Thursday, September 11, 2003
We got through another 9/11. Naturally the emphasis was on pain and remembrance, not the unanswered questions. The Administration hoped to take advantage by pushing for USA Patriot II/Victory Act amidst more conflating of Iraq/terror/al-Qaeda. Newsweek did its part by blurring the distinction with a cover line, “433 Americans Have Died in the War on Terror”.
But, 9/11 found the Administration largely on the defensive, which is not its mode. Despite polls saying that the public is ready to yield its rights, Congress has been ready to allow much of USA Patriot to ‘sunset’, and is hardly disposed to reverse course. The NY Times front-paged its wide-ranging survey that finds that “The world’s sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.”
Then, there’s the perpetual line from Bush’s speech that says the Administration is “doing all we can to make America safe”. Perhaps this is the ultimate deception. Their ideology simply does not allow this, instead preferring that the bankrupt states and private companies that seek a profit should provide the added security. So, chemical and nuclear plants, ports, etc are no safer now than two years ago.
ABC helped illustrate this by shipping uranium across U.S. borders for the second time. The ABCNEWS project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15 pounds of depleted uranium that is legal to import into the United States. The uranium, in a steel pipe with a lead lining, was placed in a suitcase for the shipment.
Their report noted that homeland security officials did not realize the depleted uranium had successfully gone through its screening devices until the truck driver hired by ABCNews became concerned that customs officials had missed something.
9/11: In Salon, Kristin Breitweiser penned a review of the Bush Showtime fiction which portrayed Bush as heroic on 9/11:
"It is understandable that so little time is actually devoted to the president's true actions on the morning of 9/11. Because to show the entire 23 minutes from 9:03 to 9:25 a.m., when President Bush, in reality, remained seated and listening to "second grade story-hour" while people like my husband were burning alive inside the World Trade Center towers, would run counter to Karl Rove's art direction and grand vision."
For the complete record of Bush’s movements that morning, see the following: http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html
Here’s an excerpt from the large report, from the Center for Cooperative Research- its final two paragraphs: (Alan Wood, Paul Thompson, 5/03)
There are many questions that deserve answers. So many pieces of the puzzle do not fit. Simply by reading the mainstream media reports, we can see that mere incompetence doesn't explain what happened to Bush on that day. For instance, it makes no sense that Bush would listen to a story about a goat long after being told the US was under attack, and even after the Secret Service decided to immediately evacuate him from the school. It defies explanation that Air Force One's fighter escort took two hours to appear. And it is mind-boggling that there are seven different versions of how Bush learned about the first crash.
It's doubtful that the Independent Commission investigation will look critically at what Bush did on 9/11 and why he did it. Despite the contradictory reports, no one in the mainstream media has yet demanded clarification of the many obvious inconsistencies and problems of the official version. Anyone even asking questions has been quickly insulted as anti-American, accused of bashing the president in a time of war, or branded a conspiracy nut. Only a few relatives of the 9/11 attacks have been able to raise these issues publicly. For instance, Kristen Breitweiser told Phil Donahue: "It was clear that we were under attack. Why didn't the Secret Service whisk [Bush] out of that school? ... [H]e is the commander-in-chief of the United States of America, our country was clearly under attack, it was after the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there for 25 minutes." [Donahue, 8/13/02] But so far, few have listened to their concerns.
Someone’s got to do it!
The Santa Cruz Independent Media Center published the draft text of a letter to be sent to Congress by the Mayor, following a 6-1 city council vote. It requested a “determination on impeachment. The document asks:
Did President Bush violate congressionally ratified international treaties and thus Article VI, the ‘supremacy clause’, of our own constitution through the invasion and occupation of Iraq?
Globalization: Women and Water, II
I wrote about Bill Moyers’ NOW in the previous blog. But after two requests for more, I print a passage of the rich interview with scientist – activist Vandana Shiva, aired this past week during the program on “Rich World, Poor Women”. The transcript is available at http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_shiva_print.html
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Suez, this world's biggest water company, wants to privatize the Ganges. One hundred thousand people were displaced. And the women started to talk about how many women are starting to commit suicide. Because they can't walk the water and the government has cancelled every local water scheme saying, "Now all the money, all the public wealth has gone into these mega-projects." So not only are rural communities denied the water, they are denied the public investment to bring water if their own village has run dry. So we have women jumping into the Ganges because now the Ganges instead of being their mother for life has become a graveyard. So it is, in a way, a system of dispossessing the poor.
Coca-Cola, South India, just been there on Earth Day I celebrated a year of protests with tribal women who are fighting Coca-Cola which is sucking out 1.5 million liters a day of water for the bottling of what is called ...India. And-- the-- Coca-Cola bottled water. Interestingly, two miles radius, every tank, every well is dry. Women have no drinking water. That's how it plays out.
