Friday, May 20, 2005
Post-Newsweek: Of course the Administration, Talk Radio and other complicit media have seized on the story to insinuate that THIS is the reason why we’re hated in the Muslim world. Perhaps it’s useful to read “the Iraqi blogs” to get a sense of what’s what in that part of the world.
On a daily basis, mosques are raided, clerics are dragged away with bags over their heads… Several months ago the world witnessed the execution of an unarmed Iraqi prisoner inside a mosque. Is this latest so very surprising?
Detainees coming back after weeks or months in prison talk of being forced to eat pork, not being allowed to pray, being exposed to dogs, having Islam insulted and generally being treated like animals trapped in a small cage. At the end of the day, it's not about words or holy books or pork or dogs or any of that. It's about what these things symbolize on a personal level. It is infuriating to see objects that we hold sacred degraded and debased by foreigners who felt the need to travel thousands of kilometers to do this. That's not to say that all troops disrespect Islam- some of them seem to genuinely want to understand our beliefs. It does seem like the people in charge have decided to make degradation and humiliation a policy.
By doing such things, this war is taken to another level- it is no longer a war against terror or terrorists- it is, quite simply, a war against Islam and even secular Muslims are being forced to take sides. http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Pre-Newsweek: Torture in Afghanistan, long before the current storm
The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=8701738ac057aebe&hp&ex=1116561600&partner=homepage
Newsweek Isn’t the Issue, III: Anne Applebaum, WaPost: No liberal she, but a half-decent take on what matters [much more than Newsweek’s partial mistake.]
But surely the larger point is not the story itself but that it was so eminently plausible, in Pakistan, Afghanistan and everywhere else. And it was plausible precisely because interrogation techniques designed to be offensive to Muslims were used in Iraq and Guantanamo, as administration and military officials have also confirmed. For example:
· Dogs. Military interrogators deployed them specifically because they knew Muslims consider dogs unclean. In a memo signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in September 2003, and available online, the then-commander in Iraq actually approved using the technique to "exploit Arab fear of dogs."
· Nudity. We know (and the Muslim world knows) from the Abu Ghraib photographs that nudity has been used to humiliate Muslim men. More important, we know that nudity was also approved as an interrogation technique by Donald Rumsfeld himself. He signed off on a November 2002 policy memo, later revised but also available online, that specifically listed "removal of clothing" as a permissible, "category II" interrogation technique, along with "removal of facial hair," also a technique designed to offend Muslims who wear beards.
There is no question that these were tactics designed to offend, no question that they were put in place after 2001 and no question that many considered them justified. Since the Afghan invasion, public supporters of "exceptional" interrogation methods have argued that in the special, unusual case of the war on terrorism, we may have to suspend our fussy legality, ignore our high ideals and resort to some unpleasant tactics that our military had never used. Opponents of these methods, among them some of the military's own interrogation experts, have argued, on the contrary, that "special methods" are not only ineffective but counterproductive: They might actually inspire Muslim terrorists instead of helping to defeat them. They might also make it easier, say, for fanatics in Jalalabad to use two lines of a magazine article to incite riots.
Blaming the messenger, even for a bungled message, doesn't get the administration off the hook. Yes, to paraphrase Rumsfeld, people need to be very careful, not only about what they say but about what they do. And, yes, people whose military and diplomatic priorities include the defeat of Islamic fanaticism and the spread of democratic values in the Muslim world need to be very, very careful, not only about what they say but about what they do to the Muslims they hold in captivity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/18/AR2005051800869.html
Do We Care? Ignorance re the missing $8.8 billion. Mucho dinero is missing in Iraq, still another manifestation of our corrupt (and inept and immoral) Occupation. Stunned by the information (and, ultimately, by the ignorance), Al Franken inquires:
Meanwhile, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which we ran, has lost 8.8 billion dollars. By lost, I mean it’s totally unaccounted for. Not only has Congress not "looked into" this $8.8 billion and who might have it now, but it seems that some members are completely unaware that this staggering sum, which was supposed to go toward rebuilding Iraq, is missing. The Sunday morning after the White House Correspondents dinner, I ran into Senator George Allen at a brunch thrown by John McLaughlin and his wife. Allen had never heard of the missing $8.8 billion, or at least that's what he told me. And he's on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Stunned, I went up to Susan Page of USA Today and her husband Carl Lubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News, two veteran Washington political reporters, and told them about Allen’s ignorance of this huge scandal, which has no doubt contributed to hatred for America and the deaths of our troops. There’s less electricity in Iraq now than there was before we invaded Iraq.
Turns out that Page and Lubsdorf had also never heard of the unaccounted-for $8.8 billion. For a moment I thought that maybe I had been imagining things.
Then I spotted my friend Norm Ornstein, scholar from the American Enterprise Institute. "Would you believe it if Norm Ornstein told you about the $8.8 billion?" I asked Susan and Carl.
"Sure."
I brought Norm over, and indeed I had not been imagining things. "It was a huge story," Norm told them.
"Was it in the New York Times?" Carl asked Norm.
"Yes," Norm assured him.
What in God’s name is going on? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/al-franken/what-in-godas-name-is-g_1221.html
Sunnis killing Shiites killing Sunnis…
The attack continued a wave of violence against religious figures from two of Iraq's main Muslim sects. The dead bodies of three Sunni Muslim sheiks were discovered in Baghdad earlier this week. A Shiite cleric and an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, widely considered the most influential Shiite cleric in the country, was also killed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/19/AR2005051900743.html
It’s not going so well; The Generals speak
In interviews and briefings this week, some of the generals pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same officers, that positive trends in Iraq could allow a major drawdown in the 138,000 American troops late this year or early in 2006. One officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could last "many years." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/international/middleeast/19cnd-iraq.html?ei=5094&en=03fb911eac4e06e0&hp=&ex=1116561600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Al-Qaeda arrests: Why do they happen when they happen? Bernard-Henri Levy questions the timing, whether the “operatives’” whereabouts are known and ‘cashed in’ by the Pakistanis, based on where it’s at with their American friend/sponsor.
