Monday, April 12, 2004
9/11 Postscript
James Pinkerton, in Newsday:
If you knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had received a memo a month before Pearl Harbor entitled, "Japanese Determined to Attack the United States in the Pacific," and that he had done nothing about that information, would that knowledge change your perception of FDR as a wise war leader? http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vppin093747412apr09,0,1427025,print.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Bush in Action, August, 2001: Recall: Bush spent most of August 2001 on his ranch here. His staff said at the time that by far the biggest issue on his agenda was his decision on federal funding of stem cell research, followed by education, immigration and the Social Security "lockbox."
Bush in Action, 2004, I: Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei, Washington Post
Explosive violence in Iraq and persistent questions about the administration's handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001, have plunged President Bush into one of the most difficult moments of his presidency, as he seeks to maintain public confidence in his leadership while facing what experts say are mostly unattractive options to put U.S. policy on track.
In the face of these challenges, Bush has yielded the stage, remaining largely out of sight at his Texas ranch as others in his administration explain his policies. Bush's silence in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and concerns about the administration's timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis has brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
"If it were I in charge over there, I would have him out early next week to explain this whole thing," said a Republican strategist close to the Bush team who demanded anonymity as a condition of speaking freely about the administration. "He should restate what we're doing over there. He needs to provide a bigger picture to give voters more confidence that we know where we're going." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A355-2004Apr9?language=printer
Bush in Action, 2004, II: On Saturday, Bush and his father were to go fishing at the ranch's bass pond with a crew from the Outdoor Life Network's "Fishing with Roland Martin."
The White House approached the network about coming to film Bush, who is eager to cultivate an image as a sportsman with the millions of voters who hunt and fish. The crew was to bring its own boat for the shoot on the small pond. http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/04/09/bush/index_np.html
The PDB: the “historical” document:
"patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
… the FBI and CIA were following up on "a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."
"After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington".
"The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related."
Yet, the AP report:
President Bush said Sunday he was satisfied before Sept. 11, 2001, that federal agents were on top of the terrorist threat when he read a briefing memo on Osama bin Laden's intention to strike inside the United States.
"I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence," Bush said, and when he read the memo of Aug. 6, 2001, "I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into."
In his first comments since Saturday's release of the presidential daily brief, Bush said the document contained "nothing about an attack on America."
Bush said if there had been any specific intelligence pointing to threats of attacks on New York and Washington, "I would have moved mountains" to prevent it.
Cheney- the inconsistencies. An example
Cheney, 2002: re the Counter-terrorism Group Interagency Task Force. “It's headed by--it was at that time by Dick Clarke who'd headed it as well back during the Clinton administration, somebody I'd known a long time. And that's a process. That's where the action takes place when these reports come in and you believe you've got actual intelligence.”
Cheney, 2004: Clarke “wasn’t in the loop.“
NYTimes Summary (Eric Lichtblau, David Sanger)
President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.
The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders…
But law enforcement officials said Friday that they believed that Ms. Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks — including her account of scores of F.B.I. investigations under way that summer into suspected Qaeda cells operating in the United States — overstated the scope, thrust and intensity of activities by the F.B.I. within American borders…
The finger-pointing will probably increase next week when numerous current and former senior law enforcement officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, testify before the Sept. 11 commission. In an unusual pre-emptive strike, Mr. Ashcroft's chief spokesman on Friday accused some Democrats on the commission of having "political axes to grind" in attacking the attorney general, who oversees the F.B.I., and unfairly blaming him for law enforcement failures.
A similar accusation against the commission was also leveled by Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican with ties to the White House, in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday…
Another Democratic panel member, Jamie S. Gorelick, said at Thursday's hearing that Mr. Ashcroft was briefed in the summer of 2001 about terrorist threats "but there is no evidence of any activity by him."
This appears to be a debate within the administration," she said. "On the one hand, you have Dr. Rice saying that the domestic threat was being handled by the Justice Department and F.B.I., and on the other hand, you have the Justice Department saying that there did not appear to be a domestic threat to address. And that is a difference in view that we have to continue to explore." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/10/politics/10PANE.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
And:
After Berger left, Rice stayed around to listen to counterterrorism bulldog Richard Clarke, who laid out the whole anti-al Qaeda plan. Rice was so impressed with Clarke that she immediately asked him to stay on as head of counterterrorism. In early February, Clarke repeated the briefing for Vice President Dick Cheney. But, according to Time, there was some question about how seriously the Bush team took Clarke's warnings. Outgoing Clinton officials felt that "the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism."
