Monday, July 05, 2004
Fahrenheit 9/11 and Israel. Robert Dreyfuss asks some questions:
Here are some questions for Moore: If Bush is so “in the pocket” of Saudi Arabia, why is he Ariel Sharon’s strongest backer? Why, when he had Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah down at the Texas ranch a few years ago, did he flip off the Saudi’s peace plan? And most important, why did he invade Iraq—since Saudi Arabia was strongly opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq? Why did he launch his Iraqi adventure over Saudi objections, with many of his advisers chortling that Saudi Arabia would be “next”? Why did he stock his administration with militant neocon crusaders who see Saudi Arabia as the main enemy? Why, Michael?
I have to conclude the Michael Moore is either blind, or a coward. Blind, if he can’t see Bush’s craven ties to Israel, driven by the neocons and the Christian Zionists and Bible-thumping fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, who consider Israel Jesus’ next stop and see Saudi Arabia as Satanic. Or cowardly, because he knows it and decided not to mention it. Is that because attacking Israel is too hard? Moore’s photo-montage of Saudi princes borders on the racist, showing Bush & Co. clinging to grinning, Semitic-looking Arabs in flowing white robes one after another. Would we stand for a similar, racist-leaning montage of Bush palling around with grinning, Semitic-looking Jews in skullcaps? 'Course not. More important, Moore completely misses the political boat. Perhaps that’s because he relies so heavily on Craig Unger and his book, House of Bush, House of Saud , which makes the same “error.”
And more for Moore. Yes, Bush 41 and his advisers—the Carlyle Group-linked James Baker, et al.—were (and are) connected to Saudi Arabia. Did Moore notice that Baker, along with Brent Scowcroft, and other former advisers to Bush 41 (including Colin Powell) were against the Iraq adventure? And that there were reports that Bush 41 himself thought it was a stupid idea? I can’t believe that Moore can be so stupid. So I can only conclude that he produced this movie the way he did on purpose. Then I read that he didn’t bother inviting Ralph Nader to the Washington, D.C., premiere of the film, and (according to The Washington Post ), Nader called Moore “fat.” Well. Moore is fatheaded. http://www.tompaine.com/articles/blind_or_a_coward.php
Moore Interview: with CBS’s Hannah Storm:
Storm: "Some have said propaganda, do you buy that? Op-ed?"
Moore: "No, I consider the CBS Evening News propaganda. What I do is-"
Storm: "We’ll move beyond on that."
Moore: "Why? Let’s not move beyond that."
Storm: "You know what?"
Moore: "Seriously."
Storm: "No, let’s talk about your movie."
Moore: "But why don’t we talk about the Evening News on this network and the other networks that didn’t do the job they should have done at the beginning of this war?"
Storm: "You know what?"
Moore: "Demanded the evidence, ask the hard questions-"
Storm: "Okay."
Moore: "-we may not of even gone into this war had these networks done their job. I mean, it was a great disservice to the American people because we depend on people who work here and the other networks to go after those in power and say 'Hey, wait a minute. You want to send our kids off to war, we want to know where those weapons of mass destruction are. Let’s see the proof. Let’s see the proof that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.’"
Storm: "But-"
Moore: "There was no proof and everybody just got embedded and everybody rolled over and everybody knows that now."
Storm: "Michael, the one thing that journalists try to do is to present both sides of the story. And it could be argued that you did not do that in this movie."
Moore: "I certainly didn’t. I presented my side-"
Storm: "You presented your side of the story."
Moore: "Because my side, that’s the side of millions of Americans, rarely gets told. And so, all I’m, look, this is just a humble plea on my behalf and not to you personally, Hannah. But I’m just saying to journalists in general that instead of working so hard to tell both sides of the story, why don’t you just tell that one side, which is the administration, why don’t you ask them the hard questions-"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/25/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main626088.shtml
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Show Me the Money- 98% of Reconstruction $ Unspent
The Administration keeps asking for more, yet has $17 billion in unspent reconstruction funds. So what gives? Suzanne Goldenberg’s report.:
The US government spent just 2% of the $18.4bn (£10bn) it had obtained from Congress for the urgent reconstruction of Iraq before formally ending its occupation last week.