In each case, we can find a reason for this series of coincidences between the lightning-raid operations of the Pakistani armed forces and the political needs of the U.S. president.
Still, I can't get it out of my mind that we have, even more than coincidences, a recurrence, or a law, or even something that looks a lot like a test of strength between the two countries.
It is as if the Pakistani powers that be have had, ever since Al-Qaida's retreat from Afghanistan and their withdrawal into Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, a precise idea of where the chiefs of Al-Qaida could be found. It is as if Pakistan's formidable intelligence service, the ISI, had not only localized but kept these public enemies of the United States -- and theoretically of Pakistan -- under observation, handy for periodic culling.
It is as if these people were bargaining chips, with the Pakistanis drawing from their reserves of terrorists and cashing them in one by one, depending on the needs of their relationship with the great American "friend."http://www.startribune.com/dynamic/story.php?template=print_a&story=5409058
The Lies that led us to War: Juan Cole takes a whack at it, as the mainstream media continue to basically ignore the infamous memo. If the Democrats had more fire (and the House or Senate), this would be fuel for Impeachment, as Cole notes.
We now know, thanks to a leaked British memo concerning the head of British intelligence, that the Bush administration -- contrary to its explicit denials -- had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and "fixed" those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush and his top officials lied about Iraq.
Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/lies/index_np.html
Times acknowledges, terms it ‘fuel for critics’. Tentative report on page 8 of Friday’s Times, a rarity.
More than two weeks after its publication in London, a previously secret British government memorandum that reported in July 2002 that President Bush had decided to "remove Saddam, through military action" is still creating a stir among administration critics. They are portraying it as evidence that Mr. Bush was intent on war with Iraq earlier than the White House has acknowledged.
Eighty-nine House Democrats wrote to the White House to ask whether the memorandum, first disclosed by The Sunday Times on May 1, accurately reported the administration's thinking at the time, eight months before the American-led invasion. The letter, drafted by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the British memorandum of July 23, 2002, if accurate, "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/politics/20weapons.html?pagewanted=print
Uzbekistan: Our Friend Reports of a more stable situation, as of Friday, in this troubled land.
Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov's army, which last Friday opened fire on thousands of unarmed protesters in Andijan, in the Ferghana Valley, has been showered by Washington in the past few years with hundreds of millions of dollars (US$200 million in 2002 alone) - all on behalf of the "war on terror".
So you won't see the White House, or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, hammering Karimov. You won't hear many in Washington calling for free elections in Uzbekistan. The former strongmen of color-coded, "revolutionary" Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were monsters who had to be removed for "freedom and democracy" to prevail. So is the dictator of Belarus. Not Karimov. He's "our" dictator: the Saddam Hussein of Central Asia is George W Bush's man…
The Washington-Tashkent "special relationship" started as early as the mid-1990s, during the Bill Clinton administration. In 1999, Green Berets were actively training Uzbek Special Forces. Khanabad has nothing to do with Afghanistan: Bagram takes care of this. But Khanabad is crucial as one of the key bases surrounding Bush's Greater Middle East, or to put it in the relevant perspective, the Middle East/Caucasus/Central Asia heavenly arc of oil and gas. It's on a seven-year lease to the Pentagon, due to expire in late 2008.
So Karimov in Uzbekistan is as essential a piece in the great oil and gas chessboard as Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. Inevitably, there will be more uprisings in the impoverished Ferghana Valley that has reached a boiling point. Karimov again will unleash his American-funded army. The White House will be silent. The Kremlin will be silent (or dub it "green revolution" - by Islamic fundamentalists, as it did with Andijan). Corporate media will be silent: one imagines the furor had Andijan happened in Lebanon when Syrian troops were still in the country. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GE17Ag01.html
Uzbekistan: Future Islamic state?
``We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran,'' rebel leader Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press in Korasuv, a town of 20,000. ``People are tired of slavery.''
The government of President Islam Karimov dismissed those claims as ``nonsense,'' but Rakhimov said he has 5,000 followers ready to fight any troops that try to crush the rebellion. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5014990,00.html
-R
On a daily basis, mosques are raided, clerics are dragged away with bags over their heads… Several months ago the world witnessed the execution of an unarmed Iraqi prisoner inside a mosque. Is this latest so very surprising?
Detainees coming back after weeks or months in prison talk of being forced to eat pork, not being allowed to pray, being exposed to dogs, having Islam insulted and generally being treated like animals trapped in a small cage. At the end of the day, it's not about words or holy books or pork or dogs or any of that. It's about what these things symbolize on a personal level. It is infuriating to see objects that we hold sacred degraded and debased by foreigners who felt the need to travel thousands of kilometers to do this. That's not to say that all troops disrespect Islam- some of them seem to genuinely want to understand our beliefs. It does seem like the people in charge have decided to make degradation and humiliation a policy.
By doing such things, this war is taken to another level- it is no longer a war against terror or terrorists- it is, quite simply, a war against Islam and even secular Muslims are being forced to take sides. http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Pre-Newsweek: Torture in Afghanistan, long before the current storm
The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=8701738ac057aebe&hp&ex=1116561600&partner=homepage
Newsweek Isn’t the Issue, III: Anne Applebaum, WaPost: No liberal she, but a half-decent take on what matters [much more than Newsweek’s partial mistake.]
But surely the larger point is not the story itself but that it was so eminently plausible, in Pakistan, Afghanistan and everywhere else. And it was plausible precisely because interrogation techniques designed to be offensive to Muslims were used in Iraq and Guantanamo, as administration and military officials have also confirmed. For example:
· Dogs. Military interrogators deployed them specifically because they knew Muslims consider dogs unclean. In a memo signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in September 2003, and available online, the then-commander in Iraq actually approved using the technique to "exploit Arab fear of dogs."
