14 November 2003

"I think Bush is going to lose..."
Pulitzer Prize-Winner Hersh Says Bush and Iraq Invasion Are Failures
By Jim-Min Lee
Tufts Daily, 14 November 2003
EXCERPT: Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour M. Hersh criticized the Bush administration's operations in Iraq as a "massive failure" during a lecture at the Fletcher School yesterday. He is the winner of a Pulitzer-Prize and regular contributor to The New Yorker. The biggest problem, according to Hersh, is that "there are no weapons of mass destruction [WMD]." Hersh found it "unnerving" that US authorities sincerely believed in the existence of WMD in Iraq.... Hersh predicted "real trouble" for the President in the 2004 elections. "You have a war fought by the underclass, financed by the underclass and for the profit of the upperclass," He said. "I think Bush's going to lose [the election], unless he makes some radical change, which he's not going to do."

Bush Says You're Overpaid
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 13 November 2003
EXCERPT: As we approach the Thanksgiving holidays, Congress still has many unfinished projects on hand -- and in some cases, particularly the miserable Energy Bill, we should all hope they stay unfinished. But we do need the 13 annual spending bills passed: They're necessary to keep the government functioning. Congress, childish Republican stunts aside, claims to be working hard to get those spending bills to the President's desk. But incredibly, George Bush is borrowing a page from Newt Gingrich's playbook and threatening to veto spending bills that resist his call for rolling back overtime pay. Yes, the big-government Busheviks are willing to hold all of America hostage to their plan to engineer pay cuts for 8 million Americans working in the private sector. Congress has voted against the idea of cutting overtime -- but the President insists he knows best.
SEE ALSO: Bush Flunks U.S. Schools, Leaving Children Behind (Nation)

Court Orders Alabama's Chief Justice Removed from Bench
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
New York Times, 13 November 2003
EXCERPT: A special court today ordered the removal of Alabama's suspended chief justice, Roy S. Moore, after unanimously finding that he had committed ethical breaches in a dispute over church, state and the Ten Commandments that gained national attention. The presiding judge of the special court, William Thompson, said the court had no choice because "the chief justice placed himself above the law" by defying a federal court order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state Supreme Court building. Moreover, Judge Thompson said, "the chief justice showed no signs of contrition for his actions." Indeed, just minutes later outside the courthouse, Mr. Moore declared that all he was guilty of was acknowledging God — "the source of our law and our liberty."

Ultimate cover-up
Pentagon Limits Funeral Coverage
Arlington to Keep Reporters Away
By Steve Vogel
Washington Post, 14 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Army tightened rules yesterday on press coverage of funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, directing that reporters be kept far enough away from the graveside that they would likely be unable to hear a chaplain's eulogy. ...The change comes as the White House and the Pentagon are showing increased sensitivity to the portrayal of U.S. casualties from the war in Iraq. Officials have barred media coverage of the bodies of troops arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, in that case also insisting that a long-ignored rule be enforced. "It concerns me, because you can't understand the true cost of war if you can't see the amputees and the people who have been killed," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans group. "The results of war have to be witnessed at graveside, whether you like it or not."

Senate's Talkathon on Judicial Nominees Exceeds 30 Hours
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post, 14 November 2003
EXCERPT: Plunging into the Senate's marathon debate over judicial nominations, President Bush yesterday accused Democrats of "playing politics" with the federal judiciary by blocking some of his nominees to appellate courts. In response, Senate Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) accused Bush of having "chosen to politicize these nominations and to raise the level of confrontation within the debate itself." The testy exchange came as weary senators concluded their first all-night session in nearly a decade and headed toward another day and night of nonstop talk about Democratic tactics that have blocked four of Bush's most conservative nominees and threaten to stymie several others. ..."This is not about confirming judges. . . . This is about scoring political points. This is about raking the money in," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) .

Their Master's Voice (from way out there in Cheneyworld)
By MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times, 13 November 2003
EXCERPT: Dick Cheney's dry Wyoming voice has the same effect on some male Republicans, starting at the very top, and even some journalists, that a high-pitched whistle has on a dog. How else to explain the vice president's success in creating a parallel universe inside the White House that is shaping the real universe? ...If the Pentagon is responsible for mismanaging the occupation in Iraq, it is the vice president's office that is responsible for the paranoid vision — the "with us or against us" biceps flex against the world — that got us into this long, hard slog. This week's Newsweek cover story on the vice president characterized a recent article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker as raising the question of whether "Cheney had, in effect, become the dupe of a cabal of neoconservative full-mooners, the Pentagon's mysteriously named Office of Special Plans, and the patsy of an alleged bank swindler and would-be ruler of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi." Mr. Cheney's parallel universe is a Bizarro world where no doubts exist. He indulges in extremes of judgment, overpessimistic about our ability to contain Saddam and overoptimistic about the gratitude we would encounter as "liberators" in Iraq. In Cheneyworld, the invasion of Iraq has made the world a safer place (tell it to the Italians), W.M.D. are still concealed in all those Iraqi basements, every Iraqi insurgent is a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda, and the increase in attacks on Americans reflects the guerrillas' desperation, not their strengths. Guerrilla attacks on American soldiers are labeled acts of terrorism rather than acts of war, even though the official U.S. definition describes terrorism as attacks on civilians. ...As Newsweek noted, the vice president cherry-picks the intelligence, then feeds his version of reality to Mr. Bush. The president leaves himself open to manipulation because, by his own admission, he doesn't read the papers and relies on his inner circle to filter information to him. ...The question is whether other voices can ever break through that sonorous ominous murmuring in the president's ear.

Keynote Address to the National Conference on Media Reform
by Bill Moyers
Common Dreams, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: ...despite plenty of lip service on every ritual occasion to freedom of the press radio and TV, three powerful forces are undermining that very freedom, damming the streams of significant public interest news that irrigate and nourish the flowering of self-determination. The first of these is the centuries-old reluctance of governments – even elected governments – to operate in the sunshine of disclosure and criticism. The second is more subtle and more recent. It’s the tendency of media giants, operating on big-business principles, to exalt commercial values at the expense of democratic value. That is, to run what Edward R. Murrow forty-five years ago called broadcasting’s “money-making machine” at full throttle. In so doing they are squeezing out the journalism that tries to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth; they are isolating serious coverage of public affairs into ever-dwindling “news holes” or far from prime- time; and they are gobbling up small and independent publications competing for the attention of the American people.
...the third powerful force – beyond governmental secrecy and megamedia conglomerates – that is shaping what Americans see, read, and hear. I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas today in a phenomenon unique in our history. You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right wing conspiracy to think this more collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch’s empire to the nattering nabobs of know-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates – the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents. Authoritarianism. With no strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony, it is left to journalism to be democracy’s best friend. That is why so many journalists joined with you in questioning Michael Powell’s bid – blessed by the White House – to permit further concentration of media ownership. If free and independent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the oxygen goes out of democracy. And there is no surer way to intimidate and then silence mainstream journalism than to be the boss.

Mutual Fund Manager Prospered as Investors Suffered
New York Times, 14 November 2003
EXCERPT: Who would have thought that Gary L. Pilgrim would seek to profit at the expense of the mutual fund shareholders whose trust had made him wealthy? As a star money manager during the 1990's, Mr. Pilgrim was a growth-at-any-cost investor. "I frankly don't believe that I've lost any serious money because of overvaluation," he said in 1996. Later, his customers would lose plenty. But Mr. Pilgrim did quite well. We now learn that a hedge fund in which he was an investor was making money from market timing trades in PBHG funds - including, according to one person briefed on the findings, the Growth Fund run by Mr. Pilgrim.

13 November 2003

Senate Approves $401.3B Defense Bill
APOnline in USA Today, 13 November 2003
The Senate gave final approval Wednesday to a $401.3 billion defense bill that gives the Pentagon greater control over its civilian work force and eases environmental restrictions on the military. Democrats joined Republicans in the 95-3 vote, despite their objections to the broader Pentagon authority. They stressed the measure would provide new benefits to both active duty soldiers and veterans. But the bill was opposed by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who said it "transfers vast, unchecked powers to the Defense Department while avoiding any break with the business-as-usual approach to increasing defense spending." The bill is $1.5 billion more than the amount request by Bush and about 2.2% more than Congress approved last year. It was approved by the House on Friday in a 362-40 vote. ...In addition to Byrd, Sens. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and James Jeffords, I-Vt., voted against the bill. Two Democrats, both presidential candidates, were absent: John Kerry of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina

Panel Reaches Deal on Access to 9/11 Papers
By PHILIP SHENON
NY Times, 13 November 2003
EXCERPT: Commission officials said that under the accord two members of the 10-member commission would have access to the full library of daily briefings prepared in the Bush and Clinton administrations and that two other members would be allowed to read just the copies of the briefings that the White House deemed relevant to the inquiry. ...Although the agreement appeared to have the support of most of the commissioners, it was denounced by a Democrat on the panel, former Representative Timothy J. Roemer of Indiana. Mr. Roemer said in an interview that the White House was continuing to place unacceptable limits on access to the briefings. "In paraphrasing Churchill, never have so few commissioners reviewed such important documents with so many restrictions," said Mr. Roemer, who was a member of the joint Congressional committee that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. "I am not happy with this agreement, and I will not support it." The accord was also criticized by family members of victims of the attacks. The relatives have said all 10 commissioners should have access to the intelligence reports. "Our understanding is that this is an unacceptable agreement," said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband was killed in the attacks and who is now a spokeswoman for the Family Steering Committee, which represents many of the victims' families. "The details haven't been shared with us. But we understand that this access will be highly limited."

Uncensored Gore (Vidal)
The take-no-prisoners social critic skewers Bush, Ashcroft and the whole damn lot of us for letting despots rule.
by Marc Cooper
LA Weekly, 14-20 November issue
EXCERPT: It's lucky for George W. Bush that he wasn’t born in an earlier time and somehow stumbled into America’s Constitutional Convention. A man with his views, so depreciative of democratic rule, would have certainly been quickly exiled from the freshly liberated United States by the gaggle of incensed Founders. So muses one of our most controversial social critics and prolific writers, Gore Vidal.

Dean Formally Endorsed By 2 Major Unions
AFSCME, SEIU cement his status as front-runner
Associated Press, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: Two powerful unions formally endorsed presidential hopeful Howard Dean today, further cementing his status as Democratic front-runner by nearly every measure -- organization, momentum and money. Dean's political coup came in a rare but expected joint announcement from the presidents of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, in a carnival-like event that overflowed with hundreds of flag-waving, cheering union members.

GOP Will Trumpet Preemption Doctrine
By Anne E. Kornblut
Boston Globe, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: Faced with growing public uneasiness over Iraq, Republican Party officials intend to change the terms of the political debate heading into next year's election by focusing on the "doctrine of preemption," portraying President Bush as a visionary acting to prevent future terrorist attacks on US soil despite the costs and casualties involved overseas. The strategy will involve the dismissal of Democrats as the party of "protests, pessimism and political hate speech," Ed Gillespie, Republican National Committee chairman, wrote in a recent memo to party officials -- a move designed to shift attention toward Bush's broader foreign policy objectives rather than the accounts of bloodshed. Republicans hope to convince voters that Democrats are too indecisive and faint-hearted -- and perhaps unpatriotic -- to protect US interests, arguing that inaction during the Clinton years led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ...[Democratic candidates counter] "If the White House believes President Bush can run for reelection on Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney's right-wing think tank doctrines, then Karl Rove has lost a step or two," Senator John F. Kerry of Masschusetts, one of the contenders, said. "Everyone knows we need to hunt down and destroy those who are plotting mass murder against Americans. But it takes a lot more than that to defeat terrorism in the long term, and the clumsy, arrogant way the Bush administration boasts about preemption alienates allies we need to help us and makes it a lot harder to stop proliferation in trouble spots around the globe." Howard Dean, an opponent of military action in Iraq from the start, dismissed preemption altogether. "A preemptive strategy never fits into an American strategy," the presidential candidate and former Vermont governor said last week. "It is a policy that doesn't serve us well, and Iraq is a perfect example. The first time we used the preemption policy, it got us into an enormous amount of trouble."

