Thursday, September 16, 2004
“I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal.” – Kofi Annan on the Iraq invasion
Overtime Rules:
A U.S. Senate committee voted on Wednesday to roll back the Bush administration's controversial new overtime regulations, which critics say will deprive an estimated 6 million workers of overtime pay.
The Republican-led Senate Appropriations Committee voted 16-13 to approve a Democratic amendment to repeal the regulations.
Two Republicans, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Colorado Sen. Ben Campbell, joined Democrats in supporting the amendment offered by Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat.
"The economic health of too many workers is at stake," Harkin said.
The amendment is attached to a larger funding bill for the departments of Labor, and Health and Human Services for fiscal 2005.
With Democrats hoping to make the regulations an issue in the Nov. 2 elections, the full House of Representatives approved a similar amendment in its version of the spending bill last week.
Republican leaders, however, are expected to try and eliminate the amendments when the two bills are reconciled in a Senate-House conference. That would repeat a strategy they used last year when they snuffed out an earlier attempt to derail the regulations, despite the fact that both the full House and Senate had voted to block the new rules.
The Bush administration began implementing the regulations last month -- a move welcomed by many corporations but bitterly opposed by organized labor.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6246842
Bush the Failure on the so-called War on Terror Still more evidence…
Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress. The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90 days, and they leave before they know enough to be able to perform any meaningful work, according to a letter the C.I.A. officer has written to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/politics/15cia.html?pagewanted=all
The Kerry Campaign: Too early for post mortems. But, despsite the stronger voice- today as to hiding truths about Iraq- many remain concerned. Tony Coelho, veteran Democratic operative talks of a “civil war going on” in the campaign between Cahill and Shrum, that “there is nobody in charge”, that the duo don’t talk to one another. Gads.
Meanwhile,
Maureen Dowd mainstreams paranoia
As per my noting last time that someone emailed news media while the CBS report was airing that the documents had problems.
There's no evidence - it's just a preposterous, paranoid fantasy at this point. But it speaks to the jitters of the Democrats that they're consumed with speculation about whether Karl Rove, the master of dirty tricks and surrogate sleaze, could have set up CBS in a diabolical pre-emptive strike to undermine damaging revelations about Bush 43's privileged status and vanishing act in the National Guard, and his odd refusal to take his required physical when ordered.
In this vast left-wing conspiracy theory, Mr. Rove takes real evidence on W.'s shirking and transfers it to documents doomed to be exposed as phony (thereby undermining the real goods), then funnels it through third parties to Dan Rather, Bush 41's nemesis on Iran-contra. A perfect bank shot. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/16/opinion/16dowd.html?hp
Competence: Bi-partisan fury re the Occupation
U.S. Lawmakers blasted the Bush administration Wednesday for its handling of the war in Iraq and said they were confounded only a fraction of $18.4 billion in U.S. rebuilding funds had been spent.
In an unusually nonpartisan hearing, Republican and Democratic senators urged senior State Department officials to try harder to speed up the reconstruction program, which lawmakers said could lead to a more stable environment in Iraq.
They also told officials to be more honest in their assessments of what was going on, with Indiana Republican Sen. Dick Lugar taking aim at what he called the "dancing in the street crowd," who painted an overly positive picture.
"The nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning (for Iraq) is apparent," said Lugar, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=6246311
Kuttner on Kerry: It’s getting late. Well said
So what on earth is John Kerry to do? He cannot possibly win a hearing to challenge all that is fake about Bush and his policy particulars unless he first changes the frame. First, he needs to reframe Bush by pounding on all the ways that Bush is a fraud, and he needs to do it with grace and wit. Second, he needs a clear, simple vision of a secure, prosperous America more compelling than Bush's vision.
If Kerry doesn't have the nerve to take on Bush, voters will conclude that he lacks the nerve to protect America. Kerry has about two weeks to break the frame before the election freezes into a lock. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/15/kerry_must_reframe_bush____and_fast?mode=PF
Perspective: An Honorable Discharge Means? The White House keeps citing the fact that Bush was honorably discharged. Well…
The Washington Sniper, John Allen Muhammed, received an “Honorable Discharge” from the service in spite of the fact that he was tried and convicted in a court martial on one count of failing to report to his duty station on time, three counts of willfully disobeying an order, one count of striking a noncommissioned officer, one count of wrongfully taking property and one count of being AWOL. It would seem that getting an “honorable discharge” is a very low standard to meet. http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/10/24/muhammad.profile
Polls: So many. Upshot: It’s still close.
