Friday, April 16, 2004
Bush and Sharon policy:
The rest of the world has seen this as The Story of the week, not the Iraq tragedy, the 9/11 Commission, or Bush’s press conference. [Similarly, when I was overseas, foreign press seized on the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Yassin as a source of great anger in the Muslim world, but to many Americans, it’s just another “terrorist” who’s been eliminated.]
The Administration’s endorsement of Sharon’s ideas constitutes an overturning of an inveterate bi-partisan American policy, the “road map” and the Geneva proposal as it endorses annexation of part of the West Bank and rules out the right of return for Palestinians.
While the reflexive reaction for some Americans is to see this as supportive of Israel, it is only “pro-Sharon” as it rewards “new realities on the ground”, allowing Sharon to select settlements to keep as long as they can in some way be connected to “existing major Israeli population centers. It inflames the Middle East and reflects the neo-conservatives hold on Washington.
Sadly, Kerry rushed to praise the idea.
Dana Milbank and Mike Allen report:
President Bush's embrace yesterday of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to unilaterally disengage from the Palestinians carries potential political benefits for Bush but also potential risk for his foreign policy.
In declaring that Israel should be able to keep some of the occupied territories and block Palestinian refugees from settling in Israel, Bush followed a familiar pattern of finding common cause with Jews and increasingly pro-Israel Christian conservatives. That Bush's move was good politics was evidenced by Democratic rival John F. Kerry's quick move not to let Bush outflank him among pro-Israel voters.
"I think that could be a positive step," the Massachusetts senator said, approving of the Bush-Sharon action regarding both refugees and Israel's borders. "What's important obviously is the security of the state of Israel, and that's what the prime minister and the president, I think, are trying to address." http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=824b283bdd5e9bbce2b4bfb175fced9b&lat=1082067174&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW3RH0589DF5C74672B7593E048F35
What’s Happening, Iraq: WMDs: Soon to be Found?
As I was away for the first report, I’m late on this. It’s being ‘followed’ by Common Dreams.
On March 13 the Iranian news agency (Mehr) reported that U.S. forces had secretly “unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.” It was mentioned that some of these weapons were similar to those that we had given to Iraq in the late ‘80’s.
Now, “the movement of those weapons have been disclosed.”
An Iraqi source close to the Basra Governor’s Office told the MNA that new information shows that a large part of the WMD, which was secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, are in containers falsely labeled as containers of the Maeresk shipping company and some consignments bearing the labels of organizations such as the Red Cross or the USAID in order to disguise them as relief shipments.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that Iraqi officials including forces loyal to the Iraqi Governing Council stationed in southern Iraq have been forbidden from inspecting or supervising the transportation of these consignments. He went on to say that the occupation forces have ordered Iraqi officials to forward any questions on the issue to the coalition forces. Even the officials of the international relief organizations have informed the Iraqi officials that they would only accept responsibility for relief shipments which have been registered and managed by their organizations.
The Iraqi source also confirmed the report about suspicious trucks with fake Saudi and Jordanian license plates entering Iraq at night last week, stressing that the Saudi and Jordanian border guards did not attempt to inspect the trucks but simply delivered them to the U.S. and British forces stationed on Iraq’s borders. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=8145ed97c2337ccbb7464573f2ab557e&lat=1082115534&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2ecommondreams%2eorg%2fheadlines04%2f0413%2d02%2ehtm
What’s Happening, Iraq, II: Despite the 90 dead in April, 'We’re doing fine', say Rummy et al. An asterisk, from the AP and the Guardian: “
Some Iraqi nuclear facilities appear to be unguarded and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency reported… http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3981804,00.html
Postscript to Press Conference: Commentaries: Tom Shales in the W.Post:
When I say something, I mean it," George W. Bush said decisively near the end of last night's prime-time presidential news conference. Nobody called out, "When will you say something?" -- the White House press corps is too mannerly for that -- but some reporters, and some viewers, must have been thinking it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9997-2004Apr13.html
The Progressive’s editor, Matthew Rothschild:
Not because his second sentence was ungrammatical: "This has been tough weeks in that country."
Not because he pronounced "instigated" as "instikated" in his fourth sentence.
Not because he said Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of State.
Not because of his foolish comment that before 9/11 "we assumed oceans would protect us." (Ever since the Russians built their first ICBMs fifty years ago, the oceans haven't protected us.)
Not because he said of the August 6 briefing, "Frankly, I didn't think it was anything new"!
Not because he said that even if he had known beforehand that Iraq did not have WMD stockpiles, he still would have gone to war against Saddam Hussein.
Not because he had no coherent answer as to why Dick Cheney must hold his hand when he testifies to the 9/11 commission.
Not because he said that no one in his Administration had "any indication that bin Laden might hijack an airplane and run it into a building," when in fact, at the Genoa G-8 summit, there were precautions taken against incoming airplanes as missiles.
And not because he repeatedly refused to take a shred of personal responsibility for allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen on his watch.
No, his performance was scary because he plunged the United States deeper into a no-win war in Iraq.
"We will finish the job of the fallen," he said. http://www.progressive.org/webex04/wx0413a04.html
Richard Cohen in the Washington Post,
America's Ayatollah
The term of the moment in Washington is "the wall." This is the legal barrier that once separated the CIA and its investigators from the FBI and its investigators, and which may have contributed to the confusion that enabled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A more interesting wall, however, was on view Tuesday evening in President Bush's prime-time news conference. It's the one between him and reality.
Never mind that even for Bush, this was a poor performance -- answers that resembled a frantic scavenger hunt for the right (or any) word or, too often, a thought. Never mind that he really had very little to say -- no exit plan for Iraq, no second thoughts about Sept. 11, no wonderment, even, at the apparent disappearance of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and how that might have happened. Like a kid who has been told otherwise, Bush persists in believing in his own version of Santa Claus. The weapons are there, somewhere -- in a North Pole of his mind.
What matters more is the phrase Bush used five times in one way or another: "We're changing the world." He used it always in reference to the war in Iraq and he used it in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson, that presidential personification of naive morality, shake his head in bemusement. In Bush's rhetoric, a war to rid Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction, a war to ensure that Condoleezza Rice's "mushroom cloud" did not appear over an American city, has mutated into an effort to reorder the world. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=e365c379f3183e2f9b55cdffbbc16639&lat=1082067174&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW3RH0589DF3E74672B7593E048F35
But, keep in mind this perspective:
Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard "Bush was heroically on message, relentlessly repetitive, but effective in his own way…His audience is outside the Beltway--the mass--and he does surprisingly well in appealing to it. How does he do it? By being plain spoken and amiable and down to earth."
9/11 Commission: One more time
Fred Kaplan (Slate) clarified how a pro would interpret the PDB:
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and the State Department's counterterrorism chief from 1989-93, explained on MSNBC this afternoon, during a break in the hearings, why the PDB—let alone the Moussaoui finding—should have compelled everyone to rush back to Washington. In his CIA days, Johnson wrote "about 40" PDBs. They're usually dispassionate in tone, a mere paragraph or two. The PDB of Aug. 6 was a page and a half. "That's the intelligence-community equivalent of writing War and Peace," Johnson said. And the title—"Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US"—was clearly designed to set off alarm bells. Johnson told his interviewer that when he read the declassified document, "I said 'Holy smoke!' This is such a dead-on 'Mr. President, you've got to do something!' " (By the way, Johnson claimed he's a Republican. http://slate.msn.com/id/2098861/
Then there’s the fact that the infamous August 6 PDB was not the only warning. From Dana Priest:
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9642-2004Apr13.html
Ashcroft- one of the lying liars…
Laughable:
Before 9/11, "our number-one goal was the prevention of terrorist acts. It is our -- it certainly is our goal. And we began to shape the department and its efforts in that respect." – Attorney General John Ashcroft, 2/28/02
FACT:
"Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs... The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13541-2004Mar21?language=printer
Another Iran Contra figure gets a job.
