Database of administration Iraq statements

Want to know who said what about Iraq? Rep. Henry Waxman has compiled a database of 237 misleading statements the administration made about Iraq and why we needed to attack there. In addition to the quote, he provide a source reference and an explaination of why the statement is misleading. He has also included a database so you can input key words or phrases to look for a specific quote or all quotes on a certain subject. It's a very handy research tool.

Define 'worse'

'Appeasement'

Kevin Hayden has posted an excellent examination of why the conservatives claims that the Spanish people in their recent electoral choices were somehow appeasing Osama bin Laden..

If conservatives want to complain about what they perceive as the Spanish public's appeasement of terrorism, they should also acknowledge out own appeasement. This is an issue I've addressed before, but it's something I think a lot more people need to be made aware of.

Part of what got Osama bin Laden started on his campaign of terror was his anger at the US's decision to station troops in Saudi Arabia, and removal of those troops has been one of his primary goals ever since. In April 2003, not long after Saddam was removed from power, the US DID remove it's troops from Saudi Arabia - giving Osama a huge victory in the eyes of his followers. Worse, Paul Wolfowitz, speaking with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine (as reported in the DOD's OWN transcription of the interview) acknowledged that being able to remove those troops was one of the reasons why we wanted to remove Saddam in the first place:

Q: Was that [Being able to remove the soldiers from Saudi Arabia] one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into --

Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but [...] there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. [...] The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.

In addition, Osama had said that he wanted to see Saddam removed from power (though he would have preferred that the Iraqi people do the removing). By invading Iraq, we have also given him that - and the hope that a democratic Iraq can be turned into another Islamic-fundamentalist nation. And while it may never have been a stated goal of his, I'm sure Osama doesn't mind that we've handed him an excellent recruiting tool through our invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Osama bin Laden wanted the American troops gone from Saudi Arabia. He wanted Saddam out of power. His al Qaeda organization launched an attack against America on September 11th, and as a direct result, we invaded Iraq, removed Saddam from power and pulled out troops from Saudi Arabia. Who says terrorism doesn't work?

Should VeriSign retain the .com and .net registries?

A lot of people don't think so, and with good reason. Below is a copy of a petition outlining the reasons why. Please read though it, and if you agree, sign it yourself. Thanks!

To: ICANN
     Department of Commerce
     Senate Commerce Committee
     House Commerce Committee

We, the undersigned, who have an interest in the Internet remaining free of unregulated profiteering, petition you to recall the .com and .net registry from VeriSign for the following reasons:

1) VeriSign has unfairly exploited its position as the monopoly provider of .com and .net registry services, as evidenced by the company's attempt to install profit-making services which provide questionable benefits to end-users but huge profits to VeriSign.

Documented abuses:

• VeriSign's implementation of "SiteFinder" - a web address resolution service that accomplishes the following:
  
  • Hijacks agreed-upon domain name resolution standards by directing non-existent Internet addresses to a VeriSign paid advertising page
  
  
  
  • Illustrates the potential for compromised network security and the very real risk of a "single point of failure" for the Internet when VeriSign chooses to circumvent Internet standards
  
  
  
  • Effectively delivers a massive "captive audience" to VeriSign
  
  
• VeriSign's proposed Wait-Listing Service (WLS) -- a domain name back-ordering service that accomplishes the following:
  • Eliminates competition for domain name back-ordering when a robust market has already emerged that offers consumers a number of business models
  
  
  
  • Replaces the current pay-for-performance model with one that charges steep annual fees and offers no assurance of success
  
  
  
  • Charges back-order prices that are four times higher than regulated domain name prices
  
  
  
  • Reduces customer choice by giving well-heeled speculators an advantage in obtaining deleted domain names

2) To support ICANN (an internationally organized, non-profit organization that has responsibility for accrediting domain name registrars) in its defense of the lawsuit filed against it by VeriSign (a multi-billion dollar corporation) - a lawsuit which sues ICANN for operating well within its established boundaries, as outlined in the 1999 Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN.

3) To prevent any corporation that is entirely motivated by profit from assuming "unregulated" control on the Internet.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Click Here if you would like to sign the petition.

Posted by thorswitch at 04:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

No aid for druggies - murderers and rapists are ok, though...

