Sunday, October 03, 2004
Post Debate Activity: As Le Monde put it, Kerry retrouve un élan après le débat. As to Bush, of course this wasn’t the first time he was pathetic. Without Michael Gerson’s speeches or the hermetically-sealed rallies, he is insecure, petulant, arrogant and easily dwarfed by a full person.
Facts: Bush talked of the “100,000 Iraqi troops trained.” Absurd. For example, this Reuters dispatch notes that the number of fully trained (8 weeks worth) number 8,169. http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=590914§ion=news
Left Bloggers Penetrate Republican Conference Call
A humorous side note, the GOP held a "conference call" with Ken Mehlman in which campaign "Team Leaders" call in to be told what to think and get their talking points for the debate. Atrios, bless his heart, posted the number and the password to be accepted to the conference call. I got in without a problem and, after enduring ten minutes of painful smooth jazz, got to hear firsthand how the Bush campaign was going to spin this. Mehlman said Kerry started with a credibility gap and ended with a credibility canyon, and babbled in and around this point for five minutes or so. Then they announced that they were going to take three questions. The first was from a "young Republican in Washington." She proceeded to say that Kerry was very credible and that she had decided to vote for him. The second caller said she thought Kerry would make a credible Commander in Chief and the third call took Bush to task for not mentioning the al Quida members not captured.Mehlman apologized to the Bush supporters listening and acknowledge that the call had obviously attracted some Democrats. We had, essentially, hijacked their own spin distribution and thrown it in the GOP's face. A small, yet hilarious victory for the blogosphere. http://jackpinesavage.blogspot.com/2004/10/post-debate.html
Bush and Poland: He tried to make a big deal about their (belated) support, but naturally ignored what Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski said: "They deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."
Right Fights Back: How to contest the reality that their fella did poorly? Attack the moderator and cite an “anonymous Democrat” who insists it was a tie. It would be laughable if…
But there were no queries to Sen. Kerry about his long Senate record of voting against defense appropriations, or his sponsorship of a bill to cut CIA funding by $6 billion a year after terrorists struck the World Trade Center in 1993, or Kerry's support of the nuclear freeze movement during the height of the Cold War.
Kerry wasn't asked why he teamed up with Jane Fonda to protest the Vietnam War while his band of brothers were still on the battlefield, or why he met with enemy leaders in Paris, or why he accused fellow soldiers of being "monsters" and "war criminals."
Most Americans would consider the answers to those questions extremely relevant to the selection of any U.S. commander in chief during a time of war.
But not Jim Lehrer. Instead, he focused on Iraq with question after question that suggested Bush had blown it. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/30/223850.shtml
A Democratic consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the president "turned in a pretty solid performance." "I think that loyal Democrats were hoping the president's head would fall off during the debate," he said. Mr. Bush came across as "calm, folksy and grounded," but that each man got "a little testy" once they started to hurl some of their campaign stump-speech accusations at each other, Republican political consultant Bob Moran said. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20041001-123117-5788r
And, Drudge, the conservative host of The Drudge Report floated one spin attempt -- that Bush was emotionally drained because he had spent the day meeting with hurricane victims. Radio callers repeated the line, expressing their empathy for ‘a preoccupied president who must have had a difficult day emotionally seeing all that tragedy in Florida.’ Yes, empathic Bush, that’s the guy.
Karl Rove tried, "That wasn't irritated. I know irritated." Bush was "pensive" and "focused," said Rove.
Sean Hannity said on Fox News that he had never seen Bush "more passionate, more articulate, more on top of his game."
Meanwhile, Left bloggers are also taken with that odd moment when Bush said “Let me Finish” even though no one was stopping him. Speculation was that ahe was talking to the person who was giving him instructions via an earpiece. Not a nutty thought, as pictures in the past have shown such, though addressing it seems unlikely to be productive. http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/298647.shtml
Media Spin: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: Integrity, Wolf, Integrity…
PRE-DEBATE:
A pivotal night in this presidential campaign, perhaps a decisive moment. A key opportunity for the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, to break through, to try to establish himself as a formidable candidate in this race.
That's a huge audience. A lot of people, of course, most of that audience has already made up their minds. But those undecided voters are still critical.
