Sunday, May 23, 2004
What’s Happening, Iraq:
P.R. Offensive: Spin is what they are about, though we term it lies, distortions, misrepresentations.
So, it’s not surprising that since they can’t make the Occupation a success, they will try to make it sound like one. Robin Wright in the Washington Post:
President Bush will launch an ambitious campaign tomorrow night to shift attention from recent setbacks that have eroded domestic and international support for U.S. policy in Iraq, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the escalating violence, and focus instead on the future of post-occupation Iraq.
The president will open a tightly orchestrated public relations effort in a speech at the Army War College outlining U.S. plans for the critical five weeks before the transfer of political power June 30. ..
In the first of at least six presidential speeches on Iraq before June 30, Bush will particularly try to counter growing criticism that Washington has lowered the goal posts for its year-long occupation, U.S. officials said. Critics and Iraq experts have charged that the administration has backed down from its original pledge to create a strong new democracy that would be a catalyst for a broad political transformation in the Middle East and is instead settling on an exit strategy that will leave a fragile government unable to protect itself.
"He will talk about the importance of not lowering our sights and sticking to our goals of a free, peaceful, democratic Iraq, of adhering to our commitment to the June 30 transfer of sovereignty, and of an election in a January time frame," said a White House official who insisted on anonymity. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48487-2004May22?language=printer
Bush Reads the Speeches, while The Others…
Nothing new here, that he reads the speeches and the Group- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al push the policy. It makes one recall an excerpt from James Fallows’ piece in the Jan-Feb. Atlantic magazine:
This is the place to note that in several months of interviews I never once heard someone say "We took this step because the President indicated ..." or "The President really wanted ..." Instead I heard "Rumsfeld wanted," "Powell thought," "The Vice President pushed," "Bremer asked," and so on. One need only compare this with any discussion of foreign policy in Reagan's or Clinton's Administration—or Nixon's, or Kennedy's, or Johnson's, or most others—to sense how unusual is the absence of the President as prime mover....It is possible that the President's confidants are so discreet that they have kept all his decisions and instructions secret. But that would run counter to the fundamental nature of bureaucratic Washington, where people cite a President's authority whenever they possibly can ("The President feels strongly about this, so ..."). http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/fallows.htm
India funds Bush's campaign
They’re pulling in big bucks from anywhere they can. Yet, they lie about this one as well. In response to reports about these overseas efforts, the GOP put out its characteristic denial:
Today John Kerry supporters began circulating a false story from the Internet, claiming that the RNC outsourced fundraising calls to an Indian telemarketing firm.
“This story is an untrue urban legend which has been traversing the nether regions of cyber space for the better part of a year. It’s unfortunate that John Kerry’s supporters have so little regard for the truth that they would spread Internet stories with no basis in fact,” said RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke. http://www.gop.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=4220
Yet, several sources suggested otherwise. From The Asia Times Online (Siddharth Srivastava)
There is more than one reason US President George W Bush should thank Indians, whether in the United States or India, as the buildup to elections in the US slated for November gathers steam. Indians are contributing handsomely to Bush's campaign funds while, until recently, there was a band of more than 100 dedicated call-center executives who were handling Bush's fundraising and vote-seeking campaign for the Republican Party from the outsourcing hubs of Noida and Gurgaon, which adjoin the national capital Delhi. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FE19Df04.html
Call to Conscience: Roger Morris, senior staff on the National Security Council under Johnson and Nixon has appealed to Americans in the Foreign Service to resign from the “worst regime by far in the history of the republic.”
Dear Trustees:
I am respectfully addressing you by your proper if little-used title. The women and men of our diplomatic corps and intelligence community are genuine trustees. With intellect and sensibility, character and courage, you represent America to the world. Equally important, you show the world to America. You hold in trust our role and reputation among nations, and ultimately our fate. Yours is the gravest, noblest responsibility. Never has the conscience you personify been more important.
