15 September 2003

U.S. Appeals Court Halts Oct. 7 Calif. Recall Vote
Mon September 15, 2003
By Gina Keating
Reuters, 15 September 2003
EXCERPT: In a political bombshell, a federal appeals court on Monday halted California's Oct. 7 recall election to replace Gov. Gray Davis, saying the obsolete punch card voting machines still used in six counties had an unconstitutionally high rate of error. "The Secretary of State is enjoined from conducting an election on any issue on October 7, 2003," a three-member panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in its 66-page opinion that sent immediate shockwaves through the state. The court stayed its order for seven days to allow the parties to either appeal its ruling to a full 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit or directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bush Administration Wants Subpoena Power That Doesn't Require Approval From Judge or Grand Jury
Associated Press, 13 September 2003
Courtesy of AntiWar.com
EXCERPT: The Bush administration wants to bring to the war on terror a subpoena power that does not require federal investigators to seek approval from a judge or grand jury. Justice Department officials say use of "administrative subpoenas" would enable the FBI to obtain information that might prevent a terror strike more quickly from records or witnesses. Critics say the extension of power is unnecessary and would permit investigations with no judicial supervision. "It's just a grab for more and more power," said Gerald Lefcourt, a New York attorney and past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "They want to do things that they know a judge won't approve of."

Public Says $87 Billion Too Much
By Richard Morin and Dan Balz
Washington Post, 13 September 2003
Courtesy of AntiWar.com
EXCERPT: A majority of Americans disapprove of President Bush's request to Congress for an additional $87 billion to fund military and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year, amid growing doubts about the administration's policies at home and abroad, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Six in 10 Americans said they do not support the proposal, which the president announced in his nationally televised address last Sunday night. That marks the most significant public rejection of a Bush initiative on national security or terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Open Letter from Michael Moore to General Wesley Clark
By Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com, 12 September 2003
EXCERPT: This is not an endorsement. For me, it's too early for that. I have liked Howard Dean (in spite of his flawed positions in support of some capital punishment, his grade "A" rating from the NRA, and his opposition to cutting the Pentagon budget). And Dennis Kucinich is so committed to all the right stuff. We need candidates in this race who will say the things that need to be said, to push the pathetically lame Democratic Party into having a backbone -- or get out of the way and let us have a REAL second party on the ballot. But right now, for the sake and survival of our very country, we need someone who is going to get The Job done, period. And that job, no matter whom I speak to across America -- be they leftie Green or conservative Democrat, and even many disgusted Republicans -- EVERYONE is of one mind as to what that job is: Bush Must Go. This is war, General, and it's Bush & Co.'s war on us. It's their war on the middle class, the poor, the environment, their war on women and their war against anyone around the world who doesn't accept total American domination. Yes, it's a war -- and we, the people, need a general to beat back those who have abused our Constitution and our basic sense of decency.
SEE ALSO: Leadership for America, founded by General Wesley Clark

Gunsmoke and Mirrors: The Bush 'Presidency' Goes Up in Smoke
By Maureen Dowd
New York Times, 14 September 2003
EXCERPT: This is how bad things are for George W. Bush: He's back in a dead heat with Al Gore. (And this is how bad things are for Al Gore: He's back in a dead heat with George W. Bush.) One terrorist attack, two wars, three tax cuts, four months of guerrilla mayhem in Iraq, five silly colors on a terror alert chart, nine nattering Democratic candidates, 10 Iraqi cops killed by Americans, $87 billion in Pentagon illusions, a gazillion boastful Osama tapes, zero Saddam and zilch W.M.D. have left America split evenly between the president and former vice president.
 

Retired General Weighs Presidential Bid; Dean Expanding Internet Organizing
By Duncan Mansfield
Associated Press, 13 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, sensing growing support for a Democratic presidential bid, said Saturday he is days away from announcing a decision and launched into an attack on President Bush.
Howard Dean's campaign is expanding its much-touted Internet organizing as it heads toward the all-important end of the third quarter fund-raising period. Campaign manager Joe Trippi outlined the steps Friday that range from the now-familiar Internet-organized monthly meetings via meetup.com to such newer ones as DeanTV and an expanding wireless network.

Dems Scrap Plans To Look Into Claims White House Manipulated Intel On Iraqi Threat
by Jason Leopold
Dissident Voice, 13 September 2003
EXCERPT: Democrats in Congress have abandoned their efforts to investigate the White House’s use of questionable intelligence information about Iraq’s alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, saying the issue has been "eclipsed" by President Bush’s request for $87 billion from Congress to continue funding the war there. David Helfert, a spokesman for Congressman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, [said] "It would be a good characterization to say that the intelligence questions on Iraq and how the President came to believe that it had weapons of mass destruction are no longer an issue."

Civil Libertarians Prepare to Fight Bush Over Anti-Terror Laws
By David Teather
Guardian (UK), 15 September 2003
EXCERPT: American civil liberties groups are steeling for a fight against proposals for a beefed up patriot act, including the expanded application of the death penalty, put forward by President George Bush last week.... Mr. Bush was also accused of exploiting the emotions of the second anniversary of the attacks. "It is unfortunate that President Bush would use this tragic date to endorse the increasingly unpopular anti-civil-liberties policies" of the justice department, said Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Bad omen for Bush in 2004
Liberal Authors Triumphant as U.S. Bookshelves Lean Left
By Peter S. Cannellos and Anne Kornblut
Boston Globe, 14 August 2003
EXCERPT: In a sales surge that surprised politicians and booksellers alike, five liberal books will be among The New York Times's top 15 hard-cover nonfiction bestsellers on today's list, mounting what some sales specialists see as a left-wing assault on the conservatives' decade-long hold on popular culture.

Ashcroft's Assault on Civil Liberties
By Ralph G. Neas
TomPaine.com, 14 September 2003
EXCERPT: Our nation must have all the tools it needs to fight terrorism while protecting the promise of freedom for our citizens and visitors. To that end, it is absolutely crucial that America¹s campaign to protect our security be overseen by an attorney general who can both stand up to terrorism and stand up for the Constitution. Instead, the worst fears of constitutional and civil rights advocates raised after John Ashcroft was named as attorney general in December 2000 have come true.

What Can $87 Billion Buy?
From the Center for American Progress
Courtesy of TomPaine.com, 12 September 2003
EXCERPT: On September 7th, President Bush asked Congress for an additional $87 billion for the war in Iraq, acknowledging that the engagement in Iraq is going to cost many hundreds of billions of dollars. This was a surprise considering that prior to the war, the administration dismissed such estimates, and even fired its top economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, for suggesting those estimates were correct. To get some perspective, here are some real-life comparisons about what $87 billion means.

13-14 September 2003

Support for Bush and War Slumps
Gary Younge
Guardian (UK), 13 September 2003
EXCERPT: With the economy haemorrhaging jobs and little sign of victory in Iraq, the CNN/USA Today poll gave Mr Bush an overall approval rating of 52%, compared with 55% in an ABC/Washington Post poll taken between September 6 and 9 2001. His continuing downward trend in the polls suggests that the weekend's televised address to the nation, in which he asked for $87bn for the war in Iraq, did nothing to reassure the electorate and may even have made things worse.

A Must-Read!
An Empire of Their Own
A complex examination of the literature and political influence of Christian Zionists, in the form of a book review
By Melani McAlister
The Nation, 4 September 2003
EXCERPTS: The links between global politics and the "prophetic calendar" are matters of doctrine among the large swath of evangelicals who are also ardent prophecy watchers. For these true believers, the Middle East, particularly Israel and Iraq, is deeply important, both religiously and politically, as the theater of God's actions in the final days.... The evangelical population in the United States is becoming more numerous, more politicized--particularly around foreign policy--and more powerful than ever before. This transformation is as much cultural as political, or rather, it is inextricably both at once. Those of us who care deeply about the future of politics, domestic and international, cannot afford to ignore the fact that evangelicals are no longer merely a subculture. They are fast becoming a--perhaps the--dominant force in American life.

On Sept. 11, the president was handed a historic opportunity. He ignored it.
Bush's Many Miscalculations
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 9 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Painful as it is to recall those planes smashing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon two years ago this week, it's nearly as heartbreaking to think back on the moment of nascent harmony that ticked in the wake of the attack—until President Bush decided to reject the opportunity that History thrust before him. Remember? The French newspaper Le Monde, never one for trans-Atlantic sentimentalism, proclaimed, "We are all Americans." The band outside Buckingham Palace played "The Star-Spangled Banner" during a changing of the guard, as thousands of Londoners tearfully waved American flags. Most significant, the European leaders of NATO, for the first time in the organization's history, invoked Article 5 of its charter, calling on its 19 member-nations to treat the attack on America as an attack on them all—a particularly moving gesture, as Article 5 had been intended to guarantee American retaliation against an attack on Europe. But the Bush administration brushed aside these supportive gestures—and that may loom as the greatest tragedy of Sept. 11, apart from the tolls taken by the attack itself.

Bush Tax Policy Primer
The Tax-Cut Con
By Paul Krugman
New York Times, 14 September 2003
EXCERPT: A result of the tax-cut crusade is that there is now a fundamental mismatch between the benefits Americans expect to receive from the government and the revenues government collect. This mismatch is already having profound effects at the state and local levels: teachers and policemen are being laid off and children are being denied health insurance. The federal government can mask its problems for a while, by running huge budget deficits, but it, too, will eventually have to decide whether to cut services or raise taxes. And we are not talking about minor policy adjustments.

An Interview with Paul Krugman of the New York Times
BuzzFlash
EXCERPT: Understandably, there are a very small number of people who sit down and do the accounting, and say, "Gee, how are we going to pay for Social Security in the next decade, given this?" It's not quantum mechanics; it's not hard stuff, but it does take some attention. The truth is, when I started doing this column, I wasn't a U.S. budget expert at all, and I had to put in a lot of work learning how to read those numbers. And you don't expect the guy in the street to understand that. As for the media, I guess the point is that not very many people understand this stuff. And those who do ­- the idea of saying, "My god, these guys are looting the country" -­ that's uncool. It's not what you want to do. Right now there's a column in the latest Newsweek entitled, "The Brainteaser of Deficit Math," which basically confirms everything I've been saying all along, that this is wildly irresponsible and it's actually unsustainable.

Prilosec OTC Launch Set Next Week Despite Lawsuit
Reuters, 12 September 2003
EXCERPT: Consumers can expect to see blockbuster heartburn drug Prilosec for sale without a prescription next week despite a lawsuit contending that consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co. is falsely advertising the product, P&G said on Friday. The over-the-counter market for heartburn medicines in the United States is more than $1 billion, Johnson & Johnson-Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co, said in the lawsuit. P&G has said it expects sales of Prilosec OTC to be $200 million to $400 million in the first year.

Opposition to Anti-Women Nominee Pickering Wavering
Feminist Daily News Wire, 12 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Feminist Majority joins a large coalition of women's and civil rights groups in opposition to Pickering's nomination because of the Mississippi judge's anti-women and anti-civil rights background. Pickering has a long history of voting against women. As a state Senator, Pickering supported a constitutional amendment to ban abortion and chaired the subcommittee of the National Republican Party that in 1976 approved a plank calling for an amendment to the US Constitution to make abortion illegal. Pickering has opposed the Equal Rights Amendment and as a district court judge, criticized remedies provided by the Voting Rights Act to redress discrimination against African-American voters.

Democrats Complain of Exclusion From Talks on Energy Bill
By CARL HULSE
New York Times, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: They had hoped in the wake of the biggest power failure in the nation's history to work as partners with Congressional Republicans to write a new national energy policy. Instead, Democrats say they are being relegated to spectators. "It is an optical illusion that Democrats are involved," said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for Democrats on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

President Asks for Expanded Patriot Act
Authority Sought To Fight Terror
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush, in a speech marking today's anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, called on Congress yesterday to "untie the hands of our law enforcement officials" by expanding the government's ability to probe and detain terrorism suspects. Hailing the passage of the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which expanded federal police powers, Bush said those changes did not go far enough. He called for empowering authorities in terrorist investigations to issue subpoenas without going to grand juries, to hold suspects without bail and to pursue the death penalty in more cases.

Missouri House, Senate Vote to Keep 24-Hour Abortion Waiting Period
Feminist Daily News Wire, 12 September 2003
EXCERPT: The new law requires women to sign a consent form 24 hours before undergoing the procedure and will require doctors to inform patients about "risk factors, including any physical, psychological, or situational factors for the proposed procedure, " reports Kaiser Network. In addition, according to the bill, doctors are required to have at minimum $500,000 in medial malpractice insurance.

12 September 2003

Bush is not done abusing the flag and the 9/11 tragedy
Exploiting the Atrocity
By Paul Krugman
New York Times, 12 September 2003
EXCERPT: In the first months after 9/11, the administration's ruthless exploitation of the atrocity was a choice, not a necessity. The natural instinct of the nation to rally around its leader in times of crisis had pushed Mr. Bush into the polling stratosphere, and his re-election seemed secure. He could have governed as the uniter he claimed to be, and would probably still be wildly popular. But Mr. Bush's advisers were greedy; they saw 9/11 as an opportunity to get everything they wanted, from another round of tax cuts, to a major weakening of the Clean Air Act, to an invasion of Iraq. And so they wrapped as much as they could in the flag. Now it has all gone wrong.

Bush claims he is protecting us, but he is not
Homeland Insecurity
By David Corn
The Nation, 22 September 2003 issue
EXCERPT: In early August, as George W. Bush was beginning a monthlong working vacation at his Texas ranch, he told reporters, "We learned a lesson on September the 11th, and that is, our nation is vulnerable to attack. And we're doing everything we can to protect the homeland." Everything we can. That was a bold statement. But it was not accurate. Indeed, it was one of the more galling misrepresentations of his presidency, for crucial areas of homeland security--ports, chemical plants, emergency response, biodefense--are not getting adequate attention or funding. Two years after the nation's vulnerability was exposed, at the price of 3,000 lives, everything is not being done. Why? Because, in part, of the Administration's strategic and ideological assumptions.

Minnesota Women to Sue Wal-Mart
Feminist Majority, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: Four Minnesota women will seek class-action status on Friday for their lawsuit against retail giant Wal-Mart for its labor practices. The women charge that they were required to work "off the clock" and that their complaints about this practice went unanswered.Lawyers for the women estimate that the 63,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees in Minnesota lost tens of millions of dollars in wages as well as 5000,000 hours of breaks per year since 1998, according to Pioneer Press. There are currently 37 similar cases seeking class-action status in 29 states across the country.

An apparent lack of concern
Geoghan Bore Guards' Abuse, Inmate Wrote
By Sean P. Murphy
Boston Globe, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: In a letter written to a lawyer seven months before defrocked priest John J. Geoghan was strangled in a cell, an inmate said that he had seen guards abuse Geoghan in Concord state prison and that he had written to top state corrections officials about the abuse of Geoghan and other inmates. In his letter, a copy of which was provided to the Globe, the inmate cited a dozen examples of abuse he said he witnessed in the protective custody unit at the Concord prison. He offered in the letter to testify against guards if his lawyer decided to bring a complaint against the state Department of Correction.

He still gets away with it...
Triumph of the Media Mill
by Norman Solomon
Dissident Voice, 11 September 2003
Without a hint of intended irony, the “NewsHour” on PBS concluded its Sept. 9 program with a warm interview of Henry Kissinger, America's most eligible candidate to be tried by the International Criminal Court.

Locking Down Democracy to Keep America Free
by Jim Hightower
ieAmericaRadio.com,  11 September 2003
EXCERPT: It's September 11: Do you know where John Ashcroft is?
It's been two years since America was attacked by al Qaeda terrorists wielding box cutters. Two years since George W. promised to "smoke 'em out," make Americans safe from foreign terrorists, and "secure our freedoms." Two years since our airports and practically every other public facility and private office building have been locked down, requiring all of us to submit to constant surveillance - from poking into our personal belongings to routinely wanding our bodies. Two years since hundreds of billions of our tax dollars have been diverted from other crucial needs to build the surveillance state. Two years during which our Brave New Homeland Security Department has been issuing its "Code Orange" alerts and advising us to defend ourselves with duct tape. So do you feel safe? Or just a little bit suckered? After two years of "protecting" our freedom by suspending our freedoms, here's what scares me: Not al Qaeda, but our own homegrown autocrats - Ashcroft and other political extremists and opportunists who fan the embers of fear, then drape a veil of patriotism over their push to impose a police-state mentality on our Land of the Free.