The Bushies had an entirely different set of obsessions. Missile defense, for example. The missile defense obsession proved prescient when terrorists fired a slow-moving intercontinental ballistic missile into the World Trade Center. If only Clarke had put his focus on missile defense instead of obsessing on Osama bin Laden. http://www.avatara.com/operationignore0.html
What’s On Cheney’s Mind: Shill for Westinghouse
On a trip to China next week to talk about high-stakes issues like terrorism and North Korea, Vice President Dick Cheney will have another task - making a pitch for Westinghouse's U.S. nuclear power technology.
At stake could be billions of dollars in business in coming years and thousands of American jobs. The initial installment of four reactors, costing $1.5 billion apiece, would also help narrow the huge U.S. trade deficit with China.
China's latest economic plan anticipates more than doubling its electricity output by 2020 and the Chinese government, facing enormous air pollution problems, is looking to shift some of that away from coal-burning plants. Its plan calls for building as many as 32 large 1,000-megawatt reactors over the next 16 years.
No one has ordered a new nuclear power reactor in the United States in three decades and the next one, if it comes, is still years away. So, China is being viewed by the U.S. industry as a potential bonanza. http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/8397857.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Competition for Bush: Some right-wingers are pushing for Roy Moore, feeling the Bushies have let them down.
- George W. Bush seems to have a problem being honest. Bush has been caught in many lies. He's lied about September 11. He's lied about Iraq. He's lied about his budget. The sad fact is that George W. Bush has lost all the moral authority that a President of the United States must have. Bush is a poor example for our children, who we try to teach to be honest.
- America is supposed to be the land of freedom, not the land of spies. Yet, George W. Bush has created new programs for the government to spy on ordinary, law-abiding Americans. Through the Patriot Act and Total Information Awareness, Bush has made America the land of Big Brother.
- We criticized Bill Clinton for having his donors sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. Now George W. Bush is doing the same, arranging for his big fundraisers to sleep overnight in the White House. That's a shame. http://www.formoore.com/wrongbush.html
9/11 Heroes: The versatile Charles Pierce (Only a Game, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, Boston Globe mag, etc.) focuses on real heroes- no, not Ted Kennedy or another pol who gives a good speech, but rather citizen activists who have made a difference.
The truly great thing about these 9/11 hearings remains the towering moral witness of the 9/11 widows -- and shame on Bob (Coiffure By Vespasian Of The Appian Way) Kerrey for shushing them. They are doing more than standing up for their loved ones, and that surely would have been enough. They are glorious in their casual disdain for the "Intelligence Community." They are blissfully unimpressed by the Great Men who presume to tell them what the Great Men decide they should know. They leave the pundits gaping at their heedless disregard for the Governing Class. Almost alone, they have insisted that information be brought to light that will enable us to judge our leaders and hold them to account, and that's what this whole silly experiment was supposed to be about -- the "most dreaded kind of knowledge," according to that impossible old blatherskite, John Adams. God save these wonderful women. They are being citizens -- in the most complete sense possible -- for the rest of us. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Is this Lebanon of the 1980’s, the West Bank of 2002 or what?
The generals are upset because of the lack of troops. http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak08.html
And, troops are being forced to extend their ‘stay’. There is no easy way out of this situation …that only gets worse.
Juan Cole reports on the Governing Council’s disaffection and more, adding up to “an incipient collapse”…
Not only has what many Iraqis call "the puppet council" taken a stand against Bush administration tactics in Iraq, but individual members are peeling off. Shiite Marsh Arab leader Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi suspended his membership in the council on Friday. A Sunni member, Ghazi al-Yawir, has threatened to resign if a negotiated settlement of the Fallujah conflict cannot be found. Old-time Sunni nationalist leader Adnan Pachachi thundered on al-Arabiya televsion, "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal." For him to go on an Arab satellite station much hated by Donald Rumsfeld and denounce the very people who appointed him to the IGC is a clear act of defiance. There are rumors that many of the 25 Governing Council members have fled abroad, fearful of assassination because of their association with the Americans.
This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq. Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers in the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and by main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast. The "handover of sovereignty" scheduled for June 30 was always nothing more than a publicity stunt for the benefit of Bush's election campaign, but it now seems likely to be even more empty. http://www.juancole.com/
More disaffection:
One of the strongest pro-American voices in Iraq's US-appointed governing council, Adnan Pachachi, condemned the operation in Falluja as "unacceptable and illegal" - a sign of Iraqi anger at the siege, which for some has become a symbol of resistance…
In a symbol of the state of Iraq a year after the US invasion, a portrait of Muqtada al-Sadr - the radical Shia cleric whose militia has rebelled across the south - was today hung on the plinth in Firdous Square, where one year ago today marines toppled a statue of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.
