand, domestic politics may come
into play. By law the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closing Commission
must submit its fifth and final list of domestic bases to be shut down to
the White House by September 8, 2005. As an efficiency measure, Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld has said he'd like to be rid of at least one-third of
domestic Army bases and one-quarter of domestic Air Force bases, which is
sure to produce a political firestorm on Capitol Hill. In order to protect
their respective states' bases, the two mother hens of the Senate's
Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee, Kay Bailey Hutchison
(R-TX) and Dianne Feinstein, are demanding that the Pentagon close
overseas bases first and bring the troops now stationed there home to
domestic bases, which could then remain open. Hutchison and Feinstein
included in the Military Appropriations Act of 2004 money for an
independent commission to investigate and report on overseas bases that
are no longer needed. The Bush administration opposed this provision of
the Act but it passed anyway and the president signed it into law on
November 22, 2003. The Pentagon is probably adept enough to hamstring the
commission, but a domestic base-closing furor clearly looms on the
horizon.
By far the greatest defect in the "global cavalry" strategy, however, is
that it accentuates Washington's impulse to apply irrelevant military
remedies to terrorism. As the prominent British military historian,
Correlli Barnett, has observed, the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq
only increased the threat of al-Qaeda. From 1993 through the 9/11 assaults
of 2001, there were five major al-Qaeda attacks worldwide; in the two
years since then there have been seventeen such bombings, including the
Istanbul suicide assaults on the British consulate and an HSBC Bank.
Military operations against terrorists are not the solution. As Barnett
puts it, "Rather than kicking down front doors and barging into ancient
and complex societies with simple nostrums of 'freedom and democracy,' we
need tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a profound understanding of
the people and cultures we are dealing with -- an understanding up till
now entirely lacking in the top-level policy-makers in Washington,
especially in the Pentagon."
In his notorious "long, hard slog" memo on Iraq of October 16, 2003,
Defense secretary Rumsfeld wrote, "Today, we lack metrics to know if we
are winning or losing the global war on terror." Correlli-Barnett's
"metrics" indicate otherwise. But the "war on terrorism" is at best only a
small part of the reason for all our military strategizing. The real
reason for constructing this new ring of American bases along the equator
is to expand our empire and reinforce our military domination of the
world.
Chalmers Johnson's latest book is The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism,
Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan). His previous book,
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, has just been
updated with a new introduction.
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Subject: [pjnews] CA Death Row Inmate Kevin Cooper Gives Last Interview
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/4cg2
Arnold Passed Up a Chance to Question the Death Penalty
ACTION: CALL THE CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR'S OFFICE AT 916 445 2841 AND DEMAND A
STAY OF EXECUTION!
-------------------
http://snipurl.com/4cg0
KEVIN COOPER GIVES LAST INTERVIEW, DEFIES 'INSANE' DEATH ROW RITUALS
BY DENNIS BERNSTEIN AND LESLIE KEAN, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
Unless he is granted a last-minute stay of execution, Kevin Cooper will be
killed by the state of California under cover of darkness early Tuesday
morning, Feb. 10. Cooper, who has maintained his innocence throughout his
20-year ordeal, will be taken to San Quentin's death chamber and strapped
to a gurney. A doctor, who has sworn an oath to save lives, will
participate in the clinical poisoning of a black man who, by all accounts,
has used his decades on death row to educate himself, growing from a
poorly educated street kid to a well- informed, free-thinking human being.
On Feb. 2, we spoke to Cooper for the Flashpoints program on KPFA/Pacifica
Radio [listen at http://www.flashpoints.net/]. It will be his last public
interview unless his date with death is averted. He spoke on a wide range
of subjects -- his life on death row, his early history, the details of
his case, and most compelling to us, his refusal to take part in the
macabre process leading up to his killing.
A few weeks ago, the warden visited Cooper in his cell and invited him to
choose the method of his death, as if this was some kind of gift presented
by the system. He was handed the "Choice of Execution Method" form CDC
1801-A, which states that a death row prisoner "may choose either lethal
gas or lethal injection as the method of execution." According to
procedure, if the prisoner refuses to choose his or her own poison,
"lethal injection will be the method of
execution."
Cooper refused to participate in choosing to be killed, and would not
sign. After some efforts at coaxing him, the warden left, saying she would
return in ten days and try again. What possible reason would there be to
subject a person to this bizarre ritual? Since lethal gas has been ruled
unconstitutional, why is this choice even presented?
More recently, Cooper was given another execution perk: he could choose
anything he wanted for his last meal. He told the authorities he didn't
want a last meal. He has since been offered psychiatrists and priests by
the very system that is planning to kill him. "For all these people to
suddenly start caring about whether or not I'm alright, asking me, 'Are
you alright? Do you want to talk to us?' I find this ludicrous. I find
this insane. So I refuse to participate in these rituals," Cooper told us.
Most devastating of all was a pre-execution search for veins in his arms
by medical staff, for which he refused to roll up his sleeves. This
occurred just a few hours before our lengthy interview on Feb. 2. "So they
pushed my sleeves up, and they checked my arms, and they found my veins,"
Cooper told the radio audience. "But then they said, 'Wait a minute, we
have to make sure.' They put me in a holding cage, went and got some
tourniquets. Then [the doctor] started massaging my arm and my hand,
trying to see if he could find my veins. I looked at him and asked, 'Isn't
this against the Hippocratic oath that you take as a doctor against
killing people?'" He said, 'I'm not killing you. I'm just checking for
your veins.'"
"And this is not just about individual doctors," Cooper quickly added:
"This is about a system, the medical system itself, which allows doctors
to participate. It's all hypocrisy."
Though Cooper has been confined to a tiny cell for nearly two decades, he
has come a long way. As part of his on-going journey of "self-discovery,"
he reads steadily about politics and history, and the struggle of African
Americans in this country. He has written numerous commentaries on world
events and the death penalty, lending his unique perspective from behind
bars.
"I decided to live, and not die just because I was sentenced to die," he
wrote in one essay. "In hindsight this seems so easy, but in fact the
decision to live and make a life for myself in this living hell was the
hardest decision I ever had to make in my life."
Cooper's quest for social justice clearly transcends his own plight. He is
inspired that many have taken up his case, and that his cause has become
the driving force for many who believe, like he does, that the criminal
justice system does not provide justice for those who cannot afford to pay
for it, and that in all cases the death penalty is dead wrong.
"This is the knowledge that I have as I face my death," Cooper writes,
"this is my death, but this is not my execution. They will take my body,
but I believe that I've left enough work behind that people will keep on
fighting for me, even after I'm dead. 'Cause we're going to get the truth
out, one way or another."
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Subject: [pjnews] 7 Soldiers Meet Death in Iraq at 18
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0208-01.htm
Published on Sunday, February 7, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
7 Soldiers Meet Death in Iraq at 18
Of the more than 500 U.S. troops killed in Iraq, seven were just 18. 'It's
a big waste of his life,' one embittered father says.
by Mitch Stacy
TAMPA, Fla. — Andy Aviles still collected basketball cards. They remain
stacked in orderly piles on a bookcase at the foot of his bed, competing
for space with toy cars, high school letterman awards, graduation photos
and other markers of a boy's life.
On the wall above where he slept, near the academic medals and baseball
caps hanging from the bedposts, he had affixed the emblem of the U.S.
Marine Corps, whose uniform he wore when an Iraqi artillery shell struck
his armored vehicle near Baghdad and killed him.
Lance Cpl. Andrew Julian Aviles was just 18, preparing for his freshman
year at Florida State University, when his country called on him to do a
man's job. He had committed to the Marine Corps Reserves before his senior
year at Robinson High School in south Tampa, before the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, before there was any talk of invading Iraq.
Less than a year after leading the Pledge of Allegiance at his high school
graduation, the former student council president and cheerleader found
himself preparing to cross the Tigris River last April 7 in the siege of
Baghdad. He never made it.
Aviles was one of seven U.S. soldiers in the Iraqi conflict, three of them
from California, who were 18 when they died, out of more than 500 American
casualties so far.
Their grieving families say they had just begun to ponder adult lives that
stretched out before them. Some regarded their service in Iraq as a kind
of destiny. Others had their eyes on grander plans.
Each 18-year-old's story was unique:
• Army Pvt. David Evans of Buffalo, N.Y., had a baby boy he never got to
see. A former city hall intern, he joined the military with plans for a
law enforcement career. He was killed May 25 in a munitions explosion.
At his funeral, mourners wore T-shirts emblazoned with a photo of his
young son with the words, "The legacy still continues."
• Pfc. Daniel R. Parker of Lake Elsinore followed his father and
grandfather into the Army, believing it to be more a moral obligation than
a family tradition. He died in a vehicle accident Aug. 12.
On July 23, Parker was part of the team sent to the villa where two sons
of Saddam Hussein were hiding. Uday and Qusai Hussein were killed in the
gunfight. News photographers took Parker's picture standing in front of
the building with his gun.
• Marine Lance Cpl. Cory Ryan Geurin of Santee signed his enlistment
papers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, even before he finished high
school.
He told his mother, Darlene Geurin: " 'Mom, they're messin' with my
country, and I won't let it happen.' "
He died after falling from the roof of an Iraqi palace that he was
guarding July 15, exactly one year after starting boot camp.
• Army Pvt. Ruben Estrella-Soto of El Paso, Texas, was born in Mexico and
became a naturalized citizen a few years ago. He enlisted right after high
school, even though his father was against it. He died when a convoy he
was riding in was ambushed March 23.
• Army Pfc. Charles M. Sims of Miami set his sights on the Army in ninth
grade when he enrolled in the ROTC. The military police officer drowned in
a swimming pool in Baghdad on Oct. 3.
• Army Spc. Michael Mihalakis of San Jose died the day after Christmas
when his Humvee hit a berm near the Baghdad airport, throwing him from the
vehicle and crushing him underneath. He was a military police officer with
the Army National Guard.
In letters home to his parents, Mihalakis wrote insightfully of his coming
of age.
"Before I left for basic, I told you guys I lived a life of little, if
any, adversity," he wrote on June 6. "I thrived [on] the need to
experience adversity and hardship to become the man I want to be.
"My lesson in adversity and hardship is something that can't be priced and
is the ultimate reason I want to stay, rather than go home early. Whatever
happens will happen, but in the end, as much as I hate it here, this is
where I want to be."
Not Aviles. Although he felt a call to national service, he wanted more
than anything to be in the north Florida college town of Tallahassee. He
graduated third in his high school class, earning a full academic
scholarship to Florida State. He already knew that he wanted to major in
business and go into real estate someday, because that's where the money
is.
"It's a big waste of his life," said Andy's father, Oscar Aviles, who
still struggles to contain his anger and resentment. "He probably could
have done anything he wanted to do in life. Because he had the
intelligence, he had the capability and he had the discipline to do
whatever he set his mind on."
A member of the ROTC in high school, Andy Aviles waved off suggestions
that he apply for a military academy appointment. Too much structure. The
gregarious, charismatic teenager hankered for what he called "the full
college experience."
But the summer before his senior year, he came home and said he wanted to
join the Marine Corps Reserves. He'd go off to boot camp during the summer
before starting college, then report back to the Reserves installation in
Tampa one weekend a month. That way, he could serve his country without
messing up college plans.
A weightlifter and physical fitness buff, the 5-foot-6, 165-pound Aviles
hooked up with the Reserves because the training was so physically
demanding, his father said. He didn't count on being activated immediately
and sent to Iraq with the 4th Marine Assault Amphibian Battalion. Neither
did his parents.
In his letters home, he said over and over, "Don't worry"; in letters to
friends, he acknowledged that he was "a little scared." But he was also
sure that he would return home soon and safely to resume a life filled
with potential.
"We never thought they were going to put him there," said his mother,
Norma Aviles. "He felt like he had a sense of duty. He said, 'I have to
go, Mom.' He had a commitment and he wasn't going to back out. They messed
up all his plans. He was upset he wasn't going to start school."
More than 1,000 people attended Aviles' funeral in Tampa. A hero's burial
at Arlington National Cemetery followed. The city and county issued
proclamations honoring him. Florida State made him an honorary alumnus and
gave a full scholarship to his brother, Matthew, who will start there next
fall.
His parents are still hearing from soldiers with whom he served in Iraq.
Andy was always smiling, always positive, always ready to lift them up
when they were down, they say.
None of that has salved his parents' deep emotional wounds.
"After Andy got killed — that word is still so hard for me to say — our
world came apart," Norma Aviles said. "That was his life, and he should be
here with his family."
Mihalakis' parents take some comfort from a letter he left in a safe
deposit box, just in case. They fetched it five days after his death.
"Everyone sooner or later has to part this world," he wrote to George and
Diana Mihalakis. "It makes me proud to know that I left while protecting
the United States.
"Eighteen is such a young age, and you're probably thinking of all the
things that I'm going to miss out on. Don't. I got to live such a
wonderful life because of you two, and because of that I don't regret
missing anything that would later come in the future."
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Subject: [pjnews] The Ice Age Cometh
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17711
The Ice Age Cometh
By Thom Hartmann, Thomhartmann.com
February 1, 2004
While global warming is being officially ignored by the political arm of
the Bush administration, and Al Gore's recent conference on the topic
during one of the coldest days of recent years provided joke fodder for
conservative talk show hosts, the citizens of Europe and the Pentagon are
taking a new look at the greatest danger such climate change could produce
for the northern hemisphere – a sudden shift into a new ice age. What
they're finding is not at all comforting.
In quick summary, if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting
polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the
northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe
and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a
full-blown return of the last ice age – in a period as short as 2 to 3
years from its onset – and the mid-case scenario would be a period like
the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide
weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide
desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.
Here's how it works.
If you look at a globe, you'll see that the latitude of much of Europe and
Scandinavia is the same as that of Alaska and permafrost-locked parts of
northern Canada and central Siberia. Yet Europe has a climate more similar
to that of the United States than northern Canada or Siberia. Why?
It turns out that our warmth is the result of ocean currents that bring
warm surface water up from the equator into northern regions that would
otherwise be so cold that even in summer they'd be covered with ice. The
current of greatest concern is often referred to as "The Great Conveyor
Belt," which includes what we call the Gulf Stream.
The Great Conveyor Belt, while shaped by the Coriolis effect of the
Earth's rotation, is mostly driven by the greater force created by
differences in water temperatures and salinity. The North Atlantic Ocean
is saltier and colder than the Pacific, the result of it being so much
smaller and locked into place by the Northern and Southern American
Hemispheres on the west and Europe and Africa on the east.
As a result, the warm water of the Great Conveyor Belt evaporates out of
the North Atlantic leaving behind saltier waters, and the cold continental
winds off the northern parts of North America cool the waters. Salty, cool
waters settle to the bottom of the sea, most at a point a few hundred
kilometers south of the southern tip of Greenland, producing a whirlpool
of falling water that's 5 to 10 miles across. While the whirlpool rarely
breaks the surface, during certain times of year it does produce an
indentation and current in the ocean that can tilt ships and be seen from
space (and may be what we see on the maps of ancient mariners).
This falling column of cold, salt-laden water pours itself to the bottom
of the Atlantic, where it forms an undersea river forty times larger than
all the rivers on land combined, flowing south down to and around the
southern tip of Africa, where it finally reaches the Pacific. Amazingly,
the water is so deep and so dense (because of its cold and salinity) that
it often doesn't surface in the Pacific for as much as a thousand years
after it first sank in the North Atlantic off the coast of Greenland.
The out-flowing undersea river of cold, salty water makes the level of the
Atlantic slightly lower than that of the Pacific, drawing in a strong
surface current of warm, fresher water from the Pacific to replace the
outflow of the undersea river. This warmer, fresher water slides up
through the South Atlantic, loops around North America where it's known as
the Gulf Stream, and ends up off the coast of Europe. By the time it
arrives near Greenland, it has cooled off and evaporated enough water to
become cold and salty and sink to the ocean floor, providing a continuous
feed for that deep-sea river flowing to the Pacific.
These two flows – warm, fresher water in from the Pacific, which then
grows salty and cools and sinks to form an exiting deep sea river – are
known as the Great Conveyor Belt.
Amazingly, the Great Conveyor Belt is the only thing between comfortable
summers and a permanent ice age for Europe and the eastern coast of North
America.
Much of this science was unknown as recently as twenty years ago. Then an
international group of scientists went to Greenland and used newly
developed drilling and sensing equipment to drill into some of the world's
most ancient accessible glaciers. Their instruments were so sensitive that
when they analyzed the ice core samples they brought up, they were able to
look at individual years of snow. The results were shocking.
Prior to the last decades, it was thought that the periods between
glaciations and warmer times in North America, Europe, and North Asia were
gradual. We knew from the fossil record that the Great Ice Age period
began a few million years ago, and during those years there were times
where for hundreds or thousands of years North America, Europe, and
Siberia were covered with thick sheets of ice year-round. In between these
icy times, there were periods when the glaciers thawed, bare land was
exposed, forests grew, and land animals (including early humans) moved
into these northern regions.
Most scientists figured the transition time from icy to warm was gradual,
lasting dozens to hundreds of years, and nobody was sure exactly what had
caused it. (Variations in solar radiation were suspected, as were volcanic
activity, along with early theories about the Great Conveyor Belt, which,
until recently, was a poorly understood phenomenon.)
Looking at the ice cores, however, scientists were shocked to discover
that the transitions from ice age-like weather to contemporary-type
weather usually took only two or three years. Something was flipping the
weather of the planet back and forth with a rapidity that was startling.
It turns out that the ice age versus temperate weather patterns weren't
part of a smooth and linear process, like a dimmer slider for an overhead
light bulb. They are part of a delicately balanced teeter-totter, which
can exist in one state or the other, but transits through the middle stage
almost overnight. They more resemble a light switch, which is off as you
gradually and slowly lift it, until it hits a mid-point threshold or
"breakover point" where suddenly the state is flipped from off to on and
the light comes on.
It appears that small (less that .1 percent) variations in solar energy
happen in roughly 1500-year cycles. This cycle, for example, is what
brought us the "Little Ice Age" that started around the year 1400 and
dramatically cooled North America and Europe (we're now in the warming
phase, recovering from that). When the ice in the Arctic Ocean is frozen
solid and locked up, and the glaciers on Greenland are relatively stable,
this variation warms and cools the Earth in a very small way, but doesn't
affect the operation of the Great Conveyor Belt that brings moderating
warm water into the North Atlantic.
In millennia past, however, before the Arctic totally froze and locked up,
and before some critical threshold amount of fresh water was locked up in
the Greenland and other glaciers, these 1500-year variations in solar
energy didn't just slightly warm up or cool down the weather for the land
masses bracketing the North Atlantic. They flipped on and off periods of
total glaciation and periods of temperate weather.
And these changes came suddenly.
For early humans living in Europe 30,000 years ago - when the cave
paintings in France were produced – the weather would be pretty much like
it is today for well over a thousand years, giving people a chance to
build culture to the point where they could produce art and reach across
large territories.
And then a particularly hard winter would hit.
The spring would come late, and summer would never seem to really arrive,
with the winter snows appearing as early as September. The next winter
would be brutally cold, and the next spring didn't happen at all, with
above-freezing temperatures only being reached for a few days during
August and the snow never completely melting. After that, the summer never
returned: for 1500 years the snow simply accumulated and accumulated,
deeper and deeper, as the continent came to be covered with glaciers and
humans either fled or died out. (Neanderthals, who dominated Europe until
the end of these cycles, appear to have been better adapted to cold
weather than Homo sapiens.)
What brought on this sudden "disappearance of summer" period was that the
warm-water currents of the Great Conveyor Belt had shut down. Once the
Gulf Stream was no longer flowing, it only took a year or three for the
last of the residual heat held in the North Atlantic Ocean to dissipate
into the air over Europe, and then there was no more warmth to moderate
the northern latitudes. When the summer stopped in the north, the rains
stopped around the equator: At the same time Europe was plunged into an
Ice Age, the Middle East and Africa were ravaged by drought and
wind-driven firestorms.
If the Great Conveyor Belt, which includes the Gulf Stream, were to stop
flowing today, the result would be sudden and dramatic. Winter would set
in for the eastern half of North America and all of Europe and Siberia,
and never go away. Within three years, those regions would become
uninhabitable and nearly two billion humans would starve, freeze to death,
or have to relocate. Civilization as we know it probably couldn't
withstand the impact of such a crushing blow.
And, incredibly, the Great Conveyor Belt has hesitated a few times in the
past decade. As William H. Calvin points out in one of the best books
available on this topic ("A Brain For All Seasons: human evolution &
abrupt climate change"): "The abrupt cooling in the last warm period shows
that a flip can occur in situations much like the present one. What could
possibly halt the salt-conveyor belt that brings tropical heat so much
farther north and limits the formation of ice sheets? Oceanographers are
busy studying present-day failures of annual flushing, which give some
perspective on the catastrophic failures of the past. In the Labrador Sea,
flushing failed during the 1970s, was strong again by 1990, and is now
declining. In the Greenland Sea over the 1980s salt sinking declined by 80
percent. Obviously, local failures can occur without catastrophe – it's a
question of how often and how widespread the failures are – but the
present state of decline is not very reassuring."
Most scientists involved in research on this topic agree that the culprit
is global warming, melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic
icepack and thus flushing cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea
from the north. When a critical threshold is reached, the climate will
suddenly switch to an ice age that could last minimally 700 or so years,
and maximally over 100,000 years.
And when might that threshold be reached? Nobody knows – the action of the
Great Conveyor Belt in defining ice ages was discovered only in the last
decade. Preliminary computer models and scientists willing to speculate
suggest the switch could flip as early as next year, or it may be
generations from now. It may be wobbling right now, producing the extremes
of weather we've seen in the past few years.
What's almost certain is that if nothing is done about global warming, it
will happen sooner rather than later.
This article was adapted from the new, updated edition of The Last Hours
of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann, due out from Random House/Three
Rivers Press in March.
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Subject: [pjnews] Climate Collapse: The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0202-02.htm
Pentagon Goes Crazy for Massive Climate Change
----------------
The scenarios laid out here aren't nearly as drastic as the scenarios laid
out by Thom Hartmann in the accompanying article. Hartmann predicts that
a failure of the Great Conveyor Belt could take place as soon as two or
three years from now and that it would effectively make life in the
northern hemisphere uninhabitable. While this article doesn't go quite
that far, its predictions are scary nonetheless...
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,582584,00.html
The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare:
The climate could change radically, and fast. That would be the mother of
all national security issues.
(excerpted)
... But what would abrupt climate change really be like?
Scientists generally refuse to say much about that, citing a data deficit.
But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall
sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A
Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's
"Yoda"—a balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks
have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has
headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to
national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile
defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military
"transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.
When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar
screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to
write a report on the national-security implications of the threat.
Schwartz formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since
consulted with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorks—he helped
create futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report.
Schwartz and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business
Network, a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted
top climate experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they
usually shy away from—at least in public.
The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the
Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a
forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help
planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version:
A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the
Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of
Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially
causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent
storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes
caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas.
For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of
abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern
Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill—its
severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age.
The event is thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a
time of rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it
recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen
by 2020:
At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather
variation—allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little
importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with
uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is
happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees
Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees
in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North
Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is
today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The
average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and
its climate has become more like Siberia's.
Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on
its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break
through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague
unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River
area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from
north to south.
Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along
with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing
widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to
cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates,
wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though:
It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose
finger-pointing at America.
Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around
itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back
starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
islands—waves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension
between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty
that guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is
forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both
economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle
Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses.
Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with
immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern
Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and
elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe.
Australia's size and resources help it cope, as does its location—the
conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer
resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to cope—its
government is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve
resources.
China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable.
It is hit by increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause
devastating floods in drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East
Africa are similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly
uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates inland
water supplies. Countries whose diversity already produces conflict, such
as India and Indonesia, are hard-pressed to maintain internal order while
coping with the unfolding changes.
As the decade progresses, pressures to act become irresistible—history
shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or
raiding, they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed
their populations, invading Russia—which is weakened by a population that
is already in decline—for access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or
picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power
desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed
Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees,
access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting
over fishing rights—fisheries are disrupted around the world as water
temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats.
Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America
in a North American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its
abundant hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry
U.S.) North and South Korea align to create a technically savvy,
nuclear-armed entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc to curb its
immigration problems and protect against aggressors. Russia, threatened by
impoverished neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc.
Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin
as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their
energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation.
Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as
do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also
are poised to use the bomb.
The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"—the
natural resources, social organizations, and economic networks that
support the population. Technological progress and market forces, which
have long helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset
the crisis—it is too widespread and unfolds too fast.
As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges:
the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy
supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over
resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such
conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As
abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human
life.
Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting that the
plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the
scientific community, and perhaps all of the political community, are
prepared to accept. In light of such findings, we should be asking when
abrupt change will happen, what the impacts will be, and how we can
prepare—not whether it will really happen. In fact, the climate record
suggests that abrupt change is inevitable at some point, regardless of
human activity. Among other things, we should:
• Speed research on the forces that can trigger abrupt climate change, how
it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.
• Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play out, including
ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on key food-producing
regions.
• Identify "no regrets" strategies to ensure reliable access to food and
water and to ensure our national security.
• Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive migration, and food
and water shortages.
• Explore ways to offset abrupt cooling—today it appears easier to warm
than to cool the climate via human activities, so there may be
"geo-engineering" options available to prevent a catastrophic temperature
drop.
In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change remains uncertain, and it is
quite possibly small. But given its dire consequences, it should be
elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now matters, because we may be
able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and we can certainly be better
prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it as a national security
concern.
The Pentagon's reaction to this sobering report isn't known—in keeping
with his reputation for reticence, Andy Marshall declined to be
interviewed. But the fact that he's concerned may signal a sea change in
the debate about global warming. At least some federal thought leaders may
be starting to perceive climate change less as a political annoyance and
more as an issue demanding action.
If so, the case for acting now to address climate change, long a hard sell
in Washington, may be gaining influential support, if only behind the
scenes. Policymakers may even be emboldened to take steps such as
tightening fuel-economy standards for new passenger vehicles, a measure
that would simultaneously lower emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce
America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its trade deficit, and put
money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yes—and give the Pentagon's fretful Yoda
a little less to worry about.
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Subject: [pjnews] Presidential Candidates: Compared to What?
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http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-10.htm
Presidential Candidates: Compared to What?
by Norman Solomon
Engaged in a continuous PR blitz, presidential campaign strategists always
strive to portray their candidate as damn near perfect. Even obvious flaws
are apt to be touted as signs of integrity and human depth. Such media
spin encourages Americans to confuse being excellent with being
preferable.
Eager to dislodge George W. Bush from the White House, many voters lined
up behind John Kerry in late January. It's true that the junior senator
from Massachusetts is probably the best bet to defeat Bush -- and, as
president, Kerry would be a very significant improvement over the
incumbent. But truth in labeling should impel acknowledgment that Kerry is
not a progressive candidate.
Enthusiasm for a presidential contender often causes people to go
overboard with their praise and lose touch with reality. On the left, a
classic example came from the wonderful documentary filmmaker Michael
Moore, who declared in a mid-September open letter to Gen. Wesley Clark:
"And you oppose war." It was a preposterous statement about a retired
four-star general who has never apologized for his commanding role in a
war that inflicted more than two months of terrible bombing on densely
populated areas of Yugoslavia in 1999.
A salutary antidote to the poisons of campaign propaganda and media hype
could be summarized this way: "No matter how zealous you are about
supporting a particular candidate, don't say things that aren't true!"
In national politics, most Americans have a strong pragmatic streak -- and
perhaps never more so than now. Evidently, at least half the country is
hoping to see Bush leave the White House sooner rather than later. A
nationwide Newsweek poll, released on Jan. 24, found that 52 percent of
registered voters said they don't want Bush to have a second term -- and
nine-tenths of those voters held that view strongly. In light of the
extremely destructive right-wing policies of the Bush administration, any
flaws in the Democratic challenger will pale for many voters.
Meanwhile, the news media will increasingly frame public debate about the
presidential race as a contest between backers of President Bush and the
Democratic nominee, presumably Kerry. Partisans will be head-over-heels
for their man. But an important question should still be asked and
answered: "Compared to what?"
For example, we should consider that question in terms of whether John
Kerry is a militarist. Compared to George W. Bush, he doesn't seem to be.
Compared to Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton, he certainly is.
Kerry's senatorial vote for the war resolution in October 2002 remains an
indefensible part of his record. Despite the absence of credible evidence,
Kerry included this rhetorical question in his oratory: "Why is Saddam
Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even
try?" In a speech on Oct. 9, 2002, Kerry also tried to justify his pro-war
vote with the statement that "according to intelligence, Iraq has chemical
and biological weapons."
Politicians who support illegal wars of aggression always have excuses.
Kerry blames "intelligence."
On the domestic front, after his New Hampshire victory, Kerry boasted to
CNN viewers that he voted for the 1996 "welfare reform" law -- which
amounts to class war against low-income mothers.
Likewise, Howard Dean also supported that draconian measure. On the eve of
the New Hampshire primary, Dean talked about the welfare law as a terrific
booster of self-esteem for poor moms -- even though the law is pushing
them out of the home into dead-end minimum wage jobs. Days later, Dean
tarnished his populist persona by choosing a new campaign manager, Roy
Neel, a former mega-corporate Washington lobbyist who ran the U.S. Telecom
Association.
Like most of his Democratic opponents, Dean pretends that the key problems
with U.S. militarism began in the second year of George W. Bush's
presidency -- thus, Dean's approval for the Gulf War of 1991, the Clinton
administration's bloody assault on Yugoslavia and the U.S. attack on
Afghanistan that began in late 2001. Dean has not seemed troubled by the
irony of evidence that the number of Afghan innocents killed by the
Pentagon was quickly comparable to the 9/11 death toll.
With ample justification, some view the presidential race as a choice of
weasels ... or far worse. While the likely prospect of Kerry as the
Democratic nominee makes him a pragmatic choice for the November election,
let's keep in mind that his political career has been sustained by largess
from such corporate patrons as Time Warner and Fleet Boston Financial
Corp.
Understandably, people who comprehend the damage done by the current
administration are keen to see a President Kerry replace President Bush
next January. But that eagerness should not mean buying into media spin
that depicts John Kerry as an advocate of military restraint or a champion
of economic justice.
Norman Solomon is co-author of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't
Tell You."
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush Administration's Secrecy as Policy
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17700
Secrecy as Policy
By Charles Lewis, The Center for Public Integrity
January 30, 2004
The following is an excerpt from the book, The Buying of the President 2004:
George W. Bush's presidency has been characterized by a zeal for secrecy,
an unrelenting push to stem the free flow of information.
One particularly notable example has been the Administration's effort to
undermine the Freedom of Information Act, the 1966 law that grants
citizens access – although with some exceptions – to federal agency
records. By statute, government FOIA officers may withhold records dealing
with classified national security information, trade secrets, personnel or
medical issues, and a handful of other matters – decisions that in each
case are left to an official's own discretion (although those denied the
requested information may appeal). In October 1993, to better standardize
the process and create more openness in government, Attorney General Janet
Reno dispatched a memorandum revamping the way the Act would be
administered; from now on, the memo directed, FOIA officers should "apply
a presumption of disclosure." To drive home the point, Reno decreed that,
in the event of FOIA-related litigation, the Justice Department would no
longer defend an agency's withholding of information merely because there
was a "substantial legal basis" for doing so. "Where an item of
information might technically or arguably fall within an exemption," she
added, "it ought not to be withheld from a FOIA requester unless it need
be."
But eight years later, in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist
attacks, Reno's successor renounced that presumption of disclosure. In a
memo to the heads of federal departments and agencies, Attorney General
John Ashcroft decreed that a well-informed citizenry may be vital to
government oversight, but not at the expense of undermining national
security. "Any discretionary decision by your agency to disclose
information protected under the FOIA should be made only after full and
deliberate consideration of the institutional, commercial, and personal
privacy interests that could be implicated by disclosure of the
information," he wrote. And unlike Reno, whose policies engendered more
government in the sunshine, Ashcroft promised legal cover for agencies
coming down on the side of non-disclosure. "When you carefully consider
FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can
be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions
unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of
adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important
records," his memo added. In other words, Justice would bow out of
litigation only if its participation might subsequently imperil the
government's ability to withhold other information.
While 9/11 was the presumed catalyst for the revamped FOIA guidelines, the
policy change was actually in keeping with Bush's historical aversion to
the release of government papers. In 1997, for example, Bush successfully
championed legislation that allowed the governor of Texas to designate an
in-state university or alternate institution, in lieu of the Texas State
Library and Archives, as the repository for his or her papers. And he
later exploited the law by ordering that his own gubernatorial papers be
deposited in the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, at Texas A&M
University, which is home to his father's executive records.
At the time, the shipment of Bush's documents received scant attention.
But the relocation effort later generated consternation among reporters,
historians, researchers, and others seeking access to the eighteen hundred
boxes of not-yet-cataloged papers. The reason: because records at the
presidential library are under the jurisdiction of the National Archives
and Records Administration, which is a federal agency, there was confusion
whether release of the younger Bush's papers was bound by the federal
Freedom of Information Act or the Texas Public Information Act, which
mandates a much speedier response time for requested records.
Bush's attorney denied that the move reflected a desire to restrict public
access to the papers. And in an interview with the Center, Chris LaPlante,
the state archivist, also dismissed the conspiratorial claims of
open-government activists: He and his colleagues, he said, knew that the
governor's papers were destined for an alternate repository, and they
assumed that the Bush library staff were equipped to deal with the
documents. But Bush's action nonetheless imposed weeks-long, even
months-long delays on the release of documents. And it left consumer
advocacy organizations such as Public Citizen grumbling that the departed
Texas governor lacked the legal authority to give away state records or
place them beyond the reach of the state's open-records law. In May 2002,
following protracted legal wrangling, Texas Attorney General John Cornyn
agreed. He ruled that the disputed papers were indeed state property, and
therefore subject to the Texas open-records law.
But while Texans earned easier access to some historical records, the
public at large was being saddled with a variety of new impediments to an
open federal government. To wit:
On November 1, 2001, President Bush signed Executive Order 13233,
not-so-aptly titled "Further Implementation of the Presidential Records
Act." In truth, the executive order actually overrides the 1978
Presidential Records Act, the Watergate-inspired edict which stipulated
that the papers of presidents and vice-presidents would be made available
to the public twelve years after their leaving office. Under Bush's plan,
however, former presidents or their heirs may veto the release of their
presidential papers, as may the sitting president – a decision that vested
George W. Bush with the authority to block release of his father's papers,
for example, or even those of Bill Clinton. Bush's order drew fervent
bipartisan condemnation on Capitol Hill (although not enough to force
reinstatement of the '78 Act), and it particularly rankled librarians and
historians. The comments of Steven Hensen, president of the Society of
American Archivists, were typical. Writing in the Washington Post, he
asked: "How can a democratic people have confidence in elected officials
who hide the records of their actions from public view?"
Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration
encouraged federal agencies to purge a wide array of potentially sensitive
data from their Web sites – a decree that, for a time, removed the entire
online presence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and which ultimately
resulted in hundreds of thousands of pages being deleted from sites
maintained by the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection
Agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, and other
federal entities. "It is no longer possible for families and communities
to get data critical to protecting themselves – information such as
pipeline maps (that show where they are and whether they have been
inspected), airport safety data, environmental data, and even documents
that are widely available on private sites today were removed from
government sites and have not reappeared," OMB Watch, which for two
decades has been chronicling the activities of the Office of Management
and Budget, noted in a paper released in October 2002.
On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed an order that postponed, by three
years, the release of millions of twenty-five-year-old documents slated
for automatic declassification the following month. What's more, Executive
Order 13292, which amended a Clinton Administration order, granted FOIA
officers wider latitude to reclassify information that had already been
declassified, and further eliminated a provision that instructed them not
to classify information if there was "significant doubt" about the need to
do so. While President Bush maintained that the order balanced national
security with open government, some were not convinced. For example, the
Washington Post quoted Thomas Blanton, executive director of the nonprofit
National Security Archive, as saying that the order sends "one more signal
from on high to the bureaucracy to slow down, stall, withhold, stonewall."
When the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press surveyed the
post-September 11th landscape, the First Amendment watchdog concluded that
the government had embarked on "an unprecedented path of secrecy" that
stifled the press' and the public's right to know. Among the reporters
ensnared by the government's flight from the traditional culture of
openness is John Solomon, deputy bureau chief of the Associated Press.
Solomon, who works out of the Washington, D.C. bureau, was twice
victimized. In one incident, a package sent by Federal Express to Solomon
from another AP bureau was intercepted by the U.S. Customs Service and
forwarded to the FBI, where its contents – an eight-year-old, unclassified
Bureau lab report previously made public in a court case – were seized and
withheld for seven months. In a previous incident, the Justice Department
subpoenaed Solomon's home phone records in an attempt to unearth his
confidential source for a wire service story. Solomon, who only learned
about the subpoena months later, told the Center it's his understanding
that the traditional practice of subpoenaing reporters as an absolute last
resort in a "leaks" investigation is no longer the department's modus
operandi. "I'm not quite sure it's gotten the public attention it
deserves," Solomon told the Center. "I don't think the profession has
realized the importance of the change of standards that has occurred as a
result of my case."
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Subject: [pjnews] The Computer Ate My Vote
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Today, TrueMajority is launching a campaign to protect the integrity of
America's elections and avoid a replay of the embarrassing Florida
election fiasco in 2000. Our goal is to raise $50,000 to run a grassroots
campaign urging state election officials to prohibit the use of
computerized voting machines until we know they are safe and have a way to
run reliable recounts. Can you help?
Donate here: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283&l=304
America's elections should be sterling examples of representative
government. But the Florida fiasco in 2000 was just the opposite, an
embarrassment to our country. Unless we act now, we could see an even
worse election disaster.
After the disputed presidential election, Congress allocated billions of
dollars through the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) to improve America's
voting machines.
Trouble is, many election officials are installing voting systems with
touch-screen computerized voting machines that are vulnerable to the same
problems as other computer technology, including crashes, power outages,
viruses and hacking. Simple question: Has your computer ever crashed and
lost important data? Now apply that lesson to our democracy.
The fledgling technology already has failed widely publicized tests. One
hacker was able to open a locked machine and start changing votes. It took
him less than a minute. Another hacker was able to intercept and change
vote totals being sent to headquarters. Still other experts analyzed a
computer voting software program and found serious problems.
Fortunately there's a simple, cost-effective, two-part solution:
- All voting machines should produce a printout of each vote that could
be used to audit the computer count, conduct recounts when necessary and
otherwise serve as the backup system. You've heard "store a hard copy?"
Voters are shown the printout of his or her vote for review before leaving
the polling place, and the papers are saved by election officials. "Voter
verified paper trail" is the fancy name for this simple safeguard.
- Public election officials and their trusted technicians must be given
full access to the touch-screen software and hardware to verify the
sanctity of the voting process, prevent fraud and eliminate unintentional
errors.
Last year, legislation was introduced to get Congress and President Bush
to fix the obvious problems before the 2004 election. TrueMajority members
sent 63,268 faxes supporting these bills, but the Congressional leadership
refuses to grant even a hearing on the bills by Rep. Holt (D-NJ) and
Senators Graham (D-FL) and Boxer (D-CA).
So, TrueMajority is directing a campaign at the elected officials who have
the power to stop the use of computer voting machines this year or demand
a verified paper trail: secretaries of state, who typically are in charge
of state elections.
Showing the way, the secretaries of state of California, Washington and
Nevada have protected their citizens by requiring touch-screen computer
voting in their states to include a voter verified paper trail. Excellent
start; now onto the rest of us.
We believe other secretaries of state, who are not used to hearing from
citizens, will follow suit under grassroots pressure. And as each state
signs on to these higher standards, the pressure will build on those
secretaries of state who refuse. No one will want to be the last chief
state election officer to protect his or her constituents.
All the secretaries of state will be in Washington, DC, on February 17 at
a meeting, so we'll kickoff the campaign then with a press conference
calling on them to protect their constituents. We've hired two organizers
who'll then move the campaign into the states, targeting a handful at a
time for local news conferences, op-eds, letters to the editor and
meetings with the election officers. As more and more states sign on and
the pressure builds, we'll move the campaign around the country until
everyone is covered.
To wage this campaign, we need $50,000 by Friday, February 13. Please help
us create elections we can all be proud of.
Donate here: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283&l=304
Here's some background on this issue:
The companies that perfected touch-screen voting technology refuse to
share it with anyone, including election officials. This prevents quality
control, audits or just plain monitoring of the system to ensure it's
working as planned. It also makes fraud easier to perpetrate by
private-sector technicians and hard, if not impossible, to investigate.
This is particularly troublesome because some of the corporations that
make these machines, such as Diebold, have links to the Republican Party.
Taking the simple step of demanding a voter verified paper trail is both
affordable and practical-and will allow our nation to use touch-screen
voting for the benefits of easy accommodation of multiple languages,
arrangements for people with disabilities and more. But currently,
computer voting systems are too vulnerable to tampering and failure to
risk using them in this year's elections.
TrueMajority is waging an organizing campaign because that's what we do.
It's based on great substantive work by experts in computer technology and
democracy protection. To learn more, check out
http://www.verifiedvoting.org or
http://www.calvoter.org/votingtechnology.html#resources .
Donate here: http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=184283&l=304
Thanks for helping to make this campaign possible,
Ben Cohen
President, TrueMajority.org
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Subject: [pjnews] On Bush's Honorable Discharge
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/4g3x
An Open Letter from Michael Moore to George "I'm a War President!" Bush
http://snipurl.com/4g2e
In Secretary of State Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey,
he says, "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and
well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army Reserve and National Guard
units... Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination
strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are
created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."
---------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27178-2004Feb9.html
>From Guardsman . . .
By Richard Cohen ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Tuesday, February 10, 2004; Page A23
During the Vietnam War, I was what filmmaker Michael Moore would call a
"deserter." Along with President Bush and countless other young men, I
joined the National Guard, did my six months of active duty (basic
training, etc.) and then returned to my home unit, where I eventually
dropped from sight. In the end, just like President Bush, I got an
honorable discharge. But unlike President Bush, I have just told the truth
about my service. He hasn't.
At least I don't think so. Nothing about Bush during that period -- not
his drinking, not his partying -- suggests that he was a consistently
conscientious member of the Texas or Alabama Air National Guard. As it
happens, there are no records to show that Bush reported for duty during
the summer and fall of 1972. Nonetheless, Bush insists he was where he was
supposed to be -- "Otherwise I wouldn't have been honorably discharged,"
Bush told Tim Russert. Please, sir, don't make me laugh.
It is sort of amazing that every four or eight years, Vietnam -- that
long-ago war -- rears up from seemingly nowhere and comes to figure in the
national political debate. In 1988 Dan Quayle had to answer for his
National Guard service. In 1992 Bill Clinton had to grapple with the
question of how he avoided the Vietnam-era draft. Now George Bush, who
faced this question the last time out, has to face it again. The reason is
that this time he is likely to compete against a genuine war hero. John
Kerry did not duck the war.
But George Bush did. He did so by joining the National Guard. Bush now
wants to drape the Vietnam-era Guard with the bloodied flag of today's
Iraq-serving Guard -- "I wouldn't denigrate service to the Guard," Bush
warned during his interview with Russert -- but the fact remained that
back then the Guard was where you went if you did not want to fight. That
was the case with me. I opposed the war in Vietnam and had no desire to
fight it. Bush, on the other hand, says he supported the war -- as long,
it seems, as someone else fought it.
It hardly matters what Bush did or did not do back in 1972. He is not the
man now he was then -- that by his own admission. In the same way, it did
not matter that Clinton ducked the draft, because, really, just about
everyone I knew at the time was doing something similar. All that really
matters is how one accounts for what one did. Do you tell the truth (which
Clinton did not)? Or do you do what I think Bush has been doing, which is
making his National Guard service into something it was not? In his case,
it was a rich kid's way around the draft.
In my case, it was something similar -- although (darn!) I was not rich. I
was, though, lucky enough to get into a National Guard unit in the nick of
time, about a day before I was drafted. I did my basic and advanced
training (combat engineer) and returned to my unit. I was supposed to
attend weekly drills and summer camp, but I found them inconvenient. I
"moved" to California and then "moved" back to New York, establishing a
confusing paper trail that led, really, nowhere. For two years or so, I
played a perfectly legal form of hooky. To show you what a mess the Guard
was at the time, I even got paid for all the meetings I missed.
In the end, I wound up in the Army Reserve. I was assigned to units for
which I had no training -- tank repairman, for instance. In some units, we
sat around with nothing to do and in one we took turns delivering antiwar
lectures. The National Guard and the Reserves were something of a joke.
Everyone knew it. Books have been written about it. Maybe things changed
dramatically by 1972, two years after I got my discharge, but I kind of
doubt it.
I have no shame about my service, but I know it for what it was -- hardly
the Charge of the Light Brigade. When Bush attempts to drape the flag of
today's Guard over the one he was in so long ago, when he warns his
critics to remember that "there are a lot of really fine people who have
served in the National Guard and who are serving in the National Guard
today in Iraq," then he is doing now what he was doing then: hiding behind
the ones who were really doing the fighting. It's about time he grew up.
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One point of view...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/03/opinion/meyer/main597854.shtml
Run, Ralph, Run
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2004
This Against the Grain commentary was written by CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer.
Public Enemy Number One for the vast majority of Democrats is George Bush.
Ralph Nader, liberal icon, occupies the second slot on the enemies list.
Something is wrong with that picture.
Nader is thinking about running for president again. That has provoked a
nasty, vehement, righteous barrage of opposition from liberals,
progressives, Democrats and assorted Bush-haters afraid a Nader campaign
could help re-elect Bush. Their anxiety may be understandable, but the
shut-Nader-up campaign is appalling.
I say: Go for it, Ralph.
Why? Because Nader is not to blame for the fact that Al Gore is not
president. Because I believe vigorous, high profile third-party
candidacies (as high profile as third parties get in this country, that
is) are good, even crucial for the political system. Because skilled
political mischief-makers capable of occasionally piercing the
homogenized, focus group tested, corporate sponsored claptrap of the two
big parties are a rare godsend. Because more voices are better than fewer
voices.
If people oppose Nader and are committed to Anybody But Bush, they should
give money or time to the Democrats. People who complain about the
rightward drift of the Democratic party shouldn't and the importance of
free, diverse political speech shouldn't be working to keep Nader off the
ballot and the big stage.
After a long conversation with him, I believe Nader wants to run. He says
he'll decide by the end of February. He won't hook up with the Green Party
this time. The key factors in his decision are whether he thinks he can
get the volunteers and money to mount a 50 state campaign. "The money is a
problem," he said. Backers in 2000 have abandoned him, with a vengeance.
Money is a problem not just for Nader but for the network of public
interest and consumer groups he invented. Public Citizen, the biggest
group Nader founded, lost 20 percent of its membership and $1 million in
donations after 2000. (Full disclosure: I worked for Public Citizen
writing a book on federal tax policy in 1984.) That's a sign of just how
thoroughly some people blame Ralph Nader for the sins of Al Gore, George
Bush and the United State Supreme Court.
But this is pure scapegoating. It's emotional.
Blaming Nader for 2000 is like blaming Steve Bartman for the Cubs failure
to get in the World Series last year. Sure, if Bartman had not innocently
tried to catch that foul ball headed for Moises Alou's mitt, the Cubs
might have won Game Six. But if the Cubs had won four previous games, they
would have made the Series. They could have come back from that freak play
and still have won Game Six. They could have won Game Seven. There are
lots of "could haves."
In 2000, Gore could have won his home state like almost all the other
candidates in U.S. history have. He could have waged a semi-competent
campaign and won New Hampshire, Ohio, Arkansas and Florida, handily. The
Supreme Court could have ruled for Gore. Nader spent two and a half days
in Florida in 2000, but it's his fault we went to war in Iraq? Right.
Nader says the "liberal intelligentsia touts itself as the most tolerant
voice in America." But with their rabid demand for him not to run,
"They're crossing from opposition to censorship." He understands some of
this. "They are desperate to replace Bush, " he said. But he is mystified
as to why their opposition is so, well, rabid. He is particularly
dumbstruck by an open letter in the Nation magazine, supposedly the
leading voice of dissent and civil liberties in the leftie world,
commanding him to not run. There's a Web site devoted to keeping him out
of the race. A Stanford law professor and blogger named Lawrence Lessig
likens Nader to the tobacco and auto executives he's famous for attacking.
He's being vilified.
I don't understand the degree of the hostility. Nader doesn't seem to
either. He thinks it has something to do with the Left's inferiority
complex. Fear of a Nader run, he speculated, shows "how low liberalism's
self-esteem has sunk, how low its expectations are."
Nader believes that his campaign would help unseat Bush. Go ahead, chortle
dismissively. I think he 's right. Nader talks about "field testing" lines
of attacks, rhetoric, issues that the Democrats are too timid to use.
Perfect example: A few weeks ago Michael Moore, appearing with the dearly
departed General Clark, called Bush a "deserter." This was deemed not
kosher; Clark was urged to denounce the gadfly and apologize to his
Highness. Well, it might not be by the Marquis of Queensbury's rule of
politics, but President's Bush National Guard service is now a huge issue
and it has tapped into some people's concerns about his moral authority to
be a "war president."
Nader believes another campaign would bring some people into politics,
perhaps into the Democratic column in November, and wouldn't scare any
voters off. He wants attention focused on issues he thinks Democrats are
too cautious on: poverty, corporate crime, minimum wage, regulation,
campaign finance reform and media consolidation.
Fundamentally, Nader believes that ballot-access and campaign finance laws
that discourage third parties are a serious civil liberties issue, an
issue not close to the radar screens of the established civil liberties
groups. He is outraged the big boys kept him and Pat Buchanan out of the
debates in 2000. They will do so again if he runs this year. It simply
galls Nader that only two teams get to play in the big tournament. It's
not in his nature to just take it without a fight.
I think the zealousness of Nader-phobia reflects a larger rage and
ugliness that has infected both sides of this narrowly and bitterly
divided electorate (an infection I have written about ad nauseum, I know).
If you're not with us, you're against us and we hate you. Clinton-haters.
Gore-haters. Bush-haters. Not opponents, haters.
But it is precisely in times like these when dissident voices -- Right,
Left, Radical Center -- are especially important. The electorate is
divided, yes, but a huge slice of the population is simply alienated from
politics and government altogether. And these voters, or non-voters, are
better served when they can cast loud protest votes. Sometimes these votes
are so loud that a Jesse Ventura becomes a governor. Minnesota survived.
In response to Lessig's insults on his blog, someone posted a message
supporting Nader that said many people "feel betrayed, abandoned, and
utterly unrepresented. I refuse to turn the act of voting into a choice
between the lesser of two evils. That’s exactly what the 2000 elections
appeared to be, and I pray that the 2004 elections will be different." Two
parties, nearly as similar as Coke and Pepsi, don't satisfy all consumers.
Third parties and independent candidates have served the country pretty
well over. If John Breckinridge hadn't run as a Southern Democrat in 1860,
Abraham Lincoln might not have been elected. I think Perot, Buchanan, John
Anderson and Nader spiced up the national debate.
I hope Nader runs. I hope someone to the right of Bush runs too. More is
better. Run, Ralph, Run.
________________
Dick Meyer, the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, has covered politics
and government in Washington for 20 years and has won the Investigative
Reporters and Editors, Alfred I. Dupont, and Society of Professional
Journalists awards for investigative journalism.
E-mail questions, comments, complaints, arguments and ideas to Against the
Grain at [EMAIL PROTECTED] We will publish some of the interesting (and
civil) ones.
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Subject: [pjnews] An Odd Accusation From Ralph Nader
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And another point of view...
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17836
Nader Goes On the Defensive
By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
February 12, 2004
After several decades as one of America's great public-interest advocates,
Ralph Nader has developed an extraordinary response when people say they
don't think he should run for president in 2004.
During a Feb. 4 interview on NPR's "All Things Considered" program, Nader
had this to say when asked about an editorial in The Nation urging him not
to run this year: "It's a marvelous demonstration by liberals, if you
will, of censorship. Now mind you, running for political office is every
American's right. Running for political office means free speech exercise,
it means exercising the right of petition, the right of assembly. And so
when they say 'Do not run,' they're not just challenging and rebutting;
they're crossing that line into censorship, which is completely
unacceptable."
News anchor Melissa Block followed up: "Wouldn't censorship, though, be if
anyone were physically preventing you from running? They're not saying
that you can't run; they're asking you not to. They're asking you to make
that decision for what they consider to be the greater good of the
country."
Nader: "Well, I don't ask them not to speak. Why are they asking me not to
speak?"
Block: "Well, I think what they would say is they're saying, 'Speak, but
in the forum of debate and not as a candidate.'"
Nader: "In other words, exercise my First Amendment rights outside the
electoral arena, not inside. No, they don't have a leg to stand on here.
Now challenge, rebuttal, lack of support; they can do all that in robust
debate. But to say 'Do not run' to anybody is to say, 'Do not speak. Do
not petition. Do not assemble. Remain silent.' That's just unacceptable,
especially coming from people like the editors of The Nation."
Of course Nader has a right to run for president. And others have no less
of a right to urge that he choose not to do so. It makes no sense to claim
that such urging amounts to "censorship."
Rhetorical overdrive carries with it the danger of conflating whatever one
doesn't want to hear into some kind of straw caricature. The editorial in
the Feb. 16 edition of The Nation – titled "An Open Letter to Ralph Nader"
– provided a set of arguments for why a Nader-in-2004 presidential race
would be unwise for the public-interest agenda that he has long
championed. In no way did the editorial urge Nader to "remain silent."
Ralph Nader has cogently pointed out anti-democratic aspects of corporate
power and government operations for almost half a century. Now, it's far
beneath this exemplary citizen to claim that those who ask him not to run
for president this year are seeking to interfere with his First Amendment
rights. Actually, they're exercising their own rights – in this instance,
to Nader's displeasure – without in any way seeking to infringe on his.
While Nader is 100 percent correct that he has a right to run for
president, that's not in dispute. The debate is over the wisdom of running
this year. Like many other people who voted for Nader in 2000, I agree
with The Nation's editorial. But that's not the point. Agree with it or
not, there's no basis for Nader's canard about "censorship."
No amount of such red-herring charges will shore up the scant support for
a Nader-for-president campaign this year. When Nader resorts to them, he
seems to be putting up a smokescreen, as if his rationales for a
presidential run in 2004 can't withstand scrutiny.
Valid political debate can include the assertion that any number of
legitimate actions such as electoral campaigns are not advisable – whether
due to narrowly tactical or broadly strategic reasons – at a particular
time. Political advocates must be able to have such debates about tactics
and strategies without deferring to charges of "censorship" along the
lines of Nader's claim during his NPR interview.
For a very long time, Ralph Nader has exemplified the spirit of a key
observation from George Orwell: "If liberty means anything at all, it
means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Now, many
longtime allies are trying to tell Nader what he doesn't want to hear
about his planned 2004 presidential race. Without trying to impinge on his
liberty, they are making good use of their own.
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Subject: [pjnews] 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
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The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
2003 was not a year of garden variety corporate wrongdoing. No, the sheer
variety, reach and intricacy of corporate schemes, scandal and crimes was
spellbinding. Not an easy year to pick the 10 worst companies, for sure.
But Multinational Monitor magazine cannot be deterred by such
complications. And so, here follows, in alphabetical order, our list for
Multinational Monitor of the 10 worst corporations of 2003.
Bayer: 2003 may be remembered as the year of the headache at Bayer. In
May, the company agreed to plead guilty to a criminal count and pay more
than $250 million to resolve allegations that it denied Medicaid discounts
to which it was entitled. The company was beleaguered with litigation
related to its anti-cholesterol drug Baycol. Bayer pulled the drug – which
has been linked to a sometimes fatal muscle disorder -- from the market,
but is facing thousands of suits from patients who allege they were harmed
by the drug. In June, the New York Times reported on internal company
memos which appear to show that the company continued to promote the drug
even as its own analysis had revealed the dangers of the product. Bayer
denies the allegations.
Boeing: In one of the grandest schemes of corporate welfare in recent
memory, Boeing engineered a deal whereby the Pentagon would lease tanker
planes -- 767s that refuel fighter planes in the air -- from Boeing. The
pricetag of $27.6 billion was billions more than the cost of simply buying
the planes. The deal may unravel, though, because the company in November
fired for wrongdoing both the employee that negotiated the contract for
Boeing (the company's chief financial officer), and the employee that
negotiated the contract for the government. How could Boeing fire a
Pentagon employee? Simple. She was no longer a Pentagon employee. Boeing
had hired her shortly after the company clinched the deal.
Brighthouse: A new-agey advertising/consulting/ strategic advice company,
Brighthouse's claim to infamy is its Neurostrategies Institute, which
undertakes research to see how the brain responds to advertising
campaigns. In a cutting-edge effort to extend and sharpen the commercial
reach in ways never previously before possible, the institute is using
MRIs to monitor activity in people's brains triggered by advertisements.
Clear Channel: The radio behemoth Clear Channel specializes in consuming
or squashing locally owned radio stations, imposing a homogenized music
play list on once interesting stations, and offering cultural support for
U.S. imperial adventures. It has also compiled a record of "repeated
law-breaking," according to our colleage Jim Donahue, violating the law --
including prohibitions on deceptive advertising and on broadcasting
conversations without obtaining permission of the second party to the
conversation -- on 36 separate occasions over the previous three years.
Diebold: A North Canton, Ohio-based company that is one of the largest
U.S. voting machine manufacturers, and an aggressive peddler of its
electronic voting machines, Diebold has managed to demonstrate that it
fails any reasonable test of qualifications for involvement with the
voting process. Its CEO has worked as a major fundraiser for President
George Bush. Computer experts revealed serious flaws in its voting
technology, and activists showed how careless it was with confidential
information. And it threatened lawsuits against activists who published on
the Internet documents from the company showing its failures.
Halliburton: Now the owner of the company which initially drafted plans
for privatization of U.S. military functions -- plans drafted during the
Bush I administration when current Vice President and former Halliburton
CEO Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense -- Halliburton is pulling in
billions in revenues for contract work -- providing logistical support
ranging from oil to food -- in Iraq. Tens of millions, at least, appear to
be overcharges. Some analysts say the charges for oil provision amount to
"highway robbery."
HealthSouth: Fifteen of its top executives have pled guilty in connection
with a multi-billion dollar scheme to defraud investors, the public and
the U.S. government about the company's financial condition. The founder
and CEO of the company that runs a network of outpatient surgery,
diagnostic imagery and rehabilitative healthcare centers, Richard Scrushy,
is fighting the charges. But thanks to the slick maneuvering of attorney
Bob Bennett, it appears the company itself will get off scot free -- no
indictments, no pleas, no fines, no probation.
Inamed: The California-based company sought Food and Drug Administration
approval for silicone breast implants, even though it was not able to
present long-term safety data -- the very thing that led the FDA to
restrict sales of silicone implants a decade ago. In light of what remains
unknown and what is known about the implants' effects -- including painful
breast hardening which can lead to deformity, and very high rupture rates
-- the FDA in January 2004 denied Inamed's application for marketing
approval.
Merrill Lynch: This company keeps messing up. Fresh off of a $100 million
fine levied because analysts were recommending stocks that they trashed in
private e-mails, the company saw three former execs indicted for shady
dealings with Enron. The company itself managed to escape with something
less than a slap on the wrist -- no prosecution in exchange for
"oversight."
Safeway: One of the largest U.S. grocery chains, Safeway is leading the
charge to demand givebacks from striking and locked out grocery workers in
Southern California. Along with Albertsons and Ralphs (Kroger's),
Safeway's Vons and Pavilion stores are asking employees to start paying
for a major chunk of their health insurance. Under the company's
proposals, workers and their families will lose $4,000 to $6,000 a year in
health insurance benefits.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor
of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
This article is posted at:
<http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corpfocus/2004/000173.html>.
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0211-06.htm
Pentagon Eager to Wash Hands of Iraq Mess It Created
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0211-03.htm
Over 100 Iraqis Working With US Die in 24 Hours Sparking Fear of Civil War
Making Money on Terrorism
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040223&s=hartung
-----------------
fwd from Arms Trade Resource Center...
HALLIBURTON: PROUD TO SERVE OUR TROOPS?
What do you do when you're in hot water?
When scandals are nipping at your ankles, and the press is at your door
asking questions about your over-billing the government for fuel shipments
and meals for U.S. troops, accepting kickbacks from Kuwaiti subcontractors
and generally profiting from war and occupation of foreign countries....
what do you do?
If your name is Halliburton you go on a media offensive, with a big ad
campaign called "Halliburton, Proud to Serve Our Troops."
I have not seen the ads (I am on a strict "no television diet" these
days). But the press descriptions are laughable and despicable at the same
time.
The ad opens with Halliburton CEO David Lesar saying: "You've heard a lot of
Halliburton lately. Criticism is OK. We can take it. Criticism is not a
failure."
Then, amid shots of smiling soldiers being served up meals and camels
crossing the desert in front of burning oil wells, he assures viewers:
"Our employees are doing a great job. We're feeding the soldiers. We're
rebuilding Iraq."
In one shot, a man in desert camouflage holds a phone, his lip trembling
as he listens to good news from home. He shouts: "It's a girl."
In the ad Lesar tries to counter criticism that it owes its billions in
profits to its political connections, saying, "We're serving our troops
because of what we know, not who we know." The ad closes with the CEO
asking, "Will things go wrong? Sure they will. It's a war zone. But when
they do we'll fix it. We always have -- for 60 years for both political
parties."
----------------
http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=593_0_2_0_C
Oil and Democracy Don’t Mix
Bush administration policies guarantee a constant flow, no matter what the
human cost
by Frida Berrigan
At a 1996 energy conference in New Orleans, Dick Cheney, then CEO of
Halliburton said, “The problem is that the good Lord didn’t see fit to put
oil and gas reserves where there are democratic governments.”
Laying the blame on the divine is a stretch, but it seems that the vice
president is right: democracy and oil do not mix. Just look at the United
States’ top 10 oil suppliers. Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia
are repressive regimes with deplorable human rights records. Mexico and
Venezuela, while democracies, are marked by instability, inequality and
civil strife. Iraq remains at war and under occupation. Only Norway,
Canada and the United Kingdom are fully functioning democracies.
Why don’t oil and democracy mix? At least part of the answer can be found
in Washington’s policy of providing military aid and training to leaders
who guarantee an uninterrupted flow of oil, defending it against all
threats—even those coming from their own citizens.
Since the beginning of the war on terrorism in 2001, the United States’
top 10 sources of oil imports have experienced a 350 percent increase in
U.S. military aid and training. In 2003, the United States plans to
provide these countries with $58 million in military assistance. In fiscal
year 2001, their military assistance totaled $12.2 million.
A large part of the increase is explained by Washington’s rewarding of
regimes like Algeria and Nigeria for their ability to cloak domestic
repression in the rhetoric of the “war on terrorism.” As the United States
looks ahead to a never ending war on terrorism and growing dependence on
foreign oil, this dynamic will become increasingly common.
Africa accounts for 16 percent of U.S. oil imports, and the National
Intelligence Council predicts an increase to 25 percent by 2015. Hunger
for this oil, combined with the need to collect allies in the war on
terrorism, led the Bush administration to adopt a “see no evil” position
toward human rights problems and inequality in the continent’s oil-rich
nations.
This policy is so entrenched that William Burns, assistant secretary of
state for Near Eastern and North African affairs, remarked with admiration
while on a 2002 trip there, “Washington has much to learn from Algeria on
ways to fight terrorism.” Burns must not have read his own State
Department 2002 Human Rights Report, which notes that Algerian “security
forces committed extra-judicial killings, tortured, beat or otherwise
abused detainees.” Algeria has proven oil reserves of more than 9.2
billion barrels and is considered underdeveloped in terms of production,
representing a golden opportunity for U.S. companies.
And so, in spite of persistent human rights abuses, relations between
Washington and Algiers are warming. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has
visited the White House twice and officials are discussing establishment
of an American military base in Algeria. Emboldened by this, Algerian
generals are pushing for access to previously denied lethal technology
like combat aircraft.
Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States, and
with the discovery of new deep-water oil reserves right off the coast U.S.
strategic interest is growing.
In July 2003, as President Bush departed for Africa, Gen. James Jones, the
U.S. commander responsible for African operations, announced that
Washington was negotiating long-term use of a “family” of military bases
across Africa and predicted a much bigger role for U.S. military in the
Gulf of Guinea, right off the Nigerian coast.
Washington’s desire for Nigerian oil and territory triggered deeper
military relationships. During the reign of Gen. Sani Abacha military ties
were frozen. But since his death in 1999, the thaw has been quick. That
year, Nigeria purchased $74,000 in U.S. weaponry. By 2001, the United
States delivered thousands of times that—a total of $3.1 million. Military
aid also skyrocketed, from $90,000 in 1999 to more than $4 million for
2003.
How increased military aid will improve human rights and efforts toward
democratization is unclear. The State Department’s Human Rights Report
found that the Nigerian “military and security forces committed
extrajudicial killings.”
Military aid is also increasing in areas that do not supply the United
States with oil—yet. The seven countries that make up the Caspian
region—Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan—are rich in oil, but the West is still trying
to figure out how to extract and transport it. In the meantime, the region
became strategically important for other reasons—its proximity to
Afghanistan and its eagerness to aid in the war on terrorism.
Uzbekistan granted the U.S. permission to establish a “semi-permanent”
military base in its territory, other countries offered “fly-over rights,”
troops, intelligence and rhetorical support for the war on terrorism. In
exchange, the handful of dictators, generals and presidents-for- life that
rule the Caspian nations were granted reprieve from their international
pariah status. Tens of millions in U.S. military aid quickly followed.
Collectively, these countries are slated to receive almost $40 million in
U.S. military aid in 2004. In 2001, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan were under
U.S. sanctions and received no military aid. The other five nations
received a collective total of $12.3 million in military aid. In other
words, military aid from the United States will increase more than 200
percent in just three years—not including Congress’ $70 million Special
Supplemental for Caspian countries in 2002.
In the Caspian, and in most of the other countries where U.S. military aid
and training markedly increased in the past three years, the weapons are
not being used to defend borders from impending invasions. Rather,
military resources are used to squash indigenous movements for
self-determination, undermine campaigns for human rights, punish those who
call for democracy and government accountability, and protect leaders who
came to power illegitimately.
There are a few exceptions to the “oil and democracy don’t mix” maxim, and
they are instructive. Norway, the United Kingdom and Canada are major oil
suppliers to the United States, but were established democracies with
diversified economies before getting into oil exploration. Replicating
these successes in other oil-rich countries will require a radical
revision of U.S. military and energy policy. Now would be a good time to
start.
Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate with the Arms Trade Resource
Center, a project of the World Policy Institute.
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Subject: [pjnews] 9/11 Families' Valentines Letter to President Bush
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http://www.peacefultomorrows.org
February 14 2004
Dear President Bush,
Two years ago today, family members of 9/11 victims lost at the World Trade
Center, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93 launched a group called September 11th
Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. We chose Valentine's Day as a symbolic
reminder that the American ideals of peace, justice and reconciliation remain
vibrant, and did not die with our loved ones.
On that day, we held up a large heart containing a valentine letter to you. In
the letter we asked to meet with you to discuss the creation of a fund to
assist innocent victims of war in Afghanistan. We felt that it was not only a
decent and moral response to those accidental deaths, but also a practical
opportunity to demonstrate the same compassion that 9/11 family members
received from all over the globe.
You chose not to meet with us, but since that day two years ago, the members of
Peaceful Tomorrows have worked to display the best of America's ideals to the
rest of the world. We secured congressional funding to assist Afghan civilians
affected by the war. We connected with others around the world who have been
similarly affected by terrorism and war. We stood with millions across the
globe against the war in Iraq and for the cause of peace. And our group has
grown as more 9/11 family members have found healing by turning their grief
into action for peace. In contrast, you declared it was an "us versus them"
world, and pursued unilateral and unpopular policies that turned that world
against the United States and made us less secure. And worst of all, you often
used the deaths of our family members as an excuse to pursue that agenda.
Two years later, we ask you to stop exploiting the tragedy of September 11 for
political gain and to join us in responding to that tragic day in a manner that
brings about genuine healing and peace for Americans and the rest of the world.
We respectfully request a written response to the following questions:
1. You and members of your administration consistently invoked 9/11 as a
justification for war in Iraq, without presenting any evidence of a link
between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the attacks of that day. The confusing and
misleading statements made by your administration that allude to an unproven
link have caused a majority of the US public, (up to 70% according to a
Washington Post poll taken in September 2003) to believe that Saddam Hussein
was responsible for September 11.You have exploited the American public's
genuine fear of another September 11 to pursue an unrelated war, which has
already cost the lives of more than 500 US service people and an estimated
10,000 Iraqi civilians. We call upon you today to publicly acknowledge that
your administration's statements have misled the American people, and to
clarify that there is no evidence of a connection between the events of 9/11
and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Please, Mr. President, will you correct this
dangerous misperce!
ption?
2. In light of your announcement that the United States plans to step up the
campaign to find Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, we ask that you cease the
tactic of bombing villages in an attempt to kill Bin Laden or other suspected
Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders. In the past two years these village bombings have
killed and injured countless innocent civilians, including children, while
failing to achieve their stated aim. Since the beginning of 2003, media reports
confirm that more than 64 civilians have been killed in at least six separate
incidents of village bombings. Meanwhile, most top Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders
have been captured through international cooperation, intelligence sharing, and
police work, not the bombing of villagers. No one desires Bin Laden to be
arrested and stand trial more than we do. Yet through continued bombing of
innocent civilians, you have increased anti-American sentiment and created
legions of potential future terrorists. We beg you, Mr. Preside!
nt, will you direct the military to cease the tactic of bombing villages in
Afghanistan, and choose more effective methods to capture the criminals
responsible for our loved ones deaths?
3. We ask you to stop playing politics with the 9/11 attacks. September 11 was
many things, but it was a victory for no one but the terrorists. When your
administration treats it like a success story and your political party uses the
World Trade Center site as the backdrop for the Republican convention this
fall, we are offended. We have witnessed the photograph of you on the telephone
on September 11 sold by your campaign as a fundraising vehicle. We have read
Republican party officials' acknowledgement that the national convention was
planned in New York City at the latest possible date in order to "flow
seamlessly into the commemoration of 9/11." And we have witnessed your
administration's lack of cooperation with the Independent Commission
investigating 9/11. On November 27, 2002, you stated, "the investigation should
carefully examine all the evidence and follow all the facts, wherever they
lead. We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the
11th.!
.. It's our most solemn duty." We ask you today live up to that promise. As
president of the United States, you well know that our nation's future is more
important than any one person's political career. We ask you, Mr. President,
will you renounce the exploitation of September 11th for partisan political
gain?
You claim that September 11th made you a war president. But this is not true.
By responding to the terrorism of 9/11 with an unending "war on terror," and a
doctrine of pre-emptive war, you and your administration chose this path. After
September 11, the entire world reached out to the United States with
compassion. Rather than building on that good will and ushering the world into
a new era of mutual cooperation, an effort that would have required true
statesmanship and a willingness to deal honestly with the root causes of
terrorism, you appealed to our fears and to the worst in human kind. Your
domestic and foreign policies have reduced our nation's leadership, leaving us
less secure, less free, less respected and less able to deal effectively with
the genuine threat of 21st century terrorism.
This Valentine's Day, two years after the creation of September 11th Families
for Peaceful Tomorrows, we call on you to open your heart, take accountability
for your actions, and act now to set our nation on the path of real peace. This
is the way to truly honor those who died on September 11 and who continue to
live in our hearts. We look forward to your timely answers to our inquiries.
Sincerely,
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT
Peaceful Tomorrows does not receive disbursements or funds from 9/11 charities.
We depend on your support to continue our work. Please visit
http://mailhost.groundspring.org/cgi-bin/t.pl?id=69167:1059699 to make a
tax-deductible donation online, or send your check made out to "Peaceful
Tomorrows/Tides Center" to:
Peaceful Tomorrows
PO Box 1818
Peter Stuyvesant Station
New York, NY 10009
You may also make secure donations online:
http://mailhost.groundspring.org/cgi-bin/t.pl?id=69168:1059699&cmid=6939:1059699&OrgID=1657
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Subject: [pjnews] Kerry, Too, Needs to Clear the Air
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http://snipurl.com/4e9d
Kerry, Too, Needs to Clear the Air
By Scott Ritter
New York Newsday
February 9, 2004
On April 23, 1971, a 27-year-old Navy veteran named John Kerry sat before the
Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and chided members on their leadership
failures regarding the war in Vietnam.
"Where is the leadership?" Kerry, a decorated hero who had proved his courage
under fire, demanded of the senators. "Where are they now that we, the men they
sent off to war, have returned?" Kerry lambasted those who had pushed so
strongly for war in Vietnam. "These men have left all the casualties and
retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude."
Today, on the issue of the war in Iraq, it is John Kerry who is all pious
rectitude.
"I think the administration owes the entire country a full explanation on this
war - not just their exaggerations but on the failure of American
intelligence," Kerry said following the stunning announcement by David Kay, the
Bush administration's former lead investigator in Iraq, that "we were all
wrong" about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. The
problem for Sen. Kerry, of course, is that he, too, is culpable in the massive
breach of public trust that has come to light regarding Iraq, WMD and the rush
to war.
Almost 30 years after his appearance before the Senate, Sen. Kerry was given
the opportunity to make good on his promises that he had learned the lessons of
Vietnam. During a visit to Washington in April 2000, when I lobbied senators
and representatives for a full review of American policy regarding Iraq, I
spoke with John Kerry about what I held to be the hyped-up intelligence
regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. "Put it in writing," Kerry told me,
"and send it to me so I can review what you're saying in detail."
I did just that, penning a comprehensive article for Arms Control Today, the
journal of the Arms Control Association, on the "Case for the Qualitative
Disarmament of Iraq." This article, published in June 2000, provided a detailed
breakdown of Iraq's WMD capability and made a comprehensive case that Iraq did
not pose an imminent threat. I asked the Arms Control Association to send
several copies to Sen. Kerry's office but, just to make sure, I sent him one
myself. I never heard back from the senator.
Two years later, in the buildup toward war that took place in the summer of
2002, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Kerry sits, convened a
hearing on Iraq. At that hearing a parade of witnesses appeared, testifying to
the existence of WMD in Iraq. Featured prominently was Khidir Hamza, the
self-proclaimed "bombmaker to Saddam," who gave stirring first-hand testimony
to the existence of not only nuclear weapons capability, but also chemical and
biological weapons as well. Every word of Hamza's testimony has since been
proved false. Despite receiving thousands of phone calls, letters and e-mails
demanding that dissenting expert opinion, including my own, be aired at the
hearing, Sen. Kerry apparently did nothing, allowing a sham hearing to conclude
with the finding that there was "no doubt" Saddam Hussein had WMD.
Sen. Kerry followed up this performance in October 2002 by voting for the war
in Iraq. Today he justifies that vote by noting that he only approved the
"threat of war," and that the blame for Iraq rests with President George W.
Bush, who failed to assemble adequate international support for the war. But
this explanation rings hollow in the face of David Kay's findings that there
are no WMD in Iraq. With the stated casus belli shown to be false, John Kerry
needs to better explain his role not only in propelling our nation into a war
that is rapidly devolving into a quagmire, but more importantly, his
perpetuation of the falsehoods that got us there to begin with.
President Bush should rightly be held accountable for what increasingly appears
to be deliberately misleading statements made by him and members of his
administration regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. If such deception took
place, then Bush no longer deserves the trust and confidence of the American
people.
But John Kerry seems to share in this culpability, and if he wants to be the
next president of the United States, he must first convince the American people
that his actions somehow differ from those of the man he seeks to replace.
"Where is the leadership?" John Kerry asked more than 30 years ago, questioning
a war that consumed life, money and national honor. Today this question still
hangs in the air, haunting a former Navy combat veteran who needs to convince a
skeptical nation that he not only has a plan to get America out of Iraq, but
also possesses the leadership skills needed to avoid future ill-advised
adventures.
Scott Ritter, former UN chief inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998, is the author of
"Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America."
------------------
The Institute for Public Accuracy
Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich today said that based on the
public record five of his fellow candidates promoted the idea that Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"The implications of this are enormous," Kucinich said. "They were either
misled or looked the other way while President Bush was using the alleged
presence of weapons of mass destruction as a reason to go to war against Iraq.
Either way, these candidates have seriously undermined their ability to win in
the general election when President Bush is obviously running for reelection
based on his Iraq policies.
"Yesterday the leader of the U.S. search for Iraq's alleged stockpiles of
chemical or biological weapons said he didn't think there were any. Secretary
of State Colin Powell now claims we went to war to find out whether such
weapons existed.
"Senators Kerry, Lieberman and Edwards, Dr. Dean, and General Clark, all
claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and, therefore, contributed
to the political climate which falsely justified a war.
"In September of 2002, before five of my fellow candidates joined the President
in claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, I repeatedly and
insistently made the point that no proof of that claim existed and as such that
there was no basis to go to war. Six months later, even Dr. Dean was still
claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
The Institute for Public Accuracy has compiled the following quotes, [listed in
chronological order]:
[August 4, 2002] Sen. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: "Every day Saddam remains in power with
chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is
a day of danger for the United States. "
See: http://www.counterpunch.org/wmd05292003.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59538,00.html
[Sept. 12, 2002] Rep. DENNIS KUCINICH: "Since 1998 no credible intelligence has
been brought forward which suggests that Iraq is manufacturing weapons of mass
destruction. . . "
See: http://www.house.gov/kucinich/press/pr-020912-avoidwar.htm
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/oh10_kucinich/030604WMDinqres.html
[Oct. 9, 2002] Sen. JOHN KERRY: "Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop
nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try? & According to intelligence,
Iraq has chemical and biological weapons . . . Iraq is developing unmanned
aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents. .
. "
See: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0826-03.htm
http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2002_1009.html
[Oct. 10, 2002] Sen. JOHN EDWARDS: "We know that he [Hussein] has chemical and
biological weapons. "
See: http://www.senate.gov/~edwards/statements/20021010_iraq.html
[Jan. 18, 2003] Gen. WESLEY CLARK: "He [Hussein] does have weapons of mass
destruction. " When asked, "And you could say that categorically?" Clark
responded: "Absolutely. " (on CNN, Jan. 18, 2003). On finding the alleged
weapons Clark said: "I think they will be found. There's so much
intelligence on this. " (on CNN, April 2, 2003)
See: http://www.fair.org/press-releases/clark-antiwar.html
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0301/18/smn.05.html
http://www-cgi.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0304/02/lt.08.html
[Jan. 31, 2003] Rev. AL SHARPTON: "I think that the present administration is
bent on war. There has been no, in my judgment, evidence presented there has
been any weapons of mass destruction. " (on NPR, Jan. 31, 2003)
[March 17, 2003] Dr. HOWARD DEAN: "[He and others] have never been in doubt
about the evil of Saddam Hussein or the necessity of removing his weapons of
mass destruction. "
See: http://www.wtv-zone.com/Morgaine_OFaery/HDean4pres/deantrpswar.html
Kucinich, who led the effort in the House of Representatives in challenging the
Bush Administration's march toward war attempted repeatedly to warn America
that there was no basis to go to war:
On Sep. 3, 2002, on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Dennis Kucinich said, "I
don't think there's any justification to go to war with Iraq. There's no
evidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. There's no. . . there's
nothing that says that they have the ability to deliver such weapons, if they
did have them. There's been no stated intention on their part to harm the
United States. "
On Sep. 4, 2002, on Buchanan and Press, Buchanan asked "Congressman Kucinich,
does not the President have a clear, factual point here? Saddam Hussein is
developing these weapons of mass destruction, he agreed to get rid of them, he
has not gotten rid of them. Kucinich replied: "Well, frankly we haven't seen
evidence or proof of that, and furthermore we haven't seen evidence or proof
that he has the ability to deliver such weapons if he has them, and finally,
whether or not he has the intent. I think that what we need to be doing is to
review this passion for war, that drumbeat for war, that's coming out of the
White House, and to slow down and to let calmer heads prevail and to pursue
diplomacy."
On Sep. 7, 2002, Dennis Kucinich gave a speech in Baraboo, Wisconsin, called
"Architects of New Worlds," in which he said "There's no evidence Iraq has
weapons of mass destruction, or the ability to deliver such weapons if it had
them or the intention to do so. There is no reason for war against Iraq. Stop
the drumbeat. Stop the war talk. Pull back from the abyss of unilateral action
and preemptive strikes. " See:
http://www.house.gov/kucinich/press/sp-020907-newworlds.htm
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Subject: [pjnews] US/ British Spy Op Wrecked Peace Move
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0215-02.htm
Spying Games on the Road to War
----------------
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0215-01.htm
Published on Sunday, February 15, 2004 by the Observer/UK
British Spy Op Wrecked Peace Move
by Martin Bright, Peter Beaumont and Jo Tuckman in Mexico
A joint British and American spying operation at the United Nations
scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq, The
Observer can reveal.
Senior UN diplomats from Mexico and Chile provided new evidence last week
that their missions were spied on, in direct contravention of
international law.
The former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told The
Observer that US officials intervened last March, just days before the war
against Saddam was launched, to halt secret negotiations for a compromise
resolution to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work.
Aguilar Zinser claimed that the intervention could only have come as a
result of surveillance of a closed diplomatic meeting where the compromise
was being hammered out. He said it was clear the Americans knew about the
confidential discussions in advance. 'When they [the US] found out, they
said, "You should know that we don't like the idea and we don't like you
to promote it."'
The revelations follow claims by Chile's former ambassador to the UN, Juan
Valdes, that he found hard evidence of bugging at his mission in New York
last March. The new claims emerged as The Observer has discovered that
Government officials seriously considered dropping the prosecution against
Katharine Gun, the translator at the GCHQ surveillance center who first
disclosed details of the espionage operation last March.
According to Whitehall sources, officials feared the prosecution would
leave the Government and the intelligence services open to embarrassing
disclosures. They were known to be concerned that the 29-year-old Chinese
language specialist would be seen as a patriotic young woman acting out of
principle to reveal an illegal operation rather than as someone who
betrayed her country's secrets. They are also known to be worried that any
trial would force the disclosure of Government legal advice on
intervention in Iraq, described by one source as 'at best ambiguous'.
Gun has attracted high profile support, particularly in the US, where her
case has been taken up by Hollywood stars, civil rights campaigners and
members of Congress. Yesterday, Oscar nominee, Sean Penn, told The
Observer that Gun was 'a hero of the human spirit'.
Aguilar Zinser also paid tribute: 'She is serving a noble cause by
denouncing what could be illegal acts,' he said.
The operation by the US National Security Agency and GCHQ was revealed by
The Observer last March, after a leaked memo showed US spies had begun an
intelligence 'surge' on members of the UN security council in which they
needed British help.
Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell last night
called on Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to clarify Britain's role: 'If the
allegations that these operations had ministerial authority are
well-founded, then it could hardly be more serious for the Government.
There will be understandable uproar at the UN. On the other hand, if the
eavesdropping took place without Ministers knowing, then the question is,
who was in charge?'
The Mexican government confirmed last week that diplomatic letters were
sent to Straw last December asking him to clarify whether GCHQ was
involved in spying on its UN allies. They have yet to receive a response.
The Foreign Office refused to comment on the new allegations.
But the revelations of the former Mexican ambassador will not go away as
he is planning a book about his experiences at the United Nations.
Aguilar Zinser told The Observer that the meeting of diplomats from six
nations took place about a week before the decision not to put the
resolution to the vote. They were working on a draft document of a
compromise solution when the American intervened.
'We had yet to get our capitals to go along with it, it was at a very
early stage. Only the people in the room knew what the document said. The
surprising thing was the very rapid flow of information to [US] quarters.
'The meeting was in the evening and they call us in the morning before the
meeting of the Security Council and they say, 'We appreciate you trying to
find ideas, but this is not a good idea." I say, "Thanks, that's good to
know." We were looking for a compromise and they [the US] say, "Do not
attempt it."'
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Subject: [pjnews] The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0214-04.htm
Drowned Iraqi 'Was Forced into River by Five US Soldiers'
------------------
http://www.fair.org/media-beat/040205.html
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
By Norman Solomon
Ninety-five days before the invasion of Iraq began, I sat in the ornate
Baghdad office of the deputy prime minister as he talked about the U.N.
weapons inspectors in his country. "They are doing their jobs freely,
without any interruption," Tariq Aziz said. "And still the warmongering
language in Washington is keeping on."
The White House, according to Aziz, had written the latest U.N. Security
Council resolution "in a way to be certainly refused." But, he added
pointedly: "We surprised them by saying, 'OK, we can live with it. We'll
be patient enough to live with it and prove to you and to the world that
your allegations about weapons of mass destruction are not true.'"
Speaking that night in mid-December 2002, Tariq Aziz -- dressed in a
well-cut business suit, witty and fluent in English -- epitomized the
urbanity of evil. As a high-ranking servant of a murderous despot, he lied
often. But not that time.
With knee-jerk professional reflexes, American journalists assumed that
Iraqi officials were lying about weapons of mass destruction -- and also
assumed that officials such as George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and
(especially) Colin Powell were being truthful. Overall, the news media
helped to create a great market for war.
An author who soared in that bullish market was Kenneth Pollack, the
former CIA analyst whose 2002 book "The Threatening Storm: The Case for
Invading Iraq" was a media-driven smash. A frequent presence on national
television, Pollack eagerly promoted a book and a war at the same time. He
called for a "massive invasion" of Iraq.
Now, in the current issue of the Atlantic magazine, Pollack has a long
essay with a somewhat regretful tone. "What we have learned about Iraq's
WMD programs since the fall of Baghdad leads me to conclude that the case
for war with Iraq was considerably weaker than I believed," he writes. "I
had been convinced that Iraq was only years away from having a nuclear
weapon -- probably only four or five years. That estimate was clearly off,
possibly by quite a bit."
But most journalists and pundits touted such estimates as reasonable
because the media pros were predisposed to believe the pronouncements from
administration officials. Now we're told that only hindsight has provided
us the chance to see how wrong those estimates were. That's nonsense.
Extensive information, poking huge holes in key deceptions, was readily
available at the time -- but major U.S. media outlets are still reporting
as though Bush's pre-war claims were credible when they were made. In
reality, any "intelligence failure" was dwarfed by a contemporaneous media
failure.
(If you have any doubt that the Bush gang's WMD claims could have been
recognized as transparently bogus from the start, take a look at dozens of
news releases assembled during many pre-war months by my colleagues at the
Institute for Public Accuracy. Those releases, from 2002 and the first
months of 2003, remain posted at www.accuracy.org without any change in
wording.)
In late January, Senate committees heard testimony from the man who headed
the 1,400-member weapons inspection team in Iraq during the last half of
2003. Longtime hawk and Bush 2000 campaign supporter David Kay declared:
"Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong." And: "It is highly
unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical
and biological weapons there."
A week later, on Feb. 4, the Pentagon's Donald Rumsfeld appeared before
the Senate Armed Services Committee and simply drew from an inexhaustible
supply of fog: "It was the consensus of the intelligence community, and of
successive administrations of both political parties, and of the Congress,
that reviewed the same intelligence, and much of the international
community, I might add, that Saddam Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass
destruction."
In the grand tradition of manipulatively farcical commissions appointed by
a president to assess his devious actions, a front-page New York Times
article reported with delicate euphemisms that Bush's new panel will
"examine American intelligence operations, including a study of possible
misjudgments about Iraq's unconventional weapons."
"Possible" -- as though there's still any question about the pre-war
intelligence verdicts proclaimed by the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld
and Powell.
"Misjudgments" -- as though the White House hadn't summoned any and all
pseudo-evidence to rationalize its from-the-outset determination to invade
Iraq.
After 27 years as a CIA analyst, Ray McGovern knows a few things about
propaganda. He notes that "the 'investigation' is slated to go past the
election. Members will be picked by the president, and the scope is
unconscionably wider than is necessary." McGovern contends that "the key
question for 2004 is whether the administration's stranglehold on the
media can be loosened to the point where the electorate can wake up, take
away the president's driver's license and put an end to the reckless
endangerment."
The media war of 2004 is well underway. To the victor goes the White House.
__________________________________
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the
News Media Didn't Tell You."
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Subject: [pjnews] George Bush, The Real Man
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Published on Friday, February 13, 2004 by the New York Times
The Real Man
by Paul Krugman
To understand why questions about George Bush's time in the National Guard
are legitimate, all you have to do is look at the federal budget published
last week. No, not the lies, damned lies and statistics — the pictures.
By my count, this year's budget contains 27 glossy photos of Mr. Bush. We
see the president in front of a giant American flag, in front of the
Washington Monument, comforting an elderly woman in a wheelchair, helping
a small child with his reading assignment, building a trail through the
wilderness and, of course, eating turkey with the troops in Iraq. Somehow
the art director neglected to include a photo of the president swimming
across the Yangtze River.
It was not ever thus. Bill Clinton's budgets were illustrated with tables
and charts, not with worshipful photos of the president being
presidential.
The issue here goes beyond using the Government Printing Office to publish
campaign brochures. In this budget, as in almost everything it does, the
Bush administration tries to blur the line between reverence for the
office of president and reverence for the person who currently holds that
office.
