Flexible Reality
Saturday, May 15, 2004
Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind
Abu Musab Zarqawi blamed for more than 700 killings in Iraq
By Jim Miklaszewski
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:14 p.m. ET March 02, 2004
With Tuesday’s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.
But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council. “Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe. The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq. The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it. Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” Cressey added. And despite the Bush administration’s tough talk about hitting the terrorists before they strike, Zarqawi’s killing streak continues today.
Bush Points Out Lesson in Prisoner Abuse Scandal
The president reminds Concordia graduates that failures of character have far-reaching effects.
By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer
MEQUON, Wis. Drawing on the controversy that has haunted his reelection campaign in recent weeks, President Bush on Friday pointed to the U.S. soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi inmates as a life lesson for new college graduates."
Note: Nicely written and delivered speech. Unfortunately for the majority of citizens the President Bush that we have seen in practice, is nothing close to what he sounds like in his speeches.
Friday, May 14, 2004
Department of Political Science at UIUC: "Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq:
The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress, and the Media
from September 12, 2001 to October 11, 2002"
The Executive Summary is here
Wiggle Room?
Politics or charity? Donations questionedBy MONI BASU
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/14/04
What's wrong with Georgia's corporate leaders trying to raise money for an Atlanta charity that benefits kids with cancer? Plenty, if you ask Melanie Sloan, head of a Washington watchdog agency. She filed a complaint seeking to pull the plug on an event sponsored by AFLAC, the Columbus-based insurance giant, and Southern Co., the Atlanta utility conglomerate, that she called "shameful abuse" of children's charities.
The companies have signed on at $100,000 apiece to sponsor "Rocking the Apple . . . Georgia Style," a concert in New York City during the Republican National Convention, Aug. 30-Sept. 2. U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and other influential Republican lawmakers are scheduled to attend. Chambliss, designated as host of the event, said the concert was not a ruse and could raise as much as $250,000 for Camp Sunshine, an organization that allows children with cancer to sail boats, ride horses and spend time with one another.
Sloan said she has no problems with a children's charity benefiting from corporate donations. But when she learned the concert would bring together big donors and lawmakers, she grew suspicious. New campaign fund-raising laws placed a ban on "soft money" — unregulated contributions from corporations, labor unions and individual donors. The aim was to prevent large donors from buying access to federal elected officials.
"I think what we have is AFLAC wanting to have an event at the convention and realizing the best way to do it is to have a charity as a front," said Sloan, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. In what she called a disturbing new trend, charities have become a way for politicians to skirt the new restrictions, she claims.
"The main issue is that it's exploiting charities for politician gain," said Sloan, who filed complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee against Chambliss and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). She also filed a complaint against Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who had agreed to host a similar fund-raiser at the Democratic Party's convention in July. The Democrats' event has since been canceled.
Sloan's complaint suggests that the charity events could violate Senate rules that bar members from soliciting contributions for charities from lobbyists. It contends that the events also violate Internal Revenue Service regulations that prohibit charities from participating in political events on behalf of, or against, a candidate.
"The use of charitable organizations — by both Democrats and Republicans — to finance convention events is a reprehensible misuse of charities [and] reflects poorly on the Senate as well as the charities involved," the complaint states. Organizers said neither of the events is political in nature and both are intended to raise money for their respective charities.
Two other watchdog agencies, Democracy 21 and Common Cause, have raised concerns about a weeklong event scheduled during the Republican convention and coordinated by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas. A $500,000 gift to Celebrations for Children buys the donor a private dinner with DeLay, Broadway theater tickets, a cruise on a yacht, a luxury suite to listen to President Bush's acceptance speech at Madison Square Garden and several other perks.
After the event's costs are deducted, proceeds would be used by the charity, which is affiliated with DeLay, to fund a facility for disadvantaged children in Texas. "The more money you pay, the more access you get," said Mary Boyle, spokeswoman for Common Cause. "DeLay's charity is the one that causes us the greatest concern because it was established for the sole purpose of funding the week in New York."
Led by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Congress in 1995 passed a gift ban intended to prevent special interest groups from wining and dining lawmakers. But Boyle said charities remain a gray area for politicians. "We think it's good when members of Congress help a charity," Boyle said. "But the concern here is that charities are being used by wealthy people to gain access to Congress. And that's not good."
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Limbaugh attacks prosecutors in full-page newspaper ads
By JILL BARTON
Associated Press
Published on: 05/13/04
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. Rush Limbaugh took out full-page ads in two Florida newspapers Thursday to attack prosecutors who are investigating whether he illegally purchased prescription painkillers"
Three swimmers die off S. Florida coast over past few days
the Associated Press
Published on: 05/14/04
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. Three swimmers believed to have been caught in rip currents have died over the past two days off the South Florida coast, with two bodies washing ashore Thursday morning and more than a dozen people rescued".
