Friday, June 18, 2004
Venality and Incompetence: So many examples of each- sometimes it’s the former, sometimes the latter, sometimes both. This time?
9/11 Commission: What we knew...
Analysis from the New York Times’ Douglas Jehl:
For most of 2002, President Bush argued that a commission created to look into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would only distract from the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism.
Now, in 17 preliminary staff reports, that panel has called into question nearly every aspect of the administration's response to terror, including the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda were somehow the same foe.
Far from a bolt from the blue, the commission has demonstrated over the last 19 months that the Sept. 11 attacks were foreseen, at least in general terms, and might well have been prevented, had it not been for misjudgments, mistakes and glitches, some within the White House.
In the face of those findings, Mr. Bush stood firm, disputing the particular finding in a staff report that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization. "There was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush declared. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18assess.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Cheney Doesn’t Let Go: (David Sanger, Robin Toner):
Mr. Cheney returned to the subject of the Times's coverage later in his appearance on CNBC when Ms. Borger began saying, "But the press is making a distinction between 9/11 and . . ."
"No, they're not," Mr. Cheney said. "The New York Times does not. `The Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Ties,' " he said, quoting the headline. "That's what it says. That's the vaunted New York Times. Numerous — I've watched a lot of the coverage on it and the fact of the matter is they don't make a distinction. They fuzz it up. Sometimes it's through ignorance. Sometimes its malicious. But you'll take a statement that's geared specifically to say there's no connection in relations to the 9/11 attack and then say, `Well, obviously there's no case here.' And then jump over to challenge the president's credibility or my credibility."
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were not alone in responding yesterday to the commission's findings. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, also charged that the media had distorted the findings of the commission about links between Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Hussein. He sad the report showed the two men were "developing a relationship."
"That relationship could have led to dire consequences for the United States," Mr. Hastert said, adding that the two men "are cut from the same cloth." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18DEBA.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Timely CNN Report: Saddam planning terrorism
Fascinating that this emerges today…
Russian intelligence services warned Washington several times that Saddam Hussein's regime planned terrorist attacks against the United States, President Vladimir Putin has said.
The warnings were provided after September 11, 2001 and before the start of the Iraqi war, Putin said Friday, according to the Interfax news agency.
The planned attacks were targeted both inside and outside the United States, said Putin, who made the remarks during a visit to Kazakhstan.
However, Putin said there was no evidence that Saddam's regime was involved in any terrorist attacks. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/18/russia.warning/
What’s Happening, Iraq: Bombings. Deaths.
Kerry: The Danger: Without progressive positions and without pressure from the Left, he endangers himself and marginalizes progressives. Bob Kuttner warns:
The bipartisan elite has convinced itself that the main challenge for the next generation is reducing the federal deficit. That's what passes for courage in Beltway Washington, as it has for two decades. No wonder voters are tuning out.
Let me amend that. Potentially progressive voters like those Sanders supporters tune out. Wall Street voters are entirely tuned in, to an insider debate between those who would cut taxes and not worry about deficits (Bush) and those who would cut deficits and give up on all but token social investment (the fiscal conservatives advising Kerry). Some debate. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/16/americas_hidden_issue_of_poverty/
(yet,) Kerry Waking Up?
Reports coming in from the Trail, of more outspokenness. The Washington Post’s Lois Romano uses words like “populist” and passionate”. Our John?
"I'm running for president to put America back to work...I'm running for president because health care is not a benefit just for the wealthy or the elected or the connected...I'm running for president because I know that we could be a hell of a lot stronger in the world if we were to secure our freedom..."
Both the Boston Globe's Glen Johnson and the New York Times' Robin Toner sat upright for another part of Kerry's sizzling New Jersey speech:
"Our tax code has gone from 14 pages to 17,000 pages. Any of you get your own page? Enron's got its own page. Exxon's got its own page. Looks to me like Halliburton's got its own chapter." "You know who the White House thinks should pay for their deficit? They think it ought to be children in Head Start, women with young babies who need nutritional help, veterans who need health care. . . . And if you think that's compassionate conservatism, then Dick Cheney is Mr. Rogers." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44661-2004Jun15.html
Major Paper Endorsement for Kerry: The Philadelphia Daily News:
KERRY FOR PREZ: WHY HIM, WHY NOW
AND HOW TO PUT HIM IN THE WHITE HOUSE
LAST WEEK, the nation looked to the past with the death of President Ronald Reagan.
This week, the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry, suspended out of respect to the deceased 40th president, start fresh.
In that spirit, this newspaper, the first in the nation, endorses John Kerry for president. Unlike the current White House occupant, Kerry can lead America to a brighter, better future. He has shown the personal courage, compassion, intellect and skill to lead this country in a time of war abroad and economic troubles at home. He is a serious man for a serious time.
