Sunday, December 05, 2004
What’s Happening, Iraq: More troops, more deaths, Fallujah isn’t secure, plus increasing acknowledgement of the possibility of “civil war.”
But the original problem persists: US forces sweep through one neighborhood after another, only to find insurgents popping up in "cleared" areas.
The battle Monday killed one marine and wounded three others - a high cost against three insurgents, who had moved into a house 50 feet across the street from a newly established marine position at a Fallujah fire station. That house and several others nearby had been cleared just two days earlier. http://csmonitor.com/2004/1203/p06s02-woiq.html
Insurgents opened fire on a bus full of civilians and drove a car bomb into a national guard checkpoint in northern Iraq this morning, killing 20 Iraqis in the latest of a wave of attacks that has claimed more than 80 lives here since Friday.
The three-day surge in violence, aimed mostly at Iraqi security officers and others working with American authorities, has also elevated tensions between the Sunni Arabs who dominate the insurgency and their Shiite and Kurdish political rivals. On Saturday, dozens were killed in a bloody battle between a Shiite militia and Sunni rebels south of Baghdad, shortly after car bomb attacks on a Shiite mosque and a busload of Kurdish militiamen.
The attacks today came as leaders of mostly Sunni political groups met in Baghdad and added their voices to a growing movement to delay the national and provincial elections, now scheduled for Jan. 30, until the violence subsides. Leaders of Iraq's majority Shiite community have responded to earlier calls by insisting that the elections go forward as planned, and President Bush said Thursday that they must not be postponed.
But the leaders gathered here today, representing about 40 political parties and individuals, said that any elections held in the current climate would be viewed as illegitimate and would provoke further civil conflict.
"I warn the two sides that the situation is very serious," said Tawfik al Yassri, a member of Iraq's interim parliament and a leader of the Iraqi National Coalition party. "It will be the first seed of civil war." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/international/middleeast/05cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1102309200&en=8258b46f45eb37a8&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Prison Scandal Revisited: Washington Post editorial: Nothing has changed, as the Red Cross issues another stinging rebuke.
Yet the worst aspect of the Abu Ghraib scandal is this: The system survived its public exposure. The Bush administration is vigorously prosecuting the lowly reservists depicted in the Abu Ghraib photos, while brazenly defending the larger process it established for extracting intelligence from prisoners. No senior officers have acknowledged fault for authorizing harsh interrogation techniques or been held accountable by prosecutors or Congress. An official investigation into how the interrogation policies were drawn up and used, which was completed months ago, has never been released. No alteration has been made in the policies governing the system, including an extremely permissive definition of torture prepared under the direction of Mr. Gonzales, or a set of harsh techniques for interrogating prisoners approved by Mr. Rumsfeld.
By now it should be clear that Mr. Bush will perpetuate this systematic violation of human rights, and fundamental American values, unless checked by one of the other branches of government. The federal courts have begun to explore the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo; last week a federal judge in Washington elicited from a Pentagon official the admission that information obtained through torture could be used by the tribunals the administration has established in Guantanamo to judge whether detainees are "enemy combatants." Yet Congress has shirked its responsibility.
No hearings have been held on the prisoner abuse scandal in three months; no legislation has corrected the administration's twisted interpretation of torture or the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Rumsfeld, Gen. Sanchez and Mr. Gonzales have never been required to answer for their policy decisions. As long as such passivity continues, you can expect more disturbing reviews from the Red Cross. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36061-2004Dec4.html
More Prison Abuse Photos: There’s more to cover up…
The U.S. military has launched a criminal investigation into photographs that appear to show Navy SEALs in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees, and photos of what appear to be bloodied prisoners, one with a gun to his head.
Some of the photos have date stamps suggesting they were taken in May 2003, which could make them the earliest evidence of possible abuse of prisoners in Iraq. The far more brutal practices photographed in Abu Ghraib prison occurred months later. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20041203/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/seals_prisoner_photos
[Nuclear] Security. Global Inquiry into Nuclear Black Market Sales Stalls (LA Times) Good thing the Republicans were kept in office. They’ll keep us safe, especially since they do so well at forging international cooperation.
The global investigation into Abdul Qadeer Khan's black market trade in nuclear technology has stalled in a clash of national interests that threatens a full accounting of his secret partners and clients, according to interviews with diplomats and officials from several countries.International authorities fear the full scope of the Pakistani scientist's ring may never be known.Senior investigators said they were especially worried that dangerous elements of the illicit network of manufacturers and suppliers would remain undetected and capable of resuming operations once international pressures eased.Investigators also said that records obtained in Libya and elsewhere showed that some nuclear equipment purchased or manufactured by the network had yet to be found, raising the possibility that it was diverted to still unidentified customers. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-network5dec05,0,4762745,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
“Middle Class” Pain. Despite the federal tax cuts…
While fuel prices may be starting to skid, there's another expense closer to home that is upsetting many Americans: rising property taxes.
