10 March 2004

Bush Bombs 9/11: The Dead, the Bad and the Ugly
By Pierre Tristam
Daytona Beach News Journal via Common Dreams, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: It was never a question of whether, but of how President Bush would use the graveyards of Sept. 11 to season his re-election campaign. The question was just answered: By eroticizing the dead of that fateful day and using the flag as their g-string. The first television ads of the Bush campaign released last week don't yet linger on the dead. They only dig one back up for a cameo in the 30-second spot that sums up the "challenges" Bush had to face after taking office ("An economy in recession. A stock market in decline. A dot com boom gone bust. Then a day of tragedy.") The ads are a teaser of what's to come. They announce that the Republican National Convention in Manhattan, a few blocks from Ground Zero and a few days removed from the attacks' third anniversary, will be an orgy of Sept. 11 videos. Last week's ads are the previews.
SEE ALSO: The Worst Form of Exploitation
A hypocritical Bush uses 9/11 images but resists an accounting of the truth.
By Robert Scheer
LA Times, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: How perfect the irony, how sordid the scam. The president, who ignored the Al Qaeda threat before Sept. 11, 2001, who diverted public attention in that horror's aftermath to the nonexistent threat from Iraq and who has stonewalled the investigation of 9/11, now seeks to exploit that tragedy as a reelection gimmick. George W. Bush avoids being photographed with the dead and injured from his folly in Iraq, but hey, those flag-draped coffins of 9/11 victims make great TV ads. What a grisly low in political exploitation. That's why the ads were condemned by a firefighters union and many of the 9/11 victims' relatives, whose various websites contain an impressive list of the unanswered questions concerning the tragedy. As Bob McIlvaine, whose son was killed in the Twin Towers disaster, put it: "Instead of playing on people's emotions with images of that day, the president would do right to cooperate more with the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks so we can learn the truth about what happened on that day and why." But uncovering the truth about 9/11 has never been Bush's intention. Instead, the president has used that tragedy for his own political ambitions ‹ to draw attention away from his lies about Iraq, the unprecedented national debt, the disappointing jobless recovery and the attacks on civil liberty.
SEE ALSO: Bush is a Big Fat Fraud (The Nation)
SEE ALSO: Bush's Backfiring Ad Campaign (The Nation)

A Different W: Women's Votes Could Change Election
By Martha Burk
TomPaine.com, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: Sorry, NASCAR dads, your 15 minutes are up. Single women are the new flavor of the month for the political punditocracy. Inspired by a survey conducted by Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and Celinda Lake showing an untapped gold mine of votes among women sans men, the buzz is all about how these babes can swing the election. With 16 million unmarried women now unregistered and 22 million unmarried women who are registered but didn't vote in the last election, this could be a formidable bloc. While neither party has a lock on this voting group, 65 percent of single women think the country is headed in the wrong direction. That could be good news for the Democrats, but only if they're willing to appeal to women as women.
SEE ALSO: Playing With Fire: The Culture War (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Liberals Must Debunk the Elitism Myth (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Six Things Kerry Must Do to Win (Arianna Huffington)

Scientists Oppose Bush's Plan to Save Endangered Species by Destroying Them
Defenders of Wildlife, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: Hundreds of scientists from around the world today called on the Bush administration to reverse a proposal to expand the importation of endangered animals and their body parts.  After two decades of bipartisan support for strict limits on global commerce in endangered species, the White House is proposing to allow the importation of endangered animals and body parts based on highly dubious claims of the conservation benefits stemming from increased trade.  Renowned scientist Jane Goodall and esteemed conservationists Dr. Edward O. Wilson and George Schaller, were among the 358 signers of today¹s letter, which questions both the structure and science behind the President¹s policy. Biologist and TV host Jeff Corwin also signed the letter, which comes on the heels of a devastating report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which criticized the Bush administration¹s distortion of science for policy gain.
SEE ALSO: Bush Clears Path for Forest Clearcuts (BushGreenWatch)

Is US Military Creeping into Domestic Spying and Law Enforcement?
By Robert Block and Gary Fields
WSJ via Common Dreams, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: In a little-noticed side effect of the war on terrorism, the military is edging toward a sensitive area that has been off-limits to it historically: domestic intelligence gathering and law enforcement. Several recent incidents involving the military have raised concern among student and civil-rights groups. One was a visit last month by an Army intelligence agent to an official at the University of Texas law school in Austin. The agent demanded a videotape of a recent academic conference at the school so that he could identify what he described as "three Middle Eastern men" who had made "suspicious" remarks to Army lawyers at the seminar, according to the official, Susana Aleman, the dean of student affairs. The Army, while not disputing that the visit took place, declined to comment, saying the incident is under investigation.

Plugging Leaks
More details emerge on the Plame investigation, as Karl Rove's testimony is revealed for the first time.
By Murray S. Waas
The American Prospect, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel's investigation of the matter. ...Media attention has so far focused largely on four current and former White House aides who have testified: McClellan; Claire Buchan, a deputy press secretary; Adam Levine, a former White House communications aide, and Mary Matalin, a former adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Bush Blasts Kerry on Swing Through Texas
The president says his likely rival tried to gut intelligence funds and has changed his views. The Democrat wastes no time in lashing back.
By Maura Reynolds and Matea Gold
LA Times, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: And Vice President Dick Cheney joined the fray from Des Moines, where he was raising money for a congressional candidate. He criticized Kerry, arguing that the presumptive Democratic nominee prefers an "inadequate strategy" of law enforcement to deal with terrorist attacks on the United States. He talked about a conversation he had with an American soldier in Italy, who told him, "Indecision kills." "These are not times for leaders who shift with the political winds, saying one thing one day and another the next," Cheney said. "We need a commander in chief of clear vision and steady determination." Kerry responded in kind during a speech with 500 supporters in Tampa, Fla. "Let me tell you something, Mr. Cheney; let me tell you something, Mr. President," he said. "Bad, rushed decisions kill too!" The crowd cheered as he continued: "And not giving American citizens healthcare kills too. And turning your back on the environment and going backward on clean air and clean water kills too!"

Senators Call Out Bush on Border Security
By LESLIE MILLER
AP in FindLaw.com, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration is moving too sluggishly to make FBI fingerprints available to immigration control officers, a failure that could allow terrorists to slip into the country, Democratic and Republican senators said Tuesday. It will be years before immigration officials can compare the FBI's 43 million fingerprints with those of all foreigners with visas who arrive in the United States, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said during a hearing of a subcommittee that deals with homeland security. At the beginning of the year, foreign visitors arriving with visas at U.S. airports and seaports had their travel documents scanned, their fingerprints and photos taken and their identification checked against terrorist watch lists under the new US-VISIT program. Gregg told Homeland Security undersecretary Asa Hutchinson that he doesn't want terrorists to get into the country through that program if their fingerprints are already in the FBI's database. "Why did we spend all this money on a database if you folks aren't going to take advantage of it?" Gregg said. "We spent so much money getting this stupid database up." Homeland Security is spending $328 million on US-VISIT this year. The Bush administration proposed spending $340 million next year.

Justice Dept. Drops Abortion Record Hunt
By CURT ANDERSON Associated Press Writer
AP in FindLaw.com, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Justice Department is dropping its effort to subpoena abortion records from six Planned Parenthood affiliates as part of the government's defense of a new law barring certain late-term abortions, officials said Tuesday. Government lawyers said they were forced to withdraw the subpoenas because of U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton's ruling in San Francisco last week that the records could not be introduced in a trial of a challenge to the law brought by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The Justice Department still is pursuing abortion records - with names, addresses and other personal information edited out - to defend the law against similar lawsuits brought by abortion providers in New York and Lincoln, Neb.

Medicare Pick McClellan Meets Resistance
By Lisa Richwine
Reuters in FindLaw.com, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: The U.S. nominee to run the Medicare program won backing on Tuesday from a Senate panel but faces resistance on the floor of the chamber over his opposition to the importation of lower-priced medicines.

Tuesday's Broadside
The Republicans tell us that John Kerry can't make up his mind. A close look at the record shows a different story.
By Matthew Yglesias
The American Prospect, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: John Kerry is a flip-flopper. I know this because the RNC tells me so. Just take a look at their new "Interactive Game," Kerry versus Kerry, or listen to the president's speech last Wednesday alleging that "Senator Kerry's been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue." ...Given a choice between Kerry's nuance and Bush's policy of, well, lying about what he wants to do, I think I'll stick with Kerry.

9 March 2004

Political Propaganda Takes the Place of Professional Analysis
by Paul Krugman
New York Times, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: Notice (referring to a chart) that the February 2004 forecast, which, as in previous years, is based on data only through the preceding October, is already 900,000 jobs too high. Economic forecasting isn't an exact science, but wishful thinking on this scale is unprecedented. Nor can the administration use its all-purpose excuse: all of these forecasts date from after 9/11. What you see in this chart is the signature of a corrupted policy process, in which political propaganda takes the place of professional analysis.

Little Demand Left in Bush's Economy
by Matthew Rothschild
Progressive Magazine Online, 6 March 2004
EXCERPT: Bush's jobless recovery shows no signs of boosting employment any time soon. The figures for February were dismal, with the economy adding just 21,000 jobs. Those were primarily temp jobs. And while the unemployment level held at 5.6 percent, that was only because "the number of labor force participants fell steeply last month, by 392,000," the Economic Policy Institute notes. That is an enormous number of discouraged workers (those not counted as officially unemployed), and it is "presumably due to the lack of available jobs," the institute said. "Our country's leaders are oblivious to the suffering of the unemployed," said John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, who noted that Bush will not extend unemployment benefits and has already taken away overtime pay from millions of American workers. Business executives are blunt. They don't care about hiring new workers. In fact, doing so is against their interests. "The goal of companies is not to hire," Larry Geiger, a vice president of the American Management Association, told Louis Uchitelle of the New York Times. Explained Uchitelle: "The executives are focused instead on fattening profits to push up stock prices. . . . They are doing it by suppressing labor costs--getting more output from the existing work force." By squeezing current employees, businesses also keep their health care costs down. If they don't hire new workers, they don't have to pay the added cost of covering them. The current economy is unique in the annals of post-Depression American capitalism. Every recovery except this one since 1945 has netted jobs 35 months after a recession began. Bush's economy has lost 2.2 million jobs. What's more, the length of time people are out of work is almost at a record level. The average today is more than 20 weeks. That is brutal. Not only is unemployment high and long, but wages are flat. In fact, for blue-collar workers and low-ranking service employees, wage increases are "up only 1.6 percent the past year--the weakest growth rate since 1986," the institute says. "Many workers are falling behind in real terms."