Operation Flight Suit was only slightly more over the top than other Bush
photo-ops, like the carefully staged picture that placed Mr. Bush's head
in line with the stone faces on Mount Rushmore. The goal is to suggest
that it's unpatriotic to criticize the president, and to use his heroic
image to block any substantive discussion of his policies.
In fact, those 27 photos grace one of the four most dishonest budgets in
the nation's history — the other three are the budgets released in 2001,
2002 and 2003. Just to give you a taste: remember how last year's budget
contained no money for postwar Iraq — and how administration officials
waited until after the tax cut had been passed to mention the small matter
of $87 billion in extra costs? Well, they've done it again: earlier this
week the Army's chief of staff testified that the Iraq funds in the budget
would cover expenses only through September.
But when administration officials are challenged about the blatant
deceptions in their budgets — or, for that matter, about the use of prewar
intelligence — their response, almost always, is to fall back on the
president's character. How dare you question Mr. Bush's honesty, they ask,
when he is a man of such unimpeachable integrity? And that leaves critics
with no choice: they must point out that the man inside the flight suit
bears little resemblance to the official image.
There is, as far as I can tell, no positive evidence that Mr. Bush is a
man of exceptional uprightness. When has he even accepted responsibility
for something that went wrong? On the other hand, there is plenty of
evidence that he is willing to cut corners when it's to his personal
advantage. His business career was full of questionable deals, and
whatever the full truth about his National Guard service, it was certainly
not glorious.
Old history, you may say, and irrelevant to the present. And perhaps that
would be true if Mr. Bush was prepared to come clean about his past.
Instead, he remains evasive. On "Meet the Press" he promised to release
all his records — and promptly broke that promise.
I don't know what he's hiding. But I do think he has forfeited any right
to cite his character to turn away charges that his administration is
lying about its policies. And that is the point: Mr. Bush may not be a
particularly bad man, but he isn't the paragon his handlers portray.
Some of his critics hope that the AWOL issue will demolish the Bush myth,
all at once. They're probably too optimistic — if it were that easy, the
tale of Harken Energy would have already done the trick. The sad truth is
that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality — a group that
in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a
considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy — are very reluctant to
give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that
they had been played for fools.
Still, we may be on our way to an election in which Mr. Bush is judged on
his record, not his legend. And that, of course, is what the White House
fears.
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Subject: [pjnews] US Preparing for Military Draft in Spring 2005
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http://www.vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/105146.php
US Preparing for Military Draft in Spring 2005
by Adam Stutz o Wednesday January 28, 2004 at 09:50 AM
The current agenda of the US federal government is to reinstate the draft
in order to staff up for a protracted war on "terrorism." Pending
legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills S 89 and HR 163) would
time the program so the draft could begin at early as Spring 2005 --
conveniently just after the 2004 presidential election!
Pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills S 89 and HR 163)
would time the program so the draft could begin at early as Spring 2005 --
conveniently just after the 2004 presidential election! But the
administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed NOW, so our
action is needed immediately. Details and links follow.
If voters who currently support U.S. aggression abroad were confronted
with the possibility that their own children or grandchildren might not
have a say about whether to fight, many of these same voters might have a
change of mind. (Not that it should make a difference, but this plan would
among other things eliminate higher education as a shelter and would not
exclude women -- and Canada is no longer an option.)
Please send this on to all the parents and teachers you know, and all the
aunts and uncles, grandparents, godparents.... And let your children know
-- it's their future, and they can be a powerful voice for change! Please
also write to your representatives to ask them why they aren't telling
their constituents about these bills -- and write to newspapers and other
media outlets to ask them why they're not covering this important story.
The Draft*
$28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System (SSS)
budget to prepare for a military draft that could start as early as June
15, 2005. SSS must report to Bush on March 31, 2005 that the system, which
has lain dormant for decades, is ready for activation. Please see website:
http://www.sss.gov/perfplan_fy2004.html to view the SSS Annual Performance
Plan - Fiscal Year 2004.
The Pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft
board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide.. Though this is
an unpopular election year topic, military experts and influential members
of Congress are suggesting that if Rumsfeld's prediction of a "long, hard
slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan [and a permanent state of war on
"terrorism"] proves accurate, the U.S. may have no choice but to draft.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5146.htm
Congress brought twin bills, S. 89 and H.R. 163 forward this year,
entitled the Universal National Service Act of 2003, "To provide for the
common defense by requiring that all young persons [age 18--26] in the
United States, including women, perform a period of military service or a
period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and
homeland security, and for other purposes." These active bills currently
sit in the Committee on Armed Services.
Dodging the draft will be more difficult than those from the Vietnam era
remember. College and Canada will not be options. In December 2001, Canada
and the US signed a "Smart Border Declaration," which could be used to
keep would-be draft dodgers in. Signed by Canada's Minister of Foreign
Affairs, John Manley, and US Homeland Security Director, Gov. Tom Ridge,
the declaration involves a 30-point plan which implements, among other
things, a "pre-clearance agreement" of people entering and departing each
country. Reforms aimed at making the draft more equitable along gender and
class lines also eliminates higher education as a shelter. Underclassmen
would only be able to postpone service until the end of their cur-rent
semester. Seniors would have until the end of the academic year.
*This article by Adam Stutz is from the "What's Hot Off the Press" column
of the newsletter of Project Censored, a media research group at Sonoma
State University that tracks the news published in independent journals
and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list
(more than 20 years running) of 25 news stories of social significance
that have been overlooked, under-reported, or self-censored by the
country's major national news media. The mission of Project Censored is
"to educate people about the role of independent journalism in a
democratic society and to tell The News That Didn't Make the News and
why."
"What's Hot Off the Press" includes student synopses of articles currently
being investigated for inclusion in the next Project Censored report. For
more info and/or to receive Project Censored's newsletter, go to
http://www.projectcensored.org
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http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040216fa_fact
16 February 2004
CONTRACT SPORT: What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?
by JANE MAYER
Vice-President Dick Cheney is well known for his discretion, but his
official White House biography, as posted on his Web site, may exceed even
his own stringent standards. It traces the sixty-three years from his
birth, in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1941, through college and graduate school,
and describes his increasingly powerful jobs in Washington. Yet one
chapter of Cheney’s life is missing. The record notes that he has been a
“businessman” but fails to mention the five extraordinarily lucrative
years that he spent, immediately before becoming Vice-President, as chief
executive of Halliburton, the world’s largest oil-and-gas-services
company. The conglomerate, which is based in Houston, is now the biggest
private contractor for American forces in Iraq; it has received contracts
worth some eleven billion dollars for its work there.
Cheney earned forty-four million dollars during his tenure at Halliburton.
Although he has said that he “severed all my ties with the company,” he
continues to collect deferred compensation worth approximately a hundred
and fifty thousand dollars a year, and he retains stock options worth more
than eighteen million dollars. He has announced that he will donate
proceeds from the stock options to charity.
Such actions have not quelled criticism. Halliburton has become a favorite
target for Democrats, who use it as shorthand for a host of doubts about
conflicts of interest, undue corporate influence, and hidden motives
behind Bush Administration policy—in particular, its reasons for going to
war in Iraq. Like Dow Chemical during the Vietnam War, or Enron three
years ago, Halliburton has evolved into a symbol useful in rallying the
opposition. On the night that John Kerry won the Iowa caucuses, he took a
ritual swipe at the Administration’s “open hand” for Halliburton.
For months, Cheney and Halliburton have insisted that he had no part in
the government’s decision about the Iraq contracts. Cheney has stuck by a
statement he made last September on “Meet the Press”: “I have absolutely
no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape, or form
of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal
government.” He has declined to discuss Halliburton in depth, and, despite
a number of recent media appearances meant to soften his public image, he
turned down several requests for an interview on the subject. Cheney’s
spokesman, Kevin Kellems, responded to questions by e-mail.
Representative Henry Waxman, a liberal Democrat from California and the
ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, has
argued aggressively that the Bush Administration has left many questions
about Halliburton unanswered. Last year, for example, a secret task force
in the Bush Administration picked Halliburton to receive a noncompetitive
contract for up to seven billion dollars to rebuild Iraq’s oil operations.
According to the Times, the decision was authorized at the “highest levels
of the Administration.” In an interview, Waxman asked, “Whose decision was
it? Was it made outside the regular channels of the procurement process?
We know that Halliburton got very special treatment. What we don’t know is
why.”
Halliburton has been accused of exploiting its privileged status. Last
year, a division of the company overcharged the government by as much as
sixty-one million dollars in the course of buying and transporting fuel
from Kuwait into Iraq. Halliburton charged the United States as much as
$2.38 per gallon, an amount that a Pentagon audit determined to be about a
dollar per gallon too high. Although Halliburton has denied any criminal
wrongdoing, the inspector general for the Department of Defense is
considering an investigation.
Halliburton blamed the high costs on an obscure Kuwaiti firm, Altanmia
Commercial Marketing, which it subcontracted to deliver the fuel. In
Kuwait, the oil business is controlled by the state, and Halliburton has
claimed that government officials there pressured it into hiring Altanmia,
which had no experience in fuel transport. Yet a previously undisclosed
letter, dated May 4, 2003, and sent from an American contracting officer
to Kuwait’s oil minister, plainly describes the decision to use Altanmia
as Halliburton’s own “recommendation.” The letter also shows that the Army
Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that oversees such transactions,
supported Halliburton’s decision to use the expensive subcontractor—which
may explain why it has been reluctant to criticize the deal.
Scott Saunders, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, confirmed the
authenticity of the letter, and acknowledged that Halliburton had picked
Altanmia. “Halliburton told us that only Altanmia could meet our
requirements,” he said.
Experts in the Persian Gulf oil business say that the Altanmia deal looks
suspicious. “There is not a reason on earth to sell gasoline at the price
they did,” Youssef Ibrahim, the managing director of the Strategic Energy
Investment Group, a consulting firm in Dubai, said. “Halliburton and their
Kuwaiti partners made out like bandits.” A well-informed Kuwaiti source
called the prices charged by Altanmia “absurd,” and said that
Halliburton’s arrangement to buy Kuwaiti oil through a middleman, rather
than directly from the government, was “highly irregular.” He added,
“There is no way that this could have transpired without the knowledge and
direction” of Kuwait’s oil minister, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah. Two
sources told me that the oil minister’s brother, Talal Al-Fahad Al-Sabah,
may have secret financial ties to Altanmia. (The brothers are also nephews
of the Emir and the Prime Minister of Kuwait.) “There are calls in
parliament to open an investigation,” the Kuwaiti source said. “It could
shake the government.”
Halliburton, meanwhile, is contending with two new scandals. Last week,
the Wall Street Journal reported that the company had overcharged the
government by sixteen million dollars on a bill for the cost of feeding
troops at a military base in Kuwait. And last month the company made an
astonishing confession: two of its employees, it said, had taken kickbacks
resulting in overcharges of $6.3 million, in return for hiring a different
Kuwaiti subcontractor in Iraq. Halliburton said that the employees, whose
names it declined to reveal, had been fired and the funds returned. The
day after this disclosure, the Pentagon awarded yet another contract to
Halliburton, worth $1.2 billion, to rebuild the oil industry in southern
Iraq.
Defenders of Halliburton deny that it has been politically favored,
arguing that very few other companies could have handled these complex
jobs. As Cheney said last September on “Meet the Press,”“Halliburton is a
unique kind of company. There are very few companies out there that have
the combination of very large engineering construction capability and
significant oil-field services.” Dan Guttman, a fellow at Johns Hopkins
University, agrees with Cheney’s assessment, but sees Halliburton’s
dominance as part of a wider problem—one that has reached a crisis point
in Iraq. After years of cutting government jobs in favor of hiring private
firms, he said, “contractors have become so big and entrenched that it’s a
fiction that the government maintains any control.” He wasn’t surprised
that Halliburton’s admission of wrongdoing in Kuwait had failed to harm
its position in Washington. “What can the government say—‘Stop right
there’?” Guttman said of Halliburton. “They’re half done rebuilding Iraq.”
The Vice-President has not been connected directly to any of Halliburton’s
current legal problems. Cheney’s spokesman said that the Vice-President
“does not have knowledge of the contracting disputes beyond what has
appeared in newspapers.” Yet, in a broader sense, Cheney does bear some
responsibility. He has been both an architect and a beneficiary of the
increasingly close relationship between the Department of Defense and an
élite group of private military contractors—a relationship that has
allowed companies such as Halliburton to profit enormously. As a
government official and as Halliburton’s C.E.O., he has long argued that
the commercial marketplace can provide better and cheaper services than a
government bureaucracy. He has also been an advocate of limiting
government regulation of the private sector. His vision has been fully
realized: in 2002, more than a hundred and fifty billion dollars of public
money was transferred from the Pentagon to private contractors.
According to Peter W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and
the author of “Corporate Warriors,” published last year, “We’re turning
the lifeblood of our defense over to the marketplace.” Advocates of
privatization, who have included fiscally minded Democrats as well as
Republicans, have argued that competition in the marketplace is the best
way to control costs. But Steven Kelman, a professor of public management
at Harvard, notes that the competition for Iraq contracts is unusually
low. “On battlefield support, there are only a few companies that are
willing and able to do the work,” he said. Moreover, critics such as
Waxman point out that public accountability is being sacrificed. “We can’t
even find out how much Halliburton charges to do the laundry,” Waxman
said. “It’s inexcusable that they should keep this information from the
Congress, and the people.”
Unlike government agencies, private contractors can resist Freedom of
Information Act requests and are insulated from direct congressional
oversight. Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic representative from Illinois, told
me, “It’s almost as if these private military contractors are involved in
a secret war.” Private companies, she noted, can conceal details of their
missions from public scrutiny in the name of protecting trade secrets.
They are also largely exempt from salary caps and government ethics rules
designed to protect policy from being polluted by politics. The Hatch Act,
for example, forbids most government employees from giving money to
political campaigns.
Halliburton has no such constraints. The company made political
contributions of more than seven hundred thousand dollars between 1999 and
2002, almost always to Republican candidates or causes. In 2000, it
donated $17,677 to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Indeed, the seventy or so
companies that have Iraq contracts have contributed more money to
President Bush than they did to any other candidate during the past twelve
years.
Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who has taught at the National
War College, told me that so many of the contracts in Iraq are going to
companies with personal connections with the Bush Administration that the
procurement process has essentially become a “patronage system.” Major
Joseph Yoswa, a Department of Defense spokesman, denied this. He told me
that multiple safeguards exist to insure that the department’s procurement
process for Iraq contracts is free of favoritism. Most important, he said,
career civil servants, not political appointees, make final decisions on
contracts.
Gardiner remains unconvinced. “The system is sick,” he told me. Cheney, he
added, can’t see the problem. “He doesn’t see the difference between
public and private interest,” he said.
George Sigalos, a Halliburton executive, recently gave a speech at a
conference in Washington for businesspeople who hoped to obtain government
contracts in Iraq. Many in the crowd had paid nearly four hundred dollars
to attend, drawn by descriptions of Iraq as “the next Klondike,” as James
Clad, an official with the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a
federal agency, put it. Sigalos began by pointing out that private
contractors supplied the bullets that the Continental Army used in the
American Revolution. “This didn’t begin with Halliburton,” he said.
Halliburton’s construction-and-engineering subsidiary, Brown & Root
Services, started working with the U.S. military decades before Cheney
joined the firm. Founded in Texas, in 1919, by two brothers, George and
Herman Brown, and their brother-in-law, Dan Root, the firm grew from
supervising small road-paving projects to building enormously complex oil
platforms, dams, and Navy warships. The company’s engineering feats were
nearly matched by its talent for political patronage. As Robert A. Caro
noted in his biography of Lyndon Johnson, Brown & Root had a symbiotic
relationship with L.B.J.: the company served as a munificent sponsor of
his political campaigns, and in return was rewarded with big government
contracts. In 1962, Brown & Root sold out to Halliburton, a booming
oil-well construction-and-services firm, and in the following years the
conglomerate grew spectacularly. According to Dan Briody, who has written
a book on the subject, Brown & Root was part of a consortium of four
companies that built about eighty-five per cent of the infrastructure
needed by the Army during the Vietnam War. At the height of the resistance
to the war, Brown & Root became a target of protesters, and soldiers in
Vietnam derided it as Burn & Loot.
Around this time, in 1968, Dick Cheney arrived in Washington. He was a
political-science graduate student who had won a congressional fellowship
with Bill Steiger, a Republican from his home state of Wyoming. One of
Cheney’s first assignments was to visit college campuses where antiwar
protests were disrupting classes, and quietly assess the scene. Steiger
was part of a group of congressmen who were considering ways to cut off
federal funding to campuses where violent protests had broken out. It was
an early lesson in the strategic use of government cutbacks.
Instead of returning to graduate school, Cheney got a job as the deputy
for a brash congressional colleague of Steiger’s, Donald Rumsfeld, whom
Richard Nixon had appointed to head the Office of Economic Opportunity.
The O.E.O., which had played a prominent role in Johnson’s War on Poverty,
was not favored by Nixon. According to Dan Guttman, who co-wrote “The
Shadow Government” (1976), Rumsfeld and Cheney diminished the power of the
office by outsourcing many of its jobs. Their tactics were not subtle. At
nine o’clock on the morning of September 17, 1969, Rumsfeld distributed a
new agency phone directory; without explanation, a hundred and eight
employee names had been dropped. The vast majority were senior career
civil servants who had been appointed by Democrats.
The purging of the office was a mixed success. Bureaucratic resistance
stymied Cheney and Rumsfeld on several fronts. But by the time Ronald
Reagan became President the overriding principle that had guided their
actions at the O.E.O.—privatization—had become a central precept of the
conservative movement.
For most of the eighties, Cheney served in the House of Representatives.
In 1988, after the election of George H. W. Bush, he was named Secretary
of Defense. The end of the Cold War brought with it expectations of a
“peace dividend,” and Cheney’s mandate was to reduce forces, cut weapons
systems, and close military bases. Predictably, this plan met with
opposition from every member of Congress whose district had a base in
peril.
Cheney was widely admired for his judicious handling of the matter. By the
time he was done, the armed forces were at their lowest level since the
Korean War. However, a Democratic aide on the House Armed Services
Committee during those years told me that “contrary to his public image,
which was as a reasonable, quiet, soft-spoken, and inclusive personality,
Cheney was a rank partisan.” The aide said that Cheney practiced
downsizing as political jujitsu. He once compiled a list of military bases
to be closed; all were in Democratic districts. Cheney’s approach to
cutting weapons systems was similar: he proposed breathtaking cuts in the
districts of Thomas Downey, David Bonior, and Jim Wright, all high-profile
Democrats. The aide told me that Congress, which was then dominated by the
Democrats, beat back most of Cheney’s plans, because many of the cuts made
no strategic sense. “This was about getting even,” he said of Cheney.
Cheney’s spokesman disputed this account, saying that the armed services
had specified which bases should be cut, and “Congress approved it without
changes.”
As Defense Secretary, Cheney developed a contempt for Congress, which, a
friend said, he came to regard as “a bunch of annoying gnats.” Meanwhile,
his affinity for business deepened. “The meetings with businessmen were
the ones that really got him pumped,” a former aide said. One company that
did exceedingly well was Halliburton. Toward the end of Cheney’s tenure,
the Pentagon decided to turn over to a single company the bulk of the
business of planning and providing support for military operations
abroad—tasks such as preparing food, doing the laundry, and cleaning the
latrines. As Singer writes in “Corporate Warriors,” the Pentagon
commissioned Halliburton to do a classified study of how this might work.
In effect, the company was being asked to create its own market.
Halliburton was paid $3.9 million to write its initial report, which
offered a strategy for providing support to twenty thousand troops. The
Pentagon then paid Halliburton five million dollars more to do a follow-up
study. In August, 1992, Halliburton was selected by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers to do all the work needed to support the military during the
next five years, in accordance with the plan it had itself drawn up. The
Pentagon had never relied so heavily on a single company before. Although
the profit margins for this omnibus government contract were narrower than
they were for private-sector jobs, there was a guaranteed profit of one
per cent, with the possibility of as much as nine per cent—making it a
rare bit of business with no risk.
In December, 1992, working under its new contract, Halliburton began
providing assistance to the United States troops overseeing the
humanitarian crisis in Somalia. Few other companies in the world could
have mobilized as fast or as well. Halliburton employees were on the
ground within twenty-four hours of the first U.S. landing in Mogadishu. By
the time Halliburton left, in 1995, it had become the largest employer in
the country, having subcontracted out most of the menial work, while
importing experts for more specialized needs. (A mortician was hired, for
example, to clean up the bodies of the slain soldiers.) For its services
in Somalia, Halliburton was paid a hundred and nine million dollars. Over
the next five years, the company billed the government $2.2 billion for
similar work in the Balkans.
Halliburton’s efforts in the field were considered highly effective. Yet
Sam Gardiner, the retired Air Force colonel, told me that the success of
private contractors in the battlefield has had an unforeseen consequence
at the Pentagon. “It makes it too easy to go to war,” he said. “When you
can hire people to go to war, there’s none of the grumbling and the
political friction.” He noted that much of the scut work now being
contracted out to firms like Halliburton was traditionally performed by
reserve soldiers, who often complain the loudest.
There are some hundred and thirty-five thousand American troops in Iraq,
but Gardiner estimated that there would be as many as three hundred
thousand if not for private contractors. He said, “Think how much harder
it would have been to get Congress, or the American public, to support
those numbers.”
continued...
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The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040216fa_fact
What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?
continued...
After Cheney’s tenure at the Pentagon ended, in 1993, with the arrival of
the Clinton Administration, he spent much of the next two years deciding
whether to run for President. He formed a political-action committee, and
crossed the country making speeches and raising money. He also became
affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think
tank. Records from the Federal Election Commission show that Cheney’s pac
contributors included executives at several of the companies that have
since won the largest government contracts in Iraq. Among them were Thomas
Cruikshank, Halliburton’s C.E.O. at the time; Stephen Bechtel, whose
family’s construction-and-engineering firm now has a contract in Iraq
worth as much as $2.8 billion; and Duane Andrews, then senior
vice-president of Science Applications International Corporation, which
has won seven contracts in Iraq.
When Newt Gingrich helped bring the House of Representatives into
Republican hands, in 1994, Cheney felt reassured that the country was back
on the right track, alleviating his need to run. His pac hadn’t raised
enough money, in any case. Equally important, colleagues said, Cheney had
found that he didn’t enjoy being the center of attention. He preferred to
work behind the scenes.
Cheney was hired by Halliburton in 1995, not long after he went on a
fly-fishing trip in New Brunswick, Canada, with several corporate moguls.
After Cheney had said good night, the others began talking about
Halliburton’s need for a new C.E.O. Why not Dick? He had virtually no
business experience, but he had valuable relationships with very powerful
people. Lawrence Eagleburger, the Secretary of State in the first Bush
Administration, became a Halliburton board member after Cheney joined the
company. He told me that Cheney was the firm’s “outside man,” the person
who could best help the company expand its business around the globe.
Cheney was close to many world leaders, particularly in the Persian Gulf,
a region central to Halliburton’s oil-services business. Cheney and his
wife, Lynne, were so friendly with Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to
the U.S., that the Prince had invited the Cheney family to his daughter’s
wedding. (Cheney did not attend.) “Dick was good at opening doors,”
Eagleburger said. “I don’t mean that pejoratively. He had contacts from
his former life, and he used them effectively.”
Under Cheney’s direction, Halliburton thrived. In 1998, the company
acquired its main rival, Dresser Industries. Cheney negotiated the
$7.7-billion deal, reportedly during a weekend of quail-hunting. The
combined conglomerate, which retained the Halliburton name, instantly
became the largest company of its kind in the world. But, in its eagerness
to merge, Halliburton had failed to detect the size of the legal liability
that Dresser faced from long-dormant lawsuits dealing with asbestos
poisoning. The claims proved so ruinous that several Halliburton divisions
later filed for bankruptcy protection. The asbestos settlements devastated
the company’s stock price, which fell by eighty per cent in just over a
year.
Cheney’s defenders have argued that no one could have anticipated the
extent of the asbestos problem. Yet the incident presaged a current
criticism of Cheney: that he can be blindsided by insular decision-making.
Eagleburger, who was on Dresser’s board of directors before it merged with
Halliburton, told me, “I can’t fault Cheney as such on asbestos, but
somebody slipped up somewhere in the due diligence. Somebody should have
caught it.”
The Dresser merger also raised ethical questions. The United States had
concluded that Iraq, Libya, and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed
strict sanctions on them. Yet during Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton the
company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq,
Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service
business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser.
With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of
foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company to avoid paying U.S.
taxes.
In some ways, the Libya and Iran transactions were consistent with
Cheney’s views. He had long opposed economic sanctions as a political
tool, even against South Africa’s apartheid regime. During the 2000
campaign, however, Cheney said he viewed Iraq differently. “I had a firm
policy that we wouldn’t do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were
supposedly legal,” he told ABC News. But, under Cheney’s watch, two
foreign subsidiaries of Dresser sold millions of dollars’ worth of oil
services and parts to Saddam’s regime. The transactions were not illegal,
but they were politically suspect. The deals occurred under the United
Nations Oil-for-Food program, at a time when Saddam Hussein chose which
companies his government would work with. Corruption was rampant. It may
be that it was simply Halliburton’s expertise that attracted Saddam’s
regime, but a United Nations diplomat with the Oil-for-Food program has
doubts. “Most American companies were blacklisted,” he said. “It’s rather
surprising to find Halliburton doing business with Saddam. It would have
been very much a senior-level decision, made by the regime at the top.”
Cheney has said that he personally directed the company to stop doing
business with Saddam. Halliburton’s presence in Iraq ended in February,
2000.
During the 2000 Vice-Presidential debate, Senator Joseph Lieberman teased
Cheney about the fortune he had amassed at Halliburton. “I’m pleased to
see, Dick, that you’re better off than you were eight years ago,” he said.
“I can tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it,”
Cheney shot back. In fact, despite having spent years championing the
private sector and disparaging big government, Cheney devoted himself at
Halliburton to securing government funds. In the five years before Cheney
joined Halliburton, the company received a hundred million dollars in
government credit guarantees. During Cheney’s tenure, this amount jumped
to $1.5 billion. One alliance that Cheney worked hard to make was with the
Export-Import Bank, in Washington; he won the support of James Harmon, a
Clinton appointee and the bank’s chairman. Harmon agreed to make a
four-hundred-and-ninety-million-dollar loan guarantee to a Russian company
that was drilling a huge oil field in Siberia. It was the largest loan
guarantee to a Russian company in the bank’s history, and a big chunk of
it would facilitate the Russian company’s purchase of Halliburton’s
services. There was a hitch, however: the Russian company, Tyumen Oil, was
caught in a messy dispute with several competitors, all of whom accused
the others of being corrupt.
Cheney was undeterred by these charges. But he almost lost the
Export-Import loan when the State Department attempted to block it, on the
ground that Tyumen was involved in illegal activity. According to a source
who worked at the State Department at the time, Cheney personally lobbied
the government in an effort to keep the deal alive. He was particularly
incensed by the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency, which
sided with the State Department. According to a friend of Cheney’s, he was
convinced that the C.I.A. had been duped by opposition research spread by
Tyumen’s rivals. Eventually, the deal went through. By then, though,
Cheney’s frustration with government had become profound. As he said in a
speech in 1998, “The average Halliburton hand knows more about the world
than the average member of Congress.”
In the spring of 2000, Cheney’s two worlds—commerce and politics— merged.
Halliburton allowed its C.E.O. to serve simultaneously as the head of
George W. Bush’s Vice-Presidential search committee. At the time, Bush
said that his main criterion for a running mate was “somebody who’s not
going to hurt you.” Cheney demanded reams of documents from the candidates
he considered. In the end, he picked himself—a move that his longtime
friend Stuart Spencer recently described, with admiration, as “the most
Machiavellian fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
One man who was especially pleased by Cheney’s candidacy was Ahmed
Chalabi, the Iraqi dissident who was the leading proponent of overthrowing
Saddam Hussein. Cheney had come to know Chalabi through conservative
circles in Washington. “I think he is good for us,” Chalabi told a U.P.I.
reporter in June, 2000.
For months there has been a debate in Washington about when the Bush
Administration decided to go to war against Saddam. In Ron Suskind’s
recent book “The Price of Loyalty,” former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill
charges that Cheney agitated for U.S. intervention well before the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Additional evidence that Cheney
played an early planning role is contained in a previously undisclosed
National Security Council document, dated February 3, 2001. The top-secret
document, written by a high-level N.S.C. official, concerned Cheney’s
newly formed Energy Task Force. It directed the N.S.C. staff to coöperate
fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two
seemingly unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies
towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of
new and existing oil and gas fields.”
A source who worked at the N.S.C. at the time doubted that there were
links between Cheney’s Energy Task Force and the overthrow of Saddam. But
Mark Medish, who served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and
Eurasian affairs at the N.S.C. during the Clinton Administration, told me
that he regards the document as potentially “huge.” He said, “People think
Cheney’s Energy Task Force has been secretive about domestic issues,”
referring to the fact that the Vice-President has been unwilling to reveal
information about private task-force meetings that took place in 2001,
when information was being gathered to help develop President Bush’s
energy policy. “But if this little group was discussing geostrategic plans
for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the
oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans.”
The Bush Administration’s war on terror has became a source of substantial
profit for Halliburton. The company’s commercial ties to terrorist states
did not prevent it from assuming a prominent role. The Navy, for instance,
paid Halliburton thirty-seven million dollars to build prison camps in
Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay for suspected terrorists. The State Department gave
the company a hundred-million-dollar contract to construct a new embassy
in Kabul. And in December, 2001, a few years after having lost its omnibus
military-support contract to a lower bidder, Halliburton won it back;
before long, the company was supporting U.S. troops in Afghanistan,
Kuwait, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Djibouti, the Republic of Georgia, and Iraq.
Halliburton’s 2002 annual report describes counterterrorism as offering
“growth opportunities.”
The Department of Defense’s decision to award Halliburton the
seven-billion-dollar contract to restore Iraq’s oil industry was made
under “emergency” conditions. The company was secretly hired to draw up
plans for how it would deal with putting out oil-well fires, should they
occur during the war. This planning began in the fall of 2002, around the
time that Congress was debating whether to grant President Bush the
authority to use force, and before the United Nations had fully debated
the issue. In early March, 2003, the Army quietly awarded Halliburton a
contract to execute those plans.
As it turned out, oil-well fires were not a problem. An Army War College
study shows that of the fifteen hundred oil wells in Iraq’s two major oil
fields, only nine were damaged during the war. Colonel Gardiner said he
was puzzled by the Pentagon’s inability to predict this outcome. “Our
intelligence before the war was good enough to know that,” he said.
After months spent trying to obtain more information about the classified
Halliburton deals, Representative Waxman’s staff discovered that the
original oil-well-fire contract entrusted Halliburton with a full
restoration of the Iraqi oil industry. “We thought it was supposed to be a
short-term, small contract, but now it turns out Halliburton is restoring
the entire oil infrastructure in Iraq,” Waxman said. The Defense
Department’s only public acknowledgments of this wide-ranging deal had
been two press releases announcing that it had asked Halliburton to
prepare to help put out oil-well fires.
The most recent budget request provided by the Coalition Provisional
Authority in Iraq mentions the building of a new oil refinery and the
drilling of new wells. “They said originally they were just going to bring
it up to prewar levels. Now they’re getting money to dramatically improve
it,” Waxman complained. Who is going to own these upgrades, after the
United States government has finished paying Halliburton to build them?
“Who knows?” Waxman said. “Nobody is saying.”
It is so complicated to secure an Iraq contract from the United States
government that several big Washington law firms have gone into the
business of shepherding applicants through the process. More than twenty
billion dollars has been set aside for Iraqi relief and reconstruction
projects, with work contracts being awarded by the Defense, State, and
Commerce Departments, and by the U.S. Agency for International
Development, in coördination with L. Paul Bremer, the head of the
Coalition Provisional Authority. There’s an additional five billion
dollars sitting in the Development Fund for Iraq, also administered by the
C.P.A. Officials at the C.P.A. say that contracts are awarded on the basis
of competitive bidding, but rumors proliferate about political influence.
When asked if connections helped, an executive whose firm has received
several contracts replied, “Of course.” One businessman with close ties to
the Bush Administration told me, “Anything that has to do with Iraq
policy, Cheney’s the man to see. He’s running it, the way that L.B.J. ran
the space program.”
Cheney’s spokesman confirmed that the Vice-President speaks “on occasion”
with officials at the C.P.A., and refers inquiries to the authority from
third parties “expressing interest in getting involved in Iraq.” The
businessman offered an example of Cheney’s backstage role. He said that
Jack Kemp, the former Republican congressman and Secretary of Housing and
Urban Development, got help from Cheney with a venture involving Iraq.
Last summer, the businessman said, Kemp had Cheney over for dinner, along
with two sons of the President of the United Arab Emirates. In an
interview, Kemp confirmed the event, and his business plans, but denied
receiving any special assistance from Cheney. “It was just social,” Kemp
said. “We’re old friends. We didn’t talk about business.” He acknowledged,
however, that Cesar Conda, who until last fall was Cheney’s
domestic-policy adviser, was helping him with a study on how to fashion a
public-private partnership plan to develop the Iraqi economy.
Kemp said that he is working on two business ventures in Iraq. He
described the first project, a company called Free Market Global, as “an
international company that trades in gas, petroleum, and other resources.”
Although Kemp provided only vague details about the project, he said, “I
can tell you that General Tommy Franks has joined the advisory board of
Free Market Global.” Last year, General Franks commanded the invasion of
Iraq.
Franks’s lawyer, Marty Edelman, confirmed his client’s participation:
“That is correct. But it is my understanding that he won’t be dealing with
Iraq or the military for a year” (to comply with government ethics rules).
Asked how Kemp and Franks had joined forces, Edelman said, “It seems like
everyone on that level knows each other.” Edelman himself is now on the
advisory board of Free Market Global.
Kemp’s second project, in which he said he would play an advisory role, is
something called al-Ruba’yia. He describes it as a
two-hundred-million-dollar fund to be invested in various ventures in
Iraq, from energy to education. He is trying to attract American
investors. Kemp is well positioned for this task: his political
organization, Empower America, counts among its supporters some of the
current Bush Administration’s top figures. Donald Rumsfeld, for example,
is a former board member. “It’s like Russia,” the businessman said. “This
is how corruption is done these days. It’s not about bribes. You just help
your friends to get access. Cheney doesn’t call the Defense Department and
tell them, ‘Pick Halliburton.’ It’s just having dinner with the right
people.”
So far, other than the irregularities at Halliburton, there has been no
evidence of large-scale corruption in the rebuilding of Iraq. But a number
of friends of the Administration have landed important positions, and
others have obtained large contracts. For instance, Peter McPherson, who
took a leave from his job as president of Michigan State University to
serve as Paul Bremer’s economic deputy in Iraq, has been friends with
Cheney since they both served in Gerald Ford’s White House. The head of
private-sector development at the C.P.A., one of the most powerful posts
in Iraq, is Thomas Foley, a Connecticut-based business-school classmate of
President Bush, who later became finance chairman for Bush’s Presidential
campaign in Connecticut. Foley was a “pioneer,” meaning that he raised
more than a hundred thousand dollars for Bush.
Last month, an inspector general was appointed for the C.P.A., as required
by Congress when it approved the President’s eighty-seven-billion-dollar
supplemental budget for Iraq last year. Rather than choosing a nonpartisan
outsider for this watchdog role, as most government agencies do, the
Administration selected Stuart Bowen, Jr., who spent two years as White
House counsel in the Bush Administration. According to The Hill, a
Washington newspaper, L. Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith,
the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, is helping with international
marketing for a concern called the Iraqi International Law Group. Billing
itself as a group of lawyers and businessmen interested in helping
investors in Iraq, the venture is run by Ahmed Chalabi’s nephew Salem, who
doubles as a legal adviser to Iraq’s governing council, of which his uncle
is a member.
Tom Korologos, a well-connected Republican lobbyist in Washington,
recently took a temporary assignment as a senior counsellor to Bremer.
Korologos acknowledged that Washington lobbyists are scrambling to solicit
business in Iraq. “By definition, it’s going to boom, because of the
numbers,” he said. “The question is who’s going to get the contracts.
There’s a lot of money. Somebody’s got to build the bridges and roads.” He
added that talk of political influence over the process was “bullshit.”
Yet a look at one prominent defense contractor, Science Applications
International Corporation, based in San Diego, suggests the importance of
connections. One of its board members is Army General Wayne Downing, who
commanded the Special Forces in the first Gulf War and ran
counterterrorism in the Bush White House for the better part of a year
after September 11th. During that time, he accompanied Cheney on visits to
the C.I.A. to discuss U.S. intelligence on Iraq. For years, Downing has
been an unpaid adviser to Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress,
and he was an early advocate of armed insurrection against the old Iraqi
regime. S.A.I.C.’s seven Iraq contracts are worth fifty million dollars.
It is unclear what special expertise S.A.I.C. brings to several of its
contracts. One company executive, who asked not to be named, said that its
chief credential for setting up what was supposed to be an independent
media for Iraq, modelled on the BBC, was military work in “informational
warfare”—signal jamming, “perception management,” and the like. Some of
S.A.I.C.’s government contracts require that specific individuals—referred
to as “executive management consultants”—be paid more than two hundred
dollars an hour. One contract cites a man named Owen Kirby as someone who
will advise Iraqis on the process of building democracy. Kirby is a
program director of the International Republican Institute, an
organization devoted to promoting democracy abroad. In October, 2001, the
group gave its Freedom Award to Dick Cheney. Before that, it gave the
award to Lynne Cheney.
It is not surprising that Cheney, after five years of running Halliburton,
a company that considers war as providing “growth opportunities,” regards
winning the peace in Iraq as a challenge for private enterprise as well as
for government. Yet it is reasonable to ask if Cheney’s faith in companies
like Halliburton contributed to his conviction that the occupation of Iraq
would be a tidy, easily managed affair. Now that Cheney’s vision has been
shown to be overly optimistic, and Iraqis and American soldiers are still
getting killed ten months after Saddam’s overthrow, critics are
questioning the propriety of a reconstruction effort that is fuelled by
the profit motive. “I’m appalled that the war is being used by people
close to the Bush Administration to make money for themselves,” Waxman
said. “At a time when we’re asking young men and women to make perhaps the
ultimate sacrifice, it’s just unseemly.” Many of those involved, however,
see themselves as part of a democratic vanguard. Jack Kemp’s spokesman, P.
J. Johnson, told me, “We’re doing good by doing well.” Joe Allbaugh,
Bush’s former campaign manager, who has established New Bridge Strategies,
a firm aimed specifically at setting up for-profit ventures in Iraq, makes
no apologies. “We are proud of the leadership the American private sector
is taking in the reconstruction of Iraq,” he said.
Another top Republican lobbyist in Washington, Charlie Black, told me that
his firm, BKSH & Associates, has plans to help Iraqis set up their own
affiliated public-relations and government-relations firm; the company
would become perhaps the first lobbying shop in Baghdad. Black is excited
by the opportunities in Iraq, but he, too, has complaints. “The problem in
Iraq so far is it’s slow, and very confusing for people to figure out how
to do business there,” he said. “One week you go to Baghdad, and they say
the decisions are being made at the Pentagon. Then you go to the Pentagon,
and they say the decisions are being made in Baghdad. Only Halliburton is
making money now!” He laughed. “Is there too much cronyism? I just wish I
could find the cronies.”
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush Would Veto Scaling Back Patriot Act
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Ashcroft: Bush would veto bill scaling back Patriot Act
By Curt Anderson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
9:27 a.m. January 29, 2004
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration issued a veto threat Thursday
against legislation introduced in Congress that would scale back key
parts of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act.
In a letter to Senate leaders, Attorney General John Ashcroft said
the changes contemplated by the Security and Freedom Ensured Act, or
SAFE, would "undermine our ongoing campaign to detect and prevent
catastrophic terrorist attacks."
If the bill reaches President Bush's desk in its current form,
Ashcroft said, "the president's senior advisers will recommend that
it be vetoed."
The threat comes a week after Bush, in his State of the Union
address, called for Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act before
it expires in 2005. The law, passed shortly after the 2001 terror
attacks, expanded the government's wiretap and other surveillance
authority, removed barriers between FBI and CIA information-sharing,
and provided more tools for terror finance investigations.
Civil liberties groups and some lawmakers, including Republicans,
believe the act goes too far and endangers the privacy of innocent
citizens.
The SAFE Act, which has not yet had a hearing in either the House or
Senate, was introduced last fall by Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho; Dick
Durbin, D-Ill.; and other lawmakers of both parties.
In a statement at the time, Craig said the bill was a "measured"
response to concerns that the Patriot Act threatens civil liberties
and privacy rights.
"This legislation intends to ensure the liberties of law-abiding
individuals are protected in our nation's fight against terrorism,
without in any way impeding that fight," Craig said.
The bill would modify so-called "sneak and peek" search warrants
that allow for delayed notification of the target of the search. In
addition, warrants for roving wiretaps used to monitor a suspect's
multiple cell phones would have to make sure the target was present
at the site being wiretapped before information could be collected.
The legislation also would reinstate standards in place prior to
passage of the Patriot Act regarding library records by forcing the
FBI to show it has reason to believe the person involved is a
suspected terrorist or spy. In addition, the bill would impose
expiration dates on nationwide search warrants and other Patriot Act
provisions, providing for congressional review.
Ashcroft, who last year embarked on a national speaking tour in
support of the Patriot Act, said the legislation would "make it even
more difficult to mount an effective anti-terror campaign than it
was before the Patriot Act was passed."
The bill is S. 1709.
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov
Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov
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Subject: [pjnews] The Real John Kerry
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/4lcb
Now that it doesn't much matter anymore, we learn, finally, the financiers
behind a group called Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive
Values. The group surfaced in December, about a month before the start of
the Democratic primaries, with $500,000 worth of hard-hitting television
ads attacking former Vermont governor Howard Dean, then the
front-runner...
--------------------
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/17337.htm
THE REAL KERRY
By HOWIE CARR
February 5, 2004 -- BOSTON
ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts
talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry
stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a
common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents,
breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before
the bill arrives.
The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry
inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"
And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from
a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a
pickle-and-ketchup heiress.
Kerry lives in a mansion on Beacon Hill on which he has borrowed $6
million to finance his campaign. A fire hydrant that prevented him and his
wife from parking their SUV in front of their tony digs was removed by the
city of Boston at his behest.
The Kerrys ski at a spa the widow Heinz owns in Aspen, and they summer on
Nantucket in a sprawling seaside "cottage" on Hurlbert Avenue, which is so
well-appointed that at a recent fund-raiser, they imported porta-toilets
onto the front lawn so the donors wouldn't use the inside bathrooms. (They
later claimed the decision was made on septic, not social,
considerations).
It's a wonderful life these days for John Kerry. He sails Nantucket Sound
in "the Scaramouche," a 42-foot Hinckley powerboat. Martha Stewart has a
similar boat; the no-frills model reportedly starts at $695,000. Sen.
Kerry bought it new, for cash.
Every Tuesday night, the local politicians here that Kerry elbowed out of
his way on his march to the top watch, fascinated, as he claims victory in
more primaries and denounces the special interests, the "millionaires" and
"the overprivileged."
"His initials are JFK," longtime state Senate President William M. Bulger
used to muse on St. Patrick's Day, "Just for Kerry. He's only Irish every
sixth year." And now it turns out that he's not Irish at all.
But in the parochial world of Bay State politics, he was never really seen
as Irish, even when he was claiming to be (although now, of course, he
says that any references to his alleged Hibernian heritage were mistakenly
put into the Congressional Record by an aide who apparently didn't know
that on his paternal side he is, in fact, part-Jewish).
Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a Forbes, from one of
Massachusetts' oldest WASP families. The ancestor who wed Ralph Waldo
Emerson's daughter was marrying down.
At the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotyping, Yankees have a reputation
for, shall we say, frugality. And Kerry tosses around quarters like they
were manhole covers. In 1993, for instance, living on a senator's salary
of about $100,000, he managed to give a total of $135 to charity.
Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape together $8,600 for a
brand-new, imported Italian motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it
for years, until he decided to run for president, at which time he traded
it in for a Harley-Davidson like the one he rode onto "The Tonight Show"
set a couple of months ago as Jay Leno applauded his fellow Bay Stater.
Of course, in 1993 he was between his first and second heiresses - a time
he now calls "the wandering years," although an equally apt description
might be "the freeloading years."
For some of the time, he was, for all practical purposes, homeless. His
friends allowed him into a real-estate deal in which he flipped a condo
for quick resale, netting a $21,000 profit on a cash investment of exactly
nothing. For months he rode around in a new car supplied by a shady local
Buick dealer. When the dealer's ties to a congressman who was later
indicted for racketeering were exposed, Kerry quickly explained that the
non-payment was a mere oversight, and wrote out a check.
In the Senate, his record of his constituent services has been lackluster,
and most of his colleagues, despite their public support, are hard-pressed
to list an accomplishment. Just last fall, a Boston TV reporter ambushed
three congressmen with the question, name something John Kerry has
accomplished in Congress. After a few nervous giggles, two could think of
nothing, and a third mentioned a baseball field, and then misidentified
Kerry as "Sen. Kennedy."
Many of his constituents see him in person only when he is cutting them in
line - at an airport, a clam shack or the Registry of Motor Vehicles. One
talk-show caller a few weeks back recalled standing behind a police
barricade in 2002 as the Rolling Stones played the Orpheum Theater, a
short limousine ride from Kerry's Louisburg Square mansion.
The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his wife as they
attempted to enter the theater. Finally, he said, the senator turned to
him and asked him the eternal question.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."
John Kerry. First he looks at the purse.
_______________
Howie Carr, a Boston Herald columnist and syndicated talk-radio host, has
been covering John Kerry for 25 years.
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See also:
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Few Americans See Caskets Come Home
------------------
The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922
Now They Tell Us
By Michael Massing
In recent months, US news organizations have rushed to expose the Bush
administration's pre-war failings on Iraq. "Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on
Paper," declared a recent headline in The Washington Post. "Pressure Rises
for Probe of Prewar-Intelligence," said The Wall Street Journal. "So, What
Went Wrong?" asked Time. In The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh described how
the Pentagon set up its own intelligence unit, the Office of Special
Plans, to sift for data to support the administration's claims about Iraq.
And on "Truth, War and Consequences," a Frontline documentary that aired
last October, a procession of intelligence analysts testified to the
administration's use of what one of them called "faith-based
intelligence."
Watching and reading all this, one is tempted to ask, where were you all
before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and
concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case
for regime change—when, in short, it might have made a difference? Some
maintain that the many analysts who've spoken out since the end of the war
were mute before it. But that's not true. Beginning in the summer of 2002,
the "intelligence community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush
officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this,
yet few chose to write about it.
Before the war, for instance, there was a loud debate among intelligence
analysts over the information provided to the Pentagon by Iraqi opposition
leader Ahmed Chalabi and defectors linked to him. Yet little of this
seeped into the press. Not until September 29, 2003, for instance, did The
New York Times get around to informing readers about the controversy over
Chalabi and the defectors associated with him. In a front-page article
headlined "Agency Belittles Information Given by Iraqi Defectors," Douglas
Jehl reported that a study by the Defense Intelligence Agency had found
that most of the information provided by defectors connected to Ahmed
Chalabi "was of little or no value." Several defectors introduced to US
intelligence by the Iraqi National Congress, Jehl wrote, "invented or
exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi
government and its suspected unconventional weapons program."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why, I wondered, had it taken the Times so long to report this? Around the
time that Jehl's article appeared, I ran into a senior editor at the Times
and asked him about it. Well, he said, some reporters at the paper had
relied heavily on Chalabi as a source and so were not going to write too
critically about him.
The editor did not name names, but he did not have to. The Times's Judith
Miller has been the subject of harsh criticism. Slate, The Nation, Editor
& Publisher, the American Journalism Review, and the Columbia Journalism
Review have all run articles accusing her of being too eager to accept
official claims before the war and too eager to report the discovery of
banned weapons after it.[1] Especially controversial has been Miller's
alleged reliance on Chalabi and the defectors who were in touch with him.
Last May, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post wrote of an e-mail exchange
between Miller and John Burns, then the Times bureau chief in Baghdad, in
which Burns rebuked Miller for writing an article about Chalabi without
informing him. Miller replied that she had been covering Chalabi for about
ten years and had "done most of the stories about him for our paper."
Chalabi, she added, "has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD
to our paper."
When asked about this, Miller said that the significance of her ties to
Chalabi had been exaggerated. While she had met some defectors through
him, she said, only one had resulted in a front-page story on WMD prior to
the war. Her assertion that Chalabi had provided most of the Times's
front-page exclusives on WMD was, she said, part of "an angry e-mail
exchange with a colleague." In the heat of such exchanges, Miller said,
"You say things that aren't true. If you look at the record, you'll see
they aren't true."
This seems a peculiar admission. Yet on the broader issue of her ties to
Chalabi, the record bears Miller out. Before the war, Miller wrote or
co-wrote several front-page articles about Iraq's WMD based on information
from defectors; only one of them came via Chalabi. An examination of those
stories, though, shows that they were open to serious question. The real
problem was relying uncritically on defectors of any stripe, whether
supplied by Chalabi or not.
This points to a larger problem. In the period before the war, US
journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the
administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a
few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to
the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction— the heart of the President's case for war.
Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of
intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away
with it. As journalists rush to chronicle the administration's failings on
Iraq, they should pay some attention to their own.
2.
On August 26, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney gave a speech that was
widely interpreted as signaling the administration's intention to wage war
on Iraq. There "is no doubt," Cheney declared, that Saddam Hussein "has
weapons of mass destruction" and is preparing to use them against the
United States. Saddam, he said, not only had biological and chemical
weapons but had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." If
allowed to continue on this course, he added, Saddam could subject his
adversaries to "nuclear blackmail." Accordingly, the United States had no
choice but to take preemptive action against him.
The reference to nuclear weapons was especially telling. While Iraq was
widely believed to have biological and chemical weapons, there was much
more uncertainty regarding its nuclear program. In 1998, when UN
inspectors left the country, it was generally agreed that Iraq's nuclear
program had been dismantled. The question was, what had happened in the
four years since? In his speech, Cheney flatly stated that Iraq had
resumed its quest for a bomb, but neither he nor any other Bush official
offered any supporting evidence.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the time of Cheney's speech, Times reporters Judith Miller and Michael
Gordon were investigating the state of Iraq's arsenal. Both had reported
on Iraq for many years and brought certain perspectives to the assignment.
Gordon, the paper's chief military correspondent, had after the Gulf War
teamed up with retired general Bernard Trainor to write The Generals' War:
The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (1995). A detailed account of
the military's conduct of the war, it strongly criticized the US decision
to leave Saddam in power. From his many years of reporting on intelligence
matters, Gordon knew how shocked US analysts had been after the Gulf War
to find how far along Iraq had been in its effort to develop a nuclear
weapon.
Miller, the coauthor of Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (1990)
and Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (2001), was
intimately acquainted with Saddam Hussein's genius for deception. In
February 1998, she (together with William Broad) had written a 4,900-word
report about Iraq's secret program to produce bioweapons and its success
in concealing them from the outside world. According to the story, many
former weapons inspectors and other experts with whom Miller and Broad
talked believed that Baghdad "is still hiding missiles and germ weapons,
and the means to make both."
Later that year, Miller met one of the first defectors who gave her
information—Khidhir Hamza, a scientist who, until the late 1980s, had been
a senior official in Iraq's nuclear program. After fleeing Baghdad in
1994, Hamza had made his way to Washington, where in 1997 he went to work
for the Institute for Science and International Security, a small think
tank, which arranged for Miller and fellow Times reporter James Risen to
interview him. The result was a front-page story relating Hamza's account
of the "inner workings" of Saddam's push for a bomb prior to the Gulf War,
and recounting Hamza's belief that Saddam retained the infrastructure to
duplicate that effort.
While seeing Hamza, Miller told me, she also was in touch with Ahmed
Chalabi, and in 2001 he arranged for her to visit Thailand to interview
another defector, a civil engineer named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri. The
resulting front-page story related al-Haideri's claim to have personally
renovated "secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear
weapons." These facilities were said to exist "in underground wells,
private villas and under Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad." Charles
Duelfer, a former inspector, was quoted as saying that al-Haideri's
account was consistent with other reports showing that Iraq had "not given
up its desire" for WMD.
In 2002, Miller went to Turkey to interview yet another defector, Ahmed
al-Shemri. A member of the Iraqi Officers Movement, another opposition
group, al-Shemri (a pseudonym) claimed to have worked in Iraq's chemical
weapons program, and he told Miller that Saddam had continued to produce
VX and other chemical agents even while international inspectors were in
Iraq. Iraq, he added, continued to store such agents at secret sites
throughout the country.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By late summer of 2002, then, Miller had developed a circle of sources who
claimed to have firsthand knowledge of Saddam's continued push for
prohibited weapons. And as she and Gordon made the rounds of
administration officials, they picked up a dramatic bit of information
about Iraq's nuclear program. During the previous fourteen months, they
were told, Iraq had tried to import thousands of high-strength aluminum
tubes. The tubes had been intercepted, and specialists sent to examine
them had concluded from their diameter, thickness, and other technical
properties that they had only one possible use—as casings for rotors in
centrifuges to enrich uranium, a key step in producing an atomic bomb.
This was dramatic news. If true, it would represent a rare piece of
concrete evidence for Saddam's nuclear aspirations. And, on Sunday,
September 8, 2002, the Times (then under the editorship of Howell Raines)
led with the story, written by Miller and Gordon. "US Says Hussein
Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts," the headline said. The lead was
emphatic:
"More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of
mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and
has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,
Bush administration officials said today."
Gordon and Miller went on to cite the officials' claims about the aluminum
tubes and their intended use in centrifuges to enrich uranium.
The article contained several caveats, noting, for instance, that Iraq "is
not on the verge of fielding a nuclear weapon." Overall, though, the
language was stark:
"Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions,
along
with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and
expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and
the United States to the brink of war."
Administration "hard-liners," Gordon and Miller added, worried that "the
first sign of a 'smoking gun'... may be a mushroom cloud." The piece
concluded with a section on Iraq's chemical and biological weapons,
relying heavily on the information supplied by Ahmed al-Shemri. "All of
Iraq is one large storage facility," he was quoted as saying.
Gordon and Miller argue that the information about the aluminum tubes was
not a leak. "The administration wasn't really ready to make its case
publicly at the time," Gordon told me. "Somebody mentioned to me this
tubes thing. It took a lot to check it out." Perhaps so, but
administration officials were clearly delighted with the story. On that
morning's talk shows, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, and
Condoleezza Rice all referred to the information in the Times story. "It's
now public," Cheney said on Meet the Press, that Saddam Hussein "has been
seeking to acquire" the "kind of tubes" needed to build a centrifuge to
produce highly enriched uranium, "which is what you have to have in order
to build a bomb." On CNN's Late Edition, Rice said the tubes "are only
really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." She
added: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"—a phrase
lifted directly from the Times.
In the days that followed, the story of the tubes received wide publicity.
And, on September 12, 2002, President Bush himself, in a speech to the UN
General Assembly, said that "Iraq has made several attempts to buy
high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon"—
evidence, he added, of its "continued appetite" for such a weapon. In the
following months, the tubes would become a key prop in the
administration's case for war, and the Times played a critical part in
legitimizing it.
3.
>From the start, however, the Times story raised doubts among many nuclear
experts. One was David Albright. A physicist and former weapons inspector
who directed the Institute for Science and International Security (the
same group for which the defector Khidhir Hamza had worked), Albright
favored a tough position on Iraq, believing Saddam to have WMD and
advocating strict measures to contain him. In the summer of 2001, however,
after the aluminum tubes were intercepted, he had been asked by an
official to find out some information about them, and in doing so he had
learned of the doubts many experts had about their suitability for use in
centrifuges. Some specialists with ties to the US Department of Energy and
the International Atomic Energy Agency had concluded that the tubes were
more likely destined for use in conventional artillery rockets, as Iraq
itself had claimed. Officials at the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research would later concur.
Reading the September 8 article, Albright felt it was important for the
Times to take note of these dissenting views. In the past, he had worked
frequently with Judith Miller; in fact, it was Albright who had arranged
for her to interview Khidhir Hamza. Although he was unavailable when
Miller tried to contact him for the September 8 story, he had several long
conversations with her after it was published. He then described the
doubts many centrifuge experts had about the administration's claims. And,
on September 13, 2002, a follow-up story appeared. It was not, however,
what Albright had expected. Six paragraphs into an article that summarized
the White House's case against Iraq, Miller and Gordon noted that senior
officials acknowledged "that there have been debates among intelligence
experts about Iraq's intentions in trying to buy such tubes." But, they
quickly noted, those officials insisted that "the dominant view" in the
administration was that the tubes were intended for use in centrifuges to
enrich uranium. While some experts in the State and Energy Departments
"had questioned whether Iraq might not be seeking the tubes for other
purposes," the article stated,
"other, more senior, officials insisted last night that this was a
minority view among intelligence experts and that the CIA had wide
support, particularly among the government's top technical experts and
nuclear scientists. 'This is a footnote, not a split,' a senior
administration official said."
Yet Albright, having talked with a large number of those experts and
scientists, knew that many did not support the CIA assessment.
"Understanding the purpose of these tubes was very difficult," he told me.
"But hearing there's a debate in the government was knowable by a
journalist. That's what I asked Judy to do—to alert people that there's a
debate, that there are competent people who disagreed with what the CIA
was saying. I thought for sure she'd quote me or some people in the
government who didn't agree. It just wasn't there."
The Times, he added, "made a decision to ice out the critics and insult
them on top of it. People were bitter about that article—it says that the
best scientists are with [the administration]."
Miller rejects this. The article, she says, clearly stated that there was
a debate about the tubes. As written, however, the piece gives far more
attention and credence to officials who dismissed the dissenters, and the
debate, as inconsequential—a "footnote."
Frustrated, Albright began preparing his own report about the tubes.
Seeking an outlet, he approached Joby Warrick of The Washington Post. In
contrast to Miller and Gordon, Warrick had little experience covering
national security matters; the environment was his beat. After the
September 11 attacks, however, he was assigned to do investigative
reporting related to the war on terrorism, and in the summer of 2002 he
began looking into Iraq's weapons programs. Calling around to officials
and former inspectors, he quickly discovered that "nobody knew very much."
That, he told me, seemed particularly true of defectors. Francis Brooke,
the Washington representative of the Iraqi National Congress, was
constantly trying to give him information, but it never seemed to check
out. "I became very frustrated at not being able to come up with anything
solid showing that there were active weapons programs," Warrick said.
Albright's report about the aluminum tubes, however, seemed to offer an
inside look at the debate within intelligence circles over Iraq's nuclear
program.[2] Drawing on it, Warrick wrote an article describing how the
administration's claims about the tubes were being challenged by
"independent experts" who questioned whether they "were intended for a
secret nuclear weapons program" or, as some believed, for use in
conventional rockets. Warrick also noted reports that the Bush
administration "is trying to quiet dissent among its own analysts over how
to interpret the evidence." It was one of the first public mentions of the
administration's possible misuse of the data on Iraq. Appearing on page
A18, however, the story caused little stir.
4.
Meanwhile, the tubes were drawing the notice of Knight Ridder's Washington
bureau, which serves Knight Ridder's thirty-one newspapers in the US,
including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, and The Detroit
Free Press. Almost alone among national news organizations, Knight Ridder
had decided to take a hard look at the administration's justifications for
war. As Washington bureau chief John Walcott recalled, in the late summer
of 2002 "we began hearing from sources in the military, the intelligence
community, and the foreign service of doubts about the arguments the
administration was making." Much of the dissent came from career officers
disturbed over the allegations being made by political appointees. "These
people," he said, "were better informed about the details of the
intelligence than the people higher up in the food chain, and they were
deeply troubled by what they regarded as the administration's deliberate
misrepresentation of intelligence, ranging from overstating the case to
outright fabrication."
Walcott assigned two experienced reporters, Jonathan Landay and Warren
Strobel, to talk with those sources. Drawing on them, Landay in early
September 2002 filed a report for Knight Ridder that quoted senior US
officials with access to intelligence on Iraq as saying that "they have
detected no alarming increase in the threat that Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein poses to American security and Middle East stability." While it
was well known that Iraq was "aggressively trying to rebuild" its weapons
programs, Landay noted, "there is no new intelligence that indicates the
Iraqis have made significant advances" in doing so.
In early October, Landay's curiosity was further aroused when the CIA
released a declassified version of its new National Intelligence Estimate
on Iraq. For the most part, the document blandly summarized the agency's
longstanding findings regarding Iraq's ties to terrorists and its efforts
to develop WMD. In a brief section on the aluminum tubes, however, it
noted that, while the intelligence community as a whole believed the tubes
were intended for use in centrifuges, some experts disagreed, believing
they were intended for conventional weapons. This was a rare public
acknowledgment of dissent within the intelligence agencies, and Landay,
intrigued, began making more calls. He eventually reached a veteran of the
US uranium enrichment program. "He'd been given data on the tubes, and he
said that this wasn't conclusive evidence," Landay recalled. In early
October, Landay wrote about how the CIA report had "exposed a sharp
dispute among US intelligence experts" over Iraq's arsenal. One expert was
quoted as saying he did not believe the tubes were intended for use in
nuclear weapons because "their diameters were too small and the aluminum
they were made from was too hard."
continued...
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International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/130230.html
19 February 2004
Cheney's Future is Washington's Current Topic
By Brian Knowlton
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney, a man who has cultivated an
unblinking image of stern secretiveness and unshakeable discretion, is
expected to become far more visible as a campaigner in this presidential
election year. Assuming, that is, that he remains on the presidential
ticket. "The campaign season is under way," Cheney said recently, "and
President Bush and I will be proud to present our vision to voters in
every part of this great land."
The White House has said that American voters will see more of the
low-profile Cheney this year, and not less.
But while it would fly in the face of history, and what is known of
President George W. Bush, to drop a vice president after one term, Cheney
has found himself mired in controversy on a variety of fronts. That has
made speculation about his political future a suddenly hot topic in this
speculation-loving city. Political scientists and observers here say they
fully expect Bush, who vaunts loyalty as one of the highest virtues, to
stick with Cheney. Their caveat is that Cheney's well-known heart problems
could change things, though the health of the vice president, who is 63,
is said to be sound at present. "He's got the respect of the president,"
said Stephen Wayne, a political scientist at Georgetown University in
Washington. A change now could raise damaging speculation about problems
in the White House, he said. And in sum, Wayne added, "He's not a drag on
the ticket."
Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University, generally agreed.
"My assumption now is that Cheney will remain on the ticket," he said.
Cheney, after all, remains a man of deep experience in Washington: as a
congressman, defense secretary to the first President Bush and chief of
staff to President Gerald Ford. He has been deeply involved in White House
policy-making, so much so that in the early days of the administration
there were waggish cracks about his being a "shadow president."
But some Republicans are said now to be questioning quietly whether Cheney
has become more ballast than lift in a presidential contest that might end
up being more competitive than had seemed likely only months ago. Cheney's
persona - unemotional, stonily restrained, and without the down-home
amiability of his boss - might not provide a needed campaign-trail boost.
And as Bush has seen his own poll ratings decline in recent months,
Cheney's have dropped more drastically, largely because of his close
involvement in some of the controversies that have hurt the president
most. Cheney has been challenged on several fronts. Some critics said he
had pushed the CIA to provide the most damaging possible assessment of a
threat from Iraq. After the war, and even after the weapons inspector
David Kay said that he expected no banned weapons to be found in Iraq,
Cheney has insisted that such weapons will be found.
Even after Bush stated that no link had been found between Saddam Hussein
and Al Qaeda, Cheney said there was "overwhelming evidence" of such a tie.
Cheney's ties to corporate America and the energy industry have been the
source of further criticism, particularly after stories that Halliburton,
the huge oil-services company he once headed, had won no-bid contracts for
work in Iraq, and overcharged for some services there. The Justice
Department is investigating, moreover, whether a Halliburton subsidiary
made improper payments to gain work in Nigeria during Cheney's time as the
company's chief. Cheney has been unable to shake questions about a
secretive task force he convened early in the administration to help
develop its energy policy. The White House resisted calls for the details
of the panel's workings, including even the names of its members, drawn
primarily from energy company executives. And with the dispute coming
before the Supreme Court, Cheney has been criticized for taking a high
court justice, Antonin Scalia, on a duck-hunting trip in Louisiana aboard
Air Force Two. Scalia said there was nothing irregular about that sort of
socializing, since Cheney was not involved in the case as a private
individual. Further, Cheney's office has been a focus of an investigation
into who leaked the name of a CIA officer, Valerie Plame. The leak was
seen as a way of punishing her husband, who had criticized administration
arguments for war with Iraq. Cheney, however, remains popular among the
conservatives whom Bush views as crucial to his re-election. "Cheney is
well-respected by conservatives," said Wayne of Georgetown. "The president
thinks he made the right decision in Dick Cheney, and there's no reason to
drop him."
What could change that thinking, of course, is if Cheney encountered new
health problems. He has suffered four heart attacks. A Cheney spokesman
has insisted that the vice president's health is fine. And Bush has
insisted that he will stand by his vice president much as his father did
in 1992, despite widespread criticism that Dan Quayle had proved a drag on
the ticket. "I don't think that Bush loyalty gene will permit him" to drop
Cheney, said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of
Virginia. "But the one way it reasonably could happen is if Cheney himself
recognized he was a lead weight around the Republican ticket this year,
which you could make a good argument for."
Should pressure grow for Cheney to step aside, analysts note, the health
issue could provide useful cover for a graceful withdrawal. That, of
course, has given rise to the latest chapter of a favorite Washington
game: speculating on who might come next. There is no clear-cut best pick
as a theoretical Cheney successor, though among the names most bruited
about are those of: Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, a
tough-minded and respected medical doctor, but not particularly well-known
around the country;
Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, who gained widespread respect
for his handling of the crisis in his city in the days after the Sept. 11,
2001, terror attacks, but whose positions on some social issues are more
liberal than those of the president; Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security
director, a former Pennsylvania governor who was considered for the No. 2
spot in 2000 but faced right-wing opposition for supporting abortion
rights;
And Condoleezza Rice, his trusted national security adviser and a woman
considered a bright star among Republicans, though perhaps less so after
the highly contentious debate over the Iraq war. She is also, however,
considered a favorite choice if Secretary of State Colin Powell steps down
at the end of this term, as has been widely rumored.
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Subject: [pjnews] Draft Alert Response and Clarification
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This is a response to the Adam Stutz Project Censored article I forwarded
the other day
(http://www.vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/01/105146.php), warning of a
resumption of the draft "as early as Spring 2005 -- conveniently just
after the 2004 presidential election." It comes from J.E. McNeil, who
works with the Center for Conscience and War and the National
Interreligious Service for Conscientious Objectors. She has been
recommended to me on several occasions as someone who is quite
knowledgeable on this topic, and thus I trust her analysis.
--------------
From: "J.E. McNeil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 4:08 AM
Subject: Re: Draft Alert and the Rumor that will not Die
This is a classic case of good news/bad news.
The current spate of letters concerning resumption of the draft are
riddled with misinformation.
1.--They state: DoD is preparing for the draft by soliciting draft board
members (including a quote from someone who with authority says it is
"significant" that the DoD is reconstituting draft boards for the first
time since Vietnam)
--Draft boards were constituted in the early 1980's with a maximum
membership of 20 years.
--Terms are expiring, the government (and the Center on Conscience & War)
are bringing it to their constituents attention that there are openings.
--Selective Service is in charge of Draft Boards and is not part of DoD
--Members of the military and retired military are prohibited from
participating in draft or appeal boards.
2.--They claim Selective Service added $28 million to its budget to
prepare for a draft.
--The Annual Performance Plan for FY 2004 cited in these stories is
submitted every year by Selective Service to justify it's funding.
Selective Service requested $28 million--up from it's $24 million annual
budget, but only received $26 million.
3--They hype HR 163 and S 89 as being introduced and sent to committee
with timing so that the draft will begin in 2005.
--HR 163 was introduced with much hoopla last Christmas by Rangel, who
succeeded in getting Rumsfeld to stick his foot in his mouth about how
draftees were worthless causing additional ruckus by Vietnam Vets.
--S 89 was introduced on the same day by Hollings
--Both bill were sent to committee (which is what happens with bills)
where they sit with no action since the Republicans generally do not push
Democratic bills and have a strangle hold on Congress.
--There are co-sponsors of both bills who would withdraw their support if
the bills looked like they were moving anywhere.
4--They cite the rule concerning only school deferments in their
discussion of HR 163 and S 89
--The rule they cite comes from the draft law already on the books and is
not from the bills on the table.
5--They claim draft evasions will be harder because of a Homeland Security
bill closing the doors to Canda.
--I almost agree with this but the doors to Canada were already closed by
Canada in the late 70's to just about everyone. US citizens could no
longer cross the border and ask for "landed status" as they could in the
60's but are routinely denied after a lengthy process. Nor is it likely
for a draft evader to be taken in asylum by Canada (which never even
happened in the 60s).
None of this tells us that there is going to be a draft, and I have spent
much of the last three years saying that there is not a draft and that a
draft would be likely only if we invade another country AFTER Iraq.
But here is the bad news:
Not because of any of this stuff are we concerned. But we are concerned.
The Administration has been quietly polling the Republican Congressional
Members as to whether they would support a draft call by the President.
The timing on the call is early to mid 2005.
So in spite of the poor journalism in the current spate of stories we have
something to worry about. And that is why the Center, MCC, Church of the
Brethren, Unitarian Universalists, United Church of Christ, United
Methodists and others are sponsoring a lobbying day on Friday May 14 in
Washington, DC and in everyone's home district. We are asking concerned
people to approach their Congressional representatives to educate them (as
so few of the Members and even fewer of the staffers remember a draft) as
to what conscientious objectors believe and that there is no such thing as
a fair draft.
But if you want to lobby, you need to go in with facts, not rumors. So we
continue to debunk the fear letters.
Yours for Peace and Justice,
J. E. McNeil
---------------
http://www.nisbco.org/lobbyday_04.html
ACTION: Lobby Day Against the Military Draft: May 14, 2004
We must work to oppose the draft.
The Center is holding a lobby day on May 14th, 2004 in conjunction with
the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, Veterans for Peace, Mennonite
Central Committee-Washington Office, Church of the Brethren, United
Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, Unitarian
Universalist Association of Congregations, and Pax Christi USA. We will
continue in our effort to educate Congress and their staff about
conscientious objectors. Most young congressional staffers are not
knowledgeable about conscientious objectors since there has not been a
draft in their lifetime. This will give us an opening to talk about how a
draft is always a bad idea and how the draft can never bring equity to the
Armed Services (Look at past talking points).
Mark the 14th of May on your calendar. It is important that members of
Congress hear from their constituents to know that a draft is never a
viable option.
Come to Washington to lobby Congress in an effort to stop the draft.
Even if it is not possible for you to be in Washington in May, please meet
with the local office of your Representative. Contact us if you need help
in setting up an appointment.
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Sorry. I just realized that I inadvertantly sent the second half of this
article to my other list yesterday, so none of you received it. I don't
think I've ever done that before. Anyway, here's the second half now. If
you missed it, by the way, the first half is posted at:
http://snipurl.com/4n20
Scott
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922
Now They Tell Us
By Michael Massing
continued...
On October 8, 2002, Landay and Strobel, joined by bureau chief Walcott,
filed a sharp account of the rising discontent among national security
officers. "While President Bush marshals congressional and international
support for invading Iraq," the article began, "a growing number of
military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own
government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's
double-time march toward war." These officials, it continued,
"charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the
threat
that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses—including distorting his links to
the al-Qaida terrorist network.... They charge that the administration
squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under
intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument
that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that
pre-emptive military action is necessary."
As these reports show, there were many sources available to journalists
interested in scrutinizing the administration's statements about Iraq.
Unfortunately, however, Knight Ridder has no newspaper in Washington,
D.C., or New York, and its stories did not get the national attention they
deserved. But in mid-October, other news organizations began to pick up on
some of the same discontent Knight Ridder had documented. The Washington
Post, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los
Angeles Times, and the Guardian of London all ran articles raising
questions about the administration's case for war. On October 10, The New
York Times ran a front-page account by Michael Gordon of the divisions
within the administration "over what intelligence shows about Iraq's
intentions and its willingness to ally itself with al-Qaeda." And on
October 24, the Times, again on its front page, reported that top Pentagon
officials had set up a special intelligence unit to search for data to
support the case for war. Written by Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, the
article cited the concerns of some intelligence analysts that civilian
policymakers were politicizing the intelligence to fit their hawkish
position. The view "among even some senior intelligence analysts" at the
CIA, they wrote, "is that Mr. Hussein is contained and is unlikely to
unleash weapons of mass destruction unless he is attacked."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The unit referred to here was the Office of Special Plans, the same group
Seymour Hersh would write about after the war. As such reports show, its
existence was widely known before the war. With many analysts prepared to
discuss the competing claims over the intelligence on Iraq, the press was
in a good position to educate the public on the administration's
justifications for war. Yet for the most part, it never did so. A survey
of the coverage in November, December, and January reveals relatively few
articles about the debate inside the intelligence community. Those
articles that did run tended to appear on the inside pages. Most
investigative energy was directed at stories that supported, rather than
challenged, the administration's case.
On December 12, for example, The Washington Post ran a front-page story by
Barton Gellman contending that al-Qaeda had obtained a nerve agent from
Iraq. Most of the evidence came from administration officials, and it was
so shaky as to draw the attention of Michael Getler, the paper's
ombudsman. In his weekly column, Getler wrote that the article had so many
qualifiers and caveats that
"the effect on the complaining readers, and on me, is to ask what, after
all, is the use of this story that practically begs you not to put much
credence in it? Why was it so prominently displayed, and why not wait
until there was more certainty about the intelligence?"
And why, he might have added, didn't the Post and other papers devote more
time to pursuing the claims about the administration's manipulation of
intelligence? Part of the explanation, no doubt, rests with the Bush
administration's skill at controlling the flow of news. "Their management
of information is far greater than that of any administration I've seen,"
Knight Ridder's John Walcott observed. "They've made it extremely
difficult to do this kind of [investigative] work." That management could
take both positive forms—rewarding sympathetic reporters with leaks,
background interviews, and seats on official flights—and negative ones—
freezing out reporters who didn't play along. In a city where access is
all, few wanted to risk losing it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Such sanctions were reinforced by the national political climate. With a
popular president promoting war, Democrats in Congress were reluctant to
criticize him. This deprived reporters of opposition voices to quote, and
of hearings to cover. Many readers, meanwhile, were intolerant of articles
critical of the President. Whenever The Washington Post ran such pieces,
reporter Dana Priest recalls, "We got tons of hate mail and threats,
calling our patriotism into question." Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and The
Weekly Standard, among others, all stood ready to pounce on journalists
who strayed, branding them liberals or traitors—labels that could
permanently damage a career. Gradually, journalists began to muzzle
themselves.
David Albright experienced this firsthand when, during the fall, he often
appeared as a commentator on TV. "I felt a lot of pressure" from
journalists "to stick to the subject, which was Iraq's bad behavior,"
Albright says. And that, in turn, reflected pressure from the
administration: "I always felt the administration was setting the agenda
for what stories should be covered, and the news media bought into that,
rather than take a critical look at the administration's underlying
reasons for war." Once, on a cable news show, Albright said that he felt
the inspections should continue, that the impasse over Iraq was not simply
France's fault; during the break, he recalls, the host "got really mad and
chastised me."
"The administration created a set of truths, then put up a wall to keep
people within it," Albright says. "On the other side of the wall were
people saying they didn't agree. The media were not aggressive enough in
challenging this."
5.
The press's submissiveness was most apparent in its coverage of the
inspections process. Responsibility for that process lay with two
organizations: the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitored
Iraq's nuclear activities, and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification
and Inspection Commission, which oversaw its biological and chemical
programs. UNMOVIC, which was based in New York and headed by Hans Blix,
got considerable coverage; the IAEA, which was based in Vienna and headed
by Mohamed ElBaradei, got little.
"We were constantly frustrated," Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokesperson,
told me. "The whole focus was on UNMOVIC, which was in New York."
According to IAEA staff members, the press gave far too much weight to
what US experts or administration officials said. Jacques Baute, the head
of the IAEA's Iraq inspection team, complained that the agency had a hard
time getting its story out. And that story, he explained, was that by 1998
"it was pretty clear we had neutralized Iraq's nuclear program. There was
unanimity on that."
The IAEA's success in dismantling Iraq's nuclear program was spelled out
in the periodic reports it sent to the UN Security Council—reports that
remained posted on its Web site. And, it was broadly agreed, any effort to
restart that program after 1998 would have very likely been detected by
the outside world. As the Carnegie Endowment noted in a recent report
("WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications"),
"Iraq's nuclear program had been dismantled by inspectors after the 1991
war, and these facilities— unlike chemical or biological ones —tend to be
large, expensive, dependent on extensive imports, and very difficult to
hide "in plain sight" under the cover of commercial (that is, dual-use)
facilities."
These facts, it added, were "largely knowable" in the fall of 2002, when
the debate over inspections was taking place.
Bush officials, however, were loudly proclaiming otherwise. "A return of
inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of [Saddam's] compliance
with UN resolutions," Vice President Cheney declared in his August 26
speech. "On the contrary, there is a great danger it would provide false
comfort that Saddam was somehow 'back in his box.'"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many journalists echoed this line. Seeking out former weapons inspectors
for comment, they generally "gravitated to the most negative ones,"
Jacques Baute said. An example was David Kay. According to the IAEA, his
background in nuclear and weapons matters was very limited—he has a Ph.D.
in international affairs—and he spent no more than five weeks as an
inspector in Iraq in 1991. This was far less time—and far longer ago—than
was the case for many other inspectors.
Recently, Kay, after stepping down as the top US weapons investigator in
Iraq, said that he thought Iraq had largely abandoned the production of
illicit weapons during the 1990s and that one key reason was the tough UN
inspections. Before the war, however, Kay often declared his contempt for
inspections to reporters—including Judith Miller. On September 18, 2002,
for instance, in an article headlined "Verification Is Difficult at Best,
Say the Experts, and Maybe Impossible," Miller quoted a variety of
officials and former inspectors about the nearly insurmountable obstacles
inspectors would face if they returned to Iraq. David Kay, identified as
"a former inspector who led the initial nuclear inspections in Iraq in the
early 1990's," was quoted as saying of the inspectors that "their task is
damn near a mission impossible." Miller also cited Khidhir Hamza, the
defector she had written about in 1998. Identified as having "led part of
Iraq's nuclear bomb program until he defected in 1994," he was quoted as
estimating that "Iraq was now at the 'pilot plant' stage of nuclear
production and within two to three years of mass producing centrifuges to
enrich uranium for a bomb." Iraq, he added, "now excelled" in hiding
nuclear and other unconventional weapons programs.
In fact, Hamza never produced any convincing sources for these statements.
Contrary to Miller's description, he had resigned from Iraq's nuclear
program in 1990 and had no firsthand knowledge of it after the Gulf War.
After coming to the United States, he had gone to work for David
Albright's Institute for Science and International Security, but by 1999
his claims about Iraq's weapons programs had become so inflated that
Albright felt he could no longer work with him, and Hamza left the
institute. The following year he came out with a book, Saddam's Bombmaker:
The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons
Agenda (written with Jeff Stein), that, Albright says, "made many
ridiculous claims." In light of this, he adds, he was surprised to see
that Judith Miller continued to rely on Hamza. "Judy should have known
about this," Albright says. "This is her area."
"Hamza had no credibility at all," one IAEA staff member told me.
"Journalists who called us and asked for an assessment of these people—
we'd certainly tell them." Miller said she believed Hamza was a credible
source because he was very useful to the administration. After the war,
she noted, the administration sent him to Iraq to work on atomic energy
matters. Yet the administration's reliance on defectors like Hamza was
itself highly controversial and deserving of scrutiny. Few journalists
provided it, though. In the months leading up to the war, Hamza was a
popular source for journalists and a frequent guest on TV news shows. (In
fairness, it should be noted that Judith Miller, along with Julia Preston,
wrote an article for the Times in late January that, based on a two-hour
interview with Hans Blix, described his differences with the Bush
administration over its "assertions about Iraqi cheating" and "the notion
that time was running out for disarming Iraq through peaceful means.")
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In late November 2002, UN inspectors finally returned to Iraq. Shortly
after, Iraq submitted to the UN a 12,000-page declaration stating it had
no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's failure to account for large stocks
of banned weapons uncovered prior to 1998 fed suspicions that it still had
such weapons. Nonetheless, IAEA inspectors felt confident that they could
get a reliable reading of the status of Iraq's alleged nuclear program.
They had more than a hundred sites they wanted to visit, based on
interviews with defectors, data collected from previous inspections,
satellite photos, and information provided by the CIA and other US
intelligence agencies. Over the summer, IAEA specialists had detected in
satellite photos new construction at sites where nuclear activity had
taken place in the past. Visiting them, however, inspectors found no
suspicious activity. The inspectors also took samples from rivers, canals,
and lakes, testing for the presence of certain radioisotopes. None was
found.
Finally, the inspectors investigated Iraq's attempted purchase of aluminum
tubes. They examined rocket production and storage sites, studied tube
samples, and interviewed key Iraqi personnel. From this they determined
that the tubes were consistent with use in conventional rockets, as Iraq
had maintained.
On January 9, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei issued a preliminary report on the
inspectors' work. "To date," it noted,
"no new information of significance has emerged regarding Iraq's past
nuclear programme (pre-1991) or with regard to Iraq activities during the
period between 1991 and 1998. To date, no evidence of ongoing prohibited
nuclear or nuclear-related activities has been detected, although not all
of the laboratory results of sample analysis are yet available."
On the aluminum tubes, ElBaradei reported that they
"appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets. While it
would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of
centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it."
In short, the IAEA, after weeks of intensive inspections, had found no
sign whatever of any effort by Iraq to resume its nuclear program. Given
the importance the administration had attached to this matter, this would
have seemed news of the utmost significance. Yet it was largely ignored.
The Times, which had so prominently displayed its initial story about the
aluminum tubes, buried its main article about ElBaradei's statement on
page A10. (The paper did briefly mention ElBaradei's conclusion about the
tubes in a front-page story that focused mainly on Iraq's lack of
cooperation with the inspectors.) One of the few papers to give his
statement significant treatment was The Washington Post. Following up on
his earlier article on the tubes, Joby Warrick incorporated the IAEA
findings into a detailed analysis of the claims and counterclaims
surrounding the tubes. The article cited weapons inspectors, scientists,
and other experts, all of whom cast strong doubt on the administration's
arguments.[3]
The IAEA, Melissa Fleming observed, "was inundated with calls, but they
were less of an investigative nature than about what the inspectors were
finding on a daily basis. In general reporters showed little interest in
more complex subjects like the aluminum tubes." Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's
top spokesperson, added: "Nobody wanted to challenge the President. Nobody
wanted to believe inspections had anything of value to bring to the table.
The press bought into that."
6.
The reception accorded Mohamed ElBaradei's statement contrasted sharply
with that given Colin Powell's speech at the United Nations on February 5,
2003. The secretary of state gave a high-tech presentation of intercepted
tapes, satellite photos, videos, and diagrams to demonstrate what he
called "a policy of evasion and deception" by Iraq dating back to 1991.
Iraq's arsenal, Powell asserted, included mobile laboratories to produce
bioweapons, unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver them, and chemical
munitions plants. On the nuclear issue, Powell said that "Saddam Hussein
is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that
he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification
aluminum tubes from 11 countries, even after inspections resumed." Powell
also asserted the existence of a "sinister nexus" between Iraq and
al-Qaeda, citing as evidence the activities of Ansar al-Islam, a militant
Islamic group based in northeastern Iraq. The group, he said, operated a
poison-making camp in the region and had strong links to Iraqi
intelligence.
The speech, while viewed skeptically by most foreign governments, received
high approval ratings in American polls—and rapturous reviews from the
American press. On CNN, after General Amer al-Saadi, Saddam Hussein's
scientific adviser, appeared to offer a point-by-point rebuttal of
Powell's charges, anchor Paula Zahn brought on former State Department
spokesman James Rubin to comment. Introducing Rubin, Zahn said, "You've
got to understand that most Americans watching this were either probably
laughing out loud or got sick to their stomach. Which was it for you?"
"Well, really, both," Rubin replied. The American people "will believe
everything they saw," he said. "They have no reason to doubt any of
[Powell's] sources, any of the references to human sources, any of the
pictures, or any of the intercepts."
The next day's New York Times carried three front-page articles on
Powell's speech, all of them glowing. His presentation took "the form of a
nearly encyclopedic catalog that reached further than many had expected,"
wrote Steven Weisman. According to Patrick Tyler, an "intelligence
breakthrough" had made it possible for Powell "to set forth the first
evidence of what he said was a well developed cell of Al Qaeda operating
out of Baghdad." The speech, he wrote, was "a more detailed and
well-documented bill of particulars than many had expected."
The Washington Post was no less positive. "Data on Efforts to Hide Arms
Called 'Strong Suit of Speech'" went one headline. "Agency Coordination
Helps Yield Details on Al Qaeda 'Associate'" went another. In an editorial
titled "Irrefutable," the paper asserted that, after Powell's performance,
"it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons
of mass destruction." The Op-Ed page ran four pieces about the speech—all
of them full of praise. "An Old Trooper's Smoking Gun," stated the
headline atop Jim Hoagland's column. Even the normally skeptical Mary
McGrory pitched in with a favorable assessment, headlined, "I'm
Persuaded."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tucked inside each paper, however, were articles that questioned the
quality of Powell's evidence. In the Times, for instance, C.J. Chivers
reported (on page A22) that Kurdish officials in northern Iraq were
puzzled by Powell's claims of a poison-making facility in the area. A few
days later, after visiting the purported camp, he found it to be a "wholly
unimpressive place" that lacked even plumbing. In the Post, Joby Warrick
raised questions about Powell's claims regarding the aluminum tubes. (This
time, though, those questions were relegated to page A29). Newsweek
accompanied its article on the speech with five boxes evaluating Powell's
key claims; each raised significant doubts. On his charge that Iraq had
mobile biogerm labs, for instance, the magazine observed that experts
believed such labs "would be all but unworkable" and that US intelligence,
"after years of looking for them, has never found even one."
In the weeks following the speech, one journalist—Walter Pincus of The
Washington Post—developed strong reservations about it. A longtime
investigative reporter, Pincus went back and read the UN inspectors'
reports of 1998 and 1999, and he was struck to learn from them how much
weaponry had been destroyed in Iraq before 1998. He also tracked down
General Anthony Zinni, the former head of the US Central Command, who
described the hundreds of weapons sites the United States had destroyed in
its 1998 bombing. All of this, Pincus recalled, "made me go back and read
Powell's speech closely. And you could see that it was all inferential. If
you analyzed all the intercepted conversations he discussed, you could see
that they really didn't prove anything."
By mid-March, Pincus felt he had enough material for an article
questioning the administration's claims on Iraq. His editors weren't
interested. It was only after the intervention of his colleague Bob
Woodward, who was researching a book on the war and who had developed
similar doubts, that the editors agreed to run the piece—on page A17.
Despite the administration's claims about Iraq's WMD, it began, "US
intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon
specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are
hidden...." Noting the pressure intelligence analysts were feeling from
the White House and Pentagon, Pincus wrote that senior officials, in
making the case for war, "repeatedly have failed to mention the
considerable amount of documented weapons destruction that took place in
Iraq between 1991 and 1998."
Two days later, Pincus, together with Dana Milbank, the Post's White House
correspondent, was back with an even more critical story. "As the Bush
administration prepares to attack Iraq this week," it began, "it is doing
so on the basis of a number of allegations against Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein that have been challenged—and in some cases disproved —by the
United Nations, European governments and even US intelligence reports."
That story appeared on page A13.[4]
The placement of these stories was no accident, Pincus says. "The front
pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles
Times are very important in shaping what other people think," he told me.
"They're like writing a memo to the White House." But the Post's editors,
he said, "went through a whole phase in which they didn't put things on
the front page that would make a difference."
7.
The Post was not alone. The nearer the war drew, and the more determined
the administration seemed to wage it, the less editors were willing to ask
tough questions. The occasional critical stories that did appear were,
like Pincus's, tucked well out of sight.
The performance of the Times was especially deficient. While occasionally
running articles that questioned administration claims, it more often
deferred to them. (The Times's editorial page was consistently much more
skeptical.) Compared to other major papers, the Times placed more credence
in defectors, expressed less confidence in inspectors, and paid less
attention to dissenters. The September 8 story on the aluminum tubes was
especially significant. Not only did it put the Times's imprimatur on one
of the administration's chief claims, but it also established a position
at the paper that apparently discouraged further investigation into this
and related topics.
The reporters working on the story strongly disagree. That the tubes were
intended for centrifuges "was the dominant view of the US intelligence
community," Michael Gordon told me. "It looks like it's the wrong view.
But the story captured what was and still is the majority view of the
intelligence community—whether right or wrong." Not only the director of
central intelligence but also the secretary of state decided to support
it, Gordon said, adding,
"Most of the intelligence agencies in the US government thought that
Iraq
had something. Both Clinton and Bush officials thought this. So did
Richard Butler, who had been head of UNSCOM and who wrote a book about
Iraq called 'The Greatest Threat.' So it was a widely shared assumption
in and out of government. I don't recall a whole lot of people
challenging that."
