31 March 2004

Two plus two is now, officially, five
Shifting the Spotlight: Clarke Gave Bush a Convenient Target
By David Corn
TomPaine.com, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Richard Clarke did George W. Bush a big favor. That may not be how it looks to most people. But with his bestselling book, Against All Enemies, his high-profile media appearances and his bravura performance before the 9/11 commission, Clarke not only made a strong case against Bush (claiming Bush had neglected Al Qaeda before 9/11 and then undermined the effort against Osama bin Laden by invading Iraq); he provided the Bush clan a much-needed distraction: himself. Clarke, a larger-than-life career bureaucrat, presented such a sharp-edged critique of the Bush administration that he, as much as his message, became the issue. The message was difficult for the Bush administration to refute, but Bush officials and their comrades found it easy to attack the fellow carrying it. And the mudfight that ensued‹whether it succeeded in discrediting Clarke or not ‹had a benefit for the White House: it made Clarke¹s charges seem like just another round in the never-ending partisan tussles of Washington. And that helps Bush.
SEE ALSO: CNN Helps Bush Smear Clarke's Personal Life (Nation)

Under Bush, Americans Worry about Privacy
AP, 31 March 2004
EXCERPT: Americans seem willing to surrender some personal information to the government for improved security against terrorism, but nearly three-fourths of adults expressed strong concerns that government can't be trusted with such information, according to a survey. The Council for Excellence in Government reported that nearly 60 percent of adults in the survey said government should have access to personal information that companies collect about consumers if there is any chance it will help prevent terrorism. Sixteen percent of adults endorsed creation of a national identification card. Still, Americans expressed skepticism over government's use of such personal information. The survey said 72 percent of adults have only some or very little trust in government to use personal information properly....

2004 and the Left
By Ted Glick
ZNet, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: 2004 is turning out to be an important political year in many ways. For those on the political Left, the independent, non-Green, Ralph Nader Presidential campaign is bringing to the fore a number of important strategic and tactical issues, among them: an assessment of the danger-or not-of a second Bush administration; what our attitude should be toward progressives in the Democratic Party; the political and organizational nature of the kind of "third party" needed; and with whom in the process of party-building we should be willing to make alliances.

Credibility Gap
The Bush administration has perfected the art of being dishonest without lying. Unfortunately, a compliant press (and public) have allowed them to get away with it.
By Matthew Yglesias
The American Prospect, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Writing in the March 29 issue of Newsweek, Jonathan Alter described Democrats as "over the top" in their constant references to the president's dishonesty. "Because Bush & Co. were as shocked as anyone at the absence of WMD" in Iraq, he says, "that's more in the category of grotesque hype than outright lie." For a real "example of dishonesty and, yes, corruption at high levels" we need to look to Medicare, where Chief Actuary Rick Foster calculated that the bill would cost over $150 billion more than the administration was claiming and was kept silent only through the threat that he'd be fired if he released his work to the Congress. In a sense, Alter's right. The administration learned the true cost of the bill, realized that the truth was politically inconvenient, and decided to cover it up and continue to feed the public and the Congress information it knew to be false. That is a lie. On Iraq, the administration took a different tack. On the subject of links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, for example, the White House operated largely by omission.
...the issue is why the Bush administration is systematically unwilling to clearly convey to the American public an accurate picture of its agenda. The answer is that Bush's dishonesty is not a personal foible or character flaw but rather a response to the fact that his agenda, when stated truthfully, is very unpopular.
...The problem is that much of the White House press corps seems to have abdicated its responsibility of telling the public what's going on. Instead, reporters prefer to simply copy down the latest administration statement and perhaps pair it with a quotation indicating that Democrats disagree with the Republicans. Actually inquiring what the truth is seems to no longer be part of the job. ...If they don't get over their fear of telling the truth soon, we'll all be in for a very frightening future.

About-Face or 'Flip Flop'
Bush Agrees to Let Rice Testify Before 9/11 Panel, Says It Would Give Nation 'Complete Picture'
AP in ABC News, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush agreed Tuesday to do what he had insisted for weeks he would not: allow National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly and under oath before an independent panel investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The White House also agreed that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would answer questions together, in private before the entire commission. The turnabout reflected administration concern that the president's strongest point with voters his leadership in the war on terror could be eroded if the high-publicity dispute over Rice's testimony lingered. (ABC image)
SEE ALSO: When Goals Meet Reality: Executive Privilege Reversal (NYT)
SEE ALSO: Clarke, Watergate Echoes Prompt Rare Bush Reversal (Antiwar.com)

Fear Factor
Our hype-driven culture thrives on confusing reality with fantasy and on making us afraid
By Jane Smiley and James Squires
The American Prospect, 1 April 2004
EXCERPT: ...the grim moment when television took over responsibility from schools and parents for creating educated citizens was the day that the economic foundation of democracy -- capitalism -- became its heart and mind. And, not coincidentally, that may have been the moment when reason and virtue in our political process gave way to dollar signs. Madison and his associates could not have anticipated the public voice ever having to compete with "teaser" headlines -- or finding its way to the national agenda only by crawling through sales pitches for impotency cures and low financing rates. Nor, for that matter, could this have been foreseen by Franklin Roosevelt, who as late as World War II could still sit down for a fireside chat and reason with his constituents on the radio. It took nearly half a century for entertainment and advertising to overwhelm the institution of the free press, which used to function as America's public voice. And it took about the same length of time for the press's successor in that role -- television -- to change the process by which the human brain makes decisions.

53% Believe that Bush Misled On War and is "Covering Up Something"
Gallup/CNN Poll, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: ...a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll finds that 53% believe the Bush administration is "covering up something" about its handling of intelligence before 9/11, 67% say it could not have prevented the attacks. But 54% say Bush still could have done more beforehand. For the first time since mid-February, Bush leads Democrat John Kerry, 51%-47%. With independent Ralph Nader in the race, Bush leads 49%-45%, and Nader receives 4%.

Bush Polls Well Among Adolescents, Even Stronger With Prepubescents
ABC News, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Bush does six points better with 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds than with older teens, but leads Kerry by significant margins in both groups. The president might want to consider lending his support to legislation currently before the California legislature: It proposes giving 14-year-olds one-quarter of a vote and 16-year-olds one-half a vote.

Probes of Iraq Contracts Give Halliburton High-Profile Headaches
By Matt Kelley
AP, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Halliburton Co. has reaped as much as $6 billion in contracts from the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but improprieties in those military contracts have also given Vice President Dick Cheney's former company high-profile headaches. Pentagon auditors have criticized Halliburton's estimating, spending and subcontracting, and they plan to begin withholding up to $300 million in payments next month. The Justice Department is investigating allegations of overcharges, bribes and kickbacks. Democrats have accused the company of war profiteering. ...Halliburton reported making $3.6 billion in revenue from Iraq contracts last year. Executives say the company is taking in about $1 billion a month from its work in Iraq, bringing its total revenue to about $6 billion.

Defying Bush, Senate Increases Child Care Funds for the Poor
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 31 March 2004
EXCERPT: Over strenuous objections from the White House, the Senate voted on Tuesday for a significant increase in money to provide child care to welfare recipients and other low-income families. The vote, 78 to 20, expressed broad bipartisan support for a proposal to add $6 billion to child care programs over the next five years, on top of a $1 billion increase that was already included in a sweeping welfare bill. The federal government now earmarks $4.8 billion a year for such child care assistance. The Bush administration objected to the increase in child care money, saying it was not needed.

Bush's Treasury Secretary Reopens Job-Loss Controversy
By Martin Crutsinger
AP, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Treasury Secretary John Snow reignited the political argument over U.S. companies shipping jobs overseas Tuesday with comments that "outsourcing" was an integral part of a global trading system. Snow's comments in economically hard-hit Ohio were published as President Bush was delivering a speech defending his free trade policies in Wisconsin, a state that has lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs.

Profile of Richard Clarke a Year Ago Reveals Description of Bush White House
Washington Post, 13 March 2003
Courtesy of Political Animal of the Washington Monthly
EXCERPT: Note the description of the Bush White House: sure, stopping terrorism is important, but "valuing consensus" is apparently more important. And if the bureaucracy gets in the way of getting the job done, well, that's the way it goes. No need to "break crockery" over it, is there? It's just terrorism, after all. No wonder he doesn't think very highly of them.
[Quoting Clarke in the WP article] Stopping for coffee and cheesecake between meetings, a man long seen as a lifer in the Senior Executive Service described himself as relieved that he did not get the Homeland Security job."I already don't miss it," he said of Washington. Asked to elaborate, he replied: "You know that great feeling you get when you stop banging your head against a wall?"

Ex-Rep. Barr Opposes Gay Marriage Ban
By DAVID ESPO
AP in Yahoo! News, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: For the eight years Bob Barr served in Congress, he peered down with unflinching conservatism on witnesses appearing before his committees. On Tuesday, the former Georgia congressman became the witness, describing himself a "proud conservative" still — and firmly opposed to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. "I don't think it's the function of Congress to monkey around with state court jurisdiction," Barr said in testimony that put him at odds with Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) Republicans looking back from the dais. Once a state sets its own definition of marriage, Barr said, "I think the role of Congress is nil."

Peace Corps Lacks Money to Expand
By ADAM ASHTON
AP to Yahoo! News, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Peace Corps is trying to carry out President Bush (news - web sites)'s goal of doubling the number of volunteers it sends abroad by 2007, but it lacks the money to do it. "The rate of growth for the Peace Corps has slowed and will slow because the funding levels we requested for doubling have not materialized," Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez says.

30 March 2004

White House Uses CIA for Partisan Purpose of Discrediting Clarke
MSNBC, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., suggested that Clarke might have committed perjury because it was likely that his statements to the House and Senate intelligence committees two years ago contradicted his testimony before the Sept. 11 commission last week. "Let's declassify all of it," Clarke said, echoing calls by Democrats familiar with his 2002 testimony, who dismissed the Republican demands as political posturing and said there was no substantive conflict. He said the full record would only prove that the Bush administration neglected the threat of terrorism in the nine months leading up to the attacks, which killed about 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. U.S. officials told NBC News that the full record of Clarke¹s testimony two years ago would not be declassified. They said that at the request of the White House, however, the CIA was going through the transcript to see what could be declassified, with an eye toward pointing out contradictions.
SEE ALSO:
This Isn't America
By Paul Krugman
New York Times, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics --even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power --to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics.... On the terrorism front, here's one story that deserves special mention. One of the few successful post-9/11 terror prosecutions -- a case in Detroit -- seems to be unraveling. The government withheld information from the defense, and witnesses unfavorable to the prosecution were deported (by accident, the government says). After the former lead prosecutor complained about the Justice Department's handling of the case, he suddenly found himself facing an internal investigation -- and someone leaked the fact that he was under investigation to the press. Where will it end? In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy." [bwusa emphasis]

Cheney's Pre-9/11 Task Force On Terrorism Never Met
Statement of Democratic Leader Daschle on the War on Terrorism, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: During the nearly nine months it took the Administration to develop and sign off on its terrorism strategy, it does not appear the Bush Administration took any decisive or effective action to cripple Al Qaeda. Perhaps the most potentially significant action the Administration took prior to September 11 was in May 2001. At that time, reportedly in response to an increase in "chatter" about a potential Al Qaeda attack, President Bush appointed Vice President Cheney to head a task force "to combat terrorist attacks on the United States." But, according to The Washington Post and Newsweek, the Cheney Terrorism Task Force never met. The American people need to know whether this is true.

The War on Clarke
A former colleague of Richard Clarke speaks out on his experience with the controversial man, and why he's being attacked.
By Larry C. Johnson
TomPaine.com, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Richard Clarke must be wondering if explaining what the United States did not do in the war on terrorism is more dangerous than actually fighting the terrorists. Clarke, the former terrorism czar for both Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is now being vilified by a host of Bush officials, including Dick Cheney and Condeleeza Rice, as a liar. The attack on Clarke, which consists of leaks, threats and intimidation tactics, has become the genuine hallmark of the Bush presidency. ... I was neither a personal friend nor fan of Richard Clarke when I was in government. Richard Clarke, in my experience, was arrogant and intense. He probably still is. (People who know me would suggest that I am the pot calling the kettle black.) However, Richard Clarke also is a competent professional who has served faithfully with Democratic and Republican administrations since the 1970s.
SEE ALSO: Clarke's View of Terrorism Unclouded (Common Dreams)
SEE ALSO: Clarke and the Media Failures of 9/11 (Common Dreams)
SEE ALSO: The Real Record: Two Administrations, Two Views (TP)
SEE ALSO: The 9/11 Bog: Partisan Bickering Drowns Out Revelations (Nation)

Ashcroft Quit Flying Commercial Jets in July, 2001
By Matt Bivens
The Nation, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Here's a head-scratcher of a CBS News report from July 2001: "Fishing rod in hand," the report begins, "Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet ... In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a 'threat assessment' by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term. ... Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it." So apparently, six weeks before 9/11, the FBI was aware of a terror threat involving commercial airliners -- and in response, made sure that its boss wouldn't be on one.
SEE ALSO: The Original CBS News Report (CBS)

Celebrate National "I'm Embarrassed by My President" Day
DemocracyMeansYou, 1 April 2004
EXCERPT: Are you embarrassed by the arrogance, greed, shortsightedness, selfishness, and outright lies told by George W. Bush and his administration? Join tens of thousands of others across the country and world and wear a brown armband or ribbon to symbolize all the BS coming out of the White House. It's not just that I disagree with the current administration. I'm outraged. And I'm downright embarrassed to talk to anyone from another country. I'm embarrassed to have a President so arrogant, so dishonest, so hawkish, that in three years, he has nearly destroyed any good relations we had before he took office, and worsened those that were already bad. I find myself apologizing to my foreign friends both in this country and abroad while trying vainly to explain the sheer idiocy and illogic of the current administration's policies. So this April 1st, April Fools day, join tens of thousands of others who are wearing brown armbands or ribbons to signify the bullshit flowing down from Washington.
SEE ALSO: Bush's Odd Warfare State (Progressive)

Experts See No Law Barring Rice Testimony
By HOPE YEN
AP  in Yahoo! News, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: There is no ironclad legal doctrine buttressing National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites)'s refusal to testify publicly before the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, law experts said Monday. Rice already has spoken to the commission in private. But she says public testimony is protected by executive privilege. That principle says presidential advisers cannot be legally forced to disclose their confidential communications if that would adversely affect the operations of the executive branch. It is rare for White House advisers to testify publicly before Congress or congressionally appointed panels like the Sept. 11 commission. But exceptions exist, and legal scholars say they poke holes in Rice's argument.

Bush's Press Slaves
It's time for the Washington press corps to probe candidate Bush just as enthusiastically as they have John Kerry.
By Philip J. Trounstine
Salon, March 29, 2004
EXCERPT: The disclosures by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, weapons inspector David Kay, counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke and other Bush administration insiders have altered the dynamics of the 2004 presidential contest. Whether George W. Bush has competently and honestly managed the nation's foreign and military affairs has become the central issue in the campaign. The question now is whether political writers covering the race will choose to continue to frame the election as the Bush-Cheney campaign has -- as a battle between the "war president" and an "unsteady" senator -- or whether they will shift their focus to what has finally emerged as the actual crux of the election. This is not to say that the economy, taxes, medical care, education and the environment are unimportant issues. Of course they're important. But in the light of 9/11, with U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with a president who has defined his status as commander in chief as his overriding quality, it's time for political writers to place accountability of him on that measure at the center of their reporting.

Terror Aides Strangely Keep Turning On Bush
by Josh Marshall
The Hill, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: It’s hard to remember another president who has suffered more abuse and betrayal from the government’s career civil service than George W. Bush. Again and again, it seems, the president hires some seemingly seasoned career counterterrorism hand, only to find out later that he’s actually a Democratic plant, a partisan stooge or just a plain fool.

"We Should Have Had Orange or Red-Type of Alert in June or July of 2001"
A former FBI translator told the 9/11 commission that the bureau had detailed information well before Sept. 11, 2001, that terrorists were likely to attack the U.S. with airplanes.
By Eric Boehlert
Salon, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted. Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie." [bwusa italics]

Backlash Builds Against Bush Plan to Delay Mercury Clean-Up
BushGreenWatch, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: Opposition to the Bush Administration's efforts to substantially delay a scheduled cleanup of mercury contamination gained momentum today when MoveOn.org joined forces with the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the Learning Disabilities Association and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner at a Washington, D.C. press conference denouncing the Bush plan.... "Most people think about mercury as an air pollution problem, but it's winding up on the end of our forks, spoiling one of the best food choices on the planet," EWG President Ken Cook told BushGreenwatch. High levels of mercury can be found in a wide range of America's ocean, stream and lake-bred fish, including large-mouth bass, swordfish, catfish, tuna, some shellfish and trout. President Bush has proposed classifying mercury as "less hazardous under the Clean Air Act, so he can delay a previously scheduled cleanup of this toxin, which contaminates fish from coal power plant emissions," according to a MoveOn.org media advisory.
SEE ALSO: UN Warns Sewage and Fertilizers are Killing Seas (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Global Warming Spirals Upwards (Independent via ZNet)

29 March 2004

Clarke Challenges Rice to Reveal Secret E-Mails
Guardian (UK), 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Richard Clarke, the former terrorism adviser whose revelations threaten to torpedo George Bush's re-election strategy, launched a counterattack yesterday at a White House that he said was determined to destroy him. In a riveting television performance, Mr Clarke called on his principal critic and former employer, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to release the entire record of their emails in the months up to the September 11 terror attacks to prove his contention that the White House did not then take the threat of al-Qaida seriously. He also agreed to Republican demands to declassify testimony he gave to the Senate two years ago - to "prove" there were no inconsistencies. "Let's take all of my emails and all the memos I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11 and let's declassify all of them," Mr Clarke told NBC television. Mr Clarke's bravura presentation surprised the Bush administration. The decision to stand his ground could also be destructive to Ms Rice. She has been under intense scrutiny for a week--largely for being the focus of Mr Clarke's charges that the Bush government did not see al-Qaida as a priority before September 11, but also because she refused to testify before the commission.
SEE ALSO:
White House Tension Rising
Clarke wants release of 9-11 notes to Rice; she's urged to testify publicly
Knight Ridder Newspapers, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke on Sunday challenged the White House to declassify documents related to the Sept. 11 attacks, as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice came under increasing pressure to testify publicly about the administration's efforts to thwart terrorism. ...Mr. Clarke also challenged the administration to release his communications with Dr. Rice when he was the top White House adviser on counterterrorism. "Let's take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from Jan. 20 to Sept. 11, and let's declassify all of it," Mr. Clarke said on NBC's Meet the Press. Top officials from the Sept. 11 commission pressed Dr. Rice to meet with the panel again in open session, but they stopped short of threatening to subpoena her. "To get into a court battle over a subpoena we don't think is really appropriate right now, nor will it help us," former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, a Republican and the panel's chairman, said on Fox News Sunday. "We are still going to press and still believe unanimously as a commission that we should hear from her in public." Commission member John Lehman, another Republican and a former Navy secretary, called Ms. Rice's refusal to testify in public "a political blunder of the first order" that has created the impression that White House officials have something to hide.

