Monday, July 12, 2004
Intelligence Failure: From the horse’s mouth:
[W]e need to bolster human intelligence. In other words, one of the best ways to figure out what the enemy is thinking is to get to know the enemy firsthand, I guess is the best way to put it -- is to have as much human intelligence as possible. Good quality intelligence and enough human intelligence agents, assets out there so that we can cover the globe. – Bush, on the Senate Report
That Senate Report: CIA Guilty, Bush Innocent That’s what the text says; all of the Dems signed on. But Senate Democrats laid the groundwork for their own political defeat in February when they agreed to delay the second phase of the investigation until after the November election. Too trusting, too passive, too often. So, they, not the press, deserve most of our ire.
Of course, in separate statements, some Democrats demurred. So, we have the weird scenario of the Senate where Rockefeller seemed to say that what he signed was not representing what he believed, that it was incomplete or very misleading.
As to the scapegoating, we knew this was coming. Long ago, the FBI was targeted as the scapegoat for 9/11, the CIA for the failed Invasion-Occupation. As for the latter, we can’t forget that the CIA is not independent, that it is overly responsive to the President.
As for accountability, when Kennedy took over, the Bay of Pigs invasion was very much planned; in his third month, he was unable to resist the Eisenhower-initiated venture. Yet, while he ultimately fired the CIA director, he took ‘full responsibility’ for the failure. The Iraq Invasion was in Bush’s third year, yet he remains unaccountable, the victim of bad intelligence.
Senate Report Confirms that Saddam’s Army was Weak
Another well-known fact, “confirmed” by the Senate report. Again, anyone who read the minimum of published information would have known that all estimates agreed that Saddam’s army and economy were MUCH weaker in 2002 than in 1991, the year of the Gulf War, that they were a threat to no one.
The Senate's report on prewar intelligence about Iraq, which asserts that warnings about its illicit weapons were largely unfounded and that its ties to Al Qaeda were tenuous, also undermines another justification for the war: that Saddam Hussein's military posed a threat to regional stability and American interests.
In a detailed discussion of Iraq's prewar military posture, the report cites a long series of intelligence reports in the decade before the war that described a formerly potent army's spiral of decay under the weight of economic sanctions and American military pressure. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/international/middleeast/11MILI.html
Media Verdict: Washington Post leads the way: Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus go as far as anyone-
The larger question is whether voters will blame the White House for these two massive mistakes. Though officially agnostic on the White House role in using Iraq intelligence (that will come in a later report), the committee gives ammunition both to Bush and Democratic opponent John F. Kerry.
On the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the bipartisan committee report absolved administration officials of pressuring CIA analysts to inflate the case against Saddam Hussein. And while making no judgment on whether the administration distorted the intelligence it was given, the committee made plain that the CIA's case against Iraq was plenty exaggerated on its own. Without "any evidence" of administration coercion, the committee found, the intelligence community's judgments on Iraq's weapons were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."
On the issue of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, however, the committee's findings imply that the White House, not the CIA, is to blame for making dubious claims that there were working ties between Osama bin Laden's organization and Hussein's Iraq. "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship," the committee found, echoing the Sept. 11 commission staff's finding of no "collaborative relationship" between the two. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39833-2004Jul9?language=printer
Ridge Non-Alert--> Kerry is the candidate of terrorists: Like Ashcroft’s, Ridge’s alert was meant to keep people off balance, if not terrified, and, arguably, to change the subject from ‘Edwards’ is the VP’. And, they keep looking for opportunities to put out the line that Condi raised in April and, more recently Bush, that terrorists might attack in the United States to affect the outcome of the November presidential election. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/200619p-173035c.html.
They have been issuing this ‘warning’ to build on the misleading statements they’ve made following the Madrid bombings. According to the Spanish press, that government was thrown out for trying to pin the bombings on Spaniards, not because they were the ‘strong on terror’ party. Also, one should consider the statement issued by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which took responsibility for the Madrid bombings. This group which claims to have links to al Qaeda, trumpted its support for Bush’s reelection, since Bush "deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom." http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040317/325/eotq9.html
Book Review of work by ‘Anonymous’ (former CIA official, author of Why the West is Losing the War on Terror) Michiko Kakutani, reviewer.
