Judges Say Overhaul Would Weaken
Bankruptcy System
By Peter G. Gosselin
LA Times, 29 March 2005
For nearly a decade, proponents of overhauling the nation's
bankruptcy laws have described their aim as ensuring that
Americans who enter bankruptcy court do not escape bills that
they can truly afford to pay.
But only weeks before Congress is likely to approve the
long-sought overhaul, bankruptcy judges across the country warn
that the measure would undermine the very section of the law
under which debtors are now repaying more than $3 billion
annually to their creditors.
These judges say the effect of the overhaul would be to
discourage most forms of personal bankruptcy, which for nearly
two centuries has served as a safety net for people in economic
trouble.
"The folks who brought you 'those who can pay, should pay' are
pulling the stuffing out of the very part of the bankruptcy law
where debtors do pay," said Keith Lundin, a federal bankruptcy
judge in the eastern district of Tennessee in Nashville and an
authority on bankruptcy repayment plans. "The advocates aren't
trying to fix the bankruptcy law; they're trying to mess it up
so much that nobody can use it," Lundin charged.
In interviews, a dozen current or former bankruptcy judges,
whose names were suggested by proponents as well as opponents of
the overhaul legislation, described what they saw as the
problems that could result from key provisions of the new
measure.
Judges now have broad discretion to determine how much a debtor
must pay to creditors and on what schedule after declaring
bankruptcy under what is known as Chapter 13. But under the
legislation, that discretion would be substantially curtailed.
The new legislation would bar courts from reducing the amount
that many debtors would have to repay on their cars and other
big-ticket items. It would also extend the length of time people
would have to make repayments and impose repayment schedules
that critics describe as so onerous that many debtors would fall
behind.
The result, the judges said, would be the collapse of more
repayment plans, forcing debtors out of bankruptcy court
protection. Creditors then could try to force debtors to pay the
full amount owed — not the reduced amount a judge had ordered —
by moving to repossess their belongings or bringing legal
actions. Many people would have to pay creditors far into the
future, the critics said, and thus be unable to restart their
economic lives, a long-held aim of bankruptcy.
|
What's Going On?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 29 March 2005
Democratic
societies have a hard time dealing with extremists in their
midst. The desire to show respect for other people's beliefs all
too easily turns into denial: nobody wants to talk about the
threat posed by those whose beliefs include contempt for
democracy itself. We can see this failing clearly in other
countries. In the Netherlands, for example, a culture of
tolerance led the nation to ignore the growing influence of
Islamic extremists until they turned murderous. But
it's also true of the United States, where dangerous extremists
belong to the majority religion and the majority ethnic group,
and wield great political influence.
SEE ALSO: |
Justice clings by a thread...3-2
decision
Colorado Court Bars Execution Because Jurors
Consulted Bible
By KIRK JOHNSON
NYT, 29 March 2005
In a sharply divided ruling, Colorado's highest court on Monday
upheld a lower court's decision throwing out the sentence of a
man who was given the death penalty after jurors consulted the
Bible in reaching a verdict. The Bible, the court said,
constituted an improper outside influence and a reliance on what
the court called a "higher authority." "The judicial system
works very hard to emphasize the rarified, solemn and
sequestered nature of jury deliberations," the majority said in
a 3-to-2 decision by a panel of the Colorado Supreme Court.
"Jurors must deliberate in that atmosphere without the aid or
distraction of extraneous texts." The ruling involved the
conviction of Robert Harlan, who was found guilty in 1995 of
raping and murdering a cocktail waitress near Denver. After Mr.
Harlan's conviction, the judge in the case - as Colorado law
requires - sent the jury off to deliberate about the death
penalty with an instruction to think beyond the narrow confines
of the law. Each juror, the judge told the panel, must make an
"individual moral assessment," in deciding whether Mr. Harlan
should live. The jurors voted unanimously for death. The State
Supreme Court's decision changes that sentence to life in prison
without parole.
SEE ALSO: |
Florida Funeral Director Buries
Universities
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 28 March 2005
Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, has introduced a Horowitz-inspired
so-called Academic Freedom Bill of Rights in the Florida State
legislature. In our Orwellian world, this is actually a bill to
destroy academic freedom and take away rights of free speech on
campus. Baxley is a funeral director, and apparently he wants to
bury higher education in this country along with his other
clients. |
|
Entries for a Devil’s Dictionary of the
Bush Era
TomDispatch, 27 March 2005
For the last few years we have been ruled by lexicographers.
Never has an administration spent so much time creating,
defining, or redefining terms, perhaps because no one (since
George Orwell) has grasped the power and possibility that lay
hidden in plain sight in the naming and renaming of words. In a
sense, our post-9/11 moment began with two definitions: The Bush
administration named our global enemy "terrorism" and called the
acts that followed a "war," which was soon given the moniker
"the global war on terror" (later reduced to the acronym GWOT,
also known as World War IV), which was then given an instant
future -- being defined as a "generational struggle" that was
still to come. All this, along with "war" itself, was simply
announced rather than officially "declared."
Given that we were (by administration definition) at war, it
should have been self-evident that those we captured in our
"war" on terrorism would then be "prisoners of war," but no such
luck for them, since their rights would in that case have been
clearly defined in international treaties signed by the United
States. So the Bush administration opened its Devil's Dictionary
and came up with a new, tortured term for our new prisoners,
"unlawful combatants," which really stood for: We can do
anything we want to you in a place of our choosing. For that
place, they then chose Guantánamo, an American base in Cuba
(which they promptly defined as within "Cuban sovereignty" for
the purposes of putting our detention camps beyond the purview
of American courts or Congress, but within Bush administration
sovereignty -- the sole kind that counted with them -- for the
purposes of the Cubans).
In this way, we moved from a self-declared generational war
against a method of making war to a world of torture beyond the
reach of, or even sight of, the law in a place that (until the
Supreme Court recently ruled otherwise) more or less didn't
exist. All this was then supported by a world of pretzeled
language constantly being reshaped in the White House Counsel's
office, the Justice Department, and the Pentagon so that reality
would have no choice but to comply with the names given it.
|
Time to look at tax exempt status?
Rightwing Evangelicals Fight to
Consolidate Power in Ohio GOP
By JAMES DAO
NYT, 27 March 2005
Christian conservative leaders from scores of Ohio's fastest
growing churches are mounting a campaign to win control of local
government posts and Republican organizations, starting with the
2006 governor's race. In a manifesto that is being circulated
among church leaders and on the Internet, the group, which is
called the Ohio Restoration Project, is planning to mobilize
2,000 evangelical, Baptist, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic
leaders in a network of so-called Patriot Pastors to register
half a million new voters, enlist activists, train candidates
and endorse conservative causes in the next year. The initial
goal is to elect Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, a
conservative Republican, governor in 2006. The group hopes to
build grass-roots organizations in Ohio's 88 counties and take
control of local Republican organizations. ...Conservatives in
other swing states are watching closely. |
Stop the press!
Business Sees Gain In GOP Takeover
Political Allies Push Corporate Agenda
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post, 27 March 2005
Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in
electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries
of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP
House and Senate majority in a half century. |
"We can do anything we need to do to
pass any bill that we need to pass."
--
Tom Delay |
|
It's Not Your Father's America Any More
by Hubert G. Locke
Seattle PI via Common Dreams, 25 March 2005
This country is becoming more unrecognizable with each passing
day. The government, we've learned recently, now packages the
news. It provides television stations with hundreds of video
news releases made up to resemble actual news reports that give
us predigested, Orwellian information designed to convince the
public that everything in the nation is being well-managed.
Alongside this propaganda circus comes the added revelation that
the presidential hops George W. Bush is taking around the
country to peddle his case for dismantling Social Security are
not conversations with local citizens -- as they are billed --
but carefully arranged events before prescreened audiences who
hear presentations from panelists who've been, by the recent
admission of one of them, repeatedly rehearsed on what to say.
...The only thing worse than the government these days -- if
such is possible -- are those portions of the populace to whom
this government owes its allegiance. These are people for whom
the country got off on the wrong track a half-century ago when
hippies and flower children became symbols of a new, permissive
culture and "race relations" -- a euphemism in an era when
"colored people" knew their place -- exploded in a civil rights
struggle that upset a settled and long-accepted way of life.
Fifty years ago, this aggrieved sector of the nation's populace
switched its political allegiance from the Democratic to the
Republican Party. This new voting bloc brought with it a set of
sentiments and values on matters of personal belief or private
opinion that both political parties have long believed ought to
remain in the personal, private realm. Mainstream Republicans
tried for several decades to ignore these private-agenda
matters. But championed by fire-eating evangelists, what are
personal and private matters for many of us are now being turned
into issues for public regulation and enforcement.
What were -- a generation ago -- matters at the margin of public
discussion and debate are now contentions that are being forced
to the center of Republican politics and, because it is the
party in power, onto the front burner of American public policy.
...We could probably endure all of this if it were only
another of the outbursts of cultural passion that Americans
periodically undergo in an attempt to assert why we think we're
God's gift to the civilized world. The problem is that the
people currently in political power in the United States and the
people who support them really think we are -- and that's why
this country is becoming more unrecognizable with each passing
day. |
The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay
Frank Rich
NYT via Common Dreams, 25 March 2005
Senator Bill Frist, the Harvard-educated heart surgeon with
presidential aspirations, announced that watching videos of Ms.
Schiavo had persuaded him that her doctors in Florida were
mistaken about her vegetative state - a remarkable diagnosis
given that he had not only failed to examine the patient
ostensibly under his care but has no expertise in the medical
specialty, neurology, relevant to her case. No less audacious
was Tom DeLay, last seen on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago
deflecting Lesley Stahl's questions about his proximity to
allegedly criminal fund-raising by saying he would talk only
about children stranded by the tsunami. ...The president was not
about to be outpreached by these saps. The same Mr. Bush who
couldn't be bothered to interrupt his vacation during the
darkening summer of 2001, not even when he received a briefing
titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," flew from his
Crawford ranch to Washington to sign Congress's Schiavo bill
into law. ..."It is wise to always err on the side of life," he
said, wisdom that apparently had not occurred to him in 1999,
when he mocked the failed pleas for clemency of Karla Faye
Tucker, the born-again Texas death-row inmate, in a magazine
interview with Tucker Carlson. |
SEE ALSO:
A New Screen Test for Imax: It's the Bible
vs. the Volcano
By CORNELIA DEAN
NYT, 19 March 2005
The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.
Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are
refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big
Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people
who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the
origin of Earth and its creatures. The number of theaters
rejecting such films is small, people in the industry say -
perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a
few dozen Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries,
the decisions of a few can have a big impact on a film's bottom
line - or a producer's decision to make a documentary in the
first place.
People who follow trends at commercial and institutional
Imax theaters say that in recent years, religious controversy
has adversely affected the distribution of a number of films,
including "Cosmic Voyage," which depicts the universe in
dimensions running from the scale of subatomic particles to
clusters of galaxies; "Galápagos," about the islands where
Darwin theorized about evolution; and "Volcanoes of the Deep
Sea," an underwater epic about the bizarre creatures that
flourish in the hot, sulfurous emanations from vents in the
ocean floor. "Volcanoes," released in 2003 and sponsored in part
by the National Science Foundation and Rutgers University, has
been turned down at about a dozen science centers, mostly in the
South, said Dr. Richard Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer who was
chief scientist for the film. He said theater officials rejected
the film because of its brief references to evolution, in
particular to the possibility that life on Earth originated at
the undersea vents. Carol Murray, director of marketing for the
Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said the museum
decided not to offer the movie after showing it to a sample
audience, a practice often followed by managers of Imax
theaters. Ms. Murray said 137 people participated in the survey,
and while some thought it was well done, "some people said it
was blasphemous." In their written comments, she explained, they
made statements like "I really hate it when the theory of
evolution is presented as fact," or "I don't agree with their
presentation of human existence." On other criteria, like
narration and music, the film did not score as well as other
films, Ms. Murray said, and over all, it did not receive high
marks, so she recommended that the museum pass. "If it's not
going to draw a crowd and it is going to create controversy,"
she said, "from a marketing standpoint I cannot make a
recommendation" to show it. In interviews, officials at other
Imax theaters said they had similarly decided against the film
for fear of offending some audiences. |
Far Too Quiet on the Homefront
By Jerry Lanson
Christian Science Monitor, 25 March 2005
It was the first day of spring, the second anniversary of the
Iraq war, the fourth day of the NCAA tournament. At the liberal
church I was attending near Boston this Palm Sunday, the
minister mentioned the tough winter that had dumped 108 inches
of snow on the area. He said not a word about the 1,524 American
soldiers killed in Iraq, at last count. As I listened, a guest
participant in the choir, he talked of the hope and rebirth that
comes with spring and of the pleasure of watching college
playoff basketball, with its teamwork, fraternity, and
enthusiasm. He never did mention the war that slogs on thousands
of miles away. He wasn't the only one who seemed forgetful this
anniversary weekend. Antiwar marches in New York, San Francisco,
Chicago, and Boston drew thousands, but the crowds were far
smaller than a year ago. Many news organizations neither
bothered to announce these events in advance nor covered them in
anything but the most perfunctory manner. I can't tell whether
America is in denial or despair over events in Iraq, but I
suspect it's some of each. ...At some point, Americans will need
to reengage in this conflict (and conflict it clearly remains,
if one reads the battle-and-bombing stories often buried inside
the daily news). If they don't, Iraq, like an earlier war in
Southeast Asia, will just keep dragging on. |
Bush's Social Security Plan Is Losing
Support, Pew Poll Shows
Bloomberg, 24 March 2005
Public support for President George W. Bush's proposal to
overhaul the Social Security system is declining, a poll by the
Pew Research Center shows. Forty-four percent of 1,505 adults
surveyed from March 17-21 said they support the idea of setting
up private investment accounts in the Social Security system,
the survey showed. That compared with 46 percent in Pew's
February poll and 54 percent in a December survey. The poll has
a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Among
people aged 18-29, 49 percent favored private accounts while 25
percent were opposed. A month ago, 66 percent of people under 30
supported such accounts and 19 percent were opposed, the poll
found.
|
The 'Vast Leftwing Conspiracy'
Tom DeLay: "It Is More Than Just Terri
Schiavo"
Transcript: The embattled House Majority Leader finds
parallels between Terri Schiavo's case and his own
By KAREN TUMULTY
Time.com, 23 March 2005
Last Friday, as the House and Senate were working out their
differences over legislation to stop the removal of Terri
Schiavo's feeding tube, embattled House Majority Leader Tom
DeLay discussed the issue at a gathering of the Family Research
Council at the Willard Hotel in Washington. In the speech, he
drew parallels between Schiavo's situation and his own as he
faces a barrage of ethics allegations, and he implicitly asked
the conservatives to come to his defense as they have Schiavo's.
