31 December 2003

Being Burned by Bush May Be Good For Democrats
By E.J. Dionne
Seattle Times, 30 December 2003
EXCERPT: Here's what's interesting for 2004: The conventional wisdom, fed by shrewd Republican operatives and commentators, is that Democrats, so out there in their antipathy for Bush, will push their party into an extremist wonderland and lose white men, soccer moms and anybody else who does not share their desire for revenge. The opposite is true. Democrats will not have to spend inordinate time or money in this election year "uniting their base." Opposition to Bush has already done that. In the 2000 election, Bush had an advantage over Al Gore because Republican rank-and-filers so hated Bill Clinton ‹ and so wanted to win ‹ that they gave Bush ample room to sound as moderate as John Breaux or Olympia Snowe. Bush's 2000 Republican National Convention hid the base behind the appealing face of inclusiveness and outreach. Gore, in the meantime, had to claw back the votes of liberals and lefties who had strayed to Ralph Nader. This time, the Democrats will have most of the election year to appeal to swing voters. Democrats are so hungry to beat Bush that they will let their nominee do just about anything, even be pragmatic and shrewd.

Electronic Voting Security Firm Hacked
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: A company developing security technology for electronic voting suffered an embarrassing hacker break-in that executives think was tied to the rancorous debate over the safety of casting ballots online. VoteHere Inc. of Bellevue, Wash., confirmed Monday that U.S. authorities are investigating a break-in of its computers months ago, when someone roamed its internal computer network. The intruder accessed internal documents and may have copied sensitive software blueprints that the company planned eventually to disclose publicly.

We don't need no...national standards
How to Measure Student Proficiency?
By FORD FESSENDEN
New York Times, 31 December 2003
EXCERPT: Two recent studies show that such anomalies are widespread, as states have set widely different standards for measuring students' progress under the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind. Three-quarters of children across the country would fail South Carolina's tough fifth-grade test, one study shows, while seven out of eight would ace the third-grade tests in Colorado and Texas. The two studies, one by a nonprofit Oregon testing company and the other by a Washington interest group, take different routes to reach a similar conclusion: Across the country, there is no agreement on how much students need to know to be considered proficient. "It means parents and students are getting very different signals about what it means to be well educated, what it means to be prepared when you leave school," said Michael Cohen, president of Achieve Inc., a nonprofit school reform group in Washington that released a study of state standards in November.

30 December 2003

Our So-Called Boom
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 30 December 2003
EXCERPT: Commerce Department figures reveal a startling disconnect between overall economic growth, which has been impressive since last spring, and the incomes of a great majority of Americans. In the third quarter of 2003, as everyone knows, real G.D.P. rose at an annual rate of 8.2 percent. But wage and salary income, adjusted for inflation, rose at an annual rate of only 0.8 percent. More recent data don't change the picture: in the six months that ended in November, income from wages rose only 0.65 percent after inflation. Why aren't workers sharing in the so-called boom? Start with jobs. Payroll employment began rising in August, but the pace of job growth remains modest, averaging less than 90,000 per month. That's well short of the 225,000 jobs added per month during the Clinton years; it's even below the roughly 150,000 jobs needed to keep up with a growing working-age population. But if the number of jobs isn't rising much, aren't workers at least earning more? You may have thought so. After all, companies have been able to increase output without hiring more workers, thanks to the rapidly rising output per worker. (Yes, that's a tautology.) Historically, higher productivity has translated into rising wages. But not this time: thanks to a weak labor market, employers have felt no pressure to share productivity gains. Calculations by the Economic Policy Institute show real wages for most workers flat or falling even as the economy expands

America and the World Are Not Safer After Saddam's Capture
By Matthew Yglesias
The American Prospect, Tapped, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: Howard Dean was completely correct. Since the capture we've moved to Orange Alert, seen renewed violence in Iraq, and there's still no plausible explanation for how imprisoning Saddam is supposed to have made America safer. If it does turn out to be the case that this remark haunts the Dean campaign on the trail, the blame will lie 100 percent with a media that's more interested in mindlessly parroting the conventional wisdom than reporting the facts.

How the Bush recovery has undone the great balancing act of the New Deal.
Un-American Recovery
By Harold Meyerson
The American Prospect, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: Why is the Bush recovery different from all other recoveries? A slump is a slump is a slump, but it's during recoveries that the distinctive features of a changing economy become apparent. And our current recovery differs so radically from every other bounce-back since World War II that you have to wonder whether we're really talking about the same country.

Top 10 Stories of 2003
According to American Editors, News Directors
By David Crary, Associated Press Writer
AP, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: The "major combat" phase was over in six weeks, but the war in Iraq -- from its tumultuous prelude to a still-active insurgency -- was in the global spotlight throughout the year. By an overwhelming margin, the U.S.-led invasion and occupation was voted the top story of 2003 in The Associated Press' annual survey of American editors and news directors.

Mutual Funds, Corporate Greed, NYSE Were Big News
Scandals Among Year's Top Business Stories
By Adam Geller
AP in Editors and Publishers, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: Greed is not good, but it makes for powerful headlines. Look back at the highlights -- and the depths -- of business news over the past year, and it's the alleged breaches of trust that stand out. The still-evolving economic rebound and the stock market's comeback also were among the biggest stories. But schemes, scandals and allegations of self-enrichment topped the news in 2003, according to U.S. newspaper and broadcast editors surveyed by The Associated Press.

Using the Other Guy's Vitriol to Win Votes
By GEOFFREY NUNBERG
New York Times, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: The anger wars were officially launched last July, when Ed Gillespie gave his first speech as chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Democrats, he said, "serve up raw emotion" in place of solutions, "and that emotion is anger." Mr. Gillespie has been echoing that theme ever since. Last month, he described the Democrats as the party of "protests, pessimism and political hate speech." As alliterative animadversions go, the line may not be in a league with " nattering nabobs of negativism," Vice President Spiro T. Agnew's dismissal of the critics of another Republican administration caught up in a controversial war. But it signals a similar intention to make the Democrats' mood itself an issue in the coming campaign, and to redefine the language of political emotion in the bargain. Marc Racicot, the chairman of the Bush for President campaign, sent out a fund-raising letter last week warning that the president is under "venomous assault from rage-filled Democrats," even as the campaign was releasing a new ad called "When Angry Democrats Attack."

29 December 2003

Has the Bush Economy Been Good for America?
By John Atcheson
Baltimore Sun via SLTribune, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: Before America allows President Bush to take bows on the economy, let's take a closer look at this recovery. A simple thought experiment -- the kind former President Reagan used to like to do -- will help. Imagine for a moment that you took all your credit cards and maxed them out. Now take your mortgage and borrow the maximum on it. Cash in the kid's college fund, your rainy day savings, your 401(k) retirement savings. While you're at it, stop paying for your health insurance and the maintenance on your house, your car and your yard. Now take all that money and spend it. Feeling pretty flush? Sure you are. You just pumped tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars into your pocket. But you'd never do that. Because you know that just because you'd be living large for the time being, you wouldn't be wealthier. In fact, you'd be getting poorer by the minute. And yet, that's exactly what Bush's recovery is -- a giant borrowing binge. But he'd rather you didn't know that. In February, the administration buried a report from its own Treasury Department that said our current fiscal policies, the ones Bush likes to claim are bringing on a "recovery," would create more than $44 trillion in chronic debt. As the London Financial Times noted, $44 trillion is roughly equivalent to 10 times the publicly held national debt, four years of U.S. economic output or more than 94 percent of all U.S. household assets. No wonder things seem good. We've cashed in everything we own at the Bush Pawn Shop, and now we're flashing a serious wad of walkin' around money.

Jobless Count Skips Millions
The rate hits 9.7% when the underemployed and those who have quit looking are added.
By David Streitfeld
LA Times, 29 December 2003
The nation's official jobless rate is 5.9%, a relatively benign level by historical standards. But economists say that figure paints only a partial — and artificially rosy — picture of the labor market. To begin with, there are the 8.7 million unemployed, defined as those without a job who are actively looking for work. But lurking behind that group are 4.9 million part-time workers... who say they would rather be working full time — the highest number in a decade. There are also the 1.5 million people who want a job but didn't look for one in the last month. Nearly a third of this group say they stopped the search because they were too depressed about the prospect of finding anything. Officially termed "discouraged," their number has surged 20% in a year. Add these three groups together and the jobless total for the U.S. hits 9.7%, up from 9.4% a year ago.

The New Republicans
New York Times editorial, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Republican Party has been in charge of the national agenda for almost three years now -- Democratic majorities in Congress don't crimp George W. Bush's style the way they did for his father or Ronald Reagan when they were in office. We have thus had an unobstructed view of what the 21st-century version of the party looks like. It's very clear this is not the father's G.O.P. The most striking thing about the new Republicanism is the way it embraces big government. The Bush administration has presided over a $400 billion expansion of Medicare entitlements. The party that once campaigned to abolish the Department of Education has produced an education plan that involves unprecedented federal involvement in local public schools. There is talk from the White House about a grandiose new moon shot. Budgetary watchdogs like the Heritage Foundation echo the Republican Senator John McCain's complaint about "drunken sailor" spending.

As Endangered Species Act Turns 30, Bush Refuses to List Species
BushGreenWatch.org, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Endangered Species Act turns 30 on Dec. 28, but the Bush Administration doesn¹t appear to be celebrating the occasion. In fact, the Administration is the first since Richard Nixon signed the bill into law in 1973 to refuse to list a single species under the act, except under court order, an analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity finds. An average of 32 species were listed annually under President Reagan; 58 under George H.W. Bush; 65 under Clinton; but only eight under the Bush Administration, according to a Defenders of Wildlife report this month. Defenders President Rodger Schlickeisen said all new species listed under the Bush Administration have been the result of court orders.

GOP Hypocrisy
By Rep. George Miller
The Nation, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: The recent report that Republican Michigan Representative Nick Smith was offered support for his son's Congressional campaign if he would vote in favor of the Medicare bill reminds me of just how hard the Republicans have to work to get their radical bills through Congress despite being in the majority. In fact, on several critical votes this year, the only way they could win was to insure their own wavering members they would be exempt from the drastic changes that their legislation would bring about.
SEE ALSO: Take the Fight to the GOP (Progressive Populist)
SEE ALSO: US Elections 2004: State By State Guide (Guardian)

Florida's Faith-Based Prison Program
By Jacqui Goddard
Christian Science Monitor, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: The taxpayer-funded program is not without controversy. Some say it violates the constitutionally required separation of church and state. "A state can no more create a faith-based prison than it could set up faith-based public schools or faith-based police departments," says the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has a federal lawsuit pending against a state-sponsored evangelical Christian project at a prison in Iowa. "Governor [Jeb] Bush is trying to merge religion and government." Critics see the governor's decision as giving momentum to the wider agenda pioneered by President Bush, his brother, to expand federally funded faith-based initiatives nationwide.

Cops Defend Use of 'Spy' Tactics in Colorado
Protesters cry foul, claim their actions were nonviolent
By Berny Morson
Rocky Mountain News, 27 December 2003
Courtesy of Antiwar.com
EXCERPT: Six people were arrested during an anti-war sit-in at U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard's office on April 14, but only five were charged. The sixth protester, the one who wasn't arrested, was a man who called himself "Chris Taylor." He was in fact an undercover officer planted by the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office.

27-28 December 2003

Bush's Medicare Scam
By Thomas Oliphant
Boston Globe, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: According to Bush and all administration underlings, retired people and others eligible for Medicare are about to get "discounts" on their drug purchases. The price breaks, the president has solemnly assured television cameras, will last between this year and the moment in 2006 when the new law takes full effect. Every person entitled to coverage will be getting a discount card, Bush goes on to note in his standard remarks, and the result of that card will be discounts ranging "from 10 to 25 percent" off the retail price of prescription medicines. That is the official line. From the fine print of the law itself, however, it appears to be a lie. When the first batch of regulations under the new law was issued by the Bush administration, the fine print described a system under which "discounts" are a goal, not a requirement. Retired people have a statutory right to "share" in savings that result from bulk purchasing of drugs, but whether that share is puny or substantial is a matter the Republicans and Bush are leaving up to private corporations. The new legislation gives private firms that will actually run the drug benefits program the business opportunity to distribute these so-called discount cards to beneficiaries. However, any savings in the form of discounts and rebates that these firms are able to achieve in price negotiations with drug manufacturers belong to the private businesses, not to the folks taking the pills.

Similar results seen in Houston
Allegations of Cheating Hint at Stress Teachers Feel
By Megan Tench
Boston Globe, 27 December 2003
EXCERPT: Since the advent of MCAS exams, educators have worried that the tests put too much pressure on students, but now allegations of cheating in a Worcester elementary school are fueling criticism that the tests unduly strain teachers and administrators, as well. The allegations of cheating, which triggered the state's first investigation into schoolwide cheating by teachers, may suggest that accountability requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind Act are raising the stress level of those in the front of the classroom. While some educators say that cheating is an extreme and isolated response, everyone is feeling the heat of increased government scrutiny.

Bush Advisers Target Dean for 2004
Basis of the attack: Label the Democrat a 'Pessimist'
By Adam Nagourney and Richard W. Stevens
Washington Post, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush's campaign has settled on a plan to run against Howard Dean that would portray him as reckless, angry and pessimistic, while framing the 2004 election as a referendum on the direction of the nation more than on the president himself, Mr. Bush's aides say. Some advisers to Mr. Bush, increasingly convinced that Dr. Dean will become their opponent next fall, are pushing to begin a drive to undercut him even before a Democratic nominee becomes clear. But others said the more likely plan would be to hold back until after the Democratic contest had effectively ended, probably no later than March. As a Bush strategist put it, Dr. Dean's rivals are "doing a great job for us" with their increasingly tough attacks on him. "Voters don't normally vote for an angry, pessimistic person to be president of the country," Matthew Dowd, a senior Bush adviser, said as he pressed the anti-Dean theme this week in an interview at Mr. Bush's re-election campaign headquarters. "They want somebody, even if times are not great, to be forward looking and optimistic."
SEE ALSO: Dissing Dean: Dem Attacks Get Noxious (Nation)
SEE ALSO: Bush Embarks on Xmas Turkey Tour 2003 (BWUSA)

Merry Christmas from Dick Cheney
VP holiday greetings make frightening reference to God and empire
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate via Working for Change, 26 December 2003
EXCERPTS: Of course, in the United States, we like to believe in American exceptionalism, to see ourselves as the Shining City on the Hill, a light and beacon unto all the world, and--as it says on that statue given us by our friends, the French--opening our arms to the world's tired, hungry and poor. We would naturally prefer to forget that the country was founded on genocide and slavery, but we have amongst us many nags and scolds who keep bringing it up, especially when we're having one of our snits of American triumphalism. All I am saying is I wouldn't be all too sure about the Lord's intentions regarding empire.

White Terror: Racist Hypocrisy and Homeland Security
By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
Black Commentator, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: Tens of thousands of members of a racist legion operate openly in every corner of the nation--men, women, juveniles, extended families, cells, gangs, churches, clans, militias, border armies, all engaged in what they consider to be a war to the death against non-white America. George Bush and John Ashcroft don't want you to hear about White Terror, understandably fearing that the lyrics of white supremacy strike the same racial chords as the Pirates' own War on Terror theme, itself a rearrangement of the many martial tunes written throughout American history in praise of Manifest Destiny. Less than a decade ago Timothy McVeigh's band of terrorists got carried away with the logic of America as a White Man¹s Country, and may have cost the Republicans the White House in 1996. That's why the homeland security colors didn't change in May of this year, when federal agents arrested a white racist couple dealing in weapons of mass destruction in a small town near Tyler, Texas. The feds seized a cyanide bomb capable of unleashing a deadly, poison cloud, chemicals and components for additional WMDs, gas masks, 100 conventional bombs, an arsenal of automatic weapons, silencers and half a million rounds of ammunition.

The Martial Plan
Police State Tactics Transform a Nation—Our Own
By James Ridgeway
Village Voice, 24-30 December 2003
EXCERPT: Every day the U.S. looks more like a police state. An internal Justice Department probe, based on surveillance videos made by the government inside federal detention facilities, shows that the U.S. harassed, beat, and kept in solitary confinement without access to family or lawyers men it picked up off the streets of New York after 9-11. More likely than not, these men were seized on grounds that some cop or FBI agent thought they looked like Osama followers. Or that a business partner or neighbor decided he could get the man's money or property by charging him first with theft and then telling the cops, "Oh, by the way, I think the guy is Al Qaeda," a claim that one magistrate after another accepted as the reason to set bails so high no one but a millionaire could pay to get out.

Whither Cheney?
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 27 December 2003
EXCERPT: While the Democratic candidates battle for the presidential nomination in the first half of next year, Republicans will face a difficult choice of their own. No, it will not be for the presidential nomination, which George W. Bush – adding daily to his unprecedented campaign war chest by hopscotching to various gold-plated fund-raisers – has already sewn up. Rather, the main battle is likely to be over the Number Two spot, specifically over whether Vice President Dick Cheney will be on the ticket.

Bush's 'ownership' scam
Why Bush's "Ownership Society" Is Just Another Bait and Switch.
By Robert Kuttner
The American  Prospect, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: In President Bush's upcoming State of the Union Address, we are going to hear a lot about something called an "Ownership Society." The idea is that American workers aspire to be owners - owners of stock for their retirement, owners of homes, owners of businesses, owners of good health insurance, and owners of the skills that they need to navigate multiple changes of jobs and careers. It sounds just great. Take a closer look, however, and you will recognize the trademarked Bush combination of inspiring themes coupled with a complete absence of useful tools. In other words, bait-and-switch.
SEE ALSO: High-Wage America: How We Can Reclaim a Middle-Class Society (The American Prospect)

Bush Administration is Rejiggering Data to Make Things Look Better
Nick Confessore
WSJ in The American Prospect (Tapped), 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration's systemic distortion of government-produced data undermines the entire policy process and compromises honest debate. If you don't have a handle on what problems exist, you can't have a worthwhile debate about fixing them. I suppose that for a party which, intellectually at least, doesn't seem to believe that government should be in the business of solving problems, this state of affairs is perfectly acceptable.

Inspection rules tilted to profit, not public safety
Mad Cow Case May Bring More Meat Testing
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
New York Times, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: United States inspectors have tested fewer than 30,000 of the roughly 300 million animals slaughtered in the last nine years, and they get results days or weeks later. But the American system was never intended to keep sick animals from reaching the public's refrigerators, said Dr. Ron DeHaven, the Agriculture Department's chief veterinarian. It is "a surveillance system, not a food safety test," Dr. DeHaven said in an interview on Wednesday. ...Ideally, Dr. Friedlander (an Ag Department vet) could pick animals at random and watch them walk, looking for stumbling, facial paralysis, drooping ears and other signs of nerve damage, which can also be caused by rabies or cancer. Instead, he said, department rules let them be walked by in groups of six. "I'm lucky if I see the second or third," he said. "The sixth? Forget about it." He said that he rejected 25 to 30 cows a day worth about $500 each, and that when he stopped the production line, managers complained that he was costing them $5,000 a minute. Ultimately, he said, they complained to Washington, and he was transferred. He quit and has since sued the department over his transfer; it is fighting his suit.

Now It's a Scandal
New evidence that a House GOP leader offered a bribe.
By Timothy Noah
Slate, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: What does a guy have to do to get a congressional bribe investigated? Even making allowances for slow readers, John Ashcroft's Justice Department is taking an awfully long time to decide whether to do anything about the (unsuccessful) attempt to bribe Rep. Smith [for his vote on the Medicare Bill]. ...According to two other congressmen who were present, Smith told [a group of 20 House members] that House Republican leaders had promised substantial financial and political support for his son's campaign if Smith voted yes.
SEE ALSO: Slate's Medicare Bribe Archive:
Dec. 8, 2003: "A Drug-Company Bribe?"
Dec. 6, 2003: "Why Smith Can't Recant"
Dec. 5, 2003: "Nick Smith Recants"
Dec. 1, 2003: "Who Tried To Bribe Rep. Smith?"

