Sunday, October 26, 2003
9/11 Commission: Cleland Speaks:
The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks said that the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he was prepared to subpoena the documents if they were not turned over within weeks.
Well into the NY Times front page article (Philip Shenon) came pointed comments from Max Cleland, whose comments were less cautious than Chairman Thomas Kean’s.
… as another member of the commission, Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, became the first panel member to say publicly that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from the panel for purely political reasons.
"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting."
He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/national/26KEAN.html?ei=5004&en=ed66b0ead25a2dac&ex=1068350400&partner=UNTD&pagewanted=print&position=
What’s Happening, Iraq: Yes, much more re Iraq. There’s no end, as this is a quagmire. Foreign observers are able to step back and look at these 25-26 weeks since the war was “won.” Writes the Asian Times’ Henry C K Liu:
The undeclared US war on Iraq ended some six months ago in a matter of weeks, mostly through bribery of an Iraqi high command infiltrated by US special operations that had been embedded during years of better relations in the Iran-Iraq War and military cooperation with its US counterpart, making treasonous plots possible. That may explain why the US high command had been so confident of a quick victory in defiance of mainstream military logic.
The Iraqi rank and file had also been demoralized by psychological pressure from relentless "shock and awe" strikes launched from locations safely beyond retaliatory range. Yet like Napoleon Bonaparte, who upon entering Moscow was astounded by his inability to find the czar to confirm an honorable victory, US President George W Bush, by his dubious war policy to assassinate an opponent chief of state by smart bombs, was unable to find Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Baghdad from whom to accept an honorable surrender. It is now plain for all to see that while the world's sole superpower may be able to topple a foreign government by the use of less-than-honorable force and force its leader to go underground, it is another matter to occupy a nation one-tenth its size to set up a puppet government to bring peace and order, even for a country the allegedly oppressed population of which US "experts" on Iraqi politics had predicted would welcome a US invasion with flowers and hugs instead of rocket-propelled grenades. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EJ23Ak01.html
Wolfowitz:
Aside from some of the usual attacks, the daring guerillas shot down a U.S. helicopter within sight of its base, wounded several U.S. soldiers in a mortar attack in Baghdad and then fired rocket/mortars at the Al-Rashid hotel, quite possibly targeting Wolfowitz, currently on a well-publicized visit, and the Al-Mansour hotel.
Robert Fisk’s take: You need to take a military escort to reach Baghdad airport these days. Yes, things are getting better in Iraq, according to President Bush - remember that each hour that goes by - but the guerrillas are getting so close to the runways that the Americans have chopped down every tree, every palm bush, every scrap of undergrowth on the way. Rocket-propelled grenades have killed so many GIs on this stretch of highway that the US army - like the Israelis in southern Lebanon in the mid-80s - have erased nature. You travel to Baghdad airport through a wasteland. Heathrow it isn't.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=457272
Those Polls: The Guardian (Peter Beaumont) notes that Iraq’s Centre for Research and Strategic Studies has new findings. Iraqis who view the coalition as a “liberating” force have dropped from 43% when Baghdad was taken over, to 15%. And, 67% of Iraqis view the American-British coalition as “occupying powers.” That’s a 20% increase since April.
Peter Beaumont http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1071460,00.html
WMD- Encore une fois: Again, the imminent threat, it seems, was that Saddam was thinking about nukes, but the sanctions and whatever else prevented him from even trying to secure them. This time, from the Washington Post article (Barton Gellman),
According to records made available to The Washington Post and interviews with arms investigators from the United States, Britain and Australia, it did not require a comprehensive survey to find the central assertions of the Bush administration's prewar nuclear case to be insubstantial or untrue
Among the closely held internal judgments of the Iraq Survey Group, overseen by David Kay as special representative of CIA Director George J. Tenet, are that Iraq's nuclear weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign, and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use. \Clear? There was no wmd, nor a wmd program. So, the “Kay Report” will continue to obfuscate, stall, hope that the public will continue to buy the Bush assertions that ‘it’s already proven’ that Saddam had such weapons.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17707-2003Oct25?language=printer
Financial Aid for Iraq:
Apparently 13 billion was raised at the “Donor’s Conference” though a chunk of that is loans, not grants. The spin continues, that this was another victory in forging the coalition. The Guardian (Leader) has an apt summary:
The Iraq donors' conference in Madrid produced enough in the way of pledges of reconstruction cash and loans for the US to assert that a good start has been made. But continuing political differences, and concerns about how reconstruction will be managed, meant that any sense of a truly united, international effort was lacking.
