Friday, June 04, 2004
THE FIRST CASUALTY IN THIS PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IS THE TRUTH
Bush, Kerry political ads can't handle the truth
USATODAY.com - Voters in the other so-called battleground states, where the election is likely to be decided, aren't as lucky. The two campaigns, armed with record funds, are bombarding voters with attacks on the rival candidate that are filled with exaggerations, omissions and misleading statements peddled as "facts."
While deceptive ads are hardly new to politics, what makes this year different is how early the barrage has begun and how often the commercials are running. And truth is the principal victim: One non-partisan study has found that most viewers believe the ads.
Political consultants may be convinced that campaigns that play loose with the facts win elections, but the country loses. Voters are deprived of a chance to weigh the real differences between candidates. And polls show that mudslinging campaigns persuade many to stay home rather than vote.
How each side has distorted facts:
Bush. His ads claim Kerry would raise taxes by at least $900 billion in his first 100 days, wants to repeal the anti-terrorist USA Patriot Act and has repeatedly voted against much-needed defense programs.
The facts: Kerry has no such tax plan. He has called for greater judicial supervision of investigations conducted under the Patriot Act, not the law's repeal. And the defense spending shifts Kerry backed had been sought by Vice President Cheney when he was Defense secretary under Bush's father.
Kerry. His ads charge that 3 million jobs have been lost during the Bush presidency and accuse Bush of saying that "sending jobs overseas makes sense." By contrast, the ads claim Kerry "cast a decisive vote that created 20 million new jobs" a decade ago.
The facts: At its worst, the drop in employment from 2001 through mid-2003 was 2.7 million. Recent gains put the net loss at 1.6 million through April. A White House economist, not Bush, said outsourcing jobs overseas lowers consumer prices; he did not say domestic job losses were a good thing. And Kerry's "decisive" vote was for a 1993 deficit-reduction bill, backed by nearly every Democrat, that certainly wasn't the sole cause of the economic boom that followed.
The claims in the ads are being closely monitored by news organizations and independent watchdogs such as Fact check.org, run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
The center's survey of 18 battleground states found that the ads are having their intended effect: The public is buying the false claims. Majorities believed that Bush "favors sending American jobs overseas," Kerry "voted for higher taxes 350 times" and 3 million jobs have been lost during Bush's presidency. A plurality agreed that "John Kerry wants to raise gasoline taxes by 50 cents a gallon," parroting the Bush campaign's recycling of a 10-year-old quote that Kerry has long since repudiated.
Bush and Kerry have sharply differing views on many issues, from taxes and trade to health care and the environment. Highlighting them honestly would allow voters to make informed choices. Stretching the truth only gives voters another reason to stay home on Election Day.Thursday, June 03, 2004
SO WHAT THE HELL IS IT THAT YOU DO, EXACTLY?
Rumsfeld Says Unaware of Any Chalabi-Iran Tie
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday he did not know if Iraqi leader Ahmad Chalabi told Iran that Washington had broken Tehran's secret communications code.
Rumsfeld also said he was unaware whether the United States was investigating the matter or if any Defense Department officials had been questioned about who might have told Chalabi that the code was broken.
"I just don't know," Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him to Singapore for an Asia security conference.
Officials in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Chalabi was alleged to have told Iran that the United States had broken secret communication codes used by Tehran's spy service.
The FBI has begun administering polygraph examinations on a small number of Pentagon employees who had access to the information that was compromised, The New York Times reported Thursday.
"The press is reporting that there is an investigation going on. I do not have personal knowledge of that. I have asked somebody and it may very well be the case. And normally when that's the case, you let those things run their course ... law enforcement's law enforcement," Rumsfeld said.
He added, however, that any investigation would be a good idea.
"How could I even begin to answer something like that?," he told reporters when asked if he knew whether Chalabi, a former ally of the Bush administration, had passed on such information.
The allegation was that Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's ministry of intelligence and security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.
The New York Times reported the specifics about the accusation Wednesday, having earlier withheld details at the request of the government.
The Bush administration last month cut off financial aid to Chalabi's organization, the Iraqi National Congress, and American and Iraqi security forces raided his Baghdad headquarters.
Chalabi and his aides have said he knew of no secret information related to Iran and therefore could not have communicated any intelligence to Tehran.
It could not be learned exactly how the United States broke the code, the Times said, but added that intelligence sources said the United States had previously broken into embassies of foreign governments, including those of Iran, to steal codes and other information.Thursday, June 03, 2004
DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YA, GEORGE
Tenet Resigns as Head of CIA, Bush Says
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA Director George Tenet has resigned for personal reasons, President Bush said on Thursday.
"I will miss him," Bush told reporters after accepting Tenet's resignation in a White House meeting.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN ATTORNEY. IF YOU CANNOT AFFORD AN ATTORNEY...
Bush Consults Lawyer in CIA Leak Case
By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) has consulted an outside lawyer in case he needs to retain him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA (news - web sites) operative last year, the White House said Wednesday.
There was no indication that Bush is a target of the leak investigation, but the president has decided that in the event he needs an attorney's advice, "he would retain him," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.
The lawyer is Jim Sharp, Buchan said, confirming a report by CBS News.
"The president has said that everyone should cooperate in this matter and that would include himself," the spokeswoman said.
She deflected questions about whether Bush had been asked to appear before a grand jury in the case.
A federal grand jury in Washington is investigating who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the news media. Plame was first identified by syndicated columnist and TV commentator Robert Novak in a column last July. Novak said his information came from administration sources.
Wilson has said he believes his wife's name was leaked because of his criticism of Bush administration claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger, which Wilson investigated for the CIA and found to be untrue.
Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime. The grand jury has heard from witnesses and combed through thousands of pages of documents turned over by the White House, but returned no indictments.
The probe is being handled by Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, appointed after Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped aside from case because of his political ties to the White House.
Absent a breakthrough from the documents or a cooperating witness, prosecutors may be forced to try to identify the leaker through Novak or other reporters. However, journalists pressed by the prosecution could assert a First Amendment privilege to protect their sources.
Wilson has suggested in a book that the leaker was Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. But Wilson's book, "The Politics of Truth," give no conclusive evidence for the claim.
The White House denies the claim and accuses Wilson of seeking to bolster the campaign of Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites), for whom he has acted as a foreign policy adviser.
Wilson also said it's possible the leak came from Elliott Abrams, a figure in the Reagan administration Iran-Contra affair and now a member of Bush's National Security Council. And Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, may have circulated information about Wilson and Plame "in administration and neoconservative circles" even if Rove was not himself the leaker, Wilson writes.
Another possibility is that two lower-level officials in Cheney's office — John Hannah or David Wurmser — leaked Plame's identity at the behest of higher-ups "to keep their fingerprints off the crime," Wilson speculates.Thursday, June 03, 2004
IT'S NOT REALLY THE DRAFT - YOU JUST HAVE TO STAY PAST YOUR EXPIRATION DATE
U.S. Army to Prevent Troops' Egress
Army Expands 'Stop-Loss' Program for Soldiers Deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan
AP- Thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will be required to stay if their units are ordered to Iraq or Afghanistan.
The announcement Wednesday, an expansion of a program called "stop-loss," affects units that are 90 days or less from deploying, said Lt. Gen. Frank L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel.
Commanders can make exceptions for soldiers with special circumstances. Otherwise, soldiers won't be able to leave the service or transfer from their units until they return to their home bases after their deployments end.
The Army is struggling to find fresh units to continue the occupation of Iraq. Almost every combat unit has faced or will face duty there or in Afghanistan, and increased violence has forced the deployment of an additional 20,000 troops to the Iraq region, straining units even further.
The move allows the Army to keep units together as they deploy, Hagenbeck said. Units with new recruits or recently transferred soldiers would not perform as well because the troops would not have had time to work together.
"The rationale is to have cohesive, trained units going to war together," Hagenbeck said.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, every Army unit ordered to Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and nearby countries has faced a similar rule, although it has been applied in a piecemeal fashion. Army officials portrayed Wednesday's announcement as an administrative change that would serve as a catchall for every unit that deploys to those combat areas in the future.
Initially, the expanded order will affect several units about to go to Iraq: most of the 2nd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, from Fort Drum, N.Y.; the 265th Infantry Brigade of the Louisiana National Guard; the 116th Armored Brigade of the Idaho National Guard; the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Tennessee National Guard, and the 42nd Infantry Division's headquarters staff, from the New York National Guard.
The 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, a South Korea-based unit, is expected to deploy later this summer and will be subject to the expanded stop-loss program as well, officials said.
There has been criticism of the program as contrary to the concept of an all-volunteer military force. Soldiers planning to retire and get on with their lives now face more months away from their families and homes.
In an opinion piece in Wednesday's New York Times, Andrew Exum, a former Army captain who served under Hagenbeck in the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, called the treatment "shameful."
"Many, if not most, of the soldiers in this latest Iraq-bound wave are already veterans of several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan," he wrote. "They have honorably completed their active duty obligations. But like draftees, they have been conscripted to meet the additional needs in Iraq."
Hagenbeck said the stop-loss move is necessary only because the Army is also undergoing a major reorganization that requires some units to be taken off-line while they are restructured.
Hagenbeck had no numbers on how many soldiers would be affected. The stop-loss expansion is indefinite, officials said.
Typical turnover requires an average division to replace about a quarter of its strength -- perhaps 4,000 soldiers -- over an 18-month period, an Army spokeswoman said.Wednesday, June 02, 2004
BURN, BABY, BURN - FUCK GRANDMA MILLIE
Enron Traders Caught On Tape
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released two Enron memos describing company plans to inflate energy prices during California's energy crisis of 2000. The practices were considered so outrageous, that an attorney with the California Public Utilities Commission dubbed them a "smoking gun memo."
Enron memo, Dec. 6, 2000 .pdf file
Enron memo, Dec. 8, 2000 .pdf file
ENRON'S INTERNAL MEMOS
(CBS) When a forest fire shut down a major transmission line into California, cutting power supplies and raising prices, Enron energy traders celebrated, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports.
"Burn, baby, burn. That's a beautiful thing," a trader sang about the massive fire.
Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard – on audiotapes obtained by CBS News – gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis.
"He just f---s California," says one Enron employee. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million."
"Will you rephrase that?" asks a second employee.
"OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," replies the first.
The tapes, from Enron's West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS reported years ago: that in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down.
"If you took down the steamer, how long would it take to get it back up?" an Enron worker is heard saying.
"Oh, it's not something you want to just be turning on and off every hour. Let's put it that way," another says.
"Well, why don't you just go ahead and shut her down."
Officials with the Snohomish Public Utility District near Seattle received the tapes from the Justice Department.
"This is the evidence we've all been waiting for. This proves they manipulated the market," said Eric Christensen, a spokesman for the utility.
That utility, like many others, is trying to get its money back from Enron.
"They're f------g taking all the money back from you guys?" complains an Enron employee on the tapes. "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"
"Yeah, grandma Millie, man"
"Yeah, now she wants her f------g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a------ for f------g $250 a megawatt hour."
And the tapes appear to link top Enron officials Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling to schemes that fueled the crisis.
