Monday, October 25, 2004
The Rule of Law
What’s Happening, Iraq: Missing High Explosives
Another notable casualty of the sloppy early days of the Occupation-- 350 tons of high explosives have disappeared. They were looted during the early days of the US occupation and had been left unguarded. They are not only used for bombings in Iraq, but could also be used as part of the ‘triggering process’ for nukes. The Nelson Report notes that the Department of Defense had sought to keep this secret, from the U.S. public and from international agencies. More at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/ and http://www.talkingpointsmemo.org/ The Times picked it up this morning. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?hp&ex=1098763200&en=fd35fdf4b6d46d61&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Meanwhile, The bodies of 49 newly trained Iraqi national guard recruits, lined up and executed by insurgents, were discovered on a roadside about 75 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
In separate attacks, a member of the State Department's diplomatic security unit was killed when a rocket or mortar landed at a U.S. military base adjoining the Baghdad airport at 5 a.m. And a Bulgarian soldier was killed when a car bomb exploded near his convoy in Karbala. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58312-2004Oct24.html
Geneva? Que?
At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department drafted a confidential memo that authorizes the agency to transfer detainees out of Iraq for interrogation -- a practice that international legal specialists say contravenes the Geneva Conventions.
One intelligence official familiar with the operation said the CIA has used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly transporting as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months. The agency has concealed the detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross and other authorities, the official said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57363-2004Oct23.html
Bush Supporters Dumbing Down…and Down. The “PIPA” report:
Three out of 4 self-described supporters of President George W. Bush still believe that pre-war Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them. According to a new survey published Thursday, the same number also believes that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided "substantial support" to al Qaeda.
But here is the truly astonishing part: as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago. In other words, more people believe the claims today –- after the publication of a series of well-publicized official government reports that debunked both notions. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/20263/
PIPA is the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.
Fraud (Cont.) Ohio and Florida:
The caller interrupting a North Side couple’s dinner earlier this week said he was from the Franklin County Board of Elections.
He told the elderly woman that her voting site had changed and that on Nov. 2 she and her husband should cast their ballots at a South Side precinct. The caller even left the phone number of the board.
Her husband, who didn’t want their names published out of fear of retribution, called the board, sat through a long menu of automated options and finally spoke with an employee.
"They said there was no way in the world they would make such a call," he said. "I think it’s hankypanky and somebody in the election is trying to kill some votes."
At no time, Elections Director Matthew Damschroder said, does the board call voters. http://www.dispatch.com/election/election-local.php?story=dispatch/2004/10/22/20041022-A1-00.html
Pasco elections officials have a warning for the county's absentee voters: Don't give your ballot to a stranger claiming to be from the elections office.
They're not who they say they are.
"The people who are soliciting your ballots in this manner are not elections officials," Pasco Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning warned Thursday.
The warning came after a phone call from a west Pasco woman. Other Florida counties have gotten similar complaints.
"We've had a bunch of them - 100 at least," said Bob Sweat, elections supervisor for Manatee County. "It's probably going on all over the state of Florida."
The Pasco woman said someone came to her home to collect her absentee ballot earlier this week. She said she was led to believe they were from the elections office. The woman told the strangers she hadn't completed the ballot, but they took it anyway. http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/22/Pasco/Election_chief_warns_.shtml
Republicans Mobilized
Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.
Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections…
Democrats said they were racing to match the Republicas, precinct by precinct. In some cities, like Dayton, they registered more challengers than the Republicans, election officials said. But in Cuyahoga County, where the Republicans said they had registered 1,436 people to challenge voters, or one in every precinct, Democrats said they had signed up only about 300.
The parties are also preparing to battle over voter qualifications in Florida, where they had until last Tuesday to register challengers. In Fort Myers, Republicans named 100 watchers for the county's 171 precincts, up from 60 in 2000. But Democrats registered 300 watchers in the county, a sixfold increase. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/politics/campaign/23vote.html?ei=5094&en=9f4420d7cc5a3720&hp=&ex=1098504000&oref=login&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position
The View from the Right: George Will makes comments that suggest that the problems lie with the Democratic voter registration efforts.
Given such measures, perhaps we should not be surprised that, as Fund reports, since 1995, Philadelphia's population has declined 13 percent but registered voters have increased 24 percent. Are we sure we should be pleased?
The unexamined belief that an ever-higher rate of voter registration is a Good Thing has met its limit in the center of the state that this year is the center of the political universe -- Ohio. The Census Bureau's 2003 estimate is that in Franklin County -- Columbus -- there are approximately 815,000 people 18 or older. But 845,720 are now registered.
