Here's something for your favorite Republican culture warrior -- a little gay bashing, a little Europe bashing, and some twisted bible verse to top it all off:
[b]Bush is a pathetic, stupid and immoral man ... Spending more on lavish, extravagant inaugural festivities (over $40 million, not including security) than on disaster relief for the many human beings who suffer miserably in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami ($35 million) ... Moreover, anybody with an iota of intelligence, substantive integrity and true morality can see how obscene it is to hold many balls, dinners, fireworks, etc.-- gorging on rich foods & swilling lots of booze-- while our U.S. Soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians are being massacred in Bush's illegal and immoral, bloody guerrilla quagmire in the Middle East-- and, when such a tragedy costing the lives of hundreds of thousands in Asia has occurred ...[/b]
George Bush ended 2004 on a sour note.
But at least he maintained his record as the most disingenuous president since Richard Nixon.
When other world leaders rushed to respond to the crisis caused by last Sunday's tsunamis in southern Asia, George Bush decamped to his ranch in Texas for another vacation. For three days after the disaster, the only formal response from the White House was issued by a deputy press secretary. Finally, after a United Nations official made comments that seemed to highlight the disengaged nature of the official U.S. reaction to one of the worst catastrophes in human history, the president appeared at a hastily-scheduled press conference to grumble about how critics of his embarrassing performance were "misguided and ill-informed."
Bush bragged about the U.S. commitment of $35 million to help respond to a tragedy that has cost more than 100,000 lives and displaced millions of people in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Somalia and other countries.
What the president did not say is that this initial commitment is less than the planned expenditure for his Jan. 20 inauguration: $40 million.
It was, as well, less than the immediate commitment by smaller and less wealthy nations such as Spain, which has already promised to provide $68 billion.
The president's missteps have been noted by the rest of the world, and by diplomatic observers at home. Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Bush had missed an opportunity to display humanitarian, moral and diplomatic leadership in the world. Reflecting on the administration's response, Derek Mitchell, an expert on Asian affairs at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "I think politically they've done poorly."
At a time when the U.S. image abroad has been battered by the president's unilateral decision to order the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration should have been sensitive to the need to respond quickly and effectively to a disaster of this magnitude. But that did not happen. Bush failed to engage at the critical point and then peddled the lie that the U.S. is in the forefront of providing humanitarian aid.
Thirty other developed nations commit greater proportions of their gross domestic products to humanitarian projects than does the U.S. In fact, the entire U.S. commitment for humanitarian aid in 2004 -- $2.4 billion -- was about the same amount as the U.S. spends every ten days to maintain the occupation of Iraq. The contrast between the Bush administration's spare-no-expense approach to Iraq and its penny-pinching response to the crisis in southern Asia is devastating for America's image abroad.
But it is not too late to respond in a more appropriate manner.
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, a longtime advocate for a more responsible U.S. policy regarding humanitarian aid, has suggested that the U.S. should rescind a portion of the reconstruction aid that has been budgeted for use in Iraq. Of an estimated $18.4 billion allocated for that purpose through December, only about $2 billion has been spent.
Leahy has already attracted some interest in his proposal from Congressional Republicans. Hopefully, this will influence the administration to dramatically increase its commitment to emergency relief and redevelopment aid.
What is the appropriate commitment? Over the critical period of the next several months, the U.S. should provide at least as much money to rebuilding southern Asia as it does to maintain the occupation of Iraq – a figure Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last year put at roughly $3.9 billion a month but that is, in reality, much higher. Committing as much to aiding southern Asia as is now being spent to occupy Iraq would signal that the U.S. wants to rejoin the world community.
Committing dramatically less – as appears to be the president's intent -- will confirm the impression that the U.S. is more interested in spending money on a military misadventure than on a necessary reconstruction.
[b]2004 ... It was a year full of memorable events, but here are some worth forgetting. [/b]
While so many year-end publications focus on what we should remember about the year now grinding to a close, I'd like to continue this column's contrarian tradition of pointing out the things we'd all be better off never having cross our minds again.
Here then is a list of all the things I'd like to forget, circa 2004:
... Bernard Kerik's nanny. Bernard Kerik's Ground Zero love nest. Bernard Kerik.
... That the woman (Condi Rice) who dismissed a presidential briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." as a "historical" document is going to be our next Secretary of State.
... That a man (Alberto 'Torture Guy' Gonzales) who finds the Geneva Conventions "quaint" is going to be our next Attorney General.
... Janet Jackson's briefly exposed right boob.
... That it took 14 months and public protests from the victims' families before the president okayed the 9/11 Commission, but only 2 weeks before the first hearings were held on Janet Jackson's boob.
... That the media thought "Don't be economic girlie men" was a great line.
... Scott Peterson's love of golf. And that his lawyers thought it was a reason he shouldn't be sentenced to death.
... Paris Hilton's new perfume. Paris Hilton's new album. Paris Hilton's new book. Paris Hilton.
... "Surviving Christmas," "Jersey Girl," J-Lo: Ben Affleck goes 0-for-2004.
... Madrid, Spain, March 11, 2004.
... Beslan, Russia, September 3, 2004.
... That the Federal budget deficit hit $413 billion this year, and two-thirds of it is the result of Bush's tax cuts.
... That Dick Cheney is talking about another round of tax cuts.
... What Colin Powell did to his credibility. "You break it, you live with it for the rest of your life."
... "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
... That picture of Lindy England holding the leash.
... The way the administration tried to sweep Abu Ghraib under the rug.
... William Hung, recording artist.
... Ashlee Simpson, lip synch artist.
... Bob Dylan, lingerie salesman.
... That George Tenet, who knew that the intel on Iraqi WMD was thinner than Lara Flynn Boyle on Dexatrim, turned into the Dick Vitale of WMD: "It's a slam dunk, baby!"
... That George Tenet was subsequently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
... That a ten-year-old grilled cheese sandwich allegedly bearing the likeness of the Virgin Mary sold for $28,000 on eBay.
... The 10,000 Web remixes incorporating The Dean Scream.
... That of the roughly 550 enemy combatants held captive in Guantanamo Bay only four have been formally charged.
... The Pistons/Pacers basketbrawl.
... The looks on George and Laura Bush's faces when Dr. Phil asked them about the "epidemic levels of oral sex" in America's middle schools.
... That Osama is still on the loose – and releasing tapes.
... That the Kyoto Protocol was ratified – and we aren't part of it.
... That Ken Lay (Enron CEO-- and Bush's good buddy who he calls "Kenny-boy") has still not gone to trial or served a minute in jail.
... That 35.9 million Americans live below the poverty line – 12.9 million of them children.
... That 42 percent of Americans still think Saddam Hussein was "directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out" the 9/11 attacks.
... That, thanks to presidential cutbacks, we actually have fewer police and first responders on the streets today than we had on 9/11.
... Star Jones' wedding.
... The Movie Multiplex From Hell: Alexander, My Baby's Daddy, Thunderbirds, Sleepover, Around the World in 80 Days.
... The iPod Party Mix From Hell: Jessica Simpson's "Take My Breath Away," William Hung's "She Bangs," Britney Spears' "Toxic," Britney Spears' "My Prerogative," Britney Spears' "I've Just Begun Having My Fun".
... That Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld couldn't find time to personally sign letters of condolence to the families of troops killed in Iraq.
... That Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz couldn't remember the number of soldiers who'd lost their lives in Iraq.
... Drilling for oil in ANWR (I've been desperately trying to forget this one since 2001 but the White House just won't let me!).
TomPaine.com seldom runs open letters. This week, however, we're making an exception. In only a few days, Christians around the country and the world will be celebrating the birth of Jesus—also called the Prince of Peace. The backdrop to Christmas this year, of course, is the war in Iraq that a majority of Americans now believe was a mistake. Sheehan's heartfelt rebuke to [i]Time[/i] offers a perspective we hope the nation will hear more of in 2005 as we contemplate the consequences of our leaders' recklessness.
[i]Cindy Sheehan lives in California[/i].
[b]Dear [i]Time [/i]Editors:[/b]
My son, Spc. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq on 04/04/04. This has been an extraordinary couple of weeks of "slaps in the faces" to us families of fallen heroes.
First, the Secretary of Defense—Donald Rumsfeld—admits to the world something that we as military families already know: The United States was not prepared for nor had any plan for the assault on Iraq. Our children were sent to fight an ill-conceived and badly prosecuted war. Our troops were sent with the wrong type of training, bad equipment, inferior protection and thin supply lines. Our children have been killed and we have made the ultimate sacrifice for this fiasco of a war, then we find out this week that Rumsfeld doesn't even have the courtesy or compassion to sign the "death letters"—as they are so callously called. Besides the upcoming holidays and the fact we miss our children desperately, what else can go wrong this holiday season?
Well let's see. Oh yes. George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three more architects of the quagmire that is Iraq. Thousands of people are dead and Bremer, Tenet and Franks are given our country's highest civilian award. What's next?
To top everything off—after it has been proven that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, there were no ties between Saddam and 9/11 and over 1,300 brave young people in this country are dead and Iraq lies in ruins— what does [i]Time Magazine [/i]do? Names George W. Bush as its "Man of the Year." The person who betrayed this country into a needless war and whom I hold ultimately responsible for my son's death and who was questionably elected, again, to a second term, is honored this way by your magazine.
I hope we finally find peace in our world and that our troops who remain in Iraq are brought home speedily—after all, there was no reason for our troops to be there in the first place. No reason for my son and over 1,300 others to have been taken from their families. No reason for the infrastructure of Iraq to be demolished and thousands of Iraqis being killed. No reason for the notion of a "happy" holiday to be robbed from my family forever. I hope that our "leaders" don't invade any other countries which pose no serious threat to the United States. I hope there is no draft. I hope that the five people mentioned here (and many others) will finally be held responsible for the horrible mistake they got our country into. I hope that competence is finally rewarded and incompetence is appropriately punished. These are my wishes for 2005.
This isn't the first time your magazine has selected a questionable man for this honor—but it's the first time it affected my family so personally and so sorrowfully.
[b]The Bush administration's attempt to sabotage the climate talks in Buenos Aires follows an established pattern of self-destruction. [/b]
I have a persistant mental image of US foreign policy, which haunts me even in my sleep. The vanguard of a vast army is marching around the globe, looking for its enemy. It sees a mass of troops in the distance, retreating from it. It opens fire, unaware that it is shooting its own rear.
Is this too fanciful a picture? Both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were groomed and armed by the United States. Until the invasion of Iraq, there were no links between the Baathists and Al Qaeda: now Bush's government has created the monster it claimed to be slaying.
The US army developed high-grade weaponized anthrax in order, it said, to work out what would happen if someone else did the same. No one else was capable of producing it: the terrorist who posted envelopes of anthrax in 2001 took it from one of the army's laboratories. Now US researchers are preparing genetically modified strains of smallpox on the same pretext, and with the same likely consequences.
The Pentagon's space-based weapons program is being developed in response to a threat that doesn't yet exist, but which it is likely to conjure up. The US government is engaged in a global war with itself. It is like a robin attacking its reflection in a window.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in its assaults on the multilateral institutions and their treaties. Listening to some of the bunkum about the United Nations venting from Capitol Hill at the moment, you could be forgiven for believing that the UN was a foreign conspiracy against the United States. It was, of course, proposed by a US president, launched in San Francisco and housed in New York, where its headquarters remain. Its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, characterized by Republicans as a dangerous restraint upon American freedoms, was drafted by Franklin D. Roosevelt's widow. The US is now the only member of the UN Security Council whose word is law, with the result that the UN is one of the world's most effective instruments for the projection of American power.
The secret deals in Iraq for which the United Nations is currently being attacked by US senators were in fact overseen by the US government. It ensured that Saddam Hussein could evade sanctions by continuing to sell oil to its allies in Jordan and Turkey. Republican congressmen are calling on Kofi Annan to resign for letting this happen, apparently unaware that it was approved in Washington to support American strategic objectives. The United States finds the monsters it seeks, as it pecks and flutters at its own image.
So we could interpret the activities of Bush's government in Buenos Aires last week as another vigorous attempt to destroy its own interests. US economic growth depends on the rest of the world's prosperity. The greatest long-term threat to global prosperity is climate change, which threatens to wreck many of America's key markets in the developing world. Coastal cities in the United States – including New York – are threatened by rising sea levels. Florida could be hit by stronger and more frequent hurricanes. Both farms and cities are likely to be affected by droughts.
In February, a leaked report from the Pentagon revealed that it sees global warming as far more dangerous to US interests than terrorism. As a result of abrupt climate change, it claimed, "warfare may again come to define human life. ... As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies." The nuclear powers, it suggested, are likely to invade each other's territories as they scramble for diminishing resources.
So how does Bush respond to this? "Bring it on." The meeting in Buenos Aires was supposed to work out what the world should do about climate change when the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012. Most of the world's governments want the protocol to be replaced by a new, tougher agreement. But the Bush administration has been seeking to ensure both that the original agreement is scrapped, and that nothing is developed to replace it.
"No one can say with any certainty," George Bush asserts, "what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided."
As we don't know how bad it is going to be, he suggests, we shouldn't take costly steps to prevent it. Now read that statement again and substitute "terrorism" for "warming." When anticipating possible terrorist attacks, the US administration, or so it claims, prepares for the worst. When anticipating the impacts of climate change, it prepares for the best. The "precautionary principle" is applied so enthusiastically to matters of national security that it now threatens American civil liberties. But it is rejected altogether when discussing the environment.
The Kyoto protocol is flawed, the Bush team says, because countries such as China and India are currently exempted from cutting their emissions. But instead of helping to design a treaty that would eventually bring them in, the US teamed up with them in Buenos Aires to try to sink all international cooperation. It even supported Saudi Arabia's demand that oil-producing countries should be compensated for any decline in the market caused by carbon cuts.
The result is that the talks very nearly collapsed. On Saturday, 36 hours after they were due to have ended, and while workmen were dismantling the rooms in which the delegates were sitting, the other countries managed to salvage the barest ghost of an agreement. The US permitted them to hold an informal meeting in May, during which "any negotiation leading to new commitments" is forbidden. According to the head of the US delegation, the time to decide what happens after 2012 is "in 2012."
It's like saying that the time to decide what to do about homeland security is when the plane is flying into the tower.
Wrecking these talks is pretty good work for a country which, as it refuses to ratify the protocol, doesn't even have negotiating rights. But this is now familiar practice. The US tried to sink the biosafety protocol in 1999, even though, as it hadn't signed, it wasn't bound by it. It sought to trash the 2002 Earth Summit, though Bush failed to attend. This isn't, as some people suggest, isolationism. It is a thorough and sustained engagement, whose purpose is to prevent the world's most pressing problems from being solved.
And the result, of course, is that the catastrophe described by the Pentagon is now more likely to happen. The US has just spent millions of dollars in Buenos Aires undermining its own peace and prosperity. Of course we know that its delegation was representing the interests of the corporations, not the people, and that what's bad for America is good for Exxon. But this does not detract from the sheer, self-immolating stupidity of its position.
The United States has every right to beat itself up. But unfortunately, while chasing itself around the world, it tramples everyone else. I know that appealing to George W. Bush's intelligence isn't likely to take us very far, but surely there's someone in that administration who can see what a monkey he's making of America.
[b]Source:[/b]
George Monbiot is the author of 'Poisoned Arrows' and 'No Man's Land' (Green Books). Read more of his writings at Monbiot.com., AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org
...---... Bush's Cash-n-Kerik's 'Nannygate' Was the Least of It ...---...