"Government Affairs has to prove how valuable it is to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling," says one trader.
"Ok."
"Do you know when you started over-scheduling load and making buckets of money on that?
Before the 2000 election, Enron employees pondered the possibilities of a Bush win.
"It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy," says one Enron worker.
That didn't happen, but they were sure President Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices.
"When this election comes Bush will f------g whack this s--t, man. He won't play this price-cap b------t."
Crude, but true.
"We will not take any action that makes California's problems worse and that's why I oppose price caps," said Mr. Bush on May 29, 2001.
Both the Justice Department and Enron tried to prevent the release of these tapes. Enron's lawyers argued they merely prove "that people at Enron sometimes talked like Barnacle Bill the Sailor."
During California's rolling blackouts, when streets were lit only by head lights and families were trapped in elevators, Enron Energy traders laughed, reports CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales.
One trader is heard on tapes obtained by CBS News saying, "Just cut 'em off. They're so f----d. They should just bring back f-----g horses and carriages, f-----g lamps, f-----g kerosene lamps."
And when describing his reaction when a business owner complained about high energy prices, another trader is heard on tape saying, "I just looked at him. I said, 'Move.' (laughter) The guy was like horrified. I go, 'Look, don't take it the wrong way. Move. It isn't getting fixed anytime soon."
California's attempt to deregulate energy markets became a disaster for consumers when companies like Enron manipulated the West Cost power market and even shut down plants so they could drive up prices.
There was quick reaction in Washington to the Enron audiotapes first aired by CBS News last night, and the tapes have become part of the debate over the President's massive energy bill.
"People were talking about market manipulation. People were talking about schemes, people were making jokes," said U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
"While the president would like to have an energy bill, I'd like to have an energy bill that protects consumers," said Cantwell.
Consumers like Grandma Millie, mentioned in one exchange recorded between two Enron employees.
Employee 1: "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?
Employee 2: "Yeah, Grandma Millie man.
Employee 1: "Yeah, now she wants her f-----g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a—for f-----g $250 a megawatt hour."
It's clear from the tapes that Enron employees knew what they were doing was wrong, and now lawmakers are responding.
"I will offer an amendment to compel the Bush administration t oget off the dime and get back this money that has been stolen," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.
Another taped exchange between different employees regarding a possible newspaper interview goes like this:
Employee 3: "This guy from the Wall Street Journal calls me up a little bit ago…"
Employee 4: "I wouldn't do it, because first of all you'd have to tell 'em a lot of lies because if you told the truth…"
Employee 3: "I'd get in trouble."
Employee 4: "You'd get in trouble."
Eventually, the lies unraveled and traders scrambled.
"I'm just -- f--k -- I'm just trying to be an honest camper so I only go to jail once," says one employee.
Two Enron traders, from the office where the tapes were made, have admitted manipulating energy prices and pled guilty in court. Another goes on trial in October. Former Enron chief Ken Lay is the only top company official who has never been charged with any crime.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
MORAL EXTRATERRITORIALITY
Offshore morals: If you're going to do bad things, do them far away from home
Behind Abu Ghraib, an Even Darker Question
by Ted Gup
It was Dostoyevsky who said you can judge a society by its prisons. It is how Saddam was judged, and it is sadly now how many around the world will judge the U.S. But the accounts of physical abuse, sexual humiliation, and mental torture that Iraqi prisoners endured at the hands of their American captors at Abu Ghraib conceal an even darker question, one that few Americans seem willing to confront. That is the question of what may be called "moral extraterritoriality."
Just as offshore banking allows wealthy citizens and corporations to escape U.S. taxes, so too much of the nation has long dodged moral liability for the country's actions abroad by embracing a fiction that what America does overseas may be held to a lesser standard, if any standard at all. If the Abu Ghraib scandal has anything to teach us, it is that morality, like the economy, is now global. No longer can we so easily escape the consequences of our crimes and skullduggery abroad.
What is painfully clear is that Abu Ghraib prison is not an isolated case. Other accounts of degradation and abuse are surfacing from those released from Guantánamo and Afghanistan. One cannot help but ask why the nation's outrage could only be triggered by the release of photographs, why it took such an assault on the eyes to shake the nation out of its moral stupor.
Is Abu Ghraib really news? One is reminded of the film Casablanca and the feigned shock at the discovery of gambling in Rick's Café. Month after month stories have seeped out about "torture lite," about secret prisons and internment facilities beyond the ken of anyone. A reporter returning from Guantánamo complained that his handler even accompanied him to the latrine. Bivouacked on a peninsula surrounded by barbed wire, a minefield, and the sea, he was allowed to see nothing. Something was being hidden. And where was—and is—American outrage over so-called "renditions," in which the U.S. places individuals in the hands of the secret police of nations notorious for torture and human rights abuses, outliers like Pakistan, Syria, and Egypt? Is it less offensive when U.S. intelligence operatives supply the questions while others apply their ancient methods to secure the answers? Distance does not immunize us when the devil does our bidding.
That is at the heart of the Abu Ghraib scandal. It is as if a criminal suggested that it was not he who was responsible but rather the hand and digits at the far end of his arm, as if the intervening two feet afforded some moral disconnect. Geography and distance have nothing to do with moral accountability, only with the ease with which criminal acts may be kept from sight and quarantined from conscience. It is moral subterfuge to sigh that such things merely happened on our watch—the misdemeanor of inattention—as opposed to happening while we watched.
