Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Blog Vacation Upcoming: From March 8 to 28 I’ll be out of country and too busy and/or out of reach of internet cafes. At most, some spotty postings possible in the weeks ahead.
Social Security / Medicare
Edmund Andrews’ piece in the NY Times addresses the future crisis that doesn’t have to be.
Some experts contend that even the administration's chilling projections about the looming problems of Social Security seriously understate the problem.
In 2002, two senior economists at the Treasury Department were asked by Paul H. O'Neill, then the Treasury secretary, to come up with a comprehensive estimate of the federal government's long-term fiscal problems. The total, calculated Kent Smetters, then a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, and Jagadessh Gokhale, an economist on loan to the Treasury from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, was an almost unthinkable $44 trillion.
That projection was swiftly disavowed by the administration. Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said the White House never intended to use the study in its official budget forecast. "They were doing what they called an independent paper,'' he said.
Mr. Gokhale, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a policy research group in Washington, recalled matters differently. "At some point, late in the game, it was decided that it wouldn't be in the budget,'' he said. "In my opinion, if they had reported these numbers, they would have gotten a lot of credit.'' http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/business/02retire.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Krugman on Social Security
Back from vacation, he weighs in on the issue, on the Greenspan travesty of bilking the middle and working class in 1983 and urging a further bilking so that we can continue tax cuts for the ultra rich.
There are three lessons in this tale.
First, "starving the beast" is no longer a hypothetical scenario — it's happening as we speak. For decades, conservatives have sought tax cuts, not because they're affordable, but because they aren't. Tax cuts lead to budget deficits, and deficits offer an excuse to squeeze government spending.
Second, squeezing spending doesn't mean cutting back on wasteful programs nobody wants. Social Security and Medicare are the targets because that's where the money is. We might add that ideologues on the right have never given up on their hope of doing away with Social Security altogether. If Mr. Bush wins in November, we can be sure that they will move forward on privatization — the creation of personal retirement accounts. These will be sold as a way to "save" Social Security (from a nonexistent crisis), but will, in fact, undermine its finances. And that, of course, is the point.
Finally, the right-wing corruption of our government system — the partisan takeover of institutions that are supposed to be nonpolitical — continues, and even extends to the Federal Reserve.
The Bush White House has made it clear that it will destroy the careers of scientists, budget experts, intelligence operatives and even military officers who don't toe the line. But Mr. Greenspan should have been immune to such pressures, and he should have understood that the peculiarity of his position — as an unelected official who wields immense power — carries with it an obligation to stand above the fray. By using his office to promote a partisan agenda, he has betrayed his institution, and the nation. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/opinion/02KRUG.html
More on Social Security- some still being uploaded- at Fairness in Taxes for Everyone, http://www.fairnessintaxes.org/pages/news.html.
Cheney Weighs In …in his words
If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years, the kind of tax increases that both Kerry and Edwards have talked about, we would not have had the kind of job growth that we've had. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040302/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney
Growth? Is he out of touch? Is he serious?
Unemployment: Bad News: Didn’t note this last week, that the number of mass layoffs rose sharply in January. The Washington Post (Kirstin Downey) and the Washington Times, the Moonie paper, had it, but they were the exceptions.
More than 2,400 employers across the country reported laying off 50 or more workers in January, the third-highest number of so-called mass layoffs since the government became tracking them a decade ago.
Only in December 2000 and December 2002 were the number of large layoffs higher. A total of 239,454 workers lost their jobs in the January layoffs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday, based on unemployment insurance claims filed with state employment agencies. Among them were 17,544 temporary workers.
The total jobs lost in January was the most since November 2002, when 240,171 workers were let go in groups of 50 or more. Manufacturing workers, particularly in transportation, food processing and retail jobs, were hardest hit. The large layoffs also included 10,876 government workers, most at the state and local levels. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6917-2004Feb25?language=printer
And,
There were more mass layoffs in January in the United States than in any previous January for the nine-years that such records have been kept.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040226-040956-6165r.htm
Haiti:
Thugs and army folk are in power, rumors/reports of shootings of Aristide supporters, a virtual laissez-faire approach by the UN and U.S. Two takes:
Jeffrey Sachs: The fire this time in Haiti was US-fueled
The Bush administration appears to have succeeded in its long-time goal of toppling Aristide through years of blocking international aid to his impoverished nation
Haiti, once again, is ablaze. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is widely blamed, and he may be toppled soon. Almost nobody, however, understands that today's chaos was made in Washington -- deliberately, cynically and steadfastly. History will bear this out. In the meantime, political, social, and economic chaos will deepen, and Haiti's impoverished people will suffer.
