Were there plans to grab Iraq's southern oil fields even before 9/11?

Josh Marshall has been writing about plans that were apparently under discussion, at least, for the US to seize Iraq's southern oil fields well before the 9/11 attacks. See here and here for more entries on the subject.

I remembered reading last year that Judicial Watch had been successful in getting at least a few documents from Cheney's Energy Task force, and that those documents concerned Iraq's oil fields. I did a bit of searching and found Judicial Watch's press release on the subject, as well as an index to the documents they were able to get.

Now, I don't know enough about the whole mess to know if there is any kind of connection between the documents Judicial Watch obtained and any possible plans to seize the southern oil fields, but the documents they got do include detailed plans to Iraq's oil fields as well as lists of possible "foreign suitors" for Iraqi oil contracts. The documents date from March of 2001.

As I said, there may not be any connection at all, but if you want to check it out, there it is. I've also dropped Josh Marshall a note about this, just to see if he wants to look into it, so you may want to check there also to see if there is any additional information.

Good point

The New York Times has an interesting letter to the editor today pointing out and apparent double standard in the Bush policy regarding pictures of flag-draped coffins & bodies.

The Bush administration claims to oppose publishing photographs of the coffins of American soldiers killed in Iraq out of respect (news article, April 23), yet it had no trouble using images of the destruction of 9/11 in the president's campaign ads.

This curious double standard seems explainable more by the administration's political interests than by the public interest: it shows us tragedy when it hopes to profit but shields us from it when it expects to lose.

GERARD J. FITZPATRICK
Collegeville, Pa., April 23, 2004

I hadn't actually thought about that before, but to a great extent, Mr. Fitzpatrick is right: If it's ok to show the photos of the flag-draped bodies being removed from the rubble of the World Trade Center, how is it any more disrespectful to the dead or their families to show the flag-draped coffins? If the coffins were individually identifiable, so that a family would know that the coffin contained their son, daughter, wife, husband, father or mother, I would agree that it would be insensitive - unless the family themselves chose to distribute the photo. But as long as the photos are of anonymous coffins, I don't see where it should be any more of a problem than all the times we saw the images of flag-draped stretchers being carried out of the WTC wreckage.

One place where I do draw the line, though, would be the use of any of these photos in a campaign commercial. I firmly believe that it was wrong and exploitative for Bush to have used the images of bodies being removed from the 9/11 rubble in his ads earlier this year, and I would be just as upset if John Kerry were to put images of flag-draped coffins in his campaign ads.

Those pictures help us remember what true cost of any war really is, and it's something we can't afford to forget.

The $700 million

Atrios makes a great point about the diverted $700 million and why we should all be outraged by it.

After 9/11, we went to war in Afghanistan to punish those responsible as well as to remove support for the al Qaeda network more generally. We didn't put enough troops on the ground either finish the job of rounding up the terrorists or to rebuild and install a stable governmenment. The consequence of this is that Bin Laden and many other al Qaeda members were allowed to escape, and much of Afghanistan has reverted to their Taliban-era existence. We know now that part of the reason was that the Bush administration was diverting resources allocated to that purpose in order to attack a country which posed no threat to us or its neighbors. They stole money allocated to make us safer, and used it to make us less safe.

This is yet another situation where if it had been a Democrat in office accused of diverting $700 million from the Afghanistan war to preparations for the Iraq war we'd ALREADY have hearings and investigations underway. That needs to be done, and done now.

Keep in mind that a number of people in the Bush administration had previously worked during the Reagan and Bush the First administrations. Some of them may well have been involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved other forms of illegal diversions. And we shouldn't forget that when the Pentagon wanted extra money for a project they didn't want Congress to know about, they leaned on various military bases to "pad" their budget requests so that the bases could then send that money to the Pentagon for their projects.

In other words, the idea of diverting resources for purposes other than what's intended is not an alien concept to this group. It is quite likely that this is a violation of the letter of the law as laid out in the Constritution, and it is certainly a violation of the spirit of the Constitution. Isn't the President supposed to uphold it, not undermine it?

Well, at least he's being honest for a change...

Not that this is anything new, but Bush has now started joking about his dislike for questions. I'm not sure I see the humour.

The whole issue of questions from the audience at the Associated Press annual luncheon was a running joke for the president during his talk. He opened his speech by saying, "I kind of like ducking questions," and said he would be "glad to duck any questions like my mother once told me to do" following his remarks.

In the end he only took three questions, from those submitted in advance by AP members, and read by Burl Osborne, the AP chairman. After replying to one question he apologized for "the long answer, but at least I answered it."

Crusade

Well, the Bush-Cheney campaign has sent out a letter describing Bush's leadership of the "crusade against terrorism." They seem to have forgotten that the last time Bush referred to the war on terror as a "crusade" is pissed a lot of Muslims off - understandably - since to them it is a reminder of the Christian persecution and slaughter of the original Crusades.

Worse, to try and justify the use of the term, Marc Racicot, the BC04 chairman, says

"...the fund-raising letter's purpose was to underscore Bush successes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"That letter was focused upon the single-minded efforts of the president, in coalition with other members of the international community, to undertake a mission to liberate people and protect the cause of freedom -- not just for a moment, not for a day, not for 10 years but for 100 years," the former Montana governor said in a conference call with reporters.

"And quite frankly, I think that's the tone of the letter and that's what it was meant to reflect."

Of course, he seems to be ignoring the fact that all of those same points could be made without using such a historically and politically charged term.

This follows comments by Bush in which he described freedom as a "gift of the Almighty" and talked about praying to be a good "messenger of God" in regards to the war in Iraq. While he says he's not going to justify the war based on God, it sure sounds like that's exactly what he's doing. He has said that it doesn't matter if there were WMD or not, since America has an obligation to bring God's gift of freedom to all the men and women of the world (though if they don't live in an oil producing country, they apparently are placed considerably lower on the priority list), and he has said he views himself as "God's messenger" in this endeavour. Then, for good measure, his fund-raising literature calls it a "crusade against terrorism."

Can someone please explain to me why - if Bush is so determined to fight against terrorism - he keeps doing and saying things that can only serve as recruiting tools for al Qaeda?

I suppose that's one way to look at it....

I always though that Clinton spent far too much time worrying about his "legacy," but Bush doesn't worry about his enough.

Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

Not "moving on" about the Guard

Recently a visitor suggested in comments that I "move on" in regards to Bush's military record. I thought I'd go ahead and post my response where it would be easy for others to read because I consider this to be an important issue.

Move on? No. Moving on is the last thing we need to do when it comes to Bush's National Guard service.

The president, his administration and their supporters have made a habit of accusing anyone who disagrees with their policies - and in particular with their war - of being "unpatriotic," yet when Bush had an opportunity to show his own patriotism when the US was at war in Vietnam (which was also an unpopular war fought on the basis of reasoning VERY similar to that used to justify the Iraqi war - the idea that changing one government in a region could lead to changes in many - if not all - of the other governments), he neither volunteered to serve in the active duty army nor choose to face the same risk of being drafted that most other men of his generation faced. Instead, he made use of his father's connection in order to get a slot in the Texas Air National Guard, and then failed to fulfill his commitment.

Even if you want to argue that his actions in regards to his guard duty were "youthful indiscretions" rather than an actual indication of his dishonourable character, his promise during his interview with Tim Russert to release ALL records related to his service went unfulfilled - only portions of his record were released, and some of those were redacted.

This incident speaks volumes about the true nature of President Bush. During his term, he has announced the creation of or support for a number of programs and then failed to include funding for them in the budget. Hell, he did that with the war in Afghanistan - ousting the Taliban, but then failing to include any money for rebuilding the country. It also demonstrates his attitude that the American people don't really have a right to know what out government - which is supposed to be BY the people and FOR the people - is up to, or what he has done and is doing as our leader. And it shows his tendency to use his family connections for any advantage he can.

So, no, I won't move on. Bush needs to be seen for the kind of person he really is, and this speaks volumes about why he is unfit to lead this nation.

Denigrating the guard

Bill Press has a good editorial in today's newspapers reviewing what we know about Bush's record with the National Guard. Bush and the Republicans are trying to portray those who question Bush's service record as being somehow 'unpatriotic' (just as they've tried to portray anyone who has questions anything else about Bush or his policies), but as Press points out, that's really not the case at all.

George Bush himself left no doubt why he joined the National Guard: to get out of Vietnam. In May 1984, he told the Houston Chronicle: "I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

So Bush, a son of privilege, used his congressman father's connections to get into the Guard. After learning to fly, he used his father's political connections to get assigned to a Republican Senate campaign in Alabama. Then he used his father's connections to get out of the Guard five months early, so he could attend Harvard Business School.

And now President Bush has the audacity to suggest that anyone who questions his military record is denigrating the National Guard. No, Mr. President, the person denigrating the National Guard is not the one asking the questions. It's the one who says he did his duty, but didn't.

I also have to wonder, while I doubt that the draft will be reinstated anytime soon (or at least not before the election), if it were, would Bush and his administration allow deferments or special placements for other young men (and women) who aren't willing to shoot their eardrums out or go to Canada? Or is that just another benefit for the wealthy and well-connected?

aWol

If you want to get caught up on the questions surrounding President Bush's military service, take time to visit Kevin Drum's "CalPundit. He's been on top of this story and is providing some excellent anaylsis.

Is anyone surprised that, after telling Tim Russert that he would "absolutely" "authorize the release of everything to settle this", we're now getting dodges on what, apparently, constituted "everything"? In an article pubished by USA Today, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, is quoted as saying "The issue is about the president's service in the National Guard. The president said he was committed to releasing any records we have to show that he served."

Notice how carefully that statement is phrased. They will release anything that would "show that he served" - meaning, of course, that if there are any documents showing that he did NOT serve, those will remain hidden as much as possible.

I hope that voters are paying attention to how on Sunday, Bush can promise he would authorize the release of "everything", but come the next week, the administration starts to qualify "everything" as being only those documents that support their side of the story. Many of us have been watching this same pattern for the last several years.

All means all, Mr. President

Disposable heroes

Colbert King has an excellent piece today about what President Bush left out of his State of the Union address.

Last Tuesday night was an opportunity for George W. Bush to eulogize the fallen, a chance for him to tell their families what their sacrifices mean to the nation -- a time for the president to help heal broken hearts. That didn't happen.

Yes, in his long address to a joint session of Congress, Bush offered a few words of praise for the skill and courage of the men and women in the military. He delivered a line about "sorrow when one is lost," and shared a self-serving recollection of himself landing on the deck of a carrier in the Pacific Ocean and his Thanksgiving Day fly-in to Baghdad. There was also a pledge to supply the troops with all the resources they need to fight and win. But victims of the Iraq war, as well as their moms, dads, spouses, children, neighbors and friends, deserved more than what they got from the president.

Instead of a moment of silence for those who have paid the ultimate price, they heard presidential pitches for prescription drugs and a new immigration law, and a denunciation of steroids and gay marriage. Instead of hearing the president recognize the preciousness of young lives expended far from home, they got a plea to put Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts. Instead of telling the country why it should remember what the dead and dying stood for, Americans were given an earful on child tax credits, the death tax and cuts in taxes on capital gains.

This is one of the things that consistently has angered me over the last year with the administration. I simply cannot fathom how a man can send so many young men and women off to die on false pretenses in a virtually pointless war and then stand before the nation and expend more effort worrying about steroid use and inheritance taxes than he does on caring about what happens to valiant individuals who are willing to put their lives on the line for this nation. President Bush speaks of himself as a righteous man, but sometimes I have to wonder if he even has a soul at all.

A satire taken too seriously

SignOn San Diego's James Goldsborough has pointed out yet another deception regarding the War on Iraq. While not as serious as the "we know they have WMDs" deception, the "we know he has ties to al-Qaeda" deception, the "we're considering war as a last resort" deception, the "we consider Iraq to be a threat because of 9/11" deception, the "he's trying to get uranium from Africa" deception or the "they'll great us with hugs and flowers" deception (among others), we now have the "oh, it's not a big deal that the Iraqi people are resisting us, the Germans did the same thing after World War II" deception.

Back in August, Condoleeza Rice gave a speech comparing the behaviour of the Iraqi resistance fighters to the German resistance "werewolves" following the fall of Hitler in 1945. Her point was that just as the German resistance had come to nothing, so would the Iraqi resistance, and so people didn't need to worry about it much. Goldsborough noted that the comparison to Germany had surprised him.

History barely mentions the werewolves, who never posed a security problem. Antony Beevor, in his "The Fall of Berlin, 1945," mentions werewolves only as a demented idea in the mind of propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and dying with him in Hitler's bunker on May 1, 1945.

Goldsborough wrote a column about the speech, and several angry readers sent him a copy of an article, allegedly from Reuters in 1945, describing the problems the military was having with the German werewolves. Donald Rumsfeld also made use of the German comparison, and several papers cited the Reuters dispatch as confirmation of what Rice and Rumsfeld were saying. Goldsborough quotes the first part of the Reuters article, as follows:

WASHINGTON DC (Reuters) Aug. 12, 1945 – President Truman, just a few months into his young presidency, is coming under increasing fire from some Congressional Republicans for what appears to be a deteriorating security situation in occupied Germany, with some calling for his removal from office.

"Over three months after a formal declaration of an end to hostilities, the occupation is bogged down. Fanatical elements of the former Nazi regime who, in their zeal to liberate their nation from the foreign occupiers, call themselves members of the Werwolf (werewolves) continue to commit almost-daily acts of sabotage against Germany's already ravaged infrastructure, and attack American troops. They have been laying road mines, poisoning food and water supplies, and setting various traps, often lethal, for the occupying forces."

Sounds almost tailor made for use as a comparison to current reports about the Iraqi resistance, doesn't it? Turns out it was a piece written by Rand Simberg, a guest columnist for Fox News, as his idea of how the modern media might have reported on World War II, were they to be transported back in time.

The article itself, which was originally published in July, doesn't appear to have been written with malicious intent, but as it so often seems to happen on the internet, people quickly take a quote, comment - or as in this case an entire article - out of context and try to use it to justify positions, beliefs, actions and statements that it really doesn't support at all.

It's not apparent from Goldsborough's columns on the issue whether Rice and/or Rumsfeld's statements were actually based on the satirical report or not, but it *is* a fair question to ask. If we have people in charge of the Defense Department and the National Security Council who either don't bother fact checking material before basing speeches on it or who are unfamiliar with the concept of fact-checking in general, then we have a very serious problem. I don't know about anyone else, but if someone gave me an article, saying it was from 1945, I'd want some kind of verification that it really had been written - and published - back then, and that it was an accurate reflection of what was happening at that time, especially if it was going to be used to help support a speech.

[Edited to add this note] One problem I do have with Goldsborough's columns on the Reuters story: In his column today, he points to the Fox News article as the source of he false story - but the way he presents the information makes it sound like the article was initially written - and published by Fox - to allow for the kind of deceptive comparisons as Rice and Rumsfeld have made. Yet at the top of the Fox article, it very clearly states that it is a speculative piece written to illustrated how the author thinks today's journalists might have written about Germany immediately following the fall of Hitler. While it's good to finally have the source of the story identified and available to use to help refute claims being made based on it, I don't appreciate the way he went about it, which is little better than presenting a quote out of context.

[Edited 1/18/04 3:49pm - cleaned up a couple of typos and finished a sentence that I'd left hanging = no change in meaning or context, however.]

To the moon?

The Associated Press is reporting that President Bush is likely to announce plans next week for returning to the moon, establishing a "permanent presence" there and an eventual manned trip to Mars.

You know, I'm a big sci-fi fan, and I absolutely love the concept of manned space exploration. My earliest memory is of my mother taking me outside the night Neil Armstrong took mankind's first steps on the moon and pointing up to it so I'd know where he was (I was 4 at the time, so watching it on TV wasn't making much of an impression.) Hell, I've been to Star Trek conventions and still have my homemade uniform. So you'd think this kind of an announcement would be something I'd find absolutely thrilling.

Well, it's not. It's not that I don't want us to achieve things like a permanent presence on the moon or travel to Mars, it's just that I think we should make fixing a few things here on Earth first a higher priority.

The deficit facing the children and grandchildren of this generation are horrific - and most likely, they'll start feeling the pinch of those deficits right about the time their moms and dads start retiring - and the Social Security payments they've been counting on to help cushion their own investments (many of which lost considerable value when the 'dot com' bubble burst or as a result of one of the many scandals such as Enron, in which the wealthy perpetrators made off with millions and the employee-victims found their retirement investments to suddenly be worthless) through their retirement years could very well dry up by then.

Bush's tax cuts - which were designed to primarily benefit the already-wealthy - don't do anything to help make it easier for the average citizen to save up for their own retirement, and if the Republicans get their way and privatize Social Security, the plan itself will become meaningless, since it will be subject to the same whims of the economy that individual retirement savings are. I know some recently retired people who have discovered first hand how devastating it can be to have your retirement savings suddenly lose a significant portion of their value when the economy goes sour, and had they not had the cushion of Social Security, I don't know if they'd still be able to live in their own homes.

Theoretically, a program like new moon landings, a permanent base and trips to Mars could help provide new jobs (something this nation desperately needs as the current "jobless recovery" isn't helping too many of the working-class people who need help the most), but I'm not sure if it can provide enough new jobs to justify a price-tag that would likely be in the trillions.

The other issue to consider, of course, is the matter of whether Bush and his administration are even competent enough to be able to pull such a plan off. As badly as they've mismanaged the war in Iraq (listening only to people who agreed with their own pre-conceived notions of how the war could be waged on the cheap and firing those who warned that it wouldn't work, only considering "intelligence" that backed their theories and desires instead of intelligence that actually represented the real situation and so on), if I were an astronaut-wannabe, I'd be scared as hell to climb into any kind of a space vehicle designed and built under plans developed by this administration's appointees.

If (Gods forbid) President Bush gets re-elected, and if (in spite of my doubts) his economic plan leads to us actually having a budget surplus again, and if his administration starts demonstrating some kind of competence in carrying out their plans, I would likely support his desire for America to start exploring space again. Until then, though, as much as I would personally love to see it happen, I think it has to wait. The "Baby Boomer" generation - which makes up a sizable chunk of the population - is starting to retire now, and we've yet to see the full impact of Bush's ill-advised tax cuts. I just don't see any way in which such exploratory plans make any sense now.

different strings response to The Happy Carpenter's questions

Recently, I got an interesting email from Pedro of The Happy Carpenter Blog, who has been soliciting responses from liberals to some questions he's had. I thought I would go ahead and post both his questions and my responses to them here, for anyone who has intersted. Just FYI, this is the reply exactly as I sent it to him, except formatted for HTML rather than the plain text I use for e-mail. I have to give Pedro credit, while a few of the questions may have a bit of a "tricky"-type slant to them, he does seem to be sincerely interested in hearing what we have to say (he has also posted these questions as a thread at his blog, if you wish to add your own thoughts) and from my own experience and what I've seen at his blog, he's one of the more civil conservatives I've run across. I appreciate his taking time to ask these questions and to read the responses (and as with most things I write, this one runs a bit to the long-ish side. I've been accused of having a motto of "Why use 2 short words when 10 perfectly good long ones will do?")

Pedro's questions are indented and bolded, my comments are normal text, and quotes I'm using to support my arguments are indented and italicized (like normal.)

I got into blogging recently because I needed help answering the question, How could nice people be against the war in Iraq?

Yes, the dialog between Left and Right has degenerated. In fact it has all but disappeared. Maybe you can help me in my humble attempt to restore it. Maybe we do have common ground, but I gotta be honest with you – I don’t get it.

I have to be honest - I've found almost no one on the pro-war side who is sincerely trying to discuss or understand, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and see if I can help explain - at least for myself - why I've opposed the war in Iraq.

One thing I do want to clear up, though - and this is a common misunderstanding I've run across. Many assume that if someone opposed the war in Iraq they also opposed the war in Afghanistan. Thinking back, though, remember that there weren't the massive protests, calls for trying to find a peaceful solution or world-wide anger that we saw in the run-up to Iraq. I, and many, many other who opposed the war in Iraq, actually supported the war in Afghanistan. In fact, the only problem I, at least, have had with the Afghani campaign is that we've provided almost NO followthru - largely because of all the attention being paid to Iraq.

As for invading and kicking out the Taliban, I supported that whole-heartedly because it was very clear that they were providing aid to bin Laden and Al Qaeda - who were, after all, the one's who had attacked us. We were not making a war of aggression, there, but were attacking in response to an attack that they had clearly facilitated. For me, that is perhaps the most crucial difference at all. There was no question of their complicity in the 9/11 attacks, and for that, they deserved to face all the wrath and might this nation can bring to bear.

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs since the war began, and I know a lot about the arguments, but I would sincerely like some answers to questions like the following:

• Why is it bad that the mass graves of Iraq are being emptied instead of filled?
• Why is it bad that a criminal-against-humanity is in custody?
• Why, given the on-going mass murder by the Ba’athists, is it bad to give up on demonstrably fruitless negotiations?
• How long are you willing to wait for sanction to work, given the on-going murder rate by Saddam Hussein?
• Why is it bad that the Taliban is not murdering women during soccer games any more?

I don't consider ANY of these things to be "bad" at all, and if we had to prosecute this war, then I'm glad at least something beneficial has come out of it. I do not, however, feel that these things justify the loss of life of our countries young men and women, nor do I believe it justifies putting them at risk. Interestingly, Paul Wolfowitz - one of the main proponents of the war - agrees we me on that point.

Here is a quote from the Department of Defense's transcript of an interview Wolfowitz gave to Vanity Fair. This is NOT the reporter's interpretation, but is taken directly from the DOD's posted transcript of the interview itself. I am providing both the full question and full response so that you can see the exact context. The only things I have deleted are a couple places where Wolfowitz had to answer phone calls during the interview. If you want to verify what I'm putting here, it can be found at http://www.dod.gov/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html near the end of the interview:

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.

This doesn't mean that I'm not happy to see those improvements happen, nor does it mean that I wanted to see them continue. I simply wanted us to find a much better way to get Saddam out of office.

As for how long I'd wait for sanctions to work, I can't really answer that. We'd already waited 12-years, and then all of a sudden this was such an emergency we had to pretty much drop our search for bin Laden (who's group has planned and carried out quite a few attacks against other countries during the time we've been focusing on Iraq. Sanctions probably weren't the answer - but we could have tried to come up with other means of trying to force him our.

It's also important to keep in mind that Saddam was NOT the only murdering thug running a country as a totalitarian dictator, killing and/or torturing his own citizens and defying international law. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (who has equated himself with Hitler), Charles Taylor of Liberia (who was removed from power over the summer though international pressure and internal pressure from the Liberian people), Karamov in Uzbekistan (who, even though he forbids opposition parties, has severely curtailed civil rights and has killed at least 2 people by boiling them alive, is considered a US ALLY). Yet we have not chosen to invade any of THESE countries to help their people or stop the carnage. I have no doubt there are more examples. And don't forget that just recently, when the current leader of Taiwan wanted to hold a referendum to allow the people of Taiwan decide if they wanted to tell China to stop pointing missiles at them and renounce violence in their quest to keep Taiwan as a part of greater China (a resolution which would not have been binding nor have had ANY kind of real world effect, except to let the Chinese know how they feel about the matter), China responded by saying if the question were to be put on the ballot, they'd even risk losing the 2008 Olympics if necessary to use force against Taiwan - and that it might even possibly consider it a reason to go to WAR with Taiwan, President Bush harshly rebuked the Taiwanese President and told him not to take this step (which would be seen by some as a Taiwan trying to take a step toward freedom and Democracy) but only cautioned China not to respond with violence.

The point of all that, being that, while I want to see people free and safe all over the world, there are many places where that isn't happening, and only one in which we decided to intervene. It's a fact that we simply cannot intervene in every situation where people are being mistreated by their leaders. I personally believe that we should ONLY intervene in those situations where the citizens are making it clear that they want our assistance. The Liberians would gather outside at the US Embassy and literally BEG for our help, and even as the rest of the world moved in to force Taylor out violently if necessary, we could only spare them 20 soldiers. Even in a severely repressive regime, there ARE ways for people to get the word out to the rest of the world if they are desperate for help. There wasn't any such indication from the Iraqi people. We're trying to force our concept of democracy on a people who may have something entirely different in mind for what they want in a government. We tell them they can have any kind of government they want, but then rule out an Islamic theocracy - that doesn't help our credibility.

To cap it all off, even though Saddam himself is no longer able to kill his own people, the situation there now has other Iraqis killing Iraqis who are helping us, and because we don't really have any good way to tell the helpful Iraqis from the ones trying to kill us, we end up killing who-knows-how-many innocent Iraqis on a fairly regular basis. I don't see this as much of an improvement. There's no way to know how long this will go on - and even once we do get some kind of government up and running and are able to pull out, there's always the possibility that civil war will break out.

As for the proffered justifications for the war, I'll start with the WMD issue.

IF we had actual, current proof that actually possessed WMD or was in the process of obtaining/manufacturing them, I would have supported the war. The President has admitted, however, that we were working from the same evidence that had led President Clinton to bomb Iraq in 1998. And Rumsfeld has said that we had no new evidence, just that we were looking at old evidence in the new light of the 9/11 attacks. The problem with that is that even in January - 3 months before we launched the Iraqi war, President Bush said flat out that we could not make the claim that there was any tie between Saddam and 9/11 - and if we couldn't make that claim, then there wasn't any "new light" to be looking at the evidence through. (I'll address the 9/11 - al Qaeda aspect in just a moment)

From the Boston Globe, 7/9/2003 (original story no longer available): He [Bush] leaned forward on a podium shared with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and said angrily: ''Imagine a world in which this tyrant had a nuclear weapon. In 1998, my predecessor raided Iraq, based upon the very same intelligence. And in 2003, after the world had demanded he disarm, we decided to disarm him.''

From ABC News.com, 7/8/2003:
"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit" of weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light "through the prism of our experience on 9/11."

Additionally, in 2001, Colin Powell said, during a press conference, that Iraq was not a threat to the US and was barely a threat to its neighbors because of the sanctions that were in place, which he said were working. This was 3 years after we had bombed Iraq in order to destroy any WMD they had at the time, and 7 months before 9/11. Note also that Powell says that he believes any weapons Saddam did have were pointed at his neighbors, and NOT at America.

From the US Department of State website transcript of a 2/24/01 press conference by Colin Powell regarding a trip to Egypt:

The Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.

[...] May I just add a p.s. that if I was a Kuwaiti and I heard leaders in Baghdad claiming that Kuwait is still a part of Iraq and it's going to be included in the flag and the seal, if I knew they were continuing to try to find weapons of mass destruction, I would have no doubt in my mind who those weapons were aimed at. They are being aimed at Arabs, not at the United States or at others. Yes, I think we should...he has to be contained until he realizes the errors of his ways.

So, if, as Powell said just a few months before 9/11 sanctions were working and had contained Saddam sufficiently that he was not a threat, and given that we were working from 5-year-old intelligence (that had ALREADY been acted on by an earlier administration) AND we had NO new intelligence indicating that Saddam actually had WMD or was trying to obtain or build them, I can't consider the war justified on the claim of Saddam having WMDs - especially when you take into account that, during what little time the UN Inspections had prior to the war, even with the BEST intelligence we could given them about where WMD were likely to be found, they were unable to find any indication of WMD and considered our intelligence to be "garbage." Then, add to the mix the fact that many pieces of "evidence" were discredited so quickly after being presented (the African uranium purchase that was based on forged documents and had been determined to be non-viable a year before it made it into the President's State of the Union address, the aluminum tubes that were allegedly for making nuclear centrifuges, but which many experts quickly pointed out were entirely wrong for that purpose, the "drones" that turned out to be little more than model planes with roughly a 5 foot wingspan and no ability to be used for any kind of attack on the US, etc.) there was absolutely NO reason to believe the claims that we "knew" he had anything, and we CERTAINLY didn't have enough "evidence" to go to war on.