To the surviving families of 16 civilians killed in an Afghanistan raid, the CIA later passed out $1,000 checks. In Belgrade, NATO bombed the Chinese embassy, believing it was a Yugoslav supply-and-procurement center; the U.S. paid off the families of those killed in the deadly blunder. And now in Iraq, checks may soon be cut for those who endured the unspeakable. Such payments salve not their wounds but ours.
Where do such notions of moral extraterritoriality begin? One place is the leafy preserve in Virginia affectionately known as "the Farm." There, the CIA teaches courses in "picks-and-locks" (how to break and enter), "black bag jobs" (burglaries, break-ins), "flaps and seals" (how to read others' mail without detection), and a host of other skills that violate and subvert the laws of nations and would be felonies at home.
In our ham-handed crusade against terrorism, we have unwittingly abetted the enemy. In his hands the ultimate WMD is the World's Moral Decline—not a thing to which we as a nation should contribute. Evil—theirs and ours—replicates itself and spreads, threatening our own shores as well.
At the hearings of the 9-11 Commission, CIA director George Tenet was naively asked why a domestic intelligence apparatus should not be placed within the CIA. He seemed amused as he suggested that the agency's ways were not quite suited for such work at home. When the U.S. trains Americans to commit felonies abroad, to subject prisoners to sensory and sleep deprivation and water-boarding (in which a person is strapped to a board and pushed underwater to the point of almost drowning), and God knows what else (most of the Abu Ghraib photographs were deemed too repulsive and incendiary to release), we come to understand Tenet's reluctance to open an American franchise. And yet the evil finds its ways home. It insinuates itself into our society, desensitizes us to injustices at home, undermines our faith in ourselves and each other, and ultimately renders us more vulnerable to attack by creating endless new enemies.
There is a long and sordid story behind Abu Ghraib (ours, not Saddam's), one that has its roots in U.S. intelligence and the Cold War, another frenzied crusade against another devil: Communism. How many Abu Ghraibs did the U.S. help found by training tens of thousands of Central American strongmen, colonels, and contractors at the School of the Americas, where information extraction was elevated to a deadly art form?
The real sin of Abu Ghraib is that we continue to deny its context. If the U.S. is indeed in a war with terrorists, if it is fighting for its very existence, then perhaps a valid argument can be made that the gloves must now come off, that the boundaries of our humanity must be redrawn. But that would require a full and open national debate, beginning first within ourselves, then carried on between neighbors, rising to communities, and finding ultimate expression in Congress and the ballot box. But even now we still seem to have no stomach for that wider discussion. Besides, should moral extraterritoriality fail us, as it did at Abu Ghraib, we can always pin the blame on others. That's what privates are for.
---
Ted Gup is the author of The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives, and is a Guggenheim Fellow on leave from Case Western Reserve University, where he is the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism. tedgup@att.netWednesday, June 02, 2004
WOMEN IN ABU GHRAIB RAPED AND TORTURED, BUT NOBODY TALKS ABOUT THAT
by Khilafah.com Journal
Much has been made of the sexual humiliation of the men incarcerated by the Crusaders in Abu Ghraib Prison. However the abuse of the female prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and other prisons in Iraq, have gone nearly unnoticed. Although it took photographs to wake the world’s attention to the shenanigans, within the cells, it was actually a letter scribed by a woman prisoner that first exposed what was going on in the infamous prison. The contents of a note that was smuggled out of the prison were so shocking that, at first, Amal Kadham Swadi and the other Iraqi women lawyers who had been trying to gain access to the jail found them hard to believe. It claimed that US guards had been raping women detainees. Several of the women were now pregnant, it added. The women had been forced to strip naked in front of men, it said.
Swadi, one of seven female lawyers now representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to piece together a picture of systemic abuse and torture perpetrated by US guards against Iraqi women held in detention without charge. This was not only true of Abu Ghraib, she discovered, but was, as she put it, “happening all across Iraq”. In November 2003, Swadi visited a woman detainee at a US military base at al-Kharkh, a former police compound in Baghdad. “She was the only woman who would talk about her case. She was crying. She told us she had been raped,” Swadi says. “Several American soldiers had raped her. She had tried to fight them off and they had hurt her arm. She showed us the stitches. She told us, ‘We have daughters and husbands. For God's sake don't tell anyone about this.’” During Swadi’s visit to Abu Ghraib in March, one of the prisoners told her that she had been forced to undress in front of US soldiers. “The Iraqi translator turned his head in embarrassment,” she said.
The Taguba inquiry has corroborated the contents of the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor". The enquiry found the letter to be entirely in line with the activities going on within the prison. While most of the focus since the scandal broke three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their sexual humiliation in front of US women soldiers, there is now incontrovertible proof that women detainees have also been abused. Among the 1,800 digital photographs taken by US guards inside Abu Ghraib there are, according to Taguba's report, images of a US military policeman “having sex” with an Iraqi woman. Taguba discovered that guards have also videotaped and photographed naked female detainees. Bush refused to release other photographs of Iraqi women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts (although Congress were shown them) - ostensibly to prevent attacks on US soldiers in Iraq. However in reality this is merely to prevent further domestic embarrassment.
Earlier this month it emerged that an Iraqi woman in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and another coalition detention centre after being arrested last July. UK Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who investigated the case and found it to be true, said, “She was held for about six weeks without charge. During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey.”