A defining night. I think everybody agrees potentially. This certainly could be a defining night. Historians will be writing about this for many years to come. [CNN, live debate coverage, 9/30/04]
POST-DEBATE:
So even if John Kerry decisively won the debate, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions, let alone on the final outcome on November 2, but even if there will be a significant movement in the poll numbers, the real polls, not these instant polls over the next three or four or five days. [CNN, News From CNN, 10/01/04] www.mediamatters.org
Polls:
Rasmussen Tracking Poll shows no bump for Kerry.
Newsweek: It’s “statistically tied”.
With a solid majority of voters concluding that John Kerry outperformed George W. Bush in the first presidential debate on Thursday, the president’s lead in the race for the White House has vanished, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. In the first national telephone poll using a fresh sample, NEWSWEEK found the race now statistically tied among all registered voters, 47 percent of whom say they would vote for Kerry and 45 percent for George W. Bush in a three-way race. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6159637/site/newsweek/
Memo to Edwards: Take Him Down. It’s doable. The excerpt below is from a mammoth article in Sunday’s NY Times which gently exposes the Administration’s cooking / selective use of, etc. intelligence. Still they all come off badly, but who will read this opus?
Mr. Cheney spoke openly about one of the closest held secrets regarding Iraq. Not only did Mr. Cheney draw attention to the tubes; he did so with a certitude that could not be found in even the C.I.A.'s assessments. On "Meet the Press," Mr. Cheney said he knew "for sure" and "in fact" and "with absolute certainty" that Mr. Hussein was buying equipment to build a nuclear weapon.
"He has reconstituted his nuclear program," Mr. Cheney said flatly.
But in the C.I.A. reports, evidence "suggested" or "could mean" or "indicates" - a word used widely in a report issued just weeks earlier. Little if anything was asserted with absolute certainty. The intelligence community had not yet concluded that Iraq had indeed reconstituted its nuclear program.
Mr. Kellems, Mr. Cheney's spokesman, said, "The vice president's public statements have reflected the evolving judgment of the intelligence community." …
Yet so far, Senate investigators say, they have found little evidence the White House tried to find out why so many experts disputed the C.I.A. tubes theory. If anything, administration officials minimized the divide...
Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said in an interview, "the secretary listened to the discussion of the various views among intelligence agencies, and reflected those issues in his presentation. Since his task at the U.N. was to present the views of the United States, he went with the overall judgment of the intelligence community as reflected by the director of central intelligence." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Faith…counts more than competence
Frank Rich on “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," 300,000 DVDs are being released this week to Churches. Read it and shiver… and do what you can.
More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president's vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a "fortunate son" of privilege into a prodigal son with the "moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet." Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from "a throat full of Texas dust"), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it's a parable anticipating the future president's miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it's an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth.
"Will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces of evil that threaten our very existence?" Such is the portentous question posed at the film's conclusion by its narrator, the religious broadcaster Janet Parshall, beloved by some for her ecumenical generosity in inviting Jews for Jesus onto her radio show during the High Holidays. Anyone who stands in the way of Mr. Bush completing his godly battle, of course, is a heretic. Facts on the ground in Iraq don't matter.
Rational arguments mustered in presidential debates don't matter. Logic of any kind is a nonstarter. The president - who after 9/11 called the war on terrorism a "crusade," until protests forced the White House to backpedal - is divine. He may not hear "voices" instructing him on policy, testifies Stephen Mansfield, the author of one of the movie's source texts, "The Faith of George W. Bush," but he does act on "promptings" from God. "I think we went into Iraq not so much because there were weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Mansfield has explained elsewhere, "but because Bush had concluded that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer" in the battle "between good and evil." So why didn't we go into those other countries in the axis of evil, North Korea or Iran? Never mind. To ask such questions is to be against God and "with the terrorists." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/arts/03rich.html?ei=1&en=564ce2e04a0d65f5&ex=1097543762&pagewanted=print&position
Meanwhile, worst fighting- and death toll-in Gaza... Ignored at the debate, along with most other foreign policy issues.
Kerry's own electoral website declares that if elected he will "strengthen weak states and secure and rebuild failed states around the world." George Bush is already committed to democratic reconstruction of the whole "Greater Middle East."
That sort of unbridled ambition to solve the world's problems and more is the conventional wisdom, and the conventional hypocrisy as well. You might think Bush or Kerry would be content if they could get out of Iraq without setting ablaze the rest of the Middle East.