*ICR Presidential Tracking Poll:Bush leads Kerry 48% to *44%.Economist poll Bush clings to a small lead over Kerry, 47% to 46%.
*New Democrat Network finds Bush leading Sen. John Kerry, 49% to 45%,
*Harris Interactive poll shows Kerry leading Bush 48% to 47% among likely voters.
And, "The poll also found that a slender 51% to 45% majority doesn't believe that Mr. Bush deserves to be re-elected."
*The Pew Survey also found a deadlock
State polls:
Minnesota: Kerry 50%, Bush 41% (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Michigan: Kerry 50%, Bush 44% (Gallup)
Florida: Bush 51%, Kerry 45% (Survey USA)
Wisconsin: Bush 49%, Kerry 47% (Rasmussen)
Wisconsin: Bush 49%, Kerry 44% (Strategic Vision)
Nevada: Bush 51%, Kerry 47% (Survey USA)
South Dakota: Bush 51%, Kerry 41
Wisconsin CNN/USA Today Gallup Poll. Bush 50 (46) Kerry 45 (49) Minnesota: Bush 46%, Kerry 45% (Mason-Dixon)
Minnesota: Kerry 49%, Bush 45% (Strategic Vision)
Pennsylvania: Bush 47%, Kerry 44% (Quinnipiac)
And: CNN Headline: Michigan Too Close To Call Data: Kerry up 50 – 44% Huh? http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/14/michigan.poll/index.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Deterioration. I know I’ve used such words before, but all accounts now portray the security as steadily worsening. Samples:
NY Times front page: Pessimism, deep pessimism. As the Times notes, in sharp contrast to public presentations, it’s been widely known/shared that everyone is fearful as to what’s happened in recent months and no one has answers.
A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.
The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.
"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document.
The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/16/politics/16intel.html?pagewanted=print&position
Or, as foreign observers note,
TWO months ago, amid the kind of secrecy more normally associated with Saddam’s illicit arms deals, the US authorities in Baghdad formally handed over power to the fledgling Iraqi government. The ceremony, amid the formidable security of the Green Zone, was done two days ahead of schedule in a bid to wrongfoot insurgents - for whom, it was claimed, it would provide the key rallying moment for a final, last-gasp offensive. Today, with both Ayad Allawi's new government and its coalition backers losing control of the country, it is hard to imagine why anybody bothered with such constitutional conjuring. No force ever attacks when its foes expect it to: instead, as yesterday’s carnage and that of recent weeks shows, the real post-hand-over violence is only truly under way now. http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1080302004
Sid Blumenthal in the Guardian
But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."
Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan." http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5016994-103677,00.html
Or, note this LA Times letter-to-the-Editor:
Re "Violence Escalates Across Iraq," Sept. 13: I have one question. If Iraqis were unhappy with Saddam Hussein, why didn't we see this level of resistance when he was in power? -Frederick Cleveland, Hollywood
Or, Recruitment Problems:
Soldiers say they were told to re-enlist or face deployment to Iraq
Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.
Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity. http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3185596,00.html
As Josh Marshall observes, “Iraq” remains ever-present, but now only as a rhetorical fixture, not a reality. It’s Iraq as a metaphor for toughness, Iraq as a test of consistency, Iraq as a platform for discussing who likes Saddam more and all the rest. But the actual Iraq war is nowhere to be found. http://www.thehill.com/marshall/091604.aspx
Lies: All they can do is spin lies. Here’s a new one.
9/11 is to blame for all: So, the White House says that we’re short a million jobs because of the attack.: "We had an attack on 9/11 where we lost over a million jobs in just about 3 months." - Suzy DeFrancis, White House Deputy Assistant for Communications
Really? If you check the stats, the US Department of Labor notes 125,637 jobs lost as either direct or indirect effects of the attack. http://www.bls.gov/mls/mlsimpac.htm
-R
Overtime Rules:
A U.S. Senate committee voted on Wednesday to roll back the Bush administration's controversial new overtime regulations, which critics say will deprive an estimated 6 million workers of overtime pay.