One reason for such unacceptable numbers in various jurisdictions across the nation is that voter rolls are not frequently enough purged of voters whose status has changed. For example, in 2000, the Indianapolis Star's Bill Theobald reported that "hundreds of thousands of names, as many as one in five statewide" were improperly on Indiana registration rolls "because the people behind those names have moved, died or gone to prison." Unfortunately, there is reluctance, especially among Republicans, to support measures that might appear to have a "disparate impact" on minorities and therefore be denounced as racist. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55781-2004Oct22.html
Lie #8,243 Exposed. This one won’t get much play, since the others- including the ones that have resulted in the deaths of 1100+ Americans and 12,000+ Iraqis- have been ignored or treated gingerly by the press. Knight Ridder, [Meg Laughlin] again the source…
Former workers dispute Bush's pull in Project P.U.L.L.
President Bush often has cited his work in 1973 with a now-defunct inner-city program for troubled teens as the source for his belief in "compassionate conservatism."
"I realized then that a society can change and must change one person at a time ..." Bush said in a video shown at the 2000 Republican National Convention about his tenure at P.U.L.L., the Professional United Leadership League, whose executive director, John White, had played tight end for the Houston Oilers in the early 1960s.
But former associates of White, who died in 1988, have disputed in recent interviews much of Bush's version of his time at the program. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9990590.htm
CIA Purge post-election. Don’t expect Republican types to be ousted.
Porter Goss' initial moves as CIA director appear to herald a post-election purge at the already troubled spy agency, according to current and former top U.S. intelligence officials.
Goss, a former Republican congressman, has put at least four former Capitol Hill Republican staffers into top positions in his CIA office and has given them broad authority to make personnel and restructuring decisions, the current and former intelligence officials said.
One of the aides, whose identity Knight Ridder is not disclosing because he served under cover, has been "going around telling people they are to fire 80 to 90 people" in the Directorate of Operations, the CIA's covert arm, according to a former official. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9990739.htm
Polls Michigan? Clinton should hit Arkansas. Still even, but it’s only…
Iowa: Kerry 46, Bush 45 (Iowa Newspaper Assn)
Hawaii: Bush 43, Kerry 43 (Honolulu Advertiser)
Pennsylavnia: Kerry 48, Bush 46 (Morning Call)
Florida: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (St. Petersburgh Times/Miami Herald
Hawaii: Bush 46, Kerry 45 (Star-Bulletin)
Michigan: Bush 47, Kerry 42 (Detroit News)
Arkansas: Kerry 48, Bush 48 (Arkansas News Bureau)
Nevada: Bush 49, Kerry 47 (Research 2000)
Nevada: Bush 45, Kerry 41 (Belden Russonello Stewart)
Florida: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (St. Petersburgh Times/Miami Herald)
Missouri: Bush 50, Kerry 45 (Rasmussen)
Illinois: Kerry 50, Bush 42 (Chicago Tribune)
-R
What’s Happening, Iraq: Missing High Explosives
Another notable casualty of the sloppy early days of the Occupation-- 350 tons of high explosives have disappeared. They were looted during the early days of the US occupation and had been left unguarded. They are not only used for bombings in Iraq, but could also be used as part of the ‘triggering process’ for nukes. The Nelson Report notes that the Department of Defense had sought to keep this secret, from the U.S. public and from international agencies. More at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/ and http://www.talkingpointsmemo.org/ The Times picked it up this morning. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?hp&ex=1098763200&en=fd35fdf4b6d46d61&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Meanwhile, The bodies of 49 newly trained Iraqi national guard recruits, lined up and executed by insurgents, were discovered on a roadside about 75 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
In separate attacks, a member of the State Department's diplomatic security unit was killed when a rocket or mortar landed at a U.S. military base adjoining the Baghdad airport at 5 a.m. And a Bulgarian soldier was killed when a car bomb exploded near his convoy in Karbala. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58312-2004Oct24.html
Geneva? Que?
At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department drafted a confidential memo that authorizes the agency to transfer detainees out of Iraq for interrogation -- a practice that international legal specialists say contravenes the Geneva Conventions.
One intelligence official familiar with the operation said the CIA has used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly transporting as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months. The agency has concealed the detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross and other authorities, the official said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57363-2004Oct23.html
Bush Supporters Dumbing Down…and Down. The “PIPA” report:
Three out of 4 self-described supporters of President George W. Bush still believe that pre-war Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them. According to a new survey published Thursday, the same number also believes that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided "substantial support" to al Qaeda.
But here is the truly astonishing part: as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago. In other words, more people believe the claims today –- after the publication of a series of well-publicized official government reports that debunked both notions. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/20263/
PIPA is the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.
Fraud (Cont.) Ohio and Florida:
The caller interrupting a North Side couple’s dinner earlier this week said he was from the Franklin County Board of Elections.
He told the elderly woman that her voting site had changed and that on Nov. 2 she and her husband should cast their ballots at a South Side precinct. The caller even left the phone number of the board.
Her husband, who didn’t want their names published out of fear of retribution, called the board, sat through a long menu of automated options and finally spoke with an employee.
"They said there was no way in the world they would make such a call," he said. "I think it’s hankypanky and somebody in the election is trying to kill some votes."
At no time, Elections Director Matthew Damschroder said, does the board call voters. http://www.dispatch.com/election/election-local.php?story=dispatch/2004/10/22/20041022-A1-00.html
Pasco elections officials have a warning for the county's absentee voters: Don't give your ballot to a stranger claiming to be from the elections office.