As for the claims about Saddam being affiliated with al Qaeda, so far, there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that he was. The one group in Iraq that is believed to have ties to al Qaeda was located in the Northern Kurdish territory, which was NOT under Saddam's control, and the group was opposed to Saddam. They were not there by his invitation, and they wanted him out of power. It's also known that bin Laden wanted Saddam out of power, so it's doubtful he would provide al Qaeda with much assistance or any weapons, since there would have been the risk that they might end up being used against HIM to achieve bin Laden's goal of an Islamic theocracy in Iraq. The stories of a possible meeting between Mohammad Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague have been discounted, and the FBI has determined that Atta was in Florida at the time the meeting supposedly took place.

True, it IS known that Saddam has provided support for and paid the families of suicide bombers among the Palestinian terrorists who are attacking in Israel. This, however, would be a justification for ISRAEL to attack Iraq, not for the US to do so. If Israel wants to retaliate against Saddam for his part in those bombings, then they need to have the courage to participate in it. (And yes, I know exactly how bad that could be and I am quite glad they didn't. But it doesn't change the fact that just because it's a justification for Israel to go to war, it isn't justification for us - especially in the absence of any other justifications.)

As for the 9/11 attacks themselves, at a joint press conference with Tony Blair, BOTH Bush and Blair acknowledged that they could not make the claim that Saddam was involved in the attacks. This is from the White House website's transcript available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030131-23.html

Q One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?

THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.
THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question.

This was reaffirmed the week of September 17th by both President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This quote is taken from a page of my blog because the original source I had for it has moved the article to their paid archives. If you wish to verify it, though, you can probably enter a part of it into Google and find it that way.

Today, Bush said:

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," Bush said. "What the vice president said was is that he [Saddam] has been involved with al-Qaida."

When asked about the matter on Tuesday, Rumsfeld had responded:

"I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

So, those are the reasons why I did not and cannot support this war, even though I had no problem with the war against Afghanistan.

On to your other questions.

Those and other questions like them are the really fundamental questions I cannot explain. Then there are other questions that sound a little more contentious, but still defy my ability to explain the Left’s position, such as: Why is it more important for the Republicans in general and GWB in particular to fail than it is to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq?

I don't believe that it is. I do not like and have no respect for Republicans in general, but my opposition to the Iraqi war is completely independent of my party affiliation - just as my support for the Afghanistan war is. While I don't believe that we should have fought the war in Iraq, once we went in there, I wanted to see us succeed and to be able to get in and back out as quickly and with as few deaths as possible.

I have also repeatedly made clear that my opposition to the war is separate from my feelings for our troops fighting it. Our soldiers have my full support and always will unless THEY initiate an illegal action - which is very rare. They don't get to choose where they're assigned, and I consider each and every one of them to be someone worthy of my sincere respect for their willingness to risk their lives for this country, even if our government decides to send them someplace where we have no business going.

Why is the assertion that preventing weapons of mass destruction from getting into the hands of terrorists is a vital national interest of the United States controversial?

As a general assertion, I don't think the CONCEPT of preventing terrorists from getting WMD to be controversial at all. The problem in THIS SPECIFIC CASE is that there was absolutely NO SUBSTANTIAL OR VIABLE EVIDENCE to show that there was ANY danger of that happening. As I discussed above, virtually every piece of evidence the government offered was found to be unreliable or flat-out wrong, or it was 5 years old, and pre-dated the bombings we had made to destroy what weapons he had. If the administration had been able been able to provide any evidence that withstood scrutiny and which substantiated their claims, I would have supported the war, but it just wasn't there (and we now see why)

My brother in law is a very liberal Jew. I cannot understand why he, like so many Jews, is against the war on terror given that the first nuclear target of the muslim terrorists is probably Tel Aviv and the second, New York.

Being Pagan, I can't answer for a Jew. I'm sorry, but I just don't have the foundation to even speculate on that.

Even now, after unprecedented victories (I write this on December 22, 2003) the President and his policies are still being slammed by the left. Why?

Because capturing Saddam isn't that big of a deal. He wasn't a threat to us while he was in power and he certainly wasn't one after he was deposed. Symbolically, his capture will likely mean something to the Iraqi people, but even as Bush himself said, there's no guarantee that his capture will slow or end the violence in Iraq.

As for other policies, there are many I'm ideologically opposed to, I don't agree with his taxation priorities, I am outraged by the unprecedented amount of secrecy he insists upon, I'm tired of the way he will say one thing at a photo-op and then later fails to follow through (for example, pledging a sizable sum for fighting against AIDS and then only actually requesting 1/3 of that amount, or saying he supports AmeriCorp and plans to increase their budget just before he cust their funding drastically), I'm worried by the problems he left in his wake in Texas - the failure and misleading statistics of the "No Child Left Behind" program implemented there, the budget crisis due to his tax cuts, and other issues, I'm embarrassed at the way America's standing in the world has gone from being reasonably good to being in the toilet, I resent the fact that he's made America look like little more than a schoolyard bully, I'm bothered by the way his administration sends conflicting messages (such as the Pentagon telling certain countries they can't participate in the rebuilding of Iraq, and then having the State department ask that they consider forgiving Iraq's debts to help US out), I'm angry at the way it's so obvious that his primary concerns are giving big business pretty much anything they want, rewarding his buddies and those who contribute to his campaign. I could go on, but the basic point is that even if he'd fought the war in Iraq for the right reasons and even if the war had gone well, there are so many other issues that are important to me and to this country on which I disagree with him that there's no way I could support his Presidency.

None of the anti-war predictions of mass civilian death, refugees, mass terrorist attacks, famine, dogs & cats living together, etc., have come to pass. Yet it is very rare to find a person who was against the war before it started but willing to admit it was on balance a good thing. Why? Shouldn’t there be many people like that?

Actually, for myself, what we're seeing is pretty much EXACTLY what I expected would happen. I don't make a lot of predictions, but I did express some concerns for how the war might come out, but this is pretty much exactly how I thought it would go. And, no, on balance it wasn't a good thing because - as noted above - even though some good came out of it, it wasn't justifiable (and it was clear even before the war that it wasn't justifiable - that's why so many were opposed to it), it diverted us and our resources from being able to track down and destroy the REAL threat, which is bin Laden, it has cause SO much damage to America's reputation, making it harder for us to get help in the future if we need it, and is costing the lives of far too many of our soldiers. Remember, even Wolfowitz said that Iraqi freedom BY ITSELF (and it's the ONLY possible justification left) wasn't a reason to risk our soldiers, especially in the capacity that we did.

Sure, war is bad, but some things are worse. Aren’t they?

Yes, but in this case, taking it all into account, I believe that war was the worst option and the worst outcome, even if it does result in some good. It's much like how if someone dies of some new disease - their death may allow medical science to understand, identify and treat this new illness, but that doesn't mean that I'm glad the person is dead or that I think their death is necessarily a good thing. It happened and good came out of it - and I wouldn't want to see all the others who were treated for the disease to have died - but I will still mourn the death itself.

What’s up with Canada?

Not being a Canadian, I can't answer on their behalf.

I’ve tried asking questions like these before, one-on-one and in the comments section of various blogs, but invariably I get sneers and jeers. One nice European replied that it would be fruitless for us to correspond. Please believe me: I am not looking for argument – there’s plenty of that – but for understanding. Yes, ultimately I’d like to persuade you to agree with me, but for now I seek only enlightenment.

God and Country

Kynn of Shock and Awe has posted an interesting piece about the concept of Nationalistic Christianism - the melding of patriotism and religion into the view that America is God's Chosen nation and the implementer of his will.

I have long grown weary of the arrogance that the leaders of this country show on such a regular basis. It is pure folly to think that we are somehow more special than any other nation on Earth - especially since the Bible - the book the very people promoting this ideology claim to look to for guidance - says nothing about America at all. If we were to be the "greatest nation" and the "instrument of God's will" and all that, wouldn't God have found a way to include that in His book?

It reminds me of a man I knew several years ago, back when Pat Robertson was running for president. He was convinced that we could know when Jesus was going to return. Well, we could have a reasonable idea of it. He pointed out that the Bible only says that we cannot "know the day or the hour" of Christ's return, but that doesn't mean we can't know the month and year. He said that based on his calculations, Christ was either going to return in June or July of 1998 or June or July of 1999. He said that what would determine which of those two date-ranges it would actually be would be determined by - get this - who America elected to be President.

Now, the biggest problem I saw with his theory is that if America's election was going to determine the date of the Second Coming, shouldn't that date have to be sometime AFTER the election? That right there should have knocked the 1998 dates out of contention. But the other thing that bothered me greatly was that this guy was saying that our country is so incredibly important that our POLITICAL decisions would determine the fate of the entire world - not just in a militaristic, political or economic context, but the whole ball of was was in our hands. I just couldn't comprehend how anyone could thing that this country was THAT important to anyone - even God.

It also scares, me, though, because when our leaders buy into this notion, it gives them grave amounts of hubris when it comes to pushing their beliefs and desires through. They don't seem to stop to question if what they plan to do is truly inspired by God, or if they've just fooled themselves into believing that God wants exactly what they happen to desire most themselves. We see this quite clearly with President Bush and his push to invade Iraq. He wanted this war so badly that nothing - not the truth, not international pressure and disapproval, not logic, not ANYthing - would stand in his way.

It seems to me, though, that if the war in Iraq were truly of God's will, that God would assure that his goals were met once the war was underway. If I remember my Bible study correctly, when God would grant his armies victory, the win would be decisive, and the conquerers were able to pretty much set up shop and get down to business without a lot of fuss about it. Instead, we're now in a position where we we may have overthrown the government, but we're failing miserably with the "setting up shop" part of the equation. Add in the administration's mandate to hand power over to the Iraqis by July (so that we'll technically be "out of there" in time for the fallout to avoid affecting Bush's re-election chances) whether our objectives (which, if we are truly on a mission from God here would also be GOD's objectives) are met or not, and it seems to me that this wasn't really a God-mandated war at all.

Finally! Someone in the White House who can tell us what's going on!

At last, the citizens of this good country will get a real look at what's going on in the White House. President Bush's dog, Barney (that little terrier he's always carrying around) has decided to keep a blog of his own, giving us a peak into the inner workings of Bushland.

So far, he's shared with a little story about himself, the excitement of having Silly Daddy and Mommy get him a special tree, Pet blogging and his great adventure with a fun white powder.

That Barney would take the time to give us such a candid look into the inner working of the White House is a great initiative on his part, and maybe, finally, we'll be able to understand just what makes this administration tick!

Gays out, Promise Keepers in for National Parks videotapes

This is just depressing. 365gay.com has published an article about charges from the Public Empoyees for Ethical Responsibility advocacy group that the current national director of parks is making significant - and offensive - changes to the tapes available for display at the national parks, plaques on display at the Grand Canyon and even books sold in the gift shops.

Environmental Media Services (EMS) also has an article on the changes, and provides a good outline of them:

This July, NPS Deputy Director Donald Murphy, ordered the Grand Canyon National Park to return three bronze plaques bearing biblical verses to public viewing areas on the Canyon's South Rim. Murphy overruled the park superintendent who had directed the plaques' removal based on legal advice from the Interior Department that the religious displays violated the First Amendment. In a letter to the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, the group sponsoring the plaques, Murphy apologized for "any intrusion resulting from" the temporary removal of the plaques quoting Psalms 68:4, 66:4 and 104:24 and pledged "further legal analysis and policy review" before any new action is taken.

This fall, the Park Service also approved a creationist text, "Grand Canyon: A Different View" for sale in park bookstores and museums. The book by Tom Vail, claims that the Grand Canyon is really only a few thousand years old, developing on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. At the same time, Park Service leadership has blocked publication of guidance for park rangers and other interpretative staff that labeled creationism as lacking any scientific basis.

Last month, the Park Service announced that it would alter an eight-minute video containing photos and footage of demonstrations and other events taking place at the Lincoln Memorial. Conservative groups have asked to cut out footage of gay rights, pro-choice and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations because it implies that "Lincoln would have supported homosexual and abortion 'rights' as well as feminism." The Park Service has promised to develop a "more balanced" version that include rallies of the Christian group Promise Keepers and pro-Gulf War demonstrators though these events did not take place at the Memorial.

In other words, they're going to engage in more of the historical revisionism that Bush claims to deplore so much, remove anything that conservatives (and, in particular, conservative Christians) might not like, and add things conservatives (and conservative Christians) will like. It sort of reminds me of a dog our family had for years. If she'd done something she knew we didn't like, she'd go run and try to find something to hide her head under, apparently under the delusion that if she couldn't see us, we wouldn't be able to see her. In this case, though, they're trying to hide some events in the hopes that they'll just go away

The 'Airbrushed' President

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank published and article today on the White House's tendency to try and rewrite history.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.

This is something I've been trying to keep track of for a while, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to post a collection of links to the posts I've made on this previously. They contain links to stories on other sites, as well as to several screenshots I've been uploading for reference.

• Changing "combat operations" to "major combat operations" in backgrounders and press releases about Bush's May 1st speech



• Questions about changes to the robots.txt file at the White House Website



• Explaination for robots.txt file changes offered



• White House website design requires pages to be updated frequently and unnecessarily



• Changes to the USAID site, the Center for Army Lessons Learned and the transcript of Bush's speech to the Austrailian Parliament

Please note: I am not taking credit for any of these discoveries. It's just one of those issues that really gets under my skin and so I've been trying to pay extra attention to it and trying to collect as much evidence of it as I can because it says so much about this administrations regard (or lack thereof) for the truth.

Supreme Court agrees to hear Cheney's appeal on energy task force documents

A debate that started even before the events of 9/11 is growing closer to resolution. For years, Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club (among others, I believe) have been trying to gain access to documents regarding the Energy Task Force that Dick Cheney led during the early months of the administration. This task force helped define the Bush administrations energy policies, and it is thought that many members of the task force were executives from the energy industry, which could lead to a serious conflict-of-interest and questions about the appropriateness of their recommendations.

Many of the questions that are being asked are due to the timing of the task force's recommendations and the Bush administration's refusal to institute caps in energy prices during the energy crisis in California that caused so many problems, and has since been demonstrated to have been the result of illegal market manipulation. If the decision not to assist California during the crisis came at the behest of energy executives (in particular, Ken Lay of the now bankrupt Enron) whose companies were engaging in the manipulation, it could raise further question about whether or not the decision not to help California was made in order to allow these companies to continue with their market manipulation scheme.

In an attempt to prevent these records from being released, Cheney is now taking his appeal to the Supreme Court:

Cheney filed the appeal in the energy dispute, arguing that neither he nor the president should have to obey a court order to begin disclosing the contacts that private industry executives had with members of the task force who fashioned the administration's energy policy.

The main argument of Cheney's appeal is that the Constitution's separation of powers among the three branches of government means that the judicial and congressional branches lack authority to second-guess the president, the vice president, and other aides when they are deciding how to use executive powers.

The administration is making similar claims in a variety of court cases challenging the president's handling of the war on terrorism.

Of course, Cheney's argument seems to ignore the fact that the reason we have executive, judicial and legislative branches that are separate from each other largely to ensure that they can second-guess each other and maintain the long-cherished practice of "checks and balances."

'Freedom' is just another word for an election Bush might lose...

In what many consider an election-year ploy to gain votes, Taiwan's democratically elected leader has proposed giving the people of Taiwan a voice in the debate about whether Taiwan is an independent nation or a province of China by voting on a referendum that would call upon China to remove missiles it currently has pointed at Taiwan and renounce the use of force to keep the island from breaking away from the mainland.

The Communist leaders of China responded by threatening to go to war if the referendum were held - even though the referendum would not be actually require that anything actually be done by China - it would just tell the leaders of China what the people of Taiwan want.) China sees the referendum as a signal that Taiwan is trying to move toward independence, something that has been an issue for over half-of-a-century.

The US maintains official relations with China, but has also pledged to help defend Taiwan if China were to take military action against it. The dispute between Taiwan and China over the referendum, therefore, puts the US in a bit of a sticky position. We don't want to anger China, but we have a commitment to Taiwan. So, what does President Bush decide to do? He warns China that "any military action against Taiwan by China would invite a forceful response from the United States, reiterating an earlier pledge to defend the island republic from potential mainland aggression", which is appropriate, but he also "cautioned Taiwan's leadership Tuesday against "comments and actions" aimed at independence, telling visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao that the United States opposes such steps."

You might want to read that last part again, because it's rather important. Our President, whose administration has taken to justifying our war on Iraq by claiming we needed to bring democracy to the Middle East and freedom to the oppressed people of Iraq, tells Taiwan that we oppose any movement on their part toward independence from China and democratic freedom for themselves. One senior US official told CNN "We don't want to see Taiwan moving toward independence. We don't want to see any unilateral moves in that direction."

As a Washington Post editorial notes:

Yesterday President Bush essentially placed the United States on the side of the dictators who promise war, rather than the democrats whose threat is a ballot box. His gift to visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was to condemn "the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan" while ignoring the sanguinary rhetoric of the man standing next to him. Mr. Bush had his reasons for doing so -- above all to avoid one more foreign policy crisis during an election year. But in avoiding a headache for himself, he demonstrated again how malleable is his commitment to the defense of freedom as a guiding principle of U.S. policy.

While the editorial says that Bush "ignored the sanguinary rhetoric" of China, as I noted above, he has warned China that military action toward China could result in the US responding with force on Taiwan's behalf. I don't know if the WaPo editors were unaware of the warning to China when the editorial was written, if they just ignored it or if the warning was not issued until after the editorial was published, but even with Bush warning China, the rest of the comments by the WaPo editors are still, in my opinion, valid.

Why? Because even though we've committed to help defend Taiwan if China attacks them, right now, our nation is telling Taiwan that we don't want them to have independence or freedom. Right now, the Taiwanese people live with the knowledge that China has 500 missiles pointed at them, and hears that China would consider a demand from the Taiwanese people to remove those missiles and renounce the use of force to keep Taiwan as a Chinese province as justification to go to war. China has even indicated that they would be willing to accept the cancellation of the 2008 Olympics (something the government has seen as a way to show off China and improve their image worldwide) or, worse, "mass casualties", in the pursuit of such a war. Yet the United States, who is supposed to be the world's leader and defender of democracy, says we don't want Taiwan to take even as small of a step as asking its people to tell China if they want missiles pointed at them or not. Instead, we tell their leaders to back off on anything that might indicate even a small desire for independence. Our pledge to defend them is not a promise that we will help them seek or gain their freedom from a Communist government, only that we will help protect them from an aggressor. It may not sound like a big difference, but it is.

Certainly, we don't want or need a war between China and Taiwan right now. For starters, with our military spread as thin as it currently is, it would be very difficult for us to fulfill our pledge to help defend Taiwan - and its true that another foreign relations crisis would look very bad for Bush. But if our country is truly committed to world-wide democracy - if we're going to take the position that freedom is so important for one group of oppressed people that we will invade their sovereign nation and get it for them (whether they want it or not) - then it should be important enough for us to tell China in this situation that they need to back down from their warmongering rhetoric and allow the Taiwanese people to have their say.

Impersonal greetings

So, the President doesn't have time to go to any funerals for the soldiers killed in Iraq, and even though he talked big about being the nation's "official" hugger in order to make the point that he wouldn't risk our soldier's lives unnecessarily (since he'd be the one who'd have to hug their mother's if they died) there hasn't been much hugging from him, either, but couldn't he at least find enough time to write an actual, personal note to the families of the fallen?

No president has ever attended every funeral of every soldier. Even President Clinton was selective in his visits. He didn't want to set the precedent of having to go to every one or being seen to play favorites, his former aides recall. And yet the Bush White House has at times acted defensively about Bush's approach. Sometimes aides suggest that Clinton was just an attention seeker (which set off a new round of barbs between the Bushies and the Clintonites). Other times they point out that Bush is "writing" letters to each of the soldiers' families instead of going to the services.

So I asked some families about the sympathy letters they had received. I assumed that they were in the Bush family style.

[...]

But those are not the letters Bush is “writing.” They are form letters. With the exception of the salutation and a reference to the fallen soldier in the text, the letters the families shared with me are all the same. Now some one has gone to the trouble of finding out if the given name of the solider and the name he or she used were different. And Bush does sign them all personally. But it would be more accurate to say he is “sending” all the families letters, a practice that goes back many presidents.

You know, even if it is a long-standing practice, sending a freaking FORM letter to the parents of someone who's died in the service of this country is just flat out lazy and cold. I don't care who's done it before - it was wrong then and it's wrong now.

These are people who have had someone they dearly loved taken away from them, sent into danger at the President's behest and killed by whomever the country has designated as "the enemy". They will spend the rest of their lives with a huge, gaping hole where that person once was. The absolute least they should be able to expect from this country is that the President who sent their loved one off to his or her death will take a few minutes to write them a personal note of condolence on the lost.

Bush promoted himself as a "compassionate conservative." Maybe he should look up "compassionate" in the dictionary sometime. He obviously doesn't have a clue as to what it actually means.

What happens when you have no civil rights

Time magazine has a very depressing story this week on the treatment of prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. Some of this we've known about for a while, though having it presented all in one article is a bit unnerving, but there's also new information claiming that many - roughly 20% - of the prisoners may well be innocent, and were only incarcerated because we were offering rewards for the capture of people connected to al Qaeda and were willing to take the word of the person getting the reward as sufficient evidence of a terrorist connection.

So, lets imagine it's 2 years ago, right after the fall of the Taliban, and you're an Afghan warlord and you're a bit short on cash. You go out and grab Ali (who's just a random person you know nothing about), bring him to the US officials and say "This is Ali. He's in cahoots with al Qaeda." The US officials give you your reward, and poor Ali - who's done nothing wrong - gets shipped off to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Now, the Geneva Convention grants specific rights to prisoners of war, but the Bush administration doesn't want any of these "detainees" to have any real rights, so they decide to call Ali - and everyone else in Guantanamo Bay - "enemy combatants", which, to the best of my knowledge, is a term that hasn't yet been defined for the purpose of international law, so there are no rights spelled out for "enemy combatants." So, Ali gets shipped off to Camp X-Ray where he's been held captive for the last 2 years. As the article notes:

The detainees—660 suspects from 44 countries, scooped up in the war on terrorism—cannot challenge their arrests or plead their cases or even talk to a lawyer, because the U.S. government denies that they have those rights.

Ali doesn't have a lot of options at this point. Since he can't see a lawyer, he can't prove he's innocent, and the only way he can even hope to either get out or at least get into "Camp Four", a relatively nice area of the prison, is if he provides useful information to his interrogators. Unfortunately, since he's innocent, he doesn't have any information. So there he sits.

Up until now, the only hope our hypothetical Ali, or someone like him, had, was that the government would decide he was "harmless" and release him, but while some prisoners have been release for that reason, it hasn't happened a whole lot yet. Otherwise, the outlook is pretty bleak.

Inmates arrive with no knowledge of how long they will stay, facing the possibility of trial by a military tribunal whose procedures have yet to be tested, on charges that have yet to be revealed and that carry sentences that may depend on not just what crimes they committed but what country they are from. The U.S. last week cut a deal with Australia that if its detainee David Hicks is found guilty, he will not be executed and will be allowed to have his family in the courtroom and talk to his lawyers without Americans listening in. But the Brits are pushing for more, and what about the inmates from Yemen or Pakistan or Afghanistan? Seeing the risks of multiple standards of justice, Pentagon officials said last week that they are conducting a wholesale review of the tribunal rules.

A new ray of hope has come in the form of the US Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear cases filed by the families of some of the detainees that could force the government's hand. And, in a sense, it already has.

A U.S. military official tells Time that at least 140 detainees—"the easiest 20%"—are scheduled for release. The processing of these men has sped up since the Supreme Court announced it would take the case, said the source, who believes the military is "waiting for a politically propitious time to release them."

The Court is expected to issue a ruling possibly in July, so apparently the "politically propitious time" will be considerably before the elections, but I have little doubt that it will come at a time when Bush has a grave need to be seen as magnanimous, with the hope that no on will notice it took us 2 years to figure out that it's likely that some of these people we've been keeping imprisoned were only handed over as a quick way for some warlord to make a buck.

Jim Henley at Unqualified Offering is also covering this story, and has a very powerful post on the matter. He notes that this seems to be another part of the Bush patterns of things turning out to be a lot worse than initially reported, even though we've had officials telling us that they're actually better. I strongly recommend taking the time to read it. Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:

We're told one month that most of Iraq is not just quiet but friendly and the next month, in one of those quiet friendly parts, crowds drag American bodies through the street. We're told that there's no guerrilla war, then that there is a guerrilla war but we've turned the corner, then we notice that fatal casualties among our soldiers have grown exponentially for seven months and more (but we're turning the corner again).

Bush's visit to Iraq

I'm really glad that the President was able to spend at least a couple hours Thanksgiving Day with the troops in Iraq. They deserve some attention from their Commander-in-Chief (especially since he doesn't have time to attend any of their funerals - though fund-raisers are, of course, not a problem to fit into his busy schedule). Still, there is room for at least one question about it.

A story in the LA Times notes that on Sunday, Condi Rice appeared on the Sunday morning talk-shows, defending the trip:

"This trip was an effort by the commander in chief on Thanksgiving Day to take to the American forces … the best wishes of the American people, to thank them for their service, to tell them that he and the American people are personally committed to seeing and staying the course here, to take a message to the Iraqi people that this is their opportunity to seize the moment for freedom," national security advisor Condoleezza Rice said.

Wouldn't it have been more effective for the President to give a message of hope to the Iraqi people if he'd actually spent any time with them? Of course, I do understand that there are security concerns, but at the same time, one has to wonder if the decision to remain at the military compound was purely for security reasons, or just another one of Bush's infamous dodges of any group that might not be unanimous in a positive reception of him (cf. The "Free Speech Zones" at most Bush speaking engagements and his recent decsion to forgo addressing the British Parliament while on a state visit to the country in order to avoid potential hecklers.)

President goes slumming to reward Murdoch's sun

As a reward for Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch's pro-war Sun tabloid in Britain, President Bush has given them an exclusive interview in advance of his upcoming visit to the UK. The Sun is most well-known for it's daily topless "Page 3" girls and wild stories that would fit right at home in the National Enquirer.

It is also reporting this week on a woman who is "made of two women" and "is NOT the biological mother of two of the children she conceived and had naturally." Other news items highlighted on the Sun's Web site: "Man begins 12-day sausage, bean and chip bath to promote Brit food," "German saboteurs plotted to bomb Palace with peas in WW2, files reveal," and "Sobbing islanders say sorry to the ancestor of minister eaten by natives."

Of course, you can imagine what the response would have been if a Democratic president - in particular President Clinton - had given an interview to a combo girlie-mag/tabloid - especially if that magazine was owned by the same person who's stateside publications included one that was notorious for its unblinking support for the President, his party and its policies. There would be yelps of favouritism, claims that his actions were mocking the dignity of the office of the President and embarrassing to the American people. There'd be snide snickers and comments about how, given the President's current credibility, maybe a tabloid was the most appropriate place to publish an interview with him.

And you know what? They'd be right. Something like this DOES smack of favouritism, it is beneath the dignity of the office (could you imagine any other country letting their head of state be interviewed by the National Enquirer?), it is embarrassing for the country and - given Bush's complete lack of credibility, it really is the best place for his words to be placed.

