Wednesday, May 12, 2004
The Bush administration still seeks to mislead Congress and the public about the policies that contributed to the criminal abuse of prisoners in Iraq. Yesterday's smoke screen was provided by Stephen A. Cambone…But if President Bush and his senior officials would acknowledge their complicity in playing fast and loose with international law and would pledge to change course, they might begin to find a way out of the mess. Instead, they hope to escape from this scandal without altering or even admitting the improper and illegal policies that lie at its core. It is a vain hope, and Congress should insist on a different response. –WaPost Wednesday editorial http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19207-2004May11.html
Before returning, inevitably, to Iraq…
Shorties:
- Who’s investigating the use of funds approved for use in Afghanistan being spent instead on Iraq in 2002? [At least some questions, as per Tuesday’s WaPost, http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=965c16eaf2f3f857fa1e70c77f0ca4c1&lat=1084315190&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW4RH05819967AEBA439543E2638D1
- When will we hear re the Plame investigation, as to the Administration figures who outed agent Valerie Plame, wife of ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson?
- Who remembers Bush saying the day the Invasion began that the troops were sent to “defend the world from grave danger”. Grave danger?
-Why- oh, I know why, but I’ll go on- is there no call for Rummy to be charged with something like “criminal negligence”, why is no one but Nader calling for the impeachment of Bush, and why haven’t McCain and other conservatives with integrity deserted Bush? (More on the latter, below)
- The Bin Laden Family has a shot at building the world’s tallest building. Very weird, but true. From the Pakistan News Service:
Osama bin Laden's family business is on the short list of contractors bidding to build the world's tallest skyscraper.
It may seem tragically ironic that the name most closely associated with the destruction of New York's World Trade Center may soon be associated with the construction of the world's tallest building.
But, nevertheless, according to officials in Dubai – the site of the Burj Dubai, scheduled for completion in 2008 – that is more than a distinct possibility.
The Saudi Binladen Group, the biggest developer in the kingdom, begun by Osama bin Laden's father, is in the running for the project. http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=64445
- Well-connected and respected journalist Josh Marshall learns of ”chatter in Pakistani intelligence circles that the US has let the Pakistanis know that the optimal time for bagging 'high value' al Qaida suspects in the untamed Afghan-Pakistani border lands is the last ten days of July, 2004.” In other words, embarrassing the Democrats as they convene their convention. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Job Creation?
One suspected that the much ballyhooed creation of 500,000+ jobs the last two months meant more part-time or temporary “service” jobs of lessened pay and benefits. Now, from the unlikely source, the once great, now very conservative NY Post, (John Crudele), comes an article that accuses the Labor Department of misleading estimating of job gains. The post is rather long. Give it a shot.
Don’t get too excited about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April.
I'm not going to waste a lot of my precious space on this, but the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were created last month may not really exist.
They could be figments of statisticians' optimism.
Anyone who plodded through my column last Thursday knows I predicted that job growth in April would be better than the 160,000 to 170,000 jobs that the "pros" were anticipating.
But I also said, quite emphatically I hope, that the stronger growth would be an illusion - the result of the Labor Department's computers making happy predictions about seasonal job creation that could neither be verified nor justified.
I'll explain one aspect.
Back in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.
That estimate comes from the Labor Department's "birth/death model." You can look up these numbers on the Department's Web site.
As staggering as the assumption about new companies was in March, the Labor Department got even more brazen in April.
Last Friday, it was disclosed that these imaginary jobs had been increased by 117,000 to 270,000 for the latest month - because, I guess, the stat jockeys got a vision from the gods of spring.
Without those extra 117,000 make-believe jobs, the total growth for April would have been just 171,000 - sub-par for an economy that's supposed to be growing at more than 4 percent a year, but right on the pros' targets.
Take away all 270,000 make-believe jobs and, well, you have the sort of pessimism that the political pollsters are seeing.
If I was the suspicious type (and if I thought Washington was smart enough), I'd suspect a nasty motive behind the sudden surge in these mystery jobs. But for now, let's just acknowledge their existence. http://nypost.com/business/23936.htm
More Warnings: Oil is Running Out:
It’s not pleasant. Let’s get busy. From the Wall Street Journal:
As the global economy roars ahead with more factories churning out consumer goods and more cars hitting the streets, demand for oil may outstrip supply. World-wide use is forecast to rise more than 50% to 121 million barrels a day by 2025, from 80 million barrels a day now. In China and India, the world's most populous countries, economic growth is powered by and in turn fueling a thirst for oil.