[b]Kerik shouldn't have been rejected by the Bushies. If they were honest, they would celebrate him as the prototypical GOP operator, playing the people for a profit.[/b]
How revealing that the nomination of Bernard Kerik as Homeland Security chief should be derailed not by the former New York City police commissioner's alleged violations of conflict-of-interest laws, mob connections and post-9/11 security industry profiteering, but rather by his rueful admission that he paid no taxes for his "illegal immigrant" baby-sitter.
Since harassing, detaining and deporting productive and otherwise law-abiding immigrants without proper residency papers has been the main task of the Homeland Security Department, the tough law-and-order booster of President Bush at the Republican National Convention could have claimed his nanny connection as research. Instead of admitting that this "lovely woman," entrusted for years with the care of his children, was part of that essential but exploited mass of "illegal aliens" whose drudgery permits the powerful to shirk family responsibilities and strut unencumbered on a larger stage, Kerik could have claimed he was merely infiltrating the ranks of the enemy.
Of course, labor law violations are to Big Business what the nickel-a-swear-word jar is to adult visitors to Grandma's house – no big deal. But woe to the political aspirant who doesn't remember the ghosts of Nannygates Past: The law is the law – as Kerik's chief backer, ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, observed in reluctantly agreeing that Kerik had to withdraw – or at least it is once the media find out it has been broken.
So Kerik tried to save a few bucks by hiring an undocumented worker and has paid a certain cost. However, by bowing out now, he may have saved himself a passel of future trouble. NYC's media have been raising issues about potentially far more consequential legal transgressions by Kerik, which Giuliani should have known about before recommending his protege for the national security post.
This rough-around-the-edges high school dropout's profligate ways led to personal bankruptcy and, ultimately, some very dubious dealings with shady characters. Yet "America's Mayor" liked what he saw in the undercover cop with six diamond studs in his ear – a young blood whose wild style earned him the name "Mayhem Magnet" ˜ and plucked him out to be the Big Apple's top cop.
Once his act went national, however, cracks in Kerik's facade started to look a lot worse. One of the most detailed exposes stressing Kerik's alleged ties to New York mobsters ran in the New York Daily News on Sunday. Why didn't those in the administration who vetted Kerik for this job know any of this?
Giuliani told Time magazine after Kerik's withdrawal that although he knew there were black marks on Kerik's record, "everything seemed pretty normal, at least by Washington or New York standards." Talk about your moral relativism! Or family values. On Monday, the Daily News reported that Kerik had juggled two extramarital affairs while police commissioner.
Bottom line: A smart guy like Giuliani should have suspected something in 1998, when his wife and his deputy mayor attended Kerik's lavish wedding, which was dotted with mob-connected characters. This was two years before he appointed Kerik to head the New York City Police Department.
To be fair, it would be only later that the Daily News reported the wedding was paid for with money from folks with city contracts and mob connections, some of whom were later indicted. But anyone knowledgeable about Kerik should have known that he could not afford his sumptuous lifestyle, given his bankruptcy and, according to Newsweek magazine, a contempt citation for failing to pay a debt in a business dealing.
Kerik soon learned to play the game with the big boys, though. After gaining celebrity for his prominent role during 9/11, he shot through that infamous government/private sector revolving door into a key position working for Giuliani's firm. Kerik also lent his prestige to stun-gun manufacturer Taser International, which – surprise! – has a contract with Homeland Security.
Never mind, though, as Kerik cleared out his Taser stock options last month with a $6.2-million windfall, ready to be flipped by kingmaker Giuliani right back onto the taxpayer payroll. Giuliani, of course, was trading his own crucial support for Bush's campaign to give Giuliani Partners what would have been some Halliburton-grade access to the White House.
Why wouldn't Giuliani push his onetime chauffeur and now a senior vice president in his firm to be Homeland Security czar, overseeing 22 federal agencies with a combined budget of $37.7 billion? The war on terror is a mother lode to be mined by those who are connected. Come to think of it, Kerik shouldn't have been rejected by the Bushies. If they were honest, they would celebrate him as the prototypical GOP operator, playing the people for a profit.
[b]Source:[/b]
Robert Scheer is the co-author of [i]The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq[/i]., AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org
[b]Mark Shields is a mild-mannered, well-informed, and highly respected (as well as very careful[i] and [/i]measured) editorialist ... It doesn't take a "wild-eyed liberal" to expose the heinous corruption & incompetence perpetrated by the traitorous Bush regime who have betrayed our nation ...[/b]
In the three years immediately after Pearl Harbor, the United States, a nation of 132 million people with a gross domestic product of less than $100 billion, produced the following to win World War II:
• 296,429 aircraft.
• 102,351 tanks.
• 87,620 warships.
• 372,431 artillery pieces.
• 2,455,694 trucks.
Compare those heroic achievements with the current dismal supply record as the U.S. war in Iraq is fast approaching its third year and the United States, now a nation of nearly 300 million with defense spending in excess of half a trillion dollars:
• Only 5,910 of the 19,584 Humvees that U.S. troops in Iraq depend on are protected with factory-installed armor.
• More than 8,000 of the 9,128 medium and heavyweight trucks transporting soldiers and supplies in that war zone are without armor.
Because of the incompetence or indifference of this nation's civilian leadership of the war, Americans in Iraq are living with an increased risk of death.
All the official transcripts of White House signing ceremonies for every defense spending bill, all the presidential proclamations for Veterans Day and every prepared statement by the secretary of defense before a congressional committee include the same stock phrase. U.S. troops are invariably referred to as "the best trained, best equipped" ever. Best equipped? To call today's American troops in Iraq the "best equipped" is more than an exaggeration; it is bilge, baloney and cruel.
An America coming out of the Great Depression somehow found the leadership and the will to build and deploy around the globe 2.5 million trucks in the same period of time that the incumbent U.S. government has failed to get 30,000 fully armored vehicles to Iraq.
The Bush administration has appropriated $34.3 billion on a theoretical missile defense system -- which proved again this week to be an expensive dud in its first test in two years, when the "kill vehicle" never got off the ground to intercept the target missile carrying a mock warhead -- but has been able up to now, according to congressional budget authorities, to spend just $2 billion to armor the vehicles of Americans under fire.
Nobody has been more persistent in holding the Pentagon and the White House accountable than maverick Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee. "When I visit Iraq," says Taylor, "I ride around in an armored vehicle, and I am sure the secretary [of defense] does as well. That should be the single standard: If it is good enough for the big shots, it is good enough for every American soldier."
The armor is truly a matter of life and death, as the Mississippi congressman explains: "Half of all our casualties, half of all our deaths and half of all our wounded are the direct result of improvised explosive devices [IEDs, or homemade bombs]." But when Washington officials visit Iraq, their traveling security includes not only heavily armored vehicles but also radio-signal jammers, which can disable the IEDs.
What makes Taylor authentically angry is the inexcusable failure of the U.S. brass -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he names -- to provide radio jammers (which cost $10,000 each) to the fewer than 30,000 U.S. military vehicles in Iraq.
How many U.S. vehicles are now equipped with jammers? The Pentagon insists the figure is classified. According to Taylor, the number is "minuscule." But because he is offended by visiting corporate chief executives and deputy assistant secretaries of weights and measures getting better protection than Marine lance corporals and Army privates, Taylor would not appreciate the fact that funds for the jammers have probably already been dedicated to underwriting the next failed missile defense test.
"A jammer costs about $10,000, and it probably costs about $10,000 to bury a dead GI. I believe Americans would rather spend the $10,000 to prevent the GI's funeral being held." Gene Taylor is right. Every American has a moral obligation to make certain that the nation's troops truly are the world's "best equipped."
It was a common trick in the South after the Civil War to "forget" to tell former slaves that they were free. In contrast, the military has only taken six months http://www.washingtonpost.com... to let Guantanamo Bay detainees that they have the right to challenge their imprisonment in a U.S. court. However, for detainees to actually make use of this right, they'd need more information. For example, the notice to detainees just says they should "mail legal challenges" to Washington's Federal courthouse. Never mind lack of knowledge of English of the form these challenges need to take.
"I don't see any real petitions coming out of this notice," said Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney for a group of African detainees. "If they follow the instructions in that notice, they're almost assured of being denied their rights."
Only about sixty of the current 550 detainees at Guantanmo currently have American lawyers.
[b]So now the crazy neo-con fucks are building-up their neo-fascist lies, deceptions and falsehoods to push us into another disastrous bloody war-gone-wrong -- [i]this time, [/i]with Iran ...[/b]
A reliance on dubious intelligence http://www.thenation.com/blog... and contempt for international diplomacy http://www.thenation.com/blog... has marked the Bush Administration's policy (or lack thereof) on Iran to date. And, in certain neoconservative circles, calls for military aggression are slowly surfacing.
"The clock is ticking for Iran," writes Michael Rubin, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/... a former advisor to the Office of Special Plans--the outfit responsible for much of the US's faulty pre-war intelligence on Iraq. "Bush may have no choice but to order a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities." Neocon academics and policy advisors such as Reuel Marc Gerecht http://www.aei.org/news/filte...,newsID.21706/news_detail.asp , Orde Kittrie http://www.defenddemocracy.or... and Norman Podhoretz http://www.washington-report.... have also called for decisive action.
Washington seems responsive. On a recent visit to the region, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith http://www.jpost.com/servlet/... --Rumsfeld's number three man--told the [i]Jerusalem Post [/i]that even the nuclear strike option remains on the table.
The [i]de facto [/i]leader of the right's hawkish philosophy on Iran is John Bolton, http://www.salon.com/news/fea... a longtime hard-liner and current Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms called http://www.salon.com/news/fea... his protege, "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, or what the Bible describes as the final battle between good and evil."
Under Bolton's watch, North Korea rapidly accelerated its nuclear weapons production (building as many as six new nukes http://thestar.com.my/news/st... ), Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan sold nuclear secrets http://www.pbs.org/frontlinew... on the black market, and Iran may be closer to developing the bomb http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,7536926.story?coll=la-home-headli nes than ever before. Apparently, Bolton takes issue with the "Arms Control" part of his job title.
In recent meetings with the Europeans--who have taken the lead in pushing for a negotiated settlement with Iran--Bolton read a US position paper criticizing negotiations and calling on the UN Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the Islamic Republic. When the shocked Europeans inquired as to why Bolton wanted to engage the Security Council when he knew the US lacked votes and popular support, Bolton simply read another prepared US position paper. "He was not willing to discuss anything," one participant told http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,0,2484958.story?coll=la-home-headli nes the [i]Los Angeles Times[/i]. (Asked about the possibility of military action at a recent conference at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs--a key neocon think tank--Bolton replied, "No options are off the table," before smiling broadly, [i]The New Republic's [/i]Franklin Foer reports http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?... .)
In addition to becoming the Administration's bullying point-man on Iran, Bolton is frequently named as the possible second-in-command for Condi Rice's State Department. As the [i]LA Times [/i]reported, a hawkish #2 at State could prompt a massive purge http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,0,3349600.story?coll=la-home-nation of moderate dissenters, modeled on Porter Goss's recent strong-arming at the CIA, or even the disastrous "de-Baathification" process in Iraq.
In a week in which Bush bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the likes of Paul Bremer and George Tenet, http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... a Bolton promotion would be the latest example of incompetence rewarded.
[b]"We the People" [i]pay, pay and pay with no end in sight [/i]for the sluttish Bushies' & their Military Industrial Complex pimps' hyper-expensive toys (that don't even work)!!! ...[/b]
The Bush administration's rush to deploy a costly, unproven national missile defense system "suffered an embarrassing setback yesterday when an interceptor missile failed to launch during the first flight test of the system in two years." Pentagon officials could not immediately explain the reason for the failure, which cast fresh doubt on the feasibility of a system that "by some accounts has cost $130 billion and is scheduled to tally $50 billion more over the next five years." The previous test, in December 2002, "also flopped when the kill vehicle failed to separate from the booster." The most recent failure comes as reports surface indicating there are questions about another "major acquisition program" being pushed by the Bush administration. That classified program, the details of which are unclear, is believed to involve a "$9.5 billion spy satellite system that could take photographs only in daylight hours and in clear weather." (For more on this issue, read this new report http://www.americanprogress.o... , "The Road To Nuclear Security," by American Progress's Lawrence Korb.)
[b]A PATTERN OF FAILURE:[/b] The short history of the Bush administration's favorite pet project, the national missile defense system, has been fraught with failure. An April report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned the system was "largely unproven" because of a lack of realistic testing and said the administration needed to "enhance testing and accountability" before considering deploying the system. The Pentagon's latest annual report, by Thomas Christie, the director of operational testing and evaluation, reported that assessments of the system's capabilities have so far been based on "modeling and simulations," rather than "operational tests of a mature, integrated system." And since last spring, three tests have been delayed or canceled due to technical problems. Even if yesterday's test had been successful, experts say the "rigged" nature of the exercise would have rendered the results largely meaningless as a tool for assessing the program.
[b]THE COST OF FAILURE:[/b] Slate's Fred Kaplan points out that President Bush's 2005 budget includes nearly twice as much funding for the completely ineffective missile defense system as it allots for the Department of Homeland Security to spend on customs and border patrol. The $10.7 billion Bush plans to spend on missile defense is also "over twice as much money as for any other single weapons system [and]…more than the entire U.S. Army is spending on research and development."
[b]A FUTURE FOLLY?: [/b]Last week, four senators - John Rockefeller IV (D-WV), Carl M. Levin (D-MI), Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) – issued a statement protesting the inclusion in the Intelligence Reform Bill of a "program they believe is unnecessary and the cost of which they believe is unjustified." That program is believed to be the "stealth satellite," which would "probably become the largest single-item expenditure in the $40 billion intelligence budget." It has been opposed by Republicans and Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee, but continues to be financed at a cost "of hundreds of millions of dollars a year" with support from the House and the Bush administration. John Pike, an expert on space imagery at GlobalSecurity.org, said the idea behind the stealth satellite was "so the evildoers wouldn't know we are looking at them." But bipartisan opponents of the expensive program say it is unproven and not "a good match against today's adversaries."
It's getting harder and harder for Army officials to insist that torture in Iraq is caused by a few bad apples. A new ACLU http://edition.cnn.com/2004/L... report shows systemic abuse that implies the whole military interrogation system is rotton to the core.
ACLU staff attorney Amrit Singh said the new report "reveals that the abuses that took place were widespread and systemic and operated within a culture of secrecy." Executive Director Anthony Romero added, "This kind of widespread abuse could not have taken place without a leadership failure of the highest order."
The documents are available online at the ACLU website http://www.aclu.org/torturefo... . The release of these documents follows a federal court order that directed the Defense Department and other government agencies to comply with a year-old request under the Freedom of Information Act filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace.
[b]Another failed test http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/Art... ... God only knows (because the corrupt Bushies [i]cook-the-books[/i]) how much money has been wasted on this missile "defense" boondoggle that is a black-hole used by corporate (military industrial complex) robber-barons to suck endless pots of money out of the poor, stupid U.S. taxpayers!!! ...[/b]
An attempt to launch an interceptor missile as part of the U.S. missile defence shield failed early Wednesday in the first test of the system in nearly two years.
... "The Missile Defense Agency said the ground-based interceptor automatically shutdown "due to an unknown anomaly" shortly before it was to be launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean [...]
The missile defence shield was meant to be in operation by the end of 2004.
In earlier tests, missile interceptors had a record of five-for-eight in hitting target missiles.
