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Bush's Reckless Tax Cuts For The Rich Boost Joblessness, Encourage Outsourcing ...

03.31.04 (5:50 pm) [edit]

Why, economists ask, is this recovery jobless? No one seems to know. But the answer is right there in the Bush tax acts, which many economists have apparently never read.

Almost any business task can be performed using more labor and less capital or less labor and more capital. We learn in Econ 101 that if government doesn't intervene, business will choose the most efficient alternative. But what if government intervenes? What if it puts its heavy tax thumb on the "more machines, fewer workers" side of the scale?

Answer: Instead of using two workers and one machine to do a given job, business will use two machines and one worker.

This has several consequences. First, it artificially boosts productivity numbers. Productivity is simply output per employed worker. In our scenario, we've just induced business to replace workers with machines, so productivity has to go up, by definition.

Most immediately relevant, we get a jobless recovery.

What exactly did the Bush tax acts do to create this problem? They granted an enormous tax cut to big business in the form of "bonus depreciation." Under bonus depreciation, the more corporations spend on equipment, the less tax they have to pay on the same economic income. And that's exactly what they've been doing. Business spending on equipment has skyrocketed, corporate tax collections have plummeted and no one's being hired.

Unfortunately, economists' ignorance of basic tax law is not limited to the bonus depreciation rules. Recently, the chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, Gregory Mankiw, opined that the movement of American jobs to other countries was a good thing. Indeed, back in Econ 101 we learn that free trade and the law of comparative advantage support Mankiw's views.

But here again, our chief economist appears to be ignorant of basic U.S. tax law. When a U.S. corporation manufactures in the United States, its income is subject to U.S. tax at a nominal rate of 35 percent. If the same corporation moves those jobs to some other country, it can normally structure the deal to reduce its U.S. taxes to zero. That's right, zero.

What this means is that the standard economists' assumption, "all else being equal," is simply not true. Current U.S. tax rules create a strong artificial incentive to move business offshore. Until recently, the one big disadvantage of doing so was that it was then hard to bring the resulting profits back to the United States. The most recent Bush tax act helped solve this problem by cutting U.S. taxes on the repatriation of offshore profits. In other words, the most recent Bush tax act made these artificial incentives to move business offshore even stronger.

I draw two morals from this story. First, our current unemployment problem has probably resulted, in significant part, from the structure of recent tax cuts for big business. Second, until tax experts are included more regularly in economic analysis and debate, economists are likely to continue missing the boat in ways that can and should be avoided.

[u]THEODORE SETO[/u], AJC, http://www.ajc.com/opinion/co...

Bush Can't Provide Proof To Support His Jobs Claim

03.31.04 (10:13 am) [edit]

As President Bush tours the country touting his economic record, he is trying to shift the blame for the more than 2 million jobs that have been lost since he took office1. Specifically, he has repeatedly claimed, "over a million jobs were lost because of the [9/11] attack"2. But a new report shows that there are no statistics to support this assertion, and that the White House itself cannot provide any evidence that this is the case.

According to the Bureau of National Affairs, "White House officials were unable to point to any specific information that supports a direct link between massive job losses and the attacks"3. While one White House spokeswoman claimed that the President's statements were "supported by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)," that agency's associate commissioner "said BLS has not compiled any specific study on jobs which were lost specifically because of the Sept. 11 attacks."

[b]Sources[/b]: - http://www.misleader.org/dail... -

1 "Bush Record on The Economy and Jobs", Committee on Education and the Workforce, 02/26/2004.

2 President Bush Discusses Job Training and the Economy in NY, 03/11/2004.

3 Bureau of National Affairs, 03/22/2004.

... Is Fix In At 9/11 Commission? ...

03.31.04 (8:01 am) [edit]

In finally accepting the 9/11 Commission's request for public testimony under oath from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, the White House was not the one that flinched. It was the 9/11 Commission.

The fine print of the deal takes the chance of the commission taking sworn public testimony from any other White House official – including Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley, Bush's political adviser Karl Rove, President Bush himself or Vice President Dick Cheney – completely off the table. It also precludes the panel from having the option of calling Rice, who's made media statements contradicting evidence and sworn statements by other officials, back to testify.

It's a one-shot deal. And it stinks.

Even under oath, Rice can dodge tough questions by claiming her answers would jeopardize national security or the war on terror. "I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, but again, that's a classified area, and I just can't get into it," she could say. Or she could come down with Washington amnesia – "I have no recollection of that." And she and everyone else in the White House could skate. The commission has no recourse at that point.

Other compromises are curious. Why did the panel, which has subpoena power and could compel Rice to testify, originally bow to White House demands not to even tape-record the statements they were "allowed" to take from her in private? Why will it let Bush tag-team with Cheney in a joint Q&A in the White House without oaths or even tape recorders? Why has it agreed to let just four panel officials lay eyes on a key intelligence briefing Bush got a month before the 9/11 attacks?

Why is the commission bending over backwards to please the White House when it's supposed to be fiercely independent and bipartisan, made up of five Republicans and five Democrats?

The answer may lie in the little-known fact that the White House has a friend on the inside. And not just any friend, either.

His name is Philip D. Zelikow, the executive director of the commission. Though he has no vote, the former Texas lawyer arguably has more sway than any member, including the chairman. Zelikow picks the areas of investigation, the briefing materials, the topics for hearings, the witnesses, and the lines of questioning for witnesses. He also picks which fights are worth fighting, legally, with the White House, and was involved in the latest round of capitulations – er, negotiations – over Rice's testimony. And the commissioners for the most part follow his recommendations. In effect, he sets the agenda and runs the investigation.

He also carries with him a downright obnoxious conflict-of-interest odor, one that somehow went undetected by the lawyers who vetted him for one of the most important investigative positions in U.S. history.

There's a raft of evidence to suggest that Zelikow has personal, professional and political reasons not to see the commission hold Rice and other Bush officials accountable for pre-9/11 failings, and may be the de facto swing vote for Republicans on the panel. Here are just a few of them:

... He and Rice worked closely together in the first Bush White House as aides to former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. Zelikow was director of European security affairs, and Rice was senior director of Soviet and East European affairs, as well as special assistant to the president. Rice reportedly hired Zelikow. Both started in 1989 and left in 1991.

... A few years after leaving the White House, Zelikow and Rice wrote a book together called, "Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft."

... The two associated again when Zelikow directed the Aspen Strategy Group, a foreign-policy strategy body co-chaired by Rice's mentor Scowcroft. Rice, along with Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, were members.

... Zelikow also directed the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age under co-chairman James Barksdale, a Bush adviser and major Bush-Cheney donor. A 9/11 commissioner, Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, also served with Zelikow on the task force. (Interestingly, the pair serves together on yet another panel – The National Commission on Federal Election Reform – with Gorton acting as vice-chairman and Zelikow as executive director.)

... After the 2000 election, Zelikow and Rice were reunited when George W. Bush named him to his transition team for the National Security Council. Rice reportedly asked Zelikow to help organize the NSC under the Scowcroft model, which was insular and steeped in Cold War worldview.

... Former White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke says he briefed not only Rice and Hadley, but also Zelikow about the growing al-Qaida threat during the transition period. Zelikow sat in on the briefings, he says.

... A month after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks, President Bush appointed Zelikow to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which is chaired by Scowcroft.

... Zelikow's regular job, the one he'll return to after the commission releases it final report in late July, is director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. The center is dedicated to the study of the presidency, and maintains contact with the Bush White House, which fought the creation of the commission.

Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow, insists Zelikow has a "clear conflict of interest." And she suspects he is in touch with Bush's political adviser, Rove, which she says would explain why the White House granted him, along with just one other commission official, the greatest access to the intelligence briefing Bush got a month before the 9/11 suicide hijackings.

The two-page memo in question mentions "al-Qaida" and "hijackings," that much we know. What we don't know is if it gets any more specific about the threat. And the White House won't let us find out. It refuses to declassify any of the August memo (or any of the other briefings Bush got before 9/11, for that matter), and it won't even let most commissioners review it.

Bush and his top security adviser insist they have nothing to hide.

Rice pal Zelikow, for his part, says he's recused himself from any part of the probe that deals with the roughly one-month period after the election when he worked with Rice on the transition, as if any potential conflicts he might have would end there. Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg doesn't understand the fuss over Zelikow. "He has not served in the Bush administration," he argues more technically than convincingly.

The fuss, Mr. Felzenberg, is that 9/11 relatives like the wife of the late Ronald Breitweiser want to know they are getting an honest investigation into what their government did to protect their loved ones from a foreign-ordered attack on American soil.

But the way key pre-9/11 documents and sworn testimony from top officials are being denied the public, it looks like the fix is in.

To be sure, Zelikow could be a remarkably objective fellow and not let his close ties to the Bush administration influence his final report in any way.

But with the commission still refusing to subpoena the documents and caving to White House ground rules on testimony, the stench of political bias has become too strong, and Zelikow should nonetheless step down, immediately, for the sake of the families, many of whom are demanding his resignation. And the commission should vote to further extend its deadline while it finds a more politically detached replacement for him and redoubles its efforts to deliver the "full and complete" and "independent" investigation it originally promised the country.

[u]Paul Sperry, formerly Washington bureau chief of Investors Business Daily, is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003). [/u] - http://antiwar.com/sperry/?ar...

Whitewash: Compromised 9/11 Investigation a Looming National Scandal -- Demands Congressional Action

03.31.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

[u][b]Mass-murderer Bin Laden Unwanted by the U.S. Government[/b][/u]

Many of you might recall comments made by a field General during the Afghan war saying, in so many words, that they were not there to go after Osama Bin Laden... or reports by Seymour Hersch aired on Bill Moyers' NOW on PBS that, on orders from the Department of Defense, thousands of Taliban forces and even Al-Qeada operatives were airlifted to Pakistan in a break during the bombing of Kunduz. Now it appears the US military is saying that the man the US government maintains was behind the largest mass murder in U.S. history is off the hook because they tell us he's 'taken himself out of the picture"--thus no longer a priority. This according to a recent Reuters story of November 22. (see…LINK http://www.smh.com.au/article... ).

This latest policy shift follows a recent controversial White House compromise with 9/11 investigators, deemed unacceptable by victims' families, that provides highly censored and limited review of Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs) including one titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike the U.S." What mad farce is going on here? How does America's #1 enemy, a man "wanted dead or alive" for the brutal mass murder of thousands, become irrelevant even as the White House fights tooth and nail to control access and analysis of intelligence warnings about the threat he posed prior to the attacks?

I can imagine how this as yet unexplained new policy might be received by the thousands who lost family members on 9/11 or by the millions around the globe raising serious questions and expressing measured skepticism and doubts about the war on terror, the war on Iraq and the pretext that launched both.

9/11 family members and others have been insisting the Commission keep their word and "leave no stone unturned." Well, now they know that the Administration who created the Commission won't be turning over stones looking for Bin Laden any longer. Of course this will come as no surprise to those who have noted how little effort has been directed at finding Bin Laden especially after the Administration shifted its focus to Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

[u][b]9/11 Commission's 'conscience' forced to leave[/b][/u]

The government's investigation of 9/11 is further compromised and complicated by the curious recent departure of one of the most vocal critics of the 9/11 Commission's recent deal cut with the White House to provide for limited review of over 500 PDBs from the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Max Cleland has called the deal "a national scandal" and accused the President of having “deliberately compromised" the Commission. Cleland, a former Georgia Senator and now a former 9/11 Commissioner had been the Commission's most ardent internal watchdog and outspoken critic.

The President appointed him to serve on the board of the Import-Export Bank and, curiously, he accepted, thus forcing his withdrawal. The law establishing the Commission says Commissioners cannot, concurrent to the Commission's work, hold a federal office. The implications of his having accepted the position and forfeiting his place in the investigation, whose integrity he fought so hard to protect, are deeply disturbing. Especially coming on the heels of his biting criticism of the President and the Commission.

[u][b]Dissembling of Government's Official Story May Foreshadow National Scandal[/b][/u]

These new revelations about the government position on Bin Laden and the Commission record of compromises and softball investigative approach doesn't bode well for the search for the truth and raises serious questions. But this change of mind is indeed telling...perhaps the straw that breaks the people's credulity and ultimately exposing a far more serious national scandal then the one imagined by Senator Cleland.

Richard Bernstein of The New York Times writes in Out of the Blue that the Osama's presumption of guilt is built entirely upon circumstantial evidence. Absent a clear smoking gun and the "White Paper" promised by Secretary of State Powell and Prime Minister Blair, disturbing doubts are being expressed even as much of what we were told about 9/11 and the war on terror has since been retracted, disproved or credibly challenged in recent months. Official explanations and accounts are shifting like sands along a riptide.

We've learned that at least five of the 19 named by the FBI and produced with pictures within 24 hours are alive in Saudi Arabia (BBC), Zaccarias Mousaoui is not the 20th hijacker after all, there was no Iraqi Nuclear program poised for deployment, and Saddam was neither allied with Bin Laden nor responsible for 9/11 or the anthrax attacks. Official 'stories' are dissembling across the board.

We also have new information about the extent of pre-9/11 warnings thanks to the investigative work of Eleanor Hill and the Congressional Joint Inquiry. Contrary to statements made by Condaleeza Rice on May 16, 2002 that "no one could have imagined" planes being used a weapons, we now know that in fact the intelligence community was well aware of the risk of just such an attack. Warnings were acted upon at the site of the G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy in July of 2001 where anti-aircraft measures were taken to protect the President from terrorists using planes as weapons.

When I asked Vice-Chair Hamilton at the conclusion of a recent public hearing how the Commission intended to resolve this sharp challenge to the President's National Security Advisor he was vague and evasive even after pressed with a follow-up. The Commission chairs were also asked to confirm whether or not they have sworn in witnesses in private 'interviews' and, if so, if they intended to apply the same investigative practice in their upcoming public hearings. This would be especially important where testimony is germaine to resolving key questions, conflicts or discrepancies that continue to cloud our understanding of 9/11.

[u][b]Shocking conflict of interest stands -- a slap in the face of 9/11 Families[/b][/u]

What adds insult to injury here lie in the details of the recent compromise reached between the White House and the 9/11 Commission. The Commission has announced it will send its Executive Director, Dr. Phillip Zelikow, a University Professor, to be one of only two allowed into the White House to review relevant portions of hundreds of PDBs in question, presumably because the Commissioners themselves won't know exactly what to look for, not having been immersed in the minutiae of the investigation as Dr. Zelikow has been.

What fuels the fire of those already deeply skeptical about the compromise is the fact that Dr. Zelikow brings with him the most serious conflict of interest to yet surface in the context of this investigation. Dr. Zelikow's selection is a slap in the face of family members and should be construed as obstruction of justice and one of the most serious compromises to the Commission's integrity. Instead of being sent to the White House to review PDBs Zelikow should be sent packing for his unwillingness to recuse himself.