Just as David Chase keeps putting actors from past mob pictures into the Sopranos, this Administration keeps bestowing jobs on notables from the wildly unlawful Iran-Contra episode. The latest is John Negroponte, likely to be the first U.S. Ambassador to the New Iraq. A veteran conservative ideologue, Negroponte was known for his role in funneling illegal arms to the Iranians (against the Iraqis!- let’s hope they forgive that one) and covert Latin American activities. The polite description of him in the NY Times: (Steven Weisman)
Mr. Negroponte is widely regarded as a cool-headed professional who has been involved in sensitive matters in the past. He is experienced in dealing with European and Arab diplomats and top officials at the United Nations, whose support is considered crucial for the stability of Iraq.
In the early 1980's, when he was ambassador to Honduras, it became a springboard and a refuge for the Nicaraguan contras as they fought the leftist Sandinista government.
When he was questioned as the nominee to become United Nations ambassador about whether he had deliberately turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in Honduras to advance the Reagan administration's policies, he denied it.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics/14ENVO.html
Environment
Paul Brown of the Guardian reports on a Blair aide’s assessment:
George Bush has had a "devastating impact" on global sustainable development and set the world back more than ten years, says Jonathon Porritt, the prime minister's senior adviser on the subject, today.
Writing in Guardian Society Mr Porritt, who is the chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, says it is hard to exaggerate the damage done to the planet by Mr Bush's drive for a "new world order".
On a whole series of issues including climate change, international aid, family planning, nuclear proliferation, trade and corporate responsibility, "staying true to a discredited model of extreme economic liberalism has set the world back a decade or more", says Mr Porritt. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1191321,00.html
-R
The rest of the world has seen this as The Story of the week, not the Iraq tragedy, the 9/11 Commission, or Bush’s press conference. [Similarly, when I was overseas, foreign press seized on the Israeli assassination of Sheikh Yassin as a source of great anger in the Muslim world, but to many Americans, it’s just another “terrorist” who’s been eliminated.]
The Administration’s endorsement of Sharon’s ideas constitutes an overturning of an inveterate bi-partisan American policy, the “road map” and the Geneva proposal as it endorses annexation of part of the West Bank and rules out the right of return for Palestinians.
While the reflexive reaction for some Americans is to see this as supportive of Israel, it is only “pro-Sharon” as it rewards “new realities on the ground”, allowing Sharon to select settlements to keep as long as they can in some way be connected to “existing major Israeli population centers. It inflames the Middle East and reflects the neo-conservatives hold on Washington.
Sadly, Kerry rushed to praise the idea.
Dana Milbank and Mike Allen report:
President Bush's embrace yesterday of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to unilaterally disengage from the Palestinians carries potential political benefits for Bush but also potential risk for his foreign policy.
In declaring that Israel should be able to keep some of the occupied territories and block Palestinian refugees from settling in Israel, Bush followed a familiar pattern of finding common cause with Jews and increasingly pro-Israel Christian conservatives. That Bush's move was good politics was evidenced by Democratic rival John F. Kerry's quick move not to let Bush outflank him among pro-Israel voters.
"I think that could be a positive step," the Massachusetts senator said, approving of the Bush-Sharon action regarding both refugees and Israel's borders. "What's important obviously is the security of the state of Israel, and that's what the prime minister and the president, I think, are trying to address." http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=824b283bdd5e9bbce2b4bfb175fced9b&lat=1082067174&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW3RH0589DF5C74672B7593E048F35
What’s Happening, Iraq: WMDs: Soon to be Found?
As I was away for the first report, I’m late on this. It’s being ‘followed’ by Common Dreams.
On March 13 the Iranian news agency (Mehr) reported that U.S. forces had secretly “unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.” It was mentioned that some of these weapons were similar to those that we had given to Iraq in the late ‘80’s.
Now, “the movement of those weapons have been disclosed.”
An Iraqi source close to the Basra Governor’s Office told the MNA that new information shows that a large part of the WMD, which was secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, are in containers falsely labeled as containers of the Maeresk shipping company and some consignments bearing the labels of organizations such as the Red Cross or the USAID in order to disguise them as relief shipments.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that Iraqi officials including forces loyal to the Iraqi Governing Council stationed in southern Iraq have been forbidden from inspecting or supervising the transportation of these consignments. He went on to say that the occupation forces have ordered Iraqi officials to forward any questions on the issue to the coalition forces. Even the officials of the international relief organizations have informed the Iraqi officials that they would only accept responsibility for relief shipments which have been registered and managed by their organizations.
The Iraqi source also confirmed the report about suspicious trucks with fake Saudi and Jordanian license plates entering Iraq at night last week, stressing that the Saudi and Jordanian border guards did not attempt to inspect the trucks but simply delivered them to the U.S. and British forces stationed on Iraq’s borders. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=8145ed97c2337ccbb7464573f2ab557e&lat=1082115534&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2ecommondreams%2eorg%2fheadlines04%2f0413%2d02%2ehtm
What’s Happening, Iraq, II: Despite the 90 dead in April, 'We’re doing fine', say Rummy et al. An asterisk, from the AP and the Guardian: “
Some Iraqi nuclear facilities appear to be unguarded and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency reported… http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3981804,00.html
Postscript to Press Conference: Commentaries: Tom Shales in the W.Post:
When I say something, I mean it," George W. Bush said decisively near the end of last night's prime-time presidential news conference. Nobody called out, "When will you say something?" -- the White House press corps is too mannerly for that -- but some reporters, and some viewers, must have been thinking it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9997-2004Apr13.html
The Progressive’s editor, Matthew Rothschild:
Not because his second sentence was ungrammatical: "This has been tough weeks in that country."
Not because he pronounced "instigated" as "instikated" in his fourth sentence.
Not because he said Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of State.
Not because of his foolish comment that before 9/11 "we assumed oceans would protect us." (Ever since the Russians built their first ICBMs fifty years ago, the oceans haven't protected us.)
Not because he said of the August 6 briefing, "Frankly, I didn't think it was anything new"!
Not because he said that even if he had known beforehand that Iraq did not have WMD stockpiles, he still would have gone to war against Saddam Hussein.
Not because he had no coherent answer as to why Dick Cheney must hold his hand when he testifies to the 9/11 commission.
Not because he said that no one in his Administration had "any indication that bin Laden might hijack an airplane and run it into a building," when in fact, at the Genoa G-8 summit, there were precautions taken against incoming airplanes as missiles.
And not because he repeatedly refused to take a shred of personal responsibility for allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen on his watch.
No, his performance was scary because he plunged the United States deeper into a no-win war in Iraq.
"We will finish the job of the fallen," he said. http://www.progressive.org/webex04/wx0413a04.html
Richard Cohen in the Washington Post,
America's Ayatollah
The term of the moment in Washington is "the wall." This is the legal barrier that once separated the CIA and its investigators from the FBI and its investigators, and which may have contributed to the confusion that enabled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A more interesting wall, however, was on view Tuesday evening in President Bush's prime-time news conference. It's the one between him and reality.
Never mind that even for Bush, this was a poor performance -- answers that resembled a frantic scavenger hunt for the right (or any) word or, too often, a thought. Never mind that he really had very little to say -- no exit plan for Iraq, no second thoughts about Sept. 11, no wonderment, even, at the apparent disappearance of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and how that might have happened. Like a kid who has been told otherwise, Bush persists in believing in his own version of Santa Claus. The weapons are there, somewhere -- in a North Pole of his mind.
What matters more is the phrase Bush used five times in one way or another: "We're changing the world." He used it always in reference to the war in Iraq and he used it in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson, that presidential personification of naive morality, shake his head in bemusement. In Bush's rhetoric, a war to rid Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction, a war to ensure that Condoleezza Rice's "mushroom cloud" did not appear over an American city, has mutated into an effort to reorder the world. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=e365c379f3183e2f9b55cdffbbc16639&lat=1082067174&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW3RH0589DF3E74672B7593E048F35
But, keep in mind this perspective:
Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard "Bush was heroically on message, relentlessly repetitive, but effective in his own way…His audience is outside the Beltway--the mass--and he does surprisingly well in appealing to it. How does he do it? By being plain spoken and amiable and down to earth."