Back in 1998, President Clinton signed a bill that has been controversial pretty much from the start. It was intended to dissuade students from using drugs by preventing them from getting financial aid if they were convicted on drug charges, but the way it's been administered has resulted in many people who had - as President Bush described his own possible drug use - "youthful indiscretions" being unable to get any kind of financial aid, and unable to attend college. Even the author of the law - Rep Mark Souder [R-IN] contends that the way it's being applied has nothing to do with how it was intended to be used - and he has said that he believes there are "lawsuits to be had here" over the way it's been handled.

The apparent logic at the root of the bill is the idea that if tax payers are paying for someone's education, they should be out doing drugs. The problem is that the law only applies to drug offenses. Individuals who have been convicted of other crimes, including murder, rape, armed robbery or any number of other severe offenses, have no restrictions place on their ability to get financial aid.

After serving almost 10 years in prison for attempted murder, Jason Bell went straight to college on federal grants and loans. Now a senior at San Francisco State University, he helps other ex-convicts enroll in the university but often has the hardest time assisting drug offenders whose crimes were minor, certainly a lot less serious than his.

"It's a form of double jeopardy," said Mr. Bell, 32. "They do the time, but then there are still roadblocks when they finish. I don't believe people should be punished twice."

In other words, someone convicted on one occasion for having a small amount of marijuana in their possession is ineligible to receive financial aid - in some cases only for a year (but if you can't afford to pay for that first year of school, you can't ever make it to your second year when your eligibility would be restored) - but someone who was convicted of murder and released could get aid with no problem. There's just something wrong about that.

There are, apparently, efforts underway to try and "fix" the law, but it's not clear if they'll really be much better than the current system.

Under President Bush's language, anyone who violated drug laws before going to college could get financial aid, regardless of the offense. That would be in keeping with Mr. Bush's philosophy, as laid out in his State of the Union address, that "when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life."

But those already in college when they commit a drug offense, however small, would still be stripped of aid, for at least a year. The idea, supporters say, is to continue trying to dissuade students from using drugs, especially since they are being educated with taxpayer money.

The problem, detractors say, is that the law would still impose stiffer penalties on drug use than on any other crime.

It's not a bad idea to try and dissuade people from committing criminal offenses. But using a law with such a blatant double standard - creating an extra punishment for drug users that doesn't exist for other criminals - doesn't serve society well. If this is being done to prevent crime, then it should target criminals in general, regardless of what kind of crime they committed.

More importantly, though, is that punishing criminals of any kind by making it harder to get an education is likely to be counterproductive. Education can be a key factor in turning someone who has committed crimes in their past into contributing members of society, and by helping people develop more marketable skills - making them more employable - education can also help reduce the chance that an individual will live in poverty. That right there can do a lot to reduce crime.

Rather than making superficial changes that don't really address the problems the law contains, the law should be scrapped as a whole. Find other ways to try and deter crime, without taking away what - for many people - is the best hope they've got of turning their lives around.

John Kerry's ads

I stopped by John Kerry's website today to look at some of the ads he's got out, and for the most part I really like them.

One ad, titled "Keep Our Word" should be very effective, but only if the person watching it is actually watching. If they've tuned out the visuals at all (by reading or if they're in a different room, for example), the ad could misfire badly because it's based on taking audio quotes from President Bush and then countering his promises with written statistics demonstrating how he's failed to live up to word on a variety of issues. The information presented is great, but I think it would be stronger if the countering statistics were both printed on the screen and spoken aloud.

I particularly like how on some of the ads, when it gets to the point where Kerry himself has to appear and say that he approves of the ad, he doesn't just recite the "I'm John Kerry and I approve of this ad" line. He carries the thought a bit further, and says something like "I'm John Kerry and I approve of this ad because we need to do what's right for America's economy" or something similar that's appropriate for the theme of the ad. It makes the line a lot less awkward sounding, and gives the ad almost a more personal feel.

I imagine by the time the election actually gets here, we're all going to be terribly sick of campaign ads - they're starting so early - but they do seem to have an impact, so if they're going to be out there, I'm glad to see that they look like they might at least have some impact for undecided voters.

With heavy heart....

I want to extend my deepest sympathies to all those in Spain who are hurting so much right now.