Note: Remember: if caught in a rip tide you should swim laterally with the shore until you come to a section where the tide weakens, and you can then swim to shore. Don't over exert yourself...use the side-stroke or back stroke. Heavy exertion, overhand swimming, and fright are deadly in a rip tide.
A Method of Seeing Native TV From Timbuktu
The Saddam ShowHow to watch Iraqi TV on the Web.
By Paul Boutin
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 1:42 PM PT
Americans have a knee-jerk reaction when they see Saddam Hussein's speeches and footage of American POWs from the Iraq Satellite Channel aired on U.S. networks: What do you mean, there's a TV channel I can't get?
Don't worry, you can add the Iraq Satellite Channel to your 500-channel universe with a little tinkering. Iraqi television is rebroadcast onto the Net by the Dutch service DSL-TV, in both Real and Windows Media formats. The catch is that unlike ish.com's Al Jazeera stream from Germany, DSL-TV tries to limit its service to computers inside the Netherlands as part of its terms of service.
But for the savvy Net surfer, that's an easy problem to get around. Like Web browsers, streaming media players allow you to use what's called a proxy server to make your computer's requests take place from inside the Netherlands—or from whatever country you prefer. (Baghdad blogger Salam Pax uses this technique from inside Iraq to reach blocked Web sites and send untraceable e-mail to his fans.) Hackers who support the free, anonymous flow of information host publicly available proxies from all over the world, and lists of them are available on sites such as Public Proxy Servers.
To watch the Iraq Satellite Channel on your computer, click through the list of proxies at Public Proxy Servers until you find one located in the Netherlands. Jot down its IP address (which looks something like 12.345.67.89) and port number (probably 80 or 8080). Find the option to set a proxy on your Web browser. (On the latest version of Internet Explorer for Windows, select Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings.) Plug in the IP address and port number. Save the settings, then open the DSL link. Click on the streaming link for the Iraq Satellite Channel. If your software is fairly new, Internet Explorer will pop up the video in a separate panel and begin playing it. Or you may have to separately set the HTTP proxy on your Windows Media Player or Real player, each of which has its own Preferences or Options menus. I tuned in with both Windows Media on a PC and with RealOne on a Mac. Two caveats: You'll need a broadband connection, and if your local network has a firewall or VPN, you may get error messages instead of video.
Iraqi TV looks like local-access cable, or at least state-sponsored local-access propaganda. It's not all Saddam, all the time, despite the frequent canned footage of him. Some of the fare is strikingly similar to American television: news reports, speeches, music videos (some with lots of guns in them), and poignant interviews with big-eyed children in hospital beds. There are frequent updates on the war. Last time I checked, Iraq's Minister of Information, Muhammad Said as Sahhaf, was speaking from a podium cluttered with microphones. Last night, I saw the notorious photos of American prisoners.
Viewers be warned: American TV networks make daily decisions on what to show or not to show their viewers. On the Internet, it's easy to route around those decisions. If blogging makes everyone a journalist, then tricks like this one make everyone their own news producer. If you're squeamish, or if you're the relative of an American soldier, you may not want to watch images that the TV networks have deemed unfit for American audiences. But if you want to narrowcast the Iraq Satellite Channel to yourself to see what's being fed to the Iraqi people during this war, you can.
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Q: What do these countries have in common?
AfghanistanAlgeria
Angola
Burma
Burundi
Congo
Chechnya
Haiti
Kosovo
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Kashmir
Liberia
Nigeria
Pakistan
Phillipines
Rwanda
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Uganda
Zimbabwe
A: A Country heavily involved in religious and sectarian violence in the recent past.
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Reasserting the primacy of a political, instead of a military, reaction to terrorist groups and their activities.
"Countering al Qaeda". An appreciaton of the situation and suggestions for stategy by Brian Michael Jeknins at the Rand Corporation 2002.UPI No mad cow tests at large Texas slaughterhouses in 2004. Even at the Lone Star Beef Processors plant where a cow that exhibited signs of a brain disorder was not tested, despite a USDA policy to test all such cows for mad cow disease.
CBC NewsThe Daily Mirror admits the U.K. Iraq abuse photos are fakes.
Note: So how long will it be before the U.S. Far Right claims the same about U.S. abuse photos?
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Schoolyard bullies and their victims: The picture fills out by Patrik Jonsson for the Christian Science Monitor.