· Nudity. We know (and the Muslim world knows) from the Abu Ghraib photographs that nudity has been used to humiliate Muslim men. More important, we know that nudity was also approved as an interrogation technique by Donald Rumsfeld himself. He signed off on a November 2002 policy memo, later revised but also available online, that specifically listed "removal of clothing" as a permissible, "category II" interrogation technique, along with "removal of facial hair," also a technique designed to offend Muslims who wear beards.
There is no question that these were tactics designed to offend, no question that they were put in place after 2001 and no question that many considered them justified. Since the Afghan invasion, public supporters of "exceptional" interrogation methods have argued that in the special, unusual case of the war on terrorism, we may have to suspend our fussy legality, ignore our high ideals and resort to some unpleasant tactics that our military had never used. Opponents of these methods, among them some of the military's own interrogation experts, have argued, on the contrary, that "special methods" are not only ineffective but counterproductive: They might actually inspire Muslim terrorists instead of helping to defeat them. They might also make it easier, say, for fanatics in Jalalabad to use two lines of a magazine article to incite riots.
Blaming the messenger, even for a bungled message, doesn't get the administration off the hook. Yes, to paraphrase Rumsfeld, people need to be very careful, not only about what they say but about what they do. And, yes, people whose military and diplomatic priorities include the defeat of Islamic fanaticism and the spread of democratic values in the Muslim world need to be very, very careful, not only about what they say but about what they do to the Muslims they hold in captivity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/18/AR2005051800869.html
Do We Care? Ignorance re the missing $8.8 billion. Mucho dinero is missing in Iraq, still another manifestation of our corrupt (and inept and immoral) Occupation. Stunned by the information (and, ultimately, by the ignorance), Al Franken inquires:
Meanwhile, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which we ran, has lost 8.8 billion dollars. By lost, I mean it’s totally unaccounted for. Not only has Congress not "looked into" this $8.8 billion and who might have it now, but it seems that some members are completely unaware that this staggering sum, which was supposed to go toward rebuilding Iraq, is missing. The Sunday morning after the White House Correspondents dinner, I ran into Senator George Allen at a brunch thrown by John McLaughlin and his wife. Allen had never heard of the missing $8.8 billion, or at least that's what he told me. And he's on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Stunned, I went up to Susan Page of USA Today and her husband Carl Lubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News, two veteran Washington political reporters, and told them about Allen’s ignorance of this huge scandal, which has no doubt contributed to hatred for America and the deaths of our troops. There’s less electricity in Iraq now than there was before we invaded Iraq.
Turns out that Page and Lubsdorf had also never heard of the unaccounted-for $8.8 billion. For a moment I thought that maybe I had been imagining things.
Then I spotted my friend Norm Ornstein, scholar from the American Enterprise Institute. "Would you believe it if Norm Ornstein told you about the $8.8 billion?" I asked Susan and Carl.
"Sure."
I brought Norm over, and indeed I had not been imagining things. "It was a huge story," Norm told them.
"Was it in the New York Times?" Carl asked Norm.
"Yes," Norm assured him.
What in God’s name is going on? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/al-franken/what-in-godas-name-is-g_1221.html
Sunnis killing Shiites killing Sunnis…
The attack continued a wave of violence against religious figures from two of Iraq's main Muslim sects. The dead bodies of three Sunni Muslim sheiks were discovered in Baghdad earlier this week. A Shiite cleric and an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, widely considered the most influential Shiite cleric in the country, was also killed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/19/AR2005051900743.html
It’s not going so well; The Generals speak
In interviews and briefings this week, some of the generals pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same officers, that positive trends in Iraq could allow a major drawdown in the 138,000 American troops late this year or early in 2006. One officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could last "many years." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/international/middleeast/19cnd-iraq.html?ei=5094&en=03fb911eac4e06e0&hp=&ex=1116561600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Al-Qaeda arrests: Why do they happen when they happen? Bernard-Henri Levy questions the timing, whether the “operatives’” whereabouts are known and ‘cashed in’ by the Pakistanis, based on where it’s at with their American friend/sponsor.
In each case, we can find a reason for this series of coincidences between the lightning-raid operations of the Pakistani armed forces and the political needs of the U.S. president.
Still, I can't get it out of my mind that we have, even more than coincidences, a recurrence, or a law, or even something that looks a lot like a test of strength between the two countries.
It is as if the Pakistani powers that be have had, ever since Al-Qaida's retreat from Afghanistan and their withdrawal into Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, a precise idea of where the chiefs of Al-Qaida could be found. It is as if Pakistan's formidable intelligence service, the ISI, had not only localized but kept these public enemies of the United States -- and theoretically of Pakistan -- under observation, handy for periodic culling.
It is as if these people were bargaining chips, with the Pakistanis drawing from their reserves of terrorists and cashing them in one by one, depending on the needs of their relationship with the great American "friend."http://www.startribune.com/dynamic/story.php?template=print_a&story=5409058
The Lies that led us to War: Juan Cole takes a whack at it, as the mainstream media continue to basically ignore the infamous memo. If the Democrats had more fire (and the House or Senate), this would be fuel for Impeachment, as Cole notes.
We now know, thanks to a leaked British memo concerning the head of British intelligence, that the Bush administration -- contrary to its explicit denials -- had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and "fixed" those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush and his top officials lied about Iraq.
Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/lies/index_np.html
Times acknowledges, terms it ‘fuel for critics’. Tentative report on page 8 of Friday’s Times, a rarity.
More than two weeks after its publication in London, a previously secret British government memorandum that reported in July 2002 that President Bush had decided to "remove Saddam, through military action" is still creating a stir among administration critics. They are portraying it as evidence that Mr. Bush was intent on war with Iraq earlier than the White House has acknowledged.
Eighty-nine House Democrats wrote to the White House to ask whether the memorandum, first disclosed by The Sunday Times on May 1, accurately reported the administration's thinking at the time, eight months before the American-led invasion. The letter, drafted by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said the British memorandum of July 23, 2002, if accurate, "raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of your own administration." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/politics/20weapons.html?pagewanted=print
Uzbekistan: Our Friend Reports of a more stable situation, as of Friday, in this troubled land.
Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov's army, which last Friday opened fire on thousands of unarmed protesters in Andijan, in the Ferghana Valley, has been showered by Washington in the past few years with hundreds of millions of dollars (US$200 million in 2002 alone) - all on behalf of the "war on terror".
So you won't see the White House, or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, hammering Karimov. You won't hear many in Washington calling for free elections in Uzbekistan. The former strongmen of color-coded, "revolutionary" Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were monsters who had to be removed for "freedom and democracy" to prevail. So is the dictator of Belarus. Not Karimov. He's "our" dictator: the Saddam Hussein of Central Asia is George W Bush's man…
The Washington-Tashkent "special relationship" started as early as the mid-1990s, during the Bill Clinton administration. In 1999, Green Berets were actively training Uzbek Special Forces. Khanabad has nothing to do with Afghanistan: Bagram takes care of this. But Khanabad is crucial as one of the key bases surrounding Bush's Greater Middle East, or to put it in the relevant perspective, the Middle East/Caucasus/Central Asia heavenly arc of oil and gas. It's on a seven-year lease to the Pentagon, due to expire in late 2008.
So Karimov in Uzbekistan is as essential a piece in the great oil and gas chessboard as Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. Inevitably, there will be more uprisings in the impoverished Ferghana Valley that has reached a boiling point. Karimov again will unleash his American-funded army. The White House will be silent. The Kremlin will be silent (or dub it "green revolution" - by Islamic fundamentalists, as it did with Andijan). Corporate media will be silent: one imagines the furor had Andijan happened in Lebanon when Syrian troops were still in the country. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GE17Ag01.html
Uzbekistan: Future Islamic state?
``We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran,'' rebel leader Bakhtiyor Rakhimov told The Associated Press in Korasuv, a town of 20,000. ``People are tired of slavery.''
The government of President Islam Karimov dismissed those claims as ``nonsense,'' but Rakhimov said he has 5,000 followers ready to fight any troops that try to crush the rebellion. http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5014990,00.html
-R
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny So spoke the head of the Air Force’s “Space Command.” The air force is ‘requesting’ permission to place offensive weapons in space.
The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701238_pf.html
Righteous White House re Newsweek article. The Administration got on its high horse to flog Newsweek, even though last week the impact of that memo had been minimized by the Joint Chiefs chair.
Mr. McClellan and other administration officials blamed the Newsweek article for setting off the anti-American violence that swept Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The report had real consequences," Mr. McClellan said. "People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged."
But only a few days earlier, in a briefing on Thursday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said that the senior commander in Afghanistan believed the protests had stemmed from that country's reconciliation process. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/politics/17koran.html?pagewanted=print
Let’s contrast: The Newsweek retraction story made it to page 1 of most major periodicals. But, the ‘discovered’ memo that provided further proof that the Iraqi invasion was dreamed up apart from any concern about wmd was relegated to the back pages of those papers.
Keith Olbermann reflects on Newsweekgate::
Last Thursday, General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Donald Rumsfeld’s go-to guy whenever the situation calls for the kind of gravitas the Secretary himself can’t supply, told reporters at the Pentagon that rioting in Afghanistan was related more to the on-going political reconciliation process there, than it was to a controversial note buried in the pages of Newsweek claiming that the government was investigating whether or not some nitwit interrogator at Gitmo really had desecrated a Muslim holy book.
But Monday afternoon, while offering himself up to the networks for a series of rare, almost unprecedented sit-down interviews on the White House lawn, Press Secretary McClellan said, in effect, that General Myers, and the head of the after-action report following the disturbances in Jalalabad, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, were dead wrong. The Newsweek story, McClellan said, “has done damage to our image abroad and it has done damage to the credibility of the media and Newsweek in particular. People have lost lives. This report has had serious consequences.”
Whenever I hear Scott McClellan talking about ‘media credibility,’ I strain to remember who it was who admitted Jeff Gannon to the White House press room and called on him all those times.
Whenever I hear this White House talking about ‘doing to damage to our image abroad’ and how ‘people have lost lives,’ I strain to remember who it was who went traipsing into Iraq looking for WMD that will apparently turn up just after the Holy Grail will - and at what human cost.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7873141/#050516b
The New York Times offered a clarification of note:
Newsweek's retraction dealt only with its mistaken assertion that the report on a months-long Pentagon investigation was expected to confirm the toilet accusation. But around the world, discussion continued on the larger issue of whether such abuse ever occurred at Guantanamo, as released prisoners have asserted over the years. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/politics/18koran.html?pagewanted=all
Rush Limbaugh does his thing: Following the Right talking points, he noted that Newsweek "didn't make a mistake," but that its article was an "attempt to undermine the effort" that Bush is making in the Middle East. And, "When's the last time you saw the media in support of the war on terror or the war in Iraq?” http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051705/content/rush_is_right.guest.html
Evangelical Profs Protest Bush They’re not all Republican zealots
One-third of the professors at an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., are taking out a large ad in a local newspaper Saturday to protest President Bush's commencement speech.
"As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," the ad will say. "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq." http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050516-103313-9190r.htm
Right Beliefs: A year or so ago we had Grover Norquist equating taxes on the wealthy and the Holocaust. Now, Bob Novak compares Democratic tactics on the judicial nominees to…you guessed it, concentration camps. From CNN’s “Capital Gang”- Al Hunt and Novak:
Hunt: “Bob, why would Senator Frist refuse an offer to break the deadlock?”
Novak: “Because the whole system is that you’re not going to have — like going to a concentration camp and picking out which people go to the death chamber. You’re not going to let the Democrats do that, say, ‘We’re going to — we’re going to confirm this person, we’re not going to confirm the other person.’” http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/14/cg.01.html
Brit Dispatches Norm Coleman. Our Democrats are gentle folk and are inclined to ‘take it’. Not so this Britisher who was unfairly trashed by the mediocre Minnesota senator in the UN ‘oil for food’ “scandal”. George Galloway, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, in east London, told the Senate subcommittee it had made a "schoolboy howler" in its investigation of illegal Iraqi oil sales. Then, he said it was attempting to divert attention from the aftermath of the US-led invasion/occupation of Iraq.