Experts warn that without alternative fuel sources, the need for oil could pit massive consumers such as the U.S. against China and India. Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, an energy-policy think tank, warns, "While the U.S. is absorbed in fighting the war on terror, the seeds of what could be the next world war are quietly germinating. ... By 2030, China is expected to have more cars than the U.S. and import as much oil as the U.S. does today." Although India's economy isn't growing as fast, its oil consumption is skyrocketing.
Both countries are paying little heed to the environmental and medical consequences of development and argue that other countries industrialized without concern for carbon emissions.
http://online.wsj.com/documents/info-aoil04.html?printVersion=true
David Brock:
I mentioned his web site; here’s a tad from an interview on Salon, addressing the development of the Republican attack machine.
In 1986 I was working at a sister publication of the Washington Times, Insight magazine, and I then became an editorial writer at the Washington Times. And I don't think it had happened during that period because the paper had the same circulation it has today, about 100,000 readers, and it was considered to be a suspect, unreliable right-wing publication. It had, from the inside, very little impact in getting its message off the page; its stories didn't really go anywhere. But then a few things happened: Limbaugh went to national syndication in '88, and then you had the proliferation of cable, and then you had the Internet. So today, 16 years later, someone writes something in the Washington Times that may be unreliable, but it resonates because Limbaugh could read it on the air, or [Matt] Drudge could post it, or the author could go on Bill O'Reilly's show. So it's a completely different climate. During the '90s the flow of misinformation was established.
How do you think the press has treated John Kerry over the past few months?
Clearly there's already some evidence of a phenomenon I describe in the book of the ability of the right-wing media to project a caricature. For instance, [Media Matters noted] that Drudge wrote an item about a hairstylist being flown in for Kerry before his appearance on "Meet the Press." There was no sourcing, so one didn't know what to make of it. Then I believe the [next step in the] chain was that Jay Leno mentioned it in a joke, which is fine. Then the AP and Reuters reported the Leno joke. Then Linda Vester on Fox the next day claimed that Fox News had independently confirmed the story, but her story didn't provide any sourcing, so we didn't know what to make of that. And then [Fox anchor] Brit Hume asserted the same thing later in the day.
So this is the kind of problem we are already seeing for Kerry -- that's the climate a candidate has to live in. The right can distort anything it wants. The playing field is so unlevel; there's a systematic disadvantage. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/05/11/right/print.html
More Conservative Angst re Bush
Washington Post’s Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman
After three years of sweeping actions in both foreign and domestic affairs, the Bush administration is facing complaints from the conservative intelligentsia that it has lost its ability to produce fresh policies.
The centerpiece of President Bush's foreign policy -- the effort to transform Iraq into a peaceful democracy -- has been undermined by a deadly insurrection and broadcast photos of brutality by U.S. prison guards. On the domestic side, conservatives and former administration officials say the White House policy apparatus is moribund, with policies driven by political expediency or ideological pressure rather than by facts and expertise.
Conservatives have become unusually restive. Last Tuesday, columnist George F. Will sharply criticized the administration's Iraq policy, writing: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts." Two days earlier, Robert Kagan, a neoconservative supporter of the Iraq war, wrote: "All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now."
The complaints about Bush's Iraq policy are relatively new, but they are in some ways similar to long-standing criticism about Bush's domestic policies. In a book released earlier this year, former Bush Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill described Bush as "a blind man in a room full of deaf people" and said policymakers put politics before sound policy judgments.
Echoing a criticism leveled by former Bush aide John J. DiIulio Jr., who famously described "Mayberry Machiavellis" running the White House, O'Neill said "the biggest difference" between his time in government in the 1970s and in the Bush administration "is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis, and Karl [Rove], Dick [Cheney], [Bush communications strategist] Karen [Hughes] and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics." http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=723e6d297271eebfc234d237651c0f0b&lat=1084195154&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW4RH0582713EFEBA439543E281C0C
And, from Army Times:
But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership.
The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes. http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2903288.php et’s
Not to Forget Syria:
President Bush this week will levy economic sanctions against Syria for supporting terrorism and not doing enough to prevent militant fighters from entering neighboring Iraq, congressional and administration sources said Monday.
The sanctions, which the White House will impose as early as Tuesday, are being ordered because the administration believes Syria has aggravated tensions in the Middle East by supporting militant groups. http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/05/10/syria_sanctions/index.html
But What About the Poor?
Poor 'are paying for war on terror'
Mark Tran in The Guardian
Some of the world's poorest people are paying for the "war on terror" as governments cut aid budgets or switch their priorities to address security issues, a leading charity said today.