BILL MOYERS: You're saying this is depriving the people at the grass-roots of the water they need just for the sustenance of life? Is that the point?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Absolutely. Women in the hills are being denied water so that every drop of Ganges water can flow down to be sold. So globalization commodifies what - the resources that are necessary for survival.
BILL MOYERS: There is an argument that water is getting increasingly scarce and only the market can determine how it can be effectively distributed. You obviously disagree with that.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: I disagree with it because I'm enough of a scientist to know that water is created in nature and not in markets. Markets can only allocate water and take it uphill to where the money is. Usually this means that those who have destroyed water resources by abuse and pollution get new license to destroy it.
It is not an incentive to conserve. It's an incentive to over-exploit. And the Coca-Cola case in Kerala is a very good example. That here is a company that can take the water. It doesn't-- conserve the water. Depletes it and creates scarcity where there was no scarcity.
BILL MOYERS: Is it taking this, is it bottling this water for sale?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: It's bottling the water for sale. So water it takes for free from local communities it then sells at ten rupees a bottle.
BILL MOYERS: Is the world's largest democracy in jeopardy?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: I think all the world's democracies are in jeopardy. And my own thesis is that this is connected to the trade liberalization and globalization.
BILL MOYERS: How? Because most people in this country who support trade liberalization say just the opposite. You know, they say this is what brings-- globalization is what brings ideas. It brings wealth. It brings-- technology and innovation to a country. And it should create a commonwealth of prosperity. You're saying just the opposite.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Well, if globalization was founded on democratic decision making from the ground up, it would create more freedom of interaction. It would create more flow of positive ideas, more universal solidarity among communities. But globalization as it's shaped right now under the coercive rules of trade under the World Trade Organization, of the World Bank and IMF structure adjustment, basically doesn't create wealth.
It takes the wealth of the poor and puts them in the hands of global cooperation, leaving insecurity behind. In addition, decisions that we made as national systems, whether it was decisions about how we run our intellectual property rights systems. What do we do with our water?
How do we do our agriculture? What seeds we plant? What price our crops will sell at? All those are decisions taken out of the country, put into a World Trade Organization or put into the hands of global corporations.
Eric Alterman on Bush the commander-in-chief:
Is there a special circle of Hell for those who lie to persuade others to risk their lives while shielding themselves from all danger? If so, I hope they have a special room for the guys who do it dressed up like fighter pilots.
Dick Morris with Advice for Bush: He’s always idiosyncratic… and often listened to…
Why is Bush falling so badly? The superficial reasons are the Iraq casualties, the failure to find WMDs and the continuing inability to round up Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But the real reason is that terror is receding as an issue, largely due to Bush's success.
The solution for Bush is to put terrorism back on the front burner by high profile and aggressive action against Iran and/or North Korea. It's not necessary to wag the dog, but Bush should wag his tongue and raise the profile of these two remaining threats to our security. http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/5261.htm
-R
But, 9/11 found the Administration largely on the defensive, which is not its mode. Despite polls saying that the public is ready to yield its rights, Congress has been ready to allow much of USA Patriot to ‘sunset’, and is hardly disposed to reverse course. The NY Times front-paged its wide-ranging survey that finds that “The world’s sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.”
Then, there’s the perpetual line from Bush’s speech that says the Administration is “doing all we can to make America safe”. Perhaps this is the ultimate deception. Their ideology simply does not allow this, instead preferring that the bankrupt states and private companies that seek a profit should provide the added security. So, chemical and nuclear plants, ports, etc are no safer now than two years ago.
ABC helped illustrate this by shipping uranium across U.S. borders for the second time. The ABCNEWS project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15 pounds of depleted uranium that is legal to import into the United States. The uranium, in a steel pipe with a lead lining, was placed in a suitcase for the shipment.
Their report noted that homeland security officials did not realize the depleted uranium had successfully gone through its screening devices until the truck driver hired by ABCNews became concerned that customs officials had missed something.
9/11: In Salon, Kristin Breitweiser penned a review of the Bush Showtime fiction which portrayed Bush as heroic on 9/11:
"It is understandable that so little time is actually devoted to the president's true actions on the morning of 9/11. Because to show the entire 23 minutes from 9:03 to 9:25 a.m., when President Bush, in reality, remained seated and listening to "second grade story-hour" while people like my husband were burning alive inside the World Trade Center towers, would run counter to Karl Rove's art direction and grand vision."
For the complete record of Bush’s movements that morning, see the following: http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html
Here’s an excerpt from the large report, from the Center for Cooperative Research- its final two paragraphs: (Alan Wood, Paul Thompson, 5/03)
There are many questions that deserve answers. So many pieces of the puzzle do not fit. Simply by reading the mainstream media reports, we can see that mere incompetence doesn't explain what happened to Bush on that day. For instance, it makes no sense that Bush would listen to a story about a goat long after being told the US was under attack, and even after the Secret Service decided to immediately evacuate him from the school. It defies explanation that Air Force One's fighter escort took two hours to appear. And it is mind-boggling that there are seven different versions of how Bush learned about the first crash.
