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---> Bush-Cheney Flip-Flops Cost America in Blood

09.30.04 (5:58 pm) [edit]

[b]Joel Connelly writes[/b], http://seattlepi.nwsource.com... "The words of our future vice president -- defending the decision to end Gulf War I without occupying Iraq -- eerily foretell today's morass. Here is what Cheney said in '92: 'I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home... And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many.' How -- given what he said then -- does Cheney get off challenging the judgment and strength of those who argue that we are bogged down and shedding blood today? Is Saddam worth the lives of 1,046 (at last count) dead Americans, and 7,000 injured Americans?"

---> You call this a democracy?

09.30.04 (10:52 am) [edit]

Our political system is starting to resemble the kind of banana republic authoritarianism we claim to despise.

There is nothing quite as hypocritical as a politician preaching the virtues of democracy while doing everything he can to destroy it. But as Election Day approaches, that is exactly what is happening.

President Bush is traveling the country bragging about supposedly bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan while waging a stealth campaign far different from his rhetoric here at home. Unwilling to wage a fight within legal bounds and undeterred by the odious stench of the 2000 debacle, the president has deployed his operatives to rig the outcome on November 2.

Before you call this conspiracy theory, read on: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

---> New Study Shows that Bush Supporters are Idiots Stuffed with Misinformation

09.30.04 (10:50 am) [edit]

A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes reveals that Bush supporters "have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, though, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush's positions, though less than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry's positions correctly. Majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (84%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the International Criminal Court (66%), the treaty banning land mines (72%), and the Kyoto treaty (51%). They were divided between those who knew that Bush favors building a new missile defense system now (44 percent) and those who incorrectly believe he wishes to do more research until its capabilities are proven (41%)." In short, these folks ain't too bright!

[b]Check-it-out http://www.pipa.org/

Courtesy of CheckItOut http://checkitout.tblog.com [/b]

---> New Study Shows that Bush Supporters are Idiots Stuffed with Misinformation

09.30.04 (10:49 am) [edit]

---> Bush Still Pushing Lies In Refusing to Lower Drug Prices

09.30.04 (10:47 am) [edit]

President Bush continues to oppose allowing American seniors to purchase lower-priced, FDA-approved medicines from Canada.1 His administration has claimed those prescription drugs would be unsafe, and is working to block a vote on bipartisan Senate legislation to make reimportation legal.2 But as a new drug industry whistleblower notes, the scare tactics are dishonest and untrue.

Dr. Peter Rost, vice-president of marketing for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, recently came out and debunked the White House's argument, saying reimportation "has been proven to be safe in Europe" and that "The safety issue is a made-up story."3 Rost's comments are consistent with the Bush administration's own FDA officials who have been unable to provide any evidence that medicines from Canada are unsafe.4

President Bush's opposition to reimportation is backed by the drug industry - the same special interest that has donated lavishly to the GOP. According to the non-profit watchdog Public Campaign, the drug industry has given Republican candidates more than $36 million since 1999. President Bush has raked in more than $418,000 from the pharmaceutical industry, and lists many drug industry executives and lobbyists as his top fundraisers.5

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Big Pharma fears a Kerry win will lead to curbs on drug prices," The Independent Portfolio, 9/22/04.
2. "Frist won't bring drug import legislation up for vote," The Tennessean, 9/16/04.
3. "Surprise Support For Drug Importing," Washington Post, 9/14/04.
4. "FDA lacks examples of Canadian drugs harming Americans," Knight Ridder, 11/26/03.
5. "Paybacks: Prescription Drugs," Public Campaign, 8/2004.

---> Bush Still Pushing Lies In Refusing to Lower Drug Prices

09.30.04 (10:44 am) [edit]

---> The BrainWashed Making Excuses For The BrainDead ...

09.29.04 (8:57 pm) [edit]

[b]Ever wonder why the BrainWashed neo-con buffoons continually make their lame-duck excuses for their BrainDead 'leaders' like Dubya???[/b]

[u][b]New Study Shows that Bush Supporters are Idiots Stuffed with Misinformation[/b][/u]

A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes reveals that Bush supporters "have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, though, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush's positions, though less than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry's positions correctly. Majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assumed that Bush favors including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements (84%), and the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (69%), the International Criminal Court (66%), the treaty banning land mines (72%), and the Kyoto treaty (51%). They were divided between those who knew that Bush favors building a new missile defense system now (44 percent) and those who incorrectly believe he wishes to do more research until its capabilities are proven (41%)." In short, these folks ain't too bright!

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.pipa.org/

[b]Courtesy of CheckItOut http://checkitout.tblog.com [/b]

---> Dubya's on Fascist Time: Bush Dealings on Iran so Hypocritical they are Comical

09.29.04 (4:20 pm) [edit]

A little over a week ago, it was announced that Bush planned to sell Israel $320 million in what experts called a war arsenal. Israeli officials made no bones about it - the weapons would most likely be trained on Iran or Syria. Now Bush has turned around and slapped sanctions on 14 foreign companies for selling arms to Iran! Worse than that - he is punishing some of these companies simply for trading with Iran as they cannot be considered arms dealers. Yet Halliburton, under a grand jury investigation for trading flagrantly with Iran in defiance of sanctions, remains unpunished! And, of course, the ongoing story of Halliburton's wheelings and dealings with US enemies continues to be ignored by the US media. You will have to go to the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/bu...

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.turkishpress.com/t...

---> The Crawford, Texas Newspaper Endorses John Kerry

09.29.04 (4:17 pm) [edit]

We can't WAIT to see how Tom Brokaw, et al. spin this one! They will probably just black it out! Reuters reports that "The newspaper in Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford threw its support on Tuesday behind Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry. The weekly Lone Star Iconoclast criticized Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and for turning budget surpluses into record deficits. The editorial also criticized Bush's proposals on Social Security and Medicare. "The publishers of The Iconoclast endorsed Bush four years ago, based on the things he promised, not on this smoke-screened agenda," the newspaper said in its editorial. "Today, we are endorsing his opponent, John Kerry." It urged "Texans not to rate the candidate by his hometown or even his political party, but instead by where he intends to take the country."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...

---> 'Persuadable Voters' (Those Just Waking up and smelling the Coffee) May Opt for Kerry

09.29.04 (4:14 pm) [edit]

Believe it or not, one in five voters (at least according to an AP poll - ahem!) describe themselves as "persuadable" - as in people who, even after a national disaster, recession, and two wars, have STILL failed to absorb enough information to have an opinion. This is the same clueless group that the media is aggressively trying to manipulate through bogus polls - if they don't like Bush, but aren't sold on Kerry, then convince them Kerry will lose anyway and they will stay home. But, where there's a pulse there's life, as they say. Perhaps through the undaunted efforts of a small handful of honest journalists, enough FACTUAL info will seep through to these people before Nov. 2. for them to realize that their country is being run by a lunatic.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/...

---> Bush Lied 4 Times to Bill O'Reilly about the National Guard!!!

09.29.04 (2:33 pm) [edit]

Bush LIED to O'Reilly about Preferences, Flying Hours, Activity Duty, and Fulfilling his Duties. When will O'Reilly invite experts to discuss Bush's AWOL? http://bobfertik.com/

---> Why Bush's War Is Illegal

09.29.04 (2:25 pm) [edit]

Not all 58,195 American bodies had come back from Vietnam yet when in 1970 Congress repealed the so-called Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Nearly six years earlier, with only two nays (in the Senate), Congress had approved it: a vague resolution supporting President Lyndon Johnson's determination to "maintain peace." Johnson thereupon claimed it gave him authority to wage war.

Three days after the terrorist suicide attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with only one nay (in the House), Congress enacted another vague resolution that President George W. Bush has taken as license to attack Afghanistan and any other countries of his choice with bombs and troops. Congress will repeal it, as it did in '70 – but will it take so much time and so many bodies?

On four main grounds, we charge that the resolution violates the Constitution, and that the war it supposedly authorizes contradicts U.S. treaty obligations.

[b]1. Congress's war resolution was an unconstitutional delegation of power[/b].

On Sept. 14 Congress hastily turned over to the president its constitutional power to declare war. He may fight any "nations, organizations, or persons," if he "determines" that they "aided" the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – or even "harbored" anyone who did.

The resolution names no country and states no objective. After attacking the Afghans, President Bush sent troops to fight Philippine rebels and escalated Clinton's undeclared drug war in Colombia to a war on rebels there. He has planned an attack on Iraq to overthrow its president and has considered actions in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Indonesia. He does not seem to care any longer about Sept. 11. He treats the congressional resolution as a blank check giving him absolute, dictatorial power to wage lasting war, world war, or nuclear war.

The Pentagon has studied some 60 countries as potential targets. Vice-President Dick Cheney warns that the war may not be over "in our lifetime" (10-21-01). It may be nuclear. President Bush has ordered the military to prepare plans to drop atomic bombs on at least seven countries and use smaller nuclear weapons in battlefields (Los Angeles Times, 3-9-02).

Professors Francis D. Wormuth and Edwin Firmage wrote in To Chain the Dog of War: The War Power of Congress in History and Law (1986): "Does the grant of the power to Congress ‘to declare war' include the power ‘to declare future wars,’ whether by authorizing presidential action or by other means? No, it does not.... One cannot enter into a future state of war in the present, any more than one can enter into a future state of marriage.... Congressional declarations of war, whether general or limited ... have always been addressed to a known adversary; one cannot declare war against, or be in a state of war with, an unknown adversary...."