Gen. Clark Reportedly Is Asked to Join Dean
By Jim VandeHei and Dan Balz
Washington Post
11 September 2003
EXCERPT: Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has asked retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark to join his campaign, if the former NATO commander does not jump into the race himself next week, and the two men discussed the vice presidency at a weekend meeting in California, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Senate Blocks Overtime Revamp
54 to 45 Vote Is Rare Victory for Democrats, Labor
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Senate, defying a White House veto threat, voted yesterday to block the Bush administration from issuing new overtime pay rules that Democrats and their labor allies said could result in a loss of income to millions of American workers. The planned changes would expand overtime protections for low-wage workers but make it easier for employers to exempt many better-paid workers. The proposal approved by the Senate would allow the expansion but not the curtailment of overtime coverage. The 54 to 45 vote in favor of the proposal amounted to a rare victory for Democrats and organized labor in the Republican-controlled Congress, even though the struggle's final outcome remains in doubt. (BWUSA italics)

Bush Resignation Hailed by World Leaders
By Greg Palast
GregPalast.com, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: The surprise resignation of the forty-third President of the United States, George W. Bush, on the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on America, was hailed by chiefs of state throughout the world.  Mr. Bush announced that after, "two years of bloodshed, economic devastation, and spreading fear in America and abroad," he saw no choice but to accept that, "I have held a title which I did not win, and for which I have proven unqualified."

This Modern World
By Tom Tomorrow
Courtesy of Working for Change
A sneak preview of an upcoming Bush campaign ad.

Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11!
Misconnecting the Dots
By Ellen Goodman
Boston Globe, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT:...Repeatedly, deliberately, the president connected the dots between Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq. Since "those deadly attacks on our country," he said, "we have carried the fight to the enemy." "For America," he said, "there will be no going back to the era before Sept. 11 -- to false comfort in a dangerous world." And finally, he told Americans that we are fighting the enemy today, "so that we do not meet him again on our own streets in our own cities." The trouble is that the dots he connected are cartoon bubbles drawn by the White House and its speechmakers.

Don't Blame the Economy on 9/11
By Lee Price of the Economic Policy Institute
TomPaine.com, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: ...It¹s hard to find an economic indicator that supports the notion that today¹s economic troubles can be properly explained as the backwash from 9/11. That claim simply does not withstand close scrutiny. While pockets of the U.S. economy remain worse off as a result of 9/11, the net effect on total GDP today is negligible and may well be positive.

11 September 2003

Why there's not much left left...
Closed Hearts, Closed Minds
Michael Lerner Editorial
Tikkun, Sept.-Oct. Issue
EXCERPT: ...why don't people hear the better and more rational arguments made by people in the antiwar movement and Tikkun that show that the invasion of another country to depose its rulers is not a smart way to build a world of peace, and that cutting social services is not likely to lead to a greater sense of security or safety in our daily lives? How can people not see the human suffering that is caused when we legitimate violence as a way to achieve our political goals, no matter how noble? How can they not see the human suffering caused by budget cutbacks of education, health care, elderly care, and other vital services? Most of these arguments on either side, however, miss the central point: The reason that people have closed their minds to these arguments is that their hearts are closed. And the reasons for that are not usually directly connected to the specific political issues being debated. The issues are almost never the issue.

AUDIO LINK
The Diane Rehm Show
Interview with
Rep. Dennis Kucinich

Ohio congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich joins Diane to talk about why he's running for president. He'll discuss his strong stand against the war in Iraq, and his views on Medicare, labor, trade policy, and more.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, (D-Ohio) and Presidential candidate
Kucinich for President
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio)

Universal Health Care Access
The Health Care Access Resolution
American Medical Student Association
Action Alert
EXCERPT:  Urge Congress to pass Universal Health Care by 2005.
Our nation's health care system is failing millions of Americans every year. It costs too much, covers too little and excludes too many. The uninsured or underinsured are predominantly the poor, racial and ethnic minority Americans and the sick. Despite the fact that the United States spends more money per capita on health care, the World Health Organization has ranked the U.S. 37th in the world in terms of meeting the health care needs of its people. We have 200,000 bankrupticies a year due to unpayed medical bills, and 86,000 deaths a year according to the Institute of Medicine. Public hospitals and community clinics are closing in our inner cities and rural areas, eroding our health care social safety net for the poor and uninsured. Many physicians will not take Medicaid patients due to reduced reimbursement rates. Under the H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act, individuals, families and small businesses would pay much less for health care than they do now due to a single payer health insurance system.

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
9/11 Victims' Families Call for Peace
Democracy NOW! Special Report
September 10, 11 and 12, 2003
Democracy NOW!, perhaps the finest daily news source on television or radio, features a three-part special report to mark the second anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. The corporate media and U.S. officials capitalized on the tragedy to "whip up a frenzy of what was called patriotism," according to Amy Goodman of Democracy NOW! But a small group of families who lost loved ones in the attacks of September 11 have raised their voices over the past 2 years under the banner "Peaceful Tomorrows."

The ugly legacy of 9/11: human rights violations in the United States
America's Dirty Torture Secret
By Henry Porter
Guardian (UK), 10 September 2003
EXCERPT: Weeks go by without serious newspapers investigating or commenting on human rights abuses by the American government. At home and abroad, hundreds, maybe thousands, of men are being held in camps and prisons by the military, by the CIA and by the justice department, incommunicado, without legal representation or hope of release, there to endure prolonged and terrifying interrogation. Alone, this is enough for the US government to place itself in contravention of the Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which it is obligated to uphold. But that is not all. There is evidence that the US authorities have encouraged the use of torture and may indeed have participated in the torture of those men they believe to hold information on past and future terrorist attacks.

Study Finds WTC Fires Spewed Toxic Gases for Weeks
By Ellen Wulfhorst
Reuters, 10 September 2003
EXCERPT: The burning ruins of the World Trade Center spewed toxic gases "like a chemical factory" for at least six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks despite government assurances the air was safe, according to a study released on Wednesday.

Bush Marriage Initiative Robs Billions from Needy
By Elizabeth Bauchner
Women's e News commentary, 10 September 2003
EXCERPT: A major goal of the landmark 1996 welfare reauthorization was "to end dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage." Seven years later, it seems our government is more concerned about promoting marriage than helping needy parents prepare for and find jobs.

Fair and Balanced?: A Discussion of Media Bias
By Steve Rendall (of FAIR - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
and Norman Solomon (of Institute for Public Accuracy)
ZNet, 10 September 2003
Rendall and Solomon team up with Intelligence Report for an excellent discussion of right-wing bias in the media, including high tolerance for racists and the rare presence of liberals and progressives on national television.

10 September 2003

Politically speaking, the Diane Rehm Show on NPR is often more irritating than it is informative. Diane repeatedly provides a public forum for elements of the extreme right, most often from the American Enterprise Institute and usually counters it with those holding centrist or moderate views. Progressive voices from the left seldom participate. But argumentation from the center is becoming more incisive against the administration. This may be because the Bush government is so obviously dominated by the right that the center is becoming more alarmed. This program demonstrates the phenomenon. AUDIO LINK The Diane Rehm Show The War on Terrorism President Bush has pledged to do what is necessary and to spend what is necessary in the war against terrorism. It will, he says, take both time and sacrifice. A panel discusses the direction, scope, and cost of the administration's strategy. Thomas Donnelly, American Enterprise Institute Ivo Daalder, The Brookings Institution

The War In Iraq Is Not Over and Neither Are The Lies To Justify It
By Stephen Zunes
The Progressive Response, 9 September 2003
(Editor's Note: In his latest piece, FPIF Middle East editor Stephen Zunes provides an annotated refutation of President George W. Bush's nationally televised speech on Sunday, September 7th. The introduction to that report is excerpted below and the full report is available at http://www.fpif.org/papers/lies2003.html .)
President George W. Bush's nationally broadcast speech Sunday evening once again was designed to mislead Congress and the American public into supporting his administration's policies in Iraq. Despite record deficits and draconian cutbacks in government support for health care, housing, education, the environment, and public transportation, the president is asking the American taxpayer to spend an additional $87 billion to support his invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is disturbing that President Bush has once again tried to link the very real threat to American security from mega-terrorist groups like al Qaeda to phony threats originating in Iraq. Not only does he try to link the terrorism that has grown out of the post-invasion chaos in Iraq to the devastating al Qaeda attacks on the United States two years ago, President Bush has depicted all the current violence against Americans and other foreigners in Iraq as part of this terrorist threat.

Was It Worth It?
Poll: More Americans Think Iraq War Raises Risk of Anti-U.S. Terror
Analysis By Gary Langer
Los Angeles Times, 8 September 2003
Americans express a growing suspicion that the war in Iraq will boost rather than ease the long-term risk of terrorism against the United States, a concern that directly challenges President Bush's rationale for invading. This finding of a new ABCNEWS poll follows continued attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and on civilians elsewhere in the world, and marks a sharp turn in public attitudes.A week after the fall of Baghdad, 58 percent of Americans thought the war would reduce the long-term risk of terrorism. Today that's down 18 points, while 48 percent — up 19 points — think the war has raised the risk.

Sign-up now to be a "weekend warrior" - great educational benefits!!!
Part-Time Soldiers, Full-Time Woes
CBS News Online, 9 September 2003
Thousands of Army reservists who were expecting to return home are being told they'll have to stay in Iraq for up to a year. It's a big shock for troops and their families, and many feel they've already done their duty. With the regular Army stretched thin from the Balkans to Afghanistan, the Pentagon says reservists must make up for missing manpower. "It's going to have an impact on morale no doubt. But I think, unfortunately, we are in a situation where we need them," said former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

George 'Hoover' Bush
The Administration's Blue-Collar Blues
Business Week Online, 15 September 2003 Issue
EXCERPT: Commentary: The Administration's Blue-Collar Blues The candidate stood before a group of Ohio construction workers and dished out red-meat rhetoric for Labor Day. "There's a problem with the manufacturing sector," he said. "We've lost thousands of jobs...manufacturing must do better." Democrat Dick Gephardt down at the union hall? Nope. It was George W. Bush, who has presided over the biggest loss of manufacturing jobs since Herbert Hoover.
If the President is sounding themes of the populist Left these days, there's good reason. He's feeling the heat from a huge loss of jobs. Since Bush took office, 2.5 million U.S. factory jobs -- 16% of the total -- have been lost. Although such jobs have been vanishing for years, "this is clearly the worst we've seen," says William A. Strauss, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. (BWUSA italics)

Why the FCC Needs a New Chief
Moveable Feast
By Thane Peterson
Business Week Online, 8 September 2003 Issue
EXCERPT: Michael Powell's ill-advised efforts to help Big Media united left and right alike. After such a fiasco, resignation is the honorable option. Enough already. Michael Powell should resign as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Ever since President Bush named him FCC head in January, 2001 (he had been a minority GOP commissioner for three-and-a-half years under Bill Clinton), Powell has tried to push through new rules that would allow more ownership concentration in American media. His efforts have been a bit like Silent Tom Smith trying to saddle Seabiscuit with a 250-pound jockey.

In a world where greed rules, Democrats stand aside for...
BUSH VS. THE REPUBLICANS!
By Michael Kranish
Boston Globe, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: It is the rarest of days in the nation's capital when the Republican National Committee takes on the party's leader, President Bush. But that is what happened yesterday, when the committee's lawyers urged the US Supreme Court to throw out the restrictions on unlimited contributions to the political parties, while the president's lawyer argued that the campaign finance law signed by Bush be upheld. To make things more awkward, analysts have contended that the Republican Party has clearly benefited from the passage of the law it is now trying to overturn. The Republican National Committee has outraised the Democratic National Committee by a 3-to-1 margin since the ban went into effect. The law has also helped put Bush on track to collect $200 million for his presidential campaign, twice the amount he raised in 2000 and four times the donations that can be raised by a candidate who accepts public financing.

The next logical step in Bush's war on nature
EPA Officials Take Jobs with Firms They Helped
By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: Two top Environmental Protection Agency officials who were deeply involved in easing an air pollution rule for old power plants just took private-sector jobs with firms that benefit from the changes.
Days after the changes in the power-plant pollution rule were announced last week, John Pemberton, the chief of staff in the EPA's air and radiation office, told colleagues he would be joining Southern Co., an Atlanta-based utility that's the nation's No. 2 power-plant polluter and was a driving force in lobbying for the rule changes. Southern Co., which gave more than $3.4 million in political contributions over the past four years while it sought the changes, hired Pemberton as director of federal affairs.
Ed Krenik, who had been the EPA's associate administrator for congressional affairs, started work Tuesday at Bracewell & Patterson, a top Houston-based law firm that coordinated lobbying for several utilities on easing the power-plant pollution rule. The firm's Washington office also served as home base and shares staff with the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which was created by several utilities, including Southern Co., to be the public voice favoring the rule changes the EPA just enacted.

Bush Speech Demonstrates Further Contempt for Americans' Intelligence
By Robert Jensen and Rahul Mahajan
ZNet, 9 September 2003
EXCERPTS: People want - and have a right to expect - the President to come clean about the lies and distortions used to lead the country to war, and an explanation for the post-invasion failures. Instead, we got more evasion, invention and obfuscation. Bush refused even to acknowledge people's legitimate questions and papered over the political and military failures with increasingly stale rhetoric and rationalizations that ignored the key question.... As any street hustler knows, shell games work only as long as people don't understand the con. Apparently, Bush and his campaign advisers think we'll never catch on. The only way to stop the deception is for the public to demand accountability

Pressure Senators to Do the Right Thing About Welfare
National Association for Women, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: The reauthorization of welfare Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) will be taken up this week in the Senate Finance Committee, possibly as early as Wednesday, and will go to a floor vote in the next few weeks. Please urge both your senators to support $7 billion in childcare funding, more opportunities for education and training, and only 24 hours of required work per week for parents with children under age six.

9 September 2003

Presidential Character
New York Times Editorial, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: ...wrong turns... were chosen because of a fundamental flaw in the character of this White House. Despite his tough talk, Mr. Bush seems incapable of choosing a genuinely tough path, of risking his political popularity with the same aggression that he risks the country's economic stability and international credibility. For all the trauma the United States has gone through during his administration, Mr. Bush has never asked the American people to respond to new challenges by making genuine sacrifices. ...Mr. Bush is a man who was reared in privilege, who succeeded in both business and politics because of his family connections. The question during the presidential campaign was whether he was anything more than just a very lucky guy. There were times in the past three years when he has been much more than that, and he may no longer be a man who expects to find an easy way out of difficulties. But now, at the moment when we need strong leadership most, he is still a politician who is incapable of asking the people to make hard choices. And we are paying the price.

Other People's Sacrifice
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: In his Sunday speech President Bush made a call for unity: "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." He also spoke, in a way he hasn't before, about "sacrifice." Yet, as always, what he means by unity is that he should receive a blank check, and it turns out that what he means by sacrifice is sacrifice by other people. It's now clear that the Iraq war was the mother of all bait-and-switch operations. Mr. Bush and his officials portrayed the invasion of Iraq as an urgent response to an imminent threat, and used war fever to win the midterm election. Then they insisted that the costs of occupation and reconstruction would be minimal, and used the initial glow of battlefield victory to push through yet another round of irresponsible tax cuts.

Flexibility to do the right thing...or to get what it wants?
Whatever It Takes
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration has the most infuriating way of changing its mind. The leading Bushies almost never admit serious mistakes. They never acknowledge that they are listening to their critics. They never even admit they are shifting course. They don these facial expressions suggesting calm omniscience while down below their legs are doing the fox trot in six different directions. Sunday night's presidential speech was a perfect example. The policy ideas Bush sketched out represent such a striking series of policy shifts they amount to a virtual relaunching of the efforts to rebuild Iraq. Yet the president unveiled them as if they were stately extensions of the policies that commenced on Sept. 11, 2001. The truly important initiatives Bush launched were, first, to sharply increase the level of spending on Iraq, and therefore increase the likelihood that major infrastructure problems will be addressed....Second, Bush has finally signaled that the U.S. is going to hand over real authority to newly selected Iraqi ministers.

Patriot Act -Fierce Fight Over Secrecy, Scope of Law
Amid Rights Debate, Law Cloaks Data on Its Impact
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: As the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks approaches, the Bush administration's war on terror has produced a secondary battle: fierce struggles in Congress, the courts and communities such as these over how the war on terror should be carried out. At the heart of this debate is the USA Patriot Act, the law signed by President Bush 45 days after the terror strikes that enhanced the executive branch's powers to conduct surveillance, search for money-laundering, share intelligence with criminal prosecutors and charge suspected terrorists with crimes. Yet the paradox of this debate is that it is playing out in a near-total information vacuum: By its very terms, the Patriot Act hides information about how its most contentious aspects are used, allowing investigations to be authorized and conducted under greater secrecy.

From Swagger to Stagger
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: Just as the father failed to finish off Saddam, so the son has failed to finish off Saddam. Just as the conservatives once carped that the father did not go far enough in Iraq, now the "cakewalk" crowd carps that the son does not go far enough. "We need to get Iraq right and we're trying to do it a little bit on the cheap," Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor, chastised on "Nightline." "I think we could use more troops; we could certainly use more money." The more you do, the more you need to do. That's the Mideast quicksand, which is why it is so important to know how you're going to get out before you get sucked in. Dick Cheney's dark idea that a show of brutal force would scare off terrorists has ended up creating more terrorists.

