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Bush Misleads About Transfer of Power in Iraq

06.30.04 (7:19 am) [edit]

Speaking at the NATO conference in Turkey yesterday, President Bush said, "15 months after the liberation of Iraq...the world witnessed the arrival of a free and sovereign Iraqi government."1 The reality, however, is much different.

The same day that U.S. administrator Paul Bremer officially ended the occupation, U.S. prosecutors refused to abide by an Iraqi judge's order acquitting Iraqi citizen Iyad Akmush Kanum of attempted murder of coalition troops.2 Instead, the prosecutors returned Kanum to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, claiming that "they were not bound by Iraqi law."

In the days leading up to his departure, Bremer "issued a raft of edicts" in an effort to "exert U.S. control over the country after the transfer of political authority."3 Specifically, Bremer empowered a seven-member appointed commission "to disqualify political parties and any of the candidates they support." Bremer also "appointed Iraqis handpicked by his aides to influential positions in the interim government" with multi-year terms to "promote his concepts of governance" after the handover.

Iraq remains plagued by violence and "the primary military responsibility for fighting the insurgency remains as much in American hands as it did yesterday."4 As a result, the [i]New York Times [/i]concludes it is "ludicrous for administration officials to suggest that America's occupation of Iraq has now somehow ended."

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

1. Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, Whitehouse.gov, 6/28/04
2. "Prisoner 27075 learns limits of sovereignty," Financial Times, 6/29/04
3. "U.S. Edicts Curb Power Of Iraq's Leadership," Washington Post, 6/27/04
4. "A Secretive Transfer in Iraq," New York Times, 6/29/04

Bush Misleads About Transfer of Power in Iraq

06.30.04 (7:17 am) [edit]

Republicans Beware: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Boosting Public Interest In Iraq War

06.29.04 (9:10 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON - Michael Moore's record-breaking documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" http://www.fahrenheit911.com/... is a pop culture phenomenon that is raising public interest in the Iraq war just as the United States is attempting a crucial handoff of power to Iraqis.

The movie, an indictment of President Bush's leadership and his decision to go to war in Iraq after the 2001 terrorist attacks, took in $23.9 million to become the first documentary to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film. Theater owners in cities large and small reported sellout crowds.

The heightened public interest generated by the film and the controversy surrounding it is likely to increase the reaction to what happens in Iraq - good and bad, analysts say.

"We haven't seen anything like this before," said political scientist Thad Beyle of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "I can't recall anything this large" coming out during an election year.

Political analysts are watching to see whether the movie attracts undecided or politically inattentive voters, but say it's too soon to say how it will influence the presidential campaign.

"What will matter most is what's happening on the ground in Iraq," said Robert Shapiro, a Columbia University political science professor who specializes in public opinion.

Most people who don't already oppose the Iraq war as Moore does are unlikely to see the movie, said Kathleen Jamieson, a specialist in political communication and director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. "But if they are undecided, this type of extended communication is the form most likely to persuade."

Other analysts said they'll be interested to see whether the huge crowds continue beyond opening weekend.

Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, said she doubted the film's "extraordinarily impressive" weekend box office numbers will influence the campaign between Bush and John Kerry.

"The election is still four months off," she said.

Recent polls suggest public sentiment is souring on Iraq with a majority saying last week for the first time that the war was a mistake. By a 2-to-1 margin, those surveyed said the transfer of limited power to Iraqis was not a sign of the success of U.S. policy because it was on schedule, but a sign of failure because Iraq is not stable.

The United States on Monday turned over limited sovereignty to Iraqis, two days ahead of schedule.

The heavy interest in the movie is more likely an indication of growing opposition to the war, said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution.

The liberal political group MoveOn.org hoped to mobilize potential voters interested in the movie at house parties around the country Monday night, with an online discussion featuring Moore as the main attraction.

But it was far from clear whether the movie will mobilize young voters to take an anti-war view, or stir up old feelings from middle-aged liberals.

"From the lines that I've seen outside the movie, it looked like the same group that was celebrating Earth Day in the 1970s," said Tom Rosenstiel, who studies media influence on public opinion.

People in Little Rock, Ark., flocked to the movie, but Art English, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, said "it seems to be a reinforcement film."

English said because some of the movie's claims are "over the top," some people are likely to think it lacks credibility. "But it's definitely getting more attention than I thought it would get," he said.

The controversy surrounding the film has helped stir interest, with some Republican-leaning groups attempting to block its distribution. The White House has dismissed the film as "outrageously false." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Republicans Beware: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Boosting Public Interest In Iraq War

06.29.04 (9:09 am) [edit]

Republicans Beware: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Boosting Public Interest In Iraq War

06.29.04 (9:07 am) [edit]

80% of Iraqis Want US to Stop Patrolling Cities

06.29.04 (9:05 am) [edit]

Over 80% of Iraqis want US and other foreign forces to stop patrolling their cities and make their presence less visible by withdrawing to bases, according to the latest survey by Iraq's best-known polling organization.

Forty-one per cent would feel safer if the forces left Iraq altogether, and only 32% would feel less safe.

In interviews in Baghdad and six other cities, which were completed last Tuesday, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies also found that pressure is likely to mount on the US and Britain to pull out of Iraq as soon as the country has an elected government in January.

This would be almost a year earlier than the end of the mandate which Washington and London got from the United Nations security council recently. That named December 2005 as the mandate's limit.

The survey looked ahead to the election campaign which will start this autumn and found that parties that promised to demand the immediate departure of foreign forces would have a huge head start.

Forty-three per cent of those polled said they would be most likely to vote for a party which called for foreign forces to leave.

Asked if they would support a party which wanted foreign forces to stay until Iraq's army and police were adequately trained and equipped to face threats of violence, only 16% said yes.

Although the collapse of security is the population's top concern, most of those surveyed felt that the problem would be best handled by Iraqi forces and that the presence of foreign armies attracted more violence.

Almost 70% said that if foreign armies remained in Iraq after an elected government took office in January attacks against Iraqi police and government officials would increase.

The Iraq Center for Research conducts monthly polls and is approved by the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Its latest results were handed to CPA officials on Sunday, the eve of their departure.

The finding that 41% would feel safer without any foreign forces in Iraq is similar to the results for April, but lower than the 55% who felt that way last month. The change may be due to the shock of recent car bombings and assassinations.

Dr Sadoun al Duleimi, who has a PhD in social psychology from Keele University and directs the polling Center, said yesterday: "It's probably because of the large number of recent explosions and attacks on the police.

"Another reason may be that at first Iraqis felt the new government was really going to be an Iraqi government of technocrats and experts who would handle the country's problems with an iron hand.

"When they see it's an extension of the previous governing council, some people go back to accepting coalition forces on the basis that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

80% of Iraqis Want US to Stop Patrolling Cities

06.29.04 (9:03 am) [edit]

Sovereignty Without Substance ...

06.28.04 (5:48 pm) [edit]

Paul Bremer suddenly left Iraq on Monday, having "transferred sovereignty" to the caretaker Iraqi government two days early.

It is hard to interpret this move as anything but a precipitous flight. It is just speculation on my part, but I suspect that the Americans must have developed intelligence that there might be a major strike on the Coalition Provisional Headquarters on Wednesday if a formal ceremony were held to mark a transfer of sovereignty. Since the U.S. military is so weak in Iraq and appears to have poor intelligence on the guerrilla insurgency, the Bush administration could not take the chance that a major bombing or other attack would mar the ceremony.

The surprise move will throw off all the major news organizations, which were planning intensive coverage of the ceremonies originally planned for Wednesday.

This entire exercise is a publicity stunt and has almost no substance to it. Gwen Ifill said on U.S. television on Sunday that she had talked to Condoleezza Rice, and that her hope was that when something went wrong in Iraq, the journalists would now grill Allawi about it rather than the Bush administration. (Or words to that effect). Ifill seems to me to have given away the whole Bush show. That's what this whole thing is about. It is public relations and manipulation of journalists. Let's see if they fall for it.

Allawi is not popular and was not elected by anyone in Iraq. The Kurds were sullen today. There were no public celebrations in Baghdad. When people in the Arab world are really happy, there is celebratory fire. They are willing to give Allawi a chance, but that is different from wholehearted support.

What has changed? The big change is that Allawi now controls the Iraqi government's $20 billion a year in income. About $10 billion of that is oil revenues, and those may be hurt this year by extensive sabotage. To tell you the truth, I can't imagine where the other $10 billion comes from. The government can't collect much in taxes. Some of it may be foreign aid, but not much of that has come in. The problem is that the Iraqi government probably needs $30 billion to run the government properly, and with only two-thirds of that or less, the government will be weak and somewhat ineffective.

Since Bremer was a congenital screw-up, just getting him and his CPA out of the country and out of control may be a good step forward. Allawi won't care about Polish style shock therapy for the economy. Allawi does not have any investment in keeping Iraq weak or preventing it from having a proper army. But how the Iraqi military, if brought back, can operate in a security environment where there are 160,000 foreign troops under U.S. command is unclear.

So that some group of Iraqis now control the budget and can set key policy in some regards may be significant. But the caretaker government is hedged by American power. Negroponte (the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad who has just arrived in the country) will control $18 billion in U.S. aid to Iraq. Rumsfeld will go on controlling the U.S. and coalition military. There isn't much space left for real Iraqi sovereignty in all that.

Another danger is that Allawi will overshoot and provide too much security. He is infatuated with reviving the Ba'ath secret police or Mukhabarat, and bringing back Saddam's domestic spies. Unlike the regular army, which had dirty and clean elements, all of the secret police are dirty, and if they are restored, civil liberties are a dead letter.

The guerrilla insurgency will continue, perhaps become more active. My wife Shahin, always a keen and canny observer, thinks the guerrillas will make their priority number one the assassination of Allawi. - http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?...

Bush Administration Lied About Secret Saudi Flight

06.28.04 (8:01 am) [edit]

The Bush administration and its right-wing allies are launching an all-out assault on Michael Moore and his new movie, attempting to discredit the film before it is even public. Last month, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the movie is "so outrageously false, it's not even worth comment" 1 - a comment made despite the fact that the movie was not yet public and Bartlett had not seen the film. Now the smear campaign is focused on creating the public illusion that Moore lied about a secret Saudi flight that was permitted after 9/11 when most U.S. airspace was closed. But, according to one new report, the Tampa International Airport "confirmed that the flight did take place" -- despite three years of Bush administration denials.

According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], "two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men (including one thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family) and flew to Lexington, Kentucky. From Kentucky "the Saudis then took another flight out of the country." As the newspaper reported, "for nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports" about the flight. But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (9/11 Commission), the Tampa International Airport acknowledged the flights happened. For its part, the Bush administration "is still not talking about the flights."2

According to the [i]St. Petersburg Times[/i], the Commission has now sent a formal letter to the Tampa International Airport asking for more information about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001" The commission "appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight." Meanwhile, former FBI agent Manuel Perez, who accompanied the formerly-secret flight, said the order to allow the flights "must have come from the highest levels of government."3

In all, the[i] New York Times [/i]notes it is "safe to say that central assertions of fact in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' are supported by the public record."4

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

1. "Michael Moore's Candid Camera," New York Times, 5/23/04. (Republished online in Common Dreams).
2. "TIA now verifies flight of Saudis," St. Petersburg Times, 6/9/04.
3. Ibid.
4. "Moore's assertions supported by record; But '9/11' director may have to defend rapid-fire statistics," San Francisco Chronicle, 6/24/04.

Bush Administration Lied About Secret Saudi Flight

06.28.04 (8:00 am) [edit]

US Coalition Fails to Account for Billions of Oil Revenues

06.28.04 (7:12 am) [edit]

[b]Billions of Revenue from Oil 'Missing' [/b]

A Christian charity has accused the coalition authority in Iraq of failing to account for up to $20bn (nearly £11bn) of oil revenues which should have been spent on relief and reconstruction projects.

At the same time, the Liberal Democrats are demanding an investigation into the way the US-led administration in Baghdad has handled Iraq's oil revenues. The coalition is obliged to pay all oil revenues into the Development Fund for Iraq, but according to Liberal Democrat figures, the fund could be short by as much as $3.7bn.

Sir Menzies Campbell, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, said yesterday: "This apparent discrepancy requires full investigation".

Christian Aid http://www.christian-aid.org.... , in a report http://www.christian-aid.org.... today, claims that the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority, which hands over power to an interim administration in Iraq this week, is in flagrant breach of the UN security council resolution which gave it control of the country's oil revenues.

Resolution 1483, passed in May 2003, stated that the money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people and independently audited, but an auditor was appointed only in April.

The charity quoted an unnamed UN diplomat as saying: "We only have the total amounts and movements in and out of the development fund. We have absolutely no knowledge of what purposes they are for and if these are consistent with the security council resolution."

Last October, Christian Aid revealed that $4bn of oil revenues were unaccounted for, but although procedures have been tightened up, the charity said, "we still do not know exactly how Iraq's money has been earned, which companies have won the contracts that it has been spent on, or whether this spending was in the interests of the Iraqi people."

According to the coalition's latest figures, the development fund has received $10.7bn. Yet it also admits that $12.5bn has been generated since June 2003.

When 5% is taken away to pay for Kuwaiti compensation, $1.2bn is still missing, say the Liberal Democrats.

Their own research, published today, also suggests that $12.5bn is anyway toward the low end of estimated revenue from oil sales.

The British government told Sir Menzies earlier this year that "information on the amount paid for Iraqi oil is not publicly available" to protect commercial confidentiality.

Christian Aid says billions of dollars are now being hastily allocated to projects which have not been properly planned and fears the authority will be wound up this week without ever having to account for the expenditure. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush CrimeWatch: U.S. Coalition Fails to Account for Billions of Oil Missing

06.28.04 (7:07 am) [edit]

Bush Administration Lied About Secret Saudi Flight

06.27.04 (6:34 am) [edit]

Bush Administration Lied About Secret Saudi Flight

06.27.04 (6:30 am) [edit]

Irish Stage MacBush: "There's the smell of blood still ..."

06.26.04 (2:14 pm) [edit]

[i]Bush's visit has contrasted sharply with those of previous U.S. presidents who were warmly welcomed in Ireland -- particularly those with Irish roots.

John F. Kennedy was greeted with almost religious fervour in 1963, Ronald Reagan had a pub named after him in his ancestral village in Tipperary when he came in 1994 and thousands of wellwishers greeted Bill Clinton when he came to Dublin[/i].

[u][b]Protesters invoke Shakespeare to blitz Bush[/b][/u]

CLARECASTLE (Reuters) - Irish protesters have used Shakespeare to blitz George W. Bush, invoking Macbeth, a ghost and a witch to cast a spell on the U.S. president and drive him, symbolically at least, from Irish soil.

Some 500 demonstrators marched on Dromoland Castle, the 16th century turreted mansion in western Ireland where Bush was meeting European Union leaders for a summit.

When they were stopped at a police road block, they staged their own version of Shakespeare's bloody Scottish tragedy.

First, a ghost with a whited-out face read the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. Then a woman dressed as Lady Macbeth read a list of Iraqi victims.

Finally, a woman dressed as a witch with a black pointy hat and a flowing cape cast a spell on a man wearing a Bush face mask. The man crumpled to the floor as the witch ordered him to leave Ireland and end the occupation of Iraq.

The protesters held up a banner adorned with a quote from Macbeth, Shakespeare's powerful drama of death, destruction and ambition in feudal Scotland.

"There's the smell of blood still," read the banner, on which was painted a gory hand. "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."

Some 50 police officers watched the drama unfold from behind their roadblock, just half a mile from the castle where Bush was staying for the EU-U.S. summit. The protest passed peacefully and the crowd dispersed after around 90 minutes.

The staging of "MacBush" was one of several events organised by demonstrators to show their anger with the president's visit.

Some 10,000 people marched through Dublin on Friday night in opposition to both U.S. policy in Iraq and Ireland's decision to host Bush and allow U.S. jets to refuel at one of its airports en route to the Gulf.

Further protests were expected later on Saturday before Bush leaves for Istanbul, where he will attend a NATO summit.

The Irish have mounted a huge security operation to protect the president, with 6,000 police and troops on the ground backed by planes, helicopters, surface-to-air missiles and tanks.

"One can only assume that if (Irish Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern is prepared to deploy tanks, he is also prepared to use them on the Irish people," said Roger Cole, chairman of the Peace & Neutrality Alliance protest group. "That is a disgrace."

Bush's visit has contrasted sharply with those of previous U.S. presidents who were warmly welcomed in Ireland -- particularly those with Irish roots.

John F. Kennedy was greeted with almost religious fervour in 1963, Ronald Reagan had a pub named after him in his ancestral village in Tipperary when he came in 1994 and thousands of wellwishers greeted Bill Clinton when he came to Dublin. - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/0406...

Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult

06.26.04 (8:36 am) [edit]

George W. Bush proclaims himself a born-again Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, and sports arena Book of Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham appear to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of Christianity. This cultist form of Christianity, with its emphasis on death rather than life, is also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian religions, particularly the Pope.

One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor of Texas to see his own preference for death over life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided over a record setting 152 executions, including the 1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong law enforcement record. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members, Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in disgust.

Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life - pursing his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky voice saying, "Please don't kill me." That went too far for former GOP presidential candidate Gary Bauer, himself an evangelical Christian. "I think it is nothing short of unbelievable that the governor of a major state running for president thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he decided to put to death," said Bauer.

A former Texas Department of Public Safety officer, a devout Roman Catholic, told this reporter that evidence to the contrary, Bush was more than happy to ignore DNA data and documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct to send innocent people to the Huntsville, Texas lethal injection chamber. He said the number of executed mentally retarded, African Americans, and those who committed capital crimes as minors was proof that Bush was insensitive and a "phony Christian." When faced with similar problems in Illinois, Governor George Ryan, a Republican, commuted the death sentences of his state's death row inmates and released others after discovering they were wrongfully convicted. Yet the Republican Party is pillorying Ryan and John Ashcroft's Justice Department continues to investigate the former Governor for political malfeasance as if Bush and Ashcroft are without sin in such matters. Hypocrisy certainly rules in the Republican Party.

Bush's blood lust has been extended across the globe. He has given the CIA authority to assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter), and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the assassination of foreign leaders. Bush's determination to kill Saddam Hussein, his family, and his top leaders with precision-guided missiles and tactical nuclear weapon-like Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombs is yet another indication of Bush's disregard for his Republican and Democratic predecessors. It now appears that in his zeal to kill Hussein, innocent civilian patrons of a Baghdad restaurant were killed by one of Bush's precision Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). Like it or not, Saddam Hussein was recognized by over 100 nations as the leader of Iraq -- a member state of the United Nations. Hussein, like North Korea' Kim Jong Il, Syria's Bashir Assad, and Iran's Mohammed Khatami, are covered by Executive Order 12333, which the Bush mouthpieces claim is still in effect. Bush's "Christian" blood cult sees no other option than death for those who become his enemies. This doctrine is found no place in Christian theology.

Bush has not once prayed for the innocent civilians who died as a result of the U.S. attack on Iraq. He constantly "embeds" himself with the military at Goebbels-like speech fests and makes constant references to God when he refers to America's "victory" in Iraq, as if God endorses his sordid killing spree. He makes no mention of the children, women, and old men killed by America's "precision-guided" missiles and bombs and trigger-happy U.S. troops. In fact, Bush revels in indiscriminate blood letting. Since he never experienced such killing in Southeast Asia, when he was AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit, Bush just does not seem to understand the horror of a parent watching one's children having their heads and limbs blown off in a sudden blast of shrapnel or children witnessing their parents burning to death with their own body fat nurturing the flames.

Bush and his advisers, previously warned that Iraq's ancient artifacts and collection of historical documents and books were in danger of being looted or destroyed, instead, sat back while the Baghdad and Mosul museums and Baghdad Library were ransacked and destroyed. Cult leaders have historically attempted to destroy history in order to invent their own. The Soviets tried to obliterate Russia's Orthodox traditions, turning a number of churches into warehouses and animal barns. Cambodia's Pol Pot tried to wipe out Buddhism's famed Angkor Wat shrine in an attempt to stamp out his country's Buddhist history. In March 2001, while they were negotiating with the Bush administration on a natural gas pipeline, Afghanistan's Taliban blew up two massive 1600-year old Buddhas in Bamiyan. The Bush administration, itself run by fanatic religious cultists, barely made a fuss about the loss of the relics. It would not be the first time the cultists within the Bush administration ignored the pillaging of history's treasures.

The ransacking of Iraq's historical treasures is explainable when one considers what the blood cult Christians really think about Islam. Franklin Graham, the heir to the empire built up by his anti-Semitic father, Billy Graham, has decided being anti-Muslim is far more financially rewarding than being anti-Jewish. Billy Graham, history notes from the Nixon tapes, complained about the Jewish stranglehold on the media and Jews being responsible for pornography.

Franklin Graham continues to enjoy his father's unfettered and questionable access to the White House. But in the case of Bush, the younger Graham has a fanatic adherent. Graham has called Islam a "very evil and wicked" religion. He then announces he wants to go to Iraq. Graham obviously sees an opportunity to convert Muslims and unrepentant Eastern Christians, who owe their allegiance to Roman and Greek prelates, to his perverted form of blood cult Christianity. Graham says he is ready to send his Samaritan's Purse missionaries into Iraq to provide assistance. Muslims and mainstream Christians are wary that Graham wants to exchange food, water, and medicine for the baptism of Iraqis into his intolerant brand of Christianity. In the last Gulf War, Graham could not get away with his chicanery. The Desert Storm Commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, stopped dead in the tracks Graham's plan to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Today's Pentagon shows no such compunction to put a rein on Graham. It invited him to give a Good Friday sermon at the Pentagon to the consternation of the Defense Department's Muslim employees. To make matters worse, under Bush's "Faith Based Initiative," Graham's Samaritan's Purse stands to receive U.S. government funds for its proselytizing efforts in Iraq, something that should be an affront to every American taxpayer.