Karl Rove: Bush's 'Boy Genius'
By Julian Borger
Guardian (UK), 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: The nerdy political brawler with only a secondary school education is now the man the president likes to call his "boy genius" - a testament to Rove's role in orchestrating Bush's rise from a feckless, hard-drinking politician's brat to Texas governor to president in barely a decade. And unlike other electoral svengalis who have gone before him, Rove has carried his power intact from the campaign bus to the White House. ... By his own account, Rove's sights are set even further into the future than Bush's re-election. He has spoken about strategic shifts of power that happen every so often in American history. The precedent he often refers to was set over a century ago by William McKinley, another Republican with brilliant advisers, who narrowly defeated a populist Democrat (William Jennings Bryan) in 1896 and established a Republican hegemony that lasted more than three decades. The Republicans now control the presidency, the senate, and the house of representatives. Rove's task now is to consolidate that dominance of the White House and Capitol Hill and then use it to recast the Washington's third source of power, the supreme court, from its current cautious conservatism to a more red-blooded Republicanism.
SEE ALSO: Kerry Claims Foreign Leaders' Support (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Not Bright Enough by Molly Ivins, (Progressive Magazine)

Ah, all the insight of Econ 101
Congressional Analysts: Bush Budget Won't Jolt Economy
By ALAN FRAM
AP, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: The tax cuts and other policies President Bush proposed in his $2.4 trillion budget would probably have a minimal impact on the economy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Monday.In its annual report on the president's budget, the agency that provides fiscal analysis for lawmakers said Bush's proposals could either increase or reduce economic output through 2009, and improve it in the following five years. "However, the differences are likely to be small, affecting output by less than one-half of one percentage point on average," the study said. The conclusion by the budget office comes in the early stages of Bush's re-election campaign, in which the core of his plan for strengthening the economy has been his call to make earlier tax cuts permanent. The economy and a dearth of job creation in his administration have emerged as major issues this election year.

Kennedy Questions Bush Recess Appointment
AP via NYT, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush's appointment of former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to the U.S. Appeals Court during a congressional recess may be unconstitutional, contends Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Bush on Feb. 20 gave Pryor an almost two-year stint on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, calling him a ``leading American lawyer'' and saying Democrats had used ``unprecedented obstructionist tactics'' last year to stop his confirmation by the Senate. The appointment came on the last day of Congress's weeklong President's Day holiday break. The Constitution gives the president authority to install nominees in office when Congress is not in session. Pryor has already been sworn in. In a letter released Monday, Kennedy, a high-ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that ``a serious question exists as to whether Judge Pryor's recess appointment is constitutional.'' He asked the court to determine the validity of the appointment, so as to not taint any decisions in which Pryor may be involved. Recess appointments can only come ``at the end of a Congress or the recess between the annual sessions of Congress,'' Kennedy wrote. ``No other Article III judge in the nation's history has ever received a recess appointment during a brief holiday period in the midst of a session of Congress,'' Kennedy added in a memo attached to the letter.

GOP Clerks Nabbed Democratic Data, Says Probe
Robert Lemos
CNET News.com via NYT, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: Two Republican Senate staffers accessed and leaked information from thousands of Democratic files over an 18-month period, aninvestigation by the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms has concluded. The report, released Thursday, describes the forensics investigation in detail. It found that a Republican clerk for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, accessed at least 4,670 files in the home directories of Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee. A senior Republican aide to the Judiciary Committee helped the clerk to target files that might help the Republicans wintheir judicial nominations, the report stated. The administrative investigation fell short, however, of proving that the two Republican staffers had given 18 of the documents to a third party with instructions to leak them to the press. "This investigation depended entirely on the voluntary cooperation of those who were asked to be interviewed," the report stated. "While investigators followed leads and interviewed many individuals as a result of learning their names during interviews, it remains possible that there are other current or former members of the Senate community who have knowledge of the open nature of the Judiciary Committee computer system who have not come forward or been identified."

GOP Wants MoveOn.org Ads Pulled
By SHARON THEIMER
AP, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Republican National Committee on Friday asked about 250 television stations to pull a liberal group's ads critical of President Bush. The RNC sent the stations a letter Friday suggesting the outlets may be complicit in breaking campaign finance laws if they air the MoveOn.org Voter Fund ads. It asked them to decline to broadcast the ads. The RNC argues that the group, financed by so-called "soft money," is spending it on ads to influence a federal election. The campaign finance law broadly bars the use of such corporate, union and unlimited donations to influence federal elections. MoveOn began airing ads Thursday critical of Bush's policies. MoveOn founder Wes Boyd said the ads are legal, and added that the group isn't concerned by the RNC's letter. The ads were financed with unlimited donations from individuals - one form of soft money.

Another Crude Slur
With a campaign of distortion and lies, the right-wing smear machine is trying to impugn the military honor of John Kerry.
By Joe Conason
Salon.com, 6 March 2004
EXCERPT: Last year the suppressed recollections of that disturbing past emerged again, when investigative journalist Gregory Vistica revealed wartime secrets long concealed by Bob Kerrey. Although the most incriminating details remain disputed, the former senator and Congressional Medal of Honor winner has admitted that he and Navy SEALS under his command massacred civilians during a nighttime raid on a hamlet called Thanh Phong in 1969. The ensuing debate over his conduct revived searing memories of My Lai, the village where hundreds of civilians were raped and murdered in March 1968 by U.S. soldiers. In 1971, John Kerry told the Senate that if William Calley and the other soldiers who committed those atrocities were guilty, then so were the commanders who had made such crimes inevitable and then covered them up. "I think if you are going to try Lieutenant Calley then you must at the same time, if this country is going to demand respect for the law, you must at the same time try all those other people who have responsibility, and any aversion that we may have to the verdict as veterans is not to say that Calley should be freed, not to say that he is innocent, but to say that you can't just take him alone." Kerry's critics argue that My Lai was an isolated incident, but at least one celebrated general doesn't agree. Secretary of State Colin Powell held a command position in the Army's Americal Division, which had included Calley's unit, and he was asked to investigate the earliest allegations about My Lai. He failed to uncover the massacre and was later accused of facilitating the coverup. Whether that accusation is fair or not, Powell knows what happened in Vietnam.
SEE ALSO:  Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
MEDIA ADVISORY: GOP Rhetoric on Kerry's Voting Record Goes Unchallenged

8 March 2004

The Unrecognizable Recovery
By BOB HERBERT
New York Times, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush crowd couldn't have been more pleased with the timing of the Martha Stewart verdict on Friday afternoon. The big news heading into the weekend was almost guaranteed to be the awful jobs report released by the Labor Department Friday morning. The White House needed a world-class distraction and the Stewart jury, eager to wrap things up before the weekend, obliged. It strolled in, as if on cue, with a verdict of guilty on all counts. Distractions don't get much bigger. The Labor Department report was as grim as faces on a bread line. Despite all the president's promises, the economy added just 21,000 jobs last month. No jobs were added by the private sector. The 21,000 additional jobs were all government hires. The report also showed that job growth in December and January was worse than previously believed. The January tally was revised from 112,000 to 97,000. The December count dropped from 16,000 to a pathetic 8,000. A number of demographic groups are getting absolutely hammered. A new study by Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, found historic lows in the reported labor force participation of 16- to 19-year-olds. According to the study, "The estimated 36.8 percent employment rate for the nation's teens was the lowest ever recorded since 1948."
SEE ALSO: Corrected: Job Growth Anemic in February
By Tim Ahmann
Yahoo! News, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: The details in the report were uniformly bleak. Private-sector employment showed no gains. Government hiring was the only reason the nonfarm payroll count rose.

The FCC's Indecency Witch Hunt; A Dangerous Threat to Free Speech
by Rob Kall
OpEd.com, 8 March 2004
Proposals are ready to go in Congress to drastically increase fines for "indecency." And there's a three strikes and you're out clause, so, if a company has three "indecencies" counted against it, its license to broadcast can be taken away. These kinds of threats will cast a pall on free speech that, added to the abuses of the patriot act, could take the US some serious steps further away from being the democracy most of the world and US citizens considered it to be. This is a process of steady erosion. Each step, by itself, may seem annoying, or unpleasant, but tolerable. Combined together they add up to an assault on our freedoms that is both deliberate, treacherous and profoundly dangerous.

Plamegate: Air Force One Phone Records Subpoenaed
By Tom Brune
Newsday via Common Dreams, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday. Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Gay-Rights Foes Find Hope Amid Furor
By David Crary
AP via Boston Globe, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: Even as they issue dire warnings, many longtime opponents of the gay-rights movement are welcoming the furor over same-sex marriage as a chance to expand the audience for their unfavorable views of homosexuality. Activists in this camp -- clergy, conservative lobbyists, and those who say they moved away from homosexuality via prayer or therapy -- have been dismayed by gay-rights advances in recent years. They also see new opportunities for their cause if, as polls have indicated, a majority of the Americans oppose the spreading push for gay marriage. "People are taking us more seriously," said Joseph Nicolosi, a leading proponent of the contested concept that homosexuality is a disorder treatable by therapy. "People were just hoping this issue would go away, and now they're forced to think about it, and make some evaluation of what homosexuality is," he said. His organization, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, reported an increase in inquiries and donations as the marriage debate escalates. The Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, said he has been campaigning against gay activism since 1972. "America stands at a defining moment," he said. Leading gay activists acknowledge that public opinion on same-sex marriage is deeply divided, but they hope middle-of-the-road Americans are not swayed by the messages coming from entrenched opponents of gay rights. "These organizations call themselves `profamily,' " said Joan Garry, executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "But people should see them as part of the antigay industry, raising lots of money by peddling factual inaccuracies about gays and lesbians, inciting fear of people who are different."

President's Initiative to Shake Up Education Is Facing Protests
By SAM DILLON
New York Times, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: Democratic legislators in Oklahoma were so unhappy with President Bush's No Child Left Behind school improvement law that they drafted a resolution calling on Congress to overhaul it. But at the last minute one of the state's most conservative Republicans, State Representative Bill Graves, stepped up with his own suggestion: Tell Congress to repeal it entirely. The resolution passed, and Mr. Graves got a standing ovation. "Some of my Republican colleagues grumbled because they don't like to see the Democrats jumping on President Bush," Mr. Graves said. "But I've always thought Bush was wrong to push that law."

College for the Home-Schooled Is Shaping Leaders for the Right
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
New York Times, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: As one of 12 siblings taught at home by their parents in St. Croix Falls, Wis., Abram Olmstead knew he would fit right in at Patrick Henry College, the first college primarily for evangelical Christian home-schoolers. But what really sold him was the school's pipeline into conservative politics. Of the nearly 100 interns working in the White House this semester, 7 are from the roughly 240 students enrolled in the four-year-old Patrick Henry College, in Purcellville. An eighth intern works for the president's re-election campaign. A former Patrick Henry intern now works on the paid staff of the president's top political adviser, Karl Rove. Over the last four years, 22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry interns in their offices or on their campaigns, according to the school's records.
SEE ALSO: School Rules, From VH1 to Hand-Holding (NYT)

Relatives of Prisoners at Guantánamo Bay Tell of Anger and Sadness at Detentions
By NEIL A. LEWIS
New York Times, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: As the battle for public opinion over the issue of the detentions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, heats up, relatives of three of the prisoners there began a tour yesterday of New York and Washington to draw attention to the detainees' situation.

