Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Bush on the Ropes?
A stolen election, a fictitious mandate, tax cuts for the very rich that have generated a half a trillion dollars of debt, crony capitalism, obsessive secrecy, an unnecessary war based on lies that kills hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis, alienating allies and much of the rest of the world, destruction of the environment…
And yet, he could win…
After 2 weeks of ‘bad news’ he’s gained a tad in the polls. It makes one wonder whether all the war news HELPS Bush, as he’s been SO identified by the media- even the liberal few- as being the 'war on terror' pres. and, perhaps, simply because the developments have kept him in the news. But, it’s only April.
Speaking of the Environment, here’s a bit of a dialogue- Dateline NBC’s Stone Phillips talking with former EPA official Bruce Buckheit [re "new source review”].
Phillips: “What's the biggest enforcement challenge right now when it comes to air pollution?”
Buckheit: “The Bush Administration. An opportunity to reduce pollution just as we saw in Tampa is being foregone.”
Phillips: “Are you saying this administration just doesn't care about air pollution?”
Buckheit: “Yes. I'm saying this administration has decided to put the economic interests of the coal fired power plants ahead of the public interests in reducing air pollution.”
Phillips: “That's a pretty serious allegation.”
Buckheit: “Well, I was the head of the air enforcement division up until a couple weeks ago and I watched it happen.”
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4759864/
Bush endorsement of Sharon: Follow-up:
A NY Times report (JAMES BENNET)
Israel will invest tens of millions of dollars in West Bank settlements as it withdraws from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Monday…
Such a move would appear to run counter to Mr. Bush's own peace initiative, the road map, which calls for a halt to "all settlement activity." But last week, Mr. Bush said Israel should be able to retain part of the West Bank in any eventual peace agreement with the Palestinians.
In addition to pulling settlers out of Gaza, Mr. Sharon says he plans to withdraw from four isolated West Bank settlements, a step he said the Americans had demanded.
Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel could now "fortify our hold" on blocs of West Bank settlements
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/20/international/middleeast/20MIDE.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1082480941-V68Ln9Ul1ph02mrI3TV1jw
Mubarak on the U.S.’s popularity in the Middle East:
Arabs in the Middle East hate the United States more than ever following the invasion of Iraq and Israel's assassination of two Hamas leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in comments published Tuesday. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040420/wl_nm/mideast_egypt_usa_dc
What’s Happening, Iraq: The relative quiet has ended. Attacks on police stations killed 55 or more, fighting resuming in Falluja…
Troops and Lack of Troops: From today’s NY Times (Thom Shanker, David Sanger)
The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that the Pentagon might need to ask Congress for more money to pay for the recent increase in combat operations, and for the additional troops kept in Iraq. That, too, could heighten debate over the war.
Until recently, the White House and the Pentagon said American forces would be reduced this summer when peacekeepers from a broad alliance of foreign powers combined with large numbers of newly trained Iraqi security forces took up their posts in Iraq.
But on Tuesday, General Myers estimated that it might take until the end of the year to have "the majority of these forces properly equipped and trained and in the field." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/politics/21MILI.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1082546694-6AqphySgRuFtfAfs1P4NWw
Special Report from the Inside. From Editor and Publisher:
The 3,000-word story…, is based on a "closely held" memo purportedly written by a U.S. government official detailed to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). It was provided to writer Jason Vest by "a Western intelligence official." The memo offers a candid assessment of Iraq's bleak future -- as a country trapped in corruption and dysfunction -- and portrays a CPA cut off from the Iraqi people after a "year's worth of serious errors."
The article is titled, "Fables of Reconstruction," with a subhead, "A Coalition memo reveals that even true believers see the seeds of civil war in the occupation of Iraq."
Karpel commented, "We have no question that the memo is authentic.
But according to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn't so rosy. Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo's author--a U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director--have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo's author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.
Provided to this reporter by a Western intelligence official, the memo was partially redacted to protect the writer's identity and to "avoid inflaming an already volatile situation" by revealing the names of certain Iraqi figures. A wide-ranging and often acerbic critique of the CPA, covering topics ranging from policy, personalities, and press operations to on-the-ground realities such as electricity, the document is not only notable for its candidly troubled assessment of Iraq's future. It is also significant, according to the intelligence official, because its author has been a steadfast advocate of "transforming" the Middle East, beginning with "regime change" in Iraq.