Wednesday's test had been put of several times because of bad weather, and a malfunction of a recovery vessel not directly related to the equipment being tested, [i]The Associated Press [/i]reported." ...
Note, that five out of eight record was achieved only because the target missile did not have 1) decoys (which are employed by intercontinental ballistic missiles), and 2) the targets had a homing beacon on them http://www.pbs.org/newshour/b... .
So here's the deal -- the missile defense system works sometimes, so long as the target has a big radar signal the interceptor can track, and as long as we have perfect weather in Alaska.
But if[i] this [/i]doesn't fill you with joy, then consider what[i] more [/i]is being done to prisoners at Abu Ghraib:
[u][b]Company fed rotten food to Abu Ghraib prisoners, sparking rebellion[/b][/u]
To those Iraqi detainees whom guards and interrogators did not humiliate or torture last winter -- along with those who they did -- a private military contractor fed spoilt and rancid meals laden with dirt and bugs, according to an article published by CorpWatch, an organization that investigates war profiteering.
Army Major David Dinenna, a military policeman stationed at the facility, spent part of last fall trying to remedy the food situation, which he described to his superiors in an email as a "contract meals disaster" that led to prisoners falling violently ill after meals. A military report quoted by CorpWatch concluded that the "deplorable food and living conditions" had in fact led to a prisoner uprising the Army had originally blamed on a "mass" escape attempt.
The contract company blamed for the bad food is identified as a small, Qatar-based firm called American Service Center.
[b]Voter Fraud protest pic ONE by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 10:51 PM[/b]
Houstonian Kip Humphrey initiated the Dec. 12 Voter Fraud protests held at state capitols nationwide.
Many Houstonians made their way to Austin on Sunday Dec. 12 to attend a rally and march to keep this year's presidential election debacle in the spotlight.
The corporate media has blacked disturbing information on wide spread voter intimidation, errors and fraud.
Speakers included Houston activist Pokey Anderson, David Van Os, a democrat who ran for the Texas State Supreme Court and Radio host Alex Jones.
The 150 in attendance heard warnings of an election system mechanism is owned and operated by the opposition party.
[b]Woman from Houston by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 10:51 PM[/b]
Houston was well represented in the small crowd that gathered before the state capitol. ... www.51capitalmarch.com/
[b]Many clever signs by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 10:51 PM[/b]
Those who vote decide nothing Those who count decide everything -Joseph Stalin ... www.51capitalmarch.com/
[b]A Fan of Alex Jones by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 10:51 PM[/b]
Alex Jones of Infowars spoke of the Republican/Democrat corporate global mafia and the coming police state. ... www.51capitalmarch.com/
[b]Kip Humphrey of Houston by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 10:51 PM[/b]
Humphrey spoke on being an ordinary citizen reacting to massive voter fraud by initiating a nationwide action. Humphrey was not sure who would show up, but he was willing to risk it.
"I Showed Up" buttons were passed out to the crowd to express appreciation and the need to keep the issues of Voter Fraud in the public eye. ... www.51capitalmarch.com/
[b]Voter Fraud protest pics TWO by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 11:10 PM[/b]
Speakers from Code Pink addressed the crowd.
150 people gathered in front if the State Capitol to protest the 2004 election debacle.
For more information on the wide spread voting fraud please visit:
[b]Mother and Daughter by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 11:10 PM[/b]
[b]In the Shade by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 11:10 PM[/b]
One of the musicians that entertained the crowded takes refuge from the bright sun. ... www.51capitalmarch.org
[b]Sign of the Times by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 11:10 PM[/b]
Voter Fraud is just one issue. ... www.51capitalmarch.org
[b]March down Capitol St. by Independent voter Sunday December 12, 2004 at 11:10 PM[/b]
After the rally in front of the capitol, the protesters marched down Capitol street to the Austin Stateman to demand coverage of election fraud. ... www.51capitalmarch.org
[b]Well done to those patriotic protestors who care about democracy in the America![/b]
[b]Iran is approximately 3-4 times the size of Iraq in both population and acreage ... Yet, the corrupt, arrogant & incompetent buffoons in the blood-thirsty (oil-thirsty) Bush regime lust for another war ... [i]Jeez!!! [/i]...[/b]
It might be a long way away—I’d guess 2006—but the war-on-Iran hawks in the Bush administration, led by John Bolton of the State Department, are rattling sabers. [i]The Los Angeles Times [/i]has a good piece http://fairuse.1accesshost.co... describing the escalating rhetoric around Iran, and it starts with an anecdote about Bolton sabotaging talks with Europe over Iran:
... "Top diplomats from the United States and its closest allies gathered this fall in Washington to hammer out a common approach to Iran's nuclear ambitions. But the mood quickly soured.
Dispensing with the usual diplomatic niceties, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton simply read aloud a U.S. position paper. In it, the administration refused to back European negotiations with Iran and instead insisted that Tehran be dragged before the United Nations Security Council to condemn it for concealing a nuclear weapons program.
Irked, the Europeans demanded to know what good it would do to bring Iran before the U.N. when Washington knew it could not muster enough Security Council votes even to slap Tehran's wrist.
Bolton referred them to another U.S. position paper.
"He was not willing to discuss anything," said one stunned participant." ...
Meanwhile, the neocons are waiting for the “end of the day”:
... "Other officials said the United States and its allies have many options short of military action with which to isolate and punish a government that they believe persists in trying to develop nuclear weapons.
"At the end of the day we may have to do it," said another senior official, referring to military action. "We're not at the end of the day yet."" ...
Buyblue.org http://www.buyblue.org/ is making the blog rounds urging liberals and progressives to carefully consider where they spend their money in order to avoid "dump(ing) millions of dollars into the conservative warchest." The attractive website, done up in all kinds of blues, is a grassroots effort to help depressed Democrats recognize their hidden source of power -- and to do so in the Buying Season.
The idea, which began as an election hangover suggestion on DailyKos http://www.dailykos.com/story... is picking up steam. Check out their latest campaign "Blue Christmas" http://www.buyblue.org/bluexm... to find out who's been naughty and who's been nice (hint: Wal-Mart gives 80% of its contributions to Republicans). Forward it to friends with BuyBlue's motto: "In today's America there is a more powerful act than voting blue - and that's buying blue!"
Donald Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense 1000 Defense Pentagon Washington, DC 20301-1000
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld,
We are writing to you regarding U.S.-administered detention facilities in Afghanistan. We are troubled by new allegations of serious abuse by U.S. military personnel and by the failure of your office to make public the results of investigations into past abuses and take adequate steps to hold abusers accountable. In most cases of which we are aware, the Department of Defense has launched criminal investigations only after particular abuses received media attention. These investigations have proceeded extremely slowly and in excessive secrecy. An internal Pentagon investigation of detention operations in Afghanistan, conducted by Brig. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, has been completed, but remains classified, unlike similar reports on abuses in Iraq.
Six detainees are now known to have died in U.S. custody in Afghanistan—including four known cases of murder or manslaughter—and former detainees have made scores of other claims of torture and other mistreatment. Some of the cases took place over two years ago. Yet to our knowledge, the U.S. government has conducted only a handful of criminal investigations, and has charged only two people with any crime in these cases.
The government’s failure to hold its personnel accountable for serious abuses has spawned a culture of impunity among some personnel. And as you know, some of the personnel involved in earlier abuses in Afghanistan have now been implicated in later abuses in Iraq.
Over nine months ago, in March 2004, we issued a report, "Enduring Freedom": Abuses by U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, focusing on arrest and detention procedures by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The report documented cases of U.S. personnel arbitrarily detaining civilians, using excessive force during arrests of non-combatants, and mistreating detainees. Detainees held at military bases in 2002 and 2003 described being beaten severely by guards and interrogators, deprived of sleep for extended periods, and intentionally exposed to extreme cold, as well as other inhumane and degrading treatment.
The report discussed three deaths known at the time to have occurred in U.S. custody: the death of a detainee in Asadabad in June 2003, and the deaths of two detainees at Bagram airbase in December 2002 which were ruled as homicides by U.S. military pathologists.
The detention system in Afghanistan continues to operate outside the rule of law. The United States continues to hold Afghan detainees in legal limbo and in many cases incommunicado, in violation of U.S. obligations under the laws of armed conflict and applicable Afghan law. There are fewer recent complaints about the central detention facility at Bagram air base, where serious abuses had occurred in the past. However, allegations of abuse and arbitrary detention continue to surface at forward operating bases, such as those near Gardez, Khost, Urgon, Ghazni, and Jalalabad.
[u]New Developments[/u]
Since the publication of our March report, several new cases of serious abuse have come to light. Through 2004, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), a government-appointed body with a proven track record of credibly reporting on human rights conditions, has received numerous complaints about mistaken arrests, arbitrary detention, and mistreatment and beatings of detainees by U.S. forces. Human Rights Watch’s interviews with former detainees bolster these reports of ongoing abuses.
Human Rights Watch has also learned of additional detainee deaths that were not documented in our March report. We call on you to take action to ensure full accountability for these cases:
• A new case from 2002. Just last week, new evidence emerged of a previously unpublicized alleged murder of an Afghan detainee by four U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan in or before September 2002. This is the earliest known death of a person in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. According to internal Department of Defense documents, recently released to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, the Army Criminal Investigative Command opened an investigation on September 26, 2002—over two years ago—into charges of “Murder,” “Conspiracy,” and “Obstruction of Justice” in conjunction with the case. The document states that “CPT (captain) [name redacted], SFC (Sergeant First Class) [name redacted], SSG (Staff Sergeant [name redacted], and SSG (Staff Sergeant) [name redacted] murdered Mr. [redacted] after detaining him for following their movements in Afghanistan.” To our knowledge, the government has not prosecuted any of the four personnel implicated. The report indicates that the case was “closed” and that a “4833” was received in the case—presumably, a Commander’s Report of Disciplinary or Administrative Action, known as DA Form 4833—which suggests that a final disciplinary or administration action has taken place. Yet we know of no courts martial that have taken place with respect to this “murder.” We call on you to explain what disciplinary or administrative actions were taken by the Department of Defense in this case and the basis for these measures.
• A new case from 2003. Another death in custody was uncovered in September 2004 by researchers with the Crimes of War project, a non-government organization. The findings were later published in the Los Angeles Times (September 21, 2004). Jamal Naseer, a soldier in the U.S.-backed official Afghan Army, was killed in March 2003 after he and seven other soldiers were mistakenly arrested by U.S. forces and taken to a base in Gardez. Their case was investigated by the United Nations office in Gardez, the office of the Attorney General of the Afghan Army, and the Crimes of War project. The investigations showed that U.S. forces severely beat Naseer and the other soldiers while in custody. Numerous witnesses who saw them at the time (including U.N. representatives) described them as having wounds and heavy bruises. The surviving detainees themselves allege that U.S. forces punched them, kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables, among other abuses. Some said they were soaked in cold water and forced to lie in snow, and shocked with electricity on their toes. The Army Criminal Investigative Command opened an investigation into this case in May 2004, but to our knowledge it has not reached any results and has not charged any one in connection with the death or the abuses against the seven other soldiers held with Naseer. We request that you publicize the results of this investigation and initiate appropriate prosecutorial and administrative measures against those responsible.
• A new case from 2004. Another detainee died in U.S. custody in September 2004. Sher Mohammad Khan was arrested on September 24, 2004 during a raid on his family’s home near Khost in which his brother, Mohammad Rais Khan, was shot and killed by U.S. forces. Sher Mohammad Khan died sometime later the next day at a U.S. military base. Military officials in Khost told journalists that he had died of a heart attack, and that the Khan family were “bad guys.” As noted above, Khan died within hours of being taken into U.S. custody. Khan’s family has told investigators with AIHRC that the body was bruised when they retrieved it from U.S. forces. We urge you to order a thorough investigation to determine the circumstances of Sher Mohammad Kkan’s death, release the results of his autopsy, and allow representatives of the AIHRC to discuss the case with U.S. investigators.
[u]Earlier Cases[/u]
In addition to the three deaths in custody cited above, we remain concerned about the three cases described in our March 2004 report. Two men, Habibullah and Diliwar, died at Bagram air base in December 2002. Another, Abdul Wali, died in June 2003 at the Asadabad airbase.
There appears to have been little progress in these three other cases. A full investigation into the two deaths at Bagram was only launched in March 2003, after the New York Times (March 4, 2003) reported that the deaths had been ruled homicides by Army pathologists. (Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill, who was the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan at the time, had ordered an investigation into the two deaths in early 2003, but the investigation did not result in any findings of criminal behavior, and recommended no courts martial.) The investigation by the Criminal Investigative Command dragged on without result for over a year and a half. The U.S. military command in Kabul promised that they would share the results of investigations with the chief U.N. representative in Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, but to our knowledge never did. Army investigators also told Human Rights Watch repeatedly over 2003 and 2004 that the investigation was “almost finished,” but failed to provide any information about its findings.
The Criminal Investigative Command finally completed a classified report on the deaths in May 2004, recommending that 28 personnel be prosecuted in connection with the deaths. The crimes identified in the report included negligent homicide, maiming, maltreatment, assault consummated by battery, conspiracy, and dereliction of duty. According to the Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the report and cited its findings in an article on December 3, 2004, other abuses discussed in the report include “slamming prisoners into walls, twisting handcuffs to cause pain, kneeing prisoners, forcing a detainee to maintain ‘painful, contorted body positions,’ shackling the detainee’s arms to the ceiling, and forcing water into the mouth of the detainee ‘until he could not breathe.’”
None of these allegations were made available to the public in a timely manner. Only in October 2004 did the Criminal Investigative Command finally announce publicly that it had recommended the 28 persons for prosecution in connection with the deaths at Bagram. Yet even now, the case appears stalled: several of the interrogators named in the report were first recommended for prosecution much earlier, in December 2003, yet remain uncharged. The Criminal Investigative Command to date has charged only one person in connection with the deaths. When Human Rights Watch inquired about the cases last week, Public Affairs Officers refused to offer any further information.
Human Rights Watch has also learned that Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, the head of the interrogation unit at Bagram from July 2002 to December 2003, is not among the 28 recommended for prosecution. According to an internal Department of Defense report by Maj. Gen. George Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones (the Fay-Jones report), Capt.Wood drew up the harsh interrogation techniques that interrogators later used at Abu Ghraib, techniques which she had previously approved in Afghanistan, according to an Army lawyer who testified before Congress in May 2004. In August, a former Bagram interrogator told a Knight-Ridder journalist that at the time of the two deaths screams and moans could easily be heard from interrogation rooms at Bagram, and that Wood must have been aware of the abuse, as the interrogation rooms were near her office. In any case, by virtue of her position, Capt. Wood should have been aware that abuse was taking place. We are concerned that, as at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. government appears more interested in blaming abuses on low-level personnel than in investigating the role of commanding officers and civilian officials.
As for the case of the June 2003 death of Abdul Wali, in Asadabad, we are troubled that over a year passed before the military took action on the case, and that the government sought an indictment in the case only after the Abu Ghraib photos became public. While a federal court in North Carolina indicted David Passaro, a CIA contractor, in June 2004, Defense Department documents released to the ACLU indicate that the Criminal Investigative Command “reopened” the investigation into the Asadabad death on May 25, 2004, only after the Abu Ghraib scandal surfaced. This suggests that the United States had no intention of prosecuting anyone in the case until after the bad publicity from Abu Ghraib. We are also concerned that Passaro might not be the only person responsible in the death: Afghan witnesses allege that other U.S. personnel were with Passaro during the interrogation period. The CIA generally has not adequately responded to allegations that its personnel have tortured persons captured in Afghanistan.