Yet there were many people challenging the administration's assertions.
It's revealing that Gordon encountered so few of them. On the aluminum
tubes, David Albright, as noted above, made a special effort to alert
Judith Miller to the dissent surrounding them, to no avail.
Asked about this, Miller said that as an investigative reporter in the
intelligence area, "my job isn't to assess the government's information
and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell
readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's
arsenal." Many journalists would disagree with this; instead, they would
consider offering an independent evaluation of official claims one of
their chief responsibilities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I asked Miller about her December 20, 2001, article about Saeed
al-Haideri, the Chalabi-linked defector who claimed that Saddam Hussein
had a network of hidden sites for producing and storing banned weapons—
sites said to include the ground under Saddam Hussein Hospital. In a
subsequent piece about the Bush administration's use of defectors, Miller
had stated that al-Haideri's interviews with US intelligence had "resulted
in dozens of highly credible reports on Iraqi weapons-related activity and
purchases." Yet neither UN inspectors nor the Iraq Survey Group was able
to confirm any of those reports. Al-Haideri, Miller acknowledges, "might
have been totally wrong, but I believe he was acting in good faith, and it
was the best we could do at the time."
To this day, neither Miller nor the Times as a whole has reported on the
failure to confirm al-Haideri's claims. Miller says that while the paper
hasn't reported on al-Haideri's specific allegations, it did do "fifteen
stories on weapons not found in Iraq." Yet, in view of the prominence the
Times had given al-Haideri's claims, its failure to follow up on them
suggests a lack of interest in correcting reports that were later
contradicted by the evidence. (By contrast, the BBC show Panorama, which
in September 2002 had reported some of al-Haideri's claims, noted
pointedly in a follow-up program aired in November 2003 that the Iraq
Survey Group had searched for but "found none of the laboratory facilities
described by Mr. Haideri, including a bunker under a hospital.")
Looking back at her coverage of Iraq's weapons, Miller insists that the
problem lies with the intelligence, not the reporting. "The fact that the
United States so far hasn't found WMD in Iraq is deeply disturbing. It
raises real questions about how good our intelligence was. To beat up on
the messenger is to miss the point."
If nothing else, the Iraq saga should cause journalists to examine the
breadth of their sources. "One question worth asking," John Walcott of
Knight Ridder says, "is whether we in journalism have become too reliant
on high-level officials instead of cultivating less glamorous people in
the bowels of the bureaucracy. "In the case of Iraq, he added, the
political appointees "really closed ranks. So if you relied exclusively on
traditional news sources—assistant secretaries and above—you would not
have heard things we heard." What Walcott calls "the blue collar"
employees of the agencies—the working analysts or former analysts—were
drawn on extensively by Knight Ridder, but by few others.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since the end of the war, journalists have found no shortage of sources
willing to criticize the administration. (Even Colin Powell, in a recent
press conference, admitted that, contrary to his assertions at the United
Nations, he had no "smoking gun" proof of a link between Saddam Hussein
and al-Qaeda.) The Washington Post has been especially aggressive in
exposing the administration's exaggerations of intelligence, its
inadequate planning for postwar Iraq, and its failure to find weapons of
mass destruction. Barton Gellman, who before the war worked so hard to
ferret out Iraq's ties to terrorists, has, since its conclusion, written
many incisive articles about the administration's intelligence
failures.[5]
The contrast between the press's feistiness since the end of the war and
its meekness before it highlights one of the most entrenched and
disturbing features of American journalism: its pack mentality. Editors
and reporters don't like to diverge too sharply from what everyone else is
writing. When a president is popular and a consensus prevails, journalists
shrink from challenging him. Even now, papers like the Times and the Post
seem loath to give prominent play to stories that make the administration
look too bad. Thus, stories about the increasing numbers of dead and
wounded in Iraq —both American and Iraqi—are usually consigned to page 10
or 12, where they won't cause readers too much discomfort.
—January 29, 2004
Notes
[1] See Jack Shafer, "The Times Scoops That Melted," Slate, July 25, 2003;
Russ Baker, "'Scoops' and Truth at the Times," The Nation, June 23, 2003;
William E. Jackson Jr., "Miller's Latest Tale Questioned," Editor &
Publisher Online, September 23, 2003, at www.editorandpublisher.com;
Charles Layton, "Miller Brouhaha," AJR, August/ September 2003; and John
R. MacArthur, "The Lies We Bought," CJR, May/June 2003.
[2] See "Aluminum Tubing Is an Indicator of an Iraqi Gas Centrifuge
Program: But Is the Tubing Specifically for Centrifuges?" ISIS, updated
October 9, 2002, at www.isis-online.org.
[3] See also Bob Drogin and Maggie Farley, "After 2 Months, No Proof of
Iraq Arms Programs," Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2003, for a thorough
account of how UN inspectors were "unable to corroborate Bush
administration claims" about Iraq's weapons.
[4] See Harry Jaffe, "Why Doesn't the Post Love Walter Pincus?" The
Washingtonian, September 2003, and Ari Berman, "The Postwar Post,"
TheNation.com, September 17, 2003.
[5] See, especially, "Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence,"
August 10, 2003, p. A1. Co-written with Walter Pincus, the article
describes in impressive detail how the administration twisted the
intelligence on the aluminum tubes.
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Subject: [pjnews] Pentagon Tells Bush Climate Change Will Destroy Us
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0222-01.htm
Published on Sunday, February 22, 2004 by the Observer/UK
Now the Pentagon Tells Bush:
Climate Change Will Destroy Us
Secret Report Warns of Rioting and Nuclear War; Threat to the World is
Greater than Terrorism
by Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe
costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by The
Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising
seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear
conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across
the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to
the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and
secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global
stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to
its contents.
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the
Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has
repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they
will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted
national defense is a priority.
The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defense adviser Andrew
Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the
past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed
at transforming the American military under Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld.
Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US
national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA
consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and
Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.
An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and
would challenge United States national security in ways that should be
considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread
flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.
Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body
of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit
its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy
Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further
example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.
Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove
the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and
happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to
sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.
A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice
their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the
US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that
American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced
with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of
touch.
One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some
of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief
scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue
as indefensible.
Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor
John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German
government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the
Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's
internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to
accept climatic change.
Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office -
and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that
of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message,
then this is an important document indeed.'
Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire
warnings could no longer be ignored.
'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of
document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest
priority is national defense The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group,
generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to
national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two
groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the
Pentagon,' added Watson.
'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the
Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's
pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,'
said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.
Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a
higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of
water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome,
plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic
conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass
migration of populations that could soon be repeated.
Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid
climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he
said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no
enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'
Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster
happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could
start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.
'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable.
It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be
worthwhile.'
So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove
vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to
accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with
Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report
in his campaign.
The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's
cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank
dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net
Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast
experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defense's
push on ballistic-missile defense
Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that
the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House
trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of
why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this
issue.'
Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy
and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was
received skeptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring
the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil
companies,' he added.
--------------
Key findings of the Pentagon Report
· Future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than
religion, ideology or national honor.
· By 2007 violent storms smash coastal barriers rendering large parts of
the Netherlands inhabitable. Cities like The Hague are abandoned. In
California the delta island levees in the Sacramento river area are
breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to
south.
· Between 2010 and 2020 Europe is hardest hit by climatic change with an
average annual temperature drop of 6F. Climate in Britain becomes colder
and drier as weather patterns begin to resemble Siberia.
· Deaths from war and famine run into the millions until the planet's
population is reduced by such an extent the Earth can cope.
· Riots and internal conflict tear apart India, South Africa and Indonesia.
· Access to water becomes a major battleground. The Nile, Danube and
Amazon are all mentioned as being high risk.
· A 'significant drop' in the planet's ability to sustain its present
population will become apparent over the next 20 years.
· Rich areas like the US and Europe would become 'virtual fortresses' to
prevent millions of migrants from entering after being forced from land
drowned by sea-level rise or no longer able to grow crops. Waves of
boatpeople pose significant problems.
· Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Japan, South Korea, and
Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt and North
Korea. Israel, China, India and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.
· By 2010 the US and Europe will experience a third more days with peak
temperatures above 90F. Climate becomes an 'economic nuisance' as storms,
droughts and hot spells create havoc for farmers.
· More than 400m people in subtropical regions at grave risk.
· Europe will face huge internal struggles as it copes with massive
numbers of migrants washing up on its shores. Immigrants from Scandinavia
seek warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by
refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa.
· Mega-droughts affect the world's major breadbaskets, including America's
Midwest, where strong winds bring soil loss.
· China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable.
Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level,
which contaminates the inland water supplies.
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Subject: [pjnews] Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0221-01.htm
Published on Saturday, February 21, 2004 by the Inter Press Service
Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War
by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - For those still puzzling over the whys and wherefores of
Washington's invasion of Iraq 11 months ago, major new, but curiously
unnoticed, clues were offered this week by two central players in the
events leading up to the war.
Both clues tend to confirm growing suspicions that the Bush
administration's drive to war in Iraq had very little, if anything, to do
with the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) or his alleged ties to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda --
the two main reasons the U.S. Congress and public were given for the
invasion.
Separate statements by Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National
Congress (INC), and U.S. retired Gen Jay Garner, who was in charge of
planning and administering post-war reconstruction from January through
May 2002, suggest that other, less public motives were behind the war,
none of which concerned self-defense, pre-emptive or otherwise.
The statement by Chalabi, on whom the neo-conservative and right-wing
hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office are still
resting their hopes for a transition that will protect Washington's many
interests in Iraq, will certainly interest congressional committees
investigating why the intelligence on WMD before the war was so far off
the mark.
In a remarkably frank interview with the London 'Daily Telegraph', Chalabi
said he was willing to take full responsibility for the INC's role in
providing misleading intelligence and defectors to President George W.
Bush, Congress and the U.S. public to persuade them that Hussein posed a
serious threat to the United States that had to be dealt with urgently.
The Telegraph reported that Chalabi merely shrugged off accusations his
group had deliberately misled the administration. ''We are heroes in
error'', he said.
''As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful'', he told the
newspaper. ''That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad.
What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking
for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants''.
It was an amazing admission, and certain to fuel growing suspicions on
Capitol Hill that Chalabi, whose INC received millions of dollars in
taxpayer money over the past decade, effectively conspired with his
supporters in and around the administration to take the United States to
war on pretenses they knew, or had reason to know, were false.
Indeed, it now appears increasingly that defectors handled by the INC were
sources for the most spectacular and detailed -- if completely unfounded
-- information about Hussein's alleged WMD programs, not only to U.S.
intelligence agencies, but also to U.S. mainstream media, especially the
'New York Times', according to a recent report in the New York 'Review of
Books'.
Within the administration, Chalabi worked most closely with those who had
championed his cause for a decade, particularly neo-conservatives around
Cheney and Rumsfeld -- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,
Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Cheney's chief of staff, I.
Lewis Libby.
Feith's office was home to the office of special plans (OSP) whose two
staff members and dozens of consultants were tasked with reviewing raw
intelligence to develop the strongest possible case that Hussein
represented a compelling threat to the United States.
OSP also worked with the defense policy board (DPB), a hand-picked group
of mostly neo-conservative hawks chaired until just before the war by
Richard Perle, a long-time Chalabi friend.
DPB members, particularly Perle, former CIA director James Woolsey and
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, played prominent roles in publicizing
through the media reports by INC defectors and other alleged evidence
developed by OSP that made Hussein appear as scary as possible.
Chalabi even participated in a secret DPB meeting just a few days after
the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon in which the main
topic of discussion, according to the 'Wall Street Journal', was how 9/11
could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq.
The OSP and a parallel group under Feith, the Counter Terrorism Evaluation
Group, have become central targets of congressional investigators,
according to aides on Capitol Hill, while unconfirmed rumors circulated
here this week that members of the DPB are also under investigation.
The question, of course, is whether the individuals involved were
themselves taken in by what Chalabi and the INC told them or whether they
were willing collaborators in distorting the intelligence in order to move
the country to war for their own reasons..
It appears that Chalabi, whose family, it was reported this week, has
extensive interests in a company that has already been awarded more than
400 million dollars in reconstruction contracts, is signaling his
willingness to take all of the blame, or credit, for the faulty
intelligence.
But one of the reasons for going to war was suggested quite directly by
Garner -- who also worked closely with Chalabi and the same cohort of U.S.
hawks in the run-up to the war and during the first few weeks of
occupation -- in an interview with 'The National Journal'.
Asked how long U.S. troops might remain in Iraq, Garner replied, ''I hope
they're there a long time'', and then compared U.S. goals in Iraq to U.S.
military bases in the Philippines between 1898 and 1992.
''One of the most important things we can do right now is start getting
basing rights with (the Iraqi authorities)'', he said. ''And I think we'll
have basing rights in the north and basing rights in the south ... we'd
want to keep at least a brigade''.
''Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they
were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great
presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our
coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East'', Garner
added.
While U.S. Military strategists have hinted for some time that a major
goal of war was to establish several bases in Iraq, particularly given the
ongoing military withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, Garner is the first to
state it so baldly.
Until now, U.S. Military chiefs have suggested they need to retain a
military presence just to ensure stability for several years, during which
they expect to draw down their forces.
If indeed Garner's understanding represents the thinking of his former
bosses, then the ongoing struggle between Cheney and the Pentagon on the
one hand and the State Department on the other over how much control
Washington is willing to give the United Nations over the transition to
Iraqi rule becomes more comprehensible.
Ceding too much control, particularly before a base agreement can be
reached with whatever Iraqi authority will take over Jun. 30, will make
permanent U.S. bases much less likely.
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/4o17
Weapons 'capacity' of Iraq challenged
-----------------
The New York Times
17 February 2004
Distorting the Intelligence
Editorial
The Senate Intelligence Committee made the right call last week when it
decided to examine whether top administration officials had exaggerated or
misused the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs. Whatever horrendous
errors the intelligence analysts made were surely compounded when the
president and other senior officials emphasized unlikely worst-case
scenarios to win support for the invasion.
In making its case for war, the administration leapt well beyond the
battlefield chemical weapons that Iraq had used in the past and repeatedly
raised the specter that Iraqi nuclear and biological weapons might cause
truly enormous casualties. Top officials warned that Saddam Hussein might
use these terrifying weapons against the American homeland, either by
providing them to terrorists or by firing biological weapons directly from
points offshore. In making such claims, the administration went beyond the
intelligence consensus in important areas.
Nuclear
The president and his top aides were artful in suggesting that, in Mr.
Bush's words, "we cannot wait for the final proof ‹ the smoking gun ‹ that
could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." In a speech shortly before the
Congressional vote authorizing force against Iraq, President Bush warned
that if Iraq could "produce, buy or steal" highly enriched uranium a bit
larger than a softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.
That was technically true, but the president failed to say that the
intelligence community considered it unlikely. An effective embargo was in
place to prevent Iraq from acquiring fissile material. The consensus view,
as stated recently by George Tenet, the director of central intelligence,
was that Iraq would need five to seven years to make a bomb. Even that
estimate proved way off, given the decrepit state of Iraq's nuclear program.
Biological
The National Intelligence Estimate prepared just before the
Congressional vote concluded, erroneously, that Iraq's biological weapons
program was active and that most elements were larger and more advanced than
before the gulf war. But at least the document was cautious in assessing
what weaponry Iraq had, concluding only that Iraq had "some" lethal
biological agents and could quickly make more. President Bush, on the other
hand, threw caution aside. In his major speech before the Congressional
vote, he extrapolated wildly from a U.N. finding that Iraq could have
produced a lot more anthrax than it admitted and warned darkly that Iraq had
probably produced enough anthrax to make "a massive stockpile of biological
weapons that has never been accounted for, and is capable of killing
millions."
Aerial Attacks
Some members of Congress voted for force in Iraq out of fear that Mr.
Hussein was prepared to launch a biological attack on the American homeland.
A month before the vote, Mr. Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney went to
Capitol Hill to brief House and Senate leaders on the supposedly dire threat
posed by Iraq's unpiloted airborne vehicles, which they described as capable
of spreading chemical or biological agents. Senator Trent Lott, the
Republican who was one of four leaders briefed by Mr. Tenet and Mr. Cheney,
said recently that the information "did have an effect on us, no question,"
and Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, complained at a recent hearing
that he had been led to believe that the threat was imminent. What is
disturbing in this episode is that the Air Force, the agency most expert on
the unpiloted vehicles, dissented from the intelligence consensus and
thought that the aircraft were actually designed for reconnaissance. The
Senate committee ought to look hard at this case to determine why the
National Intelligence Estimate overrode the Air Force experts and what role
Mr. Cheney might have played in either shaping or hyping the threat.
Terrorist Link
The most frightening specter raised by top officials was that Mr.
Hussein might provide terror weapons to Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups
for use against the United States. This was an big leap beyond what
intelligence analysts were predicting. The National Intelligence Estimate
concluded that Iraq was drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks
with its own personnel but might, if it became sufficiently desperate, take
"the extreme step" of helping terrorists conduct a chemical or biological
attack against the United States. As it turned out, of course, there seem to
have been no weapons to give to anyone.
The common thread here is that the Bush administration took unlikely
worst-case scenarios and inflated them drastically to justify an immediate
invasion without international support. The Senate committee will need to
find out not just why the intelligence was so wrong, but also the extent to
which the administration misused it to stampede the nation.
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Subject: [pjnews] Capturing bin Laden/ Faulty Iraq Intelligence
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see also:
http://sundaytelegraph.news.com.au/print/0,9362,8752173-28778,00.html
22 February 2004
Bin Laden 'surrounded'
A BRITISH Sunday newspaper is claiming Osama bin Laden has been found and
is surrounded by US special forces in an area of land bordering north-west
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Sunday Express, known for its sometimes colourful scoops, claims the
al-Qaeda leader has been "sighted" for the first time since 2001 and is
being monitored by satellite.
[snip]
----------------
http://www.alternet.org/members/story.html?StoryID=17912
The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq
-----------------
>From the radio newsmagazine Between The Lines
http://www.btlonline.org
Interview with Scott Ritter, former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq,
conducted by Scott Harris:
After grudgingly accepting the evidence that no weapons of mass
destruction will likely ever be found in Iraq, the White House has been
engaged in damage control, countering critics -- including presidential
candidates vying for the Democratic party nomination -- who are pounding
President Bush on his "credibility gap."
Although David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq
declared that Saddam Hussein's government probably had no WMDs at the time
of the U.S. invasion, he blamed a failure of intelligence, rather than the
White House. But soon after, CIA Director George Tenet stated publicly
that his agency never told President Bush that Iraq posed an imminent
threat to the U.S. Another key player in the pre-war drama, former U.N.
weapons inspector in Iraq Hans Blix, has also pointed fingers. He recently
compared president Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair to insincere
salesmen exaggerating the importance of the evidence of WMD they used to
promote their attack on Iraq.
One of the few officials with a working knowledge of Iraq's weapons
systems to publicly oppose the Bush administration's march to war was
Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer who served as a chief
U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 through 1998. In the years before
the war, Ritter challenged the president's assertion that Baghdad's
weapons systems posed a grave risk to the U.S and necessitated a war.
Between the Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Scott Ritter about the Capital
Hill blame game and his view of the commission appointed by Mr. Bush to
investigate U.S. intelligence failures.
Scott Ritter: What we’re looking at here is a very delicate political
ballet taking place. We have three players, I guess we should say four
players involved.
We have David Kay. If anybody for a second feels that David Kay’s
statements are that of an independent objective observer of the process,
they’re mistaken in the extreme. David Kay was handpicked, he’s an
ideologue; he’s not a technical expert. He’s an ideologue who was
handpicked by the Bush administration to do a job in Iraq that had nothing
to do with searching for the truth and had everything to do with spinning
facts to the political benefit of the Bush administration. This is why
David Kay for some time now has been saying that he was going to find
weapons, that there were weapons. And then finally in December of 2003 he
had to come clean and say, not only were there no weapons, but you weren’t
going to find any weapons. And now he opens up and he passes on the baton
to the next player. He says “Don’t blame the president, blame the
intelligence community.”
Enter George Tenet. Now George Tenet, the director of the CIA says, “Don’t
blame us, we never said that there was an imminent threat, that this is a
case of policymakers coming to extreme conclusions based upon the
intelligence data we did provide.” Now note there was no angry backlash
from the White House, on either what David Kay said or what George Tenet
said. In fact the president invited David Kay to a lunch. And the
president said George Tenet’s job is secure, he has nothing to fear.
The president organizes a commission to investigate the intelligence
failures, keeps it away from policy decision-making issues and then says,
“I’m going to give them the time they need to reach a conclusion.” Meaning
2005, after the fall 2004 presidential election.
The president succeeded in taking a very delicate issue, allowing the
perception of criticism to occur and then packaging it up and processing
it in a manner in which whatever conclusion is reached, if one is ever
reached, won’t come out until after the period of vulnerability for the
president. That is the election of November 2004. This is the political
charade that’s being perpetrated before the American public.
[listen to the rest of the interview at
http://www.btlonline.org/ritter022704.ram]
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Subject: [pjnews] Nader, The Lone Ranger Of Righteousness
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17920
The Lone Ranger Of Righteousness
Paul Loeb, AlterNet
February 22, 2004
It's my right to run.
This is Ralph Nader's core case in announcing his 2004 presidential
candidacy. Yes, Nader has a legal right to run. He also has a legal right
to donate $100,000 to the Republican Party and become a Bush Pioneer, but
that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
So much of Nader's career has been built on reminding us of our common
ties. It's wrong, he's argued, for companies to make unsafe cars, pollute
our air or pillage shared resources. Actions have consequences, he's
pointed out with persistence and eloquence.
Now, he's taking the opposite tack, fixating on his own absolute right to
do whatever he chooses, while branding those who've argued against his
running as contemptuous censors, who "want to block the American people
from having more choices and voices." This argument would seem familiar
coming from an Exxon executive. Coming from Ralph Nader, it marks a
fundamental shift from an ethic of responsibility to one of damn the
consequences, no matter how much populist precedent he tries to dress it
up with.
The reasons to defeat Bush escalate daily. The administration enacts
regressive tax cuts; wages pre-emptive wars and lies about their
justification; hacks away at civil liberties and appoints hard-right
judges to shut down challenges; and undermines the union movement. The
Bush administration attacks root structures of democracy by
disenfranchising tens of thousands of Florida voters, redistricting dozens
of Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan Congressional seats in raw power
grabs, and jamming Democratic phone banks in New Hampshire. It brands
those who oppose it as allies of terrorism.
That doesn't even count global warming, which (as sources from Fortune
Magazine to the New York Times and a Pentagon study have recently warned)
now brings the potential for melting polar ice caps to shutting down the
Gulf Stream and plunging Europe and northeastern North America into a
man-made ice age.
How can Nader know this and still run? He says he'll raise the otherwise
buried hard issues. He says he'll bring disenchanted citizens back into
politics. He offers Byzantine explanations of how he'll actually help
defeat George Bush by raising fresh subjects and approaches, opening up "a
second front of voters against the regime," and offering an alternative
for moderate Republicans. But he can raise the issues on his own, as he
has throughout his life. He can do it without critiques of the "two-party
duopoly" that may discourage some for voting for the Democratic nominee.
He can do it without offering the illusion that a purely symbolic vote
will do anything to get Bush out of office.
Nader seems to have forgotten his own historical contribution to a
different, more hopeful path, where he encouraged thousands of citizens to
join in challenging illegitimate actions of power. He once recognized that
progressive politics gathers its strength from the breadth of citizen
movements. Now he acts with an almost messianic fervor, a Lone Ranger
intent on holding onto his own moral purity whatever the pleas of his
compatriots. By denying the real choices we face, he betrays the best of
his legacy.
Will Nader's candidacy ultimately matter? Maybe not. Many of his
supporters have bolted. He may not get on the ballot in every state. But
if the 2004 election is as close as it was in 2000, his candidacy could
still have a devastating impact. The Nader vote made the difference in New
Hampshire and Florida, and his support in states like Oregon, Washington,
Wisconsin, New Mexico and even California forced Al Gore to divert time,
money and resources away from other close races he might well have
otherwise won.
Assuming the admittedly flawed John Kerry becomes the Democratic nominee,
progressives do not have to support him blindly. We can work to unite
historically separated progressive movements and keep raising core issues
no matter who's elected in November. But this election we're faced with as
critical a choice and challenge as we've experienced in our lifetime. It's
too bad that by prizing his own righteousness over the risks of his
actions, Ralph Nader has just made that challenge a little bit harder.
Paul Loeb is the author of "Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a
Cynical Time." This August, Basic Books will publish his new anthology on
political hope, The Impossible Will Take a Little While. See
http://www.paulloeb.org To receive Paul Loeb's articles and find out
about his new book, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message in the body of
the email: subscribe paulloeb-articlesedu
Please forward to anyone who might be interested.
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Subject: [pjnews] John Ashcroft's Subpoena Blitz
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see also:
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/commentary.aspx?id=12723
Nat Hentoff: Rewrite Patriot Act to protect freedom to protest
--------------------
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20040218_leavitt.html
John Ashcroft's Subpoena Blitz:
Targeting Lawyers, Universities, Peaceful Demonstrators, Hospitals, and
Patients, All With No Connection to Terrorism
By NOAH LEAVITT
Over the past two weeks, the Justice Department has issued two intensely
controversial sets of subpoenas. The first targeted peaceful demonstrators
in Iowa. The second targeted medical caregivers in Illinois, New York,
Pennsylvania and Michigan.
None of the targets of these subpoenas is alleged to have anything to do
with terrorism.
The Iowa Subpoenas: Information Related to An Anti-War Demonstration
The Ashcroft Justice Department has had its eye on peaceful demonstrators
and dissenters for quite some time. In May 2002, for instance, the
Attorney General announced the elimination of twenty-six-year-old
regulations that had prevented the FBI from monitoring "open to the
public" events held by domestic religious, political and civic
organizations unless it had specific cause for doing so.
These regulations had been specifically developed to counter the
COINTELPRO domestic spying program that had led to massive civil rights
era abuses during the 1960s and 70s. Now, these restrictions no longer
exist -- and such abuses may well be repeating themselves.
Indeed, in a November 23, 2003 article, the New York Times detailed how --
according to a leaked bureau memorandum -- the FBI was collecting
extensive information about, and tracking, antiwar demonstrators.
According to the Times, the memo "possessed no information that violent or
terrorist activities are being planned" as a part of major protests.
Still, even with no evidence of a link to terrorism, the surveillance
continued -- and likely continues to this day.
Then, on February 3 of this year, a local county deputy sheriff working
with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force served subpoenas ordering Drake
University in Des Moines, Iowa, to turn over documents relating to a
November 2003 anti-war conference.
The main theme of the conference had been to bring the Iowa National Guard
safely back from Iraq. Attendees included the director of the local
Catholic peace organization. The conference was followed the next day by a
peaceful demonstration at the Guard's training center.
The subpoena asked for all records of Drake University campus security
officers reflecting any observations made of the conference, including any
records relating to the people in charge, or to any of the attendees. In
addition, the subpoenas sought information about the local chapter of the
left-wing National Lawyers Guild, which had helped to organize the
conference.
This step, too, was ominous. In the 1950s and 60s, similar types of
"fishing expedition" subpoenas, as well as the threat of grand juries,
were often used to harass political dissenters and their lawyers, as well
as to threaten people with jail terms or other penalties if they did not
act as an informer on their colleagues. Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin commented
about the Drake situation, "I don't like the smell of it…It reminds me too
much of Vietnam when war protestors were rounded up, when grand juries
were convened to investigate people who were protesting the war."
(Moreover, under the USA PATRIOT Act, grand jury testimony, which is
supposedly secret, can now be shared with the CIA, the FBI and various
other law enforcement agencies whenever the government claims a possible
connection to an anti-terrorism investigation.)
Despite the lack of any terrorism connection, the government put a gag
order on the Drake staff before the subpoenas were withdrawn, which seems
to confirm that the government plans to conduct its surveillance under
cover of darkness. This is consistent with the USA PATRIOT Act, which
lowered standards for government surveillance, and created a crime of
"domestic terrorism," which many fear will be used to target organizations
that criticize federal policies.
Sadly, this is hardly the first time such legislation has been misused.
For instance, a September 27 New York Times article, which was based on a
DOJ report, detailed literally hundreds of non-terrorism cases for which
the USA PATRIOT Act had been used to prosecute drug cases, murder
investigations, money smuggling/laundering and document forgery.
When the Iowa subpoenas became public, stunned public interest law firms
said that, to their knowledge, they were the first of their kind issued
against a university in decades. A furious outcry from civil libertarians,
politicians and grassroots activists ensued.
In the end, the subpoenas were withdrawn, and the U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of Iowa replaced them with a much more narrowly tailored
request. For a moment, it seemed like the government had admitted that it
had overstepped its boundaries -- but then, just a few days later, another
set of equally abusive subpoenas was issued.
The New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Michigan Medical Subpoenas
Those subpoenas were directed to at least six major hospitals in New York
City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Ann Arbor. They demanded that the
hospitals turn over hundreds of medical records -- relating to what may be
dozens of patients who underwent certain types of abortions performed in
these facilities over the past three years.
Plainly, these subpoenas sought private, sensitive medical information.
They also attempted to second-guess doctors' judgment, and intrude into
the confidential relationship between doctor and patient.
Why were they issued? The Attorney General claims these records are needed
to defend litigation challenging the recently passed Partial Birth
Abortion Ban Act (PBABA). Apparently, the Justice Department wants to
show, specifically, that procedures doctors deemed medically necessary,
actually were not.
But in fact, this kind of evidence ought to be utterly irrelevant to the
litigation. The relevant evidence is the evidence that was before Congress
when it passed the PBABA -- not subsequent evidence the Justice Department
might later be able to dig up by violating patient privacy.
And in any event, the PBABA's central problems are constitutional -- not
evidentiary. By its plain language, the law conflicts directly with the
recent Supreme Court precedent of Stenberg v. Carhart -- which mandated
the very "health of the mother" exception that the PBABA omits.
The subpoenas have met with a mixed reaction in the federal courts. On one
hand, a federal judge in Manhattan allowed the subpoenas to go forward,
and said that he would impose penalties -- and even sanction the attorneys
-- if the medical records were not provided.
On the other hand, however, during the same week, the chief federal judge
in Chicago threw out the subpoena against the Northwestern University
Medical Center because he found that it was a significant intrusion on
patients' personal privacy. The Justice Department has said it may appeal.
Sacrificing Liberties Without Any Plausible Security Concern
Since 9/11, we have heard repeatedly, from the Bush Administration and
others, that we must sacrifice some of our civil liberties in order to
increase security, and protect our country against terrorism. This
argument has provided support for a variety of measures, including the USA
PATRIOT Act. And studies have shown that the majority of Americans have
accepted this argument: They are willing to give up some degree of privacy
and freedom if it is necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks.
But now, the Justice Department has made clear that it views its powers as
much greater than this. It won't just use its new powers to curtail
privacy and liberty when terrorism is suspected -- it will do so whenever
its political agenda makes it advantageous to do so.
The Administration has also insisted that peace-loving Americans who are
innocent of any wrongdoing have nothing to fear from these new laws and
regulations. But now, the Attorney General has sought information about
innocent persons -- who did nothing more than exercise their First
Amendment rights, or their right to obtain a legal abortion. (Remember,
even on the Attorney General's theory, the women who obtained abortions
did nothing wrong: It is the doctors' medical necessity judgment that is
at issue.)
The message could not be more clear: The government is not going to stop
at only investigating people connected to terrorism; it is willing to look
at the most personal aspects of anyone's life. And the guiding principle
won't be security; it will be politics.
And yet, this should not be a partisan issue. Suppose a Democratic
Administration were to use subpoenas to secretly investigate peaceful
pro-life demonstrators, using the USA PATRIOT Act, as if they were
terrorists. Or suppose a Democratic Administration were to use subpoenas
to check on pro-life women's medical histories, to see if there were
abortions in their pasts. Certainly, these actions would be equally
appalling and objectionable. In the end, this is not a political issue: It
is an issue about individual rights.
An Ever-Expanding Assault on Americans' Rights and Freedoms
The past two weeks will likely be recorded in history books as the moment
when President Bush's homeland security regime crossed the line, and
significantly intruded upon the lives of law-abiding, innocent Americans.
It may also come to be known as the moment when people living in the U.S.
suddenly realized the extensive powers that the government can exercise
against anyone, regardless of any connection to national security --
especially now, with the advent of the USA PATRIOT Act.
In his recent book, Enemy Aliens, Georgetown Law Professor David Cole
describes how, over U.S. history, violations of U.S. citizens' rights have
often been foreshadowed by violations of the rights of non-citizens.
Indeed, according to Cole, the expansion of rights-violations from
non-citizens to citizens has been "virtually inevitable."
Cole worries that we may be in another such cycle now, which began with
the restrictions of the rights of Arab-Americans and Muslims after
September 11 and may be spreading to wider sectors of American society.
And the recent subpoenas against peaceful demonstrators and medical
providers seem to be playing out Cole's fears.
In 1976, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas wrote: "As night fall does
not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a
twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such
twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however
slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
The federal government has repeatedly promised -- and Americans have
generally believed -- that the government would violate civil liberties
only if necessary to pursue Al Qaeda and other terrorist threats. But the
events of the past two weeks have proven that that simply isn't true.
It's not accused Al Qaeda cell members who are the targets here. Instead,
the targets are universities, peaceful protesters, civil rights attorneys,
hospitals, and patients. It is no overstatement, now, to say to all
Americans: Tomorrow, it could be you -- your medical records; your civic
organization meeting; your protest rally. The time to protest is now --
before it's too late.
________________
Noah Leavitt, an attorney and author, is the Advocacy Director of the
Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. The views expressed here do not
necessarily represent those of his organization. He can be contacted at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: [pjnews] C.I.A. Admits It Didn't Give Weapon Data to the U.N.
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see also:
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/022404.html
Is What's Good For Boeing and Halliburton Good For America?
New Data Shows How Contractors Are Cashing In On War On Terror
-----------------
The New York Times
21 February 2004
C.I.A. Admits It Didn't Give Weapon Data to the U.N.
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 - The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that
it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105
sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the
most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons.
The acknowledgment, in a Jan. 20 letter to Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of
Michigan, contradicts public statements before the war by top Bush
administration officials.
Both George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza
Rice, the national security adviser, said the United States had briefed
United Nations inspectors on all of the sites identified as "high value and
moderate value" in the weapons hunt.
The contradiction is significant because Congressional opponents of the war
were arguing a year ago that the United Nations inspectors should be given
more time to complete their search before the United States and its allies
began the invasion. The White House, bolstered by Mr. Tenet, insisted that
it was fully cooperating with the inspectors, and at daily briefings the
White House issued assurances that the administration was providing the
inspectors with the best information possible.
In a telephone interview on Friday, Senator Levin said he now believed that
Mr. Tenet had misled Congress, which he described as "totally unacceptable."
Senior administration officials said Friday night that Ms. Rice had relied
on information provided by intelligence agencies when she assured Senator
Levin, in a letter on March 6, 2003, that "United Nations inspectors have
been briefed on every high or medium priority weapons of mass destruction,
missile and U.A.V.-related site the U.S. intelligence community has
identified." Mr. Tenet said much the same thing in testimony on Feb. 12,
2003.
U.A.V.'s are unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly called drones.
Asked about the contradiction between the C.I.A.'s current account and Ms.
Rice's letter, the spokesman for the national security council, Sean
McCormack, said, "Dr. Rice provided a good-faith answer to Senator Levin
based on the best information that was made available to her."
This is not the first time the White House and the C.I.A. have engaged in
finger-pointing about the quality of the intelligence that formed the basis
of administration statements.
Last summer, Dr. Rice noted that Mr. Tenet had not read over the State of
the Union address in which Mr. Bush said Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy
uranium from Africa, a statement the White House later acknowledged was
based on faulty intelligence. That began a prolonged period of tension
between the agency and the White House that has never fully abated, and may
be inflamed by the C.I.A.'s acknowledgment to Senator Levin.
The letter to Senator Levin, from Stanley M. Moskowitz, the agency's
director of Congressional affairs, disclosed that the agency had shared
information on only 84 of the 105 suspected priority weapons sites.
Mr. Moskowitz did not directly account for the sites omitted. But he cited
an earlier letter from the agency to the senator that said the agency had
sought to help the United Nations by providing "the intelligence that we
judged would be fruitful in their search for prohibited material and
activities in Iraq."
In a letter to Senator Levin on May 23, 2003, Mr. Tenet had also said that
"in hindsight, we could have been more precise in the words we chose to
describe which of the high and medium sites that we gave" to United Nations
inspectors.
Mr. Tenet added in that letter, "We were focusing on the intelligence we had
that we believed would lead to fruitful efforts by the inspectors, rather
than trying to specifically decipher our `list of lists' and the process by
which we shared information."
An intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity described
Senator Levin as "obsessed with this particular issue" and said the C.I.A.
had done nothing inappropriate. "We provided the best information that we
had, and the notion that we held back information that would have been
useful is just absurd," the official said.
Mr. Moskowitz suggested that the sites about which the C.I.A. had not
provided information were already known to United Nations inspectors.
The acknowledgment by the agency came after more than a year of questions
from Senator Levin. He said he believed that the Bush administration had
withheld the information because it wanted to persuade the American people
that the United Nations-led hunt for weapons in Iraq had run its full course
before the war.
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush's Budgets Make Us The Irresponsible Generation
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--> If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not
repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to
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http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-02/24sklar.cfm
Bush's Budgets Make Us The Irresponsible Generation
By Holly Sklar
If President Bush's new budget passes, we won't need a special commission
to uncover its faulty intelligence. The budgetary weapons of destruction
are real, homemade and visible.
While the ricin found in the Senate crystallizes the bioterror threat
evident since the deadly anthrax mailings, Bush's budget excluded funding
requested by the Postal Service for biodetection technology. It also cuts
Centers for Disease Control programs and aid to hospitals to prepare for
bioterror attacks.
A 2002 report on homeland security, published by the Council on Foreign
Relations, warned that "America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent
and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack" and "America's own
ill-prepared response could hurt its people to a much greater extent than
any single attack by a terrorist." A follow-up 2003 report found that
emergency responders are "drastically underfunded" and still "dangerously
unprepared."
The Bush budget slashes first responder assistance as well as local law
enforcement programs, ensuring that the massive layoffs of police,
firefighters and emergency medical workers since 9/11 will continue. The
budget also cuts air traffic control modernization and leaves gaping holes
in security at nuclear, chemical and port facilities.
While soldiers wounded in Iraq face painful delays for treatment at home,
Bush's budget shortchanges veterans' healthcare. Veterans of Foreign Wars
Commander Edward Banas calls the funding "a disgrace and a sham."
While 44 million Americans have no health insurance, Bush's budget cuts
Medicaid and child health coverage, and gives billions in subsidies to
HMOs and drug companies in the guise of prescription drug benefits for
seniors.
Millions of Americans are unemployed and underemployed, and many
communities are in distress. Bush's budget slashes the Small Business
Administration, community development, empowerment zones, brownsfields
redevelopment, vocational training, adult education, and assistance for
workers dislocated by NAFTA.
In the face of rapidly growing threats from global warming and other
environmental hazards, Bush cuts the budget for the Environmental
Protection Agency and rewards coal and oil industry lobbyists.
While tax cuts for the top 1 percent of Americans will average nearly
$60,000 this year, Bush's budget reduces housing, childcare, education and
other assistance for low-income families and leaves millions of children
behind.
In the year 2000, the federal budget was balanced without borrowing the
surpluses in the Social Security or Medicare Trust Funds. Bush turned the
Social Security "lock box" into a jackpot for the rich.
Through years of hefty payroll taxes, we purposely built up surpluses in
the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds needed for the Baby Boomers'
retirement and beyond. Would you give your retirement savings away to
wealthy neighbors? That's basically what Bush did.
Bush took our common retirement savings, paid disproportionately by low-
and middle-income Americans since the Social Security tax is capped--now
at $87,900--and gave it away as tax cuts for the wealthy.
Since January 2001, a projected 10-year federal budget surplus of $5
trillion has become projected deficits of more than $4 trillion. Tax cuts
are the major factor, reports the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
"Federal revenues fell to their lowest level as a share of the economy
since 1959, a time when Medicare, Medicaid, most federal education aid,
most environmental programs...did not exist."
"Restoring Fiscal Sanity," a new Brookings Institution study, warns that
slower economic growth and higher interest rates caused by excessive
deficits will mean that by 2014, the average family's income will be an
estimated $1,800 lower; a family with a 30-year, $250,000 mortgage would
pay an additional $2,000 a year in interest.
Between 2001 and 2010, the already enacted tax cuts will cost more than $3
trillion if they are made permanent, with 60 percent of the benefits in
2010 going to the top 5 percent of Americans.
The top 1 percent will get tax cuts averaging $122,329 each in 2010,
reports Citizens for Tax Justice. Bush wants even more tax cuts favoring
the richest Americans.
Looking back years from now, will our children and grandchildren think we
acted with their best interests in mind? Or will they know us as the
Irresponsible Generation, and pay for our mistakes long after we're gone?
_______________
Holly Sklar is coauthor of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work
for All Of Us" (http://www.raisethefloor.org). She can be reached at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: [pjnews] Dying of neglect: The state of Iraq's children's hospitals
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The Independent
http://snipurl.com/4qh9
21 February 2004
Dying of neglect: the state of Iraq's children's hospitals
The wards are filthy, the sanitation shocking, the infections lethal.
Sewage drips from the roof above cots of premature babies. This is the
state of Baghdad's top children's hospital, 10 months after the fall of
Saddam
by Justin Huggler
In Iraq's hospitals, children are dying because of shockingly poor
sanitation and a shortage of medical equipment. In Baghdad's premier
children's hospital, Al-Iskan, sewage drips from the roof of the premature
babies' ward, leaking from waste pipes above.
In the leukaemia ward, the lavatories overflow at times, spreading filthy
water across the floor that carries potentially lethal infection.
Rubbish is piled on the stairs and in the corridors: old broken bits of
machinery, discarded toilet cisterns, babies' cots filled with mountains
of unwanted paperwork. The fire escape is blocked with discarded razor
wire.
Nearby lie blankets still black with the blood of Iraqi soldiers wounded
during the war - for months, they must have been fetid breeding grounds
for disease.
This is the reality of life in Iraq under American occupation. Ten months
after the fall of Saddam, the invasion that was supposed to have
transformed the lives of ordinary Iraqis has done little for the children
in Al-Iskan Hospital.
Of the billions of dollars the US is spending in Iraq, little seems to
have found its way to Al-Iskan. In a country that sits on top of the
second largest proven oil reserves in the world, children are dying in
hospital beds because of a shortage of such basic equipment as oxygen
cylinders.
The hospital is so short-staffed that the children's mothers have to do
the work of nurses: there simply aren't enough nurses to go around. There
is no hospital smell at Al-Iskan, because there is no disinfectant. We
found a cleaner washing the floor, sprinkling meagre drops of water from a
bucket as he went. Wasn't there any disinfectant, we asked. Not even soap,
he answered.
"We have our own epidemic of diarrhoea in the hospital every two to three
weeks," says Dr Ali Egab, a harried young doctor who stops to give advice
to nurses as he shows us from ward to ward. "In December there was a
serious epidemic of bronchitis in Baghdad," says Dr Egab. "The hospital
was so crowded we had three children in each bed. We had to put some of
the children on the floor."
With the overcrowding, cross-infection is a serious problem. "We cannot
keep different types of cases apart. All sorts of infections are put
together. And often, a patient arrives with a chest infection and ends up
getting a stomach infection as well," says Dr Egab.
This sort of secondary infection is the leading cause of death in many of
Iraq's hospitals. According to hospital statistics, the rate of secondary
infections in Iraq is a shocking 80 per cent.
And yet half of Al-Iskan hospital is a building site. Entire wards that
could alleviate the overcrowding are empty shells, with puddles of rancid
water gathering on the floor A programme of renovation was abandoned at
the time of the American invasion, and nothing has been done since.
Al-Iskan used to be called Saddam Hussein Central Children's Hospital. It
was supposed to be the premier children's hospital for all of Iraq, but
the staff say it was never any better than it is now.
The Americans inherited an Iraqi health system in a nightmarish state, the
product of a combination of years of crippling sanctions imposed by the
West, and criminal neglect by the Saddam regime.
But the Americans have had 10 months to improve things, and at Al-Iskan
children are still dying because of the dire conditions.
Mohammed Hussein is a new arrival in the leukaemia ward. The two-year-old
boy is a bad case: the disease has attacked his central nervous system and
his face is twitching with convulsions. But in the ward he has joined,
leukaemia will not be the only threat to him.
The success rate in treating leukaemia in children is good in the West.
But at Al-Iskan, the leukaemia ward loses five or six patients a week,
according to Dr Egab - a very high death rate. Secondary infection is even
more of a risk for leukaemia patients, who have lowered immunity, and
ideally should be kept in isolation. Here they are packed in six to a
room.
According to Dr Egab, patients often come here to be treated for
leukaemia, and end up dying of stomach infections.
That probably has something to do with the filthy toilets from which the
stench is spreading across the ward. There are just three toilets for 30
patients, and they are crusted dark with filth. The ceiling tiles have
gone, and a constant shower of dust falls from the exposed pipes above.
Under the sink damp sandbags are slowly rotting.
"The doctors are good to us but we are suffering, especially because of
the water," says Kadhimiya Murdan, watching over her 12-year-old Doa,
whose toes are curled with pain. "There is only one tap, and it is
broken." The staff have to send to other wards for clean water. In the
corner of the ward, ten-year-old Zahra Jabar has a temperature, and her
mother Henna Abbas needs to sponge her with constant supplies of water to
keep her cool.
At least these are the cool winter months. The hospital's air conditioning
system has been broken for months, and in the summer the staff had to
battle to keep patients cool amid outside temperatures in excess of 50C.
Iraq has a high incidence of leukaemia in children and it is rising. That
has been blamed on the use of depleted uranium by the US in the first Gulf
War, and many of the cases at Al-Iskan came from areas that suffered heavy
bombardment in 1991. But despite the high incidence, there are shortages
of important equipment.
The hospital is short of intravenous sets with filters for blood
transfusions, and patients often have to be sent out to buy their own on
the black market. Supplies of chemotherapy drugs can be erratic. Though
children patients are now given priority, sometimes the types of drugs in
stock change, and changing the drug in the middle of treatment can be
damaging.
Drug shortages are a serious problem in all of Iraq's hospitals. One
doctor treating adult leukaemia patients at Baghdad Teaching Hospital told
us he frequently had to send patients out to buy their own drugs on the
black market, where they can be charged $300 for drugs that would cost the
hospital $30. When they get back, he usually discovers from the label that
the drugs they have been sold were stolen from his hospital in the first
place.
There are other shortages at Al-Iskan. The hospital has only one nebuliser
for asthma patients, and if two children suffer a severe attack at the
same time, they have to share it, which means one could die. Often,
doctors have to make do with giving oxygen to asthma patients instead.
But the hospital is short of oxygen cylinders, too. You can hear the
oxygen cylinders coming at Al-Iskan, an ominous metallic rolling sound.
The staff have no trolleys to carry them safely, so they roll the
potentially explosive cylinders along the floor, bumping as they go. "To
us, this has become a routine," laughs one of the porters."No one worries
about it any more."
In the premature babies' ward, says Dr Ban al-Raaby, the shortage of
oxygen is so acute that they often have to turn patients away. The rate of
premature births in Iraq is soaring, fuelled, say doctors, by the stress
of the war and the subsequent security situation on mothers. Dr Raaby
stands over 21-day-old Hussein Hadi, who has developed septicaemia, an
infection of the blood. "We are trying to do what we can with the
facilities we have, but the situation ... well, it's not like other
places," says Dr Raaby.
Sometimes the babies get these infections inside the ward because of the
poor sanitation, says the doctor, sometimes they get it from unhygienic
conditions at home, or home deliveries by unqualified midwives, who cut
the umbilical cord with unsterilised instruments.
Outside the hospitals conditions are even more dire. A report by
Physicians for Human Rights from southern Iraq found that at local
maternity clinics, caesarean sections were being performed with
unsterilised scalpels, needles were being reused, and staff did not even
have clean water to wash the mother before she gave birth.
"In the hospitals, you're seeing the sickest 20 per cent of the
populations," says Dr Lynn Amowitz, of Physicians for Human Rights. "But
the health care for people who don't need to be hospitalised is even
worse." Dr Amowitz singles out the lack of facilities for pregnant women.
Local clinics are not supplied with specialised drugs used to treat
complications in childbirth. The occupation authorities inherited this
problem from the Saddam regime, which spent very little on women's health.
But Dr Amowitz says the Americans have no plan to improve the situation.
"The problem is that there is no effort on the part of the coalition
provisional authority to think about a long-term public health policy,"
she says. "The sort of people who have the expertise in this, the NGOs,
the US Agency for International Development, have not been involved in
Iraq. The US Department of Defence decided they're going to do everything
and, well, they're not used to building things." As far as hospitals are
concerned, Dr Amowitz says she did see a lot of improvements in some local
hospitals in the south. "But it turned out it was all being done by the
Shia clerics who'd come back from exile, not the coalition," she says.
Back at Al-Iskan, laundry is drying on a line in the premature babies'
ward. The ward is so short of nurses that Dr Raaby and the other doctors
have been teaching the mothers to carry out basic tasks. But teaching them
the importance of hygiene is hard. "We cannot trust them. We try to do
everything ourselves," says Dr Raaby.
"We are waiting for the Americans to do what they said they would," she
says. "They made so many promises, such a long list. We are waiting for
them to keep those promises."
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Subject: [pjnews] UK Spies Bugged UN Chief, Claims Claire Short
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0226-03.htm
UN Rocked by Shock Claims on Annan Spying
--------------
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0226-01.htm
Published on Thursday, February 26, 2004 by the lndependent/UK
UK Spies Bugged UN Chief, Claims Short
by John Deane
British agents spied on the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in
the run-up to the Iraqi war, the former International Development
Secretary Clare Short claimed today.
Ms Short - who quit the Cabinet in protest against the war - made the
claim while being interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today program about the
implications of the collapse of the case against GCHQ whistleblower
Katharine Gun.
Asked whether British agencies had been involved in spying activities
against Mr Annan, Ms Short said: "I know, I have seen transcripts of Kofi
Annan's conversations.
"Indeed, I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking
'Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he
and I are saying'."
Ms Short was asked whether she believed that British spies had been
instructed to carry out operations within the United Nations on people
such as Kofi Annan.
She replied: "Yes, absolutely."
Ms Short was asked whether she knew about such operations when she was in
Government.
She said: "Absolutely, I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of
his conversations."
Asked whether she believed that was legal, she said: "I don't know, I
presume so. It is odd, but I don't know about the legalities."
Asked about the Gun case, Ms Short said on the Today program: "This
centers on the Attorney General's (Lord Goldsmith) advice that war was
legal under resolution 1441, which was published, but was very very odd.
"The more I think about it, the more fishy I think it was. It came very,
very late. He came to the Cabinet the day Robin Cook resigned, sat in
Robin's seat, two sides of A4, no discussion permitted.
"We know already that the Foreign Office legal advisers had disagreed and
one of them had said there was no authority for war."
Ms Short went on: "My own suspicion is that the Attorney General has
stopped this prosecution because part of her (Mrs Gun's) defense was to
question the legality and that would have brought his advice into the
public domain again and there was something fishy about the way in which
he said war was legal."
She added: "The major issue here is the legal authority and whether the
Attorney General had to be persuaded at the last minute, against the
advice of one of the Foreign Office legal advisers who then resigned, that
he could give legal authority for war and whether there had to be an
exaggeration of the threat of the use of chemical and biological weapons
to persuade him that there was legal authority.
"I think the good old British democracy should keep scrutinizing and
pressing to get the truth out.
"The tragedy is that Iraq is a disastrous mess. Ten thousand Iraqis have
died, American troops are dying, some of our troops have died, the Middle
East is more angry than ever.
"I'm afraid that the sort of deceit on the route to war was linked to the
lack of preparation for afterwards and the chaos and suffering that
continues, so it won't go away, will it?"
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Subject: [pjnews] Action: Tell Congress to Extend 9/11
=?iso-8859-1?q?Commission?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=92s_Deadline_?=
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see also:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5756.htm
C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11
----------------
http://www.911independentcommission.org/
Action Alert:
Tell Congress to Extend 9/11 Commission’s Deadline
Three weeks ago, thanks to public pressure from 9/11 families and many
other Americans who support the quest for the truth, the White House
reversed course and issued a public statement agreeing to a two-month
extension to the 9/11 Commission’s deadline for issuing its final report.
Unfortunately, this statement appears to be a publicity stunt, because in
the past three weeks there has been no evidence that the White House has
done anything to make this promise a reality. The White House’s allies in
Congress, including Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert, continue to
oppose any extension.
If an extension of at least two months isn’t enacted by Congress, the
Commission will not be able to finish its work. The Commission will have
to cancel important hearings and interviews and will not have time to
analyze critical documents. The result will be an incomplete report that
is likely to leave answerable questions unanswered and fail to provide a
full list of recommendations for preventing future attacks.
We need your help to convince Congress to pass legislation giving the
Commission an extension.
You can do two things:
1) Send a fax to Scott Palmer, Rep. Hastert’s Chief of Staff, at fax
number 202-225-0697, and tell him you want Rep. Hastert to support an
extension of the Commission’s deadline. If you don’t have access to a fax
machine, you can call Mr. Palmer at 202-225-0600 or 202-225-2976.
2) Contact your own representative and senators urging them to support the
bills that would grant the Commission an extension: H.R. 3771 in the House
and S. 2040 in the Senate. For contact information, go to the Web site
http://www.house.gov/writerep . You can e-mail your senators by going to
http://www.senate.gov, choosing your state from the pull down menu, and
clicking on the Web forms of the two senators.
This matter requires urgent attention, because the Commission must know
soon whether it will receive an extension if it is to plan effectively for
its last few months of work.
Thank you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Family Steering Committee Statement and Questions
Regarding the 9/11 Commission Interview with President Bush
February 16, 2004
The Family Steering Committee believes that President Bush should provide
sworn public testimony to the full ten-member panel of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States . Collectively, the
Commissioners are responsible for fulfilling the Congressional mandate.
Therefore, each Commissioner must have full access to the testimony of all
individuals and the critical information that will enable informed
decisions and recommendations.
Before an audience of the American people, the Commission must ask
President Bush in sworn testimony, the following questions:
1. As Commander-in-Chief on the morning of 9/11, why didn’t you return
immediately to Washington, D.C. or the National Military Command Center
once you became aware that America was under attack? At specifically what
time did you become aware that America was under attack? Who informed you
of this fact?
2. On the morning of 9/11, who was in charge of our country while you were
away from the National Military Command Center? Were you informed or
consulted about all decisions made in your absence?
3. What defensive action did you personally order to protect our nation
during the crisis on September 11th? What time were these orders given,
and to whom? What orders were carried out? What was the result of such
orders? Were any such orders not carried out?
4. In your opinion, why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack
on our own soil?
5. U.S. Navy Captain Deborah Loewer, the Director of the White House
Situation Room, informed you of the first airliner hitting Tower One of
the World Trade Center before you entered the Emma E. Booker Elementary
School in Sarasota, Florida. Please explain the reason why you decided to
continue with the scheduled classroom visit, fifteen minutes after
learning the first hijacked airliner had hit the World Trade Center.
6. Is it normal procedure for the Director of the White House Situation
Room to travel with you? If so, please cite any prior examples of when
this occurred. If not normal procedure, please explain the circumstances
that led to the Director of the White House Situation Room being asked to
accompany you to Florida during the week of September 11th.
7. What plan of action caused you to remain seated after Andrew Card
informed you that a second airliner had hit the second tower of the World
Trade Center and America was clearly under attack? Approximately how long
did you remain in the classroom after Card’s message?
8. At what time were you made aware that other planes were hijacked in
addition to Flight 11 and Flight 175? Who notified you? What was your
course of action as Commander-in-Chief of the United States?
9. Beginning with the transition period between the Clinton administration
and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information (either
verbal or written) about terrorists, possible attacks and targets, did you
receive from any source?
This would include briefings or communications from
• Out-going Clinton officials
• CIA, FBI, NSA, DoD and other intelligence agencies
• Foreign intelligence, governments, dignitaries or envoys
• National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
• Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar
10. Specifically, what did you learn from the August 6, 2001, PDB about
the terrorist threat that was facing our nation? Did you request any
follow-up action to take place? Did you request any further report be
developed and/or prepared?
11. As Commander-in-Chief, from May 1, 2001 until September 11, 2001, did
you receive any information from any intelligence agency official or agent
that UBL was planning to attack this nation on its own soil using
airplanes as weapons, targeting New York City landmarks during the week of
September 11, 2001 or on the actual day of September 11, 2001?
12. What defensive measures did you take in response to pre-9/11 warnings
from eleven nations about a terrorist attack, many of which cited an
attack in the continental United States? Did you prepare any directives in
response to these actions? If so, with what results?
13. As Commander-in-Chief from May 1, 2001 until September 11, 2001, did
you or any agent of the United States government carry out any
negotiations or talks with UBL, an agent of UBL, or al-Qaeda? During that
same period, did you or any agent of the United States government carry
out any negotiations or talks with any foreign government, its agents, or
officials regarding UBL? If so, what resulted?
14. Your schedule for September 11, 2001 was in the public domain since
September 7, 2001. The Emma E. Booker School is only five miles from the
Bradenton Airport, so you, and therefore the children in the classroom,
might have been a target for the terrorists on 9/11. What was the
intention of the Secret Service in allowing you to remain in the Emma E.
Booker Elementary School, even though they were aware America was under
attack?
15. Please explain why you remained at the Sarasota, Florida, Elementary
School for a press conference after you had finished listening to the
children read, when as a terrorist target, your presence potentially
jeopardized the lives of the children?
16. What was the purpose of the several stops of Air Force One on
September 11th? Was Air Force One at any time during the day of September
11th a target of the terrorists? Was Air Force One’s code ever breached on
September 11th?
17. Was there a reason for Air Force One lifting off without a military
escort, even after ample time had elapsed to allow military jets to
arrive?
18. What prompted your refusal to release the information regarding
foreign sponsorship of the terrorists, as illustrated in the inaccessible
28 redacted pages in the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry Report? What
actions have you personally taken since 9/11 to thwart foreign sponsorship
of terrorism?
19. Who approved the flight of the bin Laden family out of the United
States when all commercial flights were grounded, when there was time for
only minimal questioning by the FBI, and especially, when two of those
same individuals had links to WAMY, a charity suspected of funding
terrorism? Why were bin Laden family members granted that special
privilege—a privilege not available to American families whose loved ones
were killed on 9/11?
20. Please explain why no one in any level of our government has yet been
held accountable for the countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?
21. Please comment on the fact that UBL’s profile on the FBI’s Ten Most
Wanted Fugitives poster does not include the 9/11 attacks. To your
knowledge, when was the last time any agent of our government had contact
with UBL? If prior to 9/11, specifically what was the date of that contact
and what was the context of said meeting.
22. Do you continue to maintain that Saddam Hussein was linked to al
Qaeda? What proof do you have of any connection between al-Qaeda and the
Hussein regime?
23. Which individuals, governments, agencies, institutions, or groups may
have benefited from the attacks of 9/11? Please state specifically how you
think they have benefited.
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=?iso-8859-1?q?=91suicide_report=92?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=3F?=
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/4s2k
As many as 1 of every 10 soldiers from the war on terror evacuated to the
Army's biggest hospital in Europe was sent there for mental problems...
-----------------
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4333595/
Waiting For Answers: Is the Army sandbagging its anticipated ‘suicide
report’?
By T. Trent Gegax
Newsweek
Military members and their families are asking the same question: Where is
the Army’s so-called suicide report? It’s the work of the 12-member Mental
Health Advisory Team, commissioned by the top generals in charge of the
Iraq war after a string of battlefield suicides. It was initially due out
last Thanksgiving. Then it was supposed to be released in early February.
Now, there’s talk that it’s been shelved indefinitely.
Is the Army deliberately sitting on the report? Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s
just focusing on other priorities in rebuilding Iraq and preparing to hand
back sovereignty to its citizens. No one would argue these aren’t massive
missions. And, to be sure, the vast majority of soldiers, even those
exposed to the most grotesque and horrific combat trauma, may experience
only mild post-traumatic stress disorder that requires minor counseling
before they bounce back. But evidence suggests that a wave of
combat-fatigued soldiers—as many as 20 percent of the 130,000 troops in
the field—not seen since the aftermath of the Vietnam War is about to come
crashing onto American shores.
Late last year, publicity about the spate of suicides among U.S. troops in
Iraq prompted Gen. John Abizaid and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top
commanders in Iraq, to look for causes. But the report has been complete
for months. Yet the colonel in charge of the study can’t convince either
general to allow him to brief them on the findings, which, Pentagon
sources told NEWSWEEK recently, are not exactly earth-shattering. It says
a total of 19 soldiers serving in the Iraq campaign committed suicide in
2003, a number that officials acknowledge is “above average.” What’s more
interesting is what the study ignores. NEWSWEEK has learned that it did
not touch on the issue of Lariam, the anti-malaria drug that causes
psychotic episodes in a small percentage of people who take it. It had
been cited as a potential cause of three prominent murder-suicides at Ft.
Bragg, N.C., where soldiers returned from combat in Afghanistan and killed
their wives. The Army issued a report dismissing Lariam, but the
investigation was cursory and less than conclusive, according to a senior
officer at the Army Medical Command in San Antonio, Tex.
Another problem: According to Army sources in Iraq and in the United
States, the report’s findings underplay the state of mind of soldiers in
Iraq. In a development common to the U.S. armed forces, the colonel in
charge of the research team was told what he wanted to hear by savvy
officers, according to a source close to the investigation. A few members
of combat stress teams have soft-pedaled the extent of the problem,
according to soldiers in Iraq. “The colonel was schmoozed by the officers
reporting to him,” says NEWSWEEK’s source. Official Army spokespeople did
not return calls for comment.
This could develop into a problem for the Army. For one, it could present
the Army with a public relations problem down the road, if not around the
next bend. Many of the soldiers serving in Iraq have begun rotating home
after 12 to 24-month tours of duty. It’s unclear what kind of
psychological fallout there’ll be from a war that still divides the U.S.
public. “There’s very good likelihood of a lot more PTSD,” than the
military saw after the 1991 Gulf War, says Dr. Brett Litz, associate
director of the National Center for PTSD. The reasons are apparent. The
Iraq occupation is an extended guerrilla war, without a front or rear.
Countless civilians have been killed and maimed. “There’s a larger sense
of horror from the use of overwhelming force and seeing civilians suffer,”
Litz says. “That can leave an enduring mark on men and women.” Add to that
the mission’s large number of citizen-soldiers in the Army Reserve and
National Guard, who are returning to curious communities who can’t relate
to their experiences.
Ultimately, the Army’s crew of mental health professionals may be too
small. It has about 110 psychiatrists, 130 social workers and 120
psychologists for its approximately 500,000 active-duty soldiers. “That’s
pretty bare bones,” said Col. Rene Robichaux, the former chief of the
Department of Social Work at Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio,
Tex., who retired Jan. 1. And what about the soldiers’ families back home
in garrison? “We don’t have enough psychiatry resources for family members
either,” Robichaux said. That could be a problem for stressed-out husbands
and wives who return to the arms, and frayed nerves, of their loved ones
after a year away from home.
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Subject: [pjnews] Haiti Backgrounder: Some Questions and Answers
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Published on Tuesday, February 24, 2004 by http://www.Americas.org
Background on Haiti: Some Questions and Answers
by Mary Turck
As violent gangs invade Haitian towns, murdering police and opening jails,
news reports repeat several catch phrases as if everyone knew their
meaning. In fact, those catch phrases-from "the opposition" to "flawed (or
fraudulent) elections of 2000"-are laden with political and historical
freight.
What happened in the 2000 elections?
Two elections took place in 2000. The first elections, in May, saw full
participation by a range of political parties, including the Lavalas party
of now-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In the May elections of
legislators and municipal government authorities, Lavalas won by a
landslide. Observers from the Organization of American States did not
fault the conduct of the elections. However, in eight cases, the electoral
council seated Senators who had won by a plurality of the votes, not by an
absolute majority. Because these eight Senators were Lavalas party
candidates, the opposition immediately cried fraud.
Knowing they would lose the presidential election in November 2000, the
opposition Democratic Convergence refused to participate. They cited the
eight contested senatorial elections as "proof" that the presidential vote
would be rigged. In November, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was
elected.
The OAS tried, in more than 20 missions, to arrange new elections or
compromise between the Democratic Convergence and the government.
President Aristide persuaded seven of the eight senators to resign,
clearing the way for new elections. Aristide agreed to OAS proposals for
new elections. The Democratic Convergence did not.
In January, the terms of all legislators elected in 2000 expired. The
opposition refused to allow new legislative elections, so now there is no
legislature.
The opposition has consistently demanded-and continues to demand-that
Aristide immediately leave the presidency, without completing his elected
term of office, and they be put in charge of a non-elected "transition"
government. They will accept nothing less. They want power, but not
elections. They know they could not win elections, as they never have had
anywhere near majority support.
Most recently - on February 21 - Aristide unconditionally accepted yet
another international peace proposal, this one calling for power-sharing
with the opposition.
Who is in the opposition?
The political opposition is headed by the Democratic Convergence, which is
primarily led by the Haitian business elite. Other opposition groups, such
as the Group of 184, include students, teachers, and even former Aristide
supporters who have become disillusioned with his government's
performance. But the political opposition, while it turns out
demonstrators in the streets of the capital, is not the power behind the
current armed "rebellion" in Haiti.
The leadership of the armed rebels is drawn from criminal gangs and from
the disbanded army, which was responsible for the 1991-94 reign of terror
that took over the government and killed more than 5,000 Haitians. Former
leaders of that era, some of whom have been tried in absentia and
convicted of massacres and other crimes, have returned from their hiding
places to lead the armed rebels. They include former military death-squad
leader and convicted murderer Louis-Jodel Chamblain and former police
chief and coup plotter Guy Phillippe.
How did Aristide become president and what has he done?
Aristide, a populist, leftist, charismatic leader of the poor, was first
elected president in 1991, by a landslide. Within a few months, he was
deposed and replaced by a brutal military government, whose leaders now
seek to return to power. In 1994, U.S. and U.N. forces restored Aristide
to the presidency. Haiti had been the poorest country in the hemisphere
before 1991. After the coup, its economy was further destroyed. Yet
international economic aid, promised for Haiti's rebuilding, came in tiny
trickles rather than in the needed flood.
When Aristide's first term ended, he acceded to the constitutional
prohibition against consecutive presidential terms, even though he had
lived in exile for most of his first term. The next president, also a
candidate of Aristide's Lavalas party, was René Preval. During Preval's
1996-2001 term, the opposition continued to do what it does so well-to
oppose any and all government initiatives and sabotage progress. In 2000,
Aristide was again elected president, and he began his current five-year
term in 2001.
Seizing upon the excuse offered by opposition criticism of the 2000
elections, the United States orchestrated a suspension of international
aid. The small amounts of aid that have been doled out have been
conditioned on adoption of neo-liberal economic measures, such as cutting
education spending and ending fuel subsidies. These measures are anathema
to Aristide's political base, and his reluctant acquiescence in them has
alienated some of that base. Haiti remains divided between the desperately
poor farmers and slum-dwellers and a small elite running export-import
businesses and light industry.
Who are the police and who are the "thugs"?
After 1994, the Haitian military was disbanded, but not disarmed. A small
police force-5,000 officers for a country of eight million- was trained
with U.S. and international assistance. They are outgunned by criminal
gangs and underpaid by the government. Today they are a prime target of
the rebels. In Hinche, as in other towns, the rebels' first move was to
attack the police station, kill the police, and open the jail.
The opposition speaks repeatedly of "Aristide's thugs" or the chiméres. It
is true that Aristide supporters, including "thugs" recruited from the
slums, have targeted opposition demonstrators and organizations that have
taken anti-Aristide positions, including unions and students.
The opposition also claims that the rebels are former Aristide supporters,
including members of the "Cannibal Army." This claim is, at best, a
misrepresentation and a half-truth, based on the strange saga of the
Metayer brothers.
Amiot Metayer was the leader of a criminal gang that called itself the
"Cannibal Army." Amiot Metayer and his gang supported the military from
1991-94, but his allegiance was based on profit rather than principle. For
a time during Aristide's second term, he professed allegiance to Lavalas.
That allegiance ended when the Aristide government jailed Amiot Metayer
for arson in July 2002. His gang broke into the jail and released him and
158 other prisoners in August 2002. After the jailbreak, Metayer and his
gang first opposed the government, then supported it again. Last
September, Amiot Metayer was murdered.
The gang, now led by Amiot's brother, Butter Metayer, blamed the Aristide
government for Amiot's killing, and again threw its lot in with Aristide's
opponents. Now the gang has changed its name from "Cannibal Army" to the
"Gonaives Resistance Front." This is the gang that took over Gonaives and
that now, in cooperation with the former military, is attempting to oust
Aristide and take control of all Haiti.
Where is the United States government in all of this?
The United States government has never been comfortable with the leftist,
populist platform of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The U.S. National Endowment
for Democracy has consistently funded opposition groups in Haiti,
including many members of the Democratic Convergence.
During the current violence, the U.S. position has fluctuated from day to
day, and from official to official. Donald Rumsfeld, quoted on PBS News
Hour February 16, gave perhaps the most accurate view of the currently
unclear U.S. position: "Needless to say, everyone is hopeful that the
situation, which tends to ebb and flow down there, will stay below a
certain threshold, and that there's-we have no plans to do anything. By
that, I don't mean we have no plans. Obviously, we have plans to do
everything in the world that we can think of. But we-there's no intention
at the present time, or no reason to believe, that any of the thinking
that goes into these things year in and year out would have to be
utilized."
Mary Turck ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is the editor of Connection to the
Americas, a publication of the Resource Center of the Americas.
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Subject: [pjnews] US and UK Bugged Blix's Cell Phone
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0228-01.htm
Published on Saturday, February 28, 2004 by the lndependent/UK
'Britain and US Shared Transcripts After Bugging Blix's Mobile Phone'
by Kim Sengupta and Kathy Marks in Sydney
The controversy over alleged British and American "dirty tricks" at the
United Nations deepened yesterday with claims that two chiefs of Iraq arms
inspection missions had been victims of spying.
Hans Blix and Richard Butler were said to have been subjected to routine
bugging while they led teams searching for Saddam Hussein's supposed
weapons of mass destruction.
In an interview published today, Dr Blix said he suspected his UN office
and New York home had been bugged by the United States in the run-up to
war. He said bugging was to be expected between enemies, but "here it is
between people who co-operate and it is an unpleasant feeling".
The new charges came within 24 hours of the former cabinet minister Clare
Short stating British intelligence had taped the telephone calls of the UN
secretary general, Kofi Annan.
As demands grew at home and abroad for Tony Blair to confirm or deny Ms
Short's allegations, the British ambassador to the UN, Emyr Jones-Parry,
telephoned Mr Annan on Thursday evening. The UN said Mr Jones-Parry's call
has not shed any fresh light on the matter. Edward Mortimer, Mr Annan's
director of communications, said: "There was a telephone call which was
apologetic in tone but did not really amount to an admission of substance.
Basically, the answer we got was the same as the Prime Minister gave at
his press conference [on Thursday]. We are not complete innocents, we do
realize these things happen but it was rather a shock to hear that the
British government had been spying on the secretary general."
Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said Mr Blair should
make a statement to MPs on the affair.He will table a Commons motion next
week demanding to know if there was an "eavesdropping operation", and if
so, how extensive it was. Mr Kennedy said: "We need to know whether
British intelligence took part in spying on the United Nations secretary
general. This is a serious allegation, made by a member of Mr Blair's
Cabinet, which cannot go unanswered. The United Kingdom was one of the
founding members of the UN ... the suggestion that our security services
were involved in some kind of illegal operation damages our national
standing."
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Mr Annan's predecessor as secretary general, said:
"This is a violation of the United Nations charter. It complicates the
work of the secretary general, of the diplomats, because they need a
minimum of secrecy to reach a solution." Mr Butler, who led the UN
disarmament team in Iraq in the 1990s, UNSCOM, said he was "well aware"
that he was being bugged. But he said spying on the UN was illegal and
harmed the peace-making process. "What if Kofi Annan had been bringing
people together last February in a genuine attempt to prevent the invasion
of Iraq, and the people bugging him did not want that to happen, what do
you think they would do with that information?" he said.
The alleged bugging of Dr Blix, in charge of the last UN mission before
the war, seen as the last chance to avoid war, is being viewed in
diplomatic circles as part of a concerted effort to sabotage attempts at a
peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis. Dr Blix, who retired in June, is
highly critical of George Bush and Tony Blair for the claims they made
about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction. Washington and London,
he said, had aborted the search for weapons to pave the way for an
invasion.
In an interview that appears in The Guardian today, he said he had
expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but the possibility that he was spied
on by someone "on the same side" was "disgusting". Dr Blix said his
suspicions were aroused by repeated trouble with his telephone at his New
York home. His fears worsened when a member of the US administration
showed him photographs that could only have come from the UN weapons
office. He met John Wolf, the US assistant secretary of state for
non-proliferation, two weeks before war started and was shown two pictures
of Iraqi weapons. "He should not have had them. I asked him how he got
them and he would not tell me and I said I resented that," he said.
Dr Blix said it was unlikely one of his staff had handed over the pictures
and thought it might be that spies broke into a secure fax. In his reports
to the UN, Dr Blix, and his fellow inspection team leader, Dr Mohamed
ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had asked
for more time to investigate Iraq's arsenal, a plea rejected by Washington
and London.
The claims of espionage against Dr Blix emerged in the Australian media,
sourced to a member of the country's intelligence service. Yesterday a
senior UN source confirmed to The Independent that the Iraq mission,
UNMOVIC, were convinced they were victims of spying operations. Reports
say Dr Blix's mobile telephone was monitored every time he went to Iraq,
and the transcripts shared between the US, Britain and their allies,
Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Yesterday, a UN official said: "While in the Canal Hotel in Baghdad [the
UNMOVIC headquarters at the time], we never used to talk about anything
sensitive in our rooms because we thought the Iraqis might be bugging us.
We used to go outside to the garden.
"It is one of the ironies of life that back in New York we would sometimes
take similar measures, discuss things we thought should be confidential,
out of the office, in public places, sometimes the sidewalk.
"The only saving grace is that neither Dr Blix or anyone else among us
would speak about sensitive matters on mobile telephones, so they would
not have heard anything earth-shattering just by that. But I suspect there
were other, more widespread interceptions. There were plenty of attempts
to undermine us."
Dr Blix's predecessor, Mr Butler, now the governor of Tasmania, said he
was shown transcripts of bugged conversations. "Those who did it would
come to me and show me the recordings that they made on others. 'To try to
help me to do my job in disarming Iraq', they would say. 'We're just here
to help you'," Mr Butler said. But the former UN chief inspector
maintained that it was not only Britain which was spying. He said: "I was
utterly confident that in my attempts to have private conversations,
trying to solve the problem of disarmament of Iraq, I was being listened
to by the Americans, British, the French and the Russians. They also had
people on my staff reporting what I was trying to do privately. Do you
think that was paranoia? Absolutely not. There was abundant evidence that
we were being constantly monitored."
Mr Butler said that he too had to hold sensitive conversations in the
noisy cafeteria in the basement of the UN building in New York or in
Central Park.
"We were brought to a situation where it was plain silly to think we could
have any serious conversation in our office. No one was being paranoid,
everyone had a black sense of humor about it.
"I would take a walk with the person in the park and speak in a low voice
and keep moving so we could avoid directional microphones and maybe just
have a private conversation."
Mr Boutros-Ghali also described the vulnerability of the organization to
espionage. "From the first day I entered my office they said, 'Beware,
your office is bugged, your residence is bugged, and it is a tradition
that the member states who have the technical capacity to bug will do it
without any hesitation.' That would involve members of the Security
Council," he said. "The perception is that you must know in advance that
your office, your residence, your car, your phone is bugged."
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Subject: [pjnews] Iraq Depleted Uranium Study Supressed
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see also:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8041485.htm
Richard Perle resigns from Defense Policy Board
http://snipurl.com/4siy
Blix: U.S., Britain "Created Facts" Before Iraq War
----------------
Sunday Herald-UK
http://www.sundayherald.com/print40096
22 February 2004
WHO 'Suppressed' Scientific Study into Depleted Uranium Cancer Fears in Iraq
Radiation experts warn in unpublished report that DU weapons used by
Allies in Gulf war pose long-term health risk
By Rob Edwards
An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian
population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU)
weapons has been kept secret.
The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children
and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU,
which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from
publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which employed the
main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He
alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.
Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was
completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to
limit their use of DU weapons in last year’s war, and to clean up
afterwards.
Hundreds of thousands of DU shells were fired by coalition tanks and
planes during the conflict, and there has been no comprehensive
decontamination. Experts from the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) have so far not been allowed into Iraq to assess the pollution.
“Our study suggests that the widespread use of depleted uranium weapons in
Iraq could pose a unique health hazard to the civilian population,”
Baverstock told the Sunday Herald.
“There is increasing scientific evidence the radio activity and the
chemical toxicity of DU could cause more damage to human cells than is
assumed.”
Baverstock was the WHO’s top expert on radiation and health for 11 years
until he retired in May last year. He now works with the Department of
Environmental Sciences at the University of Kuopio in Finland, and was
recently appointed to the UK government’s newly formed Committee on Radio
active Waste Management.
While he was a member of staff, WHO refused to give him permission to
publish the study, which was co-authored by Professor Carmel Mothersill
from McMaster University in Canada and Dr Mike Thorne, a radiation
consultant . Baverstock suspects that WHO was leaned on by a more powerful
pro-nuclear UN body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“I believe our study was censored and suppressed by the WHO because they
didn’t like its conclusions. Previous experience suggests that WHO
officials were bowing to pressure from the IAEA, whose remit is to promote
nuclear power,” he said. “That is more than unfortunate, as publishing the
study would have helped forewarn the authorities of the risks of using DU
weapons in Iraq.”
These allegations, however, are dismissed as “totally unfounded” by WHO.
“The IAEA role was very minor,” said Dr Mike Repacholi, the WHO
coordinator of radiation and environmental health in Geneva. “The article
was not approved for publication because parts of it did not reflect
accurately what a WHO-convened group of inter national experts considered
the best science in the area of depleted uranium,” he added.
Baverstock’s study, which has now been passed to the Sunday Herald,
pointed out that Iraq’s arid climate meant that tiny particles of DU were
likely to be blown around and inhaled by civilians for years to come. It
warned that, when inside the body, their radiation and toxicity could
trigger the growth of malignant tumours.
The study suggested that the low-level radiation from DU could harm cells
adjacent to those that are directly irradiated, a phenomenon known as “the
bystander effect”. This undermines the stability of the body’s genetic
system, and is thought by many scientists to be linked to cancers and
possibly other illnesses.
In addition, the DU in Iraq, like that used in the Balkan conflict, could
turn out to be contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive waste .
That would make it more radioactive and hence more dangerous, Baverstock
argued.
“The radiation and the chemical toxicity of DU could also act together to
create a ‘cocktail effect’ that further increases the risk of cancer.
These are all worrying possibilities that urgently require more
investigation,” he said.
Baverstock’s anxiety about the health effects of DU in Iraq is shared by
Pekka Haavisto, the chairman of the UN Environment Programme’s
Post-Conflict Assessment Unit in Geneva. “It is certainly a concern in
Iraq, there is no doubt about that,” he said.
UNEP, which surveyed DU contamination in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2002,
is keen to get into Iraq to monitor the situation as soon as possible. It
has been told by the British government that about 1.9 tonnes of DU was
fired from tanks around Basra, but has no information from US forces,
which are bound to have used a lot more.
Haavisto’s greatest worry is when buildings hit by DU shells have been
repaired and reoccupied without having been properly cleaned up.
Photographic evidence suggests that this is exactly what has happened to
the ministry of planning building in Baghdad.
He also highlighted evidence that DU from weapons had been collected and
recycled as scrap in Iraq. “It could end up in a fork or a knife,” he
warned.
“It is ridiculous to leave the material lying around and not to clear it
up where adults are working and children are playing. If DU is not taken
care of, instead of decreasing the risk you are increasing it. It is
absolutely wrong.”
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Subject: [pjnews] Haiti's lawyer: US Armed Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
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see also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3520457.stm
Aristide leaves country in chaos
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3520945.stm
The UN Security Council votes unanimously to authorise a multinational
military force for Haiti
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/28/0133217
SPECIAL BROADCAST: Haitian First Lady Mildred Aristide Speaks From The
National Palace in Port Au Prince
-----------------
http://www.democracynow.org/static/haiti.shtml
Haiti's lawyer: US Is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries, Calls For UN
Peacekeepers
By Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill
Democracynow.org
The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that the
US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt against the
country's democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ira
Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the
Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to
overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.
"I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed
by the intelligence services of the United States," Kurzban told the
national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. "This is clearly a military
operation, and it's a military coup."
"There's enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point
of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two
weeks before this military operation started," Kurzban said. "The United
States made contingency plans for Guantanamo."
If a direct US connection is proven, it will mark the second time in just
over a decade that Washington has been involved in a coup in Haiti.
Several of the paramilitary leaders now rampaging Haiti are men who were
at the forefront of the US-backed campaign of terror during the 1991-94
coup against Aristide. Among the paramilitary figures now leading the
current insurrection is Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former number 2 man in
the FRAPH paramilitary death squad.
Chamblain was convicted and sentenced in absentia to hard-labor for life
in trials for the April 23, 1994 massacre in the pro-democracy region of
Raboteau and the September 11, 1993 assassination of democracy-activist
Antoine Izméry. Chamblain recently arrived in Gonaives with about 25 other
commandos based in the Dominican Republic, where Chamblain has been living
since 1994. They were well equipped with rifles, camouflage uniforms, and
all-terrain vehicles.
Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain's leadership was Haitian
Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed and machine-gunned to death
with his bodyguard and a driver on Oct. 14, 1993. According to an October
28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the Center for
Constitutional Rights "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant,
and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the
morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary." Emmanuel "Toto"
Constant, was the founder of FRAPH.
An October 1994 article by journalist Allan Nairn in The Nation magazine
quoted Constant as saying that he was contacted by a US Military officer
named Col. Patrick Collins, who served as defense attaché at the United
States Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Constant says Collins pressed him to set
up a group to "balance the Aristide movement" and do "intelligence" work
against it. Constant admitted that, at the time, he was working with CIA
operatives in Haiti. Constant is now residing freely in the US. He is
reportedly living in Queens, NY. At the time, James Woolsey was head of
the CIA.
Another figure to recently reemerge is Guy Philippe, a former Haitian
police chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities discovered
him plotting a coup with a group of other police chiefs. All of the men
were trained in Ecuador by US Special Forces during the 1991-1994 coup.
Since that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of
master-minding deadly attacks on the Police Academy and the National
Palace in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against
police stations on Haiti's Central Plateau over the following two years.
Kurzban also points to the presence of another FRAPH veteran, Jean Tatun.
Along with Chamblain, Tatun was convicted of gross violations of human
rights and murder in the Raboteau massacre.
"These people came through the Dominican border after the United States
had provided 20,000 M-16's to the Dominican army," says Kurzban. "I
believe that the United States clearly knew about it before, and that
given the fact of the history of these people, [Washington is] probably
very, very deeply involved, and I think Congress needs to seriously look
at what the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central
Intelligence Agency has been in this operation. Because it is a military
operation. It's not a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put
in the press in the last week or two."
Kurzban says he has hired military analysts to review photos of the
weapons being used by the paramilitary groups. He says that contrary to
reports in the media that the armed groups are using weapons originally
distributed by Aristide, the gangs are using highly sophisticated and
powerful weapons; weapons that far out-gun Aristide's 3,000 member
National Police force.
"I don't think that there's any question about the fact that the weapons
that they have did not come from Haiti," says Kurzban. "They're organized
as a military commando strike force that's going from city to city."
Kurzban says that among the weapons being used by the paramilitaries are:
M-16's, M-60's, armor piercing weapons and rocket-propelled grenade
launchers. "They have weapons to shoot down the one helicopter that the
government has," he said. "They have acted as a pretty tight-knit commando
unit."
Chamblain and other paramilitary leaders have said they will march on the
capital, Port-au-Prince within two weeks. The US has put forth a proposal,
being referred to as a peace plan, that many viewed as favorable to
Aristide's opponents. Aristide accepted the plan, but the opposition
rejected it. Washington's point man on the crisis is Roger Noriega,
Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs.
"I think Noriega has been an Aristide hater for over a decade," says
Kurzban, adding that he believes Noriega allowed the opposition to delay
their response to the plan to allow the paramilitaries to capture more
territory. "My reaction was they're just giving them more time so they can
take over more, that the military wing of the opposition can take over
more ground in Haiti and create a fate accompli," Kurzban said. "Indeed,
as soon as they said, 'we need an extra day,' I predicted, unfortunately,
and correctly, that they would go into Cap Haitian (Haiti's 2nd largest
city) and indeed the next morning they did."
The leader of the "opposition" is an American citizen named Andy Apaid. He
was born in New York. Haitian law does not allow dual-nationality and he
has not renounced his US citizenship. In a recent statement,
Congressmember Maxine Waters blasted Apaid and his opposition front,
saying she believes "Apaid is attempting to instigate a bloodbath in Haiti
and then blame the government for the resulting disaster in the belief
that the United States will aid the so-called protestors against President
Aristide and his government."
"We have the leader of the opposition, who Mr. Noriega is negotiating
with, who Secretary Powell calls and who tells Secretary Powell, you know,
'we need a couple more days' and Secretary Powell says 'that's fine,'"
says Kurzban. "I mean, there's some kind of theater of the absurd going on
with this opposition where it's led by an American citizen, where they're
just clearly stalling for time until they can get more ground covered in
Haiti through their military wing, and the United States and Noriega, with
a wink and nod, is kind of letting them do that."
Kurzban says that because Aristide's opponents rejected Washington's plan,
"the next step clearly is to send in some kind of UN peacekeeping force
immediately."
"The question is," says Kurzban. "Will the international community stand
by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal
military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross
violations of human rights?"
Democracy Now! (http://www.democracynow.org) is a nationally-syndicated
radio and TV program broadcast on Pacifica Radio, NPR, community TV
stations and Free Speech TV Channel 9415 of the DishNetwork. Mike Burke
and Sharif Abdel Kouddous contributed to this report.
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Subject: [pjnews] Soldier for the Truth: Exposing
=?iso-8859-1?q?Bush=92s_talking-?= =?iso-8859-1?q?points_war?=
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http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php
Soldier for the Truth
Exposing Bush’s talking-points war
by Marc Cooper
After two decades in the U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen
Kwiatkowski, now 43, knew her career as a regional analyst was coming to
an end when — in the months leading up to the war in Iraq — she felt she
was being “propagandized” by her own bosses.
With master’s degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books
on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the
spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the
Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm
of the Pentagon.
Kwiatkowski got there just as war fever was spreading, or being spread as
she would later argue, through the halls of Washington. Indeed, shortly
after her arrival, a piece of NESA was broken off, expanded and re-dubbed
with the Orwellian name of the Office of Special Plans. The OSP’s task
was, ostensibly, to help the Pentagon develop policy around the Iraq
crisis.
She would soon conclude that the OSP — a pet project of Vice President
Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld — was more akin to a nerve
center for what she now calls a “neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the
Pentagon.”
Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the
radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the
Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its
own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with Iraq.
Deeply frustrated and alarmed, Kwiatkowski, still on active duty, took the
unusual step of penning an anonymous column of internal Pentagon dissent
that was posted on the Internet by former Colonel David Hackworth,
America’s most decorated veteran.
As war inevitably approached, and as she neared her 20-year mark in the
Air Force, Kwiatkowski concluded the only way she could viably resist what
she now terms the “expansionist, imperialist” policies of the
neoconservatives who dominated Iraq policy was by retiring and taking up a
public fight against them.
She left the military last March, the same week that troops invaded Iraq.
Kwiatkowski started putting her real name on her Web reports and began
accepting speaking invitations. “I’m now a soldier for the truth,” she
said in a speech last week at Cal Poly Pomona. Afterward, I spoke with
her.
L.A. WEEKLY: What was the relationship between NESA and the now-notorious
Office of Special Plans, the group set up by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld
and Vice President Cheney? Was the OSP, in reality, an intelligence
operation to act as counter to the CIA?
KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: The NESA office includes the Iraq desk, as well as the
desks of the rest of the region. It is under Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense Bill Luti. When I joined them, in May 2002, the Iraq desk was
there. We shared the same space, and we were all part of the same general
group. At that time it was expanding. Contractors and employees were
coming though it wasn’t clear what they were doing.
In August of 2002, the expanded Iraq desk found new spaces and moved into
them. It was told to us that this was now to be known as the Office of
Special Plans. The Office of Special Plans would take issue with those who
say they were doing intelligence. They would say they were developing
policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the invasion of
Iraq.