9/11 Commission: One more time
Fred Kaplan (Slate) clarified how a pro would interpret the PDB:
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and the State Department's counterterrorism chief from 1989-93, explained on MSNBC this afternoon, during a break in the hearings, why the PDB—let alone the Moussaoui finding—should have compelled everyone to rush back to Washington. In his CIA days, Johnson wrote "about 40" PDBs. They're usually dispassionate in tone, a mere paragraph or two. The PDB of Aug. 6 was a page and a half. "That's the intelligence-community equivalent of writing War and Peace," Johnson said. And the title—"Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US"—was clearly designed to set off alarm bells. Johnson told his interviewer that when he read the declassified document, "I said 'Holy smoke!' This is such a dead-on 'Mr. President, you've got to do something!' " (By the way, Johnson claimed he's a Republican. http://slate.msn.com/id/2098861/
Then there’s the fact that the infamous August 6 PDB was not the only warning. From Dana Priest:
In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9642-2004Apr13.html
Ashcroft- one of the lying liars…
Laughable:
Before 9/11, "our number-one goal was the prevention of terrorist acts. It is our -- it certainly is our goal. And we began to shape the department and its efforts in that respect." – Attorney General John Ashcroft, 2/28/02
FACT:
"Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs... The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13541-2004Mar21?language=printer
Another Iran Contra figure gets a job.
Just as David Chase keeps putting actors from past mob pictures into the Sopranos, this Administration keeps bestowing jobs on notables from the wildly unlawful Iran-Contra episode. The latest is John Negroponte, likely to be the first U.S. Ambassador to the New Iraq. A veteran conservative ideologue, Negroponte was known for his role in funneling illegal arms to the Iranians (against the Iraqis!- let’s hope they forgive that one) and covert Latin American activities. The polite description of him in the NY Times: (Steven Weisman)
Mr. Negroponte is widely regarded as a cool-headed professional who has been involved in sensitive matters in the past. He is experienced in dealing with European and Arab diplomats and top officials at the United Nations, whose support is considered crucial for the stability of Iraq.
In the early 1980's, when he was ambassador to Honduras, it became a springboard and a refuge for the Nicaraguan contras as they fought the leftist Sandinista government.
When he was questioned as the nominee to become United Nations ambassador about whether he had deliberately turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in Honduras to advance the Reagan administration's policies, he denied it.http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics/14ENVO.html
Environment
Paul Brown of the Guardian reports on a Blair aide’s assessment:
George Bush has had a "devastating impact" on global sustainable development and set the world back more than ten years, says Jonathon Porritt, the prime minister's senior adviser on the subject, today.
Writing in Guardian Society Mr Porritt, who is the chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, says it is hard to exaggerate the damage done to the planet by Mr Bush's drive for a "new world order".
On a whole series of issues including climate change, international aid, family planning, nuclear proliferation, trade and corporate responsibility, "staying true to a discredited model of extreme economic liberalism has set the world back a decade or more", says Mr Porritt. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1191321,00.html
-R
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Bush Press Conference:
I now recall why I stopped watching president Junior. Witnessing these pathetic performances is so unsettling- an inarticulate, not-very bright fellow who can only repeat the familiar sound bites, is utterly lost when he’s asked something they didn’t prepare him for. The country knows he’s an embarrassment, but can’t openly admit it. Dan Rather says “forceful”, others only note that ‘he won’t be apologizing.’ And, the policies…resolute, stay the course, ‘I have a plan that I will share with the American people…’ (a tad overdue, no?), the familiar, limited repertoire.
How it plays? In a dumbed-down America, some will have their faith reinforced by the repetitive, elementary presentation. But, maybe… just maybe, casualties and lies have done him in.
9/11 Commission:
The blame game. Will anyone be held truly responsible? Don’t hold your breath. Apart from the fact that too many in Washington are signaling that we should ‘look ahead, not at the past,’ we’re far removed from the simple ‘taking responsibility’ for policy failures; many have remarked that JFK owned up to the Bay of Pigs and his popularity went up. But the more usual is for investigations into unseemly or failed policies to fudge who’s at fault. Recall that although Reagan and company were clearly the guilty parties, Reagan and other luminaries got off in the Iran Contra scandal and blame was placed on a controversial colonel (Ollie North) and his boss (John Poindexter); when the Church Commission clearly revealed that the Kennedy brothers had used the CIA and even the Mob in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, the final report refused to connect the dots.
Related: John Powers tackles this issue in an illuminating essay on the relationship of the CIA and the presidency in the current NY Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17050
What’s Happening, Iraq: What to do? No one has answers. The craziness of baiting or threatening cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was only the latest mis-step.
Some newly trained Iraqis don’t want to join the battle:
A battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah earlier this week to support U.S. Marines battling for control of the city, senior U.S. Army officers here said, disclosing an incident that is casting new doubt on U.S. plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces.
Our principal ally has its complaints. The Telegraph (Sean Rayment) report about British officers criticizing American commanders.
"Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate.
One senior Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of `unease and frustration' among the British high command.
The officer, who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for `sub-humans.' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/11/wtact11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/11/ixnewstop.html
82 U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq in April (AP)
For American forces in Iraq, these are the deadliest days of the war.
At least 82 U.S. troops were killed in action in the first 12 days of April, more than 560 were wounded and two soldiers were declared missing. At least four American civilians were killed, one contractor was captured by gunmen and six others are missing and feared abducted.
The number wounded so far in April exceeds the total for any other full month of the war by more than 220.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/special_packages/8421065.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Deaths of scores of mercenaries not reported
(Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn)
At least 80 foreign mercenaries - security guards recruited from the United States, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies - have been killed in the past eight days in Iraq.
Lieutenant-General Mark Kimmitt admitted on Tuesday that "about 70" American and other Western troops had died during the Iraqi insurgency since April 1 but he made no mention of the mercenaries, apparently fearful that the full total of Western dead would have serious political fallout.
He did not give a figure for Iraqi dead, which, across the country may be as high as 900.
At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq, some of them earning $1 000 (about R6 300) a day. But their companies rarely acknowledge their losses unless - like the four American murdered and mutilated in Fallujah three weeks ago - their deaths are already public knowledge
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6031.htm
Naomi Klein in Baghdad:
For months the White House has been making ominous predictions of a civil war breaking out between the majority Shias, who believe it's their turn to rule Iraq, and the minority Sunnis, who want to hold on to the privileges they amassed under Saddam Hussein's regime. But this week the opposite appears to have taken place. Both Sunni and Shia have seen their neighbourhoods attacked and their religious sites desecrated. Up against a shared enemy, they are beginning to bury ancient rivalries and join forces against the occupation. Instead of a civil war, they are on the verge of building a common front.
You could see it at the mosques in Sadr City on Thursday: thousands of Shias lined up to donate blood, destined for Sunnis hurt in the attacks in Falluja. "We should thank Paul Bremer," Salih Ali told me. "He has finally united Iraq. Against him." http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1190300,00.html
Contractors and Countries with Second Thoughts: Work suspended, security folk contractors, even countries wanting out. One example:
Norway likely out of Iraq
Foreign Minister Jan Petersen was recently enthused by the Norwegian contribution to the rebuilding effort in Iraq. On Tuesday, after meetings at the United Nations in New York he indicated that aid projects in other countries would be a future priority.
Petersen told TV 2 that Norway was in Iraq to bring social stability and help them set up a civil government and rebuild. Petersen said there were no expectations that Norway's contribution there would be long lasting. http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article769844.ece?service=print
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: A familiar warlord continues to call for resisting the Americans.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan warlord named as a terrorist by the U.S., called on Afghans to fight the U.S.-led coalition in the country in a similar uprising to the insurgency in Iraq, the Associated Press said.