6-7 March 2004

Exploiting 9/11, Badly
By John Nichols
The Nation, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: It should not come as a surprise to anyone who has watched American politics over the past several years that George W. Bush has begun his formal reelection campaigning by exploiting the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, for political advantage. This is, after all, the president whose aides schemed on the day of the attacks to use them to get Congress to grant Bush "Fast Track" authority to negotiate a sweeping Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement. And it is the president whose political czar, Karl Rove, conspired with Republican Senate candidates in 2002 to employ 9-11 images as tools to attack the patriotism of Democrats, such as Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a decorated and disabled Vietnam veteran. Everyone expected the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign to begin its television advertising campaign by branding Bush as the 9-11 candidate. The only surprise is that the Bush political team would, after more than two years of preparation, perform the task so gracelessly.

Bush Swaps Science for Politics on Bioethics Panel
BushGreenWatch, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush last week added fuel to the argument that he is willing to devalue science in favor of politics by dumping two highly respected members of a presidential bioethics advisory council and replacing them with political appointees whose opinions are clearly aligned with those of his Administration. The President dismissed renowned biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, of the University of California at San Francisco, and ethics scholar William May, of Southern Methodist University, from his Council on Bioethics. Both had expressed support for human embryonic research, a stance that brought them into conflict with the Administration's positions. They are being replaced by Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University, who supports a greater role for religion in public life; Diana Schaub, chairman of the department of political science at Loyola College in Maryland, who has called embryonic research "the evil of the willful destruction of innocent human life;" and Peter Lawler, a professor of government at Berry College in Georgia, an outspoken abortion critic.
SEE ALSO: Bush Strips More Protections from Mountaintop Mining Rules (BGW)

The Wild Weapons of DARPA
By Nicholas Turse
TomDispatch via ZNet, 4 March 2004
EXCERPT: what's left of the USSR is a collapsed group of half-failed states, while the U.S. stands alone as the globe's sole hyperpower. Yet DARPA, the agency for an arms-race world, seems only to be warming up to the chase. There may be no country left to take the lead from us, the nearest military competitor being China which reportedly had $65 billion in military expenditures in 2002 (compared to our $466 billion according to GlobalSecurity.org) and which, only in 2003, put its first "Taikonaut" into outer space. Undaunted, DARPA continues to develop high-tech weapons systems for 2025-2050 and beyond ­ some of them standard fare like your run-of-the-mill. hypersonic bombers, others more exotic. In an August 2003 article, Los Angeles Times reporter Charles Pillar noted that DARPA has put forth some of the "most boneheaded ideas ever to spring from the government" -- including a "mechanical elephant" that never made it into the jungles of Vietnam and telepathy research that never quite afforded the U.S. the ability to engage in psychic spying. ... A question seldom asked is why pie-in-the-sky creativity exists unfettered and fostered only in the context of lethal technologies? As the U.S. continues its mad dash into a post-Cold War, one-nation arms race, fears of a missile gap or the menace of a technologically advanced foreign foe drop away as explanations; nor can it just be a generalized fear of falling behind the rest of the world. Look at the state of education in America -- in 2002 the U.S. ranked 18th in UNICEF's list of teenagers in 24 industrialized countries falling below international academic benchmarks. Despite the poor showing, no one is rushing to set up an Advanced Education Research Agency.

COINTELPRO Again?
PBS NOW, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: From John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts to the Cold War and Joseph McCarthy, civil liberties and national security have had a delicate and troubled relationship in American history. Notorious among these is the case of the domestic surveillance program run by the FBI between 1956 and 1971 (after the censure of Joseph McCarthy by the Senate) under the name COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program). COINTELPRO was a secret FBI program designed to monitor and "neutralize" domestic groups deemed by the FBI to be a danger to national security. Such groups included anti-war groups and civil rights groups and individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr. and even Eleanor Roosevelt. Some fear that something like COINTELPRO may again be at hand. There are undercover agents infiltrating peaceful protests in America. Pretending to be political activists, local law enforcement officials are monitoring the activities of advocacy and protest groups based on what one judge calls those organizations’ "political philosophies and conduct protected under the First Amendment." The tactic has come about as a result of the relaxation of guidelines first put into place after the COINTELPRO scandal investigation. Learn more about the history and the new guidelines below...(on the NOW website).

Leak Investigators to Get Phone Log
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 6 March 2004
EXCERPT: Aides to President Bush agreed to turn over a log of a week's worth of telephone calls from Air Force One and other records to satisfy subpoenas from a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity, White House officials said Friday. The grand jurors also asked the White House to surrender two years of records of any conversations about the case with reporters, including approximately 25 who were specified by name. The grand jury, which has been taking testimony from current and former White House officials, issued three subpoenas Jan. 22, three weeks after Attorney General John D. Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation.

Administration Sets Forth a Limited View on Privacy
By ROBERT PEAR and ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: In a sharp departure from its past insistence on the sanctity of medical records, the Bush administration has set forth a new, more limited view of privacy rights as it tries to force hospitals and clinics to turn over records of hundreds and perhaps thousands of abortions. Federal law "does not recognize a physician-patient privilege," the Justice Department said last month in court papers that sought abortion records from Planned Parenthood clinics in California, Kansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, New York City and Washington. Moreover, the department said in another abortion case, patients "no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential." Health lawyers and privacy experts said that position reflected a significant shift after six years in which Bush and Clinton administration officials had promised to strengthen the confidentiality of medical records.

How Industry Won the Battle of Pollution Control at E.P.A.
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
New York Times, 6 March 2004
EXCERPT: Just six weeks into the Bush administration, Haley Barbour, a former Republican party chairman who was a lobbyist for electric power companies, sent a memorandum to Vice President Dick Cheney laying down a challenge. "The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore," Mr. Barbour wrote, and called for measures to show that environmental concerns would no longer "trump good energy policy." Mr. Barbour's memo was an opening shot in a two-year fight inside the Bush administration for dominance between environmental protection and energy production on clean air policy. One camp included officials, like Mr. Cheney, who came from the energy industry. In another were enforcers of environmental policy, led by Christie Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey. The battle engaged some of the nation's largest power companies, which were also among the largest donors to President Bush and other Republicans. They were represented by Mr. Barbour and another influential lobbyist, Marc Racicot, who also would later become chairman of the Republican National Committee.

New Patterns Restrict Hiring
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
New York Times, 6 March 2004
EXCERPT: By almost every measure, the economy has been expanding at a healthy pace for six months. But the nation's employers remain stubbornly reluctant to add jobs in the United States. Outsourcing abroad, particularly the shifting of work to China and India, so much in the news, is one reason hiring at home has been sparse. Another is rising productivity, squeezing more work from existing staff and other efficiences. But these are only two aspects of a much broader syndrome that might be described as just-in-time hiring. Instead of optimistically adding workers in anticipation of demand, as in the past, the new mind-set is to hold off until the demand for a company's product or service is so great that an employer has no choice but to hire, and then add as few people as possible.

The Byrd That Roared
By Matteen Mokalla
Mother Jones, March/April 2004 Issue
Several quotes from Senator Robert Byrd
EXCERPT: We thought we knew Senator Robert Byrd: the Prince of Pork, the senator from Big Coal. But in the days since 9/11, the octogenarian statesman from West Virginia has seemingly been transformed. After nearly 50 years in the Senate, and with nothing to lose, Byrd now rails against the mendacity and the militarism of the Bush administration, raising a bold if lonely voice in defense of our civil liberties and our national character.
"Shrouded in ambiguity and cloaked in deep secrecy, this administration continues to…drop its decisions upon the public and Congress, and expect obedient approval, without question, without debate, without opposition."
—June 29, 2002

5 March 2004

'Hackergate' as Most Recent Character Study of the Republican Right Wing In Congress
Moveon.org PAC's Research Team, Press Memo
4 March 2004
The Chairman and Ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, must decide what happens next in "Hackergate," the investigation of activities by Republican committee and Senate staff members who broke into Democratic committee members' computer files. The two senators received a confidential internal investigative report yesterday which, when it becomes public, could become a huge story and lead to a full-blown criminal investigation. The most important unanswered questions: did Republican Senators know about and use the stolen documents, and did the White House use the stolen documents in preparing judicial nominees for confirmation hearings?
The scale of the Hackergate crimes casts considerable doubt on high ranking Republican senators’ claims of ignorance. Thousands of files were stolen, the theft took place over 18 months and the Republican leadership defends actions which are admittedly unethical and, very likely, criminal. The stolen documents were used to prepare judicial nominees, leaked to right wing interest groups and reporters. Many of the leaks were timed to support Republican strategy employed in the Congress. Manuel Miranda, a top level advisor to Senate Majority Leader Frist in the bitter partisan warfare over judicial nominees, was a key participant involved in both the hacking subterfuge and the collusion with outside right wing groups and publications.
SEE ALSO: Senate Cyber Spy Argues No Crime, No Foul
Former GOP staffer Manuel Miranda dismisses illegality or ethical breaches in the Judiciary Committee's mail-snooping scandal.
(LA Times)
SEE ALSO: GOP Aides Implicated In Memo Downloads
Democrats' Files Accessed and Leaked In Security Breach (Washington Post)

 AUDIO LINKS
Harvard Ethicist Says the Bush Science and Technology Advisor Has Become A "Prostitute"
Howard Gardner, author of a recent book, Making Good, which examines current ethics in the work place, sat through an hour of Dr. John Marburger's equivocation and stonewall defense of the Bush administration. Gardner's response was devastating as he characterized the behavior and moral posture of the administration.
(7 minute excerpt of the remark in its context)
NPR's Diane Rehm Show, 4 March 2004
Science and Politics
Dr. John Marburger, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy presents the Bush Administration response to the Union of Concerned Scientists charge that scientific panels and data are being manipulated and distorted for political purposes.
(first hour of 4 March 2004)
Sixty distinguished scientists last month criticized the Bush administration for how it uses scientific information in making policy, how it handles the selection of scientists for federal advisory panels, and other scientific issues. The current and former director of the federal Office of Science and Technology Policy join Diane to talk about this statement and the questions it raises.
Dr. Neal Lane, former Presidential Science advisor and former director of the National Science Foundation
Dr. John Marburger, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy      Office of Science and Technology Policy

Howard Gardner: "Making Good"
(second hour of 4 March 2004)
Young people in their first jobs have a lot of things to learn -- not only how to dress and how to format a memo, but also how to handle moral dilemmas when they arise. Howard Gardner of the Harvard Graduate School of Education talks about what he and his research colleagues have learned about how people develop their own ethical standards in the workplace.
Howard Gardner, Co-author with Wendy Fischman, Becca Solomon and Deborah Greenspan of "Making Good: How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work" (Harvard University Press). He is also a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.     The Good Work Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Making Good : How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work

SEE ALSO: Crossing Lines (MotherJones.com)
EXCERPT:Imagine restoring memory to someone with Alzheimer's, giving a diabetic freedom from insulin injections, or helping a paralyzed person walk again. Such is the promise of embryonic stem cells -- or was, until the Bush administration cut off federal funding for labs harvesting new cell lines in August, 2001. As progress in this field depends heavily on government dollars, the pace of development slowed dramatically. And all, it seemed, because the president felt the need to pander to the religious right, tainting secular science with religious ideology.