Shooting the Messenger
Conservatives should hail former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, but instead they're smearing him.
By James Pinkerton
Salon, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Conservatives, ever suspicious of Big Government, should love a whistle-blower -- unless, of course, he’s former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. The Washington Times calls Clarke "a political chameleon who is starved for attention after years of toiling anonymously in government bureaucracies." For neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, Clarke is "a liar" and "not just a perjurer but a partisan perjurer." According to Ann Coulter, Clarke is a racist. Exiting the known world and entering into her own fantasyland, Coulter depicts Clarke musing about Condoleezza Rice: "the black chick is a dummy," whom Bush promoted from "cleaning the Old Executive Office Building at night." This ad hominem defamation is obviously intended to discredit the man in order to discredit his argument. But such low tactics aren’t usually attempted against a man whose allegations are corroborated by others, including the implicated parties -- and, most palpably, by events themselves.

Commission Calls for Rice Public Testimony
By T. Christian Miller
LA Times, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Top Republicans on the Sept. 11 commission joined Democrats Sunday in calling for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly under oath about a former subordinate's claims that the White House did not take seriously al-Qaida's threat to the United States. One commissioner called her failure to appear in an open session "a political blunder of the first order." But Rice again refused to do so, saying such an appearance would violate the "long-standing principle" of executive privilege.
SEE ALSO:
Rice Defends Refusal To Testify
Compromise Sought With 9/11 Commission
By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, at the center of a controversy over her refusal to testify before the Sept. 11 commission, yesterday renewed her determination not to give public testimony and said she could not list anything she wished she had done differently in the months before the 2001 terrorist attacks. Administration officials were searching for a compromise last night with the commission that would limit the political damage from her refusal to testify. But a defiant Rice gave no hint of that as she defended the Bush administration's counterterrorism performance on CBS's "60 Minutes" -- the same venue used a week earlier by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke to launch his criticism that the Bush administration did too little on terrorism before Sept. 11, 2001, and wound up strengthening al Qaeda by pursuing war in Iraq.

President Asked Aide to Explore Iraq Link to 9/11
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Republican leaders have responded in force, suggesting that Mr. Clarke's testimony last week was at odds with the closed testimony he gave before the joint Congressional panel in 2002 and that he may have lied in one or both appearances. But intelligence officials familiar with his classified briefing said they were aware of no obvious contradictions. Mr. Ben-Veniste said he thought Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony should be declassified to resolve any dispute, but he added that "it is not my recollection that there were any notable or substantive differences in testimony. Mr. Clarke's Congressional testimony, given while he was still at the White House, put a more "positive spin" on the administration's counterterrorism efforts, just as he did in a 2002 press briefing that was released last week, said a senior Democratic Congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. But factually, it did not appear to contradict what Mr. Clarke told the Sept. 11 commission last week, the aide said. Mr. Clarke's assessment last week is also generally consistent with journalistic and Congressional accounts of the early Bush administration's approach to terrorism. In Bob Woodward's "Bush at War," the president himself acknowledged that Osama bin Laden had not been a central focus in the eight months before the attacks. "I was not on point," Mr. Bush was quoted in the book as saying. "I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling." ...Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and ABC's "This Week," disputing Mr. Clarke's charges that the administration had not devoted sufficient attention to terrorism and had been unduly focused on Iraq. And Terry Holt, the chief spokesman of the Bush campaign, called Mr. Clarke "a political opportunist" on CNN's "Inside Politics Sunday." Mr. Clarke said the administration is intent on attacking him personally through a "character assassination campaign" rather than debating the arguments he has raised about Mr. Bush's prosecution of the campaign against terrorism. "After 9/11, I say that by going into Iraq he has really hurt the war on terrorism," he said. "Now, because I say that, the administration doesn't want to talk on the merits of that. They don't want to talk about the effect on the war on terrorism of our invasion of Iraq." To rebut the administration's criticism of his credibility, he produced a handwritten letter from Mr. Bush at the time of his resignation, dated Jan. 31, 2003, that read: "Dear Dick: You will be missed. You served our nation with distinction and honor. You have left a positive mark on our government." Last week, the White House produced a resignation letter of its own — one from Mr. Clarke to Mr. Bush — in which the seasoned adviser praised the president for his "courage, determination, calm and leadership" on Sept. 11.

Signs of desperation?
Bush Campaign Blasts Kerry for Quoting Bible
By Nedra Pickler
Associated Press, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: John Kerry (news - web sites) cited a Bible verse Sunday to criticize leaders who have "faith but has no deeds," prompting President Bush (news - web sites)'s spokesman to accuse Kerry of exploiting Scripture for a political attack. Kerry never mentioned Bush by name during his speech at New North Side Baptist Church, but aimed his criticism at "our present national leadership." Kerry cited Scripture in his appeal for the worshippers, including James 2:14, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" "The Scriptures say, what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?" Kerry said. "When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?" Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry's comment "was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack."
SEE ALSO: Bush Cited Himself as Example of the Good Religion Can Do (CNN)
SEE ALSO: Al Franken on Bush's Bible Reading (Skeptics & Atheists)
SEE ALSO: Bush, Bible Not in Agreement (Daily Lobo, March 2003)

Drastic Medicare Reforms Hurt Seniors
By William D. Novelli
Dallas News, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: In 2011, the first of 77 million baby boomers will turn 65. Coupled with the fiscal challenges documented in last week's Medicare trustees' report, there should be new urgency among political leaders, policymakers and the public to act now to ensure the long-term fiscal health of Medicare. But simply shifting the cost of health care from the government to individuals through such drastic measures as means testing, higher premiums and co-pays will not solve the problem. It may only diminish the quality of life for people as they age. And it could add even greater costs to the nation brought on by poorer health, decreased productivity and greater dependency

Medicare Drug Card to Offer a Plethora of Cures -- or One Big Headache
By Sarah Kellogg
mlive.com, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: In the coming weeks, CMS, which oversees the program, will alert seniors about the new cards. Solicitations from card-sponsoring entities will follow in April and May. Participating seniors can begin using the cards June 1. While the discount program may lessen the pain of high drug costs for many seniors, some observers fear it will sow confusion and frustration, and that ultimately it could prove to be little more than a bait-and-switch operation. "There's so much latitude here (for the card sponsors) that it's distressing to me," said Peter Pratt, a health care analyst at Public Sector Consultants Inc., a Lansing policy group. The latitude comes in the design of the discounts, which is entirely left to the sponsoring companies and organizations. They decide which drugs are covered and the size of the discounts, and those details aren't guaranteed. Companies can change the discounts and covered drugs on a monthly or weekly basis, under the law. Dissatisfied seniors will be given one chance to switch card sponsors at the end of 2004. The cards expire Dec. 31, 2005. ...Nationwide, 103 pharmacy chains, drug companies and health plans applied to CMS to sponsor the cards. The cards are free to the poor, but they can cost up to $30 a year for most retirees. ...On Thursday, CMS announced that 49 different card programs will be available. Of the total, 30 will be available nationwide, including a card from Aetna Health Management. The 19 others will be available only in certain areas, including First Health Services Corp., which will offer cards in Michigan and 19 other states.

US Will Not Reduce Nuclear Arsenal to Moscow Treaty Levels
Agence-France Press, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: The United States will not cut its nuclear arsenal to levels designated by an arms accord it concluded two years ago with Russia because it must hedge against an uncertain future, a top administration official announced. The Moscow Treaty signed with great fanfare by Presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Vladimir Putin of Russia in May 2002 calls on both sides to reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012. But it refers to "operationally deployed" weapons, essentially offering both governments a loophole that allows them to move an unlimited number of warheads into storage and keep them indefinitely under lock and key. While US officials have often praised this option, Wednesday's remarks by Undersecretary of Energy Linton Brooks before the Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces represented the first official indication the Bush administration had actually decided to exercise it.

WWGRD: What Will Gay Republicans Do?
By Bill Berkowitz
Working for Change, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: In 2000, the gay vote made up 4% of the national total and Bush received about 25% of that vote -- more than one million votes -- compared with 70% for Democrat Al Gore and 4% for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. Given Bush's endorsement, who will gay Republicans vote for this November? Currently, gay Republicans appear dazed, confused and divided. Some gay GOP loyalists are undertaking a Herculean effort; swallowing hard and trying to explain away Bush's endorsement by citing the president's gay appointments and his gay-friendly demeanor. Their argument goes something like "in his heart of hearts he doesn't really mean it" and "he's only playing to his amen corner, but he actually likes us." Also in this camp are gay Republicans that believe same-sex marriage is only one of a whole series of issues they should consider before determining for whom they will vote.

Unprincipled Liar Karen Hughes Back in Saddle for Bush
Texan to release book, return to Bush's side for re-election campaign
By WAYNE SLATER
Dallas Morning News, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: As counselor to the president, Ms. Hughes was one of George W. Bush's most trusted advisers, and even after returning to Texas in the summer of 2002, she remained in close contact with the White House. Now she's packed and returning to Mr. Bush's side as a vocal political advocate – first with a six-week book tour promoting her new memoir, Ten Minutes from Normal, and then full-time on the campaign trail for his re-election.

27-28 March 2004

Terror Backlash Hits Bush in Polls
The damning testimony of former terrorism adviser Richard Clarke has left the President's team in disarray as their approval ratings begin to fall
By Paul Harris
Observer (UK), 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: Republicans fear the devastating revelations about their failure to see al-Qaeda as an imminent threat before the 11 September terrorist attacks have seriously dented President George Bush's election campaign. At the end of a week of hugely damaging publicity surrounding the allegations made by Bush's former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, Bush's rating has taken a dive in key opinion polls. Pollsters Rasmussen put Democratic challenger John Kerry three points ahead of Bush by 47 points to 44. That dramatically reversed a four per cent Bush lead just a week ago. The pollsters put the change down to the fallout from Clarke's claims. At the same time respected firm Zogby logged Bush's approval ratings as slipping to an all-time low of 46 per cent.
SEE ALSO: Book Review: Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies (Observer)
SEE ALSO: A Fatal Distraction (Boston Globe via Common Dreams)
SEE ALSO: Army Spouses Predict Reenlistment Problems (Washington Post)

In April 2001, Bush White House Called Focus on Bin Laden "A Mistake"
The Daily Mislead, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: A previously forgotten report from April 2001 (four months before 9/11) shows that the Bush Administration officially declared it "a mistake" to focus "so much energy on Osama bin Laden." The report directly contradicts the White House's continued assertion that fighting terrorism was its "top priority" before the 9/11 attacks. Specifically, on April 30, 2001, CNN reported that the Bush Administration's release of the government's annual terrorism report contained a serious change: "there was no extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden" as there had been in previous years. When asked why the Administration had reduced the focus, "a senior Bush State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden."
FROM 2002: Bush Was Warned of Hijackings Before 9/11 (ABC)
FROM 2002: Top Security Advisers Met Just Twice on Terrorism Before 9/11 (Detroit News)
FROM 2002: Missed Signals and Intelligence Failures (Freedom of Information Center)

Bush's Jokes About WMDs Draw Criticism
Associated Press, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush's humorous references to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have drawn criticism from Democrats as inappropriate for wartime. The White House and Republicans contend the president was just poking fun at himself. "This is a very serious issue," Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Friday on "Good Morning America" on ABC. "We've lost hundreds of troops, as you know, over there. Let's not be laughing about not being able to find weapons of mass destruction." Democratic candidate John Kerry (news - web sites)'s campaign said in a statement Thursday, "If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought."
SEE ALSO: George W. Bush, Comedian (BushWhackedUSA)
SEE ALSO: Meanwhile, US Troop Deaths in Iraq Rising Again (AP)

What Did They Know and When, etc?
By Dan Payne
Boston Globe, 27 March 2004
EXCERPT: Bush Candidacy takes big hit. Thirty-year counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke reveals Bush team's antiterror efforts misguided and negligent. They ignored ominous warnings from outgoing Clinton officials. Bush even ignored daily briefings from CIA's George Tenet about likely Al Qaeda attack. Bush obsessed with Iraq -- on 9/12 all but ordered Clarke to find any Iraq connection.

Bush Admits Negligence
Center for American Progress, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bush yesterday once again tried to fend off charges of gross negligence before 9/11, saying, "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people." But with more evidence emerging this week that the White House received repeated warnings before 9/11 of an imminent Al Qaeda attack, the President's "had I known" defense raises two disturbing scenarios: Either a) the Administration is telling the truth, actually did not know of the threat despite receiving repeated warnings and was totally oblivious to a brewing national security crisis. Or b) the Administration is not telling the truth, actually knew about the threat from the warnings it received, and yet still failed to act with adequate urgency. See a list of warnings the Administration received before 9/11 and what they failed to do in response. Also see these internal government documents showing how the Administration downgraded and tried to slash funding for counterterrorism before 9/11.

The Dishonesty of Condoleezza Rice – Rice Refutes Herself
Center for American Progress, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice this week reiterated the President's "ignorance" defense, but in doing so repeated a lie that she had previously admitted was a lie. In 2002, she supported the President's "had I known" defense saying, "I don't think anybody could have predicted...that [terrorists] would try to use an airplane as a missile." But when presented this month with overwhelming evidence that the Administration had been warned about such a plot, she admitted privately to the 9/11 Commission that she had "misspoken." Yet, even after this admission, she proceeded to repeat the same dishonest claim, writing in a Washington Post op-ed this week that "we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles." As one widely-respected FBI terrorism expert said, the Administration's "ignorance" defense is "an outrageous lie. And documents prove it's a lie." See this new American Progress backgrounder analyzing Rice's dishonesty.
SEE ALSO: Condoleezza Rice's Credibility Gap (Center for American Progress)

14 States Ask U.S. to Revise Some Education Law Rules
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
New York Times, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: Fourteen states asked the Bush administration on Wednesday for permission to use alternative methods for showing academic gains under the No Child Left Behind law. The 14 states, most of which had their own systems for raising academic performance in place before the federal No Child Left Behind law took effect two years ago, charged that as currently written, the law would brand too many schools "in need of improvement," and thus squander limited resources.

Analysis: Mastering Labyrinthine Medicare
By Ellen Beck
United Press International, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: Medicare is so complex even analysts who make their livelihoods from studying it often quip they cannot explain it to their mothers. The real challenge facing actuaries and policy experts, who believe the senior health insurance program is in deep financial trouble, may not be how to fix the program but rather how to get the public's attention focused so people can understand it and demand Congress do something about it.
SEE ALSO: Medicare Drug Cards Coming, But Confusion Could Come With Them (TheCarolinaChannel.com)

Seniors Rail Against Medicare Prescription Drug Plan
By JENNETTE BARNES
Standard-Times, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: The new Medicare drug discounts are a fraud, senior citizens alleged yesterday at a forum in Dartmouth. Recent mailings and television advertisements have touted discounts that start June 1 for seniors' prescription drugs. But some organizations are blasting the change. They say the benefits will decrease over time, and the new law is more about eroding Medicare as a whole than offering a drug benefit. "It's nothing but a scam," said Ed Peters of Fall River, president of the Bristol County chapter of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council.

No Pot of Gold in Privatization
by Maya Rockeymoore
Center for American Progress, 26 March 2004
For decades, Social Security has been targeted by those who want to replace its guaranteed benefits with private accounts that individuals invest in the stock market. Using various methods to convince the American public of their position, privatization advocates have shamefully ventured into dangerous territory by claiming that traditionally marginalized groups will benefit from their ill-advised schemes. Advocates of privatization have shrewdly played the wealth creation card to attract economically disadvantaged groups—like African Americans, Hispanics, and others—to their cause. They argue that these populations can make up for centuries of discrimination and disadvantage by investing their hard earned Social Security dollars in private equities where they can earn inheritable wealth with the magic of compound interest. While it should be easy to dismiss these proposals as irresponsible, there are startling indications that these arguments may be gaining ground in African-American communities.

Beef Firm Faces Perplexing Resistance to Mad Cow Tests
USATODAY.com to Yahoo! News, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: Creekstone Farms Premium Beef is a small producer of high-quality beef in Kansas. But it's making a big point about mad cow disease. It wants to privately test all of the cattle it slaughters for the illness, which can cause a fatal brain disease in humans who eat infected meat. The way Creekstone Farms sees it, 100% testing would reassure U.S customers. The company also says it is talking with Japan about restarting exports there, where total testing is required. But the firm has run into surprising obstacles: from the federal government, which has pledged to do everything possible to detect the disease, and from the meat industry, which has scrambled to keep consumer confidence since December. That's when the first U.S. case of mad cow was found in a Washington cow imported from Canada.