The felling of Saddam's statue on April 9 was an iconic image of liberation in Iraq. Today US soldiers climbed the unfinished bronze statue that replaced Saddam's to tear down the poster of Mr Sadr, the new enemy of US forces. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188965,00.html
Commentaries:
Martin Woollacott
With the excitement of the armoured race to Baghdad now a distant memory, the Bush administration finds itself face to face, perhaps even more than its predecessors in Vietnam, with what could be called the essential meagreness of the military instrument. It can be a key that opens the door for other kinds of action, but it cannot substitute for them. George Bernard Shaw observed that any political arrangement that depends on soldiers is not likely to continue long. The truth in Iraq has, from the start, been that the American "occupation", like most occupations, has never meant any kind of close military control of Iraqi society. Even if close control was desirable, American and other coalition troops are not present in sufficient numbers - nor do they have the language and other skills that would enable them to exercise it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188915,00.html
T. Christian Miller: The rising cost of security is hobbling the effort to rebuild Iraq, resulting in cutbacks to projects, delays in construction and fewer benefits for the Iraqi people, according to industry executives and government officials.
As Iraqi insurgents have increasingly targeted civilian contractors, companies have responded by enhancing private security forces and moving more cautiously in dangerous areas. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-security9apr09,1,1406508.story
Patrick Cockburn: Now Iraq is a country where people fear to venture on to the streets. Whether you are a foreign contractor, a Muslim attending prayers or a journalist, this is a land of ever-present danger. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=509894
George Bush:
“…this violence we've seen is part of a few people trying to stop progress toward democracy.”
Boston’s Air:
While Boston has healthier air than many large cities, it’s getting worse faster than all but five of 66 urban areas studied last year by the nonprofit Surface Transportation Policy Project. www.boston.com/magazineMarch282004; http://www.transact.org/library/factsheets/environment.asp
North Korea: Remember Us, Please!
North Korea said Friday the standoff over its atomic ambitions was on the brink of nuclear war as US Vice President Dick Cheney headed to the region for talks with key Asian allies.
The Stalinist state's official news agency accused Washington of "driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war" with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea.
Cheney is expected in Tokyo on Saturday on the first leg of an Asian tour that also takes him to China and South Korea.
North Korea described six-party talks held in Beijing in February as "fruitless," their harshest assessment so far. http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040409115806.6oukxw6z.html
-R
James Pinkerton, in Newsday:
If you knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had received a memo a month before Pearl Harbor entitled, "Japanese Determined to Attack the United States in the Pacific," and that he had done nothing about that information, would that knowledge change your perception of FDR as a wise war leader? http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vppin093747412apr09,0,1427025,print.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Bush in Action, August, 2001: Recall: Bush spent most of August 2001 on his ranch here. His staff said at the time that by far the biggest issue on his agenda was his decision on federal funding of stem cell research, followed by education, immigration and the Social Security "lockbox."
Bush in Action, 2004, I: Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei, Washington Post
Explosive violence in Iraq and persistent questions about the administration's handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001, have plunged President Bush into one of the most difficult moments of his presidency, as he seeks to maintain public confidence in his leadership while facing what experts say are mostly unattractive options to put U.S. policy on track.
In the face of these challenges, Bush has yielded the stage, remaining largely out of sight at his Texas ranch as others in his administration explain his policies. Bush's silence in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and concerns about the administration's timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis has brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
"If it were I in charge over there, I would have him out early next week to explain this whole thing," said a Republican strategist close to the Bush team who demanded anonymity as a condition of speaking freely about the administration. "He should restate what we're doing over there. He needs to provide a bigger picture to give voters more confidence that we know where we're going." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A355-2004Apr9?language=printer
Bush in Action, 2004, II: On Saturday, Bush and his father were to go fishing at the ranch's bass pond with a crew from the Outdoor Life Network's "Fishing with Roland Martin."
The White House approached the network about coming to film Bush, who is eager to cultivate an image as a sportsman with the millions of voters who hunt and fish. The crew was to bring its own boat for the shoot on the small pond. http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/04/09/bush/index_np.html
The PDB: the “historical” document:
"patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
… the FBI and CIA were following up on "a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."
"After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington".
"The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related."
Yet, the AP report:
President Bush said Sunday he was satisfied before Sept. 11, 2001, that federal agents were on top of the terrorist threat when he read a briefing memo on Osama bin Laden's intention to strike inside the United States.
"I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence," Bush said, and when he read the memo of Aug. 6, 2001, "I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into."
In his first comments since Saturday's release of the presidential daily brief, Bush said the document contained "nothing about an attack on America."