Cheney Should Check His Own 'Facts'
By HELEN THOMAS
Hearst in Seattle PI, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT:  Look who's talking. Vice President Dick Cheney is accusing the press of "cheap-shot journalism" in covering the Bush administration, claiming "people don't check the facts." Cheney is miffed over a raft of stories about his ties to Halliburton Co., a Houston-based energy conglomerate, which is a major recipient of U.S. contracts to rebuild Iraqi. While he's lecturing about accuracy, Cheney should do some fact-checking of his own statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

26 December 2003

Bush Officials Punished for the Truth, Rewarded for Lies
Editorial
Washington Post, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: Unless wiser heads in the upper reaches of the Bush administration prevail, underlings in the Interior Department are about to deliver a low blow to honesty and integrity in government. For responding with the truth to questions from The Post and other news outlets about staffing in her department, U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers has been placed on leave and notified that superiors in the National Park Service and Interior want her fired. And what was the chief's transgression? She said her understaffed department had to curtail critical patrols in Park Service jurisdictions beyond the Mall, such as major parkways and crime-ridden U.S. parkland in neighborhoods, because of Interior Department orders requiring more officers to guard downtown national shrines. The impending action ought to be reversed. Ms. Chambers should be commended for speaking up for public safety. The Interior Department underlings trying to muzzle her are the ones who should be on their way out the door.

The Politics of Cattle Slaughter
By Wayne Pacelle
Seattle Times, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: The "mad-cow" threat to public health and the potential economic disaster that now looms could have been prevented if the U.S. Congress, the Department of Agriculture, and the American beef and dairy industries had agreed to a single, simple step: Ban the slaughter of diseased cattle for human consumption. Animal-welfare and food-consumer groups have long warned that the agriculture department has been playing Russian roulette with the nation's meat supply by allowing "downer" animals — cattle too sick to stand or walk — to be slaughtered for human consumption. Most downers are spent dairy cattle, and are the prime carriers of "mad-cow" disease.
SEE ALSO: FDA Cited Tacoma Firm for Cattle-feed Violations (Seattle Times)
SEE ALSO:
Congress Scuttled Meat Protection Measure
By MARK SHERMAN
AP in Yahoo!News.com, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: Legislation to keep meat from downed animals off American kitchen tables was scuttled — for the second time in as many years — as Congress labored unsuccessfully earlier this month to pass a catchall agency spending bill. Now, in the wake of the apparent discovery of the first mad-cow case in the United States, the author of the House version of the cattle provision wants to press the issue anew when Congress returns Jan. 20 from its winter recess. The massive, $373 billion spending bill covering several government agencies is still pending in the Senate. "I said on the floor of the House that you will rue the day that because of the greed of the industry to make a few extra pennies from 130,000 head, the industry would sacrifice the safety of the American people," said Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., chief House sponsor. "It's so pound foolish." The provision dealing with downed cattle didn't even make it into the compromise version of the legislation that House and Senate conferees brought before Congress late in the year. The Agriculture Department estimates that 130,000 downed animals that are too injured or sick to stand or walk unassisted are slaughtered every year. About 36 million cows are slaughtered each year in the United States.

Terror Alert Undermines Administration's Safety Claims
Some terror experts say raised alert shows Hussein's capture will not make US safer from attack.
By Tom Regan
csmonitor.com, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: Reuters reports many analysts and lawmakers believe that by putting the nation on high alert for terrorist attacks that could be bigger than those of 9/11, the Bush administration has undermined many of its recent claims of success against Al Qaeda. ..."I think that although he's suffering for it, Howard Dean was probably right – the capture of Saddam [Hussein] has very little to do with day-to-day security" inside the United States, said Hurst Hannum, an international affairs professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University ..."What continues to astonish me is that more of the American public continues to think there's some connection between Iraq and terrorism, which just isn't true," Hannum said.

The Death of Horatio Alger
By Paul Krugman
The Nation, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago. The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society. And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains--or even points out what is happening--as a practitioner of "class warfare."
SEE ALSO: Class Warfare (The Nation)

Sierra Club Picks Worst Bush Administration Environmental Exploits of 2003
Common Dreams, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: Tripling allowable levels of mercury pollution, shifting the burden of toxic clean up from polluters to taxpayers, and undoing rules for cleaning up America's dirtiest power plants topped a laundry list of Bush administration exploits to weaken decades environmental progress in 2003. "The Bush administration is systematically turning back 30 years of environmental progress," said Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director. "You really have to go back to the McKinley administration in the late 19th century to find so many gratuitous giveaways to special interests looking to exploit our air, water, and natural areas. Americans want a 21st century administration that can deliver forward-thinking environmental solutions."

Nasdaq, NYSE Merger Rumors Point to Markets' Troubled Times
By Bill Atkinson
Baltimore Sun in Seattle Times, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: Stock prices have been soaring, putting a rosy glow on the cheeks of Wall Street traders. But behind all of the good cheer, America's securities markets are in crisis. Nasdaq, which framed itself in the 1990s as the high-tech market of the future, is in decline while the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the granddaddy of them all, is being forced to deal with mounting demands for reform of a system designed to reward good-old-boy trading specialists more than investors.

To Give or Not to Give: The Crisis of Confidence in Charities
by Paul C. Light
Brookings Institute, Policy Brief, December 2003
EXCERPT: Confidence slipped when charities were slow to respond after 9/11, and it has been battered in the past year by scandals. The news media have delved into lavish spending at some of the nation's leading philanthropies, improper payments at the United Way of the National Capitol Area, conflicts of interest at the Nature Conservancy, and the firing of new YWCA president and feminist leader Patricia Ireland after just six months on the job. In turn, these stories have sparked legislative investigations and calls for tighter regulation, most recently from the California State Attorney General, who joined his colleagues in Minnesota and New York in calling for a new era in charitable accountability and the legislation to create it. Where the media go, Congress, state attorneys general, and watchdog groups are sure to follow.

25 December 2003

Claim vs. Fact: Setting the Record Straight on the White House's Rundown of 2003
Center for American Progress
Courtesy of TomPaine.com, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: On Dec. 13, the White House issued a document entitled "2003: A Year of Accomplishment for the American People." The document made various inaccurate and deceptive claims about the administration's record over the last year. This report by the Center for American Progress seeks to correct those distortions, matching the White House's rhetoric with facts.

BUSH EMBARKS ON XMAS TURKEY TOUR 2003
A BushWhackedUSA Special Feature
25 December 2003
EXCERPT: Building on the dubious success of his top-secret, two-hour visit into the high security heart of the American-occupied Iraqi airport/fortress, Bush delivers a heaping helping of fake turkey to the people of America.
SEE ALSO: God Bless Us, Each and Everyone (Guardian cartoon)

Bush thwarted in effort that would have killed 19,000 Americans
Court Blocks Easing of E.P.A. Rules on Industrial Pollution
By Jennifer 8. Lee
New York Times, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: Bush administration efforts to loosen regulations on older coal-burning power plants were dealt a setback today when the District Court of Appeals here blocked the changes from taking effect on Friday. The court said that the more than dozen states and cities and environmental advocacy groups that filed a legal challenge to the new administration rules had a sound chance of winning their case. The Environmental Protection Agency expressed disappointment with the court's decision but did not say whether it would be appealed. The court order, while only two pages in length, was a strong statement in one of the most contentious environmental and public health battles of the last several years ‹ whether aging coal-fired power plants must install controls as they increase their pollution emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that full enforcement of existing rules on power plant pollution would save 19,000 lives per year. [Emphasis by BWUSA--Does the EPA not see a contradiction here?!]

Bush Pays Lip Service to Vets, Then Slashes Their Benefits
The Daily Mislead, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: Late last week President Bush visited combat veterans at Walter Reed Medical Center. During his visit, he said "We have made a commitment to the troops, and we have made a commitment to their loved ones, and that commitment is that we will provide excellent health care - excellent care - to anybody who is injured on the battlefield." His comments stand in stark contrast to the policies he has pushed - and the record he has amassed - as President. Just this year alone, the President "announced his formal opposition to a proposal to give National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon's health-insurance system"- a slap in the face to thousands of troops, especially considering "a recent General Accounting Office report estimated that one of every five Guard members has no health insurance." The President also this year proposed to cut $1.5 billion (14%) out of funding for military family housing/medical facilities. This followed his 2002 budget which, according to major veterans groups, "fell $1.5 billion short" of adequately funding veterans care.

Election Matters: Nader Flees the Greens
By John Nichols
The Nation, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: Ralph Nader has finally figured out how to unite Democrats and Greens. After Nader notified Green officials that he would not seek the party's presidential nomination in 2004 and let it be known that he might stand as an independent, it can safely be said that a number of Green activists were every bit as upset with Nader as those Democrats who believe the votes he won in key states cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. In a sense, however, both the Democrats and the Greens are wrong to worry. A Nader candidacy in 2004, either as a Green or as an unaffiliated independent, was never likely to win as many votes as the 2.9 million the consumer activist secured in 2000. The determination to prevent George W. Bush from securing a second term is so strong on the left that it has caused a great many voters who backed Nader, and even some who consider themselves Greens, to grudgingly accept that they will be voting for a Democrat in 2004. If you scratch a Dennis Kucinich backer, you will usually find a Nader enthusiast. And if you attend a Howard Dean meet-up, you'll see plenty of students with Green Party pins still attached to their knapsacks. I've talked to a lot of them; they haven't necessarily given up on third-party politics, and many of them still revere Nader, but they are passionate about beating Bush this time around

24 December 2003

A slow, voluntary recall in the U.S. is likely!
Countries Ban American Beef After First Mad Cow Case
By MATTHEW L. WALD and ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: A sick cow slaughtered about two weeks ago near Yakima, Wash., has tested positive for mad cow disease in early laboratory results, the first such case in the United States, the secretary of agriculture said on Tuesday. Shortly after the announcement, Japan said it was banning imports of American beef. The South Korean agriculture ministry said in a statement that South Korea was also halting American beef imports and that it was pulling American beef products off supermarket shelves. [On Wednesday morning, Russia, Thailand and Hong Kong also announced that they too were banning imports of American beef products.]  American agriculture officials are likely to announce as early as Wednesday a voluntary recall on beef they hope to trace to the plants where the cow was slaughtered and processed, said Dr. Elsa Murano, the under secretary for food safety. ...Critics say that the safeguards are not perfect. Among the problems, they say, is that machines that strip meat scraps from carcasses can contaminate the meat with tissue from the nervous system. Critics also say that regulations to prevent contamination of cattle food with nerve tissue are unevenly enforced. "We put a number of measures in place that we thought would substantially reduce our chance of seeing mad cow disease in this country, but clearly those methods fell short of perfect," said Dr. Fred Cohen, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California at San Francisco and a leading expert on ways to treat prion diseases. ...The diagnosis in Washington State came just a week after a federal appeals court in New York revived a lawsuit brought by an animal rights group that says that the Agriculture Department has not done enough to protect consumers from mad cow disease. The group, Farm Sanctuary, maintained in a 1998 lawsuit that the government's policy of allowing the slaughter of animals that cannot walk poses a significant health risk to consumers. A judge threw out the suit, saying the danger was remote, but the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned that decision last week.
SEE ALSO: What is the Meatrix? (excellent flash animation)
http://www.themeatrix.com/

Feel safer?
Bush Deploys Missiles Around American Airports
Officials fear al-Qaida may hijack planes again to target US interests
By Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: The US has deployed anti-aircraft missiles around Washington and other possible terrorist targets in fear of another attack using a commercial plane, but there is disagreement among intelligence officials about how direct the threat is to America. Tom Ridge, the head of US homeland security, put the country on high alert on Sunday, warning of a possible attack over the holiday season on a par with the September 11 attacks, or even more devastating.... US officials have insisted that there is unanimity within the administration over the credibility of its intelligence on this occasion, but one intelli gence source in Washington said that some CIA officials believed that Mr Ridge had exaggerated the threat to the US. "There has been a lot of dissent about this," said the source, who has close contact with CIA officials. "There isn't any substantiated information about an attack on the United States itself. Everything seems to point towards an attack on Saudi Arabia or the Arabianpeninsula."

Medicare Law Might Limit Drug Discounts for Insurers
By GARDINER HARRIS
New York Times, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: Two provisions buried deep in the nearly 700-page Medicare drug law may limit the discounts that insurers and pharmacy benefit managers can get from drug makers - and, therefore, how far the new drug benefit for the elderly will stretch, executives say. One provision allows doctors to prescribe for their Medicare patients whatever drug they deem "medically necessary," even if that drug is not on an insurer's list of preferred drugs. Other language in the measure, which President Bush signed into law on Dec. 8, requires that companies providing a drug benefit make at least two comparable drugs available in every treatment category. Both provisions, industry executives say, could limit the negotiating power of companies that use preferred drug lists, known as formularies, to win discounts from drug makers. Without significant drug discounts, monthly premiums for the benefit could soar above the expected $35 a month, said Terry Latanich, a senior vice president of Medco Health Solutions, one of the nation's largest pharmacy benefit managers. "If premiums escalate, people will drop out, and the private sector may not be able to sustain this program," he said. Healthy people would be the likeliest to opt out, according to Mr. Latanich, and insurers might be unwilling to offer coverage that would appeal only to patients sure to make heavy use of it.

Gays Banned from National Parks, Civil Service Group Says
365Gay.com, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: All images of gay gatherings at national sites, including the Millennium March on the Washington Mall have been ordered removed from videotapes that have been shown at the Lincoln Memorial since 1995 according to a civil service group. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) says that the directive came from National Parks Service Deputy Director Donald Murphy. Murphy is said to have been concerned about pictures in the video that showed same-sex couples kissing and holding hands after conservative groups complained. The Millennium March held in 2000 to bring attention to LGBT civil rights issues drew tens of thousands of gays and their supporters to the mall for one of the biggest demonstrations since the civil rights and anti-war marches of the 1960s. Also ordered cut from the tape were scenes of abortion rights demonstrations at the memorial, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations "because it implies that Lincoln would have supported homosexual and abortion rights as well as feminism." In their place, the Park Service is inserting scenes of the Christian group Promise Keepers and pro-Gulf War demonstrators though these events did not take place at the Memorial in what Murphy calls a "more balanced" version. "The Park Service leadership now caters exclusively to conservative Christian fundamentalist groups," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "The Bush Administration appears to be sponsoring a program of Faith-Based Parks." [Italics by BWUSA]
UPDATE: Gay Footage Will Stay in Lincoln Memorial Video (Gay.com)

Bush Administration Policy: Never Apologize, Never Explain
By David Corn
The Nation, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: Never apologize. Never explain. Never concede. Many politicians--and many Homo sapiens--live and die by these words. But the Bush clan has emblazoned them onto the family crescent. Bush has had a good run of late: US forces nabbed Saddam Hussein, Libyan ruler Moammar Qadaffi declared he would voluntarily abandon his WMD programs, the US economy grew at a high rate this past quarter. All of this has contributed to a Bush bubble, and political commentators are once again diminishing the chances of the Democratic presidential nominee, whomever it will be. But at the moment Bush's political fortunes are on the rise, more evidence has emerged showing that he deserves less respect than ever.

After a Scandal-Filled Year, CEOs Still Get Bonuses
By Allan Sloan
Washington Post, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: You've got to love it. First, the guys running Wall Street used their shareholders' money to settle with Spitzer, which ensured that they wouldn't be brought up on criminal charges, which could have destroyed any indicted firm. Then, having used the shareholders' money to remove the stock-depressing cloud over their firms, the top executives take more shareholder money to reward themselves for getting the stock price up.

Secrets, Lies and Media Privilege
Protecting the government sources who maligned Wen Ho Lee is wrong.
Robert Scheer
LA Times, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: Should government agents, operating on their own authority and in violation of privacy law, be allowed to smear Americans by leaking false information to the media? Are journalists who print those lies protected by the 1st Amendment from revealing their sources, thereby preventing those falsely accused from obtaining justice through lawsuits? Those issues were raised by a federal judge's recent ruling that demanded the names of the sources used by reporters who in 1999 printed false claims that scientist Wen Ho Lee had passed on nuclear secrets to China. Lee was held in solitary confinement for nine months before the government's case collapsed and 58 of the 59 charges against him were dropped. The conservative Reagan-appointed judge in the case said in freeing Lee, "I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner in which you were held in custody by the executive branch." To sue for violation of his rights under the federal Privacy Act, Lee must identify the government agencies that leaked the defamatory information. In the end, in a plea bargain forced by prosecutors threatening Lee with life in prison, the scientist admitted to one count of mishandling government data. The data had not even been classified as secret when Lee mishandled it. But no matter, his reputation and career had been destroyed, leaving U.S. District Judge James Parker to conclude that the government's treatment of Lee "embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it." Lee is now exercising a sacred legal right — that of the accused to confront his accuser. Free-press advocates should be more interested in exposing how the government manipulated the media to malign a loyal citizen than in defending the right of reporters to protect anonymous sources.

23 December 2003

The GOP talks class: Make love (i.e., money), not war
Tax Plans Target an 'Investor Class'
By Peter G. Gosselin
LA Times, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: ...the Bush administration is turning to the coming presidential contest and its new Big Idea for the election year — speeding the nation's transformation into an "ownership society." The president highlighted the notion last week in signing a bill to help 40,000 low-income families annually make down payments on homes. "This administration," he declared, "will constantly strive to promote an ownership society in America." As he spoke, Treasury officials tinkered with proposals for a new generation of tax-break-driven savings accounts, administration allies in Congress pushed plans to partially privatize Social Security and GOP activists pored over voting data that they claim shows the formation of a new — and conservative — "investor class." "This is the most important new demographic group in a generation and courting it will assure Republican dominance of American politics for decades," said Stephen Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth in Washington. Perhaps. But before the "ownership society" takes on an election-year life of its own, it is worth examining a few key struts to the argument that this is what America is, or could shortly become.

Making the world safe for corporations...
U.S. Rarely Seeks Charges for Workplace Deaths
By David Barstow
New York Times, 22 December 2003
EXCERPT: Every one of their deaths was a potential crime. Workers decapitated on assembly lines, shredded in machinery, burned beyond recognition, electrocuted, buried alive ‹ all of them killed, investigators concluded, because their employers willfully violated workplace safety laws. These deaths represent the very worst in the American workplace, acts of intentional wrongdoing or plain indifference that kill about 100 workers each year. They were not accidents. They happened because a boss removed a safety device to speed up production, or because a company ignored explicit safety warnings, or because a worker was denied proper protective gear. And for years, in news releases and Congressional testimony, senior officials at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration have described these cases as intolerable outrages, "horror stories" that demanded the agency's strongest response. They have repeatedly pledged to press wherever possible for criminal charges against those responsible. These promises have not been kept.
SEE ALSO: A Recovery for Profits, But Not For Workers (NYT)
SEE ALSO: 90,000 Lose Jobless Benefits Just Before Christmas (BG)

Bush Administration Moves to Relax Fire Safety Rules at Nuclear Plants
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 22 December 2003
EXCERPT: Instead of having proper fire safety measures in place, NIRS says, the NRC is letting utilities get off simply with plans to send reactor employees into the reactor building during a fire to "manually operate" the safety features. (Great plan! I'm sure every employee is going to want to charge back into a burning nuclear reactor building to push buttons and pull levers and such.)

Con Job at Diebold Subsidiary
AP, 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: At least five convicted felons secured management positions at a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, according to critics demanding more stringent background checks for people responsible for voting machine software. Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold, one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.
SEE ALSO: A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America (TruthOut.org)
SEE ALSO: Criticism of Electronic Voting Machines Mounts (Computer World)
SEE ALSO: Paperless Voting Declared Worst Technology of 2003 (Fortune Magazine)

Wesley Clark: Dean Wanted Me as Running Mate
By Gary Younge
Guardian (UK), 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Democratic party frontrunner, Howard Dean, offered retired general Wesley Clark the vice-presidential slot on his ticket before Mr Clark decided to run himself, it has been claimed. Mr Clark says he and Mr Dean met in early September when the vice-president's slot "was sort of discussed ... and dangled before I made the decision to run". He said he told the former Vermont governor he was "really not interested in even talking about it". He added he was "absolutely not" interested in being Mr Dean's running mate. "I don't see that in the cards," he said.
SEE ALSO: The Web's Candidate for President (Guardian)

A Flawed Terrorist Yardstick
The Justice Dept. tally of more than 280 suspects detained for prosecution after Sept. 11 is inflated with dismissed and unrelated cases.
By Richard B. Schmitt
LA Times, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: In October, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wray, the Justice Department's criminal division chief, cited the growing number of charges resulting from terrorism probes — which then stood at 284 defendants — as evidence that the department has "enjoyed key successes" in the anti-terrorism war. Last month, in a speech before a Justice Department liaison group for federal attorneys, Ashcroft cited terrorism-related criminal charges against 286 people, declaring "we have been successful." But a Times review of a sampling of the cases behind the numbers, based in part on internal Justice documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, paints a more ambiguous picture.