Bush plans to meet families of UK fallen soldiers, but still not meeting with US families

I swear, stuff like this is going to give me an aneurysm if I'm not careful. I just posted a few minutes ago about how Bush hasn't been meeting with the families of US soldiers who died fighting his war, and now find that he is planning to meet with the families of British soldiers who have died.

When asked about the families of the 54 British soldiers killed in Iraq, President Bush said: "I am going to meet some.

"There's two messages. One, the prayers of the American people and the prayers of the president are with them, as they suffer.

"Secondly, that I will tell them that their loved ones did not die in vain. The actions we have taken will make the world more secure and the world more peaceful in the long run."

So, it's OK for him to be seen comforting the families of soldiers from OTHER countries who died, but he doesn't have the time to meet with the families of the US soldiers he's killed.

One father in the UK, however, seems to have Bush's number pretty good:

However, the father of the youngest UK soldier killed in Iraq said Mr Bush and Mr Blair did not care about the deaths of British troops.

Andrew Kelly,18, from Tavistock, in Devon, died in a shooting accident near his barracks in the southern city of Basra on 6 May.

His father Robert, from Saltash, in Cornwall, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he had not been invited to meet Mr Bush, and did not want to meet him.

"For these people to meet families, it is only for their own gain," he said.

"What does George Bush care about our families and my family? He doesn't care."

No. He really doesn't. He doesn't care about the UK families, and he sure doesn't care about the US families. He's a craven, desperate petty man. I will never understand why anyone thought he was the least bit qualified to run this country. As for those who believe that he was "appointed" or "anointed" by the Christian God, well, it sure doesn't speak well of His judgment. Very few of his (Bush) actions do.

Yet he still wants them kept as far away as possible, eh?

From All Facts and Opinions comes this story about Bush's claim that he welcomes the protests planned against him next week in Britian. President Bush said Thursday he welcomes the massive protests expected in London during his visit next week because "I don't expect everybody in the world to agree with the positions I've taken."

"I'm so pleased to be going to a country which says that people are allowed to express their minds," Bush said. "That's fantastic. Freedom is a beautiful thing."So, does this mean that his friends and supporters here will begin to welcome the protests against him and his war by their fellow Americans? Probably not - since Bush's actions - as always - are going to speak louder than his words, and - as always - his action is to demand that those protesters he's so welcoming towards are kept as far away from him as possible.

Who's hugging now?

Andrew Rosenthal has a moving editorial about the way the Bush administration is trying to keep any concrete reminders of just how many of our young men and women have for Bush's Folly. The administration, however, apparently views the idea of having someone of appropriate stature greet the families coming to claim the bodies of their loved ones as a matter of convenience.

Some Republicans say it would take up too much of the president's time to attend military funerals or meet the coffins returning from Iraq. "They're coming back continually," the conservative commentator Bay Buchanan said on CNN on Tuesday. "The president cannot be flying up there every single week."

Why not? Except for when he's out of the country, he seems to be able to fly anywhere else he wants to in order to hold fund-raisers, and he had enough time to take the entire month of August as a vacation. Why, then, can't he squeeze in time to take even a few minutes to meet with the families of the soldiers he's killed?

Back in December, Bush didn't seem to think he'd have a problem with this part of the job. Speaking in Washington DC on December 13, he made a statement that was quickly added to the catalogue of his oddly mangled quotes - but the point of the comment was that he has a serious responsibility when it comes to the commitment of troops:

"And there's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids on the death of their loved ones. Others hug, but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug, and that's me, and I know what it's like."

Now that he's faced with those mothers, widows and kids he said he knew he'd have to hug, he turns his tail and runs. Not surprising for someone who went AWOL from a National Guard unit.

Bush wants to prevent protests in UK

Not content to just try and squelch protests by people opposed to his regime or his policies here at home, Bush is now trying to prevent any protests against him during his vist to London.

American officials want a virtual three-day shutdown of central London in a bid to foil disruption of the visit by anti-war protesters. They are demanding that police ban all marches and seal off the city centre.

But senior Yard officers say the powers requested by US security chiefs would be unprecedented on British soil. While the Met wants to prevent violence, it is sensitive to accusations of trying to curtail legitimate protest.

The stated justification for the demand is that terrorists could use the crowds as cover for launching an attack against Bush, but given his history of insisting that all protesters here in the States be kept in areas where he can neither see nor hear them shows that his inability to face criticism is, at the very least, a significant part of the reason. According to the article, White House officials have already conceded that it is a factor.

Secrecy surrounds his itinerary during the trip, which starts on 19 November. He will stay at Buckingham Palace and his staff want The Mall, Whitehall and part of the City closed. Besides provoking a civil liberties backlash, the Met fears such a move would cause traffic chaos and incur huge loss of business across the capital.

White House officials have already vetoed the traditional drive in an open carriage along the Mall. They fear it would make Mr Bush too vulnerable to attack or confrontations over British support for the US in Iraq.

Anti-war groups such as the Stop The War Coalition, and the Muslim Association of Britain, have made no secret of their wish to harass Mr Bush wherever he goes. But they insist they are only planning "non-violent direct action".

This kind of behaviour is just embarrassing, really. The British law-enforcement services have to deal with protecting not just members of the British government - whom a lot of people get upset at (as with any government, really), but they also have to help with protecting the Royal Family - who certainly would be a nice symbolic hit for any of a number of groups around the world. They've been dealing with terrorism related to the problems in Ireland for decades. But Bush doesn't think he'll be safe unless all protesting crowds are kept far away from him - and doesn't seem to care what problems it might cause for his hosts. Nice way to show confidence in our allies, eh?

Link via Byte Back

More on Bush stiffing the tortured soldiers

I posted earlier today about how the Bush administration is trying to prevent 17 soldiers who were awarded close to $1 billion by the courts as compensation from frozen Iraqi assets for tortured that they suffered during the first Gulf War. Tom Tomorrow posted the following excerpt from a morning press gaggle in which Scott McClellan attempts to present the White House's position on the issue. It seem that it isn't so much that the men don't deserve any money, but rather appears to be that since "no amount of money" could make up for their suffering, its better if the Bush administration just keeps it to use for the reconstruction of Iraq and the soldiers get nothing at all.

That's my take, anyway - can you make anything less vile out of it?

Q Scott, there are 17 former POWs from the first Gulf War who were tortured and filed suit against the regime of Saddam Hussein. And a judge has ordered that they are entitled to substantial financial damages. What is the administration's position on that? Is it the view of this White House that that money would be better spent rebuilding Iraq rather than going to these former POWs?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know that I view it in those terms, David. I think that the United States -- first of all, the United States condemns in the strongest terms the brutal torture to which these Americans were subjected. They bravely and heroically served our nation and made sacrifices during the Gulf War in 1991, and there is simply no amount of money that can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. That's what our view is.

Q But, so -- but isn't it true that this White House --

Q They think they're is an --

Q Excuse me, Helen -- that this White House is standing in the way of them getting those awards, those financial awards, because it views it that money better spent on rebuilding Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, there's simply no amount of money that can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering --

Q: Why won't you spell out what your position is?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm coming to your question. Believe me, I am. Let me finish. Let me start over again, though. No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of a very brutal regime, at the hands of Saddam Hussein. It was determined earlier this year by Congress and the administration that those assets were no longer assets of Iraq, but they were resources required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq. But again, there is simply no amount of compensation that could ever truly compensate these brave men and women.

Q: Just one more. Why would you stand in the way of at least letting them get some of that money?

MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree with the way you characterize it.

Q: But if the law that Congress passed entitles them to access frozen assets of the former regime, then why isn't that money, per a judge's order, available to these victims?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's why I pointed out that that was an issue that was addressed earlier this year. But make no mistake about it, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the torture that these brave individuals went through --

Q: -- you don't think they should get money?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- at the hands of Saddam Hussein. There is simply no amount of money that can truly compensate those men and women who heroically served --

Q: That's not the issue --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- who heroically served our nation.

Q: Are you opposed to them getting some of the money?

MR. McCLELLAN: And, again, I just said that that had been addressed earlier this year.

Q: No, but it hasn't been addressed. They're entitled to the money under the law. The question is, is this administration blocking their effort to access some of that money, and why?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't view it that way at all. I view it the way that I stated it, that this issue was --

Q: But you are opposed to them getting the money.

MR. McCLELLAN: This issue was addressed earlier this year, and we believe that there's simply no amount of money that could truly compensate these brave men and women for what they went through and for the suffering that they went through at the hands of Saddam Hussein --

Q: So no money.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and that's my answer.

When McClellan talks about it having been "addressed earlier this year" he's apparently referring to the fact that, just before the war started, American confiscated all of the frozen Iraqi assets and once Saddam was ousted, removed Iraq from the list of terror-sponsoring countries. The law that allowed the suit only permits suits to be filed against countries that are considered sponsors of terrorism. The administration's position seems to be that, even though the suit was filed before the assets were confiscated and Iraq was reclassified, it appears that the Bush administration is asserting that since the assets no longer belonged to Iraq and since Iraq was no longer considered a terror-sponsoring country by the time the verdict was rendered, the soldiers didn't have any real right to win the case - their claims were no longer valid.

Obviously, I disagree with the government's position, and McClellan's tap-dance during the press gaggle is just pathetic.

Stiffing soldiers

In 1996 a law was passed allowing suits to be filed for injuries suffered at the hand of the foreign governments who had been designated as sponsors of terrorism. Since Iraq had been designated as such, a group of 17 soldiers who had been tortured while held captive by the Iraqi government during the first Gulf War filed a suit for compensation for their injuries. The courts found in their favour and the group was awarded nearly $1 billion which was to be paid for from Iraqi assets that have been frozen for a number of years.

For most of the men, the purpose of the suit was to recognize that they had been tortured by the Iraqi government. It was a validation of their experience. It said that yes, they had been tortured; yes, the Iraqi government was responsible and yes, the Iraqi government should pay.

The Bush administration, however, says that the soldiers are not entitled to an award because the frozen Iraqi assets were converted to American assets shortly before the war via an executive order, and once Saddam was removed from power, Iraq was taken off the list of countries that sponsor terrorism. They also maintain that if the confiscated Iraqi assets are used to pay for this war, it would damage the ability of our government to rebuild Iraq.

"No amount of money can truly compensate these brave men and women for the suffering that they went through at the hands of a truly brutal regime," said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. "It was determined earlier this year by Congress and the administration that those assets were no longer assets of Iraq, but they were resources required for the urgent national security needs of rebuilding Iraq."

Part of the problem, it seems, is one of timing. The soldiers filed their suit in April, when the assets were still considered as Iraqi assets and, with Saddam still in charge, Iraq on the list of terror-sponsoring governments. The Iraqi government never responded to the suit and in July, the judge ordered a default judgment in favour of the soldiers. By that time, Bush had converted the Iraqi assets and removed Iraq from the terrorism list.

Still, I find it troublesome that the Bush administration feels we can afford to retain all of the massive tax cuts he gave to his wealthy friends, but we can't spare $1 billion in confiscated Iraqi assets to try and compensate some of the soldiers who fought and suffered terribly during the first Gulf War.

I find that every time the administration says they have to cut back on some benefit for the military or even for the civilian population of this country on the grounds that we can't "afford" it due to the war, but does nothing to roll back any of the tax cuts that have recently been enacted, I get a bit angrier. The tax cuts totaled around $450 billion. If the administration would just repeal even a quarter of the tax cut, we'd have the full $87 billion for reconstruction - and then some. And we wouldn't have to shaft any soldiers to do it.

Land shark

Everyone's heard of pool sharks and loan sharks - people who are known to make large amounts of money through trickery, cheating, extortion and/or intimidation. Well, there's another kind of shark that needs to be added to that list - land sharks. These are people who prey on individual land owners and coerce them into either selling their property at greatly reduced prices or arrange to have the government steal it out from under them. One of the more well-known land sharks is our current President - George W. Bush.

Back in the 1990's, he bought a part-ownership in the Texas Rangers and, along with his partners, got the state of Texas to help them steal 270 acres of land from the landowners in and around Arlington. They only really needed about 17 acres to build the stadium they wanted, but grabbed the extra land anyway and turned it into commercial development. Bush put down about $600,000 for his investment in the team, and when it came time for him to be cash out, his share was worth $14.9 million - most of that from the the increased value of the land for and around the stadium.

There's now talk that the Texas Rangers organization is wanting to donate some of that land for George W. Bush's Presidential Library. Over at the Mahablog, Barbara's feeling a bit thrilled at the prospect - not because she thinks its a good idea, but because it gives her a chance to revisit the story of how the Texas Rangers got the land, how they stiffed Arlington and how no one seems to be paying any attention at all to the story. She's got a lot of good information together, and when you're done reading, I suspect that, like me, you'll be wondering why this has gone without scrutiny for so long. It sure makes me wonder what would happen if the tables were turned - if, by some odd chance, a Democratic governor-turned-president were to possibly have been involved in a somewhat shady land deal....

Rumsfeld in denial

I think Donald Rumsfeld has simply gone around the bend. I'm not sure how else to explain this. The Ocala Star Banner has an article today about how Rumsfeld is now trying to deny having made some of the statements he's on record as having said prior to the war.

You know, I'm not sure which bothers me more - that he'd try something this crazy, or that he apparently thinks he's got a reasonable chance of getting away with it. Either way, it's pretty damn pathetic and says a lot about how desparate he must be feeling if he's going to put what credibility he has left on the line like that.

UPDATE: Tom Tomorrow reminds us of the predictive power of satire with a pointer to this comic from last month.

Update on the memo dispute

Ok, I was wrong when I wrote that the Senate Intelligence Committee might be closed down because of Republican "outrage" over the Democrat memo about how they might be able to get a more thorough investigation done. Apparently, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist already has shut it down, and says it won't start attending to business again until the memo's author has been unmasked and the Dems have apologized and disavowed it.

Angry about a leaked Democratic memo, the Republican leadership of the Senate yesterday took the unusual step of canceling all business of the committee investigating prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called on the author of the memo -- which laid out a possible Democratic strategy to extend the investigation to include the White House and executive branch -- to "identify himself or herself . . . disavow this partisan attack in its entirety" and deliver "a personal apology" to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Only if those steps are taken, Frist said, "will it be possible for the committee to resume its work in an effective and bipartisan manner -- a manner deserving of the confidence of other members of the Senate and the executive branch."

Interesting that the administration will resort to tactics of this nature to find out who wrote a memo that proposes the kind of strategy an opposition party should be considering, and which doesn't advocate anything unethical or illegal - yet no one in the administration has yet found an effective tactic to find out who leaked the name of a covert CIA agent in an apparently fit of pique.

The memo controversy

I've not said much yet about the Democrat memo that has Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee all up in arms because I just haven't been sure what to say. I mean, the memo itself isn't all that bad - it basically just says that, while the Democrats on the Committee have had some luck in getting Republican cooperation, it still seems like the Republicans are stonewalling on some important avenues of investigation because they want to protect the President, so Democrats should be prepared to do some investigating on their own if necessary and use other legal and legitimate tactics to press the issue. That's it. And yet the Republicans are so "outraged" by the existence of the memo that there have been threats made saying that the committee could be closed down (at least temporarily) if the Democrats don't apologize for, well, acting like an opposition party should.

The heart of the matter is that the Republicans only want to look at the intelligence gathered by the CIA and other intelligence resources and in what ways it might have been deficient, but they don't want to look at the other problem - which is what the administration did with the intelligence it was given and whether they manipulated, misrepresented or distorted the evidence in order to win support for the war in Iraq. The Democrats rightly think that those are areas that should be explored because it's just as important an issue as whether the intelligence given to the administration was accurate or not. But because the Republicans refuse to even consider investigating that aspect of the story, the Democrats have been trying to find way to essentially force their hand - which isn't a bad thing for them to do.

Kevin at Calpundit has one of the best commentaries on the memo I've seen online yet. He goes through the memo section by section and provides a "translation" for the bureaucratically-impaired.

Shutting the door to Democrats

The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.

So begins an article in todays Washington Post about how the Bush administration has decided it avoid dealing with queries from Democratic legislators.

A new rule will now require any questions for the House and Senate Appropriations committees to first go through the committee chairmen - who are Republicans. If the chair doesn't think the question is appropriate, it just won't get asked.

This came up after House Democrats tried asking how much it had cost to make and hang the "Mission Accomplished" banner for the President's aircraft carrier landing in May.

The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled "congressional questions" to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing "the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process," he wrote: "Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee."

He said this would limit "duplicate requests" and help answer questions "in a timely fashion."

Despite the White House's attempt to portray this as a move designed to increase efficiency, even a congressional representative at the American Enterprise Institute - a neocon think tank - says "This is obviously an excuse to avoid providing information about some of the things the Democrats are asking for."

The article doesn't indicate if this new methodology will remain a rule just for the Appropriations committees or if it will be expanded to include other committees as well, but I suspect if this change doesn't create too much of an outrage, the White House may try expanding it to include additional committees where they would find it useful to be able to duck questions from their opponents.

Another transcript discrepancy

Gunther at the League of Liberals' newest member blog, The Gunther Concept, has found yet another example of the White House cleaning up a transcript.

The basic gist is that at a recent press event with President Bush and Paul Bremer, a reporter had asked a two-part question and tried to ask a follow-up after the President had answered the first two parts. Gunther thought he heard the President cut off the reporter, telling her "That was your question", but when he looked at the White House transcript later, that part of the exchange was not included. He then located a transcript done by CNN which showed that Bush had, in fact, cut the reporter off rather abruptly, telling her "No, that's your question." The links above go to the actual pages, or if you'd like a quick comparison, I've made screenshots and highlighted the relevant section: [White House version] [CNN version]

Now, leaving out those few words isn't an earth-shattering event. It doesn't even change the meaning of anything that was said. But the way the President actually handled the situation was, well, rude, and apparently the White House doesn't want to admit that the President is sometimes a bit ill-tempered.

I suspect at least some of the President's supporters will try to defend Bush's treatment of the reporter by saying that she'd already had two questions and shouldn't have tried to ask a third. And that may well be a reasonable response to his behaviour, but it misses the point. The issue here isn't whether the reporter was out of line or not, nor is it whether Bush was rude or not - it's that what he actually said was left out of the transcript.

Just like the change to the Australian speech was apparently intended to avoid admitting that the President misspoke, this change is also about maintaining the President's image. The problem is, the President does make mistakes and he is ill-tempered from time to time. People know it, they hear it and they see it. Trying to hide it in the 'official' record doesn't really do a whole lot to make him look better, it just makes him look even more petty than he does already.

The 'not an imminent threat' meme

For a group of people who threw such a hissy fit about Clinton trying to determine the meaning of "is" and other such word trickery (which I personally cared for as little from him as I do anyone else), the conservatives have sure been squawking a lot about which specific words were actually used in describing the impending Iraq war. In the most recent issue "The Hill", Josh Marshall decides to poke a few holes in their current favourite whipping boy - the idea that no one ever claimed that Saddam was an 'imminent threat'.

Let's start by looking at what the president's spokesmen said about the "imminent threat" claim before things in Iraq started going sour.

Last October, a reporter put this to Ari Fleischer: "Ari, the president has been saying that the threat from Iraq is imminent, that we have to act now to disarm the country of its weapons of mass destruction, and that it has to allow the U.N. inspectors in, unfettered, no conditions, so forth."

Fleischer's answer? "Yes."

[...]

A month after the war, another reporter asked Fleischer, "Well, we went to war, didn't we, to find these - because we said that these weapons were a direct and imminent threat to the United States? Isn't that true?"

Fleischer's answer? "Absolutely."

I could go on. But I trust you get the point.

[NOTE: Just for the sake of reference, and so that the quotes could be seen in context, I've looked up the quotes from Ari Fleischer on the White House website so. The first, from October 16, 2002 can be found here, and the second from May 7, 2003 can be found here.]

So, whether or not anyone in the administration actually said "Saddam is an imminent threat," when asked if Saddam was an imminent threat, the White House's official spokesman - who, as any good spokesperson is wont to do, takes great care to make sure that any questions he's asked are first framed in such a way that there can be no misunderstanding either the answer itself or what the answer is specifically in response to - twice responded affirmatively to questions confirming that Saddam was considered to be an imminent threat. If "Saddam is an imminent threat" was a message that the White House did not want to send - if it was not something the administration believed and intended to communicate - Fleischer would either have taken the opportunity to have that portion of the question clarified or rephrased before answering, or he would have rephrased the question in giving his answer to make it clear which part he was agreeing to and which part he wasn't.

Fleischer didn't do that, however. He answered the questions exactly as asked. Some may try to argue that Fleischer "misspoke", but if that's the case, why was no correction ever issued or any kind of discipline administered. Since there was no indication from anyone else within the administration that Fleischer was wrong, the only rational assumption would be that his statements did, in fact, accurately reflect the administration view. If that's not the case - if we cannot take something like a confirmation by the White House press secretary on the reason we went to war as being an accurate reflection of the administration's position - why should we take the press secretary's word on anything else?

No, either the press secretary is a useless position whose statements cannot be trusted, or the people who are trying to claim that the administration never said Saddam was an imminent threat are completely full of crap. I think I have a pretty good idea of which it is, don't you?

Update on the 'see' vs 'seek' change in the White House transcripts

Josh Marshall has the scoop on the altered transcript of Bush's speech to the Australian Parliament. As noted previously, when giving the speech, he said that "We see a China.....", but after the statement was widely questions (because it just didn't really make any sense), the copy of the speech at the White House website was changed to read "We seek a China...."

According to one of Josh's sources, the President actually was supposed to say "seek", but screwed it up, and used the wrong word. Marshall notes that, oddly, when the flap over the statement first arose, the White House tried to defend the statement. At some point, though, they apparently figured out that Bush had read the speech wrong, and rather than just issue a statement saying Bush had inadvertently misspoken, they said nothing, and just changed the White House version of the transcript to read what he was supposed to have said, as opposed to what he actually did say.

I just really don't "get" this administration sometimes. What would have been the harm of issuing a statement simply acknowledging that the President misspoke? If they wanted the official transcript to reflect what he was supposed to have said rather than what he did say, they could simply have put an asterisk after the word "see" in the transcript with a footnote saying that the word should have been "seek". As it stands, there are now two "official" records of the speech, one on the White House website showing what the President was supposed to have said, and one in the official record of Australia's parliament showing what he actually did did say.

[Note: The above link goes to the official Australian record at their website. White I doubt that will be modified the way the White House record was, I've gone ahead and saved a copy anway, which can be found here. In either case, to see the sentence in question, go to page 10 of the document, and it's about 1/3 of the way down the first column.]

At any rate, in the overall scheme of things this may not be as bad of a "revision" as some of the others we've seen from this administration, but at the core, it's still just another example of how the White House can't tolerate being seen as having made an error, even one as simple as inadvertantly using the wrong word in a speech.

Nithing

Yes, that last post has me royally pissed off. It's been over and hour and my blood is still boiling. Then I read this quote of his, from a comment he made about the soldiers that were killed in the Chinook incident over the weekend.

"We mourn every loss," the president said. "We honor every name. We grieve with every family. And we will always be grateful that liberty has found such brave defenders."

He couldn't even come up with an original sentiment for the occasion - he'd used that line before - in a speech he gave at Pease Air National Guard Base in Portsmouth, NH.

The little asshole that's supposedly running our country [into the ground] may say that he "honours" those who die in the war, but he refuses to treat their bodies - or their families - with the traditional honours because it might make his regime look bad. He and his administration have worked to cut both imminent-danger and family-separation pay* (though the Senate has, just today, passed a bill that would increase these benefits to those in the military and their families), as well making budgetary requests that fail to provide them with equipment such as body armour that might help save the lives of some of our soldiers.

He lies to get us into the war and tries to spin everything so he can claim it's going well. His administration's webmasters are cleansing stories and articles to change what they did say to what they wish they had said or think they should have said.

Bush HAS no honour. He is a nithing. I only hope that when his time comes (naturally and in due course - I have no desire to see him killed or injured) he will be treated with all of the cumulative "honour" he has shown the young men and women whom he has sent off to war. I hope the emptiness of his words will be reflected in the emptiness of his eternal fate.

[*Note: One of the things discussed in the article is that hospitals are charging soldiers $8.10 per day for their meals. There has been a lot of disagreement over whether this charge is fair or unfair to the soldiers. What is happening is that when a soldier is in the hospital or otherwise away from his base or other normal source of military food service he has an $8.10 per diem added to his base pay to help cover the cost of any meals he has to purchase himself. The meals provided in the hospital, however, are already paid for by the military, so when the soldier gets the per diem in his check, he's being given money for meals he got that were already paid for. That money is then added back into the hospital bill so that that the soldier is still getting his meals free, but he's not getting "extra" money for them. Some think this is rather chintzy on the part of the military, but with as many injuries as happening in the war, the extra $8.10 per soldier per day could add up fairly fast.]

The Dover Test

Atrios points to an article at CNN in which Mark Shields hits the nail on the head about Bush's banning of the welcoming ceremony for the bodies of fallen soldiers from the Iraqi war.

WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- At Harvard on January 19, 2000, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton provided a valuable standard, both to determine whether the United States ought to send the nation's warriors into combat and to enlist "the support of the American people as well as the Congress" needed to sustain that involvement. In Shelton's judgment, such a grave decision :

"(M)ust be subjected to what I call the 'Dover test.' Is the American public prepared for the sight of our most precious resource coming home in flag-draped caskets into Dover Air Force Base in Delaware -- which is a point entry for our Armed Forces?

This is an issue, I think, that should be raised early on. It should be discussed, and it should be decided by our political leadership before any operation begins."

In the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration chose instead to duck Shelton's "Dover test." The scene so familiar to older Americans -- of the military honor guard in white gloves, respectfully accompanying from the aircraft to the waiting loved ones the remains of the fallen warrior in the coffin covered by Old Glory, often with a military band offering an appropriately solemn piece -- was simply banned. George W. Bush's war against Iraq could not flunk the Dover test because there would be no Dover test.

[...] Where is the outrage on the part of the press? Are we lapdogs? The administration in full spin control insists that the reality on the ground in Iraq is much more positive than the press reports. Yet the administration denies reality at home -- the reality of the recent heroism of this nation's fallen sons and daughters.

By official government policy,. there is no band to welcome them home. No honor guard to present the folded flag to their widow and orphan, to make certain the family knows that their loss is also their country's loss, that they do not weep alone. It is a cruel and ugly policy that robs the patriot of the glory and public honor he has earned and deserves.

The time is long past in 2003 to take the Dover test.

More governmental scrubbing

More evidence today of the government scrubbing various web pages of potentially embarrassing information.

1. Kevin Drum at Calpundit notes that the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) has removed the transcript of an interview by Nightline's Ted Koppel in which USAID Representative Andrew Natsios says that the cost to US taxpayers for rebuilding Iraq will be right around $1.7 billion once international assistance and oil revenues are taken into account.

TED KOPPEL
(Off Camera) All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?

ANDREW NATSIOS
Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it's up and running and there's a new government that's been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They're going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.

Kevin also points to a Google cache of the page in question. I've made some .gif screenshots of the page in case the Google cache gets overwritten or otherwise disappears (I'm not suggesting that it would disappear by nefarious means, I just don't know how long Google keeps their cache pages, and I've had times when the cache didn't exist any longer for pages I was trying to find.) I've also made a screenshot of the page at the USAID site where the article used to be, which now shows up as a 404.

On the screenshots, I've pointed an arrow over to the URL in the address page on the 404, so you can verify that it's the page in question, and on the Google cache, I've got the URL highlighted in the status bar showing what page the Google cache was taken from.