The Economy: Bush Will Pay for This Mess That He Made
By Andrew Cassel
Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: George Bush is in a pickle over steel, and he has nobody to blame for it but himself. Coming into office, Bush claimed to support open markets and oppose excessive government meddling in commerce. Yet 18 months ago, the President agreed to slap tariffs of up to 30 percent on imported steel. The move was a thinly veiled bid to shore up political support in old-line steel-producing states such as Pennsylvania. But the decision baffled many of the President's pro-market supporters and offended both our overseas trading partners and U.S. makers of steel-using products such as autos and refrigerators. Now the World Trade Organization has weighed in, ruling that the steel tariffs violate international rules that the United States helped put in place. The decision was hardly a surprise - it simply affirmed an identical ruling made in May, which the United States had appealed. But it clears the way for what could become a very ugly showdown.

Bush Sticks to the Big Lie About Iraq
By David Corn
The Nation, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: Sometimes the small stuff distracts from the big. At a recent press conference, George W. Bush suggested the White House had nothing to do with the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was hung on the USS Abraham Lincoln for his triumphant May 1 speech declaring major combat operations over in Iraq. Journalists quickly checked, and it turned out the White House had produced the banner. Bush-bashers decried his remark as a shameless lie that sought to shift blame to crewmembers, and White House defenders dismissed the matter as trivial. But during the same press conference, Bush tossed out other truth-challenged statements that were arguably more important than the banner business. But they have drawn little notice.
Bush claimed that he was the first president to advocate a Palestinian state. No, Bill Clinton had done so. (From a January 7, 2001 Clinton speech: "There can be no genuine resolution to the [Middle East] conflict without a sovereign, viable Palestinian state that accommodates Israel's security requirements and demographic realities.") And when a reporter asked how Bush could make up the $23 billion gap between the $33 billion pledged for Iraq reconstruction and the estimated $56 billion price tag for rebuilding, he said "Iraqi oil revenues...coupled with private investments should make up the difference." Yet Paul Bremer, the head of the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, has noted that in the near-term oil industry revenues will cover only the industry's costs. That is, there will be no oil revenues available to pay for reconstruction. More importantly, in response to a pointed question about the MIA WMDs--"Can you explain whether you were surprised those weapons haven't turned up, why they haven't turned up, and whether you feel that your administration's credibility has been affected in any way by that?"--Bush countered, "We took action based upon good, solid intelligence."

Paul Krugman Takes the Gloves Off
By Terrence McNally
AlterNet, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: Accustomed in economic circles to calling a stupid argument a stupid argument, and isolated (in Princeton, New Jersey) from the Washington dinner-party circuit, Paul Krugman has become the most prominent voice in the mainstream U.S. media to openly and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people to sell budget-busting tax cuts and a pre-emptive and nearly unilateral war. Krugman cannot be dismissed by opponents as some dyed-in-the-wool lefty. He's a moderate academic economist who's been radicalized by the Bush White House and the right wing it represents. Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the op-ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His new book, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way In The New Century" (#9 on the New York Times best-seller list and a top seller on Amazon) is a collection of his op-ed pieces from January 2000-January 2003.

F.B.I.'s Reach into Your Financial Records is Set to Grow
By Eric Lichtblau
New York Times, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: A little-noticed measure approved by both the House and Senate would significantly expand the F.B.I.'s power to demand financial records, without a judge's approval, from car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses, officials said on Tuesday. Traditional financial institutions like banks and credit unions are frequently subject to administrative subpoenas from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to produce financial records in terrorism and espionage investigations. Such subpoenas, which are known as national security letters, do not require the bureau to seek a judge's approval before issuing them.

Screwing veterans has become a hobby for W.
Bush Blocks Payout to Gulf War Veterans, Directs Cash to Bechtel and Halliburton
By Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 11 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration has blocked compensation for US soldiers captured and tortured during the first Gulf war, arguing that the money was now needed for Iraq's reconstruction, veterans' lawyers said yesterday. Seventeen former prisoners of war were awarded nearly $1bn (£600m) in compensatory and punitive damages by a US federal court in July. The awards were supposed to have been paid out of $1.7bn in seized Iraqi assets, but the administration stepped in to prevent them receiving the money on the grounds that it had been confiscated from the Iraqi government in March and was therefore the property of the US government.

National Guard Pay Delayed, Denied
By Lisa Myers and the NBC Investigative Team
NBC NEWS, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: Soldiers with the National Guard are already under the gun in Iraq and Afghanistan. But now a new government report claims that while the troops are fighting far from home, red tape is preventing many of them from being paid. ...GAO report: 94 percent of those in six units had pay problems.

12 November 2003

 Audio/Video Link
Rep. Bernie Sanders, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein and Watchdog Chuck Lewis Speaking From The National Conference on Media Reform
Democracy NOW!, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: This past weekend the University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted the National Conference on Media Reform. Organizers expected about 200 people at the event ­ over 2,000 showed up. Within the past year, media reform has gone from being a sidelined, focus-group topic to the second most important issue in Congress following the war. The National Conference on Media Reform this weekend brought together labor, community, and media activists as well as FCC and Congress members for three days to consider ways to get the public more involved in debates over media policy.

Soros Contributes $5 Million More to Oust Bush
By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post, 11 November 2003
EXCERPT: George Soros, one of the world's richest men, has given away nearly $5 billion to promote democracy in the former Soviet bloc, Africa and Asia. Now he has a new project: defeating President Bush. "It is the central focus of my life," Soros said, his blue eyes settled on an unseen target. The 2004 presidential race, he said in an interview, is "a matter of life and death." Soros, who has financed efforts to promote open societies in more than 50 countries around the world, is bringing the fight home, he said. On Monday, he and a partner committed up to $5 million to MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group, bringing to $15.5 million the total of his personal contributions to oust Bush.

‘Saving Private W’
By Josh Marshall
The Hill, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: Okay, time to call them what they are: pseudo-hawks. ...President Bush’s partisans want to frame next year’s national-security debate as one between those who are tough enough to defend our nation (i.e., Republicans) and those who aren’t (i.e., Democrats). In the case of the war in Iraq, they want to frame the question as a choice between war in March 2003 or doing nothing and “crossing our fingers,” as some of the most reliable party-liners are now putting it. ...the fact that the president’s defenders insist on such a dichotomy shows not only the political prism through which they view the matter but the same sort of jumpy and overheated mindset that led them to get us into all these problems in the first place. Their zeal hasn’t made us safer than some hypothetical political opponents believed we needed to be. On the contrary, their incompetence, intransigence and addiction to chalkboard fantasies have made us weaker and more vulnerable.

Senate to Pull All-Nighter Over Extremist Judges
By JESSE J. HOLLAND
AP in Yahoo News, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Senate readied cots and coffee for a talkathon set to last all Wednesday night on who's to blame for some of President Bush's nominees not making it to the federal appeals bench. For 30 straight hours — from Wednesday evening through midnight Thursday — Republicans and Democrats will condemn each other in 30-minutes face-offs over four filibustered U.S. Appeals Court nominees: Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, Texas judge Priscilla Owen, Mississippi judge Charles Pickering and Hispanic lawyer Miguel Estrada. Democrats have refused to allow confirmation votes, and Republicans have not been able to get the 60 votes to force them in a Senate split with 51 GOP senators, 48 Democrats and one independent. Frustrated at the delays, Estrada withdrew his nomination in September. Republicans hope the all-night Senate session — the first to go past 4 a.m. since 1992 — will help publicize the blocked nominees. Conservatives have complained the GOP hasn't done enough to highlight the Democrats' blockades.

U.S. Must Play by Trade Rules
By Everett Ehrlich
LA Times Commentary, 12 November 2003
EXCERPT: Twenty months ago, the Bush administration determined that imports of steel were injuring our domestic steel industry and proceeded to impose tariffs on those imports. The European Union, a target of the tariffs, complained to the World Trade Organization, as the EU has a right to do, asking it to declare the tariffs illegal under the WTO rules the U.S. long ago signed on to. The WTO this week agreed with the EU and laid out a choice for Washington: Either get rid of the tariff or the Europeans will have the right to impose retaliatory tariffs. And they will impose them. From the get-go, the steel tariffs were foolish. Steel imports were declining when the tariffs were imposed, and the tariffs were arbitrarily imposed on some foreign producers (Europe) but not others (Canada and Mexico). ...there were better ways to help steel workers directly — like picking up the tab for steel companies' "legacy costs," such as pensions and retirement health coverage. That might cost a few billion bucks, but it would be cheaper than making the entire economy pay for higher prices for steel. Anyone in business understands that you don't improve an industry's prospects by removing the competition. In fact, for every job in the steel industry that might have been saved, more than one has probably been lost in industries like autos or construction, which pay more for protected steel now that imports are penalized. But there were politics: Steel workers were concentrated in battleground states such as West Virginia and Pennsylvania. So sound policy lost out. The Bush administration is now confronted with a stark choice. It can either roll the tariffs back or defy the WTO and face European retaliation. When you size it up, it's a no-brainer.

What Might Have Been: Gore's Blisteringly Smart Critique of Bush Rule
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 11 November 2003
EXCERPT: Some statements of conscience transcend party and politics, and Al Gore has offered us one. His speech this weekend about "the true relationship between freedom and security" deserves to be widely read. To my mind it is the most compendious statement yet of our current moment; Gore has managed, in his conversational and professorial way, to pull off a withering critique of Bush's bumbling national security state -- and yet to be so totally reasonable about it that he truly does here speak to, and for, the broadest segment of Americans. Democrats, Republicans, the apolitical and the independent, young and old, rich and poor -- I expect an overwhelming majority of us would be nodding in agreement.
SEE ALSO: The Text of Gore's Speech (MoveOn.org)
SEE ALSO: Walter Cronkite on Fixing Rigged Elections at Home, in Texas (TP)

Mr. President, You're No Moses
By Robert Scheer
The Nation, 11 November 2003
EXCERPT: It takes stunning arrogance for a President to invade an oil-rich, politically strategic country on the basis of demonstrable lies, put his favorite companies in control of its economic future, create a puppet regime to do his bidding and then claim, as George Bush did last week in a speech, that this is all a bold exercise in spreading democracy. "Iraqi democracy will succeed, and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation," the President said. "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." Bush even invoked the blessing of a divine power, the "author of freedom," suggesting that he is not merely an overambitious imperial President but rather a modern Moses armed with smart bombs and Black Hawk helicopters come to liberate an enslaved people. Bush presents his vision as bold and new when it is nothing of the sort.
SEE ALSO: Kerry Uses Bush's Aircraft Carrier Landing in Ads (AP)

The Names They Still Won't Mention
By Jimmy Breslin
Newsday.com, 11 November 2003
EXCERPT: Bush and his people sent them out to get killed and now you can't get one of them in Washington to mention these dead. Your government would prefer that night falls and the dead are buried in darkness. We must keep them remote, names on a list, and concentrate on things like patriotism, exporting democracy and shipping freedom - all those big words that Joyce said make us so unhappy.

Found Object: Bush's Early Discharge
They also serve who attend B-school.
By Timothy Noah
Slate, 11 November 2003
EXCERPT: Certain documents available on the Web are so piquant that commentary seems superfluous. In honor of Veterans Day, Chatterbox serves up an objet trouvé concerning President George W. Bush's Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard. The found object is young Dubya's request—four months after his superiors reported they'd seen hide nor hair of him during the previous year—that he be discharged early so he can attend Harvard Business School. Enjoy. (You may need to click on the lower right-hand corner of the document to enlarge it to readable form.) If you need a refresher course on President Bush's elusive career in the Air National Guard (first reported in May 2000 by the Boston Globe's Walter V. Robinson), David Corn of The Nation provides one here.

11 November 2003

Twenty-Six House Democrats Push to Fire Rumsfeld
Reuters in Yahoo News, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: A group of more than two dozen House of Representatives Democrats on Monday said they had introduced a resolution urging President Bush (news - web sites) to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "This resolution would make official what so many members of Congress already believe -- that the soldiers in Iraq (news - web sites) and America's foreign policy would be helped greatly if Donald Rumsfeld would leave," Rep. Charles Rangel of New York said in a statement. Rangel said he so far had 25 co-sponsors to the resolution who were "willing to stand up and say what so many policy makers know, that the first step to bringing our troops home is to send Donald Rumsfeld home." The resolution said Rumsfeld misled the American public on assessments of progress in the war and occupation, sent U.S. forces to Iraq "without adequate planning and sufficient equipment," and "demonstrated a lack of sensitivity" in statements on the war and U.S. casualties.