Carmakers Pull Plug on Electric Vehicles
By CHRIS DIXON
New York Times, 27 March 2004
EXCERPT: Five to 10 years ago, when the future seemed to belong to electric cars - and California clean-air rules forced reluctant automakers to offer them - a small but enthusiastic group of optimists and environmentalists signed on as pioneers. While a few bought electrics outright, most signed leases that obliged them to return the vehicles after a few years. Regulators and auto manufacturers have since pinned their hopes on newer technologies, like hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles and, further in the future, hydrogen cars. Electric autos have become orphans, abandoned in favor of more promising offspring. Parental neglect has, in fact, turned into infanticide. General Motors and Ford are taking back electric vehicles when the leases expire - not to resell them, but in many cases to crush them. The companies have refused to sell them to leaseholders, saying there are not enough on the road to justify the cost of maintaining them, and the automakers want to avoid liability for any problems that might arise. They see electric cars as an interesting but failed experiment that taught valuable lessons for the future. But some drivers, upset at losing their cheap-running, zero-emission cars even as gasoline prices jump, are fighting back.

Democrats' Ads in Tandem Provoke G.O.P.
By JIM RUTENBERG
New York Times, 27 March 2004
EXCERPT: Senator John Kerry's advertising campaign is so closely complemented by those of two major liberal groups running commercials against President Bush that Republicans are accusing the Democrats of trying to evade campaign finance laws. An analysis of advertising data provided by Republicans, Democrats and an independent group shows a striking synchronicity between the advertising campaigns of Mr. Kerry and Moveon.org and the Media Fund, which flatly deny any illegal consultations. They have been advertising in the same 17 swing states, in most of the same markets while almost uniformly ignoring others. In mid-March, while Mr. Kerry advertised slightly more in the morning, the groups advertised slightly more at night. At other times of day, the two groups and the Kerry campaign together matched Mr. Bush's advertising nearly spot for spot, in a couple of cases exceeding it. That level of correlation has delighted Democrats, who acknowledge that the groups have gone a long way in helping Mr. Kerry to meet the advertising onslaught of Mr. Bush, whose campaign has raised far more money. Officials of the two groups say that they do not need to speak to the Kerry campaign to join it in answering the Bush campaign. But such help is becoming a focal point in what is widely expected to be a legal battle with Republicans and some advocates of election reform over what legitimate role the groups, which are called 527 committees for the section of the tax code that created them, should be allowed to play.

26 March 2004

MIA WMDs: For Bush, It's a Joke
By David Corn
The Nation, 25 march 2004
EXCERPT: Bush says he is preparing for a tough election fight; then on the large video screens a picture flashes showing him wearing a boxing robe while sitting at his desk. Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. There were funny bits about Skull and Bones, his mother, and Dick Cheney. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again. Disapproval must have registered upon my face, for one of my tablemates said, "Come on, David, this is funny." I wanted to reply, Over 500 Americans and literally countless Iraqis are dead because of a war that was supposedly fought to find weapons of mass destruction, and Bush is joking about it.
SEE ALSO: Willful Ignorance: Bush's Lies About Iraq (TomPaine.com)
SEE ALSO: Leading Republican Says it's 'Unfair' to Condemn Bush for Jokes in Poor Taste (From the guy who vilified MoveOn.org because a couple of commercials submitted to the "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest compared Bush to Nazis...)(CNN)

Dick Clarke Is Telling the Truth
Why he's right about Bush's negligence on terrorism.
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Clarke: a credible critic I have no doubt that Richard Clarke, the former National Security Council official who has launched a broadside against President Bush's counterterrorism policies, is telling the truth about every single charge. There are three reasons for this confidence. First, his basic accusations are consistent with tales told by other officials, including some who had no significant dealings with Clarke. Second, the White House's attempts at rebuttal have been extremely weak and contradictory. If Clarke were wrong, one would expect the comebacks—especially from Bush's aides, who excel at the counterstrike—to be stronger and more substantive. Third, I went to graduate school with Clarke in the late 1970s, at MIT's political science department, and called him as an occasional source in the mid-'80s when he was in the State Department and I was a newspaper reporter. There were good things and dubious things about Clarke, traits that inspired both admiration and leeriness. The former: He was very smart, a highly skilled (and utterly nonpartisan) analyst, and he knew how to get things done in a calcified bureaucracy. The latter: He was arrogant, made no effort to disguise his contempt for those who disagreed with him, and blatantly maneuvered around all obstacles to make sure his views got through.

All Washed Up: Bush is Floundering
By Bob Mullhulland
Guardian (UK), 25 Thursday 2004
EXCERPT: To many Americans, on international affairs Bush looks like a liar. To others, he's just incompetent. He or his team have told many long-time allies it's "my way or drop dead" or called them "Old Europe." He has also provided false information to most of our allies, as well as to the American people. Many Americans watch all this in disbelief. When Bush hears that 70% or 80% of people in other countries don't support his Iraq agenda, he tells his staff: "who cares, they don't vote in American elections." ... As Paul O'Neill, his former treasurer secretary said, being at a Bush cabinet meeting was like watching a blind man talking to deaf people. And the worst kept secret in Washington D.C. is that Bush also does not read memos (including the CIA ones). He prefers a verbal briefing from his staff. It isn't that Bush is dumb; it is his dyslexia that makes it hard for him to read many items. In fact, his wife has told the press she reads the papers in bed with him. ... With a mixed record in foreign affairs (well beyond Iraq) and almost three million jobs lost in America, the worst since the Great Depression, Bush is in a corner. Bush's favourable ratings are at their lowest point in years - around 50% compared to the mid-70s after 9/11. And his former national security tsar Richard Clarke's new book is very damaging. At the 9/11 inquiry this week many speakers criticised Bush for his failures in fighting terrorism. To use a word former Israeli Labour leader Ehud Barak used against the Likud party when he was successfully elected as prime minister of Israel, Bush Jr is "stuck" in Iraq and "stuck" with a jobless economy. So, Bush is in a panic thinking that history is about to repeat itself and has decided he has little to say positively about himself so he is attacking Kerry.
SEE ALSO: Ted Rall: Pin the Tale on the Donkey (Yahoo)
SEE ALSO: John Nichols: Striking Where Bush is Weakest (Nation)
SEE ALSO: Second Draft: The Media Halo Fell Off (TomPaine.com)

Bush Administration Misleads About Pre-9/11 Intelligence
MoveOn.org Press Release, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: With President Bush’s former top counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke issuing well-documented criticisms of the White House’s failure to defend America, the Bush Administration has resorted to distortions about what they knew leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The President tried to deflect criticism, saying “had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11…” - a statement designed to deflect attention from the specific warnings that he personally received outlining an imminent al Qaeda attack that could involve hijacked planes being used as missiles. ...Here are four other explicit distortions that the administration has told over the last few days, spelled out on the MoveOn.org special website www.misleader.org:
MISLEAD: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed that Clarke “chose not to” voice his concerns about the administration’s counterterrorism policy. But Clarke sent an urgent memo to Rice in January 2001 asking for a Cabinet-level meeting about an imminent Al Qaeda attack. The White House itself admits top Bush officials rejected Clarke’s request, saying they “did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat.”
MISLEAD: White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan yesterday denied Clarke's charge that the president ordered the Pentagon to begin drafting plans to invade Iraq immediately after 9/11. But according to the Washington Post, “six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document” that “directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.” This was corroborated by a September 2002 CBS News report which reported that, immediately after 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.
MISLEAD: Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley denied Clarke’s charge that there was an imminent domestic threat against America from Al Qaeda, saying, “All the chatter [before 9/11] was of an attack, a potential Al Qaeda attack overseas.” But, according to the bipartisan Congressional report on 9/11, “In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States” to “carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives.” The report “was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001].”
MISLEAD: Bush National Security spokesman Jim Wilkinson claimed that “it was this president who expedited the deployment of the armed Predator” (the unmanned plane). But, according to Newsweek, it was the Bush administration who “elected not to relaunch the Predator” and who did not deploy the new armed version of it despite “the military having successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001.”
SEE ALSO: Public Record: Bush Ignored Terrorism Befor 9/11 (The Daily Mislead)

Richard Clarke KOs the Bushies
The ex-terrorism official dazzles at the 9/11 commission hearings.
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: Richard Clarke made his much-anticipated appearance before the 9/11 commission this afternoon and, right out of the box, delivered a stunning blow to the Bush administration—the political equivalent of a first-round knockout. The blow was so stunning, it took a while to realize that it was a blow. Clarke thanked the members for holding the hearings, saying they finally provided him "a forum where I can apologize" to the victims of 9/11 and their loved ones. He continued, addressing those relatives, many of whom were sitting in the hearing room: Your government failed you … and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask … for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
End of statement. Applause. KO.

Was an Official 'in the Loop'? It All Depends
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Washington Post, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: It is a strange occurrence in Washington when members of the well-ordered Bush White House publicly disagree with each other, but it happened on Wednesday. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, took exception to Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Richard A. Clarke, the administration's former counterterrorism chief, was "out of the loop." On the contrary, Ms. Rice said, Mr. Clarke was very much involved in the administration's fight against terrorism. "I would not use the word `out of the loop,' " Ms. Rice told reporters in response to a question about whether she considered it a problem that the administration's counterterrorism chief was not deeply involved "in a lot of what was going on," as Mr. Cheney said on Monday in an interview on Rush Limbaugh's radio program. Ms. Rice painted a distinctly different picture of the involvement of Mr. Clarke, who has prompted furious responses since he asserted in a new book and in testimony on Capitol Hill that President Bush did not heed warnings before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "He was in every meeting that was held on terrorism," Ms. Rice said. "All the deputies' meetings, the principals' meeting that was held and so forth, the early meetings after Sept. 11." But she acknowledged that Mr. Clarke did not regularly meet with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. "Perhaps Dick felt that he had, you know, less — he didn't sit with Powell and Rumsfeld and so forth," Ms. Rice said. "It's just not the way we operate. I did sit with Powell and Rumsfeld and Tenet."

25 March 2004

A New Folk Hero: Richard Clarke Blasts Bush's Invasion of Iraq
By Robert Dreyfuss
TomPaine.com, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: John F. Lehman, the former secretary of the Navy, probably wishes he didn't ask Richard Clarke about Iraq today. By doing so, he not only helped Clarke emerge as a new folk hero. Lehman also increased the chances that historians will view Clarke's devastating critique of Bush's terrorism and Iraq agenda as the beginning of the end of the Bush administration. The forum for all this was Richard Clarke's testimony in front of the bipartisan commission investigating terrorism and September 11. Clarke, of course, is the giant-killer and tell-all author whose recent release, Against All Enemies, blew the roof off of President Bush's claim to be a war president. Until Lehman's question, Clarke hadn't mentioned Iraq, though he'd quietly and effectively ripped President Bush to shreds for his failure to take terrorism seriously. "The Bush administration considered terrorism an important issue but not an urgent issue," said Clarke. "George Tenet [the CIA director] and I tried very hard to create a sense of urgency. I don't think it was ever treated that way." So Lehman, acting like a hatchet man for the White House, which has launched an all-out assault on Clarke, took him on‹but on Iraq. In all your 15 hours of classified testimony to the commission before today, he asked, why didn't you say that you felt the president was so wrong about Iraq and the link to terrorism? Clarke was ready. "No one asked me what I thought about the president's invasion of Iraq," said Clarke, matter-of-factly. "By invading Iraq, the president has greatly undermined the war on terrorism."
SEE ALSO: CIA Chief in Clash Over Terror Threat (Guardian)

Bush's Brand New Enemy Is the Truth
By Sidney Blumenthal
Guardian (UK), 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: Bush protests now: "And had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on September 11, we would have acted." But he had plenty of information. The former deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, the only member of the 9/11 commission to read the president's daily brief, revealed in the hearings that the documents "would set your hair on fire" and that the intelligence warnings of al-Qaida attacks "plateaued at a spike level for months" before September 11. Bush is fighting public release of these PDBs, which would show whether he had marked them up and demanded action. The administration's furious response to Clarke only underscores his book. Rice is vague, forgetful and dissembling. Cheney is belligerent, certain and bluffing. In Clarke's account, as in the memoir of former secretary of the treasury Paul O'Neill, Bush is disengaged, incurious, manipulated by those in the circle around him; he adopts ill-conceived strategies that he has played little or no part in preparing. Bush is the Oz behind the curtain, but unlike the wizard, the special effects are performed by others. Especially on terrorism and September 11, his White House is at "battle stations" to prevent the curtain from being pulled open.
SEE ALSO:
Clarke hits Terror Effort, Apologizes for Sept. 11
By Bryan Bender
Boston Globe, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: Introduction: The nation's former counterterrorism chief testified yesterday that in its first months in office the Bush administration failed to treat the global threat of the Al Qaeda terrorist network with a sense of urgency, despite repeated and dire warning of a coming attack -- claims that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice later denied.
SEE ALSO: Public Testimony Before 9/11 Panel, Complete Transcript
New York Times, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: Following is the the transcript of public testimony from four high-ranking officials from the Bush and Clinton administrations before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, as recorded by Federal News Service.

AUDIO LINK Hearings Reveal Faults in U.S. Al Qaeda Policy
NPR Morning Edition, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: In testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, top officials from both the Clinton and Bush administrations defend their policies on the terrorist threat. The commission finds efforts against al Qaeda were hampered by a lack of intelligence, failed diplomatic overtures toward the Taliban and competing demands. Hear NPR's Pam Fessler.

Kerry is Coke, Bush is Crack
By Paul Street
ZNet, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: John Kerry is pretty hard for any leftist to take. There's the painful conflict between his super-privileged, Harvard pedigreed background and his comically stiff attempts to sound like a working peoples' populist. There's the recurrent obsessive campaign reference to glory days in Vietnam, when he "served" two tours of "duty" in a mass-murderous United States invasion - a vicious superpower assault on a small peasant nation that was conducted with so many atrocities that Kerry became an antiwar activist. There's Kerry's related imperial refusal to acknowledge tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan victims in his critique of George W. Bush's foreign policy (see Kerry's statement "George W. Bush: Mission Still Not Accomplished," available online at http://www.johnkerry.com/features/mission/). There's his call for a "muscular" U.S.-led "internationalism," unilateralist when "necessary," enunciated in a disturbing campaign tract titled A Call to Service, which exhibits the same sickeningly selective use of history and the same revolting national narcissism that permeate the speeches of Bush the Second. Then there's his recent policy record, a monument to the long rightward drift of what passes for Democratic Party "liberalism" in the United States.

MoveOn.org Producing Another Spot on Bush's Failure of Leadership In the War on Terrorism
And Provide a Brief Summary of Richard Clark's Charges
MoveOn.org Fund Raising E-mail, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: In his own words, here are some of Clarke's revelations:
--Clarke repeatedly warned the Bush Administration about attacks from al Qaeda, starting in the first days of Bush's term. "But on January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently -- underlined urgently -- a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo-- wasn't acted on."8 According to another Bush administration security official, Clarke "was the guy pushing hardest, saying again and again that something big was going to happen, including possibly here in the U.S." The official added that Clarke was likely sidelined because he had served in the previous (Clinton) administration. (NYT)
--In face-to-face meetings, CIA Director George Tenet warned President Bush repeatedly in the months before 9/11 that an attack was coming. According to Clarke, Tenet told the President that "A major al-Qaeda attack is going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead." (60 Minutes)
--On September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld pushed to bomb Iraq even though they knew that al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. "Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.'" (60 Minutes)
--Also on September 12, 2001, President Bush personally pushed Clarke to find evidence that Iraq was behind the attacks. From the New York Times: "'I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything,' Mr. Clarke writes that Mr. Bush told him. 'See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way.' When Mr. Clarke protested that the culprit was Al Qaeda, not Iraq, Mr. Bush testily ordered him, he writes, to 'look into Iraq, Saddam,' and then left the room." (NYT)
--The Bush Administration knew from the beginning that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11, but created the misperception in order to push their policy goals. "[Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush] did know better. They did know better. They did know better. We told them, the CIA told them, the FBI told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were avenging September 11th, when Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. I think for a commander-in-chief and a vice president to allow that to happen is unconscionable." (60 Minutes)
--The war on Iraq has increased the danger of terrorism. In his book, he writes that shifting from al Qaeda to Iraq "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide." (Washington Post) (bwusa emphasis)

Former Adviser Says Fighting Terror 'Not Urgent' for Bush
AP in the AJC, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush White House scaled back the struggle against al-Qaida after taking office in 2001 and spurned suggestions that it retaliate for the bombing of a U.S. warship "because it happened on the Clinton administration's watch," a former top terrorism adviser testified Wednesday. The Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists while the Bush administration made it "an important issue but not an urgent issue," said Richard Clarke, who advised both presidents. He testified before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the worst terrorist strikes in American history. Clarke's turn in the witness chair turned what had been a painstaking, bipartisan probe of pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures and bureaucratic miscommunications into a nationally televised criticism of Bush on the terrorism issue that he has made the core of his campaign for a new term.

Forum Participants Say U.S. Not Ready for Bioterror
By M.A.J. McKENNA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: Bioterrorism remains a pressing threat for which America continues to be significantly unprepared, leading government officials and researchers meeting in Atlanta warned Tuesday. Despite billions of dollars of government spending since the anthrax letter attacks of October 2001 killed five people and put more than 30,000 Americans on antibiotics, serious gaps remain in the United States' ability to bar access to dangerous organisms, detect attacks, protect citizens with drugs and vaccines, and limit economic damage, said participants in the Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum at Georgia Tech. "The biological threat is serious, it is real, it must be dealt with," said retired Gen. John Gordon, President Bush's assistant for homeland security. "There is nowhere where we are doing more right now, and nowhere in homeland security where we have further to go." But for much of the population, bioterrorism has dropped low on the list of public concerns, fostering a false sense of security that must be addressed, others warned.