To our knowledge, the government has not recommended any prosecutions with regard to other allegations of torture and mistreatment. Released detainees held in facilities in Bagram, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Asadabad, Gardez, and Khost have made serious allegations to Human Rights Watch, as well as to U.N. and Afghan officials, about numerous other cases of ill-treatment from December 2001 to the present. We know of no prosecutions initiated in connection with any of these allegations.
We are also concerned about new allegations of serious abuse at U.S. forward operating bases—smaller military posts in remote areas. Released detainees have provided both Human Rights Watch and the AIHRC numerous new complaints in 2004 about the behavior of Special Forces soldiers, who often work alongside CIA personnel and operate at forward bases, sometimes without coordination with Afghan government officials or other U.S. forces on the ground. Reported abuses include beatings, sexual humiliation, and exposure to cold. There appears to be no effective mechanism for monitoring the conditions at remote locations maintained by Special Forces or CIA teams. One Army detective, talking about his difficulties in conducting investigations at the Gardez forward operating base, told the Los Angeles Times (September 21, 2004): “We don’t know what unit was there. There are no records. The reporting system is broke across the board. Units are transferred in and out. There are no SOPs [standard operating procedures] . . . and each unit acts differently. . . . Gardez is the worst facility—it is three or four times as bad as any other base in Afghanistan.”
[u]Inaction and Lack of Transparency[/u]
In our March 2004 report, we called on the United States government to, among other things:
• End incommunicado detention practices that facilitate mistreatment.
• Fully and impartially investigate allegations of mistreatment of detainees in detention at all U.S. facilities in Afghanistan and make public the results of those investigations.
• Take disciplinary or criminal action as appropriate against all personnel responsible for mistreating or otherwise violating the rights of detainees.
It is clear that the U.S. government has fulfilled none of these recommendations. The United States continues to detain persons in Afghanistan without any recognized legal process. There is no access to these sites by family members of the detained, legal counsel, or representatives of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. Many detainees, especially those held for long periods at forward operating bases, are never seen by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Three former interrogators who worked in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 told a journalist with Knight-Ridder (August 22, 2004) that it was standard operating procedure in 2002 to hide some detainees from the ICRC in Afghanistan, sometimes for several months—a practice that violates the Geneva Conventions. (This practice was also used in Iraq, according to Fay-Jones report , and the Pentagon report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.)
To date, the government has charged only two people in connection with detainee abuse in Afghanistan, while six deaths and scores of other claims of torture and mistreatment are reported to have occurred. This reveals a large-scale failure of accountability within the military. (By way of comparison, we note the relative speed of prosecutions in the case of two Air Force pilots involved in the friendly-fire death of four Canadian troops near Kandahar in April 2002: both were charged four months after the incident.)
Your office has also failed to publicize the results of investigations into detention sites in Afghanistan. In May 2004, Lt. Gen. David Barno, the chief of military operations in Afghanistan, announced that Brig. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby would conduct an in-depth investigation of U.S. detention sites in Afghanistan, report back to Gen. Barno in June, and that your office would publicize parts of that report. But you have failed to make public the findings of the Jacoby report, which was finished almost six months ago.
In June 2004, we wrote to Gen. Jacoby, soon after he was appointed by Gen. Barno to conduct an investigation into mistreatment allegations in Afghanistan. We offered to brief Gen. Jacoby or his staff. Gen. Jacoby replied in a letter of June 12, 2004 that he would be unable to meet because he was focusing all of his “available time and efforts” towards the investigation. We were disappointed that Gen. Jacoby’s investigation did not include discussions with Human Rights Watch staff, who had written the only public report about U.S. abuses in Afghanistan and were in a unique position to provide information for his investigation. We have also tried to raise detention issues in other meetings with your staff—meetings to discuss other human rights issues in Afghanistan—but have not received adequate feedback or acknowledgement about our concerns.
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has repeatedly requested meetings with the staff of Gen. Barno to discuss their findings and concerns. They have also repeatedly asked Gen. Barno’s office for access to detention sites, but have as yet received no response. U.S. military personnel outside of Kabul, approached by Commission staff seeking to discuss detention cases, have treated the staff rudely—in some cases even threatening them with beatings or arrest. In a recent interview, a senior military official in Kabul told journalist James Rupert (Newsday, November 14, 2004) that the U.S. command in Kabul is not sure if Commission members are “good guys.” The suggestion that the AIHRC is not trustworthy, or that their access to detention sites might be a security treat, is without merit and insulting to AIHRC. The U.S. government has on several occasions pointed to the work of the AIHRC as evidence of progress in Afghanistan. U.S. officials from other departments meet regularly with the AIHRC, and the U.S. government helps to fund its work. We would also point out that, in Iraq, the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights has access to Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run detention sites.
[u]The Importance of Accountability[/u]
We strongly urge you to immediately correct these problems and take action to restore a sense of accountability among forces deployed in Afghanistan. Under the Geneva Conventions, the United States is obligated to investigate grave breaches, such as willful killings, and prosecute those responsible. Beyond this legal obligation, the United States must restore accountability to prevent future abuse. We note again that some of the interrogators and military police who ended up being implicated in the Abu Ghraib scandal (members of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion and the 377th Military Police Company) were earlier involved in deaths and abuse in Afghanistan. A senior Army lawyer, Col. Marc Warren, testified in Congress in May of this year that Capt. Carolyn Wood brought interrogation procedures to Iraq that were developed during the 519th Battalion’s service in Afghanistan. This suggests that some of the later abuse in Iraq was preventable. Had the investigation and prosecution of abusive interrogators in Afghanistan in 2002 proceeded in a timely manner, it is possible that the abusive techniques might have been abandoned, and that many of the abuses seen in Iraq could have been avoided. It also suggests that past failures to establish accountability may be leading to further abuses today.
We strongly urge you to take the necessary steps to correct the problems noted above. We request that you:
• Issue a clear policy on interrogation applicable to forces in Afghanistan, repudiating all methods that violate international, U.S. and Afghan law.
• Order the public release of the Jacoby report.
• Order the U.S. military command in Afghanistan to meet with epresentatives of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission to facilitate their access to detention sites and allow them to share their findings and concerns with you.
• Ensure that criminal investigations into abuses and deaths of detainees in Afghanistan include investigations into the relevant actions of senior commanders and Department of Defense officials.
• Ensure that persons recommended for prosecution are brought to justice in a timely and transparent manner.
We would be happy to meet with you or your staff to discuss any of these matters further.
Sincerely,
Brad Adams Executive Director
Cc: Porter Goss, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
"Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote in the Pentagon Papers case words we should all remember, "In the absence of governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government.''" - Watergate Lessons Remain for Media, US, http://www.commondreams.org/v...
Watch the trailer http://www.globalvision.org/w... for a new film by Danny Schechter that shows the media broadcasting a pro-war narrative driven by jingoism, not journalism.
A few days after the commercial television networks' laudatory "news" reports on George W. Bush's nomination of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to serve as Secretary of State, PBS's Bill Moyers countered with something rarely seen on broadcast television these days: serious journalism. Moyers devoted a substantial portion of [i]NOW[/i], the public broadcasting program he has hosted for the past three years, to an analysis of Rice's failure to take seriously warnings about terrorist threats before the September 11 attacks as well as her misguided response to those attacks, her role in the campaign for war on Iraq and her scheming to avoid cooperating with the 9/11 Commission. The devastating report brought to mind Edward R. Murrow's [i]See It Now [/i]dissection of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Unfortunately, PBS in 2004 can't influence public opinion the way CBS did in 1954. Moyers recognized that fact when he launched [i]NOW[/i] in January 2002; the former spokesman for Lyndon Johnson, senior correspondent for CBS, groundbreaking public television producer and winner of ten Peabody Awards and more than thirty Emmy Awards understood that the best he could do in these difficult times was to barter a bit of his prestige for the chance to erect an outpost of quality reporting in the increasingly corporatized broadcast television wilderness. Week after week,[i] NOW [/i]has offered consistently bold and revealing examinations of issues ranging from the threat to environmental protections posed by international trade agreements, to the damage done to basic liberties by the Patriot Act, to the abuses of politics by special interests. Moyers, who is 70 and wants to turn his attention to writing, has every reason to be proud as he prepares for his last broadcast on December 17. At a time when TV networks--including PBS--were bowing to commercial and ideological pressures that were antithetical to journalism, Moyers created a program that many viewers recognized as the only reason to turn on the TV in the Bush era.
[i]NOW[/i] will carry on with the able crew that Moyers assembled. And whether or not the program thrives without Moyers, the legacy he created will remain. James Madison said, "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both" and warned that "a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." In a time of farce and tragedy, Bill Moyers did his best to arm the people with the power knowledge gives and to affirm that there's still a place for TV journalism that nurtures citizenship and democracy.
[b]Yep, just a problem with the nanny (from [i]Newsday http://www.newsday.com/news/n...,0,2360670.story?coll=ny-homepage-bi g-pix [/i]) ...[/b]
In the 48 hours before his withdrawal as nominee for the nation's top security post, Bernard Kerik and his lawyer scrambled to keep damaging assertions about his past out of the public spotlight. [b]...[/b]
On Thursday, the day before he took his name from contention, Kerik, 49, was forced to testify in a civil lawsuit about an alleged affair with a subordinate.
The case, which involves Kerik's use of authority when he was city correction commissioner between 1998 and 2000, was brought against the city by a former deputy warden. Plaintiff Eric DeRavin III contends Kerik kept him from getting promoted because he had reprimanded the woman, Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero.
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik accepted thousands of dollars in cash and gifts without making proper public disclosures, a Daily News investigation has revealed.
Kerik failed to report the gifts on financial disclosure forms he was required to file with the city as head of the both the NYPD and, before that, the Department of Correction. [b]…[/b]
The News probe calls into question his conduct while holding two of the city's most important public offices.
The probe revealed that for many years, one of Kerik's main benefactors was Lawrence Ray, the best man at Kerik's 1998 wedding, according to Ray, other sources and checks shown by Ray to The News.
Ray and another Kerik pal, restaurant owner Carmen Cabell, helped bankroll Kerik's 1998 wedding reception, contributing nearly $10,000.
Ray also gave Kerik nearly $2,000 to buy a bejeweled Tiffany badge that Kerik coveted when he was Correction commissioner.
And Ray said he gave Kerik $4,300 more to buy high-end Bellini furniture when Kerik allegedly griped that he couldn't afford to furnish a bedroom for a soon-to-be born daughter.
The city's Conflicts of Interest Board requires officials to report any gifts of $1,000 or more.
The board's definition of gifts includes cash, free travel, and wedding presents not given by relatives.
Intentionally failing to report gifts is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine of $1,000. The board also can impose civil fines of up to $10,000. The News has examined Kerik's disclosure forms and there is no record of any of the gifts for the period concerned.
At the time of the gifts, Ray was working for Interstate Industrial, then a major city contractor. City ethics rules bar officials from accepting gifts worth more than $50 from anyone doing business with the city. The company hired Ray based on a recommendation from Kerik, according to a sworn deposition by Interstate's owner Frank DiTomasso. New Jersey gaming regulators said Kerik had confirmed to them that he had vouched for Ray.
Kerik has run afoul of ethics rules before, having been fined $2,500 by the board for dispatching detectives to investigate his mother's death as part of the research for his best-selling memoir, "The Lost Son." [b]...[/b]
Despite his finances, Kerik's November 1998 wedding was a grand affair. It was attended by Donna Hanover, then Mayor Giuliani's wife, Deputy Mayor Joseph Lhota, and state Supreme Court Justice Leslie Crocker Snyder.
The reception was held at The Chanticler, in Millburn, N.J., one of the Garden State's premier catering facilities. Kerik and his new wife, Hala, entertained 230 guests in the facility's Empress Room.
"This thing was top shelf," said one person who attended. "Martini bar, full spread, the works."
Ray wrote a check for $1,000 in July 1998 to cover the deposit. Cabell wrote a check for $6,688 to the Chanticler on the day of the wedding. Six weeks after the wedding, Cabell wrote another $2,000 check to the Chanticler.
"Bernie was a close friend of myself and Larry's that needed help," Cabell told The News. "I helped him in the planning, details and cost of the wedding."
Kerik still couldn't pay the remaining balance, and the Chanticler threatened to sue, Ray and Cabell said. Ray's attorney's handled correspondence with the Chanticler, until Ray and Cabell covered the remaining balance.
"Bernie told everybody those guys paid for it," said one official who attended.
The reception was not the first time that Ray covered Kerik's tab. After Kerik was named correction commissioner in January 1998, he pleaded with underlings to buy him a Tiffany badge like the one given to the police commissioner, department sources told The News.
"He just had to have one because the police commissioner always gets one," said a source who then worked at Correction Department headquarters.
In April 1998, Ray wrote a check out to Jorge Ocasio, then Kerik's chief of staff, for $1,895 with "Tiffany badge" written in the memo field.
Ray's wife, Teresa, issued the certified check to Bellini on Feb. 22, 2000, shortly before the March 3 birth of Kerik's daughter, Celine.
Ray, who acknowledged the gifts to The News after the paper showed him other evidence of the pattern, said he was flush at the time and Kerik always complained about surviving on his civil servant salary.
"He was always crying about money," Ray said. "Like before Celine was born, he was always saying he couldn't believe how much everything cost and they were out of money."
Ray also showed The News a check for $2,500 that his wife made out to "cash" on Aug. 29, 1999. The check was endorsed and cashed by Kerik.
In total, Ray and Cabell showed The News checks to the value of $18,400.
At the time, Ray's own finances were deteriorating.
A week after Kerik's daughter was born, Ray and 18 other men were indicted in a $40 million, mob-run, pump-and-dump stock swindle. Kerik repeatedly spoke to Ray's criminal defense attorney before the indictment, but he dropped his longtime benefactor when the case became public.
"We never saw Ray around Corrections again," said the headquarters source.
"Starting on January 1, New York state's minimum wage will rise to $6.00/hour, and eventually increase to $7.15/hour. Now that's not a huge jump, but as Katrina vanden Heuvel http://www.thenation.com/edcu... points out at[i] The Nation[/i], "For full-time workers, it's an increase from $10,700 per year to $14,900. That's still not enough for a family to live on, but it's a good raise by any standard, and roughly one million workers will benefit from the increase."
Katrina notes that after N.Y. Gov. Pataki had vetoed the minimum wage bill after its passage in the State House, a majority of the Republican state senators overrode Pataki's veto."
[u][b]A Moral Minimum Wage[/b][/u]
[b]Engaging in a vigorous fight to raise our meager minimum wage is clearly the morally right thing to do. But it may also be the politically astute thing for Democrats to do. [/b]
In two so-called "red" states that favored George W. Bush on November 2, voters also overwhelmingly approved ballot measures to raise the minimum wage by one dollar, to $6.15 an hour. In Florida, where Bush beat John Kerry by 381,000 votes, voters favored the minimum wage increase by 3.1 million votes (a lopsided 71.3 percent to 28.7 percent), despite the opposition of the state's business community and Governor Jeb Bush. In Nevada, Bush narrowly beat Kerry by 21,500 votes, but voters backed the wage boost by 293,328 votes (68.3 percent to 31.6 percent).
