Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Re-visiting the Missing Explosives
Just thought it helpful to note the following from the original NY Times report:
The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.
1) The Iraqis informed the U.S.? Either: it’s a crock, that word was leaking so we had Allawi reveal it.
2) Allawi is ticked at the Administration for whatever reason, is seeking to embarrass the Administration.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."
Condi didn’t know? The National Security Advisor didn’t know about what was missing 18 months ago? Another claim: they didn’t want to reveal it sooner, fearing the Enemy shouldn’t know. Huh? Perhaps, the “enemy” has the explosives?
Upshot of Missing 377 tons of Explosives
Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says the destructive consequences of the administration's failure to secure the site could be almost incalculable. "This is thousands and thousands of potential terrorist attacks," Cirincione told Salon. "It's like they knocked off the Fort Knox of explosives." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/26/explosives/index.html
Meanwhile, more dough is needed:
The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62554-2004Oct25.html
And then there’s this:
Concerned that they won't get enough new troops from allies to help provide security for Iraqi elections in January, Pentagon officials are considering increasing the current U.S. force by delaying the departures of some U.S. troops now in Iraq and accelerating the deployment of others scheduled to go there next year. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-10-25-troops-increase_x.htm
So, we learn that more money, more troops…which raises the question of why this is the news NOW, not after next Tuesday. Are anti-Bushies in the Pentagon seeking to do him in?
Memory Lane: Ben Cohen, Sage: From 9/4/2001. Read and Weep
You may know some despicable characters, but are they mean enough to apply for this job posting?
ENEMY WANTED. Serious enemy needed to justify Pentagon budget increase. Defense contractors desperate. Interested enemies send letter and photo or video (threatening, ok) to Enemy Search Committee, Priorities Campaign, 1350 Broadway, NY, NY, 10018.
Here's the deal: We know our politicians have their work cut out for them. They need to find an enemy to justify maintaining the Pentagon budget as if the Cold War never ended. But the pool of credible enemies is evaporating. North Korea is even going diplomatic. The Soviets took themselves out of the running years ago. And countries like Iraq -- or tough looking trading partners like China -- don't make the cut.
So, I am distributing a job description as widely as possible to help our politicians find the enemy they seek. Even with the help of defense contractors -- who spend $50 million on lobbyists annually -- our politicians do not possess the creativity to find the right adversary. It's clear that the old concept of enemy doesn't work anymore.
The trouble is the Defense Department needs to find an enemy in a hurry. The Bush Administration has proposed to increase Pentagon spending by $33 billion, the largest defense increase since the Cold War. http://www.alternet.org/story/11427
Allawi Blames U.S. for Massacre
Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, on Tuesday accused foreign troops in the country of "gross negligence" in the massacre of 49 Iraqi National Guard recruits over the weekend, an unusually critical remark by the U.S.-backed leader.
Allawi, in a weekly address to the Iraqi National Assembly, said his government had launched an investigation into the deaths of the U.S.-trained recruits, most of whom were lined up and executed shortly after sunset Saturday near the National Guard's main training base in Kirkush, about 60 miles northeast of the capital.
"A terrible crime was committed in which a large number of the ING were martyred," Allawi said. "We think this shows, in addition to gross negligence on the side of some of the multinational forces, it shows the kind of insistence to hurt Iraq and its people."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63772-2004Oct26?language=printer
Election: Nerve wracking… to the point of Breakdown? From Andrew Gumbel of the Independent
No need to wonder if this year's US presidential election is headed for another meltdown: the meltdown has already started. The voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and lawyers fully armed and ready with an intimate knowledge of the nation's byzantine election laws have flocked to court to cry foul in half a dozen states.
_____________
How the courts will react to this hypothetical state of affairs is anybody's guess. They could accept the given election results, however flawed. They could allow the arguments to rage until December, when the electoral college is supposed to meet, or even into the new year, when an undecided election would be thrown into the House of Representatives.
Or they could be trumped, once again, by the Supreme Court. The most disconcerting possibility is that the highest court in the land could remove the electoral process from the voters altogether and turn it over to the state legislatures. Technically, they can do this under Article II of the Constitution, which offers no automatic right to vote. We know from the deliberations in 2000 that two, possibly five, of the nine justices have doubts whether the people should be the ultimate arbiters of presidential elections - a strict, literal reading of the Constitution that no modern Supreme Court countenanced before the current crop of ultra-conservatives. "After granting the franchise in the special context of Article II," the majority declared in its Bush vs Gore ruling, "[the state] can take back the power to appoint electors."
Were this scenario to play out it would leave the fate of many of the electoral battlegrounds in the hands of Republican-controlled state legislatures (in Florida and Ohio, for starters), who would promptly hand the election to George Bush. Talk about a nightmare scenario - which is why every elections official and every "small d" democrat in the land is praying it won't get that close. http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=575453&host=3&dir=70
Election Stealing (cont.)
A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".