Senators Raise Concerns on Nuclear Weapons Programs
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: Democratic senators yesterday raised concerns about the Bush administration’s fiscal 2005 budget request for nuclear weapons research and development, suggesting a tough congressional fight over the plans in the coming months. Democrats on the Senate Appropriations and Armed Services committees indicated problems with two particular efforts  – a feasibility study on a high-yield earth penetrating nuclear weapon and research and development of low-yield weapons. They questioned whether research and development work on such “advanced concepts” programs, for which the administration is seeking $37 million in fiscal 2005, is part of a plan to develop and build new or modified nuclear weapons. “I am very suspicious. I think I know where you’re going and I think it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), addressing National Nuclear Security Administrator Linton Brooks at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. Republican Subcommittee Chairman Pete Domenici of New Mexico said he backs Feinstein’s opposition to developing new weapons.

EPA Mustn't Be Industry Lapdog
AJC, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: If a student copies from a classmate's book report word-for-word without crediting the source, that's called cheating. But when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lifts whole passages from energy industry documents pushing a go-slow approach in reducing mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants and then pawns off the pilfered work as its own, well, that's just another day at the office. In the latest example of an agency that has gone from environmental watchdog to corporate lapdog, the Los Angeles Times reports that EPA officials relied extensively on energy industry lawyers to craft new rules for regulating mercury, a powerful neurotoxin that can severely impair normal brain development, especially in children. When questions arose, top EPA officials stiff-armed staff experts and a national advisory panel that had been studying the mercury issue for almost two years, according to the newspaper. The EPA had taken the lead in coming up with ways of controlling mercury as well as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, troublesome but less toxic atmospheric pollutants. Among the approaches originally under consideration was a strict provision contained in the federal Clean Air Act that would lower mercury emissions from power plants 90 percent by 2008. But after the White House expressed "concerns" about the issue, the EPA proposed weaker rules that would have reduced mercury production by 70 percent, but not until 2018. There's certainly no harm in EPA consulting with industry before drafting pollution rules. But the agency went a dangerous step further in this case by refusing to conduct an independent analysis.

24 March 2004

9/11 Panel Calls for Rice to Appear
AP, 23 March 2004
Members of the federal panel that's been looking into 9/11 say they're not hearing from everyone they want to hear from. The panel has opened two days of hearings on the anti-terrorism efforts of the Bush and Clinton administrations before 9/11. The ten-member panel had invited National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify. She declined, with the White House citing concerns about separation of powers. One panel member says that's not a good enough excuse. Another mentioned the book written by former anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, who accuses the Bush administration of downplaying the al-Qaida threat before 9/11. Former Democratic Congressman Timothy Roemer also noted that Rice has been featured in the media disputing Clarke's claims. He suggests the debate shouldn't be played out in the media, but before the panel.
SEE ALSO: Internal Documents Show Bush Administration Cut Counterterrorism (CAP)

EPA Misleading Americans on Drinking Water Safety
BushGreenWatch, 22 March 2004
EXCERPT: Earlier this month, the EPA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) accused officials in the agency of consistently misleading Americans about improvements in the quality of America's tap water. The charges are spelled out in a tellingly titled report: "EPA Claims to Meet Drinking Water Goals Despite Persistent Data Quality Shortcomings." "It's just one more example of Bush officials using cooked-up numbers to try to prove what a great job they're doing," said Erik Olson, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "But the reality is we've got serious problems in our drinking water quality nationwide, and the EPA's negligence could be putting millions of Americans at risk." Lead, arsenic, bacteria, pesticides, fecal matter, radioactive contaminants -- all are among the 90 pollutants that states are required to filter from drinking water to meet national standards (standards which, in the case of arsenic, the Bush Administration tried to weaken, before public outcry forced it to retreat).
SEE ALSO: EPA Claims to Meet Drinking Water Goals Despite Persistent Data Quality Shortcomings (EPA)
SEE ALSO: GOP Pollster Warns Bush to Ease Up on Clean Water Act (BGW)

Enemies of Truth: The Bush Administration
Editorial
Guardian (UK), 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: Among members of Congress and Washington journalists, George Bush's administration was already a byword for discipline and secrecy even before 9/11. Whistleblowers in any field of policy were beneath its contempt. Once Mr Bush reinvented himself as a war president, however, the White House code of omertà became more unforgiving still. To ask questions about the war on terror was treated as an act of disloyalty. To refuse to answer them became proof of patriotism. So it is all the more striking that two senior Bush officials have now been prepared to brave the inevitable abuse to give the world a vivid picture of the response to 9/11 which startlingly differs from the authorised version.

Bush and Co. Respond to Clark's Allegations
CNN.com, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Clarke is a 30-year White House veteran, having served Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton before taking on his role in the current administration. He referred to Bush's own comments to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, author of "Bush at War," in which the president said he "didn't have a sense of urgency" about Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda."They're trying to divert attention from the truth here," Clarke said. "And they've got all sorts of people on the taxpayers' rolls going around attacking me and attacking the book and writing talking points and distributing them to radio talk shows and whatnot around the country." Senior administration officials told CNN that President Bush personally signed off on the strategy to aggressively rebut charges by Clarke. It's not the first time the Bush White House has gone on the offensive over critical comments by a former insider. Top administration figures were active in rebutting allegations in a book by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill but not with the same energy. Officials said the different approach stems from Clarke's potentially explosive charge that the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented if Bush and other leading figures in the administration had taken a more urgent interest in the al Qaeda threat.
SEE ALSO:
No bucks stopping near the Bush Team
9/11 Allegations Draw Bush's Fire
White House officials take to the airwaves to counter a former colleague's accusations.
By Maura Reynolds, Josh Meyer and Greg Miller
LA Times, March 23, 2004
EXCERPT An anxious White House scrambled Monday to rebut allegations in a new book that President Bush had failed to take the threat of terrorism seriously before the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon. In an unusually strong response, the White House sent top-ranking officials to television news and talk radio programs to counter accusations from Richard Clarke, the Bush administration's former counterterrorism chief. The daylong attack on Clarke and his book demonstrated that his criticism could threaten the president's credibility on his signature issue — his efforts against terrorism — at the start of what is already an incendiary reelection campaign. ...Clarke is sharply critical of how the Bush administration conducted the war in Afghanistan, noting that it was months before significant numbers of troops were deployed to the country, and that even then the presence never amounted to the equivalent of a single division. By the time of the springtime assault of Anaconda, the last major attack on Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, Bin Laden and other top enemy figures had escaped. Within a year, Arabic linguists, intelligence equipment and military personnel were being diverted to the Persian Gulf to begin preparations for the invasion of Iraq, Clarke said, robbing crucial resources from the effort to hunt down Al Qaeda's upper echelon. Clarke contends that the result has been a lost opportunity on a magnitude greater than most people realize. While U.S. forces have been confronting insurgents in Iraq, Al Qaeda has morphed into a more decentralized organization, less dependent on Bin Laden and his deputies for direction. Clarke also asserts that the war in Iraq has multiplied America's enemies in the Muslim world.

Ex-Secretary O'Neill Is Cleared in Inquiry
LA Times, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: A U.S. Treasury watchdog agency cleared former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill of wrongdoing in an investigation into how he acquired sensitive documents from his tenure, which he used in a book that criticized the Bush White House. The report also said that about 140 documents with "national security" or "sensitive but unclassified" information had been given to O'Neill by the Treasury Department. Had they been properly marked as "classified," they would have been withheld, the report said.

Medicare Is Careening Toward Insolvency, Government Says
By Warren Vieth and Vicki Kemper
LA Times, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Escalating costs and expanded benefits are pushing Medicare toward insolvency sooner than expected, the government said Tuesday, increasing pressure on the White House and Congress to rein in health care spending. The trust fund that covers hospital benefits for 41 million elderly Americans will run out of money in 2019, seven years earlier than projected a year ago, according to the annual report of Social Security and Medicare trustees.

23 March 2004

Lifting the Shroud
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: It's important, when you read the inevitable attempts to impugn the character of the latest whistle-blower, to realize just how risky it is to reveal awkward truths about the Bush administration. When Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation force, that was the end of his military career. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV revealed that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained information known to be false, someone in the White House destroyed his wife's career by revealing that she was a C.I.A. operative. And we now know that Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, was threatened with dismissal if he revealed to Congress the likely cost of the administration's prescription drug plan. The latest insider to come forth, of course, is Richard Clarke, George Bush's former counterterrorism czar and the author of the just-published "Against All Enemies." On "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Mr. Clarke said the previously unsayable: that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed "war president," had "done a terrible job on the war against terrorism." After a few hours of shocked silence, the character assassination began. He "may have had a grudge to bear since he probably wanted a more prominent position," declared Dick Cheney, who also says that Mr. Clarke was "out of the loop." (What loop? Before 9/11, Mr. Clarke was the administration's top official on counterterrorism.) It's "more about politics and a book promotion than about policy," Scott McClellan said. Of course, Bush officials have to attack Mr. Clarke's character because there is plenty of independent evidence confirming the thrust of his charges.

Bush Should Have Done More In Response to Terrorist Threat Before 9/11
News Hour on PBS, 22 March 2004
EXCERPT:
MARGARET WARNER: So what more could the president have done if he was paying the kind of attention you feel he should have that might have thwarted the 9/11 attacks?
RICHARD CLARKE: Well, two things. First of all, we could have adopted a policy right away, and a strategy, given presidential authorization, presidential decisions and money, to begin the process of eliminating the al-Qaida sanctuary in Afghanistan. And moreover, if we had had those meetings, chaired by Dr. Rice with the attorney general, with the FBI director, every day or every other day after we received the threat information, they would have gone back to the Justice Department and the FBI, shaken the trees, and out of the trees we now know would have fallen information that was in the FBI that two of the hijackers were in the United States. Margaret, if we had known the names of those two hijackers, we could have put them on the front page of every paper in the country. We could have rounded up those two hijackers, and then the FBI might have been able to pull the string and find the other members of the al-Qaida cell.
SEE ALSO: Bush's Secret Plan (Kevin Drum in the Washington Monthly blog)
EXCERPT: Look, every bit of evidence indicates that the Bush foreign policy team didn't see foreign terrorism as a major problem before 9/11. What's more, it's hardly plausible that the administration's top counterterrorism guy was "out of the loop" on what was supposedly the administration's biggest counterterrorism initiative. And given his background and his known intensity toward fighting terrorism, it's also unlikely to the point of lunacy to think that if the Bushies had been planning a bigger and far more extensive anti-terrorism program than Clinton's — no more "swatting flies"! — that Clarke would have opposed it. He probably would have been dancing in the streets. But the Bush apologists can't be happy with simply suggesting that maybe Clarke misinterpreted what he heard, and in any case 9/11 was a wakeup call for all of us, wasn't it? That would be too subtle, too honest, too nuanced for them. Instead, they have to open up the throttle all the way and insist against all evidence that in reality they were working on the mother of all counterterrorism plans before 9/11 but their chief counterterrorism guy wasn't in the loop. It's really a pretty pathetic performance. The only thing they know how to do is attack and then attack even harder, and look where it gets them: a pile of federal investigations and stories that are spun so ludicrously that even their supporters are probably having trouble swallowing them. You'd think they'd learn eventually.

Bush Obsession with Iraq Diverts Attention From al Qaida
News Hour on PBS, 22 March 2004
EXCERPT:
RICHARD CLARKE: It would have been irresponsible for the president not to come in and say, "Dick, I don't want you to assume it was al-Qaida. I'd like you to look at every possibility, and I'd like you to look at every possibility to see if maybe it was al-Qaida with somebody else," in a very calm way, with all possibilities open. That's not what happened.
What happened was the president, with his finger in my face, saying, "Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaida, a memo on Iraq and the attacks." Very vigorous, very intimidating, and in a way that left all of us with the same impression, that he wanted that answer. Well, we couldn't give him that answer because it wasn't true.
MARGARET WARNER: Bottom line, you say that he squandered the opportunity to eliminate al-Qaida and actually strengthened our enemies by going off on a tangent. Are you saying that you think actually terrorism is a greater threat to America now than it was prior to 9/11?
RICHARD CLARKE: I think al-Qaida and the network of radical Islamic organizations around the world are stronger now than they were prior to 9/11. There have been more major terrorist attacks by al-Qaida-related organizations since 9/11 than there were before 9/11.

Executive Director of the 9-11 Commission Has Close Ties With Rice
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: "It was very explicit," Mr. Clarke said of the warning given to the Bush administration officials. "Rice was briefed, and Hadley was briefed, and Zelikow sat in." Mr. Clarke served as Mr. Bush's counterterrorism chief in the early months of the administration, but after Sept. 11 was given a more limited portfolio as the president's cyberterrorism adviser. Now we know about Rice and Hadley, her deputy. But how about Zelikow? He's a former NSC official from the first Bush administration and a close associate of Rice's. The two of them even wrote a book together. He was in the key meetings where the warnings -- seemingly ignored -- about al Qaida came up. He seems like someone you'd want to talk to to find out what they were warned about and why they didn't take the warnings more seriously.
Well, you don't have to look far to find him. He runs the 9/11 Commission. Zelikow is the Executive Director of the Commission, which means he has operational control of the investigation under the overall management of the two co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton. Now, Zelikow is no hack. He's an accomplished Republican foreign policy hand. But Condi Rice and what happened in the hand-off between the administrations is central to the whole 9/11 investigation enterprise.
Does it make sense to have the guy who's running the investigation be one of her close professional colleagues?
The 9/11 families didn't think so either. (bwusa italics)
SEE ALSO: Groups Call for the Resignation of Sept. 11 Commission Director to Resign (Government Executive Magazine)

3 Judges Criticized for Being on Right Wing Advocacy Group's Board
By ADAM LIPTAK
New York Times, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Three federal appellate court judges violated judicial ethics by serving on the board of an environmental research and advocacy group partly financed by the energy industry and conservative foundations, according to a report issued yesterday by a public interest law firm that often defends environmental regulations. The firm, Community Rights Counsel of Washington, said it would file ethics complaints against the judges today, and it provided news groups with advance copies of the complaints, which are to be filed with the courts of the three judges. The judges serve on the board of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, which says it supports sensible environmental regulation informed by cost-benefit analysis and respect for property rights. Critics maintain that the foundation is opposed to most environmental regulations. ...Experts in judicial ethics questioned the judges' membership on the foundation's board. "A judge should not sit on the board of a group like FREE or any other group with a strident ideological profile on issues of a kind that come before the court," said Stephen Gillers, vice dean of the New York University School of Law.

Bush Campaign Falsely Accuses Kerry of Voting 350 Times for Tax Increases. Bush’s Own Words Mislead Reporters.
FactChcek.org, March 2004
EXCERPT: The President misled voters and reporters in a March 20 speech when he claimed that Kerry “voted over 350 times for higher taxes on the American people” during his 20-year Senate career. Bush spoke of “yes” votes for “tax increases.” But in fact, Kerry has not voted 350 times for tax increases, something Bush campaign officials have falsely accused Kerry of on several occasions. On close examination, the Bush campaign’s list of Kerry’s votes for “higher taxes” is padded. It includes votes Kerry cast to leave taxes unchanged (when Republicans proposed cuts), and even votes in favor of alternative Democratic tax cuts that Bush aides characterized as “watered down.” ...To be sure, Kerry has cast votes to increase taxes, and he's clearly on record favoring raising taxes on persons making over $200,000 a year, if he's elected. It's a major difference between the two candidates. But Bush aides have been falsely accusing Kerry for weeks of casting far more votes for tax increases than is the case. And now the President himself has joined in the misleading attack.

