Bankruptcy Bill Said to Hit Poorest Americans Hardest
by Abid Aslam
OneWorld.net, 12 March 2005
Millions of Americans could be plunged into financial ruin if a
bill giving credit card companies long-sought relief from unpaid
loans gets final Congressional approval, a broad array of
consumer protection, economic justice, and civil rights groups
warned. Senators on Thursday passed the bankruptcy reform bill,
which political observers said was largely crafted by the credit
card industry more than eight years ago, sending it to the House
of Representatives. Lawmakers there said they could vote on
final passage next month. Every year, some 1.6 million Americans
file for personal bankruptcy protection--more than five times as
many as in 1980. The process, which in many respects mirrors
corporate bankruptcy, allows them to come up with a
creditor-reviewed and court-approved plan to write off some of
their debts, pay off others, and reorganize their personal
finances so they can make a fresh start. Opponents of the first
revamp of the nation's personal bankruptcy laws in more than a
quarter-century said the legislation would deal a ruinous blow
to the overwhelming majority of those forced to declare personal
bankruptcy: moderate- and low-income families, many of them
black or migrant or with only one parent; and individuals of
modest means hit with large divorce losses or medical expenses.
25 Nay Votes
Akaka (D-HI)
Boxer (D-CA)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Corzine (D-NJ)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Wyden (D-OR)
Not Voting 1 Clinton (D-NY) |
Irritated Iraqis Wait for Change
Nearly six weeks after a landmark election, no new government
has formed and people who risked their lives to vote wonder why
they did.
By Alissa J. Rubin
LA Times, 13 March 2005
With Iraqis increasingly concerned about a security vacuum, the
man who is expected to become the next prime minister on
Saturday defended the winning blocs, which have not formed a
government nearly six weeks after millions of people risked
their lives to vote. In an interview, Ibrahim Jafari, the
nominee of the slate that won the most votes in the Jan. 30
election, said it could take two more weeks to close a deal. |
2/3s Rule Imposed by U.S. Jeopardizes
Democratic Process
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 14 March 2005
The US spiked the Iraqi parliamentary process by putting in a
provision that a government has to be formed with a 2/3s
majority. This provision is a neo-colonial imposition on Iraq.
The Iraqi public was never asked about it. And, it is
predictably producing gridlock, as the UIA is forced to try to
accommodate a party that should be in the opposition in the
British system, the Kurdistan Alliance. Likewise, in France, a
simple majority of the National Assembly can dismiss the
cabinet. Likewise in India. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if
the 2/3s super-majority is characteristic of only one nation on
earth, i.e. American Iraq. I fear it is functioning in an
anti-democratic manner to thwart the will of the majority of
Iraqis, who braved great danger to come out and vote. It is all
to the good if the Shiites and Kurds are forced to come to a set
of hard compromises. But not everything can be decided at the
beginning of the process. Some issues (Kirkuk is a good example)
must be decided by a long-term negotiation. I perceive this
latest Kurdish demarche to consist in a power play where they
grab all sorts of concessions on a short-term basis, just
because they are needed to form a government, even though no
national consensus has emerged on these issues. I think there is
also a real chance that Iraqis will turn against the idea of
democracy if it only produces insecurity, violence, and
gridlock. |
Guantánamo Jail Switch Planned
US inmates face threat of worse abuse under scheme to send
them to prisons in their own countries
Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian, 12 March 2005
The Pentagon is planning to transfer half the inmates at
Guantánamo Bay to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and
Yemen, despite fears that they would face even worse human
rights abuses than at the US camp. The defence secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld, has urged the State Department to ratchet up the
pressure on unresponsive allies to take custody of the
prisoners, and relieve the Bush administration of maintaining a
detention facility which is increasingly viewed as a burden.
According to yesterday's New York Times, the transfers would be
similar to the much-criticised practice of "renditions", under
which the CIA has moved prisoners to Syria and Egypt, although
the Guantánamo prisoners would be subject to review by the State
Department and other government agencies. The plans are widely
seen as a reaction to court judgments which have made it
increasingly untenable for the US to continue to use the base on
Cuba for its original purpose: a vast holding pen in which
prisoners in the war on terror could be held indefinitely beyond
the scrutiny of the US courts. Recent revelations from freed
British inmates about torture and sexual humiliation at
Guantánamo have also made it increasingly awkward for the Bush
administration to maintain the detention facility in its present
form. Human rights organisations believe the Pentagon is anxious
to rid itself of the burden of housing hundreds of prisoners who
are no longer believed to hold any intelligence value in the war
on terror. Some of the prisoners at Guantánamo have been held
without recourse to the courts since autumn 2001. However,
Washington has discovered that some foreign governments were
unresponsive to its requests to hand over detainees, prompting
Mr Rumsfeld to draft a February 5 memo to the State Department
seeking its support. Officials said reviews by the State
Department and other government agencies would help ensure that
the prisoners would not be tortured. Despite such measures, the
prospect of a wholesale transfer of prisoners from Guantánamo to
America's allies is bound to be controversial, especially as
many of the inmates face a return to countries known to practice
torture. More than 300 of the prisoners at Guantánamo are from
Afghanistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, none of which has a good
human rights record. Michael Rattner, president of the Centre
for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the
Guantánamo detainees, said: "Now that they have put themselves
in this pickle of picking up many people who were not involved
in terrorism, and keeping them for two or three years and
abusing them in a number of cases, what are they going to do
with them? Send them back to countries where governments are
known to be involved in torture, with a label of terrorist
practically around their neck? "We don't want people rendered,
or given their so-called freedom from Guantánamo, and then
jailed in a country where they are going to be tortured." The
inmate population at Guantánamo has been steadily declining
since its peak in 2002, with 146 prisoners freed outright and 62
transferred to their home countries. The prison population is
now 540. The Bush administration has no intention of dismantling
the facility. It is seeking Congressional approval for $41.8m
(£22m) to build a permanent facility and security fence, and
Pentagon officials say as many as 200 of the current inmates are
so dangerous they are likely to remain at Guantánamo
indefinitely.
SEE ALSO:
Greenberg on the Legal War on Terror at
Home (Tom Dispatch) |
U.S. shift in policy PR
rejected by Iran
Iran Dismisses Economic Offer From the U.S.
By NAZILA FATHI
NYT, 13 March 2005
Iran reacted testily on Saturday to a statement from the United
States offering modest economic incentives if it permanently
ended the enrichment of uranium, saying that it would not give
up its right to nuclear power. "The Islamic Republic of Iran is
determined to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, and
no pressure, bribe or threat can make Iran give up its
legitimate right," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamidreza
Assefi, in a statement carried on the ministry's Web site.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced on Friday that the
United States was shifting to a somewhat more conciliatory
approach on Iran, offering to back limited economic incentives
if Iran agrees to a series of steps that would permanently give
up any opportunity to building nuclear arms. |
Very old news
Looting at Weapons Plants Was Systematic,
Iraqi Says
By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD
NYT, 13 March 2005
In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters
systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from
Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including
some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for
nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the
government's first extensive comments on the looting. The Iraqi
official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said
it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed
specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which
could be used for both military and civilian applications, and
carted the machinery away. Dr. Araji said his account was based
largely on observations by government employees and officials
who either worked at the sites or lived near them."They came in
with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole
sites," Dr. Araji said. "They knew what they were doing; they
knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting." The threat
posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush
administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the
installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in
the chaotic months after the invasion. Dr. Araji's statements
came just a week after a United Nations agency disclosed that
approximately 90 important sites in Iraq had been looted or
razed in that period. Satellite imagery analyzed by two United
Nations groups - the International Atomic Energy Agency and the
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic -
confirms that some of the sites identified by Dr. Araji appear
to be totally or partly stripped, senior officials at those
agencies said. Those officials said they could not comment on
all of Dr. Araji's assertions, because the groups had been
barred from Iraq since the invasion. |
This War Walks Among Us
Most of the injured in Iraq are surviving, and their
homecoming could undercut Bush
BY NORMAN SOLOMON
NewsDay.com, 13 March 2005
In wartime, the silence of the American dead is a vacuum that
the powerful in Washington try to fill. While loved ones are
left with haunting memories and excruciating sadness, the most
amplified political voices use predictable rhetoric to talk
about ultimate sacrifices. But the wounded do not disappear.
They can speak for themselves. And many more will be seen and
heard in this decade. Thanks to improvements in protective gear
and swift medical treatment, more of America's wounded are
surviving - and returning home with serious permanent injuries.
...Founded in midsummer 2004, Iraq Veterans Against the War has
expanded from eight to 150 members while organizing forums and
teach-ins around the country and attracting some appreciable
media coverage. The group's national coordinator, Michael
Hoffman, joined the Marines in 1999 and participated in the
invasion of Iraq. "War is dirty, always wrong, but sometimes
unavoidable," he says. "That is why all these horrible things
must rest on the shoulders of those leaders who supported a war
that did not have to be fought." America's physical wounds from
the current war cannot be tucked under the national rug. And in
the long run, neither can any of the psychological pain that
afflicts many combat veterans. President Bush is likely to face
a growing backlash that will further reduce his credibility -
and strengthen the healthy skepticism that Americans should
utilize when the president insists it's time to go to war.
|
11 March 2005
Headlines
Welcome to BushWorld:
Pentagon Clears Itself on Prisoner Abuse
Committee Will Not Examine Intelligence Misuse
House Ethics Panel Shut Down |
US Senate Ends Probe into
Prewar Intelligence on Iraq
By Edward Alden
Financial Times, 11 March 2005
The Senate committee overseeing US intelligence has shut down
its investigation into whether top administration officials
distorted intelligence evidence to build the case for war on
Iraq. Senator Pat Roberts, who heads the committee, said on
Thursday he was satisfied administration officials had
accurately portrayed what turned out to be flawed intelligence
claiming the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed mass destruction
weapons. “The bottom line was they believed the intelligence,
and intelligence was wrong,” the Kansas Republican told an
audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. |
Pentagon Clears Top Personnel, Policies in
Abuses
By Vicki Allen
Reuters, 11 March 2005
The Pentagon said its policies and top officials did not cause
the mistreatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Guantanamo Bay, but in a report released on Thursday cited a
series of missed opportunities to correct lapses that led to the
abuses. The latest and most wide-ranging abuse report, by Navy
inspector general Vice Adm. Albert Church, largely tracks the
Pentagon's previous contention that its leaders were not
directly responsible for sexual and physical mistreatment of
prisoners. A 21-page unclassified summary of the report was to
be released at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The
full 368-page report is classified. The summary obtained by
Reuters found "no single, over-arching explanation" for the
abuses. While it said authorized interrogation policies did not
cause them, "We nevertheless identified a number of missed
opportunities in the policy development process" to issue more
specific guidelines and to learn from previous conflicts.
|
AUDIO LINK
Baghdad Bombing Wounds Several Americans
by Anthony Kuhn
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
Several grim incidents occur in Iraq Tuesday: Iraqi authorities
discover two sites of apparent massacres, a major bombing in
Baghdad kills three and wounds at least 30 and there is an
attempted assassination of an Iraqi Cabinet minister. |
AUDIO LINK
Panel Said to Criticize U.S. Intelligence
on Iran
by Mary Louise Kelly
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
A New York Times reports says the presidential intelligence
commission will sharply criticize the intelligence record on
Iran. The alleged problems include a heavy reliance on
information from Iranian dissidents.
SEE ALSO:
Bush Announces Iraq Exit Strategy:
'We'll Go Through Iran'
(The Onion) |
AUDIO LINK
Report Details Israeli Support for
Unauthorized Settlements
by Peter Kenyon
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
A report commissioned by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finds that
state officials have violated Israeli law to promote the spread
of illegal Jewish settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.
Opposition lawmakers are calling for a criminal investigation. |
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Is Bush Bringing Democracy to the Middle
East?
A Debate on U.S. Foreign Policy in
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and More
DemocracyNow, 9 March 2005
We host a debate on the question: Is Bush bringing democracy to
the Middle East? We are joined by Steven Cook of the Council on
Foreign Relations, Rahul Mahajan, an independent journalist and
author and Farid Ghadry, the co-founder and current president of
the Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition party.
[includes rush transcript] |
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
A More Cautious View on Democracy in
the Middle East
By Daniel Schorr
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
NPR's senior news analyst says that even though several
countries in the Middle East seem to be moving towards
democracy, recent events in Lebanon and Syria indicate that
there is still a way to go before democracy fully takes hold. |
SEE ALSO:
GW as the 'Big Kahuna' Riding a Wave of Democracy?
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 9 November 2005
The simplistic master narrative constructed by the partisans of
President George W. Bush held that the January 30 elections were
a huge success, and signalled a turn to democracy in the Middle
East. Then the anti-Syrian demonstrations were interpreted as a
yearning for democracy inspired by the Iraqi elections.
This interpretation is a gross misunderstanding of the situation
in the Middle East. Bush is not pushing with any real force for
democratization of Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy) or
Pakistan (where the elected parliament demands in vain that
General Pervez Musharraf take off his uniform if he wants to be
president), or Tunisia (where Zayn Ben Ali has just won his 4th
unopposed term as president), etc. Democratization is being
pushed only for regimes that Bush dislikes, such as Syria or
Iran. The gestures that Mubarak of Egypt made (officially
recognized parties may put up candidates to run against him, but
not popular political forces like the Muslim Brotherhood) are
empty.
In fact the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections were deeply flawed. 42
percent of the electorate did not show up. The elections could
only be held by locking down the country for 3 days, forbidding
all vehicular traffic to stop car bombings. The electorate had
no idea for whom they were voting, since the candidates' names
were secret until the last moment. The Sunni Arabs boycotted or
were prevented from voting by the ongoing guerrilla war, which
started right back up after the ban on traffic lapsed.
The Lebanese have been having often lively parliamentary
election campaigns for decades. The idea that the urbane and
sophisticated Beirutis had anything to learn from the Jan. 30
process in Iraq is absurd on the face of it. Elections were
already scheduled in Lebanon for later this spring.
Moreover, the anti-Syrian protests were not a signal that the
Lebanese wanted to be like American-occupied Iraq. They were a
signal that the Druze, Maronites and a section of the Sunnis had
agreed to try to push Syria out. It was the US who had invited
Syria into Lebanon in 1976. And it was a sign that Lebanon is
still deeply divided, since the Shiite plurality largely
supports Syria. Given the pro-Syrian sentiment in some Sunni
cities like Tripoli, it may well be that a majority of Lebanese
want Syria to remain in some capacity. If that were true, what
would it do to Mr. Bush's master narrative of the march of
democracy? |
Bush Nominates Fierce UN Critic and
Unilateralist John Bolton As Ambassador to United Nations
DemocracyNow interview with Jim Lobe, 9 March 2005
President Bush nominated John Bolton to become the next U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations. We take a look at Bolton's
record, his criticism of the UN and why his nomination stunned
many in Washington with journalist Jim Lobe. [includes rush
transcript]
SEE ALSO:
"Bush Appoints Right-Wing Extremist to UN Post" (Common
Dreams)
|
Data Is Lacking on Iran's Arms, U.S.
Panel Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
NYT, 9 March 2005
A commission due to report to President Bush this month will
describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow
firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs, according to
people who have been briefed on the panel's work. The report
comes as intelligence agencies prepare a new formal assessment
on Iran, and follows a 14-month review by the panel, which Mr.
Bush ordered last year to assess the quality of overall
intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons. The Bush administration has been issuing
increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran's
efforts to build nuclear weapons. The warnings have been met
with firm denials in Tehran, which says its nuclear program is
intended purely for civilian purposes. |
Hizbollah Draws Vast Pro-Syrian Crowds
in Beirut
By Nadim Ladki
Reuters, 8 March 2005"
Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese flooded central
Beirut Tuesday for a pro-Syrian rally called by Hizbollah that
dwarfed previous Lebanese protests demanding that Syrian troops
quit Lebanon. As the mainly Shi'ite Muslim crowds thronged Riad
al-Solh square, a security source said Syrian forces had begun
moving eastward under a phased withdrawal plan announced Monday.
"The redeployment to the Bekaa Valley has started in line with
the first phase," the Lebanese source said. The huge Hizbollah
rally was the first major show of popular support for Syria in
Beirut since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik al-Hariri touched off daily anti-Syrian protests,
mainly involving Maronite Christians. Those protests, which drew
tens of thousands Monday, take place in Martyrs Square, just 300
meters (yards) from the scene of the gathering organized by
Hizbollah and its allies. The rival demonstrations, each using
the Lebanese cedar flag to show patriotism, reveal deep rifts in
Lebanon over Syria's role and international demands for
Hizbollah to disarm. Hizbollah and Lebanese security sources
said one million people attended the rally, which Hizbollah
chief Hassan Nasrallah called to thank Syria for its
"sacrifices" in Lebanon and to oppose a U.N. resolution saying
militias must disarm. "I am here to express my opposition to
resolution 1559 because it demands the disarming of the
resistance. Hizbollah is not a militia. It deters Israeli
aggression against Lebanon," 30-year-old demonstrator Mona Srour
told Reuters. Shi'ites, Lebanon's largest community, condemned
Hariri's killing but few joined Christian, Druze and Sunni
Muslim critics of Syria's military and political role in the
country. Shi'ites and many other Lebanese are proud of
Hizbollah's role in forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation
of south Lebanon in 2000. |
Italy Demands Justice from U.S. Over
Iraq Death
By Crispian Balmer
Reuters, 8 March 2005
Italy's foreign minister rejected Tuesday a U.S. account of how
its forces killed an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq and
urged Washington to punish any soldiers found guilty of
wrongdoing in the shooting. "It is our duty to demand truth and
justice," Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini told parliament.