They're not who they say they are.
"The people who are soliciting your ballots in this manner are not elections officials," Pasco Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning warned Thursday.
The warning came after a phone call from a west Pasco woman. Other Florida counties have gotten similar complaints.
"We've had a bunch of them - 100 at least," said Bob Sweat, elections supervisor for Manatee County. "It's probably going on all over the state of Florida."
The Pasco woman said someone came to her home to collect her absentee ballot earlier this week. She said she was led to believe they were from the elections office. The woman told the strangers she hadn't completed the ballot, but they took it anyway. http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/22/Pasco/Election_chief_warns_.shtml
Republicans Mobilized
Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.
Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections…
Democrats said they were racing to match the Republicas, precinct by precinct. In some cities, like Dayton, they registered more challengers than the Republicans, election officials said. But in Cuyahoga County, where the Republicans said they had registered 1,436 people to challenge voters, or one in every precinct, Democrats said they had signed up only about 300.
The parties are also preparing to battle over voter qualifications in Florida, where they had until last Tuesday to register challengers. In Fort Myers, Republicans named 100 watchers for the county's 171 precincts, up from 60 in 2000. But Democrats registered 300 watchers in the county, a sixfold increase. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/politics/campaign/23vote.html?ei=5094&en=9f4420d7cc5a3720&hp=&ex=1098504000&oref=login&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position
The View from the Right: George Will makes comments that suggest that the problems lie with the Democratic voter registration efforts.
Given such measures, perhaps we should not be surprised that, as Fund reports, since 1995, Philadelphia's population has declined 13 percent but registered voters have increased 24 percent. Are we sure we should be pleased?
The unexamined belief that an ever-higher rate of voter registration is a Good Thing has met its limit in the center of the state that this year is the center of the political universe -- Ohio. The Census Bureau's 2003 estimate is that in Franklin County -- Columbus -- there are approximately 815,000 people 18 or older. But 845,720 are now registered.
One reason for such unacceptable numbers in various jurisdictions across the nation is that voter rolls are not frequently enough purged of voters whose status has changed. For example, in 2000, the Indianapolis Star's Bill Theobald reported that "hundreds of thousands of names, as many as one in five statewide" were improperly on Indiana registration rolls "because the people behind those names have moved, died or gone to prison." Unfortunately, there is reluctance, especially among Republicans, to support measures that might appear to have a "disparate impact" on minorities and therefore be denounced as racist. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55781-2004Oct22.html
Lie #8,243 Exposed. This one won’t get much play, since the others- including the ones that have resulted in the deaths of 1100+ Americans and 12,000+ Iraqis- have been ignored or treated gingerly by the press. Knight Ridder, [Meg Laughlin] again the source…
Former workers dispute Bush's pull in Project P.U.L.L.
President Bush often has cited his work in 1973 with a now-defunct inner-city program for troubled teens as the source for his belief in "compassionate conservatism."
"I realized then that a society can change and must change one person at a time ..." Bush said in a video shown at the 2000 Republican National Convention about his tenure at P.U.L.L., the Professional United Leadership League, whose executive director, John White, had played tight end for the Houston Oilers in the early 1960s.
But former associates of White, who died in 1988, have disputed in recent interviews much of Bush's version of his time at the program. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9990590.htm
CIA Purge post-election. Don’t expect Republican types to be ousted.
Porter Goss' initial moves as CIA director appear to herald a post-election purge at the already troubled spy agency, according to current and former top U.S. intelligence officials.
Goss, a former Republican congressman, has put at least four former Capitol Hill Republican staffers into top positions in his CIA office and has given them broad authority to make personnel and restructuring decisions, the current and former intelligence officials said.
One of the aides, whose identity Knight Ridder is not disclosing because he served under cover, has been "going around telling people they are to fire 80 to 90 people" in the Directorate of Operations, the CIA's covert arm, according to a former official. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9990739.htm
Polls Michigan? Clinton should hit Arkansas. Still even, but it’s only…
Iowa: Kerry 46, Bush 45 (Iowa Newspaper Assn)
Hawaii: Bush 43, Kerry 43 (Honolulu Advertiser)
Pennsylavnia: Kerry 48, Bush 46 (Morning Call)
Florida: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (St. Petersburgh Times/Miami Herald
Hawaii: Bush 46, Kerry 45 (Star-Bulletin)
Michigan: Bush 47, Kerry 42 (Detroit News)
Arkansas: Kerry 48, Bush 48 (Arkansas News Bureau)
Nevada: Bush 49, Kerry 47 (Research 2000)
Nevada: Bush 45, Kerry 41 (Belden Russonello Stewart)
Florida: Kerry 46, Bush 46 (St. Petersburgh Times/Miami Herald)
Missouri: Bush 50, Kerry 45 (Rasmussen)
Illinois: Kerry 50, Bush 42 (Chicago Tribune)
-R