Google cache screenshots: page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | page 4 | page 5 | page 6
USAID original page, now 404

2. Josh Marshall points out that in the original transcript of Bush's recent speech to the Australian Parliament, it'd reported one of his quotes as "We see a China that is stable and prosperous, a nation that respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people." This quote was widely reported, including in a copy of the transcript posted by FOX News.

Thinking the quote had sounded odd, Josh made a .PDF of the original transcript as posted by the White House website. If you scroll down near the bottom, you'll see the original quote, complete with the "We see...." phrasing.

Now, take a look at the current web page showing the same speech. It NOW reads "We seek a China that is stable and prosperous -- a nation that respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people." As Josh says:

Now, I've heard some speculate that the president had meant to say 'seek' but somehow misspoke or perhaps was supposed to say 'seek'.

Maybe.

But I find that a touch dubious because I think that on such a delicate matter the White House would check the 'transcript' against the prepared speech that the president read from.

I've made screenshots of the revised page in case things ever get changed again. The quote in question is on page 5.

Archived copy of original page .pdf (in case something happens to Josh's)
Screenshots of "corrected" page: page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | page 4 | page 5 | page 6

[UPDATE - 4:26pm 11/5 - Josh Marshall has the scoop on what happened with the Austrailian speech. Apparently Bush was supposed to say "seek", but flubbed it. The White House initially defended the "see" version, until they realized he'd made a mistake, and then they just quietly changed the transcript to reflect what he should have said, as opposed to what he really did say. Not the worst case of revisionism, but still not great. More of my thoughts here, if you're interested.]

3. Slate's Fred Kaplan writes about a report originally posted on the Center for Army Lessons Learned website, which has since been removed:

Two pieces of evidence shine all too glaringly: 1) an official, unclassified, and highly critical report on the U.S. Army's inefficient-to-shoddy intelligence practices in Iraq and Afghanistan, written by the Center for Army Lessons Learned in Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.; and 2) the removal of this report from the center's Web site, after the Washington Post published a story summarizing its contents.

Global Security.org has maintained a copy of the report on their side, and I've copied one to my own files as a backup.

These can be added to the apparently growing list of pages that have been changed or removed after they've become embarrassing to the President or the administration. The most well-known of these incidents is, of course, the changing of the White House website pages referring to Bush's May 1st speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

I find the White House making these kind of changes to be a serious violation of the public trust. The documents on that site are to be a reflection of what our government has said and done, not what they wish they had said and done or what they now realize they should have said or done. Changing the truth after the fact is "revisionist history" at its worse, and seems to be one of the few things this administration seems to do well at.

While I'd hate to have to see our congressional leaders waste their time dealing with an issue like this, I'm beginning to think that maybe there needs to be some kind of legislation put in place that would disallow the changing of any web pages on any official government site without some kind of notation being left behind to explain what the change was and why it was made. It's the least we should expect from a government that has a responsibility to keep us informed.

What's really sad is that these are just the one's we catching. There's so much information being put up on the websites - and possibly being changed - every day that it's almost impossible to track it all.

If you're interested in more about issues related to secrecy, be sure to check out Stephen Pizzo's "Hiding the Truth", a report on secrecy in the Bush administration.

Update - looks like Mark Kleiman is on the case, too - he has information on the Center for Army Lessons Learned report and the Slate article as well.

UPDATED 6:24am 11/4/03 - I neglected to include a few necessary links, so I went back and added them. Sorry 'bout that!

Wolfowitz over the line

There are a couple quotes from Paul Wolfowitz being spread throught the liberal blogs today. Most of the sites are 2 questions and excerpts from Wolfowitz's answers from a recent Georgetown Q&A session. I am going to go ahead and post both the questions and his complete answers, so that it's clear that the outrageousness of his answers isn't due to selective editing, but is because Wolfowitz quite simply crossed a line when he told these two people that they don't love America. [Note: Emphasis added to make the specific offending statements easier to locate.]

Q: Hi, Mr. Wolfowitz. My name is Ruthy Coffman. I think I speak for many of us here when I say that your policies are deplorable. They're responsible for the deaths of innocents and the disintegration of American civil liberties. [Applause] We are tired, Secretary Wolfowitz, of being feared and hated by the world. We are tired of watching Americans and Iraqis die, and international institutions cry out in anger against us. We are simply tired of your policies. We hate them, and we will never stop opposing them. We will never tire or falter in our search for justice. And in the name of this ideal and the ideal of freedom, we assembled a message for you that was taken away from us and that message says that the killing of innocents is not the solution, but rather the problem. Thank you. [Applause and jeers]

Wolfowitz: I have to infer from that that you would be happier if Saddam Hussein were still in power. [Applause]

I wish you could have come with me in July when we visited a little Marsh Arab village called al Amarah near the Iranian border. To get there you have to fly over desert the size of New Jersey. It is a man-made desert, created by Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the Gulf War. For thousands of years it's been a lush marsh. The Marsh Arabs are one of the oldest continuous human civilizations. They had figured out how to get milk out of water buffalo by breeding a new kind of water buffalo. It's not a small achievement. They produced some very large percentage of the vegetables for the entire country. They were peaceful people, but they also provided a refuge for the rebels that Saddam Hussein feared. So in the true traditions of Nebuchadnezzar, he simply proceeded to wipe them out by drying them out, by creating an environmental catastrophe.

There were half a million Marsh Arabs in 1991. The estimates today are somewhere between 40,000 and 200,000. When we got off the helicopters, the population was overwhelmingly women and children. The children's hair had that ugly rusty color that indicates severe malnutrition. But they were smiling and cheering and saying "Thank you Bush", "Down with Saddam" and finally hopeful that they might have a future.

For most of the Marsh Arabs liberation was too late, but for those people it came just in time. I think you ought to think about that. They're innocents as well. Far, far more innocent.

This has been a war that's been -- War is an ugly business. It is a brutal business. And a lot of those innocents died, by the way, because Saddam Hussein put his weapons in hospitals and other places. But it's ugly and it's brutal. But the alternative was far, far uglier, far more brutal. There's no question about that in my mind. [Applause]

Q: I'd just like to say that people like Ruthy and myself have always opposed Saddam Hussein, especially when Saddam Hussein was being funded by the United States throughout the '80s. And -- [Applause] And after the killings of the Kurds when the United States increased aid to Iraq. We were there opposing him as well. People like us were there. We are for democracy. And I have a question.

What do you plan to do when Bush is defeated in 2004 and you will no longer have the power to push forward the project for New American Century's policy of American military and economic dominance over the people of the world? [Applause]

Wolfowitz: I don't know if it was just Freudian or you intended to say it that way, but you said you opposed Saddam Hussein especially when the United States supported him.

It seems to me that the north star of your comment is that you dislike this country and its policies. [Applause] And it seems to me a time to have supported the United States and to push the United States harder was in 1991 when Saddam Hussein was slaughtering those innocents so viciously.

Look, let's back up a little bit. You and I should both calm down a little here.

Q: Okay. [Laughter]

Wolfowitz: This is not ideological, I don't believe. I think it is a moral issue. I respect the fact that you and the last questioner have deep moral concerns. War is an ugly thing. I agree with that. But butchers like Saddam Hussein are incredibly ugly.

I've known a lot of dictators fairly up close and personal. I take some pride in having helped to get rid of Ferdinand Marcos. I tried to get some changes in Indonesia and I took some pleasure when President Suharto left. But to quote that famous Vice Presidential debate, or to paraphrase it from a few years ago, Ferdinand Marcos was no Saddam Hussein. Ferdinand Marcos was not responsible for the deaths of a million Muslims.

I don't think there's much question here about the morality of having gotten rid of that regime. I also think that it's worth stopping and thinking from the point of view of the Iraqi people, and I'm not saying that they're the ones who should vote in our election. We should decide our President based on who Americans think is good for the American people. But I have to tell you that it sends a very unsettling message to Iraqis that our elections might decide their future.

When I visited the city of Najaf in July, met with the town council, and as I guess most of you, a well-informed audience know, this is one of the two holy cities of Shia Islam. It was pretty remarkable to be sitting with a town council that included one woman, a religious cleric as the head, and about 15 or 16 professionals for the most part in the rest of the group.

One of these professionals, I can't remember whether he was an architect or an engineer, asked me a two-part question. Part two, I'll start with, borders on the paranoid. He said are you Americans just holding Saddam Hussein as a trump card over our head? You may think that's paranoid, but if you'd been through what they went through in 1991, the suspicions about our intentions run very deep. The fear of what can happen to them if that regime comes back is palpable and enormous.

But the first question wasn't paranoid at all. In fact it was pretty sophisticated. He said what's going to happen to us if George Bush loses the election?

I told him as best I could, and I still believe it, that at bottom, no matter how partisan we get in our political debates, the American people stay to a certain center. If you look at the perseverance we had over many years of the Cold War, in spite of some pretty fierce policy debates, the United States really did stay the course. I think I did a pretty good job, maybe not of convincing him completely, but convincing him that we were with the people of Iraq until they succeeded.

I think this Madrid Conference sends a message that it's not just the United States. It's 70 countries in the world. And the fact that Najaf is now under the direction of a Spanish brigade with a Polish commander probably sends a good message.

But I have to tell you that when they hear the message that we might not be there next year they get very scared, and that fear leads them not to give us information about where the bad people are. It leads them not to want to serve on the town councils. It leads them not to want to risk their lives as policemen.

There are thousands of Iraqis right now who are risking their lives for future freedom for that country, and I think it would be good if they got an unequivocal message of support from this country. Thank you. [Applause]

I wonder if this would be a good time to remind Wolfowitz about his statement earlier this year in an interview with Sam Tannenhaus from Vanity Fair, where he explains that, while the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein was a serious concern, on its own, it doesn't justify a war of this nature. Here is the section from the DOD transcript of the interview as posted at the DoD News site. I've highlighted the most relevent comments.

Wolfowitz: [...] 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 -- hold on one second --

(Pause)

Kellems: Sam there may be some value in clarity on the point that it may take years to get post-Saddam Iraq right. It can be easily misconstrued, especially when it comes to --

Wolfowitz: -- 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. Sorry, hold on again.

Kellems: By the way, it's probably the longest uninterrupted phone conversation I've witnessed, so --

Q: This is extraordinary.

Kellems: You had good timing.

Q: I'm really grateful.

Wolfowitz: To wrap it up.

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 other words, had it not been for the issue of weapons of mass destruction (which we still haven't found any evidence of) and Saddam's links to terrorism (which even Wolfowitz acknowledges were the subject of strong disagreement), it wouldn't have been worth sacrificing our soldiers just to free the Iraqi people from Saddam's tyranny.

Does that mean he would be happier if Saddam were still in power?

White House web site and revisions

Via the Dead Parrot Society comes a very interesting piece by David Finley on the poor management of the White House website including unnecessary duplicates of many documents, at least 2 documents that are very difficult to find (one of which is the actual transcript from Bush May 1 address aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln), some odd little modifications and some comments on the robots.txt file (which, according to Keith Spurgeon, who originally discovered the problem, has now been corrected).

"Revisionist" insiders at work on the White House web site?
Or - How NOT to Run a Web Site
Based on recent reports that access to some documents on the White House web site for indexing by search engines was being blocked, I undertook an investigation of the matter, and found that the situation with White House online documents is actually far worse than was previously thought.

Short Summary
In this "digital age", the White House online public documents could be the primary, authoritative record of public information released by the Executive Branch. Those documents should be managed in such a way that their historical integrity is transparently verifiable by the public to whom those documents are addressed.

However, the document management system that has been put in place by this White House involves changing a substantial portion of the source documents on at least a monthly basis, completely unnecessarily, in order to update unrelated information that is displayed on each page along with the original source material.

Whether by design, or as merely an unintended consequence, the White House has thereby made it extremely difficult for those who value truth and integrity to determine the extent to which this administration, that has shown reckless disregard for truth and integrity, has been changing its own written record as it goes along.

Check out the whole thing. It's a bit on the tech-y side, but it's still very interesting - and in a few places a bit amusing. As David says:

The Federal budget has tanked; Afghanistan is a basket case; Iraq is a terrible, expensive, and lethal disaster; the different parts of the Bush regime are engaged in internecine combat to the finish -- why should we expect the White House web site to be anything but a mess?

Bush's 'decries' Boykin statements

President Bush actually spoke in response to General Boykin's controversial comments today, but his statement, offered at a dinner he was hosting for Islamic leaders, was somewhat tepid:

It's not what Americans think. Americans think terrorists are evil people who have hijacked a great religion. That's why Mr Boykin's comments were, uh, General Boykin's comments don't reflect the administration's comments.

By the way, there's an IG (Inspector General) investigation going on inside the Defence Department now about that.

He doesn't reflect my point of view or the view of this administration. Our war is not against the Muslim faith. As a matter of fact, as you mentioned tonight, and we're celebrating the Iftar dinner with Muslim leaders. We welcome Muslims in our country.

The LA Times says that this is the strongest administration response to date to disclosures of Boykin's frequent appearances before religious groups at which he characterized the war on terrorism as a battle between Judeo-Christian tradition and "Satan." The strongest? Methinks the administration could use a workout at the old Charles Atlas gyms.

The Times also note that Boykin's comments have made things difficult for Bush:

With hundreds of supportive calls coming into the Pentagon and Bush facing a reelection campaign in which he'll seek the help of Christian conservatives, it might be out of the question for the administration to fire Boykin.

"Gen. Boykin is kind of the living embodiment of a key Republican electoral constituency. So forcing him out would not be a very bright move with elections approaching," said military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based public policy group.

Unfortunately, when it comes to doing what is right or avoiding any actions that might anger potential Bush voters, Bush's re-election ambitions win out every time. I know that's probably true for most politicians, but I have to keep hoping that occasionally what's right will win out.

Update on the robots.txt story

The website 2600 has done a bit of additional research on the White House's modifications to the robot.txt file at the whitehouse.gov website:

According to White House spokesman Jimmy Orr, the blocking of search engines is not an attempt to ensure future revisions will remain undetected. Rather, he explained, they "have an Iraq section [of the website] with a different template than the main site." Thus, for example, a press release on a meeting between President Bush and "Special Envoy" Bremer is available in the Iraq template (blocked from being indexed by search engines) or the normal White House template (available for indexing by search engines). The attempt, Mr. Orr said, was that when people search, they should not get multiple copies of the same information. Most of the "suspicious" entries in the robots.txt file do, indeed, appear to have only this effect.

According to the robots.txt of October 24, though, the In Focus: Iraq section of the site was blocked from search engines. Some of the information there does not appear to be available anywhere else on the White House site. However, it seems that, in response to inquiries from 2600 and other sources, the White House web team has recently changed their robots.txt so that these files are no longer blocked. (The current Last-Modified date on the robots.txt is 23:22 GMT, October 27th, after work on this article had already begun.)

While it's unlikely that the White House would have admitted it if it was trying to ensure that revisions would remain hidden, on it's face, the explaination offered seems at least somewhat reasonable. I'm not much of a techie, however, so I can't really evaluate it in any significant depth. I recommend reading the full article, though, for any additional information or updates that they might add.

The robot.txt revisions at the whitehouse.gov

Yesterday, Atrios posted a story about how the folks at The White House Website have changed their robots.txt file to prevent search engines from cataloging pages about Iraq. While no one is quite sure, yet, why they're doing this, one theory that has been floated is that it is to prevent those pages from being cached by Google, thus making it harder to prove that anything has been changed - such as earlier this year when they edited all the pages that has referred to Bush declaring that "combat operations" in Iraq had ended to show, instead, that Bush had said that "major combat operations" had ended.

For the record, in his original speech, Bush did say that it was "major combat operations" that had ended, but in the articles posted to the White House website and in the press releases sent out about the speech, the phrase was shortened to just "combat operations". Then, in August, a reporter asked President Bush about his having said that "combat operations" had ended, and Bush corrected him, pointing out he'd said "major combat operations". Shortly after that incident, the headlines were changed on the whitehouse.gov site. I had posted about the change at the time it occurred, and had included a few screen shots of pages that hadn't been updated yet showing the original text.

Part of what bothered me about the change was that these were copies of "press backgrounders" and such that the White House had sent out under the original headline using the shortened "combat operations", which is how the press then began referring to the situation. By going back and changing the website without noting that the original press releases had been sent out with a different phrasing in the headline, the White House is trying to erase the evidence that the use of "combat operations" instead of "major combat operations" was essentially endorsed by the White House Press Office itself, making it easier to imply that it was the press who got it wrong in the first place and that President Bush is, once again, simply being misrepresented by the media.

At any rate, this is one theory about why the White House might have decided to keep search engines out of most of the public files on Iraq, though there probably are other ways to achieve the same goal of preventing caching without blocking the files completely from search engines. Whatever the reasons, the change appears unlikely to be something that was done by accident.

Keith at bway.net appears to have made the initial discovery, and has posted two pages explaining exactly what changes were made. For those who have a fairly good technical understanding of things like a robot.txt file, he offers a technical explaination, and for those who are less familiar with Unix arcana, he has a non-technical explaination.

Whatever the reason for the change, I find it bothersome. The White House website should be easily accessible for all people. The information it contains is, obviously, publicly accessible and, one would presume, put there so that people can find out what our government has to say for itself. To systematically try and prevent external search engines from being able to find information on certain topics reduces its functionality considerably. I know for myself, I rarely go directly to the White House website to look for information unless I already know that what I'm looking for is likely to be there. More often than not, when I've found something at the White House website, its been because a Google search has sent me there to find what I'm looking for.

This tactic, though, fits well with the secretiveness and evasion that we've seen throughout the government during Bush's term. This administration doesn't seem to understand that, in America, the ability to govern is by the consent of the people, and that in order for us to give our consent, we not only need to know what the government is up to, but we have a right to know - except in cases where making certain information public would pose a threat to national security. I seriously doubt, however, that allowing publicly available articles about our activities in Iraq to be accessed through major search engines qualifies as a threat to national security.

Out of touch

I remember when, during Bush the first's presidency, people were agog at the idea that the President was so out-of-touch with reality that he was surprised to see a supermarket scanner in action. It seems that Bush the second is even more out-of-touch than his father was. This Bush was surprised to learn how others in the world view the US and our policies.

Minutes after President Bush finished an hourlong meeting with moderate Islamic leaders on the island of Bali on Wednesday, he approached his staff with something of a puzzled look on his face.

"Do they really believe that we think all Muslims are terrorists?" he asked, shaking his head. He was equally distressed, he told them, to hear that the United States was so pro-Israel that it was uninterested in the creation of a Palestinian state living alongside Israel, despite his frequent declarations calling for exactly that.

It was a revealing moment precisely because the president was so surprised.

Perhaps the President should stop relying on aides to deliver the news they think he needs to hear and start reading the papers for himself. He might have a better idea of what's going on if he did - rather than being sheilded behind a wall of syncophants who will only tell him what he wants to hear.

The Daily Condi

David Corn offers an insightful column this week in LA Weekly about the President's reliance on Condoleeza Rice for most of his news. Corn wonders how Bush can know what's going on in the world if he relies on Rice and Andy Card for most of his news, especially given how often Rice's remarks indicate she's pretty out of touch with the news - and maybe even reality - herself.

Rice has been consistently mischaracterizing and misrepresenting Iraqi matters. And she is Bush's main source of news? No wonder he cannot get his facts straight. When Bush addressed the Filipino Congress recently, he compared the transition he wants to achieve in Iraq to the rise of democracy in the Philippines. After all, America, according to Bush, had "liberated the Philippines from colonial rule." That observation, though, ignored the fact that the United States ruled the Philippines for five decades before granting it autonomy. Had Rice - and all the other vetters of this speech - forgotten about the Spanish-American War?

So Bush proudly eschews The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and he replaces them with The Daily Condi. Talk about filters. The president is relying on All the News That Fits the Spin.

The Rumsfeld Memo

If you haven't seen it yet, here is the text of the Rumsfeld Memo. There still seems to be a bit of debate about whether the memo was leaked or intentionally released to the press. A variety of sites from about the Blogosphere (Instapundit, Tacitus, Tbogg, and IsThatLegal for starters) are all busily commenting on their various theories about how the memos got into the newspaper, what damage may occure from the leak (if it was, in fact, leaked), who might have leaked it, and why all the people who were so upset about Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative being leaked aren't calling for an investigation on this one. Personally, I'd need to be sure that there is a leak before demanding an investigation into it, but at this point, I'm honestly not sure what I think happened.

As to why Rumsfeld might want to see this memo given to the press (even if it was done in such a way as to make it look like a leak, which is yet another possiblity), speculation centers on the idea that some of the questions he asks are what might be termed "big" questions, and that in asking them, it makes Rumsfeld look more in touch and aware of what is actually happening, and that he is competent to handle running the War on Terror, no matter what the State Department might say. It might also have been a way for him to try and show up Condi Rice, now that she's been given more authority over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, by demonstrating the kinds of questions and concerns he has, compared to whatever Condi may have said or done to this point. Right now, though, that's all still just speculation.

What I find interesting is that the memo itself is now available on the Defense Department's Milink website as a .PDF file, which lends support to the non-leak theory (though, apparently, the memo was not posted until after the USA Today story that first reported the memo had been published and circulated). The accompanying article at Milink seems primarily focused on countering the view from USA Today that the memo indicates that things are going badly:

A story about the memo appeared in today's issue of USA Today. The story characterizes the questions Rumsfeld raised as an admission that the United States is losing the war on terror. "The secretary's not saying anything like what the memo's been characterized (as saying)," Di Rita said during a press conference.

The spokesman said the secretary is asking the "big questions" that any government agency should be asking itself.

Batting for the "it was a leak" team, a FOX News report indicates that Rumsfeld is "livid" about the apparent leak, which, of course, supports the idea that it wasn't released intentionally by the Department of Defense.

The original USA Today story, however, doesn't offer any indication of how it came about that they got a copy of the memo. As others have noted, though, this is USA Today we're talking about. They're not exactly known for in-depth hard-hitting investigative journalism. In any event, if it is a leak there may be some at least some reason for officials to be concerned about the possible impact it might have. Jonathan S. Landay of Knight-Ridder newspapers quoted one unnamed official as saying:

"This (memo) gives bin Laden his next tape. Nothing will inspire more jihadists than the prospect of victory."

In addition, the memo lays out a possible strategy to help reduce the number of terrorists being recruited from the madradssas that are run in many Islamic nations. Madradssas are schools which frequently teach extreme forms of Islam along with basic, educational subjects, and are known to be fertile breeding grounds for future terrorists. One of the criticisms of the Saudi government comes from their support for madradssas within Saudi Arabia itself.

Rumsfeld asks whether the Defense Department is moving fast enough to adapt to fighting terrorists and whether the United States should create a private foundation to entice radical Islamic schools to a "more moderate course." Rumsfeld says the schools, known as madradssas, may be churning out new terrorists faster than the United States can kill or capture them.

I think, from my perspective, the best news from this memo is that by asking if we are able to kill or capture terrorists as fast as they are being created shows that, just maybe, the administration does understand that there isn't a finite pool of terrorists that we can attract to Iraq so that we can wipe all of them out in one series of battles. It is an important question. I can only hope that as well as being concerned about our ability to kill and capture more terrorists than are being created, the administration will also take a serious look at our actions and the comments being made by representatives of our government and military to help ensure we aren't unnecessarily contributing to the growing number of terrorists we have to face.

TO: Gen. Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Pete Pace, Doug Feith

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld

SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?

DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere - one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.

With respect to global terrorism, the record since September 11th seems to be: We are having mixed results with Al Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them - nonetheless, a great many remain at large.

USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis. USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban - Omar, Hekmatyar, etc. With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started. Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the U.S.? Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror? Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental?

My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?

Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?

The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions. Do we need a new organization? How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools? Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?

It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog. Does CIA need a new finding? Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course? What else should we be considering?

Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday. Thanks.

NYT joins call for Boykin's dismissal

The New York Times has an editorial today calling for this dismissal of General Boykin in light of Rumsfeld's announcement that there will be an investigation into Boykin's comments.

This is not a debate about General Boykin's religious views, as his conservative defenders say, or about free speech. The question of what military rule he may have violated — which is what the Pentagon inquiry may seize on — is a distraction.

General Boykin was not exercising the free speech rights of a private citizen. Speaking as he did in uniform the day after he was appointed deputy under secretary was indefensible. Not only did a high-ranking government official make remarks that espoused a single religious view and denigrated others, but he damaged the national security policy of the United States.

[...] Mr. Rumsfeld did not need a personal hearing earlier this year to chastise the Army chief of staff for differing with him on the war in Iraq, and to question the patriotism of retired generals who critiqued his war strategy on television. Unlike General Boykin, they did not have the backing of conservative Christians, a key constituency for Mr. Bush's re-election.

The editorial also notes that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, who has been roundly - and rightly - criticized for his anti-Semitic comments earlier this week, is now using Boykin's comments about Islam in trying to point out the Bush Administration's hypocrisy.

That right there is another reason why Boykin needs to go - keeping him on in a policy-making position and involved in the War or Terrorism undermines the Bush Administration's ability to point out hate speech by other leaders by being willing to tolerate it within their own ranks. We already have enough of a credibility problem, this is just one more thing we don't need.

Tax cuts = jobs growth? Not quite....

From today's Cursor (Click here after November 1, 2003 to find it.)

Treasury Secretary John Snow predicts that the U.S. economy will generate about 200,000 additional jobs per month before next year's election. In February, reports the Economic Policy Institute's JobWatch, the Council of Economic Advisers projected 344,000 per month job growth starting in mid-2003 if the tax cuts were passed and about 250,000 per month without the tax cuts.

In other words, not only are we no where near to the kind of jobs growth we were told we could expect if Bush's rich friends got their tax break, but we're actually doing worse following the tax cuts than had been expected if the tax cuts had never gone through!

Now if only someone could think of a snappy way to point this out so that it was easily understandable by just about anyone that not only are Bush's tax cuts driving the economy into a huge deficit, but they simply don't work they way we were told they would.

Boykin's comments to be 'reviewed'

General Boykin has decided to ask Donald Rumsfeld to review his statements and see if they violate any military regulations. As Josh Marshall points out, however, it's not necessary for military rules to have been broken for the General to be relieved of his political appointment as an Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Another point I've read in a number of place, and that I think is well worth making, is that if General Boykin had been criticizing the war with Iraq, there'd be no questions being raised about his rights to free speech or if there were any constitutional issues involved in firing him. He'd simply be gone with no questions asked.

While the administration may agree with his views - and their actions so far indicate that they do - he was wrong to have expressed them the way he did, particularly while wearing his uniform, and that man simply is unfit to be place in a policy-making position that may require cooperation with other nations - especially since some of the nations he'll have to work with are Muslim.

Of photographing evil and mysterious, unheard-of planes

The Washington Post writes about a couple other statements Lt. Gen. Boykin has made which not only make him sound a bit unhinged but which lead the editors to question if he's actually fit for the position he's been given. (And like both Fareed Zakaria and I have previously commented on, they also note that his explanation of his "idol" comment is bunk.)

Gen. Boykin now argues that his "idol" reference was to the worship of money and power, not Allah. But a review of the full text of his remarks cannot support this reading. In fact, the full text only adds to the questions about his suitability. At the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Ore., last June, just after he received his third star and was named to his Pentagon post, Gen. Boykin said, "Don't you worry about what these courts say. Our God reigns supreme."