22 December 2003

Promise Them the Moon: Bush Fails America's Children
TomPaine.com, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: In a desperate search for a bold plan to galvanize the country, the White House recently floated the idea of sending a man to the moon. Again.
But imagine how this country would be transformed if the president rallied the nation to truly accomplish what's now just one of many unfulfilled promises: "leave no child behind." Twelve million children live below the poverty line and the numbers are increasing even for those whose parents work. More than 9 million kids under the age of 19 have no health insurance. Thousands of the nation's schools are doomed. Pediatric asthma rates are rising along with air pollution. And massive federal debt looms over future generations.
SEE ALSO: America's Forgotten Future: Its Children (TP)
SEE ALSO: Kids Aren't Alright (TP)
SEE ALSO: Howard Dean: Out of the Mainstream? Hardly (Washington Post)

Justice Goes Offshore and Is Imprisoned
By Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch in ZNet, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: Domestically, American justice first began to visibly morph into imperial justice just in the wake of the September 11 attacks with the passage of the Patriot Act by a terrified and supine Congress and with the mass detention of Arabs immigrants and Arab-Americans. Internationally, the key event -- along with the spur of the moment employment of all sorts of coercive measures of captivity and interrogation during the Afghan campaign and the crude incarceration centers set up on our new bases in Afghanistan -- was the infernally clever use we made of our old colonial base at Guantanamo, Cuba to house those swept up in our Afghan War. Not on American soil and just beyond the reach of our courts, Guantanamo remained within our treaty rights. The Devil's Island of a prison constructed there under the pressure of and fears engendered by the September 11th attacks, has provoked remarkably little outrage here.

Cheney Faces Prosecution in France
The Age, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: A French official is examining whether to prosecute US Vice President Dick Cheney over alleged complicity in the abuse of corporate assets dating from the time he was head of the services company Halliburton, the French newspaper Le Figaro said. The case stems from a contract by a consortium including the American company Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a Halliburton subsidiary, and a French company, Technip, to supply a gas complex to Nigeria, the newspaper reported.
SEE ALSO: The Imperial Vice-Presidency: Cheney Says the E-Word (Slate)

Cheney: Three-time Loser
Editorial, Palm Beach Post, 20 December 2003
EXCERPT: It is one of Washington's open secrets. When the Bush administration was preparing to take over in January 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney asked power industry pooh-bahs to set the nation's energy policy. Their industries had given lots of money to the Bush-Cheney campaign, and Mr. Bush's policy -- still not law, fortunately -- would give those industries what they want, which in many cases isn't what the nation needs. Officially, though, names of the participants still are secret. Mr. Cheney won't say who offered what the White House, with a straight face, calls "advice" to the National Energy Policy Development Group. White House lawyers say federal employees made up the group and note that the government has released almost 40,000 pages of documents about the group. But Mr. Cheney doesn't want to reveal which private businessmen and lobbyists worked with the group. He says nobody outside the White House has a right to ask.

US more safe with Saddam in custody?
US Moves to High Terror Alert
Credible evidence of attack to rival 9/11
Julian Borger
The Guardian, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration yesterday put the United States on a high state alert, saying it had picked up credible intelligence of a possible terrorist attack "that could either rival or exceed" September 11. The homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, did not give details of the expected nature of a potential attack, but mentioned "significant concern" that aircraft could be used again. Homeland security officials said there was also concern about the possible use of chemical, biological or radiological weapons. It is the first time in seven months that the US has issued an orange alert - the second highest status after red - and Mr Ridge said the threat was "perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11, 2001".

US Republicans Signal Readiness to Resume Senate Iraq Weapons Probe
Yahoo! Singapore News, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: US Senate Republicans signaled their readiness to resume a probe into pre-war charges that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which was halted more than six weeks ago amid bitter partisan bickering. "I think we will have, hopefully, some public hearings by February," announced Pat Roberts, chairman of the US Senate intelligence committee, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" program. "We will get those questions out." US President George W. Bush and other top administration officials had accused Iraq of secretly producing chemical and biological weapons in violation of UN resolutions -- charges that were used to justify the March invasion of the country. ...The Senate committee had been revisiting the US intelligence dossier and looking into whether the Bush administration twisted data to suit its goal of regime change in Iraq. But hearings into the matter were suspended in early November, after Senate Republicans, citing a leaked Democratic strategy paper, accused Democrats of trying to exploit the investigation for political gain. Now, striking a conciliatory posture, Roberts said he had been working with the ranking committee Democrat, Senator John Rockefeller, and other members to defuse the standoff.

Condi and the 9/11 Commission
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is apparently not keen on going under oath for the Kean 9/11 commission.
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER
Time.com, 20 December 2003
EXCERPT: Poised to convene its first hard-hitting hearings in January, the federal commission investigating the 9/11 attacks continues to be at odds with the White House over access to key information and witnesses. Two government sources tell TIME that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is arguing over ground rules for her appearance in part because she does not want to testify under oath or, according to one source, in public. While national security advisers are presidential staff and generally don’t have to appear before Congress, the commission argues that its jurisdiction is broader—and it's been requiring fact witnesses in its massive investigation to testify under oath. The exception: it may not seek to swear in President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Bill Clinton or Al Gore in the increasingly likely event they will be asked to speak to the commission. "I think that it is in their interest to meet with us," says GOP commission member John Lehman, saying that they should be invited, not subpoenaed, and be allowed to appear behind closed doors.

Presidential Powers: A Court Pushes Back
How do you solve a problem like Padilla?
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek, Dec. 29/Jan. 5 issue
EXCERPT: The White House was repeatedly warned by senior lawyers that it was facing a major legal setback if it persisted with claims that the president was empowered to indefinitely lock up U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants" without access to counsel or a right to trial. Those warnings were borne out Dec. 18 when a U.S. court of appeals panel in New York ruled that "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla was being held unconstitutionally and should be released from a military brig. White House officials vowed to appeal. But some administration insiders said the fallout from the Padilla ruling could be far-reaching—and that it vindicated doubts expressed by some White House and Justice officials about the administration's tough stand. "This is worse than what we feared," says one who worked on the case.
SEE ALSO: Judicial Blows against Military Tyranny (Future of Freedom Foundation)
SEE ALSO: The Stakes Are Huge (Working For Change)

Rush to judgment: The Wen Ho Lee-ing of Capt. James Yee
Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: Right-wing commentators chuck charges of treason at Capt. Yee. Stupidity, racism, or both? ...Early media reports "quoted defense officials as suggesting Yee may have been part of a major espionage plot at Guantanamo, where he had contact with at least some of the 660 men that the United States is holding as suspected terrorists," Reuters reported. In late November, after being held in solitary confinement in a Navy brig for more than two months, Capt. Yee was released and transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia. There, two additional charges were brought against him; adultery and downloading pornography on a government-issued computer. A U.S. Southern Command statement explained that the Captain would report to the chief chaplain at Ft. Benning "where he will perform duties commensurate to his rank." Finally, in early December, Capt. Yee appeared in an Army court at a preliminary hearing to determine whether the charges he is now facing -- mishandling classified documents, downloading pornography and committing adultery -- were enough to warrant a court martial. Under military law, conviction on these charges could result in a prison sentence, but as a Reuters report pointed out, "none are related to spying."

20-21 December 2003

Hey, They're Taking Slash-and-Burn to Extremes!
By Charles Babington
Washington Post, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: Defenders of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay say Republicans are simply repaying Democrats for wounds inflicted during four decades of Democratic House control. It's not hard to find congressional scholars who disagree. "Under Democratic rule, certainly you had a kind of marginalization of the minority, but not to the degree that it's being pursued now," says Ross K. Baker of Rutgers University. Jim Thurber, director of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies observes...These hardball techniques underscore a paradox of current U.S. politics: The electorate is almost evenly divided, but federal policymaking is increasingly one-sided. With only the narrowest of House and Senate margins, Republican leaders are deploying scorched-earth, compromise-be-damned tactics, as if they ruled the nation 80-20, not 51-49. Rather than building broader consensus, they have decided they can't afford centrist compromises that might attract some Democratic support but lose even more votes from the GOP conservative wing.

Study: Health Cuts For Poor Rising
CBS News, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: More than 1.2 million low-income Americans, including 500,000 children, have lost health coverage as a result of state cutbacks in programs for the poor, according to a new study by a liberal Washington think tank. Thirty-four states have cut health insurance programs for the poor and children because of deep budget deficits over the past two years, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said. Further cuts are likely next year, when a temporary federal government increase in its share of Medicaid expires, the group said. Medicaid is the joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor. "Cuts of this magnitude in health coverage for low-income families are unprecedented," said Leighton Ku, a senior fellow at the think tank.

Feds OK DirecTV Takeover
CBS News, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: Federal regulators on Friday approved News Corp.'s takeover of DirecTV, the nation's largest satellite television provider, but imposed certain conditions on the $6.6 billion deal. The Republican-dominated FCC split along party lines, 3-2, to approve the deal. News Corp. owns the Fox broadcasting network and the Fox News Channel, headed by former GOP political operative Roger Ailes. Under the deal announced in April, News Corp. would acquire 34 percent of DirecTV parent Hughes Electronics, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp. The deal would give News Corp. the largest block of shares in Hughes and controlling interest in DirecTV, which has more than 11 million subscribers. Some consumer groups, who said that it would further reduce competition by shrinking the number of media companies, and would drive up the price of cable and satellite services, opposed the deal. "Given Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corporation's already bloated holdings in over-the-air TV and cable programming, the FCC should have rejected this deal," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a media watchdog group. "At the very least, they should have imposed stringent safeguards that would have ensured unfettered opportunities for new and competing programmers on DirecTV."

Job Growth Up, Job Quality Down
Economic Policy Institute,
Economic Snapshot for 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: Along with the growth of employment, however, it is also important to examine the quality of the jobs gained relative to those lost. ...Compared to the job market of the latter 1990s, many of the new jobs added in this recovery pay relatively low wages. At the same time, some of the higher wage sectors, such as manufacturing and high-end services, continue to lose employment or grow too slowly to provide enough higher earning opportunities for job seekers. This dynamic, in tandem with the fact that wages are rising more slowly within specific industries right now, has the potential to significantly slow the growth of living standards for working families. With this in mind, job quality should be closely monitored as the recovery proceeds.

Are US Troops Being Denied Benefits?
CBS, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: Many wounded U.S. soldiers are treated at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where President Bush today awarded Purple Hearts to 21 soldiers. But CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, wounded troops may return from war to find themselves in a different kind of battle--with the U.S. military. A disabled soldier will never see combat again, but he might find himself fighting a new fight against the government's medical bureaucracy.

Bush's Holiday Tradition of Stealth Environmental Announcements
BushGreenWatch.org, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: Tradition is an important part of the holidays for many Americans, and the Bush Administration is no exception. This holiday season, the Administration is adhering to its tradition of waiting until odd hours -- when the press and public are preoccupied with other things -- to announce controversial environmental decisions. The year's holiday announcements kicked off last month, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service chose the day after Thanksgiving to announce its "incidental take rule" allowing for the killing of polar bears and Pacific walrus by oil companies drilling on the North Slope of Alaska. Late-afternoon announcements on Fridays are another tactic. On Friday, Dec. 5, the Administration announced proposed rollbacks to Clinton-era grazing regulations meant to limit damage to public lands by livestock. Last year, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) dubbed the Administration's slew of stealth announcements a "holiday sneak attack" on the environment.

Have Yourself a Pentagon Christmas
By Nick Turse
TomDispatch.net and ZNet, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: Black Hawk helicopter: If a DVD of Black Hawk Down just won't cut it anymore, then kick in the extra $13 million and get the real deal. Sure a Black Hawk can be knocked out of the sky by a simple rocket-propelled grenade, but until some Iraqi "bitter-enders" make it to America (look for such an announcement days before the 2004 election ­ you heard it here first!), your child will sure look cool tooling around in one of these!

Location of Red, White and Blue Bull's-eye TBD
WTC: Soaring Spire Redesign Unveiled
By Josh Getlin
LA Times, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT:  Officials unveiled plans today for the Freedom Tower, an asymmetrical spiral of glass and steel rising over the former World Trade Center site that would echo the design of the Statue of Liberty and become the world's tallest building when it is completed in 2009. Calling the blueprint "a major step forward in the rebuilding of New York" after the 9-11 terror attacks, Gov. George Pataki hailed the project as an artistic and economic reaffirmation of American democracy, as well as a "stirring creative collaboration" between two architects who, until recently, had been feuding bitterly over their respective roles in the high-profile project.

The Lingering Effects of Exxon Valdez
By Kenneth R. Weiss
Times Staff Writer
December 19, 2003
EXCERPT: Hidden pools of oil left over from the Exxon Valdez spill 14 years ago continued to damage the Alaskan coastal environment for a decade, killing pink salmon eggs and retarding the population growth of sea otters, harlequin ducks and other wildlife, a new study says. The 14-year study published today in the journal Science points out that the effects of the 11-million gallon spill into Prince William Sound extended well beyond the initial deaths of 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 otters and 300 harbor seals. The residual oil became particularly toxic and continued to harm the coastal environment for far longer than expected, the study said. These oily pockets are still tucked beneath boulders or buried below gravel and mussel beds and have escaped sunlight, oxygen and waves that normally would break them down, researchers say. "Because the Exxon Valdez spill happened in a biological wonderland of sea otters and harlequin ducks, there has been a huge amount of research," said Charles H. Peterson, the paper's lead author and a University of North Carolina marine biologist. "Things we have dismissed as sub-lethal effects actually translate into significant decline in wildlife."

Imprisoned by the Walls Built to Keep 'the Others' Out
By Setha M. Low
LA Times, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: The phenomenon of gated communities — the fastest-growing form of housing in the United States — continues unabated in California and across the nation. There are now more than 1 million homes behind such walls in the Greater Los Angeles area alone. One-third of all houses built in the region are in secured-access developments. Across the U.S., there are 7 million households in fortified communities, according to the American Housing Survey of 2001, with the largest number located in the West.

19 December 2003

Courts Tell Bush He Can No Longer 'Disappear' Americans
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: How long overdue is this? Jose Padilla, the former Chicago gang member the Bush Administration declared an "enemy combatant" two summers ago, has been sitting in a Pentagon-controlled Navy brig in South Carolina -- never charged and never tried, denied a lawyer, denied even a phone call or a chance to talk to any friendly face. He was held like this at the pleasure of an out-of-control President who argues with a straight face that he has the right to cage an American citizen forever on a whim. Today a federal appeals court ruling handed down in New York restated the obvious: the President is wrong.
SEE ALSO: Terror Suspects Must Have Lawyers (AP)
SEE ALSO: Rulings Dent Detentions of Terror Suspects (LA Times)
SEE ALSO: In Debate on Antiterrorism, the Courts Assert Themselves
By DAVID JOHNSTON
New York Times, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT:  The broad presidential powers invoked by the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, to detain suspected terrorists outside the civilian court system is now being challenged by the federal courts, the very branch of the government the White House hoped to circumvent. The two separate appellate court rulings on Thursday swept away crucial parts of the administration's legal strategy to handle terrorist suspects outside the criminal justice system and incarcerate them indefinitely without access to lawyers or to the evidence against them. The rulings are by no means a final judicial verdict on the administration's approach. But the rulings demonstrated powerfully the willingness of the courts to challenge the administration's procedures, which were put in place without Congressional approval in the tumultuous months that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mutual Fund Scandal Spreads to Overcharges in Fees
Critics say many fund firms charge individual investors two to three times the fees that they charge big-money institutions
By Tom Petruno, Times Staff Writer
LA Times, 19 December 2003
Mutual funds, which have provided millions of citizens a means of participating in the American economic system, have been systematically gouged by the industry. Ultimately, investors must decide whether they're getting what they pay for.
EXCERPT: The fee issue has grown increasingly controversial over the last decade as the fund industry has mushroomed to $7 trillion in assets while, according to critics, many fund firms have been unable or unwilling to reflect economies of scale in their fees. Most stock and bond funds take between 1% and 2% of portfolio assets each year as payment for managing the portfolio and to cover other costs, such as keeping track of shareholder accounts, mailing annual reports and, often, compensating brokers who sell the funds.
SEE ALSO: Spitzer Targets Mutural Fund Fees
(Globe and Mail)

Chief of Sept. 11 Panel Assesses Blame but Holds Off on Higher-Ups
By PHILIP SHENON
New York Times, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: The chairman of a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks said on Thursday that information long available to the public showed that the attacks could have been prevented had a group of low- and mid-level government employees at the F.B.I., the immigration service and elsewhere done their jobs properly. The chairman, Thomas H. Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, said in a telephone interview that his investigators were still studying whether senior Bush administration officials should also share the blame. He said it was too early to suggest that White House aides or other senior officials had been derelict.

White House Censors Unwanted Comments on the Internet
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history. White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend. Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.

How John Ashcroft Violated the Law and Ended Up With a Wrist Slap
By Bonnie Tenneriello
TomPaine.com, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: Documents just released by the Federal Election Commission show that Attorney General John Ashcroft engaged in serious campaign finance violations during his 2000 Senate campaign. Ashcroft participated in a patently phony deal that allowed a political action committee he founded and controlled to transfer a highly valuable mailing list to his campaign committee. The donation of the list‹which cost more than $1.7 million to create‹flaunts campaign contribution limits. Yet a divided FEC just winked at the arrangement, slapped the committees with a small penalty, and let Ashcroft himself off scot-free.

18 December 2003

Clark: Bush Lacks Will to Find Bin Laden
Democrat says he would have had the al Qaeda chief by now
CNN, 17 December 2003
Courtesy of ML
EXCERPT: Democratic presidential contender Wesley Clark said Wednesday that President Bush has shown a lack of will in pursuing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In a blistering critique of the commander in chief, Clark said that "capturing Saddam Hussein doesn't change the fact that Osama bin Laden is still on the loose."

David, Ralph, Cynthia and the 2004 Elections
by Ted Glick
Dissidentvoice.org, 16 December 2003
For months I've been thinking about who I'm going to support for President. For me, it's not between Kucinich, Sharpton, Dean, Gephardt or another Democrat. It's between David Cobb, Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney, all possible Green Party Presidential candidates. I see no contradiction between wanting the Bushites out of office and wanting a viable and visible Green Party Presidential campaign. Run the right way, such a campaign can be one part of a strategy for mobilizing the broad and deep vote necessary to advance the progressive movement at the polls in 2004 and beyond. At the same time, a strategically sound Green Party Presidential campaign can help to build the Greens at the local and state levels and the Green Party generally.

Do Misperceptions Guide the Tax Policy Debate?
Brookings Institute Briefing, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, will convene a briefing with two experts—University of Michigan economist Joel Slemrod and Princeton University political scientist Larry Bartels—who will present their recent findings on the issues. Slemrod presents evidence that much of the support for regressive tax alternatives, like the flat tax, exists because people believe a flat tax would be more progressive than the current system, despite the fact that almost every study on the issue finds that the opposite is true. Bartels concludes that Americans simply do not understand the links between public policy choices and economic inequality. [BWUSA emphasis]
Homer Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind
Read the paper (PDF-685KB)
The Role of Misconceptions in Support for Regressive Tax Reform
Read the paper (PDF-225KB)

Software Used by Diebold Wasn't Approved by the State -- Independent Audits Essential
By Elise Ackerman
Mercury News, 17 December 2003
Courtesy of Agnoist
EXCERPT: Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said Tuesday that Diebold Elections Systems could lose the right to sell electronic voting machines in California after state auditors found the company distributed software that had not been approved by election officials. The auditors reported that voters in 17 California counties cast ballots in recent elections using software that had not been certified by the state. And voters in Los Angeles County and two smaller counties voted on machines installed with software that was not approved by the Federal Election Commission. In an appearance before a state voting panel, Shelley said the report represented a ``deeply troubling'' violation of state election law. The audit is likely to feed growing concerns about the security of electronic voting as states rush to update voting equipment before the 2004 presidential election. Besides California, 36 other states use Diebold voting machines.
SEE ALSO: NIST Ignores Scientific Method for Voting Technology (Dissidentvoice.org)

Curious Trend: Bush's Legislative Coups All Impact Well After Bush Faces Voters
CalPundit, 17 December 2003
Courtesy of Cursor.org
EXCERPT: (Tax cuts) ...the CBO estimates that they will pick up steam starting in 2007 and will become catastrophic by around 2010. Using real-world estimates (the bottom line of the chart at right), we will begin running a steady $700-800 billion deficit every single year by 2010. (No Child Left Behind Act) ...standards will start to become noticably harsh and unrealistic around 2007 or so, and will eventually require an absurd 100% compliance by 2014. (Medicare bill) does not take effect until 2006. In addition, the much touted "competition" pilot projects — which are likely to be very unpopular — don't start until 2010. Republicans assure us (that these programs) will prove that conservative methods produce real results, (but they) don't take effect until George Bush is either safely reelected or out of office entirely? It's almost like they're afraid they won't work. Or that people will hate them. Or something.