The White House budget office report, the first detailed audit of the reconstruction, showed that the US occupation authorities had spent nothing on healthcare or water and sanitation, two of the most urgent needs for Iraqis. In contrast, a total of $9m was spent on administrative expenses.
By June 22 America's reconstruction campaign had spent $366m of the sum allotted to the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction. Fund. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4963338-103550,00.html
P.R. Drive: Dana Milbank, Reliable, at the Washington Post:
With scenes of violence and mayhem in Iraq replaced by more favorable images of the new Iraqi leaders taking charge and former president Saddam Hussein in the dock, top Bush administration officials launched an effort yesterday to ease the public's concern that the war has increased the threat of terrorism against the United States.
In speeches, briefings, interviews and an online chat, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and others used the events surrounding this week's handover of political autonomy in Iraq to rebuild their case that Iraq is experiencing a "historic transformation" and Americans are safer as a result.
And, Dick stays with “the connection”.
Countering the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, which found no "collaborative relationship" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda, Cheney renewed his accusation that they had "long-established ties." He listed several examples and stated: "In the early 1990s, Saddam had sent a brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence service to Sudan to train al Qaeda in bombmaking and document forgery." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22281-2004Jul1.html
Sadr Changes Mind; Urges (Political) Resistance: Scott Wilson at the WaPost:
Moqtada Sadr, the rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric, insisted Friday that the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq had not ended with the recent handover of limited political powers to an interim government, and called on his followers to continue resisting the large presence of foreign troops in the country.
"I want to draw your attention to the fact there was no transferring of authority," said Jabir Khafaji, a top Sadr lieutenant, reading from a letter from the cleric during Friday prayers at a mosque in the southern city of Kufa where Sadr commonly preaches. "What has changed is the name only."
Khafaji also demanded that the new Iraqi government defer to the Shiite religious leadership based in the neighboring holy city of Najaf. He asserted that the Mahdi Army, Sadr's black-clad militia group that was recently decimated in two months of battle with U.S. forces, was "the army of Iraq."
"I ask the Iraqis to keep rejecting the occupation and call for independence," Khafaji said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24645-2004Jul2?language=printer
Quiet Admission re Saddam StatueTaking advantage of the holiday weekend, the Army has quietly admitted what all semi-alert folk knew back in April, 2003, that the pulling down of the statue of Saddam was no spontaneous, mass celebration of Iraqis, but rather a U.S.-orchestrated event. From David Zucchino in Saturday’s LA Times
The Army's internal study of the war in Iraq criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion.
As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-na-statue3jul03,1,5285803.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Legality of the Occupation termed “Flawed”: From the Independent (Marie Woolf)
The senior Foreign Office lawyer who resigned after ministers ignored her advice that the war in Iraq was illegal has issued a damning legal critique of the occupation, claiming that the alleged abuse of prisoners "could amount to war crimes".
In her first newspaper interview since her resignation, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the former deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, said that the basis for going to war should always be based on "facts" rather than an "assertion" about an "imminent threat". Ms Wilmshurst said "it could be alleged that the use of force in Iraq was aggression" while "the kinds of abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners that have been alleged could amount to war crimes".http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=537972
Renewed Conservative Attack on the Media: Too much bad news, so a new effort to intimidate. From Knight Ridder (James Kuhnhenn)
With the presidential election likely to turn on developments in Iraq and the U.S. economy, one of the summer's hottest political issues is whether news-media coverage of those topics is fair or biased.
Conservatives across the country decry news coverage of the war as relentlessly and unfairly negative. Last week Brent Bozell, a conservative activist, launched a $2.8 million advertising and talk-radio campaign to discredit the "liberal news media."
Such complaints are escalating - and increasingly conveyed in e-mails to journalists, letters to the editor and even in social settings with news executives - a phenomenon that appears to have been aroused in part by the Republican Party, President Bush's campaign and leading conservatives on talk radio, the Internet and cable TV.