In a defiant performance on Capitol Hill, Mr Galloway said senators had confused the dating of evidence against him and relied too much on the testimony of a former Iraqi vice president held prisoner in Abu Ghraib.
"I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he told Senator Norm Coleman, the Republican subcommittee chairman.
"I am here today - but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever - and you call that justice." http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1486025,00.html
"I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf," he said. "The real sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians," he continued, but "your own companies with the connivance of your own government."
A flamboyant orator and skilled debater, he also attacked United Nations sanctions against Iraq, the program, and, above all, the American-led war to topple Mr. Hussein. The administration, he said, had based its invasion of Iraq on a "pack of lies" and was now trying to justify its actions with charges regarding the oil-for-food program and other allegations, which he called "the mother of all smoke screens."
His aggressive posture and tone seemed to flummox Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the first-term senator who heads the Senate panel. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/international/middleeast/18food.html?pagewanted=print
Disaffected Public They aren’t thrilled with the Democrats, either.
Bush approval ratings
Approve 43 (49)
Disapprove 50 (46)
Congressional Republicans
Approve 35 (39)
Disapprove 50 (44)
Congressional Democrats
Approve 39 (37)
Disapprove 41 (44)
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=243
And, as to the filibuster / nuclear option issue, the public is a blend of uninformed and apathetic…hardly atypical!
"about as many Americans blame President Bush (38%) as blame congressional Democrats (34%) for the stalemate over judicial nominees."
What’s Happening, Economy: Have to keep on top of this, as no one knows where it’s headed.
Buying of U.S. bonds and stocks by foreigners fell sharply in March, suggesting the country may be having a harder time financing its trade deficit with money borrowed abroad.
For the first time since August 2003, foreign central banks were net sellers of U.S. government securities, driving net overall foreign purchases of American securities -- both bonds and stocks -- to $45.7 billion for the month, down nearly by half from the average of the previous two months, according to the Treasury Department's latest monthly report on net capital flows. The overall net figure includes foreign purchases of U.S. bonds and stocks, as well as U.S. purchases of foreign securities.
This trend "doesn't really augur very well for the stability of financing for the current-account deficit," said Ashraf Laidi, chief currency analyst for MG Financial Group…
If foreigners lose their enthusiasm for American investments, it will likely push the dollar down -- or keep it from climbing -- drive up U.S. interest rates and possibly slow the U.S. economy. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111625830625134659,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
Meanwhile, concern that our economy is heading for a “nightmare” got little attention from politicians or the media. People of contrasting ideologies noted that future budgets could be summarized thusly: "The only thing the United States is able to do a little after 2040 is pay interest on massive and growing federal debt. The model blows up in the mid-2040s. What does that mean? Argentina." Dana Milbank, WaPost:
The timing could not have been more apt. On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country's most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina.
While Washington plunged into a procedural fight over a pair of judicial nominees, Stuart Butler, head of domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Isabel Sawhill, director of the left-leaning Brookings Institution's economic studies program, sat down with Comptroller General David M. Walker to bemoan what they jointly called the budget "nightmare." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701238_pf.html
Nuclear Option: Will there be negotiations? McCain and Ben Nelson keep trying to avoid the confrontation, but as of Wednesday, that’s not likely.
Immigration and Republican solidarity: Always beatable, the Republicans are now threatened with a new potential for splitting the governing coalition: Because of its implications for the nation's economy, security and its social fabric pit Republican constituencies against one another, immigration could threaten the GOP more than anything the Democrats could do.
But the breadth of Mr. McCain's proposal, and its potential to split his party, underscores the challenge of getting it enacted. It would invest more in border security through technology such as unmanned aerial vehicles, while creating an "essential worker" H-5A visa for immigrants willing to fill low-skilled jobs that Americans won't take. Applicants would have to show that a job is waiting for them, pay a $500 fee, and clear security and medical checks.
Undocumented workers already here could register for a temporary H-5B visa that would be good for as long as six years. To qualify for permanent legal status, they would have to clear security checks, pay back taxes and a $2,000 fee, and learn English. Hospitals caring for illegal immigrants would be eligible for federal reimbursement.
"This is not an amnesty bill," Mr. McCain declared on the Senate floor as he introduced the legislation. Yet Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a leader among conservative Republicans who favor tougher policies, denounced the proposal as tantamount to amnesty.
Smoothing the path toward legal status is popular with the Republican party's business constituency, from agribusiness executives to a tourism industry with many hotels and restaurants that can't operate without illegal immigrants. It is also popular among the Hispanic swing voters whom Mr. Bush and strategist Karl Rove recognize as vital to lasting Republican dominance.
Yet as Mr. Tancredo's criticism suggests, it is toxic to the party's socially conservative base. In a new dissection of the American electorate by the Pew Research Center, an affiliate of the Pew Hispanic Center, 53% of free-market Republican "enterprisers" say rising immigration "strengthens American society." But an overwhelming 68% of social conservatives say it "threatens traditional American customs and values." http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111629188123235342,00.html?mod=politics%5Ffirst%5Felement%5Fhs
WW II and so-called “War on Terror”: Perspective
As of tomorrow, it will be 1,346 days since the attacks of 9/11. That is the same length of time as the attack on Pearl Harbor to the end of WWII. (Dec 7, 1941 to Aug 24, 1945).
-R
The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.
The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701238_pf.html
Righteous White House re Newsweek article. The Administration got on its high horse to flog Newsweek, even though last week the impact of that memo had been minimized by the Joint Chiefs chair.
Mr. McClellan and other administration officials blamed the Newsweek article for setting off the anti-American violence that swept Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The report had real consequences," Mr. McClellan said. "People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged."