9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable
CBS, 17 December 2003
For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston. "This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean. "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen." Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

17 December 2003

Keeping Secrets: Bush Administration Does Public Business Out of the Public Eye
By Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound
EXCERPT: For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government--cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government while making increasing amounts of information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for its collection and analysis. Bush administration officials often cite the September 11 attacks as the reason for the enhanced secrecy. But as the Inauguration Day directive from Card indicates, the initiative to wall off records and information previously in the public domain began from Day 1. Steven Garfinkel, a retired government lawyer and expert on classified information, puts it this way: "I think they have an overreliance on the utility of secrecy. They don't seem to realize secrecy is a two-edge sword that cuts you as well as protects you." Even supporters of the administration, many of whom agree that security needed to be bolstered after the attacks, say Bush and his inner circle have been unusually assertive in their commitment to increased government secrecy. "Tightly controlling information, from the White House on down, has been the hallmark of this administration," says Roger Pilon, vice president of legal affairs for the Cato Institute.
SEE ALSO: Veil of Secrecy, NOW (PBS)

Case Used as Legal Precedence for U.S. State Secrecy Shown to be Bogus
US News and World Report, December 22 issue
EXCERPT: At issue: the 1948 crash of an Air Force B-29 Superfortress bomber on a mission testing military electronics. The widows of three of the nine men killed filed suit against the United States. The Air Force refused to release accident reports, claiming national security would be harmed. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1953 backed the government's ability to claim state secrets. The pivotal decision became the foundation on which the state secrets privilege rests. Now it turns out that the national security claim may have been bogus. Recently, the daughter of one of the men discovered the now-declassified accident reports. "They contained nothing approaching a military secret," says her attorney, Wilson Brown III. Instead, the reports blame the crash on Air Force negligence--the real reason the government wanted them kept secret, says Brown, who filed an extraordinary appeal to the Supreme Court to reopen the matter. "They lied," Brown says of the Air Force. ...That brought the Bush administration into the fray. Justice Department lawyers told the court there was "nothing exceptional" about the revelations concerning the basic facts of the case. [BWUSA emphasis]
SEE ALSO: The Power of the Fine Print  (US News)

Bush let nothing get in the way of profiteering...
In Run-Up to War, Bush Administration Lied to Senators in Secret Briefing
By John McCarthy
Florida Today, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force. Nelson said he couldn't reveal who in the administration gave the briefing. The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense. Defense officials had no comment on Nelson's claim. Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones.

Bush Seeks Approval for Secret Policy Meetings, Polluting Trucks
BushGreenWatch.org, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Supreme Court yesterday granted the Bush Administration's requests to intervene in two important environmental cases the White House wants overturned. The first one involves whether the White House can continue to keep secret records of Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, which shaped the controversial energy bill currently stalled in the Senate. The second case involves whether the Administration should have to conduct an environmental study before issuing permits to trucks from Mexico.
SEE ALSO: Supreme Court Hears Accepts Appeal on Cheney Task Force Case (Reuters)

Black Box Voting
Press Conference - Update,16 December 2003
EXCERPT: What we have, in Washington State, is this: We’ve got the state election director misstating when versions were certified, somebody at the secretary of state’s office signing off on software with no NASED number, and when we try to find out what software is actually authorized, we get the buffalo shuffle. We’ve got a convicted drug dealer printing our ballots, a 23-count embezzler programming our voting system, and our absentee ballots are being funneled through a private company that hires mainly immigrants but also people straight out of prison. We’ve now documented 10 states that are using unauthorized software, and internal memos that indicate that five Diebold programmers uploaded these unauthorized programs, knowing that this was not allowed.

Regarding media
Affluence Remakes the Newsroom
Tim Rutten:
LA Times, 13 December 2003
EXCERPT: To the extent any bias is generally operative in the news media today, it is the middle-class quietism that the majority of reporters and editors share with other Americans. They are the suburban voters who now cast the majority of ballots in our presidential elections — mildly libertarian on social issues, mildly conservative on fiscal matters, preoccupied with issues of personal and financial security. They are suspicious of ideology with its sweaty urgency and wearying demands for consistency. The clearest and most concise statement of how this state of affairs came to be can be found in a brief note retired New York Times columnist Russell Baker has written for the letters column of the New York Review of Books' current issue. A reader's letter wondered whether a review Baker had written underestimated journalists' willingness to modify their opinions to please the media's corporate owners and, thereby, hold on to their jobs. Baker responded that "something more fundamental than household economics may be reshaping journalistic attitudes toward public issues. Today's top-drawer Washington news people are part of a highly educated, upper-middle-class elite; they belong to the culture for which the American political system works exceedingly well. Which is to say, they are, in the pure sense of the word, extremely conservative.

Veil of Secrecy Being Pulled Around Government
Bill Moyers' NOW, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: Everywhere you look today, or try to look, our right to know is under assault. In the name of fighting terrorists, the government is pulling a veil of secrecy around itself. Information that used to be readily accessible is now kept out of sight. To cover this story, NOW is collaborating with US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT. Their five-month investigation finds that although the government regularly cites 9/11 as the basis for secrecy, the true reasons, in many cases, have nothing to do with the War on Terror. The US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT story will appear in the magazine that goes on sale Monday. Our story is reported by NOW's David Brancaccio and producer Peter Meryash.

The Administration Quarantines Dissent
By James Bovard
The American Conservative, 15 December 2003 issue
EXCERPT: On Dec. 6, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft informed the Senate Judiciary Committee, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty … your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and … give ammunition to America’s enemies.” Some commentators feared that Ashcroft’s statement, which was vetted beforehand by top lawyers at the Justice Department, signaled that this White House would take a far more hostile view towards opponents than did recent presidents. And indeed, some Bush administration policies indicate that Ashcroft’s comment was not a mere throwaway line.

Panel Finds Anti - Terror Efforts Waning
AP in NY Times, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: The effort to protect Americans from terrorism ``appears to have waned'' since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as both the government and its citizens worry more about the latest disaster or health crisis, a federal commission says. In calling for the government to refocus on anti-terrorism efforts, the advisory panel also backed an independent board to make sure that efforts to monitor suspected terrorists don't infringe on Americans' civil liberties. The commission is chaired by former Virginia governor and Republican Party chairman James Gilmore.

AARP Drops Out of Social Security Forums, Distances From Bush Overhaul Plans
By Leigh Strope
AP, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: AARP, already under fire from within its over-50 membership for endorsing the new Medicare law, is backing out of Social Security forums it agreed to sponsor with the Bush administration and from a group advocating a system overhaul to allow stock market investing.
The first of three town hall meetings organized by AARP, the Social Security Administration and the National Association of Manufacturers was scheduled for Jan. 15 in Minneapolis. After inquires from The Associated Press, AARP notified participants Monday afternoon that it was dropping out on the ground that the forums would be too politically charged in the aftermath of the Medicare flap. Social Security, like Medicare, is always a hot-button, divisive issue in elections. David Certner, AARP's federal affairs director, said the organization decided the forums were too close to next year's election. The group's board met Friday and endorsed the decision.

16 December 2003

This Modern World
       by Tom Tomorrow

White House Debates Mercury Policy Behind Closed Doors
Greenwatch, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Today is the EPA's deadline to announce its plan for regulating mercury from coal-burning power plants. A leaked draft indicates it will downgrade mercury as a toxin while weakening efforts to clean up mercury emissions. This weakening comes just days after the Food and Drug Administration announced that it plans to warn women of child-bearing age and children to limit consumption of canned tuna because of high levels of mercury, which can cause learning disabilities and other serious problems in fetuses and young children.

Dick Cheney Shootin' Fish in a Barrel
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Now comes news of Vice President Dick Cheney's "hunting" trip in Pennsylvania -- his second in as many years. As reported by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cheney took Air Force Two up to an exclusive Pennsylvania hunting club to join nine other unspecifed gentleman in gunning down about 400 ringneck pheasants and "an unknown number of mallard ducks." The birds were "plucked and vacuum-packed in time for Cheney's afternoon flight to Washington." The White House tells The New York Times the pheasants were "cleaned, packed and sent to those less fortunate" -- but, as The Times archly notes, this just-in-time-for-Christmas story of noble charity could not be fleshed out with a single concrete detail.

Patriots and Profits
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: Let's be clear: worries about profiteering aren't a left-right issue. Conservatives have long warned that regulatory agencies tend to be "captured" by the industries they regulate; the same must be true of agencies that hand out contracts. Halliburton, Bechtel and other major contractors in Iraq have invested heavily in political influence, not just through campaign contributions, but by enriching people they believe might be helpful. Dick Cheney is part of a long if not exactly proud tradition: Brown & Root, which later became the Halliburton subsidiary doing those dubious deals in Iraq, profited handsomely from its early support of a young politician named Lyndon Johnson. So is there any reason to think that things are worse now? Yes.

2003: A Year of Distortion for the American People
Center for American Progress, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: On December 13, the White House issued a document entitled "2003: A Year of Accomplishment for the American People." The document made various inaccurate and deceptive claims about the Administration's record over the last year. This report by the Center for American Progress seeks to correct those distortions, matching the White House's rhetoric with facts.
Get this CPA document in Rich Text Format

Bush Signs Bill Extending FBI Powers
AP in the Boston Globe, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush has signed legislation making it easier for FBI agents investigating terrorism to demand financial records from casinos, car dealerships, and other businesses. The changes were included in a bill authorizing 2004 intelligence programs. Most of the details of the bill are secret, including the total cost of the programs, which are estimated to be about $40 billion. That would be slightly more than Bush had requested. The bill expands the number of businesses from which the FBI and other US authorities conducting intelligence work can demand financial records without seeking court approval. Under current law, "national security letters" can be issued to traditional financial institutions, such as banks and credit unions, to require them to turn over information. The bill expands the definition of financial institution to include other businesses that deal with large amounts of cash. [It also]...Authorizes agencies to continue research on computerized terrorism surveillance suspended by the Pentagon. ...Supporters of the change say it will help authorities identify money laundering and other activities that fund terrorism. But some lawmakers and civil liberties advocates say the change does not provide enough safeguards to ensure that authorities will not violate the privacy of innocent people.

Dow to Pay Record $2M for Illegal Claims
By MICHAEL GORMLEY
AP in FindLaw, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: A subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co. will pay a $2 million court-ordered penalty to the state of New York for illegal safety claims in advertising of its pesticides."By misleading consumers about the potential dangers associated with the use of their products, Dow's ads may have endangered human health and the environment by encouraging people to use their products without proper care," New York Attorney General Spitzer said Monday. Spitzer said the penalty involving the popular Dursban and other pesticides is the largest penalty in the nation's history for this type of case. Among the advertised claims cited by Spitzer was: "No significant adverse health effects will likely result from exposures to Dursban even at levels substantially above those expected to occur when applied at label rates."  "Excellent studies conducted by independent scientists have clearly shown that chlorpyrifos, the active ingredient in Dursban, is toxic to the human brain and nervous system and is especially dangerous to the developing brain of infants," said Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Department of Community and Preventative Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Supreme Court Rules on Campaign Finance Case: The Legal and Political Impact of McConnell v. FEC
Brookings Briefing, 11 December 2003
Moderated by: Thomas E. Mann
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, and the W. Averell Harriman Chair, Brookings
Panel:
Trevor Potter
Partner, Caplin & Drysdale; General Counsel, Campaign Legal Center; Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings; Former chairman, Federal Election Commission
Kenneth W. Starr
Partner, Kirkland & Ellis, and Counsel of Record for Plaintiffs in McConnell v. FEC; Former Solicitor General
Seth P. Waxman
Partner, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and Counsel of Record for Intervenor-Defendants in McConnell v. FEC; Former Solicitor General
Read the full event transcript. (PDF—99KB)

Irresponsible Tax Cuts Sold as Fiscal Responsibility
by Christian Weller
Center for American Progress, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: Don’t look too close now, but the administration is trying to sell you the London Bridge of economic policy. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal this week, Joshua Bolten, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, essentially claimed that there won’t be any long-term deficits as a result of the two whopping tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration. The issue is not that the tax cuts increased the deficits in the short-term. Almost everybody agreed that the economy needed a boost from the government. Growth was too slow after the recession ended in November 2001 to generate sufficient jobs to lower the unemployment rate. This goal of the economic stimulus could have been reached more efficiently. That is, the same economic effect could have been reached with a lot less money, or the same amount of government money could have created substantially faster growth. In essence, the large tax cuts were inefficient because they were ill designed and because they contributed to long-term structural deficits.

Supreme Court Takes Cheney Energy Task Force Case
By Susan Cornwell
Reuters in FindLaw, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT:  The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether Vice President Dick Cheney must release White House papers about the energy policy task force he headed two years ago. The high court agreed to hear an appeal from Cheney, who is resisting a federal judge's order to produce documents about White House contacts with the energy industry in 2001. Cheney's Justice Department lawyers say he is immune to the court order on grounds of a constitutional separation of powers. The environmentalist Sierra Club and Judicial Watch government watchdog group sued in 2001 to find out the names and positions of members of the energy task force led by the vice president that year.

17 December 2003

Keeping Secrets: Bush Administration Does Public Business Out of the Public Eye
By Christopher H. Schmitt and Edward T. Pound
EXCERPT: For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government--cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government while making increasing amounts of information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for its collection and analysis. Bush administration officials often cite the September 11 attacks as the reason for the enhanced secrecy. But as the Inauguration Day directive from Card indicates, the initiative to wall off records and information previously in the public domain began from Day 1. Steven Garfinkel, a retired government lawyer and expert on classified information, puts it this way: "I think they have an overreliance on the utility of secrecy. They don't seem to realize secrecy is a two-edge sword that cuts you as well as protects you." Even supporters of the administration, many of whom agree that security needed to be bolstered after the attacks, say Bush and his inner circle have been unusually assertive in their commitment to increased government secrecy. "Tightly controlling information, from the White House on down, has been the hallmark of this administration," says Roger Pilon, vice president of legal affairs for the Cato Institute.
SEE ALSO: Veil of Secrecy, NOW (PBS)

Case Used as Legal Precedence for U.S. State Secrecy Shown to be Bogus
US News and World Report, December 22 issue
EXCERPT: At issue: the 1948 crash of an Air Force B-29 Superfortress bomber on a mission testing military electronics. The widows of three of the nine men killed filed suit against the United States. The Air Force refused to release accident reports, claiming national security would be harmed. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1953 backed the government's ability to claim state secrets. The pivotal decision became the foundation on which the state secrets privilege rests. Now it turns out that the national security claim may have been bogus. Recently, the daughter of one of the men discovered the now-declassified accident reports. "They contained nothing approaching a military secret," says her attorney, Wilson Brown III. Instead, the reports blame the crash on Air Force negligence--the real reason the government wanted them kept secret, says Brown, who filed an extraordinary appeal to the Supreme Court to reopen the matter. "They lied," Brown says of the Air Force. ...That brought the Bush administration into the fray. Justice Department lawyers told the court there was "nothing exceptional" about the revelations concerning the basic facts of the case. [BWUSA emphasis]
SEE ALSO: The Power of the Fine Print  (US News)

Bush let nothing get in the way of profiteering...
In Run-Up to War, Bush Administration Lied to Senators in Secret Briefing
By John McCarthy
Florida Today, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. Nelson, D-Tallahassee, said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force. Nelson said he couldn't reveal who in the administration gave the briefing. The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense. Defense officials had no comment on Nelson's claim. Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones.

Bush Seeks Approval for Secret Policy Meetings, Polluting Trucks
BushGreenWatch.org, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Supreme Court yesterday granted the Bush Administration's requests to intervene in two important environmental cases the White House wants overturned. The first one involves whether the White House can continue to keep secret records of Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, which shaped the controversial energy bill currently stalled in the Senate. The second case involves whether the Administration should have to conduct an environmental study before issuing permits to trucks from Mexico.
SEE ALSO: Supreme Court Hears Accepts Appeal on Cheney Task Force Case (Reuters)

Black Box Voting
Press Conference - Update,16 December 2003
EXCERPT: What we have, in Washington State, is this: We’ve got the state election director misstating when versions were certified, somebody at the secretary of state’s office signing off on software with no NASED number, and when we try to find out what software is actually authorized, we get the buffalo shuffle. We’ve got a convicted drug dealer printing our ballots, a 23-count embezzler programming our voting system, and our absentee ballots are being funneled through a private company that hires mainly immigrants but also people straight out of prison. We’ve now documented 10 states that are using unauthorized software, and internal memos that indicate that five Diebold programmers uploaded these unauthorized programs, knowing that this was not allowed.

Regarding media
Affluence Remakes the Newsroom
Tim Rutten:
LA Times, 13 December 2003
EXCERPT: To the extent any bias is generally operative in the news media today, it is the middle-class quietism that the majority of reporters and editors share with other Americans. They are the suburban voters who now cast the majority of ballots in our presidential elections — mildly libertarian on social issues, mildly conservative on fiscal matters, preoccupied with issues of personal and financial security. They are suspicious of ideology with its sweaty urgency and wearying demands for consistency. The clearest and most concise statement of how this state of affairs came to be can be found in a brief note retired New York Times columnist Russell Baker has written for the letters column of the New York Review of Books' current issue. A reader's letter wondered whether a review Baker had written underestimated journalists' willingness to modify their opinions to please the media's corporate owners and, thereby, hold on to their jobs. Baker responded that "something more fundamental than household economics may be reshaping journalistic attitudes toward public issues. Today's top-drawer Washington news people are part of a highly educated, upper-middle-class elite; they belong to the culture for which the American political system works exceedingly well. Which is to say, they are, in the pure sense of the word, extremely conservative.

Veil of Secrecy Being Pulled Around Government
Bill Moyers' NOW, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: Everywhere you look today, or try to look, our right to know is under assault. In the name of fighting terrorists, the government is pulling a veil of secrecy around itself. Information that used to be readily accessible is now kept out of sight. To cover this story, NOW is collaborating with US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT. Their five-month investigation finds that although the government regularly cites 9/11 as the basis for secrecy, the true reasons, in many cases, have nothing to do with the War on Terror. The US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT story will appear in the magazine that goes on sale Monday. Our story is reported by NOW's David Brancaccio and producer Peter Meryash.

The Administration Quarantines Dissent
By James Bovard
The American Conservative, 15 December 2003 issue
EXCERPT: On Dec. 6, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft informed the Senate Judiciary Committee, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty … your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and … give ammunition to America’s enemies.” Some commentators feared that Ashcroft’s statement, which was vetted beforehand by top lawyers at the Justice Department, signaled that this White House would take a far more hostile view towards opponents than did recent presidents. And indeed, some Bush administration policies indicate that Ashcroft’s comment was not a mere throwaway line.

Panel Finds Anti - Terror Efforts Waning
AP in NY Times, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: The effort to protect Americans from terrorism ``appears to have waned'' since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as both the government and its citizens worry more about the latest disaster or health crisis, a federal commission says. In calling for the government to refocus on anti-terrorism efforts, the advisory panel also backed an independent board to make sure that efforts to monitor suspected terrorists don't infringe on Americans' civil liberties. The commission is chaired by former Virginia governor and Republican Party chairman James Gilmore.