The Bush administration has been pursuing policies likely to topple Aristide since 2001. The hatred began when Aristide, then a parish priest and democracy campaigner against Haiti's ruthless Duvalier dictatorship, preached liberation theology in the 1980s. Aristide's attacks led US conservatives to brand him as the next Fidel Castro. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/03/01/2003100742
Kerry Speaks Out, Calls for Investigation. A Washington Times report (James Lakely, Tom Carter):
Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry yesterday called for an investigation into statements by former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide that he was kidnapped at gunpoint and removed from power by US Troops over the weekend. http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040302-115719-2739r.htm
Seymour Hersh, I: More from the New Yorker piece on Pakistan.
In case you didn’t read the entire article, here’s another excerpt. Not for the faint of heart…
The greatest risk may be not to Musharraf, or to the stability of South Asia, but to the ability of the international nuclear monitoring institutions to do their work. Many experts fear that, with Khan’s help, the world has moved closer to a nuclear tipping point. Husain Haqqani, who was a special assistant to three prime ministers before Musharraf came to power and is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted, with some pride, that his nation had managed to make the bomb despite American sanctions. But now, he told me, Khan and his colleagues have gone wholesale: “Once they had the bomb, they had a shopping list of what to buy and where. A. Q. Khan can bring a plain piece of paper and show me how to get it done—the countries, people, and telephone numbers. ‘This is the guy in Russia who can get you small quantities of enriched uranium. You in Malaysia will manufacture the stuff. Here’s who will miniaturize the warhead. And then go to North Korea and get the damn missile.’” He added, “This is not a few scientists pocketing money and getting rich. It’s a state policy.”
Haqqani depicted Musharraf as truly “on the American side,” in terms of resisting Islamic extremism, but, he said, “he doesn’t know how to be on the American side. The same guys in the I.S.I. who have done this in the last twenty years he expects to be his partners. These are people who’ve done nothing but covert operations: One, screw India. Two, deceive America. Three, expand Pakistan’s influence in the Islamic community. And, four, continue to spread nuclear technology.” He paused. “Musharraf is trying to put out the fire with the help of the people who started the fire,” he said.
“Much of this has been known for decades to the American intelligence community,” Haqqani added. “Sometimes you know things and don’t want to do anything about it. Americans need to know that your government is not only downplaying this but covering it up. You go to bed with our I.S.I. They know how to suck up to you. You let us get away with everything. Why can’t you be more honest? There’s no harm in telling us the truth—‘Look, you’re an ally but a very disturbing ally.’ You have to nip some of these things in the bud.” The former senior American intelligence official was equally blunt. He told me, “Khan was willing to sell blueprints, centrifuges, and the latest in weaponry. He was the worst nuclear-arms proliferator in the world and he’s pardoned—with not a squeak from the White House.” http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040308fa_fact
Whew.
Seymour Hersh, II: A talk in Madison. More from the outspoken treasure.
Hersh also said the U.S. government "wings it" when it comes to Iraq -- no exit strategy is in place, the war has created more terrorists, and no one seems to know where to go from here, according to Hersh.
A civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis after the U.S. leaves Iraq is also inevitable, Hersh said.
Hersh believes American citizens are uninformed about the issues of Iraq. He said the press is not doing the best job of getting the story to the American public.
"The press really doesn't get it," Hersh said.
Hersh said the language barrier between the Iraqi people and the reporters in Iraq presents a major challenge in covering the story of the war.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were also a topic of Hersh's speech. Hersh pointed out that since the invasion of Afghanistan began more than two years ago, the amount of heroin sold by Afghani people is on the rise once again.
Hersh said non-government groups, such as the terrorist group al-Qaeda, could pose a large threat in five to 10 years because it is becoming easier for such groups to obtain weapons of mass destruction. http://www.badgerherald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/03/02/40441eddd5c6a
WMD (Again!) U.N.: Iraq had no WMD after 1994
Bill Nichols’ USA TODAY piece is the latest to underscore that the UN knew, and the US, which was spying on the UN, knew.
A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N. diplomats who have seen the document.