The conventional cowardice is that neither will assume responsibility for resolving the most poisonous and dangerous conflict affecting the global situation of the United States, which still may be within American power to solve: the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Even to carry out the commitment already made by the US government to the so-called "road map," which requires antiterrorism actions by the Palestinian authorities and a nearly total Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, would mean a frontal clash with the Sharon government in Israel. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/01/a_misleading_focus_on_iraq?pg=2
What’s Happening, Africa: Oil Strife
The country's Niger Delta region, which produces nearly 2.5 million barrels of oil a day and accounts for 10 percent of US crude imports, is infused with a deep popular anger over pollution and the failure of oil revenues to bring development. Mr. Dokubo-Asari, who claims to command 2,000 armed fighters, earlier this week called for the immediate withdrawal of all foreigners from the delta until the resolution of political issues, including control of the country's oil resources. Peace talks continued Thursday between Dokubo-Asari and the Nigerian government.
The dispute over natural resources is at the heart of some of the most intractable conflicts in Africa today, from Sudan to Congo to Nigeria. Even amid international efforts to bring greater transparency to the continent's resource exploration, the recent strife here is a microcosm of widespread theft and mismanagement, which observers attribute to a combination of colonial-era intervention, corrupt governments, and cynical behavior by Western policymakers and multinationals…
Western multinationals are also widely accused of helping sustain graft. A report published in July by the US Senate found that US oil companies in Equatorial Guinea made payments to government officials and their relatives and formed joint ventures with companies linked to members of the country's repressive ruling clan. A consortium of Western companies including a subsidiary of Halliburton is under investigation in the US, France, and Nigeria over allegations that it made more than $150 million of illicit payments to Nigerian officials and expatriates. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1001/p06s02-woaf.htm
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Forty-two U.S. troops were killed in June, 54 in July and 66 in August. At least 76 in September.
Spin that Failure!
The Bush administration, battling negative perceptions of the Iraq war, is sending Iraqi Americans to deliver what the Pentagon calls "good news" about Iraq to U.S. military bases, and has curtailed distribution of reports showing increasing violence in that country.
The unusual public-relations effort by the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development comes as details have emerged showing the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Combined, they indicate that the federal government is working assiduously to improve Americans' opinions about the Iraq conflict -- a key element of Bush's reelection message. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60725-2004Sep29?language=printer
Guantanamo, an intelligence Bust. 5000 arrests, no convictions, etc.
Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial US military detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1318702,00.html
Porter Goss: Ideologue shows his stripes
When he was going through his confirmation hearings for the post of CIA director, Republican congressman Porter Goss swore repeatedly that he would end his career as a partisan hack. Yet, in his first week he named four Republican congressional aides to key positions in the CIA.
“Tensions” Continue at the CIA:
The tensions have simmered for years, mostly over intelligence about Iraq, including whether Iraq posed a threat. But in the last few weeks, they have surged into the open in a remarkable way, in a struggle in which both sides believe they have much at stake.
Already, the contents of classified intelligence estimates about Iraq have been leaked by people sympathetic to the C.I.A., to the considerable embarrassment of the White House. In response, the White House associated the documents' authors with "pessimists and naysayers," and President Bush initially dismissed one particularly damaging forecast as nothing more than a guess. And in newspaper columns in recent days, Republican partisans have variously described what is now afoot as part of an insurgency or vendetta being waged by the C.I.A. against the White House. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/politics/02intel.html?ei=5090&en=0a7bddde0d30458a&ex=1254456000&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=print&position=
Another Tax Aid for Business:
The strategy defies expectations that agreement can't be reached until a lame-duck session planned for November and appears driven by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, who has concluded that a deal is more feasible now than later.
