30 September 2003

Justice Launches Criminal Investigation Into Leak
Associated Press, 30 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Justice Department launched a full-blown criminal investigation into who leaked the name of a CIA officer, and President Bush directed his White House staff on Tuesday to cooperate fully. The White House staff was notified of the investigation by e-mail after the Justice Department decided late Monday to move from a preliminary investigation into a full probe. It is rare that the department decides to conduct a full investigation of the alleged leak of classified information.

Going it alone, even when Bush doesn't want to anymore...
Solo Act: Commentary on Bush's U.N. Visit
By Elizabeth Kolbert
The New Yorker, 29 September 2003
EXCERPT: Bush has always portrayed the U.N.¹s slowness to pursue Saddam Hussein as a failure of the institution; constrained by anxieties, protocol, and self-doubt, it is unable to take action, even against barbarism. He went into Iraq without the law behind him, because that was the only way, in his mind, to reëstablish the law. In this sense, he really did take on the role of le cowboy, for which he has been so roundly derided in the European press. By the end of the Western, the town has been rid of its villains, but by dint of a kind of violence that it can¹t then accommodate. As the hero rides off into the sunset, he is almost always a solitary figure. With his speech last week, the President effectively recommitted himself--and, with him, the country--to this course.

Deserting Our Troops: Army and Air Force Failed to Obey Orders
By Steven Rosenfeld
TomPaine.com, 29 September 2003
EXCERPT: "The percentage of Army and Air Force service members missing one or both of their pre- and post-deployment health assessments ranged from 38 to 98 percent of our samples," the GAO, Congress' investigative arm, found. "Moreover, when health assessments were conducted, as many as 45 percent of them were not done within the required time frames." These statistics confirm what veterans of the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War and members of Congress have been saying for months: the Pentagon has been ignoring a law whose primary intention was avoiding a repeat of the military's mistakes surrounding its handling of veteran illnesses that have become known as Gulf War Syndrome.
SEE ALSO: Pentagon Won't Make Boeing Deal More Fiscally Accountable

Pentagon Stashes Covert Millions
By Paul de la Garza
St. Petersburg Times, 28 September 2003
EXCERPT: The U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base inflated budget proposals at the Pentagon's request last year to hide $20-million from Congress, according to documents obtained by the St. Petersburg Times. Special Operations officials divided the money among six projects so the money would not attract attention. They also instructed their own budget analysts not to mention it during briefings with congressional aides, the documents show.

Lobbyists Swarm Congress for Corporate Campaign Against Consumer Class Actions
Congress Watch from Public Citizen
EXCERPT: Any doubt that big business expects to benefit greatly from a federal takeover of most state class-action laws is dispelled by the overwhelming amount of money and manpower that major companies and industries have spent on legislation that is now before Congress.

Oh God, here come the apologies from all the loyal subordinates
White House Says Top Aide Was Not Behind C.I.A. Leak
By DAVID STOUT
New York Times, 29 September 2003
EXCERPT: The White House said today that it was "ridiculous" for anyone to suggest that President Bush's top political adviser had leaked secret information in an effort to discredit an outspoken critic of Mr. Bush's policy on Iraq. But the chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said today that he had spoken to Mr. Rove and had been assured that it was "simply not true" that Mr. Rove had had anything to do with the leak. "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved," Mr. McClellan said at a midday news briefing. Pressed on just how the president knew that, Mr. McClellan said, "Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place," adding, "It is simply not true."

Post Haste
How The Washington Post scooped The New York Times on the Valerie Plame story this weekend, and not for the first time.
By Matthew Yglesias
The American Prospect, 29 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Times' former executive editor, Howell Raines, was roundly assailed in the conservative press both for alleged liberal bias and for his practice of "flooding the zone" with intensive coverage of potentially big stories. With Raines forced from office in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, the new management led by Bill Keller seems to be bending over backward to address these complaints by deliberately downplaying coverage of intelligence scandals that threaten to engulf the administration. Whether this will do the Times any good with its conservative critics remains to be seen, but the paper is threatening to shut itself out of what may develop into a major story. As Daniel Drezner, a professor of political science and an unpaid adviser to the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, is asking on his Web log, "[I]f the White House was willing to commit an overtly illegal act in dealing with such a piddling matter, what lines have they crossed on not-so-piddling matters?" It's a good question, and one that The New York Times probably won't be answering.

Big Increase Seen in People Lacking Health Insurance
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, September 2003
EXCERPT: The number of people without health insurance shot up last year by 2.4 million, the largest increase in a decade, raising the total to 43.6 million, as health costs soared and many workers lost coverage provided by employers, the Census Bureau reported today

29 September 2003

Leak of CIA Name Being Investigated: Agent's Name Disclosed to Journalists
By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post, 28 Sepember 2003
EXCERPT: At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that an administration official leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, administration officials said yesterday. The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa, which can be used in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim. The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity can violate federal law. A senior administration official said two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. That was shortly after Wilson revealed in July that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account eventually touched off a controversy over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq. "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked By Cheney
By Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post, 29 September 2003
In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with a Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker five months before the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that first made the allegation.

More US Troops Face Iraq Call-up
BBC News, 27 September 2003
EXCERPT: The announcement follows earlier statements by senior US officers this week, that National Guard and Reserve troops would be needed. Other countries failed to respond to President George W Bush's plea for help for help in stabilising the country. US troops come under almost daily attack.

Bush Feels Heat Over Iraq Contracts
BBC News, 27 September 2003
EXCERPT: A Republican and Democrat have joined forces to propose a bill to either make the system more competitive, or more clearly justified if open bidding does not take place. In the past there has been criticism over the way the Bush administration has allocated work in the restoration of the Gulf state.

Report Concludes Cheney Lied About Financial Ties to His Old Company
Vice President Halliburton
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: According to Cheney's own financial disclosure statements, he continues to collect a yearly Halliburton check in "deferred compensation" -- Cheney spread his last paycheck out over a period of years so he could pay less income tax to those sons-a-$#%@s in Washington like, um, himself. So he'll be pocketing about $150,000 or so a year from Halliburton through 2005. And, Cheney also holds hundreds of thousands of stock options, which gain in value as Halliburton grows fat, and fatter, on those shameless no-bid cost-plus contracts. Halliburton, meanwhile, continues to soak the American taxpayer for astounding sums.

Behold the Lord High Executioner: Ashcroft Pushes for More Death Penalties
Berkeshire Eagle editorial, 28 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is so bent on juicing up the number of state-sponsored executions in the United States that apparently it is attempting to nationalize capital punishment. Federal death-penalty law is so loosely written -- 60 different crimes can land a man or woman on federal death row -- that Attorney General John Ashcroft has been emboldened to yank cases out of the hands of local district attorneys and drag suspects into federal court and charge them with capital crimes. Most repugnant of all, Mr. Ashcroft is following this course in states like Massachusetts where there is no death penalty.

The Case for Impeachment: No Wonder America Has So Many Enemies
By Eric Margolis
Toronto Sun (Canada), 28 September 2003
President Bill Clinton was impeached by a Republican-controlled Congress for lying about sex. President George W. Bush and aides lied the United States into a stupid, unnecessary colonial war that has so far killed more than 305 Americans and seriously wounded more than 1,400. It has also cost many thousands of Iraqi dead, and $1 billion US weekly. Lying about sex is an impeachable offence; lying the nation into war apparently is not.

The Cost of Ignoring Privacy Rights
By Ralph Nader
TomPaine.com, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: Congress has been slow to enact airtight protections for individual privacy. When there is a trade-off between the demands of corporations versus citizens' right to privacy, our national legislators almost always come down on the side of financial institutions and their affiliates. Congress putted around the edges of the privacy issues when it passed the Financial Modernization Act in 1999. But the privacy provisions have done little to halt the wholesale access to financial records and other personal data of consumers.

27-28 September 2003

Why We Hate Bush
By Ted Rall
Yahoo! News, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: First but not foremost, Bush's detractors despise him viscerally, as a man. Where working-class populists see him as a smug, effeminate frat boy who wouldn't recognize a hard day's work if it kicked him in his self-satisfied ass, intellectuals see a simian-faced idiot unqualified to mow his own lawn, much less lead the free world. Another group, which includes me, is more patronizing than spiteful. I feel sorry for the dude; he looks so pathetic, so out of his depth, out there under the klieg lights, squinting, searching for nouns and verbs, looking like he's been snatched from his bed and beamed in, and is still half asleep, not sure where he is. Each speech looks as if Bush had been beamed from his bed fast asleep. And he's willfully ignorant. On Fox News, Bush admits that he doesn't even read the newspaper: "I glance at the headlines just to kind of [sic] a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read [sic] the news themselves." All these takes on Bush boil down to the same thing: The guy who holds the launch codes isn't smart enough to know that's he's stupid. And that's scary.

We Have a Right to Rip War, Bush
Cynthia Tucker
Atlantic Journal-Constitution, 28 September 2003
EXCERPT: This month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters that skepticism toward President Bush's scheme for Iraq is encouraging America's enemies. "They [terrorists] take heart in that, and that leads to more money going to these [terrorist] activities or that leads to more recruits or that leads to more encouragement or that leads to more staying power. Obviously, that does make our task more difficult," he said. With that, Rumsfeld gave a new twist to Samuel Johnson's famous definition of patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel." In the case of the White House and its desk warriors, the last refuge of scoundrels is to denounce their critics as unpatriotic. And this particular squad of scoundrels is desperate. They are no longer able to bludgeon dissenters with facts; the justifications Bush and his co-conspirators used for this pre-emptive war have been revealed as dissembling, distortion and outright lies.

U.S. Uses Terror Law to Pursue Crimes From Drugs to Swindling
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times, 27 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration, which calls the USA Patriot Act perhaps its most essential tool in fighting terrorists, has begun using the law with increasing frequency in many criminal investigations that have little or no connection to terrorism.  The government is using its expanded authority under the far-reaching law to investigate suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders, federal officials said. Justice Department officials say they are simply using all the tools now available to them to pursue criminals — terrorists or otherwise. But critics of the administration's antiterrorism tactics assert that such use of the law is evidence the administration has sold the American public a false bill of goods, using terrorism as a guise to pursue a broader law enforcement agenda. ...a new Justice Department report, given to members of Congress this month, also cites more than a dozen cases that are not directly related to terrorism in which federal authorities have used their expanded power to investigate individuals, initiate wiretaps and other surveillance, or seize millions in tainted assets.

Dean Holds Lead in New Hampshire Poll
By SAM HANANEL
AP, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: Howard Dean led rival John Kerry by 10 points in the latest New Hampshire poll that showed newcomer Wesley Clark vaulting into third place just one week after entering the Democratic presidential race. Dean, who held a hefty 21-point lead over Kerry a month ago in a similar survey, led the Massachusetts senator 30 percent to 20 percent in the Zogby International poll conducted Sept. 24-25 and released Friday. The poll of likely Democratic primary voters found 10 percent favored Clark, up from 2 percent in August, when the retired army general said he was weighing a presidential bid. The state is tentatively scheduled to hold its primary Jan. 27.

Dean Joins Kerry in Seeking Rumsfeld Resignation
Reuters, 26 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean called on Friday for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign, citing a "pattern of deception" in his statements on Iraq and a failure to plan for the postwar period. Dean is the second Democratic candidate for the 2004 presidential nomination to seek Rumsfeld's resignation as critics of the Bush administration turn up the heat on the Pentagon amid continued violence in Iraq. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry called on Thursday for Rumsfeld to step down, saying he proceeded in Iraq "in an arrogant, inappropriate way that has frankly put America at jeopardy." Dean, the former governor of Vermont, also said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz should resign and announced he was starting a national petition drive on the Internet to demonstrate support for their resignations.

Ashcroft's dangerous precedents
Bush's Unofficial Official Secrets Act:
How the Justice Department Has Pushed to Criminalize The Disclosure of Non-Security Related Government Information
By JOHN W. DEAN
FindLaw, 26 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Except in a few highly egregious circumstances relating to national security information (espionage and atomic secrets), the U.S. Congress has, in the past, never made it a crime to leak information to the news media. As a result, for over two hundred years, our government has operated without an "official secrets act." ...Despite the free speech costs, President George W. Bush has created the equivalent of an official secrets act for America - and it is only growing stronger. Indeed, by cobbling together provisions from existing laws, Bush's Justice Department has effectively created one of the world's most encompassing, if not draconian, official secrets acts. If Attorney General John Ashcroft has his way, we will see many more prosecutions of this ilk. Ashcroft has told Congress he wants a "comprehensive, coordinated, Government-wide, aggressive, properly resourced, and sustained effort" to deal with "the problem of unauthorized disclosures."

Bush Faces Growing Domestic Criticism
By James Harding
Financial Times, 26 September 26 2003
EXCERPT: In his nearly three years in office, George W. Bush has prompted tens of millions of people around the world to take to the streets in protest at US administration policy. They have, until now, made little difference. Whether people have been demonstrating against the US' unilateral withdrawal from the Kyoto treaty on the environment or voicing their concerns over the treatment of Guantanamo detainees or marching against war in Iraq, a Bush administration buoyed by popular support at home has pursued its agenda apparently impervious to international criticism. In the last week, however, overseas hostility to Mr Bush has begun to make a dent on domestic US politics and even the president's re-election prospects.

Turns out that neocons eat their own kind
Bush Has a Battle On His Hands
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 27 September 2003
EXCERPTS: As the Washington, DC, area recovers from effects of Hurricane Isabel, US President George W Bush keeps trying to divert the potential "perfect storm" forming from the combination of the constant stream of bad news coming out of the Middle East and growing domestic discontent over the war and occupation in Iraq. ...At the same time, neo-conservatives outside the administration and close to Cheney, Wolfowitz and Feith kept up an offensive this week denouncing Rumsfeld's refusal to increase the number of US troops in Iraq to reduce insecurity there. Several neo-cons, including Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, also assailed Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, for allegedly warning Republicans that there must be "no more wars" for the remainder of Bush's first term. The public nature of this infighting is remarkable in an administration that has obsessed about message management and spin control.

Ashcroft Is Unprintable, and Glad of It
On tour, he bars the press and cozies up to local TV reporters.
Los Angeles Times, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who is continuing his tour of the country to promote the Patriot Act, has at several stops, including Buffalo and Philadelphia, refused to speak to print reporters. While television correspondents can often breeze right in, their newspaper colleagues are kept at bay by Secret Service agents doing the bidding of the nation's chief law enforcement official, who prefers audiences of handpicked enthusiasts and interviews with local television reporters. According to Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock, Ashcroft wants to explain "key facts directly to the American people" and not have to subject himself to "as much of a filter from people who are already invested in having a different view of it."

Poverty Up, Income Down for Second Straight Year
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: Nearly 1.7 million people fell into poverty last year, ticking the official poverty rate up to 12.1 percent from the 2001 rate of 11.7 percent, the second straight year that poverty has increased in the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. The annual report, which also showed a decline in median household income, comes at a politically charged time, when President Bush's approval ratings have hit the lowest levels of his term and Democratic presidential candidates have focused their criticism of Bush on his economic stewardship.

Cheney "energy policy"
A Hummerdinger of a Tax Loophole?
Washington Post, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: "Thanks to the Bush administration's recent economic stimulus package, small businesses and the self-employed are eligible to deduct the entire purchase cost of new equipment up to $100,000 the year of the purchase." But these provisions are supposed to help farmers and small-business owners buy equipment to transport merchandise and haul stuff. No matter. "The Hummer H2 qualifies for this IRS Sec. 179 deduction by its gross vehicle weight of over 6,000 lbs. Cars and medium sized SUV's don't qualify for this deduction," Thorpe writes. "If you are seriously considering acquisition of a new vehicle, step up to the vehicle that can take you where you want to be, financially and otherwise."

Lieberman, a Democrat in name only, calls the kettle black
Wesley Clark Attacked for GOP Ties
Associated Press, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: Taking aim at the newcomer, Joe Lieberman on Friday accused presidential rival Wesley Clark of joining the Democratic Party for "political convenience, not conviction" as the retired general came under increased scrutiny. Lieberman's attack, leveled one day after Clark escaped criticism in his first debate, underscored how quickly campaign strategies are shifting in the wake of two political phenomena: Clark's burst upon the crowded scene Sept. 17 and Howard Dean's front-running, Internet-driven campaign.

26 September 2003

It's the economy...and the war, stupid!
Number of People Living in Poverty in U.S. Increases Again
AP, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: Poverty rose and income levels declined in 2002 for the second straight year as the nation's economy continued struggling after the first recession in a decade, the Census Bureau reported Friday. The poverty rate was 12.1 percent last year, up from 11.7 percent in 2001. Nearly 34.6 million people lived in poverty, about 1.7 million more than the previous year.

Ashcroft's Edict
A St. Petersburg Times Editorial, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: The attorney general's order for U.S. attorneys to seek maximum penalties and limit plea bargains threatens to undermine prosecutors and overload the justice system. Attorney General John Ashcroft apparently doesn't trust the legal judgment of his own corps of professional prosecutors in the field. A new directive sharply limits the ability of federal prosecutors to seek plea bargains with defendants, ordering attorneys to charge the most serious legally sound offenses available. The Justice Department says this is a way to establish uniformity so the same crimes result in equivalent charges. But as prosecutors themselves are saying, the consequence of this wrongheaded policy will be overloaded federal courts and the removal of vital discretion at the local level that the system relies upon for truly just outcomes.

