Friday, February 13, 2004
The president told Tim Russert that if you order a country to disarm and it doesn't and you don't act, you lose face. But how does a country that goes to war to disarm a country without arms get back its face? – Maureen Dowd, NY Times (more, below)
Greenspan The Republican. Let’s stop pretending that he’s serving us.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that Congress should make President Bush's tax cuts permanent and cover the $1 trillion price by trimming future benefits in Social Security and other entitlement programs.
Greenspan told the Senate Budget Committee that Congress, ``as a first order of business,'' should restore budget rules that cap discretionary government spending and require increases in entitlement benefits or cuts in taxes to be offset by other program cuts or other tax increases. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Greenspan.html
Pakistan, the Nuke Disseminator Finally they come clean and admit their numero uno, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has been spreading nukes around the world. Many of us might be confused that General/President Musharraf, armed with that knowledge, pardoned Khan. It makes more sense if you read some of the following from Democracy Now and Asia Times Online (Seema Sirohi).
BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast and Tariq Ali discuss how the Bush administration stopped an investigation that might have revealed Pakistan's top nuclear scientist helped share nuclear secrets with Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he long suspected his country's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was sharing nuclear secrets with other countries. This according to an hourlong interview with the New York Times.
Khan stunned the country last week when he confessed on television to selling nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Khan invented Pakistan’s nuclear bomb and is considered to be a national hero. He claimed he had acted without authorization from the government and begged forgiveness. Musharraf pardoned him days later.
At one point Musharraf suggested politics might have played a part in overlooking any suspected wrongdoing on Khan’s part saying "It was extremely sensitive. One couldn't outright start investigating as if he's any common criminal."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/10/151222
After the long, riveting drama by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's nuclear hero-turned high stakes proliferator, played to a packed world audience, the Bush administration could do little more than wring its hands in frustration because of the competing compulsions on US policy towards Islamabad.
In short, Pakistan policy is a puzzle, a big knot.
Washington was obliged to watch the choreography of Khan's "confession" and "pardon" without as much as a word of censure. There was only praise and support for President General Pervez Musharraf, who has made himself indispensable to US policy as the supreme frontier man in the "war against terror", even as he forgave Khan and vowed never to allow international inspections of his leaky nuclear program.
The Bush administration swallowed hard but gave Musharraf a pass. Demanding punishment for Khan would have meant forcing Musharraf to do the difficult job of prosecuting a "national hero" who is perhaps the only scientist in the world lionized for making the bomb. Rallies are held and placards carried in his honor because he made it happen - whether by begging, borrowing or stealing, it didn't matter. So once again Washington looked the other way, clenched its teeth and asked for the least difficult option - information to shut down the nuclear smuggling network. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB13Df04.html
How the Pakistani Network was Built- From the NY Times (William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, Raymond Bonner)
The scope and audacity of the illicit network are still not fully known. Nor is it known whether the Pakistani military or government, which had supported Dr. Khan's research, were complicit in his activities.
But what has become clear in recent days is that Dr. Khan, a Pakistani national hero who began his rise 30 years ago by importing nuclear equipment to secretly build his country's atom bomb, gradually transformed himself into the largest and most sophisticated exporter in the nuclear black market.
"It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before," said a senior American official who has reviewed the intelligence. "First, he exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/international/asia/12NUKE.html
Maureen Dowd added her snappy comment:
I think President Bush has cleared up everything now.
The U.S. invaded Iraq, which turned out not to have what our pals in Pakistan did have and were giving out willy-nilly to all the bad guys except Iraq, which wouldn't take it.
Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our enemy's country: that Iraq had W.M.D. and might sell them on the black market. But they were wrong.
Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our friend's country: that Pakistanis were trying to sell W.M.D. on the black market. But they couldn't prove it — until about the time we were invading Iraq.
"The grave and gathering threat" turned out to be not Saddam's mushroom cloud but the president's mushrooming deficits. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/opinion/12DOWD.html
Powell on Army Evaders- A letter to the editor
In Secretary of State Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, he says, "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army Reserve and National Guard units... Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." As a Purple Heart veteran and former infantryman in South Korea in 1950 with orders to "hold or die," I assure you that no Vietnam War coward who makes it to the White House and the title "Mr. President" will ever have my respect, let alone honor.
Richard D. Renew, Martinez, Ga.
--From the Tuesday, April 29, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle
Bush and the National Guard-It matters
The issue has traction. It is notable for the press finally being tigers; it is a story about the privileged using connections to avoid Vietnam; it’s still another example of the White House’s resistance/refusal to release information on issues of public concern; and it speaks to Bush’s mounting credibility problem with the general public. So, it matters…
Many are following this, pointing out the mysterious disappearance and addition of documents to Bush’s file, people surfacing who know that he was missing at the requisite times, questions arising every day. One such account via USA Today (Dave Moniz, Jim Drinkard)
Two forms in Bush's publicly released military files — his enlistment application and a background check — contain blacked-out entries in response to questions about arrests or convictions. Bush acknowledged in biographies published in 1999 that he was arrested twice before he enlisted in the Air National Guard: once for stealing a wreath and another time for rowdiness at a Yale-Princeton football game.
The nature of what was blacked out in Bush's records is important because certain legal problems, such as drug or alcohol violations, could have been a basis for denying an applicant entry into the Guard or pilot training. Admission to the Guard and to pilot school was highly competitive at that time, the height of the Vietnam War. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-11-bush-guard-usat_x.htm
Paul Krugman relates the National Guard issue to the need to puncture the mythic Bush, the heavily contrived effort to portray this simpleton as heroic… and the general public’s need to buy in.
Some of his critics hope that the AWOL issue will demolish the Bush myth, all at once. They're probably too optimistic — if it were that easy, the tale of Harken Energy would have already done the trick. The sad truth is that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality — a group that in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy — are very reluctant to give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that they had been played for fools. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/opinion/13KRUG.html
Cheney and Halliburton
For those who didn’t see Jane Mayer’s article in the New Yorker. More outrageous stuff re Cheney…
The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya, and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them. Yet during Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them," Mayer writes. "Yet during Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company avoid paying U.S. taxes." …
During the 2000 campaign, Cheney told ABC News that "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal.” But, under Cheney's watch, two foreign subsidiaries of Dresser sold millions of dollars worth of oil services and parts to Saddam's regime. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact
And, the U.S. Treasury Department has reportedly reopened an investigation into Halliburton's dealings with Iran, via a subsidiary that was featured in a recent "60 Minutes" segment, ‘Doing Business with the Enemy.’ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3548836
The al-Qaeda-Saddam Connection:
The Right hasn’t given up. The New York Times’ William Safire had a sorry op. ed. which missed the boat that the ostensible connection now announced via a found computer disc is current and doesn’t legitimize the pre-war nonsense. The Asian Times’ Pepe Escobar offers further clarification:
In the memo, al-Zarqawi allegedly appeals to the al-Qaeda leadership to help detonate a civil war in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'ites as the next definitive step to get rid of the Americans. For the Bush administration's spin machine, this is "the strongest evidence to date of contacts between extremists in Iraq and al-Qaeda".