But only a few days earlier, in a briefing on Thursday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said that the senior commander in Afghanistan believed the protests had stemmed from that country's reconciliation process. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/politics/17koran.html?pagewanted=print
Let’s contrast: The Newsweek retraction story made it to page 1 of most major periodicals. But, the ‘discovered’ memo that provided further proof that the Iraqi invasion was dreamed up apart from any concern about wmd was relegated to the back pages of those papers.
Keith Olbermann reflects on Newsweekgate::
Last Thursday, General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Donald Rumsfeld’s go-to guy whenever the situation calls for the kind of gravitas the Secretary himself can’t supply, told reporters at the Pentagon that rioting in Afghanistan was related more to the on-going political reconciliation process there, than it was to a controversial note buried in the pages of Newsweek claiming that the government was investigating whether or not some nitwit interrogator at Gitmo really had desecrated a Muslim holy book.
But Monday afternoon, while offering himself up to the networks for a series of rare, almost unprecedented sit-down interviews on the White House lawn, Press Secretary McClellan said, in effect, that General Myers, and the head of the after-action report following the disturbances in Jalalabad, Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, were dead wrong. The Newsweek story, McClellan said, “has done damage to our image abroad and it has done damage to the credibility of the media and Newsweek in particular. People have lost lives. This report has had serious consequences.”
Whenever I hear Scott McClellan talking about ‘media credibility,’ I strain to remember who it was who admitted Jeff Gannon to the White House press room and called on him all those times.
Whenever I hear this White House talking about ‘doing to damage to our image abroad’ and how ‘people have lost lives,’ I strain to remember who it was who went traipsing into Iraq looking for WMD that will apparently turn up just after the Holy Grail will - and at what human cost.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7873141/#050516b
The New York Times offered a clarification of note:
Newsweek's retraction dealt only with its mistaken assertion that the report on a months-long Pentagon investigation was expected to confirm the toilet accusation. But around the world, discussion continued on the larger issue of whether such abuse ever occurred at Guantanamo, as released prisoners have asserted over the years. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/politics/18koran.html?pagewanted=all
Rush Limbaugh does his thing: Following the Right talking points, he noted that Newsweek "didn't make a mistake," but that its article was an "attempt to undermine the effort" that Bush is making in the Middle East. And, "When's the last time you saw the media in support of the war on terror or the war in Iraq?” http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051705/content/rush_is_right.guest.html
Evangelical Profs Protest Bush They’re not all Republican zealots
One-third of the professors at an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., are taking out a large ad in a local newspaper Saturday to protest President Bush's commencement speech.
"As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," the ad will say. "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq." http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050516-103313-9190r.htm
Right Beliefs: A year or so ago we had Grover Norquist equating taxes on the wealthy and the Holocaust. Now, Bob Novak compares Democratic tactics on the judicial nominees to…you guessed it, concentration camps. From CNN’s “Capital Gang”- Al Hunt and Novak:
Hunt: “Bob, why would Senator Frist refuse an offer to break the deadlock?”
Novak: “Because the whole system is that you’re not going to have — like going to a concentration camp and picking out which people go to the death chamber. You’re not going to let the Democrats do that, say, ‘We’re going to — we’re going to confirm this person, we’re not going to confirm the other person.’” http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/14/cg.01.html
Brit Dispatches Norm Coleman. Our Democrats are gentle folk and are inclined to ‘take it’. Not so this Britisher who was unfairly trashed by the mediocre Minnesota senator in the UN ‘oil for food’ “scandal”. George Galloway, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, in east London, told the Senate subcommittee it had made a "schoolboy howler" in its investigation of illegal Iraqi oil sales. Then, he said it was attempting to divert attention from the aftermath of the US-led invasion/occupation of Iraq.
In a defiant performance on Capitol Hill, Mr Galloway said senators had confused the dating of evidence against him and relied too much on the testimony of a former Iraqi vice president held prisoner in Abu Ghraib.
"I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he told Senator Norm Coleman, the Republican subcommittee chairman.
"I am here today - but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any contact with me whatsoever - and you call that justice." http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1486025,00.html
"I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf," he said. "The real sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians," he continued, but "your own companies with the connivance of your own government."
A flamboyant orator and skilled debater, he also attacked United Nations sanctions against Iraq, the program, and, above all, the American-led war to topple Mr. Hussein. The administration, he said, had based its invasion of Iraq on a "pack of lies" and was now trying to justify its actions with charges regarding the oil-for-food program and other allegations, which he called "the mother of all smoke screens."
His aggressive posture and tone seemed to flummox Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the first-term senator who heads the Senate panel. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/international/middleeast/18food.html?pagewanted=print
Disaffected Public They aren’t thrilled with the Democrats, either.
Bush approval ratings
Approve 43 (49)
Disapprove 50 (46)
Congressional Republicans
Approve 35 (39)
Disapprove 50 (44)
Congressional Democrats
Approve 39 (37)
Disapprove 41 (44)
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=243
And, as to the filibuster / nuclear option issue, the public is a blend of uninformed and apathetic…hardly atypical!
"about as many Americans blame President Bush (38%) as blame congressional Democrats (34%) for the stalemate over judicial nominees."
What’s Happening, Economy: Have to keep on top of this, as no one knows where it’s headed.
Buying of U.S. bonds and stocks by foreigners fell sharply in March, suggesting the country may be having a harder time financing its trade deficit with money borrowed abroad.
For the first time since August 2003, foreign central banks were net sellers of U.S. government securities, driving net overall foreign purchases of American securities -- both bonds and stocks -- to $45.7 billion for the month, down nearly by half from the average of the previous two months, according to the Treasury Department's latest monthly report on net capital flows. The overall net figure includes foreign purchases of U.S. bonds and stocks, as well as U.S. purchases of foreign securities.
