Friday, March 18, 2005
What’s Happening, Iraq: Progress (?)
As noted previously, the people are getting restless, cynical:
Nothing like a scientific poll is possible yet in Iraq. But as the national assembly's first brief meeting came and went, broadcast into thousands of Iraqi homes on television, a sampling of street opinion in two Iraqi cities found a widespread dismay and even anger that the elections have not yet translated into a new government. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/international/middleeast/17voices.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
The LA Times headlined, “Iraqi Leaders Make History, Not Progress’:
In Washington, President Bush called Wednesday's session "a bright moment" in a process that is supposed to lead to the drafting of a new constitution, followed by another national election as early as this fall.
But without a government in place, the assembly cannot move forward on drafting the constitution or work to restore security to a country plagued by violence. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraq17mar17,1,1689330.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
Democracy on the March?: Opinions There’s clearly been a change in (U.S.) public sentiment since the Iraq election. Many struggle with being on the outside, being “negative” about the country and its direction, even if it contradicts their “sense” about the Bush Administration. This change of ‘heart’ is facilitated, if not spawned, by the clear shift in media coverage and by public personalities such as Bill Maher and Jon Stewart who have asserted that, perhaps, Bush was “right” to invade.
So, for balance:
- Juan Cole: "The Lebanese have been having often lively parliamentary election campaigns for decades. The idea that the urbane and sophisticated Beirutis had anything to learn from the Jan. 30 process in Iraq is absurd on the face of it." www.juancole.com
- Seumas Milne in The Guardian:
"The claim that democracy is on the march in the Middle East is a fraud. It is not democracy, but the US military, that is on the march... What has actually taken place since 9/11 and the Iraq war is a relentless expansion of US control of the Middle East, of which the threats to Syria are a part. The Americans now have a military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar…
And,
The anti-Syrian protests, dominated by the Christian and Druze minorities, are not in fact calling for a genuine democracy at all, but for elections under the long-established corrupt confessional carve-up, which gives the traditionally privileged Christians half the seats in parliament and means no Muslim can ever be president. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1434183,00.html
- Naomi Klein, always a grabber, talks of the re-branding of the Right effort in the Middle East, that “faced with an Arab world enraged by its occupation of Iraq and its blind support for Israel, the US solution is not to change these brutal policies; it is, in the pseudo-academic language of corporate branding, to ‘change the story.’” http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050328&s=klein
- Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun dismisses the talk of democratic reforms in our ‘client’ states as basically “pure sham.”
Most of these reforms are pure sham. Washington stage-managed Iraq's vote to empower Shia and Kurdish yes-men who will pretend to rule while the U.S. continues to run Iraq and pump its oil. Mubarak, the U.S.-backed military ruler of Egypt, is apparently grooming his son to take over under cover of rigged "open, multi-party" elections. http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2005/03/13/959224.html
Taxes and Medicaid: The headline was of the Senate defeating ($14 million) cuts in Medicaid. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that.
- The House did vote for the cuts; reconciling will be difficult
- The Senate pushed for extensive tax cuts beyond what Bush requested, including repealing a 1993 tax on wealthy seniors’ Social Security. Paralysis is possible.
Key grafs:
"It provided a huge amount of tax cuts," said Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico and one of five Republicans to vote against the provision. "We didn't know what we were doing."
While the tax cuts brought the Senate budget resolution closer in line with the one passed by the House, the Medicaid issue moved the two further apart.
That vote was a rebuke to both the White House and the Republican leadership, and it threatens to prevent Congress from adopting a final budget this year…
The amendment striking the Medicaid cuts, sponsored by Senator Gordon Smith, Republican of Oregon, was by far the most troubling to the Republican leadership. Seven Republicans joined with the Senate's 44 Democrats and one independent to approve the proposal. Mr. Smith, who had been under intense pressure from party leaders to either change or withdraw the measure, said afterward that he thought it sent a strong message that his colleagues were uneasy about the reductions.
"I think a lot of us have trouble just looking at a ledger," Mr. Smith said, "while ignoring some of the most sensitive needs of the poor."