A recording of the speech was supplied to TIME by Americans
United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group:
It is more than just Terri Schiavo. This is a critical issue for
people in this position, and it is also a critical issue to
fight that fight for life, whether it be euthanasia or abortion.
I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, one thing God has brought to
us is Terri Schiavo to elevate the visibility of what's going on
in America. That Americans would be so barbaric as to pull a
feeding tube out of a person that is lucid and starve them to
death for two weeks. I mean, in America that's going to happen
if we don't win this fight.
"And so it's bigger than any one of us, and we have to do
everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and
anybody else that may be in this kind of position, and let me
just finish with this:
"This is exactly the kind of issue that's going on in America,
that attacks against the conservative moment, against me and
against many others. The point is, the other side has figured
out how to win and to defeat the conservative movement, and that
is to go after people personally, charge them with frivolous
charges, link up with all these do-gooder organizations funded
by George Soros, and then get the national media on their side.
That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for
one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to destroy the
conservative movement. It is to destroy conservative leaders,
and not just in elected office, but leading. I mean, Ed Feulner,
of the Heritage Foundation today was under attack in the
National Journal. This is a huge nationwide concerted effort to
destroy everything we believe in. And you need to look at this,
and what's going on and participate in fighting back. |
No domestic restrictions and little
oversight by Congress
Pentagon Increases Its Spying Markedly
By Mark Mazzetti and Greg Miller
LA Times, 24 March 2005
The Pentagon's new emphasis on intelligence gathering overseas
has led to a major expansion of espionage operations and a more
prominent role for intelligence officers in military decision
making and war planning, Defense officials said Wednesday. As
part of the plan, the Pentagon is expanding the number of spies
and special operations forces abroad and creating new
intelligence analysis centers inside military commands
worldwide, the officials said. Providing new details about the
Pentagon's expanding role in intelligence operations, the
officials also acknowledged that the effort is controversial in
Washington. The ramped-up activity "rubs some people the wrong
way," said a Defense official involved in the expansion. But the
Pentagon insists that it is not encroaching on the CIA's turf
and says all its activities are permissible under existing laws
and executive orders. |
Report Emphasizes Shortfall in Medicare
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post, 24 March 2005
 The
two independent trustees overseeing Social Security and Medicare
broke with the Bush administration's trustees yesterday, saying
Medicare's financial problems far exceed Social Security's and
are in urgent need of attention. Republican Thomas R. Saving and
Democrat John L. Palmer said Social Security's condition has
changed little since they joined the Social Security and
Medicare Boards of Trustees in 2000. But in the trustees' report
released yesterday, they wrote that Medicare's prospects have
"deteriorated dramatically" with rising medical costs and the
addition in 2003 of a prescription drug benefit.
|
Unmasking the Theocons
by Sasha F. Chavkin
CommonDreams.org, 23 March 2005
The intrusion of America's leading Republican politicians into
the tragic dilemma facing Terri Schiavo and her family speaks
volumes about how deeply they have become beholden to the
religious right. Brushing aside time-honored advocacy for
limited government and state sovereignty at the behest of a
crass internal memo advertising a "great political issue" that
"the pro-life base will be excited" about, Congressional
Republicans and President Bush instead used the moment to pay
Christian conservatives their most dramatic homage to date.
The foremost political players in this drama - President Bush,
Tom DeLay, and Bill Frist - bring a pungent mix of raw ambition,
blatant agendas and inconsistencies on the issues in question
that taint their flowery pieties with a distinctly fishy odor.
Down in the trenches beside lawyers from the Family Research
Council and American Center for Law and Justice, founded by
James Dobson and Pat Robertson, respectively, with moral support
from Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Burke Balch of the National
Right to Life Foundation, Republican leaders are bringing a new
face to their party that progressives should be itching to
unmask. Indeed, the grubby spectacle of House Majority Leader
Tom DeLay trying to resurrect his reputation by force-feeding a
woman who has been vegetative for 15 years has had the opposite
of the intended effect on most Americans. |
GOP Talking Points on Terri Schiavo
Memo, Obtained by ABC News, Was Circulated Among Senate
Republicans
ABC News, 21 March 2005
Courtesy of emd
The following memo listing talking points on the Terri Schiavo
case was circulated among Republican senators on the floor of
the Senate.
This is an exact, full copy of the document obtained
exclusively by ABC News and first reported Friday, March 18,
2005, by Linda Douglass on "World News Tonight with Peter
Jennings."
S. 529, The Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act
Teri (sic) Schiavo is subject to an order that her feeding tubes
will be disconnected on March 18, 2005 at 1p.m.
The Senate needs to act this week, before the Budget Act is
pending business, or Terri's family will not have a remedy in
federal court.
--This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be
excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.
--This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of
Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a
tough issue for Democrats.
--The bill is very limited and defines custody as "those parties
authorized or directed by a court order to withdraw or withhold
food, fluids, or medical treatment."
--There is an exemption for a proceeding "which no party
disputes, and the court finds, that the incapacitated person
while having capacity, had executed a written advance directive
valid under applicably law that clearly authorized the
withholding or or (sic) withdrawl (sic) of food and fluids or
medical treatment in the applicable circumstances."
--Incapacitated persons are defined as those "presently
incapable of making relevant decisions concerning the provision,
withholding or withdrawl (sic) of food fluids or medical
treatment under applicable state law."
--This legislation ensures that individuals like Terri Schiavo
are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers
like Ted Bundy.
|
Left and Right Unite to Challenge
Patriot Act Provisions
Group wants limits on access allowed law enforcement
Edward Epstein
The SF Chronicle, 23 March 2005
An unusual left-right coalition opened a campaign Tuesday to
sharply curtail controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act,
showing that Congress and President Bush face a pointed debate
over renewing the law enacted just 45 days after the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks. It was a Washington rarity to see the
American Civil Liberties Union line up with conservative lions
like David Keefe of the American Conservative Union and former
Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. But they were among those at a Washington
press conference held to assail such Patriot Act provisions as
those allowing law enforcement agents to look at library users'
records or to conduct unannounced "sneak-and-peek'' searches on
homes or private offices. It is not, and never should be
necessary, to surrender our rights under the Bill of Rights to
fight the war on terrorism,'' said Barr, who as a House member
voted for the Patriot Act, which passed overwhelmingly in the
House and provoked only one dissenting Senate vote. Barr, leader
of the new group dubbed Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances,
concedes that the group faces a difficult fight in making
changes to the 4-year-old law. |
Administration Kept Mum About
Unapproved Modified Corn Sold
by Seth Borenstein
Knight-Ridder News, 23 March 2005
The federal government kept it secret for three months that
genetically modified corn seed was sold accidentally to some
U.S. farms for four years and may have gotten into the American
food supply. "...This is a government that's operating in a
stealth manner that wants to keep bad news from the public."
...The accidental use of unapproved seed became public when the
scientific journal Nature published a story about it Tuesday.
|
Medicare Outlook Called More Dire Than
Social Security
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
NYT, 24 March 2005
The long-term financial condition of the Social Security system
deteriorated slightly over the last year, the government
reported on Wednesday, and President Bush's supporters
immediately said this strengthened the case for enacting a
fundamental change in the program this year. In their annual
report to Congress, the trustees of the Social Security and
Medicare programs said Social Security reserves would be
depleted in 2041, one year earlier than was projected last year.
But the trustees emphasized, as they did last year, that
Medicare's financial outlook was "much worse than Social
Security's" and predicted that the monthly Medicare premiums
paid by almost all Americans 65 and older would rise by 12
percent next year after a 17 percent increase this year. The
trustees said they saw a small improvement in the condition of
Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund. They forecast that it
would be depleted in 2020, one year later than was predicted
last year.
|
Wife of Sailor Battles U.S. over
Abortion
Navy won't pay for procedure for woman who carried severely
brain-damaged fetus
By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, 23 March 2005
When she learned that she was carrying a baby with almost no
brain and no chance of survival, a devastated young Navy wife
from Everett pleaded with a federal court in Seattle to force
her military medical program to pay for an abortion. "I
could not imagine going through five more months of pregnancy,
knowing that the baby will never survive or have any kind of
life whatsoever," the woman, then 19, told a federal judge in
August 2002. "I understand that even if the baby is born alive,
it will probably die after it takes a few breaths. I am really
terrified of the prospect of giving birth, then watching the
baby die." She won her case and had the abortion. But more than
two years later, the federal government continues to fight her,
trying to get the woman and her sailor husband to pay back the
$3,000 the procedure cost and trying to cast in stone a ban on
government-funded abortions.
|
Bolton Bashing
Steve Clemons
John Bolton and the Corruption of
Think Tanks; David Brooks on Conservative Sleaze
From The Washington Note via TomPaine.com.
21 March 2005
I have found some
more on John Bolton's think tank management controversy.
Think tanks are usually organized as 501c3 organizations --
organized for the public good but increasingly they are becoming
money laundering operations for lobbyists or corporate
consulting shops. It seems that John Bolton helped the National
Policy Forum move well down this path. The National Policy Forum
of which John Bolton was President was stripped of its
non-profit 501c3 status. Foreign money, mega-conference
fundraisers, inappropriate political activity, possibly
laundering foreign funds into political activities. John Bolton
was an architect of this insidious mess. Many conservatives have
genuine concerns about the management of the United Nation's
after the "Oil-for-Food" scandal, even though it's clear that
the U.S. delegation to the U.N. knew what was going on. But
Bolton is a guy whose own past management experience and the
blurring of legal lines in his own organization sounds a lot
like what Bernie Ebbers would have looked for in his team at
WorldCom or Ken Lay at Enron. Here is an excerpt of a much
longer brief worth reading:
A decade later Bolton was again entangled in money laundering
schemes to support Republican candidates, but this time it
involved money channeled from Hong Kong and Taiwan to the
Republican Party by way of a "think tank" linked to the
Republican National Committee (RNC).
|
Social Insecurity
The president, whose approval ratings are down on almost
every issue, has yet to sell the country on his plan for Social
Security
Khue Bui
Newsweek, 19 March 2005
Although President George W. Bush has been traveling the country
touting a new plan to overhaul the Social Security system,
campaigning in 15 states over six weeks, the majority of
Americans remain unswayed, according to the latest NEWSWEEK
poll. Only one-third of all Americans (33 percent) approve of
his proposal to create investment accounts under Social
Security, the poll found, while 59 percent disapprove. More
Americans (44 percent) trust Congressional Democrats with
managing the 70-year-old program. The poll also found that,
with the exception of his handling of terrorism and homeland
security, his approval numbers are down across the board.
Support for the Social Security plan breaks down reliably along
party lines, with 72 percent of registered Republicans saying
they support the Bush plan; marginally more Democrats (76
percent) side with Congressional Dems on the issue. Political
Independents also give Congressional Democrats the edge (40
percent, versus 28 percent for Bush). The week he won
re-election in November, President Bush declared: "I earned
capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to
spend it." And spend it is what he appears to have done: the
president’s overall approval rating has slipped below the 50
percent mark, his lowest score since being sworn in again in
January. Forty-five percent of all Americans approve of the way
he is doing his job, a five-point dip from early February; 48
percent disapprove, up six points. Bush's approval numbers have
fallen the most among the demographic at whom his Social
Security overhaul is targeted: just 43 percent of 18-29 year
olds approve of his performance (down from 56 percent a month
ago). |
Justice Redacted Memo on Detainees
FBI Criticism Of Interrogations Was Deleted
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post, 22 March 2005
U.S. law enforcement agents working at the military prison in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded that controversial interrogation
practices used there by the Defense Department produced
intelligence information that was "suspect at best," an FBI
agent told a superior in a memo in May last year. But the
Justice Department, which reviewed the memo for national
security secrets before releasing it to a civil liberties group
in December, redacted the FBI agent's conclusion. The
department, acting after the Defense Department expressed its
own views on which portions of the letter should be redacted,
also blacked out a separate assertion in the memo that military
interrogation practices could undermine future military trials
for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay. It also withheld
a statement by the memo's author that Justice Department
criminal division officials were so concerned about the military
interrogation practices that they took their complaints to the
office of the Pentagon's chief attorney, William J. Haynes II,
whom President Bush has nominated to become a federal appellate
judge. The revelations in the memo, released yesterday by Sen.
Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) , generally amplify previously disclosed
FBI concerns that military interrogators at the island prison
were using coercive interrogation methods that could compromise
any evidence of terrorist activities they obtained. |
G.O.P. Right Is Splintered on Schiavo
Intervention
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
NYT, 22 March 2005
The vote by Congress to allow the federal courts to take over
the Terri Schiavo case has created distress among some
conservatives who say that lawmakers violated a cornerstone of
conservative philosophy by intervening in the ruling of a state
court. |
Coalition Forms to Oppose Parts of
Antiterrorism Law
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT, 22 March 2005
Battle lines were drawn Tuesday in the debate over the
government's counterterrorism powers, as an unlikely coalition
of liberal civil-rights advocates, conservative libertarians,
gun-rights supporters and medical privacy advocates voiced their
objections to crucial parts of the law that expanded those
powers after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Keeping the law
intact "will do great and irreparable harm" to the Constitution
by allowing the government to investigate people's reading
habits, search their homes without notice and pry into their
personal lives, said Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman
who is leading the coalition. Mr. Barr voted for the law, known
as the USA Patriot Act, in the House just weeks after the Sept.
11 attacks but has become one of its leading critics, a shift
that reflects the growing unease among some conservative
libertarians over the expansion of the government's powers in
fighting terrorism. He joined with other conservatives as well
as the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday in announcing
the creation of the coalition, which hopes to curtail some of
the law's more sweeping law-enforcement provisions.
|
|
Graphic from Salon
The Panderers
Abandoning principle and reason, DeLay, Bush and their ilk
are trafficking in cheap emotions -- and debasing our civic
ideals.
By Alan Wolfe
Salon, 21 March 2005
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, one feels safe in assuming, is
no reader of classic texts in moral philosophy. But in rushing
through legislation that would allow a federal judge to
intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, he took sides in one of
the most widely debated controversies in the history of ideas.
...Americans embody Kantian reasoning in the often-cited dictum
that we are a government of laws, not of men. The Schiavo case
reminds us why that dictum matters. In a case as conflict-ridden
and morally wrenching as this one, the courts have reached a
decision: Michael Schiavo's claim that Terri would not have
wanted to live this way has been upheld. In relying on its own
form of civil disobedience, the U.S. Congress is claiming that
we are a government of men, not of laws. Even a moment of
reflection suggests why this is a bad idea; governments of men
give to whomever is in power the capacity to overrule rights and
procedures to get what they want. Another term for that is
"dictatorship." Upholding law might just be more important than
preventing a death.