It's doubtful that the Independent Commission investigation will look critically at what Bush did on 9/11 and why he did it. Despite the contradictory reports, no one in the mainstream media has yet demanded clarification of the many obvious inconsistencies and problems of the official version. Anyone even asking questions has been quickly insulted as anti-American, accused of bashing the president in a time of war, or branded a conspiracy nut. Only a few relatives of the 9/11 attacks have been able to raise these issues publicly. For instance, Kristen Breitweiser told Phil Donahue: "It was clear that we were under attack. Why didn't the Secret Service whisk [Bush] out of that school? ... [H]e is the commander-in-chief of the United States of America, our country was clearly under attack, it was after the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there for 25 minutes." [Donahue, 8/13/02] But so far, few have listened to their concerns.
Someone’s got to do it!
The Santa Cruz Independent Media Center published the draft text of a letter to be sent to Congress by the Mayor, following a 6-1 city council vote. It requested a “determination on impeachment. The document asks:
Did President Bush violate congressionally ratified international treaties and thus Article VI, the ‘supremacy clause’, of our own constitution through the invasion and occupation of Iraq?
Globalization: Women and Water, II
I wrote about Bill Moyers’ NOW in the previous blog. But after two requests for more, I print a passage of the rich interview with scientist – activist Vandana Shiva, aired this past week during the program on “Rich World, Poor Women”. The transcript is available at http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_shiva_print.html
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Suez, this world's biggest water company, wants to privatize the Ganges. One hundred thousand people were displaced. And the women started to talk about how many women are starting to commit suicide. Because they can't walk the water and the government has cancelled every local water scheme saying, "Now all the money, all the public wealth has gone into these mega-projects." So not only are rural communities denied the water, they are denied the public investment to bring water if their own village has run dry. So we have women jumping into the Ganges because now the Ganges instead of being their mother for life has become a graveyard. So it is, in a way, a system of dispossessing the poor.
Coca-Cola, South India, just been there on Earth Day I celebrated a year of protests with tribal women who are fighting Coca-Cola which is sucking out 1.5 million liters a day of water for the bottling of what is called ...India. And-- the-- Coca-Cola bottled water. Interestingly, two miles radius, every tank, every well is dry. Women have no drinking water. That's how it plays out.
BILL MOYERS: You're saying this is depriving the people at the grass-roots of the water they need just for the sustenance of life? Is that the point?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Absolutely. Women in the hills are being denied water so that every drop of Ganges water can flow down to be sold. So globalization commodifies what - the resources that are necessary for survival.
BILL MOYERS: There is an argument that water is getting increasingly scarce and only the market can determine how it can be effectively distributed. You obviously disagree with that.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: I disagree with it because I'm enough of a scientist to know that water is created in nature and not in markets. Markets can only allocate water and take it uphill to where the money is. Usually this means that those who have destroyed water resources by abuse and pollution get new license to destroy it.
It is not an incentive to conserve. It's an incentive to over-exploit. And the Coca-Cola case in Kerala is a very good example. That here is a company that can take the water. It doesn't-- conserve the water. Depletes it and creates scarcity where there was no scarcity.
BILL MOYERS: Is it taking this, is it bottling this water for sale?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: It's bottling the water for sale. So water it takes for free from local communities it then sells at ten rupees a bottle.
BILL MOYERS: Is the world's largest democracy in jeopardy?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: I think all the world's democracies are in jeopardy. And my own thesis is that this is connected to the trade liberalization and globalization.
BILL MOYERS: How? Because most people in this country who support trade liberalization say just the opposite. You know, they say this is what brings-- globalization is what brings ideas. It brings wealth. It brings-- technology and innovation to a country. And it should create a commonwealth of prosperity. You're saying just the opposite.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Well, if globalization was founded on democratic decision making from the ground up, it would create more freedom of interaction. It would create more flow of positive ideas, more universal solidarity among communities. But globalization as it's shaped right now under the coercive rules of trade under the World Trade Organization, of the World Bank and IMF structure adjustment, basically doesn't create wealth.
It takes the wealth of the poor and puts them in the hands of global cooperation, leaving insecurity behind. In addition, decisions that we made as national systems, whether it was decisions about how we run our intellectual property rights systems. What do we do with our water?
How do we do our agriculture? What seeds we plant? What price our crops will sell at? All those are decisions taken out of the country, put into a World Trade Organization or put into the hands of global corporations.
Eric Alterman on Bush the commander-in-chief:
Is there a special circle of Hell for those who lie to persuade others to risk their lives while shielding themselves from all danger? If so, I hope they have a special room for the guys who do it dressed up like fighter pilots.
Dick Morris with Advice for Bush: He’s always idiosyncratic… and often listened to…
Why is Bush falling so badly? The superficial reasons are the Iraq casualties, the failure to find WMDs and the continuing inability to round up Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But the real reason is that terror is receding as an issue, largely due to Bush's success.