This latest US intelligence, though, makes little sense. For starters, al-Qaeda pigeons are highly unlikely to move around with computer discs in their briefcases: since early 2002 a disabled al-Qaeda has used women couriers to deliver strictly verbal messages. The memo says that the resistance against the occupation is "struggling to recruit Iraqis". This is not borne out by the situation on the ground - the resistance continues, even rising, despite the capture of Saddam. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB13Ak02.html
Scandal for Kerry?:
It’s begun. If he’s the nominee, then let’s bury him! So Matt Drudge’s infamous web site posted Thursday that Kerry has an intern problem. Let’s see if it catches on in the next few days.
Police State update: Ashcroft wants the medical records from your abortion!!
The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.
Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what opponents call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, enacted last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions.
The department wants to examine the medical histories for what could amount to dozens of the doctors' patients in the last three years to determine, in part, whether the procedure, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, was in fact medically necessary, government lawyers said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/politics/12ABOR.html
-R
Greenspan The Republican. Let’s stop pretending that he’s serving us.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that Congress should make President Bush's tax cuts permanent and cover the $1 trillion price by trimming future benefits in Social Security and other entitlement programs.
Greenspan told the Senate Budget Committee that Congress, ``as a first order of business,'' should restore budget rules that cap discretionary government spending and require increases in entitlement benefits or cuts in taxes to be offset by other program cuts or other tax increases. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Greenspan.html
Pakistan, the Nuke Disseminator Finally they come clean and admit their numero uno, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has been spreading nukes around the world. Many of us might be confused that General/President Musharraf, armed with that knowledge, pardoned Khan. It makes more sense if you read some of the following from Democracy Now and Asia Times Online (Seema Sirohi).
BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast and Tariq Ali discuss how the Bush administration stopped an investigation that might have revealed Pakistan's top nuclear scientist helped share nuclear secrets with Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged for the first time yesterday that he long suspected his country's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was sharing nuclear secrets with other countries. This according to an hourlong interview with the New York Times.
Khan stunned the country last week when he confessed on television to selling nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. Khan invented Pakistan’s nuclear bomb and is considered to be a national hero. He claimed he had acted without authorization from the government and begged forgiveness. Musharraf pardoned him days later.
At one point Musharraf suggested politics might have played a part in overlooking any suspected wrongdoing on Khan’s part saying "It was extremely sensitive. One couldn't outright start investigating as if he's any common criminal."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/10/151222
After the long, riveting drama by Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's nuclear hero-turned high stakes proliferator, played to a packed world audience, the Bush administration could do little more than wring its hands in frustration because of the competing compulsions on US policy towards Islamabad.
In short, Pakistan policy is a puzzle, a big knot.
Washington was obliged to watch the choreography of Khan's "confession" and "pardon" without as much as a word of censure. There was only praise and support for President General Pervez Musharraf, who has made himself indispensable to US policy as the supreme frontier man in the "war against terror", even as he forgave Khan and vowed never to allow international inspections of his leaky nuclear program.
The Bush administration swallowed hard but gave Musharraf a pass. Demanding punishment for Khan would have meant forcing Musharraf to do the difficult job of prosecuting a "national hero" who is perhaps the only scientist in the world lionized for making the bomb. Rallies are held and placards carried in his honor because he made it happen - whether by begging, borrowing or stealing, it didn't matter. So once again Washington looked the other way, clenched its teeth and asked for the least difficult option - information to shut down the nuclear smuggling network. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB13Df04.html
How the Pakistani Network was Built- From the NY Times (William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, Raymond Bonner)
The scope and audacity of the illicit network are still not fully known. Nor is it known whether the Pakistani military or government, which had supported Dr. Khan's research, were complicit in his activities.
But what has become clear in recent days is that Dr. Khan, a Pakistani national hero who began his rise 30 years ago by importing nuclear equipment to secretly build his country's atom bomb, gradually transformed himself into the largest and most sophisticated exporter in the nuclear black market.
"It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before," said a senior American official who has reviewed the intelligence. "First, he exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments.” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/international/asia/12NUKE.html
Maureen Dowd added her snappy comment:
I think President Bush has cleared up everything now.
The U.S. invaded Iraq, which turned out not to have what our pals in Pakistan did have and were giving out willy-nilly to all the bad guys except Iraq, which wouldn't take it.
Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our enemy's country: that Iraq had W.M.D. and might sell them on the black market. But they were wrong.
Bush officials thought they knew what was going on inside our friend's country: that Pakistanis were trying to sell W.M.D. on the black market. But they couldn't prove it — until about the time we were invading Iraq.
"The grave and gathering threat" turned out to be not Saddam's mushroom cloud but the president's mushrooming deficits. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/opinion/12DOWD.html
Powell on Army Evaders- A letter to the editor
In Secretary of State Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, he says, "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in the Army Reserve and National Guard units... Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." As a Purple Heart veteran and former infantryman in South Korea in 1950 with orders to "hold or die," I assure you that no Vietnam War coward who makes it to the White House and the title "Mr. President" will ever have my respect, let alone honor.
Richard D. Renew, Martinez, Ga.
--From the Tuesday, April 29, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle
Bush and the National Guard-It matters
The issue has traction. It is notable for the press finally being tigers; it is a story about the privileged using connections to avoid Vietnam; it’s still another example of the White House’s resistance/refusal to release information on issues of public concern; and it speaks to Bush’s mounting credibility problem with the general public. So, it matters…
Many are following this, pointing out the mysterious disappearance and addition of documents to Bush’s file, people surfacing who know that he was missing at the requisite times, questions arising every day. One such account via USA Today (Dave Moniz, Jim Drinkard)
Two forms in Bush's publicly released military files — his enlistment application and a background check — contain blacked-out entries in response to questions about arrests or convictions. Bush acknowledged in biographies published in 1999 that he was arrested twice before he enlisted in the Air National Guard: once for stealing a wreath and another time for rowdiness at a Yale-Princeton football game.
The nature of what was blacked out in Bush's records is important because certain legal problems, such as drug or alcohol violations, could have been a basis for denying an applicant entry into the Guard or pilot training. Admission to the Guard and to pilot school was highly competitive at that time, the height of the Vietnam War. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-11-bush-guard-usat_x.htm
Paul Krugman relates the National Guard issue to the need to puncture the mythic Bush, the heavily contrived effort to portray this simpleton as heroic… and the general public’s need to buy in.
Some of his critics hope that the AWOL issue will demolish the Bush myth, all at once. They're probably too optimistic — if it were that easy, the tale of Harken Energy would have already done the trick. The sad truth is that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality — a group that in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy — are very reluctant to give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that they had been played for fools. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/opinion/13KRUG.html
Cheney and Halliburton
For those who didn’t see Jane Mayer’s article in the New Yorker. More outrageous stuff re Cheney…
The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya, and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them. Yet during Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company to avoid paying U.S. taxes.