Bush's self-proclaimed adherence to Christianity (during one of the presidential debates he said Jesus Christ was his favorite "philosopher") and his constant reference to a new international structure bypassing the United Nations system and long-standing international treaties are worrying the top leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Well-informed sources close to the Vatican report that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly concerned about Bush's ultimate intentions. The Pope has had experience with Bush's death fetish. Bush ignored the Pope's plea to spare the life of Karla Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly ignorant of the world's mainstream religions, Bush also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the World Council of Churches - an organization that represents over 350 of the world's Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush's own Methodist Church and his parents' Episcopal Church are members of the World Council.

Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to "evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within his Church, his accomplishments external to Catholicism are impressive.

According to journalists close to the Vatican, the Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush administration officials. By permitting the attacks to take their course, there is a perception within the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out their agenda.

The Pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they had not seen the Pope more animated and determined since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico, Chile, Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S. resolution. If one were to believe in the Book of Revelations, as the Pope fervently does, he can seek solace in scoring a symbolic victory against the Bush administration. Whether Bush represents a dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood cult (as I believe) or he is either the anti-Christ or heralds one, the Pope should know he has fought the good battle and has gained the respect and admiration of many non-Catholics around the world. - http://www.counterpunch.org/m...

Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult: Concerns Raised by the Vatican

06.26.04 (8:33 am) [edit]

Liberation will only come when the Americans leave

06.26.04 (8:30 am) [edit]

[b]Liberation will only come when the Americans leave

[i]Let's hope Moqtada al-Sadr stands in the elections [/i][/b]

With less than two weeks until the much-vaunted transfer of power from the Americans to an Iraqi government, a few hints of independence have emerged from the men Washington approved.

Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, the civil engineer and tribal leader who is to be the new president, contradicted George Bush's suggestion that the notorious prison of Abu Ghraib be torn down. It is not that the sheikh has any affection for the place, but he probably foresaw another fat new contract looming for some foreign building company. Anyway, the damage done to the American image in Iraq cannot be undone by removing the scene of the crime.

More importantly, the sheikh came out against last week's American order banning the radical cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, from taking part in Iraq's first democratic elections in January. It was an odd decision for a country which claims to be bringing democracy to Iraq. It appeared to have the support of the new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who issued a statement welcoming the tough US line on illegal militias. The larger Shia parties in the government also went along with it. The cleric is their political rival, and to have him off the ballot would no doubt be in their short-term interest.

The sheikh, by contrast, argued that it is far better to get radicals to join the political process than leave them outside the tent, a sentiment that al-Sadr seems to share. His officials say he is planning to start a political party.

On one key issue even Allawi, a long-time US favourite, has dared to defy Washington. He wants Saddam Hussein and all other Iraqi detainees transferred to Iraqi custody by June 30, a plea which George Bush is furiously resisting. Almost no Iraqis want to see the dictator back in power, but it is a matter of national pride that they should be the ones to hold him and run his trial. He is not a trophy in Bush's election campaign, but a man they wish to punish themselves.

Welcome though this ministerial dissent is, most Iraqis treat it as minor murmuring. The prevailing view is that the Americans will continue to run the show after June 30 and that the new government will not want or be able to resist them on the big issue of security.

Outsiders will also control most spending, since Iraq's only source of revenue - oil - will continue to be deposited in a development fund set up by the UN during the sanctions era. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia still have billions of dollars in compensation claims. Other countries demand debt repayments, and none of the multi-million-dollar contracts signed by the occupation authorities with US companies can be reviewed.

"We can't trust anyone from the new government, or from the United States," Baida Muhsen, a young MA student in a white hijab, told me this week. "After the so-called liberation all Iraqis were hopeful, but I really regret to say that after what happened in Abu Ghraib, I would rather be protected by inefficient Iraqis than by the Americans."

Working near her in Baghdad University's internet room, Ahmed Nuri, another MA student, was equally gloomy. "The Americans will force the new government to do what they want. They have no choice. Many of the ministers have western passports. How can they say no?"

As car bombs tear away at Iraqi society, the issue of the new government's powers has become secondary. The stuff of every conversation nowadays is the daily carnage, and the kidnappings and assassinations that go with it. People are asking the "will and would" questions. Will violence abate in July after the handover of sovereignty? Would violence abate if the Americans pulled out altogether?

The first question is the easier one to answer. If two months ago there was a vague hope that the violence which is motivated by nationalist resentment over occupation would diminish once an Iraqi government took over, people now are almost universally pessimistic.

US troops will remain at a level of 140,000 at least until October, according to US officials, and there are no plans to reduce their visibility. Even if the formal occupation is over, Iraqis expect to see little change on July 1. Resistance to the Americans will continue as before. Those who work with the occupation will remain targets, just as they are today.

Whether violence would lessen if the Americans began to pull out is the harder question. Bush and Blair promise they will not "cut and run" or leave Iraqis in the lurch. A poll taken at the end of April found 42% of Iraqis saying they would feel safer if the Americans left their country immediately. Only 29% said they would be less safe. Another poll in mid May found the trend increasing: 55% felt life would be more secure if the Americans withdrew.

As the climate of fear increases and more Iraqis fall victim to violence, people's attitudes become volatile. A conversation that starts as a long litany of complaints about American mistakes and crimes, sometimes ends with the argument that the Americans should clear up their own mess before they go. Others are panicked by uncertainty, and want everything - the resurrection of the Iraqi army, the old police force back on the streets, and the Americans to stay in the background as an insurance policy just in case.

Only real politics can begin to resolve the issue. The fact that Moqtada al-Sadr may decide to stand in the forthcoming elections is a valuable development. He is the only well-known politician who has dared to call for an early American withdrawal. By throwing the issue into the arena - provided the Americans are forced to let him take part in the polls - he will oblige other politicians to take a stand. It will become increasingly hard for senior Iraqis to avoid the issue, and they will have to respond to the public mood.

An open debate over the future of the US presence will also put pressure on the Americans to hasten the reinstatement and re-equipping of Iraqi forces, and begin to plan for a parallel cutback in their deployments as Iraqis take over. The old Bush/Blair mantra of "not staying one day longer than necessary" has to be fleshed out with a serious and publicly announced programme of phased withdrawal.

Dreams of keeping long-term American bases in Iraq need to be abandoned, and a real test of whether John Kerry is any different from the incumbent has to be whether the Democratic party candidate will give the no-bases pledge.

Iraq is going through very dark days, and the importing of foreign terrorism, which was unknown to Iraqis until the American invasion brought it on, is spooking everyone. Liberation will only come when the Americans leave. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1241612,00.html

Iraqi Liberation Will Only Come When the Americans Leave Iraq ...

06.26.04 (8:27 am) [edit]

White House Counting on Public Apathy

06.26.04 (8:22 am) [edit]

You know, of course, that the alleged handover of Iraqi sovereignty on June 30 is a phony-baloney public-relations stunt. The armed forces will remain in the country. A U.S. embassy with 1,000 employees will open. In other words, it will be a continued occupation with an Iraqi face.

What the White House hopes will happen is that the American media, once Iraqis are allegedly in charge, will lose interest in Iraq, and American casualties, which shall surely continue, will be relegated to the inside pages of the newspapers and barely mentioned by the television talk-show crowd.

This might work, because the American media are notoriously xenophobic and show little interest whatsoever in any country other than our own. That's why Americans as a whole are notoriously ignorant of the world. It's simply impossible to develop knowledge about what's going on in most countries of the world from reading American newspapers and watching television.

It's ironic that as communications technology has exploded, intelligent content has shrunk. That's because most corporate moguls simply don't want to go to the expense of stationing permanent foreign correspondents in most parts of the world. If some disaster occurs, they can always buy footage from a local unit or, on rare occasions, fly their pretty faces over for a quickie report.

The information age produces largely static. We can all find out more than we want to know about Hollywood and its actors and actresses (I refuse to allow feminists to dictate my language), but information about the rest of the world is hard to come by. Even the nuts and bolts of our government are not well-reported these days. Ask yourself if you know exactly what your own congressional official is doing based on reading your local newspaper. I'll bet you don't.

It's sad to say, but the American media are undermining the foundation of self-government. The Founding Fathers believed that the common people could govern themselves – provided they were given the facts on which to make their judgments. You are lucky if you live somewhere with a newspaper that makes an honest attempt to give you those facts. In my opinion, the best newspapers in America today are in the small to medium-size cities where editors and reporters haven't succumbed to sensationalism and celebrity worship.

Unfortunately, most of the day-to-day business of America, whether government or private, is not sensational, sexy or scandal-ridden. A lot of it is downright dull. Yet people need to know what is going on. They need to know when their government is doing things right as well as when their government does things wrong. I share the Founding Fathers' faith that if the people are given the facts, they will, in the long run, make the right decisions.

Unfortunately, television seems intent on turning Americans into adrenaline junkies. The world is, in fact, a whole lot less dangerous and violent than you would think from watching television and movies. It's still true, for example, that most police officers graduate from the academy and retire with their gold watch without ever once firing their gun at another human being.

Let's hope the White House scheme to take Iraq off the front pages won't work and that the American press, such as we are, will continue to report on Iraq as long as American troops remain there.

I've even hoping that the Iraqis themselves will rebel against their American controllers and tell us to get out of their country altogether. That would save us a lot of lives and treasure. - http://www.antiwar.com/reese/...

In Your Ear, Bolton

06.26.04 (8:20 am) [edit]

[b]In Your Ear, Bolton [/b]

It hasn't been a good week for Undersecretary of State Bolton. Some of the eggs he's laid in the past year or so hatched as turkeys and have come home to roost.

Back in October of 2002, one of Bolton's munchkins claimed he had accosted a Democratic People's Republic of Korea "diplomat" at a cocktail party, had accused the DPRK of having a clandestine uranium-enrichment program, and the Korean had admitted the accusation was true.

The next day – and practically every day since – the DPRK has officially and emphatically denied that it has any such program.

Now, if DPRK has such a program, no one – not even the CIA – has the foggiest notion where it might be sited.

Nevertheless, within weeks we cut off the quarterly supply of fuel oil guaranteed DPRK in return for a "freeze" of its nuclear power reactors and associated facilities, kept since 1994 under lock and seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In so doing, we effectively abrogated the U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework, negotiated for President Clinton by Ambassador Gallucci, that was supposed to keep the DPRK a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The DPRK continued to deny that it had a uranium-enrichment program, and announced that if the Agreed Framework oil shipments weren't resumed it would withdraw from the NPT after all.

They weren't resumed, so in December the DPRK announced it was withdrawing, kicked out the IAEA inspectors, ripped off the IAEA seals, restarted its plutonium-producing reactor, and in February, began recovering weapons-grade plutonium from its "unfrozen" spent fuel.

About the same time, Bolton met with Israeli officials in Tel Aviv. According to the Israeli independent newspaper, Ha'aretz, Bolton told the Israelis he had "no doubt" that "America will attack Iraq," and soon, to disarm Saddam Hussein. The Israelis said "okay," but said they were much more worried about Iran having nukes, than Iraq. Bolton told them that Iraq had to come first, so "it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea, afterwards."

Well, you know how the invasion of Iraq turned out.

Disaster!

There were no Iraqi nukes. There weren't even any chemical or biological weapons. Worse, the insurrection, coupled with the paucity of "willing" partners, means that we don't have the necessary means for dealing from a position of strength with what the neocrazies perceive to be the nuke threats from Syria, Iran and the DPRK for a long time.

Worse, still, the neo-crazies had deliberately gut-shot the IAEA because it stood in the way of justifying the invasion to Joe Sixpack. The IAEA had re-certified on the eve of the invasion that there were no nuke programs in Iraq. Hence the IAEA Board of Governors was hardly in the mood to "deal with the threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea" for Bolton and the Israelis.

So, last week Bolton attempted to get the heads of state of the eight 'industrialized' nations – the G8 – to end-run the IAEA Board of Governors. The G8 issued an Action Plan on Non-Proliferation – which has all the import of a pledge by the G8 heads to give up smoking. But it got the Iranian mullahs attention. And DPRK's Kim Jong-il.

Here is what the G8 said – in part – about DPRK:

"The DPRK's (a) announced withdrawal from the NPT – which is unprecedented – its (b) continued pursuit of nuclear weapons – including through both its plutonium reprocessing and its uranium enrichment programs – in violation of its international obligations; and its (c) established history of missile proliferation, are serious concerns to us all."

And here's what the G8 said – in part – about Iran:

"Iran must be in full compliance with its NPT obligations and safeguards agreement.

"We deplore Iran's delays, deficiencies in cooperation, and inadequate disclosures, as detailed in IAEA Director General reports.

"We therefore urge Iran promptly and fully to comply with its commitments and all IAEA Board requirements, including ratification and full implementation of the Additional Protocol, leading to resolution of all outstanding issues related to its nuclear program."

So, this week, the DPRK delegate to the 6-Party talks reportedly told a Bolton munchkin that because of what Bolton had the G8 do, they might just test a nuke or two.

And the Iranian mullahs informed France-Germany-UK – all G8 members – that they were resuming gas-centrifuge construction because France-Germany-UK had reneged on their promise to deal with IAEA issues within the IAEA.

All in all, not a good week for Bolton.

[b]Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. [/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/p...

In You Ear, Bolton (Ah, come on, Cheney would have said: "Fuck-Yourself!")

06.26.04 (8:18 am) [edit]

The Irish Can't Stand Bush Anymore Than High-IQ Americans Can ...

06.25.04 (6:27 pm) [edit]

[b]Stepping out to a cold Irish welcome [/b]

Smiling and waving, George Bush glided down the steps of Air Force One at Shannon airport last night, seemingly unfazed by his tag as the most unwelcome American ever to set foot on Irish soil.

The president and his wife, Laura, were spared the sight of thousands of Irish protesters at the airport entrance and whisked off in an armoured Cadillac to the 16th century Dromoland castle in County Clare. Mr Bush enjoyed a rather military-looking walk around the expansive grounds with the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, but was expected to retire early to his £900-a night presidential suite, which the castle promotes as the authentic "landed gentry" experience.

The president will use today's US-EU summit to try to heal the transatlantic rifts over Iraq before the Nato summit in Turkey.

Pretzels are off the menu at his working lunch with European statesmen. Only the finest Irish seafood and lamb will grace the table as the conversation turns to the Middle East and famine in Sudan. The French wine-list will serve as a reminder of the difficult task at hand.

But what Mr Bush has been choking on recently is the gristle of the Irish media. Expecting nothing more than a gentle probing from a friendly state which America "helped" to prosper, he gave the first White House interview to an Irish journalist for 20 years. But the state broadcaster RTE subjected him to a grilling which left him fuming and had media commentators and licence-payers debating the Irish style of journalism.

The interview was intended as a cordial start to the president's first visit to the Irish Republic. Some claim the summit was tailored to give Mr Bush a pre-election media-opportunity for the 50 million or so Irish folk back home.

But RTE's Washington correspondent, Carole Coleman, was not about to let Mr Bush off the hook. In an interview broadcast on television and a radio breakfast show she persisted with questions about dead US soldiers, torture, the issue of making the world a more dangerous place, and being disliked.

"I don't really try to chase popularity polls," the president said.

After Irish churchmen queried the president's morals this week, there was also an inevitable question about his devotion to the Lord.

"I get great substance from my personal relationship [with God]," he said. "That doesn't make me think I'm a better person than you are, by the way, because one of the great admonitions in the good book is, 'Don't try to take a speck out of your eye if I got a log in my own'."

Mr Ahern's fashion sense will ensure that he gets the coverage he requires. Once known as anorak-man, the prime minister hogged much media time by his recent appearance in a garish pair of canary-yellow trousers at the G8 summit that the issue was raised in the Irish parliament.

The visit was accompanied by the inevitable anti-Bush demonstrations in Shannon, Dublin and several other cities. Three protesters, including Edward Horgan, a leading peace activist and former officer in the Irish army, were arrested on board a boat on the River Shannon yesterday afternoon.

Radio phone-in shows - the barometer of Irish life - have been flooded with anti-Bush callers. One of the loudest pro-Bush voices was that of a former US diplomat, George Dempsey, who said Ireland should be welcoming Mr Bush by waving American flags but instead had been poisoned by media bias.

He said the foreign policy debate in Ireland was "dominated by a self-justifying leftist fixation on the US". He had written a book dissecting the "vicious misrepresentation" in the Irish media.

The one person who did not seem to need advice on dealing with Irish resentment was the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who travelled with the president and Colin Powell.

She said she was aware the president would be greeted by protesters but the Irish should remember that the right to protest was a part of democracy once denied to Iraqis.

Irish demonstrators were resolute. "No red carpet for killer Bush," said a placard in a hedgerow. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa...,12271,1247902,00.html

Persuasive and passionate. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is both ...

06.25.04 (9:01 am) [edit]

[b]Persuasive and passionate. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is both. It's also Michael Moore's best film. [/b]

The big moment in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" comes midway through the documentary, and there's no mistaking it: It's the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the president of the United States is sitting in a little chair in a Florida classroom. His chief of staff enters and whispers in his ear that the country is under attack. And President George W. Bush just sits there for seven long minutes.

In a forceful documentary devoted to puncturing the image of the president as a take-charge leader, this will be, for many, the tipping point. At the very least, it will be the scene that everyone talks about. Moore doesn't show the whole seven minutes. Instead he lingers on the scene just long enough for the audience to daydream of Eisenhower, Reagan, Truman, Bush senior, Clinton, Nixon or Kennedy in that situation, and to imagine any one of them standing immediately, excusing himself and demanding to be put in touch with his national security team.

Assessing the merits of a political film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is partly a function of its power to persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are other things to consider: The movie's passion. Its serious purpose. Its tone. Its mix of words and images, and the way both linger in the mind. There's the way the movie fashions its arguments, and the cumulative effect the experience provides -- what you feel walking out, what you think about the next day. By all these measures, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is Michael Moore's best film.

Certainly, it's a career landmark, the film that signals his transition from political entertainer to political thinker, from propagandist to idiosyncratic journalist, from colorful gadfly to patriot. If "Bowling for Columbine" was a step, this is a leap, in which Moore vaults past Will Rogers into some territory all his own. In the 90-year history of the American feature film, there has never been a popular election-year documentary like this one.

The film, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, has a single unifying idea that brings together its various elements. The idea is an emotional one, namely that America has been living in a kind of nightmare for the last few years, one that began not with the events of Sept. 11, 2001, but from the moment that the networks took Florida out of the Gore column on election night 2000. Moore posits that the main source of America's nightmare has been the presidency of George W. Bush. There's anger at the core of Moore's position, but he never shows it. And while he sprinkles the film with his deadpan humor, for the most part he plays it straight, laying down facts methodically, trusting in the audience's interest and attention. The connection between the Bush family and the bin Laden family's oil interests dominates the first section of the film. Although Moore doesn't uncover anything sinister, the sheer extent of this personal and financial connection comes as a surprise, and it fuels Moore's outrage that the bin Laden family was allowed to leave the United States without interrogation following Sept. 11.

That Moore is becoming an artist is evident in the way he depicts the World Trade Center attacks. Instead of going to stock news footage, he blacks out the screen and makes us listen to the sounds of Lower Manhattan on the horrible day. It brings it all back. From there, Moore challenges the president's handling of the war on terror by bringing in experts to say that the Afghanistan war was "botched," that too few troops were sent. He details lapses in homeland security. To bolster his case that the administration has fostered a culture of fear, he goes to a tiny town in Virginia and talks to citizens on the lookout for terrorists. When asked what the terrorists might want to bomb, several locals say, "The Wal-Mart."

Moore had a camera on the ground in Iraq, and the footage he got is like nothing seen on American television. A woman sobs and screams that her family's house has been destroyed. American soldiers clown around near hooded detainees, while other soldiers express doubt about the mission. Moore's effects are manipulative in the best sense -- even though the audience knows what he's up to, the moments still have power. As the president talks about the need for war, Moore shows kids playing in Baghdad. Later, he shows a boy lying in the street with his forearm barely attached to his body. On the home front, Moore shows a mother whose son was killed in Iraq, reading her son's final letter -- in which he says that he hopes the president isn't re- elected.

Moore is playing for keeps. The somber tone notwithstanding, this film is on fire. It's an exhausting, shattering thing to watch, and the mood it casts lasts for days. What both exalts the experience and grounds the picture is Moore's essentially patriotic faith that a sincere, invested argument can get a hearing in America. To see "Fahrenheit 9/11" and experience its passion is to wonder why there haven't been popular political films like this since movies began, and from all points of view. It seems like such a reasonable use of cinema, and an inexpressibly worthy one.

-- Advisory: This film contains strong language, gun violence and scenes of carnage. - http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art...

Persuasive and passionate. 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is both ...

06.25.04 (8:58 am) [edit]

Gore Speech Proves Bush & Cheney Lied About Iraq

06.25.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

In a speech given at the Georgetown University Law Center today, former Vice President Al Gore systematically analyzed how the Bush administration deliberately misled the country by claiming before the war that Iraq and al Qaeda were working together. Gore traced how President Bush and Vice President Cheney ignored warnings from officials in their own administration that there was no connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Read the full speech http://www.commondreams.org/v... at Salon.com 1, or see the Reuters 2or Los Angeles Times3 stories about the speech.

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

1. "Democracy itself is in grave danger," Salon.com, 6/24/04.
2. "Gore Says Bush Lied About Iraq to Push for War," Reuters, 6/24/04.
3. "Gore: Bush Threatens Foundation of Democracy," Los Angeles Times, 6/24/04.

Thank you, Michael Moore ...

06.25.04 (7:49 am) [edit]

"[i]The light at the end of the tunnel could be the bulb in a film projector[/i]." - Jeanette Castillo

Screens in Bartlett, Chattanooga, Jackson, Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee will be showing it. Screens in Layton and West Jordan, Utah will be showing it. If you find yourself in Leawood, Merriam, Shawnee or Wichita, Kansas, you can see it. The same goes for Centerville, Fairfax and Abington, Virginia. If you happen to be in Akron, Bexley, Dublin or Elyria, Ohio, you're all set. Hoover, Montgomery and Mobile, Alabama will not be left out.