He sees the American invasion of Iraq as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages. "U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990's… As a result, I think it fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden's only indispensable ally." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/books/09BOOK.html?pagewanted=print&position=
AP report on nuclear proliferation: Guilty Parties
An investigation of the black market supplying nations wanting nuclear arms has spread to more than 20 firms — some of them North American — the chief of the U.N. atomic agency told The Associated Press Friday. A senior diplomat identified one of the firms as U.S. based....
The diplomat said at least one of them was in the United States. He declined to elaborate, saying the agency "was not yet at the bottom of that story." But he said what is known about that company sheds new light on the activities of the network, known up to now for primarily supplying technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran as part of the process allowing them to make enriched uranium that can be used either to generate electricity or make weapons. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&e=3&u=/ap/20040710/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_black_market
Disillusionment: Anne Applebaum, Wash Post centrist reporter and author, looks back: Typical
Instead of responding truthfully to the European debate, the Bush administration flatly denied that any invasion of Iraq was imminent. Instead of engaging the European public, Bush said he was still "explor[ing] all options and all tools at my disposal." No one believed him--and, of course, they were right not to…
Looking back on it, this was also the point at which I should have questioned some of my early assumptions about the Bush administration…
The truth, of course, is that, for all its talk of universal human rights, this is not an administration that actually perceives itself as a part of something greater than the United States. For all of its talk about spreading American values to benighted foreigners, this is not an administration that even likes foreigners. It never occurred to me that American troops would arrive in Baghdad and have absolutely no idea what to do next, or who was important, or who was on their side. But then, I hadn't realized that the Pentagon leadership had no interest in or knowledge of the Iraqi people. I thought these were cold warriors, whereas in fact they are narrow-minded American nationalists, isolationists turned inside out. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=jRnKUph7Tk8Ifrp9wv8YzB%3D%3D
Values:
1) Bush and the Churches:
Robert Reich had an unusually pointed piece in the American Prospect:
It was recently reported that the Bush campaign had e-mailed members of the clergy, soliciting help in identifying "friendly" congregations that would do the campaign's bidding in their areas. When the e-mail came to light, legal experts warned that any religious organization that endorsed one candidate over another could lose its tax-exempt status. A few days later, House Republicans added a measure to a tax bill working its way through Congress called the "Safe Harbor for Churches" act, which would allow any religious organization to make as many as three "unintentional" political endorsements in a calendar year without jeopardizing its tax-exempt status.
When questioned about all of this, Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said, "The campaign wants people of faith to participate in the political process." Clearly, the Bushies want more than this. Because any exemption from paying taxes has the same economic value to its recipient as a direct subsidy from the government, the Bush campaign wants religious groups to enter the political fray -- with costs offset by the federal government. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=7858
2) Bushies and Health/Science: Another Critique
For years, Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based organization devoted to adolescent sexual health, says, it received government grants without much trouble. Then last year it was subjected to three federal reviews.
James Wagoner, the president of Advocates for Youth, said the reviews were prompted by concerns among some members of Congress that his group was using public funds to lobby against programs that promoted sexual abstinence before marriage. Although that was not the case, Mr. Wagoner said, the government officials made their point.
"For 20 years, it was about health and science, and now we have a political ideological approach," he said. "Never have we experienced a climate of intimidation and censorship as we have today."
Mr. Wagoner is among the professionals in sex-related fields who have started speaking out against what they say is growing interference from conservatives in and out of government with their work in research, education and disease prevention. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/politics/11sex.html?pagewanted=print&position=
3) Conservatives put Gay Marriage into campaign
Two weeks before the Democratic convention and under pressure from conservatives, President Bush is escalating his support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, moving the issue to the forefront of the campaign and underscoring what his aides said was a critical difference between the president and Senator John Kerry. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/politics/campaign/12REPU.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Casualties: This week I counted at least 18 Americans that were acknowledged to have been killed in Iraq. The total is about to hit 900. Observe the diminished media attention
Latest Greenwald Film Exposes Fox News; NY Times profile:
''Outfoxed'' has been made in secret. The film is an obsessively researched expose of the ways in which Fox News, as Greenwald sees it, distorts its coverage to serve the conservative political agenda of its owner, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. It features interviews with former Fox employees, leaked policy memos written by Fox executives and extensive footage from Fox News, which Greenwald is using without the network's permission. The result is an unwavering argument against Fox News that combines the leftist partisan vigor of a Michael Moore film with the sober tone and delivery of a PBS special. A large portion of the film's $300,000 budget came in the form of contributions in the range of $80,000 from both MoveOn and the Center for American Progress, the liberal policy organization founded by John Podesta, the former chief of staff for Bill Clinton; Greenwald, who is not looking to earn any money from the project, provided the rest.