But developing policy is not the same as developing propaganda and pushing
a particular agenda. And actually, that’s more what they really did. They
pushed an agenda on Iraq, and they developed pretty sophisticated
propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress,
and even internally to the Pentagon — to try and make this case of
immediacy. This case of severe threat to the United States.
You retired when the war broke out and have been speaking out publicly.
But you were already publishing critical reports anonymously while still
in uniform and while still on active service. Why did you take that rather
unusual step?
Due to my frustration over what I was seeing around me as soon as I joined
Bill Luti’s organization, what I was seeing in terms of neoconservative
agendas and the way they were being pursued to formulate a foreign policy
and a military policy — an invasion of a sovereign country, an occupation,
a poorly planned occupation. I was concerned about it; I was in opposition
to that, and I was not alone.
So I started writing what I considered to be funny, short essays for my
own sanity. Eventually, I e-mailed them to former Colonel David Hackworth,
who runs the Web page Soldiers for the Truth, and he published them under
the title “Insider Notes From the Pentagon.” I wrote 28 of those columns
from August 2002 until I retired.
There you were, a career military officer, a Pentagon analyst, a
conservative who had given two decades to this work. What provoked you to
become first a covert and later a public dissident?
Like most people, I’ve always thought there should be honesty in
government. Working 20 years in the military, I’m sure I saw some things
that were less than honest or accountable. But nothing to the degree that
I saw when I joined Near East South Asia.
This was creatively produced propaganda spread not only through the
Pentagon, but across a network of policymakers — the State Department,
with John Bolton; the Vice President’s Office, the very close relationship
the OSP had with that office. That is not normal, that is a bypassing of
normal processes. Then there was the National Security Council, with
certain people who had neoconservative views; Scooter Libby, the vice
president’s chief of staff; a network of think tanks who advocated
neoconservative views — the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for
Security Policy with Frank Gaffney, the columnist Charles Krauthammer —
was very reliable. So there was just not a process inside the Pentagon
that should have developed good honest policy, but it was instead pushing
a particular agenda; this group worked in a coordinated manner, across
media and parts of the government, with their neoconservative compadres.
How did you experience this in your day-to-day work?
There was a sort of groupthink, an adopted storyline: We are going to
invade Iraq and we are going to eliminate Saddam Hussein and we are going
to have bases in Iraq. This was all a given even by the time I joined
them, in May of 2002.
You heard this in staff meetings?
The discussions were ones of this sort of inevitability. The concerns were
only that some policymakers still had to get onboard with this agenda. Not
that this agenda was right or wrong — but that we needed to convince the
remaining holdovers. Colin Powell, for example. There was a lot of
frustration with Powell; they said a lot of bad things about him in the
office. They got very angry with him when he convinced Bush to go back to
the U.N. and forced a four-month delay in their invasion plans.
General Tony Zinni is another one. Zinni, the combatant commander of
Central Command, Tommy Franks’ predecessor — a very well-qualified guy who
knows the Middle East inside out, knows the military inside out, a Marine,
a great guy. He spoke out publicly as President Bush’s Middle East envoy
about some of the things he saw. Before he was removed by Bush, I heard
Zinni called a traitor in a staff meeting. They were very anti-anybody who
might provide information that affected their paradigm. They were the spin
enforcers.
How did this atmosphere affect your work? To be direct, were you told by
your superiors what you could say and not say? What could and could not be
discussed? Or were opinions they didn’t like just ignored?
I can give you one clear example where we were told to follow the party
line, where I was told directly. I worked North Africa, which included
Libya. I remember in one case, I had to rewrite something a number of
times before it went through. It was a background paper on Libya, and
Libya has been working for years to try and regain the respect of the
international community. I had intelligence that told me this, and I
quoted from the intelligence, but they made me go back and change it and
change it. They’d make me delete the quotes from intelligence so they
could present their case on Libya in a way that said it was still a threat
to its neighbors and that Libya was still a belligerent, antagonistic
force. They edited my reports in that way. In fact, the last report I
made, they said, “Just send me the file.” And I don’t know what the report
ended up looking like, because I imagine more changes were made.
On Libya, really a small player, the facts did not fit their paradigm that
we have all these enemies.
One person you’ve written about is Abe Shulsky. You describe him as a
personable, affable fellow but one who played a key role in the official
spin that led to war.
Abe was the director of the Office of Special Plans. He was in our shared
offices when I joined, in May 2002. He comes from an academic background;
he’s definitely a neoconservative. He is a student of Leo Strauss from the
University of Chicago — so he has that Straussian academic perspective. He
was the final proving authority on all the talking points that were
generated from the Office of Special Plans and that were distributed
throughout the Pentagon, certainly to staff officers. And it appears to me
they were also distributed to the Vice President’s Office and to the
presidential speechwriters. Much of the phraseology that was in our
talking points consists of the same things I heard the president say.
So Shulsky was the sort of controller, the disciplinarian, the overseeing
monitor of the propaganda flow. From where you sat, did you see him
manipulate the information?
We had a whole staff to help him do that, and he was the approving
authority. I can give you one example of how the talking points were
altered. We were instructed by Bill Luti, on behalf of the Office of
Special Plans, on behalf of Abe Shulsky, that we would not write anything
about Iraq, WMD or terrorism in any papers that we prepared for our
superiors except as instructed by the Office of Special Plans. And it
would provide to us an electronic document of talking points on these
issues. So I got to see how they evolved.
It was very clear to me that they did not evolve as a result of new
intelligence, of improved intelligence, or any type of seeking of the
truth. The way they evolved is that certain bullets were dropped or
altered based on what was being reported on the front pages of the
Washington Post or The New York Times.
Can you be specific?
One item that was dropped was in November [2002]. It was the issue of the
meeting in Prague prior to 9/11 between Mohammed Atta and a member of
Saddam Hussein’s intelligence force. We had had this in our talking points
from September through mid-November. And then it dropped out totally. No
explanation. Just gone. That was because the media reported that the FBI
had stepped away from that, that the CIA said it didn’t happen.
Let’s clarify this. Talking points are generally used to deal with media.
But you were a desk officer, not a politician who had to go and deal with
the press. So are you saying the Office of Special Plans provided you a
schematic, an outline of the way major points should be addressed in any
report or analysis that you developed regarding Iraq, WMD or terrorism?
That’s right. And these did not follow the intent, the content or the
accuracy of intelligence . . .
They were political . . .
They were political, politically manipulated. They did have obviously bits
of intelligence in them, but they were created to propagandize. So we
inside the Pentagon, staff officers and senior administration officials
who might not work Iraq directly, were being propagandized by this same
Office of Special Plans.
In the 10 months you worked in that office in the run-up to the war, was
there ever any open debate? The public, at least, was being told at the
time that there was a serious assessment going on regarding the level of
threat from Iraq, the presence or absence of WMD, et cetera. Was this
debated inside your office at the Pentagon?
No. Those things were not debated. To them, Saddam Hussein needed to go.
You believe that decision was made by the time you got there, almost a
year before the war?
That decision was made by the time I got there. So there was no debate
over WMD, the possible relations Saddam Hussein may have had with
terrorist groups and so on. They spent their energy gathering pieces of
information and creating a propaganda storyline, which is the same
storyline we heard the president and Vice President Cheney tell the
American people in the fall of 2002.
The very phrases they used are coming back to haunt them because they are
blatantly false and not based on any intelligence. The OSP and the Vice
President’s Office were critical in this propaganda effort — to convince
Americans that there was some just requirement for pre-emptive war.
What do you believe the real reasons were for the war?
The neoconservatives needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein.
They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted
permanent basing in Iraq. There are several reasons why they wanted to do
that. None of those reasons, of course, were presented to the American
people or to Congress.
So you don’t think there was a genuine interest as to whether or not there
really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
It’s not about interest. We knew. We knew from many years of both
high-level surveillance and other types of shared intelligence, not to
mention the information from the U.N., we knew, we knew what was left
[from the Gulf War] and the viability of any of that. Bush said he didn’t
know.
The truth is, we know [Saddam] didn’t have these things. Almost a billion
dollars has been spent — a billion dollars! — by David Kay’s group to
search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn’t find anything,
they didn’t expect to find anything.
So if, as you argue, they knew there weren’t any of these WMD, then what
exactly drove the neoconservatives to war?
The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a
long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they
felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and
occupy Iraq.
One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and
everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were
preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of
sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and
southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any
kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq.
And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in
place, and we would get no financial benefit.
The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the
region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi
Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was
dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for
alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure
something we had been searching for since the days of Carter — to secure
the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were
very important — that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world.
Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in.
The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the
Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the
way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 — selling his oil for euros. The
oil sales permitted in that program aren’t very much. But when the
sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second
largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro.
The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation
now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up like it used to
be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could
cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the
dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May
[2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.
At the time you left the military, a year ago, just how great was the
influence of this neoconservative faction on Pentagon policy?
When it comes to Middle East policy, they were in complete control, at
least in the Pentagon. There was some debate at the State Department.
Indeed, when you were still in uniform and writing a Web column
anonymously, you expressed your bitter disappointment when Secretary of
State Powell — in your words — eventually “capitulated.”
He did. When he made his now-famous power-point slide presentation at the
U.N., he totally capitulated. It meant he was totally onboard. Whether he
believed it or not.
You gave your life to the military, you voted Republican for many years,
you say you served in the Pentagon right up to the outbreak of war. What
does it feel like to be out now, publicly denouncing your old bosses?
Know what it feels like? It feels like duty. That’s what it feels like.
I’ve thought about it many times. You know, I spent 20 years working for
something that — at least under this administration — turned out to be
something I wasn’t working for. I mean, these people have total disrespect
for the Constitution. We swear an oath, military officers and NCOs alike
swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. These people have no respect for
the Constitution. The Congress was misled, it was lied to. At a very
minimum that is a subversion of the Constitution. A pre-emptive war based
on what we knew was not a pressing need is not what this country stands
for.
What I feel now is that I’m not retired. I still have a responsibility to
do my part as a citizen to try and correct the problem.
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Subject: [pjnews]
Aristide: 'I Was Kidnapped', 'Tell the World it is a Coup'
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/4tpd
CNN: Aristide says U.S. deposed him in 'coup d'etat'
http://snipurl.com/4tph
US troops 'made Aristide leave'
A man who said he was a caretaker for the now exiled president told
France's RTL radio station the troops forced Aristide out.
"The American army came to take him away at two in the morning," the man
said. "The Americans forced him out with weapons. It was American
soldiers. They came with a helicopter and they took the security guards.
(Aristide) was not happy. He did not want to be taken away. He did not
want to leave. He was not able to fight against the Americans."
The RTL journalist who carried out the interview described the man as a
"frightened old man, crouched in a corner" who said he was the "caretaker
of the residence".
http://snipurl.com/4thf
Bush administration denies forcing Aristide's retreat
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/28/0133217
Haitian First Lady Mildred Aristide Speaks From The National Palace in
Port Au Prince
------------------
http://www.democracynow.org/
Pacifica Radio Exclusive:
Ousted Haitian President Says, "I was kidnapped"
Rumsfeld, Powell Deny Charge
Multiple sources that just spoke with Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide told Democracy Now! that Aristide says he was "kidnapped" and
taken by force to the Central African Republic. Congressmember Maxine
Waters said she received a call from Aristide at 9am EST. "He's surrounded
by military. It's like he is in jail, he said. He says he was kidnapped,"
said Waters. She said he had been threatened by what he called US
diplomats. According to Waters, the diplomats reportedly told the Haitian
president that if he did not leave Haiti, paramilitary leader Guy Philippe
would storm the palace and Aristide would be killed. According to Waters,
Aristide was told by the US that they were withdrawing Aristide's US
security.
TransAfrica founder and close Aristide family friend Randall Robinson also
received a call from the Haitian president early this morning and
confirmed Waters account. Robinson said that Aristide "emphatically"
denied that he had resigned. "He did not resign," he said. "He was
abducted by the United States in the commission of a coup." Robinson says
he spoke to Aristide on a cell phone that was smuggled to the Haitian
president.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Congressmember
Waters, can you tell us about the conversation you just had with Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide?
MAXINE WATERS: I most certainly can and he’s anxious for me to get the
message out so people will understand. He is in the Central Republic of
Africa at a place called the Palace of the Renaissance, and he’s not sure
if that’s a house or a hotel or what it is and he is surrounded by
military. It’s like in jail, he said. He said that he was kidnapped; he
said that he was forced to leave Haiti. He said that the American embassy
sent the diplomats; he referred to them as, to his home where they was
lead by Mr. Moreno. And I believe that Mr. Moreno is a deputy chief of
staff at the embassy in Haiti and other diplomats, and they ordered him to
leave. They said you must go NOW. He said that they said that Guy Phillipe
and U.S. Marines were coming to Port Au Prince; he will be killed, many
Haitians will be killed, that they would not stop until they did what they
wanted to do. He was there with his wife Mildred and his brother-in-law
and two of his security people, and somebody from the Steel Foundation,
and they’re all, there’s five of them that are there. They took them
where-- they did stop in Antigua then they stopped at a military base,
then they were in the air for hours and then they arrived at this place
and they were met by five ministers of government. It’s a Francophone
country, they speak French. And they were then taken to this place called
the Palace of the Renaissance where they are being held and they are
surrounded by military people. They are not free to do whatever they want
to do. Then the phone clicked off after we had talked for about five--we
talked maybe fifteen minutes and then the phone clicked off. But he, some
of it was muffled in the beginning, at times it was clear. But one thing
that was very clear and he said it over and over again, that he was
kidnapped, that the coup was completed by the Americans that they forced
him out. They had also disabled his American security force that he had
around him for months now; they did not allow them to extend their
numbers. To begin with they wanted them to bring in more people to provide
security they prevented them from doing that and then they finally forced
them out of the country. So that’s where his is and I said to him that I
would do everything I could to get the word out. …that I heard it directly
from him I heard it directly from his wife that they were kidnapped, they
were forced to leave, they did not want to leave, their lives were
threatened and the lives of many Haitians were threatened. And I said that
we would be in touch with the State Department, with the President today
and if at all possible we would try to get to him. We don’t know whether
or not he is going to be moved. We will try and find that information out
today.
AMY GOODMAN: Did President Aristide say whether or not he resigned?
MAXINE WATERS: He did not resign. He said he was forced out, that the coup
was completed.
AMY GOODMAN: So again to summarize, Congressmember Maxine Waters, you have
just gotten off the phone with President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who said
he believes he is in the Central African Republic.
MAXINE WATERS: That’s right, with French speaking officers, he’s
surrounded by them and he’s in this place called the Palace of the
Renaissance and he was forced to go there. They took him there.
AMY GOODMAN: What are you going to do right now?
MAXINE WATERS: I’m going to get to the State Dept to find out what do they
plan on doing with him. Do they plan on leaving him there or are they
planning on taking him to another country? We are going to tell them we
would like to see him. We are prepared to go where he is NOW and that we
are demanding that we are able to see him and go where he is. And to
negotiate what will be done with him.
AMY GOODMAN: Did he describe how he was taken out? We had heard reports in
Haiti that he was taken out in handcuffs. Did he…
MAXINE WATERS: No he did not say he was taken out in handcuffs. He simply
said that they came led by Mr. Moreno followed by the marines and they
said simply “you have to go!” You have no choice, you must go and if you
don’t you will be killed and many Haitians will be killed. We are planning
with Mr. De filliped to come into Puerto Rico. He will not be alone he
will come with American military and you will not survive, you will be
killed. You’ve got to go now!
AMY GOODMAN: How did President Aristide sound? What was the quality of his
voice?
MAXINE WATERS: The quality of his voice was anxious, angry, disturbed,
wanting people to know the truth.
AMY GOODMAN: Did he say why he had not made any calls since early on
Sunday morning; that people had not been in touch with him for more than
36 hours. Certainly this plane was equipped with a telephone?
MAXINE WATERS: OH, I don’t think they were able to make any calls from the
plane. They were only allowed to make calls once they landed. And I think
the only call that they had made was to her mother who is in Florida and
her brother. But they were not allowed…they had no access to telephone
calls… to a telephone on the plane.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the next step…what are you going to do? What do you
think the people in this country should being doing about this situation
in Haiti?
MAXINE WATERS: First of all I think the people in this country should be
outraged that our government led a coup de’tat against a democratically
elected President. They should call, write. Fax with their outrage, not
only to the State Dept. but to all of their elected officials and to the
press. We have to keep the information flying in the air so people will
get it and understand what is taking place. And for those of us who are
elected officials we must not only get to the President, we must demand
that he is returned to claim his presidency if that is what he wants. If
you can recall what happened in Venezuela when Mr. Chavez was…they tried
to force him out and they had someone step into the presidency and he had
not resigned his presidency and he got it back. I did not have that
conversation with President Aristide but we must meet with him and we must
talk with him and be prepared to protect him.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Maxine Waters I want to thank you for being
with us again. Congress member Waters has just spoken with President
Aristide who she says said he was kidnapped and is now with his wife and
surrounded by security in the Central African Republic.
* * *
RANDALL ROBINSON: The president called me on a cell phone that was slipped
to him by someone - he has no land line out to the world and no number at
which he can be reached. He is being held in a room with his wife and his
sister's husband, who happened to be at the house at the time that the
abduction occurred. The soldiers came in to the house and ordered them to
use no phones and to come immediately. They were taken at gunpoint to the
airport and put on a plane. His own security detachment was taken as well
and they were put in a separate compartment of the plane. The president
was kept with his wife with the soldiers with the shades of the plane down
and when he asked where he was being taken, the soldiers told him they
were under orders not to tell him that. He was flown first to Antigua,
which he recognized, but then he was told to put the shades down again.
They were on the ground like this for two hours before they took off again
and landed six hours later at another location again told to keep the
shades down. At no time before they left the house and on the plane were
they allowed to use a phone. Only when they landed the last time were they
told that they were in the central African republic. Then taken to a room
with a balcony. They do not know what the room is. Outside they say they
are surrounded by soldiers. So that they have no freedom. The president
asked me to tell the world that it is a coup, that they have been
kidnapped. That they have been abducted. I have put in calls to members of
congress asking that they demand that the president be given an
opportunity to speak, that he be given a press conference opportunity and
that people be given an opportunity to reach him by phone so that they can
hear directly from him how he is being treated. But the essential point is
clear. He did not resign. He was taken by force from his residence in the
middle of the night, forced on to a plane, and taken away without being
told where he was going. He was kidnapped. There's no question about it.
AMY GOODMAN: How does he actually know, Randall Robinson, how does
president Aristide know that he is in the Central African Republic?
RANDALL ROBINSON: He was told that when he arrived. That there was some
official reception of officials of that government at the airport when he
arrived. But, you see, he still had and continues to have surrounding him
American military.
AMY GOODMAN: You spoke with him and Mildred Aristide up to 10 times a day
in the last days before they were removed from Haiti. How did president
Aristide sound when you spoke with him today?
RANDALL ROBINSON: They sounded tired and very concerned that the departure
has been mistold to the world. They wanted to make certain that I did all
that I could to disabuse any misled public that he had not resigned, that
he had been abducted. That was very, very important to him and Mrs.
Aristide explained to me the strange response to my calls on Saturday
night. I had talked to her on Saturday morning and him on Friday. But when
I called the house on Saturday night, the phone was answered by an
unfamiliar voice who told me that the president was busy, a response that
was strange and then when I asked for Mrs. Aristide, I was told that she
was busy, too. As she told me then, even that early on, before they were
taken away and before the soldiers came, they had been instructed they
were not allowed to talk to anyone. So, that is - she said that was the
reason she explained this today, a few minutes ago - why she was not able
to talk to me and he was not able to talk to me when I called the house
object Saturday evening.
AMY GOODMAN: Who did they say was the person that you had actually spoken to?
RANDALL ROBINSON: No, but that it was not someone who worked at the house
because they know my voice when they hear it and they respond to it
because I call so many times. This was something new, a new person, a new
voice, with a new kind of tone. That is when we began to be concerned that
something was amiss.
AMY GOODMAN: I will ask you the same question I asked Congressmember
Waters who also spoke with president Aristide. The issue of whether
president Aristide resigned. Did he say he did or he didn't?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Emphatically not.
AMY GOODMAN He said he did not resign?
RANDALL ROBINSON: He did not resign. He did not resign. He was kidnapped
and all of the circumstances seem to support his assertion. Had he
resigned, we wouldn't need blacked out windows and blocked communications
and military taking him away at gunpoint. Had he resigned, he would have
been happy to leave the country. He was not. He resisted. Emphatically
not. He did not resign. He was abducted by the United States, a
democratic, a democratically elected president, abducted by the United
States in the commission of an American induced coup. This is a
frightening thing to contemplate.
AMY GOODMAN: And again, Randall Robinson, you said you spoke to president
Aristide by a cell phone that was smuggled to him?
RANDALL ROBINSON: Yes and I cannot call back because I have no number and
the only way they can call out is by cell phone because they have not been
provided with any land lines.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they say how long they will be staying in this place that
they are, the palace of the Renaissance, they say they believe in the
Central African Republic?
RANDALL ROBINSON: I haven't been told anything. I told her that last night
I spoke to senator Dodd's foreign policy person Janice O'Connell called me
to say that she had learned from the State Department that he was being
taken to the Central African Republic and she had also been told by the
State Department that they had refused, that the south Africans had
refused asylum. I told her that I didn't believe that that was true
because the South African foreign minister - [Noise] Hello?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Randall, Robinson, we hear you.
RANDALL ROBINSON: Because the South African foreign minister had called me
from India Mid-afternoon on Sunday and she asked how I was doing and I
thought I was going to be doing much better, and I told her so. And I said
because I'm sure that president Aristide has arrived in South Africa. She
said no, he hasn't arrived here. We haven't heard anything from him. We
don't know where he is and then we became really alarmed. She said there's
been no request for asylum. So, you see, the State Department is telling
an interested public, including members of the congress, that South Africa
refused asylum. The State Department knows better. They know that
President Aristide was not allowed to request asylum from South Africa or
anybody else because he was not allowed to make any phone calls before
they left Haiti, during the flight, and beyond.
AMY GOODMAN: Anything else you would like to add from your conversation
with president Aristide on this smuggled phone that he got hold of after
many hours incommunicado and now saying he believes he is in the central
African republic with the first lady of Haiti, Mildred Aristide?
RANDALL ROBINSON: The phrase that he used several times and asked of me to
find a way to tell the Haitian people, he said tell the world it's a coup,
it's a coup, it's a coup.
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Subject: [pjnews] Latest Invasions of Privacy
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see also:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/26/1077676900598.html
Toyota introduces new car that will send wireless messages to police when
you're speeding and automatically charge the fines to your credit card,
even before you arrive home.
http://snipurl.com/4tqg
Big Brother on Board: OnStar Bugging Your Car
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/news_columnists/article/0,1426,MCA_646_2571559,00.html
Big Brother in my car? No, thanks
----------------
http://snipurl.com/4tqh
OnStar Online to U.S. Government
By Bob Barr, 12/2/2003 4:13:01 AM
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Every time my wife urges me to look into getting
OnStar, the digital, computerized communications device installed in many
newer-model General Motors vehicles, I have resisted.
Yes, I know; I've heard the tear-jerk ads on the radio with the plaintive
voices of supposedly real wives, mothers, and metro-sexual-sounding men
fearing for their lives because they've locked themselves out of their
cars and have called OnStar so someone can get them out of the jam into
which they've put themselves. Still, I've not been convinced the loss of
privacy is worth the remote possibility that I would find myself in a
life-threatening situation from which the only possible salvation would be
my ability to reach out and touch an OnStar employee.
Now, even my wife agrees that OnStar -- or similar tracking devices
installed in non-GM vehicles -- would be a really bad idea. What changed
her mind? In addition to the irrefutable eloquence of my arguments, it was
a recent story, tucked away in an Internet news service, describing a
recent federal court decision that confirms what my own
conspiratorial-oriented mind always suspected was true. The FBI and other
police agencies have been using these factory-installed tracking systems
as a way to eavesdrop on passengers in vehicles, without the folks in the
car even knowing the government was listening to their conversations!
Unbelievable, you scoff? Nope, it's as real as the genetically engineered
smells automobile manufacturers are now putting into their cars.
Even though the federal court decision -- rendered by the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals, which covers several western states, including
California -- concluded that the FBI could no longer surreptitiously
listen in via computerized communications systems like OnStar, it did so
only for a tangential reason and therefore left the door wide open for
continued invasions of privacy.
This tends to get a bit technical, but let me see if I can describe it
accurately in a way that makes sense to us non-techno-geeks.
The manner in which the FBI has been worming its way into individual
vehicles equipped with one of these "emergency" communications systems
requires them to temporarily disable the particular system in the "target
vehicle." The targeted vehicle therefore cannot send an outgoing
"emergency" signal while the eavesdroppers are "dropping in."
Let's assume John or Jane Doe is proudly tooling around New York City in
their late-model Cadillac equipped with OnStar. Unbeknownst to them, an
FBI snoop believes they are discussing matters of gravest national
security interest during their jaunt. The agent has therefore directed the
Bureau's computer to reverse-engineer OnStar so it becomes a listening
device instead of a transmitting device.
Unfortunately, if during the time the FBI is thus listening in, John or
Jane suffers a real emergency, their expensive computer communications
device cannot send out a distress signal.
This scenario is what the federal court seized on as the basis for
slapping the FBI's hand. The customer has paid for an emergency
communications device, and because the FBI snooping renders it potentially
incapable of providing that service, the FBI has improperly disrupted a
service the customer has paid for. This it cannot do, sayeth the Court.
Of course, what the Court should have focused on is the gross and
unconstitutional invasion of privacy represented by this new manner of
electronic snooping. Instead the Court essentially told the government, go
back to the engineering room, and if you can come up with a way to use
OnStar to listen in to what's going on inside private vehicles without
hampering the other, legitimate functions of the system, then boys, go
right ahead with our blessing.
The implications of this opinion are not exactly reassuring.
What's even more frightening, however, is that this latest peek into the
sub rosa world of high-tech government snooping is just the tip of the
proverbial iceberg. For the past 10 years, the government has used a
little-known provision of the federal law, known as the Communications
Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, to browbeat the telecommunications
industry into spending billions of dollars to make its technology
eavesdrop-friendly, requiring technology advances to include built-in ways
for the government to use that technology to listen in to whoever is using
it.
The government's efforts to thus enhance its ability to listen in to our
conversations have moved into high gear in the aftermath of 9/11.
Cell phones already will be required to have tracking devices installed
therein, for the convenience of government employees who wish to track us
and listen in on our cell phone conversations. Now we find out that
automobile emergency communications systems can serve as one-way, secret
phone lines directly to the FBI. We've all heard the stories that our home
phones and computers serve the same purpose. As more information emerges
such as the one concerning the OnStar court decision, it's getting harder
and harder to dismiss these stories as "black helicopter" fantasies.
Bob Barr is a former member of the United States Congress and a former
U.S. Attorney in the state of Georgia.
From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue Mar 2 21:58:57 2004
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Subject: [pjnews] Our kids vs. Bush campaign contributors
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from moveon.org:
Under energy industry pressure, President Bush's EPA plans to defer
controls on mercury emissions by power plants for at least a decade. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 4.9 million women
of childbearing age in the U.S. -- that's 8 percent -- have unsafe levels
of mercury in their blood. The people hit hardest will be new-born infants
-- every year over 630,000 infants are born with levels of mercury in
their blood so high they can cause brain damage.
We have just a few weeks to get public comments to the EPA on this plan to
defer mercury controls. It's time to tell the EPA and the White House that
our kids come first. You can submit your comment by going to:
http://www.moveon.org/mercury/
>From a public health standpoint, the EPA's new policy is a disaster. But
for Bush's energy industry allies, who are responsible for most mercury
pollution, it's yet another bonanza. Increased pollution levels will allow
these companies to save millions, while their top managers keep writing
big campaign checks to support George W. Bush -- it's a pretty sick cycle.
On January 30th, the EPA announced its intention to weaken its own earlier
proposal that would have required a 90 percent reduction in mercury
pollution by power plants by 2008. The new proposal doesn't force every
power plant to limit mercury pollution, leaving many communities
vulnerable. It would also delay implementation of even these weaker
requirements until 2018, leaving a whole new generation of kids needlessly
at risk.
The first responsibility of the Bush administration and the EPA is to
protect our nation's most vulnerable citizens. Time and again, we've seen
the Bush administration try to weaken environmental protections, starting
with its proposal to roll back stricter limits on arsenic in our drinking
water. We must boost the visibility of the mercury issue so that, as with
arsenic, the Bush administration is shamed into adopting a more rigorous
standard.
Please join our effort to protect our environment and our children from
the debilitating effects of mercury poisoning. Your comments will bolster
the efforts of MoveOn members and other concerned people who are showing
up today at public hearings on this issue in Chicago, Philadelphia and
Raleigh.
Tell the Bush administration to protect children's health by reducing
power plant mercury emissions by 90 percent by 2008 and ensuring that
these reductions occur at each and every power plant, by going to:
http://www.moveon.org/mercury/
Thanks for all your efforts.
Sincerely,
- Joan and Wes
MoveOn.org
February 25th, 2004
P.S.: See our link above for more background on mercury and the harm it
can cause.
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Subject: [pjnews] The 9/11 truth movement
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see also:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-security-commission.html
Hastert Agrees to Extension for Sept. 11 Panel
-----------------
http://snipurl.com/4tq8
Long Island Press
25 February 2004
The 9/11 truth movement: Widows lead effort to expose what the government
knew
When former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean took the helm of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, more popularly
known as the 9/11 Commission, the moderate Republican made a vow: He would
not let his investigation become another Warren Commission, the 1964
federal inquiry criticized for failing to adequately probe the possibility
of conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The 9/11 Commission would look into every aspect of the attacks, and try
to illustrate why the United States was so ill-prepared.
But as the original May 27 deadline for the commission's report fast
approaches, eyebrows are already being raised. On Jan. 27, the
commissioners asked for 60 more days. The White House repeatedly said "no
way" until Feb. 4, when President George W. Bush reversed himself and gave
the commission two more months.
Part of the delay has been caused by the Bush administration itself, which
has withheld key documents, angering commission members, victims' families
and skeptical citizens all the more. "We're coming down to the final
[months] of the commission and we're still messing around with access
issues," said former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who served as one of the
commission's five Democrats until resigning late last year. Cleland, too,
sees parallels to the JFK investigation.
"This is the most serious independent investigation since the Warren
Commission. And after watching History Channel shows on the Warren
Commission...the Warren Commission blew it," Cleland went on. "I'm not
going to be part of that. I'm not going to be part of looking at
information only partially. I'm not going to be part of just coming to
quick conclusions."
"It's just a dog-and-pony show," says John Judge, co-founder of 9/11
CitizensWatch, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group monitoring the work
of the independent bipartisan commission. "It's just like when you go into
the Warren Commission, and you have five areas of inquiry: 'Who was
Oswald?'; 'Who was Ruby?'; 'Who was this and that?' But you don't have
'Who shot Kennedy?,'" he says. "They've already had a panel on 'Who are
the terrorists?,' which was all about al Qaeda. So they're investigating
the official line of assumptions."
The 9/11 hearings have been poorly attended and bloodless in content.
Witnesses have been mostly top government officials along with former
spies. The media have been largely absent. Citizens' groups have been shut
out of the process, and some 9/11 widows and widowers have become livid
with frustration.
Across the nation, a growing number of people are determined to discover
the truth about 9/11. Citizen-led organizations such as CitizensWatch and
the 9/11 Visibility Project are trying to give the public a say.
But the movement with the most clout is the loose-knit band of some 100
families who are suing airlines and government agencies rather than accept
part of the $5 billion payout offered to victims' relatives in exchange
for a promise not to sue. A lawsuit, many feel, offers the best hope of
dragging information out into the open.
THE WIDOWS' JOURNEYS
Ninety-eight percent of the families filed for claims with the 9/11 Victim
Compensation Fund, 20 percent doing so in the final week of the Dec. 22,
2003 deadline.
That number superceded Fund Director Kenneth Feinberg's "magic minimum" of
90 percent, about which he remained "cautiously optimistic" when the Press
spoke to him on Dec. 10.
But it's the other 2 percent—roughly 125 families filing some 200 separate
lawsuits—who are trading millions of dollars for the truth that Feinberg
and the commission have to worry about.
"I would rather eat dirt than [get] into the fund," says Ellen Mariani,
whose husband, Louis Mariani, died aboard United Flight 175, the plane
that hit the World Trade Center's South Tower. "I don't want to sign off
my rights as a citizen of this country. I want answers."
In the wake of the tragedy, Mariani was determined to stay strong. She
helped reschedule her daughter's wedding, originally set for Sept. 12,
2001, and attended it four days after the disaster. But events caught up
with her.
"I couldn't sleep...I had been watching TV. I was writing, listening, and
then comparing," she says. "And nothing was making sense." She began two
years of research into the Bush family's business and military involvement
in the Middle East.
Mariani went through two different lawyers before she found Philip Berg, a
Pennsylvania Democratic activist and former gubernatorial candidate. The
gravity of the situation is not lost on Berg.
"We're at a point in our history where the American public must stand up,
hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, and fight," Berg tells the Press.
"We're losing rights minute by minute here and we're in a very dangerous
time in this country."
On Nov. 26, 2003, Mariani and Berg filed an amended detailed complaint in
their racketeering lawsuit against President Bush and other top officials
(Mariani had sued United Airlines two years earlier).
"There's high levels of people in the Bush administration who knew of,
failed to warn, failed to prevent and also are covering up since 9/11,"
says Berg. "Ashcroft, for instance, stopped flying commercial aircraft in
July of 2001. Why?"
That's just one of the questions the families want answered.
Mariani isn't alone.
"This may be uncharted waters, but I was thrown in a pool on Sept. 11,
2001, and had to learn to swim," says 9/11 widow Monica Gabrielle, of West
Haven, Conn. "No one has been fired. No one has been demoted. The same
people who are guarding us today on an elevated security alert are the
same people who were working that day." She describes her late husband,
Richard Gabrielle, an insurance broker who lay trapped underneath rubble
as the South Tower collapsed: "He was a gentle man, and he was alive,
trying to get out of that building that day. The dead. The dying. The
smoke. The terror. No one should have suffered like that. I want
accountability. I need answers."
Gabrielle is represented by Kreindler & Kreindler, the Manhattan firm that
won $2 million in 1995 for 13 American Airlines passengers who had
experienced 28 seconds of severe turbulence. Gabrielle is one of many
plaintiffs represented by the firm who have joined others in filing suit
against the airlines and security firms involved in 9/11. Also named are
Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, certain governments, and parties accused of
masterminding the attacks.
As Gabrielle's attorney, Brian Alexander, sees it, the 9/11 Victim
Compensation Fund is the byproduct of powerful airline lobbying. "The
legislation [that created the fund] was designed to protect the airlines
first and foremost—and it was airline lobbyists who pushed it," Alexander
says. "The Victim Compensation Fund for the families was an afterthought."
Skeptical of the Mariani suit's chances, Alexander says, "At the end of
the day there are legal defenses that the government can take, they get to
be stupid, they can be as negligent as all get-out, and they will still
win, especially when you're talking about intelligence."
But Mariani's goal is not victory in court, but a closer pass at the truth.
IMPEDIMENTS
Creating an independent 9/11 commission was a Herculean effort, seemingly
resisted by the Bush administration from the start. When it couldn't stop
the juggernaut, the administration tapped controversial figure Henry
Kissinger to be chairman. Kissinger, former national security adviser and
secretary of state to Richard Nixon, had been both lauded and lambasted
for his role in international affairs. Kissinger bowed out of the
assignment rather than disclose who his international consulting clients
were.
Since then, the commission has become publicly frustrated by the
administration's refusal to allow full access to documents, notably the
Aug. 6, 2001 daily brief prepared by the CIA and seen by the president,
which referred to possible commercial airline attacks. After Commissioner
Cleland resigned (to take a job as a director of the Export/Import Bank),
a compromise was reached: The panel received a lengthy briefings summary
edited by the White House then prepared by two 9/11 commissioners.
Then there was the funding. The commission was expected to adhere to a
mere $3 million budget to reach its findings within 18 months. After some
time, the budget was increased to $12 million. Many believe the panel is
still being stiffed, considering the gravity of the task and the number of
people killed. After all, $40 million was spent investigating the Space
Shuttle Columbia disaster, which caused seven deaths. Republicans in
Congress gave Kenneth Starr $47 million and five years for the Clinton
investigation, which focused on real estate dealings and the president
receiving fellatio from an intern.
In addition to secrecy and underfunding, many feel the commission's
pursuits are compromised by the interests of its members (see sidebar).
Some observers see nothing more than a collection of D.C. insiders who
won't rock the boat. This theory gained credence recently when the
commission called two of its own, Executive Director Philip Zelikow and
Jamie Gorelick, as witnesses. Zelikow worked with National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice during the first Bush administration and as part
of the current administration's transition team. Gorelick was deputy
attorney general during the Clinton presidency. Zelikow and Gorelick were
interviewed by the panel regarding their influence on national security
policy and terrorism.
"Did [Zelikow] interview himself about his own role in the failures that
left us defenseless?" asked Lori Van Auken, one of the 9/11 widows.
Indeed, the commission may not even be meeting its own legal mandates.
According to the legislation that created it, members should have no
connection to any administration or to anyone potentially associated with
the case. But as their résumés clearly show, the majority of commissioners
break Rule 2 and the Republican commissioners break Rule 1.
Then there has been the absence of meaningful testimony from witnesses. In
late January, the commission heard from an immigration inspector, Jose
Melendez-Perez, of Orlando, Fla. He prevented Mohamed al-Qahtani, believed
by many to be a 20th hijacker, from entering the country in late August
2001. Authorities believe that hijacker Mohamed Atta was at Orlando
International airport to meet al-Qahtani, but Melendez-Perez put
al-Qahtani on a plane back to Saudi Arabia. It would perhaps be more
instructive to interview those officers who stopped nine hijackers but in
the end let 19 of them board planes, even though between two and eight had
fraudulent visas. But those officials have not been called as witnesses.
THE HEARINGS BEGIN
On March 31, 2003, the commission commenced its hearings, downtown near
Ground Zero in the dusty but regal U.S. Customs Building. The spacious
auditorium was one-third full of observers and media. With Gov. Kean in
charge, things were proceeding civilly.
Survivors of the 9/11 tragedy spoke first—stockbrokers and Port Authority
cops who had escaped the blaze with burns or emotional scars. It was hard
not to be moved when a beefy police officer's testimony was choked by
tears. Victims emphasized that they were not angry, and didn't want to
"point fingers." But then a panel of widows and widowers urged the panel
to find who was responsible—and "point fingers."
At lunchtime, CitizensWatch served sandwiches at its press conference,
held in the same building. John Judge and co-founder Kyle Hence put
together a list of "unanswered questions" that they urged the commission
to address.
Their questions include: Why were three top FBI agents blocked from
tracking the terrorists before 9/11? Why did the FBI convince the
University of Iowa to destroy the system that could track every kind of
anthrax 10 days before the mailing of the first envelope? Eleven months
later, these questions remain unasked and unanswered.
Judge, a journalist who has made a name for himself by looking into
possible conspiracies in history, is careful to make clear that he doesn't
believe everything he's heard—and he's heard a lot. He is critical of
certain voices, some coming from the far right, who link 9/11 to a
Jewish/Israeli conspiracy. The theory that no one of Jewish descent was in
the WTC that day is easily dismissed by a look at the list of the victims.
If Judge were chair of the 9/11 Commission, who would he call as witnesses?
"Not the FAA/NORAD top brass at the Pentagon," says Judge. "I would call
the pilots. I would call the base commanders, people on the horn at the
air traffic controller's."
LI'S MOVEMENT
At a Dec. 16 forum at Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Shelter Rock
in Manhasset, a coalition of Long Island groups attempted to answer the
questions: How—and why—did the campaign against terrorism become a war on
Iraq? What are the financial connections between the Bush and bin Laden
families? Did a "crisis presidency" give the far right leeway to transform
U.S. policies? The coalition included representatives of such diverse
groups as Five Towns Forum and L.I. Freespace. Hofstra Professor Michael
D'Innocenzo, German 9/11 expert Nico Haupt and Massapequa's Michael Kane
of the local hard rock/hip-hop group Clarity, whose song themes include
questioning the government's knowledge of the attacks, were among the
panelists.
After the showing of the film Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11,
Kane, a recent finalist in www.MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" online
video contest, spoke to the crowd. The questions that were thrown around
could make anyone dizzy.
What about the unusual activity in the options markets for United Airlines
and American Airlines in the days before 9/11? Why did National Security
Advisor Condoleeza Rice make contradictory remarks in her May 16, 2002
press briefing? She stated, "I don't think anybody could have predicted
that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade
Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon." Yet there was a
long line of published intelligence dating back to 1994 that specifically
warned of bin Laden using aircraft as bombs. The San Francisco Chronicle
reported an upsurge in threats in mid-July, including specific information
of a threat to President Bush at a summit in Genoa, Italy. That threat is
said to have included an airplanes-as-missiles plot.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said that in the weeks before the
attacks, the Egyptian intelligence service warned U.S. officials of a
possible attack by the bin Laden terrorist network, according to The New
York Times. The White House, however, responded that the United States had
no warnings at all.
OUTSIDE THE U.S.
Non-American audiences are finding it a lot easier to imagine the worst.
Many Europeans pride themselves on their more critical views of U.S.
policy, and are quick to point out that the same figures who participated
in the Iran/Contra scandal (Colin Powell, Dick Armitage, Elliot Abrams and
Dick Cheney) are back in the saddle in this White House.
These views have translated into best- seller status for several books on
the subject. One author, Andreas Von Bulow, is a former German cabinet
member. In France, a title called The Forbidden Truth also enjoyed
notoriety and heavy sales. Co-author Jean-Charles Brisard met with FBI
counterterror chief John O'Neil, and documents how O'Neil was frustrated
with how the administration accommodated the Taliban and bin Laden.
O'Neil, who resigned from the FBI to become head of security at the Twin
Towers, died on 9/11.
The mainstream American media refuses to give most theories serious
coverage. Then again, maybe the pundits are finally coming around.
Recently, Mariani's lawyer Phil Berg has been appearing on major
television news programs and in newspaper interviews.
Daniel Hopsicker, author of Barry & "the Boys" : The CIA, the Mob and
America's Secret History, has spent the past few years in Venice, Fla.,
researching Huffman Aviation, where two of three 9/11 pilots allegedly
trained. The seamy dirt he uncovered was partly revealed in Mohamed Atta
and the Venice Flying Circus, a video released in 2002, with more in his
forthcoming book, Welcome to Terrorland, due out this month. Hopsicker
reports that he wouldn't be able to get information if it weren't for
insiders willing to blow a whistle. "Sept. 11 was so overwhelming," he
says, "that people who are functionaries for that secret government are
still human, like you and I. It's compelled some of them to break ranks."
"What I saw, after a number of people talked about the FBI silencing them,
was that American streak that won't let that happen," he continues. "Real
Americans won't be silenced."
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Subject: [pjnews] Mainstream Media Fails Itself with Haiti Reporting
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Mainstream Media Fails Itself
By Peter Phillips
On February 29, Richard Boucher from the U.S. Department of State
released a press release claiming that Jean Bertrand Aristide had
resigned as president of Haiti and that the United State facilitated
his safe departure. Within hours the major broadcast news stations in
the United States including CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, and NPR were
reporting that Aristide had fled Haiti. An Associated Press release
that evening said "Aristide resigns, flees into exile." The next day
headlines in the major newspapers across the country, including the
Washington Post, USA Today, New York Times, and Atlanta Journal
Constitution, all announced "Aristide Flees Haiti." The Baltimore sun
reported, "Haiti's first democratically-elected president was forced
to flee his country yesterday like despots before him."
However on Sunday afternoon February 29, Pacific News network with
reporters live in Port-au-Prince Haiti were claiming that Aristide
was forced to resign by the US and taken out of the Presidential
Palace by armed US marines. On Monday morning Amy Goodman with
Democracy Now! news show interviewed Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
Waters said she had received a phone call from Aristide at 9:00 AM
EST March 1 in which Aristide emphatically denied that he had
resigned and said that he had been kidnapped by US and French forces.
Aristide made calls to others including TransAfrica founder Randall
Robinson, who verified congresswomen Waters' report.
Mainstream corporate media was faced with a dilemma. Confirmed
contradictions to headlines reports were being openly revealed to
hundreds of thousands of Pacifica listeners nationwide. By Monday
afternoon mainstream corporate media began to respond to the charges.
Tom Brokaw on NBC Nightly News, 6:30 PM voiced, "Haiti in crisis.
Armed rebels sweep into the capital as Aristide claims US troops
kidnapped him; forced him out. The US calls that nonsense." Fox News
Network with Brit Hume reported Colin Powell's comments, "He was not
kidnapped. We did not force him on to the airplane. He went on to the
airplane willingly, and that's the truth. Mort Kondracke, executive
editor of Roll Call added, "Aristide, Šwas a thug and a leader of
thugs and ran his country into the ground." The New York Times in a
story buried on page 10 reported that "President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide asserted Monday that he had been driven from power in Haiti
by the United States in "a coup," an allegation dismissed by the
White House as "complete nonsense."
Mainstream media had a credibility problem. Their original story was
openly contradicted. The kidnap story could be ignored or back-paged
as was done by many newspapers in the US. Or it can be framed within
the context of a US denial and dismissed. Unfortunately, the
corporate media seems not at all interested in conducting an
investigation into the charges, seeking witnesses, or verifying
contradictions. Nor is the mainstream media asking or answering the
question of why they fully accept the State Department's version of
the coup in the first place. Corporate media certainly had enough
pre-warning to determine that Aristide was not going to willingly
leave the country. Aristide had been saying exactly that for the past
month during the armed attacks in the north of Haiti. Aristide was
interviewed on CNN February 26. He explained that the terrorists, and
criminal drug dealers were former members of the Front for the
Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), which had led the coup in
1991 killing 5,000 people. Aristide believed that they would kill
more people if a coup was allowed to happen. It was also well known
in media circles that the US Undersecretary of State Roger Noriega
for Latin America was a senior aide to former Senator Jesse Helms,
who as chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs committee was a
longtime backer of Haitian dictator Jean Claude Duvalier and an
opponent of Aristide. These facts alone should have been a red flag
regarding the State Department's version.
As a former priest and liberation theologist, Jean Bertrand Aristide
stood for grassroots democracy, alleviation of poverty, and God's
love for all human beings. He challenged the neo-liberal
globalization efforts of the Haitian upper class and their US
partners. For this he was targeted by the Bush administration. That
the US waited until the day after Aristide was gone to send in troops
to stabilize the country proves intent to remove him from office.
Mainstream media had every reason to question the State Department's
version of the coup in Haiti, but choose instead to report a highly
doubtful cover story. We deserve more from our media than their being
stenographers for the government. Weapons of mass destruction aside,
we need a media that looks for the truth and exposes the
contradictions in the fabrications of the powerful.
Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University
and Director of Project Censored a media research organization.
--
Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-664-2588
http://www.projectcensored.org/
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush Rouses Sleeping Dogs Of The Culture War
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The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to: "Pray for the
President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of
marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles. With
any forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that
God's Word and His standards will be honored by our government."
So here, in support of the Prayer Team's admirable goals, is a proposed
Constitutional Amendment codifying marriage entirely on Biblical
principles:
A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one
man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5.)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in
addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron. 11:21)
C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin.
If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut. 22:13-21)
D. Marriage between a believer and a nonbeliever shall be forbidden.
(Gen.24:3; Num. 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh. 10:30)
E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the
constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be
construed to permit divorce. (Deut. 22:19; Mark 10:9)
F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the
widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does
not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise
punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut.
25:5-10)
-----------------
http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=1
Bush Rouses The Sleeping Dogs Of The Culture War
by Arianna Huffington
February 18, 2004
“I’m a war president,” George Bush told us.
But as the body count in Iraq continues to rise, the president’s approval
rating plummets, and the furor over phantom WMD, sexed-up intel, and
Bush’s spotty Air National Guard service refuses to go away, it appears
Karl Rove is planning a small rewrite for his candidate: “I’m a culture
war president.”
Remember that divisive pre-9/11 campaign staple? Well, it’s flared up
again — with a vengeance and a rash of new administration actions clearly
aimed at shoring up the president’s Christian conservative base.
In the last month, the president has traded in his too-tight flight suit
for a revival tent, backing a new anti-obscenity crusade, anti-condom
sex-ed programs, a renewed commitment to fighting the drug war, and his
attorney general’s efforts to poke around the private medical records of
women who’ve had abortions. He even hinted in his State of the Union that
he’d be willing to endorse a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
With Silver Starred John Kerry threatening the president’s hold on the
high ground of national defense, Team Bush has decided it’s time to switch
battlefields and start screaming about Sodom and Gomorrah.
And who has time to talk about the 3 million jobs lost on Bush’s watch
when gay couples are trying to make their lifetime commitment legal?
Heaven forbid.
You would think the Christian right has more pressing matters to worry
about. America now has 35 million people living in poverty, many of them
working poor. And Christian conservatives are up in arms about gay
marriage?
Maybe they should take another look at the Bible and its admonition that
we shall be judged by what we do for the least among us. Indeed, if you
removed every reference to poverty in the New Testament, the Good Book
would be reduced to little more than a Not Bad Pamphlet. In the words of
Rev. Jim Wallis, “The Prophets would be decimated, the Psalms destroyed,
and the Gospels ripped to shreds.” On the other hand, there is not a
single mention of gay marriage or the need to ban it.
Regrettably, this perversion of presidential priorities is not limited to
campaign rhetoric — it extends to how our increasingly limited tax dollars
are being spent. Take the administration’s new anti-obscenity push — a
blast from our blue-nosed past. Bush’s 2005 budget calls for a boost in
funding for government efforts to crack down on the adult entertainment
industry — one of the precious few non-terror-related programs to garner a
spending increase.
I kid you not: While the White House is cutting back on its housing
budget, veterans’ benefits, and the National Institutes of Health, it’s
opening up the coffers to make sure you have a harder time downloading the
Paris Hilton sexcapade on the Net.
But that’s not even the worst of it. The Justice Department has recently
assigned a team of FBI agents to focus exclusively on adult obscenity
cases. That’s right, with the war on terror in full swing, our war
president is going to have a group of G-men doing nothing but working the
porn beat when they could be tracking down — oh, I don’t know — terrorist
sleeper cells. Talk about your misguided allocation of manpower. I don’t
know about you, but I certainly feel safer knowing the feds are going to
be keeping close tabs on Jenna Jameson.
We see the same loopy sense of right and wrong being played out in the
Janet Jackson firestorm. Less than two weeks after the shock and bra of
the Super Bowl, Bush’s congressional cronies were already holding hearings
on the matter. Compare that to the foot-dragging that followed 9/11. It
took 14 months — and a candlelight vigil outside the White House by the
victims’ family members — before the president finally relented and the
9/11 Commission was created. Now that’s indecent.
For the moral relativists in the Bush administration, the definition of
sin seems to depend on whether the sinner can further their political
purposes.
So Justin exposing Janet's boob is a sin, but White House staffers
exposing Valerie Plame is a win. Profiting from porno is a sin, but
Halliburton’s wartime profiteering is a win. Two men getting hitched is a
sin, but Cheney and Scalia shacking up in a duck blind is a win. Telling
students condoms can prevent STDs is a sin, but lying about WMD is a win.
And so, apparently, is GOP staffers hacking into Senate computers and Tom
DeLay illegally funneling corporate money to Texas politicians.
The president’s culture war is little more than breasts and circuses.
Election-year weapons of mass distraction. Hail to the Panderer-in-Chief.
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Subject: [pjnews] Action: Bush's First Ads Exploit 9/11
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fwd...
Dear MoveOn member,
In the months after the attacks on September 11th, President Bush told
reporters that he had "no ambition whatsoever to use this as a political
issue." But the campaign ads he revealed today use imagery of Ground Zero
and of a fire fighter's funeral to argue for his re-election.
9/11 family members are furious about it. The New York Daily News covered
the story this morning:
"It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," said Monica
Gabrielle, whose husband died in the twin tower attacks. "It is
unconscionable." . . .
Firefighter Tommy Fee in Rescue Squad 270 in Queens was appalled. "It's as
sick as people who stole things out of the place. The image of
firefighters at Ground Zero should not be used for this stuff, for
politics," Fee said.
(The whole article is online here: http://snipurl.com/4vop)
If we don't tell President Bush now that exploiting our national tragedy
for partisan political gain is off-limits, we can expect far more of this
in the months ahead. The best way to put Bush on notice is by filling the
nation's editorial pages. If we all write our local papers, Bush will
understand just how inappropriate his ads are.
Writing a letter to the editor doesn't actually take very long ? you can
do it in ten minutes or less. Writing a letter that's short, sweet, and to
the point is the best way for you to get it published. We've added some
tips and some talking points below. Once you've written, please let us
know at:
http://www.moveon.org/pac/bushltes.html?id=2423-1914492-Srbx31nxNDox6xyiRsm.MQ
Here are some points you could mention in your letter:
Bush told us he wouldn't use 9/11 for political purposes. As reported by
the Associated Press on 1/23/03, President Bush said "I have no ambition
whatsoever to use this as a political issue." Now he's doing precisely
that.
Our tragedy is being exploited. By using 9/11 imagery, President Bush's
re-election ads cheapen a profoundly significant event that killed
thousands and hurt all of us.
Just two weeks ago, the Bush/Cheney campaign attacked the notion of
"playing politics with national security." As reported in Newsday on
2/20/04, Bush-Cheney spokesman Kevin Madden responded to charges that the
White House has overtly politicized 9/11 by saying "I can't believe [they]
said that. They are playing politics with national security."
Bush still won't testify in front of the 9/11 commission. As the Daily
News reported, many family members are especially upset because President
Bush still refuses to meet with the whole 9/11 commission, which was set
up to determine what went wrong in the lead-up to the attacks.
The political use of 9/11 is a major part of the Bush re-election
strategy. The 2004 Republican Convention is scheduled for the first week
of September, timing which, according to the New York Times (4/22/03),
"will allow Bush to begin his formal campaign near the third anniversary
of Sept. 11."
Here are a few tips on writing an effective letter:
Brevity is the soul of wit. 250 words is the absolute maximum, 150 words
is even better.
The key to publication is to pounce on something specific you've seen in
the newspaper -- such as a story on the Bush advertising.
Be sure to include your name and address, and especially your phone number
when submitting your letter. Editors need to call you to verify authorship
before they can print your letter. They don't print your phone number.
Your newspaper's letters page should give you an email address or fax
number to use, or you can try Congress.org's website:
http://congress.org/congressorg/dbq/media/
Working together, we can make sure that Bush and the nation knows that
these ads are over the line.
Sincerely,
--Eli Pariser
Executive Director, MoveOn PAC
March 4th, 2004
P.S. Many of the citations and quotes in this alert were collected first
by the Center for American Progress in their Progress Report, online at:
http://www.progressreport.org
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Subject: [pjnews] The Fire This Time in Haiti was US-Fueled
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from: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0304-13.htm
Assuming the Right to Intervene
By Norman Solomon
[excerpt]
... The day after the coup that U.S. media typically refuse to call a
coup, the New York Times ran a lead editorial about Haiti on March 1 that
mostly let the Bush regime off the hook with a faint reproach.
The Bush administration, the Times editorialized, was "too willing to
ignore democratic legitimacy in order to allow the removal of a leader it
disliked and distrusted." The editorial faulted "Mr. Bush's hesitation"
and went on to say "it is deplorable that President Bush stood by" while
men such as two convicted murderers and an accused cocaine trafficker
"took over much of Haiti." The editorial's last sentence muted the
critical tone, referring merely to "mishandling of this crisis."
Even at its most vehement, the Times editorial accused the Bush
administration of inaction ("ignore" ... "hesitation" ... "stood by" ...
"mishandling"), as though the gist of the problem was a kind of inept
passivity -- rather than calculated mendacity in the service of an
interventionist agenda.
Meanwhile, also on March 1, the Times front page supplied an official
story in the guise of journalism. Failing to attribute a key anecdotal
flourish to any source -- while providing Washington's version of
instantly historic events -- the newspaper of record reported that
Aristide "meekly asked the American ambassador in Haiti through an aide
whether his resignation would help the country."
In the next day's edition of the Times, the front-page story about Haiti
included Aristide's contention that he'd been overthrown by the United
States. The headline over that article: "Haitian Rebels Enter Capital;
Aristide Bitter."
Bitter.
Underneath such news and commentary runs powerful deference to Washington
policymakers, reinforcing interventionist prerogatives even when
criticizing their implementation. A basic underlying assumption that
pervades media coverage has been consistent -- the right to intervene. Not
the wisdom of intervening, but the ultimate right to do so.
[snip]
-----------
This was written before Aristide was led out of his country by US forces,
so it's a bit dated, but it still contains plenty of good information...
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/03/01/2003100742
Published on Monday, March 1, 2004 by the Taipei Times / Taiwan
The Fire This Time in Haiti was US-Fueled: The Bush Administration Appears
to have Succeeded in its Long-Time Goal of Toppling Aristide Through Years
of Blocking International Aid to his Impoverished Nation
by Jeffrey Sachs
Haiti, once again, is ablaze. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is widely
blamed, and he may be toppled soon. Almost nobody, however, understands
that today's chaos was made in Washington -- deliberately, cynically and
steadfastly. History will bear this out. In the meantime, political,
social, and economic chaos will deepen, and Haiti's impoverished people
will suffer.
The Bush administration has been pursuing policies likely to topple
Aristide since 2001. The hatred began when Aristide, then a parish priest
and democracy campaigner against Haiti's ruthless Duvalier dictatorship,
preached liberation theology in the 1980s. Aristide's attacks led US
conservatives to brand him as the next Fidel Castro.?
They floated stories that Aristide was mentally deranged. Conservative
disdain multiplied several-fold when then-president Bill Clinton took up
Aristide's cause after he was blocked from electoral victory in 1991 by a
military coup. Clinton put Aristide into power in 1994, and conservatives
mocked Clinton for wasting America's efforts on "nation building" in
Haiti. This is the same right wing that has squandered US$160 billion on a
far more violent and dubious effort at "nation building" in Iraq.?
Attacks on Aristide began as soon as the Bush administration assumed
office. I visited Aristide in Port-au-Prince in early 2001. He impressed
me as intelligent and intent on good relations with Haiti's private sector
and the US. No firebrand, he sought advice on how to reform his economy
and explained his realistic and prescient concerns that the American right
would try to wreck his presidency.
Haiti was clearly in a desperate condition: the most impoverished country
in the Western Hemisphere, with a standard of living comparable to
sub-Saharan Africa despite being only a few hours by air from Miami. Life
expectancy was 52 years. Children were chronically hungry.
Of every 1,000 children born, more than 100 died before their fifth
birthday. An AIDS epidemic, the worst in the Caribbean, was running
unchecked. The health system had collapsed. Fearing unrest, tourists and
foreign investors were staying away, so there were no jobs to be had.
But Aristide was enormously popular in early 2001. Hopes were high that he
would deliver progress against the extraordinary poverty. Together with
Dr. Paul Farmer, the legendary AIDS doctor in Haiti, I visited villages in
Haiti's Central Plateau, asking people about their views of politics and
Aristide.? Everybody referred to the president affectionately as "Titid."
Here, clearly, was an elected leader with the backing of Haiti's poor, who
constituted the bulk of the population.
When I returned to Washington, I spoke to senior officials in the IMF,
World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Organization of American
States. I expected to hear that these international organizations would be
rushing to help Haiti.
Instead, I was shocked to learn that they would all be suspending aid,
under vague "instructions" from the US. Washington, it seemed, was
unwilling to release aid to Haiti because of irregularities in the 2000
legislative elections, and was insisting that Aristide make peace with the
political opposition before releasing any aid.
The US position was a travesty. Aristide had been elected president in an
indisputable landslide. He was, without doubt, the popularly elected
leader of the country -- a claim that President George W. Bush cannot make
about himself.
Nor were the results of the legislative elections in 2000 in doubt:
Aristide's party had also won in a landslide.? It was claimed that
Aristide's party had stolen a few seats. If true -- and the allegation
remains unproved -- it would be nothing different from what has occurred
in dozens of countries around the world receiving support from the IMF,
World Bank, and the US itself. By any standard, Haiti's elections had
marked a step forward in democracy, compared to the decades of military
dictatorships that America had backed, not to mention long periods of
direct US military occupation.
The more one sniffed around Washington the less America's position made
sense. People in positions of responsibility in international agencies
simply shrugged and mumbled that they couldn't do more to help Haiti in
view of the Bush veto on aid. Moreover, by saying that aid would be frozen
until Aristide and the political opposition reached an agreement, the Bush
administration provided Haiti's un-elected opposition with an open-ended
veto. Aristide's foes merely had to refuse to bargain in order to plunge
Haiti into chaos.?
That chaos has now come. It is sad to hear rampaging students on BBC and
CNN saying that Aristide "lied" because he didn't improve the country's
social conditions. Yes, Haiti's economic collapse is fueling rioting and
deaths, but the lies were not Aristide's. The lies came from Washington.
Even now, Aristide says that he will share power with the opposition, but
the opposition says no. Aristide's opponents know that US right-wingers
will stand with them to bring them violently to power. As long as that
remains true, Haiti's agony will continue.
Jeffrey Sachs is professor of economics and director of the Earth
Institute at Columbia University.
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Subject: [pjnews] US-Sponsored Regime Change in Haiti
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/4x6l
Powell and Aide Questioned on Haiti by Panel's Skeptics
http://snipurl.com/4x6j
NYT: Supporters Question Aristide "Resignation" Letter
---------------
This is one of the most thorough pieces I'm seen on the background leading
up to the present situation...
http://www.worldwar3report.com/haiti.html
U.S.-SPONSORED REGIME CHANGE IN HAITI
by Nirit Ben-Ari with Bill Weinberg
In the wee hours of March 1, US Marines landed in Haiti hours after
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide reportedly succumbed to demands from an
armed opposition movement that he step down and go into exile--although
persistent rumors on the ground maintain he was actually arrested by US
forces. As rebel troops entered the capital Port-au-Prince, the UN
Security Council approved a resolution authorizing a multinational force
to restore order, and French troops are also on the way.
The rebel army, hobbled together from anti-government gangs and militias
and led by former army officers, has achieved its aim of Aristide's
ouster. It seems the cost will be the loss of Haiti's sovereignty to
foreign occupation troops--yet again..
Cycles of Destabilization
This overthrow had been in the making since December 1990, when Haiti's
first free election was held. The winning candidate, with two-thirds
majority, was the populist priest Aristide, backed by a vigorous
grassroots movement known as Lavalas. But seven months later, Aristide's
government was overthrown in a military coup. No government on earth
recognized the military junta, but as Noam Chomsky noted: "Washington
maintained close intelligence and military ties with the new rulers while
undermining the embargo called by the Organization of American States,
even authorizing illegal shipments of oil to the regime and its wealthy
supporters."
In July 1993, Aristide was made to sign the Governor's Island Accord, a
US-backed "peace accord" with the illegal military junta that terrorized
Haiti for three years. The Accord forbade Aristide from running for
re-election once he was restored to power, and gave amnesty to the
death-squad terrorists of the junta. The junta then refused to abide by
the accord, prompting President Clinton to send in troops in September
1994.
Aristide finished his term, although conditions imposed on him as the cost
of returning to power--such as an IMF-style "free market" reform of the
economy--eroded his popularity. But Aristide continued to stand up to the
IMF and international creditors, demanding a better deal that would not
impose yet harsher austerity on Haiti, the poorest country in the western
hemisphere.
In 1995 Rene Preval, a close friend of Aristide, was elected as president.
His government faced serious political deadlock, and in 1999 Preval
declared that Parliament's term has expired and began ruling by decree.
The last elections took place in November 2000. Aristide won his second
non-consecutive term--amid allegations of irregularities by the US and the
opposition. Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official backed by the White
House, won only 14% of the votes. To the dismay of Washington, Aristide
was president again.
The US and international donors blocked financial aid, alleging the
elections were "flawed." Arisitide, in need of funds to implement his
social plans for the country, was immobilized. Only in July 2003, the
Inter-American Development Bank resumed loan programs.
At the same time, the arming and funding of Aristide's
opposition--including the same paramilitary leaders who were at the
forefront of the campaign of terror during the 1991-94 military
junta--continued. Ira Kurzban, general counsel to the Haitian government,
told Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now Feb. 25 that the US government was
directly involved in a new military coup attempt against Aristide--and
that the rebels fighting to overthrow his government are being backed by
Washington. "This is a military operation," he said, "it's not a rag-tag
group of liberators, as has often been put in the press." Kurzban denied
media reports that the armed groups were using weapons originally
distributed by Aristide. Among the weapons used by the paramilitaries are
M-16s with armor-piercing ammo and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, he
said.
France was the first to call for Aristide's resignation as the rebels
seized the northern half of the country in late February. The French hold
grudges against Aristide for his demand last April that France pay back
the $22 billion (adjusted for inflation and interest) that Haiti had to
pay in 1863 for French recognition of the republic, which became
independent in 1804--the second in the hemisphere after the US in 1776,
and the first independent black republic in the world. Ironically, the new
uprising came weeks after Haiti had celebrated the bicentennial of its
independence.
U.S. State Department Behind Coup?
In a Feb. 12 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powel, US Rep. Barbara Lee
(D-CA) wrote: "Our failure to support the democratic process and help
restore order looks like a covert effort to overthrow a government. There
is a violent coup d'etat in the making, and it appears that the United
States is aiding and abetting the attempt to violently topple the Aristide
Government. With all due respect, this looks like 'regime change.' How can
we call for democracy in Iraq and not say very clearly that we support
democratic elections as the only option in Haiti?"
And US Rep Maxine Waters (D-CA), also in a letter to Powell, said she was
"outraged" at the State Department willingness to sabotage democracy and
the rule of law in Haiti. "It has been clear to me for some time that the
state department has been trying to undermine President AristideÉ I am
convinced that this effort to force President Aristide out of office by
any means is a power-grab by the same forces that staged a coup d'etat and
forced him out of office in 1991. The opposition that claims to be
peaceful is not peaceful and they are responsible for the violence in
Gonaives and other parts of Haiti. Should these actions by Andre Apaid and
his Committee of 184, thugs and violent protestors receive support or
encouragement from the United States, thereby increasing the risk of a
coup d'etat, there may well be a bloodbath on the streets of Haiti." She
called the State Department to "discontinue" its actions in support of
"violent protesters and thugs" in Haiti.
The New York Times reported Feb. 12 that US officials "hint[ed]" the Bush
administration might support replacing Aristide--although he had two years
left in office and was elected democratically.
Who Is Andre "Andy" Apaid?
The Haitian political opposition--allied with the armed rebels--was led by
AndrŽ "Andy" Apaid, also head of Alpha Industries, one of the oldest and
largest assembly factories in Haiti. As New York's Haiti Progress report
in November, Apaid's father was a close friend to dictator Jean-Claude
"Baby Doc" Duvalier. Apaid was born in New York and claims to be an
Haitian citizen, although Haitian law does not allow dual-nationality and
he has not renounced his US citizenship. In a recent interview broadcast
by the BBC Caribbean Service, Apaid voiced support for rioters in Gonaives
who had torched government buildings. He is also known for pulling a gun
on demonstrators organized by the Batay Ouvriye trade union who tried to
picket in front of his plant. Apaid lead the opposition's "Group of 184,"
a supposedly broad front of "civil society" organizations modeled on
similar anti-government coalitions in Chavez's Venezuela and Allende's
Chile.
Reuters reported Feb. 21 that the armed rebel leadership includes Louis
Jodel Chamblain, a prominent death-squad leader from the country's 30-year
Duvalier dictatorship. In 1993, Chamblain joined with Emmanuel "Toto"
Constant--now exiled in New York--to form the Front for the Advancement of
Progress of the Haitian People, (FRAPH), which terrorized Haiti following
the first coup against Aristide. He recently crossed back into Haiti from
exile in the Dominican Republic to lead paramilitary units. Several other
exiled figures of the junta that deposed Aristide in 1991 are also among
the rebel leadership.
Otto Reich and the Contra Connection
Kevin Pina of Berkeley's KPFA Radio, writing for the on-line Black
Commentator last April, noted that Otto Reich, President Bush's envoy for
Western Hemisphere Initiatives, had arrived in Haiti the same week bombs
began falling on Iraq. Reich came as part of a delegation representing the
Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community Council with a
stated mission of brokering an agreement between the Haitian government
and the opposition. His visit coincided with reports from the Haitian
police that uniformed soldiers of Haiti's abolished army had begun regular
armed incursions into the Central Plateau region of the country from the
Dominican Republic.
Otto Reich is a veteran of another US-sponsored armed insurgency against a
popular government in a small, impoverished Latin American nation. Reich
was the director of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy
(OPD) for Latin America and the Caribbean from 1983 to 1986--at the height
of the Reagan administration's covert wars in Central America. In 1987, he
was accused by the Congressional probe into the "Contragate" scandal of
engaging in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities" in his efforts to
promote the Reagan administration's "contra" guerilla army in Nicaragua.
He is today a top ideological and strategic mastermind of the
counter-insurgency war in Colombia, and has been named as a
behind-the-scenes figure in the failed April 2002 coup against President
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
Police Out-Gunned, Out-Numbered
Haitian police--a force of fewer than 5,000 in a country of 8
million--were outnumbered and outgunned in many areas by the rebel forces,
and the traditionally conservative army had been abolished by Aristide
following his return to power in 1994. In mid-February, as rebels seized
Cap-Haitien, the second-largest city, and numerous other town across the
country, police stations and government offices were looted and burned.
At least 70 people had been killed in three weeks of internal war as
February drew to a close, about 40 of them police officers. "Should those
killers come to Port-au-Prince, you may have thousands of people who may
be killed," Aristide told the AP. "We need the presence of the
international community as soon as possible."
Late on Feb. 29, as government loyalists and opponents of the paramilitary
gangs were preparing resistance in Port-au-Prince, the international press
reported that Aristide had fled by plane to the Central African Republic,
announcing that he would seek asylum in South Africa.
Guy Philippe, a former police chief who has emerged as public voice of the
armed rebellion, told CNN he would welcome foreign troops. Philippe, who
fled into exile in 2000 after being charged in a coup plot, insists he has
no desire to rule Haiti, but does seek to restore the military, which
Aristide disbanded.
Haitian Refugess Denied Entry
On Feb. 25, the Dominican Republic repatriated to Haiti 37 police and
local officials who had fled the country, while Dominican leaders worry
that the conflict--or a flood of refugees--could spill over the border.
The UK Guardian reported Feb. 26 that the number of Haitians fleeing the
deadly uprising in their homeland has escalated, with the US Coast Guard
saying it has intercepted 546 people at sea over three to four days. US
officials, however, denied the seriousness of the increase, saying it
"doesn't signal a mass exodus." For years, Haitian refugees detained by
the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS, now reorganized under the
Homeland Security Department) have been forcibly repatriated upon landing
at US shores--unlike Cuban refugees, who are granted political asylum
automatically upon arrival.
Given the violence and intimidation prevailing in Haiti, the new Haitian
boat people are clearly war refugees and not economic migrants, as
Washington has traditionally claimed.
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Subject: [pjnews] What's at Stake in Hackergate
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0304-09.htm
About 4,700 Democratic Files Improperly Obtained
--------------
FROM: MoveOn.org PAC's Research Team
DATE: 3.4.2004
What's at Stake in Hackergate
The Chairman and Ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin
Hatch and Patrick Leahy, must decide what happens next in "Hackergate,"
the investigation of activities by Republican committee and Senate staff
members who broke into Democratic committee members' computer files. The
two senators received a confidential internal investigative report
yesterday which, when it becomes public, could become a huge story and
lead to a full-blown criminal investigation. The most important
unanswered questions: did Republican Senators know about and use the
stolen documents, and did the White House use the stolen documents in
preparing judicial nominees for confirmation hearings?
Below are the key elements of this story as it stands now.
The Scale of the Hackergate Crimes Casts Doubt on Senators' Claims to
Ignorance
Thousands of Files Were Stolen. The Sergeant-at-Arms' investigation has
revealed that thousands of memos were stolen. "Democratic staff aides who
were briefed on Mr. Pickle's presentation said senators were stunned to
learn that more than 3,000 documents had been improperly read by
Republicans" [Neil Lewis, New York Times, 2/10/04] "Sen. Dianne Feinstein
(D-CA.), a Judiciary Committee member, put the number of documents at more
than 4,000." [Geoff Earle, The Hill, 2/11/04]
The Theft Took Place Over 18 Months. "It may never be possible to
determine the scope of the number of staffers looking at what all members
thought were confidential files," said [Judiciary Member, R-TX] Cornyn,
who added that Pickle confirmed for the Senators that "the files were
taken over an 18-month period...." [Paul Kane, Roll Call, 2/11/04]
Republican Leadership Defending a Crime. Senators Santorum (R-PA) and
Lott (R-MS) are both on record supporting Manuel Miranda, even after
Miranda admitted to stealing files. "Sen. Rick Santorum (PA)...countered
that the 'real aggrievement here' was the content of the memos of
Democratic 'collusion' with outside groups to block nominees. He urged
the media to 'look at where the real potential criminal' behavior was with
the Democrats...' [Paul Kane, Roll Call, 2/11/04]
The Stolen Memos Were Central to Republican Strategy on Judicial Nominations
Stolen Documents Used to Prep White House Judicial Nominees. Four
Democratic Judiciary Committee members have formally asked the White House
for details of any contact with or knowledge of the stolen documents.
Sergeant-at-Arms Pickle is also planning to ask every judicial nominee
from the period in question whether he or she had contact with or
knowledge of the stolen documents. Senator Durbin says he is planning on
asking every nominee who comes before the committee the same question.
[Paul Kane, Roll Call, 2/9/04; Neil Lewis, New York Times, 2/10/04]
Distributed to Right Wing Interest Groups. The Coalition for a Fair
Judiciary publicly posted 15 memoranda,
http://fairjudiciary.com/cfj_contents/press/collusionmemos.shtml, two of
which bore the electronic signature of Sen. Maj. Leader Bill Frist's
staffer Manuel Miranda. [Paul Kane, Roll Call, 1/20/04] Orrin Hatch has
also implicated a 'former staffer' as being involved, describing Manuel
Miranda. [Paul Kane, Roll Call, 1/20/04]
Distributed to Sympathetic Press Over Six Months. "On Feb. 27, 2003, I
[Bob Novak] reported in this column that Kennedy had devised a 'grand
design' to keep Bush from taking over the federal judiciary. I attributed
direct quotes about his filibuster scheme to 'internal sources,' and
Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic staffers recognized language from
their own e-mails. The Wall Street Journal last November published parts
of 15 such messages, which later were posted on a Web site." [Bob Novak,
Chicago Sun Times, 2/9/04]
Timing of Document Leeks Supported Republican Judiciary Strategy. "After
Republicans walked into the Senate chamber together to begin the
extraordinary session, Democrats argued that their move was not a show of
unity but rather a television stunt orchestrated for Fox News. They
pointed to a memo from Manuel Miranda, a staffer for Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), which said: 'It is important to double efforts
to get your boss to S-230 on time ... Fox News Channel is really excited
about this marathon and Brit Hume at 6 would love to open with all our 51
senators walking onto the floor -- the producer wants to know will we walk
in exactly at 6:02 when the show starts so they get it live to open Brit
Hume's show? Or if not, can we give them an exact time for the walk-in
start?' [The Hill, 11/14/03]
Manuel Miranda Was the Key Strategist on Right Wing Judicial Nominations
"Manuel Miranda, had spearheaded the Republican effort to push President
Bush's judicial nominees through the Senate in the face of fierce
Democratic opposition." [Alexander Bolton, The Hill, 2/5/04]
"Manuel Miranda, who advised Frist in the bitter partisan warfare over
judicial nominees, confirmed yesterday that he intends to officially
announce his resignation early next week." [Boston Globe, 2/6/04]
"Manuel Miranda, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's staff lawyer who ran
his judicial confirmation campaign, last Friday resigned under pressure."
[Bob Novak, Chicago Sun-Times, 2/9/04]
"Conservative activists...came to revere Miranda's sharp-elbowed approach
to the nomination battles." [Paul Kane, Roll Call 2/9/04]
Architect of the controversial 'Nuclear Option.' [Jimmy Moore, Talon News,
6/20/03; Chwialkowska, New York Sun, 9/5/03]
Miranda Colluded with Outside Interest Groups
Hypocritically, Republicans claim to be outraged that the stolen memos
document coordination between Democrats and liberal interest groups. [Wes
Vernon, Mewsmax.com, 2/12/04] Manuel Miranda's sole job was to collude
with conservative interest groups in the confirmation effort.
"'Mr. Miranda's very job was to plot strategy on judicial nominees with
groups on the right' Schmaler added." [Jeff Johnson, CNSNews.com, 2/24/04]
"As an aide in Frist's office, Miranda was able to organize the Judiciary
Committee with outside groups that communicated the Republican message on
judges. 'Miranda has really been the quarterback on the Republican side
for much of the Senate activity on this,' said Sean Rushton, the executive
director of the Committee for Justice." [Alexander Bolton, The Hill,
2/5/04]
"Manuel Miranda, Frist's top aide on judicial nominations who has been the
point man with conservative activists on the issue, is on leave" [Paul
Kane, Roll Call, 1/26/4]
Participated in a Christian Coalition of America rally to protest the
filibuster of the nominations of Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen.
[Washington Daybook, May 9, 2003]
-----------------
Revealing Picture of Hatch Surfaces On Internet:
Hatch Caught in Embarrassing Online Tryst with Publisher of Stolen
Democratic Documents
Twice in the days before right wing activist Kay Daly published stolen
Democratic documents on her web site, Senator Orrin Hatch appeared on
fringe internet radio shows with her. On October 29, 2003, he appeared on
her Free Republic radio "Daly Show" and on November 11, 2003, he appeared
on another Free Republic radio show with her. Manuel Miranda appeared on
Ms. Daly's radio show just two weeks earlier.
Kay Daly was the first person to publish complete versions of the stolen
documents. Miranda still denies leaking the stolen documents. Orrin
Hatch denies having any knowledge of the stolen documents. Their
appearances on the internet-broadcast radio shows days before she obtained
the documents calls into question their denials.
It is highly unusual that a sitting United States Senator, the Chairman of
the Judiciary Committee, would appear on two fringe internet radio
broadcasts in two weeks. The same could be said for a top staffer in the
Senate Leader's office, especially in the busy days leading up to the
Republicans' faux filibuster. For reasonable observers, it is hard to
believe that the timing of these events is purly coincidental. This is
one reason a criminal investigation is absolutely necessary.
Both Manuel Miranda and Sen. Orrin Hatch Appeared on a FreeRepublic.com
Radio Show with Stolen Memo Publisher Just Weeks Before Memos Published.
Stolen Memos were leaked to Kay Daly's Coalition for a Fair Judiciary.
http://fairjudiciary.com/cfj_contents/press/collusionmemos.shtml
Orrin Hatch appeared on Daly's fringe radio show two weeks before the
stolen memos were published.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1010454/posts
Orrin Hatch appeared on another extremist radio show with Daly less than a
week before the stolen memos were published.
http://www.mail-archive.com/newsandviews@chuckmuth.com/msg00411.html
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1020447/posts
Miranda appeared on Daly's radio show just weeks before the stolen memos
were published.
http://www.southernappeal.blogspot.com/2003_10_12_southernappeal_archive.html#106619471496697787
Daly leading the charge to defend Miranda. "If Miranda, who has admitted
to reading the memos in media interviews but denied distributing them to
reporters, faces more discipline or is fired, Daly promised an organized
conservative backlash. 'The reaction would be incendiary,' she said."
[Paul Kane, Roll Call, 1/26/04]
"Manny [Miranda] is a real fighter," said Kay Daly, president of Coalition
for a Fair Judiciary, a grouping of conservative activist organizations
involved in judicial nominations. "He's got that 40-yard stare." [Charles
Hurt, Washington Times, 3/4/04]
Paid for by MOVEON PAC, P.O. Box 9218, Berkeley, CA 94709. Website:
http://www.moveonpac.org. This communication is not authorized by any
candidate or candidate's committee.
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Subject: [pjnews] Further Doubts Cast on US Efforts to Link Iraq, al-Qaida
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/4vhi
Bullet magnets: Poorly-trained U.S. reservists to be rushed to Iraqi
frontline
http://snipurl.com/4vhg
US Angers Allies With New Middle East Plan
http://snipurl.com/4vhl
U.N.: Iraq had no WMD after 1994
http://snipurl.com/4xky
Blix: Iraq War Was Illegal
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0302-05.htm
U.N. Weapons Inspector Sees Vindication in US Frustration
Demetrius Perricos, acting head of the United Nations weapons inspection
program, can't disguise his satisfaction that almost a year after the
invasion of Iraq, U.S. inspectors have found the same thing that their
much-maligned U.N. counterparts did before the war: no banned weapons.
In his first interview since former chief U.S. inspector David Kay
announced his conclusion that Iraq had no banned weapons before the war,
Perricos said Kay's findings undercut complaints from the Bush
administration that the U.N. teams were not aggressive enough to find
chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.
[snip]
-------------
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8089829.htm
Posted on Tue, Mar. 02, 2004
Doubts cast on efforts to link Saddam, al-Qaida
By Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's claim that Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein had ties to al-Qaida - one of the administration's central
arguments for a pre-emptive war - appears to have been based on even less
solid intelligence than the administration's claims that Iraq had hidden
stocks of chemical and biological weapons.
Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has
turned up to verify allegations of Saddam's links with al-Qaida, and
several key parts of the administration's case have either proved false or
seem increasingly doubtful.
Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence that Saddam's
secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were
in league. At most, there were occasional meetings.
Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community never concluded that those
meetings produced an operational relationship, American officials said.
That verdict was in a secret report by the CIA's Directorate of
Intelligence that was updated in January 2003, on the eve of the war.
"We could find no provable connection between Saddam and al-Qaida," a
senior U.S. official acknowledged. He and others spoke on condition of
anonymity because the information involved is classified and could prove
embarrassing to the White House.
The administration's allegations that Saddam still had weapons of mass
destruction have been the subject of much greater public and political
controversy than its suggestions that Iraq and al-Qaida were in league.
They were based on the Iraqi leader's long history of duplicity regarding
WMD, which appeared to be confirmed by spy satellite photographs,
defectors and electronic eavesdropping.
But the evidence of Iraq's ties to al-Qaida was always sketchy, based
largely on testimony of Iraqi defectors and prisoners, supplemented with
limited reports from foreign agents and electronic eavesdropping.
Much of the evidence that's now available indicates that Iraq and al-Qaida
had no close ties, despite repeated contacts between the two; that the
terrorists who administration officials claimed were links between the two
had no direct connection to either Saddam or bin Laden; and that a key
meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and one of the leaders of
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks probably never happened.
A Knight Ridder review of the Bush administration statements on Iraq's
ties to terrorism and what's now known about the classified intelligence
has found that administration advocates of a pre-emptive invasion
frequently hyped sketchy and sometimes false information to help make
their case. On two occasions, they neglected to report information that
painted a less sinister picture.
The Bush administration has defended its prewar descriptions of Saddam and
is calling Iraq "the central front in the war on terrorism," as the
president told U.S. troops two weeks ago.
But before the war and since, Bush and his aides made rhetorical links
that now appear to have been leaps:
- Vice President Dick Cheney told National Public Radio in January that
there was "overwhelming evidence" of a relationship between Saddam and
al-Qaida. Among the evidence he cited was Iraq's harboring of Abdul Rahman
Yasin, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Cheney didn't mention that Iraq had offered to turn over Yasin to the FBI
in 1998, in return for a U.S. statement acknowledging that Iraq had no
role in that attack. The Clinton administration refused the offer, because
it was unwilling to reward Iraq for returning a fugitive.
- Administration officials reported that Farouk Hijazi, a top Iraqi
intelligence officer, had met with bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in
1998 and offered him safe haven in Iraq.
They left out the rest of the story, however. Bin Laden said he'd consider
the offer, U.S. intelligence officials said. But according to a report
later made available to the CIA, the al-Qaida leader told an aide
afterward that he had no intention of accepting Saddam's offer because "if
we go there, it would be his agenda, not ours."
- The administration tied Saddam to a terrorism network run by Palestinian
Abu Musab al Zarqawi. That network may be behind the latest violence in
Iraq, which killed at least 143 people Tuesday.
But U.S. officials say the evidence that Zarqawi had close operational
ties to al-Qaida appears increasingly doubtful.
Asked for Cheney's views on Iraq and terrorism, vice presidential
spokesman Kevin Kellems referred Knight Ridder to the vice president's
television interviews Tuesday.
Cheney, in an interview with CNN, said Zarqawi ran an
"al-Qaida-affiliated" group. He cited an intercepted letter that Zarqawi
is believed to have written to al-Qaida leaders, and a White House
official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity said the CIA has
described Zarqawi as an al-Qaida "associate."
But U.S. officials say the Zarqawi letter contained a plea for help that
al-Qaida rebuffed. Linguistic analysis of the letter indicates it was
written from one equal to another, not from a subordinate to a superior,
suggesting that Zarqawi considered himself an independent operator and not
a part of bin Laden's organization.
- Iraqi defectors alleged that Saddam's regime was helping to train Iraqi
and non-Iraqi Arab terrorists at a site called Salman Pak, south of
Baghdad. The allegation made it into a September 2002 white paper that the
White House issued.
The U.S. military has found no evidence of such a facility.
- The allegation that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met in Prague, Czech
Republic, with an Iraqi intelligence officer now is contradicted by FBI
evidence that Atta was taking flight training in Florida at the time. The
Iraqi, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, is now in U.S. custody and has
told interrogators he never met Atta.
CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee last
month that there's no evidence to support the allegation.
- Bush, Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell made much of occasional
contacts between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida, dating to the early 1990s
when bin Laden was based in the Sudan. But intelligence indicates that
nothing ever came of the contacts.
"Were there meetings? Yes, of course there were meetings. But what
resulted? Nothing," said one senior U.S. official.
The charges that Saddam was in league with bin Laden, and carefully worded
hints that he might even have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, may
have done more to marshal public and political support for a pre-emptive
invasion of Iraq than the claims that Iraq still had chemical and
biological weapons and was working to get nuclear ones.
A postwar poll last July by PIPA-Knowledge Networks found that 7 in 10
Americans thought the Bush administration had implied that Saddam was
involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush himself never made that claim, but
Cheney has kept the allegation alive.
Powell, however, was so unpersuaded by the claims of Iraq-al-Qaida
contacts that he rebuffed efforts by Cheney's office, the Pentagon and the
White House's National Security Council to include a lengthy listing of
them in his February 2003 speech to the U.N. Security Council. Instead,
Powell limited himself to a few sentences.
In a major address on the Iraqi threat on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush outlined a
series of ties: "We know that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network
share a common enemy: the United States of America." He went on to say
that Iraq and al-Qaida had high-level contacts over a decade, some
al-Qaida leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq and "Iraq has trained
al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."
In his January 2003 State of the Union address, Bush raised the
possibility that Saddam "could provide one of his hidden weapons (of mass
destruction) to terrorists or help them develop their own."
Yet Tenet had told Congress the previous October that Saddam would take
that "extreme step" only if he concluded that he couldn't deter a U.S.-led
attack on his country.
Concluded the senior U.S. official: "Did Saddam tolerate terrorists? Yes.
Was there any evidence Saddam was involved with 9/11? No."
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Subject: [pjnews] Howard Stern to be Fired for Anti-Bush Comments
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Dissent against the Bush Administration is beginning to come from some of
the unlikeliest places...
http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=20252
Stern Feels Bush-Whacked End Is Near
[excerpted]
Howard Stern says the end of his career is closer than the two years left
on his contract. "I know that it's over for me," Stern said Wednesday
morning. "I have been really good at predicting my career and I know when
I'm outmatched. It's over for me as a broadcaster. I'm checkmated. All
they gotta do is fine us and then we're gone. And there's nothing we can
do about it."
But even with comments like that, Stern is not going down without a fight.
For the past two days the syndicated morning man has been attacking those
he feels are his oppressors - Clear Channel, the FCC and the Bush
Administration. Yesterday (3/2), he was pondering the idea of a Million
Moron March on Washington with a legion of his faithful fans. "Can you
imagine CNN having to cover this and putting the Million Moron March up on
the screen?" he joked when the idea was hatched.
Stern has also started to question ties between Clear Channel and the Bush
Administration and now suggests his change in heart about his support for
President Bush is the real reason for him being suspended by Clear
Channel. "If you don' t think me going after Bush got me thrown off those
stations, you got another thing coming," said Stern. "This has nothing to
do with anything I said."
Stern laughed and was miffed at the perception by the mainstream media
that he wasn't on Clear Channel stations because of indecent content on
his show. Discussing a clip from The Sharon Osbourne Show where she said
"Apparently the talk got very raunchy when Paris Hilton's boyfriend was
on," Stern stammered: "Wrong! It wasn't that raunchy. I mean, I asked
some questions. I said, 'Did you ever have anal sex?' But that's nothing
out of the ordinary."
"Nothing that hasn't happened here every day for the last ten years,"
added Robin Quivers.
"My days here are numbered because I dared to speak out against the Bush
administration and say that the religious agenda of George W. Bush
concerning stem cell research and gay marriage is wrong," Stern continued.
"And that what he is doing with the FCC is pushing this religious agenda.