Why make this endorsement now, when the election is months away?
Because this race promises to be close and Pennsylvania is one of 18 swing states that can go to either candidate. For Kerry supporters to prevail they must do more than just vote, they must bring a ringer into this contest: the more than a million people in the region who did not vote in the last presidential election. We believe these non-voters - who will have to be mobilized over the next few months - are the key to victory.
On the next page, we outline a strategy to make sure Pennsylvania lands in the Kerry win column. We will further make the case for Kerry in future editorials.
For now, let's concentrate on the current president and why he must be defeated.
THE CASE AGAINST BUSH
George W. Bush received - and deserved - praise for his leadership during the dark days immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But since then, the Bush administration has been marked by failure - failure to shepherd the country through a tough economic downturn, failure to keep the nation focused on the true enemies to our security.
He has failed in even the one challenge he set out for himself at the beginning of his administration - to bring the country together. His has been one of the most ideologically driven and divisive administrations in recent times.
Instead of moving forward, the country has been on the wrong track. These last four years have been wasted… http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/8933725.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Post Reagan: From The Pew Survey: Somewhat of a bump for Bush. Higher ratings re Iraq involvement, approval of Bush, etc., and it’s back to even with Kerry. But, it’s only June.
Bush Courts McCain
With Kerry having ‘lost’ McCain as a possible VP, Bush is seeking to bring McCain back into the fold.The Washington Post (Dan Balz, Mike Allen)
After being courted by John F. Kerry to consider joining the Democratic presidential ticket, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will join President Bush on Air Force One on Friday and introduce him at a campaign event in Reno, Nev., campaign officials said yesterday.
Bush and McCain have had a frosty relationship ever since competing for the Republican nomination in 2000, and Bush aides have fumed at McCain's occasional barbs in televised interviews during which he was asked repeatedly about the vice presidency. McCain's trip with Bush grew out of a meeting this spring between White House senior adviser Karl Rove and John Weaver, a top adviser to McCain, who became a Democratic consultant after the bitter campaign between Bush and McCain. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48029-2004Jun16.html
Corporate Tax: “Helping Us Compete”- that’s the mantra for the latest. We gotta end this borrowing ($270 billion on this one) which keeps burdening ordinary tax payers and digs a bigger hole for Kerry… as he will then feel trapped into replaying Clinton’s first term by shelving social activism in favor of deficit trimming.
A number of Democrats helped give Republicans the margin of victory as the House of Representatives passed a $155 billion bill to cut taxes for manufacturers, overhaul international tax rules and let U.S. multinationals bring home overseas income at a 5.25% rate.
But other Democrats criticized the bill's inclusion of a plan to pay tobacco farmers to give up a federal program that shores up crop prices, saying it was merely a political ploy designed to win Southern support for the larger measure that would rewrite the nation's corporate tax code. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108749784874340301,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
Fahrenheit 9/11: Michael Moore et al as Nazis
Celebrity reviewer Tina Brown critiques the Michael Moore movie:
Those squeamish about Michael Moore's methodology, however, should check out the other documentary that opened last night, "The Hunting of the President," produced by Clinton friend Harry Thomason. It tracks the network of Arkansas dirt-diggers who peddled Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Whitewater to the manipulative right-wing fringe. Thomason's movie, with its revelations of how Susan McDougal was pressured to lie to incriminate Hillary Clinton, is substantively more damning than "Fahrenheit 9/11." Moore fans can say his prosecution of Bush only employs the same paranoid technique of reasoning by juxtaposition that the Vince-Foster-was-murdered brigade used to torture the Clintons all those years. That is true, but it doesn't appeal to the Democrats less emotionally overwrought than Leonardo DiCaprio.
Hollywood agent and Kerry supporter Tom Baer told me, "Kerry should flee Moore's movie. It's Goebbels all over again." And former Clinton speechwriter Mark Katz put it this way: "I hold my guys to a higher standard," he said quietly. "That's why they're my guys." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48059-2004Jun16.html
Bill O’Reilly: After calling liberal journalist Eric Alterman “another Fidel Castro confidant” and Molly Ivins a “socialist”, he compared Bill Moyers to Mao Zedong, and added, “All right. I mean he’s a Far Left bomb-thrower who actually runs a foundation that funds left-wing organizations. I mean the guy’s a joke. Get out of the news business, Bill.” Then he invoked Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister.
Joseph Goebbels was the Minister of Propaganda for the Nazi regime and whose very famous quote was, "If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth." All right? "If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth."