After scrutinizing the initial footage, Greenwald and a team of researchers compiled a list of what they saw as Fox's telltale themes and techniques: stories questioning the patriotism of liberals; relentlessly upbeat reports on Iraq; belligerent hosts who scream at noncompliant guests. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/magazine/11FOX.html?pagewanted=print&position
Cable Wars: Drudge Report, a conservative organ, reports on the above:
CABLE WAR: FOX NEWS VOWS TOP FIGHT BACK AGAINST RIVALS WHO TOUT DOCUMENTARY
**Exclusive**
A new documentary claiming to show Republican bias at FOX NEWS will debut in New York City on Monday. But FOX NEWS executives are preparing to hit back hard -- if rivals self-servingly hype the film!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that FOX NEWS executives are lining up a parade of FOX NEWS employees who formerly worked at CNN & MSNBC and have been downloading information on how editorial decisions are made at these networks, including the agenda for how stories are supposed to be covered.
A senior FOX NEWS executive tells DRUDGE: "We have enough ammunition to nail both MSNBC & CNN." Sources say FOX is prepared to go public with these accounts if necessary. http://drudgereport.com/foxf.htm
Developing DeLay Scandal: Weep Not (Wash. Post, R. Jeffrey Smith)
In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.
DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson.
The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts.
DeLay's fundraising efforts helped produce a stunning political success. Republicans took control of the Texas House for the first time in 130 years, Texas congressional districts were redrawn to send more Republican lawmakers to Washington, and DeLay -- now the House majority leader -- is more likely to retain his powerful post after the November election, according to political experts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43219-2004Jul11?language=printer
Finally: Kerry Addresses the lies: For example, this weekend Bush again claimed that Kerry has opposed funding for the troops, including armor, but Kerry has not rebutted this lie. So, here’s an exception. Jim VandeHei and Dan Balz of the Washington Post report on Kerry’s rare comments on the ongoing lies.
President Bush has governed in a dishonest fashion, trampling values on every issue except fighting terrorism and leaving voters "clamoring for restoration of credibility and trust in the White House again," John F. Kerry and John Edwards said in an interview.
"The value of truth is one of the most central values in America, and this administration has violated" it, Kerry said in an interview with The Washington Post aboard the Democrats' campaign plane Friday. "Their values system is distorted and not based on truth."
The Democratic nominee and his running mate said it was that kind of anger toward the president that prompted entertainers at Thursday's Democratic fundraising concert in New York to attack Bush as a "cheap thug" and a killer. "Obviously some performers, in my judgment and John's, stepped over a line neither of us believes appropriate, but we can't control that," Kerry said. "On the other hand, we understand the anger, we understand the frustration."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41190-2004Jul10?language=printer
…and they critique Bush on Iraq:
Senator John Kerry and Senator John Edwards declared on Friday that slipshod intelligence invoked by President Bush to invade Iraq had cost the nation lives, billions of dollars and international prestige, signaling that the Iraq war would be a central issue in their White House campaign.
The presumptive Democratic candidates for president and vice president, in a 30-minute joint interview given after the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report challenging the prewar Iraq intelligence, said Mr. Bush's policies abroad had probably increased, rather than decreased, the prospects of domestic terrorist attacks.
And they said the discrediting of much of Mr. Bush's case for going to war had fed cynicism toward government by young Americans, reminiscent of the mistrust of authority that swept the country when Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry came of age during the Vietnam War.
"They were wrong and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong," Mr. Kerry said as Mr. Edwards, in an adjacent seat in the front of their chartered Boeing 757 jet, nodded in agreement. "And America's paying billions of dollars because they were wrong. And allies are not with us because they were wrong." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/politics/campaign/11TICKET.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Dems Platform: Iraq not a mistake, but…
The platform calls for continuing the substantial troop presence. It notes: "The U.S. will be able to reduce its military presence in Iraq, and we intend to do this when appropriate so that the military support needed by a sovereign Iraqi government will no longer be seen as the direct continuation of an American military presence."