You know how recklessly a cabal of political appointees and ideological zealots, led by the exceptionally powerful and furtively doctrinaire Vice President Cheney, corrupted intelligence and usurped policy on Iraq and other issues. You know the bitter departmental disputes in which a deeply politicized, parochial Pentagon overpowered or simply ignored any opposition in the State Department or the CIA, rushing us to unilateral aggressive war in Iraq and chaotic, fateful occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
You know well what a willfully uninformed and heedless president you serve in Bush, how chilling are the tales of his ignorance and sectarian fervor, lethal opposites of the erudition and open-mindedness you embody in the arts of diplomacy and intelligence. Some of you know how woefully his national security advisor fails her vital duty to manage some order among Washington's thrashing interests, and so to protect her president, and the country, from calamity. You know specifics. Many of you are aware, for instance, that the torture at Abu Ghraib was an issue up and down not only the Pentagon but also State, the CIA and the National Security Council staff for nearly a year before the scandalous photos finally leaked.
As you have seen in years of service, every presidency has its arrogance, infighting and blunders in foreign relations. As most of you recognize, too, the Bush administration is like no other. You serve the worst foreign policy regime by far in the history of the republic. The havoc you feel inside government has inflicted unprecedented damage on national interests and security. As never before since the United States stepped onto the world stage, we have flouted treaties and alliances, alienated friends, multiplied enemies, lost respect and credibility on every continent. You see this every day. And again, whatever your politics, those of you who have served other presidents know this is an unparalleled bipartisan disaster. In its militant hubris and folly, the Bush administration has undone the statesmanship of every government before it, and broken faith with every presidency, Democratic and Republican (even that of Bush I), over the past half century. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/05/21/resign/print.html
Like the Rats on a Sinking Ship?:
The NY Times is now criticizing the Administration for having been hoodwinked by Chalabi and the intelligence he provided. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/opinion/21FRI1.html Yet, they fail to mention that they supported the assertions of their reporter, Judith Miller, who cited Chalabi’s claims as the basis for her belief that Iraq’s WMD presented a dire threat to the U.S. Miller, it will be recalled, admitted on May 1, 2003 that "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper. ... He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."
The NeoCon Propaganda: We’re not surprised are we?
Eric Alterman’s Nation article addresses what we knew about this bunch.
These are the men not just the neocons but self-described progressives and human-rights advocates believed capable of carrying out the delicate and difficult mission of bringing democracy and modernism to the Arab world, while safeguarding the security and good name of the United States. Excuse me, but just what was so hard to understand about this bunch? We knew they were dishonest. We knew they were fanatical. We knew they were purposely ignorant and bragged about not reading newspapers. We knew they were vindictive. We knew they were lawless. We knew they were obsessively secretive. We knew they had no time or patience for those who raised difficult questions. We knew they were driven by fantasies of religious warfare, personal vengeance and ideological triumph. We knew they had no respect for civil liberties. And we knew they took no responsibility for the consequences of their incompetence. Just what is surprising about the manner in which they've conducted the war?
And how pathetic is it that the only cable network really grappling with the media's failure is Comedy Central? Let's give the last word to the Daily Show's incomparable Stephen Colbert: "The journalists I know love America, but now all anybody wants to talk about is the bad journalists--the journalists that hurt America.... Who didn't uncover the flaws in our prewar intelligence? Who gave a free pass on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection? Who dropped Afghanistan from the headlines at the first whiff of this Iraqi snipe hunt? The United States press corps, that's who." http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040607&s=alterman
How to Recruit Opposition: Bomb a Wedding party!The military is holding out, claiming that it targeted insurgents, smugglers, bad guys. They have no explanation for the bodies of women and children, the majority of victims from this week’s air strike, or why there were so many musicians hanging with these nogoodniks.
An LA Times (Alissa J. Rubin) account:
With the smell of roasted lamb still in the air, Bassem Hameed Dulaimi left the tent where wedding guests were sleeping after three days of revelry and walked to a far field to wash up. Then, the musician said, he saw a flash in the desert sky, and another. He described blast after blast as rockets rained down on the tiny hamlet in the early-morning hours.