SEE ALSO: |
Republican Memo on Schiavo Stirs
Controversy.
By Tom Raum
WPTV, 21 March 2005
The Terri Schiavo case has been catapulted from a drawn-out
medical and legal battle into a fast-paced political drama with
Congress, the White House and the courts playing leading roles.
Republicans see a vote for prolonging the life of the
brain-damaged Florida woman as an opportunity to strengthen
their support among religious conservatives, a vital
constituency group, ahead of next year's congressional
elections. For the most part, minority-party Democrats are
asserting that congressional involvement in such a
heart-wrenching private matter is unwarranted and unwise. But
they are treading carefully, not wanting again to get clobbered
on the "values" issue that hurt them in last year's elections.
...Critics suggest it is hypocrisy for a Congress that espouses
federalism to get involved in case that has exhausted appeals in
Florida courts. "It is particularly hypocritical when you have
people who say they advocate on behalf of the defense of
marriage who now insert themselves between a husband and his
wife," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. "It is not
Congress' place to say yes or no" on the feeding tube issue, she
said.
SEE ALSO: |
A Blow to the Rule of Law
NYT, 22 March 2005
When the commotion over this one tragic woman is over, Congress
and the president will have done real damage to the founders'
careful plan for American democracy. ...President Bush and
his Congressional allies have begun to enunciate a new
principle: the rules of government are worth respecting only if
they produce the result we want. It may be a formula for
short-term political success, but it is no way to preserve and
protect a great republic.
SEE ALSO: |
Right To Die: Hasty Legislation
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 March 2005
Haste often causes trouble. The congressional rush to throw
itself into the Terri Schiavo case will lead to new difficulties
in numerous situations. Having spent decades unable to create a
national health care system like those of other advanced
nations, Congress suddenly took up one person's health care in
an extraordinary Sunday session. The legislative and executive
branches of government wanted so badly to intervene that they
created a special, new jurisdiction for a federal court.
Unavoidably, the measure's passage comes dangerously close to
expressing a wish for specific judicial action. Despite a lot of
upbeat talk, it seems unlikely that the political intervention
will mainly send a positive message on the importance of living
wills. We don't think huge numbers of people, especially the
young, will now rush to write documents detailing how some
medical catastrophe will be handled. Many married couples will
continue to rely on the good judgment of a spouse or another
surviving family member. That remains an understandable
instinct, despite the blatant political interference in the
Schiavo case to undo the decision of Terri Schiavo's husband,
Michael Schiavo. ...Although the new law narrowly targets the
Schiavo case, many backers indeed hope to create a general right
for interventions. They would like nothing better than to see
authorities able to force heroic medical interventions in any
case. The aim would be to reverse the valuable progress society
has made toward empowering individual and family decisions about
the end of life.
We are certain that a Republican memo, given to The Washington
Post and ABC News, made an astute judgment when it informed
party lawmakers that intervening in the Schiavo case is "a great
political issue." That makes it all the more impressive that the
Eastside's new Republican member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Dave
Reichert, voted against the ill-advised law, one of only five
GOP House members to do so. For most members, though, politics
and a desire to play on voters' sympathies and ideologies
dictated a rush to judgment. Now, America will have to sort out
the consequences. |
For Bush, Science is a Dirty Word
In America's right-to-die controversy the facts were not
allowed to get in the way of evangelical populism
Tristram Hunt
The Guardian, 22 March 2005
The interference by the White House in the case of Terri Schiavo
- the woman at the centre of America's latest right-to-die
controversy - marks another milestone in President Bush's
campaign for faith over fact. More concerned with the wonder of
miracles than Schiavo's 15-year irreversible vegetative state,
Bush and his allies have blithely overturned multiple court
decisions to maintain artificial feeding and let evangelical
populism triumph over medical opinion. Thanks to the policies
and prejudices of the Bush administration, science has become a
dirty word. The American century was built on scientific
progress. From the automobile to the atom bomb to the man on the
moon, science and technology underpinned American military,
commercial and cultural might. Crucial to that was the
presidency. From FDR and the Los Alamos laboratory to Kennedy
and Nasa to Clinton and decoding the genome, the White House was
vital to promoting ground-breaking research and luring the
world's scientific elite. But Bush's faith-based, petro-chemical
administration has reversed that tradition: excepting matters
military, this presidency exhibits an abiding aversion to
scientific inquiry that is in danger of affecting the entire
country. ...Neal Lane, former science adviser to Clinton,
has spoken of "a pattern of abuse of science" in policy making
within today's White House. What they don't like, they suppress
and distort. Official publications on the science of climate
change have been brazenly replaced with drafts from utility
lobbyists. An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report
linking industry emissions to global warming had to be withdrawn
at the behest of West Wing advisers - not many of them noted
climatologists. etc, etc.
|
|
|
Two Years After Iraq Invasion,
Protesters Hold Small Rallies
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
NYT, 20 March 2005
Two years after the American-led invasion of Iraq, relatively
small crowds of demonstrators - the home guard of the antiwar
movement - mobilized yesterday in New York, San Francisco and
cities and towns across the nation to condemn the war and demand
the withdrawal of allied forces. Thousands joined similar
protests in European cities. On both sides of the Atlantic, the
protests were passionate but largely peaceful, and nowhere near
as big as those in February 2003, just before the war, when
millions around the world marched to urge President Bush not to
attack. The American crowds ranged from about 350 in Times
Square to several thousand in San Francisco. And in contrast to
the vociferous rage of demonstrations two years ago, yesterday's
protests were mostly somber and low-key, with marchers carrying
cardboard coffins in silence to the beat of funereal drums, with
rally speakers alluding often to the war dead and subdued crowds
keeping behind police barriers. Still, defiant resolution
swirled in the afternoon air. "I don't like it," Ed Hedemann,
60, of Brooklyn, said of his impending arrest at a Flatbush
Avenue recruiting station. "But there comes a time when, with
the killing that's going on now, people have to stand up and say
no. If that means getting arrested, that's a small sacrifice to
make." |
Delay Hypocrisy: The GOP Using The
Schiavo Case For Political Gain. Who Cries for Sun Hudson?
By Anthony Wade
OpEdNews.com, 19 March 2005
There are two sides to these heart-wrenching stories. Both sides
have their valid points and are deserving of their rights and
privacy. Both sides are legitimate in their defense of what they
truly believe in. The ethically bankrupt Tom Delay on the other
hand, should be ashamed to politicize the issue of life and
death. He should be embarrassed to drag his own hypocrisy into
the arena of public opinion, just to “excite the pro-life base”
or to give the democrats a “tough political issue to handle.”
Terri Schiavo is a real person and deserves better than to
be treated as a political football to further the cause of the
GOP. That is hypocrisy. This is the same hypocrisy that says
that George Bush believes in a “culture of life” while waging
war to no end. It is the same hypocrisy that sees so many people
in the right-to-life movement cross-enrolled in the National
Rifle Association supporting armor piercing bullets for
“hunters”. It is the same hypocrisy that sees a man such as Tom
Delay, devoid of ethics; decrying the ethical state of affairs
in the Terri Schiavo case at the very same instant they are
removing the tube from Sun Hudson, killing him.
|
E-Mail Shows False Claims About Tests
at Nevada Nuclear Site
By MATTHEW L. WALD
NYT, 20 March 2005
Internal Energy Department e-mail messages written in
preparation for seeking a license to open a nuclear waste
repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada show that the department
made false claims about how it carried out its work. For
example, in 2000, James Raleigh, an Energy Department employee,
pointed out in one message that records showed some instruments
that were apparently used to measure conditions inside the
mountain were certified as having been calibrated before the
procedure was performed, and even before the equipment was
received.
|
Refuge Has Long Been a Major
Environmental Battleground
The nation's oil and gas needs help Bush gain support for
drilling. But foes say the limited supply isn't worth the
lasting damage.
By Julie Cart and Ralph Vartabedian
LA Times, 17 March2005
No environmental battle in the last 25 years has aroused more
passion than the seesaw struggle over the future of a strip of
coastal tundra at the northern tip of Alaska. The Senate's vote
Wednesday to allow oil and gas drilling there did not seal the
fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Legislative hurdles
remain. But for the first time in more than 20 years of debate,
the president and Congress have signaled that they agree the
nation's energy needs justify tapping into the nation's largest
wildlife preserve, a place many Americans believe should be
untouchable. Moreover, both proponents and critics of drilling
in the preserve see Wednesday's vote as the opening wedge in a
broader campaign, reflected in pending legislation to open other
areas currently off limits to energy exploration, including
areas off California's coast. Oil industry executives have tied
exploring the preserve to a larger agenda of opening areas that
are closed to exploration. In a speech in Washington in June,
Exxon Chief Executive Lee R. Raymond said: "We will need to
muster the political will, based on a realistic energy outlook,
to allow further development of the energy resources to be found
in the United States. This includes those that may be [in]
offshore California and Florida, in the Rocky Mountains and in
northern Alaska." |
Senate Rejects Bush's Cuts
It narrowly approves a $2.6-trillion budget as four
Republicans break ranks. A confrontation with the House over its
fiscal plan is expected.
By Joel Havemann
LA Times, 18 March 2005
The Senate on Thursday voted to restore cuts sought by President
Bush in Medicaid, education and other domestic programs, and
then approved a $2.6-trillion budget for fiscal year 2006.
The vote on the budget was 51-49.
The Senate's actions set up a confrontation with the House,
which earlier Thursday approved its own version of the budget —
one that hews more closely to Bush's initial spending and tax
proposals. They also shone a spotlight on fissures in the
Senate's GOP majority. Four Republicans broke ranks with their
party to vote against the overall bill; seven voted to restore
funds for Medicaid but to study ways to save money in the
future. "This is not a vote against fiscal responsibility," said
Sen. Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, a moderate Republican and the
Medicaid amendment's principal author. "This is a vote for
cutting the deficit in an orderly way…. We're letting the budget
drive the policy, instead of the policy driving the budget." As
votes continued late into the night on one challenge after
another to the Senate Budget Committee's proposal, Sen. Judd
Gregg (R-N.H.), the committee chairman, admitted that the effort
to control the deficit — which reached $412 billion last year —
was under "serious stress." "A lot of what's happening is
turning a cute little bunny rabbit into a camel," Gregg said as
the parade of successful amendments proceeded. Among them was
one that would roll back the maximum amount of Social Security
benefits subject to income tax for wealthier seniors. The budget
sets the basic outlines of tax and spending targets as
legislation to fund the government moves through Congress, and
Gregg said he hoped that the version ultimately negotiated with
the House would be more restrained than what the Senate
approved. If the two chambers cannot reach agreement, they would
be forced to go without a plan, as they did last year. |
In Blow to Bush, Senators Reject Cuts
to Medicaid
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT, 18 March 2005
The House and Senate passed competing versions of a $2.57
trillion budget for 2006 on Thursday night. The two chambers
provided tens of billions of dollars to extend President Bush's
tax cuts over the next five years, but differed sharply over
cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor.
The votes, 218 to 214 in the House and 51 to 49 in the Senate,
set the two chambers on a collision course. The House budget
included steep cuts in Medicaid and other so-called entitlement
programs. But in the Senate, President Bush's plans to reduce
the explosive growth in Medicaid ran into a roadblock when
lawmakers voted 52 to 48 to strip the budget of Medicaid cuts
and instead create a one-year commission to recommend changes in
the program. In a surprise move, the Senate also voted to
approve a total of $134 billion in tax cuts, $34 billion more
than President Bush requested and $64 billion more than the
Senate Republican leadership had initially proposed. In addition
to extending the cuts on capital gains taxes and dividend
income, the move was intended to repeal an unpopular tax,
enacted in 1993, on Social Security benefits for the wealthy.
"It provided a huge amount of tax cuts," said Senator Pete V.
Domenici, Republican of New Mexico and one of five Republicans
to vote against the provision. "We didn't know what we were
doing." While the tax cuts brought the Senate budget resolution
closer in line with the one passed by the House, the Medicaid
issue moved the two further apart.
That vote was a rebuke to both the White House and the
Republican leadership, and it threatens to prevent Congress from
adopting a final budget this year. ...Senators spent nearly the
entire day in the chamber, voting on more than two dozen budget
amendments, on matters including national security, vocational
education grants and prescription drugs for Medicare
beneficiaries. By 10 p.m., after the vote on tax cut measures,
some senators appeared a little confused about what they had
done. The measure, sponsored by Senator Jim Bunning, Republican
of Kentucky, passed 55 to 45, with five Democrats backing the
plan and five Republicans breaking ranks to oppose it. "I think
I did vote for this," said Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of
Minnesota. But Mr. Coleman said he thought the vote was mostly
symbolic, a statement of opposition to the Social Security tax,
"which has been a sore point for a long time." |
Un-Volunteering: Troops Improvise to
Find Way Out
By MONICA DAVEY
NYT, 18 March 2005
The night before his Army unit was to meet to fly to Iraq, Pvt.
Brandon Hughey, 19, simply left. He drove all night from Texas
to Indiana, and on from there, with help from a Vietnam veteran
he had met on the Internet, to disappear in Canada. In Georgia,
Sgt. Kevin Benderman, 40, whose family ties to military service
stretch back to the American Revolution, filed for
conscientious-objector status and learned that he will face a
court-martial in May for failing to report to his unit when it
left for a second stint in Iraq. One by one, a trickle of
soldiers and marines - some just back from duty in Iraq, others
facing a trip there soon - are seeking ways out. Soldiers, their
advocates and lawyers who specialize in military law say they
have watched a few service members try ever more unlikely and
desperate routes: taking drugs in the hope that they will be
kept home after positive urine tests, for example; or seeking
psychological or medical reasons to be declared nondeployable,
including last-minute pregnancies. Specialist Marquise J.
Roberts is accused of asking a relative in Philadelphia to shoot
him in the leg so he would not have to return to war.
|
Defiant DeLay's Dirty Dealings
American Progress Action Fund,
16 March 2005
A defiant Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) came out swinging yesterday,
attacking the press and blaming partisan politics for reports of
his recent ethics violations. "I have yet to be found breaking
any House rules," he crowed. Not so fast, congressman. In the
past year, DeLay was rebuked three times for ethics violations.
On 9/30/04, he was admonished by the House Ethics Committee for
trying to bribe a colleague into supporting the Medicare
bill. On 10/6/04 he was rebuked for using the
Federal Aviation Administration to track down Texas
legislators during a state partisan squabble. He was also
rebuked for appearing to solicit campaign contributions from
corporations interested in an energy bill. Still outstanding:
Lobbyists picked up the tab for expensive vacations DeLay took
to
Britain and
Asia. He's also under new scrutiny for his involvement in
funneling illegal corporate campaign funds to candidates for
Texas state office. (For a list of a dozen of DeLay's
dirty dealings, check out ThinkProgress.org.) Tired of
DeLay's blatant disregard for basic ethics? Tell your lawmakers
it's time for DeLay to go by
signing this petition from the Public Campaign Action Fund. |
Puzzled by the bipartisan nature of the
assault on the middle class? ...don't be.