Supporters of presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, still campaigning despite Kerry's evident victory, said the language was not what they had wanted but called it a victory. They agreed to withdraw amendments to the platform on Iraq in exchange for the new language. http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040710_688.html
Another take: Jonathan Steele of the Guardian sees their stance as more troubling:
Kerry would keep US troops in Iraq far longer than Bush The Democrat looks like the one with the long-term imperial agenda
Here's a dinner-party talking point that can run and run, certainly until November and, if the Democrats win the US presidency, for several months beyond. Would John Kerry, far from quickly bringing US troops home, keep them in Iraq even longer than George Bush?
My answer, regrettably, is yes - which means that the Democratic convention in Boston later this month will be a sad affair for the people of Iraq, where polls consistently show a majority in favour of early withdrawal. ...
Kerry …looks increasingly like the candidate with the long-term imperial agenda. It would not be as raw as the one pushed by Bush's neoconservative apostles of privatisation, but it would be imperial none the less, dressed in the classic garb of Democratic party multilateral interventionism…
The notion of Bush as an ideologue and Kerry as a realist is too simple. Each has elements of both, and it may well be that a second-term Bush would recognise the cost of his first term's mistakes. Flushed by victory, Kerry might be less clear-sighted. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4967143-103677,00.html
Polls: “Interesting” that the Panetta Institute survey finds that there is “a major decline in students’ perceptions that voting really matters. The Pew Research Center poll found “young voters today are significantly more likely to be giving the election a lot of thought than they were four years ago.”
Go figure.
Meanwhile: Michigan: Kerry 50%, Bush 43%, Nader 2% (American Research Group)
New Mexico: Kerry 49%, Bush 42%, Nader 3% (American Research Group)
National: Kerry 47%, Bush 43%, Nader 3% (Newsweek)
But it's only July...Kerry's month.
-R
[W]e need to bolster human intelligence. In other words, one of the best ways to figure out what the enemy is thinking is to get to know the enemy firsthand, I guess is the best way to put it -- is to have as much human intelligence as possible. Good quality intelligence and enough human intelligence agents, assets out there so that we can cover the globe. – Bush, on the Senate Report
That Senate Report: CIA Guilty, Bush Innocent That’s what the text says; all of the Dems signed on. But Senate Democrats laid the groundwork for their own political defeat in February when they agreed to delay the second phase of the investigation until after the November election. Too trusting, too passive, too often. So, they, not the press, deserve most of our ire.
Of course, in separate statements, some Democrats demurred. So, we have the weird scenario of the Senate where Rockefeller seemed to say that what he signed was not representing what he believed, that it was incomplete or very misleading.
As to the scapegoating, we knew this was coming. Long ago, the FBI was targeted as the scapegoat for 9/11, the CIA for the failed Invasion-Occupation. As for the latter, we can’t forget that the CIA is not independent, that it is overly responsive to the President.
As for accountability, when Kennedy took over, the Bay of Pigs invasion was very much planned; in his third month, he was unable to resist the Eisenhower-initiated venture. Yet, while he ultimately fired the CIA director, he took ‘full responsibility’ for the failure. The Iraq Invasion was in Bush’s third year, yet he remains unaccountable, the victim of bad intelligence.
Senate Report Confirms that Saddam’s Army was Weak
Another well-known fact, “confirmed” by the Senate report. Again, anyone who read the minimum of published information would have known that all estimates agreed that Saddam’s army and economy were MUCH weaker in 2002 than in 1991, the year of the Gulf War, that they were a threat to no one.
The Senate's report on prewar intelligence about Iraq, which asserts that warnings about its illicit weapons were largely unfounded and that its ties to Al Qaeda were tenuous, also undermines another justification for the war: that Saddam Hussein's military posed a threat to regional stability and American interests.
In a detailed discussion of Iraq's prewar military posture, the report cites a long series of intelligence reports in the decade before the war that described a formerly potent army's spiral of decay under the weight of economic sanctions and American military pressure. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/international/middleeast/11MILI.html
Media Verdict: Washington Post leads the way: Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus go as far as anyone-
The larger question is whether voters will blame the White House for these two massive mistakes. Though officially agnostic on the White House role in using Iraq intelligence (that will come in a later report), the committee gives ammunition both to Bush and Democratic opponent John F. Kerry.