The California Republican has been meeting with senators behind the scenes and last night distributed a working draft that reflects significant movement toward the Senate. Rep. Thomas said he is committed to a bill that won't add to the deficit as preferred by senators. His draft embraces a tax deduction for American manufacturers as proposed by the Senate rather than the corporate rate cut in the House bill. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109650010530831931,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
-R
Facts: Bush talked of the “100,000 Iraqi troops trained.” Absurd. For example, this Reuters dispatch notes that the number of fully trained (8 weeks worth) number 8,169. http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=590914§ion=news
Left Bloggers Penetrate Republican Conference Call
A humorous side note, the GOP held a "conference call" with Ken Mehlman in which campaign "Team Leaders" call in to be told what to think and get their talking points for the debate. Atrios, bless his heart, posted the number and the password to be accepted to the conference call. I got in without a problem and, after enduring ten minutes of painful smooth jazz, got to hear firsthand how the Bush campaign was going to spin this. Mehlman said Kerry started with a credibility gap and ended with a credibility canyon, and babbled in and around this point for five minutes or so. Then they announced that they were going to take three questions. The first was from a "young Republican in Washington." She proceeded to say that Kerry was very credible and that she had decided to vote for him. The second caller said she thought Kerry would make a credible Commander in Chief and the third call took Bush to task for not mentioning the al Quida members not captured.Mehlman apologized to the Bush supporters listening and acknowledge that the call had obviously attracted some Democrats. We had, essentially, hijacked their own spin distribution and thrown it in the GOP's face. A small, yet hilarious victory for the blogosphere. http://jackpinesavage.blogspot.com/2004/10/post-debate.html
Bush and Poland: He tried to make a big deal about their (belated) support, but naturally ignored what Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski said: "They deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride."
Right Fights Back: How to contest the reality that their fella did poorly? Attack the moderator and cite an “anonymous Democrat” who insists it was a tie. It would be laughable if…
But there were no queries to Sen. Kerry about his long Senate record of voting against defense appropriations, or his sponsorship of a bill to cut CIA funding by $6 billion a year after terrorists struck the World Trade Center in 1993, or Kerry's support of the nuclear freeze movement during the height of the Cold War.
Kerry wasn't asked why he teamed up with Jane Fonda to protest the Vietnam War while his band of brothers were still on the battlefield, or why he met with enemy leaders in Paris, or why he accused fellow soldiers of being "monsters" and "war criminals."
Most Americans would consider the answers to those questions extremely relevant to the selection of any U.S. commander in chief during a time of war.
But not Jim Lehrer. Instead, he focused on Iraq with question after question that suggested Bush had blown it. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/30/223850.shtml
A Democratic consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the president "turned in a pretty solid performance." "I think that loyal Democrats were hoping the president's head would fall off during the debate," he said. Mr. Bush came across as "calm, folksy and grounded," but that each man got "a little testy" once they started to hurl some of their campaign stump-speech accusations at each other, Republican political consultant Bob Moran said. http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20041001-123117-5788r
And, Drudge, the conservative host of The Drudge Report floated one spin attempt -- that Bush was emotionally drained because he had spent the day meeting with hurricane victims. Radio callers repeated the line, expressing their empathy for ‘a preoccupied president who must have had a difficult day emotionally seeing all that tragedy in Florida.’ Yes, empathic Bush, that’s the guy.
Karl Rove tried, "That wasn't irritated. I know irritated." Bush was "pensive" and "focused," said Rove.
Sean Hannity said on Fox News that he had never seen Bush "more passionate, more articulate, more on top of his game."
Meanwhile, Left bloggers are also taken with that odd moment when Bush said “Let me Finish” even though no one was stopping him. Speculation was that ahe was talking to the person who was giving him instructions via an earpiece. Not a nutty thought, as pictures in the past have shown such, though addressing it seems unlikely to be productive. http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/298647.shtml
Media Spin: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: Integrity, Wolf, Integrity…
PRE-DEBATE:
A pivotal night in this presidential campaign, perhaps a decisive moment. A key opportunity for the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, to break through, to try to establish himself as a formidable candidate in this race.
That's a huge audience. A lot of people, of course, most of that audience has already made up their minds. But those undecided voters are still critical.
A defining night. I think everybody agrees potentially. This certainly could be a defining night. Historians will be writing about this for many years to come. [CNN, live debate coverage, 9/30/04]
POST-DEBATE:
So even if John Kerry decisively won the debate, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions, let alone on the final outcome on November 2, but even if there will be a significant movement in the poll numbers, the real polls, not these instant polls over the next three or four or five days. [CNN, News From CNN, 10/01/04] www.mediamatters.org
Polls:
Rasmussen Tracking Poll shows no bump for Kerry.
Newsweek: It’s “statistically tied”.
