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| Neil Bush's Squalid Foreign Business Deals Draw Spotlight |
| 12.31.03 (6:40 am) [edit] |
[b]Neil Bush's Squalid Foreign Business Deals Draw Spotlight ... Neil, Jeb and Daddy Bush are being enriched by Dubya's illegal & immoral war-profiteering abroad, and the plundering & looting of the U.S. Treasury here at home!
In "[i]Role of president's brother in transactions detailed in documents tied to divorce[/i]" on [/b]http://www.commondreams.org/h... , some of his despicable "[i]smooth-operating[/i]" and [i]oily[/i] & sordid business dealings are exposed :
Neil Bush, brother of the president and son of the former president, earned nearly $1.4 million in 2000 and nearly half of it came from simply introducing the executives of a Thailand-based conglomerate to the executives of a U.S. company that makes computer components.
The introduction, which led to a $20 million investment in the U.S. company, is one of several high-stakes international business deals that President Bush's younger brother has been involved in over the past few years, according to court and corporate records.
Neil Bush, 48, the second-youngest son of former President George Bush, has chosen not to join the family business of politics, but to some he seems to have parlayed the family name into a lucrative private enterprise.
While most multinational business deals are made behind the scenes, Neil Bush's role in several major transactions and other financial business is detailed in a lengthy court document relating to his stormy divorce this year from Sharon Bush.
In the document, Neil Bush plays down his business successes and gives no indication that any of his deals were the result of political ties.
"I consider it a success that I made ... ends meet," he testified. "We live in a very nice home. Our kids have a good lifestyle."
Pressed further by Marshall D. Brown, Sharon Bush's attorney, to explain his worldwide business connections, Neil Bush pointed to his degree in business administration from Tulane University.
In one situation brought up in the proceedings, Neil Bush acknowledged that he was being paid about $60,000 a year by a company called Crest Investment, where he said he served as "co-chairman."
Asked by Brown what his duties were at Crest, Neil Bush said he provided "miscellaneous consulting services, such as answering phone call[s]." He said he spent about three or four hours a week to earn the $60,000 from Crest.
Steven Weiss, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, a public watchdog group, said that making a connection with the president's brother was "an obvious way to develop a relationship that could lead to the president himself."
But as the president's brother, Weiss said, "Neil Bush ought to recognize that his business dealings are going to be scrutinized for any improprieties."
[b]Headlines in '92 [/b]
Neil Bush made headlines during his father's tenure in 1992 when he agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a civil suit related to the billion-dollar collapse of the Silverado Savings & Loan Association. He served on Silverado's board of directors and was accused of failing to disclose his business ties to two of the bank's largest debtors.
Now the head of an educational computer software firm, Ignite Inc., Neil Bush has been back in the news because of his divorce from Sharon Bush, who is publicly contesting the terms of their settlement.
Contacted by phone at his business office in Austin, Texas, Neil Bush declined to answer any questions. He did not respond to a series of e-mail questions.
Neil Bush is not the first presidential relative involved in foreign business dealings. Billy Carter registered as an agent of the Libyan government during the tenure of his brother, Jimmy Carter. He also disclosed that he had received a $220,000 loan from Libyan partners.
In a deposition taken March 3 as part of his divorce case, Neil Bush said he earned $642,000 from the deal that paired U.S.-based Kopin Corp. investors with the CP (Charoen Pokphand) Group, an Asian firm headed by Dhanin Chearavanont.
The CP Group, a huge agricultural conglomerate, is involved in such businesses as aquaculture, telecommunications and motorcycle manufacturing. It was also a 40 percent partner in a company that owned a Thailand toy factory that was destroyed by fire in 1993, killing 188 workers, according to a report by Kroll Associates, a private investigation and risk assessment company. The blaze, which also injured 469 workers, has been labeled the world's worst industrial fire.
"We made introduction of the Asian group to Kopin and they ended up investing a significant amount of money in Kopin," Neil Bush said in his deposition. "I believe it was in excess of $20 million. They're in Hong Kong and Thailand."
[b]Investors in Bush's firm [/b]
Two CP Group officers were also investors in Neil Bush's own investment company, owning half the shares.
His investment company, called Interlink, operated out of Suite 920 at 10000 Memorial Drive in Houston. Just steps away is Suite 900, where his father, the former president, maintains an office.
Texas corporate records show that two CP Group officers were shareholders in Interlink, which Neil Bush set up several years ago with a partner, Timothy Bridgewater. Bridgewater did not respond to a request for comment.
Those CP Group officials, Thanakorn Seriburi and Krisada Kampanatsanyakorn, together held 500 shares in Interlink, the Texas records show. The remaining 500 shares were evenly split between Neil Bush and Bridgewater.
Working through Interlink, Neil Bush has helped arrange investment backing in other financial deals.
He pulled in a $488,567 fee in 2000 for work finding investors for a Pennsylvania firm called Lithium Technologies, which is developing batteries for laptop computers, according to the deposition transcript.
"As part of my [work] with Interlink Management Corporation we raised money for Lithium Technology Corp. through a partnership that we established," he testified.
Alicia Perry, a spokeswoman for Lithium Technology, said Neil Bush and his company were engaged in 1997 to arrange a $5.5 million equity offering. She said the company fully disclosed the arrangement in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. She said Neil Bush has no current affiliation with the firm.
The firm's 1998 filings with the SEC showed Interlink and an affiliated company called Lithium Link controlling 21,875,138 shares of stock, which totaled a little more than 50 percent of all the shares issued at that time.
Neil Bush testified that he earned $105,649 through Interlink in 2001 for work done for Covol Technologies, an energy firm.
In another deal involving the CP Group detailed in the deposition, Neil Bush said he arranged for a joint venture between CP and Cole Real Estate Development, a California firm. He testified that he received stock in the joint venture as his fee but contended that he never received any monetary payment.
Interlink, he testified, also provided consulting services to Advanced Paint and Chemical, a firm that also had a partnership arrangement with the CP Group. Under questioning, Neil Bush said that he received 12,500 shares of stock for his work for Advanced but that the shares were now worthless.
Another Interlink client, records show, is computer-related Universal Display of New Jersey, which on its Web site lists Interlink as its Taiwan representative. The Universal relationship was not mentioned during the deposition.
Neil Bush testified that he received a $60,000 payment from Interlink in 2001 and that he was then wrapping up his work as an active partner with the company.
[b]CP Group is fined [/b]
A year after Neil Bush became embroiled in the Silverado collapse, the CP Group encountered problems of its own.
In the toy factory fire, the company was subsequently fined for safety violations.
The CP Group and its partner in the factory, Kader Industrial, denied responsibility for the tragedy, but Kader alleged that CP Group was responsible for the management and operation of the factory, according to Kroll Associates officials.
The partners eventually paid families of the victims about $8,000 each, according to the International Federation of Free Trade Unions. The payments from the joint venture came after a series of protest demonstrations.
Other big-money deals detailed in the 270-page deposition include a two-page agreement dated Aug. 15 last year, under which Neil Bush could earn stock valued at $2 million over five years for serving on the board of directors of Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., a Chinese firm.
The Grace contract was signed by Winston Wong, who also is an investor in Neil Bush's latest business venture, Ignite Inc., which sells computer programs to school districts. Based in Shanghai, Grace was founded by Wong and Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
Neil Bush described Wong as "a friend of mine" but added that he didn't know if he ever would collect the fees promised under his contract.
Asked whether he had extensive knowledge of semiconductors, Neil Bush said, "No, I don't. But I know a lot about business and I've been working in Asia quite a long time."
Despite the substantial income he reported and acknowledged in 2000, Neil Bush testified that he has few assets and his income is limited to $180,000 a year in salary from Ignite Inc.
He said much of the nearly $1.4 million he earned in 2000 went to taxes, while the rest went into other investments that lost money. Taxes, according to records in the divorce case, totaled $485,000 for 2000.
"We invested a big, big piece of it that has subsequently gone down in the toilet with the stock market," he said.
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| The Right Thing, At Last ... Or, Too Little, Too Late |
| 12.31.03 (6:30 am) [edit] |
[b]Attorney General John Ashcroft finally did the "right thing, at last" or was it [i]too little, too late[/i]![/b] Me thinks, it's [i]the latter [/i]... Ashcroft has had several months now to "[i]bulldoze[/i]" over the truth regarding the traitorous White House felon or felons ([i]probably Cheney, Rice & Rove-- as nothing happens in the neo-con Bush regime without their tacit approval[/i]) who illegally exposed the secret identity of an undercover CIA operative (Valerie Plame) in a sordid, squalid & petty act of revenge against her husband (Joseph C. Wilson IV) for telling America the truth about the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] lies regarding phony nuclear weapons programs developed by Iraq ([i]using uranium yellow cakes supposedly purchased from Niger[/i]) ... It was all LIES ... and the corrupt neo-fascist Bushies knew it was a pack of LIES when they illegally used it in Dubya's mendacious State of the Union speech last year.
The White House felons should be[i] frog-marched off to jail,[/i] instead of at large-- where they continue to do perilous damage to our nation.
In "[i][b]The Right Thing, at Last[/b][/i]" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... , the NY Times gives Ashcroft of little pat on the behind-- while, instead, [b]Ashcroft should be asked to resign and be investigated for obstruction of justice![/b]
After an egregiously long delay, Attorney General John Ashcroft finally did the right thing yesterday when he recused himself from the investigation into who gave the name of a C.I.A. operative to the columnist Robert Novak. Mr. Ashcroft turned the inquiry over to his deputy, who quickly appointed a special counsel. There was little chance of a credible outcome for the investigation as Mr. Ashcroft had originally chosen to run it: under his personal supervision, using Justice Department lawyers whose futures are dependent on his good graces. Even the normal investigative units of the F.B.I. would have been cut out of the loop.
The change was announced by the newly appointed Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who turned the case over to a respected career prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago. Mr. Fitzgerald is charged with finding out who violated federal law by giving the name of the undercover intelligence operative to Mr. Novak for publication in his column.
The operative in this case is the wife of Joseph Wilson IV, a retired career diplomat who wrote an Op-Ed article for The Times, published on July 6, that said the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence by asserting that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium in Africa in order to foster a nuclear weapons program.
There are still serious questions about the investigation, the most immediate of which is whether Mr. Comey will give Mr. Fitzgerald true operational independence. Mr. Comey must also allow Mr. Fitzgerald to use the full powers of a special counsel, including the ability to seek Congressional intervention if he finds his investigation blocked by a government official or agency.
We may never know what damage was caused by Mr. Ashcroft's delay of nearly two months in taking the proper action. Further time will now be lost as Mr. Fitzgerald gets up to speed on the investigation. In his announcement, Mr. Comey said that Mr. Ashcroft was displaying "an abundance of caution" in recusing himself from the case. But that sort of care would have mandated the appointment of a special counsel from the start. Yesterday's developments left open the possibility of what we feared all along: that Mr. Ashcroft's extremely tight political bonds with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, the chief White House strategist, inevitably conflicted with an investigation into whether someone at the White House, perhaps acting with institutional sanction, had revealed the name of a C.I.A. operative for political reasons.
[b]For more analysis, refer to [i]Joshua Micah Marshall's [/i]TalkingPointsMemo [/b]on http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... .
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| Disconnect Between 'Economic Growth' & Working People's 'Wages' |
| 12.30.03 (6:55 am) [edit] |
[b]There is a growing gap between the [i]haves-and-the-have-not s[/i], in the United States of America, which is higher than at any time in over 75 years! [/b] The corporate robber-barons and filthy rich top-dogs & fat-cats are getting [i]fabulously richer[/i], and the rest of us are[i] getting poorer[/i].
The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc [i]junta[/i] have ruthlessly awarded reckless, immoral & possibly illegal boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts to their [i]corporate-take-all[/i] cronies, plutocrats & themselves ... and have created the largest deficit in our nation's history -- they have overseen an insane re-distribution of wealth to the wealthiest by turning the rest of us into their neo-slaves to serve their neo-fascist neo-feudal slave state.
Consider "[i][b]Our So-Called Boom[/b][/i]" by Dr. Paul Krugman on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... :
It was a merry Christmas for Sharper Image and Neiman Marcus, which reported big sales increases over last year's holiday season. It was considerably less cheery at Wal-Mart and other low-priced chains. We don't know the final sales figures yet, but it's clear that high-end stores did very well, while stores catering to middle- and low-income families achieved only modest gains.
Based on these reports, you may be tempted to speculate that the economic recovery is an exclusive party, and most people weren't invited. You'd be right.
Commerce Department figures reveal a startling disconnect between overall economic growth, which has been impressive since last spring, and the incomes of a great majority of Americans. In the third quarter of 2003, as everyone knows, real G.D.P. rose at an annual rate of 8.2 percent. But wage and salary income, adjusted for inflation, rose at an annual rate of only 0.8 percent. More recent data don't change the picture: in the six months that ended in November, income from wages rose only 0.65 percent after inflation.
Why aren't workers sharing in the so-called boom? Start with jobs.
Payroll employment began rising in August, but the pace of job growth remains modest, averaging less than 90,000 per month. That's well short of the 225,000 jobs added per month during the Clinton years; it's even below the roughly 150,000 jobs needed to keep up with a growing working-age population.
But if the number of jobs isn't rising much, aren't workers at least earning more? You may have thought so. After all, companies have been able to increase output without hiring more workers, thanks to the rapidly rising output per worker. (Yes, that's a tautology.) Historically, higher productivity has translated into rising wages. But not this time: thanks to a weak labor market, employers have felt no pressure to share productivity gains. Calculations by the Economic Policy Institute show real wages for most workers flat or falling even as the economy expands.
An aside: how weak is the labor market? The measured unemployment rate of 5.9 percent isn't that high by historical standards, but there's something funny about that number. An unusually large number of people have given up looking for work, so they are no longer counted as unemployed, and many of those who say they have jobs seem to be only marginally employed. Such measures as the length of time it takes laid-off workers to get new jobs continue to indicate the worst job market in 20 years.
So if jobs are scarce and wages are flat, who's benefiting from the economy's expansion? The direct gains are going largely to corporate profits, which rose at an annual rate of more than 40 percent in the third quarter. Indirectly, that means that gains are going to stockholders, who are the ultimate owners of corporate profits. (That is, if the gains don't go to self-dealing executives, but let's save that topic for another day.)
Well, so what? Aren't we well on our way toward becoming what the administration and its reliable defenders call an "ownership society," in which everyone shares in stock market gains? Um, no. It's true that slightly more than half of American families participate in the stock market, either directly or through investment accounts. But most families own at most a few thousand dollars' worth of stocks.
A good indicator of the share of increased profits that goes to different income groups is the Congressional Budget Office's estimate of the share of the corporate profits tax that falls, indirectly, on those groups. According to the most recent estimate, only 8 percent of corporate taxes were paid by the poorest 60 percent of families, while 67 percent were paid by the richest 5 percent, and 49 percent by the richest 1 percent. ("Class warfare!" the right shouts.) So a recovery that boosts profits but not wages delivers the bulk of its benefits to a small, affluent minority.
The bottom line, then, is that for most Americans, current economic growth is a form of reality TV, something interesting that is, however, happening to other people. This may change if serious job creation ever kicks in, but it hasn't so far.
The big question is whether a recovery that does so little for most Americans can really be sustained. Can an economy thrive on sales of luxury goods alone? We may soon find out.
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| Is It The Twilight of the Neo-Con "Crazies"? ... |
| 12.30.03 (6:21 am) [edit] |
[b]Is it the twilight of the neo-con "crazies"? ... One wonders ... -- [/b]These neo-con, neo-fascist "[i]crazies[/i]" who have: hijacked our government, and waged immoral & illegal wars ... unravelled our civil liberties ... undermined our democracy ... squandered good relations with other nations ... and, created a 'train-wreck' of an economy that will create misery for the middle-class, working people, the elderly and the poor-- should be tried for treason & frog-marched off to jail. The neo-cons are not fit to serve the public.
A brief history of the power struggles and disagreements between[i] traditional conservative republican realists [/i]and the[i] insane "neo-cons"[/i] is found on "[i][b]Twilight of the Neocons[/b][/i]?" on http://billmon.org/archives/0... :
History, Ismael Reed once said, is the story of warfare between secret societies. I'm not ready to go that far, but I think it's fair to say the history of U.S. foreign policy over the past forty years has been the story of the war between two not-so-secret societies: the neoconservatives and the realists. And it now seems the realists have won another battle -- although perhaps not the war.
It's been a peculiar war, to be sure: bureaucratic in-fighting with a hefty dose of emotional psychodrama, at times more closely resembling the obscure squabbles of an old married couple than a clearly defined struggle between opposing political factions. Think of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as the middle-aged combatants in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
"In both the play and the film, Martha and George are outwardly rational figures with a troubled and compulsive bent toward emotional sadism."
Like most domestic disputes, much of the fighting has been done behind locked doors, leaving us to interpret the results based on the muffled sound of screaming voices and the occasional smash of broken porcelain. But the signs that the neocons are on the losing end of the battle have become fairly evident in recent weeks:
1. The administration has welcomed Libya back into the community of "civilized" nations, on terms that can only help solidify Col. Ghadafi's dictatorial regime. The deal is about as textbook a case of realpolitik as you will find outside the archives of the Kissinger NSC.
2. Jim Baker has returned to the diplomatic circuit, with the speculation being that his assignment is to liquidate not only Iraq's debt but also the neocon illusion of remaking the Middle East into the Community of Israel-Recognizing Nations.
3. The rumor mill also has uber-neocon Paul Wolfowitz departing the Pentagon in February. Can Doug Feith -- the other half of the necon Laural & Hardy act, be far behind?
4. Bush rolled out the red carpet -- with a 19-gun salute no less -- for Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao, then explicitly warned Taiwan not to ditch its allegiance to the increasingly fictional notion of "one China." So doing, he completely ignored the howls of protest from neocon punditry that he was selling Taiwanese democracy down the river.
5. The public sniping at the administration by said punditry has become distinctly more direct, with both Newt Gringrich and Bill Kristol harshly criticizing the White House -- if not yet the president who lives and sometimes even works there..
For the moment, the "we got Saddam!" propaganda orgasm has temporarily silenced the quarreling -- in the same way an interlude of passionate sex can briefly patch up a disfunctional marriage. But the differences are still irreconcilable, and are likely to re-emerge in even stronger form if Bush wins reelection next year, eliminating the need to maintain the pretense of a united front.
The neocons may be down, but they're not out -- and aren't likely to be, not as long they continue to enjoy the support of the ultras: the Christian conservatives, Sunbelt demagogues, Arab haters and hyperpatriots that constitute the Republican Party's popular base. The realists may be the ones who have a clue about how to run a foreign policy, but the neocons are still the ones with the political juice.
[b]Flashbacks[/b]
To anyone who covered the Reagan Administration, it's a familiar story. The ideological and bureaucratic tensions evident, but controlled, during Reagan's first term, exploded after his 1984 landslide, leading, among other things, to the Iran-Contra debacle. A fiasco so complete it should have led to the eternal banishment of the neocons from the corridors of power. But it didn't, and couldn't, because by then the neocons were already too tightly wired to the GOP's ascendant conservative wing to be cut loose.
They did, however, go into eclipse, both because the GOP desperately needed to sweep the Iran-Contra affair under the carpet, and because the dawn of perestroika era and then the collapse of the Soviet Union deprived them of their political raison d'etre -- a menacing threat they could claim the realists were either ignoring or underestimating, or both.
September 11 fixed that problem, even if it didn't correct the neocons' propensity for making truly enormous blunders. But to understand how the neocons were able to grab control of American foreign policy in the wake of 9/11 -- and why their influence is so hard to dislodge now -- it's important to go back and look at how they achieved their influence in the first place.
[b]The Emigrants[/b]
The story begins in the early '70s, when the neocons finally left the arms of the Democratic Party for the more ideologically friendly embrace of the GOP. The most important biographical detail about these refugees wasn't the fact that they were Jewish (many were; some weren't) or that they started their political journey on the far left (some did; most didn't). The essential point is that they were Democrats, strangers in the strange land of the GOP. They had no popular base of their own, and thus no leverage inside the party's political machinery. Their views on domestic issues -- civil rights, social spending, the separation of church and state -- but them at odds with prevailing sentiment within their adopted party, especially its Goldwater wing.
To be sure, there were some commonalities -- intense hatred for the Vietnam protestors and everything they represented being the most deeply felt. But the cultural gulf between the neocons and their new allies on the right was still immense. Like turncoats throughout history, they were in danger of ending up distrusted by both sides.
To make matters worse, the neocons had competition. In ecological terms, they were trying to invade a niche that had already been filled by an earlier generation of intellectuals (Kissinger being the most notorious) who had established themselves as the foreign policy brains of the Republican Party. Add the fact that most of these thinkers were non-Jewish (Kissinger being the most notorious exception) and tended to see the Arabs, not the Israelis, as America's most important clients in the Middle East, and you had all the makings of an intellectual version of West Side Story: Sharks versus Jets.
The GOP itself, however, was in upheaval. Control was passing from the East Coast internationalists (the long-time patrons of the realists) to the Goldwater conservatives -- a group whose intellectual approach to U.S. foreign policy could best be described as one long howl of rage. By the mid-'70s, the party was deep in the throes of an unfinished revolution, with the Ford Administration caught squarely in the middle.
As Kissinger's sun began to set, power passed to a group of administration officials who had their feet planted firmly in both ideological camps -- men such as Donald Rumsfeld, the once and future Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, Ford's Chief of Staff, and George Bush, the CIA Director. They became the neocons' original sponsors within the GOP.
To generalize, this group (with the exception of Bush) tended to be Midwestern and middle class -- heirs to the older Main Street conservatism of Bob Taft and Everett Dirksen, although also sympathetic to the newer Sunbelt conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan. They were corporate/bureaucratic rather than conservative/activist, hardline where issues of American power and prestige were involved, but much less doctrainaire (at least at the time) about economic policy and what would later be called the "social issues" -- affirmative action, abortion, etc. They were, in effect, the center of gravity of a Republican Party in transition.
They were not (again, with the exception of Bush) particularly knowledgeable about foreign policy. Like the Goldwater Republicans, their roots were in the party's pre-World War II isolationist wing, not the internationalist wing of the Rockefeller and Dulles brothers. They were in the market, you might say, for a foreign policy world view -- and a set of policy advisors to fill in the details of that world view. This the neocons were in a position to provide.
[b]On the B Team[/b]
Ironically (in light of later events) it was Bush who gave the neocons their first big break. Frustrated by the CIA's relatively dovish views about Soviet capabilities and intentions (or, to the conspiratorially inclined, itching to undermine Kissinger's detente policy) Bush created the infamous Team B -- a group of outside analysts (including Wolfowitz) who were called in to second guess the CIA's own intelligence estimates. (Sound familiar?)
Team B, to no one's surprise, concluded the CIA was drastically underestimating the Soviet threat. This then became the wedge issue for the conservative attack on Kissinger, and the first great organizing vehicle for the neocons, who essentially took over an existing hardline lobbying group called the Committee on the Present Danger and began to agitate against detente.
The resulting fratricidal struggle might have grown even bloodier if the Democrats hadn't had the temerity to win the 1976 election. But Carter's initial swing to the dovish left -- his "inordinate fear of communism" stage -- alarmed the realists as much as it did the neocons. Old grudges, if not forgotten, were put aside in the battle against the common enemy.
The collapse of detente following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, coupled with the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis, set the stage for Carter's defeat and the triumph of the Goldwater wing (now the Reagan wing) of the Republican Party. But Reagan's election wasn't quite the foreign policy revolution the neocons might have hoped it would be. In part, this was a reflection of geographic politics. As a Californian, Reagan inherited some key advisors from fellow Californian and hyper realist Richard Nixon. These included Casper Weinberger at Defense, and, later, George Shultz at State. So while the neocons moved into some key second-tier positions -- Richard Perle at the Pentagon, Wolfowitz at State, Jeanne Kirkpatrick at the UN -- power ultimately remained in the hands of the realist establishment.
The one major exception -- and the one that gave the neocons their first opportunity to actually drive American foreign policy off a cliff -- was the CIA, which went to Bill Casey. Given his previous ties to the Committee on the Present Danger, and his fascination with the covert exercise of American power, it was probably inevitable that Casey would emerge as the neocons' primary ally and patron among the Reagan foreign policy principals.
[b]East of Suez [/b]
The ideological and bureaucratic competition between the realists and the neocons made little difference when it came to policy towards the Soviets. By this point, deep into the second Cold War, the hardline consensus within the GOP foreign policy establishment was universal. The only limits on the administration's willingness to confront the Soviets -- in Europe, in Central America, in space, wherever -- were external and political. The Vietnam syndrome wasn't quite dead, even if it was coughing up blood. When it came to the direct use of American troops, the administration still felt itself to be on a short leash.
In the Middle East, on the other hand, the policy differences between the neocons and the realists were vast, and the personal animosities intense. To the realists, the Middle East was simply another theatre in the Cold War, in which the moderate Arab regimes were necessary evils and the state of Israel an unwelcome distraction. America, they believed, had little choice but to rely on its "deputy sheriffs" in the region -- Iran and Saudi Arabia -- to keep the Soviets out and the oil flowing.
But the collapse of the Shah knocked that policy into crisis. Saudi Arabia, everybody understood, simply wasn't strong enough to be America's sole watchdog in the Persian Gulf. The Iranian revolution was a match poised over the dynamite dump of Shi'a aspirations throughout the region. The Soviets were watching closely. What was to be done?
It's an interesting coincidence that at this particular moment in history, in September 1980, Saddam Hussein launched his war of aggression against Iran. The war presented a irresistable opportunity for the realists: By tilting towards Saddam, they could contain Iran, protect Saudia Arabia and -- just perhaps -- wean Baathist Iraq away from its Soviet arms supplier.
The neocons despised this policy, which ran exactly counter to their own desire to turn Israel into America's primary ally and deputy sheriff in the Middle East. By cuddling up to Iraq, the realists were actually strengthening one of the Jewish state's most powerful enemies. This was intolerable.
The neocons, however, were in a weak position. Their own initial effort to forge a U.S.-Israeli alliance -- by dragging American forces into Arial Sharon's disastrous adventure in Lebanon -- had ended with the Marine barracks bombing in Beruit. To most rational analysts, it was obvious that Israel by itself could not be America's primary proxy in the Middle East. But Israel and a newly moderated and benign Iran ... well, the possibilities were intriguing.
The rest, as they say, is history: TOW missiles, a cake backed in the shape of a key, Ollie North and his shredder, congressional investigations, criminal indictments, etc. The neocons were discredited, the realists vindicated. Bill Casey was dead. Reagan rode off into the Altzheimer's sunset. The new president, once the neocons' patron, abandoned them The tilt towards Iraq increased. So did U.S. pressure on Israel to freeze settlement activity and come to the negotiating table with the Palestinians.
The realist policy, however, also ended in a disaster. Having been fed a few crumbs, Saddam decided he might as well take the whole cake. But as Keynes once remarked, failing conventionally is often less harmful to a professional reputation than succeeding conventionally. Bush could make good his mistakes by kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. The neocons could gripe about Bush's failure to finish Saddam off, but few were listening.
[b]The Return from Exile[/b]
With the Gulf War won, Saddam contained, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process launched and the Soviet Union resting in the dustbin of history, you might have thought the neocons would have been put out of business for good. The Iran-Contra affair should have been their swan song. But they actually emerged stronger from that debacle -- even though it wasn't obvious at the time.
Whatever damage the neocons suffered in as a result of the scandal was more than offset by the bonding that took place between them and the conservative populists during the heat of the partisan battle. The cultural gap was bridged. The neocons, who had been moving steadily to the right on domestic and social issues, finally shed their outsider status. At the same time, support for Israel emerged a litmus test issue for the religious right. For the first time, the neocons had a popular base.
If not for 9/11, however, none of this might have mattered much. The prevailing popular sentiment within the Republican Party during the 1990s was crudely nationalistic, if not neo-isolationist. Nation building was one of those silly liberal fantasies. So was peacekeeping. The conservative populists were happy to cheer when the neocons bashed Clinton, and they agreed on the need for fatter military budgets. But they had absolutely no desire to embrace the neocon vision of an activist foreign policy -- much less to remake the map of the Middle East.
When the second Bush administration took office in 2001, it seemed like a case of deja vu all over again. As in Reagan's first term, the neocons were well represented in the second tier jobs. But it looked like the key posts had all been reserved for Ford administration veterans, who would take their advice from the realists. It appeared the neocons were going to be kept on a tight leash -- even by their original patrons, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. This wasn't too surprising: the neocons, after all, generally had leaned towards John McCain in the GOP primary race. To the victor goes the foreign policy spoils.
The administration's first major foreign policy crisis -- the forced landing of a Naval spy plane in China -- only seemed to confirm this impression. As much as the neocons might want to set China up as the new evil empire, senior management wasn't buying it. It seemed like the neocons had finally been domesticated.
[b]A Whole New Ballgame[/b]
So how they did they end up in a position to ram an invasion of Iraq down the collective throat of the realists? I'm going to speculate that their abrupt rise to control of the war on terror was the result of something close to panic on the parts of the Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
In the aftermath of 9/11, senior management was forced to confront the many things it didn't know about the Islamic world, as well as the things it thought it knew that turned out to be flat wrong -- like the idea that Saudi Arabia was a friendly country firmly controlled by a friendly dynasty. Or the idea that Afghanistan could be ignored, because it was no longer a battleground against the Soviets. Or the idea that they could rely on Pakistan's security service to keep tabs on Talaban. Or the quaint notion that Osama bin Laden played the terrorism game according to certain rules -- one of them being that the U.S. homeland was off limits.
Invading Afghanistan, destroying the Taliban and uprooting Al Qaeda were the obvious immediate responses to 9/11. But what then? The policy options must have seemed almost infinite.
Once again, badly in need of a world view, senior management turned to the neocons -- who again seemed to have all the answers. They, at least, had been thinking about the threat of terrorism while the Republican establishment was still dreaming about endless tax cuts. Saddam was a familiar enemy; invading Iraq was a familiar military problem -- one that could be solved using familiar tactics. And there was the oil, which offered the prospect of a self-financing occupation, plus a nice dividend for the invader.
The hardest sell must have been the post-Saddam succession -- the same problem that had deterred the Bush I team from marching to Baghdad. Somehow the neocons were able to convince senior management that Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress could fill the void. Or maybe that was simply a smoke screen all along, and the real plan was for a prolonged U.S. military occupation. Who knows?
But once the decision was made, the neocons used all their old tricks to steamroller the bureaucracy and keep the realists on the defensive. The Pentagon's Office of Special Plans played the role of the old "Team B" -- second guessing the CIA and creating the desired sense of urgency about the WMD "threat." Policy planning was privatized, ala Iran-Contra, with key decisions being farmed out to ideologically correct think tank analysts while the State Department was cut out of the loop whenever possible. Military planners were excluded from grand strategy, and strictly confined to the operational aspects of the invasion -- and even there was subjected to neocon meddling. And so on.
The neocons didn't win every battle -- the decision to seek a UN Security Council resolution in support of the invasion being the most glaring example. But it's hard to argue that the grand design behind the policy wasn't theirs, or that the ultimate responsibility for its success or failure doesn't lie with them. And that's true no matter how vigorously their ideological soulmates in the conservative media try to obscure it now.
[b]Fall from Grace[/b]
It's fairly easy to pinpoint when the neocons began to lose their grip. It was immediately after the suicide bombing that destroyed the UN headquarters in Baghdad and killed Sergio Viera de Mello in August. The bombing, followed shortly later by the one in Najaf that killed the Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim, prompted Bush to return to the U.N. Security Council for a resolution endorsing the occupation, and to put Condi Rice in direct charge of Iraq policy.
Since then, the neocon decline has proceeded in accelerating stages. Bush's September request for $189 billion in military and reconstruction funding (an admission that the neocon fantasy of a cheap occupation had died) was one milestone. Proconcul Bremer's abrupt recall to Washington in November, which was followed by the decision to move towards a provisional government on an accelerated timetable, was another. Now they're passing in rapid succession.
But if the neocons no longer control Iraq policy -- or have much say in foreign policy in general -- who does? Figuring out who's minding the store is always a problem with an administration this secretive, especially since it never admits to a mistake and rarely tosses people overboard. Or, as General Zinni told the Washington Post:
"What I don't understand is that the bill of goods the neocons sold him has been proven false, yet heads haven't rolled," he says. "Where is the accountability? I think some fairly senior people at the Pentagon ought to go." Who? "That's up to the president."
The problem, I think, is that while the neocons may be in the dog house, it's very much in the administration's interests to obscure that fact. Firing them would draw too much attention to the people who allowed them to crap all over the carpet -- again.
Since that group includes the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, and since the investigative machinery of Congress is safely in Republican hands, accountability can be avoided, at least for now. The neocons can be permitted to slip away quietly -- to academia, the think tanks, or, in Richard Perle's case, perhaps to a federal penitentiary.
But I wouldn't bid them a final farewell just yet. In the 1970s and '80s, and even into the '90s, the neocons were totally dependent on the GOP's foreign policy grandees -- men like Bush I, Cheney and Rumsfeld -- for their access to power. They could be brought into the policymaking circle when needed, and dismissed when they became a liability.
But now the neocons have a political power base of their own. Or, to be more accurate: They've acquired a new set of patrons on the populist right -- supremely ignorant men like Tom Delay and even (God help us) Rush Limbaugh, who need a foreign policy world view to go with their crude notions of American supremacy, their loathing of Islam, and their bible-based support for Israel.
Providing ideological world views to the ignorant is how the neocons have made their way in the world. And their new customers are the modern center of gravity of the Republican Party. They're the leaders of The Base -- that mystical block of true believers the Bush II administration feels it cannot afford to offend in any way.
Which suggests to me the neocons won't remain in the twilight for long. The realists are the ones who don't seem to have much of a future in the GOP. Who knows? Maybe in time they'll defect to the Democratic Party, to become the intellectual mentors to a rising generation of moderately hawkish Democrats, in search of a world view.
[i]After all, it's happened before. [/i]
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| Bremer Rolls Blair |
| 12.29.03 (7:10 am) [edit] |
[b]L. Paul Bremer has created problems for Tony Blair [/b]who claimed in a pre-Christmas speech that "[i]The Iraq Survey Group has found evidence of a massive clandestine laboratory network system. When a country with a leader like Saddam tries to hide that, what is it doing[/i]?" When asked, Bremer replied that there is no evidence to support such claims and called Blair's statement a "red herring" ... British MPs ([i]Members of Parliament[/i]) are asking for Blair to explain his statement ... [i]Ooopppsss[/i] ...
[i]Happy New Year, Tony Blair![/i]
Consider "[i][b]Blair under fire again for WMD claims[/b][/i]" on http://www.news.scotsman.com/... :
CLAIMS that weapons inspectors have uncovered massive evidence that Saddam Hussein had a network of clandestine laboratories have landed Tony Blair in trouble for the second time in a month after they were rubbished by the United States’ top man in Iraq.
Paul Bremer, unaware the claims had been made by the Prime Minister, said the comments sounded like a "red herring" put about to undermine the coalition by someone opposed to military action.
Once Mr Bremer realised the remarks were Mr Blair’s, he softened his criticism, but it was too late to stop the Prime Minister’s critics accusing him of hyping up the evidence to support his claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction when he opted for war.
Liam Fox, the Conservative Party co-chairman, said Mr Blair would say anything to save his own skin. "This is a huge embarrassment for a Prime Minister who is in a deep political hole. But he is unable to stop digging.
"Once again he seems to have been willing to sex up a piece of information purely to defend his own political position. His assertion that there has been ‘massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories’ has been destroyed as untrue by Mr Paul Bremer and innuendo by Hans Blix [the former chief United Nations weapons inspector ]."
Clare Short, who resigned from the Cabinet over the invasion of Iraq, renewed her calls for Mr Blair to resign.
"If you are going to start getting into deceit when you are going to war and risking human life, it has gone too far," she said. "I hope for his sake, but most particularly for the honour of the country and for renewal of the Labour government, I hope he steps down gracefully."
It is the second time this month that Mr Blair’s comments about the work of the weapons inspectors have landed him in trouble.
He first made the claim two weeks ago, in an interview to be broadcast to British troops, but Downing Street later admitted that his comments referred to a report issued by the Iraq Survey Group earlier in the year and not to new evidence.
At the time, Mr Blair was accused by Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, of misrepresenting the findings of the survey group in its interim report in October.
With the Hutton report on the death of the government weapons scientist Dr David Kelly due within the fortnight, Downing Street is desperate for good news on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
But instead, Mr Blair faced fresh embarrassment yesterday when his remarks were relayed to Mr Bremer in a TV interview.
Told about a claim that inspectors in Iraq had uncovered "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories", Mr Bremer replied: "I don’t know who said that. It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me.
"It sounds like someone who doesn’t agree with the policy sets up a red herring then knocks it down.
"I don’t know where those words come from but that is not what David Kay [the head of the Iraq Survey Group] has said."
But when he learned the comments had come from the US’s staunchest ally, he tried to row back from his criticism. "There is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public," he said. He said the survey group had found "clear evidence of biological and chemical programmes, ongoing".
He added: "They show clear evidence of violation of UN Security Council resolutions relating to rockets."
Downing Street stood by Mr Blair’s claims, saying the information came straight from the group hunting for the arsenal.
Mr Bremer rejected the claim by Mr Blix that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction left to give up. "You might conclude that Dr Blix is out of touch," he said.
War was justified "historically" regardless of the issue of weapons, Mr Bremer said. "I invite anybody, British or American, who thinks it was wrong to go to war, to come and see the mass graves in Halabjah," he said. "Come there and then tell me that we were not right to liberate this country from Saddam Hussein.
"Weapons of mass destruction or no weapons of mass destruction, it’s important to step back a little bit here, to see what we have done historically.
"We, the coalition, the British and American people, have done a noble thing by relieving 25 million Iraqis of one of the most vicious tyrannies in the 20th century."
[b]SAYS WHO?[/b]
"The Iraq Survey Group has found evidence of a massive clandestine laboratory network system. When a country with a leader like Saddam tries to hide that, what is it doing?" - Tony Blair.
"I don’t know where those words come from, but that is not what [ISG chief] David Kay has said. I have read his reports so I don’t know who said that. It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me," - Paul Bremer.
"There is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public ... clear evidence of biological and chemical programmes, ongoing," - Paul Bremer.
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| Conservatives Say Insane Bush's Reckless Spending Will TRIPLE His Inept Estimates! |
| 12.28.03 (6:11 am) [edit] |
[b]The hypocritical neo-con buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters who [i]worship at the altar [/i]of the tyrannical & rapacious Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]are lying to the American public regarding the Mad King George's destructive economic policies. Dubya is a radical neo-fascist [i]ne'er-do-well[/i], who is not only incompetent and corrupt, but also a traitor to our nation[/b].
The insane Bush [i]recklessly spends like a drunken sailor[/i], having plundered & looted the U.S. Treasury, in order to re-distribute our nation's wealth to powerful corporations, filthy rich plutocrats & greedy campaign contributors. The gap between the hyper-rich, and the middle-class & working people, is higher & more extreme that at any time in over 75 years.
We are facing an economy that is in a lot more trouble than the neo-fascist Bush's neo-orwellian ventiloquests & mendacious propagandists are revealing:-- as unemployment is increasing-- poverty & homelessness are skyrocketing-- deficit spending is record-level ([i]higher than at any time in our nation's history[/i])-- health care & education are in crisis ... [i]And, [u]NONE[/u] of this deficit spending represents an investment in our nation's infrastructure or to improve our citizen's lives [/i]... Meanwhile, the immoral Bushies award massive "[i]Welfare for the Rich[/i]" ([i]illegal[/i]?) boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts for the richest among us ...
What happened to[i] so-called [/i]conservative fiscal discipline? It hasn't existed since before Reagan-- who started the wholesale rape of America on behalf of corporate robber-barons & the wealthy plutocracy ... Republicans have gotten us into the worst fiascos harmful to our nation, as a result of their rapacious & callous [i]Saddam-Hussein-Style Economic Policies[/i]-- and the Democrats must then struggle to [i]bail-us-out [/i] of these miserable corporate swindles ... Now, the squalid Mad King George is desperately [i]speeding-up [/i]the transformation of America into his calamitous neo-feudal slave state, in service of his sordid neo-imperial Global Corporate Empire ...
[b]What about the needs of the American people?[/b]
Consider "[i][b]Conservatives dispute Bush spending estimates - Groups predicting triple those figures[/b][/i]" on http://www.boston.com/news/na... :
WASHINGTON -- After three straight years of double-digit increases in federal spending, President Bush and the Republican Congress say they have the situation under control. But a number of [i][b]conservatives say the actual spending this year will be triple the figures cited by the White House.[/b][/i][b] [With Dubya, you never know if his [i]"mis-estimates" [/i]are the result of [i]LIES[/i] or [i]BUMBLING INCOMPETENCE [/i]or[i] BOTH[/i]!][/b]
The two camps have chosen different kinds of budget numbers to bolster their positions. Bush enumerates the amount of spending that Congress authorizes each year. His critics cite the actual amount the government is spending.
In effect, the president and his allies are counting the money put into the spending pipeline, while the others figure the amount flowing out the other side, some of which may have been slowly trickling through for years.
The debate over federal spending has become politically charged, with both sides tossing out markedly divergent numbers. On Dec. 15, Bush said at a news conference that his administration and the GOP-controlled Congress had held spending not related to the military or homeland security to a 6 percent increase in fiscal year 2002, with a 5 percent increase last fiscal year and a 3 percent increase for the 2004 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
"We're working with Congress to hold the line on spending," Bush said.
Tad DeHaven, a budget researcher at the libertarian Cato Institute, published his version of the numbers a few days later. He found a 6.8 percent increase in the same categories in 2002, an 8.3 percent increase last fiscal year, and a 6.3 percent increase this year -- more than double Bush's 2004 number.
The president's figures "amount to a spin job," DeHaven wrote on the website of the conservative National Review. "Many people who support the president's tax cuts and his conduct of the war can no longer stomach his expansion of big government via big spending."
Congressional Republicans say they will hold overall discretionary spending this year to a 3 percent increase, with military spending rising 1.2 percent. Brian M. Riedl, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, put the spending increase this year at triple the GOP's number, or 9 percent.
Wall Street also is raising doubts about the White House's budget optimism. Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo & Co. and a noted economic optimist, has warned clients, "The budget deficit could lead to sharply higher inflation, rising interest rates, and a falling dollar unless measures are taken to restrain them."
Both sides may be correct, budget specialists say. The difference is whether they are counting budget authority, which is the spending authorized by Congress each year, or outlays, the funds actually shelled out by the government.
Federal budget authority grew 11 percent in 2002 and 15.3 percent in 2003, but if Congress and Bush refrain from enacting additional emergency spending bills over the next nine months, budget authority this fiscal year will rise only 3.1 percent, said the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan scorekeeper.
Actual spending, however, shows little sign of abatement. Outlays rose by 13.2 percent in fiscal 2002, 15.2 percent in 2003, and 8.9 percent in 2004 -- an average growth rate of 12.4 percent.
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| Gore Vidal Versus The Global Corporate Empire |
| 12.27.03 (7:27 am) [edit] |
[b]Gore Vidal is an American Master and a National Treasure[/b]-- a [i]true patriot [/i]who refuses to be scammed & fooled by the lies, deceptions and falsehoods perpetrated by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i]. [b]Gore Vidal [/b]is too smart for that-- he is [b]not[/b] a[i] brain-dead [/i]ideologue, [b]nor[/b] is he a [i]ventriloquest's [/i]attack-dog or court-jester for our nation's traitorous corporate oligarchy! [b]Gore Vidal [/b]refuses to prostitute himself to the powerful corporations' & wealth plutocracy's [i][b]neo-con con-game[/b][/i], devised to impoverish the rest of us, in order that these criminal embezzlers, thieves, fraudsters, liars, thugs & goons can live like neo-emperors.
America is in the thralls of our [i]winter[/i] of discontent, while it is [i]summer-time [/i]in Australia ... [b]Gore Vidal [/b]was interviewed by[b] Monica Attard [/b]on [i]Sunday Profile [/i], in "[i][b]Sounds of Summer: Gore Vidal[/b][/i]" on http://www.abc.net.au/pm/cont... :
As part of the [i]ABC[/i] summer season, we present a [i]Current Affairs Special[/i]:--
[b]Gore Vidal[/b], once described as the United States' last small-r Republican, found himself in the lead-up to the war with Iraq railing against what he calls the Bush-Cheney junta. America, he said, had made meddling in the affairs of other nations its "reason for being."