Agent Nicola Calipari has been hailed as a hero in Italy after
he died shielding a newly freed hostage from U.S. gunfire as
they drove to Baghdad airport last Friday. The killing has
strained ties between the United States and Italy, which has
been one of President Bush's staunchest allies in Europe over
the war in Iraq. Fini dismissed speculation that U.S. forces
deliberately fired on the Italians, but he said a U.S. military
statement on the incident appeared to be at odds with what
actually happened. ...The U.S. military has said its soldiers
fired on the Italians' car after it approached a checkpoint at
speed and failed to heed signals to slow down. But in a detailed
reconstruction, Fini insisted that the Italians had been driving
slowly and had received no warning.
SEE ALSO:
Friendly Fire in Iraq Takes Toll on
U.S.-Led Coalition - and Iraqis
by Rawya Rageh and Todd Pitman
AP via Common Dreams, 7 March 2005
They're told every day across Iraq - tragic stories of people
dying in hails of gunfire, shattered windshields and car seats
covered in blood. Friendly fire - often at U.S. military
checkpoints - is taking a toll on the United States and its
allies, as the shooting deaths of an Italian intelligence agent
and a Bulgarian soldier highlight the terrifying reality of
Iraqi roads. "They're just cowboys," an infuriated Abdullah
Mohammed said Monday of U.S. troops who killed his brother Feb.
28 in Ramadi. Mohammed said his brother edged too close to an
American patrol. "They killed him without any reason, they
suddenly shot at his car." Weary of suicide car bombers, U.S.
military vehicles in Iraq carry signs in Arabic warning
civilians to keep a distance or risk "deadly force." Similar
warnings are affixed to fortified, tank-manned U.S. checkpoints
around the capital. In a country where insurgents strike daily,
there's no doubt some of the force is justified. But Iraqi
civilians are getting tangled up in the violence as well, at an
alarming rate. |
Heavily Armed Duo in No Position to Lay
Down Law on Proliferation
Sydney Herald, 8 March 2005
Thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions would be easier if the US
and Israel kept their side of the bargain, writes Richard
Butler. In recent months the US President, George Bush, and
senior members of his Administration have asserted that Iran is
involved in the clandestine development of nuclear weapons. Last
week Bush turned up the temperature during his visit to Europe,
when he declared, on one public occasion punching the air with
his fist, Iran "must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear
weapon". A month earlier The New Yorker published a disturbing
report by Seymour Hersch that US forces had already entered Iran
from Iraq to scope out prospective targets related to Iran's
nuclear activities. The Pentagon expressed anger at Hersch's
report and attacked him personally, but did not directly deny
its substance. Last week Bush chose to comment publicly on this
matter saying that reports the US was planning to attack Iran
were wrong, but all options were on the table. There is good
reason for concern about the directions of Iran's nuclear
program. In a manner similar to Bush's remarks on his future
intentions, Iran has also given contradictory signals, claiming
that it was not making a nuclear weapon but had a right to do so
if it chose to. |
It will take all our energy to stand
still
Bush's America is Waging a Global Battle Against Women's
Rights
Mary-Ann Stephenson
The Guardian, 8 March 2005
For all George Bush's courting of Europe, when it comes to
women's reproductive rights he is closer to Iran and Syria than
the EU. In 1995, representatives from 189 countries met in
Beijing and agreed a major programme on women's equality and
human rights - the Beijing platform for action. This statement
was ambitious, and the UN commission on the status of women is
currently meeting in New York to review its progress over the
past decade.
The meeting was to publish a statement reaffirming international
support for the platform for action. But the US has refused to
support it unless it is amended to say that the platform does
not create any new human rights or the right to abortion. But it
doesn't actually give the right to abortion. States are called
on to "consider reviewing laws containing punitive measures
against women who have undergone illegal abortions", but the
platform is clear that "any measures or changes related to
abortion within the health system can only be determined at the
national or local level according to the national legislative
process". But that's not how the US is presenting it. Countries
are being warned that failure to support the US amendment could
allow the platform to be used to push through a "right to
abortion" and take away the right of countries to determine
their own laws. Activists are furious. Annette Lawson, of the
European Women's Lobby, said the US is "simply trying to mislead
the rest of the world".
|
Medicaid in the Cross Hairs
NYT, 14 March 2005
Everyone seems to be howling about the cost of Medicaid, and no
wonder. Spending on the health care program for the poor has
been exploding, up from about $200 billion in 2000 to more than
$300 billion at last count. State governments, which share the
costs with the federal government, were hit with the bill just
as the economic downturn hit their revenues. And the Bush
administration, awash in red ink, wants to cut costs. The
biggest problem with Medicaid is that it has been deputized to
do a lot of jobs it wasn't originally created for. Intended as a
health insurance program for families on welfare and people with
disabilities, Medicaid has gradually been stretched to cover for
Congress's failure to deal with the millions of low-income
American workers without health insurance, and the refusal of
Medicare to pay for long-term nursing home care for the elderly.
It's understandable that the states (and in New York, the
localities, which pay for part of the program) want to control
this fiscal albatross. And while this page has deep
disagreements with the current budget priorities in Washington,
both the White House and Congress have a responsibility to get a
handle on Medicaid's rising costs. But the effort should account
for three important points: Medicaid is performing a critical
service that the public supports - making sure that poor
children get proper medical care, that working families have
health coverage and that old people get quality care. The
driving force behind the recent upsurge in costs, according to
an analysis by researchers at the Urban Institute, was a big
increase in the number of people enrolled. The wobbly economy
left more workers with incomes low enough to qualify for
Medicaid and fewer employers offering affordable health
coverage. That is hardly an indictment of Medicaid. The program
was doing what it was meant to do, filling a gap for people in
real need. There is a difference between real spending cuts and
simply moving the bills into a different account book. People's
health needs won't disappear just because Medicaid stops paying
for treatment. People will turn instead to hospital emergency
rooms, adding to the huge burden of charity care at hard-pressed
medical institutions. Medicaid itself is the ultimate victim of
cost shifting. |
Government Report on U.S. Aviation
Warns of Security Holes
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 14 March 2005
Despite a huge investment in security, the American aviation
system remains vulnerable to attack by Al Qaeda and other
jihadist terrorist groups, with noncommercial planes and
helicopters offering terrorists particularly tempting targets, a
confidential government report concludes. Intelligence indicates
that Al Qaeda may have discussed plans to hijack chartered
planes, helicopters and other general aviation aircraft for
attacks because they are less well-guarded than commercial
airliners, according to a previously undisclosed 24-page special
assessment on aviation security by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security two weeks
ago. But commercial airliners are also "likely to remain a
target and a platform for terrorists," the report says, and
members of Al Qaeda appear determined to study and test new
American security measures to "uncover weaknesses."
|
House Ethics Panel in Gridlock
Democrats Refuse to Participate Under New GOP Rules
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 11 March 2005
The House, facing new controversy about the travel of Majority
Leader Tom DeLay and other lawmakers, was left last night with
no mechanism for investigating improper behavior by its members
when Democrats shut down the ethics committee by refusing to
accept Republican rules changes that restrict the panel's power.
Democrats said they do not plan to allow the ethics committee to
organize until Republicans repeal a series of rule changes they
pushed through in January, making it more difficult to initiate
an investigation unless at least one Republican member supports
the probe.
|
I'd Rather Not Say Good-bye, Dan
By Greg Palast, 9 March 2005
Imagine if Edward R. Murrow, after having exposed Joe McCarthy,
replied to criticism by bowing his head for the noose-man.
Rather died as a journalist years ago by accepting the evil gag
orders of the media moguls. Still, I applaud his attempt with
the Bush story to kick his way out of his professional coffin.
Unfortunately, his current silence simply gives aid and comfort
to the censoring corporate news-killers.
Tonight, Rather read off his last "news" broadcast, if you can
call it that. To Dan the newsman, and to American journalism,
all I can say is, rest in peace. |
A Defense That's Offensively Weak
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 10 March 2005
What the administration doesn't acknowledge, as it crows about
democracy blooming in the Iraqi desert, is that our defense
against terrorists who want to attack here is full of holes, and
that the war in Iraq may have made it even worse. Despite the
promising election, the war has created more insurgents and
given them a training ground. It has siphoned off attention,
money and troops that could have been used to catch Osama,
pursue Al Qaeda and secure our own country. And it has alienated
not only many Arabs, but also allies who were eager, after 9/11,
to help us fight Al Qaeda - even Italians are mad now. Every
time we turn around, some administration official charged with
our protection is claiming that it will take three more years,
or five more, to fix something that should have been put in
place right after 9/11 - or even 20 years ago. The F.B.I. has
abandoned its latest computer follies: the $170 million effort
to upgrade the bureau's computer system so analysts can
accomplish such difficult tasks as simultaneously searching for
"aviation" and "schools." Now it's going to take at least three
and a half years to develop a new system. Bill Gates has been
donating computers and software to poor grade schools; maybe he
could take pity on the poor F.B.I. and donate a system that
works. One of the first big stories I covered was the homecoming
of the hostages from Iran in 1981. Nearly a quarter of a century
later, we still don't have good intelligence on Iran.
The Times reported yesterday that a bipartisan presidential
panel is set to report that the lack of American intelligence on
Iran's nuclear capability is scandalously inadequate. Our
intelligence on Iraqi weapons systems was so bad that we had to
go to war to find out that Iraq didn't have any. ...Our
intelligence services are only now trying to recruit agents who
speak Arabic and Farsi? Who didn't realize after the Iranian
hostage crisis that it might be smart to invest in some spies
who could infiltrate the places that were calling us Satan?
President Carter lost an election because he didn't know what
was going on in Iran, and President Bush still doesn't know. Now
that they've belatedly started to recruit Arabic speakers -
after the military forced out more than 300 linguists considered
important to the war in terror in the past decade because they
happened to be gay - our intelligence agencies are not sure
whether they're signing up the good guys or the bad guys. We
can't get into Al Qaeda's inner councils, but has Al Qaeda
gotten inside ours?
The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that about 40
Americans seeking jobs at U.S. intelligence agencies were turned
away because of possible ties to terrorist groups. Paul Redmond,
a longtime C.I.A. officer, said it was an "actuarial certainty"
that spies had infiltrated U.S. security agencies: "I think
we're worse off than we've ever been." At the same time, dozens
of terror suspects on federal watch lists have been allowed to
buy firearms legally in our country, according to a G.A.O.
investigation. No wonder Porter Goss, the new C.I.A. director,
seems dazed and confused. While the president and the neocons
try to remake the Middle East to help future generations, can't
they find a little time to remake our security to protect this
generation? |
Bush Priorities: Putting Last Things
First
NYT, 10 March 2005
We had hoped, when Mr. Bush was re-elected, that he'd rethink
his goals once the next campaign was no longer an issue. There
are so many critical problems facing the nation. But the
president seems determined to ignore the biggest challenges and
to home in on politically charged side issues. Medicare faces a
perilous future, given growing health costs and the aging of the
baby boomer population, and anything approaching a resolution
would require hard bipartisan work. But the White House instead
decided to make privatizing Social Security its chief priority.
Social Security's long-term problems are relatively minor
compared with Medicare's, and the fixes are pretty obvious.
The list goes on and on. When we look at problems that cry out
for White House involvement, one that leaps out is our
dependency on foreign oil. That not only leaves us hostage to
some of the shakiest and most unappetizing oil-producing nations
around the globe, but also threatens the entire economy over the
long term, given that rising oil prices make the trade deficit
even bigger and the dollar even weaker. Another huge economic
threat, at least for some agricultural regions, is the growing
international pressure to end our irrational subsidy program for
crops like cotton. Both of these are tricky political issues
that require steady and firm presidential intervention.
We haven't heard Mr. Bush make a big deal about either, except
for his fixation with drilling in the Arctic wildlife preserve.
Meanwhile in Congress, all the political capital is being
directed toward putting an anti-environmental former lobbyist
for mining interests on the federal bench, and passing a new law
that will make it difficult for middle-class credit card users
who suffer a life catastrophe - like sudden illness or divorce -
to get back on their feet after they have to declare bankruptcy.
The priorities of this administration never cease to amaze.
SEE ALSO:
Bush's Spending Priorities Not in Line
with Americans' - Poll
by Abid Aslam
Common Dreams, 10 March 2005
The American people would like to significantly change next
year's federal budget, reversing key proposals by the
administration of President George W. Bush, according to a new
poll.
Given the chance to look at and make changes to the major areas
of Bush's proposed discretionary budget for fiscal year 2006,
which begins on Oct. 1, 2005, around two-thirds redirected money
to reduce the budget deficit, said the poll released Monday by
the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
''The American public as a whole takes a fairly coherent
position. They favor redirecting a portion of defense spending
to deficit reduction and social spending and look for savings by
cutting spending on large-scale Cold War style capabilities,''
said PIPA director Steven Kull.
Republican and Democratic poll participants alike would take the
budget axe to spending on defense and on Iraq and Afghanistan,
plowing more funds into education, job training, veterans, and
reducing U.S. reliance on oil, the poll found. |
Death Behind Bars
NYT, 9 March 2005
The United States has about 2.1 million people behind bars - a
larger proportion of its population than any other nation in the
world. The correctional system's price tag is more than $60
billion - up from just $9 billion two decades ago - and states
are understandably eager to shave costs. Some are attempting to
do it by cutting back on already dismal prison medical care.
Prison inmates are literally the sickest people in our society.
States and municipalities frequently try to dodge the bill for
treating them by ordering up bids from private providers and
signing up with the cheapest, most bare-bones plan. Paul von
Zielbauer of The Times recently opened a window onto this aspect
of the problem with a harrowing series of articles about Prison
Health Services, the nation's largest private provider of jail
and prison medical care, handling about one in every 10 people
who live behind bars in this country. |
AUDIO LINK
Progressive Consumption
Robert Riech
Market Place, 10 March 2005
Listen to this commentary
Earlier this week, we told you about the tax reform panel's tour
of America. The President's group is trying to get ideas from
the public. Yesterday, the tax panel's tour bus pulled into
Tampa. Entrepreneurs lined up to complain. The message: you
could stimulate the economy with a simpler tax code. Fed Chief
Alan Greenspan seems to think a consumption tax is a good way to
stimulate the economy. Marketplace commentator Robert Reich
warns that one size does not fit all.
|
Donations Are Tied to House Leader
By PHILIP SHENON
NYT, 9 March 2005
Documents subpoenaed from an indicted fund-raiser for Tom DeLay,
the House majority leader, suggest that Mr. DeLay was more
actively involved than previously known in gathering corporate
donations for a political committee that is the focus of a
grand-jury investigation in Texas, his home state. The
documents, which were entered into evidence last week in a
related civil trial in Austin, the state capital, suggest that
Mr. DeLay personally forwarded at least one large corporate
check to the committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and
that he was in direct contact with lobbyists for some of the
nation's largest companies on the committee's behalf. In an
August 2002 document subpoenaed from the files of the indicted
fund-raiser, Warren M. RoBold, Mr. RoBold asked for a list of 10
major donors to the committee, saying that "I would then decide
from response who Tom DeLay" and others should call to help the
committee in seeking a "large contribution." Another document is
a printout of a July 2002 e-mail message to Mr. RoBold from a
political ally of Mr. Delay, requesting a list of corporate
lobbyists who would attend a fund-raising event for the
committee, adding that "DeLay will want to see a list of
attendees" and that the list should be available "on the ground
in Austin for T.D. upon his arrival." Under Texas law,
corporations are barred from donating money to state political
candidates. The Texas committee acknowledged receiving large
corporate donations during the 2002 campaign but always insisted
that the money was used for administrative costs, which is
legal. |
Counting chickens already?