The Christian Aid report, entitled The Politics of Poverty, said that aid was being politicised as it had been during the cold war. It accused the US of leading the trend.
"We seem to be drifting back to the darkest days of the cold war, to a time when aid was just as liable to prop up dictators and their regimes as it was to build hospitals or drill wells," the report said. http://society.guardian.co.uk/aid/story/0,14178,1213525,00.html
Venezuela
Some assert that Venezuela has 348 billion barrels of what’s termed proven oil reserves, substantially more than Iraq, and compared to Saudi Arabia’s 261 billion. We know the Bush administration is discomforted by our importing up to 13% of our oil from the regime of maverick populist Hugo Chavez. They’re tying to get rid of him.
The latest development was the arrest of 56 mercenaries, mostly from Colombia.
Venezuelan opposition groups brought the Colombians, now being held on a military base, to the South American country's capital to help overthrow the government, Chavez said.
``This is the tip of the iceberg of subversive groups in Venezuela,'' Chavez said during a televised speech. ``They were planning to kill me.''
Opponents of Chavez have been trying for about two years to force the former paratrooper from office, following a failed coup in April 2002. Chavez may face a recall vote in August.
The Democratic Coordinator, which organizes several opposition groups, had ``nothing to do'' with any plot to kill Chavez, opposition leader Felipe Mujica said, according to newspaper El Nacional's web site.
Chavez also said the United States was plotting to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro. Calls to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas were not answered.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aDA.cL.T6OYs&refer=latin_america#
And, in Colombia
About 1,000 US military personnel plus numerous “contractors” are in Colombia as “trainers” and “advisers” The White House wants to augment their number. But there is an official denial of such.
"The United States has neither plans nor intentions to send US troops to Colombia," the embassy said in a communique released here.
The declaration was made to deny previous statements by Coffer Black, coordinator of the US State Department's anti-terror office, who said Washington would support with military forces in fights against Colombian illegal armed groups.
The US government "will continue to support the programs of the Colombian government with military assistance and training" but would not send troops, said the embassy.
Colombia has been locked in a four-decade civil war, the longest in Latin America, in which government forces, leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitarists fight one another. The conflicts kill 3,500 people on average every year. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-05/08/content_1456359.htm
Iraq is but one Center for Abuse
Dana Priest and Joe Stephens of the Washington Post have done a three-parter. Here’s #3.
In Afghanistan, the CIA's secret U.S. interrogation center in Kabul is known as "The Pit," named for its despairing conditions. In Iraq, the most important prisoners are kept in a huge hangar near the runway at Baghdad International Airport, say U.S. government officials, counterterrorism experts and others. In Qatar, U.S. forces have been ferrying some Iraqi prisoners to a remote jail on the gigantic U.S. air base in the desert.
The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where a unit of U.S. soldiers abused prisoners, is just the largest and suddenly most notorious in a worldwide constellation of detention centers -- many of them secret and all off-limits to public scrutiny -- that the U.S. military and CIA have operated in the name of counterterrorism or counterinsurgency operations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
These prisons and jails are sometimes as small as shipping containers and as large as the sprawling Guantanamo Bay complex in Cuba. They are part of an elaborate CIA and military infrastructure whose purpose is to hold suspected terrorists or insurgents for interrogation and safekeeping while avoiding U.S. or international court systems, where proceedings and evidence against the accused would be aired in public. Some are even held by foreign governments at the informal request of the United States.
"The number of people who have been detained in the Arab world for the sake of America is much more than in Guantanamo Bay. Really, thousands," said Najeeb Nuaimi, a former justice minister of Qatar who is representing the families of dozens of prisoners.
The largely hidden array includes three systems that only rarely overlap: the Pentagon-run network of prisons, jails and holding facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere; small and secret CIA-run facilities where top al Qaeda and other figures are kept; and interrogation rooms of foreign intelligence services -- some with documented records of torture -- to which the U.S. government delivers or "renders" mid- or low-level terrorism suspects for questioning.
All told, more than 9,000 people are held by U.S. authorities overseas, according to Pentagon figures and estimates by intelligence experts, the vast majority under military control. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15981-2004May10?language=printer
Abuse in Afghanistan:
From Wednesday’s NY Times (Carlotta Gall):
A former Afghan police colonel gave a graphic account in an interview this week of being subjected to beating, kicking, sleep deprivation, taunts and sexual abuse during about 40 days he spent in American custody in Afghanistan last summer. He also said he had been repeatedly photographed, often while naked. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/international/asia/12AFGH.html?ex=1399694400&en=a88932b0d553dbe1&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
Red Cross: Up to 90% of Iraqi detainees arrested by mistake (Alexander G. Higgins)
Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested ''by mistake,'' according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report disclosed Monday.
Abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was widespread and routine, the report finds -- contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment ''was the wrongdoing of a few.''
Red Cross delegates saw U.S. military intelligence officers mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison and collected allegations of abuse at more than 10 other detention facilities, according to the report.
The 24-page document cites abuses -- some ''tantamount to torture'' -- including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of ''imminent execution.'' http://www.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi
Wall Street Journal (David S. Cloud) re Red Cross reports
The Red Cross report indicates that some complaints brought an allied response, while others didn't. More than a year ago, on April 1, 2003, officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross complained at coalition forces headquarters in Qatar about treatment of detainees at a British-run internment camp in the Iraqi port town of Umm Qasr, the report says.
A meeting with the political adviser to the senior British commander in Qatar appears to have brought quick results. It "had the immediate effect [of stopping] the systematic use of hoods and flexi-cuffs in the interrogation section of Umm Qasr," according to the ICRC report, which details the results of its inspections in Iraq.
But during the next year, the ICRC encountered far more resistance when it raised concerns about the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, especially those in the custody of military intelligence, the report says. The U.S. military was sometimes slow to respond to Red Cross complaints and ignored them in a few cases.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108414473392906282,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
Terrorism on the Rise
From Knight Ridder:
A series of recent developments in the war on terrorism, barely noticed in the United States, suggests that global Islamic extremism is spreading.
On Monday, Turkish authorities charged nine people, believed to be part of an al-Qaida-linked group, in connection with planning to bomb next month's NATO summit in Istanbul, which President Bush is scheduled to attend. That followed the April 26 televised confessions of suspects allegedly caught trying to build a chemical bomb, which authorities said could have killed tens of thousands in Jordan's capital, Amman.
In Saudi Arabia, authorities weren't so successful. On May 1, militants shot dead two Americans, two Britons and an Australian at an oil company's offices. On May 3, a car bomb exploded in southwestern Pakistan, killing three Chinese engineers who had been building a multimillion-dollar seaport.
In Syria on April 27, a gym teacher died in a cross fire between extremists and police. In Thailand the next day, police killed 108 Muslim militants who'd allegedly attacked police stations trying to seize guns, though that incident has overtones of longstanding ethnic strife. In Spain, an indictment issued April 29 alleges that one of the Moroccans accused in connection with the Madrid train bombings is also linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In Indonesia on April 30, protesters rioted after a radical cleric was arrested again on charges linking him to the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, which killed 202 people.
On Thursday, the FBI took into custody Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, in connection with the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000.
Many of these events, all within the past two weeks, received scant attention in the United States, where the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal dominates news headlines. But they are the most recent indications that the threat of Islamic terrorism - and the transnational battles against it - are intensifying.
The recent episodes show that law enforcement and intelligence agencies across Europe and the Middle East have been able to prevent terrorist attacks and have vigorously pursued those accused of planning them. Yet the military and police actions haven't stopped extremists from hatching chilling new plots. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8623725.htm
Republican Campaign:
President Bush is resolved not to repeat what he thinks were the two fundamental blunders of his father's one-term presidency: abandoning Iraq and failing to vanquish the Democrats.
In one of several exclusive interviews with The Washington Times, Mr. Bush said his father had "cut and run early" from Iraq in 1991.
Mr. Bush also said Sen. John Kerry would "regret" disparaging the U.S.-led coalition that liberated Iraq, promising to use the Massachusetts Democrat's words against him in the election campaign. [...]
White House political strategist Karl Rove, in one of the lengthy interviews with The Times granted by senior administration officials, also detailed how the Bush campaign intends to paint Mr. Kerry as a condescending elitist, who is pro-tax, weak on defense and on the wrong side in the culture wars.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. described Mr. Kerry as a John F. Kennedy "wannabe," who lacks the mettle to be president. Mr. Card, who also worked for the first President Bush, said when it comes to running for re-election, the son is much more engaged and far less complacent than the father. http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040510-122703-4851r.htm
Loose-lipped O’Reilly: Liberals as Fidelistas
Seems that Bill O’Reilly, the repugnant, lying liar on Fox, has been characterizing various liberal types as “confidants” of Fidel Castro. Molly Ivins, Arianna Huffington, Bill Maher and now journalist Eric Alterman have received the designation, arguably actionable as “malicious intent” to defame character and demonstrating ‘reckless disregard’ for the truth, etc. Alterman asks on his web site, below, whether anyone wants to take on his case, pro bono. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/ http://mediamatters.org/items/200405040007
-R
Before returning, inevitably, to Iraq…
Shorties:
- Who’s investigating the use of funds approved for use in Afghanistan being spent instead on Iraq in 2002? [At least some questions, as per Tuesday’s WaPost, http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=965c16eaf2f3f857fa1e70c77f0ca4c1&lat=1084315190&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW4RH05819967AEBA439543E2638D1
- When will we hear re the Plame investigation, as to the Administration figures who outed agent Valerie Plame, wife of ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson?