The solution for Bush is to put terrorism back on the front burner by high profile and aggressive action against Iran and/or North Korea. It's not necessary to wag the dog, but Bush should wag his tongue and raise the profile of these two remaining threats to our security. http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/5261.htm
-R
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Status quo on the ground. Casualties continue, pressure on / pleading with foreign governments to pitch in; behind-the-scenes negotiations on a new UN resolution- thus far the U.S. hasn’t acceded to enough UN/foreign involvement and control.
Vietnam Parallel: All parallels are inexact, but Pepe Escobar of Asia Times online (atimes.com) draws the Vietnam parallel. He seizes on General Giap, the master architect of the Vietnamese strategy that defeated the U.S., that Giap's efforts have been carefully studied by the Iraqis.
Just as it took a few years for the Americans to lose the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese, it took them only a few weeks to lose the hearts and minds of the majority of Iraqis - which ultimately means losing the war, whatever the strategic final result. Topographic denials - this is the Mesopotamian desert, not the Indochinese jungle - don't work, nor do denials saying that the Iraqis are not as politicized as the Vietnamese were by communism. These totally miss the point: as happened in Vietnam, what is happening now in Iraq has everything to do with patriotism and nationalism.
Former Iraqi vice premier Tariq Aziz used to say, before the US invasion, "Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles." Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, aka "Comical Ali", the unforgettable former minister of information, used to say Iraq would be "another Indochina". The guerrilla war strategy against what was considered an inevitable US invasion has been perfected in Iraq for years. And the master strategist was neither an Assyrian nor a Mesopotamian general, but the legendary Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who coordinated the victories against French colonialism and US meddling.
Iraqi strategists - from army officials to Ba'ath Party officials - have always been thorough students of the Vietnam War, or American War, as it is referred to in Vietnam.
Verbiage: Recall Vietnamization? Get used to seeing ‘the U.S. is Iraqicizing its operations, or the process of Iraqinization.
Incompetence: More admissions as to lack of planning, anticipation. The Administration is telling Congress that they hadn’t anticipated the damage to the Iraqi infrastructure (Saddam’s fault), the lack of help / ratting from the Iraqis (Iraqis’ fault), etc. The Independent's Robert Fisk. reported on the Senate hearings:
Assistant Under Secretary Douglas Feith, one of Rumsfeld's "neo-cons", revealed that an office for "post-war planning" had only been opened three weeks earlier. He and Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman conceded that the Pentagon had been "thinking" about post-war Iraq for 10 months. "There are enormous uncertainties," Feith said. "The most you can do in planning is develop concepts."
Concepts?????
The $87 Billion (and more): The LA Times has been doing yoeperson’s (sic) work, …some fine reporting. Warren Vieth and Esther Schrader took apart the numbers behind the Administration’s request for an additional $87 billion, emphasizing that "even the additional $87 billion it was seeking from a wary Congress would fall far short of what is needed for postwar reconstruction."
If you follow the numbers, there is a reconstruction funding gap" of approximately $55 billion. Add that to the original outlay of $79 billion and we’re up to $221 billion.
What does that mean? A deficit approaching / reaching $600 billion. Time to again calculate how much this was the customary deception or customary incompetence. I keep concluding that it’s a ‘blend’. Whichever, for perspective, the requested $87 billion is merely 10 times the EPA budget or twice what’s spent on unemployment benefits.
Al-Qaeda and Iraq: The LA Times (Greg Miller) doesn’t pussy-foot around with the Al-Qaeda~Iraq connection or lack thereof.
But evidence of ties to Al Qaeda were flimsy at best. And the Al Qaeda allegations were never as prominent in the White House's case for war as Iraq's alleged stocks of weapons of mass destruction, its flouting of U.N. sanctions, and the argument that installing a democratic regime could transform the Middle East.
Some experts and U.S. officials believe that the war against Iraq has weakened the war on terrorism, distracting attention and sapping military and intelligence resources that had been trained against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
WTO / Cancun:
Remember the hot issue pre-9/11? Globalization. It’s still out there. Two good entries on the meetings that began today.
(1) George Monbiot in the Guardian:
Outside the world trade talks beginning in Cancun in Mexico tomorrow, two battles will be fought. The first will be the battle between the campaigners demanding fair trade and the rich-nation delegates demanding unfair trade. The second will be the dispute now brewing within the ranks of those who claim to be helping the poor.
The problem all those who want a fairer deal face is that there has seldom, if ever, been a trade treaty struck between rich and poor which does not amount to legalized theft. The draft agreement the members of the World Trade Organization will discuss this week is no exception. While it permits the rich nations to continue protecting their markets, it seeks to force the poor nations to open their economies to several novel forms of institutional piracy.