"The bias that's been there is now simply out of control," said Bozell, whose conservative Media Research Center is running newspaper and billboard ads accusing the press of lying. The ads show a stern-faced Uncle Sam warning: "Don't believe the liberal media!"
Protests about media coverage have surged as bad news from Iraq and worries about jobs here at home have driven Bush's approval numbers to all-time lows. The president's supporters say journalists dwell unfairly on casualties and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and ignore positive U.S. economic signs. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9049444.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Conservatives and (Liberal) Social Science
Thoughtful piece by Franklin Foer in the New Republic:
Conservative distrust of liberal social science — sometimes justified — has metastasized in the past few decades into a distrust of any fact-based research program that reaches non-favored conclusions. Thus the distrust of the CIA when it initially resisted neocon beliefs about Saddam's WMD and the contempt for Arabists and State Department experts who warned that occupying Iraq required real planning and real knowledge.
The disaster this has caused is obvious and immediate. Less immediate, but no less disastrous, is the administration's refusal to acknowledge the CBO's economic projections or the scientific establishment's consensus on global warming. In this administration, if the facts don't fit their agenda, all the worse for the facts.
The most common explanation for this animus is that the White House overflows with political hacks uninterested in the nitty-gritty of policy. But the administration's expert-bashing also has deep roots in ideology. Since its inception, modern American conservatism has harbored a suspicion of experts, who, through adherence to inductive reasoning and academic methodologies, claim to provide objective research and analysis.
To be sure, this social-scientific approach has its limits. Conservatives have raised genuinely troubling questions about its predilection for downplaying the role of "culture" and "values" in shaping human behavior. But the Bush administration has adopted a far more extreme version of this critique: It takes the radically postmodern view that "science," "objectivity," and "truth" are guises for an ulterior, leftist agenda; that experts are so incapable of dispassionate and disinterested analysis that their work doesn't even merit a hearing. And the results have been disastrous. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=BbMEUfpmlzBDZWCV4Imv7o%3D%3D
Biolabs. Overlooked, as it was in the mid-week business section of the NY Times. It deserves our attention.
Convincing, but on the other side is Dr. Richard Spertzel, who lead the U.N. inspection team for bioweapons in Iraq. He and others argue that the level-4 labs are absolutely essential. I can't say who is right. But to invoke Santayana, it took Russia, what, five years to develop the atomic bomb after the Manhattan Project? And Ebright's comment that BSL-4 funding is "the easiest way to bring $100 million to your university" is stinging. We need a Senator Harry Truman, who rose to fame by investigating waste and fraud during World War II, more than ever.
The government and many security experts say one crucial step is to build more high-security laboratories, where scientists can explore the threats posed not only by deadly natural germs, but also by designer pathogens - genetically modified superbugs that could outdo natural viruses and bacteria in their killing power. To this end, the Bush administration has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to erect such laboratories in Boston; Galveston, Tex.; and Frederick, Md., among other places, increasing eightfold the overall space devoted to the high-technology buildings.
Dr. Ebright, on the other hand, views the plans as a recipe for catastrophe. The laboratories, called biosafety level 4, or BSL-4, are costly, unnecessary and dangerous, he says.
"I'm concerned about them from the standpoint of science, safety, security, public health and economics," he added in an interview. "They lose on all counts."
Dr. Ebright said the Level 4 labs appeared to be safe. Their crux is multiple layers of protection to keep lethal germs inside - technicians in space suits, filters in air ducts, backup generators, negative pressure so any leaks around sealed doors or windows let clean air in rather than poisonous air out and so on.
But Dr. Ebright noted that the deadly SARS virus recently escaped from BSL-4 and BSL-3 labs in Taiwan, Singapore and Beijing, in each case setting off minor epidemics that killed or sickened people.
The smart alternative, he says, is for national authorities to focus germ-defense research on more realistic threats like simple anthrax, which needs just a Level 2 or Level 3 laboratory for preparation, while still being powerful enough to knock out whole cities.