- Who remembers Bush saying the day the Invasion began that the troops were sent to “defend the world from grave danger”. Grave danger?
-Why- oh, I know why, but I’ll go on- is there no call for Rummy to be charged with something like “criminal negligence”, why is no one but Nader calling for the impeachment of Bush, and why haven’t McCain and other conservatives with integrity deserted Bush? (More on the latter, below)
- The Bin Laden Family has a shot at building the world’s tallest building. Very weird, but true. From the Pakistan News Service:
Osama bin Laden's family business is on the short list of contractors bidding to build the world's tallest skyscraper.
It may seem tragically ironic that the name most closely associated with the destruction of New York's World Trade Center may soon be associated with the construction of the world's tallest building.
But, nevertheless, according to officials in Dubai – the site of the Burj Dubai, scheduled for completion in 2008 – that is more than a distinct possibility.
The Saudi Binladen Group, the biggest developer in the kingdom, begun by Osama bin Laden's father, is in the running for the project. http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=64445
- Well-connected and respected journalist Josh Marshall learns of ”chatter in Pakistani intelligence circles that the US has let the Pakistanis know that the optimal time for bagging 'high value' al Qaida suspects in the untamed Afghan-Pakistani border lands is the last ten days of July, 2004.” In other words, embarrassing the Democrats as they convene their convention. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Job Creation?
One suspected that the much ballyhooed creation of 500,000+ jobs the last two months meant more part-time or temporary “service” jobs of lessened pay and benefits. Now, from the unlikely source, the once great, now very conservative NY Post, (John Crudele), comes an article that accuses the Labor Department of misleading estimating of job gains. The post is rather long. Give it a shot.
Don’t get too excited about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April.
I'm not going to waste a lot of my precious space on this, but the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were created last month may not really exist.
They could be figments of statisticians' optimism.
Anyone who plodded through my column last Thursday knows I predicted that job growth in April would be better than the 160,000 to 170,000 jobs that the "pros" were anticipating.
But I also said, quite emphatically I hope, that the stronger growth would be an illusion - the result of the Labor Department's computers making happy predictions about seasonal job creation that could neither be verified nor justified.
I'll explain one aspect.
Back in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.
That estimate comes from the Labor Department's "birth/death model." You can look up these numbers on the Department's Web site.
As staggering as the assumption about new companies was in March, the Labor Department got even more brazen in April.
Last Friday, it was disclosed that these imaginary jobs had been increased by 117,000 to 270,000 for the latest month - because, I guess, the stat jockeys got a vision from the gods of spring.
Without those extra 117,000 make-believe jobs, the total growth for April would have been just 171,000 - sub-par for an economy that's supposed to be growing at more than 4 percent a year, but right on the pros' targets.
Take away all 270,000 make-believe jobs and, well, you have the sort of pessimism that the political pollsters are seeing.
If I was the suspicious type (and if I thought Washington was smart enough), I'd suspect a nasty motive behind the sudden surge in these mystery jobs. But for now, let's just acknowledge their existence. http://nypost.com/business/23936.htm
More Warnings: Oil is Running Out:
It’s not pleasant. Let’s get busy. From the Wall Street Journal:
As the global economy roars ahead with more factories churning out consumer goods and more cars hitting the streets, demand for oil may outstrip supply. World-wide use is forecast to rise more than 50% to 121 million barrels a day by 2025, from 80 million barrels a day now. In China and India, the world's most populous countries, economic growth is powered by and in turn fueling a thirst for oil.
Experts warn that without alternative fuel sources, the need for oil could pit massive consumers such as the U.S. against China and India. Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, an energy-policy think tank, warns, "While the U.S. is absorbed in fighting the war on terror, the seeds of what could be the next world war are quietly germinating. ... By 2030, China is expected to have more cars than the U.S. and import as much oil as the U.S. does today." Although India's economy isn't growing as fast, its oil consumption is skyrocketing.