Several women are housed in solitary confinement, within cells 2.5m long by 1.5m wide. There remain extremely troubling questions as to why these women came to be classified as “security detainees” - a term invented by the Crusaders to justify the indefinite detention of prisoners without charge or legal access, as part of the war on terror. According to Swadi, who managed to visit Abu Ghraib in late March, the allegations against the women are "absurd". "One of them is supposed to be the mistress of the former director of the Mukhabarat. In fact, she's a widow who used to own a small shop. She also worked as a taxi driver, ferrying children to and from kindergarten. If she really had a relationship with the director of the Mukhabarat, she would scarcely be running a kiosk. These are baseless charges," she adds angrily. "She is the only person who can provide for her children." The women appear to have been arrested - not because of anything they have done, but merely because of who they are married to, and their potential intelligence value. US officials have previously acknowledged detaining Iraqi women in the hope of convincing male relatives to provide information; when US soldiers raid a house and fail to find a male suspect, they will frequently take away his wife or daughter instead.
The horrific abuses that are taking place in the prisons of Iraq have come to symbolise the horrific nature of the Iraqi crusade in general. The brutality of the six military personal, that happened to get caught out, is the logical continuum of the occupation. Bush may claim that these abuses have only been committed by six sick individuals and their behaviour “does not represent the America that I know,” as he proclaimed on Arabic television. All the evidence now points to the facts that Donald Rumsfeld, authorised physical coercion and sexual humiliation in Iraqi prisons. America’s political establishment actively encouraged the abuse. Donald Rumsfeld was hand picked by Bush, who was chosen by a minority, and a Court, to be the president of the USA. Therefore the behaviour of the six is wholly representative of the American way, in this author's opinion.Tuesday, June 01, 2004
BUSHCO GOOD OIL BOYS CONSOLIDATE POWER WITH A GOVERNMENT NOD AND WINK
The "Pioneer" and "Ranger" corporate jackals are still busy at the job of raping America for profit, just as bold and brassy as you please, and the administration is letting them do exactly what they want (emphasis added):
---
Mergers Concentrate U.S. Oil Lease Control
By DAVID PACE, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A single New Mexico family and a dozen big oil companies, including one once headed by Commerce Secretary Don Evans, now [i]control one-quarter of all federal lands leased for oil and gas development in the continental United States despite a law intended to prevent such concentration,[/i] federal records show.
Since 1997, mainly as a result of mergers and acquisitions, six companies have exceeded the legal limit of 246,080 acres in lease holdings on public lands in states other than Alaska. But the Bureau of Land Management in charge of enforcing the 1920 law, has chosen to extend compliance deadlines for years.
In fact, an Associated Press computer analysis found the Interior Department agency permitted companies it knew were in violation of the law in Wyoming to continue to acquire thousands of acres of new oil and gas leases in that state. The bureau has given the companies additional [i]years[/i] to comply.
"They should not be purchasing leases," said Tom Lonnie, the bureau's assistant director for minerals, realty and resource protection. Before acquiring a lease, a company must certify that its holdings do not exceed the legal limit.
The government can cancel leases held by companies that exceed the cap. Agency officials acknowledge they have never done that nor denied a company's request for more time to comply.
Companies in violation of the state limit as a result of a merger or acquisition have 180 days to comply.
"We try to work with them instead of hitting them with a hammer," said Bob Bennett, the bureau's Wyoming state director.
When Anadarko Petroleum of Houston asked for a two-year extension to get back into compliance after a 2000 merger with Union Pacific Resources put it over the limit in Wyoming, the bureau said yes. That was the case, too, for a 2002 request by Encana Oil and Gas of Canada.
In the first 15 months of Anadarko's extension, the company acquired 70 new leases in Wyoming totaling more than 100,000 acres. A year after granting Encana the extension, the bureau allowed Encana to acquire two new leases totaling more than 2,000 acres in the state.
Anadarko relinquished 50 of its leases to meet a deadline this April 30 to get back under the acreage cap, Lonnie said. Encana has until October to comply. Four other companies that had gone over the cap in Wyoming since 1997 are now in compliance.
Bureau officials say they have to rely on companies to provide accurate accounts of their holdings because the agency's computerized records do not track transfers of lease operating rights or the ownership of divided shares of leases.
[i]The lax enforcement coincides with the Bush administration's push to open new public lands for oil and gas development.[/i] In March, bureau records showed 40 million acres of federal lands were under lease in the continental United States. That is 5.3 million more acres than when President Bush took office.
[b]Companies and individuals that dominate federal oil and gas leasing have been major financial supporters of Bush and the Republican Party. Since the 1999, the top 25 owners of federal oil and gas leases have directed 86 percent of their $8.2 million in political donations to the GOP.[/b]
Individuals and companies affiliated with the Yates family of Artesia, N.M., which is by far the biggest lease holder, have given $276,926 to GOP parties and candidates since 1999, and just $11,400 to Democrats.
Vice President Dick Cheney visited Artesia in March to raise money for a GOP congressional candidate backed by the Yates. A month earlier, he was in Albuquerque for a presidential campaign fund-raiser that took in more than $200,000.
Denver-based Tom Brown Inc. was over the acreage limit in Wyoming from 1997 to 2000, while current Commerce Secretary Evans was the company's chief executive.
As Bush's campaign chairman, Evans raised millions of dollars from the oil industry for the winning 2000 campaign. When he resigned at Tom Brown before joining the Cabinet in 2001, Evans received a retirement package worth more than $5 million.
Encana, which the government says has exceeded the acreage limit since 2002, announced plans last month to acquire Tom Brown. The merger would join two of the top three federal oil and gas lease owners.
Environmental groups contend the administration is rewarding its financial backers by ignoring the acreage law while pushing more public lands into development.
"It's clear from the data that there is no reason for the Bush administration to issue leases on America's last remaining wild public lands, other than as a favor to their most generous political patrons," said Dave Alberswerth, public lands director for the Wilderness Society.
Lonnie, the BLM's assistant director, said administration officials have left enforcement of the acreage law to bureau officials in the states. He said agency officials are following the same policies they used in the Clinton administration.