In the end, Dr. Ebright says, it is simple greed, not science or national security, that lies behind some of the Level 4 offensive.
"It's the easiest way to bring $100 million to your university," he said. "Perhaps the only way." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/science/29cont.html?pagewanted=print&position=
If Kerry Wins, what happens to the GOP? E.J. Dionne:
Former representative Steve Gunderson, a Wisconsin Republican, speaks of "a coming civil war in the party" spurred by the efforts of conservatives to purge moderates from its ranks. This civil war over social issues is compounded by new divisions over deficits and the use of tax cuts not only to "promote growth" -- there is, says Gunderson, "nothing wrong with that" -- but also to "shut down the legitimate role of government."
Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, as close as there is in Congress to an old-time liberal Republican, believes that "there would be an acceptance from moderate Republicans for rolling back some of the upper-income tax cuts to address the deficit." Both Chafee and Leach believe that because the 2001 Bush tax cuts are set to expire by 2011, Kerry might successfully negotiate some increases in exchange for making parts of the tax cut permanent. Leach is particularly interested in reforming rather than repealing the estate tax. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=b68186b1cbddf5c84ccacfec9ec273c4&lat=1088790354&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW6RH05A1C14ECEBA439543FE1E4670
Baptists Criticize Bush Campaign
The Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative denomination closely aligned with President Bush, said it was offended by the Bush-Cheney campaign's effort to use church rosters for campaign purposes.
''I'm appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
''The bottom line is, when a church does it, it's nonpartisan and appropriate. When a campaign does it, it's partisan and inappropriate," he said. ''I suspect that this will rub a lot of pastors' fur the wrong way." http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/07/03/bush_camps_outreach_hit_by_church_groups?mode=PF
Florida Felons List:
Follow-up: The Miami Herald finds that at least 2119 were wrongly excluded from the voter roles, that 62% of that number were Democrats, practically 50% were black. The math: A loss of some 1200 votes. Again, at least…
More than 2,100 Florida voters -- many of them black Democrats -- could be wrongly barred from voting in November because Tallahassee elections officials included them on a list of felons potentially ineligible to vote, a Herald investigation has found.
A Florida Division of Elections database lists more than 47,000 people the department said may be ineligible to vote because of felony records. The state is directing local elections offices to check the list and scrub felons from voter rolls.
But a Herald review shows that at least 2,119 of those names -- including 547 in South Florida -- shouldn't be on the list because their rights to vote were formally restored through the state's clemency process. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9062928.htm
Polls: Kerry up 10 in Michigan (Survey USA)
Unemployment / Underemployment
Unemployment stuck at high level of 5.6%; underemployment higher than at recovery's start
After a few months of healthy job growth, employment grew by just 112,000 jobs in June 2004. The employment growth that began in September 2003 has not been vigorous enough to reduce unemployment, which has remained at 5.6% since January 2004, the same rate as when the recovery began in November 2001 and far higher than the 4.2% level when the recession began in March 2001. Unfortunately, underemployment in the form of involuntary part-time work, discouraged workers, and other marginally attached workers (i.e., those who have looked for work in the last year but are not counted as unemployed) has increased. Specifically, the total underemployment rate was 9.6% in June 2004, up from 9.4% in November 2001 when the recovery began, and far higher than the 7.3% in March 2001 when the recession began. http://www.jobwatch.org/
Massachusetts Tax Update: More revenues means the centrist Democrats want to stabilize the budget; the Governor (Romney) wants to cut taxes.
Lowering the tax rate to 5 percent would cost the state between $200 million and $225 million in fiscal 2005. But it would reduce revenue by twice that amount in fiscal 2006, when it would be in effect for the entire year.
Michael J. Widmer of the Taxpayers Foundation said the revenue number is ''clearly good news after years of bad news."