"They fired more than 40 rockets — I counted," the 26-year-old organ player recounted Thursday at a funeral in Baghdad for two of the seven fellow musicians he said were killed in the attack by U.S. forces.
U.S. military officials continued to doubt Thursday that the "men of fighting age" they say died in the desert early Wednesday had gathered for a wedding. They say three large buildings in the hamlet were safe houses along a trail used by smugglers to move arms and insurgents into Iraq. They say troops found passports, weapons and the equivalent of $1,000 in Iraqi dinars at the site.
The Iraqis and the U.S. military agree on some details of the attack. But on the crucial question they disagree: Was this an innocent gathering of revelers fast asleep at the time, or a band of gunmen who fired on the Americans?
About 40 people were killed in the remote village just 15 miles from the Syrian border, said the U.S. military and Iraqis on the scene. A doctor in the hospital in the nearby town of Qaim put the number of dead at about 45. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-bombing21may21,1,7405961,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Abuse Scandal: General Sanchez Implicated
Local media are beginning to report this. From the original report from the Guardian:
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition forces in Iraq, issued an order last October giving military intelligence control over almost every aspect of prison conditions at Abu Ghraib with the explicit aim of manipulating the detainees' "emotions and weaknesses", it was reported yesterday.
The October 12 memorandum, reported in the Washington Post, is a potential "smoking gun" linking prisoner abuse to the US high command. It represents hard evidence that the maltreatment was not simply the fault of rogue military police guards. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1222348,00.html
Still Another Scandal within the (Abuse) Scandal within …
John McCain was in a tizzy about this at the end of the week, but the media ignored it till TIME did a posting. It’s about some missing pages. Yet the headline was about the Senate being on CIA Director Tenet’s case.
Another big stack of pages is causing concern over at the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is investigating abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Committee aides discovered belatedly that their copy of the 6,000-page report on prison abuses produced by Major General Antonio M. Taguba might not be complete. The copy they got after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony on May 7 was a thick document with 106 annexes, and it was quickly arranged into separate binders. Only later did the committee stack up all the pages, compare them with a ream of 6,000 blank pages and decide that at least 2,000 pages were missing. "We'd certainly like to know why they're missing," said Republican Senator John McCain. Pentagon spokesman Larry Dirita insisted, "If there is some shortfall in what was provided, it was an oversight." Committee staff members haven't actually counted the pages. Chairman John Warner will investigate this week to see what is missing. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040531-641078,00.html
Frank Rich on Fahrenheit 9/11
Rich’s take on Michael Moore’s movie- which received, according to attendees, the longest ovation of any prize winner EVER! Not to be concerned- The post below doesn’t include Plot.
We already know that politicians in denial will dismiss the abuse sequence in Mr. Moore's film as mere partisanship. Someone will surely echo Senator James Inhofe's Abu Ghraib complaint that "humanitarian do-gooders" looking for human rights violations are maligning "our troops, our heroes" as they continue to fight and die. But Senator Inhofe and his colleagues might ask how much they are honoring soldiers who are overextended, undermanned and bereft of a coherent plan in Iraq. Last weekend The Los Angeles Times reported that for the first time three Army divisions, more than a third of its combat troops, are so depleted of equipment and skills that they are classified "unfit to fight." In contrast to Washington's neglect, much of "Fahrenheit 9/11" turns out to be a patriotic celebration of the heroic American troops who have been fighting and dying under these and other deplorable conditions since President Bush's declaration of war.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/arts/23RICH.html?ex=1086307690&ei=1&en=9478737ff2721eb7
The Occupation Toll:
An AP survey of morgues in Baghdad and the provinces of Karbala, Kirkuk and Tikrit found 5,558 violent deaths recorded from May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, to April 30. The toll from both criminal and political violence ran dramatically higher than violent deaths before the war, according to statistics from morgues. http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBHU6WELUD.html
Food News: “What is Organic?” Fuzziness ahead…
Over the course of 10 days in mid-April, the USDA issued three "guidances" and one directive -- all legally binding interpretations of law -- that threaten to seriously dilute the meaning of the word "organic" and discredit the department's National Organic Program. And the changes -- which would allow the use of antibiotics on organic dairy cows, synthetic pesticides on organic farms, and more -- were made with zero input from the public or the National Organic Standards Board, the advisory group that worked for more than a decade to help craft the first federal organic standards, put in place in October 2002. One practice favored by large agribusiness is the use of antibiotics on cows, and a guidance [PDF] issued on April 14 will allow just that on organic dairy farms, a dramatic reversal of 2002 rules. Under the new guidelines, sickly dairy cows can be treated not just with antibiotics but with numerous other drugs and still have their milk qualify as organic, so long as 12 months pass between the time the treatments are administered and the time the milk is sold…
Previously, organic farmers were only allowed to use natural, nontoxic pesticides on their crops, which effectively prohibited use of pesticides with hidden ingredients (pesticide manufacturers often don't list certain ingredients, claiming the information is proprietary).