Dr. Zelikow, is being asked to scrutinize a President he recently served as a member of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and who last year co-authored a book with National Security Advisor, Condaleeza Rice, whose lie, deceit or ignorance regarding the issue of planes as weapons has been directly challenged by the Joint Inquiry Report now in the historical record. Will Zelikow seek her sworn testimony for the record? Given his intimate role in the 'transition team' creating President Bush's National Security Council he clearly has a conflict of interest which could interfere with the pursuit of the truth in this case. The Commission's original chair Henry Kissinger was forced to resign after he refused to expose his client list. Here the conflicts are in plain view and yet the completely justified objections from the family members and others have been entirely dismissed by the Commission.

Furthering muddying the waters is the noticeable lack of attention being paid to Commission access to details of the July 5th meeting of the Counterterrorism Security Group called and held by Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke. Intelligence was discussed regarding an 'imminent' attack, 'spectacular' in nature 'designed to inflict mass casualties". Again, it is reasonable to assume that this has yet to publicly addressed in part from Zelikow's conflict of interest. Even the appearance of conflict of interest, in the most important investigation since the Warren Commission, should be enough for the Commission to excuse Zelikow and appoint a Co-Executive Director to handle these delicate matters with an Executive branch with which he has such close ties.

[u][b]A Call for Hearings on the Hill[/b][/u]

Given hints the Commission may soon ask Congress for an extension of its deadline it is time that all of those concerned with the integrity of the current Commission and its work to call for and help organize full and open hearings on Capitol Hill.

It is time for the Congress in its oversight capacity to take direct issue with the blatant conflict of interest thus far allowed to stand, the presence of minders allowed to sit in on Commission interviews, the lack of sworn testimony in public hearings, and the failure to produce interim findings of fact. These hearings should address this broad range of concerns. Congress should issue an overt challenge to a commission gone soft and failing to live up to a high and consistent investigative standard that must be applied at this perilous moment in history. Failing this urgent remedy and democratic scrutiny, the obvious concern is that the Kean Commission will become as discredited and doubted as the Warren Commission.

Given the stakes involved here, with nearly 3000 murdered and a global war on terror sacrificing American blood and treasure, it is absolutely imperative that indeed no stone is left unturned by this Commission, that they and the President be held to their word and to the highest investigative standard. Thus far they have failed to keep their word and meet this standard.

Urgent corrective action is required immediately and concerned citizens must act now to insure that Congress holds the Commission fully and transparently accountable to fulfill their mandate. Failing that Congress should launch a full investigation of their own, acting to declassify were necessary, with the deeply probative Committee hearings that Daschle should have encouraged and not limited when asked to do so by the President and Vice-president early in 2002.

The Commission should withdraw from it deal with the White House and issue a subpoena to insure full access to both NSC and Oval Office documents.

([i]Appendices Follow[/i])

****************

[b]APPENDIX 1[/b]

[u]FURTHER READING[/u]

1. "Osama capture unnecessary, US general says"
Reuters -- November 22, 2003
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/22/10 69027373682.html?from=storyrhs" title="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/22/10 69027373682.html?from=storyrhs" target="_blank"http://www.smh.com.au/article...
A senior US general said today that al Qa'eda mastermind Osama bin Laden had "taken himself out of the picture" and that his capture was not essential to winning the "war on terror".

2. "The President Ought to be Ashamed"
Salon -- Eric Boehlert; Friday 21 November 2003;
http://truthout.org/docs_03/112303A.shtml" title="http://truthout.org/docs_03/112303A.shtml" target="_blank"http://truthout.org/docs_03/1...

3. "New job takes Cleland off 9/11 panel"
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031123 -091108-4750r.htm" title="http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20031123 -091108-4750r.htm" target="_blank"http://washingtontimes.com/up...
Cleland bemoans the administration's "Nixonian" love of secrecy and its attempt to "slow walk" the commission into irrelevancy.

****************

[b]APPENDIX 2[/b]

[u]WHAT TO DO[/u]

A scathing critique of the current Commission was published as a cover story by savvy investigative journalist Kelly Patricia O'Meara in November 23 issue of Insight Magazine. It is titled "A Historical Whitewash?"

http://www.insightmag.com/news/565658.html" title="http://www.insightmag.com/news/565658.html" target="_blank"http://www.insightmag.com/new...

I am told each issue of Insight Magazine is delivered to every member of Congress. Now is the right time to begin to raise the issues covered in the Insight article and in my commentary above.

Please take a moment now and again in the coming weeks to contact your representative to express your concerns about the 9/11 Investigation. Specifically ask that the Congress to hold hearings at their earliest opportunity to address these serious problems within the Commission. America's credibility in the world is at stake as is justice for the victims and their families, and ultimately the whether or not we learn the whole truth and secure full accountability. PLEASE ACT NOW.

[u]ALSO,[/u]

Please call, fax or write the Commission giving voice to your objection to their recent compromise with the White House and the Executive Director's Conflict of Interest.

[b]CONTACT DETAILS[/b]:

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States 301 7th Street, SW Room 5125 Washington, DC 20407

Washington Office* Tel: (202) 331-4060 Fax: (202) 296-5545 info@9-11Commission.gov

New York Office Tel: (212) 264-1505 Fax: (212) 264-1595 info@9-11Commission.gov

9/11 Family Liaison Office Tel: (212) 264-1505 Toll-Free: 1-888-862-0556 Fax: (212) 264-1595 ehartz@9-11Commission.gov

****************

[b]APPENDIX 3[/b]

Selected quotes from Cleland in an interview with Eric Boehlert:

"...a majority of the commission has agreed to a bad deal."

"It is a national scandal."

"I say that [The President's] decision compromised the mission of the 9/11 commission, pure and simple. Far from the commissioners being able to fulfill their obligation to the Congress and the American people, and far from getting access to all the documents we need, the president of the United States is cherry-picking what information is shown to that minority of commissioners. Now this is ridiculous. That's not full and open access.

"If you trust one commissioner you should trust them all. I don't understand it. You can say, 'I'm not going to show anything to anybody, and take me to court.' At least that's consistent. But it's not consistent at all to say we're going to parse out this information and we determine how many members of the commission get to see it."

"It's all about 9/11. This is not a political witch hunt. This is the most serious independent investigation since the Warren Commission. And after watching History Channel shows on the Warren Commission last night, the Warren Commission blew it. I'm not going to be part of that. I'm not going to be part of looking at information only partially. I'm not going to be part of just coming to quick conclusions. I'm not going to be part of political pressure to do this or not do that. I'm not going to be part of that. This is serious."

"Let's chase this rabbit into the ground here. They had a plan to go to war and when 9/11 happened that's what they did; they went to war. They pulled off their task force in Afghanistan, their Predator assets, and shifted them over to the war in Iraq. They took their eye off the 9/11 ball and transferred it to the Iraq ball. And that's a very strategic question that ultimately has got to be answered. I'm focused on 9/11 and the administration is not focused on it. They don't want to share information, and they didn't agree with the commission in the first place."

Corporate Right-Wing Media: Lies, What Lies?

03.30.04 (3:49 pm) [edit]

Matthew Yglesias over at the [i]American Prospect [/i]identifies http://www.prospect.org/webfe... two reasons why the mainstream media has given the Bush administration a pass on its performance. One is "a prosecutorial mindset in the media, overly concerned with whether or not the narrow criteria for a lie have been met." Given such a strict, almost legalistic definition, the White House has been able to use omission, vague language, and contradictory rhetoric to get away with, well, lying.