Widmer said there is enough new money to replenish reserves and reduce the state's reliance on one-time revenue, but not enough to substantially restore past budget cuts or cut taxes. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/07/02/state_revenues_soar?mode=PF
-R
Here are some questions for Moore: If Bush is so “in the pocket” of Saudi Arabia, why is he Ariel Sharon’s strongest backer? Why, when he had Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah down at the Texas ranch a few years ago, did he flip off the Saudi’s peace plan? And most important, why did he invade Iraq—since Saudi Arabia was strongly opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq? Why did he launch his Iraqi adventure over Saudi objections, with many of his advisers chortling that Saudi Arabia would be “next”? Why did he stock his administration with militant neocon crusaders who see Saudi Arabia as the main enemy? Why, Michael?
I have to conclude the Michael Moore is either blind, or a coward. Blind, if he can’t see Bush’s craven ties to Israel, driven by the neocons and the Christian Zionists and Bible-thumping fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, who consider Israel Jesus’ next stop and see Saudi Arabia as Satanic. Or cowardly, because he knows it and decided not to mention it. Is that because attacking Israel is too hard? Moore’s photo-montage of Saudi princes borders on the racist, showing Bush & Co. clinging to grinning, Semitic-looking Arabs in flowing white robes one after another. Would we stand for a similar, racist-leaning montage of Bush palling around with grinning, Semitic-looking Jews in skullcaps? 'Course not. More important, Moore completely misses the political boat. Perhaps that’s because he relies so heavily on Craig Unger and his book, House of Bush, House of Saud , which makes the same “error.”
And more for Moore. Yes, Bush 41 and his advisers—the Carlyle Group-linked James Baker, et al.—were (and are) connected to Saudi Arabia. Did Moore notice that Baker, along with Brent Scowcroft, and other former advisers to Bush 41 (including Colin Powell) were against the Iraq adventure? And that there were reports that Bush 41 himself thought it was a stupid idea? I can’t believe that Moore can be so stupid. So I can only conclude that he produced this movie the way he did on purpose. Then I read that he didn’t bother inviting Ralph Nader to the Washington, D.C., premiere of the film, and (according to The Washington Post ), Nader called Moore “fat.” Well. Moore is fatheaded. http://www.tompaine.com/articles/blind_or_a_coward.php
Moore Interview: with CBS’s Hannah Storm:
Storm: "Some have said propaganda, do you buy that? Op-ed?"
Moore: "No, I consider the CBS Evening News propaganda. What I do is-"
Storm: "We’ll move beyond on that."
Moore: "Why? Let’s not move beyond that."
Storm: "You know what?"
Moore: "Seriously."
Storm: "No, let’s talk about your movie."
Moore: "But why don’t we talk about the Evening News on this network and the other networks that didn’t do the job they should have done at the beginning of this war?"
Storm: "You know what?"
Moore: "Demanded the evidence, ask the hard questions-"
Storm: "Okay."
Moore: "-we may not of even gone into this war had these networks done their job. I mean, it was a great disservice to the American people because we depend on people who work here and the other networks to go after those in power and say 'Hey, wait a minute. You want to send our kids off to war, we want to know where those weapons of mass destruction are. Let’s see the proof. Let’s see the proof that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.’"
Storm: "But-"
Moore: "There was no proof and everybody just got embedded and everybody rolled over and everybody knows that now."
Storm: "Michael, the one thing that journalists try to do is to present both sides of the story. And it could be argued that you did not do that in this movie."
Moore: "I certainly didn’t. I presented my side-"
Storm: "You presented your side of the story."
Moore: "Because my side, that’s the side of millions of Americans, rarely gets told. And so, all I’m, look, this is just a humble plea on my behalf and not to you personally, Hannah. But I’m just saying to journalists in general that instead of working so hard to tell both sides of the story, why don’t you just tell that one side, which is the administration, why don’t you ask them the hard questions-"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/25/earlyshow/leisure/celebspot/main626088.shtml
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Show Me the Money- 98% of Reconstruction $ Unspent
The Administration keeps asking for more, yet has $17 billion in unspent reconstruction funds. So what gives? Suzanne Goldenberg’s report.:
The US government spent just 2% of the $18.4bn (£10bn) it had obtained from Congress for the urgent reconstruction of Iraq before formally ending its occupation last week.