Everyone believed that Afghans would be ahead of Iraqis in starting a popular uprising to evict the foreign occupiers,'' AP cited Hekmatyar as saying in a statement obtained by the news agency. Afghans, like Iraqi fighters, ``will choose the way of uprising against the occupiers.'' http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=ae63CbTAROjk&refer=asia#
Next Generation Nukes:
They’re being discussed…and more
No one likes to consider the possibility of nuclear war, especially on Easter Monday. But somebody's got to do it, and that sober duty fell recently to a special task force of the Defense Science Board, which has just recommended useful changes to the U.S. strategic arsenal to fit our post-September 11 world.
First we should note what the task force does not want to change -- the high threshold for use of nuclear weapons. "It is, and will likely remain, American policy to keep the nuclear threshold high and to pursue non-nuclear attack options whenever possible. Nothing in our assessment or recommendations seeks to change that goal," the panel writes. "Nevertheless, in extreme circumstances, the president may have no choice but to turn to nuclear options."
The scenarios the task force envisions aren't, regrettably, all that extreme. High on the list would be eliminating an enemy's WMD before it has a chance to use it on us…
The Defense Science Board, chaired by William Schneider, is a prestigious body whose recommendations are taken seriously and often translated into action.
None of this is likely to go down well with critics in Congress who immediately deem any proposed change in nuclear policy to be provocative. They are already on record as opposing the Bush Administration's push for the development of new low-yield nukes. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108171598453779699,00.html?mod=opinion
Bush Economy: Playing with the Figures
James Surowiecki’s piece in the New Yorker looks at the misrepresenting that is their hallmark.
Statistical expediency and fiscal obfuscation have become hallmarks of this White House. In the past three years, the Bush Administration has had the Bureau of Labor Statistics stop reporting mass layoffs. It shortened the traditional span of budget projections from ten years to five, which allowed it to hide the long-term costs of its tax cuts. It commissioned a report on the aging of the baby boomers, then quashed it because it projected deficits as far as the eye could see. The Administration declined to offer cost estimates or to budget money for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A recent report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers included an unaccountably optimistic job-growth forecast, evidently guided by the Administration’s desire to claim that it will have created jobs. And a few weeks ago the Treasury Department put civil servants to work—at Tom DeLay’s request—evaluating a tax proposal identical to John Kerry’s, then issued a press release saying that the proposal would raise taxes on “hardworking individuals.” (Lazy individuals breathed a sigh of relief.)
Politics as usual? Not really. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040419ta_talk_surowiecki
Poll: People prefer balanced budget ...fits with Kerry's inclination...
By almost a 2-1 margin, Americans prefer balancing the nation's budget to cutting taxes, according to an Associated Press poll, even though many believe their overall tax burden has risen despite tax cuts over the past three years.
About six in ten, 61 percent, chose balancing the budget while 36 percent chose tax cuts when they were asked which was more important, according to a poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos Public Affairs.
As the nation's tax deadline of April 15 approaches, people's lukewarm feeling about tax cuts may be influenced by a belief that recent cuts haven't helped them personally.
Half in the poll, 49 percent, said their overall tax burden - including federal, state and local taxes - had gone up over the past three years. That's almost four times the 13 percent in the poll who said their overall taxes had gone down.
Even when it comes to federal taxes, most in the public don't feel their taxes have gone down over the past three years. Twenty-five percent in the poll said their federal taxes had gone up during that time, while 43 percent said they had stayed the same .http://www.csmonitor.com/newsinbrief/brieflies.html#BF15:12:49
What’s to Come for the Economy. David T. Cook of the Christian Science Monitor has a measured account of what the next President will face.
Experts say the next president will face a number of challenging tax policy questions. The issues in question are seldom included in campaign rhetoric, since they involve tough choices, including:
• Inadequate revenue. "Whoever is president will continue to face huge budget deficits. "They cannot solve those by capping spending," says Charles Davenport, senior contributing editor at Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan publisher. The war in Iraq adds to the problem. On NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Senator John McCain of Arizona said, "we are going have to ask for more money after the election, and it's going to increase the ... deficit."
• An explosion in the number of middle-income taxpayers paying the Alternative Minimum Tax. The tax was adopted in the late 1960s to make sure the wealthiest Americans paid at least some taxes. "It now affects substantial numbers of middle-income taxpayers and will, absent a change of law, affect more than 30 million taxpayers by 2010," writes IRS taxpayer advocate Nina Olson in her annual report to Congress. The cost of fixing the problem: upwards of $450 billion over the next 10 years, according to figures from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
• A sizable gap between what the government is owed and what it collects. "The tax gap is more than $300 billion in revenue we think we should be collecting and are not," says Peter Orszag of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "Some of that is nonreporting [of income], some of it is aggressive use of tax sheltering."
• A major erosion in corporate tax revenue. Congress's General Accounting Office recently reported that 61 percent of US-owned companies and 71 percent of foreign-owned firms paid no taxes in the US from 1996 to 2000, when profits were booming. Last year, corporate taxes fell to just 7.4 percent of government receipts, versus 20.3 percent 40 years ago.
One reason for falling corporate tax revenues is so called "corporate inversions." In these transactions a new foreign corporation, typically located in a no- or low-tax country, replaces a US company as the parent corporation of the business.
Another factor in the erosion of tax receipts from corporate America is inadequate IRS auditing activity. Face-to-face audits of corporations - where IRS auditors show up at the company's place of business - fell from 15 per 1,000 corporations in 1999 to 7 per 1,000 in 2003, according to data released this week by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearing House. "Government data show that major IRS programs to enforce the tax laws against businesses and corporations are continuing to slump," the study said.
All of the major issues facing the tax system add to ebbing confidence about its fairness, experts say. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0414/p02s02-uspo.h
-R
I now recall why I stopped watching president Junior. Witnessing these pathetic performances is so unsettling- an inarticulate, not-very bright fellow who can only repeat the familiar sound bites, is utterly lost when he’s asked something they didn’t prepare him for. The country knows he’s an embarrassment, but can’t openly admit it. Dan Rather says “forceful”, others only note that ‘he won’t be apologizing.’ And, the policies…resolute, stay the course, ‘I have a plan that I will share with the American people…’ (a tad overdue, no?), the familiar, limited repertoire.
How it plays? In a dumbed-down America, some will have their faith reinforced by the repetitive, elementary presentation. But, maybe… just maybe, casualties and lies have done him in.
9/11 Commission:
The blame game. Will anyone be held truly responsible? Don’t hold your breath. Apart from the fact that too many in Washington are signaling that we should ‘look ahead, not at the past,’ we’re far removed from the simple ‘taking responsibility’ for policy failures; many have remarked that JFK owned up to the Bay of Pigs and his popularity went up. But the more usual is for investigations into unseemly or failed policies to fudge who’s at fault. Recall that although Reagan and company were clearly the guilty parties, Reagan and other luminaries got off in the Iran Contra scandal and blame was placed on a controversial colonel (Ollie North) and his boss (John Poindexter); when the Church Commission clearly revealed that the Kennedy brothers had used the CIA and even the Mob in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, the final report refused to connect the dots.
Related: John Powers tackles this issue in an illuminating essay on the relationship of the CIA and the presidency in the current NY Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17050
What’s Happening, Iraq: What to do? No one has answers. The craziness of baiting or threatening cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was only the latest mis-step.
Some newly trained Iraqis don’t want to join the battle:
A battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to go to Fallujah earlier this week to support U.S. Marines battling for control of the city, senior U.S. Army officers here said, disclosing an incident that is casting new doubt on U.S. plans to transfer security matters to Iraqi forces.
Our principal ally has its complaints. The Telegraph (Sean Rayment) report about British officers criticizing American commanders.
"Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate.
One senior Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of `unease and frustration' among the British high command.
The officer, who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for `sub-humans.' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/11/wtact11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/11/ixnewstop.html
82 U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq in April (AP)
For American forces in Iraq, these are the deadliest days of the war.