Some of his comments also raise questions about Gen. Boykin's fitness to oversee military intelligence, questions of religious bigotry aside. He describes taking photographs during a helicopter tour before leaving Mogadishu, Somalia, and then finding an unexplained black mark on the developed pictures, which he explains as a manifestation of evil. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your enemy," he tells the Good Shepherd audience. "It is not Osama bin Laden, it is the principalities of darkness. It is a spiritual enemy that will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus and pray for this nation and for our leaders." He also offers this take on Sept. 11: "Whether you realize it or not, I believe there were at least two more airplanes that were headed for major installations in this country. I believe that there was one headed for the Capitol, but they were thwarted by the hand of God."

I gotta say, I am not the least bit comfortable trusting a man who think that he can photograph evil to deal and believes God stopped two additional planes on 9/11. I'm sure some will claim that at least one of the planes he's referring to is the flight that went down in Pennsylvania, even though the way he's phrased his statement ("I believe that there were at least two more airplanes...") makes it pretty clear he means that he thinks there were six planes total - but even if we accept that one of them was the Pennsylvania plane, he's still claiming that there was yet another plane - a 5th plane.

Here's the thing, though. There were no reports of other crashes that day, and no reports from any pilots of other attempts at hijacking. So, my first question would be what makes Gen. Boykin think one existed? Is he privy to information none of the rest of us have? If so, why is he talking about it at all? I think that a publicly-unreported crash or hijacking attempt would have to be under perhaps the highest level of secret classification in order for us to have not even a hint of its existence to have escaped into the greater wilderness of public knowledge - and you know that if any conspiracy theorists caught so much as a whiff of something that explosive, we'd be seeing reports of it sailing around the internet. So, either there is no evidence of a 5th plane, or the General is talking about something he really shouldn't be talking about - making him either whacked-out or careless. I'm not quite sure which worries me more (especially for someone in an intelligence position.)

For the sake of discussion, let's just assume he knows about the extra plane(s) because God told him. It's no wackier than his contending he took a photograph of evil, right? So, ok. God tells the General that there was at least one more plane (if not two) on its way to a major target, but that He stopped it from succeeding. What did God do? Make all the hijackers for those planes just vanish into thin air? I would have to assume either no one missed them or everyone just assumed that they were swept up in the post 9/11 raids. Maybe God just made them get stuck in their seats on the planes so they couldn't try anything - but wouldn't someone who found themselves unable to stand up be likely to at least ask a question about what was wrong with their seat? Maybe God just caused them to forget what it was they were there to do. I imagine He'd have the power to do that.

But all of those possibilities - along with any others anyone could come up with - beg another question, and it's a biggie: If God could miraculously stop one or two planes from being hijacked and crashing into major targets, why didn't He stop them all? I wouldn't think that God would be limited - stopping four shouldn't be any more difficult than stopping one or two. Does the General believe that God saved our lawmakers because they are somehow better or more necessary than any of the thousands who did die that day? Would he say they were more faithful than those who died (among whom I have no doubt where hundreds of good and faithful Christians?) Maybe God needed to make a point but felt it wasn't necessary to kill any politicians to do so.

Obviously, I'm not likely to have much insight into what the Christian God would do since He and I aren't exactly on speaking terms, but it would be great if General Boykin is going to claim to know what God has done if maybe he'd let us in a bit on why. It may not tell us much about God, but it should let us know more about Boykin. As it stands right now, though, he sounds like both a right-wing extremist zealot and someone who more than just a bit too wacko to be in charge of anything as important as an intelligence operation focusing on hunting down two of the most wanted men in the world. Unless maybe God wants to fill him in on where they might be hiding.

Zakaria on Boykin

Newsweek features Fareed Zakaria's column this week on why Donald Rumsfeld should fire Lt. Gen. Boykin ASAP.

the issue is not whether the general is free to express his views, but whether Secretary Rumsfeld wants someone who holds such views in high office. After all, were the general to have expressed his opinion that the Iraq war was a blunder, he would have been fired. Were he to have made an anti-Semitic comment (like the noxious ones Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir made last week), he would have been fired. Why? Because those freely expressed views would contradict the Bush administration’s basic philosophy. So are we to assume that Boykin’s views do not contradict administration policy? No one is urging that Secretary Rumsfeld muzzle Boykin, merely that he allow him to enter the private sector, where he may express his views even more freely. He could even sit in for Rush Limbaugh.

This is not simply a matter of symbolism, though that is important because this story is now being broadcast across the globe. The position Boykin holds—deputy undersecretary for intelligence—is one in which he would have to interact routinely with Pakistanis, Egyptians, Afghans, Indonesians; Muslims from all over the world. Will he be effective in establishing close working relationships with these officials, who have all watched him slur their religion? Is this a man who will be able to objectively sift through intelligence and analysis about the state of Muslim societies, the difference between moderates and extremists, the distinctions among various fundamentalist groups? Or does he look at them all and see ... Satan?

Zakaria is right on the money. We can hardly expect our allies in Muslim nations to be willing to work easily with a man who has made it clear that he considers "our" God to be "bigger" than "theirs" God - how can we possibly have any hope for cooperation from officials in Muslim countries that aren't quite as fond of us?

His comments about the implications of the Bush administration's lack of concern with Boykin's comments are also well made. Just as Bush's unwillingness to question his staff about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative signals how unconcerned he is about "getting to the bottom" of the scandal, his administration's defense of Boykin and refusal (thus far) to fire him is indicative of a lack of disagreement with his statement, in spite of Bush's previous statements to the contrary.

There is one rather amusing part of the column - which is used to point out just how forced Boykin's attempted apology is. Zakaria points out, as I had mentioned in an earlier piece, that Boykin's claim that he was referring to "money and power" when said that a Somalian warlord's God was an "idol" falls flat on its face when Boykin's actual words are taken into account. (He had spoken of how the warlord has prayed to Allah for safety.) He then writes:

His dissembling gets almost comic over another one of his comments. Boykin routinely told audiences that God elevated George W. Bush to the presidency. “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him,” he would say. “I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there.” Boykin now explains that he believes God routinely decides American elections and has done the same thing for “Bill Clinton and other presidents.” This is surely the first time a conservative evangelical has argued that Clinton’s election was caused by divine intervention.

If that's the best explanation he can come up with, Boykin may well want to quit while he's ahead - before he has to come up with any more explanations.

If Geoge Bush was put in the White House by God...

Lambert has a few variations on the title question that would be nice to have answered...

And here's one of my own: If George Bush was put in the White House by God, why aren't there more jobs available - wouldn't God want George to have a good economy to preside over and take credit for?

Nitpicker on Boykin

Nitpicker, who notes that he has served in two branches of the military (and thus probably has a fairly good idea about military regulations), has a good piece on Gen. Boykin and how the speeches he's been giving violate those codes. He also notes that the recent spate of identical letters from several members of the 503rd that were sent to various newspapers around the country are also violations of the regulations as well.

Department of Defense directive 1344.10 says that an active duty military member may not make partisan political speeches and, frankly, this goes double for guys who do it while wearing their uniforms.

Boykin has embarrassed himself and should be relieved.

But he's not the only one.

As was discovered recently, Army Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, commander of 2nd Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, wrote a form letter and then passed it around to be signed by soldiers (and in some cases those signatures are said to not be real) and then sent to American newspapers as letters to the editor.

Where's the harm? The letters were basically pro-soldier, right? Yes, but they were clear violations of 1344.10, too.

He also points out that because Boykin's comments could cause a soldier to feel "negatively influenced if [s/he] were a Muslim and my commander said that [s/he] was placing my faith in an "idol" who was not a "real god."," that "he's made it clear that he is not, as the CGSC says, "Army leader" material," as defined in chapter two of the Command and General Staff Course (CGSC) manual.

Boykin's apology - not enough and badly spun

Lt. Gen. Boykin has issued and apology today and tried to explain his comments regarding religion and the war in Iraq.

In his statement, Boykin said for 33 years he has defended every American's right to "worship as he or she chooses" and the "right of free speech and a free press."

"I will continue to do so," he said.

[...] He concluded with an apology.

"For those who have been offended by my statements, I offer a sincere apology," he said.

An apology is all well and good as far as that goes, but in this case, I don't think its sufficient. For one thing, his attempt at explaining his comments, in at least one area, came off as more than a bit disingenuous. In his remarks today, he said:

"My comments to Osman Otto in Mogadishu were not referencing his worship of Allah but his worship of money and power; idolatry. He was a corrupt man, not a follower of Islam."

Yet if you read his comments to Osman Otto, you see that his comment about "his god being an idol" were referring to his having prayed to Allah, and nothing was mentioned about his worshiping money or power. He tells how Otto (Atto in the excerpt below) has bragged about being protected by Allah, explains how he prayed that God would let them catch Otto and then tells Otto that he "underestimated" Boykin's God.

First Baptist Church, Daytona, FL, Jan 28, 2003

“There was a man in Mogadishu named Osman Atto. You see him in the movie [“Blackhawk Down”], smoking a big cigar and talking philosophically. How many of you have seen the movie? Acting like a big shot. Well let me tell you something. That’s not what Osman Atto did. The reality was Osman Atto was Aideed’s closest ally. He was Aideed’s top lieutenant. He was a multimillionaire financier for Aideed’s clan. And we knew if that if we could capture Osman Atto and take him away, that we could destroy Aideed’s network. So we went after Osman Atto about two weeks before the battle.... We went after Osman Atto. We got into a terrible fight. And I’m sad to say a lot of Somalis were killed as we went after Osman Atto.

But we missed him by seconds. He walked out of the facility that we raided, he walked down the street and blended in with the crowd and we missed him.

“And then he went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, ‘They’ll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.’

“Well, you know what I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol. But I prayed, Lord let us get that man.

“Three days later we went after him again, and this time we got him. Not a mark on him. We got him. We brought him back into our base there and we had a Sea Land container set up to hold prisoners in, and I said put him in there. They put him in there, there was one guard with him. I said search him, they searched him, and then I walked in with no one in there but the guard, and I looked at him and said, ‘Are you Osman Atto?’ And he said ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Mr. Atto, you underestimated our God.’”

As part of his explanation, he also says:

"My references to Judeo-Christian roots in America or our nation as a Christian nation are historically undeniable."

Actually, they are deniable - there are a number of historical documents that contain statements from the Founding Fathers making it clear that the United States was not intended to be a "Christian Nation." As Americans United for the Separation of Church and State notes in their "Is America a 'Christian Nation'" brochure:

[...] The U.S. Constitution is a wholly secular document. It contains no mention of Christianity or Jesus Christ. In fact, the Constitution refers to religion only twice – in the First Amendment, which bars laws "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," and in Article VI, which prohibits "religious tests" for public office. Both of these provisions are evidence that the country was not founded as officially Christian.

[...] Jefferson and Madison's viewpoint also carried the day when the Constitution, and later, the Bill of Rights, were written. Had an officially Christian nation been the goal of the founders, that concept would appear in the Constitution. It does not. Instead, our nation's governing document ensures religious freedom for everyone. Maryland representative Luther Martin said that a handful of delegates to the Constitutional Convention argued for formal recognition of Christianity in the Constitution, insisting that such language was necessary in order to "hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism." But that view was not adopted, and the Constitution gave government no authority over religion. Article VI, which allows persons of all religious viewpoints to hold public office, was adopted by a unanimous vote. Through ratification of the First Amendment, observed Jefferson, the American people built a "wall of separation between church and state."

Given the nature of Boykin's statements and the fact that he made them while in uniform, the fact that they will undoubtedly be used by Islamist terrorist organizations to help recruit new terrorists, and they way they could create tension within the ranks by implying that our army is some kind of Holy Force for the Christian God, an apology and badly spun explaination isn't enough. As I mentioned yesterday, had his remarks been aimed at Jews, there'd be no question that his days in the military would be over. If it would be wrong to make such statements about one group, it is just as wrong to make them about any group.

Boykin Update

I'm going through the new article on Lt. Gen. Boykin that is being published in tomorrow's Washington Post. It's got a few additional quotes from some of his speeches that help show exactly why they've become controversial.

[...] He spoke of Islamic extremists hating the United States because “we’re a Christian nation” and added that our “spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” He said that President Bush “is in the White House because God put him there,” and that “we in the army of God . . . have been raised for such a time as this.”

It also tells us what his job is:

A much-decorated veteran of covert military operations, Boykin took over in June as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, heading a new Pentagon office focused on hunting al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and other high-profile targets.

Given this, I feel even more strongly that he should resign or be removed. His views make him entirely unsuitable for any job where he would have a significant role in the War or Terror - and if he's going to be in charge of the search for important War on Terror targets, he's going to have some influence there.

As Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said:

“Putting a man with such extremist views in a critical policymaking position sends entirely the wrong message to a Muslim world that is already skeptical about America’s motives and intentions."

Requests have been made that he either be reassigned or reprimanded, but I believe the harsher step of resignation or removal is more appropriate, because as I noted earlier, not only do his views send the wrong message to the rest of the world, they also send the wrong message to our troops - and that's of critical importance, too.

The Boykin controversy

Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a new deputy undersecretary of defense who's promotion and appointment were confirmed by the Senate this past June, has been going to churches - in full military dress uniform - delivering speeches saying that the war on terror is a war between a "Judeo-Christian" America and America's enemy, Satan. On at least one occasion, he even said that his God is the "real" God, while the God of a Muslim "was an idol."

Here is a sample of some of what he's had to say:

First Baptist Church, Broken Arrow, OK, June 30, 2002:

[Slide show, Picture of Osama bin Laden] “And then we began to see this face…the face of Osama bin Laden. And finally we said, ‘There’s the enemy. That’s our enemy. That’s the man that hates us. And all of those that follow him.”

[Picture of President Bush] “And then this man stepped forward. A man that has acknowledged that he prays in the Oval Office. A man that’s in the White House today because of a miracle. You think about how he got in the White House. You think about why he’s there today. As Mordecai said to Esther, ‘You have been put there for such a time and place.’ And this man has been put in the White house to lead our nation in such a time as this.

“But who is that enemy? It’s not Osama bin Laden. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy because we are a nation of believers. You go back and look at our history, and you will find that we were founded on faith. Look at what the writers of our Constitution said. We are a nation of believers. We were founded on faith.”

[Picture of Satan] “And the enemy that has come against our nation is a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan. And if you do not believe that Satan is real, you are ignoring the same Bible that tells you about God. Now I’m a warrior. One day I’m going to take off this uniform and I’m still going to be a warrior. And what I’m here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God’s kingdom.”

[There are two additional excerpts available at the same page.]

He also tells his audience that President Bush is God's chosen leader:

“Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”

These comments are more than just offensive. They're statements that are likely stir up more resentment against America among Islamists. There's already been considerable concern from the Islamic community that our war on terror is really a religious crusade. Remember the flap that occurred when, 5 days after the September 11 attacks, Bush said "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while"? He ended up having to back away from that term because some in the Islamic world were taking it as confirmation that the War or Terror is, in fact, a religious war and that the "Christian" America was going to try and kill or convert all Muslims.

That was just one word. Boykin has given entire speeches filled with messages that Islamic nations are after us because we're a "Judeo-Christian" land, with an obligation to protect Israel, and that since our land follows the "real" God while our enemies worship idols, we will be granted the victory under our God-appointed leader. By claiming that the "real enemy" is Satan, Boykin conflates Islam with Satanism, and paints the terrorists who are attacking us as Satan's minions - his weapon - though which he is striking at the heart of righteousness. Boykin gives these speeches while wearing his uniform, something that may be perceived by other nations as an indication that he is speaking on behalf of the military - if not the government itself.

What is worse is that, so far, Rumsfeld is giving this man his support.

Asked about this Thursday, Rumsfeld told reporters he had not seen the videos and did not know the "full context" of Boykin's remarks. But the secretary did say, "We do know that he is an officer that has an outstanding record in the United States armed forces."

[...] "There are a lot of things that are said by people that are their views," he said, "and that's the way we live. We are free people and that's the wonderful thing about our country, and I think for anyone to run around and think that can be managed or controlled is probably wrong."

Of course, when it was soldiers speaking out against the Pentagon leadership, there was no problem with "managing" or "controlling" what was being said.

"None of us that wear this uniform are free to say anything disparaging about the secretary of defense, or the president of the United States," said Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command.

These rules, and others that serve to limit the freedom of speech a soldier may have, exist to help ensure unit cohesion and prevent a breakdown of discipline and morale, so that our troops will be able to do their jobs as well as they possibly can. Logically, I would think that these rules would also apply to making other kinds of public statements that could potentially lead to problems with unit cohesion, disciplinary issues or lowered morale.

Comments like those made by Boykin can be misconstrued by our enemies or provoke them in such a way that it makes it easier for them recruit more soldiers to fight against us. They can also strengthens the enemy's resolve to defeat us. In addition, they can be taken by soldiers as indicating disapproval of who they are or what they believe, leaving them unsure as to how it might affect their careers in the military. And, of course, they can contribute to an atmosphere where there is hostility between soldiers of different religions. These are all definitely factors that can affect cohesion, discipline and morale.

Fortunately, Boykin now seems to understand that such comments are likely to be counterproductive.

Boykin tells NBC News that, given his new assignment, he is curtailing such speeches in the future. He says, “I don’t want … to be misconstrued. I don’t want to come across as a right-wing radical.”

Unfortunately, his understanding has come too late. His comments are already out there - and he's already shown himself to be a right-wing radical, and while he's said that "he respects Muslims and believes the radicals who attack America are “not true followers of Islam," his comments make it clear that he views America's "Judeo-Christian values" as being key to our success in this war and that he considers this to be, first and foremost, a religious war. Given the repercussions as discussed above, I feel that he should resign or face disciplinary action from the military. While some may think that recommending he leave the military is to harsh, I'm sure if he made similar comments about Israel or Judaism, conservatives would have him drummed out of the corps in a heartbeat.

UPDATE 11:02pm: As I was hitting the "Publish" button on this piece, my little MSNBC pop-up news thingy started flashing, and it turns out there's a new story out about this subject. You can find it at: http://www.msnbc.com/news/981411.asp?0na=x2301582-.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, and after working on this thing for the last 2 hours, I need a break, so I'm going to go play my guitar and stuff for a bit before I go through it - but if anything else I've said here needs to be updated based on any new information, I'll do another entry later this evening.

BTW: I just had my 40,000th visitor today - I never thought I'd create a site that would have that many people want to see it - even over a period of years, so I'm extremely flattered and pleased that so many of you have made this a stop on your trip through the web. Thank you very much!!

Quote of the Day (so far)

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.

Link via Atrios

Bush as a 'leader'

Rob Salkowitz at Emphasis Added does a nice analysis of Bush's "leadership" qualities and the problems they're starting to cause. He does a nice job comparing Bush's version of leadership to that of previous presidents, and shows how little true "leading" Bush has done.

Bush's supporters point to his "leadership" as his defining quality. Let's look at leadership. Harry Truman fired Douglas McArthur, America's pre-eminent military figure, at the height of the Korean War for insubordination and imposed the Taft-Hartley Act on striking unions. Nixon went to China in contravention of an entire career of anti-Communism, shocking his hardcore base. Reagan reversed himself and raised taxes in 1986 when it was clear that the 1981 cuts were having too much of a negative effect on public finances. Papa Bush did the same in 1990, even though it meant electoral defeat. Clinton, the first Democrat elected President in 12 years, declared the era of big government over, passed welfare reform and balanced the budget.

By contrast, George W. Bush has never, in nearly three years in office, taken a single significant position against the wishes of his base. He has never challenged his supporters to move with him to a more moderate stance. He has never publicly rebuked one of his senior aides (the firing of the first Treasury secretary, a nonentity taken seriously by no one, barely registers). He has never moved with sincerity and purpose to common ground with his opponents or shown the least bit of grace and humility in his interactions with anyone.

Bush's inability to truly lead is probably one of, if not the, biggest problem facing our country today. Bush seems to forget that he was placed in the position of President, not Figure Head, and that occasionally, being President means you have to make decisions all on your own - and that sometimes you have to upset your supporters in the process, if it's in the best interest of the nation.

[Note: I tried to link directly to the article, but for some reason, the link came up with a "404" error, so this is linked to the main page. The article title is "Follow the Leader" - just scroll down until you see it if Rob's added anything else to his blog since then.]

Still at it

Well, even after admitting there was no connection between Saddam Hussein, Iraq and the September 11th attacks, he's still trying to use September 11th to justify the war in Iraq.

On a day when two U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, President Bush used a Columbus Day speech Monday to pay tribute to soldiers who have died in that war and others.

"That's what's happening today: People are willing to sacrifice for the country they love," Bush said at the White House. "They remember the lessons of September 11th, 2001, and so do I."

And people in this administration pretend to be confused when a survey shows that 70% of people believe Saddam was behind the attacks.

The war with Iraq has nothing to do with September 11th. The soldiers dying over there are not dying to avenge the thousands killed that day.

They're dying because Bush wanted to see Saddam removed from power in a misguided attempt to "remake" the Middle East in America's image, in which he and his chief advisors have done little but make one misstep after another after another.

They're dying because Bush refused to work with the rest of the world to see Saddam disarmed, because Bush didn't care about disarming Saddam. Only removing him by force was good enough for him.

They're dying because the civilian leadership in the Pentagon used faulty assumptions (especially on how we would be treated by the Iraqis once we'd taken Saddam down) in trying to determine troop strength, tactics, equipment needed and how long the soldiers would need to be deployed.

They're dying because the chaos in Iraq is attracting terrorists to the area - and while supporters of the "flypaper" theory may think this is good, it's really not. There's no limited number of terrorists that we can attract to Iraq and "kill 'em all" there. The longer we stay in Iraq, the more terrorists we help create.

They're dying because people who thought this war was a good idea, including the President (with his "you're either with us or against us" language) and the Attorney General (who reminded everyone that if we spoke out against what the government was doing, we were, in essence, helping the terrorists), decided that rather than listen to the concerns being raised by people opposed to the war - concerns that, for the most part, have since been shown to be valid - they would vilify us as "unpatriotic" and call us "traitors".

So, please, Mr. President. Stop pretending that your war has anything to do with September 11th. You know perfectly well that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the attacks - you've admitted that there is no evidence that Saddam was involved in those attacks.

Those soldiers are being sacrificed on the alter of your own arrogance and incompetence. Don't try to pretend otherwise.

Link via Atrios

Rove's reputation as 'Bush's Hit Man'

While there's still no proof that Karl Rove was involved in the Plame leak, an article in The Nation from 2001 provides a look at Karl Rove's history and reputation as someone for whom dirty tricks are apparently standard operating procedure.

In a 700-word article that Slater said wasn't the most significant thing he'd written about Rove, he referred to questionable campaign tactics attributed to Rove: teaching College Republicans dirty tricks; spreading a rumor that former Texas Governor Ann Richards was too tolerant of gays and lesbians; circulating a mock newspaper that featured a story about a former Democratic governor's drinking and driving when he was a college student; spreading stories about Texas official Jim Hightower's alleged role in a contribution kickback scheme; and alerting the press to the fact that Lena Guerrero, a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party, had lied about graduating from college. Rove was explicitly linked by testimony and press reports to all but the gay and lesbian story; the college incident had been so widely reported for fifteen years that it was essentially part of the common domain. Slater also reported that primary candidates Steve Forbes and Gary Bauer blamed the Bush camp for the smear campaign.

"He said I had harmed his reputation," Slater recalls. Says another reporter who was traveling with Bush, "It was pretty heated. They were nose to nose. Rove was furious and had his finger in Slater's chest." Adds the same reporter, "What was interesting then is that everyone on the campaign charter concluded that Rove was responsible for rumors about McCain."

That Karl Rove, who, according to the White House press office is not giving interviews, hasn't always abided by the Marquess of Queensberry rules of political engagement is not exactly breaking news. As long ago as 1989, when Rove collaborated with an FBI agent investigating Hightower, the then-Texas agricultural commissioner complained about "Nixonian dirty tricks."

He also seems to have a Clintonian ability to parse questions:

When questioned under oath before a Texas Senate committee in 1991, Rove was evasive about his relationship with Rampton and engaged in semantic hairsplitting worthy of Bill Clinton. "How long have you known an FBI agent by the name of Greg [Rampton]?" a Democratic senator asked Rove. The answer should have been fairly straightforward, as Rampton had cleared Rove of the bugging incident five years earlier and had met with him a number of times subsequently, which Rove had disclosed in a federal questionnaire in 1989. Yet Rove was, to say the least, evasive: "Senator, it depends. Would you define 'know' for me?"

If this history is accurate, then doing something like outing a CIA agent to intimidate others who might think about coming forward and punishing someone who had embarassed the Bush Administration might not be out of character for him.

Bush admin going after leakers - at least some

In another interesting article from John Dean, he points out how John Ashcroft and the Bush administration are trying to use laws never intended to limit leaks from government sources to reporters to punish exactly that.

Except in a few highly egregious circumstances relating to national security information (espionage and atomic secrets), the U.S. Congress has, in the past, never made it a crime to leak information to the news media. As a result, for over two hundred years, our government has operated without an "official secrets act."

In contrast, Great Britain and other nations have long criminalized the disclosure of government information. But there's a crucial difference between them and us: They lack an equivalent of our First Amendment.

Despite the free speech costs, President George W. Bush has created the equivalent of an official secrets act for America - and it is only growing stronger. Indeed, by cobbling together provisions from existing laws, Bush's Justice Department has effectively created one of the world's most encompassing, if not draconian, official secrets acts.

If Attorney General John Ashcroft has his way, we will see many more prosecutions of this ilk. Ashcroft has told Congress he wants a "comprehensive, coordinated, Government-wide, aggressive, properly resourced, and sustained effort" to deal with "the problem of unauthorized disclosures."

It's important to watch Ashcroft's lips here: He said "unauthorized" disclosure - not, say, disclosures of classified information relating to national security, which would be a very different matter. Plainly, he is targeting anyone who leaks information the Bush Administration would rather not have made public - even when security is in no way at risk.

In light of the current situation with the leaks about Valerie Plame's stats as an undercover operative, this could really put Ashcroft in an interesting bind. According to Dean's article, at least one person he's prosecuted for leaking information to a reporter, the severity of the leak was questionable.

The information was not classified. It did not compromise any investigator, investigation, or investigative method.

In the Plame case, one would assume her status as an undercover CIA operative would be classified, and it did compromise the CIA's ability to get information in her area of expertise - Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was also illegal under existing laws, which means that, unlike the case profiled in Dean's article, no one would have to try and repurpose the available laws to make prosecution viable.

Given that Ashcroft and the Bush Administration have, on a number of occasions, complained about people leaking information to the press, and especially in light of Ashcroft taking legal action against someone for leaking unclassified information that had no impact on any investigations or, for that matter, national security, it should be that much harder for him to attempt to bury the Plame investigation.

Bushspeak: "Mission Accomplished" means "Mission NOT Accomplished"

From US News and World Report: `Mission accomplished': Bush brag or Demo fib?

After weeks of Democratic assaults that President Bush was a nitwit for declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq during his May 1 landing and victory speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the White House is bidding to set the story straight. The issue should be a simple one: Bush never uttered those words. "The president," argues communications boss Dan Bartlett, "said exactly the opposite: The mission continues." But Bush stood under a banner declaring "mission accomplished." Why? Bartlett says that the Lincoln's captain had the banner made up to thank his crew for the longest-ever carrier tour, not to declare the war over. "It is something the troops are really proud of," says Bartlett. "Of course they can hang the banner." But the picture was all the Demos needed. "On TV," he says, "they never play the [sound] bite of the president, they just show the image with the banner." Democratic polls show that the public buys their spin, which doesn't really surprise Bartlett. "Look, perception becomes reality," he says. "But the facts don't back it up."