He went further, maintaining that without a constant perception of threat, the world's last super-power can't function. It is, he said, a law of nature that there's no action without reaction and the United States had September 11th coming!
[b]Gore Vidal [/b]even went so far as to suggest that the attacks may well have been a gift to the Bush administration - a gift which allowed the United States to go after Osama bin Laden and after Saddam Hussein, the two men it perceived as obstacles to the super power's imperial ambition.
So, given his extremely dark interpretation of America's foreign policy, how does [b]Gore Vidal [/b]see America itself?
If you believe him, it's a truly unappealing place where the State is constantly waging war not only against foreign nations, but against its own citizens, where the police run wild abusing civil liberties, and where the Bill of Rights is a fading memories of what could have been.
[b]Gore Vidal [/b]spoke to [b]Monica Attard [/b]on [i]Australia's Sunday Profile[/i].
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: We have never had an administration that set out deliberately to rid us of the Bill of Rights. With USA Patriot Act Number One, which passed 45 days after 9/11, and now there's a current sequel to it, which has not yet been given to Congress, but it's been leaked, you can be arrested without a charge, put before a military tribunal without recourse to due process of law to a lawyer, you can be deprived of your citizenship and you can be deported, this is a born American, and there's some lovely language in it, you can be deported to a region or a country that has no government.
I mean it is a dictatorship.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]Now, Mr Vidal, this dictatorship, as you call it, did it have September 11 coming[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Well, yes, it activated a lot of things that had been in the works.
Example, after the bombing in Oklahoma City the country was duly shocked by what McVeigh and a group of what they call themselves patriots may or may not have done, we still don't know much about it, nothing was ever really investigated, but suddenly Oklahoma City they blew up a public building. Immediately, Clinton assigns a terrorist act bill, which really goes out to many of the rights of due process of law and so on, habeas corpus, which we expect under our system. They were, if not annulled, they were nudged toward obedience on the part of the citizens.
Then comes 9/11, and a few weeks afterwards there's a 342-page USA Patriot Act, which is enormous detail. Well, it certainly wasn't thought up in 30 days since 9/11, as a response to a terrorist attack. It had been prepared and it was sent to Congress. Congress was then so overwhelmed by the media and the horror that had befallen us by wicked Arabs or whoever it was who did it, they passed it without reading it.
Now we're stuck with the damn thing. Congress, at last, are sitting down and realising what they wrought, and they're reviewing some of the aspects of it, which are violently anti-democratic, if one can use that phrase.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]Mr Vidal, do you think that the United States brought the devastation of September 11 upon itself though? Do you think it was as simple as a payback[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Well, nothing is, of that nature, is ever terribly simple. No nation ever begins anything in a state of innocence. Nations have pasts. They've done good things and bad things and have acquired enemies, allies, indifference. There are many things we could have done, should have done, did not do, and there were many things that we did in other parts of the world which caused resentment.
The President is a born again Christian. That means he's a Protestant from the south and believes in rapture and wants to be a sunbeam for Jesus. Well, he's going to let in, so Washington says, I can't believe that he'll do it, but he will let in, in theory anyway, Christian evangelicals into the Muslim world.
I don't know if you've ever seen an American Christian evangelical but run, no matter what you yourself may be in the way of religion, I mean these are very, very primitive people and they're absolutist and they know that God has chosen them to convert everyone else. To have a bunch of them loose in the Middle East, I say, is asking for even more trouble than what we've got.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]But given the United States' reaction to September 11, the attack on Afghanistan and Iraq, the rolling back of American civil liberties, who in your view represents the more dangerous evil? Is it Osama bin Laden or George W. Bush[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Well, it's Bush we have to deal with. Bin Laden is a gangster that should have been treated not as like a war with the country. Osama bin Laden is not a country. He is something like the mafia. He's head of a bunch of religious zealots. He's a thug. He's a terrorist indeed.
Now, how do you handle that normally in a normal country? What you do is you call out the police, you get to Interpol if he's international, you turn to other countries to help you find him and his allies, and you might even go to the United Nations if you were not eager to supersede it yourself. That's what should have been done. Instead Bush pretends it's a war. Well you can't have a war without a country. Terrorism – you can't have a war against terrorism. It's an abstract noun. You can't fight an abstract noun.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]But you'd have to argue, wouldn't you Mr Vidal, that attempts had been made to flush him out, particularly under the Clinton administration, and yet all of those attempts have failed. He's a very elusive character[/i].
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Well, he's, literally elusive, they can't find him, but then again, we don't know if they're looking for him. When our generals first arrived in Afghanistan, a country which had nothing to do with 9/11, the Taliban as such had nothing to do with it, they were a bunch of chaotic people that we had put in charge of the country at the time of the wars with the Soviets and they were becoming crazier and crazier but, in the interests of establishing a pipeline to get oil from the Caspian Sea down to Karachi in Pakistan, we decided to go in there and replace the Taliban, and using Osama bin Laden, who had been in and out of Afghanistan, as an excuse. As soon as our general on the spot got there, he gave an interview, I'm sure he got into a lot of trouble, somebody said 'well, when do you think you're going to get Osama bin Laden?' He said 'we're not looking for him, that's not what this is about', and then he had to come back with a statement like 'we're against al-Qaeda', and then he had to explain what that was. But what it was really about was UNOCAL, Union Oil of California, which had a contract to put a pipeline from Turkmenistan down through Afghanistan, down through Pakistan to the port of Karachi, where the oil would then be sold to China. We'd already made a deal.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]So is it possible then that September 11 was potentially pre-emptive strike in response to what the Arab world might have interpreted, correctly or otherwise, to have been a possible US threat to Afghani strategic interests, oil interests[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: I think that it is now fact, one doesn't know in a world of so much rumour and this and that, but Osama bin Laden got word that in October, Clinton had a plan to hit his camps up in the hills in the eastern part of Afghanistan and to attack Afghanistan maybe with a full invasion. This was Clinton, who was our kindly Liberal President.
Osama bin Laden gets wind of that and the next thing we know we've got 9/11, which is a pre-emptive strike against us. That, I think, is current wisdom around Washington, not in certain circles obviously, where he must be forever a mad demon, I'm sure he is a mad demon, but if he knew an attack was coming in October and he hit in September, one sort of sees the logic of that.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]Now, you also talk of the United States' need to always manufacture an enemy. If it's not terrorists it's its own people, paedophiles, drug lords, etcetera. Do you believe that it was necessary for the United States to have one individual to focus anger upon after September 11, that is, Osama bin Laden[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: We've always done it. We personalise everything because that is the style of the country, that's the style of the media. But you immediately focus on an individual of great good and beauty, or of great evil and ugliness, and you just go on and on about them and you never go on about what the battle's really about, because we want to talk about good and evil, which gets back to President Bush's deep religiosity.
He keeps talking in theological terms about good and evil. Politicians ought not to do that, particularly politicians for the United States – a country in which we built, what I thought, was a big solid wall between the Church and the State, between religion and politics, and he's been breaking that wall down too. I mean, there's a good deal to object to.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]Do you think that the United States, Britain and Australia had any justification for what they've done in Iraq[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Not really, no. I think it could have been done quite differently.
First of all, Saddam Hussein was of no danger to the United States or England or Australia. He might be of danger to a next-door neighbour, but he didn't even show much sign of that.
The last war we had with him was 1991. Well he hadn't done anything between '91 and now.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]:[i] But do you accept that the people of Iraq would never have risen up themselves, that they weren't capable of such an uprising[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Don't you think that's their problem? That's not your problem and that's not my problem. There are many bad regimes on Earth, we can list several hundred. At the moment I would put the Bush regime as one of them, but I don't want anybody to attack the United States and send Bush back to Texas.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]Can you not conceive of any good, planned or coincidental, to come from this military campaign[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Well, the first law of physics is there is no action without reaction. So for all I know they will discover a cure for cancer because of what they did in the desert. That, we can say, is a good result.
What we have done is we have torn up the old blueprint that came into being around 1950, in which we were in command of Germany and Japan and we were restoring them to their former glory really, and we had established NATO to help Europe, we had the United Nations to arbitrate, we had Bretton Woods, which was going to take care of the world finances, in our favour, but it was favourable for just about everybody.
That world has been totally destroyed in the last two years. There is nothing left of it. We don't honour any of our arrangements with the Kyoto accords or the environment. We tried to kill the United Nations several times by not paying our dues, by ignoring its orders. We have changed the world's balance and I am amazed that you people – "you people" is a generic word for everybody else on Earth – haven't done anything about it, and haven't brought it to attention. This is radical. This is the most radical regime since the '30s.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]You mentioned that the United States has, essentially, usurped the United Nations, or is attempting to. Another casualty of the war is the relationship between Europe and the United States, always tense, but now it appears to be irretrievably damaged. Is that how you see it? You lived in Europe, you still live in Europe for part of the time, what do you make of that relationship[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: I don't think it's irretrievable. This administration will vanish without a trace one day. I just don't want it to vanish in a nuclear cloud of some suicide bomber, because I see that they're making all kinds of trouble for themselves that they don't understand the extent of it. I don't want war and I don't want anything violent to happen.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]But what do you make of the descriptions of[/i]…
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Europe has moved onto another sphere and there are those, I know, rather good economists who maintain that with the creation of the euro, that removes the power of the dollar, and it's only the power of the dollar that we've been able to build up this vast military because we could print as many as we want and it's a sovereign currency and it's considered safe. So any time there's war being threatened, they buy American securities, American Treasury buy them, so that's how we finance our nuclear weapons and so on.
Well, Saddam Hussein threatened, it was his first threat that, I think, got to us, that he was going to shift over to the euro and not the dollar, which meant that people with euros could buy Iraqi oil, which they can't do much of now and then, but they will one day, and that would destroy the power of the dollar to determine world values, particularly the value of oil, and this was enough to give our people a great headache.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]So do you think then, if that scenario's correct, that France and Germany would have had just as much incentive to indulge in decision making for the wrong reasons as Washington[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Well, they would, they did, they embraced the euro. They don't love the United States. I think that should be quite clear. Nor is there any reason why one country should love another anyway.
President Washington, who was a great statesman, has said that nations should not have special friends or special enemies, nations should only have interests and that to me is good statesmanship.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]But that's precisely what Washington's doing isn't it, acting on its interests[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: It isn't. It's invented interests that it doesn't have. It pretends that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 and he was going to do it again if we didn't go in and smash him. He had no plans and we went in and smashed him anyway. Why? Because he has the second largest oil reserves on Earth.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]Mr Vidal, if we look at the so-called Coalition forces, you've got George Bush, you've got John Howard of Australia, they appear at least to have behaved as expected, that is to say we're not really surprised by their actions. When you look at Tony Blair, a British Labour leader steadfastly supporting George Bush on this issue of Iraq, what do you make of that? Why do you think he did it[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: I think there's something very creepy going on, and I'm giving you an opinion.
Bush was an alcoholic, and he became AA, and part of AA is you find Jesus or God or something, and that helps you find the strength to cease to be an alcoholic, which he did. He found God, a very primitive sort of fundamental Protestantism – believes in Armageddon, believes in the end of the world, believes that this world is nothing and only the next matters.
Tony Blair is equally religious, obviously in a more sophisticated way, but he's in a funny position. He's Prime Minister of England. He is responsible, in a sense, for the Church of England. He appoints bishops for the sovereigns to install. Well, it is said that he's become Roman Catholic.
Now, the two boys can see themselves as crusaders fighting for Jesus against the infidel, against the heathen, against Muslims. This, to me, is perfectly loony. It is nothing that you would do or I would do, or most people would do, since this kind of religious zeal went out of the western world quite some time ago. It did not go out of the Middle Eastern world but we could live with that. It isn't going to hurt us unless we make them very angry.
So I think they see themselves as two Christian crusaders.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]Do you think that Tony Blair's zeal will eventually see him falling in behind Washington if Washington makes a decision to extend this war and go after Syria? He says he won't, but do you think that's possible[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Well, I'm sure he says that, but what he will do is a different thing. I think he's got himself in pretty deep and I don't think he's worked out enough of an exit to get out of it because they are going to go into Syria.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]You believe that[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: I know that, and also Iran has been marked too. I hope it isn't going to happen, I hope that the American people will wake up and stop the junta.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]How do you know that they're going to go into Syria or Iran? Why do you say you know that[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: I have connections in Washington and I know that this is a decision that has been made. Things do go wrong and things don't happen.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]So, but you don't think that Washington is just sabre-rattling? Isn't it possible that having just demonstrated having this capacity and willingness to act in terms of Iraq, that the Bush administration can actually achieve its aims through fear and threat[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: It has no aims other than more oil and gas because Cheney had a study done about a year ago, that by the year 2020 the entire world would be practically out of fossil fuels. They're going to grab all of it and the biggest supply is in the Caspian area and all those countries whose names end in 'stan'. That's what our eye is on.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]You describe a three-stage process that you observed the US Government employing against its enemies, abroad and at home. First there's harassment, then there's demonisation, then there's attack. Is Syria now at the harassment stage[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: You should read the New York Times this morning. There were four major stories about the crimes of Syria, how it was really in with they found the terrorists there, and so it means that Iraq had been supporting terrorism and this and that, mostly stories are made up or totally distorted. But the New York Times is a voice of the regime and a voice with really a sort of desire for war and expansion in that part of the world.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]And so on your account then, the terrorist link would just be extended add infinitum, and all of this on the back of one event, September 11, which looks, on this account, as though it might have been a gift for Bush – a truly massive, widely-perceived direct external threat needed in order to secure American global and oil interests[/i].
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: That is one way of looking at it.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]You believe there's no plan to deliver democracy via regime change throughout the Middle East[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: I don't believe it's our business to make the regime changes in the Middle East, particularly when we're under no threat from anybody.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]:[i] But is there a plan? Is the American administration interested at all in delivering democracy to the Middle East[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Are you crazy? We don't have it here, for God's sake. Why would we export it? We talk a lot about it.
Our founding fathers feared two things – one was majority rule, or democracy, and the other is tyranny, which they called monarchy in those days, that's all.
[b]MONICA ATTARD[/b]: [i]In relation to this idea that the United States is not, you know, the slightest bit interested in delivering democracy to the Middle East. Clearly much of the Arab world is deeply sceptical about what the United States is actually up to, but Saudi Arabia seems to stand apart from the rest. Why are they so taken by Washington[/i]?
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: Well, first of all they're occupied by American troops which were brought in at the time of Iraq one, and then didn't go home. Secondly, deals were made that they are there to protect the Royal Family, which is generally in cahoots with our oil companies, and to protect them from the people if the people should suddenly turn ugly in a country like that. They're in an awful position. I would not like to be one of them for anything, but we are there.
[b][i]Go Gore Go[/i]![/b]
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| Bush's Death Toll Over Christmas:-- 8 More US Soldiers Killed in Iraq |
| 12.27.03 (6:43 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush's Death Toll Over Christmas:-- 8 More U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq [/b]
Isn't it time to contact Congress http://www.congress.org , and demand that the corrupt neo-con Bush regime be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i]? [i] Hundreds [/i]of Americans and [i]tens of thousands [/i]of innocent Iraqis, have been massacred in Iraq in order to enrich the mendacious neo-fascists in the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i], including the Bush & Cheney families, Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, etc., as well as, corporate robber-barons, embezzlers & frauds, and greedy campaign contributors! [i]Thousands[/i] of Americans and [i]many, many thousands [/i]of innocent Iraqis are injured and maimed for life, while these arm-chair [i]chicken-hawks [/i]including squalid & ruthless Bush war-mongers and sordid & reckless Bush war-profiteers gorge on rich foods and swill gallons of wine & spirits, over the holidays.
[i]American should demand a change[/i]-- we need wise leadership instead of neo-fascist criminal thugs & goons who have hijacked our nation and are causing havoc in their immoral, illegal & bungled wars turned bloody guerrilla quagmires ... (while our [i]heads are turned [/i]towards the Bush regime's terrorism, they pull their[i] 'bait-and-switch'[/i] and swindle, plunder & loot our U.S. Treasury-- creating the largest record-level deficits in our nation's history in order to enrich themselves & their [i]corporate-take-all [/i]cronies ...)
Consider "[i][b]Eight US soldiers killed in Iraq Christmas violence[/b][/i]" on http://www.channelnewsasia.co... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
BAGHDAD : Eight US soldiers have been killed across Iraq over the Christmas period, as a series of attacks battered the capital and an advance batch of Japanese soldiers left home to prepare for deployment to the war-torn country.
The latest US troop fatalities came Friday with one soldier killed defusing a roadside bomb near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, and another when his convoy hit a booby-trap explosive between Baquba and Samarra, said Captain Jefferson Wolfe.
"There was an IED (improvised explosive device) attack on a convoy, two soldiers were injured, one of whom later died," Wolfe said.
"Soldiers returned fire and were able to kill two former regime elements."
Their deaths took to eight the number of US soldiers killed in action in Iraq since Christmas Eve.
On Thursday night, two US soldiers died during a mortar attack on a US army base near Baquba, military spokeswoman Josslyn Aberle said Friday.
Four other soldiers were wounded in the attack, she said, while an officer in Baquba put the wounded toll at six.
The latest deaths raise to 209 the number of US soldiers killed in action in Iraq since US President George W. Bush declared major combat over May 1.
[i][b]Read the rest of the article [/b][/i]on http://www.channelnewsasia.co... .
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| Will the Corrupt Bush Regime "Bulldoze" Over the Truth? |
| 12.26.03 (11:42 am) [edit] |
[b]Will the corrupt Bush regime get away with "[i]bulldozing[/i]" over the truth? ...[/b]
The most highly controlled, secretive & dangerously neo-fascist administration in our nation's history does not permit anything to be[i] "leaked"[/i] that they don't want[i] "leaked".[/i] A felon or felon[i]s [/i]within the neo-con Bush White House (probably Cheney, Rice & Rove-- who know & approve everything that goes on in the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i]) has broken the law ([i]and deserves the 10 years of imprisonment & $50,000 fine[/i]) for exposing the identity of an undercover CIA operative ([i]Valerie Plame[/i]), in an illegal, petty & mean-spirited act of revenge against her husband ([i]and to warn other whistle-blowers[/i]), Joseph C. Wilson IV, who told the truth to the American people, regarding the Bushies lies ...
Recently, the arrogant & corrupt Bushies glibly smirked the following:--[b] "Senior White House official" told the Financial Times (UK) that "We [Bush White House] have let the earth-movers roll in over this one (i.e. the Plame investigation) ... " [/b]... http://www.tblog.com/template...
[b]Apparently, another prosecutor has been added to investigate into this heinous act of treason ... But, will the corrupt Bush regime "[i]bulldoze[/i]" over the truth? Is this simply another of their cynical publicity stunts, to fool us yet again?[/b]
Consider "[i][b]Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum[/b][/i]" on http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
The Justice Department has added a fourth prosecutor to the team investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity, while the FBI has said a grand jury may be called to take testimony from administration officials, sources close to the case said.
Administration and CIA officials said they have seen signs in the past few weeks that the investigation continues intensively behind closed doors, even though little about the investigation has been publicly said or seen for months.
According to administration officials and people familiar with some of the interviews, FBI agents apparently started their White House questioning with top figures -- including President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove -- and then worked down to more junior officials. The agents appear to have a great deal of information and have constructed detailed chronologies of various officials' possible tie to the leak, people familiar with the questioning said.
The Justice Department has added a prosecutor specializing in counterintelligence, joining two other counterintelligence prosecutors and one from Justice's Public Integrity section.
Agents investigating the matter have been increasingly apparent at CIA headquarters in Langley over the past three weeks, officials said. "They are still active," a senior official said.
But sources said the CIA believes that people in the administration continue to release classified information to damage the figures at the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA officer by unidentified senior administration officials for a July 14 column by Robert D. Novak.
Wilson, a prominent critic of the administration over Iraq, has said that was done to retaliate against him for continuing to publicize his conclusion, after a 2002 mission for the CIA, that there was little evidence Iraq had sought uranium in Africa to develop nuclear weapons.
Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.
CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended the meeting.
"It has been circulated around," one official said. CIA and State Department officials have refused to discuss the document.
On Oct. 28, Talon News, a news company tied to a group called GOP USA, posted on the Internet an interview with Wilson in which the Talon News questioner asks: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"
On Monday, the Senate minority leader and the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee sent a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft demanding more information about the probe. "We request that you provide us with an overall status of the investigation, including the number of people the Justice Department has interviewed, the number of briefings you have received, the general types of information you are briefed on, what conditions you have placed on the scope of these briefings to ensure the independence of this investigation, and whether you have discussed this case with senior administration officials outside the Justice Department," wrote the senators, Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) and Carl M. Levin (Mich.).
The senators said that it is an apparent conflict of interest for Ashcroft to be briefed on the subject, and again requested a special counsel to prosecute the case, which Ashcroft has so far opposed.
FBI agents have told people they have interviewed that they may be asked to testify before a grand jury, according to sources close to the case. That could indicate that prosecutors believe they have a case, or it could be a routine method of getting testimony on the record even though no indictment is ever sought.
White House officials profess to be unconcerned about the outcome of the investigation. Some administration officials said they believe charges will eventually result, although it could be as long from now as 2005. A Republican legal source who has had detailed conversations about the matter with White House officials said he "doesn't get any sense at all that they're worried or concerned, or that they're covering up."
Still, the White House is eager for the findings to emerge soon, or wait until after the November election. "The only fear I've heard expressed is that the investigation will be too slow or too fast and will kick into a visible mode in a way that is poorly timed for the election," the Republican said. "If they prosecuted someone tomorrow, I don't think the White House would care. And they can do it in December 2004. They just don't want it to become an issue in the election."
FBI agents showed up unannounced last week at the home of a private citizen who was believed to have some knowledge of White House handling of Plame's identity, according to a source involved in the investigation. The source refused to identify the person who was interviewed, but said it was a man who had only peripheral knowledge of the case and had discussed it with officials in the White House.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is also preparing a report that is likely to cover both Wilson's mission to Niger and the subsequent leak of Plame's name. The report is still months from completion, officials said.
Capitol Hill aides in both parties said Wilson had badly hurt his credibility with his apparently enthusiastic participation in a spread in the January issue of Vanity Fair that includes a glamorous photo of him and his wife outside the White House, a scarf and dark glasses shielding her. In another photo in the magazine, she shields her face with the front section of The Washington Post as he eats breakfast barefoot on their deck with the Washington Monument in the distance.
Wilson is quoted as saying he is "appalled at the apparent nonchalance shown by the president of the United States on this." The article includes Wilson's steamy account of his early romance with Plame. Congressional aides said the article bolstered the contention of Wilson's critics that no one had done more than him to draw attention to Plame, and that the couple had eagerly contributed to their celebrity.
Wilson, in an interview, defended his participation in the glossy magazine's article. "The Republicans are going to say anything to deflect attention from the crime, which was exposing a CIA operative," he said, adding that his wife's "cover was completely blown" before the article appeared.
"My only regret about the Vanity Fair photo is that after all my wife and I have been through on this, that she had to be clothed as generic blonde in order to deal with the genuine concern that some wacko on the street might easily identify her," he said. "It was just in the interest of personal security."
[i]Staff writers Walter Pincus and Susan Schmidt contributed to this report[/i].
[b]Sources[/b]:
"Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum" on http://www.washingtonpost.com...
"Dubya Promises Investigation ... Instead 'Earth-Mover' Bulldozes Over the Truth" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| A Little History |
| 12.26.03 (11:15 am) [edit] |
[b]A Little History from [i]The War on Iraq News Log[/i]:[/b]
[i]The Independent [/i]on http://truthout.org/docs_03/1... : "Newly declassified documents reveal that ... President Ronald Reagan was concerned about maintaining good relations with Iraq despite evidence of Saddam's 'almost daily' use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels." Rumsfeld himself traveled to Baghdad to make good with Saddam -- a controversy that has some calling for his resignation.
[b]Sources[/b]:
"Rumsfeld Backed Saddam Even After Chemical Attacks", by [i]Andrew Buncombe[/i], The Independent UK
AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
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| Bush's Death Toll Mounts: 3 U.S. Soldiers Killed Today In Iraq To Enrich Halliburton ... |
| 12.24.03 (8:16 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush's Death Toll Mounts[/b]
[i][b]Three more U.S. soldiers were killed today in Iraq[/b][/i], all to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Lockheed Martin, etc... The[i] NBC Today Show [/i]reported today that the wealthy fat-cats & tog-dots ([i]who were awarded massive immoral & anti-christian tax cuts by the insane "crazies" in the corrupt neo-con Bush regime[/i]) are on a fabulous [i]spending-spree "like there is no tomorrow"[/i]! Meanwhile, the neo-fascist Bushies are living like neo-emperors while our nation is being pillaged for the sake of these traitorous war-profiteers, and more American retirees & working people, since the Great Depression, are facing hardships, job losses, no health care, poverty and homelessness.
Don't worry folks! The Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] are sending their squalid [i]Christmas greetings [/i]to our men and women in the U.S. military, who are being blown to smitherings & maimed for life-- in order for these neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons to gorge on rich foods & swill gallons of expensive wines this Christmas holiday.
Refer to "[i][b]Bomb Kills Three U.S. Soldiers in Iraq[/b][/i]" on http://www.dailycomet.com/app... :
A roadside bomb exploded north of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing three American soldiers, the U.S. military said.
"Three Task Force Ironhorse soldiers were killed when the vehicle they were in was struck by an improvised explosive device," the military said in a statement. The attack occurred at about 9 a.m. as the soldiers traveled in a convoy near Samarra, a town north of Baghdad where insurgents have often launched attacks on U.S. troops.
The soldiers' names were withheld pending notification of next of kin.
Also Wednesday, U.S. helicopter gunships backed an artillery bombardment aimed at insurgents in southwest Baghdad, as troops raided homes and arrested a Sunni sheik said to be close to the most wanted man in Iraq.
Ghazi Hanash, leader of al-Ta'ee tribe based around the northern city of Mosul, was arrested Tuesday at his apartment in Baghdad along with a son and two aides, a cousin, Ghassan Hamadi, said from the sheik's residence in Mosul. Hanash is said to be close to former Vice President Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who U.S. commanders say could be organizing the anti-American resistance.
Al-Douri - No. 6 on the U.S. list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis - is the most senior official of 13 who have escaped custody.
In northern Iraq, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the Interior Ministry in Irbil, near Kirkuk, and several people were killed or injured, said Kamil Kerkukly, an official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Irbil houses the Kurdish parliament. Under U.S.-led aerial protection, Iraqi Kurds, ethnically distinct from the majority Arabs, have ruled an autonomous Switzerland-sized stretch of northern Iraq since the end of the Gulf War more than a decade ago.
Also Wednesday, a minibus detonated a roadside bomb in a Baghdad traffic tunnel, killing one civilian and wounding two others, Iraqi police said. The bomb exploded in the Shurta tunnel around noon, when roads fill as residents go home for lunch.
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| Presidential Advisory Board Condemns White House For Making Phony WMDs Claims! |
| 12.24.03 (8:04 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush lied in his State of the Union address made last January, falsely claiming that Irag was re-constituting its nuclear weapons program [/b]-- and that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium yellow cakes from Niger. This was a bold-faced lie and what is more: Cheney, Rice & Rove [i]KNEW[/i] it was a bold-faced lie. It is always unclear whether the ne'er-do-well and congenital idiot Dubya also [i]KNEW[/i] that it was a bold-faced lie[i][b] or [/b][/i]is simply a imbecilic neo-fascist buffoon who simply stumbles, bumbles and fumbles through screeds that he doesn't even comprehend: [i][b]I suspect both![/b][/i]
Later, the ex-Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV exposed this bold-faced lie and the White House committed a felony, in an illegal, mean & petty act of revenge, by outing his wife (Valerie Plame) who was an undercover CIA agent. This crime is being "[i]bulldozed[/i]" over by the corrupt neo-cons in the sordid Bush regime ... meanwhile, Dubya & his corrupt cabal of squalid neo-con thugs & goons should be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i].
Consider "[i][b]White House Faulted on Uranium Claim - Intelligence Warnings Disregarded, President's Advisory Board Says[/b][/i]" by[i] Walter Pincus [/i]of the Washington Post, on http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has concluded that the White House made a questionable claim in January's State of the Union address about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain nuclear materials because of its desperation to show that Hussein had an active program to develop nuclear weapons, according to a well-placed source familiar with the board's findings.
In the speech Jan. 28, President Bush cited British intelligence in asserting that Hussein had tried to buy uranium from an unnamed country in Africa. The White House later said the claim should not have been made, after reports that the intelligence community expressed doubts it was true. After reviewing the matter for several months, the intelligence board -- chaired by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- has determined that there was "no deliberate effort to fabricate" a story, the source said. Instead, the source said, the board believes the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable.
The source said that at the time of the State of the Union speech, there was no organized system at the White House to vet intelligence, and the informal system that was followed did not work in the case of that speech. The White House has since established procedures for handling intelligence in presidential speeches by including a CIA officer in the speechwriting process.
The board shared its findings with Bush earlier this month. It is the first government body to complete its inquiry into an episode that buttressed criticism by lawmakers and others that the administration exaggerated intelligence to make the case for war. Word of its findings has also circulated within the White House and on Capitol Hill. The White House declined to comment on the board's findings.
The findings of the advisory board do not appear to add many new details about the uranium episode, but they make it clear that the White House should share blame with the CIA for allowing the questionable material into the speech. CIA Director George J. Tenet and deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley have accepted responsibility for allowing the assertion into the address.
In May, Bush asked Scowcroft to look into how the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium in Africa -- the claim concerned Niger -- made it into the presidential speech. The intelligence board, made up of 16 members, including former California governor Pete Wilson, former Netscape chief executive Jim Barksdale and retired Adm. David E. Jeremiah, traditionally provides the president private advice on intelligence questions. Scowcroft served in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, among others.
That request came at the same time that members of the Senate intelligence panel asked the inspectors general of the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department to investigate the matter. The House and Senate intelligence committees are looking into the episode as well.
Although the president's intelligence board keeps its findings secret, the Senate panel plans to make public details of its inquiry in a report, which is being drafted and is expected to be released next spring, according to congressional sources.
"The whole Niger case will be disclosed and the entire story told because it is not classified," one senior congressional aide familiar with the committee inquiry said yesterday.
At the time of the president's speech, the allegation about Hussein's uranium purchase in Africa was already part of the administration's campaign to win domestic and international support for invading Iraq. Although at the request of Tenet a reference to Niger had been removed from a speech by Bush the previous October, the White House subsequently wanted to "find something affirmative" for the January speech, one source said.
That month, the allegations had already been included in two official documents sent out by the White House and in speeches and writings by Bush's four most senior national security officials.
The CIA and the State Department had doubts about the purported Niger information because they knew that Hussein already had a stockpile of the same type of uranium that he was supposed to be seeking. In addition, the CIA had sent former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to Niger in February 2002, and he reported that officials in that country had denied the report.
More recently, the Iraq Survey Group looking into weapons activities in that country under the direction of David Kay reported in October that it found no support for the report that Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa. In fact, Kay said, the group found that the Iraqis had turned down an offer of uranium from a still-unidentified country.
One enduring mystery is which White House official was responsible for promoting the material in question. Senate hearings have indicated there was a disagreement between a CIA analyst and the White House National Security Council staff member about how the material was handled. "One side did not coordinate with the other," said the source familiar with the advisory board's inquiry.
The Senate probe has been slowed by disputes between Republicans and Democrats. It will not probe how other intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was used in public statements by administration officials in the run-up to the war, one congressional official said.
"But how that intelligence was portrayed [by policymakers] is a subjective thing and not something a committee could agree on," he said. "What was said publicly is available publicly," he added, saying each senator could make his own judgment.
It probably will be at least two to three months before the committee releases its report and holds public hearings on the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs, according to congressional sources. The first drafts are not expected before February, when they will first be reviewed by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the intelligence panel, and its vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.). Then other senators get to read it and make suggestions, a process that could take weeks.
Meanwhile, Roberts has tentatively set March for a closed hearing to update the work of Kay's survey group. At that time, or perhaps even before, Kay is expected to resign his position for personal reasons -- although the work in Iraq is expected to continue for at least another year, according to administration sources.
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| Mad Cow Disease Hits the U.S.A. ... Hmmm ... Could That Be Dubya's Problem? |
| 12.23.03 (6:03 pm) [edit] |
[b]Mad cow disease has been discovered ([i]or, let's just say: "un-covered"[/i]) in the U.S.A. Hmmm .. [i]Could that be the Mad King George's problem?[/i] ... [/b]
Let us just hope that Dubya & Cheney don't sell the diseased cows to Halliburton-- otherwise they'll shriek with joy over their gluttonous & obscene [b]war-profiteering[/b], while passing on this horrible disease to their [i]'cannon fodder'[/i]: the boys & girls in the U.S. military. Refer to "[i]Contractor (Halliburton) served troops dirty food in dirty kitchens[/i]" on http://www.taipeitimes.com/Ne... .
It is worth pondering ... because the insane neo-fascist Bushies won't reveal the true extent of the problems if the U.S. Beef Industry doesn't want them to ... There isn't a favour that the whorish neo-con Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] won't grant to their corporate pimps, irrespective of the damage done to our people and our nation.
Refer to "[i][b]U.S. Discovers Its First Suspected Case of Mad Cow Disease[/b][/i]" in the [i]N.Y. Times [/i]on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
Mad cow disease, known also as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is a brain-wasting sickness that first occurred in Britain in the mid-1980's. It spread to Europe and Asia, causing huge losses in the beef industry and some loss of human life, although statistically the chances of a person dying are small.
But the outbreaks in other countries were calamitous to their beef industries, and Ms. Veneman tried to avert a similar reaction in the United States, particularly as millions of people prepare for Christmas dinner that often includes, on many tables, a standing rib roast.
``I plan to serve beef for my Christmas dinner,'' she said.
[b]Uh-huh, yeah, and that is what the then-Agriculture Minister in the U.K. John Gummer http://www.time.com/time/euro... said when he ate a hamburger in an embarrassing publicity stunt ([i]to pander to the British Beef Industry[/i]) during their Mad Cow Disease crisis ... which later proved much, much worse than the British government revealed ... The U.K. had purposely & knowingly misled their people ... The corrupt [i]corporate-take-all [/i]Bushies cannot be relied upon to tell us the truth ... They don't give a damn about our health![/b]
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| America Has Guided Missiles And Misguided Leaders |
| 12.23.03 (8:16 am) [edit] |
"[b]America has guided missiles and misguided leaders[/b]." - [i]Ghazwan Al Mukhtar[/i]
[b][i]Ain't [/i]that the TRUTH![/b]
And the corporate [i]whores[/i] in the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] live to serve their[i] corporate-take-all [/i]pimps ... having created a[i] train-wreck of a nightmare [/i]in the wholesale economic [i]rape[/i] of America-- resulting in the largest deficits in our nation's history, the highest rates in poverty & homelessness in decades, rising unemployment with more job losses under Bush than at any time, since the Great Depression, etc. ... and these neo-fascist thugs & goons are doing nothing about our health care crisis ... But to enrich themselves, they are willing to slaughter hundreds of Americans & tens of thousands of Iraqis & Afghanistanis, in their neo-con wars waged based upon lies, deceptions & falsehoods -- and thus should be in the dock with Saddam Hussein & tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i].
The corporations, wealthiest plutocrats & richest among us are the beneficiaries of the Mad King George's neo-imperial largesse ... while the rest of us are[i] left holding their proverbial bag of shit[/i]!
The neo-cons' insane dreams of global domination are also our nightmares ... Consider ""[i][b]America has guided missiles and misguided leaders[/b][/i]" by Dahr Jamail on[i] Electronic Iraq [/i]on http://electroniciraq.net/new... :
According to a Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR-subsidiary of Halliburton) subcrontractor working with a Lebanese company in Tikrit, the lowest paid KBR employee in Iraq is a truckdriver. This position starts at $125,000 per year. Not including administration, the pay continues up the scale upwards to $250,000 per year for other jobs working for KBR.
Along with the obscenely high pay scale comes risk, however. This is why over 40% of the employees for KBR in Iraq have left the country. Thus, one of the many reasons KBR has been unable to perform reconstruction projects in Iraq is because they simply donít have the staff. With foreign workers in Iraq being killed or injured every week, and the situation having no immediate hope of improving, the prospects are looking a bit grim today.
This man also went on to discuss how KBR is hiring what he referred to as TCNís (Third Country Nationals), and there are between 3-5,000 of these people currently in Iraq.
He also estimates that his company is doing 95% of their work on US bases, leaving no time or workers for reconstruction projects. While the bunkers, roadblocks and military barracks are growing, the remainder of Iraq remains in shambles.
Meanwhile, the food costs continue to rise on nearly a daily basis. Here is a short list of price comparison from before the Anglo-American Invasion, to now, on basic food and fuel supplies:
Sugar 1 kg 150 ID (Iraqi Dinars) 750 ID
Tomatoes 1 kg 100 ID 750 ID
Rice 1 kg 150 ID 600 ID
Gas cylinder 300 ID 5000 ID
Diesel 1 ltr. 20 ID 300 ID
Benzene 1 lt. 20 ID 500 ID
With all the hoopla of the capture of Saddam Hussein already fading into the background, the grinding reality of the struggle of daily life in Iraq remains at the forefront of people's minds. For when the vast majority if Iraqis struggle daily to put food on their families plates, or some petrol in their car, worrying about where Saddam will be tried isn't such a high priority.
While speaking with Ghazwan Al Mukhtar, an electrical engineer, he stated, "I have a worthless passport. I have a worthless nationality."
Every Iraqi I've spoken with shares this hopeless sentiment, shared by Hamudi.
"I feel trapped here. No way can I afford to go to another country. Besides, aside from Jordan, getting a visa to a country, if you are Iraqi, is nearly impossible. Sometimes I feel like I live in a cage here. I love my country, but I would very much like to be able to take my wife and leave."
[i]Dahr Jamail is a freelance journalist and political activist from Anchorage, Alaska. He has come to Iraq to bear witness and write about how the US occupation is affecting the people of Iraq, since the media in the US has in large part, he believes, failed to do so[/i].
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| Making Money The Old-Fashioned Way? |
| 12.23.03 (7:58 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]are [i][b]cashing-in big-time [/b][/i]on their illegal & immoral incursions into Afghanistan & Iraq [/b]... as these neo-con war-criminals are war-profiteering, as they swindle, plunder & loot the U.S. Treasury and massacre thousands to enrich themselves and their sordid & squalid [i]corporate-take-all [/i]cronies ... [i]Our boys & girls in the U.S. military are treated like 'cannon-fodder' to enrich these despicable neo-con thugs & goons [/i]...
[i][b]Karen Kwiatkowski [/b][/i]is a recently retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon. She now lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley
Consider [i][b]"Making Money The Old-Fashioned Way?" [/b][/i]by [i]Karen Kwiatkowski [/i]on http://www.lewrockwell.com/kw... : - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
The gift of U.S. universal hegemony seems to have arrived early inside the Beltway. Like impatient children, neo-conservative aficionados have shaken the box, ripped the wrapping and are dreaming of a brave new world where they will both rule and profit. With hegemonic anxiety, CNN’s Lou Dobbs, the nation's preeminent business news journalist, recently whined rhetoric about Iran, with "[i]Why do they need nuclear power[/i]?" ...
... Uncle Sam "Slick" and Auntie Beltway "Backshish" actually understand nothing about who needs what energy, and couldn’t care less. But they do understand precisely what they and their cronies need to do to profit from publicly funded monstrosities, domestically and globally. And if they can’t profit from it the easy way, then threats and military deployments are in order. Enter George W. Bush, rainmaker extraordinaire. Tehran understands perfectly what went on in Afghanistan, and what is going on in Afghanistan today. Map the U.S. military bases against the pipeline map, and you see that the U.S. fascism – muscular national socialism – is on the march. Thus neo-fascist mouthpieces everywhere opine, "Why do they need nuclear power built by Russian contractors, when they could have Enron and Halliburton and Bechtel with U.S. military protection work on a nice publicly funded gas fueled electrical plant for them?"
Iran’s publicly funded socialist economy is undoubtedly wasting as much as India’s in the creation of white elephants. But beyond the national or regional security façade, it is only the feeling of being shut out of this potential hog trough that so annoys modern American imperialists in the Bush/Cheney administration. At least now we are both annoyed.
Let me sum up. You can find and experience real market forces driving local and global economies, unleashing real creativity, generating real solutions to real problems all over the world. You really can, as Brad Edmonds illustrates so wonderfully in the case of another typical government monstrosity. But don’t expect them under this year’s Christmas tree. In 2003 and 2004, you won’t find real market forces discussed on Lou Dobbs Tonight, you won’t scare up freedom at the American Enterprise Institute, and you can’t have either in George W. Bush’s America.
[b]I urge you to read the entire article on http://www.lewrockwell.com/kw... , as she provides maps and links worthy of review[/b].
[b]Source[/b]:
"Making Money the Old-Fashioned Way?" by Karen Kwiatkowski on http://www.lewrockwell.com/kw...
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| Operation Desert Santa |
| 12.23.03 (7:45 am) [edit] |
[b]Here's a good one folks ...[/b]
[b][i]Operation Desert Santa[/i][/b]
[i]According to The Onion[/i] http://www.theonion.com/3949/... , the United States military is insuring Iraqis celebrate a Merry Christmas – or else. "[i]Thus far, Operation Desert Santa has gone off without a hitch[/i]," said Gen. Stanley Kimmet, commander of U.S. armed reconnaissance-and-mistle toe operations in the volatile Tikrit region of central Iraq. "[i]There has been sporadic house-to-house fighting during our door-to-door caroling, but that's to be expected in a Christmas season of this magnitude[/i]."
[i][b]For more ... [/b][/i] http://www.alternet.org/waron...
[b]Sources[/b]:
AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
"Operation Desert Santa" (entire article) on http://www.alternet.org/waron...
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| White House 'Scrubs' Their Web-Sites To Wipe-Out Their LIES, DECEPTIONS & FALSEHOODS! |
| 12.22.03 (5:37 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime has a team of neo-orwellian fascists engaged in[i] 'scrubbing', 'wire-brushing', 'cleansing', 'erasing', 're-writing over their neo-con fraudulent statements' [/i] on their web-sites ... whatever you want to call it ... It amounts to[i] wiping out [/i]their many, many lies, deceptions & falsehoods.[/b]
Talk about revisionism ... re-writing history ... one had better [i]"cut-and-paste" [/i]their statements made today-- for tomorrow their neo-fascist web-sites will report a new revision of [i]'statements not made' fabricated anew to fit today's 'circumstances'[/i] and bearing no resemblance to the neo-con propaganda that they propagated yesterday ... The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] does not want to be held accountable for their statements made to mislead the American people, because they could be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i]. Certainly if the American people 'kept [i]track[/i]' of the fraudulent Bushies [i]lies, deceptions & falsehoods[/i], they would call for impeachment trials!
[i][b]White House 'scrubs' its website[/b][/i]
Here is yet more proof that when it comes to revisionism, no one can top the Bush administration. According to the Washington Post, the administration is routinely rewriting and erasing information from its websites. The latest example is the disappearance of a transcript from earlier this year in which Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq. Now that this wild underestimation has been proved to be untrue, the offending document has simply disappeared.
The Post adds, "[i]This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, 'President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended,' to insert the word 'Major' before combat[/i]."
[b]Sources[/b]:
"The Media Culture Mix" by AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
"White House Web Scrubbing" on http://www.washingtonpost.com...
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| Neo-Buffoonery: If Corporations & The Rich PAY TAXES - IT WILL DESTROY AMERICA? HA HA HA! |
| 12.22.03 (8:07 am) [edit] |
[b]A new neo-con, neo-fascist [i]spin[/i] currently being re-hashed by the neo-buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters who pay homage to the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta[/i], is that if corporations and the rich pay their fair share in taxes ... that this will destroy America! Ha ha ha! [/b]... Only moronic, brain-dead imbeciles & sheepish ideologues buy this [i]snake oil[/i], and Neil & Jeb Bush have got some[i] swamp land [/i]in Florida for [i]'em[/i] ... Dubya has already swindled hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to enrich his corporate cronies, the richest plutocrats, his sordid family & squalid campaign contributors.