And also the fact that the guy takes more vacation than any President
ever. It's time for him to leave. Having said that pushed me off the air
in six markets."
Stern says the end game of him being thrown off the air is already set,
predicting "the FCC in a matter of weeks will come out with a trumped up
list of things I said that they find offensive that Infinity will have to
fire me." Later in the show Stern said he was "tempted to shut my mouth
about all of it, because it will go away." He then added "I don't think we
can stop it, short of me calling up President Bush and saying 'Look man,
I'm going to support you, so don't do this.'"
[...]
Stern also brought up the hiring of Michael Savage at ClearChannel's
KPRC/Houston. Savage was fired from MSNBC for saying a caller was a
sodomite who should "get AIDS and die." "Clear Channel had no problem
hiring him after comments like that, because he's pro-Bush," Stern
alleged.
------------------
http://www.fmqb.com/Article.asp?id=20396
Stern: "This country is so dangerously close to being absolutely no
different than Iran. The religious right is winning. We are losing.
Despite a Constitution that says separate religion from state, it’s not
happening anymore. There’s a religious agenda. They are winning. They
control the media. Clear Channel, Fox, all of them, all part of the
religious right. We’ve lost. We’ve lost our airwaves. We’ve lost our
freedoms. We will be a religious state within 20 years."
[...]
"Payback has to be a bitch," Stern quickly added. "I ask any fan of mine
to vote George W. Bush out of office. That’s the payback. He suffers. He’s
got to lose. He’s gotta go back home to his dad and say, ‘I’m a loser like
you. I only served one term.’ That’s all I ask. Remember me when you go in
the voting booth. There is going to be a lot of spin out there. They are
going to try and make you forget what they said about me and what happened
to your freedom."
If he is thrown off the air, Stern said, "I would support [John] Kerry."
When Robin Quivers questioned the extent of his support, Stern said he
would campaign and mount a movement for Kerry. "I will devote myself to
it. Let me tell you this, I’ve done it before. I did it for [NY] Governor
[George] Pataki, who I still think is a great guy and a great Governor.
The guy was 20 points below in the polls up until three days before the
election. I said to Governor Pataki, ‘My audience will get you in office.
You will go up in the polls dramatically.’ Three days before the election.
That’s when it counts, last minute, that’s when people do most of their
thinking. And, sure enough, he’s now the Governor."
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Subject: [pjnews] GM Crops: If It =?iso-8859-1?q?Can=92t_Work=2C_Fake_It?=
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--> If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not
repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to
Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet
at http://www.zmag.org
Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-03/05sharma.cfm
Gm Crops: If It Can’t Work, Fake It
By Devinder Sharma
For years, they made us believe that genetically modified (GM) crops
reduce pesticide applications and thereby help in protecting the
environment. For years, they worked hard, manipulating scientific data, to
justify the increasing public investment in a risky technology. For
several years now, they have succeeded in diverting the public attention
from the more pressing problems of hunger and malnutrition for the sake of
private profit.
The citadel of scientific fraud has now begun to crumble.
Amidst reports that the pesticides application in GM crops in the United
States has actually multiplied, comes the damming indictment of the faulty
technology from the crop fields in Africa. Trials to develop a
virus-resistant sweet potato, launched in Kenya in 2001 by the US special
envoy, Dr Andrew Young, have failed. The much-hyped GM technology, that
was claimed to usher in a green revolution in Africa, has finally turned
out to be a scientific crap.
The virus-resistant sweet potato, donated by Monsanto to Kenya
Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), has been found to be susceptible
to viral attacks. This is the same sweet potato that a black African
woman, in her colourful traditional dress, has used in her non-stop global
sermons on feeding the hungry in Africa. Sponsored by the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) and Monsanto, Dr Florence Wambugu of
KARI, has gone around the world telling how the transgenic potato could
raise the crop yield from four to ten tonnes per hectare.
The media loved her. The media, in fact, adores everyone who speaks in
favour of the GM crops. After all, the future of the world lies only in
increasing the corporate profits, which in turn benefits the media. So
whether it was The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, or the
discredited Fox TV, they all clamoured around her. The Forbes magazine
even went to the extent of naming her among the 15 people from all over
the world who will ‘reinvent the future’.
Reports now indicate that the transgenic sweet potato yields less than the
traditional varieties. In other words, knowing that the transgenic sweet
potato wouldn’t work, Dr Florence Wambugu, had faked it.
Earlier, Aaron deGrassi of the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex
(UK) too had picked up holes in Dr Florence Wambugu’s claims. In a
detailed report on GM crops in Africa, he had said: “Accounts of the
transgenic sweet potato have used low figures on average yields in Kenya
to paint a picture of stagnation. An early article stated 6 tons per
hectare - without mentioning the data source - which was then reproduced
in subsequent analyses. However, FAO statistics indicate 9.7 tons, and
official statistics report 10.4." In simple words, the transgenic sweet
potato that was being imposed as the answer to Africa’s food security was
no better.
His warning went unheard. Meanwhile, World Bank, USAID and Monsanto
continue to sponsor her research project running for over 12 years now,
involving 19 researchers, 16 of them with PhDs, something unusual for
Africa. If only the US $ 6 million that has been incurred on her research
project had been used for fighting hunger, more than six million
impoverished Africans could have been fed adequately for as many as six
years.
No one is however keen to remove hunger. Not only the World Bank, USAID or
the private companies, even agricultural scientists are looking forward to
any and every possibility to latch on to hunger and malnutrition.
The sweet potato debacle is the latest in the series of flops that have
tumbled out from the GM industry laboratories, and that too in the name of
ameliorating hunger and building food security. Ever since the days of the
Flavr Savr tomato, the magic bullets of technology have failed to enthuse
the farmers and the consumers alike. The ‘golden rice’, the protein-rich
potato in India -- protrato, and now the fall of the transgenic sweet
potato in Africa, are all classic examples of the great exercise in public
deception.
At the same time, the GM industry finds itself in a terrible fix over
reports that the cultivation of transgenic crops in the United States has
actually led to an increase in the application and use of pesticides. This
negates the only saving grace that the industry had so far used
successfully used – GM crops reduce the use of pesticides thereby leading
not only to sustainable farming systems but also to a safe environment.
Drawing on the official records of the US Department of Agriculture,
Charles Benbrook of the Northwest Science and Environment Policy Centre at
Idaho (USA), concludes that the planting of 55 million acres of
genetically engineered (GE) corn, soybeans and cotton in the United States
since 1996 has increased pesticide use by about 50 million pounds.
Substantial increases in herbicide use on "herbicide tolerant" crops,
especially soybeans, was cited as the main reason that accounted for the
increase in pesticide use on GM crops compared to acres planted to
conventional plant varieties. ‘Herbicide tolerant’ plants are genetically
modified to ensure that those who grow these crops have no other option
but to also the use the herbicides of the same companies. For the
agribusiness companies, ‘herbicide tolerant’ crops are the sure means of
profit security. That the American farmers have complied with the profit
motive of the companies is quite obvious.
Benbrook says that many farmers have had to spray incrementally more
herbicides on GM crops in order to keep up with shifts in weeds toward
tougher-to-control species, coupled with the emergence of genetic
resistance in certain weed populations. For the developing countries, the
implications of this study are enormous and of course serious.
Agribusiness companies will exploit the small farmers pushing them more
into a debt trap and at the same time do more damage to the environment
and crop sustainability.
Whether it is chemical pesticides or the pest-resistant GM crops, the
effectiveness against the target pest lasts only for a couple of years. In
case of cotton, for instance, the agribusiness industry is exhorting
farmers to adopt Bt cotton, which has the inbuilt ability to produce a
toxin that kills the pink bollworms. In India, in the very first year of
commercial planting, Mahyco-Monsanto priced the seed four times than the
existing price, thereby earning its pound of flesh in the very first year.
The Bt gene has been further licensed to half a dozen companies from which
a substantial royalty has also been drawn.
The Bt cotton crop has, meanwhile, failed in the very first year of
planting in large parts of the country. While the farmers suffered, the
company that sold the seed has gone scot-free. By the time the farmers
wake up to the damage done by the Bt crop to the environment as well as
the economy, the seed companies will bring in the next generation
transgenic. Agribusiness industry had done exactly the same in the past
five decades, bringing in more potent chemicals each time the insect
developed resistance to the pesticides. In the bargain, the number of
problem insects in cotton that the farmers are now confronted with has
multiplied to 70. In the 1960s, only seven crop pests worried the farmers.
In three decades, the problem pests have multiplied by ten times.
All over the world, Bt cotton is now losing its resistance to the pests as
a result of which the pesticides consumption is going up. In China, where
over 7 million hectares are under Bt cotton cultivation, pesticides usage
has once again reverted back to almost what existed before its
commercialization in 1999. Scientists are therefore refraining from
conducting studies on pesticides saving four years later, knowing that
such an analysis would be damming for the industry.
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Subject: [pjnews] Sick, Wounded U.S. Troops Held in Squalor
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0302-04.htm
GI Denied Health Care After Speaking Out
---------------
http://snipurl.com/4y5l
Sick Soldiers Wait for Treatment
October 29, 2003, FORT KNOX, Ky. (UPI)-- More than 400 sick and injured
soldiers, including some who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, are stuck
at Fort Knox, waiting weeks and sometimes months for medical treatment, a
score of soldiers said in interviews.
The delays appear to have demolished morale -- many said they had lost
faith in the Army and would not serve again -- and could jeopardize some
soldiers' health, the soldiers said.
The Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers are in what the Army calls
"medical hold," like roughly 600 soldiers under similar circumstances (see
full article below) waiting for doctors at Fort Stewart, Ga.
The apparent lack of care at both locations raises the specter that
Reserve and Guard soldiers, including many who returned from Iraq, could
be languishing at locations across the country, according to Senate
investigators.
Representatives from the office of Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., were at Fort Knox
Wednesday looking into conditions at the post.
Following reports from Fort Stewart, Senate investigators said that the
medical system at that post was overwhelmed and they were looking into
whether the situation was Army-wide.
Army officials at the Pentagon said they are investigating that
possibility. "We are absolutely taking a look at this across the Army and
not just at Fort Stewart," Army spokesman Joe Burlas said Wednesday.
"I joined to serve my country," said Cpl. Waymond Boyd, 34. He served in
Iraq with the National Guard's 1175 Transportation Company. He has been in
medical hold since the end of July.
"It doesn't make any sense to go over there and risk your life and come
back to this," Boyd said. "It ain't fair and it ain't right. I used to be
patriotic." He has served the military for 15 years.
Boyd's knee and wrist injuries were severe enough that he was evacuated to
Germany at the end of July and then sent to Fort Knox. His medical records
show doctor appointments around four weeks apart. He said it took him
almost two months to get a cast for his wrist, which is so weak he can't
lift 5 pounds or play with his two children. He is taking painkilling
drugs and walks with a cane with some difficulty.
Many soldiers at Fort Knox said their injuries and illnesses occurred in
Iraq. Some said the rigors of war exacerbated health problems that
probably should have prevented them from going in the first place.
Boyd's X-rays appear to show the damage to his wrist but also bone spurs
in his feet that are noted in his medical record before being deployed,
but the records say "no health problems noted" before he left.
"I don't think I was medically fit to go. But they said 'go.' That is my
job," Boyd said.
Fort Knox Public Affairs Officer Connie Shaffery said, "Taking care of
patients is our priority." Soldiers see specialists within 28 days,
Shaffery said and Fort Knox officials hope to cut that time lag.
"I think that we would like for all the soldiers to get care as soon as
possible," Shaffery said.
Shaffery said of the 422 soldiers on medical hold at Fort Knox, 369 did
not deploy to Operation Iraqi Freedom because of their illnesses. Around
two-thirds of the soldiers at Fort Stewart did serve in Operation Iraqi
Freedom.
Soldiers at Fort Knox describe strange clusters of heart problems and
breathing problems, as did soldiers at Fort Stewart and other locations.
Command Sgt. Major Glen Talley, 57, is in the hospital at Fort Knox for
heart problems, clotting blood and Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder.
All of the problems became apparent after he went to war in April, he
says. He is a reservist.
Talley said he was moved to Fort Knox on Oct. 16 and had not seen a doctor
yet, only a physician's assistant. His next appointment with an
endocrinologist was scheduled for Dec. 30.
"I don't mind serving my country," Talley said. "I just hate what they are
doing to me now." Talley has served for 30 years. He was awarded two
Purple Hearts in Vietnam.
Sgt. Buena Montgomery has breathing problems since serving in Operation
Iraqi Freedom. She said she has been able to get to doctors but worries
about many others who have not.
"The Army did not prepare for the proper medical care for the soldiers
that they knew were going to come back from this war," Montgomery said.
"Now the Army needs to step up to the plate and fix this problem."
In nearly two dozen interviews conducted over three days, soldiers also
described substandard living conditions -- though they said conditions had
improved recently.
A UPI photographer working on this story without first having cleared his
presence with base public affairs officials was detained for several hours
for questioning Tuesday and then released. He was told he would need an
Army escort for any further visits to the base. He returned to the base
accompanied by an Army escort on Wednesday.
This reporter also was admonished that he had to be accompanied by an Army
public affairs escort when on base. The interviews had been conducted
without the presence of an escort.
After returning from Iraq, some soldiers spent about eight weeks in
Spartan, dilapidated World War II-era barracks with leaking roofs, animal
infestations and no air conditioning in the Kentucky heat.
"I arrived here and was placed in the World War II barracks," one soldier
wrote in an internal Fort Knox survey of the conditions. "On the 28th of
August we moved out. On 30 Aug. the roof collapsed. Had we not moved,
someone would be dead," that soldier wrote.
Shaffery said all of the soldiers have moved out of those barracks. "As
soon as we were able to, we moved them out," Shaffery said. The barracks
now stand empty and have been condemned.
Also like Fort Stewart, soldiers at Fort Knox claimed they are getting
substandard treatment because they are in the National Guard or Army
Reserve as opposed to regular Army. The Army has denied any discrepancies
in treatment or housing.
"We have provided, are providing, and will continue to provide our
soldiers -- active and Reserve component -- the best health care
available," Army spokesman Maj. Steve Stover said Oct. 20. He said Army
policy provides health care priority based on a "most critically ill"
basis, without differentiation between active and our Reserve soldiers.
"Medical hold issues are not new and the Army has been working diligently
to address them across the Army," Stover said.
"They are treating us like second-class citizens," said Spc. Brian Smith,
who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom until Aug. 16 and said he is having
trouble seeing doctors at Fort Knox. The Army evacuated him through
Germany for stomach problems, among other things. "My brother wants to get
in (the military). I am now discouraging him from doing it," Smith said.
"I have never been so disrespected in my military career," said Lt.
Jullian Goodrum, who has been in the Army Reserve for 16 years. His health
problems do not appear to be severe -- injured wrists -- but he said the
medical situation at Fort Knox is bad. He said he waited a month for
therapy. "I have never been so treated like dirt."
----------------
Sick, Wounded U.S. Troops Held in Squalor
October 17, 2003, FORT STEWART, Ga. (UPI) -- Hundreds of sick and wounded
U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in
hot cement barracks here while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see
doctors.
The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so
substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the
Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One
document shown to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are
available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.
"I have loved the Army. I have served the Army faithfully and I have done
everything the Army has asked me to do," said Sgt. 1st Class Willie
Buckels, a truck master with the 296th Transportation Company. Buckels
served in the Army Reserves for 27 years, including Operation Iraqi
Freedom and the first Gulf War. "Now my whole idea about the U.S. Army has
changed. I am treated like a third-class citizen."
Since getting back from Iraq in May, Buckels, 52, has been trying to get
doctors to find out why he has intense pain in the side of his abdomen
since doubling over in pain there.
After waiting since May for a diagnosis, Buckels has accepted 20 percent
of his benefits for bad knees and is going home to his family in
Mississippi. "They have not found out what my side is doing yet, but they
are still trying," Buckels said.
One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of
the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq,
approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and
National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement
barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or
illnesses.
The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls
"medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and
what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.
Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an
appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks or
months without getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.
The soldiers said professional active duty personnel are getting better
treatment while troops who serve in the National Guard or Army Reserve are
left to wallow in medical hold.
"It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and Reserves,"
said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which she
developed a serious heart condition and strange skin ailment.
A half-dozen calls by UPI seeking comment from Fort Stewart public affairs
officials and U.S. Forces Command in Atlanta were not returned.
Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in
medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described
clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among
previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them
benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing
condition," prior to military service.
Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular,
gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air
conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat
and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.
Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy
dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions
between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on
an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because
many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block
room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper.
They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.
"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq
and asked that his name not be used.
That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden
onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse.
He shakes uncontrollably.
He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a
pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax
shots the Army gave him.
"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said.
"I did not have a problem until I got those shots."
First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the
296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the
Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he
was healthy before the war; he could run two miles in 17 minutes at 48
years old.
But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness of
breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the anthrax
vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder from an injury
there.
Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself looking
at shotguns recently and thought about suicide.
Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block
barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that no more
doctor appointments are available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov.
11. He said he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the
Army Reserves.
"Now, I would not go back to war for the Army," Mosley said.
Many soldiers in the hot barracks said regular Army soldiers get to see
doctors, while National Guard and Army Reserve troops wait.
"The active duty guys that are coming in, they get treated first and they
put us on hold," said another soldier who returned from Iraq six weeks ago
with a serious back injury. He has gotten to see a doctor only two times
since he got back, he said.
Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he has had
real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he suffered in Iraq.
"There are not enough doctors. They are overcrowded and they can't perform
the surgeries that have to be done," that soldier said. "Look at these
mattresses. It hurts just to sit on them," he said, gesturing to the
bunks. "There are people here who got back in April but did not get their
surgeries until July. It is putting a lot on these families."
The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves.
In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone of
the military.
"Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on terror," Bush
said. "And you're making your state and your country proud."
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Subject: [pjnews] GOP Rhetoric on Kerry's Voting Record Goes Unchallenged
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Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kerry-military-votes.html
MEDIA ADVISORY:
GOP Rhetoric on Kerry's Voting Record Goes Unchallenged
March 8, 2004
After John Kerry emerged as the likely Democratic nominee for president,
the Republican National Committee (RNC) began criticizing his record on
military spending. The campaign against Kerry's record escalated on
February 22 when the RNC released a list of weapons systems that Kerry
allegedly "voted against."
Republican spokespeople used this list to make sweeping claims about Kerry
in the media: "I think the more that the president and the Republicans
describe accurately-- they don't have to exaggerate at all; they just have
to describe accurately and calmly-- what it means...to have voted against
every major weapon system," Newt Gingrich declared on Fox's Hannity and
Colmes (2/26/04), "I think if they stick to that and stick to the facts,
Senator Kerry will react by saying that he's being smeared by his own
record."
Partisan TV pundits like Sean Hannity quickly echoed these charges: "He's
voting against every major weapons system we now use in our military,"
Hannity told his Fox News audience (3/1/04). Hannity's participation in
the RNC's attack was perhaps to be expected, but he was not the only media
figure to simply pass on the Republican allegations without examination.
CNN anchor Judy Woodruff (2/25/04) framed the issue this way in an
interview with Rep. Norm Dicks (D.-Wash.): "The Republicans list something
like 13 different weapons systems that they say the record shows Senator
Kerry voted against. The Patriot missile, the B-1 bomber, the Trident
missile and on and on and on."
Embarrassingly, Dicks had to explain to Woodruff that most of the weapons
"votes" weren't individual votes at all, but a single vote on the
Pentagon's 1991 appropriations bill. Woodruff responded with surprise to
this information: "Are you saying that all these weapons systems were part
of one defense appropriations bill in 1991?"
But Woodruff wasn't alone. Appearing on CNN (2/3/04), Bush-Cheney campaign
strategist Ralph Reed explained to anchor Wolf Blitzer that Kerry's record
was one of "voting to dismantle 27 weapons systems, including the MX
missile, the Pershing missile, the B-1, the B-2 stealth bomber, the F-16
fighter jet, the F-15 fighter jet, cutting another 18 programs, slashing
intelligence spend by $2.85 billion, and voting to freeze defense spending
for seven years." Blitzer responded by pointing out to guest Ann Lewis of
the Democratic National Committee, "I think it's fair to say, Ann, that
there's been some opposition research done."
For many reporters, the charges against Kerry's record were recorded as
just part of the back-and-forth of a campaign: Fox News Channel's Carl
Cameron (2/27/04) explained: "With the GOP attacking John Kerry's votes to
cut defense over the years, the Democratic front-runner, once again,
counter-attacked what he calls the president's 'mishandling' of the war on
terror."
Associated Press reporter Nedra Pickler (2/27/04) noted that "the Bush
campaign has criticized Kerry in recent days for voting against some
increases in defense spending and military weapons programs during his
19-year congressional career. Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot said
Kerry's policies would weaken the country's ability to win the war on
terror."
NBC anchor Tom Brokaw (3/2/04, MSNBC) also seemed to accept the charges at
face value, noticing that "the vice president just today was talking about
his votes against the CIA budget, for example, intelligence budgets and
also weapons systems. Isn't he [Kerry] going to be very vulnerable come
the fall when national security is such a big issue in this country?
One of the few reporters to take a serious look at the RNC's list-- on
which 10 of the 13 items refer to the single 1991 vote-- was Slate's Fred
Kaplan (2/25/04). Kaplan noted that 16 senators, including five
Republicans, voted against the bill. Kaplan concluded that the claim
against Kerry "reeks of rank dishonesty."
Kaplan also pointed out that at the time of the 1991 vote, deeper cuts in
military spending were being advocated by some prominent Republicans--
including then-President George H.W Bush and Dick Cheney, who was
secretary of defense at the time. As Kaplan noted, Cheney appealed for
more cuts from Congress: "You've squabbled and sometimes bickered and
horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't
fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements."
Cheney went to name the M-1 tank and the F-14 and F-16 fighters-- all of
which appear on the RNC's list-- as "great systems" that "we have enough
of."
Ironically, Cheney made the rounds on the cable channels on March 2,
criticizing Kerry's record in terms parallel to the RNC's release. During
an interview with Fox News Channel's Brit Hume, Cheney said: "What we're
concerned about, what I'm concerned about, is his record in the United
States Senate, where he clearly has over the years adopted a series of
positions that indicate a desire to cut the defense budget, to cut the
intelligence budget, to eliminate many major weapons programs."
Unfortunately, Hume failed to raise an important follow-up: Why was Cheney
now criticizing Kerry for having essentially the same position Cheney
advocated back in 1991?
The Bush/Cheney campaign plans to spend $133 million over the next several
months in an effort to "redefine" Kerry (Sydney Morning Herald, 3/4/04).
If this charge is an indication of the Republicans' approach, then the
media would perform a valuable service if they took a keen interest in
evaluating the accuracy of such campaign rhetoric.
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Subject: [pjnews] More on Stern / Bush-Clearchannel connections
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I've never been a fan of Howard Stern, but this is interesting...
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/04/stern/index_np.html
(mirrored at: http://snipurl.com/4yn7)
The passion of Howard Stern
By Eric Boehlert / salon.com
The shock jock says radio colossus Clear Channel fired him because he
criticized George Bush -- and he's sure as hell not going to go quietly.
>From the moment last week when Clear Channel Communications suspended
Howard Stern's syndicated morning show from the company's radio stations,
denouncing it as "vulgar, offensive and insulting," speculation erupted
that the move had more to do with Stern's politics than his raunchy
shock-jock shtick.
Stern's loyal listeners, Clear Channel foes and many Bush administration
critics immediately reached the same conclusion: The notorious jock was
yanked off the air because he had recently begun trashing Bush, and
Bush-friendly Clear Channel used the guise of "indecency" to shut him up.
That the content of Stern's crude show hadn't suddenly changed, but his
stance on Bush had, gave the theory more heft. That, plus his being pulled
off the air in key electoral swing states such as Florida and
Pennsylvania.
This week, Stern himself went on the warpath, weaving in among his
familiar monologues about breasts and porn actresses accusations that
Texas-based Clear Channel -- whose Republican CEO, Lowry Mays, is
extremely close to both George W. Bush and Bush's father -- canned him
because he deviated from the company's pro-Bush line. "I gotta tell you
something," Stern told his listeners. "There's a lot of people saying that
the second that I started saying, 'I think we gotta get Bush out of the
presidency,' that's when Clear Channel banged my ass outta here. Then I
find out that Clear Channel is such a big contributor to President Bush,
and in bed with the whole Bush administration, I'm going, 'Maybe that's
why I was thrown off: because I don't like the way the country is leaning
too much to the religious right.' And then, bam! Let's get rid of Stern. I
used to think, 'Oh, I can't believe that.' But that's it! That's what's
going on here! I know it! I know it!"
Stern's been relentless all week, detailing the close ties between Clear
Channel executives and the Bush administration, and insisting that
political speech, not indecency, got him in trouble with the San Antonio
broadcasting giant. If he hadn't turned against Bush, Stern told his
listeners, he'd still be heard on Clear Channel stations.
In a statement released to Salon, the media company insists that "Clear
Channel Radio is not operated according to any political agenda or
ideology." Clear Channel Radio chief Joe Hogan said, "The decision to
suspend Howard Stern from our radio stations is based on our regulatory
obligation and commitment to airing material that conforms to the
standards and sensibilities of the local communities we serve."
Although by far the most powerful, Stern is not the first radio jock to
charge Clear Channel with retaliation for anti-Bush comments.
"I'm glad he's pissed off and I hope he raises hell every single day,"
says Roxanne Walker, who claims Clear Channel fired her last year because
of her antiwar views. "I think any time a broader section of the
population hears about the Bush administration and the Clear Channel
connection, it's a good thing."
Walker, South Carolina Broadcasters Association's 2002 radio personality
of the year, is suing Clear Channel for violating a state law that forbids
employers from punishing employees who express politically unpopular
beliefs in the workplace.
"On our show we talked about politics and current events," she tells
Salon. "There were two conservative partners and me, the liberal, and that
was fine. But as it became clear we were going to war, and I kept charging
the war was not justified, I was reprimanded by Clear Channel management
that I needed to tone that down. Basically I was told to shut up." She
says she was fired on April 7, 2003.
Phoenix talk show host Charles Goyette says he was kicked off his
afternoon drive-time program at Clear Channel's KFYI because of his sharp
criticism of the war on Iraq. A self-described Goldwater Republican who
was selected "man of the year" by the Republican Party in his local county
in 1988, Goyette -- more recently named best talk show host of 2003 by the
Phoenix New Times -- says his years with Clear Channel had been among his
best in broadcasting. "The trouble started during the long march to war,"
he says.
While the rest of the station's talk lineup was in a pro-war "frenzy,"
Goyette was inviting administration critics like former weapons inspector
Scott Ritter on his show, and discussing complaints from the intelligence
community that the analysis on Iraq was being cooked to support the White
House's pro-war agenda. This didn't go over well with his bosses, Goyette
says: "I was the Baby Ruth bar in the punch bowl."
Soon, according to Goyette, he was having "toe-to-toe confrontations" with
his local Clear Channel managers off the air about his opposition to the
war. "One of my bosses said in a tone of exasperation, 'I feel like I'm
managing the Dixie Chicks,'" Goyette recalls. "I didn't fit in with the
Clear Channel corporate culture."
Writing in the February issue of American Conservative magazine, Goyette
put it this way: "Why only a couple of months after my company picked up
the option on my contract for another year in the fifth-largest city in
the United States, did it suddenly decide to relegate me to radio Outer
Darkness? The answer lies hidden in the oil-and-water incompatibility of
these two seemingly disconnected phrases: 'Criticizing Bush' and 'Clear
Channel.'"
Goyette, who was relegated to the dead 7-10 p.m. slot, wrote, "I was
replaced on my primetime talk show by the Frick and Frack of Bushophiles,
two giggling guys who think everything our tongue-tied president does is
'Most excellent, dude!'"
Whether Stern was suspended because of his Bush-bashing -- or only because
of his Bush-bashing -- is open to question. As reported in Salon, the
media behemoth had another powerful reason to clean up its image: In the
wake of Janet Jackson's nipplegate, broadcasters faced hostile
congressional hearings about indecency on the airwaves and a new bill that
would drastically increase the penalties for it. Indeed, the day before it
dropped Stern, Clear Channel fired its top-rated Tampa, Fla., shock jock,
"Bubba the Love Sponge," who had been recently fined $755,000 by the
Federal Communications Commission for indecency.
Several radio insiders interviewed by Salon are skeptical of Stern's
inference about his suspension. "I don't think this had anything to do
with helping Bush," says Robert Unmacht, former publisher of the radio
trade publication, the M Street Journal. "It had to do with the one thing
Clear Channel cares about, their bottom line. They're just bankers."
Unmacht also points out that Stern appears in only six markets for Clear
Channel, so dumping him was a relatively painless way to score moral
points -- and paint Clear Channel rival Infinity, which broadcasts most of
Stern's shows, as pandering to indecency.
"Howard thrives when he has an enemy, and this is a pretty good enemy,"
Unmacht says. "Howard will rail against whoever he thinks is hurting him."
But if Clear Channel hoped that sacking Stern for indecency would earn the
company Brownie points, the shock jock's rampage against its Bush
connections has only given it another P.R. headache.
Headaches are nothing new for Clear Channel. Over the last five years the
company has ballooned into a radio and music industry monster and in the
process has faced numerous allegations about unfair business practices.
Following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which ushered in sweeping
radio consolidations, the company has grown from 40 to approximately 1,200
stations, or roughly 970 more than its closest competitor. Clear Channel
also owns nearly three dozen television stations, 770,000 billboards, and
an unmatched list of venues, promoters and tours that allow it to exercise
a powerful control over the concert industry.
If Clear Channel did fire Stern at least partly to prop up Bush, the move
may backfire -- especially if Stern's rage against Clear Channel feeds his
newfound distaste for the president. Stern's audience contains many
independents and potential swing voters.
At least one radio pro suggests Stern's sudden turn against Bush could
prove costly to the administration during this election year. "Absolutely
it should be of concern for the White House," says Michael Harrison, the
publisher of Talkers magazine, a nonpartisan trade magazine serving talk
radio. "Howard Stern will be an influential force for the public and for
other talk show hosts during the election. Despite the shock jock thing,
Stern has credibility. He's looked upon as an honest person.
"Clear Channel is a good target and Stern may be honestly upset with them.
But over time he'll realize Bush makes a better target, and Stern could be
the leader of a new anti-Bush movement. Bush is very vulnerable at talk
radio and Stern could reinvent himself as a new, improved Stern and take
on more serious issues."
The new Stern may be coming, but the old Stern is still holding the mike.
In recent days, when not pounding Clear Channel and Bush, Stern updated
listeners on his bouts of late-night masturbation and welcomed to the
studio a guy who likes women to vomit on him.
Stern's political conversion came on Monday, Feb. 23, when he returned to
the show after a week's vacation and announced he'd read Al Franken's
anti-Bush book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and
Balanced Look at the Right." That morning Stern, who had strongly backed
Bush during the war on Iraq, told listeners, "If you read this book, you
will never vote for George W. Bush. I think this guy is a religious
fanatic and a Jesus freak, and he is just hell-bent on getting some sort
of bizzaro agenda through -- like a country-club agenda -- so that his
father will finally be proud of him ... I don't know much about Kerry, but
I think I'm one of those 'Anybody but Bush' guys now. I don't think G.W.
is going to win. What do you think about that?"
Three days later, on the morning of Feb. 26, Stern was suspended from all
six Clear Channel stations that aired his wake-up program. Company
executives pointed to the Tuesday show as the reason for the suspension.
During that program Stern interviewed Rick Solomon, who had starred in a
sex tape with Paris Hilton. The conversation was graphic (Stern: "I can't
believe you banged her. Did you get anal?"), and one caller used a racial
slur that was broadcast. But Stern's shows are filled with such language
and have been for years.
On Monday, March 2, Stern was telling his vast audience he took a hit
because of his stance on Bush.
For her part, former Clear Channel jock Walker doubts that politics was
behind Clear Channel's move against Stern. "Much as I'd love this to be
about Bush and politics, it's more about sex and indecency," she says. But
she stresses the important thing for people to understand is the
relationships among Clear Channel CEO Mays, vice chairman Tom Hicks and
George W. Bush. Says Walker, "These are not casual acquaintances."
Mays is a staunch Republican, a good friend of the elder George Bush, and
close to the current president. "I see him all the time," Mays told a
reporter during the 2000 presidential campaign. "His father's a friend of
mine." Mays and the company have showered the party with contributions,
while essentially stiffing Democrats. Mays served as one of Texas A&M's
nine regents when the school landed the elder Bush's presidential library.
Mays subsequently became a major donor to the library. Also, former
President Bush and Mays shared a podium when they were inducted into the
Texas Business Hall of Fame on the same evening in 1999.
FCC chairman Michael Powell, appointed by the current president, has been
pushing a strong pro-big-business, deregulation agenda, which makes Mays
happy. But Texas investment banker Hicks may have an even closer
relationship to Bush. Hicks, a major Bush donor, sits on the Clear Channel
board. The two men helped make each other very wealthy during the 1990s.
When Bush was governor of Texas he privatized the financial assets of the
University of Texas, all $13 billion worth, rolled them into a single
entity, and placed it under the control of Hicks, who, behind closed
doors, doled out investment deals to longtime Bush family political
contributors. In 1998, Hicks turned around and bought the Texas Rangers
from a group of investors that included Bush; Bush pocketed $15 million
off his initial investment of $605,000, most of which was borrowed.
During the 2000 campaign, Hicks announced on a conference call among Clear
Channel's senior radio executives that the company was supporting Bush's
presidential run, that everyone was encouraged to make donations, and that
the legal department would be in contact with donors in order to maintain
a proper roster. "Some people took out their checkbooks, but lots of
people felt it was staged like a shakedown," Salon was told last year by
one knowledgeable source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "To be
fair, Hicks told everyone they were free to vote for whoever they wanted.
But some senior people felt there was an implied pressure there,
especially with the mention of the law department maintaining a roster of
donors."
Clear Channel is also the corporate home of rabid Bush booster Rush
Limbaugh, who spoke to company managers during a Clear Channel conference
on the eve of the 2000 presidential election. According to one person who
attended, Mays also addressed assembled executives, telling them a Bush
administration would be good for the radio industry and good for America.
Just before the war, Clear Channel made news when its syndicated talk show
host Glenn Beck began promoting "Rallies for America." Clear Channel
insisted the events were put together at the local level and not sponsored
by San Antonio headquarters. Yet at a time when antiwar rallies were
dominating the news, Clear Channel played a key role in giving war
supporters a voice by providing a turnkey service: staging the events,
acquiring any necessary permits, taking care of security, assembling
speakers, and of course relentlessly publicizing the events on Clear
Channel radio stations.
Clear Channel does employ some liberal talkers, such as the popular host
Randi Rhodes, who broadcasts out of WJNO in West Palm Beach, Fla. Rhodes
is going national this year, but it's not Clear Channel who's giving her a
syndicated deal -- it's the Air America Radio Network, the new liberal
talk network, which debuts this spring.
If Stern keeps up the Bush bashing, he might fit right in on Air America's
roster.
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Subject: [pjnews] Aristide Speaks on Democracy Now!
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http://www.democracynow.org/
Published on Monday, March 8, 2004 by DemocracyNow!
Aristide Speaks to Democracy Now! in Most Extensive English-Language
Interview Since His Removal from Haiti
At approximately 7:20 am EST, Democracy Now! managed to reach exiled
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by cell phone in the Central
African Republic. His comments represent the most extensive
English-language interview Aristide has given since he was removed from
office and his country.
Moments before the Democracy Now! interview, Aristide appeared publicly
for the first time since he was forced out of Haiti in what he has called
a US-backed coup. The authorities in the Central African Republic allowed
Aristide to hold a news conference after a delegation of visiting US
activists charged that the Haitian president was being held under lock and
key like a prisoner. The delegation included one of Aristide's lawyers,
Brian Concannon, as well as activists from the Haiti Support Network and
the International Action Center, representatives of former US Attorney
General Ramsey Clark. Shortly after they arrived in Bangui on Sunday, the
delegation attempted to meet with Aristide at the palace of the
Renaissance. The CAR government rebuked them.
Shortly after, the country's foreign minister held a press conference in
Bangui. Armed men threatened journalists in the room, warning them not to
record the minister's remarks. Mildred Aristide, the Haitian First lady,
was brought into the room, but was not permitted to speak. The CAR foreign
minister told the journalists that President Aristide would hold a news
conference within 72 hours. Hours later, Aristide was allowed to address
journalists.
In his interview on Democracy Now!, Aristide asserted that he is the
legitimate president of Haiti and that he wants to return to the country
as soon as possible. He details his last moments in Haiti, describing what
he called his "kidnapping" and the coup d'etat against him. He responds to
Vice President Dick Cheney's comment that Aristide had "worn out his
welcome" in Haiti.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: I am Amy Goodman from the radio/TV program Democracy Now!
around the United States. We would like to know why you left Haiti.
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Thank you. First of all, I didn't leave Haiti because
I wanted to leave Haiti. They forced me to leave Haiti. It was a
kidnapping, which they call coup d'etat or [inaudible] ...forced
resignation for me. It wasn't a resignation. It was a kidnapping and under
the cover of coup d'etat.
AMY GOODMAN: It was a kidnapping under the cover of coup d'etat?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Who forced you out of the country?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE:I saw U.S. officials with Ambassador Foley.
Mr. Moreno, [inaudible...] at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti I saw American
soldiers. I saw former soldiers who are linked to drug dealers like Guy
Philippe and to killers already convicted, Chamblain. They all did the
kidnapping using Haitian puppets like Guy Philippe, [inaudible], and
Chamblain, already convicted, and basically, this night, I didn't see
Haitians, I saw Americans.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you say that they kidnapped you from the country.
Secretary of State Powell said that that is ridiculous. Donald Rumsfeld
said that is nonsense. Your response?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Well, I understand they try to justify what they
cannot justify. Their own ambassador, ambassador Foley said we were going
to talk to the media, to the press, and I can talk to the Haitian people
calling for peace like I did one night before. And unfortunately, once
they put me in their car, from my residence, a couple of days later, they
put me in their planes full with military, because they already had all of
the control of the Haitian airport in Port-au-Prince. And during the
night, they surrounded my house, and the National Palace, and we had some
of them in the streets. I don't know how many are -- were there. So it's
clearly something they planned and they did. Now, if someone wants to
justify what I think they cannot justify and that's -- my goal is to tell
the truth. This is what now I'm telling you -- the truth.
AMY GOODMAN: President Aristide, did you resign the Presidency?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: No, I did not resign. I exchanged words through
conversations, we exchanged notes. I gave a written note before I went to
the press at the time. And instead of taking me where they said they were
taking me in front of the Haitian press, the foreign press, to talk to the
people, to explain what is going on, to call for peace. They used that
note as a letter of resignation, and I say, they are lying.
AMY GOODMAN: When you went into the car from your house, did you
understand you were going to the airport and being flown out?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Not at all. Because this is not what they told me.
This was our best way to avoid bloodshed. We talked with them somehow in a
nice, diplomatic way to avoid bloodshed, we played the best we could in a
respectful way, in a legal and diplomatic way. Because they that told me
that they were going to have bloodshed. Thousands of people were going to
be killed, including myself. As I said, it was not for me, because I never
cared about me, my life, my security. First of all, I care about the
security and lives of other people. I was elected to protect the life of
every single citizen. So, that night I did my best to avoid bloodshed and
when they took me, putting me in their plane, that was their plan. My
strategy was then all I could [do] to avoid bloodshed.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you being held in the Central African Republic against
your will?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Actually, against my will, exactly. Let me tell you,
this past twenty hours on the American plane with American soldiers,
including nineteen American agents who had an agreement with the Haitian
government to provide security to us. They were also in that plane, maybe,
to keep the truth in the plane, instead of having one of them telling the
truth out of the plane. Because one of them had a baby, one year
and-a-half in the plane - he was an American guy - and they wouldn't give
him a chance to get out of the plane with the baby. My wife, the first
lady, who was born in the United States, her father and mother were
Haitians, with me. She didn't have the right to even move the shade and
look out through the windows. Which means, they violated their own law.
Until twenty minutes before I arrived here, I knew where they request
going to land, which means clearly, clear violation of international law.
Unfortunately, they did that, but fortunately, I pay tribute to the
government of Central Africa for the way they welcomed us. It was
gracious, human, good, and until now, this is the time kind of
relationship which we are developing together. I thank them for that once
again.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you want to happen now?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: I always call for peace. Those who realize their
kidnapping cannot bring peace to the violence in my country. CARICOM,
which means all of the heads of the Caribbean countries, call for peace
and restoration of Constitutional order. In some way we heard the voice of
Americans - American Senators, American members, U.S. members, members of
the U.S. parliament. They're all -- they're all U.S. citizens and the
Haitians are actually calling for peace for the restoration of
Constitutional order. This is what I also call for. Allow me to give you a
very simple example. Peace means for us, in this time, education and
investment in health care. In my country, after 200 years of independence
-- we are the first black independent country in the world - but we still
have only one-point-five Haitian doctors for its 11,000 Haitians. We
created a university, we founded a university with the faculty of medicine
that has 247 students. Once U.S. soldiers arrived in Haiti after the
kidnapping, what did they do? They closed the faculty of medicine and they
are now in the classrooms. This is what they call peace. This is the
opposite of peace. Peace means investing in human beings, investing in
health care, respect for human rights, not violations for human rights, no
violations for the rights of those who voted for an elected President, and
this is what it means. It means that, for humans in the world, today this
is their day, [inaudible] men in the world, all together, we can all work
hard to restore peace and constitutional order to Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: This is president Jean-Bertrand Aristide speaking from the
Central African Republic. Did you want to return as President to Haiti
now?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: If it's possible now, yes, now. Whenever it's
possible, I am ready because this is what my people voted for.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you being held -- do you see yourself as being held as a
prisoner in the Central African Republic?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Here I say it again, the people and government and the
President, President Bozize, they are gracious, the way they treat us. I
just paid public tribute to them, and if you have citizens of Central
Africa listening to me, allow me to tell them [inaudible], which means
thank you very much, because their country is a country called zo-quo-zu,
in the language which means every human being is a human being. All that
is to say, we I am grateful to them. But when you living in a house or in
a palace that is their palace, which is a good sign of respect for us, and
we are living in their conditions, although it's still good because of the
way they welcome us, we also feel that we should be in Haiti with the
Haitian people doing our best to keep investing in education, health care,
building a state of law. Slowly, but surely, building up that state of
law.
AMY GOODMAN: President Aristide, at least five people were killed in Haiti
on Sunday. Opposition leaders say it was pro-Aristide forces that opened
fire. Also including journalists - a Spanish journalist based in New York
was shot dead. Another was also shot. Your response?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: First of all, I wasn't there, and I don't have many
pieces of this information to comment, but the respect that I have for the
truth, I will make some comments but I say it again, I wasn't there. I
don't have yet any information so, I cannot go too far in my way to
analyze the situation. I do believe because for the past years, each time
drug dealers like Guy Philippe, people already convicted like Chamblain
kill people, we heard exactly what I just heard. They blame the
non-violent people and they blame the poor. When are poor, they are
violated in their eyes, like the way they did. When you are already
convicted, you are not violating human rights. So, I think or I suspect
they are lying when they talk like that, accusing my followers.
AMY GOODMAN: What message do you think the United States is sending the
people of Haiti and the rest of the world in their actions with you?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: I think the citizens of the United States supporting
democracy in Haiti, the Haitian People, and Haitians in Washington,
Brooklyn and Milano, in Boston and elsewhere, calling for my return to
Haiti and the constitutional order, I think all the citizens of the United
States [inaudible] are a sending a very strong, critical signal to all of
the countries in the world willing to work in a peaceful way for
democracy. But those who [inaudible] me are sending a very wrong signal
because if we don't reach the result of democratic elections and then we
cannot be elected and then you do that here and elsewhere, the signal you
are sending is "No to democracy," while you are talking about democracy.
So, that's why I wish they would connect - they did realize that they are
wrong and they have a new approach, which will be protecting the rights of
humans in the world. Because in the world, what do we mean, meaning peace.
What do we mean, meaning democracy. What do we mean, we need to invest in
human beings. Therefore, to go back, we should not send wrong signals as
they did. They went to Iraq. We see how is the situation in Iraq. They
went to Haiti. We see how is the situation in Haiti. Pretending they are
imposing democracy with people killing people. Why don't they change their
approach to let democracy and the constitutional order flourish slowly,
but surely. After imposing a criminal embargo on us being, from the
cultural point of view, very rich from a historic point of view very rich
but from an economic point of view, very poor because we are the poorest
country in the western hemisphere, after imposing their economic embargo
upon us, because the people wanted one man, one vote, so equality among
us. Then they use drug dealers, they use people who are already convicted,
pretending to lead the rebellion, while they went to Haiti killing people
in Gonaives, killing people in Cap Hatian and killing people in
Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. And now they continue in the face of the
entire world, blessing impunity supporting those killers. My god, I have
said it's really ugly that image they project in the face of the world.
Now it's time for them to change, to respect them but we will also respect
the truth. That's why respectfully, we are telling them the truth. I said,
when someone is wrong, the wrong way to behave is to continue to be wrong.
The right way to behave is a move from wrong to being right. Now, it's
time to move from being wrong on their side to become right by supporting
the constitutional order.
AMY GOODMAN: President Aristide, Vice President Dick Cheney said you wore
out your welcome in Haiti. It's time for you to go. He also said -- can I
get your response to that?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: How can someone, after the kind of elections they had,
now talk like that regarding Haiti where you had fair, democratic
elections regarding the elected president. I think someone can have power,
but that does not mean, we cannot see the truth and say the truth. I
respect the rights of every single citizen in the world to talk, and we
have to be tolerant because this is also about democracy. That's why I
have respect for him, I respect the way his way to talk, but at the same
time I have respect for my people and for the truth. I say it, and I say
it again, the Haitian people are a non-violent people. They voted for
democracy. They will continue to fight in a peaceful way for democracy,
and I will continue to be faithful to them doing the same. The peaceful
approach, fighting peacefully for the restoration of the constitutional
order.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you still consider yourself President of Haiti?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Yes, because the people voted for me. They are still
fighting in a peaceful way for their elected President. I cannot betray
them. That's why I do my best to respect their will.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, how would you describe the situation in Haiti today?
U.S. and French forces and Canadian troops are in Haiti. It is something
you called for before you left, to support you, and to protect the -- and
to protect you there, then?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Yes. I called for them before they forced me to leave
the country. Now, unfortunately, they are in Haiti. They don't have the
elected President with them to move with the constitutional order. But
despite of that, I wish the United Nations in Haiti through peacekeepers
can help keeping peace in the country, protecting all the Haitians, every
single Haitian, because the life of every single man or woman is sacred.
You have to respect that. So, I wish they will protect the lives and the
rights of every single citizen by the time we continue to work hard,
peacefully to restore democracy in Haiti.
AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Cheney said, 'I have dealt with Aristide
before when I was Secretary of Defense. We had a crisis involving Haiti.
He left of his own free will. He signed a resignation letter on his way
out. He left with his security detail on an aircraft we provided, not a
military aircraft, but civilian charter. Now, I suppose he's trying to
revise history. But the fact of matter was, he'd worn out his welcome with
the Haitian people. He was democratically elected, but he never governed
as a democrat. He was corrupt, and he was in charge of many of the thugs
that were committing crimes in Port-au-Prince. The suggestion that somehow
the United States arrested him or forcibly put him on an aircraft to get
him to leave, that's simply not true. I'm happy he's gone. I think the
Haitian people are better off for it. I think now they'll have an
opportunity to elect a new government, and that's as it should be. '
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Well, as I said before, he has the right to talk, and
I respect his right, as I have the right to say the truth, and I will be
saying the truth. I disagree with him, and I will continue to believe that
the Haitian people will continue to fight in a peaceful way to restore
democracy, and when the day will come to have elections, of course, they
will have the ability to vote. Unfortunately, they didn't want a coup
d'etat, and they never wanted the Haitian people to keep moving from
election to election. They preferred the Haitian people to move from coup
d'etat, to coup d'etat. We celebrated 200 years of independence. We had a
[inaudible] coup d'etat. We know, usually, who can choose to be behind the
coup d'etat. So, now that we just had a kidnapping which they call a
resignation, which others call coup d'etat, it's clear that some people
will be do their best to justify, but they may not be able to justify, and
I will continue to be on the side of the truth, on the side of the human
rights, on the side of all of those who knew about what happened, and
stand firm with the Haitian people. The heads of the Caribbean countries
stand firm for the restoration of the constitutional order, for peace. We
have senators in the United States, members of the U.S. House, citizens in
the States standing firm for peace, for democracy, for constitutional
order, and I join them.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think that the United States government does not
want you to be the president of Haiti?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Maybe, if you could just one single example, it can
tell the world a lot. I know I have already told you that, but I will go
through it again. In 200 years of independence, making Haiti the first
black independent country of the world, we still have 1.5 Haitian doctors
for each 11,000 Haitians. Then we have a university who the faculty of
medicine had 237 students. [inaudible], they are now in that faculty of
medicine, they closed it. And the students are out, and this is not what
they decided to do. If, have a government or a President willing to invest
in health care, apparently they don't want that. If you have a president
or government willing to invest in education, maybe they don't want that.
I will continue to believe that we must invest in human beings. We must
invest in education and health care. This is what will bring peace.
Because peace is not an empty word. It has to be full. Investing in
education and health care, bring the real peace to the country, and what
they call peace is not the real peace. It is violence. It is kidnapping.
What we call peace through education is telling the world that we are
right.
AMY GOODMAN: President Aristide in your news conference, did you say that
your country is now in the midst of an unacceptable occupation?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: It's an occupation, and the last example I just gave
says it is an occupation. How you can imagine that you come to me, you
want to be in peace, and you close my university and you send out 247
students of medicine in the country where you don't have hospitals and you
don't have enough doctors. God, this is an occupation. When you protect
killers, when you protect drug dealers like Guy Philippe, like Chamblain,
when you protect the citizens of the United States in violating the law of
the United States, Mr. Andy Apaid is a citizen of the United States,
violating the Neutral Act, the way with this act will destroying our
Democracy, and once we do that, then this is an occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: Is true that -- did you say that your security force around
-- that protected you in Haiti, from the Steele Foundation--that they were
told by the U.S. government they could not send in reinforcements?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Yes. As a matter of fact they blocked them, to stop
providing security, and twenty-five [inaudible] did come the day after,
they were prevented to come. So it was a clear strategy did to move their
way according to their plan. Now, time is gone. Unfortunately I need to
stop because they just asked me to leave.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that you will ever see Haiti again as President?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: I will. I will once the Haitian people and the
international community continue to work hard. It's not impossible.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think people can do in the United States?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: I think they can continue to mobilize human resources
to help bring peace for Haiti--democracy for Haiti. This is what the
Haitian people want: Peace and democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Will you be leaving the Central African Republic? Do you want
to leave?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: No, no, no, no. They are not asking me to leave the
country, they are asking me to end the...
AMY GOODMAN: I understand. I understand. I understand, but do you want to
leave the country? Do you want to return immediately to Haiti?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: If I can go today, I would go today. If it's tomorrow,
tomorrow. Whenever time comes, I will say yes, because my people, they
elected me.
AMY GOODMAN: What is stopping you from returning today?
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Because it means to clear the way, and that's what we
are doing now.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you very much for joining us, President Aristide.
PRESIDENT ARISTIDE: Thank you so much for you and wishing that we can meet
again in Haiti.
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Subject: [pjnews] HRW accuses U.S. forces of abuses in Afghanistan
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see also:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=497314
Heroin to flood Britain after Taliban's fall
------------------
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0403080157mar08,1,4477094.story
Group accuses U.S. forces of abuses in Afghanistan
By Liz Sly, Tribune foreign correspondent
March 8, 2004
KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. forces in Afghanistan are committing a range of
human-rights abuses, including torture and the use of excessive force, in
their hunt for terrorism suspects, according to a report released Monday
by Human Rights Watch.
The report cites numerous instances in which U.S. soldiers allegedly used
violent methods to arbitrarily detain civilians who have not taken part in
combat activities, calling into question the quality of U.S. intelligence.
In other instances, the report said, U.S. forces opened fire on homes
before detaining suspects, sometimes causing casualties among innocent
civilians.
"U.S. forces regularly use military means and methods during arrest
operations in residential areas where law enforcement techniques would be
more appropriate," the report said. "This has resulted in unnecessary
civilian casualties and may in some cases have involved indiscriminate or
disproportionate force in violation of international humanitarian law."
A U.S. military spokesman rejected the findings, saying the report failed
to take into account the nature of the war in Afghanistan.
"I think they have the wrong take on the war," Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty
said. "They're talking about arrests, but we're not arresting people. This
is a combat zone, and we're a combat force.
"The report does not mention the Taliban killing 15 people in Kandahar in
January, including eight children, and they don't mention the Taliban
burning down girls' schools," he said. "They don't mention the work
[coalition forces] have done on reconstruction."
Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said that in one incident
in July 2002, a man sleeping outside was killed by a stray bullet when
U.S. forces stormed a house before arresting its occupants.
Another man interviewed by the group said U.S. forces stormed into his
home in the southern province of Uruzgan, tied him up and then pushed his
two children, ages 11 and 13, to the ground.
"In front of my eyes, two Americans laid down both the boys on the ground
and pressed their boots into the children's backs. And they were yelling:
`Where is the ammunition? Where is the ammunition?'" the man told Human
Rights Watch. "The children were shrieking and shouting."
The man, who said he had fought against the Taliban and had no idea why
U.S. forces raided his home in February 2003, was detained and then
released after a couple of days.
Others have been held at U.S. detention centers for up to two years in
inhumane conditions without access to family members or lawyers, and in
many instances they have been mistreated, the group said. Altogether, the
U.S. has arrested more than 1,000 people in the past two years, most of
whom have been released.
Freed detainees told the group that U.S. forces beat them severely, doused
them with cold water and subjected them to freezing temperatures. Many
said they were forced to stay awake, or to stand or kneel in painful
positions for extended periods, according to the report.
"There is compelling evidence suggesting that U.S. personnel have
committed acts against detainees amounting to torture, or cruel, inhumane
or degrading treatment," said Brad Adams, executive director of Human
Rights Watch's Asia division.
The group cites the deaths in custody of three detainees, two at the
Bagram air base north of Kabul in December 2002 and one at the Asadabad
air base in eastern Afghanistan in June 2003. The first two deaths were
ruled homicides by U.S. military pathologists, but U.S. officials have yet
to explain what happened to the three men.
The deaths in custody are being investigated, and U.S. forces have "made
changes to our procedures as a result," Hilferty said.
The group also cites the deaths of eight civilians, including six
children, in December when U.S. forces raided a house in search of a
Taliban suspect. The suspect was not there, but during the raid a wall
collapsed on a neighboring house, killing the family.
"The use of military methods and tactics during the operation may have
violated international legal obligations to minimize harm to civilians,"
Human Rights Watch said.
The group said it took into account that Afghanistan is a war zone but
said that did not justify the abuses it had uncovered by U.S. forces.
"The Taliban and other insurgent groups are illegally targeting civilians
and humanitarian aid workers," Adams said. "But abuses by one party to a
conflict do not justify violations by the other side. This is a
fundamental principle of the laws of war."
The report comes as U.S. forces step up their efforts to tame the troubled
eastern and southern border regions where most of the raids described in
the report occurred and where a rejuvenated Taliban guerrilla movement has
been active recently.
Afghan government officials frequently have complained that some of the
tactics used by U.S. forces risk turning Afghans against their government
and the U.S.-led coalition.
As part of the new strategy, U.S. forces will spend more time in
communities and will deliver more aid, U.S. officials say, in an effort to
win the hearts and minds of locals who otherwise may fall under the
influence of the renewed Taliban.
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Subject: [pjnews] US Sets 'Terrible Example' in Afghanistan
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http://antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2103
US Sets 'Terrible Example' in Afghanistan
by Jim Lobe
US forces in Afghanistan are arbitrarily detaining civilians, using
excessive, sometimes lethal force in arresting them, mistreating detainees
in ways that may meet international definitions of torture, and
administering a system of arrest and detention that is outside the rule of
law, according to a blistering new report released Monday by Human Rights
Watch (HRW).
The 59-page report, "'Enduring Freedom: Abuses by US Forces in
Afghanistan,'" charges that mistreatment of detainees appears to be
routine in a number of U.S.-controlled detention facilities around
Afghanistan, and that the detention system itself resembles "a legal black
hole" about which almost nothing is known apart from what former prisoners
say about it once they are released.
"The United States is setting a terrible example in Afghanistan on
detention practices," said Brad Adams, executive director of HRW's Asia
division. "Civilians are being held in a legal black hole – with no
tribunals, no legal counsel, no family visits and no basic legal
protections."
Indeed, the record to date is likely to give ammunition to more abusive
governments, particularly in South Asia and the Middle East, where the
Bush administration insists it wants to promote human rights and the rule
of law.
"Abusive governments across the world can now point to US forces in
Afghanistan, and say, 'If they can abuse human rights and get away with
it, why can't we?'" noted Adams.
The report was released amid continuing international criticism of
Washington's treatment of the more than 600 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban
detainees at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Bush
administration has asserted its right to hold them indefinitely and
refused to grant them prisoner-of-war (POW) status that would give them
the right to appeal their detention in an independent court. Washington
has also been criticized for "rendering" some al Qaeda suspects to their
home countries' intelligence agencies known to practice torture for
interrogation.
Its release also coincides with reports of plans for a major escalation of
US military operations against Taliban forces and their allies along the
Pakistani border later this spring, in part to improve security in advance
of elections scheduled for this summer.
The report is based on research conducted in southeast and eastern
Afghanistan in 2003 and early 2004, including interviews of former
prisoners (some of whom were detained both in Afghanistan and at the US
naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba), US, UN, and relief officials and
military officers, and published reports.
It stresses that the armed foes of the US and its allies, including the
Taliban, Hezb-e Islami, and a relatively small number of non-Afghan
fighters have shown little or no regard for international human rights
standards or the laws of war. They have carried out abductions and attacks
against civilians and humanitarian aid workers and bombings in bazaars and
other civilian areas. HRW agrees that those responsible for these acts
should be brought to justice.
At the same time, however, the report insists that these activities do not
excuse violations of international human rights law, notably the Geneva
Conventions, by the US. "Abuses by one party to a conflict, no matter how
egregious, do not justify violations by the other side," according to the
report.
The report covers three kinds of abuses committed by US forces: their use
of excessive force in apprehending suspects; arbitrary arrests and
indefinite detention; and mistreatment in detention.
Over the last two years at least 1,000 Afghans and other nationals are
believed to have been arrested and detained by U.S.-led forces in
Afghanistan. While some were apprehended while they were engaged in
military operations, most have been taken into custody with no apparent
connection to ongoing hostilities, according to the report.
It found that US forces regularly use military means and methods – such as
firing from helicopter gunships or using suppressing fire (firing to
immobilize possible enemy forces) from small and heavy arms – during
arrest operations in residential areas where police tactics would be more
appropriate. The use of these tactics has resulted in unnecessary civilian
casualties, and in some cases may have been so indiscriminate and
disproportionate as to violate international humanitarian law, according
to the report.
One of the most damaging cases took place just last December when US
forces bombed a house belonging to a tribal leader they believed to be
associated with Hezb-e Islami. The intended target, however, was not
there, and explosions set off by the bombing killed eight people,
including six children, in a nearby home.
The report also documents abuses committed by Afghan soldiers or militias
deployed alongside US forces, including beatings of detainees and their
families, lootings of their homes, and even seizures of their land. The
report notes that while the Afghan government is responsible for these
abuses, they should also be of concern to the US because they were
committed during operations controlled by the US military.
Once taken into custody, individuals are detained for indefinite periods
at U.S. or U.S.-controlled military bases or outposts. Except for
occasional visits to some of these bases by the International Committee of
the Red Cross, the detainees – many of whom were simply picked up for
being in the vicinity of US military operations – are essentially held
incommunicado, with no way to contact relatives and no opportunity to
challenge the basis of their detentions. In the report's words, they find
themselves in a "hopeless situation."
Interviews with former detainees suggest that many have been subjected to
mistreatment, ranging from beatings, sometimes quite severe, to dousing
with cold water or exposing them to freezing temperatures, to sleep
deprivation, to forcing them to sit or kneel in painful positions for
extended periods of time, a "stress and duress" technique that has been
condemned by the UN Committee Against Torture.
"There is compelling evidence suggesting that US personnel have committed
acts against detainees amounting to torture or cruel, inhumane, or
degrading treatment," said Adams.
Indeed, the fact that the Pentagon has still not explained adequately the
circumstances of the deaths of two Afghan detainees at Bagram airbase in
December – both were ruled homicides by US military doctors who performed
autopsies – and a similar case in June 2003 at a detention site in Kunar
province bolsters the notion that the US military is operating its
detention facilities in Afghanistan "in a climate of almost total
impunity," according to the report.
"Simply put, the United States is acting outside the rule of law," the
report states. "There are no judicial processes restraining their actions
in arresting persons in Afghanistan. The only real legal limits on their
activities are self-imposed..."
Nor is the US military the only likely offender. In addition to the Afghan
Army, which is also accused of committing serious abuses against its
detainees, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is known to hold
detainees both at Bagram and other locations in Afghanistan, including in
Kabul. Even less is known about its practices, according to the report.
It noted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has complained to US
authorities about abuses by US troops, including their use of excessive
force in arrest operations and its treatment of suspects in detention, on
a number of occasions. But "the Afghan government and the Afghan Ministry
of Defense have limited influence over US military strategies and
policies..." the report asserted.
The ultimate result is a serious loss of credibility for US criticisms of
abusive practices committed by Afghan forces and foreign governments,
according to HRW. "It is now all too easy for governments to justify their
failures to uphold human rights by pointing to US violations in
Afghanistan."
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Subject: [pjnews] As U.S. Detains Iraqis, Families Plead for News
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The New York Times
7 March 2004
As U.S. Detains Iraqis, Families Plead for News
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 -- Sabrea Kudi cannot find her son. He was taken by
American soldiers nearly nine months ago, and there has been no trace of
him since.
"I'm afraid he's dead," Ms. Kudi said.
Lara Waad cannot find her husband. He was arrested in a raid, too.
"I had God -- and I had him," she said. "Now I am alone."
In Abu Sifa, a sunbaked village north of Baghdad, entire swaths of
farmland have been cleared of males -- fathers, sons, brothers, cousins.
There are no men to do men's work. Women till the fields, guard the houses
and hoist sacks of grapefruit on their backs.
"Essam, come here," said Malaika Hassan, to her grandson. "Show our
friends who is the new man of the house." Essam nuzzled in her skirt. He
is 10 years old.
Iraq has a new generation of missing men. But instead of ending up in mass
graves or at the bottom of the Tigris River, as they often did during the
rule of Saddam Hussein, they are detained somewhere in American jails.
Although the insurgency has cooled, with suicide attacks against civilians
now eclipsing armed clashes with American troops, American forces are
still conducting daily raids, bursting into homes and sweeping up
families. More than 10,000 men and boys are in custody. According to a
detainee database maintained by the military, the oldest prisoner is 75,
the youngest 11.
Military officials say some of the detainees have been accused of serious
offenses, including shooting down helicopters and planting roadside bombs.
But the officials acknowledge that most of the people captured are
probably not dangerous. Of a recent batch of cases reviewed by military
judges, they recommended that 963 of 1,166 detainees be released.
Part of the reason so many are being held is that soldiers' work is not
police work. Tips are not as reliable. Artillerymen are not detectives.
The troops cast a wide net and then sort through the catch, with much of
the investigation coming after the arrest, not before.
"But we have to be careful about it," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the
deputy director of operations for the occupying military forces. "We don't
want to arrest an entire village and come out with one rifle."
"There is an old Arabic expression," he added. "Don't do a good deed and
then throw it in the river."
The detainee issue is increasingly contentious. Under international law,
the American authorities have the right as occupiers to detain anyone who
poses a security threat, even without enough evidence to prosecute. But in
Iraq, unlike in postwar Japan or Germany, occupation has come without
pacification. The security threat did not end May 1, when major combat was
declared over, and detentions have continued long after Iraqi troops were
routed.
But the occupation is scheduled to end June 30, when the American
authorities plan to hand sovereignty back to the Iraqi people. American
officials say it is unclear how that will affect the status of detainees.
The American authorities say they are trying to help people locate
detained relatives, even posting prisoner lists on the Internet.
But computers are strange things to most Iraqis, and many families still
have no idea where their men are. Often they were led away in the middle
of the night, with bags over their heads and no explanation. Many people
have said that when they asked soldiers where their family members were
being taken, they were told to shut up. A few hundred women have also been
detained. And complicating the families' searches, there are several major
prisons and hundreds of smaller jails and bases across Iraq.
"It took the Americans five minutes to take my son," said Fadil
Abdulhamid. "It has taken me more than three weeks to find him."
Adil Allami, a lawyer with the Human Rights Organization of Iraq, said
security detainees had essentially no rights. None have lawyers, and most
are denied visits.
"Iraq has turned into one big Guantanamo," Mr. Allami said, referring to
the United States military prison in Cuba where hundreds of terrorism
suspects are being held, mostly without charges.
Several men recently released from American jails in Iraq have said they
were kicked in the head, choked and put in cold, wet rooms for days at a
time. The American authorities declined to comment on the charges, pending
the outcome of an investigation. Last month, they suspended 17 enlisted
men and officers, including a battalion commander and a company commander,
after abuse allegations surfaced at Abu Ghraib prison, where thousands of
prisoners are being held.
The prison, west of Baghdad, is a nucleus of despair. Every day, crowds of
women in black shrouds jam the front gates, squinting up at the guard
towers, clutching worn pieces of paper, pleading with guards to see their
missing men.
"Move! Move! Move!" an American sergeant shouted at them on a recent day.
Ms. Kudi, whose son, Muhammad, was detained nearly nine months ago, has
been to Abu Ghraib more than 20 times. The huge prison is the center of
her continuing odyssey through military bases, jails, assistance centers,
hospitals and morgues. She said she had been shoved by soldiers and chased
by dogs.
"If they want to kill me, kill me," Ms. Kudi said. "Just give me my son."
Ms. Kudi is a compact woman with tribal marks and the sorry story of
modern Iraq tattooed on her face. She says she is around 50 years old. She
looks much older.
Her first son died in the Iran-Iraq war, her second in Kuwait in 1991, her
third during the American invasion last year. Two more boys have been
crippled in battle. Her husband is dead.
On June 23, she said Muhammad, a 32-year-old furniture maker, was waiting
in his truck at an American checkpoint in Ramadi when a gun battle broke
out. Witnesses said Muhammad was lightly wounded in the cross-fire and
then detained by American forces.
Three days later, American troops returned Muhammad's truck. But they did
not know what had happened to Muhammad.
The other day, as she had done before, Ms. Kudi went to an assistance
center in Baghdad to check the computer database of prisoners. Again, she
stepped into a little office and sat down in a little chair. Again, she
watched a woman behind a desk key in her son's name. Again, she was told
there was no record.
A line of people waited behind her. Many got the same empty news.
The reasons for the detentions differ. The military authorities say they
arrested Ms. Waad's husband because he may have played a part in shooting
down a Chinook helicopter last year. Ms. Waad said that he was a taxi
driver and that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Mr. Abdulhamid, who has been looking for his son for three weeks, said his
son was arrested because he was at a wedding where guns were shot off in
celebration. It is a common story.
In Abu Sifa, the farming village north of Baghdad, 83 people were detained
in December during a raid for a high-level former member of Mr. Hussein's
Baath Party. But people in Abu Sifa say everyone here was a Baathist.
"Even the dogs were Baathists," said Munther Haddam, a farmer. "What's the
big deal?"
Ms. Hassan, who lives with her 10-year-old grandson, said American
soldiers took her four adult sons. "Couldn't they have left me one?" she
asked.
Most of the village teachers were led away, too.
Saba Muhammad, an Abu Sifa elder, began to count them on his hands: Salah,
Faisal, Ahmed, Ayub, Emad, Raad.
Soon he ran out of fingers.
"Eleven," Mr. Muhammad said. "Eleven teachers. Now you tell me how we're
supposed to feel about Americans."
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Subject: [pjnews] I am an American
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>From a friend, Pete Russo ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):
I am an American. I listen to heavy metal and smooth jazz. I watch the
Simpsons and the news. I enjoy entertainment that makes me think, despite
what sort of controversial topics are involved. I don't believe video
games make people kill, and I don't believe Howard Stern is the
antichrist.
I don't pay as much attention to politics as I should. I think the Patriot
Act is pure, unadulterated fascism. I believe George W Bush is the single
worst president in my lifetime to date. I believe the world is a better
place with Saddam Hussein removed from power but I do not believe in the
methods used to achieve that end. I think the United States has no
business in other countries until our own has climbed out of recession and
unemployment - and not even then.
I don't believe in the FCC or the PTC or the PMRC or any type of unelected
body that tries to tell me what I can or can't listen to. I believe in the
freedom to choose my own entertainment, and if I hear something that
offends, I believe that my course of action should be to change the
station or change the channel, not to make the choice for others. I
believe anyone who thinks they know what is best for anyone not in their
own family is at least mistaken, and at most, suffering from messianic
delusions.
I believe that freedom of speech is the most important aspect of my life.
I believe that the people who would work to inhibit free speech are the
weakest people alive. I believe that anyone whose convictions are
threatened by someone who simply disagrees with them, who would fight so
hard for their voice to drown out everyone else's, is weak-willed and
pitiful. A person who cannot bear to hear another's opinion, a person who
cannot bear the thought that another person feels differently comes off as
wishy-washy and incapable of making decisions. And I don't like the idea
that someone incapable of holding their convictions can alter the options
available in my life.
I believe in family and the fact that dysfunctional kids come from
dysfunctional parents. I believe that things were better before parents
loaded their kids with ritalin in the morning. I believe teachers are
overworked and underpaid for the job they do, and I believe childless
families owe just as much to the school systems. I believe things can
always be worked out if parents talk to their children and not at them, if
parents tried to understand their children's issues and remembered that
they were children once, themselves. I believe there is a right way and a
wrong way to say "What were you thinking when you did this?"
I believe that Saddam Hussein is an atypical Iraqi, just as I believe
Osama bin Ladin is an atypical Saudi Arabian. I believe that the general
population of the countries in which we interfere do not care nearly as
much about the status of their country's leadership as they do paying
their bills and putting food on their family's table. I believe that
anyone who gets upset at the way our soldiers are treated overseas should
not lose their anger, but should try and imagine how they would feel if a
foreign country invaded their homeland, overthrew their leader, and told
them how to live. It's easy to point fingers, it's hard to understand if
you can't imagine being there.
I believe in the separation of Church and State. I believe that religion
has begun to infringe on privacy. I believe the church, the mosque, or the
temple have no place in my home, my bedroom, or my mind. I believe that
the current form of government is attempting to make decisions for us and
I believe the Religious Right is afraid of informed people making
decisions that erode their control. I support cloning and stem cell
research and birth control and abortion. I support anyone who peacefully
and respectfully voices their objections to these procedures without
making the decision for other people. I don't agree with the gestapo
tactics the Religious Right uses to strong-arm others into their point of
view. I believe that protesters in front of an abortion clinic are
inhibiting the privacy rights that such clinics - by necessity - subscribe
to. I don't believe those people who equate pro- choice with anti- life
deserve to argue against the point that by the same logic, pro- life
equates anti- choice. I believe the statistic that ninety percent of women
who get an abortion regret that fact, and I believe those ninety percent
have no right to make the decision for the other ten.
I believe in premarital sex and homosexual marriage. I believe that things
happening behind closed doors that harm nobody are nobody's business but
the people in the room. I believe that the only thing a born-again
Christian has against a homosexual couple is the fact that he was taught
at a young age that homosexuality was wrong. I believe that, in ninety
nine percent of the world's population, if people suddenly let go of all
the hatred they have towards other cultures and religions that they have
because their ancestors told them to, war and hatred would die a quick
death. I believe that racial and religious prejudice have no place in the
world. I believe that the hatred some cultures feel towards America is due
to America itself, filled with prejudice, violence, and hatred, telling
other countries how to exist.
I believe that the people who died on September 11, 2001, would be
shocked, ashamed, and enraged to learn that their deaths have been turned
into a political tool. I believe they would be even more enraged to learn
that their government wasted the ensuing sympathy by forsaking the United
Nations. I don't believe that the people who died in the Twin Towers were
martyrs. I believe they were people who worked hard to support their
families and for the most part, would not give support to a President that
would use the death of 3500 worker bees for political gain.
I believe George W. Bush knowingly lied to the American People about the
reasons for the War in Iraq.
I believe that the incident at the Super Bowl will kick off a spree of
censorship in the name of indecency that will strip this country of its
constitutionally protected freedom of speech before any of us can notice.
I believe that the only enemy more dangerous to the rights of the American
People than George Bush and his associates is the apathy of the American
People themselves. I believe that if Howard Stern is fired for exercising
his first amendment rights, the United States Government has opened the
door into every one of our homes for surpression of our first amendment
rights. I believe that the solution for anyone who is offended by the
things they hear on the radio or watch on the television is to change the
station.
I am an American and these are my beliefs. You may agree with them all.
You may agree with some and disagree with others to varying degrees. You
may disagree with them all.
It does not change the fact that I am an American, and a good one. And it
does not change the fact that you are an American, should you live in
America, and a good one.
The only thing that makes an American a bad American is when that American
tries to take away the rights of the people whom he disagrees with.
I may disagree with your words, but I will defend to the death your right
to speak them. All I ask in return is the right to speak mine.
I am an American.
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Subject: [pjnews] You, Too Can Run For President
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The deadline for this is April 9th.
fwd...
From: Carol Yelverton [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I am a communications consultant working on the new TV program AMERICAN
CANDIDATE. A brief description of the show is listed below.
We are looking for people engaged in advocating for their passions and
beliefs, who welcome a chance to be part of a fascinating exercise in the
process of democracy.
The winner of AMERICAN CANDIDATE will receive $200,000 and a nationwide
media appearance to occur after the conclusion of the series so that the
"American Candidate" can make his or her address to the nation.
If you are interested or know of others who might welcome this
opportunity, please let me know by e-mailing me at this address. I'm
looking for folks in the Washington - NYC - Boston area.
Thank you,
Carol Yelverton
-------------
Here is a program description of American Candidate:
In America, we believe that anyone can grow up to be President of the
United States. The reality is that most people don't have the means to
try. American Candidate is a ground-breaking television series in which
the American people will identify a People's Candidate that they would
like to see run for President of the United States.
On American Candidate, an innovative new political television series by
Showtime, 12 Americans from all walks of life will be selected to
participate in an unscripted, nationally televised political forum.
Through competitions, challenges, debates, and engagement with the 2004
presidential election, those 12 people will have a once in a lifetime
opportunity to offer their perspective on the state of the nation and
their vision for our future.
American Candidate will provide a forum for new and diverse ideas and a
path to national prominence for people with the passion and talent to make
a difference. Contestants will create their own platforms, organize their
own campaigns, recruit key staff members, and garner the support of
potential voters. By introducing a diverse group of potential leaders,
each championing a different set of core issues and policy proposals, the
show will provoke discussion and debate about what our nation is really
looking for in a president. And by providing a forum for grassroots
campaigns throughout the country, American Candidate will involve more
people in the political process.
Viewers will follow a group of contestants as they campaign across the
United States. On each show, the contestants will perform live under
pressure, as they participate in competitions, debates, press conferences,
crisis simulations, and other tests of presidential mettle. Viewers will
also be able to participate in the campaigns via the internet. The final
episode will be the American Candidate Convention, during which viewers
will select the show's winner: the People's Candidate.
We are looking for:
* People who have a passion for creating change
* Leaders
* Diversity
The requirements and more information can be found at
http://www.AmericanCandidate.com
American Candidate is created and executive produced by R.J. Cutler, who
produced the Oscar-nominated documentary The War Room, produced and
directed the Emmy-nominated documentary A Perfect Candidate, and created,
executive produced and directed the Emmy-winning television series,
American High. Jay Roach (Meet the Parents, Austin Powers) and Tom
Lassally are also Executive Producers. American Candidate will air on
Showtime starting in the summer of 2004.
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Subject: [pjnews] Behind the Madrid Massacre
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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18116
Behind the Madrid Massacre
By Rahul Mahajan, CounterPunch
March 12, 2004
Whether yesterday's attacks in Spain, in which 190 people were killed and
nearly 1500 wounded, were carried out by the Basque separatist ETA or by
al-Qaeda, they make one thing very clear: Terrorism cannot be fought by
military means.
After the first Gulf War, and particularly after the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing, U.S. military analysts concerned themselves extensively
with the question of terrorism. An early conclusion was that it is
precisely the extreme dominance of the U.S. military that makes potential
opponents turn to what is sometimes called "asymmetric warfare" – i.e.,
attacks in which the other side also has a chance of inflicting damage.
For example, Presidential Decision Directive 62, issued in 1998, says,
"America's unrivaled military superiority means that potential enemies
(whether nations or terrorist groups) that choose to attack us will be
more likely to resort to terror instead of conventional military assault."
The Bush administration's response, involving a tremendous new wave of
militarism, new weapons systems, and a newly aggressive posture in the
world could not have done more to exacerbate the threat of terrorist
attacks if it had been planned that way.
Worse, there has been a shift in the modality of attacks after 9/11. The
9/11 attacks and previous ones by al-Qaeda, like that on the U.S.S. Cole
or those on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, were attacks on hard
targets, requiring suicide bombers and, in the case of 9/11, a highly
sophisticated operation. Furthermore, the targets were ones of obvious
political significance; there was hardly a more potent symbol of American
economic might and world domination than the World Trade Center. Contrary
to popular depictions, at the time al-Qaeda was not simply ravening to
kill any American anywhere.
That changed after the Afghanistan war, with a decision made by elders of
Al-Qaeda in Thailand in January 2002 to turn more toward soft targets. The
first major such attack was the November 2002 Bali nightclub bombing which
killed nearly 200. Just as with the Madrid bombing, the targets had no
particular political significance. While it is true that Aznar supported
the war on Iraq, 90% of the Spanish people opposed it, and they were the
victims of the attack.
And thus we are led to the reductio ad absurdum – more military prowess
leads to more terrorist attacks, more defense of hard or politically
significant targets leads to more indiscriminate attacks on soft targets,
and it is simply impossible to defend all soft targets. Today the trains
of Madrid. Tomorrow the New York subway?
The progression of events in Iraq under the occupation mirrors this.
Initially, one saw mainly attacks on the U.S. military. It quickly
responded by increasing the level of alert, and so August of last year saw
numerous terrorist attacks. The U.N. humanitarian headquarters was
attacked and Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim was assassinated at the Imam Ali
mosque in Najaf. These were still aimed at very specific persons or
organizations and involved targets with some level of protection.
As Iraq began to fill up with concrete barricades and razor wire, the
targets changed. Attackers who had earlier concentrated on the Iraqi
police as collaborators with the occupation took to bombing lines of
people waiting to interview for jobs as police. Cleaning women who worked
on a CPA base were gunned down. Attacks against random targets of
opportunity proliferated. The culmination was on Ashura, the holiest day
of the year for the Shi'a; a dozen suicide bombers attacked processions in
Baghdad and Kerbala (and tried to in Basra and Najaf), killing likely over
200 people.
The Spanish government has a heavy political investment in the claim that
the ETA perpetrated these attacks, and there is some evidence in that
direction. There is also much in the other direction, including a van
found near Madrid with explosive detonators and an Arabic tape of Quranic
verses, a claim of responsibility by an Islamist group, and a denunciation
of the attacks by the spokesman of Batasuna, the Basque party most closely
associated with the ETA.
But it doesn't matter. If al-Qaeda didn't do this, whoever did it was
inspired by al-Qaeda. The attack involves the same modus operandi, the
same abandonment of clear political purpose for body count as the sole
criterion. If non-Islamist organizations come to adopt the same methods,
the danger is only increased.
So far, all military measures in the "war on terrorism" have strengthened
the emerging archipelago of Islamist terrorist organizations. Weakening it
requires taking away the political ground on which they stand. That ground
is not the virtually nihilistic domestic political programs of these
groups. It is their opposition to U.S. imperial control of the Islamic
world, a grievance that most Muslims share.
It doesn't matter whether you're a dove or a hawk, left or right,
concerned with the suffering of others or concerned merely with your own
skin. Military means will not work. The beginning of a solution is the end
of the twin occupations in the Middle East. Only after that will it be
possible to take measures against terrorism that don't worsen the problem.
_____________
Rahul Mahajan is the publisher of EmpireNotes and serves on the
Administrative Committee of United for Peace and Justice. He is the author
of "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism" and "Full Spectrum
Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond."
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush and Blair were on 'witch hunt' over Iraqi weapons
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see also:
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=273532004
Saddam had WMDs destroyed in 91, claim scientists
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tenet10mar10,1,3578305.
story
Rummy's personal spy unit did an end-run around CIA on Iraq intelligence
------------------
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=498992
Hans Blix: Bush and Blair behaved as if they were on a 'witch hunt' over
Iraqi weapons
The Monday Interview: Retired Chief UN Weapons Inspector
By Anne Penketh in Stockholm
08 March 2004
Hans Blix is chuckling as he emerges from his study and settles into an
armchair in his spacious Stockholm flat to leaf through a document.
The document is no laughing matter: it is the Blair Government's
now-notorious dossier from September, 2002, which framed the case for war
on Iraq, and indirectly led to the death of David Kelly, the government
arms expert. But Mr Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, smiles as
he cites examples of the Prime Minister's "faith-based" approach to
intelligence.
"Listen to this," he says. "This is Blair speaking, 'I believe the
assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt'." Mr Blix is mocking
Mr Blair's uncritical view of intelligence, which prevented the Prime
Minister backing down even when the UN inspectors returned from Iraq
unable to report that they had the "smoking gun" which would demonstrate
"beyond doubt" that Saddam Hussein had rebuilt his arsenal of weapons of
mass destruction.
Today he is angry at the lack of attention paid by the British and
American governments to the inspectors' findings in the rush to topple
Saddam. "Why the hell didn't they pay more attention to us?" he asks.
When Mr Blix, now 75, was called out of retirement to become chief UN
weapons inspector in March 2000, he suspected that Iraq retained lethal
stocks of WMD. Like other weapons inspectors, including Dr Kelly, who had
witnessed first-hand the "cat and mouse" game played by Iraq in the 1990s,
Mr Blix was hawkish. After all, under his watch as head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the Iraqis had been caught red-handed
as they worked on a clandestine nuclear programme.
"My gut feelings, which I kept to myself, suggested to me that Iraq still
engaged in prohibited activities and retained prohibited items, and that
it had the documents to prove it," he says in a new book, Disarming Iraq:
the search for weapons of mass destruction. This is why he would not
challenge Mr Blair's claim on Friday about Saddam's WMD, that in November,
2002, when resolution 1441 was adopted, "everyone thought he had them".
But Mr Blix's doubts set in when the inspectors were allowed back into
Iraq at the end of that month, exactly four years after they were pulled
out, as the US/UK bombing campaign of Operation Desert Fox started. They
inspected suspicious sites, acting on tip-offs from the intelligence
agencies, but they found no credible evidence of WMD. " I said, 'If this
is the best, what is the rest?'" In fact, he adds: "Considering how
misleading much of the intelligence given us eventually proved to be,
perhaps it was a blessing we did not get more."
He tells of a conversation with Mr Blair, one month before the war, amid a
controversy over the alleged presence of mobile biological weapons
production facilities after the inspectors had been unable to confirm the
intelligence claims.
"I added that it would prove paradoxical and absurd if 250,000 troops were
to invade Iraq and find very little. Blair responded that the intelligence
was clear Saddam had reconstituted his weapons of mass destruction
programme. Blair clearly relied on the intelligence and was convinced,
while my faith in intelligence had been shaken."
What Mr Blix still cannot understand is why his doubts and those of his
professional teams of trained inspectors failed to make an impression on
Mr Blair and President George Bush, who continued to mislead the public
with categorical assertions about the existence of WMD with the fervency
of religious crusaders. He accuses the British and US governments of
"distorting" the reports of the weapons inspectors, who had said that
amounts of chemical and biological weapons remained unaccounted for. This
became an accusation that Iraq "retained" chemical and biological weapons.
Worse, he says, the Bush administration actively sought to undermine the
inspectors, accusing them of playing down the threat from Saddam's WMD,
particularly after Mr Blix refused to brand the discovery of an Iraqi
drone as a "smoking gun". He adds: "I still find it insulting if they
believed that our assessments were prompted by a wish to avoid finding
incriminating evidence."
He also feels insulted by the lack of consideration with which Americans
treated the inspectors. "I am flabbergasted that the American military
could believe there were such easily available large stores of this stuff
when Unscom (the previous inspection regime) hadn't seen any, and we
hadn't seen any. They had such a low opinion of the inspectors."
Mr Blix's doubts increased further after the war, when Saddam's chief
weapons expert, Amer al-Saadi, was taken away in a US Jeep, still
insisting on the official Iraq line that all the WMD had been destroyed
after the first Gulf War in 1991. "It was only then that I said to myself,
'There is nothing there'."
Today, in the comfort of his flat scattered with rugs and modern Swedish
paintings and as he embarks on a new career at the head of an independent
Stockholm WMD commission, Mr Blix admits he feels vindicated for his
cautious and critical approach. His old nemesis, David Kay, the former US
chief weapons hunter, threw in the towel, proclaiming: "We are all wrong."
But Mr Blix maintains he was right. "I don't like to have any glee because
the matter is far too serious for that. But yes, I think the attitude we
had of a critical examination of the evidence, that is vindicated."
Although Mr Blix says he is not bitter, he is scathing about the
"faith-based" approach of Messrs Bush and Blair which he says was
tantamount to a "witch hunt". After a conversation with John Wolf,
Assistant US Secretary of State for Non-proliferation, who is accused of
obtaining secret information from his office, he says: "I understood his
formulations to say, 'The witches exist; you are appointed to deal with
these witches; testing whether there are witches is only a dilution of the
witch-hunt'."
His account is particularly damaging for Dick Cheney, the Vice-President
who continued to insist that Iraq had "nuclear weapons" long after the
evidence proved the contrary. Given Mr Blix's IAEA background, he is
well-placed to know that US statements about Iraq's nuclear potential were
"too alarming or exaggerated".
In the light of the bugging revelations, he is clearly smarting. "Although
it's nice they were listening to us, why weren't they paying attention to
what we said? They might have learnt something." Some leaders did believe
the inspectors. Mr Blix says Jacques Chirac, the French President, had a
healthy disrespect for intelligence. Although the French intelligence
services were convinced WMD remained in Iraq, Mr Chirac's thinking "seemed
to be dominated by the conviction that Iraq did not pose a threat that
justified armed intervention".
Mr Chirac believed that the intelligence services "sometimes intoxicate
each other". So were the French right? "I think they were, yes. Chirac was
right that the intelligence agencies intoxicated each other; I think they
were right on the second resolution, they were right also in saying that
one should defer, that one should have more inspections.
"They did not say that they would always say 'no' to war. The Americans
might have suspected that, but clearly March was too early a date." So
what were Mr Blair's channels that made Mr Blair so certain of the Iraqi
threat? Defectors, certainly. "They wanted Saddam gone." And the weapons
inspectors, many of whom from the Unscom teams of the 1990s remained as
government advisers. Mr Blix admits they must share the blame.
"Where was [Mr Blair] getting his information from? He could have had
reports from British agents that went further than the [Unscom] reports
did." Mr Blix does praise the British Government for pursuing the
inspection route - at least in public - to the bitter end. "I never
doubted that Blair was strongly advocating inspections all the way
through; that the resistance to that must have come from the Americans and
mainly from the Pentagon side. Even to the last they were trying with the
inspection path."
But how sincere was the Government? "They certainly tried very hard." Mr
Blix takes pains to stress that he is no pacifist. While he maintains that
the Iraqi invasion was unjustified based on the nature of the weapons
threat, "you can take another line, on humanitarian grounds. I would be in
favour of that." From that perspective, Mr Blix sounds remarkably like Mr
Blair, who complained in his speech on Friday that international law, as
presently constituted, meant that "a regime can systematically brutalise
and oppress its people and there is nothing anyone can do".
On the wall of Mr Blix's study is a framed letter from Bill Clinton,
congratulating him after his retirement on his 16 years at the head of the
IAEA. "I don't expect I'll be getting one from Bush," Mr Blix says drily.
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Subject: [pjnews] 1/2 The Permanent Scars of Iraq
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http://snipurl.com/532v
February 15, 2004
The Permanent Scars of Iraq
By SARA CORBETT (NYT Magazine)
Robert Shrode can't sleep.
At night, in the fly-speck town of Guthrie, Ky., in the rented farmhouse
he shares with his 20-year-old wife, Debra, he surfs the Internet, roams
the house. He lies down and gets up again. He drinks a beer and stares out
the window at the black fields beyond. Hours pass. He can't sleep. Before
the war, he could have six beers and sleep like a baby, but now that works
against him. Drinking may help get his head to the pillow, but it also
ratchets up the nightmares. For a while, he sweated out his bad dreams on
the living-room couch, and it drove Debra crazy. She would come down from
the bedroom, touch his shoulder, ask what the problem was. Shrode would
just turn his back to her and not say a word. Now she knows better than to
ask, though occasionally when the silence between them gets too deep,
she'll put it out there, What're you thinking about?