There's so much spin there I'm feeling rather dizzy....

Seriously, though, if the message was being misinterpreted, why did it take over 4 months for someone to point it out? These folks just don't know when to stop.

$87 billion

I never believed the Bush Administration when they said that Iraq's oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction of the country. It didn't sound logical - mainly because it rested on the idea that the war would 'pay for itself', and I've found that very few things that say they'll 'pay for themselves' actually do. It's a nice fantasy, but rarely does it turn into a concrete reality.

So, as I was with everything else about this war, I was rather skeptical about how little it was supposed to cost. It was also obvious that, because this war was so controversial and had such a high profile, that the Bush administration wouldn't be able to get away with neglecting to include money for the rebuilding in the budget, the way they tried to provide no funds for rebuilding Afghanistan. Still, I didn't quite expect it to cost a billion dollars a week.

Tom Paine has put together a nice little list of what else that $87 billion could buy. I think one of the most telling items on the list looks at what that money could do in terms of jobs. Since Bush took office, our economy has lost 3.3 million jobs. For $87 billion, each of those people could be paid $26,383.

Another option? A recent Council on Foreign Affairs report noted that [a]cross the country, first responders simply do not have the money, equipment or training to adequately handle a devastating blow like the attacks on 9-11

The task force, chaired by former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman, issued its findings in June under the title ``Emergency Responders: Drastically Underfunded, Dangerously Unprepared.''

The $27 billion budgeted by the federal government's Department of Homeland Security to fund emergency responders during the next five years falls more than $98 billion short of what is needed to provide training, equipment and technological upgrades across the country, the task force found.

The $87 Bush wants to spend in Iraq would sure help with making up for that shortfall - and note that the totals being discussed there aren't just for one year, they're for five.

On an even more practical level, $87 billion would be enough for the government to cut a check to every man, woman and child in the US for $300. And this time, we wouldn't have to deduct it from our tax returns at the end of the year.

Of course, the easiest way to come up with the $87 billion we need to rebuild Iraq would be to simply repeal even a portion of the tax breaks that the Bush administration has given to the wealthiest Americans. Since, in general, the wealthy support Bush - and, one would presume, his policies, it would make sense that they'd be willing to sacrifice a part of the huge tax cuts he's given them in order to see his vision for Iraq properly funded.

More on the Bush Administration's lies

Robert Scheer writes a hard-hitting piece in todays LA Times giving more examples of how the Bush Administration knowingly lied and continues to lie in regards to the Iraq war. Some choice points:

"We know [Iraq] had a great deal to do with terrorism in general and with Al Qaeda in particular and we know a great many of [Osama] bin Laden's key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime " Wolfowitz told ABC on this year's 9/11 anniversary.

We know nothing of the sort, of course, and the next day Wolfowitz was forced to admit it. He told Associated Press that his remarks referred not to a "great many" of Bin Laden's lieutenants but rather to a single Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi. "[I] should have been more precise," Wolfowitz admitted.

He then goes on to note that even that correction doesn't quite provide the full picture either:

The Zarqawi connection has been a red herring since Colin Powell emphasized it in his prewar presentation to the United Nations Security Council, telling the world how Zarqawi was running a chemical weapons lab. Problem was, the site was not in Iraqi control but was in the U.S.-patrolled no-fly zone, and when reporters visited it in the days immediately after Powell's speech they found nothing that indicated anything like a chemical weapons lab.

The fundamentalist militia known as Ansar al Islam that controlled the area, meanwhile, was supported by Hussein's enemies in Iran.

He also makes note of Cheney's admission that he "misspoke" in his statement prior to the war that Iraq had reconstituted it's nuclear weapons.

One thing I must say that I've found disturbing lately, however, is that on more than a few liberal-oriented sites, I've seen comments to the effect that all Cheney had to say about that matter was that he had misspoken, and that they fail to note that he actually went further than that in making his clarification. In addition to admitting he "misspoke", he also said "We never had any evidence that [Hussein] had acquired a nuclear weapon."

It strikes me that some of the sites I've seen saying that he "simply" said he "misspoke" are trying to portray Cheney as brushing the whole issue off casually, which may be a fair characterization - not having seen the segment in question, I'm not sure - but by leaving off that fuller part of the admission - stating that we never had any evidence that Saddam had nukes, they're ignoring one of the most important parts of the statement. Cheney didn't just misspeak. If we never had any evidence that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear program, then by saying that we "knew" he had, Cheney was, without a doubt, and with no room for hedging, flat-out lying on national television to the American people. In my opinion, that's a much bigger deal than Cheney saying simply that he "misspoke".

The Scheer article also notes this comment by Vincent Cannistraro, who used to head up the CIA's counter-terrorism operations and analysis:

"There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war. Now we've created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans."

That, I think, hits the nail on the head. Since the Bush Administration seems to be unable to demonstrate that they actually had any pre-war justification for invading Iraq, it's almost like they're now trying to manufacture conditions they can point to and say "See? It's as bad as we said it was!" even though it would be so bad if we hadn't invaded in the first place. Talk about revising history!

Cheney's lies

The Minnesota-based Star-Tribune has an excellent analysis of the lies Dick Cheney told when he appeared this past Sunday on "Meet the Press".

Dick Cheney is not a public relations man for the Bush administration, not a spinmeister nor a political operative. He's the vice president of the United States, and when he speaks in public, which he rarely does, he owes the American public the truth.

In his appearance on "Meet the Press" Sunday, Cheney fell woefully short of truth. On the subject of Iraq, the same can be said for President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. But Cheney is the latest example of administration mendacity, and therefore a good place to start in holding the administration accountable.

The article then goes on to describe a number of the lies that Cheney told during his interview, refuting each. These include his claim that America ignored the threat of terrorism before September 11th; that we "don't know" whether Saddam was involved with 9/11 or not (while both Bush and Rumsfeld have admitted this week that there is no evidence at all to say that he was), that the connection between Saddam and 9/11 is supported by a supposed meeting between Mohamed Atta and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague (which Czechloslovakian president has said they've determined never happened, and which supposedly occured at a time when the FBI has concluded Atta was in Florida); that Iraq is the supposed "geographical base" for terrorism; and a number of misleading claims about what information we had on Saddam and his alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction.

It's astounding that even as more and more information is coming out showing us the true extent of the administration's deception - Cheney is still out there pushing the same crap he has been all along, even though some of it has long since been discredited.

In addition, the Star-Tribune has provided a list of links to their sources for the article, which can be found at http://hoster.startribune.com/nuke/html/index.php/. You'll want to scroll down the page a bit, and look for the headline reading "Links for Strib Sept. 17 editorial on Dick Cheney". This will allow you to check out their resources and verify the context of their information for yourself.

Bush and Rumsfeld admit Saddam not part of 9/11 plot

I've mentioned several times that in January of this year, Bush - during a joint press conference with Tony Blair - said that he could not make the claim that Saddam was involved with the 9/11 attacks. Yet even though Bush himself indicated he could not make that link, a recent poll showed that 70% of Americans believe that Saddam was responsible for them.

Maybe this will help. So far this week, both Bush and Don Rumsfeld have admitted that they have no evidence of such a link. The issue became somewhat hot again this weekend after Dick Cheney went on "Meet the Press" and apparently made some ambiguous statements that Bush and Rumsfeld were then asked to clarify in subsequent press conferences. Today, Bush said:

"No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," Bush said. "What the vice president said was is that he [Saddam] has been involved with al-Qaida. ... There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties.

When asked about the matter on Tuesday, Rumsfeld had responded:

"I’ve not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

Cheney admits he was wrong in pre-war 'Meet the Press' interview claim

Dick Cheney admited this week that he 'misspoke' when asked about Iraq's nuclear weapons on the March 16th "Meet the Press". During that interview, he said:

Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that [Saddam] has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

According to the LA Times, Cheney recently appeared on "Meet the Press" again, and acknowledged that his original statement was wrong.

Questioned by host Tim Russert, Cheney acknowledged that he had been wrong to claim, as he did on "Meet the Press" before the war, that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons.

"Yeah, I did misspeak," Cheney said. "I said repeatedly during the show, 'weapons capability.' We never had any evidence that [Hussein] had acquired a nuclear weapon."

It's not much yet, but it's a start.

Making the sacred sacreligious

Ellen Goodman has a particularly poignant piece on how 9/11 has become the "catch-all" excuse for everything.

Sunday night we saw a sober president admitting that the scenario of swift victory in Iraq was far too rosy. This was no flight deck photo op. The "Mission Accomplished" speech of May has become the "Mission Prolonged" speech of September -- with an $87 billion price tag.

But repeatedly, deliberately, the president connected the dots between Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq. Since "those deadly attacks on our country," he said, "we have carried the fight to the enemy." "For America," he said, "there will be no going back to the era before Sept. 11 -- to false comfort in a dangerous world." And finally, he told Americans that we are fighting the enemy today, "so that we do not meet him again on our own streets in our own cities."

The trouble is that the dots he connected are cartoon bubbles drawn by the White House and its speechmakers.

Nevertheless, Americans have followed them. A Washington Post poll recently showed that 69 percent of Americans still believe it's likely or very likely Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11.

[...] When does the small, repeated exploitation of this belief become the big lie? What do we make of a patriotism of fear?

In my Cold War childhood, "godless communism" was the unifying all-purpose enemy that justified everything from an overkill arsenal of nuclear weapons to a host of unsavory allies. Sept. 11 not only ended the end of the Cold War, it ushered in a new all-purpose enemy: terrorism.

So this is how we commemorate Sept. 11, 2001, two years later. The preemptive, preventive war with Iraq has not made us safer. North Korea and Iran lurk in the nuclear imagination. Patriotism is calibrated by a willingness to follow the dots of propaganda.

On the calendar a sacred space has become a sacrilege. The White House has sent Sept. 11 spinning.

Ann Coulter, who I have never had any respect for, and whom I wish all newspapers, talk shows, radio programs and other media would consign to the deepest darkest recesses of anonymity where she rightly belongs, provides an extraordinary example of just this kind of heinous abuse of the memory of 9/11 in her column this week:

In the wake of Dean's success, the entire Democratic Dream Team is beginning to sound like Dr. Demento. On the basis of their recent pronouncements, the position of the Democratic Party seems to be that Saddam Hussein did not hit us on 9-11, but Halliburton did.

No, Ann, the Democratic Party - and everyone who's actually been paying attention - holds the position that Saddam Hussein did not hit un on 9-11, but Osama bin Laden did. The reason why we old this position? It's because Saddam Hussein did not his us on 9-11. No matter how many times the Bush administration and conservative pundits try to imply otherwise (despite the fact that Bush himself admitted in January of this year that he could not make the claim that there was a direct link between Saddam Hussein and "the men who attacked on September the 11th"), there simply is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the attacks at all.

Yet here Coulter states it as if it's a known fact that Saddam was behind the attacks, and proceeds to use this lie to try and smear the Democrats. Her goal, obviously, is to paint the Democrats as insensitive to the need to get "revenge" on Saddam for the 9/11 attack - something he had nothing to do with - but in doing so, she uses the memory of the people killed that day - and the emotional reaction most Americans (understandably) have when reminded of that day.

It frightens me that nearly 70% of Americans surveyed believe Saddam Hussein was involved, especially when the President's admission that he can't claim there is a direct link is availabe right on the official White House website in a transcript of the press conference, along with Prime Ministers Blair's confirmation of this fact.

There's no excuse for this level of ignorance, and even less for propogating the lie. Those who continue to spread it - whether through implication or direct statements - should be shamed and then ignored. Trying to tie the memory of that dark day to Saddam Hussein as a means of justifying a war that the neo-cons now in charge have been pushing for over the better part of the last decade (if not longer) is a disgrace, and desecrates the memories of all those who died that day.

Irony in action

The Washington Post has a sharp-tongued review of what it describes as a very dull movie, Showtime's DC 9/11, a supposed chronicle of the President's actions on the day of the attacks, but really little more than an attempt to make Bush and his cabinet look like saints.

In one paragraph, the reviewer reports on some of the lines attributed to Bush, many of which were likely never actually said.

Bush repeatedly demands he be taken to the White House as Air Force One flies aimlessly about on that horrible September day: "I've got to get back to Washington because I'm not going to let those people keep me from getting home," he barks. And earlier: "Get me home! . . . The American people want to know where their damn president is." And still earlier: "People can't have an AWOL president!"

All I want to know is how any screenwriter with any knowledge of Bush's history could have written that last line with a straight face...

Former UK MP: 'This War on Terrorism is Bogus' - reference companion

Michael Meacher, a Member of the British Parliament until recently, has written a very provocative article providing his analysis of the events leading up to 9/11, the War or Terror™, the failure of US forces to capture Osama bin Laden and the true goals of the Iraq war. It's a doozy.

Meacher works primarily from documents already in the public media, and the article lists the publications and dates he's gotten his information from, though it does not provide clickable links. As with anything that tends to get into conspiracy theory territory, I like to try and at least verify the information being provided and a sense of the context it was initially presented in, so I figured I should start checking what I could of the references he gave - and since I was going to do all that for myself, I figured I might as well provide some of what I find to you as well.

Understand - I have not yet made up my mind as to whether I find Meacher's theories credible or not, but given his recent position and how widespread this article is going to be (there are already about 5 pages at Google that are just links to reposts of this article at various sites around the world), it's at least worth looking at. The quotes below are from what I've judged to be the most likely part of each article he's referencing, and occasionally a bit addition to help provide context (especially where the additional material - in my opinion - either strongly supports or potentially weakens his arguments). As with anything, I strongly recommend that you read the entire article for yourself. You might also want to review the companion article "Meacher sparks fury over claims", also published in the Guardian, which provides a small amount of information on Meacher and comments by a few who disagree with his views.

Because of the nature of the claims made in this article, I feel it should be approached with caution. Meacher's standing as a recent member of the Blair Parliament gives his comments an extra veneer of crediblity such that many people will likely latch onto this article as proof of their worst fears. While it is possible that what he's saying is true (and if it is, we have been witness to one of the most heinous crimes in the history of mankind, paleing only - in my opinion - to crimes of genocide such as the Holocaust), it is also possible that he is seeing connections and links where there are none. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote:

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing.” ... “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.”

That said, here are the quotes and links referenced in the article that I've been able to locate.

1. Daily Telegraph (UK), September 16, 2001 - Israeli security issued urgent warning to CIA of large-scale terror attacks
   
   "The Telegraph has learnt that two senior experts with Mossad, the Israeli military intelligence service, were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation.
   
   "They had no specific information about what was being planned but linked the plot to Osama bin Laden and told the Americans that there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement," said a senior Israeli security official."
   
   
2. BBC Newsnight, November 6, 2001 - Has someone been sitting on the FBI?
   
   "PALAST: Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis. The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman.
   
   MICHAEL SPRINGMAN: In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence.
   
   PALAST: By now, Bush Sr, once CIA director, was in the White House. Springman was shocked to find this wasn't visa fraud. Rather, State and CIA were playing "the Great Game".
   
   SPRINGMAN: What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets.
   
   The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi connections?"



3. Newsweek, September 15, 2001 - Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained at U.S. Bases
   
   "U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s.
   
   Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source.
   
   Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon source.
   
   But there are slight discrepancies between the military training records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers—either in the spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military source said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the identities of the foreign nationals who studied at the U.S. installations. "



4. Times, November 3, 2001 - I was unable to find the article referred to here. Initially, the problem was that I didn't know for sure which "Times" he was referring to. A later reference, also attributed to "Times", however, was located in the Times Online (UK). I attempted to search their archives for this article, also, but was unable to find anything. It may be behind the archive wall. If anyone has a copy of this article or knows where one is posted, please let me know so I can add it to this list.



5. Newsweek, May 20, 2002 - Unheeded Warnings - [Note: The original source article is now behind a pay-per-view archive wall. The text of the article, however, can be found at "America's Intelligence Failures"]
   
   "The FBI has insisted it had no advance warning about the 9-11 attacks. But internal documents suggest there were more concerns inside the bureau's field offices than Washington has acknowledged.
   
   One FBI memo, written by a Phoenix agent in July 2001, warned about suspicious activities by Middle Eastern men at an Arizona flight school. Last week, in little-noticed testimony before a Senate panel, FBI Director Robert Mueller referred to another internal document that may prove more explosive: notes by a Minneapolis agent worrying that French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui might be planning to "fly something into the World Trade Center."
   
   The notes are especially eerie because Moussaoui faces charges that he was part of the 9-11 plot. Sources say the notes Mueller referred to were written in early September 2001-days before the attack. The author was part of a counterterrorism team desperately trying to figure out what Moussaoui was up to. He had been arrested in August on immigration charges after a Minnesota flight instructor reported that he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners."



6. AP - August 13, 2002 - Use of Military Jets Jumps since 9/11
   
   "The military sent fighter jets to chase suspicious aircraft 462 times between Sept. 11 and June, nearly seven times as often as the 67 scrambles from the same period a year earlier. More frequent scrambles are also faster in the tense new environment because the North American Aerospace Defense Command communicates better with the Federal Aviation Administration."



7. AP - April 5, 2002 [Note: I was unable to locate the actual AP article, however I did find the transcript of the CNN interview at the Department of Defense news site from which the quote "the goal has never been to get bin Laden" was taken. Here is the segment of the interveiw containing that quote.]
   
   "Hunt: The Big Question for General Myers: One embarrassment for the U.S. has been that, in almost seven months after 9/11, we still haven't captured Osama bin Laden. With the apprehension this week of one of his top lieutenants, have we gotten enough information to be any closer to maybe finally getting bin Laden?
   
   Myers: Well, if you remember, if we go back to the beginning of this segment, the goal has never been to get bin Laden. Obviously, that's desirable.
   
   Interesting, I just read a piece by some analysts that said you may not want to go after the top people in these organizations. You may have more effect by going after the middlemen, because they're harder to replace. I don't know if that's true, or not, and clearly we would like to eventually get bin Laden.
   
   But I think the fact that we've been able to disrupt operations, get a lot of the people just under him and maybe just a little bit further down, has had some impact on their operations. We know have disrupted, you know, four, five, six, seven active operations that they had planned and probably more that we don't know about.
   
   So we're going to keep the hunt on. Finding one person, as we've talked about before, is a very difficult prospect, but we will keep trying."



8. ABC News - December 19, 2002 - Primetime Investigation FBI Terrorist Cover-up [Note: The original piece containing the quote is a video story I located a transcript of the story, as broadcast, at Cooperative Research. Brian Ross is the reporter.]
   
   "BRIAN ROSS(Voice Over) Their story begins in the mid-1990s. With growing terrorism in the Middle East, the two agents were assigned to track a connection to Chicago, a suspected terrorist cell that would later lead them to an Osama Bin Laden connection.
   
   ROBERT WRIGHT:We had a cell in Chicago, right. And that was, that was the premise of how we got the investigation going.
   
   BRIAN ROSS:(Voice Over) But Wright says he soon discovered that all the FBI Intelligence Division wanted him to do was to follow suspected terrorists around town and file reports, but make no arrests.
   
   ROBERT WRIGHT:The supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across from me and started yelling at me, "you will not open criminal investigations. I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects."
   
   BRIAN ROSS:(Off Camera) You're on the Terrorism Task Force and you were told you will not open criminal cases?
   
   ROBERT WRIGHT:Yes.
   
   BRIAN ROSS: (Voice Over) In 1998, Al-Qaeda terrorists bombed two American Embassies in Africa, killing more than 200 people. The agents say some of the money for the attack led back to the people they had been tracking in Chicago, and to a powerful Saudi Arabian businessman, this man, Yassin Kadi, (PH) who had extensive business and financial ties in Chicago. Yet, even after the bombings, the agents say headquarters ordered no arrests.
   
   ROBERT WRIGHT:Two months after the embassies are hit in Africa, they want to shut down the criminal investigation. They wanted to kill it.
   
   BRIAN ROSS:(Voice Over) The move outraged the Federal Prosecutor in Chicago, who says Agents Wright and Vincent were helping him build a strong criminal case against Kadi and others.
   
   MARK FLESSNER, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR : There were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and within the FBI that simply were not going to let it happen. And it didn't happen.
   
   BRIAN ROSS: (Voice Over) Mark Flessner,(PH) now in private practice, says he still can't figure out why Washington stopped the case, whether it was Saudi influence or bureaucratic ineptness."



9. Time Magazine - May 13, 2002 - This issue is now premium (paid) content at Time's archives, and I was unable to find any direct quotes from the article elsewhere. I haven't even been able to figure out the actual name of the article, so I'm not sure which article to buy at the Time site. The index page for that issue is here, and if you find a copy of the article or relevent quotes from it, please let me know.



10. Times - July 17, 2002 - Britian Backs US Plan for Attack on Iraq
    
    "There was a lesson from September 11. “We knew about al-Qaeda for a long time. They were committing terrorist acts, they were planning, they were organising. Everybody knew, we all knew, that Afghanistan was a failed state living on drugs and terror. We did not act.
    
    “To be truthful about it,there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11.
    
    “There is a threat, the threat has changed in the way that I have described post-September 11. The options are open, but we do have to deal with it. How we deal with it, however, is, as I say, an open question.”
    
    He added: “And that is why I constantly say to people there are no decisions that have been made in relation to Iraq at all, but there is no doubt that Iraq poses a threat in respect of weapons of mass destruction.
    
    “And there is no doubt that this issue is an issue that must be dealt with.”'



11. Time Magazine - May 13 2002 - See note on #9



12. Sunday Herald - October 6 2002 - "Official: US Oil at the Heart of Iraq Crisis" (This link is to the Common Dreams mirror of the article. The full "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century" report is available online at The Baker Institute site.)
    
    "President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary.
    
    Vice-president Dick Cheney, who chairs the White House Energy Policy Development Group, commissioned a report on 'energy security' from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a think-tank set up by James Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Sr.
    
    The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century, concludes: 'The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de- stabilizing influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments.
    
    'The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.'
    
    Baker who delivered the recommendations to Cheney, the former chief executive of Texas oil firm Halliburton, was advised by Kenneth Lay, the disgraced former chief executive of Enron, the US energy giant which went bankrupt after carrying out massive accountancy fraud.
    
    The other advisers to Baker were: Luis Giusti, a Shell non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of BP and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco. Another name linked to the document is Sheikh Saud Al Nasser Al Sabah, the former Kuwaiti oil minister and a fellow of the Baker Institute."



13. BBC - September 18, 2001 - "US 'Planned Attack to Taleban'"
    
    "A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks.
    
    Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.
    
    Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.
    
    Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.
    
    The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah."



14. Inter Press Service - November 15, 2001 - POLITICS: U.S. Policy towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - authors [This also is located at Common Dreams. The original article is available at Inter Press Service, but is available by subscription only.]
    
    "In the book ''Bin Laden, la verite interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.
    
    Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. Oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it''.
    
    The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.
    
    They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.
    
    Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.
    
    But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors claim.
    
    ''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris."



15. Guardian - October 30, 2002 - BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches
    
    "Lord Browne, chief executive of BP and one of New Labour's favourite industrialists, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war.
    
    The comments from the most senior European oil executive, who has impeccable political connections in the UK, will be seen by anti-war protesters as further proof that US president George Bush has already made his mind up about an early attack.
    
    They will also serve to underline concern that the US is primarily concerned with seizing control of Saddam Hussein's oil and handing it over to companies such as ExxonMobil rather than destroying his weapons of mass destruction.
    
    Britain's biggest company is reviewing what impact a regime change in Baghdad would have on its own business and global crude supplies.
    
    Both London and Washington have been lobbied by the UK oil giant, which is concerned that European companies could be left out in the cold.
    
    "We have let it be known that the thing we would like to make sure, if Iraq changes regime, is that there should be a level playing field for the selection of oil companies to go in there if they're needed to do the work there," said Lord Browne yesterday at a briefing on the company's results."



16. BBC Online - August 10, 2002 [Note: The article I was able to locate with the relevant quote is actually dated August 8, 2002.] - Libya Hints at Lockerbie Payout
    
    "Regarding the fight against terrorism, Mr O'Brien said the UK authorities were already cooperating with the Libyans.
    
    "They know they are as much at risk from the extremists of al-Qaeda as any western country is," he said.
    
    "They have made promises and we will look at whether they deliver on this," Mr O'Brien added.
    
    Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abderrahmane Chalgam, for his part, stressed his government's willingness to cooperate in the fight against al-Qaeda.
    
    "The fundamentalists are against our project," he said. "They are against the freedom of women, they are against technology."
    
    Libya had shown its desire to move from "pariah" to a state complying with international law by handing over the Lockerbie bomb suspects, said Mr O'Brien.
    
    The UK was keen to boost ties that have been cautiously improving since diplomatic relations were restored three years ago.
    
    Libya is keen to re-enter the world economy and the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts.
    
    Sanctions against Libya have been suspended but Colonel Gaddafi wants them lifted permanently."

Coincidence or too convinient?

President Bush had intended to promote his plan for thinning forests to prevent forest fires in Camp Sherman, Oregon, but those plans had to be changed when two fires sprang up and threatened the area.

Can it be pure coincidence, locals are asking, that two wildfires sprang up in view of the spot where President Bush planned to promote his plan to thin forests for wildfire prevention?

And that they both appeared just as his plans emerged?

"I think everyone in the community here is wondering that," said Judy Wattier, who works at the KOA Campground just east of Sisters, where business is in the doldrums because of the blazes that have covered almost 40,000 acres in the nearby Deschutes National Forest. "Everyone I've mentioned it to can talk about it for hours."

Personally, I'm going with coincidence. Hard as it may be at times, I don't want to think that he or his aides would be capable of doing something this foolish and reckless (though the whole situation with Iraq gives me reason to think otherwise...), and I honestly don't think he expects enough of a fight against his proposal that such drastic measures would be considered necessary.

What does give me pause, though, is that enough people do view him in such a poor light that the idea that this isn't a coincidence - that the fires were deliberately set to give the President's plan that little extra bit of oomph - came so easily to people's minds.

Please explain this

This is an exceprt from a letter send today by President Bush to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, in which he seeks to reduce the percentage rate of raises Federal employees will be eligible for, due to the "National Emergency" that has existed since the 9/11 attacks.

I am transmitting an alternative plan for across-the-board and locality pay increases payable to civilian Federal employees covered by the General Schedule (GS) and certain other pay systems in January 2004.

Under title 5, United States Code, civilian Federal employees covered by the GS and certain other pay systems would receive a two-part pay increase in January 2004: (1) a 2.7 percent across-the-board increase in scheduled rates of basic pay derived from Employment Cost Index data on changes in the wages and salaries of private industry workers, and (2) a locality pay increase based on Bureau of Labor Statistics' salary surveys of non-Federal employers in each locality pay area, which would cost about 10 percent of payroll for the calendar year. Including increases for blue-collar and other workers, the total Federal employee pay increase would cost about 13 percent of payroll in calendar year 2004. For Federal employees covered by the locality pay system, the overall average pay increase would be about 15.1 percent.

For each part of the two-part pay increase, title 5, United States Code, authorizes me to implement an alternative pay plan if I view the adjustment that would otherwise take effect as inappropriate due to "national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare." For the reasons described below, I have determined that it would be appropriate to exercise my statutory alternative plan authority to limit the January 2004 GS pay increases.

A national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001, that now includes Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Full statutory civilian pay increases costing 13 percent of payroll in 2004 would interfere with our Nation's ability to pursue the war on terrorism. Such increases would cost about $13 billion in fiscal year 2004 alone -- $11 billion more than the 2 percent overall Federal civilian pay increase I proposed in my 2004 Budget -- and would build in later years.

