Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Incompetence:
The NY Times ran this one on Sunday; I didn’t have the heart to …
The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials.
Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said.
The strikes, carried out against so-called high-value targets during a one-month period that began on March 19, 2003, used precision-guided munitions against at least 13 Iraqi leaders, including Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, Iraq's No. 2 official, the officials said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/international/middleeast/13SADD.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Overstatement? Don’t think so
Krugman: Ashcroft the worst AG ever.
For this column, let's just focus on Mr. Ashcroft's role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn't even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/opinion/15KRUG.html
Tom Powers: Neocons and their boy Bush “caused the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in modern U.S. history” Powers is no radical.
The U.S. is now waging three wars, says intelligence expert Thomas Powers. One is in Iraq. The second is in Afghanistan. And the third is in Washington -- an all-out war between the White House and the nation's own intelligence agencies.
Powers, the author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda," charges that the Bush administration is responsible for what is perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of U.S. intelligence. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/14/coup/index.html
Pfaff on Torture: Impeachment, no?
The highly-regarded journalist for (International Herald Tribune) asks the obvious, but avoided question.
Documents recently obtained by the press reveal White House anxiety about how to protect President George W. Bush and members of his cabinet from going to prison for ordering, authorizing or deliberately permitting systematic torture of persons in their control, but technically outside formal American legal jurisdiction. The question put to lawyers was how the president and the others could commit war crimes and get away with it.
Thus, according to these reports, the president last year obtained from his lawyers an opinion that he is not bound by U.S. laws or by international engagements prohibiting torture and that Americans committing torture under his authority cannot be prosecuted by the Justice Department…
The American operation in Iraq, and apparently in Afghanistan before, has been haphazard, planned and run by people mostly without serious knowledge of these countries and their societies. The administration has gone in for wholesale arrests and interrogations, sweeping people up virtually at random, because it doesn't know what else to do.
This has been futile and irrational, as well as evil. The nearly universal uselessness of torture is well-known in intelligence and special warfare circles. Even if you have a key figure who does possess useful information, and you eventually get him (or her) to tell you what you want, what actual good is it?..
All of this is a ghastly scandal, one of the worst in American history. It is evident cause for impeachment of this president, if Congress has the courage to do it, and for prosecution of cabinet figures and certain commanders. However in view of the partisan alignment in Congress, quite possibly nothing will happen before the November election.
What then? It also is quite possible that George W. Bush will be elected to a second term. In that case, the American electorate will have made these practices its own. Now that is something for our children to think about. http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=524502.html
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Independence? Interim Government vs Contractors
Interim Government Resists U.S. Proposal to Exempt Foreigners From Iraqi Law
Edward Cody of the Washington Post notes a harbinger:
In an early test of its imminent sovereignty, Iraq's new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contractors here be granted immunity from Iraqi law, in the same way as U.S. military forces are now immune, according to Iraqi sources. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39159-2004Jun13.html
Saddam: From Al Jazeera:
”Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, currently in US custody, is to be handed over to the interim government within two weeks.” …. I was reminded of a comment a year ago by a member of the then governing Council who said that once they take over on July 1, Saddam will be toast. “He will be dealt with on July 1.” So much for the rule of law in Democratic Iraq.”
Saddam Hussein must either be released from custody by June 30 or charged if the US and the new Iraqi government are to conform to international law, the International Committee of the Red Cross said last night.
”Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the ICRC, told the Guardian: "The United States defines Saddam Hussein as a prisoner of war. At the end of an occupation PoWs have to be released provided they have no penal charges against them." http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CC95D495-E992-42B5-A9B6-CCBCA1A26DEB.htm
Who is Allawi?
Iyad Allawi is now considered the prime minister of the “new” and interim Iraqi government. But consider his history: he was a Ba’thist from 1961 to 1971, and very close to Saddam—so close that he walked with a sidearm firing it in the air when he didn’t get his way. He was the typical Ba’thist brute.
”Dr. Haifa al-Azawi, a California-based gynecologist and US citizen who went to school with Allawi, wrote a column on February 12 in the London-based al-Arab newspaper in which she questioned Allawi’s moral authority as an Iraqi leader. “The Baath party union leader, who carried a gun on his belt and frequently brandished it terrorising the medical students, was a poor student and chose to spend his time standing in the school courtyard or chasing female students to their homes,” she wrote.