The historical review of inspections in Iraq is the first outside study to confirm the recent conclusion by David Kay, the former U.S. chief inspector, that Iraq had no banned weapons before last year's U.S-led invasion. It also goes further than prewar U.N. reports, which said no weapons had been found but noted that Iraq had not fully accounted for weapons it was known to have had at the end of the Gulf War in 1991.
The report, to be outlined to the U.N. Security Council as early as Friday, is based on information gathered over more than seven years of U.N. inspections in Iraq before the 2003 war, plus postwar findings discussed publicly by Kay. http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+U.N.%3A+Iraq+had+no+WMD+after+1994&expire=&urlID=9464809&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Firaq%2F2004-03-02-un-wmd_x.htm&partnerID=1660
David Kay to Bush: Come Clean’Julian Borger in the Guardian
David Kay, the man who led the CIA's postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has called on the Bush administration to "come clean with the American people" and admit it was wrong about the existence of the weapons.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1160842,00.html
9/11 Commission In summary, the Administration has done all it could to thwart the commission. It fought its existence, delayed its start, tried to put Kissinger at its head, tried to limit access to documents and key witnesses, resisted an extension and has circumscribed their personal involvement. Shameful, obscene…and hopefully, politically hurtful.
Two reports fro the Newark Star Ledger (Richard Cohen) which has been diligently following the issue, and the NY Times (Philip Shenon).
Following a commission meeting yesterday, its chairman, Thomas Kean, said the White House is insisting Bush and Cheney will submit only to closed- door interviews of one hour each. Kean also said they want to meet with only him and vice chairman Lee Hamilton, not all 10 members of the panel... Neither Bush and Cheney would be under oath, and much of their testimony might be classified and kept secret." ... http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-13/107829912424100.xml
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is refusing to accept strict conditions from the White House for interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and is renewing its request that Mr. Bush's national security adviser testify in public, commission members said Tuesday.
The panel members, interviewed after a private meeting on Tuesday, said the commission had decided for now to reject a White House request that the interview with Mr. Bush be limited to one hour and that the questioners be only the panel's chairman and vice chairman.
The members said the commission had also decided to continue to press the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to reconsider her refusal to testify at a public hearing. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are expected to be asked about how they had reacted to intelligence reports before Sept. 11, 2001, suggesting that Al Qaeda might be planning a large attack. Panel members want to ask Ms. Rice the same questions in public http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/politics/03PANE.html?ei=5007&en=58915a05038b1036&ex=1393650000&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=print&position=
‘I Came for the Waters’:
Like Bogart in Casablanca, I thought there were many progressives in Massachusetts. But, based on the votes that Kucinich, the Leader of the Progressive Caucus, received. 4%, I guess I was misinformed.
Matt Taibbi on Kucinich, of the candidate being mocked by sports celebrities, (Wilbon and Kornheiser, below), Jon Stewart and much of the Media- "labeled a lunatic by nearly every 'responsible' press organ in this country and cruelly mocked to a degree that no civil society should allow an honorable man to endure."
Over and over again we have been told, in a million different ways, that a certain kind of idealism is actually childish weakness, and that the only pragmatic way of approaching life upholds force and commerce as the chief engines of social organization. That is why we laugh at people who use words like peace and community but praise as tough, responsible leaders anyone who’s willing to drop the most mother-of-all bombs on defenseless foreign populations. We laugh at a person who uses the word peace for the same reason that we laugh at the person who works as a temp or at McDonald’s: because we’re afraid of being lumped together with him. We’re afraid of being the proverbial punchline to the proverbial Dennis Miller joke about John Lennon and Joanie Baez and that goddamn Cat Stevens song, "Peace Train."
I will never forgive America for what Dennis Kucinich went through this year. Because he has had the audacity to call for an end to all wars, to announce plans for the creation of a Department of Peace, to question the very culture of viciousness and intolerance and crass commercialism that rules our public discourse, he has been labeled a lunatic by nearly every "responsible" press organ in this country and cruelly mocked to a degree that no civil society should allow an honorable man to endure. The New Yorker, that revolting beacon of glib, self-satisfied affluence, runs a cartoon showing Kucinich sweeping to victory in a primary held on Mars. The New York Times first angrily demands that he not waste any more of our time, then actually physically disposes of him after the passing of some self-imposed fictional electoral deadline. Even the more genuinely funny and more intelligent people in American public life–I’m thinking particularly of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon–can’t resist savaging Kucinich whenever they get a chance. All because he’s funny-looking, and because he uses the word peace without kidding. http://www.nypress.com/print.cfm?content_id=9681
-R
Social Security / Medicare
Edmund Andrews’ piece in the NY Times addresses the future crisis that doesn’t have to be.