For Bush, No Boasts, but a Taste of
Vindication
By TODD S. PURDUM
NYT, 9 March 2005
He has gone out of his way not to crow, or even to take direct
credit. But not quite two years after he began the invasion that
toppled Saddam Hussein, and not quite two months after a second
Inaugural Address in which he spoke of "ending tyranny,"
President Bush seems entitled to claim as he did on Tuesday that
a "thaw has begun" in the broader Middle East. At the very
least, Mr. Bush is feeling the glow of the recent flurry of
impulses toward democracy in Iraq, the Palestinian territories,
Lebanon and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where events have put
him on a bit of a roll and some of his sharpest critics on the
defensive. It now seems just possible that Mr. Bush and aides
like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz were not wrong
to argue that the "status quo of despotism cannot be ignored or
appeased, kept in a box or cut off," as the president put it in
a speech at the National Defense University here. The failure to
find unconventional weapons in Iraq, his administration's
shifting rationales for the war, the lingering insurgency and
steady American casualties there were a drag on Mr. Bush's
political fortunes for most of last year. But a wave of
developments since the better-than-expected Iraqi elections in
January - some perhaps related and others probably not - have
brought Mr. Bush a measure of vindication, which may or may not
be sustained by events and his own actions in the months to
come. |
Bankruptcy Bill Set for Passage;
Victory for Bush
By STEPHEN LABATON
NYT, 9 March 2005
The Senate assured final passage of the first major overhaul of
the nation's bankruptcy laws in 27 years on Tuesday, when it
took two votes that cleared the remaining political obstacles to
a measure that the nation's credit and retail industries have
sought for years. The bill would disqualify many families from
taking advantage of the more generous provisions of the current
bankruptcy code that permit them to extinguish their debts for a
"fresh start." It would also impose significant new costs on
those seeking bankruptcy protection and give lenders and
businesses new legal tools for recovering debts. The Senate on
Tuesday first defeated an amendment that would have prevented
violent protesters at abortion clinics from using the bankruptcy
laws to shield themselves from judgments awarded in civil
lawsuits. That amendment, which lost by a vote of 53 to 46, had
threatened to derail the legislation. The senators then voted 69
to 31 to limit debate and cut off any effort to kill the
legislation by filibuster. Final passage of the measure is now
an inevitable formality. |
Bush Gives the UN the Finger
by David Corn
The Nation, 8 March 2005
If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked,
"Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job
that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your
job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a
no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took
this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which
requires Senate confirmation.
Bolton is the rightwing's leading declaimer of the United
Nations. He once said, "If the UN Secretariat building in New
York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to
back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further evidence
to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."
Bolton has expressed much more vitriol for the UN than those two
(representative) remarks, for he has been a UN-basher for years.
Sure, the UN has many flaws and deserves reform. But what
message does it convey to the UN and the world to send to the UN
a fellow who has essentially called for total defunding of the
institution? And this move comes right after Bush went to Europe
to mend fences and after he has started working closely with
France in an admirable effort to push Syria out of Lebanon. The
Bolton appointment is unfathomable--except if viewed as a
payback to the neocons. This band of Bush-backers were
considered the losers when Bolton, formerly an undersecretary at
the State Department, was not appointed to the number-two slot
at Foggy Bottom when Condoleezza Rice took over the State
Department. But this is some consolation prize. Imagine Jerry
Falwell being placed in charge of marriage in Massachusetts.
SEE ALSO:
Bush's Perverse UN Pick
by Ian Williams
The Nation, 8 March 2005
The nomination of John Bolton to be US ambassador to the United
Nations is a resounding declaration of American contempt for the
organization and the rest of the world. When Condoleezza Rice
forced Bolton out of his niche at the State Department, it was
taken worldwide as a positive indication of the prospects of
multilateralism in Bush's second term, in some measure
compensating for the retirement of Colin Powell--not least since
no one was sure how much of a multilateralist Rice is. Some
playful souls scared colleagues by suggesting that Bolton could
end up as UN ambassador, but the consensus was that not even
Bush could be that crassly insouciant about the views of the
rest of the world.
|
|
Welcome to BushWorld:
Pentagon Clears Itself on Prisoner Abuse
Committee Will Not Examine Intelligence Misuse
House Ethics Panel Shut Down |
House Ethics Panel in Gridlock
Democrats Refuse to Participate Under New GOP Rules
By Mike Allen
Washington Post, 11 March 2005
The House, facing new controversy about the travel of Majority
Leader Tom DeLay and other lawmakers, was left last night with
no mechanism for investigating improper behavior by its members
when Democrats shut down the ethics committee by refusing to
accept Republican rules changes that restrict the panel's power.
Democrats said they do not plan to allow the ethics committee to
organize until Republicans repeal a series of rule changes they
pushed through in January, making it more difficult to initiate
an investigation unless at least one Republican member supports
the probe.
|
I'd Rather Not Say Good-bye, Dan
By Greg Palast, 9 March 2005
Imagine if Edward R. Murrow, after having exposed Joe McCarthy,
replied to criticism by bowing his head for the noose-man.
Rather died as a journalist years ago by accepting the evil gag
orders of the media moguls. Still, I applaud his attempt with
the Bush story to kick his way out of his professional coffin.
Unfortunately, his current silence simply gives aid and comfort
to the censoring corporate news-killers.
Tonight, Rather read off his last "news" broadcast, if you can
call it that. To Dan the newsman, and to American journalism,
all I can say is, rest in peace. |
A Defense That's Offensively Weak
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT, 10 March 2005
What the administration doesn't acknowledge, as it crows about
democracy blooming in the Iraqi desert, is that our defense
against terrorists who want to attack here is full of holes, and
that the war in Iraq may have made it even worse. Despite the
promising election, the war has created more insurgents and
given them a training ground. It has siphoned off attention,
money and troops that could have been used to catch Osama,
pursue Al Qaeda and secure our own country. And it has alienated
not only many Arabs, but also allies who were eager, after 9/11,
to help us fight Al Qaeda - even Italians are mad now. Every
time we turn around, some administration official charged with
our protection is claiming that it will take three more years,
or five more, to fix something that should have been put in
place right after 9/11 - or even 20 years ago. The F.B.I. has
abandoned its latest computer follies: the $170 million effort
to upgrade the bureau's computer system so analysts can
accomplish such difficult tasks as simultaneously searching for
"aviation" and "schools." Now it's going to take at least three
and a half years to develop a new system. Bill Gates has been
donating computers and software to poor grade schools; maybe he
could take pity on the poor F.B.I. and donate a system that
works. One of the first big stories I covered was the homecoming
of the hostages from Iran in 1981. Nearly a quarter of a century
later, we still don't have good intelligence on Iran.
The Times reported yesterday that a bipartisan presidential
panel is set to report that the lack of American intelligence on
Iran's nuclear capability is scandalously inadequate. Our
intelligence on Iraqi weapons systems was so bad that we had to
go to war to find out that Iraq didn't have any. ...Our
intelligence services are only now trying to recruit agents who
speak Arabic and Farsi? Who didn't realize after the Iranian
hostage crisis that it might be smart to invest in some spies
who could infiltrate the places that were calling us Satan?
President Carter lost an election because he didn't know what
was going on in Iran, and President Bush still doesn't know. Now
that they've belatedly started to recruit Arabic speakers -
after the military forced out more than 300 linguists considered
important to the war in terror in the past decade because they
happened to be gay - our intelligence agencies are not sure
whether they're signing up the good guys or the bad guys. We
can't get into Al Qaeda's inner councils, but has Al Qaeda
gotten inside ours?
The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that about 40
Americans seeking jobs at U.S. intelligence agencies were turned
away because of possible ties to terrorist groups. Paul Redmond,
a longtime C.I.A. officer, said it was an "actuarial certainty"
that spies had infiltrated U.S. security agencies: "I think
we're worse off than we've ever been." At the same time, dozens
of terror suspects on federal watch lists have been allowed to
buy firearms legally in our country, according to a G.A.O.
investigation. No wonder Porter Goss, the new C.I.A. director,
seems dazed and confused. While the president and the neocons
try to remake the Middle East to help future generations, can't
they find a little time to remake our security to protect this
generation? |
Bush Priorities: Putting Last Things
First
NYT, 10 March 2005
We had hoped, when Mr. Bush was re-elected, that he'd rethink
his goals once the next campaign was no longer an issue. There
are so many critical problems facing the nation. But the
president seems determined to ignore the biggest challenges and
to home in on politically charged side issues. Medicare faces a
perilous future, given growing health costs and the aging of the
baby boomer population, and anything approaching a resolution
would require hard bipartisan work. But the White House instead
decided to make privatizing Social Security its chief priority.
Social Security's long-term problems are relatively minor
compared with Medicare's, and the fixes are pretty obvious.
The list goes on and on. When we look at problems that cry out
for White House involvement, one that leaps out is our
dependency on foreign oil. That not only leaves us hostage to
some of the shakiest and most unappetizing oil-producing nations
around the globe, but also threatens the entire economy over the
long term, given that rising oil prices make the trade deficit
even bigger and the dollar even weaker. Another huge economic
threat, at least for some agricultural regions, is the growing
international pressure to end our irrational subsidy program for
crops like cotton. Both of these are tricky political issues
that require steady and firm presidential intervention.
We haven't heard Mr. Bush make a big deal about either, except
for his fixation with drilling in the Arctic wildlife preserve.
Meanwhile in Congress, all the political capital is being
directed toward putting an anti-environmental former lobbyist
for mining interests on the federal bench, and passing a new law
that will make it difficult for middle-class credit card users
who suffer a life catastrophe - like sudden illness or divorce -
to get back on their feet after they have to declare bankruptcy.
The priorities of this administration never cease to amaze.
SEE ALSO:
Bush's Spending Priorities Not in Line
with Americans' - Poll
by Abid Aslam
Common Dreams, 10 March 2005
The American people would like to significantly change next
year's federal budget, reversing key proposals by the
administration of President George W. Bush, according to a new
poll.
Given the chance to look at and make changes to the major areas
of Bush's proposed discretionary budget for fiscal year 2006,
which begins on Oct. 1, 2005, around two-thirds redirected money
to reduce the budget deficit, said the poll released Monday by
the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
''The American public as a whole takes a fairly coherent
position. They favor redirecting a portion of defense spending
to deficit reduction and social spending and look for savings by
cutting spending on large-scale Cold War style capabilities,''
said PIPA director Steven Kull.
Republican and Democratic poll participants alike would take the
budget axe to spending on defense and on Iraq and Afghanistan,
plowing more funds into education, job training, veterans, and
reducing U.S. reliance on oil, the poll found. |
Death Behind Bars
NYT, 9 March 2005
The United States has about 2.1 million people behind bars - a
larger proportion of its population than any other nation in the
world. The correctional system's price tag is more than $60
billion - up from just $9 billion two decades ago - and states
are understandably eager to shave costs. Some are attempting to
do it by cutting back on already dismal prison medical care.
Prison inmates are literally the sickest people in our society.
States and municipalities frequently try to dodge the bill for
treating them by ordering up bids from private providers and
signing up with the cheapest, most bare-bones plan. Paul von
Zielbauer of The Times recently opened a window onto this aspect
of the problem with a harrowing series of articles about Prison
Health Services, the nation's largest private provider of jail
and prison medical care, handling about one in every 10 people
who live behind bars in this country. |
AUDIO LINK
Progressive Consumption
Robert Riech
Market Place, 10 March 2005
Listen to this commentary
Earlier this week, we told you about the tax reform panel's tour
of America. The President's group is trying to get ideas from
the public. Yesterday, the tax panel's tour bus pulled into
Tampa. Entrepreneurs lined up to complain. The message: you
could stimulate the economy with a simpler tax code. Fed Chief
Alan Greenspan seems to think a consumption tax is a good way to
stimulate the economy. Marketplace commentator Robert Reich
warns that one size does not fit all.
|
Donations Are Tied to House Leader
By PHILIP SHENON
NYT, 9 March 2005
Documents subpoenaed from an indicted fund-raiser for Tom DeLay,
the House majority leader, suggest that Mr. DeLay was more
actively involved than previously known in gathering corporate
donations for a political committee that is the focus of a
grand-jury investigation in Texas, his home state. The
documents, which were entered into evidence last week in a
related civil trial in Austin, the state capital, suggest that
Mr. DeLay personally forwarded at least one large corporate
check to the committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and
that he was in direct contact with lobbyists for some of the
nation's largest companies on the committee's behalf. In an
August 2002 document subpoenaed from the files of the indicted
fund-raiser, Warren M. RoBold, Mr. RoBold asked for a list of 10
major donors to the committee, saying that "I would then decide
from response who Tom DeLay" and others should call to help the
committee in seeking a "large contribution." Another document is
a printout of a July 2002 e-mail message to Mr. RoBold from a
political ally of Mr. Delay, requesting a list of corporate
lobbyists who would attend a fund-raising event for the
committee, adding that "DeLay will want to see a list of
attendees" and that the list should be available "on the ground
in Austin for T.D. upon his arrival." Under Texas law,
corporations are barred from donating money to state political
candidates. The Texas committee acknowledged receiving large
corporate donations during the 2002 campaign but always insisted
that the money was used for administrative costs, which is
legal. |
Counting chickens already?
For Bush, No Boasts, but a Taste of
Vindication
By TODD S. PURDUM
NYT, 9 March 2005
He has gone out of his way not to crow, or even to take direct
credit. But not quite two years after he began the invasion that
toppled Saddam Hussein, and not quite two months after a second
Inaugural Address in which he spoke of "ending tyranny,"
President Bush seems entitled to claim as he did on Tuesday that
a "thaw has begun" in the broader Middle East. At the very
least, Mr. Bush is feeling the glow of the recent flurry of
impulses toward democracy in Iraq, the Palestinian territories,
Lebanon and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where events have put
him on a bit of a roll and some of his sharpest critics on the
defensive. It now seems just possible that Mr. Bush and aides
like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz were not wrong
to argue that the "status quo of despotism cannot be ignored or
appeased, kept in a box or cut off," as the president put it in
a speech at the National Defense University here. The failure to
find unconventional weapons in Iraq, his administration's
shifting rationales for the war, the lingering insurgency and
steady American casualties there were a drag on Mr. Bush's
political fortunes for most of last year. But a wave of
developments since the better-than-expected Iraqi elections in
January - some perhaps related and others probably not - have
brought Mr. Bush a measure of vindication, which may or may not
be sustained by events and his own actions in the months to
come. |
Bankruptcy Bill Set for Passage;
Victory for Bush
By STEPHEN LABATON
NYT, 9 March 2005
The Senate assured final passage of the first major overhaul of
the nation's bankruptcy laws in 27 years on Tuesday, when it
took two votes that cleared the remaining political obstacles to
a measure that the nation's credit and retail industries have
sought for years. The bill would disqualify many families from
taking advantage of the more generous provisions of the current
bankruptcy code that permit them to extinguish their debts for a
"fresh start." It would also impose significant new costs on
those seeking bankruptcy protection and give lenders and
businesses new legal tools for recovering debts. The Senate on
Tuesday first defeated an amendment that would have prevented
violent protesters at abortion clinics from using the bankruptcy
laws to shield themselves from judgments awarded in civil
lawsuits. That amendment, which lost by a vote of 53 to 46, had
threatened to derail the legislation. The senators then voted 69
to 31 to limit debate and cut off any effort to kill the
legislation by filibuster. Final passage of the measure is now
an inevitable formality. |
Bush Gives the UN the Finger
by David Corn
The Nation, 8 March 2005
If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked,
"Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job
that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your
job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a
no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took
this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which
requires Senate confirmation.
Bolton is the rightwing's leading declaimer of the United
Nations. He once said, "If the UN Secretariat building in New
York lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."
And when the Bush administration failed to persuade the UN to
back its war in Iraq, Bolton observed that was "further evidence
to many why nothing should be paid to the UN system."
Bolton has expressed much more vitriol for the UN than those two
(representative) remarks, for he has been a UN-basher for years.
Sure, the UN has many flaws and deserves reform. But what
message does it convey to the UN and the world to send to the UN
a fellow who has essentially called for total defunding of the
institution? And this move comes right after Bush went to Europe
to mend fences and after he has started working closely with
France in an admirable effort to push Syria out of Lebanon. The
Bolton appointment is unfathomable--except if viewed as a
payback to the neocons. This band of Bush-backers were
considered the losers when Bolton, formerly an undersecretary at
the State Department, was not appointed to the number-two slot
at Foggy Bottom when Condoleezza Rice took over the State
Department. But this is some consolation prize. Imagine Jerry
Falwell being placed in charge of marriage in Massachusetts.
SEE ALSO:
Bush's Perverse UN Pick
by Ian Williams
The Nation, 8 March 2005
The nomination of John Bolton to be US ambassador to the United
Nations is a resounding declaration of American contempt for the
organization and the rest of the world. When Condoleezza Rice
forced Bolton out of his niche at the State Department, it was
taken worldwide as a positive indication of the prospects of
multilateralism in Bush's second term, in some measure
compensating for the retirement of Colin Powell--not least since
no one was sure how much of a multilateralist Rice is. Some
playful souls scared colleagues by suggesting that Bolton could
end up as UN ambassador, but the consensus was that not even
Bush could be that crassly insouciant about the views of the
rest of the world.
|
Exporting Prisoner Abuse
CBS News.com, 6 March 2005
A secret CIA program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign
countries that use torture during interrogations was approved at
the highest levels of the U.S. government,
one of the agents who helped set it up tells 60 Minutes.
Mike Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit
and one of the agents who helped set up the program, tells 60
Minutes it was authorized by Clinton's National Security
Council and officials in Congress - and all understood what it
meant to send suspects to those countries. "They don't have the
same legal system we have. But we know that going into it," says
Scheuer. "And so the idea that we're gonna suddenly throw our
hands up like Claude Raines in 'Casablanca' and say, 'I'm
shocked that justice in Egypt isn't like it is in Milwaukee,'
there's a certain disingenuousness to that."