Enforcement efforts consist mainly of annual record title checks by bureau officials in each state, Lonnie said. Companies near the limit are asked to produce a record of their holdings for review. But Lonnie said no attempt is made to verify that the record is complete unless there is reason to believe something has been omitted.
Congress limited oil and gas lease ownership in 1920 amid concerns that a few companies would monopolize mineral rights on public lands by cornering leases they did not intend to exploit. But changes in the law over the years and new interpretations have allowed companies to amass far more than the current 246,080-acre limit per state.
Legislation pending in Congress would remove any producing lease from that cap.
[i]The top 25 of the more than 10,000 owners of oil and gas leases, for example, now control more than one-third of all leased acres and 37 percent of the acres in leases actually producing oil and gas,[/i] the AP analysis found.
The Yates family, through nearly three dozen companies, individuals and trusts operating out of the same building in Artesia, controls 2.7 million acres of oil and gas leases on public lands. That includes more than 1 million acres in Wyoming, more than 800,000 acres in New Mexico and more than 500,000 in Nevada.
"We pay very close attention to that acreage limitation and are in compliance with it all the time," said Randy Patterson, vice president for exploration at Yates Petroleum.
A dozen companies with Yates family members as officers show up in BLM lease owner records, all with the same address. When the General Accounting Office the investigative arm of Congress, questioned the arrangement in 1994, the bureau's chief lawyer ruled the law does not require that lease holdings of affiliated companies or individuals be counted together.
The acreage limit applies to individuals and their share of leases held by corporations in which they own more than 10 percent. When the bureau last audited individual holdings in the Yates family businesses eight years ago in Wyoming, it found no violations of the acreage cap.
[i]Large public corporations cannot take advantage of the law the way the Yates family does because their subsidiaries are considered part of the company and their combined lease holdings must be below the state acreage limit.[/i]
Both big oil companies and independent operators have another way to amass lease holdings in excess of the state limit. They can enter into agreements with other companies, approved by the government, to develop the oil or gas on several adjoining leases as a unit under fairly strict controls. In return, they get to exclude that acreage from the cap.
Tom Brown, for example, owns 378,790 acres of oil and gas leases on public lands in Colorado, but more than 260,000 acres are excluded from the cap because of such agreements. Encana owns more than 400,000 acres of leases in Colorado, but only 155,715 are counted against the acreage limit.
In all, Encana controlled more than 1 million acres of federal oil and gas leases in March; Tom Brown controlled 856,887 acres.
Other companies that have been in violation of the acreage cap in recent years, all in Wyoming, are BP Amoco, Devon Energy Corp., and Marathon Oil. The combined public land oil and gas leases of those companies in March were 645,969 acres by Devon, 446,615 by BP Amoco, and 358,611 by Marathon.
___
On the Net:
A list of the top 100 federal land lease holders is available at: http://wid.ap.org/oilgas/lease_acres.htmlTuesday, June 01, 2004
DIE-HARD BUSHCO APOLOGIST HAS PUBLIC DOUBTS ABOUT AFGHANISTAN. NO DUH, ROBERT.
U.S. is lost in Afghanistan
by Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times
The handful of valiant American warriors fighting the ''other'' war in Afghanistan is not a happy band of brothers. They are undermanned and feel neglected, lack confidence in their generals and are disgusted by Afghan political leadership. Most important, they are appalled by the immense but fruitless effort to find Osama bin Laden for purposes of U.S. politics.
This bleak picture goes unreported because journalists are rarely seen there. It was painted to me by hard U.S. fighters who are committed to the war against terrorism but have a heavy heart. They talked to me not to undermine policy but to reveal problems that should and can be corrected.
Afghanistan constitutes George W. Bush's clearest victory since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The Taliban regime has been overthrown, eliminating al-Qaida's most important base. But the overlooked war continues with no end in sight. Narcotics trafficking is at an all-time high. If U.S. forces were to leave, the Taliban -- or something like it -- would regain power. The United States is lost in Afghanistan, bound to this wild country and unable to leave.
The situation in Afghanistan, as laid out to me, looks nothing like a country alleged to be progressing toward representative democracy under American tutelage. Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-sponsored Afghan president, is regarded by the U.S. troops as hopelessly corrupt and kept in power by U.S. force of arms.
Those arms are not what they seem. The basic U.S. strength in Afghanistan is 17,000 troops of ''straight-legged'' infantry -- conventional forces ill-prepared to handle irregulars. The new unit assigned to Afghanistan is the 25th Infantry Division, which has been stationed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and has not seen combat since the Vietnam War.
More important than this conventional infantry division are two commando units known as Black SOF (Special Operations Forces) and White SOF. Black SOF, by far the more numerous of the two, is assigned to capture Osama bin Laden. Nothing would do more to boost President Bush's sagging popularity than getting the designer of the 9/11 attacks.
The problem is that nobody I have talked to in the military thinks his capture is likely or may even be possible. The American fighting men think ''UBL'' (as he is called) is hiding in Pakistan, impossible to find. Most exasperating to the men in the field is the manpower and effort expended on what they consider to be a helpless cause.
It is White SOF that is given the task of confronting armed narco-terrorists. There are hardly more than 100 American soldiers assigned to this duty, many of them bearded and dressed as Afghans. They are augmented by British and New Zealand special forces, CIA paramilitaries and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency operatives.
They are also hamstrung by senior officers who may be expert in conventional warfare but are at a loss to understand American troops who are far closer in style to Lawrence of Arabia than George Patton. The special operations soldiers and junior officers have a low opinion of Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the U.S. military commander. On paper, he looks good: West Pointer, Ranger, veteran of the Grenada and Panama invasions. But they grumble that Barno does not have a clue.