Money Talks: Campaign
Contributions from Finance/Credit Interests Correlate with
Senate Bankruptcy Vote
By Steven Weiss
Capital Eye, 14 March 2005
Judging by last week’s Senate vote on bankruptcy legislation,
the millions of dollars in campaign donations contributed by the
credit card industry over the years was money well spent. The
finance and credit industry strongly supports the bill, which
would make it more difficult to escape from debt through
bankruptcy protection. After several days of debate, the Senate
on Thursday night approved the measure by a vote of 74-25. An
analysis of the contributions shows that senators who voted to
pass the bill raised an average of nearly twice as much between
1999 and 2004 from the finance and credit industry as those who
voted against the bill. |
Karen Hughes
Sells Brand America
She's supposed to market Bush policies
to the Muslim world. Good luck!
By
Fred Kaplan
Slate, 16 March 2005
In consumer marketing, it's not just the slogan that
counts; it's ultimately how the product tastes, feels, looks, or
sounds. The same is true with public diplomacy. The product
matters: What's important is what the U.S. government does.
As a recent
RAND Corporation paper on public diplomacy put it, "Misunderstanding
of American values is not the principal source of
anti-Americanism." Sometimes foreigners understand us just fine;
they simply don't like what they see. The study concludes that
"some U.S. policies have been, are, and will continue
to be major sources of anti-Americanism." (Italics are in the
original.) It didn't matter what ads Tutwiler produced: Her
audience already distrusted Brand America.
SEE ALSO:
Truth Is, Bush's Propaganda Hurts the
U.S.
ANDRÉS MARTINEZ
LA Times, March 16, 2005 |
Implications of the Bush Budget for
People Over 55
Economic Policy Institute, 16 March 2005
I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do
not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system
will not change in any way.
-- President George W. Bush, State of the Union address,
February 2, 2005
Contrary to the president's assurances in his State of the Union
speech, workers currently age 55 and over have every reason to
worry about President Bush's budget proposals. The permanent
reduction of revenues he has proposed would deny government the
resources to maintain Social Security and medical benefits that
those over 55 now expect. The experience of the last several
decades shows that there will no be crisis for Social Security
or Medicare so long as government officials are committed to pay
scheduled benefits. The Social Security trustees have projected
that Social Security benefits will exceed revenues in 2018 and
beyond. The president has portrayed this cross-over point as the
beginning of a crisis. Yet both the Social Security and Medicare
trust funds have repeatedly had periods when cash benefits
exceeded new tax revenues.
SEE ALSO:
Collision Course: The Bush Budget and
Social Security
by Max B. Sawicky
Economic Policy Institute, 16 March 2005
The Bush Administration's budget for fiscal year 2006 proposes
the continuation of fiscal policies that undermine the federal
government's ability to perform traditional, basic functions,
including its capacity to make good on obligations to Social
Security and Medicare. Current retirees, as well as workers
currently over the age of 55, are in danger of benefit cuts in
coming years, despite the president's assurances to those groups
that their current benefits are safe. This report examines the
long-run budget picture as projected in the administration's
latest budget documents, using their own short-term forecast for
the sake of argument. These numbers show that the
administration's budget policies make the problems worse, not
better. In particular, the data show that protection of Social
Security and Medicare benefits is impossible under Bush
Administration policies, but feasible under an alternative
budget framework. |
Fraud Verdict Is Ominous for Toppled
CEOs
Ex-WorldCom chief Ebbers is convicted of a huge accounting
scam, though he professed ignorance. Such a claim may not help
others.
By Walter Hamilton, Lisa Girion and Thomas S. Mulligan
LA Times, 16 March 2005
The conviction Tuesday of former WorldCom Inc. chief Bernard J.
Ebbers for orchestrating an $11-billion accounting fraud could
have deep repercussions for other disgraced executives who claim
they were unaware of financial scams taking root beneath them. |
Senate Democrats Erect Shield to
Obstruct "Nuclear Option"
If Republicans change rules to guarantee approval of Bush's
controversial judicial nominees, the party will block chamber
business.
By Edwin Chen
LA Times, 16 March 2005
Senate Democrats threatened Tuesday to block virtually all
business in that chamber if the Republican majority carried out
a plan to unilaterally impose rule changes that would ensure
confirmation of President Bush's most controversial judicial
nominations. The threat, issued by Minority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.), sharply escalated a partisan disagreement that could
put the brakes on an array of legislative business in the upper
chamber, where Democrats used the threat of a filibuster to
block votes on 10 appellate court nominees last year. The
showdown, which could come as early as next month, looms because
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), reflecting the
frustrations among most of his 54 Republican colleagues, has
said he might seek to break the logjam over Bush's court
appointments by abolishing the use of the filibuster to block
nominations. Instead, he would force through a rule that enables
a simple majority of 51 to bring nominations to a vote. Such a
ploy is considered so politically explosive within the Senate
that when it was first proposed in 2003, Sen. Trent Lott
(R-Miss.), a former majority leader, described it as the
"nuclear option." Reid and his fellow Democrats, in effect,
called Frist's bluff on Tuesday by issuing a preemptive strike,
saying that Democrats would respond to any Frist action by
continuing to work with Republicans only on matters that
affected U.S. troops or that ensured the continuity of
government operations.
|
Senate Work May Come to Halt If GOP
Bars Judicial Filibusters
By Charles Babington
Washington Post, 16 March 2005
Senate Democrats formally threatened yesterday to bring the
chamber to a virtual standstill if Republicans carry out a plan
to change Senate rules and bar filibusters of judicial
nominations. The comments, which Republicans quickly denounced,
signal that the two parties remain on a collision course whose
outcome could be so explosive that it is generally called the
"nuclear option."
Democrats have made similar threats in recent interviews and
speeches, but yesterday's actions -- including a letter to GOP
leaders and a mass gathering on the Capitol's east steps --
marked their biggest effort yet to show solidarity on an issue
that many expect to reach a climax next month. |
Mercury
Emissions To Be Traded
EPA Criticized On Pollution Rule
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post, 15 March
2005 |
SEE ALSO:
Proposed EPA Mercury Rule Leads World in
Wrong Direction
Group Intensifies Legal Challenge to Tuna and Seafood
Advisory
Environmental Working Group, 14 March 2005
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) today condemns the Bush
EPA's proposed rule allowing power plants to trade mercury
pollution credits. It's more evidence that the Bush
Administration is abdicating a leadership role on the
environment, and promoting policies that allow far more
pollution than necessary, particularly for this case in hot
spots and sacrifice zones around coal-burning power plants. The
"cap-and-trade" plan was spawned from politically-driven science
and faulty methods, according to two government investigations.
It sets the U.S. forward as a poor example for the world, and
does not move the country closer to the clean energy
technologies of the future. The Bush administration is not doing
enough to stop pollution from power plants, EWG analysts say,
and it is also not doing enough to prevent people from eating
unsafe levels of mercury in tuna fish and other seafood.
SEE ALSO:
Toxic Mercury Hurts Our Health & Quality
of Life
National Environmental Trust, 14 March 2005
One in six American women of childbearing age has enough mercury
in her blood to pose a risk to her unborn child. Airborne
mercury pollution from power plant smokestacks rains down on our
rivers and lakes where it accumulates in the food chain,
especially in fish. Breastfed infants and developing fetuses are
exposed when their mothers consume tainted fish, which can
result in lowered intelligence, learning problems, and brain
damage.
SEE ALSO:
U.S. Mercury Standard Among Worst in World
(Environmental Working Group)
SEE ALSO:
FDA Seafood Advisory is Industry
Giveaway
Advice would increase the number of babies exposed to unsafe
levels of mercury (Environmental Working Group)
|
Right Turns 'Bully Pulpit' into
Covert Propaganda Ministry
Fake News Gets White House
Okay
Dan Froomkin
Washington Post, 15 March 2005
Message delivery was a big theme at the White House yesterday.
First, Karen Hughes was over for breakfast. The president's
finest spinner is headed back onto the public payroll with a new
and challenging goal: Improving Bush's image in the Muslim
world.
Then at the mid-day briefing, Press Secretary Scott McClellan
officially confirmed that the White House is blowing off the
Government Accountability Office's finding that prepackaged
administration video news releases constitute illegal covert
propaganda.
SEE ALSO:
Administration Rejects Ruling On PR Videos
GAO Called Tapes Illegal Propaganda
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post, 15 March 2005
The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the
Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is
legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news
stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing
them. That message, in memos sent Friday to federal agency heads
and general counsels, contradicts a Feb. 17 memo from
Comptroller General David M. Walker. Walker wrote that such
stories -- designed to resemble independently reported broadcast
news stories so that TV stations can run them without editing --
violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert
propaganda. But Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of
Management and Budget, and Steven G. Bradbury, principal deputy
assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, said in
memos last week that the administration disagrees with the GAO's
ruling. And, in any case, they wrote, the department's Office of
Legal Counsel, not the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress,
provides binding legal interpretations for federal agencies to
follow. The legal counsel's office "does not agree with GAO that
the covert propaganda prohibition applies simply because an
agency's role in producing and disseminating information is
undisclosed or 'covert,' regardless of whether the content of
the message is 'propaganda,' " Bradbury wrote. "Our view is that
the prohibition does not apply where there is no advocacy of a
particular viewpoint, and therefore it does not apply to the
legitimate provision of information concerning the programs
administered by an agency."
The existence of the memos was reported Sunday by the New York
Times. |
Mercury Emissions To Be Traded
EPA Criticized On Pollution Rule
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post, 15 March 2005
...The EPA issued a rule last week to control the smog and soot
produced by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The agency plans
to offer a full justification for its approach today but
defended it in broad terms yesterday. Industry groups back the
cap-and-trade approach as more practical and cost-effective than
the alternative that environmentalists prefer -- limiting
emissions at every plant. The EPA's actions in developing the
mercury rule prompted intense criticism by the agency's
inspector general and the nonpartisan Government Accountability
Office, which said the agency ignored scientific evidence.
Agency staff have charged that the Bush administration's
political operatives decided the framework of the new rule in
advance and deliberately made it less ambitious in order not to
be tougher than President Bush's proposed revisions of the Clean
Air Act, the nation's fundamental air pollution law. Bush's
proposal, which has been stalled in Congress, is also based on a
cap-and-trade system. Agency officials and industry advocates
have defended the rulemaking process as open, credible and
efficient. "It is unconscionable EPA is allowing power companies
to trade in a powerful neurotoxin -- it is unprecedented and
illegal," said S. William Becker, executive director of two
bipartisan state environmental groups, the State and Territorial
Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Association of
Local Air Pollution Control Officials. He predicted that states
and cities will be forced to institute a "patchwork quilt" of
more stringent local emissions controls. To justify the new
approach, the administration needed to reverse a decision by the
Clinton administration to list mercury as a "hazardous air
pollutant." That allowed for greater flexibility in designing
emission controls and made possible a trading system to mesh
with the EPA rule issued last week to control emissions of
sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, said Scott Segal, a
spokesman for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council,
which represents a number of coal-fired utilities. |
SEE ALSO:
EPA Distorted Mercury Analysis, GAO
Says
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post, 8 March 2005
The Environmental Protection Agency distorted the analysis of
its controversial proposal to regulate mercury pollution from
power plants, making it appear that the Bush administration's
market-based approach was superior to a competing scheme
supported by environmentalists, the nonpartisan Government
Accountability Office said yesterday. Rebuking the agency for a
lack of "transparency," the report said the EPA had failed to
fully document the toxic impact of mercury on brain development,
learning, and neurological functioning. The GAO urged that these
problems be rectified before the EPA takes final action on the
rule. |
"When You See News As a Product...It's Impossible To Really
Serve Democracy"
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Laurie Garrett
DemocracyNow, 14 March 2005
We speak with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Laurie Garrett,
who resigned from Newsday and ripped the paper's parent company,
the Tribune Company, for putting profit over quality journalism.
Garrett says, “If you trim back your staff, if you trim back
your costs, and you put out a lower quality product, your stock
value goes up. All across the news industry, we have seen this
same phenomenon."
Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/14/151255 |
State Propaganda:
How Government Agencies Produce Hundreds of Pre-Packaged TV
Segments the Media Runs as News
DemocracyNow, 14
March 2005
From the State Department to Agriculture to the Transportation
Security Administration, federal agencies under the Bush
administration have been producing hundreds of pre-packaged TV
segments that have been broadcast on local stations as real
news. We speak with John Stauber of PR Watch, which has been
tracking the rise of government and corporate-produced news for
years.
Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/14/152202 |
The $600 Billion Man
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 15 March 2005
he argument over Social Security privatization isn't about rival
views on how to secure the program's future - even the
administration admits that private accounts would do nothing to
help the system's finances. It's a debate about what kind of
society America should be. And it's a debate Republicans appear
to be losing, because the public doesn't share their view that
it's a good idea to expose middle-class families, whose lives
have become steadily riskier over the past few decades, to even
more risk. As soon as voters started to realize that private
accounts would replace traditional Social Security benefits, not
add to them, support for privatization collapsed. |
The Courts and the War on Terror
By Karen J. Greenberg
TomDispatch, 14 March 2005
The fact is that the political expediency of the war on terror
has undermined the strategy of an effective pursuit of
terrorists. The rush to prosecution, the pressure to get
convictions, even the holding of detainees without charging
them, speaks more to politics than to justice, more to
appearances than substance. It is time for the courts to assert
their professionalism, to prosecute alleged terrorists
carefully, without a rush to judgment, and in so doing to help
the legal war on terror take its rightful place in the annals of
American jurisprudence.
|
PR, Bullshit and 'Orwellian' Newscasts
Under Bush, a New Age of
Prepackaged TV News
By DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN
NYT, 13 March 2005
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American
told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction
to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another
success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen
aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most
remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment,
broadcast in January, described the administration's
determination to open markets for American farmers. To a viewer,
each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local
news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The
report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The
"reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public
relations professional working under a false name for the
Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was
done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has
aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations:
the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major
corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch
everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at
least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and
the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of
television news segments in the past four years, records and
interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local
stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the
government's role in their production.
SEE ALSO:
Master of fabrication and deceit
re-employed
Bush Picks Karen
Hughes to Repair Tarnished U.S. Image Abroad
by Elisabeth Bumiller
NYT, 12 March 2005
WASHINGTON - President Bush will nominate one of his closest
confidantes, Karen P. Hughes, to lead an effort at the State
Department to repair the image of the United States overseas,
particularly in the Arab world, administration officials said
Friday.