Social Security Scares
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: The annual report of the Social Security system's trustees reveals a system in pretty good financial shape. In fact, it would take only modest injections of money to maintain that system's current benefit levels for at least the next 75 years. Other reports, however, appear to portray a system in deep financial trouble. For example, a 2002 Treasury study, described on Tuesday in The New York Times, claims that Social Security and Medicare are $44 trillion in the red. What's the truth? Here's a hint: while even right-wing politicians insist in public that they want to save Social Security, the ideologues shaping their views are itching for an excuse to dismantle the system. So you have to read alarming reports generated by people who work at ideologically driven institutions — a list that now, alas, includes the U.S. Treasury — with great care.

Greenspan Testimony Highlights Bush Plan for Deliberate Federal Bankruptcy
By Michael Meurer
Truthout.org, 2 March 2004
Courtesy of d_r
EXCERPT: Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's Feb. 25 testimony to the House Budget Committee provided an unintentionally candid look at the Bush administration's deliberate fiscal policy of bankrupting the federal government to justify a sweeping program of privatization. During his February 25 testimony before the House Budget Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generated sensational national headlines by recommending that President Bush's $1.5 trillion in tax cuts be made permanent while Social Security and Medicare benefits be dramatically cut to achieve long term deficit reduction and a balanced budget. In spite of the media furor and across the board condemnation by the remaining Democratic presidential candidates, there should be no reason for surprise at Greenspan's remarks. In his capacity as shill for the Bush administration, the Chairman's recommendations make perfect sense, as long as one is not foolish enough to believe the window dressing about a long term balanced budget. Mr. Greenspan is laying the groundwork for a second Bush administration, not a balanced budget. His remarks, and most of the economic policies of the Bush administration, can only be understood against the backdrop of the little remarked right wing agenda of deliberate federal bankruptcy.

Reversing Position, Bush Uses 9/11 in Political Ad
Daily Mislead, 4 March 2004
EXCERPT: Less than 19 weeks after the tragic attacks of September 11th, President Bush reassured America that he had "no ambition whatsoever to use [the war on terror or 9/11] as a political issue." Today, however, "President Bush's re-election team unveiled his first campaign advertisements [which] in part use the events of Sept. 11, 2001...Two ads refer to the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001...One ad, entitled 'Tested,' shows, among other images, a damaged building from the World Trade Center ruins behind an American flag." ...To top it off, the president took the extraordinary step of making the 2004 Republican National Convention the latest in party history in order to have it come three days before the 9/11 anniversary. Even White House advisers admit "they are wary of being portrayed as exploiting the trauma of Sept. 11, a perception that might be particularly difficult to rebut as Mr. Bush shuttles between political events at Madison Square Garden and memorial services at ground zero."

Confidence Man
The case for Bush is the case against him.
By William Saletan
Slate, 4 March 2004
EXCERPT: "I know exactly where I want to lead this country," says George W. Bush in one of his new campaign ads. The ad, along with three others that began airing today, concludes with his official campaign theme: "President Bush. Steady leadership in times of change." In the revamped stump speech he has delivered twice in the last two weeks, Bush calls the election "a choice between an America that leads the world with strength and confidence, or an America that is uncertain in the face of danger." ...President Bush. Strength and confidence. Steady leadership in times of change. He knows exactly where he wants to lead this country. And he won't let facts, circumstances, or the Constitution get in his way.

Political Mugging In America
Anatomy of an "independent" smear campaign
Center for Public Integrity, 4 March 2004
EXCERPT: New contribution reports released today by the IRS show that an organization that ran attack ads against presidential candidate Howard Dean raised $1 million. In the 21st century in the United States of America, it is still astonishingly easy to assassinate a political opponent's character, with little or no accountability or basis in fact. It is hardly new to politics anywhere that money and the
messages it buys often create devastating perceptions. But such smear tactics are more serious and offensive when they benefit major "mainstream" candidates seeking the Presidency, are utilized anonymously by mysterious, outside organizations and they occur in the wake of recent, historic, campaign finance reform and new political disclosure
requirements.

Kucinich was right...he's not a "liberal"
New (Conservative DLC type) Democrats Embrace Kerry
New Democrats Online, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: Like many who have watched him over the years, we think his record and his agenda for the country show a thoughtful, imaginative, reform-minded leader with clear principles and an understanding that complex challenges often require real new ideas, not partisan orthodoxy. As a charter member of the Senate New Democrat Coalition, Kerry has often rejected the stale left-right options that disguise the real choices facing the country -- choices that are rarely reflected in mechanical interest-group Congressional vote ratings, but that are in line with the real sentiments of the American people.

4 March 2004

Congress and the Gun Lobby
New York Times, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: Anyone concerned about having a rational gun policy in this country had reason for grave concern yesterday as Congress snarled itself into a frenzy of election-year politicking and bare-knuckle pressure from a gun lobby aided by President Bush. In the end, the Senate killed a disastrous bill that would have compromised justice and public safety by gutting the rights of crime victims to sue irresponsible gun makers and shady weapons dealers. Lawmakers whose votes against the bill were dictated by the National Rifle Association's display of raw power deserve no praise. Their aim was to kill two amendments that would have extended the nation's ban on assault weapons and required background checks on weapons buyers at gun shows. There was one encouraging sign of progress: Democratic gun control advocates drew enough support from moderate Republicans to add those riders to the immunity bill despite Republicans' dominance of the chamber and the president's urging "no" votes. But once this level of compromise was achieved, the gun lobby flinched, putting out the word to kill the bill. The result underlined the president's singular failure to prod Congressional leaders to continue the 10-year-old weapons ban. Ostensibly, Mr. Bush is on record as favoring the ban's continuation. But his political energy has been placed far more firmly behind the N.R.A.'s demand for unprecedented immunity for gun makers and dealers from civil lawsuits. The assault weapons law is doomed to expire in September unless Mr. Bush steps forward.

Bush Campaign Ads: Brought to You by... Special Interests
Industries That Give to Bush Get Their Money's Worth
Public Citizen Report Outlines the Many Favors Bush Has Given Industries That Bundle Money for Campaign
Public Interest, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: Public Citizen's report also details how Bush has given tax breaks that benefit the finance industry, made it easier for real estate developers to build on wetlands and in the Florida Everglades, reneged on a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (pleasing the electric utility and mining industries), increased the amount of public land available for oil and gas exploration and coal mining, filled top Interior Department positions with executives from the mining industry, and aided the pharmaceutical industry by pushing pro-industry Medicare drug legislation.

• Click here to read the Press Release.
• Click here to read the Executive Summary.
• Click here to read the report.

The Apache: Heading Back to Iraq for Round 2
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
New York Times, 1 March 2004
EXCERPT: During the American military's push to Baghdad last spring, attack helicopters from the 1-227 Aviation Battalion had one of the war's roughest missions. The unit's AH-64D Apache helicopters were sent deep into Iraqi territory searching for enemy armor only to run into a wall of small-arms and antiaircraft fire. Of the 30 helicopters that took off on that mission March 23, 2003, largely without benefit of reconnaissance or support from warplanes, virtually all suffered some battle damage and one was shot down, its two pilots captured. That mission proved to be a shock to Army leaders, and the service has been rethinking its helicopter tactics ever since.

U.S. Launches Criminal Investigation Into Records in Mad Cow Case
AP in Globe ad Mail, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: The U.S. government has begun a criminal investigation into whether records may have been falsified in the country's first and only case of mad cow disease, the Agriculture Department's inspector general said Wednesday. In a separate investigation, the General Accounting Office is checking the feed industry's compliance with a Food and Drug Administration's rule aimed at keeping the infectious protein blamed for the disease out of cattle feed. The criminal investigation is moving alongside a non-criminal review of the Agriculture Department's response to the mad cow case, the department's inspector general, Phyllis Fong, told a House of Representatives subcommittee. Ms. Fong said the criminal investigation focuses on whether the infected Holstein cow truly was a "downer" animal unable to stand or walk when it was slaughtered Dec. 9 in Moses Lake, Wash.

Bush Policy on Human Stem Cells Faces New Challenges
By NICHOLAS WADE
New York Times, 4 March 2004
EXCERPT: The White House's policy on research with human embryonic stem cells has been put under new pressure by the dismissal of a leading biologist from the President's Council on Bioethics last week and by the development, announced today, of new stem cell lines by a Harvard researcher. At present, researchers who receive government financing can only work with human embryonic stem lines that were derived from embryos before 9 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2001. This was a political compromise that allowed stem cell research to begin but that also assured opponents of abortion that no more very early embryos would be destroyed.

3 March 2004

US Military Spending Soars, Security Suffers
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: More than one-fifth of the proposed 2005 United States military budget could be cut and the money spent on projects that would better protect the nation's security, according to a task force report released Monday. Overall, the steep increases in US defense budgets under President George W Bush have largely failed to strengthen US security since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, adds the study, written by nine national-security experts. ...The report (by the Center for Defense Information), "A Unified Security Budget for the United States", concludes that some US$51 billion of the proposed $230 billion 2005 budget could be saved by reallocating funding within military accounts, while the savings could be used on non-military initiatives that could substantially boost overall security.
SEE ALSO: Center for Defense Information,   A Unified Security Budget for the United States  Full Report (PDF) • Executive Summary (PDF) • Full Report (RTF).

Are We Safer Than One Year Ago?
by P.J. Crowley
Center for American Progress, 2 March 2004
EXCERPT: Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security finished its rookie season. Perhaps like LeBron James, it has had an immediate impact on the court, but is not yet playing at an all-star level. The obvious good news is that nothing truly awful has happened on its watch. However, a tough question remains: are we more secure today than we were one year ago?