(2) Tom Hayden for Alternet, a companion piece for Bill Moyers’ NOW last week which addressed ‘globalization and women’, which could have been subtitled, The Horrors of Privatization. See the NOW web site for more (pbs.org/NOW)
Cancun's water supply was privatized by an Enron subsidiary in the mid-Nineties. The water, according to environmental specialists, is dirtier than before but costs consumers four times as much.
There is also a push to open rich genetic diversity and forests surrounding Cancun to corporate prospectors under privatization provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS).
In hopes of salvaging a victory in Cancun, the U.S. recently ended its opposition to a plan for poor countries to obtain generic medicines to treat HIV and a handful of other life-threatening diseases. But that deal, in response to global grassroots pressure, is far from nailed down, and will be overshadowed by other conflicts this week.
Venezuela:
Let’s not forget this one. The Administration is still seeking a "recall" of Hugo Chavez; many papers picked up the AP/Reuters item in which Chavez accused the US of "meddling"... again. Since Venezuela produces more oil than Iraq, our ambassador, Charles Shapiro, is reportedly ‘working the streets’ and long-time troublemaker Otto Reich is still around, it’s time to review the Chile coup we orchestrated in the early ‘70’s and to remind our representatives that they should speak out on this issue, as well.
Overtime pay victory
A victory in the Senate! Senate Democrats succeeded in getting an amendment passed to block the White House proposal that sought to restrict overtime pay. The 54-45 vote meant that some Republicans broke from their usually disciplined block
The House has already approved the Bush proposal, so the conference committee will seek to reconcile.
The Republican deserters: Campbell (CO), Chaffee (RI), Murkowski (AK), Snowe (ME), Spectre (PA), and Stevens (AK).
Bustamante as Leftist! He has stood out for his advocating for taxing the rich. And, he leads in the polls! The LA Times' Matea Gold notes a solidifying of his drift.
In his quest for the governor's office, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is increasingly veering left with appeals to immigrants and working-class voters, shucking off the label of moderate Democrat that he has worn for years.
By pairing his personal biography with a campaign platform aimed at blue-collar workers, Bustamante has positioned himself as a staunch liberal — and is depicting himself as the antithesis of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The move reflects the dynamics of a multi-candidate recall election in which the winner need only get the most votes, not the majority. That has allowed Bustamante, whose political career began in a conservative Central Valley district, to run a campaign aimed directly at liberal Democratic partisans.
State of the media:
CNN has had virtually zero coverage of the WTO meetings in Cancun, yet booked Britney Spears for Crossfire, where she "weighed in" as to the need to be unquestioning in support of Junior. Of course, the foreign press is ‘front-paging’ the conference.
A (lengthy) comment on Bush Administration: A reader (John Shaw of Seattle) of Eric Alterman’s column at msnbc.com, wrote in a beaut, which I’m happy to re-produce.
Is it possible that what we think of as Bush failures, he thinks of as successes? Certainly the enormous budget deficit is deliberate, having been a central Republican tenet since Reaganomics, with the long-term goal being the fiscally forced elimination of Social Security, since the R’s have conceded political-ideological defeat on this issue. Given that they count this apparent failure as a success (and I don’t see how anybody could argue that the deficit is inadvertant), what other obvious failures could be seen as successes by completely unscrupulous villains?
High unemployment: Forces long term wage and benefit concessions, puts unions on their heels. Success.
Increase in homelessness: Increases economic insecurity for the lower classes, making them more likely to docilely accept terrible work situations. Success.
Defeat in the drug war: Gives an excuse to lock up huge percentages of poor people, especially poor people of color, especially poor men of color. Given the historically inarguable "conservative" animus against people of color, especially men of color, I think they’d chalk this up as success too. The addicts not in prison are destroying their lives and severely damaging the lives of people around them. Success.
War on terror and insufficient homeland security: Since the Bush administration OFFICIALLY stated that an invasion of Iraq would likely result in INCREASED terrorism against Americans, I can only imagine that they count the lack of a terrorist sequel of the September 11 Atrocity as a failure. Karl Rove saw Bush’s numbers skyrocket when foreigners murdered thousands of Americans. Given their completely unscrupulous villainy, why should we trust that they don’t deliberately want that to happen again, especially since their actions seem to show it?
Americans have a tremendous capacity for denial. We simply don’t want to believe that our leaders really, really mean to do most of us serious, serious harm.
-R
Status quo on the ground. Casualties continue, pressure on / pleading with foreign governments to pitch in; behind-the-scenes negotiations on a new UN resolution- thus far the U.S. hasn’t acceded to enough UN/foreign involvement and control.
Vietnam Parallel: All parallels are inexact, but Pepe Escobar of Asia Times online (atimes.com) draws the Vietnam parallel. He seizes on General Giap, the master architect of the Vietnamese strategy that defeated the U.S., that Giap's efforts have been carefully studied by the Iraqis.