This trend "doesn't really augur very well for the stability of financing for the current-account deficit," said Ashraf Laidi, chief currency analyst for MG Financial Group…
If foreigners lose their enthusiasm for American investments, it will likely push the dollar down -- or keep it from climbing -- drive up U.S. interest rates and possibly slow the U.S. economy. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111625830625134659,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us
Meanwhile, concern that our economy is heading for a “nightmare” got little attention from politicians or the media. People of contrasting ideologies noted that future budgets could be summarized thusly: "The only thing the United States is able to do a little after 2040 is pay interest on massive and growing federal debt. The model blows up in the mid-2040s. What does that mean? Argentina." Dana Milbank, WaPost:
The timing could not have been more apt. On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country's most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina.
While Washington plunged into a procedural fight over a pair of judicial nominees, Stuart Butler, head of domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Isabel Sawhill, director of the left-leaning Brookings Institution's economic studies program, sat down with Comptroller General David M. Walker to bemoan what they jointly called the budget "nightmare." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701238_pf.html
Nuclear Option: Will there be negotiations? McCain and Ben Nelson keep trying to avoid the confrontation, but as of Wednesday, that’s not likely.
Immigration and Republican solidarity: Always beatable, the Republicans are now threatened with a new potential for splitting the governing coalition: Because of its implications for the nation's economy, security and its social fabric pit Republican constituencies against one another, immigration could threaten the GOP more than anything the Democrats could do.
But the breadth of Mr. McCain's proposal, and its potential to split his party, underscores the challenge of getting it enacted. It would invest more in border security through technology such as unmanned aerial vehicles, while creating an "essential worker" H-5A visa for immigrants willing to fill low-skilled jobs that Americans won't take. Applicants would have to show that a job is waiting for them, pay a $500 fee, and clear security and medical checks.
Undocumented workers already here could register for a temporary H-5B visa that would be good for as long as six years. To qualify for permanent legal status, they would have to clear security checks, pay back taxes and a $2,000 fee, and learn English. Hospitals caring for illegal immigrants would be eligible for federal reimbursement.
"This is not an amnesty bill," Mr. McCain declared on the Senate floor as he introduced the legislation. Yet Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a leader among conservative Republicans who favor tougher policies, denounced the proposal as tantamount to amnesty.
Smoothing the path toward legal status is popular with the Republican party's business constituency, from agribusiness executives to a tourism industry with many hotels and restaurants that can't operate without illegal immigrants. It is also popular among the Hispanic swing voters whom Mr. Bush and strategist Karl Rove recognize as vital to lasting Republican dominance.
Yet as Mr. Tancredo's criticism suggests, it is toxic to the party's socially conservative base. In a new dissection of the American electorate by the Pew Research Center, an affiliate of the Pew Hispanic Center, 53% of free-market Republican "enterprisers" say rising immigration "strengthens American society." But an overwhelming 68% of social conservatives say it "threatens traditional American customs and values." http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111629188123235342,00.html?mod=politics%5Ffirst%5Felement%5Fhs
WW II and so-called “War on Terror”: Perspective
As of tomorrow, it will be 1,346 days since the attacks of 9/11. That is the same length of time as the attack on Pearl Harbor to the end of WWII. (Dec 7, 1941 to Aug 24, 1945).
-R
Monday, May 16, 2005
A news ‘lull’, at least partly explained by the media’s habitual ignoring of Bush Administration transgressions, including the latest evidence of how the Iraq war was planned long before…ah, you know. Meanwhile:
Moyers in St. Louis: At the conference on ‘media reform’.
“The more compelling our journalism, the angrier became the radical right of the Republican Party,’’ he said. “That’s because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.” http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/2183DBC809328E3686257002007A5988?OpenDocument
Media: NPR – CPB Conflict
Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.
The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/business/media/16radio.html?pagewanted=print
Uzbekistan Protests: U.S. Double Standard decried Apparently hundreds were killed in anti-government protests. The U.S. silence on top of the ignoring of Uzbek ongoing human rights violations including their torture of dissidents, has awakened human rights organizations.
Heated criticism was growing last night over 'double standards' by Washington over human rights, democracy and 'freedom' as fresh evidence emerged of just how brutally Uzbekistan, a US ally in the 'war on terror', put down Friday's unrest in the east of the country.
Outrage among human rights groups followed claims by the White House on Friday that appeared designed to justify the violence of the regime of President Islam Karimov, claiming - as Karimov has - that 'terrorist groups' may have been involved in the uprising. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1484251,00.html
Fraud More, of the common variety
Money earmarked by Congress for investigating health care fraud appears to have been shifted improperly to other purposes, like fighting terrorism, Congressional auditors say in a new report.
The report, to be issued this week by the Government Accountability Office, says health care cases got short shrift from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was supposed to use the money exclusively to investigate fraud against Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs. The money came from an account in the Medicare trust fund.
The bureau was unable to show that it had used the money for the intended purpose, the report said, noting that F.B.I. agents "previously devoted to health care fraud investigations were shifted to counterterrorism activities" in the last three years. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/politics/16fraud.html?pagewanted=print
Social Security: Democrat turncoat
Until now the Democrats have been disciplined, depriving the Administration of a Democrat to use for their claims of ‘bi-partisan” support. But, Robert Wexler (D-Palm Beach) has weakened and has introduced legislation.
Breaking with party leaders, a Democratic congressman plans to introduce Social Security legislation, saying his first commitment is to his constituents.
The lawmaker, Representative Robert Wexler of Florida. said on Friday: "I have the largest amount of Social Security recipients of any Democrat anywhere in the country. My allegiance to seniors is greater than my allegiance to the Democratic Party."