The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them," Mayer writes. "Yet during Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries. In the case of Iraq, Halliburton legally evaded U.S. sanctions by conducting its oil-service business through foreign subsidiaries that had once been owned by Dresser. With Iran and Libya, Halliburton used its own subsidiaries. The use of foreign subsidiaries may have helped the company avoid paying U.S. taxes." …
During the 2000 campaign, Cheney told ABC News that "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal.” But, under Cheney's watch, two foreign subsidiaries of Dresser sold millions of dollars worth of oil services and parts to Saddam's regime. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact
And, the U.S. Treasury Department has reportedly reopened an investigation into Halliburton's dealings with Iran, via a subsidiary that was featured in a recent "60 Minutes" segment, ‘Doing Business with the Enemy.’ http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3548836
The al-Qaeda-Saddam Connection:
The Right hasn’t given up. The New York Times’ William Safire had a sorry op. ed. which missed the boat that the ostensible connection now announced via a found computer disc is current and doesn’t legitimize the pre-war nonsense. The Asian Times’ Pepe Escobar offers further clarification:
In the memo, al-Zarqawi allegedly appeals to the al-Qaeda leadership to help detonate a civil war in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'ites as the next definitive step to get rid of the Americans. For the Bush administration's spin machine, this is "the strongest evidence to date of contacts between extremists in Iraq and al-Qaeda".
This latest US intelligence, though, makes little sense. For starters, al-Qaeda pigeons are highly unlikely to move around with computer discs in their briefcases: since early 2002 a disabled al-Qaeda has used women couriers to deliver strictly verbal messages. The memo says that the resistance against the occupation is "struggling to recruit Iraqis". This is not borne out by the situation on the ground - the resistance continues, even rising, despite the capture of Saddam. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB13Ak02.html
Scandal for Kerry?:
It’s begun. If he’s the nominee, then let’s bury him! So Matt Drudge’s infamous web site posted Thursday that Kerry has an intern problem. Let’s see if it catches on in the next few days.
Police State update: Ashcroft wants the medical records from your abortion!!
The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.
Lawyers for the department say they need the records to defend a new law that prohibits what opponents call partial-birth abortions. A group of doctors at hospitals nationwide have challenged the law, enacted last November, arguing that it bars them from performing medically needed abortions.
The department wants to examine the medical histories for what could amount to dozens of the doctors' patients in the last three years to determine, in part, whether the procedure, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, was in fact medically necessary, government lawyers said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/politics/12ABOR.html
-R
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Lie #786: Rummy Weighs In
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he did not recall British Prime Minister Tony Blair's pre-war claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready to be deployed in 45 minutes. [2/10/04] http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040210/pl_afp/iraq_us_britain_rumsfeld_040210221018
White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim On Iraqi Strikes
Gist Was Hussein Could Launch in 45 Minutes
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 20, 2003;
The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.
The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17424-2003Jul19?language=printer
Follow-up: Bush on Meet the PressI certainly wouldn’t submit myself to such torture…can’t bear to watch. But, I read the transcript. Firstly, commentators aren’t rushing to ponder the meaning of Bush’s comment that we can pre-emptively attack a country if they have “the capacity to have a weapon.” So, if a country has the capacity to plan to build a weapon that they could use, then, look out!
The mis-statements are way too numerous to chart. So, I provide a link that did: (Center for American Progress)
"President Bush wouldn't have agreed to an hour long network interview without a good reason and today he had one: in the span of a week he's faced the dual challenges of a loss of credibility on the war in Iraq and his management of the economy.
"His statement this morning that he would cut the deficit in half is simply laughable. Analyses by independent organizations like Goldman Sachs, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Economic Development, and Decision Economics all project deficits of about $5 trillion over the next decade, even assuming a return to strong growth."
"The President's statement that there is 'good momentum' on the job creation front is dishonest: while we are averaging 72,000 new private sector jobs created per month, at that pace, it would not be until May 2007 that this President would have created his first net job. President Bush is well on his way to having the worst job creation record since the Great Depression. His bragging today only served to reinforce his lack of credibility on managing the nation's economy.
"And what the President referred to as a "word contest" regarding the threat from Iraq is, in fact, his attempt to change the rationale for going to war and rewrite the history of what has occurred. His argument today that Iraq had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and pass them into the hands of shadowy terrorist networks is inconsistent with the intelligence provided to him.
INFORMING CONGRESS OF INTELLIGENCE CAVEATS
CLAIM: "I went to Congress with the same intelligence. Congress saw the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at."
FACT ? CONGRESS WAS OUTRAGED AT PRESENTATION BY THE WHITE HOUSE: The New Republic reported, "Senators were outraged to find that intelligence info given to them omitted the qualifications and countervailing evidence that had
characterized the classified version and played up the claims that strengthened the administration's case for war."
According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), many House members were only convinced to support the war after the Administration "showed them a photograph of a small, unmanned airplane spraying a liquid in what appeared to be a test for delivering chemical and biological agents," despite the U.S. Air Force telling the Administration it "sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03; Wilkes Barre Times Leader, 1/6/04; WP, 9/26/03]
9/11 COMMISSION
CLAIM: "We have given extraordinary cooperation with Chairmen Kean and
Hamilton."
FACT ? WHITE HOUSE HAS STONEWALLED THE 9/11 COMMISSION: According to the Baltimore Sun, President Bush "opposed the outside inquiry" into September 11th. When Congress forced him to relent, Time Magazine reported he tried to choke its funding, noting, "the White House brushed off a request quietly made by 9-11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean" for adequate funding. Then, the NY Times reported, "President Bush declined to commit the White House to turning over highly classified intelligence reports to the independent federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite public threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan panel." And as the Akron Beacon Journal reported last week, "the 9/11 panel did not receive the speedy cooperation it expected. In a preliminary report last summer, the panel's co-chairmen, Thomas Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, a Democrat and former congressman from Indiana, complained about lengthy delays in gaining access to critical documents, federal employees and administration officials. They warned the lack of cooperation would prove damaging, ensuring that a full investigation would take that much longer to complete, if at all."
[Source: Baltimore Sun, 6/14/02; Time Magazine, 3/26/03; NY Times, 10/27/03; Akron Beacon Journal 2/2/04]
And, Bush claimed that his Administration has slowed the growth of discretionary federal spending. Actually, the average annual growth rate during Clinton’s eight years was 2.4% while it has been 11.8% during Bush’s first three years. http://slate.msn.com/id/2095184/ http://www.factcheck.org/printerFriendly.aspx?docid=139
What’s Happening, Iraq:Casualties are moving further back in the newspapers. Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s bombs each killed more than 50 Iraqis, but there weren’t American deaths, so… The is classic guerilla strategy, aiming to frighten off those who cooperate with the Occupier. The police are especially targeted.
WMD- Michael Massing in the NY Review of Books- A Strong summary:
This points to a larger problem. In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction— the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it. As journalists rush to chronicle the administration's failings on Iraq, they should pay some attention to their own. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922
What’s Happening, Afghanistan:Progress- or lack thereof report. From the leftist rag, the Wall Street Journal (Barnett Rubin)
In his State of the Union address, President Bush proclaimed that Afghanistan "has a new constitution, guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women." At the meeting of G-7 finance ministers last weekend, Afghanistan's minister provided a sober analysis of what it will take to make the constitution's words a reality: $28 billion over seven years, with about $6 billion supplied directly to the government's budget.