Consider that the corrupt Bush regime has created a $560 billion deficit ([i]the largest in our nation's history[/i]) in 2003 alone, having turned a budget surplus into a record-level deficit of over $1.9 trillion from 2001-2004-- funnelled into the bulging pockets of the richest among us ... Moreover, we are suffering, here in America from:--
* Between[b] 9-15 million unemployed citizens searching for jobs[/b] ([i]Dubya destroyed over 3 million jobs -- Clinton created over 22 million jobs[/i]) ...
* Over[b] 35 million families live below the poverty line [/b]([i]1960s defined ... it is much, much worse[/i]) ...
* Over [b]3.5 million citizens are homeless [/b]([i]Dubya refuses to permit a census count[/i]) ...
* Between [b]45-85 million citizens lack health care coverage [/b]([i]and this is increasing as health care costs soar to line the pockets of the executives from the HMOs, insurance, pharmaceuticals & other corporations ... with gold[/i]) ...
* [b]Crumbling schools, educational deprivation[/b], etc. and [i]other needs to ensure opportunity and a civilized life for all [/i]...
The neo-fascist Bushies are DOING NOTHING to solve the dire problems of this nation ... Instead of working towards making this country better for all of our citizenry, the neo-con Bushies are swindling, plundering & looting the U.S. Treasury for themselves, corporations and the rich, on a scale unseen in our short 228 year-old history!
As an example, Cheney will rake in over $1 million in income this year, and pay less in taxes proportionally than his secretary ... thanks to insane, immoral & anti-christian tax loopholes & tax cuts ... Progressive taxation ensures that citizens contribute responsibly to their society ... Instead, corporations are avoiding taxes altogether ([i]with the loopholes put in place by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. junta[/i]) ... and the wealthy are not paying their fair share. Refer to Warren Buffet's attack on the reckless Bush tax cuts ([i]he also pays proportionally less than his secretary[/i]) ... "[i]Dividend Voodoo[/i]" on http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/w...+Voodoo
The ruthlessly criminal [i]Tax-Cut Swindle for the Rich[/i] perpetrated by the corrupt, neo-fascist Bush regime is like their[i] Medicare Swindle [/i]-- unless you read the [i]fine print[/i], you are screwed unless you are very, very, very powerful & wealthy! The miniscule tax cuts for medium-and-low income families ([i]bones & scraps to mollify critics[/i]) will expire in 2005, while the insane rape ([i]massive tax cuts of hundreds of millions for the plutocrats & billions for corporate robber-barons[/i]) by the corporations and the wealthiest among us does not expire at all!
The callous neo-cons in the Bush regime intend to transform American into a 3rd world-type neo-feudal slave state-- and they are doing it-- as poverty is increasing, those in need are growing more desperate as services are mercilessly slashed, and the gap between the [i]haves-and-the-have-not s [/i]is higher than at any time in the last 75 years! We are witness to a pernicious form of fascism overtaking America!
Consider "[i][b]Analysts: Future Budget Outlook Gloomy[/b][/i]" on http://www.centredaily.com/ml... - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
"[i]If spending is left unchecked, it could have a disastrous effect on the economy[/i]," said Rich Meade, Republican staff director of the House Budget Committee. "[i]The bottom line is deficits do matter, and we need to address them[/i]."
Thomas Kahn, his Democratic counterpart, said, "[i]The worst thing we could do is approve the Republican agenda, because its extra $1 trillion in new tax cuts would make the long-term budget problem even worse[/i]."
Yeah, except that [b]the corrupt neo-fascist Bushies are spending on the WRONG THINGS [/b]... instead of Universal Health Care, Education, etc. and caring for our people-- the rapacious Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] are [i]spending like drunken-sailors [/i]on corporations, the richest among us, gluttonous-and-unnecessar y military boondoggles & insane 'pre-emptive' warfare!!! Talk about screwed-up priorities ... It is time for a change ... Let us take our country back and out of the hands of these neo-con swindlers, rapists & murderers!
[b]Sources[/b]:
"U.S. Class & Income Inequality Is At The Highest Point In Over 75 Years" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"The Poverty Quagmire in America" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"Financial Analysts Confirm That Bush Has Placed The U.S.A. In Economic Peril" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"WANTED: A Real Economic Program - Instead of Mad King George's Swindle of America" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"U.S. Homelessness & Poverty Worsens Under The Rapacious Bush Regime" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| 'Rummy' Wants A Bigger Army: Okay, So Long As Bush's Brats & Neo-Con Trash GO TO WAR TOO! |
| 12.22.03 (7:03 am) [edit] |
[b]Arrogant Rummy Rumsfeld spews & crows & smirks neo-garbage from one idiotic press conference to the next[/b]. A few months ago, Rumsfeld was saying we [i]do not need any more troops [/i]and that the U.S military was the "[i]right size[/i]" http://usembassy-australi a.st... ... In the aftermath of his botched-up bloody guerrilla quagmires in Afghanistan & Iraq, mis-[i]planned[/i] with tne neo-crazy Wolfy Wolfowitz, he is now forced to admit ([i]since the Bushies can't "[u]do[/u]" diplomacy and practically no one wants to help them[/i]) that they are[i] in over their insane heads [/i]-- Their neo-fascist solution: Massacre more young men and women ([i]but not their off-spring, uh-huh[/i])-- Then, let these filthy rich war-profiteers and neo-con thugs & goons, and their [i]kit-and-kin [/i]go fight, die or be maimed for life. [i]Ain't they patriotic?[/i]
Are the neo-con nut-jobs planning more neo-fascist wars for blood-thirsty profit ([i]Halliburton, Bechtel, Unocal, Carlyle Group ... and Neil Bush's philanderings & rape of pension funds & Iraqi oil -- may all want to grab more war-profits, now that they've seen how easily led the fat, dumb & lazy American people really are[/i]!). The neo-con, neo-fascist rape of America and the Middle-East is like "[i]taking candy from a baby[/i]" -- the rich get richer and the rest of us are massacred, slaughter, plundered, swindled & looted!
If the U.S. military is to increase in size-- then there damn well [i]ought to be a draft [/i]-- and this time no deferments, exemptions & champagne brigades: no escape for the rich brats & no-con trash, whose cowardly parents ([i]Dubya, Cheney, Limbaugh, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. etc. etc[/i].) were [i]AWOL in a druken stupor during Vietnam[/i]. Let the Bush family's brats and the neo-con trash do their duty too, [i]for a change[/i]:-- these spoiled kids & off-spring SHOULD GO TO WAR TOO ... instead these useless [i]ne'er-do-wells [/i]are being "protected" by their corrupt, squalid & sordid families raking in hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, while the kids from poor & middle-class families are sent to their insane neo-con "pre-emptive" ([i]neo-hitlerian aggressions[/i]) wars to die or become maimed for life.
Surely, Bush's & Cheney's brats, the filthy rich plutocrats' off-spring, and the neo-con trash are patriotic and want to do their duty, right? [i]Uh-huh [/i]...
Refer to "[i][b]EXCLUSIVE: THE U.S. "MAY NEED A BIGGER ARMY," DONALD RUMSFELD TELLS TIME - Opens Door to Expanding U.S. Military[/b][/i]" on http://www.time.com/time/pres...,8599,565993,00.html :
[b]New York – "[i]We may need a bigger army[/i]," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tells [i]TIME[/i] in this week's Person of the Year double issue [/b](on newsstands for two weeks beginning Monday, Dec. 22). Rumsfeld has been under pressure from Congress to expand the military by at least two divisions, or 20,000 troops, [i]TIME [/i]Washington Bureau Chief Michael Duffy and Pentagon Correspondent Mark Thompson report. The Secretary resisted that pressure over the summer and fall, but in his conversation with [i]TIME[/i], he said he was studying it more closely now, opening the door to a deal.
Rumsfeld tells [i]TIME[/i]: "I don't see any analysis or any studies that persuade me that it should be larger or smaller at the moment. I'm commissioning them. I’m getting them done. And if they say we need a larger one, I will, with alacrity, recommend it, and it may very well be the case." But if he is flexible, it is only to a point. Rumsfeld remains firmly opposed to a return to the military draft. He has often said today's volunteers are smarter and more dedicated than conscripts, [i]TIME [/i]reports.
"Secretary of War": In 2003 Donald Harold Rumsfeld, 71, was the very word of war: he planned it, he sold it, he strutted through a post-war landscape that is still far from tidy. Armed with a new doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, he spurred the military to fight lighter and faster than it had ever fought before, rewriting the battlefield playbook for perhaps a decade or more, Duffy and Thompson report.
Positioning the President as Reluctant Warrior: The White House was at pains to disguise, before the shooting started, any indication that a war was inevitable. The decision to go to war was Baghdad's, not Washington's, went the daily talking point. Job one was to position the President as a reluctant warrior. Any emphasis on what would come after a war would have put the President in a public relations bind, [i]TIME[/i] reports.
Looking back a few days ago on this complicated minuet, Rumsfeld half conceded only that the U.S. was trying to avoid any impression that war was unavoidable. "We didn’t want that inevitability," he said, pausing slightly before quickly editing himself, "because it wasn't inevitable! We were hoping it wouldn't happen." Life in "Rummyland": The Pentagon has often behaved as if it were on its own timetable, uninterested in or even ignorant of diplomacy or politics. Two weeks ago the Pentagon posted on one of its websites a previously released announcement that only the 62 coalition allies could participate in U.S.-funded postwar contracts, needlessly angering other nations at the very moment Bush had sent James Baker to some of those countries in search of debt relief for Iraq. White House officials have a name for the Don's Pentagon. “It's Rummyland," said one aide. "They just do what they want."
"He Really Does Want to Smack You": What feels like sport to Rumsfeld is more like a blood sport to those who have to face him. They describe a man who "listens aggressively," who wants to watch you take a punch and see how you react. "He really does want to smack you," said one aide. "From that, he thinks, 'I will learn something I don't know and you weren’t planning to teach me.' The truth might not tumble out of you otherwise."
Senior Pentagon Officer: Post-War Gets a "C-minus or D-plus": Given Rumsfeld's depth of field, and his deft handling of the war, it's hard to escape the question: Where was he on the peace? How could a man with trifocals fail to see that the peace would need as much planning as the war? As one senior Pentagon officer put it, "The war gets an A-minus, but post-war is more a C-minus or D-plus."
Pentagon Civilian Close to Rumsfeld: "We Shouldn't Have Disbanded the (Iraqi) Army": White House aides finger Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer for disbanding the Iraqi army. Bremer aide Walter Slocombe claims some responsibility, but it's unlikely that a Clinton-era Democrat like Slocombe would have been allowed to make such a big decision. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz says the decision to disband the army was unanimous. Asked whether it was Rumsfeld’s call, Douglas Feith, a top Rumsfeld aide, says, "You could say that." A Pentagon civilian close to Rumsfeld admits, "We shouldn't have disbanded the army."
Widely Believed that Wolfowitz May Leave Administration Some Time Next Year: In a companion story on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Thompson reports that the Rummy and Wolfie Show may soon go off the air. It is widely believed in national-security circles that Wolfowitz may leave the Administration some time in 2004. He has become too controversial for Bush to promote to Defense Secretary; Wolfowitz believed that U.S. troops in Iraq would be greeted with rose petals. He remains unbowed about the postwar effort. "I'd like to know among those people who say we should have had better plans, just which plan they had in mind that would have prevented the murderers and torturers that raped and abused that country for 35 years from continuing to fight this destructive war until they're defeated. The bottom line is," he says, "these are tough, ugly bastards."
Would Never Admit He Made a Mistake: Rumsfeld would never admit that he made a mistake, says an aide, who adds, "That's a good thing when selling a policy or a war. But if the choice turns out to be wrong, he probably won't acknowledge it until it's turned into a disaster."
Co-Owns New Mexico Ranch with Dan Rather, among others: You would think, especially after Saddam's capture, that Rumsfeld could pack it in, go out on top and settle down in that ranch in Taos, N.M., that he co-owns with, among others, Dan Rather, [i]TIME [/i]reports. Boyhood chum Ned Jannotta, who ran his first campaign for Congress in 1962, notes that Rumsfeld never has cared about staying anywhere very long. "He doesn’t look for security in his life," says Jannotta. "It gives him great freedom to do and try and risk and fail. He's prepared to go head to head—winner take all, no second-place money—and still fail. That runs through his life."
Click on the link below for the full story on [i]TIME.com[/i]:
"Donald Rumsfeld: Secretary of War" on http://www.time.com/time/pers...
[b]Other source[/b]:
"Rumsfeld Insists No Need to Increase U.S. Troops in Iraq" on http://usembassy-australi a.st...
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| Letters Sent By U.S. Troops In Iraq To Michael Moore |
| 12.22.03 (6:37 am) [edit] |
[b]Ventriloquest's dummies who regurgitate the corrupt Bush regime's mendacious propaganda are again trying the [i]same-ole' same-ole' [/i]"all is rosy" & everybody is "tickled pick" in Iraq bull-shit[/b]. The corrupt Bush regime's corporate cronies, robber-barons & rapists are indeed very, very happy since they are raking in tens-to-hundreds of billions of dollars in profits, from the blood, sweat and tears of the [i]not-rich [/i]American taxpayers, U.S. military & the Iraqi people & assets.
However, the U.S. Troops on-the-ground in Iraq are not all bamboozled by the rapacious & ruthless Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]insane [i][b]war-mongering for war-profiteering[/b][/i].
Consider "[i][b]Letters the Troops Have Sent Me[/b][/i]..." by Michael Moore on http://www.michaelmoore.com/w... :
[i][b]Dear Friends[/b][/i],
As we approach the holidays, I've been thinking a lot about our kids who are in the armed forces serving in Iraq. I've received hundreds of letters from our troops in Iraq -- and they are telling me something very different from what we are seeing on the evening news.
What they are saying to me, often eloquently and in heart-wrenching words, is that they were lied to -- and this war has nothing to do with the security of the United States of America.
I've written back and spoken on the phone to many of them and I've asked a few of them if it would be OK if I posted their letters on my website and they've said yes. They do so at great personal risk (as they may face disciplinary measures for exercising their right to free speech). I thank them for their bravery.
Lance Corporal George Batton of the United States Marine Corps, who returned from Iraq in September (after serving in MP company Alpha), writes the following:
“[i]You'd be surprised at how many of the guys I talked to in my company and others believed that the president's scare about Saddam's WMD was a bunch of bullshit and that the real motivation for this war was only about money. There was also a lot of crap that many companies, not just marine companies, had to go through with not getting enough equipment to fulfill their missions when they crossed the border. It was a miracle that our company did what it did the two months it was staying in Iraq during the war…. We were promised to go home on June 8th, and found out that it was a lie and we got stuck doing missions for an extra three months. Even some of the most radical conservatives in our company including our company gunnery sergeant got a real bad taste in their mouth about the Marine corps, and maybe even president Bush[/i].”
Here's what Specialist Mike Prysner of the U.S. Army wrote to me:
“[i]Dear Mike -- I’m writing this without knowing if it’ll ever get to you…I’m writing it from the trenches of a war (that’s still going on,) not knowing why I’m here or when I’m leaving. I’ve toppled statues and vandalized portraits, while wearing an American flag on my sleeve, and struggling to learn how to understand… I joined the army as soon as I was eligible – turned down a writing scholarship to a state university, eager to serve my country, ready to die for the ideals I fell in love with. Two years later I found myself moments away from a landing onto a pitch black airstrip, ready to charge into a country I didn't believe I belonged in, with your words (from the Oscars) repeating in my head. My time in Iraq has always involved finding things to convince myself that I can be proud of my actions; that I was a part of something just. But no matter what pro-war argument I came up with, I pictured my smirking commander-in-chief, thinking he was fooling a nation[/i]…"
An Army private, still in Iraq and wishing to remain anonymous, writes:
“[i]I would like to tell you how difficult it is to serve under a man who was never elected. Because he is the president and my boss, I have to be very careful as to who and what i say about him. This also concerns me a great deal... to limit the military's voice is to limit exactly what America stands for... and the greater percentage of us feel completely underpowered. He continually sets my friends, my family, and several others in a kind of danger that frightens me beyond belief. I know several other soldiers who feel the same way and discuss the situation with me on a regular basis[/i].”
Jerry Oliver of the U.S. Army, who has just returned from Baghdad, writes:
“[i]I have just returned home from "Operation Iraqi Freedom". I spent 5 months in Baghdad, and a total of 3 years in the U.S. Army. I was recently discharged with Honorable valor and returned to the States only to be horrified by what I've seen my country turn into. I'm now 22 years old and have discovered America is such a complicated place to live, and moreover, Americans are almost oblivious to what's been happening to their country. America has become "1984." Homeland security is teaching us to spy on one another and forcing us to become anti-social. Americans are willingly sacrificing our freedoms in the name of security, the same Freedoms I was willing to put my life on the line for. The constitution is in jeopardy. As Gen. Tommy Franks said, (broken down of course) One more terrorist attack and the constitution will hold no meaning[/i].”
And a Specialist in the U.S. Army wrote to me this week about the capture of Saddam Hussein:
“[i]Wow, 130,000 troops on the ground, nearly 500 deaths and over a billion dollars a day, but they caught a guy living in a hole. Am I supposed to be dazzled[/i]?”
There are lots more of these, straight from the soldiers who have been on the front lines and have seen first hand what this war is really about.
I have also heard from their friends and relatives, and from other veterans. A mother writing on behalf of her son (whose name we have withheld) wrote:
“[i]My son said that this is the worst it's been since the "end" of the war. He said the troops have been given new rules of engagement, and that they are to "take out" any persons who aggress on the Americans, even if it results in "collateral" damage. Unfortunately, he did have to kill someone in self defense and was told by his commanding officer ‘Good kill[/i].’
[i]"My son replied ‘You just don't get it, do you?’
"Here we are...Vietnam all over again[/i].”
From a 56 year old Navy veteran, relating a conversation he had with a young man who was leaving for Iraq the next morning:
“[i]What disturbed me most was when I asked him what weapons he carried as a truck driver. He told me the new M-16, model blah blah blah, stuff never made sense to me even when I was in. I asked him what kind of side arm they gave him and his fellow drivers. He explained, "Sir, Reservists are not issued side arms or flack vests as there was not enough money to outfit all the Reservists, only Active Personnel[/i]". I was appalled to say the least.
"[i]Bush is a jerk agreed, but I can't believe he is this big an Asshole not providing protection and arms for our troops to fight HIS WAR[/i]!”
From a 40-year old veteran of the Marine Corps:
“[i]Why is it that we are forever waving the flag of sovereignty, EXCEPT when it concerns our financial interests in other sovereign states? What gives us the right to tell anyone else how they should govern themselves, and live their lives? Why can't we just lead the world by example? I mean no wonder the world hates us, who do they get to see? Young assholes in uniforms with guns, and rich, old, white tourists! Christ, could we put up a worse first impression[/i]?”
(To read more from my Iraq mailbag -- and to read these above letters in full -- go to my website: http://www.michaelmoore.com/b...)
Remember back in March, once the war had started, how risky it was to make any anti-war comments to people you knew at work or school or, um, at awards ceremonies? One thing was for sure -- if you said anything against the war, you had BETTER follow it up immediately with this line: "[i]BUT I SUPPORT THE TROOPS[/i]!" Failing to do that meant that you were not only unpatriotic and un-American, your dissent meant that YOU were putting our kids in danger, that YOU might be the reason they lose their lives. Dissent was only marginally tolerated IF you pledged your "support" for our soldiers.
Of course, you needed to do no such thing. Why? Because people like you have ALWAYS supported "the troops." Who are these troops? They are our poor, our working class. Most of them enlisted because it was about the only place to get a job or receive the guarantee of a college education. You, my good friends, have ALWAYS, through your good works, your contributions, your activism, your votes, SUPPORTED these very kids who come from the other side of the tracks. You NEVER need to be defensive when it comes to your "support" for the "troops" -- you are the only ones who have ALWAYS been there for them.
It is Mr. Bush and his filthy rich cronies -- whose sons and daughters will NEVER see a day in a uniform -- they are the ones who do NOT support our troops. Our soldiers joined the military and, in doing so, offered to give THEIR LIVES for US if need be. What a tremendous gift that is -- to be willing to die so that you and I don't have to! To be willing to shed their blood so that we may be free. To serve in our place, so that WE don't have to serve. What a tremendous act of selflessness and generosity! Here they are, these 18, 19, and 20-year olds, most of whom have had to suffer under an unjust economic system that is set up NOT to benefit THEM -- these kids who have lived their first 18 years in the worst parts of town, going to the most miserable schools, living in danger and learning often to go without, watching their parents struggle to get by and then be humiliated by a system that is always looking to make life harder for them by cutting their benefits, their education, their libraries, their fire and police, their future.
And then, after this miserable treatment, these young men and women, instead of coming after US to demand a more just society, they go and join the army to DEFEND us and our way of life! It boggles the mind, doesn't it? They not only deserve our thanks, they deserve a big piece of the pie that we dine on, those of us who never have to worry about taking a bullet while we fret over which Palm Pilot to buy the nephew for Christmas.
In fact, all that these kids in the army ask for in return from us is our promise that we never send them into harm's way unless it is for the DEFENSE of our nation, to protect us from being killed by "the enemy."
And that promise, my friends, has been broken. It has been broken in the worst way imaginable. We have sent them into war NOT to defend us, not to protect us, not to spare the slaughter of innocents or allies. We have sent them to war so Bush and Company can control the second largest supply of oil in the world. We have sent them into war so that the Vice President's company can bilk the government for billions of dollars. We have sent them into war based on a lie of weapons of mass destruction and the lie that Saddam helped plan 9-11 with Osama bin Laden.
By doing all of this, Mr. Bush has proven that it is HE who does not support our troops. It is HE who has put their lives in danger, and it is HE who is responsible for the nearly 500 American kids who have now died for NO honest, decent reason whatsoever.
The letters I've received from the friends and relatives of our kids over there make it clear that they are sick of this war and they are scared to death that they may never see their loved ones again. It breaks my heart to read these letters. I wish there was something I could do. I wish there was something we all could do.
Maybe there is. As Christmas approaches (and Hanukkah begins tonight), I would like to suggest a few things each of us could do to make the holidays a bit brighter -- if not safer -- for our troops and their families back home.
[b]1[/b]. Many families of soldiers are hurting financially, especially those families of reservists and National Guard who are gone from the full-time jobs ("just one weekend a month and we'll pay for your college education!"). You can help them by contacting the Armed Forces Emergency Relief Funds at http://www.afrtrust.org/ (ignore the rah-rah military stuff and remember that this is money that will help out these families who are living in near-poverty). Each branch has their own relief fund, and the money goes to help the soldiers and families with paying for food and rent, medical and dental expenses, personal needs when pay is delayed, and funeral expenses. You can find more ways to support the troops, from buying groceries for their families to donating your airline miles so they can get home for a visit, by going here.
[b]2[/b]. Thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed by our bombs and indiscriminate shooting. We must help protect them and their survivors. You can do so by supporting the Quakers' drive to provide infant care kits to Iraqi hospitals—find out more here: http://www.afsc.org/iraq/reli... You can also help the people of Iraq by supporting the Iraqi Red Crescent Society—here’s how to contact them: http://www.ifrc.org/address/i..., or you can make an online donation through the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies by going here: http://www.ifrc.org/HELPNOW/d...
[b]3[/b]. With 130,000 American men and women currently in Iraq, every community in this country has either sent someone to fight in this war or is home to family members of someone fighting in this war. Organize care packages through your local community groups, activist groups, and churches and send them to these young men and women. The military no longer accepts packages addressed to “Any Soldier,” so you’ll have to get their names first. Figure out who you can help from your area, and send them books, CDs, games, footballs, gloves, blankets—anything that may make their extended (and extended and extended…) stay in Iraq a little brighter and more comfortable. You can also sponsor care packages to American troops through the USO: http://www.usocares.org/.
[b]4[/b]. Want to send a soldier a free book or movie? I’ll start by making mine available for free to any soldier serving in Iraq. Just send me their name and address in Iraq (or, if they have already left Iraq, where they are now) and the first thousand emails I get at soldiers@michaelmoore.com will receive a free copy of "Dude..." or a free “Bowling…” DVD.
[b]5[/b]. Finally, we all have to redouble our efforts to end this war and bring the troops home. That's the best gift we could give them -- get them out of harm's way ASAP and insist that the U.S. go back to the UN and have them take over the rebuilding of Iraq (with the US and Britain funding it, because, well, we have to pay for our mess). Get involved with your local peace group—you can find one near where you live by visiting United for Peace, at: http://www.unitedforpeace.org... and the Vietnam Veterans Against War: http://www.vvaw.org/contact/.... A large demonstration is being planned for March 20, check here for more details: http://www.unitedforpeace.org... To get a “[i]Bring Them Home Now[/i]” bumper sticker or a poster for your yard, go here: http://bringthemhomenow.org/y... Also, back only anti-war candidates for Congress and President (Kucinich, Dean, Clark, Sharpton).
I know it feels hopeless. That's how they want us to feel. Don't give up. We owe it to these kids, the troops WE SUPPORT, to get them the hell outta there and back home so they can help organize the drive to remove the war profiteers from office next November.
To all who serve in our armed forces, to their parents and spouses and loved ones, we offer to you the regrets of millions and the promise that we will right this wrong and do whatever we can to thank you for offering to risk your lives for us. That your life was put at risk for Bush's greed is a disgrace and a travesty, the likes of which I have not seen in my lifetime.
Please be safe, come home soon, and know that our thoughts and prayers are with you during this season when many of us celebrate the birth of the prince of "peace."
[i][b]Yours,
Michael Moore[/b][/i]
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
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| John 'Robespierre' Ashcroft Is Stomping On Our "Freedom of the Press" |
| 12.21.03 (1:38 pm) [edit] |
[b]John 'Robespierre' Ashcroft is running amok in his neo-fascist [i]Reign of Terror[/i], and is now stomping on our "Freedom of the Press"[/b] ... Since Americans are now forced to obtain the real [i]un-sanitized [/i]news from [i]foreign news sources and media outlets[/i], in this scary new age of mendacious neo-orwellian propaganda re-gurgitated by the neo-con buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters [i]in the corporate-owned, right-wing media & press[/i], who serve as ventriloquest's dummies for the corrupt Bush regime-- this represents a major assault on our democracy.
Can anyone claim to be shocked to learn of such unconstitutional abuses by the neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i], anymore? Tragically, hmmm ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[i][b]A repressive embarrassment[/b][/i] on http://www.toledoblade.com/ap... :
Anyone who thinks the administration and its law enforcement chief, Attorney General John Ashcroft, aren’t out to impede a free press need only hear how the federal government is treating foreign journalists coming to this country on assignment.
Without notification to foreign media outlets, the immigration and customs people are arresting, detaining, and deporting journalists arriving here without special visas. This is so even when they come from nations whose citizens can stay for up to 90 days without a visa if they are arriving as tourists or on business.
If that threatening form of registration is not enough, members of the press arriving without the visas, which no one told them they needed, are treated like criminals, handcuffed as they’re marched through airports, photographed, fingerprinted, and their DNA taken.
Peter Krobath, chief editor for the Austrian movie magazine Skip, was held overnight in a cold room with 45 others who arrived without the visa. The room had two open toilets, a metal bench, and a concrete bench. He was here to interview movie star Ben Affleck and see the movie Paycheck.
Thomas Sjoerup, a photographer for the Danish paper Ekstra Bladet, was deported after a few hours during which a mugshot, fingerprints, and DNA sample were taken. A French journalist said he and five others from his country were marched across the airport in handcuffs, without belts or laces.
The International Press Institute in Vienna, a media freedom group, has complained not only about Mr. Korbath’s treatment but also, and indeed more important, the fact that only foreign journalists need special visas.
The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists is about to launch a global campaign against the absurd and repressive rule that casts suspicion on working journalists who come to this country on business as valid as any other traveler’s.
A U.S. embassy official in Vienna said visas have always been required. If that requirement existed, it was more honored in its breach and ought to be rescinded.
It should not take a world media outcry to address this problem. It’s a policy that puts these United States in the ranks of Third World dictatorships.
Members of Congress, regardless of party, who understand the absurdity of it all, even in these troubled times, should demand an end to this repressive embarrassment.
It’s not likely President Bush ever will.
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| John 'Robespierre' Ashcroft Told That His Reign of Terror Is Unconstitutional |
| 12.21.03 (11:36 am) [edit] |
[b]This last week, the U.S. Federal Appeals Court upheld the rights and protections afforded our citizens under the U.S. Constitution[/b], not to be held illegally, for example, without due process:-- of being arrested & sent-off to a gulag without being formally charged, or read your rights, and of being denied legal counsel ... a fundamental right that differentiates the United States of America from [i]oh, let's say,[/i] Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq ... [i]ooopppsss ... Dubya=Saddam?[/i]
John 'Robespierre' Ashcroft was told that his [i]Reign of Terror [/i]is unconstitutional. The Mad King George who thinks that he rules over his own empire or kingdom ([i]he never grew-up and still likes to play at being cowboy-- or dons military garb and pretends he is a top-gun-- or poses beside a plastic, phony turkey & pretends he gives a damn about his 'cannon-fodder' in the U.S. military-- or gets behind a podium and pretends he is a dictator[/i] ...) is finally being told what he appears oblivious to:-- The [i][b]U.S.A.[/b] is [b]A Republic for Which [i]It [/i]Stands [/i]-- [/b]the '[i]It[/i]' refers to a democratic system of government as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ...
Dubya and his cabal of neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons treat us like their neo-slaves ... they treat the U.S. Treasury like their private ATM bank account ... and, they treat this nation like their private playground. [b]This insane hijacking of our nation-- and the arrogant and tyrannical Dubya's pretense that he can grant us favors ([i]of law & justice[/i]) at his personal whim, must come to a STOP! He is not King, Emperor & Liege ... He is a Servant of the People and is Not Above the Rule of Law![/b]
[b]Dubya is a servant of the people-- and so are his corrupt cabal of "strong-arm" bully-boys ... This nation belongs to us, not them ... It is supposed to be the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave ... and not the corrupt Bushies insane vision of the Land of their Screeds and the Home of their Slaves![/b]
Consider "[i][b]Setback for Ashcroft's Radical Agenda[/b][/i]" on http://www.alternet.org/story... :
Yesterday's 2nd Circuit federal appeals court ruling in Manhattan, rejecting President Bush's detention of American citizen Jose Padilla without charges or counsel as an "enemy combatant," underscores the stunningly radical nature of Bush's post-9/11 assault on civil liberties.
In the ruling – which the government is likely to appeal either to the full circuit court or directly to the U.S. Supreme Court – the opinions of both the two-judge majority, Judges Barrington D. Parker Jr. and Rosemary S. Pooler, and the dissenting judge, Richard C. Wesley, showed clearly the fundamental constitutional matters raised by the White House attempt to claim authority to imprison citizens like Padilla without charges.
Padilla has been held for 18 months incommunicado in a military brig in Charleston, S.C. He was arrested – to great media fanfare – in a plot U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft first triumphantly exposed as a well-developed Al-Qaeda plan to detonate a so-called "dirty" nuclear bomb in the heart of... uh...
Somewhere. It turns out there wasn't all that much evidence, at least much that's known publicly, other than that Padilla is a long-time Chicago area gang member, converted Muslim, and that he traveled extensively in the Middle East. Whether that made him a terrorist, an Al-Qaeda wannabe, a mid-level drug runner, or religious tourist is anyone's guess, since no court has been allowed to decide.
And that's the point.
Constitutionally, the questions in Padilla's case are very roughly twofold: first, whether the President's rights, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, supercede those of Congress, which has authority to determine issues of due process; and secondly, when military matters involve a threat to national security on U.S. soil itself, whether a declaration of war or war making authority – such as that Congress gave Bush after 9-11 – is enough to give Bush the latitude to, for example, suspend basic constitutional rights.
Wesley, the court panel dissenter, claimed that it was – but also noted pointedly in his opinion that "There is no well-traveled road delineating the respective constitutional powers and limitations in this regard."
For that reason, the case of Padilla – as well as other fundamental shifts in authority embodied in post-9/11 Bush policies like the establishment of military tribunals and the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay – are likely to wind up resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. The lack of other serious cases against suspected terrorists, either as part of or after 9/11, underscores both the over-hyping of such threats embodied in "dirty bomb" and various color-coded White House terror warnings, and the use of these few existing cases primarily to try to establish precedents for future use.
Even while Padilla's case winds upwards through the courts, the sharp erosion of civil liberties begun while Manhattan still smoldered has continued. When a proposed draft "PATRIOT II" Act was leaked and provoked enormous public outcry early this year, one of its major provisions was instead quietly attached as a rider to an intelligence appropriations bill last month. By simply redefining virtually any exchange of money in a cash economy as a "financial institution," Congress has now given the government the right to search records of almost any private business or organization without either a warrant or judicial oversight – the sort of blatant disregard for constitutional "search and seizure" protections that also ought to wind up in the Supreme Court.
One of the other components of the previous draft PATRIOT II would have allowed the government to strip persons, accused by the Commander-in-Chief of being enemies, of U.S. citizenship – again raising the possibility of a two-step indefinite detention as an "enemy combatant" of someone like Padilla, even if his current case succeeds.
The Padilla ruling represents yet another in a string of recent setbacks for the Bush attempts to hijack constitutional power. But every time they win one, it's a setback that could take generations to undo. And just in case anyone needs reminding, whoever controls the White House after November 2004 is likely to be picking at least two, even three new lifetime Supreme Court appointments in the next four years.
[b]Even without such powers, over two million Americans already rest in jail in the Land of the Free. The stakes are enormous[/b].
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| The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook: Declassified Secrets from the U.S.-Iraq Relationship |
| 12.21.03 (9:17 am) [edit] |
[b]The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook: Declassified Secrets from the U.S.-Iraq Relationship[/b]
Newly de-classified documents from the U.S. National Security Archives is a "[i]must-read[/i]" for anyone who wants to investigate into the truth behind the sordid & squalid relationships between Daddy Bush 41, Kissinger, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other neo-con thugs & goons who supported Saddam Hussein's [i]War Crimes[/i].
One[i] revealing tid-bit [/i]includes:--
... British Embassy in Baghdad recommending Saddam Hussein to London in 1969 as a "[i]presentable young man[/i]" with an "[i]engaging smile[/i]," "[i]with whom, if only one could see more of him, it would be possible to do business[/i]."
U.S. documents published in today's [i]Saddam Hussein Sourcebook [/i]quote Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1975 telling the Iraqi foreign minister "[i]we do not think there is a basic clash of national interests between Iraq and the United States[/i]" (the Iraqi disagreed), and that Israeli influence on U.S. policy would diminish given "our new electoral law" which means "[i]the influence of some who financed the elections before isn't so great[/i]."
The newly declassified briefing notes for special envoy [b]Donald Rumsfeld's second trip to Baghdad in March 1984 [/b]reveal Rumsfeld's instructions to reinforce the message of [b]U.S. interest in improved relations "[i]at a pace of Iraq's own choosing[/i][/b]," and to emphasize that U.S. criticism of Saddam's chemical weapons use versus Iran was not meant as a pro-Iranian or anti-Iraq gesture. Saturday, December 20, marks the 20th anniversary of Rumsfeld's famous handshake meeting with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
Visit [i]The National Security Archives [/i]web-site concerning Saddam Hussein on http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/in dex.htm
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| Neo-Con Bush Arm-Chair Chicken-Hawks Scared of Saddam Hussein's Testimony |
| 12.21.03 (8:56 am) [edit] |
The cowardly neo-con Bush arm-chair chicken-hawks are scared to death of Saddam Hussein's testimony ... which is why they want a kangaroo ([i]neo-stalinist show trial[/i]) court and for Saddam Hussein to be executed ([i]Jack Ruby-shooting-of-Lee Harvey Oswald style[/i]?) ASAP!
If Saddam Hussein were allowed to give[i] his side of the story[/i] ([i][b]the neo-orwellian Bush regime will never let the truth come out [/b][/i]...)-- then Daddy Bush 41, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and many of the neo-con "[i]crazies[/i]" in the Reagan & Bush 41 regimes would also have to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... Or course, Dubya & his corrupt neo-fascist regime of thugs & goons should be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]for massacring tens of thousands of human beings in Afghanistan & Iraq, in their blood-thirsty, illegal & immoral wars based upon lies, deceptions & falsehoods-- all to enrich themselves & their rapacious neo-feudal corporate cronies!
Consider "[i][b]Looking Back: Saddam`s Invasion of Kuwait[/b][/i]" by [i]Memo on the Margin[/i] on Wanniski, http://wanniski.com/showartic... :--
Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From: Jude Wanniski
Re:[i] Background to the 1991 Gulf War[/i]
This is a memo on the margin I posted here on July 7 of this year about how the 1991 Gulf War came about in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. It is again timely because of the capture of Saddam Hussein and the tussle over which tribunal will try him for war crimes. The report in today’s [i]Washington Post by Dana Priest[/i] http://www.washingtonpost.com... on[i][b] Donald Rumsfeld’s 1984 trip to Baghdad [/b][/i]further adds to the memo’s timeliness. The administration hawks are certainly wary of what Saddam will say on the witness stand about all this, with the President himself already saying he will not believe anything the despot says under oath. The problem will not be Saddam’s veracity, but documentation and testimony of other witnesses who will be in a position to deny or confirm his account of this period of history. Remember all the charges against him will relate to the years prior to 1992 as there have been no charges of crimes committed by his regime in the years since.
Early last year, I decided there were so many public misconceptions of what was going on in Iraq that I would write a book about the roots of the 1990 Gulf War and the events of the last decade. I wrote several chapters but abandoned the project when I could find no publisher interested in a book that would view the history from the Iraqi perspective as well as from Washington's. Here is an excerpt from the chapter on Saddam’s rationale for invading Kuwait, material largely forgotten in the years since, but worth reviewing today. It consists largely of a letter from Saddam to President Bush and the transcript of a conversation with the U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad. In reading the transcript, we may get some idea of how Saddam will comport himself at his trial next year.
* * * * *
On July 25, 1990, a week before Iraq invaded Kuwait, a neighbor so tiny one American diplomat called it a gas station in the desert, Saddam Hussein summoned the American Ambassador, a career civil servant named April Glaspie, to his office. To critics of the Gulf War, what happened at that meeting has been known since as “the green light.” Saddam essentially explains his economic predicament, complains of the economic warfare being waged against Iraq by Kuwait, and asks for the official U.S. government view. Ms. Glaspie, acting under instructions from Washington, knows the situation in the neighborhood is tense, as the Iraqi army has massed at a short distance from its border with Kuwait.
The transcript provides the best sense of Saddam Hussein’s calculations on how to proceed and also leaves the impression, especially with Ambassador Glaspie, that things will almost certainly work out in the weekend discussions between Iraq and Kuwait. Note she says at the end of the meeting that she thought perhaps she might delay her vacation trip, but given the tone of the meeting with him, she will proceed to Washington and perhaps be able to deliver his letter to President Bush in person. As you see here, the transcript of that meeting was not made publicly available until it appeared in the New York Times more than seven weeks later. By that time the Bush administration had already determined that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was an aggression comparable to the fascist power grabs of the 1930s. The charges that he had gassed his own people in an Arabic holocaust were dusted off after having been dismissed earlier in 1990 by a U.S. Army War College report. Most of the best informed political leaders in Washington have never read the transcript, let alone the American people. I would be astonished if I learned that President Bush ever even knew of its existence. It is reprinted here in its entirety, with my comments at the conclusion:
* * * * *
THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1990
[i][b]Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy[/b][/i]
[i]Special to The New York Times[/i]
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 -- On July 25, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq summoned the United States Ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, to his office in the last high-level contact between the two Governments before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2. Here are excerpts from a document described by Iraqi Government officials as a transcript of the meeting, which also included the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz. A copy was provided to The New York Times by ABC News, which translated from the Arabic. The State Department has declined to comment on its accuracy.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: I have summoned you today to hold comprehensive political discussions with you. This is a message to President Bush. You know that we did not have relations with the U.S. until 1984 and you know the circumstances and reasons which caused them to be severed. The decision to establish relations with the U.S. were taken in 1980 during the two months prior to the war between us and Iran.
When the war started, and to avoid misinterpretation, we postponed the establishment of relations hoping that the war would end soon.
But because the war lasted for a long time, and to emphasize the fact that we are a non-aligned country, it was important to re-establish relations with the U.S. And we choose to do this in 1984.
It is natural to say that the U.S. is not like Britain, for example, with the latter's historic relations with Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq. In addition, there were no relations between Iraq and the U.S. between 1967 and 1984. One can conclude it would be difficult for the U.S. to have a full understanding of many matters in Iraq. When relations were re-established we hoped for a better understanding and for better cooperation because we too do not understand the background of many American decisions. We dealt with each other during the war and we had dealings on various levels. The most important of those levels were with the foreign ministers.
[i][b]U.S.-Iraq Rifts[/b][/i]
We had hoped for a better common understanding and a better chance of cooperation to benefit both our peoples and the rest of the Arab nations.
But these better relations have suffered from various rifts. The worst of these was in 1986, only two years after establishing relations, with what was known as Irangate, which happened during the year that Iran occupied the Fao peninsula.
It was natural then to say that old relations and complexity of interests could absorb many mistakes. But when interests are limited and relations are not that old, then there isn't a deep understanding and mistakes could have a negative effect. Sometimes the effect of an error can be larger than the error itself.
Despite all of that, we accepted the apology, via his envoy, of the American President regarding Irangate, and we wiped the slate clean. And we shouldn't unearth the past except when new events remind us that old mistakes were not just a matter of coincidence.
Our suspicions increased after we liberated the Fao peninsula. The media began to involve itself in our politics. And our suspicions began to surface anew, because we began to question whether the U.S. felt uneasy with the outcome of the war when we liberated our land.
It was clear to us that certain parties in the United States -- and I don't say the President himself -- but certain parties who had links with the intelligence community and with the State Department -- and I don't say the Secretary of State himself -- I say that these parties did not like the fact that we liberated our land. Some parties began to prepare studies entitled: "Who will succeed Saddam Hussein?" They began to contact gulf states to make them fear Iraq, to persuade them not to give Iraq economic aid. And we have evidence of these activities.
[i][b]Iraqi Policy on Oil[/b][/i]
Iraq came out of the war burdened with $40 billion debts, excluding the aid given by Arab states, some of whom consider that too to be a debt although they knew -- and you knew too -- that without Iraq they would not have had these sums and the future of the region would have been entirely different.
We began to face the policy of the drop in the price of oil. Then we saw the United States, which always talks of democracy but which has no time for the other point of view. Then the media campaign against Saddam Hussein was started by the official American media. The United States thought that the situation in Iraq was like Poland, Romania or Czechoslovakia. We were disturbed by this campaign but we were not disturbed too much because we had hoped that, in a few months, those who are decision makers in America would have a chance to find the facts and see whether this media campaign had had any effect on the lives of Iraqis. We had hoped that soon the American authorities would make the correct decision regarding their relations with Iraq. Those with good relations can sometimes afford to disagree.
But when planned and deliberate policy forces the price of oil down without good commercial reasons, then that means another war against Iraq. Because military war kills people by bleeding them, and economic war kills their humanity by depriving them of their chance to have a good standard of living. As you know, we gave rivers of blood in a war that lasted eight years, but we did not lose our humanity. Iraqis have a right to live proudly. We do not accept that anyone could injure Iraqi pride or the Iraqi right to have high standards of living.
Kuwait and the U.A.E. were at the front of this policy aimed at lowering Iraq's position and depriving its people of higher economic standards. And you know that our relations with the Emirates and Kuwait had been good. On top of all that, while we were busy at war, the state of Kuwait began to expand at the expense of our territory.
You may say this is propaganda, but I would direct you to one document, the Military Patrol Line, which is the borderline endorsed by the Arab League in 1961 for military patrols not to cross the Iraq-Kuwait border.
But go and look for yourselves. You will see the Kuwaiti border patrols, the Kuwaiti farms, the Kuwaiti oil installations -- all built as closely as possible to this line to establish that land as Kuwaiti territory.