Both countries are paying little heed to the environmental and medical consequences of development and argue that other countries industrialized without concern for carbon emissions.
http://online.wsj.com/documents/info-aoil04.html?printVersion=true
David Brock:
I mentioned his web site; here’s a tad from an interview on Salon, addressing the development of the Republican attack machine.
In 1986 I was working at a sister publication of the Washington Times, Insight magazine, and I then became an editorial writer at the Washington Times. And I don't think it had happened during that period because the paper had the same circulation it has today, about 100,000 readers, and it was considered to be a suspect, unreliable right-wing publication. It had, from the inside, very little impact in getting its message off the page; its stories didn't really go anywhere. But then a few things happened: Limbaugh went to national syndication in '88, and then you had the proliferation of cable, and then you had the Internet. So today, 16 years later, someone writes something in the Washington Times that may be unreliable, but it resonates because Limbaugh could read it on the air, or [Matt] Drudge could post it, or the author could go on Bill O'Reilly's show. So it's a completely different climate. During the '90s the flow of misinformation was established.
How do you think the press has treated John Kerry over the past few months?
Clearly there's already some evidence of a phenomenon I describe in the book of the ability of the right-wing media to project a caricature. For instance, [Media Matters noted] that Drudge wrote an item about a hairstylist being flown in for Kerry before his appearance on "Meet the Press." There was no sourcing, so one didn't know what to make of it. Then I believe the [next step in the] chain was that Jay Leno mentioned it in a joke, which is fine. Then the AP and Reuters reported the Leno joke. Then Linda Vester on Fox the next day claimed that Fox News had independently confirmed the story, but her story didn't provide any sourcing, so we didn't know what to make of that. And then [Fox anchor] Brit Hume asserted the same thing later in the day.
So this is the kind of problem we are already seeing for Kerry -- that's the climate a candidate has to live in. The right can distort anything it wants. The playing field is so unlevel; there's a systematic disadvantage. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/05/11/right/print.html
More Conservative Angst re Bush
Washington Post’s Dana Milbank and Jonathan Weisman
After three years of sweeping actions in both foreign and domestic affairs, the Bush administration is facing complaints from the conservative intelligentsia that it has lost its ability to produce fresh policies.
The centerpiece of President Bush's foreign policy -- the effort to transform Iraq into a peaceful democracy -- has been undermined by a deadly insurrection and broadcast photos of brutality by U.S. prison guards. On the domestic side, conservatives and former administration officials say the White House policy apparatus is moribund, with policies driven by political expediency or ideological pressure rather than by facts and expertise.
Conservatives have become unusually restive. Last Tuesday, columnist George F. Will sharply criticized the administration's Iraq policy, writing: "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts." Two days earlier, Robert Kagan, a neoconservative supporter of the Iraq war, wrote: "All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now."
The complaints about Bush's Iraq policy are relatively new, but they are in some ways similar to long-standing criticism about Bush's domestic policies. In a book released earlier this year, former Bush Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill described Bush as "a blind man in a room full of deaf people" and said policymakers put politics before sound policy judgments.
Echoing a criticism leveled by former Bush aide John J. DiIulio Jr., who famously described "Mayberry Machiavellis" running the White House, O'Neill said "the biggest difference" between his time in government in the 1970s and in the Bush administration "is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis, and Karl [Rove], Dick [Cheney], [Bush communications strategist] Karen [Hughes] and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics." http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=723e6d297271eebfc234d237651c0f0b&lat=1084195154&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW4RH0582713EFEBA439543E281C0C
And, from Army Times:
But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership.
The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes. http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2903288.php et’s
Not to Forget Syria:
President Bush this week will levy economic sanctions against Syria for supporting terrorism and not doing enough to prevent militant fighters from entering neighboring Iraq, congressional and administration sources said Monday.
The sanctions, which the White House will impose as early as Tuesday, are being ordered because the administration believes Syria has aggravated tensions in the Middle East by supporting militant groups. http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/05/10/syria_sanctions/index.html
But What About the Poor?
Poor 'are paying for war on terror'
Mark Tran in The Guardian
Some of the world's poorest people are paying for the "war on terror" as governments cut aid budgets or switch their priorities to address security issues, a leading charity said today.
The Christian Aid report, entitled The Politics of Poverty, said that aid was being politicised as it had been during the cold war. It accused the US of leading the trend.