A senior Bush administration official told the New York Times
the program is a legal alternative to the cumbersome and
expensive process of holding terror suspects in U.S. facilities.
The official told the Times the program is not used to send
people to other countries to be tortured, but did not dispute
that some prisoners had been mistreated.
SEE ALSO:
CIA Flying Suspects To Torture?
(CBS New York) |
The Debt-Peonage Society
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 8 March 2005
Today the Senate is expected to vote to limit debate on a bill
that toughens the existing bankruptcy law, probably ensuring the
bill's passage. A solid bloc of Republican senators, assisted by
some Democrats, has already voted down a series of amendments
that would either have closed loopholes for the rich or provided
protection for some poor and middle-class families. The
bankruptcy bill was written by and for credit card companies,
and the industry's political muscle is the reason it seems
unstoppable. But the bill also fits into the broader context of
what Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at Yale, calls "risk
privatization": a steady erosion of the protection the
government provides against personal misfortune, even as
ordinary families face ever-growing economic insecurity. The
bill would make it much harder for families in distress to write
off their debts and make a fresh start. Instead, many debtors
would find themselves on an endless treadmill of payments. The
credit card companies say this is needed because people have
been abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing irresponsibly and
walking away from debts. The facts say otherwise. A vast
majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are the
result of severe misfortune. One recent study found that more
than half of bankruptcies are the result of medical emergencies.
The rest are overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of
divorce. To the extent that there is significant abuse of the
system, it's concentrated among the wealthy - including
corporate executives found guilty of misleading investors - who
can exploit loopholes in the law to protect their wealth, no
matter how ill-gotten.
SEE ALSO:
Bankruptcy Bill Is Arena for Abortion Fight
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 8 March 2005
A bankruptcy bill pending before the Senate is about to provide
a forum for the first abortion battle of the new Congress, and
how it plays out could set the stage for much larger fights over
abortion restrictions and judicial nominees, including perhaps a
nominee to the Supreme Court. At issue is a proposed amendment
intended to deny bankruptcy protection to protesters who use
violence to shut down abortion clinics. The measure is expected
to come up for a vote on Tuesday before a Senate with an
expanded Republican majority that includes some of the most
ardent abortion opponents in American politics. "This is the
first major pro-choice amendment to come up in this Congress,"
said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, the
author of the measure. "It's the first test of how difficult the
fight to maintain choice is going to be." |
Senate Defeats Minimum Wage Increase
AP via NYT, 8 March 2005
The Senate defeated dueling proposals Monday to raise the
$5.15-an-hour minimum wage -- one backed by organized labor, the
other salted with pro-business provisions -- in a day of
skirmishing that reflected Republican gains in last fall's
elections. Both plans fell well short of the 60 votes needed to
advance, and signaled that prospects for raising the federal
wage floor, unchanged since 1996, are remote during the current
two-year Congress. ``I believe that anyone who works 40 hours a
week, 52 weeks a year should not live in poverty in the richest
country in the world,'' said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.,
arguing for the Democratic proposal to increase the minimum wage
by $2.10 over the next 26 months. Republicans countered with a
smaller increase, $1.10 in two steps over 18 months, they said
would help workers without hampering the creation of jobs needed
to help those with low skills. ``Wages do not cause sales. Sales
are needed to provide wages. Wages do not cause revenue. Revenue
drives wages,'' said Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo. The Democratic
amendment was defeated, with 46 votes for and 49 against. The
GOP alternative fell by a wider margin, 38 for and 61 against. |
The Anti-Populist
Traditionalist historian John Lukacs laments the direction of
conservatism in America
By Jeet Heer
Boston Globe, 6 March 2005
Populism first emerged in America in the late 19th century as a
radical political movement pushing for labor reform, progressive
taxation, the regulation of business, and economic justice for
the little guy. But in recent decades, as observers like
journalist Thomas Frank and historian Michael Kazin have pointed
out, the populist notion of an embattled people fighting an
entrenched elite has evolved into a staple of the conservative
worldview. From Joseph McCarthy finding treason in ''the bright
young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths'' to
Richard Nixon speaking up for ''the silent majority'' to George
W. Bush complaining about those who ''think they're all of a
sudden smarter than the average person because they happen to
have an Ivy League degree,'' the right has consistently won
elections by talking the language of Power to the People.
But criticism of the marriage between conservatism and populism
comes not only from the left. In his bracing new book,
''Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred'' (Yale), the
traditionalist historian John Lukacs-well-known for his elegant
histories of the great men and great events of World War
II-offers a dark vision of modern democracy being destroyed by
nationalist demagogues who gain power by bullying unpopular
minorities and pursuing a belligerent foreign policy. Today's
politicians of the right, Lukacs writes, have abandoned the
conservative values of stability, order, and tradition and
instead learned to bind nationalist majorities together by
evoking hatred, directed not just against foreign foes but
against fellow citizens who are seen as insufficiently
patriotic. |
Terror Suspects Buying Firearms, U.S.
Report Finds
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 8 March 2005
Dozens of terror suspects on federal watch lists were allowed to
buy firearms legally in the United States last year, according
to a Congressional investigation that points up major
vulnerabilities in federal gun laws. People suspected of being
members of a terrorist group are not automatically barred from
legally buying a gun, and the investigation, conducted by the
Government Accountability Office, indicated that people with
clear links to terrorist groups had regularly taken advantage of
this gap. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, law enforcement
officials and gun control groups have voiced increasing concern
about the prospect of a terrorist walking into a gun shop,
legally buying an assault rifle or other type of weapon and
using it in an attack.
The G.A.O. study offers the first full-scale examination of the
possible dangers posed by gaps in the law, Congressional
officials said, and it concludes that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation "could better manage" its gun-buying records in
matching them against lists of suspected terrorists. F.B.I.
officials maintain that they are hamstrung by laws and policies
restricting the use of gun-buying records because of concerns
over the privacy rights of gun owners. At least 44 times from
February 2004 to June, people whom the F.B.I. regards as known
or suspected members of terrorist groups sought permission to
buy or carry a gun, the investigation found.
|
The More He Sinks, the More He Lies
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 5 March 2005
...In a case where A and B are fundamentally different and you
take the term for A and apply it to B, that is not usually known
as 'borrowing'. I'm not sure whether 'lying' or 'deceiving' or
something else altogether is a better term for it. But this
isn't borrowing. It's simply an effort to mislead. There's a
clearer way for any newspaper to describe what happened:
President Bush misidentified his proposal as an add-on to Social
Security. That covers the whole thing. Simply look at the
president's proposal, as the White House itself explains it, and
you will see that the accounts are funded by diverted Social
Security payroll taxes. And those who chose private accounts
have their guaranteed benefit cut by an amount that is supposed
to be roughly equivalent to what their account might be expected
to make under favorable conditions. Under any version of the
English language we're familiar with, that's not an add-on to
Social Security. That comes out of Social Security. Until today
of course when the meaning of all the words changed. Admittedly,
these word games are nothing new. And perhaps men of destiny
define words rather than being defined or constrained by them.
But just as you cannot have a constructive discussion about
strengthening Social Security with someone who wants to phase it
out, you also cannot have an honest or meaningful discussion
about anything with someone who on a daily basis changes the
meaning of the words being discussed. |
SEE ALSO:
Presidential Malpractice
by Ralph Nader
Common Dreams, 5 March 2005
Having moved along the path of destroying the freedoms and
rights hitherto accorded wrongfully injured or defrauded
Americans to have their full day in court via state class
actions, George W. Bush is now pushing the Congress to make it
even more difficult to sue for injuries and fatalities coming
from medical negligence or incompetence.
Again and again, George W. Bush demands pain and suffering caps
on court awards for the most serious of human injuries and other
restrictions on these defenseless patients. He complains
publicly about "skyrocketing" costs of "junk lawsuits" against
doctors and hospitals. When people ask him to document these
wild assertions with data and quantitative evidence, he totally
ignores their inquiries. For good reason: he doesn't have the
facts. He is trading in unilateral propaganda of the most
reckless kind.
Call it Presidential malpractice, propelled by the Karl Rove-led
grudge against trial lawyers supporting Democrats. His specious
stance also reaps ten of millions of grateful campaign dollars
from practitioners and executives and political action
committees associated with insurance companies, hospital chains
and medical societies (the latter declining to police its own
ranks of bad doctors).
The opposition to Mr. Bush's cruel and false positions is almost
entirely defensive. Groups like Public Citizen (citizen.org) and
the Center for Justice and Democracy (centerjd.org) have
produced mountains of factual rebuttals and brought forth the
heart-wrenching victims of bad physician or hospital practices
to speak for the freedom to hold their harmdoers accountable and
deter future incompetence and recklessness in open courts of
law.
It is long overdue to go on the offensive against George W.
Bush, whose forked tongue on more than one occasion has said
that "the safety of all Americans is my top priority." Why isn't
he lifting a finger on probably the leading cause of preventable
violence going on in the United States today - deaths and
injuries and sickness from the misworkings of the
medical-hospital economy? |
Recycled Rhetoric
Bush's huge gamble on dismantling the cornerstone of the New
Deal will fail. And if the Democrats remain disciplined, his
defeat will be profound.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon, 3 March 2005
The coming defeat of President Bush on Social Security will be
the defining moment in domestic policy and politics for his
second term and for the future of the Republican Party. It will
be a central, clarifying event because Bush alone chose to make
this fight. Campaigning in 2004 on the trauma of Sept. 11, he
won by the smallest margin of any incumbent president in
American history. The Electoral College map was little changed
from the deadlock of 2000. While Bush barely took two states he
had lost before (Iowa and New Mexico), he lost one to John Kerry
-- New Hampshire. Bush's political advisor, Karl Rove, had
forecast a fundamental realignment that would establish
Republican dominance, but Bush's desperate political position
required a series of tactics of character assassination against
the Democratic candidate and culture war gambits on gay
marriage, atmospherically organized around the fear factor of
Sept. 11. The outcome was a strategic victory but not a
structural one, and Bush's campaign further polarized the
country. |
Imagine: 500 Miles Per Gallon
There have been many calls for programs to fund research.
Beneath the din lies a little-noticed reality—the solution is
already with us
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek, 7 March issue
Tomorrow, President Bush could make the following speech: "We
are all concerned that the industrialized world, and
increasingly the developing world, draw too much of their energy
from one product, petroleum, which comes disproportionately from
one volatile region, the Middle East. This dependence has
significant political and environmental dangers for all of us.
But there is now a solution, one that the United States will
pursue actively. It is now possible to build cars that are
powered by a combination of electricity and alcohol-based fuels,
with petroleum as only one element among many. My administration
is going to put in place a series of policies that will ensure
that in four years, the average new American car will get 300
miles per gallon of petroleum. And I fully expect in this period
to see cars in the United States that get 500 miles per gallon.
This revolution in energy use will reduce dramatically our
dependence on foreign oil and achieve pathbreaking reductions in
carbon-dioxide emissions, far below the targets mentioned in the
Kyoto accords." Ever since September 11, 2001, there have been
many calls for Manhattan Projects and Marshall Plans for
research on energy efficiency and alternate fuels. Beneath the
din lies a little-noticed reality—the solution is already with
us. Over the last five years, technology has matured in various
fields, most importantly in semiconductors, to make possible
cars that are as convenient and cheap as current ones, except
that they run on a combination of electricity and fuel. Hybrid
technology is the answer to the petroleum problem. ...The
current crop of hybrid cars get around 50 miles per gallon. Make
it a plug-in and you can get 75 miles. Replace the conventional
fuel tank with a flexible-fuel tank that can run on a
combination of 15 percent petroleum and 85 percent ethanol or
methanol, and you get between 400 and 500 miles per gallon of
gasoline. (You don't get 500 miles per gallon of fuel, but the
crucial task is to lessen the use of petroleum. And ethanol and
methanol are much cheaper than gasoline, so fuel costs would
drop dramatically.) If things are already moving, why does the
government need to do anything? Because this is not a pure free
market. Large companies—in the oil and automotive industry—have
vested interests in not changing much. There are transition
costs—gas stations will need to be fitted to pump methanol and
ethanol (at a cost of $20,000 to $60,000 per station). New
technologies will empower new industries, few of which have
lobbies in Washington. Besides, the idea that the government
should have nothing to do with this problem is bizarre. It was
military funding and spending that produced much of the
technology that makes hybrids possible. (The military is
actually leading the hybrid trend. All new naval surface ships
are now electric-powered, as are big diesel locomotives and
mining trucks.) And the West's reliance on foreign oil is not
cost-free. Luft estimates that a government plan that could
accelerate the move to a hybrid transport system would cost $12
billion dollars. That is what we spend in Iraq in about three
months. Smart government intervention would include a
combination of targeted mandates, incentives and spending. And
it does not have to all happen at the federal level. New York
City, for example, could require that all its new taxis be
hybrids with flexible-fuel tanks. Now that's a Manhattan Project
for the 21st century.
|
Deficits and Deceit
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 3 March 2005
Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes,
asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of
paying off too much debt. On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned
Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there
would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future,
leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt. But he
counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for
cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Does anyone
still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom
seriously? ...O.K., enough about Mr. Greenspan. The real news is
the growing evidence that the political theory behind the Bush
tax cuts was as wrong as the economic theory. According to
starve-the-beast doctrine, right-wing politicians can use the
big deficits generated by tax cuts as an excuse to slash social
insurance programs. Mr. Bush's advisers thought that it would
prove especially easy to sell benefit cuts in the context of
Social Security privatization because the president could
pretend that a plan that sharply cut benefits would actually be
good for workers. But the theory isn't working. As soon as
voters heard that privatization would involve benefit cuts,
support for Social Security "reform" plunged. Another sign of
the theory's falsity: across the nation, Republican governors,
finding that voters really want adequate public services, are
talking about tax increases. The best bet now is that Mr. Bush
will manage to make the poor suffer, but fail to make a dent in
the great middle-class entitlement programs. And the consequence
of the failure of the starve-the-beast theory is a looming
fiscal crisis - Mr. Greenspan isn't wrong about that. The middle
class won't give up programs that are essential to its financial
security; the right won't give up tax cuts that it sold on false
pretenses. The only question now is when foreign investors, who
have financed our deficits so far, will decide to pull the plug.
|
SEE ALSO:
Senate Democratic Leader Blasts Greenspan
By Dan Balz
Washington Post, 4 March 2005
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan generally gets accolades
for his public pronouncements. Yesterday he got a brickbat from
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who blasted
Greenspan as "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in
Washington." Reid ripped Greenspan during an interview on CNN's
"Inside Politics." He said the Fed chairman has given President
Bush a pass on deficits that have built up in the past four
years and should be challenging Republicans on their fiscal
policies, rather than promoting Bush's plan to introduce
personal accounts into Social Security.
|
SEE ALSO:
Recycled Rhetoric
Bush's huge gamble on dismantling the cornerstone of the New
Deal will fail. And if the Democrats remain disciplined, his
defeat will be profound.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Slate, 3 March 2005
The coming defeat of President Bush on Social Security will be
the defining moment in domestic policy and politics for his
second term and for the future of the Republican Party. It will
be a central, clarifying event because Bush alone chose to make
this fight.
|
SEE ALSO:
Phasing Out a Guaranteed Benefit
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 4 March 2005
...the terms of this debate are actually pretty straightforward.
The president and his supporters want to get the government out
of the Social Security business by ending guaranteed benefits.
It's really as simple as that. Not complicated. They'll put in
its place some system of private accounts where you can save
money on your own. And if it works out, great. If it doesn't,
it's your problem.
Social Security is about spreading out the risk and the security
by having near-universal participation in one program. That's
what it is. You pay in through the course of your working years
and after you retire you receive your guaranteed benefit every
month for the rest of your life. It is that issue of guarantee
-- which, in its nature, only a program like Social Security can
provide -- which the president and his supporters are trying to
do away with, either all at once or in stages.
So take away all of your policy particulars and computations and
flow-charts and analyses. And set them to one side. That is the
issue at the core of all of this debate. It defines what kind of
society we live in. Its future rests in the hands of Senate
Democrats. And all manner of honor or infamy is in store for the
ones who make the difference. |
Bush Denies That Private Accounts Are
in Serious Trouble
By ROBIN TONER
NYT, 3 March 2005
President Bush dismissed the notion Thursday that his campaign
to create private accounts in Social Security was in serious
trouble, asserting he was still "at the early stages of the
process." Vowing to push ahead and acknowledging that "I've got
a lot more work to do," Mr. Bush said he was open to ideas from
both parties and tried again to allay the fears widespread in
his own party that Social Security was "the third rail of
politics." "Ultimately," he said, "I think politicians need to
be worried about not being a part of the solution." Senate
Democrats seemed unworried. They said they would work with Mr.
Bush on Social Security only if he would "publicly and
unambiguously announce" that he rejected his proposal for
private investment accounts financed by payroll tax revenues.
"Such a statement would eliminate a serious obstacle to the kind
of bipartisan process that Democrats are seeking to deal with
Social Security's long-term challenges," Democrats said in a
letter that was circulated for senators' signatures Thursday
night and quickly acquired 42. Democrats said the Bush
administration had been sending mixed signals about whether it
would consider a Social Security plan without those accounts.
|
'Political capital' surplus
disappears...
