Friday, February 13, 2004
The president told Tim Russert that if you order a country to disarm and it doesn't and you don't act, you lose face. But how does a country that goes to war to disarm a country without arms get back its face? – Maureen Dowd, NY Times (more, below)
Greenspan The Republican. Let’s stop pretending that he’s serving us.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that Congress should make President Bush's tax cuts permanent and cover the $1 trillion price by trimming future benefits in Social Security and other entitlement programs.
Greenspan told the Senate Budget Committee that Congress, ``as a first order of business,'' should restore budget rules that cap discretionary government spending and require increases in entitlement benefits or cuts in taxes to be offset by other program cuts or other tax increases. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Greenspan.html
Pakistan, the Nuke Disseminator Finally they come clean and admit their numero uno, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has been spreading nukes around the world. Many of us might be confused that General/President Musharraf, armed with that knowledge, pardoned Khan. It makes more sense if you read some of the following from Democracy Now and Asia Times Online (Seema Sirohi).
BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast and Tariq Ali discuss how the Bush administration stopped an investigation that might have revealed Pakistan's top nuclear scientist helped share nuclear secrets with Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he long suspected his country's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was sharing nuclear secrets with other countries. This according to an hourlong interview with the New York Times.
Khan stunned the country last week when he confessed on television to selling nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Khan invented Pakistan’s nuclear bomb and is considered to be a national hero. He claimed he had acted without authorization from the government and begged forgiveness. Musharraf pardoned him days later.
At one point Musharraf suggested politics might have played a part in overlooking any suspected wrongdoing on Khan’s part saying "It was extremely sensitive. One couldn't outright start investigating as if he's any common criminal."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/10/151222
After the long, riveting drama by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's nuclear hero-turned high stakes proliferator, played to a packed world audience, the Bush administration could do little more than wring its hands in frustration because of the competing compulsions on US policy towards Islamabad.
In short, Pakistan policy is a puzzle, a big knot.
Washington was obliged to watch the choreography of Khan's "confession" and "pardon" without as much as a word of censure. There was only praise and support for President General Pervez Musharraf, who has made himself indispensable to US policy as the supreme frontier man in the "war against terror", even as he forgave Khan and vowed never to allow international inspections of his leaky nuclear program.
The Bush administration swallowed hard but gave Musharraf a pass. Demanding punishment for Khan would have meant forcing Musharraf to do the difficult job of prosecuting a "national hero" who is perhaps the only scientist in the world lionized for making the bomb. Rallies are held and placards carried in his honor because he made it happen - whether by begging, borrowing or stealing, it didn't matter. So once again Washington looked the other way, clenched its teeth and asked for the least difficult option - information to shut down the nuclear smuggling network. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB13Df04.html
How the Pakistani Network was Built- From the NY Times (William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, Raymond Bonner)
The scope and audacity of the illicit network are still not fully known. Nor is it known whether the Pakistani military or government, which had supported Dr. Khan's research, were complicit in his activities.
But what has become clear in recent days is that Dr. Khan, a Pakistani national hero who began his rise 30 years ago by importing nuclear equipment to secretly build his country's atom bomb, gradually transformed himself into the largest and most sophisticated exporter in the nuclear black market.
"It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before," said a senior American official who has reviewed the intelligence. "First, he exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/international/asia/12NUKE.html
Maureen Dowd added her snappy comment:
I think President Bush has cleared up everything now.
The U.S. invaded Iraq, which turned out not to have what our pals in Pakistan did have and were giving out willy-nilly to all the bad guys except Iraq, which wouldn't take it.
Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our enemy's country: that Iraq had W.M.D. and might sell them on the black market. But they were wrong.
Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our friend's country: that Pakistanis were trying to sell W.M.D. on the black market. But they couldn't prove it — until about the time we were invading Iraq.