From Madison, Wis., to Bucks County, Pa., the local tax assessor is dipping deeper into homeowners' pockets as real estate prices rise and states share less of their tax revenue with local governments.
With people starting to receive their 2005 tax bills, the levies are squeezing the middle class and senior citizens - leaving them less to spend on everything from restaurants to roof repair. There is also concern the taxes could particularly hurt the home-buying chances of the young or civil servants such as firefighters. States such as New Jersey now have grass-roots efforts - verging on revolts - for reform. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1203/p01s01-usec.html
Tommy Thompson exits. What to make of this?
Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced Friday that he was resigning, and he expressed grave concern about the threat of a global flu epidemic and the possibility of a terrorist attack on the nation's food supply.
"For the life of me," he said, "I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do…We are importing a lot of food from the Middle East and it would be easy to tamper with that," he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/04/politics/04health.html?oref=login&hp&ex=1102222800&en=119916d35da95708&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Makes one hesitate to pick up the hoummos…
Why is the Right Attacking Kofi Annan?
The Right has been consistently maligning the UN. Ostensibly it’s about “corruption” with the Oil for Food program and with Kofi Annan’s son who enjoyed a lucrative, conflict-ridden consulting contract with Cotecna, a Swiss firm accused of abetting Saddam's abuse of the oil deals. That has purportedly prompted Sen. Norm Coleman, (R-Minn), who chairs a Senate committee investigating the scandal, to urge Annan to quit. That demand is now echoing around Congress with the conservative media- from the Wall Street Journal to Fox News to the cover of the National Review- leading the charge. We know it’s purely ideological. Joe Conason provides perspective.
Behind the attacks on Annan lies the broader purpose of bringing down the U.N. itself. Once praised by the likes of former Sen. Jesse Helms for implementing fiscal reform, the secretary general provoked deep enmity on the right by opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and by criticizing its illegality again last September during the U.S. presidential campaign. Worse yet, U.N. inspectors made the terrible mistake of being correct about the nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq.
For the Bush administration and its conservative allies, the U.N. represents embarrassment and obstruction. Seeing no value in debating and discussing world problems with lesser nations, they regard the U.N. as nothing but an unworthy obstacle to the exercise of American power. To them, the world body symbolizes all that they hate about multilateralism and diplomacy.
Certain starry-eyed neoconservatives broach the idea of a new global organzation that would only admit "legitimate" democratic governments (as defined, perhaps, by the Heritage Foundation or the Wall Street Journal editorial board). In the neocon scenario, the U.N. would be hollowed into a meaningless, impoverished shell, and left to such pariahs as Kim Jong Il and the Iranian mullahs. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/12/03/u_n/index.html
“Homeland Security”: From Ridge to Rambo. Bernie Kirek
With the former mayor having turned down the job, Bush took Giuliani’s police chief, pronouncing him ideally suited for the administrative job. Why? Let’s count the ways. 1) Kirek was in NYC for 9/11; 2) he did security work for the Saudi Royal Family; 3) he left the NYC police department as hundreds of retirements loomed and the city’s finances tightened; 4) he trained Iraqi police, and that’s gone just swell; 5) he was a fierce partisan for Bush in the swing states.
Really. That’s it…and Guiliani turned it down, then recommended Kirek, calling in a chit.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041202-115310-9067r.htm
Olbermann on Ohio:
Blackwell gets to wait until Monday to certify the state’s vote, even though all 88 counties in the Buckeye State have finished their own confirmations. Data is still sketchy, but it turns out election officials accepted about 77% of the provisional ballots — about 121,000 of them. No statewide count of the provisionals yet, though results reported by one county — Franklin (that's Columbus), indicated that Senator Kerry had gotten nearly 7,700 of the more-than 12,000 provisional votes counted.
But of all the developments out of Ohio, the most provocative, clearly, is still stalled under the weight of its own paperwork. The Alliance for Democracy is not quite ready with its challenge to the vote yet. Lawyer Cliff Arnebeck, with who else but Reverend Jackson by his side today on the steps of the Ohio Supreme Court, said that the group hopes to file its election challenge tomorrow — if not, Monday — but it’s not guaranteeing anything. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6533008/#041202a
Rummy Stays: In view of all else, it makes sense. Long live accountability!
