Sunday, September 07, 2003
All the world knows about the Iraq about-face: having squandered our military
strength in a war he felt like fighting even though it had nothing to do with
terrorism, President Bush is now begging the cheese-eaters and chocolate-makers
to rescue him. What may not be equally obvious is that he's doing the same thing
on the economic front. Having squandered his room for economic maneuver on tax
cuts that pleased his party base but had nothing to do with job creation, Mr.
Bush is now asking China to help him out. - Paul Krugman, NYTimes
What's Happening, Iraq: The Costs Mount: Time to tally. Dan Smith at Asian Times includes this summary in his in-depth look at where things are at in Iraq:
The cost of the war itself is estimated at US$48 billion, with the Pentagon's ongoing operations costing another $4 billion a month - and no decrease forecast.
Reconstruction costs for just the post-war part of fiscal year 2003, which ends September 30, have been estimated at $7.3 billion. The administration refuses to estimate costs for 2004, let alone future years. Independent estimates depend on what is included; for example, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has a range of between $106-$615 billion over 10 years, while estimates by Taxpayers for Common Sense run between $114-$465 billion.
The administration had already signaled it would ask Congress for new, substantial Iraq supplemental appropriations in October. Now it says that it will need a "few billion more" just to get through September.
L Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), acknowledged that rebuilding Iraq would cost "tens of billions" of dollars and that most of this cost would be paid by US taxpayers. Bremer recently set the cost of providing clean water at $16 billion and reliable electric power at $13 billion. He made no estimate about the cost of rebuilding the oil industry, although he did suggest it might cost $100 billion over the next five years to reconstitute Iraq's "national infrastructure.
One characteristic of black holes is that they grow in size as they absorb energy from the surrounding cosmos. Iraq has already snuffed out thousands of lives and absorbed tens of billions of dollars. Bush reiterated that a "substantial commitment of time and resources" still lies ahead.
Yes, Iraq is not a quagmire. But at a time when US budget deficits of $401 billion this year and $480 billion for 2004 are forecast, Iraq looms as an ever-expanding funnel into which human lives, human talent and monetary resources are being poured, never to be recovered. That, by any measure, defines a veritable black hole. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EI05Ak01.html
Forget Imminent Threat; It was the "Capability" that mattered
The retreat continues. Now, we didn't go to war to stop an imminent threat; According to John Bolton, the loose cannon and "top arms control official" of the Administration, "The issue I think has been the capability that Iraq sought to have ... WMD programs." Similarly, Tony Blair had said that Iraq constituted a "current and serious threat", but now has dropped any mention of weapons.
Apparently, weapons inspector David Kaye's upcoming report will emphasize that scientists remained in Iraq so that Iraq thus had the capability to develop a weapons program, i.e Iraq was a potential threat.
Can they really get away with this?
Commentary: David Greenberg in the Columbia Journalism Review has a goodie; he reviews why Bush has gotten away with his systematic lies.
To the axiom that journalists love lies, however, there's one important corollary — and it helps explain Bush's Teflon coating. Reporters like only certain lies. Perversely, those tend to be the relatively trivial ones, involving personal matters: Clinton's deceptions about his sex life; Al Gore's talk of having inspired Love Story; John Kerry's failure to correct misimpressions that he's Irish. Here, the press can strut its skepticism without positioning itself ideologically.
The lies reporters dislike, in contrast, center on what are usually more important matters: claims about public policy — taxes, abortion, the environment — where raising questions of truthfulness can seem awfully close to taking sides in a partisan debate. Most of Bush's lies have fallen in this demilitarized zone, where journalists fear to tread.
He summarizes, Whatever the outcome of Uranium-gate, it's dismaying that the conventions of news reporting have combined with the mechanisms of Washington media politics to erect such high barriers to freethinking journalism. The current rules end up encouraging media hysteria about personal lies of scant importance and deterring inquiry into topics that matter incalculably more. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/5/lie-greenberg.asp .
9/11 (1): Most Americans, of all political stripes, would agree that in the frantic days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, George Bush's steely leadership and deft tone helped stabilize a nation knocked out of its equilibrium and stripped of its comfortable preconceptions. Mark Jurkowitz, Boston Globe, in his review of the 9/11 Showtime travesty, airing Sunday night, which deifies Bush.
9/11 (2) From Saturday's Washington Post: ( Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane) On the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents. No comment.
Republican Pharmacy Bill: Friday's NY Times had a gem on the pharmacy bill. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Gardiner Harris noted how Congress' bill is a dream come true for the pharmaceutical industry, how during the thick of the 2000 presidential campaign, executives at Bristol-Myers Squibb, one of the nation's largest drug companies, received an urgent message: donate money to George W. Bush.