Just as it took a few years for the Americans to lose the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese, it took them only a few weeks to lose the hearts and minds of the majority of Iraqis - which ultimately means losing the war, whatever the strategic final result. Topographic denials - this is the Mesopotamian desert, not the Indochinese jungle - don't work, nor do denials saying that the Iraqis are not as politicized as the Vietnamese were by communism. These totally miss the point: as happened in Vietnam, what is happening now in Iraq has everything to do with patriotism and nationalism.
Former Iraqi vice premier Tariq Aziz used to say, before the US invasion, "Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings our jungles." Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, aka "Comical Ali", the unforgettable former minister of information, used to say Iraq would be "another Indochina". The guerrilla war strategy against what was considered an inevitable US invasion has been perfected in Iraq for years. And the master strategist was neither an Assyrian nor a Mesopotamian general, but the legendary Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who coordinated the victories against French colonialism and US meddling.
Iraqi strategists - from army officials to Ba'ath Party officials - have always been thorough students of the Vietnam War, or American War, as it is referred to in Vietnam.
Verbiage: Recall Vietnamization? Get used to seeing ‘the U.S. is Iraqicizing its operations, or the process of Iraqinization.
Incompetence: More admissions as to lack of planning, anticipation. The Administration is telling Congress that they hadn’t anticipated the damage to the Iraqi infrastructure (Saddam’s fault), the lack of help / ratting from the Iraqis (Iraqis’ fault), etc. The Independent's Robert Fisk. reported on the Senate hearings:
Assistant Under Secretary Douglas Feith, one of Rumsfeld's "neo-cons", revealed that an office for "post-war planning" had only been opened three weeks earlier. He and Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman conceded that the Pentagon had been "thinking" about post-war Iraq for 10 months. "There are enormous uncertainties," Feith said. "The most you can do in planning is develop concepts."
Concepts?????
The $87 Billion (and more): The LA Times has been doing yoeperson’s (sic) work, …some fine reporting. Warren Vieth and Esther Schrader took apart the numbers behind the Administration’s request for an additional $87 billion, emphasizing that "even the additional $87 billion it was seeking from a wary Congress would fall far short of what is needed for postwar reconstruction."
If you follow the numbers, there is a reconstruction funding gap" of approximately $55 billion. Add that to the original outlay of $79 billion and we’re up to $221 billion.
What does that mean? A deficit approaching / reaching $600 billion. Time to again calculate how much this was the customary deception or customary incompetence. I keep concluding that it’s a ‘blend’. Whichever, for perspective, the requested $87 billion is merely 10 times the EPA budget or twice what’s spent on unemployment benefits.
Al-Qaeda and Iraq: The LA Times (Greg Miller) doesn’t pussy-foot around with the Al-Qaeda~Iraq connection or lack thereof.
But evidence of ties to Al Qaeda were flimsy at best. And the Al Qaeda allegations were never as prominent in the White House's case for war as Iraq's alleged stocks of weapons of mass destruction, its flouting of U.N. sanctions, and the argument that installing a democratic regime could transform the Middle East.
Some experts and U.S. officials believe that the war against Iraq has weakened the war on terrorism, distracting attention and sapping military and intelligence resources that had been trained against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
WTO / Cancun:
Remember the hot issue pre-9/11? Globalization. It’s still out there. Two good entries on the meetings that began today.
(1) George Monbiot in the Guardian:
Outside the world trade talks beginning in Cancun in Mexico tomorrow, two battles will be fought. The first will be the battle between the campaigners demanding fair trade and the rich-nation delegates demanding unfair trade. The second will be the dispute now brewing within the ranks of those who claim to be helping the poor.
The problem all those who want a fairer deal face is that there has seldom, if ever, been a trade treaty struck between rich and poor which does not amount to legalized theft. The draft agreement the members of the World Trade Organization will discuss this week is no exception. While it permits the rich nations to continue protecting their markets, it seeks to force the poor nations to open their economies to several novel forms of institutional piracy.
(2) Tom Hayden for Alternet, a companion piece for Bill Moyers’ NOW last week which addressed ‘globalization and women’, which could have been subtitled, The Horrors of Privatization. See the NOW web site for more (pbs.org/NOW)
Cancun's water supply was privatized by an Enron subsidiary in the mid-Nineties. The water, according to environmental specialists, is dirtier than before but costs consumers four times as much.
There is also a push to open rich genetic diversity and forests surrounding Cancun to corporate prospectors under privatization provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS).
In hopes of salvaging a victory in Cancun, the U.S. recently ended its opposition to a plan for poor countries to obtain generic medicines to treat HIV and a handful of other life-threatening diseases. But that deal, in response to global grassroots pressure, is far from nailed down, and will be overshadowed by other conflicts this week.
Venezuela:
Let’s not forget this one. The Administration is still seeking a "recall" of Hugo Chavez; many papers picked up the AP/Reuters item in which Chavez accused the US of "meddling"... again. Since Venezuela produces more oil than Iraq, our ambassador, Charles Shapiro, is reportedly ‘working the streets’ and long-time troublemaker Otto Reich is still around, it’s time to review the Chile coup we orchestrated in the early ‘70’s and to remind our representatives that they should speak out on this issue, as well.