Such cost increases would threaten our efforts against terrorism or force deep cuts in discretionary spending or Federal employ-ment to stay within budget. Neither outcome is acceptable. Therefore, I have determined that a total pay increase of 2 percent would be appropriate for GS and certain other employees in January 2004.

In other words, $11 billion in 2004 for pay raises to Federal Employees would cost too much an impede our ability to fight the nebulous "War on Terror™", but $350 billion over the next 10 years in tax cuts for rich people is just fine.

Link via Atrios

There he goes again....

Bush gave another speech full of tough-talking rhetoric and platitiudes yesterday at the American Foreign Leigon in St. Louis, MO, including the following gem:

Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York, or St. Louis, or Los Angeles.

This sounds like a basic restatement of what's been called the "Flypaper" theory of war: Create a big target (say, a standing army) in the Middle East and draw all the terrorists there, so our military can kill them off and they won't have the manpower or other capabilities to attack us on our own soil.

Nice theory as far as it goes, I guess, but it has one major, fatal flaw. It seems to presume that there's a finite number of terrorists - that somehow we can get them all to focus on our troops in Iraq so we can kill 'em all, and then they won't be a threat. But that's just not how it works.

Everytime we do something that pisses off more Islamic extremists - stay in Iraq, fail to restore electricity, adequate food, water or security services, kill innocent bystanders or talk about them like they're some sort of barbarians we need to domesticate - we help create more terrorists. The number of terrorists is only limited to the number of people we can sufficiently piss off - and some days it seems like pissing people off is the only thing this administration can do well.

Saying in effect "we're going to keep you busy in Iraq so you can't come get us at home" is little better than outright daring them to come get us here, and we all know how well Bush's last little bit of rhetorical taunting went. Of the 163 people who have died since Bush announced the end of "major combat" operation, 76 of them have been killed since Bush made his "Bring 'em on" dare. The UN headquarters and Jordanian embassy bombings have also happened since his dare.

Richard Perle, one of the most rabid "lets attack Iraq"ers there is, is even now admitting that we've handled things poorly and says that we should turn over Iraq to the Iraqis as soon as possible. Since he's one of the main proponants of the PNAC's "domino theory", for him to be advocating that we get our butts out of there is pretty serious stuff.

In the meantime, we can only hope Bush's mouth doesn't get us into even more trouble. He may think that by waging this war, he's helping to defeat terrorism, but that's only because he fails to understand that new terrorists are created on a consistant basis - and right now, some of the main things helping create them are his policies and his words.

Bush pretends.... on air quality

Many of you have probably already heard about this, but I needed to wait on posting about it until I was a bit calmer.

I've posted before on Bush the pretender, but I think this one really takes the cake. Rather than provide people with accurate and necessary warnings about the air quality in areas of New York City following the 9/11 attacks, the White House pushed the EPA to put on some rose-coloured glasses and take a second look

The White House Office of Environmental Quality "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" from news releases, said the report, released late Thursday by the EPA's inspector general office, an internal watchdog.

For instance, a draft EPA news release for Sept. 16, 2001, warned that the air near the attack site could contain higher levels of asbestos, a carcinogen, than is considered safe. After input from the White House office, the news release issued by the EPA two days later said the asbestos levels met government standards and were "not a cause for public concern."

A New York lawmaker charged that the White House hid crucial information that could have helped residents and workers protect their health.
"EPA officials lied when they initially were telling people that the air was safe," said Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes the attack site, which became known as Ground Zero. "That's an outrage."

Nadler suggested that the White House allowed economic concerns, such as the desire to reopen Wall Street, to take precedence over public health.

Bush? Let business interests take precedence over actual people? Nah, couldn't happen! (pardon me whilst I go barf)

Senator Hillary Clinton has called for investigations into the report and it's conclusions.

"I don't think any of us ever expected to find out ... that our government would knowingly deceive us about something as sacred as the air we breathe, outdoors and indoors," she said in a speech on the steps of City Hall.

"They knew and they didn't tell us the truth, and the White House told them not to tell us the truth," Clinton said, adding that she wants to find out who was responsible for pressuring the EPA.

I remember looking at the plume of smoke from the attacks and collapse and wondering how anyone could say that air would be "ok" to breathe, and its infuriating to learn that it was because the White House wanted a more reassuring report that warnings were taken out of the information being given to the people of New York City by the EPA. Doesn't that qualify as some kind of a "high crime or misdemeanor"? It should.

'Compassionate' slight-of-hand

The New York Times has an editorial today that looks at whether Bush's alleged "compassionate" conservatism may end up being more of a liability in 2004 than a benefit. It lays out several of the ways in which Bush's "compassion" agenda has been more hat than cattle:

• During the tax debate over the $400-per-child tax credit, Bush initially demanded Congress expand the credit to poor families, but fell strangly silent when Tom DeLay made it clear he would not support any such thing.



• Bush's much lauded support for increased funding for global AIDS research. Even as he was promoting legislation he'd signed that authorized $15 billion spread over 5 years, the White House only asked for $2 billion this year - 2/3 of what he was boasting had been authorized by the legislation.



• Bush's "faith-based" charity initiative had to be modified from giving federal money to religious charities to handle various social services to a plan that mainly offers tax breaks for charitable giving.
  
  Now, personally, I was glad to see this one fail. I firmly believe that his goal would have violated the First Amendment and could have created a situation in which non-Christians could have found it difficult to seek out assistance if they ended up having to go through a Christian organization - and I seriously doubt the plan would have allowed minority faiths such as Paganism to establish social programs and make use of federal funds for them. In overall terms, though, the "faith-based" initiative was one of the keystones of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" program, and it's failure is one that may hurt him with some of his Christian base come 2004.

  ...some religious supporters of Mr. Bush say they feel betrayed by promises he made as a candidate and now, they maintain, has broken as president.

  "After three years, he's failed the test," said one prominent early supporter, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leader of Call to Renewal, a network of churches that fights poverty.

  Mr. Wallis said Mr. Bush had told him as president-elect that "I don't understand how poor people think," and appealed to him for help by calling himself "a white Republican guy who doesn't get it, but I'd like to." Now, Mr. Wallis said, "his policy has not come even close to matching his words." [Emphasis mine]

• Bush's "No Child Left Behind" legislation authorized $18 billion in funding for this year, but the White House again only requested 2/3 of it - $12 billion.



• Bush has verbally promoted AmeriCorps heavily, but said and did nothing when the House rejected the programs request for an emergency $100 million in funding, putting the future of the program itself into question.

Joshua B. Bolten, White House budget director has defended Bush, saying ""Even the president is not omnipotent. Would that he were. He often says that life would be a lot easier if it were a dictatorship. But it's not, and he's glad it's a democracy." The comment was made specifically in response to criticism of the AmeriCorps funding debacle, but I suspect they'd try to use the same defense for any of these complaints. (By the way, how stupid do you have to be to remind people that a President who has overseen the rollback of civil rights and cultivated an atmosphere in which speaking out in opposition to his beliefs or desires is considered borderline "treasonous", thinks things would be "easier" if this country were a dictatorship?)

The White House is promising we'll see more progress on the "compassionate" part of Bush's agenda when he returns to work in September, but I'll be surprised if the progress is anything more than just talk followed by no action as has been the pattern thus far. The President seems to think its enough to make big, splashy, photo-op announcement about what he intends to do, it doesn't matter if it doesn't ever quite work out the way he promised.

Bush's phony compassion is yet another point that needs to be hammered home in order to get people who really are compassionate out to the polls and vote him out of office next November.

Why Geoff Hates Bush

This is just a part of an essay a Slate reader named Geoff posted in response to someone asking why people hate George Bush. You should really read the whole thing, but this section really sums up a lot of why I despise Bush as both a man and as our President.

People love to fulminate about character. My standards are not those of everyone. I don't really hold any feelings against those prone to sins of the appetite, as Bill Clinton was. I have trouble holding poor judgment against those who demonstrate it. All I ask is some evidence of a fundamental respect for the dignity of people. And I don't think George W. Bush has that respect.

The evidence by which I come to this conclusion is unlikely to be compelling to most, gleaned as it is from countless observations of subtle tell-tale signals. The lies obviously bother me. There are those who believe that all politicians lie, and that Bush's are nothing exceptional. I don't know how to rebut such a charge, other than to state firmly and forcefully that I disagree. Watching Bush tell the nation with a straight face that they will receive an "average" tax cut of $1000 when he knows what the average person will actually receive is one of those little acts of disrespect. Sneeringly dismissing the protests of hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions worldwide at his instigation of a war abroad as mere "focus groups" is a telling indicator of the disrespect which created the frustration that propelled them to the streets in the first place (may I remind you, that neither his father nor his immediate predecessor faced anything on a comparable scale). Putting out word that he believed Air Force One to be the target of a terrorist attack to account for his shameful disappearance on September 11th of 2001… that's a kind of falsehood which makes my stomach start to churn in disgust. Untruths and misrepresentations abound in this President's public discourse, when he even bothers to show himself in public. More than usual, even for a politician. And, frankly, more than should be acceptable in the America I thought I knew.

But the final mark of disrespect… the gut-level intuition that leads me to label him an EVIL man, rather than a merely despicable one is his casual contempt for human life. There aren't words to describe the horror I feel when I see Bush look into the nation's television cameras with that sadistic little smirk and tell us euphemistically, as if half-choking on a stifled snort that our enemies… "let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies." The barely-suppressed, no not really suppressed at all, look of GLEE at the thought of the death America has inflicted upon it's enemies. I recognize that it is necessary to kill human beings. I recognize that our security demands it. That every president must hold the lives and deaths of strangers in his hands. But the fact that we MUST kill NEVER excuses taking delight THAT we kill. You probably don't believe me. I don't know if you believe Tucker Carlson when he describes Bush's mockery of Karla Faye Tucker: "Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me." Maybe some of you don't believe it. Worse, maybe some of you feel the same way, and consider Bush's response… virtuous? I don't know. I look at Bush, taunting the camera, daring America's enemies to "bring it on" and I see a sick and disgusting man - the worst face of America sneering in the spotlight. A man who doesn't bother to care about the enormity of his job, the enormity of its consequences, and the enormity of this glorious Republic we've brought forth.

I've long had a very visceral reaction to Bush's smug little smirk and the way he talks so casually about the taking of human lives. We may be at war with the Iraqis, and many of them probably have done things that we would consider worthy of the death penalty. Yet there should still be a certain amount of respect for the fact that a life has been ended - a certain solemnity to the situation. We hear often about how our all the blood, gore and death in our media desensitizes people to violence and murder, yet I think watching a President who seems to think that enforcing the death penalty or the killing of thousands during a war is a time for a bit of macho swagger, boasting, offering wisecracks or otherwise making light of the entire situation is potentially even more damaging to those who are impressionable and tend to be influenced by such things. As Geoff says, Bush is visibly gleeful when he talks about the deaths we've caused and it is something that should sicken every American.

When campaigning for the Presidency, Bush promised to bring honour and dignity back to the White House. What he's delivered, however, is far from that. He's snide, sarcastic, petty and flippant, even when discussing the most serious of topics. One might think that he learned all he knows about acting like a "leader" from watching John Wayne westerns and Arnold Schwarzenegger action flicks. It's about as dishonourable and undignified as you can get.

Some things never change

Dave Neiwert has a solid piece looking at both the "Clinton-haters" and the "Bush-haters", and how differently the two groups are viewed and treated. As part of his piece, he includes a look at some of the anti-Clinton propaganda that was spread immediately after the Bush inauguration, particularly in regards to the alleged destruction, looting and pilfering of "gifts" by Clinton and his staffers. One quote he cites from an apperance Josh Marshall made on "Reliable Sources" really stood out at me:

Not at all. I think when I looked at that, when I looked at that story for the first few days, the charges escalated and escalated, more and more things, destruction of property, trash everywhere. And at a certain point, journalists started asking for some actual proof, some pictures, someone to go on the record and actually say this happened. And over and over again Ari Fleischer said, "Well, it's, yes it's true, but we're going to rise above it" and so forth. And at some point, you say, when are we going to get some proof that this happened.

Of course, it later came out that there simply was no proof because there'd been no vandalism. But even from the earliest days, the Bush administration has expected the American public to accept their word on things without any proof - the same pattern we've seen repeated throughout this administration, especially in regards to the Iraqi war.

It's too bad that none of us - liberals included - paid enough attention to this "we don't want to talk about it anymore" attitude of the White House to realize that rarely is the true reason they don't want to talk about it that they are "above it" or feel it's time to "move on", but simply that they're lying and don't want to be challenged on it. We know that now, of course, and there's a good chance that even if we'd been able to point out more examples like this one of the Bush Administration's duplicity we still wouldn't have been able to sway those who, after the shock of 9/11 felt a strong need to believe in the President, but reminding people of more of this kind of obfuscation might have made a bit of a difference. In any event, I think it's important that we keep re-discovering examples like this to make use of in the upcoming election campaign.

Listen! I smell something!

Here's a story that just reeks to high Asgard. Donald Rumsfeld engaged in a 'photo-op' today when a 9-year-old girl, who says she wants to be a reporter, got to ask him a question after a press conference. What wasn't made clear until later is that the girl in question is the neice of one of Paul Wolfowitz' speechwriters, and her aunt told her what question to ask. Kynn at Shock-and-Awe has a great analysis of the story. Talk about stage managing a situation!

Bush doll not much fun

A fun little commentary about the George Bush "Action" Figure was published in the KC Star today. Here's a bit - read the rest. It's good.

Dear Blue Box:

With great disappointment, I am returning the George W. Bush "action figure," which you will find enclosed in this package. I am seeking a full refund for this defective toy for the following reasons:

• Despite its billing as an action figure to pair up with my GI Joes, it was obviously not made to be a soldier. Never mind the lack of any scar on its face. The bigger problem is that I cannot find any weapons of mass destruction

More Bush Revisionism

[NOTE 10/28/03 - 7:30pm: If you are here via a story about the White House's robots.txt file, first, Welcome!! and secondly, I've just posted an update to that story on the main page. 2600 Magazine has spoken to a White House spokesperson about the change.]

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank notes that Bush is once again trying to revise history.

In an interview with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service given on Thursday and released by the White House yesterday, Bush interrupted the questioner when asked about his announcement on May 1 of, as the journalist put it, "the end of combat operations."

"Actually, major military operations," Bush replied. "Because we still have combat operations going on." Bush added: "It's a different kind of combat mission, but, nevertheless, it's combat, just ask the kids that are over there killing and being shot at."

In his May 1 speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush declared: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country." The headline on the White House site above Bush's May 1 speech is "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended."

Want proof? Screenshot 1 shows the National Security page at http://www.whitehouse.gov/response. Highlighted down at the bottom, you'll see a link to an article titled "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended" which links to http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html (I've also highlighted the URL for the link in the status bar of my browser that shows up because my mouse is hovering over the link, so you can verify that this is really where the link goes.)

Screenshot 2 shows the Popdex page for the http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html URL, and shows it having the title "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended".

Screenshot 3 is of the actual page you find at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html. Note that the word "major" has been added to the title.

Adam at "The Likely Story" has some additional screenshots showing just how many articles related to the USS Abraham Lincoln trip and announcement that now have "Major" in the title AND were most recently updated on August 18th.

And in case there was any doubt that the White House did, in fact, use the "Combat Operations" title as opposed to the "Major Combat Operations" title, here's Screenshot 4, of article from the White House website that apparently hasn't been updated yet. Might be fun to check back in a day or two, eh?

Sadly, this isn't the first time this week the Bushites have engaged in such historical revisionism. A couple days ago, I posted about how their rationale for having the Republican Convention so close to the September 11th commemerations has apparently changed from taking advantage of the commemeration (as stated in April) to "only" trying to avoid a conflict with the 2004 Summer Olympics (as stated in May).

By the way, since it's miserably hot (105 degress as I write this) and, as a result, I'm feeling rather grumpy, let me just say that I love how Bush says to ask our "kids that are over there killing and being shot at" whether its "combat" or not. Now, granted, it would be a logistical impossiblity to ask our kids that have been killed about it since, not to put to fine a point on it, dead people can't exactly speak, but does anyone really think the phrasing was actually predicated on the logistical issue? I mean, that would involve nuancing, right, and we all know it's not Bush's job to nuance, right? Besides, how often does someone say "you want to know if XYZ is dangerous? Ask so-and-so!" even though so-and-so is actually dead? Its a very common rhetorical tactic to emphasize just how bad a situation is - you know, ask the dead guy, he'd tell you if he wasn't dead. No, I think Bush just didn't want to have to actually admit, yet again, that our kids are being killed. As he put it back in December, he may be the "...one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids on the death of their loved ones," but near as I can tell, he doesn't give much thought to the casualty count beyond that. If he does, he could sure do a better job communicating that!

Bush to try and use a 'recess appointment' to get Dr. Daniel Pipes into Peace Institute

From the Interfaith Alliance:

August Recess Update: Bush to Side-Step Senate to Appoint Daniel Pipes

The Interfaith Alliance has learned through Congressional sources as well as Reuters and the Associated Press that President George Bush will side-step the normal Senate confirmation process and appoint Dr. Daniel Pipes to the U.S. Institute of Peace through a “recess appointment” sometime in the next two weeks. The “recess appointment,” that is, an appointment made during a congressional recess of a presidential nominee normally requiring confirmation by the Senate, will allow Pipes to serve through next year.

The nomination of Daniel Pipes, an outspoken critic of Islam, who has made divisive and destructive comments toward the Muslim-American community, was brought before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for confirmation on July 23. During the committee hearing, several senators expressed great alarm over the disparaging anti-Muslim remarks that have become a defining theme in the public record of Daniel Pipes and managed to postpone the confirmation vote.

By side-stepping the Senate committee, President Bush will install Pipes regardless of the divisive nature of the nominee and the legitimate concerns expressed in the Senate hearing. Further, by choosing this highly controversial and highly selective method to place Dr. Pipes on the Institute, President Bush is sending a message to Muslim Americans throughout the nation that their concerns over this nominee are being dismissed.

Today and tomorrow, thousands of people of faith and good will across the nation will call the White House and register their opinions on the comment line regarding this latest move by the administration. If you would like to join this effort, the number to call is 202-456-1414.

They'll put you through to the White House Comment Line - you can either leave a recorded message or, if you stay on the line, an operator will come on. They only asked for my home state and my comment - not my name or anything else. The Comment Line can also be reached directly by dialing 202-456-1111.

Meetings with members of Congress to ask for an independent investigation

I got this today from MoveOn.org - if you can go, please do! I'm going to see if I can draft someone from around here to go on my behalf. (This is one of those times being homebound is a real bitch!)

Join us to meet with key Members of Congress to demand an independent investigation of the intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify the attack on Iraq.

Working Assets, Women's Action for New Directions, True Majority, and MoveOn are setting up these critical meetings in elected officials' home districts during the August recess.

Members of Congress respond to pressure. They need to hear that constituents like you insist they take responsibility for America's tradition of democracy and fair play and ask tough questions about the White House justification for the ongoing catastrophic war in Iraq.

The American people have a right to know the true reasons behind this war, which has cost taxpayers billions of dollars and cost hundreds of soldiers their lives.

To meet with your Representative or Senator and demand an investigation, go to: http://www.workingassets.com/citizensfortruth3

Members of Congress must examine the validity of the intelligence used to justify the attack on Iraq. They should ask probing questions and demand that any answers be subject to verification. In the run-up to war, an array of administration officials claimed sources that provided justification for the attack were secret. Now, that secrecy seems to have been a screen to hide flaws in the evidence.

We hope you will join us in this powerful campaign to establish an independent investigation of administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

According to the Working Assets sign-up page, these are the ground rules that you are asked to agree to if you decide to go.

• These meetings are intended to be respectful discussions, not rallies or demonstrations. The purpose of these meetings is to allow constituents to raise the pressure on our elected officials to examine the validity of the intelligence used to justify attacking Iraq.
• The tone of the meetings is constructive, not adversarial.
• If the Congressional Member is not available, we will meet with senior staff. Gaining a staff ally is just as important as meeting with the elected official.
• Please register for the meeting with your local Representative or Senator only. You may see options for multiple meetings in your area. Please be courteous and allow activists who live in a particular district to sign up for that meeting.
• Our message is:

  “Members of Congress must examine the validity of the intelligence used to justify attacking Iraq. They must ask probing questions and demand any answers be subject to verification. An array of administration officials claimed sources providing justification for the attack were secret. Now, that secrecy seems to have been a screen to hide the flaws in the underlying evidence. The American people have the right to know whether the information used to justify the war and the deaths of our soldiers is accurate. Legislators must demand that they and their constituents be told the truth. “House Representatives should support the asking of questions by cosponsoring House Resolution 2635 or House Resolution 307 or both.”

  We all have many concerns, but we'll be the most effective if we rally behind one message.

Tips for talking to kids about the Bush lies

With a tip of the hat to the Sexuality Information and Education Council's ''Ten Tips for Talking about the Starr Report with your Children, '' the Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel offers a set of tips for talking to your children about the Bush administration's lies. Her tips include:

Think about your values as they relate to this situation. What are your family's values about telling the truth? What would you do if your child lied to you and when you scolded him or her, he or she replied: ''I am not a fact-checker.'' Or added, ''Isn't it time to move on?''

Ask your children to tell you what words mean to them. Explain that words have consequences and lies can come in two, six or 16 words.

Clarify facts. Give short, age-appropriate answers. Explain that shifting strategies at damage control only lead to more unanswered questions. Make clear that even if facts are malleable for President Bush, they're not malleable in your home. Explain that even though the White House strategy may be to say whatever is necessary, even if they have to admit later that what they said the first time wasn't exactly true, you don't do it that way yourself.

The article is clearly written with tongue-in-cheek, yet at the same time, some of the advice is pretty good. Kids do need to understand that telling the truth is actually rather important - as well as being the right thing to do. Sadly, it seems that most Presidents - from either party - serve as negative role models - people you can point out to your kids as example of what not to do.

Iran-Contra revisited and Felons in the government

During the 80's I tried to pay attention to politics, but I have to admit, I got a bit lost trying to understand the whole Iran-Contra affair. Today's Guardian offers a good overview of what Iran-Contra was about and who the main players were. What's frightening is how many of these names have shown up in Bush's cabinet and administration.

I do have to disagree with one comment the author makes. He says that "[i]t would be wrong to argue that convicted felons should not get a second chance." While I agree that felons should be able to continue on in most ways with their lives once they've paid their debt to society, I don't think that they should be allowed into government service. These are people who've already shown that they have little regard for the public by committing the crime they were convicted of. Why, then, should they be allowed into position of trust where they are supposed to serve the public?

I think this is a particlarly valid question when the felony in question was commited while a person was in government service, and especially if they used their government position in the commission of their crime. I would even consider extending such a prohibition to people who admit to have committing crimes for which they would receive a felony conviction, but are immune from prosecution due to immunity deals, though it is possible that such a rule might make some criminals less likely to testify against their co-conspirators. Those situation might have to be decided on a case-by-case business.

The main point, though, is that once a person has shown that they are willing to commit crimes against the public, violating oaths to uphold the Constitution and breaking laws that help define who and what America is as a nation, there's no reason to trust them to do otherwise in the future. It's axiomatic that power corrupts. Power, itself, provides any temptations. Someone who has fallen for it's siren's call once is likely to do so again. They shouldn't get a second bite at that apple.

Who's the poseur?

Stolen from Atrios:

Dukakis, who was resoundingly ridiculed for his tank "joyride" actually did serve in the military, as an Army Specialist 3rd from 1955 to 1957 - completing his service, unlike our "lets join the National Guard to avoid getting sent to Vietnam" commander-in-cheif, who couldn't even be bothered to show up for his last year of service. (And, yes, the longer this war drags on, and the more of our young men and women Bush kills in is twisted attempt to create a "domino effect" in the Middle East, the angrier I'm getting about his own draft dodging and going AWOL when his generation was called upon to die for the government's twisted attempt to prevent the communists from creating a "domino effect" in Southeast Asia)

In addition, as Norbizness notes in the comments section:To complete the "spot the differences", Dukakis apologists or a Dukakis version of Peggy Noonan weren't claiming that he actually drove the tank and blew up several structures in a live-fire exercise; in addition, his press secretary didn't claim that he HAD to use the tank because all of the jeeps were out of service.We need someone to - independent of any of the actual candidates - run an ad using the footage of Bush's carrier landing, with the voice over talking about "Bush pretends to be a jet fighter pilot, but in reality, he used his father's influence to get a prime National Guard posting and then went AWOL". Make it part of an overall campaign showcasing Bush's phoniness - other ads could feature shots of the "Mission Accomplished" banner with a voice over and on-screen graphics saying "Bush pretends that our mission is accomplished in Iraq, but since this announcement on May 1st, at least xx soldiers have died in combat, and another xx have died in other incident - deaths that would not have occured if our mission really had been finished"; images of Bush signing his tax cut, with voice saying "Bush pretends that his tax cut is progressive, but in reality the top 1% of taxpayers benefit at a much greater rate than middle or low income taxpayers", and graphics featuring this quote from TNR: "In fact, the top 1 percent of taxpayers would have their tax burden slashed by 9 percent, the middle quintile would have its taxes cut by 4.5 percent, and the lowest quintile would have its taxes cut by 0.8 percent.". A really great one would be images of Bush and of Osama bin Laden with the voice over talking about how "Bush pretends that we're winning the war on terrorism, but the reality is that we're no closer to finding Osama bin Laden than we were the day after the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda is still active (show headlines or new footage of recent bombings), and resources for going after bin Laden were diverted to the war in Iraq when Bush decided that Saddam would be our new priority".

There are a bunch of other, similar spots that could be done, focusing on how Bush pretends that the war in Iraq was to prevent Saddam from being a threat to the US, when in reality there's no solid evidence he was; same with the issues on Saddam's links to al Qaeda and the other issues involved there. Using the "Bush pretends...." but "the reality is...." formulation, it wouldn't be hard to start getting the message across that Bush isn't at all what he seems.

He's a poseur!

Jeremy Heimans and Tim Dixon offer what I think is a great suggestion for how the Democrats can deal with Bush in the upcoming election. Right now, the Dems have two big problems facing them: an ill-defined idea of what a Democrat is or should be, and the perception of Bush as a straight-shooting, tough-talking, "hero-warrior" here to save us from the "evildoers".

The first issue is undoubtedly the biggest of the two - the Democrats cannot and will not survive if they are unable to find an identity and a message beyond just being "the other white meat". Dems are supposed to be the party of the left, but the DLC complains that Howard Dean is "too liberal" - even though he's really a centrist! As a result, the Dems come off looking confused and unsure of who or what they're supposed to be, which makes it hard to build a campaign, much less a mandate.

Of course, it doesn't really help matters much that Democrats actually like to try and play closer to "fair" than the Republicans seem to, which means that when it's time for the race to the electoral finish line, the Repubs can get down in the dirt and just dig their way through, flinging mud everywhere, while the Dems seem to be more likely to lay down a coat so everyone can carefully walk across without getting their feet wet. I think you can see the problem (at least I hope you can, though the tortured metaphor there....)

Anyway, it's not that there's anything wrong with playing "fair", nor do the Dems need to start playing "dirty" - that would actually do a lot of damage to the party as a whole, but they do need to remember that "nice guys finish last" and that - while some may not consider it nice - there's nothing at all dirty in pointing out your opponents faults in the sharpest of terms.