New Poll Finds Bush Priorities Are Out of
Step With Americans
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER
NYT, 3 March 2005
Americans say President Bush does not share the priorities of
most of the country on either domestic or foreign issues, are
increasingly resistant to his proposal to revamp Social Security
and say they are uneasy with Mr. Bush's ability to make the
right decisions about the retirement program, according to the
latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The poll underscores just
how little headway Mr. Bush has made in his effort to build
popular support as his proposal for overhauling Social Security
struggles to gain footing in Congress. |
No shame in 'Bushworld'
Top Official Leaving Security Dept.
Shifts to Advising Contractors
By ERIC LIPTON
NYT, 3 March 2005
Asa Hutchinson, who stepped down this week as a top
administrator at the Department of Homeland Security, has joined
a law firm based in Washington that represents major domestic
security contractors and companies regulated by the department.
Mr. Hutchinson, 54, who as under secretary at the department
oversaw transportation and border security, will be barred for
at least one year from interacting directly with department
officials. But he can advise companies that are pursuing
contracts with the agency or are subject to its regulatory
review. Venable L.L.P., the law firm where Mr. Hutchinson will
serve as chairman of the domestic security practice, has
represented the Lockheed Martin Corporation, which, along with
its business partners, was awarded $513 million in Homeland
Security contracts last year. Among Venable's other clients,
according to federal lobbying records, are American Airlines and
the Cargo Airline Association, both of which have regulatory
matters before the Transportation Security Administration, which
Mr. Hutchinson supervised until this week. The firm has also
represented the chemical industry before United States Customs,
which Mr. Hutchinson also oversaw. Mr. Hutchinson, a former
congressman who may run for Arkansas governor in 2006, would not
say how much he was being paid or who some of his probable
clients would be.
|
A sign of the times...
Byrd Denies Comparing Republicans to
Nazis
By ALAN FRAM
The Guardian, 3 March 2005
Sen. Robert Byrd's description of Adolf Hitler's rise to power
was meant as a warning to heed the past and not as a comparison
to Republicans, a spokesman for the West Virginia Democrat says.
Nonetheless, two Jewish groups and a pair of GOP politicians
chastised the senator on Wednesday, including one who recalled
Byrd's Ku Klux Klan membership as a young man. Byrd's comments,
which he made Tuesday in the Senate, came during his speech
criticizing a Republican plan to block Democrats from
filibustering President Bush's judicial nominees. ``Terrible
chapters of history ought never be repeated,'' said Tom Gavin,
spokesman for Byrd. ``All one needs to do is to look at history
to see how dangerous it is to curb the rights of the minority.''
|
Pray for a 'post-Christian' America...
Bible Bloc
The evangelical political movement is just getting started.
By Rob Garver
The American Prospect, 2 March 2005
On March 9, evangelical Christians will converge in Washington,
D.C., for the annual convention of the National Association of
Evangelicals (NAE), which represents various Protestant churches
and denominations across the country with a combined membership
of between 30 million and 40 million people. Anybody concerned
about the increasing influence of religion on U.S. public policy
ought to be paying close attention.
A
key event during the convention will be the release of a 12-page
statement of principles meant to serve as guidelines for
unprecedented political engagement by U.S. evangelicals.
Called For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to
Civic Responsibility, this manifesto for a Bible-based public
policy calls on evangelical Christians to recognize that it is
their religious obligation to advocate for government policies
that support their religious beliefs.
SEE ALSO:
Plan to
increase Christian economic and political power...
Bush Pushes Faith-Based
Initiative
By NEDRA PICKLER
AP via FindLaw, 2 March 2005
President Bush on Tuesday dismissed criticism that his plan to
steer public money to religious charities might discriminate
against people who did not share their beliefs, saying those
groups should have an "all drunks are welcome" policy. Speaking
to more than 250 religious leaders invited by the White House,
Bush vented his frustration that Congress has not approved the
idea he first offered soon after he took office to let religious
charities spend taxpayer money. In a speech at a Washington
hotel, Bush took on what he described as a government culture
"unfriendly" to religious groups. "Charitable choice is
something I've supported every year, and every year it's got
stuck," Bush said. "There's kind of a consistent pattern there."
Bypassing Congress, Bush has used executive orders and
regulations to give religious organizations equal footing with
nonsectarian groups in competing for federal contracts. "Since
Congress isn't moving, I will," Bush told the religious leaders,
whom he addressed as "leaders in the armies of compassion." He
raised the possibility of further executive action, though it
was unclear what more Bush could order.
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
Ruling on Embryo May Impact In Vitro
Fertilization
by David Schaper
NPR,s Day to Day, 2 March 2005
In a recent case in Chicago, a judge ruled that the parents of a
frozen embryo accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic have
the right to file a wrongful death suit. NPR's David Schaper
discusses how the ruling may affect the availability of in vitro
fertilization.
SEE ALSO:
God Is a Centrist Democrat
If it's true that the Democratic Party is about to get
religion, then Hillary Clinton is first at the altar.
by Kristen Lombardi
Village Voice, 2-8 March 2005
|
More Bush Style 'Democracy'
Josh Marshall
Talking Points Memo, 2 March 2005
In Westfield, New Jersey, the president's host, Rep.
Mike Ferguson (R),
says the president "wants to speak to, listen to and talk to
residents from around the state." But the town's lone Democratic
town councilman notes that...
If the event is being billed as a town hall meeting for the
purpose of eliciting views on one of his policy initiatives,
there would be an expectation that people having differing
views may be in attendance.
This of course is a reference to the apparent decision to
restrict the townhall meeting to avowed supporters of the
president. On the other hand, Rep. Ferguson doesn't think
there's a problem....
My sense is the people who would be most interested in
being in an event with the president will be ones who are
supporters... And I think it's important to hear constructive
criticism ... that doesn't include disruptive behavior or
obnoxiousness.
|
The GOP's Insatiable Appetite for Power
by Ed Kilgore
Talking Points Memo, 1 March 2005
The re-redistrictng Power Grab isn't the only mischief being
cooked up by the Republicans in my home state of Georgia.
Interestingly enough, there's a big fight underway over
GOP-sponsored legislation that would shield public incentives
for corporate relocations from public scrutiny. |
Public Views on Social Security Need to
Swing Soon, Senator Says
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
NYT, 1 March 2005
Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Finance
Committee, said Monday that if public opinion did not soon begin
to swing in favor of President Bush's Social Security plan, it
would be an indication that the plan was in trouble.
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
Grassley Performance Incredibly
Disingenuous
Diane Rehm Show, 1 March 2005
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) chairman of the Senate
Finance Committee.
Diane talks with Senator Grassley about Social Security, the
FDA, his proposed changes to bankruptcy law, and other issues. |
Back
to Archive Index |
Irritated Iraqis Wait for Change
Nearly six weeks after a landmark election, no new government
has formed and people who risked their lives to vote wonder why
they did.
By Alissa J. Rubin
LA Times, 13 March 2005
With Iraqis increasingly concerned about a security vacuum, the
man who is expected to become the next prime minister on
Saturday defended the winning blocs, which have not formed a
government nearly six weeks after millions of people risked
their lives to vote. In an interview, Ibrahim Jafari, the
nominee of the slate that won the most votes in the Jan. 30
election, said it could take two more weeks to close a deal. |
2/3s Rule Imposed by U.S. Jeopardizes
Democratic Process
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 14 March 2005
The US spiked the Iraqi parliamentary process by putting in a
provision that a government has to be formed with a 2/3s
majority. This provision is a neo-colonial imposition on Iraq.
The Iraqi public was never asked about it. And, it is
predictably producing gridlock, as the UIA is forced to try to
accommodate a party that should be in the opposition in the
British system, the Kurdistan Alliance. Likewise, in France, a
simple majority of the National Assembly can dismiss the
cabinet. Likewise in India. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if
the 2/3s super-majority is characteristic of only one nation on
earth, i.e. American Iraq. I fear it is functioning in an
anti-democratic manner to thwart the will of the majority of
Iraqis, who braved great danger to come out and vote. It is all
to the good if the Shiites and Kurds are forced to come to a set
of hard compromises. But not everything can be decided at the
beginning of the process. Some issues (Kirkuk is a good example)
must be decided by a long-term negotiation. I perceive this
latest Kurdish demarche to consist in a power play where they
grab all sorts of concessions on a short-term basis, just
because they are needed to form a government, even though no
national consensus has emerged on these issues. I think there is
also a real chance that Iraqis will turn against the idea of
democracy if it only produces insecurity, violence, and
gridlock. |
Guantánamo Jail Switch Planned
US inmates face threat of worse abuse under scheme to send
them to prisons in their own countries
Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian, 12 March 2005
The Pentagon is planning to transfer half the inmates at
Guantánamo Bay to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and
Yemen, despite fears that they would face even worse human
rights abuses than at the US camp. The defence secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld, has urged the State Department to ratchet up the
pressure on unresponsive allies to take custody of the
prisoners, and relieve the Bush administration of maintaining a
detention facility which is increasingly viewed as a burden.
According to yesterday's New York Times, the transfers would be
similar to the much-criticised practice of "renditions", under
which the CIA has moved prisoners to Syria and Egypt, although
the Guantánamo prisoners would be subject to review by the State
Department and other government agencies. The plans are widely
seen as a reaction to court judgments which have made it
increasingly untenable for the US to continue to use the base on
Cuba for its original purpose: a vast holding pen in which
prisoners in the war on terror could be held indefinitely beyond
the scrutiny of the US courts. Recent revelations from freed
British inmates about torture and sexual humiliation at
Guantánamo have also made it increasingly awkward for the Bush
administration to maintain the detention facility in its present
form. Human rights organisations believe the Pentagon is anxious
to rid itself of the burden of housing hundreds of prisoners who
are no longer believed to hold any intelligence value in the war
on terror. Some of the prisoners at Guantánamo have been held
without recourse to the courts since autumn 2001. However,
Washington has discovered that some foreign governments were
unresponsive to its requests to hand over detainees, prompting
Mr Rumsfeld to draft a February 5 memo to the State Department
seeking its support. Officials said reviews by the State
Department and other government agencies would help ensure that
the prisoners would not be tortured. Despite such measures, the
prospect of a wholesale transfer of prisoners from Guantánamo to
America's allies is bound to be controversial, especially as
many of the inmates face a return to countries known to practice
torture. More than 300 of the prisoners at Guantánamo are from
Afghanistan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, none of which has a good
human rights record. Michael Rattner, president of the Centre
for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the
Guantánamo detainees, said: "Now that they have put themselves
in this pickle of picking up many people who were not involved
in terrorism, and keeping them for two or three years and
abusing them in a number of cases, what are they going to do
with them? Send them back to countries where governments are
known to be involved in torture, with a label of terrorist
practically around their neck? "We don't want people rendered,
or given their so-called freedom from Guantánamo, and then
jailed in a country where they are going to be tortured." The
inmate population at Guantánamo has been steadily declining
since its peak in 2002, with 146 prisoners freed outright and 62
transferred to their home countries. The prison population is
now 540. The Bush administration has no intention of dismantling
the facility. It is seeking Congressional approval for $41.8m
(£22m) to build a permanent facility and security fence, and
Pentagon officials say as many as 200 of the current inmates are
so dangerous they are likely to remain at Guantánamo
indefinitely.
SEE ALSO:
Greenberg on the Legal War on Terror at
Home (Tom Dispatch) |
U.S. shift in policy PR
rejected by Iran
Iran Dismisses Economic Offer From the U.S.
By NAZILA FATHI
NYT, 13 March 2005
Iran reacted testily on Saturday to a statement from the United
States offering modest economic incentives if it permanently
ended the enrichment of uranium, saying that it would not give
up its right to nuclear power. "The Islamic Republic of Iran is
determined to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, and
no pressure, bribe or threat can make Iran give up its
legitimate right," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamidreza
Assefi, in a statement carried on the ministry's Web site.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced on Friday that the
United States was shifting to a somewhat more conciliatory
approach on Iran, offering to back limited economic incentives
if Iran agrees to a series of steps that would permanently give
up any opportunity to building nuclear arms. |
Very old news
Looting at Weapons Plants Was Systematic,
Iraqi Says
By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD
NYT, 13 March 2005
In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters
systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from
Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including
some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for
nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the
government's first extensive comments on the looting. The Iraqi
official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said
it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed
specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which
could be used for both military and civilian applications, and
carted the machinery away. Dr. Araji said his account was based
largely on observations by government employees and officials
who either worked at the sites or lived near them."They came in
with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole
sites," Dr. Araji said. "They knew what they were doing; they
knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting." The threat
posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush
administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the
installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in
the chaotic months after the invasion. Dr. Araji's statements
came just a week after a United Nations agency disclosed that
approximately 90 important sites in Iraq had been looted or
razed in that period. Satellite imagery analyzed by two United
Nations groups - the International Atomic Energy Agency and the
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic -
confirms that some of the sites identified by Dr. Araji appear
to be totally or partly stripped, senior officials at those
agencies said. Those officials said they could not comment on
all of Dr. Araji's assertions, because the groups had been
barred from Iraq since the invasion. |
This War Walks Among Us
Most of the injured in Iraq are surviving, and their
homecoming could undercut Bush
BY NORMAN SOLOMON
NewsDay.com, 13 March 2005
In wartime, the silence of the American dead is a vacuum that
the powerful in Washington try to fill. While loved ones are
left with haunting memories and excruciating sadness, the most
amplified political voices use predictable rhetoric to talk
about ultimate sacrifices. But the wounded do not disappear.
They can speak for themselves. And many more will be seen and
heard in this decade. Thanks to improvements in protective gear
and swift medical treatment, more of America's wounded are
surviving - and returning home with serious permanent injuries.
...Founded in midsummer 2004, Iraq Veterans Against the War has
expanded from eight to 150 members while organizing forums and
teach-ins around the country and attracting some appreciable
media coverage. The group's national coordinator, Michael
Hoffman, joined the Marines in 1999 and participated in the
invasion of Iraq. "War is dirty, always wrong, but sometimes
unavoidable," he says. "That is why all these horrible things
must rest on the shoulders of those leaders who supported a war
that did not have to be fought." America's physical wounds from
the current war cannot be tucked under the national rug. And in
the long run, neither can any of the psychological pain that
afflicts many combat veterans. President Bush is likely to face
a growing backlash that will further reduce his credibility -
and strengthen the healthy skepticism that Americans should
utilize when the president insists it's time to go to war.
|
11 March 2005
Headlines
Welcome to BushWorld:
Pentagon Clears Itself on Prisoner Abuse
Committee Will Not Examine Intelligence Misuse
House Ethics Panel Shut Down |
US Senate Ends Probe into
Prewar Intelligence on Iraq
By Edward Alden
Financial Times, 11 March 2005
The Senate committee overseeing US intelligence has shut down
its investigation into whether top administration officials
distorted intelligence evidence to build the case for war on
Iraq. Senator Pat Roberts, who heads the committee, said on
Thursday he was satisfied administration officials had
accurately portrayed what turned out to be flawed intelligence
claiming the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed mass destruction
weapons. “The bottom line was they believed the intelligence,
and intelligence was wrong,” the Kansas Republican told an
audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. |
Pentagon Clears Top Personnel, Policies in
Abuses
By Vicki Allen
Reuters, 11 March 2005
The Pentagon said its policies and top officials did not cause
the mistreatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Guantanamo Bay, but in a report released on Thursday cited a
series of missed opportunities to correct lapses that led to the
abuses. The latest and most wide-ranging abuse report, by Navy
inspector general Vice Adm. Albert Church, largely tracks the
Pentagon's previous contention that its leaders were not
directly responsible for sexual and physical mistreatment of
prisoners. A 21-page unclassified summary of the report was to
be released at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The
full 368-page report is classified. The summary obtained by
Reuters found "no single, over-arching explanation" for the
abuses. While it said authorized interrogation policies did not
cause them, "We nevertheless identified a number of missed
opportunities in the policy development process" to issue more
specific guidelines and to learn from previous conflicts.
|
AUDIO LINK
Baghdad Bombing Wounds Several Americans
by Anthony Kuhn
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
Several grim incidents occur in Iraq Tuesday: Iraqi authorities
discover two sites of apparent massacres, a major bombing in
Baghdad kills three and wounds at least 30 and there is an
attempted assassination of an Iraqi Cabinet minister. |
AUDIO LINK
Panel Said to Criticize U.S. Intelligence
on Iran
by Mary Louise Kelly
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
A New York Times reports says the presidential intelligence
commission will sharply criticize the intelligence record on
Iran. The alleged problems include a heavy reliance on
information from Iranian dissidents.
SEE ALSO:
Bush Announces Iraq Exit Strategy:
'We'll Go Through Iran'
(The Onion) |
AUDIO LINK
Report Details Israeli Support for
Unauthorized Settlements
by Peter Kenyon
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
A report commissioned by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finds that
state officials have violated Israeli law to promote the spread
of illegal Jewish settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.
Opposition lawmakers are calling for a criminal investigation. |
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Is Bush Bringing Democracy to the Middle
East?