-R
But the original problem persists: US forces sweep through one neighborhood after another, only to find insurgents popping up in "cleared" areas.
The battle Monday killed one marine and wounded three others - a high cost against three insurgents, who had moved into a house 50 feet across the street from a newly established marine position at a Fallujah fire station. That house and several others nearby had been cleared just two days earlier. http://csmonitor.com/2004/1203/p06s02-woiq.html
Insurgents opened fire on a bus full of civilians and drove a car bomb into a national guard checkpoint in northern Iraq this morning, killing 20 Iraqis in the latest of a wave of attacks that has claimed more than 80 lives here since Friday.
The three-day surge in violence, aimed mostly at Iraqi security officers and others working with American authorities, has also elevated tensions between the Sunni Arabs who dominate the insurgency and their Shiite and Kurdish political rivals. On Saturday, dozens were killed in a bloody battle between a Shiite militia and Sunni rebels south of Baghdad, shortly after car bomb attacks on a Shiite mosque and a busload of Kurdish militiamen.
The attacks today came as leaders of mostly Sunni political groups met in Baghdad and added their voices to a growing movement to delay the national and provincial elections, now scheduled for Jan. 30, until the violence subsides. Leaders of Iraq's majority Shiite community have responded to earlier calls by insisting that the elections go forward as planned, and President Bush said Thursday that they must not be postponed.
But the leaders gathered here today, representing about 40 political parties and individuals, said that any elections held in the current climate would be viewed as illegitimate and would provoke further civil conflict.
"I warn the two sides that the situation is very serious," said Tawfik al Yassri, a member of Iraq's interim parliament and a leader of the Iraqi National Coalition party. "It will be the first seed of civil war." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/international/middleeast/05cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1102309200&en=8258b46f45eb37a8&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Prison Scandal Revisited: Washington Post editorial: Nothing has changed, as the Red Cross issues another stinging rebuke.
Yet the worst aspect of the Abu Ghraib scandal is this: The system survived its public exposure. The Bush administration is vigorously prosecuting the lowly reservists depicted in the Abu Ghraib photos, while brazenly defending the larger process it established for extracting intelligence from prisoners. No senior officers have acknowledged fault for authorizing harsh interrogation techniques or been held accountable by prosecutors or Congress. An official investigation into how the interrogation policies were drawn up and used, which was completed months ago, has never been released. No alteration has been made in the policies governing the system, including an extremely permissive definition of torture prepared under the direction of Mr. Gonzales, or a set of harsh techniques for interrogating prisoners approved by Mr. Rumsfeld.
By now it should be clear that Mr. Bush will perpetuate this systematic violation of human rights, and fundamental American values, unless checked by one of the other branches of government. The federal courts have begun to explore the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo; last week a federal judge in Washington elicited from a Pentagon official the admission that information obtained through torture could be used by the tribunals the administration has established in Guantanamo to judge whether detainees are "enemy combatants." Yet Congress has shirked its responsibility.
No hearings have been held on the prisoner abuse scandal in three months; no legislation has corrected the administration's twisted interpretation of torture or the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Rumsfeld, Gen. Sanchez and Mr. Gonzales have never been required to answer for their policy decisions. As long as such passivity continues, you can expect more disturbing reviews from the Red Cross. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36061-2004Dec4.html
More Prison Abuse Photos: There’s more to cover up…
The U.S. military has launched a criminal investigation into photographs that appear to show Navy SEALs in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees, and photos of what appear to be bloodied prisoners, one with a gun to his head.
Some of the photos have date stamps suggesting they were taken in May 2003, which could make them the earliest evidence of possible abuse of prisoners in Iraq. The far more brutal practices photographed in Abu Ghraib prison occurred months later. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20041203/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/seals_prisoner_photos
[Nuclear] Security. Global Inquiry into Nuclear Black Market Sales Stalls (LA Times) Good thing the Republicans were kept in office. They’ll keep us safe, especially since they do so well at forging international cooperation.
The global investigation into Abdul Qadeer Khan's black market trade in nuclear technology has stalled in a clash of national interests that threatens a full accounting of his secret partners and clients, according to interviews with diplomats and officials from several countries.International authorities fear the full scope of the Pakistani scientist's ring may never be known.Senior investigators said they were especially worried that dangerous elements of the illicit network of manufacturers and suppliers would remain undetected and capable of resuming operations once international pressures eased.Investigators also said that records obtained in Libya and elsewhere showed that some nuclear equipment purchased or manufactured by the network had yet to be found, raising the possibility that it was diverted to still unidentified customers. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-network5dec05,0,4762745,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
“Middle Class” Pain. Despite the federal tax cuts…
While fuel prices may be starting to skid, there's another expense closer to home that is upsetting many Americans: rising property taxes.