Weapons of Mass Destruction in Our Midst
America Can Be Its Own Worst Enemy
by Scott Ritter
Common Dreams, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: It now appears that the only place in the world where labs similar to those described by Powell actually exist is here, in the United States. Worse, according to the New York Times, the scientist responsible for the design and construction of the U.S. mobile biological lab is under suspicion by the FBI of using this technology to produce the dry powder anthrax used in the October 2001 letter attack that killed seven Americans. This same scientist was allegedly behind similar "defensive" research that identified anthrax-impregnated letters as an ideal platform for delivering the deadly biological agent.

Patriot Act Facing Fight on Multiple Fronts
by Guillermo Contreras
San Antonio News, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: A controversial law granting federal authorities new powers to target terrorists faces growing heat over beliefs that it can lead to civil rights abuses while others are seeking to expand its grasp. The USA Patriot Act was signed into law weeks after the 9-11 attacks. Among other things, the 340-page law granted federal investigators authority to seek roving wiretaps for suspects and to conduct property searches and delay notifying the owner.

Unions Assail WTO for Ignoring Worker Rights
By Jim Lobe
One Wolrd, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: With trade ministers from around the world gathering in Cancun, Mexico, this week for a key round of negotiations under the World Trade Organization (news - web sites) (WTO), labor unions are complaining loudly that workers rights have been excluded from the agenda.

Far-Right Launches Attack on UNICEF
by Barbara Crossette
Common Dreams, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: A couple of years ago, a conservative organization called the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute produced a very contentious report claiming that the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) was complicit in China's forced abortion policy. The report led directly to a White House decision in early 2002 to withhold the $34 million U.S. contribution to the fund that had already been appropriated by Congress. That a State Department investigative team went to China and decided the charges were unfounded didn't bother the Bush administration. The cut was made permanent, and efforts in Congress to restore some money this year were beaten back.

World: Sesame Street Used to Promote US Army
Is Elmo Bush's Secret Weapon?
Corp Watch, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: Images of heavily-armed Marines patrolling Iraq may not be winning the US many friends in the Islamic world. So it could be time to enlist the soft and fluffy inhabitants of Sesame Street in the battle against anti-Americanism. Is Sesame Street really brought to you by the letters U, S and A? The US Army - which partly sponsors the show's makers, the New York-based Children's Television Workshop - certainly loves Sesame Street. Especially its saccharine theme music about everything being "A-OK". Iraqi prisoners were treated to repeated playings of the ditty at ear-splitting volume by US psychological operations officers intent on encouraging their captives to submit to questioning.

Senate Judiciary Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Defense of Marriage Act
Feminist Majority News, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law explicitly defining marriage as the union between a man and woman, to determine what steps should be taken to protect the federal law, including the possibility of a Constitutional amendment. Thirty-seven states have passed state versions of the law.

Home-Grown No More
Trade Testimonials
Tom Paine, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: Free trade is no longer about an exchange of commodities between countries -- wheat for coffee or bananas. What free trade is really about is procuring the unregulated movement of unlimited amounts of capital anywhere in the world. To this end, farm families have become pawns in a dangerous game played by powerful people who trade away the futures of the next generations of farm families, who neither understand nor consent to the rules of the game.

Generic Drugs Agreement Still Not Enough
By Peter van Lier
One World, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: Why should you export generic drugs to Africa at all? Is it for economic or partly for humanitarian reasons? The generic industry has limited resources unlike the brand name industry. It works on small margins but large volumes whereas the brand name industry works on small volumes but huge margins. The generic industry cannot afford to export for humanitarian reason alone. It has to be for pursuing commercial objectives.

Perpetual Motion Machine
Talking Points Memo
Josh Marshall, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: The president has turned 9/11 into a sort of foreign policy perpetual motion machine in which the problems ginned up by policy failures become the rationale for intensifying those policies. The consequences of screw-ups become examples of the power of 'the terrorists'. We're not on the offensive. We're on the defensive. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo and flim-flam doesn't change that.

The Twelve Percent Problem
New York Time Editorial, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: One of the saddest statistics in the still eerily jobless recovery is that 1.3 million more Americans fell into poverty last year — almost half of them children. Whatever else is on the national agenda, there should be no higher priority than directing already available help to these least among us. But the growth in the poverty roll to almost 35 million — more than 12 percent of the population — has been accompanied by an equally disturbing drop in those impoverished families who are eligible for limited welfare actually managing to obtain the aid.

Rumsfeld's Fall From Grace
By Maria Tomchick,
Zmagazine, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: History books will characterize the Bush administration for its in-fighting: the struggle between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, backed by a host of extremely conservative civilian policy wonks at the Pentagon, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, representing a less extreme conservatism that still leaves at least some room for diplomacy.

8 September 2003

Featured Article:
Iraq occupation "surest way...so that we do not meet him (terrorists) again on our own streets, in our own cities." [The strategy that works so well in Israel. Next we'll be building our own wall. -bwusa]
Bush Seeks $87 Billion and U.N. Aid for War Effort
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
New York Times, 8 September 2003
EXCERPTS: President Bush said tonight that he would ask Congress for $87 billion in emergency spending for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Iraq had now become "the central front" in the campaign against terrorism. ...Mr. Bush did not mention Osama bin Laden, who has so far eluded American capture in Afghanistan. He also did not mention the failure so far to find any unconventional weapons in Iraq, the major stated reason that the United States went to war. Nor did Mr. Bush dwell on the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, which he once predicted would abate if Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in Iraq. That conflict has worsened. ...Mr. Bush's appeal for help from other countries was a recognition that the administration cannot unilaterally maintain its current level of 181,000 American troops in both Iraq and neighboring Kuwait. ...Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont whose campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has caught fire largely because of his opposition to the war in Iraq, called the speech "outrageous," and said Mr. Bush was "beginning to remind me of what was happening with Lyndon Johnson and Dick Nixon during the Vietnam War." Asked to explain the analogy to Vietnam, Dr. Dean said: "The government begins to feed misinformation to the American people in order to justify an enormous commitment of American troops, which turned out to be a tremendous mistake." ...The "surest way" to avoid attacks on Americans, Mr. Bush said, "is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans" so that "we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities."

No more Mister "On the cheap" guy
Bush Says US Will Spend Whatever is Necessary to Win War Against Terrorism
By Deb Riechmann
Associated Press, 7 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush said Sunday night he will ask Congress for $87 billion to fight terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, appealing for troops and money from other countries, even those who opposed the U.S.-led war. Defense Department officials have said U.S. operations are costing about $3.9 billion monthly. That figure excludes indirect expenses such as replacing damaged equipment and munitions expended in combat. (Carl) Levin, (D-MI) said lawmakers are being told that it will cost $4.5 billion a month for the military -- plus reconstruction expenses.

Before we lose track...
Double Dipping
Tom Paine.com, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: Only The Washington Post correctly headlines President Bush's request for $87 billion in additional funding for U.S. efforts to eliminate threats/fight terrorism/overthrow tyrants in Iraq and Afghanistan. Somehow the editors of the The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today all failed to note that this is double the money that has already been spent on Bush's folly. Dave Moniz of USA Today does give us a critical benchmark, however: the combined costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions now rival Pentagon spending during the Vietnam War. And The Wall Street Journal notes that the White House plans to spend less than one-fourth of the total funding request on reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sixty-six billion dollars is earmarked for military and intelligence operations in both countries.

Military Families Tell Congress: Bring Them Home Now
Military Families Speak Out, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), one of the organizations that launched the Bring Them Home NOW! campaign last month, is bringing its message to Members of Congress this week. Several families whose close relatives are serving, have served or were killed in Iraq will be participating in a Congressional briefing (Tuesday, September 9 at 2 pm in Rayburn House Office Building Room 2318), organized by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, 35th District (CA-35), to discuss how best to end US military involvement in Iraq.

Audio Link  Thirty-six minutes of fun...
Fresh Air/Terry Gross Interview with Al Franken
September 3, 2003
Listen to Comedian and Political Commentator Al Franken
EXCERPT: Franken's new book is Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Franken recently made headlines when the Fox News Channel tried to sue him over the phrase "fair and balanced," which Fox claimed as its own. Fox lost, and Franken got lots of publicity for the book, which is now a bestseller. Al Franken is an alumnus of Saturday Night Live, where his most memorable character was the simpering self-help sap Stuart Smalley.

Congress Has a Big Hand In This Too
Neocons and the Military-Industrial Complex
By Carol Bloice, Left Margin
Courtesy of ZNet, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: Today the 'military-industrial complex,' about which departing President Dwight Eisenhower warned, has a bigger hand in shaping and directing U.S. foreign policy than at any time in history. The operatives who have taken charge at the Pentagon, usurping the role once played by the State Department, and the think tanks and institutes to which they are linked are generously supported by the gun, missile and bomb makers.

Star of Disney hit speaks out, then caves in, apologizes
Johnny Depp Says U.S. Is Like 'Dumb Puppy,' 'Broken Toy'
Reuters, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: "America is dumb, it's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive," he said. "My daughter is four, my boy is one. I'd like them to see America as a toy, a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling and then get out," said the star of the off-beat films "Edward Scissorhands" and "Dead Man." Depp slammed George W. Bush's administration for its criticism of French opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. "I was ecstatic they re-named 'French Fries' as 'Freedom Fries'. Grown men and women in positions of power in the U.S. government showing themselves as idiots," he told Stern.
DEPP APOLOGIZES TO USA
(His corporate film distributors probably weren't pro-free speech.)

Four Problems Dean Must Overcome
Commentary by Thomas Oliphant
7 September 2003
EXCERPT: Howard Dean may be slightly ahead of 1988 winner Gephardt in Iowa (or he may not be, given error margins in polling). He is definitely ahead of John Kerry in New Hampshire. But except for some buzz in California, that is as far as it goes outside of his stupendous successes in fund-raising and Internet-based organizing. He has done well with his opposition to the war in Iraq and his attitude toward Bush; but he is far from having provided reasons to support his candidacy that have broader appeal, especially on economic policy.

Weekend 6-7 September 2003

Bush Administration’s Tax Cuts Falls 437,000 Jobs Short in Job Creation During August
JobWatch.org, 6 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which took effect in July 2003, its “Jobs and Growth Plan.” The president’s economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers (see background documents), projected that the plan would raise the level of growth enough to create 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004—344,000 new jobs each month, starting in July 2003. Last month, August 2003, the jobs and growth plan fell 437,000 jobs short of the administration’s projection.

Bush Numbers Hit New Low; Dean Tops List of Democratic Presidential Contenders, New Zogby America Poll Reveals
Released: 6 September 2003
EXCERPT: President George W. Bush’s job performance ratings have reached the lowest point since his pre-Inauguration days, continuing a steady decline since a post-9/11 peak, according to a new Zogby America poll of 1,013 likely voters conducted September 3-5. Less than half (45%) of the respondents said they rated his job performance good or excellent, while a majority (54%) said it was fair or poor. In August Zogby International polling, his rating was 52% positive, 48% negative. Today’s results mark the first time a majority of likely voters have given the president an unfavorable job performance rating since he took office. A majority (52%) said it’s time for someone new in the White House, while just two in five (40%) said the president deserves to be re-elected. Last month, 45% said re-election was in order, and 48% said it was time for someone new.

VIDEO LINK
When Bush Lies, Our Planet Dies
Eric Blumrich of Bush Flash has created an excellent, informative Flash animation video about the Bush administration's all-out war on the environment.

Overpaying the Pentagon
How we can meet our security needs for less than $500 billion
By Lawrence J. Korb
The American Prospect, 1 September 2003
EXCERPT: The United States' current budget for 'defense' is, in real terms, higher than at any time during the cold war. When the expenditures for Afghanistan and Iraq are included, the U.S. spends more on its defense budget than all of the countries in the rest of the world combined. In this article, Lawrence Korb simply points out that with a little more attention to detail and development of a coherent national strategy, the U.S. could easily reduce these expenditures by at least 25 per cent.

Jobless or Job Loss? Uh, please define 'recovery'...
Bush Rattled by Signs of 'Jobless Recovery'
By Larry Elliot
Guardian (UK), 6 September 2003
EXCERPT: Stronger manufacturing order books and robust consumer spending had left analysts confident that the US would start to generate more employment. But they warned that the haemorrhaging of jobs in the US coupled with the security crisis in post-conflict Iraq raised the possibility that Mr Bush would face the same electoral problems as his father, who lost control of the White House in 1992 despite victory in the first Gulf war. Payrolls fell by 93,000 last month, compared to a revised fall of 49,000 in July, with jobs lost in both the manufacturing and services sectors. However, the unemployment rate fell 0.1% to 6.1%.

America's New Anti-Imperialists
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
The Nation, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Committee's ("Committee for the Republic") creation is yet another sign of how mainstream members of the conservative establishment are waking up to George W's (mis)leading of the country into ruin. (Paleocons like Patrick Buchanan have also lined up against Bush's empire-building.) After all, imperialism is just as un-American today as it was at the turn of the century--or in 1776.

Whopper of the Week
Christie Whitman: The perils of premature assurance.
By Timothy Noah
Slate, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breath[e] and their water is safe to drink."
—Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman, as quoted in an EPA press release issued on Sept. 18, 2001

Opposable Bum
It won't be easy, but Bush is beatable.
Robert Kuttner
The American Prospect, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: With Labor Day 2003, the race to November 2004 is on. Seemingly, President Bush will be seriously on the defensive on the issues, but with a big advantage on the politics. However, voters are likely to be energized in 2004 as they have rarely been in recent years. And voter mobilization will ultimately determine whether Bush gets a second term.

5 September 2003

Success through shaping the world you see...

What Are You Supposed to Make of This?
By Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: Paul Wolfowitz told reporters today that it's not the US which has changed positions, but the UN. We've wanted a new UN resolution for months. It's just that the UN has finally come around to our position. The bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad "changed the atmosphere in New York." How about that? Wolfowitz is an awfully sharp guy. But he's turning into the Comical Ali of the collapse of neoconservative grand strategy in the Middle East. The UN is putty in our hands!

Democratic Presidential Candidates Focus On Bush Failures
By Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
5 September 2003
EXCERPT: In the first debate sanctioned by the Democratic Party, the candidates sought to outdo each other by denouncing Bush for costing the country the loss of life, of tens of billions of dollars in military and rebuilding costs, and of credibility worldwide by failing to enlist greater international support for the mission in Iraq.

U.S. Employers Unexpectedly Slashed Jobs in Aug.
By LEIGH STROPE
AP, 5 September 2003
In a CNN interview yesterday, President Bush said that he was more optimistic about the economy than he was last year. He also reassured Americans that there was no one to blame for the last three years of poor economic performance. Since 2001, 2.7 million jobs have been lost. [bwusa comment]
EXCERPT: The civilian unemployment rate improved marginally last month - sliding down to 6.1 percent - as companies slashed payrolls by 93,000 amid continuing mixed signals about the nation's economic health. ...Last month, the number of people in the labor force remained largely unchanged, with just 10,000 giving up their job searches.

Iraq Report Cites Poor Planning
By Charles Aldinger
Reuters,  4 September 2003
EXCERPT: A "brutally honest" report prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff blames postwar unrest in Iraq on hurried, inadequate planning before the invasion, defense officials said yesterday. The classified report on lessons learned in the war says US commanders were so busy preparing to defeat Iraq's military and directing the fight that they had too little time to properly prepare for "Phase IV" peace, according to the officials. It also criticizes planning for efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The threat from such chemical and biological weapons was cited by President Bush and the Pentagon as a major reason for the invasion. No such weapons have yet been found.

Basic, basic security rules ignored...
Nuclear Plants Warned of Internet Virus Attacks
Boston Globe, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: Government regulators are warning nuclear plant operators about computer failures caused by Internet infections, disclosing disruptions of two important internal systems in January during a shutdown of an Ohio nuclear power plant. The government confirmed that two important systems -- a safety parameter display system and the plant process computer -- at Davis-Besse were knocked offline for several hours. The NRC said the plant operator, FirstEnergy Nuclear, determined that a contractor had placed an unprotected computer connection to its corporate network that allowed the so-called "Slammer" worm to spread internally.

Democratic Candidates Criticize Bush On Economy, Iraq
Associated Press, 4 August 2003
EXCERPT: While the first major debate of the 2004 race tonight came with former Vermont Gov. Dean's rivals seeking to slow the momentum he has built in a summer surge, the contenders spent most of their time assailing the president's policies.

 Audio Link
If you thought the 'election' was ugly in 2000, just wait for next year!
Will Bush Backers Manipulate Votes to Deliver GW Another Election?
Democracy NOW!, 4 September 2003
As millions of voters prepare to use electronic voting machines for the first time, Democracy NOW! takes a look at the companies selling these machines and their ties to the Bush administration. Amy Goodman speaks with reporter Julie Carr Smyth and author Bev Harris. [Includes transcript]

Why bother to hide the obvious?
Voting Machine Controversy in Ohio
By Julie Carr Smyth
Cleveland Plain Dealer, 28 August 2003
EXCERPT: Columbus - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

Bush locks up the bubble-gum vote with Britney Spears endorsement
CNN Labels Opposition to Iraq Invasion as a 'Political Pot Hole'
4 September 2003
In an interview with pop star Britney Spears, CNN lauded the singer's unquestioning support for Bush as a successful avoidance of "the political pot hole that other entertainers have fallen into when she was aked about whether she supported the war in Iraq." With many conservatives singling out CNN as a "liberal" media outlet, BWUSA wonders just how anti-dissident and pro-war the network has to get before it steals viewers back from Fox News. "Honestly," said Spears, "I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." By "we," Spears obviously means herself and CNN.