The minimum-wage measures won in every county in both states. In conservative Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in the Florida Panhandle, where military bases and retired military veterans dominate the political culture, more than two-thirds of voters supported the wage boost, about the same margins they gave Bush. In Nevada's richest county, Douglas, near the Lake Tahoe resort area, where Bush garnered 63.5 percent of the vote, 61.5 percent of voters supported raising the minimum wage.
Obviously, many Floridians and Nevadans, including many middle-class voters (and certainly some evangelicals), who voted for Bush also voted to raise the minimum wage. Both states also saw a significant increase in turnout among low-income and working-class voters, thanks to grassroots voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns by coalitions of progressive groups.
"The minimum-wage campaign brought a lot of people out to vote who otherwise might have stayed home," explained Brian Kettenring, an organizer for ACORN, a community group that spearheaded the Florida effort. "Most of those new voters probably voted for Kerry, which narrowed Bush's margin. But we also found that lots of swing voters, who weren't sure how they were going to vote for President, enthusiastically supported raising the minimum wage."
But, although Democrats and their allies mobilized an unprecedented get-out-the-vote operation, they were outsmarted and out-hustled by Republicans. Kettenring believes that Kerry might have taken more votes away from Bush in Florida if he had embraced the minimum-wage campaign, as many labor and progressive activists urged him to do. But he inexplicably ignored the issue. It is imperative that Democrats and progressives start a nationwide debate that frames economic justice as a moral issue. Not only would this be the right thing to do. It would seem to be a winning electoral issue.
Bob Fulkerson, director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, says that the extensive door-to-door field operations on behalf of the minimum-wage increase by unions, community groups and environmental organizations increased voter turnout in target districts, accounting not only for the wage-increase victory but also for the Democrats' picking up three seats in the State Assembly and one seat in the State Senate. "The issue tugged at people's heartstrings," Fulkerson said. "They saw it as a basic matter of fairness."
Democrats and progressives are once again going through a wrenching self-evaluation about why they lost the White House again and how they can build a majority coalition to win it back. The minimum-wage victories in Florida and Nevada are a political neon sign blinking brightly. In January, when Bush is sworn in for a second term, the array of people and groups who worked to elect John Kerry (unions, environmentalists, community-organizing networks, civil rights groups, disaffected millionaires and religious organizations) should announce a nationwide moral crusade to raise the national minimum wage to the official poverty level – $9.50 an hour – which translates to $19,000 a year.
It has already become conventional wisdom that President Bush won a second term by defending the "moral" values derived from traditional religious teachings. According to a postelection analysis written by veteran pollster Stan Greenberg and political consultant James Carville, "downscale voters" (rural, blue-collar and non-college educated) responded to a conservative "cultural surge" toward the end of the election and tilted toward Bush.
But isn't it a moral issue when more than 36 million Americans live in poverty and more than 40 million people in the wealthiest county in the world lack health insurance? Many major religious denominations support raising the minimum wage. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops says that Catholic social teaching regards work as a reflection of our human dignity, and that receiving poverty wages is an affront to individual self-respect.
And isn't it immoral that Congress – which has given itself a cost-of-living pay raise for the past five years in a row – has allowed the federal minimum wage to lose its purchasing power, so that minimum-wage workers today are worse off now than they have been in decades? At its peak in 1968, the minimum wage was worth the equivalent of almost $7 an hour today. That was also the last year that the minimum wage was above the nation's poverty line. The effect of the last increase in the federal minimum wage, to $5.15 in 1997, has been completely eroded by inflation. That figure (which equals $10,700 a year) is now less than one-third of the average hourly wage of American workers, the lowest level since 1949. If the federal minimum wage were increased to just $7 an hour, at least 7.4 million workers would receive a wage boost. If the minimum wage were pegged at $9.50, millions more would be lifted out of poverty. The largest group of beneficiaries would be children, whose parents would have more money for rent, food, clothing and other basic necessities.
Business leaders still trot out economists to claim that raising the minimum wage will destroy jobs and hurt small businesses. But the evidence, based on studies of the effects of past increases in both the federal and state minimum-wage levels (twelve states have minimum wages higher than the federal level), shows otherwise. Because the working poor spend everything they earn, every penny of a minimum-wage increase goes back into the economy, increasing consumer demand and adding at least as many jobs as are lost. Most employers actually gain, absorbing the increase through decreased absenteeism, lower recruiting and training costs, higher productivity and increased worker morale.
The Democrats should give right-wing Republicans a taste of their own tactics. In a mere two years, Congressional elections will be held nationwide and a third of US senators will be up for election. Democrats and progressives could put pressure on Republican members of Congress, legislators and statewide officials who, as writer Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?," suggests, "talk Jesus" when they're running for election but "walk corporate" once they're in office.
Let's put President Bush and his Congressional allies, who gave the richest Americans a huge tax break, in the position of explaining that a nurse's aide with two kids can raise a family on $5.15/hour or that a worker in a poultry plant doesn't deserve a wage boost.
In addition to a national campaign targeted directly at Congress, ACORN and its labor allies are talking about mounting grassroots initiatives to boost the minimum wage in several key states in 2006 where Republican members of Congress, senators and state legislators are politically vulnerable. The strategy is designed to increase turnout among poor and working-class voters and to provide Democratic candidates with a clear economic justice issue. By doing so, they might also reach some of the God-fearing, church-going white Protestant males who live barely above the poverty line but give their votes to Republicans.
Those who insist on pointing out the widening economic divide in the United States are invariably accused by conservatives of fomenting "class warfare." Well, perhaps a bit of class warfare is just what's needed. There are thousands of new progressive activists who have emerged from this presidential election ready for the next battle. Engaging in a vigorous fight to raise our meager minimum wage is clearly the morally right thing to do. But it may also be the politically astute thing for Democrats to do.
[b]The Mad King George's craven hypocrisy is [i]rearing its' ugly head [/i]yet again ...[/b]
Bush's Treasury Dept. has made the curious decision to take freedom down another notch by requiring that works by dissident writers in countries under U.S. sanctions obtain a license http://seattletimes.nwsource.... from the U.S. government prior to publication.
You may know it by its other name: Censorship.
The Treasury Dept's doublespeak response is so precious it requires extensive quoting:
"'These are countries that pose serious threats to the United States, to our economy and security and our well-being around the globe,' Millerwise said, adding that publishers can still bring dissident writers to American readers as long as they first apply for a license."
"'The licensing is a very important part of the sanctions policy because it allows people to engage with these countries,' Millerwise said. 'Anyone is free to apply to OFAC for a license.'"
Note the conflation of the threats from the nations under sanction with the writers who, as is the nature of being a dissident, are in opposition to those threatening governments.
One of the ironies of this threat to American press freedom is that it's the result of a selective interpretation of the 1917 "Trading With the Enemy Act." Wasn't this act intended to stop things a touch more egregious, like, say, Cheney's Halliburton having done business with Iraq http://www.sfbg.com/reality/0... while sanctions were still in place?
[b]The response of the Secretary of Defense to questions from National Guardsmen reveals the callousness of the Bush administration.[/b]
Yesterday, America's troops spoke and their message was clear: they are not getting the support they need from the Bush administration. In a question-and-answer session http://www.dod.gov/transcript... with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, rank-and-file soldiers didn't ask for tough talk, patriotic anthems or American-flag lapel pins. Rather, they told Rumsfeld they needed – but weren't getting – armored vehicles, modern equipment and adequate supplies. Rumsfeld's responses were disgracefully insensitive and condescending. As of today, 6,530 Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan lack adequate protection http://www.kansascity.com/mld... . Our troops deserve better.
Spec. Thomas Wilson told http://www.dod.gov/transcript... Rumsfeld, "A lot of us are getting ready to move north [... into Iraq] relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat." Rumsfeld responded that "you go to war with the Army you have...not the Army you might want to wish to have at a later time." But the planning for war in Iraq began http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... in late 2001. In a spin session later in the day, Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita conceded http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... that as late as the fall of 2003, the military was producing just 15 armored Humvees a month, less than 4 percent of today's production capacity. According to Di Rita, one quarter of Humvees in war zones today are unarmored. The bottom line: soldiers in Iraq today don't have armored vehicles because of poor planning and Rumsfeld refuses to accept responsibility.
Rumsfeld callously attempted to diminish Spec. Wilson's question, saying, "if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can still be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up." In response, Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq War veteran who is now with the soldiers' advocacy group, Operation Truth, said, http://www.usatoday.com/news/... "Having the armor increases your survivability much more than not having it. For [Rumsfeld] to say that is an indication of how little he understands the dangers of the battlefield."
According to http://www.washingtonpost.com... Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS), when Rumsfeld visits Iraq he undoubtedly travels in an armored vehicle. Taylor said, " If it is good enough for the big shots, it is good enough for every American soldier." Col. John Zimmerman, a leader of Spec. Wilson's unit, said, "he and his troops...could not help fuming at the sight of the fully 'up-armored' Humvees and heavy trucks put on display here for Mr. Rumsfeld's visit." Zimmerman noted, "what you see out here isn't what we've got going north [to Iraq] with us."
According to testimony by the Army's vice chief of staff late last year, the military needed 8,400 armor kits for Humvees in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush responded by submitting a budget in early 2004 that proposed http://slate.msn.com/id/20957... "exactly zero dollars" for Humvee armor kits.
The military is preventing thousands of people who have completed their service obligation from leaving the military through the "stop loss" program. Rumsfeld expressed http://www.dod.gov/transcript... no regret that poor planning has forced him to keep troops in war zones involuntarily. Rumsfeld called the program " basically a sound principle" and told the troops that "it will continue to be used." There is so much frustration with the stop loss policy that eight soldiers are suing http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... the government from their camps in the conflict zone.
When an Army specialist asked Rumsfeld what he planned to do about the disparity in equipment between the National Guard and Reserve and the active duty army, Rumsfeld was "taken aback http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... by the question and a murmur began spreading through the ranks." Rumsfeld told the troops to " settle down, Hell, I'm an old man, it's early in the morning and I'm gathering my thoughts here." He then went on to explain that some "element of the Army is going to end up, at some point, with – you characterize it as 'antiquated' [equipment]."
"Don [Rumsfeld] took a bath when the dollar tanked back in 2005," one prominent Republican said, "and hasn't done all that well since the dollar was pegged to the yuan. In the absence of Social Security, he can't afford to quit." - Eternally Rumsfeld, http://www.washingtonpost.com...
Rumsfeld faced calls for his resignation this summer over the abuses at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq. Republicans close to the White House said the decision to retain him was driven by the calculation that replacing him would appear to be a concession that the administration made mistakes in Iraq.
Moreover, some Republicans have speculated that Rumsfeld wanted to stay on with the hope that security conditions in Iraq would improve, leaving him with a better legacy.
Ah, poor little Dummy, poor little Rummy-- [i]whatever[/i] the asshole's reasons for wanting to stay (probably largely due to the fact that his family don't want the mean-spirited jerk hanging around at home, torturing them all) ... it is too bad we're saddled with the crazy buffoon & that our U.S. Soldiers are being killed like flies (or cannon-fodder) due to his incompetence, arrogance and corruption ... But then, who else could Bush select (who would go-along with Dubya's blood-thirsty War Crimes)??? ... Of course, birds of a feather (in this case vultures) flock together!!! ... And, Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, and their neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons stick together while they're sticking it to the American people ...
Compromises and tweaks made at the [i]last minute[/i] http://www.americanprogressac... to ensure conservative support for the new intel bill "have left many government officials and espionage experts skeptical that key reforms will amount to more than an administrative reshuffling http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,0,5805482.story?coll=la-home-headli nes – or will make the nation any safer." [i]Slate[/i] notes the legislation "falls far short of the measures urged by the 9/11 Commission," http://slate.msn.com/id/21107... with House changes to the bill vastly limiting the authority of the new national intelligence director. Curbs to the director's power, urged by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), include "strict limits" on budget authority and an inability to fire the heads of intelligence agencies. Other areas of the bill also limit the effect of changes; the Wall Street Journal reports the new National Counterterrorism Center will have "strict limits" on how far it can go "in planning actual antiterrorism operations." http://online.wsj.com/article...,,SB110246633901993871,00 .html?mod=home_whats_news_ us ...
– Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, responding to troops' complaints about the lack of armor for their vehicles in Iraq, 12/8/04, http://www.washingtonpost.com...
[b]Too bad the despicable blowhard-[i]cum[/i]-liar & arrogant arm-chair chicken-hawk, who[i] never [/i]has been close to anything resembling a battle or warfare (except to [i]send[/i] others to die), Rummy-Scummy-Dummy Rumsfeld, can't be subjected to the appalling conditions he has inflicted upon U.S. troops by denying them the resources, equipment & support they need-- while instead, Rummy & Bush sit back on their fat-asses, swindle the U.S. out of billions of taxpayer dollars and gorge on the blood of human beings here at home and abroad ...[/b]
[u][b]Disgruntled Troops Complain to Rumsfeld[/b][/u]
CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait - Disgrunted U.S. soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday about the lack of armor for their vehicles and long deployments, drawing a blunt retort from the Pentagon chief.
"You go to war with the Army you have," he said in a rare public airing of rank-and-file concerns among the troops.
In his prepared remarks earlier, Rumsfeld had urged the troops - mostly National Guard and Reserve soldiers - to discount critics of the war in Iraq and to help "win the test of wills" with the insurgents.
Some of soldiers, however, had criticisms of their own - not of the war itself but of how it is being fought.
Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, for example, of the 278th Regimental Combat Team that is comprised mainly of citizen soldiers of the Tennessee Army National Guard, asked Rumsfeld in a question-and-answer session why vehicle armor is still in short supply, nearly two years after the start of the war that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.
Rumsfeld hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.
"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson said after asking again.
Rumsfeld replied that troops should make the best of the conditions they face and said the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible.
And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.
"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up," Rumsfeld said.
Asked later about Wilson's complaint, the deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in Kuwait, Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, said in an interview that as far as he knows, every vehicle that is deploying to Iraq from Camp Buehring in Kuwait has at least "Level 3" armor. That means it at least has locally fabricated armor for its side panels, but not necessarily bulletproof windows or protection against explosions that penetrate the floorboard.
Speer said he was not aware that soldiers were searching landfills for scrap metal and used bulletproof glass.
During the question-and-answer session, another soldier complained that active-duty Army units sometimes get priority over the National Guard and Reserve units for the best equipment in Iraq.
"There's no way I can prove it, but I am told the Army is breaking its neck to see that there is not" discrimination against the National Guard and Reserve in terms of providing equipment, Rumsfeld said.
Yet another soldier asked, without putting it to Rumsfeld as a direct criticism, how much longer the Army will continue using its "stop loss" power to prevent soldiers from leaving the service who are otherwise eligible to retire or quit.
Rumsfeld said that this condition was simply a fact of life for soldiers at time of war.
"It's basically a sound principle, it's nothing new, it's been well understood" by soldiers, he said. "My guess is it will continue to be used as little as possible, but that it will continue to be used."
In his opening remarks, Rumsfeld stressed that soldiers who are heading to Iraq should not believe those who say the insurgents cannot be defeated or who otherwise doubt the will of the military to win.
"They say we can't prevail. I see that violence and say we must win," Rumsfeld said.