Mexican Air Force Films UFOs
Associated Press Page 1 of 1
11:17 AM May. 12, 2004 PT
Mexican Air Force pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state, a spokesman for Mexico's Defense Department confirmed Tuesday.
A videotape made widely available to the news media on Tuesday shows the bright objects, some sharp points of light and others like large headlights, moving rapidly in what appears to be a late-evening sky. The lights were filmed on March 5 by pilots using infrared equipment. They appeared to be flying at an altitude of about 11,500 feet, and reportedly surrounded the jet as it conducted routine anti-drug trafficking vigilance in Campeche. Only three of the objects showed up on the plane's radar.
"Was I afraid? Yes. A little afraid because we were facing something that had never happened before," said radar operator Lt. German Marin in a taped interview made public Tuesday. "I couldn't say what it was ... but I think they're completely real," added Lt. Mario Adrian Vazquez, the infrared equipment operator. Vazquez insisted that there was no way to alter the recorded images.
The plane's captain, Maj. Magdaleno Castanon, said the military jets chased the lights "and I believe they could feel we were pursuing them." When the jets stopped following the objects, they disappeared, he said.
A Defense Department spokesman confirmed Tuesday that the videotape was filmed by members of the Mexican Air Force. The spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, declined to comment further.The video was first aired on national television Monday night then again at a news conference Tuesday by Jaime Maussan, a Mexican investigator who has dedicated the past 10 years to studying UFOs.
"This is historic news," Maussan told reporters. "Hundreds of videos (of UFOs) exist, but none had the backing of the armed forces of any country.... The armed forces don't perpetuate frauds." Maussan said he obtained the video from Secretary of Defense Gen. Ricardo Vega Garcia.
Better Not Try to Blame the Abuse on Low-Level Enlisted Men and Women!! It Could Not Have Happened That Way as Anyone Who Served in The US Armed Forces Can Attest!
Private says: I was told to stand there, hold the leash and look at the cameraBy Rupert Cornwell in Washington
13 May 2004
The female soldier at the centre of the Iraqi prison abuse scandal yesterday maintained that she only posed in the infamous pictures of naked detainees because she was told to do so by her superiors, as a means of softening up the prisoners for interrogation.
Hours before the Pentagon privately showed what were by some accounts even more shocking photos to senior politicians on Capitol Hill, Private Lynndie England, 21, said she was given specific instructions on how to pose in the pictures. Asked who gave those instructions, she replied "persons in my chain of command", refusing to be more specific.
Her claim, in an interview with a television station in Denver, Colorado, echoes those of six of her colleagues in the 372nd Military Police Company, who are also facing courts martial for their part in the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. It will intensify suspicions that responsibility for the abuse is not confined to them, or even to the six middle-ranking officers who face dismissal from the armed forces.
Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of running US military prisons in Iraq, told The Washington Post she had tried to block decisions by more senior officials to put military intelligence in effective charge of the prisons and authorising the use of lethal force to keep order.
She put the blame on Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, and Major-General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, who was sent to Iraq in 2003 to "improve" the results of prisoner interrogations. Both generals have denied that they gave any such orders.
Pte England, who in one photo was shown holding a leash around the neck of a naked Iraqi detainee, said she was "instructed by persons in higher rank to 'stand there, hold the leash, look at the camera'." She said: "They then took pictures for PsyOps [psychological operations]. I didn't really want to be in any pictures. It was all rather weird."
In a separate TV interview, Pte England's lawyer claimed those who gave the orders were "from MI [Military Intelligence] and OGA [other government agencies]", the latter a widely used reference to the CIA.
After the pictures were taken, Pte England said she was praised by her superiors, who told her: "Hey, you're doing great, just keep it up." She added that things had happened at the prison even worse than those depicted in the pictures already made public.
As she spoke, congressmen and senators were being shown some of the "hundreds" of further photos and "dozens" of video clips showing prisoner abuse including forced sex, rape and torture, now in the Pentagon's possession. One emerging Senator, clearly shaken, described them as "stomach-churning". Others said the new material made clear that responsibility extended higher up the command chain.
At Pentagon insistence, the viewings took place in secure rooms on Capitol Hill. Sharp divisions have emerged about whether the pictures should be released to the public, with some arguing that the sooner everything is out in the open the better. Others senators and congressmen contend that, after the airing of the video showing the beheading of the US businessman Nick Berg by Islamic militants, the release of more prison abuse photos would only further inflame the situation.
However the argument is resolved, intense pressure will continue on the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, despite strong public support from President George Bush.