Though the media stopped covering it, Bush's unemployment problem hasn't gone away
Weekly Jobless Claims Above 400,000
By Rex Nutting,
CBS.MarketWatch.com, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: The average number of first-time claims over the past four weeks increased to 401,500 in the week ended Aug. 30, up from 397,250 a week earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday.

4 September 2003

Some Successful Models Ignored as Congress Works on Drug Bill
By ROBERT PEAR and WALT BOGDANICH
New York Times, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: By most measures, the Department of Veterans Affairs has solved the puzzle of making prescription drugs affordable for at least one big group of Americans without wrecking the federal budget. Wielding its power as one of the largest purchasers of medications in the United States, the V.A. has made it possible for millions of veterans to pay just $7 for up to a 30-day prescription. Thousands are signing up for the program every month. Yet for all its apparent success, lawmakers have disregarded the V.A. model — and others like it that use the government's immense power to negotiate lower prices — as they try to give older Americans relief from rising drug costs while reshaping how the elderly get medical services. Instead, a Congress deeply divided by ideology has given birth to legislation that would add prescription drug coverage to Medicare, but that many experts say would fall short of meeting the needs of the elderly. The benefits, costing $400 billion over 10 years, are complex and limited, and the legislation relies in part on cost control mechanisms that are untested or unproven.

Bush's Reelection Liabilities Mount
By Robert Kuttner
Boston Globe, 3 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Bush's foreign policy is a shambles. The architects of the Iraq war have been proven wrong on every contention they made -- the imminent weapons of mass destruction, the alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, the supposed ease of occupation and reconstruction. Thumbing America's nose at "old Europe" proved a major blunder. Bush now needs the United Nations to clean up his mess, but he is insisting on US control. France and Germany, not to mention Russia and China, aren't exactly lining up to donate money and troops to bail Bush out.... GIs are still getting killed for a war that the American public is turning against. Bush's vaunted Israel-Palestine "road map" is a path to nowhere. Colin Powell, the prudent internationalist in the nest of reckless hawks, has been reduced to a pathetic token. Barring some improbable breakthrough, photo ops of Bush in a flak jacket won't divert the spotlight from the real damage. Then there's the economy.

Documents Show Extent of Lobbying by Boeing For Tanker Lease
By LESLIE WAYNE
New York Times, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: In a last-ditch effort to block a controversial $20 billion proposal by the Air Force to lease a fleet of Boeing 767 aerial tankers, Senator John McCain's office has released documents showing a high-level lobbying campaign by the Air Force and Boeing to fend off critics as well as potential competitors.

The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky
By Arundhati Roy
Rense.com, 30 August 2003
EXCERPT: Today, thanks to Noam Chomsky and his fellow media analysts, it is almost axiomatic for thousands, possibly millions, of us that public opinion in "free market" democracies is manufactured just like any other mass market product--soap, switches, or sliced bread. We know that while, legally and constitutionally, speech may be free, the space in which that freedom can be exercised has been snatched from us and auctioned to the highest bidders. Neoliberal capitalism isn't just about the accumulation of capital (for some). It's also about the accumulation of power (for some), the accumulation of freedom (for some). Conversely, for the rest of the world, the people who are excluded from neoliberalism's governing body, it's about the erosion of capital, the erosion of power, the erosion of freedom.

The Bush Cartel sold off the friendly skies
Muscling Government Out of Air Safety
By Thomas Oliphant
Boston Globe, 3 September 2003
EXCERPTS: In the expanding annals of President Bush's duplicitous misleadership, turning high school civics on its head in the service of corporate buddies is at least a new wrinkle.... Indeed, the White House has already helped prepare for that day by changing a basic bureaucratic definition of air traffic control from inherently governmental to "commercial activity."

GOP Focuses on Medical Malpractice Caps
By DAVID ESPO
Associated Press  3 September 2003
EXCERPT: Republicans intend to stage another Senate clash this fall over legislation to limit damage awards in medical malpractice cases, and they undeterred by a congressional report that says rising insurance costs for doctors are not causing widespread denial of health care.

White House Threatens Veto on Overtime Change
By Thomas Ferraro
Reuters in FindLaw, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: The White House issued a veto threat on Wednesday against a Democratic bid to derail its proposed changes in federal work rules that foes say could cost millions of Americans overtime pay.

The Triumverate
August 29, 2003
By Ralph Nader
In the Public Interest, 29 August 2003
EXCERPT: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and John Ashcroft are testing the American people as to whether violations of the U.S. Constitution by the Executive branch of government are to be viewed as mere technicalities or a growing threat to the fabric of liberty, privacy, due process and fair trials in our country. Of course, these men are verbally reassuring while they conduct their "war on terrorism." President Bush says "we will not allow this enemy to win the war by restricting our freedoms." Last September, Attorney General Ashcroft said "We're not sacrificing civil liberties. We're securing civil liberties." Then Orwellian-like they swing into action. Arrests without charges. Imprisonment indefinitely without lawyers. Secret indefinite jailings for people who are just considered "material witnesses," not accused of any crimes.

Federal Appeals Court Halts Implementation of FCC Ownership Rules
By David B. Caruso
Associated Press, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: A federal appeals court Wednesday issued an emergency stay delaying new Federal Communications Commission rules that would allow a single company to own newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same city. The new media ownership rules, which the FCC approved in June on a party-line, 3-2 vote, also would allow a single company to own TV stations reaching 45 percent of the nation's viewers. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a coalition of media access groups called the Prometheus Radio Project would suffer irreparable harm if the new rules were allowed to go into effect as scheduled Thursday. The Philadelphia-based coalition campaigns for greater radio access and provides technical support and advice to groups seeking to establish low-power radio stations. Small broadcasters and network affiliates are concerned the new rules will allow the networks to gobble up more stations and limit local control of programming.

3 September 2003

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Losing Jobs
President Bush's New Manufacturing Policy is Doomed
By Daniel Gross
Slate, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: Message: President Bush cares.
"I want you to understand that I understand that Ohio manufacturers are hurting, that there's a problem with the manufacturing sector," the president told a union gathering in Ohio on Labor Day. "We've lost thousands of jobs in manufacturing." The truth is we've lost more like thousands of thousands of job—2.57 million (nonseasonally adjusted) since December 2000, to be exact. And as the Washington Post reported, Bush announced he's going to create "a new position, assistant secretary of commerce for manufacturing and services." That's one new job, at least. ...Bush could be the first president since Herbert Hoover to see the total number of jobs fall in a four-year term, he's got to do something.

Interview with Noam Chomsky
The Dominion And The Intellectuals
Antasofia Interview with Noam Chomsky
Outlook India.com, 1 September 2003
EXCERPT: 'One of the reasons why I am considered public enemy number one among a large sector of intellectuals in the US is that I mention that the U.S. is one of the major terrorist states in the world and this assertion, though plainly true, is unacceptable for many intellectuals...'.

Richard Perle Libel Watch, Week 24
Sympathy for the foreign-policy macher.
By Jack Shafer
Slate, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: Almost six months ago, foreign-policy macher Richard N. Perle vowed to sue Seymour M. Hersh for writing an unflattering feature about him in The New Yorker. Perle told the New York Sun he'd be suing in England because its libel laws are more favorable to plaintiffs than U.S. libel law. As I wrote back then, Perle had little cause for a lawsuit and no real intention to file. His threat was a coward's bluff designed to intimidate other reporters from investigating his potential conflicts of interest. The bluff failed miserably when the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Nation all followed Hersh's lead to survey the peculiar intersection of Perle's business dealings with his official duties as chairman and member of the Defense Policy Board.

Bush's War On Cops
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
Washington Monthly, September Issue
EXCERPT: Welcome back to the 1980s. Thanks to White House policy, police departments are understaffed, cops are overwhelmed, murders are up, and killers are getting away.

Anti-Bush Cartoon Gets Spiked
Progressive, 28 August 2003
McCarthyism Watch {scroll down)
EXCERPT: Dennis Draughon is a cartoonist for the Scranton Times and Tribune in Pennsylvania. After Bush gave his infamous "Bring 'Em On" statement in July, Draughon drew a cartoon with Bush at the podium saying those words, while in front of the podium were four caskets draped in American flags and a sign saying, "U.S. Casualties in Iraq." The cartoon never ran.

Tim Robbins strikes a blow against "patriotic" chickenhawks
Star Attacks US Culture of Fear
By Fiachra Gibbons
Guardian (UK), 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: The American actor Tim Robbins broke his silence yesterday after being attacked for putting US troops "in danger" by speaking out against the invasion of Iraq. Robbins, whose partner and fellow actor, Susan Sarandon, has also been criticised for her anti-war stance, said the cold shouldering they received had been "a gift" which had rallied liberals to the cause of free speech.... "Too often people abdicate their freedom in their minds and choose not to speak. But once you abdicate that freedom you may as well not have it," Robbins said at the Venice Film Festival.

Black America's icons aren't what they used to be...
When The Saints Go Marching Out
By Arundhati Roy
Transcript of speech given on BBC
Courtesy of ZNet, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: The black American struggle for civil rights gave us some of the most magnificent political fighters, thinkers, public speakers and writers of our times. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, James Baldwin, and of course the marvellous, magical, mythical Muhammad Ali. Who has inherited their mantle? Could it be the likes of Colin Powell? Condoleeza Rice? Michael Powell? They're the exact opposite of icons or role models. They appear to be the embodiment of black peoples' dreams of material success, but in actual fact they represent the Great Betrayal. They are the liveried doormen guarding the portals of the glittering ballroom against the press and swirl of the darker races. Their role and purpose is to be trotted out by the Bush administration looking for brownie points in its racist wars and African safaris. If these are black America's new icons, then the old ones must be dispensed with because they do not belong in the same pantheon.

Bush Team's clueless economic policies
The Morning After
By Dean Baker
(co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research)
TomPaine.com, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: The period of slow growth since President Bush took office has led to the largest prolonged period of job loss since the Great Depression. Since February 2001, the private sector has lost more than 3 million jobs. While previous recessions recorded steeper job losses, the rebounds also happened more quickly. Only in this recession has the economy continued to shed jobs for such a long period, with no obvious turnaround in sight.

Adding Insult to Labor's Injuries
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate, 31 August 2003
EXCERPT: This poignant Labor Day, when the numbers are bad, the policies are worse and the jobs are disappearing, it's not so much the economy that riles me as the disrespect and the gratuitous contempt with which this administration treats working Americans. The old insult to injury. If we've had an administration so blinkered by class blinders before, it is not within my memory. What these people know about working-class Americans would fit in a gnat's eye.

Tuesday 2 September 2003

The Bush team gives more bad news when they think no one is paying attention
Another Friday Outrage
By Paul Krugman
New York Times, 2 August 2003
EXCERPT: When the E.P.A. makes our air dirtier, or the Interior Department opens a wilderness to mining companies, or the Labor Department strips workers of some more rights, the announcement always comes late on Friday ‹ when the news is most likely to be ignored on TV and nearly ignored by major newspapers. Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, known as FERC, announced settlements with energy companies accused of manipulating markets during the California energy crisis. Why on Friday? Because the settlements were a joke: the companies got away with only token payments.

Neocons Admit They've Blown It: Is the Draft Next?
By Paul Craig Roberts
VDare, 28 August 2003
EXCERPT: Do you remember the ridicule neocons heaped on critics who predicted a quagmire in Iraq? Now neocons William Kristol and Robert Kagan are calling for more troops and more money - two more army divisions and another $60 billion to be exact. But there are no troops to send. The Pentagon doesn¹t know where it is going to get the troops to carry on the occupation of Iraq at the present level of troop strength.

Bush Facing Crucial Political Stretch, Analysts Say
By Wayne Washington
Boston Globe, 2 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Bush returned to the capital last week to face a morass of problems in addition to unemployment. The problems include rising bipartisan complaints about his policies in Iraq, soaring deficits, and news that his hopes for a Medicare prescription drug benefit are on the ropes.... At least Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor running for president, won't be able to keep mocking Bush as "asleep" in Crawford while Americans worry about their jobs. With his poll numbers slipping back to pre-Sept. 11, 2001, levels and an eager field of Democratic presidential candidates tearing into him, Bush is facing one of the most crucial stretches of his political life, political observers say.

U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rising
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: U.S. battlefield casualties in Iraq are increasing dramatically in the face of continued attacks by remnants of Saddam Hussein's military and other forces, with almost 10 American troops a day now being officially declared "wounded in action." The number of those wounded in action, which totals 1,124 since the war began in March, has grown so large, and attacks have become so commonplace, that U.S. Central Command usually issues news releases listing injuries only when the attacks kill one or more troops. The result is that many injuries go unreported.

Lawmakers Question Bush's Iraq Policies
By Ken Guggenheim
AP, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: Once wary of criticizing a popular wartime president's handling of Iraq, members of Congress are shedding their inhibitions. Returning to Washington this week after a summer break, some are questioning whether President Bush could do more to get help from other countries to secure and rebuild Iraq, whether he has enough U.S. troops there and how much the war will cost in U.S. lives and taxpayer dollars.

Rice-a-phony history?
Sorry, Dr. Rice, postwar Germany was nothing like Iraq.
By Daniel Benjamin
Sltate, 29 August 2003
EXCERPT: As American post-conflict combat deaths in Iraq overtook the wartime number, the administration counseled patience. "The war on terror is a test of our strength. It is a test of our perseverance, our patience, and our will," President Bush told an American Legion convention. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice embellished the message with what former White House speechwriters immediately recognize as a greatest-generation pander.

Do Jobs Not Matter Anymore?
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Wahsington Post, 23 August 2003
EXCERPT: Maybe we should just scrap Labor Day and rename it "Capital Day." After all, aren't we now a "nation of investors"? Isn't most business reporting, especially on television, about stock prices and "returns on capital"? If you care about wages and working conditions, you must be some sort of dinosaur. And, hey, who cares about unemployment? Productivity is growing, which means we're more efficient. Sure, we're losing manufacturing jobs. But worrying about manufacturing is so Old Economy. Yeah, yeah, a lot of those manufacturing jobs helped people build middle class lives. But won't they make it all up in their portfolios? Income is old hat. Wealth is the thing.

Doctor Rising
Columbia Political Review
26 August 2003
EXCERPT: Polls at this stage of the presidential race are naturally incredibly fluent and open to interpretation, The Times is reporting on a very interesting Zogby poll: Zogby International, an independent firm, is scheduled to release Wednesday a poll showing Dr. Dean leading in New Hampshire with 38 percent of the vote to 17 percent for Senator John Kerry; in early July Senator Kerry had 25 percent to Dr. Dean's 22 percent. The poll has a margin of sampling error of 4.5 percentage points. Even if the sampling error is the full 4.5 percent, that still means that Howard Dean is over John Kerry 33.5 percent to 21.5%. For this early in the presidential race, that's staggering, especially considering that New Hampshire, always important due to its role as the first primary, is a must-win state for both candidates.

Failing to Fight Failure
By Brian Wagner
Columbia Political Review, 1 September 2003
EXCERPT: In 2001, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act. Only a year after implementation, it is already in danger of falling far short of expectations. The programs of the Act were, and still are, a testament to wishful thinking. Unfortunately, wishful thinking and a chunk of money are no panacea for the recurring problems of the U.S. educational system

1 September 2003

Looks Like a Recovery, Feels Like a Recession
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
New York Times, 1 September 2003
EXCERPT: Even though the recession ended nearly two years ago, polls show that American workers are feeling stressed and shaky this Labor Day because the nation continues to register month after month of job losses and wages are rising more slowly than inflation. One factor above all has fueled the insecurity: the nation has lost 2.7 million jobs over the last three years. The recovery has been so weak since the recession ended in November 2001 that the nation's payrolls are down one million jobs from when economic growth resumed.

Corporate culture of "encouraging paranoia"
Stupid Microsoft Tricks: Why the Richest Company on Earth Feels it Needs to Cheat
I, Cringly - The Pulpit, 1 September 2003
By Robert X. Cringely
Courtesy of What Really Happened.com
EXCERPT: It isn't that Microsoft needs so much to win, but that they are desperate not to lose. The company functions in part by encouraging paranoia. "Sure things look good now, but that could change in an instant." That was Microsoft's primary defense in its case with the Department of Justice -- not that it didn't have an effective monopoly, but that it had what it thought was a fragile monopoly. That's why Microsoft needs a war chest of nearly $50 billion because that instant could come and the cash would be needed. ...this fear has been very effective as a company motivator, but in the process it has turned Microsoft into a monster.