Some senior State Department officials say that the problem is
American policy, not inadequate public relations, and that no
amount of marketing will changes minds in the Muslim world about
the war in Iraq or American support of Israel.
She will also be a leader in publicizing the president's
campaign for democracy in the Middle East.
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
On Bullshit
To the Best of Our Knowledge, 13 March 2005
 Philosopher
Harry Frankfurt is the author of "On Bullshit." He tells
Steve Paulson why "b.s." is a more insidious problem than
outright falsehood and undermines the basic values of a society
that values truth-telling.
Publisher comments: With his characteristic combination of
philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor,
Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related
concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that
bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as
liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about
what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.
Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of
themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all
is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of
the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are
irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take
many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually
undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way
that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters
what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a
greater enemy of the truth than lies are. |
Back
to Archive Index |
Bush trades proliferation security for War
on Terror alliance
Illegal Nuclear Deals
Alleged
Officials say Pakistan has secretly bought high-tech
components for its weapons program from U.S. companies.
By Josh Meyer
LA Times, 26 March 2005
A federal criminal investigation has uncovered evidence that the
government of Pakistan made clandestine purchases of U.S.
high-technology components for use in its nuclear weapons
program in defiance of American law. Federal authorities also
say the highly specialized equipment at one point passed through
the hands of Humayun Khan, an Islamabad businessman who they say
has ties to Islamic militants. Even though President Bush has
been pushing for an international crackdown on such trafficking,
efforts by two U.S. agencies to send investigators to Pakistan
to gather more evidence have hit a bottleneck in Washington,
said officials knowledgeable about the case. The impasse is part
of a larger tug-of-war between federal agencies that enforce
U.S. nonproliferation laws and policymakers who consider
Pakistan too important to embarrass. The transactions under
review began in early 2003, well after President Pervez
Musharraf threw his support to the Bush administration's war on
terrorism and the invasion of neighboring Afghanistan to oust
Pakistan's former Taliban allies. "This is the age-old problem
with Pakistan and the U.S. Other priorities always trump the
United States from coming down hard on Pakistan's nuclear
proliferation. And it goes back 15 to 20 years," said David
Albright, director of the Washington-based Institute for Science
and International Security. Albright, a former United Nations
weapons inspector in Iraq, favors getting tougher with Pakistan.
U.S. and European officials involved in nonproliferation issues
say they recently discovered evidence that Pakistan has begun a
new push to acquire advanced nuclear components on the black
market as it tries to upgrade its decades-old weapons program.
Current and former intelligence officials said the same elements
of the Pakistani military that they suspected of orchestrating
efforts to buy American-made products may also have worked with
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear
program who supplied weapons know-how and parts to Iran, North
Korea and Libya. ...Pakistan has refused to allow access to
Abdul Qadeer Khan. Gary Milhollin, a nuclear nonproliferation
expert, said the Bush administration could apply enough pressure
on Pakistan to gain access for the investigators reviewing
Humayun Khan's activities, tying cooperation to the $3-billion
U.S. aid package, for example, and to the sale of F-16 fighter
jets that the White House announced Friday.
SEE ALSO:
AUDIO LINK
Pakistan's Nuclear Ambitions
NPR's Weekend Edition - Sunday, 27 March 2005
Sheilah Kast speaks with Josh Meyer of the Los Angeles Times,
who reported this weekend on Islamabad's continued efforts to
expand its nuclear weapons program, including several attempts
to purchase high-tech components on the international arms black
market. |
'Due Process' a la Bush
Military Tribunal Ignored
Evidence on Detainee
U.S. Military Intelligence, German Authorities Found No Ties
to Terrorists
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post, 27 March 2005
A military tribunal determined last fall that Murat Kurnaz, a
German national seized in Pakistan in 2001, was a member of al
Qaeda and an enemy combatant whom the government could detain
indefinitely at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. The three military officers on the panel, whose identities
are kept secret, said in papers filed in federal court that they
reached their conclusion based largely on classified evidence
that was too sensitive to release to the public. In fact, that
evidence, recently declassified and obtained by The Washington
Post, shows that U.S. military intelligence and German law
enforcement authorities had largely concluded there was no
information that linked Kurnaz to al Qaeda, any other terrorist
organization or terrorist activities.
In recently declassified portions of a January ruling, a federal
judge criticized the military panel for ignoring the exculpatory
information that dominates Kurnaz's file and for relying instead
on a brief, unsupported memo filed shortly before Kurnaz's
hearing by an unidentified government official.
Kurnaz has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since at least
January 2002.
"The U.S. government has known for almost two years that he's
innocent of these charges," said Baher Azmy, Kurnaz's attorney.
"That begs a lot of questions about what the purpose of
Guantanamo really is. He can't be useful to them. He has no
intelligence for them. Why in the world is he still there?"
...The Kurnaz case appears to be the first in which
classified material considered by a "combatant status review
tribunal" has become public. While attorneys for Guantanamo Bay
detainees have frequently complained that their clients are
being held based on thin evidence, Kurnaz's is the first known
case in which a panel appeared to disregard the recommendations
of U.S. intelligence agencies and information supplied by
allies. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Daryl Borgquist,
said the government will not answer questions about the
decisions made by the tribunals. "We don't comment on the
decisions of the tribunals," he said. "They make the best
decision based on what they saw before them at the time."
...Justice Department lawyers told Azmy last week that the
information may have been improperly declassified and should be
treated in the foreseeable future as classified.
Kurnaz, 23, told the tribunal he was traveling to Pakistan with
an Islamic missionary group. He said he is a religious man who
pays no attention to politics and detests terrorists for
violating the Koran's teachings to practice nonviolence,
according to transcripts of his appearance before the tribunal,
which are available in federal court. One of the tribunal's
assertions is that Kurnaz was traveling to Pakistan with Selcuk
Bilgin, who Kurnaz said was a friend from his gym and who the
military said is suspected of being "the Elalananutus suicide
bomber." Military records do not make it clear what the incident
was, but in November 2003, an Istanbul synagogue was bombed and
suspected bomber Gokhan Elaltuntas died. Bilgin, who is still
alive and living in Germany, did not go on the trip with Kurnaz,
according to German court records that are part of the tribunal
process. He was detained at the airport in Germany for failing
to pay a fine on his dog. Uwe Picard, the German prosecutor who
investigated the case against Bilgin, said in an interview last
week that there was no evidence of Bilgin being a suicide bomber
and that authorities there had to drop the case. "We don't have
proof the two wanted to go to Afghanistan or had any terrorist
plans," he said through a German translator. He said German
state security agencies told him they had never heard of an
Elalananutus bombing or a group by that name. "As far as I'm
concerned, this group is just a series of letters that means
absolutely nothing," he said. "And as I see it, the Americans
really have no reason to hold Mr. Kurnaz. That wouldn't be
allowed under German law."
SEE ALSO:
U.S. Is Examining Plan to Bolster
Detainee Rights (NYT)
...Those changes include strengthening the rights of defendants,
establishing more independent judges to lead the panels and
barring confessions obtained by torture, the officials said. |
Bush: Democracy on the march...
Iraq Embroiled in Grisly Epidemic Beyond
Insurgency
Monte Morin
Los Angeles Times via Star Tribune, 27 March 2005
As Iraq's newly elected leaders cobble together the foundation
of a fledgling democracy, a killing epidemic has taken hold of
this troubled nation. Ministry of Health statistics show that
record numbers of Iraqi civilians are coming to violent ends,
particularly in Baghdad. Political assassinations and bombings
have garnered worldwide attention. But Iraqi officials say
violence unrelated to the insurgency is growing and Iraqis are
more likely to die at the hands -- or in the cross-fire -- of
kidnappers, carjackers and angry neighbors than they are from
car bombs. In some cases, authorities say, the motives are so
opaque that they cannot tell if they are investigating a crime
disguised as an act of war or a political assassination
masquerading as a violent business dispute. ...In Baghdad alone,
officials at the central morgue counted 8,035 deaths by
unnatural causes in 2004, up from 6,012 the previous year when
the United States invaded Iraq. In 2002, the final year of the
Saddam Hussein's regime, the morgue examined about 1,800 bodies.
Of the deaths occurring now, 60 percent are caused by gunshot
wounds, officials say, and most are unrelated to the insurgency.
Between 20 and 30 bodies arrive at the morgue every day, and the
victims are overwhelmingly male. Much of the violence, officials
say, is inspired by the ethnic, tribal and religious rivalries
that were held in check by Saddam's brutal rule. The rivalries
and a ready supply of firearms are a deadly combination that has
let loose a wave of vengeance killings, tribal vendettas,
mercenary kidnappings and thievery. |
Fractured Iraq Sees a Sunni Call to
Arms
By Thanassis Cambanis
Boston Globe, 27 March 2005
For the first time, Sunni Muslim sheiks are publicly exhorting
followers to strike with force against ethnic Kurds and Shi'ites,
an escalation in rhetoric that could exacerbate the communal
violence that already is shaking Iraq's ethnic communities. 'The
Americans aren't the problem; we're living under an occupation
of Kurds and Shi'ites," Sattar Abdulhalik Adburahman, a Sunni
leader from the northern city of Kirkuk, told a gathering of
tribal leaders last week, to deafening applause. ''It's time to
fight back." Such calls for violence are being voiced against
the backdrop of an alarming rise in tit-for-tat ethnic and
sectarian killings. According to several Iraqi leaders, Shi'ite
death squads routinely kill Sunnis suspected of ties to the
Ba'ath Party or insurgency. Bands of Sunnis target Shi'ites in
retaliation, Sunni political leaders like Adnan Pachachi said,
suggesting that significant organizations, rather than small
splintered cells of vigilantes, are driving the killing.
Increasingly, terms like ''insurgency" and ''anti-Iraqi forces"
favored by American officials here fail to fully describe much
of the violence. Iraqi politicians say the worst violence is
being carried out by Sunni fighters against Shi'ites and Kurds
-- both civilians and those who work for security forces backed
by the Iraqi government. |
Republican 'moderates' lie and deceive
too
The Missing WMD Report
David Corn
BushLies, 25 March 2005
It seems that Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate
intelligence committee, wants to break the promise he made last
year to investigate whether the Bush administration
misrepresented the prewar intelligence on WMDs. What a surprise.
Before the November election, Roberts said this was an important
subject warranting examination but that his committee could not
mount an inquiry until early 2005. How politically convenient.
Now he wants to forget all about it. This matter has so far
received little media coverage. But Democrats should be howling
about Roberts' stonewalling. Do your bit for responsibility and
accountability in government by passing along this article.
...When the intelligence committee released its report last
summer, I asked Roberts if the public and relatives of US troops
killed in Iraq deserved to know "whether this Administration
handled intelligence matters adequately and made statements that
were justified." He replied, "I have made my commitment, and it
will be done." His promise was -- oh-so shocking! -- nothing but
a maneuver to protect Bush's backside. Rockefeller and other
Democrats are insisting Phase II be carried out. But Bush may
benefit from the attempted cover-up. A President doesn't have to
worry about troubling answers if no one asks the questions.
|
Army Documents Shed Light on CIA
'Ghosting'
Systematic Concealment Of Detainees Is Found
By Josh White
Washington Post, 24 March 2005
Senior defense officials have described the CIA practice of
hiding unregistered detainees at Abu Ghraib prison as ad hoc and
unauthorized, but a review of Army documents shows that the
agency's "ghosting" program was systematic and known to three
senior intelligence officials in Iraq. Army and Pentagon
investigations have acknowledged a limited amount of ghosting,
but more than a dozen documents and investigative statements
obtained by The Washington Post show that unregistered CIA
detainees were brought to Abu Ghraib several times a week in
late 2003, and that they were hidden in a special row of cells.
Military police soldiers came up with a rough system to keep
track of such detainees with single-digit identification
numbers, while others were dropped off unnamed, unannounced and
unaccounted for. The documents show that the highest-ranking
general in Iraq at the time acknowledged that his top
intelligence officer was aware the CIA was using Abu Ghraib's
cells, a policy the general abruptly stopped when questions
arose. CIA operatives began looking for a central place to put
detainees captured during secret missions in Iraq in mid-2003,
and an early choice was the high-security Camp Cropper near
Baghdad International Airport, where CIA officers hoped to
deposit a few of their prisoners without registering their
names. Lt. Col. Ronald G. Chew, the military police commander
there, told Army investigators later that he "argued against the
practice" and turned the operatives away. Instead, according to
the documents, the CIA quickly looked to Abu Ghraib, then a
dusty and decrepit compound outside Baghdad that was slated to
be transformed into the central U.S. detention center for the
war. |
Guantanamo Detainee Says Bin Laden
Escaped Tora Bora
DemocracyNow!, 24 March 2005
In news on Afghanistan - the Associated Press has obtained a
Pentagon document that states as fact that a detainee being held
at Guantanamo Bay helped Osama bin Laden escape from the Tora
Bora region in December 2001. The alleged escape played a
central role in last year's race between President Bush and John
Kerry. Senator Kerry repeatedly accused the Bush administration
of making errors at Tora Bora that allowed Bin laden to escape.
President Bush and Vice president Cheney countered by asserting
that commanders never knew whether bin Laden was there when U.S.
and allied Afghan forces attacked the area. According to the
Associated Press, the Pentagon document is the first definitive
statement from the government that bin Laden was at Tora Bora
and evaded U.S. pursuers.
SEE ALSO:
‘Osama Eluded US Forces in Tora Bora’
(Daily Times- Pakistan) |
Insurgents Control Raided Iraq Camp
From correspondents in Samarra, Iraq
From: Agence France-Presse, 24 March 2005
UP to 40 fighters were seen today at a Iraq lakeside training
camp attacked by US and Iraqi forces a day before and said they
had never left, an AFP correspondent who visited the site said.
The correspondent, who went with other journalists to the camp
at Lake Tharthar, 200km north of Baghdad, said he saw 30 to 40
fighters there. The remains of three burnt vehicles were seen on
a dusty road leading to the camp in the village of Ain al-Hilwa.
A few mud huts were partly destroyed and a few big craters
gouged the ground. One of the fighters, who called himself
Mohammed Amer and claimed to belong to the Secret Islamic Army,
said they had never left the base. He also said only 11 of his
comrades were killed in airstrikes on the site. Iraqi commanders
said 85 suspected insurgents were killed in an assault by Iraqi
troops and US aircraft on the camp yesterday. No one was
captured and others had fled by boat, he said. |
Guantanamo Evidence is Suspect, Admits
FBI
By Rupert Cornwell
The Guardian, 23 March 2005
The value of intelligence obtained from Guantanamo Bay detainees
has been cast into further doubt, with the release of new parts
of a 2004 FBI memorandum that describe information extracted by
coercive means as "suspect at best.