22 March 2004

Former Counterterror Adviser Slams Bush
By Paul Sakuma
Associated Press via ICH, 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism coordinator, accuses the Bush administration of failing to recognize the al-Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and then manipulating America into war with Iraq with dangerous consequences. He accuses Bush of doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism." Clarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, writes in a new book going on sale Monday that Bush and his Cabinet were preoccupied during the early months of his presidency with some of the same Cold War issues that had faced his father's administration. "It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier," Clarke told CBS for an interview Sunday on its 60 Minutes program. CBS' corporate parent, Viacom Inc., owns Simon & Schuster, publisher for Clarke's book, Against All Enemies. Clarke acknowledges that, "there's a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too." He said he wrote to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Jan. 24, 2001, asking "urgently" for a Cabinet-level meeting "to deal with the impending al-Qaeda attack." Months later, in April, Clarke met with deputy cabinet secretaries, and the conversation turned to Iraq. "I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me," Clarke said. "But frankly I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something."
SEE ALSO: Ex-Advisor Blasts Bush's Terror Response (AP in The Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Krugman: Bush is Weak on Terror (New York Times)

No, not THOSE right-wing extremists from Texas--the other ones!
They Seemed Normal But Plotted to Kill Thousands
How the FBI stumbled upon right-wing cyanide bombers
By Paul Harris
Observer (UK), 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: William Krar and Judith Bruey appeared a perfectly normal couple. Certainly Teresa Staples thought so. She remembered a polite, sociable couple who always paid their rent on time for the three garages they rented from her. So when the FBI showed up in the tiny Texas hamlet of Noonday demanding access to the garages, Staples thought they had made a mistake. But a few hours later, more FBI agents turned up, this time wearing biochemical warfare suits. 'When those guys showed up in spacesuits, I just knew something very bad had been found,' Staples said. She was right. Among a terrifying arsenal of guns, bullets and bombs, the FBI found a chemical cyanide bomb. Used in a shopping mall, a stadium or a subway, it could have killed thousands. 'I was terrified. I live here with my children and they had that terrible stuff in there,' Staples said. Krar and Bruey will soon be sentenced to lengthy jail terms, but their capture has revealed a gaping hole in America's war on terror: the home front. The FBI fears that other chemical bombs, built by Krar, may already be in circulation. The case has now sparked the biggest domestic terror investigation since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Supreme Court Justices Clash on Recusals
LA Times, 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: In the spring of 1989, Supreme Court Justice Byron White, once a star running back for the Detroit Lions, was the guest of the Detroit News at the annual press dinner of the Gridiron Club. When the paper's publisher bought him a drink, White casually asked how the planned merger of the city's two newspapers was going. "It's before your court," the publisher informed White. A few weeks later, the justices voted to take up the case ‹ but without White. He had withdrawn from the deliberations, apparently concerned that his having just been the unwitting guest of a party to a case before the court might create an appearance of partiality. Around that same time, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia got together once a month to play poker. Sometimes, they were joined by the Reagan administration's solicitor general, Charles Fried, the government's top lawyer before the high court. That same spring, Fried strongly urged the court to overturn the Roe vs. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. Fried's poker partners participated fully in the case. "I was an occasional player. It was very small stakes," Fried, a Harvard law professor, said last week. "The work of the court was not discussed." As the two incidents show, and as the current controversies over the outside activities of Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underscore, the Supreme Court justices have quite different views on how they should manage their social and professional lives so as to avoid creating an appearance of partiality.
SEE ALSO: Dowd: Quid Pro Quack (New York Times)

The Made-for-TV Presidency
By Colleen Redman
Common Dreams, 19 March 2004
EXCERPT: On March 15th The New York Times reported that a video put forth by the Bush Administration is being studied by Federal investigators because of its potential to be misleading. The video, made for local television news stations to air, portrays President Bush receiving a standing ovation, and paid actors posing as journalists praising Bush¹s new Medicare law. It prompted Washington Post staff writer, Howard Kurtz, when asked about it, to say this: "It's become common practice for companies and trade associations to put out these video news releases, which sometimes are not identified as suchŠBut for the government to get into the same business is troublingŠ" About the use of paid actors, he said, "I'm sure the Bush administration would prefer that all questions came from such faux journalists and not the authentic variety." The Bush administration has also gotten some flak for using paid actors ­ firefighters, construction workers, children and the elderly ­ in re-election campaign ads (Washington Post, March 4). But these recent incidents are only the latest in a long and troubling trend. While all presidential administrations have used public relations to further their agendas, the Bush administration has taken it to new heights (or should I say "new lows") and seems to cross the line from public relations to propaganda.
DOUBLE-CHECK ABOVE TEXT FOR BAD CHARACTERS
SEE ALSO: Bush Fake Turkey Tour Headquarters (BushWhackedUSA)

When Rupert Murdoch Calls...Condoleeza Rice Answers
But she can't be bothered to testify about 9/11
By John Nichols
The Nation, 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: Last Friday, the Bush Administration was busy pumping up hopes that the war on terrorism was about to yield a victory: the capture along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan of the reputed No. 2 man in Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. As it turned out, Dr Ayman Al-Zawahri was probably not among the militants holed up in the heavily fortified compounds that were assaulted by Pakistani troops and their US advisors. ... At the same time, Administration aides were busy trying to hold together the coalition of the sort-of willing that was cobbled together to support the invasion of Iraq. With Spain's new prime minister declaring the occupation "a disaster" and threatening to withdraw that country's troops from Iraq, and with Poland's president telling European reporters that his country was "misled" about the nature of the threat posed by Iraq, the Administration has its hands full. Surely, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a key player on all the fronts that were in play, had a very long list of responsibilities. No time for diversions on Friday, right? Wrong. Rice took time out of the middle of the day to address a secretive gathering that included global media mogul Rupert Murdoch and top executives from television networks, newspapers and other media properties owned by Murdoch's News Corp. conglomerate. Rice spoke at some length via satellite to Murdoch and his cronies, who had gathered at the posh Ritz Carlton Hotel in Cancun Mexico, according to reports published in the British press. The Guardian newspaper, which sent a reporter to Cancun, revealed that Rice was asked to address the group by executives of the Murdoch-controlled Fox broadcast and cable networks in the US. The Fox "family" includes, of course, the Fox News cable channel, which the Guardian correctly describes as "hugely supportive of President George Bush."
SEE ALSO: Krugman: Taken for a Ride (New York Times)

Democrats Say Bush Speeding US Job Exports
Reuters, 20 March 2004
EXCERPT: Democrats accused President Bush on Saturday of speeding the export of U.S. manufacturing jobs to other countries and calling it a good thing. In the Democrats' weekly radio address, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm told the story of a refrigerator plant that closed recently in her state and moved its 2,700 jobs to Mexico. She said it had become an all-too-familiar American tale. "But after losing over 2.7 million manufacturing jobs over the last four years, all the Bush administration can say is that shipping jobs overseas is a 'positive development,"' Granholm said. "Americans deserve a president who will fight to create good jobs, not export them," she declared. Jobs have become a central issue in the campaign leading up to November's presidential election. Democrats have criticized comments by Bush economic aide Gregory Mankiw last month that "outsourcing" by U.S. companies was a plus for the economy in the long run, a comment for which Mankiw later apologized.

20-21 March 2004

31 March 2004

An emerging "democratic and sovereign" state, Bush style
Bomb Kills Five U.S. Soldiers in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 31 March 2004
EXCERPT: A bomb exploded under a U.S. military vehicle west of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing five soldiers, the military said. At least four people, including one American and possibly other foreign nationals, were killed in a separate attack. Crowds burned and mutilated their bodies. The explosive device that killed the American soldiers blew up when their vehicle ran over it, U.S. Army Col. Jill Morgenthaler said in Baghdad. The attack occurred in Anbar province, which encompasses Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns where anti-U.S. insurgents are active. (AP Photo)

Duelfer Bush's new gopher?
WMD...
WMD Related Plans...
WMD Intent Now Being Sought
CIA Weapons Inspector Says His Strategy Is to Unravel Saddam's Intentions to Advance Weapons
AP to ABC News, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Still unable to find banned Iraqi weapons, the new U.S. weapons inspector said Tuesday his strategy is to unravel Saddam Hussein's intentions as Iraq's former president worked to advance weapons of mass destruction programs. Charles Duelfer, the CIA's special adviser on the weapons hunt, said the Iraq Survey Group he oversees is looking for a comprehensive picture, not simply an answer to the question: Were there weapons or not? ...Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the top Democrat on armed services, called on the CIA to declassify Duelfer's entire status report, delivered to the committee. Levin said he is "deeply troubled" that the public version leaves out information that casts doubt on the notion that Iraq had an active WMD program. "Mr. Duelfer's statement raises the same issues of selective use of information ... that have been such a problem for the credibility of the intelligence community's pre-war estimates related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," Levin said in a statement. ...Duelfer took over the job as the top civilian weapons inspector after his predecessor, David Kay, resigned in January and told Congress "we were almost all wrong" about Saddam's weapons programs. In a flurry of public statements questioning whether weapons would ever be found, Kay renewed the debate about the very weapons programs that the Bush administration used to justify last year's Iraq invasion.
SEE ALSO:
US Weapons Hunt Shifts Focus to 'Intent' in Iraq
Reuters, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: The U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will continue despite the failure so far to find them but the mission will also investigate whether Saddam Hussein intended to develop such weapons, the chief U.S. arms hunter said on Tuesday. "Ultimately what we want is a comprehensive picture, not just simply answering questions -- were there weapons, were there not weapons?" Charles Duelfer told reporters after briefing the Senate Armed Services Committee behind closed doors. "The hunt will go on until we're able to draw a firm and confident picture of what the programs were and where the regime was headed with respect to them. But we're looking at it from soup to nuts -- from the weapons end to the planning end and to the intentions end," he said. The new direction of trying to determine whether the former Iraqi president was actively pursuing the development of banned arms reflects the Bush administration's evolving public rationale for the war on Iraq.
SEE ALSO: One Year Later, Conscientious Objectors Have No Regrets (TP)
SEE ALSO: How Iraq Feels About Democracy (ZNet)
SEE ALSO: Iraq Arms Inspector Says Search Is a Tangle (NYT)

Just what's needed against those 'sleeper cells'...
Shooting Stars
U.S. Military Takes First Step Towards Weapons in Space
By Marc Lallanilla
ABC News, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: For all of human history, people have looked at the stars with a sense of wonder. More recently, some U.S. military planners have looked skyward and seen something very different — the next battlefield. While the military's presence in space stretches back decades, now there appears to be a new emphasis. Officials in the Bush administration and the Department of Defense are actively pursuing an agenda calling for the unprecedented weaponization of space. The first real step in that direction appears to be coming in the form of a little-noticed weapons program at the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The agency has now earmarked $68 million in 2005 for something called the Near Field Infrared Experiment.

The Wrong Target
Jason Vest
The American Prospect, 1 April 2004
EXCERPT: If the Robb-Silberman commission discharges its duties properly, it will likely come to the conclusion that the weapons-of-mass-destruction snipe hunt was the result of a collision among members of an inadequately reformed intelligence community, the myopia of a political leadership hell-bent on realizing its muscular vision, and the reality that, despite whatever mystique may be attached to "intelligence," certain unavoidable factors will always limit what can truly and fully be known. But even if it does, meaningful change is unlikely. Taking stock of what we know so far in this case, one is hard-pressed to conclude that the administration has much interest in reforming the structure and process -- and is only too enamored of imposing illusions.

Connecting the Dots:
'Against All Enemies' and 'Ghost Wars'
By James Risen
AGAINST ALL ENEMIES
Inside America's War on Terror.
By Richard A. Clarke.
and
GHOST WARS
The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.
By Steve Coll.
EXCERPT: Discounting the possibility that the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, is secretly a publicist for the Free Press (Clarke's publisher), one must assume that the Bush administration really is angry at its former counterterrorism czar, and isn't simply trying to help him sell more books. But if President Bush and his advisers were hoping that their loud pre-emptive attacks on ''Against All Enemies'' would make this book go away, they were sadly mistaken. Richard A. Clarke knows too much, and ''Against All Enemies'' is too good to be ignored.
   (Steve) Coll, the managing editor of The Washington Post, has given us what is certainly the finest historical narrative so far on the origins of Al Qaeda in the post-Soviet rubble of Afghanistan. He has followed up that feat by threading together the complex roles played by diplomats and spies from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States into a coherent story explaining how Afghanistan became such a welcoming haven for Al Qaeda. In particular, Coll has done a great service by revealing how Saudi Arabia and its intelligence operations aided the rise of Osama bin Laden and Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia's alleged involvement in terrorism has been the subject of wild conspiracy theories since Sept. 11; Coll gives us a clear and balanced view of Saudi Arabia's real ties to bin Laden. The links he reveals are serious enough to prompt an important debate about the nature of the Saudi-American partnership in the fight against terrorism. ''Saudi intelligence officials said years later that bin Laden was never a professional Saudi intelligence agent,'' he writes, referring to Saudi support for foreign Arab fighters against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Still, ''it seems clear that bin Laden did have a substantial relationship with Saudi intelligence.''

Bush Promise to Battle AIDS Worldwide Falls Short
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
New York Times, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: Three years after the United Nations declared a worldwide offensive against AIDS and 14 months after President Bush promised $15 billion for AIDS treatment in poor countries, shortages of money and battles over patents have kept antiretroviral drugs from reaching more than 90 percent of the poor people who need them. ...While Mr. Bush promised in his 2003 State of the Union address to spend $15 billion over five years on AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean, his budget requests have fallen far short of that goal. For the most recent donation to the Global Fund, he requested only $200 million, although Congress authorized $550 million. ...Advocates of cheap drugs say the Bush administration has yielded to pressure from the pharmaceutical lobby to find ways to reject the generics. On Friday, Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, wrote a joint letter to the White House urging it to accept W.H.O.-approved generics. In a separate letter, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, accused the administration of trying to set standards for Indian generics higher than those for American ones.

Saudis Signal They Will Proceed With Oil-Production Cut
By SIMON ROMERO
New York Times, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Saudi Arabia signaled today that it was proceeding with its plans to cut oil production, prompting a gathering of OPEC officials here this week to voice support for higher crude oil prices, which have become a sensitive political issue in the United States. "Throwing more oil on the market would be destructive for everybody," said Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister for Saudi Arabia, the most pivotal member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Mr. Naimi sought to brush aside criticism that his nation was seeking higher returns from oil exports, claiming a flurry of speculative activity in commodity markets was behind the recent increase in oil prices. Still, as if on cue from Mr. Naimi's statements, prices for light crude closed up 75 cents at $36.35 a barrel in trading today on the New York Mercantile Exchange. OPEC is expected to discuss on Wednesday whether it will adhere to a cut of 1 million barrels announced at a meeting last month in Algiers.

Bush's friends at Harken Oil are at it again...
Oiled Again: 'Free Trade' Threatens Costa Rican Environment
By Mark Engler and Nadia Martiniez
Grist Magazine, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: When most people think of Costa Rica, they don't imagine oil rigs stationed off the pristine beaches. Nor do they envision pit mines cutting into the cloud-forested mountains. But, despite the country's noteworthy conservation efforts, its scenic vistas and extraordinary biodiversity face ongoing threats from extractive industries -- and from international trade deals. Nearly two years ago, Costa Rican nationals and admirers thought they'd been given reason to rest easy. In May 2002, responding to a large-scale mobilization of the country's environmentalists, President Abel Pacheco announced a moratorium on oil exploration and open-pit mining in Costa Rica. Legislators are currently working to give congressional backing to the executive order and repeal laws that expose the country to extractive industries. At least one multinational interest isn't happy about the developments, however, and its model of corporate discontent may soon end the prospects of an activist siesta. Harken Energy, a Texas-based oil company with close ties to U.S. President George W. Bush, had previously obtained rights to search for crude in Costa Rica. Before failing an environmental impact review in February 2002, it had planned to drill offshore. Now Harken is demanding that the Costa Rican government pay upwards of $12 million in reparations for its aborted exploits.

(Yes, this was under Clinton, but America was bushwhacked then, too...)
US Chose to Ignore Rwandan Genocide
By Rory Carroll
Guardian (UK), 31 March 2004
EXCERPT: President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time. Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene. Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak. It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington's top policymakers. The documents undermine claims by Mr Clinton and his senior officials that they did not fully appreciate the scale and speed of the killings.

30 March 2004

Russia Says New Weapon Will Make US 'Star Wars' Missile Defense Useless
Canadian Press, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Russia has designed a "revolutionary" weapon that would make the prospective American missile defence useless, Russian news agencies reported Monday, quoting a senior Defence Ministry official. The official, who was not identified by name, said tests conducted during last month's military manoeuvres would dramatically change the philosophy behind development of Russia's nuclear forces, the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies reported. If deployed, the new weapon would take the value of any U.S. missile shield to "zero," the news agencies quoted the official as saying. The official said the new weapon would be inexpensive, providing an "asymmetric answer" to U.S. missile defences, which are proving extremely costly to develope. Russia, meanwhile, also has continued research in prospective missile defences and has an edge in some areas compared to other countries, the official said.

19 Killed in Uzbekistan Terror Attacks
AP in Guardian (UK), 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: A series of bombings and attacks linked to Islamic militants, including the first known suicide missions in Uzbekistan, killed 19 people and injured 26, officials said Monday in this key American ally in the war on terrorism. The oppressive regime of President Islam Karimov, the former Communist boss, had held Islamic extremists in the Central Asian in check through brutal policies that forbid political or religious freedom. The last known terrorist attack of this magnitude came in an assassination attempt against Karimov 1999 that led to the arrests of thousands. Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov said the blasts Sunday and Monday were connected and aimed at destabilizing Uzbekistan. Female suicide bombers carried out the blasts at the Chorsu market, the biggest bazaar in Tashkent, near the "Children's World" store, and at a nearby bus stop, Kadyrov said.
SEE ALSO: Uzbekistan Launches Terror Attacks Probe (AP)

Bush Adviser: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel
By Emad Mekay
Inter Press Service via Information Clearing House, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 -- the 9/11 commission -- in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East. Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security. The administration has instead insisted it launched the war to liberate the Iraqi people, destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to protect the United States. Zelikow made his statements about "the unstated threat" during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president. He served on the board between 2001 and 2003. "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel," Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. "And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell," said Zelikow. 
SEE ALSO: Israel Enjoys Broad-Based, Bipartisan Support on Capitol Hill (ICH)
SEE ALSO: Pro-Israeli PAC Contributions to Congress, 1999-2000 (ICH)
SEE ALSO: In Return, Israel Gets $91 Billion in Aid (ICH)
SEE ALSO: Jews Against Zionism
SEE ALSO: Assassination Strengthens Hamas (Common Dreams)

Shia Protests Aim to Scupper Iraq Constitution
By Nicolas Pelham in Baghdad
Financial Times, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Protests erupted in many of Iraq's Shia Muslim areas on Monday as Shia leaders sought to increase pressure on the US-led coalition and scupper Iraq's temporary constitution. ...The unrest followed a poster campaign and petition drive by supporters of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shia's reclusive but paramount religious authority, who is seeking to overturn Iraq's temporary constitution, agreed this month. The elderly cleric's face now adorns posters plastered across the country denouncing the document. Signed by Mr Bremer and his appointees in the Governing Council, the temporary constitution includes a bill of rights and was hailed as the most progressive in the region. But Mr Sistani fears the Governing Council has enacted a permanent constitution by the back-door. In addition to the poster campaign, last Friday imams at thousands of Shia mosques across central and southern Iraq began distributing a petition addressed to the United Nations and Mr Bremer, demanding the law be revoked. "It is illegal because the administrators who have drafted the law lack legitimacy among ordinary Iraqis," says the petition.

U.N. Leader: Security Vital for Iraq Vote
By BASSEM MROUE
AP in Yahoo! News, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: The head of a U.N. team said Monday that better security in Iraq (news - web sites) is vital for elections to take place by a Jan. 31 deadline. A U.S. soldier was killed in a bomb west of Baghdad and British troops in the south fired rubber bullets to disperse anti-coalition activists.