”According to al-Azawi, while in England studying, Allawi “spent his time dealing with assassins, doing the dirty work for the Iraqi government, until his time was up and he became their target.” www.Islamonline.net/english/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2004/06/article_05.shtml
Running Out of Oil? Let’s Get Into Coal!
Despite the obvious environmental concerns, coal is flourishing. The increasing amounts of carbon in the atmosphere is amongst the most vile contributions of this Administration.
Colorado, once a backwater of coal production in the shadow of giants like West Virginia and Wyoming, has stumbled into unexpected wealth. China is exporting less coal and keeping more for its own use, thus pinching supply. Appalachian coal, especially the cleaner burning lower-sulfur variety that Colorado's coal competes with, has gotten scarcer and more expensive, and soaring natural gas prices have compelled electricity-generating companies to scramble for alternatives.
This year through June 5, coal output in Colorado rose more than in any other major coal-producing state, up 16 percent from the same period in 2003, according to federal energy figures, pushing Colorado from the eighth-largest producing state to the sixth…
Many environmentalists are dismayed at coal's new luster and have begun a campaign against new power plants, including a coal-fired plant proposed by Xcel Energy for Pueblo, two hours south of Denver.
"Coal should be a part of the past, not the future," said Mark Detsky, an energy lawyer at Environment Colorado, a conservation group in Denver. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/national/16coal.html?pagewanted=2
Fahrenheit 9/11:
Moore’s movie is garnering interest from all but Bill O’Reilly who reportedly left long before it ended. It’s unleashed a campaign from a conservative group, that writes that Moore’s movie is “an advertisement against the war on terrorism, our troops and President Bush.”
So why on earth are ANY movie theaters showing this film? “Fahrenheit 9/11” should be shown as a recruiting video for Al-Qaeda, not in our movie theaters.
Please join us in telling the movie theater companies below your opinion as it relates to their attempt to profit from the showing of “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Since we are the customers of the American movie theatres it is important for us to speak up loudly and tell the industry executives that we don’t want this misleading and grotesque movie being shown at our local cinema.
We need these executives to be overwhelmed with letters, phone calls and FAXes… in addition to emails. Sending an email alone is not enough – since in some cases an aide can easily click “DELETE.”
We would like to thank those individuals at Lions Gate Entertainment and IFC Films who support our efforts. http://www.moveamericaforward.org/MichaelMoore/
BTW: It ain’t working… But the movie received an “R” rating. Moore, who is seeking the PG-13 so as to broaden the audience.
Kerry as Bush’s ‘twin’?
It’s increasingly recognized that Kerry refuses to separate himself from Bush on Iraq policy. He risks alienating Democrats who didn’t think invading Iraq was a swell idea. The Bush campaign has taken this into consideration and changed their strategy. E.J. Dionne notes Bush’s “Him-Too” strategy.
In the past several weeks, there has been a remarkable shift in President Bush's strategy for reelection. Bush once wanted to highlight his differences with John Kerry over Iraq and national security. Now the president is trying to blur them.
The change reflects the Bush campaign's response to a widespread loss of public confidence in the administration's handling of Iraq. What Bush's lieutenants had once hoped would be a large plus in this year's campaign is turning into a negative that Bush is trying to minimize. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=849a96c50378f09325b20b1e59f3470a&lat=1087307868&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW5RH05B34581CEBA439543FF8041C0
Cheney: Still the Al-Qaeda-Saddam connection
Cheney is still pushing this, and on Tuesday Bush agreed.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had ‘long-established ties’ with al Qaeda, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.”
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, countered that the Bush administration had "a sorry record in the war on terror." Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spoke Sunday in a conference call arranged by John Kerry's presidential campaign in anticipation of Cheney's speech.
The State Department said last week it was wrong in stating that terrorism declined worldwide last year in a report that the Bush administration initially cited as evidence it was succeeding against terrorism, Graham noted. Both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department acknowledged. http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/06/14/cheney.terrorism.ap/index.html
U.S. as doing Israel’s bidding:
Many will be discomforted by this Time magaine summary of James Bamford’s highly regarded new book, A Pretext for War.