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0416/vest.php
Media Parroting the Bush Administration line:
Beware how the media so often repeat the Big Lie- the administration’s oft-repeated line. In this case, the Denver Post (Lee Keath) follows the Condi line that the Spanish troop withdrawal meant that they were giving in to the terrorists. Rather the Spanish people threw out an Administration caught in its lies.
The portion below begins with a false premise, as Zapatero had always campaigned to pull the troops out. And he won largely because of the LIES that Aznar told as to who was responsible for the bombing, not because Aznar had provoked the bombing.
Also Sunday, Spain's prime minister ordered the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq as soon as possible, fulfilling a campaign promise made after terrorist bombings that al-Qaeda militants said were reprisal for Spain's support of the war. Spain has about 1,300 troops there.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist party won the March 14 general election amid allegations that outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, by backing the war in Iraq, had provoked commuter-train terrorist bombings that killed 191 people three days before the vote. http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E11676%257E2093466,00.html?search=filter
John Pilger on the Insurgency: The passionate Englishman’s latest:
That a nationalist uprising has been under way in Iraq for more than a year, uniting at least 15 major groups, most of them opposed to the old regime, has been suppressed in a mendacious lexicon invented in Washington and London and reported incessantly, CNN-style. ‘Remnants’ and ‘tribalists’ and ‘fundamentalists’ dominate, while Iraq is denied the legacy of a history in which much of the modern world is rooted. The ‘first-anniversary story’ about a laughable poll claiming that half of all Iraqis felt better off now under the occupation is a case in point. The BBC and the rest swallowed it whole. For the truth, I recommend the courageous daily reporting of Jo Wilding, a British human rights observer in Baghdad. (www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com)
Even now, as the uprising spreads, there is only cryptic gesturing at the obvious: that this is a war of national liberation and that the enemy is ‘us.’.... What we do routinely in the imperial west, wrote Richard Falk, professor of international relations at Princeton, is propagate ‘through a self-righteous, one-way moral/legal screen positive images of western values and innocence that are threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence.’ Thus, western state terrorism is erased, and a tenet of western journalism is to excuse or minimize ‘our’ culpability, however atrocious. Our dead are counted; theirs are not. Our victims are worthy; theirs are not. http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm
A Newspaper Defies the Administration:
Hats off to the Seattle Times for printing photos of soldiers’ coffins.
Last week, photos of flag-draped coffins in Kuwait containing the bodies of Americans killed in Iraq surfaced on scattered Internet sites, such as the Drudge Report. The photos were not credited and no major news organization would touch them. But Sunday, a similar image appeared on the front page of The Seattle Times. The picture arrived amid rising debate over the Bush administration's strict ban on media outlets taking photos of soldiers' coffins offloaded at U.S. military bases.
"The administration cannot tell us what we can and cannot publish," David Boardman, managing editor at The Seattle Times, told E&P Monday afternoon. "The photo may have been seen as an unnecessarily provocative anti-war sentiment," Boardman said, but he explained, "We weren't attempting to convey any sort of political message." He added that so far, phone calls and e-mails from readers have been "overwhelmingly positive." http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000491273
Marketplace Report on Corruption
The public radio program (6:30PM in Greater Boston) has a four-part report on the money being badly spent. It runs through Friday.
The spoils of war add up to more than capturing expansive palaces and luxury cars. As Marketplace reporters have discovered, not all of the $22 billion being spent to rebuild Iraq is going where it should. Who's watching the money as it streams through Baghdad? Just about no one, and bribes and black marketeering are rampant, witnesses say. A leading anti-corruption group claims as much as 90 percent of U.S. money spent in Iraq is being lost to corruption. From Halliburton subsidiaries charging double for gas, Iraqi officials and Arabic translators unrestrained from pocketing millions of dollars, or even members of the interim governing Council accusing each other of taking tens of millions in bribes. Trouble is, the root of the problem can't be found anywhere near the Green Zone. Try the White House, and Capitol Hill, where oversight of Iraqi construction crews and U.S. contractors like Halliburton has only just begun to be assigned… more than a year after the war began. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/iraq/index.html
-R
A stolen election, a fictitious mandate, tax cuts for the very rich that have generated a half a trillion dollars of debt, crony capitalism, obsessive secrecy, an unnecessary war based on lies that kills hundreds of Americans and thousands of Iraqis, alienating allies and much of the rest of the world, destruction of the environment…
And yet, he could win…
After 2 weeks of ‘bad news’ he’s gained a tad in the polls. It makes one wonder whether all the war news HELPS Bush, as he’s been SO identified by the media- even the liberal few- as being the 'war on terror' pres. and, perhaps, simply because the developments have kept him in the news. But, it’s only April.