Troops Shut Down Iraqi Paper
The Straits Times, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: US soldiers have shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper after the occupation authorities accused it of printing lies that incited violence. Thousands of Iraqis protested against the closing as an act of American hypocrisy, laying bare the hostility many feel towards the US a year after Saddam Hussein was toppled.

Pakistan Scales Down al-Qaeda Hunt
SUCCESSFUL MISSION: The government said its main objectives had been met but did not rule out further efforts to rid the Afghan border region of the militants
AP, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: Pakistan called its mission to chase down and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda militants a success and began withdrawing troops after tribesmen along the border with Afghanistan agreed to release captured soldiers and politicians. Officials said, however, troops would remain in the unruly western border region while tribal leaders negotiate the hand-over of other foreign militants.

Terrorists Don't Need States
The danger is less that a state will sponsor a terror group and more that a terror group will sponsor a state—as happened in Afghanistan
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek, April issue
EXCERPT: The Bush team, distrustful of anything Clinton's people said, did not see Al Qaeda as an urgent threat. They held few meetings on it and in other ways were inattentive to it. One example from the panel's report: the senior Pentagon official responsible for counterterrorism is the assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict. Even by September 11, 2001, no one had been appointed to that post. The Bush administration came to office with different concerns. During the 1990s conservative intellectuals and policy wonks sounded the alarm about China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Iraq, but not about terror. Real men dealt with states. Even after 9/11, many in the administration wanted to focus on states. Bush spoke out against countries that "harbor" terrorists. Two days after the attacks, Paul Wolfowitz proposed "ending states that sponsor terrorism." Beyond Iraq, conservative intellectuals like Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen insist that the real source of terror remains the "terror masters," meaning states like Iran and Syria.

'Dead zones' In World's Oceans Are Growing, Say Alarmed UN Scientists
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Independent, 30 March 2004
EXCERPT: It is as sinister a development as any in the list of things going wrong with the planet. Marine "dead zones" - oxygen-starved areas of the oceans that are devoid of fish - are one of the greatest environmental problems facing the world, UN scientists warned yesterday. There are nearly 150 dead zones across the globe, they are increasing, and they pose as big a threat to fish stocks as over-fishing, the United Nations Environment Program (Unep) said in its Global Environment Outlook Year Book 2003, released at a meeting of environment ministers in Korea. These lifeless areas of the sea are caused by an excess of nutrients, mainly nitrogen, that originate from heavy use of agricultural fertilizers, from vehicle and factory emissions and from human wastes. They have doubled in number over the last decade, with some extending over 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles), about the size of Ireland, Unep said.

Saudi Arabia to Call for Opec Output Cut
By Carola Hoyos in Vienna and Javier Blas in Madrid
Financial Times, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Saudi Arabia will on Tuesday push the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut output despite some members' opposition and high oil prices.

29 March 2004

Iraqi Detentions Fuel Anti-US Sentiment
By Thanassis Cambanis
Boston Golobe, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: The American military is holding some 8,000 Iraqi security detainees without trial or formal charges, most of them in a prison where at least six US guards have been criminally charged with abusing inmates. While legal under the Geneva Conventions, the detentions are proving disastrous to the public image of the US-led occupation authority, as hundreds of Iraqis freed this month spread stories of dismal prison conditions and say they were never told why they were arrested. US officials insist they treat the prisoners fairly, but the widely circulated stories about seemingly arbitrary arrests fuel the sense of injustice here; even as the coalition builds democratic institutions for Iraq, including a new court system, a parallel legal system for detainees persists with few apparent rights for the accused. In one such case, Mahmoud Khodair said American soldiers blasted into his basement apartment six months ago and dragged him off, accusing him of aiding insurgents. He was held under a procedure that allows occupation forces to imprison without trial those suspected of "anticoalition activity." Like hundreds more, he was released earlier this month, with no explanation of why he was arrested in the first place or why he was ultimately cleared to go home.

Ukraine to Investigate Disappearance of Hundreds of Missiles
People's Daily, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Ukrainian military will launch an in-depth investigation into the disappearance of hundreds of missiles, Defense Minister Yevgeni Kirillovich Marchuk has promised. In a recent review of the military's arsenal, the armed forces found that hundreds of missiles had been lost, Interfax-Ukraine News Agency quoted the minister as saying late Friday. Marchuk said the missing missiles were all air defense ones inherited from the now-defunct Soviet Union. Ukraine declared independence in 1991.

The Middle East Needs Its Democracy Home-Grown
Washington's latest initiative has Arab leaders worried
By Jonathan Steele
Guardian (UK), 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Little noticed in the west as yet, the Bush administration's latest Middle East adventure has been making furious waves in the Arab world. Dubbed the Greater Middle East initiative, the plan aims to press democracy on one of the world's least democratic regions. Its details were due to be unveiled when the leaders of the industrialised world hold their annual Group of Eight summit in June. US officials compare it to the 1975 Helsinki charter of human rights which gradually forced the Soviet Union and its allied regimes in eastern Europe to open up and ultimately collapse. The initiative is a neo-conservative brainchild, a follow-up to the toppling of Saddam Hussein by force, and an effort to use his removal as the first in a line of Middle Eastern dominoes. The notion of pressing reform on the Arab world has wide support in Washington. As long as it is predicated on generational change which is accepted by Arab rulers themselves, rather than being hastily imposed by sanctions or military might, its fans include the secretary of state, Colin Powell, as well as Democratic party liberals such as John Kerry.
SEE ALSO: US Sets Up 14 'Enduring Bases' in Iraq (Chicago Tribune)
SEE ALSO: Expansion Overseas Fuels Suspicions of US Motives (Sun Herald)
SEE ALSO: Pentagon Counts Psychological Cost of Iraq Invasion (Guardian)

Punchline: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere."
Death Toll Climbs in Iraq as US Forces Clash with Guerillas
By Patrick Graham
Observer (UK), 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: A spate of violent clashes has left 22 people dead across Iraq this weekend as fighting erupted between US forces and guerrillas armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. In Baghdad yesterday, five Iraqis were injured when a bomb exploded on a street. US troops sealed off the area. In Tikrit a three-year-old boy died yesterday after being shot by US troops when the car in which he was travelling failed to stop at a checkpoint. Rebels in Mosul fired a rocket at a government building yesterday, killing two civilians and wounding 14 others. But it was Falluja where the fiercest fighting raged as marines and guerrillas fought for hours through the alleys of the city, leaving one marine, at least six Iraqi civilians, including an 11-year-old boy, and a television cameraman dead. In the fighting, which began on Friday, 25 Iraqis and five marines were injured.
(Repeated from the weekend)
SEE ALSO: Virginia Senator on Iraq Invasion: "My Vote Was Wrong" (AP)
SEE ALSO: US Troops 'Shoot Three-Year-Old Boy' (The Age)
SEE ALSO: Sistani May Issue Edict Against Iraq Power Transfer (Reuters)

A likely story...
Israeli Secret Services Faulted for Iraq Forecasts
By Dan Williams
Reuters in Yahoo! News, 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: Israel overestimated Iraq's military capabilities but the miscalculation in no way influenced the U.S. decision to topple Saddam Hussein, a parliamentary inquiry found Sunday. ...Officially at war with Saddam, its avowed enemy, Israel shared intelligence with Washington, its closest ally, before last year's invasion. Then, as now, it played down its cooperation to avoid deepening Arab ire at the campaign. Yuval Steinitz, a lawmaker from the right-wing ruling Likud party who led the inquiry, said Israeli input played "a very minor role" in Washington's prewar planning. ...The report complained of a snowball effect in intelligence sharing, whereby some Israeli assessments, analyzed by U.S. counterparts, eventually found their way back to Israel in repackaged form. "It is not inconceivable that (such) analyzes had a bolstering and authenticating effect as though authoritative," said the report, parts of which were kept classified.

Summit's Collapse Leaves Arab Leaders in Disarray
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
New York Times, 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Arab governments were in disarray on Sunday after the Arab League summit meeting, set to grapple with vital regional issues like democratic reform, Arab-Israeli bloodshed and the American occupation of Iraq, was abruptly called off just before it was to open Monday. The exact reason is a matter of some dispute, but all sides viewed the meeting's collapse — even as some heads of state were on their way — as an embarrassment. It was a stark public admission that the commitment to change voiced by Arab leaders risks becoming just more words. The Arab League is infamous for its fractious gatherings, but even its most experienced bureaucrats described the cancellation as extraordinary. Some commentators thought the collapse inevitable from the start. The very idea of reform remains too divisive, and many nations' governments have yet to decide how to deal themselves with issues like elections. ...Given the the American invasion of Iraq, and spiral of violence in the region, including terrorist bomb attacks from Casablanca to Riyadh, there had been some expectation that Arab leaders might commit themselves to change. Certainly the Bush administration had hoped for some kind of broad endorsement of reform that might demonstrate that its decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein was having a positive echo. Senior officials and analysts here said events in Tunis, while not without precedent, represented in stark colors the Arab world's inability to cope with American efforts to redraw the region's political map. ..."To fail to even hold a meeting is a disaster, taking into consideration all the challenges of the region," said Hoshar Zubairy, the Iraqi foreign minister. "This encourages extremism, when people see that even the formal Arab system is not functioning, not operating. The sense of frustration will only deepen."

Haiti's Troika of Terror: Thugs, a Buffoon, and The Pirates
By Glen Ford and Peter Gamble
Black Commentator, 27 March 2004
EXCERPT: The United States has delivered George Bush's ghoulish brand of democracy to Haiti. The nightmarish components of Haiti's ruling troika gathered last Saturday, in Gonaives, the country's fourth-largest city--a macabre assemblage that seemed designed to assault the sensibilities of civilized humans.

IMF Director Selection Process is an Insult to the Rest of the World
By Larry Elliott
Guardian (UK), 29 March 2004
EXCERPT: Imagine Bill Gates announcing, out of the blue, that he is leaving Microsoft to spend more time with his family. Within minutes, Microsoft's finance chief says he reserves the right to choose the successor to Gates from his team. "That's the way we've always done things here," he says. No, of course, you can't imagine it. If Microsoft or any other company were to choose its top executives in such a bizarre fashion, the share price would plummet and with good reason. There would be real doubt about whether the new CEO was up to the job. Yet this is the scandalous way in which the international community is going about choosing the next managing director of the International Monetary Fund, a position of pivotal global importance. The previous MD, Horst Köhler, has resigned to stand for the job as president of Germany, and this Friday Europe's finance ministers are gathering to discuss who should be his successor. Why just the Europeans you might ask? Simple. Ever since the IMF and the World Bank were created at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, there has been an arrangement - stitch-up describes it better - under which the Europeans decide who should head the Fund and the Americans pick the president of the World Bank.

27-28 March 2004

US Uses Iraq as Living Weapons Lab
By Nick Turse
TomDispatch, 27 March 2004
EXCERPT: In a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times, military analyst William M. Arkin reported that the Marines being deployed in Iraq this month will bring along the newest high-tech gadget in America's ever-expanding arsenal to try out on whatever resistant Iraqis they may happen to run into. The Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) emits a powerful tone which brings agonizing pain to those within earshot. While Woody Norris, chairman of the American Technology Corporation which manufactures the device, refuses to call it a "weapon," he claims, "It will knock [some people] on their knees." But Arkin asks a crucial question seldom heard these days: "Is actual combat in a foreign country the appropriate place to test a new weapon?" The military and its industrial partners sure think so. As the fears of the Vietnam era continue to fade, successive, sometimes concurrent wars and foreign adventures provide the means to constantly improve and upgrade weapons, early versions of which are rushed into battle for real-world testing, re-tooling and perfecting on what increasingly seems to be the global assembly line of the military-industrial complex.

Forces Linked to Al-Qaeda Execute Pakistani Troops
Protests against Musharraf as losses mount in hunt for al-Qaeda deputy
By James Astill
Observer (UK), 28 March 2004
EXCERPT: Islamic forces allegedly linked to al-Qaeda have executed eight Pakistani soldiers on a battlefield in the north of the country, where about 500 militants have been besieged by thousands of government troops. The soldiers were discovered in a ditch in remote South Waziristan province, shot dead with their hands tied behind their backs, according to army sources. They had been taken hostage in an ambush on Monday in which another 13 soldiers died. 'It was a cold-blooded murder,' said army spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan. 'We have identified the local and foreign militants and now we are chasing them.' Analysts in Islamabad said the executions would exacerbate already violent tensions in Waziristan, stirred by the army's first major incursion into an area that has long been a refuge for Islamist fighters. More than 100 soldiers and civilians have so far died in the battle, which began earlier this month when Pakistani forces walked into a hail of bullets as they approached the house of a suspected al-Qaeda member.
SEE ALSO: Once and Always a Colonial Army (ZNet)

Striking Where Bush is Weakest
By John Nichols
The Nation
25 March 2004
EXCERPT: If the Bush administration had gone after Osama bin Laden with anything akin to the energy it is expending to discredit Richard Clarke, the story of America's response to terrorism might have been dramatically different. That, of course, is the point that Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism adviser, makes when he says that Bush and his aides "ignored" the terrorist threats before September 11, 2001, and, even more significantly, when he suggests that the administration diverted attention from the real war on terrorism with an unnecessary war on Iraq. Those are powerful charges, and Clarke has made them convincingly in his testimony before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States, in various media appearances over the past few days, and in his book, Against All Enemies. Predictably, the White House spin machine has been churning out increasingly-visceral attacks on Clarke, a self-described Republican who still praises Bush's father as a masterful leader. Amid the tit-for-tat that has developed, however, Clarke has already prevailed. No matter what the Bush administration throws at the man who served in four White Houses, Clarke has already trumped his attackers. (Emphasis by BWUSA.)

Up to 16 Die in Gun Battles in Sunni Areas of Iraq
By DEXTER FILKINS
New York Times, 27 March 2004
EXCERPT: As many as 16 people, including a United States marine, were killed in a series of gun battles on Friday, as guerrilla violence swept the Sunni-dominated areas north and west of Baghdad in the latest show of strength by the insurgency here. Among the Iraqis killed was a cameraman for ABC News, who a witness said was shot by American troops when he stepped into the middle of a skirmish.

'Why Are Our Children Dying?'
By Colbert I. King
Washington Post, 27 March 2004
EXCERPT: The photo in the March 24 Post of a little girl named Jami-Cierra McRae weeping on the flag-draped coffin of her uncle, Army Spec. Jason Ford, is a face of the Iraq war that the rest of the country seldom sees. Her anguish said it all. Ford, a 21-year-old Washington area resident, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. He didn't make it past his first week in Iraq. Ford's heartbreaking funeral service has been replicated more than 560 times across the country since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq a year ago. There are thousands more members of the U.S. armed forces who must now live out their years with broken bodies. And America, because of Iraq, will soon be $100 billion poorer. Irene Ford, Jason's stepmother, angrily asked the other day: "Why are our children dying? What is the reason for this young boy to lose his life?" ...the fight against terrorism suffered badly because Bush advisers, principally Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, entered office in 2001 with Iraq as the No. 1 national security issue. And, Clarke suggests, the focus on unseating Hussein was driven by the desire to settle unfinished Gulf War business, shore up Western access to Middle East oil, make it easier to withdraw U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia, promote democracy in Arab states and improve "Israel's strategic position" in the region.

Echoes of Florida and the Supreme Court...
Bush-Style Democracy in Action: US Will Tell Iraqi Council to Pick Prime Minister
By Jonathan Steele
Guardian (UK), 27 March 2004
EXCERPT: The United States will transfer power in Iraq to a hand-picked prime minister, abandoning plans for an expansion of the current 25-member governing council, according to coalition officials in Baghdad. With fewer than 100 days before the US occupation authorities are due to transfer sovereignty, fear of wrangling among Iraqi politicians has forced Washington to make its third switch of strategy in six months. The search is now on for an Iraqi to serve as chief executive. He will almost certainly be from the Shia Muslim majority, and probably a secular technocrat. "There will be no [Paul] Bremer and there will be a prime minister," a coalition official told the Guardian yesterday. "That will be the biggest change with the transfer of sovereignty."
SEE ALSO: Libya: Path to Friendship Goes Through Oil and Gas Fields (Guardian)

More Goodies for Pervez
Despite the piquant situation Pakistan is in today, US rewards still come thick and fast
Indiana Express, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: Coming as it does so soon after the US declaring Pakistan a major military ally, President Bush¹s waiver of sanctions imposed after the 1999 military coup, smacks of a lack of principle or consistency in American policy. The logic, of course, is that this would facilitate the transition to democratic rule in Pakistan. If this was the only reason, then it should have come soon after the elections last year, despite their obvious limitations. More important, perhaps, is the second part of the stated reason that lifting sanctions are important for the US war against terrorism; a war that has stalled badly because of shifting priorities in Washington. There is an obvious political signal in the policy shift at this stage to indicate strong support for the military-dominated regime in Islamabad. Pakistan¹s much-publicised military operation ‹ including the use of US-supplied helicopter gunships and combat aircraft ‹ in Waziristan in the southern reaches of the North West Frontier Province to decimate the Al-Qaeda has ground to a halt with substantial casualties to army and paramilitary forces, both in direct attacks as well as through the ambushing of army convoys. The militants are engaged in a counter-offensive that goes as far as placing Peshawar under rocket attack.
SEE ALSO: Bush Reverses Position on Gay Marriage, Weds Pakistan's Musharraf (BushWhackedUSA)

Palestinians: U.S. Veto Gives Israel License to Kill
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Reuters to Yahoo! News, 2 March 2004
EXCERPT: Palestinians accused the United States on Friday of granting Israel a license to kill by vetoing U.N. condemnation of its assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Israeli forces, taking action after the Islamic militant group said it would launch "earthquake-like" attacks to avenge Yassin's death, killed two Hamas frogmen who came ashore overnight near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians denounced the U.S. veto and thousands demonstrated in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to protest Yassin's killing. In Tehran, about 5,000 people marched in protest as well, chanting "Death to Israel, death to America."