Top Court to Decide Guantanamo Detainees' Cases
By James Vicini
Reuters, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) said on Monday it would decide whether foreign nationals can use American courts to challenge their incarceration at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first cases it will hear on the Bush administration's war on terror. The justices agreed to rule on whether U.S. courts have the power to consider challenges by a group of Afghan war detainees to their continued confinement without access to families or lawyers, and with no charges brought against them.

White House Declares It Won't Answer Questions from Non-Republicans
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: House Democrats in charge of the money recently asked the White House for information about how much taxpayer swag went into the infamous and mysterious "Mission Accomplished" banner. By way of reply, the White House Office of Administration sent all House and Senate members of the Appropriations Committees an e-mail titled "congressional questions." The upshot of which, as The Washington Post reports, was that the White House would not accept any more questions from non-Republicans.

Bush's Propaganda Machine Made a Mistake in Making Lynch a Hero (She Turned Out to Actually be One!)
BuzzFlash, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: They prohibit coverage of the returning coffins of our dead to Dover Air Force Base. Neither Bush nor Cheney have attended one funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. The Pentagon doesn't go out of its way to quickly identify the casualties. The better to depersonalize the deaths. Bush Cartel officials minimize the deaths of our soldiers. In short, Bush and Cheney would have wanted the death of a pretty blonde girl from West Virginia -- should Lynch have actually been killed -- to fall quickly down the Orwellian hole of a war where soldiers die as impersonal statistics. The "Bush team doesn't want people to see human cost of war," the Toronto Star observed, "Even body bags are now sanitized as 'transfer tubes.'"  But as we now know, Jessica survived due to the dedicated intervention of Iraqi doctors, working under extremely difficult circumstances. That's when Jessica Lynch's story -- and her life -- made an unexpected rendezvous with the Karl Rove/Defense Department Soviet-style "hero of the revolutionary forces" propaganda machine.

Rumsfeld Denies He Made Pre-War Statements
By Eric Rosenberg
Hearst Newspapers, 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. forces would be welcomed by the Iraqi citizenry and that Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Now, after both statements have been shown to be either incorrect or vastly exaggerated, Rumsfeld - with the same trademark confidence that he exuded before the war - is denying that he ever made such assertions. In recent testy exchanges with reporters, Rumsfeld interrupted the questioners and attacked the premise of the questions if they dealt with his pre-war comments about weapons of mass destruction and Americans-as-liberators.

10 November 2003

The Evangelicals Who Like to Giftwrap Islamophobia
The world's largest children's Christmas project has a toxic agenda
Giles Fraser
The Guardian, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: It all sounds innocent enough. Operation Christmas Child "is a unique ministry that brings Christmas joy, packed in gift-filled shoeboxes, to children around the world". Over the past 10 years, 24 million shoeboxes have been delivered, making it the world's largest children's Christmas project. Every US president since Ronald Reagan has packed a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child. In the UK, thousands of schools, churches and youth clubs are doing the same. Some will fill their boxes with dried-out felt tip pens and discarded Barbie amputees. Others spend serious money on the latest GameBoy or Sony Walkman. But what many parents and teachers don't know is that behind Operation Christmas Child is the evangelical charity Samaritan's Purse. Their aim is "the advancement of the Christian faith through educational projects and the relief of poverty". And a particularly toxic version of Christianity it is. ...US evangelicals employ a selective biblical literalism to support a theology that systematically confuses the kingdom of God with the US's burgeoning empire. It is no coincidence that the mission fields most favoured by US evangelicals are also the targets of neo-conservative military ambition.

President Bush's Stated Commitment to Veterans Is Not Reflected In the Budget
Daily Mislead, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush often emphasizes his commitment to veterans, saying in 2001, "My administration understands America's obligations not only go to those who wear the uniform today, but to those who wore the uniform in the past: to our veterans." But the 200,000 veterans waiting six months or more for their first appointment at a VA facility would be denied access to VA health care under Bush's plan. Others would be charged $250 annual enrollment fees, doubled prescription costs and increased co-payments.

Gore Criticizes Bush Administration and Patriot Act
By Cate Doty
New York Times, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: Former Vice President Al Gore called on Sunday for a repeal of the law expanding counterterrorism powers, calling it a "terrible mistake" for its effect on civil liberties. During a speech in which he condemned President Bush's fight against terror, Mr. Gore said: "I want to challenge the Bush administration's implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists. It is simply not true." Speaking before a crowd of about 3,000 at Constitution Hall, across the street from the White House, Mr. Gore admonished the Bush administration for what he called "unprecedented secrecy and deception" in dealing with the Congress and the public. But his sharpest remarks focused on how the administration was dealing with civil liberties for immigrants and foreign citizens. He said the administration needed to stop detaining American citizens indefinitely without charges.
SEE ALSO: CIA Publishes Daily Briefs, But Does Bush Read Them? (NYT)
SEE ALSO: Wesley Clark's Defense Contractor Connections (NYT)

Freedom and Security
As Prepared for Delivery
Remarks By Al Gore
MoveOn.org, November 9, 2003
EXCERPT: I want to challenge the Bush Administration’s implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists. Because it is simply not true. In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden. In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target. In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country. ...the real story is that while the administration manages to convey the impression that it is doing everything possible to protect America, in reality it has seriously neglected most of the measures that it could have taken to really make our country safer.

Reactions to Bush's Pro-Democracy Speech: 'Laughable...Pathetic'
Guardian (UK), 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: The more... Mr Bush gets involved in Middle East issues, the more obvious it becomes how deficient is his knowledge of the region. His attempt at preaching democracy to the Arab nations would be laughable, were it not so pathetic. That the Arab leaders recognise a need for change in political dialogue is a given. But it cannot happen overnight... Where Mr Bush's (or his briefers') ignorance comes in on the Middle East is the blatant lack of knowledge of how a centuries-old system of peoples' representation has worked here. Such a system has worked well and still does work well. It may not have ballot boxes but it does have a person who can be approached to solve problems immediately. That is more than can be said of many western politicians.

Making the Troops Pay Twice
By Don Carpenter
IndyStar.com, 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: If you notice there are more veterans to honor this Veterans Day than there were last year, thank the Bush administration and the Republican Congress. If you want more help for those veterans, better ask the Democrats. They're fighting President Bush, the Defense Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the GOP congressional leadership just to keep a shamefully inadequate veterans support system from getting worse. When Democrats tried to insert health insurance and other personnel benefits into the $87 billion appropriation for Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House shot them down. When Democrats tried to replace $1.3 billion of the $1.8 billion shortfall in the pending VA health care budget bill, the White House threatened a veto. On and on it goes.

  Book Review/Essay 
Strictly Business
By Paul Krugman
New York Review of Books, 20 November 2003 issue
Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America
by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
Random House, 347 pp., $24.95
Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth
by Joe Conason
Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, 245 pp., $24.95
EXCERPT: We're living in a replay of the Gilded Age, in which robber barons openly bought and sold government officials and their policies. And just as the Gilded Age brought forth a golden age of muckraking, our modern descent into money politics has brought forth a new wave of outraged reporters. Ivins and Dubose are worthy heirs of an honorable tradition. ...Big Lies is a less friendly book than Bushwhacked. This is not a criticism. To be frank, though I understand why Ivins and Dubose chose to mix their grim tales of corrupt politics with heartwarming tales of good ordinary folks, I would just as soon have drunk my coffee without the cream. Conason, by contrast, gives it straight: his book is a fairly unrelieved tract, whose theme is the triumph of hypocrisy. His claim is that the right-wing coalition now ruling our nation hardly ever practices what it preaches: that we're ruled by self-styled populists whose policies are relentlessly elitist, by people who declare their fiscal responsibility while breaking the bank, by people who stress "character" while pursuing private lives no better than anyone else's, and, above all, by "patriots" who would never think of making personal sacrifices for their country.

Government Without Religion, Amen
by Milt Shook
The Daily Weasel, November 2003
EXCERPT: Imagine a wave of immigration gripping this country, the likes of which we have never seen. Imagine a population shift over the next 50 years which makes Christians a minority for the first time. Imagine a future in which the dominant religion is Buddhism or Hinduism, or even Islam. I wonder if the people who are now insisting that the United States is a "Christian Nation" will appreciate it when Muslims refer to this as a "Muslim Nation," because they just happen to have the greatest number of members? I’m pretty sure they won’t like it a bit. This is not a "Christian nation." There, I said it. This is a nation in which the majority of its citizens just happen to belong to a Christian sect, or so they say. The people who created this nation wisely separated church and state at every turn, but for some reason, we tend to forget that about every other generation.

Labs on Front Lines of Biowar
At a new facility in Texas studying the world's most lethal viruses, security is paramount.
By Lianne Hart
Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT:
GALVESTON, Texas — They are technically known as BSL-4 laboratories, but the people who work there call them "hot labs," ultra-secure repositories for the most deadly viruses in the world. For decades, only three such labs existed in the United States. But the threat of bioterrorism has brought fresh funding, and several more Biosafety Level 4 labs — those that can handle lethal pathogens — are now planned. The newest is a $15.5-million facility at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. This lab, which will initially be used to study hemorrhagic fevers and tick-borne encephalitis, will by 2007 be dwarfed by a $150-million federally funded complex next door. On a hurricane-prone barrier island like Galveston, the specter of two buildings storing viruses with no known cure might be cause for alarm. But reaction in this beach community has generally been muted, said Robert Mihovil, past president of a neighborhood association near the university. [Emphasis by BWUSA]

Case for War Confected, Say Top US Officials
Andrew Gumbel
The Independent, 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: An unprecedented array of US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq. In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair. A new documentary film beginning to circulate in the United States features one powerful condemnation after another, from the sort of people who usually stay discreetly in the shadows - a former director of the CIA, two former assistant secretaries of defence, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even the man who served as President Bush's Secretary of the Army until just a few months ago. Between them, the two dozen interviewees reveal how the pre-war intelligence record on Iraq showed virtually the opposite of the picture the administration painted to Congress, to US voters and to the world. They also reconstruct the way senior White House officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - leaned on the CIA to find evidence that would fit a preordained set of conclusions.

Issue of Competition Causes Widest Split Over Medicare
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT:  In the current debate over Medicare, no issue excites more passion than a proposal for it to compete directly with private health plans. Conservative House Republicans say they will not vote for a Medicare drug bill unless it fosters such competition, which they see as a way to slow the growth of Medicare spending. But many Democrats say they cannot vote for any bill that requires competition because it would undermine traditional Medicare and could raise costs for people who remain in that program. House and Senate negotiators are trying to reconcile Medicare bills passed by the two chambers, and they hope to finish before Nov. 21, when Congressional leaders plan to adjourn for the year. ...If one issue sinks the legislation, it could be the proposal for competition, also known as "premium support." The proposal symbolizes the vast changes in Medicare that conservatives desire and liberals fear. ...But Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said the proposal was "a cockamamie scheme" to privatize Medicare, and he asserted that it would not save money.

At Meetings, U.S. to Seek Support for Broad Ozone Exemptions
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
New York Times, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: The two-decade effort to eliminate chemicals that harm the ozone layer faces its most serious test in recent years this week as the Bush administration seeks international support for broad exemptions to a 2005 ban on a popular pesticide. Many American farmers say the pesticide, methyl bromide, is vital as they try to compete with farm production in countries where fields are tended by low-paid laborers. Critics of the proposed exemptions, led by the European Union, say that substitute chemicals are already in wide use and that the American request threatens progress toward repairing the ozone layer, which shields the earth from radiation that causes cancers and other problems. ...But many countries, environmental groups and scientists say the proposed exemptions would reverse steady progress in healing the ozone layer, would discourage farmers from shifting to safer products and would encourage poorer countries to seek new loopholes or delays.