With a solid majority of voters concluding that John Kerry outperformed George W. Bush in the first presidential debate on Thursday, the president’s lead in the race for the White House has vanished, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. In the first national telephone poll using a fresh sample, NEWSWEEK found the race now statistically tied among all registered voters, 47 percent of whom say they would vote for Kerry and 45 percent for George W. Bush in a three-way race. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6159637/site/newsweek/
Memo to Edwards: Take Him Down. It’s doable. The excerpt below is from a mammoth article in Sunday’s NY Times which gently exposes the Administration’s cooking / selective use of, etc. intelligence. Still they all come off badly, but who will read this opus?
Mr. Cheney spoke openly about one of the closest held secrets regarding Iraq. Not only did Mr. Cheney draw attention to the tubes; he did so with a certitude that could not be found in even the C.I.A.'s assessments. On "Meet the Press," Mr. Cheney said he knew "for sure" and "in fact" and "with absolute certainty" that Mr. Hussein was buying equipment to build a nuclear weapon.
"He has reconstituted his nuclear program," Mr. Cheney said flatly.
But in the C.I.A. reports, evidence "suggested" or "could mean" or "indicates" - a word used widely in a report issued just weeks earlier. Little if anything was asserted with absolute certainty. The intelligence community had not yet concluded that Iraq had indeed reconstituted its nuclear program.
Mr. Kellems, Mr. Cheney's spokesman, said, "The vice president's public statements have reflected the evolving judgment of the intelligence community." …
Yet so far, Senate investigators say, they have found little evidence the White House tried to find out why so many experts disputed the C.I.A. tubes theory. If anything, administration officials minimized the divide...
Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said in an interview, "the secretary listened to the discussion of the various views among intelligence agencies, and reflected those issues in his presentation. Since his task at the U.N. was to present the views of the United States, he went with the overall judgment of the intelligence community as reflected by the director of central intelligence." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
Faith…counts more than competence
Frank Rich on “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," 300,000 DVDs are being released this week to Churches. Read it and shiver… and do what you can.
More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president's vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. It transforms the president that the Democrats deride as a "fortunate son" of privilege into a prodigal son with the "moral clarity of an old-fashioned biblical prophet." Its Bush is not merely a sincere man of faith but God's essential and irreplaceable warrior on Earth. The stations of his cross are burnished into cinematic fable: the misspent youth, the hard drinking (a thirst that came from "a throat full of Texas dust"), the fateful 40th-birthday hangover in Colorado Springs, the walk on the beach with Billy Graham. A towheaded child actor bathed in the golden light of an off-camera halo re-enacts the young George comforting his mom after the death of his sister; it's a parable anticipating the future president's miraculous ability to comfort us all after 9/11. An older Bush impersonator is seen rebuffing a sexual come-on from a fellow Bush-Quayle campaign worker hovering by a Xerox machine in 1988; it's an effort to imbue our born-again savior with retroactive chastity. As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth.
"Will George W. Bush be allowed to finish the battle against the forces of evil that threaten our very existence?" Such is the portentous question posed at the film's conclusion by its narrator, the religious broadcaster Janet Parshall, beloved by some for her ecumenical generosity in inviting Jews for Jesus onto her radio show during the High Holidays. Anyone who stands in the way of Mr. Bush completing his godly battle, of course, is a heretic. Facts on the ground in Iraq don't matter.
Rational arguments mustered in presidential debates don't matter. Logic of any kind is a nonstarter. The president - who after 9/11 called the war on terrorism a "crusade," until protests forced the White House to backpedal - is divine. He may not hear "voices" instructing him on policy, testifies Stephen Mansfield, the author of one of the movie's source texts, "The Faith of George W. Bush," but he does act on "promptings" from God. "I think we went into Iraq not so much because there were weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Mansfield has explained elsewhere, "but because Bush had concluded that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer" in the battle "between good and evil." So why didn't we go into those other countries in the axis of evil, North Korea or Iran? Never mind. To ask such questions is to be against God and "with the terrorists." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/arts/03rich.html?ei=1&en=564ce2e04a0d65f5&ex=1097543762&pagewanted=print&position
Meanwhile, worst fighting- and death toll-in Gaza... Ignored at the debate, along with most other foreign policy issues.
Kerry's own electoral website declares that if elected he will "strengthen weak states and secure and rebuild failed states around the world." George Bush is already committed to democratic reconstruction of the whole "Greater Middle East."