• Brookings Institution
• Center for Economic and Policy Research
• Institute for Policy Innovation

Social Security: The Phony Crisis

Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach

Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else

Kerry Locks Up the Democratic Nomination
By Dan Balz
Washington Post, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: Sen. John F. Kerry locked up the Democratic presidential nomination last night with a coast-to-coast string of Super Tuesday victories that included landslides in California, New York, Ohio and Maryland, eliminating Sen. John Edwards from the race and setting up what promises to be a divisive confrontation with President Bush in the general election. Edwards will end his candidacy today in Raleigh, N.C., after a disappointing day on which he failed to win any of the 10 states with contests. The senator from North Carolina bowed to the reality that he had no chance to overtake Kerry and to pressure within the party to free the senator from Massachusetts to focus his energies and resources on Bush.
SEE ALSO: The Exit and the Polls: What happened on Super Tuesday (Slate)

John Kerry's Night To Relish, but Not Rest, on His Laurels
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post,3 March 2003
EXCERPT: "Well, I guess we took 10 minutes to enjoy the magical mystery tour we've been on," said senior adviser Michael Meehan. "A few minutes to congratulate each other on the returns. But there's no time to relax. The fight begins immediately." In the morning, Kerry and his campaign staff will wake up to the first of $150 million worth of Republican offensives, including "positive message" from President Bush, in Spanish and English. The next installment of "Kerry Unprincipled," brought to you by the Bush campaign, will land in 6 million e-mail in-boxes worldwide. Vice President Cheney is set to do another round of talk shows about Kerry's voting record on defense. [bwusa emphasis]

A Timely Boost Versus Bush
By Thomas Oliphant
Boston Globe, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: Put yourself in President Bush's shoes this morning the better to understand John Kerry's intriguing opportunities in the wake of his near-sweep of the Super Tuesday primaries. Bush just committed to a $4.5 million cable television advertising buy in 16 pivotal states to rebuild his recently tattered image, supported by Dick Cheney's cable interview-a-thon to rebuild an even more tattered image. In those 16 states, Bush and Kerry are neck and neck, according to Bush campaign officials -- 45-45 percent with the rest undecided. Then, almost on the eve of the blitz's beginning, the biggest catastrophe since the end of formal combat in Iraq occurs, once again shattering the notion that Iraq is either stable or clearly evolving in the right direction. If you are the Bush TV buyer, you wish you could take the ads off the air for a few days; the money spent on them this week is down the toilet. As Kerry's high command prepared yesterday both to celebrate last night's definitive climax to a stunning comeback from the abyss last year and begin gearing up for the general election, there was more than a little discussion of the way events in real life can clash with TV ad messages. Bush's spending on ads at just the moment Americans may want a break from politics does not automatically translate into polling points; and a massive attack on Kerry may not be credible until the president is more credible.

Edwards Willing to Join Kerry on Presidential Ticket, Aide Says
Bloomberg.com, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: North Carolina Senator John Edwards probably would agree to be John Kerry's running mate if asked to join the Democratic presidential ticket, a campaign aide said. ``I don't think he would say no'' to being the Democratic vice presidential candidate, his spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, told reporters traveling with Edwards to his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, last night. ``He wouldn't turn them down if people really wanted him to do it.''

Some GOP Lawmakers Aim To Scale Back Bush Tax Cuts
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post, 2 March 2004
EXCERPT: Confronted with ever-widening deficit forecasts, some key congressional Republicans worried about the long-term budgetary effects of President Bush's tax cuts are preparing legislation to scale back the cuts by the end of the decade.
Don Nickles (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said he will try this year to pass legislation to cut -- but not eliminate -- the tax on inherited estates. The House and Senate budget committees will begin drafting tax and spending blueprints this week that decline to extend Bush's tax cuts beyond 2011, as the president has requested. And former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) is preparing amendments to the budget plan to demand that tax cut extensions be offset by spending cuts or other tax hikes.

Bush Wants Transition Cash to Train Aides
By ALAN FRAM
AP, 3 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush is making an unprecedented request to use up to $1 million budgeted for a possible presidential transition to train top officials who would join his administration if he should win a second term. The proposal, which will require Congress' approval, is the first time a president has sought to use public transition funds to prepare officials to enter a re-elected administration, White House officials and others say. Critics say the money should come from existing agency budgets, especially as Bush is proposing to curb spending for many programs because of soaring federal deficits.

Ralph Nader on Paperless Electronic Voting
VoteNader.org, 4 March 2004
EXCERPT: Computers are inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering. If we are to ensure fair and honest elections, and retain voter confidence in our democratic process, we need to ensure that there are no such questions. Therefore, it is crucial that any computerized voting system provide a voter-verifiable paper audit trail and that random audits of electronic votes be conducted on Election Day. Paperless electronic voting machines make it impossible to safeguard the integrity of our vote thereby threatening the very foundation of our democracy. The seller of the machines, the Diebold Corporation, is a supplier of money to one of the major party candidates, George W. Bush. The CEO and top officers of Diebold are major contributors to the Bush campaign. This does not pass the smell test. Voters should report immediately any suspected malfunctions and deficiencies at voting precincts around the country to their Board of Elections. And voters should urge their legislators to require a voter verified paper ballot trail for random audits and independent recounts.

2 March 2004

Maestro of Chutzpah
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 2 March 2004
EXCERPT: The traditional definition of chutzpah says it's when you murder your parents, then plead for clemency because you're an orphan. Alan Greenspan has chutzpah. Last week Mr. Greenspan warned of the dangers posed by budget deficits. But even though the main cause of deficits is plunging revenue — the federal government's tax take is now at its lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950 — he opposes any effort to restore recent revenue losses. Instead, he supports the Bush administration's plan to make its tax cuts permanent, and calls for cuts in Social Security benefits. Yet three years ago Mr. Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, warning that otherwise the federal government would run excessive surpluses. He assured Congress that those tax cuts would not endanger future Social Security benefits. And last year he declined to stand in the way of another round of deficit-creating tax cuts. But wait — it gets worse.

American 'Bullet Magnets' Prepare for Iraqi Frontline
By Suzanne Goldenberg
Guardian (UK), 1 March 2004
EXCERPT: The lead vehicle in the convoy has disappeared over the hill. The road ahead is flanked by two suspicious-looking car wrecks. In the back of the pick-up truck, the troops are getting twitchy. All six soldiers jump out of the truck and sprawl in the dirt, triggers at the ready. Minutes later, they clamber back in. Nobody thinks to look behind until a smoke grenade explodes three yards away. The buzzer sounds. "A grenade. We're dead, dude," says Private Tyler Franzen. They were wiped out within the first five minutes of their drill on convoy movement, and the implications register quickly. Days from now, Pte Franzen and the 319th Signals Battallion could be in Iraq. "This makes me more scared," he says. "I am preparing for the worst." Their trainer calls troops like these "bullet magnets" - army reservists or National Guard soldiers, weekend warriors with minimal combat training pressed into service. Tens of thousands are on the move now as the Pentagon carries out the largest rotation of forces in its history, relieving battle-weary soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait with fresh forces. By late March, 130,000 troops will be leaving Iraq and 105,000, including some of the 319th, will arrive. As many as 50% of these will be reservists or National Guard.

Rove's Platform for Making Incompetence Electable
By Russ Baker
TomPaine.com, 1 March 2004
EXCERPT: How do you take a vulnerable, borderline-unelectable person and make him unbeatable? Ask Karl Rove. Having succeeded in making George Bush look presidential last time around, he's tooling up for the Return of the Cowboy Statesman in 2004. Democrats eager to forge a winning counterstrategy would do well to look more closely at the evolving Rove playbook for November. The basic outline of the Rove-Bush campaign is already clear: To minimize your guy's weak points, attack your opponent for waffling on those very issues. For example: If polls show the electorate is increasingly unhappy with the situation in Iraq, accuse your opponent of being, sort of, both for and against the Iraq invasion. By ignoring the fact that changing circumstances and fresh information can (and should) prompt changing views, you can label your opponent as indecisive, which, in many people's eyes, is worse for a president than being wrong.
SEE ALSO: David Corn: How Bush Helped My Marriage (TomPaine.com)

Ashcroft wants to know if you've had an abortion...
Justice Department Subpoenas Planned Parenthood Records
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 28 February 2004
EXCERPT: Pittsburgh's Planned Parenthood affiliate is one of six across the country that the Justice Department has subpoenaed in seeking the medical records of hundreds of women as part of its defense against lawsuits challenging the partial-birth abortion law.Kim Evert, president of Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, which has seven offices in the region, said she received the subpoena on Tuesday, "which was something of a surprise. I didn't expect it. "The subpoenas for medical records stem from a federal lawsuit that Planned Parenthood filed last year in San Francisco in an attempt to overturn the law, signed in November by President Bush.

Schools, Facing Tight Budgets, Leave Gifted Programs Behind
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
New York Times, 2 March 2004
EXCERPT: Under that kind of a formula, programs for gifted and talented children have become especially vulnerable. Unlike services for disabled children, programs for gifted children have no single federal agency to track them. A survey by the National Association for Gifted Children found that 22 states did not contribute toward the costs of programs for gifted children, and five other states spent less than $250,000. Since that survey, released in 2002, the outlook for programs for the gifted has grown harsher. In Michigan, state aid for gifted students fell from more than $4 million a year to $250,000. Illinois, which was spending $19 million a year on programs for fast learners, eliminated state financing for them. New York was spending $14 million a year on education for the gifted but has now cut all money earmarked for gifted children, saying districts should pay for them out of block grants. Nearly one in four school districts in Connecticut have eliminated their programs for gifted students. The new federal education law, known as No Child Left Behind, "has almost taken gifted off the radar screen in terms of people being worried about that group of learners," said Joyce L. Vantassel-Baska, executive director of the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary.

Poll: Kerry-Edwards Ticket Beats Bush-Cheney
AP,  29 February 2004
EXCERPT: John Kerry and John Edwards are still fighting for the Democratic presidential nomination, but a new poll puts a Kerry-Edwards ticket ahead of the incumbents, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Both Kerry and Edwards are basically tied with Bush in head-to-head matchups in a CBS News poll released this weekend. But when Kerry-Edwards are matched against Republican Bush-Cheney, the Democrats lead 50 percent to 42 percent. None of the hypothetical matchups included independent candidate Ralph Nader.

1 March 2004

Sorry, Right Number
By MAUREEN DOWD
29 February 2004
EXCERPT: Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, George Tenet was asked why the C.I.A. never picked up the trail of Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot who crashed Flight 175 into the south tower on 9/11. Thirty months earlier, German intelligence had passed on a hot tip to the C.I.A. — the Al Qaeda terrorist's first name and phone number. "The Germans gave us a name, Marwan — that's it — and a phone number," the director of central intelligence replied, adding: "They didn't give us a first and a last name until after 9/11, with then additional data." For crying out loud. As one guy I know put it: "I've tracked down women across the country with a lot less information than that." Mr. Tenet is not in any trouble for that sorry answer, of course, just as he hasn't had to pay any penalty for building up the phantom arsenal that Saddam only dreamed he had.