''Iraq,'' he'll say. And then the silence falls again.
He pops Ambien to coax some sleep. The results are mixed. On the advice of
his doctors, he is taking three different pills for pain, a pill for
swelling and another pill for depression. There are days when he is
unrecognizable to himself, a guy who a few years ago was a party-loving
bartender at a Mississippi casino and who is now 29 and engaged in what
can feel like a never-ending battle to see his own future brightly.
The only person who understands him is his buddy Brent Bricklin, a
restless, dark-haired 22-year-old and fellow Army specialist in the 101st
Airborne Division, who is also home after serving in Iraq. Most mornings,
Shrode picks up Bricklin at Fort Campbell, the sprawling base that
straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee state line where both men are stationed,
and they go driving. It's always more or less the same. They drive through
the buttressed gates of the base, patrolled by armed National Guardsmen,
and turn onto Fort Campbell Boulevard, passing the check-cashing outfits,
the strip clubs and gun-and-ammo shops that, during peacetime anyway, boom
with military business.
Shrode sometimes jokes that he loves his Chevy Tahoe more than his wife,
and it's half true. The Tahoe is a big upholstered bubble, a place where
he can watch the world drift by harmlessly. Inside it, he shares more with
Bricklin than he does with Debra, whom he met at a nightclub in 2002 and
married three months before going to war. ''I can talk to him -- I can't
talk to my wife,'' Shrode says. ''But 30 seconds with him, and I feel
better.''
Not far from the base, they pass a pint-size Kia driving in the next lane.
Someone has used soap to write a self-congratulatory ''Back From Iraq'' in
large letters across the rear window. This being December, the only
soldiers back from Iraq are ones sent home because of expired enlistments
or for medical reasons or those on their way to being transferred
elsewhere. The bulk of the division -- some 20,000 local soldiers --
remains at war. Shrode and Bricklin stare down at the Kia.
''Dumb idiot,'' Bricklin says. Shrode says nothing.
It's been nearly six months since Shrode and Bricklin arrived home from
Iraq. Shrode lost most of his right arm, which was amputated just below
the elbow in a Baghdad field hospital. Even healed, his face is pitted
with purple shrapnel scars the size of raindrops. Bricklin, a
broad-shouldered former competitive swimmer who came home honeycombed with
shrapnel, bears larger, raw-looking scars from his thigh to his neck. Both
men have significant hearing loss, cocking their heads like a couple of
old-timers in order to grasp what's said. They are plagued by headaches
and are convinced they've had some memory loss. Between them, they've had
nine operations since getting, as they like to say, ''blown up'' in Iraq.
Shrode, who is shorter and stockier than Bricklin and speaks with a soft
Alabama accent, still visits the base hospital five days a week for
occupational therapy. Once a month, he sees a military therapist. He has
tried, without luck, to persuade Bricklin to get individual counseling
too.
''He says I took it harder than I say I do,'' Bricklin says with a
deflective smile.
''He did,'' Shrode says.
''He's says I'm messed up in the head.''
''You are,'' Shrode says earnestly.
It's a subject Bricklin doesn't want to discuss. He playfully jabs a
finger near the stump of his friend's arm: ''How much feeling you got left
in this thing, anyway? Let's find out.''
Both men say they feel more vulnerable since coming back from war. When
someone recently dropped a tray in the hospital cafeteria, Shrode dove,
horror-struck, beneath the table. A crackling summer thunderstorm sent
Bricklin into a panic, convinced he was caught in the back blast of a
grenade again. Both say they have frequent nightmares. And then there's
something less tangible, a visceral undercurrent of anger that makes them
walk around feeling ready to explode. ''I can go from being happy-go-lucky
and joking to having someone's throat in my hand, like that,'' Bricklin
says, snapping his fingers. Shrode nods. ''My fuse is short,'' he says.
''It's real short.''
Shrode and Bricklin are 2 of the 2,600 United States soldiers wounded in
action in Iraq as of early this month, according to the Department of
Defense. The basics of their stories are hauntingly familiar: just after
midnight one night in June, a rocket-propelled grenade shrieked out of
nowhere and hit their Humvee, which sat parked at a police station in the
Baathist city of Fallujah. What was reported in the news bore the standard
sterility: ''One soldier killed; five others injured.'' What wasn't said
was that Branden Oberleitner, the private who died standing almost
shoulder to shoulder with Shrode, was a car buff who once planned to
become a firefighter or that he was killed two weeks shy of his 21st
birthday. It didn't say that his blood was all over the road.
But for whatever societal void the dead disappear into, it is the wounded
who must live with the confounding mix of anonymity and exposure wrought
by surviving a war. On and off the Army base, Shrode is approached by
strangers who size up his military haircut and missing arm and feel
compelled to heap on the thanks for serving in Iraq. They all but ignore
Bricklin, who is often with him but whose injuries remain hidden. Shrode
finds the situation reliably awkward, sensing a whiff of pity riding on
the backside of flattery. The people who open doors for him, he says, make
him feel handicapped. And then there are those whose gazes follow him
wordlessly as he makes his way down the buffet line at the China King
restaurant near the base -- drawn, it would seem, to the spectacle of a
one-armed man working to load his plate.
The discomfort feels irresolvable. ''Somebody stares at it, I get mad at
them,'' Shrode says. ''Somebody looks away, and I get mad at that.''
For both soldiers, the tension between themselves and the rest of the
world builds up quickly and with no real outlet. Bricklin has had one
run-in with the police and says that he's been a jerk ''to anyone who
didn't go'' to war. Even when someone shows concern for their well-being
-- when Debra touches her husband's shoulder or a stranger flashes a
kindly smile -- the effect can be abrasive. One day, as Shrode was walking
down a hospital hallway, a civilian passing by happened to toss out an
innocent ''Howyadoin','' which somehow, in that moment, became the last
straw. ''Ninety-nine percent of the time, I tell them what they want to
hear,'' Shrode says. But in this instance he couldn't help blurting out a
truth that was becoming more evident each day. ''Buddy,'' he said, ''I'm
going to hurt the rest of my life.''
Every other Tuesday, Shrode drives over to Fort Campbell's mental-health
building to attend a support-group meeting for injured soldiers. Before
going to Iraq, before being wounded, he wouldn't have been caught dead
doing something like this. Support groups were the stuff of Oprah --
helpful for others, maybe, but not for him.
Given the uncomfortable silence before a session begins, it is clear that
Shrode is not the only squeamish one. The soldiers -- usually anywhere
between 5 and 15 of them -- sit in a circle of couches and chairs in the
cramped linoleum-floored waiting room of the mental-health building,
looking almost like a roomful of unusually clean-cut college kids
gathering for a study group. Except that one walks with a cane. Several
others have burn sleeves covering their arms. A woman with a bobbed
haircut wears an arm splint. There's a guy -- an Apache helicopter pilot
-- who has balance problems. His neighbor, a muscled young corporal,
winces as he takes a seat. When they make chitchat, it tends to be about
skin grafts and medication and how there aren't enough handicapped parking
spaces on base. Occasionally, some will compare scars, hiking up pants and
shirts and inspecting the wreckage of someone else's limb or torso. ''Hey,
yours is growing hair back!'' one soldier says to another. ''That's pretty
good.''
For every broken body in this room, there are hundreds more confined to
hospital beds across the country and hundreds more again who, by choice or
by circumstance, are gutting out the effects of their injuries without the
help of peers or mental-health counselors. It has been suggested that the
wounded are the hidden casualties of the Iraq war, stranded somewhere
between our grief for the dead and a wartime patriotism best stirred by
the belief that our troops are both productive and healthy. Thanks to the
lifesaving properties of body armor and largely impenetrable Kevlar
helmets, combined with highly advanced battlefield medicine, more soldiers
are surviving explosions and gunfire than in previous wars. The downside
of this is that the injury rate in Iraq is high: an average of nine
soldiers have been injured per day. The pace shows little sign of slowing,
which means it's possible we will bring home another 1,500 wounded before
the start of summer. Some military experts worry that in the next four
months -- as the U.S. rotates roughly 110,000 new troops into Iraq, many
of them reservists and National Guardsmen with less combat training than
the full-time soldiers they are replacing -- injury rates could climb even
higher.
The government's reports on the wounded can be confusing. In early
February, the Department of Defense Web site listed 2,600 soldiers as
wounded in action in Iraq and another 403 as injured in ''nonhostile''
incidents like helicopter or motor-vehicle accidents. Meanwhile, the Army
Surgeon General's office said that only 804 soldiers have been evacuated
with battle wounds and that over 2,800 have been injured accidentally. In
addition, the Surgeon General's office reported that another 5,184
soldiers have been evacuated from the theater for other medical reasons,
which could include anything from kidney stones to nervous breakdowns. To
date, 569 of these have qualified as psychiatric casualties.
Although many of the soldiers who attend the support group at Fort
Campbell have escaped enemy fire, their injuries reflect the full spectrum
of what can go wrong during war: Sgt. Jenni McKinley had her right hand
crushed when her Humvee blew a tire and flipped over on a sandy road
outside of Baghdad. Chief Warrant Officers Emanuel Pierre and Stuart
Contant were pilots whose Apache helicopter reportedly malfunctioned and
then crashed in Afghanistan, requiring them to spend months in the
hospital and to endure multiple operations. There is a medic who is
physically uninjured but tormented to the point of agony by memories of
treating his wounded and dying colleagues. And then there is a quiet young
private who comes because her hair is falling out and her fingers are numb
and nobody seems able to tell her why.
These soldiers generally are no less disabled than those who were hit by
AK-47 fire. Sgt. Jeremy Gilbert, another medic, laments that he never made
it into Iraq at all, since a week before the invasion, a Kuwaiti civilian
driving 90 miles per hour plowed into Gilbert's Humvee, shattering the
soldier's right leg and pelvis and relegating him to a wheelchair for five
months. ''There's nothing glamorous about the way I got hurt,'' says
Gilbert, who wept in frustration as he watched the first live footage of
the Army's invasion of Iraq from a bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
in Washington. ''But it sure has trashed my life.''
Operating with a blend of military toughness and quiet empathy, the
injured soldiers' support group -- believed to be the first of its kind on
an Army base -- has taken on everything from fractured self images and
faltering marriages to traumatic memories of Iraq and the pervading
question of what each soldier's future looks like in the wake of both war
and injury. Yet there is little that's 12-step about it. You won't find
group hugs or even metaphorical handholding here. Nor is there any
second-guessing whether it was worth it to go to war in the first place.
In the context of the Army's rigid hierarchy and low tolerance for
weakness, the power of the support group, it seems, comes from its ability
to listen.
The first time I visited, in late November, conversation was dominated by
one soldier, a newcomer who looked to be in his early 30's, with a spinal
injury that had required some of his vertebrae to be fused together. As a
result, his neck appeared stiff and unyielding; his back, ramrod straight.
He spent the better part of an hour raging about various things that
angered him, mainly the way his commanders were treating him and issues he
had with his medical care. When he spoke, it was at a full shout, letting
out a stream of emotion so potent and vituperative that it seemed his
rigid body might launch right off the chair. The other soldiers listened,
expressionless except for Brent Bricklin, who leaned back in his chair
with a smirk, as if he wasn't buying a word of it. It wasn't until the
newcomer mentioned that he wished he were back in Iraq that anybody else
chimed in.
''I miss it, too,'' another soldier said. ''At least there was a purpose.''
''I wish I was in Iraq because my buddies are there,'' Robert Shrode offered.
Heads in the group began to nod. The atmosphere seemed to lighten. But
then the newcomer -- or Angry Neck Man, as some of the others would later
call him -- charged headlong into another furious rant.
A while later, sitting with Terry James, the easygoing retired first
sergeant who moderates the group and works as a counselor at Fort
Campbell, I remarked upon how unnerving I found the soldier's anger, how
potentially violent it seemed. James just laughed. ''That's how they all
come to us,'' he said. ''Pretty much everyone starts out mad. Any other
place in the military would've cut him off, wouldn't have let him get his
anger out.''
The line between venting and sniveling, however, can be imperceptibly
thin. One soldier's fury may set off another's, as was the case in a
meeting where a soldier ran on too long, in Shrode's opinion, kvetching
about a minor gunshot wound in his shoulder: ''He was whining and
complaining and I said: 'Shut up. I'd love to be in your situation.
There's a lot of people worse off than you and worse off than me.''' At
another meeting, a soldier who had been run over by a truck complained to
the group he hadn't received a Purple Heart -- the medal reserved for
soldiers injured or killed in combat. ''I told him to get lost,'' says
Shrode, who received a Purple Heart last summer. ''And then I got up and
left.''
A number of soldiers confess that they were initially put off by the
concept of group therapy, figuring it was going to be ''a bunch of guys
crying and wiping snot on their sleeves.'' Most insist they attend not for
emotional release but rather to receive information -- about disability
benefits or discharge procedures. The soldiers' questions often reflect a
me-against-the-world mistrust of what's to come, an indistinct but
entirely accurate perception that this country has failed veterans of past
wars. The war will stay with them, they realize, but after a point the
Army won't.
For many, including Robert Shrode, the question is when and how to
formalize their separation from the military. Everyone in the group is an
active-duty soldier, though many say they are doing little more than
showing up for morning formation these days -- either too consumed by pain
and doctors' appointments or simply uninspired to work while their units
are still in Iraq. Yet there is little that's light about what they face.
In order to be medically discharged, soldiers must go before the Army
Physical Evaluation Board, which assesses their injuries and then either
approves or disapproves the discharge. Eventually they receive a
''disability rating'' from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which
determines how much money they are eligible for. A soldier deemed ''100
percent disabled'' is granted a base payment of $2,239 monthly. (The
payment can be supplemented depending on the severity of the injury.)
Though the V.A. judges each case individually, an amputated arm generally
gets you a 60 to 90 percent disability rating. Shrode has been told that
his hearing loss and depression will likely further increase his rating.
It's the promise of a new arm that keeps him in the Army. When I met him,
Shrode was waiting to get a state-of-the-art prosthetic, worth $35,000 and
paid for by the government. The Army had flown him several times to Walter
Reed to work with its best occupational therapists, training the tiny
reflexive muscles in his elbow so that they eventually could control the
carbon-fiber myoelectric hand that was being custom-built for him in
Nashville. If the new arm didn't work out well, Shrode faced a cruel
choice: he could have his elbow amputated in order to be fitted with a
different and more effective type of prosthetic.
When it came to fake arms, though, he was hardly optimistic. In August, he
had been given a low-tech prosthetic, with a hook where the hand should
be, and while he had quickly proved to be a whiz at putting pegs into the
pegboards they thrust at him at occupational therapy, he hated both the
look and feel of it, preferring to master real-life tasks with his one
good arm. He had proudly learned to lace and tie his boots and was working
on figuring out how to cut a steak. When we went driving, Shrode smoked a
cigarette with his left hand, ably piloting the Tahoe with one knee. In
the meantime, his right arm -- or the piece of plastic that was supposed
to pass for it -- rolled around neglected in the back seat.
A tornado siren blasts, and Jenni McKinley rips up her pickup truck,
hunting for a gas mask. A car backfires, and she dives for cover. The
panic is instant and the charge for safety instinctive and ultimately
embarrassing as she climbs to her feet again, bug-eyed and looking for
snipers, instead finding the Kroger parking lot full of oblivious
cart-pushing families. A person can come to doubt her sanity this way.
Then there is the dead marine who visits her as she tries to sleep. A
young guy, he can be angry, accusative, and sometimes he just shows up
quietly and stares at her until she's jarred awake, heart racing --
another night's rest stolen away.
McKinley is 27 and a career soldier, having logged eight years with the
Army, and is hoping to stay until she has earned her military retirement
benefits after 20 years of service. Off duty, she has a gentle manner, a
dry wit and a penchant for good wines. On duty, she has worked hard to
achieve the rank of sergeant, completing tours in Korea and Kosovo, where
she led a small team of mostly men. As a female soldier, McKinley says she
feels the pressure to constantly prove herself, to remain emotionally
bulletproof. But Iraq really got to her.
''I didn't handle war the way I thought I was going to,'' she told me one
night over dinner at a Red Lobster on a strip-malled stretch of road not
far from Fort Campbell. ''I thought I was going to do my job, be strong.
But three days into it, I broke down crying. The scuds were flying. We
were waking up to the sounds of explosions over our heads. It was
terrifying.'' Whatever fear she felt, nobody saw it: she ducked into an
empty field tent to do her crying. Three days later, in 115-degree heat,
McKinley's Humvee rolled over, pinning her beneath it and all but
destroying her right hand.
Since arriving back in the United States in April, McKinley has been told
she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, which garnered
recognition in the years following the Vietnam War and today is used to
describe the most crippling psychological effects of trauma. The name may
be new, but the concept isn't. Research on World War I veterans showed
that even those who might be termed well adjusted still reported that they
were quick to anger, forgetful, anxious and regularly suffering from
headaches and dizziness. Traumatized World War II vets were commonly
referred to as having ''battle fatigue.'' Today the military uses the term
''combat stress'' to describe a range of symptoms including anxiety,
sleeplessness and depression, but post-traumatic stress disorder itself
generally is diagnosed only when the symptoms become ''intrusive'' -- in
other words, when they start to really mess up a soldier's or veteran's
life.
McKinley has a difficult time parsing the source of her post-traumatic
stress disorder. Does it stem from the shock of the Humvee accident? Was
it the flying scud missiles or the sirens that wailed nearly hourly early
on in the war, signaling possible incoming chemical or biological weapons?
Or maybe it was the marine who lay bleeding on the stretcher next to hers
at a desert combat support hospital. He was younger than she was and had
been shot in the face several times. As McKinley lay watching in a
morphine haze, a doctor and team of nurses worked to stabilize him. Just
as they moved on to examine her mangled hand, he flat-lined and the doctor
rushed back to revive him. But the soldier flat-lined again. The doctor
jump-started the marine's heart twice, three times, only to have it fail
-- again and again -- until the nurses finally pried him off the soldier's
body. After a time, McKinley boosted herself up and took a long look at
the dead man's face -- maybe to honor him and maybe to learn something.
She still doesn't know why.
Her case of post-traumatic stress disorder most likely stems from the
combination of these events. Researchers believe that the condition is not
always connected to a specific incident and can, in fact, be spawned by
repeated exposure to fear or by bearing witness to something violent or
traumatic or by experiencing moral uncertainty connected to these things.
Depending on the intangibles of a person's background and ability to
either process or shut out stress, there are those who come through war
relatively unscathed and those who don't. It's as if every psyche has a
reservoir for trauma, and some fill faster than others -- each soldier's
breaking point different from the next one's. And while many G.I.'s manage
to hold it together during a deployment, the repression of emotion over
time can lead to a tumultuous homecoming. Post-traumatic stress disorder
is considered controllable but not curable, and often it will flare up
years after the original trauma. In 1994, for example, Veterans of Foreign
Wars officials noticed a significant spike in claims of post-traumatic
stress disorder -- not from soldiers returning from Operation Desert Storm
or Somalia but rather from World War II veterans whose nightmares were
revved by the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of D-Day.
Since McKinley returned to the United States in April, the vision of the
dead marine's face has sat in her mind like an elephant blocking the road.
''When I first got home, the nightmares were him basically calling me
selfish, asking why didn't I help save him,'' she said, her voice so grave
and quiet that it was nearly inaudible. ''And now it's changed to he's
asking me why I didn't go with him.''
McKinley has two children, ages 4 and 6, who live with her ex-husband 50
miles away in Nashville but spend weekends at her two-bedroom apartment
close to Fort Campbell. With virtually no use of her right hand, she has
struggled with the smallest of maternal tasks, from opening jars to
cutting vegetables and carrying laundry. Before she began treatment for
post-traumatic stress disorder, a child's simple request for apple juice
could send her into a tailspin; her sleepless nights left her snappish,
unloving. ''My husband would come pick the kids up on Sundays,'' she said,
''and before they'd get halfway home, I'd be calling on the cellphone,
crying and asking if I could apologize to them for how I'd acted.''
The low point came on the day she managed to change the sheets on her
queen-size bed -- a task that, one-handed, became a two-hour ordeal. In
the end, she was nothing short of triumphant, with a bed orderly enough to
pass a military inspection. And then the children arrived, tumbling
through the door as they always did, eventually settling down on
McKinley's bed to watch TV as she cooked dinner. But sitting on the bed
led to jumping on the bed, which in turn led to tearing off the sheets in
an exuberant frenzy. McKinley became unhinged. ''I completely lost my mind
on them,'' she said, sounding as if she were still startled by it. ''I was
throwing sheets and screaming.'' For a full month afterward, she slept on
the living room couch, unable to confront the bed again.
It was pure desperation that led her to the support group, which she
learned about through her occupational therapist at Fort Campbell's
hospital. ''I didn't know what was wrong with my head,'' she recalled. But
hearing other soldiers talk about what they were grappling with helped her
understand that she needed -- and had access to -- help. ''After the first
meeting, I almost cried with relief,'' she said. The sessions also gave
her the courage to see a therapist, who prescribed Clonazepam for her
anxiety and Lexapro, an antidepressant. On her third visit to the group,
she managed to sputter out the story of the dead marine before breaking
down in tears. When she tried to stuff the emotion back inside, it
wouldn't go. ''I didn't want anyone to see me that weak, so I grabbed my
keys and started to get up to leave,'' McKinley remembered. And then came
the kind of touchy-feely moment so many of the soldiers claim they're not
looking for: the guy sitting next to her, one of the wounded helicopter
pilots, laid a friendly hand on her shoulder, coaxed her back into her
seat and, without saying a word, let her know that it was O.K.
continued...
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http://snipurl.com/532v
The Permanent Scars of Iraq
continued...
Often during my visits with injured soldiers at Fort Campbell, I would ask
what they envisioned as happening in the next few months when the rest of
the 101st Airborne -- plus another 100,000 or so troops around the country
-- began arriving home as part of the largest troop rotation since World
War II. Would returning soldiers suffer the same nightmares and anxiety,
the same alienation from both intimates and the world at large, that so
many of the soldiers I encountered described having? In essence, I
wondered whether the wounded, as the first large group to come back from
Iraq, were like canaries in a coal mine, their postwar struggles
foretelling those of thousands soon to come. Usually the answers ran along
the same lines. ''There will be problems,'' Robert Shrode said. ''There'll
be a lot of short fuses, a lot of intolerance. People are going to have to
be patient with these guys.''
The fact that post-traumatic stress disorder can develop from fear and
anxiety raises particular implications in a war like the one in Iraq,
where a seemingly straightforward army-versus-army scenario has long been
dispensed with, replaced by the uncertainties of guerrilla warfare. Though
military researchers have estimated that 25 percent of soldiers on the
front lines of a war will experience combat stress, it seems possible that
for Iraq the numbers will be even greater. ''These troops know no front
line,'' says Alfonso Batres, the clinical psychologist in charge of
readjustment counseling services for the 206 Vet Centers around the
country. ''It's just like Vietnam. They have to be on guard with everyone;
they're always facing an unknown. In some ways, fighting a conventional
war is a lot easier on the psyche.''
Even as the military works to provide mental-health care, history shows
that the vast majority of soldiers returning from war will never seek
help. Or they will do it years later, when the psychological afterburn has
wreaked havoc on their lives. Steve Tice, a retired Vet Center counselor
and disabled Vietnam veteran, refers to the legions of soldiers who live
alone with destructive war memories as the ''invisible wounded.'' Says
Tice, ''There's this unfortunate stigma we attach to soldiers who say, 'I
hurt.' And so soldiers don't say anything.''
In this respect, it is conceivable that the physically wounded may have a
slight advantage over their peers. Whereas most soldiers without major
injuries will touch down on American soil and undergo a relatively
impersonal and perfunctory post-deployment medical screening before
returning to duty, many of the injured soldiers have already spent months
being routinely examined, assessed and questioned about their well-being
-- arguably making it easier to ask for help.
One morning I stopped in on Jeremy Gilbert, the medic hurt in Kuwait, as
he sat on a hospital bed, awaiting the fourth operation on his leg in six
months. His cane lay hooked over the arm of a nearby chair. Two weeks
earlier, just as he sensed he was making progress healing, an infection
flared up and remained untamed by antibiotics. This was his 10th day as an
inpatient, and he was accordingly listless. He had brought his Xbox and
was playing video games to pass the time. ''My morale is kind of down,''
he confessed.
Across the hallway from Gilbert's room on Ward 4A-B, the beds were full --
two to a room -- of soldiers freshly evacuated from Iraq. I had met a
National Guardsman from Kansas who had been hit by an improvised explosive
device in the Sunni Triangle, an Army sergeant from California who had had
his leg fractured in a roadside ambush and a small-framed 21-year-old New
Yorker who had collapsed during a long march and now had permanent nerve
damage in both legs. For the most part, they seemed stunned, anxious to be
cleared to go home on convalescent leave, and not quite ready to talk
about what had happened.
But Gilbert, who as one of the first casualties to be flown out of the
gulf seemed to relish the role of elder statesman, used his own experience
to predict what lay ahead. ''At first you're like, wow, I'm injured,'' he
told me. ''The news on television is all about Iraq. You're like, this is
good; I was part of something good. But then suddenly the news is bad --
it's all about soldiers dying -- and you're not healing the way you
thought you would. You start thinking, I wish they'd cut my leg off. You
think maybe I was supposed to die.''
Gilbert refers frequently to his ''bitter period,'' which stretched
through the summer and involved a lot of sitting around in a wheelchair,
playing solitaire, watching ''M*A*S*H'' reruns and refusing to leave the
house except for doctors' appointments. It ended, slowly, after his wife,
Andrea, who was pregnant with their first child, begged him to ask his
doctors for antidepressants. He says he resisted, knowing his request
would become part of his medical records, potentially affecting security
clearances and promotions in what he hoped would be a full military
career. (This was a sticking point for a number of soldiers I spoke with:
patient privacy laws apply only loosely in the military, where commanders
have access to a soldier's medical history, including what goes on in
counseling sessions.) For Andrea Williams-Gilbert, the kick in the pants
she gave her husband represented a small bit of military-spouse activism.
''Wives and family members shouldn't have to go through some of what we
have to because their spouses are afraid to go on antidepressants,'' she
told me. ''It's not fair to anyone.''
Even stabilized with Elavil, Gilbert said he has cycled through ups and
downs, and Andrea, an outgoing blond Arkansan who was hugely pregnant when
I first met her, does what she can to ride the waves. ''He'll say
something touchy, and I'm out of there,'' she told me in November. ''I
just head out the door and go walking.'' A week or so later, just before
Thanksgiving, their daughter, Lauren, was born. Until he was hospitalized
again, Gilbert had been more buoyant, regularly reporting for physical
therapy, taking classes at a local university and doting, as best he
could, on his wife and child. He was hoping to stay in the Army for a few
more years after he recovered, but worried that if he ''toughed it out''
for a while, the fact that he was able to perform his duties (though in
pain) would lower his disability rating when he did leave the service -- a
difference of potentially thousands of dollars. And as it often does,
fatherhood also rearranged his priorities. While earlier he was eager to
get well so he could be redeployed to the Middle East, he announced to the
support group in December that he'd changed his mind. ''I'm not going back
there,'' he said, imagining a conversation with some higher-up in the
Army. ''I'm not going to die for you.''
Whether he had wised up or had grown pessimistic, it was hard to say.
Knowing that the rest of the 101st Airborne Division was soon to return to
Fort Campbell, Gilbert made another prediction from his hospital bed,
saying he had a ''bad feeling'' about the homecoming. ''You've got a lot
of units pulling security every single day, doing missions every single
day,'' he said. ''They're seeing explosions, shootings, burning bodies.
And they're going to bring that back to a place where there are lots of
people who just won't get it. We're about to have 20,000 people walk
through their front door for the first time in a year.'' He pursed his
lips, shook his head as if still thinking about it and then laughed. ''If
I were a divorce lawyer, I'd be in high cotton this winter.''
Remembering how lonely she was as an inpatient at the base hospital, Jenni
McKinley sometimes finishes her daily occupational-therapy appointment on
the second floor and wanders up to Ward 4-AB to pop in on new arrivals
from Iraq. It was there that she met Caleb Nall, a blue-eyed 23-year-old
corporal from Louisiana who was recovering after being hit in the back by
a rocket-propelled grenade. His torso had been severely burned; a gaping
shrapnel wound had hollowed out part of his pelvis, and his left leg had
been damaged. The explosion left him about 70 percent deaf in one ear.
''He was frustrated and tired of being in bed,'' McKinley said. She showed
him her scars, invited him to come to the next support-group meeting and
then the next day dropped off a few back issues of Maxim magazine and a
case of Dr. Pepper.
When it came time for the group's next meeting, Nall showed up. He wore a
pile jacket and a pair of jeans, his wounds hidden well away but his anger
fully exposed. After a visiting V.A. representative started to natter on
about how soldiers needed medical evidence and a formal diagnosis of
post-traumatic stress disorder to receive relevant disability payments,
Nall jumped in. ''Would you say waking up with the sound of a mortar round
going off next to your head counts?'' he asked, the bitterness thinly
wrapped in his Louisiana drawl. ''Jumping six inches off your bed?''
After the V.A. rep left, Nall turned to the group at large. ''Anyone else
here having sleep problems?'' he asked.
Brent Bricklin raised his hand. So did Jeremy Gilbert and Jenni McKinley
and Robert Shrode, as well as four of the five other soldiers who had come
that day. Everybody but Nall burst out laughing.
''Is there something else they did for you?'' he continued, perplexed.
''I'm on morphine, Percocet, Elavil. . . .''
''I did Vicodin and Benadryl, but they counteract each other,'' offered a
soldier across the room.
''Have you tried drinking?'' asked another.
Nall nodded earnestly. ''I take two Percocets and drink two six packs of
beer, and I still can't sleep.''
This set off a voluble round of pharmaceutical recipe-swapping. Injured
soldiers, I have learned, are nothing if not experts on painkillers and
sleep aids. And yet little seems truly to work. A few complain that their
antidepressants cause them to sleep all the time; more -- like Nall --
report that they sit up half the night in a drugged daze, waiting for
sleep to come.
It was on one of these nights not long ago that a garbage truck arrived at
2:30 a.m. to empty the Dumpsters at Nall's off-base apartment. At the
first slam of a Dumpster on pavement, Nall, who had been dozing in an easy
chair dressed only in his underwear, was back in Iraq. ''My rifle was
sitting in the corner,'' he said. ''I grabbed it, ran outside and made a
loop around the block.'' Here, he paused to shake his head at just how
scary this seemed in retrospect, and how utterly beyond his control. ''I
was lucky it was the middle of the night, or I'd be in jail right now.''
The rifle is one of seven guns he keeps at his apartment.
The potential for violence is just one of a list of concerns both the
military and veterans' groups have for returning soldiers. Combat veterans
have been linked to higher incidences of drug and alcohol abuse, domestic
violence, depression and unemployment. Having learned from its failure to
treat traumatized Vietnam War soldiers 30 years ago, the military has
dispatched ''combat stress teams'' to Iraq to offer counseling and in some
cases dispense antianxiety meds to suffering soldiers. It may be
impossible, however, to fully counteract the shock of going from a 24-hour
state of generalized fear-apprehension-paranoia, sustained for a year
through wartime, to evenings at home on the La-Z-Boy, asked to fulfill the
requirements of love and tenderness needed to sustain a family. In a
well-publicized string of incidents in 2002, three Special Forces soldiers
returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., from Afghanistan and killed their wives in a
span of six weeks. All three soldiers committed suicide.
It is unclear whether today's veterans will avoid the hardships that
yesterday's continue to know. ''It won't be different for these guys than
it was for the Vietnam vets,'' says Shad Meshad, the president of the
National Veterans Foundation, who has counseled soldiers and veterans for
the last three decades. He says that antidepressants and psychologists can
only do so much for a hurting soul. ''There's a voice that rings through
all these guys who've paid the price to survive war. No matter how much
science or technology you have, those memories never leave you.'' Based
out of Los Angeles, Meshad operates a hot line for war veterans. Until
recently, the calls came from veterans of Vietnam and of Desert Storm, but
in late fall the Iraq calls started to come -- not from soldiers but from
their families. ''They're saying, 'Johnny came home, and he's angry; he
wants a divorce,''' Meshad says. ''It's all the stuff I've heard from
other wars.''
What might save some of today's soldiers is their awareness of the
struggles of past veterans and of the resources available to them now. Not
only are soldiers better educated and slightly older than their forebears
in Vietnam; they are more likely to be married and have children --
meaning more people will be directly affected by their ability or
inability to recover from war. On the day I met Debra Shrode, Robert's
wife, at the hospital at Fort Campbell, she sat quietly holding his hand.
There was an uneasy tenderness between the two, and Debra, who is tall and
pretty, with wide down-turned eyes, seemed at first reluctant to speak.
''I told you she was shy,'' Robert said, grinning.
But she did speak. In a hill-country Kentucky drawl, Debra softly
described getting the call last June from a commander, telling her that
Robert had been hit by a grenade. She described the first time he was able
to call her from the Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, about four days
after the incident. (''He told me he was fine,'' she said. ''I lied
through my teeth,'' Robert added.) And then she talked about his
homecoming -- about meeting his medevac flight, ''scared to death,'' and
first taking in the sight of his scar-ridden face, his weak body and
missing arm. She remembered smiling as hard as she could at Robert before
stepping out of his line of vision as the medics transferred him to a
stretcher and letting herself weep.
At home, the awkwardness rarely seemed to lift. When Robert's nightmares
drove him to sleep on the couch, Debra lay awake in the bedroom. ''I kept
wondering, Is he sleeping down there because he rests better, or is it
because he doesn't want to be beside me?'' she said. And while six months
after Robert's return their relationship had stabilized somewhat, Debra
was still adjusting to what the war has done to her husband. Even as she
kept busy going to cosmetology school by day and selling lottery tickets
in the evenings, she couldn't help feeling ''left out,'' since Robert
seemed to prefer the company of Bricklin and other soldiers to her own.
''I know there's a lot of things he can't talk to me about, that he can
talk to his friends about,'' she said, glancing at Robert, who was by now
staring quietly at the floor. ''But I'm sitting there thinking, Why can't
he talk to me?'' She added that she has become better at living with the
distance between them. ''At first, I had thoughts of holding his hand, of
wanting to be close with him,'' she said, a quiet resignation in her
voice. ''But stuff like that's changed, too.''
For his part, Robert said that he couldn't get past the memories of Iraq,
that his experience there felt unresolved. ''My body's here, but my mind
is there,'' he said. Despite the injuries he had suffered, Shrode remained
loyal to the war effort. ''We're doing good over there,'' he told me.
''People just don't see it.'' When it came to the future, he felt only
confusion, saying, ''I'd like to live out West, but what kind of job could
I do?'' He was interested in Wyoming, but remembered that cold weather
makes his pain worse. ''One day I'm on the Internet searching for property
there, and the next day I'm looking for a condo in Key West.'' He had
thought about going to college to study forestry or real estate or to
become a teacher, but his limitations always came rushing back. ''I type
slow. I write slow. I can't carry heavy things. What am I going to do for
work?''
Anticipating the challenges of receiving compensation and care from the
V.A., he had recently joined the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He was also
going to sign up with Disabled American Veterans and the American Legion,
and just in case, he was going to hire a lawyer. When I asked what his
image of a group like the V.F.W. was, Robert said, ''A bunch of old guys
from Vietnam sitting around in field jackets, drinking and not talking
about it.'' Did he sometimes worry that he, too, might end up as one of
those guys? Robert paused for a long, sobering moment. ''Yeah,'' he said
finally. ''I do.''
As Christmas approached, Caleb Nall's insomnia had not subsided. He
announced to the group that his doctor had heard out all his complaints
and then had the gall to suggest he add a warm bath to his routine. ''A
warm bath -- c'mon!'' Nall said.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Gilbert had consulted his doctor about all the pain
medication he was taking. Earlier in the fall, he had started shortening
the time between his prescribed doses of Percocet until suddenly he was
taking twice what he should. Gilbert, who is studying to apply for a
physician's assistant degree and can be aptly professorial, cautioned
everyone about Percocet. ''They say it's as addictive as heroin,'' he
said. Having recently replaced Percocet with controlled-release OxyContin,
Gilbert admitted to having a ''serious physical dependence'' on it,
developing a crushing headache every time he tried to skip a dose. ''It
gets to where you'll kill somebody because you need that fix,'' he joked.
''I'm strung out on Demerol all the time,'' Jenni McKinley piped up. ''I
know it's time to take my meds when I start screaming at my kids for
little things.''
She added, ''My doctors are talking about switching me to methadone.''
Gilbert laughed. ''Mine said the same thing.''
Whatever lay ahead for them couldn't be as bad, they figured, as what they
went through the first few months following their return from war. Or at
least they hoped as much. In an attempt to salve her conscience, McKinley
had done some research on the marine who died next to her in Iraq,
learning his name and the fact that he had left behind a young wife. She
was contemplating calling his family, but eventually decided against it.
Meanwhile, she had gained some strength and movement in her injured hand
and was feeling better able to enjoy her children.
Robert Shrode, meanwhile, has a new prosthetic -- a high-tech beauty
complete with realistic-looking fingers -and was out on the air strip on
Feb. 1 when the men and women of his unit returned home. At Fort Campbell,
the troop rotation is now fully under way, with planes landing almost
daily at the base, each one carrying up to 200 soldiers fresh out of Iraq.
Shrode says that he has decided against having more of his arm amputated
and is now embarking on the series of doctor's exams he needs in order to
receive a medical discharge. His aim is to be out of the Army in April. He
has also hit upon a new idea for his future: returning to Iraq as a
security contractor for a private company. If it all works out, he could
be back in the desert by next January -- his wife, he says, is against it.
Meanwhile, Brent Bricklin's four-year enlistment is up in June. He plans
on marrying his girlfriend in Wisconsin, with Shrode as a groomsman, and
then he wants to go to college to become a history teacher. Imagining
this, he expressed the first bit of military pride I had heard from him.
''I can't wait for the day I say: 'O.K. class, close your books. Today
we're going to do Operation Iraqi Freedom. This here is my Purple Heart;
here's the Iraqi flag I got off a rooftop in Karbala; these are pictures
from Mosul.' How cool will that be?'' But while the dream of this moment
kept him going, it also -- he finally admitted -- prevented him from
seeking psychological help for the grief and anger he felt in the wake of
his time in Iraq. ''I can't have any of that on my record,'' Bricklin told
me, as if there were absolutely no choice in the matter. ''I mean, who's
going to hire a teacher who has flashbacks?''
At night, in the quiet of their rented farmhouse, Robert Shrode lets Debra
pick the shrapnel out of his body. Over the last six months, she's tugged
out 15 pieces as they have worked their way to the surface of his skin.
She has picked them from his legs, from his neck, his face. Sometimes he
will study them, these twisted aluminum chunks that have managed to escape
while so many more will forever live inside him.
Barely out of her teenage years, Debra Shrode never pictured her life this
way. Never imagined the Army would be calling her up and asking her to
hand out advice as some kind of expert wife. Yet someone from the Army's
Family Readiness Group wanted her to call another wife whose husband had
come home injured. She sighs and dials the number. ''I don't know what I
can say to make you feel better,'' she says into the phone. ''If he
doesn't want to talk, don't take it to heart.''
She adds each new piece of shrapnel to the collection they keep stored in
a Tupperware container. For a while, the container sat on their coffee
table, but recently Robert moved it into a spare bedroom drawer.
If it seems as if he might be moving on, Debra has only to ask, What're
you thinking about?
''Iraq,'' he'll say. And then the silence falls again.
Sara Corbett is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.
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http://snipurl.com/531y
(AP) The Army is spread so thin around the globe that when it needs fresh
combat troops for Iraq this fall it will have little choice but to call on
the same soldiers who led the charge into Baghdad last spring.
The 3rd Infantry Division already has been given an official "warning
order" to prepare to return to Iraq as soon as Thanksgiving. When those
soldiers flew home from Iraq last summer to their bases in Georgia, few of
them could have known they were, in effect, on a roundtrip ticket.
[...]
Some are concerned that the Army is being squeezed so hard that soldiers
will quit in droves. Statistics on reenlistments and recruiting don't show
that to be the case — not yet, anyway...
---------
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18069
Coming to Grief
By Hans Johnson, In These Times
March 8, 2004
Like the breeze of late winter, a single word, unspoken, has rippled
through the recent funerals of several U.S. service members returned from
Iraq. Families and military press officers have different reasons for
tight lips on the topic. But suicide among Iraq war soldiers, 29 cases by
recent count, says volumes about drooping troop morale and raises further
doubts about how accurately the toll on service members is being measured
and how much more they will bear.
Demands are sharpening for release of an Army Surgeon General's report
about the prevalence of depression and suicide among service members
stationed in Iraq and Kuwait. In February, an Army trainee stationed in
North Carolina, Jeremy Hinzman, sought refugee status in Toronto as a
conscientious objector, raising the prospects of an organized exodus of
AWOL service members north of the border. And questions are ricocheting
among grieving relatives in small-town America about the loss of loved
ones.
"Why would he take a bottle [of pills]?" asks Rebecca Suell of her late
husband, Joseph. A resident of Lufkin in East Texas, Suell died on duty in
Iraq last June. According to the careful euphemism of the Army casualty
report, the cause of death was "Self-inflicted: drug overdose." But
Suell's mother, Rena Mathis, told the Washington Post, "I have no autopsy
report, no toxicology report, nothing."
The mood of troops on the ground is mixed at best, according to a survey
by Stars and Stripes of 2,000 service members. Thirty-four percent
reported their morale as low or very low. The military has transported
nearly 1,000 troops from the occupied territory to Germany to be treated
for mental health problems.
Even the brass in Washington has begun to scratch its head. "Are soldiers
killing themselves in increased number due to deployment?" Army Col.
Thomas J. Burke wondered aloud at a public appearance in late January.
Burke, who directs mental health policy at the Pentagon, said no, but his
boss, William Winkenwerder, admitted that the official rate of 13.5
suicides per 100,000 troops on the ground is about 20 percent higher than
the recent average of 11.
"These are people of character who are losing all hope and taking this
very unique step of ending their lives," Stephen L. Robinson of the
National Gulf War Resource Center told the Baltimore Sun. Robinson has
helped draw attention to another problem not traced in the Pentagon's
calculations: stateside depression and suicide.
In January, a soldier receiving care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington became the second patient fresh from the front lines to commit
suicide there in the past six months, according to the Post. The hospital
did not mention either death in its weekly report.
Reporters have joined independent advocates for service members in probing
the number of troops treated for what a hospital commander called
"psychiatric and behavioral health issues." Small but significant
disclosures have followed.
"We certainly have seen an average, I would say, of 8 to 10 percent of our
casualties" with mental problems, Army Colonel Rhonda Cornum told UPI in
February. Cornum oversees the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in
Germany, the military's biggest European hospital and intake point for
service members injured during operations in Asia. Overall, hospital
records reveal nearly 12,000 soldiers receiving care, with nearly 10,000
from Iraq and 2,000 from Afghanistan. Based on Cornum's estimate, the Army
has hospitalized nearly 10 percent of those troops for mental health
injuries.
Hearing alerts from the front lines last fall about combat stress and
depression, the Army sent an additional mental health team to Iraq. But
service members are receiving mixed signals. In December, National Public
Radio reported on the case of Staff Sgt. George Pogany, an exemplary
soldier who reacted to seeing a grossly disfigured Iraqi corpse by
vomiting. Temporarily unable to focus, Pogany told his higher-up.
Instead of getting a break, Pogany was threatened with removal, sent back
to the United States, and charged with cowardice, which carries a
potential death sentence. Back at Fort Carson, Colorado, Pogany was
relegated to cleanup duty and blackballed by other soldiers. His charge
was eventually reduced, to dereliction, but Pogany remains incredulous. "I
didn't do anything wrong. I just don't understand how a medical condition
or a medical problem can be treated with disciplinary action."
Some activists don't expect service members to continue enduring the risk
of duty in Iraq. Facing daily bomb attacks around Baghdad, the boredom of
extended deployment in the desert and ambushes that catch civilians in the
crossfire, some troops are fleeing Iraq and disappearing after stateside
rotation. The French magazine Le Canard Enchaine reports that 1,700
American soldiers have ditched their Iraq duty.
U.S. activist Carl Rising-Moore highlights their dilemma and encourages
their escape to Canada as a last resort. "I'm telling them to go to their
clergy, go to their commanding officers, and claim conscientious objection
while in the military and fight it out like that," he told the Vancouver
Courier. "But if they're considering pulling the trigger on themselves,
I'm telling them to desert, just as George Bush Jr. did during Vietnam."
Rising-Moore is urging Canadian armed forces veterans to help him
construct a "Freedom Underground." Such a patchwork system would aid U.S.
service members who go AWOL from combat in Iraq in crossing the border to
Canada. The network would be modeled on the organized drive to assist
Vietnam draft-dodgers in the '60s and early '70s. The Hinzman case has
breathed life into such efforts. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
reports his case is now before the Canadian Immigation and Refugee Board,
which granted protection to none of the 268 U.S. applicants in 2003.
Meanwhile, those who constitute the home-front support network for service
members try to empathize with lost friends and grow less guarded in their
criticism of the conflict. "What could have happened – fright?" wonders
Floyd Slaughter, owner of the Army Navy store in Joseph Suell's hometown
of Lufkin. "If he did, he was scared and saw no way out."
Interviewed by the Post, Slaughter wouldn't say the word suicide in regard
to Suell's death. But he did share his attitude about the war. The failure
to find the dreaded weapons of mass destruction cited by the president, he
said, has led him to oppose it.
Hans Johnson writes about labor, religion and politics from Washington, D.C.
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http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/8174963.htm
Medicare analyst confirms muzzling:
He said his boss told him he'd be fired if he gave lawmakers higher cost
estimates for the prescription-drug bill.
By Tony Pugh
Philadelphia Inquirer Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - The nation's top Medicare cost analyst confirmed yesterday
that his former boss had ordered him to withhold from lawmakers
unfavorable cost estimates about the Medicare prescription-drug bill. He
said the estimates exceeded what Congress seemed willing to accept by more
than $100 billion.
Richard Foster, chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services, said that in early June he received a written note from Thomas
Scully, then the centers' administrator, ordering him to ignore
information requests from members of Congress who were drafting the drug
bill.
The Inquirer Washington Bureau reported the episode in an exclusive
published yesterday, but Foster's comments were his first on the matter.
Yesterday, House and Senate leaders called for investigations into the
alleged muzzling. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D., S.D.) said the
allegations justified reopening the vote on the drug benefit. Sen. Edward
M. Kennedy (D., Mass.) wrote President Bush demanding to know what cost
estimates he used in pushing the new drug benefit, which Congress passed
in November and which Bush signed into law Dec. 8.
Scully's note, Foster said, "was a direct order not to respond to certain
requests and instead to provide the responses to him and warn about the
consequences of insubordination."
The note was Scully's first threat in writing, according to Foster, and
came after at least three less formal threats.
They "came in different forms," he said. "Sometimes he would make a
comment that 'I think I need another chief actuary,' or, 'If you want to
work for the Ways and Means Committee, I can arrange it.' It was that sort
of thing." Ways and Means was drafting the bill.
Efforts to reach Scully at his office and home yesterday were
unsuccessful. In a recent interview, he denied closing off Foster's lines
of communication with Congress. On only one occasion, Scully said, did he
block Foster's contacts with lawmakers, in this case Democrats, saying
their motives were purely political.
Foster said Scully insisted on a pattern of withholding of information.
"Estimates that were supportive of the legislation were generally
released, and estimates that could be used to criticize the legislation
were generally not released," Foster said.
He said he believed that higher-ranking members of the administration than
Scully knew of the higher cost estimates his office had computed.
"Did the President know? Did Secretary Tommy Thompson know? I don't know,"
Foster said. Thompson heads the Department of Health and Human Services,
which oversees the Medicare office.
The White House press office did not respond to requests seeking comment.
The Inquirer reported yesterday that Foster's office had suggested that
the drug benefit would cost at least $100 billion more than the $395
billion estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, whose job it is to
project costs of legislation.
One projection prepared in early June by Foster's office and obtained by
the Inquirer Washington Bureau concluded that a Senate version of the bill
might cost as much as $551 billion.
At the time of the estimate, the House was sharply divided on the proposed
new Medicare drug benefit, which the administration strongly backed.
Ultimately, the House passed the measure, 216-215, on June 27. In
November, it endorsed a House-Senate compromise version, 220-215; the yes
votes included 13 Republican fiscal conservatives who had said they would
vote against the bill if it cost more than $400 billion for its first 10
years.
When Bush signed the bill, the drug benefit was touted as costing $395
billion. In January, Bush's budget director, Joshua Bolten, raised the
estimate to $534 billion.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R., Tenn.) noted yesterday that
Foster's estimates were based on different and costlier assumptions than
those of the Congressional Budget Office.
Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson added: "If an individual's job was
threatened and if they were trying to shield information from Congress,
that could be an issue of concern."
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Finance Committee,
said Foster's estimates "should not have been withheld. Government
analysts with relevant information should never be muzzled."
In a floor speech yesterday, Daschle called for reopening the vote on the
drug benefit. He also called for an investigation into the firing threat
and assertions that the administration had withheld its cost estimates
from Congress.
"Whether this is criminal or not is a matter we will certainly want to
clarify," Daschle said. "But if not criminal, it was certainly unethical.
And I think we need to know the facts."
A group of House Democrats concurred, asking that the HHS inspector
general investigate.
Foster, a senior civil servant, remains on his job. He said he had new and
strong support from Thompson and from Medicare's newly confirmed chief,
Mark McClellan.
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Subject: [pjnews] One Year Later, Sunday Shows Short on Iraq Critics
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http://www.fair.org/activism/iraq-anniversary.html
ACTION ALERT:
One Year Later, Sunday Shows Short on Iraq Critics
March 15, 2004
A year after the invasion of Iraq began, the Sunday morning interview
shows all focused on the anniversary. But viewers would have had a hard
time finding a debate on the controversial decision.
ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos featured an interview with
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was also the sole guest on Fox News
Sunday. CBS's Face the Nation featured Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, as well as pro-war New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Only NBC's Meet the Press showcased competing perspectives, with separate
interviews with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and former
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, a critic of the Bush
administration's handling of the war.
The one-year anniversary of the start of the war provided an opportunity
for the networks to reflect on pre-war claims about Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction, the occupation of Iraq, and the global effect the war has had
so far. But a meaningful debate about such matters would have to include
forceful critics of the Bush administration.
Instead, the networks' Sunday shows mostly sought out the same
administration officials who were responsible for much of the pre-war
misinformation. If anything, the interviews served as a reminder of just
how little scrutiny the media gave to administration claims about Iraq
before the invasion. (See FAIR's "A Failure of Skepticism in Powell
Coverage," http://www.fair.org/press-releases/un-powell-iraq.html.)
While network interviewers like to think of themselves as holding
administration officials' feet to the fire, in practice the networks seem
more concerned to ensure return visits from high-ranking guests than to
ask tough questions. Broadcast journalists rarely challenge officials when
they give misleading or deceptive answers. (See FAIR's "Another Falsehood
on Iraq Goes Unchallenged,"
http://www.fair.org/activism/powell-inspectors.html, and "PBS Fails to
Hold Rumsfeld Accountable,"
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/un-powell-iraq.html.)
-------------
ACTION:
Please contact the Sunday morning news shows of ABC, CBS and Fox and ask
them why, on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, they featured
one-on-one interviews with top administration officials, while excluding
critical voices. Please thank NBC's Meet the Press for including a Bush
administration critic in its invasion retrospective, and encourage the
inclusion of more critics in discussions of Iraq.
CONTACT:
ABC's This Week
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
CBS Face the Nation
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
NBC's Meet the Press
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fox News Sunday
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if
you maintain a polite tone. Please cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] with your
correspondence.
FAIR
(212) 633-6700
http://www.fair.org/
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: [pjnews] Aristide Arrives in Jamaica
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http://www.democracynow.org/
** BREAKING NEWS **
DEMOCRACY NOW! BROADCAST EXCLUSIVE
Defying Washington: Haiti's Aristide Arrives in Jamaica
Kingston, JAMAICA (March 15)--Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman reports that
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has arrived in the Caribbean
nation of Jamaica. Moments after his plane touched down at Norman Manley
International Airport at approximately 2:20 pm EST, Aristide and his wife
Mildred were escorted to a helicopter, which transported them to an
undisclosed location on the island nation.
The Jamaican emissary that traveled with the Aristides from the Central
African Republic to Jamaica, Sharon Hay-Webster, told Goodman that the
Aristide's were headed to a government compound on the country's north
coast. Hay-Webster said she could not disclose the exact location for
security reasons. Aristide made no public statements at the airport.
[Click here to listen to Amy's report from Kingston, Jamaica]
Amy Goodman has been traveling with Aristide, his Haitian-American wife
Mildred, and the delegation of US and Jamaican officials that accompanied
the Aristides to Jamaica, which has offered to temporarily host them.
Goodman is one of only two journalists that traveled with Aristide.
In returning to the Caribbean, Aristide is defying the Bush
administration, which has stated clearly it does not want Aristide in the
Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the US-installed "prime minister" of Haiti
said today he was recalling Haiti's ambassador to Jamaica and putting
relations on hold over Aristide's return to the region.
The US has also criticized Jamaica for offering to host Aristide.
"Jamaican authorities are certainly taking on a risk and a
responsibility," said James Foley, the US Ambassador to Haiti. "His coming
within 150 miles from Haiti is promoting violence."
"Ambassdor Foley's responses are unfortunate," Jamaican emissary
Hay-Webster told Democracy Now!
She said: "[Jamaican] Prime Minister Pattterson, as chairman of CARICOM,
took that position not as a personal consideration but as a response to a
request by President Aristide and also in conjunction with speaking to his
other colleages in the Caribbean - that is the prime ministers and
presidents of the other nations within the Caribbean. This is not a
singular decision from Jamaica. This is decision by Caricom. Is the
ambassador threatening all of Caricicom? He may have a lot of surprises
ahead."
California Congressmember Maxine Waters (D-CA), who led the delegation
that escorted Aristide back to the Caribbean, told Democracy Now!: "I am
sure this is another effort directed at trying to make this [new Haitian]
government legitimate. The fact of the matter is President Aristide was
democratically-elected by the people and this new government certainly
[was not]. The [US-installed] president was not, so I just think it's just
a meaningless gesture."
[...]
Throughout Sunday, Goodman reported on the stand-off in the CAR [Central
African Republic] over the fate of Aristide and his wife Mildred. She
indicated that there was some question among the visiting delegation on
what role Washington was playing in the situation. What is clear is that
US officials have declared very publicly that they do not want Aristide to
return to the Western Hemisphere.
"We think it's a bad idea," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice
told NBC's "Meet the Press." "We believe that President Aristide, in a
sense, forfeited his ability to lead his people, because he did not govern
democratically."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on CNN's "Late Edition," said: "The
hope is that he will not come back into the hemisphere and complicate
[the] situation."
In Haiti, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Richard
Myers, said, "As far as Aristide’s return to the region is concerned, if
that increases the violence here, then that would be extremely unhelpful."
Jamaican Prime Minister Patterson, speaking as current chairman of the
15-nation CARICOM, has called for an international investigation into the
circumstances of Aristide's removal from Haiti February 29. The 53-nation
African Union echoed that call last week.
Earlier, Goodman reported that, as the stand-off ensued, the delegation's
pilots were on-board the plane for a number of hours, awaiting word on
whether the group would be allowed to leave. "That answer has come and it
appears to be yes," said Goodman, just moments after the final round of
talks between Aristide, Bozize and the US/Jamaican delegation ended.
Moments before the Aristides and the delegation left for the airport, the
Director General of State Protocol of the Central African Republic,
Stanislas Moussa-Kembe, told Goodman, who at the time was inside the
Presidential Palace in Bangui, that the Aristides would be allowed to
leave the Central African Republic immediately. He told Goodman, "You're
headed to the airport."
Goodman was reporting from inside the Presidential Palace late into Sunday
night. She is now with Aristide and the delegation that came from the US
to escort him to Jamaica. They are expected to arrive in the Caribbean
nation midday Monday.
NOTE: Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman has been traveling with Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his wife Mildred as they made their
historic return to the Caribbean. Aristide was accompanied by a delegation
led by US and Jamaican lawmakers. The delegation included Rep. Maxine
Waters, TransAfrica founder and close friend of the Aristides, Randall
Robinson, Sharon Hay-Webster, an emissary of the Jamaican prime minister,
as well as Aristide's Miami-based lawyer, Ira Kurzban. Washington Post
reporter Peter Eisner was also with the group. Over the past 48 hours, Amy
has filed regular reports from each stop of the journey.
Listen to all of Amy's reports at:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/15/1829250
Read a transcript of Amy's interview on CNN at:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/15/lol.01.html
(bottom of page)
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Subject: [pjnews] 1/2 Guantanamo Detainee Charges Two Years of Torture
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http://snipurl.com/523e
My Hell in Camp X-Ray
By Rosa Prince and Gary Jones
The Mirror UK 12 March 2004
A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its
full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to
degrade Muslim inmates.
Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of
confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in
Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.
The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with
fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection.
He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time in hand and
leg cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin.
Their "cells" were wire cages with concrete floors and open to the
elements - giving no privacy or protection from the rats, snakes and
scorpions loose around the American base.
He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the
Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining
blows on them.
Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to make
them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of
rules brought severe punishment.
Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more
drastic than required, claimed Jamal.
A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left inmates
malnourished.
But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to
torment the most religiously devout detainees.
Prisoners who had never seen an "unveiled" woman before would be forced to
watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.
The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared
menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation.
Jamal said: "I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to
be those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who
would be taken away.
"I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us - we'll have
them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously knew we wouldn't be
shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't bother.
"It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would
refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks
for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole
block."
Jamal added: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you
psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the
psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff
stays with you."
HE was talking from a secret location after being reunited with his
family. The website designer, a convert to Islam, had gone to Pakistan in
October 2001, a few weeks after September 11, to study Muslim culture.
He accidentally strayed into Afghanistan - believing he was being driven
to Turkey - and was arrested as a spy, perhaps because of his British
passport. He was held in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and fell into US hands.
Now Jamal bears the scars of Guantanamo. He stoops into a hunch as he
walks because the shackles that bound him were too short.
As a punishment, inmates would be confined so tightly they would be forced
to lie in a ball for hours. During lengthy interrogation, they would be
tethered to a metal ring on the floor.
Jamal said: "Sometimes you would be chained up on the floor with your
hands and feet actually bound together. One of my friends told me he was
kept like that for 15 hours once.
"Recreation meant your legs were untied and you walked up and down a strip
of gravel. In Camp X-Ray you only got five minutes but in Delta you walked
for around 15 minutes."
Jamal said victims of the Extreme Reaction Force were paraded in front of
cells. "It was a horrible sight and it was a frequent sight."
He said one unit used force-feeding to end a hunger strike by 70 per cent
of the 600 inmates. The strike started after a guard deliberately kicked a
copy of the Koran.
Rice and beans was the usual diet and the water was "filthy". Jamal added:
"In Camp X-Ray it was yellow and in Delta it was black - the colour of
Coca-Cola.
"We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage' but they would often
turn the water off as punishment.
"They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash
ourselves according to our religion.
"The food was terrible as well, up to 10 years out-of-date. They would
open a hatch and shove it through a section at a time.
"We had porridge and something they called 'like-milk', which was
disgusting and 'like-tea' and a piece of fruit. The fruit had been frozen
and pounded with chemicals. An apple might look red but there was waxy
white stuff all over it and inside it would be black and brown.
"They would play tricks on people by denying them things - you might be
the only person on your block who didn't get any bread. I prided myself on
never asking them for anything. I would not beg." Jamal said they were
told they had no rights. "They actually said that - 'You have no rights
here'. After a while, we stopped asking for human rights - we wanted
animal rights. In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an
Alsatian dog.
"He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise
on. I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they replied, 'That dog
is member of the US army'.
"You would be punished for anything - for having six packets of salt in
your cell rather than five, for hanging your towel through the cage if it
wasn't wet, even for having your spoon and things lined up in the wrong
order."
Being forced to use a bucket as a toilet in view of other inmates and
guards was particularly embarrassing. Jamal said: "I never got used to it
- we would all put our towels and clothes around us.
"But the Military Police up in the tower would see us and would shout to
each other.
"We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning and none at
all in solitary confinement.
"This was very tough because you are supposed to be clean when you pray.
"Gradually the number of showers rose to three a week. They were always cold.
"You would be chained by two MPs while you were still in the cage before
being taken off for what they called 'rec and shower'.
"You could sometimes see the guards tampering with the shower heads to
make water squirt all over the inmate's clothes if he had put them up to
protect his privacy."
Inmates were issued with "comfort items" - known as CIs - like shampoo,
towels, a washcloth and boxer shorts. CIs would be removed as a
punishment.
Jamal defiantly refused "treats", such as watching a James Bond film in a
room dubbed The Love Shack by inmates.
He added: "Some people were given pizzas, ice-cream and McDonald's, but
they didn't offer them to me. I guess they knew bribery would work with
some and not with others."
To pass the time, inmates would chat to each other, pray, read the Koran
and sing Islamic songs. In Camp X-Ray, they were given Mills and
Boon-style romance novels in Arabic, which they refused to read.
Describing medical treatment, Jamal said he knew of 11 men who had legs
amputated and two who lost toes and fingers. He was told that the
Americans had removed far more tissue than was necessary.
HE added: "The man in the cell next to me had frostbite in two fingers and
two toes. He also had it in his big toe, but they didn't treat that for a
year by which time they had to cut off much more than was needed.
"All the men who had lost limbs complained they would chop them off high
up and not bother to try to save as much as possible."
Jamal added that he didn't have close friends in Guantanamo, saying: "When
I did meet the other Brits, we would reminisce about home - particularly
the food.
"We were all obsessed with Scottish Highland Shortbread - we wanted some
so much.
"One of the Brits told me he was asked why he was a Muslim, because he
ought to be praying to the Queen."
Jamal, who is divorced with daughters aged three and eight and a son of
five, is convinced his refusal to succumb to mind-games gave him the will
to come through.
He said: "It was very, very hard at times, but I tried to think about
nothing but survival.
"I kept my thoughts from home as much as possible because it would drive
me crazy.
"About a year into my time, I had a dream. A voice said, 'You will here
for two years'.
"In my dream I said, 'Two years! You're joking'. But when I woke up, I was
calmer because at least that meant I would be getting out one day.
"I was sent to Guantanamo on February 11, 2002 and left on March 9, 2004,
so I was there for just over two years, just like the voice in the dream
said."
TERROR OF TORTURE IN CUBA CAMP
'I was beaten by special squad in show of force. Guards chant while
kicking and punching"
JAMAL al-Harith told last night how he suffered a brutal attack by US
military police because he refused to have a mystery injection.
A squad of five men used batons, fists, feet and knees in an assault that
left him with severe bruising.
During the beating the officers barked in automated unison: "Comply,
comply, comply. Do not resist. Do not resist."
Jamal told how the men swung into action after he politely refused a jab
an orderly was trying to give him because he didn't know what it was and
he was fit and healthy.
The squad was from the US military's Extreme Reaction Force, a unit
trained to hand out beatings and known to prisoners at Guantanamo as ERF.
Jamal said: "I could hear their feet stomping on the ground as they got
closer and closer to my cell. They were given a briefing about me refusing
the injection, then I heard them readying themselves outside.
"I was terrified of what they were going to do. I had seen victims of ERF
being paraded in front of my cell.
"They had been battered and bruised into submission. It was a horrible
sight and a frequent sight."
Jamal, who had been warned by interrogators they would inject him with
drugs if he did not answer their questions, cowered in his cell awaiting
the inevitable.
When it came the full force of heavily protected men in riot gear, with
batons and shields, was used against him.
He said: "They were really gung-ho, hyped up and aggressive. One of them
attacked me really hard and left me with a deep red mark from my backbone
down to my knee. I thought I was bleeding, but it was just really bad
bruising.
"I said to myself, 'You shouldn't have put yourself through that', but
said nothing to the ERFs. I didn't want to give them the satisfaction.
"There is principle and I wasn't going to take the injection so if they
wanted to beat me up that was down to them. This huge black bruise was
there for days after that."
But Jamal's ordeal didn't end there. Half an hour later as he was
recovering, a second ERF squad arrived to dish out more punishment.
HE SAID: "They accused me of biting a military policeman. I said nothing.
I knew it wouldn't help whatever I said.
"They laid into me again. When they were finished I sat down, picked up
the Koran and started reading. Then two guards put me in more chains and
said: 'Will you comply?'"
Jamal was taken to the feared isolation units, nicknamed ISOs, where those
accused of misbehaving are kept in solitary confinement with just a mat
and towel.
A toothbrush, toothpaste and soap, considered "comfort items", were
denied. Jamal admits this was the first time he cried, although he did not
let the guards see he was upset.
He added: "I sobbed a little, twice. Everything had been taken away from
me. All I had was my dignity."
Jamal told of the psychological torture used on those in the isolation
unit by guards who were trying to break their resolve.
Bright lights were left on in their cells overnight making it impossible
to sleep properly. And the rooms were turned very hot in the day or
freezing in the early morning by using fans in the ceiling.
Jamal said: "I'd wake up at 3am shivering like crazy. Just to keep a
little bit warm I'd try to sleep under a metal bed to protect me from the
cold air that was blowing in.
"I'd kept a towel which I hid from a guard to lie on. It wasn't much, but
it made things a bit better."
He was put in the isolation unit twice more. Once when he kept ripping off
wrist bands with his name and the number 490 written on and another time
after guards set up a group of detainees by pretending some spoons had
gone missing. Jamal said: "Non-compliance were the favourite words thrown
at us."
Jamal told how he was interrogated on a regular basis by FBI and CIA
agents and later MI5.
On 40 occasions he was quizzed in chains, which were bolted to the floor,
for up to 12 hours at a time.
Jamal quickly became an expert in their interrogation techniques, often
turning questions on his tormentors.
He said: "They'd ask me the same thing over and over again. Sometimes I'd
say nothing and they asked me why I wasn't responding.
"I'd say: 'You're boring me, ask me something new and I will reply'."
After the Americans failed to glean any information, MI5 officers and
British consular officials interviewed him. On eight or nine occasions
they tried to make him admit he was involved in terrorism.
Jamal said: "They would say: 'Are you a terrorist?' I'd say 'no, get me
out of here'."
Speaking about his British interrogators, Jamal added: "They were a mixed
bunch. There was one young nervous guy who looked about 21. I called him
Youth Training Scheme MI5.
"He wasn't very professional and hadn't even checked out my background.
One of them did say they had run my name and details through every
Interpol check, but could find nothing. I told them that's because I'm
innocent. There's nothing on me. I haven't even got a parking ticket.
"The young guy got a bit frustrated with me and said: 'Are you trying to
tell me how to do my job?'
"One MI5 guy I just didn't want to talk to. He kept asking me questions
and I'd say 'it's in my file'.
"In the end I said: 'I'm not talking any more.' He replied: 'I've come all
this way from England to see you.' I only saw him for 10 minutes. He was
very red faced and angry."
Jamal said his US interrogators were much meaner in their approach to
questioning.
One told him after not getting the answers he wanted: "We are going to
inject you with drugs."
Jamal said: "They were trying everything they could to frighten me. They
even staged a mock beating up in the next room to me. They started
shouting and pulling a chair around, but I knew there wasn't anyone there
because I couldn't hear any chains clanking on the floor."
Another officer threatened Jamal with torture to get a confession. He told
him: "Then we will kill your family and you."
Jamal said: "Sometimes they'd joke about what they were going to do to me.
But I was determined to show no weakness. I didn't want to let them think
they were getting to me.
"Other times they'd play a good cop, bad cop routine. I tried to remain
calm, although I was fuming inside. It would have been giving in to have
lost my temper and I never did, not once.
"I don't swear and I didn't fight back. It was only on principles that I
stood my ground.
"The mental torture was far tougher than any of the physical punishments.
I knew I was being treated a lot worse than any of the other detainees.
They tried everything to break me.
"Ridiculously, they even accused me of being an MI5 spy.
"I began to tease them a little because it was my way of coping. They
could never work out when I was serious or not.
I HAD three plaits in my beard. I suggested, although I didn't say it,
that it was for three people I had killed during drug deals in Moss Side,
Manchester.
"I was making the whole thing up but they believed me. Next time I saw an
officer he said MI5 had confirmed the story.
"They couldn't get a handle on me and that frustrated them. In the end one
said: 'Who are you?' And I said: 'I've been here for over one a half years
and you're asking who I am?'
"I took a stand against them because what they were doing to me was
barbaric. I wouldn't get down on my knees for the chains to be pulled
around my body because it was demeaning.
"About 20 per cent of us wouldn't co-operate. Eventually they backed down
and we would stand while the guards went on their knees to chain us up.
"That was a small victory. There weren't many, but they were memorable. I
will cherish them."
Despite the horror, Jamal said there were lighter moments.
One particular interrogation technique amused him. He said: "They started
playing different music to see how I would react.
"They started with country singer Kris Kristofferson which I said I quite
liked. Then some Fleetwood Mac songs.
"They watched my reactions on camera. I just said the music's great and
even started singing along. They didn't play it again."
In the isolation unit, Jamal met for the first time fellow British
detainee Tarek Dergoul.
He said: "He was suave and had a pencil moustache. We had a good chat
about life back in Britain."
Jamal was released on Tuesday after being flown from Cuba to RAF Northolt,
West London.
He arrived back with four other former Guantanamo Bay Britons - Asif Iqbal
and Ruhal Ahmed, both 22, and 26-year-olds Shafiq Rasul and Tarek.
They were freed on Wednesday night after being quizzed by anti-terrorist
police in London.
Four other British suspects are still being held in Cuba.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last night said the US was right to keep the
men locked up and the release of the five did not necessarily prove their
innocence.
He added: "The Americans as far as they were concerned had good reason for
detaining them."
Asked whether they were innocent, he replied: "I can't answer that
question, nobody can."
continued...
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My Hell in Camp X-Ray
The Mirror UK
continued...
http://snipurl.com/558l
I WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME
JAMAL al-Harith's incredible journey to Guantanamo Bay began in the tough
streets of Manchester's Moss Side.
He was born Ronald Fiddler in a family of Jamaican origin and grew up with
his father and two sisters after their mother walked out.
At 23, Ronnie began learning about Islam and converted soon afterwards,
taking the name Jamal al-Harith "just because I liked it".
He took a computer course alongside his religious studies and became a web
designer.
He visited several European countries before deciding to go further afield
to learn more about Muslims and how they lived.
He began studying the Koran and learned Arabic on a trip to Sudan.
The ill-fated trip to Pakistan in October 2001, just a few weeks after
September 11, was his second and he planned to stay for three weeks,
learning about Muslim culture and studying the holy book.
Divorced Jamal, who has three children aged three, five and eight, said:
"Yes, I travelled to Pakistan in October 2001 but if that's my crime then
you would have to arrest whole planeloads of people.
"When I was interrogated, the Americans used to say 'How come you're so
clean? We've put your name and face through Interpol and we can't even
find a speeding ticket'.
"I told them: 'That's because I've never done anything wrong in my life.
You don't have anything on me and you still won't have anything on me when
I walk out of here' - and that's exactly what happened.
"I think that's why they were so hard on me. They couldn't bear to admit
they had made a mistake."
Jamal was in Quetta, on the border with Afghanistan and just four days
into his trip to Pakistan, when the Americans began bombing Taliban
strongholds.
He decided to leave for Turkey and paid a local truck driver 4,000 rupees
- around £47 - to drive him.
He was told their route would take them through Iran, but he had no idea
he would be passing through Afghanistan.
A few days into the trip, the truck was stopped by an armed gang.
They grew excited when they saw Jamal's British passport and after looking
at his other possessions, which included a clockwork radio, accused him of
being a spy.
He was taken to a filthy jail, held in solitary confinement then
transferred to another prison.
He was again held in isolation and was beaten and interrogated, during
which he denied he had been spying against the Taliban for the British.
Jamal later told the Americans how a man he presumed was a US agent had
died after suffering a particularly brutal beating.
He said: "They tried to say the man wasn't an American, but I know he was.
I am sure I would have got the same treatment but I made sure that every
time my guards saw me I was praying.
"The Taliban liked me because I always had the Koran in my hands. I was
beaten very badly, but not as badly as most of the other inmates.
"Afghanistan finally fell and I was visited in jail by the Red Cross.
"There were a couple of Pakistanis in the prison and they were allowed to
go across the border.
"The Red Cross asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I had no money
and no way of getting back to Britain so I asked them to put me in contact
with the British Embassy in Kabul.
"That is incredible to me now - I could have gone home on my own."
Jamal stayed with the Red Cross in Kandahar for a week and, in phone calls
to the British Embassy was assured he would soon be put on a flight to
Kabul and then back to Britain.
But two days later, the Americans arrived. They drove him to a place
described by Jamal as "a concentration camp", complete with watchtowers
and barbed wire.
He said: "I begged the Red Cross to get me out or at least contact the
embassy for me. On January 24, I was taken to a US air base and held there
for another three weeks.
"Then my interrogator told me I was being sent to Cuba, but it was just
standard procedure.
"I was assured it would take about two months to process me and then I
could go free. I believed him."
For the next two years, Jamal continued to protest his innocence.
He said his interrogators would often taunt him by promising he was about
to go home, only to pretend they had never said it.
But two weeks ago, Jamal and the four other Britons were met by the Red
Cross and told they were finally to be freed.
Before they were released, the Americans asked the five men to sign a
piece of paper confessing to links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Jamal said: "This was given to me first by the Americans and then by a
British diplomat who asked if I agreed to sign it. I just said 'No'.
"I would rather have stayed in Guantanamo than sign that paper.
"That night, all the inmates sang Islamic songs for me, wishing me well.
"The next morning, as I walked past them in chains for the last time, they
shouted out: 'Don't forget us, Jamal. Tell the world, tell the Press,
about what is happening here'."
Jamal was the only one of the five men not to be arrested when they landed
at RAF Northolt in West London.
While Tarek Dergoul, 26, Ruhal Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, and Shafiq
Rasul, 26, were taken to Paddington Green police station, Jamal was
questioned with his solicitor.
"Then suddenly it was all over and they told me I could go," he said.
Jamal has vowed to sue America for compensation for his two lost years.
He said: "They deprived me of my liberty, interrogated and tortured me and
let me go without even a word of apology."
He also plans to campaign for other detainees to be freed and given human
rights.
He said: "I can speak freely at long last and let the world know what's
happening there.
TO be honest I'd rather go on a camping holiday with my family, but I know
I have a grave responsibility to those still there.
"That's why I want my story told in the Daily Mirror."
Jamal, who has yet to be reunited with his two girls and a boy, said: "I
want so much to hug my children and tell them I love them.
"They think I have been on holiday. They don't know the truth.
"I woke up last night when I heard the keys of someone returning to their
hotel room. I woke up in a fright and thought one of the guards was coming
to put on my chains.
"I then realised that the light in the room was on. When locked up in our
cages, the lights were on as well, and I thought to myself: 'You can sleep
in the dark now' - and I switched it off."
Jamal added: "One thing good about being in Guantanamo, was that it made
you think. Time actually went very quickly.
"There was always something or other on your mind. It didn't pay to dwell
on things.
"I tried not to think about my family for two years, because it hurt so much.
"I tried to contain everything.
"It was very difficult, but I survived - and I survived well."
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--> If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not
repeatedly -- please explain that Commentaries are a premium sent to
Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that to learn more folks can consult ZNet
at http://www.zmag.org
Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-03/08z.cfm
New Word Order
March 16, 2004
By Mickey Z
"The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been
in." -British TV dramatist, Dennis Potter
John Kerry is liberal, Wesley Clark is anti-war, and an un-elected
president is seeking re-election. When Colin Powell recently said:
"Whether or not he is able to effectively continue as president is
something he will have to examine carefully," Powell was not talking about
Bush...he was discussing Jean Bertrand Aristide, the democratically
elected president of Haiti (until ousted by "rebels" and "students"). Of
all the beguiling propaganda tactics Corporate America has cultivated, the
usurping of language is the greatest victory of all.
Have you ever considered that right after World War II the "Department of
War" was renamed the "Defense Department"? Sixty years later, thanks to
legions of pinstriped mountebanks, we exist in an age where helicopters
named Apache are unselfconsciously used to quell ethnic cleansing. It's a
new word order where the land of the free incarcerates its citizens at the
rate of 1200 per week...the home of the brave carpet bombs civilians from
15,000 feet in the name of humanitarianism.
Kill someone while wearing a uniform and you're a hero...do it in gang
colors and you're a criminal. Hire a lawyer to help you find tax loopholes
and you're a good businessman...make a few bucks off the books and you're
a tax cheat. Sell cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets and you're an
entrepreneur...smoke a joint and bet with a bookie: you're a menace to
society.
It's all about setting standards and defining the accepted parameters. Our
society, through corporate propaganda and an overdose of so-called
patriotism, has become a coast-to-coast mall. We'll buy most
anything--from consumer electronics to electoral deceptions--if we're
convinced we need it. Yes, we can "have it our way," as long as we stay
well within the range of choices being offered. We can "just do it" any
time we damn well please, all we need in a $120 pair of sneakers. We've
strayed so far from reality that even the most elementary truths have
become obscured. Everything is four or five degrees removed from its
original form...and it's all conveniently forgotten before anyone has time
to analyze it.
Just when I thought we'd hit rock bottom--linguistically
speaking--multinational corporations began patenting life forms, thanks to
the "trade-related intellectual property rights" agreement of the GATT
treaty (precursor to the notorious WTO). For example, when a human gene is
introduced to a sheep's mammary glands to produce a protein called
alpha-1-antitrypsin, a sheep is no longer a mere "sheep." Instead, that
woolly object is now a legally patented corporate commodity known as a
"mammalian cell bioreactor." Not a sheep, not a lamb...but a mammalian
cell bioreactor. Mary had a little mammalian cell bioreactor. Sound right
to you?
Show some flesh in a particular magazine and you're a pornographer...flash
some skin on a public bus and you're a Calvin Klein ad. Collect food
stamps and you're a welfare queen...hire a lobbyist to win government
subsidies, tax breaks, and protectionist tariffs and you're General
Motors. Invade Kuwait and you're the "next Hitler"...invade Iraq and
you're "George W. Bush, Leader of the Free World."
There's really nothing to it: Cars aren't "used," they're "pre-owned."
Invasions aren't invasions when they're pre-emptive wars. Let's say you're
NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg and you want to institute a regressive tax on
your city's poor and middle-class residents. Easy, call it a "transit fare
hike." Rich people don't ride the subway. What if your company wants to
dump toxic sludge on farmers to be used as fertilizer? Hire a massive
public relations firm to give it a new image by renaming it "biosolids."
Just as Haiti's protestors are "students," Venezuela's are "union
members."
Claim that the Messiah regularly visits your suburban home and Mel
Gibson's faithful will beat a path to your door...claim to be the Messiah
in Waco and they'll drive a tank through your living room. Sell guns in a
ghetto and you're on the cover of Newsweek as a bad guy...sell fighter
jets to a Third World nation and you're on the cover of Newsweek as a good
guy. Reprint State Department press releases verbatim and you're a
respected investigative journalist...dig up the truth and you're gonna
have a hell of a time trying earn money as a writer.
Since today's words have developed an uncanny knack for altering their
meaning from situation to situation until they have no meaning at all,
perhaps it's time for Americans to hold a mass dictionary burning. Who
needs Webster or Roget when we've got The O'Reilly Factor? What good are
definitions when they give peace prizes to men like to Carter, de Klerk,
Arafat, Clinton, Rabin, Peres, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Henry
Kissinger...and so many of us believe they're deserving?
It all reminds me of something South African activist Steven Biko once
said: "The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed." But, then again, what do I know? I've always been the black
mammalian cell bioreactor in my family.
Mickey Z. is the author of two upcoming books: "A Gigantic Mistake:
Articles and Essays for Your Intellectual Self-Defense" (Prime Books) and
"Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda" (Common
Courage Press). He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: [pjnews] George Bush: Weak on terror
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Check This Out: http://www.moveon.org/censure/caughtonvideo/
Rumsfeld is Caught Lying on CBS's Face the Nation by none other than NYT
conservative columnist Thomas Friedman!
------------------
see also:
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/
The Iraq on the Record Report, prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A.
Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five
Administration officials most responsible for providing public information
and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice
President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of
State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. This
database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat
posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in
the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq.
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=2997
Sewage Runs Through Baghdad Crops
http://snipurl.com/53j5
U.S. wants military control in Iraq, even after sovereignty handed over
------------------
The New York Times
16 March 2004
George Bush: Weak on terror
by Paul Krugman
"My most immediate priority," Spain's new leader, José Luis Rodríguez
Zapatero, declared yesterday, "will be to fight terrorism." But he and the
voters who gave his party a stunning upset victory last Sunday don't
believe the war in Iraq is part of that fight. And the Spanish public was
also outraged by what it perceived as the Aznar government's attempt to
spin last week's terrorist attack for political purposes.
The Bush administration, which baffled the world when it used an attack by
Islamic fundamentalists to justify the overthrow of a brutal but secular
regime, and which has been utterly ruthless in its political exploitation
of 9/11, must be very, very afraid.
Polls suggest that a reputation for being tough on terror is just about
the only remaining political strength George Bush has. Yet this reputation
is based on image, not reality. The truth is that Mr. Bush, while eager to
invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war, has shown consistent reluctance
to focus on the terrorists who actually attacked America, or their backers
in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
This reluctance dates back to Mr. Bush's first months in office. Why,
after all, has his inner circle tried so hard to prevent a serious
investigation of what happened on 9/11? There has been much speculation
about whether officials ignored specific intelligence warnings, but what
we know for sure is that the administration disregarded urgent pleas by
departing Clinton officials to focus on the threat from Al Qaeda.
After 9/11, terrorism could no longer be ignored, and the military
conducted a successful campaign against Al Qaeda's Taliban hosts. But the
failure to commit sufficient U.S. forces allowed Osama bin Laden to
escape. After that, the administration appeared to lose interest in Al
Qaeda; by the summer of 2002, bin Laden's name had disappeared from Mr.
Bush's speeches. It was all Saddam, all the time.
This wasn't just a rhetorical switch; crucial resources were pulled off
the hunt for Al Qaeda, which had attacked America, to prepare for the
overthrow of Saddam, who hadn't. If you want confirmation that this
seriously impeded the fight against terror, just look at reports about the
all-out effort to capture Osama that started, finally, just a few days
ago. Why didn't this happen last year, or the year before? According to
The New York Times, last year many of the needed forces were tied up in
Iraq.
It's now clear that by shifting his focus to Iraq, Mr. Bush did Al Qaeda a
huge favor. The terrorists and their Taliban allies were given time to
regroup; the resurgent Taliban once again control almost a third of
Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda has regained the ability to carry out
large-scale atrocities.
But Mr. Bush's lapses in the struggle against terrorism extend beyond his
decision to give Al Qaeda a breather. His administration has also run
interference for Saudi Arabia — the home of most of the 9/11 hijackers,
and the main financier of Islamic extremism — and Pakistan, which created
the Taliban and has actively engaged in nuclear proliferation.
Some of the administration's actions have been so strange that those who
reported them were initially accused of being nutty conspiracy theorists.
For example, what are we to make of the post-9/11 Saudi airlift? Just days
after the attack, at a time when private air travel was banned, the
administration gave special clearance to flights that gathered up Saudi
nationals, including a number of members of the bin Laden family, who were
in the U.S. at the time. These Saudis were then allowed to leave the
country, after at best cursory interviews with the F.B.I.
And the administration is still covering up for Pakistan, whose government
recently made the absurd claim that large-scale shipments of nuclear
technology and material to rogue states — including North Korea, according
to a new C.I.A. report — were the work of one man, who was promptly
pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf. Mr. Bush has allowed this farce to
go unquestioned.
So when the Bush campaign boasts of the president's record in fighting
terrorism and accuses John Kerry of being weak on the issue, when
Republican congressmen suggest that a vote for Mr. Kerry is a vote for
Osama, remember this: the administration's actual record is one of
indulgence toward regimes that are strongly implicated in terrorism, and
of focusing on actual terrorist threats only when forced to by events.
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http://snipurl.com/56rx
At $6 an hour, who needs a tax cut?
Paul Vitello
March 12, 2004
New York Newsday
It was upbeat, precise, as organized as a meeting of the board of
directors, framed at beginning and end with rousing music -- a
near-perfect campaign stop:
President George W. Bush arrived on schedule. He gave his speech. He
moderated a panel of five people on a makeshift stage in front of a sign
that said "Strengthening America's Economy." He wove their stories
seamlessly into the fabric of his re-election campaign. He engaged in
self-deprecating humor that even a detractor might find charming.
And then he left -- to a standing ovation -- shaking hands all the way to
the exit door of U.S.A. Industries in Bay Shore, where his campaign made
this first of three stops on Long Island yesterday.
Security people kept reporters from interviewing the workers at U.S.A.
until the president was on the way to his next stop.
But when workers were finally interviewed -- these people who made up the
bulk of the president's cheering audience in New York -- Bush's
performance turned out to be, if anything, even more impressive.
"No speak English," said the first worker, smiling apologetically.
"No speak English," said the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth
workers way-laid in the crowd.
But you think the tax cuts should be made permanent, as he says?
"Sorry, no English," said another.
It is possible that President Bush could have drawn a crowd of several
hundred at lunchtime on the streets of Bay Shore to cheer his economic
policies, which can be summed up in two words: tax cuts.
But if that crowd is ready-made -- the work force of a small auto parts
factory whose owner has received tax breaks from the Republican-run state
and town governments, and who employs large numbers of non-English
speaking immigrants happy to work for $6 to $9 an hour with few benefits
-- why bother?
"I understand him a little bit English," said Nubia Guzman, a packer who
said she earns $7.50 an hour after four years on a job that Bush had
described in his speech as evidence of the success of his tax cutting
economic policies. She has no health coverage.
What did you like about him? she was asked.
"He nice," she said.
This may be all that matters in the long run. The candidate who wins is
usually the one people like the look and sound of, not the one they have
listened closely to. In this particular crowd, anyway, there were probably
few voters. Of those who spoke English, few said they were registered.
It is the not-so-secret secret of every presidential campaign that most
crowds at most campaign stops are so much stage prop. They are there to
make a certain amount of noise, to look like a constituency the candidate
hopes to win the votes of -- in the Bay Shore factory, Hispanic voters --
and to be as unsurprising and well-behaved as security arrangements can
make them.
The campaigner is the only one with a speaking part in these
entertainments. And in yesterday's performance, Bush was a star. It almost
didn't matter that most of his audience didn't understand a word he said.
He gave off an aura of optimism that was magnetic.
In fact, he used the word optimism at least eight times during his
presentation. "I hope you get a feeling of the optimism ... " he said.
"It's gotta make you optimistic ... " he said. "I am very optimistic about
the future ... "
He was as upbeat as those people who do hour-long info-mercials. Optimism
poured out of him.
Optimism apparently will be one of the themes of his campaign. You don't
have to like Bush to see the brilliance of it. It is apparently the
counter-punch to the relentless attack of his presumed democratic
opponent, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who criticizes Bush for what he terms
Bush's many failures: failures of economic policy, of foreign policy, of
environmental and domestic policies, of political vision.
Optimism is a deep vein in the psyche of all people, Americans especially;
and if Bush succeeds at bottling it for his campaign, he will win.
What would you like to do with your life?, a shipping clerk at U.S.A.
Industries named Wil Romero was asked. He is 26 years old. He thought for
a moment.
"I would like to be an American citizen," he said.
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Subject: [pjnews] Fear and Favor at the PBS NewsHour
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Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
http://www.fair.org/activism/newshour-parenti.html
ACTION ALERT:
Fear and Favor at the PBS NewsHour
March 18, 2004
Journalist Christian Parenti was invited to talk about Iraq on the March 2
broadcast of PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. But Parenti's criticism of
the reconstruction contracts granted to corporations like Halliburton and
Bechtel apparently crossed a line for the program's host.
According to a report by Cynthia Cotts in the Village Voice newspaper
(3/17/04), Lehrer objected to comments Parenti made in response to a
question about whether bombings in Iraq would "make the American job
harder on the ground in Iraq":
PARENTI: "I would think so. I would think that we have to look at some of
the deeper causes as to why there's so much frustration. Why are Iraqis so
angry and willing to point the blame at the U.S. after this sort of
bombing? A lot of it has to do with the failure of meaningful
reconstruction. There still is not adequate electricity. In many towns
like Ramadi there wasn't adequate water. Where is all the money that's
going to Halliburton and Bechtel to rebuild this country? Where is it
ending up? I think that is one of the most important fundamental causes of
instability, is the corruption around the contracting with these
Bush-connected firms in Iraq. Unless that is dealt with, there is going to
be much more instability for times to come in Iraq."
Two nights later (3/4/04), Lehrer made an unusual on-air announcement: "An
editor's note before we go, for those who were watching two nights ago: A
discussion about Iraq ended up not being as balanced as is our standard
practice. While unintentional, it was our mistake, and we regret it."
According to the Voice report, producers for the show suggest that
Parenti's mistake was referring to the Halliburton contracts. The Voice
quoted NewsHour senior producer Michael Mosettig saying: "This was not
reportage, this was giving his opinion, and that's not why we brought him
on." Mossetig's deputy, Dan Sagalyn, told the Voice that Parenti's
comments lacked "balance."