  AUDIO LINK 
Friedman, Brooks Peddle Bush Line
By Matt Rothschild
The Progressive, 7 November 2003
Within the course of five days, The New York Times op-ed page has run two of its most ludicrous columns in years.
MP3 file (1mb)
RealAudio file (1mb)

8-9 November

Family Buries U.S. Soldier and His Mother
By Judy Lin
Associated, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT:
BEAVER FALLS, Pa. -- An Army sergeant killed in a missile attack as he was returning home for his mother's funeral was buried along with her Saturday. More than 200 family members and friends gathered at a school auditorium about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh for a double funeral for Sgt. Ernest Bucklew and his mother. Mary Ellen Bucklew, 57, of Darlington Township, died Oct. 31 of an aneurism as she drove home from work. Her 33-year-old son was on emergency leave two days later when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in was shot down near Fallujah, Iraq.

Independents May Not Want Bush Re-election
By The Associated Press, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT: Independent voters are leaning against the re-election of President Bush amid doubts about his handling of the economy and Iraq, a poll released Saturday indicates.
A majority of independents, 53 percent, said they oppose Bush's re-election, while 40 percent favor it, according to the Newsweek poll. Republicans favor his re-election by an 86-10 margin, while Democrats oppose it by the same amount. Overall, his re-election was favored by 44 percent of respondents and opposed by 50 percent. More of those surveyed favored his re-election in May, but since then, people have been evenly split or slightly opposed on that question. Bush's overall job approval in the poll was 52 percent. People were closely divided on his handling of the economy, with 44 percent approving and 48 percent disapproving. Just over half, 51 percent, disapprove of his handling of Iraq, while 42 percent approve. Bush still gets solid support for his handling of the fight against terrorism, with 64 percent approving.

Scientist's Trial Focuses on Money
Thomas Butler of Texas Tech faces 69 counts after reporting deadly bacteria vials missing.
By Charles Piller
Los Angeles Times, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT: The trial of a Texas Tech University bubonic plague researcher has focused as much in its first week on a bitter money dispute with the university as on charges that he lied to the FBI and smuggled deadly bacteria. Defense attorney Charles M. Meadows Jr. characterized the case as an academic "catfight" that ballooned into a federal investigation. ...This week, four Nobel Prize winners in scientific fields decried Butler's treatment. He was shackled in his first court appearance and has been subject to a strict home curfew, among other restrictions. They called for renewed efforts to settle the case out of court. "We fear that the message sent by this case will intimidate exactly those most involved in bioterrorism-related research," the Nobel winners wrote.

Mother Without Leave
Simone Holcomb faced a hard choice: disobey an Army order or lose custody of her children.
By David Kelly
Los Angeles Times,8 November 2003
DENVER — Simone Holcomb was a soldier motivated by duty and honor who knew the sacrifices her job required and performed without complaint. That all changed when the National Guard medic, who spent the last eight months nursing wounded soldiers in Iraq, was forced to make a stark choice — the Army or her children. She chose the children. Now she faces charges of being absent without leave, or AWOL, casting a pall over a seven-year military career and her immediate future.

U.S. spends as much on military as rest of the world combined
House Approves $401-Billion Military Budget
The bill includes many provisions pushed by Donald Rumsfeld and the White House
Los Angeles Times, 8 November 2003
By Nick Anderson
EXCERPT: In a show of support for an administration at war, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill Friday that would grant the Pentagon exemptions to landmark environmental laws, authorize a major overhaul of the civilian defense bureaucracy and lift a decade-old ban on government research into "low-yield" nuclear weapons. The bill, a milestone in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's quest to reshape the Pentagon, also drops objections to politically painful military base closures scheduled for two years from now. The House voted, 362 to 40, for the fiscal 2004 defense authorization, reflecting solid bipartisan support for defense programs at a time when U.S. armed forces are engaged in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The Senate is expected to follow suit early next week on the $401-billion measure and send it to President Bush for his signature.

Saint Ronald
Why must we pretend the 40th president was alert and engaged?
By Timothy Noah
Slate, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: Reagan was no doddering fool, but his rather extreme mental and emotional detachment were at the time noted not only by his critics but by many of his political allies. Liberals like Chatterbox who struggled to persuade themselves that Reagan had more on the ball than he seemed saw their worst suspicions confirmed in the memoirs of former Reagan aides. Here's former chief of staff Donald Regan in For the Record: "In the four years that I served as Secretary of the Treasury I never saw President Reagan alone and never discussed economic philosophy or fiscal and monetary policy with him one-on-one. From first day to last at Treasury, I was flying by the seat of my pants. The President never told me what he believed or what he wanted to accomplish in the field of economics."
Here's speechwriter Peggy Noonan, describing her first encounter with President Reagan in the White House in What I Saw at the Revolution: "I was surprised how big his hearing aid is, or rather how aware of it you are when you're with him. There was a quizzical look on his face as he listened to what was going on around him, and I thought, He doesn't really hear very much, and his appearance of constant good humor is connected to his deafness. He misses much of what is not said directly to him, but he assumes it is good."
Here's communications director David Gergen, in Eyewitness to Power: "Reagan could be remarkably unaware of (and indifferent to) developments around him. If I were still working for him, I would probably pass it off as being "intellectually selective." But it's hard for anyone to argue that he knew as much as a president should about the state of the world. … His inattention to details and hands-off stance could be dangerous for his leadership. His Republican allies in the Senate believed that because he did not pay close enough heed, he turned down a budget deal in 1985 that they had carefully crafted to cut the deficits. By their account, he didn't seem to understand the terms of the deal. … Majority Leader Bob Dole was furious at the time." All these former aides went on to say, in one way or another, that in the end things somehow managed to work out for the best. That's a topic for legitimate debate. But none seemed to disagree with the proposition that President Reagan was not all there.
SEE ALSO: Saint Ronald, Part 2 (Slate)

Fury at Bush's Civil Rights Policing of Abortion Ban
By Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 8 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration has given the US justice department's civil rights division the job of enforcing a contentious new ban on late-term abortions, it emerged yesterday. The move has provoked furious accusations that the White House is perverting the government's role in promoting civil rights. In the past, the civil rights division has been instrumental in ensuring black Americans have the right to vote and equal access to housing, while prosecuting hate crimes against minorities.

Vermont Papers Pen Definitive Book on Howard Dean
Reporters Covered Candidate for 16 Years
By Joe Strupp
Editor and Publisher, 7 November 2003
EXCERPT: When it comes to insider biographies of political heavyweights, why should the Michael Isikoffs and David Maranisses have all the fun? At the Rutland (Vt.) Herald and its sister paper, The Times-Argus of Montpelier, editors and reporters have collaborated on what they call the real backgrounder on Howard Dean -- a new book titled Howard Dean: A Citizens Guide to the Man Who Would Be President, which hits bookstores Nov. 15.

White House Puts Limits on Queries From Democrats
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post, 7 November 2003
The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers. The decision -- one that Democrats and scholars said is highly unusual -- was announced in an e-mail sent Wednesday to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House spent making and installing the "Mission Accomplished" banner for President Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. ...Brookings Institution government scholar Thomas Mann said the Democrats have little ability to challenge the decision. "This is just one of many instances where Republicans have a legal basis for what they're doing, but it violates long-standing norms," he said. All the Democrats can do, he said, "is carp."

7 November 2003

Leaked Memo Sparks Rancor in Senate
By Robert Schlesinger
Boston Globe, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: The festering quarrel over the Senate investigation into pre-war US intelligence on Iraq flared up yesterday as Republicans and Democrats traded charges of politicizing the probe and engaging in office espionage. At issue was a draft strategy memorandum written by a Democratic staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Leaked to the media Tuesday night, it laid out how the party could steer the probe in an effort to produce the information most damaging to the Bush administration. "Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq," the memo concluded. "Yet, we have an important role to play in the revealing [of] misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives -- of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war."
SEE ALSO: Republican and Democratic Panel Leaders Take Feud to the Senate Floor (NYT)

Dean Move Hints at a Crack in Political Financing System
Candidate weighs whether to break spending-cap pledge
By Brian C. Mooney
Boston Globe, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: Is it groundbreaking grass-roots democracy or a backdoor escape hatch from a campaign pledge? In either case, Howard Dean's decision to let a plebiscite of supporters determine whether he will be the Democrats' first presidential candidate to forgo spending caps is the latest sign that the public financing system is breaking down. Rivals for the Democrats' nomination slashed away at Dean yesterday, saying he is hiding behind his supporters as he prepares to abandon a commitment to abide by the mechanism that provides public funding for presidential candidates who accept spending limits.

Lawyers at E.P.A. Say It Will Drop Pollution Cases
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New york Times, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT:  A change in enforcement policy will lead the Environmental Protection Agency to drop investigations into 50 power plants for past violations of the Clean Air Act, lawyers at the agency who were briefed on the decision this week said. The lawyers said in interviews on Wednesday that the decision meant the cases would be judged under new, less stringent rules set to take effect next month, rather than the stricter rules in effect at the time the investigations began.

Bush vs. Bush: Poppy Bush Gets Fed Up
By Katrina Vanden Heuvel
The Nation, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: We know there are rifts inside the Bush Administration, but what about the growing rift between Presidents 41 and 43? Even before the Iraq war, the schism between father and son wasn't hard to conceal. The former President (via associates like Brent Scowcroft) clearly disapproved of W's repudiation of traditional conservative internationalism in favor of adventurist neo-con extremism. (Remember Scowcroft's oped of August 2002 in which he argued that preemptive war against Iraq was an unwarranted and divisive distraction from the fight against global terrorism?) Has Papa Bush decided it's time to inflict a little public humiliation on his son for disregarding wise paternal advice? How else to interpret his decision to give the George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service to Senator Edward Kennedy--one of his son's most ferocious critics and the same man who denounced the Iraq invasion as a "fraud" that had been "made up in Texas" for political gain? As The Guardian quipped, "The message could only have been clearer if Bush the elder had presented the award to Saddam Hussein himself."

Don't Mention the Dead: White House in Denial
By Gary Younge
Guardian (UK), 7 November 2003
EXCERPT: For years political orthodoxy had it that America would no longer know days like these. Not because it was shy about going to war, but because after Vietnam it was determined not to incur large numbers of casualties in doing so. The US military would bomb from a great height or use proxies to enforce its will. Public opinion would endorse the country's involvement in most military conflicts, so long as the nation did not have to endure the sight of its young men and women coming home in body bags.

More Signs of Patriot Act Abuse
TalkLeft.com, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Patriot Act is being used in a public corruption trial in Las Vegas. It's a case that has nothing to do with terrorism. he charges involve strip club owner Michael Galardi and politicians.... Like we've said before, Congress got hood-winked into passing the Patriot Act. It was always the Justice Department's intention to use the powers authorized by the Act in non-terror related criminal cases and Congress, in its post-9/11 fervor, just looked the other way.

'Cuz it's all about the price of oil...'
Musician Billy Bragg to Tour U.S. With 'Tell us the Truth' Message
By Katherine Stapp
Common Dreams, 4 November 2003
EXCERPT: Disgusted that "the media is no longer reporting the stories that really matter", British folk-rocker Billy Bragg is taking his message directly to the people with a 'Tell Us The Truth' U.S. tour that brims with outrage over corporate swashbucklers and talking head tele-zombies. "You could argue that the goal of this tour is to discover why a majority of the American people believe that Saddam Hussein was in some way responsible for 9/11," Bragg told IPS. "Since that awful day in 2001, the facts about who perpetrated such an atrocity and why have been obscured by propaganda and conspiracy theory alike. The Bush administration was able to sell the invasion of Iraq to the people because the mainstream media failed to inform the American public of the facts," he said.
SEE ALSO: Tell Us the Truth Homepage
AUDIO LINK: Billy Bragg's song "The Price of Oil" (MP3 format)

Michael Moore on Aaron McGruder's Right to be Hostile
The Nation, 30 October 2003
EXCERPT: It's odd, considering all the black ink that goes into making up the comics section (and color on Sundays) that you rarely see any black faces on that page. Well, maybe it's not so odd after all, considering the makeup of most newsrooms in our country. It is even more stunning when you consider that in many of our large cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, where the white population is barely a third of the overall citizenry, the comics pages seem to be one of the last vestiges of the belief that white faces are just...well, you know...so much more happy and friendly and funny! Of course, the real funnies are on the front pages of most papers these days. That's where you can see a lot of black faces. The media love to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up about 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.
Music Video: Bush Hates America's Veterans
By Eric Blumrich, BushFlasch.com

Brookings Press Briefing
What's on the Minds of Voters?
A Survey of American Political Values
EXCERPT: One year before the presidential election, the Pew Research Center provides a portrait of the American electorate. (The) ...overall finding is that the national unity that we saw in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks have given way to intense political polarization and even anger. This is a very different political climate than it was even a year ago. Read the full event transcript (pdf-90kb)

Rethinking McDonalds?
Kroc Bequest Gives NPR a Record $200 Million Donation
By Paul Farhi and Reilly Capps
Washington Post, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: National Public Radio will announce today the largest donation in its history, a cash bequest from the will of the late philanthropist Joan Kroc of about $200 million. The bequest from the wife of the founder of the McDonald's fast-food chain both shocked and delighted people at NPR's headquarters in Washington yesterday. It amounts to almost twice NPR's annual operating budget. "No one saw this coming," said one person.