Congress did not declare war on Afghanistan or any other country. Instead it gave the president the go-ahead to attack enemies that he would choose in the future. Attorney General John Ashcroft said (9-25-01) that "President Bush declared war on terrorism." A president may not constitutionally declare war – even a supposed war on an ism.

[b]2. Bombing communities and hospitals violates international and U.S. law[/b].

Since the bombing of Afghanistan began on Oct. 8, disastrous results have been reported almost daily. Examples:

• The village of Karam was razed and survivors spoke of 200 dead (BBC, 10-10-01).

• Planes bombed a hospital in the city of Herat; the Afghans said over 100 died (AP, 10-22-01). A mosque there and a nearby village were also hit, with cluster bombs and armor-penetrating explosives, the U.N. said (AFP, 10-25-01). (Such explosives, using depleted uranium, were dropped on the Yugoslavs in the Clinton-NATO war of 1999.)

• Red Cross warehouses, marked on top, were bombed on three occasions in Kabul, and one bomb meant for them "inadvertently" hit residences (Reuters, 10-27-01).

• In the city of Kandahar, bombs destroyed a bus, killing seven or eight riders

(The Times, London, 10-28-01), and badly damaged a hospital operated by the Red Crescent (Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross); a doctor said 15 were killed (AP, 10-31-01).

• Waves of jets leveled the village of Chokar Karaiz, killing at least 60, survivors said (AFP, 11-2-01).

• More than 25 bombs destroyed the village of Kama Ado, killing between 100 and 200 civilians, witnesses and survivors said; and bombings killed at least 50 villagers at Khan-e-Muirajuddin, according to a security chief (AP, 12-1-01).

• Warplanes attacked a convoy of tribal elders going from Paktia province to Kabul, killing 15 and then 50 nearby villagers; later, planes attacked the village of Naka, killing up to 40 and wounding up to 60 (The Guardian, UK, 12-28-01, citing Reuters).

• In place of ten homes and up to 107 residents, many of them children and women, piles of brick, pieces of human flesh and hair, and pools of blood remained after a pre-dawn air raid demolished the village of Qalaye Niazi as its inhabitants slept after a wedding celebration (Reuters, 12-31-01, and Los Angeles Times, 1-8-02).

The air raids violate The Hague Conventions (1899, 1907), banning the bombardment of towns, villages, dwellings or undefended buildings; poisoned arms; arms to cause unnecessary suffering; treacherous killing; and refusing to allow an enemy to surrender. Geneva Conventions outlawed attacks on any hospitals (1949). All were approved by the U.S. A 1977 protocol to the Geneva pacts condemned attacks on civilians or indiscriminate attacks. (The U.S. signed it; the Senate has not voted on it.)

Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, says the military "does not target civilians." Yet he admits knowingly taking action that kills them: "There is no question that when one is engaged militarily ... [there will be] unintended loss of life." (Briefing 10-11-01) In a murder trial, the accused cannot argue, "It was an accident. I meant to kill somebody else."

The Pentagon has released lists of its "inadvertent" bombings of civilians. It admitted intentionally bombing the Red Cross warehouses, containing food, in a "targeting error." The UN estimated that 7.5 million Afghans were near starvation.

Ted Rall wrote, after a trip to the war zone, "We've already killed more civilians than died in the 9-11 attacks – and as we know firsthand, seeing innocent people killed creates rage among their survivors. To the Afghans, we're the terrorists" (Yahoo, 2-20-02).

Note that under Article VI of the Constitution, "all treaties made ... under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land...."

[b]3. Bush refused to seek a peaceful solution, contrary to the U.N. Charter[/b].

The Charter of the United Nations is another U.S. treaty (1945, San Francisco).

Article 2: "All members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means" and "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."

Article 33: nations in any dispute that endangers peace "shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means...."

Bush took none of those steps. When the Afghan leaders, then the Taliban, offered to negotiate a peaceful solution before Bush began his bombing, he refused. His aim, then supposedly to catch Osama bin Laden, became to "get rid of this particular regime" (he told business leaders in Sacramento, 10-17-01) – an aim for which the Charter prohibits force.

The Sept. 14 resolution mentions "self-defense" as one of its purposes. The U.N. Charter (Article 51) allows it only until the Security Council has acted to restore peace and security. In a murder trial, no defendant could get away with a "self-defense" plea if he had spent a month planning, traveled far to break into his victim's home, and put a bomb there.

[b]4. A U.S. treaty renounces war as an instrument of national policy[/b].

The Pact of Paris, or the Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, made aggressive war illegal and its initiation an individual crime. The Nuremberg tribunal sentenced Nazi leaders to death under it. (The treaty, of 1928, is better known as the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, after its promoters, Frank B. Kellogg, secretary of state under President Calvin Coolidge; and Aristide Briand, French foreign minister.)

The U.S. resolution lists among its rationales "the threat to the national security and foreign policy...." It wrongly states that the president has "authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism," implying that attacking countries will do so. But haven't our attacks and global presence caused violent anti-Americanism?

Standing headlines say "America strikes back." The French news agency AFP has expressed the popular view that the bombings were "retaliation" (10-23-01). Few consider the logic of killing Afghans to punish terrorism committed mostly by Saudi-Arabians. But anyway, retribution is an unlawful war aim. One columnist advocated bombing Moslem peoples, converting them to Christianity and killing their leaders (Ann Coulter, 9-13-01).

In July 2001, two months before the terrorists struck the United States, U.S. officials told of plans to attack Afghanistan in October and replace its regime, a former Pakistani foreign secretary informed British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC Internet report 9-18-01). Likewise Bush aims at replacing Iraq's regime. His objective in each case has been the "nation building" that he told voters he opposed – far from "self-defense." - http://warandlaw.homestead.co...

---> Bush Ignored Warnings on Iraq Insurgency Threat Before Invasion

09.29.04 (12:01 pm) [edit]

[b]Intelligence suggested country faced years of tumult[/b]

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration disregarded intelligence reports two months before the invasion of Iraq which warned that a war could unleash a violent insurgency and rising anti-US sentiment in the Middle East, it emerged yesterday.

The warning, delivered in two classified reports to the White House in January 2003, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council, the same advisory board that warned the Bush administration last month that the violence in Iraq could descend into a civil war.

That forecast radically departs from George Bush's upbeat assertions that the situation is improving in Iraq, and he initially dismissed the assessment as a "guess".

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, suggested the assessment was the work of "handwringers".

The revelation yesterday that the White House was similarly cavalier about prewar warnings could hurt Mr Bush in the run-up to tomorrow's presidential debate, which is focused on foreign policy.

The Democratic challenger, John Kerry, has led a dogged effort to shift the election agenda from the "war on terror" to the chaos in Iraq, and yesterday's report at last provides him with a new opening.

One of the prewar assessments said it would take years of tumult before democracy was established in Iraq, and the country could revert to its tradition of authoritarian rule. According to the New York Times, it also warned that the new authorities in Iraq could face a guerrilla war waged by remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, and other militant groups.

Meanwhile, Washington could see a rise in anti-American sentiment across the Middle East, as well as support for some terrorist acts.

The existence of the prewar National Intelligence Council estimate was reported by the conservative columnist, Robert Novak, on Monday, as well as in yesterday's New York Times.

The manner in which the assessment came to light has attracted as much attention as its contents.

According to Mr Novak, details of the estimate were disclosed by Paul Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the near east and south Asia and one of the officials involved in preparing the report, at a private dinner on the west coast. Mr Pillar told his dinner companions that the White House had disregarded the warnings.

Mr Pillar also suggested that the Bush administration was so focused on going to war that it never considered the prospect of an anti-American backlash. "When Pillar was asked why this was not made clear to the president and other higher authorities, his answer was that nobody asked," Mr Novak writes.

Mr Pillar's frustration was widely shared yesterday by intelligence professionals who said they were undermined by an administration in which ideologues often had the final say over policy-making, as well as by the agency's management, which they believed was overly compliant with Pentagon and White House hardliners.

"The CIA had come out before the war, and had been telling the administration all kinds of things it didn't want to hear," said Melissa Mahle, a former CIA operative in the Middle East. "The CIA feels very embattled right now. They feel vulnerable to accusations of politicisation in the run-up to the war, and to a degree they are vulnerable because of the war [former CIA chief] George Tenet played."

Yesterday, a government official confirmed that the two prewar reports had sounded clear warnings of a widening struggle for Iraq. The official also noted that the conclusions in the assessment were shared by the entire intelligence community, not just the CIA.

"It talked about possible insurgency, possible waging of guerrilla warfare, the possibility of domestic groups engaging in violent conflict," the official said.

The official confirmed that Mr Pillar had been granted CIA authorisation to speak to the gathering, but on the understanding that the session remain confidential. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

---> Truths Worth Telling

09.29.04 (11:56 am) [edit]

[b]by Daniel Ellsberg [/b]

KENSINGTON, Calif. — On a tape recording made in the Oval Office on June 14, 1971, H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon's chief of staff, can be heard citing Donald Rumsfeld, then a White House aide, on the effect of the Pentagon Papers, news of which had been published on the front page of that morning's newspaper:

"Rumsfeld was making this point this morning,'' Haldeman says. "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say, and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong."