According to the new guidelines, however, organic farmers and certifiers are only required to make a "reasonable effort" to find out what is in the pesticides being applied to crops. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/05/21/anti_organic/index.html
Voter Registration:
How to reach people? Some original notions are out there. One blog reader (MR) notes that a friend simply sets up in shopping centers in African-American areas and has registered hundreds of new voters by himself.
Another novel idea reported in Salon (Xiao Zhang)”
Strip club owners are putting a little bada-bing in the presidential campaign by asking patrons to turn their eyes away from the stage for a moment to fill out a voter registration form -- and then vote against President Bush.
"It's not to say our industry loves John Kerry or anything like that," said Dave Manack, associate publisher of E.D. Publications, which publishes Exotic Dancer magazine. "But George Bush, if he's re-elected, it could be very damaging to our industry." http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/05/20/stip_clib/index.html
-R
P.R. Offensive: Spin is what they are about, though we term it lies, distortions, misrepresentations.
So, it’s not surprising that since they can’t make the Occupation a success, they will try to make it sound like one. Robin Wright in the Washington Post:
President Bush will launch an ambitious campaign tomorrow night to shift attention from recent setbacks that have eroded domestic and international support for U.S. policy in Iraq, particularly the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the escalating violence, and focus instead on the future of post-occupation Iraq.
The president will open a tightly orchestrated public relations effort in a speech at the Army War College outlining U.S. plans for the critical five weeks before the transfer of political power June 30. ..
In the first of at least six presidential speeches on Iraq before June 30, Bush will particularly try to counter growing criticism that Washington has lowered the goal posts for its year-long occupation, U.S. officials said. Critics and Iraq experts have charged that the administration has backed down from its original pledge to create a strong new democracy that would be a catalyst for a broad political transformation in the Middle East and is instead settling on an exit strategy that will leave a fragile government unable to protect itself.
"He will talk about the importance of not lowering our sights and sticking to our goals of a free, peaceful, democratic Iraq, of adhering to our commitment to the June 30 transfer of sovereignty, and of an election in a January time frame," said a White House official who insisted on anonymity. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48487-2004May22?language=printer
Bush Reads the Speeches, while The Others…
Nothing new here, that he reads the speeches and the Group- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al push the policy. It makes one recall an excerpt from James Fallows’ piece in the Jan-Feb. Atlantic magazine:
This is the place to note that in several months of interviews I never once heard someone say "We took this step because the President indicated ..." or "The President really wanted ..." Instead I heard "Rumsfeld wanted," "Powell thought," "The Vice President pushed," "Bremer asked," and so on. One need only compare this with any discussion of foreign policy in Reagan's or Clinton's Administration—or Nixon's, or Kennedy's, or Johnson's, or most others—to sense how unusual is the absence of the President as prime mover....It is possible that the President's confidants are so discreet that they have kept all his decisions and instructions secret. But that would run counter to the fundamental nature of bureaucratic Washington, where people cite a President's authority whenever they possibly can ("The President feels strongly about this, so ..."). http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/fallows.htm
India funds Bush's campaign
They’re pulling in big bucks from anywhere they can. Yet, they lie about this one as well. In response to reports about these overseas efforts, the GOP put out its characteristic denial:
Today John Kerry supporters began circulating a false story from the Internet, claiming that the RNC outsourced fundraising calls to an Indian telemarketing firm.