Some experts contend that even the administration's chilling projections about the looming problems of Social Security seriously understate the problem.
In 2002, two senior economists at the Treasury Department were asked by Paul H. O'Neill, then the Treasury secretary, to come up with a comprehensive estimate of the federal government's long-term fiscal problems. The total, calculated Kent Smetters, then a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy, and Jagadessh Gokhale, an economist on loan to the Treasury from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, was an almost unthinkable $44 trillion.
That projection was swiftly disavowed by the administration. Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said the White House never intended to use the study in its official budget forecast. "They were doing what they called an independent paper,'' he said.
Mr. Gokhale, now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a policy research group in Washington, recalled matters differently. "At some point, late in the game, it was decided that it wouldn't be in the budget,'' he said. "In my opinion, if they had reported these numbers, they would have gotten a lot of credit.'' http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/business/02retire.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Krugman on Social Security
Back from vacation, he weighs in on the issue, on the Greenspan travesty of bilking the middle and working class in 1983 and urging a further bilking so that we can continue tax cuts for the ultra rich.
There are three lessons in this tale.
First, "starving the beast" is no longer a hypothetical scenario — it's happening as we speak. For decades, conservatives have sought tax cuts, not because they're affordable, but because they aren't. Tax cuts lead to budget deficits, and deficits offer an excuse to squeeze government spending.
Second, squeezing spending doesn't mean cutting back on wasteful programs nobody wants. Social Security and Medicare are the targets because that's where the money is. We might add that ideologues on the right have never given up on their hope of doing away with Social Security altogether. If Mr. Bush wins in November, we can be sure that they will move forward on privatization — the creation of personal retirement accounts. These will be sold as a way to "save" Social Security (from a nonexistent crisis), but will, in fact, undermine its finances. And that, of course, is the point.
Finally, the right-wing corruption of our government system — the partisan takeover of institutions that are supposed to be nonpolitical — continues, and even extends to the Federal Reserve.
The Bush White House has made it clear that it will destroy the careers of scientists, budget experts, intelligence operatives and even military officers who don't toe the line. But Mr. Greenspan should have been immune to such pressures, and he should have understood that the peculiarity of his position — as an unelected official who wields immense power — carries with it an obligation to stand above the fray. By using his office to promote a partisan agenda, he has betrayed his institution, and the nation. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/02/opinion/02KRUG.html
More on Social Security- some still being uploaded- at Fairness in Taxes for Everyone, http://www.fairnessintaxes.org/pages/news.html.
Cheney Weighs In …in his words
If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years, the kind of tax increases that both Kerry and Edwards have talked about, we would not have had the kind of job growth that we've had. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20040302/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cheney
Growth? Is he out of touch? Is he serious?
Unemployment: Bad News: Didn’t note this last week, that the number of mass layoffs rose sharply in January. The Washington Post (Kirstin Downey) and the Washington Times, the Moonie paper, had it, but they were the exceptions.
More than 2,400 employers across the country reported laying off 50 or more workers in January, the third-highest number of so-called mass layoffs since the government became tracking them a decade ago.
Only in December 2000 and December 2002 were the number of large layoffs higher. A total of 239,454 workers lost their jobs in the January layoffs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday, based on unemployment insurance claims filed with state employment agencies. Among them were 17,544 temporary workers.
The total jobs lost in January was the most since November 2002, when 240,171 workers were let go in groups of 50 or more. Manufacturing workers, particularly in transportation, food processing and retail jobs, were hardest hit. The large layoffs also included 10,876 government workers, most at the state and local levels. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6917-2004Feb25?language=printer
And,
There were more mass layoffs in January in the United States than in any previous January for the nine-years that such records have been kept.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040226-040956-6165r.htm
Haiti:
Thugs and army folk are in power, rumors/reports of shootings of Aristide supporters, a virtual laissez-faire approach by the UN and U.S. Two takes:
Jeffrey Sachs: The fire this time in Haiti was US-fueled
The Bush administration appears to have succeeded in its long-time goal of toppling Aristide through years of blocking international aid to his impoverished nation
Haiti, once again, is ablaze. President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is widely blamed, and he may be toppled soon. Almost nobody, however, understands that today's chaos was made in Washington -- deliberately, cynically and steadfastly. History will bear this out. In the meantime, political, social, and economic chaos will deepen, and Haiti's impoverished people will suffer.