He got it exactly right. But it's a lesson that each generation of voters and each new set of leaders have to learn for themselves. Perhaps Mr. Rumsfeld - now secretary of defense, of course - has reflected on this truth recently as he has contemplated the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. According to the government's own reporting, the situation there is far bleaker than Mr. Rumsfeld has recognized or President Bush has acknowledged on the campaign trail.

Understandably, the American people are reluctant to believe that their president has made errors of judgment that have cost American lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the only way for the public to get such evidence is if a dedicated public servant decides to release it without permission.

Such a leak occurred recently with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was prepared in July. Reports of the estimate's existence and overall pessimism - but not its actual conclusions - have prompted a long-overdue debate on the realities and prospects of the war. But its judgments of the relative likelihood and the strength of evidence pointing to the worst possibilities remain undisclosed. Since the White House has refused to release the full report, someone else should do so.

Leakers are often accused of being partisan, and undoubtedly many of them are. But the measure of their patriotism should be the accuracy and the importance of the information they reveal. It would be a great public service to reveal a true picture of the administration's plans for Iraq - especially before this week's debate on foreign policy between Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry.

The military's real estimates of the projected costs - in manpower, money and casualties - of various long-term plans for Iraq should be made public, in addition to the more immediate costs in American and Iraqi lives of the planned offensive against resistant cities in Iraq that appears scheduled for November. If military or intelligence experts within the government predict disastrous political consequences in Iraq from such urban attacks, these judgments should not remain secret.

Leaks on the timing of this offensive - and on possible call-up of reserves just after the election - take me back to Election Day 1964, which I spent in an interagency working group in the State Department. The purpose of our meeting was to examine plans to expand the war - precisely the policy that voters soundly rejected at the polls that day.

We couldn't wait until the next day to hold our meeting because the plan for the bombing of North Vietnam had to be ready as soon as possible. But we couldn't have held our meeting the day before because news of it might have been leaked - not by me, I'm sorry to say. And President Lyndon Johnson might not have won in a landslide had voters known he was lying when he said that his administration sought "no wider war."

Seven years and almost 50,000 American deaths later, after I had leaked the Pentagon Papers, I had a conversation with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two senators who had voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution in August 1964. If I had leaked the documents then, he said, the resolution never would have passed.

That was hard to hear. But in 1964 it hadn't occurred to me to break my vow of secrecy. Though I knew that the war was a mistake, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president. It took five years of war before I recognized the higher loyalty all officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, the soldiers in harm's way or their fellow citizens.

Like Robert McNamara, under whom I served, Mr. Rumsfeld appears to inspire great loyalty among his aides. As the scandal at Abu Ghraib shows, however, there are more important principles. Mr. Rumsfeld might not have seen the damning photographs and the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba as soon as he did - just as he would never have seen the Pentagon Papers 33 years ago - if some anonymous people in his own department had not bypassed the chain of command and disclosed them, without authorization, to the news media. And without public awareness of the scandal, reforms would be less likely.

A federal judge has ordered the administration to issue a list of all documents relating to the scandal by Oct. 15. Will Mr. Rumsfeld release the remaining photos, which depict treatment that he has described as even worse? It's highly unlikely, especially before Nov. 2. Meanwhile, the full Taguba report remains classified, and the findings of several other inquiries into military interrogation and detention practices have yet to be released.

All administrations classify far more information than is justifiable in a democracy - and the Bush administration has been especially secretive. Information should never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating. But in practice, in this as in any administration, no information is guarded more closely.

Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims.

Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.

[b]Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> Bush Restricting Democracy As Election Nears

09.29.04 (11:53 am) [edit]

President Bush has opined about the need for democracy to be preserved, and for U.S. elections to be fair. In 2002, he said "Every registered voter deserves to have confidence that the system is fair and elections are honest."1 In 2003, he gave a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy claiming he had a "commitment to democracy."2 But, as a new report shows, Bush and the Republican Party are doing everything they can to reduce democracy at home as the election approaches.

As an article in [i]In These Times [/i]notes, in August 2003 the CEO of one of the biggest manufacturers of new voting machines wrote a fundraising letter saying he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."3 In June 2004, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) tried to remove 48,000 traditionally Democratic voters from the Florida voter rolls,4 prompting the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to demand an investigation.5 In July, a top GOP official in Michigan indicated his party's effort to reduce minority voter turnout, saying that the GOP will have "a tough time [in this election]" if "we do not suppress the Detroit vote."6 In August, Jeb Bush's political appointee tried to hire two top Bush fundraisers to represent the election office in Broward County in the case of a recount.7

See the full article at www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/111 5.

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "President Signs Historic Election Reform Legislation into Law," The White House, 10/29/02.
2. "President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East," The White House, 11/06/03.
3. "Voting Machine Controversy," Common Dreams News Center, 8/23/03.
4. "Rights leader scolds Bush on use of felon purge lists," Miami Herald, 6/22/04.
5. "Voting worries just won't go away," Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 7/18/04.
6. "Groups Say GOP Moves to Stifle Vote," Washington Post, 8/26/04.
7. "Elections Supervisor Rapped for Hiring Lawyers With Bush Ties," Law.com, 8/30/04.

---> Bush Restricting Democracy As Election Nears

09.29.04 (11:51 am) [edit]

---> Chilling Image of Bush

09.28.04 (11:51 am) [edit]

Now tell us this photo doesn't evoke images of Nazi Germany in the 1930s! Here's Bush apparently giving an unabashed "Seig Heil!", while in the background a US flag hangs vertically suspended, as the Nazi flag was displayed...

[b]More[/b] ... http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm...

---> Death Threats by Neo-Cons to Libs on tBLOG ...

09.28.04 (8:50 am) [edit]

In response to a tBLOGGer http://www.tblog.com/template... complaining that some of us liberals block certain neo-con tBLOGGers: [b]This is because we were getting DEATH THREATS.[/b]

I will open my tBLOG to any tBLOGGer who asks me, providing that they promise not to post DEATH THREATS.

The tBLOGGer who posted DEATH THREATS didn't even have the courage to use his/her own tBLOG ID, but would type in 'newbie' to over-ride his/her real tBLOG ID.

I don't even mind insults or name-calling-- but DEATH THREATS are beyond the pale...

Thank you.

---> The Commission on Presidential Debates (Sham Body Panders to Bush Thugs)

09.28.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

The Commission on Presidential Debates said Monday that it would enforce many of the stipulations agreed to by the campaigns of President Bush and Senator John Kerry, but that it would not sign the agreement itself - which aides to Mr. Bush had indicated was a prerequisite for his participation in the debates.

The 32-page agreement, released last Monday, included a provision that gave the candidates the right to walk away from its terms if the commission did not sign it. Mr. Kerry's campaign aides indicated last week that they would not make an issue of whether the commission signed the agreement, something it has never been asked to do before. Mr. Bush's campaign indicated that it might.

But after the commission said Monday that its decision not to sign the agreement was final, Mr. Bush's campaign said it was satisfied with a statement the commission posted on its Web site that said "the debate format rules will be enforced as stated in the Sept. 20 memorandum."

Mark Wallace, Mr. Bush's deputy campaign manager, said, "We're pleased that the commission has agreed to uphold the terms of the agreement."

Still, officials of the debate commission said they were agreeing primarily to those things Mr. Bush's aides had emphasized as especially important to them: a strict time limit on candidate responses, an electronic warning when candidates exceed their speaking time that can be seen and heard by viewers at home, and a prohibition against the candidates' directly posing questions to each other.

One official said the commission would probably not abide by the agreement's stipulation that the audience at the Oct. 8 town-hall-style debate in Missouri be composed of people who are "soft supporters" of Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush, meaning they had not solidly made up their minds but were leaning one way or another. The commission had proposed that the audience be filled with strictly undecided voters.

But a senior Bush campaign official noted that the commission said in its statement, "There will be no departure from the terms of the memorandum without prior consultation with and approval by the appropriate campaign representatives."

"I'm unaware of any such prior approval or consultation,'' said the official, who said he expected the point to be worked out between the parties.

Debate commission officials also said they could not and would not enforce the agreement's stipulation that network cameras refrain from showing Mr. Bush when Mr. Kerry was speaking, and vice versa.

"There are certain things that are clearly beyond our control," said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., a co-chairman of the commission. "We don't control the feed so we don't know what the networks are going to show; that's not within our purview."

Paul Schur, a spokesman for the Fox News Channel, which is telecasting the first debate on Thursday for the major news networks planning to carry it, said, "Because of journalistic standards, we're not going to follow outside restrictions."

Mr. Fahrenkopf also said that the debate moderators had no plans to sign the agreement either, despite a provision in the memorandum allowing the campaigns to replace those who refuse to sign. Aides to both candidates indicated that they would not push the issue. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

---> Destroying Democracy, One Debate At A Time!!!

09.28.04 (6:32 am) [edit]

[b]INSIDE BUSH WATCH: Reading the Morning Papers (September 28)[/b]

Christine: Who do you think will win the debates?

Jerry: Debates? What debates. Those who have read the rules say there's less spontaneity than ever before. The candidate can't ask follow-up questions about what his opponent says, and neither can the moderator, so there aren't going to be any debates. What we'll hear are canned comments going by like freight trains in response to intial questions by the moderator. That's what Bush-Rove got as a "compromise" in order for Kerry to have three debates rather than two. Bush-Rove didn't want to have a town meeting debate format, because that would involve questions from citizens.