The other reason is, of course, the overly deferent posture adopted by journalists in the wake of 9/11. Yglesias quotes[i] New York Times [/i]reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, who explains the unwillingness to ask tough questions in the lead up to the Iraq war as follows: "Think about it, you're standing up on primetime live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time."

There is another reason that journalists are afraid, ashamed and intimidated not to report why they do not report upon the Bush administration's lies and criminal activities: [i]corporate ownership of media outlets [/i]and the slow, but sure transformation of our media into a fascist propaganda machine in service of right-wing regimes who undermine the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights in favor of special interests.

Compromised 9/11 Investigation a Looming National Scandal -- Demands Congressional Action

03.30.04 (1:56 pm) [edit]

Hapless Boob Bush Can't Testify ALONE - Bush Can't Remember His LI(N)ES-LIES!!!

03.30.04 (11:12 am) [edit]

Apparently Dubya can't testify [b]ALONE[/b]. He needs Cheney by his side.

Can't Bush remember his LI(N)ES...LIES...LI(N)ES...LIES...LI(N)ES...LIES? [b]NOPE![/b]

Read the Text of Abuse of Power by the Bushites--

[u]Text of the letter White House counsel Alberto Gonzales sent to the Sept. 11 commission on Tuesday, addressed to Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, chairman and vice chairman of the commission[/u]: - http://www.miami.com/mld/miam...

Dear Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton:

As we discussed last night, the president is prepared, subject to the conditions set forth below, to agree to the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States for public testimony, under oath, by the assistant to the president for national security affairs, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

The president has consistently stated a policy of strong support for the commission and instructed the executive branch to provide unprecedented and extraordinary access to the commission. To my knowledge, the executive branch has provided access to documents or information in response to each of the requests issued by the commission to date, including many highly classified and extremely sensitive documents that have seldom, if ever, been made available outside the executive branch.

As an additional accommodation, the executive office of the president has made available more than 20 EOP officials, including the national security adviser, for private meetings with the commission. As you know, based on principles underlying the constitutional separation of powers, presidents of both parties have long taken the position that White House advisers and staff are not subject to the jurisdiction of legislative bodies and do not provide testimony - even on a voluntary basis - on policy matters discussed within the White House or advice given to the president. Indeed, I am not aware of any instance of a sitting national security adviser testifying in public to a legislative body (such as the commission) concerning policy matters.

We continue to believe, as I advised you by letter dated March 25, 2004, that the principles underlying the constitutional separation of powers counsel strongly against such public testimony, and that Dr. Rice's testimony before the commission can occur only with recognition that the events of September 11, 2001, present the most extraordinary and unique circumstances, and with conditions and assurances designed to limit harm to the ability of future presidents to receive candid advice.

Nevertheless, the president recognizes the truly unique and extraordinary circumstances underlying the commission's responsibility to prepare a detailed report on the facts and circumstances of the horrific attacks on September 11, 2001. Furthermore, we have now received assurances from the speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate that, in their view, Dr. Rice's public testimony in connection with the extraordinary events of September 11, 2001, does not set, and should not be cited as, a precedent for future requests for a national security adviser or any other White House official to testify before a legislative body. In light of the unique nature of the commission and these additional assurances, the president has determined that, although he retains the legal authority to decline to make Dr. Rice available to testify in public, he will agree, as a matter of comity and subject to the conditions set forth below, to the commission's request for Dr. Rice to testify publicly regarding matters within the commission's statutory mandate.

The necessary conditions are as follows. First, the commission must agree in writing that Dr. Rice's testimony before the commission does not set any precedent for future commission requests, or requests in any other context, for testimony by a national security adviser or any other White House official.

Second, the commission must agree in writing that it will not request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice. The national security adviser is uniquely situated to provide the commission with information necessary to fulfill its statutory mandate. Indeed, it is for this reason that Dr. Rice privately met with the commission for more than four hours on February 7, fully answered every question posed to her, and offered additional private meetings as necessary. Despite the fact that the commission will therefore have access to all information of which Dr. Rice is aware, the commission has nevertheless urged that public confidence in the work of the commission would be enhanced by Dr. Rice appearing publicly before the commission. Other White House officials with information relevant to the commission's inquiry do not come within the scope of the commission's rationale for seeking public testimony from Dr. Rice. These officials will continue to provide the commission with information through private meetings, briefings, and documents, consistent with our previous practice.

I greatly appreciate the strong support you expressed to me last night for an agreement to the conditions on which we are proposing this extraordinary accommodation and your commitment to strongly advocate for the full support of the commission. If the commission accepts the terms of this agreement, I hope that we can schedule a time as soon as possible for such a public appearance by Dr. Rice. I want to reiterate once again, however, that Dr. Rice would be made available to the commission with due regard for the constitutional separation of powers and reserving all legal authorities, privileges, and objections that may apply, including with respect to other governmental entities or private parties.

[b]I would also like to take this occasion to offer an accommodation on another issue on which we have not yet reached an agreement - commission access to the president and vice president. I am authorized to advise you that the president and vice president have agreed to one [i][u]joint[/u][/i] private session with all 10 commissioners, with one commission staff member present to take notes of the session[/b].

I look forward to continuing to work with the commission to help it obtain the information it needs to fulfill its statutory mandate.

Will Neo-Fascist Bush Confess After Watching "The Passion of the Christ"???????

03.30.04 (9:39 am) [edit]

Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack."

So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of something rotten in the state of our government.

The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush's terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources — including "Bush at War," by Bob Woodward.

And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures."

That's why the administration responded to Mr. Clarke the way it responds to anyone who reveals inconvenient facts: with a campaign of character assassination.

Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an Associated Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks were "standard operating procedure" for this administration and cited "a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster," the Medicare actuary who revealed how the administration had deceived Congress about the cost of its prescription drug bill.

But other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well."

This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics — even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power — to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics.

To be fair, Senator Bill Frist's suggestion that Mr. Clarke might be charged with perjury may have been his own idea. But his move reminded everyone of the White House's reaction to revelations by the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: an immediate investigation into whether he had revealed classified information. The alacrity with which this investigation was opened was, of course, in sharp contrast with the administration's evident lack of interest in finding out who leaked the identity of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame to Bob Novak.

And there are many other cases of apparent abuse of power by the administration and its Congressional allies. A few examples: according to The Hill, Republican lawmakers threatened to cut off funds for the General Accounting Office unless it dropped its lawsuit against Dick Cheney. The Washington Post says Representative Michael Oxley told lobbyists that "a Congressional probe might ease if it replaced its Democratic lobbyist with a Republican." Tom DeLay used the Homeland Security Department to track down Democrats trying to prevent redistricting in Texas. And Medicare is spending millions of dollars on misleading ads for the new drug benefit — ads that look like news reports and also serve as commercials for the Bush campaign.

On the terrorism front, here's one story that deserves special mention. One of the few successful post-9/11 terror prosecutions — a case in Detroit — seems to be unraveling. The government withheld information from the defense, and witnesses unfavorable to the prosecution were deported (by accident, the government says). After the former lead prosecutor complained about the Justice Department's handling of the case, he suddenly found himself facing an internal investigation — and someone leaked the fact that he was under investigation to the press.

Where will it end? In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy."

[u]This Isn't America[/u], Paul Krugman, http://nytimes.com/2004/03/30...

[b]WILL NEO-FASCIST DUBYA CONFESS HIS MURDEROUS CRIMES AFTER WATCHING 'THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST'? I DOUBT IT. HE'S TOO, TOO, TOO, TOO, TOO CROOKED[/b].