It is a strange war, with the JAGs -- Judge Advocate General military lawyers -- given a hand in military decisions. My sources tell of commanders, despite credible intelligence of enemy forces, calling off air strikes on the advice of JAGs. This is the kind of restraint the U.S. military has experienced starting with the Korean War, when as a noncombat Army officer, I knew our forces had their hands tied behind their backs.
I am told that one discouraged and now discharged Special Forces officer, who always has voted Republican and admires Bush, thought about contacting a former military colleague now advising John Kerry. He decided that would accomplish nothing and would inject him in politics. Being lost in Afghanistan transcends politics and is a long-term American burden.Monday, May 31, 2004
TOP TEN REASONS WHY WE SHOULD BE IN IRAQ
"Why should we be in Iraq"?
10. OIL
9. They have OIL
8. There's OIL in them thar Hills
7. We want their OIL
6. We Need their OIL
5. Halliburton needs new OIL Projects
4. We Gots 2 OILMEN in the White House
3. Can anyone say "OIL"
2. Pump up the Price of OIL
And....the #1 reason we are still in Iraq *drumroll*
1. OUR OIL is buried under THEIR SandMonday, May 31, 2004
WELCOME TO 1984 - WAR IS PEACE, DAY IS NIGHT, BLACK IS WHITE, AND WRONG IS RIGHT
Never mind the truth
Bush and Blair appear to think that making declarations on Iraq is enough to change the realities on the ground
Gary Younge, The Guardian UK
Seeing the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, testify before the 9/11 commission on CNN in April was a challenge in eye-ear coordination. While she eloquently spelled out the Bush administration's strategy for the war on terror, the tickertape of rolling news spewed out grim news from the front across the bottom of the screen. Your ears took in the official narrative: "We are in control and shaping a positive future for the Middle East." Your eyes traced the brutal reality: "This is a bloody mess and innocents are dying."
At the very moment when Rice said that the invasion had removed a source "of violence and fear and instability in the world's most dangerous region", the tape read: "Iraq's interim interior minister Nuril Al-Badran announces his resignation; interior ministry is in charge of police forces."
At the point when she told the commission that invading Iraq was one of "the only choices that can ensure the safety of our nation for decades to come", the wire services reported: "Iraqis say air strike killed dozens gathered for prayers."
Politics has, to an extent, always been about the triumph of symbols over substance and assertion over actuality. But in the case of Iraq this trend seems to have reached its apogee, as though statements by themselves can fashion reality by the force of their own will and judgment. Declaration and proclamation have become everything. The question of whether they bear any relation to the world we actually live in seems like an unpleasant and occasionally embarrassing intrusion. The motto of the day both in Downing Street and the White House seems to be: "To say it is so is to make it so." These people are rewriting history before the ink on the first draft is even dry.
The most obvious example was President George Bush's speech to the nation last week, as he struggled to define the mission in Iraq. "On June 30 the occupation will end and Iraqis will govern their own affairs," he said. To understand what will happen at the end of the month it would make more sense to turn the sentence inside out so that it says the opposite: "On June 30 the occupation will continue and Iraqis will not govern their own affairs."
To the charge that this is leftwing axe-grinding, look no further than the lead editorial in the Economist, which supported the war. "To those who complain that in this case the sovereignty of the Iraqi government is going to be pretty bogus, the answer of Messrs Bush and Blair ought to be the honest one. Of course it is. In Iraq's present context, sovereignty is just a word on paper, and not even the most important one."
Only yesterday the Iraqi governing council members complained of "massive pressure" to endorse Adnan Pachachi, America's choice for president of the interim government, even though most of them favoured another candidate, more critical of the US. The US, which has the final say in the matter, threatened not to recognise the council's choice. Given that the US chose the members of the council, one can only imagine how they will get on with a truly independent, democratically accountable group of representatives.
Sadly, we are not about to find out. What will in fact happen on June 30 is that a former CIA operative, Iyad Allawi, who was picked by the US with little involvement from the United Nations, will head a puppet regime. This "sovereign" country will have 138,000 US troops on its soil, not to mention soldiers from Britain and elsewhere, and its "sovereign" leader will have no control over what they do. "US forces remain under US command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves," says Colin Powell.
Tony Blair for once disagreed. "If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Fallujah in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government and the final political control remains with the Iraqi government," he said. But by the next day he was back in his box. "We are both absolutely agreed that there should be full sovereignty transferred to the Iraqi people, and the multinational force should remain under American command," he told the Commons.
In so doing he revealed two of the golden rules in this new era of politics by pronouncement. First, so long as you say things boldly and confidently, they do not have to make any sense. Second, whatever announcement you make last negates all announcements you've made before.
Indeed, Blair, of whom Doris Lessing, the novelist, once said: "He believes in magic. That if you say a thing, it is true," is the high priest of this dark art. Here are a few corkers he pulled out of the hat in the past two years.
"There is no doubt at all that the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein poses a severe threat, not just to the region but to the wider world," he said in April 2002. Just four months before he bombed Iraq he said: "Nobody in the British government is in favour of military action against Iraq." And then there is my favourite, from this April. "We have been involving the UN throughout," by which we can only presume he means bugging the offices of the secretary general.
The least kind, and yet most obvious, explanation for why these statements have no resemblance to the truth would be that Blair keeps lying. A more generous interpretation would be that he is a hopelessly wishful thinker.