The issue brought forth such passion that Senator Judd Gregg, an ordinarily taciturn New Hampshire Republican who, as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, proposed the $14 billion in spending reductions, addressed Mr. Smith in deeply personal terms on Thursday on the Senate floor. He said Mr. Smith's amendment would "gut the only thing in this budget" that would help tame the deficit and enforce fiscal discipline.
"And it's being done by Republicans," Mr. Gregg added. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/politics/18budget.html?hp&ex=1111122000&en=f0605f4f364eb4f6&ei=5094&partner=homepage
If the two chambers cannot reach agreement, they would be forced to go without a plan, as they did last year.
A budget breakdown would be an embarrassment for the GOP leadership, which had expected that the larger Republican majorities in both chambers — and particularly in the Senate — would allow easy passage of the president's proposals.
It also could doom a top energy priority: allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A measure smoothing the way for drilling legislation is included in the Senate's version of the budget and is considered likely to emerge intact from a compromise with the House.
The absence of a budget would also short-circuit the House and Senate budget committees' plans to instruct other congressional committees to write legislation cutting farm benefits, food stamps and other programs…
The education funding was restored on a motion by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Even Democrats were surprised that Kennedy's amendment prevailed on a vote of 51 to 49, with six Republicans breaking ranks.
The six were Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The same six Republicans plus Smith sided with the majority on the Medicaid vote.
All Democratic senators, including Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, voted with the majority on Medicaid and education.
The income tax break for Social Security benefits was a Republican initiative sponsored by Jim Bunning of Kentucky.
Five Democrats — Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Ken Salazar of Colorado — voted for the tax rollback, and a like number of Republicans — Chafee, Snowe, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, Ted Stevens of Alaska and George V. Voinovich of Ohio — voted against it. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-budget18mar18,0,4188870,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Congress Passes on Gannon Investigation. They’re not looking at how a non-journalist (and male ‘hooker’) accessed the White House and Junior for two years despite security and White House protocol. The major media totally ignored the vote.
No surprise, as they’re not investigating treason (Plame), lies that gave us a war, etc. But they’re looking closely at steroids!
The House Judiciary Committee voted against adopting a resolution demanding Bush agencies turn over all credentialing information related to James D. Guckert 21-10, the discredited conservative reporter and prostitute who wrote under the nom de guerre “Jeff Gannon.”
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the resolution was imperative to ensuring that the line between reporters and activists remains clear.
“If we don’t investigate this matter thoroughly,” Conyers said, “where and when will be draw the line? I plead with my committee members in the Judiciary to support this very plain but necessary [amendment].” http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=184
Democratic Strategy? DeLay as the head of a corrupt party Sounds reasonable
Using the swirl of controversy surrounding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) as a springboard, Democrats have ratcheted up their push to convince voters that the GOP has ushered in an era of corruption in Congress.
Democrats are painting the latest news reports concerning DeLay's fundraising practices and relationship with embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff as simply the tip of an iceberg of ethical problems surrounding House Republicans, and indicative of what they say is widespread corruption gripping the party controlling the institution. www.thehill.com (subscription required)
Social Security: Repubs know they’re in trouble, so they’re considering a change in tactics.
To pass Social Security reform this year, top Republican strategists say, President Bush and the GOP-led Congress must redirect the debate by stressing that their plan includes a crucial safety-net protection.
For months, Democrats and AARP have hammered Bush and congressional Republicans on the “risky gamble” of setting up personal accounts in the Social Security system. Frustrated Republicans have acknowledged that the Democrats’ political blows have connected.
Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose Bush’s Social Security plan, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.
But Republicans are not ready to throw in the towel. They say the key to victory is to emphasize repeatedly that reform legislation would provide current and future Social Security beneficiaries with a guarantee that they will not collect a penny less than the present system allows.
That guarantee, which is included in certain Social Security reform bills, could be used as an effective rebuttal to comparisons that liken private accounts to playing the slots, GOP officials say. http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/031705/reform.html
What’s Happening, Lebanon: So who killed Rafik Hariri? Two reports, from Al Jazeera and the Tehran Times suggest that the White House / Israel were connected with the murder. Why? They speculate that the U.S. had designs on an airbase for northern Lebanon…which is now under ‘discussion’.