"The grave and gathering threat" turned out to be not Saddam's mushroom cloud but the president's mushrooming deficits. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/opinion/12DOWD.html
Powell on Army Evaders- A letter to the editor
In Secretary of State Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, he says, "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army Reserve and National Guard units... Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." As a Purple Heart veteran and former infantryman in South Korea in 1950 with orders to "hold or die," I assure you that no Vietnam War coward who makes it to the White House and the title "Mr. President" will ever have my respect, let alone honor.
Richard D. Renew, Martinez, Ga.
--From the Tuesday, April 29, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle
Bush and the National Guard-It matters
The issue has traction. It is notable for the press finally being tigers; it is a story about the privileged using connections to avoid Vietnam; it’s still another example of the White House’s resistance/refusal to release information on issues of public concern; and it speaks to Bush’s mounting credibility problem with the general public. So, it matters…
Many are following this, pointing out the mysterious disappearance and addition of documents to Bush’s file, people surfacing who know that he was missing at the requisite times, questions arising every day. One such account via USA Today (Dave Moniz, Jim Drinkard)
Two forms in Bush's publicly released military files — his enlistment application and a background check — contain blacked-out entries in response to questions about arrests or convictions. Bush acknowledged in biographies published in 1999 that he was arrested twice before he enlisted in the Air National Guard: once for stealing a wreath and another time for rowdiness at a Yale-Princeton football game.
The nature of what was blacked out in Bush's records is important because certain legal problems, such as drug or alcohol violations, could have been a basis for denying an applicant entry into the Guard or pilot training. Admission to the Guard and to pilot school was highly competitive at that time, the height of the Vietnam War. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-11-bush-guard-usat_x.htm
Paul Krugman relates the National Guard issue to the need to puncture the mythic Bush, the heavily contrived effort to portray this simpleton as heroic… and the general public’s need to buy in.
Some of his critics hope that the AWOL issue will demolish the Bush myth, all at once. They're probably too optimistic — if it were that easy, the tale of Harken Energy would have already done the trick. The sad truth is that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality — a group that in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy — are very reluctant to give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that they had been played for fools. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/opinion/13KRUG.html
Cheney and Halliburton
For those who didn’t see Jane Mayer’s article in the New Yorker. More outrageous stuff re Cheney…
The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya, and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them. Yet during Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them," Mayer writes. "Yet during Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company avoid paying U.S. taxes." …
During the 2000 campaign, Cheney told ABC News that "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal.” But, under Cheney's watch, two foreign subsidiaries of Dresser sold millions of dollars worth of oil services and parts to Saddam's regime. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact
And, the U.S. Treasury Department has reportedly reopened an investigation into Halliburton's dealings with Iran, via a subsidiary that was featured in a recent "60 Minutes" segment, ‘Doing Business with the Enemy.’ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3548836
The al-Qaeda-Saddam Connection:
The Right hasn’t given up. The New York Times’ William Safire had a sorry op. ed. which missed the boat that the ostensible connection now announced via a found computer disc is current and doesn’t legitimize the pre-war nonsense. The Asian Times’ Pepe Escobar offers further clarification:
In the memo, al-Zarqawi allegedly appeals to the al-Qaeda leadership to help detonate a civil war in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'ites as the next definitive step to get rid of the Americans. For the Bush administration's spin machine, this is "the strongest evidence to date of contacts between extremists in Iraq and al-Qaeda".
This latest US intelligence, though, makes little sense. For starters, al-Qaeda pigeons are highly unlikely to move around with computer discs in their briefcases: since early 2002 a disabled al-Qaeda has used women couriers to deliver strictly verbal messages. The memo says that the resistance against the occupation is "struggling to recruit Iraqis". This is not borne out by the situation on the ground - the resistance continues, even rising, despite the capture of Saddam. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB13Ak02.html
Scandal for Kerry?:
It’s begun. If he’s the nominee, then let’s bury him! So Matt Drudge’s infamous web site posted Thursday that Kerry has an intern problem. Let’s see if it catches on in the next few days.
Police State update: Ashcroft wants the medical records from your abortion!!
The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.
Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what opponents call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, enacted last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions.