"We seem to be drifting back to the darkest days of the cold war, to a time when aid was just as liable to prop up dictators and their regimes as it was to build hospitals or drill wells," the report said. http://society.guardian.co.uk/aid/story/0,14178,1213525,00.html
Venezuela
Some assert that Venezuela has 348 billion barrels of what’s termed proven oil reserves, substantially more than Iraq, and compared to Saudi Arabia’s 261 billion. We know the Bush administration is discomforted by our importing up to 13% of our oil from the regime of maverick populist Hugo Chavez. They’re tying to get rid of him.
The latest development was the arrest of 56 mercenaries, mostly from Colombia.
Venezuelan opposition groups brought the Colombians, now being held on a military base, to the South American country's capital to help overthrow the government, Chavez said.
``This is the tip of the iceberg of subversive groups in Venezuela,'' Chavez said during a televised speech. ``They were planning to kill me.''
Opponents of Chavez have been trying for about two years to force the former paratrooper from office, following a failed coup in April 2002. Chavez may face a recall vote in August.
The Democratic Coordinator, which organizes several opposition groups, had ``nothing to do'' with any plot to kill Chavez, opposition leader Felipe Mujica said, according to newspaper El Nacional's web site.
Chavez also said the United States was plotting to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro. Calls to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas were not answered.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aDA.cL.T6OYs&refer=latin_america#
And, in Colombia
About 1,000 US military personnel plus numerous “contractors” are in Colombia as “trainers” and “advisers” The White House wants to augment their number. But there is an official denial of such.
"The United States has neither plans nor intentions to send US troops to Colombia," the embassy said in a communique released here.
The declaration was made to deny previous statements by Coffer Black, coordinator of the US State Department's anti-terror office, who said Washington would support with military forces in fights against Colombian illegal armed groups.
The US government "will continue to support the programs of the Colombian government with military assistance and training" but would not send troops, said the embassy.
Colombia has been locked in a four-decade civil war, the longest in Latin America, in which government forces, leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitarists fight one another. The conflicts kill 3,500 people on average every year. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-05/08/content_1456359.htm
Iraq is but one Center for Abuse
Dana Priest and Joe Stephens of the Washington Post have done a three-parter. Here’s #3.
In Afghanistan, the CIA's secret U.S. interrogation center in Kabul is known as "The Pit," named for its despairing conditions. In Iraq, the most important prisoners are kept in a huge hangar near the runway at Baghdad International Airport, say U.S. government officials, counterterrorism experts and others. In Qatar, U.S. forces have been ferrying some Iraqi prisoners to a remote jail on the gigantic U.S. air base in the desert.
The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where a unit of U.S. soldiers abused prisoners, is just the largest and suddenly most notorious in a worldwide constellation of detention centers -- many of them secret and all off-limits to public scrutiny -- that the U.S. military and CIA have operated in the name of counterterrorism or counterinsurgency operations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
These prisons and jails are sometimes as small as shipping containers and as large as the sprawling Guantanamo Bay complex in Cuba. They are part of an elaborate CIA and military infrastructure whose purpose is to hold suspected terrorists or insurgents for interrogation and safekeeping while avoiding U.S. or international court systems, where proceedings and evidence against the accused would be aired in public. Some are even held by foreign governments at the informal request of the United States.
"The number of people who have been detained in the Arab world for the sake of America is much more than in Guantanamo Bay. Really, thousands," said Najeeb Nuaimi, a former justice minister of Qatar who is representing the families of dozens of prisoners.
The largely hidden array includes three systems that only rarely overlap: the Pentagon-run network of prisons, jails and holding facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere; small and secret CIA-run facilities where top al Qaeda and other figures are kept; and interrogation rooms of foreign intelligence services -- some with documented records of torture -- to which the U.S. government delivers or "renders" mid- or low-level terrorism suspects for questioning.
All told, more than 9,000 people are held by U.S. authorities overseas, according to Pentagon figures and estimates by intelligence experts, the vast majority under military control. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15981-2004May10?language=printer
Abuse in Afghanistan:
From Wednesday’s NY Times (Carlotta Gall):
A former Afghan police colonel gave a graphic account in an interview this week of being subjected to beating, kicking, sleep deprivation, taunts and sexual abuse during about 40 days he spent in American custody in Afghanistan last summer. He also said he had been repeatedly photographed, often while naked. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/international/asia/12AFGH.html?ex=1399694400&en=a88932b0d553dbe1&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
Red Cross: Up to 90% of Iraqi detainees arrested by mistake (Alexander G. Higgins)
Up to 90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested ''by mistake,'' according to coalition intelligence officers cited in a Red Cross report disclosed Monday.
Abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was widespread and routine, the report finds -- contrary to President Bush's contention that the mistreatment ''was the wrongdoing of a few.''
Red Cross delegates saw U.S. military intelligence officers mistreating prisoners under interrogation at Abu Ghraib prison and collected allegations of abuse at more than 10 other detention facilities, according to the report.
The 24-page document cites abuses -- some ''tantamount to torture'' -- including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of ''imminent execution.'' http://www.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi
Wall Street Journal (David S. Cloud) re Red Cross reports
The Red Cross report indicates that some complaints brought an allied response, while others didn't. More than a year ago, on April 1, 2003, officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross complained at coalition forces headquarters in Qatar about treatment of detainees at a British-run internment camp in the Iraqi port town of Umm Qasr, the report says.
A meeting with the political adviser to the senior British commander in Qatar appears to have brought quick results. It "had the immediate effect [of stopping] the systematic use of hoods and flexi-cuffs in the interrogation section of Umm Qasr," according to the ICRC report, which details the results of its inspections in Iraq.
But during the next year, the ICRC encountered far more resistance when it raised concerns about the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, especially those in the custody of military intelligence, the report says. The U.S. military was sometimes slow to respond to Red Cross complaints and ignored them in a few cases.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108414473392906282,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
Terrorism on the Rise
From Knight Ridder:
A series of recent developments in the war on terrorism, barely noticed in the United States, suggests that global Islamic extremism is spreading.
On Monday, Turkish authorities charged nine people, believed to be part of an al-Qaida-linked group, in connection with planning to bomb next month's NATO summit in Istanbul, which President Bush is scheduled to attend. That followed the April 26 televised confessions of suspects allegedly caught trying to build a chemical bomb, which authorities said could have killed tens of thousands in Jordan's capital, Amman.
In Saudi Arabia, authorities weren't so successful. On May 1, militants shot dead two Americans, two Britons and an Australian at an oil company's offices. On May 3, a car bomb exploded in southwestern Pakistan, killing three Chinese engineers who had been building a multimillion-dollar seaport.
In Syria on April 27, a gym teacher died in a cross fire between extremists and police. In Thailand the next day, police killed 108 Muslim militants who'd allegedly attacked police stations trying to seize guns, though that incident has overtones of longstanding ethnic strife. In Spain, an indictment issued April 29 alleges that one of the Moroccans accused in connection with the Madrid train bombings is also linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In Indonesia on April 30, protesters rioted after a radical cleric was arrested again on charges linking him to the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, which killed 202 people.
On Thursday, the FBI took into custody Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, in connection with the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people and injured 2,000.
Many of these events, all within the past two weeks, received scant attention in the United States, where the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal dominates news headlines. But they are the most recent indications that the threat of Islamic terrorism - and the transnational battles against it - are intensifying.
The recent episodes show that law enforcement and intelligence agencies across Europe and the Middle East have been able to prevent terrorist attacks and have vigorously pursued those accused of planning them. Yet the military and police actions haven't stopped extremists from hatching chilling new plots. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8623725.htm
Republican Campaign:
President Bush is resolved not to repeat what he thinks were the two fundamental blunders of his father's one-term presidency: abandoning Iraq and failing to vanquish the Democrats.
In one of several exclusive interviews with The Washington Times, Mr. Bush said his father had "cut and run early" from Iraq in 1991.
Mr. Bush also said Sen. John Kerry would "regret" disparaging the U.S.-led coalition that liberated Iraq, promising to use the Massachusetts Democrat's words against him in the election campaign. [...]
White House political strategist Karl Rove, in one of the lengthy interviews with The Times granted by senior administration officials, also detailed how the Bush campaign intends to paint Mr. Kerry as a condescending elitist, who is pro-tax, weak on defense and on the wrong side in the culture wars.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. described Mr. Kerry as a John F. Kennedy "wannabe," who lacks the mettle to be president. Mr. Card, who also worked for the first President Bush, said when it comes to running for re-election, the son is much more engaged and far less complacent than the father. http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040510-122703-4851r.htm
Loose-lipped O’Reilly: Liberals as Fidelistas
Seems that Bill O’Reilly, the repugnant, lying liar on Fox, has been characterizing various liberal types as “confidants” of Fidel Castro. Molly Ivins, Arianna Huffington, Bill Maher and now journalist Eric Alterman have received the designation, arguably actionable as “malicious intent” to defame character and demonstrating ‘reckless disregard’ for the truth, etc. Alterman asks on his web site, below, whether anyone wants to take on his case, pro bono. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/ http://mediamatters.org/items/200405040007
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