The message did not come from Republican campaign officials. It came from top Bristol-Myers executives, according to four executives who say they donated to Mr. Bush under pressure from their bosses. They said that they were urged to donate the maximum — $1,000 in their own name and $1,000 in their spouse's — and were warned that the company's chief executive would be notified if they failed to give.
Bristol-Myers said no one was forced to donate. But elsewhere in the drug industry, the message about the election was much the same. At some companies, officials circulated a videotape of Vice President Al Gore railing against the high price of prescription drugs. A torrent of contributions for Mr. Bush and other Republicans resulted. And the money kept flowing, right through the elections of 2002.
Those donations may soon pay off handsomely for the pharmaceutical business. Four years ago, a Democrat was in the White House and the industry was bitterly fighting a prescription drug proposal that it said would have led to price controls. Today, a Republican-controlled Congress is preparing to send a Republican president a measure with a central provision — the use of private health plans to deliver Medicare prescription drug benefits — that is tailor-made to the industry's specifications.
Bad News for Chocolate Lovers. No, I'm not harping on the Administration's put-down of those independent W. European countries. The news is that "French connoisseurs of chocolate definitively lost a battle against the bureaucrats of the European Union. Up to 5 percent of the cocoa butter in chocolate may be replaced by other vegetable fats...and still be called chocolate."
The NY Times piece by John Tagliabue quotes connoisseurs (i.e. those who appreciate real chocolate) as noting that "Chocolate is no longer chocolate." The culprit? "The struggle began in the 1970's, after Britain sought entry into the European Union and set as a condition the acceptance by the rest of Europe of a law that would permit the addition of vegetable fat, a customary practice in British chocolate."
Says one afficionado, "The poor European chocolate law," he said. "It's sad, because we're assuring a move toward a more synthetic world, in all domains."
Housing Subsidies to be Cut?
Also from Friday's Times (David Firestone): Advocates fear the loss of over 100,000 rent subsidies because of the spending bill moving through Congress.
If the nonpartisan budget office's forecast of housing costs next year proves accurate, it could be the first time in the 30-year history of the federal housing voucher program that Congress has failed to renew all existing vouchers.
-R
strength in a war he felt like fighting even though it had nothing to do with
terrorism, President Bush is now begging the cheese-eaters and chocolate-makers
to rescue him. What may not be equally obvious is that he's doing the same thing
on the economic front. Having squandered his room for economic maneuver on tax
cuts that pleased his party base but had nothing to do with job creation, Mr.
Bush is now asking China to help him out. - Paul Krugman, NYTimes
What's Happening, Iraq: The Costs Mount: Time to tally. Dan Smith at Asian Times includes this summary in his in-depth look at where things are at in Iraq:
The cost of the war itself is estimated at US$48 billion, with the Pentagon's ongoing operations costing another $4 billion a month - and no decrease forecast.
Reconstruction costs for just the post-war part of fiscal year 2003, which ends September 30, have been estimated at $7.3 billion. The administration refuses to estimate costs for 2004, let alone future years. Independent estimates depend on what is included; for example, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has a range of between $106-$615 billion over 10 years, while estimates by Taxpayers for Common Sense run between $114-$465 billion.
The administration had already signaled it would ask Congress for new, substantial Iraq supplemental appropriations in October. Now it says that it will need a "few billion more" just to get through September.
L Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), acknowledged that rebuilding Iraq would cost "tens of billions" of dollars and that most of this cost would be paid by US taxpayers. Bremer recently set the cost of providing clean water at $16 billion and reliable electric power at $13 billion. He made no estimate about the cost of rebuilding the oil industry, although he did suggest it might cost $100 billion over the next five years to reconstitute Iraq's "national infrastructure.
One characteristic of black holes is that they grow in size as they absorb energy from the surrounding cosmos. Iraq has already snuffed out thousands of lives and absorbed tens of billions of dollars. Bush reiterated that a "substantial commitment of time and resources" still lies ahead.
Yes, Iraq is not a quagmire. But at a time when US budget deficits of $401 billion this year and $480 billion for 2004 are forecast, Iraq looms as an ever-expanding funnel into which human lives, human talent and monetary resources are being poured, never to be recovered. That, by any measure, defines a veritable black hole. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EI05Ak01.html
Forget Imminent Threat; It was the "Capability" that mattered
The retreat continues. Now, we didn't go to war to stop an imminent threat; According to John Bolton, the loose cannon and "top arms control official" of the Administration, "The issue I think has been the capability that Iraq sought to have ... WMD programs." Similarly, Tony Blair had said that Iraq constituted a "current and serious threat", but now has dropped any mention of weapons.