From Madison, Wis., to Bucks County, Pa., the local tax assessor is dipping deeper into homeowners' pockets as real estate prices rise and states share less of their tax revenue with local governments.
With people starting to receive their 2005 tax bills, the levies are squeezing the middle class and senior citizens - leaving them less to spend on everything from restaurants to roof repair. There is also concern the taxes could particularly hurt the home-buying chances of the young or civil servants such as firefighters. States such as New Jersey now have grass-roots efforts - verging on revolts - for reform. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1203/p01s01-usec.html
Tommy Thompson exits. What to make of this?
Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced Friday that he was resigning, and he expressed grave concern about the threat of a global flu epidemic and the possibility of a terrorist attack on the nation's food supply.
"For the life of me," he said, "I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do…We are importing a lot of food from the Middle East and it would be easy to tamper with that," he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/04/politics/04health.html?oref=login&hp&ex=1102222800&en=119916d35da95708&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Makes one hesitate to pick up the hoummos…
Why is the Right Attacking Kofi Annan?
The Right has been consistently maligning the UN. Ostensibly it’s about “corruption” with the Oil for Food program and with Kofi Annan’s son who enjoyed a lucrative, conflict-ridden consulting contract with Cotecna, a Swiss firm accused of abetting Saddam's abuse of the oil deals. That has purportedly prompted Sen. Norm Coleman, (R-Minn), who chairs a Senate committee investigating the scandal, to urge Annan to quit. That demand is now echoing around Congress with the conservative media- from the Wall Street Journal to Fox News to the cover of the National Review- leading the charge. We know it’s purely ideological. Joe Conason provides perspective.
Behind the attacks on Annan lies the broader purpose of bringing down the U.N. itself. Once praised by the likes of former Sen. Jesse Helms for implementing fiscal reform, the secretary general provoked deep enmity on the right by opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and by criticizing its illegality again last September during the U.S. presidential campaign. Worse yet, U.N. inspectors made the terrible mistake of being correct about the nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq.
For the Bush administration and its conservative allies, the U.N. represents embarrassment and obstruction. Seeing no value in debating and discussing world problems with lesser nations, they regard the U.N. as nothing but an unworthy obstacle to the exercise of American power. To them, the world body symbolizes all that they hate about multilateralism and diplomacy.
Certain starry-eyed neoconservatives broach the idea of a new global organzation that would only admit "legitimate" democratic governments (as defined, perhaps, by the Heritage Foundation or the Wall Street Journal editorial board). In the neocon scenario, the U.N. would be hollowed into a meaningless, impoverished shell, and left to such pariahs as Kim Jong Il and the Iranian mullahs. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/12/03/u_n/index.html
“Homeland Security”: From Ridge to Rambo. Bernie Kirek
With the former mayor having turned down the job, Bush took Giuliani’s police chief, pronouncing him ideally suited for the administrative job. Why? Let’s count the ways. 1) Kirek was in NYC for 9/11; 2) he did security work for the Saudi Royal Family; 3) he left the NYC police department as hundreds of retirements loomed and the city’s finances tightened; 4) he trained Iraqi police, and that’s gone just swell; 5) he was a fierce partisan for Bush in the swing states.
Really. That’s it…and Guiliani turned it down, then recommended Kirek, calling in a chit.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041202-115310-9067r.htm
Olbermann on Ohio:
Blackwell gets to wait until Monday to certify the state’s vote, even though all 88 counties in the Buckeye State have finished their own confirmations. Data is still sketchy, but it turns out election officials accepted about 77% of the provisional ballots — about 121,000 of them. No statewide count of the provisionals yet, though results reported by one county — Franklin (that's Columbus), indicated that Senator Kerry had gotten nearly 7,700 of the more-than 12,000 provisional votes counted.
But of all the developments out of Ohio, the most provocative, clearly, is still stalled under the weight of its own paperwork. The Alliance for Democracy is not quite ready with its challenge to the vote yet. Lawyer Cliff Arnebeck, with who else but Reverend Jackson by his side today on the steps of the Ohio Supreme Court, said that the group hopes to file its election challenge tomorrow — if not, Monday — but it’s not guaranteeing anything. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6533008/#041202a
Rummy Stays: In view of all else, it makes sense. Long live accountability!
-R