Laramie, Wyoming? It's there. Bozeman, Montana? Indeed. Should you call home Grand Island, Lincoln or Omaha, Nebraska, you have not been forgotten. The largest mall in the country, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, will have it in its theater. If you are a soldier at Camp Lejune or Fort Bragg, about to be shipped to Iraq, you can see it in nearby Fayetteville, North Carolina.

These towns, large and small, along with towns large and small from sea to shining sea and straight through the American heartland, will begin screening Michael Moore's documentary, 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' beginning at 12:01a.m. Friday morning, the 25th of June, 2004. For the majority of people who will see this movie, in those towns large and small, the experience will be nothing short of a mind-bomb.

[i]The Full Story on[/i] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Thank you, Michael Moore ...

06.25.04 (7:48 am) [edit]

Thank you, Michael Moore ...

06.25.04 (7:48 am) [edit]

Discredited Al Qaeda Link to Iraq May be Confusion Over Names (Ahmad is like Smith ... Jeez ...)

06.25.04 (7:44 am) [edit]

[b]Al Qaeda Link To Iraq May Be Confusion Over Names [/b]

An allegation that a high-ranking al Qaeda member was an officer in Saddam Hussein's private militia may have resulted from confusion over Iraqi names, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Former Navy secretary John Lehman, a Republican member of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Sunday that documents found in Iraq "indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaeda." Although he said the identity "still has to be confirmed," Lehman introduced the information on NBC's "Meet the Press" to counter a commission staff report that said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda but no "collaborative relationship."

Yesterday, the senior administration official said Lehman had probably confused two people who have similar-sounding names.

One of them is Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi, identified as an al Qaeda "fixer" in Malaysia. Officials say he served as an airport greeter for al Qaeda in January 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, at a gathering for members who were to be involved in the attacks on the USS Cole, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Iraqi military documents, found last year, listed a similar name, Lt. Col. Hikmat Shakir Ahmad, on a roster of Hussein's militia, Saddam's Fedayeen.

"By most reckoning that would be someone else" other than the airport greeter, said the administration official, who would speak only anonymously because of the matter's sensitivity. He added that the identification issue is still being studied but "it doesn't look like a match to most analysts."

In an interview yesterday, Lehman said it is still possible the man in Kuala Lumpur was affiliated with Hussein, even if he isn't the man on the Fedayeen roster. "It's one more instance where this is an intriguing possibility that needs to be run to ground," Lehman said. "The most intriguing part of it is not whether or not he was in the Fedayeen, but whether or not the guy who attended Kuala Lumpur had any connections to Iraqi intelligence. . . . We don't know."

Allegations that Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi was under Iraqi intelligence control were raised last year in an article in the Weekly Standard by Stephen F. Hayes, and later discounted by U.S. intelligence officials. No such tie was indicated in the commission report.

The commission staff report, released Wednesday, prompted a vigorous response from the Bush administration, which had cited since 2002 an al Qaeda-Hussein link as one reason for going to war. Just last week, Vice President Cheney said in a television interview he "probably" knew intelligence about Iraq's ties to terrorists that the commission had not received, but added, "I don't know what they know."

On Sunday, Lehman said, "The vice president was right when he said that he may have things that we don't yet have."

Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton have asked the administration to provide any additional information it has. Commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said no new requests for information have been sent, but the panel has long-standing requests for documents. Cheney's spokesman, Kevin Kellems, said that, to his knowledge, the vice president has received no new requests. [We can't be sure since Cheney intimidates everyone with "[i]F*ck You[/i]" Tony Soprano rhetoric!] - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Discredited Al Qaeda Link to Iraq May be Confusion Over Names (Ahmad is like Smith ... Jeez ...)

06.25.04 (7:41 am) [edit]

Gore Speech Proves Bush & Cheney Lied About Iraq

06.25.04 (7:34 am) [edit]

Ron Reagan: "Bush Misled Us Into The War" ...

06.24.04 (10:06 am) [edit]

[b]Ron Reagan Criticizes Bush Foreign Policy[/b]

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Ron Reagan, the younger son of the late President Reagan, criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy, saying he believed the president misled Americans to gain support for the Iraq war.

``We lied our way into the war,'' he said on CNN's ``Larry King Live'' on Wednesday, referring to allegations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and direct connections to al-Qaida. ``It's a terrible mistake, a terrible foreign policy error.''

Reagan, 44, a vocal opponent of his father's conservative politics, said he would vote for anyone who could beat the current president.

Reagan also said he was angered over the administration's restriction of federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

``It's shameful,'' he said. ``We're not talking about fetuses, human beings being killed. We're talking about collections of cells in a petri dish that are never ever going to be a human being.''

Reagan said he expected his mother to continue to speak out in favor of stem cell research. Nancy Reagan has long argued that such work could lead to cures for a number of diseases like the Alzheimer's that afflicted her husband.

He said Nancy Reagan was doing ``pretty well.''

``I've got to hand it to her. She's 83 years old. She doesn't get around as well as she used to, a little glaucoma,'' he said. But, ``She's a professional.'' - http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/n...%2F20040624%2F0436195500.htm&sc=1110&photoid=20040 611WCAP109

Bush Hides Documents About Environmental Policy

06.24.04 (7:04 am) [edit]

President Bush regularly talks about the need for other countries to display "transparency"1 and create an open system that allows citizens to see what their government is doing. But, according to a new report, the Bush administration is hiding thousands of previously public documents to "undercut the public's right to know about contamination of the environment, transport of hazardous materials, pipeline routes, and more."

The Working Group on Community Right-to-Know this week reports that, under the guise of "national security," more than "six thousand public documents have been removed from the web sites of over a dozen government agencies since the fall of 2001."2 The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for example, has removed from its website parts of once-public Risk Management Plans -- documents that helped communities identify nearby chemical hazards. The Department of Energy has taken down environmental impact statements related to nuclear power plants and hazardous materials transport information. The Department of Transportation removed from its web site much of the national pipeline mapping data that allowed communities to find hazardous pipeline routes.3

According to the report, President Bush has also issued executive orders that broaden the authority of agencies to withhold information from the public. May 2002's Executive Order 12958 gave the EPA Administrator authority to designate documents "Secret" or "Confidential," two of the three highest possible security classifications. The White House has even reduced the public's access to unclassified information, passing bills allowing agencies to withhold "sensitive but unclassified" information from the public.

For more, see the report at Bushgreenwatch.org.

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. Presidental Remarks , WhiteHouse.gov, 6/22/2004.
2. "Bush Administration Secrecy Imperils Environment and Public Health", Bushgreenwatch.org, 6/23/2004.
3. "Secrecy in the Bush Administration Obstructs Communities' Right-to-Know", Working Group on Community Right to Know (crtk.org), 6/23/2004.

Bush Hides Documents About Environmental Policy

06.24.04 (7:03 am) [edit]

Bush Hides Documents About Environmental Policy (Too... Bush's Pattern: Hide Docs)...

06.24.04 (6:58 am) [edit]

Latest Iraq-al Qaeda "Evidence" Proves False (Again) ...

06.24.04 (6:57 am) [edit]

Just days after the bipartisan 9/11 Commission acknowledged that there was "no credible evidence"1 to support the White House's pre-war assertions of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection,2 the Bush administration is now putting out "new evidence" that supposedly proves the claim. But as reported by newspapers around the country, senior U.S. intelligence officials say this "evidence" is false.

Days after Vice President Dick Cheney claimed he "probably"3 had more evidence than the 9/11 Commission to prove an Iraq-al Qaeda connection, Republican commissioner John Lehman said he was given "new intelligence"4 showing that "at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, was a very prominent member of al Qaeda."5 But according to U.S. officials, intelligence experts are "highly skeptical that the Iraqi officer had any connection to al-Qaida."6 Newsday noted that the CIA concluded "a long time ago" that the individual in question "was not an officer in Saddam Hussein's army."7

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have both continued to insist on an Iraq-al Qaeda connection, despite "senior U.S. officials now saying there never was any evidence that Saddam's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league."8 Members of the 9/11 Commission are formally calling on Cheney to provide any shred of proof9 to support his assertion last week that "the evidence is overwhelming"10 that the Iraqi government had a relationship with al Qaeda.

[b]Sources: [/b]

1. "9-11 panel finds 'no credible evidence' of link between al-Qaida and Iraq", The Seattle Times, 6/17/2004.
2. Presidential Remarks, WhiteHouse.gov, 9/17/2003.
3. "Al Qaeda Link To Iraq May Be Confusion Over Names", Washington Post, 6/22/2004.
4. "Al-Qaida, Fedayeen militia tie disputed", AZCentral.com, 6/22/2004.
5. "Iraqi officer tied to al Qaeda", Reuters UK, 6/20/2004.
6. "Intelligence experts cast doubt on ties between Iraq, al-Qaida", Knight Ridder, 6/21/2004.
7. "CIA: No Iraqi officer link in al-Qaida meeting", Newsday, 6/22/2004.
8. "Doubts Cast on Efforts to Link Saddam, al-Qaida", Common Dreams News Center, 3/03/2004.
9. "Sept. 11 Panel Asks Cheney for Saddam-Al Qaeda Evidence", NPR: All Things Considered, 6/20/2004.
10. "Al-Qaida, Fedayeen militia tie disputed", AZCentral.com, 6/22/2004.

Latest Iraq-al Qaeda "Evidence" Proves False (Again) ...

06.24.04 (6:55 am) [edit]

Another Broken Promise by Bush: U.S. aide to rebuild Iraqi universities falls far short

06.24.04 (6:52 am) [edit]

[b]U.S. aid to rebuild Iraqi universities falls far short [/b]

BAGHDAD — John Agresto arrived nine months ago with two suitcases, a feather pillow and a suffusion of optimism. He didn't know much about Iraq but was certain the U.S. occupation and his mission to oversee the country's university system would be a success.

"Like everyone else in America, I saw the images of people cheering as Saddam Hussein's statue was pulled down. I saw people hitting pictures of him with their shoes," said Agresto, former president of 525-student St. John's College in Santa Fe, N.M. "Once you see that, you can't help but say, 'OK. This is going to work.' "

But the Iraq he encountered was different from what he had expected. Visits to the universities he was trying to rebuild and the faculty he wanted to invigorate were more and more dangerous and infrequent.

His Iraqi staff was threatened by insurgents. His evenings were disrupted by mortar attacks on the occupation authority's Baghdad headquarters.

His plans to repair hundreds of campus buildings were scuttled by the Bush administration's move to shift reconstruction efforts and by the failure to raise aid from other sources.

His hope that Iraqis would put aside differences and personal interests for a common cause was, as he put it, "way too idealistic."

"I'm a neoconservative who's been mugged by reality," Agresto said as he puffed on a pipe next to a resort-size swimming pool behind the marbled palace that houses the occupation authority.

"We can't deny there were mistakes, things that didn't work out the way we wanted," he added. "We have to be honest with ourselves."

Agresto's candor is unusual among the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. bureaucracy responsible for the civil administration of Iraq until June 30. He is one of the few U.S. officials in Baghdad to speak on the record at length about the shortcomings of the occupation.

Iraq's institutions of higher learning were once the most modern in the Middle East. But they were smothered under Saddam Hussein, then further devastated by looting after Saddam's government was toppled last year.

In his initial travels around Iraq, Agresto, 58, observed students sitting on the floor in burned-out classrooms. He visited technical colleges with no tools. He saw academic journals from the 1960s kept under lock at an agricultural college because the school did not possess more-recent books.

"It's difficult to describe how bad things were," he recalled.

Agresto found the universities needed $1.2 billion to become viable centers of learning and reap goodwill for the U.S. rebuilding effort. But of the $18.6 billion U.S. reconstruction package approved by Congress last year, higher education received $8 million, a tiny fraction of his proposal. When Agresto asked the U.S. Agency for International Development for 130,000 desks, he got 8,000.

"I really thought this would have been valuable money, well spent and sorely needed," he said. "We're not buying books for the libraries. We're not buying saws and nails for the technical institutes. We're not replacing the computers that were stolen. I can't be anything but sad about it."

Agresto, a lifelong Republican and political conservative, still believes in the U.S. invasion. He is proud of the changes the Coalition Provisional Authority instilled in Iraq's universities, including the promotion of academic freedom and a purge of senior officials of Saddam's Baath party. He says he believes the provisional authority accomplished "a lot of good under very difficult conditions."

While acknowledging U.S. mistakes, Agresto aimed some of his most pointed criticism at Iraqis. In his view, the United States toppled a dictator and prepared the ground for democracy, but Iraqis have not stepped up to build on that start.

"They don't know how to be a community," he said. "They put their individual interests first. They only look out for themselves."

Some American academics who are familiar with Iraq's university system blame the Bush administration, and Agresto, for failing to secure more independent funding.

They said that in choosing Agresto, the White House shunned scholars with greater acceptance in academic circles, many of whom had opposed the invasion, in favor of a conservative loyalist who had spent much of his career criticizing the U.S. academic establishment.

"Had it been someone different than Agresto, the possibility of that would have been so much better," said Keith Watenpaugh, an assistant professor of Middle East history at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., who traveled to Baghdad last year to assess Iraq's university system.

"The politics of the occupation were so divisive, and the American academy felt so disempowered by the way things were happening, that when such political creatures like Agresto came asking for things, it was too difficult to put aside those politics," he said.

"If the administration had really been committed to rebuilding Iraq's education structures, they wouldn't have sent Agresto." - http://seattletimes.nwsource....

"I'm a neoconservative who's been mugged by reality"!!! Ha ha ha!!!

06.24.04 (6:47 am) [edit]

Bush Traitorously Waged the Wrong War (Nothing To Do With Terrorism) ...

06.23.04 (5:32 pm) [edit]

[b]CIA insider says U.S. fighting wrong war[/b]

[i][b]Anonymous career officer makes bold claims in book about U.S. war on terror[/b][/i]

A career CIA officer claims in a new book that America is losing the war on terror, in part because of the invasion of Iraq, which, he says, distracted the United States from the war against terrorism and further fueled al-Qaida’s struggle against the United States. The author, who writes as “Anonymous,” is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and still works for the intelligence agency, which allowed him to publish the book after reviewing it for classified information.

In an interview with NBC’s Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, he calls the U.S. war in Iraq a dream come true for Osama bin Laden, saying, “Bin Laden saw the invasion of Iraq as a Christmas gift he never thought he’d get.” By invading a country that’s regarded as the second holiest place in Islam, he asserts, the Bush administration inadvertently validated bin Laden’s assertions that the United States intends a holy war against Muslims.

In his book, titled "Imperial Hubris," he calls the Iraq invasion "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat,” arguing against the concept of pre-emptive war put forward by President Bush as justification for the Iraq war.

The book also argues that the U.S. focus on bin Laden as a terrorist is the wrong way to fight him and the wrong way to think of the foe. The real enemy, he asserts, is the radical form of Islam that bin Laden and his followers espouse. And he calls for escalating the level of violence in the war against al-Qaida.

Read the complete transcript of Andrea Mitchell’s interview with Anonymous below:

Andrea Mitchell: "What is your background? How many years were you, are you in the agency?"

Anonymous: "Well, I've been in the intelligence community for 22 years. My background is I was trained as a historian, British imperial history. But I've been here since 1982 and have had a very good career."

Mitchell: "Starting in 1996, the CIA decided to create a station devoted to Osama bin Laden. Why?"

Anonymous: "I think it was created because the intelligence community had turned up bits and pieces of information in multiple areas of the world, after the end of the Afghan war, that indicated bin Laden was involved in one way or another with various Islamist groups who were opposing the Egyptian government or the Saudi government, the Yemeni government. And it was decided to try to make a concerted effort against this individual, to see where it would lead, to see if he was either a spendthrift billionaire, or if he was a serious military-minded opponent of the United States. And that was, I think, the genesis of the effort."

Mitchell: "Now, you were placed in charge of this station, the first time that the CIA developed a station just devoted to a man, to a person, not to a country."

Anonymous: "That's what I understand, yes."

Mitchell: "You say in your new book that the United States is not making a dent in the war on terror against these foes. Why do you think so?"

Anonymous: "Well, I think we have made a dent in some areas. I think in the leadership, the first generation of al-Qaida leadership, we've made a — certainly made a dent. America's clandestine service has done a terrific job in that regard. But we are — we remain in a state of denial about the size of the organization we face, the multiple allies it has, and more importantly probably than anything, the genius of bin Laden that's behind the movement and the power of religion that motivates the movement. I think we are, for various reasons, loath to talk about the role of religion in this war. And it's not to criticize one religion or another, but bin Laden is motivated and his followers and his associates are motivated by what they believe their religion requires them to do. And until we accept that fact and stop identifying them as gangsters or terrorists or criminals, we're very much behind the curve. Their power will wax our costs in treasure, and blood will also wax."

Mitchell: "But isn't it a distortion of Islam, what they espouse? How can you say that this is the Muslim belief to attack us and to wage war against us?"

Anonymous: "I'm certainly not an expert and neither am I a Muslim. I think the appeal that bin Laden has across the Muslim — I indeed think he's probably the only heroic figure, the only leadership figure that exists in the Islamic world today, and he does so because he is defending Muslims, Islamic lands, Islamic resources. From his perspective it's very much a war against someone who is oppressing or killing Muslims.

"And the genius that lies behind it, because he's not a man who rants against our freedoms, our liberties, our voting, our — the fact that our women go to school. He's not the Ayatollah Khomeini; he really doesn't care about all those things. To think that he's trying to rob us of our liberties and freedom is, I think, a gross mistake. What he has done, his genius, is identify particular American foreign policies that are offensive to Muslims whether they support these martial actions or not — our support for Israel, our presence on the Arabian Peninsula, our activities in Afghanistan and Iraq, our support for governments that Muslims believe oppress Muslims, be it India, China, Russia, Uzbekistan. Bin Laden has focused the Muslim world on specific, tangible, visual American policies.

"And there seems to be very little opposition to him within the Muslim world, and that's why I think that our assumption that he distorts Islam is just that, it's analysis by assertion. I'm not sure it's quite accurate."

Mitchell: "Well, you say in your book that the reality is that there is a large and growing among the world's 1.3 billion Muslims against America, not because of a misunderstanding of America but because they understand our policies very well."

Anonymous: "That's exactly right. I certainly believe that, and I think the substantial amount of polling that's been done by the Pew Trust and by other very reputable pollsters in the Islamic world indicate that most of the Islamic world believes they know exactly what we're up to, and that's to deny the Palestinians a country, to make sure that oil flows at prices that may seem outrageous to the American consumer, but are not market prices in the Islamist's eyes, supporting Russia against Chechnya. I think very coolly bin Laden has focused them on substance rather than rhetoric. And his rhetoric is only powerful because that is the case. He's focused them on U.S. policies."

Mitchell: "You're saying that no amount of public diplomacy will reach the Muslim world and change their minds because they hate everything that we stand for."

Anonymous: "No, I don't think they hate everything that they — that we stand for. In fact, the same polls that show the depths of their hatred of our policies show a very strong affection for the traditional American sense of fair play, the idea of rule by law, the ability of people to educate their children. I think the mistake is made on our part to assume that they hate all those things. What they hate is the policy and the repercussions of that policy, whether it's in Israel or on the Arabian Peninsula. It's not a hatred of us as a society, it's a hatred of our policies."

Mitchell: "You call for some very tough actions here. You talk about escalating our war against them, and you say in your book that killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. This killing must be a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. You talk about civilian deaths. You talk about landmines. Is that really what we have come to in this war on terror?"

Anonymous: "I think we've come to the place where the military is about our only option. We have not really discussed the idea of why we're at war with what I think is an increasing number of Muslims. Which — it's very hard in this country to debate policy regarding Israel or to debate actions or policies that might result in more expensive energy. I don't think it's something that we wanted to do, but I think it's where we've arrived. We've arrived at the point where the only option is military. And quite frankly, in Iraq and in Afghanistan we've applied that military force with a certain daintiness that has not served our interests well.

Mitchell: "But in fact in your book you argue that we are waging half-failed wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan that have only further incited Osama bin Laden and his sympathizers."

Anonymous: "Well, I think we made no impression on them with our military might. We are unquestionably the strongest military power on earth. And in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our opponents rode out that war. I wrote in the book that if we give the military, you know, substantial credit for actions, probably 40,000 Taliban fighters went home with their guns in Afghanistan; probably 400,000 Iraqis went home with their guns in Iraq, all to fight another day. We seem to have a little bit of trouble distinguishing between winning a war and winning a battle. And I think —

Mitchell: "In other words, we're winning the battles but not the war."

Anonymous: "We're — yes, ma'am. We've won, we won quite a few battles and marvelously so, but we're fighting opponents that perceive tactical losses rather than strategic losses. And it's quite clear that these wars are half-started."

Mitchell: "You call the invasion of Iraq, ‘an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat.’ Why do you think so?"

Anonymous: "For several reasons. That was a passage cut from a larger passage where I describe my personal aversion to aggressive war, to the war started by the United States. And I tried to draw an analogy between our war against Mexico in the 19th century and just saying it is not part of the American character or our basic sense of decency to wage wars except in self-defense or preemption.

"The major problem with the Iraq war is that it distracted us from the war against terrorism. But more importantly, it allowed—it made us invade, or it caused us to invade a country that's the second holiest place in Islam. It's not really the same as the Russians invading Afghanistan in 1979. Afghanistan is an Islamic country, but it was far from the mainstream of world Islam.

"Iraq, however, for both Sunnis and Shias, is the second holiest place in the Islamic world. And to invade that country, on the face of it, is a great offense to Islam and an action which almost entirely validated bin Laden's assertions about what the United States intended vis-à-vis the Islamic world."

Mitchell: "But we were encouraged by many of Iraq's neighbors quietly saying, you know, go ahead and do it as long as you get Saddam, which we did."

Anonymous: "Yes, they certainly did. But you need to remember that, I think the neighbors of Saddam were afraid of Saddam. I'm not sure our goals were their goals in those countries."

Mitchell: "You believe that, you believe that al-Qaida is going to hit us again and harder, in this country?"

Anonymous: "I believe that's the case, yes."

Mitchell: "Why?"