Several important countries, including France, Russia and Germany, held back; others exhibited an evident wariness reflected by conditional or limited up-front, ready-money contributions. This ambivalence may prolong an already intensely difficult exercise in nation-building. For all the many offers of support yesterday, Iraq is still seen as primarily an American project. It was George Bush's war; even after Madrid, it is still mainly George Bush's problem. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1070841,00.html
Donor’s Conference PR / Spin: Compare the headlines:
The Washington Post re the Madrid Donors' Conference ... (and most of the $ is coming from the World Bank and the International Money Fund, and the 1.5 billion from Kuwait was already given to Iraq. It’s never straight-forward…)
Iraq Donations Fall Short: Many Pledges in the Form of Loans, Debt Relief, Not Grants
Compared w/ Reuters ...
Donors Promise Iraq $33 Billion, Smashing Expectations
Patriot Act: What’s to come:
A contribution from a periodical that has come through before. The St. Petersberg Times’ Robyn Blumner writes about what the Administration is seeking, ostensibly to merely close loopholes in the Patriot Act. Blumner shows that they have more in mind.
In a speech given on the eve of the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, our tin-eared president decided the time was ripe to propose Patriot Act expansions.
The proposed changes, which the president called the closing of "loopholes," may seem technical, but within those details lie our character as a nation. Are we a model of liberty, even in the face of threats to our national security? Or has al-Qaida's ragtag band impelled us to unravel a 200-year commitment to due process? Which is what Bush and Ashcroft are pushing.
Bush wants three additional powers from Congress.
First, he wants to give the Justice Department the authority to confiscate records and compel testimony without review by a court or grand jury.
The Patriot Act had substantially changed the law in this area by removing the requirement that federal agents tie the records they are seeking - be they library, medical, financial, educational or other records - to an investigation of a foreign agent or terrorist. Now, all the government has to do is certify to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - a court that operates in secret and is only open to government lawyers - that the records are "sought for" an investigation into terrorism or espionage…
Where once the FBI could only demand that bookstores turn over records on a particular customer who was under suspicion, now the FBI can seize the entire customer database as long as it somehow figures in an ongoing investigation. The Patriot Act made the courts little more than a rubber stamp for the FBI.
But even this is apparently too much of a paean to the separation of powers for Bush. He wants passage of the "Antiterrorism Tools Enhancement Act of 2003" that would give the FBI "administrative subpoena" authority to confiscate any records and compel any testimony on its say-so alone. The bill would eliminate entirely court oversight, or as Bush would call it "interference."
Second, Bush wants to chip away at the right to bail. Current law allows a judge to deny bond for anyone shown to be dangerous or a flight risk. And, for anyone accused of international terrorism, there is a presumption against granting bond.
Not good enough, according to the president. He wants passage of the "Pretrial Detention and Lifetime Supervision of Terrorists Act of 2003," a bill that would keep people accused of a whole range of new crimes behind bars pending trial by making those crimes presumptively "no bond" offenses.
This is an attempt to lock people up first and investigate later. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, more than 750 immigrants were jailed for months while the Justice Department looked into potential ties to terrorism. In the end not, one was charged. Now Bush wants the power to do the same thing to Americans and immigrants here legally.
And third, Bush wants to expand the reach of the federal death penalty by making it applicable to "domestic terrorism."
Under the Patriot Act, the crime of "domestic terrorism" couldn't be more broadly written. Any criminal act intended to influence the government through "intimidation or coercion" involving "dangerous acts" qualifies. Aggressive protesters of all stripes from Greenpeace activists to abortion foes could easily fall within this definition, opening the door for politically motivated executions.
Bush also wants the death penalty for those convicted of providing "material support for terrorism," a law that can be violated even when people think they are giving money to a charity and don't know the group is a designated terrorist organization.
While Bush is working to undo more of our liberty, there are bipartisan efforts in Congress pushing back. Perhaps the most promising is the "Safety and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act" that would rollback some of the worst excesses of the Patriot Act. If even NBA commissioners know the Patriot Act is a bad thing, what is Congress waiting for?http://www.sptimes.com/2003/10/26/news_pf/Columns/No_pause_in_Patriot_A.shtml
And, a bit of Frank Rich. Not his best, but always worthwhile…
It's at times like this that we must be grateful that Disney didn't succeed in jettisoning "Nightline" for David Letterman. (The administration is only too happy to send its top brass to Mr. Letterman when it doesn't send them to Oprah — Colin Powell most recently.) If the Oct. 15 "Nightline" wasn't an Edward R. Murrow turning point in the coverage of the war on terrorism, it's the closest we've seen to one since 9/11. There will be others, because this administration doesn't realize that trying to control the news is always a loser. Most of the press was as slow to challenge Joe McCarthy, the Robert McNamara Pentagon and the Nixon administration as it has been to challenge the wartime Bush White House. But in America, at least, history always catches up with those who try to falsify it in real time. That's what L.B.J. and Nixon both learned the hard way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/arts/26RICH.html?pagewanted=print&position
-R
The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks said that the White House was continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he was prepared to subpoena the documents if they were not turned over within weeks.