Of course, somewhere in the 32 pages of rules for the debates, there are rules for carefully screening the citizens who ask the questions, just like party plants who ask questions at Bush campaign stops: the Gallup poll, which has used more Republicans than Democrats in its polls, will select an equal number of "soft" Bush supporters and "soft" Kerry supporters, and "ABC's Charles Gibson, who's moderating [the forum], is supposed to pre-select written questions and then "cut off" anyone who changes the wording submitted," notes one observer.

Christine: That figures. As one reporter said on Lou Dobbs the other evening, the only possibility for any shift in the poll numbers based upon the content of the debates is if one of the candidates makes a mistake in a canned respones.

Jerry: What a joke! Yet, the media would have us believe that our democratic debate process is still intact. With each passing election, the democratic traditons of a free society are slowly but surely being strangled, while the politicians and pundits pretend that everything's fine. That's why the thrust of the commentary on the debates has been about how style will decide the winner, because it's obvious that content will be propaganda, just like at the conventions and in the ads. Dobbs had a question for his viewers to call/e-mail a response to: What will most help you select your candidate, ads, the conventions, or the debates? How about "none of the above"?

Breaking News: The Debate Commission is refusing to sign the Bush-Kerry agreement and Bush has threatened to pull out if they don't, according to a story in today's NYT: "Officials of the debate commission said they were agreeing primarily to those things Mr. Bush's aides had emphasized as especially important to them: a strict time limit on candidate responses, an electronic warning when candidates exceed their speaking time that can be seen and heard by viewers at home, and a prohibition against the candidates' directly posing questions to each other.

One official said the commission would probably not abide by the agreement's stipulation that the audience at the Oct. 8 town-hall-style debate in Missouri be composed of people who are "soft supporters" of Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush, meaning they had not solidly made up their minds but were leaning one way or another. The commission had proposed that the audience be filled with strictly undecided voters....

Debate commission officials also said they could not and would not enforce the agreement's stipulation that network cameras refrain from showing Mr. Bush when Mr. Kerry was speaking, and vice versa. "There are certain things that are clearly beyond our control," said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., a co-chairman of the commission. "We don't control the feed so we don't know what the networks are going to show; that's not within our purview." Paul Schur, a spokesman for the Fox News Channel, which is telecasting the first debate on Thursday for the major news networks planning to carry it, said, "Because of journalistic standards, we're not going to follow outside restrictions."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.bushwatch.net/#ins...

---> The Effect of the War in Iraq on America's Security

09.28.04 (6:24 am) [edit]

[b]The Effect of the War in Iraq on America's Security

by Senator Ted Kennedy

Remarks delivered at The George Washington University [/b]

Thank you Steve, for that generous introduction. Your many years of impressive leadership at GW have benefited the students, the faculty, and the whole city. I commend you as well for your support for the DC public schools, and your commitment to help them in their time of need, and increase opportunities for their students. Thank you for all you do so well.

I'm honored to be at GW today, and to have this opportunity to speak to all of you at this defining moment for our nation. Five weeks from tomorrow, the American people will decide the next President of the United States. The consequences of the election will be enormous for our country here at home and our role in the world. Every American has a responsibility to vote, and I know you'll approach that responsibility with the seriousness it deserves.

Most of you will probably be voting for the first time, as will many other college students throughout America. One of the few positive results of the Vietnam War is the irresistible momentum it gave Congress thirty-four years ago to pass legislation lowering the voting age to 18. Long-standing opposition crumbled in the face of one simple truth-"Old enough to fight, old enough to vote." Hopefully, because of the war in Iraq, young voters in communities across America will finally be moved to help our democracy work, by going to the polls in the large numbers long expected.

My topic today, as you can guess, is the war in Iraq. In another presidential election campaign 24 years ago, a Republican governor named Ronald Reagan posed the defining question to the American people in that election, when he asked, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" That simple question has even greater relevance now than when Ronald Reagan asked it.

The defining issue today is our national security. Especially in this post-9/11 world, people have the right to ask Ronald Reagan's question in a very specific and all-important way-are we safer today because of the policies of President George W. Bush?

Any honest assessment can lead to only one answer, and that answer is an emphatic no. President Bush is dead wrong and John Kerry is absolutely right. We are not safer today. And the reason we are not safer is because of President Bush's misguided war in Iraq.

The President's handling of the war has been a toxic mix of ignorance, arrogance, and stubborn ideology. No amount of Presidential rhetoric or preposterous campaign spin can conceal the truth about the steady downward spiral in our national security since President Bush made the decision to go to war in Iraq. If this election is decided on the question of whether America is safer because of President George Bush, John Kerry will win in a landslide.

Enough time has now passed to make us sure of that verdict, beyond any reasonable doubt.

Shakespeare stated the enduring age-old principle eloquently and wisely when he wrote: "Time's glory is to calm contending kings, to unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light."

No issue is more important today. The battle against terrorism is a battle we must win. Even those who opposed the war in Iraq understand that we cannot cut and run, that this is an American issue. But to remain silent in the face of mounting failures by this President and this White House is to weaken our security even further, and we cannot let that happen.

I thank God that President Bush was not our President at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Even after 9/11, it is wrong for this President or any president to shoot first and ask questions later, to rush to war and ignore or even muzzle serious doubts by experienced military officers and experienced officials in the State Department and the CIA about the rationale and justification for the war, and the strategy for waging it.

We all know that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator. We've known it for more than 20 years. We're proud, very proud, of our troops for their extraordinary and swift success in removing Saddam from power. But as we also now know beyond doubt, he did not pose the kind of immediate threat to our national security that could possibly justify a unilateral, preventive war without the broad support of the international community. There was no reason whatsoever to go to war when we did, in the way we did, and for the false reasons we were given.

The Administration's insistence that Saddam could provide nuclear material, or even nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda has been exposed as an empty threat. It should have never been used by George W. Bush to justify an ideological war that America never should have fought.

Saddam had no nuclear weapons. In fact, not only were there no nuclear weapons, there were no chemical or biological weapons either, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind.

Nor was there any persuasive link between Al Qaeda and Saddam and the 9/11 attacks. A 9/11 Commission Staff Statement put it plainly: "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." The 9/11 Commission Report stated clearly that there was no "operational" connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda.

Secretary of State Colin Powell now agrees that there was no correlation between 9/11 and Saddam's regime. So does Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Nonetheless, President Bush continues to cling to the fiction that there was a relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda. As the President said in his familiar Bush-speak, "The reason that I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

That's the same logic President Bush keeps using today in his repeated stubborn insistence that the situation is improving in Iraq, and that we and the world are safer because Saddam is gone.

The President and his administration continue to paint a rosy picture of progress in Iraq. Just last Wednesday, he referred to the growing insurgency as "a handful of people." Some handful!

Vice President Cheney says we're "moving in the right direction," despite the worsening violence. Our troops are increasingly the targets of deadly attacks. American citizens are being kidnapped and brutally beheaded. But Secretary Rumsfeld says he's "encouraged" by developments in Iraq.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina doesn't buy that, and he has said so clearly: "We do not need to paint a rosy scenario for the American people."

Neither does Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Vietnam veteran and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He stated unequivocally last week, "I don't think we're....winning. The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq."

The National Intelligence Estimate in July, although not yet made public, made this point as well-and made it with such breathtaking clarity that for the good of our country, unnamed officials discussed it with the press. The New York Times said the estimate "spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq." According to the same New York Times report and other reports, the National Intelligence Estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of next year. The worst case scenario is that Iraq plunges into outright civil war. The best case scenario it says-the best case-is an Iraq with violence still at current levels, with tenuous political and economic stability. Yet President Bush categorically rejected that description, saying the CIA was "just guessing." Last week, he retreated somewhat. He said he should have used "estimate," instead of "guess."

In other words, the best-case scenario, between now and the end of 2005-2005--is that our soldiers will be bogged down in a continuing quagmire with no end in sight. President Bush refuses to give the time of day to advice like that by the best intelligence analysts in his Administration, but the American people need to hear it.

The outlook is bleak, and it's easy to understand why. It's because the number of insurgents has gone up. The number of their attacks on our troops has gone up. The sophistication of the attacks has gone up. The number of our soldiers killed or wounded has gone up. The number of hostages seized and even savagely executed has gone up.

Our troops are under increasing fire. More than a thousand of America's finest young men and women have been killed. More than seven-thousand have been wounded.

In August alone, we had 863 American casualties. Our forces were attacked an average of 70 times a day-higher than for any other month since President Bush dressed up in a flight suit, flew out to the aircraft carrier, and recklessly declared "Mission Accomplished" a year and a half ago.

The President, the Vice President, the National Security Council, Secretary Rumsfeld, and other civilian leaders in the Pentagon failed to see the insurgency that took root last year and that began to metastasize like a deadly cancer. How could they not have noticed that?

Perhaps because they were still celebrating their mission accomplished.

For two years, terrorist cells have been spreading like cancer cells. Any doctor who let that happen would be guilty of malpractice. Is it only coincidence that one of the principal domestic priorities of the Bush Administration is to protect doctors from malpractice lawsuits?

In many places in Iraq today, it is too dangerous to go out, even with guards. The State Department does not attempt to conceal the truth, at least in its travel warnings. Its September 17th advisory states that Iraq remains "very dangerous."

As much as 15 to 20% of the country has inadequate security. Whole cities are considered "no-go" zones for our troops-presumably to avoid even greater casualties until after the election.