Anonymous: "Well, they stay very much on message and on task. And although the line is not perfectly straight, bin Laden since 1996 has told us he will attack us periodically with incremental increases in the amount of destruction he causes. And he's been true to his word. Whether you start with Somalia and move on to the explosions in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, you take one step further to 1998 and two embassies that were destroyed in East Africa. The attack on the Cole in 2000, and then the attack on New York City and Washington in—"

Mitchell: "Since there has not been an attack on the homeland since 9/11 —"

Anonymous: "Yeah?"

Mitchell: "— doesn't that suggest that al-Qaida has either lost some of its ability to mobilize and/or that our homeland security has been improved?"

Anonymous: "Well, that might indeed be the case. I tend to think that's more analysis by assertion. The one thing these people have, bin Laden and his ilk, is tremendous patience. One huge failing of the American counterterrorist community throughout its existence has been the assumption that if someone hasn't attacked us in a while, they can't attack us. And I think that's where we are, the kind of mindset that if it hasn't happened, it's because they can't. I tend to think bin Laden will attack us when he wants to. He's an individual who has been very unmoved by external events. If there's a man who marches to his own drummer in terms of timing, it's certainly bin Laden and al-Qaida."

Mitchell: "Have we not managed, by capturing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other of his henchmen, have we not managed to get at al-Qaida and undermine his ability to attack?"

Anonymous: "There is no doubt that the clandestine service of the United States has staged stunning attacks against al-Qaida. I would say that damage that the clandestine service has inflicted on al-Qaida would have wiped out any other terrorist group that we've ever known of in the last 30 years, maybe longer. The point I would make is al-Qaida is not a terrorist group. It's more akin to an insurgent organization. It pays tremendous attention to succession, to leadership succession. Were all of those people that were killed or captured important? Absolutely. Did it hurt the organization? Of course it did. But there were successors waiting in the wings; there were understudies. The organization goes on.

"Just the other day in Saudi Arabia, the Saudis killed the man responsible for the, the kidnapping and murder of Mr. Johnson."

Mitchell: "Al-Moqrin?"

Anonymous: "Yes, Mr. Moqrin. And within hours of that, al-Qaida announced that Moqrin was indeed dead and named a successor. Part of the problem when we're judging success is looking at this group as if it is a gangster organization or a criminal organization or a traditional terrorist organization. It's none of those things. And just as the American army or any army in the West would have a backup to their leader in the field, so does al-Qaida. And it's an organization that replicates itself with tremendous dexterity and speed."

Mitchell: "Do you think bin Laden is still able to call the shots?"

Anonymous: "My own inclination, for what it's worth, is yes. He's in a country where he is, as Kipling would say, the little friend of all the world. He has no enemies in Afghanistan or most of Pakistan. He's been there for 20 years. For better or worse, he stood by the Afghans from the invasion in 1979 until today. I think he probably has an ability to elude us for the, for the foreseeable future."

Mitchell: "And why do you think the CIA has not been able to capture him, to find him?"

Anonymous: "As I wrote in the book, the intelligence community as a whole has been at war against bin Laden and al-Qaida with various degrees of commitment. I would go beyond that and say the Defense Department and the intelligence community, from my, from my personal experience as I've watched as a member of the intelligence community, the Directorate of Operations at the CIA has been, has turned in a performance that's nothing less than stellar. But it cannot do it all itself."

Mitchell: "Where is the falling down? Where is our effort falling down?"

Anonymous: "Part of it, I think, is again, as I wrote in the book, is the unwillingness of senior bureaucrats in the intelligence community to take the full truth, an unvarnished truth to the president, whether it's Mr. Bush or Mr. Clinton. I'm not sure that it's proper to blame al-Qaida's existence, continued existence or attacks on any elected official. I think the, the bureaucracy at the senior levels in the intelligence community is selective in what they take to the president. I think they are loath to describe the dire problem posed by bin Laden for a number of reasons. One of them is basically political correctness. It's not career-enhancing to try to engage in a, in a debate about religion and the role it plays in international affairs. And so we, we, we address bin Laden from the perspective of law enforcement, picking them off one at a time, arresting them, killing them. And I think that's a, the, the, the result of no one frankly discussing the size of the problem or the motivation behind the problem."

Mitchell: "And what do you think the size of the problem is, first?"

Anonymous: "I think the size of the problem is — I think the first step in understanding the problem is to try to divorce yourself from the emotions generated by bin Laden's activities and rhetoric and the activities and rhetoric of the people who agree with him, or support him. The decapitation of people, the flying into the World Trade Center, the destruction of the, of the Destroyer Cole raise emotions that they must raise among Americans. But they — when we respond to those in a law enforcement manner, in a manner that describes these men as, again, criminals or terrorists, we, we fail to understand the size of the organization that supports al-Qaida and the size of the organization that al-Qaida has bred for over 20 years. I think we also forget that it's a 20-year-old organization. It's an organization that has Muslims from every ethnic group in the world. It's extraordinary. It's a singular accomplishment on bin Laden's part to have created an organization where all those Muslims from different ethnic groups, different linguistic groups work together in a manner that's effective enough to take on the United States in a war. We watched the Palestinians for 50 years unable to agree amongst themselves — and they're all Palestinians.

"So that's one problem. The other is an analytic problem. If you're looking at a terrorist group, you don't put together an order of battle as you would for an army or an insurgency. And so you talk about taking down three-quarters of al-Qaida's leadership. Well, at the end of the day, what we, what we've done is take down three-quarters of the al-Qaida leadership we knew of on 11 September 2001. And if you take that as a measurable success, it is. But you don't know, first, how big the organization was you started to work against; and second, the assumption is that it's a static, sterile organization that doesn't grow. And the one thing we can be certain of is that the attack on Afghanistan by the United States and the continued occupation of Afghanistan has caused the number of volunteers going to al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and the amount of money going to al-Qaida in Afghanistan, to have increased, I would say, probably dramatically.

Mitchell: "What is George Tenet not telling George Bush?"

Anonymous: "I'm not in a position to tell you that. I'm in a position where I could tell you what I would like to tell the president."

Mitchell: "What would you like to tell the president?"

Anonymous: "I would like to tell the president, I think, and, and it's presumptuous of me, but I genuinely think that we have underestimated the scope of the enemy, the dedication of the enemy and the threat that it poses to the United States. I think someone should have gone to the president when the, when the discussion of going to Iraq was broached and have said, Mr. President, this is something that can only help Osama bin Laden. Whatever the danger posed by Saddam, whatever weapons he had, is almost irrelevant in that the boost it would give to al-Qaida was easily seen. And if that message wasn't delivered, then I think there was a mistake made. I also think that Mr. Lincoln's view that one war at a time is plenty is probably a good piece of guidance."

Mitchell: "Now, you told the 9/11 commission that there were people in the agency who basically ignored the advice of your unit, the Osama bin Laden station, because they thought you were a little over the top, a little too zealous."

Anonymous: "Yes. I think we, we were certainly convinced by late in 1996 that we had an organization that was militarily competent, that was structured in a way that made it very difficult to isolate and attack, in the sense that it was structured in 40 or 50 countries around the world…"

Mitchell: "Do you think, do you think that your advice was ignored? Did they, did the people within the CIA, the people in charge think that you were all exaggerating the threat of Osama bin Laden before 9/11?"

Anonymous: "I'm not sure if the people thought we were exaggerating so much as they just didn't take it very seriously at all. They thought that bin Laden was just one more terrorist on a list of terrorists. I really believe Mr. Tenet was the one person who did take it seriously almost from the start, but the rest of the senior leadership in much of the intelligence community, I think, did not take it seriously.

"But I think the most important failure was in the, in the years between 1996 and 2001, the failure to correct obvious dysfunctions within the intelligence community was what led in large part to no one being able to claim that the intelligence community did the best it could before 9/11. They were failures of cooperation, failures of leadership that were brought to the attention of the senior-most members of the intelligence community and to the attention of some people at the NSC. And whether or not they ever got to the people who could actually change things, to the, to the committees in the Congress or to the president, to our elected leaders, I'm not sure.

"I know for, for many years we told various members of the Congress and the executive branch that there was seamless cooperation between the FBI and the CIA. And from my seat and from — and admittedly, from a very small portion of the total relationship between those two organizations— I cannot imagine that in any way that could have been true."

Mitchell: "The CIA and the FBI weren't cooperating even though they were supposedly assigned together in the counterterrorism which you worked."

Anonymous: "From my — over my career in the intelligence community, the CIA is an organization that produces intelligence for the rest of the government. The idea that somehow we, somehow the CIA produced information and didn't share it is a, a, a shibboleth that, that receives wide repetition. In my experience, the flow of information out of CIA to the community is extraordinary.

"The people, as I understand it, the people who were placed in the terrorism components of the intelligence community from FBI or other U.S. government agencies were put there to ensure that the CIA did not become involved with domestic U.S. criminal prosecutions, looking at U.S. citizens— anything that was beyond our purview, our legal statutory responsibilities. And so they brought in officers from other agencies who, again, in my knowledge, read everything that a CIA officer would read. And their responsibility was to cull through that information and return it, as appropriate, to their own headquarters for use domestically, something that was, again, meant to ensure the rights, the privileges of American citizens. And rightly so.

"My biggest experience was that was not done. And I think if there is a failure in these various investigations of 9/11, it's, it lies in the fact that many members seconded to the counterterrorist arena did not perform the intermediary job they were assigned to perform."

Mitchell: "According to Steve Coll of the Washington Post and his book, the White House complained over the course of several years to George Tenet that you were too myopic in your approach to bin Laden. Do you want to respond to that?"

Anonymous: "Let me say that within the intelligence community there was a group of officers, mostly women, very young, who worked extraordinary hours, who gave up vacations, delayed operations, and ruined marriages because, by the fall of 1996, they had recognized the threat posed to the United States by bin Laden and al-Qaida and the rising tide of, of the resentment in the Islamic world directed against U.S. policies; and that those two factors— the lethality of bin Laden's organization and the increasing ire of Muslims against America who were coming together in a way that threatened the United States.

"I can't take any personal credit for identifying that. My role, to the extent I had one, was to bring forth the findings of those extraordinary officers and their extraordinary colleagues in the field."

Mitchell: "But what about the criticism that you were too myopic?

Anonymous: "‘Myopic’ is generally a term for ‘fanatic’ that's used by senior bureaucrats when you're delivering a message that they don't want to take to the White House. I genuinely don't believe that an elected official, whether it's the President of the United States or a congressman or a senator, would not want to hear the truth. My suspicion is that accusations of fanaticism or myopic focus came from senior bureaucrats at the White House rather than anyone else.

"But the book explains. And it's one guy's opinion. You need to take it for what it's worth. My own experience in the intelligence community for the past now almost 10 years on this particular issue is that the hard, hard truth has not been delivered to the elected officials. Certainly the truth that — as it is seen by the people who work the issue on a day-to-day basis has not been delivered — again, with the possible exception of, of Mr. Tenet, who, to his credit, recognized this early on, perhaps did not as much as he could to drive the community to address the issue."

Mitchell: "And what are you going to say to those who say that this is anti-American and that this is a really prejudiced approach? What do you say to those who say that your call for a war against Muslim people, is really only going to make the situation worse?"

Anonymous: "I wonder how much worse the situation can be, in the first instance. We continue to believe that somehow public diplomacy or words will affect the anger and hatred of Muslims. And I'm not advocating war as my choice. What I'm advocating is, in order to protect the United States, it is our only option. As long as we pursue the current policies we have, until we have a debate about those policies, there's not a lot we can do. We won't talk them out of their anger, we won't convince them we're an honest broker between the Israel and the Palestinians. We won't convince that we're not supporting tyrannies in the Arab world from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

"It's the only option. It's not a good option; it's the only option. And I'm not saying we attack people who aren't attacking us. But in areas where we realize our enemies are, perhaps we have to be more aggressive."

Mitchell: "Even if it means civilian casualties?"

Anonymous: "That's the way war is. I've never really understood the idea that any American government, any American elected official is responsible for protecting civilians who are not Americans. My experience working against bin Laden was there was multiple occasions when we did not take advantage of an opportunity to solve the problem because we were afraid of killing a civilian, we were afraid of hitting a mosque with shrapnel, we were afraid of disrupting sales of arms overseas. Very seldom in my career have I ever heard anyone ask what happens if we don't do this.

My own opinion is we should err on the side of protecting Americans first. And if we make a mistake in that kind of action, I think the American people will accept that. It's — this is a matter of survival. This is not a nuisance anymore. No one wants to be bloodthirsty, but we're at a position in this war where we've cornered ourselves in many ways, to the point where only the military option is available to us. And if we don't use that, and we continue to pursue the policies we are pursuing, then it's a very dicey situation for America…that the war in Iraq was bin Laden's dream come true."

Mitchell: "You've said that you think the war in Iraq motivated bin Laden. What do you think the impact of the war in Iraq was on bin Laden?"

Anonymous: "Bin Laden, I think, and al-Qaida and other of America's enemies in the Islamic world certainly saw the invasion of Iraq as a, if you would, a Christmas gift they always wanted and never expected to get. It validated what they all said about American aggressiveness against Islam. It made us the occupiers of the second holiest place for Muslims in the world. In fact, now we are occupying, in the eyes of our opponents, we're occupying the two holiest places, Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq, and the Israelis are occupying the third, in Jerusalem. The reaction of the clerical community to our invasion of the Islamic clerical community to our invasion of Iraq was uniformly negative."

Mitchell: "So what, what is the war in Iraq to bin Laden?

Anonymous: "It is, I think, a proof of his thesis that America is malignantly inclined toward Muslims, that it is willing to attack a Muslim country that dares to defy it, that it is willing to do most anything to defend Israel. It's certainly viewed as an action which is meant to assist the Israeli state. It is in every way predictably, if you will, a godsend for those Muslims who believe as bin Laden does."

Mitchell: "It's a dream come true."

Anonymous: "If you're familiar with that wonderful Christmas movie, ‘The Christmas Story,’ at the end of the day, Ralphie getting his air rifle even though his mother was worried his eye would get shot out. It's a terrific gift."

Mitchell: "OK. Thank you very much."

Anonymous: "You're welcome."

The Sin of Droit de Seigneur ...

06.23.04 (6:50 am) [edit]

[b]The U.S. hasn't even begun to deal with Bush's Murder, Torture, Rape and Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, in Afghanistan and Iraq (including Abu Ghraib). A few lowly US Soldiers have been scapegoated for following orders that go all the way up the chain of command to Bush and Rumsfeld. It is time to impeach Bush and fire Rumsfeld.[/b]

[b]Bush Claimed Right to Waive Torture Laws[/b]

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration laid out its legal reasoning for denying terror war suspects the protections of international humanitarian law but immediately repudiated a key memo arguing that torture might be justified in the fight against al-Qaida.

The release Tuesday of hundreds of pages of internal memos by the White House was meant to blunt criticism that President Bush had laid the groundwork for the abuses of Iraqi prisoners by condoning torture. The president insisted Tuesday: "I have never ordered torture."

But critics said the developments left unresolved some questions about the administration's current guidelines for interrogating prisoners in Iraq and around the world. For example, a 2002 order signed by Bush says the president reserves the right to suspend the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war at any time.

"These documents raise more questions than they answer," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The White House is better off coming clean and releasing all relevant and nonclassified documents."

The White House released Defense Department memos detailing some of the harsh interrogation methods approved -- and then rescinded -- by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2002 and 2003. The administration continues to refuse to say what interrogation methods are approved for use now.

Six soldiers face criminal charges for abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib complex near Baghdad. Another soldier pleaded guilty and received a one-year prison term. The Justice Department has filed criminal assault charges against a contract CIA interrogator, accusing him of beating a prisoner in Afghanistan who later died.

An Aug. 1, 2002, Justice Department memo argues that torture -- and even deliberate killing -- of prisoners in the terror war could be justified as necessary to protect the United States. The memo from then-assistant attorney general Jay Bybee also offers a restricted definition of torture, saying only actions that cause severe pain akin to organ failure would be torture.

Bybee is now a justice on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Justice Department backed away from Bybee's memo Tuesday. Senior department officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the memo would be rewritten because it contains advice that is too broad and irrelevant. The officials, who briefed several reporters in a widely publicized news conference, said department policy allowed them to demand anonymity.

The White House also released documents detailing some of the most harsh interrogation methods Rumsfeld approved for use on prisoners at the lockup at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Rumsfeld's Nov. 27, 2002, memo approved several methods which apparently would violate Geneva Convention rules, including:

* Putting detainees in "stress positions," such as standing, for up to four hours.

* Removing prisoners' clothes.

* Intimidating detainees with dogs.

* Interrogating prisoners for 20 hours at a time.

* Forcing prisoners to wear hoods during interrogations and transportation.

* Shaving detainees' heads and beards.

* Using "mild, non-injurious physical contact," such as poking.

Prisoners at Abu Ghraib were interrogated for as long as 20 hours at a time, kept hooded and naked, intimidated with dogs and forcibly shaved. Bush and other administration officials have said other treatment at the Iraqi prison, such as forcing prisoners to perform sex acts, beating them and piling them in a naked human pyramid, were unquestionably illegal.

Less than two months later, on Jan. 15, 2003, Rumsfeld rescinded approval for those methods without saying why. He appointed a Pentagon panel to recommend proper interrogation methods.

That panel reported to Rumsfeld in April 2003, and its recommendations included prohibiting the removal of clothes, which it said could be considered inhumane treatment under international law. Rumsfeld issued a new set of approved interrogation methods later that month, disallowing nakedness and requiring approval for four techniques: use of rewards or removal of privileges; verbally attacking or insulting the ego of a detainee; alternating friendly and unfriendly interrogators in a "good cop, bad cop" method; and isolation.

Bush had agreed in February 2002 that al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were not protected by the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war because they violated the laws of war themselves.

Bush's previously secret Feb. 7, 2002, order also agrees with Justice and Pentagon lawyers that a president can ignore U.S. law and treaties.

"I accept the legal conclusion of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice that I have the authority to suspend Geneva (conventions) as between the United States and Afghanistan," Bush wrote. "I reserve the right to exercise this authority in this or future conflicts."

Bush and Rumsfeld have said [after the scandal broke] the Geneva Conventions do apply to all prisoners in Iraq.

But Rumsfeld acknowledged last week that he ordered a suspected terrorist to be secretly held in Iraq without notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld said he approved an unspecified number of other, similar secret detentions. - http://www.chicagotribune.com...,1,1998546.story?coll=chi-news-hed

Bush Claiimed Right to Waive Torture Laws

06.23.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

The U.S. Hasn't Even Begun To Deal With Bush's Murder, Torture, Rape & Abuse ...

06.23.04 (6:43 am) [edit]

Latest Iraq-al Qaeda "Evidence" Proves False (Again)

06.23.04 (6:36 am) [edit]

Bush & Cheney Lies: Latest Iraq-al Qaeda "Evidence" Proves False

06.23.04 (6:33 am) [edit]

Bush Refuses To Release ALL Torture Memos-- Only Selected Ones Which Still Show Guilt At The Top!!!

06.22.04 (3:51 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush Claimed Right to Waive Torture Laws [/b]

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) claimed the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties covering prisoners of war after the invasion of Afghanistan (news - web sites), and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized guards to strip detainees and threaten them with dogs, according to documents released Tuesday.

The documents were handed out at the White House in an effort to blunt allegations that the administration had authorized torture against al-Qaida prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq (news - web sites). "I have never ordered torture," Bush said a few hours before the release.

The Justice Department (news - web sites), meanwhile, disavowed a memo written in 2002 that appeared to justify the use of torture in the war on terror. The memo also argued that the president's wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties.

That 50-page document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, will be replaced, senior Justice Department officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A new memo will instead narrowly address the question of proper interrogation techniques for al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the officials said, citing department policy for requesting anonymity on their comments.

Bush outlined his own views in a Feb. 7. 2002, document regarding treatment of al-Qaida detainees from Afghanistan. He said the war against terrorism had ushered in a "new paradigm" and that terrorist attacks required "new thinking in the law of war." Still, he said prisoners must be treated humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

"I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice (news - web sites) that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time," the president said in the memo, entitled "Humane Treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban Detainees."

In a separate Pentagon (news - web sites) memo, dated Nov. 27, 2002, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II, recommended that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approve the use of 14 interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, such as yelling at a prisoner during questioning and using "stress positions," like standing, for up to four hours.

Haynes also recommended approval of one technique among harsher methods requested by U.S. military authorities at Guantanamo: use of "mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing."

Among the techniques that Rumsfeld approved on Dec. 2, 2002, in addition to that one, the yelling and the stress positions:

_ Use of 20-hour interrogations.

_ Removal of all comfort items, including religious items.

_ Removal of clothing.

_ Using detainees' "individual phobias such as fear of dogs to induce stress."

In a Jan. 15, 2003, note, Rumsfeld rescinded his approval and said that a review would be conducted to consider legal, policy and operational issues relating to interrogations of detainees held by the U.S. military in the war on terrorism.

Rumsfeld's decision was prompted at least in part by objections raised by some military lawyers who felt that the techniques approved for use at Guantanamo Bay might go too far, officials said earlier this year.

The review was completed in April 2003, and on that basis Rumsfeld reissued his guidance on April 16, 2003. He approved 24 interrogation techniques, to be used in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions, but said that any use of four of those methods would have to be approved by him in advance. Those four were use of rewards or removal of privileges from detainees; attacking or insulting the ego of a detainee; alternating the use of friendly and harsh interrogators, and isolation.

The April 2003 review said that removing a detainees' clothing would raise legal issues because it could be construed as degrading, which is against the international convention on torture. The removal of clothing, while approved by Rumsfeld for use at Guantanamo Bay in late 2002, was not among the authorized techniques in his revised guidelines issued in April 2003.

At the Justice Department, senior officials said that the 50-page memo issued to the White House on Aug. 1, 2002, would be repudiated and replaced because it contained what they called overbroad and irrelevant advice.

The memo, signed by former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee, included lengthy sections that appeared to justify use of torture in the war on terrorism and it contended that U.S. personnel could be immune from prosecution for torture. The memo also argued that the president's powers as commander in chief allow him to override U.S. laws and international treaties banning torture.

Critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have said that memo provided the legal underpinnings for subsequent abuses of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reacting to the White House release, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee (news - web sites), accused the administration of continuing to withhold information.

"Though this is a self-serving selection, at least it is a beginning," Leahy said. "But for the Judiciary Committee and the Senate to find the whole truth, we will need much more cooperation and extensive hearings." - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

Be Sure To Watch ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: Moore puts it all together

06.22.04 (7:35 am) [edit]

[b]‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ puts it all together

Moore goes after Bush and reflects on the toll of the war in Iraq[/b]

Michael Moore’s scathing indictment of the Bush administration, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” winner of the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, doesn’t break a lot of new ground.

If you’ve been watching recent installments of “60 Minutes” and Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” or if you’re familiar with this year’s best-seller list (especially Craig Unger’s “House of Bush, House of Saud”), you won’t find many surprises here.

Indeed, the opening scenes amount to a condensed version of Richard Perez and Joan Seckler’s 2002 documentary, “Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election,” which made the case that the 2000 election was stolen. Much of the rest is reminiscent of Robert Greenwald’s 2003 documentary, “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” which used interviews with CIA, Pentagon and foreign-service experts to demolish the rationale behind the war.

But put all these approaches together, connect the dots, throw in a few brand-new interviews and never-seen-before clips of President Bush looking especially befuddled, and you’ve got a remarkably powerful narrative — and a movie that communicates an unshakeable sense of non-fiction tragedy. No wonder conservatives are trying so hard to shut it down before it reaches theaters.

The freshest ammunition in Moore’s arsenal is a camcorder tape of Bush’s ultra-delayed reaction to the news that the World Trade Center had been hit by terrorists. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush was reading to kids at a Florida elementary school. After being informed of the attacks, Bush froze and continued with the classroom lesson — for nearly seven minutes.

This gives Moore more than enough room to ponder what Bush could be thinking during this moment of apparent paralysis. He fills in the vacancy on the soundtrack with a collection of possible Presidential thoughts, including worries about his friends, the Saudis, and whether he should have paid more attention to counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke.

The first half of “Fahrenheit 9/11” is filled with such Moore-ish mischief-making, guaranteed to embarrass Republicans. Especially excruciating: Paul Wolfowitz licking his comb to slick back his hair for the cameras, John Ashcroft singing a patriotic song he composed, and Bush preparing to deliver an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, as his eyes nervously dart from side to side. The jokiest touch is a faked clip from “Bonanza,” with the faces of Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair placed over the bodies of cowboys.

But there’s a somber quality to the film’s second half, as the cost of the Iraq war becomes harder to hide. Interviews with fed-up American soldiers and furious Iraqi citizens are particularly chilling. So is Moore’s talk with a woman who lost her disillusioned son in Iraq and tearily confesses that she should have been paying more attention to the reasons he went.

“Fahrenheit 9/11” isn’t entirely designed to skewer the current administration. Democrats are chastised for voting for the war and for not challenging the Supreme Court’s decision to anoint Bush, while senators of both parties are condemned for not backing African-American Congressmen who questioned the Florida election. Moore’s final hope, delivered in a non-partisan spirit, is that “we won’t get fooled again.” - http://msnbc.msn.com/id/52648...

Be Sure To Watch ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: Moore puts it all together

06.22.04 (7:33 am) [edit]

Be Sure To Watch ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: Moore puts it all together

06.22.04 (7:31 am) [edit]

Be Sure To Watch ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: Moore puts it all together

06.22.04 (7:28 am) [edit]

Intelligence experts cast doubt on new claim of ties between Iraq, al-Qaida

06.22.04 (7:21 am) [edit]

Defenders of President Bush's charges that Saddam Hussein worked with al-Qaida have been citing what they say is new evidence that could help substantiate one of the administration's main justifications for invading Iraq.

They say the evidence is the name of a paramilitary officer in captured documents that appears identical to that of an Iraqi who met two Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia nearly two years before the attacks in New York and Washington.

But U.S. officials told Knight Ridder on Monday that U.S. intelligence experts were highly skeptical that the Iraqi officer had any connection to al-Qaida.

On Sunday, John F. Lehman, a Republican member of the independent commission that's probing the attacks, cited the documents as "new intelligence" on Iraq's links with al-Qaida.

"We are in the process of getting this latest intelligence," Lehman said on NBC. "Some of these documents indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al-Qaida. This still has to be confirmed."

The U.S. officials said the lieutenant colonel's name is different from that of the man who met the hijackers in Malaysia. The man who met the hijackers wasn't in Iraq at the time the documents were dated and he's never been implicated in the Sept. 11 plot by any top al-Qaida operatives in American custody.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the documents remain classified.

The officials said they were unsure why Lehman portrayed the documents as possible new intelligence on Iraq's links to al-Qaida. The documents have been cited by such staunch administration defenders as conservative author Stephen F. Hayes and The Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Lehman didn't return a telephone call to his office in New York. A spokesman for the commission said he couldn't answer questions about the intelligence Lehman cited Sunday.

Bush justified invading Iraq in part by alleging that Saddam aided al-Qaida and could have armed the terrorist network with biological or chemical weapons.

Lehman on Sunday apparently was referring to three rosters seized after last year's fall of Baghdad that listed members of the Fedayeen Saddam, a militia headed by Saddam's eldest son, Odai. The militia fought fierce guerrilla-style battles against invading American-led troops.

Two of the rosters identified a lieutenant colonel in the militia as Hikmat Shakir Ahmad, and the third identified an officer of the same rank as Hikmat Shakir, the U.S. officials said.

Some civilian officials in the Pentagon and other experts have suggested that the officer may have been the same person as Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, an Iraqi at the center of an unresolved subchapter of the Sept. 11 plot.

Ahmad Hikmat Shakir was employed with the aid of an Iraqi intelligence officer as a "greeter" or "facilitator" for Arabic-speaking visitors at the airport at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In January 2000, he accompanied two Sept. 11 hijackers from the airport to a hotel where the pair met with Ramzi Binalshibh, a key planner of the attacks, and Tawfiz al Atash, who masterminded al-Qaida's strike on the USS Cole in October 2000.

There's no evidence that Ahmad Hikmat Shakir attended the meeting. Four days after it ended, he left Kuala Lumpur.

Several days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ahmad Hikmat Shakir was arrested in Qatar in possession of highly suspicious materials that appeared to link him with al-Qaida.

The Qataris inexplicably released him, and he flew to Amman, Jordan, where he was arrested again. The Jordanians freed him under pressure from Iraq and Amnesty International, and he went to Baghdad.

Some civilian Pentagon officials and other experts have cited Ahmad Hikmat Shakir as potential evidence of an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 conspiracy, a possibility that grew with the discovery of the lieutenant colonel's name on the Fedayeen Saddam rosters.

But the U.S. officials who spoke to Knight Ridder on Monday said there were a number of reasons that intelligence analysts doubted that the officer was the same Iraqi who met the two Sept. 11 hijackers in Kuala Lumpur.

First, they said, the order in which the names were entered on the rosters was different from the name of the Iraqi who worked in Malaysia, indicating that the names didn't belong to the same person.

"It's very confusing, but it's not the same guy," one U.S. official said.

More importantly, the U.S. officials said, U.S. intelligence analysts have determined that on the dates marked on the rosters, the man who met the hijackers in Malaysia wasn't in Iraq. The officials declined to reveal the dates.

Finally, the Fedayeen Saddam was employed for security duties strictly in Iraq and wasn't involved in foreign operations, which were the responsibility of Iraqi intelligence, the U.S. officials said.

They said that while no conclusion had been reached on whether the Iraqi who met the hijackers in Malaysia was involved in the Sept. 11 plot, U.S. intelligence analysts were highly skeptical that he was. They said their view was based on the fact that no major al-Qaida operative in American custody, including Binalshibh, had implicated him in interrogations.

"It's quite possible he was just a greeter," a second U.S. official said. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Intelligence experts cast doubt on new claim of ties between Iraq, al-Qaida

06.22.04 (7:18 am) [edit]

In America, Presidents Ain't Above Rule of Law: Bush Should Give Testimony!!!

06.21.04 (3:44 pm) [edit]

[b]Lawyer Wants Bush, Rumsfeld on Witness Stand Over Iraq Abuse For Creating Climate Encouraging Cruelty [/b]

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should take the witness stand at the trial of a U.S. soldier charged with abusing prisoners in Iraq, the soldier's lawyer said on Monday.

[b]Policies adopted in Bush's "war on terror" created a climate encouraging cruelty, said lawyers for U.S. soldiers [/b]accused of subjecting detainees to sexual humiliation and physical abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

"No one can suggest with a straight face that the MPs (military police) acted alone," said defense lawyer Guy Womack, representing Specialist Charles Graner, who faces the most serious charges of the soldiers to be court martialed.

"They were directly under the supervision of military intelligence officers," he told reporters after a pretrial hearing.

Pretrial hearings were held on Monday for Specialist Charles Graner -- who faces the most serious charges of all the Abu Ghraib accused -- and Sergeant Javal Davis.

Davis's defense counsel Paul Bergrin said Bush and Rumsfeld sidestepped the Geneva Convention, encouraging abuse that stretched down the chain of command to the soldiers at Abu Ghraib, notorious as a torture center under Saddam Hussein.

He said his client -- accused of jumping on a pile of prisoners and stomping on their feet -- was instructed on a daily basis to soften up Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence.

"Bush gave a speech declaring his war on terror and said the Geneva Convention no longer applied," he told reporters after an impassioned address in the court room.

Bergrin said he would seek to put both Bush and Rumsfeld on the stand as witnesses.

A scheduled hearing for Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick was postponed to July 23 after his civilian defense counsel, Gary Myers, failed to turn up in court, despite the judge's earlier rejection of his request to represent his client by telephone to avoid the violent chaos gripping Iraq.

[b]ABU GHRAIB "A CRIME SCENE"[/b]

During Monday's hearing, the U.S. military judge handling the case agreed to Bergrin's request to question top American generals, testimonies the defense counsel hopes to use to show that abuses were sanctioned from the top down. Judge Colonel James Pohl said Central Command chief General John Abizaid and Iraq commander Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and others could be interviewed.

The U.S. army, keen to demonstrate it is weeding out the culprits, has charged seven low-ranking suspects in relation to abuse at Abu Ghraib, which U.S. officials have blamed on a few wayward individuals.

Pohl ordered the prison be preserved as a "crime scene," despite an offer by Bush to tear down the building. Bergrin said he wanted to take members of the jury to the jail so they could experience the conditions U.S. soldiers were working under.

"We want the court members to smell the fecal matter and the urine that service members who worked inside that prison and who are accused in this case had to live with," he said.

No date has been set for the start of any trial for the three defendants, who have yet to plead.

Graner, who faces the most serious accusations, could be sentenced to up to 24 years and six months in jail if convicted.

He is accused of photographing a detainee being dragged on a leash, and posing for a picture by a pile of naked detainees.

Graner is also charged with making prisoners strip and masturbate in front of each other, and forcing one detainee to simulate oral sex on another, before taking a picture.

Frederick faces charges including participating in an incident where a prisoner was hooded and made to stand on a box with wires attached to him, and told he would be electrocuted if he fell off -- an image splashed on front pages worldwide.

One U.S. soldier, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, has already been sentenced to a year in prison after admitting abuse charges. - http://www.aljazeerah.info/Ne...%20archives/2004%20News%2 0archives/June/21%20n/Law yer%20Wants%20Bush,%20Rum sfeld%20on%20Witness%20St and%20Over%20Iraq%20Abuse %20For%20Creating%20Clima te%20Encouraging%20Cruelt y.htm

In America, Presidents Ain't Above Rule of Law: Bush Should Give Testimony!!!

06.21.04 (3:38 pm) [edit]

Why I Like Ike (Bush is a Bungling Idiot Asshole Compared to Eisenhower!)

06.21.04 (9:52 am) [edit]

The 34th and 35th presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, were never really comfortable together. They began the ride from the White House to the Capitol for Kennedy's inaugural on Jan. 20, 1961, in total silence, which Kennedy nervously broke by asking Eisenhower what he thought of Cornelius Ryan's new book on D-Day, "The Longest Day."

"I haven't read it," said Ike, which made Kennedy even more nervous. The outgoing president finally said that he knew about the book but didn't need to read it. He was there.

On that day, June 6, 1944, Eisenhower's son, John S.D. Eisenhower, graduated from West Point, beginning a 20-year career in the Army. Later he served as the American ambassador to Belgium and then began a new career as a writer of military history, a good one.

This year, the International Herald Tribune, published here and in more than two dozen other countries, produced six days of stories on the invasion commanded by Gen. Eisenhower, including reproductions of the old New York Herald Tribune's original coverage of the invasion.

Amazing stuff, including what President Franklin Roosevelt told Gen. Charles de Gaulle when the Frenchman originally refused to sign the joint declaration issued by the Allies that day -- Sign, or we'll intern you in Algeria! -- and the demotion of an American major general to lieutenant colonel because he almost gave away the invasion date trying to impress a woman at a cocktail party in London.

But the most amazing article in the series was by John S.D. Eisenhower, who wrote: "The war that included D-Day had made a pacifist of the man who bore the responsibility, its supreme commander."

He continued: "The most fundamental conviction that the period of Ike's command in Europe and the Mediterranean imprinted on his mind was the cruelty, wastefulness and stupidity of war. He saw firsthand how war destroyed cities, killed innocent people (in which I would include most of the participating soldiers), wiped out national economies and tore up the structure of civilizations. Its wastefulness cut him to the bone, and its specter never left him."

Historians generally show Ike in his final days of power in 1960 giving a farewell address warning of "a military-industrial complex" thriving on war and threat of war. A great deal of conventional wisdom dismisses that as the sentimental words of an old man going home. In fact, accounts of the speech almost always emphasize that the words were actually written by Malcolm Moos, a speechwriter who went on to become president of the University of Minnesota -- as if President Eisenhower really did not mean it at all.

The old man's son knows better. He discusses what his father told him and then reminds us that in April of 1953, only three months into his presidency, Ike said this:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed ... The cost of one modern bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants. ... It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed 8,000 people."

That is what the hero thought looking back at his war. His son also said that the general who led the greatest invasion in history privately stressed again and again the value of allies and the futility of attempting something called "preventative war."

John Eisenhower then ended his essay with this: "He was the first to admit that situations change, and the policies followed in one generation might be used as guides to future action but never rules. How he would view today's world scene, I repeat that I do not know. But I wonder."

We all should wonder as we plunge ahead without allies to prevent wars that never were and never would be. - http://www.uexpress.com/richa...

Bush is Spending $2.5 Billion From Iraqi Oil Without Approval of Iraqi People (Democracy?)

06.21.04 (7:31 am) [edit]

[b]U.S. Is Quietly Spending $2.5 Billion From Iraqi Oil Revenues to Pay for Iraqi Projects[/b]

Struggling with bureaucratic problems in spending the money appropriated by Congress to rebuild Iraq, American authorities are moving quietly and quickly to spend $2.5 billion from a different source, Iraqi oil revenue, for projects employing tens of thousands of Iraqis, especially in the country's hot spots, Bush administration officials say.

The spending program, which was started unannounced, has been undertaken in consultation with Iraqi ministers, despite misgivings that the oil revenue belonged to Iraq and that it should be set aside for use when Iraq's sovereignty is restored, scheduled for June 30.

Because of deteriorating security and complex delays in contracts that have slowed the spending of the $18 billion in Congressionally appropriated money, occupation authorities say they decided recently that they had to spend the Iraqi money to build schools, factories and oil fields, and to turn Iraqis away from violence.

"The security needs were just overwhelming," said an occupation official. "Would we rather have been able to save the money and have a nice kitty? Sure. There's always a tension between putting money to work right away and having it available for a tough year next year. This is the way we resolved it."

Bush administration officials say they believe that the spending program has helped stabilize Iraq, although most note that negotiated arrangements allowing insurgent groups to operate peacefully in Falluja, Karbala, Najaf and other troubled areas also have aided in reaching that goal.

Iraq's overall domestic budget of roughly $20 billion for 2004, financed mostly by oil revenue, was approved last year by the Program Review Board, a unit of the Coalition Provisional Authority — the American-led occupation authority in Iraq.

But this spring, Bush administration officials said, it became clear that rising global oil prices were presenting Iraq with a windfall, and a decision had to be made about whether to save that extra money or disburse it in a one-time expenditure that might not be available in the 2005 budget.

American occupation officials said the $2.5 billion had helped pay for security needs like police cars and uniforms, as well as repairs of schools, power grids, oil fields, state-owned factories and other sources of employment. Additional funds have been used for vocational training for young Iraqis "to get some of these kids off the streets, doing something productive for the future," an occupation official said.

Some of the money has gone to American military teams operating since the beginning of the occupation 14 months ago. The teams have become famous in Iraq for the way they have spread across the country, commissioning repairs and paying for them from satchels bulging with $100 bills shipped by plane from a Federal Reserve vault in East Rutherford, N.J. Much of that money came from Iraqi assets frozen in the United States during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

At least $1 billion has been distributed in this fashion — by some estimates more than $2 billion.

"The military commanders love that program, because it buys them friends," said an administration official, referring to the cash distribution. "You want to hire everybody on the street, put money in their pockets and make them like you. We have always spent Iraqi money on that."

The $2.5 billion to be spent from Iraqi oil funds has several components, the biggest of which is $1 billion to be spent on 15 to 21 military or security projects around the country. The rest of the money is to be used for vocational training, infrastructure repair, principally in the oil and electricity sectors, and increased supplies of food. A small amount has been set aside for future compensation of victims of Saddam Hussein's government and displacement since the occupation began.

A principal goal is to employ Iraqis and compensate for the shortfall in financing that was supposed to have come from American sources.

One reason for distributing cash for quick gains, some administration officials say, is that controls on the $18 billion appropriated by Congress last fall to rebuild Iraq may make it harder to operate in that fashion, so policy makers have decided to use what they have before the formal end of the occupation, now scheduled for June 30.

Early last fall, L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Baghdad, said he hoped that most of the $18 billion would be spent by the time sovereignty was transferred.

In November, however, the transfer of sovereignty was accelerated. Meanwhile, what was intended as a spending program to showcase the benefits of the American occupation has been slow in functioning because of security problems and cumbersome contracting regulations.

Of the $18 billion appropriated by Congress, the American occupation has made spending "commitments" of $7.7 billion, with the hope of reaching $10 billion by the time Iraq officially regains self-rule on June 30. But these figures simply represent money that is reserved or to be reserved for certain purposes. Only $3.2 billion in contracts for actual construction projects have been awarded, although the number could rise before June 30.

A senior administration official said that, contrary to early hopes, it would probably take five years to use up the $18 billion.

"The expectations for spending were unrealistic," said the official said. "You can't just pull 2,300 projects off the shelf and build them without vetting. It takes time to figure out if you're going to build a power plant, where it should be and who should build it."

Another problem has been a lag in donor countries coming forward with the money they had pledged last September at a donors' conference in Madrid. Of $13 billion pledged then, less than $2 billion has been received.

"Donor countries can see that the money that is already there is not being spent, because they can't spend it," said a development official involved in that fund-raising effort. "That removes the pressure on the donors to come through with the money they pledged."

More than a year ago, after the fall of Mr. Hussein, some conservatives in the Bush administration envisioned Iraq as a model for free enterprise, replacing the big money-losing state-owned industries in everything from petrochemicals to pharmaceuticals.

Instead, the accelerated government-driven employment and construction projects are cementing Iraq's reliance on the state as its central economic engine, just as it had been under Mr. Hussein.

"Lots of people wanted to change this, and change that, and transform the economy of Iraq," said an administration official. "But then we quickly realized that we had to put Humpty Dumpty back together first, and then give it over to the Iraqis and let them figure out the best way to change their country."

Accordingly, when sovereignty is transferred next week, Iraq will be what this official called "a centralized socialist state" on which virtually all citizens are dependent for basic needs, putting a particular burden on the fragile interim government selected less than three weeks ago.

Of Iraq's eight million employed workers, for example, an estimated 700,000 work for the government directly, 400,000 work for state-owned enterprises, many of them operating in the red, and 200,000 work for various armed forces or security branches, a number expected to grow.

But those numbers measure the equivalent of full-time employees, and some administration officials say that a more realistic number is two million Iraqis, one out of every four with a job, who are dependent on the state for employment.

In addition to the tens of thousands of jobs to be created by the new oil-financed program, American officials say 1.5 million jobs will be generated by the Congressionally appropriated funds that are only now starting to be spent.

Beyond these state programs, most Iraqis are given free or partially subsidized food, costing $4 billion this year. Electricity supplied at subsidized rates costs $1.7 billion, and the cost of distributing low-cost kerosene and other fuel to Iraqis is estimated at $3 billion to $5 billion.

But occupation officials say the spending of money now to generate employment will revive state industries, so that in the future they can be privatized and serve as the country's economic base.

"All the programs we have started have the full support of the Iraqi ministries of planning and finance," said an occupation official. [What about the Iraqi people? Where the hell is the democracy here?]

"There are two ways of looking at this," the official said. "First is the absolute need to find jobs for millions of young people who need training. But second is to increase the capacity of companies and of the oil infrastructure to become healthy and employ more Iraqis in the future." [Enriching Halliburton, Bechtel and the Carlyle Group isn't helping the Iraqi people who could do the re-building for far less that the exploitative over-charging by greedy Bush/Cheney Corporate Thugs.] - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

Has Corrupt Bush Regime Stolen $2.5 Billion of Iraqi Oil Money? (Iraqis Didn't Have A Say!)

06.21.04 (7:28 am) [edit]

Creeping Fascism ...

06.21.04 (7:03 am) [edit]

It is just one lie after another, one cover-up after another, one egregious tromping of our Constitution after another, and yet almost half the population supports the Bush Regime. Unfortunately, that half is also strongly represented in the legislative branch of our government. This means that while the exposes, and atrocities, and lies continue to dance across the headlines, legislation continues to be put forward and passed that cements the travesty of the current regime's vision.