The department wants to examine the medical histories for what could amount to dozens of the doctors' patients in the last three years to determine, in part, whether the procedure, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, was in fact medically necessary, government lawyers said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/politics/12ABOR.html
-R
Greenspan The Republican. Let’s stop pretending that he’s serving us.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that Congress should make President Bush's tax cuts permanent and cover the $1 trillion price by trimming future benefits in Social Security and other entitlement programs.
Greenspan told the Senate Budget Committee that Congress, ``as a first order of business,'' should restore budget rules that cap discretionary government spending and require increases in entitlement benefits or cuts in taxes to be offset by other program cuts or other tax increases. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Greenspan.html
Pakistan, the Nuke Disseminator Finally they come clean and admit their numero uno, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has been spreading nukes around the world. Many of us might be confused that General/President Musharraf, armed with that knowledge, pardoned Khan. It makes more sense if you read some of the following from Democracy Now and Asia Times Online (Seema Sirohi).
BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast and Tariq Ali discuss how the Bush administration stopped an investigation that might have revealed Pakistan's top nuclear scientist helped share nuclear secrets with Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he long suspected his country's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was sharing nuclear secrets with other countries. This according to an hourlong interview with the New York Times.
Khan stunned the country last week when he confessed on television to selling nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Khan invented Pakistan’s nuclear bomb and is considered to be a national hero. He claimed he had acted without authorization from the government and begged forgiveness. Musharraf pardoned him days later.
At one point Musharraf suggested politics might have played a part in overlooking any suspected wrongdoing on Khan’s part saying "It was extremely sensitive. One couldn't outright start investigating as if he's any common criminal."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/10/151222
After the long, riveting drama by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's nuclear hero-turned high stakes proliferator, played to a packed world audience, the Bush administration could do little more than wring its hands in frustration because of the competing compulsions on US policy towards Islamabad.
In short, Pakistan policy is a puzzle, a big knot.
Washington was obliged to watch the choreography of Khan's "confession" and "pardon" without as much as a word of censure. There was only praise and support for President General Pervez Musharraf, who has made himself indispensable to US policy as the supreme frontier man in the "war against terror", even as he forgave Khan and vowed never to allow international inspections of his leaky nuclear program.
The Bush administration swallowed hard but gave Musharraf a pass. Demanding punishment for Khan would have meant forcing Musharraf to do the difficult job of prosecuting a "national hero" who is perhaps the only scientist in the world lionized for making the bomb. Rallies are held and placards carried in his honor because he made it happen - whether by begging, borrowing or stealing, it didn't matter. So once again Washington looked the other way, clenched its teeth and asked for the least difficult option - information to shut down the nuclear smuggling network. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB13Df04.html
How the Pakistani Network was Built- From the NY Times (William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, Raymond Bonner)
The scope and audacity of the illicit network are still not fully known. Nor is it known whether the Pakistani military or government, which had supported Dr. Khan's research, were complicit in his activities.
But what has become clear in recent days is that Dr. Khan, a Pakistani national hero who began his rise 30 years ago by importing nuclear equipment to secretly build his country's atom bomb, gradually transformed himself into the largest and most sophisticated exporter in the nuclear black market.
"It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before," said a senior American official who has reviewed the intelligence. "First, he exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/international/asia/12NUKE.html
Maureen Dowd added her snappy comment:
I think President Bush has cleared up everything now.
The U.S. invaded Iraq, which turned out not to have what our pals in Pakistan did have and were giving out willy-nilly to all the bad guys except Iraq, which wouldn't take it.
Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our enemy's country: that Iraq had W.M.D. and might sell them on the black market. But they were wrong.
Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our friend's country: that Pakistanis were trying to sell W.M.D. on the black market. But they couldn't prove it — until about the time we were invading Iraq.
"The grave and gathering threat" turned out to be not Saddam's mushroom cloud but the president's mushrooming deficits. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/opinion/12DOWD.html
Powell on Army Evaders- A letter to the editor
In Secretary of State Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, he says, "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army Reserve and National Guard units... Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." As a Purple Heart veteran and former infantryman in South Korea in 1950 with orders to "hold or die," I assure you that no Vietnam War coward who makes it to the White House and the title "Mr. President" will ever have my respect, let alone honor.