Defending Equality

I've set up a page at the Human Rights Campaign website to help in the fight against the proposed Constitutional Amendment that would redefine marriage for the entire nation.

Even if you don't personally support marriage rights for gays, consider the precedent that would be set by this amendment. It would be the only amendment to the Constitution that existed solely to RESTRICT rights rather than expand them. That in and of itself is danger - and could make it easier for others to get their own bigotries embedded into the Constitution.

If you're interested in helping, please visit my page at: http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/actioncenter/advocacy/kriselda-200006 and urge Congress not to insert discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people into the U.S. Constitution. This issue is very important to me and it's critical that as many people as possible speak up.

Please feel free to pass this message along to any of your friends who would like to support gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality.

'Statistical Malpractice' from the CDC on latest obesity scare

I generally don't post entire articles - and I rarely use material from FOX News. This article, though, I couldn't pass up, as it deals with a topic near and dear to my relatively healthy heart.

Recently, the CDC issued a new proclamation saying that obesity-related deaths are approaching 400,000 per year. Unfortunately, they don't make clear what "obesity-related" deaths are. In my experience, it basically, means how many fat people died and had conditions that might be related to their obesity - without always taking into account of those conditions were directly related to the death. From what I can tell, pretty much any time a fat person dies and it wasn't an accident or murder, it is considered an "obesity-related" death.

As regular readers already know, the whole anti-fat attitude of this nation is something that infuriates me no end, as does the way that fat people are demonized in this country. Reports such as the CDC's announcement do nothing to help. In fact, they can cause even more problems for the obese, since many employers view fat people not as individuals who have the potential to do a good job and be a valuable asset to a company, but rather as people who will only manage to drain their health insurance budgets dry and rack up sick-days.

Sadly, it's all too easy to perpetuate bigotry - both in attitude and in action - against fat people because society blames every fat person for their condition, even though overeating is not the sole cause, and not ever fat person you meet eats to excess. There are medical conditions that can cause obesity - there have been numerous discoveries in the last few years showing that factors as disparate as viruses to hormonal malfunctions can be at the root - and other issues such as side effects from various medications - including medications for disorders that often plague fat people, such as depression.

Yes, some people are big because they just plain eat too much - but if you don't know the person, you don't know the cause, and to assume the worst about them is no better than making assumptions about individuals belonging to any other "group."

So I was quite relieved, today, to find this article, which explains why the CDC's new numbers are misleading - even if it does come from a rather surprising source.

Obesity Obsession

Friday, March 12, 2004

By Steven Milloy

“Obesity is catching up to tobacco as the leading cause of death in America,” proclaimed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Julie Gerberding this week. “Americans need to understand that overweight and obesity are literally killing us,” added Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.

While it’s not disputed that severe obesity may shorten life, the real killer in this case seems to be the CDC’s statistical malpractice.

The excuse for the desperate health warning is a study in the March 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association in which the CDC claims that poor diet and physical inactivity caused 400,000 deaths in 2000. That estimate supposedly represents a 33 percent increase from the 1990 estimate and approaches the 435,000 deaths in 2000 supposedly attributable to smoking.

Now it’s been said that there are two types of statistics ― the kind you look up and the kind you make up. CDC’s body counts are definitely the latter.

The CDC produced its estimates with a statistical ruse called “attributable risk” ― the fearmongers’ method of choice for alarming the public with large body counts. Attributable risk could be the poster child for the saying, “garbage in, garbage out.”

Without getting lost in the depths of statistical formulas, the key components of attributable risk calculations are statistical correlations between potential causes and effects, like overweight/obesity and premature death. But just because overweight/obesity and premature death might have been statistically correlated in some studies doesn’t mean that overweight/obesity has been proven to cause premature death.

In the few studies that have reported correlations between overweight/obesity and premature death, the vast majority of the correlations are small, not statistically significant (that is, they may be due to chance) and, in short, are unreliable. Reported correlations between overweight/obesity with premature death don’t start to inspire even minimal confidence until the obesity in question is extreme ― cases where you only need common sense, not statistical hocus-pocus.

Recklessly plugging unreliable statistical correlations into the attributable risk formula to produce sensational body counts can only be described as junk science.

But you don’t need to take my word about the folly of the CDC’s methodology.