Bush said if there had been any specific intelligence pointing to threats of attacks on New York and Washington, "I would have moved mountains" to prevent it.
Cheney- the inconsistencies. An example
Cheney, 2002: re the Counter-terrorism Group Interagency Task Force. “It's headed by--it was at that time by Dick Clarke who'd headed it as well back during the Clinton administration, somebody I'd known a long time. And that's a process. That's where the action takes place when these reports come in and you believe you've got actual intelligence.”
Cheney, 2004: Clarke “wasn’t in the loop.“
NYTimes Summary (Eric Lichtblau, David Sanger)
President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.
The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders…
But law enforcement officials said Friday that they believed that Ms. Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks — including her account of scores of F.B.I. investigations under way that summer into suspected Qaeda cells operating in the United States — overstated the scope, thrust and intensity of activities by the F.B.I. within American borders…
The finger-pointing will probably increase next week when numerous current and former senior law enforcement officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, testify before the Sept. 11 commission. In an unusual pre-emptive strike, Mr. Ashcroft's chief spokesman on Friday accused some Democrats on the commission of having "political axes to grind" in attacking the attorney general, who oversees the F.B.I., and unfairly blaming him for law enforcement failures.
A similar accusation against the commission was also leveled by Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican with ties to the White House, in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday…
Another Democratic panel member, Jamie S. Gorelick, said at Thursday's hearing that Mr. Ashcroft was briefed in the summer of 2001 about terrorist threats "but there is no evidence of any activity by him."
This appears to be a debate within the administration," she said. "On the one hand, you have Dr. Rice saying that the domestic threat was being handled by the Justice Department and F.B.I., and on the other hand, you have the Justice Department saying that there did not appear to be a domestic threat to address. And that is a difference in view that we have to continue to explore." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/10/politics/10PANE.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
And:
After Berger left, Rice stayed around to listen to counterterrorism bulldog Richard Clarke, who laid out the whole anti-al Qaeda plan. Rice was so impressed with Clarke that she immediately asked him to stay on as head of counterterrorism. In early February, Clarke repeated the briefing for Vice President Dick Cheney. But, according to Time, there was some question about how seriously the Bush team took Clarke's warnings. Outgoing Clinton officials felt that "the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism."
The Bushies had an entirely different set of obsessions. Missile defense, for example. The missile defense obsession proved prescient when terrorists fired a slow-moving intercontinental ballistic missile into the World Trade Center. If only Clarke had put his focus on missile defense instead of obsessing on Osama bin Laden. http://www.avatara.com/operationignore0.html
What’s On Cheney’s Mind: Shill for Westinghouse
On a trip to China next week to talk about high-stakes issues like terrorism and North Korea, Vice President Dick Cheney will have another task - making a pitch for Westinghouse's U.S. nuclear power technology.
At stake could be billions of dollars in business in coming years and thousands of American jobs. The initial installment of four reactors, costing $1.5 billion apiece, would also help narrow the huge U.S. trade deficit with China.
China's latest economic plan anticipates more than doubling its electricity output by 2020 and the Chinese government, facing enormous air pollution problems, is looking to shift some of that away from coal-burning plants. Its plan calls for building as many as 32 large 1,000-megawatt reactors over the next 16 years.
No one has ordered a new nuclear power reactor in the United States in three decades and the next one, if it comes, is still years away. So, China is being viewed by the U.S. industry as a potential bonanza. http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/8397857.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Competition for Bush: Some right-wingers are pushing for Roy Moore, feeling the Bushies have let them down.
- George W. Bush seems to have a problem being honest. Bush has been caught in many lies. He's lied about September 11. He's lied about Iraq. He's lied about his budget. The sad fact is that George W. Bush has lost all the moral authority that a President of the United States must have. Bush is a poor example for our children, who we try to teach to be honest.
- America is supposed to be the land of freedom, not the land of spies. Yet, George W. Bush has created new programs for the government to spy on ordinary, law-abiding Americans. Through the Patriot Act and Total Information Awareness, Bush has made America the land of Big Brother.
- We criticized Bill Clinton for having his donors sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. Now George W. Bush is doing the same, arranging for his big fundraisers to sleep overnight in the White House. That's a shame. http://www.formoore.com/wrongbush.html
9/11 Heroes: The versatile Charles Pierce (Only a Game, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, Boston Globe mag, etc.) focuses on real heroes- no, not Ted Kennedy or another pol who gives a good speech, but rather citizen activists who have made a difference.