[i][b]Conflicting Interests[/b][/i]
Since then, the Kuwaiti Government has been stable while the Iraqi Government has undergone many changes. Even after 1968 and for 10 years afterwards, we were too busy with our own problems. First in the north then the 1973 war, and other problems. Then came the war with Iran which started 10 years ago.
We believe that the United States must understand that people who live in luxury and economic security can each an understanding with the United States on what are legitimate joint interests. But the starved and the economically deprived cannot reach the same understanding.
We do not accept threats from anyone because we do not threaten anyone. But we say clearly that we hope that the U.S. will not entertain too many illusions and will seek new friends rather than increase the number of its enemies.
I have read the American statements speaking of friends in the area. Of course, it is the right of everyone to choose their friends. We can have no objections. But you know you are not the ones who protected your friends during the war with Iran. I assure you, had the Iranians overrun the region, the American troops would not have stopped them, except by the use of nuclear weapons.
I do not belittle you. But I hold this view by looking at the geography and nature of American society into account. Yours is a society which cannot accept 10,000 dead in one battle.
You know that Iran agreed to the cease-fire not because the United States had bombed one of the oil platforms after the liberation of the Fao. Is this Iraq's reward for its role in securing the stability of the region and for protecting it from an unknown flood?
[i][b]Protecting the Oil Flow[/b][/i]
So what can it mean when America says it will now protect its friends? It can only mean prejudice against Iraq. This stance plus maneuvers and statements which have been made has encouraged the U.A.E. and Kuwait to disregard Iraqi rights.
I say to you clearly that Iraq's rights, which are mentioned in the memorandum, we will take one by one. That might not happen now or after a month or after one year, but we will take it all. We are not the kind of people who will relinquish their rights. There is no historic right, or legitimacy, or need, for the U.A.E. and Kuwait to deprive us of our rights. If they are needy, we too are needy.
The United States must have a better understanding of the situation and declare who it wants to have relations with and who its enemies are. But it should not make enemies simply because others have different points of view regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict.
We clearly understand America's statement that it wants an easy flow of oil. We understanding American staying that it seeks friendship with the states in the region, and to encourage their joint interests. But we cannot understand the attempt to encourage some parties to hard Iraq's interests.
The United States wants to secure the flow of oil. This understandable and known. But it must not deploy methods which the United States says it disapproves of -- flexing muscles and pressure.
If you use pressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We know that you can harm us although we do not threaten you. But we too can harm you. Everyone can cause harm according to their ability and their size. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States, but individual Arabs may reach you.
[i][b]War and Friendship[/b][/i]
You can come to Iraq with aircraft and missiles but do not push us to the point where we cease to care. And when we feel that you want to injure our pride and take away the Iraqis' chance of a high standard of living, then we will cease to care and death will be the choice for us. Then we would not care if you fired 100missiles for each missile we fired. Because without pride life would have no value.
It is not reasonable to ask our people to bleed rivers of blood for eight years then to tell them, "Now you have to accept aggression from Kuwait, the U.A.E., or from the U.S. or from Israel."
We do not put all these countries in the same boat. First, we are hurt and upset that such disagreement is taking place between us and Kuwait and the U.A.E. The solution must be found within an Arab framework and through direct bilateral relations. We do not place America among the enemies. We pace it where we want our friends to be and we try to be friends. But repeated American statements last year make it apparent that America did not regard us as friends. Well the Americans are free.
When we seek friendship we want pride, liberty and our right to choose.
We want to deal according to our status as we deal with the others according to their statuses.
We consider the others' interests while we look after our own. And we expect the others to consider our interests while they are dealing with their own. What does it mean when the Zionist war minister is summoned to the United States now? What do they mean, these fiery statements coming out of Israel during the past few days and the talk of war being expected now more than at any other time?
* * *
HUSSEIN: I do not believe that anyone would lose by making friends with Iraq. In my opinion, the American President has not made mistakes regarding the Arabs, although his decision to freeze dialogue with the P.L.O. was wrong. But it appears that this decision was made to appease the Zionist lobby or as a piece of strategy to cool the Zionist anger, before trying again. I hope that our latter conclusion is the correct one. But we will carry on saying it was the wrong decision.
You are appeasing the usurper in so many ways -- economically, politically and militarily as well as in the media. When will the time come when, for every three appeasements to the usurper, you praise the Arabs just once?
APRIL GLASPIE: I thank you, Mr. President, and it is a great pleasure for a diplomat to meet and talk directly with the President. I clearly understand your message. We studied history at school That taught us to say freedom or death. I think you know well that we as a people have our experience with the colonialists.
Mr. President, you mentioned many things during this meeting which I cannot comment on on behalf of my Government. But with your permission, I will comment on two points. You spoke of friendship and I believe it was clear from the letters sent by our President to you on the occasion of your National Day that he emphasizes --
HUSSEIN: He was kind and his expressions met with our regard and respect.
[i][b]Directive on Relations[/b][/i]
GLASPIE: As you know, he directed the United States Administration to reject the suggestion of implementing trade sanctions.
HUSSEIN: There is nothing left for us to buy from America. Only wheat. Because every time we want to buy something, they say it is forbidden. I am afraid that one day you will say, "You are going to make gunpowder out of wheat."
GLASPIE: I have a direct instruction from the President to seek better relations with Iraq.
HUSSEIN: But how? We too have this desire. But matters are running contrary to this desire.
GLASPIE: This is less likely to happen the more we talk. For example, you mentioned the issue of the article published by the American Information Agency and that was sad. And a formal apology was presented.
HUSSEIN: Your stance is generous. We are Arabs. It is enough for us that someone says, "I am sorry. I made a mistake." Then we carry on. But the media campaign continued. And it is full of stories. If the stories were true, no one would get upset. But we understand from its continuation that there is a determination.
GLASPIE: I saw the Diane Sawyer program on ABC. And what happened in that program was cheap and unjust. And this is a real picture of what happens in the American media -- even to American politicians themselves. These are the methods the Western media employs. I am pleased that you add your voice to the diplomats who stand up to the media. Because your appearance in the media, even for five minutes, would help us to make the American people understand Iraq. This would increase mutual understanding. If they American President had control of the media, his job would be much easier.
Mr. President, not only do I want to say that President Bush wanted better and deeper relations with Iraq, but he also wants an Iraqi contribution to peace and prosperity in the Middle East. President Bush is an intelligent man. He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq.
You are right. It is true what you say that we do not want higher prices for oil. But I would ask you to examine the possibility of not charging too high a price for oil.
HUSSEIN: We do not want too high prices for oil. And I remind you that in 1974 I gave Tariq Aziz the idea for an article he wrote which criticized the policy of keeping oil prices high. It was the first Arab article which expressed this view.
[i][b]Shifting Price of Oil[/b][/i]
TARIQ AZIZ: Our policy in OPEC opposes sudden jumps in oil prices.
HUSSEIN: Twenty-five dollars a barrel is not a high price.
GLASPIE: We have many Americans who would like to see the price go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states.
HUSSEIN: The price at one stage had dropped to $12 a barrel and a reduction in the modest Iraqi budget of $6 billion to $7 billion is a disaster.
GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.
I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly. With regard to all of this, can I ask you to see how the issue appears to us?
My assessment after 25 years' service in this area is that your objective must have strong backing from your Arab brothers. I now speak of oil But you, Mr. President, have fought through a horrific and painful war. Frankly, we can see only that you have deployed massive troops in the south. Normally that would not be any of our business. But when this happens in the context of what you said on your national day, then when we read the details in the two letters of the Foreign Minister, then when we see the Iraqi point of view that the measures taken by the U.A.E. and Kuwait is, in the final analysis, parallel to military aggression against Iraq, then it would be reasonable for me to be concerned. And for this reason, I received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship -- not in the spirit of confrontation -- regarding your intentions.
I simply describe the position of my Government. And I do not mean that the situation is a simple situation. But our concern is a simple one.
HUSSEIN: We do not ask people not to be concerned when peace is at issue. This is a noble human feeling which we all feel. It is natural for you as a superpower to be concerned. But what we ask is not to express your concern in a way that would make an aggressor believe that he is getting support for his aggression.
We want to find a just solution which will give us our rights but not deprive others of their rights. But at the same time, we want the others to know that our patience is running out regarding their action, which is harming even the milk our children drink, and the pensions of the widow who lost her husband during the war, and the pensions of the orphans who lost their parents.
As a country, we have the right to prosper. We lost so many opportunities, and the others should value the Iraqi role in their protection. Even this Iraqi [the President points to their interpreter] feels bitter like all other Iraqis. We are not aggressors but we do not accept aggression either. We sent them envoys and handwritten letters. We tried everything. We asked the Servant of the Two Shrines -- King Fahd -- to hold a four-member summit, but he suggested a meeting between the Oil Ministers. We agreed. And as you know, the meeting took place in Jidda. They reached an agreement which did not express what we wanted, but we agreed.
Only two days after the meeting, the Kuwaiti Oil Minister made a statement that contradicted the agreement. We also discussed the issue during the Baghdad summit. I told the Arab Kings and Presidents that some brothers are fighting an economic war against us. And that not all wars use weapons and we regard this kind of war as a military action against us. Because if the capability of our army is lowered then, if Iran renewed the war, it could achieve goals which it could not achieve before. And if we lowered the standard of our defenses, then this could encourage Israel to attack us. I said that before the Arab Kings and Presidents. Only I did not mention Kuwait and U.A.E. by name, because they were my guests.
Before this, I had sent them envoys reminding them that our war had included their defense. Therefore the aid they gave us should not be regarded as a debt. We did not more than the United States would have done against someone who attacked its interests.
I talked about the same thing with a number of other Arab states. I explained the situation t brother King Fahd a few times, by sending envoys and on the telephone. I talked with brother King Hussein and with Sheik Zaid after the conclusion of the summit. I walked with the Sheik to the plane when he was leaving Mosul. He told me, "Just wait until I get home." But after he had reached his destination, the statements that came from there were very bad -- not from him, but from his Minister of Oil.
And after the Jidda agreement, we received some intelligence that they were talking of sticking to the agreement for two months only. Then they would change their policy. Now tell us, if the American President found himself in this situation, what would he do? I said it was very difficult for me to talk about these issues in public. But we must tell the Iraqi people who face economic difficulties who was responsible for that.
[i][b]Talks with Mubarak[/b][/i]
GLASPIE: I spent four beautiful years in Egypt.
HUSSEIN: The Egyptian people are kind and good and ancient. The oil people are supposed to help the Egyptian people, but they are mean beyond belief. It is painful to admit it, but some of them are disliked by Arabs because of their greed.
GLASPIE: Mr. President, it would be helpful if you could give us an assessment of the effort made by your Arab brothers and whether they have achieved anything.
HUSSEIN: On this subject, we agreed with President Mubarak that the Prime Minister of Kuwait would meet with the deputy chairman of the Revolution Command Council in Saudi Arabia, because the Saudis initiated contact with us, aided by President Mubarak's efforts. He just telephoned me a short while ago to say the Kuwaitis have agreed to that suggestion.
GLASPIE: Congratulations.
HUSSEIN: A protocol meeting will be held in Saudi Arabia. Then the meeting will be transferred to Baghdad for deeper discussion directly between Kuwait and Iraq. We hope we will reach some result. We hope that the long-term view and the real interests will overcome Kuwaiti greed.
GLASPIE: May I ask you when you expect Sheik Saad to come to Baghdad?
HUSSEIN: I suppose it would be on Saturday or Monday at the latest. I told brother Mubarak that the agreement should be in Baghdad Saturday or Sunday. You know that brother Mubarak's visits have always been a good omen.
GLASPIE: This is good news. Congratulations.
HUSSEIN: Brother President Mubarak told me they were scared. They said troops were only 20 kilometers north of the Arab League line. I said to him that regardless of what is there, whether they are police, border guards or army, and regardless of how many are there, and what they are doing, assure the Kuwaitis and give them our word that we are not going to do anything until we meet with them. When we meet and when we see that there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death, even though wisdom is above everything else. There you have good news.
AZIZ: This is a journalistic exclusive.
GLASPIE: I am planning to go to the United States next Monday. I hope I will meet with President Bush in Washington next week. I thought to postpone my trip because of the difficulties we are facing. But now I will fly on Monday. [End of Transcript.]
* * * * *
Take note on how this critical meeting concluded. Ambassador Glaspie knew the situation was critical, with Iraqi forces massed on Kuwait’s border. Yet she was so assured of Hussein’s intent in a peaceful conclusion of his discussions with Kuwait that she decided it would be all right if she went ahead with her planned vacation, her home leave. Saddam had told her: When we meet and when we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death, even though wisdom is above everything else. There you have good news.
If Saddam needed further assurance that the United States would not resist an Iraqi military solution, he got it over the BBC on July 31, when John Kelly, the assistant Secretary of State, appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss the developments in the Middle East. Chairman Lee Hamilton first noted that Defense Secretary Richard Cheney had been quoted in the press saying the U.S. was committed to the defense of Kuwait if she were attacked. Hamilton asked if Kelly could clarify that:
Kelly: ... We have no defense treaty relationship with any Gulf country...
Hamilton: ... Do we have a commitment to our friends in the Gulf in the event that they are engaged in oil or territorial disputes with their neighbors?
Kelly: ... As I said, Mr. Chairman, we have no defense treaty relationships with any of the countries. We have historically avoided taking a position on border disputes or on internal OPEC deliberations...
Hamilton: If, for example, Iraq charged across the border into Kuwait, for whatever reason, what would be our position with regard to the use of U.S. forces?
Kelly: That, Mr. Chairman, is a hypothetical or a contingency, the kind of which I cant get into. Suffice it to say that we would be extremely concerned, but I cannot get into the realm of what if answers.
Hamilton: In that circumstance, is it correct to say, however, that we do not have a treaty commitment which would obligate us to engage US forces?
Kelly: That is correct.
* * * * *
[i]Ambassador Glaspie did go on her vacation, seemingly confident Saddam Hussein and the emir of Kuwait would work out their differences at their weekend meeting in Baghdad. Alas, the emir decided not to go to the meeting, perhaps out of assurances from the Pentagon and Mr. Cheney that he would be protected even without a treaty commitment. From Saddam's point of view, Iraq was being destroyed by Kuwait's "economic aggression." Kuwait had driven down the price of oil to $10 a barrel by producing well above its OPEC promises. It was "slant drilling" under its border to drain oil from Iraqi oil fields, adding insult to injury. And it was demanding full payment on its loans to Iraq during Baghdad's war against the Islamic fundamentalists of Iran. In contrast, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia forgave its war loans to Saddam. It was Saddam's claim that the national security of his country was facing the imminent threat of collapse and that he had no choice but to order the pre-emptive strike on Kuwait. JW[/i]
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| Newly Released National Security Archives Show Bush 41 Supported War Crimes ... |
| 12.21.03 (8:24 am) [edit] |
[b]Newly released documents from the U.S.A. National Security Archives show that Daddy Bush 41, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their gang of neo-con "crazies" supported Saddam Hussein's War Crimes [/b]... Should not these traitorous thugs & goons be placed on trial, in the dock, along with Saddam Hussein?
By the way, where are all those WMDs posing an imminent threat to the U.S.A., that the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] used as their mendacious [i]casus belli [/i]to invade Iraq?
Consider "[i][b]Winking At War Crimes[/b][/i]" by Matt Bivens of [i]The Nation [/i]on http://www.thenation.com/outr... :
In times like these -- when the President's people are busily scrubbing http://www.washingtonpost.com... his office's website http://www.whitehouse.gov/ to remove all those embarrassing Iraq war bloopers, and generally shutting down the flow of information all across http://www.usnews.com/usnews/... the government -- we should give thanks for dedicated scholars like those at the non-profit National Security Archives http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ .
Saturday is the 20th anniversary of the famous Rumsfeld-Hussein handshake http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82 / . Donald Rumsfeld had been sent to Baghdad by President Ronald Reagan, bearing gifts of a Bible and a chocolate cake baked in the shape of a key.
Oops, wrong story http://www.library.cornell.ed... . Sorry. The cake-and-Bible thing was a few years into the future, and six degrees longitude to the East.
No, Rumsfeld had been sent in 1983, and again in 1984, to patch up relations with Baghdad's top war criminal. According to newly declassified documents just released http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/in dex.htm by the National Security Archives, on his second trip Rumsfeld carried a private message from Reagan. The gist was that even though Saddam was making, in our judgment, "almost daily" http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82 /iraq24.pdf use of chemical weapons provided "primarily from Western firms, including possibly http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82 /iraq24.pdf a US foreign subsidiary" against his enemies foreign and domestic http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82 /iraq25.pdf -- and even though Saddam would hear some public carping from the Senate and the State Department about such atrocities -- he should not despair, because the movers and shakers in American government still wanted to make beautiful music with him.
Rumsfeld's suck-up instructions are laid out, in diplo-speak, in this four-page once-secret memo http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10 7/iraq07.pdf (seen here, like many of these links, as a PDF file). One could argue that this was all simply realpolitik -- a moving of pieces about the Cold War chess board. But even so, it's instructive to remember it when today we hear Don Rumsfeld and George W. Bush express such Casablancaesque "shock, shock!" about the days http://www.commondreams.org/h... when Rumsfeld and George H. W. Bush were telling Saddam he needn't sweat http://www.berkshireeagle.com...,1413,101~6267~1838044,00 .html the poison gas thing.
There are other instructive documents offered this weekend http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/in dex.htm by the archives. Don't miss the confidential cable http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB10 7/iraq11.pdf from the US ambassador to Baghdad from 1988, a year in which the Senate rose up to pass economic sanctions against Iraq for using chemical weapons against the Kurds. The ambassador reports in an aside that the US construction company Bechtel has no intention of obeying the will of Congress -- and instead would use "non-US suppliers of technology and continue to do business in Iraq." This is the same Bechtel once again chowing down http://truthout.org/docs_03/0... on millions of Iraq-related American dollars; the same Bechtel that counts http://truthout.org/docs_03/0... among its directors George Shultz; the same George Shultz who as Secretary of State wrote Rumsfeld's suck-up instructions. Small world.
[b]Other source[/b]:
The Nation on http://www.thenation.com
National Security Archives on http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
The Saddam Hussein Sourcebook, National Security Archives on http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/in dex.htm
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| Neo-Con Bush/Cheney Inc. Junta Now Installs Their Own Saddam-Hussein Version 2.0 |
| 12.21.03 (8:05 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt neo-con Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] now installs their own puppet Saddam-Hussein [i]Version 2.0[/i][/b] ...
The neo-fascist, blood-thirsty Bushies planned for their Iraq War ([i]turned bloody guerrilla quagmire[/i]) long before 9/11 ... and lied, deceived & falsified information regarding non-existent WMDs and phony links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Osama bin '[i]Forgotten[/i]' and his Al Qaida network apparently were responsible ([i]along with the mendacious Bushies[/i]?) for 9/11 ... Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 ... Saddam Hussein & Osama bin Laden were enemies, not friends ... Saddam Hussein didn't threaten us, nor did he pose a threat to us ... Saddam Hussein had no WMDs ... The[i] corporate-take-all [/i]Bushies ruthlessly told neo-orwellian lies and continue to do so, today!
[i][b]What was the neo-imperial Bushies insane plan to enrich themselves & their corrupt corporate cronies? ... Ask Bush's Buddy, Convicted Criminal Embezzler, Liar & Thug: Ahmed Chalabi![/b][/i]
Consider "[i][b]Global Eye -- Best-Laid Plans[/b][/i]" by Chris Floyd on http://www.tmtmetropolis.ru/s... :
One of the constant refrains we hear from the malcontents carping about George W. Bush's triumphant crusade in Iraq is the charge -- the canard -- that the president and his crack team of advisers "had no plan" for the post-war period, that they've stumbled from crisis to crisis, changing policies without rhyme or reason, or have even "plunged off a cliff," as erstwhile war-hawk Newt Gingrich declared last week.
But to anyone not blinded by partisan ideology or irrational Bush-hatred, the evidence clearly shows that Team Bush has always had a very specific plan for remaking Iraq -- and is following it faithfully to this very day.
Of course, it's not always easy to discern the president's steadfast adherence to principle through the defeatist fog of the liberal American media. For instance, this month saw perhaps the most significant progress yet toward the fulfillment of Bush's master plan, yet there was not a word about it anywhere in America's media "Establishment." No, Britain's Financial Times and South Africa's Sunday Times provided the unvarnished truth last week.
[i][b]We refer, of course, to the $40 million contract awarded by occupation authorities to a private security company called Erinys Iraq. This plucky start-up is one of the great success stories of the occupation, having already bagged big money to ride shotgun for Halliburton and Bechtel as they spread their beneficent tentacles throughout the conquered land. Now little Erinys will guard the Holy Grail of the entire invasion project: Iraq's oil industry.[/b][/i]
[i][b]Erinys is a joint venture between a large South African freebooting firm and a few choice Iraqi investors. How choice? They are intimates of Ahmad Chalabi: leader of the Iraqi National Congress exile group, member of the Bush-appointed Governing Council, convicted swindler, darling of the Pentagon -- and the Bush plan's designated tyrant-to-be, the Iraqi face of a compliant, corporate-run colonial outpost in Mesopotamia.[/b][/i]
This has been the plan all along: to install a "[b]strongman[/b]" in Iraq who can "hold the country together" and protect the imperial flank while America "projects its dominance" over the oil wealth -- and political life -- of the Middle East and Central Asia. There's no great secret here: Team Bush has been talking about it for years in the corporate-funded "think tanks" they inhabited during the Clinton interregnum. There, they published their dreams about a "new Pearl Harbor" that would "catalyze" the American public into supporting wide-ranging militarization at home and extensive "interventions" abroad. [i][b]This vision was most clearly articulated in a September 2000 report published by the Cheney-Rumsfeld group, Project for the New American Century.[/b][/i]
Central to this dream -- besides the Pearl Harbor bit, which those lucky duckies got only a year later -- was the conquest of Iraq, a project that PNAC said "transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The crimes of their now-captured errand boy -- most of which (including "gassing his own people") were committed when he was being serviced and pampered by the Reagan-Bush administrations -- were always irrelevant to the PNAC catalyzers, except as a PR pitch to help sell their "transcendent" invasion.
And Chalabi was always their main man, the horse they were going to ride in on. Despite his conviction in Jordan for massive bank fraud, despite his dubious husbandry of the millions in covert aid thrown at him by U.S. officials, despite the fact that even the CIA finally washed its hands of him, dismissing him as an ineffectual poseur peddling false intelligence to inflate his importance and attract more funding, the PNAC boys kept faith with Chalabi, as American Prospect reports.
Thus when PNAC seized power in Washington, Chalabi's star rose again in the East. As Newsweek reports, his group was given a direct funnel to the White House for its "intelligence" about Saddam's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction -- and Chalabi's nonexistent popularity with the Iraqi people. He also supplied The New York Times with a steady stream of WMD scare stories that helped stoke the fever for war, the Washington Post reports. His private, American-funded militia was ferried into Iraq in the midst of the invasion and took part in the staged toppling of Saddam's statue by a small, hand-picked crowd in Baghdad -- the much-televised symbol of "victory" in the war, Harper's reports. He was then named to Iraq's "rotating interim presidency" by the Bushist conquerors.
Now, Chalabi's cronies at Erinys are hiring Chalabi's militiamen for the new "security" contract. In other words, Bush has given Chalabi armed control over Iraq's oil industry. This has drawn strident protests from other members of the Governing Council, who know exactly what it means: Chalabi's gun is pointed at the nation's jugular. But their voice is meaningless; Bush's word alone is law in Babylon.
That's why the occupation seems such a shambles. The stated policies don't really matter; they're just window dressing for the master plan. Thus they can be discarded the moment they're no longer politically expedient. What matters is getting the strongman in place -- Saddam 2.0, a more obedient, more presentable, less quirky upgrade, who will "invite" a lasting American military presence and uphold Bush's arbitrary decrees granting foreign corporations a stranglehold on the Iraqi economy.
[i][b]Now, is this an evil plan, conceived in ignorance and arrogance, predicated on the war crime of military aggression, an act of terrorism on a scale than bin Laden could only dream of? You bet. But let's be fair: it is a plan. You can't say that Bush hasn't got one.[/b][/i]
[b]Annotations[/b]:
Rival Former Exile Groups Clash Over [Oilfield] Security in Iraq
Financial Times, Dec. 11, 2003
South African Company to Protect Iraqi Oil
Sunday Times of South Africa, Dec. 7, 2003
Needed: An Iraqi Boss With Mo'
The Australian, Dec. 8, 2003
U.S. Arrests Iraqi Union Leaders
Pacific News Service, Dec. 10, 2003
Buying Up Iraq
Humanities and Social Scienes On-Line, Nov. 29, 2003
Ahmad Chalabi: Tinker, Tailor, Neocon, Spy
The American Prospect, Nov. 18, 2002
Intra-Times Battle Over Iraqi Weapons
Washington Post, May 25, 2003
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
The Guardian, Dec. 13, 2003
Cheney and the 'Raw Intelligence,'
Newsweek, Dec. 15, 2003
Bechtel Gets Black Marks on Iraqi School Repairs
Scripps-Howard, Dec. 8, 2003
Bechtel Fails Reconstructions of Iraq's Schools
Corpwatch, Dec. 2, 2003
US to Form Paramilitary Force From Party Militias
Washington Post, Dec. 2, 2003
Rebuilding America's Defenses
Project for the New American Century, Sept. 2000,
American Dominance [PNAC]
The Bergen Record, Feb. 23, 2003
Case for War Confected, Say U.S. Officials
The Independent, Nov. 9, 2003
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| When Will The Neo-Con Press & Media Stop Regurgitating The Bush Regime's LIES??? |
| 12.20.03 (6:33 am) [edit] |
[b]When will the[i] extreme right-wing neo-con, neo-fascist press & media lap-dogs [/i]stop regurgitating the corrupt Bush regime's many lies, deceptions & falsehoods?[/b]
Recently another mendacious neo-orwellian [i]piece-of-garbage [/i]was circulated by the neo-cons' buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters ... in another desperate attempt to mislead the[i] brain-dead and/or sleepy-headed [/i]American public into believing that the Bushies' rape of American taxpayers & the Iraqi people is a "[i]noble[/i] [sic]" effort, instead of the[b] insane blood-thirsty swindle and neo-con con-game [/b]that it really represents: the Bush regime should be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i].
Consider "[i][b]When Will Press Stop Circulating Dubious Iraq Claims? Atta-Hussein Document Probably Bogus[/b][/i]" on http://www.mediainfo.com/edit... :
[b]NEW YORK [/b]-- NEWS ANALYSIS
[b]When will the press stop circulating dubious or fabricated claims [/b]-- whether from Bush administration officials or intelligence abroad? The latest chapter unfolded this week with wide publicity -- capped by a favorable mention in a [i]William Safire (Rumsfeld Crony) [/i]column in The [i]New York Times [/i]on Monday and the usual hosannas on [i]Fox News [/i]-- concerning a supposed document that linked 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta to Saddam Hussein.
This sort of "evidence," which surfaces periodically, is significant, as polls have always shown that one of the major reasons the public supported the invasion of Iraq was belief that Saddam helped plan the 9/11 attacks. Even after more than two years have passed -- and no hard evidence of that uncovered -- a poll earlier this week showed that slightly more than half of all Americans still believe that to be true, suggesting that perhaps the press has not really done its job in debunking this belief.
Now appears a document linking Atta to Hussein, which comes amid reports that the U.S. chief weapons inspector is about to call it quits, having failed to uncover any weapons of mass destruction.
There's only one problem: Just like every other bit of paper linking Saddam to 9/11 (some of them also touted by [i]Safire[/i]), the latest document appears to be bogus. Yet many in the press keep taking them seriously.
According to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents, the latest "smoking gun" linking Saddam to 9/11-- purporting to show that Atta visited Baghdad in the summer of 2001-- is probably a fabrication, [i]Newsweek[/i] reported this week. In fact, the new document, supposedly written by the chief of the Iraqi intelligence service, is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing that Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip would have taken place.
The document was hailed by the[i] Sunday Telegraph [/i]of London earlier this week in a front-page story written by Con Coughlin, a [i]Telegraph [/i]correspondent and the author of the book Saddam:[i] The Secret Life[/i].
But [b]U.S. officials and a leading Iraqi document expert told [i]Newsweek [/i]that the document is most likely a forgery -- "[i]part of a thriving new trade in dubious Iraqi documents that has cropped up in the wake of the collapse of Saddam's regime[/i]."[/b]
Senior U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence officials said "the claims of an Atta trip to Iraq in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks were highly implausible -- and contradicted by a wealth of information that has been collected about Atta's movements during the period he was plotting the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."
Contacted by [i]Newsweek[/i], the Sunday [i]Telegraph's[/i] Coughlin acknowledged that "he could not prove the authenticity of the document. He said that while he got the memo about Mohammed Atta and Baghdad from a 'senior' member of the Iraqi Governing Council who insisted it was 'genuine,' he and his newspaper had 'no way of verifying it. It's our job as journalists to air these things and see what happens,' he said."
[b]Beware of the [i]American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Heritage Foundation, Weekly Standard, World Net Daily[/i], Rush Limbaugh, William Safire, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Charles Krauthammer, [i]Fox News[/i], etc. amongst others-- all neo-fascist mouth-pieces willing to propagate whatever [i]neo-con agenda & neo-orwellian propaganda[/i] is expoused by the Mad King George and his cabal of thugs & goons[/b].
- [i]Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpubli sher.com) is editor of [b]E&P[/b][/i]
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| Bush Regime's Neo-Con Cronyism Hurts Iraqi Reconstruction |
| 12.20.03 (6:08 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime & their corporate campaign contributors are cashing in big-time on the "[i]spoils of war[/i]" in Iraq -- [/b]an illegal & immoral incursion that Dubya planned over a year before 9/11 (as such Bush should be impeached-- [i]He Lied & Betrayed His Oath Of Office, a Crime Under the U.S. Constitution [/i]...) ... ([i]What did Cheney promise his corporate cronies during that summer of 2001?:-- when his buddies staged a phony energy shortage, swindling consumers out of billions -- wiped off the radar by 9/11, that we now know the traitorous Bushies let happen [/i]...)
The Bush Regime's anti-christian, immoral (& possibly illegal) neo-con cronyism hurts Iraqi reconstruction.
Joshua Micah Marshall provides the following report in the [i]Washington Monthly[/i] on http://www.washingtonmonthly.... :
[b]Simone Ledeen [/b]is serving her country. She is the daughter of [b]Michael Ledeen, the Iran-Contra luminary, AEI [American Enterprise Institute - neo-fascist mouth-piece of the neo-cons] scholar[/b], and all-around [b]capo in the neocon mafia[/b]. She's 29, a freshly-minted M.B.A., with little to no experience in war-torn countries. But as an advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, she is, in essence, helping shape one quarter of that nation's economy.
When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.
It's not that Americans lack such experience. In the last decade particularly, many American officials acquired a great deal of expertise in post-conflict reconstruction in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and in post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe and around the globe--expertise that could have been put to good use at the CPA. Names frequently mentioned are those of General [b]Bill Nash[/b], who commanded troops in the Gulf War and NATO operations in Bosnia; [b]Robert Perito[/b], former senior foreign service officer and deputy director of the Justice Department's international police training program, who helped advise peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, and helped organize post-conflict police training in Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia; [b]Bob Gelbard[/b], former U.S. presidential envoy to the Balkans; and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. [b]Jacques Klein[/b], who served in various capacities in the Balkans under the United States and the United Nations. Yet according to experts in the field, few of those with experience in these various deployments got the call to serve or even had their opinions solicited.
In their place, the architects of the war chose card-carrying Republicans--operatives, flacks, policy-wonks and lobbyists--for almost every key assignment in the country. Some marquee examples include U.S. civil administrator [b]Paul Bremer's [/b]senior advisor and liaison to Capitol Hill, [b]Tom Korologos[/b], one of the most powerful GOP lobbyists on Capitol Hill. Then there's the man in charge of privatizing Iraq's 200-odd state owned companies, [b]Tom Foley[/b], a venture capitalist and high-flying GOP fundraiser. Foley was one of the [b]Bob Dole's[/b] top-ten career donors, Connecticut finance chair for Bush 2000 and a classmate of the president's from Harvard Business School.
The chief advisor to the Agriculture Ministry is [b]Dan Amstutz[/b], a Reagan administration veteran who until recently served as the president of the North American Export Grain Association. Oxfam's Director of Policy [b]Kevin Watkins [/b]recently quipped that with his record of opening up developing economies to cheap American agricultural exports, "putting [b]Dan Amstutz [/b]in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting [b]Saddam Hussein [/b]in the chair of a human rights commission." The presence of so many GOP lobbyists and fat-cats on the CPA roster has led many to suspect that the staffing was driven by the desire to award prized contracts to friendly companies and campaign donors. There is more than a little truth in those impressions. But a closer look paints a more complex picture.
In the lead-up to war, the architects of the coming invasion fought endless rearguard battles against their enemies at the State Department and the C.I.A. to keep the major policy decisions firmly in their hands. And the process continued as they began to staff CPA itself, where they wrote off not only State Department employees (considered disloyal because State had resisted the hawks over Iraq strategy) but also anyone who worked at NGO's (ideologically suspect) and those who had worked in Clinton's government (ditto).
**********
By making partisan loyalty their primary criteria, the administration ruled out most of the people with experience in the field and restricted themselves to politically trustworthy Republicans, many of whom, though often well-meaning and admirably willing to serve their country in a very dangerous place, had little to no experience to prepare them for the challenges they'd encounter in Iraq.
A typical example is [b]Dan Senor[/b]. Before attending Harvard Business School from 1999 to 2001, Senor was a staffer for then-Sen.[b] Spencer Abraham [/b]of Michigan. After receiving his MBA, he went to the Carlyle Group, where he was a venture capitalist from 2001 to 2003. Senor left Carlyle in 2003 for a brief stint as White House Press Secretary [b]Scott McLellan's [/b]deputy before shipping off to Iraq. Though he showed up in Iraq as a junior press handler, Senor is now Bremer's senior advisor and for most of last summer he was in charge of organizing Iraq's post-Saddam media, an effort which most have rated as little short of a disaster. More examples can be found at the Ministry of Education, often cited by the White House as one of the CPA's signal successes. Who runs the Ministry of Education? The chief American advisor to the Minister of Education is [b]Williamson Evers[/b], a school voucher advocate and Libertarian activist from the Hoover Institution who was an education policy advisor on the Bush 2000 campaign. The first of Evers's two deputies is [b]Leslye Arsht,[/b] a Republican education policy wonk who served as deputy press secretary under [b]Ronald Reagan [/b]and then in the Department of Education under [b]George H.W. Bush[/b]. Evers's second deputy was [b]Jim Nelson[/b], President [b]George W. Bush's [/b]education commissioner from when he was governor of Texas. (Nelson recently returned stateside.)
Each of the three has education policy credentials. But one searches their résumés in vain for any evidence of the sort of expertise that would suit them to rebuild an educational system in an Arab country in the aftermath of war, a decade of sanctions, and two generations of totalitarian rule.
To date, Evers and his team have resisted the urgings of their colleagues back in Washington to foist on Iraq vouchers and other schemes conservatives have thus far failed to get enacted in the United States. But critics say that even the much-hyped successes getting schools refurbished and reopened may not stand up to scrutiny. The White House routinely trumpets the fact that 1,595 of Iraq's 10,000 schools have already been rehabilitated. But when Newsweek reporters visited five of those schools in October, they found each one trash-strewn, poorly supplied, and mostly a wreck.
More such "help" may be on the way in the person of [b]Rich Galen[/b], veteran [i][b]GOP-spin meister[/b][/i], former spokesman for Vice President [b]Dan Quayle [/b]and onetime head of [b]Newt Gingrich's[/b] GOPAC. In late October, Galen received the call to serve his country in Iraq as yet another of Bremer's Senior Advisors. His gig? Adding more artillery to the Iraq War spin operation. "My job," Galen told The New York Post before shipping off, "will be to help reporters on the ground find interesting stories that they can use. If there's a civil-affairs unit out of Manhattan that rebuilt a school, it might be of interest to Channel 5 but not to a network."
CPA officials say that the older GOP functionaries do a reasonable job keeping their partisanship publicly under wraps. But the younger Republicans in Iraq spend much of their time plotting against the Democrats. "Everything is seen in the context of the election, and how they will screw the Democrats," said one CPA official. "It was really pretty shocking to hear them talk."
"They are all on the campaign trail," said another official. "They see this as a stepping stone to a better job in the next Bush administration." "I don't always know if they are Republicans," said yet another senior CPAer. "But what is clear is that they know nothing about development, and nothing about transitional economies." They're trying to do the right thing, this official adds, "but they do what they do without any knowledge of how the post-war world works in reality. They come up with hare-brained schemes that cause so many problems they take more time to fix than to create."
It's also driven journalists on the ground, watching these operatives move in and out of Saddam's marble Republican Palace, which CPA commandeered as its headquarters, to joke: "They don't call it the Republican Palace for nothing."
*****
[i]Joshua Micah Marshall is a [b]Washington Monthly [/b]contributing writer and author of [b]Talkingpointsmemo.com[/b]. Laura Rozen is a national security writer in Washington, D.C. Colin Soloway is a contributing editor of [b]Newsweek[/b][/i].
[b]Sources[/b]:
"Bush Decision to Invade Iraq a Full Year Before War Brings Claims of Military Power as "Last Choice" into Question" on http://www.misleader.org/dail...
"9/11 Chair: ... Attack Was Preventable, But Instead The Bush Regime Profitted!" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"Bush Regime Operates In An Anti-Democratic Veil-of-Secrecy" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| Dubya Responsible for Nearly 11,000 U.S. Casualties in Iraq |
| 12.19.03 (4:39 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Mad King George conducted an immoral & illegal incursion into Iraq [/b]... that has turned into a major fiasco-- now a [i]bloody guerrilla quagmire [/i]with nearly 11,000 U.S. casualties thus far, and no end in sight ... all to enrich the sordid Bush family & associates, and their squalid [i]corporate-take-all [/i]campaign contributors ([i]e.g. Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, et al[/i].) ...
AlterNet reports on http://www.alternet.org :
The total number of wounded soldiers and medical evacuations by the U.S. military in Iraq is nearing 11,000, according to new Pentagon data http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?S... , and 457 troops have died. But as Aseneth Blackwell, a Vietnam War widow, says, the casualty figures can't capture the pain and suffering she has seen during visits to D.C.'s Walter Reed Army Medical Center this year. "[i]To see these guys walking around up there with an arm missing, a leg missing, that is when it hits you in the face[/i]," said Blackwell.
For more, refer to "[i][b]Latest casualty figures[/b][/i]" on http://www.alternet.org/waron...
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| Cheney's Pimp Halliburton Overcharges By $128 Million ... And Makes No Profit? Ha ha ha!!! |
| 12.19.03 (4:27 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime, particularly the whore-monger Cheney awards massive no-bid, no-audit, no-accountability contracts to his pimp: [i]Halliburton[/i] [/b]... who is caught overcharing by $128 Million ([i]the 'tip of the iceberg' of their corporate-take-all swindle[/i]) ... and their neo-con, neo-fascist buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters claim they are not making any profits?!?!? ... If you believe that, Neil Bush has some [i]snake oil [/i]and Jeb Bush has some Florida [i]swamp land [/i]to sell you ... Dubya has already plundered & looted us out of hundreds of billions ([i]if not trillions[/i]) of dollars in his [i]neo-con con-game [/i]to immorally & illegally invade Iraq to enrich himself & his corporate campaign contributors!!!!!
Consider the conservative financial magazine, Forbes, who published "[i][b]Democrats press Rumsfeld for Halliburton records[/b][/i]" on http://www.forbes.com/iraq/ne... :
[b]WASHINGTON[/b], Dec 19 (Reuters) - Democratic lawmakers pressed U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday for records that could shed light on a draft audit that found Halliburton (nyse: HAL - news - people) may have overcharged the U.S. government by $61 million for fuel it shipped into Iraq.
Halliburton, the Texas-based oil services company run by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, refused to be drawn into what it suggested was a growing political fight as Democrats put pressure on the Bush administration over Iraqi contracts.
"We do not intend to debate these issues within the context of a political campaign, for either party," said Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall.
A preliminary Pentagon audit disclosed last week found evidence that a Halliburton unit, Kellogg Brown and Root, potentially overcharged by as much as $61 million through September for gasoline imported from Kuwait under an Iraq reconstruction project.
Rep. Henry Waxman of California and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, respectively the top Democrats on the House of Representatives' Government Reform Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, asked for detailed information about subcontracts and bids by potential subcontractors.
They also sought records, by no later than Jan. 5, of contacts between the Defense Department and Halliburton, and between the Defense Department and the Kuwaiti Oil Ministry relating to gasoline imports.
[i][b]INTERNAL AUDIT DOCUMENTS[/b][/i]
Halliburton was awarded a no-bid contract in March to rebuild Iraq's oil industry. So far, it has billed the U.S. government $2.26 billion for related services.
Halliburton denies any wrongdoing and Hall said "KBR delivered fuel to Iraq at the best value, the best price and the best terms."
Hall denied a suggestion by Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democratic presidential contender, the company had refused to turn over internal audit documents sought by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, or DCAA.
A Dec. 10 letter in which the audit agency complained about a purported lack of cooperation amounted to "old, outdated information," Hall said in an e-mailed reply to Reuters.
"We are with the DCAA and we have updated and provided materials to them following these numerous meetings" since the Dec. 10 letter, she wrote.
Lieberman, in a letter to Rumsfeld on Thursday, quoted Michael Thibault, DCAA deputy director, as saying Halliburton's own auditors had warned the company of "serious problems" with its fuel contracts with the U.S. government.
"The Halliburton auditors warned that the prices the company was charging to import fuel from Kuwait were excessive," Lieberman wrote.
Hall said all documents used for Halliburton's internal "evaluation" had been provided to DCAA.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said DCAA auditors were reviewing Halliburton's response to their draft audit.
[b]Another source[/b]:
"Halliburton unscathed by overcharge flap" on http://www.atimes.com/atimes/... :
[b]TOKYO [/b]- The timely capture of Saddam Hussein virtually eclipsed, for a while, the embarrassing scandal involving the apparent [b]US$128 million overcharging of US taxpayers by Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm[/b], which received $7 billion in no-bid contracts for oil services and other work in Iraq. The total overcharge, revealed by a Pentagon audit, covers about $61 million for fuel and another $67 million for supplying army food services.
But investors in Halliburton and its engineering subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) paid little heed to the uproar in Washington and the field day by Democratic presidential candidates excoriating what they called the apparent war-profiteering and sweetheart deals with Halliburton. Investors figure the firm once run by Cheney will continue to be favored and will continue to reap enormous profits. And that's how it's playing out.
Stock prices are rising and new contracts are still being awarded to the company. Group revenues surged 39 percent to $4.1 billion on the back of a stunning 80 percent revenue rise to $2.3 billion at the KBR engineering and construction subsidiary that won the government work. And this despite the fact that third-quarter earnings fell 38 percent to $58 million, or 13 cents a share, because of a loss on discontinued operations as well as litigation over asbestos.
The Pentagon awarded another $222 million worth of Iraq reconstruction work to Halliburton last week.
A Pentagon audit revealed that Halliburton's KBR subsidiary overcharged the government by as much as $61 million for supplying and transporting fuel in Iraq. No one claims that the company pocketed ill-gotten gains, and Texas-based Halliburton contends that it was forced to pay higher costs because it was overcharged by a supplier in Kuwait. It also said that in other related work it saved US taxpayers as much as $164 million.
President George W Bush was politically embarrassed and stung by allegations that the Halliburton overcharging confirmed that his administration was favoring big-business friends, even while excluding foreign critics of his war policy from bidding competitively on major reconstruction contracts in Iraq. He said Halliburton must repay the funds.
Halliburton has been doing everything in Iraq from repairing oil wells to delivering soldiers' mail and even preparing the display turkey Bush posed with when he visited troops in Baghdad on Thanksgiving. Some competitors have complained that the Pentagon has already given Halliburton so much work in Iraq's oil sector that it would be nearly impossible to dislodge the company even if, in future, bidding is allowed for the competitors.