According to high-level Lebanese intelligence sources, both Christian and Muslim, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in a sophisticated explosion-by-wire bombing authorized by the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon's Likud government…
It was a well known issue that the pan-Arabist and Lebanese nationalist Hariri was adamantly opposed to the construction of a major U.S. air base in the north of the country.
On its part, the U.S. wants Syrian troops completely out of Lebanon before construction of the base is initiated. While Hariri's meetings with Hezbollah shortly before his death angered Washington and Tel Aviv, according to the Lebanese intelligence sources. http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=3/16/2005&Cat=4&Num=8
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: In Kandahar, some are feeling more vulnerable than under the Taliban. The warlords remain in charge; crime is rife. "Imagine how things are," said one man, "that we are wishing for the Taliban again."
A wave of crime in this southern Afghan city -- including Mohammed's killing two months ago and a bombing Thursday that killed at least five people -- has evoked a growing local nostalgia for the Taliban era of 1996 to 2001, when the extremist Islamic militia imposed law and order by draconian means.
Residents reached their boiling point last week, after a second kidnapped boy was killed. Hundreds of men poured into the streets, demanding that President Hamid Karzai fire the provincial governor and police chief. Some threw rocks at military vehicles and chanted, "Down with the warlords!" Witnesses recalled some adding, "Bring back the Taliban!" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45302-2005Mar17.html
Venezuela: New policy on the way. The DoD assistant secretary, Roger Pardo-Maurer asserts, “Chavez is a problem because he is clearly using his oil money and influence to introduce his conflictive style into the politics of other countries. He’s picking on the countries whose social fabric is the weakest. In some cases it’s downright subversion.”
Love that righteousness!
Senior US administration officials are working on a policy to "contain" President Hugo Chávez and what they allege is his drive to "subvert" Latin America's least stable states, writes Andy Webb-Vidal.
A strategy aimed at fencing in the Chávez government is being prepared at the behest of President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, senior US officials say. Roger Pardo-Maurer, deputy assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs at the Department of Defense, said the policy was being developed because Mr Chavez was employing a "hyena strategy" in the region. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b0fd22ec-942d-11d9-9d6e-00000e2511c8.html
Wolfowitz Exit: Mixed bag. Putting aside his lack of qualifications, this being another thumbing at Europe and the UN, it may be more of a removal than a reward. Rummy and Condi keep solidifying their power- the outspoken- Wolfie and Bolton are either Out or under their thumb; the UN job has not been a plumb in decades, since Adlai Stevenson was given it instead of his sought-after Secretary of State slot in JFK’s Administration.
Fred Kaplan offers:
A few months ago, Doug Feith announced that he would be leaving his job this summer, for personal reasons. Now Wolfowitz heads toward the door. Will the neocon triumvirate's third peg, Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary for intelligence, be the next to fall? And what of Rumsfeld himself? The face-saving has been accomplished. His archrival, Colin Powell, was booted while he stayed on in triumph. He escaped official blame for Abu Ghraib. Having thus emerged from the firestorms unscathed, he too may be working up an appetite to spend more time with his family.
Rumsfeld's fingerprints, which were smeared all over Bush's first-term foreign policy, have thus far left no marks in the second term. There are three possible explanations: Rumsfeld is insinuating himself more subtly than before; Condoleezza Rice shares his views, so he doesn't need to raise a fuss; or, just maybe, the winds are shifting over the Potomac. http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2114929&
Another concern about Wolfie:
Adding fuel to the controversy is concern within the bank staff over Wolfowitz's reported romantic relationship with Shaha Riza, an Arab feminist who works as a communications adviser in the bank's Middle East and North Africa department.