Without the resources needed to revive Afghanistan's legal economy, no one will be able to establish a stable government or implement the constitution. But Kabul is running out of money, and the amount offered falls far short of the need. Afghans cannot build a constitutional order on a criminalized base. The IMF says at least 40% of the economy is illicit: the drug trade, trafficking in emeralds and timber, smuggling of artifacts, land grabs by warlords, and trafficking of women. Income from illicit exports finances most of the imports and provides much of the demand for the remaining parts of the economy -- trade and construction. This illicit economy is the tax base for insecurity. Those who profit from it command resources to resist the rule of law. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107637522571725211,00.html?mod=todays%5Fus%5Fopinion%5Fhs
Kerry:
I never was a fan, and not just because he called me “Dick” even when I told him not to. But he will be tarred and feathered by unfair and outlandish charges. Today there were reports of a pathetic attempt to play the ‘race card’, referring to his “African-American wife”. [Teresa Heinz Kerry was born in Mozambique.] More importantly, he’s termed a captive of “special interests”. Well, of course all politicians are beholden, and Kerry’s not the most righteous in this respect [or almost any other]. But his PAC money contributions are 1/28th of what Bush’s are, so…
The Guardian noted Kerry’s backbone, reporting that Kerry would fight the GOP “smear machine”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3722161,00.html
Conservatives Getting Lukewarm re Bush
They’ll still vote for him, but the enthusiasm has waned. Combative Bill O’Reilly on Fox News was interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America”:
Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The anchor of his own show on Fox News said he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war.
"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly said in an inte
"What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?" asked O'Reilly, who had promised rival ABC last year he would publicly apologize if weapons were not found.
O'Reilly said he was "much more skeptical about the Bush administration now" since former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20040210-0550-campaign-bush-oreilly.html
Bush and Jobs: He Wants to Export ‘em!Gotta admire the honesty! (Not really) From the LA Times (Warren Vieth, Edwin Chen)
Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas
The loss of work to other countries, while painful in the short term, will enrich the economy eventually, his report to Congress says.
The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said Monday.
The embrace of foreign outsourcing, an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the economy.
"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."
The report, which predicts that the nation will reverse a three-year employment slide by creating 2.6 million jobs in 2004, is part of a weeklong effort by the administration to highlight signs that the recovery is picking up speed. Bush's economic stewardship has become a central issue in the presidential campaign, and the White House is eager to demonstrate that his policies are producing results. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-bushecon10feb10,1,6077937.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
A good sign that Kerry and other Democrats got right on it.
Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail, citing remarks by a top White House economic adviser, accused President Bush on Tuesday of encouraging companies to export jobs overseas.
"The Bush administration said that sending American jobs overseas is a good thing for America and good for the economy," Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement released by his campaign.
"They've delivered a double blow to America's workers — three million jobs destroyed on their watch, and now they want to export more of our jobs overseas. What in the world were they thinking?" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/11/politics/11JOBS.html
Military Analyst/Veteran David H. Hackworth on Scott Ritter
Like it or not, Maj. Scott Ritter had it right all along.
Most of the rest of us, from the president to his key advisers, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz and Tenet, to the majority of Congress and to most of the talking heads – including the pre-Iraq War NBC analyst David Kay, who reported WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) behind every Iraqi sand dune – blew it big-time when it came down to the awesome arsenal that Saddam had supposedly squirreled away.
Ritter, the United Nations’ chief weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998, took us all on – virtually alone, against incredible odds – stating, “Iraq is not a threat to the U.S.,” and begging the American people to take charge and not “sit back and allow your government to go to war against Iraq ... (without all) the facts on the table to back this war up.”
As per his reputation on training fields and battlefields, this granite-jawed former Marine stood his ground and never flinched. He reminds me of another two-fisted, tell-it-like-it-is Marine, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, the recipient of two Medals of Honor, who was almost drummed out of the Marine Corps twice: Once in the 1930s for calling Benito Mussolini a “fascist,” and once again a few years later when he rattled the military-industrial complex by daring to declare that “War is a racket.”
Ritter, too, took serious punishment from his critics – and instead of doing proper due diligence or asking hard questions, the media quickly piled on. It was not Fox’s finest hour when that network gleefully painted him as a 21st-century Benedict Arnold – not that he had many prime-time advocates anywhere else. Even CNN’s usually evenhanded Paula Zahn said to Ritter six months before America unleashed its miscalculated military solution on Iraq, “People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein’s Kool-Aid.”
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=52&rnd=257.75345692271156
-R
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he did not recall British Prime Minister Tony Blair's pre-war claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction ready to be deployed in 45 minutes. [2/10/04] http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040210/pl_afp/iraq_us_britain_rumsfeld_040210221018
White House Didn't Gain CIA Nod for Claim On Iraqi Strikes
Gist Was Hussein Could Launch in 45 Minutes
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 20, 2003;
The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.
The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week. Bush attributed the claim to the British government, but in a "Global Message" issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq "could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17424-2003Jul19?language=printer
Follow-up: Bush on Meet the PressI certainly wouldn’t submit myself to such torture…can’t bear to watch. But, I read the transcript. Firstly, commentators aren’t rushing to ponder the meaning of Bush’s comment that we can pre-emptively attack a country if they have “the capacity to have a weapon.” So, if a country has the capacity to plan to build a weapon that they could use, then, look out!
The mis-statements are way too numerous to chart. So, I provide a link that did: (Center for American Progress)
"President Bush wouldn't have agreed to an hour long network interview without a good reason and today he had one: in the span of a week he's faced the dual challenges of a loss of credibility on the war in Iraq and his management of the economy.
"His statement this morning that he would cut the deficit in half is simply laughable. Analyses by independent organizations like Goldman Sachs, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Economic Development, and Decision Economics all project deficits of about $5 trillion over the next decade, even assuming a return to strong growth."
"The President's statement that there is 'good momentum' on the job creation front is dishonest: while we are averaging 72,000 new private sector jobs created per month, at that pace, it would not be until May 2007 that this President would have created his first net job. President Bush is well on his way to having the worst job creation record since the Great Depression. His bragging today only served to reinforce his lack of credibility on managing the nation's economy.
"And what the President referred to as a "word contest" regarding the threat from Iraq is, in fact, his attempt to change the rationale for going to war and rewrite the history of what has occurred. His argument today that Iraq had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and pass them into the hands of shadowy terrorist networks is inconsistent with the intelligence provided to him.
INFORMING CONGRESS OF INTELLIGENCE CAVEATS
CLAIM: "I went to Congress with the same intelligence. Congress saw the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at."
FACT ? CONGRESS WAS OUTRAGED AT PRESENTATION BY THE WHITE HOUSE: The New Republic reported, "Senators were outraged to find that intelligence info given to them omitted the qualifications and countervailing evidence that had
characterized the classified version and played up the claims that strengthened the administration's case for war."
According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), many House members were only convinced to support the war after the Administration "showed them a photograph of a small, unmanned airplane spraying a liquid in what appeared to be a test for delivering chemical and biological agents," despite the U.S. Air Force telling the Administration it "sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03; Wilkes Barre Times Leader, 1/6/04; WP, 9/26/03]
9/11 COMMISSION
CLAIM: "We have given extraordinary cooperation with Chairmen Kean and
Hamilton."
FACT ? WHITE HOUSE HAS STONEWALLED THE 9/11 COMMISSION: According to the Baltimore Sun, President Bush "opposed the outside inquiry" into September 11th. When Congress forced him to relent, Time Magazine reported he tried to choke its funding, noting, "the White House brushed off a request quietly made by 9-11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean" for adequate funding. Then, the NY Times reported, "President Bush declined to commit the White House to turning over highly classified intelligence reports to the independent federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite public threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan panel." And as the Akron Beacon Journal reported last week, "the 9/11 panel did not receive the speedy cooperation it expected. In a preliminary report last summer, the panel's co-chairmen, Thomas Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, a Democrat and former congressman from Indiana, complained about lengthy delays in gaining access to critical documents, federal employees and administration officials. They warned the lack of cooperation would prove damaging, ensuring that a full investigation would take that much longer to complete, if at all."