[i][b]If they find blood, look out for piranhas[/b][/i]
"This is a contract everybody is watching," said Steven Schooner, a professor of contract law at George Washington University law school. "If they find blood, they're going to set the piranhas loose. It's going to be a nightmare for Halliburton."
The Bush administration denies the charge that the Iraq war was fought for oil and that it waged the war to pay off business cronies of the White House. Nonetheless, the Pentagon findings on Halliburton overcharges are likely to fuel the allegations of favoritism, especially since it was revealed that the firm had been granted the contract to manage Iraq's oilfields, valued at up to $7 billion, without competition and without any bidding. Cheney's name inevitably surfaces.
Cheney denies that his connections and influence as vice president have improperly aided his old company. His links to Halliburton, however, have drawn intense scrutiny because he ran the company for five years and was given a $33 million payoff when he left to run for office. Before joining Halliburton he was secretary of defense, and in a position to know about and grant Pentagon contracts. Halliburton's military work has expanded over the past decade as the Pentagon has sought to increase its procurement ratio by outsourcing non-combat tasks to private contractors.
During the decade of Halliburton's extraordinary growth, Cheney was the defense secretary for four years, from 1989-93, and then the chief executive of the company for five years, from 1995-2000.
As vice president, Cheney has maintained his contacts with energy-industry executives and solicited their views in developing US energy policy. The secrecy of those contacts - which the White House refuses to divulge - is the subject of a US Supreme Court lawsuit.
In response to a Sierra Club lawsuit, the high court agreed last Wednesday to decide whether the Bush administration must disclose the names of participants in Cheney's energy task force that advised the president on national energy policy. The court's decision to consider the issue has broad implications for the president's ability to receive confidential advice. Bush and Cheney claim it is the executive's prerogative and privilege to receive confidential advice and that divulging the names of participants and their views would inhibit their ability to speak candidly. The Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision by June.
[i][b]Cheney's close ties with energy industry[/b][/i]
After several meetings with energy experts - and a few environmentalists - Cheney's energy task force produced a national policy report in May 2001. Last month Republicans completed an energy bill that provides billions of dollars in tax incentives meant to increase energy production but little in the way of support for conservation and alternative sustainable energy sources. The legislation stalled.
The audit revealing overcharging emerged as US officials prepared to award two new contracts to repair Iraq's oilfields valued at up to $2 billion, and Halliburton's KBR got another no-bid contract for $222 million last week from the Army Corps of Engineers. Other contracts are expected. The latest contracts cover rebuilding Iraq's oil industry and restoring the nation's essential infrastructure. So far KBR has been awarded $2.26 billion in contracts.
Despite the good news in Iraq, Halliburton announced this week that two of its divisions had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and reorganization as part of a settlement for asbestos claims. It sought protection for its DII industries division and the KBR construction and engineering services business. The KBR unit does not include the government contract division working in Iraq because it does not have any asbestos liabilities, the company said. The anticipated bankruptcy filings were first announced a year ago as Halliburton sought to extricate itself from asbestos claims that threatened to crush the company.
More than 400,000 workers filed individual lawsuits claiming they were harmed by inhaling asbestos.
Under the agreement, a bankruptcy trust will be created to handle all current and future asbestos lawsuits against Halliburton and its subsidiaries filed by workers. Last week most claimants voted in favor of the plan that will include payment of $4.2 billion in cash and shares. Halliburton inherited most of the claims four years ago when the conglomerate, then under Cheney's leadership, acquired Dresser Industries Inc for $7.7 billion.
A company spokeswoman said the Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan "provides permanent and final resolution of Halliburton's asbestos issues". She said it would have "no impact on any of our present and future projects". She was right, as Halliburton stocks held firm and continued to rise thereafter.
[i][b]$67m overcharge for army canteens[/b][/i]
The Pentagon said it had found evidence that the company overcharged the US government $61 million for gasoline delivered to Iraq. It said the government would have overpaid $67 million to Kellogg, Brown & Root to supply army canteens - if auditors hadn't raised alarms.
Although Bush said the funds must be repaid, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier the same day that there had been no overcharges. He chalked up the error to a simple disagreement: "We've got auditors that crawl all over these things," Rumsfeld said.
But congressional Democrats are not letting the issue die. Representative Henry Waxman, a California liberal and a relentless critic of the Bush administration, has introduced a telephone tip line for whistleblowers to report corporate profiteering associated with Iraq reconstruction contracts. "I created the tip line because the White House refuses to respond to congressional inquiries about Halliburton and other well-connected contractors," said Waxman, calling for a full review of all Iraq contracts.
"This audit confirms what we've known for months. Halliburton has been gouging taxpayers and the White House has been letting them get away with it," Waxman said.
Halliburton's KBR overcharged the US Army by $1.09 per US gallon (29 cents a liter) for nearly 57 million gallons (216 million liters) of fuel transported from Kuwait to Iraq, defense officials said. The government was paying Halliburton $2.64 a gallon (nearly 70 cents a liter) for gasoline from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying. The shipments were mandated under a contract to restore Iraq's oil fields. Documents of the US Army Corps of Engineers refer to "political pressures" from Kuwait's government and the US Embassy in Kuwait to deal only a Kuwaiti firm owned by a prominent family.
Some Democratic lawmakers have questioned why KBR bought more expensive fuel from Kuwait when it paid less for fuel from Turkey. According to government documents, KBR paid $1.17 per gallon (31 cents a liter) to buy fuel from Kuwait and 89 cents a gallon (23.5 cents a liter) to purchase it from Turkey.
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| Neo-Con Con-Game:-- Scamming America Out of Our Freedoms, Rights & Wealth ... |
| 12.19.03 (3:42 am) [edit] |
[b]The neo-con con-game of scamming America [/b]out of [u]our[/u] freedoms & rights as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution & the Bill of Rights, and our nation's wealth built-up by the hard labour & vigilent efforts of the working people of America-- is becoming increasingly exposed for the ugly fraud & treason, that it indeed represents.
Witness the corrupt [i]neo-con-man [/i]Richard Perle (who is making a fortune from their neo-con war-mongerings, as he has substantial business interests in these [i]snake oil [/i]corporate swindles in the U.S.A., Afghanistan & Iraq ...):-- War-profiteer Perle is an obscene lap-dog of the neo-fascist Bush-Cheney-Rice-Rumsfeld -Wolfowitz gang at the neo-hitlerian American Enterprise Institute (AEI) & Heritage Foundation-- a corrupt cabal of cowardly thugs & goons who were [i]AWOL in drunken stupors when it was their turn to serve this nation[/i], but who now lust to send our boys & girls to die as their[i] cannon-fodder[/i], while they reap the [i]"spoils of war"[/i]: gigantic power & riches. Our U.S. Military, tragically has been [i]immorally & illegally [/i]turned-into a mercenary force ([i]paid slave labor wages[/i]) to fight & die for the "[i]noble purpose [/i][sic]" to enrich the squalid & sordid Bush/Cheney families, Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, etc. ...
[i][b]Recently, Perle on what is behind criticism of neoconservatism [/b][/i]... http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... :
"[i]I can only conclude that the visceral anti-Americanism just runs deeper than any other set of values that is meaningful on the left and hence the obsession with and the disparagement of what they define as a neoconservative approach to international affairs[/i]."
We [TalkingPointsMemo] will return to this in the context of a discussion of whether such attitudes about political disagreements suit a person to the task of spreading democracy.
And along these lines, while we're at it, let me again recommend George Soros' new book [i]The Bubble of American Supremacy[/i] on http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob...%3Dnosim/002-8261154-8472 805 .
[b]Uh-huh, so now anyone not willing to become a neo-fascist collaborator prepared to betray our nation's freedoms & rights (and permit the plundering & looting of the U.S. Treasury), in order to empower & enrich the corrupt cabal of Bush neo-con corporate rapists is "[i]Anti-American[/i]" ... Ha ha ha! ... I don't think so, Perle![/b]
[b]Our rights & freedoms don't belong to the corrupt Bush regime ... they belong to us ...[/b]
[b]Source[/b]:
Joshua Micah Marshall's [i]TalkingPointsMemo[/i] on http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
"Mad King George Tramples & Treads On Our "Freedoms":-- The Neo-Cons' Real Motives Exposed!" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"U.S. Court Reminds The Mad King George That He Isn't King In The U.S.A." on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| Mad King George Tramples & Treads On Our "Freedoms":-- The Neo-Cons' Real Motives Exposed! |
| 12.19.03 (2:46 am) [edit] |
[b]The Mad King George is told by the U.S. Federal Court to stop his insane neo-fascist trampling & treading on [u]our[/u] "[i]freedoms[/i]"-- [/b]which the hypocritical neo-con smirks that he is "[i]fighting[/i]" [it[b] [i]ain't [/i][/b]him:-- [i]Dubya[/i] is sending poor boys & girls to die while [i]he sits on his fat ass watching football games [/i]with incompetent [i]9/11-Hijackings-are-OK -Condi Rice[/i]] for "[i]freedom[/i]" ... uh-huh ... (in reality, the [i]real motives [/i]behind the[i] insane bloody neo-con wars turned guerrilla quagmires [/i]waged by the[i] cowardly whore [/i]Dubya are [i]war-mongerings around the world, [/i]for infinite power & riches, for himself, his squalid family & his sordid [i]corporate pimps[/i]:-- [i]Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, et al[/i].)
The U.S. Federal Appeals Court has finally decided to put a halt to the neo-cons' traitorous attempts to transform the United States of America into a neo-hitlerian fascist state. For the corrupt Bush regime to[i] trample & tread [/i]on [u]our[/u] freedoms & rights as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights-- in the name of "[i]freedom[/i]" is an absurd exercise in neo-orwellian sophistry-- yeah, destroy our nation for[i] security's [/i]sake-- yeah, destroy our rights to make us [i]free[/i]-- yeah, destroy our economy to make us [i]rich[/i] ([i]sorry, these immoral & illegal atrocities committed by the Bush regime are empowering & enriching their wealthy war-profiteers & plutocrats-- while the average Americans & workers are being enslaved & impoverished by these corrupt corporate-take-all thugs & goons[/i]) ... [i][b]Anyone else spot the fraud & insanity in this neo-con con-game of swindling us out of [u]our[/u] "freedoms" & [u]our[/u] nation's wealth?[/b][/i] ...
[b]The Mad King George does not dole out [u]our[/u] "freedoms" at his [i]whim[/i] ... they are [u]ours[/u] by right, not his![/b]
Consider "[i][b]Jose Padilla: A Constitutional Challenge for Us All[/b][/i]", of The Independent Institute, by Brigid O’Neil* on http://www.independent.org/ti... :
In a landmark victory for constitutional protections and the separation of powers in the post-9/11 era, a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 ruling barring the president from declaring a U.S. citizen an “enemy combatant” without congressional authorization. In a decision likely to influence another case on enemy combatants before the Supreme Court case, the federal appeals court ordered the government to release U.S. citizen Jose Padilla from military custody in thirty days, with the option of transferring Padilla to civilian authorities for a criminal trial. The ruling marks a growing judicial backlash against unfettered presidential authority during a period of war. Given the week’s events, the ruling couldn’t have come at a better time. With controversy over the status of Guantanamo detainees and the PATRIOT Act growing to a feverish pitch, it’s about time the Constitution gained a voice, and an arm strong enough to back it up.
If the greatest threat to constitutional freedoms weighs heaviest on the backs of the minority, then a prime candidate for this can easily be found in enemy combatants such as Jose Padilla. A poor kid from a Puerto Rican family who cut his teeth on the streets of Chicago, it didn’t take long for Padilla to find his way from gang life to the arms of the law by the time he was 13 years old. His run-ins with the law seemed to end after he spent a year in a Florida jail, converting to a radical sect of Islam in the process. After stints in a series of fringe mosques and Afghani schools, Padilla had a meeting with Al-Qaeda chief of operations Abu Zubaydah to build a so-called “dirty bomb” bound for the United States, FBI officials allege. Since Padilla’s arrest, however, intelligence officials have openly discredited Abu Zubaydah, calling his reliability “uncertain at best”. Moreover, the Associated Press released a story in August quoting law-enforcement officials who have dismissed Padilla’s role in Al-Qaeda as a “small fish”, whose plans never got past the drawing board.
These large problems with the government’s case might explain why, a day before conservative Judge Michael Mukasey was set to rule on Padilla’s status as a material witness in the “dirty bomb” case, the Defense Department removed the prisoner in the middle of the night to a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina. The next day, Attorney General Ashcroft held a press conference declaring Padilla an “enemy combatant” who would be held in the military brig without a warrant, access to an attorney, or any charges filed against him. The entire episode reeked of under-handed tactics and desperate attempts by the Justice Department to show, with the capture of Padilla, that it was effectively fighting the war on terror and keeping the “bad guys” locked away -- even if that meant suspending all constitutional protections of the accused in the process.
After a year and a half of physical isolation and legal abandonment, it is time that Padilla has his day in court. As Senator John McCain has openly questioned, if the government has enough evidence to formally charge Padilla, why are they so adamantly opposed to presenting it before a judge? Hopefully, in thirty days time, the truth behind Padilla’s imprisonment will come to light. However, with the option still open to challenge the panel’s ruling, the government can at least temporarily keep him behind bars as an “enemy combatant” at the president’s discretion.
Obviously, the repercussions of this case extend far beyond the rights and livelihood of a man who’s turned his back against authority for much of his life. The horror is this story could happen to anyone -- citizen or non-citizen. The actions of the Administration in this case defy the fundamental role of our constitutional rights: protecting the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the state. If all of us can’t find something to get riled up about in the case of Jose Padilla, then the Constitution will have lost its last line of defense against tyrannical rule -- an informed and active populace.
*[i]Brigid O’Neil http://www.independent.org/ti... is a researcher at the Center on Peace & Liberty http://www.independent.org/ti... at The Independent Institute http://www.independent.org/ in Oakland, California. For further articles and studies, see the "War on Terrorism" http://www.independent.org/ti... and OnPower.org http://www.onpower.org/histor... . [/i]
[b]Other sources[/b]:
"In Debate on Antiterrorism, the Courts Assert Themselves" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...
"Rights, Liberties Groups Hail Court Defeats for Bush Anti-Terror War" on http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lo...
"U.S. Courts Reject Detention Policy in 2 Terror Cases" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...
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| The Crooked Dubya & Chalabi Got The Wrong Guy ... As Our Boys & Girls Die ... |
| 12.18.03 (4:37 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Crooked Dubya & Chalabi ([i]two cowardly thugs who enrich themselves off of the blood of others [/i]...) Got The Wrong Guy [/b]... Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks upon the U.S.A. -- not Saddam Hussein ... but then the neo-con [i]wars-turned-bloody-gue rrilla-quagmires [/i]in Afghanistan & Iraq are making billions of dollars in profits for the squalid neo-fascist Bush & Chalabi families-- as hundreds of our poor men & women in the U.S. military, used as [i]cannon-fodder, [/i]are being slaughtered, along with tens of thousands of innocent Afghanistani & Iraqi civilians.
Presidential candidate and four-star [b]Gen. Wesley Clark [/b]opines that Bush hasn't followed through with neutralizing Osama Bin Ladin: "[i][b]Instead, he executed a bait-and-switch. He took the priority off Osama bin Laden. He shifted the spotlight onto Saddam Hussein[/b][/i]."
[i][b]Moreover[/b][/i] ...
[b]As many news outlets are reporting, there was a new photo of Saddam published today which caused quite a stir in Baghdad[/b].
It was published by Al-Mutamar, a new daily published by Ahmed Chalabi, and it features a [b]disheveled downcast Saddam sitting before -- who else? -- Ahmed Chalabi. Why the [i]hell[/i] is this embezzler, thief & puppet of the neo-cons allowed into the CIA's interrogations? ... [/b]
Chalabi, with hands clasped, is sitting a couple feet from Saddam and seems to be posing some question, as Saddam looks on sheepishly.
This picture was taken shortly after Saddam's capture when the US military brought in four members of the Interim Governing Council to speak with Saddam: Chalabi and three others.
(The best reproductions of the picture I've seen are in the Dallas Morning News.)
Here are a few questions ...
Who took the picture?
Presumeably an Army photographer, unless Chalabi was allowed to bring in a camera man from his new paper, which would be, to put it mildly, a bit irregular. Were pictures taken only of Chalabi and Saddam? And regardless of these two questions, why were pictures taken (presumeably) by US military photographers given on a exclusive basis to Chalabi?
[i][b]A bet there's a story there ...
Anyone want to "Connect the Dots"???[/b][/i].
[b]Sources[/b]:
AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
TalkingPointsMemo on http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
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| Saddam's Capture Bodes Ill for Bush's Re-election ... Bush Doesn't Want The Truth To Emerge! |
| 12.18.03 (4:11 pm) [edit] |
[b]Saddam's Capture Bodes Ill for Bush's Re-election ... As Bush Doesn't Really Want The Truth To Emerge ...[/b]
* What if Saddam Hussein [i]tells the truth [/i]about the sales of his WMDs to Iraq, by Daddy Bush 41, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other neo-con thugs & goons in the corrupt Bush regime? ... And that Dubya & his corrupt regime knew that these same WMDs were destroyed before their immoral & illegal incursion into Iraq ...
* What if Saddam Hussein [i]tells the truth [/i]about the okay given by Daddy Bush 41 to gas and massacre his own people, in his civil war ([i]as the Kurds wanted independence [/i]... )? ... and that Dubya's cronies encouraged Saddam Hussein's atrocities ...
* What if Saddam Hussein [i]tells the truth [/i]about the billions of dollars stolen by the Bush family, Cheney & the gang, and the rest of the Bushies' war-profiteers, who are raping the American taxpayer and Iraqi people, senseless? ... and that Ahmed Chalabi is in collaboration with the Bush family to conduct a wholesale take-over of the U.S. Treasury & Iraqi assets ...
[b]Is it any wonder that Dubya wants Saddam Hussein killed [i]ASAP[/i]? [/b]Hopefully, in the insane neo-fascist [i]Doctrine According to the Mad King George[/i]: an enraged Iraqi people will [i]tear Saddam Hussein to shreds [/i]in order to [i][b]take the heat off [/b][/i]of Bushy-boy and his own crimes ...
Consider also "[i][b]Saddam's Capture Bodes Ill for Bush's Re-election[/b][/i]" by William Pfaff on http://www.commondreams.org/v... :
Contrary to what many are saying, Saddam Hussein's capture is a negative omen for President George W. Bush's re-election campaign and points toward continuing disorder and resistance in Iraq.
Saddam's ignominious circumstances when he surrendered - hiding in a hole in the ground when he wasn't living in a shed heaped with dirty clothes, eggshells and unwashed pans, with a refrigerator stocked with candy bars and soft drinks - made it clear to all that the resistance to the American occupation was not being commanded from there. So it is wishful thinking to expect his capture alone to slow or end the violence. It may spur the resistance.
As long as the Shiite majority thought there was a remote possibility that he could return to power, and with him the Baath party apparatus whose remnants survive throughout the country, they had reason to stay on good relations with the American occupation authority hunting him down.
With Saddam gone, the Shiite authorities are free to express their real ambition: power in a new Iraq proportionate to their majority in the population.
Until now, the most important Shiite leaders have remained, objectively, allies, or at least neutrals, in Washington's effort to control the country.
They now will become active players in the emerging political power struggle. Since they can bring millions into the streets, as demonstrators or as fighters, practicing a version of Islam with a powerful emotional component of suicidal self-sacrifice, they are potentially a more important force than Saddam could ever have mobilized as underground leader or as martyr.
The minority Sunni community, which had dominated Iraq since the time of the Ottoman Empire, has more urgent reason than ever to fight to regain power and privilege.
A new government might be a federation in which the communities - Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish, but also Turkmen, Christians of several denominations and others - coexist on representative and more or less democratic terms.
The United States might prefer this solution, at least in principle, but would also probably expect (or be needed) to remain in Iraq in order to maintain the balance. A continued American presence would run into the obstacle of Iraqi nationalism, which this war has inflamed, and rob the Shiites of the dominant political role.
A second possibility is restored centralized and probably authoritarian government, quite possibly with the better-educated Sunni community back on top. Americans are accustomed to dealing with this kind of government in the Arab world. Nationalism and sectarian interests again are the obstacles.
Shiite majority rule would incorporate a powerful bias toward theocratic government of the Iranian kind, which is what Washington does not want.
On the other hand, there is a limit on what the United States can do, short of continued direct rule. The June departure is supposed to end with a sovereign Iraq on its way to democracy, although how this desirable end is to be accomplished I do not know.
An Iraqi author, Zaki Laidi, sums it up by saying that "the Shiites, who in the majority seem to have at least implicitly backed the American intervention, cannot find durable political legitimacy other than by opposing the United States, while the Sunnis, who lost most in the American intervention, would be Washington's best allies against the Shiites' taking power."
As for Bush, Saddam's capture symbolically changes the president from war leader to the builder of a new Iraq. Electorally, he is likely to regret this change.
If questioning Saddam Hussein doesn't produce the famous weapons of mass destruction that were threatening Jerusalem, and British and American bases in the region - not to mention New York and Washington - the question of what the war was all about is reopened.
The failure to get new information will confirm what so far has been the unanimous testimony of Iraqi scientists and officials, who no longer have any reason to lie and every reason to tell the truth: The weapons programs were all terminated after the first Gulf War. Washington, significantly, had already let the issue of weapons of mass destruction drop even before Saddam's capture.
Had Karl Rove, Bush's chief domestic political adviser, been consulted in time, he probably would have told the president to seize Saddam but hide him until the first week of next November, and produce him - trussed on a turkey platter - on the eve of the election. But as 600 soldiers were involved in the capture and rumors fly, that was not practical.
As things stand, the triumph of Saddam's capture has 11 months during which to ebb. By next November it risks being covered over by an accumulation of bad news from a liberated but unpacified Iraq.
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| 9/11 Chair: ... Attack Was Preventable, But Instead The Bush Regime Profitted! |
| 12.18.03 (3:45 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Bush regime profitted enormously from the attack on 9/11 [/b]... Bush was about to return from his summer vacation in early September 2001 (... [i]Dubya takes the longest vacations of any president in the history of this nation[/i]) to a Congress with a lot of questions regarding his corrupt and rapacious policies:--
[b](1) [/b]Cheney's secret "U.S. Energy Policy" meetings that involved the corporate robber-barons, top-dogs & fat-cats who staged a phony energy shortage and swindled consumers ([i]in California & elsewhere in the U.S.A[/i].) out of billions of dollars -- What the hell did Cheney promise these corporate thugs & goons? ([i]A War in Iraq prior to 9/11[/i]?);
[b](2)[/b] Dubya refused to demand any systemic changes into fraudulent accounting practices, or punishments for the corporate rapists & swindlers who embezzled hundreds of billions from corporations and left employees & investors "[i]holding the bag[/i]" ... ([i]e.g. Bush's good buddy Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay is still at large, having defrauded & stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from employees, pension funds & investors[/i]) ... In fact, swindling, plundering & looting taxpayers, pension funds & company assets, is how Dubya immorally (& [i]possibly illegally[/i]) acquired his ill-gotten gains;
[b](3)[/b] Dubya was under attack as reports regarding the fact his brother Jeb was [i]up to ugly shenanigans [/i]in Florida, having used [i]dirty tricks [/i]to rig the 2000 presidential election outcome ... Gore would have won Florida, studies showed, had the voters been allowed to vote & their votes been counted properly.
Then, [i]up up up,[/i] and the tragic attack on 9/11 occurs ... Many investigators have pointed out that the Bush regime knew more than they have acknowledged ... and that they gained ([i]and then cynically abused Iraq-- which had nothing to do with 9/11, as an excuse to wage war to enrich their corporate pimps: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, et al. [/i] ...) ... Indeed, the squalid Bush family and their sordid war-profiteers & campaign contributors are raking in billions of taxpayer dollars-- while our men & women in the U.S. military & innocent Iraqis are ruthlessly being slaughtered.
Now, over two years following 9/11, the [i]tip of the iceberg [/i]of the corrupt Bush regime's incompetence and/or corruption is finally starting to emerge ... Consider "[i][b]9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable[/b][/i]" on http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... :
[b](CBS)[/b] For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.
"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.
"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."
Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.
"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.
To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president's top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on one of the most controversial assertions of the Bush administration – that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists might fly an airplane into a building.
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," said national security adviser Condoleeza Rice on May 16, 2002.
"How is it possible we have a national security advisor coming out and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had FBI records from 1991 stating that this is a possibility," said Kristen Breitweiser, one of four New Jersey widows who lobbied Congress and the president to appoint the commission.
The widows want to know why various government agencies didn't connect the dots before Sept. 11, such as warnings from FBI offices in Minnesota and Arizona about suspicious student pilots.
"If you were to tell me that two years after the murder of my husband that we wouldn't have one question answered, I wouldn't believe it," Breitweiser said.
Kean admits the commission also has more questions than answers.
Asked whether we should at least know if people sitting in the decision-making spots on that critical day are still in those positions, Kean said, "Yes, the answer is yes. And we will."
Kean promises major revelations in public testimony beginning next month from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and, maybe, President Bush and former President Clinton.
[b]The Mad King George and his cabal of neo-con thugs & goons should be tried for [i]Treason [/i]and[i] Crimes Against Humanity[/i] ... and be frog-marched off to jail where they belong. Contact Congress http://www.congress.org to demand that an investigation into the neo-fascist Bush regime's many, many crimes, is initiated immediately.[/b]
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| Three More U.S. Soldiers Slaughtered in the Aftermath of Saddam Hussein's Capture |
| 12.16.03 (6:44 am) [edit] |
[b]Three more U.S. soldiers have been slaughtered in Iraq in the aftermath of the capture of Saddam Hussein[/b]. The Iraqi people ([i]hopefully not just the neo-con's puppet Iraqi Governing Counsel [IGC] ... who are permitting the U.S.A.'s neo-con dictators in Iraq to continue to commit atrocities ...)[/i] want to place Saddam Hussein on trial ... however, the neo-orwellian media frenzy surrounding this tyrant's fate should not become an obsession of the American people to the neglect of our own problems here at home. Why are we still occupying Iraq as dictatorial invaders? ([i]Ooopppsss[/i] ... One must ask [i]Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, et al[/i]. for the [i]right timing to pull-out [/i]of Iraq, after they have ruthlessly plundered the[i] not-rich [/i]American taxpayers & Iraqi people ... )
The neo-fascist Bush regime has immorally & illegally waged neo-con warfare abroad, and has created a fiscal 'train-wreck' for middle-class and working Americans here at home. As the Iraqi people hold Saddam Hussein to account for his crimes, the American people should hold the corrupt Bush regime accountable for its' crimes.
Consider "[i][b]Meanwhile, in Iraq the slaughter goes on[/b][/i]" by Andrew Buncombe on http://news.independent.co.uk... :
Many had hoped the capture of Saddam Hussein would put an end to the insurgency that has been carrying out deadly attacks against US troops and Iraqi targets. But any such wishfulness was swiftly crushed when suicide bombers killed eight Iraqi policemen and injured at least 30 civilians in two suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad.
In what may well be a clear indication that the resistance to US occupation will continue despite the capture of the former Iraqi leader, two car bombs were detonated outside Iraqi police stations in different parts of the city.
US troops killed 11 attackers after coming under attack in Samarra, north of Baghdad, a military statement said, and in Saddam's home town of Tikrit, a roadside bomb injured three soldiers.
Gunmen ambushed an American patrol in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, using automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenades but caused neither casualties nor damage to the patrol which called in reinforcements, the statement said.
US forces also met civil resistance on the streets. The military announced that soldiers in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, killed three protesters and wounded two more, after up to 750 people rallied in a show of support for Saddam.
The statement said that US troops were fired upon repeatedly and that one soldier was wounded.
Pro-Saddam demonstrations have been held in several Iraqi towns, casting doubts on claims by the US-led coalition that the people of Iraq universally welcomed his arrest.
In Tikrit, 10 miles from Saddam was captured, about 700 people rallied in the town centre chanting "Saddam is in our hearts, Saddam is in our blood." US soldiers and Iraqi policemen yelled back: "Saddam is in our jail."
On the northern outskirts of the Iraqi capital, a suicide bomber driving a four-wheel-drive taxi killed eight policemen at their station in Husainiyah, yesterday. The commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Ali Amer, told reporters that 10 officers were injured. Residents said at least five civilians, including a five-year-old girl, were wounded by flying glass and debris.
"We were in a state of shock," said Salem Eid Ali, who lives across the street from the station and who was injured by flying glass, along with his wife and two children. "We were having breakfast and each of us was thrown by the power of the blast. We had to carry my family from above the back wall of the house in order to take them to hospital."
Colonel Hamad Ghazban, another Iraqi officer, said of the attackers: "These are al-Qa'ida people. Saddam does not have the power to do these kinds of things. His ability is too weak. Last night we saw him in a hole."
Just hours before, in the Ameriyah neighbourhood of the city, eight policemen were injured when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle packed with explosives at about 8am. The attack would have been much worse had Iraqi police and US Military Police not fired at a second explosives-laden vehicle that was following the first car. That intervention prevented the second vehicle from ramming into the station, and the driver fled the scene without detonating his device. He was later captured.
Brigadier General Mark Hertling of the US Army said: "Right now, we don't know what the target was. It goes with the intelligence we had yesterday, that there would be several [car bombs]. We dodged a couple of bullets in Baghdad."
Yesterday's attacks appear to undermine the views of those who said that Saddam and his so-called "Baathist hold-outs" have been behind the wave of attacks against US targets. Even President George Bush predicted yesterday that there would be continuing violence. "The terrorists in Iraq remain dangerous. The work of our coalition remains difficult and will require further sacrifice," he said at a press conference in Washington.
[b]Meanwhile in Baghdad police fired into the air to disperse hundreds of people chanting: "[i]We want Saddam back[/i]."
The attacks in Husainiyah and Ameriyah follow a similar car bomb attack on Sunday in which 17 people were killed in Khalidiyah, about 60 miles west of Baghdad, just 12 hours after the former Iraqi leader was taken into US custody[/b].
[i]16 December 2003 07:31[/i]
[b]Other sources[/b]:
"Casualties in Iraq - The Human Cost of Occupation" on http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/...
"Saddam Hussein's Capture Is Yesterday's NEWS ... It's Time To Return To EARTH!" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"A Tyrant Falls ... and Everybody Keeps on Spinning ... Ho ho ho!!!" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"One Tyrant Down ... Well, There Are At Least Two More Tyrants To Go!!!" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| U.S. Senator's "Challenging 'Pre-emption'" ... |
| 12.16.03 (6:17 am) [edit] |
[b]Senator Robert C. Byrd has courageously spoken out against Bush's immoral and illegal incursion into Iraq [/b]... and is one of the few Congressmen to ask fundamental questions regarding our purpose, motives, [i]right-to-invade[/i], and moreover, the real problems, needs & issues faced by the United States of America-- and ignored by the corrupt [i]corporate-take-all [/i]neo-fascist Bush regime who are obsessed with neo-con warfare instead of with the welfare of our great nation.
[b]Challenging 'Pre-emption' by Senator Robert C. Byrd
[i]Remarks on the 138th Anniversary Celebration of The Nation Magazine, December 14, 2003, in New York City[/i], http://www.thenation.com [/b]
The older I get, the more I become convinced that wisdom is enhanced by age, and I think the same can be said of [i]The Nation[/i] magazine. It is more than a good read. It has become, over the years, an essential publication and a voice for the loyal opposition that is needed today as perhaps never before.
Tonight, I have been asked to speak about Iraq.
Early this morning came news of the capture of Saddam Hussein. That is good news. Despite his fall from power many months ago, the specter of a possible return to power had cast a constant shadow over Iraq and the Iraqi people. I applaud the tenacious work of the military and intelligence communities for their success today.
But that success does not diminish the challenges that remain in Iraq, and it certainly does not tamp the passions inflamed against the United States throughout the Muslim world by our actions in Iraq. The capture of Saddam Hussein will not be the keystone for peace in that volatile region. This day's news does not lessen the danger that the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strike poses to international peace and stability.
In order to bring lasting stability to Iraq, that nation needs the help of the entire world, not just America and her fighting needs.
As each day passes and as more American soldiers are killed and wounded in Iraq, I become ever more convinced that the war in Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. Contrary to the President's rosy predictions--and the predictions of others in the Bush Administration--the United States has not been universally greeted as a liberator in Iraq. The peace--if one can use the term "peace" to describe the chronic violence and instability that define Iraq today--the peace is far from being won. Iraqi citizens may be glad that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, but they appear to be growing increasingly resentful that the United States continues to rule their country at the point of a gun.
What a huge price we are now paying for the President's bullheaded rush to invoke the unwise and unprecedented doctrine of pre-emption to invade Iraq, an invasion without provocation, an invasion without the support of the United Nations or the international community.
It would be tragic enough if the casualties of the Iraq war were confined to the battlefield, but they are not. The casualties of this war will have serious repercussions for generations to come. Truth is one casualty. Despite the best efforts of the White House to contort the invasion of Iraq into an extension of the war on terror, there was never a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11. There was never a connection between Iraq and September 11. Not a single Iraqi was among the nineteen hijackers of those four planes. Despite dire warnings from the President, Saddam Hussein had at his fingertips neither the means nor the materiel to unleash deadly weapons of mass destruction on the world. Despite presidential rhetoric to the contrary, Iraq did not pose a grave and gathering menace to the security of the United States. The war in Iraq was nothing less than a manufactured war. It was a war served up to a deliberately misled and deluded American public to suit the neoconservative political agenda of the Bush White House.
A lasting casualty is the international credibility and reputation of the United States of America. We have squandered the good will that had rallied to our side after the attacks of 9/11, attacks that struck just a few short blocks from where we sit tonight. At the end of that fateful day, the world was with us. The French newspaper [i]Le Monde [/i]proclaimed, "[i]We Are All Americans[/i]." But we squandered that good will. We turned our sights on Iraq and turned our back on the United Nations. As a result, in some corners of the world, including some corners of Europe and Great Britain, our beloved nation is now viewed as the world bully.
Finally, and most disheartening to me, Congress allowed the Constitution to become a casualty of the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes. Congress allowed its constitutional authority to declare war to fall victim to this irresponsible strategy. Just a little more than a year ago, in October 2002, the Senate obsequiously handed to the President the constitutional authority to declare war. It failed to debate; it failed to question; it failed to live up to the standards established by the Framers. Like a whipped dog, the Senate put its tail between its legs and slunk away into the shadows, slunk away from its responsibility. Congress--and I mean both houses--Congress delegated its constitutional authority to the President and effectively washed its hands of the fate of Iraq. It is a dark and despicable mark on the escutcheon of Congress.
The roots of this travesty can be traced directly back to the President's doctrine of pre-emption, that cockeyed notion that the United States can pre-emptively attack any nation that for whatever reason may--may!--appear to pose a threat in the future. Not only is the doctrine of pre-emption a radical departure from the traditional doctrine of self-defense but it is also a destabilizing influence on world affairs. The Bush doctrine of pre-emption is a dangerous precedent. The Bush doctrine of pre-emption is a reckless policy. The rising tide of anti-Americanism across the globe is directly attributable to the fear and distrust engendered by this Bush doctrine of pre-emption.
Yet too many Americans are willing--yes, even eager--to swallow the Administration line on pre-emption without examining it, without questioning it, without challenging it.
Thank God for courageous institutions--like this one--which are willing to stand up to the tide of popular convention. I commend [i]The Nation [/i]magazine for filling this vacuum, and I urge you to continue in your mission, without fear, without constraint, and with an unyielding commitment to truth.
Today, for better or worse, the United States has embroiled itself in the future of Iraq. But that does not mean that we need to continue to be the lone wolf in Iraq. Unfortunately, the Administration's latest edict to freeze out the French, German, Russian and Canadian companies from Iraq gives me little reason to hope that the President is even remotely interested in internationalizing the political, economic and security reconstruction effort. As a result, the White House continues to feed the perception throughout the world that Iraq's reconstruction is a spoil of war. Reconstruction contracts, funded with $18.6 billion from the American taxpayer, seemingly have become kickbacks to those countries which dared not speak out--as Germany, France, Russia and Canada did speak out--against a policy of pre-emptive war.
Like all roads to peace in the Middle East, the path to stability in Iraq may still face obstacles. We cannot precisely what those obstacles will be. But we must demand accountability from the Bush White House. We must continue to raise questions. We must continue to seek the truth. We must continue to speak out against wrongheaded policies and dangerous strategies.
I am reminded of the closing lines from Tennyson's "[i]Ulysses[/i]":
[i]We are not now that strength which in old days...tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will,
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield[/i].
For my part, I will continue to speak out, I will continue to challenge, to question, and never to yield in defense of the Constitution, the United States Senate and the American people. For your part, I hope that [i]The Nation [/i]magazine will sail on, always serving as an advocate for the truth and an antidote to the tide of imperialism that threatens to encompass our government.
[i][/i]Congratulations on your remarkable achievements.
[b]Sources[/b]:
"Challenging 'Pre-emption'" by Senator Robert C. Byrd at [i]Common Dreams [/i]on http://www.commondreams.org/v...
"Chellenging 'Pre-emption'" by Senator Robert C. Byrd at [i]The Nation [/i]on http://www.thenation.com/doc....
[i]The Nation [/i]magazine on http://www.thenation.com
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| Neo-Orwellian Fabrications Regarding Phony Iraqi-Al Qaida Links are Discredited by the CIA |
| 12.15.03 (12:32 pm) [edit] |
[b]The neo-con buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters are at it again[/b]-- in their [i]non-stop [/i]panicky & desperate attempts,[i] knowing no bounds[/i], to establish non-existant links [i]that have been denied & discredited by the CIA[/i], regarding Iraqi involvement in 9/11 ... and pre-war co-operation between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaida ...
Beware of sitting in the same restaurant or coffee shop with a complete stranger, across the room, who the neo-con "crazies" decide is an "enemy combattant" ... because even if you do not know, speak with, or interact with this "enemy combattant" ... you will be [i]linked-connected-and-a ssociated [/i]with him if it suits the squalid & sordid purposes of the corrupt Bush regime. Hell, if you happen to be visiting the same foreign country as one of their "enemies", watch-out-- you may be held accountable for terrorist attacks!
The neo-cons have employed their mendacious & fraudulent puppets, some of the exiles in Iraq who are disliked by the Iraqi people, like Ahmed Chalabi ([i]embezzler, thief & liar[/i]), to fabricate neo-lies, "[i]good news[/i]" propaganda-- that the discredited neo-fascists like the [i]Cheney-Rice-Rumsfeld-W olfowitz-Feith-Bolton [/i]gang can easily feed to their neo-orwellian[i] mouth-pieces [/i](e.g.[i] U.K. Telegraph, World Net Daily, Weekly Standard, Rush Limbaugh, etc[/i].) who [i]vomit it back into the laps [/i]of the American people ... without doing any research or verifying its' veracity ... These neo-con thugs & goons will do anything to retain power & grab riches-- and the [i]truth-be-damned [/i]as far as they are concerned ...
Consider "[i][b]The murky case of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man behind the neocons’ Sept. 11 obsession[/b][/i]" by Ed Blanche on http://www.dailystar.com.lb/o... :
BEIRUT: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a one-legged Jordanian Palestinian who by all accounts has become one of the most active of the terrorist commanders fighting the Americans and their allies, has been identified by Turkish authorities as the mastermind for the Istanbul bombings in November that killed 61 people and wounded more than 700.
The Bush administration has long branded him as the key link between Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda and the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001 an allegation that has been largely discredited but which hard-line conservatives, pushed onto the defensive by the anarchy in Iraq they failed to foresee, are resurrecting in a politically charged debate that could impact the 2004 electoral campaign.
The Americans insist that Zarqawi is a close associate of Osama bin Laden, but European intelligence agencies say that while he may share bin Laden’s ideology and pathological hatred of the West, and fought like the Al-Qaeda leader against the Soviet Army in the 1979-89 Afghan war, he operates independently and has his own fundamentalist organization, Al-Tawheed. The Palestinian-based group is dedicated to overthrowing the Jordanian monarchy and government.
Several Al-Tawheed cells have been rounded up in Western Europe and in Jordan in recent years.
Zarqawi, whose real name is Ahmed Fadeel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, has been central to the Bush administration’s allegations since Oct. 20, 2002, when George W. Bush made the case for the global terrorist threat allegedly posed by Saddam. As an example of high-level contacts between the Baghdad regime and Al-Qaeda, Bush identified Zarqawi as “one very senior Al-Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year and who has been associated with planning chemical and biological attacks.” Zarqawi was wounded in a US air strike in Afghanistan in late 2001, and made his way to Baghdad via Iran in March 2002. While in Baghdad one of his legs was amputated and he now uses an artificial limb.
On Feb. 5, 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had shown little enthusiasm for going to war with Iraq, told the UN Security Council that the administration had undeniable proof of a connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, and identified Zarqawi as the head of “a deadly terrorist network” based in Iraq, and as an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda lieutenants.”
US intelligence insiders, European intelligence officials who were tracking Zarqawi long before the Americans, and even Israeli intelligence, all cast considerable doubt on the US claims, and still do.
Zarqawi, 36, first became known as a player in the world of terrorism in 1999, when Jordanian authorities rounded up a cell of Islamic extremists who were later convicted mostly in absentia for plotting attacks on US and Israeli targets in the Hashemite kingdom. Four years later, he was considered a key terrorist leader and on Oct. 28, 2003, the Americans put a bounty of $5 million on his head.
He has been linked to a multitude of terrorist atrocities since 1999, and Turkey’s claim that he orchestrated the Istanbul bombings, albeit without any hard evidence provided, was a major boost to US conservatives who claim that he, and thus Al-Qaeda, were linked to Saddam.
Faced with the humiliation of failing to find any evidence that Saddam had active programs to develop weapons of mass destruction that threatened the “free world,” a primary justification for invading Iraq to which the administration clings with theological conviction, the neoconservatives in the Bush administration are once more trying hard to prove another of their pre-war claims, that Saddam was an international terrorist threat that had to be eliminated.
The irony is that the Americans, now grappling with an escalating insurgency in Iraq that is driving them to distraction, appear to have created in that country the very Frankenstein they conjured up to warrant their war there in the first place. It is probably true that among the insurgents are Islamic zealots and followers of bin Laden, for whom the conflict in Iraq, on Arab soil, has become part of the jihad against the United States and its allies. But the involvement of fighters with ideological links to Al-Qaeda hardly proves that Saddam had anything to do with the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001.
It seems that the post-invasion anarchy in Iraq has energized the neoconservatives in the administration to revive that claim. But it may also be a desperate ploy to counter their apparently diminishing influence in the White House because of the flawed strategy they provided regarding the invasion of Iraq.
There have been reports of contacts between Saddam’s inner circle and Al-Qaeda officials, including bin Laden, dating back long before Sept. 11. And in that time, Al-Qaeda operatives appear to have moved in and out of Baghdad without problems, but no concrete evidence of state sponsorship by the Baathist regime has ever surfaced. Still, US neocons continue to believe that Saddam was behind just about every terrorist attack on the US over the last decade. The State Department says the last such attack was the abortive attempt to assassinate George Bush the elder in Kuwait in 1993.
Amid growing pressure from Democrats, who charge that the Republican administration cooked intelligence to justify the war, the conservatives have been hitting back as the campaigning for the 2004 presidential election heats up. On Sept. 14, as US forces in Iraq reeled from one blow after another from an escalating insurgency against occupation, Vice-President Dick Cheney brought the debate back into sharp focus.
Cheney, whose power within the administration remains formidable and who avidly propagated the claim that Saddam was allied to Al-Qaeda, not only reasserted that allegation but claimed Baghdad helped, and probably financed, the Islamic terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in New York in February 1993. The neocons, including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, have been saying that for the last decade, but Cheney’s assertion added a new twist to the administration’s conspiracy theory.
The 1993 attack, the first act of international terrorism within the US, has never been attributed to Al-Qaeda, which at the time was in its formative stages, although some of those involved later became part of bin Laden’s network. One was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who became a senior operational chief for Al-Qaeda until he was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. During interrogation, according to intelligence sources, he repeatedly denied any operational Al-Qaeda links with Baghdad.