  AUDIO LINKS 
Audio from Molly Ivin's Bushwhacked
You’ve heard about Molly Ivins's latest book, Bushwhacked, but have you heard it? Now you can listen to Molly Ivins read excerpts from this hilarious, no-holds-barred look at George W. Bush and the full, destructive impact of his presidency.
http://www.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin/ramgen.pperl/Ivins_Molly_aud_01.ram

6 November 2003

The Federal Government's Intervention On Behalf of Religious Entities In Local Land Use Disputes:
Why It's A Terrible Idea
By MARCI HAMILTON
FindLaw, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Department of Justice has recently intruded into a bizarre and inappropriate new terrain. It has begun acting as a prosecutor in local land use disputes. You may find this hard to believe, given everything that is on DOJ's plate right now. There is, of course, the war on terror. And there is the largest coordinated child sexual abuse ring in history--run by the leadership of the Catholic Church. This ring plainly falls within federal jurisdiction, pursuant to the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), as I have discussed in a previous column. Yet no prosecution has been brought against it But forget about protecting the nation from terrorist attacks, or finding justice for thousands of children for sexual abuse by trusted adults. Instead, DOJ's concern is to protect churches from the zoning laws that apply equally to everyone. It's hard to imagine a worse misallocation of federal resources, at a more crucial time.

Why We Should Fear The Matrix
The "Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange" Program Threatens To Revive Total Information Awareness
By ANITA RAMASASTRY
FindLaw, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: On October 30, 2003, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed simultaneous requests in Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania for information about those states' participation in the "Matrix" program. (The program's formal name is the "Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.") In addition to the five states named above, four other states are participating -Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Utah. What is the Matrix, and why is the ACLU so concerned? Those are the two questions I will address in this column. I will also argue that readers should be concerned, too.

Judge Blocks Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
By KEVIN O'HANLON
AP in FindLaw, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT:
LINCOLN, Neb. - A federal judge blocked implementation of a federal ban on certain late-term abortions Wednesday less than an hour after President Bush signed the ban into law. U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf issued a temporary restraining order citing concerns that the law did not contain an exception for preserserving the health of the woman seeking the abortion. He said his order would apply only to the four doctors who filed the lawsuit in Nebraska.

Appeal for Draft Board Volunteers Revives Memories of Vietnam Era
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Wednesday November 5, 2003
The Guardian, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Pentagon has begun recruiting for local draft boards, dredging up painful memories of Vietnam era conscription at a time of deepening misgiving about America's occupation of Iraq.
In a notice posted on the defence department's Defend America website, Americans over the age of 18 and with no criminal record are invited to "serve your community and the nation" by volunteering for the boards, which decide which recruits should be sent to war.

Empire of the Men of Best Quality
The Ideology of the Polyarchy
By NOAM CHOMSKY
CounterPunch, 1/2 November 2003
EXCERPT: Though Bush planners are at an extreme end of the traditional US policy spectrum, their programs and doctrines have many pre-cursors, both in US history and among earlier aspirants to global power. More ominously, their decisions may not be irrational within the framework of prevailing ideology and the institutions that embody it. There is ample historical precedent for the willingness of leaders to threaten or resort to violence in the face of significant risk of catastrophe. But the stakes are far higher today. The choice between hegemony and survival has rarely, if ever, been so starkly posed. ...The men of best quality recognized that if the people are so "depraved and corrupt" as to "confer places of power and trust upon wicked and undeserving men, they forfeit their power in this behalf unto those that are good, though but a few." Almost three centuries later, Wilsonian idealism, as it is standardly termed, adopted a rather similar stance. Abroad, it is Washington's responsibility to ensure that government is in the hands of "the good, though but a few." At home, it is necessary to safeguard a system of elite decision-making and public ratification -- "polyarchy," in the terminology of political science -- not democracy.

Judge Blocks Partial-Birth Abortion BanBy KEVIN O'HANLON
Associated Press in FindLaw, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT:  A federal judge blocked implementation of a federal ban on certain late-term abortions Wednesday less than an hour after President Bush signed the ban into law U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf issued a temporary restraining order citing concerns that the law did not contain an exception for preserserving the health of the woman seeking the abortion. He said his order would apply only to the four doctors who filed the lawsuit in Nebraska.

     1-2 November 2003

 BWUSA "two fur one" Section 
Rice Faults Past Administrations on Terror
By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times, October 31, 2003
EXCERPT:  President Bush's national security adviser said on Thursday that the Clinton and other past administrations had ignored evidence of growing terrorist threats and that despite repeated attacks on American interests, "until Sept. 11, the terrorists faced no sustained, systematic and global response" from the United States. "They became emboldened," the adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said of Al Qaeda, "and the result was more terror and more victims."
SEE ALSO: Did Bush Spike The Investigation Of Bin Laden? (TP)

And in other news...
Bush can't find them, but the media apparently can...
Saddam and Osama Adopt Shaved Baby Ape
Weekly World News, 1 November 2003
EXCERPT: Just one month after their gay marriage rocked the world, ecstatic newlyweds Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have adopted a shaved-ape baby to make their family complete. And while the news is sure to set terrorists' hearts aflutter, the animal-rights group that delivered the chimp to a go-between who promised that the 9-month-old was going to a "good home" say they were lied to -- and they want the little critter back.

Iraqi Constitution Delay Frays Relations
By Hamza Hendawi
Associated Press, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: Delays in drafting a new constitution, a key part of Washington's political blueprint for Iraq, are fraying relations between the U.S.-led coalition and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi interim leadership. Some American officials believe key members of the 25-seat Iraqi Governing Council are stalling in hopes of winning concessions from American politicians eager to turn power over to the Iraqis quickly. Civil administrator L. Paul Bremer has so far held firm against suggestions by some council members that the political process he has charted -- a seven-step program that concludes with a democratically elected government in place by the end of 2004 -- should be set aside. Instead, some council members, who were appointed by the coalition in July, are pressing for full sovereign powers as a provisional government, with the United States handing over responsibility for security to an Iraqi-led paramilitary force composed of private militias. Bremer, however, will only hand over power to an elected government after a constitution is in place to ensure Iraq's future, said a coalition official closely involved in the process.

Alternatives to Iraqi Council Eyed
Inaction of Hand-Picked Baghdad Officials Frustrates Washington
By Robin Wright and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: Increasingly alarmed by the failure of Iraq's Governing Council to take decisive action, the Bush administration is developing possible alternatives to the council to ensure that the United States can turn over political power at the same time and pace that troops are withdrawn, according to senior U.S. officials here and in Baghdad. The United States is deeply frustrated with its hand-picked council members because they have spent more time on their own political or economic interests than in planning for Iraq's political future, especially selecting a committee to write a new constitution, the officials added. "We're unhappy with all of them. They're not acting as a legislative or governing body, and we need to get moving," said a well-placed U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They just don't make decisions when they need to." Ambassador Robert Blackwill, the new National Security Council official overseeing Iraq's political transition, begins an unannounced trip this weekend to Iraq to meet with Iraqi politicians to drive home that point. He is also discussing U.S. options with L. Paul Bremer, civilian administrator of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, U.S. officials said.

Rice Confronts Rising Iraq Casualty Toll
By TERENCE HUNT
AP, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration, confronting a rising casualty toll in Iraq, said Monday that ``nothing of value has ever been won without sacrifice.'' National security adviser Condoleezza Rice also said a surge of attacks against American forces does not represent a return to major combat operations. ...she said. ``We will get a handle on this security situation and resolve the problem.'' Rice said Bush's strategy calls for increasing the number of Iraqis involved in their own security. ``We have nearly 118,000 Iraqis now involved on a daily basis in their own security,'' Rice told Fox affiliate WAGA in Atlanta. [BWUSA emphasis]

US Stuck Without a Turkish Crutch
By Hilmi Toros
Asia Times, 11 November 2003
EXCERPT: Turkey's decision not to send troops to Iraq has brought relief to many Iraqis and Turks, but comes as a setback to an increasingly beleaguered United States. Turkey acted last week after the US acknowledged that Turkish troops would run into an unfriendly reception, if not resistance. The Turkish government had obtained parliamentary authorization under intense US insistence earlier to dispatch as many as 10,000 troops. That was to be the first major force from a Muslim nation. The US had expected that forces from its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally would be readily accepted in Iraq, and would lessen the burden of the war on its soldiers. They were seen also as opening the way for troops from other Muslim nations. The parliamentary approval is valid for one year and Turkey could still send troops in the next 11 months. But few expect the anti-Turkish sentiment in Iraq to change.

WTO Says U.S. Steel Tariffs Violate Trade Rules
Opens the Door for Retaliatory Tariffs from EU, Other Countries
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT: The World Trade Organization issued a final ruling Monday that the steel tariffs imposed by President Bush violate international trade rules, escalating the pressure on the president to repeal the tariffs. The decision by the WTO gives the European Union, Japan, Brazil and other countries the right to impose retaliatory tariffs on a host of American exports unless Bush reverses the decision he made in March of last year to give American steel makers protection from imports. The EU has already said it is readying punitive duties that would be applied starting in mid-December on American motorcycles, citrus fruit and farm equipment, among other goods. That leaves Bush with an unpleasant political choice. If he abides by the WTO ruling and rolls back the steel tariffs, he may anger voters in key steel making states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But if he maintains the tariffs, he risks courting the wrath of industries in other states that would be hurt by the retaliatory duties.

10 November 2003

Alternatives to Iraqi Council Eyed
Inaction of Hand-Picked Baghdad Officials Frustrates Washington
By Robin Wright and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: Increasingly alarmed by the failure of Iraq's Governing Council to take decisive action, the Bush administration is developing possible alternatives to the council to ensure that the United States can turn over political power at the same time and pace that troops are withdrawn, according to senior U.S. officials here and in Baghdad. The United States is deeply frustrated with its hand-picked council members because they have spent more time on their own political or economic interests than in planning for Iraq's political future, especially selecting a committee to write a new constitution, the officials added. "We're unhappy with all of them. They're not acting as a legislative or governing body, and we need to get moving," said a well-placed U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They just don't make decisions when they need to."

Occupational Hazards
How the Pentagon forgot about running Iraq.
By Jacob Weisberg
Slate, 6 November 2003
Courtesy of Talking Points Memo
EXCERPT: ...during the 2000 campaign, George Will and others argued that presidential intelligence didn't matter. This notion was reinforced after Sept. 11, when it became fashionable to argue that Bush's "moral clarity" was preferable to the ability to comprehend many sides of a complicated issue. In fact, presidential intelligence does matter. The intellectual qualities Bush lacks—historical knowledge, interest in the details of policy, and substantive (as opposed to political) judgment—might well have prevented the quagmire we're facing in Iraq right now. A more engaged president—one who understood, for instance, the difference between the Sunnis and the Shiites—surely would have asked about Plan B.