White House Faces Crunch Time on 9/11 Files
by Marie Cocco
Newsday.com, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: Two weeks and counting. After that, the independent commission investigating the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, says it is going to blow the whistle. Again. "We spend a long time on negotiating on access," said former Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the 9/11 commission co-chairman. "And we have laid down a marker here in which we indicate that we need this information in two weeks' time. So we are approaching a crunch point, I believe." You may wonder why, two years after the attacks that slaughtered more than 3,000 people and set the United States on a course of indefinite war, it has come down to these two weeks. The families of Sept. 11 surely do. It is nine months, after all, since the commission - the only one empowered to fully probe the events of that day - was established. There are only eight more left until, by law, it expires.

Inside Out
The NYSE needs more than Grasso's departure -- it needs a clean break with the system that enriches insiders.
By Robert Kuttner
The American Prospect, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: Dick Grasso is gone as chief of the New York Stock Exchange, but the system of super-enrichment for insiders lives on. The NYSE's new chief, former Citicorp co-chair John S. Reed, has little experience in stock trading and even less as a reformer. But in this sorry mess, he passes for a clean broom. The recent financial scandals -- from Enron to WorldCom to Arthur Andersen to Merrill Lynch and now to the epitome of capitalism itself -- have had one thing in common. The insiders at the very top contrived ways to take astronomical amounts of money for themselves, eluding the supposed forms of accountability, because the self-regulators were on the take, too.

President's Job Approval Hits Low in New Poll
Los Angeles Times, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush's job approval has dipped to 49% in an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, the lowest level of his presidency in that poll. The poll results reported on NBC's "Nightly News" are close to the 50% job approval in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll Monday. Some other polls have the president in the mid-50s.
While 49% approved in the NBC-WSJ poll, 45% disapproved; 52% disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy, but six in 10 approve of his handling of the campaign against terrorism.

Bush-haters
Molly Ivins
AlterNet, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he's a bad president. Grown-ups can do that, you know -- decide someone's policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night consumed with hatred. Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape because of his stupid economic policies. If that make me a Bush-hater, then sign me up.

In Book, Clark Sees U.S. Errors in Iraq Strategy
By Grant McCool
Reuters, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: Clark wrote that a senior military officer told him on a visit to the Pentagon in November 2001 that the U.S. was planning to go against Iraq but there was more to it. After Iraq, the plan called for targeting Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan."He said it with reproach -- with disbelief, almost -- at the breadth of the vision," Clark wrote. "I moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted to see moving forward either. "What a mistake! I reflected -- as though the terrorism were simply coming from those states," said Clark, whose book is a military, diplomatic and strategic analysis rather than a personal account of his long military career. Clark, a four-star Army general, was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from 1997 to 2000.

Bush's War on Nature gets stinky
The Stench at the EPA
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Environmental Protection Agency has struck a deal with monster animal farms that lets them leak stinking animal crap and other pollutants all over, to their heart's content. In exchange for promising not to sue -- ever -- EPA demands a mere $500 fine (yes, just five hundred dollars) and also a contribution of $2,500 toward a fund to, yes, study the problem of rivers of stinking animal crap.

Déjà Vu With Condoleezza Rice
By Katrina vanden Heuvel
The Nation, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: One good measure of this Administration's extremism is the steady drumbeat of criticism being leveled against it by leading establishment figures--many not known for being politically outspoken. Just the other day, Pulitzer-prize winner James McPherson, one of America's preeminent Civil War historians and the current President of the prestigious American Historical Association (AHA) published a blistering critique of President Bush and his national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in the September AHA newsletter. Among other charges, he accuses them of mis-using the term "revisionist historians" to derisively deflect criticism and denigrate a legitimate and essential activity of his profession.

Democrats' Pentagon-approved savior can't make up his mind
Life's a Riot with Clark vs. Clark
By Scot Lehigh
Boston Globe, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: Wesley Clark parachuted into the presidential race last week -- and promptly commenced a debate with himself about whether he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force in Iraq. Yes, he probably would have, the newly minted candidate said on Thursday. No, he would never have voted for this war, the retreating general declared on Friday. Add to that confusion an AP story from last October that indirectly quotes Clark saying he supported the resolution. Plus an April 10 column in The Times of London, after Baghdad had fallen, in which Clark wrote: "President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt." So where, really, did Clark stand?

25 September 2003

Sacrificing public good for private gain, "free market ethics"
Private Utilities Cut Corners to Increase Profits
By JAMES DAO and NEELA BANERJEE
New York Times, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: With nearly 600,000 customers still without power in Virginia and Maryland, many critics of the utility industry contend that the companies have cut spending on vital operations in search of profits. As a result, the critics say, power lines are more vulnerable to falling trees, and repair crews are shorthanded. The real villain, they argue, is deregulation, which has increased pressure on utilities to cut costs and, perhaps, cut corners on maintenance.

Democrats Turning Into Free Trade Critics
By Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times, 25 September 2003
[A strong bias causes this reporter to overlook the principle reason for being critical of free trade. Multilateral trade agreement often focus on corporate interests rather than those of the general public. BWUSA]
EXCERPT: Retreating from a central pillar of Bill Clinton's economic strategy, almost all of the leading Democratic presidential candidates are expressing growing skepticism about free trade. The Democrats' movement away from free trade, which is likely to be on vivid display when the candidates meet today in New York for a debate on economic issues, could have important implications for the primary and general elections.

Quality care for corporate profits
Proposed Rule Would Ease Stance on Feeding at Nursing Homes
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 25September 2003
The Bush administration is relaxing regulation of nursing homes to allow low-paid workers with one day of training to feed patients who cannot feed themselves. Administration officials said the new workers would improve the quality of care, providing additional assistance to patients at busy mealtimes. Nursing homes, facing a severe labor shortage, have long sought permission to hire such "feeding assistants." But patients' advocates, including AARP and the Alzheimer's Association, objected to the change. They said it could cause "real harm to nursing home residents," in the words of David M. Certner, director of federal affairs for AARP.

Bush's kind of guy not kind to women...
Judiciary Committee to Vote on Far-Right Nominee Pickering
Feminist Daily News Wire, 24 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. Also as a federal district judge, Pickering attempted to intercede in a case to reduce the sentence of a convicted cross burner.

Democrats' Wrath Awaits EPA Nominee
By Elizabeth Shogren
Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and their leader, independent James M. Jeffords of Vermont, plan to use Leavitt's confirmation hearing to draw attention to the Bush administration's easing of regulations to enable power plants to avoid cleaning up, to permit coal companies to keep practicing mountaintop-removal mining, and to allow the Defense Department to sell PCB-polluted sites without first cleaning them.

A New Moment for Progressives
By John Podesta
TomPaine.com, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: The voters are turning to progressives to make the right choices because of declining confidence in the President's choices. It centers on his handling of the economy and the budgets (only 41 percent think he has a good plan); and his handling of Iraq (only 44 percent think he has good plans here). The Bush Administration is seen to be adrift before the mounting problems facing the country as 54 percent think the President does not have a plan to win the peace and bring American troops home. This is a moment for progressives to pose bold alternatives consistent with the need for leadership, responsibility and the right priorities.

FDA Drops Reins on Food Producers' Health Claims
Public Citizen, 23 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Consumer groups sue FDA over scheme to allow misleading health claims on food The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Public Citizen today filed suit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to challenge the FDA’s recently announced scheme to permit food companies to make health claims based on weak or inconclusive evidence. Prior to 1990, food companies were not permitted to make claims that their products helped to prevent, treat or cure any disease.

Profits at Any Price: A History of Corporate Abuse
By Samuel Loewenberg
TomPaine.com, 22 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Almost since the day it took office, the Bush administration has engaged in a furious struggle to protect American chemical, tobacco, pharmaceutical, biotech and oil companies -- not from terrorists, but from regulators.... While the current collusion of American government and industry at the expense of the environment and public health is now having a global impact, the process had its roots at the beginning of the 20th century. As Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, a new book by public health historians Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, makes clear, the history of American 'progress' is inextricably linked to government and industrial cover-ups.

U.S. Soldiers' Relatives Demand End to Iraq Occupation
NCM, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: Relatives of U.S. soldiers are leading a grassroots protest against the occupation of Iraq and are becoming more vocal and forceful in their criticisms of the administration, according to a report aired recently on Abu Dhabi Television. The channel, the second-most popular Arab-language network after Al-Jazeera, featured an in-depth look at the "Bring Them Home Now" campaign that is organized by a network of some 600 families with relatives serving in Iraq. Some of the protesters are of military backgrounds themselves. As more U.S. soldiers die and no weapons of mass destruction are found, the loved ones of the military men and woman in Iraq are becoming more vocal in their criticism of the Bush administration, the Abu Dhabi reporter said during the broadcast.

24 September 2003

The Clark Critique of the Bush Doctrine
Exclusive: In an excerpt from his new book, the ex-general argues that Bush is leading us astray in the war on terror
By Gen. Wesley K. Clark
Newsweek, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: "And so, barely six months into the war on terror, the direction seemed set. In Afghanistan and later in Iraq, the United States would strike, using its military superiority; it would enlarge the problem, using the strikes on 9/11 to address the larger Middle East concerns; it would attempt to make the strongest case possible in favor of its course, regardless of the nuances of the intelligence; and it would dissipate the huge outpouring of goodwill and sympathy it had received in September 2001 by going it largely alone. And just as the Bush administration suggested, it could last for years."
From “Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire.” by General Wesley K. Clark.

US Iraq Policy: The Day the Roof Caved In
by Ivan Eland
Antiwar.com, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: As top Bush administration officials come before Congress this week to justify the annual $80-plus billion being pumped into Iraq to try to contain a worsening insurgency, new questions have arisen about why the United States invaded that country in the first place. In the wake of remarkable statements by the president, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice that no evidence exists that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11th attacks, the last pillar holding up the administration's justification for invading Iraq has crumbled.

Funding Inadequate in Fight Against HIV/AIDS
Feminist Daily News Wire, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on HIV/AIDS, AIDS experts announced that the promises made for additional funds like President Bush's $15 billion AIDS initiative are inadequate. According to the Associated Press, after experts praised Bush's new priority of the HIV/AIDS crisis they declared that the money promised by Bush for 14 countries is only a fraction of what is needed and programs with conflicting policies could limit its impact.

Feeding the religious right
Bush Presses 'Faith-Based' Agenda
President Proposes Regulations to Ease Federal Funding By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush repealed and proposed several regulations yesterday to make it easier for religious charities to receive federal money, including allowing such groups to make hiring decisions based on job candidates' faith. The announcements were the most significant steps so far in Bush's plan to pursue his "faith-based" initiative through administrative power after encountering congressional resistance to doing so through legislation. Also yesterday, HHS awarded $30.5 million to 81 organizations that will use the money to provide services or make grants to religious charities and community organizations in 45 states. The money is from the Compassion Capital Fund, which Bush created. Last year, $24 million in awards went to 21 groups.

Vision of the Neocons Stays Fixed on Making Hard Choices
By Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: ... AEI [American Enterprise Institute] is a thinktank. More than that, though, it is the headquarters of the intellectual movement known as neoconservatism. Its staff includes famous names such as Richard Perle, Irving Kristol and Newt Gingrich. The magazine Weekly Standard, the neocon bible, is published at the same address. A White House that appeared in tune with their thinking has proved to have other concerns: proving a point about military technology, in Mr Rumsfeld's case, and, in the president's, winning the next election. "There are peple around the president who can see that, politically, this is a mess," Mr Marshall said. "But the neocons see it all in grand-historical terms - if it takes 100,000 soldiers, if it takes a draft, who cares? We gotta do it."  Their clarion call now is for "Iraqification" of Iraq: an argument which brings the neoconservatives curiously close to the viewpoint put by the French and Germans at the UN. "We need a game plan for a swift transfer to the Iraqis, because we haven't won until we have government by the Iraqis," said Danielle Pletka, author of the optimistic mid-war paper, although going to the UN "doesn't accelerate that, it decelerates it."

Dean Sharpens Rhetoric On Bush
By Dan Balz
Washington Post, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, invoking the spirit of the American Revolution, charged yesterday that President Bush and his advisers have "turned the Constitution on its head" by rewarding wealthy special interests in Washington and said that "right-wing ideologues" are subverting the democratic process and stacking the federal judiciary. As the Democratic candidates looked toward a Thursday debate that will include the newest entry in the field, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) also took aim at Washington lobbyists, calling for a ban on contributions by lobbyists to federal campaigns, and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) picked up a prominent endorsement in New Hampshire.

In Senate, Kennedy Fuels Sharp Debate
Senator's Comments on War as 'Fraud' Prompt Angry Replies From GOP Colleagues
By Helen Dewar and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: With scathing criticism of a colleague that is rare in the clubby Senate, Republicans lashed out yesterday at recent comments by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that depicted President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq as a "fraud" aimed at helping Republicans at the polls.

23 September 2003

Clark leads all, Bush ratings drop
Bush's Strength Wanes, Poll Says
By Richard Benedetto
USA Today, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: The unsettled state of the presidential race is the key finding of a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll that shows retired general Wesley Clark and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry narrowly ahead of President Bush among registered voters. (Related link: Poll results) Americans are split over whether the war was worth fighting; 50% say yes, 48% no. That is a dramatic drop from April, when, as Saddam Hussein's statue was falling in Baghdad, 76% said the war was worth it. Further bad news for Bush: His job approval is at 50%, his lowest rating since taking office. [Clark beats Dubya 49-46. Dubys's's approval rating is just 50% and appears to be dropping. BWUSA]

Attorney General wants more people in prison longer
Ashcroft Limiting Prosecutors' Use of Plea Bargains
By Eric Lichtblau
New York Times, 23 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Attorney General John Ashcroft today made it tougher for federal prosecutors to strike plea bargains with criminal defendants, requiring attorneys to seek the most serious charges possible in almost all cases. The policy directive issued by Mr. Ashcroft is the latest in a series of steps the Justice Department has taken in recent months to combat what it sees as dangerously lenient practices by some federal prosecutors and judges. The move also effectively expands to the entire gamut of federal crimes the attorney general's tough stance on the death penalty, which he has sought in numerous cases over the objections of federal prosecutors.... "What is driving this," said Gerald D. Lefcourt, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, "is that a tough-on-crime attorney general is pandering to the public, and he knows that this will play well."

Medicaid Feeling the Effects of the States' Fiscal Crisis
Cuts limit coverage for the poor and disabled, report says. Pressures on the program are called 'a mirror' of the nation's health-care system.
By Vicki Kemper
Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: Medicaid cuts imposed by every statehouse have slowed the growth in spending on the health-care program for the poor and disabled for the first time in six years, a panel announced Monday. The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, a health-care think tank, released three reports showing how the states' fiscal crisis is limiting health coverage for the poor. In addition, the reports' authors and local health officials warned that pressures on Medicaid, the largest health insurance program in the country, reflected fundamental weaknesses in the nation's health-care system.

Molly Ivins makes the quote of the week.
"The administration is now in The Full Ostrich on Iraq: Dick Cheney put on a fabulous performance last Sunday on Meet the Press, in which he insisted everything in Iraq is tickety-boo, right as rain and cheery-bye. I haven't heard anyone lie with such gravitas since Henry Kissinger was in office."
Molly Ivins
Star-Telegram

Neocon Chickenhawks Cheered by Attacks on U.S. Troops
By Oliver Burkeman
Guardian (UK), 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: The neocons felt they were delivering stern, sobering truths, wake-up calls with all the kick of a strong espresso: that liberating Iraq and making an awesome show of American power was vital for the US and the world, that democracy would spread through the region as dictators fell like dominoes. Resistance would be minimal: the war could be fought, most argued, with the lean hi-tech military championed by Donald Rumsfeld. But not with the UN and Europe, who did not have the stomach for the new era of muscular American power. But that was then; September in Washington finds the ultra-hawks in ferment. They confess to being taken aback by events in Iraq. Some are responding by arguing that the terrorist attacks on US troops there may actually be, counterintuitively, a good thing.

Privacy Rights
by Ralph Nader
Dissident Voice, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: A shocking report just released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should disabuse everyone-and hopefully Capitol Hill-of the notion that the right to privacy is some nice esoteric concern with little real economic impact. The FTC found that 3.3 million U. S. consumers had been victimized last year in identity thefts made possible by the easy access to personal information. The thefts were used to open fraudulent bank, credit card or utility accounts and to commit other crimes. The cost: $3.8 billion to consumers on top of losses of more than $32.9 billion to businesses, many of them small merchants. In addition to these "identity thefts," the FTC found that 6.6 million became victims of a closely related crime, "account thefts" which involved the use of stolen ATM cards, or financial records to steal from a victim's existing accounts. These "account thefts" created $14 billion in business losses plus $1.l billion in losses to consumers. The "account thefts" are outstripping the "identity thefts." FTC found a 71 percent increase in this type of theft last year. In most cases, the thefts were used in purchases by the thieves. But, about 15 percent of the thefts were used in other schemes including the utilization of stolen information to obtain government records.