The remarks seem to have gotten Parenti virtually blacklisted from the
show. "I would have liked to have him on again... but because of this it
would be very hard," Sagalyn told Cotts. "When you have a loose-cannon
experience with somebody, you're going to be wary," Mossetig said.
It would be understandable for the NewsHour to be concerned with the
accuracy of comments made by any guest; that would be responsible
journalism. But the show is not claiming Parenti said anything inaccurate.
Instead, the show seems to be saying that journalists shouldn't give
opinions on the show. Lehrer has declared that one of his principles of
journalism (1997 Catto Report on Journalism and Society) is to "carefully
separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label
them as such."
But that's not been a consistent policy. New York Times reporter John
Burns, for example, often shares opinions on the NewsHour while being
interviewed about his reportage. On the November 17, 2003 broadcast, for
example, Burns suggested that he felt "profoundly dispirited and
disappointed" by the situation in Iraq six months after U.S. troops pulled
down Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. Burns recommended a renewed
commitment to the occupation: "It's going to take stout hearts on the part
of the people of the United States, and the government of the United
States, to see this through."
Those are certainly opinions, and the NewsHour audience is entitled to
hear them. What the NewsHour seems to be arguing is that it just didn't
care for Parenti's opinions-- specifically, that official corruption might
be to blame for some of the problems the occupation is facing.
Far more important than regulating journalists who cross such arbitrary
lines, though, is challenging official sources who misstate the facts. The
NewsHour, unfortunately, does not always exhibit a keen interest in
correcting misinformation from Bush administration officials.
In September 2002 (9/20/02), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed in
an interview with Lehrer that Iraq "threw the [U.N.] inspectors out" in
1998, and that in 1990 Iraq had plans for "invading Saudi Arabia, which
they were ready to do." Both assertions are false, and neither was
challenged by Lehrer. Despite the fact that hundreds of FAIR activists
wrote to the NewsHour to point out Rumsfeld's distortions (see FAIR action
alert, 9/20/02), Lehrer made no attempt to correct the record.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACTION: Write to the NewsHour and ask them to explain why Jim Lehrer
apologized for airing the opinions of Christian Parenti when other
journalists are routinely allowed to offer their opinions on the NewsHour.
Ask them why Parenti's analysis merited an on-air apology, while
Rumsfeld's distortions were not challenged or corrected.
CONTACT:
PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if
you maintain a polite tone. Please cc [EMAIL PROTECTED] with your
correspondence.
see also:
PBS Gets Picky" by Cynthia Cotts (Village Voice, 3/17/04)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0411/cotts.php
FAIR Action Alert: PBS Fails to Hold Rumsfeld Accountable
http://www.fair.org/activism/newshour-iraq.html
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Subject: [pjnews] Taken for a Ride
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/19/opinion/19KRUG.html
The New York Times
19 March 2004
Taken for a Ride
By PAUL KRUGMAN ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." So George Bush
declared on Sept. 20, 2001. But what was he saying? Surely he didn't mean
that everyone was obliged to support all of his policies, that if you
opposed him on anything you were aiding terrorists.
Now we know that he meant just that.
A year ago, President Bush, who had a global mandate to pursue the
terrorists responsible for 9/11, went after someone else instead. Most
Americans, I suspect, still don't realize how badly this apparent
exploitation of the world's good will — and the subsequent failure to find
weapons of mass destruction — damaged our credibility. They imagine that
only the dastardly French, and now maybe the cowardly Spaniards, doubt our
word. But yesterday, according to Agence France-Presse, the president of
Poland — which has roughly 2,500 soldiers in Iraq — had this to say: "That
they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We
were taken for a ride."
This is the context for last weekend's election upset in Spain, where the
Aznar government had taken the country into Iraq against the wishes of 90
percent of the public. Spanish voters weren't intimidated by the terrorist
bombings — they turned on a ruling party they didn't trust. When the
government rushed to blame the wrong people for the attack, tried to
suppress growing evidence to the contrary and used its control over state
television and radio both to push its false accusation and to play down
antigovernment protests, it reminded people of the broader lies about the
war.
By voting for a new government, in other words, the Spaniards were
enforcing the accountability that is the essence of democracy. But in the
world according to Mr. Bush's supporters, anyone who demands
accountability is on the side of the evildoers. According to Dennis
Hastert, the speaker of the House, the Spanish people "had a huge
terrorist attack within their country and they chose to change their
government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists."
So there you have it. A country's ruling party leads the nation into a war
fought on false pretenses, fails to protect the nation from terrorists and
engages in a cover-up when a terrorist attack does occur. But its
electoral defeat isn't democracy at work; it's a victory for the
terrorists.
Notice, by the way, that Spain's prime minister-elect insists that he
intends to fight terrorism. He has even said that his country's forces
could remain in Iraq if they were placed under U.N. control. So if the
Bush administration were really concerned about maintaining a united front
against terrorism, all it would have to do is drop its
my-way-or-the-highway approach. But it won't.
For these denunciations of Spain, while counterproductive when viewed as
foreign policy, serve a crucial domestic purpose: they help re-establish
the political climate the Bush administration prefers, in which anyone who
opposes any administration policy can be accused of undermining the fight
against terrorism.
This week the Bush campaign unveiled an ad accusing John Kerry of, among
other things, opposing increases in combat pay because he voted against an
$87 billion appropriation for Iraq. Those who have followed this issue
were astonished at the ad's sheer up-is-down-ism.
In fact, the Bush administration has done the very thing it falsely
accuses Mr. Kerry of doing: it has tried repeatedly to slash combat pay
and military benefits, provoking angry articles in The Army Times with
headlines like "An Act of `Betrayal.' " Oh, and Mr. Kerry wasn't trying to
block funds for Iraq — he was trying to force the administration, which
had concealed the cost of the occupation until its tax cut was passed, to
roll back part of the tax cut to cover the expense.
But the bigger point is this: in the Bush vision, it was never legitimate
to challenge any piece of the administration's policy on Iraq. Before the
war, it was your patriotic duty to trust the president's assertions about
the case for war. Once we went in and those assertions proved utterly
false, it became your patriotic duty to support the troops — a phrase
that, to the administration, always means supporting the president. At no
point has it been legitimate to hold Mr. Bush accountable. And that's the
way he wants it.
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Subject: [pjnews] U.S. Allegedly Unloading WMDs in Iraq!
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http://snipurl.com/53yy
U.S. Unloading WMD in Iraq
TEHRAN (Mehr News Agency) – Over the past few days, in the wake of the
bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing
of Iraq’s interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces
have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles
and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.
A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on condition
of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces, with the help of
British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made extensive efforts to
conceal their actions.
He added that the cargo was unloaded during the night as attention was
still focused on the aftermath of the deadly bombings in Karbala and the
signing of Iraq’s interim constitution.
The source said that in order to avoid suspicion, ordinary cargo ships
were used to download the cargo, which consisted of weapons produced in
the 1980s and 1990s.
He mentioned the fact that the United States had facilitated Iraq’s WMD
program during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq and said that some of the weapons
being downloaded are similar to those weapons, although international
inspectors had announced Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime had destroyed all
its WMD.
The source went on to say that the rest of the weapons were probably
transferred in vans to an unknown location somewhere in the vicinity of
Basra overnight.
“Most of these weapons are of Eastern European origin and some parts are
from the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The U.S. obtained them
through confiscations during sales of banned arms over the past two
decades,” he said.
This action comes as certain U.S. and Western officials have been pointing
out the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in
Iraq and the issue of Saddam’s trial begins to take center stage.
In addition, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has emphasized
that the U.S. and British intelligence agencies issued false reports on
Iraq leading to the U.S. attack.
Meanwhile, the suspicious death of weapons inspector David Kelly is also
an unresolved issue in Britain.
------Occupation Forces Official Claims to Have No Information About
Transfer of WMD to Iraq -------
A security official for the coalition forces in Iraq said that he has not
received any information about the unloading of weapons of mass
destruction in ports in southern Iraq.
Shane Wolf told the Mehr News Agency that the occupation forces have
received no reports on such events, but said he hoped that the coalition
forces would find the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction one day.
Coalition forces and inspectors have so far been unable to find any Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. invaded Iraq under the pretext that
Iraq possessed a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
--------------------
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views04/0318-04.htm
Published on Thursday, March 18, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Journalists Find Many Ways to Kill Truth in Iraq
by Ira Chernus
Truth dies, just as people die, every day in Iraq. Sometimes the people
are killed by Americans paid with our tax dollars. But we rarely hear
about it, thanks to other Americans, the ones who kill truth: the
journalists. There are different ways to send truth to its grave, as two
current examples prove.
On March 13 the Iranian news agency Mehr reported a story
(http://snipurl.com/53yy) that, if true, is surely the biggest news of
this election year: "U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for
constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in
the southern ports of Iraq. A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing
Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency
that U.S. forces, with the help of British forces stationed in southern
Iraq, had made extensive efforts to conceal their actions."
According to Mehr's source, the parts are old ones, just the kind the U.S.
gave to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. Once they are "discovered," they
would be the smoking gun that George W. needs to get re-elected.
Five days after Mehr broke this story, a Google and Lexis/Nexis search
failed to find it reported in any U.S. news source. Not even a story to
say "We checked and found nothing to support the allegations." Why? Two
possibilities come to mind. Perhaps American journalists in Iraq, and
their editors at home, saw it and said "Oh, that's silly. With all the
serious stuff we have to investigate, why waste a good reporter's precious
time on such nonsense?" They are not warmongers or conspirators, just
serious professionals doing their job in the approved manner. They got
their jobs by sticking to mainstream "common sense" thinking. Why change
now?
Oh yes, they did use the same kind of mainstream "common sense" last year,
when they assumed that the Bush administration must have secret evidence
of Saddam's WMDs. But you don't abandon "common sense" just because of an
occasional mistake, do you?
The other possibility is that some American journalists believe the U.S.
might indeed be planting WMD parts in Iraq for pre-election "discovery."
But the story is just too hot, too dangerous to touch. A reporter for a
mainstream U.S. news source knows that his or her editor might very well
not run it in any event. So why waste time on it, when so many other good
stories are out there that could see the light of day.
In either event, if there is a startling pre-election "discovery," hang on
to your Mehr News Agency report (http://snipurl.com/53yy) and remember:
You saw it here first.
Of course, you don't have to bury the news to kill the truth. You can kill
it by reporting it in a lethal way. That's what Jeffrey Gettleman of the
New York Times did on March 17.
He revealed that, twice a week, Captain Jonathan Tracy hands out "sympathy
payments" to the relatives of Iraqi civilians killed or injured by the
U.S. military. No admission of U.S. guilt, but you get $1,000 for an
injury and $2,500 for a death. Now you know what Iraqi life is worth, in
official U.S. eyes. Captain Tracy, who is only 27, says he is "getting
pretty burned out." That is understandable. It's a hellish job.
To make it worse, Tracy has to worry about cheaters. How does he know that
the Iraqis who come asking for payments really deserve them? He "checks
each claim a civilian files against a database of military incident
reports," Gettlemen reported. "We do keep records of innocent civilians
who are killed accidentally by coalition force soldiers," said Brig. Gen.
Mark Hertling, assistant commander for the First Armored Division, which
patrols Baghdad. "And, in fact, in every one of those innocent death
situations, we conduct internal investigations to determine what
happened."
But earlier in the very same news story, Gettlemen wrote: "Military
officials say they do not have precise figures or even estimates of the
number of noncombatant Iraqis killed and wounded by American-led forces in
Iraq. 'We don't keep a list,' said a Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Cmdr. Jane
Campbell. 'It's just not policy.'"
We used to assume that what Commander Campbell said was true. We rely on
websites like www.iraqbodycount.net because we thought that our government
was killing and not bothering to count the victims. Now we just ain't
sure, because our nation's newspaper of record says, in the very same
story, that our government does and does not keep a list.
When you say it's both night and day at the same time, truth is dead. When
someone says the U.S. is planting evidence to "prove" the biggest lie yet,
and you don't even bother to check it out, truth is dead. Truth is the
first casualty of war. We always knew that. Now we know that there's more
than one way to kill the truth.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of
Colorado at Boulder. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush/Cheney Campaign Paraphernalia Made with Slave Labor
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, March 19, 2004
BUSH / CHENEY CAMPAIGN PARAPHERNALIA MADE WITH SLAVE LABOR IN BURMA
*Bush / Cheney '04 Campaign Fleece pullovers obtained by [NY] NEWSDAY
(http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0319-03.htm) were made in Burma
in factories operating as joint ventures with the brutal military
dictators. Workers in Burma earn as little as seven cents an hour, 56
cents a day and $3.23 a week. Any worker in Burma daring to ask for her
most fundamental rights would be imprisoned. The garment workers in Burma
were paid approximately four cents for each $49.95 Bush / Cheney fleece
pullover they sewed.
*U.S. Customs import records show a large $124,241 shipment of fleece
goods made in Burma which was raced to the U.S., entering at the port of
Los Angeles on August 21, 2003---just 10 days before the Burma import ban
would go into effect.
Another shipment of fleece goods from Burma entered Vancouver, Canada on
September 6, 2003. It is not known if these goods entered the U.S. in
violation of the ban. The landed customs value-the total cost of
production-of the fleece pullover entering Canada was just $5.21. One
company located in Denver called Yes America Inc. imported $2,000,000
worth of fleece goods made in Burma between March 19 and May 12, 2003.
The fleece goods were manufactured at:
Myanmar Yes Company Limited
Industrial Zone (Plot 64 / Port 3)
Hlaing Thayar Township
Yangou, Myanmar (Burma)
All Bush / Cheney campaign goods are handled by the Spalding Group based
in Louisville, KY. [In the last three years, Kentucky has lost 36,200
manufacturing jobs.] Ted Jackson, Spalding's President, told NEWSDAY that
out of their entire fleece pullover inventory they could find only one
other garment made in Burma. However, this appears to be untrue. Last
evening the National Labor Committee placed an order to purchase several
Bush / Cheney fleece pullover which were due to arrive on Monday. At
11:00 a.m. this morning we reviewed a call from the Spalding Group saying
that -without explanation-they could not send us the fleece pullovers we
ordered.
*Since President Bush came into office in January 2001, the U.S. has lost
337,000 textile and apparel jobs in the last 12 months. There are now
709,000 textile and apparel jobs left in the U.S., down from down from 1.5
million in 1994. The U.S. had a $70 billion textile and apparel trade
deficit last year, as imports shot up 10.3 percent. In the last three
years the U.S. has lost an average of 78,000 manufacturing jobs a month.
__________________
NATIONAL LABOR COMMITTEE IN SUPPORT OF WORKER AND HUMAN RIGHTS
540 West 48th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10036
Tel: 212-242-3002 / Fax: 212-242-3821
http://www.nlcnet.org
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Subject: [pjnews] Media's fear of seeming unpatriotic undermined Iraq
reporting
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http://snipurl.com/57rr
Media: fear of seeming unpatriotic undermined Iraq reporting
by MIELIKKI ORG
March 19, 2004 (AP)
BERKELEY, CA - Competitive pressures and the fear of appearing unpatriotic
prevented journalists from doing more critical reporting in the lead-up to
the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, according to reporters and other key
figures at a conference analyzing the media's coverage of the war.
The journalists on the panels at the University of California, Berkeley,
this week blamed the Bush administration for leaking faulty information,
but said the media also has itself to blame for failing to report
critically enough about justifications for the war in Iraq.
"The press did not do their job," said Michael Massing, whose scathing
article in the New York Review of Books found the New York Times and The
Washington Post particularly at fault for relying on Bush administration
leaks that turned out to be false.
"The media was sucker-punched entirely by this administration," added
Robert Sheer, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
The problem is that journalists fear they will be seen as unpatriotic if
they challenge White House statements, Sheer and others said.
"There is no doubt that there is an atmosphere of fear in the media of
being out of sync with the punitive government," Sheer said. "This has
been the most shameful period of American media. It has been the most
shameful moment for American democracy."
Much criticism focused on a Sept. 8, 2002, New York Times article by
Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, which said Iraq was importing aluminum
tubes that could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium, a critical step
in making an atomic bomb.
Massing said nuclear experts or weapons inspectors would have refuted the
evidence had the Times consulted them. And when experts later verified the
tubes weren't used for nuclear weapons, the New York Times and other
papers buried that news in their inside pages, he said.
A call to the Times for comment was not immediately returned on Friday.
Massing noted that a phrase from the article, "the first sign of a smoking
gun may be a mushroom cloud," made it into a speech given by President
Bush in the fall of 2002, days before Congress gave him war powers, as
well as speeches by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and
Secretary of State Colin Powell to justify the war.
Miller was scheduled to appear at the Berkeley conference, which wrapped
up Thursday night, but didn't make it. John Burns, the Times' bureau chief
in Baghdad, did speak by satellite phone from Iraq, where he said American
reporters, against considerable odds, are doing a good job of covering the
war's aftermath.
In fact, reporters accused of being insufficiently critical are going too
far in the other direction when they suggest Iraq is already descending
into chaos and civil war, Burns said. He called it "a growing deception
among the press and others that there is an air of error and disillusion"
in Iraq.
The real question, Burns said, is whether Iraqis can pull off a transition
to peace and democracy under the Bush administration's timetable for
pulling out of the country.
"What they've done is to construct a rickety bridge and they're now trying
to push people across it," Burns said. "There is a very big risk that that
load will collapse and fall into the abyss."
Foreign reporters at the conference found it hard to understand how
Americans could so easily believe their president, despite so much
evidence contradicting his arguments.
"We were so surprised at how uncritically these arguments were being
taken," said Hani Shukrallah, editor of the Cairo paper El Ahram Weekly.
He said his Arab readers had "a sense that things were being fabricated."
Maher Abdallah Ahmad, a reporter from Al-Jazeera television network, said
there has been too little reporting by U.S. media about Iraqi casualties
and the plight of civilians there.
"One year later, does anybody here know how many Iraqis were killed in
this war?" Maher asked an auditorium full of hundreds of people. "You make
all this effort to establish democracy and don't give a damn as to how
many were killed?"
The only government representative at the conference that ran Tuesday
through Thursday was Lt. Col. Rick Long, a U.S. Marine Corps spokesman. He
deflected accusations that the Pentagon decision to "embed" about 700
journalists with troops fighting in the Iraq war helped the government
influence coverage.
"The reason we embedded so many journalists is that we wanted to dominate
the information environment," Long said. "We wanted to beat any kind of
disinformation or propaganda by beating them at their own game."
Long also confirmed a U.S. Army plan to spend $6.5 million to establish
its own media system, which would distribute its own articles to small
newspapers across the country. But he declined to give details.
"Our job is to win," he said. "Part of that is information warfare."
Also speaking at the conference were former chief U.N. weapons inspector
Hans Blix and former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife, Valerie
Plame, was outed as a CIA agent after he accused the Bush administration
of manipulating intelligence.
Ambassador Wilson agreed that "our press is under a lot of stress and a
lot of pressure," but said critical reporting is fundamental - "If we
don't do it for ourselves, we have to do it for the basic institution we
represent."
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Subject: [pjnews] U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/15/politics/15VIDE.html?hp
The New York Times
15 March 2004
U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, March 14 — Federal investigators are scrutinizing television
segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as
journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be
offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription
medicines.
The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several
include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a
crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.
The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human
Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not
identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In
Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired
her to read a script prepared by the government.
Another video, intended for Hispanic audiences, shows a Bush
administration official being interviewed in Spanish by a man who
identifies himself as a reporter named Alberto Garcia.
Another segment shows a pharmacist talking to an elderly customer. The
pharmacist says the new law "helps you better afford your medications,"
and the customer says, "It sounds like a good idea." Indeed, the
pharmacist says, "A very good idea."
The government also prepared scripts that can be used by news anchors
introducing what the administration describes as a made-for-television
"story package."
In one script, the administration suggests that anchors use this language:
"In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription
drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot
of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with
disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details."
The "reporter" then explains the benefits of the new law.
Lawyers from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of
Congress, discovered the materials last month when they were looking into
the use of federal money to pay for certain fliers and advertisements that
publicize the Medicare law.
In a report to Congress last week, the lawyers said those fliers and
advertisements were legal, despite "notable omissions and other
weaknesses." Administration officials said the television news segments
were also a legal, effective way to educate beneficiaries.
Gary L. Kepplinger, deputy general counsel of the accounting office, said,
"We are actively considering some follow-up work related to the materials
we received from the Department of Health and Human Services."
One question is whether the government might mislead viewers by concealing
the source of the Medicare videos, which have been broadcast by stations
in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states.
Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or
propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. In the past, the General
Accounting Office has found that federal agencies violated this
restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles
written by the government or its contractors without identifying the
source.
Kevin W. Keane, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human
Services, said there was nothing nefarious about the television materials,
which he said had been distributed to stations nationwide. Under federal
law, he said, the government is required to inform beneficiaries about
changes in Medicare.
"The use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in
government and the private sector," Mr. Keane said. "Anyone who has
questions about this practice needs to do some research on modern public
information tools."
But Democrats disagreed. "These materials are even more disturbing than
the Medicare flier and advertisements," said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg,
Democrat of New Jersey. "The distribution of these videos is a covert
attempt to manipulate the press."
Mr. Lautenberg, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and
seven other members of Congress requested the original review by the
accounting office.
In the videos and advertisements, the government urges beneficiaries to
call a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-MEDICARE. People who call that
number can obtain recorded information about prescription drug benefits if
they recite the words "Medicare improvement."
Documents from the Medicare agency show why the administration is eager to
advertise the benefits of the new law, on radio and television, in
newspapers and on the Internet.
"Our consumer research has shown that beneficiaries are confused about the
Medicare Modernization Act and uncertain about what it means for them,"
says one document from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Other documents suggest the scope of the publicity campaign: $12.6 million
for advertising this winter, $18.5 million to publicize drug discount
cards this spring, about $18.5 million this summer, $30 million for a year
of beneficiary education starting this fall and $44 million starting in
the fall of 2005.
"Video news releases" have been used for more than a decade.
Pharmaceutical companies have done particularly well with them, producing
news-style health features about the afflictions their drugs are meant to
cure.
The videos became more prominent in the late 1980's, as more and more
television stations cut news-gathering budgets and were glad to have
packaged news bits to call their own, even if they were prepared by
corporations seeking to sell products.
As such, the videos have drawn criticism from some news media ethicists,
who consider them to be at odds with journalism's mission to verify
independently the claims of corporations and governments.
Government agencies have also produced such videos for years, often on
subjects like teenage smoking and the dangers of using steroids. But the
Medicare materials wander into more controversial territory.
Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, expressed
disbelief that any television stations would present the Medicare videos
as real news segments, considering the current debate about the merits of
the new law.
"Those to me are just the next thing to fraud," Mr. Kovach said. "It's
running a paid advertisement in the heart of a news program."
Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting for this article.
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Subject: [pjnews] The Wild Weapons of DARPA
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/53j7
The Pentagon's Secret Scream: Sonic devices that can inflict pain--or even
permanent deafness--are being deployed
------------
http://www.alternet.org/members/story.html?StoryID=18070
The Wild Weapons of DARPA
By Nick Turse, tomdispatch.com
March 9, 2004
When, in October 1957, the USSR launched the first man-made earth
satellite, the basketball-sized Sputnik, it caught the United States off
guard and sent the government into fits. Not only had the Soviets exploded
an atomic bomb years before the Americans predicted they would, but now
they were leading the "space race." In response, the Defense Department
approved funding for a new U.S. satellite project, headed by former Nazi
SS officer Wernher von Braun, and created, in 1958, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to make certain that the United States
forever after maintained "a lead in applying state-of-the-art technology
for military capabilities and to prevent technological surprise from her
adversaries."
Almost half a century later, what's left of the USSR is a collapsed group
of half-failed states, while the U.S. stands alone as the globe's sole
hyperpower. Yet DARPA, the agency for an arms-race world, seems only to be
warming up to the chase. There may be no country left to take the lead
from us, the nearest military competitor being China which reportedly had
$65 billion in military expenditures in 2002 (compared to our $466 billion
according to GlobalSecurity.org) and which, only in 2003, put its first
"Taikonaut" into outer space. Undaunted, DARPA continues to develop
high-tech weapons systems for 2025-2050 and beyond – some of them standard
fare like your run-of-the-mill. hypersonic bombers, others more exotic.
In an August 2003 article, Los Angeles Times reporter Charles Pillar noted
that DARPA has put forth some of the "most boneheaded ideas ever to spring
from the government" -- including a "mechanical elephant" that never made
it into the jungles of Vietnam and telepathy research that never quite
afforded the U.S. the ability to engage in psychic spying.
As former DARPA Director Charles Herzfeld noted in 1975, "When we fail, we
fail big." Little has changed. According to DARPA's current chief, some
85%-90% of its projects fail to meet their full objectives. Still, Piller
points out, DARPA "has been behind some of the world's most revolutionary
inventions" – "the Internet, the global positioning system, stealth
technology and the computer mouse."
DARPA's spectacular failure rate and noteworthy successes stem from its
high risk ventures. For years DARPA has funded extremely unconventional,
sometimes beyond-the-pale, avant-garde research in all realms of science
and technology. It is, perhaps, the most creative place in our vast
government for a scientist who wants to stretch his or her mind in
adventurous directions and be well paid to do so. If you have a wild idea,
DARPA's the place to try it out. Said Harvard University pathologist
Donald Ingber in a 2001 Los Angeles Times article, "DARPA [has] funded
things that a lot of people thought were ridiculous, and some that people
thought were impossible. They make things happen."
There's only one caveat -- in one way or another most every project,
however mind-stretching, invariably must end, directly or indirectly, in
the incapacitation or death of future American enemies.
The projects are often some of the most lethal ever conceived. Over the
years, DARPA research has led to a plethora of products designed to maim
and kill, among them the: M-16 rifle, Hellfire-missile-equipped Predator
drones, stealth fighters and bombers, surface-to-surface artillery rocket
systems, Tomahawk cruise missiles, B-52 bomber upgrades, Titan missiles,
Javelin portable "fire and forget" guided missiles and cannon-launched
Copperhead guided projectiles, to name but a few.
A question seldom asked is why pie-in-the-sky creativity exists unfettered
and fostered only in the context of lethal technologies? As the U.S.
continues its mad dash into a post-Cold War, one-nation arms race, fears
of a missile gap or the menace of a technologically advanced foreign foe
drop away as explanations; nor can it just be a generalized fear of
falling behind the rest of the world. Look at the state of education in
America -- in 2002 the U.S. ranked 18th in UNICEF's list of teenagers in
24 industrialized countries falling below international academic
benchmarks. Despite the poor showing, no one is rushing to set up an
Advanced Education Research Agency.
According to the CIA's annually-published World Factbook, "the US is the
largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil
fuels," yet the Environmental Protection Agency's "National Center for
Environmental Innovation" is a far cry from a DARPA-like entity. It doled
out a mere $737,500 in seven state-innovation grants in 2003. DARPA, by
comparison, spent about $3 billion on some 200 projects that ranged from
space weapons to unmanned aerial vehicles. But just because the government
isn't pouring money into the projects of scientists eager to attack
environmental problems doesn't mean environmental research is of no
interest to it. Quite the opposite. DARPA has taken up the torch and is
funding a rigorous research program aimed at finding novel ways to
weaponize the natural world.
As evidenced by their Vietnam-era mechanical elephant project and a recent
grant to researchers developing a robotic canine called "Big Dog" for the
Army, DARPA might be said to have something of an animal fetish, reflected
perhaps in various projects whose very names evoke the ethos of the wild
kingdom. Among them:
WolfPack, a group (pack) of miniaturized, unattended ground sensors that
are meant to work together in detecting, identifying and jamming enemy
communications; Piranha, a project to "enable submarines to engage elusive
maneuvering land and sea targets"; and Hummingbird Warrior, a program to
produce a helicopter-like vertical take-off and landing unmanned air
vehicle (UAV).
The agency also embraces the imagery of the natural environment in its
"Organic Air Vehicles in the Trees" project, which sounds downright
"green," though it's actually a tiny UAV that will fly in the forests,
over hills and through cities searching for enemies.
Allusions to the natural world, however, are the least of it. While the
military is well-versed in employing all sorts of creatures to do its
bidding, from Army guard dogs to Navy dolphins used for locating sea
mines, DARPA is keen on branching out from class Mammalia. One way is
through its "Bio-Revolution" program which seeks to "harness the insights
and power of biology to make U.S. warfighters and their equipment… more
effective."
Willard and His Wild Pals
Killer Bees
After all those years of warnings about sinister African killer bees
inexorably heading toward the U.S., DARPA decided to draft bees into
military service. In 2002, projects examining the performance of honeybees
trained to detect explosives and locate other "odors of interest" were
launched. Since then, DARPA has been creating insect databases while
increasing efforts to "understand how to use endemic insects as collectors
of environmental information." DARPA says it has already tested "this
endemic insect system in key operational demonstrations here and abroad."
How long until they start thinking about weaponizing insects as well?
Instead of your plain old, garden variety Stinger missiles, you could have
a swarm of missile stingers.
Fly Boys
At the University of Florida, DARPA-sponsored researchers are working on
biologically-inspired "eyes," patterned after those of flies. "We think we
can use this concept to make smart weapons smarter," says professor of
materials science and engineering Paul Holloway, the project's lead
researcher. It's a safe bet that a new set of eyes would help, since the
current crop of smart weapons couldn't get much dumber! Despite the
pronouncements of U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Timothy Keating who, on the eve
of the invasion of Iraq, bragged of a military "plan that… reduces to an
absolute minimum, if not eliminates, noncombatant casualties," nothing
proved further from the case. While 68% of munitions used in Operation
Iraqi Freedom were precision-guided, as opposed to only 6.5% in the 1991
Gulf War, the ratio of civilian to military deaths turned out to be almost
twice as high this time around, according to Carl Conetta of the
Massachusetts-based think-tank, Project on Defense Alternatives. Are fly
eyes the answer? Perhaps… at least until some rogue state develops a
fly-paper missile defense shield.
Little Shop of Horrors
In July 2003, DARPA held a workshop to "help researchers in various
disciplines self-assemble into teams capable of developing plant inspired
actuation systems that will ultimately have application in military
adaptive or morphing structures." What's on the horizon then? Giant Venus
Fly-trap-inspired fighting vehicles? A brigade of Swamp-Thing warriors?
(Octo)Pie in the sky camouflage
According to the agency's 2003 strategic plan, "DARPA-supported
researchers are studying how geckos climb walls and how an octopus hides
to find new approaches to locomotion and highly adaptive camouflage. The
idea is to let nature be a guide toward better engineering." Imagine the
ink-squirting, suction-cup-covered frogman of the future!
Remote-Control Robo-Rats
In 2002, DARPA researchers demonstrated that they could remotely control
the movements of a rat with electrodes implanted into its brain using a
laptop computer. In 2003 and 2004, DARPA's "Robolife" program researchers
will turn their attention to the "performance of rats, birds and insects
in performing missions of interest to DoD, such as exploration of caves or
covert deposition of sensors." Militarizing the animal world, however,
carries its own risks. Take World War II's Project X-Ray in which bats
with incendiary explosives strapped to their bodies turned on their
military masters and set fire to an U.S. Army airfield. Just imagine what
an army of Army rats might do! Anybody remember Willard?
The Wildest of Apes
When Captain America throws his mighty shield…
Perhaps the most frightening of DARPA's weaponized science projects are
those that deal with militarily enhancing that most violent of apes --
man. In its 2003 strategic plan, DARPA touted the "Enhanced Human
Performance" component of its "Bio-Revolution" program whose aim is to
prevent humans from "becoming the weakest link in the U.S. military." Lest
rats, bees and trees become the dominant warriors, Enhanced Human
Performance will "exploit the life sciences to make the individual
warfighter stronger, more alert, more endurant, and better able to heal."
Yes, what now captivates DARPA researchers once captivated comic-book
readers -- the dream of creating a real-life Captain America, that
weakling-turned-Axis-smashing-super-patriot by way of "super soldier
serum."
Just Say "No" to No Doze, but "Yes" to Endless Combat
The U.S. military has long plied its fighting men with uppers. In Vietnam,
medics sated soldiers' need for speed by doling out government-issue
amphetamines. In 2002, U.S. pilots under the influence of Air Force
"go-pills" (which Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Jennifer Ferrau calls a
"fatigue management tool") killed four Canadian soldiers and injured eight
others when they dropped a laser-guided bomb on a Canadian military
training exercise in Afghanistan. Today, DARPA's Continuous Assisted
Performance (CAP) program is aimed at creating a 24-7 trooper by
"investigating ways to prevent fatigue and enable soldiers to stay awake,
alert, and effective for up to seven days straight without suffering any
deleterious mental or physical effects and without using any of the
current generation of stimulants."
This is your brain on DARPA… any questions?
DARPA researchers are also at work on the "Brain Machine Interface"
("neuromics") project, designed as a mind/machine interface, allowing
mechanical devices to be controlled via thought-power. Thus far,
researchers have taught a monkey to move a computer mouse and a
telerobotic arm simply by thinking about it. With arrays of up to 96
electrodes implanted in their brains, the animals are able to reach for
food with a robotic arm. Researchers even transmitted the signals over the
internet, allowing remote control of an robotic arm 600 miles away. In the
future they hope to develop a "non-invasive interface" for human use. Says
DARPA, "The long-term Defense implications of finding ways to turn
thoughts into acts, if it can be developed, are enormous: imagine U.S.
warfighters that only need use the power of their thoughts to do things at
great distances." For years, the U.S. military has been improving its
ability to reach out and kill someone. What's the mantra of the future?
Maybe, if you think it, they will die.
Life (and Death) Sciences
Leonard J. Buckley, a program manager in materials chemistry at DARPA's
Defense Science Office, has said, in regard to insect-inspired optics
research, "Inspiration from nature… will allow more life-like qualities in
the system." And, says DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker, "We're interested in
investigating biological organisms because they have evolved over many,
many years to be particularly good at surviving in the environment. …and
we hope to learn from some of those strategies that Mother Nature has
developed."
Poor Mother Nature! What hope has she when faced with an over $400 billion
dollar defense budget. What can she do when the most powerful impetus for
free-thinking scientists to consider her is in the urge to weaponize her
offspring. Under DARPA, the life sciences have become a fertile area to
further the science of death and destruction in an effort, in the words of
the DARPA Defense Sciences Office, to overcome the "Frailties of Life" to
achieve "Super Physiological Performance." How wonderfully Nietzschean!
Such is the state of government-sponsored innovation in our land. If
you're a researcher in crucial fields and want the time, funding, and
latitude to be creative, your work must benefit the Pentagon in its race
to make sure that the next Saddam can be, in the words of Maj. Gen.
Raymond Odierno, "caught like a rat" by Capt. Ben Willard of the Army's
rat patrol.
Other than finding new ways of circumventing international law (e.g.
bypassing violations of national airspace with space-launched weapons)
which the U.S. already does quite well with current technology or the
mountain climber's mantra "because its there," it's hard to fathom why the
government is still locked in a Cold War-style arms race in a single
hyperpower world. The only explanation available lies in the driving will
of the ever-expanding military-industrial complex, first named by
President Eisenhower back in 1961. This would certainly help explain why
we have no educational or environmental DARPAs. For today's researchers,
DARPA is, both intellectually and financially, a fabulous and alluring
gravy train, the only agency that puts real money into and rewards
creative and maverick thinking. The freedom to dream and create, DARPA's
mandate, is seductive and exceptional and, as such, so dangerous that we
have to ask ourselves whether war-making isn't now America's most advanced
product.
Have a hankering to check out some websites dealing with the birds and the
bees? Well, those are easy enough to find on your own. I'm talking about
the birds and the bees, DARPA-style! If you think you're wild enough to
see the Hummingbird Warrior, go to
http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/hum_war.html
Or do you think the weaponization of the wild kingdom is just plain batty?
If so, go to http://biomicro.sdstate.edu/pederses/insignia.html#batbomb
and scroll down to "Bat Bomb--Project X-Ray" where you can view of photo
of that bats' handiwork --a flaming army barracks-- sure to inspire a Fox
special, titled: "When Animals Attack the U.S. Military!"
Nicholas Turse is doctoral candidate at the Center for the History &
Ethics of Public Health in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia
University.
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Subject: [pjnews] Ex-Adviser Blasts Bush's Terror Response
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http://snipurl.com/597i
Ex-Adviser Blasts Bush's Terror Response
Monday March 22, 2004 4:46 AM
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza
Rice, ``looked skeptical'' when she was warned early in 2001 about the
threat from al-Qaida and appeared to never have heard of the terrorist
organization, according to Bush's former counterterrorism coordinator.
``Her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard
the term before,'' wrote Richard A. Clarke in a new book - ``Against All
Enemies'' - that is scathingly critical of Bush's response to the 2001
terror attacks against New York and Washington. The Associated Press
obtained a copy of Clarke's book before its Monday publication.
Clarke said Rice, who previously worked for Bush's father, appeared not to
recognize post-Cold War security issues and effectively demoted him within
the national security council. He said Rice has an unusually close
relationship with Bush, which ``should have given her some maneuver room,
some margin for shaping the agenda.''
Clarke, expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel investigating
the attacks, recounted his meeting with Rice as support for his contention
that the Bush administration failed to recognize the risk of an attack by
al-Qaida in the months leading to Sept. 11, 2001. Clarke retired in March
2003 after three decades in the U.S. government.
Clarke said within one week of the Bush inauguration he ``urgently''
sought a meeting of senior Cabinet leaders to discuss ``the imminent
al-Qaida threat.'' Months later, in April, Clarke met with deputy
secretaries. During that meeting, he wrote, the Defense Department's Paul
Wolfowitz told Clarke, ``You give bin Laden too much credit,'' and he said
Wolfowitz sought to steer the discussion to Iraq.
The White House responded that it kept Clarke on its staff after the
election because of its concerns over al-Qaida. ``He makes the charge that
we were not focused enough on efforts to root out terrorism,'' White House
spokesman Dan Bartlett said Sunday. ``That's just categorically false.''
Bartlett said Clarke's memo to Rice in January 2001 discussed
recommendations to improve security at U.S. sites overseas, not inside the
United States. ``Each one of these, while important, wouldn't have
impacted 9/11,'' Bartlett said.
Clarke harshly criticizes Bush personally in his book, saying his decision
to invade Iraq generated broad anti-American sentiment among Arabs. He
recounts that Bush asked him directly almost immediately after the Sept.
11 terror attacks to find whether Iraq was involved in the suicide
hijackings.
``Nothing America could have done would have provided al-Qaida and its new
generation of cloned groups a better recruitment device than our
unprovoked invasion of an oil-rich Arab country,'' Clarke wrote.
Clarke added: ``One shudders to think what additional errors (Bush) will
make in the next four years to strengthen the al-Qaida follow-ons:
attacking Syria or Iran, undermining the Saudi regime without a plan for a
successor state?''
[snip]
------------------
White House's response
http://snipurl.com/597g
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Subject: [pjnews] A Year After the Iraq War: Mistrust of America Pervades
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see also:
http://snipurl.com/597l
Peace Rallies Mark Iraq War Anniversary
... In Montpelier, Vt., hundreds of silent protesters placed a pair of
shoes on the Statehouse steps for each of the more than 560 U.S. soldiers
killed in the war. In Los Angeles, one of thousands of protesters held
photographs of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) with
the words, "forget Janet Jackson's — expose the real boobs." ...
----------------
The Pew Research Center
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=206
16 March 2004
A Year After Iraq War
Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists
Summary of Findings
A year after the war in Iraq, discontent with America and its policies has
intensified rather than diminished. Opinion of the United States in France
and Germany is at least as negative now as at the war¹s conclusion, and
British views are decidedly more critical. Perceptions of American
unilateralism remain widespread in European and Muslim nations, and the war
in Iraq has undermined America¹s credibility abroad. Doubts about the
motives behind the U.S.-led war on terrorism abound, and a growing
percentage of Europeans want foreign policy and security arrangements
independent from the United States. Across Europe, there is considerable
support for the European Union to become as powerful as the United States.
In the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, anger toward the United
States remains pervasive, although the level of hatred has eased somewhat
and support for the war on terrorism has inched up. Osama bin Laden,
however, is viewed favorably by large percentages in Pakistan (65%), Jordan
(55%) and Morocco (45%). Even in Turkey, where bin Laden is highly
unpopular, as many as 31% say that suicide attacks against Americans and
other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable. Majorities in all four Muslim
nations surveyed doubt the sincerity of the war on terrorism. Instead, most
say it is an effort to control Mideast oil and to dominate the world.
There has been little change in opinion about the war in Iraq except in
Great Britain, where support for the decision to go to war has plummeted
from 61% last May to 43% in the current survey. In contrast, 60% of
Americans continue to back the war. Among the coalition of the ³unwilling,²
large majorities in Germany, France and Russia still believe their countries
made the right decision in not taking part in the war. Moreover, there is
broad agreement in nearly all of the countries surveyed the U.S. being a
notable exception that the war in Iraq hurt, rather than helped, the war
on terrorism.
In the four predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, opposition to the war
remains nearly universal. Moreover, while large majorities in Western
European countries opposed to the war say Saddam Hussein¹s ouster will
improve the lot of the Iraqi people, those in Muslim countries are less
confident. In Jordan, no less than 70% of survey respondents think the
Iraqis will be worse off with Hussein gone.
This is the latest in a series of international surveys by the Pew Global
Attitudes Project. It was conducted from late February to early March in the
United States and eight other countries, with fieldwork under the direction
of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. The survey finds a
significant point of agreement in opinion on Iraq¹s future. Overwhelming
majorities in all countries surveyed say it will take longer than a year to
establish a stable government in Iraq. But there are deep differences about
whether the U.S. or the United Nations would do the best job of helping
Iraqis to form such a government. The U.N. is the clear choice of people in
Western Europe and Turkey; Americans are divided over this issue. However,
roughly half of Jordanians and a third of Moroccans volunteered that neither
the U.S. nor the U.N could do best in this regard.
Americans have a far different view of the war¹s impact on the war on
terrorism and the global standing of the U.S. than do people in the other
surveyed countries. Generally, Americans think the war helped in the fight
against terrorism, illustrated the power of the U.S. military, and revealed
America to be trustworthy and supportive of democracy around the world.
These notions are not shared elsewhere. Majorities in Germany, Turkey and
France and half of the British and Russians believe the conflict in Iraq
undermined the war on terrorism. At least half the respondents in the eight
other countries view the U.S. as less trustworthy as a consequence of the
war. For the most part, even U.S. military prowess is not seen in a better
light as a result of the war in Iraq.
A growing number in Western Europe also think that the United States is
overreacting to the threat of terrorism. Only in Great Britain and Russia do
large majorities believe that the U.S. is right to be so concerned about
terrorism. Many people in France (57%) and Germany (49%) have come to agree
with the widespread view in the Muslim countries surveyed that the America
is exaggerating the terrorist threat.
Nevertheless, support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism has increased
dramatically among Russians, despite their generally critical opinion of
U.S. policies. More than seven-in-ten Russians (73%) currently back the war
on terrorism, up from 51% last May. Since the end of the Iraq war, there
also have been gains in support for the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign in
Turkey (from 22% to 37%) and Morocco (9% to 28%). On the other hand, backing
for the war against terrorism has again slipped in France and Germany; only
about half of the public in each country favors the U.S.-led effort.
Publics in the surveyed countries other than the United States express
considerable skepticism of America¹s motives in its global struggle against
terrorism. Solid majorities in France and Germany believe the U.S. is
conducting the war on terrorism in order to control Mideast oil and dominate
the world. People in Muslim nations who doubt the sincerity of American
anti-terror efforts see a wider range of ulterior motives, including helping
Israel and targeting unfriendly Muslim governments and groups.
Large majorities in almost every country surveyed think that American and
British leaders lied when they claimed, prior to the Iraq war, that Saddam
Hussein¹s regime had weapons of mass destruction. On balance, people in the
United States and Great Britain disagree. Still, about three-in-ten in the
U.S. (31%) and four-in-ten in Great Britain (41%) say leaders of the two
countries lied to provide a rationale for the war.
In that regard, opinions of both President Bush and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair are negative. Large majorities in every country, except for the
U.S., hold an unfavorable opinion of Bush. Blair is rated favorably only by
a narrow majority in Great Britain but fully three-quarters of Americans. In
contrast, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is viewed positively in nearly
all nine countries surveyed, with Jordan and Morocco as prominent
exceptions.
The United Nations itself engenders varied reactions around the world. Just
55% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the world body. This is the
lowest rating the U.N. has achieved in 14 years of Pew Research Center
surveys. People in Russia and the Western European countries have a
considerably more favorable view of the U.N. But large majorities in Jordan
and Morocco hold negative views of both the U.N. and the man who leads it.
Majorities in the Western European countries surveyed believe their own
government should obtain U.N. approval before dealing with an international
threat. That idea is much more problematic for Americans, and on this issue
Russians and people in Muslim countries are much closer to Americans than
they are to Western Europeans.
Despite that small piece of common ground, however, there is still
considerable hostility toward the U.S. in the Muslim countries surveyed.
Substantial numbers in each of these countries has a negative view of the
U.S. Overwhelming majorities in Jordan and Morocco believe suicide attacks
against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable. As a point
of comparison, slightly more people in those two countries say the same
about Palestinian suicide attacks against Israelis.
About half of Pakistanis also say suicide attacks on Americans in Iraq and
against Israelis in the Palestinian conflict are justifiable.
Fewer respondents in Turkey agree, but slightly more Turks view suicide
attacks on Americans in Iraq as justifiable as say the same about
Palestinian attacks on Israelis (31% vs. 24%).
Other Findings
€ Despite concerns about rising anti-Semitism in Europe, there are no
indications that anti-Jewish sentiment has increased over the past decade.
Favorable ratings of Jews are actually higher now in France, Germany and
Russia than they were in 1991. Nonetheless, Jews are better liked in the
U.S. than in Germany and Russia. As is the case with Americans, Europeans
hold much more negative views of Muslims than of Jews.
€ The survey finds, however, that Christians get much lower ratings in
predominantly Muslim countries than do Muslims in mostly Christian
countries. Majorities in Morocco (73%), Pakistan (62%) and Turkey (52%)
express negative views of Christians.
€ The adage that people in other nations may dislike America, but
nonetheless want to move there is borne out in Russia, Turkey and Morocco.
Roughly half of the respondents in those three countries say people who have
moved to the U.S. have a better life.
€ But one of the largest gaps between Americans and Europeans concerns
the question of whether people who move to the U.S. have a better life.
Americans overwhelmingly believe this to be the case 88% say people who
move to the U.S. from other countries have a better life. By contrast, just
14% of Germans, 24% of French and 41% of British think that people who have
moved to the U.S. from their countries have a better life.
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
1150 18th Street, NW Suite 975 Washington, DC 20036
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Subject: [pjnews] Ask Bush to stand up to a real debate
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from http://www.moveon.org
Dear friend,
Several weeks ago, Tom Cole, a Republican Congressman in Oklahoma spoke to
supporters about the upcoming election. "If George Bush loses the
election, Osama bin Laden wins the election," he told them. Later, he said
that a vote against Bush was like a vote for Adolf Hitler.
These hateful and outrageous remarks - which neither the RNC nor the
Bush/Cheney campaign will repudiate -- are representative of the negative
campaign being rolled out against John Kerry. Bush is now airing the first
negative ads of the season, which according to nonpartisan monitors
seriously misled viewers about Kerry's record.
In response, Senator Kerry is taking the high road. He's asked President
Bush to engage in a series of monthly debates on the country's future --
debates on the real substance of the issues that face us. It's a simple
proposal that could elevate the campaign and truly educate the country
about the positions and records of each candidate. But President Bush's
campaign brushed off the suggestion with a snide remark.
Today, MoveOn members and I are asking President Bush to stand up and face
a real debate. You can join our petition asking President Bush to debate
Kerry on the future of our country at: http://snipurl.com/597o
We'll send your comment on to the Bush/Cheney campaign and highlight this
issue in the media.
The negative tenor of the campaign so far even has Republicans worried.
Senator John McCain reprimanded the President for the negative campaign,
saying, "Already, I'm hearing from people here that are saying, 'Look, I'm
not even going to vote if this is the way the campaign's going to be
conducted.'"
Here's a summary of some of the attacks that have unfolded just in the
first two weeks.
* In the first negative ad of the general election, President Bush claimed
that Kerry would raise taxes by $900 billion. The figure turned out to be
entirely made up -- John Kerry promised to lower taxes on working
families, not raise them.
* President Bush personally accused Kerry of attempting to "gut" the
intelligence budget in a "deeply irresponsible" move: Yet, as independent
media monitor factcheck.org pointed out, "the proposal Bush criticized
would have amounted to a reduction of roughly 1%. And senior congressional
Republicans supported a cut two-thirds as large at the time."
* Vice President Cheney told reporters that he believed Kerry does not
have "an impressive record for someone who aspires to be commander in
chief in this time of testing for our country."
By any standard, the campaign is already one of the most negative in
political history. But by engaging in a forward-looking debate, President
Bush could turn things around. It's much easier to make misleading claims
in TV ads than to someone's face, and both Kerry and Bush would have hours
-- not seconds -- to make their case to the public.
Join us in asking President Bush to take the high road now at:
http://snipurl.com/597o
Sincerely,
--Adam, Carrie, Eli, James, Joan, Laura, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn PAC Team
March 22nd, 2004
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush Cashing in on 9/11
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http://alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=18115
Cashing in on Tragedy
David J. Sirota and Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, The Progress Report
March 12, 2004
President Bush Thursday used a "brief visit" to a 9/11 memorial to force
taxpayers to pick up the tab for a political fundraising trip in which he
raked in more than $1.6 million for his campaign. The White House has
repeatedly used this tactic before, even using a brief visit to Martin
Luther King's grave as a pretext to get taxpayers to foot the bill for a
Georgia fundraiser. But it has never been used before with 9/11, as the
President himself had previously declared that tragic day off limits from
politics. And as the Washington Post notes, the proximity between politics
and Sept. 11 "was unmistakable" yesterday. Unfortunately, yesterday was
only the latest chapter in the White House's deliberate attempt to
politicize 9/11. Well before the debris from Ground Zero was cleared, the
White House at every turn began distracting the public from its pre-9/11
security failures, trying to reap political advantage from the terrorist
attacks themselves. Here is a timeline of the politicization of 9/11, and
questions that are still unanswered:
While the White House now says Bush "has every right" to politicize 9/11
and the War on Terror, it was President Bush and Vice President Cheney who
reassured Congress after 9/11 that national security would never be used
for political purposes. On 1/23/02, President Bush said, " I have no
ambition whatsoever to use [national security] as a political issue." On
5/17/02, Vice President Cheney even said legitimate questions about the
White House's failure to better defend America before 9/11 were
"thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a
time of war." On 3/4/03, Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member
Richard Shelby (R-AL) was asked if his party should use the war for
political gain and responded, "Absolutely not. And as a Republican, I
would deplore such tactics. I think that what we've got to do in a
bipartisan way, as Americans, is win this war."
Less than 19 weeks after the 9/11 attacks, top White House adviser Karl
Rove gave a speech on 1/19/02 urging fellow conservatives to "go to the
country" on issues surrounding the War on Terror, an invitation to
politicize national security in an election year, as he claimed Americans
trust conservatives to do a better job of "protecting America." The NYT
noted that the White House had effectively "rolled out of a strategy
branding anyone who questions the administration as 'giving aid and
comfort to our enemies,'" as Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) said.
In March 2002, AP reported that in speeches, President Bush began "making
the defense budget a patriotic issue." The story noted that "despite the
lack of concerted opposition," Bush was seeking partisan political gain
from the traditionally bipartisan issue of defense spending.
On 5/15/02, CNN reported the White House allowed political campaign
committees to use an official, taxpayer-funded photograph of President
Bush taken on September 11 to be sold to fat cats at political
fundraisers. The photograph, paid for with government money, "shows Bush
aboard Air Force One, talking to Vice President Dick Cheney hours after
the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." The picture was
being offered "to donors who contribute at least $150 and attend a
fund-raising dinner with Bush and the first lady."
The Associated Press reported on 6/13/02 that the White House began urging
conservatives to push "messages highlighting the war on terrorism"
according to a presentation formulated by top Presidential advisers in the
White House. On 9/26/02, the President acted on this, claiming Senate
opponents were "more interested in special interests in Washington and not
interested in the security of the American people." When senators asked
for an apology, the head of Bush's legislative team said there will be no
apology because "there has been no attempt on [Bush's] part to politicize
the war."
On 10/11/02, AP reported that an advertisement was aired against
triple-amputee Vietnam war hero Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) "that showed
pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and implied the Democratic
incumbent is soft on homeland security." Instead of invoking his pledge
not to use 9/11 and the War on Terrorism "as a political issue," the
President Bush effectively condoned the tactic by repeatedly making
campaign appearances on behalf of Saxby Chambliss, who was airing the ad.
Even now, the White House has refused to discredit the statement by Rep.
Tom Cole (R-OK) that opposing the Bush Administration means "Osama bin
Laden wins."
The New York Times reported that the President has scheduled the latest
Republican National Convention in history specifically to coincide with
official ceremonies marking the three-year anniversary of 9/11. The
President is set to "shuttle between political events at Madison Square
Garden and memorial services at Ground Zero." Will taxpayers have to pick
up the enormous cost of the President's travel, security and entourage at
his political nominating convention?
The White House has continued to politicize 9/11 despite the pleas of
victims' families and firefighters. Harold Schaitberger, president of the
International Association of Fire Fighters, said that while the White
House has "shortchanged fire fighters by not providing adequate
resources," the President is "calling on the biggest disaster in our
country's history, and indeed in the history of the fire service, to win
sympathy." Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the twin towers, said
the President's insistence on politicizing the 9/11 attacks "is a slap in
the face of the murders of 3,000 people. It is unconscionable."
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Subject: [pjnews] Urgent: Spread 9/11 and Iraq Revelations
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http://www.moveon.org
As you may have heard, Richard Clarke, a former counter-terrorism advisor
to Bush, and a registered Republican who has worked in every
administration since Reagan, has exposed Bush's mishandling of 9/11 and
the war on Iraq (1). In his book "Against All Enemies," Clarke does an
amazing job of presenting the facts and connecting the dots. Instead of
refuting Clarke's claims, the Bush Administration has launched a campaign
of character assassination, hoping that the story will just go away. (2)
We're committed to stopping that from happening by making sure that the
American public hears Clarke's extraordinary comments. If we can raise
$300,000 in the next few days, we can run a hard-hitting ad nationally
that highlights his message. You can see a rough story board of the ad and
donate to get it on the air at: https://www.moveonpac.org/clarkead.html
When the World Trade Center was hit on the morning of 9/11, National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice dubbed Richard Clarke, the
administration's top counter-terrorism official, "crisis manager." (3) As
the White House, which was thought to be the next target, was evacuated,
Clarke heroically stayed on, coordinating the government's response from
the Situation Room in the West Wing.(4)
Clarke is viewed by colleagues as a hawk, a "true believer" who doesn't
play partisan politics.(5) So the shocking facts he revealed about the
Bush administration's approach to terrorism before 9/11 and its response
after must be taken seriously. On Sunday, Clarke told reporters that the
President and Defense Secretary downgraded counter-terrorism and ignored
repeated warnings about an al Qaeda attack prior to 9/11. And, perhaps
even more explosive, Clarke revealed that President Bush and senior
administration officials wanted to bomb Iraq after 9/11 even though they
knew that it had no connection to al Qaeda, and that al Qaeda was
responsible for the attacks.(6)
Already, the White House spin machine is in overdrive. Since they can't
rebut Clarke's facts -- which independent witnesses have confirmed (7) --
they're trying to paint him as an angry partisan, even though he's a
Republican. But Clarke's words remain a searing indictment of the Bush
Administration's campaign against terrorism.
In his own words, here are some of Clarke's revelations:
Clarke repeatedly warned the Bush Administration about attacks from al
Qaeda, starting in the first days of Bush's term. "But on January 24th,
2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently --
underlined urgently -- a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending
al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo-- wasn't acted on." (8) According to
another Bush administration security official, Clarke "was the guy pushing
hardest, saying again and again that something big was going to happen,
including possibly here in the U.S." The official added that Clarke was
likely sidelined because he had served in the previous (Clinton)
administration. (9)
In face-to-face meetings, CIA Director George Tenet warned President Bush
repeatedly in the months before 9/11 that an attack was coming. According
to Clarke, Tenet told the President that "A major al-Qaeda attack is going
to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks
and months ahead."(10)
On September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld pushed to bomb Iraq even though
they knew that al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. "Rumsfeld was saying that we
needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda
is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there
aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets
in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places,
but Iraq had nothing to do with it.'"(11)
Also on September 12, 2001, President Bush personally pushed Clarke to
find evidence that Iraq was behind the attacks. From the New York Times:
"'I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything,'
Mr. Clarke writes that Mr. Bush told him. 'See if Saddam did this. See if
he's linked in any way.' When Mr. Clarke protested that the culprit was Al
Qaeda, not Iraq, Mr. Bush testily ordered him, he writes, to 'look into
Iraq, Saddam,' and then left the room." (12)
The Bush Administration knew from the beginning that there was no
connection between Iraq and 9/11, but created the misperception in order
to push their policy goals. "[Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush] did know better.
They did know better. They did know better. We told them, the CIA told
them, the FBI told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is
that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were
avenging September 11th, when Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th.
I think for a commander-in-chief and a vice president to allow that to
happen is unconscionable."(13)
The war on Iraq has increased the danger of terrorism. In his book, he
writes that shifting from al Qaeda to Iraq "launched an unnecessary and
costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic
terrorist movement worldwide."(14)
It's been well reported that President Bush intends to run on his record
as a wartime President. Clarke's revelations show how deeply flawed that
record is. But if we don't act fast, the public may not have a chance to
evaluate the facts for themselves -- the story could go away quickly. With
an ad, we can take Clarke's comments directly to the public. Can you help?
Check out the script and donate whatever you can to get this story out
there at:
https://www.moveonpac.org/clarkead.html
(By the way, if we're unable to use your contribution for the ad you
specify, either because of oversubscription or for another unforeseen
reason, it is our policy to use your contribution for other advertising,
public relations, and advocacy activities.)
Richard Clarke had an intimate view -- perhaps the best view -- of how the
Bush Administration responded to terrorism. So we should all listen
carefully when he says:
"Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for
re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about
terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we
could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know. . . I
think the way he has responded to al-Qaeda, both before 9/11 by doing
nothing, and by what he's done after 9/11 has made us less safe,
absolutely. I think he's done a terrible job on the war against
terrorism."(15)
Together, we can make sure every American knows what President Bush's true
record on terrorism really is.
Sincerely,
--Adam, Carrie, Eli, James, Joan, Laura, Wes, and Zack
The MoveOn PAC Team
March 24th, 2004
P.S. Salon has recently published a new interview with Clarke. You can
read it at:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/24/clarke_moveon/
P.P.S. As the Administration strikes back, our friends at the Center for
American Progress have put together an excellent rebuttal to their claims.
Here's an example:
CLAIM #1: "Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the
administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the
wrong direction and he chose not to." -- National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked "urgent"
asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending Al Qaeda
attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says "principals did not
need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred
until one week before 9/11. -- White House Press Release, 3/21/04
For the whole document, go to:
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=39828
Footnotes:
1. "Dissent from within on Iraq war," Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/24/04
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/8260216.htm?1c (Registration
required)
2. "Bush Aides Blast Ex-Terror Chief," CBS News, 3/22/04
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/23/terror/main608107.shtml
3. "The book on Richard Clarke," Washington Post, 3/23/04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16192-2004Mar22.html
(Registration required)
4. "Clarke's Take On Terror," CBS, 3/21/04
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml
5. See 3, above.
6. "60 Minutes" interview; see 4, above.
7. "Ex-Bush Aide Sets Off Debate as 9/11 Hearing Opens," New York Times,
3/23/04
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/politics/23CLAR.html?hp (Registration
required)
8. "60 Minutes" interview; see 4, above.
9. See 7, above.
10. "60 Minutes" interview; see 4, above.
11. "Sept. 11: Before And After," CBS News, 3/20/04
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/20/60minutes/main607622.shtml
12. "Excerpts from 'Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror'
by Richard A. Clarke," posted on NYTimes.com, 3/23/04
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/politics/23CWOR.html (Registration
required)
13. "60 Minutes" interview; see 4, above.
14. "Memoir Criticizes Bush 9/11 Response," Washington Post, 3/22/04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13607-2004Mar21.html
(Registration required)
15. "60 Minutes" interview; see 4, above.
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush Character Assassination of Clarke a Disservice to
Nation
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Win Without War Calls Bush Character Assassination of Clarke a Disservice
to Nation
CLARKE REINFORCES OTHER EX-INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS WHO SAY BUSH MAKES
AMERICA LESS SAFE BY ATTACKING WRONG ENEMY
Win Without War National Director Tom Andrews blasted President Bush today
for his campaign's strategy of personal attack on former White House
counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke. Clarke argues in his new book that
Bush dropped the ball in the fight against Al Qaeda in a misguided effort
to make a case for invading Iraq.
"I can understand the President's desire to change the subject. For two
years former US intelligence officials and counter-terrorism experts have
argued two points: that President Bush misled the nation by falsely
linking 9/11 with Saddam Hussein; and that he has made Americans less safe
by invading Iraq thereby fueling terrorism, alienating key allies, and
diverting resources from the real enemy, Al Qaeda," said Andrews.
"We don't know why the President decided to mislead Americans about who
perpetrated the World Trade Center attack. He knew then that it was Al
Qaeda and not Saddam Hussein. But he chose to invade Iraq rather than
concentrate on the imminent threat to our nation. Now's the time to admit
error and change course so that Americans can be safer. Politics should
come second to that," Andrews concluded.
Long before Mr. Clarke came forward, officials and experts have pointed
out that Bush Administration policy has neglected the strong focus on Al
Qaeda in favor of a misguided effort in Iraq. The following quotations
cover a sampling of experts, reports and officials who have made this
point:
Sources:
Rand Beers (Special Assistant to the President for Combating Terrorism for
President George W. Bush), quoted by Laura Blumenfield, "Former Aide Takes
Aim on War on Terror," Washington Post, June 16, 2003.
"The focus on Iraq has robbed domestic security of manpower, brainpower
and money, he [Beers] said. The Iraq war created fissures in the United
States' counterterrorism alliances, he said, and could breed a new
generation of al Qaeda recruits."
~~~~
International Institute for Strategic Studies. Strategic Survey
2002/2003, An Evaluation and Forecast of World Affairs, London, IISS,
2003, pp. 9,10.
Notwithstanding al Qaeda's loss of its infrastructure in Afghanistan and
the killing or capture of perhaps one-third of its leadership, al Qaeda is
"now reconstituted and doing business in a somewhat different manner, but
more insidious and just as dangerous, as in its pre-September incarnation.
More insidious because the West's 'counter-terrorism effort' perversely
impelled an already highly decentralized and elusive transnational
terrorist network to become even harder to identify and neutralize."
[The war also] "inflamed radical passions among Muslims and thus increased
al Qaeda's recruiting power and morale and, at least marginally, its
operating capability."
~~~~
Sen. Bob Graham, (former Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee)
quoted by Todd S. Purdum, "An Accuser's Insider Status Puts the White
House on the Defensive," Washington Post, March 23, 2004.
"The facts are that within six months of the first bombs falling on
Afghanistan, this administration was diverting military and intelligence
resources to its planned war in Iraq, which allowed Al Qaeda to
regenerate. As the people of Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and most
recently, Spain, have learned painfully well, this president failed to
execute the real war on terrorism."
~~~~
Paul O'Neill (former Treasury Secretary in the Bush administration),
quoted by Ron Suskind, in The Price of Loyalty: George Bush, the White
House and the Education of Paul O'Neill, Simon and Schuster, 2004.
"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a
bad person and that he needed to go. [From 10 days after the
inauguration] we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how
we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country, and, if we did
that, it would solve everything. It was about finding a way to do it. That
was the tone of it. The President saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do
this.'"
~~~~
Jeffrey Record (Professor at the US Air Force Air War College and former
senior staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee), "Bounding the
Global War on Terrorism," Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War
College, December, 2003, p. 19.
"In conflating Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, the
administration unnecessarily expanded the global war on terrorism by
launching a preventive war against a state that was not at war with the
United States and that posed no direct or imminent threat to the United
States at the expense of continued attention and effort to protect the
United States from a terrorist organization with which the United States
war at war."
~~~~
Vincent Cannistraro, (Former CIA Director of counter-terrorism operations
and analysis), Quoted in John Wolcott, "Some in Administration Uneasy Over
Bush Speech," Philadelphia Inquirer, September 19, 2003.
"There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to
international terrorism before the war. Now we've created the conditions
that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans."
~~~~
Jessica Stern, (Former National Security Council staff and expert on
terrorism at Harvard University), "How America Created a Terrorist Haven,"
New York Times, August 20, 2003.
[The bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq] was "the latest evidence that
America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it
into one." [It has created] "precisely the situation the administration
has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to
control its borders or provide for its citizens' rudimentary needs."
~~~~
Kenneth Pollack (former Senior staff, National Security Council; author of
The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq), in an interview with
Frontline, The War Behind Closed Doors, PBS, January 4, 2003.
"From the first moments after Sept. 11, there was a group of people, both
inside the administration and out, who believed that the war on terrorism
should target Iraq. In fact, should target Iraq first. In many cases,
they were simply reactively convinced that Saddam Hussein had to be behind
Sept. 11, because they made Saddam Hussein out to be the greatest threat
to the United States, and the source of all evil, if not in the world,
then certainly in the Middle East. And they were pushing very early on to
make Iraq the first stop in the war on terrorism."
~~~~
Bob Woodward, Bush at War, Simon and Schuster, 2003
"[On September 12] Rumsfeld raised the question of Iraq. Why shouldn't we
go against Iraq, not just al Qaeda? He asked. Rumsfeld was speaking not
only for himself when he raised the question. His deputy, Paul D.
Wolfowitz, was committed to a policy that would make Iraq a principal
target of the first round in the war on terrorism."
~~~~
Dana Milbank, FBI Budget Squeezed after 9/11, Washington Post, March 22,
2004.
"In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House
cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds
by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows."
"The document, dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the FBI requested $1.5
billion in additional funds to enhance its counterterrorism efforts with
the creation of 2,024 positions. But the White House Office of Management
and Budget cut that request to $531 million. Attorney General John D.
Ashcroft, working within the White House limits, cut the FBI's request for
items such as computer networking and foreign language intercepts by half,
cut a cyber-security request by three quarters and eliminated entirely a
request for "collaborative capabilities….The papers show that Ashcroft
ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor
did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding
before and immediately after the attacks."
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Subject: [pjnews] 3/25 Pakistan Documentary
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Produced by a friend of a friend...
Tune In:
THU MARCH 25TH @ 9 P.M. PBS FRONTLINE WORLD "ON RAZOR'S EDGE"
REPORTER: Sharmeen Obaid from Pakistan
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/
The voices of opposition and dissent are closing in on General Pervez
Musharraf, the embattled president of Pakistan. He rescued Pakistan from
the brink of political collapse, only to find himself threatened by a
rising tide of opposition from both Islamic fundamentalist groups and
liberal political parties, who view his military rule as a betrayal of the
nation. While fending off these dissenting factions, Musharraf also must
struggle to balance a hefty load of explosive issues. His historic peace
accord with India has averted the threat of nuclear war, but it ignited
the ire of radical Pakistani groups who lay claim to Kashmir. He is
cooperating with the international community to dismantle the nuclear
weapons black market, but having to confront emerging revelations about
Pakistan's central role in the growing nuclear scandal. PBS
FRONTLINE/World reporter and producer Sharmeen Obaid journeyed across her
native Pakistan in early 2004, talking with people on the ground about the
president's predicament. Her story illuminates the complexities and
contradictions playing out inside Pakistan and the razor's edge on which
its president is now walking....
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Subject: [pjnews] Peering into the Abyss
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Peering into the Abyss
March 23, 2004
by William J. Thomson, Ph.D.
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
It is impossible to imagine a more provocative act than yesterday’s
assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin by Ariel Sharon’s government.
The response to this action is absolutely predictable and well understood by
Mr. Sharon, and it is totally consistent with his policies and actions
over the past several decades.
I believe that this brutal killing is the major escalation that will
ultimately lead to an attempt by Mr. Sharon to kill or forcibly expel the
majority of Palestinians from historic Palestine.
Many military campaigns begin with a feint, and clearly Mr. Sharon’s
February statement to unilaterally evacuate Gaza may be seen in that
light. To raise a glimmer of cautious hope among a humiliated and
repressed Palestinian population, and then to crush it by brutally
assassinating the single person who many Palestinians, especially those in
Gaza, recognize as THE symbol of their struggle, virtually guarantees the
violent Palestinian response that Mr. Sharon will use as the justification
for ethnic cleansing.
It did not have to be thus. Repeated overtures by the Arab League, leading
Palestinians and even Sheik Yassin himself offered significant concessions
to Israel as a basis for a peaceful and just resolution to this struggle.
Many years ago I received assurances from significant figures in HAMAS
that a resolution of the conflict similar to that proposed a year ago by
the Arab
League would lead to settlement. Yet Mr. Sharon and a majority of the
Israeli public consistently dismissed these overtures in the most derisive
terms.
Faced with ageing and charges of political corruption, but most importantly
recognizing the demographic reality of a majority Palestinian population in
Israel/Palestine within a few years, Mr. Sharon has chosen to fight the
battle now, on his terms, rather than allow even the possibility of a
negotiated settlement. To not recognize Mr. Sharon’s genocidal plan, and
his ruthless repression of those who have toiled with nonviolence to
provide an alternative vision, is simply pathological denial.
And what of America in this process? It is naive in the extreme to assume
that we will emerge unscathed from this coming conflict, and I hold the
American political and Jewish establishment to be primarily responsible
for any actions directed at American citizens. I know that I will be
labeled anti-Semitic for this statement (as have all of us who have in
some way placed our bodies on the line to help resolve this conflict), but
there comes a time when it is crucial to speak truth to power. Without
the unstinting support of the American Jewish establishment and its
stranglehold on the American political process in all matters involving
Israel, the decades-old occupation of Palestine and the humiliation of its
people could not have occurred. Let me be perfectly clear--the efforts of
AIPAC and its supporting American Jewish establishment (including those
who could, but have neglected, to thwart this process), and the craven
thirst for power of American political figures who allow themselves to be
manipulated by this body, will ultimately be held accountable for their
actions, with consequences to horrible to contemplate.
Can anything be done at this point to prevent this catastrophe? Can
Palestinians restrain their humiliated compatriots who are calling for
violent revenge? Can moderate Israelis and American Jews find the
strength to confront their own self-destructive establishment? Can
American politicians and Mr. Bush summon sufficient courage and foresight
to deal with the issue? And can American citizens do anything other than
sit idly by?
Sadly, I think not. The bullet has been fired--can it yet be deflected?
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Subject: [pjnews] Electronic Voting: Patriot Dies - Diebold Lives
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http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/853
Columbus Free Press
March 17, 2004
Death of a patriot: No more
by Bob Fitrakis, Editor
The subject line on yesterday’s email read: “Another mysterious accident
solves a Bush problem. Athan Gibbs dead, Diebold lives.” The attached news
story (http://www.tennessean.com/obits/archives/04/03/48330576.shtml)
briefly described the untimely Friday, March 12th death of perhaps
America’s most influential advocate of a verified voting paper trail in
the era of touch screen computer voting. Gibbs, an accountant for more
than 30 years and the inventor of the TruVote system, died when his
vehicle collided with an 18-wheeled truck which rolled his Chevy Blazer
several times and forced it over the highway retaining wall where it came
to rest on its roof.
Coincidence theorists will simply dismiss the death of Gibbs as a tragic
accident – the same conclusion these coincidence theorists came to when
anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood died in November 1974 when her car
struck a concrete embankment en route to a meeting with New York Times
reporter David Burnham. Prominent independent investigators concluded that
Silkwood’s car was hit from behind and forced off the road. Silkwood was
reportedly carrying documents that would expose illegal activities at the
Kerr-McGee nuclear fuel plant. The FBI report found that she fell asleep
at the wheel after overdosing on Quaaludes and that there never were any
such files. A journalist secretly employed by the FBI, and a veteran of
the Bureau’s COINTELPRO operation against political activists, provided
testimony for the FBI report.
Gibbs’ death bears heightened scrutiny because of the way he lived his
life after the 2000 Florida election debacle. I interviewed Athan Gibbs in
January of this year. “I’ve been an accountant, an auditor, for more than
thirty years. Electronic voting machines that don’t supply a paper trail
go against every principle of accounting and auditing that’s being taught
in American business schools,” he insisted.
“These machines are set up to provide paper trails. No business in America
would buy a machine that didn’t provide a paper trail to audit and verify
its transaction. Now, they want the people to purchase machines that you
can’t audit? It’s absurd.”
Gibbs was in Columbus, Ohio proudly displaying his TruVote machine that
offered a “VVPAT, that’s a voter verified paper audit trail” he noted.
Gibbs also suggested that I look into the “people behind the other
machines.” He offered that “Diebold and ES&S are real interesting and all
Republicans. If you’re an investigative reporter go ahead and investigate.
You’ll find some interesting material.”
Gibbs’ TruVote machine is a marvel. After voters touch the screen, a paper
ballot prints out under plexiglass and once the voter compares it to his
actual vote and approves it, the ballot drops into a lockbox and is issued
a numbered receipt. The voter’s receipt allows the track his particular
vote to make sure that it was transferred from the polling place to the
election tabulation center.
My encounter with Gibbs led to a cover story in the Columbus Free Press
March-April issue, entitled, “Diebold, electronic voting and the vast
right-wing conspiracy.” The thesis I advanced in the Free Press article
(www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2004/834) is that some of the same
right-wing individuals who backed the CIA’s covert actions and
overthrowing of democratic elections in the Third World in the 1980s are
now involved in privatized touch screen voting. Additionally I co-wrote an
article with Harvey Wasserman that was posted at MotherJones.com
(www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html) on March 5,
2004. Both articles outlined ties between far right elements of the
Republican Party and Diebold and ES&S, which count the majority of the
nation’s electronic votes.
As I wrote in the Free Press article, “Proponents of a paper trail were
emboldened when Athan Gibbs, President and CEO of TruVote International,
demonstrated a voting machine at a vendor’s fair in Columbus that provides
two separate voting receipts.”
In an interview on WVKO radio, Gibbs calmly and methodically explained the
dangers of “black box” touch screen voting. “It absolutely makes no sense
to buy electronic voting machines that can’t produce a paper trail.
Inevitably, computers mess up. How are you going to have a recount, or
correct malfunctions without a paper trail?
Now, the man asking the obvious question, and demonstrating an obvious
tangible solution is dead in another tragic accident, a week after both
articles were in circulation.
When I called TruVote International to verify Gibbs’ death, I reached
Chief Financial Officer Adrenne Brandon who assured me “We’re going on in
his memory. We’re going to make this happen.”
Every American concerned with democracy should pledge to make this happen.
To beat back the rush for state governments to purchase privatized,
partisan and unreliable electronic voting machines without verified paper
trails.
Gibbs’ last words to me were “How do you explain what happened to Senator
Max Cleland in Georgia. How do you explain that? The Maryland study and
the Johns Hopkins scientists have warned us against ‘blind faith voting.’
These systems can be hacked into. They found patches in Georgia and the
people servicing the machine had entered the machines during the voting
process. How can we the people accept this? No more blind faith voting.”
Dr. Bob Fitrakis is Senior Editor of The Free Press
(http://freepress.org), a political science professor, and author of
numerous articles and books.
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush Downgraded Bin Laden as a Threat After Taking Office
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see also:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1175790,00.html
Guardian Interview: Richard Clarke
--------------
http://www.moveon.org
BUSH DOWNGRADED BIN LADEN AS A THREAT, AFTER TAKING OFFICE
Prior to 9/11, Bush Administration Said It Was "A Mistake" to Focus on Al
Qaeda Leader
Report Corroborates Richard Clarke's Testimony This Week
On April 30, 2001, CNN reported that when the new Bush Administration
released the government's annual terrorism report, it made a serious
change: "There was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind
Osama bin Laden," as there had been in previous years.
When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush
State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in
focusing so much energy on bin Laden."
The report directly contradicts the White House's continuing assertion
that fighting terrorism was its "top priority" before September 11th.
The move to downgrade the fight against Al Qaeda before 9/11, despite
repeated warnings that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent, is consistent with
other Administration behavior. Specifically, the Associated Press reported
in 2002 that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally
nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, yet
terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions."
Meanwhile, Newsweek reported that internal government documents show that,
before 9/11, the Bush Administration moved to "de-emphasize"
counterterrorism. When "FBI officials sought to add hundreds more
counterintelligence agents" to deal with the problem, "they got shot down"
by the White House, the magazine said.
For full citations and links to the cited documents, visit:
http://www.misleader.org.
--------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22218-2004Mar24.html
Clarke Stays Cool as Partisanship Heats Up
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 25, 2004; Page A01
The Sept. 11 commission shed its bipartisan spirit and turned a Senate
hearing room into a courtroom yesterday for the testimony of Richard A.
Clarke, the White House counterterrorism chief-turned-Bush administration
whistle-blower.
Democrats, prosecuting President Bush for ignoring terrorism before the
2001 attacks, used the newly famous Clarke as their star witness.
Republican commission members -- armed with fresh information on Clarke
released by the White House yesterday through Fox News -- played defense
lawyers determined to discredit the witness as a closet Democrat.
"You've got a real credibility problem," Republican commissioner John F.
Lehman told Clarke, the author of a new book eviscerating Bush's terrorism
policies. "And because of my real genuine long-term admiration for you,"
he continued, "I hope you'll resolve that credibility problem, because I'd
hate to see you become totally shoved to one side during a presidential
campaign as an active partisan selling a book."
Democratic commissioner Bob Kerrey sought to build the witness's
credibility and objected to the Fox News report one Republican
commissioner was using to undermine Clarke. "Well, Mr. Clarke, let me say
at the beginning that everything that you've said today and done has not
damaged my view of your integrity," the former Nebraska senator declared.
There was good reason for the tension. If the critique presented by
Clarke, who left the Bush White House after two years, is to be accepted,
a key rationale for Bush's reelection has been lost. In Clarke's view, the
Bush administration ignored his pleas to make terrorism a high priority
before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, reacted inadequately to the attacks
and then strengthened terrorists by persistently pursuing war in Iraq.
Bush aides are not about to let that version stand.
Shortly before the hearing, the White House violated its long-standing
rules by authorizing Fox News to air remarks favorable to Bush that Clarke
had made anonymously at an administration briefing in 2002. The White
House press secretary read passages from the 2002 remarks at his televised
briefing, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who has declined
to give public testimony to the commission, called reporters into her
office to highlight the discrepancy. "There are two very different stories
here," she said. "These stories can't be reconciled."
Back at the hearing, former Illinois governor James R. Thompson, a
Republican member of the commission, took up the cause, waving the Fox
News transcript with one hand and Clarke's critical book in the other.
"Which is true?" Thompson demanded, folding his arms and glowering down at
the witness.
Clarke, appearing unfazed by the apparent contradiction between his
current criticism and previous praise, spoke to Thompson as if addressing
a slow student.
"I was asked to highlight the positive aspects of what the administration
had done, and to minimize the negative aspects of what the administration
had done," he explained. "I've done it for several presidents."
With each effort by Thompson to highlight Clarke's inconsistency -- "the
policy on Uzbekistan, was it changed?" -- Clarke tutored the commissioner
about the obligations of a White House aide. Thompson, who had far
exceeded his allotted time, frowned contemptuously. "I think a lot of
things beyond the tenor and the tone bother me about this," he said.
During a second round of questioning, Thompson returned to the subject,
questioning Clarke's "standard of candor and morality."
"I don't think it's a question of morality at all; I think it's a question
of politics," Clarke snapped.
Thompson had to wait for Sept. 11, 2001, victims' relatives in the gallery
to stop applauding before he pleaded ignorance of the ways of Washington.
"I'm from the Midwest, so I think I'll leave it there," he said. Moments
later, Thompson left the hearing room and did not return.
It was a masterful bit of showmanship by the former bureaucrat who became
a household name in the past week with his charges about Bush. Though more
prominent personalities testified in the commission's two-day public
hearings, the longtime foreign policy bureaucrat stole the show.
With two dozen cameras recording his every twitch, Clarke disarmed the
crowd by starting with an apology to those who lost loved ones on Sept.
11, 2001. "Your government failed you," he said. "Those entrusted with
protecting you failed you. And I failed you."
Democrats teed up easy questions for him. Commissioner Timothy J. Roemer
got Clarke, who served in four administrations, to say that there was "no
higher" priority than terrorism under President Bill Clinton, but the Bush
administration "either didn't believe me that there was an urgent problem
or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem."
Kerrey did his part to make Clarke a hero. "I feel badly," he told the
witness, "because I presume that you are at the moment receiving terrible
phone messages and e-mail messages."
Democrat Jamie S. Gorelick continued the praise. After one Clarke
pronouncement, she replied: "Well, that's a very sobering statement,
particularly from someone whose reputation is as aggressive as your
reputation is."
Republican commissioners labored to change that reputation. Fred F.
Fielding implied that Clarke may have perjured himself when he spoke to a
congressional investigation into the attacks but did not raise complaints
about Bush's Iraq policy then. Clarke, though the back of his neck and
head were a burning red, replied coolly: "I wasn't asked, sir."
The gallery drew quiet when Lehman questioned Clarke. "I have genuinely
been a fan of yours," he began, and then he said how he had hoped Clarke
would be "the Rosetta Stone" for the commission. "But now we have the
book," Lehman said, suggesting it was a partisan tract.
Clarke was ready for that challenge. "Let me talk about partisanship here,
since you raised it," he said, noting that he registered as a Republican
in 2000 and served President Ronald Reagan. "The White House has said that
my book is an audition for a high-level position in the Kerry campaign,"
Clarke said. "So let me say here, as I am under oath, that I will not
accept any position in the Kerry administration, should there be one."
When Clarke finished his answer, there was a long pause, and the gallery
was silent. Lehman smiled slightly and nodded. He had no further
questions.
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Subject: [pjnews] Lack of WMDs no Laughing Matter
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1178547,00.html
Bush jokes about search for WMD, but it's no laughing matter for critics
David Teather in New York
Friday March 26, 2004
The Guardian
President George Bush sparked a political firestorm yesterday after making
what many judged a tasteless and ill-judged joke about the failure to find
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Mr Bush made the joke at a black-tie event for radio and television
journalists in Washington on Wednesday night.
He narrated a slide show, described as the White House election year
album, making hay of the administration's reputation for secrecy and
strained relations with European allies. But it was the joke about the war
in Iraq that drew attacks.
A slide showed Mr Bush in the Oval office, leaning to look under a piece
of furniture. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here
somewhere," he told the audience, drawing applause.
Another slide showed him peering into another part of the office, "Nope,
no weapons over there," he said, laughing. "Maybe under here," he said, as
a third slide was shown.
John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who will fight Mr Bush for the
White House said the joke displayed a "stunningly cavalier" attitude.
"If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a
laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought.
Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke."
He added: "585 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the last
year, 3,354 have been wounded and there's no end in sight. George Bush
sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass
destruction. But we still haven't found them, and now he thinks that's
funny?"
The statement from Mr Kerry also included a comment from an Iraqi war
veteran, Brad Owens.
"War is the single most serious event that a president or government can
carry its people into," he said. "This cheapens the sacrifice that
American soldiers and their families are dealing with every single day."
CNN viewers emailed the network to vent their anger at the joke. "How can
a thinking, caring human being joke about the lies that led to body bags
and broken young men and women? I was appalled," wrote one viewer. Another
said: "It was tasteless and childish. It shows the true man - or child in
his case."
The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, later declined to give an opinion
at a press conference. "To know what I would think, I would have to be
there," he said.
Mr Bush's skit poked fun of members of the administration, including Mr
Rumsfeld.
When he showed another slide, the president joked: "Oops, this photo
wasn't supposed to be in here. This is the skull and bones secret signal."
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Subject: [pjnews] Four 9/11 Moms Watch Rumsfeld And Grumble
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http://www.observer.com/pages/frontpage2.asp
The New York Observer 3/29/2004
Four 9/11 Moms Watch Rumsfeld And Grumble
by Gail Sheehy
In the predawn hours of Tuesday, March 23, Kristen Breitweiser, Lorie Van
Auken, Mindy Kleinberg and Patty Casazza dropped off their collective
seven fatherless children with grandmothers and climbed into Ms.
Breitweiser’s S.U.V. for the race down Garden State Parkway to the Hart
Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. It’s a journey that they could now
make blindfolded—but this one was different. On March 23, testimony was to
be heard by the commission investigating intelligence failures leading up
to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
among others.
These four moms from New Jersey are the World Trade Center widows whose
tireless advocacy produced the broad investigation into the failures
around the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that now has top officials from both
the Clinton and Bush administrations duking it out in conflicting
testimonies at this week’s high-drama hearings in the Hart Office Building
before the 9/11 commission.
After two and a half years of seeking truth and accountability, they had
high hopes for this week’s hearings, which are focused on policy failures.
Instead, packed into the car at 4 a.m. in what has become a ritual for
them, their hearts were heavy.
The Four Moms had submitted dozens of questions they have been burning to
ask at these hearings. Mr. Rumsfeld is a particular thorn in their sides.
"He needs to answer to his actions on Sept. 11," said Ms. Kleinberg. "When
was he aware that we were under attack? What did he do about it?"
When the widows had a conference call last week with the commission staff,
they asked that Secretary Rumsfeld be questioned about his response on the
day of Sept. 11. They were told that this was not a line of questioning
the staff planned to pursue.
They were not especially impressed with his testimony. In Mr. Rumsfeld’s
opening statement, he said he knew of no intelligence in the months
leading up to Sept. 11 indicating that terrorists intended to hijack
commercial airplanes and fly them into the Pentagon or the World Trade
Center.
It was his worst moment at the mike. Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste ran
through a list of at least a dozen cases of foiled plots using commercial
airliners to attack key targets in the U.S. and elsewhere. Mr. Ben-Veniste
cited the "Bojinka" plot in 1995, which envisioned blowing up Western
commercial planes in Asia; that plot was foiled by the government and must
have been on the mind of C.I.A. director George Tenet, who was having
weekly lunches with Mr. Rumsfeld through 2001. In 1998, an Al
Qaeda–connected group talked about flying a commercial plane into the
World Trade Center.
"So when we had this threatened strike that something huge was going to
happen, why didn’t D.O.D. alert people on the ground of a potential
jihadist hijacking? Why didn’t it ever get to an actionable level?" the
commissioner asked.
Mr. Rumsfeld said he only remembered hearing threats of a private aircraft
being used. "The decision to fly a commercial aircraft was not known to
me."
Mr. Ben-Veniste came back at him: "We knew from the Millennium plot [to
blow up Los Angeles International Airport] that Al Qaeda was trying to
bomb an American airport," he said. The Clinton administration foiled that
plot and thought every day about foiling terrorism, he said. "But as we
get into 2001, it was like everyone was looking at the white truck from
the sniper attacks and not looking in the right direction. Nobody did a
thing about it."
Mr. Rumsfeld backed off with the lame excuse, "I should say I didn’t know."
He said that on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he was "hosting a meeting
for some of the members of Congress."
"Ironically, in the course of the conversation, I stressed how important
it was for our country to be adequately prepared for the unexpected," he
said.
It is still incredible to the moms that their Secretary of Defense
continued to sit in his private dining room at the Pentagon while their
husbands were being incinerated in the towers of the World Trade Center.
They know this from an account posted on Sept. 11 on the Web site of
Christopher Cox, a Republican Congressman from Orange County who is
chairman of the House Policy Committee.
"Ironically," Mr. Cox wrote, "just moments before the Department of
Defense was hit by a suicide hijacker, Secretary Rumsfeld was describing
to me why … Congress has got to give the President the tools he needs to
move forward with a defense of America against ballistic missiles."
At that point, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, the Secret
Service, the F.A.A., NORAD (our North American air-defense system),
American Airlines and United Airlines, among others, knew that at least
three planes had been violently hijacked, their transponders turned off,
and that thousands of American citizens had been annihilated in the World
Trade Center by Middle Eastern terrorists, some of whom had been under
surveillance by the F.B.I. Yet the nation’s defense chief didn’t think it
significant enough to interrupt his political pitch to a key Republican in
Congress to reactivate the Star Wars initiative of the Bush I years.
"I’ve been around the block a few times," Mr. Rumsfeld told the
Congressman, according to his own account. "There will be another event."
Mr. Rumsfeld repeated it for emphasis, Mr. Cox wrote: "There will be
another event."
"Within minutes of that utterance, Rumsfeld’s words proved tragically
prophetic," Mr. Cox wrote.
"Someone handed me a note that a plane had hit one of the W.T.C. towers,"
Mr. Rumsfeld testified on March 23. "Later, I was in my office with a
C.I.A. briefer when I was told a second plane had hit the other tower."
The note didn’t seem to prompt any action on his part.
"Shortly thereafter, at 9:38 a.m., the Pentagon shook with an explosion of
a then-unknown origin," he said.