The White House budget office report, the first detailed audit of the reconstruction, showed that the US occupation authorities had spent nothing on healthcare or water and sanitation, two of the most urgent needs for Iraqis. In contrast, a total of $9m was spent on administrative expenses.
By June 22 America's reconstruction campaign had spent $366m of the sum allotted to the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction. Fund. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4963338-103550,00.html
P.R. Drive: Dana Milbank, Reliable, at the Washington Post:
With scenes of violence and mayhem in Iraq replaced by more favorable images of the new Iraqi leaders taking charge and former president Saddam Hussein in the dock, top Bush administration officials launched an effort yesterday to ease the public's concern that the war has increased the threat of terrorism against the United States.
In speeches, briefings, interviews and an online chat, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and others used the events surrounding this week's handover of political autonomy in Iraq to rebuild their case that Iraq is experiencing a "historic transformation" and Americans are safer as a result.
And, Dick stays with “the connection”.
Countering the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, which found no "collaborative relationship" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda, Cheney renewed his accusation that they had "long-established ties." He listed several examples and stated: "In the early 1990s, Saddam had sent a brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence service to Sudan to train al Qaeda in bombmaking and document forgery." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22281-2004Jul1.html
Sadr Changes Mind; Urges (Political) Resistance: Scott Wilson at the WaPost:
Moqtada Sadr, the rebellious Shiite Muslim cleric, insisted Friday that the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq had not ended with the recent handover of limited political powers to an interim government, and called on his followers to continue resisting the large presence of foreign troops in the country.
"I want to draw your attention to the fact there was no transferring of authority," said Jabir Khafaji, a top Sadr lieutenant, reading from a letter from the cleric during Friday prayers at a mosque in the southern city of Kufa where Sadr commonly preaches. "What has changed is the name only."
Khafaji also demanded that the new Iraqi government defer to the Shiite religious leadership based in the neighboring holy city of Najaf. He asserted that the Mahdi Army, Sadr's black-clad militia group that was recently decimated in two months of battle with U.S. forces, was "the army of Iraq."
"I ask the Iraqis to keep rejecting the occupation and call for independence," Khafaji said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24645-2004Jul2?language=printer
Quiet Admission re Saddam StatueTaking advantage of the holiday weekend, the Army has quietly admitted what all semi-alert folk knew back in April, 2003, that the pulling down of the statue of Saddam was no spontaneous, mass celebration of Iraqis, but rather a U.S.-orchestrated event. From David Zucchino in Saturday’s LA Times
The Army's internal study of the war in Iraq criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion.
As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-na-statue3jul03,1,5285803.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Legality of the Occupation termed “Flawed”: From the Independent (Marie Woolf)
The senior Foreign Office lawyer who resigned after ministers ignored her advice that the war in Iraq was illegal has issued a damning legal critique of the occupation, claiming that the alleged abuse of prisoners "could amount to war crimes".
In her first newspaper interview since her resignation, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the former deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, said that the basis for going to war should always be based on "facts" rather than an "assertion" about an "imminent threat". Ms Wilmshurst said "it could be alleged that the use of force in Iraq was aggression" while "the kinds of abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners that have been alleged could amount to war crimes".http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=537972
Renewed Conservative Attack on the Media: Too much bad news, so a new effort to intimidate. From Knight Ridder (James Kuhnhenn)
With the presidential election likely to turn on developments in Iraq and the U.S. economy, one of the summer's hottest political issues is whether news-media coverage of those topics is fair or biased.
Conservatives across the country decry news coverage of the war as relentlessly and unfairly negative. Last week Brent Bozell, a conservative activist, launched a $2.8 million advertising and talk-radio campaign to discredit the "liberal news media."
Such complaints are escalating - and increasingly conveyed in e-mails to journalists, letters to the editor and even in social settings with news executives - a phenomenon that appears to have been aroused in part by the Republican Party, President Bush's campaign and leading conservatives on talk radio, the Internet and cable TV.