It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm
Meanwhile…
The Broward County Supervisor of Elections office on Tuesday said it couldn't account for nearly 60,000 missing absentee ballots sent to voters and that its phone lines were being overwhelmed by calls.
Hoping to avoid another embarrassing election, Broward County commissioners Tuesday offered to send county employees to help. Dozens of county employees could begin assisting the elections office as early as today to answer telephone calls and to process voters at the 14 early voting sites. http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/10023659.htm
Rehnquist Vacancy…to be filled?
So, what if Rehnquist’s cancer forces his retirement or kills him in the next days. Is it possible / legal for Bush to make a ‘recess appointment’ of a justice? Rove must be thinking about this, in case a close election went to the Court, and a 4-4 decision loomed. Just thinking it through…
Polls:
4 years ago: Bush was up by 3 points in the Zogby poll against Gore. But Gore won.
TIPP: Bush +7% (updated 9 am ET)
Rasmussen: Tied (updated 12 pm ET)
ABC News/Washington Post: Kerry +1%
Democracy Corps poll Kerry leading Bush 49% to 47%.
State polls:
New Hampshire: Kerry 50, Bush 41 (Franklin Pierce College)
Colorado: Kerry 49, Bush 45 (Zogby)
Florida: Bush 49, Kerry 46 (Zogby)
Iowa: Bush 47, Kerry 45 (Zogby)
Michigan: Kerry 52, Bush 42 (Zogby)
Minnesota: Kerry 46, Bush 45 (Zogby)
Nevada: Bush 48, Kerry 44 (Zogby)
New Mexico: Bush 49, Kerry 44 (Zogby)
Ohio: Bush 47, Kerry 42 (Zogby)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 47, Bush 45 (Zogby)
Wisconsin: Bush 48, Kerry 45 (Zogby)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 50, Bush 47 (ARG)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 49, Bush 44 (Keystone)
Florida: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (Insider Advantage)
Florida: Bush 51, Kerry 42 (Gallup)
Florida: Kerry 50, Bush 48 (Survey USA)
Florida: Kerry 48, Bush 48 (Rasmussen)
Florida: Kerry 49, Bush 46 (ARG)
Ohio: Kerry 49, Bush 47 (ARG)
Arizona: Bush 47, Kerry 42 (KAET-TV)
Michigan: Kerry 45, Bush 44 (Mitchell Research)
Missouri: Bush 48, Kerry 45 (Research 2000) http://politicalwire.com/
-R
Just thought it helpful to note the following from the original NY Times report:
The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.
1) The Iraqis informed the U.S.? Either: it’s a crock, that word was leaking so we had Allawi reveal it.
2) Allawi is ticked at the Administration for whatever reason, is seeking to embarrass the Administration.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."
Condi didn’t know? The National Security Advisor didn’t know about what was missing 18 months ago? Another claim: they didn’t want to reveal it sooner, fearing the Enemy shouldn’t know. Huh? Perhaps, the “enemy” has the explosives?
Upshot of Missing 377 tons of Explosives
Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says the destructive consequences of the administration's failure to secure the site could be almost incalculable. "This is thousands and thousands of potential terrorist attacks," Cirincione told Salon. "It's like they knocked off the Fort Knox of explosives." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/26/explosives/index.html
Meanwhile, more dough is needed:
The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62554-2004Oct25.html
And then there’s this:
Concerned that they won't get enough new troops from allies to help provide security for Iraqi elections in January, Pentagon officials are considering increasing the current U.S. force by delaying the departures of some U.S. troops now in Iraq and accelerating the deployment of others scheduled to go there next year. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-10-25-troops-increase_x.htm
So, we learn that more money, more troops…which raises the question of why this is the news NOW, not after next Tuesday. Are anti-Bushies in the Pentagon seeking to do him in?
Memory Lane: Ben Cohen, Sage: From 9/4/2001. Read and Weep
You may know some despicable characters, but are they mean enough to apply for this job posting?
ENEMY WANTED. Serious enemy needed to justify Pentagon budget increase. Defense contractors desperate. Interested enemies send letter and photo or video (threatening, ok) to Enemy Search Committee, Priorities Campaign, 1350 Broadway, NY, NY, 10018.
Here's the deal: We know our politicians have their work cut out for them. They need to find an enemy to justify maintaining the Pentagon budget as if the Cold War never ended. But the pool of credible enemies is evaporating. North Korea is even going diplomatic. The Soviets took themselves out of the running years ago. And countries like Iraq -- or tough looking trading partners like China -- don't make the cut.
So, I am distributing a job description as widely as possible to help our politicians find the enemy they seek. Even with the help of defense contractors -- who spend $50 million on lobbyists annually -- our politicians do not possess the creativity to find the right adversary. It's clear that the old concept of enemy doesn't work anymore.