“This story is an untrue urban legend which has been traversing the nether regions of cyber space for the better part of a year. It’s unfortunate that John Kerry’s supporters have so little regard for the truth that they would spread Internet stories with no basis in fact,” said RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke. http://www.gop.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=4220
Yet, several sources suggested otherwise. From The Asia Times Online (Siddharth Srivastava)
There is more than one reason US President George W Bush should thank Indians, whether in the United States or India, as the buildup to elections in the US slated for November gathers steam. Indians are contributing handsomely to Bush's campaign funds while, until recently, there was a band of more than 100 dedicated call-center executives who were handling Bush's fundraising and vote-seeking campaign for the Republican Party from the outsourcing hubs of Noida and Gurgaon, which adjoin the national capital Delhi. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FE19Df04.html
Call to Conscience: Roger Morris, senior staff on the National Security Council under Johnson and Nixon has appealed to Americans in the Foreign Service to resign from the “worst regime by far in the history of the republic.”
Dear Trustees:
I am respectfully addressing you by your proper if little-used title. The women and men of our diplomatic corps and intelligence community are genuine trustees. With intellect and sensibility, character and courage, you represent America to the world. Equally important, you show the world to America. You hold in trust our role and reputation among nations, and ultimately our fate. Yours is the gravest, noblest responsibility. Never has the conscience you personify been more important.
You know how recklessly a cabal of political appointees and ideological zealots, led by the exceptionally powerful and furtively doctrinaire Vice President Cheney, corrupted intelligence and usurped policy on Iraq and other issues. You know the bitter departmental disputes in which a deeply politicized, parochial Pentagon overpowered or simply ignored any opposition in the State Department or the CIA, rushing us to unilateral aggressive war in Iraq and chaotic, fateful occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
You know well what a willfully uninformed and heedless president you serve in Bush, how chilling are the tales of his ignorance and sectarian fervor, lethal opposites of the erudition and open-mindedness you embody in the arts of diplomacy and intelligence. Some of you know how woefully his national security advisor fails her vital duty to manage some order among Washington's thrashing interests, and so to protect her president, and the country, from calamity. You know specifics. Many of you are aware, for instance, that the torture at Abu Ghraib was an issue up and down not only the Pentagon but also State, the CIA and the National Security Council staff for nearly a year before the scandalous photos finally leaked.
As you have seen in years of service, every presidency has its arrogance, infighting and blunders in foreign relations. As most of you recognize, too, the Bush administration is like no other. You serve the worst foreign policy regime by far in the history of the republic. The havoc you feel inside government has inflicted unprecedented damage on national interests and security. As never before since the United States stepped onto the world stage, we have flouted treaties and alliances, alienated friends, multiplied enemies, lost respect and credibility on every continent. You see this every day. And again, whatever your politics, those of you who have served other presidents know this is an unparalleled bipartisan disaster. In its militant hubris and folly, the Bush administration has undone the statesmanship of every government before it, and broken faith with every presidency, Democratic and Republican (even that of Bush I), over the past half century. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/05/21/resign/print.html
Like the Rats on a Sinking Ship?:
The NY Times is now criticizing the Administration for having been hoodwinked by Chalabi and the intelligence he provided. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/opinion/21FRI1.html Yet, they fail to mention that they supported the assertions of their reporter, Judith Miller, who cited Chalabi’s claims as the basis for her belief that Iraq’s WMD presented a dire threat to the U.S. Miller, it will be recalled, admitted on May 1, 2003 that "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper. ... He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."