Luckily, with Bush, finding faults to point out isn't that hard to do. From his lies about his own armed service record; to questions about why Gray Davis is facing recall in California for a busted economy, but Ken Lay - who led Enron when it's deliberate and fraudulent manipulation of the California energy markets did a large part of the damage - has yet to face any consequences for what he did; to Bush's proclivity for keeping things secret - including many documents from Reagan's presidency (when his father was Vice President) that, under normal rules would have been made available by now, the names of the people on Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force (which, not coincidentally, consulted with the President and Vice President on the California situation shortly before the administration announced that they weren't going to do anything about it), delaying the Congressional 9/11 report as long as possible, refusing to release the 28 pages of information on the Saudis from that report (even though the Saudis themselves have asked him to do so), refusing to let anyone see the daily briefing from August 6, 2001 which might have contained information that could have clued them in to al Qaeda's plans, and more; to questions about the use - or misuse - of intelligence prior to the Iraq war, including the infamous "16 words", the aluminum tubes, the specific quantities of biological and chemical toxins, the claims of knowing "beyond a doubt" that Saddam had weapons - which has magically now morphed into attempts to prove that he, at any time had a weapons program, and claims of links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein; to the misrepresentation of his tax programs and what effect they'll have on the economy (not to mention is misrepresentation of when the recession actually started); and so on. The list is quite long. As Heimans and Dixon put itBush is a phoney.

The Democrats' greatest danger is to run an issues-based campaign that becomes a ritualized liberal/conservative slanging match. Progressives who are flabbergasted at the audacity of Bush's agenda seem to think that simply communicating Bush's policy failures is enough. But this approach will play straight into Karl Rove's chubby hands and trap Democrats in the defensive, dithering posture that has defined them since the Bush presidency began.

So no matter how bad Bush's actual record may be, Democrats simply can't count on fighting the upcoming election on substantive policy grounds alone.

The question is what communications strategy will wear down the personal appeal of Bush as effectively as the "weak and indecisive" tag slapped on Jimmy Carter, and the "out of touch" tag on Bush's father. What characterization can the Democrats use to undermine Bush's image and his greatest perceived strengths? The one label that will stick and could work to undermine the positive personal perceptions of the president comes from Gephardt's line last week: George Bush is a phony. It works, because it has a ring of truth about it -- on everything from Iraq, to the economy, to tax cuts, to Bush's character and personal history.

The Bush-is-a-phony message can work because it starts where the average voter already is -- with a positive view of Bush. It recognizes that Bush may very well look tough, decisive, patriotic, responsible and compassionate. But it asks those voters to look beyond the image.

Sound nasty? It is. But expect the same from Republicans, whomever the Democrats nominate. And this time around, the Democrats clearly cannot run on the perception that Bush is not sufficiently experienced, bright or interested in the job. Those issues have been effectively neutralized as Americans have become used to seeing Bush as their commander in chief at a time of deep insecurity and fear.

Showing that Bush is a phony, rather than detailing how he's incompetent, focuses on a simpler message, and one that's harder to deflect.

Bush's image as a regular guy has helped to obscure the fact that he is an insider with close connections to big business and a natural interest in protecting them. To turn this around, Democrats can use the "phony" message as a nexus to explain the contradiction. How can the everyman who stumbles on his words and has a traveling pillow be the same fellow whose tax cuts leave nothing to poor families with kids? How can a champion of personal responsibility and born-again asceticism engineer such unsustainable budget deficits? How can a leader who claims to be the first White House CEO engage in the kind of shoddy handouts to corporate backers in Iraq that shareholders would never tolerate in a business leader? How can a president so determined to wage the war on terrorism be the same president who starves state and local authorities of critical funds for homeland security? How can the commander in chief so concerned about terrorists getting hold of nuclear weapons be the same leader who leaves Iraqi nuclear sites unattended for weeks?

These contradictions make much more sense when seen through the prism of Bush's utter phoniness. It's stunning that when Bush was making his controversial "Top Gun" flight suit appearance, no major Democrat noted the president's shoddy record in the Texas Air National Guard, where he served his country in the "Champagne" unit with Texas boys of privilege, while his poor neighbors went to Vietnam -- and still had several months of service unaccounted for. Instead Democrats complained about Bush's using public resources for the stunt, which most Americans, proud of the supposed quick victory in Iraq, couldn't care less about.

I think the idea of simplifying the message and focusing on how the carefully crafted image is just that - an image - with no substance underneath - could be a powerful one that might actually get through. I certainly can't hurt to try it - the Dems need all the help they can get.

Same old song and dance

After watching the PBS special on Watergate the other night, I've been doing a bit more research into Watergate and the events leading up to it. The Washington Post (natch) has a very nice section that include copies of articles written during that time, so you can see how the stories were intially reported. Typically, we either read or hear about how the stories came about described to us by someone who now has the benfit of hindsight to place the story itself into the overall context. Being able to read the stories as they were written, before the larger context was even known, however, is a real treat.

In addition to the Watergate information, they also have a few stories that sort of help "set the scene" for the scandal. One of them is an article on the Pentagon Papers and the revelation that months before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the US had already been planning for a war against North Vietnam. President Johnson, however, was able to take the Tonkin incident and use it as a leverage to gain public and Congressional support for the Vietnam War - and once he got authorization from Congress for attacking North Vietnam, he used that resolution to help him be able to take the war even further than initially intended.

It's stunning to sit here, having seen the aftermath of the Vietnam war, and watch as it begins to look like history repeating itself. The 9/11 attacks were used to help gain popular and Congressional support for the war in Iraq (along with the WMD, of course), even though we now know that this war was taked about and planned from long before the attacks ever took place. Bush now has his authorization from Congress, and we keep hearing talk (and thanfully, that's all it's been thus far) of targeting Syria or Iran or who knows who else, which would seem to be an expansion of what Congress said he could do.

Granted, the two situations do have some differences. While the losses in Iraq are unacceptable, they are not nearly as high as they were in Vietnam - something we can all be grateful for. There is also possible reason to hope that the war in Iraq won't last as long as the Vietnam war. And, thankfully, this time, our soldiers have the support of most Americans - both those who are in favour of the war and those who are against it. And, obviously, once you start getting into the finer details, there will be even more differences.

The point, though, is that in both cases, you have a President who's got a serious jones for war with a particular country, and has even made plans about going to war, if he can find a way to get the people and Congress to agree. Both Presidents make questionable claims about an incident deemed sufficiently aggressive as to justify war - but in neither case is the justification what it really appears to be. The Gulf of Tonkin incident may not have happened the way it was described, and worse, it may have been provoked by us in order to create a situation where President Johnson could get the authorization he wanted. With 9/11, there's no question that the attacks took place, or that they were severe enough to warrant a military retaliation. The problem here is that the country we retaliated against - Iraq - wasn't involved in the attacks (at least not that anyone's been able to demonstrate in any meaningful way at all).

Read the following excerpt, and see if there isn't something strangly familiar about it:

The Johnson administration planned for major American military action against North Vietnam nearly five months before the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, according to secret government documents made public yesterday by the New York Times.

These plans were made, the documents, show, at a time when the United States already was directing clandestine sabotage operations in the North.

Two months before the attack on two American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 2 and 4, 1964, the administration sent a Canadian diplomat, J. Blair Seaborn, on a secret mission to Hanoi where he is quoted as telling Premier Pham Van Dong that "in the event of escalation (of the war) the greatest devastation would result for the D.R.V. (North Vietnam) itself."

It was the Tonkin incident - called totally unprovoked by the administration - which led Congress on Aug. 7, 1964 to pass a resolution declaring that the United States was "prepares, as the President directs, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force," to assist South Vietnam. It was on this resolution that President Johnson subsequently leaned heavily to widen the war.

Videos on troop support

Take Back the Media has a fantastic Flash presentation called "Army of One" that takes a look at how Bush and the Republican Congress are "supporting" our troops.

For a different take on supporting our troops, check out the "When I'm Gone" video from 3 Doors Down. The song itself wasn't intended as a song about the men and women of our armed forces, but a large part of them seem to very touchingly fit their situation. From the chorus:

So hold me when I'm here
Love me when I'm wrong
Hold me when I'm scared
And love me when I'm gone
Everything I am
And everything you need
I'll also be the one
You wanted me to be
I'll never let you down
Even if I could
I'd give up everything
If only for your good
So hold me when I'm here
Love me when I'm wrong
You can hold me when I'm scared
You won't always be there
So love me when I'm gone

(If you've seen the version of the "When I'm Gone" video that shows the band members being "buried" while playing in a graveyard, that's not the video this link goes to. They've got a second version of the video out now.)

'I did not have a misleading relations with that intelligence!'

This, from Hesiod, is just too cute.

THE BLAME GAME: President Bush admits that he had an "inappropriate relationship" with the truth in his State of the Union speech.

Indeed.

Poindexter to resign

I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to higher retired Admiral John Poindexter - a lead figure in the Iran-Contra scandal who was convicted of lying to Congress and only had the conviction overturned because of an immunity agreement - but he's now expected to resign from DARPA in the wake of revelations of a planned project under his auspicies which would have created a market for betting on trends and events in the Middle East.

The departure had been demanded by lawmakers outraged over the notion that the Pentagon should set up a system enabling people to profit from predictions of terrorist attacks and other events. Poindexter, who has not spoken publicly about the initiative since it sparked a political firestorm Monday, has headed the office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) responsible for developing the trading program.

This isn't the first time he's been in hot water over a project from the Information Awareness Office he's overseen at DARPA.

Since joining DARPA in January 2002, Poindexter also has been embroiled in controversy over a computerized surveillance project to collect information about potential terrorist threats by scouring financial, travel, medical and other databases. After critics blasted the project for potential invasions of privacy, lawmakers and the Defense Department placed limits on it.

That project was the infamous Total Information Office.

The official said that Poindexter had not been asked to resign, but added that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior aides had agreed the onetime national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan -- and a central figure then in the Iran-contra scandal -- had become too much of a political lightning rod. Poindexter is "working through the details" of his resignation and "expects to offer" it within a few weeks, the official said.

Bush takes responsiblity for uranium inclusion

I have to be honest - I'm more than just a bit surprised by this - but Bush has actually taken personal responsiblity for including the line about Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from Africa in the State of the Union address.

It was the president's most direct response to questions about how his January State of the Union speech included erroneous allegations about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. "I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course. Absolutely. I also take responsibility for making decisions on war and peace," he said.

I'm glad to finally hear that, but it sure took him long enough.

Shades of Nixon

I've been sitting here this morning, watching (again) "All the President's Men", and thinking how much the behaviour of Bush and his White House has been reminding me of Nixion for quite a while. Then I came across this Dick Meyer column at CBS, entitled "George W. Nixon. Hmmm. Seems I'm not alone.

Fall guys, intimidation and leaked personal attacks on enemies are back in at the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. How Nixonian. How disappointing.

While he eventually concludes that Bush, himself, is probably a bit more Reaganesque, the way the White House has been handling the MisLeader scandal (please, lets NOT use a name for it that ends in "gate" - there's already enough Nixon here!) is decidedly Nixonian.

Maybe I should sit the White House folks down and make them watch this movie again themselves. Better yet, make them read the book - it has so much more detail. Then we can spend a few hours like a good Politics in Literature class and discuss the lessons of the book - the first of which would have to be "If you're in trouble, try telling the truth. It'll be less painful than if we have to pry it out of you." The second? "Far more often than not, the truth will out. Be prepared for the firestorm to follow."

'a sovereign state of terrorists'

Tom DeLay is on his way to the Middle East to carry his message that Palestine isn't ready to have it's own state yet.

"I'm sure there are some in the administration who are smarter than me, but I can't imagine in the very near future that a Palestinian state could ever happen," he said in an interview today, as he prepared to leave for a weeklong official tour.

"I can't imagine this president supporting a state of terrorists, a sovereign state of terrorists," he said. "You'd have to change almost an entire generation's culture."

To be honest, I don't write much about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict much because I have a very hard time trying to decide which side - if either - I agree with. In regards to DeLay's comment, though, I do have to ask: How do you expect the culture to change when the circumstances don't? As long as the Palestinians live in what they - understandably, I think - perceive as an intolerable situation, with no land they can call their own and under what appear to be both retalitory and aggressive attacks from Israel, the anger and resentment out of which they commit their terrorist acts isn't going to go away.

Now, this doesn't mean that I think what they do is right - I may understand why they feel they must act in the ways they do, but that doesn't mean I agree with it or support it in any way. By the same token, I understand why the Israelis feel the need to take some of the violent action that they do, but I don't think they're right all the time, either. Part of the problem is that both sides constanly claim that they are acting in defense of their people and their territory, and are the victims of the aggression of the other side - but they are both also being the aggressors on many occasions, engaging in terrorist acts they say are necessary to 'defend' themselves, but which serve only to keep the situation at full boil. (And keep in mind that what is defined as "terrorism" is often dependent on which side the definer agrees with. The Palestinians may use suicide bombers and the Israelis use their army, but the aggressive acts against the civilian populations of each country that both sides engage in are very much "terroristic" in nature.)

I have absolutely no idea what would be a reasonable solution. Absolutely none. I do, know, though, that demanding the Palestinians - and only the Palestinians - to change their ways as a pre-condition of establishing a sovereign state isn't going to accomoplish anything. The Israelis have to change as well. Just as both sides are right in some of what they want and do, both sides are very wrong in other ways.

I don't know if Bush's "road map" has much of a chance of working, but whatever chance that may be is only going to be damaged by having DeLay making comments like the one above which is insulting, and places no responsiblity on the Israelis for bring about the needed changes.

This will never be a "winner takes all" situation. If people keep trying to insist that it should be, there's no way anyone can ever win at all.

Mark Fiore is on it

Mark Fiore has a nice little animation about Bush's problem with the truth. Check it out...

Blaming the CIA

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has offers a great comparison to help explain why it is that after spending 2 years pushing the CIA to change how they gather and analyze intelligence, it's hard for the Bush administration to justify blaming them for intelligence failures in Iraq. He starts by recapping how Jim Hoagland had written in October about

...the way the Bush administration had muscled the intelligence community (and particularly the CIA) into giving up its "long-standing and deeply flawed analysis of Iraq." The White House was triggering, he went on to say, a battle between "officials whose careers and reputations were built on the old analysis of the Iraqis as a feckless, inert and inward-looking bunch of thugs against those willing to take a fresh, untilted look at all the evidence."

From there, he offers a good analysis as to what the trouble is with this kind of a mostly-political approach to intelligence gathering. He then offers this comparison:

Let's say a CEO took over a Fortune 500 company. Let's further say that his first act was to walk down to the advertising division and tell them they had no idea what they were doing and had to change the way they did business. He also told them he was going to bring in some outside consultants to comment on (read: second guess) their work. Now, the CEO and his new crew didn't have a huge amount of experience with ad work. But he talked a good game. So people thought he might have something up his sleeze. Then the new results come in at the end of the year and the company's revenues fell off the cliff.

Now, needless to say, the boss's cronies and sycophants would say that it was just an example of how bad the ad division was doing in the first place, or come up with some other such excuse. But how long do you think that CEO would hold on to his job?

Not very long would be my guess, and the analogy is good one. In this case, the politicans came in wanted the CIA to look at things differently, and the Department of Defense set up its own intelligence office to "second guess" the CIA.

UPDATE: (7/21/03 11:43pm) Rayne pointed out to me a small typo in the quote above... where it says "So people thought he might have something up his sleeze" instead of "...up his sleeve". She commented what a great Freudian slip it is, and I agree. Sadly, it's not mine. I had copied the text from Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo blog and pasted it in as it was. Josh has since corrected the error on his site, but I think I'm going to leave it here, just because it's such a perfect commentary on SO many things.... Thanks for the heads up, Rayne!

A decidedly non-comforting reassurance

This gem is courtesy of Atrios. Personally, I think this is one of the scariest things I've read in a while.

Los Angeles Times: Preparing for War, Stumbling to Peace

[...] Still, he and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely — to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.

"We're going to get better over time," promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. "We've always thought of post-hostilities as a phase" distinct from combat, he said. "The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum

"This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," he said. "We'll get better as we do it more often."

Scott McClellan and the Buck That Never Stops

From Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall comes this transcript of the July 17th morning press gaggle, in which reporters try to get Scott McClellan to say where it is that the buck stops in this administration. While no clear answer is found, it obviously stops someplace other than Bush's desk. My favourite line? QUESTION: And so when there's intelligence in a speech, the President is not responsible for that?.

You know, I think the answer to that one's just a little bit obvious.

QUESTION: Regardless of whether or not there was pressure from the White House for that line, I'm wondering where does the buck stop in this White House? Does it stop at the CIA, or does it stop in the Oval Office?

Scott McClellan: Again, this issue has been discussed. You're talking about some of the comments that -- some that are --

QUESTION: I'm not talking about anybody else's comments. I'm asking the question, is responsibility for what was in the President's own State of the Union ultimately with the President, or with somebody else?

Scott McClellan: This has been discussed.

QUESTION: So you won't say that the President is responsible for his own State of the Union speech?

Scott McClellan: It's been addressed.

QUESTION: Well, that's an excellent question. That is an excellent question. (Laughter.) Isn't the President responsible for the words that come out of his own mouth?

Scott McClellan: We've already acknowledged, Terry, that it should not have been included in there. I think that the American people appreciate that recognition.

QUESTION: You acknowledge that, but you blame somebody else for it. Is the President responsible for the things that he said in the State of the Union?

Scott McClellan: Well, the intelligence -- you're talking about intelligence that -- sometimes you later learn more information about intelligence that you didn't have previously. But when we're clearing a speech like that, it goes through the various agencies to look at that information and --

QUESTION: And so when there's intelligence in a speech, the President is not responsible for that?

Scott McClellan: We appreciate Director Tenet saying that he should have said, take it out.

QUESTION: But it's the President's fault.

Scott McClellan: In fact, if you look back at it, I mean, we did take out a different reference, a reference based on different sources in a previous speech because it was said -- the CIA Director said, take it out.

QUESTION: Let me come back to your "nonsense" statement here, and let me slice it as thinly as I possibly can, just growing out of what Scott asked. Is it nonsense to say that the White House wanted this information included in the State of the Union and negotiated with the CIA to find a way to put it in to the State of the Union?

Scott McClellan: I'm sorry?

QUESTION: Is it nonsense to say that the White House wanted this information in the speech and went through negotiations with the CIA on a way to get it in the speech?

Scott McClellan: That there were discussions? Speech drafts go -- we've stated that these speeches go out to the principals, it goes out to the State, it goes out to DOD, it goes out to CIA, when it's going through the drafting process.

QUESTION: Scott, you said it was "nonsense" to say that the White House was pressuring the CIA to put this in the speech. Is it nonsense to say --

Scott McClellan: I think the question that you asked about was that someone was insisting --

QUESTION: Durbin said, a White House official insisted --

Scott McClellan: -- insisting that it be put in there in an effort to mislead the American people, I think is what --

QUESTION: You didn't explicitly give a motive.

Scott McClellan: And I said I think that's just nonsense.

QUESTION: I'm just trying to slice it a little bit narrowly, to say, is it nonsense to say that the White House wanted this information in the speech and negotiated with the CIA on a way to get it in the speech?

Scott McClellan: Are you asking me to characterize the discussions that occur going on during the speech drafting process? I don't --

QUESTION: I'm saying, does your "nonsense" statement apply to the idea that the White House wanted it in the speech and negotiated with the CIA on a way to get it in the speech?

Scott McClellan: I think that it still goes back to, these drafts go to the various agencies, it goes to the CIA, this is an intelligence matter. It was based on information in the National Intelligence Estimate. That's the consensus document of the intelligence community, and that's what the information was based on in that speech.

QUESTION: So what I asked you about in that speech, your "nonsense" statement --

Scott McClellan: I'm trying to walk you --

QUESTION: You're trying to walk me out the door. (Laughter.)

Scott McClellan: I'm trying to walk you through this.

QUESTION: So your nonsense statement doesn't apply to what I just asked you?

Scott McClellan: I'm trying to walk you through the drafting process. And that's why I was trying to put it in context, so you understand how this occurs.

QUESTION: Scott, on Keith's question, why can't we just expect, basically what would be a non-answer, which is, of course the President is responsible for everything that comes out of his mouth. I mean, that's a non-answer. Why can't you just say that?

Scott McClellan: This issue has been addressed over the last several days.

QUESTION: Why won't you say that, though, that's, like, so innocuous and benign.

Scott McClellan: The issue has been addressed.

Energy Task Force apparently studying where everyone's oil was

Back in the 90's, Larry Klayman drove me nuts with all of his lawsuits against the Clinton administration or trying to get information from people. My assumption was that he was a partisan butthead trying to be a nusiance and possibly tying up the courts with frivolous crap.

It may be that I was wrong about some of that. He has been one of the driving forces behind the lawsuit into getting records from Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, and appears to be going after the Republicans with the same zeal and tactics he used against the Democrats. I still don't know if I think all of his lawsuits are really justified, but at the very least, he's showing that his mission isn't a partisan one.

Recently, he was successful in getting some documents from the Energy Task Force, and while I'm not yet sure what, exactly, it means, he's now announced that among the records the Task Force had were "a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” " along with similar material on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirites. Below is their media release and a link to the maps.

(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org.

The Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) documents likewise feature a map of each country’s oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the projects, costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date.

Judicial Watch has been seeking these documents under FOIA since April 19, 2001. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) when the government failed to comply with the provisions of the FOIA law. U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Friedman ordered the government to produce the documents on March 5, 2002.

The documents were produced in response to Judicial Watch’s on-going efforts to ensure transparency and accountability in government on behalf of the American people. Judicial Watch aggressively pursues those goals by making FOIA requests and seeking access to public information concerning government operations. When the government fails to abide by these “sunshine laws” Judicial Watch files lawsuits in order to obtain the requested information and to hold responsible government officials accountable.

“These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Click here for: MAPS AND CHARTS OF OILFIELDS: CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE

If I find out more of what's going on here, I'll be sure to make note of it. Tom Tomorrow at "This Modern World speculates that if this is on the level, it may be that one of the purposes of the Energy Task Force was to work out how to "divvy up" Iraq. He also posts a link to the transcripts from a Bill Moyers interview with Klayman, and notes that the suit referenced above was filed jointly with the Sierra Club, though they are not mentioned in the media release.

'Administration officials' may have outed undercover CIA agent for intimidation purposes

If this is true, it could be explosive. Well, if the press pay attention to it, that is...

Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.

The story provides a good background on both Wilson's trip and Wilson himself, and notes that the White House most likely hasn't been thrilled that Wilson stepped forward to provide evidence that there was reason for the administration to have known prior to the SOTU that the Niger/uranium story was questionable.

Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad, the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.

[ ... ]

The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames." If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good.

This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a "pattern of activities" to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry.

As the article notes, it is not clear at this point if the statement about Wilson's wife is true or not, but either way, it has some serious implications. In addition, there seems to have been little reason for anyone to have revealed that Wilson's wife recommended him for the trip. The trip itself was unpaid, and at the time, there was little personal gain to be had from making the trip (especially since Wilson obviously had not intended to make it known that he had made the trip until he felt it was necessary in order to explain what he had done and what information he'd about the trip).

If this is what it appears to be - and keep in mind that it's not entirely clear at this point if it is or not - an attempt by the Administration to punish a man for having embarassed them, and to warn others not to do likewise, it's very serious. If not, then it needs to be cleared up as soon as possible for the sake of the woman involved and her family.

Either way, the press needs to get on this, and there needs to be some kind of investigation into the matter.

Soon.

More exaggerations

This time, the CIA is accusing John Bolton, the Undersecretary of State, of planning to present a report that would have contained exaggerated information about Syria's WMD capabilities.

U.S. officials told Knight Ridder that Bolton was prepared to tell members of a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that Syria's development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to such a point that they posed a threat to stability in the region.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated.

The CIA appears to have managed to win this round, however, as Bolton's testimony has now been put off until September.

Bolton had also caused a bit of a stir in May of 2002, when he claimed Cuba had a biological weapons program - another assertion disputed by the CIA.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm beginning to think that maybe the only country who's weapons capabilities they don't want to exaggerate is North Korea's - and there's doesn't need any exaggeration to be scary!

Sharply pointed

Good bit about how various people take responsiblity for their actions....

Monster Limo Web Log

If you haven't started reading the Monster Limo Web Log yet, you really need to. They proved some wonderfully snarky takes on the news, usually making a good point along the way. This one, in particular, made me laugh - and points out, once again, the intellectual limitations of those in power. They can't even make a decent metaphor!

You People Need To Retake Geometry. One last time everyone, an axis is something with TWO points. The Axis Powers of WWII were named "Axis" because of Berlin and Rome, their TWO capitals. When Bush named three countries an "axis of evil" it was bad enough, but wanting to add a fourth point to a two-pointed figure is ridiculous. Let's gather up the ten worst uses of "axis" and form a hexagon of stupid.

Oh, regarding that light blogging comment earlier? Yeah, I'm still working on the project (trying to update the content and improve the usability of some of my websites) but every time I sit down to start on it, I realize just how incredibly big of an undertaking it is, and decide I'm just better off reading more news and blogging more. So, maybe blogging won't be so light after all, but if it does get light, that'll be why. :)

UPDATE: Husbands and puppies should NEVER be allowed to snuggle up and sleep next to each other. It's terminally cute. Were I diabetic, I'd be needing some insulin any moment now. By the Gods, I'm lucky to have to have the life I do! (OK, I'll go away now before I get outright maudlin *G*)

Good article on Bush's lies

Orcinus has an excellent article up that examines George Bush's aversion to the truth. Not only does he look at matters surrounding the WMD, but also other issues, including his war record, the "trifecta" joke, and Enron.

One bit he points out that I was unaware of is that while Bush employed the "trifecta" joke (saying he wouldn't engage in deficit spending unless we had a national emergency, a war, or a recession - and lucky him, we hit the trifecta) as a means of blaming 9/11 and the resulting War or Terror™ for his returning the country to deficit spending, even before 9/11, the situation was such that the country would have been engaged in deficit spending and raiding the Social Security Trust to cover it.

Throughout the campaign, Bush had been insistent that budget surpluses would be continuing, and never does he appear to have told any public audience at any time that deficit spending might become necessary. Indeed, the only times that Bush ever seems to have brought up the subject of deficit spending were those when he accused Al Gore of planning to lapse back into the practice.

Moreover, the story is fundamentally false as a purely chronological matter: Bush was already facing the certainty of deficit spending at the end of the summer of 2001, well before the attacks of Sept. 11. The surplus built up during the Clinton years -- some $4 trillion worth -- vanished over the spring and summer that year, and budget experts sounded the alarm about looming deficits then. The Congressional Budget Office warned Bush on Aug. 29 that Social Security funds would be needed to balance the books, forcing him to abandon a campaign promise not to use the retirement fund for other government spending.

Indeed, that is just what Bush proceeded to do in his actual budget, presented in January. According to the CBO, Bush’s budget plan would drain every dollar of the $527 billion surplus from the Social Security Trust Fund for the next two fiscal years even while creating a deficit. It would continue to raid the fund for varying amounts each year through 2012. Even with the fund’s help, the federal budget is expected to be in deficits through at least 2005.

Most serious economists peg the source of these nagging deficits on Bush’s tax-cut plan, the deepest portions of which have yet to kick in. The administration sternly denies this, with Bush offering a familiar defense: "This nation might have to run deficits in time of war, in times of a national emergency or in times of recession, and we’re still in all three," he told reporters in January. "It makes sense to spend money necessary to win the war."

Yet it’s clear that while Sept. 11 may have deepened and broadened the budget-deficit problem, the administration was faced with chronic budget deficits no matter what -- largely because of the Bush tax breaks.

It's a fairly long article, but well worth the time.