It's Who They Know
Boeing’s ties bloat government budgets
By Frida BerriganIn
In These Times, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: Boeing is not only one of the largest weapons manufacturers in the world, it is also a master of the fine art of quid pro quo. When the going gets tough, this Chicago-based giant gets tougher by calling in its favors and relying on friends in Washington. Just the latest instance of this can be seen in a unique leasing deal Boeing negotiated with the Air Force and almost squeezed through Congress.

Do the Lies that Led to an Invasion of Iraq Matter?
By Tom Stephens
Information Clearing House, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: On the one hand, you might think that a national issue as important as the reason for war would require official honesty, and that lying about it would be the kind of high crime identified as grounds for impeachment in the US Constitution. So based on those considerations you'd think it should matter that the US Government lied about its reasons for going to war in Iraq. On the other hand, the ratings of the embedded and censored TV "coverage" of the war ("promotion" is more like it--the crucial means by which the lies were believed when it counted) were pretty good. The US casualties are still fairly low compared to past world & imperial wars. Bechtel and Halliburton, Raytheon and Lockheed are happy. Worldcom isn't exactly happy with its $500 million fine for its $150 billion accounting fraud, but its new government contract to repair Iraq's wireless network, and its $300 million tax rebate will all help it get thru.

Anti-Bush Moderates
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: The critical fact is that the roots of the anti-Bush feeling among Democrats were planted before the war. Democrats are still incensed that even though they strongly backed the president after 9/11, Bush turned around and used issues of national and homeland security (1) to club them in the 2002 elections, and (2) to push through his ideological program, especially more big tax cuts. Ask a Democrat about 2002 and it won't take long before the name Max Cleland comes up. Cleland is the former Georgia senator who lost three limbs in Vietnam. Because he favored some union and civil service protections in the homeland security bill, Cleland was attacked in a vicious campaign ad showing pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cleland lost, and Democrats are still furious over the treatment of this war hero and political moderate. This is personal, not ideological.

Judiciary Committee to Hold Hearing on Far Right Nominee
Feminist Daily News Wire, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to hold a hearing this Wednesday on the nomination of Claude Allen to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Allen's nomination is opposed by a coalition of women's, civil, and human rights organizations, including the Feminist Majority, based on "Allen's lack of experience, his extreme conservative ideology, his lack of respect for the law, and, not insignificantly, his nomination to a seat reserved for a member of the Maryland bar, which he is not."

Getting Tough on U.S. Oil Dependence
By Ross Gelbspan and Michael Shellenberger
TomPaine.com, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: Over the last few weeks the Democratic presidential candidates have both called for major programs to wean America from its oil addiction. Their goal is to create the suspicion among voters that Bush (who voters already perceive as an oil man) is more loyal to oil companies and Saudi sheiks than he is to American workers and consumers. But their proposals conceal a lurking question that none of the Democratic candidates have yet addressed: How do we move toward oil independence without increasing unemployment in the Middle East -- and exacerbating the conditions that breed terrorism?

Media Gives Little Coverage to Bush's Admission of No Connection Between Hussein and 9/11
By Seth Porges
Editor & Publisher, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune (both owned by the Tribune Co.) ran front-page stories on the revelation Thursday. But an analysis of most major American newspapers found the story either buried deep within the paper -- or completely absent. Of America's 12 highest-circulation daily papers, only the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, and Dallas Morning News ran anything about it on the front page. In The New York Times, the story was relegated to page 22.

22 September 2003

Candidate In the Making
A Meteoric Rise in Vermont Politics
Younger sibling's death may have been catalyst
By Sarah Schweitzer and Tatsha Robertson
Boston Globe, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: Of the four Dean boys, Charlie was supposed to be the politician. Articulate, outspoken, and rarely cowed, Charlie held forth on issues with vigor like his father, the conservative Wall Street banker. Where his older brother, Howard, shrank from arguments, Charlie reveled in the well-timed jab, particularly those aimed at "Big Howard," as their father was known.

 BushWhackedUSA Comment
A current piece in the Wall Street Journal's editorial section gives testimony to the Journal's zeal for shaping a culture based on fear and ignorance, with life and death justice being meted out based on tried and true principles of "guilt by association" and of being "guilty until proven innocent." Sages at the Journal advocate killing and maiming countless numbers by justifying a nation's military action on interpretation, distortion and even likely fabrication of evidence. All this sounds somewhat familiar to BWUSA. Haven't we already got what the WSJ so ardently wants? 
See their opinion below (registration required):

Iraq and al Qaeda
Wall Street Journal editorial, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush Administration was cautious, arguably too cautious, when making its case for the liberation of Iraq. Exhibit A is what it said about the links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Investigators, interrogators and even journalists are turning up evidence of a stronger relationship than the limited ties originally sketched by President Bush and Colin Powell.

The unPresident's uneasy relationship with science...
Administration Covers Up Climate Research
By Paul Harris
Observer (UK), 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: Emails and internal government documents obtained by The Observer show that officials have sought to edit or remove research warning that the problem is serious. They have enlisted the help of conservative lobby groups funded by the oil industry to attack US government scientists if they produce work seen as accepting too readily that pollution is an issue.

Far Right Woos Women with Vows on Feminism and Family
Guardian (UK), 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: The male hierarchy of the far Right has traditionally regarded racial order and the gender order as inextricably linked, using crude definitions of biology, tradition and nature in their defence. In the past few years, however, belief in the rigid social hierarchy has been undermined. Promised a more prominent role, women are joining far Right parties in ever-growing numbers, winning support from those willing to believe that having more women equates to having more mainstream politics. But it is, anti-fascists and academics believe, a cynical, sinister and successful tactic used by an increasingly sophisticated movement that has no genuine intention of softening its core politics.

Soaring Executive Pay Finally Strikes a Nerve
By Tom Petruno And Kathy M. Kristof,
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: "I think executives are getting the message that the American public won't put up with this anymore," said Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

Polls Show Latest Talk Hurt Bush
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 20 September 2003
Courtesy of Antiwar.com
EXCERPT: President Bush has often used major speeches to bolster his standing with the public, but pollsters and political analysts have concluded that his recent prime-time address on Iraq may have had the opposite effect -- crystallizing doubts about his postwar plans and fueling worries about the cost. A parade of polls taken since the Sept. 7 speech has found notable erosion in public approval for Bush's handling of Iraq, with a minority of Americans supporting the $87 billion budget for reconstruction and the war on terrorism that he unveiled.

W. working hard for Big Business, hardly working for workers...
Bush Steps Up Fight Against European Safety Testing
By Geoffrey Lean
Independent (UK), 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: President George Bush is mounting an intensive campaign to force European countries to drop safety tests expected to save thousands of lives each year, internal US government documents seen by The Independent on Sunday reveal. Britain, which has been generally supportive, last week denounced the measures as "disastrously wrong". The documents - which include diplomatic cables signed by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell - show that the Bush administration has threatened Europe with trade sanctions if it goes ahead with the tests, which are designed to protect workers and the public from highly toxic chemicals.

Israel Embarks on U.S. Diplomatic Offensive
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: Israel was embarking on a diplomatic offensive yesterday after it took a hammering at the United Nations and threats of punishment from Washington over the path of a controversial West Bank barrier. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was travelling to New York to attend the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, two days after Israel was almost universally condemned over its threats to remove Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Israel has insisted it regards the UN vote as irrelevant.

20-21 September 2003

John Ashcroft's words not-with-standing
Not in the U.S. of A?
How the Justice Department Subverted a Respected Reporter's Rights
Center for Public Integrity, 17 September 2003
Interview with John Solomon
Associated Press investigative reporter John Solomon, whose phone records were seized by the Justice Department in 2001, speaks to Center Executive Director Charles Lewis.

Conservative Revolt
The Costs of War
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
Ron Paul is a Republican in the US House of Representatives
Courtesy of LewRockwell.com, 20 September 2003
EXCERPT: ...the neo-conservative media machine has been hard at work lately drumming up support for the $87 billion appropriation to extend our precarious occupation of Iraq. Opposition to this funding, according to the Secretary of Defense, encourages our enemies and hinders the war against terrorism. This is a distortion of the facts and is nothing more than attacking the messenger when one disapproves of the message.

The Assault on Liberty (Continued)
The Bush Administration Pushes to Expand the Patriot Act
By Charles Lewis
The Center for Public Integrity, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT:  President George W. Bush used the second anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks not only to praise the controversial USA Patriot Act but to promote further expanding federal law enforcement powers. Speaking at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Bush said “Under current federal law, there are unreasonable obstacles to investigating and prosecuting terrorism,” and he recommended allowing authorities in terrorist investigations to issue subpoenas without going to judges or grand juries, to make it easier to hold terrorism suspects without bail, and to add more death penalty statutes. ...We are indelibly scarred by the attacks. But we are also reminded every 10 minutes by politicians from both parties who try to gain political favor from the horror of 9/11. Beyond the graceless pandering and manipulations of public opinion about that national tragedy in ways that appear to be frequently untethered to truth itself, my sensibilities are also offended by the way the President and his Attorney General arrogantly kept America, including the Congress and the news media, in the dark about their plans for more unbridled power in the name of national security.

Connecting the dots was what it was all about, the intelligence community did and the President was briefed before 911, but...
“The Real Question is How Post-9/11 Was Exploited…To Curtail Our Freedoms and Launch an Unprovoked War”
Democracy Now, 19 September 2003
Amy Goodwin continues the interview with former CIA analysts Ray McGovern and David MacMichael. They discuss how the White House exploited the September 11 attacks to fulfill an ideological strategic concept and wage a war that had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction or ties with al-Qaeda.

White House is Ambushed by Criticism from America's Military Community
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
The Independent (UK), 20 September 2003
Courtesy of Antiwar.com
EXCERPT: George Bush probably owes his presidency to the absentee military voters who nudged his tally in Florida decisively past Al Gore's. But now, with Iraq in chaos and the reasons for going to war there mired in controversy, an increasingly disgruntled military poses perhaps the gravest immediate threat to his political future, just one year before the presidential elections.

Holding Fire:
On firing the neocons
Karen Kwiatkowski
LewRockwell.com, date unknown
EXCERPT: Secretary of State Colin Powell tells us, "Those who are so critical of the administration might want to hold their fire..." He said this in the context of his recent trip to Iraq and the "hope" he saw there. One hears a faint murmur of parley in Washington. Powell is echoing Rumsfeld’s suggestion last week that "those who have been critical of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath might be encouraging enemies of the United States to believe that it might one day walk away from the effort, as it has in past conflicts." Considering Rummy’s vast personal experience fighting in such conflicts in Vietnam, Beirut and Somalia – adventures we walked into stupidly and away from too late – one is left to wonder only whether Rumsfeld is simply ignorant or willfully ignorant.

Republicans Want Iraq to Share Costs of Rebuilding
With hopes of help from allies dwindling, some say U.S. should be repaid with oil revenue.
By Janet Hook
Los Angeles Times, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush's request to spend more than $20 billion to rebuild Iraq's sewers, power lines and other domestic facilities is meeting resistance from an unexpected source — Republicans in Congress, who have been among the staunchest allies of the administration's foreign policy.

Cheney's Conflict with the Truth
Boston Globe, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: Five years ago, America was in a tizzy over President Clinton's "That depends on what the meaning of is, is." That was over lying about sex. For that, Clinton was impeached. Now, we have a vice president who tells America he has severed his ties even as his umbilical cord doubles his salary. To him, it depends what the meaning of i$, i$. We know what the meaning of i$, i$ to Halliburton. It is by far the largest beneficiary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. With no-bid, no-ceiling contracts, the company has already amassed $2 billion in work. It is doing everything from restoring oil facilities to providing toilets for troops. A year ago Halliburton was staring at nearly a half-billion dollars in losses. In the second quarter of 2003 it posted a profit of $26 million.

"I Do Get Rattled": An Interview with NY Times Columnist Paul Krugman
Guardian (UK), 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: Accustomed to the vigorous ivy league tradition of calling a stupid argument a stupid argument (and isolated, at home in New Jersey, from the Washington dinner-party circuit frequented by so many other political columnists) [Krugman] has become pretty much the only voice in the mainstream US media to openly and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people: first to sell a calamitous tax cut, and then to sell a war.

Anger-Baiting on the Right
By David Corn
TomPaine.com, 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: These days, anger-baiting is being adopted by some on the Right to duck the accusations made by The Angry Left and to discredit the accusers, who do have more to offer than mere anger, such as comprehensive health coverage, a fairer tax code, a safer workplace, tighter environmental safeguards. But if indeed Bush lied -- or, to be kind, misrepresented -- as he guided the nation into war, shouldn¹t that cause a citizen to become upset? If Bush is saddling this nation with trillions of dollars in debt in order to grant tax cuts to millionaires who would get by fine without them, shouldn¹t that provoke rage?

White-Rumsfeld Dispute, Round 2
Ex-Army Secretary Fires Back on Iraq
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: For several months after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fired him as secretary of the Army, Thomas E. White kept a low profile.
His departure from the Army's top civilian job followed a series of clashes with Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz over the nature and pace of Army modernization and planning for postwar Iraq. Summoned to Rumsfeld's office late one Friday in April and abruptly told his services were no longer desired, White, a retired Army general and former Enron Corp. executive, left without any public comment on his removal or his two years overseeing the military's largest branch. But in recent weeks White has started speaking out and, not surprisingly, he has some critical things to say about his old boss -- about the tight control Rumsfeld exerted over the timing of U.S. troop deployments to Iraq before the war, about the adequacy of Rumsfeld's planning for postwar reconstruction and about Rumsfeld's negative views of the Army's willingness to transform itself

Environmentalists Cite Threat to State Clean Air Rules
Provision Designed to Bar California's Tougher Standards for Lawn Mowers, Garden Equipment
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: Environmentalists and state advocates warned yesterday that many states could be forced to abandon plans to reduce unhealthy emissions from off-road machinery under a provision recently adopted by a Senate committee. The provision was designed to prevent California from toughening air pollution standards for lawn mowers and garden equipment, but it could affect other states and equipment as well, the advocates said. Environmentalists say the amendment, sponsored by Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.) on behalf of lawn mower engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton Corp., would alter the Clean Air Act by stripping California and other states of their long-standing authority to exceed federal air quality standards for smaller off-road engines except agricultural and construction equipment.

Patriot Monitoring Claims Dismissed
Government Has Not Tracked Bookstore or Library Activity, Ashcroft Says
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Justice Department escalated its attack on opponents of the USA Patriot Act yesterday, ridiculing criticism of the anti-terrorism law and accusing some lawmakers of ignoring classified reports that showed the government has never used its power to monitor individuals' records at bookstores and libraries.
In an unusually sharp and at times sarcastic speech to police and prosecutors in Memphis, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft labeled critics of the law "hysterics" and said "charges of abuse of power are ghosts unsupported by fact or example."

The Bush Administration's Anti-Environmental Actions
As Commented On By America's Editorial Pages
January 2001 - September 2003
Compiled by the National Environmental Trust

The Environment: Love It or Leavitt!
National Environmental Trust
EXCERPT: The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to be the nation’s principal enforcer of the laws protecting our air, water and land. But for 2 1/2 years the Bush Administration has undercut its own environmental agency at every turn, compiling the worst environmental record in modern history. Now, EPA nominee Mike Leavitt’s record as Utah governor gives every indication that he’ll only accelerate efforts to weaken our fundamental environmental and public health safeguards.

18 September 2003

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
"The Crazies Are Back": Former CIA Analysts Discuss How Wolfowitz & Allies Falsely Led the U.S. To War
Interview with Ray McGovern and David MacMichael
Democracy Now!, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: Former CIA analysts Ray McGovern and David MacMichael accuse President Bush of waging the Iraq war based on a series of lies, discuss the unprecedented pressure that VP Dick Cheney put on the CIA before the invasion and call on CIA analysts and agents to come forward with information that will reveal the lies of the Bush administration. [Includes transcript.]

FAIR MEDIA ADVISORY
Wesley Clark: The New Anti-War Candidate?
Record Shows Clark Cheered Iraq War as "Right Call"
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 16 September 2003
EXCERPT: Before the war, Clark was concerned that the U.S. had an insufficient number of troops, a faulty battle strategy and a lack of international support. As time wore on, Clark's reservations seemed to give way. Clark explained on CNN (1/21/03) that if he had been in charge, "I probably wouldn't have made the moves that got us to this point. But just assuming that we're here at this point, then I think that the president is going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies have reservations.