The memo was originally made public last year in response to a
Freedom of Information request from the American Civil Liberties
Union. But large parts were blacked out. They have now been
released after pressure from senior Democratic senators, during
confirmation hearings last month for Michael Chertoff, the new
head of the Homeland Security Department.
Between 2001 and 2003, Mr Chertoff was the head of the criminal
division at the Justice Department. Mr Chertoff insisted he was
not involved in deciding interrogation techniques at Guantanamo
Bay. But the memo shows that four of his senior aides held
regular meetings with FBI officials, who criticised the methods
as unproductive.
The latest disclosures will only increase pressure for the
release of the 550 inmates still being held at the Guantanamo
Bay military base in Cuba. But that in turn raises the vexed
issue of "rendition" under which the United States has been
delivering terror suspects for interrogation in their country of
origin. In places such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan the suspects
face further imprisonment and torture.
|
Bush was right...
War's Effect Felt Across Mideast
ROBERT FISK
Seattle PI via Antiwar.com, 23 March 2005
So now they have struck in Qatar. Nice, friendly, liberal Doha,
with its massive U.S. air base and its spiky, argumentative al-Jazeera
television, its modern shops and expatriate compounds and luxury
hotels. Ever since al-Qaida urged its supporters to strike
around the maritime Arab kingdoms of the Gulf, the princes and
emirs have been waiting to find out who's first. The suicide
bomber -- and the killing of a Brit -- gave them their answer.
...The idea that "regime change" would bring newfound stability
to the countries of the Gulf -- another of President Bush's
excuses for the 2003 invasion -- now appears to be a myth. |
Hijacking Democracy in Iraq
By Scott Ritter
AlterNet, 23 March 2005
What occurred in Iraq on Jan. 30, 2005 was an American-brokered
event, not an expression of Iraqi national unity. The U.S.
lowering of the Shi'a vote is case in point. On the surface,
this looks like the sometimes messy aftermath of democracy;
squabbling, rhetoric, and posturing. The Iraqi elections have
been embraced almost universally as a great victory for the
forces of democracy, not only in Iraq, but throughout the entire
Middle East. The fact, however, is that the Iraqi elections
weren't about the free election of a government reflecting the
will of the Iraqi people, but the carefully engineered selection
of a government that would behave in a manner dictated by the
United States. In Iraq, democracy was hijacked by the Americans.
...The sad fact is that it is not so much that the people of the
Middle East are incapable of democracy, but rather the United
States is incapable of allowing genuine democracy to exist in
the Middle East. |
In a Warped Reality
Two years on, the occupiers justify the war by embracing the
irrelevant and ignoring the inconvenient
Gary Younge
The Guardian, 21 March 2005
"The
nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities
committed by his own side. He has a remarkable capacity for
not even hearing about them."
--George
Orwell
We should not
become intoxicated by our own 'goodness.' (paraphrased)
--Reinhold Niebuhr |
This is a tale of one war, two anniversaries, three different
demonstrations - and inconsistencies, contradictions and
civilian deaths that are too numerous to count.
On April 18 2003, tens of thousands of Sunni and Shia protesters
took to the streets of Baghdad to call for the Americans to
leave Iraq. "You are the masters today," Ahmed al-Kubeisy, the
prayer leader, told the Americans as he addressed the men
emerging from Friday prayers. "But I warn you against thinking
of staying. Get out before we kick you out."
Two years later, the US is still there. The anti-American
protest was hailed in the White House as a vindication for the
US strategy of bombing and then occupying the country. "In Iraq,
there's discussion, debate, protest - all the hallmarks of
liberty," said President George Bush that week. "The path to
freedom may not always be neat and orderly, but it is the right
of every person and every nation." |
U.S. Document says bin Laden Evaded
American Forces in Tora Bora
ROBERT BURNS
AP, 22 March 2005
A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a commander
for Osama bin Laden during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
in the 1980s and helped the al-Qaida leader escape his mountain
hideout at Tora Bora in 2001, according to a U.S. government
document. The document, provided to The Associated Press in
response to a Freedom of Information request, says the
unidentified detainee "assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden
from Tora Bora." It is the first definitive statement from the
Pentagon that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and evaded U.S.
pursuers. The detainee is not identified by name or nationality. |
US/WTO/'Big Pharma' insist on 20-year
patents
India's Clampdown on Generic Drugs
Imperils World's Poor, Say Advocates
by Abid Aslam
CommonDreams.org, 23 March 2005
Indian lawmakers adopted a new patent law Tuesday that would ban
domestic firms from making low-cost generic versions of patented
drugs. Health campaigners warned that as a consequence, millions
of people around the world would be denied access to cheap
life-saving medicines. The Lok Sabha, parliament's lower house,
approved the legislation after the government agreed to demands
from leftist allies and made several last-minute amendments to
placate concerns that the new law would help multinational
companies gain dominance and push up prices in the Indian
market.
International aid groups, however, said the law would restrict
the ability of Indian companies to supply generic drugs to
Africa and other poor regions. With respect to AIDS alone, the
effect would be to threaten the survival of hundreds of
thousands of current patients and millions more who had hoped
the medicines would become more widely available, not less.
''The patent law will cut the lifeline to other countries,''
said Ellen 't Hoen, policy advocacy and research director at
Doctors Without Borders' campaign for access to essential
medicines.
|
Bush's Iraq Distraction Results in al
Qaeda Metastasis
Al Qaeda Changes Global
Structure
by Michael Shuster
NPR's Morning Edition, 23 March 2005
The war on terror has forced al Qaeda to decentralize its global
structure. A former FBI counter-terrorism agent says al Qaeda
has changed its tactics, but its goals are still the same.
Although there has not been an attack in the United States since
Sept. 11, the U.S. government still views al Qaeda as the number
one terrorist threat. |
Master political hack purveyor of
international insecurity?
Greenspan has Plenty of Critics in
Europe
Market Place, 21 March 2005
The Fed's Open Market Committee meets today to make a decision
about interest rates. Given the global dominance of the U.S.
dollar, the world will be watching. But not everyone will be
cheering Alan Greenspan for his stewardship of the American
currency. Although he is widely admired, there is a small but
growing band of foreign sceptics who are deeply critical of the
Fed Chairman, as Stephen Beard reports from London. |
Reforming the United Nations
Secretary General Kofi Annan is proposing sweeping changes
for the organization. Will Bush ambassadorial nominee John
Bolton be a help or a hindrance?
By John Barry
Newsweek, 21 March 2005
Administration officials hit the phones before George Bush’s
choice of John Bolton as United Nations ambassador was announced
earlier this month. Secretary of State Condi Rice phoned U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan; the White House phoned foreign
leaders. Heads-up on these occasions is standard etiquette; but
the callers’ message this time was part reassurance, part veiled
threat: Bolton’s naming showed that Bush is serious about the
United Nations—but equally determined to see it reform.
Reactions to the
nomination of Bolton—whose incendiary remarks about the
global organization have included comments like “there is no
such thing as the United Nations”—have ranged from bewildered to
apoplectic. Yet Bush’s timing may be better than it seems. U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan has proposed, in a major speech to
the General Assembly today, the most radical reforms in the
U.N.’s 60-year history. Much of what he has suggested responds
directly to U.S. criticisms. Other proposals will be less
welcome in Washington but are supported by other constituencies
at the U.N. That mix, Annan’s aides say, is precisely the
point. Annan has put together “a package deal”: an ambitious
set of reforms offering something for everyone. Much of it could
be pushed through this year, Annan believes—but only if the Bush
administration is willing to embrace this notion of a package. |
The Energy Crunch to Come
Soaring Oil Profits, Declining Discoveries, and Danger Signs
By Michael T. Klare
TomDispatch, 22 March 2005
Data released annually at this time by the major oil companies
on their prior-year performances rarely generates much interest
outside the business world. With oil prices at an all-time high
and Big Oil reporting record profits, however, this year has
been exceptional. Many media outlets covered the announcement of
mammoth profits garnered by ExxonMobil, the nation's wealthiest
public corporation, and other large firms. Exxon's
fourth-quarter earnings, at $8.42 billion, represented the
highest quarterly income ever reported by an American firm.
"This is the most profitable company in the world," declared
Nick Raich, research director of Zacks Investment Research in
Chicago. But cheering as the recent announcements may have been
for many on Wall Street, they also contained a less auspicious
sign. Despite having spent billions of dollars on exploration,
the major energy firms are reporting few new discoveries and so
have been digging ever deeper into existing reserves. If this
trend continues -- and there is every reason to assume it will
-- the world is headed for a severe and prolonged energy crunch
in the not-too-distant future. |
The End for GM Crops: Final British
Trial Confirms Threat to Wildlife
by Steve Connor, Michael McCarthy and Colin Brown
Independent, 22 March 2005
Yet another nail was hammered into the coffin of the GM food
industry in Britain yesterday when the final trial of a
four-year series of experiments found, once more, that
genetically modified crops can be harmful to wildlife. |
Pentagon Reaffirms Globocop Role
Analysis by Jim Lobe
Inter-Press Service, 22 March 2005
March has been a bad month for the world's multilateralists who,
encouraged by several early appointments to the State Department
and a successful presidential tour of Europe, had hoped that
George W. Bush would temper his unilateralist instincts in his
second term. But culminating in Friday's release by the Pentagon
of a new ”National Defense Strategy of the United States of
America”, the last few weeks have showered a bracing dose of
cold water on that notion. Combined with the nomination earlier
in the month of super-unilateralist John Bolton as Bush's
ambassador to the United Nations, as well as the U.S. withdrawal
from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
for cases involving the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations,
the Strategy strongly suggests that Washington's interest in its
traditional alliances, multilateral institutions, and even
international law is on a downward trajectory.
The 24-page public document, signed by Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, is designed to lay out some of the basic assumptions
of the U.S. role in the world, particularly as regards peace and
security, that will guide the Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR),
an important exercise carried out every four years that steers
U.S. strategy, the Pentagon's more than 400-billion-dollar
annual budget, and military ”transformation” over the next five
to 10 years. While the New York Times highlighted one suggested
innovation -- inviting foreign allies into classified
discussions on the QDR as it is developed -- as evidence of
greater collegiality and openness to allies, the Strategy puts
far greater stress on the critical importance of retaining
Washington's independence and its unchallengeable military
dominance in strategic regions, particularly in and around
Eurasia. While the first of four ”strategic objectives” listed
in the report is securing the U.S. from direct attack, the
second is to ”secure strategic access and retain global freedom
of action.” |
Europe Prepares Its Case Against
Wolfowitz
by Stefania Bianchi
Inter-Press Service via Common Dreams, 22 March 2005
Paul Wolfowitz, the controversial U.S. nominee to take over as
World Bank president, will face some of his biggest critics
during a trip to Brussels. The European Commission, the
executive arm of the European Union (EU), announced Monday that
Wolfowitz had agreed to visit Brussels, as members of the
European Parliament (MEPs) launched a campaign to block his
appointment.
|
Or not...
Counting the Iraqi Dead
FAIR Action Alert, 21 March 2005
According to a study published in the respected British medical
journal The Lancet (10/29/04),
about 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war.
The majority of deaths were due to violence, primarily as a
result of U.S.-led military action. One of the researchers on
the project said that the estimate is likely a conservative one
(New York Times, 10/29/04).
It's certainly a more scientific estimate than the Iraq Body
Count figure cited by
ABC, which is, as that project's website notes, a
"compilation of civilian deaths that have been reported by
recognized sources.... It is likely that many if not most
civilian casualties will go unreported by the media."
Recent polling (ABC/Washington Post
poll, 3/16/05) indicates that the vast majority of the American
public believes that U.S. casualties in Iraq are unacceptable.
One can only wonder what Americans think about the level of
Iraqi civilian casualties; unfortunately, the media's count
dramatically minimizes that death toll. |
AUDIO/VIDEO LINK
U.S. Broadcast Exclusive: Secret U.S.
Plans For Iraq's Oil Spark
Political Fight Between Neocons and Big Oil
DemocracyNow, 21 March 2005
In an explosive new report, investigative journalist Greg Palast
charges that President Bush was planning to invade Iraq before
the September 11th attacks and was considering two very
different plans about what to do with Iraq's oil. The plans
reportedly sparked a political fight between neoconservatives
and big oil companies. Greg Palast joins us in our firehouse
studio and we air his exclusive report, "Secret U.S. Plans For
Iraq's Oil" for the first time in this country. [includes rush
transcript] ...Some people believe George Bush had a secret
plan for Iraq's oil. It's not that simple. In fact, we found two
plans. While there was a hot war being fought in Iraq, here in
Washington, there was a cold war being fought. On one side, the
Pentagon and its neo-con friends, and on the other, the State
Department and its allies in big oil. |
Sharon's 'formaldehyde solution' to
preserve the status quo
Israel to Expand Largest West Bank
Settlement
By GREG MYRE
NYT, 22 March 2005
Israel on Monday publicly confirmed plans to build 3,500 new
housing units in the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank,
Maale Adumim. Palestinians angrily responded that such an action
would violate the Middle East peace plan and would be a major
obstacle to resolving bitter disputes over nearby Jerusalem.