That sort of unbridled ambition to solve the world's problems and more is the conventional wisdom, and the conventional hypocrisy as well. You might think Bush or Kerry would be content if they could get out of Iraq without setting ablaze the rest of the Middle East.
The conventional cowardice is that neither will assume responsibility for resolving the most poisonous and dangerous conflict affecting the global situation of the United States, which still may be within American power to solve: the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Even to carry out the commitment already made by the US government to the so-called "road map," which requires antiterrorism actions by the Palestinian authorities and a nearly total Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, would mean a frontal clash with the Sharon government in Israel. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/01/a_misleading_focus_on_iraq?pg=2
What’s Happening, Africa: Oil Strife
The country's Niger Delta region, which produces nearly 2.5 million barrels of oil a day and accounts for 10 percent of US crude imports, is infused with a deep popular anger over pollution and the failure of oil revenues to bring development. Mr. Dokubo-Asari, who claims to command 2,000 armed fighters, earlier this week called for the immediate withdrawal of all foreigners from the delta until the resolution of political issues, including control of the country's oil resources. Peace talks continued Thursday between Dokubo-Asari and the Nigerian government.
The dispute over natural resources is at the heart of some of the most intractable conflicts in Africa today, from Sudan to Congo to Nigeria. Even amid international efforts to bring greater transparency to the continent's resource exploration, the recent strife here is a microcosm of widespread theft and mismanagement, which observers attribute to a combination of colonial-era intervention, corrupt governments, and cynical behavior by Western policymakers and multinationals…
Western multinationals are also widely accused of helping sustain graft. A report published in July by the US Senate found that US oil companies in Equatorial Guinea made payments to government officials and their relatives and formed joint ventures with companies linked to members of the country's repressive ruling clan. A consortium of Western companies including a subsidiary of Halliburton is under investigation in the US, France, and Nigeria over allegations that it made more than $150 million of illicit payments to Nigerian officials and expatriates. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1001/p06s02-woaf.htm
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Forty-two U.S. troops were killed in June, 54 in July and 66 in August. At least 76 in September.
Spin that Failure!
The Bush administration, battling negative perceptions of the Iraq war, is sending Iraqi Americans to deliver what the Pentagon calls "good news" about Iraq to U.S. military bases, and has curtailed distribution of reports showing increasing violence in that country.
The unusual public-relations effort by the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development comes as details have emerged showing the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Combined, they indicate that the federal government is working assiduously to improve Americans' opinions about the Iraq conflict -- a key element of Bush's reelection message. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60725-2004Sep29?language=printer
Guantanamo, an intelligence Bust. 5000 arrests, no convictions, etc.
Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial US military detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1318702,00.html
Porter Goss: Ideologue shows his stripes
When he was going through his confirmation hearings for the post of CIA director, Republican congressman Porter Goss swore repeatedly that he would end his career as a partisan hack. Yet, in his first week he named four Republican congressional aides to key positions in the CIA.
“Tensions” Continue at the CIA:
The tensions have simmered for years, mostly over intelligence about Iraq, including whether Iraq posed a threat. But in the last few weeks, they have surged into the open in a remarkable way, in a struggle in which both sides believe they have much at stake.
Already, the contents of classified intelligence estimates about Iraq have been leaked by people sympathetic to the C.I.A., to the considerable embarrassment of the White House. In response, the White House associated the documents' authors with "pessimists and naysayers," and President Bush initially dismissed one particularly damaging forecast as nothing more than a guess. And in newspaper columns in recent days, Republican partisans have variously described what is now afoot as part of an insurgency or vendetta being waged by the C.I.A. against the White House. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/politics/02intel.html?ei=5090&en=0a7bddde0d30458a&ex=1254456000&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=print&position=
Another Tax Aid for Business:
The strategy defies expectations that agreement can't be reached until a lame-duck session planned for November and appears driven by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, who has concluded that a deal is more feasible now than later.
The California Republican has been meeting with senators behind the scenes and last night distributed a working draft that reflects significant movement toward the Senate. Rep. Thomas said he is committed to a bill that won't add to the deficit as preferred by senators. His draft embraces a tax deduction for American manufacturers as proposed by the Senate rather than the corporate rate cut in the House bill. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109650010530831931,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
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