BushWhackedUSA Special Report
Is General Wesley Clark a Viable Progressive Candidate?
18 September 2003
As expected, General Wesley Clark threw his hat into the ring of presidential contenders yesterday. A close examination should be made of any candidate for national office. Anyone familiar with the dominant culture of our uniformed services knows that someone with a successful career conferred by the Pentagon must be given particular attention from a progressive point of view. Obsequiously supporting another presidential candidate talking left who will probably govern center/right may be more detrimental to a progressive future than a second Bush term. Though BushWhackedUSA will likely back almost any effort to remove Bush and his neocons, we take this opportunity to offer a skeptical look at the candidate many hail as "The One Who Will Defeat Bush." Here are some links, from several perspectives, that explore the background of General Wesley Clark:

Wesley Clark - A War Criminal?
ZPub, 1999

Protest NATO Supreme Commander Clark!
International Action Center, 17 October 2000

Wesley Clark's Unanswered Questions
MuslimWakeUp.com, 11 September 2003

War Criminal Wants More Wars
LewRockwell.com, date unknown

Michael Moore Supports Wesley Clark? (a discussion)
SF.IndyMedia.org, 12 September 2003

BBC Profile: General Wesley Clark
BBC News, 2 May 2000

Retired Army General Greeted With Protests
Daily Californian, 19 October 2000

Revised Patriot Act Will Make It Illegal To Read Patriot Act
The Onion, 17 September 2003
ENTIRE TEXT: President Bush spoke out Monday in support of a revised version of the 2001 USA Patriot Act that would make it illegal to read the USA Patriot Act. "Under current federal law, there are unreasonable obstacles to investigating and prosecuting acts of terrorism, including the public's access to information about how the federal police will investigate and prosecute acts of terrorism," Bush said at a press conference Monday. "For the sake of the American people, I call on Congress to pass this important law prohibiting access to itself." Bush also proposed extending the rights of states to impose the death penalty "in the wake of Sept. 11 and stuff.

U.S. Economic Folly Should Worry the World
By Joseph Stiglitz
Guardian (UK), 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: Now, after handing billions to rich Americans through tax cuts, the Bush administration is passing the hat around, asking for contributions from other countries to help to pay for the Iraq war. Even setting aside other dubious aspects of Bush's Iraq policy, the conjunction of misguided giveaways to America's richest people with an international US begging bowl is hardly likely to evoke an outpouring of sympathy. Meanwhile, the US trade deficit is mounting. America, the world's richest country, evidently can't live within its means, borrowing more than a billion dollars a day. As the US thrashes around for someone to blame, it is inevitable that it will focus on China, with its large trade surplus, just as the deficits of the Reagan era led to a focus on Japan two decades ago.

Wall Street reform
NYSE Chief Forced to Quit
BBC, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) chairman Richard Grasso has been forced to quit his job amid public anger over his $140m pay package. Mr Grasso has been under mounting pressure to go since details of his benefits and incentives package were revealed by the NYSE last month. Although fat cat salaries are a way of life on Wall Street, the sheer scale of Mr Grasso's deal raised questions about potential conflicts of interest. US regulators wanted to know how Mr Grasso could be paid so much by the very organisation he was meant to be regulating.

Cumulative poll evidence
Bush Support Softens
By Linda Feldmann
Christian Science Monitor, 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: ...in context, there are plenty of polling figures that could be, in essence, the canary in the coal mine - undermining not only his ability to fully fund Iraq reconstruction but also to go into next year's presidential election from a position of strength.

Clark Able?
By Michael Tomasky
The American Prospect, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: The general-turned-politician could be a bust or a star. Clark will have to do all his learning, and make all his mistakes, under a media spotlight so intense that every errant syllable will be analyzed and exaggerated.

Dems Fail To Block Nuke Funding
AP, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: Senate Democrats failed to block funding for nuclear weapons research Tuesday that they said could trigger a new arms race and increase the likelihood of cataclysmic war. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. said "Does anyone believe that if the United States goes down this path that other nations will not follow?"

Audio Link
"Manufacturing Czar” Is a Pre-election Ploy
Robert Reich Commentary
Market Place Morning Report, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: The White House announced this week that it’s going to establish a “manufacturing czar” to help protect manufacturing jobs in the U.S. But Marketplace commentator Robert Reich calls the president’s move just a lot of political hoopla.

Audio Link
Economics and Politics Go Together
Interview (1st of series) with Paul Krugman
Market Place Morning Report, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: It’s not easy separating economics from politics these days. So says noted economist Paul Krugman, who states that much of what is happening in the economy today is colored by political maneuvering.

17 September 2003

Handing Out Hardship
Is this the Bush administration's idea of fiscal discipline?
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
The Washington Post, 16 September 2003
EXCERPT: Let's get this straight: The administration wants $87 billion in new spending for Iraq, refuses to contemplate rolling back any of its tax cuts to pay for it -- and then proposes holding down new spending on child care for mothers trying to leave welfare. Oh, yes, and on Sunday, Vice President Cheney insisted that although he and President Bush have presided over a deficit that's reaching well beyond $500 billion this year, we shouldn't worry. Why? "I am a deficit hawk," Cheney explained. "So is the president." Don't you feel better? The way to reach a balanced budget, Cheney insisted on "Meet the Press," was "to have fiscal discipline on the rest of the budget." That presumably includes child care. Not to worry. It may be good for those poor working mothers not to have the child-care money. Warning against the idea of child care as an entitlement, Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, reassured us: "Making people struggle a little bit is not necessarily the worst thing." You should be inspired by those words the next time you see a mother working behind the counter at an ice cream place or a Burger King with her kids in tow. Just tell her having the kids around is good for family values. Struggle will build character. The kids can always do their homework in the corner.

Stonewalling continues
Cheney Wants Supreme Court Review on Energy Case
Reuters, 16 September 2003
Courtesy of FindLaw.com
EXCERPT: The Bush administration signaled its intent on Tuesday to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a ruling requiring Vice President Dick Cheney to divulge information about his energy task force. In papers filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, Cheney's Justice Department lawyers said they intend to file a petition with the Supreme Court no later than Sept. 30. Last week, the appeals court refused to reconsider its previous ruling against Cheney, leaving him with the option of appealing to the Supreme Court or complying with a lower court order to release information about his task force's contacts with the energy industry while drafting policy in 2001. "At some point, the Bush administration is going to have to realize that the American people want to know what kind of influence energy corporations had over America's energy policies," said David Bookbinder, senior attorney for the Sierra Club, an environmental group.

Bush Suffers Defeats in Republican-Led Congress
By Thomas Ferraro
Reuters, 16 September 2003
Courtesy of FindLaw.com
EXCERPTS: The U.S. Senate defied a second White House veto threat in as many weeks on Tuesday as Republicans displayed a willingness to break ranks with an embattled President Bush on selected fronts. With Bush's poll numbers slipping as he remains under fire for Iraq and the ailing U.S. economy, Republicans have helped give Democrats a string of recent victories on matters from student aid to federal pay. ... Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota savored the most recent victory, saying, "I think there's a growing lack of confidence in this administration's ability to lead, ability in Iraq, ability in the economy, ability on fiscal policy."

New Doctrine: Admission by Stealth
By Stewart Powell and Dan Freedman
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who studies political damage control, said the Administration was "very gradually trying to rub the rough edges off earlier claims and predictions".

Deconstructing George: An Annotated Refutation of Bush's Michigan Address
By the TomPaine.com Staff
TomPaine.com, 16 September 2003
This is an excellent analysis of Bush's lied during yesterday's speech at the Detroit Edison plant in Monroe, Michigan, in the form of links that contradict each major claim made by Bush. A great read!

Bush's Worst Nightmare: General Wesley Clark
By Stephen K. Medvic
TomPaine.com, 16 September 2003
EXCERPT: Indeed, it's difficult to even conceive of how the Bush team could use the security issue against the likes of a West Point grad, Vietnam veteran, four-star general, and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander. I imagine the first thing they'd do is mothball the footage taken when Bush played dress-up on the aircraft carrier.

Opposition to the will of the American people? No problem for pro-corporate administration
Bush Threatens Veto as Senate Repeals F.C.C.'s New Media Ownership Rules
By Kenneth N. Gilpin
New York Times, 16 September 2003
EXCERPTS: The Republican-controlled Senate dealt a blow to the Bush Administration today, voting to rescind new Federal Communications Commission rules that would allow large media companies to get even bigger.... "We think the rules that the F.C.C. came up with more accurately reflect the changing media landscape and the current state of network station ownership, while guarding against concentration in the marketplace," Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's spokesman, said at his daily news briefing today. He added: "And I did notice the Senate action today. I think that the vote appears to show that there would not be enough votes there to overturn a possible veto."

Retired General Poised to Seek Democratic Nomination in '04
By KIRK SEMPLE
New York Time, 16 September 2003
EXCERPT: Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the supreme allied commander of NATO during the Kosovo campaign, will join the crowded race for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday, people who have been briefed on his plans said today. Such an announcement would end months of speculation about the political ambitions of General Clark, who retired from the Army in 2000, and increase the field of Democratic contenders to 10.

16 September 2003

To Educators, 'No Child' Goals Out of Reach
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post, 16 September 2003
EXCERPT: As the bad news about America's public schools has poured in, with large numbers falling short of state targets demanded by the new federal education law, local officials are blaming the White House and Congress for asking the impossible. How could rational leaders demand, in just 12 years, that 100 percent of students do well enough on standardized tests to be rated proficient in reading and math?  The No Child Left Behind law is "out of touch with reality," said Ron Wimmer, school superintendent in Olathe, Kan., and many of his counterparts across the country agree.

We don't need to make no choices
Brooks Embraces a National "Schwarzenegger Option" for Both Parties
New York Times Editorial, 15 September 2003
Rightwing editorialist advocates selection of amorphous candidates. Okay. Thanks, Dave. Now, let's all join in a couple of verses of " This is My Country." If you are not familiar with David Brooks ambitions and perspectives, check out this article at The American Prospect.

Retirees Alarmed at Threat of Cuts in Drug Benefits
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 16 September 2003
EXCERPT:  As Congress works on legislation to cover prescription drugs under Medicare, lawmakers have been deluged with complaints from retirees who fear losing drug benefits they already have from former employers. Some lawmakers say this issue is emerging as the most immediate threat to the legislation. Congress is frantically seeking ways to address the concern, by offering tax credits, subsidies or other incentives for employers to continue providing drug benefits to retirees. The tax credits would be available to employers who maintain drug coverage or supplement what Medicare provides. Medicare generally does not cover outpatient prescription drugs. Some employers voluntarily provide such coverage though they are not required to do so.

Visualize a Fair Election in 2004
by Greg Palast and Ina Howard
Yes! Magazine, Fall 2003
EXCERPT: The techniques that brought us Florida 2000 are catching on across the U.S. Add unverifiable electronic voting, and we could see the most questionable election yet. How do we reclaim our vote? The new law to “Help America Vote” will eat up $3.9 billion of the taxpayers’ money, partly to tempt states and counties to adopt computerized ‘touch-screen’ voting—an expensive electronic con game. ... computer sciences academics have already sniffed-out the rat in the ballot box. Led by Professor David Dill of Stanford University, 300 of America’s top computer academics have signed their own petition warning of the dangers of electronic voting. What gives the experts the jitters? Unlike paper ballots, there’s no “audit” trail. If the machine is messed with, or even crashes of its own volition (that’s happened a few times with computers), there is no way to tell how people actually voted. ...Most states are holding public hearings on computerization right now. Tell your officials that those voting computers must provide paper trails. Get in and raise the facts, then raise hell.
Ina Howard is coordinating the petition drive. Sign on to ML King’s voting rights petition at www.GregPalast.com.

Yeah, sure thing, Dick...
Cheney Denies Role in Iraq Deal
By Wayne Washington
Boston Globe, 15 September 2003
EXCERPT: Cheney bristled at the suggestion that his past leadership of Halliburton played a role in the company being awarded the no-bid contracts. "Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company," he said. "And as vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape, or form of contracts let by the US Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government." Asked why Halliburton did not have to compete with other firms for the contracts, Cheney said: "I have no idea. Go ask the corps of engineers.

The Latest Bush Gang Whoppers
By David Corn
The Nation, 15 September 2003
EXCERPT: During a speech at a Nashville elementary school, [Bush] hailed his education record by noting that "the budget for next year boosts funding for elementary and secondary education to $53.1 billion. That's a 26-percent increase since I took office. In other words, we understand that resources need to flow to help solve the problems." A few things were untrue in these remarks. Bush's proposed elementary and secondary education budget for next year is $34.9 billion, not $53.1 billion, according to his own Department of Education. It's his total proposed education budget that is $53.1 billion. More importantly, there is no next-year "boost" in this budget. Elementary and secondary education received $35.8 billion in 2003. Bush's 2004 budget cuts that back nearly a billion dollars, and the overall education spending in his budget is the same as the 2003 level.

An example of business as usual...
Corporations Pick Up $400,000 Tab for Western Governors
By Allison Farrell
Missoulian, 15 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Ten governors from the Western United States and four premiers from western Canada, along with some 400 other assorted guests, have descended on posh Big Sky Resort to discuss energy, forest health, health care, endangered species and other topics during conference, which opened Sunday.... The conference is being funded solely by corporations that have donated between $5,000 and $20,000 and will pay hundreds more for registration fees. They'll get the chance to talk with the governors and premiers during meals and private meetings over the three days of the conference.

The Daily Mis-Lead
Misleader.org
A daily dose of Bush administration lies, from MoveOn.org.

Ailing Nuke Workers Denied Aid, Most Not Told of Risks
By Peter Eisler
USA TODAY, 14 September 2003
EXCERPT: Scores of private factories that helped make the nation's first atomic bombs stayed polluted for decades. And thousands of people who later worked in them were exposed to radiation and toxins without knowing it, federal records show.

Bush Defends Environmental Rules That Will Reduce Air Quality
By Steve Holland
Reuters, 15 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush on Monday defended a change in clean air rules -- which environmentalists believe will cause more pollution -- as necessary to allow power plants to upgrade their equipment and keep the U.S. economy going. "We have done the right thing," Bush said. But several Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, said the Senate should block confirmation of Bush's choice to head the EPA, Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt, until the administration changes its clear air policy. Environmental groups said Bush's policy will increase pollution, particularly at the Monroe plant, one of the largest coal-fired plants in the country. ...and fails to set limits on carbon dioxide emissions, thought to be a major cause of global warming.

NY Times Editorial Trivializes NOW/NWPC Endorsement
Feminist Daily News Wire, 15 September 2003
EXCERPT: A New York Times Sunday editorial trivialized the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus for endorsing Carol Moseley Braun for President. The editorial, entitled "NOW's Woman Problem," labeled Moseley Braun's candidacy a "vanity affair" and called the NOW and NWPC endorsement "silly." This is despite the fact that she has a stronger public service record than some of the other candidates and is consistently polling in the middle of the pack of Democratic candidates.

Don't Talk Like a Twit
by Jonathan Rowe
Yes! Magazine, Fall 2003
EXCERPT: Polls find that voters support progressive issues. So why have Americans been voting for such conservative candidates? Because conservatives are speaking their language. I’m suggesting only that we speak as though listeners matter, and that we attend to what listeners hear and not just what we want to say. (A little humor wouldn’t hurt either.)
Claiming strength
What’s needed, among other things, is language that embodies strength on a range of issues, so that defense does not have to carry the whole strong-father load. The progressive camp needs to learn to speak to the living room of the strong-father psyche. This is not as hard as it might seem. It’s a different way of getting to essentially the same place. There might be many such common places, if only we can speak in language that does not distance us from the people we need to reach.

30 September 2003

Who's Sordid Now?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 30 September 2003
EXCERPT: It's official: the administration that once scorned nation-building now says that it's engaged in a modern version of the Marshall Plan. But Iraq isn't postwar Europe, and George W. Bush definitely isn't Harry Truman. Indeed, while Truman led this country in what Churchill called the "most unsordid act in history," the stories about Iraqi reconstruction keep getting more sordid. And the sordidness isn't, as some would have you believe, a minor blemish on an otherwise noble enterprise. Cronyism is an important factor in our Iraqi debacle. It's not just that reconstruction is much more expensive than it should be. The really important thing is that cronyism is warping policy: by treating contracts as prizes to be handed to their friends, administration officials are delaying Iraq's recovery, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

It's not just the 'Lincoln Bedroom' now...
Washington Insiders' New Firm Consults on Contracts in Iraq
By DOUGLAS JEHL
New York Times, 30 September 2003
EXCERPT: A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family and his administration have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects

Bush's War on Terror becomes War on Intelligence...
CIA to Combat Terror by Playing Bin Laden Video Game
Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 2003
EXCERPT: CIA agents will become make-believe terror chiefs, playing a new video game devised to make them think more like their most wanted enemy, Osama bin Laden, it was revealed yesterday. The CIA's Counter Terrorist Centre (CTC) is developing the computer game which will help agents adopt the mindset of an evil mastermind character, bent on terror and destruction. With other agents cast as themselves, or law enforcement officials, they will do battle against one another on the multi-million dollar game.

Projecting American values abroad...
U.S. Ambassador Says It May Not Be a Crime to Kill a President
VHeadline (Venezuela), 28 September 2003
EXCERPT: In an Associated Press (AP) dispatch the United States government has said it will open up an investigation into allegations made by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias relative to conspiracy to assassinate him. Chavez Frias has said that "terrorist groups" in southern Florida have allied with Miami-based anti-Castro radicals.

Iraqis Call U.S. Goal on Constitution Impossible
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 30 September 2003
EXCERPT: Iraqis involved in the effort to write a new constitution said today that completing the document in six months, the goal set by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last week, will be impossible to meet because of differences over how to select the drafters and more profound disagreements over the role of Islamic law and the basic contours of a new political system. "The Iraqi people must be able to choose the people who are going to write their constitution," said Adel Abdel Mehdi, a senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a large Shiite party.