Decades of neglect
Mental Care Poor for Some Children in State Custody
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 1 September 2003
EXCERPT: Thousands of parents have given up custody of their children under pressure from states in order to obtain treatment for the children's severe mental illnesses, federal investigators say, but some states have not lived up to their end of the deal.

15 September 2003

Report on Iraq WMDs Shelved
Even Documentation To Prove Iraqi WMD Program Is Not Found
Sunday Times (London), 14 September 2003
Remember the Kay Report? That's the comprehensive summary of the evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that the Bush team promised to release in mid-September. Well, the time has arrived, and the London Sunday Times reveals that the report has been shelved due to a lack of evidence, as the search for evidence of chemical and biological weapons has ended in failure.

Bush team pleased with progress
Secret Slaughter By Night, Lies and Blind Eyes By Day
By Robert Fisk
The Independent,14 September 2003
Courtesy of InformationClearingHouse.info
In the suburbs of Baghdad and the Sunni cities to the north the American military policy of 'recon-by-fire' and the breakdown of law and order is exacting a heavy toll on a war-torn people. ...almost 1,000 Iraqi civilians are being killed every week - and that may well be a conservative figure. Somewhere in the cavernous marble halls of proconsul Paul Bremer's palace on the Tigris, someone must be calculating these awful statistics. But of course, the Americans are not telling us. It's like listening to Iraq's American-run radio station. Death - unless it's on a spectacular scale like the Jordanian or UN or Najaf bombings - simply doesn't get on the air. Even the killing of American troops isn't reported for 24 hours. Driving the highways of Iraq, I've been reduced to listening to the only radio station with up-to-date news on the guerrilla war in Iraq: Iran's "Alam Radio", broadcasting in Arabic from Tehran. It's as if the denizens of Mr Bremer's chandeliered chambers do not regard Iraq as a real country, a place of tragedy and despair whose "liberated" people increasingly blame their "liberators" for their misery.

Blow to World Economy as WTO Talks Collapse
By Larry Elliott, Charlotte Denny and David Munk
Guardian (UK), 15 September 2003
EXCERPT: The fragile global economy received a damaging blow last night when trade talks in Cancun collapsed after a walkout by African countries protesting at the west's failure to open its markets to the poor. In scenes reminiscent of the World Trade Organisation's disastrous Seattle meeting four years ago, a day of acrimonious wrangling ended as the chairman, the Mexican foreign secretary, Luis Ernesto Derbez, was unable to get talks restarted after Kenya lost patience and left the negotiating table.
SEE ALSO: Dumping, Access and Tariffs: Issues that could make or break WTO talks

U.S. Renews French Feud over Iraq
By Jason Burke
Observer (UK), 14 September 2003
EXCERPT: The continuing row between France and the United States appeared to be jeopardising Washington's hopes of swiftly sharing the burden of occupation. Although there has been a relatively positive response to requests for assistance, the international community is still seriously divided over how soon the US should hand power to local politicians in Iraq.

The End of Zionism: Israel Must Shed its Illusions and Choose Between Racist Oppression and Democracy
By Avraham Burg
Guardian (UK), 15 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly. There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement it.

Israel Firm on Arafat Exile, Cites 'Self-Defense'
By Dan Williams
Reuters, 13 September 2003
Courtesy of InformationClearingHouse.info
EXCERPT: Israel rebuffed Saturday a U.N. Security Council warning not to go through with its threat to exile Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, saying national security was at stake amid a new wave of suicide bombings.

PM Sharon ´s Confidante: PA State - Not in this Generation
Arutz Sheva, 11 September 2003
Courtesy of InformationClearingHouse.info
EXCERPT: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has changed his mind about the establishment of a Palestinian state. At least so writes his good friend and confidante, journalist Uri Dan. After returning from the official visit to India with Sharon early this morning, Dan wrote in Maariv today that he has the impression that "in India, the State of Palestine was buried" (based on Theodore Herzl's statement, "In Basel [at the First Zionist Congress], I established the Jewish State"). In light of the recent wave of Palestinian Arab terrorism, Dan writes, "The Palestinian leadership will not get to see a Palestinian state - at least not in this generation. The chance that they were given has expired." Dan, who has never been known to criticize a position taken by Sharon, wrote that the events of the past few days have convinced the Prime Minister that the PA must "disappear from the map."

Another egregious, idiotic violation of international law...
U.S. Military to Abuse Illegally Detained Prisoners with Big Macs
By Dan Fesperman
Baltimore Sun, 14 September 2003
EXCERPT: American interrogators here have come up with a few new weapons as they try to pry loose the secrets of prisoners captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan. "It could be cupcakes, it could be Twinkies, it could even be a McDonald's hamburger," says Warrant Officer James Kluck, who, as the ranking food service officer, helps supply some of the unlikely ammunition.... But somehow this doesn't seem surprising at the strange and surreal Camp Delta, the seaside prison complex built by the Pentagon nearly a year and a half ago in this fenced-off corner of Cuba. It is a penal colony unlike any ever created by the American government, nestled in cactus-spiked hills and visited by giant iguanas, but, by careful design, well beyond reach of defense lawyers and the US Constitution. With a captor-to-captive ratio of greater than 4 to 1, it may be the world's most securely staffed prison, but not a single detainee has been charged with a crime or told how long he will be staying. The detainee population is 660 men and three teenage boys.

Bush silent
Israeli Says Killing Arafat Is an Option
By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH,
Associated Press, 14 September 2003
The second-ranking official in the Israeli government said Sunday that killing Yasser Arafat is an option, as thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across the West Bank and Gaza Strip promising to protect their leader.

Iraqiization progresses
Heavy Gunfire Erupts As Mourners Gather in Fallujah
ABC News, 14 September 2003
EXCERPT: Heavy gunfire crackled through the city of Fallujah as scores of heavily-armed tribesmen vowed revenge against US troops involved in a "friendly fire" incident that killed nine Iraqi security personnel and a Jordanian hospital guard. A chorus of Kalashnikovs reverberated around the city as the bodies of the dead were brought to the Hamad al-Mahmud Mosque, opposite police headquarters, an AFP correspondent said. Mourners who gathered under tribal banners vowed to avenge their lost love ones. "We will keep your blood warm with the blood of the American killers," they chanted. Many wore masks and carried rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers.

Rummy, say it isn't so...
American Troops Forced to Buy Own Wartime Gear
By TARA COPP & JESSICA WEHRMAN
Scripps Howard News Service, 11 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Last Christmas, Mike Corcoran sent his mother an unusual Christmas list: He wanted night-vision goggles, a global positioning system and a short-wave radio. Corcoran, then a Marine sergeant in Afghanistan, wanted the goggles so he could see on patrols. They cost about $2,000 each. According to an Army internal report released earlier this summer, many ground troops like Corcoran decided to dip into their own pockets to get the equipment they needed to fight in Afghanistan and in Iraq. "There were a lot of reports of that prior to the war, people would go out and buy their own gear," said Patrick Garrett, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. "The Army ran out of desert camo boots, and a lot of soldiers were being issued regular black combat boots. Soldiers decided that wasn't for them, so they paid for new boots with their own money." According to the Pentagon's "Operation Iraqi Freedom Lessons Learned" draft report, soldiers spent their own money to get better field radios, extra ammunition carriers to help them fight better and commercial backpacks because their own rucksacks were too small.

Basic U.S. Military Equipment Used In Iraq In Need Of Repair
Extended Iraq Deployment Taking Its Toll
By Martha Raddatz
ABC News, 13 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration expected more than half of the U.S. troops and equipment in Iraq to be home by now. Instead, billions of dollars are urgently needed for protection and repairs because of the extended stay.

North Korea Working on Missile Accuracy
If developed, the new nuclear weapon could increase the communist regime's chances of striking the continental U.S., an analyst says.
By Sonni Efron 
Los Angeles Times, 12 September 2003
Courtesy of GlobalSecurity.org
EXCERPT: North Korea is developing a long-range missile that could hit U.S. targets with greater accuracy than its old missiles, a U.S. official confirmed Thursday. The missile is based on the old Soviet navy's SS-N-6, a submarine-launched missile, the official said. North Korea is believed to have acquired it between 1992 and 1998, then added technology to improve the missile. It can now be launched from the ground, the official said.

The UN Must Be Given a Strong Mandate to Protect and Promote Human Rights
Amnesty International Press release,
12 September 2003
EXCERPT: On the eve of the meeting of the foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the future of Iraq, Amnesty International has called on the Security Council to ensure that human rights are central to any future resolution.
"In particular, the Security Council should ensure that the United Nations is given a strong and unambiguous human rights mandate which it must be able to assert with the full authority accorded to it under the United Nations Charter," Amnesty International said. "The Security Council should ensure that human rights are given a foremost place in reconstruction efforts and should explicitly provide that the protection of all human rights for all Iraqis is the central purpose of these efforts," the organisation stressed.

Powell Rejects French Proposal
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post, 13 September 2003
EXCERPT: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, arriving here early this morning for talks about what role the United Nations should play in rebuilding Iraq, labeled as "totally unrealistic" a French proposal that the United States should transfer power to the U.N. and Iraqis within the next month. Powell said France's proposal that Iraq establish a provisional government in a month, write a constitution by the end of this year and hold elections next spring---all under U.N. supervision---was "interesting, but not executable."... His remarks, coming before he meets with the other foreign ministers representing the five permanent members U.N. Security Council, suggested that a new trans-Atlantic rift may be opening over Iraq similar to the bitter dispute that pitted the United States and Britain against France, Germany and Russia in the weeks before the war began last March. ... French and German leaders, meeting earlier this week, made clear the United States must be prepared to cede political control over Iraq if it hopes to win international financial support for rebuilding the country and a multinational troop presence.

International Support to Rebuild Iraq May Cost
By WILLIAM DOUGLAS
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 12 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Less than a week after announcing that it now intends to work through the United Nations, the administration found itself wrangling with France, Germany and Russia - three nations that opposed military action in Iraq - over what it would take to earn their support. Countering the administration's proposed U.N. resolution, the three countries support measures that would create an international military force under U.S. command but swiftly shift control of Iraq from U.S. hands to the United Nations and eventually to the Iraqi people. ...France also wants an independent entity, such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, to ensure monitoring of how money for Iraq is used, said Jean-David Levitte, France's U.S. ambassador. ...Powell and the foreign ministers of the other four permanent members of the Security Council are scheduled to meet this weekend in Geneva to discuss the United States' Iraq resolution. Hoping to avoid a repeat of the diplomatic meltdown that stymied White House efforts to get a U.N. resolution authorizing war with Iraq, the administration intends to isolate France, which Washington viewed as the ringleader of the U.N. antiwar effort, a veteran State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

World editorial opinion on Bush's War
What the Foreign Papers Are Saying
By June Thomas
Slate, 11 September 2003

Memorial Day
How Bush squandered the chance to salvage American greatness from 9-11
By Michael Tomasky
The American Prospect, 11 September 2003
EXCERPTS: (On September 11, 2001)...we had entered a new period of history. But two years on, this new period looks far more like what preceded it than it ought to, and when history eventually gets around to rendering judgments about what opportunities were squandered or missed or contemptuously dismissed, its j'accuse will be directed squarely at the current administration, whose ideological imperatives have trumped practical reality at every turn. ...This could have and should have been an era of unprecedented national -- indeed, international -- unity against a common enemy. President Bush could have gone to the other nations of the world and made a case for a new age of international cooperation against terrorism and fundamentalism. That cooperation, and that fight, would have been aimed squarely at the Taliban and at the House of Saud, and, to a lesser extent, at the smaller terrorist networks that operate in the Middle East. To be sure, this wouldn't have been easy. There would have been (as there are) vast disagreements between the United States and nations of Europe over how to deal with the Palestinian question and what to do about Saudi Arabia. But a historical process would have begun, and the United States would clearly and unambiguously have occupied the moral high ground in such a case.

13-14 September 2003

Besieged by Protestors, Cancun Trade Talks on Verge of Collapse
By Larry Elliott and Charlotte Denny
Guardian (UK), 13 September 2003
EXCERPT: Britain gave warning last night that time was running out for the global trade summit in Cancun as negotiators prepared for a weekend of crisis talks to save the meeting from collapse. Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, said the standoff between rich and poor nations had to be resolved quickly to secure a deal by tomorrow night's deadline. The United States and European Union urged developing countries to compromise after the Group of 21 bloc, headed by Brazil, China and India, prevented any real progress in the first 48 hours of talks.

Looking for Signs of Hope in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
By Jonathan Freedland
Guardian (UK), 13 September 2003
EXCERPT: It was on September 13 1993 that Bill Clinton stood on the White House lawn, held out his big, bear arms and pushed Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat into one of the most memorable handshakes of modern times. They were there to sign the Oslo accords, heading down a road that most of the watching world believed would finally end the century-long conflict between Jews and Arabs over the land they both claim. Rabin, the weary soldier turned peacemaker, caught the mood when he declared: "Enough of war, enough of bloodshed. Enough."

A Hail of Bullets, A Trail of Dead, and a Mystery the U.S. is in No Hurry to Resolve
By Robert Fisk
London Independent, 13 September 2003
Courtesy of Information Clearing House
EXCERPT: A human brain lay beside the highway. It was scattered in the sand, blasted from its owner's head when the Americans ambushed their own Iraqi policemen. A few inches away were a policeman's teeth, broken but clean dentures, the teeth of a young man. "I don't know if they are the teeth of my brother - and I don't even know if my brother is alive or dead," Ahmed Mohamed shouted at me. "The Americans took the dead and the wounded away - they won't tell us anything." Ahmed Mohamed was telling the truth. He is also, I should add, an Iraqi policeman working for the Americans. United States forces in Iraq officially stated - incredibly - that they had "no information" about the killing of the 10 cops and the wounding of five others early yesterday morning. Unfortunately, the Americans are not telling the truth.... But why did the Americans kill so many of their own Iraqi policemen? Had they not heard the radio appeals of the dying men? Why--and here the story of the Jordanian Hospital guard's and the policemen's relatives were the same--did the Americans go on shooting for an hour and a half? And why did the Americans say that they had "no information" about the slaughter 18 hours after they had gunned down 10 of the very men whom President Bush needs most if he wishes to extricate his army from the Iraqi death trap?

Bush Says 'No Free Nation Can Be Neutral' in Call for International Support to Stabilize Iraq
By Rupert Cornwell
Independent (UK), 13 September
EXCERPTS: On the eve of a crucial meeting between the US and its key United Nations partners, President Bush yesterday issued an uncompromising demand for international support for Washington's faltering attempt to restore stability to Iraq.... His language - which was reminiscent of the "either-with-us-or-against-us" gauntlet he threw down immediately after 11 September - does little to suggest that the US will be prepared to give much ground in its pursuit of a new UN resolution authorising the dispatch of a multinational force to Iraq.

Women Still Have to Save the World
By Marlene Nadle
Pacific News Service, 12 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush may not face much opposition in Congress to his plan for perpetual preemptive war, but he better watch out for the women. Angry over the swagger of violence coming out of the White House, disgusted by the bring-'em-on itch for a fight as the solution to political problems, women around the globe are organizing in new ways.

Bush Team envious
International Community Imposes No Responsibilities of Occupation On Israel
By Meron Benvenisti
Haaretz.com, 11 September 2003
Courtesy of Cursor.org
EXCERPT: Had Israel been required to fulfill its commitment as an occupying power, it would have had to pay NIS 5-6 billion a year just to maintain basic services for a population of more than three million people. But it created an international precedent - an occupation fully financed by the international community. The harsher the Israeli measures with "closures, blockades and safety fences," the larger the international aid "to prevent a humanitarian crisis," and Israel is not held accountable. Israel isn't even required to display minimal politeness and gratitude to the donor states for their generosity in providing the economic safety net. Indeed, the greatest contributor - the European Union as a body and European states individually - are treated with contempt and condescension: pay up and shut up, or we'll accuse you of anti-Semitism.

12 September 2003

Iraqiization, not de-Iraqiization!
U.S. Soldiers Mistakenly Open Fire on Iraqi Police Chasing Bandits
By Ali Ahmed, Associated Press, 9/12/2003 06:08
EXCERPT:  U.S. soldiers mistakenly opened fire Friday on Iraqi police officers chasing highway bandits near an American checkpoint in a small town west of Fallujah, witnesses said. The U.S. military in Baghdad said it had no information on the incident. In the confusion after the shooting, which was near the Jordanian Hospital just outside Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, 12 policemen were taken inside the nearby U.S. base. Whether they were killed or injured was not clear. Family members gathered at the base gate waiting for news. Five other policemen were taken to a hospital with injuries. Arab satellite television broadcasters were reporting between 10 and 17 policemen killed.

