Thursday, October 28, 2004
Quotes of the Day
This is such an emotional lift for people in New England and all over the world; I hope they enjoy it. I hope they do something good with it. I hope they go vote Tuesday and make the world a better place. - Red Sox GM Theo Epstein [note: Schilling told the Today audience, ‘Vote Bush’]
The actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough…-Rudy Giuliani [ugly]
For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander-in-chief. -Bush, re Kerry [Ain’t he self-aware!]
Those Missing Explosives:
It’s merely emblematic of the failed Occupation, but in the campaign’s final days, it has generated much heat. One aspect: Were the weapons gone before our troops arrived? Though the preponderance of evidence is that they were there, the Press is being careful, which aids the Rove line, ‘We don’t know.’
But one (Minneapolis) news crew apparently was there, and photographed and videoed the subject of concern.
A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons.
The missing explosives are now an issue in the presidential debate. Democratic candidate John Kerry is accusing President Bush of not securing the site they allegedly disappeared from. President Bush says no one knows if the ammunition was taken before or after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003 when coalition troops moved in to the area http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1
White House Explanations:
Typically they’ve been confidently -with resolve!- conveying as many as 5 different lines of explanation which have included relying on a discredited NBC report, alleging that the Russians walked off with the material, or Rudy Guiliani’s skuzzy blaming of the troops, (above).
But do people care? Will the historians care? Then again, who will write the history?
The basics, again:
Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28bomb.html?hp&ex=1099022400&en=b50b42da5ffd60de&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Post-war Chaos: A pro-war witness’s testimony Peter W. Galbraith
For those that missed this Globe piece. Maureen Dowd also referenced it extensively today. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?oref=login&hp
In 2003 I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow. For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion -- the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.
I also described two particularly disturbing incidents -- one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about. On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.
When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.
_____________________________
This was a preventable disaster. Iraq's nuclear weapons-related materials were stored in only a few locations, and these were known before the war began. As even L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator in Iraq, now admits, the United States had far too few troops to secure the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. But even with the troops we had, the United States could have protected the known nuclear sites. It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq's WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/27/eyewitness_to_a_failure_in_iraq?mode=PF
Falluja, Fallujah…no, Ramadi!
The American military and the interim Iraqi government are quickly losing control of this provincial capital, which is larger and strategically more important than its sister city of Falluja, say local officials, clerics, tribal sheiks and officers with the United States Marines.
"The city is chaotic," said Sheik Ali al-Dulaimi, a leader of the region's largest tribe. "There's no presence of the Allawi government," he added, speaking of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
While Ramadi is not exactly a "no go" zone for the marines, like the insurgent stronghold of Falluja 30 miles to the east, officers say it is fast slipping in that direction. In the last six weeks, guerrillas have stepped up the pace of assassinations of Iraqis working with the Americans, and marine officials say they suspect Iraqi security officers have been helping insurgents to attack their troops. Reconstruction efforts have ground to a halt because no local contractors are willing to work. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28ramadi.html?hp&ex=1099022400&en=2de652b511e67fdf&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Halliburton Under [ongoing] Scrutiny: More leaking of stories that don’t flatter the Bushies. Last minute renegades hoping to do some damage…
The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices. The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002075416_webhalliburton28.html
From the Wall Street Journal’s Correction Section: I’m not making this up.
NEWS CORP.'S Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article Monday as being sympathetic to the Bush cause.
I know a Greenwald DVD the WSJ could borrow…
Fraud / Cheating / Suppressing. WaPost’s Harold Meyerson:
With Election Day almost upon us, it's not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d'etat. By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own.
This is civic life in the age of George W. Bush, in which politics has become a continuation of civil war by other means. In Bush's America, there's a war on -- against a foreign enemy so evil that we can ignore the Geneva Conventions, against domestic liberals so insidious that we can ignore democratic norms. Only bleeding hearts with a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set still believe in voting rights. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A707-2004Oct26.html
A flyer is being distributed around Milwaukee's African-American communities. The basics are, ‘you can’t vote if…’, including “if anybody in your family has ever been found guilty of anything you can’t vote in the presidential election.”
John Dean on the Upcoming Chaos:
This is a climate for trouble. A storm warning is appropriate. In the end, attorneys and legal strategy could prove as important, if not more so, to the outcome of this election as the traditional political strategists and strategy. http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=/dean/20041022.html
“If it weren’t for the newly registered voters, Kerry would trail the President instead of being tied” (or winning)
Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio ‘s survey of 12 battleground states hammers home the point that Bush’s success depends on the newly registered NOT voting. So, it makes perfect sense that the ‘win at all costs’ Karl Rove would challenge / suppress ‘minority’ voters wherever possible. The survey/ press release is at www.fabmac.com
Rove Charges: Al-Qaeda wants Kerry to win? ABC wants Kerry?