After all we've done for them?
Kuwait Refuses to Drop Iraq Debt
By Haitham Haddadin
Swiss Info, 28 September 2003
EXCERPT: Kuwaiti parliamentarians have reacted angrily to a U.S. suggestion the oil-rich emirate drop demands for billions of dollars in war reparations owed by former foe Iraq, newspapers say. U.S. civil administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer said on Friday that out of Iraq's total debt of $200 billion, Baghdad owed $98 billion in reparations to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for losses during the 1990-91 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and the Gulf War. "This is some kind of (U.S.) pressure on Kuwait .. the issue of the reparations is something that concerns the impacted countries and the United Nations," said MP Yousef al-Zalzalah in remarks carried by al-Watan daily on Sunday.
SEE ALSO: Electoral Shock: Women Still Barred from Voting in Kuwait

29 September 2003

Ethnic and Religious Fissures Deepen in Iraqi Society
Tensions Escalating Over Land, Power and Loyalties
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post, 29 September 2003
EXCERPT: ...Many of the confrontations have taken place not in large cities where U.S. reconstruction specialists have their offices, but in tiny villages such as Haifa where there are no soldiers or prominent Iraqi leaders to defuse tensions. "I am sure," Jubbouri said, "the Americans have no idea what is happening here." "Relations in our country have become very tense," said Anwar Assi Hussein Obeidi, a Sunni Arab who is a leader of the Obeidi tribe, one of Iraq's largest. "If the Americans don't resolve these problems soon, the people will start killing each other."

Are These American Human Rights?
Yellow Times, 28 September 2003
EXCERPT: A man was killed and two of his children wounded when two U.S. missiles struck their farm in the middle of the night, last week. "May God's curse fall upon the Americans, for they have no fear of God," said the man's cousin, who asked, "Are these American human rights?"

In the world of blood-for-oil, everybody wants some...
Russia Sends Message to U.S. About Iraqi Oil Contracts
By Neela Banerjee
New York Times, 27 September 2003
EXCERPT: After going it alone for so many years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian companies are now finding opportunities in which American help would be invaluable. At an oil conference earlier this week in St. Petersburg, Russian oil companies talked about the need for American assistance in building more oil infrastructure to ease exports, like ports, storage facilities and pipelines. And it is widely known that ChevronTexaco and Exxon Mobil are vying to buy a large stake, perhaps as much as 25 percent, in Yukos, Russia's largest oil company.

Former CIA Director Says U.S. Overplayed WMD Issue
By Arno Schuetze
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 26 September 2003
EXCERPTS: The United States should immediately surrender the leading role in rebuilding Iraq to the United Nations, former Central Intelligence Agency director Stansfield Turner said in a speech at the University of Kentucky yesterday. "We will have to do that anyway, so we better do it now," Turner said after his talk, which was the inaugural Vince Davis Memorial Lecture.... Turner also said the United States should have tried harder to get more international support before attacking Iraq. "Iraq was not a time-urgent issue. There was no imminent threat."

Missiles Strike at Heart of U.S. Occupation
By Robert Fisk
London Independent, 28 September 2003
Courtesy of Information Clearing House
EXCERPT: The man with the missiles was driving a white Toyota and pulled up in the leafy Baghdad suburb of Salhaya at 6:35 yesterday morning. Those who saw him said he climbed very calmly out of the car and placed a large battery on the road. Then he took seven rockets from the back seat and laid them on the tarmac. Using the battery as a ramp, he fired the first missile at the Rashid Hotel, fortress home to many of the senior American officials of the occupation authorities.
SEE ALSO: Lies, Michief and the Myth of Western Intelligence Services, by Robert Fisk

Mission Not Accomplished: So, What Went Wrong?
By Michael Elliott
Time Magazine, 28 September 2003
EXCERPT: The reconstruction of Iraq has proved far more difficult than any official assumed it would be. Since May 1, 170 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, as sporadic guerrilla attacks have continued. Two potential leaders of the new Iraq‹Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and Akila al-Hashimi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council in Iraq‹have been assassinated. Also dead is Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. chief representative in Iraq, who was killed when a bomb exploded at U.N. headquarters last month. After a second bombing last week near the building, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan ordered a reduction in the size of the organization's mission‹already much smaller than it had once been‹for reasons of safety.

27-28 September 2003

I want what he's having...
Bush: 'World is safer today'
Reuters, September 27, 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush sought to reassure Americans on Saturday that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was appropriate despite the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and with U.S. troops under daily guerrilla attack. "I am confident that more nations will rally to the side of the Iraqi people and help them to build a free and peaceful nation," Bush said. The White House is reworking draft proposals that would give U.N. authorization to a multinational force under U.S. leadership to get more troops and money into Iraq. An early draft asks the unelected Iraqi Governing Council to draw up a schedule for a new constitution and elections, in cooperation with the U.S.-led occupying coalition.

Marchers Worldwide Call for Iraq Pullout
By JACK GARLAND
Associated Press, 27 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Thousands of protesters demanding an end to the occupation of Iraq (news - web sites) took to the streets Saturday in London, Athens, Paris and other cities, calling for the withdrawal of troops and chanting slogans attacking the U.S. and British governments. The protests, the first major demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April, were held as the United States tried to gain international help in rebuilding Iraq, where American troops regularly come under attack. The demonstrations were organized in each country by local activist groups that have informal contacts with each other. London's was the biggest protest, drawing 20,000 people. Demonstrators turned out in a dozen other countries, including South Korea and Egypt. "No more war. No more lies" proclaimed a banner pinned to the pedestal of Nelson's Column in London's Trafalgar Square where demonstrators rallied after a march through the city. People of all ages, from gray-haired couples to toddlers in strollers, joined the orderly stream of protesters marching from Hyde Park.

How To Counter Iran's Nuclear Threat
Financial Times, September 24, 2003
By Ivo H. Daalder and Michael A. Levi
EXCERPT: The U.S. and Europe are united in their opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran and, unlike with Iraq, their strategies for ensuring Tehran does not succeed are slowly converging. Yet, despite their united front at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) this month, critical differences persist. The U.S. is putting pressure on Iran to accept expanded international inspections, using a policy of confrontation and threats. Europe is more ambitious—it wants a permanent halt to Iran's uranium enrichment programme and intrusive inspections—and is offering Tehran co-operation on its civil nuclear programme if it agrees. Europe and the U.S. have both identified elements of the right strategy but their individual approaches are incomplete. A successful strategy must combine Europe's ambitious goals and incentives with the American-style threat of coercive action should engagement fail.

Is Bush's War in Iraq A "Brain Fart"?
By David Corn
The Nation, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: (Retired General) Zinni displayed little confidence in Bush and his aides. He said that their Iraq endeavor has landed the United States into the middle of assorted "culture wars" in the Middle East. "We don't understand that culture," he remarked. "I've spent the last 15 years of my life in this part of the world. And I'll tell you, every time I hear...one of the dilettantes back here speak about this region of the world, they don't have a clue. They don't understand what makes them tick. They don't understand where they are in their own history. They don't understand what our role is....We are great at dealing with the tactical problems--the killing and the breaking. We are lousy at solving the strategic problems; having a strategic plan, understanding about regional and global security and what it takes to weld that and to shape it and to move forward."

Senator Raises Concerns That US Not Spending Enough In Afghanistan
Feminist Daily News Wire, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: At yesterday's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the $87 billion supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) raised concerns about the $20 billion for Iraq's reconstruction compared to the $800 million for Afghanistan's. He questioned whether the United States should think about spending more money in Afghanistan than Iraq because Iraq and Afghanistan's populations are not much different and Afghanistan is a much poorer country.

Report: Global Gag Rule Spurring Deaths, Disease
Womens E News, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Mexico City policy, also known as the global gag rule, has led to closed clinics, cuts in healthcare staff and dwindling medical supplies, leaving women, children and families without access to vital healthcare services, according to a report released yesterday by policy opponents. The policy, reinstated by U.S. President George W. Bush as one of his first acts in office, prohibits any organization receiving population funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development from using those or other funds to provide or promote abortion as a method of family planning.

Blow for U.S. as UN Staff Quit, Iraqi Leader Mourned
Reuters, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: The killing of Akila al-Hashemi, who died on Thursday five days after gunmen fired on her car, and the U.N. pullout, following two suicide bomb attacks, were setbacks to a U.S. bid to get more international help to police and rebuild Iraq.

A Must-Read Analysis of Contemporary Journalism
Media Censorship That Doesn't Speak Its Name
By John Pilger
ZNet, 26 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Reducing journalism to a branch of corporate and government public relations is the hidden agenda of the media deregulators, in Britain and America.... The global model for censorship by omission in free societies is America, which constitutionally has the freest press in the world. In Washington, Charles Lewis, the former CBS 60 Minutes producer who runs the Centre for Public Integrity, told me: "Under Bush, the silence among journalists is worse than in the 1950s."

U.S. Tries to Drop All Terrorism Charges Against Moussaoui
Guardian (UK), 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: US prosecutors attempting to bring a case against the so-called "20th hijacker", Zacarias Moussaoui, have been forced to ask for all charges against him to be dropped, a legal manoeuvre they hope will keep him from calling other terrorism suspects as defence witnesses. Prosecutors ran into trouble with the case after two district court orders gave Mr Moussaoui the right to question three suspected al-Qaida members who he says could testify he was not a conspirator in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

If they can do it in the U.K., we can do it in the U.S.
Weapons of Mass Democracy: Special Report on the Peace Movement in Britain
Guardian (UK), 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: Alastair Campbell has resigned. Geoff Hoon, branded a hypocrite and a liar at the Hutton inquiry, is finished. And, as the front cover of Newsweek, announces this week, Tony Blair's premiership is now in the twilight zone. Three men who used duplicity and deceit to manipulate an unwilling country into an unwanted war. And their political graves were dug by the 2 million people who packed into the streets of London back in February. If the much promised - and much lied about - weapons of mass destruction that Tony "trust me" Blair was so scared of were never found in Iraq, it was always inconceivable to us that these conviction warmongers should stay in office.

26 September 2003

Devil in the details
In GOP, Concern Over Iraq Price Tag
Some Doubt Need For $20.3 Billion For Rebuilding
By Jonathan Weisman and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: The discontent is relatively contained so far, said Jim Dyer, Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, but that is because few lawmakers have read the proposal's fine print. As more details seep out, he said, anger is sure to rise "We're not talking sanity here," Dyer said. "The world's second-largest oil country is importing oil, and a country full of concrete is importing concrete."

Russia at a fork in the road
Putin Foes See Erosion Of Liberties,
Terror War Mutes Criticism by U.S.
By Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: After Russia's most reputable polling agency reported last month that support for President Vladimir Putin's war in Chechnya had fallen to 28 percent, the messengers were targeted by a state-ordered purge. Soon the center's founder and research team were out, replaced by a 29-year-old who once campaigned for Putin's political party. ...critics at home say that Putin's proclivity for authoritarian rule has largely been overlooked by the United States and will undermine the legitimacy of parliamentary election campaigns now underway. "I'm very worried about the destiny of democracy in Russia," said Vladimir Lysenko, a member of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, and founder of one of the first political parties to challenge the Communists in the dying days of the Soviet Union. Lysenko fears that a powerful Kremlin faction wants to follow China's model, economic reform without political freedom. "Russia is now at a crossroads," he said, "whether to take the European way of development, the democratic way of development, or the Asian way, a partial authoritarian regime."

Timetable for a legal client state?
Powell Gives Iraq 6 Months to Write New Constitution
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
New York Times, 26 September 2003
EXCERPT: Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, responding to demands from France and others for a rapid timetable for self-rule in Iraq, said yesterday that the United States would set a deadline of six months for Iraqi leaders working under the American-led occupation to produce a new constitution for their country. The constitution, which would spell out whether Iraq should be governed by a presidential or parliamentary system, would clear the way for elections and the installation of a new leadership next year, Mr. Powell said. Not until then, he added, would the United States transfer authority from the American-led occupation to Iraq itself.

Body Bags Filled with GI Joe and Jane: No Homecoming Trumpets for the Fallen?
By Vincent L. Guarisco
AxisofLogic.com, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: Notice anything missing in the news media since all this war business started? Where is all the media attention for the more than 300 fallen military servicemen who have been killed in Iraq and shipped back home? I ask again -- has anyone heard the trumpets blaring or seen cameras clicking in patriotic fever as the body bags arrive and unload from military cargo planes? While I'm on the subject -- has anyone seen any televised funerals or heard any interviews with relatives of the deceased who are not happy campers? Hardly anything? Hmmmm, go figure. I apologize for asking such disturbing questions, but duty calls in the wake of duplicity, and simply waving the flag is not enough, in fact it's not even close. If we want to call ourselves true American patriots, it's our duty to "ask questions," and lots of them. When considering all the brave souls who have given their lives for country and cartel, perhaps asking questions and demanding honest answers will be the true battle cry of our times.

The Unilateral Party's Over: Comparing Bush's Wars to Clinton's
By Russ Baker
TomPaine.com, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: Ask an American voter which political party he or she trusts more on foreign policy, and they'll almost always tell you GOP. That's based on the sense that Democrats are too softhearted, unwilling to make the tough decisions needed to protect American interests and safeguard peace, democracy and freedom around the world. To test that assumption, let's compare two situations that come as close as recent history allows to a matched pair: how Bush has handled Iraq versus how Clinton handled the Balkans.

Apparently shouting "We are police!" is grounds for attack
U.S. Absolves Troops in Shooting of Iraqi Police
The Star, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: A U.S. military investigation found no misconduct by U.S. soldiers who earlier this month killed eight Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian hospital guard near Fallujah, the U.S. commander in Iraq said Thursday. "The initial findings are that the soldiers acted within the construct of the military's rules of engagement," Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told reporters.

Against Blind Imperial Arrogance: On the Death of Edward Said
By John Nichols
The Nation, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: Edward Said closed one of his last published essays with the lines: "We are in for many more years of turmoil and misery in the Middle East, where one of the main problems is, to put it as plainly as possible, U.S. power. What the U.S. refuses to see clearly it can hardly hope to remedy."
SEE ALSO: New York Times on Said's Life and Death

Iraq Pullout, Middle East Gloom Cloud UN Assembly
By Paul Taylor
Reuters, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT:  The United Nations ordered a further pullout of staff from Iraq on Thursday after two suicide bombings in five weeks, in a setback to U.S.-led efforts to stabilize and rebuild the country. The withdrawal of dozens of U.N. staff to Jordan over the next few days added to gloom at the General Assembly over the Middle East, with Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts in tatters and a crisis looming over Iran's nuclear program.

Sifting Through the Rubble/
Below the Beltway
By John B. Judis
The American Prospect, 1 October Issue
EXCERPT: Last February I had lunch with a friend who was teaching at one of the military war colleges. He told me that the officers he knew were uniformly skeptical about a war with Iraq. "I don't think they are worried about fighting Iraq but about garrisoning it afterward," he said. I heard similar doubts about the wisdom of the war from foreign-policy experts, oil-industry consultants and Middle East historians, but the Bush White House was not interested in these opinions. It was listening to the echo chamber set up by the Pentagon, The Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute. A few months after George W. Bush declared victory, however, it is clear that the skeptics were right on every important count. ...All in all, the administration's record in Iraq should call forth extensive resignations from the Pentagon (Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Stephen Cambone), the Department of State (John Bolton), the National Security Council (Robert Joseph) and the vice president's office (I. Lewis Libby). But that is not likely to occur. If past practice holds, Bush's abysmal failures will lead to a new political offensive designed to gull the American people into believing that the invasion was really a smashing success.

Bush's world changed on 9/11. Truth became less important.
Bush Says 9/11 Changed View of Saddam
By TERENCE HUNT
AP, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush said Thursday the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "changed my calculation" about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein after the administration -- early that same year -- had played down Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Powell, barely a month into the Bush administration, had used a news conference in Cairo to argue for keeping U.N. sanctions on Iraq. "And frankly they have worked," Powell said on Feb. 24, 2001. "He (Saddam) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

U.S. Troops May Stay in Iraq Through 2004
By KEN GUGGENHEIM
AP, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Thursday that "significant forces" from the United States probably will remain in Iraq through the end of next year.

Israel Reels at Pilots' Refusal to Go on Missions
By Jeffrey Heller
Reuters, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: Israel sharply criticized and grounded on Thursday a group of air force pilots who refused to carry out missions against Palestinian militants in which civilians could be killed.