A new book, Bush vs The Beltway, by Laurie Mylroie, an American academic, Iraq specialist and rabidly devout believer in Saddam’s sponsorship of terror, and involvement in Sept. 11, claims that Mohammed was an Iraqi agent, but US authorities refuse to investigate.
On Sept. 17, Bush himself finally conceded that there was no firm evidence that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks disputing for the first time the claims made by his administration to justify the war against Iraq and, one could argue, distancing himself from the neocons in his administration. But he also insisted: “There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had Al-Qaeda ties.”
Then in late November, the right-wing US magazine The Weekly Standard, which has close ties to administration hawks, reported that Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary for defense for policy and planning and a key architect of the war with Iraq, had provided the US Senate Intelligence Committee with a 16-page memorandum of classified material that he claimed showed an operational link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.
The Oct. 27 memo listed 50 items of raw intelligence pointing toward such an unholy alliance. With the disclosure of the Feith memo, some conservative US commentators, including William Safire in The New York Times, have resurrected claims of linkage between Saddam and Sept. 11. Safire wrote on Nov. 25 that the memo buttressed those claims, and noted: “With so much connective tissue exposed some the result of ‘custodial interviews’ of prisoners the burden of proof has shifted to those grimly in denial.”
Bush may have rowed back on those claims, but a recent poll showed that 70 percent of Americans firmly believe Saddam had a hand in the suicide attacks of 2001, and as Safire notes, “in the murder of 3,000 Americans.” Cheney, the Darth Vader of the Bush administration, still insists there was an operational terrorist alliance between Saddam and bin Laden just as he remains unabashed about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction when all the evidence now points the other way.
Among the items cited in the Feith memo was the Czech intelligence service claim that Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian who led the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers, met at least twice in Prague in 2001 with Ahmed al-Ani, a senior Iraqi intelligence official then operating under diplomatic cover as the vice consul at Iraq’s embassy in the Czech capital, before the attacks on the US. Ani supposedly gave Atta access to $100,000.
The CIA has said it cannot confirm those meetings and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that at the time of one of the alleged contacts in Prague, on April 9, 2001, Atta was traveling between Virginia and Florida. Ani has been in the hands of the US Justice Department since July, but there has been no indication that he has confirmed meeting Atta on the dates cited. Farouk Hejazi, former head of external operations in the Iraqi intelligence service who reportedly met bin Laden and his Egyptian No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, during a secret mission to Afghanistan in December 1998, has also been in US custody since late April. If anyone could confirm any links between Saddam’s regime and Al-Qaeda it is Hejazi but again, nothing.
Ani’s predecessor in Prague, Jabr Salem, has defected to the British and has been interrogated by the Secret Intelligence Service, but there has been no whisper from that quarter to substantiate the alleged Baghdad link with Al-Qaeda. The large number of CIA operatives now in Baghdad has access to tons literally of meticulous files kept by Iraqi intelligence, but there has been no whiff of anything to validate the neocons’ claims.
In the meantime, the elusive Zarqawi remains at large, with his secrets. But even so, the betting is that the conservatives’ renewed claims that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden on Sept. 11 will haunt Bush as the election campaign gathers momentum and he will distance himself from them, further eroding their influence.
[i]Ed Blanche, a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, has covered Middle Eastern affairs for many years and is a regular contributor to The Daily Star. [/i]
[b]Another source[/b]:
"CIA Report-no link between AL-Qaida and Saddam" on http://www.vancouver.indymedi...
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| Bush Regime Admits To NBC News That Saddam Didn't Have WMDs Stockpiles ... Ooopppsss ... |
| 12.15.03 (11:33 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt neo-fascist Bush regime has finally been forced to acknowledge that they are LIARS ... and therefore, have committed CRIMES [/b]against (1) the[i] American people [/i]and the [i]U.S. Constitution [/i]... as misleading a nation into a war based on [i]false/phony [/i]pretexts is a crime in this country, (2) the entire world community who were [i]deceived [/i]at the United Nations, and (3) [i]Humanity[/i]-- as hundreds of U.S. service men & women have been slaughtered and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been massacred, in order to enrich their blood-thirsty corporate cronies: [i]Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, et al[/i].
[i]Ooopppsss[/i] ... the gluttonous neo-con "crazies" in the corrupt Bush regime made a "mistake" ... costing precious lives and our nation's treasure ... [i]Ooopppsss [/i]...
Consider "SADDAM HUSSEIN CAPTURED" on http://www.kpvi.com/index.cfm... : - [i]Excerpt [/i]-
[b]Today the man heading the hunt for WMD meets with CIA director George Tenet. But officials tell NBC News that David Kay's search teams have concluded that there were no stockpiles of weapons.[/b]
Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org , and demand that the fraudulent neo-fascist Bush regime be put on trial for [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i].
[b]Other sources[/b]:
[i]But in an indication that some of the euphoria over Saddam's capture may already be abating, Glen Rangwala, the anti-war British Indian international lawyer and political theorist at Cambridge University, raised some of the thorniest points of any future trial.
Rangwala, who last year embarrassingly exposed the Blair administration's plagiarised dossier on Iraqi WMD as a fraud, said the legality of any tribunal rested on UN Security Council endorsement[/i]. http://timesofindia.indiatime...
[i][b]and ...[/b][/i]
[i]Besides the tough questions surrounding Halliburton that may go unasked in the tide of Saddamania, there are other compelling issues which this glorious victory seems destined to sweep under the carpet. Where are those WMDs, anyway? How many civilians have we actually killed? Why are American service personnel still coming home in body bags, or with limbs missing?
And given that the pre-war justifications for an attack have been systematically dismantled and discredited ad nauseum – no ties to 9/11, no nuclear program, no chemical weapons, no anything – why have we sacrificed our global credibility, the goodwill of much of the world, and hundreds of U.S. soldiers in the hellhole that Iraq has become? If the Bush administration has its way, the world may never know[/i]. http://progressivetrail.org/a...
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| Saddam Hussein's Capture Is Yesterday's NEWS ... It's Time To Return To EARTH! |
| 12.15.03 (6:58 am) [edit] |
[b]The capture of Saddam Hussein is yesterday's [i]NEWS[/i] ... It is time to return to[i] Planet EARTH [/i]and [i]REALITY[/i] [/b]... The[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]committed by the corrupt neo-con Bush regime have not simply vanished ... we are still embroiled in bloody-wars-turned-guerri lla quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq ... in fact, another U.S. Soldier was killed after Saddam's capture.
Moreover, the [i][b]dire problems [/b][/i]we face, due to the[i][b] insane neo-fascist Bush policies here at home[/b][/i], still leave:
* Between 9-15 million people looking for jobs in an economy where Bush wiped out over 3 million jobs ([i]compared with Clinton who created 22 million jobs[/i]) ...
* Skyrocketing health care costs with between 45-85 million citizens with no health care coverage in the richest nation on the planet ([i]as compared with the costs of health care dropping during the Clinton years[/i]) ...
* Over 35 million families living below the ([i]1960s defined ... it is actually worse[/i]) poverty line and over 3.5 million people homeless ...
So, for concerned, conscientious citizens who are prepared to face the hard, cold unpleasant reality of life under a [i]corporate-take-all [/i]neo-con neo-fascist regime run by the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]... here are some more readings about the Saddam Hussein capture ... and why it is not all it is [i]'cracked-up' [/i]to be, by the extreme right-wing buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters in the neo-orwellian media:--
"[b]Hussein's Capture Is Yesterday's News[/b]" by Christopher Scheer on http://www.alternet.org/story...
"[b]One Tyrant Down ... Well, There Are At Least Two More Tyrants To Go!!![/b]" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"[b]Saddam Hussein Isn't GOD: He Is Finally Captured ... What About Tomorrow???[/b]" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| Health Care Costs Are UP ... Here Are Some Of The CULPRITS ... |
| 12.15.03 (6:30 am) [edit] |
[b]The Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]desperately hopes that the capture of Saddam Hussein will [i]wipe[/i] all of their other disastrous foreign & domestic policies "[i]off-the-radar[/i]" ... but it [i]does not [/i]because Americans are sufferring at the hands of this corrupt cabal of [i]corporate-take-all [/i]swindlers ...[/b]
[b]The costs of health care continue to skyrocket [/b]... and, it is scandalous that the U.S.A. is the only 1st-tier nation without a National Health Care system-- Americans reside in the only so-called civilized [sic] country ([i]the richest in the world[/i]) that is callous to the needs of the elderly, the sick and the vulnerable ([i]uh-huh, the rich & those with good health care coverage do just fine ... but for between 45-85 million of us, we are left destitute ...)[/i] ... Recently a PEW Research Center poll revealed that the majority of Americans support a Universal Health Care system http://www.tblog.com/template... .
[b]Please contact Congress [/b]on http://www.congress.org and demand a [i][b]National Health Care system [/b][/i]to ensure that our citizens are not left to die, suffer or be left bereft without basic health care.
Consider "[i][b]Healthcare costs are up. Here are the culprits[/b][/i]" on http://csmonitor.com/2003/121...
It is no secret to Americans that healthcare costs are soaring. But some of the causes of this escalation are startling. For example:
• Drug companies spend roughly as much on advertising and promotion - $20 billion a year - as they do on research and development of new drugs.
• Overall, American pharmaceutical firms employ one sales person for every physician in the country. They also pick up the tab for doctors to attend seminars promoting their products, which happen to take place in desirable locations, such as Florida and the Caribbean.
• New technology - from diagnostic devices to surgical techniques - accounts for more than half the rise in total healthcare spending in the past three years, says Andrew Tilton, an economist at Goldman Sachs, an investment bank in New York.
• Despite rising costs, profit margins on healthcare products and services, including health insurance, have been going up - rapidly - rather than down. Mr. Tilton says mergers have increased providers' pricing power.
Even before the new Medicare law extending prescription-drug benefits, experts had forecast higher costs ahead. The rising cost of healthcare affects all Americans, whether or not they make much use of the medical system. It means they have less to spend elsewhere.
"[Soaring US costs] just can't go on much longer," says Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) in Washington, D.C. "Things will happen."
The latest cost numbers indicate the growing economic challenge.
Already the nation is spending about $1.65 trillion a year on healthcare. That represents 15 percent of gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services. It consumes one-fourth of the federal budget, more than defense.
By comparison, Canada spends about 10 percent of GDP on a universal, government-run healthcare system. Further, Canadians live a bit longer on average than Americans. That suggests lower costs haven't damaged the health of Canadians.
[i][b]Outpacing inflation[/b][/i]
Surveying nearly 3,000 employers, Mercer Human Resource Consulting finds that their health-benefit costs rose 10.1 percent this year, while inflation hovered around 2 percent. (See chart.)
The cost increase is less than the nearly 15 percent rise in 2002. But it still means that costs for each active employee, including all medical and dental plans offered, rose from $5,645 in 2002 to $6,215 in 2003.
Using a broader database that covers individual costs as well, the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) in Washington, reckons that healthcare expenses per privately insured American slowed in the first half of 2003 to a 8.5 percent increase from a 10 percent rise in the second half of 2002. That includes hospital inpatient and outpatient services, physicians, and - rising fastest of all in recent years - prescription-drug costs.
As costs spiral upward, more and more Americans are being priced out of the healthcare market.
[i][b]Rising number of uninsured[/b][/i]
The latest statistics show 44 million Americans are not covered by any health insurance. This number is likely to increase as costs rise further.
Higher costs discourage employers, especially small businesses, from providing health benefits to employees. And since employers are already boosting the cost to employees of health benefits, fewer workers will enroll in their firms' health plans.
In smaller companies, only 48 percent of employees elect family coverage, down from 51 percent in 2002. The $359 average monthly bill for HMO coverage is just too much for many, and it's getting worse.
The Mercer survey found that employee contributions, especially for family coverage, rose sharply in 2003. In the three previous years, employers had passed on to employees only a portion of cost increases. This year, "employers took back the lost ground," says Mercer consultant Blaine Bos.
Critics say the new Medicare drug benefit will tempt more companies to drop their coverage of retirees, despite new subsidies to encourage continuation. The benefit, though primarily shifting drug costs from individuals to the federal government, is expected to add to overall drug consumption.
The cost of bringing a single new drug to market has risen to about $1.7 billion, calculates Bain & Co., a Boston consulting firm. That's up from $1.1 billion from 1995 to 2000. These totals involve commercialization costs, such as preparing marketing materials.
[i][b]Marketing that informs?[/b][/i]
Drug companies defend their marketing expenses as educational, saying doctors have little spare time to inform themselves of the latest advances.
But "nobody wants to be educated by somebody who wants to sell them something," says Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. He calls the seminars "small-scale bribery."
What's to be done about rising medical costs? Here are some suggestions by experts, not all politically easy to obtain:
• Provide more information to consumers on what drug works, what procedures are best, which hospitals and physicians have good records. Insurance, for instance, shouldn't cover extra costs if a patient uses a brand-name drug when a cheaper generic does the job.
• Cut off expensive treatment if it extends someone's life only a few days or months.
• Spend more on prevention of disease by encouraging better lifestyles, improved nutrition, and other steps.
• Ban or control the advertising of prescription drugs to consumers. The "hype" in the ads that pepper the evening news and other programs has swelled drug sales and taken up physicians' time, suggests Mr. Caplan. But there is little indication that the extra drug consumption has improved health by much.
• Cap malpractice awards so doctors need not prescribe so many tests and other defensive practices.
• Let HMOs and other healthcare providers return to tighter management of costs, procedures that worked in the 1990s but were abandoned after severe criticism by customers and the press.
[b][i]THE SKYROCKETING PRICE OF HEALTH BENEFITS[/b]: Medical costs for employers have outpaced inflation in all but four of the past 17 years. Among the culprits: expensive technology, less stringent HMO cost management, and rapidly rising drug costs. (Results for 1987-1998 include retired employees.) [/i]
[b]Refer To Table [/b]on http://csmonitor.com/2003/121... .
[b]Related stories[/b]:
"Bush signature won't end Medicare debate" on http://csmonitor.com/2003/120...
"Key provisions of new Medicare law" on http://csmonitor.com/2003/120...
"Seniors' old friend turns foe, for some" on http://csmonitor.com/2003/112...
"Medicare reform carries huge fiscal toll" on http://csmonitor.com/2003/101...
"A major Medicare expansion" on http://csmonitor.com/2003/061...
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| Rumsfeld Confirms Tonight: Saddam Hussein Not Connected To Al Qaida & Not Involved In 9/11 ... |
| 12.14.03 (5:42 pm) [edit] |
[b]Rummy Rumsfeld was interviewed this evening on [i]CBS "60 Minutes"[/i], in the aftermath of the capture of Saddam Hussein[/b]. Even Rumsfeld confirmed that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 ... and went on to confirm that he did not believe that there were any connections and/or links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. Maybe Rummy ought to inform Dubya who seems oblivious to reality http://www.tblog.com/template... ...
So much for the neo-con lies, deceptions & falsehoods perpetrated by the extreme right-wing neo-fascist [i]U.K. Telegraph[/i], quoted by the discredited [i]World Net Daily [/i] (also watch out for the PNAC groupies' neo-tyrannical [i]Weekly Standard[/i]) ... neo-orwellian [i]mouth-pieces [/i]of the liars, thugs & goons in the neo-con world of blood-lust for wars to enrich themselves & their corrupt corporate cronies ...
[b]Sources[/b]:
[i][b]CBS[/b] "[b]60 Minutes[/b]" [/i]Interview With Rumsfeld on 14th December 2003
"SADDAM A POW: RUMSFELD" on http://www9.sbs.com.au/thewor...®ion=4
"Saddam Sideshow Obscures Reality" on http://www.alternet.org/story...
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| A Tyrant Falls ... and Everybody Keeps on Spinning ... Ho ho ho!!! |
| 12.14.03 (3:27 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Bushies are desperate to recuperate some of their lost credibility ... Hell, do they [i]have[/i] any credibility left, except amongst their [i]brain-dead [/i]buffoons, [i]neo-con [/i]attack-dogs &[i] neo-fascist [/i]court-jesters??? [i]Hmmm ... there's one in every crowd, methinks [/i]...[/b]
[b]A tyrant falls...[/b]
[b]... [/b][i][b]and everybody keeps on spinning[/b][/i]. The President took the opportunity [today] to again falsely link http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... Saddam Hussein to international fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. Meanwhile, Joe Lieberman sunk to his lowest moment of an already spotty career with this extreme example of opportunism: "[i]If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would be in power today, not in prison[/i],” http://www.phxnews.com/fullst... Lieberman told NBC's "Meet the Press." Some of us just left the ABBA party. http://www.abbaparty.com/
[b]Anyone still curious about the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] immoral & anti-christian war-profiteering and/or those pesky WMDs posing an imminent threat to our national security (Dubya's[i] casus belli [/i]for war-mongering)?
Ho ho ho!!![/b]
[b]Source[/b]:
AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
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| Rumsfeld Gets To Meet Again With His Good, Good Buddy 'Saddam Hussein' ... |
| 12.14.03 (9:56 am) [edit] |
[image]SamAdams_85893824.jpg[/image]
[b]Rummy Rumsfeld [i](... and, Cheney & the Gang[/i]) happily gets to meet again with his good, good buddy: Saddam Hussein ... Wonder what insane neo-con, neo-fascist [i]screeds[/i], will be dreamt-up in the "bowels" of their torture chambers, by Karl [i]'Joseph Goebbles' [/i]Rove, Rummy Rumsfeld & Wolfy Wolfowitz ... "cooked-up" for Saddam Hussein to re-gurgitate for our neo-orwellian consumption?[/b]
[b]Crude Vision[/b] on http://www.guerrillanews.com/...
[i][b]The Secret History of the Aqaba Pipeline[/b][/i]
In the early 1980's Iraq and America's newest enemy Iran were locked in a vicious conflict. The use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein was well-known. In fact, in November 1983, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz received an intelligence report describing how Saddam Hussein's troops were resorting to "almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]" in their war against the Iranians.
Undeterred by the reports, one month later, President Reagan dispatched a special envoy to Baghdad on a secret mission.
On December 20, the envoy met with Saddam Hussein. He was not there to lecture the dictator about his use of weapons of mass destruction or the fine print of the Geneva Conventions. He was there to talk business.
The envoy informed the Iraqi leader that Washington is ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a recently declassified State Dept. report of the conversation, and that Washington would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West." Iraqi leaders later described themselves as "extremely pleased" with the visit.
The envoy was Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Searle. The meeting is widely considered to be the trigger that ushered in a new era of U.S.-Iraq relations, one that opened the door to shipments of dual-use munitions, chemical, biological agents and other dubious technology transfers. But for years what exactly was discussed in that now infamous meeting has been shrouded in secrecy.
Until now.
In a recently released investigative report from the Institute for Policy Studies entitled Crude Vision: How Oil Interests Obscured U.S. Government Focus On Chemical Weapons Use by Saddam Hussein, researchers Jim Vallette, Steve Kretzmann, and Daphne Wysham detail the real reason Donald Rumsfeld was sent to Baghdad: Rumsfeld, under direct instructions from the White House, was there to convince Saddam Hussein to approve a highly lucrative, and highly secret, oil pipeline project from Iraq to Jordan.
Examining recently released government and corporate sources, the researchers document how a close-knit group of high-ranking U.S. officials worked in secrecy for two years attempting to secure the billion dollar pipeline scheme for the Bechtel corporation. The Bush/Cheney administration now eyes Bechtel as a primary contractor for the rebuilding of Iraq's infrastructure.
Bechtel's pipeline would have carried a million barrels of Iraqi crude oil a day through Jordan to the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
What happened to the pipeline deal? What trade-offs were made? Who were the players? How did Israel fit into the scheme? What impact did it have on current U.S. policy?
For answers to these questions, and links to the original memos and declassified cables, read GNN's Cointel interview with the report's lead author Jim Vallette here:
[i][b]Crude Vision[/b][/i]:
"[i]While Iraq is not unique in possessing these weapons, it is the only country which has used them - not just against its enemies, but its own people as well. We must assume that Saddam is prepared to use them again. This poses a danger to our friends, our allies, and to our nation. Saddam is more wily, brutal and conspiratorial than any likely conspiracy the U.S. might mobilize against him. Saddam must be overpowered[/i]." - [b]Donald Rumsfeld, Robert McFarland, Judge William Clark, "Open Letter to the President," Feb. 19, 1998 [/b]
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]What are the origins of western involvement in Iraq's oil[/i]?
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: The U.S. and the British have a history of intervention in Iraq for oil. It really goes back over seventy years to 1911 when the British, German and Turkish formed a pipeline consortium interest. After WWI, the U.K. took over Iraq and installed a king and took over this oil consortium. Herbert Hoover, the former U.S. president, forced the British to allow what is now Exxon Mobil into the consortium. So by the 1920's you had a king installed by the British and you had oil exploration and production controlled by the origins of British Petroleum (BP), Exxon, Mobil, TotalFinaElf of France and Shell. From the 20's through the 60's, starting with the British and then with the U.S., there was a considerable backlash among the Iraqi people against the control of their resources.
There were interventions to get folks out of power who wanted to nationalize the oil company. In 1958, [Col.] Kassem took over in a coup and started nationalizing parts of the Iraq Petroleum Company. In 1963, the CIA assisted in a coup that wound up with an important deal and their oil interests somewhat protected.
Then the Baath Party took over in 1968 and a few years later in 1972 they nationalized the oil interests of Exxon Mobil and BP.
That was the end of sixty-one years of a British and U.S. stranglehold over Iraq's oil. It severed the relationship between the U.S., U.K. and Iraq on a business and political level. They turned their support to the north where the Shah Reza Pahlavi was a very tight friend of the British and Americans. But then, the Iranian revolution in 1979 swept him from power and made Iran a mortal enemy of the U.S.
Almost immediately Reagan put out an olive branch to Saddam. He took Iraq off the list of states that support terrorism, despite evidence that they still did - including harboring master terrorist Abu Nidal.
A year later the Iran-Iraq war started and the Reagan Administration took over. Almost immediately they put out an olive branch to Saddam, saying they were interested in reestablishing business connections. They took Iraq off the list of states that support terrorism, despite evidence that they still did [including harboring master terrorist Abu Nidal]. But that allowed the sale of dual-use munitions to Iraq.
In 1983, these business interests ratcheted up quite a bit after Bechtel officials met with State Department officials to discuss a plan to build an oil pipeline from Iraq to Jordan. George Shultz, the Secretary of State, had gone from being president and CEO of the Bechtel Group directly into the Reagan Administration.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]Tell me about Bechtel[/i].
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: Bechtel is a privately held company, one of the largest construction companies in the world. They and Halliburton are dominating the contracting for post-war Iraq. They have deep ties with the Bush-Cheney Administration.
Shultz went straight from Bechtel to the White House, where he promoted this pipeline idea. They hired Donald Rumsfeld, who was then the CEO of Searle pharmaceutical company, for a couple of months as a special envoy to the Middle East, where he made several trips.
It was never clear what Rumsfeld was doing in Baghdad in December 1983. Newly released documents reveal he had marching orders from George Shultz to promote a pipeline deal on behalf of Bechtel, Shultz's former company.
In the public realm, these trips have always been described as peace missions, but it was never clear what Donald Rumsfeld was doing in Baghdad in December 1983 in his meeting with Saddam Hussein. But from papers that were released by the National Security Archive, and by papers I found in the government's National Archives, it is very clear in their own words that George Shultz gave Donald Rumsfeld marching orders to go to Baghdad and promote this Bechtel pipeline to Saddam.
In that meeting, Saddam told Rumsfeld that he thought this was a good idea since we needed to avoid the Persian Gulf where the Iranians were attacking Iraqi ships. This would be a pipeline that would go west through Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba, and into the Red Sea, circumventing the Persian Gulf.
But Saddam told Rumsfeld that he was worried about the possibility of the Israelis attacking the pipeline. In his note back to Shultz, Rumsfeld said this is something we need to talk to the Israelis about. So for the next few years, while Saddam Hussein was unleashing thousands of chemical bombs on the Iranians, the Reagan Administration and many of the architects of this war were spending their time shuttling back and forth between Baghdad, Amman, Israel and Washington, trying to get the Israelis to guarantee that there wouldn't be an attack on the pipeline and to assuage Saddam's fears that there wouldn't be an attack.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]The Israelis had attacked their nuclear plant at Osirak in 1982[/i].
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: Exactly. It was fresh in their minds. There were all sorts of mechanisms that were put into place. Shultz's State Deptartment pressured another U.S. agency, the U.S. Export Import Bank that loans and credits exports to overseas projects, to extend hundreds of millions of dollars to their project. Then the National Security Agency put similar pressure on another agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corp., to give insurance to the project, all designed to allay Saddam's concerns.
"It got dirtier and dirtier." Bechtel hired a Swiss billionaire to bribe Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
A lot of this was being hatched out of the Bechtel offices, in cahoots with their buddies in the State Department and the National Security Council, and this went on for two years. It got dirtier and dirtier. Bechtel met with a Swiss billionaire Bruce Rappaport, who was close personal friends with the Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Rappaport and another agent E. Robert Wallace tried to make certain arrangements with the Israeli government, which included funneling off oil pipeline profits into Peres' Labor Party.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]Pipeline protection money. [Peres was reportedly offered $700 million over ten years. Rappaport was later investigated by the FBI for illegal oil dealing. Wallace and his former client Attorney General Edwin Meese were investigated by a special prosecutor for their role in the bribing scandal. See the National Security Archive for an extensive list of documents relating to the scandal, including a photo of Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and Reagan.] [/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: Exactly. They also looked at ways of dedicating Defense Department funds as a way of insuring against attack, and were looking at all sorts of mechanisms off the books that would set up this deal. This is what really preoccupied U.S. policy with Iraq at the same time Saddam Hussein was unleashing weapons of mass destruction.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]At one point, at the same time the State Department was urging the Export-Import Bank to push through this loan for the pipeline, the State Department itself was issuing statements criticizing Iraq for using chemical weapons. It's taken so long for this major operation to come out, it must have been very top secret. How aware where they in keeping it under wraps? [/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: There was definitely an assumption that these documents were never going to come out.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]How were they just sitting in the National Archives?[/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: There was an independent investigation into Edwin Meese, who was made the Attorney General under Reagan in 1985, and his relationship with E. Robert Wallach, who was one of the pipeline agents. He owed money to Wallach, who was an attorney, from a past defense. Wallach, once hired, went straight to Meese and said can you get your boys and get the ball rolling on this pipeline? And Meese did get the ball rolling in the National Security Council.
The timing of the official proclamations was interesting.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]Yes, were those same people issuing statements condemning Iraq aware of these back channel deals going on?[/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: Sure, in these memoranda you can see that in behind the scenes communications, they were saying, 'of course we had to say something about this, but just don't source your chemical weapons from the U.S. - don't embarrass us because we don't want this issue to dominate our bi-lateral relationship.'
Later, in March 1984 the United Nations had a team of experts go to Iran who came back and reported on March 28th that indeed Iraq had used chemical weapons on Iranians that same day Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad trying to push the pipeline deal.
Then things kind of cooled off, first with the Israeli elections. The Labor Party took over from the Likud Party as the dominant party in Israel and they had been relying on contacts with the existing government in Israel. It took about six months for Bechtel to work out this deal to find this other way, which they did in January 1985, when Bechtel worked out a deal with this Swiss billionaire Bruce Rappaport, who was close friends with Peres. Throughout 1985, Peres provided certain levels of guarantees, which got stronger and stronger as the pot sweetened. In the summer of '85, Bechtel and the pipeline and others hired two very high level officials; one was James Schlesinger, who was a Defense Secretary in the 1970s [and a CIA Director]. They also hired Judge William Clark, who was known as the Second Reagan or his right hand man. He was National Security Advisor for Reagan, left office and took a $500/hour job to promote the plan. He flew to the Middle East to discuss the pipeline, representing himself not as a pipeline agent but as being on [official] White House business.
I'm not making this up. Folks can read all of this themselves. It was really amazing to see all this stuff unfold and piece it together, and these are the same guys who are using this justification for the invasion of Iraq that Saddam must be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction. They say it doesn't have anything to do with oil.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]Why did Saddam ultimately decide not to go through with the deal at the end of 1985?[/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: A couple of things happened. Around this time he was also negotiating to do deals to do pipelines through Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and those were completed. He also thought Bechtel was overpricing the project. Bechtel said it was a billion dollar project to build it. Saddam apparently thought it would be half of that.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]It fell through on the numbers.
They were steaming mad. Reagan's boys had expended a lot of political capital on this. They turned a blind eye to chemical attacks for naught.[/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: There may have been an element of Saddam using the U.S. as leverage against these other contracts. They were steaming mad. Bechtel was steaming. The Reagan Administration had expended a lot of political capital on this. They turned a blind eye to chemical attacks for naught.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]How did U.S.-Iraqi relations progress from there? [/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: That was really the last big effort to expand business ties between Washington and Baghdad. But Iran was still... there was still some relations between the first Bush Administration and Saddam allowing some dodgy technologies to get in there. Then it became 1990, and Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait of being in cahoots with the United States in influencing oil prices, which Saddam claimed was a threat to Iraq's national security, and with that pretext he invaded Kuwait.
Since then, the U.S. has seen oil contracts go to other countries like France, Russia and China. These are multi-billion dollar contacts. Beyond that the landscape hasn't really changed, in terms of what weapons and what tactics he has used to stay in power. But what has changed in the intervening 12 or 15 years, has been this lucre being parceled out to other interests.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]And these guys got back into power. Do you think there's a personal feeling of resentment that these guys spent the good part of the early 80's trying to do a deal that never happened?[/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: They keep calling him a wily dictator that can concoct these wild schemes greater than anything the U.S. could concoct against him, so maybe that reflects some sort of psychological state remnant of their dealings in the 80's.
In the 90's, a lot of these guys were in think tanks and in business concocting the current strategy against Iraq. In a lot of their papers, and in their testimonies before Congress up until last year, they were justifying their attack on Iraq in terms of oil. As recently as last August when Dick Cheney spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and kind of launched this whole initiative, they raised the specter of Saddam holding weapons of mass destruction and holding oil hostage from the global community. Since August of last year, the Bush/Cheney Administration has completely eliminated the word oil from their dictionary.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]What has been the response to your report? Any contact with the Times or the Post?[/i]
[b]Jim Vallette[/b]: There is always hope. The alternative media is the best hope for the truth, especially in times of war. We'll see what happens. There is already talk in mainstream media about who will get the spoils of war, so maybe this will filter into that.
In some ways I wish I had found these documents earlier. It's kind of late.
[b]GNN[/b]: [i]Well, this information is extremely important to understand the secret history of how the U.S. and Iraq have been dealing with each other and to see through the hypocrisy of the weapons of mass destruction rhetoric. And I applaud you for digging this out. [/i]
Read the entire "[i][b]Crude Vision[/b][/i]" report here (PDF) on http://www.ips-dc.org/crudevi...
[b]Additional documents with links on http://www.guerrillanews.com/... [/b]:
07/20/84: Memo from Bechtel to energy ministries of Iraq and Jordan
07/26/84: Internal memo, Bechtel
10/15/84: Correspondence between Bechtel and Placke (State Dept.)
10/15/84: Notes from the first Rappaport/Bechtel meeting
01/07/85: Internal memo, Bechtel
01/23/85: Internal memo, Bechtel
02/08/85: Internal memo, Bechtel
05/03/85: Internal memo, Bechtel
05/03/85: Letter from law firm to Bechtel
06/14/85: Letter from law firm to Bechtel
07/11/85: Letter from William Clark to E. Robert Wallach
08/01/85: Internal memo, Bechtel
09/25/85: Letter from Shimon Peres to Edwin Meese
01/30/86: Internal memo, Bechtel
02/07/86: Internal memo, Bechtel
[i]National Archives documents can be found on the National Security Archive web site. You can also find video of Donald Rumsfeld's December 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein. http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB 82/ [/i]
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| One Tyrant Down ... Well, There Are At Least Two More Tyrants To Go!!! |
| 12.14.03 (8:08 am) [edit] |
[b]One tyrant down ... The Bush regime's dictator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer says "[i]We got him, the tyrant is a prisoner[/i]" ... Well, there are at least two more tyrants to go!!![/b]
Finally after over 7 months of searching by the U.S. Military and a [i]$25 Million Bounty[/i] on his head, Saddam Hussein is captured ... Apparently the U.S. Military has whisked Saddam Hussein [i]out of Iraq [/i]-- the Bushies want a[i] long, long, long public trial [/i]in order to divert the attention of the American & Iraqi peoples until around [i]November 2004[/i]! Anyone want to "[i]Connect the Dots[/i]"?
The neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]are the luckiest [i]criminals[/i] on earth ... When Dubya returned from his Crawford vacation ([i]he takes the longest vacations of any president in US history[/i]) in the summer of 2001, he came under attack for doing absolutely nothing ([i]why should he? it's how Bushy-boy amassed his ill-gotten gains[/i]) about the Enron & corporate scandals ([i]Dubya's buddy Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay raped his employees, retirees & investors, making off with hundreds of millions of dollars-- and these corporate swindlers are still at large[/i]) as well as, the Energy Swindle in California & across America ([i]rigged to gouge consumers for billions in profits ... following secret "energy meetings" with neo-fascist Cheney[/i]) ... Americans were[i] very, very, very [/i]unhappy and Dubya's job approval ratings were[i] in the toilet [/i]... then [i]up, up, up [/i]and [b]9/11 happens ... Bush got lucky![/b]
The mendacious Bush regime lies, deceives us and fabricates falsehoods to invade Afghanistan & Iraq in order to enrich their corrupt corporate cronies: [i]Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, et al. [/i]... There were no WMDs, no threats posed by Saddam Hussein ... Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida network attacked the U.S.A.-- not Saddam Hussein ...
Increasingly over the past few months, criticism of Dubya and his gang of neo-con thugs & goons, has increased because Americans started to [i]wake-up to the fact[/i] that we've been ruthlessly scammed ... We've been conned by the Bushies with regards to their foreign wars for business war-profiteering abroad-- and here at home, the whorish Bush family & their corporate pimps are swindling & looting American taxpayers in the most ruthless & un-democratic plunder in our nation's history. The Bushies have created a fiscal[i] 'train-wreck' [/i]in the making ... in progress ... as the largest deficits in our nation's history & job losses since the Great Depression, are threatening our economic stability and well-being.
Even the recent [i]tip-of-the-iceberg[/i] of war-profiteering, represented by Halliburton's [i]price-gouging [/i]of the American taxpayers in their criminal abuse of no-bid, no-audit, no-accountability contracts awarded by the Bushies-- is now "[i]off the radar[/i]" thanks to this[i] sensational [/i]news ... and, yet the war-profiteering & price-gouging is the bigger story and affects the way our government operates and the U.S. economy ...
... and then [i]up, up, up [/i]and [b]Saddam Hussein ([i]one mad tyrant "out of power" according to the Bushies' 1st May's "Mission Accomplished" buffoonery[/i]) is captured ... again, Bush gets lucky![/b]
Hopefully, Americans will not be [i]neo-con conned [/i]again-- and will not allow this so-called "[i]victory[/i]" to outweigh the [i]many, many, many crimes [/i]committed by the neo-fascist Mad King George & his neo-nazi regime-- to be buried by their bulldozers in their neo-con, neo-orwellian media.
[b]Oh ... and the two other tyrants, at large, instead of in prison where they belong? ... The tyrants [i]who actually HAVE [/i][u]reeked havoc[/u] upon the U.S.A.:
[i]Osama bin Laden[/i], and
[i]George W. Bush[/i].[/b]
[b]Sources[/b]:
"'We got him, the tyrant is a prisoner'" on http://www.heraldsun.news.com...,5478,8166236%255E663,00.html
CBS News Special Report with Dan Rather, 14 December 2003
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| Dubya's Neo-Con CON with regards to Halliburton War-Profiteering ... |
| 12.13.03 (11:19 am) [edit] |
[b]C'mon folks ... Are you really ready to buy Neil Bush's [i]snake oil [/i]... Jeb Bush's Florida [i]swamp land [/i]... or Dubya's [i]neo-con CON [/i]with regards to their despicable war-profiteering by Halliburton & his corporate cronies ([i]one wonders what else Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, et al. are up to[/i] ... the Bush family is making a fortune! ...) ... We've just witnessed the [i]tip of the iceberg [/i]of the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] swindle of America ...[/b]
[i][b]Consider this ... [/b][/i]
[b]Okay, this may call for what, back in the old days, we used to call reporting.[/b]
Yesterday, President Bush said that if Halliburton's overcharged then they've gotta pay up.
"[i]I appreciate the Pentagon looking out after the taxpayers' money[/i]," the president said. "[i]They put the issue right out there on the table for everybody to see, and they're doing good work. We're going to watch, we're going to make sure that as we spend the money in Iraq that it's spent well and spent wisely. And their investigation will lay the facts out for everybody to see[/i]."
[i][b]Yet, just a week earlier, acting on the president's orders, the Deputy Secretary of Defense signed a directive which hamstrung precisely the sort internal audits of the funds Congress just approved for work in Iraq [ http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ] [/b][/i]-- [i][b]just the sort of crackerjack oversight the president says he loves[/b][/i].
Earth to daily newspaper reporters: these two things don't match up.
Don't be scared off. This one doesn't even require any serious investigtive reporting. Just get a hold of the December 3rd memo Paul Wolfowitz wrote, which set up the IG's office that Congress authorized to oversee the money to be disbursed under the 2004 Emergency Supplemental.
[b]C'mon, you can do it! I believe in you![/b]
[b]Sources[/b]:
TalkingPointsMemo on http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
"Remarks by the President and HUD Deputy Secretary Jackson in Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Announcement" on http://releases.usnewswire.co...
"Inside Defense" on http://www.insidedefense.com/...
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| Dubya's Corrupt Fiscal Policies Cause Dollar To Fall, Fall, Fall, Fall, Fall, Fall, Fall, Fall ... |
| 12.13.03 (7:10 am) [edit] |
[b]Dubya's corrupt neo-fascist fiscal policies are causing investors here at home and abroad to dump their dollars ... Who can possibly have confidence in this [i]corporate-rape-all [/i]Bush regime? ... Nobody with an iota of brain-matter ... which is why you [i]ain't[/i] witness to any rush to invest in the stock-market, which isn't exactly skyrocketing upwards! ... Who is so dumb as to invest in the Enron-style stock market (since the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] never did, [i]as promised[/i], demand [i]systemic changes to stop the fraudulent accounting standards permitting corporate crooks to swindle investors, workers & pensioners[/i])! ... Anyone want to "[i]Connect the Dots[/i]"?[/b]
Meanwhile, the dollar continues to fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall ... which means that imported goods cost more now ([i]most of our goods ... since the neo-buffoon Dubya has stupidly decimated our manufacturing industry -- wiping out manufacturing jobs at the highest rate in our nation's history ... with a loss of over 3.3 million jobs in his disastrous term-in-office ... and between 9-15 million people out of work[/i]) ... Hope you got huge tax cuts ... you did if you are a corporation or in the top filthy rich 5% of plutocrats ... Otherwise, any small bone of a pittance thrown your way to [i]shut-you-up [/i]([i]tax cuts will expire in 2005 for working Americans ... but not for the corporations or the top 5% wealthiest ...[/i]) is wiped-out by inflation ... i.e. higher costs!
Consider "[b]Dollar continues downward slide ... [/b]" on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/bu... :
The US dollar continued its slide against the euro on Friday, tumbling to a new record low and taking declines this year to nearly 15%.
Comments by Treasury Secretary John Snow and worse-than-expected consumer sentiment data weighed on the currency.
Also denting investor confidence were reports on the US trade and budget deficits, which showed them widening.
The dollar slid to $1.23 to the euro, before rebounding slightly. It also dropped against the pound and yen.
[b]Orderly retreat [/b]
Mr Snow said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that the drop in the dollar had been "orderly" and noted that on a "trade-weighted basis" the currency is still higher than it has been for most of the past 25 years.
Those comments were seen by many analysts to signal that the Bush administration is not overly concerned about the weakness of the dollar and may be willing to let it slide further.
President George W Bush later said his government was in favour of a strong dollar, though this is something that has been repeated throughout the currency's recent declines.
One of the main problems is that interest rates are at the lowest levels in almost 50 years and many investors are finding better returns outside of the US.
Without them buying the dollar and US assets, the currency has softened.
[b]No rush [/b]
Friday's University of Michigan reading on consumer sentiment has made it unlikely the Federal Reserve will rush to increase borrowing costs, economists said.
With domestic demand subdued and the economy in the early stages of recovery, inflation is less of a concern.
The University said its measure of sentiment came in at 89.6 for December, far below the forecasted 96.
America's trade deficit, meanwhile, hit a new record annual high of $490.8bn.
The figure, much worse than last year's $418.04bn, comes after October's rise of $41.77bn - the highest since March.
[b]Keep widening[/b]
A separate report, meanwhile, showed that tax cuts and the cost of keeping troops in Iraq will mean the biggest ever budget deficit this year.
In November, the government's spending shortfall totalled $43bn.
While that is less than in November last year, the total deficit in the first 11 months of the year was a record $375bn.
[b]Other sources[/b]:
"Point/Counterpoint on the Bush Regime's Neo-Fascist Fiscal Policy" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"Bush Tax Cuts Result in the "Death of Manufacturing" & the Highest Loss of Jobs in Over 60 Years" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"Irresponsible Tax Cuts Sold as Fiscal Responsibility" on http://www.americanprogress.o...
"ECONOMY: Silence on Unemployment" on http://www.americanprogress.o...%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A52 1-5D6FF2E06E03%7D/031212.HTM#3
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| Hypocritical Dumb-Dubya Worships $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ |
| 12.13.03 (6:47 am) [edit] |
[b]Hypocritical Dumb-Dubya worships $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ ... $$$ -- [/b]There is[b] NO BUSINESS [/b]like [b]WAR BUSINESS [/b]... and boy are the squalid Bush family, the anal-retentive Cheneys, and their [i]corporate-take-all [/i]crooks ([i]Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, etc[/i].) ... and their other war-profiteers ([i]Neil & Jeb Bush-- & other Bush whores & pimps ala "Mother Hen" Rice-a-Roni, Wolfy Wolfowitz, Rummy Rumsfeld, etc.[/i]) are cashing in big time!
Indeed, both of neo-fascist Dubya's bloody guerrilla quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq have caused internal fiascos in both war-torn countries ([i]much to the delight of the neo-con thugs & goons who are war-profitting big time[/i]) ...[b] What "[i]mission[/i]" has been "[i]accomplished[/i]"? [/b]Murder, massacre, rape, plunder & loot of the[i] not-rich [/i]American taxpayers, Afghanistani & Iraqi peoples-- all of this horrendous carnage, mayhem & misery to enrich the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta,[/i] who should be tried for [i][b]Crimes Against Humanity[/b][/i].
In "[b]The same old racket in Iraq - To the victors, the spoils: Bush's colonialism will only deepen resistance[/b]" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1106238,00.html :
[i][b]Iraq remains a country of unbearable suffering, the sort that only soldiers and administrators acting on behalf of states and governments are capable of inflicting on their fellow humans[/b][/i]. It is the first country where we can begin to study the impact of a 21st-century colonisation. This takes place in an international context of globalisation and neo-liberal hegemony. If the economy at home is determined by the primacy of consumption, speculation as the main hub of economic activity and no inviolate domains of public provision, only a crazed utopian could imagine that a colonised Iraq would be any different.
The state facilities that were so carefully targeted with bombs and shells have now to be reconstructed, but this time under the aegis of private firms, preferably American, though Blair and Berlusconi, and perhaps plucky Poland too, will not be forgotten at handouts time. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton, awarded a contract (without any competition) to rebuild Iraq's oil industry, is happily boosting profits by charging the US government $2.64 a gallon for the fuel it trucks into Iraq from Kuwait. The normal price per gallon in the region is 71 cents, but since the US taxpayer is footing the bill, nobody cares.
The secret plan to privatise the country by selling off its assets to western corporations was drafted in February this year and surfaced in the Wall Street Journal, which helpfully explained that "for many conservatives, Iraq is now the test case for whether the United States can engender American-style free-market capitalism within the Arab world". Worried by the leaks, Bush and Blair issued a user-friendly joint statement on April 8, stressing that Iraq's oil and other natural resources are "the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit". But who decides on behalf of the Iraqi people - Bremer/Chalabi or Chalabi/Bremer?