Will Neo-Fascist George Bush Confess After Watching "The Passion of the Christ"???????

03.30.04 (9:35 am) [edit]

Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack."

So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of something rotten in the state of our government.

The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush's terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources — including "Bush at War," by Bob Woodward.

And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures."

That's why the administration responded to Mr. Clarke the way it responds to anyone who reveals inconvenient facts: with a campaign of character assassination.

Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an Associated Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks were "standard operating procedure" for this administration and cited "a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster," the Medicare actuary who revealed how the administration had deceived Congress about the cost of its prescription drug bill.

But other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well."

This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics — even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power — to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics.

To be fair, Senator Bill Frist's suggestion that Mr. Clarke might be charged with perjury may have been his own idea. But his move reminded everyone of the White House's reaction to revelations by the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: an immediate investigation into whether he had revealed classified information. The alacrity with which this investigation was opened was, of course, in sharp contrast with the administration's evident lack of interest in finding out who leaked the identity of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame to Bob Novak.

And there are many other cases of apparent abuse of power by the administration and its Congressional allies. A few examples: according to The Hill, Republican lawmakers threatened to cut off funds for the General Accounting Office unless it dropped its lawsuit against Dick Cheney. The Washington Post says Representative Michael Oxley told lobbyists that "a Congressional probe might ease if it replaced its Democratic lobbyist with a Republican." Tom DeLay used the Homeland Security Department to track down Democrats trying to prevent redistricting in Texas. And Medicare is spending millions of dollars on misleading ads for the new drug benefit — ads that look like news reports and also serve as commercials for the Bush campaign.

On the terrorism front, here's one story that deserves special mention. One of the few successful post-9/11 terror prosecutions — a case in Detroit — seems to be unraveling. The government withheld information from the defense, and witnesses unfavorable to the prosecution were deported (by accident, the government says). After the former lead prosecutor complained about the Justice Department's handling of the case, he suddenly found himself facing an internal investigation — and someone leaked the fact that he was under investigation to the press.

Where will it end? In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy."

- [i]This Isn't America[/i], Paul Krugman, http://nytimes.com/2004/03/30...

[b]WILL NEO-FASCIST DUBYA CONFESS HIS MURDEROUS CRIMES AFTER HE WATCHES "THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST?". I DOUBT IT-- HE'S TOO, TOO, TOO, TOO, TOO CROOKED.[/b]

Compromised 9/11 Investigation a Looming National Scandal -- Demands Congressional Action

03.30.04 (9:22 am) [edit]

... Uncounted Dead ...

03.30.04 (6:17 am) [edit]

More than a year after the launch of the Iraqi War, the U.S. has no answer to a fairly straightforward question: how many Iraqis have been killed in the invasion and occupation of their country? The U.S. can't say how many Iraqis have been killed for a very simple reason: it doesn't keep count.

"We don't keep a list. It's just not policy," Pentagon spokeswoman Lieutenant Commander Jane Campbell explained to the New York Times earlier this month. The Pentagon may not keep track, but several organizations--with far fewer resources than the U.S. government--do.

The Iraqi Body Count Project, which tracks press accounts, puts the number of Iraqi civilians killed up to now at between 8,790 and 10,639. Last month, a report released by the influential Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) stated that between 7,800-10,700 Iraqi combatants and between 3,200-4,300 civilians died during the combat phase of the war. The numbers were arrived at using journalistic surveys of Iraqi hospitals and death certificates, interviews with Iraqi military commanders, and other news reports, as well as U.S. records of its military operations.

The PDA charges that the Department of Defense has sought to mislead the public about the human toll of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. According to the PDA, the military exaggerated the extent to which its "precision warfare" minimized civilian casualties even as it claimed that it was impossible to get an accurate estimate of the dead. The military compounded this "casualty agnosticism" during the most publicized of wars with "casualty irrelevance" -- arguing that the body account was not an appropriate marker by which to judge the war’s success or failure.

When, in July of 2003, the BBC asked Coalition Military Commander U.S. Lieutenant General Rick Sanchez about the Iraqi dead, he said:

[i]"No, we do not know what the exact numbers were. Even now, when we conduct engagements, normally what will happen, according to the cultural beliefs, the dead are removed very quickly, so we cannot establish those numbers. At this point, we are not attempting to establish the numbers of Iraqis who were killed during the conflict. In terms of compensation, payments are not standard during wartime. That is something that would have to be addressed later on, especially in co-ordination with an Iraqi government once it is established[/i]."

U.S. officials termed civilians killed and maimed during the war regrettable "collateral damage." Human rights groups particularly criticized the use of cluster bombs by the military. Many of the fragments left by those bombs -- bomblets -- failed to explode at the time and are continuing to kill and maim civilians. As the Village Voice reports:

"[i]The bomblets look like fun to kids. Shiny, tossable pieces of metal, they resemble a large D battery or a small hand grenade. Attached to the bottom are long, white ribbons, rather like streamers a child might fasten to the handlebars of a bike. Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimates that coalition forces left 2 million of these little bombs all over Iraq, killing or injuring perhaps a thousand civilians. Cluster munitions, the group reports, caused more harm to noncombatants than any other weapon during the war[/i]."

The practice of casualty agnosticism has continued following the end of hostilities -- even as Iraqi civilians continue to be killed by bomblets and at U.S. checkpoints. No record is kept of the number of Iraqis--surely in the hundreds--killed by suicide bombers. The Washington Post says that:

"[i]Historically, the Pentagon has not tried to count civilian casualties and losses resulting from U.S. military action. Military officials have given various reasons for this, citing principally the time and resources involved and the difficulty of separating damage caused by U.S. forces from damage caused by the enemy[/i]."

Casualty agnosticism, of course, has a clear political rationale: the U.S.’s fear that reports of heavy civilian casualties will shake the fragile domestic support for the Iraqi war and occupation and further stoke the overwhelming foreign opposition to its actions in Iraq. As John Pike, founder of the Virginia-based military think-tank GlobalSecurity.org argues, this a lesson the Pentagon learned from Vietnam: "… the military used the body count in Vietnam and have been allergic to it every since."

The U.S. also insists that it is under no legal obligation to compensate the families of those who were wrongfully killed or injured by American soldiers.

U.S. Captain Jonathan Tracy, the lawyer in charge of handling the Iraqi claims, believes that the government has been charitable in providing any monetary compensation at all:

"[i]There's nothing out there that legally forces us to pay them…It's gratuitous. The point behind the policy is to build friendly relations[/i]."

In fact, the "sympathy payments" made by the United States government have been pitiful. As the Christian Science Monitor reports:

"[i]So far, the US military has paid out $2.2 million to Iraqi civilians in response to a flood of claims of wrongful or negligent injuries or death at the hands of US forces. In total, the military has received 15,000 claims, 5,600 of which it has accepted.

In distributing such payments, the military says they are not accepting liability or responsibility, and in fact no soldier has ever faced charges for illegally killing an Iraqi civilian. In some cases, victims must waive their right to take further legal action in order to receive the money.[/i]"

The U.S. has not made the application process easy. The burden of proof lies with the claimants, who wait for hours in long lines to present their case -- which may or may not be referred for further consideration. They have to provide death certificates and eyewitness accounts. If not for the work of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) and other human rights groups, many claimants would be unable to put their case together at all. As CIVIC's founder Marla Ruzicka says:

"[i]We go door-to-door, we check hospital records and death certificates to verify. Our work is very accurate. We know if we are trying to get assistance to people, if we have one false claim it could throw out all of our claims[/i]."