Both divorced, Wolfowitz and Riza have steadfastly declined to talk publicly about their relationship, but they have been regularly spotted at private functions and one source said the two have been dating for about two years. Riza, an Oxford-educated British citizen who was born in Tunisia and grew up in Saudi Arabia, shares Wolfowitz's passion for democratizing the Middle East, according to people who know her. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45449-2005Mar17.html
A way to remember Wolfowitz: from 3/27/03
“There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” [Source: House Committee on Appropriations Hearing on a Supplemental War Regulation, 3/27/03] http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/iraqquotes_web.htm
-R
As noted previously, the people are getting restless, cynical:
Nothing like a scientific poll is possible yet in Iraq. But as the national assembly's first brief meeting came and went, broadcast into thousands of Iraqi homes on television, a sampling of street opinion in two Iraqi cities found a widespread dismay and even anger that the elections have not yet translated into a new government. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/international/middleeast/17voices.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
The LA Times headlined, “Iraqi Leaders Make History, Not Progress’:
In Washington, President Bush called Wednesday's session "a bright moment" in a process that is supposed to lead to the drafting of a new constitution, followed by another national election as early as this fall.
But without a government in place, the assembly cannot move forward on drafting the constitution or work to restore security to a country plagued by violence. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraq17mar17,1,1689330.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
Democracy on the March?: Opinions There’s clearly been a change in (U.S.) public sentiment since the Iraq election. Many struggle with being on the outside, being “negative” about the country and its direction, even if it contradicts their “sense” about the Bush Administration. This change of ‘heart’ is facilitated, if not spawned, by the clear shift in media coverage and by public personalities such as Bill Maher and Jon Stewart who have asserted that, perhaps, Bush was “right” to invade.
So, for balance:
- Juan Cole: "The Lebanese have been having often lively parliamentary election campaigns for decades. The idea that the urbane and sophisticated Beirutis had anything to learn from the Jan. 30 process in Iraq is absurd on the face of it." www.juancole.com
- Seumas Milne in The Guardian:
"The claim that democracy is on the march in the Middle East is a fraud. It is not democracy, but the US military, that is on the march... What has actually taken place since 9/11 and the Iraq war is a relentless expansion of US control of the Middle East, of which the threats to Syria are a part. The Americans now have a military presence in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar…
And,
The anti-Syrian protests, dominated by the Christian and Druze minorities, are not in fact calling for a genuine democracy at all, but for elections under the long-established corrupt confessional carve-up, which gives the traditionally privileged Christians half the seats in parliament and means no Muslim can ever be president. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1434183,00.html
- Naomi Klein, always a grabber, talks of the re-branding of the Right effort in the Middle East, that “faced with an Arab world enraged by its occupation of Iraq and its blind support for Israel, the US solution is not to change these brutal policies; it is, in the pseudo-academic language of corporate branding, to ‘change the story.’” http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050328&s=klein
- Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun dismisses the talk of democratic reforms in our ‘client’ states as basically “pure sham.”
Most of these reforms are pure sham. Washington stage-managed Iraq's vote to empower Shia and Kurdish yes-men who will pretend to rule while the U.S. continues to run Iraq and pump its oil. Mubarak, the U.S.-backed military ruler of Egypt, is apparently grooming his son to take over under cover of rigged "open, multi-party" elections. http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2005/03/13/959224.html
Taxes and Medicaid: The headline was of the Senate defeating ($14 million) cuts in Medicaid. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that.
- The House did vote for the cuts; reconciling will be difficult
- The Senate pushed for extensive tax cuts beyond what Bush requested, including repealing a 1993 tax on wealthy seniors’ Social Security. Paralysis is possible.
Key grafs:
"It provided a huge amount of tax cuts," said Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico and one of five Republicans to vote against the provision. "We didn't know what we were doing."
While the tax cuts brought the Senate budget resolution closer in line with the one passed by the House, the Medicaid issue moved the two further apart.
That vote was a rebuke to both the White House and the Republican leadership, and it threatens to prevent Congress from adopting a final budget this year…
The amendment striking the Medicaid cuts, sponsored by Senator Gordon Smith, Republican of Oregon, was by far the most troubling to the Republican leadership. Seven Republicans joined with the Senate's 44 Democrats and one independent to approve the proposal. Mr. Smith, who had been under intense pressure from party leaders to either change or withdraw the measure, said afterward that he thought it sent a strong message that his colleagues were uneasy about the reductions.
"I think a lot of us have trouble just looking at a ledger," Mr. Smith said, "while ignoring some of the most sensitive needs of the poor."