Caribbean Won't Accept Haiti's New Bush-Backed Coup Government
Associated Press, 26 March 2004
EXCERPT: The 15-nation Caribbean Community has decided against recognizing Haiti's new U.S.-backed government, senior Caribbean officials said Friday. Regional leaders reached a consensus decision on the issue during the second and final day of a summit, said several senior officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. The move came a day after the leaders demanded that the U.N. General Assembly investigate Aristide's claims he was abducted at gunpoint by U.S. agents when he left as rebels threatened to attack Haiti's capital. In Haiti, meanwhile, the interim government announced it will block dozens of ex-members of Aristide's government from leaving the country, including former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. New Justice Minister Bernard Gousse told The Associated Press that the move was "an insurance policy" that will make the officials available for investigations into embezzlement and other alleged crimes.

26 March 2004

The Wrong War
By BOB HERBERT
New York Times, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: The most compelling aspects of Richard Clarke's take on the world have less to do with the question of whether the Bush administration could somehow have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and much more with the administration's folly of responding to the attacks by launching a war on Iraq. ...Mr. Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, writes in his book, "Against All Enemies," that despite clear evidence the attacks had been the work of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, top administration officials focused almost immediately on the object of their obsession, Iraq. He remembers taking a short break for a bite to eat and a shower, then returning to the White House very early on the morning of Sept. 12. He writes: "I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were. . . . Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq."

U.S. Officials Fashion Legal Basis to Keep Force in Iraq
By JOHN F. BURNS and THOM SHANKER
New York Times, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: With fewer than 100 days to go before Iraq resumes its sovereignty, American officials say they believe they have found a legal basis for American troops to continue their military control over the security situation in Iraq. After months of concern about the legal status of the 110,000 American troops who are expected to remain here after the occupation formally ends on June 30, the officials say they believe an existing United Nations resolution approving the presence of a multinational force in Iraq, approved by the Security Council in October, gives American commanders the authority needed to maintain control after sovereignty is handed back. Showing his confidence that the approach was grounded in international law, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the occupation authority, issued an executive order this week specifying that the newly formed Iraqi armed forces be placed under the operational control of the American commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who has been named to lead American and allied forces after the transfer of political authority to the Iraqis. Mr. Bremer and other top American officials say they believe Security Council Resolution 1511, which conferred the mandate for the American-led alliance, can be used to provide legal justification for the American military command to operate until Dec. 31, 2005. That is when a timetable agreed on by Iraqi leaders envisages the final transition to an elected Iraqi government.

Afghanistan's Problematic Path to Peace: Lessons in State Building in the Post-September 11 Era
By Mark Sedra & Peter Middlebrook
EXCERPT: Introduction: As donors to Afghanistan convene from March 30-April 1, 2004, the reconstruction process faces a crossroads.

Winning friends, influencing people...
U.S. Vetoes U.N. Measure Against Israel
By Grant McCool
Reuters, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: The United States has vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution introduced by Arab nations to condemn Israel for assassinating militant Palestinian leader Ahmed Yassin. The Bush administration, alone among major powers in not condemning Monday's assassination as an extrajudicial killing, rejected the resolution because it did not also denounce Yassin's group Hamas for suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in recent years. Washington's "no" vote killed the resolution because it is one of the five permanent members of the council with veto power. A total of eleven countries voted in favor. Britain, Germany and Romania abstained after Algeria, negotiating for Arab nations, rejected an amendment they wanted that would have condemned "atrocities" against Israelis. The measure was supported by China, Russia, France, Angola, Chile, Pakistan, Spain, Algeria, Benin, Brazil and the Philippines.

Israel Plays with Fire
By Roane Carey and Adam Shatz
The Nation, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: Sheik Yassin, to be sure, was not a man of peace. His group has killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in suicide attacks since the mid-1990s. But Yassin, along with Ismail Abu Shanab, who was assassinated last year, represented the more moderate current within Hamas; although Yassin refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state, he had spoken favorably of a "hundred-year truce" with it and had indicated that violent resistance would cease once Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders. Now that Yassin is dead, the only men left standing are the hard-liners, led by Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, the sheik's successor in Gaza. Some "friends" of Israel--a curious term for those who cheer Israel on as it marches down the road to self-destruction--will doubtless observe that Yassin would not himself have flinched from a comparable attack on Israelis. But that is precisely the point. Under Sharon's leadership, Israel is increasingly behaving like a rogue state, heedless of international legal norms and contemptuous of civilian life. With its indiscriminate raids, the government has chosen the path of escalation, putting its own citizens in jeopardy. The Yassin assassination, a turning point in a conflict that grows uglier by the day, appears to be a calculated and deeply cynical move by Sharon, "the champion of violent solutions," in the words of Israeli historian Avi Shlaim. Contrary to official claims, the intention is not to fight terror but to exploit it politically. The Yassin killing comes on the heels of Sharon's February 2 announcement that he intends to withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza in one to two years and to evacuate Gaza's 7,500 Jewish settlers. Sharon's deepest fear is that the Gaza withdrawal will be perceived as a victory for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, much as Ehud Barak's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 was hailed as a triumph for the Shiite guerrilla organization Hezbollah. To avert such an outcome, Sharon appears determined to decapitate Hamas's leadership--Israel has vowed to carry out more such attacks--and to make Gaza bleed.

Venezuela: Distortion in the London Independent and Corporate Media
By Toni Solo
ZNet, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: Many people read the London based Independent newspaper because among its reporters is the outstanding Robert Fisk. The anti-war stance of the newspaper on Iraq and its stance on genetically manipulated foods and other environmental issues may give the impression that the Independent is a responsible newspaper across the board. But a look at its coverage of Venezuela reveals the same old story of distortion, omission and deceit on US intervention in Latin America that one finds everywhere else in the corporate media.

25 March 2004

Shaping puppets into clients...
Bremer Lays Out Handover Hurdles
Says big challenges remain 100 days preceding switch
By Anne Barnard and Thanassis Cambanis
Boston Globe, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: With just 100 days before the US-led occupation authority cedes sovereignty to Iraqis, the country's American administrator yesterday laid out the formidable tasks that remain, among them designing a caretaker government. To meet its goals by June 30, the Coalition Provisional Authority must build institutions to root out the corruption that festered under Saddam Hussein and encourage public media to produce news rather than propaganda, L. Paul Bremer III said as he kicked off the countdown to what he called Iraq's "future of hope." Against a backdrop of palm trees deep in the coalition authority's heavily fortified Green Zone, Bremer also touted the coalition's major accomplishments since the fall of Hussein on April 9, including the recent signing of an interim constitution, numerous reconstruction projects, and steps toward improving security. "What a difference a year can make in the life of the Iraqi people," he said in the outdoor speech.
SEE ALSO:
Bremer Forms Boards to Aid Iraq Transfer
By DANIEL COONEY
AP in AJC, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: With fewer than 100 days until power is handed over to Iraqis, the top U.S. administrator said Wednesday he was establishing several Western-style institutions that are expected to put a moderating influence on the fledgling government that takes over June 30. Guerrillas in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, ambushed an American patrol, and three civilians were killed and two soldiers were wounded, in the latest sign that security could remain a problem in Iraq for months to come. The fighting came a day after attacks on Iraqi police and recruits left a dozen dead. Top administrator L. Paul Bremer said significant steps had been taken to rebuild the country since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago. ``One hundred days from now, Iraqis will be sovereign in their own land and responsible for their own future,'' Bremer said in an outdoor speech in the Green Zone, the heavily protected area housing coalition headquarters in central Baghdad.

Blix Says U.N. Discredited Iraq Intelligence, but “No One Cared”; Calls for a “Reality Check” on Purported Iraq-Terrorism Link
Global Security Newswire, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: Former U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) Executive Chairman Hans Blix spoke this week with Global Security Newswire’s Joe Fiorill about Iraq, where Blix was the lead U.N. weapons inspector prior to last year’s war, and how best to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the world. Blix, who now leads the international Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, is on a U.S. tour promoting his new book, Disarming Iraq.
Global Security Newswire: Do you believe the war in Iraq was justified, whether by a WMD threat or for some other reason?
Hans Blix: No, I don’t think so, but there are many types of justifications. The simplest one is, perhaps, the almost limitless legal one, and it’s interesting that neither the U.K. nor the U.S. really advanced the doctrine of pre-emptive war. They are both saying that Iraq had violated a long series of resolutions, including the latest, [U.N. Security Council Resolution] 1441. I also think that such a contention, which might be reasonable, could be advanced ― but by the Security Council. My view is that the Security Council owns its own resolutions, and if they are breached, then the council can authorize action, but individual members cannot.

Lost on Planet Rummy
Defense Secretary Puts Us in a Dangerous World of His Own Making
by James Ridgeway
March 24 - 30, 2004
EXCERPT: Once again there's evidence that the man leading us to war in Iraq and Afghanistan is a nutcase. Richard A. Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief and author of the new book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, said on 60 Minutes Sunday that less than a day after 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting "there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq" instead, because it had "better targets." The White House dismissed the book as "reckless" and "baseless," and Rumsfeld's spokesman said the secretary had no comment because he hadn't read it yet. But Clarke's recollections tend to reinforce the opinion of critics who think Rumsfeld and Bush had made up their minds to attack Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein before Osama bin Laden struck on American soil—regardless of whether there were any ties between Saddam and bin Laden or whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. In September 2002, CBS reported that it had obtained a note written by Rumsfeld at 2:40 p.m., September 11, 2001: "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at the same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden, as he was then sometimes called]. . . . Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

New World Disorder: Americans Defeat Themselves in Iraq
By James Carroll
TomPaine.com, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: "It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things." This warning is from Niccolo Machiavelli, yet it has never had sharper resonance. More than a decade ago, after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, President George H. W. Bush explicitly sought to initiate, as he put it to Congress, a "new world order." He made that momentous declaration on Sept. 11, 1990. Eleven years later, the suddenly mystical date of 9/11 motivated his son to finish what the father began. A year ago last week, Bush the younger launched a war against the man who tried to kill his dad, initiating the opposite of order.
SEE ALSO: The Big Shift: Bush Loses Ground in Polls (TomPaine.com)

Polls Show Iraqis Reject the Occupation
By Milan Rai
ZNet, 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: The majority of Iraqi people oppose the presence of US/UK occupation forces in their country and do not believe that the US and UK should be involved in restoring public security or holding elections in Iraq. So says the second nationwide opinion poll carried out since the war, a poll commissioned by the BBC and carried out in February 2004 by 'Oxford Research International'. (Full results of the poll are available in pdf format.) 51.2% of Iraqis oppose the presence of the US/UK occupation forces (31.3% strongly). Only 39.5% support them. 66.3% of people do not have confidence in the US and UK occupation forces. Only 25.3% do have some confidence. 62.2% do not have confidence in the US/UK Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Only 27.9% have some confidence in the CPA. Only 12.7% of Iraqis think the occupation Forces or the United States should be involved in regaining public security in Iraq. 49.5% think it should be an Iraqi government or the Iraqi people. Only 7.4% of Iraqis think the occupation forces/the US should hold the elections for a new Iraqi national government. 8.7% think the Governing Council should do it. 23.9% think it should be the Iraqi people; 18.2% go for 'the Iraqi government'.

Soldier Suicides in Iraq Downplayed
By Robert Burns
AP in Boston Globe, 25 March 2004
EXCERPT: The suicide rate among American soldiers in Iraq is much higher than for the Army as a whole, but officials said yesterday that mental health specialists have concluded there is no crisis.

Israeli Official: Yassin Offered Israel a 30-Year Truce
By Mark Lavie
AP, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, assassinated in an Israeli air strike, offered Israel a 30-year truce in 1997, the mediator who arranged Yassin's release from prison said Tuesday. Efraim Halevy, a former Mossad operative who was called in to resolve an Israel-Jordan crisis after a botched assassination attempt against a Hamas leader in Jordan in 1997, made the disclosure in an interview on Israel TV.
SEE ALSO: U.S. Prevents U.N. Rebuke of Israel for Assassination (IPS via ICH)
SEE ALSO: Israel's Fatal Blow (ZNet)

24 March 2004

Nine Police Recruits Killed in Baghdad
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
Associated Press, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Gunmen opened fire on a van filled with police recruits south of Baghdad, killing nine, and assailants shot and killed two policemen -- twin brothers -- north of the capital. Early Wednesday, attackers fired a rocket that struck the Sheraton Hotel, where foreign contractors and journalists stay. Security guards said there were no reports of casualties. The slayings were the latest to target police and other Iraqis who work with the U.S.-led occupation.

A year later, remembering the deadliest weapon
Iraq's Children of the Bomblet
by Kareem Fahim
Village Voice, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: In the months after the Iraq war, the unexploded bomblets sat idly in parks, sandlots, school yards, and fields, waiting for kids. ...The bomblets look like fun to kids. Shiny, tossable pieces of metal, they resemble a large D battery or a small hand grenade. Attached to the bottom are long, white ribbons, rather like streamers a child might fasten to the handlebars of a bike. Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that coalition forces left 2 million of these little bombs all over Iraq, killing or injuring perhaps a thousand civilians. Cluster munitions, the group reports, caused more harm to noncombatants than any other weapon during the war.

Universal Justice is Not a Dream
By John Pilger
ZNet, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: The invasion of Iraq, now in its second year, was "organised with lies", says the new Spanish prime minister. Does anyone doubt this any more? And yet these proven lies are still dominant in Australia. Day after day, their perpetrators seek to obfuscate and justify an unprovoked, illegal attack that killed up to 55,000 people, including at least 10,000 civilians: that every month causes the death and injury of 1,000 children from exploding cluster bombs: that has so saturated Iraqi towns and cities with uranium that American and British soldiers are warned not to go where Iraqi children play, for fear of contamination. Set that carnage against the Madrid atrocity. Terrible though that act of terrorism was, it was small compared with the terrorism of the American-led "coalition". Yes, terrorism. How strange it reads when it describes the actions of "our" governments. So saturated are we in the west in the devilry of third world tyrants (most of them the products of Western imperialism) that we have lost all sense of the enormous crime committed in our name.
SEE ALSO: Labor Leader Pledges to Bring Home Australian Troops (The Age)
SEE ALSO: Naomi Klein: Terror as a Weapon of Occupation (Guardian)

We'll Wipe Out Entire Hamas Leadership, Says Israel
Israeli government approves more assassinations
By Chris McGreal
Guardian (UK), 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Israeli government has approved the elimination of the entire leadership of Hamas and other militant groups following the assassination of the Islamic resistance movement's founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Among the targets is the uncompromising new Hamas leader named by the organisation yesterday, Abdel Aziz al Rantissi, who has opposed tentative political concessions and a ceasefire by the group. Israel's internal security minister, Tsahi Hanegbi, said the government had given a green light to the army to kill "the worst terrorists". "Anyone who is involved in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank or anywhere else in leading a terror group knows from yesterday there is no immunity. Everyone is in our sights," he said. Israeli security sources say that defence chiefs have decided to kill all Hamas leaders without waiting for the organisation to carry out its threats of bloody retaliation for Sheikh Yassin's death. The defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, said the strategy would ultimately curb suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis.
SEE ALSO: Why Israel Killed Yassin (Guardian)

With Evangelical Christians Watching, Bush Will Not Risk Putting Pressure on Sharon
By Suzanne Goldberg
Guardian (UK), 24 March 2004
EXCERPT: With the November election approaching, he is also mindful of keeping the support of evangelical Christians, who have lined up on the Israeli side of the debate and criticised the White House for not doing enough to support the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. The result has left America out of step with the rest of the world. Washington alone has failed to condemn the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. President Bush yesterday insisted that Israel had the right to defend itself. There was no move to cancel meetings with the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, who was in Washington, or to postpone a visit to the White House by Mr Sharon scheduled for April 14. Instead, the Bush administration has clung to the view that Mr Sharon is a valued ally in the war on terror. That has worked tremendously to Israel's advantage. So too did Mr Bush's decision last July to put his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, in charge of Middle East policy. Ms Rice relies heavily on a group of advisers led by Elliot Abrams, an ideologue known for his opposition to the Oslo peace accords. Within the Bush administration, Ms Rice's influence, and by extension the opinion of her advisers, outranks the diplomats from the state department. That has left Washington loth to criticise Mr Sharon. In effect, Washington sabotaged its own peacemaking initiatives, analysts say. The reluctance to put pressure on Mr Sharon doomed Mr Bush's road map, reducing it to a gesture aimed at dampening criticism from Europe and the Arab world.
SEE ALSO: Bush Defends Israel (Reuters)

An Unwise Assassination
LA Times, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration isn't shedding any tears over the death of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, nor should it. But it was important for the White House and the State Department to criticize — however mildly and belatedly — Israel's assassination of Yassin on Monday. Washington needs to avoid being seen as the provider of a blank check to Ariel Sharon's government to deal any way that it wants with the Palestinians.
SEE ALSO: Israel Vows to Hit Again (LA Times)

Colin Powell - Misoverestimated
Yes, the hard-liners have outflanked and humiliated Colin Powell. But don't feel sorry for him. He has no one to blame but himself.
Michael Steinberger
The American Prospect, 1 April issue
EXCERPT: When Powell was appointed secretary of state, such was his stature at home and abroad that he was widely expected to be the new administration's vicar of foreign policy. Three years on, he finds himself the fig leaf of that foreign policy -- the moderate front man for an administration that has been anything but moderate in its statecraft. On almost every critical issue -- the Kyoto Protocol, the future of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Middle East peace process, North Korea, and, of course, Iraq -- Powell has been the odd man out, his influence minimal to nonexistent. That's obvious in Washington, where Powell's vanishing act is a source of curiosity and not a little sadness. More importantly, it's obvious overseas; one U.S. official says French President Jacques Chirac recently told him, "When Powell agrees with us, we know it doesn't mean anything."