Andrew Greeley asks in his June 11, article Is U.S. like Germany of the '30s?. He points to the humiliation of the German people and their anger at their leaders as key to the rise to power of Hitler. He argues that Hitler was a strong leader who appealed to the "dark side" of Germans.

Greeley's article does not do justice, in my opinion, to the comparisons to be made. It also doesn't address the scope of the deception being played out in front of our eyes.

There is a pervasive belief in the U.S. that what happened in Nazi Germany could never happen here. The belief goes beyond the Holocaust, to the transformation of a democracy into a fascist state; to the transformation of protection of individual freedoms into a police state with massive surveillance. Yet it is happening, and the people submit. Even as voices rise, most still feel that much of the actions of the last three years were necessary.

There are striking similarities between George W. Bush and Adolph Hitler. They both belong to secret death societies - Hitler to the Thule Society and Bush to the Skull and Bones. (Fact: Prescott Bush made a fortune doing business with the Nazi Regime - links below) Both brought their brotherhood and their vision to their leadership in their respective nations (Bush currently has five "Bonesmen" in his administration). Both were "messianic." Both saw their role as a calling to power to lead their nations to global domination. Both thought no cost was too great in this quest. Both acted on the belief that evil means were justified in the pursuit of the greater vision. Both promoted a good/evil dichotomy to their citizens. But these similarities aside, there are other similarities between Hitler's Germany and Bush's United States.

At a basic level, Greeley is right in that upon the rise to power of these two men, their respective nations were looking for a change. In the US, the tilt for two decades has been towards a corporate government model. (I remember during the early 1980s there was some talk of running Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler, for President of the United States). Certainly, George Bush and his administration have reflected that desire. There was a desire for "morality" after the spectacle of the Clinton sex scandals. George sold himself well in this regard, as well.

However, the fascist transformation of the United States has been long in the making (see Fascism USA, UTJ 5/22/04). We have been moving towards this for over 20 years. GW is just taking us over the cliff, and he is doing it by promoting and enforcing a perverted patriotism, and promulgating a campaign of fear. This, too, is similar to Hitler's rise to power. He didn't just spring full-blown on the German scene.

Now to the present and the undermining of a nation.

There has been an ongoing erosion of the line between various branches of government. Under the auspices of the "war on drugs," there has been an increasing blurring of the line between the military and the police. This legal line is blurring to invisibility in the aftermath of 9/11. In the 6/21/04 Newsweek article Intelligence: The PentagonﾗSpying in America? by Michael Isikioff, we learn that the Senate Intelligence Committee has eliminated the restriction that the Department of Defense no longer has to comply with the Privacy Act (the CIA is also exempt from this restriction). What is frightening here is that both the CIA and the military are only tasked to operate outside the Untied States, that is, until the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, and the merging of departments and agencies under the Homeland Security Act, and the various intelligence reorganization policies. Now both of the non-domestic tasked agencies can (and do) operate inside the US.

An examination of recent legislation coming out of the Senate Intelligence Committee is instructive. Both domestic intelligence authorizations and Department of Defense authorizations are in the same bills. Joint reports, programs, and transfer of personnel are common. There are provisions in other legislation being proposed that should also raise alarm.

S.1047 - Department of Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by Senate). Section 1037 allows the use of "unmanned aerial vehicles for support of Homeland Security missions. That is the "predator drones being used in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. The bill allows them to operate over population centers inside the US.

S.1050 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (Placed on Calendar in Senate). Sections 3131 and 3132 authorize restarting the nuclear weapon development program and underground testing of nuclear weapons.

Public Law 108-177 - Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 from S.1025 Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004. Exempts the Department of Defense from the constraints of the Freedom of Information Act (Section 503, item 5 D).

All of the above is new legislation that erodes the boundaries that protect the population from the overbearing power of our government. They join a slew of other legislation: the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and all of its siblings, the Homeland Security Act, numerous anti-privacy and anti-rights infringements. All of these in the name of "security," and argued as "necessary in the war on terrorism." Wasn't it Ben Franklin who said something to the effect, "That he who gives up liberty for security gets neither"?

But it is largely a hidden and misrepresented erosion of democracy that faces us. It is an erosion that largely is not marketed with the face of the dominant race in the United States, and when it is (such as has happened recently) it is the face of the convert to Islam, or the "environmental terrorist," or the political activist. Anti-patriots all, according to the new rhetoric. These are the faces of the "terrorists" in our midst; the unknown element able to hide in "our" neighborhoods and strike us without warning. Interestingly not on the list (given the recent Nichols trial) is that of the White Supremacist, or the armed militia groups. So we add the "TIPS" program to the mix, for average citizens to turn in their neighbors, people on the street, or people acting "strangely" to the FBI for investigation.

Likewise the Germans (or rather those selected as loyal Germans) had their fears quieted by the Hitler propaganda machine. They blindly and unwittingly gave up their democracy to fascism because those "rules and punishments" applied to someone else—the Jew, the Gypsy, the immoral, the homosexual, the anti-Reich resister—not to them. Those extreme government actions were for "their" protection and for a greater Germany. It is more than hauntingly familiar. It is playing out day by day in front of our eyes.

So why does this tactic of framing the leader as a father and protector of the "real" national values work? It works because it plays upon the racism and ethnocentrism embedded in the culture. This is particularly true in the US which styled itself for so long as the true white democracy—reserving rights of citizenship and social participation for "whites." This creates (still) a sense of entitlement and protection. The tactics of fear work within this rubric of entitlement and protection because whites are being protected from "them." Included in them are those "traitors" who challenge the system and who challenge the entitlements (the perpetual enemy within). The dreams of grandeur work because the embeddedness of entitlement, purity, morality and "rightness" embedded in the nationalism it creates leads naturally to a belief in national entitlement and right within the world. The world is rightly "ours" and all that is in it is "ours."

It worked in Germany. It has, and is, working in the United States. We see similar processes at work in the policies of Israel, and in the anti-immigrant movements and far-right shifts in parts of Europe. The US is not unique in any of this. What is unique is that we have the military power to take by force externally, and the perceived justification and technology of controlling by force internally.

Those of us who are alarmed are told "Don't worry. If you have nothing to hide, then the protections of law are not needed." If "they" are a threat, then "take them out." How inconvenient that "our" oil (or other desired resource) is under someone else's land.

Can it happen here? It is happening here.

[b]Resources:[/b]

[u]Secret Society Links[/u]

Three World WarsThe Real Adolf Hitler

IAE THE SKULL AND BONES SOCIETY

Cephas Ministry/Library THE THULE SOCIETY & NWO

Kris Millegan, Parascope, The Order of Skull and Bones

Steven Bonta, The New American, The Power Elite & George W. 7/17/2000

[u]The Bushes and the Nazis[/u]

The Third Reich.

Wasserman and Fitrakis, Rense.com, Sen Byrd, Media Begin To Cover Bush-Hitler Connection

Article showing Skull and Bones members, E. R. Harriman, and Prescott S. Bush(The President's Grandfather.) tied to Hitler's funding and Banking. The Bush-Nazi Connection The Zanesville Signal, Zanesville, Oh., Thursday, July 31, 1941 - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Creeping Fascism ...

06.21.04 (7:02 am) [edit]

Creeping Fascism ...

06.21.04 (7:01 am) [edit]

Creeping Fascism ...

06.21.04 (6:59 am) [edit]

Scrooge & Marley, Inc. - The true conservative agenda ...

06.19.04 (4:17 pm) [edit]

"[i]That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone[/i]." --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, 1798.

There is nothing "normal" about a nation having a middle class, even though it is vital to the survival of democracy.

As twenty-three years of conservative economic policies have now shown millions of un- and underemployed Americans, what's "normal" in a "free and unfettered" economy is the rapid evolution of a small but fabulously wealthy ownership class, and a large but poor working class. In the entire history of civilization, outside of a small mercantilist class and the very few skilled tradesmen who'd managed to organize in guilds (the earliest unions) like the ancient Masons, the middle class was an aberration.

If a nation wants a middle class, it must define it, desire it, and work to both create and keep it.

This is because a middle class is the creation of government participation (conservatives call it "interference") in the marketplace, by determining the rules of the game of business and of taxation, and by providing free public education to all. And it wasn't until 1776, when Thomas Jefferson replaced John Locke's right to "life, liberty and property" with "life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that the idea of a large class of working people having the ability to "pursue happiness" - the middle class - was even seriously considered as a cornerstone obligation of government.

(That was also the first time in history that "happiness" had ever appeared in any nation's formative documents. As Jefferson wrote in 1817 to Dr. John Manners, "The evidence of this natural right, like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man.")

Thomas Jefferson laid out in an 1816 letter to Samuel Kerchival what today would be a blistering attack on the conservative/corporate war on labor and Bush's union-busting planned privatization of over 700,000 government positions.

"Those seeking profits," Jefferson wrote, "were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government. No other depositories of power have ever yet been found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge."

He added: "I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. ... We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. ... [Otherwise], as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, ... and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers."

A totally "free" market where corporations reign supreme, just like the oppressive governments of old, Jefferson said could transform America "...until the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man."

As Jefferson realized, with no government "interference" by setting the rules of the game of business and fair taxation, there will be no middle class.

Although this may come as a sudden realization to many, we've really known it all our lives.

For example, every year, millions of Americans revisit Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" about Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob (and Tiny Tim) Cratchit. Yet somehow Americans fail to realize the subtext of the story (and so many of Dickens' other works). That subtext is that the middle class is not a normal thing: exploited workers are the norm. In fact, in the six-thousand-year history of the "civilized" world, a middle class emerging in any nation has been such a rarity as to be historically invisible.

As Dickens pointed out, Cratchit lived the typical life of that day's English working poor. He couldn't afford medical care for Tim, dooming his son to death or a lifetime of deformity. He had no idea where his Christmas dinner may come from, let along how to get gifts for his children, and always lived on the edge of the terror of unemployment and homelessness. Although he had a full-time job at Scrooge & Marley, Inc., he was so desperately anxious to keep his job that he worked weekends and evenings and put up with years of daily abuse from his employer.

This demonstrates the true liberal/conservative divide. Conservatives believe what business does is business's business, and government should keep its nose out of it, even when it leads to centuries of Tiny Tims and terrified-of-job-loss employees. As the Wall Street Journal noted in 1997, Alan Greenspan sees one of his main jobs as being to maintain a high enough level of "worker insecurity" that employees won't demand pay raises and benefits increases, thus provoking "wage inflation." ("CEO inflation" is fine with the cons.)

Liberals, on the other hand, subscribe to the notions of the founder of today's Democratic Party -- Thomas Jefferson -- that if the government doesn't actively participate in regulating how the game of business is played, the middle class (what in Jefferson's day were the "yeomanry") would vanish.

The United States has had two great periods of what we today call a middle class. The first was from the 1700s to the mid-1800s, and was fueled by virtually free land for settlers. People owned the means of their production (their farms), could sell their surplus, and had time to be among (as deTocqueville pointed out) the most well-educated, politically active "non-aristocrats" in the world.

As big business grew in the 1800s after the Civil War, the farm-based middle class collapsed, in large part because the early progenitors of companies like today's Cargill or ADM came to control the sale and distribution of farm produce. Middle class farmers rose up, created the Grange movement as part of their own way of competing with the big ag companies, and -- seeing that their "representative government" was being taken over by the largest corporate interests -- launched the Populist and Progressive movements.

Step one was to limit the size of corporations to limit their power -- thus the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1881 (still law, but unenforced for all practical purposes since Reagan.)

Step two was to take Teddy Roosevelt's advice that, "We must drive the special interests out of politics. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains." Progressives pushed hard, and in 1907 a law was passed (still on the books) making it illegal for corporations to give money to politicians. It needs to be expanded.

The last parts of the progressive agenda included a direct election of the U.S. Senate (Senators had been pointed by political machines in the states) so the progressives may get more democracy and representation, and the hope that when women voted (besides it being the morally right thing) they may help break up the old boy's club of big business. (These goals were achieved in 1913 and 1920.) And, even in the face of corporate violence that often escalated to murder, Americans struggled to bring together the budding union movement.

But the middle class of the farmers never really again recovered their middle class status in America (although there are dying pockets of it still about, supported by Willie Nelson, Farm Aid, and other groups), and the Gilded age saw a very Dickens-like America -- a small group of very wealthy business and land owners and a very large class of desperately poor workers.

It took the leadership of FDR for government to again take a hand in creating a middle class, this time via industrialized labor instead of land (times change, and we'd taken about all the land we could from the Native Americans).

The Wagner Act of 1935 guaranteed Americans the right to form a union and bargain collectively with their corporate employers. Combined with the later G.I. Bill that sent millions of young men and women to college and technical schools in the late 1940s and early 1950s, not only did America recover its prosperity, but a second great middle class began forming. A middle class that wouldn't have existed without "government interference" in the game of big business.

(Some say WWII was the stimulus out of the depression, and it was an economic stimulus from which many, like the Bush family benefited [even to the extent of helping out Hitler], but the real events of the 1930s and 1940s that set the stage for a second American Middle Class were primarily the Wagner Act, the G.I. Bill, and tax changes ranging from raising the top rate on the most rich to 90 percent to offering an emerging middle class home interest tax deductions. Spending money on weapons that serve no useful purpose after they're used doesn't stimulate an economy the way building roads, bridges, houses, or domestic consumer industries, which "keep on giving," does.)

And to stimulate that domestic economy, we instituted progressive taxation, which gave workers more to spend, thus stimulating demand for more goods and services.

Progressive taxation has a long history: As Jefferson said in a 1785 letter to James Madison, "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."

But the conservatives -- who since the days when John Adams called working people "the rabble" and Alexander Hamilton suggested they should play no (or only a token) role in government -- fought back. A true middle class represented a threat to the aristocrats and pseudo-aristocrats of America's conservatives. They may have to give up some of their power, and some of the higher end of their wealth may even be "redistributed" - horror of horrors - for schools, parks, libraries, and other things that support a healthy middle-class society but are not needed by the rich who live in a parallel, but separate, world among us.

At the height of early participation in the newly empowered union movement (at one point 35 percent of American workers were union members), in 1947, over Truman's veto, congress passed the Taft-Hartley Law that significantly weakened union protections defined (and working well) under the 1935 Wagner Act. Taft-Hartley was (and still is) a powerful weapon for employers over employees (banning sympathy strikes, etc.), and was used, although most aggressively in the southern states (who declared themselves "right to work" states under another provision of Taft-Hartley) until Reagan declared a national war on unionization with his attack on PATCO in 1981.

The cons had first launched their attack on labor in 1947, and Reagan brought it to full fruition: education was next.

Today, although there are still some educational benefits to GI's (Jessica Lynch joined the army to get financial aid to go to college to become an elementary school teacher, for example), they're minimal and hard to both accumulate, track, and take advantage of (and must be paid for in most cases). Although Jefferson started the University of Virginia with the notion that part of building a middle class (necessary to a democracy, he said) would require people with some education, and advocated a national program of free education up to and including university levels, the last state to fall from that ideal was when Governor Ronald Reagan ended free enrollment in the University of California system.

Jefferson said, in an 1824 letter: "This degree of [free] education would ... give us a body of yeomanry, too, of substantial information, well prepared to become a firm and steady support to the government."

The attack on higher education was being won (and continues with cuts in college grant programs), and the cons moved to attack the third requirement for a society to produce a middle class: progressive taxation. This, of course, infuriates the elite cons who seem to truly believe that a CEO actually works 500 times harder than his employees (or is 500 times smarter).

But history shows that the third pillar of creating a middle class requires a modest control of how wealth is distributed. The richest, who benefit the most from our society, pay proportionately more, so the middle class can have home interest deductions, child tax credits, free public education, and health care. Progressive taxation has helped create every middle class in the First World, and without it the middle class will vanish (to Steve Forbes delight, apparently).

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1784, "Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual." And, as earlier noted, as wealth rises, so should taxes -- "geometrically."

But as president, Reagan cut the top tax rate for billionaires from 70 percent to 28 percent, while effectively raising taxes on working people via the payroll tax and using inflation against a non-indexed tax system. It was another hit to the already-beginning-to-shri nk middle class, to be followed by more "tax cut" bludgeons during the first three years of the W. Bush administration.

Nonetheless, a never-ending parade of conservative economists and commentators march through our living rooms daily via radio and TV, assuring us that it is good for American workers to go along with the Wal-Martization of America, accept lower pay and few benefits, and fear for their health, so multinational corporations can "level the playing field" for labor.

They say it will create winners in the system, and they are right. The winners are the multinational corporations, and the losers are the rest of us. No matter, say the TV commentators -- nearly all millionaires themselves. "Free trade" sounds sexy; "protectionism" sounds downright selfish. And it's all too complicated to explain in 20 seconds, even quoting Jefferson.

But, unless we repeal Taft-Hartley; start enforcing the Sherman act, provide free education for Americans (and not just Iraqis); abandon WTO/GATT and NAFTA; restore progressive taxation (including on dividend income); force corporations to pay their fair share; and go back to selective tariffs to protect domestic industries and stop offshoring to explicitly bring home the ability for us to make our own clothes, furniture, autos, and electronics, the conservatives will have won and the middle class -- and, thus, democracy -- will lose.

As Jefferson warned in an 1826 letter to Will B. Giles, even then some conservatives "now look to a single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures, commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry. This will be to them a next best blessing to the monarchy of their first aim, and perhaps the surest steppingstone to it."

Jefferson's vision rose to fruition in the Gilded age, was fought back by FDR, and again rose its antidemocratic head under Reagan, the first Bush, GATT/NAFTA Clinton, and Dubya.

If conservative economics are allowed to continue, and we fully revert to the way life was lived by the average person in America in 1890 or Dickens' England (over 40 million in America already have, by the way, many in the past 3 years), there will be no more middle class, just a few more rich CEOs and Bushies, and a lot more terrified workers living in slavery to debt and terrified of unemployment or a serious health crisis.

It'll be a marvelous thing for the profits of the multinationals (including those who supply our "news"), but the end of a way of life in America, and possibly around the world, since so many nations imitate our lead. And only you and I - the ploughman and yeomanry - can stop them and restore an America where it's possible to raise a family on one income and still have enough for housing, transportation, food, education, vacations, health care, and a decent retirement.

The middle class is not a "normal" thing: it's just the core that holds together democracy and an informed, healthy, and active citizenry.

To bring it back from its steady decline since the Reagan era is going to take a lot of active work spreading the word (call talk radio, blog, forward this article and similar ones, write a letter to the editor to your local paper), and participation in or contact with elected officials at all levels (writing elected officials, joining and volunteering to help your favorite local political party or activist organization, showing up for rallies, etc.). We must get out the vote and remove the whole con bunch from the White House and Congress, repeal Taft-Hartley, get corporate money and lobbyists out of our governmental processes, restore progressive taxation, rebuild our schools, return to the tariff system that protected American industries (and jobs and communities) from 1786 until 1996, strengthen Social Security, and turn Medicare into a universal single-payer health system (among other things).

Are you willing to join? Or would you prefer to re-read "A Christmas Carol" to your children, so they can understand the future America that conservatives have in mind for them?

[b]Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show that runs in 57 markets from coast-to-coast. www.thomhartmann.com. His most recent books are "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy." [/b]- http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Scrooge & Marley, Inc. - The true conservative agenda ...

06.19.04 (4:16 pm) [edit]

George Bush's ideology is downright Orwellian

06.19.04 (4:11 pm) [edit]

[b]'George Bush's ideology is downright Orwellian'[/b]

Some 55 years ago, George Orwell was near death and his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was being prepared for publication in the U.S. On being informed of plans to present his book in North America as an attack on socialism, Orwell dictated a statement to his English publisher, Fredric Warburg.

"The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else, and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere," Orwell rasped to Warburg from fluid-filled lungs through a throat that had been damaged by a bullet in the Spanish Civil War more than a decade before, when Orwell was fighting alongside anarchists.

"Specifically the danger lies in the structure imposed on Socialist and on Liberal capitalist countries by the necessity to prepare for total war....But danger lies also in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours." Orwell predicted the coming totalitarian ideologies of our age would be careful to avoid association with those that had just caused so much destruction in the Second World War and would come up with new names for themselves.

"The name suggested in Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course Ingsoc [English Socialism, in the 'newspeak' of the novel], but in practice a wide range of choices is open. In the U.S.A. the phrase 'Americanism' or 'hundred per cent Americanism' is suitable and the adjective is as totalitarian as anyone could wish."

It really is too bad that Orwell never had the opportunity to alter his novel in order to make it more understandable to the people of the U.S. by changing "Ingsoc" to "Amercorp", but his provisional designation of "hundred per cent Americanism" still resonates after more than half a century and likely would have no trouble getting an endorsement from U.S. President George Bush. There is plenty of evidence that the U.S. government conforms to the philosophy of Orwell's Ingsoc and sees the purpose of power as being to perpetuate, increase, and exercise power for its own sake.

That is not exactly the way Bush sees it, of course. He is trying to create economic opportunities for the world's people under the misapprehension that the same economic smoke and mirrors that subsidized his privileged way through Yale University and a rather disastrous high-level business career can also provide clean water and medical care for the shanty dwellers on the fringes of cities in Asia and Africa. The rationalization behind such nonsense comes from the intellectual demon that laid waste to a quarter of a billion human lives in the 20th century: ideology, which is the belief that there is a single, indivisible, and final answer to all questions.

Ideology is hard to distinguish from religion, and it is no surprise that the ideology of "hundred per cent Americanism"--usually termed these days as "free enterprise" or "the market system"--has (after some groping following the fall of the complementary ideology of Stalinism) found an enemy among the Islamists. Without enemies, ideologies always look a bit silly. Islamist extremism is a fine example.

So we are either with Bush or against him, and we are all supposed to ignore the simple facts that exclusive ideologies have never been long-lasting nor just, that things change, life goes on, and that the U.S.--with 10,000 or so gun-related deaths per year--is hardly the acme and culmination of human progress so far. We are supposed to believe this is an action movie, or a World Wrestling Entertainment match, that will be over soon. Here is good, there is evil, and when the evil villains are properly pounded and disposed of, the world will be a happy place, with plenty of guns for all. And the widely available weapons will only be used on irretrievable criminals, never by them. Oh, yeah.