Speaking of the Environment, here’s a bit of a dialogue- Dateline NBC’s Stone Phillips talking with former EPA official Bruce Buckheit [re "new source review”].
Phillips: “What's the biggest enforcement challenge right now when it comes to air pollution?”
Buckheit: “The Bush Administration. An opportunity to reduce pollution just as we saw in Tampa is being foregone.”
Phillips: “Are you saying this administration just doesn't care about air pollution?”
Buckheit: “Yes. I'm saying this administration has decided to put the economic interests of the coal fired power plants ahead of the public interests in reducing air pollution.”
Phillips: “That's a pretty serious allegation.”
Buckheit: “Well, I was the head of the air enforcement division up until a couple weeks ago and I watched it happen.”
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4759864/
Bush endorsement of Sharon: Follow-up:
A NY Times report (JAMES BENNET)
Israel will invest tens of millions of dollars in West Bank settlements as it withdraws from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Monday…
Such a move would appear to run counter to Mr. Bush's own peace initiative, the road map, which calls for a halt to "all settlement activity." But last week, Mr. Bush said Israel should be able to retain part of the West Bank in any eventual peace agreement with the Palestinians.
In addition to pulling settlers out of Gaza, Mr. Sharon says he plans to withdraw from four isolated West Bank settlements, a step he said the Americans had demanded.
Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel could now "fortify our hold" on blocs of West Bank settlements
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/20/international/middleeast/20MIDE.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1082480941-V68Ln9Ul1ph02mrI3TV1jw
Mubarak on the U.S.’s popularity in the Middle East:
Arabs in the Middle East hate the United States more than ever following the invasion of Iraq and Israel's assassination of two Hamas leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in comments published Tuesday. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040420/wl_nm/mideast_egypt_usa_dc
What’s Happening, Iraq: The relative quiet has ended. Attacks on police stations killed 55 or more, fighting resuming in Falluja…
Troops and Lack of Troops: From today’s NY Times (Thom Shanker, David Sanger)
The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that the Pentagon might need to ask Congress for more money to pay for the recent increase in combat operations, and for the additional troops kept in Iraq. That, too, could heighten debate over the war.
Until recently, the White House and the Pentagon said American forces would be reduced this summer when peacekeepers from a broad alliance of foreign powers combined with large numbers of newly trained Iraqi security forces took up their posts in Iraq.
But on Tuesday, General Myers estimated that it might take until the end of the year to have "the majority of these forces properly equipped and trained and in the field." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/politics/21MILI.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1082546694-6AqphySgRuFtfAfs1P4NWw
Special Report from the Inside. From Editor and Publisher:
The 3,000-word story…, is based on a "closely held" memo purportedly written by a U.S. government official detailed to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). It was provided to writer Jason Vest by "a Western intelligence official." The memo offers a candid assessment of Iraq's bleak future -- as a country trapped in corruption and dysfunction -- and portrays a CPA cut off from the Iraqi people after a "year's worth of serious errors."
The article is titled, "Fables of Reconstruction," with a subhead, "A Coalition memo reveals that even true believers see the seeds of civil war in the occupation of Iraq."
Karpel commented, "We have no question that the memo is authentic.
But according to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn't so rosy. Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo's author--a U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director--have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo's author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.
Provided to this reporter by a Western intelligence official, the memo was partially redacted to protect the writer's identity and to "avoid inflaming an already volatile situation" by revealing the names of certain Iraqi figures. A wide-ranging and often acerbic critique of the CPA, covering topics ranging from policy, personalities, and press operations to on-the-ground realities such as electricity, the document is not only notable for its candidly troubled assessment of Iraq's future. It is also significant, according to the intelligence official, because its author has been a steadfast advocate of "transforming" the Middle East, beginning with "regime change" in Iraq.
http://villagevoice.com/issues/0416/vest.php
Media Parroting the Bush Administration line:
Beware how the media so often repeat the Big Lie- the administration’s oft-repeated line. In this case, the Denver Post (Lee Keath) follows the Condi line that the Spanish troop withdrawal meant that they were giving in to the terrorists. Rather the Spanish people threw out an Administration caught in its lies.