The Republican-led Senate Appropriations Committee voted 16-13 to approve a Democratic amendment to repeal the regulations.
Two Republicans, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Colorado Sen. Ben Campbell, joined Democrats in supporting the amendment offered by Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat.
"The economic health of too many workers is at stake," Harkin said.
The amendment is attached to a larger funding bill for the departments of Labor, and Health and Human Services for fiscal 2005.
With Democrats hoping to make the regulations an issue in the Nov. 2 elections, the full House of Representatives approved a similar amendment in its version of the spending bill last week.
Republican leaders, however, are expected to try and eliminate the amendments when the two bills are reconciled in a Senate-House conference. That would repeat a strategy they used last year when they snuffed out an earlier attempt to derail the regulations, despite the fact that both the full House and Senate had voted to block the new rules.
The Bush administration began implementing the regulations last month -- a move welcomed by many corporations but bitterly opposed by organized labor.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6246842
Bush the Failure on the so-called War on Terror Still more evidence…
Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress. The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90 days, and they leave before they know enough to be able to perform any meaningful work, according to a letter the C.I.A. officer has written to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/15/politics/15cia.html?pagewanted=all
The Kerry Campaign: Too early for post mortems. But, despsite the stronger voice- today as to hiding truths about Iraq- many remain concerned. Tony Coelho, veteran Democratic operative talks of a “civil war going on” in the campaign between Cahill and Shrum, that “there is nobody in charge”, that the duo don’t talk to one another. Gads.
Meanwhile,
Maureen Dowd mainstreams paranoia
As per my noting last time that someone emailed news media while the CBS report was airing that the documents had problems.
There's no evidence - it's just a preposterous, paranoid fantasy at this point. But it speaks to the jitters of the Democrats that they're consumed with speculation about whether Karl Rove, the master of dirty tricks and surrogate sleaze, could have set up CBS in a diabolical pre-emptive strike to undermine damaging revelations about Bush 43's privileged status and vanishing act in the National Guard, and his odd refusal to take his required physical when ordered.
In this vast left-wing conspiracy theory, Mr. Rove takes real evidence on W.'s shirking and transfers it to documents doomed to be exposed as phony (thereby undermining the real goods), then funnels it through third parties to Dan Rather, Bush 41's nemesis on Iran-contra. A perfect bank shot. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/16/opinion/16dowd.html?hp
Competence: Bi-partisan fury re the Occupation
U.S. Lawmakers blasted the Bush administration Wednesday for its handling of the war in Iraq and said they were confounded only a fraction of $18.4 billion in U.S. rebuilding funds had been spent.
In an unusually nonpartisan hearing, Republican and Democratic senators urged senior State Department officials to try harder to speed up the reconstruction program, which lawmakers said could lead to a more stable environment in Iraq.
They also told officials to be more honest in their assessments of what was going on, with Indiana Republican Sen. Dick Lugar taking aim at what he called the "dancing in the street crowd," who painted an overly positive picture.
"The nonsense of all of that is apparent. The lack of planning (for Iraq) is apparent," said Lugar, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=6246311
Kuttner on Kerry: It’s getting late. Well said
So what on earth is John Kerry to do? He cannot possibly win a hearing to challenge all that is fake about Bush and his policy particulars unless he first changes the frame. First, he needs to reframe Bush by pounding on all the ways that Bush is a fraud, and he needs to do it with grace and wit. Second, he needs a clear, simple vision of a secure, prosperous America more compelling than Bush's vision.
If Kerry doesn't have the nerve to take on Bush, voters will conclude that he lacks the nerve to protect America. Kerry has about two weeks to break the frame before the election freezes into a lock. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/15/kerry_must_reframe_bush____and_fast?mode=PF
Perspective: An Honorable Discharge Means? The White House keeps citing the fact that Bush was honorably discharged. Well…
The Washington Sniper, John Allen Muhammed, received an “Honorable Discharge” from the service in spite of the fact that he was tried and convicted in a court martial on one count of failing to report to his duty station on time, three counts of willfully disobeying an order, one count of striking a noncommissioned officer, one count of wrongfully taking property and one count of being AWOL. It would seem that getting an “honorable discharge” is a very low standard to meet. http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/10/24/muhammad.profile
Polls: So many. Upshot: It’s still close.