Globalism is a form of war
Activists Must Follow the Money
By Naomi Klein
Guardian (UK), 12 September 2003
EXCERPT: After September 11, rightwing pundits couldn't bury the globalisation movement fast enough. In times of war, they said, no one would care about frivolous issues like water privatisation. Much of the anti-war movement fell into a related trap: now was not the time to focus on divisive economic debates, but to come together to call for peace. All this nonsense ended in Cancun this week, when thousands of activists converged to declare that the brutal economic model advanced by the WTO is itself a form of war. War because privatisation and deregulation kill - by pushing up prices on necessities like water and medicines, and pushing down prices on raw commodities like coffee, making small farms unsustainable. War because those who resist are routinely arrested, beaten and even killed. War because when this low-intensity repression fails to clear the path to corporate liberation, the real wars begin.

Indian farmers strike against globalism
Monsanto Greenhouse Destroyed by Activists
AP, 12 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Indian farmers yesterday wrecked a research station in Bangalore run by Monsanto, the US firm with a monopoly on the sale of genetically modified cotton seeds in the six out of India's 29 states that permit them. At least 29 farmers were arrested.... "We timed the attack [for] those attending the WTO in Cancun," said the Karnataka state farmers' association.

Not so "free trade"
Researchers Estimate Smoking Kills as Many in Developing World as in Industrialized Countries
By EMMA ROSS
Associated Press, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: LONDON -- About as many people are now dying from smoking in the developing world as in industrialized nations, according to the most thorough estimate to date of global deaths caused by tobacco.

President of Egypt Warns Israel: Expelling Arafat Would be a Huge Mistake
EUBusiness, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: "I want to say that if we are talking about expelling Arafat, we would be making a monumental error," Mubarak said. "Not because we love Arafat, but because we want peace, we want security, we want stability. I can't predict what will happen in a case where President Arafat is expelled from the Palestinian territories. It could lead to a extremely dangerous situation, an escalation of violence, terrorism from who knows where."

"Bush style" accountability
Mystery Shrouds Pentagon's Extra Funds
By Peter Spiegel
Financial Times of London, 10 September 2003
EXCERPT: the Bush administration has been tight-lipped about where the huge sums - which come on top of $62bn appropriated for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in April - are going. Because Iraq military efforts are being funded outside the normal appropriations process, in so-called "supplemental" or emergency spending bills, the funding does not go through the same rigorous congressional oversight to which normal Pentagon spending is subject annually. As a result, the spending is difficult to track, leading to concerns among some members of Congress, and experts in Pentagon budgeting, about the Defence Department's accountability.

Let the corporate rape of Iraq begin!
Iraq Finance Minister Prepares Privatisation Plan
By Rosalind Russell
Reuters, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: Iraq's new finance minister said on Thursday a clear framework for the privatisation of the country's state industries would be in place in two years. Kamel al-Keylani, appointed last week by the U.S.-backed Governing Council, said the idea of selling off Iraq's state industries, particularly its prized oil sector, would first have to be sold to the Iraqi people.

Fatah urges Palestinians to shield Arafat
By Reuters, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement urged Palestinians Thursday to stay around the clock at his headquarters to protect the Palestinian president from any Israeli attempt to force him into exile. "It is true the Palestinians do not own tanks but they own the determination to resist this Israeli decision," Ahmed Ghneim, a senior official in Arafat's mainstream political movement, told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Using Arafat's nom de guerre, he said: "We call on the Palestinian people to be present at Abu Ammar's compound day and night so the (Israeli) occupiers realize that the people will defend their leadership." Tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in defiant rallies after Israel's cabinet decided in principle to expel Arafat as an obstacle to peace, a charge he denies. Arafat vowed to crowds outside his presidential offices he would stay put come what may.

Israelis Threatens Arafat Expulsion
By Karin Laub
The Associated Press, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: Israel issued an ominous threat Thursday to "remove" Yasser Arafat because he has failed to halt suicide bombings. Thousands of Palestinians rushed to Arafat's compound to protect their leader, fearing Israel wants to expel or even kill him.

Report: Blair Was Told of Terror Risks in Iraq War
Britain's Intelligence Chiefs Warned Prime Minister Prior to Invasion
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: Britain's intelligence chiefs warned Prime Minister Tony Blair a month before the invasion of Iraq that military action would increase the threat of terrorism and the risk of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction, according to a parliamentary report released today.

Folly Taken to a Scale We Haven't Seen Since WWII
By Robert Fisk
Independent (UK), 11 September 2003
Courtesy of Information Clearing House
EXCERPT: Who could ever have conceived of an American president calling the world to arms against "terrorism" in "Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza"? Gaza? What do the miserable, crushed, cruelly imprisoned Palestinians of Gaza have to do with the international crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania? Nothing, of course. Neither does Iraq have anything to do with 11 September. Nor were there any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, any al-Qa'ida links with Iraq, any 45-minute timeline for the deployment of chemical weapons nor was there any "liberation". No, the attacks on 11 September have nothing to do with Iraq. Neither did 11 September change the world. President Bush cruelly manipulated the grief of the American people - and the sympathy of the rest of the world - to introduce a "world order" dreamed up by a clutch of fantasists advising the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld.

Bush's glaring failure: Two years later, no Bin Laden
Terror's Disconnect
By Laura Rozen
TomPaine.com, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: Two years after 9/11, the Bush administration's war on terror seems riven by a stunning disconnect. Why does the White House, which insisted on tying Iraq to Al Qaeda with the flimsiest shreds of evidence, ignore a growing array of facts pointing to two other countries' support of Al Qaeda? Why does Bush, having dispensed with all diplomatic niceties in declaring Iraq, Iran and North Korea charter members in "the axis of evil," refuse to call a spade a spade in Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan?

New York in 2001, Chile in 1973
Two 9/11s, One Story
By Roger Burbach
Guardian (UK), 11 September 2003
EXCERPTS: On September 11 1973 Salvador Allende resided in the Chilean presidential palace. He was the first freely elected socialist leader in the world, and ever since his victory in September 1970, the CIA and the US government, headed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, were determined to oust Allende and his Popular Unity coalition.... The years to come will focus on the great divide that has emerged out of the two September 11s. On the one side stands an arrogant unilateralist clique in the US that engages in state terrorism and human rights abuses while tearing up international treaties. On the other is a global movement that is determined to advance a broad conception of human rights and human dignity through the utilisation of law, extradition treaties and limited policing activities.
SEE ALSO: US Papers Reveal Secret Role in Chile

11 September 2003

The Twin Towers and the Tower of Babel
Part 1: Sleeping with the enemy
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times, 10 September 2003
EXCERPT: Two years after September 11, 2001, the Washington neo-conservative dream of a rainbow of democracy shining from Israel to Afghanistan and traversing Iraq has vanished into thin air. From Kabul to Baghdad, the vision is being wiped out by the truth of hard facts. 1) The American army does not have the resources to play by itself the role of global sheriff. 2) America is not prepared for or interested in nation-building. 3) Military "victories", like Afghanistan and Iraq, mean nothing when they are not complemented by moral and political legitimacy. The lack of legitimacy creates a political void, immediately exploited by radical Islam.

The Twin Towers and the Tower of Babel
Part 2 : The roadmap of human folly
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times, 11 September 2003
EXCERPT: "I wonder whether there can be a future for the UN in Iraq," asks an European diplomat. Some Iraqis recognize that the United Nations' humanitarian aid, in the shape of the oil for food program, may have saved lives during the embargo. But many hate the UN exactly because of the embargo: for them, the UN just enforces what Washington decides.

WTO Must Be Transformed for Poor to Reclaim Power from Rich
By George Monbiot
Guardian (UK), 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: The World Trade Organisation is a corrupted, coopted, captured institution, but all those who care about global justice should be fighting for its survival. Every time we shout that the WTO has got to go, we join hands with George Bush: he wants to destroy it because it impedes his plans for direct US control of other nations' economies. In principle, the poor members of the WTO can and should outvote the rich ones. In practice, its democratic structure has been bypassed by the notorious "green room" meetings organised by the rich nations, by corporate lobbying and by the secret and unaccountable committees of the corporate lawyers it uses to resolve trade disputes.

Former U.S. Aide In Negotiations With North Korea Slams Bush's Strategy
By Marian Wilkinson
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), 10 September 2003
EXCERPT: A former key US State Department official involved in North Korean nuclear talks has attacked the Bush Administration, saying that unless its approach to negotiations is rethought, any prospect of success is "very grim".

How to Lose Friends and Start a Big War Before the Next Election
U.S. Requests South Korea to Send Troops to Iraq
Xinhua News Agency (China), 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: After his initial denial, Assistant Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck acknowledged that South Korea received the US request from Richard Lawless, US deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia and the Pacific, during his visit here last week to attend the South Korean-US military talks.

10 September 2003

What's really happening on the ground?
Meet the New Iraqi Strongman: Paul Bremer
Thugs in Business Suits
By ROBERT FISK
CounterPunch, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: Paul Bremer's taste in clothes symbolises "the new Iraq" very well. He wears a business suit and combat boots. ...Why don't the occupation authorities realise that Iraq cannot be "spun"? This country is living a tragedy of epic proportions, and now-after its descent into hell under Saddam-we are doomed to suffer its contagion. By our hubris and by our lies and by our fantasies-including the fantasies of Tony Blair-we are descending into the pit. For the people of Iraq, the next stage in their long suffering is under way. For us, a new colonial humiliation, the like of which may well end the careers of George Bush and Tony Blair, is coming. Of far more consequence is that it is likely to end many innocent lives as well.

ASSertiveness or agression?
America's World
To tackle terrorism, the planet's superpower is making Iraq the proving ground for US assertiveness - and how much help it gets from abroad.
By Howard LaFranchi
Christian Science Monitor, 10 September 2003
EXCERPT: In the land of Doonesbury, George W. Bush has changed hats. Once a voice from under a Stetson, the American president in the Garry Trudeau comic strip now speaks from under a Roman soldier's feathered metal helmet.

Relations Break Down Between U.S. and Them
The Onion, September 2003
EXCERPT: After decades of antagonism between the two global powers, the U.S. has officially severed relations with Them, Bush administration officials announced Tuesday. "They have refused to comply with the U.S. time and time again," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, following failed 11th-hour negotiations Monday night. "It's always unfortunate when diplomacy fails, but we could not back down. We have to be ready to fight back, in the name of freedom, against all of Them at once, if necessary." Rumsfeld added: "If They're not with us, They're against us."

Will Press Roll Over Again on New WMD Report?
By Greg Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: Since no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have been found in Iraq, close observers now report that Kay is likely to drop on the media a massive weapon of his own: hundreds or thousands of pages of summaries and documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein had WMDs recently (and hid them) and/or had numerous WMD programs underway that we succeeded in pre-empting.

Health Premiums Swell, U.S. Public Worried - Poll
By Kim Dixon
Reuters, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: Americans fret more over soaring health costs than terrorism and consumers have more cause for anger as premiums rise at the steepest rate in a decade, a report on Tuesday said. Health-care premiums rose 13.9 percent this year, driven by steep prescription drug costs, pricey new medical technology and insurers' profit gains, a study by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found.

EU can ban genetically altered food
Temporary Halts OK If Products Threaten Public, Environment
Associated Press, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: A European nation can as a preventive measure ...temporarily restrict or suspend the marketing of those foods in its territory, the court said in a statement. There should be no relaxation of the safety requirements that must be met by novel foods.

Iraq Estimates Were Too Low, U.S. Admits
By Warren Vieth and Esther Schrader
Los Angeles Times, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: The White House acknowledged Monday that it substantially underestimated the cost of rebuilding Iraq and that even the additional $87 billion it was seeking from a wary Congress would fall far short of what is needed for postwar reconstruction. Administration officials said President Bush's emergency spending request 'which would push the U.S. budget deficit above the half-trillion-dollar mark for the first time' still left a reconstruction funding gap of as much as $55 billion.

American Money, Weapons Are Used to Kill and Oppress
Amnesty International Condemns Israeli Policies Toward Palestinians
Amnesty International Report, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: The human rights situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories continues to deteriorate. In the past three years the Israeli army has killed more than 2,200 Palestinians and some 800 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian armed groups. Most of the victims were civilians and included more than 380 Palestinian children and some 100 Israeli children. The Israeli army has assassinated more than 100 known or suspected Palestinians militants, killing scores of men, women and children bystanders and injuring hundreds others. The Israeli army routinely use F-16 fighter jets, helicopter gunships and tanks to bomb and shell densely populated Palestinian residential areas and Palestinian armed groups deliberately target Israeli civilians in frequent suicide bombings in buses, restaurants and other public places.
SEE ALSO: Noam Chomsky's Axis of Evil (Israel, Turkey and the U.S.): "Israel is virtually a US military base, also closely integrated with the militarized US high-tech economy."

Third-world country has much to teach America
Why the U.S. Fears Cuba
By Seumas Milne
Guardian (UK), 8 September 2003
Courtesy of ZNet
EXCERPT: US hostility to Cuba does not stem from the regime's human rights failings, but its social and political successes and the challenge its unyielding independence offers to other US and western satellite states. Saddled with a siege economy and a wartime political culture for more than 40 years, Cuba has achieved first world health and education standards in a third world country, its infant mortality and literacy rates now rivaling or outstripping those of the US, its class sizes a third smaller than in Britain - while next door, in the US-backed "democracy" of Haiti, half the population is unable to read and infant mortality is over 10 times higher.

Heil Bush! Der Fuhrer Uber Alles!
Secretary of Defense Condemns Free Speech
By Tabassum Zakaria
Reuters, 8 September 2003
In a move certain to fuel accusations about the administration's fascist tendencies, Herr Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke out against those who criticize the Fuhrer's "war against terrorism." Herr Rumsfeld suggested that the mere presence of opposition to the Fuhrer would aid the enemies of the Homeland. "They take heart in that and that leads to more money going into these activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement or that leads to more staying power," Herr Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him on his plane. "Obviously that does make our task more difficult."

9 September 2003

Conveying legitimacy to occupation?
Arab League Nations Agree to Grant Seat to Iraq's Council
New York Times, 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: Arab foreign ministers agreed early this morning to grant Iraq's seat in the Arab League to the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, according to Al Jazeera, the Arabic television channel. The report said the Governing Council would hold Iraq's seat in the 22-member league until the election of a new government and the drafting of a constitution. ...The league's secretary general, Amr Moussa, had stopped short of recognizing the Governing Council for fear of legitimizing the American occupation of Iraq.

Annan Wants Security Council to Grow to Better Reflect World
By FELICITY BARRINGER
New York Times, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT:  Hoping to use the Iraq crisis to kick-start the stalled process of overhauling the United Nations, Secretary General Kofi Annan today suggested enlarging the Security Council to make it more representative of 21st-century geopolitical realities. While more specific proposals will be unveiled in his speech to the General Assembly in two weeks, Mr. Annan indicated that he would favor expanding the number of permanent Council members, now five nations, each with veto power, and the elected membership, 10 countries serving staggered two-year terms.

Allies Don't Jump at Bush Call for Funds
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
8 September 2003
EXCERPT: With doubts still deep, there was no rush from Washington's allies Monday to answer President Bush's call for troops and money to buttress his policy in Iraq.

Reasons to Fear the United States
By Noam Chomsky
Toronto Star, 7 September 2003
EXCERPT: Amid the aftershocks of recent suicide bombings in Baghdad and Najaf, and countless other horrors since Sept. 11, 2001, it is easy to understand why many believe that the world has entered a new and frightening "age of terror," the title of a recent collection of essays by Yale University scholars and others. However, two years after 9/11, the United States has yet to confront the roots of terrorism, has waged more war than peace and has continually raised the stakes of international confrontation. On 9/11, the world reacted with shock and horror, and sympathy for the victims. But it is important to bear in mind that for much of the world, there was a further reaction: "Welcome to the club."

Mission Creep
Bush's Perversion of the "War on Terror"
By William Saletan
Slate, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: A $87 billion misrepresentation
For more than a year, President Bush has framed Iraq as part of the "war on terror." And for more than a year, he has produced no evidence for that claim. No evidence of a link between Iraq and 9/11. No evidence of an affinity between Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and the fundamentalists of al-Qaida. No evidence of a terrorist presence in Iraq greater than in other Arab or Muslim countries. No evidence that Iraq offered weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. In his address to the nation Sunday night, Bush offered two new arguments for declaring Iraq "the central front" in the war on terror. If you buy those arguments, he's right. But before you buy them, stop and think about how far afield they would take us from the war we embarked on two years ago.

Is the Neocon Agenda for Pax Americana Losing Steam?
By Jim Lobe
Foreign Policy In Focus, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: President George W. Bush's speech to the nation last night was notable in many ways, most critically for marking what appears to be a weakening of the steep unilateralist trajectory on which neoconservative and right-wing hawks set U.S. foreign policy two years ago. Who would have thought it would lose momentum so quickly after Washington's stunning military victory in Iraq in early April and plummet back to earth?