Just in case the bin Laden capture falls through...
Bush Focuses on Raising Campaign Cash
AP, 1 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush plans a week of heavy fund raising starting Monday, collecting campaign cash in the nation's capital, California and Texas for his re-election and for fellow Republicans. Bush starts with a reception Monday for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in Washington. Most of Bush's fund-raisers are open to the news media, but reporters are barred from this event. On Wednesday, Bush flies to Los Angeles for a pair of fund-raisers--a midday event for his re-election campaign, and a dinner for the Republican National Committee. It will be his 11th visit to the state since taking office. Bush has a third California fund-raiser scheduled for Thursday in Santa Clara. He also planned a public event on the economy in Bakersfield, Calif.

Transcript of the Last Debate Before Super Tuesday
Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate in New York
New York Times, 29 February 2004
EXCERPT: The following is the text of the debate Sponsored By CBS News and The New York Times as transcribed by FDCH e-Media, Inc.

Christian fundamentalists use "creationism as science" to exert control of school boards/curriculum
Montana Creationism Bid Evolves Into Unusual Fight
By JAMES GLANZ
New York Times, 29 February 2004
EXCERPT: In early December, a local Baptist minister, Curtis Brickley, put up handbills inviting residents of this town, population 754, to a meeting in the junior high school gym. The topic was the teaching of evolution in the Darby schools. Two hundred people from Darby and surrounding Ravalli County, which nurtures a deep vein of conservative religious sentiment, filed into the gym on Dec. 10. There, the well-spoken minister delivered an elaborate PowerPoint presentation challenging Charles Darwin's theories. ...Partly because of the contentious dynamics of an election year, partly because of the coast-to-coast influence of the Discovery Institute, local disputes on the teaching of evolution are simmering in states from Alabama to Ohio to California.
SEE ALSO: National Center for Science Education
SEE ALSO: Understanding Evolution

Are You a Liberal?
Democratic Debate transcript
New York Times, 29 February 2004
EXCERPT:
KUCINICH: Let me answer directly. I'm liberal, and I'm co- chairman of the Progressive Caucus in the United States Congress. And as such, I stand for full-employment economy, universal health care, protection of Social Security, canceling NAFTA and the WTO, creating a Department of Peace. These are the kinds of things that relate to creating a sustainable society where people can have peace and prosperity simultaneously.
RATHER: Congressman, do you consider Senator Kerry a liberal by your definition?
KUCINICH: I think it's important to hear how the senator describes himself.
RATHER: But my question is, how do you describe him? Is he a liberal?
KUCINICH: I don't think so, because he voted for the war. He voted for the Patriot Act. He supported NAFTA and the WTO. I would say that...
RATHER: Reverend Sharpton, do you consider Senator Kerry a liberal?
SHARPTON: No. I think that anyone -- if you want to use George Bush as the definition of conservative, most of America is liberal now, because most of America would vote against Bush. (LAUGHTER) So in that broad definition, he is. But I think that compared to some of us, no. I think we've made ourselves clear on that. But I don't think -- liberal is going to lose this dirty name in 2004, because George Bush has so let down what conservative -- I remember when conservatives were respectable.

Joining the Debate but Missing the Point
By NATHANIEL FRANK
New York Times, 29 February 2004
EXCERPT: By declaring his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, President Bush has taken sides in an energetic national debate. Unfortunately, thus far the debate has often obscured more than it has illuminated. Supporters and opponents of gay marriage are talking past each other. Social conservatives argue from the premise that marriage is important to society — the president called it "the most fundamental institution of civilization" — and must be protected. Letting gays wed will undermine marriage, they say, but they are seldom able to explain how. Proponents of same-sex marriage, meanwhile, make a rights-based argument, insisting that gays deserve the freedom to marry — but they don't address the possible impact of gay marriage on society. As a result, they are open to the valid retort that if marriage is an individual right (instead of a social good), why not polygamous, incestuous or child marriages? For a productive dialogue, we should be asking the question this way: is giving gays the right to marry good for society? And to answer that, we must ask what larger social purpose marriage serves.
SEE ALSO: Nothing Sacred
By Brett Di Resta and Cliff Schecter
The American Prospect
EXCERPT: Republicans warn that gay couples will undermine the sanctity of marriage -- unlike straight couples who, of course, show only respect for the institution.
SEE ALSO: Golden Silence?
By Michelangelo Signorile
The American Prospect
EXCERPT: You'd think the Bushies could explain why same-sex marriage is so dangerous, but so far we haven't heard an answer -- which could be great news for Democrats.

The Results Are in and the Winner Is . . . or Maybe Not
By ADAM COHEN
New York Times, 29 February 2004
EXCERPT: Defeated candidates who think they were robbed are nothing new in American politics. But modern technology is creating a whole new generation of conspiracy theories — easy to imagine and, unless we're careful, impossible to disprove. The nation is rushing to adopt electronic voting, but there is a disturbing amount of evidence that, at least in its current form, it is overly vulnerable to electoral mischief.

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10 March 2004

Spy Unit Skirted CIA on Iraq
Pentagon group's role in shaping White House views about ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda was greater than known, Senate panel hears.
By Greg Miller
LA Times, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: A special intelligence unit at the Pentagon privately briefed senior officials at the White House on alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda without the knowledge of CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to new information presented at a Senate hearing Tuesday. The disclosure suggests that the controversial Pentagon office played a greater role than previously understood in shaping the administration's views on Iraq's alleged ties to the terrorist network behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and bypassed usual channels to make a case that conflicted with the conclusions of CIA analysts. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tenet said he was unaware until recently that the Pentagon unit had presented its findings to the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice. It is not clear whether Cheney or Rice were present for the briefing, which was mentioned in a Defense Department letter released by the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. ...Levin said the committee had obtained copies of the Pentagon group's written briefing material, and that the version presented to the White House included material omitted from the briefing for the CIA. He declined to elaborate, saying the documents were classified. A government official familiar with the briefings said the presentation for the White House included a slide sharply critical of the CIA for failing to recognize evidence pointing toward collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda. That slide was excluded from the briefing at CIA headquarters at Langley, Va. The government official said those briefed at the White House included the staff of Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security advisor, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. The Pentagon intelligence group was disbanded before the war, but remains under scrutiny because of its controversial mission and role. Critics say it sifted through years of intelligence reports on Iraq, seizing on shards that supported the contention that there was collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and then funneling the information to senior policymakers to help bolster the case for war. Pentagon officials reject that characterization. Many of the group's findings have been disputed by the CIA and other agencies, who say there is a history of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda but no evidence of an operational relationship. But administration officials continue to cling to the theme, and polls show many Americans believe that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks In January, Cheney said "there's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government." Cheney has touted the work of the Pentagon group, saying a Feith memo that lists Iraq-Al Qaeda connections and was leaked to the media is the "best source" on the subject. Tenet said Tuesday that the CIA "did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document," and that he intended to contact Cheney to caution him about its conclusions. "I learned about [Cheney's] quote last night when I was preparing for this hearing," Tenet said. "And I will talk to him about it." Some lawmakers said that if Tenet did not believe Iraq was an imminent threat — as he said in a recent speech at Georgetown University — he should have done more to challenge the prewar assertions by Bush and others casting Hussein's regime as a danger that required immediate military intervention. "You can't have it both ways, can you, Mr. Tenet?" said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "You can't on the one hand just say look, we never said that war was imminent, and then have this superheated dialogue and rhetoric [from the White House] … and tell us here before the committee that you have no obligation to correct it or didn't even try."  Tenet shot back: "I'm not going to sit here today and tell you … what I did or what I didn't do, except that you have the confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence I said something about it."  Kennedy then asked Tenet whether he believed the administration "misrepresented the facts to justify the war." Tenet responded, "No, sir, I don't." Dissecting a key prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq's weapons program, Levin cited a number of cases in which he said the CIA or the administration hardened its language or dropped caveats to bolster the case for war. A declassified version of the report warned that Iraq's alleged weapons stocks could be used "against the U.S. homeland," language he said was missing from the classified text. In another example, Levin cited the CIA's assessment in its classified analysis that Iraq would supply weapons to Al Qaeda only under "desperate" or "extreme" circumstances, qualifiers missing from the public version of the report. Democrats attacked Tenet for allowing recent statements by administration officials to go unchallenged. Cheney, in particular, has reiterated claims that the intelligence community has backed away from, including comments suggesting Iraq might have been complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that Iraqi trailers seized by American forces are "conclusive" evidence that Iraq had banned weapons. Urged by Levin to be more swift and assertive in correcting public statements by White House officials, Tenet said, "Sir, it's a fair point."

U.S. Softens Its Rebuke on Iran Nuclear Issue, Appeasing Allies
By CRAIG S. SMITH
New York Times, 10 March 10, 2004
EXCERPT: The United States agreed Tuesday to tone down its criticism of Iran in order to win European support for a demand that Tehran divulge more about its nuclear program, according to European diplomats here. Washington dropped threatening language from a draft resolution being prepared at a meeting of the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, and agreed to insert a paragraph praising Iran's cooperation so far. The board's 10 European members signed off Tuesday on the revised draft, and the United States will present it to remaining board members on Wednesday. The resolution, which board members are expected to approve later this week, will be the third on Iran issued by the agency since the country was discovered last year to have a far more extensive nuclear program than was previously known. And it will be the second in which the United States has agreed to a weaker rebuke against Iran than it would like because of European fears of alienating the country. Last November, the United States dropped its demand that an agency resolution threaten Security Council action if Iran again failed to disclose details of its nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for purely peaceful uses. The resolution instead said that if any further serious failures came to light, the board would "consider all options at its disposal." The United States repeated that language in its initial draft this time but agreed Tuesday to remove the threat in favor of a simple reference to the previous resolutions. The debate carries unsettling echoes of the controversy that preceded the war with Iraq, when European allies argued to give Iraq more time to prove it had no weapons of mass destruction. In Iran's case, France, Germany and Britain reached an agreement with Iran last year under which Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment program in return for easier access to technology and trade.

Slow Learning Curve at Pakistan's Madrassas
By Ron Synovitz
LA Times, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: When Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf announced plans to reform the country's 10,000 madrassas almost two years ago, he said the move was necessary because some of the private Islamic schools had become breeding grounds for "intolerance and hatred". Reports now suggest, however, that there have been few changes at the most radical madrassas, the religious schools that spawned Afghanistan's Taliban movement.