Overtime pay victory
A victory in the Senate! Senate Democrats succeeded in getting an amendment passed to block the White House proposal that sought to restrict overtime pay. The 54-45 vote meant that some Republicans broke from their usually disciplined block
The House has already approved the Bush proposal, so the conference committee will seek to reconcile.
The Republican deserters: Campbell (CO), Chaffee (RI), Murkowski (AK), Snowe (ME), Spectre (PA), and Stevens (AK).
Bustamante as Leftist! He has stood out for his advocating for taxing the rich. And, he leads in the polls! The LA Times' Matea Gold notes a solidifying of his drift.
In his quest for the governor's office, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is increasingly veering left with appeals to immigrants and working-class voters, shucking off the label of moderate Democrat that he has worn for years.
By pairing his personal biography with a campaign platform aimed at blue-collar workers, Bustamante has positioned himself as a staunch liberal — and is depicting himself as the antithesis of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The move reflects the dynamics of a multi-candidate recall election in which the winner need only get the most votes, not the majority. That has allowed Bustamante, whose political career began in a conservative Central Valley district, to run a campaign aimed directly at liberal Democratic partisans.
State of the media:
CNN has had virtually zero coverage of the WTO meetings in Cancun, yet booked Britney Spears for Crossfire, where she "weighed in" as to the need to be unquestioning in support of Junior. Of course, the foreign press is ‘front-paging’ the conference.
A (lengthy) comment on Bush Administration: A reader (John Shaw of Seattle) of Eric Alterman’s column at msnbc.com, wrote in a beaut, which I’m happy to re-produce.
Is it possible that what we think of as Bush failures, he thinks of as successes? Certainly the enormous budget deficit is deliberate, having been a central Republican tenet since Reaganomics, with the long-term goal being the fiscally forced elimination of Social Security, since the R’s have conceded political-ideological defeat on this issue. Given that they count this apparent failure as a success (and I don’t see how anybody could argue that the deficit is inadvertant), what other obvious failures could be seen as successes by completely unscrupulous villains?
High unemployment: Forces long term wage and benefit concessions, puts unions on their heels. Success.
Increase in homelessness: Increases economic insecurity for the lower classes, making them more likely to docilely accept terrible work situations. Success.
Defeat in the drug war: Gives an excuse to lock up huge percentages of poor people, especially poor people of color, especially poor men of color. Given the historically inarguable "conservative" animus against people of color, especially men of color, I think they’d chalk this up as success too. The addicts not in prison are destroying their lives and severely damaging the lives of people around them. Success.
War on terror and insufficient homeland security: Since the Bush administration OFFICIALLY stated that an invasion of Iraq would likely result in INCREASED terrorism against Americans, I can only imagine that they count the lack of a terrorist sequel of the September 11 Atrocity as a failure. Karl Rove saw Bush’s numbers skyrocket when foreigners murdered thousands of Americans. Given their completely unscrupulous villainy, why should we trust that they don’t deliberately want that to happen again, especially since their actions seem to show it?
Americans have a tremendous capacity for denial. We simply don’t want to believe that our leaders really, really mean to do most of us serious, serious harm.
-R
Monday, September 08, 2003
It's time to get the UN in and the US out. The Bush Administration's arrogant
occupation of Iraq has harmed the United States position in the world community,
caused the deaths of 289 American soldiers at last count, and diverted tens of billions
of dollars from domestic needs. Now the President is asking for another $87 billion.
Even with that, he will not be able to achieve his objectives. - Dennis Kucinich
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Military Snafu: Newsweek (John Barry) announces that “The Bush administration’s military predicament in Iraq has suddenly gotten worse.” Apparently slip-shod overseeing has resulted in the military
…confessing to a potential showstopper. The deploying unit’s new armored vehicles may have faulty armor which would leave them vulnerable to machine-gun fire and to the rocket-propelled grenades that are the Iraq insurgents’ favorite weapon.
The vehicle is the prized new Stryker wheeled troop carrier, advertised as the first fruit of the Army’s plan to transform itself into a lighter, go-anywhere-fast force.
Worse still: the Army has known it might have a problem since February, but has kept quiet about it.
The speech was a re-hash, intended for the domestic audience, seeking to continue the re-write of history, e.g. the U.S. is ‘enforcing UN policy’, we went there to combat terror, etc. Foreign folk were not impressed.
Police Head Departs Prematurely: Still another sign of the chaos at hand. Originally slated to be serving a six month term, Bernard Kerik, the former New York City Police Commissioner, left after little more than 3 months from his job as defacto police chief of Baghdad.
9/11: So, Who Was Behind the Attacks? The spin was al-Qaeda and bin Laden, and then Saddam was introduced as being responsible…somehow. Now, a report out of Germany suggests suspects who fit less well into the Administration’s spin.