The proposed legislation, which Mr. Wexler plans to outline on Monday in Florida, calls for a 6 percent tax on all income above the current $90,000 cap. Three percent would be paid by workers and 3 percent paid by their employers.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/politics/14social.html?pagewanted=all
Class. So rarely addressed, but here, a 3-parter
But class is still a powerful force in American life. Over the past three decades, it has come to play a greater, not lesser, role in important ways. At a time when education matters more than ever, success in school remains linked tightly to class. At a time when the country is increasingly integrated racially, the rich are isolating themselves more and more. At a time of extraordinary advances in medicine, class differences in health and lifespan are wide and appear to be widening. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html
Bush on his Bike. The major media didn’t want to touch this latest humiliation, but we should linger on his role in The Alert. Here’s a sample of the McClellan press conference, featuring some rare questioning by the press. Highly entertaining.
McCLELLAN: Well, again, if you want to give me a chance to respond, I'll be glad to. The protocols were followed. This situation, as you're well aware, turned out to be an accident. The Department of Defense pointed out yesterday that they didn't sense any hostile intent on the part of the plane. There were fighter jets scrambled. There was a Blackhawk helicopter scrambled, as well, to get in contact with the plane. ...
Q So if it was assessed that there was no hostile intent on the part of this aircraft, can you tell us why 30,000 people -- 35,000 people were told to run for their lives?
McCLELLAN: Because of the protocols that are in place, John. We want to make sure that the people in the area of the threat are protected. After --
Q: But what was the threat? You just said there was no threat.
McCLELLAN: John, after Sept. 11, we have to take into account the world that we live in. We live in a very different world than we did before Sept. 11. And the president is going to do everything in his power to make sure we are protecting the American people and to make sure that the people in areas that could be high-risk areas are protected, as well.
Q: Right, but there seems to be so many disconnects here. You've got a plane that was assessed as not being a threat, you've got 35,000 people evacuated, you've got a person who you claim is a hands-on commander in chief who is left to go ride his bicycle through the rural wildlands of Maryland while his wife is in some secure location somewhere, it's just not adding up. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000920092
-R
Moyers in St. Louis: At the conference on ‘media reform’.
“The more compelling our journalism, the angrier became the radical right of the Republican Party,’’ he said. “That’s because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth.” http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/2183DBC809328E3686257002007A5988?OpenDocument
Media: NPR – CPB Conflict
Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.
The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/business/media/16radio.html?pagewanted=print
Uzbekistan Protests: U.S. Double Standard decried Apparently hundreds were killed in anti-government protests. The U.S. silence on top of the ignoring of Uzbek ongoing human rights violations including their torture of dissidents, has awakened human rights organizations.
Heated criticism was growing last night over 'double standards' by Washington over human rights, democracy and 'freedom' as fresh evidence emerged of just how brutally Uzbekistan, a US ally in the 'war on terror', put down Friday's unrest in the east of the country.
Outrage among human rights groups followed claims by the White House on Friday that appeared designed to justify the violence of the regime of President Islam Karimov, claiming - as Karimov has - that 'terrorist groups' may have been involved in the uprising. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1484251,00.html
Fraud More, of the common variety
Money earmarked by Congress for investigating health care fraud appears to have been shifted improperly to other purposes, like fighting terrorism, Congressional auditors say in a new report.
The report, to be issued this week by the Government Accountability Office, says health care cases got short shrift from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was supposed to use the money exclusively to investigate fraud against Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs. The money came from an account in the Medicare trust fund.
The bureau was unable to show that it had used the money for the intended purpose, the report said, noting that F.B.I. agents "previously devoted to health care fraud investigations were shifted to counterterrorism activities" in the last three years. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/politics/16fraud.html?pagewanted=print
Social Security: Democrat turncoat
Until now the Democrats have been disciplined, depriving the Administration of a Democrat to use for their claims of ‘bi-partisan” support. But, Robert Wexler (D-Palm Beach) has weakened and has introduced legislation.
Breaking with party leaders, a Democratic congressman plans to introduce Social Security legislation, saying his first commitment is to his constituents.
The lawmaker, Representative Robert Wexler of Florida. said on Friday: "I have the largest amount of Social Security recipients of any Democrat anywhere in the country. My allegiance to seniors is greater than my allegiance to the Democratic Party."
The proposed legislation, which Mr. Wexler plans to outline on Monday in Florida, calls for a 6 percent tax on all income above the current $90,000 cap. Three percent would be paid by workers and 3 percent paid by their employers.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/politics/14social.html?pagewanted=all
Class. So rarely addressed, but here, a 3-parter
But class is still a powerful force in American life. Over the past three decades, it has come to play a greater, not lesser, role in important ways. At a time when education matters more than ever, success in school remains linked tightly to class. At a time when the country is increasingly integrated racially, the rich are isolating themselves more and more. At a time of extraordinary advances in medicine, class differences in health and lifespan are wide and appear to be widening. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html
Bush on his Bike. The major media didn’t want to touch this latest humiliation, but we should linger on his role in The Alert. Here’s a sample of the McClellan press conference, featuring some rare questioning by the press. Highly entertaining.
McCLELLAN: Well, again, if you want to give me a chance to respond, I'll be glad to. The protocols were followed. This situation, as you're well aware, turned out to be an accident. The Department of Defense pointed out yesterday that they didn't sense any hostile intent on the part of the plane. There were fighter jets scrambled. There was a Blackhawk helicopter scrambled, as well, to get in contact with the plane. ...
Q So if it was assessed that there was no hostile intent on the part of this aircraft, can you tell us why 30,000 people -- 35,000 people were told to run for their lives?
McCLELLAN: Because of the protocols that are in place, John. We want to make sure that the people in the area of the threat are protected. After --
Q: But what was the threat? You just said there was no threat.
McCLELLAN: John, after Sept. 11, we have to take into account the world that we live in. We live in a very different world than we did before Sept. 11. And the president is going to do everything in his power to make sure we are protecting the American people and to make sure that the people in areas that could be high-risk areas are protected, as well.
Q: Right, but there seems to be so many disconnects here. You've got a plane that was assessed as not being a threat, you've got 35,000 people evacuated, you've got a person who you claim is a hands-on commander in chief who is left to go ride his bicycle through the rural wildlands of Maryland while his wife is in some secure location somewhere, it's just not adding up. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000920092
-R