Anarchy Rules in the Palestinian Hub of Nablus
By Ken Ellingwood
LA Times, 10 March 2004
EXCERPT: Ghassan Shaka paints a frightening portrait of the conditions that he says have turned this once-thriving Palestinian business hub into a gun-crazy den of lawlessness. Gangs rule the streets of the West Bank's largest city, shooting rivals, strong-arming merchants and carrying out beatings and kidnappings. Residents have no faith in the toothless police force, which shows little stomach for stopping the disorder. The courts are a joke. Nablus, Shaka says, is a hopeless mess. ...But residents and officials say law and order has disappeared during the 41-month Palestinian uprising. Much of the blame, they say, rests with Israel and its frequent military incursions to arrest suspected militants or demolish the homes of suicide bombers. The raids and closures have throttled commerce and created an atmosphere of anarchy that plays into the hands of armed thugs, the officials argue. Under Israeli orders, Palestinian police in Nablus and most West Bank cities are not allowed to carry weapons. "The Israelis also take the responsibility because they're not allowing the security forces to do their work," Deputy Mayor Adnan O. Derhalli said.

US Gave Weapons-Grade Uranium to 43 Nations
PTI/Times of India, 7 March 2004
EXCERPT: he U.S. has given weapons-grade uranium to 43 countries including Pakistan since the 1950s under the Atoms for Peace programme and is making little effort to get them back, a government department reported. The Department of Energy said in a report that among the countries which have refused to return the material are Pakistan , Iran, Israel, Mexico, Jamaica and South Africa. The reasons for declining vary. Some of the bomb-grade uranium is in use at research universities and institutions that do not want to give it up. Jon Wolfsthal, who ran the recovery programme from 1995 to 1997, said one important reason why so little uranium has been returned is that "we are charging these countries $5,000 kilogram to get it back."

US Forces Accused of Looting, Torture and Death in Afghanistan
By Kim Sengupta
Independent (UK), 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: American forces in Afghanistan have been accused of flouting international law with arbitrary arrests, torture and killing of prisoners in a report by a civil rights watchdog. Soldiers are accused of using unprovoked deadly force in capturing civilians, some of whom were then allegedly subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment leading to deaths in custody. It is also alleged that looting has taken place during searches of homes. The report, by Human Rights Watch, says the situation at Guantanamo Bay is being replicated many times in Afghanistan, with detainees being held in even worse conditions at the military bases of Bagram, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Asadabad. At least three prisoners are known to have died during interrogation, with two of the deaths being ruled homicide by American military pathologists after post-mortem examinations. US officials have refused to explain what happened in any of the cases. "This stonewalling must stop," said Brad Adams, the executive director for Asia at HRW. "The US is obligated to investigate allegations and prosecute those who violated the law. There is no sign that serious investigations are taking place."
SEE ALSO: Hiding War's Toll (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Literature of War Missing in Action (LA Times)

Chomsky: US-Haiti
ZNet, 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: Those who have any concern for Haiti will naturally want to understand how its most recent tragedy has been unfolding. And for those who have had the privilege of any contact with the people of this tortured land, it is not just natural but inescapable. Nevertheless, we make a serious error if we focus too narrowly on the events of the recent past, or even on Haiti alone. The crucial issue for us is what we should be doing about what is taking place. That would be true even if our options and our responsibility were limited; far more so when they are immense and decisive, as in the case of Haiti. And even more so because the course of the terrible story was predictable years ago -- if we failed to act to prevent it. And fail we did. The lessons are clear, and so important that they would be the topic of daily front-page articles in a free press.
SEE ALSO: Aristide Lawyers Demand US Prosecute 'Kidnappers' (DNow!)

The biggest corporate bait-and-switch ever...
Starved of the Truth: Biotech Firms Out to Corner the Market
By George Monbiot
Guardian (UK), 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: The question is as simple as this: do you want a few corporations to monopolise the global food supply? If the answer is yes, you should welcome the announcement that the government is expected to make today that the commercial planting of a genetically modified (GM) crop in Britain can go ahead. If the answer is no, you should regret it. The principal promotional effort of the genetic engineering industry is to distract us from this question. GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them. They can patent the seeds and the processes that give rise to them. They can make sure that crops can't be grown without their patented chemicals. They can prevent seeds from reproducing themselves. By buying up competing seed companies and closing them down, they can capture the food market, the biggest and most diverse market of all. No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must persuade us to focus on something else.
SEE ALSO: Green Light for GM Crop (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Anti-GM Movement Vows to Fight Maize Approval (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Misappliance of Science (Guardian Editorial)

9 March 2004

The Lies That Bind White House Team to Iraq
by ROBERT SCHEER
Toronto Star, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: The central sickness of human history is the notion that the ends justify the means, and it has disastrously gripped political movements from left to right and from the secular to the religious. It is axiomatic that immoral means will inevitably corrupt the noblest of ends, as has been displayed from the fatal hubris of the Roman Empire down through the genocidal policies of the last century's nationalists, communists and colonialists and on through the suicide bombers of today. Yet this profoundly immoral posture has been embraced by President George W. Bush in justifying his pre-emptive war against Iraq, even when the much-touted Iraqi threat proved at best to be based on inexcusable ignorance and at worst to be impeachable fraud. The undemocratic means employed by Bush — misinforming the public, Congress and the United Nations — are now somehow to be justified by the ends of "building democracy" in Iraq. This is a daunting challenge that the American people never signed on for and which seems as elusive a goal today as a year ago. Once again, we seem unwilling to fully grasp the lesson of Vietnam, our other major exercise in pre-emptive war based on the theories of ivory-tower intellectuals with dreams of a Pax Americana.

Afghan Women Continue to Fend for Themselves
By Sonali Kolhatkar
Foreign Policy In Focus, March 2004
EXCERPT: The U.S.'s destructive role in Afghanistan goes back many years from the fueling of extremist fundamentalism in the “jihad” against the Soviet Union, to the lukewarm engagement with the Taliban. And every step of the way Afghan women faced a worsening climate of fear, repression, and misogyny as a result. Today, the countryside is overrun with Afghan warlords, resurrected from the pre-Taliban era--these warlords, who also targeted women, were the main reason for initial widespread public acceptance of the Taliban's promise of peace and stability in 1996. The warlords, many of whom hold high-level positions in the interim government thanks to the intervention of U.S. officials, are just as disrespectful of women's rights today as the Taliban.
Rhetoric Versus Reality
An October 2003 Amnesty International (AI) Report entitled “'No one listens to us and no one treats us as human beings': Justice denied to women” concludes that “Two years after the ending of the Taleban regime, the international community and the [U.S.-backed] Afghan Transitional Administration (ATA), led by President Hamid Karzai, have proved unable to protect women.” In fact, AI claims that “In parts of Afghanistan, women have stated that the insecurity and the risk of sexual violence they face make their lives worse than during the Taleban era” and that “women and girls in Afghanistan are threatened with violence in every aspect of their lives.” In the meantime, desperately needed and promised aid has trickled in far too slowly. A report released by the international humanitarian organization, CARE last year declared, “Much of the country remains a tinderbox, with reconstruction all but stalled, and ordinary Afghans wondering if reality will ever match the rhetoric.” But U.S. officials still repeat the lie of “liberation.” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said this February of the Afghan and Iraqi people, “Under President Bush's leadership… our men and women in uniform have delivered freedom to more than 50 million people in the space of two-and-a-half years.” More specifically to Afghan women, a White House press release this January asserts that “Millions of Afghan women are experiencing freedom for the first time.” The rhetoric extends to the spreading of democracy: Vice President Dick Cheney declared on February 7th, “Under President Karzai's leadership, and with the help of our coalition, the Afghan people are building a decent and a just and a democratic society." U.S. government officials seem to occupy a separate plane of existence from the rest of us. Amnesty International's research revealed last year that the Afghan criminal justice system, the police, and the Afghan National Army are all implicated in women's oppression. Mariam Rawi of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan agrees that in addition to warlords, the Afghan government itself threatens women: “In spite of its rhetoric, the Karzai government actively pursues policies that are anti-women.”

Exiled Aristide Urges Haitian Resistance
Guardian (UK), 9 March 2004
EXCERPT: The ousted leader of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, urged his followers yesterday to resist the "occupation" of their homeland peacefully, and said that he still considered himself president. Raising the stakes at what could be the beginning of a campaign to regain office, Mr Aristide denounced the rebels as drug dealers and terrorists and repeated the claim that he had been kidnapped by the Americans. "This unfortunately has paved the way for occupation and we launch an appeal for peaceful resistance," he said. "I'm choosing my words carefully: for a peaceful resistance."
SEE ALSO: Aristide Interviewed by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!)
SEE ALSO: Friends of Haiti (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Aristide Calls for End to 'Occupation' (Toronto Star)
SEE ALSO: Interim president urges calm in Haiti (Toronto Star)

Palestinian Militants Vow Revenge After Deadly Raid
14 killed yesterday; teen killed in new violence today
IBRAHIMBARZAK ASSOCIATED PRESS
AP in Toronto Star, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: Hamas threatened revenge today after 14 Palestinians were killed in the deadliest Israeli raid in Gaza in 17 months - part of an upsurge in bloodshed linked to a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the coastal strip.

8 March 2004

US Appointed Iraqi Politicians Struggle to Resolve Differences
US still upbeat about signing of interim pact
By Vivienne Walt
Boston Globe, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: Iraq's politicians scrambled yesterday to resolve their political differences over an interim constitution, while Governing Council members and aides warned that last week's disputes have caused bitter divisions between the body's ethnic blocs. "There is more than anger," Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of the 25-member council, said by telephone last night at the end of one of Iraq's most violent weeks since the war. Othman said the schisms over ethnic protections, which flared Friday, had left council members with one cynical conclusion: "There is no trust in politics. There are only interests." An aide to a key Sunni council member said that if the constitution was not signed tomorrow, "the council's credibility will be damaged perhaps beyond repair." The gloom within the council contrasted sharply with the upbeat assurances from the American-led coalition. US officials insisted last night that their plan to cede control to Iraqis on June 30 remained firm, despite the fact that the council failed Friday to sign the interim constitution, the first milestone in Washington's exit strategy. Five Shi'ite members on council boycotted the ceremony, having been blocked from signing by their spiritual leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. ...On Sistani's advice, the group rejected the constitution over one crucial clause: the ability to veto the permanent constitution if two-thirds of the people in three provinces vote against it in a national referendum, expected next December or January. That clause was inserted at the insistence of Kurdish political parties, which control Iraq's three northern provinces. Kurdish politicians have said the clause guarantees they will not be overpowered in a new Iraq government by Shi'ites, who are believed to comprise 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people. A senior political aide to a Kurdish council member said that Kurdish officials would refuse to yield on that clause, which effectively allows the more secular north to block attempts by conservative Shi'ite clerics to install in the constitution an Iran-type Islamic state in Iraq. "This isn't a guarantee just for Kurds. It's for everyone who doesn't want an Islamic state," said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ...Analysts said this weekend that even if the interim constitution is signed, Sistani's political move Friday could greatly complicate the continued US role in Iraq. Partly on Sistani's insistence, the council has refused to pass a law allowing about 100,000 US soldiers to stay in Iraq after the American occupation ends. Sistani's power has risen greatly as the council's Shi'ite politicians, all of whom returned last year after decades in exile, battle one another for top spots in a new Iraqi government. Some analysts believe that by objecting at the last minute and embarrassing coalition officials, Sistani attempted to signal to US officials that his blessing was essential for any political deal. The cleric consistently has snubbed all contact with Bremer.