On the question of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the bipartisan committee report absolved administration officials of pressuring CIA analysts to inflate the case against Saddam Hussein. And while making no judgment on whether the administration distorted the intelligence it was given, the committee made plain that the CIA's case against Iraq was plenty exaggerated on its own. Without "any evidence" of administration coercion, the committee found, the intelligence community's judgments on Iraq's weapons were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."
On the issue of Iraq's relationship with al Qaeda, however, the committee's findings imply that the White House, not the CIA, is to blame for making dubious claims that there were working ties between Osama bin Laden's organization and Hussein's Iraq. "The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship," the committee found, echoing the Sept. 11 commission staff's finding of no "collaborative relationship" between the two. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39833-2004Jul9?language=printer
Ridge Non-Alert--> Kerry is the candidate of terrorists: Like Ashcroft’s, Ridge’s alert was meant to keep people off balance, if not terrified, and, arguably, to change the subject from ‘Edwards’ is the VP’. And, they keep looking for opportunities to put out the line that Condi raised in April and, more recently Bush, that terrorists might attack in the United States to affect the outcome of the November presidential election. http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/200619p-173035c.html.
They have been issuing this ‘warning’ to build on the misleading statements they’ve made following the Madrid bombings. According to the Spanish press, that government was thrown out for trying to pin the bombings on Spaniards, not because they were the ‘strong on terror’ party. Also, one should consider the statement issued by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which took responsibility for the Madrid bombings. This group which claims to have links to al Qaeda, trumpted its support for Bush’s reelection, since Bush "deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom." http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040317/325/eotq9.html
Book Review of work by ‘Anonymous’ (former CIA official, author of Why the West is Losing the War on Terror) Michiko Kakutani, reviewer.
He sees the American invasion of Iraq as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages. "U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990's… As a result, I think it fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden's only indispensable ally." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/09/books/09BOOK.html?pagewanted=print&position=
AP report on nuclear proliferation: Guilty Parties
An investigation of the black market supplying nations wanting nuclear arms has spread to more than 20 firms — some of them North American — the chief of the U.N. atomic agency told The Associated Press Friday. A senior diplomat identified one of the firms as U.S. based....
The diplomat said at least one of them was in the United States. He declined to elaborate, saying the agency "was not yet at the bottom of that story." But he said what is known about that company sheds new light on the activities of the network, known up to now for primarily supplying technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran as part of the process allowing them to make enriched uranium that can be used either to generate electricity or make weapons. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&e=3&u=/ap/20040710/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_black_market
Disillusionment: Anne Applebaum, Wash Post centrist reporter and author, looks back: Typical
Instead of responding truthfully to the European debate, the Bush administration flatly denied that any invasion of Iraq was imminent. Instead of engaging the European public, Bush said he was still "explor[ing] all options and all tools at my disposal." No one believed him--and, of course, they were right not to…
Looking back on it, this was also the point at which I should have questioned some of my early assumptions about the Bush administration…
The truth, of course, is that, for all its talk of universal human rights, this is not an administration that actually perceives itself as a part of something greater than the United States. For all of its talk about spreading American values to benighted foreigners, this is not an administration that even likes foreigners. It never occurred to me that American troops would arrive in Baghdad and have absolutely no idea what to do next, or who was important, or who was on their side. But then, I hadn't realized that the Pentagon leadership had no interest in or knowledge of the Iraqi people. I thought these were cold warriors, whereas in fact they are narrow-minded American nationalists, isolationists turned inside out. http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=jRnKUph7Tk8Ifrp9wv8YzB%3D%3D
Values:
1) Bush and the Churches:
Robert Reich had an unusually pointed piece in the American Prospect:
It was recently reported that the Bush campaign had e-mailed members of the clergy, soliciting help in identifying "friendly" congregations that would do the campaign's bidding in their areas. When the e-mail came to light, legal experts warned that any religious organization that endorsed one candidate over another could lose its tax-exempt status. A few days later, House Republicans added a measure to a tax bill working its way through Congress called the "Safe Harbor for Churches" act, which would allow any religious organization to make as many as three "unintentional" political endorsements in a calendar year without jeopardizing its tax-exempt status.