Richard D. Renew, Martinez, Ga.
--From the Tuesday, April 29, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle
Bush and the National Guard-It matters
The issue has traction. It is notable for the press finally being tigers; it is a story about the privileged using connections to avoid Vietnam; it’s still another example of the White House’s resistance/refusal to release information on issues of public concern; and it speaks to Bush’s mounting credibility problem with the general public. So, it matters…
Many are following this, pointing out the mysterious disappearance and addition of documents to Bush’s file, people surfacing who know that he was missing at the requisite times, questions arising every day. One such account via USA Today (Dave Moniz, Jim Drinkard)
Two forms in Bush's publicly released military files — his enlistment application and a background check — contain blacked-out entries in response to questions about arrests or convictions. Bush acknowledged in biographies published in 1999 that he was arrested twice before he enlisted in the Air National Guard: once for stealing a wreath and another time for rowdiness at a Yale-Princeton football game.
The nature of what was blacked out in Bush's records is important because certain legal problems, such as drug or alcohol violations, could have been a basis for denying an applicant entry into the Guard or pilot training. Admission to the Guard and to pilot school was highly competitive at that time, the height of the Vietnam War. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-11-bush-guard-usat_x.htm
Paul Krugman relates the National Guard issue to the need to puncture the mythic Bush, the heavily contrived effort to portray this simpleton as heroic… and the general public’s need to buy in.
Some of his critics hope that the AWOL issue will demolish the Bush myth, all at once. They're probably too optimistic — if it were that easy, the tale of Harken Energy would have already done the trick. The sad truth is that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality — a group that in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy — are very reluctant to give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that they had been played for fools. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/opinion/13KRUG.html
Cheney and Halliburton
For those who didn’t see Jane Mayer’s article in the New Yorker. More outrageous stuff re Cheney…
The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya, and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them. Yet during Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them," Mayer writes. "Yet during Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company avoid paying U.S. taxes." …
During the 2000 campaign, Cheney told ABC News that "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal.” But, under Cheney's watch, two foreign subsidiaries of Dresser sold millions of dollars worth of oil services and parts to Saddam's regime. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact
And, the U.S. Treasury Department has reportedly reopened an investigation into Halliburton's dealings with Iran, via a subsidiary that was featured in a recent "60 Minutes" segment, ‘Doing Business with the Enemy.’ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3548836
The al-Qaeda-Saddam Connection:
The Right hasn’t given up. The New York Times’ William Safire had a sorry op. ed. which missed the boat that the ostensible connection now announced via a found computer disc is current and doesn’t legitimize the pre-war nonsense. The Asian Times’ Pepe Escobar offers further clarification:
In the memo, al-Zarqawi allegedly appeals to the al-Qaeda leadership to help detonate a civil war in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'ites as the next definitive step to get rid of the Americans. For the Bush administration's spin machine, this is "the strongest evidence to date of contacts between extremists in Iraq and al-Qaeda".
This latest US intelligence, though, makes little sense. For starters, al-Qaeda pigeons are highly unlikely to move around with computer discs in their briefcases: since early 2002 a disabled al-Qaeda has used women couriers to deliver strictly verbal messages. The memo says that the resistance against the occupation is "struggling to recruit Iraqis". This is not borne out by the situation on the ground - the resistance continues, even rising, despite the capture of Saddam. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB13Ak02.html
Scandal for Kerry?:
It’s begun. If he’s the nominee, then let’s bury him! So Matt Drudge’s infamous web site posted Thursday that Kerry has an intern problem. Let’s see if it catches on in the next few days.
Police State update: Ashcroft wants the medical records from your abortion!!
The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.
Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what opponents call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, enacted last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions.
The department wants to examine the medical histories for what could amount to dozens of the doctors' patients in the last three years to determine, in part, whether the procedure, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, was in fact medically necessary, government lawyers said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/politics/12ABOR.html
-R