The truly great thing about these 9/11 hearings remains the towering moral witness of the 9/11 widows -- and shame on Bob (Coiffure By Vespasian Of The Appian Way) Kerrey for shushing them. They are doing more than standing up for their loved ones, and that surely would have been enough. They are glorious in their casual disdain for the "Intelligence Community." They are blissfully unimpressed by the Great Men who presume to tell them what the Great Men decide they should know. They leave the pundits gaping at their heedless disregard for the Governing Class. Almost alone, they have insisted that information be brought to light that will enable us to judge our leaders and hold them to account, and that's what this whole silly experiment was supposed to be about -- the "most dreaded kind of knowledge," according to that impossible old blatherskite, John Adams. God save these wonderful women. They are being citizens -- in the most complete sense possible -- for the rest of us. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Is this Lebanon of the 1980’s, the West Bank of 2002 or what?
The generals are upset because of the lack of troops. http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak08.html
And, troops are being forced to extend their ‘stay’. There is no easy way out of this situation …that only gets worse.
Juan Cole reports on the Governing Council’s disaffection and more, adding up to “an incipient collapse”…
Not only has what many Iraqis call "the puppet council" taken a stand against Bush administration tactics in Iraq, but individual members are peeling off. Shiite Marsh Arab leader Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi suspended his membership in the council on Friday. A Sunni member, Ghazi al-Yawir, has threatened to resign if a negotiated settlement of the Fallujah conflict cannot be found. Old-time Sunni nationalist leader Adnan Pachachi thundered on al-Arabiya televsion, "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal." For him to go on an Arab satellite station much hated by Donald Rumsfeld and denounce the very people who appointed him to the IGC is a clear act of defiance. There are rumors that many of the 25 Governing Council members have fled abroad, fearful of assassination because of their association with the Americans.
This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq. Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers in the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and by main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast. The "handover of sovereignty" scheduled for June 30 was always nothing more than a publicity stunt for the benefit of Bush's election campaign, but it now seems likely to be even more empty. http://www.juancole.com/
More disaffection:
One of the strongest pro-American voices in Iraq's US-appointed governing council, Adnan Pachachi, condemned the operation in Falluja as "unacceptable and illegal" - a sign of Iraqi anger at the siege, which for some has become a symbol of resistance…
In a symbol of the state of Iraq a year after the US invasion, a portrait of Muqtada al-Sadr - the radical Shia cleric whose militia has rebelled across the south - was today hung on the plinth in Firdous Square, where one year ago today marines toppled a statue of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.
The felling of Saddam's statue on April 9 was an iconic image of liberation in Iraq. Today US soldiers climbed the unfinished bronze statue that replaced Saddam's to tear down the poster of Mr Sadr, the new enemy of US forces. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188965,00.html
Commentaries:
Martin Woollacott
With the excitement of the armoured race to Baghdad now a distant memory, the Bush administration finds itself face to face, perhaps even more than its predecessors in Vietnam, with what could be called the essential meagreness of the military instrument. It can be a key that opens the door for other kinds of action, but it cannot substitute for them. George Bernard Shaw observed that any political arrangement that depends on soldiers is not likely to continue long. The truth in Iraq has, from the start, been that the American "occupation", like most occupations, has never meant any kind of close military control of Iraqi society. Even if close control was desirable, American and other coalition troops are not present in sufficient numbers - nor do they have the language and other skills that would enable them to exercise it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188915,00.html
T. Christian Miller: The rising cost of security is hobbling the effort to rebuild Iraq, resulting in cutbacks to projects, delays in construction and fewer benefits for the Iraqi people, according to industry executives and government officials.
As Iraqi insurgents have increasingly targeted civilian contractors, companies have responded by enhancing private security forces and moving more cautiously in dangerous areas. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-security9apr09,1,1406508.story
Patrick Cockburn: Now Iraq is a country where people fear to venture on to the streets. Whether you are a foreign contractor, a Muslim attending prayers or a journalist, this is a land of ever-present danger. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=509894
George Bush:
“…this violence we've seen is part of a few people trying to stop progress toward democracy.”
Boston’s Air:
While Boston has healthier air than many large cities, it’s getting worse faster than all but five of 66 urban areas studied last year by the nonprofit Surface Transportation Policy Project. www.boston.com/magazineMarch282004; http://www.transact.org/library/factsheets/environment.asp
North Korea: Remember Us, Please!
North Korea said Friday the standoff over its atomic ambitions was on the brink of nuclear war as US Vice President Dick Cheney headed to the region for talks with key Asian allies.
The Stalinist state's official news agency accused Washington of "driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war" with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea.
Cheney is expected in Tokyo on Saturday on the first leg of an Asian tour that also takes him to China and South Korea.
North Korea described six-party talks held in Beijing in February as "fruitless," their harshest assessment so far. http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040409115806.6oukxw6z.html
-R