Report: Bush Had No Plan for Occupation of Baghdad
By Peter Beaumont and Dan Plesch
Observer (UK), 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: Officially titled the Third Infantry Division (Mechanised) After Action Report, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the study (by globalsecurity.org) provides the first formal internal view of the Iraq war from the point of view of the soldiers who brought down Saddam Hussein. The report provides official confirmation of a complete absence of high-level military and political planning to manage the aftermath of victory and indicates some key problems that continue to hamper US army effectiveness to this day.

Cheney's Long Path to War
BY MARK HOSENBALL, MICHAEL ISIKOFF AND EVAN THOMAS
Newsweek, 17 November issue
Courtesy of Talking Points Memo
EXCERPTS: Of all the president’s advisers, Cheney has consistently taken the most dire view of the terrorist threat. On Iraq, Bush was the decision maker. But more than any adviser, Cheney was the one to make the case to the president that war against Iraq was an urgent necessity. ...Cheney has repeatedly suggested that Baghdad has ties to Al Qaeda. He has pointedly refused to rule out suggestions that Iraq was somehow to blame for the 9/11 attacks and may even have played a role in the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The CIA and FBI, as well as a congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks, have dismissed this conspiracy theory. Still, as recently as Sept. 14, Cheney continued to leave the door open to Iraqi complicity. ...A Cheney aide took strong exception to the notion that the vice president was at the receiving end of some kind of private pipeline for half-baked or fraudulent intelligence, or that he was somehow carrying water for the neocons or anyone else's self-serving agendas. "That's an urban myth," said this aide, who declined to be identified. ...Top intelligence officials reject the suggestion that Cheney has somehow bullied lower-level CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency analysts into telling him what he wants to hear. But they do describe the Office of the Vice President, with its large and assertive staff, as a kind of free-floating power base that at times brushes aside the normal policymaking machinery under national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice. On the road to war, Cheney in effect created a parallel government that became the real power center.

Americans Sow Seeds of Hatred
Iraqi Tribes, Not Saddam Supporters, Shoot Down U.S. Helicopters
By Patrick Graham
Observer (UK), 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: While the US authorities maintain that resistance attacks are carried out by former Baathists and supporters of Saddam, they continue to ignore the tribal nature of the insurgency which has grown steadily over recent months. Deeply conservative clans like the 50,000-strong Albueisi have codes of honour which they complain the American army ignores at checkpoints and during raids on houses. They also believe that the Koran demands jihad against foreign invaders. Asked how many American lives should be taken if one of their own is killed, the answer is: 'As many as possible.'
SEE ALSO: A Fast Transfer of Power By U.S. Will Fail (Observer)

  BOOK RECOMMENDATION 
Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
By Noam Chomsky
Metropolitan Books, Published 4 November 2003
EXCERPT: By early 2003, studies revealed that fear of the United States had reached remarkable heights throughout the world, along with distrust of the political leadership. Dismissal of elementary human rights and needs was matched by a display of contempt for democracy for which no parallel comes easily to mind, accompanied by professions of sincere dedication to human rights and democracy. The unfolding events should be deeply disturbing to those who have concerns about the world they are leaving to their grandchildren. Though Bush planners are at an extreme end of the traditional US policy spectrum, their programs and doctrines have many pre- cursors, both in US history and among earlier aspirants to global power. More ominously, their decisions may not be irrational within the framework of prevailing ideology and the institutions that embody it. There is ample historical precedent for the willingness of leaders to threaten or resort to violence in the face of significant risk of catastrophe. But the stakes are far higher today. The choice between hegemony and survival has rarely, if ever, been so starkly posed.
  AUDIO LINK   Chomsky Talks About New Book

America Stirs Hornet's Nest of Revenge
Angry Iraqi villagers are supporting resistance to the occupying powers, writes David Blair
The Telegraph, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT: It is unlikely that a Pentagon official will ever visit the Iraqi hamlet of al-Hussai on the western bank of the Euphrates river, but if he did he would find the views of 19-year-old Bashar Hashim Abdullah deeply troubling. As he gathered the maize harvest from a lush field lined with palm trees, Bashar expressed a settled opinion of the US soldiers who patrol near his mud-brick home in central Iraq. "We do not speak to the Americans or deal with them in any way," said Mr Abdullah. "My father tells me not to speak with bad people."

Official Says U.S. Is Sobered, Not Subdued
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reaffirms commitment to rooting out Iraqi insurgents. Three more soldiers are killed.
By John Daniszewski
Los Angeles Times, 10 November 2003
EXCERPT:  Visiting Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said Saturday that U.S. officials have been sobered by mounting casualties in Iraq but insisted that America will press forward and take the fight to the enemy. Armitage's remarks came at the end of the bloodiest week for coalition forces since April. The day began with the deaths of two U.S. paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division, who were killed in a land mine explosion outside the restive city of Fallouja. It ended with a bomb attack on a mounted patrol in Baghdad that killed one soldier from the 1st Armored Division and wounded another. In addition, mortar shells fell near the Republican Palace complex in central Baghdad, the third such bombardment in two weeks of the headquarters of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. There were apparently no injuries.

Iraq Seen as Al Qaeda's Top Battlefield
Terrorist network and its affiliates are aiding Hussein loyalists, coalition officials say.
By Richard C. Paddock, Alissa J. Rubin and Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times, 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: Answering Osama bin Laden's call for holy war in Iraq, hundreds of followers from at least eight nations have entered the country and are playing a major role in attacking Western targets and Iraqi civilians, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. Operatives of the Al Qaeda terrorist network and affiliated extremist groups are collaborating with Saddam Hussein loyalists, officials say, forming an array of shadowy alliances that are emerging as one of the biggest challenges to U.S.-led efforts to bring stability to the war-torn country. ...U.S. officials acknowledge that they are hobbled in their efforts to stem the apparent surge in Islamic extremism because they have little information about the attackers or their activities.

Council/Population Divided Over Constitution
By Charles A. Radin
Boston Globe, 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: The US-appointed council itself is deeply and evenly divided on who should write the new constitution, members and other officials say. The 12 Shi'ite Muslim members are calling for direct election of a constitution-writing body, and the 12 who represent other religious and ethnic groups are favoring selection of the framers by the religious, social, and intellectual leaders of Iraq's provinces. In addition, the general public is split over what kind of political system the constitution should create. Recent polling by the nonpartisan Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies showed 31 percent of the public wants a democratic system, 34 percent wants an Islamic system, and 24 percent wants a mix of the two. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 3 percent. ...Regardless of the method chosen to draft the constitution, undue haste could lead to failure of efforts to democratize Iraq, said Professor Mazin Al-Ramadhani, who founded the college of political science at Al-Nahrain University, then was ousted by the Hussein regime. "In the past, the constitution was never higher than the ruler -- the ruler was higher than the constitution," Ramadhani said. "You cannot impose democracy. It is a learned process. . . .. We need time."

Bush Vs. His Mideast Message
CBS/AP, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT: In calling for more democracy in the Middle East, President Bush echoed what many Arabs have said for years. But with Mr. Bush as the messenger, many were skeptical that the United States would push for real change in the region's autocratic rule. The speech Thursday in Washington, televised throughout the Arab world, also provoked resentment since many Arabs believe the U.S. government manufactured reasons to wage war on Iraq and regularly sides unfairly with Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. In its Friday edition, a signed editorial in the leading Lebanese daily An-Nahar described the speech as "very attractive words" but said that "before they become tangible policies that deal with the real problems, they will continue to be boring, empty rhetoric." "Exposing the region's ills is useless. We already know them…What is required is a realization that the underlying problem continues to be Palestine and the obscene American bias for Israel and against Arabs, their interests and hopes," wrote columnist Sahar Baasiri.

The Humiliation Factor
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times, 9 November 2003
EXCERPT: If President Bush wants to get a better handle on the problems he's facing in Iraq and the West Bank, I suggest he study the speech made Oct. 16 by Malaysia's departing prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, to a conclave of Muslim leaders. Most of that speech was a brutally frank look into the causes of the Muslim world's decline. ..."I will not enumerate the instances of our humiliation," Mr. Mahathir said. "We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated. . . . Today we, the whole Muslim [community], are treated with contempt and dishonor. . . . There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their people. They feel that they can do nothing right." He added: "Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot think properly." ...The only way we'll foster a decent government in Iraq is if every day we turn a little more power over to Iraqis and create the economic conditions where Iraqis can be successful. The more we empower Iraqis, the less humiliated they will feel, the more time we will have to help them and the less they will need our help.

8-9 November

Baghdad Residents Point to Failures by US After Iraq's Fall
By Charles A. Radin
Boston Globe, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT: In and around Al Zwiya Husseiniya, a Shi'ite prayer hall in a neighborhood where dozens of young men were killed by the Ba'ath regime, the faithful are happy that the United States has deposed Saddam Hussein.
But they blame the United States for a series of failures, after the fall of Baghdad, that they say have emboldened attackers who have struck international aid organizations, foreign embassies, and local police stations. So grievous are the mistakes of the US-led occupation, the men at the prayer hall insist, they cannot believe the missteps were accidental. They say the United States is too big, too powerful, too smart for that. "The Americans want to keep the country in chaos, with no government, so that they can do what they want," said Sabir Abadi, 58, the chief custodian. Many Iraqis -- from the poor, humble men at the hall and ousted generals to politicians who want to see a democratic Iraq emerge -- share his suspicions.

In Much of Mideast, Bush Words Stir Ire
Response to speech shows resentment
By G.G. LaBelle
Associated Press, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT:
CAIRO -- Iran told President Bush to mind his own business yesterday after he called for greater democracy in the region. Similar and equally caustic views were expressed by commentators across the region. While some commentators stressed that most people in the Middle East do want democracy, Bush's preaching aroused resentment in a region where America is accused of waging war on Iraq and siding blindly with Israel against the Palestinians.

Military's Show of Force in Saddam's Hometown Deepens Resentment of America
By Hamza Hendawi
Associated Press, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT:
TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) Houses shook, walls cracked, chandeliers swayed and children woke up screaming for their parents as U.S. planes dropped 500-pound bombs on the outskirts of Saddam Hussein's hometown overnight. The show of force late Friday and early Saturday was a warning to the 120,000 people of Tikrit not to support insurgents, suspected of shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter hours earlier, killing six soldiers. But while it succeeded in scaring residents, the barrage only confirmed for many that the United States is their enemy. ...Local people called the Americans ''terrorists,'' ''mercenaries'' or ''Jews'' a word used colloquially in Iraq and other Arab countries to refer to Israelis who, along with Iranians, were Saddam's worst enemies.

Three Explosions Rock Saudi Capital
By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer
AP in Los Angeles Times, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT: Three explosions rocked a residential compound in western Riyadh around midnight Saturday, and smoke could be seen rising from the area of the blast. Diplomats reported one big explosion, followed by two smaller ones 15 seconds apart. The streets were crowded with late night crowds because of Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims fast during the day. A U.S. Embassy spokesperson said the attack targeted the B2 compound, which is in the Nakheel neighborhood near the Muhaya shopping center. It's a residential area, with mainly Saudis and other Arabs with a few foreigners.

CIA Says North Korea Already Has 'Validated' Nuke
By Jim Wolf, 11/7/2003
Reuters, 7 November 2003
EXCERPT:  North Korea appears to have built one or two nuclear weapons it could be confident would work even without a test nuclear blast, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has told Congress. "We assess that North Korea has produced one or two simple fission-type nuclear weapons and has validated the designs without conducting yield-producing nuclear tests," the CIA said in written replies to questions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Bring Halliburton Home
by Naomi Klein
The Nation,  November 24, 2003 issue
Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules.
Those are a few suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations. But the "Troops Out" debate overlooks an important fact. If every last soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of another country, by foreign corporations controlling its essential services, by 70 percent unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs. Any movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonization as well. That means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation chief Paul Bremer has fraudulently passed off as "reconstruction" and canceling all privatization contracts flowing from these reforms. How can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer's reforms were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international convention governing the behavior of occupying forces, the Hague Regulations of 1907 (the companion to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, both ratified by the United States), as well as the US Army's own code of war. ...The only way out for the Administration is to make sure that Iraq's next government is anything but sovereign. It must be pliant enough to ratify the CPA's illegal laws, which will then be celebrated as the happy marriage of free markets and free people. Once that happens, it will be too late: The contracts will be locked in, the deals done and the occupation of Iraq permanent. Which is why antiwar forces must use this fast-closing window to demand that the next Iraqi government be free from the shackles of these reforms. It's too late to stop the war, but it's not too late to deny Iraq's invaders the myriad economic prizes they went to war to collect in the first place. It's not too late to cancel the contracts and ditch the deals.