Led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, they were installed at various national-security choke points in the government, and nothing moved without their O.K. Bamford comes very close to stating that the hard-liners were wittingly or unwittingly acting as agents of Israel's hard-line Likud Party, which believed Israel should operate with impunity in the region and dictate terms to its neighbors. Such a world view, Bamford argues, was simply repotted by the hard-liners into U.S. foreign policy in the early Bush years, with the war in Iraq as its ultimate goal. Bamford asserts that the backgrounds, political philosophies and experiences of many of the hard-liners helped to hardwire the pro-Israel mind-set in the Bush inner circle and suggests that Washington mistook Israel's interests for its own when it pre-emptively invaded Iraq last year. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040614-646366-2,00.html
Nukes: Taking Care of the Next Generation
Well, North Korea is supposed to be a threat…
Senate renewed its support Tuesday for research into a new generation of nuclear weapons, overcoming opposition from Democrats who said they feared that the Bush administration had already decided to develop such arms. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/politics/16nukes.html
Reagan Lives! French Fries are “Fresh vegetables”!
South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel reports on Fries joining ketchup as a balanced meal.
Anyone trying to add more fruits and vegetables to their diet may have just gotten an unlikely assist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Based on a little-noticed change to obscure federal rules, the USDA defines frozen french fries as "fresh vegetables."
As bizarre as it may sound, a federal judge in Texas last week endorsed the USDA's rules in a court case, saying the term "fresh vegetables" was ambiguous.
The USDA quietly changed the regulations last year at the behest of the french fry industry, which has spent the past five decades pushing for a revision to the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA). The law was passed by Congress in 1930 to protect fruit and vegetable farmers in the event that their customers went out of business without paying for their produce. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-afries15jun15,0,202707.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
-R
The NY Times ran this one on Sunday; I didn’t have the heart to …
The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials.
Only a few of the 50 airstrikes have been described in public. All were unsuccessful, and many, including the two well-known raids on Saddam Hussein and his sons, appear to have been undercut by poor intelligence, current and former government officials said.
The strikes, carried out against so-called high-value targets during a one-month period that began on March 19, 2003, used precision-guided munitions against at least 13 Iraqi leaders, including Gen. Izzat Ibrahim, Iraq's No. 2 official, the officials said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/international/middleeast/13SADD.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Overstatement? Don’t think so
Krugman: Ashcroft the worst AG ever.
For this column, let's just focus on Mr. Ashcroft's role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn't even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/opinion/15KRUG.html
Tom Powers: Neocons and their boy Bush “caused the greatest foreign policy catastrophe in modern U.S. history” Powers is no radical.
The U.S. is now waging three wars, says intelligence expert Thomas Powers. One is in Iraq. The second is in Afghanistan. And the third is in Washington -- an all-out war between the White House and the nation's own intelligence agencies.
Powers, the author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda," charges that the Bush administration is responsible for what is perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of U.S. intelligence. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/14/coup/index.html
Pfaff on Torture: Impeachment, no?
The highly-regarded journalist for (International Herald Tribune) asks the obvious, but avoided question.
Documents recently obtained by the press reveal White House anxiety about how to protect President George W. Bush and members of his cabinet from going to prison for ordering, authorizing or deliberately permitting systematic torture of persons in their control, but technically outside formal American legal jurisdiction. The question put to lawyers was how the president and the others could commit war crimes and get away with it.
Thus, according to these reports, the president last year obtained from his lawyers an opinion that he is not bound by U.S. laws or by international engagements prohibiting torture and that Americans committing torture under his authority cannot be prosecuted by the Justice Department…
The American operation in Iraq, and apparently in Afghanistan before, has been haphazard, planned and run by people mostly without serious knowledge of these countries and their societies. The administration has gone in for wholesale arrests and interrogations, sweeping people up virtually at random, because it doesn't know what else to do.
This has been futile and irrational, as well as evil. The nearly universal uselessness of torture is well-known in intelligence and special warfare circles. Even if you have a key figure who does possess useful information, and you eventually get him (or her) to tell you what you want, what actual good is it?..