The Bush administration has been pursuing policies likely to topple Aristide since 2001. The hatred began when Aristide, then a parish priest and democracy campaigner against Haiti's ruthless Duvalier dictatorship, preached liberation theology in the 1980s. Aristide's attacks led US conservatives to brand him as the next Fidel Castro. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/03/01/2003100742
Kerry Speaks Out, Calls for Investigation. A Washington Times report (James Lakely, Tom Carter):
Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry yesterday called for an investigation into statements by former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide that he was kidnapped at gunpoint and removed from power by US Troops over the weekend. http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040302-115719-2739r.htm
Seymour Hersh, I: More from the New Yorker piece on Pakistan.
In case you didn’t read the entire article, here’s another excerpt. Not for the faint of heart…
The greatest risk may be not to Musharraf, or to the stability of South Asia, but to the ability of the international nuclear monitoring institutions to do their work. Many experts fear that, with Khan’s help, the world has moved closer to a nuclear tipping point. Husain Haqqani, who was a special assistant to three prime ministers before Musharraf came to power and is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted, with some pride, that his nation had managed to make the bomb despite American sanctions. But now, he told me, Khan and his colleagues have gone wholesale: “Once they had the bomb, they had a shopping list of what to buy and where. A. Q. Khan can bring a plain piece of paper and show me how to get it done—the countries, people, and telephone numbers. ‘This is the guy in Russia who can get you small quantities of enriched uranium. You in Malaysia will manufacture the stuff. Here’s who will miniaturize the warhead. And then go to North Korea and get the damn missile.’” He added, “This is not a few scientists pocketing money and getting rich. It’s a state policy.”
Haqqani depicted Musharraf as truly “on the American side,” in terms of resisting Islamic extremism, but, he said, “he doesn’t know how to be on the American side. The same guys in the I.S.I. who have done this in the last twenty years he expects to be his partners. These are people who’ve done nothing but covert operations: One, screw India. Two, deceive America. Three, expand Pakistan’s influence in the Islamic community. And, four, continue to spread nuclear technology.” He paused. “Musharraf is trying to put out the fire with the help of the people who started the fire,” he said.
“Much of this has been known for decades to the American intelligence community,” Haqqani added. “Sometimes you know things and don’t want to do anything about it. Americans need to know that your government is not only downplaying this but covering it up. You go to bed with our I.S.I. They know how to suck up to you. You let us get away with everything. Why can’t you be more honest? There’s no harm in telling us the truth—‘Look, you’re an ally but a very disturbing ally.’ You have to nip some of these things in the bud.” The former senior American intelligence official was equally blunt. He told me, “Khan was willing to sell blueprints, centrifuges, and the latest in weaponry. He was the worst nuclear-arms proliferator in the world and he’s pardoned—with not a squeak from the White House.” http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040308fa_fact
Whew.
Seymour Hersh, II: A talk in Madison. More from the outspoken treasure.
Hersh also said the U.S. government "wings it" when it comes to Iraq -- no exit strategy is in place, the war has created more terrorists, and no one seems to know where to go from here, according to Hersh.
A civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis after the U.S. leaves Iraq is also inevitable, Hersh said.
Hersh believes American citizens are uninformed about the issues of Iraq. He said the press is not doing the best job of getting the story to the American public.
"The press really doesn't get it," Hersh said.
Hersh said the language barrier between the Iraqi people and the reporters in Iraq presents a major challenge in covering the story of the war.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were also a topic of Hersh's speech. Hersh pointed out that since the invasion of Afghanistan began more than two years ago, the amount of heroin sold by Afghani people is on the rise once again.
Hersh said non-government groups, such as the terrorist group al-Qaeda, could pose a large threat in five to 10 years because it is becoming easier for such groups to obtain weapons of mass destruction. http://www.badgerherald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/03/02/40441eddd5c6a
WMD (Again!) U.N.: Iraq had no WMD after 1994
Bill Nichols’ USA TODAY piece is the latest to underscore that the UN knew, and the US, which was spying on the UN, knew.
A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N. diplomats who have seen the document.
The historical review of inspections in Iraq is the first outside study to confirm the recent conclusion by David Kay, the former U.S. chief inspector, that Iraq had no banned weapons before last year's U.S-led invasion. It also goes further than prewar U.N. reports, which said no weapons had been found but noted that Iraq had not fully accounted for weapons it was known to have had at the end of the Gulf War in 1991.