Well into the NY Times front page article (Philip Shenon) came pointed comments from Max Cleland, whose comments were less cautious than Chairman Thomas Kean’s.
… as another member of the commission, Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, became the first panel member to say publicly that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from the panel for purely political reasons.
"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting."
He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/national/26KEAN.html?ei=5004&en=ed66b0ead25a2dac&ex=1068350400&partner=UNTD&pagewanted=print&position=
What’s Happening, Iraq: Yes, much more re Iraq. There’s no end, as this is a quagmire. Foreign observers are able to step back and look at these 25-26 weeks since the war was “won.” Writes the Asian Times’ Henry C K Liu:
The undeclared US war on Iraq ended some six months ago in a matter of weeks, mostly through bribery of an Iraqi high command infiltrated by US special operations that had been embedded during years of better relations in the Iran-Iraq War and military cooperation with its US counterpart, making treasonous plots possible. That may explain why the US high command had been so confident of a quick victory in defiance of mainstream military logic.
The Iraqi rank and file had also been demoralized by psychological pressure from relentless "shock and awe" strikes launched from locations safely beyond retaliatory range. Yet like Napoleon Bonaparte, who upon entering Moscow was astounded by his inability to find the czar to confirm an honorable victory, US President George W Bush, by his dubious war policy to assassinate an opponent chief of state by smart bombs, was unable to find Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Baghdad from whom to accept an honorable surrender. It is now plain for all to see that while the world's sole superpower may be able to topple a foreign government by the use of less-than-honorable force and force its leader to go underground, it is another matter to occupy a nation one-tenth its size to set up a puppet government to bring peace and order, even for a country the allegedly oppressed population of which US "experts" on Iraqi politics had predicted would welcome a US invasion with flowers and hugs instead of rocket-propelled grenades. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EJ23Ak01.html
Wolfowitz:
Aside from some of the usual attacks, the daring guerillas shot down a U.S. helicopter within sight of its base, wounded several U.S. soldiers in a mortar attack in Baghdad and then fired rocket/mortars at the Al-Rashid hotel, quite possibly targeting Wolfowitz, currently on a well-publicized visit, and the Al-Mansour hotel.
Robert Fisk’s take: You need to take a military escort to reach Baghdad airport these days. Yes, things are getting better in Iraq, according to President Bush - remember that each hour that goes by - but the guerrillas are getting so close to the runways that the Americans have chopped down every tree, every palm bush, every scrap of undergrowth on the way. Rocket-propelled grenades have killed so many GIs on this stretch of highway that the US army - like the Israelis in southern Lebanon in the mid-80s - have erased nature. You travel to Baghdad airport through a wasteland. Heathrow it isn't.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=457272
Those Polls: The Guardian (Peter Beaumont) notes that Iraq’s Centre for Research and Strategic Studies has new findings. Iraqis who view the coalition as a “liberating” force have dropped from 43% when Baghdad was taken over, to 15%. And, 67% of Iraqis view the American-British coalition as “occupying powers.” That’s a 20% increase since April.
Peter Beaumont http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1071460,00.html
WMD- Encore une fois: Again, the imminent threat, it seems, was that Saddam was thinking about nukes, but the sanctions and whatever else prevented him from even trying to secure them. This time, from the Washington Post article (Barton Gellman),
According to records made available to The Washington Post and interviews with arms investigators from the United States, Britain and Australia, it did not require a comprehensive survey to find the central assertions of the Bush administration's prewar nuclear case to be insubstantial or untrue
Among the closely held internal judgments of the Iraq Survey Group, overseen by David Kay as special representative of CIA Director George J. Tenet, are that Iraq's nuclear weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign, and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use. \Clear? There was no wmd, nor a wmd program. So, the “Kay Report” will continue to obfuscate, stall, hope that the public will continue to buy the Bush assertions that ‘it’s already proven’ that Saddam had such weapons.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17707-2003Oct25?language=printer
Financial Aid for Iraq:
Apparently 13 billion was raised at the “Donor’s Conference” though a chunk of that is loans, not grants. The spin continues, that this was another victory in forging the coalition. The Guardian (Leader) has an apt summary:
The Iraq donors' conference in Madrid produced enough in the way of pledges of reconstruction cash and loans for the US to assert that a good start has been made. But continuing political differences, and concerns about how reconstruction will be managed, meant that any sense of a truly united, international effort was lacking.