"The bias that's been there is now simply out of control," said Bozell, whose conservative Media Research Center is running newspaper and billboard ads accusing the press of lying. The ads show a stern-faced Uncle Sam warning: "Don't believe the liberal media!"
Protests about media coverage have surged as bad news from Iraq and worries about jobs here at home have driven Bush's approval numbers to all-time lows. The president's supporters say journalists dwell unfairly on casualties and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and ignore positive U.S. economic signs. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9049444.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Conservatives and (Liberal) Social Science
Thoughtful piece by Franklin Foer in the New Republic:
Conservative distrust of liberal social science — sometimes justified — has metastasized in the past few decades into a distrust of any fact-based research program that reaches non-favored conclusions. Thus the distrust of the CIA when it initially resisted neocon beliefs about Saddam's WMD and the contempt for Arabists and State Department experts who warned that occupying Iraq required real planning and real knowledge.
The disaster this has caused is obvious and immediate. Less immediate, but no less disastrous, is the administration's refusal to acknowledge the CBO's economic projections or the scientific establishment's consensus on global warming. In this administration, if the facts don't fit their agenda, all the worse for the facts.
The most common explanation for this animus is that the White House overflows with political hacks uninterested in the nitty-gritty of policy. But the administration's expert-bashing also has deep roots in ideology. Since its inception, modern American conservatism has harbored a suspicion of experts, who, through adherence to inductive reasoning and academic methodologies, claim to provide objective research and analysis.
To be sure, this social-scientific approach has its limits. Conservatives have raised genuinely troubling questions about its predilection for downplaying the role of "culture" and "values" in shaping human behavior. But the Bush administration has adopted a far more extreme version of this critique: It takes the radically postmodern view that "science," "objectivity," and "truth" are guises for an ulterior, leftist agenda; that experts are so incapable of dispassionate and disinterested analysis that their work doesn't even merit a hearing. And the results have been disastrous. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=BbMEUfpmlzBDZWCV4Imv7o%3D%3D
Biolabs. Overlooked, as it was in the mid-week business section of the NY Times. It deserves our attention.
Convincing, but on the other side is Dr. Richard Spertzel, who lead the U.N. inspection team for bioweapons in Iraq. He and others argue that the level-4 labs are absolutely essential. I can't say who is right. But to invoke Santayana, it took Russia, what, five years to develop the atomic bomb after the Manhattan Project? And Ebright's comment that BSL-4 funding is "the easiest way to bring $100 million to your university" is stinging. We need a Senator Harry Truman, who rose to fame by investigating waste and fraud during World War II, more than ever.
The government and many security experts say one crucial step is to build more high-security laboratories, where scientists can explore the threats posed not only by deadly natural germs, but also by designer pathogens - genetically modified superbugs that could outdo natural viruses and bacteria in their killing power. To this end, the Bush administration has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to erect such laboratories in Boston; Galveston, Tex.; and Frederick, Md., among other places, increasing eightfold the overall space devoted to the high-technology buildings.
Dr. Ebright, on the other hand, views the plans as a recipe for catastrophe. The laboratories, called biosafety level 4, or BSL-4, are costly, unnecessary and dangerous, he says.
"I'm concerned about them from the standpoint of science, safety, security, public health and economics," he added in an interview. "They lose on all counts."
Dr. Ebright said the Level 4 labs appeared to be safe. Their crux is multiple layers of protection to keep lethal germs inside - technicians in space suits, filters in air ducts, backup generators, negative pressure so any leaks around sealed doors or windows let clean air in rather than poisonous air out and so on.
But Dr. Ebright noted that the deadly SARS virus recently escaped from BSL-4 and BSL-3 labs in Taiwan, Singapore and Beijing, in each case setting off minor epidemics that killed or sickened people.
The smart alternative, he says, is for national authorities to focus germ-defense research on more realistic threats like simple anthrax, which needs just a Level 2 or Level 3 laboratory for preparation, while still being powerful enough to knock out whole cities.