[Source: Baltimore Sun, 6/14/02; Time Magazine, 3/26/03; NY Times, 10/27/03; Akron Beacon Journal 2/2/04]
And, Bush claimed that his Administration has slowed the growth of discretionary federal spending. Actually, the average annual growth rate during Clinton’s eight years was 2.4% while it has been 11.8% during Bush’s first three years. http://slate.msn.com/id/2095184/ http://www.factcheck.org/printerFriendly.aspx?docid=139
What’s Happening, Iraq:Casualties are moving further back in the newspapers. Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s bombs each killed more than 50 Iraqis, but there weren’t American deaths, so… The is classic guerilla strategy, aiming to frighten off those who cooperate with the Occupier. The police are especially targeted.
WMD- Michael Massing in the NY Review of Books- A Strong summary:
This points to a larger problem. In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction— the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it. As journalists rush to chronicle the administration's failings on Iraq, they should pay some attention to their own. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16922
What’s Happening, Afghanistan:Progress- or lack thereof report. From the leftist rag, the Wall Street Journal (Barnett Rubin)
In his State of the Union address, President Bush proclaimed that Afghanistan "has a new constitution, guaranteeing free elections and full participation by women." At the meeting of G-7 finance ministers last weekend, Afghanistan's minister provided a sober analysis of what it will take to make the constitution's words a reality: $28 billion over seven years, with about $6 billion supplied directly to the government's budget.
Without the resources needed to revive Afghanistan's legal economy, no one will be able to establish a stable government or implement the constitution. But Kabul is running out of money, and the amount offered falls far short of the need. Afghans cannot build a constitutional order on a criminalized base. The IMF says at least 40% of the economy is illicit: the drug trade, trafficking in emeralds and timber, smuggling of artifacts, land grabs by warlords, and trafficking of women. Income from illicit exports finances most of the imports and provides much of the demand for the remaining parts of the economy -- trade and construction. This illicit economy is the tax base for insecurity. Those who profit from it command resources to resist the rule of law. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107637522571725211,00.html?mod=todays%5Fus%5Fopinion%5Fhs
Kerry:
I never was a fan, and not just because he called me “Dick” even when I told him not to. But he will be tarred and feathered by unfair and outlandish charges. Today there were reports of a pathetic attempt to play the ‘race card’, referring to his “African-American wife”. [Teresa Heinz Kerry was born in Mozambique.] More importantly, he’s termed a captive of “special interests”. Well, of course all politicians are beholden, and Kerry’s not the most righteous in this respect [or almost any other]. But his PAC money contributions are 1/28th of what Bush’s are, so…
The Guardian noted Kerry’s backbone, reporting that Kerry would fight the GOP “smear machine”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3722161,00.html
Conservatives Getting Lukewarm re Bush
They’ll still vote for him, but the enthusiasm has waned. Combative Bill O’Reilly on Fox News was interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America”:
Conservative television news anchor Bill O'Reilly said Tuesday he was now skeptical about the Bush administration and apologized to viewers for supporting prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The anchor of his own show on Fox News said he was sorry he gave the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons program poised an imminent threat, the main reason cited for going to war.
"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this," O'Reilly said in an inte
"What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?" asked O'Reilly, who had promised rival ABC last year he would publicly apologize if weapons were not found.
O'Reilly said he was "much more skeptical about the Bush administration now" since former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20040210-0550-campaign-bush-oreilly.html
Bush and Jobs: He Wants to Export ‘em!Gotta admire the honesty! (Not really) From the LA Times (Warren Vieth, Edwin Chen)
Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas
The loss of work to other countries, while painful in the short term, will enrich the economy eventually, his report to Congress says.
The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said Monday.
The embrace of foreign outsourcing, an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the economy.
"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."
The report, which predicts that the nation will reverse a three-year employment slide by creating 2.6 million jobs in 2004, is part of a weeklong effort by the administration to highlight signs that the recovery is picking up speed. Bush's economic stewardship has become a central issue in the presidential campaign, and the White House is eager to demonstrate that his policies are producing results. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-bushecon10feb10,1,6077937.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
A good sign that Kerry and other Democrats got right on it.
Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail, citing remarks by a top White House economic adviser, accused President Bush on Tuesday of encouraging companies to export jobs overseas.
"The Bush administration said that sending American jobs overseas is a good thing for America and good for the economy," Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement released by his campaign.
"They've delivered a double blow to America's workers — three million jobs destroyed on their watch, and now they want to export more of our jobs overseas. What in the world were they thinking?" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/11/politics/11JOBS.html
Military Analyst/Veteran David H. Hackworth on Scott Ritter
Like it or not, Maj. Scott Ritter had it right all along.
Most of the rest of us, from the president to his key advisers, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz and Tenet, to the majority of Congress and to most of the talking heads – including the pre-Iraq War NBC analyst David Kay, who reported WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) behind every Iraqi sand dune – blew it big-time when it came down to the awesome arsenal that Saddam had supposedly squirreled away.
Ritter, the United Nations’ chief weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998, took us all on – virtually alone, against incredible odds – stating, “Iraq is not a threat to the U.S.,” and begging the American people to take charge and not “sit back and allow your government to go to war against Iraq ... (without all) the facts on the table to back this war up.”
As per his reputation on training fields and battlefields, this granite-jawed former Marine stood his ground and never flinched. He reminds me of another two-fisted, tell-it-like-it-is Marine, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, the recipient of two Medals of Honor, who was almost drummed out of the Marine Corps twice: Once in the 1930s for calling Benito Mussolini a “fascist,” and once again a few years later when he rattled the military-industrial complex by daring to declare that “War is a racket.”
Ritter, too, took serious punishment from his critics – and instead of doing proper due diligence or asking hard questions, the media quickly piled on. It was not Fox’s finest hour when that network gleefully painted him as a 21st-century Benedict Arnold – not that he had many prime-time advocates anywhere else. Even CNN’s usually evenhanded Paula Zahn said to Ritter six months before America unleashed its miscalculated military solution on Iraq, “People out there are accusing you of drinking Saddam Hussein’s Kool-Aid.”
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=52&rnd=257.75345692271156
-R
Monday, February 09, 2004
But David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world.
And I made the decision to go to the United Nations
Bush W/ Tim Russert on Meet the Press
The mass reaction, especially from conservatives, was that Bush seemed strikingly un-presidential. Only Cokie Roberts on NPR held a positive view of the performance, that Bush had ‘made his case’. Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan:
The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse. He did not seem prepared. He seemed in some way disconnected from the event. When he was thrown the semisoftball question on his National Guard experience--he's been thrown this question for 10 years now--he spoke in a way that seemed detached. "It's politics." Well yes, we know that. Tell us more
Mr. Bush's supporters expect him to do well in speeches, and to inspire them in speeches. And he has in the past. The recent State of the Union was a good speech but not a great one, and because of that some Bush supporters were disappointed. They put the bar high for Mr. Bush in speeches, and he clears the bar. But his supporters don't really expect to be inspired by his interviews. http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/
Krugman I (last Friday’s column) …Have We Finally Had Enough?