Ruzicka has some allies in the U.S. Congress. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy has authored a measure, passed last year, providing that part of the reconstruction aid allocated to Iraq be used to compensate innocent civilians hurt in the course of the fighting.

The Weekly Standard points out that human rights groups' fears of hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties have been proven wrong. It goes on to argue (correctly, and, for current purposes, irrelevantly) that many more Iraqis would have been killed had Hussein's regime remained in place than have been killed during and after the war:

"[i]How many Iraqis were saved by the use of force against Saddam can be counted in several ways. At a bare minimum, several thousand Iraqis were saved from being killed in individual political murders. This includes political prisoners (including children) who poured from Saddam's dungeons at liberation, Shia activists, other dissenters, and military men suspected of disloyalty. Toppling Saddam also saved several thousand more at dire risk from his gradually rising violence against the Shia. If the Shia or Kurds were targeted with wholesale murder, as seemed increasingly likely, the regime could easily have resumed killing at its historic rate of 15,000 to 20,000 deaths a year. Specifically, the West's already existing threat to use force inside Iraq to protect Kurdistan--a threat whose credibility might well have collapsed if the Coalition had crumbled last year--saved tens of thousands more from certain death every year it was in place[/i].

Of course, saving Iraqi lives was not prime motive for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The yet to be found WMDs -- the ones that President George Bush told reporters at last week's black-tie dinner "have got to be here somewhere" as slides showed him looking under a chair and other Oval Office hiding spots -- were. (For a good account of this low moment, see David Corn's eyewitness account.)

The rights and wrongs of the war are a separate issue from whether it is appropriate to keep track of those who died during it. The Bush administration, deliberately and unfortunately, has created the impression that the United States does not care how many Iraqi civilians have been killed and injured thus far or about how their families will cope with the emotional and financial burdens incurred by those losses.

Keeping count of the Iraqi dead is the right thing to do -- both morally and politically -- and so are just monetary compensations. If the U.S. wants to teach Iraqis about accountability, it should set an example by keeping this most important of counts.

[u]Nonna Gorilovskaya, Mother Jones[/u], http://www.motherjones.com/ne...

Connecting the Dots ...

03.29.04 (7:02 pm) [edit]

[b][u]'Against All Enemies' and 'Ghost Wars': Connecting the Dots[/u][/b]

Discounting the possibility that the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, is secretly a publicist for the Free Press, one must assume that the Bush administration really is angry at its former counterterrorism czar, and isn't simply trying to help him sell more books. But if President Bush and his advisers were hoping that their loud pre-emptive attacks on ''Against All Enemies'' would make this book go away, they were sadly mistaken. Richard A. Clarke knows too much, and ''Against All Enemies'' is too good to be ignored.

The explosive details about President Bush's obsession with Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks captured the headlines in the days after the book's release, but ''Against All Enemies'' offers more. It is a rarity among Washington-insider memoirs - it's a thumping good read.

The first - and by far the best - chapter is a heart-stopping account of the turmoil inside the White House on the morning of Sept. 11, when Washington suddenly came blinking into a bloody new world. I hope Clarke has sold the rights to Hollywood, at least for his opening chapter, because I would pay to see this movie. You can guess who gets to play Jack Ryan in his retelling of that historic morning.

By Sept. 11, 2001, Dick Clarke had become the ultimate White House insider; he was not only a Clinton holdover, he was a holdover from the first Bush administration and had served in the Reagan State Department. He had been working at the National Security Council for about a decade, and in 1998 had been named White House counterterrorism coordinator by President Clinton. He was asked to stay on in the same post by the second Bush administration. But he had quickly become frustrated by the new team's unwillingness to address the mounting threat from Osama bin Laden. By the morning of Sept. 11, he was still handling counterterrorism, but was planning to leave for a lower-profile assignment dealing with cybersecurity.

In the first minutes after the attacks, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, told Clarke to act as crisis manager in the White House Situation Room, and he seized the moment. In his account, it was he who recommended to Vice President Dick Cheney that President Bush should not come back to the White House from Florida, and he who gave the order triggering the Continuity of Government procedures, the doomsday rules under which cabinet members and Congressional leaders were whisked to undisclosed locations.

With Clarke at the helm of a secure videoconference network linking the White House with other key agencies, in quick succession thousands of commercial aircraft were grounded; the country's land and sea borders were closed; the military went to Defcon 3, its highest alert level in nearly 30 years; and the Russians were notified. ''Damn good thing I did that,'' Clarke quotes Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as telling him. ''Guess who was about to start an exercise of all their strategic nuclear forces?''

While Clarke and his aides were holding down the fort in the Situation Room and the president was flying around the country on Air Force One, Vice President Cheney, his wife and aides were holed up in a little-known bunker in the East Wing of the White House called the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. At one point that morning, Clarke went to the bunker to see Cheney; navigating his way into the vault past grim, shotgun-toting guards, he found that Lynne Cheney had turned down the volume on the television hooked up to the secure videoconference so she could listen to CNN.

The most controversial incident in ''Against All Enemies'' deals with the president's eagerness to link the Sept. 11 attacks to Iraq, and comes on the night of Sept. 12. Clarke writes that he saw Bush wandering alone through the Situation Room. The president then stopped and asked Clarke and a few aides to ''go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this.''

Clarke said he was ''taken aback, incredulous.'' He told the president, ''Al Qaeda did this.''

''I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred. . . .'' After the president left, one of Clarke's aides said, ''Wolfowitz got to him.''

Within a few months of the attacks, Clarke's access clearly did begin to dwindle; White House officials played on his lack of firsthand knowledge of Iraq war planning to attack the credibility of his book. But the key allegation in the book - that the Bush team was obsessed with Iraq even when faced with overwhelming evidence that it was Al Qaeda that was attacking the United States - can't be dismissed by assertions that he was out of the loop. During those early days, Richard Clarke was the loop.

''Ghost Wars,'' Steve Coll's objective - and terrific - account of the long and tragic history leading up to Sept. 11, is a welcome antidote to the fevered partisan bickering that accompanied the release of Clarke's book.

Coll, the managing editor of The Washington Post, has given us what is certainly the finest historical narrative so far on the origins of Al Qaeda in the post-Soviet rubble of Afghanistan. He has followed up that feat by threading together the complex roles played by diplomats and spies from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States into a coherent story explaining how Afghanistan became such a welcoming haven for Al Qaeda.

In particular, Coll has done a great service by revealing how Saudi Arabia and its intelligence operations aided the rise of Osama bin Laden and Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia's alleged involvement in terrorism has been the subject of wild conspiracy theories since Sept. 11; Coll gives us a clear and balanced view of Saudi Arabia's real ties to bin Laden. The links he reveals are serious enough to prompt an important debate about the nature of the Saudi-American partnership in the fight against terrorism. ''Saudi intelligence officials said years later that bin Laden was never a professional Saudi intelligence agent,'' he writes, referring to Saudi support for foreign Arab fighters against the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Still, ''it seems clear that bin Laden did have a substantial relationship with Saudi intelligence.''

Coll overlaps with Clarke in his detailed recounting of the mush that was the Clinton administration's counterterrorism policy. Unlike Clarke, however, Coll doesn't have an ax to grind, and so offers a more evenhanded view of the internal battles between the White House, the C.I.A. and other agencies at a time when terrorism was not Washington's top priority. As a reporter who struggled to cover many of the twists and turns in counterterrorism policy that Coll describes, I find ''Ghost Wars'' provides fresh details and helps explain the motivations behind many crucial decisions.