AARP Drops Out of Social Security Forums, Distances From Bush Overhaul Plans
By Leigh Strope
AP, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: AARP, already under fire from within its over-50 membership for endorsing the new Medicare law, is backing out of Social Security forums it agreed to sponsor with the Bush administration and from a group advocating a system overhaul to allow stock market investing.
The first of three town hall meetings organized by AARP, the Social Security Administration and the National Association of Manufacturers was scheduled for Jan. 15 in Minneapolis. After inquires from The Associated Press, AARP notified participants Monday afternoon that it was dropping out on the ground that the forums would be too politically charged in the aftermath of the Medicare flap. Social Security, like Medicare, is always a hot-button, divisive issue in elections. David Certner, AARP's federal affairs director, said the organization decided the forums were too close to next year's election. The group's board met Friday and endorsed the decision.

16 December 2003

This Modern World
       by Tom Tomorrow

White House Debates Mercury Policy Behind Closed Doors
Greenwatch, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Today is the EPA's deadline to announce its plan for regulating mercury from coal-burning power plants. A leaked draft indicates it will downgrade mercury as a toxin while weakening efforts to clean up mercury emissions. This weakening comes just days after the Food and Drug Administration announced that it plans to warn women of child-bearing age and children to limit consumption of canned tuna because of high levels of mercury, which can cause learning disabilities and other serious problems in fetuses and young children.

Dick Cheney Shootin' Fish in a Barrel
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Now comes news of Vice President Dick Cheney's "hunting" trip in Pennsylvania -- his second in as many years. As reported by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cheney took Air Force Two up to an exclusive Pennsylvania hunting club to join nine other unspecifed gentleman in gunning down about 400 ringneck pheasants and "an unknown number of mallard ducks." The birds were "plucked and vacuum-packed in time for Cheney's afternoon flight to Washington." The White House tells The New York Times the pheasants were "cleaned, packed and sent to those less fortunate" -- but, as The Times archly notes, this just-in-time-for-Christmas story of noble charity could not be fleshed out with a single concrete detail.

Patriots and Profits
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: Let's be clear: worries about profiteering aren't a left-right issue. Conservatives have long warned that regulatory agencies tend to be "captured" by the industries they regulate; the same must be true of agencies that hand out contracts. Halliburton, Bechtel and other major contractors in Iraq have invested heavily in political influence, not just through campaign contributions, but by enriching people they believe might be helpful. Dick Cheney is part of a long if not exactly proud tradition: Brown & Root, which later became the Halliburton subsidiary doing those dubious deals in Iraq, profited handsomely from its early support of a young politician named Lyndon Johnson. So is there any reason to think that things are worse now? Yes.

2003: A Year of Distortion for the American People
Center for American Progress, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: On December 13, the White House issued a document entitled "2003: A Year of Accomplishment for the American People." The document made various inaccurate and deceptive claims about the Administration's record over the last year. This report by the Center for American Progress seeks to correct those distortions, matching the White House's rhetoric with facts.
Get this CPA document in Rich Text Format

Bush Signs Bill Extending FBI Powers
AP in the Boston Globe, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush has signed legislation making it easier for FBI agents investigating terrorism to demand financial records from casinos, car dealerships, and other businesses. The changes were included in a bill authorizing 2004 intelligence programs. Most of the details of the bill are secret, including the total cost of the programs, which are estimated to be about $40 billion. That would be slightly more than Bush had requested. The bill expands the number of businesses from which the FBI and other US authorities conducting intelligence work can demand financial records without seeking court approval. Under current law, "national security letters" can be issued to traditional financial institutions, such as banks and credit unions, to require them to turn over information. The bill expands the definition of financial institution to include other businesses that deal with large amounts of cash. [It also]...Authorizes agencies to continue research on computerized terrorism surveillance suspended by the Pentagon. ...Supporters of the change say it will help authorities identify money laundering and other activities that fund terrorism. But some lawmakers and civil liberties advocates say the change does not provide enough safeguards to ensure that authorities will not violate the privacy of innocent people.

Dow to Pay Record $2M for Illegal Claims
By MICHAEL GORMLEY
AP in FindLaw, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: A subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co. will pay a $2 million court-ordered penalty to the state of New York for illegal safety claims in advertising of its pesticides."By misleading consumers about the potential dangers associated with the use of their products, Dow's ads may have endangered human health and the environment by encouraging people to use their products without proper care," New York Attorney General Spitzer said Monday. Spitzer said the penalty involving the popular Dursban and other pesticides is the largest penalty in the nation's history for this type of case. Among the advertised claims cited by Spitzer was: "No significant adverse health effects will likely result from exposures to Dursban even at levels substantially above those expected to occur when applied at label rates."  "Excellent studies conducted by independent scientists have clearly shown that chlorpyrifos, the active ingredient in Dursban, is toxic to the human brain and nervous system and is especially dangerous to the developing brain of infants," said Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Department of Community and Preventative Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Supreme Court Rules on Campaign Finance Case: The Legal and Political Impact of McConnell v. FEC
Brookings Briefing, 11 December 2003
Moderated by: Thomas E. Mann
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, and the W. Averell Harriman Chair, Brookings
Panel:
Trevor Potter
Partner, Caplin & Drysdale; General Counsel, Campaign Legal Center; Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings; Former chairman, Federal Election Commission
Kenneth W. Starr
Partner, Kirkland & Ellis, and Counsel of Record for Plaintiffs in McConnell v. FEC; Former Solicitor General
Seth P. Waxman
Partner, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering and Counsel of Record for Intervenor-Defendants in McConnell v. FEC; Former Solicitor General
Read the full event transcript. (PDF—99KB)

Irresponsible Tax Cuts Sold as Fiscal Responsibility
by Christian Weller
Center for American Progress, 12 December 2003
EXCERPT: Don’t look too close now, but the administration is trying to sell you the London Bridge of economic policy. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal this week, Joshua Bolten, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, essentially claimed that there won’t be any long-term deficits as a result of the two whopping tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration. The issue is not that the tax cuts increased the deficits in the short-term. Almost everybody agreed that the economy needed a boost from the government. Growth was too slow after the recession ended in November 2001 to generate sufficient jobs to lower the unemployment rate. This goal of the economic stimulus could have been reached more efficiently. That is, the same economic effect could have been reached with a lot less money, or the same amount of government money could have created substantially faster growth. In essence, the large tax cuts were inefficient because they were ill designed and because they contributed to long-term structural deficits.

Supreme Court Takes Cheney Energy Task Force Case
By Susan Cornwell
Reuters in FindLaw, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT:  The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether Vice President Dick Cheney must release White House papers about the energy policy task force he headed two years ago. The high court agreed to hear an appeal from Cheney, who is resisting a federal judge's order to produce documents about White House contacts with the energy industry in 2001. Cheney's Justice Department lawyers say he is immune to the court order on grounds of a constitutional separation of powers. The environmentalist Sierra Club and Judicial Watch government watchdog group sued in 2001 to find out the names and positions of members of the energy task force led by the vice president that year.

See previously selected articles in our archives.

31 December 2003

The Real War On Terrorism
By Bishop John Shelby Spong
Newsletter, 31 December 2003 (subscription only)
EXCERPT: Terror is the last violent gasp of hopelessness. The terrorist views heroic death as a better option than meaningless life. Look at the life of a typical Palestinian or at the economic disparity between the rich and the poor in every Islamic country. Remember the violence of America's urban riots in the 60s. That was not solved with appeals to law and order. Terrorism will never be solved with military strikes. The cause of violence must be addressed. Hope, education, training, jobs and a real hope will make them want to build the future rather than destroy it. Do not mistake what I am saying. A nation must defend itself from aggression from any source. But when the aggression comes from suicidal individuals organized in terrorist cells, someone needs to ask what created this despair and move to address the causes not the symptoms. When hatred is driven underground, it does not disappear. If we have learned anything in this dreadful war in Iraq, it should be that winning this war was easy. Mr. Bush pronounced it concluded early in May. Yet no one will think that this military adventure has been successful until genuine peace has been achieved and the people who are terrorists today wake up tomorrow to dream of a better world with themselves as part of it. The cost of bringing hope to hopeless people by addressing their pressing needs is considerably less expensive than the cost of building a nation we have destroyed militarily. When will we ever learn this basic human lesson?

Hawks Tell Bush How to Win War on Terror
By David Rennie in Washington
The Telegraph, 31 December 2003
EXCERPT: President George W Bush was sent a public manifesto yesterday by Washington's hawks, demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear sites. The manifesto, presented as a "manual for victory" in the war on terror, also calls for Saudi Arabia and France to be treated not as allies but as rivals and possibly enemies. The manifesto is contained in a new book by Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser and "intellectual guru" of the hardline neo-conservative movement, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter. They give warning of a faltering of the "will to win" in Washington.

The War Party Versus Global Capitalism
by Jim Lobe
Antiwar.com, 30 December 2003
EXCERPT: If anti-globalization radicals really want to tear down the world capitalist system they might want to go door-to-door next year on behalf of incumbent U.S. president, George W. Bush. While Bush brags about his business experience and identifies with the interests of wealthy US capitalists, a continuation of the policies he has pursued since Sept. 11, 2001 threatens not only the US economy, whose ballooning defense-driven federal deficit risks a potentially disastrous collapse of the dollar. But his insistence on effectively exempting the United States from the rule of international law – commercial as well as human rights law – also threatens the very foundation of the multilateral economic system under which global corporate capitalism has prospered for more than 50 years, according to a growing number of economic analysts.

Will the French Indict Cheney?
By Doug Ireland
The Nation, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: The suspected bribe money was mostly ladled out between 1995 and 2000, when Cheney was Halliburton's CEO. The Journal du Dimanche reported on December 21 that "it is probable that some of the 'retrocommissions' found their way back to the United States" and asked, did this money go "to Halliburton's officials? To officials of the Republican Party?" These questions have so far gone unasked by America's media, which have completely ignored the explosive Le Figaro headline revealing the targeting of Cheney. It will be interesting to see if the US press looks seriously into this ticking time-bomb of a scandal before the November elections.

Israel Seeks to Gag Nuclear Whistleblower
By Gavin Rabinowitz and AP
Guardian (UK), 31 December 2003
EXCERPT: Israel is looking for ways to gag a whistleblower who is due to be released from prison in the new year, fearing that he may have more nuclear secrets to disclose that will embarrass the government, officials said yesterday. Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for espionage after giving dozens of pictures and a description of alleged weapons from Israel's top-secret Dimona nuclear reactor to the Sunday Times in 1986. Israel's official policy about nuclear weapons is ambiguous: officials say only that Israel will not be the first to introduce them into the Middle East. But, based on Mr Vanunu's pictures, experts concluded Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
SEE ALSO: Israeli Government Covers Up Incidents of Refusal (The Nation)

A Very Special Relationship
By Amos Elon
New York Review of Books, 15 January issue
Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the US–Israel Alliance
by Warren Bass
Oxford University Press, 336 pp., $30.00
Israel and the Bomb
by Avner Cohen
Columbia University Press, 470 pp., $21.00 (paper)
EXCERPT: Introduction-The alliance between the US and Israel, which has been tighter than ever under the Bush administration, is often thought to have started under President Johnson following the 1967 war. The two books under review show that Johnson was not the first to break the US embargo—imposed by Harry Truman in 1948—on supplying major weapons to Israel. It was Kennedy who did so, although he had at first opposed deliveries of major weapons. At the same time, and even though nuclear proliferation was one of Kennedy's principal concerns throughout his brief presidency, he failed to prevent Israel from going nuclear. Both books are well documented from material recently released by Israeli and American archives, and tell stories that should be read.

30 December 2003

Bush is Author of Dark Chapter for America
HAROON SIDDIQUI
The Toronto Star, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: As the year of the war on Iraq draws to a close, the larger perspective that emerges is clear: George W. Bush, a small man in a big job, has dragged America into one of its darkest chapters. He commands unprecedented military power, but his word carries little or no weight in much of the world. This odd equation remains unaltered by Saddam Hussein's capture, hyped in America but seen elsewhere as inevitable, given that Iraq is not an Afghanistan of a million caves. If anything, the video of his captivity exposed the Bush administration's desperate need to display a trophy catch. Bush's next declared mission, that of toppling Yasser Arafat, only reinforces the image of the president as a king who knows not the boundaries of his kingdom, nor the limits of his power. Or, as a captive of pro-Israeli hawks hell-bent on remaking the Middle East to Likud designs.

Saddam Trial Will Not Be Public
Aljeerzera.net, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: Saddam Hussein has told US occupation forces of the whereabouts of $40 billion he stashed abroad, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council has said. ...He added that "Saddam Hussein's trial would not be public since he could name countries and persons whom he gave money".

Halliburton Contracts in Iraq: The Struggle to Manage Costs
By JEFF GERTH and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
New York Times, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: The rebuilding of Iraq's oil industry has been characterized in the months since by increasing costs and scant public explanation. An examination of what has grown into a multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure shows no evidence of profiteering by Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services company, but it does demonstrate a struggle between price controls and the uncertainties of war, with price controls frequently losing. The Pentagon's contract with a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, conceived in secrecy before the war and signed in March, was meant as a stopgap deal to last no more than a few months. But it has been in effect since then and has grown to more than $2 billion.

British Spies 'Misled' Media on Iraq
By Nicholas Rufford, The Sunday Times, and Bernard Lane
The Australian, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: Britain's intelligence services ran a publicity campaign to gain support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq, it has emerged. The Government confirmed at the weekend that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding the death of government weapons expert David Kelly.

U.S. Split Grows Over Chávez Links to Rebels
Among U.S. officials, disagreement has sharpened over the credibility of reports that Venezuela's Hugo Chávez aided Colombian rebels.
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
The Miami Herald, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is growing increasingly divided over the credibility of intelligence reports on Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's links to Colombian guerrillas, officials say. 'It's getting very testy, because the believers and skeptics want to quote only from the reports that agree with their own views,'' said a top U.S. government official involved in the dispute.

U.S. Decisions On Iraq Spending Made in Private
By Jackie Spinner and Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post, 27 December 2003
EXCERPT: Of the billions of dollars appropriated or promised for the largest nation-building project since World War II, the Iraqi money doled out by Bremer and the Program Review Board is the least visible. Spending of the $18.6 billion the U.S. Congress approved this fall for Iraqi reconstruction will be overseen by an office run by a retired U.S. admiral. The $13 billion pledged from other countries will be monitored by an Iraqi-run oversight board.

U.N. Council to Weigh Nuclear Arms Ban in Middle East
By Irwin Arieff
Reuters, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: The U.N. Security Council, at the request of Arab nations, will meet on Monday to discuss a Syrian draft resolution calling for the Middle East to rid itself of all nuclear, biological and chemical arms. Arab diplomats said they sought the meeting after the council earlier this week issued a statement welcoming Libya's announcement that it was voluntarily abandoning its programs for developing weapons of mass destruction.

29 December 2003

Oh what tangled webs we weave...
Bush Administration Embarrasses #1 Ally: Bremer Bashes Blair
By Luke Harding
Observer, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: Tony Blair was at the centre of an embarrassing row last night after the most senior US official in Baghdad bluntly rejected the Prime Minister's assertion that secret weapons laboratories had been discovered in Iraq. In a Christmas message to British troops, Blair claimed there was 'massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories'. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed compelling evidence that showed Saddam Hussein had attempted to 'conceal weapons', the Prime Minister said. But in an interview yesterday, Paul Bremer, the Bush administration's top official in Baghdad, flatly dismissed the claim as untrue - without realising its source was Blair. It was, he suggested, a 'red herring', probably put about by someone opposed to military action in Iraq who wanted to undermine the coalition.

Iraqis Pay for Saddam's Capture
By Robert Fisk
UK Independent via ZNet, 27 December 2003
EXCERPTS: Ali Salman Ali was the first victim of Saddam's capture, but he died on Christmas Day. As his father Salman Ghazi, 71, tells it, Ali must have been among the first of Iraq's Shia Muslims to scream his delight in the street after the former dictator emerged from his hole in the ground. "He shouted that the Americans had come to save us and liberated us from that terrible regime," Mr Ghazi said yesterday, his sun-blasted, lined face and dark eyes staring at my notebook.... "That same afternoon, they came for him," his father said. "He had gone out shopping to Kaddamiya in his car and they were in another car that caught him and overtook him and opened fire on him with rifles." And who were "they"', I asked? The father looked at another of his sons and then at a cousin who had muttered the word "wahabis". The Sunni Muslim "wahabi" sect in Iraq is at the centre of the anti-American insurgency; a purist, ascetic faith which was, in the last years of Saddam's rule, allowed an existence as the "committees of the faith".
SEE ALSO: Fisk: Insurgents are Civilians (UK Independent)

2003's Biggest Story: US Aggression
By Tibor R. Machan
LewRockwell.com, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: What was the biggest story of 2003?  The US Government's decision to go to war with Iraq, that's what.  Why?  Because, all in all, despite the desirable result of bringing down a vicious dictatorship, it was an unjustified military action taken by our government. What justifies going to war?  When a country is attacked; or when another country with which a sound, just treaty has been established is attacked; or when it is imminent, as demonstrated by solid intelligence information, that a country or an ally will be attacked. Then it is justified to initiate military action against a country waging the attack or about to wage one.  That is what the military of a just system of government is for, to defend the country, not to wage war against countries with governments that may very well deserve to be brought down.

Roadside Bombs Kill Four In Iraq
Two GIs, Two Children Claimed in the Attacks
By Jim Krane
AP in Washington Post, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: Roadside bombs in and near Baghdad killed two U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi children Sunday, a day after a coordinated guerrilla assault in a southern city killed 19 people and wounded nearly 200, the U.S. military said.

In Iraq, Pace of U.S. Casualties Has Accelerated
Number of killed and wounded doubled in past four months
By Vernon Loeb
MSNBC News, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: The number of U.S. service members killed and wounded in Iraq has more than doubled in the past four months compared with the four months preceding them, according to Pentagon statistics. ..."The rate of casualties over the last four months is an indication that the insurgents are getting better organized," said retired Lt. Col. Andrew F. Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank. "The insurgents have been encouraged by the fact that they have had some success." ...Americans are clearly growing weary of casualties. Washington Post-ABC News polling data from late March, during major combat operations, showed that 58 percent of Americans interviewed said they thought the number of casualties in Iraq was acceptable, with 34 percent saying the number was unacceptable. The latest results, based on interviews conducted Dec. 18-21 with 1,001 randomly selected adults nationwide, indicate that those percentages have flipped, with only 33 percent saying the number of casualties is acceptable and 64 percent saying it is unacceptable.

Attacks Force Retreat From Wide-Ranging Plans for Iraq
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: The United States has backed away from several of its more ambitious initiatives to transform Iraq's economy, political system and security forces as attacks on U.S. troops have escalated and the timetable for ending the civil occupation has accelerated. Plans to privatize state-owned businesses -- a key part of a larger Bush administration goal to replace the socialist economy of deposed president Saddam Hussein with a free-market system -- have been dropped over the past few months. So too has a demand that Iraqis write a constitution before a transfer of sovereignty. With the administration's plans tempered by time and threat, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and his deputies are now focused on forging compromises with Iraqi leaders and combating a persistent insurgency in order to meet a July 1 deadline to transfer sovereignty to a provisional government. ...The new approach, U.S. diplomats said, calls into question the prospects for initiatives touted by conservative strategists to fashion Iraq into a secular, pluralistic, market-driven nation. While the diplomats maintain those goals are still attainable, the senior official said, "ideology has become subordinate to the schedule."

Suicide Bomber Kills Five in Afghan Capital
Washington Post, 29 December 2003
EXCERPT:  An apparent suicide bomber killed four intelligence agents, their driver and himself in the Afghan capital Sunday, the latest violent incident during a closely guarded constitutional assembly. The suspect detonated explosives concealed under his clothing moments after the agents hustled him into a sport utility vehicle near the airport, said Baba Jan, the Kabul police chief. The blast is the latest in a series of attacks since the historic constitutional convention started in the capital two weeks ago. At least five rockets have been fired into the city, damaging several houses but causing no injuries. Two days ago, a bomb demolished a wall outside a house where U.N. staffers were sleeping. None was hurt.