Insider influence runs rampant
Contracts Go to Allies of Iraq's Chalabi
By Paul Richter and Edmund Sanders
Los Angeles Times in NewsDay.com, 7 November 2003
EXCERPT: Businessmen with close ties to a leading — and controversial — member of Iraq's Governing Council have won large contracts for the country's reconstruction, leading to charges by some council members and other Iraqis that the actions are fueling a cronyism that threatens to sabotage the nation-building effort. The men are associates of Ahmad Chalabi, an American-trained financier who has close ties to senior Pentagon officials and is a prominent member of the council, the U.S.-appointed interim government in Iraq. Although it is perfectly legal for entrepreneurs with ties to top government officials to land reconstruction contracts, the perception of favoritism is setting back the rebuilding effort in Iraq by discouraging some foreign companies from seeking contracts, Iraqi and U.S. businessmen and officials said in interviews in Washington and Iraq. It is further damaging the image of a reconstruction effort already hurt by the granting of huge no-bid awards to the politically connected U.S. firms Halliburton Co. and the Bechtel Group, Iraqis said.

Journalists May Be Targets in Afghanistan
Warning About Taliban Insurgents
By Jonathan Fowler
Associated Press, 7 November 2003
EXCERPT: U.S. authorities warned American journalists in Afghanistan on Friday that they could be targeted for kidnap by Taliban insurgents. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it had "received credible information that Taliban forces are actively searching for American journalists to take hostage for use as leverage for the release of Taliban currently under United States control." In a statement, it urged journalists in the country to "to take immediate steps to increase their security posture in light of these threats."

Unsolicited Advice: A Response to Rumsfeld's October 16th Memo
By Colonel Dan Smith (Retired)
Foreign Policy in Focus, November 2003
Dan Smith a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, is a retired US army colonel and senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. In this paper he responds to Secretary Rumsfeld's memo with advise that Mr. Rumsfeld is unlikely to get from the senior advisors that he addressed.

No news here, so to speak...
Embedded Reporters Sanitized the Iraq Invasion
By Matt Wells
Guardian (UK), 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: Television reports produced by "embedded" correspondents in the Iraq conflict gave a sanitised picture of war, according to an academic study published by the BBC today. Researchers found that although reporters who accompanied the British and US military were able to be objective, they avoided images that would be too graphic or violent for British television. Some of the coverage resembled a "war film".

Bush With a New Axis to Grind
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 8 November 2003
EXCERPT: The speech was "an attempt to put a very positive spin" on recent events "to convince a public that is becoming more skeptical about the benefits of the war in Iraq that it already has had very positive impacts on the area", according to Marina Ottaway, co-director of the democracy and rule of law project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "I don't think this will be seen as very convincing in the Arab world or to people here who are familiar with recent developments there," she added in an interview. Ottaway described the speech as a "double-edged sword" for Bush, primarily because of the fading likelihood that elections for a new government in Iraq - a pre-condition set by Washington for transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people - can be held before next year's presidential elections in the US. Any premature transfer to shortcut the process, as Bush will be tempted to do, "is likely to be very messy", she said. ..."The rhetoric is meaningless if the reality on the ground gets much worse," said Geoffrey Kemp, a top Middle East adviser to former president Ronald Reagan and currently with the Richard M Nixon Center, a think tank in Washington. ...Kemp said the speech - particularly the different treatment accorded US allies, such as Saudi Arabia and the emirates on the one hand, and perceived foes, such as Syria and Iran on the other - will be greeted in the region as another example of the administration's double standards. "The irony is that to succeed in Afghanistan, the US embraced two very powerful dictators, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and he didn't mention either one," noted Kemp.

Neocon-Friendly Solutions for Manning Shortfalls in the War Against Terror
by Karen Kwiatkowski
LewRockwell.com, 3 November 2003
EXCERPT: ...all those demands for expensive bulletproof vests and proper equipment are getting old. Soldiers are worried sick about being shot up with vaccine cocktails and shot down when they try to get health care afterward. Wounded soldiers cause media problems when they mention they are required to pay for their hospital meals or don’t have air conditioning. Today, soldiers must be constantly watched and lectured to prevent embarrassment – either fighting to keep their men alive or making the comments out loud that are on everyone’s mind. Trading citizenship (before or after death, your choice) for military duty to the state is working, but not nearly well enough to implement Global Domination Version 1.0. ...Staying on theme is the very model of a modern major neo-con, so what about mini-nukes in lieu of the draft? Small, five kiloton yield battlefield nuclear weapons would be great at blowing things up, like small Muslim cities, and perhaps later – after they become popular enough and the price comes down – small Midwestern American cities as well.

7 November 2003

Six Killed in U.S. Helicopter Crash in Iraq
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
New York Times, 7 November 2003
EXCERPT: Six American soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed near Saddam Hussein's hometown and a soldier died in an ambush on his convoy in separate incidents in Iraq on Friday, the military said. The Black Hawk helicopter from the 101st Airborne Air Assault Division, which was ferrying the six passengers, went down on the East side of the Tigris river near Tikrit, Iraq at 9:40 a.m., a military statement said. The aircraft caught fire upon landing. The statement did not release the identities of the passengers, but a military spokesperson said they were all soldiers.

Number of Troops in Iraq to Expand
US force to grow by up to 50,000
By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: The Pentagon has decided to dispatch thousands of Marines to Iraq early next year as part of a revised troop rotation that will swell the size of the US occupation by up to 50,000 troops during critical months when the United States hopes to hand off greater security responsibilities to Iraqis, senior defense officials said yesterday. Pentagon officials say the new plan is aimed at adding manpower to improve security in the short term -- when troop numbers will increase from the current 130,000 to as many as 180,000 -- but also meeting President Bush's goal of shrinking the force to 100,000 by the middle of next year

Officials Say U.S. Has No Plans for Iraqi Paramilitary Forces
By ALEX BERENSON
New York Times, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: Occupying forces here have no plans to use privately controlled Iraqi paramilitary forces to augment Iraq's army and police force, senior American and Iraqi officials said today. The United States wants to expand Iraqi security forces as quickly as possible to relieve the burden on the 150,000 American and international troops in Iraq. But proposals to augment state-trained troops with paramilitary forces affiliated with Kurdish and Shia political parties are only beginning to be studied, according to members of Iraq's governing council and Dan Senor, a senior adviser to L. Paul Bremer III, the chief administrator of Iraq. "Ambassador Bremer has always had concerns about this proposal," Mr. Senor said. "The concerns remain." ...occupying authorities worry that the paramilitary forces could become competing power centers to whatever new government Iraqis eventually create. In addition, the paramilitary forces have not been trained for policing in a more-open society and might be prone to use force inappropriately. As a result, Mr. Bremer and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top soldier in Iraq, had said they would not allow paramilitary forces. The Washington Post reported today that Mr. Bremer had changed his mind and "decided to conditionally support the creation of an Iraqi-led paramilitary force." Mr. Senor said that Mr. Bremer had not agreed to support such a force, though he was now open to the idea. "All we are saying is if there's a way to address those concerns, we're open to discussing them," Mr. Senor said. (BWUSA emphasis)

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
As Occupation Worsens, White House Tries to Blame CIA For Rejecting Iraqi Offer on Eve of War
Democracy Now!, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: The New York Times and Newsweek are reporting that the Bush administration rebuffed a last minute deal from Saddam Hussein to stop the invasion of Iraq. According to the reports, Iraqi representatives offered to give the U.S. rights to Iraqi oil, to hold elections in Iraq, to allow for an intensive search for weapons of mass destruction and to hand over an Iraqi man who was connected to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Iraq also agreed to support the U.S. so-called war on terrorism and back any U.S.-written Middle East peace proposal. The offer came about through back-channel negotiations between a Lebanese-American businessman, Pentagon advisor Richard Perle and the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Perle told The New York Times that he met with the Lebanese-businessman but the CIA refused to pursue the negotiations further.

Iraq is Not America's to Sell
By Naomi Klein
Guardian (UK), 7 November 2003
EXCERPT: Bring Halliburton home. Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules. Those are just a few of the suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations. But the "troops out" debate overlooks an important fact. If every last soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of another country; by foreign corporations controlling its essential services; by 70% unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs. Any movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonisation as well.
SEE ALSO: Bush Subcontracts Out the Torture of Terror Suspects (Nation)
 

Secret Israeli Military Test Mistakenly Shown on TV
By Chris McGreal
Guardian (UK), 7 November 2003
EXCERPT: Reality television has finally caught up with the Israeli military. But the country's generals had no idea that their every move was being watched, their secret missile codes broadcast to their enemies or their conversations potentially overheard from Libya to Iran. For two days this week, Israel's communications satellite accidentally beamed a live feed from the control room of a highly classified test missile firing, meaning that they could be viewed by anyone in the Middle East with the simplest satellite dish. Four of Israel's most senior generals and their foreign guests were shown in the control room discussing the relative merits of weapons systems and who they might be used against.
SEE ALSO: Now Europeans See Israel as Threat to Their Existence (Guardian)

Colombia and Human Rights
By Nina Englander
The Nation, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: Human rights groups and a few members of Congress have reacted strongly to Uribe's statements. Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Latin America Working Group, notes that Uribe's "vague accusations could give the green light to those who would attack legitimate opposition politicians, union activists, human rights defenders and community leaders in the name of fighting insurgency." A September 23 letter sponsored by Representative Jan Schakowsky to Secretary of State Colin Powell (signed by nineteen members of the House) condemns Uribe's statements and urges Powell to make a "strong public statement dissociating the United States from President Uribe's remarks, indicating strong US concern with these statements, and asking him to protect, by his words and by his actions, human rights defenders and the broader non-governmental community in Colombia." Senators Dodd, Feingold, Leahy and Kerry sent a similar letter to the Secretary of State asking for a public statement from the US ambassador to Colombia and calling for meetings between the ambassador and Colombian human rights groups. Neither the State Department nor the US Embassy in Colombia has made any public denouncement.

The Iraq Trap: Watch Out What You Ask For
by Norman Solomon
Antiwar.com, November 6, 2003
EXCERPT: Media outlets are filled with bad news about Iraq. A theme is emerging: This administration doesn't know how to run an occupation! Those who oppose President Bush may welcome the recent shift in the media climate. But when war-makers get frustrated, they're inclined to heighten the violence. And some critics of the occupation's management are reinforcing assumptions that lead to more bloodshed. ...The occupation of Iraq must be challenged not merely because the Bush administration miscalculated or because it's inept, but – much more importantly – because militarism and empire are reprehensible. Instead of ceding the media ground to those who demand a better occupation, we should widen the debate by giving voice to a very different vision.

Silly Word Games and Weapons of Mass Destruction
By Josh Marshall
The Hill, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: It’s true that administration officials avoided the phrase “imminent threat.” But in making their argument, Sullivan and others are relying on a crafty verbal dodge — sort of like “I didn’t accuse you of eating the cake. All I said was that you sliced it up and put it in your mouth.” The issue is not the precise words the president and his deputies used but what arguments they made. And on that count, the record is devastatingly clear. To call something an imminent threat means that the blow could come at any moment and that any delay in confronting it risks disaster. Webster’s defines “imminent” as “ready to take place; especially: hanging threateningly over one’s head.” That gets it just about right. The White House described the Iraqi threat as a sword over our heads, a threat we had to confront now.

Loss of Feith in Douglas
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: "What's gonna happen with Feith?"
That, in a nutshell, is the question of the month for the Washington cognoscenti trying to figure out whether a major shift in the Bush administration's unilateralist and ultra-hawkish foreign policy is or is not under way. The reference is to Douglas Feith, the administration's rather obscure but nonetheless strategically placed under secretary of defense for policy, who reports directly to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld. If the administration is looking for a scapegoat for the situation it faces in Iraq, Feith is the most likely candidate, both because of his relative obscurity compared to other administration hawks and the fact that, of virtually all of them, his ideas - particularly on the Middle East - might be the most radical. A protégé of Richard Perle, the former chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) who stands at the center of the neo-conservative foreign-policy network in Washington, Feith has long opposed territorial compromise by Israel.