I’m confused. The Republicans claimed this week that
1) al-Qaeda has a new videotape that allegedly threatens a major attack aimed to defeat Bush. And,
2) ABC wants to defeat Bush and that’s why it won’t release the tape since that will help Bush.
Huh?
Bush Loss: because of a ‘Stab in the Back’
Our political situation reminds me of Weimar Germany, circa 1932 [totalitarian putsch, weak, “democratic” opposition]. The Right-wing media have provided another such reminder. They seem to be preparing their explanation for a Bush defeat- that it was (gulp) because of the Liberal Media. Examples abound, including alleging that the missing explosives story emerged because of them Liberals. It’s sophomoric, as it was Allawi who broached the story, but reality, as we know, doesn’t apply to these guys. They know the Big Lie works.
Seymour Hersh. In between New Yorker articles / books, he’s interviewed by the Boston Phoenix.
…since Allawi’s been brought in, there’s no question the bombing has gone up exponentially. We don’t get any sortie figures; we don’t even ask. We don’t know how many bombs are dropped. All we know is that the bombing’s going up. And there’s been nothing said about the increase in American bombing of a country we’re occupying! I mean, how’s that compatible with getting the hearts and minds of Iraqis? Wholesale bombing. It’s madness. http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/04224661.asp
Polls:
Democracy Corps poll: Kerry leading 49% to 46%.
Economist: Kerry leading 49% to 45%.
Rasmussen: Bush up 49% - 47%
State polls: Pennsylvania and New Jersey not secure, etc.
Pennsylvania: Bush 49, Kerry 47 (Quinnipiac)
Florida: Bush 49, Kerry 46 (Quinnipiac)
Wisconsin: Kerry 48, Bush 47 (ARG)
Iowa: Bush 48, Kerry 47 (ARG)
Oregon: Kerry 50, Bush 46 (ARG)
Yet, it’s all about turnout, suppression, lawyers, democracy. Baseball sure was simpler.
-R
This is such an emotional lift for people in New England and all over the world; I hope they enjoy it. I hope they do something good with it. I hope they go vote Tuesday and make the world a better place. - Red Sox GM Theo Epstein [note: Schilling told the Today audience, ‘Vote Bush’]
The actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough…-Rudy Giuliani [ugly]
For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander-in-chief. -Bush, re Kerry [Ain’t he self-aware!]
Those Missing Explosives:
It’s merely emblematic of the failed Occupation, but in the campaign’s final days, it has generated much heat. One aspect: Were the weapons gone before our troops arrived? Though the preponderance of evidence is that they were there, the Press is being careful, which aids the Rove line, ‘We don’t know.’
But one (Minneapolis) news crew apparently was there, and photographed and videoed the subject of concern.
A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons.
The missing explosives are now an issue in the presidential debate. Democratic candidate John Kerry is accusing President Bush of not securing the site they allegedly disappeared from. President Bush says no one knows if the ammunition was taken before or after the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003 when coalition troops moved in to the area http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1
White House Explanations:
Typically they’ve been confidently -with resolve!- conveying as many as 5 different lines of explanation which have included relying on a discredited NBC report, alleging that the Russians walked off with the material, or Rudy Guiliani’s skuzzy blaming of the troops, (above).
But do people care? Will the historians care? Then again, who will write the history?
The basics, again:
Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28bomb.html?hp&ex=1099022400&en=b50b42da5ffd60de&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Post-war Chaos: A pro-war witness’s testimony Peter W. Galbraith
For those that missed this Globe piece. Maureen Dowd also referenced it extensively today. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?oref=login&hp
In 2003 I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow. For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion -- the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.
I also described two particularly disturbing incidents -- one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about. On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.
When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.
_____________________________
This was a preventable disaster. Iraq's nuclear weapons-related materials were stored in only a few locations, and these were known before the war began. As even L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator in Iraq, now admits, the United States had far too few troops to secure the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. But even with the troops we had, the United States could have protected the known nuclear sites. It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq's WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/27/eyewitness_to_a_failure_in_iraq?mode=PF
Falluja, Fallujah…no, Ramadi!