At least 82 U.S. troops were killed in action in the first 12 days of April, more than 560 were wounded and two soldiers were declared missing. At least four American civilians were killed, one contractor was captured by gunmen and six others are missing and feared abducted.
The number wounded so far in April exceeds the total for any other full month of the war by more than 220.
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/special_packages/8421065.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Deaths of scores of mercenaries not reported
(Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn)
At least 80 foreign mercenaries - security guards recruited from the United States, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies - have been killed in the past eight days in Iraq.
Lieutenant-General Mark Kimmitt admitted on Tuesday that "about 70" American and other Western troops had died during the Iraqi insurgency since April 1 but he made no mention of the mercenaries, apparently fearful that the full total of Western dead would have serious political fallout.
He did not give a figure for Iraqi dead, which, across the country may be as high as 900.
At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq, some of them earning $1 000 (about R6 300) a day. But their companies rarely acknowledge their losses unless - like the four American murdered and mutilated in Fallujah three weeks ago - their deaths are already public knowledge
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6031.htm
Naomi Klein in Baghdad:
For months the White House has been making ominous predictions of a civil war breaking out between the majority Shias, who believe it's their turn to rule Iraq, and the minority Sunnis, who want to hold on to the privileges they amassed under Saddam Hussein's regime. But this week the opposite appears to have taken place. Both Sunni and Shia have seen their neighbourhoods attacked and their religious sites desecrated. Up against a shared enemy, they are beginning to bury ancient rivalries and join forces against the occupation. Instead of a civil war, they are on the verge of building a common front.
You could see it at the mosques in Sadr City on Thursday: thousands of Shias lined up to donate blood, destined for Sunnis hurt in the attacks in Falluja. "We should thank Paul Bremer," Salih Ali told me. "He has finally united Iraq. Against him." http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1190300,00.html
Contractors and Countries with Second Thoughts: Work suspended, security folk contractors, even countries wanting out. One example:
Norway likely out of Iraq
Foreign Minister Jan Petersen was recently enthused by the Norwegian contribution to the rebuilding effort in Iraq. On Tuesday, after meetings at the United Nations in New York he indicated that aid projects in other countries would be a future priority.
Petersen told TV 2 that Norway was in Iraq to bring social stability and help them set up a civil government and rebuild. Petersen said there were no expectations that Norway's contribution there would be long lasting. http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article769844.ece?service=print
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: A familiar warlord continues to call for resisting the Americans.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan warlord named as a terrorist by the U.S., called on Afghans to fight the U.S.-led coalition in the country in a similar uprising to the insurgency in Iraq, the Associated Press said.
Everyone believed that Afghans would be ahead of Iraqis in starting a popular uprising to evict the foreign occupiers,'' AP cited Hekmatyar as saying in a statement obtained by the news agency. Afghans, like Iraqi fighters, ``will choose the way of uprising against the occupiers.'' http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=ae63CbTAROjk&refer=asia#
Next Generation Nukes:
They’re being discussed…and more
No one likes to consider the possibility of nuclear war, especially on Easter Monday. But somebody's got to do it, and that sober duty fell recently to a special task force of the Defense Science Board, which has just recommended useful changes to the U.S. strategic arsenal to fit our post-September 11 world.
First we should note what the task force does not want to change -- the high threshold for use of nuclear weapons. "It is, and will likely remain, American policy to keep the nuclear threshold high and to pursue non-nuclear attack options whenever possible. Nothing in our assessment or recommendations seeks to change that goal," the panel writes. "Nevertheless, in extreme circumstances, the president may have no choice but to turn to nuclear options."
The scenarios the task force envisions aren't, regrettably, all that extreme. High on the list would be eliminating an enemy's WMD before it has a chance to use it on us…
The Defense Science Board, chaired by William Schneider, is a prestigious body whose recommendations are taken seriously and often translated into action.
None of this is likely to go down well with critics in Congress who immediately deem any proposed change in nuclear policy to be provocative. They are already on record as opposing the Bush Administration's push for the development of new low-yield nukes. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108171598453779699,00.html?mod=opinion
Bush Economy: Playing with the Figures
James Surowiecki’s piece in the New Yorker looks at the misrepresenting that is their hallmark.
Statistical expediency and fiscal obfuscation have become hallmarks of this White House. In the past three years, the Bush Administration has had the Bureau of Labor Statistics stop reporting mass layoffs. It shortened the traditional span of budget projections from ten years to five, which allowed it to hide the long-term costs of its tax cuts. It commissioned a report on the aging of the baby boomers, then quashed it because it projected deficits as far as the eye could see. The Administration declined to offer cost estimates or to budget money for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A recent report from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers included an unaccountably optimistic job-growth forecast, evidently guided by the Administration’s desire to claim that it will have created jobs. And a few weeks ago the Treasury Department put civil servants to work—at Tom DeLay’s request—evaluating a tax proposal identical to John Kerry’s, then issued a press release saying that the proposal would raise taxes on “hardworking individuals.” (Lazy individuals breathed a sigh of relief.)
Politics as usual? Not really. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040419ta_talk_surowiecki
Poll: People prefer balanced budget ...fits with Kerry's inclination...
By almost a 2-1 margin, Americans prefer balancing the nation's budget to cutting taxes, according to an Associated Press poll, even though many believe their overall tax burden has risen despite tax cuts over the past three years.
About six in ten, 61 percent, chose balancing the budget while 36 percent chose tax cuts when they were asked which was more important, according to a poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos Public Affairs.
As the nation's tax deadline of April 15 approaches, people's lukewarm feeling about tax cuts may be influenced by a belief that recent cuts haven't helped them personally.
Half in the poll, 49 percent, said their overall tax burden - including federal, state and local taxes - had gone up over the past three years. That's almost four times the 13 percent in the poll who said their overall taxes had gone down.
Even when it comes to federal taxes, most in the public don't feel their taxes have gone down over the past three years. Twenty-five percent in the poll said their federal taxes had gone up during that time, while 43 percent said they had stayed the same .http://www.csmonitor.com/newsinbrief/brieflies.html#BF15:12:49
What’s to Come for the Economy. David T. Cook of the Christian Science Monitor has a measured account of what the next President will face.
Experts say the next president will face a number of challenging tax policy questions. The issues in question are seldom included in campaign rhetoric, since they involve tough choices, including:
• Inadequate revenue. "Whoever is president will continue to face huge budget deficits. "They cannot solve those by capping spending," says Charles Davenport, senior contributing editor at Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan publisher. The war in Iraq adds to the problem. On NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Senator John McCain of Arizona said, "we are going have to ask for more money after the election, and it's going to increase the ... deficit."
• An explosion in the number of middle-income taxpayers paying the Alternative Minimum Tax. The tax was adopted in the late 1960s to make sure the wealthiest Americans paid at least some taxes. "It now affects substantial numbers of middle-income taxpayers and will, absent a change of law, affect more than 30 million taxpayers by 2010," writes IRS taxpayer advocate Nina Olson in her annual report to Congress. The cost of fixing the problem: upwards of $450 billion over the next 10 years, according to figures from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
• A sizable gap between what the government is owed and what it collects. "The tax gap is more than $300 billion in revenue we think we should be collecting and are not," says Peter Orszag of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "Some of that is nonreporting [of income], some of it is aggressive use of tax sheltering."
• A major erosion in corporate tax revenue. Congress's General Accounting Office recently reported that 61 percent of US-owned companies and 71 percent of foreign-owned firms paid no taxes in the US from 1996 to 2000, when profits were booming. Last year, corporate taxes fell to just 7.4 percent of government receipts, versus 20.3 percent 40 years ago.
One reason for falling corporate tax revenues is so called "corporate inversions." In these transactions a new foreign corporation, typically located in a no- or low-tax country, replaces a US company as the parent corporation of the business.
Another factor in the erosion of tax receipts from corporate America is inadequate IRS auditing activity. Face-to-face audits of corporations - where IRS auditors show up at the company's place of business - fell from 15 per 1,000 corporations in 1999 to 7 per 1,000 in 2003, according to data released this week by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearing House. "Government data show that major IRS programs to enforce the tax laws against businesses and corporations are continuing to slump," the study said.