[b]Source:[/b]
Disgruntled Troops Complain to Rumsfeld, Associated Press, http://www.ap.org/
[b]The controversial 9/11 bill should concern us ... Firstly, bills are being passed through Congress[i] these days[/i] without much public scrutiny ... All one heard from the corporate-owned main-stream press is that a new position of Intelligence Czar is being created with budgetary powers ... The [i]devil is always in the detail [/i] however, and instead of the American public being properly informed, this bill was passed by Congressional toadies frightened of the right-wing media's neo-con attacks & neo-fascist onslaughts ... Secondly, the routine pattern in the traitorous Bush regime is for the White House to demand that GOP Congressional traitors make [i]last minute insertions and deletions into bills [/i]without any public and/or proper congressional review, debate & discourse ... And finally, the right-wing media, of course, [i]is not doing its job [/i]by telling us what these bills actually contain-- and what last minute changes are made; but instead is a megaphone for the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i], who is grabbing more tyrannical, neo-imperial powers & U.S. taxpayer monies, to the detriment of our Republic, each and every day ...[/b]
Until now the whole debate has revolved around a three-cornered conflict between congressional right-wingers who wanted to use the bill to impose harsh immigration reforms (killed); pro-military hard-liners like Duncan Hunter who wanted to protect the Pentagon’s intelligence turf (they surrendered); and the center-right coalition that backed the current bill, which contains several awful and scary provisions.
The impact of the civil liberties advocates was barely heard.
Here are some examples of what the bill does that is terrible. First, it dramatically increases the likelihood that intelligence will be even more politicized than it has been. Now, of course, intelligence agencies have always felt the pressure of politics. But by creating a National Intelligence Director beholden to the White House—an essentially political job—it means that all of the agencies will get their marching orders from a person whose main job is to carry out administration policy. The one good thing about intelligence agencies is that they are, by their very nature, tied to the truth by virtue of collecting facts and information. Policy makers are free to ignore (or, in Bush’s case, create) facts. Now it will get worse.
Second, by encouraging spying on so-called “lone-wolf” terrorist suspects, people not connected to any foreign organization or source, it means that the CIA and FBI will have a much freer hand to spy on individual Americans.
Third, by enhancing CIA-FBI cooperation and strengthening “domestic intelligence” forces, we will see more and more CIA spying on Americans. Consider the case of the arson in Maryland this week, in which several dozen homes under construction were burned. If environmental groups come under suspicion and case is declared “terrorist related,” then the CIA can start spying on environmental action groups here and abroad, using all of the CIA’s virtually unbridled tactics and technology.
There’s a lot more. Does anyone care? Not in Congress. Even the Democrats are stupidly cheering this bill. (Sen. Rockefeller, shame on you!) The ACLU at least is worried, noting that the bill creates a[i] de facto [/i]national ID card and has little or no safeguards to protect civil liberties. Here’s what they had to say:
"In its attempt to reform our intelligence systems by an artificial deadline, Congress appears willing to accept legislation that will diminish our freedom and privacy," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "While Sens. Collins and Lieberman and Reps. Hoekstra and Harman should be commended for their hard work, their final measure unfortunately includes provisions that would undermine our civil liberties."
The bill would centralize the intelligence community’s surveillance powers, increasing the likelihood for government abuses, the ACLU said, without creating sufficient corresponding safeguards.
In letters sent to the House and Senate today, the ACLU said that the legislation contains provisions that would:
*-- Unnecessarily expand wiretapping to erase a key constitutional safeguard and expand the "guilt by association" material support law, including making mere membership in a designated terrorist organization a criminal offense for the first time. The 9/11 Commission did not call for any of these provisions in its report.
*-- Create a weakened civil liberties board that risks becoming the proverbial fox guarding the hen house. The board would be appointed by the president, serve at his pleasure, and have no subpoena power.
*-- Standardize drivers’ licenses and state identification cards, creating a de facto national ID. This cosmetic "quick fix" would not effectively deter terrorists, the ACLU said, but would threaten our freedom and our right to privacy by making it easier for the federal government to constantly track our movements.
[b]Remember Bush's promise to get Osama bin Laden "[i]dead or alive[/i]"??? ...[i] Hmmm [/i]... Remember Bush's unequivocal words that Iraq had [i]massive stockpiles of WMDs that represented an imminent threat to the U.S.[/i], which was why we are spending (i.e. squandering) the lives of our U.S. Soldiers (innocent Iraqi civilians, our nation's goodwill, etc.) & U.S. Taxpayer Dollars??? ...[i] Hmmm [/i]... Remember Bush's bizarre ramblings that Iraqis would[i] welcome us with open arms [/i]once Saddam Hussein was toppled??? ... [i]Hmmm[/i] ...[/b]
It's a strange, twisted time we live in when a dictator makes more sense than a lawfully elected president. Bush isn't going to be too thrilled with what his loyal ally, Pervez Musharraf, had to say in Washington this week. Pakistan's president claimed among other things that: [b]one[/b], there is little hope http://www.guardian.co.uk/alq...,12469,1367208,00.html of arresting bin Laden any time in the future; [b]two[/b], the invasion of Iraq was a mistake http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD... ; and [b]three[/b], plain old brute force will never win http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD... the battle against terrorism.
Bush introduced Mike and Sharla Hintz, a couple from Clive, whom he said benefited from his tax plan.
Last year, because of the enhanced the child tax credit, they received an extra $1,600 in their tax refund, Bush said. With other tax cuts in the bill, they saved $2,800 on their income taxes.
They used the money to buy a wood-burning stove to more efficiently heat their home, made some home improvements and went on a vacation to Minnesota, the president said.
"Next year, maybe they'll want to come to Texas," Bush quipped.
Mike Hintz, a First Assembly of God youth pastor, said the tax cuts also gave him additional money to use for health care.
He said he supports Bush's values.
"The American people are starting to see what kind of leader President Bush is. People know where he stands," he said.
"Where we are in this world, with not just the war on terror, but with the war with our culture that's going on, I think we need a man that is going to be in the White House like President Bush, that's going to stand by what he believes.
[[b]Aside:[/b] Bush's 'Upside-Down' Economy http://www.americanprogress.o... has[i] in reality [/i]hurt working people-- who are paying more in local, state & property taxes ([i]and inflation[/i]);-- who are paying for his corporate neo-fascists' insane tax cuts for the rich by the unconscionable slashing of social programs protecting our environment; health care; food & drug supply, etc.; and, -- who are saddled with the largest deficits in our nation's history causing our dollar to lose value. Working people are [i]paying out more [/i]money[i] for less [/i]so that the hyper-wealthy can live the "obese" life...]
A Des Moines youth pastor is charged with the sexual exploitation of a child.
KCCI learned that the married father of four recently turned himself in to Johnston police.
Rev. Mike Hintz was fired from the First Assembly of God Church, located at 2725 Merle Hay Road, on Oct. 30. Hintz was the youth pastor there for three years.
Police said he started an affair with a 17-year-old in the church youth group this spring.
[b]When the matter of naming Condoleeza Rice to replace Secretary of State Colin Powell came before the U.S. Senate, at least one Senator stood up and castigated the Bush foreign policy and the abuse of U.S. power. [/b]
[i]Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) has the unique distinction of being the lone dissenter in the Senate on the vote approving the Patriot Act. He also was among a handful of Senators opposing the resolution to authorize the Iraq war. And last month, he won re-election, beating his well-financed Republican opponent 55-44 percent. On Nov. 18, when President Bush's nomination of Condoleeza Rice to replace Secretary of State Colin Powell came before the U.S. Senate, Sen. Feingold stood on the Senate floor and, in his characterestically forthright manner, spoke the following words[/i].
[b]Mr. FEINGOLD:[/b] On Tuesday, the President announced the nomination of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice to be the next U.S. Secretary of State.
I admire Dr. Rice's obvious intellectual gifts and her communication skills, and I congratulate her. I also believe that the president has the right to appoint cabinet officers who reflect his ideology and his perspective. Barring serious concerns about a nominee's qualifications or ethical record, and in keeping with Senate practices and precedents, my inclination is to give the president substantial deference in his cabinet choices, so I do expect, barring something unforeseen, that I will be supporting Dr. Rice.
But I am deeply troubled by the signal that this nomination appears to send — a signal suggesting that the modest moderating influence of the State Department over the last four years will disappear, and that the next four years will be guided even more closely by the voices that shouted loudest in the first term, and that led our country into seriously flawed foreign policies. Our country cannot afford to continue down the foreign policy path that was forged during the first term of the Bush administration.
Over the past four years, we have witnessed the greatest loss of a very valuable type of American power in our history: our power to lead, to persuade, and to inspire. As Joseph Nye has pointed out, this power will not convert the extremists who oppose us no matter what. Those people must be eliminated, pure and simple. But it can thwart their plans, by denying them new recruits, undermining their appeal and their message, and unifying, rather than dividing, Americans and the rest of the international community. Rather than bolstering this asset, which has helped to make us the most powerful country on earth, I'm afraid we have squandered it.
In March, the Pew Research Center found that one year after the start of the war in Iraq, "discontent with America and its policies has intensified rather than diminished" across the world. Majorities in Pakistan, Jordan, Morocco and Turkey believe that the U.S. is exaggerating the terrorist threat. They doubt the sincerity of the U.S. war on terrorism and say that it is an effort to control Mideast oil and dominate the world. The Center found that "at least half the people in countries other than the U.S. say as a result of the war in Iraq they have less confidence that the United States is trustworthy. Similarly, majorities in all of these countries say they have less confidence that the U.S. wants to promote democracy globally." Our motives are questioned, our public justifications and explanations viewed with skepticism, and our post-9/11 public diplomacy efforts have too often missed the mark, substituting pop music broadcasts, brochures and videos for the kind of respectful dialogue and engagement that could convince generations of angry young people that their humiliation is not our goal.
We have had over three years since Sept. 11, 2001, to think strategically about how to win the fight against terrorism. But I'm afraid we have little to show for this time.
We have relied upon a doctrine that fails to recognize that our enemies do not rely on explicit state sponsorship of terrorism. By focusing primarily on possible state sponsors of terror, the administration failed to realize that our terrorist enemies operate effectively in weak and failing states and without the backing of national governments. This is a new enemy waging a new war against us, but the administration appears still to be stuck in an old cold war mindset.
We have muddled our language and our focus by conflating other priorities with the fight against terrorism, costing us credibility around the world and shattering the unified and resolved global coalition that emerged to support us in the aftermath of 9/11. By choosing to fight the war in Iraq in such a divisive and astronomically expensive fashion, we have diverted resources away from the fight against the terrorist networks that seek to destroy us and undermined our ability to win the hearts and minds of many whose support we will need to succeed in the long run. We have recognized the dangers of nuclear proliferation in an age of terrorism, but have then pursued policies that may well create incentives for states to develop nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.
We have developed essentially no measures of success or failure when it comes to one of our most urgent priorities, as the 9/11 Commission underscored — preventing the continued growth of Islamist terrorism. In fact, we do not even know where we stand today in this vital struggle.
We have not given any serious thought to how to avoid the mistakes of the Cold War, when we gave a free pass to forces of repression and brutality, as long as they did not come with a Communist bent. Those mistakes, as we all know, actually helped to make Afghanistan the brutally repressive terrorist haven that it was on 9/11/2001.
We have not made an adequate investment in bolstering our diplomatic resources and engagement around the world. From Northern Nigeria to Eastern Kenya, we have virtually no presence. In Somalia, despite knowing that al Qaeda-linked terrorists have operated in the country, we simply failed to develop any policy at all.
While the administration's policy was failing on all of these fronts, the president's team was devoting its time and attention to selling the world and the American people a war in Iraq with fundamentally flawed intelligence, manipulative and misleading characterizations, and rosy predictions that proved horribly, dangerously off-the-mark.
The administration's Iraq policies in the first term painted a picture of an American government that isn't so sure it rejects torture; that isn't competent and careful enough to properly vet intelligence presented in major speeches and briefings; that willfully rejects the lessons of history and the advice of its own experts; that is surprised when disorder results in massive looting; that misleads taxpayers regarding the costs and commitments entailed in its policies; that spends billions upon billions without any effort to even budget for these extremely predictable costs; and that is willing to politicize issues fundamental to our national security in the ugliest possible way.
We deserve better. Certainly the brave men and women of the U.S. military who are fighting every day to make this effort in Iraq work deserve better. We do not honor them by accepting lousy, irresponsible policy in the halls and hearing rooms of the Capital and then leaving our soldiers holding the bag on the ground, when policy collides with the hard truth.
The administration's record of the past four years suggests a foreign policy careening out of control, driven by ideologues who want to test their theories in the laboratory of the Middle East one minute, by domestic political considerations the next, and by spiteful attempts to punish those who disagree with their methods the next.
Where is this going? Who is in charge? Who knows? No one ever seems to be held accountable for the blunders, the failures, the wildly inaccurate presentations and projections or the painfully ineffective initiatives. Congress cannot simply accept more of the same, keep our heads down and hope that somehow we will muddle through. The stakes are far too high. Our national security, the stability of the world that our children will inherit, our troops — even our country's honor — are on the line. Congress has an obligation, not to oppose every administration effort, but to reassert our role in helping to steer the ship of state wisely rather than recklessly. I look at our foreign policy over the past four years, and I know that America is so much better than this.
I look forward to the opportunity to raise these concerns with Dr. Rice when she testifies before the Foreign Relations Committee, and to receiving some assurance that she will work with Congress to put our country's foreign policy on a better, more effective footing.
A White House transcript of President Bush's speech at the Christmas tree lighting on Thursday originally read, "We think of the patient hope of men and women across the centuries who listened to the words of the profits http://www.washingtonpost.com... and lived in joyful expectation." Nineteen minutes later, a corrected transcript changed "profits" to "prophets." http://www.washingtonpost.com...
Obviously Bush wrote his own mediocre, cliche-ridden speech [i]this [/i]time-- and really meant every ugly Un-Christian word he babbled mindlessly ... Too bad the White House minions changed his words (as they[i] often [/i]do ...), for history should show that we've been saddled with a greedy, supercilious asshole for President ...
"Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."
—This is [i]not[/i] fiction. It's from the abstinence-only sex education text "Choosing The Best Soulmate http://www.choosingthebest.or... ." Congress just allocated $130 million http://www.kaisernetwork.org/... in U.S. Taxpayer Dollars to expand programs that use such texts.
[b]Is it treasonous to declare what is obvious to anybody with an iota of brain-matter? Of course[i] not[/i]! Indeed, it is[i] patriotic [/i]to tell the truth and face reality! Bush is an imbecilic nobody who has risen to power because Slut-Poppy Bush is a corrupt power-broker who got his corporate cronies to put their Useful Idiot in power-- which has even further corrupted the already tainted-[i]n[/i]-drunkard ly irresponsible Dubya ... I'm just waiting for Dubya to prance around mindlessly on some other aircraft carrier dressed-up Halloween-style in military garb parrotting Karl 'Joseph Goebbels' Rove's script "Mission Accomplish" to the brain-dead neo-cons who turn away from the facts surrounding their horrendous miserable failure and bloody fiasco in Iraq ...[/b]
Voices of reason are rising in unison. The Bush war in Iraq is increasingly recognized as unwinnable.
Military historian and strategist Martin Van Creveld provides a re-reading of the diaries of General Moshe Dayan http://www.lewrockwell.com/or... as the famous one-eyed warrior toured Vietnam in 1966. In preparation for his visit to the battlefields, Dayan attended a small private dinner in Washington with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, where questions about the situation in Vietnam were asked and answered. Van Creveld writes,
[i][McNamara] admitted that many of the figures being floated by the Pentagon – particularly those pertaining to the percentage of the country and population "secured" – were meaningless at best and bogus at worst. No more than anybody else could he explain to Dayan how the Americans intended to end the War. What set him apart was the fact that he was prepared to admit it, albeit only in a half- hearted way; as we now know, he already had his own doubts which led to his resignation in the next year. He consoled himself by saying that the War was not hurting the US economy. In other words, it could go on and on until one side or the other gave way[/i].