After reports in the Israeli news media, the Defense Ministry
confirmed Monday that Shaul Mofaz, the defense minister, had
approved the new building plan for Maale Adumim two months ago,
based on government proposals dating back several years. ...The
settlement is a magnet for young couples and includes 39
kindergartens. Housing here costs at least one-third less than
in Jerusalem. The commute used to include regular traffic jams
and, on occasion, stone-throwing Palestinian youths. But a
highway that opened two years ago tunnels through a hillside,
avoiding Palestinian areas and allowing commuters to zip into
the center of Jerusalem in less than 10 minutes. About 230,000
Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, and the number is
increasing by at least 10,000 each year. In addition, more than
200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed
after capturing it in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon intends to remove all Jewish settlers from
the Gaza Strip; they now number about 8,800. But Mr. Sharon also
has made it clear that he intends to strengthen Israel's hold on
the main West Bank settlements, where a vast majority of
settlers live. In addition to formal settlements like Maale
Adumim, settlers have established about 100 unauthorized
outposts in recent years. Earlier this month, a
government-sponsored report said Israeli governments had
systematically broken the law by providing assistance to the
outposts in the last decade.
|
Rice Gives Diplomacy New Focus
Secretary of State Reshapes State Department in White House
Image
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post, 20 March 2005
Since becoming secretary of state two months ago, Condoleezza
Rice has transformed the language and image of U.S. diplomacy,
offering a relentless and consistent message that has turned the
State Department into an adjunct of the White House
communications machine. |
The Intelligence Made Them Do It
by Ray McGovern
Antiwar.com, 19 May 2005
Let's review now. It was bad intelligence that made President
George W. Bush invade Iraq, right? No, you say, and you are
correct; that is just White House spin. The "intelligence" was
conjured up many months after President George W. Bush's
decision to attack. |
Pakistani's Nuclear Black Market Seen
as Offering Deepest Secrets of Building Bomb
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 21 March 2005
Nuclear investigators from the United States and other nations
now believe that the black market network run by the Pakistani
scientist A. Q. Khan was selling not only technology for
enriching nuclear fuel and blueprints for nuclear weapons, but
also some of the darkest of the bomb makers' arts: the
hard-to-master engineering secrets needed to fabricate nuclear
warheads.Their suspicions were initially raised by the discovery
of step-by-step instructions, some of which appear to have come
from China and Pakistan, among the documents recovered last year
from Libya. More recently, investigators have found that the
Khan network had offered similar materials to Iran.The secrets
range from how to cast uranium metal into the form needed at the
core of a bomb to how to build the explosive lenses that
compress the core and start the detonation. The discoveries have
set off a debate in the intelligence community about whether
those technological skills made their way to North Korea and
Iran. President Bush has vowed he will not tolerate either
country's obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran was a customer of the
Khan network, and while it appears to have turned down the offer
of the engineering secrets in 1987, some intelligence officials
are concerned that it picked up the technology elsewhere. North
Korea, which is believed to have two separate bomb projects
under way, also did business with the Khan network, although
precisely what it obtained is not clear. |
Wave of Bombings in Middle East
Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 20 March 2005
Qater, Lebanon, Pakistan and Iraq |
AUDIO LINK
“Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict and United States National Security”
TPR.org, 18 March 2005
On March 10, 2005, Dr. Michael C. Desch presented a program
titled "Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and United States National
Security" to members and guests of the World Affairs Council of
San Antonio. Desch is the first holder of the Robert M. Gates
Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-making at
the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M
University. Their website is
bush.tamu.edu.
Listen now.
|
Deconstructing Iraq: Year Three Begins
Tom Englehardt
TomDispatch, 18 March 2005 |
Secret US Plans for Iraq's Oil
By Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC's Newsnight, 17 March 2005
The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil
before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between
neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed. Two years
ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and
Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protesters claimed
the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been
conquered. In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off
a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon,
on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US
State Department "pragmatists". "Big Oil" appears to have won.
The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State
Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American
oil industry consultants. Insiders told Newsnight that planning
began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long
before the September 11th attack on the US. We saw an increase
in the bombing of oil facilities and pipelines [in Iraq] built
on the premise that privatisation is coming
Mr Falah Aljibury An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant,
Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in
California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State
Department plan for a forced coup d'etat. Mr Aljibury himself
told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to
Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.
Secret sell-off plan
The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan,
drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the
sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted
by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the
Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec
quotas. The sell-off was given the green light in a secret
meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US
entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr Ebel, a former
Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told
Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the
State Department. Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's
"back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's
oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003,
helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British
occupying forces. "Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're
losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of
wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your
life miserable,'" said Mr Aljibury from his home near San
Francisco. "We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities,
pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is coming."
SEE ALSO:
Wolfowitz's Plot to Destroy OPEC
by Juan Cole
Informed Comment, 18 March 2005 |
Italian Press Cynical on Troop Move
by David Willey
BBC News via Common Dreams, 19 March 2005
The Italian press says Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's
conditional decision to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq later
this year is an election tactic. Editorials drew comparisons
between Mr Berlusconi and his UK counterpart Tony Blair - both
facing upcoming elections, and both facing largely hostile
public opinion over military involvement in Iraq. The leading
Milan daily Corriere della Sera says Mr Berlusconi's decision is
aimed at triggering an immediate effect in favour of candidates
supporting his centre-right coalition, just over two weeks ahead
of local elections in which some 40 million Italians can vote.
|
Questions Are Left by C.I.A. Chief on
the Use of Torture
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NYT, 18 March 2005
Porter J. Goss, the director of central intelligence, said
Thursday that he could not assure Congress that the Central
Intelligence Agency's methods of interrogating terrorism
suspects since Sept. 11, 2001, had been permissible under
federal laws prohibiting torture. Under sharp questioning at a
hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mr. Goss
sought to reassure lawmakers that all interrogations "at this
time" were legal and that no methods now in use constituted
torture. But he declined, when asked, to make the same broad
assertions about practices used over the last few years. "At
this time, there are no 'techniques,' if I could say, that are
being employed that are in any way against the law or would meet
- would be considered torture or anything like that," Mr. Goss
said in response to one question. When he was asked several
minutes later whether he could say the same about techniques
employed by the agency since the campaign against Al Qaeda
expanded in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks in the United
States, he said, "I am not able to tell you that."
He added that he might be able to elaborate after the committee
went into closed session to take classified testimony. ...At
times in his appearance, Mr. Goss described some of the
approaches now used by the C.I.A., including the transfer of
terrorism suspects to the custody of foreign governments, as not
much more than a continuation of techniques used by the agency
before the Sept. 11 attacks. But other intelligence officials
have acknowledged that the C.I.A.'s use of detention,
interrogation and rendition, which refers to the transfers,
represents a major expansion in its authorities, and Mr. Goss
seemed to acknowledge that point.
"We have changed some of the ways we gather secrets," he said,
referring to the period since the Sept. 11 attacks. Despite the
sharp Congressional questioning, he added, "I'd much rather
explain why we did something than why we did nothing, and I'm
asking your support in that endeavor." |
Bush's Herds: Ready to Kick Anyone in
the Face
"We Weren't in Any Hurry to Call
the Medics"
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
CounterPunch, 17 March 2005
Reuters, March 7: "Soldiers depicted in the new video would not
face criminal charges, the Pentagon said. One section of the
video showed a bound and wounded prisoner sprawled on the
ground, and showed his bullet entry and exit wounds. At one
point, a US soldier kicked the prisoner in the face. Army
documents quoted a soldier at the scene as saying he 'thought
the dude eventually died. We weren't in any hurry to call the
medics'." This is no surprise, because there are energetic
Christians in America who applaud the murder of wounded
prisoners. They think it is wonderful to kill them. They are
proud that US soldiers kill helpless people. ...Bush has plunged
America into the abyss of everlasting war, and the parallels
between what Bush America is becoming and what Hitler's Germany
became in the 1930s are as startling as they are repellent. |
Afghan Crime Wave Breeds Nostalgia for
Taliban
Child Abductions in Kandahar Crystallize Discontent With
Governing Ex-Warlords
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post, 18 March 2005
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- "We are savage, cruel people," the
kidnappers warned in a note sent to Abdul Qader, demanding
$15,000 to spare the life of his son Mohammed, 11. The
construction contractor quickly borrowed the money and left it
at the agreed spot. But the next morning, a shopkeeper found the
boy's bruised corpse lying in a muddy street. A wave of crime in
this southern Afghan city -- including Mohammed's killing two
months ago and a bombing Thursday that killed at least five
people -- has evoked a growing local nostalgia for the Taliban
era of 1996 to 2001, when the extremist Islamic militia imposed
law and order by draconian means. |
Blind ideology at work...
The Ugly American Bank
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NYT, 18 March 2005
You can say this about Paul Wolfowitz's qualifications to lead
the World Bank: He has been closely associated with America's
largest foreign aid and economic development project since the
Marshall Plan. I'm talking, of course, about reconstruction in
Iraq. Unfortunately, what happened there is likely to make
countries distrust any economic advice Mr. Wolfowitz might give.
Let's not focus on mismanagement. Instead, let's talk about
ideology. Before the Iraq war, Pentagon hawks shut the State
Department out of planning. This excluded anyone with
development experience. As a result, the administration went
into Iraq determined to demonstrate the virtues of radical
free-market economics, with nobody warning about the likely
problems. Journalists who spoke to Paul Bremer when he was
running Iraq remarked on his passion when he spoke about
privatizing state enterprises. They didn't note a comparable
passion for a rapid democratization. In fact, economic ideology
may explain why U.S. officials didn't move quickly after the
fall of Baghdad to hold elections - even though assuring Iraqis
that we didn't intend to install a puppet regime might have
headed off the insurgency. Jay Garner, the first Iraq
administrator, wanted elections as quickly as possible, but the
White House wanted to put a "template" in place by privatizing
oil and other industries before handing over control. The
oil fields never did get privatized. Nonetheless, the attempt to
turn Iraq into a laissez-faire showpiece was, in its own way, as
much an in-your-face rejection of world opinion as the decision
to go to war. Dogmatic views about the universal superiority of
free markets have been losing ground around the world... ...Wolfowitz
fit into all this? The advice that the World Bank gives is as
important as the money it lends - but only if governments take
that advice. And given the ideological rigidity the Pentagon
showed in Iraq, they probably won't. If Mr. Wolfowitz says that
some free-market policy will help economic growth, he'll be
greeted with as much skepticism as if he declared that some
country has weapons of mass destruction. Moisés Naím, editor of
Foreign Policy, says that the Wolfowitz nomination turns the
World Bank into the American Bank. Make that ugly American bank:
rightly or not, developing countries will see Mr. Wolfowitz's
selection as a sign that we're still trying to impose policies
they believe have failed.
|
SEE ALSO:
Sheep in Wolf's Clothing
Why Paul Wolfowitz may be a good choice to run the World
Bank.
By Fred Kaplan
Slate, 16 March 2005
Meet the new boss
What to make of Paul Wolfowitz being tapped to run the World
Bank?
On the one hand, this is a man who has displayed strikingly poor
analytical judgment as deputy secretary of defense. You may
recall his smug assurances to congressional skeptics that our
troops would be welcomed to Iraq with flowers and that the war's
cost would be reimbursed by post-Saddam oil revenues. There was
also his dismissive riposte to the prediction by Gen. Eric
Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, that a few hundred thousand
U.S. troops would be needed for post-war stabilization. "It's
hard to conceive," Wolfowitz testified, "that it would take more
forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would
take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of
Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to believe."
Wolfowitz is not an economist. He has had little experience in
development work beyond a stint as Ronald Reagan's ambassador to
Indonesia. And because he was the intellectual architect of the
war in Iraq, the European members of the World Bank's board are
sure to see his appointment as an affront. There has long been a
deal: The United States picks the head of the World Bank; the
Europeans pick the head of the International Monetary Fund.
Vetoes are rare and awkward. Bill Clinton rejected an IMF
candidate; some Europeans will be tempted to return the favor
now—though they'll probably refrain, knowing how George W. Bush
responds to international naysayers. Besides, they may recognize
that Wolfowitz is not so bad a choice for World Bank boss. |
SEE ALSO:
A Perfect Fit: Wolfowitz at the World
Bank
By JUDE WANNISKI
CounterPunch, 17 March 2005
That's what the World Bank is all about. It was created as an
adjunct of the United Nations at the end of World War II, along
with its brother institution, the International Monetary Fund.
On paper, its function was to lend money to developing countries
to help them grow. Its real job has been to serve the interests
of the major money-center banks and the multinational
corporations who make the big bucks in World Bank development
projects. The Bank, which is really a "fund," persuades a poor
country like Ghana, for example, to build a new industrial
complex in order make stuff for export. It will lend the money
to Ghana -- which it gets from global taxpayers including you
and me -- and arrange for the complex to be built by one of the
favored corporations in the military-industrial complex. The
list always includes Bechtel Corporation, Halliburton, and
Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton. These outfits
go in and build the projects because the locals have no
expertise.
In "Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man" John Perkins explains in some detail
the mechanics of this gigantic money machine. It not only
promotes unnecessary industrial complexes in Ghana, which rust
away in bankruptcy when they prove to be uneconomic. The aim of
the military-industrial complex is not only "industrial," but
also military. The name most closely associated with
Halliburton, of course, is Vice President Cheney, who was
Defense Secretary in the first Gulf War, with Paul Wolfowitz
even then at his side (urging all-out war with Iraq even after
Saddam put up the white flag and retreated to Baghdad before the
war began!!) Rats.
The name most associated with Bechtel is George P. Shultz, once
its top dog, now a mere director. Shultz was Treasury Secretary
under Richard Nixon (helping talk him into floating the U.S.
dollar), Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, and currently a
member of the Defense Policy Board, which until last year
Richard Perle chaired.
Shultz also introduced Governor George W. Bush to Condoleezza
Rice, who in turn introduced Paul Wolfowitz to Governor Bush
back in 1999. Shultz of course knew at the time that Wolfie and
Perle and their neo-con Cabal were planning a war in Iraq, and
we know nice, little "doable" wars (Wolfie's word), are meat and
potatoes for the military-industrial complex. Instead of
squeezing nickels and dimes out of the taxpayers to persuade
Ghana to build a steel mill it doesn't need and can't run, even
little wars run into the billions. And everyone gets into the
act. The arms makers who produce airplanes, tanks, guns, jeeps
and humvees get to blow up a country (like Iraq) and Bechtel and
Halliburton come in right behind to rebuild it. In announcing
the Wolfowitz appointment today, President Bush said the World
Bank is a big organization and Wolfowitz has experience running
a big organization, the Pentagon!! As far as the
military-industrial complex is concerned, Wolfowitz did a
FANTASTIC job. He was only expected to plan for a $30 billion
war and he screwed up so badly that it is now a $200 billion
war, and counting. Anyone who can screw up that badly deserves a
promotion, to the World Bank.
So you see it doesn't really matter that Wolfowitz doesn't know
the first thing about banking or the economics of development
projects. He will sit behind the biggest desk at the Bank and
take the telephone calls from the Big Banks and the
Multinationals, telling him what to do, and providing him with
experts like John Perkins, who did the actual dirty work as an
economic hit man, and now writes his confessions. When the White
House needs a big favor for one of its big hitters, it need only
put in a call to Wolfie, who will throw the right switch. That's
exactly the way it worked with Jim Wolfensohn these past ten
years, and if you don't believe me, look around and you will
note how many poor countries got poorer during his reign, and
how many big bucks were made at Bechtel and Halliburton.
|
Report: Iraq Could Become 'the Biggest
Corruption Scandal in History.'
By Mark Rice-Oxley
The Christian Science Monitor, 16 March 2005
Two of the world's biggest-ever
reconstruction projects - Iraq and post-tsunami Asia - are
facing major tests of credibility, as billions of dollars of aid
and reconstruction money pour in.
And according to a major report released Wednesday by
Transparency International (TI), an international organization
that focuses on issues of corruption, the omens are not good.
...The report cites weak government, haphazard law and order,
armed factions that need appeasing, and a scramble for rich
resources as factors that render a country prone to corruption. |
SEE ALSO:
Iraq Reconstruction 'Rife with
Corruption'
Urgent measures must be taken to prevent
the reconstruction of Iraq from turning into the world's biggest
corruption scandal in history, a respected anti-corruption
watchdog has said.