All of the major issues facing the tax system add to ebbing confidence about its fairness, experts say. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0414/p02s02-uspo.h
-R
Monday, April 12, 2004
9/11 Postscript
James Pinkerton, in Newsday:
If you knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had received a memo a month before Pearl Harbor entitled, "Japanese Determined to Attack the United States in the Pacific," and that he had done nothing about that information, would that knowledge change your perception of FDR as a wise war leader? http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vppin093747412apr09,0,1427025,print.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Bush in Action, August, 2001: Recall: Bush spent most of August 2001 on his ranch here. His staff said at the time that by far the biggest issue on his agenda was his decision on federal funding of stem cell research, followed by education, immigration and the Social Security "lockbox."
Bush in Action, 2004, I: Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei, Washington Post
Explosive violence in Iraq and persistent questions about the administration's handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001, have plunged President Bush into one of the most difficult moments of his presidency, as he seeks to maintain public confidence in his leadership while facing what experts say are mostly unattractive options to put U.S. policy on track.
In the face of these challenges, Bush has yielded the stage, remaining largely out of sight at his Texas ranch as others in his administration explain his policies. Bush's silence in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and concerns about the administration's timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis has brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
"If it were I in charge over there, I would have him out early next week to explain this whole thing," said a Republican strategist close to the Bush team who demanded anonymity as a condition of speaking freely about the administration. "He should restate what we're doing over there. He needs to provide a bigger picture to give voters more confidence that we know where we're going." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A355-2004Apr9?language=printer
Bush in Action, 2004, II: On Saturday, Bush and his father were to go fishing at the ranch's bass pond with a crew from the Outdoor Life Network's "Fishing with Roland Martin."
The White House approached the network about coming to film Bush, who is eager to cultivate an image as a sportsman with the millions of voters who hunt and fish. The crew was to bring its own boat for the shoot on the small pond. http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/04/09/bush/index_np.html
The PDB: the “historical” document:
"patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
… the FBI and CIA were following up on "a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."
"After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington".
"The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related."
Yet, the AP report:
President Bush said Sunday he was satisfied before Sept. 11, 2001, that federal agents were on top of the terrorist threat when he read a briefing memo on Osama bin Laden's intention to strike inside the United States.
"I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence," Bush said, and when he read the memo of Aug. 6, 2001, "I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into."
In his first comments since Saturday's release of the presidential daily brief, Bush said the document contained "nothing about an attack on America."
Bush said if there had been any specific intelligence pointing to threats of attacks on New York and Washington, "I would have moved mountains" to prevent it.
Cheney- the inconsistencies. An example
Cheney, 2002: re the Counter-terrorism Group Interagency Task Force. “It's headed by--it was at that time by Dick Clarke who'd headed it as well back during the Clinton administration, somebody I'd known a long time. And that's a process. That's where the action takes place when these reports come in and you believe you've got actual intelligence.”
Cheney, 2004: Clarke “wasn’t in the loop.“
NYTimes Summary (Eric Lichtblau, David Sanger)
President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.
The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders…
But law enforcement officials said Friday that they believed that Ms. Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks — including her account of scores of F.B.I. investigations under way that summer into suspected Qaeda cells operating in the United States — overstated the scope, thrust and intensity of activities by the F.B.I. within American borders…
The finger-pointing will probably increase next week when numerous current and former senior law enforcement officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, testify before the Sept. 11 commission. In an unusual pre-emptive strike, Mr. Ashcroft's chief spokesman on Friday accused some Democrats on the commission of having "political axes to grind" in attacking the attorney general, who oversees the F.B.I., and unfairly blaming him for law enforcement failures.
A similar accusation against the commission was also leveled by Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican with ties to the White House, in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday…
Another Democratic panel member, Jamie S. Gorelick, said at Thursday's hearing that Mr. Ashcroft was briefed in the summer of 2001 about terrorist threats "but there is no evidence of any activity by him."
This appears to be a debate within the administration," she said. "On the one hand, you have Dr. Rice saying that the domestic threat was being handled by the Justice Department and F.B.I., and on the other hand, you have the Justice Department saying that there did not appear to be a domestic threat to address. And that is a difference in view that we have to continue to explore." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/10/politics/10PANE.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
And:
After Berger left, Rice stayed around to listen to counterterrorism bulldog Richard Clarke, who laid out the whole anti-al Qaeda plan. Rice was so impressed with Clarke that she immediately asked him to stay on as head of counterterrorism. In early February, Clarke repeated the briefing for Vice President Dick Cheney. But, according to Time, there was some question about how seriously the Bush team took Clarke's warnings. Outgoing Clinton officials felt that "the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism."
The Bushies had an entirely different set of obsessions. Missile defense, for example. The missile defense obsession proved prescient when terrorists fired a slow-moving intercontinental ballistic missile into the World Trade Center. If only Clarke had put his focus on missile defense instead of obsessing on Osama bin Laden. http://www.avatara.com/operationignore0.html
What’s On Cheney’s Mind: Shill for Westinghouse
On a trip to China next week to talk about high-stakes issues like terrorism and North Korea, Vice President Dick Cheney will have another task - making a pitch for Westinghouse's U.S. nuclear power technology.
At stake could be billions of dollars in business in coming years and thousands of American jobs. The initial installment of four reactors, costing $1.5 billion apiece, would also help narrow the huge U.S. trade deficit with China.
China's latest economic plan anticipates more than doubling its electricity output by 2020 and the Chinese government, facing enormous air pollution problems, is looking to shift some of that away from coal-burning plants. Its plan calls for building as many as 32 large 1,000-megawatt reactors over the next 16 years.
No one has ordered a new nuclear power reactor in the United States in three decades and the next one, if it comes, is still years away. So, China is being viewed by the U.S. industry as a potential bonanza. http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/8397857.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Competition for Bush: Some right-wingers are pushing for Roy Moore, feeling the Bushies have let them down.
- George W. Bush seems to have a problem being honest. Bush has been caught in many lies. He's lied about September 11. He's lied about Iraq. He's lied about his budget. The sad fact is that George W. Bush has lost all the moral authority that a President of the United States must have. Bush is a poor example for our children, who we try to teach to be honest.
- America is supposed to be the land of freedom, not the land of spies. Yet, George W. Bush has created new programs for the government to spy on ordinary, law-abiding Americans. Through the Patriot Act and Total Information Awareness, Bush has made America the land of Big Brother.
- We criticized Bill Clinton for having his donors sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. Now George W. Bush is doing the same, arranging for his big fundraisers to sleep overnight in the White House. That's a shame. http://www.formoore.com/wrongbush.html
9/11 Heroes: The versatile Charles Pierce (Only a Game, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, Boston Globe mag, etc.) focuses on real heroes- no, not Ted Kennedy or another pol who gives a good speech, but rather citizen activists who have made a difference.
The truly great thing about these 9/11 hearings remains the towering moral witness of the 9/11 widows -- and shame on Bob (Coiffure By Vespasian Of The Appian Way) Kerrey for shushing them. They are doing more than standing up for their loved ones, and that surely would have been enough. They are glorious in their casual disdain for the "Intelligence Community." They are blissfully unimpressed by the Great Men who presume to tell them what the Great Men decide they should know. They leave the pundits gaping at their heedless disregard for the Governing Class. Almost alone, they have insisted that information be brought to light that will enable us to judge our leaders and hold them to account, and that's what this whole silly experiment was supposed to be about -- the "most dreaded kind of knowledge," according to that impossible old blatherskite, John Adams. God save these wonderful women. They are being citizens -- in the most complete sense possible -- for the rest of us. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Is this Lebanon of the 1980’s, the West Bank of 2002 or what?
The generals are upset because of the lack of troops. http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak08.html
And, troops are being forced to extend their ‘stay’. There is no easy way out of this situation …that only gets worse.