When questioned about all of this, Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said, "The campaign wants people of faith to participate in the political process." Clearly, the Bushies want more than this. Because any exemption from paying taxes has the same economic value to its recipient as a direct subsidy from the government, the Bush campaign wants religious groups to enter the political fray -- with costs offset by the federal government. http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=7858
2) Bushies and Health/Science: Another Critique
For years, Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based organization devoted to adolescent sexual health, says, it received government grants without much trouble. Then last year it was subjected to three federal reviews.
James Wagoner, the president of Advocates for Youth, said the reviews were prompted by concerns among some members of Congress that his group was using public funds to lobby against programs that promoted sexual abstinence before marriage. Although that was not the case, Mr. Wagoner said, the government officials made their point.
"For 20 years, it was about health and science, and now we have a political ideological approach," he said. "Never have we experienced a climate of intimidation and censorship as we have today."
Mr. Wagoner is among the professionals in sex-related fields who have started speaking out against what they say is growing interference from conservatives in and out of government with their work in research, education and disease prevention. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/politics/11sex.html?pagewanted=print&position=
3) Conservatives put Gay Marriage into campaign
Two weeks before the Democratic convention and under pressure from conservatives, President Bush is escalating his support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, moving the issue to the forefront of the campaign and underscoring what his aides said was a critical difference between the president and Senator John Kerry. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/politics/campaign/12REPU.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Casualties: This week I counted at least 18 Americans that were acknowledged to have been killed in Iraq. The total is about to hit 900. Observe the diminished media attention
Latest Greenwald Film Exposes Fox News; NY Times profile:
''Outfoxed'' has been made in secret. The film is an obsessively researched expose of the ways in which Fox News, as Greenwald sees it, distorts its coverage to serve the conservative political agenda of its owner, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. It features interviews with former Fox employees, leaked policy memos written by Fox executives and extensive footage from Fox News, which Greenwald is using without the network's permission. The result is an unwavering argument against Fox News that combines the leftist partisan vigor of a Michael Moore film with the sober tone and delivery of a PBS special. A large portion of the film's $300,000 budget came in the form of contributions in the range of $80,000 from both MoveOn and the Center for American Progress, the liberal policy organization founded by John Podesta, the former chief of staff for Bill Clinton; Greenwald, who is not looking to earn any money from the project, provided the rest.
After scrutinizing the initial footage, Greenwald and a team of researchers compiled a list of what they saw as Fox's telltale themes and techniques: stories questioning the patriotism of liberals; relentlessly upbeat reports on Iraq; belligerent hosts who scream at noncompliant guests. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/magazine/11FOX.html?pagewanted=print&position
Cable Wars: Drudge Report, a conservative organ, reports on the above:
CABLE WAR: FOX NEWS VOWS TOP FIGHT BACK AGAINST RIVALS WHO TOUT DOCUMENTARY
**Exclusive**
A new documentary claiming to show Republican bias at FOX NEWS will debut in New York City on Monday. But FOX NEWS executives are preparing to hit back hard -- if rivals self-servingly hype the film!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that FOX NEWS executives are lining up a parade of FOX NEWS employees who formerly worked at CNN & MSNBC and have been downloading information on how editorial decisions are made at these networks, including the agenda for how stories are supposed to be covered.
A senior FOX NEWS executive tells DRUDGE: "We have enough ammunition to nail both MSNBC & CNN." Sources say FOX is prepared to go public with these accounts if necessary. http://drudgereport.com/foxf.htm
Developing DeLay Scandal: Weep Not (Wash. Post, R. Jeffrey Smith)
In May 2001, Enron's top lobbyists in Washington advised the company chairman that then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year.
DeLay requested that the new donation come from "a combination of corporate and personal money from Enron's executives," with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas," said the e-mail to Kenneth L. Lay from lobbyists Rick Shapiro and Linda Robertson.
The e-mail, which surfaced in a subsequent federal probe of Houston-based Enron, is one of at least a dozen documents obtained by The Washington Post that show DeLay and his associates directed money from corporations and Washington lobbyists to Republican campaign coffers in Texas in 2001 and 2002 as part of a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts.