He had to go to the window of his office to see that the Pentagon had been
attacked? Now the moms were getting agitated.
"I went outside to determine what had happened," he testified. "I was not
there long, apparently, because I was told I was back in the Pentagon,
with the crisis action team, by shortly before or after 10 a.m.
"Upon my return from the crash site, and before going to the Executive
Support Center," he continued, "I had one or more calls in my office, one
of which I believe was the President."
Then commission member Jamie Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney
general and general counsel for the Department of Defense in the Clinton
administration, had her turn with Mr. Rumsfeld.
"Where were you and your aircraft when a missile was heading to the
Pentagon? Surely that is your responsibility, to protect our facilities,
our headquarters—the Pentagon. Is there anything we did to protect that?"
Mr. Rumsfeld said it was a law-enforcement issue.
"When I arrived at the command center, an order had been given—the command
had been given instructions that their pilots could shoot down any
commercial airlines filled with our people if the plane seemed to be
acting in a threatening manner," he said.
Ms. Gorelick tried to get Mr. Rumsfeld to say whether the NORAD pilots
themselves knew they had authority to shoot down a plane.
"I do not know what they thought," he answered. "I was immediately
concerned that they knew what they could do and that we changed the rules
of engagement."
One of the hardest things for the families to hear was how every witness
defended how he had done everything possible to combat the threat of
terrorism. No one said, "We fell short."
Secretary of State Colin Powell complained that the Bush administration
was given no military plan by the Clinton administration for routing Al
Qaeda. He then described how Condoleezza Rice undertook a complete
reorganization of the failed responses of the Clinton years—not too much
more than a series of meetings that took up the next eight months.
"Then 9/11 hit, and we had to put together another plan altogether," said
Mr. Powell.
He also claimed that "we did not know the perpetrators were already in our
country and getting ready to commit the crimes we saw on 9/11."
Some of the widows groaned. In fact, the Moms had learned, the F.B.I. had
14 open investigations on supporters of the 9/11 hijackers who were in the
U.S. before 9/11.
And after the Clinton administration foiled the Millennium plot to blow up
LAX, the C.I.A. knew that two Al Qaeda operatives had a sleeper cell in
San Diego. F.B.I. field officers tried to move the information up the
line, with no success.
What’s more, most of the 9/11 hijackers re-entered the U.S. between April
and June of 2001 with blatantly suspicious visa applications, which the
Four Moms had already obtained and shown to the commission. The State
Department had 166,000 people on its terrorist watch list in 2001, but
only 12 names had been passed along to the F.A.A. for inclusion on its
"no-fly list." Mr. Powell had to admit as much, though he said that State
Department consular officers had been given no information to help them
identify terrorist suspects among the visa applicants.
One of the key questions that the Moms expected to be put to Mr. Powell
was why over 100 members of the Saudi royal family and many members of the
bin Laden clan were airlifted out of the U.S. in the days immediately
following the terrorist attacks—without being interviewed by law
enforcement—while no other Americans, including members of the victims’
families, could take a plane anywhere in the U.S. The State Department had
obviously given its approval. But no commissioner apparently dared to
touch the sacrosanct Saudi friends of the Bush family.
When Republican commissioner James Thompson asked Mr. Powell: "Prior to
Sept. 11, would it have been possible to say to the Pakistanis and Saudis,
‘You’re either with us or against us?’", Mr. Powell simply ignored the
issue of the Saudi exemption and punted on Pakistan.
Fox in the Chicken House
To the Moms, the problems with the 9/11 commission were always apparent.
But the disappointing testimony from Mr. Rumsfeld was especially difficult
to bear. The Moms had tried to get their most pressing questions to the
commission to be asked of Mr. Rumsfeld, but their efforts had foundered at
the hands of Philip Zelikow, the commission’s staff director.
Indeed, it was only with the recent publication of Richard Clarke’s memoir
of his counterterrorism days in the White House, Against All Enemies, that
the Moms found out that Mr. Zelikow—who was supposed to present their
questions to Mr. Rumsfeld—was actually one of the select few in the new
Bush administration who had been warned, nine months before 9/11, that
Osama bin Laden was the No. 1 security threat to the country. They are now
calling for Mr. Zelikow’s resignation.
Ms. Gorelick sees their point.
"This is a legitimate concern," Ms. Gorelick said in an interview, "and I
am not convinced we knew everything we needed to know when we made the
decision to hire him."
But despite her obvious discomfort at the conflicts of interest apparently
not fully disclosed by Mr. Zelikow in his deposition by the commission’s
attorney, Ms. Gorelick believes that the time is too short to replace the
staff director.
"We’re just going to have to be very cognizant of the role that he played
and address it in the writing of our report," she said.
That doesn’t satisfy the Four Moms. They point out that it is Mr. Zelikow
who decides which among the many people offering information will be
interviewed. Efforts by the families to get the commission to hear from a
raft of administration and intelligence-agency whistleblowers have been
largely ignored at his behest. And it is Mr. Zelikow who oversees what
investigative material the commissioners will be briefed on, and who
decides the topics for the hearings. Mr. Zelikow’s statement at the
January hearing sounded to the Moms like a whitewash waiting to happen:
"This was everybody’s fault and nobody’s fault."
The Moms don’t buy it.
"Why did it take Condi Rice nine months to develop a counterterrorism
policy for Al Qaeda, while it took only two weeks to develop a policy for
regime change in Iraq?" Ms. Kleinberg asked rhetorically.
Dr. Rice has given one closed-door interview and has been asked to return
for another, but the commissioners have declined to use their subpoena
power to compel her public testimony. And now, they say, it is probably
too late.
"That strategy may not turn out well for the Bush administration," Ms.
Gorelick said.
Bob Kerrey, the commissioner who replaced Max Cleland, expressed the same
view in a separate interview: "The risk they run in not telling what they
were doing during that period of time is that other narratives will
prevail."
The Four Moms have enjoyed some victories along the way. The first was
when the White House finally gave up trying to block an independent
investigation; the commission was created in December 2002. The Moms shot
down to Washington—stopping in traffic to change out of their Capri pants
and into proper pantsuits—to meet with the new commissioners, who thanked
them for providing the wealth of information they’d been gathering since
losing their husbands on Sept. 11. Ms. Gorelick expressed amazement at the
research the women had done, and vowed it would be their "road map."
"We were their biggest advocates," said the husky-voiced Ms. Kleinberg.
"They asked us to get them more funding, and we did. It could have been a
great relationship, but it hasn’t been."
Mr. Zelikow’s idea of how to conduct the investigation, the Moms said, is
to hold everything close to the vest.
"They don’t tell us or the public anything, and they won’t until they
publish their final report," said Ms. Casazza. "At which point, they’ll be
out of business."
Ms. Kleinberg chimed in: "Why not publish interim reports, instead of
letting us sit around for two years bleeding for answers?"
"We have lower and lower expectations," said Ms. Van Auken, whose teenage
daughter often accompanies her to hearings; her son still can’t talk about
seeing his father’s building incinerated.
The irony is that two of the Four Moms voted for George Bush in 2000,
while another is a registered independent; only one is a Democrat. But
until they felt the teeth of the Bush attack dogs, they were either
apolitical or determinedly nonpartisan. Now their tone is different.
"The Bush people keep saying that Clinton was not doing enough [to combat
the Al Qaeda threat]," said Ms. Kleinberg. "But ‘nothing’ is less than
‘not enough,’ and nothing is what the Bush administration did."
An unnamed spokesman for the Bush campaign was quoted as saying of Sept.
11, "We own it." That comment particularly disturbed the Four Moms.
"They can have it," said Ms. Van Auken. "Can I have my husband back now? "
"If they want to own 9/11, they also have to own 9/10 and 9/12," said Ms.
Kleinberg. "Their argument is that this was a defining moment in our
history. It’s not the moment of tragedy that defines you, but what you do
afterwards."
If the final report of this 9/11 commission does indeed turn out to be a
whitewash, the Four Moms from New Jersey have a backup plan. Provided
there is a change of leadership, they will petition the new President to
create an independent 9/11 commission. As if one never existed before.
You may reach Gail Sheehy via email at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Subject: [pjnews] Bring Low Power Community Radio to America's Cities
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see also:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0323-08.htm
Clear Channel Execs Donate More to Bush
---------------
The Time is Now to Bring Low Power Community Radio to America's Cities!
Senator John McCain will introduce a bill that will give community radio a
new round of licenses!
Click here -- http://www.prometheusradio.org/freeairwaves.shtml -- to
fight for Low Power FM today!
The future of Low Power FM radio has come to a critical juncture. And
we're writing to ask your help. There are hundreds of Low Power FM radio
stations on the air in rural communities across the country. Now it's
time to bring community radio to the cities! In 2000, Congress curtailed
the LPFM service. They kept thousands of potential stations off the air
in the name of 'potential interference'. 100 watt radio stations, like
the ones we build, were forbidden from going on the air across most of
this country. Why? Because of the 100,000 watt juggernauts belonging to
Clear Channel, Infinity, and Cumulus. They fretted that these new
community stations would steal their thunder.
But the claims of the big broadcasters turned out to be without merit!
After the service was curtailed, the MITRE corporation completed a
congressionally mandated study. This study proved that LPFM wouldn't
cause interference to the big boys:
http://www.prometheusradio.org/release_71303.shtml
The Federal Communications Commission (http://www.fcc.gov) has
finally made its recommendation to Congress to expand the Low Power
FM service. If they expand the service, it will reach thousands more
communities across the US. Now that that we've jumped through that hoop,
the last battle will be in Congress. They are the only people standing in
the way of the expansion of the Low Power FM community radio service.
Does your Senator know what you think about Low Power FM?
The big broadcasters are making the rounds in DC, talking to the
representatives, making their demands clear. Big broadcasters usually get
their way, because they have money to spread around. Folks think they are
too big and too rich to fight. But this time, we know we can beat them,
if we all get active! We have beaten them before. It's up to all of us
to let Congress know that their constituents want Low Power FM now. It's
up to all of us to let them know -- we want to start building stations in
our communities, large and small.
Organizations are working in Washington to bring this legislation to a
vote. Media Access Project, Free Press, the Future of Music Coalition,
the NFCB, and Prometheus have been meeting with Senate staff, and we are
getting a great reaction so far. But we can't move this new legislation
off their desks without a show of support from grassroots groups around
the country.
Ready to ask your legislators for more Low Power FM?
You'll find all the tools you need right here, at our legislative action
center:
http://www.prometheusradio.org/freeairwaves.shtml
Our legislative action center contains all the background information,
statistics, sample letters/phone scripts, and contact information you can
use to tell your elected representatives to let LPFM into your
communities. And, if you're an existing community station, it has links
to tools you can use on your station. Get your listeners to stand up for
community radio!
As always, contact us anytime for information, education, and support on
Low Power FM radio and free media, all around the world.
Best,
The Organizers of the Prometheus Radio Project
Click here -- http://www.prometheusradio.org/freeairwaves.shtml -- to
begin today!
And feel free to forward this message.
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Subject: [pjnews] MIA WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke
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http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1336
25 March 2004
MIA WMDs--For Bush, It's a Joke
David Corn
Last night I was at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association
Dinner. It's a formal-and-fun affair where thousands of media folks
assemble at the Hilton for a fancy dinner and fab pre- and post-parties.
I'm not going to denigrate such soirees. I enjoy them. While bookers and
producers jiggled and jostled on the dance floor and media and political
celebs dissected the news du jour (this time it was Richard Clarke's
dramatic appearance before the 9/11 commission), I was able to chat with
former weapons hunter David Kay and learn about some troubling
developments in the intelligence community (more on that down the road).
And there was free sushi.
But an awful you're-all-alone moment came during George W. Bush's comments
that followed the sit-down dinner. The current president is often the
honored guest at this annual affair, and the audience toasts him in what
is supposed to be a sign of communal and nonpartisan spirit. And the
tradition is that the president has to be funny; he has to provide us with
an amusing speech that pokes fun at himself and his political foes. After
all, political journalists love to see politicians engage in
self-deprecating humor. Bill Clinton was quite good at these performances.
Bush seems to enjoy them less. Rather than do straight standup, he
sometimes relies on a humorous slide show, and that was how he chose to
entertain the media throng this time.
It's standard fare humor. Bush says he is preparing for a tough election
fight; then on the large video screens a picture flashes showing him
wearing a boxing robe while sitting at his desk. Bush notes he spends "a
lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a
photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. There were funny bits
about Skull and Bones, his mother, and Dick Cheney. But at one point, Bush
showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval
Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be
somewhere."
The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a
few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the
Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then
another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here."
Laughter again.
Disapproval must have registered upon my face, for one of my tablemates
said, "Come on, David, this is funny." I wanted to reply, Over 500
Americans and literally countless Iraqis are dead because of a war that
was supposedly fought to find weapons of mass destruction, and Bush is
joking about it. Instead, I took a long drink of the lovely white wine
that had come with our dinner. It's not as if I was in the middle of a
talk-show debate and had to respond. This was certainly one of those
occasions in which you either get it or don't. And I wasn't getting it. Or
maybe my neighbor wasn't.
At the end of the slide show, Bush displayed two pictures of himself with
troops and noted these were his favorites. The final photograph was a shot
of special forces soldiers--with their faces blurred to protect their
identities--who were posing in Afghanistan where they had buried a piece
of 9/11 debris in a spot that had once been an al Qaeda camp. Bush spoke
about the prayer the commander had said during the burial ceremony and
noted he had this photograph hanging in his private study.
So what's wrong with this picture? Bush was somber about the sacrifice
being made by U.S. troops overseas. But he obviously considered it fine to
make fun of the reason he cited for sending Americans to war and to death.
What an act of audacious spin. One poll recently showed that most
Americans believe he either lied about Iraq's WMDs or deliberately
exaggerated the case to justify the war. And it is undeniable that in
seeking public support for the war he made many false assertions that went
beyond quoting intelligence that turned out to be wrong. (I've written
about this in many other places. If you still don't believe Bush mugged
the truth, check out this short guide.) As the crowd was digesting the
delicious surf-and-turf meal, Bush was transforming serious scandal into
rim-shot comedy.
Few seemed to mind. His WMD gags did not prompt a how-can-you silence from
the gathering. At the after-parties, I heard no complaints. Was I being
too sensitive? I wondered what the spouse, child or parent of a soldier
killed in Iraq would have felt if they had been watching C-SPAN and saw
the commander-in-chief mocking the supposed justification for the war that
claimed their loved ones. Bush told the nation that lives had to be
sacrificed because Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction
that could be used (by terrorists) against the United States. That was not
true. (And as Kay pointed out, the evidence so far shows these weapons
were not there in the first place, not that they were hidden, destroyed or
spirited away.) But rather than acknowledge he misinformed the public,
Bush jokes about the absence of such weapons.
Even if Bush does not believe he lied to or misled the public, how can he
make fun of the rationale for a war that has killed and maimed thousands?
Imagine if Lyndon Johnson had joked about the trumped-up Gulf of Tonkin
incident that he deceitfully used as a rationale for U.S. military action
in Vietnam: "Who knew that fish had torpedoes?" Or if Ronald Reagan
appeared at a correspondents event following the truck-bombing at the
Marines barracks in Beirut--which killed over 200 American servicemen--and
said, "Guess we forgot to put in a stop light." Or if Clinton had come out
after the bombing of Serbia--during which U.S. bombs errantly destroyed
the Chinese embassy and killed several people there--and said, "The
problem is, those embassies--they all look alike."
Yet there was Bush--apparently having a laugh at his own expense, but
actually doing so on the graves of thousands. This was a callous and
arrogant display. For Bush, the misinformation--or disinformation--he
peddled before the war was no more than material for yucks. As the
audience laughed along, he smiled. The false statements (or lies) that had
launched a war had become merely another punchline in the nation's
capital.
*********
David Corn in the author of New York Times bestseller The Lies of George
W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). For more
information and a sample, check out the book's official website:
http://www.bushlies.com.
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Subject: [pjnews] Paul Krugman: Lifting the Shroud
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see also:
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7350504^2,00.html
AUSTRALIAN investigative journalist John Pilger uncovers video footage of
US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser
Condoleeza
Rice confirming in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been
disarmed and was no threat. But after the terrorist attacks on New York
and Washington on September 11 that year, Pilger claimed Rice said the US
"must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq
and claim control of its oil...
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/?page=story_12-8-2003_pg1_9
According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and
28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration’s
assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to “plant” WMDs inside the country.
Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the
secret mission was mistakenly taken out by “friendly fire”, the
Environmentalists Against War report.
--------------
http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df03262004.html
White House, 4/01: Focus on Bin Laden "A Mistake"
A previously forgotten report from April 2001 (four months before 9/11)
shows that the Bush Administration officially declared it "a mistake" to
focus "so much energy on Osama bin Laden." The report directly contradicts
the White House's continued assertion that fighting terrorism was its "top
priority" before the 9/11 attacks (1).
Specifically, on April 30, 2001, CNN reported that the Bush
Administration's release of the government's annual terrorism report
contained a serious change: "there was no extensive mention of alleged
terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden" as there had been in previous years.
When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush
State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in
focusing so much energy on bin Laden" (2).
The move to downgrade the fight against Al Qaeda before 9/11 was not the
only instance where the Administration ignored repeated warnings that an
Al Qaeda attack was imminent (3). Specifically, the Associated Press
reported in 2002 that "President Bush's national security leadership met
formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet
terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions" (4). Meanwhile,
Newsweek has reported that internal government documents show that the
Bush Administration moved to "de-emphasize" counterterrorism prior to 9/11
(5). When "FBI officials sought to add hundreds more counterintelligence
agents" to deal with the problem, "they got shot down" by the White House.
Sources:
1 Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, 03/22/2004.
2 CNN, 04/30/2001.
3 Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11; Lawmakers Want Public
Inquiry, ABC News, 05/16/2002.
4 "Top security advisers met just twice on terrorism before Sept. 11
attacks", Detroit News, 07/01/2002.
5 Freedom of Information Center, 05/27/2002.
-------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/opinion/23KRUG.html?hp
The New York Times
23 March 2004
Lifting the Shroud
By PAUL KRUGMAN
>From the day it took office, U.S. News & World Report wrote a few months
ago, the Bush administration "dropped a shroud of secrecy" over the
federal government. After 9/11, the administration's secretiveness knew no
limits — Americans, Ari Fleischer ominously warned, "need to watch what
they say, watch what they do." Patriotic citizens were supposed to accept
the administration's version of events, not ask awkward questions.
But something remarkable has been happening lately: more and more insiders
are finding the courage to reveal the truth on issues ranging from mercury
pollution — yes, Virginia, polluters do write the regulations these days,
and never mind the science — to the war on terror.
It's important, when you read the inevitable attempts to impugn the
character of the latest whistle-blower, to realize just how risky it is to
reveal awkward truths about the Bush administration. When Gen. Eric
Shinseki told Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation
force, that was the end of his military career. When Ambassador Joseph
Wilson IV revealed that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained
information known to be false, someone in the White House destroyed his
wife's career by revealing that she was a C.I.A. operative. And we now
know that Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, was
threatened with dismissal if he revealed to Congress the likely cost of
the administration's prescription drug plan.
The latest insider to come forth, of course, is Richard Clarke, George
Bush's former counterterrorism czar and the author of the just-published
"Against All Enemies."
On "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Mr. Clarke said the previously unsayable: that
Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed "war president," had "done a terrible job on
the war against terrorism." After a few hours of shocked silence, the
character assassination began. He "may have had a grudge to bear since he
probably wanted a more prominent position," declared Dick Cheney, who also
says that Mr. Clarke was "out of the loop." (What loop? Before 9/11, Mr.
Clarke was the administration's top official on counterterrorism.) It's
"more about politics and a book promotion than about policy," Scott
McClellan said.
Of course, Bush officials have to attack Mr. Clarke's character because
there is plenty of independent evidence confirming the thrust of his
charges.
Did the Bush administration ignore terrorism warnings before 9/11? Justice
Department documents obtained by the Center for American Progress, a
liberal think tank, show that it did. Not only did John Ashcroft
completely drop terrorism as a priority — it wasn't even mentioned in his
list of seven "strategic goals" — just one day before 9/11 he proposed a
reduction in counterterrorism funds.
Did the administration neglect counterterrorism even after 9/11? After
9/11 the F.B.I. requested $1.5 billion for counterterrorism operations,
but the White House slashed this by two-thirds. (Meanwhile, the Bush
campaign has been attacking John Kerry because he once voted for a small
cut in intelligence funds.)
Oh, and the next time terrorists launch an attack on American soil, they
will find their task made much easier by the administration's strange
reluctance, even after 9/11, to protect potential targets. In November
2001 a bipartisan delegation urged the president to spend about $10
billion on top-security priorities like ports and nuclear sites. But Mr.
Bush flatly refused.
Finally, did some top officials really want to respond to 9/11 not by
going after Al Qaeda, but by attacking Iraq? Of course they did. "From the
very first moments after Sept. 11," Kenneth Pollack told "Frontline,"
"there was a group of people, both inside and outside the administration,
who believed that the war on terrorism . . . should target Iraq first."
Mr. Clarke simply adds more detail.
Still, the administration would like you to think that Mr. Clarke had base
motives in writing his book. But given the hawks' dominance of the
best-seller lists until last fall, it's unlikely that he wrote it for the
money. Given the assumption by most political pundits, until very
recently, that Mr. Bush was guaranteed re-election, it's unlikely that he
wrote it in the hopes of getting a political job. And given the Bush
administration's penchant for punishing its critics, he must have known
that he was taking a huge personal risk.
So why did he write it? How about this: Maybe he just wanted the public to
know the truth.
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see also:
Extremely thorough timeline of Bush's actions and inactions on September
11, 2001:
http://snipurl.com/5e38
Government Accounts of 9/11 Reveal Gaps, Inconsistencies
(The Wall Street Journal)
------------------
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/26/translator/index_np.html
26 March 2004
"We Should Have Had Orange or Red-Type of Alert in June/July of 2001:" A
former FBI translator told the 9/11 commission that the bureau had
detailed information well before Sept. 11, 2001, that terrorists were
likely to attack the U.S. with airplanes.
By Eric Boehlert
A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who
has been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told
Salon she recently testified to the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had detailed information prior
to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being
plotted.
Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings
instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told
Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of
2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by
the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of
attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22 where
she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or
that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can
prove it's a lie."
Edmonds' charge comes when the Bush White House is trying to fend off
former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke's testimony that it did
not take serious measures to combat the threat of Islamic terrorism, and
al-Qaida specifically, in the months leading up to 9/11.
Edmonds, who is Turkish-American, is a 10-year U.S. citizen who has passed
a polygraph examination conducted by FBI investigators. She speaks fluent
Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and worked part-time for the FBI, making $32 an
hour for six months, beginning Sept. 20, 2001. She was assigned to the
FBI's investigation into Sept. 11 attacks and other counterterrorism and
counterintelligence cases, where she translated reams of documents seized
by agents who, for the previous year, had been rounding up suspected
terrorists.
She says those tapes, often connected to terrorism, money laundering or
other criminal activity, provide evidence that should have made apparent
that an al- Qaida plot was in the works. Edmonds cannot talk in detail
about the tapes publicly because she's been under a Justice Department gag
order since 2002.
"President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 11, and
that's accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific information about
use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months
beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of
2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we're facing."
Edmonds testified before 9/11 commission staffers in February for more
than three hours, providing detailed information about FBI investigations,
documents and dates. This week Edmonds attended the commission hearings
and plans to return in April when FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled
to testify. "I'm hoping the commission asks him real questions -- like, in
April 2001, did an FBI field office receive legitimate information
indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on major cities? And is it
true that through an FBI informant, who'd been used by the Bureau for 10
years, did you get information about specific terrorist plans and specific
cells in this country? He couldn't say no," she insists.
Edmonds first made headlines in 2002 when she blew the whistle on the
FBI's translation department, which was suddenly thrown into the spotlight
as investigators clamored for original terrorist-related information,
often in Arabic. Edmonds made several reports of serious misconduct,
security lapses and gross incompetence in the FBI translations unit,
including supervisors who told translators to work slowly during the
crucial post-9/11 period to ensure the agency would get more funds for its
next annual budget. As a result of her reports, Edmonds says she was
harassed at the FBI. She was fired in March 2002.
Litigation followed, and in October 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft
asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the
Edmonds case, taking the extraordinary step of invoking the rarely used
state secrets privilege in order "to protect the foreign policy and
national security interests of the United States." Ashcroft's move was
made at the request of Mueller.
During a 2002 segment on "60 Minutes" exploring Edmonds' initial charges
of FBI internal abuses, Sen. Grassley was asked if Edmonds is credible.
"She's credible and the reason I feel she's very credible is because
people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story," he said.
The Inspector General's office then launched an investigation into
Edmonds' charges and told her to expect a finding in the fall of 2002. The
report has yet to be released. Edmonds suspects if it is ever publicly
released Ashcroft will demand that it be immediately classified. "They're
pushing everything under the blanket of secrecy," she says.
That's why she felt it was so important to appear before the 9/11
commission: "It's the only hope I have left to get this issue added to the
public domain."
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Subject: [pjnews] Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage
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This is pretty different from the serious stuff I usually send out, but I
couldn't resist...
http://www.felbers.net/mt/archives/001756.html#001756
(and featured on This American Life 03/26/04,
http://www.thislife.org/ra/261.ram beginning at 31:08)
My Marriage
by Adam Felber
This gay marriage thing is tearing my wife and me apart. Now, because of
activist judges in Massachusetts and overzealous officials in San
Francisco, our union is hanging on by the thinnest of threads.
Back in the simpler days of 2002, when we were planning our wedding,
Jeanne and I used to coo fondly at each other about the joys that lay
ahead. It wasn't that we were unsupportive of our gay friends, no. We were
just looking forward to the government's validation of our relationship's
specialness - a license that affirmed that the two of us had made a unique
and personal eternal vow to each other. Something uniquer and specialer
than any of our homosexual acquaintances could ever even hope for.
We're all for the separation of church and state, naturally, but if the
government doesn't define marriage as the sacred union between a man and a
woman, who will? Are Jeanne and I expected to treasure our union solely on
the basis of our deep love, personal beliefs, public vows, and the
government's blessing? Sorry, Judge Pinkypants, but that's just not good
enough. Not for us. We need to know that we've got something that's only
available to 90% of the population, the select and upstanding few.
Sure, some of us are criminals. Murderers, even. Some of us have committed
rape, beaten children, tattooed swastikas on our bodies, abused animals,
broken into houses, bilked the government out of millions of tax dollars,
lied under oath, cheated on previous spouses, dishonored our fathers and
mothers, failed to keep the Sabbath holy, mowed down pedestrians in our
SUV's while intoxicated, coveted our neighbors' stuff, gotten ourselves
put on death row, sold military secrets to the Chinese, urinated in public
places, beaten up people who looked or sounded different than us, and sold
drugs in schoolyards.
But we're straight, and that means we can get married. And that's special.
Or, at least it was. Jeanne and I could look around at other married
couples - at least the ones that aren't currently dealing with serial
infidelity, divorce, spousal abuse, or bigamy - and think to ourselves,
"Yes, that's what we're striving for. That kind of sanctity."
Are some gay people serious about their commitment to each other? Sure, of
course, that's not the point. Let me give you an example. Jeanne and I
know this couple, these two men. They've been together for years and
years, longer than we have. They live on a farm in Pennsylvania and
treasure their time together. They're loved by their community, have saved
lives as members of the local fire department and have opened their home
to youth groups from the city. They've built a life together based on love
and trust. BUT - and here's my point - they're gay. They're both men. And
if they're allowed to marry someday, where does that leave us, my wife and
me? See what I'm saying? It'd cheapen everything we have.
And that's not a knock on gay people. No no no. America loves its gays.
Look at the TV, with all those funny gay people on "Will and Grace," and
"Queer as Folk," and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." They're funny!
Funny, colorful people - they're nature's clowns, really. Like penguins.
And we don’t allow penguins to marry, do we? No, these are dark times in
my household. My wife and I look at each other with haunted, suspicious
eyes, feeling like we've bought a whole bunch of shares in a stock that is
about to be devalued. Suddenly, the eternal, personal vows that we swore
to each other will mean very little. We'll basically become roommates who
happen to wear matching rings, while meanwhile out our window we'll see
gays and penguins feeding each other wedding cake willy-nilly on our very
own street corner.
That’s why we need a Constitutional amendment that will protect marriage
for straight people. Until we have the right to enter that sacred union,
violate it, exit it, and enter it again with somebody else, again and
again, regardless of what crimes we commit, until we’re too old and feeble
to mouth the words, "I do," - unless we have that right and gay people
don't, then there is truly nothing sacred in the United States of America.
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see also:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,333835,00.html
Time: Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?
http://snipurl.com/5dgn
USA Today: Shifts from bin Laden hunt evoke questions
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1179531,00.html
The polls take a nosedive: Terror backlash hits Bush's votes
At the end of a week of hugely damaging publicity surrounding the
allegations made by Bush's former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke,
Bush's rating has taken a dive in key opinion polls. Pollsters Rasmussen
put Democratic challenger John Kerry three points ahead of Bush by 47
points to 44. That dramatically reversed a four per cent Bush lead just a
week ago. The pollsters put the change down to the fallout from Clarke's
claims. At the same time respected firm Zogby logged Bush's approval
ratings as slipping to an all-time low of 46 per cent...
------------
[Condolezza Rice] also said [on CBS's Sixty Minutes last night], "The
world is a lot safer and the war on terrorism is well-served by the
victory in Iraq." When it was noted that there have been more terrorist
attacks in the 30 months since Sept. 11 than in the 30 months prior, she
replied: "That's the wrong way to look at it."
--The Washington Post, 29 March 2004
------------
http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/4690189.html
Published on Sunday, March 28, 2004 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Clarke's Public Service
by Tom Maertens
MANKATO, MINN. — Richard Clarke, who served as the national coordinator
for counterterrorism in the White House, argues in his new book, “Against
All Enemies,” that the Bush administration ignored the threat from
Al-Qaida and instead chose to fight “the wrong war” by attacking Iraq.
The troops who could have been used in Afghanistan to capture Osama bin
Laden and Al-Qaida were instead held back for the planned invasion of
Iraq. In contrast to the 150,000 men sent to Iraq, only about 11,500
troops were sent to Afghanistan, a force smaller than the New York City
police. The result is that Bin Laden and his followers escaped across the
border into Pakistan.
Meanwhile, American troops are being killed in Iraq, our army is stretched
to the breaking point, our international credibility is at an all-time
low, Muslims are further radicalized to join a jihad against us, and our
relations with key allies have been damaged.
The Bush administration has counterattacked furiously, impugning Clarke’s
facts, his timing and his motives. Marc Racicot, chairman of the
Bush-Cheney campaign, said on national television that Clarke’s charges
were “almost malevolent.” The qualifier “almost” is apparently meant to
distinguish Clarke from someone genuinely malevolent — Saddam Hussein,
perhaps.
Clarke was a colleague of mine for 15 months in the White House, under
both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Subsequently, I moved to the U.S.
State Department as deputy coordinator for counterterrorism, and worked
with him and his staff before and after 9/11.
My experience confirms what Clarke relates in his book. The Bush
administration did ignore the threat of terrorism. It was focused on tax
cuts, building a ballistic missile system, withdrawing from the ABM Treaty
and rejecting the Kyoto Protocol.
Administration officials seemed to believe that the terrorist attacks on
the United States in East Africa, and on the USS Cole, were due to
Clinton’s moral failings. Since they didn’t share those weaknesses, and
because President Bush had the blessing of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson
and Justice Antonin Scalia, we would be spared any serious attack. Moral
superiority would triumph.
I personally believe that Clarke was one of the most effective government
officials I have ever worked with — most effective, but not the most
loved. He has been described as a bureaucratic steamroller, and he no
doubt ruffled some feathers, but who better to put in charge of
counterterrorism? Unfortunately, he suffered the fate of Cassandra: He was
able to foresee the future but not convince his leaders of the threat.
Despite its own failings, the Bush administration has conducted a
scorched-earth smear campaign against Clarke, because his book threatens
Bush’s carefully orchestrated image as a war president.
The president keeps repeating the mantra that America is safer now that
Saddam is gone. But no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have been found
in Iraq, and Bush now admits that Saddam was not involved in 9/11. The
future of a nuclear-armed Pakistan is far more important to our security
than was Iraq.
We have also learned from former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that the
president spoke of overthrowing Saddam from the day he arrived in office.
Clarke reports that on Sept. 12, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
was already advocating bombing Iraq, even though Clarke told him that Iraq
was not involved in the 9/11 attack.
We also know that some people who became members of the Bush
administration had been advocating the overthrow of Saddam since 1996. The
president’s claim that this was a war of necessity was never supported by
the facts. But what better to stir up patriotic fervor in the run-up to an
election than a war?
Is this too cynical?
Karl Rove, the president’s political adviser, is said to reread
Machiavelli the way the devout study their Bibles. It was the Bush-Rove
team that deployed the scurrilous push-poll techniques against Sen. John
McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary. (Sample question: “Would you be
more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you
knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” In reality, the
brown-skinned child with McCain was his adopted Bangladeshi daughter, but
the race-baiting worked and McCain was defeated.)
It was also Rove who in 2002 counseled Republican congressional candidates
to “run on the war.” This is a man who recognizes a potent political prop
when he sees one. Is this the real reason for the invasion of Iraq? The
Bush administration’s other justifications don’t hold water.
The Bush-Cheney ads don’t show the dead or wounded from that war, of
course, nor do the cheerleaders on Fox News, despite the nearly 4,000
casualties we have suffered in Iraq to date.
They don’t like to talk about the $160 billion we have spent to run the
war either. That works out to $571 for each man, woman and child, or
$2,285 for a family of four. And the cost is sure to go higher.
Clarke’s gutsy insider recounting of events related to 9/11 is an
important public service. From my perspective, the Bush administration has
practiced the most cynical, opportunistic form of politics I witnessed in
my 28 years in government: hijacking legitimate American outrage and
patriotism over 9/11 to conduct a pre-ordained war against Saddam Hussein.
That invasion was then misleadingly packaged as a war on terrorism and
used to sell more tax cuts, the USA Patriot Act, oil drilling in ANWR,
exemptions to environmental laws and other controversial programs. Those
who have opposed the misguided invasion have been labeled appeasers and
unpatriotic for failing to support “the troops” — meaning the president’s
policies.
As Clarke has observed, the real war is against Al-Qaida. Instead, the
Bush administration has involved us in a breath takingly cynical,
unprovoked war against Iraq, under false pretenses, which it now uses to
justify the reelection of a president who has violated the public trust.
Tom Maertens, now retired, also served as a Naval officer during the
Vietnam era and a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa.
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Subject: [pjnews] Catching up with a human shield
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http://snipurl.com/5e3f
Catching up with a human shield
By Linell Smith
Baltimore Sun Staff / March 20, 2004
March 19, 2003: The human shields waited nervously for the bombs. The
media had predicted that the American air attack would begin about 4 in
the morning, and Faith Fippinger was awake - just like everyone else in
Baghdad, she figured.
The 62-year-old retired school teacher was living in a one-story stucco
house, just like hundreds of others in the community surrounding the Daura
Refinery in the south end of Baghdad. She shared the house with several
activists who had traveled from Turkey, Australia, England and Germany
hoping to help preserve the peace.
When Faith looked out the front window, she could see the homes of Iraqis
who worked at the refinery. Children came to visit after school, showing
off their dolls and bicycles. They also showed her the shelters they would
use if bombs fell while they were in class.
No country in the world has the right to do that to a child, she remembers
thinking. Perhaps her presence - and the presence of the other human
shields - would spare this neighborhood.
Faith did not relish risking her life. She did not enjoy disobeying her
government's orders to stay out of Iraq, and, once there, to leave it. In
her mind, though, her mission was clear.
"I was in no way there to support Saddam Hussein and his military," she
says. "I was there to support those innocent men, women and children
caught between their domestic tyrant and the ambitions of the U.S.
government."
Many human shields went home when they realized war was imminent. But this
blond, middle-aged woman from Sarasota, Fla., refused to leave. The United
Nations had designated the Daura Refinery - a place damaged during the
1991 gulf war - as a humanitarian site. Other human shields stayed at
water treatment plants, food silos, communications centers. Faith chose
Daura because its neighborhood had a school and a clinic - places she
thought could use her help.
Before the bombs dropped, the peace activists e-mailed the White House to
let the president know where they were. They reminded him that
international law forbids the United States or any other country from
harming or destroying facilities that provide essential services to the
civilian population. They even painted HUMAN SHIELDS in huge dark green
and black letters across roofs near their posts.
But such preparations provided slender comfort in the hours before the
bombing began.
Faith steeled herself. Like her Iraqi neighbors, she gathered extra
provisions, food and water. She spent long hours worrying over what was
next.
In the early morning of March 19, she sat in the bedroom she shared with
another activist, too jittery to pass the time by reading or talking or
writing.
Instead, she prayed: Please don't come, please don't happen.
Four o'clock, the moment for the bombing, arrived.
"It was silent," she recalls. "And we waited. Then at 5:30 in the morning,
the first missiles flew over the house. There was this amazing hissing
whistle of sound. But even more [terrifying] than that was the explosion
that rocked the house and shook the taped-up windows. Even more was the
knowing that when each bomb struck, with each explosion, it probably
killed someone. That seemed to go on forever."
Over the next few days, whenever there were periods of silence, Faith
found herself hoping that the protests of millions of people were actually
making a difference.
March 19, 2004: Yesterday, Faith planned to mark the first anniversary of
the war at home, by herself, in her study. She would light candles on the
altar she assembled according to her Buddhist beliefs. She would pray for
her former Iraqi neighbors.
For the dead.
For the injured civilians she tended, in particular the young pregnant
woman whose arms were amputated just before she gave birth.
For American soldiers, like the one who beckoned her over at the hospital.
"He said, 'I don't want to be here, and I thank you for what you're
doing,' " she recalls. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think
of him and wonder where he is or even if he is. He and many many others
will also be part of my vigil. ... The vigil is for all of us."
Faith remained in Iraq, helping out at the overcrowded hospitals, until
the president declared an official end to combat on May 1.
A few days later, she returned to Florida. Having traveled in Asia for
almost a year before the war, the activist was homesick and out of money.
She needed a time-out to visit relatives and friends and tend to matters
at home - such as maintenance on her 13-year-old Geo. Her ultimate goal
was to travel back to Iraq to help children left homeless by the invasion.
First, though, she would tell Americans about the horrors of the war she
witnessed. She needed to describe the "civilian death side of it," an
aspect she considered under-reported. Over the summer and fall, the human
shield spoke to dozens of journalists, appeared at peace rallies, and
discussed her experiences with groups at churches, colleges and retirement
homes.
Her tale acquired an unexpected complication, one not yet resolved.
The U.S. Treasury Department sent a letter stating penalties - steep
fines, possible jail time - for violating sanctions against travel and
business in Iraq. Other Americans acting as human shields received similar
notices. (Such letters are routinely sent to those who travel to
prohibited countries, according to a Treasury Department spokesperson.)
This news led to another flurry of interviews. Would the government force
the idealistic educator - Faith taught blind elementary school children
for 33 years - to forfeit a chunk of her Social Security and retirement
savings?
Before becoming a human shield, she mostly thought of herself as a
wanderer, an explorer of the physical and spiritual. Divorced with no
children, she spent the first two years of retirement alone in a remote
Alaskan cabin.
In 2002, while America was building its case against Iraq, Faith was
studying Buddhism at sacred sites in Nepal, Tibet and India. Although that
experience encouraged her to act boldly against the impending war, she
says, her Gandhian belief that "we must be what we want the world to
become" had already altered her style of activism.
In the past, Faith had been content to sign petitions and write letters
about the issues that were important to her. But in February last yeat,
when she read about a multinational group of peace activists who intended
to serve as human shields, she booked a flight from India to Jordan to
join them.
And in November, she traveled to Fort Benning, Ga., to protest the
operation of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
The successor to the former School of the Americas, WHISC is the Army's
principal training facility for Latin-American military personnel.
Opponents blame the school for atrocities committed in Latin America by
some of its graduates.
During the demonstration, which attracted 10,000 people, Faith was
arrested for trespassing on federal property. On April 6, she will begin
serving a three-month sentence at the Federal Correctional Complex in
Coleman, Fla.
Although she is hazy about the details of what she will encounter, her
mission remains clear.
"Martin Luther King said that our lives begin to end the day we become
silent about things that matter," she says. "These things matter."
That's why Faith risked her life in Iraq and why she continues to speak
out against the war. It's why, one year later, even jail offers her a
chance to witness, and perhaps protest, what she considers her nation's
injustices.
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Subject: [pjnews] Campaign finance reform provision hurts free speech
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http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0404/hentoff.php
Village Voice
January 23rd, 2004
Nat Hentoff: Supreme Court's Gag Rule on Us
'The Powerful Have Only Gotten More Powerful'
In covering the Supreme Court's historic cutting down of the First
Amendment right of individual Americans who belong to independent
organizations to get their views expressed, the press has greatly
underestimated the effect of the court's banning these groups' television
and radio ads close to federal primaries and general elections.
The rule now is that these ads on social and political issues cannot be on
the air within 30 days of a primary or 60 days before a general election.
The law will be violated, says the Supreme Court, even if "advertisements
do not urge the viewer [or listener] to vote for or against a candidate in
so many words [but] they are no less clearly intended to influence the
election."
What do "in so many words" and "clearly intended" mean? This is the kind
of scrambled reasoning, leading to opaque language, that has become
customary on this clueless high court, where the deciding vote in cases
with formidable consequences is often cast by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
But along with the vagueness of this silencing prior restraint of speech
that twists the First Amendment out of shape, there is the further abuse
of the First Amendment right to associate for political purposes, which
the AFL-CIO emphasized in its brief to the Supreme Court in McConnell v.
Federal Election Commission, the case in which the court, 5 to 4, upheld
the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation.
Let me know if you've seen what follows anywhere in the media—or in the
majority decision of the Supreme Court, in this case. Independent
organizations—not tied to political parties—wanting to place broadcast ads
criticizing George W. Bush will have these obstacles, as detailed by the
AFL-CIO:
"Beginning 30 days before the first primary or caucus . . . December 14,
2003 . . . Section 203 [of McCain-Feingold] will criminalize broadcast
references to the President in a series of geographic blackouts that will
continuously ripple through the Nation, blocking every broadcast outlet,
wherever located, whose signal can reach 50,000 persons in an upcoming
primary or caucus state until June 8, 2004.
"This blackout will become national in scope on July 31, 30 days before
the August 30-September 2 Republican National Convention . . . and it will
then continue without interruption throughout the remaining 60 days until
the November 2 election. Thus, from July 31, 2004 until the election, it
will be a crime for a union, corporation, or incorporated non-profit
organization to pay to broadcast any 'reference' to the President by
'name,' 'photograph,' 'drawing' or other 'unambiguous' means anywhere in
the United States."
In view of the definition of "reference" to the president—including speech
that just has "the effect" of seeking the candidate's election or
defeat—the AFL-CIO claims that section 203 is unconstitutionally overbroad
because it includes too much speech that the First Amendment protects.
The majority of the Supreme Court has failed to recognize, says the
AFL-CIO, that "the First Amendment does not permit a prohibition of all
candidate-referential speech merely because some of that speech could be
viewed, and might even be intended, to have an electoral impact."
The AFL-CIO then quotes a Supreme Court decision directed against George
W. Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, a master of reducing free
speech: "The argument . . . that protected speech may be banned as a means
to ban unprotected speech . . . turns the First Amendment upside down. The
Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress
unlawful speech. Protected speech does not become unprotected speech
merely because it resembles the latter. The Constitution requires the
reverse" (Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 2003).
Here, for further examples of how this law—celebrated by The New York
Times—forbids broadcast messages concerning any candidate close to
primaries or general elections, the AFL-CIO lists prohibited ads that:
"Call upon a Member of Congress to support or oppose imminent legislation,
or ask viewers or listeners to urge the member to do so; inform the
public, or express an opinion, about a Member of Congress's votes,
legislative proposals or performance otherwise; respond directly to a
Member [of Congress] who has criticized the [independent] organization or
taken issue with its activities or policies; or encourage candidates to
commit that, if elected, they will support or oppose particular
legislation or policies."
I have been unable to understand why Senator Russell Feingold, an
exceptionally principled legislator—the Wisconsin Democrat was the only
senator to vote against Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act—allowed these prior
restraints on free speech during crucial election periods to be part of a
bill, and then a law, bearing his name. The result—as Edward Wronka wrote
in a letter to The New York Times: "The powerful have only gotten more
powerful."
It should also be noted that the key "Wellstone Amendment" was
specifically included in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act
(McCain-Feingold) to severely restrict issue ads, such as those by the
AFL-CIO, and the National Right to Life Committee. In the Senate,
Wellstone spoke of "sham issue ads" and "poisonous ads," adding that "I
have an amendment that tries to make sure . . . this big [soft] money
doesn't get" through. There sure were some poisonous ads in the last
presidential campaign and in other campaigns. But by jamming all issue ads
into his amendment, Wellstone—a paladin of the First Amendment throughout
his career—grievously wounded it in this law, setting a precedent for
future attacks on free speech.
I got to know Wellstone during the last two years of his life and greatly
respected his independence and plain decency. He worked hard, for one of
many examples, to try to get his colleagues to rescue what he called "the
disappeared"—the many Americans thrown off the welfare rolls by Bill
Clinton's coldhearted "welfare reform" law.
So how, like Feingold, could Wellstone have been a vital part of this
silencing of organizations he supported (along with those he opposed) for
those months when all voices count during elections? Neither Feingold nor
Wellstone were motivated by cynicism. They thought they were doing good by
fighting corruption in politics. Watch and see how that aim also misfired
in the growing loopholes in this disgraceful law and Supreme Court
decision.
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Subject: [pjnews] This Isn't America
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Several weeks ago, the Bush-Cheney website had a place where you could put
your own slogan on a campaign sign and print it out with your computer.
When the word got out, here were some of the slogan people came up with:
http://revbilly.com/revsite/sloganator1/sloganator/index.html
Not surprisingly, that feature has since been disabled.
----------
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/opinion/30KRUG.html
The New York Times
30 March 2004
This Isn't America
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the
killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government
did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the
threat to justify their attack."
So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception
and abuse of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's
"Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of something rotten in the
state of our government.
The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush's
terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed
on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the
lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources — including "Bush at War,"
by Bob Woodward.
And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the
Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA
Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize
in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to
prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops
with expertise in Spanish cultures."
That's why the administration responded to Mr. Clarke the way it responds
to anyone who reveals inconvenient facts: with a campaign of character
assassination.
Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an Associated
Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks were "standard
operating procedure" for this administration and cited "a
behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster," the Medicare
actuary who revealed how the administration had deceived Congress about
the cost of its prescription drug bill.
But other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf
Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr.
Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life,
they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as
well."
This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern
U.S. politics — even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its
readiness to abuse power — to use its control of the government to
intimidate potential critics.
To be fair, Senator Bill Frist's suggestion that Mr. Clarke might be
charged with perjury may have been his own idea. But his move reminded
everyone of the White House's reaction to revelations by the former
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: an immediate investigation into whether
he had revealed classified information. The alacrity with which this
investigation was opened was, of course, in sharp contrast with the
administration's evident lack of interest in finding out who leaked the
identity of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame to Bob Novak.
And there are many other cases of apparent abuse of power by the
administration and its Congressional allies. A few examples: according to
The Hill, Republican lawmakers threatened to cut off funds for the General
Accounting Office unless it dropped its lawsuit against Dick Cheney. The
Washington Post says Representative Michael Oxley told lobbyists that "a
Congressional probe might ease if it replaced its Democratic lobbyist with
a Republican." Tom DeLay used the Homeland Security Department to track
down Democrats trying to prevent redistricting in Texas. And Medicare is
spending millions of dollars on misleading ads for the new drug benefit —
ads that look like news reports and also serve as commercials for the Bush
campaign.
On the terrorism front, here's one story that deserves special mention.
One of the few successful post-9/11 terror prosecutions — a case in
Detroit — seems to be unraveling. The government withheld information from
the defense, and witnesses unfavorable to the prosecution were deported
(by accident, the government says). After the former lead prosecutor
complained about the Justice Department's handling of the case, he
suddenly found himself facing an internal investigation — and someone
leaked the fact that he was under investigation to the press.
Where will it end? In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of
Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place
for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of
the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will
take the air out of democracy."
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Subject: [pjnews] Navy Public Affairs Officer Condemns Bush
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http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/03/26/body.armor.ap/index.html
U.S. Troops Buying Own Armor for Iraq Duty
http://snipurl.com/5ewz
Widow of Soldier in Jessica Lynch Unit Blasts Bush
----------------
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/26/1551246
A year ago Saturday Lt. John Oliveira was aboard the USS Theodore
Roosevelt in the Mediterranean Sea. He was serving as public affairs
officer for the 5,000-troop aircraft carrier. He was overseeing embedded
reporters. He was speaking to the national and international media
defending the U.S. invasion.
To mark the first anniversary of the invasion, Oliveira was far from the
battlefront -- he was taking part in his first peace rally. Two months
after being honorably discharged, Oliveira decided to speak out against
the invasion of Iraq for the first time. Today this decorated 16-year Navy
veteran talks with Democracy Now! in his first national interview to
criticize the U.S. invasion of Iraq and President Bush.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Lieutenant John Oliveira.
JOHN OLIVEIRA: Thank you. Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. As you listen to this
discussion starting with President Bush this week joking about the failure
to find weapons of mass destruction, your response?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: Well, you know, I think it's very typical Bush
administration callousness towards our military and to the American
public, people all over the world, in the way they’ve handled their
foreign affairs and callously going into combat.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about -- well, speaking out for the first time,
why you have chosen us. You were the press officer for the Navy.
JOHN OLIVEIRA: Yeah, and after Afghanistan where we went in there, the
military was used in response to remove the terrorists from their
positions in Afghanistan and destroy the government supported that
terrorism, we went in there and failed to build a peace. Shortly after I
got back from Afghanistan, I saw that the things had not changed in
outlying areas. The only place that was relatively secure was Kabul. So, I
saw no major improvement in Afghanistan. As things started developing for
Iraq, things just weren't making sense to me. But obviously, I had taken
on oath and went off to war in January of last year, and I just didn't
realize at the time what kind of an impact that that would have on me once
things started, when I had to get on television every day to talk to the
American people and the international public and continue to sell them on
the administration's policies, which I did not believe in, and as the war
progressed, obviously, we discovered more things. Today we still see we
haven't been able to develop the peace. So, in my perspective, I’m doing
what I can to support our troops. Up until two months ago, I was one of
those troops. I was unable to voice my opinion regarding the
administration policies on how they were using our military. And one of
the key things I say to Mr. Bush, “support our troops and join us.”
Because the way he's doing it is not supporting our troops, it’s using
them.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We have heard from Ivan Medina, who served in Iraq, who
recently his twin brother died there. And he talked about the conditions
of the troops, the lack of equipment that they had necessary to fight the
war. As the months passed over the last year and you saw that the
occupation was going so badly, not anywhere near what was expected, what
were your thoughts having to be the spokesperson and put out a message
while at the same time you were facing this reality?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: It was difficult, at best. I was -- in fact, I had gotten
to the point that I had a nervous breakdown, that I could not continue to
do it anymore. It wore on me that much--which I never thought it did. Even
my wife, who I would call routinely from sea early on, she even had one of
her friends onboard keep an eye out for me. She sensed there was something
wrong. I never even noticed it myself. It was difficult. Maybe if I had
not been a spokesperson, I may have been able to deal with it a little bit
better. But I started seeing -- I mean, this was back in February and
March of last year, that a lot of the sailors were questioning why we were
going into Iraq. And it just wasn't our junior sailors. I'm -- we were
talking our senior leadership. When I put in my resignation papers about
two weeks before the end of the hostilities phase, I had senior leadership
look at me and say, “John, we agree with you, but this is our job.” I
understood -- I understood the oath that we took. But that just made me
feel that much better about what I was doing, and what I was doing was
right when I see senior leadership questioning the policies.
Unfortunately, we don't have that voice to oppose those publicly.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Lieutenant John Oliveira, who was a
spokesperson for the Navy, and is speaking out for the first time. Juan.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the -- as the war progressed, and you must have
been receiving, all of the public affairs people, you must have been
receiving talking points from higher-ups, could you talk a little bit
about the message that you were being told to put out?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: Amazingly enough, we received one set of communication
points from the DOD and the White House that kind of came out
simultaneously, and that was about two weeks before the war started, when
we first got our embedded media. And on the day the shooting started, all
of those communication points were basically moot. That was, you know,
bringing the war on terrorism to the terrorists, the weapons of mass
destruction. How Saddam Hussein was a direct threat to the American
public. We never received any communication points after that. I routinely
called questioning, saying, “Hey, I need something to work with. I'm
looking like an idiot on television talking about the same communication
points that now as the shooting has started mean absolutely nothing.” So,
even from that respect it, was very disorganized, very slow to get a
response back from the administration and DOD regarding what we were
supposed to be talking about. And I think what happened -- I think events
overran them and their public affairs program that as weapons of mass
destruction weren't found, when people started to question the lack of
terrorist activity in Iraq, when people started to question whether Saddam
was really a threat, that the administration couldn't -- wasn't able to
spin out any new things to say as fast as we needed it on the front line.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Lieutenant John Oliveira, perhaps one of the
highest ranking military to speak out against the invasion of Iraq. You
had a nervous breakdown in April. Can you talk about that and do you see
it as related to what your job was as a spokesperson for the Navy?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: Oh, no question. I mean, I am very proud of my
16-and-a-half years of active service. I loved my job. I loved talking to
the American public about the great job that our young men and women do
every single day. And insuring that we have the ability to do what I’m
doing now, to speak out, to enjoy those rights of free speech. That's just
so important and so integral to our country and our success as a nation. I
absolutely loved it. I was highly decorated, but as -- really, once we
started getting word that we might be going to Iraq in November of '02 I
started -- and then -- not at the time realizing it, but I slowly got into
a deeper and deeper depression, until mid April when I actually had my
nervous breakdown.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We have just seen a report come out from a new study that
the Pentagon did of troops back in the summer that shows a very high
incidence of depression among many of the -- and low morale among many of
the troops. They were looking at, obviously, the suicide rates that seem
to be higher than soldiers who were not in -- who were not at the scene.
Your reaction to this recent report?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: Well, yeah. Absolutely. You look at those suicide numbers.
They're high. And of course, the administration does not tack those on to
the numbers of dead in Iraq because it doesn't help their cause any. I saw
it firsthand. When we went into Afghanistan, troop moral was probably the
best I had ever seen. The support from the nation was unbelievable. A year
later, with pretty much the same crew, the morale was 180 degrees out.
Discipline problems were backed up. People weren't giving the 110%. They
were basically doing their job. People were seriously questioning -- I had
never seen that before in my 16-and-a-half years where we would sit around
at the table in the wardroom or around the ship listening to people talk
about how -- why we were doing what we were doing. It was -- I had never
seen military people and officers question it as much as I did when we
went into Iraq. There's no question, morale was down. It's down even worse
as we get into this quagmire that we cannot get out of, and it's almost
reminiscent, I think, of those that were involved in the Vietnam War. I
think a lot of those people would see many similarities with Iraq right
now.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Lieutenant John Oliveira, speaking about his
opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Spokesperson for the military, for the
Navy, and January 2003 deployed again to lead naval public relations
efforts in the eastern Mediterranean during "Operation Iraqi Freedom",
returned to the US in May. Was assigned to the community relations office
for the commander, US Atlantic Fleet. Lieutenant john Oliveira, you
oversaw the embedded reporters program. Can you talk about it?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: Yeah. You know, to me, that was not a big change. I knew --
the Department of Defense made this big to-do over the embedded media. I
think for a lot of units, especially Army units, that was a big change.
For the way that I operated onboard the aircraft carriers for the previous
three years, it really wasn't a change for me. I had about two dozen media
during Iraq. Most of those folks that I had embedded were people -- were
reporters that had been with me in Afghanistan that had requested DOD that
they be assigned to the Theodore Roosevelt, because of the working
relationship that I had with them. The embed process, I think is great.
Unfortunately, depending on the service, depending on the individual
public affairs officer, you are going to get some very extremes in what
reporters are allowed to do, and what they can't do. I tended to be
extremely open, allowed interviews with anyone, didn't preview any stories
that were released. They could send them straight out. But I heard stories
from the -- from some of the same reporters that said they would go to
other ships and were told you can only interview ten people and their day
was managed like if was a three ring circus right on schedule. I was
letting them go around the ship, talk to sailors. Whatever they wanted to
do. My job -- I would get -- pitch them story ideas, that kind of a thing.
But the more openness I gave them, generally the better press coverage
that I got. It was kind of a two-edged sword. It does allow the media some
access that they normally would not have, however, I think that the media
and the American public also need to look at it as that they are being
managed to an extent. To what that extent is going to vary greatly. But
that people do need to be aware of that fact. Yeah, Ivan brought up a good
point about the lack of equipment. The DOD can spend billions of dollars
on research of weapons systems, but they cannot provide our troops with
adequate personal protection, you know, onboard ship. You know, we're
trying to manage money for spare parts to keep our airplanes flying. Once
again, I go back to the administration and say, that is not supporting our
troops. Supporting our troops is ensuring that our young men and women
have the right tools to do the job and are protected and used properly,
not necessarily spending billions of dollars on research. The president
has sold the American public and, another issue, which is supporting the
troops, means supporting him. That does not go hand in hand.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In your opinion, of press coverage that you saw of the war
in Iraq, were the press being objective enough or critical enough about
the information they were receiving from you, the military?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: From my perspective, and what I was seeing from the
reporters onboard my ship, I -- most -- I think they were -- most of them
were very happy with what they were able to get, since we weren't in the
Gulf, we were in the eastern Mediterranean, a lot of the reporters were
somewhat dissatisfied with where they were, but not with the information
they were getting. I think a lot of the reporters, though, that were in
the gulf and on the ground in Iraq had some issues because they were being
managed a lot more by their public relations officers over there. So, I --
you know, without actually being over there, I will go by what I saw and
talking to other public affairs officers during our conferences, a lot of
them had problems with the media, because the media were constantly
hounding them and harassing them to get them some timely information.
AMY GOODMAN: Lieutenant Oliveira, did you ever change reporters' pieces?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: No. I had reporters routinely -- I think it was because of
the relationships that we had. I never asked, but they would start giving
me their copy and asking me it take a look at this. Most of the time, if I
suggested anything it was usually because of a technical thing. I didn't
want them -- especially for the reporters that had no military background,
it was an F-14 Tomcat is not called an F-14 Intruder. Things that were not
going to make them that -- I wanted their article to be credible, and if
they were getting little technical things wrong, then that just did not do
anything for their article. Occasionally if I’d see something that was
somewhat negative that I thought could have had a bit of different spin on
it, I would mention it, but never asked them to change it, never change it
on my own, because they sent it directly to their editors by themselves.
So, you it didn't have to go through me to be sent to the editors. I think
because of that was because of the working relationship that I had with
them and the mutual respect we had for each other. As you know, public
affairs officers that looked at every story and made it sometimes
difficult for reporters to release their information because they did not
like what was being written.
AMY GOODMAN: Lieutenant Oliveira, we have seen Richard Clarke, the counter
terrorism chief now being thoroughly disparaged by the Bush
administration, Joseph Wilson, the ambassador who -- whose wife was
exposed, and an investigation going on of the White House, who did it, as
an undercover CIA Operative, are you concerned as one of the most high
level military people ever to speak out after this invasion of Iraq. Are
you concerned about what could happen to you?
JOHN OLIVEIRA: No. I haven't really thought about it. You know, I kind of
say was John Kerry overly concerned when he came back from Vietnam and
went very public about his opposition to the war that he had just come
from, and no, I’m not. My concern is for our troops. I want it make sure
that I know -- they know that I support them. I was very grateful for the
folks that were back here in the United States and worldwide that
supported us back when we went to war last year, who were voicing their
opinions then at that time this war was wrong. I'm thankful for those
people today. And I was thankful for them back then.
AMY GOODMAN: Lieutenant John Oliveira, I want to thank you very much for
being with us. Speaking to us from Washington State, speaking out
nationally for the first time against the invasion of Iraq. Thanks for
being with us.
JOHN OLIVEIRA: Great. Thank you.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 (800)
881-2359
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Subject: [pjnews] The Flori-Duh Election
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--> If you pass this comment along to others -- periodically but not
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http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-03/06schechter.cfm
The Flori-Duh Election
By Danny Schechter
Who made the following statement?
"Our nation watched as we were all reminded on a daily basis of the
importance of each and every vote. We were reminded of the strength of our
democracy -- that while our system is not always perfect, it is
fundamentally strong and far better than any other alternative."
That was Republican candidate George W Bush talking about the 2000
presidential race in Florida. This affirmation of the merits of our
universal franchise and the joys of our much heralded democracy tended to
miss or avoid the fact that nearly 175,000 votes went uncounted in Florida
and that as many as 90,000 potential voters were dumped from the rolls
because they were considered felons not eligible to vote.
Most of them were black and potential Gore voters.
The ballot problems in Florida were partly covered at the time, although
the confusing maze of recounts, legal cases and electoral rules in 67
counties and were so arcane as to quickly become the grist for the comedic
mill. Cries of disenfranchised minorities were duly noted and forgotten as
the Supreme Court settled the election, ironically invoking the very
Constitutional amendment that had been passed to protect the rights of
minorities.
The cliffhanger in Florida became what TIME magazine called
"Electotainment". Democrats shouted foul, but the networks seemed more
responsive to Republican calls to "move on" and "get over it." Later,
network executives would tell Congress that very serious mistakes were
made in their exit polling and ballot projections.
Soon, the inauguration ended the protests and later 9/11, in the words of
The New York Times, ended whatever debate remained about the outcome in
Florida. "The debate," it reported, "went from who won to who cares."
Oddly, and surprisingly, The Times returned to the Florida debacle on its
editorial page in 2004 with a long Sunday editorial calling for electoral
reforms, citing a scandalous purge of voters directed by then Florida
Secretary of State and now US Representative Katherine Harris
The editorial thundered:
"In 2000, the American public saw in Katherine Harris's massive purge of
eligible voters in Florida, how easy it is for registered voters to lose
their rights by bureaucratic fiat." (Read the Times op-ed)
The editorial goes on to quote the US Civil Rights commission's findings
documenting how people falsely designated as felons were struck from the
polls. The race of most of these felons was not mentioned.
Many readers were probably pleased to see the purge cited again as an
example of why structural and institutional reforms are needed as
Americans get presidential fever in this 2004 election.
There is only one small problem.
New York Times readers had never seen this story detailed in the
"newspaper" of record. In fact, it was only mentioned once in a story that
reported Republican objections to a report by the US Civil Rights
Commission, which cited the purge after investigating the denial of voter
rights in Florida. The Commission's own report and the basis of its claims
was only reported in passing.
The refusal of The New York Times to cover the story in 2000 was a serious
omission, but it was not the only newspaper to ignore it at the time.
Journalist Greg Palast knows about this because he's the person who broke
the story and then tried to interest other media outlets in it. The
Washington Post picked it up-but not until June 2001, eight months AFTER
the election.
Palast, then writing for The Observer and contributing to the BBC, wrote
about his experiences in an exclusive for MediaChannel.org. He later
included it as a centerpiece in what became his best seller, "The Best
Democracy Money Can Buy." His investigation is now well known, but it
wasn't when it might have done some good and had an impact on that still
contested election.
Palast wrote: "Beginning in November, this extraordinary news ran, as it
should, on Page 1 of the country's leading paper. Unfortunately, it was in
the wrong country: Britain. In the United States, it ran on page zero --
that is, the story was not covered on the news pages. The theft of the
presidential race in Florida also was given big television network
coverage. But again, it was on the wrong continent: on BBC television,
London.
"Was this some off-the-wall story that the Brits misreported? A lawyer for
the U.S. Civil Rights Commission called it the first hard evidence of a
systematic attempt to disenfranchise black voters; the commission held
dramatic hearings on the evidence. While the story was absent from
America's news pages (except, I grant, a story in The Orlando Sentinel and
another on C-Span), columnists for The New York Times, Boston Globe and
Washington Post cited the story after seeing a U.S. version on the
Internet magazine Salon.com.
As the reporter on the story for Britain's Guardian newspaper (and its
Sunday edition, The Observer) and for BBC television, I was interviewed on
several American radio programs -- generally "alternative" stations on the
left side of the dial.
"Interviewers invariably asked the same two questions, 'Why was this story
uncovered by a British reporter?' And 'Why was it published in and
broadcast from Europe?'
"I'd like to know the answer myself. That way I could understand why I had
to move my family to Europe in order to print and broadcast this and other
crucial stories about the American body politic in mainstream media. The
bigger question is not about the putative brilliance of the British press.
I'd rather ask how a hundred thousand U.S. journos failed to get the vote
theft story and print it (and preferably before the election)."
Palast, a MediaChannel adviser, was shocked when we called the Times
editorial to his attention. Many unprintable epithets were his response,
as if the crime of a cover-up had been compounded by the delays and
denials that kept the story from most Americans.
The Florida election, as it turned out, was not unique. A subsequent study
done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California
Institute of Technology found that as many as 8 million votes were not
counted. Despite heated debates, few substantive reforms were passed. In
fact, a trend toward computerized electronic voting machines may open the
door to even more fraud.
As a new political campaign intensifies, let us hope that the media can be
persuaded do a better job at remembering the 2000 elections and make its
lessons a component in its coverage. Or are we doomed to see old mistakes
repeated?
-- News Dissector Danny Schechter writes daily on MediaChannel.org. His
latest book is "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception."(Prometheus Books)
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Subject: [pjnews] Action: Support Community Activist Camilo Viveiros
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hannah sassaman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) writes:
camilo is up for trial next week, with jury selection on april 8th. his
story is getting a lot of mainstream press coverage, because the trial is
coming up during a time when civil disobedience and legal dissent are
getting cracked down on more and more:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/04/01/7090104
* * * * * * * * * *
- -ALERT-
SOLIDARITY NEEDED IN DEFENCE OF JUSTICE!
Community organizer faces decades in prison
April 8th Trial for Community Activist Camilo Viveiros
Camilo Viveiros, a community organizer and housing activist in
southeastern Massachusetts was arrested along with over 400 other
protesters in August 2000 during the Republican National Convention in
Philadelphia. Camilo faces trumped up charges that could result in a
prison sentence of over 30 years. We need to protect Camilo and preserve
our civil liberties!
This is not simply a case of injustice against one individual. If Camilo
is unjustly convicted a precedent will be set that will threaten our right
to use public protest and nonviolent civil disobedience as a way to speak
up against injustice. The push for Camilo's unjust conviction is an effort
to legitimize the repression of our movements for justice.
People went to Philly during the Republican National Convention (RNC) to
demonstrate against police brutality, the increase in construction of
jails rather than schools, in favor of affordable housing, healthcare,
labor and immigrant's rights and many other issues. They were met with
repression, surveillance and brutality by the police in what civil
liberties lawyers say was one of the largest violations of First Amendment
rights since the Vietnam War.
In the three years since the RNC protest, of the 400+ arrested, 95% have
had their cases either dismissed for lack of evidence or have been
acquitted. As the prosecutor's cases fell apart in court, a series of
investigative reports revealed how far police powers and the judiciary
were abused to stifle dissent. Police deployed such tactics as the
infiltration of groups, preemptive arrests, preventative detention and
mass arrests. Authorities set outlandish and unprecedented bails of up to
a million dollars for misdemeanors.
From the onset, RNC protesters where portrayed as violent thugs. Smears
and lies, claimed that demonstrators where storing explosive materials in
a warehouse that police had infiltrated and knew contained no such
materials. Coordinated plans to disrespect protesters' rights where hidden
by a smoke screen of anti-protester media manipulation. Police claimed
that protestors carried "unknown substances" which turned out to be water
bottles. They made absurd claims that arrested protesters smeared
themselves with their own feces. Of the many falsified accusations
directed at protesters the remaining charges against Camilo are important
to expose. Timoney claimed that Camilo was violent to him and another
officer, while witnesses and hospital records prove that Camilo was beaten
by the police and received a concussion. After Camilo was brutalized he
was charged with attacking police. Unfortunately it is a prevalent police
cover up tactic to charge those who are attacked by the police with
aggravated assault against the police.
Camilo is caught in the very system he was protesting for its inhumanity
and brutality. He still faces severe charges. We need to work together to
make sure he does not stand alone, after he has struggled to stand up for
justice in our communities.
Camilo's trial is set for April 5th. It is the prosecutor's final attempt
to try to claim "violent" protesters validate the city's misdeeds and
wasted resources. For those who know Camilo and the behavior of
Philadelphia's Police during the RNC the charges against Camilo are
clearly false. He remains charged with a first-degree felony claimed by
then-police commissioner John Timoney, a charge that carries the same
potential sentence as homicide. If convicted, Camilo could face 15-40
years in prison!
While Camilo's history, as a non-violent activist is clear, John Timoney
has advanced his career from his role in the often-violent repression of
activists. He gained national notoriety by repeating his fictionalized
accounts of fending off dangerous protesters in Philadelphia. He has
replicated his tactics of repression as police commissioner of Miami.
After Timoney trampled on protesters rights and the public's security
during the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) protest, he earned
widespread condemnation including a demand by the Steelworkers as well as
the AFL-CIO that he be removed from office.
Timoney has a personal investment in portraying protesters as dangerous.
He is presently on a leave of absence from a security firm that
specializes in protecting corporate interests. With disturbing national
trends that are reducing civil liberties and John Timoney's special role
in repression it is important that we work to keep Camilo free and stop
the build up of repressive government forces that will be used against
social justice activists and people of color.
We need to support Camilo to fight increased government repression and
defend our civil liberties!
STEPS YOU CAN TAKE:
1) Write a letter in support of Camilo. Letters from individuals are
important, and letters from organizations-- national organizations,
community groups, tenant associations, unions, religious congregations,
etc. are powerful in demonstrating broad based concern. Letters are
vitally important for convincing the judge of Camilo's character, and for
showing how much damage it would do to the community if he were
imprisoned. Letters of support also help increase public and political
pressure around the case. Support letters have been received from: U.S.
Congressmen Barney Frank and James McGovern, the Boston City Council, the
National Organizers Alliance, the National Coalition for the Homeless,
Arthur Miller, Mel King, Howard Zinn, and numerous housing, religious,
labor and social justice organizations from around the country. Send two
copies of your letter, one addressed to the "Honorable Judge Mazzola",
one addressed to "To Whom it May Concern", to the following address:
Friends of Camilo
P.O. Box 23169
Providence, RI 02903
For more information or assistance email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In your letter, try to address the following points:
*If possible write your letter on organizational letterhead and state
your group's members and services provided. If you are not a member of
an organization, you can mention community work or an institution you
belong to and describe the communities served. If you are writing solely
as an individual, it is useful to mention something about yourself
(i.e.: you are a student, small business owner, union member etc.).
*Briefly state your concerns regarding the continued prosecution of
Camilo. Explain why it would be a shame to deprive the community of the
valuable work Camilo does. E.g. Taking him away from his work would be a
crisis for the tenants he works with and would add insecurity to the
lives of the seniors and low-income tenants who Camilo works with.
*Make a connection between the work you are doing and the work Camilo
does. Contact us if you want to learn more about Camilo's work on a
particular issue (the website does not contain a comprehensive listing
of all the issues Camilo has or is working on.)
* Attest to Camilo's character and reputation as a nonviolent and=
peaceful person and a level headed community member.
Letter writing guidelines and sample letters can be found at:
www.friendsofcamilo.org.
(If the page doesn't load, please try
http://www.waste.org/~roadrunner/writing/camilo/main.htm)
2) Help generate support in Philadelphia; this is a community issue! We
need to let people know that Camilo went to Philly to support the
important programs that affect the average Philadelphia. Taxpayers
funds have been used to support the criminalization of Camilo rather
than to support needed social service programs that Camilo was defending
in the first place. As the prosecution against Camilo continues,
important community issues are drained financially in order to
villainize Camilo with false allegations. If you have suggestions or
contacts of Philadelphia community groups or individuals that can help,
please contact us at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3) Publicize information about Camilo's case in your internal
publications and networks like newsletters, mailings, listserves or
website. Having your labor union/labor council pass a resolution to
support Camilo would also help (for examples and literature contact us).
4) Download a petition and collect signatures at meetings and events.
Download the pamphlet "In Defend of Justice" from
www.friendsofcamilo.org and distribute it.
5) Attend events in your area. (There will also be a vigil and=
solidarity events in Philadelphia during Camilo's trial.) Events are
listed on the website.
6) Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you are willing to participate in
more, e.g. make phone calls, do research/outreach, organize solidarity
events/fundraisers, attend the trial or a press conference, etc.
*********************************************************************
http://www.friendsofcamilo.org
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Subject: [pjnews] Protests, Even Buttons, Verboten in Crawford
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http://www.progressive.org/mcwatch04/mc031704.html
The Progressive
March 17, 2004
Protests, Even Buttons, Verboten in Crawford
by Matthew Rothschild
If you're ever thinking about going down to Crawford, Texas, to protest
against Bush, beware.
The police do not take kindly to demonstrators there--or legal observers,
for that matter.
And even if you're just wearing an anti-Bush button, you could get arrested.
That's the message a local jury sent last month.
On February 16, it convicted five peace activists of violating the parade
and procession ordinance of Crawford, Texas. That ordinance required 15
days' notice and a $25 registration fee.
The Crawford Five were part of a larger group that was trying to go down
to Bush's ranch outside of town to protest the Iraq War last May 3.
One irony is that they weren't intending to protest in Crawford itself,
the protesters say. Nor did they do so, they insist.
As they tried to move through Crawford, the police set up a barricade and
blocked them from proceeding.
"Our intention was not to be in the city limits of Crawford," says Amanda
Jack, who lives in Austin and was acting as a legal observer on May 3. "We
wanted to get as close as possible to the ranch," which is further down
the road.
Jack was in the last car of the caravan, and she saw the other cars pulled
over. Some of the occupants had gotten out with their signs to see what
was going on, she says. But they were not demonstrating there.
Police Chief Donnie Tidmore ordered everyone to get back in their cars
within three minutes or face arrest, Jack says. "I went back up to ask
Chief Tidmore if people could have more time, and as I was doing this,
deputies came up and started to arrest one of our members. Another legal
observer was trying to find out the name of the person arrested when she,
too, got arrested. I asked, where are you taking these people? And they
arrested me."
Jack, the assistant director of Casa Marianella, a shelter for recently
arrived immigrants and refugees, was held overnight in the Waco jail with
the four others.
Their names are Ken Zarifis, Amara Maliszewski, Trish Major, and Michael
Machicek.
Zarifis is an eighth-grade English teacher in Austin. He, too, was a legal
observer on May 3. "My intention was just to keep an eye on what was going
on, and if civil liberties were being violated, I would jot them down," he
says.
But like Amanda Jack's, his watchfulness was not appreciated.
Zarifis saw the police arresting two people, including another legal
observer, so he went up to the policeman.
"I asked the officer what his name and badge number was, and he told me,
'Step off the road, I'm going to arrest you.' I wasn't really in the road,
but I stepped back four or five feet off the grass, and I said, 'I still
need to ask why you're arresting them,' and he then arrested me and took
me to the van."
Trish Major is the communications director at the Dallas Peace Center. She
had come to Crawford with her fourteen-year-old daughter and her
daughter's friend "to see the Peace House" there, she says. (A Dallas
donor had recently bought the gathering place for activists, she
explains.) She had gotten wind that the Austin caravan was coming, so she
went looking for it. She saw the cars come and pull over and the people
pile out with their signs. She heard Police Chief Donnie Tidmore tell
people to get back in their cars, and she says he heard him warn, "If you
leave your protest signs, you'll be cited for littering."
Major did not have a car nearby, so she picked up a sign and went off to
the side of the road, she says.
"A television reporter came up to me and started asking me questions," she
says. "I started answering her questions. In the middle of that, I saw
five or six law enforcement officers coming toward me. And they said, 'Put
down your sign,' and I was kind of wondering whether I should do this and
would I be cited for littering. They put my hands behind my back and
handcuffed me." It was the first time she had ever been arrested, she
says.
When she finally reached her daughter by phone, says Major, her daughter
asked: "Are your civil rights being abridged?"
Michael Machicek had a similar experience. He came on a bus with members
of the Dallas Peace Center, and he had supper at the Crawford Peace House.
Afterward, he saw the caravan come through, and he was curious.
"I wanted to see what was going on," he says, "so I took off walking
toward the highway. I was standing by the side of the road when I was
hailed by a policeman, who turned out to be Police Chief Tidmore. He said,
'You, get over there with the rest of them, get in your car, and get out
of here.' I wasn't with the rest of them, and I didn't have a car. I
wasn't able to do what he ordered, and I needed to explain to him what my
situation was. I told him I walked from the Crawford Peace House, and I
asked him if he could give me a ride back. He said, 'We'll give you a
ride. We'll give you a ride to the jail.' "
Machicek says a deputy then came over, "threw me on the hood of the car,
handcuffed me, and marched me to the van."
At trial, the police testified that the protesters in Crawford were
yelling "anti-Bush, anti-war slogans," though the defendants deny this and
a tape of the arrests backs them up, they say.
Their lawyer, Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project,
cross-examined Police Chief Tidmore and extracted an alarming--and
telling--concession from him.
Harrington asked him "whether one of the defendants would have violated
the ordinance by sporting political buttons, such as those that read 'No
Nukes' and 'Peace,' without the permit," according to the Waco
Tribune-Herald.
"It could be a sign of demonstration," Chief Tidmore responded, according
to the paper.
Still, it took a Crawford jury only ninety minutes to convict all five
defendants, who were fined between $200 and $500 each.
The Crawford Five are appealing.
Chief Tidmore says he cannot comment either on the activists' claims that
they were not protesting or on his own testimony that wearing a political
button could be verboten in Crawford.
"They've appealed," he says. "We're just having to wait until we're
through the final phase of it" before talking to the press.
A separate legal action against Crawford is also under way. Other
protesters from that day are pressing a civil suit in federal court
against the town for violating their rights.
The ordinance, which has since been changed to mandate a seven-day notice,
is "unconstitutional, overly broad, and gives too much discretion to the
police chief," says Harrington, who is the lawyer in that case, as well.
In a press release, he called the ordinance a "blatant political attempt
to prevent any adverse political protest near President Bush's ranch. The
Crawford ordinance illegally chills fully protected expression of
political views. . . . In effect, it means that there can never be
political protest near the Bush ranch or in Crawford, when he is in town.
This is un-American."
"The Bill of Rights doesn't hold up in the President's hometown," says Ken
Zarifis.
Adds Amanda Jake: "I think it's pretty ridiculous this President has a no
protest zone around him the whole time."
Trish Major says we should all be alarmed by this. "The erosion of your
civil rights is like a cancer that starts in these little places," says
Major. "You've got to pay attention to them."
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush pulls back the curtain on who really runs the White
House
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see also:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8323444.htm
Bush, Cheney to Testify Together Before September 11 Commission
-------------
Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4653858/
2 April 2004
The Wizard of Oz letter:
Bush pulls back the curtain on who really runs the White House
by Eleanor Clift
This was the week the curtain got pulled back on the Bush presidency. In
exchange for allowing Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath, President Bush
gets to bring along his vice president when he appears privately before the
commission.
A top Republican strategist dubbed the legal document striking the unusual
deal "the Wizard of Oz letter" because it strips away the myth that Bush is
in charge. Until now, it's been all speculation about Vice President
Cheney's influence. With the revelation of the tandem testimony, nobody with
a straight face can deny Cheney is a co-president or worse, the puppeteer
who pulls Bush's strings.
Aside from being fodder for the late-night comics, the arrangement confirms
Bush's inability to articulate anything without a script--or a tutor by his
side. There's a reason lawyers don't take testimony in groups. The whole
idea is to get individual recollections and then compare stories to uncover
contradictions. Try thinking about it this way: can anyone imagine Bush's
father in a similar situation bringing his vice president? (For those who
need a refresher course, the elder Bush was a rocket scientist compared to
his son, and the vice president was Dan Quayle.)
Even President Reagan testified alone on the Iran-contra scandal. He didn't
insist on having Vice President Bush sit beside him. Of course, Reagan
couldn't remember much of anything. His faculties were failing as a result
of Alzheimer's disease, which he later revealed. Still, Reagan permitted his
testimony to be videotaped.
This is a defining moment in the Bush presidency because it reveals weakness
at the top.
What Cheney and the tight circle around Bush are protecting is the myth they
have created since 9/11 of a war president astride the world stage. Anybody
who punctures that imagery is destroyed. Richard Clarke is only the latest
in a series of insiders who have pulled back the curtain. At the center is
an incurious president who is so inarticulate that he can't be left on his
own to make a sustained argument on behalf of his policies without falling
back on rehearsed talking points and sound bites.
The Democrats must be greatly tempted to lampoon Bush, but they should leave
that to Jay Leno and Jon Stewart. John Kerry is smart to stay out of the way
when it comes to the 9/11 commission. The Bush strategy is to muddy the
picture, castigate Clarke as a disgruntled partisan, and portray his
criticisms as nothing but politics. But Clarke's book is flying off the
shelves, and his revelations will be followed later this month by a sequel
to "Bush at War" from Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, which the White House
is nervously anticipating.
Also due by the end of April is a memoir/expose by Ambassador Joseph Wilson,
who angered the administration last year when he went public with his
finding that Iraq had not sought uranium from Africa. Wilson's wife was then
exposed as a CIA operative by columnist Robert Novak, who was acting on
information provided by the administration. Wilson's book is titled, "The
Politics of Truth." It could be subtitled: "What I Didn't Find in Africa."
Wilson praises Clarke for how he's handling himself in the media spotlight.
"He's a ferocious bureaucrat," says Wilson, "and I mean that in the positive
sense of the term. He learned to operate in that environment." When 9/11
commissioner Jim Thompson confronted Clarke on the gap between what he is
saying now and the rosy briefings he gave while working the White House,
Clarke explained that was politics. Wilson says an effective response would
have been to point out to the many lawyers on the 9/11 commission that White
House aides are paid to make the case for the president just as lawyers make
the case for their client. "If you can't abide it, then you step away," says
Wilson. "Clarke was in it for the long haul, to roll back Al Qaeda."
Clarke said under oath that he would not accept a job with the Kerry
campaign, and he asked an activist group (MoveOn.org) to stop using his
voice on an ad bashing Bush. What Clarke said has been said before, that the
Bush administration was slow to recognize the terrorist threat before 9/11
and that going to war in Iraq was unnecessary and has made us less safe. The
difference is who's saying it. Clark is not some Washington time-server.
He's the ultimate serious guy who knows what he's doing and cares
passionately about countering terrorism. He was Bush's crisis manager on
9/11, the man who sat in the chair in the Situation Room while other top
aides fled to safety.
The person whose reputation got hurt the most during the Clarke
counterattack was Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who went to the Senate
floor to threaten Clarke with perjury. It was crude character assassination,
and it opened the door for Democrats to make the same accusation against
Condoleezza Rice, who has made more conflicting statements than Clarke. The
danger is not that Rice might actually be prosecuted, but the charge is
political mud, and it might stick.
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Subject: [pjnews] Bush Attacks Environment 'Scare Stories'
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http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0404-01.htm
Published on Sunday, April 4, 2004 by the Observer/UK
Bush Attacks Environment 'Scare Stories'
Secret email gives advice on denying climate change
by Antony Barnett in New York
George W. Bush's campaign workers have hit on an age-old political tactic
to deal with the tricky subject of global warming - deny, and deny
aggressively.
The Observer has obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries
of all Republican congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on
the environment in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell
them everything's rosy.
It tells them how global warming has not been proved, air quality is
'getting better', the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil
reserves are 'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is
cleaner and reaching more people'.
The email - sent on 4 February - warns that Democrats will 'hit us hard'
on the environment. 'In an effort to help your members fight back, as well
as be aggressive on the issue, we have prepared the following set of
talking points on where the environment really stands today,' it states.
The memo - headed 'From medi-scare to air-scare' - goes on: 'From the
heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the
muddled talk on our nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution,
we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment -
Republicans can't stress enough that extremists are screaming "Doomsday!"
when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'
Among the memo's assertions are 'global warming is not a fact', 'links
between air quality and asthma in children remain cloudy', and the US
Environment Protection Agency is exaggerating when it says that at least
40 per cent of streams, rivers and lakes are too polluted for drinking,
fishing or swimming.
It gives a list of alleged facts taken from contentious sources. For
instance, to back its claim that air quality is improving it cites a
report from Pacific Research Institute - an organization that has received
$130,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998.
The memo also lifts details from the controversial book The Skeptical
Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg. On the Republicans' claims that
deforestation is not a problem, it states: 'About a third of the world is
still covered with forests, a level not changed much since World War II.
The world's demand for paper can be permanently satisfied by the growth of
trees in just five per cent of the world's forests.'
The memo's main source for the denial of global warming is Richard
Lindzen, a climate-skeptic scientist who has consistently taken money from
the fossil fuel industry. His opinion differs substantially from most
climate scientists, who say that climate change is happening.
But probably the most influential voice behind the memo is Frank Luntz, a
Republican Party strategist. In a leaked 2002 memo, Luntz said: 'The
scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is
still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.'
Luntz has been roundly criticized in Europe. Last month Tony Blair's chief
scientific adviser, Sir David King, attacked him for being too close to
Exxon.
Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace condemned the messages given in the
Republican email. He said: 'Bush's spin doctors have been taking their
brief from dodgy scientists with an Alice in Wonderland view of the
world's environment. They want us to think the air is getting cleaner and
that global warming is a myth. This memo shows it is Exxon Mobil driving
US policy, when it should be sound science.'
The memo has met some resistance from Republican moderates.
Republican Mike Castle, who heads a group of 69 moderate House members,
senators and governors, says the strategy doesn't address the fact that
pollution continues to be a health threat. 'If I tried to follow these
talking points at a town hall meeting with my constituents, I'd be booed.'
Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords, who left the Republican Party in 2001 to
become an independent partly over its anti-green agenda, called the memo
'outlandish' and an attempt to deceive voters.
'They have a head-in-the-sand approach to it. They're just sloughing off
the human health impacts - the premature deaths and asthma attacks caused
by power plant pollution,' Jeffords said.
Republican House Conference director Greg Cist, who sent the email, said:
'It's up to our members if they want to use it or not. We're not stuffing
it down their throats.'
He said the memo was spurred by concerns that environmental groups were
using myths to try to make the Republicans look bad.
'We wanted to show how the environment has been improving,' Cist said. 'We
wanted to provide the other side of the story.'
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Subject: [pjnews] Indecent
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Indecent
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Whatever you think about broadcast obscenity, it is hard to make the
case that a disk jockey cursing causes greater social harm than someone
who puts another person's life in danger.
But that, apparently, is how Congress looks at things.
Under the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004, which passed the
House of Representatives earlier this month and is likely soon to come
up for consideration in the Senate, television and radio stations that
broadcast "indecent" material can be subject to fines as high as
$500,000 per incident.
Under the nation's worker safety rules, an employer that commits a
"serious" violation -- defined as "a violation where there is
substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result
and that the employer knew, or should have known, of the hazard" may be
fined up to $7,000 per violation. If an employer engages in a "willful"
violation of the rules -- meaning "the employer intentionally and
knowingly commits" the violation -- it may fined up to $70,000.
It's not just penalties for violations of worker safety laws that are
dwarfed by the proposed fines for indecency. Environmental fines,
considerably more robust than workplace penalties, generally pale in
comparison to the proposed sanctions for broadcast indecency. (The fines
for the worst violations of the Clean Air Act, for example, top out at
$10,000 per day per violation.)
Beyond the stunning misplaced sense of priorities, there's a lot to
learn from the juxtaposition of the proposed penalties for broadcast
indecency and those for other forms of corporate wrongdoing.
That's because the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act is intended to be a
serious law exercising a serious deterrent function. Other regulatory
regimes are not.
There are at least three features of the broadcast bill that should be
imported into other corporate law-and-order rules.
First is the size of the fines, which are big enough to make any company
take notice, especially because they can easily be compounded by
citation for numerous violations.
Second, the broadcast bill posits fines for both companies and
individuals -- for both broadcasters and their employees or performers.
The analog would be for fines to be levied against both corporations
that endangered their workers, and against the CEO or floor manager who
was responsible for permitting dangerous conditions to exist.
Third, the broadcast bill threatens the death penalty against violators
of indecency rules. The bill directs the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) to consider violations of indecency rules in making
their determination as to whether renew broadcast licenses. Without
these licenses, broadcasters cannot use the public airwaves, and would
be out of business. For repeat violators -- those with three or more
violations -- the bill commands the FCC to commence a proceeding as to
whether it should revoke the violator's broadcast license.
For better or worse, there's no question that, if enacted, the broadcast
indecency bill will have the intended deterrent effect. Just look at
radio colossus Clear Channel's effort to distance itself from Howard
Stern and deejays crossing the obscenity lines.
Profit-maximizing economic actors take seriously significant penalties,
especially threats to their ongoing viability.
Would that the Congress be willing to impose such sanctions against
corporate scofflaws that threaten the safety of people and the planet.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is
editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor,
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
This article is posted at:
<http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2004/000176.html>