A Debate on U.S. Foreign Policy in
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and More
DemocracyNow, 9 March 2005
We host a debate on the question: Is Bush bringing democracy to
the Middle East? We are joined by Steven Cook of the Council on
Foreign Relations, Rahul Mahajan, an independent journalist and
author and Farid Ghadry, the co-founder and current president of
the Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition party.
[includes rush transcript] |
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
A More Cautious View on Democracy in
the Middle East
By Daniel Schorr
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
NPR's senior news analyst says that even though several
countries in the Middle East seem to be moving towards
democracy, recent events in Lebanon and Syria indicate that
there is still a way to go before democracy fully takes hold. |
SEE ALSO:
GW as the 'Big Kahuna' Riding a Wave of Democracy?
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 9 November 2005
The simplistic master narrative constructed by the partisans of
President George W. Bush held that the January 30 elections were
a huge success, and signalled a turn to democracy in the Middle
East. Then the anti-Syrian demonstrations were interpreted as a
yearning for democracy inspired by the Iraqi elections.
This interpretation is a gross misunderstanding of the situation
in the Middle East. Bush is not pushing with any real force for
democratization of Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy) or
Pakistan (where the elected parliament demands in vain that
General Pervez Musharraf take off his uniform if he wants to be
president), or Tunisia (where Zayn Ben Ali has just won his 4th
unopposed term as president), etc. Democratization is being
pushed only for regimes that Bush dislikes, such as Syria or
Iran. The gestures that Mubarak of Egypt made (officially
recognized parties may put up candidates to run against him, but
not popular political forces like the Muslim Brotherhood) are
empty.
In fact the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections were deeply flawed. 42
percent of the electorate did not show up. The elections could
only be held by locking down the country for 3 days, forbidding
all vehicular traffic to stop car bombings. The electorate had
no idea for whom they were voting, since the candidates' names
were secret until the last moment. The Sunni Arabs boycotted or
were prevented from voting by the ongoing guerrilla war, which
started right back up after the ban on traffic lapsed.
The Lebanese have been having often lively parliamentary
election campaigns for decades. The idea that the urbane and
sophisticated Beirutis had anything to learn from the Jan. 30
process in Iraq is absurd on the face of it. Elections were
already scheduled in Lebanon for later this spring.
Moreover, the anti-Syrian protests were not a signal that the
Lebanese wanted to be like American-occupied Iraq. They were a
signal that the Druze, Maronites and a section of the Sunnis had
agreed to try to push Syria out. It was the US who had invited
Syria into Lebanon in 1976. And it was a sign that Lebanon is
still deeply divided, since the Shiite plurality largely
supports Syria. Given the pro-Syrian sentiment in some Sunni
cities like Tripoli, it may well be that a majority of Lebanese
want Syria to remain in some capacity. If that were true, what
would it do to Mr. Bush's master narrative of the march of
democracy? |
Bush Nominates Fierce UN Critic and
Unilateralist John Bolton As Ambassador to United Nations
DemocracyNow interview with Jim Lobe, 9 March 2005
President Bush nominated John Bolton to become the next U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations. We take a look at Bolton's
record, his criticism of the UN and why his nomination stunned
many in Washington with journalist Jim Lobe. [includes rush
transcript]
SEE ALSO:
"Bush Appoints Right-Wing Extremist to UN Post" (Common
Dreams)
|
Data Is Lacking on Iran's Arms, U.S.
Panel Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
NYT, 9 March 2005
A commission due to report to President Bush this month will
describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow
firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs, according to
people who have been briefed on the panel's work. The report
comes as intelligence agencies prepare a new formal assessment
on Iran, and follows a 14-month review by the panel, which Mr.
Bush ordered last year to assess the quality of overall
intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons. The Bush administration has been issuing
increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran's
efforts to build nuclear weapons. The warnings have been met
with firm denials in Tehran, which says its nuclear program is
intended purely for civilian purposes. |
Hizbollah Draws Vast Pro-Syrian Crowds
in Beirut
By Nadim Ladki
Reuters, 8 March 2005"
Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese flooded central
Beirut Tuesday for a pro-Syrian rally called by Hizbollah that
dwarfed previous Lebanese protests demanding that Syrian troops
quit Lebanon. As the mainly Shi'ite Muslim crowds thronged Riad
al-Solh square, a security source said Syrian forces had begun
moving eastward under a phased withdrawal plan announced Monday.
"The redeployment to the Bekaa Valley has started in line with
the first phase," the Lebanese source said. The huge Hizbollah
rally was the first major show of popular support for Syria in
Beirut since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik al-Hariri touched off daily anti-Syrian protests,
mainly involving Maronite Christians. Those protests, which drew
tens of thousands Monday, take place in Martyrs Square, just 300
meters (yards) from the scene of the gathering organized by
Hizbollah and its allies. The rival demonstrations, each using
the Lebanese cedar flag to show patriotism, reveal deep rifts in
Lebanon over Syria's role and international demands for
Hizbollah to disarm. Hizbollah and Lebanese security sources
said one million people attended the rally, which Hizbollah
chief Hassan Nasrallah called to thank Syria for its
"sacrifices" in Lebanon and to oppose a U.N. resolution saying
militias must disarm. "I am here to express my opposition to
resolution 1559 because it demands the disarming of the
resistance. Hizbollah is not a militia. It deters Israeli
aggression against Lebanon," 30-year-old demonstrator Mona Srour
told Reuters. Shi'ites, Lebanon's largest community, condemned
Hariri's killing but few joined Christian, Druze and Sunni
Muslim critics of Syria's military and political role in the
country. Shi'ites and many other Lebanese are proud of
Hizbollah's role in forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation
of south Lebanon in 2000. |
Italy Demands Justice from U.S. Over
Iraq Death
By Crispian Balmer
Reuters, 8 March 2005
Italy's foreign minister rejected Tuesday a U.S. account of how
its forces killed an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq and
urged Washington to punish any soldiers found guilty of
wrongdoing in the shooting. "It is our duty to demand truth and
justice," Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini told parliament.
Agent Nicola Calipari has been hailed as a hero in Italy after
he died shielding a newly freed hostage from U.S. gunfire as
they drove to Baghdad airport last Friday. The killing has
strained ties between the United States and Italy, which has
been one of President Bush's staunchest allies in Europe over
the war in Iraq. Fini dismissed speculation that U.S. forces
deliberately fired on the Italians, but he said a U.S. military
statement on the incident appeared to be at odds with what
actually happened. ...The U.S. military has said its soldiers
fired on the Italians' car after it approached a checkpoint at
speed and failed to heed signals to slow down. But in a detailed
reconstruction, Fini insisted that the Italians had been driving
slowly and had received no warning.
SEE ALSO:
Friendly Fire in Iraq Takes Toll on
U.S.-Led Coalition - and Iraqis
by Rawya Rageh and Todd Pitman
AP via Common Dreams, 7 March 2005
They're told every day across Iraq - tragic stories of people
dying in hails of gunfire, shattered windshields and car seats
covered in blood. Friendly fire - often at U.S. military
checkpoints - is taking a toll on the United States and its
allies, as the shooting deaths of an Italian intelligence agent
and a Bulgarian soldier highlight the terrifying reality of
Iraqi roads. "They're just cowboys," an infuriated Abdullah
Mohammed said Monday of U.S. troops who killed his brother Feb.
28 in Ramadi. Mohammed said his brother edged too close to an
American patrol. "They killed him without any reason, they
suddenly shot at his car." Weary of suicide car bombers, U.S.
military vehicles in Iraq carry signs in Arabic warning
civilians to keep a distance or risk "deadly force." Similar
warnings are affixed to fortified, tank-manned U.S. checkpoints
around the capital. In a country where insurgents strike daily,
there's no doubt some of the force is justified. But Iraqi
civilians are getting tangled up in the violence as well, at an
alarming rate. |
Heavily Armed Duo in No Position to Lay
Down Law on Proliferation
Sydney Herald, 8 March 2005
Thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions would be easier if the US
and Israel kept their side of the bargain, writes Richard
Butler. In recent months the US President, George Bush, and
senior members of his Administration have asserted that Iran is
involved in the clandestine development of nuclear weapons. Last
week Bush turned up the temperature during his visit to Europe,
when he declared, on one public occasion punching the air with
his fist, Iran "must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear
weapon". A month earlier The New Yorker published a disturbing
report by Seymour Hersch that US forces had already entered Iran
from Iraq to scope out prospective targets related to Iran's
nuclear activities. The Pentagon expressed anger at Hersch's
report and attacked him personally, but did not directly deny
its substance. Last week Bush chose to comment publicly on this
matter saying that reports the US was planning to attack Iran
were wrong, but all options were on the table. There is good
reason for concern about the directions of Iran's nuclear
program. In a manner similar to Bush's remarks on his future
intentions, Iran has also given contradictory signals, claiming
that it was not making a nuclear weapon but had a right to do so
if it chose to. |
It will take all our energy to stand
still
Bush's America is Waging a Global Battle Against Women's
Rights
Mary-Ann Stephenson
The Guardian, 8 March 2005
For all George Bush's courting of Europe, when it comes to
women's reproductive rights he is closer to Iran and Syria than
the EU. In 1995, representatives from 189 countries met in
Beijing and agreed a major programme on women's equality and
human rights - the Beijing platform for action. This statement
was ambitious, and the UN commission on the status of women is
currently meeting in New York to review its progress over the
past decade.
The meeting was to publish a statement reaffirming international
support for the platform for action. But the US has refused to
support it unless it is amended to say that the platform does
not create any new human rights or the right to abortion. But it
doesn't actually give the right to abortion. States are called
on to "consider reviewing laws containing punitive measures
against women who have undergone illegal abortions", but the
platform is clear that "any measures or changes related to
abortion within the health system can only be determined at the
national or local level according to the national legislative
process". But that's not how the US is presenting it. Countries
are being warned that failure to support the US amendment could
allow the platform to be used to push through a "right to
abortion" and take away the right of countries to determine
their own laws. Activists are furious. Annette Lawson, of the
European Women's Lobby, said the US is "simply trying to mislead
the rest of the world".
|
|
Welcome to BushWorld:
Pentagon Clears Itself on Prisoner Abuse
Committee Will Not Examine Intelligence Misuse
House Ethics Panel Shut Down |
US Senate Ends Probe into
Prewar Intelligence on Iraq
By Edward Alden
Financial Times, 11 March 2005
The Senate committee overseeing US intelligence has shut down
its investigation into whether top administration officials
distorted intelligence evidence to build the case for war on
Iraq. Senator Pat Roberts, who heads the committee, said on
Thursday he was satisfied administration officials had
accurately portrayed what turned out to be flawed intelligence
claiming the regime of Saddam Hussein possessed mass destruction
weapons. “The bottom line was they believed the intelligence,
and intelligence was wrong,” the Kansas Republican told an
audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. |
Pentagon Clears Top Personnel, Policies in
Abuses
By Vicki Allen
Reuters, 11 March 2005
The Pentagon said its policies and top officials did not cause
the mistreatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Guantanamo Bay, but in a report released on Thursday cited a
series of missed opportunities to correct lapses that led to the
abuses. The latest and most wide-ranging abuse report, by Navy
inspector general Vice Adm. Albert Church, largely tracks the
Pentagon's previous contention that its leaders were not
directly responsible for sexual and physical mistreatment of
prisoners. A 21-page unclassified summary of the report was to
be released at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The
full 368-page report is classified. The summary obtained by
Reuters found "no single, over-arching explanation" for the
abuses. While it said authorized interrogation policies did not
cause them, "We nevertheless identified a number of missed
opportunities in the policy development process" to issue more
specific guidelines and to learn from previous conflicts.
|
AUDIO LINK
Baghdad Bombing Wounds Several Americans
by Anthony Kuhn
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
Several grim incidents occur in Iraq Tuesday: Iraqi authorities
discover two sites of apparent massacres, a major bombing in
Baghdad kills three and wounds at least 30 and there is an
attempted assassination of an Iraqi Cabinet minister. |
AUDIO LINK
Panel Said to Criticize U.S. Intelligence
on Iran
by Mary Louise Kelly
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
A New York Times reports says the presidential intelligence
commission will sharply criticize the intelligence record on
Iran. The alleged problems include a heavy reliance on
information from Iranian dissidents.
SEE ALSO:
Bush Announces Iraq Exit Strategy:
'We'll Go Through Iran'
(The Onion) |
AUDIO LINK
Report Details Israeli Support for
Unauthorized Settlements
by Peter Kenyon
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
A report commissioned by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon finds that
state officials have violated Israeli law to promote the spread
of illegal Jewish settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.
Opposition lawmakers are calling for a criminal investigation. |
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
Is Bush Bringing Democracy to the Middle
East?
A Debate on U.S. Foreign Policy in
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and More
DemocracyNow, 9 March 2005
We host a debate on the question: Is Bush bringing democracy to
the Middle East? We are joined by Steven Cook of the Council on
Foreign Relations, Rahul Mahajan, an independent journalist and
author and Farid Ghadry, the co-founder and current president of
the Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based Syrian opposition party.
[includes rush transcript] |
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
A More Cautious View on Democracy in
the Middle East
By Daniel Schorr
All Things Considered, 9 March 2005
NPR's senior news analyst says that even though several
countries in the Middle East seem to be moving towards
democracy, recent events in Lebanon and Syria indicate that
there is still a way to go before democracy fully takes hold. |
SEE ALSO:
GW as the 'Big Kahuna' Riding a Wave of Democracy?
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 9 November 2005
The simplistic master narrative constructed by the partisans of
President George W. Bush held that the January 30 elections were
a huge success, and signalled a turn to democracy in the Middle
East. Then the anti-Syrian demonstrations were interpreted as a
yearning for democracy inspired by the Iraqi elections.
This interpretation is a gross misunderstanding of the situation
in the Middle East. Bush is not pushing with any real force for
democratization of Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy) or
Pakistan (where the elected parliament demands in vain that
General Pervez Musharraf take off his uniform if he wants to be
president), or Tunisia (where Zayn Ben Ali has just won his 4th
unopposed term as president), etc. Democratization is being
pushed only for regimes that Bush dislikes, such as Syria or
Iran. The gestures that Mubarak of Egypt made (officially
recognized parties may put up candidates to run against him, but
not popular political forces like the Muslim Brotherhood) are
empty.
In fact the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections were deeply flawed. 42
percent of the electorate did not show up. The elections could
only be held by locking down the country for 3 days, forbidding
all vehicular traffic to stop car bombings. The electorate had
no idea for whom they were voting, since the candidates' names
were secret until the last moment. The Sunni Arabs boycotted or
were prevented from voting by the ongoing guerrilla war, which
started right back up after the ban on traffic lapsed.
The Lebanese have been having often lively parliamentary
election campaigns for decades. The idea that the urbane and
sophisticated Beirutis had anything to learn from the Jan. 30
process in Iraq is absurd on the face of it. Elections were
already scheduled in Lebanon for later this spring.
Moreover, the anti-Syrian protests were not a signal that the
Lebanese wanted to be like American-occupied Iraq. They were a
signal that the Druze, Maronites and a section of the Sunnis had
agreed to try to push Syria out. It was the US who had invited
Syria into Lebanon in 1976. And it was a sign that Lebanon is
still deeply divided, since the Shiite plurality largely
supports Syria. Given the pro-Syrian sentiment in some Sunni
cities like Tripoli, it may well be that a majority of Lebanese
want Syria to remain in some capacity. If that were true, what
would it do to Mr. Bush's master narrative of the march of
democracy? |
Bush Nominates Fierce UN Critic and
Unilateralist John Bolton As Ambassador to United Nations
DemocracyNow interview with Jim Lobe, 9 March 2005
President Bush nominated John Bolton to become the next U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations. We take a look at Bolton's
record, his criticism of the UN and why his nomination stunned
many in Washington with journalist Jim Lobe. [includes rush
transcript]
SEE ALSO:
"Bush Appoints Right-Wing Extremist to UN Post" (Common
Dreams)
|
Data Is Lacking on Iran's Arms, U.S.
Panel Says
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
NYT, 9 March 2005
A commission due to report to President Bush this month will
describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow
firm judgments about Iran's weapons programs, according to
people who have been briefed on the panel's work. The report
comes as intelligence agencies prepare a new formal assessment
on Iran, and follows a 14-month review by the panel, which Mr.
Bush ordered last year to assess the quality of overall
intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons. The Bush administration has been issuing
increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran's
efforts to build nuclear weapons. The warnings have been met
with firm denials in Tehran, which says its nuclear program is
intended purely for civilian purposes. |
Hizbollah Draws Vast Pro-Syrian Crowds
in Beirut
By Nadim Ladki
Reuters, 8 March 2005"
Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving Lebanese flooded central
Beirut Tuesday for a pro-Syrian rally called by Hizbollah that
dwarfed previous Lebanese protests demanding that Syrian troops
quit Lebanon. As the mainly Shi'ite Muslim crowds thronged Riad
al-Solh square, a security source said Syrian forces had begun
moving eastward under a phased withdrawal plan announced Monday.