Van Creveld concludes his article by reminding us of the three problems Dayan saw in America’s military conduct of Vietnam: lack of intelligence, a failed campaign for "hearts and minds" and the problem faced when "an armed force ... keeps beating down on a weaker opponent ... [The stronger force] will be seen as committing a series of crimes; therefore it will end up by losing the support of its allies, its own people, and its own troops." One needn’t open one’s eyes or heart far to see the similarities in Iraq.
But Van Creveld, best known for his books on the nature of war—past, present and future—may be considered only an academic gadfly, notwithstanding that he is well studied in all our war colleges. Perhaps the war journalists can provide something a bit more realistic and less theoretical.
Overwhelmingly, journalists who travel Iraq, reporting and shooting photographs and videos, trying to be fair, end up being vilified by the administration. The infamous Kevin Sites video of a "dead check" http://www1.villagevoice.com/... in a mosque is a classic, as is the well traveled evaluation from a respected [i]Wall Street Journal [/i]war reporter http://www.conspiracyplanet.c... . These are consistently discounted by the administration, but it may be harder to minimize the observations of erstwhile Bush supporter and [i]New York Times [/i]op-ed page beacon Tom Friedman. Friedman writes this week that "America is losing the last mile in Iraq," http://www.iht.com/articles/2... concluding, of course, that we must fight harder, steel our stomachs and grow a backbone. But Friedman is notoriously lacking in military experience. Perhaps we should seek counsel of those who have worn a uniform.
What of the retired military analysts? From traditional conservatives and retired Army Colonels Bill Lind and David Hackworth, we heard early, consistent cautions regarding our backfired boutique war in Iraq. Their wise words ignored by the administration and the Pentagon, Hackworth and Lind in different ways have provided words of clear constant advice on how to successfully deal with what we have wrought in Iraq. Lind’s latest includes "The Last Dignified Exit" http://www.lewrockwell.com/li... and for [i]The American Conservative[/i], the November 22 cover article "Strategic Defense Initiative." http://www.amconmag.com/2004_... Both address the abject failure of our strategy in Iraq, military to be sure, but in a more substantial way, our politics of war. The Bush administration planners have much to answer for, as Colonel Hackworth’s archive indicates. Retired generals from Tony Zinni to William Odom to Brent Skowcroft and a host of others agree with the battle hardened soldier’s concern about administration intent, objective, strategy and Iraq exit possibilities. Yet, truly, these men have had their chance, and no longer serve in the active force.
The litany of stakeholders in American military strategy would be incomplete without the words of the soldiers on the ground in Iraq, or those recently returned. Our soldiers, as do all soldiers in all stupid wars, fight for their brothers in arms, and only for them. Period.
The Bush administration ignores or discounts these critical and honest observers from all parts of the American defense spectrum. Navel gazing groupthinkers to a man (and one woman), the current administration fails to recognize American strategic gains in Iraq – a dominant military presence in the heart of the Middle East, permanent basing, guaranteed petro-dollars, unquestioned control of Iraqi economic development in a post-Saddam environment, and an Iraqi state that will not rise again as a regional power – are [i]simply not well understood by most Americans[/i].
Yet these were the objectives. George W. Bush, wearing a borrowed flight suit in front of a super-sized PowerPoint graphic declared in May 2003 stated that "Combat operations are over!" Over 25,000 American casualties later, there is a sense that someone got a bum deal. The Bush strategy has failed to deliver – was it Rumsfeld’s light and lean emphasis or his chip on the shoulder desire to sink both the Abrams Doctrine and the Powell Doctrine in one fell swoop? Was the flaw simply a lack of competent leadership in Washington, or in the Pentagon? Can we solve the problem by simply sending more troops or spending more money? Perhaps holding a election under the gun is the solution.
The shattered lives and wasted treasure in Iraq, with diminished morale and diminishing moral high ground for the United States, drive serious observers to identify and try to understand the American strategy failures. They use terms like unwinnable, flawed, unsustainable. They say "Yankee, come home."
But a strategy failure indicates that desired objectives have not been achieved. The only important Bush strategy flaw was its abject failure to sell their true – and as of December 2004, mostly achieved – objectives to the strategists, the military analysts, the defense journalists, and most tragically, to the men and women dying to maintain the Bush course.
Marshall Wittman says http://www.bullmooseblog.com/... : "Despite the mass exodus, the incompetent one remains -Rummy. All that happened on his watch was an abysmal post-war plan and a prison scandal. This confirms that the only ones held accountable in this Administration are welfare mothers and struggling third grade students. For them, standards and accountability apply. For Rumsfeld, he is just passed along to the next grade (or term) regardless of his performance."
[b]Karl Rove is a nasty piece-of-work ... He is known as the corrupt Bush regime's "Joseph Goebbels" promoting the insane neo-cons' Global Corporate Empire (defined by PNAC - Project for the New American Century, run by the corporate neo-fascists) ... Rove brags that he will create a 100 (perhaps not wanting to be so obvious as to use the Nazis' "1000") Year Reich ...[/b]
[u][b]Learning to win the Republican way[/b][/u]
[i]Bush’s Brain[/i], the 2003 book and film by veteran journalists [b]James Moore [/b]and [b]Wayne Slater[/b], and director [b]Michael Shoob[/b], lays out, with compelling bi-partisan evidence, the wake of destruction left by Bush’s long-time campaign and political director, [b]Karl Rove[/b].
Rove is on a roll. He’s orchestrated two presidential wins in a row, gained the Republicans majority positions in the House and Senate, and all but driven the Democrats into the sea. He’s currently on the short list for [i]Time Magazine’s [/i]Man of the Year. As his boss puts it, “Karl’s the man with the plan.”
Bush and Rove met in the early 1970s, when Rove was a young up-and-comer in the Republican Party working for then-party chairman, George Bush Sr.
[i]Bush’s Brain [/i]author James Moore describes their early relationship, “Karl’s job was to give George W. the car keys when he came into town. Back then, Karl had no confidence about anything except his politics and his intellect. He’s got a nasal reedy voice and tortoise shell glasses almost as big as his head. And he lays eyes on George W, a strapping six-footer, wearing a leather bomber jacket and sunglasses and snapping gum. It’s an inevitable political marriage. Bush has the looks, charm, family name and corporate connections. Karl brings the politics, policy, ambition and strategy. Put those two heads on the same political body and you have one very formidable team.”
Democrats claim that Rove’s tactics are dishonest, unethical and have undermined the democratic process. Even so, Moore warns, “until Democrats find the right candidates and the right strategists, they’re just not going to defeat Karl Rove.”
I recently spoke with James Moore and Michael Shoob about Rove’s tactics, his unprecedented political influence, and what the Democrats have to do to beat him:
[b]Scheff: [/b]What is the mark of a Rove attack?
[b]James Moore: [/b]The Max Cleland case is a classic example of Rove. Senator Max Cleland [D – Ga.] and Senator Joseph Lieberman [D – Conn.] came up with the idea for a Department of Homeland Security. Karl bristled at it and said, we don’t need another stupid huge government bureaucracy.
But he did some overnight polling to see what the public’s take on it was and discovered that there was very strong interest in it. So the Republicans cobbled together their own Homeland Security bill. But Karl threw anti-labor and anti-union provisions into the republican version of the bill. Senator Cleland couldn’t vote for that and neither could Senator Lieberman. They voted against the Republican bill and for the Democrat’s version.
When the midterm elections come around and Senator Cleland was up for re-election, the Republicans ran an ad on television that showed Max Cleland – a veteran who left three limbs in Vietnam, an American hero, who’s spent every day of his adult life in service to his country – on the same screen with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein – and said that Cleland voted to stop the Homeland Security bill.
It completely destroyed his re-election efforts.
[b]Michael Shoob (Director of [i]Bush’s Brain[/i]): [/b]The mark of Rove is that he attacks a candidate’s strength. The Bush campaign tried to paint McCain as mentally unfit because of what he suffered as a P.O.W. They attacked Kerry’s heroism by saying that his medals were achieved fraudulently.
[b]Moore:[/b] Some of the things that happened on Election Day were completely Karl. There were robocalls – automated telephone calls in the state of Michigan, urging people to get out and vote for John Kerry because he was going to legalize homosexual marriages, and it was important to support him because he was taking a courageous stand. Of course this wasn’t true, but the idea was to motivate people to vote against Kerry
The same thing happened in North and South Carolina. There the calls went to African Americans who were informed by an automated message that if they showed up to vote, and had unpaid speeding or parking tickets, they’d be arrested.
These are Rove’s tactics. He has learned how to game the system, to suppress the vote of the opposition and energize the vote of his side – and drown the real issues in a sea of money.
[b]Moore:[/b] In 2000, Karl was managing George W. Bush’s campaign and they did an all out assault on John McCain in South Carolina. They used photos, push-polls and television call-in shows to forward the notion that John McCain had an illegitimate black child.
Flyers showed up on the car windshields of people attending Sunday services throughout South Carolina. There was a photo of John McCain, his wife Cindy and their children – and standing in front was a young, dark-skinned girl. People looking at the text [accusing McCain of infidelity] wondered if McCain had done something immoral.
In reality, the girl was part of the family – she was adopted. John and Cindy McCain had adopted a Bangladeshi child from an orphanage that was run by mother Theresa. But the rumors destroyed McCain in South Carolina and gave the win to Bush.
[b]Shoob:[/b] Rove has learned to make false allegations, which he did in Alabama, for example. He accused a judge they were running against of being a pedophile. So you’re a pedophile, you’re un-American, Kerry lied about his war record, John McCain is mentally unfit, Ann Richards is a lesbian – all these are lies carefully designed to defeat and ultimately destroy an opponent.
The way journalism works is this: you make an allegation, and it takes a certain amount of time to research and refute it. Political campaigns have a short shelf life, by the time anyone has refuted the lie, it’s too late. It’s stuck.
In most cases it sticks whether you refute it or not. A majority of voters thought there was something wrong with John Kerry’s war record, even though the charges were completely false, and had been refuted, point by point.
[b]Moore:[/b] The Swift Boat Veterans against Kerry. That group was made up of a number of people who have actively funded Rove’s campaigns and candidates throughout the years.
[b]Shoob:[/b] People think, where there’s smoke there must be fire. Well there is, but it’s the wrong kind of fire – there’s Rove again.
[b]Scheff:[/b] What’s are the limits of Rove’s influence?
[b]Moore:[/b] In the old days, Karl’s position, political advisor, did not directly influence what went on in the White House.
It used to work like this: the President, the cabinet and policy experts would sit down and try to develop policies that would best serve the country. The political advisor would only be called after the policy meeting, to help develop strategies to win political support for the policies.
Karl has morphed it into something more dangerous. He’s flip-flopped the protocol. He sits in his West Wing office and thinks of policies that will have a positive effect in the polls. It’s not about what’s good for the country, it’s what’s good for the President and the Republican Party. My tax money is being used to pay Karl Rove – who’s not elected to government – to do policy for the President of the United States
[b]Scheff:[/b] In January 2002, at the Republican winter convention in Austin, Texas, Rove surpassed his role as political consultant. He announced the Republican party’s intention to drive America to war in Iraq, over a year before the invasion. Rove said:
“We can go to the American people on winning this war because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America. And we should be proud of the record of our Party in doing just that….This is going to be a long and difficult contest. And then much is yet to be done and much is yet to be required. We are winning in Afghanistan, but we’re winning only in the first theater of a long contest that will take a long time and a lot of treasure and a lot of challenge for this country.”
[b]Moore:[/b] Karl was laying out what had been planned since before September 11. The whole tactic of calling Afghanistan a battle, not a war, plays right into the Rove approach to politics.
If we called it a war, we could win it and be done. But then George W. wouldn’t be a war President anymore and he’d drop in the polls. However, if it’s just the first battle in a long, ongoing war, then America is forever on a war footing, the President is forever a war president, and it’s difficult for people to criticize him.
So we have the Battle of Afghanistan, the Battle for Iraq. What’s next – the Battle of Iran? They have a rather large army. It would cost a lot more in lives and treasure than even Karl envisioned.
[b]Scheff:[/b] In 2003, undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame was outed in the press. What was the Rove Connection?
[b]Moore:[/b] Valerie Plame was working to track the movement of weapons in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. She was what the CIA refers to as the holiest of holies – a NOC – non-official cover. This means, if you’re discovered by an enemy, the U.S. government provides you with no protection. They will disavow any knowledge of your actions.
She worked with about six or seven dozen operatives in Eastern Europe. She’d spent her entire professional life working for the CIA, and years as a NOC in a very dangerous undercover operation, trying to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Her life was in constant danger – and they outed her – they released her name in the press.
[b]Shoob:[/b] Her husband, ambassador Joseph Wilson, told us that he received a call from a “respected reporter” – later identified as Hardball host Chris Matthews – who told him, ”I just got off the phone with Karl Rove – he tells me your wife is fair game”
Joseph Wilson is the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. He had been asked by the CIA to investigate intelligence reports that yellowcake uranium from Niger had been funneled to Iraq. Wilson went to Niger and found the intelligence was bad – the transfer of uranium had not happened. He reported his findings to the CIA.
Later, he wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times called, “What I did not find in Africa.”
And then he got the call. His wife, Valerie Plame, had been outed as a CIA agent in the press. Her name appeared in a column by Robert Novak, a long-time press connection of Rove’s.
[b]Moore:[/b] This was purely an act of revenge – to send a message to Ambassador Wilson and anyone who might consider contradicting the Bush campaign – “Don’t mess with us.”
Wilson’s wife was working in precisely the area that we went to war over – trying to stop the spread of WMDs – and they outed her. They destroyed her operation and the relationships she’d taken years to develop. They endangered the country by destroying a significant intelligence gathering operation.
Identifying an undercover U.S. agent is a federal offense. This was made law under the White House of George H.W. Bush. This is precisely the kind of irony that goes unnoticed by Americans who voted for George W. Bush.
[b]Scheff:[/b] How do we get Karl Rove out of the White House?
[b]Moore:[/b] As long as Republicans are in charge, Karl Rove is going be there, because there’s nobody better – there never has ever been anybody as good as this guy.
He’s iconic on the American political landscape, he has figured out how to game democracy, to win at all costs. He’s turned lying – something that used to bring down entire careers – into an acceptable political tactic.
Rove has turned the idea of our nation going to war into a marketing concept. He’s branded it and marketed it – “We’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys, our president is a hero and a leader so get in line behind him.” And it’s worked. The American public has fallen for it.
[b]Shoob:[/b] The winner of the election was the one successful in portraying themselves as the party that achieved the moral high ground. The Democrats could’ve done this very easily if they’d claimed from the start that the war was immoral and illegal – that people had been lied to – that it was a violation of the Geneva Convention.
[b]Scheff:[/b] But they didn’t. The Democratic leadership all supported the war – Kerry, Clinton, Feinstein, Biden, Lieberman – they all voted for it.
[b]Shoob:[/b] The Democrats think victory is in the middle. They think that if some Americans support the war, the party has to lean to the right. Victory, I think we’ve discovered, is not in the middle.
[b]Source:[/b]
[b]Liam Scheff [/b]is an investigative journalist and health advocate. His ongoing investigation into the use of toxic AIDS drugs on children, including orphans, as part of government (N.I.H.) clinical trials was recently featured in a BBC documentary http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/h... ., http://www.guerrillanews.com/...