The portion below begins with a false premise, as Zapatero had always campaigned to pull the troops out. And he won largely because of the LIES that Aznar told as to who was responsible for the bombing, not because Aznar had provoked the bombing.
Also Sunday, Spain's prime minister ordered the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq as soon as possible, fulfilling a campaign promise made after terrorist bombings that al-Qaeda militants said were reprisal for Spain's support of the war. Spain has about 1,300 troops there.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist party won the March 14 general election amid allegations that outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, by backing the war in Iraq, had provoked commuter-train terrorist bombings that killed 191 people three days before the vote. http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E11676%257E2093466,00.html?search=filter
John Pilger on the Insurgency: The passionate Englishman’s latest:
That a nationalist uprising has been under way in Iraq for more than a year, uniting at least 15 major groups, most of them opposed to the old regime, has been suppressed in a mendacious lexicon invented in Washington and London and reported incessantly, CNN-style. ‘Remnants’ and ‘tribalists’ and ‘fundamentalists’ dominate, while Iraq is denied the legacy of a history in which much of the modern world is rooted. The ‘first-anniversary story’ about a laughable poll claiming that half of all Iraqis felt better off now under the occupation is a case in point. The BBC and the rest swallowed it whole. For the truth, I recommend the courageous daily reporting of Jo Wilding, a British human rights observer in Baghdad. (www.wildfirejo.blogspot.com)
Even now, as the uprising spreads, there is only cryptic gesturing at the obvious: that this is a war of national liberation and that the enemy is ‘us.’.... What we do routinely in the imperial west, wrote Richard Falk, professor of international relations at Princeton, is propagate ‘through a self-righteous, one-way moral/legal screen positive images of western values and innocence that are threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence.’ Thus, western state terrorism is erased, and a tenet of western journalism is to excuse or minimize ‘our’ culpability, however atrocious. Our dead are counted; theirs are not. Our victims are worthy; theirs are not. http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm
A Newspaper Defies the Administration:
Hats off to the Seattle Times for printing photos of soldiers’ coffins.
Last week, photos of flag-draped coffins in Kuwait containing the bodies of Americans killed in Iraq surfaced on scattered Internet sites, such as the Drudge Report. The photos were not credited and no major news organization would touch them. But Sunday, a similar image appeared on the front page of The Seattle Times. The picture arrived amid rising debate over the Bush administration's strict ban on media outlets taking photos of soldiers' coffins offloaded at U.S. military bases.
"The administration cannot tell us what we can and cannot publish," David Boardman, managing editor at The Seattle Times, told E&P Monday afternoon. "The photo may have been seen as an unnecessarily provocative anti-war sentiment," Boardman said, but he explained, "We weren't attempting to convey any sort of political message." He added that so far, phone calls and e-mails from readers have been "overwhelmingly positive." http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000491273
Marketplace Report on Corruption
The public radio program (6:30PM in Greater Boston) has a four-part report on the money being badly spent. It runs through Friday.
The spoils of war add up to more than capturing expansive palaces and luxury cars. As Marketplace reporters have discovered, not all of the $22 billion being spent to rebuild Iraq is going where it should. Who's watching the money as it streams through Baghdad? Just about no one, and bribes and black marketeering are rampant, witnesses say. A leading anti-corruption group claims as much as 90 percent of U.S. money spent in Iraq is being lost to corruption. From Halliburton subsidiaries charging double for gas, Iraqi officials and Arabic translators unrestrained from pocketing millions of dollars, or even members of the interim governing Council accusing each other of taking tens of millions in bribes. Trouble is, the root of the problem can't be found anywhere near the Green Zone. Try the White House, and Capitol Hill, where oversight of Iraqi construction crews and U.S. contractors like Halliburton has only just begun to be assigned… more than a year after the war began. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/iraq/index.html
-R