I hesitate to charge that the U.S. government has become so influenced by its country's entertainment industry that it thinks it can solve all terrorism problems forever before the final reel rolls. But it certainly did not anticipate Iraq becoming such a source of difficulty after Saddam Hussein was overthrown. It also was surprised to encounter a lot of trouble with free, democratic people saying they don't think their principles are being upheld when thousands of their civilians are killed or maimed.

The U.S. has declared war on poverty, and on drugs, and lost both times because it was fighting aspects of human existence without addressing the roots of the human experiences it considered problems. It can win the war against terrorism only by preventing the birth of potential terrorists among the disadvantaged, the dispossessed, the dissatisfied, and the disenfranchised for a generation or two, and it is not likely the U.S. will stumble on the concept of granting advantage, possession, satisfaction, and meaningful democracy to those people it despises. We have to hope that the U.S. soon, rather than later, learns the limits of ideology. As Orwell pointed out, the English-speaking peoples are not innately better than anyone else. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Mad George Bush's insane ideology is downright Orwellian

06.19.04 (4:10 pm) [edit]

Leaders of 9/11 Panel Ask Cheney for Reports ...

06.19.04 (4:06 pm) [edit]

[b]Leaders of 9/11 Panel Ask Cheney for Reports[/b]

The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission called on Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know.

"Probably," Mr. Cheney replied. [The arrogant Nazi Cheney should be forced to come-up with evidence or be put in jail and tried for treason.]

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said that, in particular, they wanted any information available to back Mr. Cheney's suggestion that one of the hijackers might have met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent, a meeting that the panel's staff believes did not take place. Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the administration had never been able to prove the meeting took place but was not able to disprove it either.

"We just don't know," Mr. Cheney said.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton made the requests in separate interviews with The New York Times as the White House continued to question the findings of a staff report the commission released on Wednesday and to take exception to the way the report was characterized in news accounts. The report found that there did not appear to have been a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and the terrorist network.

That finding appeared to undermine one of the main justifications cited by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney for invading Iraq and toppling Mr. Hussein.

Mr. Cheney has also continued to cite a disputed report that Mohamed Atta, a ringleader of the hijacking plot, met in April, 2001, in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer, raising the possibility of a direct tie between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks, a tie that the commission's staff report found no evidence to support.

Mr. Cheney also said in the television interview that after Osama bin Laden had requested "terror training from Iraq, the Iraqi intelligence service responded; it deployed a bomb-making expert, a brigadier general." The commission's report concluded that Mr. bin Laden's requests went unanswered.

"It sounds like the White House has evidence that we didn't have," Mr. Hamilton said in an phone interview. "I would like to see the evidence that Mr. Cheney is talking about."

Mr. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said in a phone interview that he was surprised by Mr. Cheney's comments and would be "very disappointed" if the White House had not shared intelligence information about Al Qaeda with the commission, especially about the purported meeting in Prague.

Mr. Cheney's spokesman, Kevin Kellems, declined to comment on the request by Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton. Trent D. Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, said, "This White House and this administration have cooperated fully with the commission and have provided unprecedented access to some of the most classified information, including the Presidential Daily Brief. The president wants the commission to have the information it needs to do its job."

In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin of Russia said Friday that his country gave intelligence reports to the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks suggesting that Saddam Hussein's government was preparing terrorist attacks in the United States or against American targets overseas. It is not clear whether Mr. Cheney was referring to those reports in citing intelligence that the commission was not aware of.

Mr. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana and former chairman of the House intelligence committee, said the commission has found evidence of repeated contacts between Iraqi officials and the Qaeda terrorists and may describe those contacts in greater detail in its final report next month. But he said the panel had been unable to document any "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and the terror network — against the United States or any other target.

While characterizing any differences between the commission and the White House on the issue as largely semantic, he said that the committee had no credible evidence "of any collaborative relationship — period."

Other commission officials disclosed on Friday that the White House had sent a letter to the commission — stamped "secret" — on the eve of this week's hearings that demanded a variety of changes in its staff reports this week. But the officials said the White House letter did not seek any changes in the portions of the report that dispute any relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

That portion of the report said there was "no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States" and that Iraq had rebuffed or ignored Qaeda's requests for help from Baghdad in the 1990's.

"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," it said.

Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said the administration's early review of the commission report did not set off any alarm bells "because it was not inconsistent with what we've been saying" about the ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The White House has repeatedly said the commission's findings back its assertions that Iraq had regular contacts with and provided support or refuge to Al Qaeda.

Commission members said Friday that as result of the furor created by that portion of the report, they may rewrite it significantly in preparation of the panel's final report, which is expected to be released next month.

Mr. Kean suggested that the commission may want to limit the scope of the conclusion about ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq to only what is known about any possible collaboration between them on terrorist attacks against the United States, not against other targets.

"That's our mandate," he said. "This was a staff statement, and we've had commissioners who have disagreed occasionally with the staff statements, and this may be one of those occasions," he said.

Mr. Bush continued to press his case on Friday that there were substantial links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government, although less directly than he did earlier in the week.

During a speech at Fort Lewis, Wash., he called Iraq under Mr. Hussein "a regime that sheltered terrorist groups," and he pointed to the capture by Iraqi authorities of suspected terrorists, including one with ties to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant said by the White House to be an "associate" of Al Qaeda who has lived in Iraq.

Advisers to the White House said Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney would continue to be aggressive in countering the commission's conclusions — or in the White House's official view, the misinterpretation by the news media of the commission's conclusions — because failing to do so would undermine their credibility and their rationale for taking the country to war.

The Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee sent e-mail messages to supporters highlighting comments by Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton on Thursday suggesting that they saw no big gulf between the White House's position and the commission. Mr. Bartlett said Mr. Bush had no specific plans at the moment to revisit the issue in a speech, but that he would raise it when he had the opportunity in coming weeks.

"We'll continue to talk about how Saddam Hussein was a threat, and his ties to terrorism, and we will not give an inch on what we've said in the past," Mr. Bartlett said.

One outside adviser to the White House said the administration expected the debate over Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda to be "a regular feature" of the presidential campaign.

"They feel it's important to their long-term credibility on the issue of the decision to go to war," the adviser said. "It's important because it's part of the overall view that Iraq is part of the war on terror. If you discount the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, then you discount the proposition that it's part of the war on terror. If it's not part of the war on terror, then what is it — some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush?" - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

Either Herr Furher Bush & Reich Marshal Cheney Show Evidence Or Be Impeached for Lies Against USA!

06.19.04 (4:02 pm) [edit]

Bush and Cheney: Out on a Limb of of Lies ...

06.19.04 (3:57 pm) [edit]

The report from the September 11 commission was clear. "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States," it said. And there appears to have been no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, it added.

This finding undercuts one of the major rationales the Bush Administration put forward for the war against Iraq. Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, and George Bush himself all played up the alleged links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. But the links, in any operational way, did not exist.

In October 2002, Bush said, "Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." That was false.

Bush said, in his January 2003 State of the Union address, "Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda." That was false.

Bush said, on February 8, 2003, "Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training." That was false.

Powell, in his U.N. speech prior to the Iraq War, talked of the "sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network." False again.

On May 3, 2003, in his infamous end-of-major-combat-opera tions speech, Bush said, "We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda." False again.

On September 14, 2003, Vice President Cheney repeated Bush's claim that Iraq and Al Qaeda were involved together in training with chemical and biological weapons, and added that the Iraqis were "providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization." False again.

On October 10, 2003, in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, Cheney said, "Saddam had an established relationship with Al Qaeda, providing training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional weapons." False again.

This Monday, June 14, Cheney said Saddam "had long established ties with Al Qaeda."

And Bush on Thursday, June 17, said, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

Note how slippery Bush and Cheney are getting. Now they are talking about amorphous "ties" and "a relationship." But before they were talking about specifics, scary specifics, like joint work on chemical and biological weapons.

All of their falsehoods served a purpose: to scare the American people into going along with the Iraq War.

Now that their falsehoods have been exposed, they are way out on a limb of lies. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Bush and Cheney: Out on a Limb of Lies ...

06.19.04 (3:55 pm) [edit]

US Hostage Paul Johnson Beheaded in Retaliation for Bush's Insane Crusade of Murder, Torture & Rape

06.18.04 (10:39 am) [edit]

[b]U.S. hostage beheaded, terror group says[/b]

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- The al-Qaida group that kidnapped American Paul M. Johnson Jr. said in an online statement Friday that it had killed the hostage, and posted three still photographs of his beheaded body.

“In answer to what we promised ... to kill the hostage Paul Marshall after the period is over ... the infidel got his fair treatment. ... Let him taste something from what Muslims tasted who were long reached by Apache helicopter fire and missiles,” the statement said.

Johnson, 49, worked on targeting and night vision systems for Apache helicopters.

“We, God willing, will continue our road to fight the enemies of God,” the statement said.

A Saudi senior security official, reached by The Associated Press, said: “We have so far nothing on this.”

In Washington, a CIA official said the agency was not able to immediately confirm the report of Johnson's beheading.

Johnson was kidnapped last weekend by militants who threatened to kill him by Friday if the kingdom did not release its al-Qaida prisoners. - http://www.salon.com/news/wir...

Former Reagan, Bush 41 Diplomats Call for Bush to Go ... Bush Foreign Policy a Disaster!

06.18.04 (10:30 am) [edit]

[b]Ex-U.S. Ambassador: Regime Change is Needed in Washington[/b]

[i]26 former diplomats and retired military officials have co-written a statement saying the re-election of President Bush in November will jeopardize national security. We talk to the former ambassador to Greece and Zimbabwe[/i].

A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials have signed a joint statement saying Bush should be voted out of office in November for damaging U.S. national security interests and America's standing in the international community.

The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, includes 20 ambassadors, many appointed by the Reagan and first Bush administrations, as well as ex-military leaders and other former State Department officials and whose careers span three decades.

. Ambassador Robert Keeley, former ambassador to Greece, Zimbabwe and Mauritius. He most recently served as ambassador to Greece during the Reagan administration. He is a founding member of the newly formed Dipomats and Military Commanders For Change. He is speaking to us from Washington D.C.

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the phone now by Ambassador Robert Keeley, former ambassador to Greece , Zimbabwe. He most recently served as ambassador to Greece during the Reagan Administration, founding member of diplomats and military commanders for change, speaking to us from Washington, D.C. Welcome to democracy now!, ambassador.

ROBERT KEELEY: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this letter that you have signed?

ROBERT KEELEY: Well, it's not actually a letter. It ended up being a statement. It started out as a letter. But we decided to do a press conference yesterday at the National Press Club. 13 of us were there. It was presented by Phyllis Oakley, former deputy spokesman at The State Department for George Schultz and the rest of us answered questions. The whole thing lasted about an hour. It actually -- 27 signatories in the end, five senior four-star generals and admirals and 22 diplomats, all career officers.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is your statement?

ROBERT KEELEY: Well, the statement in essence calls for regime change in Washington, if we could put it that way, and our fundamental problem is that the present administration has tried to conduct foreign policy without using diplomacy. So, I guess it's not surprising that career diplomats think that that's a grievous error. Our statement talks about the militarization of our foreign policy, the damage to our lives is the fact that we are not relying on friends around the world in the war on terrorism. Where cooperation with other countries is absolutely essential. And we mentioned a number of other things like the environment and global warming and H.I.V. And so forth. But fundamentally, its focus is on Iraq and the Middle East, disengagement from the Israel-Palestinian problem, the mess we've created in Iraq with no exit strategy. And the lack of reliance on diplomacy is what's fundamental to these people. And this is a very nonpartisan group that includes Republicans, Democrats, Independents and people who have never been involved in domestic politics. It is a bit unusual to find career diplomats and career military officers getting involved in what is essentially a domestic politics since we are in the middle of an election.

JUAN GONZALES: Well, the White House response to your letter has -- much of your statement has been that even though there are both Republicans and Democrats involved in the statement or were part of the old way of doing things in terms of foreign policy and that got us -- got the country into the current mess that it's in. So, they basically say that many of you are critical just because you are a stake in the old ways that our foreign policy has operated.

ROBERT KEELEY: Yes. You are absolutely accurate. They call us 9-10 people. Meaning we haven't changed our ways because of 9/11. I'd like to speak to that because the mantra of the administration has been 9/11 changed everything. But it didn't change everything. It changed a few things. That is terrorism on our soil on a massive scale, spectacular events seen on TV. Those are all new to us. Although we had the Oklahoma City bombing. But the fundamentals haven't changed. You still have to live on this planet. You still have to deal with other countries and if you are going to fight terrorism, you need their cooperation. We can not go it alone and we cannot do it by military means alone. And force should be a last resort, not a first resort. Those things haven't changed. So, to say that we're mired in the pre 9-11 mentality is really erroneous and unfortunately that mantra that is 9/11 changed everything has been used by the administration to permit the president to do anything he pleases, whether it legal, whether it moral, whether it proper, whether effective. Our opinion is that 9/11 did not change everything.

AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Robert Keeley, I want to thank you for being with us. One of the founders of the newly formed Diplomats And Military Commanders For Change. Former Ambassador to Greece and Zimbabwe. This is[i] Democracy Now[/i]! - http://www.democracynow.org/a...

One "Little" Problem With Bush: He Is Mentally Deranged- A Paranoid Meglomaniac & Sadistic Crook

06.18.04 (8:46 am) [edit]

[b]Pschoanalyst describes Bush as "paranoid meglomaniac," "untreated alcoholic"[/b]

A new book by a prominent Washington psychoanalyst says President George W. Bush is a "paranoid meglomaniac" as well as a sadist and "untreated alcoholic." The doctor's analysis appears to confirm earlier reports the President may be emotionally unstable.

Dr. Justin Frank, writing in Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, also says the President has a "lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions ... [and] pumping his fist gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad."

Even worse, Dr. Frank concludes, the President's years of heavy drinking "may have affected his brain function -- and his decision to quit drinking without the help of a 12-step program [puts] him at far higher risk of relapse."

Dr. Frank's revelations comes on the heels of last week's Capitol Hill Blue exclusive that revealed increasing concern by White House aides over Bush's emotional stability.

Aides, who spoke only on condition that their names be withheld, told stories of wide mood swings by the President who would go from quoting the Bible one minute to obscenity-filled outbursts the next.

Bush shows an inability to grieve -- dating back to age 7, when his sister died. "The family's reaction -- no funeral and no mourning -- set in motion his life-long pattern of turning away from pain [and hiding] behind antic behavior," says Frank, who says Bush may suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Other findings by Dr. Frank:
. His mother, Barbara Bush -- tabbed by some family friends as "the one who instills fear" -- had trouble connecting emotionally with her son, Frank argues.

. George H.W. Bush's "emotional and physical absence during his son's youth triggered feelings of both adoration and revenge in George W."

. The President suffers from "character pathology," including "grandiosity" and "megalomania" -- viewing himself, America and God as interchangeable.

Dr. Frank has been a psychiatrist for 35 years and is director of psychiatry at George Washington University. A Democrat, he once headed the Washington Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

In an interview with The Washington Post's Richard Leiby, Dr. Frank said he began to be concerned about Bush's behavior in 2002.

"I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote, and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed," Dr. Frank told Leiby. Bush, he said, "fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated."

Dr. Frank's expert recommendation? "Our sole treatment option -- for his benefit and for ours -- is to remove President Bush from office ... before it is too late."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to comment on the specifics of Dr. Frank's book or the earlier story by Capitol Hill Blue.

"I don't do book reviews," McClellan said, even though he last week recommended the latest book by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward to reporters at the daily press briefing. - http://www.unknownnews.net/in...

Bush/Cheney: Traitorous Liars & Consequential Lies ...

06.18.04 (7:54 am) [edit]

As the notion evaporates that the United States could implant democracy in Iraq at gunpoint or that "weapons of mass destruction" will ever be found, the Bush administration has resurrected the argument that Saddam Hussein had longstanding ties to Al Qaeda.

Speeches by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney earlier this week were timed to pre-empt and cast doubt on a 9/11 commission finding released on Wednesday that there is "no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

The all-too-familiar notion fostered by Bush and Cheney, however, is that Iraq was indeed involved in the attacks of 9/11, even though this is as spurious as the claim about WMD. Spurious or not, it has been extremely effective in playing on the trauma of 9/11 to whip up support for war on Iraq. A year ago 69 percent of Americans believed that Iraq was largely responsible for 9/11, and polls this spring show that a majority still believe this to be the case.

Successful as its PR approach on this key issue has been in rallying support for the war, the administration is not about to cede the field to the commission. A "senior administration official" has already reacted to the commission report, insisting, "We stand by what (Secretary of State) Powell and (CIA Director) Tenet have said" on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

With violence steadily increasing in Iraq and the 9/11 commission hearings about to resume, the White House spin machine shifted into a tried and tested gear--a technique described as "most brilliant" by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels: "It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

The refrain struck up again on Monday with Cheney claiming that Saddam Hussein had "long established ties" with Al Qaeda. Cheney offered no details, but the president elaborated the following day, citing "evidence" on ties between Iraq and "Al Qaeda operative" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--evidence the CIA considers inconclusive at best. George Tenet told the Senate in February that, although Zarqawi had had contacts with Al Qaeda, he appeared to be "autonomous," and U.S. officials now say it has become increasingly clear that Zarqawi was operating independently.

As for 9/11, never mind the admission the president tucked into an impromptu interview on Sept. 17, 2003: "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11th." That admission received little play in the mainstream press, and it will be interesting to see if anyone remembers it this time around. If need be, it can be dusted off as proof that the president never held Saddam Hussein directly responsible for 9/11, just as the administration has argued (erroneously) that it never said an attack from Iraq was "imminent."

[b]Consequential Lies...[/b]

The continual spinning--not only about cosmic issues like Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda and WMD but also more limited episodes like the "Jessica Lynch Story"--constitutes what might be called consequential lies, not only for what they do to U.S. credibility, but also for the effect that have day to day on the ground in Iraq.

Consider the explanation offered, with no hint of shame, by U.S. Army Corporal Michael Richardson in Iraq to the London Evening Standard in June 2003:

"There was no dilemma when it came to shooting people...I just pulled the trigger...If they were there, they were enemy, whether in uniform or not...There's a picture of the World Trade Center hanging up by my bed and I keep one in my flak jacket. Every time I feel sorry for these people I look at that. I think, they hit us at home and now it's our turn. I don't want to say it's payback but, you know, it's pretty much payback."

The lies about WMD have been no less consequential. Consider Iraqi Gen. Amir Saadi, a British-educated chemist and erstwhile liaison between the Iraqi government and UN weapons inspectors. He was the first of the 55 "most wanted" senior officials to surrender. He did so on April 12, 2003, and took pains to ensure that German TV filmed his surrender lest he disappear down the memory hole. Yet he has been in solitary confinement ever since.

According to Pentagon and intelligence officials, Charles Duelfer, who took over from David Kay as head of the group still searching for WMD believes that Saadi "has not fully answered questions." Rather, it seems to be a case of coming up with the "wrong" answer.

Saadi has been consistent in telling UN and U.S. inspectors that Iraq's WMD were destroyed in 1991. David Albright, president of the DC-based Institute for Science and International Security--which has longstanding relationships with Iraqi scientists--suggests that Saadi has not been released because his release would provide further acknowledgment that Iraq did not have such weapons after 1991.

[b]Half-Truths...[/b]

What Saadi has been saying is what Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, told us when he defected in 1995. Everyone from Bush and Cheney on down gave Kamel--who spent 10 years running Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile development programs--fulsome praise for the intelligence windfall he provided about previously unknown weaponry. But no U.S. official told the rest of the story--i. e., that Kamel said that at his order all such weapons were destroyed in 1991, a claim now confirmed by documentary evidence (not to mention the conspicuous absence of WMD).

Benjamin Franklin said, "Half a truth is often a great lie."

Just ask 19-year-old Abdullah Mohammed Abdulrazzaq, captured by U.S. troops at 2:30 one morning last September in the Baghdad apartment he shared with his widowed mother. Abdulrazzaq was hooded, handcuffed, tortured with electricity and shuttled back and forth among several prisons in Iraq, including Abu Graib. What were his interrogators most interested in learning from this 19-year-old? What he could tell them about the weapons of mass destruction. And as we know, Abdulazzaq's case is far from unusual.

[b]...and Little Lies[/b]

These too have consequences. Remember the unproven allegation about Jessica Lynch being raped? Around midnight on May 12, 2003, Master Sgt. Lisa Girman and three other Army MPs decided to retaliate by abusing Iraqi prisoners at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, according to a report by Lt. Col. Jerry Phillabaum, commander of her MP battalion. Phillabaum wrote that Girman got it into her head that the rapist might be among the prisoners she was guarding, and decided to exact what he termed "vigilante justice."

The inference from the disclosures of the past few weeks that the Bush administration apparently paged through the telephone books to find lawyers willing to justify torture and abuse is outrageous enough. It is equally sobering to reflect on the fact that meretricious rhetoric from our highest officials can produce the same effect.

[b]Ray McGovern is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He had a 27-year career as a CIA analyst from 1964 to 1990[/b]. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Consequential Lies

06.18.04 (7:51 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney: Traitorous Liars & Consequential Lies ...

06.18.04 (7:49 am) [edit]

Bush Allies Vote for Contract to Corporate Ex-Pat

06.18.04 (7:44 am) [edit]

As reported in an earlier[i] Daily Mislead[/i],1 the Bush administration awarded a $10 billion Department of Homeland Security contract to Accenture, a company that based its headquarters in Bermuda to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The move defied the President's promise to make sure everyone is "paying their fair share."2 As if the Administration's actions weren't enough, yesterday the White House's Congressional allies defeated legislation that would have stopped the contract.

According to the [i]Chicago Tribune[/i], Congress "bowed to Republican leaders" and rejected legislation sponsored by Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) that would have prevented the contract from moving forward.3 Despite proponents of the bill noting that Accenture "has shrunk its tax bill by moving its headquarters to Bermuda,"4 the White House's allies defeated the legislation on a party line vote.