Yesterday at a Senate hearing on the White House request for $25bn (£14bn) of supplementary funds for the Iraq operation, Mr Rumsfeld dismissed complaints that the interrogation techniques used in Iraq violated the Geneva Convention. He told Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, that Pentagon lawyers had approved sleep deprivation, dietary changes and other methods. Mr Rumsfeld flatly rejected Mr Durbin's charge that these went "far beyond the Geneva Conventions".
Military specialists and political observers believe the Defence Secretary could yet be forced from office, possibly by the publication of the thus-far secret material.
Even Republican senators loyal to the administration maintain that junior officers and NCOs cannot be the sole scapegoats. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, insisted yesterday that Mr Rumsfeld was anything but indispensable, and that "any number of people" could replace him. He said suitable candidates included the Republican senators John McCain and John Warner, their Democratic colleague Carl Levin of Michigan, and Bill Clinton's defence secretary William Perry.
Tallahassee Democrat | 05/13/2004 | Federal deficit reaches almost $282 billion
By Jeannine Aversa
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deficit of almost $282 billion in first seven months of budget year
The government ran a deficit of $281.8 billion in the first seven months of the 2004 budget year according to the latest snapshot of the nation's balance sheets. The data released by the Treasury Department on Wednesday showed more red ink than the $202.1 billion shortfall recorded for the corresponding period last year. For the 2004 budget year that began Oct. 1, spending has totaled $1.35 trillion, 7.5 percent more than the same period a year ago. Revenues came to $1.07 trillion - a 1.3-percent increase from a year ago.
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This Administration Simply Doesn't Have A Clue About Anything That Really Matters!!!All they seem capable of is redirecting citizens attention toward some lame attempt at remaking America 2004 into a 50's era Mayberry replica replete with John Wayne male characters, and Stepford Wives. Get Real!!
U.S. Discloses Wal-Mart Fine of $3.1 Million
Wal-Mart Fined $3.1M by Justice Dept.
The Justice Department said on Wednesday that Wal-Mart had agreed to pay $3.1 million in fines for violating the Clean Water Act at 24 sites in nine states.
Tax Relief Charade
NY Times Editorial
Published: May 13, 2004
Last week, House Republicans were the driving force behind the passage of a stopgap measure intended to provide relief for taxpayers who have been hit of late with the alternative minimum tax. The relief is sorely needed. But the House's measure is disingenuous — a temporary fix that will mollify justifiably aggrieved taxpayers in the short run while obscuring the real cause of the alternative tax problem and, by extension, dangerous flaws in the Bush administration's tax policy.
The alternative minimum tax is built into the federal tax code to ensure that superwealthy taxpayers don't use excessive tax breaks to avoid paying their fair share. In the 1990's, it never applied to more than about one million people a year. But in recent years, the tax has begun afflicting middle-class and upper-middle-class taxpayers who are far from the multimillionaires it was intended to affect. This year, about three million taxpayers will owe this tax. Without corrective action, nearly 30 million taxpayers will be affected in 2010, most of them making $50,000 to $200,000.
Part of the problem is that the alternative minimum tax was not designed to reflect the effects of inflation, so the House's fix would provide some inflation protection by increasing the thresholds for the tax through 2005. But a more serious cause is the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. When the tax cuts were enacted, no corresponding changes were made to the alternative tax. So as the tax cuts reduce the liability on a filer's Form 1040, the alternative tax liability looms relatively larger. In effect, most taxpayers snared by this tax will be giving back all or part of the tax savings they were supposed to reap from the Bush tax cuts.
This consequence was not unforeseen — the alternative tax has been studied from every conceivable angle for over a decade. It is allowed to endure in its current form for only one reason: to mask the tax cuts' disastrous effect on the deficit. As long as the alternative tax is on the books, official budget estimates include the revenue it is projected to raise from middle-class taxpayers — even though the administration and Congress are publicly committed to ensuring that those same taxpayers won't have to pay. One way or the other, then, the administration's tax plan is sheer duplicity. Either middle-class Americans will find their supposed tax cuts gobbled up by the alternative tax, or the deficit will be far larger than the administration projects.
The hidden budget hole is enormous. Right now, the administration argues that Congress must permanently extend the Bush tax cuts. According to estimates by the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, the cost of doing so, without reforming the alternative tax, is about $1.2 trillion. If the alternative tax is reformed so it won't apply to middle-class taxpayers, the cost will explode to nearly $2 trillion.
The Senate is expected to pass the House's temporary fix, but middle-class taxpayers should not be fooled. They will either get little if any benefit from the Bush tax cuts, or they will get a deficit that has ballooned beyond anyone's worst nightmare
U.S. Missile Shield Won't Work: Scientist Group
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5133987&src=rss/topNews§ion=news
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Clash of Civilizations
"Clash of Civilizations
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: May 13, 2004
ASHINGTON
Testifying before the Senate yesterday, General Richard Myers admitted that we're checkmated in Iraq.