DeLay's fundraising efforts helped produce a stunning political success. Republicans took control of the Texas House for the first time in 130 years, Texas congressional districts were redrawn to send more Republican lawmakers to Washington, and DeLay -- now the House majority leader -- is more likely to retain his powerful post after the November election, according to political experts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43219-2004Jul11?language=printer
Finally: Kerry Addresses the lies: For example, this weekend Bush again claimed that Kerry has opposed funding for the troops, including armor, but Kerry has not rebutted this lie. So, here’s an exception. Jim VandeHei and Dan Balz of the Washington Post report on Kerry’s rare comments on the ongoing lies.
President Bush has governed in a dishonest fashion, trampling values on every issue except fighting terrorism and leaving voters "clamoring for restoration of credibility and trust in the White House again," John F. Kerry and John Edwards said in an interview.
"The value of truth is one of the most central values in America, and this administration has violated" it, Kerry said in an interview with The Washington Post aboard the Democrats' campaign plane Friday. "Their values system is distorted and not based on truth."
The Democratic nominee and his running mate said it was that kind of anger toward the president that prompted entertainers at Thursday's Democratic fundraising concert in New York to attack Bush as a "cheap thug" and a killer. "Obviously some performers, in my judgment and John's, stepped over a line neither of us believes appropriate, but we can't control that," Kerry said. "On the other hand, we understand the anger, we understand the frustration."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41190-2004Jul10?language=printer
…and they critique Bush on Iraq:
Senator John Kerry and Senator John Edwards declared on Friday that slipshod intelligence invoked by President Bush to invade Iraq had cost the nation lives, billions of dollars and international prestige, signaling that the Iraq war would be a central issue in their White House campaign.
The presumptive Democratic candidates for president and vice president, in a 30-minute joint interview given after the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report challenging the prewar Iraq intelligence, said Mr. Bush's policies abroad had probably increased, rather than decreased, the prospects of domestic terrorist attacks.
And they said the discrediting of much of Mr. Bush's case for going to war had fed cynicism toward government by young Americans, reminiscent of the mistrust of authority that swept the country when Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry came of age during the Vietnam War.
"They were wrong and soldiers lost their lives because they were wrong," Mr. Kerry said as Mr. Edwards, in an adjacent seat in the front of their chartered Boeing 757 jet, nodded in agreement. "And America's paying billions of dollars because they were wrong. And allies are not with us because they were wrong." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/politics/campaign/11TICKET.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Dems Platform: Iraq not a mistake, but…
The platform calls for continuing the substantial troop presence. It notes: "The U.S. will be able to reduce its military presence in Iraq, and we intend to do this when appropriate so that the military support needed by a sovereign Iraqi government will no longer be seen as the direct continuation of an American military presence."
Supporters of presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, still campaigning despite Kerry's evident victory, said the language was not what they had wanted but called it a victory. They agreed to withdraw amendments to the platform on Iraq in exchange for the new language. http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040710_688.html
Another take: Jonathan Steele of the Guardian sees their stance as more troubling:
Kerry would keep US troops in Iraq far longer than Bush The Democrat looks like the one with the long-term imperial agenda
Here's a dinner-party talking point that can run and run, certainly until November and, if the Democrats win the US presidency, for several months beyond. Would John Kerry, far from quickly bringing US troops home, keep them in Iraq even longer than George Bush?
My answer, regrettably, is yes - which means that the Democratic convention in Boston later this month will be a sad affair for the people of Iraq, where polls consistently show a majority in favour of early withdrawal. ...
Kerry …looks increasingly like the candidate with the long-term imperial agenda. It would not be as raw as the one pushed by Bush's neoconservative apostles of privatisation, but it would be imperial none the less, dressed in the classic garb of Democratic party multilateral interventionism…
The notion of Bush as an ideologue and Kerry as a realist is too simple. Each has elements of both, and it may well be that a second-term Bush would recognise the cost of his first term's mistakes. Flushed by victory, Kerry might be less clear-sighted. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4967143-103677,00.html
Polls: “Interesting” that the Panetta Institute survey finds that there is “a major decline in students’ perceptions that voting really matters. The Pew Research Center poll found “young voters today are significantly more likely to be giving the election a lot of thought than they were four years ago.”
Go figure.
Meanwhile: Michigan: Kerry 50%, Bush 43%, Nader 2% (American Research Group)
New Mexico: Kerry 49%, Bush 42%, Nader 3% (American Research Group)
National: Kerry 47%, Bush 43%, Nader 3% (Newsweek)
But it's only July...Kerry's month.
-R