The General Accounting Office has cited Accenture for using offshore tax havens.5 Because of the GAO's report, at least one state has had the courage to do what Congress and the White House refuse to do. In May, Illinois held up a $2 million state contract6 to the company because of its tax behavior. In its defense, the company denies getting serious benefits from moving offshore. But, according to a June 1 [i]Bloomberg News [/i]report, Accenture's tax liability decreased7 while its U.S. earnings increased in 2002 and 2003.

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

1. "Bush Gives Contract to Tax Traitor/Campaign Donor ", Misleader.org, 6/02/2004.
2. Presidential Remarks, WhiteHouse.gov, 4/15/2004.
3. "House reverses course, won't bar Accenture security contract", Chicago Tribune, 6/17/2004.
4. "House votes to allow contract for Accenture", Chicago Sun-Times, 6/17/2004.
5. "GAO concludes Accenture, others, use tax havens", Washington Technology, 10/03/2002.
6. "Hynes Blocks Payments To Overseas Company, Asks For Policy Ruling", KSDK.com, 5/03/2004.
7. "Contractor vows to continue work on $10 billion border system", Government Executive, 6/10/2004.

Bush Allies Vote for Contract to Corporate Ex-Pat

06.18.04 (7:40 am) [edit]

Travesty of Justice: Ashcroft is the Worst Attorney General in the USA's History

06.17.04 (8:35 am) [edit]

No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history.

For this column, let's just focus on Mr. Ashcroft's role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn't even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure.

We can't tell directly whether Mr. Ashcroft's post-9/11 policies are protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. But a number of pieces of evidence suggest otherwise.

First, there's the absence of any major successful prosecutions. The one set of convictions that seemed fairly significant — that of the "Detroit 3" — appears to be collapsing over accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. (The lead prosecutor has filed a whistle-blower suit against Mr. Ashcroft, accusing him of botching the case. The Justice Department, in turn, has opened investigations against the prosecutor. Payback? I report; you decide.)

Then there is the lack of any major captures. Somewhere, the anthrax terrorist is laughing. But the Justice Department, you'll be happy to know, is trying to determine whether it can file bioterrorism charges against a Buffalo art professor whose work includes harmless bacteria in petri dishes.

Perhaps most telling is the way Mr. Ashcroft responds to criticism of his performance. His first move is always to withhold the evidence. Then he tries to change the subject by making a dramatic announcement of a terrorist threat.

For an example of how Mr. Ashcroft shuts down public examination, consider the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former F.B.I. translator who says that the agency's language division is riddled with incompetence and corruption, and that the bureau missed critical terrorist warnings. In 2002 she gave closed-door Congressional testimony; Senator Charles Grassley described her as "very credible . . . because people within the F.B.I. have corroborated a lot of her story."

But the Justice Department has invoked the rarely used "state secrets privilege" to prevent Ms. Edmonds from providing evidence. And last month the department retroactively classified two-year-old testimony by F.B.I. officials, which was presumably what Mr. Grassley referred to.

For an example of changing the subject, consider the origins of the Jose Padilla case. There was no publicity when Mr. Padilla was arrested in May 2002. But on June 6, 2002, Coleen Rowley gave devastating Congressional testimony about failures at the F.B.I. (which reports to Mr. Ashcroft) before 9/11. Four days later, Mr. Ashcroft held a dramatic press conference and announced that Mr. Padilla was involved in a terrifying plot. Instead of featuring Ms. Rowley, news magazine covers ended up featuring the "dirty bomber" who Mr. Ashcroft said was plotting to kill thousands with deadly radiation.

Since then Mr. Padilla has been held as an "enemy combatant" with no legal rights. But Newsweek reports that "administration officials now concede that the principal claim they have been making about Padilla ever since his detention — that he was dispatched to the United States for the specific purpose of setting off a radiological `dirty bomb' — has turned out to be wrong and most likely can never be used in court."

But most important is the memo. Last week Mr. Ashcroft, apparently in contempt of Congress, refused to release a memo on torture his department prepared for the White House almost two years ago. Fortunately, his stonewalling didn't work: The Washington Post has acquired a copy of the memo and put it on its Web site.

Much of the memo is concerned with defining torture down: if the pain inflicted on a prisoner is less than the pain that accompanies "serious physical injury, such as organ failure," it's not torture. Anyway, the memo declares that the federal law against torture doesn't apply to interrogations of enemy combatants "pursuant to [the president's] commander-in-chief authority." In other words, the president is above the law.

The memo came out late Sunday. Mr. Ashcroft called a press conference yesterday — to announce an indictment against a man accused of plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio. The timing was, I'm sure, purely coincidental. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Bush/Cheney LIE About Iraq/Al-Qaida Link & Should Be Charged With Treason!!!

06.17.04 (6:40 am) [edit]

[b]The US national commission examining the 11 September 2001 attacks has found no "credible evidence" that Iraq helped al-Qaeda militants carry them out[/b].

The statement appears in a report on al-Qaeda published before the final public session of the commission.

It contradicts remarks by the US vice-president about Saddam Hussein's "long-established ties" with al-Qaeda.

Iraq's alleged links with al-Qaeda were part of the justification the Bush administration gave for invading Iraq.

The 11 September attacks killed nearly 3,000 people after members of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network flew three hijacked planes into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with a fourth crashing in Pennsylvania.

The commission, drawn from both Republicans and Democrats, published two separate preliminary reports: an overview of al-Qaeda and an outline of the 11 September plot.

It concludes that senior al-Qaeda suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed initially proposed a hijacking attack involving 10 planes to hit an expanded list of targets that would include the CIA and FBI headquarters, unidentified nuclear plants and tall buildings in California and Washington state.

The more ambitious plan was reportedly rejected by Bin Laden.

A final report on the commission's findings is due on 28 July.

But preliminary statements published by the commission on a range of issues are building up into a complex picture of missed opportunities and some of it does not make pleasant reading for the Bush administration, says BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus.

[b]Bin Laden spurned [/b]

The report on al-Qaeda, entitled Overview of the Enemy, describes the roots of the militant network and its activities.

It says Osama Bin Laden had explored the possibility of co-operation with Iraq, despite his opposition to Saddam Hussein's secular regime.

A senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Bin Laden in 1994 to hear his requests for space to establish training camps and assistance in procuring weapons - but Iraq had not responded.

"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," the statement says.

"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States."

The report on al-Qaeda also finds:

. Bin Laden did not fund al-Qaeda through a personal fortune - it relied on a fundraising network.

. There is no convincing evidence that any government financially supported al-Qaeda before the 11 September attacks.

. The 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania "were planned, directed, and executed by al-Qaeda, under the direct supervision of Bin Laden and his chief aides".

. Al-Qaeda is "far more decentralised", now that Bin Laden has lost his Afghan base.

[b]More attacks likely [/b]

The commission's second report, entitled Outline of the 9/11 Plot, paints a picture of al-Qaeda members integrating themselves into Western societies before coming together to strike at America, and shows Bin Laden dominating the organisation's decision-making.

The commission finds that al-Qaeda is still "extremely interested in conducting chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear attacks".

The point was reinforced by a CIA expert testifying on Wednesday.

"Al-Qaeda... has by no means been defeated and though weakened, it continues to patiently plan its next attacks," said the expert, identified as Dr K.

"They may strike next week, next month or next year but they will strike," he warned.

The expert is one of several law enforcement and intelligence experts on al-Qaeda testifying before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

On Thursday, top military and civilian aviation officials - including General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - will testify about their agencies' responses to the attacks. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...

Attention Right-Wing Fascists: Bush Broke the Law & Should Be Impeached & Hung for Treason!!!

06.17.04 (6:36 am) [edit]

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away - unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's Statements On Iraq's Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

United Nations Address
September 12, 2002

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

Radio Address
October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Cincinnati, Ohio Speech
October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003

Should The President Get The Benefit Of The Doubt?

When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words posture was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the world, and many other Americans, doubted them.

As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also being debated on campuses - including those where I happened to be lecturing at the time.

On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they believe the President of the United States? My answer was that they should give the President the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.

First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the result of a process, not a moment's thought. White House speechwriters process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the President for his own review and possible revision.

Second, I explained that - at least in every White House and administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton - statements with national security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these statements, the President is speaking not only to the nation, but also to the world.

Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the Administration were similarly quick to back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMDs - and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would be say: "I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.

So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find - for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production equipment also existed.

So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?

There are two main possibilities. One that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the President has deliberately misled the nation, and the world.

A Desperate Search For WMDs Has So Far Yielded Little, If Any, Fruit

Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the President had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.

Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.

As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None were found.

During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there.

British and American Press Reaction to the Missing WMDs

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as scandalous; so far, the reaction in the U.S. has been milder.

New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to be held accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he continued, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq continues.

Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was shifting its search from looking for WMD sites, to looking for people who can provide leads as to where the missing WMDs might be.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMDs will indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.

But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."

Perhaps most troubling, the President has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.

Investigating The Iraqi War Intelligence Reports

Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a new age of pre-emption --when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons--exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"

In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O. J.'s looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the members of Administration can find someone else to blame - informants, surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it - they may not escape fault themselves.

Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner (R-VA), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.

These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct - and either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.

Senator Bob Graham - a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee - told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they find WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other possible alternative scenarios:

One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.

Senator Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Senator Graham requested that the Bush Administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the Administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decisionmaking process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."

Worse than Watergate? A Potential Huge Scandal If WMDs Are Still Missing

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

As I remarked in an earlier column, this Administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, it was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case. - http://writ.news.findlaw.com/...

Official verdict: White House lied to the world about Saddam

06.17.04 (6:30 am) [edit]

[i]"The liberation of Iraq removed... an ally of al-Qa'ida[/i]" -- President George Bush, 1 May 2003

[i]"There's overwhelming evidence... of a connection between al-Qa'ida and Iraq[/i]" -- Vice-President Cheney, 22 January 2004

[i]"Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qa'ida[/i]" -- Donald Rumsfeld, 14 November 2002

[i]"Saddam was a danger in the region where the 9/11 threat emerged[/i]" -- Condoleezza Rice, 17 September 2003

The Bush administration's credibility was dealt a devastating blow yesterday when the commission investigating the attacks of 11 September said there was no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had assisted al-Qa'ida - something repeatedly suggested by the President and his senior officials and held up as a reason for the invasion of Iraq.

[b]The full story [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Official verdict: White House lied to the world about Saddam

06.17.04 (6:28 am) [edit]

Bush Stonewalling on Bin Laden/Saudi Flights After 9/11

06.17.04 (6:22 am) [edit]

With questions swirling about who authorized allowing relatives of Osama bin Laden to fly out of the country immediately after 9/11, The Hill newspaper is reporting that President Bush is "refusing to answer repeated requests by the September 11 commission" about the matter1.

Last year, Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that, even as all foreign and domestic flights were grounded after 9/11, the bin Ladens and other wealthy Saudis were allowed to fly out of the United States. He said that "the flights were well-known and it was coordinated within the government"2.

Yet now, even as White House officials claim that "the [P]resident has fully cooperated with this commission in an unprecedented way"3, the panel vice chairman Lee Hamilton disclosed that the Administration is refusing to answer any questions on the subject -- even in closed-door meetings with Senators4. The President is also still refusing to release 28 pages of the bipartisan 9/11 congressional report about the Saudi Government. That report is known to "depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda"5. Some of that money may have even flowed through Riggs Bank6, where the President's uncle7 (and major fundraiser8) is a top executive. Nonetheless, the President continues to refer to the Saudi government as "our friend"9.

[b]Sources: [/b]

1. "Who let bin Ladens leave U.S.?", The Hill, 05/18/2004.
2. Interview on NBC's Meet the Press With Tim Russert, 09/07/2003.
3. Meet The Press transcript, 04/04/2004.
4. "Who let bin Ladens leave U.S.?", The Hill, 05/18/2004.
5. "Saudi Government Provided Aid to 9/11 Hijackers, Sources Say", Los Angeles Times, 08/02/2003.
6. Riggs Press Release, 05/31/2000.
7. Riggs Press Release, 05/31/2000.
8. Texans for Public Justice.
9. President Bush Vows to Bring Terrorists to Justice, 05/16/2003.

Bush Stonewalling on Bin Laden/Saudi Flights After 9/11

06.17.04 (6:15 am) [edit]

CONSERVATIVE FASCISTS LAUNCH Pre-Emptive Strike Against 'Fahrenheit 9/11'

06.16.04 (6:02 pm) [edit]

Michael Moore's controversial documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" is creating a political firestorm even before its official opening next week -- with a conservative grassroots organization announcing Tuesday the start of a campaign urging movie theaters to reject the film.

The California-based organization, called Move America Forward, is headed by former GOP Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian and aided by Melanie Morgan, a talk show host on KSFO 560 AM, both of whom had high-profile roles in support of last year's recall election of former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis.

"It's political propaganda," Kaloogian said Tuesday of the film, which he labeled anti-American.

Kaloogian said Moore has a right to his views, but "we also have a right to tell movie theater owners and the industry that this is not the fare that passes as entertainment -- let alone documentary.''

Moore's film criticizes President Bush for his response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The announcement by Kaloogian's group prompted a quick response from Lion's Gate, one of the film's distributors.

"It is unfortunate that people who don't want to see this film are trying to interfere with the rights of people who may want to decide for themselves. Regardless of a person's political perspective, we hope that everybody can agree that censorship is antithetical to the American way," Lion's Gate said in a statement.

The movie is scheduled for nationwide release June 25.

Moore has hired Democratic strategists Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani -- both former spokesmen in President Bill Clinton's administration and based in California -- to handle what he anticipates will be attacks on the movie from Bush supporters.

Kaloogian's group has hired veteran Republican political strategist Sal Russo to help its effort. Another conservative group, Citizens United, headed by David Bossie, also is reportedly planning to protest Moore's film with a television commercial. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

CONSERVATIVE FASCISTS LAUNCH Pre-Emptive Strike Against 'Fahrenheit 9/11'

06.16.04 (6:01 pm) [edit]

This is the Fight of Our Lives ...

06.16.04 (5:53 pm) [edit]

[b]This is the Fight of Our Lives

by Bill Moyers
Keynote speech
Inequality Matters Forum
New York University[/b]

"[i]The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand.' This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us[/i]." -- Bill Moyers, Keynote speech, June 3, 2004

It is important from time to time to remember that some things are worth getting mad about.

Here's one: On March 10 of this year, on page B8, with a headline that stretched across all six columns, The New York Times reported that tuition in the city's elite private schools would hit $26,000 for the coming school year -- for kindergarten as well as high school. On the same page, under a two-column headline, Michael Wineraub wrote about a school in nearby Mount Vernon, the first stop out of the Bronx, with a student body that is 97 percent black. It is the poorest school in the town: nine out of ten children qualify for free lunches; one out of 10 lives in a homeless shelter. During black history month this past February, a sixth grader wanted to write a report on Langston Hughes. There were no books on Langston Hughes in the library -- no books about the great poet, nor any of his poems. There is only one book in the library on Frederick Douglass. None on Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker, Leontyne Price, or other giants like them in the modern era. In fact, except for a few Newberry Award books the librarian bought with her own money, the library is mostly old books -- largely from the 1950s and 60s when the school was all white. A 1960 child's primer on work begins with a youngster learning how to be a telegraph delivery boy. All the workers in the book -- the dry cleaner, the deliveryman, the cleaning lady -- are white. There's a 1967 book about telephones which says: "when you phone you usually dial the number. But on some new phones you can push buttons." The newest encyclopedia dates from l991, with two volumes -- "b" and "r" -- missing. There is no card catalog in the library -- no index cards or computer.

Something to get mad about.

Here's something else: Caroline Payne's face and gums are distorted because her Medicaid-financed dentures don't fit. Because they don't fit, she is continuously turned down for jobs on account of her appearance. Caroline Payne is one of the people in David Shipler's new book,' The Working Poor: Invisible in America'. She was born poor, and in spite of having once owned her own home and having earned a two-year college degree, Caroline Payne has bounced from one poverty-wage job to another all her life, equipped with the will to move up, but not the resources to deal with unexpected and overlapping problems like a mentally handicapped daughter, a broken marriage, a sudden layoff crisis that forced her to sell her few assets, pull up roots and move on. "In the house of the poor," Shipler writes "...the walls are thin and fragile and troubles seep into one another."

Here's something else to get mad about. Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives, the body of Congress owned and operated by the corporate, political, and religious right, approved new tax credits for children. Not for poor children, mind you. But for families earning as much as $309,000 a year -- families that already enjoy significant benefits from earlier tax cuts. The editorial page of The Washington Post called this "bad social policy, bad tax policy, and bad fiscal policy. You'd think they'd be embarrassed," said the Post, "but they're not."

And this, too, is something to get mad about. Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did twenty years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer hours and still falling behind; not the fact that while we have the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans -- eight out of ten of them in working families -- are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need.

Astonishing as it seems, no one in official Washington seems embarrassed by the fact that the gap between rich and poor is greater than it's been in 50 years -- the worst inequality among all western nations. Or that we are experiencing a shift in poverty. For years it was said those people down there at the bottom were single, jobless mothers. For years they were told work, education, and marriage is how they move up the economic ladder. But poverty is showing up where we didn't expect it -- among families that include two parents, a worker, and a head of the household with more than a high school education. These are the newly poor. Our political, financial and business class expects them to climb out of poverty on an escalator moving downward.

Let me tell you about the Stanleys and the Neumanns. During the last decade, I produced a series of documentaries for PBS called "Surviving the Good Times." The title refers to the boom time of the '90s when the country achieved the longest period of economic growth in its entire history. Some good things happened then, but not everyone shared equally in the benefits. To the contrary. The decade began with a sustained period of downsizing by corporations moving jobs out of America and many of those people never recovered what was taken from them. We decided early on to tell the stories of two families in Milwaukee -- one black, one white -- whose breadwinners were laid off in the first wave of layoffs in 1991. We reported on how they were coping with the wrenching changes in their lives, and we stayed with them over the next ten years as they tried to find a place in the new global economy. They're the kind of Americans my mother would have called "the salt of the earth." They love their kids, care about their communities, go to church every Sunday, and work hard all week -- both mothers have had to take full-time jobs.

During our time with them, the fathers in both families became seriously ill. One had to stay in the hospital two months, putting his family $30,000 in debt because they didn't have adequate health insurance. We were there with our camera when the bank started to foreclose on the modest home of the other family because they couldn't meet the mortgage payments after dad lost his good-paying manufacturing job. Like millions of Americans, the Stanleys and the Neumanns were playing by the rules and still getting stiffed. By the end of the decade they were running harder but slipping behind, and the gap between them and prosperous America was widening.

What turns their personal tragedy into a political travesty is that they are patriotic. They love this country. But they no longer believe they matter to the people who run the country. When our film opens, both families are watching the inauguration of Bill Clinton on television in 1992. By the end of the decade they were no longer paying attention to politics. They don't see it connecting to their lives. They don't think their concerns will ever be addressed by the political, corporate, and media elites who make up our dominant class. They are not cynical, because they are deeply religious people with no capacity for cynicism, but they know the system is rigged against them. They know this, and we know this. For years now a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life. In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30 fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold.

Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if the rest of society were benefiting proportionately. But that's not the case. As the economist Jeff Madrick reminds us, the pressures of inequality on middle and working class Americans are now quite severe. "The strain on working people and on family life, as spouses have gone to work in dramatic numbers, has become significant. VCRs and television sets are cheap, but higher education, health care, public transportation, drugs, housing and cars have risen faster in price than typical family incomes. And life has grown neither calm nor secure for most Americans, by any means." You can find many sources to support this conclusion. I like the language of a small outfit here in New York called the Commonwealth Foundation/Center for the Renewal of American Democracy. They conclude that working families and the poor "are losing ground under economic pressures that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation, and civic life."

Household economics is not the only area where inequality is growing in America. Equality doesn't mean equal incomes, but a fair and decent society where money is not the sole arbiter of status or comfort. In a fair and just society, the commonwealth will be valued even as individual wealth is encouraged.

Let me make something clear here. I wasn't born yesterday. I'm old enough to know that the tension between haves and have-nots are built into human psychology, it is a constant in human history, and it has been a factor in every society. But I also know America was going to be different. I know that because I read Mr. Jefferson's writings, Mr. Lincoln's speeches and other documents in the growing American creed. I presumptuously disagreed with Thomas Jefferson about human equality being self-evident. Where I lived, neither talent, nor opportunity, nor outcomes were equal. Life is rarely fair and never equal. So what could he possibly have meant by that ringing but ambiguous declaration: "All men are created equal"? Two things, possibly. One, although none of us are good, all of us are sacred (Glenn Tinder), that's the basis for thinking we are by nature kin.

Second, he may have come to see the meaning of those words through the experience of the slave who was his mistress. As is now widely acknowledged, the hands that wrote "all men are created equal" also stroked the breasts and caressed the thighs of a black woman named Sally Hennings. She bore him six children whom he never acknowledged as his own, but who were the only slaves freed by his will when he died -- the one request we think Sally Hennings made of her master. Thomas Jefferson could not have been insensitive to the flesh-and-blood woman in his arms. He had to know she was his equal in her desire for life, her longing for liberty, her passion for happiness.

In his book on the Declaration, my late friend Mortimer Adler said Jefferson realized that whatever things are really good for any human being are really good for all other human beings. The happy or good life is essentially the same for all: a satisfaction of the same needs inherent in human nature. A just society is grounded in that recognition. So Jefferson kept as a slave a woman whose nature he knew was equal to his. All Sally Hennings got from her long sufferance -- perhaps it was all she sought from what may have grown into a secret and unacknowledged love -- was that he let her children go. "Let my children go" -- one of the oldest of all petitions. It has long been the promise of America -- a broken promise, to be sure. But the idea took hold that we could fix what was broken so that our children would live a bountiful life. We could prevent the polarization between the very rich and the very poor that poisoned other societies. We could provide that each and every citizen would enjoy the basic necessities of life, a voice in the system of self-government, and a better chance for their children. We could preclude the vast divides that produced the turmoil and tyranny of the very countries from which so many of our families had fled.

We were going to do these things because we understood our dark side -- none of us is good -- but we also understood the other side -