Criticism of Israel--and its Jewish supporters--is not anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism: A Minor Problem, Overblown
By Michael Neumann
LA Times, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: Jewish and non-Jewish commentators alike have deplored a recent upsurge in anti-Semitism. In Europe, journalist Andrew Sullivan says, "Not since the 1930s has such blithe hatred of Jews gained this much respectability in world opinion." Yet, Jews like myself and the Israeli journalist Ran HaCohen feel quite differently. He writes: "It is high time to say it out loud: In the entire course of Jewish history, since the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC, there has never been an era blessed with less anti-Semitism than ours. There has never been a better time for Jews to live in than our own." Why would a Jew say such a thing? What is anti-Semitism, and how much of a danger is it in the world today? If both sides agree on anything, it's that the definition of "anti-Semitism" has been manipulated for political ends. Leftists accuse ardent Zionists of inflating the definition to include — and discredit — critics of Israel. Zionists accuse the left of deflating the definition to apologize for covert prejudice against Jews. ...should definitional inflation be allowed to make anti-Semites out of all those who hold Jews responsible for Israel's actions and character?

27-28 December 2003

Three US Soldiers Killed in Separate Attacks
Deaths attributed to Iraqi insurgents
By Alan Sipress,
Washington Post in Boston Globe, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: Three US soldiers were killed in separate occurrences north of the capital yesterday as Iraqi insurgents continued to exact fatalities after a brief lull following the capture of former president Saddam Hussein nearly two weeks ago. The resistance has been especially fierce in the town of Baqubah, about 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, where four US soldiers have died in the last two days. One soldier died yesterday in Baqubah and another was injured when their convoy came under attack, US military officials said. The troops returned fire, killing two assailants. A second soldier was killed while trying to defuse a bomb discovered near the town. The deaths occurred a day after suspected Hussein loyalists fired mortar rounds at a US base outside Baqubah, killing two soldiers and wounding four others, according to officials with the US Army's Fourth Infantry Division. Ten US soldiers have died in hostile action since Monday, raising to 322 the number killed since the invasion in March. Officials say it is hard to track the hundreds of Iraqis killed since most are buried within 24 hours in accordance with Islamic law.

Turkish Sympathy for Militants Grows
By Charles A. Radin
Boston Globe, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: ...Turkey, whose people are not Arab, has long been considered the model of a moderate Muslim society capable of bridging the immense cultural gap between the Islamic Middle East and the Judeo-Christian West. Recent interviews in Konya, widely regarded as the capital of Islam in Turkey; in Ankara, the national capital; and in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, indicate that major changes -- some of which have been gestating for decades -- are taking place in Turkish society. Turkish Muslims' attitudes have taken a sharp anti-Western, anti-American turn, and some fear a dangerous new outpost of international terror is being established among the nation's 70 million people.

Eight US Soldiers Killed in Iraq Christmas Violence
Channelnewsasia.com, 26 December 2003
Courtesy of Antiwar.com
EXCERPT: Eight US soldiers have been killed across Iraq over the Christmas period, as a series of attacks battered the capital and an advance batch of Japanese soldiers left home to prepare for deployment to the war-torn country.

Bush's Man Rejects Blair Weapon Claim
Luke Harding in Baghdad
The Observer, 28 December 2003
EXCERPT: Tony Blair was at the centre of an embarrassing row last night after the most senior US official in Baghdad bluntly rejected the Prime Minister's assertion that secret weapons laboratories had been discovered in Iraq. In a Christmas message to British troops, Blair claimed there was 'massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories'. The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed compelling evidence that showed Saddam Hussein had attempted to 'conceal weapons', the Prime Minister said. But in an interview yesterday, Paul Bremer, the Bush administration's top official in Baghdad, flatly dismissed the claim as untrue - without realising its source was Blair.

A Year of Thwarted Ambition
By Martin Jacques
Guardian (UK), 27 December 2003
EXCERPT: Saddam Hussein's arrest provided a long overdue, and desperately needed, morale-booster for the American and British governments. The fact that they had succeeded in finding neither Saddam nor Osama bin Laden had lent an air of ridicule to American military grandiloquence. The failure to capture Saddam spoke eloquently of an occupation that had veered far off course from the confident predictions that had been made at the time of the invasion. We will have to wait and see what the longer-term effect of Saddam's arrest proves to be. Combined with Libya's new contrition, it should, for a period at least, ease some of the domestic pressure on Bush and perhaps even Blair. But it seems unlikely that it will change much, especially where it matters most, on the ground in Iraq.
SEE ALSO: US Towns Gather in Their Wounded (Guardian)

An Hour With Noam Chomsky: Profiteers & the Media
Democracy Now!, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: In a recent speech at Columbia University, Noam Chomsky strongly criticizes the Bush Administration's war against Iraq. He speaks against the power investors have over world affairs, the media's capitulation to them and much more.
SEE ALSO: Question Time for Chomsky (Guardian)

Tortured Explanations: Any Instruments We Sell May Be Used Against You
By James Ridgeway
Village Voice, 10 December 2003
EXCERPT: A this point just about everyone knows that while the U.S. itself doesn't officially sanction torture, it is more than ready to ship suspects out to other countries whose governments do engage in the practice. Amnesty International now presents a report on how U.S. companies are cashing in on the torture business. Since 9-11, the U.S. is alleged to have sent prisoners to Yemen, Jordan, Morocco, and Thailand, while at the same time our companies have been selling torture equipment to them. "The total value of U.S. exports of electroshock weapons was $14.7 million in 2002, and exports of restraints totaled $4.4 million in the same period," Amnesty's report says. "The Commerce and State departments approved these sales, permitting 45 countries to purchase electroshock technology, including 19 that had been cited for the use of such weapons to inflict torture since 1990." Around the world, there are some 856 companies in 47 countries engaged in the manufacture and marketing of electroshock technology, restraints, and chemical irritants that are used in torture, the report adds.

Peace on Earth: The Prospects
By Geov Parrish
Working for Change, 22 December 2003
EXCERPT: With Saddam captured and weapons of mass destruction long-forgotten, the remaining justification for America's invasion and occupation of Iraq is now the establishment of (Western) democracy in Iraq and in the Middle East. This, according to neocon logic, is the only true guarantor of peace and prosperity. If nothing else, there¹s a certain self-fulfilling logic to their assertion--because if allowed, the neocons would keep waging wars until they got their Pax Americana. But that's exactly the problem. They're absolutely correct that people want and deserve the right to determine their own, and their societies' own, fates. But that right cannot be imposed at the end of a gun. Even more to the point, if a sign of stable democracy is the orderly transition of power even when the powerful don't get what they want, it's America, more than any other single force in the world, that's standing in the way of global democracy. From trashing the United Nations to routinely breaking global treaties to mounting unilateral invasions, official U.S. policy is now to use force to get what we want, regardless of whether it's what the majority of the world wants. That's not democracy.

Unilateralism Has Its Price
By JEFF MADRICK
New York Times, 25 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute calculates that the world's military defense spending, as a proportion of gross domestic product, bottomed out in 1998. But in the last few years, the pace of spending growth has picked up. The main reason is the rise in America's defense budget, from $300 billion when President Bush took office to $400 billion in the new fiscal year, excluding the recent $87 billion authorized to fight the Iraq war. "We are back to Reagan-era defense spending levels," said Christopher Hellman of the Center for Arms Control in Washington. America's defense spending accounts for nearly half of the world's such spending, but defense expenditures are also rising rapidly in Russia, China, India, Brazil and several East Asian nations. To compound matters, Russia is not only spending more but also has recently put its multiple-warhead nuclear weapons back into service. Former Warsaw Pact nations, eager to enter NATO, are obliged to increase the amount they devote to defense. Defense spending is up even in Britain and France, and up sharply in several African nations. A variety of factors are driving up defense spending, including terrorism, civil wars, border conflicts and modernization. But Mr. Hellman and others argue that some of the increase is also a reaction to America's more unilateralist military approach. This includes not just higher spending and the war in Iraq, but also a formal pre-emptive military doctrine, proposals for a new missile defense shield and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, or so-called mininukes.

'Our Guy' for Iraq Leader May End Up Biting Us
When the British anointed a ruler in the 1920s, they got more than they bargained for. Read your history, Washington.
LA Times, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: U.S. policymakers today, to the extent that they push leadership claims of those whom they see as open-minded and reasonable about issues important to Washington, might well consider the case of Faisal. No sooner had his coronation been scheduled — and the British more or less irrevocably committed to the cause of his monarchy — than he announced that he had changed his mind. He would not accept a League of Nations mandate. He would not be a puppet king. He wanted to negotiate a treaty, not a trusteeship agreement. Indeed, in the course of his 10-year reign he succeeded in winning not only full independence but membership in the League of Nations as a free and equal country.

26 December 2003

Iraq Through the American Looking Glass
Insurgents are civilians. Tanks that crush civilians are traffic accidents. And civilians should endure heavy doses of fear and violence
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad
The Independent, 26 December 2003
EXCERPT: Something very unpleasant is being let loose in Iraq. Just this week, a company commander in the US 1st Infantry Division in the north of the country admitted that, in order to elicit information about the guerrillas who are killing American troops, it was necessary to "instill fear" in the local villagers. An Iraqi interpreter working for the Americans had just taken an old lady from her home to frighten her daughters and grand-daughters into believing that she was being arrested. A battalion commander in the same area put the point even more baldly. "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," he said. He was speaking from a village that his men had surrounded with barbed wire, upon which was a sign, stating: "This fence is here for your protection. Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot." Try to explain that this treatment - and these words - offend the very basic humanity of the people whom the Americans claimed they came to "liberate" and you are met in Baghdad with the same explanation: that a very small "remnant" of "diehards" - loyal to the now-captured Saddam Hussein, etc, etc - have to be separated from the civilians whom they are "intimidating"

Iraq Reconstruction's Bottom-line
By Herbert Docena
Asia Times, 25 December 2003
EXCERPT:  Even if the occupation were working perfectly well, it would still be wrong. This has become trite commentary among Iraqis who bitterly want the occupation of their country to fail but, at the same time, also earnestly hope that the reconstruction of their country succeeds. Still, no matter how hard the occupiers try to make the reconstruction go right, the US and its corporations still have no right staying here. ...The occupation forces would not admit this, of course, but much of the problem could be attributed to the successful efforts of the resistance to ensure that nothing works as long as an illegal occupation stays in place. The resistance has kept the authorities too busy dodging bombs to spare time for such trifling matters as providing Iraqis with jobs. With the resistance targeting not just combatants but also those profiting from the occupation, it's a little too much to expect contractors to go out of their tightly guarded bubbles and move around.

White House Faulted on Uranium Claim
Intelligence Warnings Disregarded, President's Advisory Board Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has concluded that the White House made a questionable claim in January's State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain nuclear materials because of its desperation to show that Hussein had an active program to develop nuclear weapons, according to a well-placed source familiar with the board's findings.

Goof Caused Uranium-to-Iraq Claim
By Dana Bash
CNN, 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: President Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has concluded that his 2003 State of the Union address included information about Iraq's weapons program that wasn't checked carefully, a source involved in the investigation and findings said Wednesday. CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility this summer for allowing the information to make it into the presidential address, but the new report suggests the White House bears responsibility too. "No one checked their facts carefully," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It was a mistake that propagated itself. They should have known better to check and ask more questions about the information." In an effort to draw support for waging war with Iraq, Bush told the nation in his January speech: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The source said the report concludes there was no intention to deceive; instead it was "a goof" as the administration searched for examples to share with the public of why the United States believed Iraq was attempting to build a nuclear program.

For Vietnam Vet Anthony Zinni, Another War on Shaky Territory
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: Anthony C. Zinni's opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq began on the monsoon-ridden afternoon of Nov. 3, 1970. He was lying on a Vietnamese mountainside west of Da Nang, three rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle in his side and back. He could feel his lifeblood seeping into the ground as he slipped in and out of consciousness. He had plenty of time to think in the following months while recuperating in a military hospital in Hawaii. Among other things, he promised himself that, "If I'm ever in a position to say what I think is right, I will. . . . I don't care what happens to my career." That time has arrived. Over the past year, the retired Marine Corps general has become one of the most prominent opponents of Bush administration policy on Iraq, which he now fears is drifting toward disaster.... "Iraq is in serious danger of coming apart because of lack of planning, underestimating the task and buying into a flawed strategy," he says. "The longer we stubbornly resist admitting the mistakes and not altering our approach, the harder it will be to pull this chestnut out of the fire."

24 December 2003

America: They Do it Their Way
Editorial
Guardian (UK), 24 December 2003
EXCERPT: Even before the costs of the Iraq war and occupation, which themselves exceed $100bn, the United States had a regular defence budget this year of $334bn. The sum is larger than the combined defence spending totals of the 10 next largest military powers on the planet. For this outlay the US possesses the world's largest navy, the world's third largest air force and the world's sixth largest army, all of which are incomparably better equipped than their rivals, and employ a total of 1.43 million personnel between them. The US has taken part in 14 wars since Vietnam, and has troops of some sort stationed in the majority of the world's nations, with significant numbers in a dozen or more, from Iraq to our own. To call the US a militaristic culture may be an exaggeration, but it is a pardonable one. This massive investment forms the bedrock of an intense national feeling in America about its armed forces.

Israeli Army Kills Eight Palestinians in Raid on Gaza
By Conal Urqhuhart
Guardian (UK), 24 December 2003
EXCERPTS: An Israeli army raid in southern Gaza yesterday left eight Palestinians dead in the worst outbreak of violence in two months. The raid followed the killing of two Israeli soldiers in Gaza although the army said its operation in Rafah had been planned for days.... A force of around 30 tanks and armoured vehicles, supported by helicopter gunships, entered Rafah refugee camp, home to almost 100,000 people, in the early hours of yesterday morning. Gunfights began immediately and carried on all day. Israeli soldiers entered homes and used them as defensive positions and sniper nests.
SEE ALSO: The Jewish Choice: Human Equality or Israel (Dissident Voice)

Christmas Brought to Iraq by Force
The Onion, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: On almost every corner in Iraq's capital city, carolers are singing, trees are being trimmed, and shoppers are rushing home with their packages--all under the watchful eye of U.S. troops dedicated to bringing the magic of Christmas to Iraq by force. "It's important that life in liberated Iraq get back to normal as soon as possible," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz at a press conference Monday. "That's why we're making sure that Iraqis have the best Christmas ever--something they certainly wouldn't have had under Saddam Hussein's regime." To that end, 25,000 troops from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and 82nd Airborne Division have been deployed. Their missions include the distribution of cookies and eggnog at major Iraqi city centers, the conscription of bell-ringers from among the Iraqi citizenry, and the enforcement of a new policy in which every man, woman, and child in Baghdad pays at least one visit to 'Twas The Night... On Ice.
SEE ALSO: Twas the Night Before Christmas in the USA

Oldie but goodie...
Senate Authorizes Invasion of Holland
Reuters, 13 June 2002
Courtesy of Atrios
EXCERPT: U.S. officials today sought to allay concerns among Dutch politicians after the Senate approved a measure authorizing use of force if a U.S. citizen is held by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

23 December 2003

Will Iraq Survive the Iraqi Resistance?
Spengler
Asia Times, 22 December 2003
EXCERPT: If the devastating anti-coalition strikes continue, Washington's moment of triumph following Saddam Hussein's capture will fade into a debilitating crisis of policy. Iraqi resistance will no more disappear than Russian resistance in World War II would have disappeared had Josef Stalin been captured. ...Speak to Westerners who have trained Iraqi officers in the military and security forces - some of them are still around - and they will argue that the guerrillas are fighting not for Saddam, whom they despised, nor for his regime, which most of them hated, but for their country. They want to continue living the way they used to live, without the American-style democracy that threatens to dissolve the bonds of traditional society and destroy everything they know. The Iraqi resistance will no more disappear after Saddam's capture than the Russian resistance in World War II would have disappeared had Josef Stalin been captured, observes one old campaigner. Does this mean that America will in turn abandon its Iraqi venture after the fashion of Vietnam? That is extremely unlikely. Much more likely is a revolution in tactics.

Bush Has Thrown Open Pandora's Box in a Paradise for International Terrorists
By David Hirst
Guardian (UK), 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: This was the year the Middle East became the undisputed, tumultuous centre of global politics. When, at dawn on March 20 the US and its British ally went to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, they were intervening in the region on such a scale that Arabs everywhere compared the invasion, in its potential geopolitical significance, to that seminal upheaval of the last century: the collapse of the Ottoman empire. That led to the arbitrary carve-up of its former Arab provinces by the European colonial powers and, in 1948, to the loss of one of them, Palestine, to the Israeli settler-state. In Arab eyes, it was a final mortal blow to the so-called "Arab system" through which the component parts of the greater Arab "nation" collectively strove to protect the territorial integrity and basic security of the whole. To the disgust and shame of the Arab peoples, it was not merely incapable of preventing the conquest and occupation of what, properly governed, would have been one of the most powerful and prosperous Arab lands, it was largely complicit in it. It simply stood and watched as the world's only superpower embarked on its hugely ambitious, neo-colonial enterprise: to make Iraq the fulcrum for reshaping the entire region and, with regime change and "democratisation", cure it of those sicknesses - political and social oppression, religious extremism, corruption, tribalism and economic stagnation - that had turned it into the main threat to the existing world order. It did not formally envisage a full-scale redrawing of state frontiers, but it looked as though by an inexorable momentum that might come to pass.
SEE ALSO: Michael Moore: Letters the Troops Have Sent Me

It's Greed, Not Ideology, That Rules the White House
Why the US wants Iraq's debts cancelled - and Argentina's paid in full
By Naomi Klein
Guardian (UK), 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: The US position has been that wiping out debts would be a dangerous precedent (and rob Washington of the leverage it needs to push for investor-friendly economic reforms). So why is Bush so concerned that "the future of the Iraqi people should not be mortgaged to the enormous burden of debt"? Because it is taking money from "reconstruction", which could go to Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon and Boeing. It has become popular to claim that the White House has been hijacked by neo-conservative ideologues in love with free-market dogma. I'm not convinced. If there's one thing the Wolfowitz/Baker dust-ups make clear, it's that the ideology of the Bush White House isn't neo-conservatism, it's old-fashioned greed. There is only one rule that appears to matter: if it helps our friends get even richer, do it.

Documents Show Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overtures in 1984 Despite Chemical Raids
By Christopher Marquis
New York Times, 23 December 2003
EXCERPT: As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show. Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time, was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to reinforce a message that a recent move to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle and that America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.
SEE ALSO: The Video Footage: When Donald Met Saddam (ICH)

Reinventing Gaddafi and Libya's Weapons of Mass Destruction
By Robert Fisk
Independent (UK), 22 December 2003
Courtesy of ZNet
EXCERPT: The problem I have with the whole Gaddafi saga is that the Libya I know can scarcely repair a drain or install a working lavatory in a hotel. Yet this same Libya, after years of sanctions, was apparently making a nuclear bomb. Libyan nuclear scientists. Say those three words over and over again. Really? And what was that odd word in the Downing Street announcement? "Programmes'? Wasn't that exactly what Mr Blair accused Iraq of developing after the weapons of mass destruction he had told us all about turned out to be non-existent? According to the usual anonymous "US officials' who daily grace the front pages of American newspapers, Libya had not actually acquired a nuclear bomb but was "close to developing one'. But what does that mean? How close is close? A year? Ten years? Some time?
SEE ALSO: Neoconning Us Again? (Nation)
SEE ALSO: The Libya Bush Has Come to Respect (Republicons)
SEE ALSO: UN Watchdog to Scrap Libya's Nuclear Project (Guardian)

U.S. Acting Tough with North Korea
Cheney recently rejected a statement clearing the way for arms talks. He wanted "irreversible" dismantling of programs.
By Warren P. Strobel
Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: Vice President Cheney intervened recently to insist on an uncompromising approach to nuclear arms talks with North Korea, effectively blocking a resumption of negotiations this year, according to a senior administration official. Efforts are under way to get the diplomacy back on track. But the vice president's move illustrates the difficulty the Bush administration is having in agreeing on what incentives - if any - to offer the reclusive communist state to give up its nuclear-weapons programs. It also underscores the unusually powerful foreign-policy role played by Cheney. The senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, quoted the vice president as saying in a pivotal meeting on North Korea: "I have been charged by the President with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with. We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it."

U.S. Puts Its Latest Arms in South Korea
An infusion of high-tech weapons near the DMZ isn't at odds with Bush's call to end the nuclear crisis with Pyongyang via talks, officials say.
By Barbara Demick
LA Times, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: Even as the Bush administration seeks a negotiated settlement to the North Korean nuclear standoff, an intimidating array of high-tech weaponry, much of it battle-tested in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being deployed south of the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean peninsula. The weaponry has been quietly moved into South Korea since the summer as part of a significant restructuring of the 37,000 U.S. troops in the country. In return for moving soldiers away from the DMZ, the Pentagon promised Seoul that it would spend $11 billion to bring in the latest armaments. "More lethality with fewer people," is the way one security analyst described the new mantra of the Pentagon when it comes to the Korean peninsula.