The issue brought forth such passion that Senator Judd Gregg, an ordinarily taciturn New Hampshire Republican who, as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, proposed the $14 billion in spending reductions, addressed Mr. Smith in deeply personal terms on Thursday on the Senate floor. He said Mr. Smith's amendment would "gut the only thing in this budget" that would help tame the deficit and enforce fiscal discipline.
"And it's being done by Republicans," Mr. Gregg added. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/politics/18budget.html?hp&ex=1111122000&en=f0605f4f364eb4f6&ei=5094&partner=homepage
If the two chambers cannot reach agreement, they would be forced to go without a plan, as they did last year.
A budget breakdown would be an embarrassment for the GOP leadership, which had expected that the larger Republican majorities in both chambers — and particularly in the Senate — would allow easy passage of the president's proposals.
It also could doom a top energy priority: allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A measure smoothing the way for drilling legislation is included in the Senate's version of the budget and is considered likely to emerge intact from a compromise with the House.
The absence of a budget would also short-circuit the House and Senate budget committees' plans to instruct other congressional committees to write legislation cutting farm benefits, food stamps and other programs…
The education funding was restored on a motion by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Even Democrats were surprised that Kennedy's amendment prevailed on a vote of 51 to 49, with six Republicans breaking ranks.
The six were Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The same six Republicans plus Smith sided with the majority on the Medicaid vote.
All Democratic senators, including Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, voted with the majority on Medicaid and education.
The income tax break for Social Security benefits was a Republican initiative sponsored by Jim Bunning of Kentucky.
Five Democrats — Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Ken Salazar of Colorado — voted for the tax rollback, and a like number of Republicans — Chafee, Snowe, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, Ted Stevens of Alaska and George V. Voinovich of Ohio — voted against it. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-budget18mar18,0,4188870,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Congress Passes on Gannon Investigation. They’re not looking at how a non-journalist (and male ‘hooker’) accessed the White House and Junior for two years despite security and White House protocol. The major media totally ignored the vote.
No surprise, as they’re not investigating treason (Plame), lies that gave us a war, etc. But they’re looking closely at steroids!
The House Judiciary Committee voted against adopting a resolution demanding Bush agencies turn over all credentialing information related to James D. Guckert 21-10, the discredited conservative reporter and prostitute who wrote under the nom de guerre “Jeff Gannon.”
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the resolution was imperative to ensuring that the line between reporters and activists remains clear.
“If we don’t investigate this matter thoroughly,” Conyers said, “where and when will be draw the line? I plead with my committee members in the Judiciary to support this very plain but necessary [amendment].” http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=184
Democratic Strategy? DeLay as the head of a corrupt party Sounds reasonable
Using the swirl of controversy surrounding House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) as a springboard, Democrats have ratcheted up their push to convince voters that the GOP has ushered in an era of corruption in Congress.
Democrats are painting the latest news reports concerning DeLay's fundraising practices and relationship with embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff as simply the tip of an iceberg of ethical problems surrounding House Republicans, and indicative of what they say is widespread corruption gripping the party controlling the institution. www.thehill.com (subscription required)
Social Security: Repubs know they’re in trouble, so they’re considering a change in tactics.
To pass Social Security reform this year, top Republican strategists say, President Bush and the GOP-led Congress must redirect the debate by stressing that their plan includes a crucial safety-net protection.
For months, Democrats and AARP have hammered Bush and congressional Republicans on the “risky gamble” of setting up personal accounts in the Social Security system. Frustrated Republicans have acknowledged that the Democrats’ political blows have connected.
Fifty-six percent of Americans oppose Bush’s Social Security plan, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.
But Republicans are not ready to throw in the towel. They say the key to victory is to emphasize repeatedly that reform legislation would provide current and future Social Security beneficiaries with a guarantee that they will not collect a penny less than the present system allows.
That guarantee, which is included in certain Social Security reform bills, could be used as an effective rebuttal to comparisons that liken private accounts to playing the slots, GOP officials say. http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/031705/reform.html
What’s Happening, Lebanon: So who killed Rafik Hariri? Two reports, from Al Jazeera and the Tehran Times suggest that the White House / Israel were connected with the murder. Why? They speculate that the U.S. had designs on an airbase for northern Lebanon…which is now under ‘discussion’.