Iraq's state-run health service, which, prior to the killer sanctions, was the most advanced in the region, is now being privatised, courtesy of Abt Associates, a US firm specialising in privatisations that has clearly been forgiven its record of "invoice irregularities" by its Washington patron. Its first priority is instructive. It has demanded armoured cars for its staff. Khudair Abbas, the orthopaedic surgeon from Ilford and "minister for health" in the puppet government, was recently in London boasting of the state-of-the-art hospitals they would soon build to create a "two-tier health system". Sound familiar?
This week Bush amplified US policy by insisting on the time-honoured norm: to the victor, the spoils. Why should those countries (Germany, France, China, Russia, etc) that had refused to make the necessary blood sacrifice expect a share of the loot? The EU is screaming "foul", and its bureaucrats are suggesting that by denying the non-belligerent states equal opportunities to exploit an occupied Iraq, the US is withdrawing itself from the groove of capitalist legality. These arguments won't carry much weight in Washington, but if China, Russia and France insist that, as the occupying powers, the US and Britain should immediately meet the debts incurred by the former Iraqi regime, there might be some basis for negotiation. A few bones in the shape of juicy subcontracts could be thrown in the direction of China and the EU, but only if they stop whingeing and behave themselves in public.
On its own, the privatisation plan, if implemented successfully, would be a disaster for the bulk of Iraqi citizens (as is the case in most of Latin America and central Asia), but the situation here is unique. These "reforms" are being imposed at tank point. Many Iraqis perceive them as a recolonisation of the country, and they have provoked an effective and methodical resistance. On the military level, the situation continues to deteriorate, thus remaining the source of numerous internal difficulties and sustaining friction and strife within the west.
In a recent dispatch from Baghdad in the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner reported that in the two months (October and November) he spent in the occupied city, the number of daily attacks on US troops had more than doubled, from 15 to 35, and behind the bombings of other targets "one can see a rather methodical intention to sever, one by one, with patience, care and precision, the fragile lines that still tie the occupation authority to the rest of the world". How will the occupying armies respond? In the only way they can, with the traditional methods of colonial rule. The Israelis are trying their best to help, but they haven't been too successful themselves.
On December 7, the front page of the New York Times carried a report from Dexter Filkins in Baghdad. Its opening paragraph could have applied to virtually any major colonial conflict of the past century: "As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire. In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning relatives of suspected guerrillas in hope of pressing insurgents to turn themselves in."
During the first phase of European colonisation, it was the companies that were provided with a charter to raise their own armies to defend their commercial interests. The British and Dutch East India companies took India and Java. Later, their countries' empires moved in to take control and consolidate the gains. It was different in the Americas. Here it was always a case of "send in the marines". General Smedley Butler, a much-decorated and celebrated US war hero of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with 34 years' military service, later reflected on his campaigns and produced a telling volume entitled War as a Racket. He explained his central thesis thus: "I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism... I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long."
The 21st-century colonial model appears to be a combination of the two approaches. Specialist companies are now encouraged to provide "security". They employ the mercenaries, and their profits are ensured by the state that hires them. They are backed up by the real army and, more importantly, by air power, to help defeat the enemy. But none of this will work if the population remains hostile. And large-scale repression only helps to unite the population against the occupiers. The fear in Washington is that the Iraqi resistance might attempt a sensational hit just before the next presidential election. The fear in the Arab east is that Bush and Cheney might escalate the conflict to retain the White House in 2004. Both fears may well be justified.
· [i]Tariq Ali's latest book, Bush in Babylon: The Re-colonisation of Iraq, is published by Verso [/i]
[b]Other sources[/b]:
"Plunder goes on across Afghanistan as looters grow ever bolder" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/afg...,1284,1106359,00.html
"CIA to step up operations in Iraq as attacks on US troops continue" on http://news.independent.co.uk...
"U.S. Troops Shoot Dead 'Drive By' Tikriti Gunman" on http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Wo...
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| Why Social Security Is GOOD ... |
| 12.12.03 (6:26 pm) [edit] |
[b]The richest nation in the history of the world is rapidly becoming the most petty-minded, greedy and spoilt ... if anything, that will prove our downfall ... [/b]Social safety-nets are not only moral and sane, producing a better society ([i]as proved when the vast majority belong to the Middle-Class ... instead of the Neo-Feudal Slave State with a few plutocrats amassing the vast wealth of a nation, and the remainder of citizens left destitute and miserable[/i]) ... but also, it creates an environment of greater prosperity and scientific & social advancements-- and also much, much lower crime rates.
Social security is one of the too few safety-nets that still remains, which the corrupt neo-fascist Bush regime wants to eliminate in order to swindle workers ([i]look at the stock-market plundering & looting ... and no systemic changes have been made to obstruct Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay style crimes[/i]) out of their life savings & retirement ... Do not let the [i]neo-con con-artists [/i]plunder and loot our vulnerable and elderly citizens ... We do not need another Enron-style scam on a national level!
[b]Why Social Security Is GOOD ... Read on ...[/b]
"[b]You're in good hands with Social Security ... But privatization proposals would unravel its ability to insure against loss of income, disability, and death[/b]" by the [i][b]Economic Policy Institute [/b][/i]on http://www.epinet.org/content...
President Bush's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, having apparently discovered that it can't rely on sound economics to defend partial privatization, has instead chosen to falsely discredit the existing program by suggesting it is a bad deal for African Americans and women. "[F]ailure to restructure Social Security poses a disproportionate threat to the overall retirement security of women," the commission stated in its July report, adding, "African Americans are disproportionately threatened by the financing shortfalls facing the current system." But the commission's tactic is transparently belied by facts: for the past 66 years, Social Security has offered a safety net for workers and their families in the event the primary source of family income is lost due to retirement, disability, or death. In these situations, women, children, low-wage workers, and African Americans benefit greatly from Social Security.
Social Security is a three-pronged insurance program: it insures against loss of income due to retirement, death, or disability. About two-thirds of Social Security's expenditures pay for retirement benefits. The average elderly household receives 58% of its income from Social Security, and without these benefits an additional 39% of the elderly would fall into poverty. Moreover, Social Security's retirement benefit program offers insurance both against low lifetime earnings, since lower lifetime earners receive relatively higher benefits than do higher lifetime earners, and against old-age poverty, since it pays guaranteed, inflation-proof benefits regardless of life expectancy. Low-wage workers and women (who tend to live longer than men and have lower lifetime earnings than men) benefit especially from these retirement insurance features.
Social Security is also a large disability and life insurance program -about a third of expenditures pay for survivorship and disability benefits-and African Americans, women, and children are the major beneficiaries. While African Americans make up just 12% of the population, they constitute 18% of disability beneficiaries; women, who make up 52% of the population, constitute 72.3% of survivorship beneficiaries; and children under the age of 18-just 6% of the population-constitute 26.9% of survivorship beneficiaries and 22.1% of disability beneficiaries.
These insurance features make Social Security a good deal for the average worker in general and for low-wage workers and women in particular. The average rate of return from Social Security for workers born between 1956 and 1964 is 2.7%, substantially higher than the 2% that could be expected from a privatized system. For women the average rate of return is 3.7%, and for low-wage men it's 4.7%.
[b][i]Partial privatization will likely result in cuts to all benefits[/i][/b]
Social Security privatization would be a bad deal for women, children, African Americans, and low-wage workers, since it would significantly weaken Social Security's insurance function. Diverting a portion of Social Security revenue into individual accounts will result in less income for Social Security itself, meaning that retirement, disability, and survivorship benefits will have to be cut. 1 It has been estimated that a diversion of 2 percentage points of payroll (out of a total of 12.4%) will require a cut in retirement, disability, and survivorship benefits of 41% for anybody who is younger than 55 next year (Aaron et al. 2000).
Indeed, past proposals for partial privatization generally included cuts in all three types of benefits. For example:
(1) One of three options put forth by the 1994-96 Advisory Council on Social Security (the personal security accounts (PSA) option) would have let workers divert 5 percentage points of payroll tax (or 40% of Social Security revenue) into individual accounts.2 Cuts in retirement, survivorship, and disability benefits were proposed to offset the loss in revenue.
(2) In 1998, then-Senator Patrick Moynihan proposed a 2-percentage-point cut in payroll taxes, the savings from which workers could use to establish individual retirement accounts. Aaron and Reischauer (1998) estimated that the loss of income to Social Security would require a 20% across-the-board cut in retirement, disability, and survivorship benefits.
(3) Senators John Breaux and Judd Gregg also suggested partial privatization in which 2 percentage points of payroll would be allocated to individual accounts. To cover the income shortfall, retirement and disability benefits were to be cut substantially, by about 30% to 40% for high- and moderate-income workers (Aaron and Reischauer 2001).
[i][b]Individual account savings will not compensate for benefit cuts[/b][/i]
The cuts to Social Security could be offset to some degree by savings in individual accounts. But these accumulated savings will on average cover only one-third to one-half of the loss in benefits (Aaron et al. 2000; Baker 2000).
The share of lost benefits a worker will be able to recover with the accumulated savings depends on several factors, the most important of which is the rate of return. Future real rates of return, though, are likely to be lower than in the past. Real rates of return on stock markets depend on economic growth, and Social Security's trustees assume that economic growth over the next 75 years will equal only half that of the past 75 years, 1.6% compared to 3%. Hence, real rates of return should be equally lower, meaning that we can expect an average rate of return of 3.6% for the next 75 years (Baker 1997).
Another factor cutting into rates of return on private accounts will be the administrative charges on individual accounts and premiums for private insurance to pay for survivorship and disability benefits. In addition, Social Security will be expected to honor promises made to workers who already paid into the system, therefore requiring current workers to pay twice, once into their own accounts and once for the benefits already promised. Consequently, the effective rate of return from stock market investments will be around 2% (Baker 1998), applicable to every worker regardless of demographic or economic background.
Moreover, even if rates of return for the next 75 years equal those of the past 75, some workers will, on average, be more likely to experience a substantial loss in benefits than others. For instance, low-wage workers and workers with long average life expectancies will have an even harder time than their higher-earning but shorter-lived counterparts in recovering their loss in retirement benefits through savings in individual accounts (Aaron et al. 2000; Baker 2000).
Currently, Social Security redistributes funds toward low-wage earners, yielding them a higher rate of return on their contributions. While the average worker born between 1956 and 1964 can expect a rate of return of 2.7%, men with low earnings can expect a 4.7% real rate of return and women can expect a 6.8% return (Cohen, Steuerle, and Carasso 2001). Also, as Social Security pays benefits based on lifetime earnings without adjustments for life expectancies, workers who can expect to live longer, particularly women, receive higher lifetime benefits than others. Women born between 1956 and 1964 can expect a real rate of return of 3.7%, compared to 1.7% for men (Cohen, Steuerle, and Carasso 2001).
With individual accounts workers will be on their own, though. It will be harder for lower-wage workers and for workers with longer life expectancies to recover across-the-board benefit cuts with savings in individual accounts. Aaron et al. (2000) estimate that, while a single worker with average earnings who retires in 2037 can recover 63% of the benefit cut with the savings in his or her individual account, a single low-wage worker can recover only 46%.3
Because Social Security offers spousal benefits to married couples with only one income earner, while individual accounts do not, married one-earner couples will recover a substantially smaller share of lost benefits than will single workers. Aaron et al. (2000) estimate that a married average-wage worker retiring in 2037 could expect to recover about 39% of the loss in benefits, whereas a married low-wage worker could expect to recover only 30%. Assuming different rates of return on individual accounts, Baker (2000) estimates that a married average-wage worker could recover 28%, and a married low-wage worker 20%, of lost benefits.
The calculations for average-wage workers mask differences between demographic groups. Two factors are of particular importance-life expectancy and earnings. Women, for instance, have a higher rate of return under Social Security than do men because they live longer, thus getting more out of Social Security's guaranteed, inflation proof, lifetime benefit, and they earn less, thus taking advantage of the more-generous benefits to lower lifetime earners. In other words, in order to receive the same benefits as under Social Security, women would have to have accumulated more relative to their earnings than men to compensate for the fact that they tend to live longer and earn less over their lifetimes.
Moreover, survivorship and disability beneficiaries are likely to recover less in terms of lost benefits than others. If a worker becomes disabled before reaching retirement age, disability benefits are converted to retirement benefits when the disabled worker reaches retirement age. Under a privatized system, workers with a complete working life would have a chance to build up savings to compensate partly for the loss in Social Security retirement benefits. But disabled workers have to rely on the accumulated savings from much shorter working lives. Consequently, disability beneficiaries would experience an above-average benefit cut.
Similarly, if a worker dies, Social Security operates like life insurance and provides benefits to surviving spouses and children. If a worker dies well before retirement age, accumulated individual account balances will be less than they would have been after a full working life, therefore leaving survivors with fewer funds to cover the reduction in benefits.
[i][b]Women, children, and African Americans depend on disability and survivorship benefits[/b][/i]
To cover the shortfall in income that results from partial privatization, all Social Security benefits-retirement, survivorship, and disability-will likely be cut, and individual account balances are likely to cover only a small portion of the lost benefits. Low-wage workers and women will be particularly hurt by cuts in retirement benefits, but who will be hurt by cuts to survivorship and disability benefits?
Since 1980, disability and survivorship benefits have made up more than 30% of Social Security's expenditures. In 2000, 19% of Social Security's expenditures paid for survivorship benefits to 7 million beneficiaries, while 13% for disability expenditures was allocated to 6.7 million beneficiaries (Table 1).
Average disability and survivorship benefits are of about the same amount as average retirement benefits. The average monthly disability benefit was $787 in 2000, about 93% of the average monthly retirement benefit. The average monthly survivorship benefit was $810, or 96% of retirement benefits (Table 2).
Women are disproportionately dependent on survivorship benefits because of longer life expectancies and lower lifetime earnings. As noted above, while women constitute 52% of the American population, they constitute 72.3% of survivorship beneficiaries (Table 3). For black women, the average monthly survivorship benefit is almost identical (98%) to their average monthly retirement benefit; for white women, the survivorship benefit is about 12% higher than the retirement benefit (Table 2).
African Americans rely more on disability benefits than do whites. While African Americans are 12% of the population, they constitute 18.0% of disability insurance beneficiaries. Moreover, the average monthly disability benefits for African American men and women are almost identical to their retirement benefits.
Finally, the fact that Social Security is a social insurance program designed to help the families of American workers is highlighted by the fact that more than one-fifth of survivorship and more than one-fourth of disability beneficiaries are children. Though just 6% of the U.S. population is under the age of 18, this age group constitutes 22.1% of disability beneficiaries and 26.9% of survivorship beneficiaries. Fifteen percent of the under-18 population is African American, yet they constitute 22.6% of all young survivorship beneficiaries and 20.8% of young disability beneficiaries (from Table 3).
[i][b]What the commission may bring[/b][/i]
The president's Commission to Strengthen Social Security wants to privatize part of Social Security. Such a radical shift in the program would lower benefit levels and ultimately hurt working people by substantially weakening the insurance protection for low-wage workers, women, children, and African Americans.
The commission's scorched-earth attempt to discredit the nation's immensely successful-and for the most part financially secure-social insurance system is an intellectually dishonest endeavor at best and a raid on public pension funds at worst, since the only sure beneficiaries of a private-account scheme would be the financial firms that collect the fees. Keeping Social Security in the black over the 75-year planning horizon can be achieved through much less radical policy changes, such as raising the income cap for payroll taxes. The Social Security program, not to mention its beneficiaries, is already in good hands. We shouldn't let this commission touch it.
[b]Refer to the [i]Tables and References [/i][/b]on http://www.epinet.org/content...
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| Dubya's Corporate Cronies Swindling US "Out of the Kindness of Their Hearts" ... Ho ho ho! |
| 12.12.03 (5:25 pm) [edit] |
[b]Dubya's corporate cronies ([i]Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bechtel, Unocal et al[/i].) sell WMDs to those who use them against us ... and price-gouge, swindle, plunder & loot the [i]not-rich [/i]American taxpayers, and the Afghanistani & Iraqi peoples ... "[i]out of the kindness of their hearts[/i]" ... Ho ho ho![/b]
Uh-huh ... and if you believe that Halliburton and the rest of the neo-con Bush regime's neo-fascist pimps are donating their goods & services out of[i] generosity[/i], then ... well, Neil Bush has some [i]snake oil [/i]and Jeb Bush some [i]Florida swamp land [/i]for you ... the Mad King George has[i] already [/i]sold us a [i]load of rubbish [/i]([i][b]Dubya's rapacious neo-fascist domestic policies for the wealthiest plutocrats & robber-barons ... and insane neo-con war-mongering to enrich their corporate cronies[/b][/i]) ...
[i][b]Consider the following ...[/b][/i]
[b]1)[/b] Excerpt from "[b]America's Weapons Of Mass Destruction - An Interview With Dr. Helen Caldicott, Founder of Physicians For Social Responsibility[/b]" on http://www.tompaine.com/featu... :
[i]So who are the companies then that are going to be benefiting from this military build-up[/i]?
[b]Caldicott[/b]: Right. Halliburton. Halliburton is Cheney’s company. Halliburton was built up by Cheney to become the seventh-largest Pentagon contractor in the last few years. But Halliburton did [oil-related] contracts with Saddam Hussein, too, during Cheney’s watch.
Lockheed-Martin is the biggest military contractor in the whole world. It sells weapons to friends and foe alike, indiscriminately. It is the major contractor for the five layers of Star Wars, including the militarization of space. [Republican Senate Minority Leader] Trent Lott [of Mississippi] represents Lockheed-Martin in his district, where the C-130s are made, and Lockheed-Martin has factories in almost all states of the country. So, that’s why it does so well, because, of course, the Congresspeople need jobs in their districts. So they vote for everything Lockheed-Martin wants and desires.
[b]2) [/b]Excerpt from "[b]From bring 'em on to bring 'em home[/b]" on http://yellowtimes.org/articl... :
[i]Who profits from the takeover of Iraq[/i]?
Iraqi reconstruction has become a bonanza for companies connected to the Bush administration. Vice President Cheney, for one, owns 400,000 stock options in/receives large payments from Halliburton, a company whose subsidiary KBR has been soaking American taxpayers via no-bid contracts in post-war Iraq.
And, of course, deep-pocket Bush supporters have reaped handsome post-war dividends. A study by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity text found that companies sharing the $8 billion spoil in contracts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan had donated more money to the Bush presidential campaign than to any other politician over the last dozen years.
Meanwhile, the American taxpayer has forked over billions for the invasion and occupation, billions that could have been much better spent at home.
[i]Why again are we in Iraq[/i]?
[b]3) [/b]Excerpt from "[b]Indonesia at the Crossroads: U.S. Weapons Sales and Military Training[/b]" on http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... :
The high concentration of oil and gas magnates in the Bush administration-- from Vice President Richard Cheney, former CEO of oil services giant Halliburton, to Bush’s own connections to the industry-- makes the oil-rich archipelago particularly important. ExxonMobil, which has a vast project in Indonesia, gave more than a million dollars in campaign contributions in 2000-- mostly to Republicans.[36] Then-Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab, expressing his excitement about Bush’s election in January, said, "I am optimistic that the military sanctions will be lifted because the Bush government is more pragmatic and realistic."[37]
Pragmatism and realism notwithstanding, it certainly helps that both Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz are old friends with Indonesia’s former dictator, General Suharto. Cheney was Bush Senior’s Secretary of Defense at the time of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre and traveled to Indonesia just a few months later, meeting with Suharto and top military officials. Rather than admonishing Jakarta for the military slaughter of 271 unarmed people during his visit, he reinforced the value of strong relations with the military, saying, "we have in the past worked with the Indonesia armed forces and are eager to continue to do that in the future."[38] Wolfowitz was Ambassador to Indonesia during the worst violence in East Timor and represented Washington’s indefatigable diplomatic, military and political support for the Jakarta regime. In 1997 testimony before Congress, Wolfowitz credited Suharto’s "strong and remarkable leadership" for Indonesia’s "significant progress."[39]
When asked about arms sales to Indonesia during his January confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that, "every nation has the right of legitimate self-defense, and if they don’t buy it from us, they have many other sources in which they can get such weapons."[40] Powell’s use of the "better-us-than-them" argument for U.S. weapons sales dovetails nicely with the "stability" argument. The latest version of this well-worn line of reasoning can be found in a recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations, The United States and Southeast Asia: A Policy Agenda for the New Administration. Report chair J. Robert Kerrey, former Senator and current President of the New School University, sums up its central point by saying, "the Indonesian military remains essential to the country’s future stability."[41] The report characterizes the current ban on military sales and training as "heavy handed," and "short sighted," warning that without military training the U.S. will lose the "opportunity to help shape a new attitude toward civil-military relations" in the Indonesian military.[42] Kerrey and his team conclude that "the United States must cease hectoring Jakarta and re-engage Indonesia’s army."[43]
[b]4)[/b] Excerpt from "[b]U.S. Dominates Arms Sales to Third World[/b]" on http://www.independent-media....%20Reported :
Washington accounted for close to one-half of all new arms transfer agreements concluded during the year, as well as actual arms deliveries.
Altogether, arms sales from all sources to developing countries made up about two-thirds of arms sales worldwide during 2002, according to the report, which is based on the most comprehensive data compiled by the U.S. government.
New arms agreements with developing nations totalled 17.7 billion dollars, a 10 percent increase over new deals in 2001. Of that total, U.S. sales came to 8.6 billion dollars, or almost 48 percent of all arms transfers to Third World countries, up from 41 percent the previous year.
[b]5) [/b]Excerpt from "[b]Firms ‘making money’ off Iraq[/b]" on http://www.thestar.com.my/new... :
“KBR is charging Iraq US$180,000 (RM684,000) for each school they renovate. They then give the project to Iraqi sub-contractors and pay them just US$20,000 (RM76,000) to do the job.
“So KBR netts US$160,000 (RM608,000) just like that. KBR is getting everything. You know, of course, they are connected to the higher-ups in Washington. So what do you want me to think?” he said.
Sheikh Abdul Jalil referred to the US company's involvement in Iraq as “robbery.”
“If KBR is making money this way, they are actually stealing from us.
“There are many able and capable Iraqis here, so why can't the jobs be given directly to us. That is, of course, if they are sincere in wanting to help the Iraqis and Iraq, and not to rip us off,” he said.
KBR is the subsidiary of US giant Halliburton Corporation.
The fact that Halliburton was run by US Vice-President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000 escapes no one.
“Actually, I think this more or less explains the real reason the US went to war,” said a security officer who helps protect the KBR team at one of the hotels.
[b]Of course it is the real reason that the corrupt Bush regime went to war ...[/b]
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| The Blind Mad-Dog Bush-Luvers Are Hypocritical Thugs ... |
| 12.12.03 (5:13 pm) [edit] |
[b]The blind mad-dog Bush-[i]luvers [/i]are hypocritical thugs ...[/b]
Remember all of the Clinton-bashing over Whitewater, Lewinsky and anything else the neo-con, neo-fascist buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters could dig up or manufacture ...
[b]Where is their self-rightous indignation at all of the Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]crimes ... Where is their outrage NOW? Jeez![/b]
[b]Department of the ugly truth ...[/b]
"[i]If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of ... I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business[/i]."
- George W. Bush on the Plame Investigation
University of Chicago, http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/0...
September 30, 2003
And then more recently...
[i]"We have let the earth-movers roll in over this one (i.e. the Plame investigation)." [/i]
- "Senior White House official"
[i]Financial Times[/i]
December 5th, 2003
If you slap the press around enough and keep your people's mouths shut you usually get what you want.
Usually ... So the Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove & John "Robespierre" Ashcroft [i]spin-meisters [/i]use their earth-movers to bury their crimes ...
The White House felon [i]breaks the law[/i]-- puts the lives of CIA operatives and their contacts at risk ... and undermines years of work to protect our nation's security, as this under-cover operative's work was to discover those who tried to obtain WMDs ... Bush is a criminal and is surrounded by [i]like-minded [/i]criminals-in-arms.
[b]Uh-huh, yeah the blind mad-dog Bush-[i]luvers[/i] are really hypocritical thugs ...[/b]
[b]Source[/b]:
TalkingPointsMemo on http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
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| Dumb-Dubya's Federal Deficit Skyrockets in November ... But Let's Blame Clinton! |
| 12.12.03 (12:33 pm) [edit] |
[b]Dumb-Dubya's immoral neo-fascist deficit spending on his corporate cronies, filthy rich campaign contributors & the wealthiest plutocrats, results in record-level massive debts loaded upon the backs of working Americans while badly needed jobs are not forthcoming & services required for a civilized society are slashed ... It's a record-level $43 Billion in November ... [/b]
But why don't we adopt the insane mantra of their neo-con buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters and: [i]Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ...[/i] that these thugs & goons repeat [i]over and over and over again[/i], in order to persuade the[i] brain-dead sheep [/i]to blindly run[i] off the cliff[/i], while the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] laughs [i]all the way to the bank[/i].
Funny how a minor upswing in growth (GDP) that lands in the pockets of the corporate robber-barons, top-dogs & fat-cats-- is hilariously called Bush's triumph ... although Dubya's record-level job losses ([i]3.3 million jobs wiped-out, highest since the Great Depression[/i]) are blamed on someone else ([i]although Clinton created over 22 million jobs[/i]) ... and of course, [b]9/11 gives the corrupt neo-fascist Bushies the excuse to massacre tens of thousands of innocent human beings and hundreds of our military personnel, in their war-mongering to enrich their ugly [i]corporate-take-all [/i]war-profiteers.[/b]
In "Deficit Swells to Nearly $43B in November" on http://www.ajc.com/business/c... :
WASHINGTON (AP) _The deficit swelled to nearly $43 billion in November, giving the country its second straight monthly red-ink ledger.
At the start of the new budget year in October, the government was $69.5 billion in the hole as spending grew faster than revenues. In November, the Treasury Department reported Friday, spending totaled $161.2 billion and revenues came to $118.2 billion, thus producing the shortfall.
Still, November's deficit was $15.9 billion less than the $58.9 billion deficit posted for the same month last year, and was slightly smaller than the $44 billion shortfall that the Congressional Budget office was projecting.
For the 2003 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, the government recorded a deficit of $374.8 billion, according to revised figures. That was up slightly from the $374.3 billion previously estimated. Under either figure, the 2003 deficit was a record in dollar terms, surpassing the previous $290 billion record set in 1992. The 2004 budget year started on Oct. 1.
The White House's budget chief has said red ink could exceed $500 billion in the current budget year, even as the economy strengthens.
The Bush administration has blamed the swelling deficits on the costs of the war in Iraq, fighting terrorism at home and until recently the lingering economic weakness from the 2001 recession. Democrats, however, say a major cause of the red ink has been President Bush's tax cuts and what they contend are bad economic policies.
In the first two months of the 2004 budget year, the government ran up a deficit of $112.5 billion based on revenues of $254 billion and spending of $366.5 billion. The year-to-date deficit is slightly smaller than the $112.9 billion deficit produced during the corresponding period last year.
So far this budget year, the biggest spending categories were: Social Security, $85.1 billion; programs of the Health and Human Services Department, including Medicare and Medicaid, $84.5 billion; military, $67 billion; and interest on the public debt, $32.6 billion.
The Bush regime's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have already exceeded $100 billion in 2003 alone.
[b]And, who do you think will pay-off Bushies massive debts? Not their corporate cronies ... not the richest-of-the-rich awarded massive tax cuts ... not the Bush family rapists ... These criminals are saddling their debts to live in the lavish life-style of neo-emperors upon the American middle-class, workers, fixed-income retirees & the poor: that's who will pay-off Bush's massive deficits[/b].
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| Dubya's Corporate Cronies Swindling US "Out of the Kindness of Their Hearts" ... Ho ho ho! |
| 12.12.03 (11:13 am) [edit] |
[b]Dubya's corporate cronies ([i]Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bechtel, Unocal et al[/i].) sell WMDs to those who use them against us ... and price-gouge, swindle, plunder & loot the [i]not-rich [/i]American taxpayers, and the Afghanistani & Iraqi peoples ... "[i]out of the kindness of their hearts[/i]" ... Ho ho ho![/b]
Uh-huh ... and if you believe that Halliburton and the rest of the neo-con Bush regime's neo-fascist pimps are donating their goods & services out of[i] generosity[/i], then ... well, Neil Bush has some [i]snake oil [/i]and Jeb Bush some [i]Florida swamp land [/i]for you ... the Mad King George has[i] already [/i]sold us a [i]load of rubbish [/i]([i][b]Dubya's rapacious neo-fascist domestic policies for the wealthiest plutocrats & robber-barons ... and insane neo-con war-mongering to enrich their corporate cronies[/b][/i]) ...
[i][b]Consider the following ...[/b][/i]
[b]1)[/b] Excerpt from "[b]America's Weapons Of Mass Destruction - An Interview With Dr. Helen Caldicott, Founder of Physicians For Social Responsibility[/b]" on http://www.tompaine.com/featu... :
[i]So who are the companies then that are going to be benefiting from this military build-up[/i]?
[b]Caldicott[/b]: Right. Halliburton. Halliburton is Cheney’s company. Halliburton was built up by Cheney to become the seventh-largest Pentagon contractor in the last few years. But Halliburton did [oil-related] contracts with Saddam Hussein, too, during Cheney’s watch.
Lockheed-Martin is the biggest military contractor in the whole world. It sells weapons to friends and foe alike, indiscriminately. It is the major contractor for the five layers of Star Wars, including the militarization of space. [Republican Senate Minority Leader] Trent Lott [of Mississippi] represents Lockheed-Martin in his district, where the C-130s are made, and Lockheed-Martin has factories in almost all states of the country. So, that’s why it does so well, because, of course, the Congresspeople need jobs in their districts. So they vote for everything Lockheed-Martin wants and desires.
[b]2) [/b]Excerpt from "[b]From bring 'em on to bring 'em home[/b]" on http://yellowtimes.org/articl... :
[i]Who profits from the takeover of Iraq[/i]?
Iraqi reconstruction has become a bonanza for companies connected to the Bush administration. Vice President Cheney, for one, owns 400,000 stock options in/receives large payments from Halliburton, a company whose subsidiary KBR has been soaking American taxpayers via no-bid contracts in post-war Iraq.
And, of course, deep-pocket Bush supporters have reaped handsome post-war dividends. A study by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity text found that companies sharing the $8 billion spoil in contracts to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan had donated more money to the Bush presidential campaign than to any other politician over the last dozen years.
Meanwhile, the American taxpayer has forked over billions for the invasion and occupation, billions that could have been much better spent at home.
[i]Why again are we in Iraq[/i]?
[b]3) [/b]Excerpt from "[b]Indonesia at the Crossroads: U.S. Weapons Sales and Military Training[/b]" on http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... :
The high concentration of oil and gas magnates in the Bush administration-- from Vice President Richard Cheney, former CEO of oil services giant Halliburton, to Bush’s own connections to the industry-- makes the oil-rich archipelago particularly important. ExxonMobil, which has a vast project in Indonesia, gave more than a million dollars in campaign contributions in 2000-- mostly to Republicans.[36] Then-Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab, expressing his excitement about Bush’s election in January, said, "I am optimistic that the military sanctions will be lifted because the Bush government is more pragmatic and realistic."[37]
Pragmatism and realism notwithstanding, it certainly helps that both Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz are old friends with Indonesia’s former dictator, General Suharto. Cheney was Bush Senior’s Secretary of Defense at the time of the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre and traveled to Indonesia just a few months later, meeting with Suharto and top military officials. Rather than admonishing Jakarta for the military slaughter of 271 unarmed people during his visit, he reinforced the value of strong relations with the military, saying, "we have in the past worked with the Indonesia armed forces and are eager to continue to do that in the future."[38] Wolfowitz was Ambassador to Indonesia during the worst violence in East Timor and represented Washington’s indefatigable diplomatic, military and political support for the Jakarta regime. In 1997 testimony before Congress, Wolfowitz credited Suharto’s "strong and remarkable leadership" for Indonesia’s "significant progress."[39]
When asked about arms sales to Indonesia during his January confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted that, "every nation has the right of legitimate self-defense, and if they don’t buy it from us, they have many other sources in which they can get such weapons."[40] Powell’s use of the "better-us-than-them" argument for U.S. weapons sales dovetails nicely with the "stability" argument. The latest version of this well-worn line of reasoning can be found in a recent report from the Council on Foreign Relations, The United States and Southeast Asia: A Policy Agenda for the New Administration. Report chair J. Robert Kerrey, former Senator and current President of the New School University, sums up its central point by saying, "the Indonesian military remains essential to the country’s future stability."[41] The report characterizes the current ban on military sales and training as "heavy handed," and "short sighted," warning that without military training the U.S. will lose the "opportunity to help shape a new attitude toward civil-military relations" in the Indonesian military.[42] Kerrey and his team conclude that "the United States must cease hectoring Jakarta and re-engage Indonesia’s army."[43]
[b]4)[/b] Excerpt from "[b]U.S. Dominates Arms Sales to Third World[/b]" on http://www.independent-media....%20Reported :
Washington accounted for close to one-half of all new arms transfer agreements concluded during the year, as well as actual arms deliveries.
Altogether, arms sales from all sources to developing countries made up about two-thirds of arms sales worldwide during 2002, according to the report, which is based on the most comprehensive data compiled by the U.S. government.
New arms agreements with developing nations totalled 17.7 billion dollars, a 10 percent increase over new deals in 2001. Of that total, U.S. sales came to 8.6 billion dollars, or almost 48 percent of all arms transfers to Third World countries, up from 41 percent the previous year.
[b]5) [/b]Excerpt from "[b]Firms ‘making money’ off Iraq[/b]" on http://www.thestar.com.my/new... :
“KBR is charging Iraq US$180,000 (RM684,000) for each school they renovate. They then give the project to Iraqi sub-contractors and pay them just US$20,000 (RM76,000) to do the job.
“So KBR netts US$160,000 (RM608,000) just like that. KBR is getting everything. You know, of course, they are connected to the higher-ups in Washington. So what do you want me to think?” he said.
Sheikh Abdul Jalil referred to the US company's involvement in Iraq as “robbery.”
“If KBR is making money this way, they are actually stealing from us.
“There are many able and capable Iraqis here, so why can't the jobs be given directly to us. That is, of course, if they are sincere in wanting to help the Iraqis and Iraq, and not to rip us off,” he said.
KBR is the subsidiary of US giant Halliburton Corporation.
The fact that Halliburton was run by US Vice-President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000 escapes no one.
“Actually, I think this more or less explains the real reason the US went to war,” said a security officer who helps protect the KBR team at one of the hotels.
[b]Of course it is the real reason that the corrupt Bush regime went to war ...[/b]
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| Dubya Versus the World Trade Organization |
| 12.12.03 (7:15 am) [edit] |
[b]Dubya versus the World Trade Organization[/b]
With typical bombast, President Bush on Thursday scoffed at the idea that the Pentagon policy to restrict reconstruction bidding to those countries that have toed the U.S. line on Iraq could violate international agreements: "[i]International law? I better call my lawyer. I don't know what you're talking about, about international law[/i]." [i][b]Jeez![/b][/i]
Of course, today Dubya is signaling flexibility on Iraq contracts ... Isn't this referred to as "[i]talking out of both sides of his "mouth" (or in this case, "ass"[/i] ...)"?
[b]Sources[/b]:
AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
"Facing Heat, President Stands by Decision to Limit Iraq Contracts" on http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,2868937.story?coll=la-home-headli nes
"What WTO accord says on Iraq contract dispute" on http://www.forbes.com/busines...
"Bush Regime Back-tracks & Signals Flexibility on Iraq Contracts Amid Row" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| Bush Regime Back-tracks & Signals Flexibility on Iraq Contracts Amid Row |
| 12.12.03 (6:51 am) [edit] |
[b]As usual, the fumbling, bumbling & stumbling Bush regime is having to back-track from their inane & dangerously stupid policies[/b]. In this case, it's the rapacious 'contracts-for-cronies' scandal-- the Bushies' corrupt[i] corporate-take-all [/i]campaign contributors ([i]who are price-gouging not-rich American taxpayers & Iraqis[/i]) have been awarded no-bidding, no-auditing and no-accountability boondoggles ... Meanwhile, the petty & imbecilic Bushies decided that they would use this opportunity to[i] stick-it [/i]to "Old Europe" for refusing to support their neo-con, neo-fascist war-mongering ... [i]but, as the world turns [/i]... the corrupt Bush regime is back-tracking & signaling flexibility on Iraq contracts ...
Dubya's handlers have their "[i]boy in the plastic bubble[/i]" pretending he is a [i]tough-guy [/i]for consumption by his [i]brain-dead [/i]audience here at home-- but in the meantime, they know they have [i]screwed-up badly[/i] (again!) ... and are now the [i]laughing stock [/i]of the entire world, since their petty & vindictive "punishment" of "Old Europe" comes at the very same moment that they are trying to get "Old Europe" to forgive debts owed by Iraq. [i]Jeez![/i]
Perhaps the Bushies need an instruction in the [i]ABCs of Management [/i]to teach them some basics like: "[i]Left Hand [/i](White House[i]), Let Me Introduce You [/i]To [i]Right Hand [/i](Pentagon)" ...[i] What a bunch of schmucks[/i]!
[b]Oh, and by the way, shouldn't the Iraqi people have a voice and participation in the re-construction of their own country? [i]What a novel notion [/i]...[/b]
Consider "U.S. Signals Flexibility on Iraq Contracts Amid Row" on http://asia.reuters.com/newsA... :
WASHINGTON/BERLIN (Reuters) - President Bush on Thursday rejected criticism of his bar on Iraq war opponents winning lucrative reconstruction contracts, but signaled flexibility as Germany and others demanded a rethink.
"It's very simple. Our people risked their lives. Friendly coalition folks risked their lives and...the contracting is going to reflect that...that's what the U.S. taxpayers expect," said Bush, as the bar threatened fresh international rifts.
[b]White House spokesman Scott McClellan suggested, however, there was room for some flexibility when asked whether countries that helped erase Iraqi debt could qualify to win contracts from $18.6 billion of U.S. reconstruction funding[/b].
"If countries want to join in our efforts in Iraq...then circumstances can change, and we'll make that very clear," McClellan told reporters.
Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who refused to send troops to join the war in Iraq because the fighting was not approved by the United Nations, said Bush told him in a farewell conversation "not to worry."
Bush has tasked former Secretary of State James Baker to leave on Monday for a mission to war critics France, Germany and Russia, as well as supporters Italy and Britain, to seek restructuring for Iraq's $120 billion of foreign debt.
"If these countries want to participate in helping the world become more secure, by enabling Iraq to emerge as a free and peaceful country, one way to contribute is through debt restructuring," Bush told reporters.
Germany, France and Russia are among Iraq's biggest creditors and their cooperation would be needed for large debt reduction.
[b]SCHROEDER CALLS BUSH [/b]
Asked about comments by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that international law must apply to awarding of contracts, Bush said: "International law? I better call my lawyer."
Bush's decision left many European firms counting the cost and could open new trade disputes. But experts doubted the World Trade Organization would declare the U.S. decision illegal and said it was unlikely to kill a deal to reduce Iraqi debt.
While the door was shut on opponents of the war, more than 60 countries were deemed eligible for contracts, including Japan, Britain, Australia, Poland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, South Korea, the Philippines and Romania.
Major European NATO allies of Washington were unimpressed to be told they were being excluded from contracts on U.S. "national security" grounds.
Schroeder said he "made quite clear" to Bush in a telephone conversation that the decision was a "backwards-looking view of the situation" after they had agreed recently to put past differences behind them.
"We had agreed in New York to look to the future," Schroeder told German television. "One should not dramatize the issue. I hope it's not going to stay like this."
[b]CHINA URGES UNITY [/b]
U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan, speaking in Berlin after meeting Schroeder, also urged Bush to change his stance.
"I think the decision was unfortunate," said Annan.
"Returning to old arguments and divisions doesn't seem particularly constructive," Chris Patten, European Commissioner for External Relations, said in Brussels.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, visiting the German city of Munich, was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying: "We must not allow steps to be taken today that would lead to a split in the international community with regard to Iraq."
China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose country also opposed the war, said: "It is not good to have different standards...It is important we should have a unified position instead of divisive positions for the reconstruction of Iraq."
The Pentagon said it was likely to issue tenders for contracts in the next few days and played down a delay in advertising the lucrative deals.
The contracts were set to be announced last Friday but the Pentagon-run Program Management Office, which handles Iraq contracts, said they had been "temporarily delayed."
Officials said the delay was due to questions raised about the draft proposals by prospective bidders and had nothing to do with the criticism over the bar on war opponents winning prime contracts. Sub-contracting is open to firms from all nations.
A bidding conference set for Thursday to provide details to companies seeking the reconstruction business was delayed until December 19.
[b]Other Sources[/b]:
"U.S. Trims Funds to Halliburton for Iraq Oil Deal" on http://asia.reuters.com/newsA...
"What WTO Accord Says on Iraq Contract Dispute" on http://asia.reuters.com/newsA...
"U.S. Set to Start Iraq Contract Bidding Soon" on http://asia.reuters.com/newsA...
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| Bush Administration on Prescription Drugs: NOW & THEN |
| 12.11.03 (5:24 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush Administration on Prescription Drugs[/b]
[b]NOW:--[/b]
“CDC Director Julie Gerberding said Tuesday in a briefing that the agency is investigating the possibility of buying about half a million doses of flu vaccine from the British plant of U.S.-based Chiron.”
- [i]USA Today, 12/09/03 [/i][[i]Source[/i]: http://www.usatoday.com/news/... ]
[b]THEN:--[/b]
Just weeks ago, the Bush Administration backed the drug-industry and threatened to veto legislation giving seniors access to lower-priced prescription drugs from Canada and Europe. The Administration also opposes recent efforts by states and cities to investigate purchasing lower priced prescription drugs from abroad. The Administration cites "public health reasons" despite the fact it “can't name a single American who's been injured or killed by drugs bought from licensed Canadian” or European pharmacies.
- [i]FDA Statement, 3/10/03 [/i][[i]Source[/i]: http://www.fda.gov/ola/2003/s... ], [i]Knight-Ridder[/i], 11/27/03 [[i]Source[/i]: http://www.grandforks.com/mld... ]
[b]Sources[/b]:
Common Dreams on http://www.commondreams.org
The Center for American Progress on http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| Detained At The Mad King George's Whim ... |
| 12.11.03 (10:05 am) [edit] |
[b]The Bush regime is embarking upon a very, very dangerous precedence[/b]:-- the adhoc labeling of citizens and non-citizens as "[i]enemy combattants[/i]" with no proof and/or legal framework ... and the indefinite imprisonment of "[i]enemy combattants[/i]" who are subject to torture, abuse and potential execution via military tribunals. These prisoners have no legal representation to speak of ... [i]recently lawyers attempting to defend those held at Guantanamo Bay were fired for trying to defend their clients[/i]. [b]We have entered the Dark Ages of the Neo-Con's American Gulag ... [/b]
Does this remind anyone of another dictator who over-took his nation in the 1930s and used secret methods and guidelines to exterminate his so-called "[i]enemies[/i]"?
[b]Detained at the Mad King George's Whim ...[/b]
Just a couple of weeks after the Supreme Court decided to evaluate the legality of the Guantánamo detentions, the Pentagon announced yesterday that it would begin making arrangements to allow Yasser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen, access to a lawyer after more than 20 months of incommunicado military detention.
Although this is a welcome step, its timing is suspicious. As Deborah Pearlstein points out in the International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/1... , this administration has been very effective at keeping the courts out of the business of checking executive power.
[b]Sources[/b]:
AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
"Detained at the whim of the president" on http://www.iht.com/articles/1...
"US hired & fired Guantanamo lawyers - Washington sacked a team of lawyers within hours of their recruitment to defend alleged terrorists being held at a US naval base in Cuba, a London newspaper has reported." on http://english.aljazeera.net/...
"Claims of torture in Guantanamo Bay" on http://www.abc.net.au/am/cont...
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| Conservative Cites Founding Father's Disgust With Imperialism |
| 12.11.03 (7:42 am) [edit] |
[b]People make a fundamental mistake[/b]: the neo-con "[i]crazies[/i]" in the Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i][i][b]are not [/b][/i]conservatives ... they are neo-fascists ... an important distinction to make ...