25 September 2003

Bush Fails to Gain Pledges on Troops or Funds for Iraq
National Guard, Reserve May Plug Holes
By Dana Milbank and Colum Lynch
Washington Post, 25 September 2003
President Bush ended two days of meetings with foreign leaders today without winning more international troops or funds for Iraq and with a top aide saying it could take months to achieve a new U.N. resolution backing the U.S. occupation. Bush's failure to win a promise of fresh soldiers in meetings with the leaders of India and Pakistan -- aides said the president did not even ask -- increased the difficulty the United States will have in assembling another division of foreign troops in Iraq, which senior Pentagon officials say is the minimum needed to relieve overstretched U.S. forces. ...As U.S. diplomats worked to resolve the dispute, military leaders said they are preparing for the possibility of calling up more reserves. Pace, a Marine general, told a group of defense writers in Washington this morning that if more commitments of foreign troops are not secured, the Pentagon will need to begin in the next four to six weeks alerting National Guard and Reserve forces required to sustain troop levels in Iraq. [Emphasis by BWUSA]

The Real Obstacle to Peace is Sharon, Not Arafat
Avi Shlaim IHT
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
In a memorandum to Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin dated June 2, 1948, Sir John Troutbeck held the Americans responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders." Today, a similar sense of moral outrage is felt toward the rightist government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by people throughout the world, though evidently not by the Bush administration. President George W. Bush himself has famously described Ariel Sharon as "a man of peace" and has made no real effort to restrain him in the savage war that Sharon has been waging against the Palestinian people since coming to power two and a half years ago.

Bush neglects vital component of WOT
Megawati says West Causes Violence
By Sian Powell
News.com.au,  25 September 2003
EXCERPT: Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has blamed the West for the global "climate of violence" that fosters terrorism.
Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York yesterday, the leader of the world's most populous Muslim nation urged world powers to review their Middle East policies, seen by many Muslims as "not only unjust, but also one-sided" in favour of Israel. She said the "absence of a just attitude, exacerbated by being sidelined and ignored, has cultivated a climate of violence". ...Unlike many of her peers from other Muslim nations, she criticised the world's only remaining superpower, condemning the US for the war in Iraq - which she said was creating far more problems than those it was intended to solve.

S.Korea's Roh Links Iraq Request to N.Korea Talks
By Reuters, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Roh Moo-hyun, facing hostility at home to a U.S. request for military help in Iraq, has linked the deployment of South Korean troops to progress on defusing the crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions. The United States has asked South Korea for combat troops to help ease the burden of stabilizing post-war Iraq. A South Korean newspaper quoted a U.S. official as saying Washington would like 5,000 troops and a decision by mid-October.

Why Gather Intelligence if our Leaders Deliberately Ignore It?
Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian, September 24, 2003
EXCERPT:If London and Washington had been truly interested in what their intelligence services had to say, they might have drawn very different conclusions. In October 2002 the CIA concluded that Saddam posed little threat - and was only likely to strike at the US if attacked first. Britain's own intelligence chiefs warned this February that al-Qaida remained the greatest danger to western interests "and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq". But neither of these assessments fitted the policy that had already been decided, and so they were ignored. This is a perverse way for governments to make choices about national security. We learned this week that Colin Powell and even Condoleezza Rice were happily declaring that Iraq posed no threat and had no weapons of destruction as recently as the spring of 2001. But 9/11 came along, the hawks won the upper hand and the decision was taken. One of the steps on the way was the corruption of intelligence.

Due to carelessness, ineptitude, deceit
Planning Ignored Iraq's "Stone Age" Electrical Infrastructure
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 25 September 2003
Sanctions made it impossible for Iraqis to maintain an adequate electrical system. EXCERPT: ...several American and Iraqi specialists contend the U.S. occupation authority has been slow to address the problem. ..."The telltale signs were there," said the American electrical engineer. "But either because of sheer carelessness or because the [U.S.] government didn't want to reveal how expensive it would be, there was massive under-planning." ...In the early months of the occupation, the official said, "everyone believed that saying we needed billions of dollars was too politically risky. Now they realize that if they don't fix the power system quickly, this whole effort will fail -- and that's a much bigger political risk." ...It is impossible to find parts for the plant because it is so old. "It's not like you can find this stuff on the shelf anywhere," he said. "This place is very Stone Age."

U.S. Arms Sales Almost Equals Rest of World Combined, Report Says
By THOM SHANKER
New York Times, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: The United States maintained its dominance in the international arms market last year, especially in sales to developing nations, according to a new Congressional report. The United States was the leader in total worldwide sales in 2002, with about $13.3 billion, or 45.5 percent of global conventional weapons deals, a rise from $12.1 billion in 2001. Of that, $8.6 billion was to developing nations, or about 48.6 percent of conventional arms deals concluded with developing nations last year, according to the report. Russia was second in sales to the developing world last year, with $5 billion, followed by France with $1 billion.

Venezuela's Chavez Blasts U.S. Over 'Terrorist' Plot
Reuters, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday Venezuelan "terrorists" plotting to kill him were training in the United States, and he told the U.S. and Spanish governments to stop meddling in his country's affairs.
In a pugnacious speech to a meeting of women supporters in Caracas, the left-wing Venezuelan leader also criticized the United Nations as a "dialogue of the deaf" and said it was not worth speaking at the international body.

Bomb Kills Guard at Baghdad Hotel for U.S. Media
By Ian Simpson and Fiona O'Brien
Reuters, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: A bomb exploded on Thursday at a Baghdad hotel housing journalists from U.S. television network NBC, killing a guard, the latest in a string of deadly attacks targeting foreigners in Iraq. The blast, which echoed across central Baghdad at dawn, shattered windows around the three-floor Aike Hotel, wounding some guests with flying glass.

Iraqi Council Member Dies 5 Days After Ambush
New York Times, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: Akila Hashimi, a member of Iraq's Governing Council who was seriously wounded in an ambush near her home five days ago, died today, according to a statement released to news organizations by U.S. authorities in Iraq.

Draft Report Said to Cite No Success in Iraq Arms Hunt
By DOUGLAS JEHL and JUDITH MILLER
New York Times, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: An early draft of an interim report by the American leading the hunt for banned weapons in Iraq says his team has not found any of the unconventional weapons cited by the Bush administration as a principal reason for going to war, federal officials with knowledge of the findings said today. ...The effort by the C.I.A. today to emphasize the interim nature of any document seemed intended to minimize political fallout from his findings.

Study: Bush Abortion Policy Closes African Clinics
By Maggie Fox
Reuters, September 24, 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush's anti-abortion policy has forced family planning clinics in poor countries to close, leaving some communities without any healthcare, according to a report issued Wednesday. Under the policy, known as the Mexico City rule by supporters and the Global Gag rule by opponents, foreign family planning agencies cannot receive U.S. funds if they provide abortion services or lobby to make or keep abortion legal in their own country.

'Logic' of Occupation Points to More Trouble
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 25 September 2003
EXCERPT: An increasing number of calls by prominent members of Washington's handpicked, 25-member Governing Council in Iraq for the United States to more quickly transfer real power from US occupation authorities are adding to the embarrassment of the Bush administration. The council, which late last week called for US troops to withdraw from towns and cities to bases and turn over police duties to Iraqi militias and police, has clearly reached the conclusion that the occupation is turning into a disaster. "The Iraqi people understand the logic of liberation and they reject the logic of occupation," said Chalabi, who has joined other council members in opposing Washington's solicitation of foreign troops to participate in the occupation. The administration is pressing Turkey, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and South Korea to contribute a total of some 40,000 troops to lighten the US load.

U.N. Leader Annan Says Bush's Aggression Breeds Terror
By Caroline Overington and Maggie Farley
Sydney Morning Herald (Aus.), 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, attacked American foreign policy - warning it could stoke terrorism and global chaos - just hours before President George Bush was due to defend the US-led invasion of Iraq in a speech to the UN. Mr Annan said the use of military force against terrorist groups could encourage more terrorism, while pre-emptive strikes could lead to a lawless world where nations attack one another "with or without justification".

Bush to World: Drop Dead!
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: Has an American president ever delivered such a bafflingly impertinent speech before the General Assembly as the one George W. Bush gave this morning? Here were the world's foreign ministers and heads of state, anxiously awaiting some sign of an American concession to realism‹even the sketchiest outline of a plan to share not just the burden but the power of postwar occupation in Iraq. And Bush gave them nothing, in some ways less than nothing.

And Now, Global Booby Prizes
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek, 29 September 2003 Issue
EXCERPT: There is a leadership vacuum in the world these days—on almost every major issue. Consider what’s happened in the last week, besides the Cancun fiasco, which is the biggest setback for free trade in decades. The U.S. and key European states started tussling over Iraq again, and a cooperative approach to building democracy there seems unlikely. Kofi Annan is urging a radical overhaul of the United Nations to save it from irrelevance. ...Across different areas, important institutions and alliances that have helped manage international peace and prosperity are coming apart. Patterns of cooperation are eroding; new frictions are emerging. The world order we have gotten used to over the last half century is slowly crumbling. the most vital leadership vacuum is in the United States. It is the only country that has the power to help repair, revive or reinvent arrangements to help manage global peace and prosperity. This is the time for intense and creative efforts along these lines. But at this crucial moment in world history, the influential hard-liners in the Bush administration stand in theological opposition to the very idea of international cooperation.

CIA Created Fake Mullahs to Pacify Iraqis
Al Jazeera, 23 September 2003
EXCERPTS: The CIA installed phoney Muslim leaders and bribed existing ones to counter the anti-American sentiment in mosques across the Arab world after the 11 September attacks.

More hypocrisy in Liberation Land
America's Toothless Interim Council Roars Like a Lion--Against the Press
By Robert Fisk
Independent (UK), 23 September 2003
Courtesy of Information Clearing House
EXCERPT: Sewage is coming through the manhole covers, there's still only 15 hours electricity a day and anarchy grips the streets of Baghdad, but yesterday America's toothless Iraqi 'interim council' roared like a lion, issuing a set of restrictions and threats against - the press, of course.

Pride and Prejudices
How Americans have fooled themselves about the war in Iraq, and why they’ve had to
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek, 19 September 2003
EXCERPTS: The media talk about anti-Americanism, but what’s really noxious right now is an insufferable smugness, a pervasive air of schadenfreude, and I fear it’s a symptom of still worse to come from this Iraq adventure. Because the bitterest contradiction of all may be that this war was waged—first and foremost—to save face after the humiliation and suffering of September 11. It was meant to inspire awe in the Arab and Muslim world, as former CIA operative Marc Reuel Gerecht and others insisted it should be. And in that it truly has failed. Every day we look weaker. And the worst news of all it that it’s not because of what was done to us by our enemies but because of what we’ve done to ourselves.

Senator Raises Concerns For Women In Afghanistan
Feminist Daily News Wire, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: At today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the $87 billion supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) raised concerns about vulnerable populations in Afghanistan and Iraq, including women. She pointed to a Human Rights Watch Report and threats against girls going to school as examples of the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.

A Question That Drives Saudi Women Crazy
By Abeer Mishkhas
Women's E News, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: So we are caught in a growing bind. We are getting cultural cues--in the form of more education and more job opportunities--that tell us we can and should be more independent. But the society does not give us the most basic liberties--from driving, to being issued our own identification cards, to serving on consultative councils--to live up to the challenge of greater independence.

Afghan Women's Rights
New York Times, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: From some of the most desperate corners of Afghanistan, about 45 brave women have embarked on a cause that hardly seems on Washington's powerful radar. President Bush's speech to the United Nations yesterday barely mentioned Afghanistan's struggle to build what he calls a "decent and just society." Yet recently, these Afghan women endured great risk in that very cause. They traveled to Kandahar, now considered a dangerous city, deep in Taliban territory. There, they crafted an extraordinary document they have called the Afghan Women's Bill of Rights.

Palestinian mother speaks out against Israeli oppression
My Baby Boy's American Freedoms Vanish in Occupied Palestine
By Elizabeth Price
Pacific News Service, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: My son was born in San Francisco. He is an American. He was also born to a Palestinian father. He is also Palestinian. This summer, at 6 weeks old, he became an international traveler, with a brand new American passport, when we traveled to Palestine to introduce him to his father's family. Two days before we were supposed to return to America, we were told by the Israeli military that my infant son was not allowed to travel with me on his American passport. As a Palestinian citizen, he was subject to the regulations of the Israeli military occupation and needed a Palestinian passport and permission from the Israeli army to leave the country.

24 September 2003

Cracks Appear in America's Conservative Consensus
By Guy Dinmore
Financial Times, 23 September 2003
EXCERPTS: The spectacle of pro-war "neo-conservatives" savaging Donald Rumsfeld - the United States defence secretary they had hailed as the architect of military victory in Iraq - has set chat-shows buzzing and delighted opponents of the Bush administration. Recriminations over the Pentagon's failure to plan for the complexities of post-war Iraq, combined with the public's shock at the cost, have also led to questions over the future direction of US foreign policy. A key argument of the neo-conservatives was that removing Saddam Hussein would give the US more leverage on all three key fronts in its "war on terror". But senior officials concede that the contrary has happened. Iran's hardline clerics have consolidated their position. Syria has ignored US threats over its support for Palestinian militants. The Israeli-Palestinian "road map" has stalled. ..."The neo-cons' wings have been clipped," says a former senior official close to the hawks. "But they still wield influence."

Iraqis Wary of Exile Who Came Back with the US Tanks
By Charles Clover, Guy Dinmore, Roula Khalaf and Gareth Smyth
Financial Times, 24 September 2003
EXCERPT: Ahmad Chalabi seems an unlikely candidate to head a revolt against the US. ...But Mr Chalabi's proposals on sovereignty strike a chord among ordinary Iraqis, who feel the best way to get the country moving is the return of control. Yet discussions with them suggest Mr Chalabi is unpopular or unknown even though he won a high profile through Governing Council press conferences and quick, well-judged remarks after the bombings of the UN's Baghdad compound and the shrine of Ali in Najaf in August. To many Iraqis he symbolises domination by US-backed exiles who have returned "riding on US tanks", to quote one local mayor. Mr Chalabi is still dogged by the collapse of Petra Bank in Jordan, a case for which he was convicted of embezzlement - a charge he has always denied.

Bush Isolated as Speech to UN Falls Flat
by Gary Younge
The Guardian, 24 September 2003
[Bush's speech was aimed at his domestic audience rather than to the UN members before him. He failed to address concerns impacting the effectiveness of this international organization. Those are the problematic difficulties of unilateralism and the need for UN  structural reform. BWUSA]
EXCERPT: George Bush was increasingly isolated on the global stage yesterday as he defied intense criticism from a litany of world leaders at the United Nations over the war on Iraq. Mr Bush's speech was received with polite applause from the 191-member states, while his critics were given a far warmer reception.

US-backed Council Bars Arab Media
By Roshan Muhammed Salih
Aljazeera.net, 23 September 2003
Courtesy of the Agonist
EXCERPT: Freedom of speech campaigners have condemned US-appointed authorities in Iraq for banning television stations Aljazeera and al- Arabiya. Iraq's Governing Council said on Tuesday the stations were prohibited from covering official activities in Iraq for two weeks. It said the action was taken as a warning to broadcasters who incite anti-US violence.
"Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya will temporarily be excluded from any coverage of Governing Council activities or official press conferences, and correspondents of the two channels will not be allowed to enter ministries or government offices for two weeks," the council said in a statement.

Think Bigger on North Korea
Washington Post,17 September 2003
Courtesy of The Brookings Institution
Summary: North Korea will not surrender its nuclear capabilities unless offered a very good deal for giving them up. Michael O'Hanlon believes the goal should be to push North Korea, which has shown increasing interest in economic reform, to seriously attempt such reform—building on the precedents offered by China and Vietnam in the past two decades. If North Korea is willing and takes such steps, the U.S. can be generous in return.

Pilger Film Reveals Powell and Rice Knew Iraq was Disarmed and No Threat
22 September 2003
Writing in the Daily Mirror, John Pilger reveals that both US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Bush's closest adviser Condaleeza Rice said, in 2001, that Saddam Hussein was effectively disarmed and no threat - putting the lie to their own propaganda. Accusations of Iraq being armed and dangerous were complete fabrications." Not only was every word of this false, it was part of a big lie invented in Washington within hours of the attacks of September 11 2001 and used to hoodwink the American public and distract the media from the real reason for attacking Iraq."

Taliban Takes Control
News24.com, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: The Taliban are in control of four districts in southeast Afghanistan and have formed four committees to organise "resistance" to US-led forces, a spokesperson for the resurgent militia was quoted saying here on Monday.

23 September 2003

How the World Can Aid Iraq Without Helping Bush
by Simon Tisdall
The Guardian/UK, 22 September 2003
Courtesy of Common Dreams
EXCERPT: The answer must thus be to do all that is possible in terms of immediate humanitarian and technical aid to Iraq while insisting, with France, on a greatly accelerated handover of sovereign powers to a provisional Iraqi government and on primary political oversight for the UN security council. Longer-term reconstruction investments and loans and any contributions to a UN-mandated peacekeeping force should be conditional on US agreement to relinquish its stranglehold on Iraq. Until Iraqis are able physically to control their country, and unless it cuts and runs, the US will continue to bear the main security burden. Yet as the war's progenitor, it is only right that it should. It is a price Bush should be made to pay even though, thanks to his foolishness and hubris, it is America's soldiers who pay the highest price of all. Such a hard-nosed approach by the international community will hardly help Bush's re-election chances. It may even dish him. But it will help Iraq recover its dignity and get back on its feet.

Can beggars be choosers, or will U.N. rebuke the U.S.?
Bush Demands U.N. Help in Iraq
By Julian Borger and Jon Henley
Guardian (UK), 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush will make a defiant stand at the United Nations today, demanding international support in cash and troops for the US occupation of Iraq, while rejecting appeals to accelerate the transfer of authority to Iraqis. Excerpts of Mr Bush's speech to the general assembly released yesterday made it clear that there remains a wide gulf between the US and its European critics, led by France, over the governance of Iraq.