Unmet expectations
After Backing U.S. in Iraq, Poland Waits for Economic Payback
By MARK LANDLER
New York Times, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: As the Pentagon starts handing out contracts to rebuild Iraq's sundered roads, bridges, wells and pipelines, few people are waiting with more impatience than the Poles. In the view of Poland, which risked the ire of its European neighbors by backing the war, committed troops to the occupation and lost its first soldier last month to a sniper near Baghdad, this is payback time. While the Polish government cited moral and political reasons for its support of the United States, economic motives were never far from the surface. Polish officials freely acknowledged that they hoped that backing a friend in a time of need would translate into more profitable economic ties. To many here, winning contracts in Iraq is one way to judge whether that bet paid off. Some see it as an ominous sign that Poland has so far netted just one project, a $7 million telecommunications contract.

22 December 2003

Phoenix Rising
Tucked away in the recent Iraqi appropriation was $3 billlion for a new paramilitary unit. Close students of Vietnam may see similarities.
By Robert Dreyfuss
The American Prospect, 1 January 2004 issue
EXCERPT: With the 2004 electoral clock ticking amid growing public concern about U.S. casualties and chaos in Iraq, the Bush administration's hawks are upping the ante militarily. To those familiar with the CIA's Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam, Latin America's death squads or Israel's official policy of targeted murders of Palestinian activists, the results are likely to look chillingly familiar. "They're clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in Vietnam," says Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism. Ironically, he says, the U.S. forces in Iraq are working with key members of Saddam Hussein's now-defunct intelligence agency to set the program in motion. "They're setting up little teams of Seals and Special Forces with teams of Iraqis, working with people who were former senior Iraqi intelligence people, to do these things," Cannistraro says. The plan is part of a last-ditch effort to win the war before time runs out politically. Driving the effort are U.S. neoconservatives and their allies in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, who are clearly worried about America's inability to put down the Iraqi insurgency with time to spare before November. They are concerned that President Bush's political advisers will overrule the national-security team and persuade the president to pull the plug on Iraq. So, going for broke, they've decided to launch an intensified military effort combined with a radical new counterinsurgency program. ..."It's time for 'no more Mr. Nice Guy'"... "All those people shouting, 'Down with America!' and dancing in the street when Americans are attacked? We have to kill them."

On Saddam's Capture: Selective Memory and False Doctrine
By Noam Chomsky
ZNet, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: All people who have any concern for human rights, justice and integrity should be overjoyed by the capture of Saddam Hussein, and should be awaiting a fair trial for him by an international tribunal. An indictment of Saddam's atrocities would include not only his slaughter and gassing of Kurds in 1988 but also, rather crucially, his massacre of the Shiite rebels who might have overthrown him in 1991. At the time, Washington and its allies held the "strikingly unanimous view (that) whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country's stability than did those who have suffered his repression," reported Alan Cowell in the New York Times. Last December, Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, released a dossier of Saddam's crimes drawn almost entirely from the period of firm U.S.-British support of Saddam. With the usual display of moral integrity, Straw's report and Washington's reaction overlooked that support.
SEE ALSO: Robert Fisk: Iraq's Phantom Insurgents (ZNet)
SEE ALSO: Information Clearing House has a great collection of links to stories about how Saddam Hussein was really captured (ICH)

Memorandum to Empire: Keep Your 'War on Terror'
By Renato Redentor Constantino
ZNet, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: Assembly of Corsairs -- esteemed Pirates of America, Britain and Australia -- we appreciate your generous counsel. We agree with you that the shadow of terror and tyranny grows longer by the day and that we must meet this growing threat with sustained ardor. However, despite all the benefits that are said to come with it, we must respectfully decline your invitation for us to join the new crusade -- what you call the 'war on terror.' Your offer of support is sincerely appreciated, even though the blandishments in your missive suggest that you need our support more than we need yours. While your proposal of deepened friendship given our perilous times is positively noted, you will have to forgive us if we can only extend our middle finger in return. The kindnesses you have heaped on the hapless are not forgotten so easily.

Critics Dismiss Link to Iraq War
Vikram Dodd
The Guardian.22 December 2003
EXCERPT: The government yesterday tried to reap a political windfall from its role in persuading Libya to abandon ambitions to attain a nuclear bomb. The defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, linked the toppling of Saddam Hussein with Libya's unexpected decision to come clean about its weapons programmes. "I don't think you can separate out the relevance of military action in Iraq from the decision the Libyans have taken," he told Sky News.  ...Joseph Cirincione, the director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's nonproliferation project, said: "The president is trying hard to portray this as a victory for his strategy. But when you look at this, it's almost the opposite of the Bush doctrine." With significant numbers of US and British troops likely to have to stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future, some analyst say military action against any other rogue state is unlikely even if the US wanted to do it. "The plan was that Iraq was to be a message for everyone to either fall in line, or else," Mr Cirincione said. "The problem is this threat is not very realistic."

Halliburton Unscathed by Overcharge Flap
By Hussain Khan
Asia Times, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: The timely capture of Saddam Hussein virtually eclipsed, for a while, the embarrassing scandal involving the apparent US$128 million overcharging of US taxpayers by Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm, which received $7 billion in no-bid contracts for oil services and other work in Iraq. The total overcharge, revealed by a Pentagon audit, covers about $61 million for fuel and another $67 million for supplying army food services. But investors in Halliburton and its engineering subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) paid little heed to the uproar in Washington and the field day by Democratic presidential candidates excoriating what they called the apparent war-profiteering and sweetheart deals with Halliburton. Investors figure the firm once run by Cheney will continue to be favored and will continue to reap enormous profits. And that's how it's playing out. Stock prices are rising and new contracts are still being awarded to the company.

Nuclear Program in Iran Tied To Pakistan
Complex Network Acquired Technology and Blueprints
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: Evidence discovered in a probe of Iran's secret nuclear program points overwhelmingly to Pakistan as the source of crucial technology that put Iran on a fast track toward becoming a nuclear weapons power, according to U.S. and European officials familiar with the investigation. The serious nature of the discoveries prompted a decision by Pakistan two weeks ago to detain three of its top nuclear scientists for several days of questioning, with U.S. intelligence experts allowed to assist, the officials said. The scientists have not been charged with any crime, and Pakistan continues to insist that it never wittingly provided nuclear assistance to Iran or anyone else.

If Libya can do it, why not Israel?
We can no longer turn a blind eye to the fifth largest nuclear power
Peter Preston
The Guardian, 22 December 2003
EXCERPT: If weapons of mass destruction are a menace in unstable regions such as the Middle East, if their availability must be reduced, then logic begins to move us closer to the confrontation we never seek with the nuclear power we - let alone Messrs Bush and Blair - seldom mention: Israel. Nobody, including the Knesset, quite knows what happens inside the Dimona complex, but if you put together a compote of usually reliable sources (the Federation of American Scientists, Jane's Intelligence Review, the Stockholm Institute), a tolerably clear picture emerges. Ariel Sharon probably has more than 200 nuclear warheads this morning - more if the 17 years since Mordechai Vanunu's kidnapping have been devoted to building stockpiles. That makes Israel the world's fifth largest nuclear power, boasting more bangs from Washington's bucks than Blair's Britain.

Why the Resistance Will Increase
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset Saddam Hussein is - already was - totally beside the point. Only in the past few months have we learned the extent to which the Saddam system sub-contracted a great deal of decision-making to different Iraqi elite - from tribal sheikhs to businessmen and Sunni and Wahhabi religious leaders. They may originally have been cajoled by Saddam with carrots and sticks to be incorporated into the Ba'athist regime. But now they are totally free to command their own agendas. To top it all, they really have a common agenda for the first time in their lives: a war against American occupation. The resistance will persist because Saddam was never its political, religious, spiritual or moral guide. The mukawama - resistance against foreign occupation - is now a full-blown nationalist, religious movement. The most popular political party on the sprawling campus of Baghdad University is not the widely-despised Ahmad Chalabi's neo-conservative-backed Iraqi National Congress. It is the Iraq Islamist Party.
SEE ALSO: Saddam's Capture Bodes Ill for Bush's Re-election  (International Herald Tribune)
SEE ALSO: Winning and Losing (Note in the New Yorker)

Joint Intelligence Center Is Urged
Rep. Wolf Says Information Should Be Shared Globally to Fight Terror
By Douglas Farah and Dan Eggen
Washington Post, 21 December 2003
EXCERPT: Lack of cooperation between the United States and its European allies has greatly hindered the war on terror, and some congressional leaders are asking the United States to take the lead in establishing a joint intelligence center modeled on NATO to share information on terrorist money and movements. ...the formal coalition "would allow for the FBI and its counterparts around the world to work hand in hand and more easily share information about potential terrorists and terrorist threats."

Bush Declares: "We Must Get Rid of Arafat"
Yahoo! Singapore News, 21 December 2003
Courtesy of Agonist
EXCERPT: US President George W. Bush told an Israeli journalist that "we must get rid of" Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot daily has reported. Bush's comments came in a brief exchange with the paper's correspondent during a Christmas drinks party in Washington, several hours after a keynote speech by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Thursday in which he outlined plans for unilateral disengagement from peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
SEE ALSO: Bush Chided for Arafat Rebuke (Al Jazeera)
SEE ALSO: Israel's Daily Dehumanization of the Palestinians (Haaretz)

Hussein Enters Post-9/11 Web of U.S. Prisons
By JAMES RISEN and THOM SHANKER
New York Times, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: Saddam Hussein is now prisoner No. 1 in what has developed into a global detention system run by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, according to government officials. It is a secretive universe, they said, made up of large and small facilities scattered throughout the world that have sprouted up to handle the hundreds of suspected terrorists of Al Qaeda, Taliban warlords and former officials of the Iraqi government arrested by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the war in Iraq. Many of the prisoners are still being held in a network of detention centers ranging from Afghanistan to the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Officials described it as a prison system with its own unique hierarchy, one in which the most important captives are kept at the greatest distance from the prying eyes of the public and the media. It is a system in which the jailers have refined the arts of interrogation in order to drain the detainees of crucial information.

20-21 December 2003

When Will Press Stop Circulating Dubious Iraq Claims?
Atta-Hussein Document Probably Bogus
By Greg Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: When will the press stop circulating dubious or fabricated claims -- whether from Bush administration officials or intelligence abroad? The latest chapter unfolded this week with wide publicity -- capped by a favorable mention in a William Safire column in The New York Times on Monday and the usual hosannas on Fox News -- concerning a supposed document that linked 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta to Saddam Hussein. This sort of "evidence," which surfaces periodically, is significant, as polls have always shown that one of the major reasons the public supported the invasion of Iraq was belief that Saddam helped plan the 9/11 attacks. Even after more than two years have passed -- and no hard evidence of that uncovered -- a poll earlier this week showed that slightly more than half of all Americans still believe that to be true, suggesting that perhaps the press has not really done its job in debunking this belief. Now appears a document linking Atta to Hussein, which comes amid reports that the U.S. chief weapons inspector is about to call it quits, having failed to uncover any weapons of mass destruction. There's only one problem: Just like every other bit of paper linking Saddam to 9/11 (some of them also touted by Safire), the latest document appears to be bogus. Yet many in the press keep taking them seriously.

Kadafi Began His Overtures More Than a Decade Ago
The leader appeared to change his stance after world reaction to the Pan Am bombing.
By Paul Richter
LA Times, 20 December 2003
EXCERPT: Though the White House is pleased to take credit for Libya's dramatic disavowal of banned weapons, the regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi has been seeking for more than a decade to trade its uncomfortable renegade status for international acceptance.

Ex-Atty. General Would Aid Saddam Defense
By JENNIFER C. KERR
AP in Newsday.com, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said Friday that he would be willing to provide legal counsel to Saddam Hussein if the ousted Iraqi leader requested Clark's assistance. "I would seek to help him protect his rights if he needed my help and I felt that there was no one who's willing who could do it better," Clark said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I would have no hesitation. That's my work. That's my chosen pursuit -- to protect rights. His rights need protecting." Clark also lashed out at the Bush administration for the military's handling of the ex-Iraqi president since he was discovered last weekend hiding underground near his hometown of Tikrit. "My two main concerns would be about the way he's being treated from the standpoint of human rights, and my belief that the humiliation that he has suffered causes hatred and will be harmful to the interests of the United States," Clark said.

U.S. Troops Kill Three Iraqi Policemen
AP in Newsday.com, 20 December 2003
EXCERPT: U.S. troops mistakenly shot and killed three Iraqi police officers and wounded two others, thinking they were bandits, an Iraqi police officer said Saturday. The policemen were manning a checkpoint on a road in the Sleiman Beg area, 55 miles south of Kirkuk city, in northeast Iraq, when U.S. troops opened fire on them around midnight Friday, said Lt. Salam Zangana of the Kirkuk police force. He said two other policemen were wounded. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military.

Think Again: We Are No Safer
By Eric Aleterman
Center for American Progress, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: Saturday, December 13 was a great day for justice. The murderous dictator and mass murderer, Saddam Hussein, was caught by U.S. forces and will be tried for his myriad crimes. But contrary to the enormous media hype the administration has enjoyed, those who say we are no safer for Hussein's capture are correct. America was never threatened by Iraq. Every single one of the scare tactics employed by the administration in their game of bait and switch, designed to exploit the trauma of 9/11 to deploy the neocons' longtime plan to invade Iraq, has proven an exaggeration, a chimera or a lie. There were no WMDs, no nukes, and no connections to Al Qaeda. Indeed, Saddam was being effectively contained at the moment George Bush chose to plunge the region into war and the inspectors were hard at work, despite the president's clueless claims to the contrary. ("Did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is: 'Absolutely.' And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in.") Of course these simple but rather significant complications appear to have eluded much of the media, to the delight of Karl Rove and the administration spin-meisters.

Ounce of Preventive War, Pound of Destruction
Notion of 'strike first' helped fill the 20th century with violence
By Errol Morris
Errol Morris' documentaries include "The Gates of Heaven" and "The Thin Blue Line." "The Fog of War" opens in Los Angeles and New York City today.
LA Times, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: In the spring of 2001, I started interviewing Robert McNamara, the secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, for the film "The Fog of War." I have often been asked: "Why McNamara? Why make a movie about this man, a man reviled by many as the architect of the Vietnam War?" Because I had read McNamara's "In Retrospect" in 1995 and was surprised that the book I read was different from the mea culpa that was described in countless reviews and editorials. The book wasn't an apology but an anguished attempt to look back on history and to imagine whether history could have been different. At its heart, it also raised these questions: "Can we learn from experience? Can we learn from history?"

The Logic of Withdrawal
By Howard Zinn
The Progressive, January 2004 issue
EXCERPT: Many liberals were saying: "Yes, we should leave Vietnam, but President Johnson can't just do it; it would be very hard to explain to the American people." My response, in the last chapter of my book, was to write a speech for Lyndon Johnson, explaining to the American people why he was ordering the immediate evacuation of American armed forces from Vietnam.

The War in Iraq
NewYorker.com, 19 December 2003
Newyorker.com has collected much of the magazine’s coverage of the conflict with Iraq and added a selection of relevant articles from The New Yorker’s archive.

19 December 2003

Who Needs WMD When You've Got Saddam?
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: With former president Saddam Hussein in the bag, the administration of President George W Bush appears determined to make US voters forget Washington invaded Iraq on the pretext that its now evidently non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed a direct threat to the United States and its allies. The effort so far has taken two forms: the suggestion by administration officials, including Bush himself, that ousting and capturing Saddam were ample justifications for going to war; and the quiet dissolution of the nearly billion-dollar effort to find WMD in Iraq.

U.S. in "Delicate" Negotiations With Its Puppet Council Over Future Military Role in "Sovereign Iraq"
By THOM SHANKER and STEVEN R. WEISMAN
New York Times, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration has begun delicate negotiations with Iraq's transitional leaders on the freedom American-led military forces will have to carry out operations against insurgents after the transfer of sovereignty to a new government in Baghdad on June 30, officials say. While the Coalition Provisional Authority is scheduled to go out of business by the middle of next year, military officials have said recently that their forces may have to remain in Iraq for at least "a couple more years," in the words of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the American commander in Iraq.

Telling It Right
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: The capture of Saddam Hussein has produced a great outpouring of relief among both Iraqis and Americans. He's no longer taunting us from hiding; he was a monster and deserves whatever fate awaits him. But we shouldn't let war supporters use the occasion of Saddam's capture to rewrite the recent history of U.S. foreign policy, to draw a veil over the way the nation was misled into war. Even the Iraq war's critics usually focus on the practical failures of the Bush administration's policy, rather than its morality. After all, the war came at a heavy cost, even before the fighting began: to prepare for the Iraq campaign, the administration diverted resources away from Afghanistan before the job was done, giving Al Qaeda a chance to get away and the Taliban a chance to regroup.

Sharon: Palestinians Must Act Now or Israel Will Go It Alone
By Ewen MacAskill, Conal Urquhart and Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 19 December 2003
EXCERPTS: The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, opened a dangerous new phase in the Middle East conflict last night when he delivered an ultimatum to the Palestinians to act against terrorists or he will embark on a "unilateral separation" plan within months.... The US government, Israel's strongest ally, said it would oppose any unilateral Israeli steps and urged Mr Sharon to meet with his Palestinian counterpart "very soon" for peace talks.
SEE ALSO: Sowing Conflict and Division (Ha'aretz)
SEE ALSO: Netanyahu: Israel's Arabs are the real demographic threat (Ha'aretz)
SEE ALSO: Sharon Issues Separation Ultimatum (Arab News)
SEE ALSO: Jewish Leaders Warn Bush: Don't Push Israel (Jewish Week)

Iraq Weapons Hunter Kay to Quit Early as Hopes of Finding WMDs Dwindle
By Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 19 December 2003
EXCERPT: One former UN colleague said Mr Kay was under pressure to leave from his wife, who was nervous about his safety. He had expected the search to have brought results much quicker and had predicted he would be back in the US by Christmas. Another former colleague however, said Mr Kay was frustrated at the haemorrhage of personnel and resources from the ISG to the counter-insurgency effort in Iraq. A significant proportion of the group's Arabic translators have been diverted to interrogating suspected guerrillas, leaving the ISG unable to interview officials and scientists who might have knowledge of Saddam Hussein's programmes. "This is a big blow to the administration and it will signal the effective end of the search for weapons of mass destruction," said Joseph Cirincione, a weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment Institute for Peace in Washington. "Some will continue looking but very, very few expect there to be any significant finds at this point."
SEE ALSO: US Soldier Killed in Iraq Despite Major Army Drive (Arab News)
SEE ALSO: Remember WMDs? FOr Bush, They Are a Nonissue (NYT)

 AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
The Lie Factory: How the Pentagon Pushed Lies About Iraq
Democracy NOW!, 18 December 2003
EXCERPT: As the U.S. occupation of Iraq extends into it eight month and into 2004, some 460 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and thousands more have been wounded. U.S. forces have failed to produce any of mass destruction in the country ­ the stated reason for going to war against Baghdad. A new investigation examines how a secret Pentagon intelligence unit led the nation to war by pushing disinformation and faulty intelligence to produce wildly exaggerated threats posed by Iraq. A detailed article in this month¹s issue of Mother Jones reveals how just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration set up the secret Pentagon unit and war-planning task force named the Office of Special Plans.
SEE ALSO: Saddam's Capture Provides Rallying Point for Neoconservatives (TomPaine.com)

18 December 2003

Bush the Bumbler
The real trouble with the president's foreign policy.
By Daniel Drezner
Slate, 17 December 2003
Courtesy of ML
EXCERPT: There are three ways to criticize the Bush administration's approach to foreign policy. ...A third criticism has slowly emerged over the past six months. It agrees with the logic of Bush's grand strategy, but questions whether the policy implementation has been up to snuff. This line of argumentation has less to do with substance and more to do with process. To sum it up, Bush's management of foreign policy has been too detached for his own good. The president would proudly admit that he's not a detail guy, preferring to enunciate firm principles and let his subordinates hash out the specifics. However, this disengagement has encouraged bureaucratic rivalries to fester, diverting the attention of officials from the actual substance of foreign policy.