All of this is a ghastly scandal, one of the worst in American history. It is evident cause for impeachment of this president, if Congress has the courage to do it, and for prosecution of cabinet figures and certain commanders. However in view of the partisan alignment in Congress, quite possibly nothing will happen before the November election.
What then? It also is quite possible that George W. Bush will be elected to a second term. In that case, the American electorate will have made these practices its own. Now that is something for our children to think about. http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=524502.html
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Independence? Interim Government vs Contractors
Interim Government Resists U.S. Proposal to Exempt Foreigners From Iraqi Law
Edward Cody of the Washington Post notes a harbinger:
In an early test of its imminent sovereignty, Iraq's new government has been resisting a U.S. demand that thousands of foreign contractors here be granted immunity from Iraqi law, in the same way as U.S. military forces are now immune, according to Iraqi sources. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39159-2004Jun13.html
Saddam: From Al Jazeera:
”Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, currently in US custody, is to be handed over to the interim government within two weeks.” …. I was reminded of a comment a year ago by a member of the then governing Council who said that once they take over on July 1, Saddam will be toast. “He will be dealt with on July 1.” So much for the rule of law in Democratic Iraq.”
Saddam Hussein must either be released from custody by June 30 or charged if the US and the new Iraqi government are to conform to international law, the International Committee of the Red Cross said last night.
”Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the ICRC, told the Guardian: "The United States defines Saddam Hussein as a prisoner of war. At the end of an occupation PoWs have to be released provided they have no penal charges against them." http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CC95D495-E992-42B5-A9B6-CCBCA1A26DEB.htm
Who is Allawi?
Iyad Allawi is now considered the prime minister of the “new” and interim Iraqi government. But consider his history: he was a Ba’thist from 1961 to 1971, and very close to Saddam—so close that he walked with a sidearm firing it in the air when he didn’t get his way. He was the typical Ba’thist brute.
”Dr. Haifa al-Azawi, a California-based gynecologist and US citizen who went to school with Allawi, wrote a column on February 12 in the London-based al-Arab newspaper in which she questioned Allawi’s moral authority as an Iraqi leader. “The Baath party union leader, who carried a gun on his belt and frequently brandished it terrorising the medical students, was a poor student and chose to spend his time standing in the school courtyard or chasing female students to their homes,” she wrote.
”According to al-Azawi, while in England studying, Allawi “spent his time dealing with assassins, doing the dirty work for the Iraqi government, until his time was up and he became their target.” www.Islamonline.net/english/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2004/06/article_05.shtml
Running Out of Oil? Let’s Get Into Coal!
Despite the obvious environmental concerns, coal is flourishing. The increasing amounts of carbon in the atmosphere is amongst the most vile contributions of this Administration.
Colorado, once a backwater of coal production in the shadow of giants like West Virginia and Wyoming, has stumbled into unexpected wealth. China is exporting less coal and keeping more for its own use, thus pinching supply. Appalachian coal, especially the cleaner burning lower-sulfur variety that Colorado's coal competes with, has gotten scarcer and more expensive, and soaring natural gas prices have compelled electricity-generating companies to scramble for alternatives.
This year through June 5, coal output in Colorado rose more than in any other major coal-producing state, up 16 percent from the same period in 2003, according to federal energy figures, pushing Colorado from the eighth-largest producing state to the sixth…
Many environmentalists are dismayed at coal's new luster and have begun a campaign against new power plants, including a coal-fired plant proposed by Xcel Energy for Pueblo, two hours south of Denver.
"Coal should be a part of the past, not the future," said Mark Detsky, an energy lawyer at Environment Colorado, a conservation group in Denver. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/national/16coal.html?pagewanted=2
Fahrenheit 9/11:
Moore’s movie is garnering interest from all but Bill O’Reilly who reportedly left long before it ended. It’s unleashed a campaign from a conservative group, that writes that Moore’s movie is “an advertisement against the war on terrorism, our troops and President Bush.”
So why on earth are ANY movie theaters showing this film? “Fahrenheit 9/11” should be shown as a recruiting video for Al-Qaeda, not in our movie theaters.