According to high-level Lebanese intelligence sources, both Christian and Muslim, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in a sophisticated explosion-by-wire bombing authorized by the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon's Likud government…
It was a well known issue that the pan-Arabist and Lebanese nationalist Hariri was adamantly opposed to the construction of a major U.S. air base in the north of the country.
On its part, the U.S. wants Syrian troops completely out of Lebanon before construction of the base is initiated. While Hariri's meetings with Hezbollah shortly before his death angered Washington and Tel Aviv, according to the Lebanese intelligence sources. http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=3/16/2005&Cat=4&Num=8
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: In Kandahar, some are feeling more vulnerable than under the Taliban. The warlords remain in charge; crime is rife. "Imagine how things are," said one man, "that we are wishing for the Taliban again."
A wave of crime in this southern Afghan city -- including Mohammed's killing two months ago and a bombing Thursday that killed at least five people -- has evoked a growing local nostalgia for the Taliban era of 1996 to 2001, when the extremist Islamic militia imposed law and order by draconian means.
Residents reached their boiling point last week, after a second kidnapped boy was killed. Hundreds of men poured into the streets, demanding that President Hamid Karzai fire the provincial governor and police chief. Some threw rocks at military vehicles and chanted, "Down with the warlords!" Witnesses recalled some adding, "Bring back the Taliban!" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45302-2005Mar17.html
Venezuela: New policy on the way. The DoD assistant secretary, Roger Pardo-Maurer asserts, “Chavez is a problem because he is clearly using his oil money and influence to introduce his conflictive style into the politics of other countries. He’s picking on the countries whose social fabric is the weakest. In some cases it’s downright subversion.”
Love that righteousness!
Senior US administration officials are working on a policy to "contain" President Hugo Chávez and what they allege is his drive to "subvert" Latin America's least stable states, writes Andy Webb-Vidal.
A strategy aimed at fencing in the Chávez government is being prepared at the behest of President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, senior US officials say. Roger Pardo-Maurer, deputy assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs at the Department of Defense, said the policy was being developed because Mr Chavez was employing a "hyena strategy" in the region. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b0fd22ec-942d-11d9-9d6e-00000e2511c8.html
Wolfowitz Exit: Mixed bag. Putting aside his lack of qualifications, this being another thumbing at Europe and the UN, it may be more of a removal than a reward. Rummy and Condi keep solidifying their power- the outspoken- Wolfie and Bolton are either Out or under their thumb; the UN job has not been a plumb in decades, since Adlai Stevenson was given it instead of his sought-after Secretary of State slot in JFK’s Administration.
Fred Kaplan offers:
A few months ago, Doug Feith announced that he would be leaving his job this summer, for personal reasons. Now Wolfowitz heads toward the door. Will the neocon triumvirate's third peg, Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary for intelligence, be the next to fall? And what of Rumsfeld himself? The face-saving has been accomplished. His archrival, Colin Powell, was booted while he stayed on in triumph. He escaped official blame for Abu Ghraib. Having thus emerged from the firestorms unscathed, he too may be working up an appetite to spend more time with his family.
Rumsfeld's fingerprints, which were smeared all over Bush's first-term foreign policy, have thus far left no marks in the second term. There are three possible explanations: Rumsfeld is insinuating himself more subtly than before; Condoleezza Rice shares his views, so he doesn't need to raise a fuss; or, just maybe, the winds are shifting over the Potomac. http://www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2114929&
Another concern about Wolfie:
Adding fuel to the controversy is concern within the bank staff over Wolfowitz's reported romantic relationship with Shaha Riza, an Arab feminist who works as a communications adviser in the bank's Middle East and North Africa department.
Both divorced, Wolfowitz and Riza have steadfastly declined to talk publicly about their relationship, but they have been regularly spotted at private functions and one source said the two have been dating for about two years. Riza, an Oxford-educated British citizen who was born in Tunisia and grew up in Saudi Arabia, shares Wolfowitz's passion for democratizing the Middle East, according to people who know her. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45449-2005Mar17.html
A way to remember Wolfowitz: from 3/27/03
“There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” [Source: House Committee on Appropriations Hearing on a Supplemental War Regulation, 3/27/03] http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/iraqquotes_web.htm
-R