We continue to use so-called "precision" bombing in Iraq, even though our bombs can't tell whether it's terrorists or innocent families inside the buildings they hit.

What is helping to unite so many Iraqi people in hatred of America is their emerging sense that America is unwilling - not just unable - to rebuild their shattered country and provide for their basic needs. Far from sharing President Bush's unrealistically rosy view, they see up-close that their hopes for peace and stability are receding every day. Inevitably, more and more Iraqis feel that attacks on American forces are acceptable, even if they would not resort to violence themselves.

For every mistake we make, for every innocent Iraqi child we accidentally kill in another bombing raid, the ranks of the insurgents climb, and so does their fanatical determination to stop at nothing to drive us out. An Army Reservist described the deteriorating situation this way: "For every guerilla we kill with a 'smart bomb,' we kill many more innocent civilians and create rage and anger in the Iraqi community. This rage and anger translates into more recruits for the terrorists and less support for us."

The Iraqi people's anger is also fueled by the persistent blackouts, the power shortages, the lack of electricity, the destroyed infrastructure, the relentless violence, the massive lack of jobs and basic necessities and services.

By any reasonable standard, our policy in Iraq is failing. We are steadily losing ground in the war. The American people are seeing through the White House smokescreen more clearly every day - seeing the catastrophic failures resulting from the Bush Administration's gross incompetence in managing so many aspects of our occupation of Iraq. We can't go on like this.

Before the war, President Bush and his advisers manipulated, mishandled, and misled the American people about the intelligence, because they were so focused - so blindly focused - on removing Saddam Hussein from power.

They bungled the pre-war diplomacy on Iraq, insulted our friends, and left us more isolated in the world than ever before in our history, unable to obtain real allied support.

They failed to plan for the possibility that the liberation of Iraq would not be the cakewalk they predicted. They arrogantly rejected the counsel, the cautions, and the expertise of the professionals in the State Department most familiar with planning for post-war and post-conflict conditions.

Our soldiers were not adequately trained for the missions thrust upon them. Month after month, our courageous troops could not get even enough armored vests of their own or enough armor for their humvees to protect themselves on patrol. What kind of leadership is it, when month after month, our troops on patrol are so urgently in need of protective armor that they call home in desperation and ask their loved ones to buy armor at the local store and fed-ex it to them in Iraq?

The Administration shrugged when the massive looting began after the fall of Saddam. Secretary Rumsfeld said, "Stuff happens." They foolishly disbanded the Iraqi army, but let them keep their weapon and left ammunitions depots unguarded, creating a bonanza for the insurgents. The Bush Administration has yet to effectively train a new Iraqi army, or even provide the existing units with adequate equipment.

President Bush's repeated insistence that the United States will stay in Iraq "as long as necessary and not one day longer" now has a hollow and tragic ring to our men and women in uniform and their increasingly worried families. They deserve to hear more from our President than happy talk like that.

President Bush speaks about his commitment to genuine sovereignty for Iraq, so that the Iraqi people can govern themselves. But many signs on the ground strongly suggest that we are preparing a long-term military presence. We are also building and staffing the largest American embassy in the world, a huge additional permanent American presence.

Yet another serious failure is the way the Bush Administration has so badly botched every aspect of the reconstruction of Iraq. These failures have also inflamed tensions and created serious dangers as well. Seeds of the insurgency were sown in the earliest days of reconstruction, when we failed to guarantee the openness and the fairness of the reconstruction process. Our failure to have Iraqis perform as much of the reconstruction work as possible may have created huge profits for American contractors, but it also created huge numbers of disgruntled Iraqis, who are easy prey for insurgents to recruit and even pay to kill our soldiers.

The contracts themselves have led to incredible absurdities. Cement is being imported at a far higher cost that what Iraqis could manufacture for themselves. What kind of reconstruction policy is that?

As more evidence of gross mismanagement, the Bush Administration can't account for 8 billion dollars in Iraqi oil funds, apparently because so many of those dollars went to phantom Iraqi soldiers and phantom policemen. Thousands of them magically appeared on payrolls of the new Iraqi government, but they never existed. Eight billion dollars is just lost? Who is being held accountable?

The Administration has also mismanaged the 18 billion dollars approved by Congress a year ago for the reconstruction. Despite the vast need, only a tiny fraction of that amount has actually been spent. Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the highly respected chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says the slow rate of spending "means that we are failing to fully take advantage of one of our most potent tools to influence Iraq." Of the bungled reconstruction work, he says, "This is the incompetence in the Administration."

Why has the reconstruction effort been so disastrous? Only partly because the security situation is so dangerous. A more fundamental reason is emerging. The Bush Administration tried to carry out the reconstruction with its ideology, instead of an honest strategy. Instead of trying seriously to create jobs for Iraqis, they tried to carry out a plan to privatize virtually every part of the Iraqi economy. It's Republican ideology run amuck. It's bad enough that they're trying to do that to the American economy. It's preposterous to try and do it in Iraq.

The Administration didn't anticipate the obvious result of precipitously opening up Iraq's economy to foreign competition after decades of stagnation. They thought they could use Iraq as an experiment in laissez-faire economics. But the result has been far fewer jobs for Iraqis and far greater support for insurgents. Meanwhile, Vice President Cheney's friends at Halliburton were among the first in line for the gravy train.

Across Iraq, these blunders unleashed forces so powerful and so violent that the Administration didn't even know what hit them. Their disastrous economic strategy was clearly a major factor in the rise of the armed resistance, and it never should have happened.

Twelve years ago, the first President Bush lost his campaign for re-election, because he couldn't understand how deeply the American people felt about the troubled economy. The fundamental concern of that time was summed up in four blunt words, "It's the economy, stupid." The fundamental concern of today takes one less word to sum up -"It's Iraq, stupid."

In the dirtiest tactic so far in the Presidential election campaign, Vice President Cheney claims that Al Qaeda wants John Kerry to win this election. It's despicable to say something like that. It is not unpatriotic to tell the truth to the American people about the war in Iraq. In this grave moment for our country, to use the words of Thomas Jefferson, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

Most likely, Mr. Cheney's ugly charge is a desperate and cynical attempt by the Bush campaign to immunize President Bush, in case another terrorist attack takes place in our country on his watch, in the remaining days before the election.

Another brazen tactic is being used as well. How dare President Bush accuse John Kerry of flip flops on the war in Iraq. My response is "Physician, heal thyself." President Bush is the all-time world-record-holder for flip flops. Nothing John Kerry has said remotely compares with the President's gigantic flip flops on the reasons he went to war in Iraq.

The President keeps saying America and the world are safer today and better off today because Saddam Hussein is gone. In any meaningful sense, he's wrong. A brutal dictator is gone because of the war in Iraq, and that's good. But no matter how many rhetorical double-twisting back flips President Bush performs, his disingenuous claim that the war has made America safer is wrong-- and may well be catastrophically wrong.

Let's count the ways that George Bush's war has not made America safer.

Number One: Iraq has been a constant perilous distraction from the real war on terrorism. There was no persuasive link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. We should have finished the job in Afghanistan, finished the job on Al Qaeda, and finished the job on Osama bin Laden.

Number Two: The mismanagement of the war in Iraq has created a fertile and very dangerous new breeding ground for terrorists in Iraq and a powerful magnet for Al Qaeda that did not exist before the war. We can't go a day now without hearing of attacks in Iraq by insurgents and Al Qaeda terrorists, and our troops are in far greater danger because of it.

Number Three: Saddam Hussein may be behind bars, and that's a significant plus for America and the world, as President Bush says. But the war in Iraq has clearly distracted us from putting Osama bin Laden behind bars-- and that's a huge minus. The President likes to talk about school reform, so let's try a little third grade math. If you add a significant plus and a huge minus, you don't wind up with a plus.

Number Four: Because of the war, the danger of terrorist attacks against America itself has become far greater. Our preoccupation with Iraq has given Al Qaeda more than two full years to regroup and plan murderous new assaults on us. We know that Al Qaeda will try to attack America again and again here at home, if it possibly can. Yet instead of staying focused on the real war on terror, President Bush rushed headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq

Number Five, and most ominously: The Bush Administration's focus on Iraq has left us needlessly more vulnerable to an Al Qaeda attack with a nuclear weapon. The greatest threat of all to our homeland is a nuclear attack. A mushroom cloud over any American city is the ultimate nightmare, and the risk is all too real. Osama bin Laden calls the acquisition of a nuclear device a "religious duty." Documents captured from a key Al Qaeda aide three years ago revealed plans even then to smuggle high-grade radioactive materials into the United States in shipping containers.

If Al Qaeda can obtain or assemble a nuclear weapon, they will certainly use it - on New York, or Washington, or any other major American city. The greatest danger we face in the days and weeks and months ahead is a nuclear 9/11, and we hope and pray that it is not already too late to prevent. The war in Iraq has made the mushroom cloud more likely, not less likely, and it never should have happened.

Number Six: The war in Iraq has provided a powerful new worldwide recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. We know Al Qaeda is getting stronger, because its attacks in other parts of the world are increasing. In the eight years before 9/11, Al Qaeda conducted three attacks. But in the three years since 9/11, it has carried out a dozen more attacks, killing hundreds in Spain, Pakistan, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the world.