In fact, wishful thinking has been the entire intellectual and political thrust of the "liberal hawks" - the lefties who backed the war. They wished that the UN would pass a second resolution, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, that the Iraqi people would come out and greet western soldiers, that the Bush administration had noble intentions and that Blair could exert influence over the US in the Middle East. Some of us wished that they would get real.
For one of the most pernicious baseless assertions in recent times is the notion that there is any such thing as a "liberal hawk". There isn't. People are not liberal just because they say so. For the term to have any meaning at all they have to share some common ground on which the bombing of Iraq has no place. There was no progressive case for bypassing the will of the UN and international law and bombing a country that posed no immediate threat to any other. There was a liberal dilemma about how you confront vicious dictators. But in the case of Iraq it no more led to war than the liberal dilemma over how to solve crime leads to capital punishment.
Having seen their wish-list shredded by the neoconservatives in the Pentagon and the White House, some now wring their hands and wonder where it all went wrong, while others become ever more bullish and bizarre in defence of a stance long since discredited.
Liberals never provided a case for this war. There was "liberal" cover for it. A fact for which conservatives are delighted and those coopted by them should be ashamed.Monday, May 31, 2004
THEMEPARK BLUES
Welcome To Bushworld
by Maureen Dowd, New York Times
WASHINGTON -- It's their reality. We just live and die in it.
In Bushworld, our troops go to war and get killed, but you never see the bodies coming home.
In Bushworld, flag-draped remains of the fallen are important to revere and show the nation, but only in political ads hawking the president's leadership against terror.
In Bushworld, we can create an exciting Iraqi democracy as long as it doesn't control its own military, pass any laws or have any power.
In Bushworld, we can win over Fallujah by bulldozing it.
In Bushworld, it was worth going to war so Iraqis could express their feelings ("Down With America!") without having their tongues cut out, although we cannot yet allow them to express intemperate feelings in newspapers ("Down With America!") without shutting them down.
In Bushworld, it's fine to take $700 million that Congress provided for the war in Afghanistan and 9-11 recovery and divert it to the war in Iraq that you are insisting you are not planning.
In Bushworld, you don't consult your father, the expert in being president during a war with Iraq, but you do talk to your Higher Father, who can't talk back to warn you to get an exit strategy or chide you for using Him for political purposes.
In Bushworld, it's OK to run for re-election as the avenger of 9-11, even as you make secret deals with the Arab kingdom where most of the 9-11 hijackers came from.
In Bushworld, you get to strut around like a tough military guy and paint your rival as a chicken hawk, even though he's the one who won medals in combat and was praised by his superior officers for fulfilling all his obligations.
In Bushworld, it makes sense to press for transparency in Mr. and Mrs. Rival while cultivating your own opacity.
In Bushworld, you can reign as the antiterror president even after hearing an intelligence report about al-Qaida's plans to attack America and then stepping outside to clear brush.
In Bushworld, those who dissemble about the troops and money it will take to get Iraq on its feet are patriots, while those who are honest are patronizingly marginalized.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq, even as they increasingly merge the two in America.
In Bushworld, you can claim to be the environmental president on Earth Day while being the industry president every other day.
In Bushworld, you brag about how well Afghanistan is going, even though soldiers like Pat Tillman are still dying and the Taliban are running freely around the border areas, hiding Osama and delaying elections.
In Bushworld, imperfect intelligence is good enough to knock over Iraq. But even better evidence that North Korea is building the weapons that Saddam could only dream about is hidden away.
In Bushworld, the CIA says it can't find out whether there are WMD in Iraq unless we invade on the grounds that there are WMD.
In Bushworld, there's no irony that so many who did so much to avoid the Vietnam draft have now strained the military so much that lawmakers are talking about bringing back the draft.
In Bushworld, we're making progress in the war on terror by fighting a war that creates terrorists.
In Bushworld, you don't need to bother asking your vice president and top Defense Department officials whether you should go to war in Iraq, because they've already maneuvered you into going to war.
In Bushworld, it's perfectly natural for the president and vice president to appear before the 9-11 commission like the Olsen twins.
In Bushworld, you expound on remaking the Middle East and spreading pro-American sentiments even as you expand anti-American sentiments by ineptly occupying Iraq and unstintingly backing Ariel Sharon on West Bank settlements.
In Bushworld, we went to war to give Iraq a democratic process, yet we disdain the democratic process that causes allies to pull out troops.
In Bushworld, you pride yourself on the fact that your administration does not leak to the press, while you flood the best-known journalist in Washington with inside information.
In Bushworld, you list Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack as recommended reading on your campaign Web site, even though it makes you seem divorced from reality. That is, unless you live in Bushworld.Sunday, May 30, 2004
IT REALLY WAS PERSONAL
Bush Keeps Saddam Gun at White House
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A handgun that Saddam Hussein was clutching when U.S. forces captured him in a hole in Iraq last December is now kept by President Bush at the White House, a spokesman confirmed on Sunday.
Time magazine, which first disclosed the gun's location, said military officials had it mounted after it was seized from Saddam near his hometown of Tikrit last year, and soldiers involved in the capture gave it to Bush.
The magazine quoted a visitor who had been shown the gun, which is kept in a small study off the Oval Office where Bush displays memorabilia. It is the same room where former President Bill Clinton had some of his encounters with former intern Monica Lewinsky.
Bush shows Saddam's gun to select visitors, telling them it is unloaded, both now and when Saddam was captured, Time reported.
"He really liked showing it off," Time quoted a visitor as saying. "He was really proud of it."
White House spokesman Jim Morrell said, "The president was proud of the performance and bravery of our armed forces and was honored to receive it on behalf of the troops involved in the operation."
--------
Unloaded, huh. Too bad.