Apparently, weapons inspector David Kaye's upcoming report will emphasize that scientists remained in Iraq so that Iraq thus had the capability to develop a weapons program, i.e Iraq was a potential threat.
Can they really get away with this?
Commentary: David Greenberg in the Columbia Journalism Review has a goodie; he reviews why Bush has gotten away with his systematic lies.
To the axiom that journalists love lies, however, there's one important corollary — and it helps explain Bush's Teflon coating. Reporters like only certain lies. Perversely, those tend to be the relatively trivial ones, involving personal matters: Clinton's deceptions about his sex life; Al Gore's talk of having inspired Love Story; John Kerry's failure to correct misimpressions that he's Irish. Here, the press can strut its skepticism without positioning itself ideologically.
The lies reporters dislike, in contrast, center on what are usually more important matters: claims about public policy — taxes, abortion, the environment — where raising questions of truthfulness can seem awfully close to taking sides in a partisan debate. Most of Bush's lies have fallen in this demilitarized zone, where journalists fear to tread.
He summarizes, Whatever the outcome of Uranium-gate, it's dismaying that the conventions of news reporting have combined with the mechanisms of Washington media politics to erect such high barriers to freethinking journalism. The current rules end up encouraging media hysteria about personal lies of scant importance and deterring inquiry into topics that matter incalculably more. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/5/lie-greenberg.asp .
9/11 (1): Most Americans, of all political stripes, would agree that in the frantic days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, George Bush's steely leadership and deft tone helped stabilize a nation knocked out of its equilibrium and stripped of its comfortable preconceptions. Mark Jurkowitz, Boston Globe, in his review of the 9/11 Showtime travesty, airing Sunday night, which deifies Bush.
9/11 (2) From Saturday's Washington Post: ( Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane) On the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.
Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents. No comment.
Republican Pharmacy Bill: Friday's NY Times had a gem on the pharmacy bill. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Gardiner Harris noted how Congress' bill is a dream come true for the pharmaceutical industry, how during the thick of the 2000 presidential campaign, executives at Bristol-Myers Squibb, one of the nation's largest drug companies, received an urgent message: donate money to George W. Bush.
The message did not come from Republican campaign officials. It came from top Bristol-Myers executives, according to four executives who say they donated to Mr. Bush under pressure from their bosses. They said that they were urged to donate the maximum — $1,000 in their own name and $1,000 in their spouse's — and were warned that the company's chief executive would be notified if they failed to give.
Bristol-Myers said no one was forced to donate. But elsewhere in the drug industry, the message about the election was much the same. At some companies, officials circulated a videotape of Vice President Al Gore railing against the high price of prescription drugs. A torrent of contributions for Mr. Bush and other Republicans resulted. And the money kept flowing, right through the elections of 2002.
Those donations may soon pay off handsomely for the pharmaceutical business. Four years ago, a Democrat was in the White House and the industry was bitterly fighting a prescription drug proposal that it said would have led to price controls. Today, a Republican-controlled Congress is preparing to send a Republican president a measure with a central provision — the use of private health plans to deliver Medicare prescription drug benefits — that is tailor-made to the industry's specifications.
Bad News for Chocolate Lovers. No, I'm not harping on the Administration's put-down of those independent W. European countries. The news is that "French connoisseurs of chocolate definitively lost a battle against the bureaucrats of the European Union. Up to 5 percent of the cocoa butter in chocolate may be replaced by other vegetable fats...and still be called chocolate."
The NY Times piece by John Tagliabue quotes connoisseurs (i.e. those who appreciate real chocolate) as noting that "Chocolate is no longer chocolate." The culprit? "The struggle began in the 1970's, after Britain sought entry into the European Union and set as a condition the acceptance by the rest of Europe of a law that would permit the addition of vegetable fat, a customary practice in British chocolate."
Says one afficionado, "The poor European chocolate law," he said. "It's sad, because we're assuring a move toward a more synthetic world, in all domains."
Housing Subsidies to be Cut?
Also from Friday's Times (David Firestone): Advocates fear the loss of over 100,000 rent subsidies because of the spending bill moving through Congress.
If the nonpartisan budget office's forecast of housing costs next year proves accurate, it could be the first time in the 30-year history of the federal housing voucher program that Congress has failed to renew all existing vouchers.
-R