Number Seven: Because of the war, Afghanistan itself is still unstable. Taliban and Al Qaeda elements roam the country. A dangerous border with Pakistan, where terrorists can easily cross continues to be wide open. President Hamid Karzai is frequently forced to negotiate with warlords who control private armies in the tens of thousands. Opium production is at a record level, and is being used to finance terrorism. Our troops there are in greater danger. Free and fair elections there are in greater danger. The war in Iraq has stretched our troops thin to the point where we can't provide enough additional forces to stop the rising drug trade and enable President Karzai to gain full control of the country and root out Al Qaeda. How can we afford not to do that?

Number Eight: We've alienated long-time friends and leaders in other nations, whom we heavily depend on for intelligence, for border enforcement, for shutting off funds to Al Qaeda, and for many other types of support in the ongoing war against international terrorism. Mistrust of America has soared throughout the world. We're especially hated in the Muslin world. The past two years have seen the steepest and deepest fall from grace our country has ever suffered in the eyes of the world community in all our history. We remember the enormous goodwill that flowed to America in the aftermath of September 11th, and we should never have squandered it.

Does President Bush ever learn? His chip-on-the-shoulder address to the United Nations last week was yet another missed opportunity to turn the page and start regaining the genuine support of the world community for a sensible policy on Iraq.

In fact, the President's arrogance toward the world community has left our soldiers increasingly isolated and alone. We have nearly ninety percent of the troops on the ground in Iraq. More than ninety-five percent of the killed and wounded are Americans. Instead of other nations joining us, initially supportive nations are pulling out. The so-called coalition of the willing has become the coalition of the dwindling.

Number Nine: Our overall military forces are stretched to the breaking point because of the war in Iraq. As the Defense Science Board recently told Secretary Rumsfeld, "Current and projected force structure will not sustain our current and projected global stabilization commitments." Our troops in Iraq are under an order that prevents them from leaving active-duty when their term of service is over. Lt. Gen. John Riggs said it clearly: "I have been in the Army 39 years, and I've never seen the Army as stretched in that 39 years as I have today."

That fact makes it harder for us to respond to threats elsewhere in the world. As John McCain warned last week, if we have a problem in some other flash-point in the world, "it's clear, at least to most observers, that we don't have sufficient personnel."

The war has also undermined the Guard and Reserve. The average tour for reservists recalled to active duty is now 320 days. In the first Gulf War, it was 156 days. In Bosnia and Kosovo, 200 days. A survey by the Defense Department last May found that reservists, their spouses, their families, and their employers are less supportive now of remaining in the military than they were a year ago. Since Guard members are also first-responders for any terrorist attack in the United States, our homeland security as well is being weakened because of their loss. Surely, no one in America wants the legacy of George W. Bush to be that America reinstated the draft.

In the words of the person for whom this city and this distinguished university are named, "There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well-prepared to meet the enemy." George Washington would be appalled at how unprepared the war in Iraq has made us to produce peace-and we should be appalled as well.

Number Ten: The war in Iraq has undermined the basic rule of international law that protects captured American soldiers. The Geneva Conventions are supposed to protect our forces, but the brutal interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have lowered the bar for treatment of POWs and endangered our soldiers throughout the world.

Number Eleven: While President Bush has been pre-occupied with Iraq, not just one, but two, serious nuclear threats have been rising-from North Korea, and Iran. Four years ago, North Korea's plutonium program was inactive. Its nuclear rods were under seal. Two years ago, as the Iraq debate became intense, North Korea expelled the international inspectors and began turning its fuel rods into nuclear weapons. At the beginning of the Bush Administration, North Korea was already thought to have two such weapons. Now they may have eight or more-- and the danger is far greater.

Iran too is now on a faster track that could produce nuclear weapons. The international inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium at two nuclear sites, and Iran admitted last March that it had centrifuges to enrich uranium. The international community might be more willing to act, if President Bush had not abused the U.N. resolution passed on Iraq two years ago, when he took the words "serious consequences" as a license for launching his unilateral war in Iraq. Now, after that breach of faith with the world community, other nations now refuse to trust us enough to enact a similar U.N. resolution on Iran--because they fear President Bush will use it to justify another reckless preventive war.

Number Twelve: While we focused on the non-existent nuclear threat from Saddam, we have not done enough to safeguard the vast amounts of unsecured nuclear material in the world. According to a joint report by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Harvard's Managing-the-Atom-Project , "scores of nuclear terrorist opportunities lie in wait in countries all around the world" - especially at sites in the former Soviet Union that contain enough nuclear material for a nuclear weapon and are poorly defended against terrorists and criminals. As former Senator Sam Nunn said, "The most effective, least expensive way to prevent nuclear terrorism is to secure nuclear weapons and materials at the source." How loudly does the alarm bell have to ring before President Bush wakes up?

Number Thirteen: The neglect of the Bush Administration on all aspects of homeland security because of the war is frightening. We're pouring nearly five billion dollars a month into Iraq - yet we're grossly short-changing the urgent need both to strengthen our ability to prevent terrorist attacks here at home, and to strengthen our preparedness to respond to them if they occur. As former Republican Senator Warren Rudman, Chairman of the Independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, said recently, "Homeland security is terribly under-funded, and we cannot allow that to continue." Chemical plants across the country have been called "ticking time bombs," highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Police, firefighters, and other first responders have seven billion dollars less in basic equipment they urgently need. Our hospitals are unprepared for a bioterrorist attack. Our land borders, our seaports, our shipping containers, our railroads, our transit systems, our waterways, our nuclear power plants-none of these have sufficient funds for protection against terrorist attacks, even though the Bush Administration has put the nation on high alert for such attacks five times in the past three years.

You can't pack all these reasons why America is not safer into a 30-second television response ad or a news story or an editorial. But as anyone who cares about the issue can quickly learn, our President has utterly no credibility when he keeps telling us that America and the world are safer because he went to war in Iraq and rid us of Saddam.

President Bush's record on Iraq is clearly costing American lives and endangering America in the world. Our President won't change, or even admit how wrong he's been and still is. Despite the long line of mistakes and blunders and outright deception, there has been no accountability. As election day draws closer, the buck is circling more and more closely over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Only a new President can right the extraordinary wrongs of the Bush Administration on our foreign policy and our national security.

On November 2nd, the American people will decide whether or not they still have confidence in this President's leadership. When we ask ourselves the fundamental question whether President Bush has made us safer, there can be only one answer: no, he has not. That's why America needs new leadership.

We could have been, and we should have been, much safer than we are today. We cannot afford to stay this very dangerous course. This election cannot come too soon. As I've said before, the only thing America has to fear is four more years of George Bush. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

---> Bush Misleads on Scope of Violence in Iraq ...

09.28.04 (6:19 am) [edit]

President Bush and his allies have insisted that violence in Iraq is limited to a few isolated pockets of resistance. President Bush said last Wednesday that there are a "handful of people who are willing to kill in order to stop the process."1 The next day, Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told reporters at a press conference in the Rose Garden "there is nothing, no problem, except on a small pocket in Fallujah."2 Information in a secret report compiled for the administration suggests that Bush and Allawi are misleading the public about the scope of violence in Iraq.

According to data collected by Kroll Security International for the administration, there are about 70 attacks a day on U.S. and coalition forces, compared to 40-50 attacks a day before the transfer of authority to the interim Iraqi government.3 Moreover, the data indicate attacks in "nearly every major city in central, western and northern Iraq."4 Allawi, in a speech to Congress last Tuesday, described Baghdad as "very good and safe."5 But the Kroll data reveal that, in recent weeks, there have been an average of 22 attacks per day on troops in Baghdad.6

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "President's Remarks in "Focus on Education with President Bush" Event ," The White House, 9/22/04.
2. "President Bush and Prime Minister Allawi Press Conference," The White House, 9/23/04.
3. "Violence in Iraq Belies Claims of Calm, Data Show," Washington Post, 9/24/04.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

---> Bush Misleads on Scope of Violence in Iraq ...

09.28.04 (6:16 am) [edit]

---> What Can Be Learned From U.S. Veterans ...

09.27.04 (10:16 am) [edit]

Veterans Against Iraq War is a coalition of American veterans who support our troops but oppose war with Iraq or any other nation that does not pose a clear and present danger to our people and nation.

Until and unless the current U.S. Administration provides evidence which clearly demonstrates that Iraq or any other nation poses a clear, direct and immediate danger to our country, we oppose all of this Administration's pre-emptive and unilateral military activities in Iraq. Furthermore, we cannot support any war that is initiated without a formal Declaration of War by Congress, as our Constitution requires.

Although we detested the dictatorial policies of Saddam Hussein and sympathized with the tragic plight of the Iraqi people, we opposed unilateral and pre-emptive U.S. military intervention on the grounds that it established a dangerous precedent in the conduct of international affairs, that it could easily lead to an increase of violent regional instability and the spread of much wider conflicts, that it places needless and unacceptable financial burdens on the American people, that it diverts us from addressing critical domestic priorities, and that it distracts us from our goals of tracking down and destroying international terrorists and their lairs.

Furthermore, we do not believe that the American military can or should be used as the police force of the world by any administration, Republican or Democrat. Consequently, we believe that the lives and well being of our nation's soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines should not be squandered or sacrificed for causes other than in the direct defense of our people and nation.