The NeoCon Propaganda: We’re not surprised are we?
Eric Alterman’s Nation article addresses what we knew about this bunch.
These are the men not just the neocons but self-described progressives and human-rights advocates believed capable of carrying out the delicate and difficult mission of bringing democracy and modernism to the Arab world, while safeguarding the security and good name of the United States. Excuse me, but just what was so hard to understand about this bunch? We knew they were dishonest. We knew they were fanatical. We knew they were purposely ignorant and bragged about not reading newspapers. We knew they were vindictive. We knew they were lawless. We knew they were obsessively secretive. We knew they had no time or patience for those who raised difficult questions. We knew they were driven by fantasies of religious warfare, personal vengeance and ideological triumph. We knew they had no respect for civil liberties. And we knew they took no responsibility for the consequences of their incompetence. Just what is surprising about the manner in which they've conducted the war?
And how pathetic is it that the only cable network really grappling with the media's failure is Comedy Central? Let's give the last word to the Daily Show's incomparable Stephen Colbert: "The journalists I know love America, but now all anybody wants to talk about is the bad journalists--the journalists that hurt America.... Who didn't uncover the flaws in our prewar intelligence? Who gave a free pass on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection? Who dropped Afghanistan from the headlines at the first whiff of this Iraqi snipe hunt? The United States press corps, that's who." http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040607&s=alterman
How to Recruit Opposition: Bomb a Wedding party!The military is holding out, claiming that it targeted insurgents, smugglers, bad guys. They have no explanation for the bodies of women and children, the majority of victims from this week’s air strike, or why there were so many musicians hanging with these nogoodniks.
An LA Times (Alissa J. Rubin) account:
With the smell of roasted lamb still in the air, Bassem Hameed Dulaimi left the tent where wedding guests were sleeping after three days of revelry and walked to a far field to wash up. Then, the musician said, he saw a flash in the desert sky, and another. He described blast after blast as rockets rained down on the tiny hamlet in the early-morning hours.
"They fired more than 40 rockets — I counted," the 26-year-old organ player recounted Thursday at a funeral in Baghdad for two of the seven fellow musicians he said were killed in the attack by U.S. forces.
U.S. military officials continued to doubt Thursday that the "men of fighting age" they say died in the desert early Wednesday had gathered for a wedding. They say three large buildings in the hamlet were safe houses along a trail used by smugglers to move arms and insurgents into Iraq. They say troops found passports, weapons and the equivalent of $1,000 in Iraqi dinars at the site.
The Iraqis and the U.S. military agree on some details of the attack. But on the crucial question they disagree: Was this an innocent gathering of revelers fast asleep at the time, or a band of gunmen who fired on the Americans?
About 40 people were killed in the remote village just 15 miles from the Syrian border, said the U.S. military and Iraqis on the scene. A doctor in the hospital in the nearby town of Qaim put the number of dead at about 45. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-bombing21may21,1,7405961,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Abuse Scandal: General Sanchez Implicated
Local media are beginning to report this. From the original report from the Guardian:
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition forces in Iraq, issued an order last October giving military intelligence control over almost every aspect of prison conditions at Abu Ghraib with the explicit aim of manipulating the detainees' "emotions and weaknesses", it was reported yesterday.
The October 12 memorandum, reported in the Washington Post, is a potential "smoking gun" linking prisoner abuse to the US high command. It represents hard evidence that the maltreatment was not simply the fault of rogue military police guards. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1222348,00.html
Still Another Scandal within the (Abuse) Scandal within …
John McCain was in a tizzy about this at the end of the week, but the media ignored it till TIME did a posting. It’s about some missing pages. Yet the headline was about the Senate being on CIA Director Tenet’s case.