The report, to be outlined to the U.N. Security Council as early as Friday, is based on information gathered over more than seven years of U.N. inspections in Iraq before the 2003 war, plus postwar findings discussed publicly by Kay. http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=USATODAY.com+-+U.N.%3A+Iraq+had+no+WMD+after+1994&expire=&urlID=9464809&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Firaq%2F2004-03-02-un-wmd_x.htm&partnerID=1660
David Kay to Bush: Come Clean’Julian Borger in the Guardian
David Kay, the man who led the CIA's postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has called on the Bush administration to "come clean with the American people" and admit it was wrong about the existence of the weapons.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1160842,00.html
9/11 Commission In summary, the Administration has done all it could to thwart the commission. It fought its existence, delayed its start, tried to put Kissinger at its head, tried to limit access to documents and key witnesses, resisted an extension and has circumscribed their personal involvement. Shameful, obscene…and hopefully, politically hurtful.
Two reports fro the Newark Star Ledger (Richard Cohen) which has been diligently following the issue, and the NY Times (Philip Shenon).
Following a commission meeting yesterday, its chairman, Thomas Kean, said the White House is insisting Bush and Cheney will submit only to closed- door interviews of one hour each. Kean also said they want to meet with only him and vice chairman Lee Hamilton, not all 10 members of the panel... Neither Bush and Cheney would be under oath, and much of their testimony might be classified and kept secret." ... http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-13/107829912424100.xml
The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is refusing to accept strict conditions from the White House for interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and is renewing its request that Mr. Bush's national security adviser testify in public, commission members said Tuesday.
The panel members, interviewed after a private meeting on Tuesday, said the commission had decided for now to reject a White House request that the interview with Mr. Bush be limited to one hour and that the questioners be only the panel's chairman and vice chairman.
The members said the commission had also decided to continue to press the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to reconsider her refusal to testify at a public hearing. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are expected to be asked about how they had reacted to intelligence reports before Sept. 11, 2001, suggesting that Al Qaeda might be planning a large attack. Panel members want to ask Ms. Rice the same questions in public http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/politics/03PANE.html?ei=5007&en=58915a05038b1036&ex=1393650000&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=print&position=
‘I Came for the Waters’:
Like Bogart in Casablanca, I thought there were many progressives in Massachusetts. But, based on the votes that Kucinich, the Leader of the Progressive Caucus, received. 4%, I guess I was misinformed.
Matt Taibbi on Kucinich, of the candidate being mocked by sports celebrities, (Wilbon and Kornheiser, below), Jon Stewart and much of the Media- "labeled a lunatic by nearly every 'responsible' press organ in this country and cruelly mocked to a degree that no civil society should allow an honorable man to endure."
Over and over again we have been told, in a million different ways, that a certain kind of idealism is actually childish weakness, and that the only pragmatic way of approaching life upholds force and commerce as the chief engines of social organization. That is why we laugh at people who use words like peace and community but praise as tough, responsible leaders anyone who’s willing to drop the most mother-of-all bombs on defenseless foreign populations. We laugh at a person who uses the word peace for the same reason that we laugh at the person who works as a temp or at McDonald’s: because we’re afraid of being lumped together with him. We’re afraid of being the proverbial punchline to the proverbial Dennis Miller joke about John Lennon and Joanie Baez and that goddamn Cat Stevens song, "Peace Train."
I will never forgive America for what Dennis Kucinich went through this year. Because he has had the audacity to call for an end to all wars, to announce plans for the creation of a Department of Peace, to question the very culture of viciousness and intolerance and crass commercialism that rules our public discourse, he has been labeled a lunatic by nearly every "responsible" press organ in this country and cruelly mocked to a degree that no civil society should allow an honorable man to endure. The New Yorker, that revolting beacon of glib, self-satisfied affluence, runs a cartoon showing Kucinich sweeping to victory in a primary held on Mars. The New York Times first angrily demands that he not waste any more of our time, then actually physically disposes of him after the passing of some self-imposed fictional electoral deadline. Even the more genuinely funny and more intelligent people in American public life–I’m thinking particularly of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon–can’t resist savaging Kucinich whenever they get a chance. All because he’s funny-looking, and because he uses the word peace without kidding. http://www.nypress.com/print.cfm?content_id=9681
-R