As Coll seeks to explain why the Clinton team never mounted a serious effort to go after Al Qaeda, even after the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa, he finds plenty of blame to go around: ''Clinton's National Security Council aides firmly believed that they were the aggressive ones on the Al Qaeda case, pursuing every possible avenue to get at bin Laden over calcified resistance or incompetence within the C.I.A. and Pentagon bureaucracies. From the other side of the Potomac, Clinton's White House often looked undisciplined, unfocused and uncertain.'' ''Ghost Wars'' also corroborates many of Clarke's assertions that counterterrorism policy was largely ignored by the new Bush administration before Sept. 11. Coll notes, as does Clarke, that the Bush team didn't hold its first cabinet-level meeting on Al Qaeda and Afghanistan until Sept. 4, one week before the twin towers fell.

Coll closes with the Sept. 9, 2001, murder of Ahmed Shah Massoud, an Afghan rebel leader who had been cooperating with the C.I.A. in its vain efforts to track bin Laden around Afghanistan. As with so many other warnings before it, the full significance of Massoud's murder was missed until it was too late. Here and elsewhere in ''Ghost Wars,'' Coll's riveting narrative makes the reader want to rip the page and yell at the American counterterrorism officials he describes - including Clarke - and tell them to watch out.

[u]James Risen is the author, with Milt Bearden, of ''The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the C.I.A.'s Final Showdown With the K.G.B.'' He covers national security for The Times.[/u] - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

Richard Clarke Wants Full Disclosure ... Will Hypocritical Bush/Rice Comply?

03.29.04 (12:27 pm) [edit]

[b]Richard Clarke wants full disclosure of the facts ...

Will the hypocritical Bush/Rice gang comply? Thus, far the Bush/Rice gang have only released misleading partial e-mails in an attempt to destroy Clarke. Why don't they reveal the full facts?[/b]

Richard Clarke, the former terrorism adviser whose revelations threaten to torpedo George Bush's re-election strategy, launched a counterattack yesterday at a White House that he said was determined to destroy him. In a riveting television performance, Mr Clarke called on his principal critic and former employer, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to release the entire record of their emails in the months up to the September 11 terror attacks to prove his contention that the White House did not then take the threat of al-Qaida seriously.

He also agreed to Republican demands to declassify testimony he gave to the Senate two years ago - to "prove" there were no inconsistencies. "Let's take all of my emails and all the memos I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11 and let's declassify all of them," Mr Clarke told NBC television.

Mr Clarke's bravura presentation surprised the Bush administration. The decision to stand his ground could also be destructive to Ms Rice. She has been under intense scrutiny for a week - largely for being the focus of Mr Clarke's charges that the Bush government did not see al-Qaida as a priority before September 11, but also because she refused to testify before the commission.

Yesterday, the commission's chairman, Thomas Kean, called for Ms Rice to testify in public. "We recognise there are arguments having to do with separation of powers. We think in a tragedy of this magnitude that those kind of legal arguments are probably overridden," he said. But he said he would not force the issue with a court order.

Even leading Republican figures are criticising Ms Rice's refusal to appear, saying it looked as if she had something to hide. "I think she'd be wise to testify," said Richard Perle, a former Pentagon adviser.

Further damage was inflicted yesterday in a Los Angeles Times report discrediting a prewar claim by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had trucks capable of dispersing dangerous substances such as anthrax. The report claimed the information came from a single discredited source and reached US intelligence agents third-hand.

In Israel, meanwhile, a parliamentary committee investigating exaggerated prewar claims over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction concluded that western agencies had dealt in speculation not facts.

The committee said claims that Saddam was expanding his armoury were based on evaluations shared among intelligence agencies in Israel, the US, Britain and elsewhere, that reinforced "dubious interpretations" of the few facts available.

But the report released yesterday by the foreign affairs and defence committee said that while there was a "serious intelligence failure" there was no evidence of deliberate deception to build a false case.

[u]Clarke challenges Rice to reveal secret emails[/u], Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian UK, http://www.independent-media....%20Reported

Blabbering Bush Head: Sick of this Crap!!!!!!!

03.29.04 (11:01 am) [edit]

[b]Blabbering Bush Head

Sick of this Crap!!!!!!![/b]

Click on http://www.sickofthiscrap.com...

10 Minute Rice: Three Lies And No Apology

03.29.04 (6:21 am) [edit]

Condi Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, appeared on[i] 60 Minutes [/i]Sunday evening, but, unlike Bush anti-terrorism adviser Dick Clarke at the 9/11 Probe, she did not swear on the Bible that what she would say would be the truth. While Clarke on [i]60 Minutes [/i]last Sunday allowed himself to be probed and turned inside and out for nearly the entire program, the edited tape of the Rice interview with Ed Bradley lasted around 10 minutes, and she said nothing new. The short episode came across as political spin to control the bleeding, and nothing more.

[b]Rice's Lie #1 [/b]([i]transcript[/i]: http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... )

DICK CLARKE (video):
I said 'Mr. President, we've done this before. We - we've been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind, there's no connection.' He came back at me and said, 'Iraq, Saddam - find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean, that we should come back with that answer....

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I - I have never seen the president say an - anything to an - people in an intimidating way, to try to get a particular answer out of them. I know this president very well. And the president doesn't talk to his staff in an intimidating way to ask them to produce information - that is false.

OUR RESPONSE:
Clarke and two others were in the room with Bush. The others have gone on record as agreeing with Clarke's description of the meeting. Condi was not present.

[b]Rice's Lie #2[/b] ([i]transcript[/i]: http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... )

VOICE OVER:
All week long, the White House said it had no recollection that the September 12 meeting ever took place, and that it had no record that President Bush was even in the situation room that day. But two days ago, they changed their story, saying the meeting did happen.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
"None of us recall the specific - conversation....

OUR RESPONSE:
Actually, two lies here. First, the White House said the meeting didn't happen, then they changed their story. Second, Condi misleads Bradley by saying "us" did not recall the specific conversation. Of course "us" didn't since it has already been established that "us" was not in the room at the time of the conversation.

[b]Rice's Lie #3 [/b]([i]transcript[/i]: http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... )

ED BRADLEY:
Clarke has alleged that the Bush administration underestimated the threat from - from al Qaeda, didn't act as if terrorism was an imminent and urgent problem. Was it?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
Of course it was an urgent - problem....

ED BRADLEY: :
But even the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Hugh Shelton, has said that the Bush administration pushed terrorism, and I'm quoting here, farther to the back burner.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I just don't agree....

ED BRADLEY:
After 9/11, Bob Woodward wrote a book in which he had incredible access and interviewed the president of the United States. He quotes President Bush as saying that he didn't feel a sense of urgency about Osama bin Laden. Woodward wrote that bin Laden was not the president's focus or that of his nationally security team. You're saying that the administration says fighting terrorism and al-Qaeda has been a top priority since the beginning.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I'm saying that the administration took seriously the threat - let's talk about what we did....

ED BRADLEY: :
You'd listed the things that you'd done. But here is the perception. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at that time says you pushed it to the back burner. The former Secretary of the Treasury says it was not a priority. Mr. Clarke says it was not a priority. And at least, according to Bob Woodward, who talked with the president, he is saying that for the president, it wasn't urgent. He didn't have a sense of urgency about al Qaeda. That's the perception here.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
Ed, I don't know what a sense of urgency - any greater than the one that we had, would have caused us to do differently.