President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East
Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy
United States Chamber of Commerce
Washington, D.C. , 6 November 2003

British Police Brace for Bush Visit
By WARREN HOGE
New York Times, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT:  President Bush, who has been shielded from protests in recent travels, arrives in Britain on a state visit in two weeks, and the police here are weighing how to control promised street demonstrations without resorting to crowd control measures that could be seen as curbing free expression. "There will be substantial demonstrations over President Bush's visit — as much as 50,000 to 60,000 people," Sir John Stevens, the Scotland Yard chief, told the Police Complaints Authority. "Apart from ensuring his safety, which is our primary concern, we have to ensure the demonstrations are allowed to take place in the normal way we do in this democracy." Mr. Bush is the least popular American president in memory with Britons, and Prime Minister Tony Blair has been castigated by critics as the president's "poodle" for being Mr. Bush's loyal ally and fighting an unpopular United States-led war in Iraq.

6 November 2003

Loonies: The Origin of the Species
If first you don't succeed...
Tapped, The American Prospect, 4 November 2003
This blog entry, and other material that it references, describes three decades of lunacy and gross overestimates of the enemy by the click of neoconservatives that now dominate Bush administration. EXCERPT: In the second Reagan administration, a reform-minded Soviet leader came to the helm and the president largely sidelined the super-hawks in favor of a return to containment. As a result, the Soviet Union was kept in its box and the communist system collapsed under its own weight. The Soviet menace wasn't growing any more than Iraq was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. Getting something like this wrong once is pretty understandable -- intelligence gathering is an inexact science -- but having been proven wrong once, the same group of people came back to power, used the same methods again, and were proven wrong again. Pay attention to administration statements about the WMD search and you'll see the goalpost-moving strategy Pipes employed in this article -- trying to switch the conversation from whether Saddam had weapons to whether he wanted them. Doubtless we'll see the younger members of today's team back 20 years from now insisting that the CIA is underestimating the looming Peruvian threat or something. Some people never learn.
SEE ALSO: Exaggerating The Threats (Newsweek)
SEE ALSO: The Mind of the Administration (Boston Globe)

Possible Deal for Saddam's Resignation Aborted?
Claim: U.S. Government Spurned Peace Talks Before the War With Iraq
By Brian Ross and Chris Vlasto
ABC News, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: A possible negotiated peace deal was laid out in a heavily guarded compound in Baghdad in the days before the war, ABCNEWS has been told, but a top former Pentagon adviser (Richard Perle) says he was ordered not to pursue the deal, ABCNEWS has learned. A prominent Lebanese-American businessman said he secretly met with Iraqi intelligence officials just days after Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out the U.S. case for war at the United Nations in February.

`Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.'
U.S. Had No Interest In Alternative to War
By JAMES RISEN
New York Times, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal. On Feb. 19, Mr. Hage faxed a three-page report on his trip to Baghdad to Mr. Maloof in Washington. The Iraqis, he wrote, "understand the days of manipulating the United States are over." He said top Iraqi officials, including Mr. Habbush and Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, wanted to meet with American officials.The report also listed five areas of concessions the Iraqis said they would make to avoid a war, including cooperation in fighting terrorism and "full support for any U.S. plan" in the Arab-Israeli peace process. In addition, the report said that "the U.S. will be given first priority as it relates to Iraq oil, mining rights," and that Iraq would cooperate with United States strategic interests in the region. Finally, under the heading "Disarmament," the report said, "Direct U.S. involvement on the ground in disarming Iraq."

US Compound in Mosul Shelled
Sydney Morning Herald, 6 November 2003
EXCERPT: Insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades struck a US compound in the northern city of Mosul yesterday, a day after Baghdad's heavily guarded central district came under fire from mortars or missiles. No casualties were reported in yesterday's incident, the US military said. Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, has been relatively quiet in the past several months, but the security situation has deteriorated since last month. The continuing attacks by shadowy groups of Iraqi resistance fighters have cast doubt on the ability of the US-led coalition to contain the growing insurgency, and have sparked an exodus from Baghdad of international organisations and diplomats from several Western countries.

Judge is Shot Dead as Iraqis' Hatred of Occupiers Grows
By Patrick Cockburn in al-Qadasiya
The Independent, 5  November 2003
EXCERPT: Gunmen shot dead a prominent judge in Mosul in northern Iraq yesterday, a day after another judge was kidnapped and killed in Najaf in the south of the country. ...a few miles away lies the scene where a US bulldozer had uprooted part of a grove of orange trees and a few date palms from which American troops had been ambushed a week before. The owner, an ageing sheikh, persuaded them to stop, saying there was no way he could prevent guer- rillas using the trees for cover. The men gathered in the mourning tent were bitter about the killings but they were almost as angry that nobody in the outside world knew or cared their relatives had been killed. They had made an attempt to tell others what had happened to them since the American-led invasion. Close to the road was a banner in broken English reading: "Them removed the tree and killed the kids, women and elderlies and cracked the houses." The US army does not keep a count of Iraqi civilians killed in such incidents, but the hostility they create towards the occupation goes a long way to explain why guerrilla war is becoming endemic in this part of the Iraqi countryside.

More U.S. Call-ups Likely as Turks Indicate No Troops for Iraq
MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer Tuesday,
AP in San Francisco Chronicle, 4 November 2003
EXCERPT: In a major setback to U.S. efforts to attract military help in Iraq, a Turkish official said Tuesday his country won't send peacekeeping troops without a significant change in the situation there. That makes it virtually certain the United States will have to send thousands more U.S. reservists early next year. No additional countries have contributed forces in Iraq since the United Nations Security Council approved a new resolution last month. Bush administration officials had hoped the U.N. action would persuade reluctant allies to send more forces.

Bremer Supports Iraqi-led Force
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
WASHINGTON POST,   November 2003
EXCERPT: The U.S. administrator of Iraq has decided to conditionally support the creation of an Iraqi-led paramilitary force composed of former employees of the country’s security services and members of political party militias, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council wants the force, which would pursue resistance fighters who have eluded American troops, to include a domestic intelligence-gathering unit and to have broad powers to conduct raids and interrogate suspects. Such characteristics would make the proposed force different from those created under other security initiatives undertaken by the Americans, who until now had expressed opposition to the idea. The council leaders contend that Iraq’s municipal police departments are too weak-and American soldiers too lacking in local knowledge-to combat the supporters of former president Saddam Hussein, Islamic militants and foreign guerrillas who are attacking American forces and Iraqis cooperating with the U.S.-led occupation. “We need a security force that is run by Iraqis, that is more heavily armed than the police and is able to act quickly,” said a senior official of the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmed Chalabi, has participated in discussions about the new unit.

5 November 2003

North Korean Nuclear Efforts Looking Less Threatening
By Barbara Slavin and John Diamond
USA TODAY, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: A U.S. intelligence official says the CIA, which has conducted extensive surveillance of North Korea, is "not certain there even is" a uranium-enrichment plant. He says North Korea may have overstated its capability as part of a strategy of "bluff and bluster to extract concessions from the United States."...The reason it's still unclear whether there is a uranium program is that such efforts are difficult to monitor. Plutonium programs, however, emit krypton gas that can be measured from the atmosphere.

Syria Calls on U.S. to Leave Iraq to End Violence
Reuters to My Yahoo!, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: A Syrian official called in remarks published Wednesday for the United States to withdraw from Iraq (news - web sites), saying the problem of terror attacks had arisen only since U.S.-led forces occupied the country. Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bushra Kanfani told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that Damascus was not optimistic about U.S.-Syrian ties in the short term and urged Washington to engage in dialogue instead of making demands. Last week, Washington demanded after a string of deadly suicide attacks that Syria -- which it calls a sponsor of "terrorism" -- should stop foreign militants from entering Iraq.

Three Wounded in Mortar Attack on American Compound in Baghdad
Yahoo News, 5 November 2003
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer
EXCERPT: Insurgents struck Tuesday at the center of the U.S.-led occupation, firing mortars after sundown at the heavily guarded district that includes major American facilities. Three people were wounded, the Pentagon said. Early Wednesday, a U.S. army compound in the northern city of Mosul was hit by rocket-propelled grenades, the military said

Acknowledging reality presents dilemmas for Bush administration
Issue for Bush: How to Speak of Casualties in Iraq
By Elisabeth Bumiller
New York Times, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: When the Chinook helicopter was shot down on Sunday in Iraq, killing 15 Americans, President Bush let his defense secretary do the talking and stayed out of sight at his ranch. The president has not attended the funeral of any American soldiers killed in action, White House officials say. And with violence in Baghdad dominating the headlines this week, he has used his public appearances to focus on the health of the economy and the wildfires in California. But after some of the deadliest attacks yet on American forces, the White House is struggling with the political consequences for a president who has said little publicly about the mounting casualties of the occupation. The quandary for Mr. Bush, administration officials say, is in finding a balance: expressing sympathy for fallen soldiers without drawing more attention to the casualties by commenting daily on every new death. White House officials say their strategy, for now, is to avoid having the president mention some deaths but not others, and so avoid inequity.
SEE ALSO: Insult to Injury: Concealing the Wounded in Iraq (MJ)
SEE ALSO: Senator Says Iraq is Vietnam Again (State)
SEE ALSO: Spain Withdraws Embassy Staff from Iraq (Guardian)

Three Wounded in Mortar Attack in Baghdad
By Robert H. Reid
AP,  4 November 2003
EXCERPT: Insurgents struck Tuesday at the center of the U.S.-led occupation, firing mortars after sundown at the heavily guarded district that includes major American facilities. Three people were wounded, the Pentagon said. Early Wednesday, a U.S. army compound in the northern city of Mosul was hit by rocket-propelled grenades, the military said. There were no casualties.

Survey Shows Skepticism About Iraq
Washington Post, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: Only one in seven Americans agrees with President Bush's assertion that the conflict in Iraq is the most important fight in the war on terrorism, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Since Sept. 7, when Bush addressed the nation to build support for the war in Iraq, he and his aides have described Iraq as "the central front" in the war on terrorism. "We will fight this war against terror until it is won," Bush said recently in one typical speech. "We are fighting on many fronts. Iraq is now the central front."

World to Bush: Well, were there or were there not WMDs in Iraq?
Classified U.S. Report on Iraq Sought by U.N.
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post, 4 November 2003
EXCERPT: The U.N.'s top nuclear weapons inspector Monday called on the United States to provide his agency with a copy of a classified American report on Iraq's banned weapons and to allow his inspectors to return to Iraq. "If there are weapons, we would like to find [them]; if there are no weapons, we would like to conclude the issue," Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview. "They owe us the classified version."

Death By Optimism
By Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times, 5 November 2003
EXCERPT: Evidence suggests that Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney may have actually believed that our troops would be, as Mr. Cheney predicted, "greeted as liberators." The administration chose to rely not on intelligence but on wishful thinking, and it became intoxicated by the siren calls of Ahmad Chalabi, a silver-tongued charlatan. I wish administration officials were lying, because I would prefer hypocrisy to delusion ‹ at least hypocritical officials make decisions with accurate information. Policy by wishful thinking is crippling our occupation. Initially, U.S. officials didn't restrain looting because they regarded it as celebratory high jinks. Then, confident that security was in hand, they disbanded the Iraqi Army. They didn't push hard to bring in international forces.

AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Rumsfeld Calls for Action Against Terrorism Schools But Fails to Act Against School of the Americas
Democracy Now!, 3 November 2003
EXCERPT: Amid a dramatic rise in attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, the Bush administration has stressed a rapid "Iraqification" of the security situation in recent weeks. Disregarding new calls from Capitol Hill for additional U.S. troops to be deployed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that over 100,000 Iraqi forces have been trained to provide security in Iraq and that the number will double by next September. Today we take a look at a U.S. training facility that has been training foreign soldiers for over half a century: The notorious School of the Americas.