Al-Qaida Has Emerged Stronger Since 9-11, British Academic Says
Canadian Press, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: The al-Qaida terrorist network is stronger than before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and the U.S.-led war on terror has so far been a failure, a British academic concludes in a study published Tuesday. Paul Rogers, a professor of peace studies at the University of Bradford in England, said the U.S.-led coalition's military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq have failed to crush al-Qaida's structure or stem its recruitment. "(Al-Qaida) and its associates have managed to plan and often undertake a remarkable range of activities, with these collectively showing a capability that exceeds that existing before the Sept. 11 attacks," Rogers wrote. "On this basis alone, it is difficult to accept any claim that the war on terror is being won."

The Quagmire of Denouncing a "Quagmire"
By Norman Solomon
FAIR Media Beat, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: When I hear pundits warn that Iraq is becoming a “quagmire,” I wince. “Quagmire” is a word made famous during the Vietnam War. The current conflict in Iraq comes out of a very different history, but there are some chilling parallels. One of them has scarcely been mentioned: These days, the editorial positions of major U.S. newspapers have an echo like a dirge. Current media appeals for multilateral policies rarely go beyond nostrums like giving the handpicked Iraqi leaders more prominent roles, recruiting compliant natives and foreigners for security functions, and getting the United Nations more involved. But whatever the U.N. role in Iraq turns out to be, the U.S. government still insists on remaining in charge. Despite the compromises, that’s the bottom line. The Bush administration is not letting go of a country that has so many attractive features to offer -- including a central geopolitical foothold in the Middle East, access to extensive military bases for the Pentagon, and ... oh yes ... about 112 billion barrels of known oil reserves under the sand.

Poor countries cannot be totally self-reliant
The Myth of Localism
By George Monbiot
Guardian (UK), 9 September 2003
EXCERPT: Outside the world trade talks beginning in Cancun, Mexico tomorrow, two battles will be fought. The first will be the battle between the campaigners demanding fair trade and the rich-nation delegates demanding unfair trade. The second will be the dispute now brewing within the ranks of those who claim to be helping the poor. The problem all those who want a fairer deal face is that there has seldom, if ever, been a trade treaty struck between rich and poor which does not amount to legalised theft.

Looking For WMDs? Come To London's Docklands
By Mark Steel
London Independent, 6 September 2003
Courtesy of ZNet
EXCERPT: Every imaginable object capable of destroying in a massive way will be on display and on sale at the Defense Systems and Equipment Exhibition [http://www.dsei.co.uk/], where 1,000 arms companies will compete for business.... One third of the world's governments have been invited, and there's great excitement at the possibility of deals being struck with regimes such as Syria, Turkey and Indonesia. The excuse offered to any moral objection is the old favorite: "If we didn't sell them arms, somebody else would." Which is perhaps a line of Defense the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay ought to try - "Oh, come on, if we didn't blow up your embassies, somebody else would."

Same ol' song, 99th verse
Rumsfeld Strikes Back at Critics of U.S. Effort on Terror
By DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times, 8 September 2003
EXCERPT: With costs and casualties rising in the war on terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld struck back today at the administration's widening circle of critics, saying they were complicating an already difficult task. Mr. Rumsfeld did not mention any of the domestic critics by name. But he suggested that those who have been critical of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath might be encouraging American foes to believe that the United States might one day walk away from the effort, as it has in past conflicts.

8 September 2003

Debate Grows Over Israeli Tactic of 'Targeted Killings' of Hamas Leaders
By Ian James
Associated Press, 7 September 2003
EXCERPT: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared after a botched strike against Hamas' founder that all members of the Islamic militant group were "marked for death." But as Israel edges toward all-out war with Hamas, a debate brewed Sunday over the morality of "targeted killings" and whether the policy can deter militants. The group says it has hundreds of would-be suicide bombers who anticipate becoming "martyrs," and its revenge for the latest strike will be more severe than ever. "I don't think it will lead anywhere but to more cycles of bloodshed," retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Doron Kadmiel told The Associated Press. ..."Violence is not a successful tool to fight violence," Palestinian Cabinet minister Ghassan Khatib said. "Israel's experiments have shown that the more violence the Israelis use, the more the Palestinians will respond with violence."

10 Reasons to Oppose US Militarization of Aid and Reconstruction in Iraq
By Yifat Susskind
Associate Director of MADRE
An International Women's Human Rights Organization
EXCERPT: “We will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free.” George Bush, televised address, 3/17/03.
Now that Bush’s illegal invasion has given way to illegal occupation, how should we understand his promise to the Iraqi people? The US insists on exercising direct military control over the administration of humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Iraq. We believe these processes should be handled by independent agencies of the United Nations. Here are 10 reasons why...

Military Industrial Complex
Guarding the Oil Underworld in Iraq
By: Jim Vallette and Pratap Chatterjee
Corp Watch, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: When unidentified saboteurs struck the vital Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline in northern Iraq recently, one in a number of recent attacks on the Middle Eastern nation's oil production and transport, the United States government announced that a company called Erinys would be brought in to train 6,500 Iraqis to guard oil pipelines, wellheads, and refineries, as well as water and electrical facilities. Erinys' yearlong $39.5 million contract to protect 140 Iraqi oil installations, for which it beat out larger and more established competitors, will start this October. The Johannesburg-based company will be also offering its protection services to contractors Bechtel and Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root.

Rogue corporations terrorize world's poor
Strategic Abuses: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
By Neve Gordon
ZNet, 6 September 2003
Here is some good background information, in light of the Cancun trade conference this week. This scholarly article outlines the reasons and principles behind the "outsourcing" of human rights violations by transnational and multinational corporations. By distancing themselves from the abuses, corporations keep their reputations clean by letting subcontractors do the dirty work. This has created an international playing field in which corporations rampant over poorer countries. When workers in, say, Thailand strike, demand higher pay or exercise their rights, the companies move their production to Indonesia or elsewhere. It's a vicious cycle that allows corporations to benefit from cheap labor while trampling over the impoverished people of the Earth.

"Increasingly callous disregard of civilian lives in coalition operations"
Girl Pleaded With US Troops, Was Killed Anyway
By Peter Beaumont
Observer (UK), 7 September 2003
EXCERPT: What is perhaps most shocking about their deaths is that the coalition troops who killed them did not even bother to record details of the raid with the coalition military press office. The killings were that unremarkable. What happened in Mahmudiya last week should not be forgotten, for the story of this raid is also the story of the dark side of the US-led occupation of Iraq, of the violent and sometimes lethal raids carried out apparently beyond any accountability.

Over 400 Iraqi Women Raped Since War's End
Yellow Times, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq chided coalition forces for their failure to protect women in post-war Iraq, asserting that over 400 have been raped since the war ended four months ago. "This violence is still a daily occurrence, especially on the streets of Baghdad, without attracting the least attention of the soldiers," director Yanar Mohammed told press covering a sparsely attended Aug. 24 demonstration in Baghdad's Faridous Square.

Stage Set for Massive Repression
Staff Report
Center for Independent Media, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: The police presence in Cancun, Mexico is already staggering, and further militarization will continue as we near the commencement of the 5th ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization on Sept. 10. Authorities have suggested that as many as twenty- thousand members of the various security forces will be mobilized, including 1,300 strong from the notorious Policia Federal Preventativo (PFP). More than 10,000 campesinos, students and others are expected to arrive in bus carravan's later in the week as actions and alternative forums get under way. The hundreds of activists already in Cancun are under heavy surveillance.

US admits Failure to Stop Saddam Loyalists
Mail and Guardian Online, 7 September 2003
EXCERPT: United States President George Bush was set on Sunday to announce a shift on Iraq policy calling in greater United Nations help as his defence secretary admitted the failure to wipe out Saddam loyalists may have sparked the security nightmare. Bush, with an eye to the November 2004 presidential election, has resolved to ask the UN for more assistance.

83,000 Jobs Lost On Account of WTO Membership
AllAfrica.com, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: Nigeria's membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), has cost about 83,000 workers in the textile industry their jobs, while five companies closed down within the last two months.

Practice vs. Theory
Free Trade Must Benefit the 3rd World
AllAfrica.com, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: The terms of trade between the rich and the poor have always been loaded in favour of the latter. Poverty, low standards of living and unemployment that have characterised the least developed countries cannot be overcome unless agricultural products from these countries are accorded the right prices. The rich countries in collaboration with global financial institutions like the World Bank have been advocates of the removal of protectionist policies in international trade. Yet the rich countries are the major culprits when it comes to farm subsidies with the overt connivance of the global financial institutions.

September Surprise: America's Weapon of Mass Deception
By Bill Berkowitz
TomPaine.com, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: Last May, President Bush made his now-famous -- and outrageously false -- statement to a Polish television station: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.... But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." In fact, of course, we hadn't found anything of the sort -- and pretty soon that'll be official. David Kay, the man in charge of the WMD search in Iraq, is expected to release a report this month on what the more than 1,200-member Iraq Survey Group has turned up. And the fact that the count still stands at zero won't stop Kay from trying to paint the search as a success.

Globalism grinds on as Cancun prepares to host the trade summit
Two Worlds Prepare for a Showdown in a Mexican Nest of Vipers
By John Vidal
Guardian (UK), 6 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Next week 10,000 trade ministers and other government delegates, up to 20,000 Mexican peasants, students and intellectuals, 5,000 activists from international pressure groups and 2,000 media personnel from 146 countries will gather there [in Cancun] for the biennial global trade summit. They will find themselves in one of two worlds.

Weekend 6-7 September 2003

Too late for 'legitimacy?'
A Return to the UN?
By Phyllis Bennis
Editors: Erik Leaver, Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
Foreign Policy In Focus, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: The recent Bush administration's draft UN resolution proposing a new role for the United Nations in Iraq would be a welcome step if it was done to help improve the lives of Iraqi citizens. But the reassessment is not a reflection of any concern regarding the illegality of the occupation, the lack of legitimacy of the U.S. presence in Iraq, or the impact on Iraqis of Washington's abject failure to provide for even the minimal humanitarian needs of the population. Instead, it reflects a growing concern regarding ... the "high cost of occupation" for the U.S. in Iraq--costs both in U.S. soldiers' lives and in dollars.

Increased U.S. military  involvement in the Americas under the pretext of anti-terrorism will only exacerbate real security threats.
Militarizing the Americas
By Laura Carlsen
Interhemispheric Resource Center, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration has launched renewed efforts to reach out to Central and South American countries over the past month. The recent visits of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers signal that Latin America is back on the U.S. government's geopolitical map--but the map is being significantly redrawn. That both overtures were military comes as no surprise. The trips emphasized hemispheric security as the number-one priority for the region, and Myers and Rumsfeld noted that security depends on fighting terrorism.

Removing the spin
Hexagonal Headache
By John Feffer |
Foreign Policy In Focus, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: It is a testament to the absurdly low expectations attached to the diplomatic abilities of both North Korea and the United States that pundits have avoided the obvious conclusion concerning the recently concluded Six-Party Talks in Beijing.
They were a disaster.

Shiite Militia Deploys Forces
Brigade Poses Challenge to U.S. Authority in Najaf
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post, 6 September 2003
EXCERPT: Dozens of armed men belonging to a militia loyal to Iraq's best-organized Shiite Muslim party deployed today in this sacred city, posing a challenge to U.S. forces that have vowed to disband them. The Badr Brigade, a force of lightly armed fighters once said to number 10,000, was supposed to have been disarmed early in the U.S. occupation. But in the wake of the assassination last week of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, killed with scores of others in a car bombing outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, the brigade has returned to the streets of this southern city. Men in black uniforms with armbands that read "Badr" in Arabic were visible throughout Najaf today. About a dozen were posted atop the shrine, the most sacred to Shiites in Iraq, and others manned checkpoints on roads leading to its grounds. Several pickup trucks, carrying men with Kalashnikov rifles, roamed the city's streets and the perimeter of the shrine.

Connecting the dots and the un-dots...
This War On Terrorism is Bogus
The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination
Michael Meacher
The Guardian, 6 September 2003
EXCERPT: 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary

UN Gains the Upper Hand
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 6 September 2003
EXCERPT: Now that US President George W Bush has decided to ask the United Nations Security Council to rescue Washington's occupation of Iraq, the question here is, "What will be the price?"... The fact that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who normally report only through the secretary of defense, have established an independent line to Colin Powell in the State Department could be a deciding factor against the hawks in the US administration as Washington negotiates with the Security Council over United Nations involvement in Iraq.

Security at Iraq Munitions Sites Is Vulnerable, U.S. Officials Say
By ERIC SCHMITT with LOWELL BERGMAN
New York Times, 6 September 2003
EXCERPT: American officials said today that about 50 munitions sites in Iraq containing explosives similar to those used in the recent major bombings had only light security and were poorly guarded.An official from the United States Central Command, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged today that the American-led military operation in Iraq did not have enough troops to heavily guard all 2,700 Iraqi munitions sites that have been identified.

Palestinian Prime Minister Submits Resignation
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
6 September 2003
EXCERPT: Given the position of both the United States and Israel the resignation of Abbas also makes it much more likely that Arafat will once again receive a not so friendly visit from the IDF. (bwusa)
EXCERPT: Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, increasingly unpopular and worn out by a power struggle with Yasser Arafat, submitted his resignation Saturday, dealing a serious blow to a U.S.-backed peace plan. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office warned it would not agree to Arafat heading the Palestinian government, and a senior Israeli official demanded that Arafat be sent into exile.

General Agreement
Does the U.N. U-turn signal a comeback for Colin Powell?
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: The whiff of a battle royal comes wafting up the Potomac. It has all the markings of a bureaucratic stink bomb of a fight, with fisticuffs, body blows, and incessant acts of treachery. The gong for the first round sounded in today's Washington Post, which reports that President George W. Bush agreed to offer more authority to a U.N. peacekeeping force in Iraq after Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has long favored a more multilateral approach, came into the Oval Office last Tuesday—Bush's first day back from the ranch—and announced that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were on his side. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "whose office had been slow to embrace the U.N. resolution," the Post notes, "quickly agreed." As, of course, did Bush.

5 September 2003

Why Rumsfeld went to Iraq...
Still Time to Avoid Failure
Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek, 8 September Issue
EXCERPT: In a remarkable interview last week, Gen. John Abizaid, head of the Central Command, told The New York Times that he needed more troops. This seems to contradict what Donald Rumsfeld said two days earlier, which could be a sign of more internal wrangling, or could mark the beginning of a turnaround. Abizaid attempted to disguise the shift by saying that critics were wrong; he needed no more American troops and instead only wanted foreign forces. Abizaid’s explanation for why we need foreign forces is even more remarkable. American troops, he explained, were fueling Iraqi nationalism that was morphing into anti-Americanism: “You can’t underestimate the public perception, both within Iraq and within the Arab world, about the percentage of forces being so heavily American.” But who underestimated this problem of Iraqi nationalism? Certainly not those of us who argued from the day the war ended that the operation should be multinational, with full U.N. authorization.

Has Anyone Seen Condi?
Roadmap to Nowhere
New York Times, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, may be on the verge of collapse. The refusal of radical Palestinian groups — and Yasir Arafat — to abandon terror remains the biggest obstacle. But there is plenty of blame to go around. Abbas, who has little popular support, needs help from Israel to be able to show his people that violence is not a legitimate reaction to occupation but an obstacle to statehood, and that Israel is living up to its own road map commitments. Yet that is far from the reality. Settlement building is not being frozen, as required by the plan. On the contrary, construction in the occupied territories continues apace. The Bush administration argued before the Iraq war that once it was over, Iraq would be pro-Western, Israel more secure, the Palestinians inclined to compromise, and Washington focused on the Middle East road map. None of this has happened, and all of it seems unlikely as managing postwar Iraq becomes ever more complicated. But the administration's — and the world's — woes will increase if the Middle East is allowed to fester.

Betraying the Sick in Africa
New York Times, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush is backing off his pledge to fight AIDS in Africa... There is an old joke about a man who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he is an orphan. For such chutzpah on a global scale, consider President Bush's overseas AIDS initiative. In his last State of the Union address, the president announced a new program to fight AIDS in Africa and pledged $15 billion over the next five years. But instead of using existing channels, Mr. Bush created a new bureaucracy. Now the White House and Congressional Republicans argue that since the bureaucracy is not ready, dying patients must wait.

As U.S. runs low on soldiers is blackmail back on the table? Is it too little, too late?
U.S. Shifts Approach in Talks With North Korea
By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times, 5 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush, in a significant shift in his approach to North Korea, authorized American negotiators to say last week that he is prepared to take a range of steps to aid the starving nation — from gradually easing sanctions to an eventual peace treaty, senior officials today. ...it was far from clear that the North Koreans picked up on Mr. Bush's new message, officials said.

Neocon "realists" encounter reality
Bush Foreign Policy and Harsh Reality
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
New York Times, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: Few administrations enjoy making midcourse corrections in their foreign policies, much less admitting to making them. But this week it has become unmistakable that President Bush's team has had to rethink its approaches on Iraq and North Korea after a succession of setbacks and pressures at home and abroad.