"The redeployment to the Bekaa Valley has started in line with
the first phase," the Lebanese source said. The huge Hizbollah
rally was the first major show of popular support for Syria in
Beirut since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafik al-Hariri touched off daily anti-Syrian protests,
mainly involving Maronite Christians. Those protests, which drew
tens of thousands Monday, take place in Martyrs Square, just 300
meters (yards) from the scene of the gathering organized by
Hizbollah and its allies. The rival demonstrations, each using
the Lebanese cedar flag to show patriotism, reveal deep rifts in
Lebanon over Syria's role and international demands for
Hizbollah to disarm. Hizbollah and Lebanese security sources
said one million people attended the rally, which Hizbollah
chief Hassan Nasrallah called to thank Syria for its
"sacrifices" in Lebanon and to oppose a U.N. resolution saying
militias must disarm. "I am here to express my opposition to
resolution 1559 because it demands the disarming of the
resistance. Hizbollah is not a militia. It deters Israeli
aggression against Lebanon," 30-year-old demonstrator Mona Srour
told Reuters. Shi'ites, Lebanon's largest community, condemned
Hariri's killing but few joined Christian, Druze and Sunni
Muslim critics of Syria's military and political role in the
country. Shi'ites and many other Lebanese are proud of
Hizbollah's role in forcing Israel to end its 22-year occupation
of south Lebanon in 2000. |
Italy Demands Justice from U.S. Over
Iraq Death
By Crispian Balmer
Reuters, 8 March 2005
Italy's foreign minister rejected Tuesday a U.S. account of how
its forces killed an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq and
urged Washington to punish any soldiers found guilty of
wrongdoing in the shooting. "It is our duty to demand truth and
justice," Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini told parliament.
Agent Nicola Calipari has been hailed as a hero in Italy after
he died shielding a newly freed hostage from U.S. gunfire as
they drove to Baghdad airport last Friday. The killing has
strained ties between the United States and Italy, which has
been one of President Bush's staunchest allies in Europe over
the war in Iraq. Fini dismissed speculation that U.S. forces
deliberately fired on the Italians, but he said a U.S. military
statement on the incident appeared to be at odds with what
actually happened. ...The U.S. military has said its soldiers
fired on the Italians' car after it approached a checkpoint at
speed and failed to heed signals to slow down. But in a detailed
reconstruction, Fini insisted that the Italians had been driving
slowly and had received no warning.
SEE ALSO:
Friendly Fire in Iraq Takes Toll on
U.S.-Led Coalition - and Iraqis
by Rawya Rageh and Todd Pitman
AP via Common Dreams, 7 March 2005
They're told every day across Iraq - tragic stories of people
dying in hails of gunfire, shattered windshields and car seats
covered in blood. Friendly fire - often at U.S. military
checkpoints - is taking a toll on the United States and its
allies, as the shooting deaths of an Italian intelligence agent
and a Bulgarian soldier highlight the terrifying reality of
Iraqi roads. "They're just cowboys," an infuriated Abdullah
Mohammed said Monday of U.S. troops who killed his brother Feb.
28 in Ramadi. Mohammed said his brother edged too close to an
American patrol. "They killed him without any reason, they
suddenly shot at his car." Weary of suicide car bombers, U.S.
military vehicles in Iraq carry signs in Arabic warning
civilians to keep a distance or risk "deadly force." Similar
warnings are affixed to fortified, tank-manned U.S. checkpoints
around the capital. In a country where insurgents strike daily,
there's no doubt some of the force is justified. But Iraqi
civilians are getting tangled up in the violence as well, at an
alarming rate. |
Heavily Armed Duo in No Position to Lay
Down Law on Proliferation
Sydney Herald, 8 March 2005
Thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions would be easier if the US
and Israel kept their side of the bargain, writes Richard
Butler. In recent months the US President, George Bush, and
senior members of his Administration have asserted that Iran is
involved in the clandestine development of nuclear weapons. Last
week Bush turned up the temperature during his visit to Europe,
when he declared, on one public occasion punching the air with
his fist, Iran "must not be allowed to acquire a nuclear
weapon". A month earlier The New Yorker published a disturbing
report by Seymour Hersch that US forces had already entered Iran
from Iraq to scope out prospective targets related to Iran's
nuclear activities. The Pentagon expressed anger at Hersch's
report and attacked him personally, but did not directly deny
its substance. Last week Bush chose to comment publicly on this
matter saying that reports the US was planning to attack Iran
were wrong, but all options were on the table. There is good
reason for concern about the directions of Iran's nuclear
program. In a manner similar to Bush's remarks on his future
intentions, Iran has also given contradictory signals, claiming
that it was not making a nuclear weapon but had a right to do so
if it chose to. |
It will take all our energy to stand
still
Bush's America is Waging a Global Battle Against Women's
Rights
Mary-Ann Stephenson
The Guardian, 8 March 2005
For all George Bush's courting of Europe, when it comes to
women's reproductive rights he is closer to Iran and Syria than
the EU. In 1995, representatives from 189 countries met in
Beijing and agreed a major programme on women's equality and
human rights - the Beijing platform for action. This statement
was ambitious, and the UN commission on the status of women is
currently meeting in New York to review its progress over the
past decade.
The meeting was to publish a statement reaffirming international
support for the platform for action. But the US has refused to
support it unless it is amended to say that the platform does
not create any new human rights or the right to abortion. But it
doesn't actually give the right to abortion. States are called
on to "consider reviewing laws containing punitive measures
against women who have undergone illegal abortions", but the
platform is clear that "any measures or changes related to
abortion within the health system can only be determined at the
national or local level according to the national legislative
process". But that's not how the US is presenting it. Countries
are being warned that failure to support the US amendment could
allow the platform to be used to push through a "right to
abortion" and take away the right of countries to determine
their own laws. Activists are furious. Annette Lawson, of the
European Women's Lobby, said the US is "simply trying to mislead
the rest of the world".
|
Bush Appoints Right-Wing Extremist to
UN Post
by Jim Lobe
Common Dreams, 8 March 2005
In a breathtaking victory for right-wing hawks, U.S. President
George W. Bush has nominated Undersecretary of State for Arms
Control and International Security John Bolton to become his
next ambassador to the United Nations.
Bolton, widely considered the most unilateralist and least
diplomatic of senior U.S. officials during Bush's first term,
will have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate where some
Democrats, a few of whom were said to be stunned by the
nomination, are expected to put up a fight.
One aide called the nomination ”incredible”, particularly in
light of recent indications, including his talks with European
leaders at the end of last month, that Bush and his new
secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, intended to pursue a more
multilateralist policy in his second term and was determined to
smooth the rougher diplomatic edges of his foreign policy team.
That notion had been bolstered by Rice's choice of Trade
Representative Robert Zoellick, a long-time pragmatist and
”realist”, as her deputy despite Bolton's efforts, backed by
Vice President Dick Cheney, to take the job.
The fact that he failed in his quest was taken as a clear sign
that Rice was indeed moving toward a more multilateralist policy
in defiance even of Cheney, the undisputed the leader of the
coalition of aggressive nationalists, neo-conservatives, and
Christian Right activists that dominated foreign policy from the
Sep. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon
until after the Iraq invasion.
Rice's acquiescence, if not agreement, to serve as her
representative at the U.N., however, will require foreign policy
analysts here to reassess that judgment.
...”His nomination sends the exactly the wrong message to the
world about the Bush administration's willingness to work with
other countries and in multilateral institutions. There's no one
who has a greater track record of offending other countries,
including our closest allies...” |
Bush Accused of 'Fiddling While World
Burns' by Ignoring Climate Change
By Steve Connor, Science Editoor
Independent (UK), 7 March 2005
One of Britain's most eminent scientists has attacked President
Bush for acting like a latter-day Nero who fiddles while the
world burns because of global warming. Lord May of Oxford, the
president of the Royal Society and former chief scientific
adviser to the Government, said the Bush administration must
accept the case has been made about the link between man-made
pollution and climate change. Continuing to deny the impact of
human activities on the environment may ultimately have
catastrophic consequences for everyone on the planet, he said. |
At Least 33 Iraqis Killed in Attacks
Violence comes after date is set for meeting of new assembly
AP via MSNBC.com, 7 March 2005
Iraqi insurgents set off bombs and fired rocket-propelled
grenades and automatic weapons at military convoys, checkpoints
and police patrols in a spate of violence Monday that killed 33
people and wounded dozens. The terrorist group Al-Qaida in Iraq,
led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for much of
the bloodshed.
As the attacks persisted, so did negotiations to form Iraq’s
first democratically elected government. Iraqi Kurds said they
were close to a deal with the Shiite clergy-backed United Iraqi
Alliance to secure many of their territorial demands and ensure
the country’s secular character after its National Assembly
convenes March 16.
Kurdish leverage
The dominant Shiite Muslim alliance, however, said although it
agreed that Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani would become Iraq’s
president, it was still talking about other conditions set by
the Kurds for their support in the 275-member legislative body. |
Summit May Favor Tackling Causes of
Terrorism Over Military Response
by Ed McCullough
AP via Common Dreams, 8 March 2005
Governments afflicted by extremist violence must address its
causes if they hope to defeat it, not just strike back as the
United States has done, say experts who will take part in a
world conference on terrorism in Madrid this week. Those causes
include poverty, religious intolerance and failures to integrate
a swelling tide of immigrants. "The consensus ... is a 'soft'
power approach based on prevention - not like the United States
has in mind, but (rather) with engagement with North African
Muslim nations, economic development, assimilating and
integrating immigrants into host nations," Charles Powell, a
history professor at San Pablo-CEU University in Madrid, said in
an interview.
The conference, which runs from Tuesday to Friday, brings
together world leaders including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and various heads of
government or state, as well as about 180 experts from 50
countries ...The general tone of the conference will not
be at all sympathetic to what the Bush administration has been
up to. |
Ex-Hostage Voices Her Suspicions
'I could have been the target,' she says
By Jason Horowitz
International Herald Tribune, 7 March 2005
The Italian reporter wounded when U.S. troops opened fire on the
car carrying her and Italian secret service officers to the
Baghdad airport just hours after her release from kidnappers
rejected the U.S. version of the incident Sunday and refused to
rule out that she had been shot at intentionally. "The fact that
the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is
known," the ex-hostage, Giuliana Sgrena, said in a telephone
interview with Sky TG24 television. "The fact that they do
everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the
lives of people held hostages, everybody knows that. So I don't
see why I should rule out that I could have been the target."
The White House called the shooting a "horrific accident" and
promised a full investigation. Sgrena, a 56-year-old reporter
for the Communist daily Il Manifesto, was hit with shrapnel in
the shoulder Friday night at a checkpoint in western Baghdad. An
Italian intelligence agent, Nicola Calipari, tried to shield her
from the bullets and was killed. Calipari's body was flown back
to Italy over the weekend and lay in state at Vittoriano, a
monument in Rome where thousands of Italians filed by. |
From All Sides
In the deadly cauldron of
Iraq, even the Arab media are being pushed off the story
By Mariah Blake
Columbia Journalism Review, 7 March 2005
In a war where the various factions seem to want everyone —
including the press — to choose sides, the Arab media have found
themselves under attack from every direction. That has
far-reaching implications. Western reporters, faced with the
threat of death, began retreating to fortified compounds months
ago. Now, with pressure mounting, Arab journalists, along with
Arab translators and fixers employed by international news
organizations, are retreating, too. The result is that firsthand
reporting is getting squeezed out. When it comes to covering the
Iraq conflict — one of the most important stories of our time —
even the Arab media are finding themselves increasingly reliant
on secondhand accounts and official reports from Washington and
Baghdad, and less able to gauge how events are playing out in
the lives of ordinary Iraqis. “We can no longer get close to
people’s suffering, people’s hopes, people’s dreams,” says Nabil
Khatib, Al Arabiya’s executive editor for news. “We no longer
know what’s really going on because we can no longer get close
to reality.” |
Counter-Terrorism Revisited
By B Raman
Asia Times, 8 March 2005
To mark the first anniversary of the spectacular terrorist
strikes in Madrid by jihadi terrorists with definite sympathy
for al-Qaeda, even if not satisfactorily proven links to it, the
city is hosting what has been projected as an international
summit on democracy, terrorism and security from this Tuesday to
Thursday to discuss, inter alia, the causes and the underlying
factors of terrorism, methods of confronting it and the
democratic responses available for confronting it.
...Conventional wisdom that progress toward finding a solution
to the Palestine problem and the introduction of democracy in
the Muslim world would set in motion the withering away of
jihadi terrorism is unlikely to be proved right. Possibly, if a
solution had been found to the Palestine problem before the
US-led invasion of Iraq, that might have had a decisive impact
on the "war against terrorism". For the new breed of jihadi
terrorists volunteering for suicide missions in Iraq in
increasing numbers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria,
Yemen and other Muslim countries, the objective is no longer
freedom for the Palestinian people, but to avenge the
humiliation inflicted on a proud Arab people and the desecration
of their culture by the US-led coalition. |
|
Kidnapping Becomes Iraq's Boom Industry
By Peter Popham
Independent (UK), 7 March 2005
Hostage-taking is a booming industry in Iraq, but Italy is the
only Western country to admit to paying huge ransoms for the
release of its citizens. Rumours of large sums changing hands
surfaced with the liberation of three Italian security guards
last June. When two volunteer workers, Simona Torretta and
Simona Pari, were freed last September after three weeks in
captivity, it was claimed that at least €1m (£680,000) had been
paid for their release; the denial by then foreign minister
Franco Frattini had a hollow ring. Britain and the US have by
contrast pursued a "no negotiation" line, arguing that paying
ransoms intensifies the fever for hostage-taking and lines the
pockets of terrorists. But it is a policy that has seen Ken
Bigley, Margaret Hassan, Nick Berg and other hostages murdered.
France secured the release of two journalists, Christian Chesnot
and George Malbrunot after 124 days allegedly through the
payment of a ransom, though this was denied. Another French
journalist, Florence Aubenas, who writes for the daily
Libération, has been held since January, and her family say
her captors have demanded $3m (£1.5m) and the withdrawal of
foreign troops. |
What Iraq's
Checkpoints Are Like
By Annia Ciezadlo
Christian Science Monitor, 7 March 2005
Editor's note: On Friday, an
Italian intelligence officer was killed and Italian journalist
Giuliana Sgrena was wounded as their car approached a US
military checkpoint in Baghdad. The US says the car was
speeding, despite hand signals, flashing white lights, and
warning shots from US forces. Ms. Sgrena says her car was not
speeding and they did see any signals. This personal account,
filed prior to the shooting, explains how confusing and risky
checkpoints can be - from both sides. It's a common
occurrence in Iraq: A car speeds toward an American checkpoint
or foot patrol. They fire warning shots; the car keeps coming.
Soldiers then shoot at the car. Sometimes the on-comer is a
foiled suicide attacker (see
story), but other times, it's an unarmed family.
|
'Outsourcing torture'
Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send
Suspects Abroad to Jails
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
NYT, 6 March 2005
The Bush administration's secret program to transfer suspected
terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been
carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad
authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case
approval from the White House or the State or Justice
Departments, according to current and former government
officials. The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to
operate independently was provided by the White House under a
still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days
of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, the officials said. The process, known as rendition,
has been central in the government's efforts to disrupt
terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights
groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush
administration's public pledge to provide safeguards against
torture. |
"Going to War with the Army You Have"
Why the U.S. Cannot Correct Its Military Blunders in Iraq
By Michael Schwartz
TomDispatch, 5 March 2005
In the short, dreary history of America's Iraq war, our leaders
have repeatedly acted on gross misconceptions about whom they
were fighting -- sometimes based on faulty intelligence, but
sometimes in the face of perfectly accurate intelligence. This
is, in all likelihood, another instance where they believe their
own distortions, and it is worthwhile attempting to understand
the underlying pattern that produces this almost predictable
error. ...The American army is also fighting with the army it
has. This army is the best equipped in the world for advanced
conventional warfare -- with tanks, artillery, air power,
missile power, battlefield surveillance power, and satellite
imaging to support highly mobile, well equipped, and superbly
trained soldiers. No supply route is safe from its firepower,
and no conventional army would be likely to hold its ground long
against an American assault. But the most intractable part of
the resistance in Iraq is fighting a guerrilla war: they do not
have long supply lines and they rarely try to hold their ground.
Guerrilla armies hide by melting into the local population.
(Everyone knows this, including, of course, American military
men.) To defeat them, an occupying force must have the
intelligence to identify guerrillas who can disappear into the
civilian world; and it must station troops throughout resistance
strongholds in order to pounce upon guerrillas when they emerge
from hiding to mount an attack. American military strategists
know this, too. But these lessons -- painfully drawn from
Vietnam -- can't be implemented by the army that Donald Rumsfeld
sent to war. The Americans, in fact, have neither of these
resources. Anti-guerrilla intelligence, after all, requires the
cooperation of the local population, which, at least in the
Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq, the U.S. has definitively
alienated, largely through its use of blunt-edged conventional
army attacks on communities that harbor guerrillas. And it
cannot station enough troops in key locations because too small
an occupation force is spread far too thinly over contested
parts of the country. Estimates for the size of an army needed
to pacify Iraq range upward from
General Eric Shinseki's prewar call for "several hundred
thousand" troops. The American military simply lacks the tools
it needs to fight the guerrillas. ...This backward logic leads
inevitably to imagining an enemy that might be far more
susceptible to defeat with the tools at hand; that is, an
opponent with long supply lines (from Syria, for example) and a
command-and-control leadership (Zarqawi and his Saddamist
allies, for example) capable of being "decapitated." This
portrait of the enemy then justifies a military strategy that
seeks, above all, to kill or capture the theorized leaders. Such
tactics almost always fail (even when leaders are
captured); and in the process of failing, only alienates further
the Iraqi population, producing an ever larger, more resourceful
enemy.