The American military and the interim Iraqi government are quickly losing control of this provincial capital, which is larger and strategically more important than its sister city of Falluja, say local officials, clerics, tribal sheiks and officers with the United States Marines.
"The city is chaotic," said Sheik Ali al-Dulaimi, a leader of the region's largest tribe. "There's no presence of the Allawi government," he added, speaking of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
While Ramadi is not exactly a "no go" zone for the marines, like the insurgent stronghold of Falluja 30 miles to the east, officers say it is fast slipping in that direction. In the last six weeks, guerrillas have stepped up the pace of assassinations of Iraqis working with the Americans, and marine officials say they suspect Iraqi security officers have been helping insurgents to attack their troops. Reconstruction efforts have ground to a halt because no local contractors are willing to work. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/international/middleeast/28ramadi.html?hp&ex=1099022400&en=2de652b511e67fdf&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Halliburton Under [ongoing] Scrutiny: More leaking of stories that don’t flatter the Bushies. Last minute renegades hoping to do some damage…
The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices. The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002075416_webhalliburton28.html
From the Wall Street Journal’s Correction Section: I’m not making this up.
NEWS CORP.'S Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article Monday as being sympathetic to the Bush cause.
I know a Greenwald DVD the WSJ could borrow…
Fraud / Cheating / Suppressing. WaPost’s Harold Meyerson:
With Election Day almost upon us, it's not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d'etat. By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own.
This is civic life in the age of George W. Bush, in which politics has become a continuation of civil war by other means. In Bush's America, there's a war on -- against a foreign enemy so evil that we can ignore the Geneva Conventions, against domestic liberals so insidious that we can ignore democratic norms. Only bleeding hearts with a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set still believe in voting rights. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A707-2004Oct26.html
A flyer is being distributed around Milwaukee's African-American communities. The basics are, ‘you can’t vote if…’, including “if anybody in your family has ever been found guilty of anything you can’t vote in the presidential election.”
John Dean on the Upcoming Chaos:
This is a climate for trouble. A storm warning is appropriate. In the end, attorneys and legal strategy could prove as important, if not more so, to the outcome of this election as the traditional political strategists and strategy. http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=/dean/20041022.html
“If it weren’t for the newly registered voters, Kerry would trail the President instead of being tied” (or winning)
Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio ‘s survey of 12 battleground states hammers home the point that Bush’s success depends on the newly registered NOT voting. So, it makes perfect sense that the ‘win at all costs’ Karl Rove would challenge / suppress ‘minority’ voters wherever possible. The survey/ press release is at www.fabmac.com
Rove Charges: Al-Qaeda wants Kerry to win? ABC wants Kerry?
I’m confused. The Republicans claimed this week that
1) al-Qaeda has a new videotape that allegedly threatens a major attack aimed to defeat Bush. And,
2) ABC wants to defeat Bush and that’s why it won’t release the tape since that will help Bush.
Huh?
Bush Loss: because of a ‘Stab in the Back’
Our political situation reminds me of Weimar Germany, circa 1932 [totalitarian putsch, weak, “democratic” opposition]. The Right-wing media have provided another such reminder. They seem to be preparing their explanation for a Bush defeat- that it was (gulp) because of the Liberal Media. Examples abound, including alleging that the missing explosives story emerged because of them Liberals. It’s sophomoric, as it was Allawi who broached the story, but reality, as we know, doesn’t apply to these guys. They know the Big Lie works.
Seymour Hersh. In between New Yorker articles / books, he’s interviewed by the Boston Phoenix.
…since Allawi’s been brought in, there’s no question the bombing has gone up exponentially. We don’t get any sortie figures; we don’t even ask. We don’t know how many bombs are dropped. All we know is that the bombing’s going up. And there’s been nothing said about the increase in American bombing of a country we’re occupying! I mean, how’s that compatible with getting the hearts and minds of Iraqis? Wholesale bombing. It’s madness. http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multipage/documents/04224661.asp
Polls:
Democracy Corps poll: Kerry leading 49% to 46%.
Economist: Kerry leading 49% to 45%.
Rasmussen: Bush up 49% - 47%
State polls: Pennsylvania and New Jersey not secure, etc.
Pennsylvania: Bush 49, Kerry 47 (Quinnipiac)
Florida: Bush 49, Kerry 46 (Quinnipiac)
Wisconsin: Kerry 48, Bush 47 (ARG)
Iowa: Bush 48, Kerry 47 (ARG)
Oregon: Kerry 50, Bush 46 (ARG)
Yet, it’s all about turnout, suppression, lawyers, democracy. Baseball sure was simpler.
-R