Another big stack of pages is causing concern over at the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is investigating abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Committee aides discovered belatedly that their copy of the 6,000-page report on prison abuses produced by Major General Antonio M. Taguba might not be complete. The copy they got after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony on May 7 was a thick document with 106 annexes, and it was quickly arranged into separate binders. Only later did the committee stack up all the pages, compare them with a ream of 6,000 blank pages and decide that at least 2,000 pages were missing. "We'd certainly like to know why they're missing," said Republican Senator John McCain. Pentagon spokesman Larry Dirita insisted, "If there is some shortfall in what was provided, it was an oversight." Committee staff members haven't actually counted the pages. Chairman John Warner will investigate this week to see what is missing. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040531-641078,00.html
Frank Rich on Fahrenheit 9/11
Rich’s take on Michael Moore’s movie- which received, according to attendees, the longest ovation of any prize winner EVER! Not to be concerned- The post below doesn’t include Plot.
We already know that politicians in denial will dismiss the abuse sequence in Mr. Moore's film as mere partisanship. Someone will surely echo Senator James Inhofe's Abu Ghraib complaint that "humanitarian do-gooders" looking for human rights violations are maligning "our troops, our heroes" as they continue to fight and die. But Senator Inhofe and his colleagues might ask how much they are honoring soldiers who are overextended, undermanned and bereft of a coherent plan in Iraq. Last weekend The Los Angeles Times reported that for the first time three Army divisions, more than a third of its combat troops, are so depleted of equipment and skills that they are classified "unfit to fight." In contrast to Washington's neglect, much of "Fahrenheit 9/11" turns out to be a patriotic celebration of the heroic American troops who have been fighting and dying under these and other deplorable conditions since President Bush's declaration of war.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/arts/23RICH.html?ex=1086307690&ei=1&en=9478737ff2721eb7
The Occupation Toll:
An AP survey of morgues in Baghdad and the provinces of Karbala, Kirkuk and Tikrit found 5,558 violent deaths recorded from May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, to April 30. The toll from both criminal and political violence ran dramatically higher than violent deaths before the war, according to statistics from morgues. http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBHU6WELUD.html
Food News: “What is Organic?” Fuzziness ahead…
Over the course of 10 days in mid-April, the USDA issued three "guidances" and one directive -- all legally binding interpretations of law -- that threaten to seriously dilute the meaning of the word "organic" and discredit the department's National Organic Program. And the changes -- which would allow the use of antibiotics on organic dairy cows, synthetic pesticides on organic farms, and more -- were made with zero input from the public or the National Organic Standards Board, the advisory group that worked for more than a decade to help craft the first federal organic standards, put in place in October 2002. One practice favored by large agribusiness is the use of antibiotics on cows, and a guidance [PDF] issued on April 14 will allow just that on organic dairy farms, a dramatic reversal of 2002 rules. Under the new guidelines, sickly dairy cows can be treated not just with antibiotics but with numerous other drugs and still have their milk qualify as organic, so long as 12 months pass between the time the treatments are administered and the time the milk is sold…
Previously, organic farmers were only allowed to use natural, nontoxic pesticides on their crops, which effectively prohibited use of pesticides with hidden ingredients (pesticide manufacturers often don't list certain ingredients, claiming the information is proprietary).
According to the new guidelines, however, organic farmers and certifiers are only required to make a "reasonable effort" to find out what is in the pesticides being applied to crops. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/05/21/anti_organic/index.html
Voter Registration:
How to reach people? Some original notions are out there. One blog reader (MR) notes that a friend simply sets up in shopping centers in African-American areas and has registered hundreds of new voters by himself.
Another novel idea reported in Salon (Xiao Zhang)”
Strip club owners are putting a little bada-bing in the presidential campaign by asking patrons to turn their eyes away from the stage for a moment to fill out a voter registration form -- and then vote against President Bush.
"It's not to say our industry loves John Kerry or anything like that," said Dave Manack, associate publisher of E.D. Publications, which publishes Exotic Dancer magazine. "But George Bush, if he's re-elected, it could be very damaging to our industry." http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/05/20/stip_clib/index.html
-R