The trouble is the Defense Department needs to find an enemy in a hurry. The Bush Administration has proposed to increase Pentagon spending by $33 billion, the largest defense increase since the Cold War. http://www.alternet.org/story/11427
Allawi Blames U.S. for Massacre
Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, on Tuesday accused foreign troops in the country of "gross negligence" in the massacre of 49 Iraqi National Guard recruits over the weekend, an unusually critical remark by the U.S.-backed leader.
Allawi, in a weekly address to the Iraqi National Assembly, said his government had launched an investigation into the deaths of the U.S.-trained recruits, most of whom were lined up and executed shortly after sunset Saturday near the National Guard's main training base in Kirkush, about 60 miles northeast of the capital.
"A terrible crime was committed in which a large number of the ING were martyred," Allawi said. "We think this shows, in addition to gross negligence on the side of some of the multinational forces, it shows the kind of insistence to hurt Iraq and its people."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63772-2004Oct26?language=printer
Election: Nerve wracking… to the point of Breakdown? From Andrew Gumbel of the Independent
No need to wonder if this year's US presidential election is headed for another meltdown: the meltdown has already started. The voting machines have already begun to break down, accusations of systematic voter suppression and fraud are rampant, and lawyers fully armed and ready with an intimate knowledge of the nation's byzantine election laws have flocked to court to cry foul in half a dozen states.
_____________
How the courts will react to this hypothetical state of affairs is anybody's guess. They could accept the given election results, however flawed. They could allow the arguments to rage until December, when the electoral college is supposed to meet, or even into the new year, when an undecided election would be thrown into the House of Representatives.
Or they could be trumped, once again, by the Supreme Court. The most disconcerting possibility is that the highest court in the land could remove the electoral process from the voters altogether and turn it over to the state legislatures. Technically, they can do this under Article II of the Constitution, which offers no automatic right to vote. We know from the deliberations in 2000 that two, possibly five, of the nine justices have doubts whether the people should be the ultimate arbiters of presidential elections - a strict, literal reading of the Constitution that no modern Supreme Court countenanced before the current crop of ultra-conservatives. "After granting the franchise in the special context of Article II," the majority declared in its Bush vs Gore ruling, "[the state] can take back the power to appoint electors."
Were this scenario to play out it would leave the fate of many of the electoral battlegrounds in the hands of Republican-controlled state legislatures (in Florida and Ohio, for starters), who would promptly hand the election to George Bush. Talk about a nightmare scenario - which is why every elections official and every "small d" democrat in the land is praying it won't get that close. http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=575453&host=3&dir=70
Election Stealing (cont.)
A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".
It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/3956129.stm
Meanwhile…
The Broward County Supervisor of Elections office on Tuesday said it couldn't account for nearly 60,000 missing absentee ballots sent to voters and that its phone lines were being overwhelmed by calls.
Hoping to avoid another embarrassing election, Broward County commissioners Tuesday offered to send county employees to help. Dozens of county employees could begin assisting the elections office as early as today to answer telephone calls and to process voters at the 14 early voting sites. http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/10023659.htm
Rehnquist Vacancy…to be filled?
So, what if Rehnquist’s cancer forces his retirement or kills him in the next days. Is it possible / legal for Bush to make a ‘recess appointment’ of a justice? Rove must be thinking about this, in case a close election went to the Court, and a 4-4 decision loomed. Just thinking it through…
Polls:
4 years ago: Bush was up by 3 points in the Zogby poll against Gore. But Gore won.
TIPP: Bush +7% (updated 9 am ET)
Rasmussen: Tied (updated 12 pm ET)
ABC News/Washington Post: Kerry +1%
Democracy Corps poll Kerry leading Bush 49% to 47%.
State polls:
New Hampshire: Kerry 50, Bush 41 (Franklin Pierce College)
Colorado: Kerry 49, Bush 45 (Zogby)
Florida: Bush 49, Kerry 46 (Zogby)
Iowa: Bush 47, Kerry 45 (Zogby)
Michigan: Kerry 52, Bush 42 (Zogby)
Minnesota: Kerry 46, Bush 45 (Zogby)
Nevada: Bush 48, Kerry 44 (Zogby)
New Mexico: Bush 49, Kerry 44 (Zogby)
Ohio: Bush 47, Kerry 42 (Zogby)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 47, Bush 45 (Zogby)
Wisconsin: Bush 48, Kerry 45 (Zogby)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 50, Bush 47 (ARG)
Pennsylvania: Kerry 49, Bush 44 (Keystone)
Florida: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (Insider Advantage)
Florida: Bush 51, Kerry 42 (Gallup)
Florida: Kerry 50, Bush 48 (Survey USA)
Florida: Kerry 48, Bush 48 (Rasmussen)
Florida: Kerry 49, Bush 46 (ARG)
Ohio: Kerry 49, Bush 47 (ARG)
Arizona: Bush 47, Kerry 42 (KAET-TV)
Michigan: Kerry 45, Bush 44 (Mitchell Research)
Missouri: Bush 48, Kerry 45 (Research 2000) http://politicalwire.com/
-R