Open Investment Policy Looks Like 'World Occupation' to Iraq Merchants
By Mark Fineman
Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: In the marble-floored corporate offices of Al Hafidh General Trading Co., Waleed and Hani Hafidh vented the rage of many Iraqi businessmen Monday over the country's new wide-open foreign investment policy. Puffing furiously on imported cigarettes, the brothers asserted that the economic reform package unveiled by Iraq's recently appointed finance minister in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday will destroy the country's small yet burgeoning private sector, create a permanent "world occupation" of its economy and render the Iraqi people "immigrants in their own land." Waleed and other Iraqi businessmen had told Bremer that the nation's investment policy should mirror those of other Persian Gulf nations, which limit foreign ownership of any company based in those countries to 49%. When the new policy was announced Sunday by Iraqi Finance Minister Kamel Keylani in speeches at this year's meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank governors, Waleed and his brother were in shock, they said. "Everything we asked for was thrown onto the trash heap," said Waleed, echoing the thoughts of many businesspeople in the Iraqi capital, some of whom appeared on Arab satellite television Monday to air their grievances.

Annan to Propose Overhaul of U.N.
By Maggie Farley
Los AngelesTimes, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: Seeking to save the United Nations from irrelevance, Secretary-General Kofi Annan will launch plans for "radical reforms" of the world body at the annual opening debate of the General Assembly today. Since the United States sidestepped the U.N. to invade Iraq this year, the institution has been looking for a way to recover its global standing. Now, Annan says, the U.N. must change markedly to revive its legitimacy

Woman on Iraqi Council Critically Injured in Assassination Attempt
Feminist Daily News Wire, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: One of only three women on Iraq's Governing Council remains in critical condition after her car was ambushed by men with semiautomatic weapons in an assassination attempt Saturday morning. Aqila Hashimi suffered gunshot wounds to her abdomen and her leg, the LA Times reports. Her brother Zaid, who had been serving as one of her bodyguards, told the New York Times that she had received threats recently for collaborating with the US. Hashimi is a diplomat and a Shiite who is the only member of the current Governing Council who had served in Saddam Hussein's government.

Shortfalls in the U.S. WOT
World Leaders Warn Terror War Abuses Fuel Militants
by Irwin Arieff
Reuters, 22 September 2003
Courtesy of Common Dreams
EXCERPT: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned world leaders on Monday that the war against terrorism must go beyond simply fighting extremists but also hold out the promise of a "better and fairer world." Annan told more than 20 heads of state at the conference that human rights violations, like targeted assassinations, which Israel has carried out against Palestinian militants, as well as civilian deaths from off-target bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq ran the risk of winning over converts and spurring new terrorist acts. "Paradoxically, terrorist groups may actually be sustained when, in responding to their outrages, governments cross the line and commit outrages themselves -- whether it is ethnic cleansing, the indiscriminate bombardment of cities, the torture of prisoners, targeted assassinations or accepting the death of innocent civilians as 'collateral damage," Annan said. "These acts are not only illegal and unjustifiable. They may also be exploited by terrorists to gain new followers and to generate cycles of violence in which they thrive," he added. "The rule of law and respect for human rights are the first and the best way to counter terrorism," the Norwegian [Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik] said. "We must provide outlets for human ambitions, for hopes and beliefs, but also for anger and grief." Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf dismissed the idea of a "militant Islam" as being at the root of the problem, saying, "There are only some 'militant Muslims' -- as there are militant Hindus, Christians and Jews." "Most of the political disputes of our times afflict Islamic peoples and nations," he said. "Religious extremism and militancy have risen because these conflicts have been allowed to fester. There is a feeling in the Muslim world that Islam is being targeted." "This widening gulf of perceptions between the West and the Islamic world must be bridged," he said, calling on the West to seek to better understand Islam and on the Muslim world to reject extremist laws and practices.

Arctic's Biggest Ice Shelf, a Sentinel of Climate Change, Cracks Apart
By Usha Lee McFarling
Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2003
EXCERPT: The breakup is apparent evidence of global warming. It also has drained a freshwater lake containing a rare ecosystem. The largest ice shelf in the Arctic — an 80-foot-thick slab of ice nearly the size of Lake Tahoe — has broken up, providing more evidence that the Earth's polar regions are responding to ongoing and accelerating rates of climatic change, researchers reported Monday.

Does W. think he's Abe Lincoln?
Bush to Urge U.N. to Deal with Slavery
Fox News, 22 September 2003:
Among other things, George W. Bush told Fox News (during a cozy White House interview) that he would urge the U.N. to deal with sexual slavery, though the word "sexual" was deleted from the transcript. While slavery, sexual or otherwise, is a serious concern, it's hardly a prominent issue on the domestic or world stages at this time. Was this an innocent slip of the tongue or another indication of how out of touch and delusional Bush (who also called himself "a man of peace") really is? We will watch Bush's speech to see how much attention he devotes to slavery.

Venezuelan Intelligence Says CIA Planned to Shoot Down Chavez Frias' Plane
By Roy Carlson
VHeadline (Venezuela), 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: Details behind the sudden decision to cancel President Hugo Chavez Frias' next-week trip to Washington D.C. and New York (to deliver a speech to the United Nations) are being revealed by security services who say they have "overwhelming evidence" of a CIA-backed plan to "bring down" the Chavez Frias' airplane during the scheduled flight to the United States from Caracas.

22 September 2003

Bomb Kills 2 at U.N. Compound in Baghdad, 19 Wounded in Suicide Attack
By Steven R. Hurst
Associated Press Writer
Monday, September 22, 2003
EXCERPT: A suicide car bomber killed an Iraqi policeman and himself outside the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Monday, an attack that came as the U.N. considers expanding its role in Iraq. Nineteen people, including two Iraqi U.N. workers, were injured, a U.N. official said.

Dubya thinks "sharing responsibility" with the UN is telling them to bend over
Bush Open To U.N. Oversight of Iraq Election
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush said yesterday that he is prepared to allow the United Nations to oversee the first postwar election in Iraq, a limited concession to demands that he give the world body a more vigorous role in rebuilding the country.

We don't need no talk about roots. Bring 'em on and we'll just whack the hell out of 'em!
U.N. Meeting Eyes Roots of Terrorism
Low-level U.S. delegation disappoints conference organizers
AP, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: A daylong United Nations summit on the roots of terrorism was under way Monday, bringing together experts and nearly 20 heads of state. The session, called “fighting terrorism for humanity,” is the brainchild of Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor.
President Bush was invited but the administration is sending Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., as its representative while Colin Powell will be three blocks away at the AIDS summit.

America Puts Iraq Up For Sale
By Philip Thornton in Dubai and Andrew Gumbel
The Independent (UK), 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: Iraq was in effect put up for sale yesterday when the American-appointed administration announced it was opening up all sectors of the economy to foreign investors in a desperate attempt to deliver much-needed reconstruction against a daily backdrop of kidnappings, looting and violent death. In an unexpected move unveiled at the meeting in Dubai of the Group of Seven rich nations, the Iraqi Governing Council announced sweeping reforms to allow total foreign ownership without the need for prior approval. The initiative bore all the hallmarks of Washington's ascendant neoconservative lobby, complete with tax cuts and trade tariff rollbacks. It will apply to everything from industry to health and water, although not oil. [BWUSA italics)

Support for War in Iraq Based on Fallacious Reasoning
By Erich Marquardt
Power and Interest News Report, 22 September 2003
EXCERPT: By not making concrete statements connecting Saddam and the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration was able to avoid explicitly lying to the American people -- while at the same time achieving their objectives of getting support for a U.S. intervention in Iraq by putting Saddam Hussein's government into the same political and military context as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. From this perspective, the recent comments made by administration officials denying that they've ever tried to connect Saddam and September 11 are being made in order to disarm critics who charge that the administration mislead the American people into supporting the war in Iraq.

Bush governing by poll results?
Bush Team Begins to Rethink Iraq Policy
By JOHN WALCOTT
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Miami Herald, 21 September 2003
Foreign-policy concerns and domestic politics are prompting the administration to rethink its approach to Iraq, said a number of administration foreign and domestic-policy officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity because, as one of them put it, "the president hates seeing internal debates in the paper." ...At home, they said, budget chief Josh Bolten and other White House officials have been troubled by the rough reception the president's request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004 is getting in Congress and across the country. The officials said Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, was concerned about new polls that suggest sinking support for the president's handling of Iraq. Rove also is worried about a potential schism between traditional Republican conservatives wary of spending huge sums in Iraq and neoconservatives who want to remake not only Iraq but also Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Even some of Bush's strong support from military families appears to be ebbing, one official said, as overseas tours are extended and casualties mount.

Chirac Pushes Plan for Iraqi Sovereignty
Reuters, 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: Hours before he traveled to the United States on Sunday, French President Jacques Chirac proposed the United States transfer symbolic sovereignty to Iraqis soon and cede real power in six to nine months.
The United States, which has drafted a U.N. Security Council resolution on military and civilian controls, opposes any deadlines to end the occupation and says the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council should set a timetable. In an interview with the New York Times as he left to attend the United Nations General Assembly, Chirac said he had no plans to veto the U.S.-drafted measure but might not support it in its current form, indicating he would abstain.

$8.5 billion to Turkey in exchange for military assistance isn't a bribe?
Bush Gets Defensive after Kennedy's Remarks
Associated Press, 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush on Sunday described as "uncivil" Sen. Edward Kennedy's critical remarks of the administration's policies in Iraq.
Kennedy said last week the case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud "made up in Texas" to give Republicans a political boost. The longtime senator also alleged that the money for the war is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send troops. In an exclusive Oval Office interview with Fox News' Brit Hume, Bush said that while he respected Kennedy, the senator "should not have said we were trying to bribe foreign nations."

Blair Takes Hit--Bush Next?
By John Nichols
The Nation, 19 September 2003
EXCERPTS: Forget about the economy. Forget about the environment. Forget about the mess that he has made of US relations with the rest of the world. The issue that is on George W. Bush's mind is more basic: Does a leader end up paying a political price if voters think he lied his country into an unwise and unnecessary war in Iraq?... Instead of complaining about the Greens and the prospect of another presidential campaign by consumer activist Ralph Nader, Democrats should fill the void. They can start by following the lead of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, who charged Thursday that Bush administration officials relied on "distortion, misrepresentation, a selection of intelligence" to press their case for war.

Another part of Bush's WMD case evaporates
No Evidence Iraq Stockpiled Smallpox
DAFNA LINZER
Associated Press, 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: The team - Top American scientists assigned to the weapons hunt in Iraq found no evidence Saddam Hussein's regime was making or stockpiling smallpox, The Associated Press has learned from senior military officers involved in the search. Smallpox fears were part of the case the Bush administration used to build support for invading Iraq - and they were raised again as recently as last weekend by Vice President Dick Cheney. But a three-month search by "Team Pox" turned up only signs to the contrary: disabled equipment that had been rendered harmless by U.N. inspectors, Iraqi scientists deemed credible who gave no indication they had worked with smallpox and a laboratory thought to be back in use that was covered in cobwebs. The negative smallpox findings reported to U.S. intelligence agencies come nearly six months after the administration went to war to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam long denied having and the military hasn't been able to find.

Playing the post-invasion reconstruction by ear
Bremer's Tug of War: Still no Plan for Iraq
By Jim Hoagland
Washington Post, 21 September 2003
EXCERPTS: A man with $20 billion to spend is certain to accumulate a lot of things, including new troubles and determined rivals for control of that fortune. The hot seat that L. Paul Bremer occupies as America's proconsul in Iraq is about to get even hotter.... Bremer has little to fear from open challenges to his authority, whether they come from France at the Security Council, from congressional Democrats eager to force the administration into admitting error on Iraq or from Iraqi politicians. They are not likely to influence President Bush or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the two officials to whom Bremer reports in Washington. It is the hidden agendas he must fear.

In the aftermath WTO's Cancun collapse, W. goes it alone
Resisting Reform: Wealthy West Resorts to Backroom Deals
By Dr. Raj Patel
EXCERPT: As the WTO heads back to its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the prospects for transforming the deadlock into institutional reform -- where decision-making power would shift and resulting law would help the world's poor -- seem very far away. The Bush administration, not for the first time, seems to have become frustrated with multilateralism when other countries won't play ball. Robert Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, has suggested that he will now pursue a go-it-alone trade strategy, bypassing the WTO in favor of bilateral deals with individual nations.

Pilot Killed on Anti-Drug Mission in Colombia
Reuters, 21 September 2003
The U.S. employs a military force comprised of several hundred personnel for the "war on drugs" going on in Colombia. Some are American uniformed military and some are hired mercenaries or 'privatized' functional personnel (i.e., for defoliation missions), such as this pilot.
EXCERPT: BOGOTA, Colombia - A pilot on a U.S.-backed counter-narcotics mission was killed in Colombia on Sunday while spraying drug crops over a Marxist rebel combat zone, Colombian and U.S. officials said. A U.S. embassy spokesman in Bogota declined to speculate on the cause of the crash of the light propeller aircraft -- the fifth downed plane so far this year in Colombia's war on the world's largest cocaine industry.

20-21 September 2003

Bush Returning to U.N. With Altered Iraq Stance
By Robin Wright
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: The president returns to New York on Tuesday to once again appeal for major international involvement in Iraq — this time seeking a resolution that implicitly acknowledges that Washington needs the world. Although Bush could shun the U.N. to get into Iraq, solidifying postwar peace and then getting out of Iraq is proving difficult without the U.N. imprimatur. "He won't put it that way, but that's the reality," reflected a well-placed U.S. official who requested anonymity. Washington is hoping that the new resolution will, first and foremost, heal the bitter divisions over Iraq policy and eventually lead allies to provide additional troops and funds for reconstruction — the prerequisites of an exit strategy.

More 'incentives' (aka bribery) needed
Russian President Reasserts Position On Iraq
By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: Preparing for a summit with Russia's former Cold War adversary, President Vladimir V. Putin said Saturday that the United States and Russia "could be regarded as allies" in combating terrorism, but he accused the Bush administration of unleashing Islamic extremism in Iraq and committing possible human rights violations in its conduct of the war there. In a four-hour round table with U.S. journalists before this week's meetings with President Bush, Putin praised the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime and said an international resolution to aid U.S. troops in Iraq is "a can-do issue," but he emphasized that Russia has not changed its view that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

Starbucks 'grand opening' delayed by gunfire...
Iraq to Allow Foreign Owners Outside Oil
By REUTERS, 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: U.S.-controlled Iraq will on Sunday unveil sweeping economic reforms including the entry of foreign investment in all economic sectors except oil -- steps that would end 30 years of state economic domination. "This isn't just a proposal -- this is the law, this is done. This was all signed yesterday," the U.S. official said. [BWUSA italics]

Another "coalition of the willing?"
U.N. Warns Israel to Halt Threats Against Arafat
Los Angeles Times, 20 September 2003
The General Assembly passed a resolution nearly identical to one vetoed in the Security Council by the U.S., which called it flawed.
EXCERPT: The General Assembly passed a resolution Friday demanding that Israel stop threatening to expel Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and condemning Palestinian suicide attacks against Israelis. The 191-member assembly passed the measure with 133 "yes" votes. Four nations — the United States, Israel, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands — voted against it, and 15 abstained. The General Assembly resolution condemned "the suicide bombings and their recent intensification." It also reminded the Palestinian Authority that under the U.S.-backed "road map" for peace, it is obligated to "take all necessary measures to end violence and terror." At the same time, the resolution deplored Israel's "extrajudicial killings and their recent escalation" and said those killings are violations of international law and an impediment to the peace process. [Emphasis by BWUSA]

Al Qaeda's Stealth Weapons
By Sebastian Rotella
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2003
EXCERPT: Their numbers are made up of an unlikely group of men with non-Muslim backgrounds. They are Muslim converts who are drawn to fanaticism and they pose special dangers well beyond their symbolic impact. These are individuals who do not fit the ethnic profiles of Middle Eastern Islamic militant extremists. Thus far, they include Pierre Richard Robert, "the blue-eyed emir of Tangier," Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber" convicted of trying to blow up an airliner; American Jose Padilla, an alleged Al Qaeda operative being held as an enemy combatant; and Christian Ganczarski, a German convert arrested in June by French police.

Iraqi Council's Path Diverges From U.S. Plan
Representatives act without consulting the coalition authority, a sign of a power struggle.
By Alissa J. Rubin
Los Angeles Times, 20 September 2003
EXCERPT: Cracks are emerging in the relationship between the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraqi Governing Council, suggesting that as the Iraqis gain more power they may well pursue policies that could undercut coalition efforts to install a democratic government here.

The Lebanon Scenario
By Rod Nordland
Newsweek, 22 September 2003 Issue
Courtesy of Antiwar.com
EXCERPT: Anonymous car bombs, political kidnappings, ethnic militias ... The Iraqi battleground has echoes of an earlier occupation.  Iraq under occupation is starting to look uncomfortably similar to Lebanon during its long civil war. The central government exists only in name, and neither police nor occupying troops are able to keep the peace.