SEE ALSO:
Real Story of the Insurgency
(The Nation)
... the Bush Administration has downplayed or distorted what is
knows about the size, strength and structure of an insurgency
that only continues to grow. A "pocket of dead-enders" has
turned into a mix of former Baathists, Sunni nationalists,
Shiite radicals and foreign terrorists numbering as many as
40,000 core fighters and 200,000 sympathizers, according to
Iraq's own intelligence chief. Below is a recap of the
Administration's tragedy of errors: ...
|
'Drop that Second Amendment and put
your severely burnt hands high where we can see 'em!'
Maximum Pain is Aim of New US Weapon
By David Hambling
New Scientist, 2 March 2005
The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers
a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away.
Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims
unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at
controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they
fear that the technology will be used for torture. "I am deeply
concerned about the ethical aspects of this research," says
Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and
Westminster Hospital in London, UK. "Even if the use of
temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure,
which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and
psychological effects are unknown." The research came to light
in documents unearthed by the Sunshine Project, an organisation
based in Texas and in Hamburg, Germany, that exposes biological
weapons research. The papers were released under the US¹s
Freedom of Information Act. One document, a research contract
between the Office of Naval Research and the University of
Florida in Gainesville, US, is entitled "Sensory consequences of
electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas." It
concerns so-called Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs), which fire
a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it
hits something solid, like a person (New Scientist print
edition, 12 October 2002). The weapon, destined for use in 2007,
could literally knock rioters off their feet.... According to a
2003 review of non-lethal weapons by the US Naval Studies Board,
which advises the navy and marine corps, PEPs produced "pain and
temporary paralysis" in tests on animals. This appears to be the
result of an electromagnetic pulse produced by the expanding
plasma which triggers impulses in nerve cells. The new study,
which runs until July and will be carried out with researchers
at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, aims to
optimise this effect. The idea is to work out how to generate a
pulse which triggers pain neurons without damaging tissue. The
contract, heavily censored before release, asks researchers to
look for "optimal pulse parameters to evoke peak nociceptor
activation" -- in other words, cause the maximum pain possible.
Studies on cells grown in the lab will identify how much pain
can be inflicted on someone before causing injury or death. |
NPR Correspondent Amos Details Iraq
Assignments
By Christine Parrish
Belfast Village Soup.com, 28 February 2005
"We are too restricted. We cannot go out and be reporters in
Iraq anymore and it is a big problem." -- Deborah Amos, foreign
correspondent for National Public Radio National Public Radio
foreign correspondent Deborah Amos, who has reported from Iraq
off and on since the Iraq-American war started two years ago,
said Iraq has become the most dangerous assignment in the world
and one of the most difficult places to do accurate and balanced
reporting. Amos, who addressed and audience of more than 500 on
Saturday, Feb. 26 at the 2005 Camden Conference on the Middle
East, said the full story of what is happening in Iraq is not
being reported for two reasons: the dangerous situation in the
country severely restricts movement, and the U.S. military
restricts media access. |
Iraq Insurgents Seize Initiative
By Jim Muir
BBC News, 3 March 2005
A spate of recent attacks in Iraq has underlined the
determination of the insurgents to regain the initiative,
following general elections which they had vowed - and failed -
to disrupt, and which many Iraqis see as a qualified success.
Five weeks on from the elections, the new parliament has not yet
convened. The formation of a government has got bogged down in
protracted and complex negotiations between the political
factions which emerged from the polls with seats in the new
assembly. There are fears that a prolonged delay could signal a
loss of momentum and play into the hands of the insurgents in
the make-or-break weeks that lie ahead. "The insurgency is
already taking advantage of the paralysis in government," a
senior security official said. "If there is more delay in
forming a new administration, I have no doubt that there will be
bad repercussions - there already are, and it's getting bigger
every day." |
American Jails in Iraq Bursting With
Detainees
By EDWARD WONG
NYT, 3 March 2005
The American military's major detention centers in Iraq have
swelled to capacity and are holding more people than ever,
senior military officials say. The growing detainee population
reflects recent changes in how the military has been waging the
war and in its policies toward detainees, the officials say. The
military swept up many Iraqis before the Jan. 30 elections in an
attempt to curb violence and halted all releases before the
vote. Other detainees have been captured in ambitious recent
offensives across the Sunni Triangle, from Samarra to Falluja to
the Euphrates River valley south of Baghdad. The Abu Ghraib
abuse scandal also forced changes in the system, with the
military working quickly last summer to try and weed out
detainees who obviously did not belong in prison. Many of the
ones remaining are more likely to be denied release by review
boards, military officials say. As of this week, the military is
holding at least 8,900 detainees in the three major prisons,
1,000 more than in late January. Here in Abu Ghraib, where eight
American soldiers were charged last year with abusing detainees,
3,160 people are being kept, well above the 2,500 level
considered ideal, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for
the detainee system. The largest center, Camp Bucca in the
south, has at least 5,640 detainees. |
A Less Super Superpower
By Jonathan Schell
TomDispatch, 2 March 2005
For power, as Thomas Hobbes wrote in one of the most succinct
and durable definitions of power ever offered, is a "present
means, to obtain some future apparent good." Power, after all,
is not just an expenditure of energy. There must be results.
Measured by Hobbes's test, the superpower looks less super. Its
military has been stretched to the breaking point by the
occupation of a single weak country, Iraq. Its economy is held
hostage by Himalayas of external debt, much of it in the hands
of a strategic rival, China, holder of nearly $200 billion in
Treasury bills. Its domestic debt, caused in part by the war
expenditures, also towers to the skies. The United States has
dramatically failed to make progress in its main declared
foreign policy objective, the nonproliferation of weapons of
mass destruction: While searching fruitlessly for nuclear
programs in Iraq, where they did not exist, it temporized with
North Korea, where they apparently do exist, and now it seems at
a loss for a policy that will stop Iran from taking the same
path. The President has just announced that the "end of tyranny"
is his goal, but in his first term the global democracy movement
suffered its greatest setback since the cold war -- Russia's
slide toward authoritarianism. The shaky foundations of
America's power were on display in the President's recent
travels. Shortly before Bush landed in Brussels, Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder of Germany quietly but firmly repudiated the
President's militarized, US-centered approach to world affairs.
NATO, he heretically announced, should no longer be "the primary
venue" of the Atlantic relationship. Did that mean that Europe
would continue to take direction from Washington through some
other venue? Hardly: He was, he said, formulating German policy
"in Europe, for Europe and from Europe." The superpower's
penchant for military action was also rejected. The chancellor
said, "Challenges lie today beyond the North Atlantic Alliance's
former zone of mutual assistance. And they do not primarily
require military responses." Schröder was standing on solid
ground at home. A poll in the German newspaper Die Welt revealed
that "Vladimir Putin is seen as more trustworthy than George W.
Bush, France as a more important partner for German foreign and
security policy than the United States. Closer harmonization of
German foreign policy with America is not wanted, either."
|
Christian 'primitivism' rejected by
other nations
US Demand Causes Outcry at UN Meeting
AFP via Common Dreams, 2 March 2005
A US attempt to insert language restricting abortion rights into
documents prepared by a conference marking the 10th anniversary
of a meeting in Beijing has sparked a determined response from
European delegates as well as representatives of
non-governmental organizations. More than 150 such groups taking
part in the conference that is examining the status of women a
decade after the Beijing conference issued a statement Tuesday
condemning the proposed US amendment. "The purpose of this
Session of the Commission on the Status of Women - the UN body
charged specifically with advancing the status of women - is to
reaffirm the Beijing Platform for Action, not to move backward
or undermine it," the statement said. "We, representatives of
civil society organizations from all regions of the world,
celebrate the historic achievement for women's human rights that
the Platform represents," the document continued. "We strongly
applaud the statement by Secretary General Kofi Annan that the
Platform adopted in 1995 was 'a giant step forward' and that
gender equality is critical to the development and peace of
every nation', and we affirm his call for specific targeted
actions to realize women's rights in ALL areas. "In this light,
we urge government delegations to oppose unequivocally the
amendment to the Draft Declaration proposed by the United
States. Let's affirm the Platform fully and move forward!" the
signatories urged.
SEE ALSO:
US Becomes Last Country to End Death Penalty for
Under-18s
Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian, 2 March 2005
The US bowed to international and domestic pressure yesterday,
becoming the last country in the world officially to abolish the
death penalty for offenders who were under 18 when they
committed murder. The supreme court ruling will spare up to 70
inmates who are on death row for committing murders while aged
16 or 17, and it removes a source of friction between the US and
Europe. The EU welcomed the decision, but said it "opposes
capital punishment under all circumstances". The former American
president Jimmy Carter said that with the ruling the US had
joined "the community of nations". The swing vote came from
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who normally sides with the
conservatives on the bench. In giving his reasons, he explicitly
cited the role of world opinion. "It is proper that we
acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion
against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the
understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of
young people may often be a factor in the crime," he wrote,
adding that there was an emerging national consensus against
juvenile execution. Dissenting from the majority view, Justice
Antonin Scalia argued that foreign pressure should play no role
in the decision. He said the constitution should not be
determined by "the subjective views of five members of this
court and like-minded foreigners". The judges ruled that
juvenile execution conflicted with the eighth amendment of the
constitution which outlaws "cruel and unusual punishment". "To
decide what is cruel and unusual you don't look at what was
happening 200 years ago. You look at evolving standards of
decency. In that specific area, what is going on in the rest of
the world is relevant," said Stephen Harper, an expert on
juvenile law at the University of Miami. "Clearly, international
opinion had some effect on the court." ..."Until today the
US was the only country that officially executed child
offenders; today's ruling finally brings the US out from the
cold on this issue," Kate Allen, Amnesty International's UK
director, said in a statement. "The death penalty does nothing
to deter crime and is a human rights violation that brings shame
on those countries that use it. In addition, innocent people are
always at risk of execution." In 1988 the supreme court outlawed
the execution of anyone 15 or under. At the time of yesterday's
ruling, 15 states had death penalties for offenders as young as
16 while four had a minimum age of 17. |
U.S. Troop Deaths in Iraq Rise to 1,500
By TODD PITMAN
AP via The Guardian, 3 March 2005
The number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq rose to 1,500 after
the military announced Thursday that a soldier was killed in
action just south of the capital, an Associated Press count
showed.
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Attacking Iran: I Know It Sounds Crazy,
But...
By Ray McGovern
TomDispatch, 1 March 2005
"'This notion that the United States is getting ready to
attack Iran is simply ridiculous.' "(Short pause)
"'And having said that, all options are on the table.'
"Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the
result: '(Laughter).'"
...Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is
being run by men -- yes, only men -- who were routinely referred
to in high circles in Washington during the 1980s as "the
crazies." I can attest to that personally, but one need not take
my word for it.
According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental
American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, former Secretary of
State Colin Powell added an old soldier's adjective to the
"crazies" sobriquet in referring to the same officials. Powell,
who was military aide to Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger in
the early eighties, was overheard calling them "the f---ing
crazies" during a phone call with British Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw before the war in Iraq. At the time, Powell was reportedly
deeply concerned over their determination to attack -- with or
without UN approval. Small wonder that they got rid of Powell
after the election, as soon as they had no more use for him.
..."The crazies" are not finished. And we do well not to
let their ultimate folly obscure their current ambition, and the
further trouble that ambition is bound to bring in the four
years ahead. In an immediate sense, with U.S. military power
unrivaled, they can be seen as "crazy like a fox," with a value
system in which "might makes right." Operating out of that value
system, and now sporting the more respectable misnomer/moniker
"neoconservative," they are convinced that they know exactly
what they are doing. They have a clear ideology and a
geopolitical strategy, which leap from papers they put out at
the Project for the
New American Century over recent years. The very same men
who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us the war in Iraq are
now focusing on Iran, which they view as the only remaining
obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich Middle
East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned press,
a co-opted mainstream church, and a still-trusting populace, the
United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful air
offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs --
with the added bonus of possibly causing the regime in power in
Iran to crumble. "Israel Is Our Ally." ...An earlier
American warned:
"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces
a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation
facilitates the illusion of an imaginary common interest in
cases where no real common interest exists, infuses into one
the enmities of the other, and betrays the former into
participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without
adequate inducement or justification.... It also gives to
ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote
themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or
sacrifice the interests of their own country." (George
Washington, Farewell Address, 1796)
In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly
to this administration's lash-up with the Sharon government. As
responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about
addressing this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be
denied important information neglected or distorted in our
domesticated media. |
The Grip of War
by James Carroll
Boston Globe, 1 March 2005
Was it Heraclitus who said war is humanity's natural state? Are
those who imagine peace as the ground of a new condition guilty
of an irresponsible wishful thinking?
I just wrote two hopeful columns from Jerusalem, a city trying
to wrench itself from the grip of war, and though I allowed for
the prospect of yet more violence, I was stunned by Friday's
news. A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a nightclub in
Tel Aviv, killing four, wounding dozens of others. The killer
targeted young people at play, a horror that had become common.
In the new climate of hope, such brutality fully horrifies
again. And then came news of yesterday's suicide bombing in
Iraq, a staggering new level of carnage with more than 125 dead.
Why do human beings, knowing the costs of war, cling to it
nonetheless? It is a question not only for those diehards who
dispatched these suicide murderers. News of another kind last
week also raised it -- the commissioning by the US Navy of its
newest submarine, a Seawolf attack sub, costing $3.2 billion and
bearing more firepower than any submarine in history. But this
sub, ordered during the Cold War, was designed to fight an enemy
that no longer exists.
What makes its commissioning even more anomalous is the name the
sub was given -- the USS Jimmy Carter. The former president
began as a submarine officer, and it is easy to grasp how an old
man is moved by such an affirmation of his youth. But Carter
presided at the commissioning ceremonies with the innocent
enthusiasm of a man who should know better. ''The most deeply
appreciated and emotional honor I've ever had," he said, ''is to
have this great ship bear my name." Jimmy Carter is a Nobel
Peace Prize laureate, but that honor takes second place now to
an attack sub. |
Negroponte's Sins...On Film
David Corn
The Nation, date unknown
In mid-February, The New York Times ran a news story
headlined "Intelligence Nominee Comes Under Renewed Scrutiny on
Human Rights." That was, alas, not quite true. John Negroponte,
who George W. Bush selected to be the first national directory
of intelligence, does have a checkered past that warrants
examination. As I and others noted when Bush appointed him UN
ambassador in 2001 and then ambassador to Iraq last year, during
the time Negroponte was Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Honduras
in the early 1980s, he was the boss of the contra operation.
Worse, he ignored serious human rights violations and oversaw an
embassy that smothered reporting of abuses committed by the
Honduran military, an ally of the Reagan administration in the
not-that-secret covert war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
(Click
here for details.)
Democrats--and anyone who claims to care about human rights
anywhere--ought to see a new documentary called The
Ambassador, which was made by Norwegian filmmaker
Erling Borgen. In a
delightful coincidence, Borgen had decided to make a film about
the U.S. ambassador to Iraq that explored his past in Honduras.
The film is in Norwegian, but Borgen's small production company
sent me one of the first copies of the English version. The
documentary does not disclose new revelations about Negroponte's
days as our man in Honduras. But it is powerful indictment, for
it presents human rights victims directly speaking about and to
Negroponte, who supported a military and a government that
killed and disappeared hundreds if not thousands of civilians.
Honduran human rights leaders note that the fates of 179
Hondurans who disappeared during the Negroponte years have yet
to be determined. In the film, Bertha Oliva, one of those human
rights advocates (whose husband was disappeared), says, "I want
to use every possible medium to make Negroponte tell hundreds of
families of the dead and disappeared in Honduras where they are.
He must stop hiding the truth." Noemi Espinoza, who runs a
Christian aid organization in Honduras and who worked with
refugees in the 1980s, says that Negroponte's embassy falsely
accused her of being a subversive. After the Honduran military
raided her office in 1982 and detained and tortured two
coworkers, she fled to the United States. The documentary--more
than once--shows Negroponte testifying before the Senate in 2001
and saying there was "no substantiation of any systemic human
rights violations" in Honduras. The statement seems either a lie
or a fantasy, as various Honduran human rights advocates
describe the extensive pattern of human rights abuses practiced
by the Honduran military when Negroponte was ambassador. At the
time, he was working closely with the Honduran military and the
United States was training and supporting the now-infamous
Battalion 316, which the CIA's IG report linked to death squad
activity.
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