Imminent First World Debt Crisis Worse than 'Third World'
New Economics Foundation, 1 September 2003
EXCERPTS: A new annual report on the global economy published by nef today, Monday September 1st, predicts that a giant credit bubble, created by globalisation's decades of "easy money", has now reached a "tipping point" ­ a point that has historically triggered financial crises.... Ann Pettifor, editor of the annual report, the Real World Economic Outlook, said: "Gullible consumers, acting as heroically as Atlas once did, are holding up the US and UK economies by dutifully borrowing and spending. But take-home pay is falling in the UK, and unemployment is up in the US, so consumers will soon buckle under the strain of single-handedly propping up these economies.... When tipping point is reached, consumers buckle and the credit bubble bursts, it is the middle-class debtors who will bear the full brunt of a debt-deflationary financial crisis. Sadly, they will suffer much more pain than a minority who have resisted the siren calls of lenders and instead watched as their assets have been inflated by the actions of central bankers ­ enriching the already rich."

The World According to Richard Perle: Demented Maniac or Shortsighted Moron?
Thank God for the Death of the UN
By Richard Perle
Guardian (UK), 21 March 2003
In this essay, published during the Iraq invasion, neoconservative chickenhawk Richard Perle declared the death of the United Nations. Now, as the Bush Cartel has gone crawling back to the U.N., begging to be rescued from the quagmire in Iraq, Perle has argued that the U.S. should get out of Iraq as soon as possible.

Why Iraq is Bad News for Financial Markets
By Dr. Marc Faber
AMEInfo.com, 1 September 2003
EXCERPT: The situation into which the coalition forces have boxed themselves in Iraq is potentially far more serious than the financial markets are giving it credit for. It could, if it deteriorates, not only have implications for the budget deficit and President Bush's chances of being re-elected, but also for geopolitics, since one can safely assume that both the Russians and the Chinese (who are becoming increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern oil) have little interest in seeing the Americans succeed in their endeavor.

Whoopee, yahoo, hip hip hooray, ho-hum...
A 'Big Victory' for Powell over Rumsfeld
The Economist, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: The State Department tried to "multinationalise" post-war Iraq after the hostilities were over. But France threatened to veto any resolution at the UN that legitimised America's military action and that failed to give the UN political control. The secretary of state, Colin Powell, later managed to win a small, mostly advisory, role for the UN‹through a mission headed by Sérgio Vieira de Mello. The death of Mr de Mello, with 23 others in a massive bomb blast last month, underlined how badly Mr Rumsfeld's strategy was working in practice. But so have a lot of other things: the failure to get electricity working in Baghdad, the recent killing of the main Shiite cleric in Iraq, the near-daily attacks on US troops and the stream of angry e-mails to wives at home.

4 September 2003

Europeans' Doubt Over U.S. policy rises
Thomas Crampton
International Herald Tribune, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: The yawning political divide between Europe and the United States that was opened by the war in Iraq has continued to widen, according to a new survey of trans-Atlantic attitudes. The survey of 8,000 Americans and Europeans, conducted by the German Marshall Fund, found citizens on both sides of the Atlantic raising similar concerns about global security, but expressing increasingly divergent views on how to respond. "It is clear that the trans-Atlantic rift has deepened over the last year," said William Drozdiak, executive director of the Brussels- based Transatlantic Center of the fund. "Europeans are increasingly dismayed by U.S. leadership and the use of U.S. force."

Nice War - Here's the Bill
Donald Hepburn
New York Times, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: In 1991, America's so-called Operation Tin Cup got enough money from its allies to cover the costs of the Gulf War. In contrast, what could be called "Operation Begging Bowl" after the latest war in Iraq has come up empty, leaving the United States stuck with the bill for the invasion and occupation - the full extent of which is only now becoming apparent. The Bush administration's recent willingness to consider a greater United Nations role on the ground is the first sign that it is aware of how vastly mistaken its assertions about the occupation were. Contrary to the prewar view that Iraq's oil revenues would greatly offset American costs, we now know that Iraq - with its shattered economy, devastated oil industry and plundered national wealth - is incapable of making any significant reimbursement of the invasion and occupation costs. And the military expense is only a fraction of the cost of making Iraq into a functioning country.

Helpers to Get Seat at Table, Rumsfeld Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday night that countries that contribute troops and financial support to American-led military and reconstruction operations in Iraq could count on a seat at the table in decision making about the mission there.

Quagmire? What Quagmire?
By Col. Daniel Smith (Ret.)
Foreign Policy In Focus, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: In the months leading up to the recent war in Iraq and in its aftermath, Bush administration officials were forced to continually change their rationale for launching the attack to topple Saddam Hussein. Where they have not wavered, and where they have received consistent support from top Pentagon military commanders, is in their insistence that Iraq is not another Vietnam, not a quagmire. The further the U.S. and the world move from the fall of Baghdad on April 9th, the more it seems that the administration is correct: Iraq is not a quagmire. It is really a black hole.

Iraq move points to US limit
Larger UN Role Has Ramifications In Middle East
By Stephen J. Glain
Boston Globe, 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: By allowing the United Nations a significant role in postwar Iraq, the Bush administration is ceding authority over what it regards as an important asset in its war on terrorism: a platform from which it can extinguish radical Islam and cultivate a democratic Middle East. "It was an ideological cluster within the Defense Department that horribly miscalculated the costs and consequences of the invasion," said Anthony H. Cordesman a security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "One still hears speeches [from administration officials] about the need to democratize the Middle East using Iraq as a model and it makes as little sense now as it did then."
Diplomats said they welcomed the White House gesture toward the UN, which they described as another chapter in the ongoing struggle between administration hawks and moderates. But they warned the initiative would get a tough hearing in the Security Council, which has been stiffened by the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, its most senior official in Iraq, in a terrorist attack Aug. 19 on its headquarters in Baghdad "They're digging in their heels," said a World Bank official who worked with UN staff in Baghdad. "They feel like they lost one of their best guys for nothing and for them to put up another guy like that requires clear authority."

Washington and Pyongyang creep toward war
The Fire Next Time
By John Feffer
TomPaine.com, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: With the exception of perhaps a handful of hardliners in the Bush administration, no one wants Korean War II. Washington, dangerously overextended militarily, knows such a war would be devastating in both human and political terms. Pyongyang, dangerously underequipped militarily, knows war would be suicidal. Yet both sides are inching toward the very war that they and everyone else would like to avoid. If anything, the recently concluded Six-Party talks have brought this conflict only closer.

Renewed Taliban Strength Seen
By Kathy Gannon
AP, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Taliban are no longer on the run and have teamed up with Al Qaeda once again, according to officials and former Taliban who say the religious militia has reorganized and strengthened since their defeat at the hands of the US-led coalition nearly two years ago.

War, Propaganda, Empire
By P Sainath
ZNet, 2 September 2003
EXCERPTS: the United States media proves comprehensively, is that it is possible to have the world¹s largest media and the world's least informed public. Where else in the world did 55% of the people believe that Saddam was tied to al Qaida, and 42% believe that he was behind the WTC attacks? Because they have no media alternatives.... The most fantastic thing is that the media have never been more concentrated than they were in this war, they have never been more powerful than they were at this time. And yet, there was a divergence between what they said and what 85% of the world's public believed and marched for. Governments and media were on one side, the public were on the other.

Reconstruction Hinges on Security, Say Donors
By Ian Black in Brussels
The Guardian (UK), 4 September 2003
EXCERPT: Officials from the EU, the US, Japan, the World Bank, the UN, the IMF, the coalition provisional authority and Iraq's governing council were meeting in Brussels to plan a donors conference in Madrid next month. A statement from the meeting said "an adequate security environment" would be necessary for reconstruction. Receipts from Iraq's oil exports, expected to total about £7.6bn next year, will fall short of the country's needs, forcing donors to cover the shortfall to the end of next year.

Iraq wasn't a bed of terror then, but it is now
The Blind Prophet: Bush's Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
By Jonathan Freedland
Guardian (UK), 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: The warning was plain. Iraq was a breeding ground of terror, an incubator for al-Qaida and a clear and present danger to "the civilised world". Tony Blair was wary of that argument, but George Bush made it the heart of his case. At his eve-of-war press conference back in March, the president cast the coming attack as the next step in a story that had begun on September 11, 2001. Iraq was providing "training and safe haven to terrorists, terrorists who would willingly use weapons of mass destruction against America and other peace-loving countries". The irony is that, at the time, this was not true. But it is now.

David Kay's "Smokescreen" Report
War To Be Justified On Basis of Iraqi Plans
Report to describe dispersed "dual use" programs
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent,
Boston Globe, 28 August 2003
EXCERPT: Investigators searching for Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction will report next month that Saddam Hussein's regime spread nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons plans and parts throughout the country to deceive the United Nations, according to senior Bush administration and intelligence officials. Once freed of inspections and international sanctions, the weapons programs were intended to be pulled together quickly to manufacture substantial quantities of deadly gases and germs, the investigators will argue, although the development of a nuclear weapon would probably take many months, if not years. After more than four months of searching hundreds of sites in Iraq, the team of US military officers and intelligence agents headed by former UN arms inspector David Kay has not produced hard evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said the argument over going to combat "was whether the threat was so imminent and dangerous that we had to go to war. If Kay says there was potential there, that refutes the administration's rationale for going to war. No one ever argued there was nothing there. I still suspect we'll find remnants of the program, perhaps nerve or mustard gas or anthrax samples."

Bush Looks to U.N. to Share Burden on Troops in Iraq
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID FIRESTONE
New York Times, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush agreed today to begin negotiations in the United Nations Security Council to authorize a multinational force for Iraq but insisted that the troops be placed under American command, according to senior administration officials. ...(A Congressional Budget Office) report said that if the Pentagon stuck to its plan of rotating active-duty Army troops out of Iraq after a year, it would be able to sustain a force of only 67,000 to 106,000 active duty and reserve Army and Marine forces. A larger force would put at risk the military's operations elsewhere around the globe, the study said. ...Currently, there are about 180,000 American troops in Iraq and Kuwait and 21,000 non-American troops, about half of them from Britain.

More Iraqi Forces Key to Securing Iraq, Rumsfeld Says
By Matt Kelley
Associated Press 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: The United States is focused on training Iraqi security forces while the Bush administration seeks a U.N. resolution to spur more countries to send troops to Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday. Rumsfeld, traveling to the Mideast, offered few details on what conditions the United States would want for an increased U.N. role in Iraq. More important than an expanded international peacekeeping force are the 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqis currently ''involved in security activities,'' Rumsfeld told reporters. ''This is their country. They are going to have to provide security,'' Rumsfeld said on an Air Force plane before a refueling stop in Ireland. Rumsfeld said he guessed that other countries could provide ''maybe another division'' in Iraq, or about 10,000 troops. There are now about 140,000 U.S. troops and about an additional 22,000 from 29 other countries in Iraq.

BushWhackedUSA Commentary
A current neoconservative mantra is "The U.S. is hated for who we are and not for what we do." It is modernism (i.e., globalization) that is the source of hostility toward America. This reasoning permits conservatives to argue that U.S. action based upon unilateralism, arrogance and militarism do not adversely impact America's position in the world. This is a view that disregards choices that the U.S. can make that may not so profoundly transform Moslem moderates into that expanding camp of extremists. It ignores a possibility that moderates might be a more powerful influence than extremists and that they may be persuasive in actually reducing reactionary violence. The U.S. will ignore this aspect of reality at its great peril. Read a smart, but incredibly naive expression of the neocon view in Foreign Policy Online:
The Falseness of Anti-Americanism
By Fouad Ajami
Foreign Policy, Sept/Oct 2003
EXCERPT: Pollsters report rising anti-Americanism worldwide. The United States, they imply, squandered global sympathy after the September 11 terrorist attacks through its arrogant unilateralism. In truth, there was never any sympathy to squander. Anti-Americanism was already entrenched in the world's psyche—a backlash against a nation that comes bearing modernism to those who want it but who also fear and despise it.

3 September 2003

Iraq: What Next?
By Ted Glick
Outlook India.com, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: I support the demand of the peace movement, "Bring the Troops Home Now!" I also support the demand, "Democracy and Self-Determination for the Iraqi People." It's very easy to take such positions. The hard part is, what next? Is that it? Is that the extent to which we should go? Should we have nothing to say about how to go from the current U.S. occupation to an Iraq run by and for Iraqis?

Ex-Army Official Blasts US Plan
Rebuilding policy underestimated dangers, book says
By Robert Burns,
Associated Press, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: Thomas E. White, forced to resign as Army secretary in May, has fired back in a book that describes the Bush administration's postwar effort in Iraq as "anemic" and "totally inadequate." ..."Clearly the view that the war to `liberate' Iraq would instantly produce a pro-United States citizenry ready for economic and political rebirth ignored the harsh realities on the ground," White wrote in a preface to "Reconstructing Eden," which is to be published tomorrow. In a letter to news organizations announcing the book's release, White was even tougher on the administration. "Unbelievably, American lives are being lost daily," he wrote. White said the administration lacks a cohesive, integrated plan to stabilize and rebuild Iraq. "We did not conduct the war this way and we should not continue rebuilding the country in a haphazard manner," he wrote. "The result will be a financial disaster, more lives lost, chaos in Iraq, and squandered American good will."

US cedes some control on troops, government
US Shifts On Role For UN In Iraq
By Mike Allen and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: In an effort to win broader international support for US policies in Iraq, President Bush decided yesterday to seek United Nations Security Council approval of a resolution granting the world body greater control over multinational peacekeeping forces and a role in forming a new Iraqi government, administration officials said. The decision marks a major shift for Bush after months in which the administration had strongly resisted granting any significant military or political authority to the UN. It reflected a growing recognition within the administration that a stronger UN mandate was essential to winning greater foreign military and economic help in stabilizing Iraq.

Bush Seeks U.N. Help in Iraq
By Steve Holland
Reuters, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: President George W. Bush, under pressure at home and abroad over a failure to impose security in Iraq, has taken steps to draw the United Nations into a bigger military role in the occupied country. A senior U.S. official said Bush directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to open negotiations at the U.N. Security Council on a resolution aimed at building a wider multinational force and getting U.N. help to build political stability.

Slain Ayatollah's Brother Assumes New Role
As Funeral Ends, Many Shiites See A Power Vacuum
By Anthony Shadid and Daniel Williams
Washington Post, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: New head cleric in Iraq may struggle to live up to slain brother's legacy.

Israeli Report Is Welcomed, Dismissed
Some See Impetus for Addressing Long-Standing Bias Against Arab Citizens
By Molly Moore
Washington Post, 3 September 2003
EXCERPT: For Elie Rekhess, an academic who has spent much of his career condemning Israeli discrimination against the country's Arab citizens, the first government-commissioned report documenting this unfair treatment is a landmark in the nation's history.

Tens of Thousands of Shia Mourners Demand End to US Occupation of Iraq
By Rory McCarthy in Najaf
Guardian (UK), 3 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Tens of thousands of mourners turned the funeral service for the murdered Iraqi cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim yesterday into a powerful show of defiance against the US-led military occupation....US troops meanwhile suffered three more fatalities; two soldiers died when their jeep hit a landmine and a third killed in a helicopter accident.

Iraqi Liberation: Bush Style
By Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
ZNet, 1 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush strategy is clear: If WMD and terrorist links fail as rationalizations for war, don't worry; let us now praise the liberation of Iraq. It turns out that all along the invasion was about creating democracy in Iraq so that Americans will be more secure. The brutality of Hussein's regime had long been known, not least to U.S. planners during the decade the United States supported him through the worst of his atrocities. But liberation rhetoric is designed to divert people from questioning U.S. intentions. For the sake of discussion, however, let's take Bush's claim at face value and ask, How serious is the United States about establishing a meaningful democracy in Iraq? How liberated are Iraqis?

The Worst of Times
By George Monbiot
Guardian (UK), 2 September 2003
In the first of a three-part series on trade, George Monbiot argues that the rich world's brutal diplomacy is worsening the plight of poor nations.
EXCERPT: The world is beginning to look like France, a few years before the Revolution. There are no reliable wealth statistics from that time, but the disparities are unlikely to have been greater than they are today. The wealthiest 5% of the world's people now earn 114 times as much as the poorest 5%. The 500 richest people on earth now own $1.54 trillion - more than the entire gross domestic product of Africa, or the combined annual incomes of the poorest half of humanity.

One Iraqi's lessons about democracy at gunpoint
Democracy Dismissed
By Medea Benjamin
TomPaine.com, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: Majid Muhammed Yousef yearns for democracy. As an Iraqi Kurd, he and his family suffered tremendously under Saddam Hussein. After the United States overthrew Saddam, Majid was grateful and excited about building a new Iraq. But the first four months of U.S. occupation have left him wondering what the United States means by democracy.

Tuesday 2 September 2003

Chinese Aide Says U.S. Is Obstacle in Korean Talks
By JOSEPH KAHN
New York Times, 2 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Chinese official who played host to six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program said today that the United States was the "main problem" in re