The Wrong Way to Sell Democracy to the Arab World
By ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI
New York Times, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration deserves credit for its long-term commitment to democracy in the Middle East. But even a good idea can be spoiled by clumsy execution. Worse still, the idea can backfire — particularly if people come to suspect that ulterior motives are at work. This is precisely what is happening with President Bush's "Greater Middle East initiative," which outlines steps the United States and its partners in the Group of 8 industrialized nations can take to promote political freedom, equality for women, access to education and greater openness in the Middle East. Elements of the proposal include the creation of free trade zones in the region, new financing for small businesses and help overseeing elections. After a draft of the initiative was published last month in Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, Arab leaders responded swiftly — and unhappily — at what they perceived to be American efforts to impose change. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt went so far as to call the proposal "delusional."

Rights Group Alleges Abuses by US Military in Afghanistan
AP via Boston Globe, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: US operations in Afghanistan are marred by civilian casualties and the alleged torture of prisoners, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. The US military rejected the group's findings, saying it "confused the situation" in strife-torn Afghanistan for one where peacetime methods could be used. Still, the report raises uncomfortable questions for the United States as it embarks on new operations to capture or kill elusive militants, such as Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "The behavior of the United States sends the message that the US operates on a set of double standards," the rights group said, referring to Washington's criticism of other countries' human rights records. The 50-page report said the US military used excessive force to capture suspects in residential areas.

For More Afghan Women, Immolation Is Escape
By CARLOTTA GALL
New York Times, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: Waiflike, draped in a pale blue veil, Madina, 20, sits on her hospital bed, bandages covering the terrible, raw burns on her neck and chest. Her hands tremble. She picks nervously at the soles of her feet and confesses that three months earlier she set herself on fire with kerosene. Beside her, on the next bed, her mother-in-law, Bibi Khanum, and her brother-in-law, Abdul Muhammad, 18, confirm her account but deny her reason, which Madina would explain only outside on a terrace, away from her husband's family. "All the time they beat me," she said. "They broke my arm. But what should I do? This was my home." Accounts like Madina's are repeated across Afghanistan, doctors and human rights workers say. They are discovering more and more young women who have set themselves on fire, desperate to escape the cruelties of family life and harsh tribal traditions that show no sign of changing despite the end of Taliban rule and the dawn of democracy.

Haitian Police Chief Appeals for Multinational Presence
By Carol J. Williams
LA Times via Boston Globe, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: National Police Chief Leon Charles banned the possession of personal weapons yesterday and appealed to the US-led multinational forces here to help provide security during competing marches today to mark the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide a week ago. The show of unity called by the Democratic Platform, an alliance of political and social groups that fought for years to remove Aristide, has provoked the former president's supporters to announce a countermarch. That has stirred fears of a repeat of the bloody confrontations that marked demonstrations when Aristide was in power. "No one except police officers are allowed to have weapons from now on," Charles, who was appointed Thursday to resurrect the demoralized law enforcement body, told Radio Kiskeya. "We need to recover the confidence of the people so that we can protect them." Charles went to the US Marines airport headquarters yesterday to ask for a strong presence of the multinational force.

14 Palestinians Killed in Battle as Israelis Raid Camps in Gaza
By JAMES BENNET
New York Times, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT:  Israeli armored forces raided the outskirts of two neighboring refugee camps in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, igniting a gun-and-grenade battle that lasted for hours and left 14 Palestinians dead.
SEE ALSO:
Israeli Troops Kill 14 in Gaza
81 Palestinians wounded in raid on refugee camp
By Shahdi al-Kashif
Reuters via Boston Globe, 7 March 2004
EXCERPT: Israeli forces raided two Gaza refugee camps today, killing at least 10 Palestinians in fighting after militants mounted an elaborate attack at the Israel-Gaza border, witnesses said. The Palestinian witnesses said the dead included three civilians and seven militants, at least five from Hamas which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and ambush shootings since a Palestinian uprising broke out in 2000. Dozens of armored vehicles joined the sweeps for militants in the Nusseirat and al-Bureij camps in the central Gaza Strip. Israeli helicopters and tanks were involved in the battles with Palestinian gunmen in the narrow camp streets, witnesses said. Medics said at least 40 Palestinians, including several children, were wounded in fighting that erupted after the Israeli forces rumbled in under the cover of darkness and began to search houses.

Asteroid Scare Exposes Flaws in Early Warning System
By Beth Daley, Globe Staff, 3/2/2004
Boston Globe, 8 March 2004
EXCERPT: It could have been a scene from a B-grade doomsday movie: Some of the nation's most respected astronomers weighed a call to top NASA authorities -- and ultimately the White House -- to say a large asteroid was streaking toward Earth and could hit within days. The call was never made but the scene was real -- played out during a nine-hour crisis on the eve of President George Bush's Jan. 14 announcement that he was restarting the nation's manned space program. Astronomers' information showed -- wrongly, as it turned out -- that a 100-foot asteroid had as much as a 40 percent chance of crashing somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere with the force of a 1-megaton bomb. A dramatic play-by-play of the crisis was revealed last week at a California planetary defense conference. And while scientists are hotly debating how serious the scare really was, most involved agree the event underscores a national lack of preparedness to deal with such cosmic events should they be real -- and prevent embarrassing false alarms if they are not. "It's clear that when we first spot an object with some potential [for hitting the Earth], a system needs to be developed enough to know how to react," said Richard Binzel, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who developed a scale for the significance of possible asteroid strikes. Now, NASA and the Air Force search for large asteroids that could hit the Earth in the far distant future, but they also pick up smaller space rocks -- like the one in January -- that could strike much sooner. Scientists say the threat of small strikes is bound to grow as the world begins to better track space debris. Asteroids are believed to be primordial matter from the start of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, bits of rock and metal that reside between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. While the Earth is bombarded every day with tiny pieces of space debris, most either vaporize in the atmosphere or land as meteorites

Coup d'etat and kidnapping: two sides of the same coin
Aristide's Statement on the Coup in Haiti
By Jean Bertrand Aristide
ZNet, 6 March 2004
Dear compatriots, it is with these first words that I am saluting our brothers and sisters from Africa, while I am standing on the soil of the Central African Republic. Allow me to salute you by repeating that same declaration that is, "In overthrowing me, they have uprooted the trunk of the tree of peace." During the night of the 28th of February 2004, there was a coup d'etat. One could say that it was a geo-political kidnapping. I can clearly say that it was terrorism disguised as diplomacy. To conclude, this coup d'etat and this kidnapping are like two quarters and 50 cents side by side. I have always denounced the coming of this coup d'etat, but until the 27th of February, the day before, I didn't see that the crime was going to be accompanied by kidnapping as well. The 28th of February, at night, suddenly, American military personnel who were already all over Port-au-Prince descended on my house in Tabarre to tell me first that all the American security agents who have contracts with the Haitian government only have two options. Either they leave immediately to go to the United States, or they fight to die. Secondly, they told me the remaining 25 of the American security agents hired by the Haitian government who were to come in on the 29th of February as reinforcements were under interdiction, prevented from coming. Thirdly, they told me the foreigners and Haitian terrorists alike, loaded with heavy weapons, were already in position to open fire on Port-au-Prince. And right then, the Americans precisely stated that they will kill thousands of people and it will be a bloodbath. That the attack is ready to start, and when the first bullet is fired nothing will stop them and nothing will make them wait until they take over, therefore the mission is to take me dead or alive.
SEE ALSO: Coup in Haiti (Nation)

6-7 March 2004

The Destabilization Script as Applied to Venezuela
By Dario Azzelini
ZNet, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: These days the audience of Venezuela's four most important private TV-channels must have the impression that there is a popular revolt against the Chávez government going on. Globovision is in a leading position with an uninterrupted live program. The local news-source for CNN is selling the idea of street fighting throughout the whole country. Even images of two burning litterbags or simply some rocks lying around are supported with dramatic music while aggressive politicians from the opposition talk about a supposed dictatorship and make calls for disobedience. Reporters of the same channel are filmed in front of a completely normal city highway and declare with a certain flavor of invitation: "The protests here will begin about midday, we're gonna stay here until the blockades start." On Venevision, also an organ of the coup-friendly sector of the opposition, we can observe messages of supposed calls of the audience on the bottom of the screen: "Out on the streets!" "F! ight the dictatorship." "Blockades with any means." "Shame! Nobody can stay at home!" And a hysteric voice declares in a phone call: "People have to wake up! The regime is executing people on the streets all over the county!" Reality on streets is obviously different.
SEE ALSO: How to Overthrow A Government Pt. 1: The 1953 U.S. Coup in Iran (DNow!)
SEE ALSO: How to Overthrow A Government Pt. 2: The 2002 Attempted Coup in Venezuela
(DNow!)
SEE ALSO: Caribbean Nations Call For UN Investigation on Ouster of Aristide In Haiti (DNow!)

McDonald's Confirms 'No-Arabic' Policy at Its Restaurants in Israel
By Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry
Electronic Intifada, 5 March 2004
EXCERPT: McDonald's Corporation today confirmed that it has a policy banning its employees from speaking Arabic in its restaurants in Israel, despite the fact that Palestinian citizens of Israel form 20% of its workforce, and Arabic is one of the two official languages of Israel. The Corporation denied, however, that Abeer Zinaty, a former "Excellent Worker 2003 -- McDonald's Israel," was fired because she spoke Arabic on the job.

Plunder and Profit
By David Moberg
In These Times, 4 March 2004
EXCERPT: Rich countries--working through international institutions like the World Bank--rarely help poor countries modernize and strengthen public services. But they often push them to privatize and commercialize public services, a move that they themselves would never make. Leading the tide of globalization, international financial institutions are aggressively and undemocratically promoting an ideological agenda of privatization and commercialization. "The IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization care about dismantling the state," says Nancy Alexander, director of the Citizens' Network on Essential Services (CNES), a research and advocacy group. "They¹re faith-based organizations. They don't care who dismantles the state."