Juan Cole reports on the Governing Council’s disaffection and more, adding up to “an incipient collapse”…
Not only has what many Iraqis call "the puppet council" taken a stand against Bush administration tactics in Iraq, but individual members are peeling off. Shiite Marsh Arab leader Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi suspended his membership in the council on Friday. A Sunni member, Ghazi al-Yawir, has threatened to resign if a negotiated settlement of the Fallujah conflict cannot be found. Old-time Sunni nationalist leader Adnan Pachachi thundered on al-Arabiya televsion, "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal." For him to go on an Arab satellite station much hated by Donald Rumsfeld and denounce the very people who appointed him to the IGC is a clear act of defiance. There are rumors that many of the 25 Governing Council members have fled abroad, fearful of assassination because of their association with the Americans.
This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq. Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers in the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and by main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast. The "handover of sovereignty" scheduled for June 30 was always nothing more than a publicity stunt for the benefit of Bush's election campaign, but it now seems likely to be even more empty. http://www.juancole.com/
More disaffection:
One of the strongest pro-American voices in Iraq's US-appointed governing council, Adnan Pachachi, condemned the operation in Falluja as "unacceptable and illegal" - a sign of Iraqi anger at the siege, which for some has become a symbol of resistance…
In a symbol of the state of Iraq a year after the US invasion, a portrait of Muqtada al-Sadr - the radical Shia cleric whose militia has rebelled across the south - was today hung on the plinth in Firdous Square, where one year ago today marines toppled a statue of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.
The felling of Saddam's statue on April 9 was an iconic image of liberation in Iraq. Today US soldiers climbed the unfinished bronze statue that replaced Saddam's to tear down the poster of Mr Sadr, the new enemy of US forces. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188965,00.html
Commentaries:
Martin Woollacott
With the excitement of the armoured race to Baghdad now a distant memory, the Bush administration finds itself face to face, perhaps even more than its predecessors in Vietnam, with what could be called the essential meagreness of the military instrument. It can be a key that opens the door for other kinds of action, but it cannot substitute for them. George Bernard Shaw observed that any political arrangement that depends on soldiers is not likely to continue long. The truth in Iraq has, from the start, been that the American "occupation", like most occupations, has never meant any kind of close military control of Iraqi society. Even if close control was desirable, American and other coalition troops are not present in sufficient numbers - nor do they have the language and other skills that would enable them to exercise it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188915,00.html
T. Christian Miller: The rising cost of security is hobbling the effort to rebuild Iraq, resulting in cutbacks to projects, delays in construction and fewer benefits for the Iraqi people, according to industry executives and government officials.
As Iraqi insurgents have increasingly targeted civilian contractors, companies have responded by enhancing private security forces and moving more cautiously in dangerous areas. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-security9apr09,1,1406508.story
Patrick Cockburn: Now Iraq is a country where people fear to venture on to the streets. Whether you are a foreign contractor, a Muslim attending prayers or a journalist, this is a land of ever-present danger. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=509894
George Bush:
“…this violence we've seen is part of a few people trying to stop progress toward democracy.”
Boston’s Air:
While Boston has healthier air than many large cities, it’s getting worse faster than all but five of 66 urban areas studied last year by the nonprofit Surface Transportation Policy Project. www.boston.com/magazineMarch282004; http://www.transact.org/library/factsheets/environment.asp
North Korea: Remember Us, Please!
North Korea said Friday the standoff over its atomic ambitions was on the brink of nuclear war as US Vice President Dick Cheney headed to the region for talks with key Asian allies.
The Stalinist state's official news agency accused Washington of "driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war" with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea.
Cheney is expected in Tokyo on Saturday on the first leg of an Asian tour that also takes him to China and South Korea.
North Korea described six-party talks held in Beijing in February as "fruitless," their harshest assessment so far. http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040409115806.6oukxw6z.html
-R
James Pinkerton, in Newsday:
If you knew that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had received a memo a month before Pearl Harbor entitled, "Japanese Determined to Attack the United States in the Pacific," and that he had done nothing about that information, would that knowledge change your perception of FDR as a wise war leader? http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vppin093747412apr09,0,1427025,print.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Bush in Action, August, 2001: Recall: Bush spent most of August 2001 on his ranch here. His staff said at the time that by far the biggest issue on his agenda was his decision on federal funding of stem cell research, followed by education, immigration and the Social Security "lockbox."
Bush in Action, 2004, I: Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei, Washington Post
Explosive violence in Iraq and persistent questions about the administration's handling of terrorist threats before Sept. 11, 2001, have plunged President Bush into one of the most difficult moments of his presidency, as he seeks to maintain public confidence in his leadership while facing what experts say are mostly unattractive options to put U.S. policy on track.
In the face of these challenges, Bush has yielded the stage, remaining largely out of sight at his Texas ranch as others in his administration explain his policies. Bush's silence in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and concerns about the administration's timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis has brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
"If it were I in charge over there, I would have him out early next week to explain this whole thing," said a Republican strategist close to the Bush team who demanded anonymity as a condition of speaking freely about the administration. "He should restate what we're doing over there. He needs to provide a bigger picture to give voters more confidence that we know where we're going." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A355-2004Apr9?language=printer
Bush in Action, 2004, II: On Saturday, Bush and his father were to go fishing at the ranch's bass pond with a crew from the Outdoor Life Network's "Fishing with Roland Martin."
The White House approached the network about coming to film Bush, who is eager to cultivate an image as a sportsman with the millions of voters who hunt and fish. The crew was to bring its own boat for the shoot on the small pond. http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/04/09/bush/index_np.html
The PDB: the “historical” document:
"patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York."
… the FBI and CIA were following up on "a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."
"After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington".
"The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related."
Yet, the AP report:
President Bush said Sunday he was satisfied before Sept. 11, 2001, that federal agents were on top of the terrorist threat when he read a briefing memo on Osama bin Laden's intention to strike inside the United States.
"I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence," Bush said, and when he read the memo of Aug. 6, 2001, "I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into."
In his first comments since Saturday's release of the presidential daily brief, Bush said the document contained "nothing about an attack on America."
Bush said if there had been any specific intelligence pointing to threats of attacks on New York and Washington, "I would have moved mountains" to prevent it.
Cheney- the inconsistencies. An example
Cheney, 2002: re the Counter-terrorism Group Interagency Task Force. “It's headed by--it was at that time by Dick Clarke who'd headed it as well back during the Clinton administration, somebody I'd known a long time. And that's a process. That's where the action takes place when these reports come in and you believe you've got actual intelligence.”
Cheney, 2004: Clarke “wasn’t in the loop.“
NYTimes Summary (Eric Lichtblau, David Sanger)
President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.
The warning came in a secret briefing that Mr. Bush received at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, 2001. A report by a joint Congressional committee last year alluded to a "closely held intelligence report" that month about the threat of an attack by Al Qaeda, and the official confirmed an account by The Associated Press on Friday saying that the report was in fact part of the president's briefing in Crawford.
The disclosure appears to contradict the White House's repeated assertions that the briefing the president received about the Qaeda threat was "historical" in nature and that the White House had little reason to suspect a Qaeda attack within American borders…
But law enforcement officials said Friday that they believed that Ms. Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks — including her account of scores of F.B.I. investigations under way that summer into suspected Qaeda cells operating in the United States — overstated the scope, thrust and intensity of activities by the F.B.I. within American borders…
The finger-pointing will probably increase next week when numerous current and former senior law enforcement officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, testify before the Sept. 11 commission. In an unusual pre-emptive strike, Mr. Ashcroft's chief spokesman on Friday accused some Democrats on the commission of having "political axes to grind" in attacking the attorney general, who oversees the F.B.I., and unfairly blaming him for law enforcement failures.
A similar accusation against the commission was also leveled by Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican with ties to the White House, in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday…
Another Democratic panel member, Jamie S. Gorelick, said at Thursday's hearing that Mr. Ashcroft was briefed in the summer of 2001 about terrorist threats "but there is no evidence of any activity by him."