Finally, we believe that a doctrine of pre-emptive and unilateral U.S. military attack on Iraq or any other nation is illegal, unnecessary, counter-productive and presents a truly dire and distressing threat to our vital international interests and basic national security. As military veterans, we have a unique understanding of war and know the many hidden truths that lie behind war's easy theories and promises, as well as behind the tragic consequences that even, "victory" brings. We therefore call on all like-minded veterans and family members to endorse this statement and support us in our efforts to help avert, mitigate or stop a national tragedy and an international calamity.

We ask that you support our troops, by demanding that they be brought home from Iraq immediately. We ask that you support our nation's vital interests, by demanding that our troops should never be placed in harm's way except to meet and defeat any direct and immediate threat to our people.

[b]Listen to Veterans Voices [/b]on http://www.vaiw.org/vet/index...

---> On the US Election: He Makes A Good Point!

09.27.04 (9:42 am) [edit]

[b]Do I think that [i]anyone[/i] other than US citizens should cast a vote in the US elections? No, but he makes a good point![/b]

[b]US policy now affects every citizen on the planet. So we should all have a say in who gets to the White House [/b]

There were few pleasures to be had following Bob Dole's doomed presidential campaign in 1996, but one was the unique brand of anti-charm adopted by the candidate. I was once on the receiving end of it myself, during a stop in New Hampshire. Dole had just inspected a factory and a huddle of reporters gathered to ask some questions. I was only three words into mine when the would-be president cut me off. He'd heard my accent and decided there was no point giving me the time of day. "No votes in Liverpool," he snapped, before calling on the man from the Kansas City Star.

I later heard a reporter from Finnish TV dismissed with a crisp "No votes in Leipzig". Dole's familiarity with both British accents and European geography may have been slightly off, but the point was clear enough. He was running in an American election: he needed to speak to Americans and Americans alone. No one else mattered.

At the time, that logic seemed fair enough. Americans were choosing their own leader to run their own government. Americans would pay the taxes and live with the consequences of their decision. It was up to them.

But now I'm not so sure. For who could honestly describe the 2004 contest of George Bush and John Kerry as a domestic affair? There's a reason why every newspaper in the world will have the same story on its front page on November 3. This election will be decisive not just for the United States but for the future of the world.

Anyone who doubts it need only look at the last four years. The war against Iraq, the introduction of the new doctrine of pre-emption, the direct challenge to multilateral institutions - chances are, not one of these world-changing developments would have happened under a President Al Gore. It is no exaggeration to say that the actions of a few hundred voters in Florida changed the world.

So perhaps it's time to make a modest proposal. If everyone in the world will be affected by this election, shouldn't everyone in the world have a vote? Despite Bob Dole, shouldn't the men who want to be president win the support of Liverpool and Leipzig as well as Louisville and Lexington?

It may sound wacky, but the idea could not be more American. After all, the country was founded on the notion that human beings must have a say in the decisions that govern their lives. The rebels' slogan of "No taxation without representation" endures two centuries later because it speaks about something larger than the narrow business of raising taxes. It says that those who pay for a government's actions must have a right to choose the government that takes them.

Today, people far from America's shores do indeed pay for the consequences of US actions. The citizens of Iraq are the obvious example, living in a land where a vile dictatorship was removed only for a military occupation and unspeakable violence to be unleashed in its place. The would-be voters of downtown Baghdad might like a say in whether their country would be better off with US forces gone. Perhaps John Kerry's Monday promise to start bringing the troops home, beginning next summer, would appeal to them. But they have no voice.

It's not just those who live under US military rule who might wish to choose the commander-in-chief. Everyone from Madrid to Bali is now drawn into the "war on terror" declared by President Bush. We might believe that war is being badly mishandled - that US actions are aggravating the threat rather than reducing it - and that we or our neighbours will eventually pay the price for those errors. We might fear that the Bush policy is inflaming al-Qaida, making it more not less likely to strike in our towns and cities, but right now we cannot do anything to change that policy. Instead we have to watch the US campaign on TV, with our fingers crossed - impotent spectators of a contest that could shake up our lives. (Those who feel the same way about Tony Blair should remember: at least we will get a vote.)

So we ought to hold America to its word. When George Bush spoke to the UN yesterday, he invoked democracy in almost every paragraph, citing America's declaration of independence which insists on the equal worth of every human being. Well, surely equal worth means an equal say in the decisions that affect the entire human race.

That 1776 declaration is worth rereading. Its very first sentence demands "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind": isn't that exactly what the world would like from America today? The document goes on to excoriate the distant emperor George for his recklessness, insisting that authority is only legitimate when it enjoys "the consent of the governed". As the world's sole superpower, the US now has global authority. But where is the consent?

By this logic, it is not a declaration of independence the world would be making. On the contrary, in seeking a say in US elections, the human race would be making a declaration of dependence - acknowledging that Washington's decisions affect us more than those taken in our own capitals. In contrast with those founding Americans, the new declaration would argue that, in order to take charge of our destiny, we do not need to break free from the imperial power - we need to tame it.

Such a request would also represent a recognition of an uncomfortable fact. It would be an admission that the old, postwar multilateral arrangements have broken down. In the past, America's allies could hope to influence the behemoth via treaties, agreements and the UN. The Bush era - not just Iraq, but Washington's disdain for Kyoto, the test ban treaty, the international criminal court and the rest - suggests that the US will no longer listen to those on the outside. As candidate Dole understood, only those with votes get a hearing.

Will this modest proposal fly? Will it hell. Despite Bush's smooth talk in New York yesterday, his position remains that America does not need a "permission slip" from anybody to do anything. If Washington won't listen to the security council, it's hardly likely to submit itself to the voters of Paris and Pretoria.

Besides, every good Republican knows the world is solid Kerry territory. A survey by pollsters HI Europe earlier this month found that, if Europeans had a vote, they would back Kerry over Bush by a 6 to 1 margin. Bush would win just 6% in Germany, 5% in Spain and a measly 4% in France. No Republican is going to cede turf like that to the enemy.

You would think those numbers would hurt Bush, making clear how unpopular he is in the world. But they don't. If anything they hurt Kerry, suggesting he is the candidate of limp-wristed foreigners and therefore somehow less American. We may find that a sorry state of affairs. But there is little we can do about it. In the democratic contest that matters most to the world, the world is disenfranchised. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/Col...,5673,1309889,00.html

---> American Boob: Why Skyrocketing Oil Prices are Largely Bush's Fault

09.27.04 (6:48 am) [edit]

Even the most fanatical Bushie "expert" can't deny that skyrocketing oil prices are driven by dangerously low stockpiles. Why are they so low? Reuters reports: "Political tensions in the Middle East and violence in Iraq have undermined traders' confidence in security of supply from the region, which pumps a third of the world's oil; Iraqi exports have been repeatedly hit by sabotage attacks, keeping its supplies BELOW pre-war volumes; Traders fear Islamic militants could target oil infrastructure in OPEC's biggest producer Saudi Arabia; Oil production in Venezuela, a big supplier to the US," is still suffering reduced oil output due to a strike believed by Hugo Chavez to have been instigated by Bush operatives." ALL these factors can be traced to Bush's inflammatory, destabilizing global policies. In addition, Bush insisted on transferring oil to the SPR at a time when stockpiles were at their lowest in THIRTY YEARS.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.reuters.co.uk/news...

---> American Boob: A'W'OL Bush Lies About Tax Cuts

09.27.04 (6:45 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Administration Distorts Who Benefits from Tax Cut[/b]

The administration and most of the mainstream press are billing the tax package passed by Congress yesterday as a "middle class tax-cut."1 The reality is that the new law is more of the same: tax cuts that benefit the rich and, in many cases, exclude the neediest families.

An analysis from the Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center shows that the middle 20 percent of earners "will receive an average tax cut of $162 in 2005 from this legislation."2 The top fifth of earners, however, "will get an average tax cut of $1,317."3 As a result, the top fifth will receive two-thirds of all benefits.4

The bill excluded a provision that would have extended the child tax credit to four million low-income families who currently don't qualify.5 Extending eligibility to these families would have cost $4 billion.6 Meanwhile, conservatives included $12 billion in tax cuts for corporations.7

[b]Sources:[/b]

1. "Congress Extends Middle-Class Tax Breaks," The Kansas City Star, 9/24/04.
2. "New 'Middle-Class' Tax-Cut Bill Represents Cynical Policymaking," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/23/04.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. "Lawmakers Can't Resist Voting to Extend Bush's Tax Cuts," Los Angeles Times, 9/24/04.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

---> American Boob: 4 More Years of Bush Bad for the World, Disastrous for the USA!!!

09.27.04 (6:41 am) [edit]

In a shameless display of political bottom feeding, Dick Cheney, implied a vote for Kerry-Edwards invites another terrorist attack on America. The absurdity of this fear-mongering strategy would be laughable if this election weren't so "deadly" serious.

Cheney was right. America should be very afraid -- afraid of four more years on the Bush-Cheney terror train. The world awaits America's decision to rejoin the community of nations or continue its antagonist role. According to recent poll numbers, the Bush-Cheney camp's spin of the last four years may be working, as political pundits like MSNBC's Chris Matthews suggest, "Bush is winning the personality contest. People see Bush as the kinda fella' you'd most like to have a beer with."

Unfortunately for America, this clearly is no time for drinking.

The Bush-Cheney bungling of the last four years --and their employment of tactics of lowered expectations to disguise their disastrous impact -- may prove successful. Following the transparently deceptive Republican National Convention, poll numbers of likely voters in states like Ohio and Missouri suggest that many either aren't paying attention or the Bush-Cheney tactics of fear and misleading rhetoric are having the desired effect.