...---... Bush's Neo-Con Nazi Pigs Grunting to "Limit Access" & "Control" the Internet ...---...
[b]Ah, it didn't take long [i]after[/i] the election, for the corrupt neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] neo-con Nazi Pigs to start grunting & squealing to "limit access" and "control" the internet ... [i]How convenient[/i]! ... In order to install their corporate-take-all dictatorship, [i]the Bushies must stop[/i] the "masses of rabble" [i]who don't buy their corporate bullshit & mendacious propaganda [/i]from communicating, organizing & finding out the truth about their many heinous crimes and treasonous activities ... [/b]
Of course, all of this "limit access" & "control" of the internet is being done in the name of "fighting terrorism"-- just like their insane, illegal & immoral wars for oil & riches; their destruction of the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights via their (Un)-Patriot Acts; and, their Crimes Against Humanity in setting up concentration camps & torturing innocent civilians at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and in Afghanistan ...
Former CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called "a potential Achilles' heel."
"I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability," he told an information-technology security conference in Washington, "but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control."
[i][b]Yeah, Georgey-boy Tenet:-- Is this the price to get the Presidential Medal of Freedom http://seattlepi.nwsource.com...%20Medal%20of%20Freedom that Dubya is going to convey upon you (& other crooked minions who lick his ass), in order to support his neo-Nazi policies, as well as to cover-up Bush/Cheney Inc.'s War Crimes?[/b][/i]
The Pentagon has urged Congress to authorize 500 million dollars for building a network of friendly militias around the world to purge terrorists from "ungoverned areas" -- and warned Muslim clerics against providing "ideological sanctuary" to radicals.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday the money would be used "for training and equipping local security forces -- not just armies -- to counter terrorism and insurgencies." ...
... In his testimony, Wolfowitz also suggested expanding the scope of the war on terror by including into the list of its possible targets radical Islamic clerics, who, in his words, provide "ideological sanctuary" to terrorism.
In addition, he called for tightening control over international communication networks, including the Internet.
[b][i]Yeah, Wolfy:-- Wouldn't it be great if all of your lies, deceptions, falsehoods & incompetence, malfeasance, criminal activities couldn't be dug-up from sources who leak on the internet? Ah, how convenient![/i][/b]
[b]The Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] is comprised of neo-con phonies, traitors, liars and neo-fascist con-men ... They scream & howl about a so-called "coalition" of the so-called "willing" ... The U.S. currently has over 130,000 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq fighting (... and many dying, maimed, injured for life ...) based on treasonous lies, deceptions & falsehoods-- and Bush/Cheney Inc. will build-up our troop deployment in Iraq to 150,000 by the Jan. 30th election (... since it's a bloody fiasco ...)-- ... The total troop deployment by other nations is currently less than 24,000 (<16% of the total) ...[/b]> So here's the best data http://www.globalsecurity.org... on the status of Bush's coalition of the billing:
1. United Kingdom: 12,000 (will decrease to 10,500 in near future) 2. Italy: 3,169 3. South Korea: 2,800 (will increase to 3,600) 4. Poland: 2,400 (gradual complete pullout in 2005) 5. Ukraine: 1,400 (complete pull out over next few months?) 6. Netherlands: 1,345 (complete pullout by March 2005) 7. Romania: 700 8. Japan: 750 9. Denmark: 496 10. Bulgaria: 485 (pulling out 20 of those in near future) 11. El Salvador: 380 12. Hungary: 300 (complete pullout by March 2005) 13. Australia: 920 14. Mongolia: 180 15. Georgia: 159 (850 by end of 2004) 16. Azerbajian: 151 17. Portugal: 128 18. Latvia: 122 19. Czech: 110 (down to 10 in near future) 20. Lithuania: 105 21. Slovakia: 105 22. Albania: 71 23. Estonia: 55 24. Tonga: 45 25. Kazakhstan: 29 26. Macedonia: 28 27. Moldova: 12 28. Norway: 10
That makes for a total of 23,900 troops, over half from the Brits.
Countries who have already pulled out: Thailand, Spain, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Philippines, Singapore, and New Zealand.
Armenia was supposed to offer a 50-man contingent, but that is now up in the air. Fiji will send 130 troops to serve as security for the UN mission.
[b]Bush/Cheney Inc. should be impeached ... These neo-con traitors are responsible for the massacre of over 1000 U.S. Soldiers & tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians ... Moreover, the whorish Bush and Cheney have enriched themselves & their vile neo-fascist corporate pimps, by embezzling billions of dollars stolen from the U.S. taxpayer & Iraq ...
What happened to Iraq’s oil money?
Former U.S. official says billions of dollars were ‘squandered’[/b]
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the United States took control of all of the Iraqi government’s bank accounts, including the income from oil sales. The United Nations approved the financial takeover, and President Bush vowed to spend Iraq’s money wisely. But now critics are raising serious questions about how well the United States handled billions of dollars in Iraqi oil funds.
Iraq's oil resources generate billions of dollars — money the United States promised to protect after overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
Now, Frank Willis, a former senior American official in Iraq, tells NBC News the United States failed to safeguard the oil money known as the Development Fund for Iraq.
"There was, in my mind, pervasive leakage in assets of Iraq, and to some extent, those assets were squandered," says Willis.
Willis helped run Iraq’s Transportation Ministry. He says government agencies and private contractors had to be paid in cash because Iraq’s banking system was decimated.
"A lot of money did get to the Iraqi people at the grass-roots level, and a lot of it got into the wrong hands," he says.
In one photograph, Willis and colleagues showed off a $2 million payment to a security contractor.
"It was time for payment," he remembers. "We told them to come in and bring in a bag. It reminded me of the Wild West."
In a series of reports on U.S. management of the oil money, auditors working for the United Nation's Iraq Advisory and Monitoring Board and the Inspector General of the Coalition Provisional Authority found:
1. Insufficient controls 2. Missing records 3. Two sets of books at Iraq's Finance Ministry, which did not match
In one example of insufficient controls, the United States stored hundreds of millions of oil dollars in a vault in a Baghdad palace. Government auditors found that the key to the vault was kept “unsecured” — in a U.S. official’s backpack.
Iraq’s U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer, pledged last year to hire a certified public accounting firm to ensure proper controls. But the United States gave the contract not to an accounting firm but to a tiny consulting company, Northstar — which NBC News found is headquartered at a private home near San Diego.
"They violated the rules. They picked a contractor who didn’t meet their requirements," says Paul Light, a government contracting expert and professor at New York University.
Northstar’s president says the Pentagon knew Northstar was not a certified public accounting firm and that four experienced employees went to Iraq and did a good job. However, one audit notes that a single Northstar employee maintained spreadsheets tracking billions of dollars.
Bremer would not comment. His aides say Iraq is a war zone and their top priority was getting money quickly where it was needed, even if the accounting wasn't perfect.
But NBC News has learned that a draft government audit faults the United States for “inadequate stewardship” of up to $8.8 billion in oil money, handed over to Iraq’s ministries but never fully accounted for.
[b]Neither Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld-- nor any of the neo-con arm-chair chicken-hawks remaining in office (instead of in jail, where they belong) have ever served in war ... In fact, none of these assholes have ever been within arms-length of anything remotely resembling a battle ... Yet, these are the incompetent neo-fascists we're saddled with, who are sending [i]others to die [/i]in their ill-conceived, incompetently mis-managed war in Iraq??? ...[i] Only in America!!! [/i]...[/b]
With Tom Ridge http://www.washingtonpost.com... following Colin Powell out the White House revolving door, George Bush has finally completed his purge of Vietnam veterans from the Cabinet. Call it the revenge of the Deferment Generation.
In mourning over this latest "spend more time with my family" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... loss, Americans in airports across the nation removed their jackets, shoes and cowboy belt buckles. Some even consoled each other with quick frisks and pat-downs.
You can tell I find it hard to know whether to laugh, cry, or shout over his departure. Ridge's Homeland Security Department represented the War on Terrorism in its Dadaist mode: a series of pointless provocations involving color codes http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... , duct tape, suspiciously-timed alerts http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... and endless talk about terrorist "chatter."
But while Ridge made us feel less secure at home, Donald Rumsfeld and his fellow Chicken Hawks actually did make us less secure abroad with a "fight them over there" strategy that has worked all too well. Two years, 150,000 soldiers, and tens of thousands of American and Iraqi lives later, and we have yet to secure Baghdad's airport road. Each month the number of casualties rises. November was the worst of the entire war.
What was sold as an easy battle in our latest War On An Abstract Concept has become another dreaded "quagmire"--a black hole for American prestige, treasure and blood. This is tragedy replaying itself as farce. And we have the men who avoided service in Vietnam to thank.
[b]Apparently China is advancing in a way that the United States of America no longer can because we've been hijacked by neo-con war-mongers & neo-fascist corporate robber-barons using their Useful Idiot Bush & their cabal of GOP Repug-sluts to rape & ravage our nation in order to amasse huge fortunes and leave the rest of us to clean-up their messes ... Refer to "Quo Vadis: Playing For Keeps" on http://www.tompaine.com/artic... ...[/b]
[i]A Newly Electric Green – Sustainable Energy, Resources and Design[/i]
As we've discussed before, China is taking some giant steps forward in building an ecologically sane future: embracing windpower, building the largest tidal energy project in the world, implementing new automobile fuel efficiency standards more stringent than those of the US, promoting a massive solar energy program and becoming one of the largest manufacturers of solar cells, even embracing the idea of a green olympics.
Now, China says, it's moving into green building, in a big way:
"[i]By the end of 2010, all Chinese cities will be expected to reduce their buildings’ energy use by 50 percent; by 2020, that figure will be 65 percent. Furthermore, by 2010, 25 percent of existing residential and public buildings in the country’s large cities will be retrofitted to be greener; that number will be 15 percent in medium-sized cities and 10 percent in small cities. Over 80 million square meters of building space will be powered using solar and other renewable energies.
"If China follows the sustainability plan announced by Minister Qiu, the country will essentially commit itself to reconstructing a sizable portion of its built environment. In fact, China would embark on one of the largest rebuilding projects in world history[/i]."
We shouldn't underestimate just how far China has yet to go. With well over a billion people, and an economy that grew 9% last year, China's future is of direct consequence to every person on the planet, and China's current path is deeply unsustainable. It is already one of the world's largest polluters, and faces truly monumental environmental challenges, challenges perhaps too large to be entirely overcome. That said, moves like this make us optimistic that a bright green China is still possible.
[b]25,000 US Casualties in Iraq; 9% of Troops Put in Hospital or Killed
Over 2000 Iraqis Killed in Fallujah[/b]
CBS has elicited from the Pentagon the real figure of US casualties in Iraq, which is more like 25,000. That number includes the 1230 or so killed and the 9300 classified as "wounded in battle," but also 17,000 classified as non-combat sick or injured, of whom 80 percent do not return to their units in Iraq. Although some of the 17,000 are victims of disease, some unspecified number have actually been injured as a result of being in a theater of war. If you have an "accident" while guns and bombs are going off all around you, is it really an "accident"? - Informed Comment, Juan Cole, http://www.juancole.com/2004/...
Here are my favorite quotes from today’s [i]New York Times [/i]story http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... about the abysmal performance of the Iraqi army, national guard and police forces:
[i]Given the weak performance of Iraqi forces, any major withdrawal of American troops for at least a decade would invite chaos, a senior Interior Ministry official, whose name could not be used, said in an interview last week[/i].
A decade. That would be 10 years.
As a copter full of new Iraqi cannon fodder arrived at a U.S. training facility, the U.S. forces ridiculed them:
[i]"2100: Clown Car arrives," the slide said, referring to the helicopters. "2101: Be ready for negligent discharges," the entry continued, warning of accidental shots from the AK-47's carried by many of the recruits. "Recommend 'Duck & Cover,' " it concluded[/i].
The Iraqi recruits, meanwhile, are being blown up and gunned down nationwide. As far as I know, no one has compiled a list of how many of these Iraqis—including hundreds of would-be recruits—have been killed, but it must be in the thousands.
To say that it doesn’t bode well for the election, supposedly to be held on Jan. 30, is an understatement. So the United States is boosting troop levels to 150,000, according to the latest reports, but it’s not nearly enough to keep registration flowing, never mind securing the polling places. No serious election can be held. If the United States insists on supporting the power-mad Ayatollah Sistani and his crew of Iranian-backed Islamist parties (SCIRI, Al Dawa, and a host of smaller southern-Iraq militant groupings, including Hezbollah), it will only guarantee a resistance that goes on for the entire decade that the[i] Times [/i]is suggesting.
It’s time to raise the white flag, and make a deal with the resistance.
[b]The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] corporate-owned media top-dogs and hyper-rich plutocratic fat-cats are now deciding[i] who [/i]has access to the public airways (so long as they adhere to Herr Fuhrer Bush's Neo-Con, Neo-Fascist Ideology) and[i] what [/i]we can see (so long as we remain obedient sheeple who worship at the altar of Der Fuhrer & his Corporate-Take-All Minions)... And it isn't in[i] our [/i]best interest -- It's in [i]theirs[/i] ...[/b]
CBS and NBC are refusing to air an ad produced by the United Church of Christ (UCC) http://www.ucc.org/news/r1129... because it advocates religious inclusion. The ad shows bouncers turning away a variety of people at the door of a church – including ethnic minorities and two men who may be a homosexual couple. The announcer says, "Jesus doesn't turn people away. Neither do we. No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey you are welcome here." (You can watch the advertisement here http://www.stillspeaking.com/... ). In a letter to the UCC, CBS is refusing to air the advertisement because the commercial "touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations." Also, CBS found the ad "unacceptable" because "the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman." NBC similarly declared the ad "too controversial." The ad has been accepted and will air on a number of networks http://www.ucc.org/news/u1130... , including ABC Family, AMC, BET, Discovery, Fox, Hallmark, History, Nick@Nite, TBS, TNT, Travel and TV Land. Email CBS http://www.cbs.com/info/user_... and NBC mailto:Nightly@NBC.com and tell them to air the advertisement because everyone in this country – not just the Bush administration – should be able to freely express their opinions.
And be sure to check-out Joshua Micah Marshall's excellent [i]TalkingPointsMemo [/i]on this topic at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ...
Also please refer to a [i]must-read [/i]"Corporate Power: Anti-Capitalistic Control of the Internet" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ...
"Today is World AIDS Day, a time when we are called to remember the 20 million people around the world who have died from HIV/AIDS, dedicate ourselves to reaching out and caring for the 39.4 million currently living with the virus, and renew our commitment to preventing the further spread of this modern-day plague." - 'Not Aware' Is Not The Answer, http://www.americanprogress.o...
Inequality for women fuels the spread of HIV and AIDS. That's why the theme for World AIDS Day 2004 is "Women, Girls, HIV and AIDS."
The United States was slow to join this movement, but under President Bush had appeared to be increasing its response and funding. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current administration's embrace of the global fight against HIV/AIDS is more politics than compassion.
While the United States' ABC (abstinence, being faithful, condoms) approach to HIV prevention might sound good, it means nothing to women in poor countries who haven't got the bargaining power to make it work. Writer Traci Hukill says it will take policy changes in a broad range of areas for the United States to actually reduce global AIDS numbers.
Under pressure from the Bush Administration, House Republicans celebrated World AIDS Day a week early. How? By cutting funding for the internationally-supported Global Fund to Fight AIDS http://www.theglobalfund.org/... by $200 million in the recently passed omnibus spending bill.