As the New England Journal of Medicine editorialized in 1998, “Although some claim that every year 300,000 deaths in the United States are caused by obesity, that figure is by no means well established. Not only is it derived from weak or incomplete data, but it is also called into question by the methodologic difficulties of determining which of many factors contribute to premature death.”

“Calculations of attributable risk are fraught with problems … [and can produce] a nonsensical result,” noted the Journal.

And if all this is too technical, just ask yourself this question: Is it really plausible that the death rate from overweight and obesity has increased by 33 percent in the last 10 years?

Let’s not forget that despite all the hyperventilating about our health, the CDC reported last month (with much less fanfare) that U.S. life expectancy ― the most objective measure of public health ― reached an all-time high of 77.4 years in 2002, up from about 75.2 in 1990.

So what gives? Why does the CDC insist on nagging us about our waistlines? Two reasons come to mind.

First, the previously mentioned New England Journal of Medicine editorial characterized the obesity obsession as an example of “a tendency to medicalize behavior we do not approve of” ― that is, politically incorrect activities like over-eating, not exercising, smoking, drinking, and gun ownership.

Next, the public health establishment is simply running out of things to do. Preventing and controlling the spread of infectious disease, the traditional and primary mission of public health professionals, has largely been achieved. The relatively small number of infectious disease deaths that still occur annually, excluding AIDS-related deaths, decreased by 25 percent from 1990 to 2000, according to the CDC.

In former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous 1961 speech warning us of a looming military-industrial complex, he also said, “The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Were Ike witnessing the health nannies’ apparent desire to control our behavior and bigger budgets, he might warn us of the looming “public health-industrial complex.”

Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).

Putting the war on terrorism on hold to help ensure the war on Iraq

According to an NBC News story broadcast on March 2nd, 2004, prior to the war in Iraq, the Pentagon drew up at plans on at least 3 separate occasion to take out a terrorist now considered responsible for at least 700 killings in Iraq only to have those plans killed by the Bush Administration, who were concerned that doing so would weaken their case for going to war in Iraq.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

[...] Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

[...] In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

By the time we started the war in Iraq, Zarqawi and most of his followers had left the area, and we've been unable to locate them again - and at least 700 people are dead as a result.

Sabotaging justice

Even as President Bush is running ads that seek to capitalize on the 9/11 tragedy for political gain, the Bush administration is thwarting criminal prosecution of terrorists accused of being involved in the attacks.

According to a New York Times editorial, the Bush administration is refusing to allow criminal defendants - both here and abroad - access to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, allegedly one of the masterminds of the attack. As a result, much of the case against Zacarias Moussaoui - the only person facing trial in the US for involvement in the attacks - has been thrown out, and in Germany, one defendant was acquitted and another has had his conviction overturned.

Moussaoui may still end up being tried by a military tribunal here in the states, but

...the German decisions serve as a reminder that Al Qaeda is a global enterprise whose dismantling will require arrests and coordinated law enforcement in many countries. Terrorists arrested in Europe will not be turned over to American military tribunals seen by the outside world as kangaroo courts.

As I've mentioned before, I'm no fan of conspiracy theories, but the Bush administration has so consistently done everything they can to block any true investigation into the tragedy that it has the effect of making some of those theories seem like maybe they're not quite so far-fetched after all. Between

• the initial difficulty in even getting an investigation started,



• Bush's initial appointment of Henry Kissinger to head the commission,



• the administration's refusal to allow the 9/11 investigative committee to have full access to all necessary documents regarding what the administration might have known prior to the attacks,



• Bush's refusal to testify before the commission,



• their refusal to allow defendants access to one of their chief accusers even though that refusal prevents the US and other countries from being able to successfully prosecute participants in planning and/or carrying out the attacks,



• the indefinite detention of "suspected terrorists" and "enemy combatants" without any of the rights they're supposed to be guaranteed by our Constitution (including access to a lawyer, the ability to confront their accusers, and the right to a speedy trial, among others) and



• the use of secret military tribunals,

it becomes almost impossible to not wonder what the Bush administration is hiding. Maybe it's nothing, but it keeps getting harder and harder to convince myself of that.

You know, it almost wouldn't surprise me

Yes, I have an issue with Bush using 9/11 footage in his ads...

The crassness factor