The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.
The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.
I'd like to think that the administration's crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won't let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/opinion/06KRUG.html
You Can’t Make These Things Up:
The AP story:
President Bush asked Congress to eliminate an $8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins — the same day a poison-laced letter shuttered Senate offices. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=703&e=6&u=/ap/20040206/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ricin_bush
Russert Interview, II:
Several times during the exchange Bush said that he had released his military records back in 2000.
MR. RUSSERT: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, absolutely.
We did so in 2000, by the way.
Bush never released those records. No one has disputes that.
Again, he lies as he breathes…
What’s Happening, Iraq: Slaughter of the Educated
A very unsettling account in the NY Times (Jeffrey Gettleman). What we hath wrought with our invasion by choice.
They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."
These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from — and in some ways more insidious than — the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.
But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/international/middleeast/07ASSA.html?ei=5062&en=f2848e5dfb0a2326&ex=1076734800&adxnnl=1&partner=GOOGLE&adxnnlx=1076156328-xcqmhKZ8n045KtdVUSBIYA
Krugman, II: On Kevin Phillips’ book, American Dynasty (the Bushes) and the Suskind/Paul O’Neill book, The Price of Loyalty [NY Review of Books]
Halliburton's reported expenses for transporting gasoline are, for some reason, much higher than anyone else's. But the real question is why Halliburton chose that particular supplier—a company with little experience in the oil business, mysteriously selected as the sole source of gasoline after what appears to have been a highly improper bidding procedure. Why did it get the job? We don't know. But it's interesting to note that the company appears to be closely connected with the al-Sabahs, Kuwait's royal family. And the al-Sabahs, in turn, have in the past had close business ties with the Bush family, in particular the President's brother Marvin.
In any previous administration—at least any administration of the past seventy years—this sort of incestuous relationship among foreign governments, private businesses, and the personal fortunes of people in or close to the US government would have been considered unusual and prima facie scandalous. What we learn from Kevin Phillips's new book, however, is that this kind of intertwining of public policy and personal self-interest has been standard operating procedure not just for George W. Bush, but for his entire family.
______
While the Kennedys and the Rockefellers may have a sense of entitlement, they also display a sense of noblesse oblige—what one might call an urge to repay, with charitable contributions and public service, their good fortune. The Bushes don't have that problem; there are no philanthropists or reformers in the clan. They seek public office but, if anything, they seem to feel that the public is there to serve them
Suskind:
Still, officials remained concerned about a sluggish economy. But what was the cause of that sluggishness? The President, according to his secretary of the Treasury, had a sim-ple answer: "SEC overreach." That is, those nasty regulators, in their attempt to crack down on corporate malfeasance, were making executives and investors nervous, depressing the economy. Here's how Suskind describes the moment:
O'Neill couldn't quite believe what he was hearing—SEC overreach? No wonder the White House had backed off from the toughest medicine for crooked executives and eventually ceded the corporate governance debate to Congress. How, though, could the President believe that the largely overwhelmed SEC had any significant effect on the vast US economy?
Kevin Phillips could, of course, have told him: Bush—whose own business career had involved some remarkably Enron-like moments—was revealing his instinctive, indeed inbred sympathy for corporate insiders, and his antipathy toward anyone who might try to enforce accountability.
Aside from the report of Bush's amazing outburst, what we learn from Suskind's description of that meeting is that, in private, top administration officials conceded the very points that they vehemently denied when responding to outside critics. They knew that they were being fiscally irresponsible. "The budget hole is getting deeper," warned budget director Mitch Daniels. "We are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." (And this was before the 2003 tax cut.)
They also knew that their policies heavily favored rich people—indeed, in an uncharacteristic moment Bush himself seemed uneasy over the tilt, asking, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" And when Bush asked, "What are we doing on compassion?," no one answered.
But what they said in public was the exact opposite. In private Bush might worry that his tax plan was too friendly to the rich; in public he insisted that "the vast majority of my tax cut goes to the bottom of the economic spectrum." In private Dick Cheney told O'Neill that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." In public he described himself as a "deficit hawk." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16911
Intelligence Commission:
McCain is there for credibility, the rest of the panel knows nothing about intelligence, the leading “jurist”, Laurence Silberman, is a Republican hack who’s pardoned Ollie North and played a role in the pre-election sabotage of the 1980 elections, the negotiation with the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages until after Reagan (hopefully) defeats Carter.
Finally, the executive order that authorized the commission doesn’t authorize subpoena power and leaves cooperation to be at the discretion of the department heads of the executive branch agencies, i.e. it’s a toothless commission that depends on the Administration’s voluntary cooperation. And, as we know, the Commission is not supposed to address what the Administration did with the intelligence.
And, as Walter Pincus and Dana Priest note in their report,
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
Clear-Cut Assertions Were Made Before Arms Assessment Was Completed
In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday.
In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20194-2004Feb6.html
Wall Street Journal’s Albert Hunt on the Bush Budget
…the pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009 is even phonier. That's conceivable if the Bush, or another, administration accepts a whopping tax hike on the middle class; this budget assumes no action after this year on the alternative minimum tax. Or if the war on terrorism ends after this year; there's nothing budgeted beyond 2004. Or if draconian cuts in education and other popular domestic programs are enacted after the November election. There are gimmicks galore: a $65 billion health-care tax credit will be offset by other savings; none are specified.
More likely, the 2009 deficit will be closer to $500 billion than $237 billion. Moreover, after that the picture worsens as the baby boomers start retiring.
The president's priority obviously is tax cuts, disproportionately for the wealthy. These come at a price. There are budget cuts proposed for this year in low-income housing and environmental programs among others.
Important investments are brushed aside, the National Institutes of Health -- the gold standard of medical research in the world -- has flourished as its budget doubled over the last five years. President Bush proposes to end the priority for this medical research, with no increase in real spending this year and subsequent reductions. Funds for the Centers for Disease Control, the envy of the world, would be sliced. And for all the rhetoric about homeland security, funding for first responders, especially firefighters, would be cut. Firefighters, Mr. Rove reasons, are aligned with Democrats -- unless you're a Republican and your house is burning down.
When it comes to sacrifice, the Bush budget considers the rich conscientious objectors, but doesn't spare others. The authoritative Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group, calculates that by 2009 funding for domestic discretionary programs, outside of homeland security, will be cut more than 11% from the current level. That's education, law enforcement, national parks and firefighters.
Most outrageous are the proposed new budget rules: these would reinstate the old pay-as-you-go budgetary discipline for spending programs, including entitlements, but not for tax cuts. In short, any added benefits for Social Security or Medicare would have to be offset by accompanying spending reductions. But tax cuts would be a fiscal free-lunch under the Bush proposals. www.wsj.com
Republican Dirty Tricks:
They play to win. Rumors as to their “cooperating” with the Nader campaign in 2000 are now followed by more confirmed reports of their being overly friendly with the Sharpton campaign. From the Village Voice (Wayne Barrett) :
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.