Please join us in telling the movie theater companies below your opinion as it relates to their attempt to profit from the showing of “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Since we are the customers of the American movie theatres it is important for us to speak up loudly and tell the industry executives that we don’t want this misleading and grotesque movie being shown at our local cinema.
We need these executives to be overwhelmed with letters, phone calls and FAXes… in addition to emails. Sending an email alone is not enough – since in some cases an aide can easily click “DELETE.”
We would like to thank those individuals at Lions Gate Entertainment and IFC Films who support our efforts. http://www.moveamericaforward.org/MichaelMoore/
BTW: It ain’t working… But the movie received an “R” rating. Moore, who is seeking the PG-13 so as to broaden the audience.
Kerry as Bush’s ‘twin’?
It’s increasingly recognized that Kerry refuses to separate himself from Bush on Iraq policy. He risks alienating Democrats who didn’t think invading Iraq was a swell idea. The Bush campaign has taken this into consideration and changed their strategy. E.J. Dionne notes Bush’s “Him-Too” strategy.
In the past several weeks, there has been a remarkable shift in President Bush's strategy for reelection. Bush once wanted to highlight his differences with John Kerry over Iraq and national security. Now the president is trying to blur them.
The change reflects the Bush campaign's response to a widespread loss of public confidence in the administration's handling of Iraq. What Bush's lieutenants had once hoped would be a large plus in this year's campaign is turning into a negative that Bush is trying to minimize. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=849a96c50378f09325b20b1e59f3470a&lat=1087307868&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW5RH05B34581CEBA439543FF8041C0
Cheney: Still the Al-Qaeda-Saddam connection
Cheney is still pushing this, and on Tuesday Bush agreed.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had ‘long-established ties’ with al Qaeda, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.”
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, countered that the Bush administration had "a sorry record in the war on terror." Graham, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spoke Sunday in a conference call arranged by John Kerry's presidential campaign in anticipation of Cheney's speech.
The State Department said last week it was wrong in stating that terrorism declined worldwide last year in a report that the Bush administration initially cited as evidence it was succeeding against terrorism, Graham noted. Both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department acknowledged. http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/06/14/cheney.terrorism.ap/index.html
U.S. as doing Israel’s bidding:
Many will be discomforted by this Time magaine summary of James Bamford’s highly regarded new book, A Pretext for War.
Led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, they were installed at various national-security choke points in the government, and nothing moved without their O.K. Bamford comes very close to stating that the hard-liners were wittingly or unwittingly acting as agents of Israel's hard-line Likud Party, which believed Israel should operate with impunity in the region and dictate terms to its neighbors. Such a world view, Bamford argues, was simply repotted by the hard-liners into U.S. foreign policy in the early Bush years, with the war in Iraq as its ultimate goal. Bamford asserts that the backgrounds, political philosophies and experiences of many of the hard-liners helped to hardwire the pro-Israel mind-set in the Bush inner circle and suggests that Washington mistook Israel's interests for its own when it pre-emptively invaded Iraq last year. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040614-646366-2,00.html
Nukes: Taking Care of the Next Generation
Well, North Korea is supposed to be a threat…
Senate renewed its support Tuesday for research into a new generation of nuclear weapons, overcoming opposition from Democrats who said they feared that the Bush administration had already decided to develop such arms. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/politics/16nukes.html
Reagan Lives! French Fries are “Fresh vegetables”!
South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel reports on Fries joining ketchup as a balanced meal.
Anyone trying to add more fruits and vegetables to their diet may have just gotten an unlikely assist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Based on a little-noticed change to obscure federal rules, the USDA defines frozen french fries as "fresh vegetables."
As bizarre as it may sound, a federal judge in Texas last week endorsed the USDA's rules in a court case, saying the term "fresh vegetables" was ambiguous.
The USDA quietly changed the regulations last year at the behest of the french fry industry, which has spent the past five decades pushing for a revision to the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA). The law was passed by Congress in 1930 to protect fruit and vegetable farmers in the event that their customers went out of business without paying for their produce. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-afries15jun15,0,202707.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines
-R