Counter Intelligence
After taking office, President Bush could have done more to stop al-Qaeda and terrorism. Here's why he didn't.
Matthew Yglesias
The American Prospect Online,  23 March 2004
EXCERPT: ...Foreign Affairs magazine went so far as to ask Rice to compose an article explaining her candidate's differences with the Democrats and how he would do better. Rice's critique was clear: The Clinton policy was disorganized. "Every issue has been taken on its own terms," she wrote, while a better approach would see that "it takes courage to set priorities because doing so is an admission that foreign policy cannot be all things to all people." Rice proposed eliminating Clinton's confusion with the following priorities: First, ending the overstretch of the American military; second, promoting free trade, particularly with Latin America; third, encouraging Europe to develop a more robust military capacity within the NATO context; fourth, improving relations with Russia and China; and fifth, dealing "decisively" with rogue states. Al-Qaeda was not on the list, nor did the organization appear anywhere in Rice's 6,900-word discussion of the threats facing the United States. Terrorism was discussed, only briefly, as problematic because rogue states -- specifically Iran, presumably working through Hezbollah -- might seek to use it as an instrument of policy. Because the main thesis of the article was the need to bring about a more disciplined approach, it seems safe to conclude that Rice favored not continuing the Clinton administration's al-Qaeda policies but rather abandoning them in favor of doing, well, nothing -- so as to leave more time to pursue other priorities. After the election, outgoing National Security Adviser Sandy Berger agreed that more focus was needed and told his successor that she should make al-Qaeda her top priority. As Clarke tells us, she did not. But we don't need to take his word for it. Shortly after taking office as secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld penned a memo (helpfully obtained by Ron Suskind) outlining his vision for U.S. national security. Again, al-Qaeda and terrorism simply do not figure into the analysis. Rather, terrorism -- or, as Rumsfeld put it, "asymmetric capabilities" -- is worrying because it might be used by hostile states to frustrate America's ability to project power.

The al-Zawahiri Fiasco
Pepe Escobar
Asia Times, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Introduction-Despite confident official claims, the thousands of troops dispatched to Pakistan's tribal areas have failed to find "high-value target" Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's No 2. What they have found is fierce resistance from local tribesmen who give far greater allegiance to such "targets" than they do to Islamabad.

23 March 2004

Death in a Wheelchair
Plus, what's cooking on U.S.-financed Al-Hurra.
By Michael Young
Slate, 22 March 2004
EXCERPT: Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin came too late for most Monday morning dailies, although several updated their Web sites throughout the day. The prevailing sense was that the last thing the killing would do is limit terrorism. Rather, as many papers indicated, it would merely encourage Hamas to perpetuate the present cycle of attack and counterattack. ...All day Monday, stations such as Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, and Hezbollah's Al-Manar ran live feed from Palestinian demonstrations in the lead-up to Yassin's funeral. In contrast, at midday, when many people in the Arab world were watching television to find out what was happening, the U.S.-government-financed Arabic-language satellite station Al-Hurra was showing a translated American cooking program. This hardly endeared the station (which is supposed to provide an alternative approach to regional news that is more friendly to the United States) to Arab viewers. Whatever the reason, Al-Hurra's not pursuing the story in real time will be interpreted by many Arabs as politically motivated. Yassin's death was Al-Hurra's first test, and the station failed spectacularly.
SEE ALSO: Mr. Sharon's Solution ( Washington Ppost)

The Call for Bloody Revenge
Guardian (UK), 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Hamas responded to Israel's assassination of its spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin yesterday by calling for Muslims across the globe to attack Israelis and Americans who support them. Ariel Sharon personally approved the helicopter missile attack that killed the quadriplegic Hamas founder as he was pushed in his wheelchair outside his local mosque. The Israeli prime minister described it as part of the war on terror and called Sheikh Yassin the "first and foremost leader of the Palestinian terrorist murderers" who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis. Seven other people died in the attack and more than a dozen were wounded, including two of Sheikh Yassin's sons. The US, which said it had no prior knowledge of the attack, refused to condemn the killing but last night moved to reassure the Arab world and Europe that it had limits to its tolerance for Israel, saying it was "deeply troubled" by the attack.
SEE ALSO: 'He'll Kill More in Death than He Did Alive' (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Special Report on Israel & the Middle East (Guardian)

US Response To Israeli Rocket Attack Rings Hollow
New York Times, 22 March 2004
EXCERPT: The Bush administration, in the middle of its own campaign to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and others it considers terrorists, found itself on Monday in the position of being pressed by world opinion to criticize as "deeply troubling" Israel's assassination of the leader of Hamas. In a startling sequence of events unusual even for the ups and downs of Middle East policy, the administration began the day by avoiding direct criticism of Israel after the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City. Instead, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said in a morning television interview that Hamas was a terrorist organization, that Sheik Yassin had been involved in terrorist actions and that it was "very important that everyone step back and try now to be calm in the region." Only later in the afternoon did the administration shift tone and criticize Israel's action as harmful to the cause of bringing peace to the region.
SEE ALSO: Gazillions March (Slate)
EXCERPT: Everybody notes that the White House said it was "troubled" by the killing. But the NYT notices that the White House actually started the day without criticizing Israel, only to decide a few hours later that was no longer operative after a "torrent of criticism erupted throughout the Arab world." Said one unnamed administration official, "When you see thousands of people all over the Arab world coming out into the streets, it's hard to ignore that."
SEE ALSO:
Israel's Killing of Yassin Puts U.S. in Line of Fire
By David R. Sands (Washington Times)
EXCERPT: Arab rage at Israel's assassination of the Hamas founder quickly spilled into Iraq yesterday, signaling that the killing of the Palestinian militant could undermine U.S. policies and interests across the region. Protesters at two demonstrations against the U.S.-led coalition — one in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and the other in the southern city of Basra — chanted in support of Sheik Ahmed Yassin. "Do not worry, Palestine. Iraq will avenge the assassination of Sheik Yassin," protesters in Mosul chanted. Israeli and U.S. officials stressed that Washington had not been told about the assassination plan. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the killing "deeply troubling."

Shiite Ayatollah Is Warning U.N. Against Endorsing Charter Sponsored by U.S.
By JOHN F. BURNS
New York Times, 23 March 2004
EXCERPT: Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has warned of "dangerous consequences" if the United Nations endorses the American-sponsored interim constitution for an independent Iraq that was adopted over Shiite protests two weeks ago.The warning came in a letter released by Ayatollah Sistani's office on Monday, four days after it was delivered in New York to Lakhtar Brahimi, the chief United Nations envoy to Iraq. It amounted to a warning that the ayatollah's followers, by far the most powerful political bloc in Iraq, could move to paralyze American plans for a smooth transfer of sovereignty on June 30 unless Shiite terms for changing the interim constitution were met. Ayatollah Sistani warned in his letter that he would boycott a coming visit to Baghdad by Mr. Brahimi, refusing to "take part in any meetings or consultations" conducted by him or his emissaries, unless the United Nations offered guarantees that it would not endorse the interim constitution. After nearly a year of discounting the value of a United Nations political role in Iraq, the Bush administration shifted its position recently, saying it strongly favored the United Nations having a part in helping to establish an interim government and organize elections. Mr. Brahimi, a former foreign minister of Algeria, is to arrive here late this month or early in April to help broker the talks on a transitional government and election arrangements. But Shiite groups that accept Ayatollah Sistani as their ultimate political arbiter have said they will use negotiations over the interim authority — blocking agreement, if necessary — to expand the Shiite majority's powers before an elected government takes over at the end of 2005.

AUDIO LINK
Authority On Pakistan Finds New Relationship with the US Military "Incredible"
Update on Pakistan and Terrorism
Talk of the Nation ON NPR, 22 March 2004
NPR's Neal Conan and his guests discuss Pakistan's role in the global fight against terrorism and the U.S. relationship with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Guest: Mary Anne Weaver
*Author of Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan and Portrait of Egypt: A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam

U.S.-Backed Rightist Claims Victory in Salvador Election
By TIM WEINER
New York Times, 22 March 2004
EXCERPT: After a bitter campaign for president in El Salvador, a conservative pro-American businessman claimed victory Sunday night over a battle-hardened former Communist guerrilla. The ruling party’s candidate, Antonio Saca, 39, a media mogul tacitly supported by the United States, was winning 57 percent of the vote in early returns. Schafik Handal, 73, a longtime left-wing leader, had 36 percent. The campaign revived cold-war fervors from El Salvador’s civil war. An estimated 75,000 people died as an American-backed government fought left-wing rebels between 1980 and 1992. Mr. Saca's party, the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA, was linked to death-squad killings in the 1980's. Mr. Handal's party, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, was the rebel force that fought the government. After a 1992 peace treaty, the FMLN became a legitimate political party, and now controls 31 of 84 seats, a plurality, in Congress. American officials who were behind-the-scenes players in Central America's anti-communist campaigns during the 1980’s had openly opposed Mr. Handal. Otto Reich, President Bush's special envoy for the Western Hemisphere, and Roger Noriega, an Assistant Secretary of State, inferred in public statements that El Salavdor's commercial, economic and political relations with the United States could suffer if the leftist won. But ARENA has controlled power in El Salvador since the 1980's, and claimed that it kept control tonight. President Francisco Flores is among the most pro-American leaders in the Western Hemisphere, and his apparent successor, Mr. Saca, has vowed to continue his policies, including free trade with the United States and adoption of the United States dollar as the nation's official currency. ARENA, whose campaign colors are red, white and blue, argued that the United States could cut the flow of money from Salvadoran migrants in the United States if Mr. Handal won.

22 March 2004

US Will Retain Power in 'Sovereign' Iraq
By Jim Krane
Associated Press in The Guardian (UK), 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: The United States says Iraq will be sovereign, no longer under military occupation, on June 30. But most power will reside within the world's largest U.S. Embassy, backed by 110,000 U.S. troops. The fledgling Iraqi government will be capable of tackling little more than drawing up a budget and preparing for elections, top U.S. and Iraqi officials say. "We're still here. We'll be paying a lot of attention and we'll have a lot of influence," a top U.S. official said on condition of anonymity. "We're going to have the world's largest diplomatic mission with a significant amount of political weight."

Mosque Blasts Expose Deadly Power Struggle in Iraq
The fall of Saddam was supposed to unite the Sunnis and Shias. But now, 12 months on, a wave of attacks has left 20 dead as rival factions vie for political control in Baghdad.
By Peter Beaumont
Observer (UK), 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: A funeral banner hanging in the Fandi al-Qubaysi mosque declares: 'Do not count those who died on the road of god as dead. Rather they are alive with their god and being served.' Sunni worshippers at this scruffy little mosque in west Baghdad have come to know a lot about death lately. Since 7 March, three of its members have died in cold-blooded sectarian assassinations. ... A total of 10 Sunni mosques across the city have been attacked in little more than two weeks - and up to 20 people killed - in a sharp escalation of violence between Shias and Sunnis that has followed the bombing of Shia shrines at Kerbala and Kadhimiya in which more than 170 died. Sunnis in mainly Shia areas have replied by attacking Shia mosques and shrines. The upsurge in sectarian violence has shocked leaders from both communities, who have ordered religious, tribal and community leaders to show solidarity between Shias and Sunnis in an attempt to end the violence. Yet despite their best efforts, the killings continue.
SEE ALSO: 'Get It Wrong and We Know There'll Be Riots' (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Crowds Gather to Protest US Presence (Observer)
SEE ALSO: Bush, Blair Seek to Shore Up Crumbling International Support for Military Occupation of Iraq (Observer)
SEE ALSO: Spinning the Past, Threatening the Future (Common Dreams)
SEE ALSO: Canada Got it Right on Iraq (Common Dreams)

The Bush Doctrine Has Been Turned on Its Head
By Paul McGeough
Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 2004
EXCERPT: There have been at least as many terrorist operations in the past year as there were in the previous 12 months, and that is with an estimated two-thirds of al-Qaeda's known leadership dead or behind bars. The arch villain - Osama bin Laden - remains free and his terrorist organisation has morphed into something even more dangerous than what existed before the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Previously, bin Laden's lieutenants went out into the world, buying into terrorist plots they thought to be worthwhile investments. Subsequently, the Bush Administration, with echoes from Tony Blair and John Howard, has enhanced the myth that it is all - and only - bin Laden's work. What seems to have happened is more insidious. The notion of a bin Laden chain of command has been superseded by a sort of McDonald's of terrorism, franchise cells and groups that want to be like al-Qaeda, carrying a torch for the man in the cave without ever receiving direct orders. The word simply goes out in the Arab media and it is absorbed - war against the US. And when they strike, they pack the punch by claiming that it was done in the name of al-Qaeda. The CIA director, George Tenet, told the US Senate as much this month when he said: "A serious threat will remain for the foreseeable future, with or without al-Qaeda in the picture."

Bush's Northern Alliance Allies in Afghanistan Committed Massacres
American experts find that Northern Alliance warlords slaughtered prisoners of war
By David Rose
Observer (UK), 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: Dramatic corroboration of the massacre of Afghan prisoners by the US-backed Northern Alliance at the start of the war in 2001 was last night provided by American pathologists commissioned to investigate the claims by the UN. A vivid account of the slaughter was provided to The Observer last week by three Britons who were released from the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba more than two years after they were first seized in Afghanistan. They told how they narrowly escaped the massacre before being handed over to American forces and flown to Guantanamo Bay. Forensic anthropologist William Haglund, who earlier led inquiries into mass graves in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone, told The Observer how he dug into an area of recently disturbed desert soil outside the town of Shebargan, and exhumed 15 bodies, a tiny sample, he said, of what may be a very large total. Thanks to the cold and arid climate, they were well enough preserved to carry out autopsies. Haglund's conclusion 'that they died from suffocation' exactly corroborates the stories told by the Guantanamo detainees.
SEE ALSO: Revealed: The Full Story of the Guantanamo Britons (Observer)
SEE ALSO: US Pilot Absolved of Killing 9 Children, But Report Kept Secret (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: Human Rights Watch: American Troops are Killing and Abusing Afghans (Guardian)
SEE ALSO: US Officers Charged in Abuse of Iraqis (LA Times)

A New Day in Madrid
By Sam Loewenberg
The Nation, 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: It is a pity that President Bush could not make it to the peace march in the heart of the Spanish capital on Saturday night. The rally was just a few minutes away from the railway station where nine days earlier bombs killed more than 200 early morning commuters and wounded another 1,700. If Bush had been there, he would have seen thousands of brave and sincere people--a contrast to Washington, DC, where just a few days earlier Republican leaders had accused Spaniards of appeasing terrorists because of their vote to oust the conservative Popular Party in the wake of the attacks. There was none of that crude cynicism at the Saturday night demonstration. "It is more important then ever to call for peace. The bombs reminded us of that urgency," said Valeria Suarez Marsa, a 40-year-old teacher. Prime Minister-elect José Luis Zapatero has called the war in Iraq "a fiasco" and has pledged to pull out Spain's 1,300 troops by the end of June unless the occupation comes under United Nation control. Haizam Amirah, an analyst at the Real Elcano Institute in Madrid, notes that a troop withdrawal was on the party platform for months before the election. People were bewildered by the American interpretation of their decision to kick out the ruling conservative party as a sign of weakness. In the elections three days after the attacks, voters turned out in record numbers to repudiate an arrogant government that had ignored the overwhelming public opposition to the invasion of Iraq and then tried to manipulate the investigation of the railway bombings. "The vote was a punishment for the years of lies," said Iris Bernal, a 26-year-old sociologist attending the march.
SEE ALSO: A Vote for Honesty (Nation)
SEE ALSO: What Europe is Truly Doing (Star Tribune)

Ariel Sharon's New Plan
By Tanya Reinhart
ZNet, 21 March 2004
EXCERPT: The majority is asked to believe that of all Israeli leaders, it is Sharon who will get us out of Gaza. Sharon, who shaped the map of the settlements in the Gaza strip in the seventies, and explained persistently the supreme strategic importance of the Netzarim settlement in cutting the strip into halves, Sharon of the Lebanon war, Sharon of Jenin - he is the one who will now dismantle the Gaza settlements and end the occupation there. For those who doubt, ample evidence is provided by the world of politics.  Intensive negotiations of the plan take place, with the U.S. and with Egypt. Low and behold, the right wing is already protesting, the settlers are furious, the chief of staff Ya'alon has reservations, and Sharon may be about to loose his coalition - a strong indication of how serious he is.  Those who still doubt remember that there have already been many plans in the past, and road maps and diplomatic convoys, and still it turned out at the end that Sharon did not really mean what he said.  To restore their faith, the political discourse is filled with explanations on why this time it is different.  Some say that Sharon has changed, or that he has had to yield to the will of his voters, to whom he has promised peace.  Others explain that what drives Sharon is the need to distract attention away from the various scandals and allegations of corruption in which he is involved, or that perhaps he is willing to give up on the Gaza settlements in order to gain international support for his fence plan in the West Bank. The point is that in order to achieve the goals assumed in these explanations, one does not need to dismantle a single settlement.  It is sufficient to declare intentions, and start a new process of negotiations.  This is precisely what all Israeli governments have done successfully since 1993, and what Sharon has done for the last three years.  The only innovation is that now negotiations take place with everyone except the Palestinians.  All that is needed is to throw a pacifier at the majority and to convince them that this time Sharon really means it.  This way, the majority will continue to sit silently another year, and let Sharon apply the Gaza model also in the West Bank. The American historian Howard Zinn formulated a simple rule: Governments lie.  It appears that this generalization is one of the most difficult for people to internalize and digest in a democratic society.  Until this changes, the majority is doomed to believe again and again the same lie.

AUDIO LINK
Noam Chomsky Speaks in Vancouver
Radio4All.net, 20 March 2004

20-21 March 2004

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