And that's what Stuart Smalley [O'Reilly regularly refers to [Al] Franken as Stuart Smalley, a character Franken created on Saturday Night Live], and Michael Moore and all of these guys do. They just run around.
So who turns out for the screening of this movie [Fahrenheit 9/11] last night? You ready? Now, here are the celebrities that turn out. Here are the people who would turn out to see Josef Goebbels convince you that Poland invaded the Third Reich. It's the same thing, by the way. Propaganda is propaganda. OK?
Billy Crystal. Martin Sheen. Leonardo DiCaprio. Ellen DeGeneres. David Duchovny. Sharon Stone. Meg Ryan. Ashton Kutcher. Demi Moore. Norman Lear. Rob Reiner. Jodie Foster. Chris Rock. Larry David. Jack Black. Matthew Perry. Diane Lane.
And from the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel:
I think it's [the effort by some Hollywood celebrities to help defeat President George W. Bush] more organized than ever before and I think they [anti-Bush Hollywood celebrities] have more access to the media than ever before because the celebrity media, as I said, is so profitable and pervasive. So now it becomes a Leni Riefenstahl Third Reich propaganda proposition where what they say and do is put in everybody's face. http://www.ofrankenfactor.com
Interfaith Group Apologizes to Arab viewers.
Their idea: to run a t.v. ad apologizing for Abu Ghraib. It was created by faithful america.org, and is running on Al Jazerra and Al Arabiya.
Venezuela: Chavez Faces Recall:
One rumor: Venezuela is buying voting machines …from Florida!
How many political lives does Venezuela's Hugo Chávez have? The former paratrooper won a landslide presidential election victory in 1998 just a few years
after being released from prison for leading a failed coup against the government in 1992. He was ousted from power himself in 2002 by a loosely knit
opposition of business, military, and labor leaders, but returned triumphantly to his post two days later after mass protests and military supporters forced his rivals
to back down.
Now, Chávez, 49, faces another big test. After months of struggle, his opponents -- who have banded together in a coalition called Democratic Coordinator -- have collected enough signatures to force a recall vote on Aug. 15. On June 3, Venezuela's National Electoral Council declared that more than the required 2.4 million signatures were valid. That marked a breakthrough for the opposition, since Chávez had earlier alleged that many signatures were fraudulent and the CNE required the opposition to get more than 1 million people to sign petitions again. http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/04_25/b3888142_mz058.htm?gb
-R
9/11 Commission: What we knew...
Analysis from the New York Times’ Douglas Jehl:
For most of 2002, President Bush argued that a commission created to look into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would only distract from the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism.
Now, in 17 preliminary staff reports, that panel has called into question nearly every aspect of the administration's response to terror, including the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda were somehow the same foe.
Far from a bolt from the blue, the commission has demonstrated over the last 19 months that the Sept. 11 attacks were foreseen, at least in general terms, and might well have been prevented, had it not been for misjudgments, mistakes and glitches, some within the White House.
In the face of those findings, Mr. Bush stood firm, disputing the particular finding in a staff report that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization. "There was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush declared. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18assess.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
Cheney Doesn’t Let Go: (David Sanger, Robin Toner):
Mr. Cheney returned to the subject of the Times's coverage later in his appearance on CNBC when Ms. Borger began saying, "But the press is making a distinction between 9/11 and . . ."
"No, they're not," Mr. Cheney said. "The New York Times does not. `The Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Ties,' " he said, quoting the headline. "That's what it says. That's the vaunted New York Times. Numerous — I've watched a lot of the coverage on it and the fact of the matter is they don't make a distinction. They fuzz it up. Sometimes it's through ignorance. Sometimes its malicious. But you'll take a statement that's geared specifically to say there's no connection in relations to the 9/11 attack and then say, `Well, obviously there's no case here.' And then jump over to challenge the president's credibility or my credibility."
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were not alone in responding yesterday to the commission's findings. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, also charged that the media had distorted the findings of the commission about links between Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Hussein. He sad the report showed the two men were "developing a relationship."
"That relationship could have led to dire consequences for the United States," Mr. Hastert said, adding that the two men "are cut from the same cloth." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18DEBA.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Timely CNN Report: Saddam planning terrorism
Fascinating that this emerges today…
Russian intelligence services warned Washington several times that Saddam Hussein's regime planned terrorist attacks against the United States, President Vladimir Putin has said.
The warnings were provided after September 11, 2001 and before the start of the Iraqi war, Putin said Friday, according to the Interfax news agency.
The planned attacks were targeted both inside and outside the United States, said Putin, who made the remarks during a visit to Kazakhstan.