Once again, the Bush-Cheney corporate elitists are benefiting from a frustrating double standard that sees the rich as always right, even when they're clearly wrong. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the "Fox faithful" believe Bush and Cheney have made the world safer, when the opposite is true. Global terrorism has increased, and the Iraqi insurgency becomes more emboldened with each U.S. casualty, now grimly at more than 1,000.

Bush supporters cite the dearth of terrorist attacks on American soil since 9-11 as proof of Bush-Cheney's success against terrorism, conveniently forgetting that under President Clinton American soil was attacked (by foreign terrorists) eight weeks into his first term (World Trade Center bombing) then for the next seven-and-a-half years lay dormant, a testament to terrorism's patience. The point being, America could have a terrorist attack on a school that Russia endured no matter who's elected.

China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and Syria are all foreign policy "miscalculations" that will almost certainly come into play within the next four years. No amount of American nationalism and hyperbole will substitute for experienced, rational diplomacy based on mutual respect.

Americans may see Bush as a down-to-earth fella with whom to share a laugh and a beer or two, but the prospect of "four more years" to the world at large is definitely not amusing. - http://www.thetimesherald.com...

---> Iraqi Civilian Casualties Mounting

09.26.04 (10:32 am) [edit]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis - most of them civilians - as attacks by insurgents, according to statistics compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry and obtained exclusively by Knight Ridder.

According to the ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 Iraqi deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5 - when the ministry began compiling the data - until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

While most of the dead are believed to be civilians, the data include an unknown number of police and Iraqi national guardsmen. Many Iraqi deaths, especially of insurgents, are never reported, so the actual number of Iraqis killed in fighting could be significantly higher.

During the same period, 432 American soldiers were killed.

Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of innocent civilians. Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government.

That suggests that more aggressive U.S. military operations, which the Bush administration has said are being planned to clear the way for nationwide elections scheduled for January, could backfire and strengthen the insurgency.

American military officials said "damage will happen" in their effort to wrest control of some areas from insurgents. They blamed the insurgents for embedding themselves in communities, saying that's endangering innocent people.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, an American military spokesman, said the insurgents were living in residential areas, sometimes in homes filled with munitions.

"As long as they continue to do that, they are putting the residents at risk," Boylan said. "We will go after them."

Boylan said the military conducted intelligence to determine whether a home housed insurgents before striking it. While damage would happen, the airstrikes were "extremely precise," he said. And he said that any attacks by the multinational forces were "in coordination with the interim government."

The Health Ministry statistics indicate that more children have been killed around Ramadi and Fallujah than in Baghdad, though those cities together have only one-fifth of the Iraqi capital's population.

According to the statistics, 59 children were killed in Anbar province - a hotbed of the Sunni Muslim insurgency that includes the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah - compared with 56 children in Baghdad. The ministry defines children as anyone younger than 12.

"When there are military clashes, we see innocent people die," said Dr. Walid Hamed, a member of the operations section of the Health Ministry, which compiles the statistics.

Juan Cole, a history professor at University of Michigan who specializes in Shiite Islam, said the widespread casualties meant that coalition forces already had lost the political campaign: "I think they lost the hearts and minds a long time ago."

"And they are trying to keep U.S. military casualties to a minimum in the run-up to the U.S. elections" by using airstrikes instead of ground forces, he said.

American military officials say they're targeting only terrorists and are aggressively working to spare innocent people nearby.

Nearly a third of the Iraqi dead - 1,122 - were killed in August, according to the statistics. May was the second deadliest month, with 749 Iraqis killed, and 319 were killed in June, the least violent month. Most of those killed lived in Baghdad; the ministry found that 1,068 had died in the capital.

Many Iraqis said they thought the numbers showed that the multinational forces disregarded their lives.

"The Americans do not care about the Iraqis. They don't care if they get killed, because they don't care about the citizens," said Abu Mohammed, 50, who was a major general in Saddam Hussein's army in Baghdad. "The Americans keep criticizing Saddam for the mass graves. How many graves are the Americans making in Iraq?"

At his fruit stand in southern Baghdad, Raid Ibraham, 24, theorized: "The Americans keep attacking the cities not to keep the security situation stable, but so they can stay in Iraq and control the oil."

Others blame the multinational forces for allowing security to disintegrate, inviting terrorists from everywhere and threatening the lives of everyday Iraqis.

"Anyone who hates America has come here to fight: Saddam's supporters, people who don't have jobs, other Arab fighters. All these people are on our streets," said Hamed, the ministry official. "But everyone is afraid of the Americans, not the fighters. And they should be."

Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by multinational forces and police; the remaining third died from insurgent attacks. The ministry began separating attacks by multinational and police forces and insurgents June 10.

From that date until Sept. 10, 1,295 Iraqis were killed in clashes with multinational forces and police versus 516 killed in terrorist operations, the ministry said. The ministry defined terrorist operations as explosive devices in residential areas, car bombs or assassinations.

The ministry said it didn't have any statistics for the three provinces in the north: Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, ethnic Kurdish areas that generally have been more peaceful than the rest of the country.

The Health Ministry is the only organization that attempts to track deaths through government agencies. The U.S. military said it kept estimates, but it refused to release them. Ahmed al Rawi, the communications director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, said the organization didn't have the staffing to compile such information.

The Health Ministry reports to interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whom the United States appointed in June.

Iraqi health and hospital officials agreed that the statistics captured only part of the death toll.

To compile the data, the Health Ministry calls the directors general of the 15 provinces and asks how many deaths related to the war were reported at hospitals. The tracking of such information has become decentralized since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime because both hospitals and morgues issue death certificates now. And families often bury their dead without telling any government agencies or are treated at facilities that don't report to the government.

The ministry is convinced that nearly all of those reported dead are civilians, not insurgents. Most often, a family member wouldn't report it if his or her relative died fighting for rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia or another insurgent force, and the relative would be buried immediately, said Dr. Shihab Ahmed Jassim, another member of the ministry's operations section.

"People who participate in the conflict don't come to the hospital. Their families are afraid they will be punished," said Dr. Yasin Mustaf, the assistant manager of al Kimdi Hospital near Baghdad's poor Sadr City neighborhood. "Usually, the innocent people come to the hospital. That is what the numbers show."

The numbers also exclude those whose bodies were too mutilated to be recovered at car bombings or other attacks, the ministry said.

Ministry officials said they didn't know how big the undercount was. "We have nothing to do with politics," Jassim said.

Other independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqis have been killed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations.

Iraqis are aware of the casualties that are due to U.S. forces, and nearly everyone has a story to tell.

At al Kimdi Hospital, Dr. Mumtaz Jaber, a vascular surgeon, said that three months ago, his 3-year-old nephew, his sister and his brother-in-law were driving in Baghdad at about 9 p.m. when they saw an American checkpoint. His nephew was killed.

"They didn't stop fast enough. The Americans shot them immediately," Jaber said. "This is how so many die."

At the Baghdad morgue, Dr. Quasis Hassan Salem said he saw a family of eight brought in: three women, three men and two children. They were sleeping on their roof last month because it was hot inside. A military helicopter shot at them and killed them: "I don't know why."

U.S. officials said any allegations that soldiers had recklessly killed Iraqi citizens were investigated at the Iraqi Assistance Center in downtown Baghdad.

"There is no way to refute" such stories, said Robert Callahan, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. "All you can do is tell them the truth and hope it eventually will get through." - http://www.realcities.com/mld...

---> Osama's Candidate ...

09.26.04 (10:14 am) [edit]

Where does Osama bin Laden stand on gay marriage? What are his views on privatization of Social Security and stem cell research? Is he concerned about judges who place their personal opinions ahead of the Constitution? Or does he care more about corporations that outsource good American jobs to foreign countries?

It seems we're going to have a national debate about whom bin Laden and al Qaeda support for president. Fair enough. Bin Laden's opinion, if only we could know it, would probably affect the judgment of voters more than that of any other independent thinker except, of course, John McCain. So far, the bin Laden debate has been pretty one-sided, with a string of Republican public officials claiming that terrorists are rooting for John Kerry and some bloggers and a columnist or two suggesting that he may prefer Bush.

My favorite among the Republican mind readers is House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who said last week, "I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another," which is an assertion that no one will disagree with. But he continued that al Qaeda "would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops."

Like many Americans, Hastert seems to be confusing bin Laden with Saddam Hussein. This is a confusion the Bush administration and campaign wish to encourage, and the president himself may even share. To describe Kerry's position on Hussein as "file a lawsuit" is merely witless and unfair. To describe his position on bin Laden that way is mystifying.

In fact the Bush administration's focus on Iraq after Sept. 11 -- a country that had nothing to do with the terrible events of that day -- might be a point in the president's favor for bin Laden, as he sits in his cave studying materials from the League of Women Voters and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

If there is one thing we know about bin Laden before the start of the Iraq war, it is that he wasn't in Iraq. With the invasion of Iraq, bin Laden got all the benefits of being America's public enemy No. 1 but none of the disadvantages. He got an explosion of anti-Americanism around the world, potential recruits lined up out the cave door and around the block for future suicide missions, swell new opportunities for terrorism in the chaos of Iraq itself, and the forced retirement of Saddam Hussein, whom he never cared for. He got a thousand Americans dead and hundreds of billions of capitalist dollars gone