Conservatives have traditionally rejected the insane notion of "imperialism" ... so did our Founding Fathers. Indeed, John Quincy Adams said "[i]We do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy[/i] ..." for we might ([i]or might not[/i]) gain the entire world at the peril of our souls. Bush is indeed destroying the soul of America in pursuit of imperial power and wealth for himself and his corrupt [i]corporate-take-all [/i]cronies.
Nor did the Founding Fathers equate powerful interest's ([i]corporate, business, plutocrats[/i]) money with free speech ... nor did the Founding Fathers intend that corporations enjoy the rights of man ([i]refer to the Federalist Papers[/i]) ... nor did the Founding Fathers believe that the corporations or plutocracy should enslave 'We the People' ... this is the neo-con, neo-fascist's notion ... and many conscientious conservatives as well as liberals reject the Bush regime's barbaric and blood-thirsty domestic & foreign policies.
[b]Bush and Ashcroft would have been hung by the Founding Fathers as traitors, for having imposed neo-fascist Patriot Acts and[i] corporate-take-all [/i]rapacious policies devised to control & swindle 'We the People" out of tax payers dollars to enrich themselves and their corporate cronies; instead of to improve the lives of our citizens and the health of our nation ... [i]Another tea party, anyone?[/i][/b]
Consider "[i]Here we go again[/i]" by Patrick J. Buchanan on http://www.wnd.com/news/artic... :
A close read of President Bush's November addresses at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington and at the Whitehall Palace in London leads a traditionalist almost to despair.
George Bush did not write this democratist drivel. This is the kind of messianic rhetoric he probably never heard before he became president. Who is putting these words in his mouth? For if George Bush truly intends to lead a "global democratic revolution," and convert not only Iraq but the whole Middle East to democracy, he has ceased to be a conservative and we are headed for endless conflicts, disappointments, disillusionment and tragedy.
At London, he called a "commitment to the global expansion of democracy" both "the alternative to instability and to hatred and terror" and "the third pillar of our security." But before he wagers our security on a crusade for democracy, Bush should ask the hard questions no one seems to have asked before he invaded Iraq.
Where in the Constitution is he empowered to go around the world destabilizing governments? Can he truly believe that by hectoring such autocracies as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, America is more secure? Who comes to power if Mubarak goes in Cairo, the Saudi monarchy falls or Musharaff is ousted in Pakistan? If memory serves, the last wave of popular revolutions in the region gave us Nasser, Khadafi, Saddam and the Ayatollah.
With $200 billion sunk into democratizing Iraq and Afghanistan, how many more wars does Bush think Americans will support before they decide to throw the interventionist Republicans out?
Where did he get the idea we are insecure because the Islamic world is not democratic? The Islamic world has never been democratic. Yet, before we intervened massively there, our last threat came from Barbary pirates. Lest we forget, Muhammad Atta and his comrades did not plot their atrocities in the Sunni Triangle, but in Hamburg and Delray Beach.
Surveys show that Islamic people bear a deep resentment of U.S. dominance of their region and our one-sided support for Israel. Interventionism is not America's solution, it is America's problem.
It was our earlier intervention in the Gulf War and our huge footprint on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia that lead directly to 9-11. They were over here because we were over there.
If one-man, one-vote comes to Pakistan, what do we do if that nuclear nation supports a return of the Taliban? What do we do if the Iraqi regime that takes power after free elections tells us to pack up and get out, and declares the liberation of Kuwait and its return to the embrace of the motherland to be as vital to Baghdad as the return of Taiwan is to Beijing?
Freedom, the president said, "must be chosen and defended by those who choose it." Exactly. Why not then let these Islamic peoples choose it on their own timetable and defend it themselves?
It is "cultural condescension," says Bush, "to assume the Middle East cannot be converted to democracy. ... Perhaps the most helpful change we can make is to change in our own thinking."
But if 22 of 22 Arab states are non-democratic, this would seem to suggest that this soil is not particularly conducive to growing the kind of democracies we raise in upper New England. This may be mulish thinking to the progressives at NED, but it may also be common sense.
What support is there in history for the view that as we meddle in the affairs of foreign nations, we advance our security? How would we have responded in the 19th century if Britain had declared a policy of destabilizing the American Union until Andrew Jackson abolished slavery?
"Liberty is both the plan of Heaven for humanity and the best hope for progress here on earth." Is it? Before democracy became our god, we used to believe that salvation was Heaven's plan for humanity, and Jesus Christ was the way, the truth and the life.
The neocons have made democracy a god, but why is George W. Bush falling down and worshiping their golden calf?
The last time we heard rhetoric like Bush's at NED and Whitehall Castle was the last time we were bogged down in a war. LBJ declared that America's goal was far loftier than saving South Vietnam. We were going to build a "Great Society on the Mekong."
Like Woodrow Wilson, Bush has been converted to the belief that democracy is the cure for mankind's ills. But our Founding Fathers did not even believe in democracy. They thought they were creating a republic – a republic that would be secure by remaining free of the wars of the blood-soaked continent their fathers had left behind. How wrong they were.
[b]More interesting readings[/b]:
"George Woodrow Carter" by[i] Patrick J. Buchanan [/i]on http://www.antiwar.com/pat/pa...
"Uncensored Gore - The take-no-prisoners social critic skewers Bush, Ashcroft and the whole damn lot of us for letting despots rule" on http://www.laweekly.com/ink/0...
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| Sitting ducks fly away:-- One-Third of Iraqi Soldiers Trained by U.S. Have QUIT! |
| 12.11.03 (7:25 am) [edit] |
The inept Bush regime can't even get control of the security situation in Iraq ([i]without massacring the entire population[/i]!!!) ...
[b]Sitting ducks fly away ... [/b]
"[b]Plans to deploy the first battalion of Iraq's new army are in doubt because a third of the soldiers trained by the U.S.-led occupation authority have quit[/b], defense officials said Wednesday," reports AP. "Touted as a key to Iraq's future, the 700-man battalion lost some 250 men over recent weeks as they were preparing to begin operations this month, Pentagon officials said."
Somebody better demand a refund from the Vinnell Company, the U.S. defense contractor which recruited and trained these guys.
[b]Sources[/b]:
AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
"Pentagon: One-third of new soldiers in Iraq army quit just before starting operations" on http://www.boston.com/dailyne...:.shtml
"Pentagon: Many of New Iraq Soldiers Quit" on http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| Nobel Prize Winner Hits Out at U.S. Foreign Policy Under Bush ... |
| 12.11.03 (7:19 am) [edit] |
[b]The Bush regime's foreign policy is dangerously [i]out of control[/i][/b]-- Bush's Death Toll in Afghanistan and Iraq rises daily: their bloody fiascos turned into guerrilla quagmires are causing carnage, misery and mayhem on a daily basis, with no end in sight.
In "Iran's Nobel Winner Hits Out at U.S. Foreign Policy" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... :
OSLO - Iran's Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize Wednesday and [b][i]sent a bold anti-war message to the West, accusing it of hiding behind the Sept. 11 attacks to violate human rights[/i][/b].
Reformist lawyer Ebadi, who was recognized for her work for the rights of women and children in Iran, was handed the prize by the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, at a glittering ceremony at the Oslo City Hall.
Ebadi slammed the U.S. administration for double standards in ignoring U.N. resolutions in the Middle East, while using them as a pretext to go to war in Iraq. The audience included Hollywood couple Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, star hosts of Thursday's Nobel concert.
"In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext," she said in a prepared acceptance speech.
"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism."
Wearing no headscarf for the ceremony, the 56-year-old who won the $1.4 million prize for her work for the rights of women and children in Iran, lashed out at what she called breaches of the Geneva conventions at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay military jail.
Ebadi said Guantanamo prisoners had been "without the benefit of the rights stipulated under the international Geneva conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the (U.N.) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."
Ebadi, Iran's first female judge before the 1979 Islamic revolution forced her to step aside in favor of men, said it was worrying that human rights were violated by the same Western democracies that had initiated the principles.
The laureate said she, like other human rights activists, questioned why some U.N. resolutions were binding to the West and others were ignored.
Ebadi, who has become a symbol of reformist hope in Iran while labeled a political stooge of the West by conservative clerics, also pointed a finger at her own government, urging Tehran to accept that reform is inevitable.
"In fact, it is not so easy to rule over a people who are aware of their rights, using traditional, patriarchal and paternalistic methods," she said
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| The Continued Saga of Bizarre Ineptitude in Bushies World ... |
| 12.11.03 (7:14 am) [edit] |
[b]The continued saga of the bizarre ineptitude in Bushies world ...[/b]
Remember the imbecilic denial by the corrupt Bush regime of democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, who aren't allowed to [i]direct[/i] the re-construction of their own country ...
"[i]Direct[/i]"??? ... hell, they aren't even allowed to[i] participate [/i]in the re-building of their own country -- in order that the sordid Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's corporate-take-all [/i]rapists can swindle, plunder & loot the [i]not-rich [/i]American taxpayer and Iraqi people.
Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Inocal et al. have already gotten their lavish & price-y Christmas gifts & presents [i]big-time [/i]from [i]Santa Bushy-boy[/i], and[b] 'We the People' are paying the tab[/b].
[i][b]Read on ...[/b][/i]
[b]Read this lede from an article in the Times [/b][i]and tell me with a straight face that these guys have any idea what they're doing ...[/i]
President Bush found himself in the awkward position on Wednesday of calling the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's debts, just a day after the Pentagon excluded those countries and others from $18 billion in American-financed Iraqi reconstruction projects.
[i]White House officials were fuming about the timing and the tone of the Pentagon's directive, even while conceding that they had approved the Pentagon policy of limiting contracts to 63 countries that have given the United States political or military aid in Iraq[/i].
I mean, it defies ridicule (what will I do?). The tone?
How were they supposed to sugar-coat it?
Please ...
Clearly, we need to come up with a new executive branch foreign policy appointee, someone whose job it would be to coordinate all this stuff, who could make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing, someone who could ride herd over interagency disputes.
Ideally, that person would work out of the White House.
We could call the new post the National Security Coordinator or maybe the National Security Advisor. Something like that.
Just a thought.
And you wonder why they're bringing Jim Baker into the mix? Forget about Rove's phone records. I want the last month's phone records between Dubya and pops ...
... [b]Who is in control here? Not Dubya!!! [/b]...
[b]Sources[/b]:
[i]TalkingPointsMemo [/i]by Joshua Micah Marshall on http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
"Bush Seeks Help of Allies Barred From Iraq Deals" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...
"Bizarre Politics in the Neo-Looney World of the Bushies" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"More Intel on the Bizarre World of the Neo-Looney Bushies" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"Bush Regime Shows Contempt For Iraq, Democracy & The Entire World" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| "Call Me A 'Bush Hater'" ... Ho ho ho ... Logical Reasons For Wanting Bush OUT!!! |
| 12.11.03 (6:57 am) [edit] |
[b]Funny in the neo-con, neo-orwellian world[/b], if you really, really want Bush to go back to Crawford TX & play [i]cowboy & indians [/i]with his corrupt corporate cronies, the neo-fascist right-wing press simply [i]screech, scream & smirk[/i]:[i][b] Bush hater [/b][/i]...
One can hate the [i]Crimes Againt Humanity [/i]committed by the corrupt Bush regime, without spending a lot of time wondering about the private lives of the Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]thugs and goons.
In Molly Ivins's "[i]Call Me a Bush-Hater[/i]" on http://www.alternet.org/story... , she says it well:
Among the more amusing cluckings from the right lately is their appalled discovery that quite a few Americans actually think George W. Bush is a terrible president.
Robert Novak is quoted as saying in all his 44 years of covering politics, he has never seen anything like the detestation of Bush. Charles Krauthammer managed to write an entire essay on the topic of "Bush-haters" in Time magazine as though he had never before come across a similar phenomenon.
Oh, I stretch memory way back, so far back, all the way back to – our last president. Almost lost in the mists of time though it is, I not only remember eight years of relentless attacks from Clinton-haters, I also notice they haven't let up yet. Clinton-haters accused the man of murder, rape, drug running, sexual harassment, financial chicanery, and official misconduct. And they accuse his wife of even worse.
For eight long years, this country was a zoo of Clinton-haters. Any idiot with a big mouth and a conspiracy theory could get a hearing on radio talk shows and "Christian" broadcasts and nutty Internet sites. People with transparent motives, people paid by tabloid magazines, people with known mental problems, ancient Clinton enemies with notoriously racist pasts – all were given hearings, credence, and air time. Sliming Clinton was a sure road to fame and fortune on the right, and many an ambitious young rightwing hit man like David Brock, who has since made full confession, took that golden opportunity.
And these folks didn't stop with verbal and printed attacks. From the day Clinton was elected to office, he was the subject of the politics of personal destruction. They went after him with a multimillion-dollar smear campaign funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the rightwing billionaire. They went after him with lawsuits funded by rightwing legal foundations (Paula Jones), they got special counsels appointed to investigate every nitpicking nothing that ever happened (Filegate, Travelgate), and they never let go of that hardy perennial Whitewater.
After all this time and all those millions of dollars wasted, no one has ever proved that the Clintons did a single thing wrong. Bill Clinton lied about a pathetic, squalid affair that was none of anyone else's business anyway, and for that they impeached the man and dragged this country through more than a year of the most tawdry, ridiculous, unnecessary pain. The day President Clinton tried to take out Osama bin Laden with a missile strike, every right-winger in America said it was a case of "wag the dog." He was supposedly trying to divert our attention from the much more breathtakingly important and serious matter of Monica Lewinsky. And who did he think he was to make us focus on some piffle like bin Laden?
"The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from," mused the ineffable Mr. Krauthammer. Gosh, what a puzzle that is. How could anyone not be just crazy about George W. Bush? "Whence the anger?" asks Krauthammer. "It begins of course with the 'stolen' election of 2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy."
I'd say so myself, yes, I would. I was in Florida during that chilling post-election fight, and am fully persuaded to this good day that Al Gore actually won Florida, not to mention getting 550,000 more votes than Bush overall. But I also remember thinking, as the scene became eerier and eerier, "Jeez, maybe we should just let them have this one, because Republican wing-nuts are so crazy, their bitterness would poison Gore's whole presidency." The night Gore conceded the race in one of the most graceful and honorable speeches I have ever heard, I was in a ballroom full of Republican Party flacks who booed and jeered through every word of it.
One thing I acknowledge about the right is that they're much better haters than liberals are. Your basic liberal – milk of human kindness flowing through every vein, and heart bleeding over everyone from the milk-shy Hottentot to the glandular obese – is pretty much a strikeout on the hatred front. Maybe further out on the left you can hit some good righteous anger, but liberals, and I am one, are generally real wusses. Guys like Rush Limbaugh figured that out a long time ago – attack a liberal and the first thing he says is, "You may have a point there."
To tell the truth, I'm kind of proud of us for holding the grudge this long. Normally, we'd remind ourselves that we have to be good sports, it's for the good of the country, we must unite behind the only president we've got, as Lyndon used to remind us. If there are still some of us out here sulking, "Yeah, but they stole that election," well, good. I don't think we should forget that.
But, onward. So George Dubya becomes president, having run as a "compassionate conservative," and what do we get? Hell's own conservative and dick for compassion.
His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, and he lied and said the tax cuts would help average Americans. Again and again, the "average" tax cut would be $1,000. That means you get $100, and the millionaire gets $92,000, and that's how they "averaged" it out. Then came 9/11, and we all rallied. Ready to give blood, get out of our cars and ride bicycles, whatever. Shop, said the President. And more tax cuts for the rich.
By now, we're starting to notice Bush's bait-and-switch. Make a deal with Ted Kennedy to improve education and then fail to put money into it. Promise $15 billion in new money to combat AIDS in Africa (wow!) but it turns out to be a cheap con, almost no new money. Bush comes to praise a job training effort, and then cuts the money. Bush says AmeriCorps is great, then cuts the money. Gee, what could we possibly have against this guy? We go along with the war in Afghanistan, and we still don't have bin Laden.
Then suddenly, in the greatest bait-and-switch of all time, Osama bin doesn't matter at all, and we have to go after Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11. But he does have horrible weapons of mass destruction, and our president "without doubt," without question, knows all about them, even unto the amounts – tons of sarin, pounds of anthrax. So we take out Saddam Hussein, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the Iraqis are not overjoyed to see us.
By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to say, "Wha the hey?" We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for one year and no one knows how long we'll be there. And still poor Mr. Krauthammer is hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that George W. Bush is a poor excuse for a President.
Chuck, honey, it ain't just the 2.6 million jobs we've lost: People are losing their pensions, their health insurance, the cost of health insurance is doubling, tripling in price, the Administration wants to cut off their overtime, and Bush was so too little, too late with extending unemployment compensation that one million Americans were left high and dry. And you wonder why we think he's a lousy president?
Sure, all that is just what's happening in people's lives, but what we need is the Big Picture. Well, the Big Picture is that after September 11, we had the sympathy of every nation on Earth. They all signed up, all our old allies volunteered, everybody was with us, and Bush just booted all of that away. Sneering, jeering, bad manners, hideous diplomacy, threats, demands, arrogance, bluster.
"In Afghanistan, Bush rode a popular tide; Iraq, however, was a singular act of presidential will," says Krauthammer.
You bet your ass it was. We attacked a country that had done nothing to us, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and turns out not to have weapons of mass destruction.
It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he's a bad president. Grownups can do that, you know. You can decide someone's policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night consumed with hatred.
Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape because of his stupid economic policies.
If that makes me a Bush-hater, then sign me up.
[i]Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist out of Austin, Texas, is the co-author of "Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America." [/i]
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| Halliburton Gouges $2.64-per-Gallon To Import Gasoline From Kuwait To Iraq |
| 12.10.03 (6:14 pm) [edit] |
[b]An example of the rape of the [i]not-rich[/i]-American Taxpayer and Iraq by the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i][/b], is the [i]whore [/i]Cheney's[i] pimp [/i]Halliburton's exorbitant price-gouging for the sales of gasoline imported from Kuwait ([i]next door neighbor[/i]) to Iraq.
In "[i][b]High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq[/b][/i]" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... :
[b]The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show[/b].
Halliburton, which has the exclusive United States contract to import fuel into Iraq, subcontracts the work to a Kuwaiti firm, government officials said. But Halliburton gets 26 cents a gallon for its overhead and fee, according to documents from the Army Corps of Engineers.
The cost of the imported fuel first came to public attention in October when two senior Democrats in Congress criticized Halliburton, the huge Houston-based oil-field services company, for "inflating gasoline prices at a great cost to American taxpayers." At the time, it was estimated that Halliburton was charging the United States government and Iraq's oil-for-food program an average of about $1.60 a gallon for fuel available for 71 cents wholesale.
But a breakdown of fuel costs, contained in Army Corps documents recently provided to Democratic Congressional investigators and shared with The New York Times, shows that Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey.
A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Wendy Hall, defended the company's pricing. "It is expensive to purchase, ship, and deliver fuel into a wartime situation, especially when you are limited by short-duration contracting," she said. She said the company's Kellogg Brown & Root unit, which administers the contract, must work in a "hazardous" and "hostile environment," and that its profit on the contract is small.
The price of fuel sold in Iraq, set by the government, is 5 cents to 15 cents a gallon. The price is a political issue, and has not been raised to avoid another hardship for Iraqis.
The Iraqi state oil company and the Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center import fuel from Kuwait for less than half of Halliburton's price, the records show.
Ms. Hall said Halliburton's subcontractor had had more than 20 trucks damaged or stolen, nine drivers injured and one driver killed when making fuel runs into Iraq.
She said the contract was also expensive because it was hard to find a company with the trucks necessary to move the fuel, and because Halliburton is only able to negotiate a 30-day contract for fuel. "It is not as simple as dropping by a service station for a fill-up," she said.
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Bob Faletti, also defended the price of imported fuel.
"Everyone is talking about high costs, but no one is talking about the dangers, or the number of fuel trucks that have been blown up," Mr. Faletti said. "That's the reason it is so expensive." He said recent government audits had found no improprieties in the Halliburton contract.
Gasoline imports are one of the largest costs of Iraqi reconstruction efforts so far. Although Iraq sits on the third-largest oil reserves in the world, production has been hampered by pipeline sabotage, power failures and an antiquated infrastructure that was hurt by 11 years of United Nations sanctions.
Nearly $500 million has already been spent to bring gas, benzene and other fuels into Iraq, according to the corps. And as part of the $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan that President Bush signed last month, $18.6 billion will be spent on reconstruction projects, including $690 million for gasoline and other fuel imports in 2004.
From May to late October, Halliburton imported about 61 million gallons of fuel from Kuwait and about 179 million from Turkey, at a total cost of more than $383 million.
A company's profits on the transport and sale of gasoline are usually razor-thin, with companies losing contracts if they overbid by half a penny a gallon. Independent experts who reviewed Halliburton's percentage of its gas importation contract said the company's 26-cent charge per gallon of gas from Kuwait appeared to be extremely high.
"I have never seen anything like this in my life," said Phil Verleger, a California oil economist and the president of the consulting firm PK Verleger LLC. "That's a monopoly premium — that's the only term to describe it. Every logistical firm or oil subsidiary in the United States and Europe would salivate to have that sort of contract."
In March, Halliburton was awarded a no-competition contract to repair Iraq's oil industry, and it has already received more than $1.4 billion in work. That award has been the focus of Congressional scrutiny in part because Vice President Dick Cheney is Halliburton's former chief executive officer. As part of its contract, Halliburton began importing fuel in the spring when gasoline was in short supply in large Iraqi cities.
The government's accounting shows that Halliburton paid its Kuwait subcontractor $1.17 a gallon, when it was selling for 71 cents a gallon wholesale in the Middle East.
In addition, Halliburton is paying $1.21 a gallon to transport the fuel an estimated 400 miles from Kuwait to Iraq, the documents show. It is paying 22 cents a gallon to transport gas into Iraq from Turkey.
The 26 cents a gallon it keeps includes a 2-cent fee and 24 cents for "mark-up costs," the documents show. The mark-up portion is intended to cover the overhead for administering the contract.
Ms. Hall of Halliburton said it was "misleading" for the corps to call it a mark-up. "This simply means overhead costs, which includes the general and administrative costs like light bulbs, paper and employees," she said. "These costs are specifically allowable under the contract with the Corps of Engineers, are defined by detailed regulations, and are scrutinized and approved by U.S. government auditors."
In recent weeks, the costs of importing fuel from Kuwait have risen. Figures provided recently to Congressional investigators by the corps show that Halliburton was charging as much as $3.06 per gallon for fuel from Kuwait in late November.
If the corps concludes that Halliburton has successfully administered the gas contract, it could be paid an additional 5 percent of the total value of the gas it imported.
Halliburton's Kuwait subcontractor was hired in May. Halliburton and the Army Corps of Engineers refused to identify the company, citing security reasons. Aides to Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who has been a critic of the fuel contract, said government officials had identified it as the Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company. Several independent petroleum experts in the Middle East and the United States said they had not heard of Altanmia.
Copies of the Army Corps documents were given to Mr. Waxman's office, which provided them to The Times.
Iraqi's state oil company, SOMO, pays 96 cents a gallon to bring in gas, which includes the cost of gasoline and transportation costs, the aides to Mr. Waxman said. The gasoline transported by SOMO — and by Halliburton's subcontractor — are delivered to the same depots in Iraq and often use the same military escorts.
The Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center pays $1.08 to $1.19 per gallon for the gas it imports from Kuwait, Congressional aides said. That includes the price of the gas and its transportation costs.
The money for Halliburton's gas contract has come principally from the United Nations oil-for-food program, though some of the costs have been borne by American taxpayers. In the appropriations bill signed by Mr. Bush last month, taxpayers will subsidize all gas importation costs beginning early next year.
[b]In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Waxman responded to the latest information on to costs of the Halliburton contract. "[i]It's inexcusable that Americans are being charged absurdly high prices to buy gasoline for Iraqis and outrageous that the White House is letting it happen[/i]," he said.[/b]
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| Now Can We Call It Imperialism? |
| 12.10.03 (8:50 am) [edit] |
[b]Now can we call it imperialism?[/b]
The Pentagon will bar companies from France, Germany, Russia and other countries that opposed the war in Iraq from bidding on $18.6 billion in prime contracts for reconstruction of the country, according to a memo released Tuesday, reports the Los Angeles Times. "The memo, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, says that 'for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States,' only companies from the United States, Iraq and the countries that joined the coalition against Saddam Hussein will be allowed to bid on the 26 contracts to be announced soon."
[b]Should not the Iraqis be deciding to whom contracts are awarded? Should not the Iraqis be building their own businesses and participating in the re-construction of their own country? Should not the Iraqis make these decisions?[/b]
[b]YES, but [i]the Mad King George and his neo-con, neo-fascist Global Corporate Empire are installing 'Democracy-Bush-Style'[/i ]: [i]in other words, the wholesale rape and plunder of the non-rich American taxpayer and the Iraqi oil, people & assets[/b][/i].
[b]Sources[/b]:
AlterNet on http://www.alternet.org
"Antiwar Nations Barred From Bids: Companies in countries that opposed the Iraq invasion will not be allowed to compete for $18.6 billion in contracts for reconstruction" on http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,1951429.story?coll=la-home-headli nes
TalkingPointsMemo on http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... -[i] Excerpt [/i]-
[i]What they're trying to accomplish? Or did the relevant regulations make them have to say this in order to get to the desired end of barring bids from French and German companies?
That question aside, what it sounds like is that we're trying to use the contract bonanza to leverage more foreign troops into Iraq for next year. You Dutch guys want contracts? You Kuwaitis? You know the price ...
The line about "future efforts" rather begs the question of whether there are going to be any "future efforts."
Frankly, this raises more questions for me than it answers. But I think this plays into the issues we've been discussing about Baker's mission and the question of Iraq's debt. [/i]
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| Neo-Cons Thrilled: U.S. Soldiers Slaughtering Future Generations |
| 12.10.03 (8:00 am) [edit] |
[b]The neo-con thugs and goons in the corrupt Bush regime must be thrilled this morning [/b]to learn that U.S. Soldiers slaughtered 6 more children on Friday-- resulting in 15 children massacred in the span of less than one week in Afghanistan.
Ah, yes, if the Afghanistani people don't accept [i]Democracy-Bush-Style [/i]([i]whatever the hell that is ... oh, yes ... it is the wholesale corporate rape of people, land and natural resources[/i]), then let us simply slaughter future generations ... let us wipe 'em all out ... a neo-con holocaust ... How exciting for the cowardly [i]arm-chair chicken-hawks [/i]who sit on their fat asses in plush offices, far, far away from the danger and the battle ... Uh-huh. After all, Tom DeLay calls Palestinian people "[i]cockroaches[/i]" ... and the Bush/Cheney Inc. propaganda machine [[i]Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, etc. out of the neo-nazi American Enterprise Institute (AEI)[/i] ... ] calls Islam the "[i]evil[/i]" religion ... Even [i]dumb[/i]-Dubya called these wars a "[i]crusade[/i]":-- of course, his [i]neo-fascist spin-meisters[/i] explained it was a "mistake" ... and Dubya's got an advantage:-- when he claims[i] ignorance[/i], it is so easy to believe [i]he is ignorant[/i].
Two Afghanistani adults were also also killed this "raid" ... When will these bloody fiascos, these guerrilla quagmires that are responsible for the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of innocent human beings in Afghanistan and Iraq be brought to a halt? Apparently, not until Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, et al. have finished their raping, swindling, plundering & looting of the[i] not-richest [/i]American taxpayers, and the Afghanistani and Iraqi peoples ...
This is unconscionable -- the daily slaughter of human being in order to enrich the squalid whorish Bush family & associates, and their sordid [i]corporate-take-all [/i]pimps. [b]What a wonderful example to the world of Bush-Style-Democracy in action[/b]!
Please contact your Congress on http://www.congress.org and demand an end to this despicable outrage and call for impeachment hearings into the[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]committed by the corrupt Bush regime.
[b]Sources[/b]:
"More Afghan children die in raids - The US says civilian casualties are inevitable. The US military in Afghanistan has revealed that six children died in a raid on suspected militants in the eastern province of Paktia last week." on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/so...
"U.S. Actions in Afghanistan Claim Six More Children - Two Adults Were Also Killed During Friday's Assault" on http://www.washingtonpost.com...
"A Creeping Collapse in Credibility at the White House: From ENRON Entanglements to UNOCAL Bringing the Taliban to Texas and Controlling Afghanistan" on http://www.counterpunch.org/t...
"Unocal Slave-Labor Trial Set to Start in Calif." on http://www.quicken.com/invest...
"Bush Family Hits The Jackpot $$$ From Blood-Money In Iraq" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"Daddy, Jeb, Neil & the Mad King George Bush's Corrupt Billions $$$ "One Family" BANK" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
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| More Intel on the Bizarre World of the Neo-Looney Bushies |
| 12.09.03 (7:51 pm) [edit] |
[b]More Intelligence on the Bizarre World of the Neo-Looney Bushies ... ([i]continued[/i] from http://www.tblog.com/template... )[/b]
What is Bush doing? [i]Oh, yeah, raising money to rig the 2004 election [/i]...
What is Condi Rice doing (who is [i]supposed to be in charge of co-ordinating Iraqi policy [/i]from the White House)? [i]Oh, yeah, running around the world attending banquets and stuffing her fat face and swilling gallons of wine[/i] ...
What are James A. Baker & Wolfy Wolfowitz doing? [i]Oh, apparently not talking to each other [/i]...
[b]Bush is no leader [/b]... and, this corrupt, inept and bungling regime are ([i]un[/i])funny laughing stocks ...
[i][b]Read on [/b][/i]...
[b]Just looking now at the headlines on a number of the big news sites,[/b] it's clear that the Pentagon's decision to bar French, German and Russian companies from bidding on Iraqi reconstruction contracts is getting a lot of attention.
But as I noted earlier, [b]the bigger story is that the administration can't even get its story straight[/b]. Are we trying to get retribution toward these countries by stiffing them on the contracts or are we trying to come to some sort of agreement with them to refinance and restructure Iraq's mammoth foreign debt?
[b]It pretty obviously can't be both[/b].
One reader suggested to me today that perhaps the Wolfowitz directive banning the bids from these three countries is a bargaining chip we're putting on the table as part of Baker's negotiation strategy.
[b]But, believe me, it's not. It's just that everybody is pursuing their own policy and nobody's coordinating anything[/b].
And then there's the Baker appointment.
One might say that if we didn't have James Baker to turn to to handle international debt crises, we might have to invest the Treasury Secretary.
I mean, this doesn't just fall under the Treasury Department's general purview. It's one of its main responsibilities.
In an insightful column in [i]Newsweek[/i], Richard Wolffe makes the point we've been hinting at for the last for days ... http://msnbc.com/news/1003370... ...
[i]Unless Baker is about to declare Iraq’s independence, there are only two explanations for his appointment. Either the president feels that Powell, Snow and the rest of his cabinet are incapable of dealing with Iraq’s debts. Or the president is giving Baker a far broader role in resolving Iraq’s future. Both explanations are deeply unsettling for his much-vaunted foreign policy team and for the rest of the world. When Baker travels to European and regional capitals, the world’s leaders will think that Baker—not Powell, Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza Rice—has the influence with the president to get things done in Iraq. Yet we, and they, can’t be sure of that. After all, in official terms, Baker is just talking about Iraq’s debts[/i].
[b]In fact, I think it's both. It signals a lack of confidence in his team and Baker has a much larger brief than we're being told[/b].
As I've tried to argue over the last couple days, in the current context, handling the Iraqi debt issue inherently takes you well be technical matters of debt refinance.
[b]This is another tacit admission of the failure of the president's policy in Iraq. We went into Iraq to overturn the geopolitical dynamics of the region. Now Baker, an opponent of everything the architects of the war stand for, is being sent in to reach an accomodation with the status quo powers to pave the way for our departure[/b].
[b]Sources[/b]:
TalkingPointsMemo on http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
"Practice to Deceive - Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan." on http://www.washingtonmonthly....
"Clear as Mud: How the administration’s Mideast policy has become confused, murky and weak" on http://msnbc.com/news/1003370...
"Pentagon Bars Three Nations From Iraq Bids" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...
"High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...
"U.S. bars opponents from Iraq bids - Iraq reconstruction contracts estimated at $18.6 billion" on http://msnbc.com/news/1003413...
"Chinese Premier meets US Secretary of State (Condi Rice also at banquet)" on http://www1.chinadaily.com.cn...
"Iraq Reconstruction Funds Slow Coming In" on http://www.nytimes.com/aponli...
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| Bizarre Politics in the Neo-Looney World of the Bushies |
| 12.09.03 (4:00 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bizarre Politics in the Neo-Looney World of the Bushies ...[/b]
Dubya has brought back his Daddy's handler & fixer, James A. Baker ([i]remember the guy who helped the Bush family rig Florida[/i]) ... and assigned him as his "[i]debt envoy[/i]" to try to persuade nations owed money by Iraq to forgive the $120-$150 Billion debt:-- after all, Bushy-boy has promised Iraq's oil, assets and loot to his corporate cronies.
[b]Aside[/b]: [i]Too bad Dubya doesn't find a "debt envoy" to get us out of his historical record-level debt he has saddled on America's middle-class, lower-income and poor-- and future generations-- as he's swindled the U.S. Treasury to funnel our tax dollars to his Global Corporate Empire[/i].
You gotta read the following for a [i]good laugh [/i]or a [i]good cry[/i]:
[b]Department of intra-administration coordination, subdivision of [i]one hand knowing what the other's doing [/i] or not know what the hell each other are doing[/b]...
As we noted yesterday, Bush family fixer James A. Baker has been given the task [ http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ] of cajoling states that are owed money by Iraq into either forgiving or generously restructuring Iraq's debts.
Near the top of that list of state creditors are France, Germany and Russia. [ http://www.clubdeparis.org/re... ]
Now we hear that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has just signed a directive barring French, German and Russian companies from competing for the $18.6 billion of Iraqi reconstruction contracts for "the protection of the essential security interests of the United States." [ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... ]
[i][b]D'oh![/b][/i]
Luckily, Baker and Wolfowitz are such close pals and ideological soul-mates. So I'm sure they'll be able to work it out.
[b]Sources:[/b]
"Baker Takes The Whole Loaf" on http://www.tompaine.com/featu...
TalkingPointsMemo on http://www.talkingpointsmemo....
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| Gore Backs Dean ... Now Let's Get Rid Of Dubya |
| 12.09.03 (8:52 am) [edit] |
[b]Gore backs Dean ... a [i]real stunner[/i]![/b]
Maybe Gore feels like most conscientious citizens with honor and integrity, and concludes it is time to gather our courage and our forces against the corrupt neo-con, neo-fascist thugs, goons and corporate rapists who have:-- hijacked our government -- engaged us in immoral and illegal wars turned bloody guerrilla quagmires to enrich themselves -- and, decimated the economy.
[b]It is time to get rid of Dubya [/b]... [i]Get ready folks, it is going to be a bumby ride [/i]... but together we can succeed in taking back[b] Our Republic For Which It Stands in 2004![/b]
[b]Sources[/b]:
"Gore endorses Dean for president" on http://www.msnbc.com/news/100...
"Mr. Inside Embraces Mr. Outside, and What a Surprise" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...
"Gore's epiphany" on http://www.salon.com/opinion/...
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| Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... |
| 12.09.03 (7:08 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime's insane mantra [/b]that only "[i]works[/i]" for the their brain-dead neo-con buffoons, attack-dogs & court-jesters ... is to [i]mindlessly repeat over and over and over and over and over [/i]again their mind-numbing chant:
[i][b]Blame Clinton [/b][/i]... for all of their [b]failed policies and incompetence[/b].
[i][b]9/11 [/b][/i]... for all of their [b]insane[/b] [b]bloody Crimes Against Humanity[/b].
[i][b]Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blaime Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ... Blame Clinton ... 9/11 ...[/b][/i]
However, nobel prize winning economists such as Professor George Akerlof and others all agree that Bush's economic policies are the "worst in America's history". Also, even conservatives agree that the inept Bushies have failed in Iraq. [i][b]Blaming others for their wrong-headed crimes and ineptitude & exploiting the misery and trauma of 9/11 may be convenient, but is yet another example of the sordid & squalid dishonesty of the Bushies and their neo-orwellian spin-meisters[/b][/i].
Moreover, [i]dumb-[/i]Dubya can't have it "[i]both ways[/i]" ([i]unless you are a liar or corrupt or both[/i]) by erroneously claiming credit for their so-called growth ([i]actually the productivity improvements have been funneled into the pockets of the corporate top-dogs & fat-cats[/i])-- Bush's[b] insane neo-fascist domestic policies [/b]have proven a [i]train-wreck [/i]for the U.S.A.:
* Bush destroyed over 3.3 million jobs ([i]Clinton created 22,000,000 jobs in 8 years[/i])-- the highest job loss since the Great Depression.
* Bush has done NOTHING about rising poverty levels with over 35 million families living below the poverty line & over 3.5 million people homeless. It's getting worse.
* Bush has done NOTHING about the 45-85 million citizens with no health care. It's getting worse.
* Bush has swindled, plundered and looted the U.S.A.'s Treasury out of hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars, to enrich his corporate cronies, the richest plutocrats & his greedy campaign contributors-- resulting in over $560 Billion deficit in 2003 alone-- over $1.9 Trillion debt from 2000-2004-- the highest in our nation's history.
Bush's[b] insane neo-con, neo-nazi warmongering [/b]has resulted in the [i]tragic slaughter of tens of thousands of human beings[/i]:
* Afghanistan is a bloody fiasco with the warlords rising-up again.
* Iraq has turned into a bloody guerrilla quagmire with over 445 U.S. Soldiers, 85 Coalition Troops & between 21,000-55,000 Iraqis massacred to enrich the whorish Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] pimps: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, et al. Their illegal & immoral [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]was waged by lying to the U.S. & the entire world-- a crime under the U.S. Constitution.
* Bush has squandered the good-will and respect that the U.S.A. enjoyed around the world-- and is now the nation most hated and feared, since it has been hijacked by a corrupt cabal of[i] mafioso-style [/i]thugs & goons in the corrupt Bush regime.
Bush is a phony and ugly "useful idiot" ... a whore for his [i]corporate-take-all [/i]swindlers and his plutocratic pimps. The facts speak for themselves ... The neo-con's mendacious neo-nazi propaganda campaign and neo-orwellian rhetoric do not change the facts.
[b]Blaming Clinton and invoking the fear and trauma of 9/11 doesn't change the truth: Bush should GO in 2004[/b]!
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| DOUBTS Cast on Iraqi Officer:-- Lt. Colonel's Misleading WMD Claims |
| 12.08.03 (3:47 pm) [edit] |
DOUBTS are being cast on the Iraqi Officer's bizarre and misleading WMD claims ... This is hardly surprising since Lt. Col al-Dabbagh is a member of the[i] embezzler & liar-extraordinaire Ahmed Chalabi's [/i]corrupt gang who want to take-over Iraq. ["[i]British Intelligence Sources Distance Themselves From Un-Proven WMDs Claim[/i]" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
In "Doubts cast on Iraqi officer's WMD claims" on http://www.smh.com.au/article... :
[b]Doubts have been cast on an Iraqi former colonel's claims that Saddam Hussein's front-line units were provided with rocket-propelled grenades armed with chemical or biological weapons for use against allied troops.[/b]
Lt-Col al-Dabbagh's description of the "secret weapon" issued on the Iraqi dictator's orders appeared to back Tony Blair's claim that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat to British interests.
He told London's The Sunday Telegraph he commanded an air-defence unit in the western desert and claimed to be the source of the intelligence used by MI6 and the Prime Minister to bolster the case for war.
He insisted the weapons of mass destruction could have been deployed in half an hour, faster than the 45 minutes made famous by the Government's controversial dossier on Iraq's WMD.
He claimed they were not used because the bulk of the Iraqi army chose not to resist the allied advance. "If the army had fought for Saddam Hussein and used these weapons there would have been terrible consequences," he said.
However, in Baghdad yesterday doubts were expressed about his version of events. His commanding officer said that he had no knowledge of his men being supplied with WMD warheads.
A senior Iraqi general in charge of Iraq's air defences during the war, who was part of a committee that reported directly to Saddam on the supply and training of air defence units, said: "This lieutenant colonel wanted to scare the Western world."
The general, who would not give his name, conceded that authority may have been bypassed but said the frontline troops he visited were in a shambolic state and were unlikely to have received any additional weapons.
"We were very low on equipment," he said. "There certainly wasn't any talk of chemical warheads."
[b]Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, said: "The claim is that battlefield weapons of mass destruction were available. That's not what the Government told us at the time. The Government told us that WMD could be deployed in 45 minutes and that was a misleading claim[/b]."
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| WAG THE TURKEY: ... Surprise Thanksgiving Dinner At 6 AM? ... Ho ho ho!!! |
| 12.08.03 (12:30 pm) [edit] |
[b]WAG THE TURKEY: ... [i]Surprise Thanksgiving Dinner At 6 AM[/i]? ... Ho ho ho!!![/b]
Funny(?) that the Bushies seem oblivious to the fact that they are the foolish [i]laughing stock [/i]of the entire world ... And, except for either frightened and intimidated U.S. Soldiers ([i]who understandably want to escape this neo-con, neo-fascist bloody fiasco, with their lives intact... [/i]) or neo-con buffoons, attack-dogs & court jesters ... most thinking people now see Bush's cynically staged circus act for the stupid and phony stunt it indeed was!
Maybe next time Bush can dress-up ([i]he has a bizarre fetish for donning 'freaky' clothing [/i]...) as Santa Claus and give out presents to his rich campaign contributors ([i]ooopppsss ... he has already done that by virtue of swindling, plundering & looting the U.S. Treasury on behalf of his corporate cronies[/i]) ... or, maybe he could dress-up in his [i]top-gun [/i]outfit and stand by a stockpile of fake plastic WMDs ... hmmm ... [i]Have I discovered Karl "Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles" Rove's secret plan?[/i]
Here's a great article by[i] Wayne Madsen [/i]on http://www.rense.com/general4... :
Yes folks, we are now all bit players in a real-life version of the movie "[i]Wag the Dog[/i]." President Bush and his GOP advisers are ecstatic that the president made a secret trip to Baghdad to be with U.S. troops for a "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner. His polling numbers -- which I contend are as fixed as a Florida election -- will undoubtedly receive a huge boost.
I may be a bit naive, and it has been a while since I served on active duty, but I can't recall ever sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner at 6:00 AM. Air Force One touched down at Baghdad International Airport, under cover of darkness, at 5:20 AM Baghdad time. Bush was on the ground for two and a half hours, his plane departing Baghdad at around 7:50 AM. Considering that it likely took some 30 minutes for Bush to disembark from Air Force One and travel by a heavily secured motorcade to the hangar where the troops were assembled, that means our military men and women were downing turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and non-alcoholic beer at a time when most people would be eating eggs, bacon, grits, home fries, and toast.
But there on national television, when most Americans were preparing to sit down to their own traditional Thanksgiving dinners, we saw a tape of President Bush serving mashed potatoes and corn to American troops at a "traditional" Thanksgiving meal in the early hours of the morning. What's more, when a clearly exhausted Bush strode around a curtain -- after a "What's My Line" mystery guest routine by Iraq proconsul L. Paul Bremer -- 600 American troops were said to be "shocked and awed" by Bush's surprise appearance. I would have thought most of the troops, many of whom are support personnel who work relatively normal working hours, would have been more surprised when they were ordered to get up before sunrise to eat Thanksgiving dinner between 6:00 and 7:30 A.M.
And the abysmal and sycophantic Washington and New York press corps seems to have completely missed the Thanksgiving "breakfast dinner." Chalk that up to the fact that most people in the media never saw a military chow line or experienced reveille in their lives. So it would certainly go over their heads that troops would be ordered out of bed to eat turkey and stuffing before the crack of dawn.
Democratic presidential candidates will be scurrying to regain ground from Bush's surprise trip and previous indicators that the economy is on a rebound. Of course, economic indicators emanate from public and private institutions controlled by GOP political operatives. With an all time high of 4000 people in Washington, DC having their Thanksgiving dinners courtesy of DC's Central Kitchen for the homeless, those economic indicators seem as phony as Florida's vote totals. And you will never see Bush serving meals to the homeless. What would Bush's handlers do? Have the homeless applaud him? Bush's handlers could have propaganda signs in the ba | |