Making Terrorists
The Progressive, October 2003 Issue
EXCERPT: Bush's Iraq folly has made the United States less safe in at least three ways: It has bred the very terrorism it ostensibly set out to vanquish, it has diverted resources from the fight against Al Qaeda, and it has alienated people and countries that were providing crucial help in that fight.

Coca Cola challenged in Kerala
By Charles Havilland
BBC, 20 September 2003
EXCERPT: Villagers, campaigners and a BBC radio programme have alleged that the plant in the state of Kerala is drying up local ground water and emitting toxic sludge. For its part, the soft drinks giant strenuously denies the allegations.

Can America's Three Unexplained Wars Come to an End?
Commentary, By Franz Schurmann
Pacific News, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: The second anniversary of 9/11 was a sober affair, and rightly so. But the media should have gone much further, to ask why we still don't know the identities of all the hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001. And especially, who were their instigators, on the basis of which we attacked Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001? Furthermore, when we invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, our president did not explain why he suddenly switched away from pursuing Osama bin-Laden, the alleged master culprit of 9/11, to another master criminal, Saddam Hussein, who had, as President Bush just admitted, nothing to do with 9/11.

Iraqi Council Member Shot; Europeans Still Divided
By Suleiman al-Khalidi and Nick Antonovics
Reuters, 20 September 2003
EXCERPT: Gunmen seriously wounded a leading woman member of Iraq's Governing Council on Saturday, as Europe's three biggest powers failed to resolve their rift over Iraq six months after the war began. They disagreed on how fast power should be handed back to Iraqis by the United States, which tried again to put the bitter prewar debate aside as it seeks international help to rebuild and stabilize Iraq.

More "balance"
Bush Admits Mideast Plan Is Stalled and Blames Arafat
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
New York Times, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush acknowledged today, for the first time, that the Middle East peace talks that he had thrown so much of his political capital behind had stalled, and he laid the blame solely on the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat.
The Bush administration is now struggling to respond. Aid to Afghanistan is being doubled, and the cost of the occupation of both countries over the next year is now put at $87 billion. In neither country does any exit for American troops appear feasible in the foreseeable future.

Israeli Pilots Refuse to Participate in Assassinations
By Lily Galili
Haaretz (Israel), 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: A group of reserve pilots in the Israel Air Force is planning to publicly announce their refusal to participate in attempts to assassinate senior wanted men in the Palestinian Authority.

Kennedy Says Case for War Built on 'Fraud'
By Steve LeBlanc
Associated Press, 19 September 2003
EXCERPT: The case for going to war against Iraq was a fraud "made up in Texas" to give Republicans a political boost, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said today. In an interview, Kennedy also said the Bush administration has failed to account for nearly half of the $4 billion the war is costing each month. He said he believes much of the unaccounted-for money is being used to bribe foreign leaders to send in troops. He called the Bush administration's Iraq policy "adrift." Kennedy expressed doubts about how serious a threat Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. He said administration officials relied on "distortion, misrepresentation, a selection of intelligence" to make their case for war.

19 September 2003

Audio/Video Link
"What is Happening Is An Absolute Slaughter Every Night of Iraqi People"
An interview with Robert Fisk
Democracy Now!, 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: Again we don't need to be romantic about Saddam. It was his government that committed the crimes before the war. It's now Iraqis who are committing the crimes after the war, but the real problem is that there is no security, and what is happening is an absolute slaughter every night of Iraqi people, either murdered in revenge killings by thieves, gunned down at American checkpoints by trigger-happy U.S. soldiers, involved in family feuds.

Iraqis' Bitterness Is Called Bigger Threat Than Terror
By DOUGLAS JEHL with DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: New intelligence assessments are warning that the United States' most formidable foe in Iraq in the months ahead may be the resentment of ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American military occupation, Defense Department officials said today.

Iraq: The New War
By Mark Danner
New York Review of Books,
25 September 2003 Issue
Courtesy of the Agonist
EXCERPT: As near as one can tell, the Bush administration launched its war against Iraq for three broad reasons:
1. Weapons of Mass Destruction...
2. National Security...
3. Regional Transformation...
Nearly six months after the war was launched, these three rationales for America's first preemptive war have been stood on their heads.

Deteriorating security a key issue
Donor Delay Spells Doom for Afghanistan
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 20 September 2003
EXCERPT:  By completing just 1 percent of the reconstruction required in Afghanistan to date, the United States and other donors are risking renewed conflict, if not disintegration, in the devastated country, says an unusually frank report released this week by the US relief organization CARE.

Poor Nations Revolt at Rigged Trade Talks
By Robert Kuttner,
The Boston Globe, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: What should we think of a developing country that protected its young industries with high tariffs, stole technologies from established nations, used government aid to develop manufacturing and farming, limited foreign ownership of land, devalued its money in defiance of international wishes, imposed currency controls, and even allowed secessionist provinces to default on foreign debt? The country would probably be read out of the World Trade Organization and blacklisted by the International Monetary Fund. Well, the country in question is the United States of America at earlier stages of our development. Other advanced economies, including France, Germany, Korea, and Japan, did much the same things. Mercifully, there was no IMF or WTO to retaliate. And it worked out pretty well. Now, however, we deny these tools to today's poor nations. We want them to fling open their borders to foreign private capital, renounce state development aids, balance budgets, and conform to our other current conceptions of good behavior. (Actually, if the Bush budget deficit belonged to a developing nation, it would be scorned by the IMF.)

Even assuming a military response in Iraq was necessary, Bush was completely inept...
Stumbling Into War
By James P. Rubin
From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003
EXCERPT: ...some important lessons from the recent crisis are starting to emerge.
First, the fact that Washington's justification for war seemed to shift as occasion demanded led many outside observers to question the Bush administration's motives and to doubt it would ever accept Iraq's peaceful disarmament. Second, the United States failed to synchronize its military and diplomatic tracks. The deployment of American forces in the Middle East seemed to determine American policy, not the other way around, and diplomatic imperatives were given short shrift. Third, the failure to anticipate Saddam's decision to comply partially with UN demands proved disastrous to Washington's strategy. Fourth, the belated effort to achieve a second Security Council resolution could still have succeeded, had the United States been willing to compromise by extending the deadline by just a few weeks. But such a compromise was not forthcoming, which leads to the last lesson: the Bush administration's rhetoric and style alienated rather than persuaded key officials and foreign constituencies, especially in light of Washington's two-year history of scorn for international institutions and agreements.

Bush's Saudi Connections: Big Issue for 2004
By Michael Steinberger
The American Prospect, 1 October 2003
EXCERPT: Bush can spew all the frontier rhetoric he wishes, but in the case of the Saudis, his inaction speaks louder. Why he would rather undermine the war on terrorism than confront Riyadh is an interesting question, and it doesn't require a particularly active imagination to wonder if there is more here than just oil and a bad case of realpolitik. The links between the House of Bush and the House of Saud are deep, overlapping and notoriously opaque: the Saudi investment in the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm whose rainmakers include George Bush Senior; the Saudi bankrolling of Poppy's presidential library; the lucrative contracts the Saudis doled out to Halliburton when Dick Cheney was at the company's helm. The main law firm retained by the Saudis to defend them against the 9-11 families is Baker Botts -- as in James Baker, the Bush family consigliere. And, of course, there's oil, the black glue connecting all these dots.

American tax dollars at work...
Arab States Condemn Israel for Nuclear Weapons
Agence-France Press, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: Arab states turned the spotlight on Israel at a meeting Wednesday of the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, saying it posed the biggest atomic weapons threat in the Middle East and attacking the Jewish state for not signing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

U.S. PR program a bust
Taking Arabs Seriously
Marc Lynch
From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration's tone-deaf approach to the Middle East reflects a dangerous misreading of the nature and sources of Arab public opinion . Independent, transnational media outlets have transformed the region, and the administration needs to engage the new Arab public sphere that has emerged.

U.S. Bid to Boost Image With Muslims Faltering
Reuters, 18 September 2003
Courtesy of Arab News
EXCERPT: People in Muslim nations have an increasingly low opinion of the United States, despite the Bush administration¹s effort to burnish the US image after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to a General Accounting Office report. The State Department¹s attempts to win friends abroad through broadcasts, pamphlets, educational exchange programs and other measures lacked a comprehensive strategy, was understaffed and lacked people with sufficient language skills, GAO, the investigative and audit agency for Congress, said.

Bush's pointless gesture to the religious right...
China: Religious Leaders See No Link Between Forced Abortions and UNFPA
Feminist Majority News, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: A group of religious leaders who studied the United Nations Population Fund's (UNFPA) family planning work in China said that they found no evidence to back accusations by the administration that the UNFPA supports forced abortions. According to the Associated Press, the group said that they will lobby Washington to end its ban on funding of the UNFPA.

Mystery Pneumonia Toll May Be Much Higher Among Troops in Iraq
By Mark Benjamin
Common Dreams, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: Mysterious pneumonia-like illnesses and breathing problems appear to be striking U.S. troops in greater numbers than the military has identified in an investigation -- including more deaths, according to soldiers and their families. Some of the soldiers were deployed to Iraq and died but are not part of the Pentagon's investigation. Others who got ill told United Press International they suffered a pneumonia-like illness after being given vaccines, particularly the anthrax shot.

Afghan Judge Details How Women Can Work
United Press International, 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: The chief justice in Afghanistan has decreed women are permitted to work with non-governmental organizations if they dress to Islamic standards. Chief Justice Mawlawi Fazl Hadi Shinwari said women must observe the Islamic hijab, or dress code, Radio Free Afghanistan reported. "Only a woman's face can be left uncovered," Shinwari said, adding that Afghan women cannot travel for more than three days without a mahram, a husband or male relative she cannot legally marry.

18 September 2003

The roadmap to global destruction
Bush's Pals, the Saudis, Consider Nuclear Bomb Program
By Ewen MacAskill and Ian Traynor
Guardian (UK), 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons, the Guardian has learned. This new threat of proliferation in one of the most dangerous regions of the world comes on top of a crisis over Iran's alleged nuclear programme.

Bush's balanced approach
Arab World Condemns US Arafat Veto
BBC News, 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: Arab diplomats have condemned Washington's decision to veto a UN Security Council draft resolution denouncing Israel's policy of "removing" Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte said the resolution was "flawed" because it did not include a "robust condemnation of acts of terrorism" by Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The US was the only one of the 15 countries on the Security Council to oppose the resolution, with three - Britain, Germany and Bulgaria - abstaining.

Are Westerners Joining the Iraqi Resistance?
By Sara B. Miller,
Christian Science Monitor, 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: Some members of the coalition forces in Iraq, under steady attack by anonymous snipers and suicide bombers, have expressed fear that they are targets of an increasing number of assailants – from Saddam Hussein's loyalists, to foreign insurgents, to members of Al Qaeda. Now there is concern that ordinary Iraqis, and possibly even Westerners, could be added to the list. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of the US-led coalition in Iraq, told The Times of London on Wednesday that US forces now face revenge attacks from ordinary Iraqis increasingly angry over the occupation. "We have seen that when we have an incident in the conduct of our operations, when we killed an innocent civilian, based on their ethic, their values, their culture, they would seek revenge," he said.

As Bush eases air quality standards...
Hole in Ozone Layer over Antarctic Back to Record Level
AFP, 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: The hole in the protective ozone layer over the Antarctic has expanded more rapidly than in recent years and has reached the record level set three years ago, the World Meteorological Organisation has said.

Baghdad's Packed Morgue Marks a City's Descent Into Lawlessness
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Los Angeles Times, 16 September 2003
EXCERPT: The number of reported gun-related killings in Baghdad has increased 25-fold since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1. Before the war began, the morgue investigated an average of 20 deaths a month caused by firearms. In June, that number rose to 389 and in August it reached 518. Moreover, the overall number of suspicious deaths jumped from about 250 a month last year to 872 in August.

This Saturday is International Day of Peace
EXCERPT: Since 9/11, the world's attention has been focused on terror, fear and war. But behind the scenes, a worldwide movement for a better world has been growing, bringing us hope for a more peaceful, just and sustainable future. The United Nations has proposed a tangible goal that will help unite our global community and shift our consciousness. The world is joining together to create a Global Ceasefire and humanity's first day of peace in our homes, our communities and between nations on the International Day of Peace, September 21, 2003.

Multilateralism or Not, Iraq is a Mess
By Ehsan Ahrari
Asia Times, 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: How much ill-will President George W Bush has created for the United States over his predilection for unilateralism in Iraq is becoming apparent when Secretary of State Colin Powell is given the lead in damage control. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has to accept a lower profile, at least for now. ... there is little doubt that Washington intends to stay in Iraq for at least two years. ... however, the trouble is that the US is in dire need of gaining legitimacy of its occupation from its European and Asian allies and friends, who are unwilling to offer it without a price. That price is sharing the ruling authority in Iraq with the United Nations. The fact that the French are once again in the lead in insisting on curtailing the scope of US rule in Iraq is beginning to look like a non-starter in the intricate negotiating process.

Blix: Iraq Bluffed On WMD
CBS News/AP,  Sept. 17, 2003
EXCERPT: Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believes that Iraq destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction 10 years ago, but kept up the appearance that it had them to deter a military attack. In an interview with an Australian radio station broadcast Wednesday, Blix said it was unlikely that the U.S and British teams now searching for weapons in Iraq would find more than some "documents of interest." "I'm certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed all, almost, of what they had in the summer of 1991," Blix told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "I mean, you can put up a sign on your door, 'Beware of the Dog,' without having a dog."

BBC Under Attack From Murdoch and Conservative Quarters
By Joe Conason
Guardian (UK), 18 September 2003
EXCERPTS: While British broadcasting is structurally (and qualitatively) very different from its US counterpart, the conservative agenda in both countries is identical: to stigmatise dissent and to dominate discourse. Once upon a time, there were "liberal media" in America - or at least there were major media outlets unafraid of being called liberal.... Conservatives still complain about the "liberal media", but their ideas (and ideologues) command opinion-making airtime and newsprint. No rightwing extremist is judged too rancid to be awarded his own cable TV show.

Our Role in the Terror
By Karen Armstrong
Guardian (UK), 18 September 2003
EXCERPT: Terrorism is wicked and abhorrent, but it has not come out of the blue. If we simply write off these movements as irrational and inexplicable, we will feel no need to examine our own policies and behaviour. The shocking nihilism of the suicide killers shows they feel they have nothing to lose. Millennial or fundamentalist extremism has risen in nearly every cultural tradition where there are pronounced inequalities of wealth, power and status. The only way to create a safer world is to ensure that it is more just.

17 September 2003

"Unconditional love"
U.S. Vetoes Resolution on Arafat at U.N.
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press, 16 September 2003
Courtesy of FindLaw.com
EXCERPTS: The United States vetoed an Arab-backed U.N. resolution Tuesday demanding that Israel halt threats to expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from the West Bank, because it did not contain a condemnation of terrorist groups such as Hamas. ...The rejected draft resolution would have demanded "that Israel, the occupying power, desist from any act of deportation and to cease any threat to the safety of the elected president of the Palestinian Authority." It would have condemned Israel's targeted assassinations of militant leaders and Palestinian suicide bombings, "all of which caused enormous suffering and many innocent victims." It would also have called for a cessation of "all acts of terrorism, provocation, incitement and destruction." Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian U.N. observer, said the United States had lost its credibility to play an honest broker in the Middle East peace process. He warned that "serious consequences may follow the use of this veto, and the United States will bear the consequences for that."

Don't they know they've been liberated?
Raiders Losing the Battle for Iraqi Hearts and Minds
By Saul Hudson, Tikrit
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), 17 September 2003
EXCERPT: US troops lost the hearts and minds of some Iraqis this week in aggressive pre-dawn house raids in the hometown of Saddam Hussein, blowing open gates, kicking down doors and shoving faces in the dirt. Ten-year-old Ahmed, herded with his family into his garden, shook visibly as he watched soldiers interrogate one man, whose head slammed onto the ground with a thud. "I will become an Iraqi fighter and I will kill Americans," the boy said. He pointed at troops who charged into his home with rifles, sledgehammers and bolt-cutters hunting for anti-American guerillas. "They are the enemy," he said.

U.S. Admits to Holding 10,000 Iraqi Prisoners
ABC News Online, 16 September 2003
EXCERPT: US officials have admitted they are holding 10,000 prisoners in Iraq, double the number previously reported, including six claiming to be Americans and two who say they are British.

Continuing "occupational neglect"
Women Face Miserable Conditions in Northern Afghanistan
Park Tribune 16, September 2003
EXCERPT:In northern provinces of Afghanistan, the Afghan women are still facing a lot of problems as they are living in very miserable condition. People in northern provinces on one side are preventing girls from going to schools while on the other hand; their women are helping their men in cultivation and farms, VOA said in its survey report.

Under Blair, Britain Has Ceased to be a Sovereign State
By Hugo Young
Guardian (UK), 16 September 2003
EXCERPT: On the one hand, we now know that senior intelligence people were categorically advising in February that their assessment pointed towards more terrorism not less if we went to war in Iraq. Blair simply rejected it. On the other hand, when remonstrating with sceptics in private he