Though Stone and Sharpton have tried to reduce their alliance to a curiosity, suggesting that all they do is talk occasionally, a Voice investigation has documented an extraordinary array of connections. Stone played a pivotal role in putting together Sharpton's pending application for federal matching funds, getting dollars in critical states from family members and political allies at odds with everything Sharpton represents. He's also helped stack the campaign with a half-dozen incongruous top aides who've worked for him in prior campaigns. He's even boasted about engineering six-figure loans to Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) and allowing Sharpton to use his credit card to cover thousands in NAN costs—neither of which he could legally do for the campaign. In a wide-ranging Voice interview Sunday, Stone confirmed his matching-fund and staffing roles, but refused to comment on the NAN subsidies.
Sharpton denounced the Voice's inquiries as "phony liberal paternalism," insisting that he'd "talk to anyone I want" and likening his use of Stone to Bill Clinton's reliance on pollster Dick Morris, saying he was "sick of these racist double standards." He did not dispute that Stone had helped generate matching contributions and staff the campaign. Asked about the Stone loans, he conceded that he "asked him to help NAN," but attributed the financial aid to his and Stone's joint "fight against the Rockefeller drug laws…
Recruited in 2000 by his friend James Baker, the former secretary of state, to spearhead the GOP street forces in Miami, Stone is apparently confident that he can use the Democrat-bashing preacher to damage the party's eventual nominee, just as Sharpton himself bragged he did in the New York mayoral campaign of 2001. In his 2002 book, Al on America, Sharpton wrote that he felt the city's Democratic Party "had to be taught a lesson" in 2001—insisting that Mark Green, who defeated the Sharpton-backed Fernando Ferrer in a bitter runoff, had disrespected him and minorities. Adding that the party "still has to be taught one nationally," he warned: "A lot of 2004 will be about what happened in New York in 2001. It's about dignity." In 2001, Sharpton engaged in a behind-the-scenes dialogue with campaign aides to Republican Mike Bloomberg while publicly disparaging Green. http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0405/barrett.php
More on Bush’s Support for the Troops:
Another comment from the South. It isn’t a lock…
Do you support our troops? If so, prepare to be outraged that our commander in chief does not.
The Bush Administration's 2004 budget proposed gutting Veterans Administration (VA) services, including health care funding. Proposed cuts included: denying at least 360,000 veterans access to health care; $250 annual premiums; increased pharmacy co-payments; a 30 percent increased primary care co-payments; and increased waiting time for a first medical appointment.
Because of budgetary shortfalls, the VA suspended the enrollment of veterans not injured in service earning between $24,450 and $38,100 annually. VFW officials estimated the administration's VA budget is at least $2 billion short of meeting the demand for quality health care.
The FY 2004 budget approved by Congress calls for reducing VA funding over a 10-year period by $6.2 billion. Cuts are in the areas of veterans' health care and disability benefits.
The cuts affect VA discretionary funding, which could mean discontinuation of burial benefits for veterans or delays in the cost-of-living adjustment for disability benefits.
Some veterans must pay a new $250 annual enrollment fee to join the VA healthcare system. The VA believes 1.25 million veterans nationwide, already under the VA healthcare plan, may no longer be able to participate because of the new fee.
Veterans who can remain under the VA health-care system will pay increased co-payments for physician benefits and prescription drug cost, amounting to an estimated increase in out-of-pocket expenses of $347 each year. http://www.usavanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/01/28/401970abb42d7
-R
And I made the decision to go to the United Nations
Bush W/ Tim Russert on Meet the Press
The mass reaction, especially from conservatives, was that Bush seemed strikingly un-presidential. Only Cokie Roberts on NPR held a positive view of the performance, that Bush had ‘made his case’. Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan:
The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse. He did not seem prepared. He seemed in some way disconnected from the event. When he was thrown the semisoftball question on his National Guard experience--he's been thrown this question for 10 years now--he spoke in a way that seemed detached. "It's politics." Well yes, we know that. Tell us more
Mr. Bush's supporters expect him to do well in speeches, and to inspire them in speeches. And he has in the past. The recent State of the Union was a good speech but not a great one, and because of that some Bush supporters were disappointed. They put the bar high for Mr. Bush in speeches, and he clears the bar. But his supporters don't really expect to be inspired by his interviews. http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/
Krugman I (last Friday’s column) …Have We Finally Had Enough?
The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.
The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.
I'd like to think that the administration's crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won't let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough? http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/opinion/06KRUG.html
You Can’t Make These Things Up:
The AP story:
President Bush asked Congress to eliminate an $8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins — the same day a poison-laced letter shuttered Senate offices. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&ncid=703&e=6&u=/ap/20040206/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ricin_bush
Russert Interview, II:
Several times during the exchange Bush said that he had released his military records back in 2000.
MR. RUSSERT: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, absolutely.
We did so in 2000, by the way.
Bush never released those records. No one has disputes that.
Again, he lies as he breathes…
What’s Happening, Iraq: Slaughter of the Educated
A very unsettling account in the NY Times (Jeffrey Gettleman). What we hath wrought with our invasion by choice.
They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."
These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from — and in some ways more insidious than — the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.
But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/international/middleeast/07ASSA.html?ei=5062&en=f2848e5dfb0a2326&ex=1076734800&adxnnl=1&partner=GOOGLE&adxnnlx=1076156328-xcqmhKZ8n045KtdVUSBIYA
Krugman, II: On Kevin Phillips’ book, American Dynasty (the Bushes) and the Suskind/Paul O’Neill book, The Price of Loyalty [NY Review of Books]
Halliburton's reported expenses for transporting gasoline are, for some reason, much higher than anyone else's. But the real question is why Halliburton chose that particular supplier—a company with little experience in the oil business, mysteriously selected as the sole source of gasoline after what appears to have been a highly improper bidding procedure. Why did it get the job? We don't know. But it's interesting to note that the company appears to be closely connected with the al-Sabahs, Kuwait's royal family. And the al-Sabahs, in turn, have in the past had close business ties with the Bush family, in particular the President's brother Marvin.
In any previous administration—at least any administration of the past seventy years—this sort of incestuous relationship among foreign governments, private businesses, and the personal fortunes of people in or close to the US government would have been considered unusual and prima facie scandalous. What we learn from Kevin Phillips's new book, however, is that this kind of intertwining of public policy and personal self-interest has been standard operating procedure not just for George W. Bush, but for his entire family.
______
While the Kennedys and the Rockefellers may have a sense of entitlement, they also display a sense of noblesse oblige—what one might call an urge to repay, with charitable contributions and public service, their good fortune. The Bushes don't have that problem; there are no philanthropists or reformers in the clan. They seek public office but, if anything, they seem to feel that the public is there to serve them
Suskind:
Still, officials remained concerned about a sluggish economy. But what was the cause of that sluggishness? The President, according to his secretary of the Treasury, had a sim-ple answer: "SEC overreach." That is, those nasty regulators, in their attempt to crack down on corporate malfeasance, were making executives and investors nervous, depressing the economy. Here's how Suskind describes the moment:
O'Neill couldn't quite believe what he was hearing—SEC overreach? No wonder the White House had backed off from the toughest medicine for crooked executives and eventually ceded the corporate governance debate to Congress. How, though, could the President believe that the largely overwhelmed SEC had any significant effect on the vast US economy?
Kevin Phillips could, of course, have told him: Bush—whose own business career had involved some remarkably Enron-like moments—was revealing his instinctive, indeed inbred sympathy for corporate insiders, and his antipathy toward anyone who might try to enforce accountability.