However, Putin said there was no evidence that Saddam's regime was involved in any terrorist attacks. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/18/russia.warning/
What’s Happening, Iraq: Bombings. Deaths.
Kerry: The Danger: Without progressive positions and without pressure from the Left, he endangers himself and marginalizes progressives. Bob Kuttner warns:
The bipartisan elite has convinced itself that the main challenge for the next generation is reducing the federal deficit. That's what passes for courage in Beltway Washington, as it has for two decades. No wonder voters are tuning out.
Let me amend that. Potentially progressive voters like those Sanders supporters tune out. Wall Street voters are entirely tuned in, to an insider debate between those who would cut taxes and not worry about deficits (Bush) and those who would cut deficits and give up on all but token social investment (the fiscal conservatives advising Kerry). Some debate. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/06/16/americas_hidden_issue_of_poverty/
(yet,) Kerry Waking Up?
Reports coming in from the Trail, of more outspokenness. The Washington Post’s Lois Romano uses words like “populist” and passionate”. Our John?
"I'm running for president to put America back to work...I'm running for president because health care is not a benefit just for the wealthy or the elected or the connected...I'm running for president because I know that we could be a hell of a lot stronger in the world if we were to secure our freedom..."
Both the Boston Globe's Glen Johnson and the New York Times' Robin Toner sat upright for another part of Kerry's sizzling New Jersey speech:
"Our tax code has gone from 14 pages to 17,000 pages. Any of you get your own page? Enron's got its own page. Exxon's got its own page. Looks to me like Halliburton's got its own chapter." "You know who the White House thinks should pay for their deficit? They think it ought to be children in Head Start, women with young babies who need nutritional help, veterans who need health care. . . . And if you think that's compassionate conservatism, then Dick Cheney is Mr. Rogers." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44661-2004Jun15.html
Major Paper Endorsement for Kerry: The Philadelphia Daily News:
KERRY FOR PREZ: WHY HIM, WHY NOW
AND HOW TO PUT HIM IN THE WHITE HOUSE
LAST WEEK, the nation looked to the past with the death of President Ronald Reagan.
This week, the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry, suspended out of respect to the deceased 40th president, start fresh.
In that spirit, this newspaper, the first in the nation, endorses John Kerry for president. Unlike the current White House occupant, Kerry can lead America to a brighter, better future. He has shown the personal courage, compassion, intellect and skill to lead this country in a time of war abroad and economic troubles at home. He is a serious man for a serious time.
Why make this endorsement now, when the election is months away?
Because this race promises to be close and Pennsylvania is one of 18 swing states that can go to either candidate. For Kerry supporters to prevail they must do more than just vote, they must bring a ringer into this contest: the more than a million people in the region who did not vote in the last presidential election. We believe these non-voters - who will have to be mobilized over the next few months - are the key to victory.
On the next page, we outline a strategy to make sure Pennsylvania lands in the Kerry win column. We will further make the case for Kerry in future editorials.
For now, let's concentrate on the current president and why he must be defeated.
THE CASE AGAINST BUSH
George W. Bush received - and deserved - praise for his leadership during the dark days immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But since then, the Bush administration has been marked by failure - failure to shepherd the country through a tough economic downturn, failure to keep the nation focused on the true enemies to our security.
He has failed in even the one challenge he set out for himself at the beginning of his administration - to bring the country together. His has been one of the most ideologically driven and divisive administrations in recent times.
Instead of moving forward, the country has been on the wrong track. These last four years have been wasted… http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/8933725.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Post Reagan: From The Pew Survey: Somewhat of a bump for Bush. Higher ratings re Iraq involvement, approval of Bush, etc., and it’s back to even with Kerry. But, it’s only June.
Bush Courts McCain
With Kerry having ‘lost’ McCain as a possible VP, Bush is seeking to bring McCain back into the fold.The Washington Post (Dan Balz, Mike Allen)
After being courted by John F. Kerry to consider joining the Democratic presidential ticket, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will join President Bush on Air Force One on Friday and introduce him at a campaign event in Reno, Nev., campaign officials said yesterday.
Bush and McCain have had a frosty relationship ever since competing for the Republican nomination in 2000, and Bush aides have fumed at McCain's occasional barbs in televised interviews during which he was asked repeatedly about the vice presidency. McCain's trip with Bush grew out of a meeting this spring between White House senior adviser Karl Rove and John Weaver, a top adviser to McCain, who became a Democratic consultant after the bitter campaign between Bush and McCain. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48029-2004Jun16.html
Corporate Tax: “Helping Us Compete”- that’s the mantra for the latest. We gotta end this borrowing ($270 billion on this one) which keeps burdening ordinary tax payers and digs a bigger hole for Kerry… as he will then feel trapped into replaying Clinton’s first term by shelving social activism in favor of deficit trimming.