*ICR Presidential Tracking Poll:Bush leads Kerry 48% to *44%.Economist poll Bush clings to a small lead over Kerry, 47% to 46%.
*New Democrat Network finds Bush leading Sen. John Kerry, 49% to 45%,
*Harris Interactive poll shows Kerry leading Bush 48% to 47% among likely voters.
And, "The poll also found that a slender 51% to 45% majority doesn't believe that Mr. Bush deserves to be re-elected."
*The Pew Survey also found a deadlock
State polls:
Minnesota: Kerry 50%, Bush 41% (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
Michigan: Kerry 50%, Bush 44% (Gallup)
Florida: Bush 51%, Kerry 45% (Survey USA)
Wisconsin: Bush 49%, Kerry 47% (Rasmussen)
Wisconsin: Bush 49%, Kerry 44% (Strategic Vision)
Nevada: Bush 51%, Kerry 47% (Survey USA)
South Dakota: Bush 51%, Kerry 41
Wisconsin CNN/USA Today Gallup Poll. Bush 50 (46) Kerry 45 (49) Minnesota: Bush 46%, Kerry 45% (Mason-Dixon)
Minnesota: Kerry 49%, Bush 45% (Strategic Vision)
Pennsylvania: Bush 47%, Kerry 44% (Quinnipiac)
And: CNN Headline: Michigan Too Close To Call Data: Kerry up 50 – 44% Huh? http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/14/michigan.poll/index.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: Deterioration. I know I’ve used such words before, but all accounts now portray the security as steadily worsening. Samples:
NY Times front page: Pessimism, deep pessimism. As the Times notes, in sharp contrast to public presentations, it’s been widely known/shared that everyone is fearful as to what’s happened in recent months and no one has answers.
A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.
The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.
"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document.
The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board under John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/16/politics/16intel.html?pagewanted=print&position
Or, as foreign observers note,
TWO months ago, amid the kind of secrecy more normally associated with Saddam’s illicit arms deals, the US authorities in Baghdad formally handed over power to the fledgling Iraqi government. The ceremony, amid the formidable security of the Green Zone, was done two days ahead of schedule in a bid to wrongfoot insurgents - for whom, it was claimed, it would provide the key rallying moment for a final, last-gasp offensive. Today, with both Ayad Allawi's new government and its coalition backers losing control of the country, it is hard to imagine why anybody bothered with such constitutional conjuring. No force ever attacks when its foes expect it to: instead, as yesterday’s carnage and that of recent weeks shows, the real post-hand-over violence is only truly under way now. http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1080302004
Sid Blumenthal in the Guardian
But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."
Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan." http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5016994-103677,00.html
Or, note this LA Times letter-to-the-Editor:
Re "Violence Escalates Across Iraq," Sept. 13: I have one question. If Iraqis were unhappy with Saddam Hussein, why didn't we see this level of resistance when he was in power? -Frederick Cleveland, Hollywood
Or, Recruitment Problems:
Soldiers say they were told to re-enlist or face deployment to Iraq
Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.
Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity. http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3185596,00.html
As Josh Marshall observes, “Iraq” remains ever-present, but now only as a rhetorical fixture, not a reality. It’s Iraq as a metaphor for toughness, Iraq as a test of consistency, Iraq as a platform for discussing who likes Saddam more and all the rest. But the actual Iraq war is nowhere to be found. http://www.thehill.com/marshall/091604.aspx
Lies: All they can do is spin lies. Here’s a new one.
9/11 is to blame for all: So, the White House says that we’re short a million jobs because of the attack.: "We had an attack on 9/11 where we lost over a million jobs in just about 3 months." - Suzy DeFrancis, White House Deputy Assistant for Communications
Really? If you check the stats, the US Department of Labor notes 125,637 jobs lost as either direct or indirect effects of the attack. http://www.bls.gov/mls/mlsimpac.htm
-R