This appears to be a debate within the administration," she said. "On the one hand, you have Dr. Rice saying that the domestic threat was being handled by the Justice Department and F.B.I., and on the other hand, you have the Justice Department saying that there did not appear to be a domestic threat to address. And that is a difference in view that we have to continue to explore." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/10/politics/10PANE.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
And:
After Berger left, Rice stayed around to listen to counterterrorism bulldog Richard Clarke, who laid out the whole anti-al Qaeda plan. Rice was so impressed with Clarke that she immediately asked him to stay on as head of counterterrorism. In early February, Clarke repeated the briefing for Vice President Dick Cheney. But, according to Time, there was some question about how seriously the Bush team took Clarke's warnings. Outgoing Clinton officials felt that "the Bush team thought the Clintonites had become obsessed with terrorism."
The Bushies had an entirely different set of obsessions. Missile defense, for example. The missile defense obsession proved prescient when terrorists fired a slow-moving intercontinental ballistic missile into the World Trade Center. If only Clarke had put his focus on missile defense instead of obsessing on Osama bin Laden. http://www.avatara.com/operationignore0.html
What’s On Cheney’s Mind: Shill for Westinghouse
On a trip to China next week to talk about high-stakes issues like terrorism and North Korea, Vice President Dick Cheney will have another task - making a pitch for Westinghouse's U.S. nuclear power technology.
At stake could be billions of dollars in business in coming years and thousands of American jobs. The initial installment of four reactors, costing $1.5 billion apiece, would also help narrow the huge U.S. trade deficit with China.
China's latest economic plan anticipates more than doubling its electricity output by 2020 and the Chinese government, facing enormous air pollution problems, is looking to shift some of that away from coal-burning plants. Its plan calls for building as many as 32 large 1,000-megawatt reactors over the next 16 years.
No one has ordered a new nuclear power reactor in the United States in three decades and the next one, if it comes, is still years away. So, China is being viewed by the U.S. industry as a potential bonanza. http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/8397857.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Competition for Bush: Some right-wingers are pushing for Roy Moore, feeling the Bushies have let them down.
- George W. Bush seems to have a problem being honest. Bush has been caught in many lies. He's lied about September 11. He's lied about Iraq. He's lied about his budget. The sad fact is that George W. Bush has lost all the moral authority that a President of the United States must have. Bush is a poor example for our children, who we try to teach to be honest.
- America is supposed to be the land of freedom, not the land of spies. Yet, George W. Bush has created new programs for the government to spy on ordinary, law-abiding Americans. Through the Patriot Act and Total Information Awareness, Bush has made America the land of Big Brother.
- We criticized Bill Clinton for having his donors sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. Now George W. Bush is doing the same, arranging for his big fundraisers to sleep overnight in the White House. That's a shame. http://www.formoore.com/wrongbush.html
9/11 Heroes: The versatile Charles Pierce (Only a Game, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, Boston Globe mag, etc.) focuses on real heroes- no, not Ted Kennedy or another pol who gives a good speech, but rather citizen activists who have made a difference.
The truly great thing about these 9/11 hearings remains the towering moral witness of the 9/11 widows -- and shame on Bob (Coiffure By Vespasian Of The Appian Way) Kerrey for shushing them. They are doing more than standing up for their loved ones, and that surely would have been enough. They are glorious in their casual disdain for the "Intelligence Community." They are blissfully unimpressed by the Great Men who presume to tell them what the Great Men decide they should know. They leave the pundits gaping at their heedless disregard for the Governing Class. Almost alone, they have insisted that information be brought to light that will enable us to judge our leaders and hold them to account, and that's what this whole silly experiment was supposed to be about -- the "most dreaded kind of knowledge," according to that impossible old blatherskite, John Adams. God save these wonderful women. They are being citizens -- in the most complete sense possible -- for the rest of us. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/
What’s Happening, Iraq:
Is this Lebanon of the 1980’s, the West Bank of 2002 or what?
The generals are upset because of the lack of troops. http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak08.html
And, troops are being forced to extend their ‘stay’. There is no easy way out of this situation …that only gets worse.
Juan Cole reports on the Governing Council’s disaffection and more, adding up to “an incipient collapse”…
Not only has what many Iraqis call "the puppet council" taken a stand against Bush administration tactics in Iraq, but individual members are peeling off. Shiite Marsh Arab leader Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi suspended his membership in the council on Friday. A Sunni member, Ghazi al-Yawir, has threatened to resign if a negotiated settlement of the Fallujah conflict cannot be found. Old-time Sunni nationalist leader Adnan Pachachi thundered on al-Arabiya televsion, "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal." For him to go on an Arab satellite station much hated by Donald Rumsfeld and denounce the very people who appointed him to the IGC is a clear act of defiance. There are rumors that many of the 25 Governing Council members have fled abroad, fearful of assassination because of their association with the Americans.
This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq. Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers in the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and by main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast. The "handover of sovereignty" scheduled for June 30 was always nothing more than a publicity stunt for the benefit of Bush's election campaign, but it now seems likely to be even more empty. http://www.juancole.com/
More disaffection:
One of the strongest pro-American voices in Iraq's US-appointed governing council, Adnan Pachachi, condemned the operation in Falluja as "unacceptable and illegal" - a sign of Iraqi anger at the siege, which for some has become a symbol of resistance…
In a symbol of the state of Iraq a year after the US invasion, a portrait of Muqtada al-Sadr - the radical Shia cleric whose militia has rebelled across the south - was today hung on the plinth in Firdous Square, where one year ago today marines toppled a statue of ousted leader Saddam Hussein.
The felling of Saddam's statue on April 9 was an iconic image of liberation in Iraq. Today US soldiers climbed the unfinished bronze statue that replaced Saddam's to tear down the poster of Mr Sadr, the new enemy of US forces. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188965,00.html
Commentaries:
Martin Woollacott
With the excitement of the armoured race to Baghdad now a distant memory, the Bush administration finds itself face to face, perhaps even more than its predecessors in Vietnam, with what could be called the essential meagreness of the military instrument. It can be a key that opens the door for other kinds of action, but it cannot substitute for them. George Bernard Shaw observed that any political arrangement that depends on soldiers is not likely to continue long. The truth in Iraq has, from the start, been that the American "occupation", like most occupations, has never meant any kind of close military control of Iraqi society. Even if close control was desirable, American and other coalition troops are not present in sufficient numbers - nor do they have the language and other skills that would enable them to exercise it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188915,00.html
T. Christian Miller: The rising cost of security is hobbling the effort to rebuild Iraq, resulting in cutbacks to projects, delays in construction and fewer benefits for the Iraqi people, according to industry executives and government officials.
As Iraqi insurgents have increasingly targeted civilian contractors, companies have responded by enhancing private security forces and moving more cautiously in dangerous areas. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-security9apr09,1,1406508.story
Patrick Cockburn: Now Iraq is a country where people fear to venture on to the streets. Whether you are a foreign contractor, a Muslim attending prayers or a journalist, this is a land of ever-present danger. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=509894
George Bush:
“…this violence we've seen is part of a few people trying to stop progress toward democracy.”
Boston’s Air:
While Boston has healthier air than many large cities, it’s getting worse faster than all but five of 66 urban areas studied last year by the nonprofit Surface Transportation Policy Project. www.boston.com/magazineMarch282004; http://www.transact.org/library/factsheets/environment.asp
North Korea: Remember Us, Please!
North Korea said Friday the standoff over its atomic ambitions was on the brink of nuclear war as US Vice President Dick Cheney headed to the region for talks with key Asian allies.
The Stalinist state's official news agency accused Washington of "driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war" with plans for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea.
Cheney is expected in Tokyo on Saturday on the first leg of an Asian tour that also takes him to China and South Korea.
North Korea described six-party talks held in Beijing in February as "fruitless," their harshest assessment so far. http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040409115806.6oukxw6z.html
-R