The U.S. Risks Squandering Newfound Goodwill
Philip H. Gordon
Financial Times in Brookings, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: And even if the violence does diminish, the longer-term challenges of putting in place a stable government structure and the costly burden of reconstruction will remain. US forces still account for more than 80 per cent of foreign troops in Iraq and have borne at least 90 per cent of the casualties. The US taxpayer will spend nearly $80bn in Iraq this year, while international pledges amount to no more than $4bn in grants and $9bn in loans and most are so far unfulfilled. With the arrival today in Paris of James Baker, former US secretary of state, on a mission to garner help to relieve some of Iraq's crushing debt burden, now would seem an ideal time for Mr Bush to reach out to Europe and try to bring new countries into the coalition. Unfortunately, there is little sign that Washington recognises a new approach is needed. Indeed, the optimism this week that Mr Hussein's arrest would be a turning point in Iraq's nation-building process may well make the Bush administration more confident that it needs no more help to stabilise Iraq. Certainly, last Monday's Pentagon directive excluding companies from anti-war countries from bidding for primary contracts in Iraq's reconstruction suggests that large parts of the US government, at least, still do not get it. That petulant diktat, vigorously supported by Mr Bush later in the week, was based on the same misguided theory of "punishment" that so deepened the rift with many of America's traditional allies in the first place and made public opinion around the world reluctant to support the US.

Guantanamo a Legal Black Hole
CNN, 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: David Hicks has been detained for two years without charge so far. ...The attorney for an Australian captured in Afghanistan and being held as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Wednesday called the detention camp where his client is being held a "legal, physical and moral black hole." Attorney Stephen Kenny described to reporters as much as he legally could about his first meetings with his client, David Hicks, which came over the course of five days recently. Hicks, an Australian who was captured in northern Afghanistan as a suspected Taliban fighter, is the first detainee allowed to have a visit from an independent lawyer. Hicks has not been formally charged.

US Accused of Double Standards After Granting Saddam Prisoner-of-War Status
By Robert Verkaik and Rupert Cornwell
The Independent, 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: The US administration was accused of gross hypocrisy yesterday after granting Saddam Hussein the legal rights that for more than two years it has denied the 660 detainees held in Guantanamo Bay. The treatment of Saddam as a prisoner of war under the terms of the Geneva Conventions and the promises he will be given a fair trial contrast sharply with the status of the "illegal combatants" picked up by the coalition forces in the war against terror. ...Mr Rumsfeld rejected charges that the videos breached the Geneva Conventions, which bar PoWs from being displayed publicly as objects of ridicule, saying that "by a reasonable definition of the Geneva Convention", Saddam had not been treated in a demeaning fashion.
SEE ALSO: Saddam's Arrest Raises Troubling Questions (Foreign Policy In Focus)

Umm Qasr: From National Pride to War Booty
By David Bacon
CorpWatch, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: The free trade ideologues of the Bush administration see the occupation of Iraq as a beachhead into the Middle East and south Asia. Their first objective is the transformation of the state-dominated economy of what was once one of the region's wealthiest countries. Tom Foley, a Bush fundraiser put in charge of implementing this vision on the ground, said his goal is a "fully thriving capitalist economy." Privatizing Umm Qasr began the transformation of the Iraqi economy -- from one based on nationalization and production for domestic welfare, to one based on ownership by transnational corporations, sending their profits out of the country.

Understanding Iraq: The Terrorist Cell Group
By Gary North
LewRockwell.com, 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: The capture of Hussein makes it that much more difficult politically to keep our troops there. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no al-Qaeda connection. There was only Hussein. Now he has been captured. There is no way that President Bush can get Americans to foot the bill alone much longer. The symbol of evil is in custody. Americans are practical people. They will not be persuaded to pay the price of occupying Iraq much longer. When we pull out, this will send a message to Islamic terrorists all over the world: America will not be back. They will see the departure as a retreat. They will see that the cell structure is a low-cost way to drive out the Great Satan. They will also see that to become a client of the U.S., as Saddam Hussein was, is suicidal. So will the client rulers in the region. If I am correct, then the Middle East will become more of a tinder box than it was before last March. Client regimes will lose confidence in the support they can expect from America. Congress is not going to authorize any more adventures in the Middle East without the presence of a provable direct military threat. Meanwhile, the cells, like cancer, will multiply. Recruiting will become easier.
SEE ALSO: Backroom Political Maneuvering Delays Next Round of Pentagon Bidding, Again (Forbes)
SEE ALSO: Saddam's Capture Means Trouble for U.S. Officials (FFF)

17 December 2003

Twenty-first Century Version of "Rape and Pillage"
New York Times, 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: [American based TV broadcast is] the most ambitious United States government-sponsored international media project since the Voice of America began broadcasting in 1942. It is to be called Al Hurra, a slickly produced Arab-language news and entertainment network that will be beamed by satellite from this Washington suburb to the Middle East. The name translates to English as "The Free One." Many Middle East scholars have questioned whether its target audience, suspicious of all things American, would ever accept it, especially when its main hub is in Virginia. Even if it does gain acceptance, some scholars said they doubted that a single television network could have enough impact to justify $62 million in first-year costs. The team behind Al Hurra, an odd mix of American media executives and longtime Arab journalists, said it would be editorially independent, in keeping with other outfits of its kind: Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.

U.S. Seeks Compromise Plan for Iraqi Political Transition
By Robin Wright and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is scrambling to negotiate a compromise with Iraq's two main religious strains in an effort to keep alive its plan to transfer political power to a new Iraqi provisional government in less than seven months, according to senior U.S. and Iraqi officials. The compromises would be aimed at satisfying Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has rejected a U.S. plan to choose an Iraqi government through regional caucuses and insisted that popular elections are the only legitimate method of selection. In an attempt to broker a deal, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, has privately asked intermediaries to speak with Sistani to convey the administration's view that early elections could result in violence and manipulation by Baath Party loyalists, the officials said. Although Bremer and Sistani have not met or spoken directly, the officials said the two recently exchanged letters on the issue of elections in a bid to untangle the political transition.

Humiliating Photos of Saddam Hussein Could Backfire in Islamic World
By Stanley Weintraub
USA Today, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: As an army lieutenant during the Korean War, I was the admissions officer of the United Nations' prisoner of war hospital in Korea. Although American soldiers considered the Korean prisoners representatives of a brutal, communist enemy and were all outraged over the mistreatment and exploitation of our fellow troops as prisoners of war, each captured Korean soldier was treated with humanity. The same cannot be said of the U.S. handling of the capture of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein this past weekend. The video images of a haggard, unshaven Saddam were played over and over on televisions around the world. The United States will pay a price in the Islamic world for our public debasement of Saddam.
SEE ALSO: We Caught the Wrong Guy (AlterNet)
SEE ALSO: The War Rolls On (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Iraq: What Next? (AlterNet)

A Baghdad Thanksgiving's Lingering Aftertaste
By Dana Milbank
12 December 2003
EXCERPT: Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-authorized newspaper of the U.S. military, is bucking for a court-martial. When last we checked in on Stripes, it was reporting on a survey it did of troops in Iraq, finding that half of those questioned described their units' moral as low and their training as insufficient and said they did not plan to reenlist. With the Pentagon just recovering from that, Stars and Stripes is blowing the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying the cheering soldiers who met him were pre-screened and others showing up for a turkey dinner were turned away.
SEE ALSO: Bush Takes His Prop Turkey to the REAL Iraq (BushWhackedUSA)
SEE ALSO: Bush Takes His Prop Turkey Around the World (BushWhackedUSA)

Can the Americans Bring Justice to the Iraqis?
By Kate Allen
Guardian (UK), 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: Can the Americans help bring about justice? Arresting Saddam Hussein is obviously a step in the right direction. However, there are doubts about the current US administration's commitment to the principles of international justice. The US is implacably opposed to the work of the international criminal court (ICC), a body described by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, as "the greatest recent single act of progress for justice, human rights and the rule of law". Far from agreeing with the usefulness of internationalising justice procedures when confronted with crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes (all potentially charges to be levelled against Saddam), the US is waging a campaign to weaken support for the ICC. This does not mean that the US cannot assist in the process of securing justice for Iraq, but does bring it into question. For example, will any court that tries Saddam Hussein be able to examine crimes committed when Iraq was an ally of the west as well as its acknowledged enemy? Or will there be time limits imposed?
SEE ALSO: Putting Saddam on Trial (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Saddam's Decades of Connection to the CIA (Rise4News.net)
SEE ALSO:  Rumsfeld and "His Old Friend" Saddam (Asia Times)

New Powers, Old Habits in Iraq
By Humphrey Hawksley
BBC News. 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Six months before the planned transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, new political forces have been filling the vacuum left by the fall of Saddam. But a brush with the new authorities can mean a familiar encounter over identity cards and threats.

Beijing's Ominous New Threat on Taiwan
By Macabe Keliher
Asia Times, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: Taiwanese investors on the southeast coast of China got a shock recently when officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) showed up and delivered an ominous message that, this time, the threat of military action against Taiwan could be more than mere rhetoric. And this was not the only sign that a real shooting war may be in the offing.

Updates Pave the Way for Government and Corporate Control of the Internet
By Steven Levy
Newsweek,  16 December 2003
EXCERPT: Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse. Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive) ideas in the cradle, and no one can publish even a laundry list without the imprimatur of Big Brother. Some prognosticators are saying that such a construct is nearly inevitable. And this infrastructure is none other than the former paradise of rebels and free-speechers: the Internet.

17 December 2003

Twenty-first Century Version of "Rape and Pillage"
New York Times, 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: [American based TV broadcast is] the most ambitious United States government-sponsored international media project since the Voice of America began broadcasting in 1942. It is to be called Al Hurra, a slickly produced Arab-language news and entertainment network that will be beamed by satellite from this Washington suburb to the Middle East. The name translates to English as "The Free One." Many Middle East scholars have questioned whether its target audience, suspicious of all things American, would ever accept it, especially when its main hub is in Virginia. Even if it does gain acceptance, some scholars said they doubted that a single television network could have enough impact to justify $62 million in first-year costs. The team behind Al Hurra, an odd mix of American media executives and longtime Arab journalists, said it would be editorially independent, in keeping with other outfits of its kind: Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.

U.S. Seeks Compromise Plan for Iraqi Political Transition
By Robin Wright and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is scrambling to negotiate a compromise with Iraq's two main religious strains in an effort to keep alive its plan to transfer political power to a new Iraqi provisional government in less than seven months, according to senior U.S. and Iraqi officials. The compromises would be aimed at satisfying Iraq's most influential Shiite Muslim leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has rejected a U.S. plan to choose an Iraqi government through regional caucuses and insisted that popular elections are the only legitimate method of selection. In an attempt to broker a deal, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, has privately asked intermediaries to speak with Sistani to convey the administration's view that early elections could result in violence and manipulation by Baath Party loyalists, the officials said. Although Bremer and Sistani have not met or spoken directly, the officials said the two recently exchanged letters on the issue of elections in a bid to untangle the political transition.

Humiliating Photos of Saddam Hussein Could Backfire in Islamic World
By Stanley Weintraub
USA Today, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: As an army lieutenant during the Korean War, I was the admissions officer of the United Nations' prisoner of war hospital in Korea. Although American soldiers considered the Korean prisoners representatives of a brutal, communist enemy and were all outraged over the mistreatment and exploitation of our fellow troops as prisoners of war, each captured Korean soldier was treated with humanity. The same cannot be said of the U.S. handling of the capture of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein this past weekend. The video images of a haggard, unshaven Saddam were played over and over on televisions around the world. The United States will pay a price in the Islamic world for our public debasement of Saddam.
SEE ALSO: We Caught the Wrong Guy (AlterNet)
SEE ALSO: The War Rolls On (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Iraq: What Next? (AlterNet)

A Baghdad Thanksgiving's Lingering Aftertaste
By Dana Milbank
12 December 2003
EXCERPT: Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-authorized newspaper of the U.S. military, is bucking for a court-martial. When last we checked in on Stripes, it was reporting on a survey it did of troops in Iraq, finding that half of those questioned described their units' moral as low and their training as insufficient and said they did not plan to reenlist. With the Pentagon just recovering from that, Stars and Stripes is blowing the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying the cheering soldiers who met him were pre-screened and others showing up for a turkey dinner were turned away.
SEE ALSO: Bush Takes His Prop Turkey to the REAL Iraq (BushWhackedUSA)
SEE ALSO: Bush Takes His Prop Turkey Around the World (BushWhackedUSA)

Can the Americans Bring Justice to the Iraqis?
By Kate Allen
Guardian (UK), 17 December 2003
EXCERPT: Can the Americans help bring about justice? Arresting Saddam Hussein is obviously a step in the right direction. However, there are doubts about the current US administration's commitment to the principles of international justice. The US is implacably opposed to the work of the international criminal court (ICC), a body described by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, as "the greatest recent single act of progress for justice, human rights and the rule of law". Far from agreeing with the usefulness of internationalising justice procedures when confronted with crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes (all potentially charges to be levelled against Saddam), the US is waging a campaign to weaken support for the ICC. This does not mean that the US cannot assist in the process of securing justice for Iraq, but does bring it into question. For example, will any court that tries Saddam Hussein be able to examine crimes committed when Iraq was an ally of the west as well as its acknowledged enemy? Or will there be time limits imposed?
SEE ALSO: Putting Saddam on Trial (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Saddam's Decades of Connection to the CIA (Rise4News.net)
SEE ALSO:  Rumsfeld and "His Old Friend" Saddam (Asia Times)

New Powers, Old Habits in Iraq
By Humphrey Hawksley
BBC News. 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Six months before the planned transfer of sovereignty in Iraq, new political forces have been filling the vacuum left by the fall of Saddam. But a brush with the new authorities can mean a familiar encounter over identity cards and threats.

Beijing's Ominous New Threat on Taiwan
By Macabe Keliher
Asia Times, 16 December 2003
EXCERPT: Taiwanese investors on the southeast coast of China got a shock recently when officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) showed up and delivered an ominous message that, this time, the threat of military action against Taiwan could be more than mere rhetoric. And this was not the only sign that a real shooting war may be in the offing.

Updates Pave the Way for Government and Corporate Control of the Internet
By Steven Levy
Newsweek,  16 December 2003
EXCERPT: Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse. Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive) ideas in the cradle, and no one can publish even a laundry list without the imprimatur of Big Brother. Some prognosticators are saying that such a construct is nearly inevitable. And this infrastructure is none other than the former paradise of rebels and free-speechers: the Internet.

16 December 2003

We Finally Got Our Frankenstein
By Michael Moore
Courtesy of ZNet, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam today. That's something most Americans can't get. America used to like Saddam. We LOVED Saddam. We funded him. We armed him. We helped him gas Iranian troops. But then he screwed up. He invaded the dictatorship of Kuwait and, in doing so, did the worst thing imaginable -- he threatened an even BETTER friend of ours: the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, and its vast oil reserves. The Bushes and the Saudi royal family were and are close business partners, and Saddam, back in 1990, committed a royal blunder by getting a little too close to their wealthy holdings. Things went downhill for Saddam from there.
SEE ALSO: A Saddam Chronology (ZNet)
SEE ALSO: Indications Saddam Was Not in Hiding but Captive (Debka)
SEE ALSO: Bush's Iraq Headache Will Get Worse When Saddam Opens His Mouth (TP)
SEE ALSO: Still No WMD's or Al Quaeda Connections Captured (TP)
SEE ALSO: Meanwhile, Suicide Bomber Kills Eight Policemen in Iraq (AP)

Blood, Contracts and the Cost of Empire
By Paul Street
ZNet, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: What's the most disturbing thing about the latest White House and Pentagon fiasco, sparked by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz's announcement that only countries who supported the United States invasion of Iraq can bid for lucrative reconstruction contracts in the occupied nation? It's hard to say.  There's just so much about this sorry episode to make one cringe. There's the absence of the Iraqi peoples' needs from the debate over Wolfowitz's directive. Speaking outside the relevant mainstream discourse, Phyllis Bennis recently argued the radical notion that "the reconstruction of Iraq should be for the benefit of Iraqis," and not a source of "reward" for "multinational corporations" based outside Iraq.  Consistent with that logical imperative, "Iraqi firms and workers should be hired to rebuild the community, not U.S. or international firms"

Saddam’s Capture Means Trouble for U.S. Officials
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Future of Freedom Foundation, 15 December 2003
EXCERPT: Why wouldn’t U.S. officials readily agree to relinquish jurisdiction over Hussein’s trial? Because of their need to closely guard the secrets that Saddam Hussein has in his possession — secrets that would cause no small amount of embarrassment to the U.S. government, including former president Ronald Reagan, former vice-president and former president George H.W. Bush (the president’s father), and Donald Rumsfeld, the president’s secretary of defense. ...As U.S. officials begin to reflect upon the legal quandary that Hussein’s capture has put them in, they will undoubtedly come to rue the day that U.S. soldiers treated his capture differently than the way they treated the capture of his two sons.

Capture Gives U.S. Fresh Diplomacy Chance
By TOM RAUM Associated Press Writer
AP in FindLaw, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: Saddam Hussein's capture offers the Bush administration a fresh chance to improve relations with the Arab world and to persuade European nations to participate in Iraq's reconstruction. But the administration has squandered international goodwill before, and much may depend on whether the capture leads to improved security and public safety in Iraq. "The arrest of Saddam Hussein changed the equation in Iraq," a hopeful President Bush told a news conference on Monday as he basked in international cheers. Even world leaders who opposed the U.S.-led war congratulated Bush and expressed hope the arrest would bring greater stability to the war-ravaged country. But continued attacks on Monday by insurgents were a reminder that Saddam's detention doesn't necessarily mean a lessening of violence or of anti-American sentiment.

Origins of Iraq's Nuclear Program
American Data Aided Iraq Arms Program
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP in the New York Times, 13 December 2003
EXCERPT: Atoms for Peace was designed to sell U.S. nuclear technology for electricity generation and other peaceful purposes, but it had "an unintended outcome," says Peter R. Lavoy, an American expert on weapons proliferation. "Some recipient nations did divert U.S. nuclear assistance to military uses." In Iraq's case, the 1991 Gulf War halted the weapons program, and U.N. inspectors later dismantled what was left of it. The Bush administration claimed before the U.S. invasion last March that intelligence indicated Iraq had restarted a bomb program, but months of searching turned up no evidence of that. In the cases of Israel, India and Pakistan, U.S. assistance in the early years contributed to the nuclear arsenals those nations now possess. At the same time, the Soviet Union was supplying nuclear technology to China, which eventually also built nuclear weapons. Khadduri, a senior scientist in the Iraqi bomb effort who left his homeland in 1998, describes the quest for technology in a new, self-published book, "Iraq's Nuclear Mirage," available via online booksellers.

Woman Faces Prison for Revealing US, UK Spying on UN Representatives
For telling the truth
By Norman Solomon
Baltimore Sun, 14 December 2003
EXCERPT: On Nov. 13, her name (Katharine Gun) surfaced in the British news media when the Labor Party government dropped the other shoe, charging the 29-year-old woman with a breach of the Official Secrets Act. She faces up to two years in prison if convicted. Ms. Gun, who is free on bail and is to appear in court Jan. 19, has responded with measured eloquence. Disclosure of the NSA memo, she said Nov. 27, was "necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed." And Ms. Gun reiterated something that she had said two weeks earlier: "I have only ever followed my conscience." ...the illegal bugging of diplomats from three continents in Manhattan foreshadowed the illegality of the war that was to come. Shortly before the invasion began, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pointed out that - in the absence of an authorizing resolution from the Security Council - an attack on Iraq would violate the U.N. Charter.

Bush Team Rewards Halliburton for its Great Gas Price
Halliburton Gets More Business in Iraq
By Sue Pleming
Reuters
EXCERPT: The U.S. military said on Monday Vice President Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton was allocated $222 million more last week for work in Iraq, at the same time as a Pentagon audit found the firm may have overbilled for some services there. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root has now clocked up $2.26 billion under its March no-bid contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild Iraq's oil sector. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Bob Faletti said a new task order was made for KBR last week worth up to $222 million for the "restoration of essential infrastructure."

Why 'USA Today' Probed Cluster Bombs in Iraq