In the end, Dr. Ebright says, it is simple greed, not science or national security, that lies behind some of the Level 4 offensive.
"It's the easiest way to bring $100 million to your university," he said. "Perhaps the only way." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/science/29cont.html?pagewanted=print&position=
If Kerry Wins, what happens to the GOP? E.J. Dionne:
Former representative Steve Gunderson, a Wisconsin Republican, speaks of "a coming civil war in the party" spurred by the efforts of conservatives to purge moderates from its ranks. This civil war over social issues is compounded by new divisions over deficits and the use of tax cuts not only to "promote growth" -- there is, says Gunderson, "nothing wrong with that" -- but also to "shut down the legitimate role of government."
Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, as close as there is in Congress to an old-time liberal Republican, believes that "there would be an acceptance from moderate Republicans for rolling back some of the upper-income tax cuts to address the deficit." Both Chafee and Leach believe that because the 2001 Bush tax cuts are set to expire by 2011, Kerry might successfully negotiate some increases in exchange for making parts of the tax cut permanent. Leach is particularly interested in reforming rather than repealing the estate tax. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=b68186b1cbddf5c84ccacfec9ec273c4&lat=1088790354&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW6RH05A1C14ECEBA439543FE1E4670
Baptists Criticize Bush Campaign
The Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative denomination closely aligned with President Bush, said it was offended by the Bush-Cheney campaign's effort to use church rosters for campaign purposes.
''I'm appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
''The bottom line is, when a church does it, it's nonpartisan and appropriate. When a campaign does it, it's partisan and inappropriate," he said. ''I suspect that this will rub a lot of pastors' fur the wrong way." http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/07/03/bush_camps_outreach_hit_by_church_groups?mode=PF
Florida Felons List:
Follow-up: The Miami Herald finds that at least 2119 were wrongly excluded from the voter roles, that 62% of that number were Democrats, practically 50% were black. The math: A loss of some 1200 votes. Again, at least…
More than 2,100 Florida voters -- many of them black Democrats -- could be wrongly barred from voting in November because Tallahassee elections officials included them on a list of felons potentially ineligible to vote, a Herald investigation has found.
A Florida Division of Elections database lists more than 47,000 people the department said may be ineligible to vote because of felony records. The state is directing local elections offices to check the list and scrub felons from voter rolls.
But a Herald review shows that at least 2,119 of those names -- including 547 in South Florida -- shouldn't be on the list because their rights to vote were formally restored through the state's clemency process. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9062928.htm
Polls: Kerry up 10 in Michigan (Survey USA)
Unemployment / Underemployment
Unemployment stuck at high level of 5.6%; underemployment higher than at recovery's start
After a few months of healthy job growth, employment grew by just 112,000 jobs in June 2004. The employment growth that began in September 2003 has not been vigorous enough to reduce unemployment, which has remained at 5.6% since January 2004, the same rate as when the recovery began in November 2001 and far higher than the 4.2% level when the recession began in March 2001. Unfortunately, underemployment in the form of involuntary part-time work, discouraged workers, and other marginally attached workers (i.e., those who have looked for work in the last year but are not counted as unemployed) has increased. Specifically, the total underemployment rate was 9.6% in June 2004, up from 9.4% in November 2001 when the recovery began, and far higher than the 7.3% in March 2001 when the recession began. http://www.jobwatch.org/
Massachusetts Tax Update: More revenues means the centrist Democrats want to stabilize the budget; the Governor (Romney) wants to cut taxes.
Lowering the tax rate to 5 percent would cost the state between $200 million and $225 million in fiscal 2005. But it would reduce revenue by twice that amount in fiscal 2006, when it would be in effect for the entire year.
Michael J. Widmer of the Taxpayers Foundation said the revenue number is ''clearly good news after years of bad news."
Widmer said there is enough new money to replenish reserves and reduce the state's reliance on one-time revenue, but not enough to substantially restore past budget cuts or cut taxes. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/07/02/state_revenues_soar?mode=PF
-R