A German investigation into the September 11 attacks, believed to have been devised and led by a group of Muslim students from Hamburg, has found that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, captured a year ago in Pakistan, was the leader, according to a report over the weekend Whereas US officials have generally stressed Osama bin Laden and his Qaeda network as the author of the attacks, German investigators have contended the original conspiracy took place in Hamburg and that al-Qaeda was then tapped for funds, training and additional men. http://www.expatica.com/germany.asp?pad=190,205,&item_id=34037
Hillary Steps Forward:
I’m no fan, but Clinton has at least sat on the issue of the EPA being told to mislead New Yorkers about the quality of air in post 9/11 Lower Manhattan. She’s holding up the new EPA Administrator nomination, as she urges a better look at the 2001 deception. "This is a very big issue. It not only has to do with the health and safety of the people I represent. It has to do with the credibility and trust of this entire government."
Polls: I’m sure I’m not alone in citing polls. But, relative to where things have been, I choose to note the following:
(1) The latest Zogby is perhaps a precipitating reason for the Administration’s re-evaluation of their Iraqi position. Those viewing Bush as doing a good job has declined to 45%, and those with a negative view has risen to 54%.This is the first time Zogby has tallied a majority of "negative" ratings since Bush took office. And, this apparently is the first poll to put Bush under the (psychologically) important 50 percent line
(2) CNN reports that "41% of all registered voters say they will definitely vote AGAINST Bush; just 29% say they will definitely vote FOR him. So Bush must woo about seven in ten swing voters -- not a difficult task for a popular incumbent, but far from a certainty."
Fascinating how the media struggle to let go of calling him “popular.” 29% hardly constitutes “popular”.
-R
occupation of Iraq has harmed the United States position in the world community,
caused the deaths of 289 American soldiers at last count, and diverted tens of billions
of dollars from domestic needs. Now the President is asking for another $87 billion.
Even with that, he will not be able to achieve his objectives. - Dennis Kucinich
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Military Snafu: Newsweek (John Barry) announces that “The Bush administration’s military predicament in Iraq has suddenly gotten worse.” Apparently slip-shod overseeing has resulted in the military
…confessing to a potential showstopper. The deploying unit’s new armored vehicles may have faulty armor which would leave them vulnerable to machine-gun fire and to the rocket-propelled grenades that are the Iraq insurgents’ favorite weapon.
The vehicle is the prized new Stryker wheeled troop carrier, advertised as the first fruit of the Army’s plan to transform itself into a lighter, go-anywhere-fast force.
Worse still: the Army has known it might have a problem since February, but has kept quiet about it.
The speech was a re-hash, intended for the domestic audience, seeking to continue the re-write of history, e.g. the U.S. is ‘enforcing UN policy’, we went there to combat terror, etc. Foreign folk were not impressed.
Police Head Departs Prematurely: Still another sign of the chaos at hand. Originally slated to be serving a six month term, Bernard Kerik, the former New York City Police Commissioner, left after little more than 3 months from his job as defacto police chief of Baghdad.
9/11: So, Who Was Behind the Attacks? The spin was al-Qaeda and bin Laden, and then Saddam was introduced as being responsible…somehow. Now, a report out of Germany suggests suspects who fit less well into the Administration’s spin.
A German investigation into the September 11 attacks, believed to have been devised and led by a group of Muslim students from Hamburg, has found that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, captured a year ago in Pakistan, was the leader, according to a report over the weekend Whereas US officials have generally stressed Osama bin Laden and his Qaeda network as the author of the attacks, German investigators have contended the original conspiracy took place in Hamburg and that al-Qaeda was then tapped for funds, training and additional men. http://www.expatica.com/germany.asp?pad=190,205,&item_id=34037
Hillary Steps Forward:
I’m no fan, but Clinton has at least sat on the issue of the EPA being told to mislead New Yorkers about the quality of air in post 9/11 Lower Manhattan. She’s holding up the new EPA Administrator nomination, as she urges a better look at the 2001 deception. "This is a very big issue. It not only has to do with the health and safety of the people I represent. It has to do with the credibility and trust of this entire government."
Polls: I’m sure I’m not alone in citing polls. But, relative to where things have been, I choose to note the following:
(1) The latest Zogby is perhaps a precipitating reason for the Administration’s re-evaluation of their Iraqi position. Those viewing Bush as doing a good job has declined to 45%, and those with a negative view has risen to 54%.This is the first time Zogby has tallied a majority of "negative" ratings since Bush took office. And, this apparently is the first poll to put Bush under the (psychologically) important 50 percent line
(2) CNN reports that "41% of all registered voters say they will definitely vote AGAINST Bush; just 29% say they will definitely vote FOR him. So Bush must woo about seven in ten swing voters -- not a difficult task for a popular incumbent, but far from a certainty."
Fascinating how the media struggle to let go of calling him “popular.” 29% hardly constitutes “popular”.
-R
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