Aside from the report of Bush's amazing outburst, what we learn from Suskind's description of that meeting is that, in private, top administration officials conceded the very points that they vehemently denied when responding to outside critics. They knew that they were being fiscally irresponsible. "The budget hole is getting deeper," warned budget director Mitch Daniels. "We are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." (And this was before the 2003 tax cut.)
They also knew that their policies heavily favored rich people—indeed, in an uncharacteristic moment Bush himself seemed uneasy over the tilt, asking, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" And when Bush asked, "What are we doing on compassion?," no one answered.
But what they said in public was the exact opposite. In private Bush might worry that his tax plan was too friendly to the rich; in public he insisted that "the vast majority of my tax cut goes to the bottom of the economic spectrum." In private Dick Cheney told O'Neill that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." In public he described himself as a "deficit hawk." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16911
Intelligence Commission:
McCain is there for credibility, the rest of the panel knows nothing about intelligence, the leading “jurist”, Laurence Silberman, is a Republican hack who’s pardoned Ollie North and played a role in the pre-election sabotage of the 1980 elections, the negotiation with the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages until after Reagan (hopefully) defeats Carter.
Finally, the executive order that authorized the commission doesn’t authorize subpoena power and leaves cooperation to be at the discretion of the department heads of the executive branch agencies, i.e. it’s a toothless commission that depends on the Administration’s voluntary cooperation. And, as we know, the Commission is not supposed to address what the Administration did with the intelligence.
And, as Walter Pincus and Dana Priest note in their report,
Bush, Aides Ignored CIA Caveats on Iraq
Clear-Cut Assertions Were Made Before Arms Assessment Was Completed
In its fall 2002 campaign to win congressional support for a war against Iraq, President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons that CIA Director George J. Tenet defended Thursday.
In fact, they made some of their most unequivocal assertions about unconventional weapons before the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was completed http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20194-2004Feb6.html
Wall Street Journal’s Albert Hunt on the Bush Budget
…the pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009 is even phonier. That's conceivable if the Bush, or another, administration accepts a whopping tax hike on the middle class; this budget assumes no action after this year on the alternative minimum tax. Or if the war on terrorism ends after this year; there's nothing budgeted beyond 2004. Or if draconian cuts in education and other popular domestic programs are enacted after the November election. There are gimmicks galore: a $65 billion health-care tax credit will be offset by other savings; none are specified.
More likely, the 2009 deficit will be closer to $500 billion than $237 billion. Moreover, after that the picture worsens as the baby boomers start retiring.
The president's priority obviously is tax cuts, disproportionately for the wealthy. These come at a price. There are budget cuts proposed for this year in low-income housing and environmental programs among others.
Important investments are brushed aside, the National Institutes of Health -- the gold standard of medical research in the world -- has flourished as its budget doubled over the last five years. President Bush proposes to end the priority for this medical research, with no increase in real spending this year and subsequent reductions. Funds for the Centers for Disease Control, the envy of the world, would be sliced. And for all the rhetoric about homeland security, funding for first responders, especially firefighters, would be cut. Firefighters, Mr. Rove reasons, are aligned with Democrats -- unless you're a Republican and your house is burning down.
When it comes to sacrifice, the Bush budget considers the rich conscientious objectors, but doesn't spare others. The authoritative Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group, calculates that by 2009 funding for domestic discretionary programs, outside of homeland security, will be cut more than 11% from the current level. That's education, law enforcement, national parks and firefighters.
Most outrageous are the proposed new budget rules: these would reinstate the old pay-as-you-go budgetary discipline for spending programs, including entitlements, but not for tax cuts. In short, any added benefits for Social Security or Medicare would have to be offset by accompanying spending reductions. But tax cuts would be a fiscal free-lunch under the Bush proposals. www.wsj.com
Republican Dirty Tricks:
They play to win. Rumors as to their “cooperating” with the Nader campaign in 2000 are now followed by more confirmed reports of their being overly friendly with the Sharpton campaign. From the Village Voice (Wayne Barrett) :
Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton.
Though Stone and Sharpton have tried to reduce their alliance to a curiosity, suggesting that all they do is talk occasionally, a Voice investigation has documented an extraordinary array of connections. Stone played a pivotal role in putting together Sharpton's pending application for federal matching funds, getting dollars in critical states from family members and political allies at odds with everything Sharpton represents. He's also helped stack the campaign with a half-dozen incongruous top aides who've worked for him in prior campaigns. He's even boasted about engineering six-figure loans to Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) and allowing Sharpton to use his credit card to cover thousands in NAN costs—neither of which he could legally do for the campaign. In a wide-ranging Voice interview Sunday, Stone confirmed his matching-fund and staffing roles, but refused to comment on the NAN subsidies.
Sharpton denounced the Voice's inquiries as "phony liberal paternalism," insisting that he'd "talk to anyone I want" and likening his use of Stone to Bill Clinton's reliance on pollster Dick Morris, saying he was "sick of these racist double standards." He did not dispute that Stone had helped generate matching contributions and staff the campaign. Asked about the Stone loans, he conceded that he "asked him to help NAN," but attributed the financial aid to his and Stone's joint "fight against the Rockefeller drug laws…
Recruited in 2000 by his friend James Baker, the former secretary of state, to spearhead the GOP street forces in Miami, Stone is apparently confident that he can use the Democrat-bashing preacher to damage the party's eventual nominee, just as Sharpton himself bragged he did in the New York mayoral campaign of 2001. In his 2002 book, Al on America, Sharpton wrote that he felt the city's Democratic Party "had to be taught a lesson" in 2001—insisting that Mark Green, who defeated the Sharpton-backed Fernando Ferrer in a bitter runoff, had disrespected him and minorities. Adding that the party "still has to be taught one nationally," he warned: "A lot of 2004 will be about what happened in New York in 2001. It's about dignity." In 2001, Sharpton engaged in a behind-the-scenes dialogue with campaign aides to Republican Mike Bloomberg while publicly disparaging Green. http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0405/barrett.php
More on Bush’s Support for the Troops:
Another comment from the South. It isn’t a lock…
Do you support our troops? If so, prepare to be outraged that our commander in chief does not.
The Bush Administration's 2004 budget proposed gutting Veterans Administration (VA) services, including health care funding. Proposed cuts included: denying at least 360,000 veterans access to health care; $250 annual premiums; increased pharmacy co-payments; a 30 percent increased primary care co-payments; and increased waiting time for a first medical appointment.
Because of budgetary shortfalls, the VA suspended the enrollment of veterans not injured in service earning between $24,450 and $38,100 annually. VFW officials estimated the administration's VA budget is at least $2 billion short of meeting the demand for quality health care.
The FY 2004 budget approved by Congress calls for reducing VA funding over a 10-year period by $6.2 billion. Cuts are in the areas of veterans' health care and disability benefits.
The cuts affect VA discretionary funding, which could mean discontinuation of burial benefits for veterans or delays in the cost-of-living adjustment for disability benefits.
Some veterans must pay a new $250 annual enrollment fee to join the VA healthcare system. The VA believes 1.25 million veterans nationwide, already under the VA healthcare plan, may no longer be able to participate because of the new fee.
Veterans who can remain under the VA health-care system will pay increased co-payments for physician benefits and prescription drug cost, amounting to an estimated increase in out-of-pocket expenses of $347 each year. http://www.usavanguard.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/01/28/401970abb42d7
-R