A number of Democrats helped give Republicans the margin of victory as the House of Representatives passed a $155 billion bill to cut taxes for manufacturers, overhaul international tax rules and let U.S. multinationals bring home overseas income at a 5.25% rate.
But other Democrats criticized the bill's inclusion of a plan to pay tobacco farmers to give up a federal program that shores up crop prices, saying it was merely a political ploy designed to win Southern support for the larger measure that would rewrite the nation's corporate tax code. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108749784874340301,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
Fahrenheit 9/11: Michael Moore et al as Nazis
Celebrity reviewer Tina Brown critiques the Michael Moore movie:
Those squeamish about Michael Moore's methodology, however, should check out the other documentary that opened last night, "The Hunting of the President," produced by Clinton friend Harry Thomason. It tracks the network of Arkansas dirt-diggers who peddled Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Whitewater to the manipulative right-wing fringe. Thomason's movie, with its revelations of how Susan McDougal was pressured to lie to incriminate Hillary Clinton, is substantively more damning than "Fahrenheit 9/11." Moore fans can say his prosecution of Bush only employs the same paranoid technique of reasoning by juxtaposition that the Vince-Foster-was-murdered brigade used to torture the Clintons all those years. That is true, but it doesn't appeal to the Democrats less emotionally overwrought than Leonardo DiCaprio.
Hollywood agent and Kerry supporter Tom Baer told me, "Kerry should flee Moore's movie. It's Goebbels all over again." And former Clinton speechwriter Mark Katz put it this way: "I hold my guys to a higher standard," he said quietly. "That's why they're my guys." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48059-2004Jun16.html
Bill O’Reilly: After calling liberal journalist Eric Alterman “another Fidel Castro confidant” and Molly Ivins a “socialist”, he compared Bill Moyers to Mao Zedong, and added, “All right. I mean he’s a Far Left bomb-thrower who actually runs a foundation that funds left-wing organizations. I mean the guy’s a joke. Get out of the news business, Bill.” Then he invoked Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister.
Joseph Goebbels was the Minister of Propaganda for the Nazi regime and whose very famous quote was, "If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth." All right? "If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth."
And that's what Stuart Smalley [O'Reilly regularly refers to [Al] Franken as Stuart Smalley, a character Franken created on Saturday Night Live], and Michael Moore and all of these guys do. They just run around.
So who turns out for the screening of this movie [Fahrenheit 9/11] last night? You ready? Now, here are the celebrities that turn out. Here are the people who would turn out to see Josef Goebbels convince you that Poland invaded the Third Reich. It's the same thing, by the way. Propaganda is propaganda. OK?
Billy Crystal. Martin Sheen. Leonardo DiCaprio. Ellen DeGeneres. David Duchovny. Sharon Stone. Meg Ryan. Ashton Kutcher. Demi Moore. Norman Lear. Rob Reiner. Jodie Foster. Chris Rock. Larry David. Jack Black. Matthew Perry. Diane Lane.
And from the O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel:
I think it's [the effort by some Hollywood celebrities to help defeat President George W. Bush] more organized than ever before and I think they [anti-Bush Hollywood celebrities] have more access to the media than ever before because the celebrity media, as I said, is so profitable and pervasive. So now it becomes a Leni Riefenstahl Third Reich propaganda proposition where what they say and do is put in everybody's face. http://www.ofrankenfactor.com
Interfaith Group Apologizes to Arab viewers.
Their idea: to run a t.v. ad apologizing for Abu Ghraib. It was created by faithful america.org, and is running on Al Jazerra and Al Arabiya.
Venezuela: Chavez Faces Recall:
One rumor: Venezuela is buying voting machines …from Florida!
How many political lives does Venezuela's Hugo Chávez have? The former paratrooper won a landslide presidential election victory in 1998 just a few years
after being released from prison for leading a failed coup against the government in 1992. He was ousted from power himself in 2002 by a loosely knit
opposition of business, military, and labor leaders, but returned triumphantly to his post two days later after mass protests and military supporters forced his rivals
to back down.
Now, Chávez, 49, faces another big test. After months of struggle, his opponents -- who have banded together in a coalition called Democratic Coordinator -- have collected enough signatures to force a recall vote on Aug. 15. On June 3, Venezuela's National Electoral Council declared that more than the required 2.4 million signatures were valid. That marked a breakthrough for the opposition, since Chávez had earlier alleged that many signatures were fraudulent and the CNE required the opposition to get more than 1 million people to sign petitions again. http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/04_25/b3888142_mz058.htm?gb
-R