Aljazeera.net, 16 March 2005
Transparency International (TI) focused on post-war Iraq in a
case study within its Global Corruption Report 2005, which was
released at a press conference in London on Wednesday.
"Corruption thrives in a context of confusion and change," the
study said, adding that ordinary Iraqis became cynical about the
honesty of the factions jostling for power as soon as Saddam
Hussein was removed from power in 2003. "If urgent steps are not
taken," the study concluded, "Iraq will not become the shining
beacon of democracy envisioned by the Bush administration, it
will become the biggest corruption scandal in history." |
Iraq Assembly Meets But Minds Do Not
From Catherine Philp in Baghdad
TimesOnLine, 17 March 2005
IRAQ’S new parliament opened yesterday to the boom of mortar
fire and fiery debate over ethnic identity — and closed again as
the newly elected politicians returned to their backroom
haggling over the make-up of the government.
The parties’ failure to agree a government meant that there was
little of the euphoria that marked the momentous elections of
January 31. In fact, there was little for the 275 deputies to do
but meet, declare the session open, listen to speeches from
various dignitaries and take their oath of office. Yet even that
descended into farce after a squabble over whether the
legislators should be made to swear the oath in Kurdish as well
as Arabic.
SEE ALSO:
Iraqi Assembly Gets Off To Quiet but
Telling Start
By Caryle Murphy and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post, 17 March 2005
Dhari Fayad, temporary speaker of Iraq's newly elected National
Assembly, stood before his fellow delegates for the first time
Wednesday and recalled those "who sacrificed themselves . . .
for the sake of the Iraqi people," including "the martyrs of the
mass graves and the martyrs of the north of Iraq."
Suddenly, someone shouted at Fayad from the auditorium floor:
"Kurdistan! Kurdistan!"
Bowing to his colleague's wish that he refer to
Kurdish-populated northern Iraq by another name, Fayad, 78,
corrected himself and said, "Kurdistan." |
Pakistan Model State for Muslim World:
Rice
Holds talks with Musharraf, Shaukat; president seeks
By Naveed Ahmad
The News International (PK), 17 March 2005
ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived here
Wednesday evening on the second stop of her six-nation tour of
South and East Asia after breaking the hype built around an
announcement on the sale of F-16 fighter jets.
"Pakistan is a model country for the Muslim world," Rice said.
In Washington, she had stated that she would push General
Musharraf on "commitment to a democratic path" for his country.
Rice also held a separate meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat
Aziz and exchanged views on Pak-US relations, regional security
and other important regional and international issues. |
Oil Prices at Fresh Highs Despite Opec
Boost to Output
By James Daley
Independent (UK), 17 March 2005
The price of crude oil soared to an all-time high yesterday,
edging past its previous record of $55.67 a barrel, in spite of
the promise from Opec to supply an additional 500,000 barrels a
day. |
No Escape from the War
Andrew Murray
The Guardian (UK), 16 March 2005
The front benches of both main parties would like to fight the
forthcoming election on the Basil Fawlty principle of "don't
mention the war". They will not be so lucky. The invasion and
occupation of Iraq - and the British public's sustained
opposition to it - continues to cast a long shadow over British
politics. Some are so anxious to "draw a line and move on" that
they simply court ridicule. A correspondent to this paper from
South Shields called for an end to "carping" about the "Iraq
misadventure". Carping? Misadventure? The Iraq war is a huge
crime which has led to up to 100,000 civilian deaths, the deaths
of 1,600 US and British soldiers, the ruination of a country,
and the trashing of international law and the authority of the
UN. |
Report: 108 Died In U.S. Custody
CBS News, 16 March 2005
At least 108 people have died in American custody in Iraq and
Afghanistan, most of them violently, according to government
data provided to The Associated Press. Roughly a quarter of
those deaths have been investigated as possible abuse by U.S.
personnel.
The figure, far higher than any previously disclosed, includes
cases investigated by the Army, Navy, CIA and Justice
Department. Some 65,000 prisoners have been taken during the
U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although most have been
freed. The Pentagon has never provided comprehensive information
on how many prisoners taken during the U.S. wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan have died, and the 108 figure is based on
information supplied by Army, Navy and other government
officials. It includes deaths attributed to natural causes.
To human rights groups, the deaths form a clear pattern.
"Despite the military's own reports of deaths and abuses of
detainees in U.S. custody, it is astonishing that our government
can still pretend that what is happening is the work of a few
rogue soldiers," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.
"No one at the highest levels of our government has yet been
held accountable for the torture and abuse, and that is
unacceptable." |
Wolfowitz Nod Follows Spread of
Conservative Philosophy
By TODD S. PURDUM
NYT, 17 March 2005
Paul D. Wolfowitz once wrote that a major lesson of the cold war
for American foreign policy was "the importance of leadership
and what it consists of: not lecturing and posturing and
demanding, but demonstrating that your friends will be protected
and taken care of, that your enemies will be punished, and that
those who refuse to support you will regret having done so."
...By sending Mr. Wolfowitz to the World Bank, and another
outspoken administration figure, John R. Bolton, to be
ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Bush all but announced his
belief that both institutions could benefit from unconventional
thinking and stern discipline. At the same time, Mr. Wolfowitz's
resignation as deputy secretary of defense, and the planned
departure this summer of Douglas J. Feith as undersecretary for
defense policy, would seem to give Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who often tangled with Mr. Wolfowitz, expanded
influence over national security policy and minimize public
feuding - something Mr. Bush is said to want badly. But Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, who
share many of Mr. Wolfowitz's interventionist views, remain in
place, and some debates will doubtless go on.
SEE ALSO:
A look at some Wolfowitz comments on
Iraq (Yahoo!News)
SEE ALSO:
Wolfowitz To Rule the World (Bank)
David Corn
The Nation, 16 March 2005
The Wolfowitz nomination is a win for the Pentagon but a loss
for the world. Wolfowitz's achievements as a warmonger may say
little about his views on international development, but his
record on Iraq is one of miscalculation and exaggeration. And
the poor of the world deserve a World Bank president with better
judgment. |
The Iraq War Has Only Set Back Middle
East Reform
NPR via Brookings Institution, 14 March 2005
Shibley Telhami, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Saban Center for
Middle East Policy
Recent debate about hopeful signs of change in the Middle East
has blurred the role of the Iraq war in the region. It's true
that U.S. advocacy of democracy cannot be ignored by regional
governments and that some moves in places like Egypt and Saudi
Arabia are in part related to the new American posture. But the
effect of the Iraq war itself has been mostly negative. The war
has made the region more repressive, not less, over the past two
years. Moreover, had the United States employed its power and
international support after the Afghan war to support reformers
in the region and push for Arab-Israeli peace, the Middle
Eastern reform would be much farther along. Our strategic
actions in the Middle East have had more impact on the prospects
for reform than our direct advocacy of democracy. Few in the
Middle East directly associate signs of real change with the
United States, and they are justifiably skeptical about the
chance of real change. Most remain suspicious that the future
will parallel the past: Facing internal and external pressure in
the late '80s, governments reacted by providing short-term
relief to withstand this pressure, only to freeze and in some
instances reverse the moves at the earliest opportunity. In a
survey I conducted last year (with Zogby International) in six
Arab countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon
and the United Arab Emirates), the vast majority of Arabs did
not believe that American policy in Iraq was motivated by the
spread of democracy in the region. Even more troubling, most
people believed the Middle East became less democratic after the
Iraq war, and that Iraqis were worse off than they had been
before the war. Their perception was not merely driven by
suspicion and denial. The modest promise of future change has
been outweighed in most minds by a more repressive reality. The
vast majority of Arabs opposed the Iraq war with a passion that
made their governments insecure. But faced with pressure from
the United States, most governments in the region went along
with that war, often actively cooperating politically and
militarily with the U.S. In turn, the resulting domestic
insecurity has led to repression to prevent destabilizing
dissent. ...There is a notion in our political discourse that
this time around, the American advocacy of democracy is more
serious in part because there is a prevalent belief after 9/11
that the absence of democracy is a primary reason for Middle
East terrorism. Democracy is a worthy objective in its own
right, but our current instrumental view of democracy could very
easily reduce its future import in American priorities. One can
envision more than one possible—maybe even probable— scenario
that can change the U.S. attitudes toward reform: rising tension
with Iran that requires mobilizing allies; a collapse in the
Palestinian-Israeli negotiations; and another significant attack
on American soil. Expectations about profound democratic
transformations in the region and about the U.S. role in driving
change must be weighed against a disturbing historical record
and current reality. The Iraq war has demonstrated what should
have been known all along: The United States has the power the
reshuffle the deck in the Middle East but not the power to
guarantee where the cards will fall.
SEE ALSO:
Democracy -- by George?
President Bush and his supporters are taking credit for
spreading freedom across the Middle East. Here's why they're
wrong.
By Juan Cole
Salon, 16 March 2005
|
Just a few 'bad apples'
U.S. Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths
May Be Homicide
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
NYT, 16 March 2005
At least 26 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and
Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have
concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according
to military officials. The number of confirmed or suspected
cases is much higher than any accounting the military has
previously reported. A Pentagon report sent to Congress last
week cited only six prisoner deaths caused by abuse, but that
partial tally was limited to what the author, Vice Adm. Albert
T. Church III of the Navy, called "closed, substantiated abuse
cases" as of last September. The new figure of 26 was provided
by the Army and Navy this week after repeated inquiries. In 18
cases reviewed by the Army and Navy, investigators have now
closed their inquiries and have recommended them for prosecution
or referred them to other agencies for action, Army and Navy
officials said. Eight cases are still under investigation but
are listed by the Army as confirmed or suspected criminal
homicides, the officials said. Only one of the deaths occurred
at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, officials said, showing how
broadly the most violent abuses extended beyond those prison
walls and contradicting early impressions that the wrongdoing
was confined to a handful of members of the military police on
the prison's night shift. Among the cases are at least four
involving Central Intelligence Agency employees that are being
reviewed by the Justice Department for possible prosecution.
They include a killing in Afghanistan in June 2003 for which
David Passaro, a contract worker for the C.I.A., is now facing
trial in federal court in North Carolina. Human rights groups
expressed dismay at the number of criminal homicides and renewed
their call for a Sept. 11-style inquiry into detention
operations and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This number to me
is quite astounding," said James D. Ross, senior legal adviser
for Human Rights Watch in New York. "This just reflects an
overall failure to take seriously the abuses that have
occurred." |
Supporting our troops...
Shipping was extra — a lot extra
KBR spent millions getting $82,100 worth of LPG into Iraq
By DAVID IVANOVICH
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
Iraq needed fuel. Halliburton Co. was ordered to get it there —
quick. So the Houston-based contractor charged the Pentagon
$27.5 million to ship $82,100 worth of cooking and heating fuel.
In the latest revelation about the company's oft-criticized
performance in Iraq, a Pentagon audit report disclosed Monday
showed Halliburton subsidiary KBR spent $82,100 to buy liquefied
petroleum gas, better-known as LPG, in Kuwait and then 335 times
that number to transport the fuel into violence-ridden Iraq.
Pentagon auditors combing through the company's books were
mystified by this charge. "It is illogical that it would cost
$27,514,833 to deliver $82,100 in LPG fuel," officials from the
Defense Contract Audit Agency noted in the report. The portions
of the audit report released Monday did not specify exactly how
much fuel was involved in this billing. The portions of audit
report were released by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Rep.
John Dingell, D-Mich., both dogged critics of Halliburton and
its wartime contracts.
|
Italy to Begin Pullout Of Troops From
Iraq
Shiites, Kurds Negotiate on Eve of Assembly
By Daniel Williams and Caryle Murphy
Washington Post, 16 March 2005
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, one of the United
States' most ardent supporters on Iraq, said Tuesday he intended
to begin withdrawing his country's troops in September. That
makes Italy the latest country to announce that it will reduce
or eliminate its military contingent in the U.S.-led force. |
Bush Orders Policy to ‘Contain’ Chávez
By Andy Webb-Vidal in Miami
Financial Times, 13 March 2005
Senior US administration officials are working on a policy to
“contain” Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, and what they
allege is his drive to “subvert” Latin America's least stable
states. A strategy aimed at fencing in the government of the
world's fifth-largest oil exporter is being prepared at the
request of President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice,
secretary of state, senior US officials say. The move signals a
renewed interest by the administration in a region that has been
relatively neglected in recent years.
|
Moral superiority...
Extreme Cinema Verite
GIs Shoot Iraq battle Footage and Edit it
Into Music Videos Filled with Death and Destruction. And they
Display their Work as Entertainment.
by Louise Roug
LA Times via CommonDreams, 14 March 2005
When Pfc. Chase McCollough went home on leave in November, he
brought a movie made by fellow soldiers in Iraq. On his first
night back at his parents' house in Texas, he showed the video
to his fiancee, family and friends. This is what they saw: a
handful of American soldiers filmed through the green haze of
night-vision goggles. Radio communication between two soldiers
crackles in the background before it's drowned out by a
heavy-metal soundtrack. "Don't need your forgiveness," the song
by the band Dope begins as images unfurl: armed soldiers posing
in front of Bradley fighting vehicles, two women covered in
black abayas walking along a dusty road, a blue-domed mosque, a
poster of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr. Then, to the fast, hard
beat of the music — "Die, don't need your resistance. Die, don't
need your prayers" — charred, decapitated and bloody corpses
fill the screen. ..."It's in poor taste," Moore said, "kind of
sick." McCullough was surprised that his favorite video was
disturbing to his loved ones back in Texas. ..."If I had a copy
of it, and MTV called, I'd sell it," he said. The videos are no
different than what's on screen at the cinema, showing glorified
violence, he added. "It's no more graphic than 'Saving Private
Ryan,' " he said. "To us, it's no different than watching a
movie." |
Reshaping Nuclear Pact: Bush Seeks to
Close Loopholes
By DAVID E. SANGER
NYT, 14 March 2005
Behind President Bush's recent shift in dealing with Iran's
nuclear program lies a less visible goal: to rewrite, in effect,
the main treaty governing the spread of nuclear technology,
without actually renegotiating it. In their public statements
and background briefings in recent days, Mr. Bush's aides have
acknowledged that Iran appears to have the right - on paper, at
least - to enrich uranium to produce electric power. But Mr.
Bush has managed to convince his reluctant European allies that
the only acceptable outcome of their negotiations with Iran is
that it must give up that right. In what amounts to a
reinterpretation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Mr.
Bush now argues that there is a new class of nations that simply
cannot be trusted with the technology to produce nuclear
material even if the treaty itself makes no such distinction.
|
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