Several important countries, including France, Russia and Germany, held back; others exhibited an evident wariness reflected by conditional or limited up-front, ready-money contributions. This ambivalence may prolong an already intensely difficult exercise in nation-building. For all the many offers of support yesterday, Iraq is still seen as primarily an American project. It was George Bush's war; even after Madrid, it is still mainly George Bush's problem. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1070841,00.html
Donor’s Conference PR / Spin: Compare the headlines:
The Washington Post re the Madrid Donors' Conference ... (and most of the $ is coming from the World Bank and the International Money Fund, and the 1.5 billion from Kuwait was already given to Iraq. It’s never straight-forward…)
Iraq Donations Fall Short: Many Pledges in the Form of Loans, Debt Relief, Not Grants
Compared w/ Reuters ...
Donors Promise Iraq $33 Billion, Smashing Expectations
Patriot Act: What’s to come:
A contribution from a periodical that has come through before. The St. Petersberg Times’ Robyn Blumner writes about what the Administration is seeking, ostensibly to merely close loopholes in the Patriot Act. Blumner shows that they have more in mind.
In a speech given on the eve of the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, our tin-eared president decided the time was ripe to propose Patriot Act expansions.
The proposed changes, which the president called the closing of "loopholes," may seem technical, but within those details lie our character as a nation. Are we a model of liberty, even in the face of threats to our national security? Or has al-Qaida's ragtag band impelled us to unravel a 200-year commitment to due process? Which is what Bush and Ashcroft are pushing.
Bush wants three additional powers from Congress.
First, he wants to give the Justice Department the authority to confiscate records and compel testimony without review by a court or grand jury.
The Patriot Act had substantially changed the law in this area by removing the requirement that federal agents tie the records they are seeking - be they library, medical, financial, educational or other records - to an investigation of a foreign agent or terrorist. Now, all the government has to do is certify to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - a court that operates in secret and is only open to government lawyers - that the records are "sought for" an investigation into terrorism or espionage…
Where once the FBI could only demand that bookstores turn over records on a particular customer who was under suspicion, now the FBI can seize the entire customer database as long as it somehow figures in an ongoing investigation. The Patriot Act made the courts little more than a rubber stamp for the FBI.
But even this is apparently too much of a paean to the separation of powers for Bush. He wants passage of the "Antiterrorism Tools Enhancement Act of 2003" that would give the FBI "administrative subpoena" authority to confiscate any records and compel any testimony on its say-so alone. The bill would eliminate entirely court oversight, or as Bush would call it "interference."
Second, Bush wants to chip away at the right to bail. Current law allows a judge to deny bond for anyone shown to be dangerous or a flight risk. And, for anyone accused of international terrorism, there is a presumption against granting bond.
Not good enough, according to the president. He wants passage of the "Pretrial Detention and Lifetime Supervision of Terrorists Act of 2003," a bill that would keep people accused of a whole range of new crimes behind bars pending trial by making those crimes presumptively "no bond" offenses.
This is an attempt to lock people up first and investigate later. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, more than 750 immigrants were jailed for months while the Justice Department looked into potential ties to terrorism. In the end not, one was charged. Now Bush wants the power to do the same thing to Americans and immigrants here legally.
And third, Bush wants to expand the reach of the federal death penalty by making it applicable to "domestic terrorism."
Under the Patriot Act, the crime of "domestic terrorism" couldn't be more broadly written. Any criminal act intended to influence the government through "intimidation or coercion" involving "dangerous acts" qualifies. Aggressive protesters of all stripes from Greenpeace activists to abortion foes could easily fall within this definition, opening the door for politically motivated executions.
Bush also wants the death penalty for those convicted of providing "material support for terrorism," a law that can be violated even when people think they are giving money to a charity and don't know the group is a designated terrorist organization.
While Bush is working to undo more of our liberty, there are bipartisan efforts in Congress pushing back. Perhaps the most promising is the "Safety and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act" that would rollback some of the worst excesses of the Patriot Act. If even NBA commissioners know the Patriot Act is a bad thing, what is Congress waiting for?http://www.sptimes.com/2003/10/26/news_pf/Columns/No_pause_in_Patriot_A.shtml
And, a bit of Frank Rich. Not his best, but always worthwhile…
It's at times like this that we must be grateful that Disney didn't succeed in jettisoning "Nightline" for David Letterman. (The administration is only too happy to send its top brass to Mr. Letterman when it doesn't send them to Oprah — Colin Powell most recently.) If the Oct. 15 "Nightline" wasn't an Edward R. Murrow turning point in the coverage of the war on terrorism, it's the closest we've seen to one since 9/11. There will be others, because this administration doesn't realize that trying to control the news is always a loser. Most of the press was as slow to challenge Joe McCarthy, the Robert McNamara Pentagon and the Nixon administration as it has been to challenge the wartime Bush White House. But in America, at least, history always catches up with those who try to falsify it in real time. That's what L.B.J. and Nixon both learned the hard way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/arts/26RICH.html?pagewanted=print&position
-R