OUR RESPONSE:
It's clear that Bradley wants to discuss the Clarke charge that the Bush administration changed terrorism from the top priority to one of secondary concern, and Rice attepts to twist the question of giving terrorism "top priority" to taking terrorism "seriously," which are two different things. Then Bush is quoted as saying terrorism was not "urgent." Rice ignores this documented quote and goes on to disagree with Bush. As such, she is attempting to mislead by changing the terms from "top priority" to "seriously," and to simply ignore the evidence presented that Bush disagrees with her. As such, she is on auto-pilot as she lies, spinning the implicit scenario she wants Bradley to accept.

Finally, Bradley repeatedly gave Rice the program's forum to apologize for 9/11 to the millions of viewers watching the show, like Clarke did on the show last week and previously to that under oath in front of the 9/11 Panel, but she refused each time. ([i]transcript[/i]: http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... )

--[i][b]Jerry Politex[/b][/i], 03.29.04 - http://bushwatch.org/bush.htm...

White House Whitewash: Conflict-of-Interest At The Heart Of The Of The U.S. Commission

03.29.04 (6:16 am) [edit]

[u][b]A conflict of interest at the heart of the US 9/11 Commission hearings has been exposed by the families of the Twin Towers victims[/b][/u]

ANDREW Rice is angry with George Bush. His brother David was 31 years old when he died as United Airlines Flight 175 ploughed into the south tower of the World Trade Center where David worked as a financier with the investment firm Sandler O'Neill.

Andrew doesn't buy the rhetoric from the White House that Bush is a great war president who can make America stronger and safer. To Andrew, Bush is a charlatan making a mockery out of the deaths of his brother and the some 3000 other men, women and children who died on September 11, 2001.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Andrew Rice might then be glad to see the bloody battering that the Bush administration took this week during the ongoing commission hearings in Washington into whether or not the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented.

Bush and his team were painted as a feckless, lazy and ill-informed bunch who had little clue about al-Qaeda, and were fixated on Iraq. Security seemed far from the top of their agenda while an ideological obsession with taking out Saddam appeared to obscure the real dangers posed by Osama bin Laden's network of fundamentalist killers.

But the hammering that Bush took during the hearings did little to appease Rice and other family members like him. To Rice, who chairs the 9/11 Commission Committee of the September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows organization, the whole inquiry is one big fix that will do everything it can to hide the truth of what the US president and his closest advisors knew about the attacks.

Last week saw Dick Clarke, the former White House anti-terrorism chief under Bush and Bill Clinton, give evidence before the inquiry. Most of America already knew what he was going to say as they'd read it in his bestseller Against all Enemies where he claimed that the Bush administration ignored mounting warnings of a coming terror attack. Clarke said that when 9/11 did happen the Bush inner circle was desperate to link it to Saddam .

Clarke also said that Bush's national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, who has refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission under oath, didn't seem to know what al-Qaeda was. Rice gave Clarke the brush-off when he warned Bush officials in a January 2001 memo about the growing al-Qaeda threat. Dilatory plans by the Bush administration to deal with al-Qaeda, which weren't finalized until a week before the 9/11 attacks, were scorned by commission member Bob Kerry, who said he'd seen the document and it contained "nothing new whatsoever".

While Democrats might be whooping it up at the expense of Bush, Andrew Rice and many other families of 9/11 victims see these events as nothing more than political point-scoring. They don't care which politician comes off best, what they care about is the truth and they are sure that they are not going to get it.

You can hardly blame Rice for his pessimism. Many family members believe the "fix was in" from the very beginning and cite the appointment of Philip Zelikow as the commission's executive director as proof positive.

Zelikow was a Bush-appointee who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; he worked under Jim Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Sr; spent three years on the first President Bush's National Security Council and, as well as working with Condoleezza Rice, wrote two books with her as well.

Zelikow supported the White House when the administration said it would only release the president's daily briefings (PDB), prepared by the CIA, to the commission once they had been edited. Zelikow said: " The notion that the commission should want to read PDB articles that have nothing to do with al-Qaeda would be a novel suggestion."

One Democrat on the commission, Timothy Roemer, said agreeing to the White House demands would remove the context in which intelligence was presented and allow any "smoking guns" to be hidden from public scrutiny.

The White House acknowledged back in 2002 that a copy of the PDB in August 2001 noted that al-Qaeda might use hijacked planes in an attack on the USA. The commission has designated four members to read the reports. They will be allowed to take notes, but the White House can edit their notes to remove anything deemed sensitive.

Family members believe Zelikow's key conflict of interest stems from his role in the transition period between the Clinton and Bush presidencies. It was then that Zelikow worked on Bush's team to smooth the handover in terms of intelligence and to help formulate national security policy.

The Clinton administration has claimed that al-Qaeda was a top security priority. Zelikow would know, therefore, just how much importance both the Clinton and Bush governments placed on al-Qaeda. He would also have had a role in fine-tuning the Bush policy on al-Qaeda.

Clarke says he clearly and bluntly warned Bush officials about the risk of al-Qaeda when they took office. "It was very explicit," he said. "Rice was briefed ... and Zelikow sat in." Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the 9/11 Commission, said there was no question of any conflict of interests regarding Zelikow.

Andrew Rice seethes over information like this. "I've contacted the commission to say that it's laughable that Zelikow was appointed to such a position. I have big problems with the White House editing the PDBs, but Zelikow defended the decision. He worked with these people and now he is defending them.

"This commission was created by the establishment and the friends of the establishment are now part of the commission. Is it really an investigation? Zelikow is a symbol of the way this inquiry has been constructed. As far as the Clinton and Bush administrations being held to account - we won't hear about it. It is not about transparency, it is just there to appease the public.

"But it won't appease me or many other family members. We need a truly independent commission that is outside the realm of government. Zelikow should never have been in this in the first place. Aren't there other and better people out there who didn't work with Condoleezza Rice?

"The worst case scenario is that I fear this could be a whitewash and a cover-up. We know these people were obsessed with Iraq and not al-Qaeda - and that could ruin the administration. We also know the administration had strong ties to the Saudis.

"Bush only wants to be re-elected. It is so disingenuous of him to portray himself as the 9/11 president. He doesn't want people to look at all the dirty relationships."

The commission findings won't be published until April 2005 - after the presidential election in November. "We know the commission's findings can't affect the election, so why don't we push back the deadline further and get a new guy in?" asks Rice.

" No-one at any level of government - from a security guard at an airport to the President - has been held accountable for the biggest security failure in the history of this country."

Rice suspects that at the end of the inquiry a "figure like Ollie North will take the spear in the chest, while the rest will all be protected".

"In a situation like this, there is so little I can do," he adds. "I'm as powerless as when I watched my brother murdered on TV. We have so little recourse to find out who is responsible, who, by their mistakes and incompetency, helped this happen.

" My brother's death will not be in vain. I have to work hard to illuminate the hypocrisy of politicians who want to benefit from these tragedies while not caring about transparency.

"There is such a lack of humility. Bush runs ads draping himself in this tragedy. My brother wouldn't have wanted that. If we want to be secure then we need to know the full truth."

When Clarke told the September 11 families crowded into the commission chamber that he was sorry, that "the government failed you and I failed you", they got to their feet, with tears in their eyes, and cheered and clapped him. Why the outpouring of thanks and sadness? Simple, says Kirsten Breitweiser, a 9/11 families spokeswoman: "It was the first time we received an apology, or any acknowledgement of mistakes."

[u]White House Whitewash[/u], The Sunday Herald, http://www.commondreams.org/h...

No Time For DeLay ...

03.28.04 (1:12 pm) [edit]

First came Trent Lott and his wistful memories of segregation. Now Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader, may be forced step down if he's indicted for funneling corpora