"There is no way to militarily lose in Iraq," he said, describing the generals' consensus. "There is also no way to militarily win in Iraq."
Talk about the sound of one hand clapping. And they say John Kerry is on both sides of issues.
Sounding like Mr. Kerry, General Myers summed up: "This process has to be internationalized. The U.N. has to play the governance role. That's how we're, in my view, eventually going to win."
The administration's demented quest to conquer Arab hearts and minds has dissolved in a torrent of pornography denigrating other parts of the Arab anatomy. George Bush, who swept into office on a cloud of moral umbrage, now has his own sex scandal — one with far greater implications than titillating cigar jokes.
The Bush hawks, so fixated on making the Middle East look more like America, have made America look un-American. Should we really be reduced to defending ourselves by saying at least we don't behead people?
Gripped in a "I can't look at them — I've got to look at them" state of mind, lawmakers grimly filed into private screening rooms on the Hill to check out the 1,800 grotesque images of sex, humiliation and torture.
"They're disgusting," Senator Dianne Feinstein told me. "If somebody wanted to plan a clash of civilizations, this is how they'd do it. These pictures play into every stereotype of America that Arabs have: America as debauched, America as hypocrites.
"Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz act like they know all the answers, almost like a divine right," she said. "They don't have a divine right, and they are wrong."
After 9/11, America had the support and sympathy of the world. Now, awash in digital evidence of uncivilized behavior, America has careered into a war of civilizations. The pictures were clearly meant to use the codebook of Muslim anxieties about nudity and sexual and gender humiliation to break down the prisoners.
Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell said some photographs seemed to show Iraqi women being commanded to expose their breasts — such debasement, after a war that President Bush partly based on women's rights.
The problem, of course, is that the war in Iraq started with lies — that Saddam's W.M.D. were endangering our security and that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and 9/11.
In a public relations move that cheapens the heroism of soldiers, the Pentagon merged the medals for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, giving the G.W.O.T. medal, for Global War on Terrorism, in both wars to reinforce the idea that we had to invade Iraq to quell terrorism. The truth is that our invasion of Iraq spurred terrorism there and around the world.
That initial deception — and headlong rush to throw off international conventions and old alliances, and namby-pamby institutions like the U.N. and the Red Cross — led straight to the abuse of Abu Ghraib. Now the question is whether the C.I.A. tortured Al Qaeda operatives.
Officials blurred the lines to justify ideological decisions, calling every Iraqi who opposed us a "terrorist"; conducting rough interrogations, perhaps to find the nonexistent W.M.D. so they would not look foolish; rolling all opposition into one scary terrorist ball that did not require sensitivity to the Geneva Conventions or "humanitarian do-gooders," to use the phrase of Senator James Inhofe, a Republican.
Senator Fritz Hollings made it clear yesterday that Rummy has left us undermanned and undertrained in Iraq — another factor in the torture scandal. "Now, in a country of 25 million, you're trying to secure it with 135,000," he scolded Mr. Rumsfeld, adding: "We're trying to win the hearts and minds as we're killing them and torturing them." At least, he said sarcastically, Gen. William Westmoreland never asked a Vietcong general to take the town, "like we have for Falluja. We've asked the enemy general to take the town."
The hawks, who promised us garlands in Iraq, should have recalled the words of the historian Daniel Boorstin, who warned that planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
MSNBC - Altercation: Correspondents Corner: David Scott, USMC Ret.
Hometown: Westfield, MA
I know this is probably a horrible and perhaps nearly incomprehensible thing to say, but I am happy that these prison murders, rapes and abuses have finally been shown to the American people, and make no mistake, given a choice this administration would never have allowed the country to see these terrible things.
As a disabled Vietnam veteran and as someone whose existence has been defined by war, there are things happening in Iraq that have a very sick and familiar feel, only this is a much more secret war. In Vietnam it was all there on the T.V. every night, the carnage and senseless killing that is a part of every war.
In this war it is all a secret, as if there really were no killings no grotesquely wounded as if the 700 or so dead or the thousands wounded were just numbers with no names attached no real lives to account for and it is unpatriot and nearly criminal to merely mention those that have fallen.
It is we, the wretched refuse, the poor people, and it has always been the poor who fight wars, who are ultimately made more poor, more disenchanted once they return home to V.A. hospitals with the worst health care system in the country and veterans benefits that require nothing less than shameless begging.
It is always us against them. The rich ,the privileged, that have never been in a war, have never been wounded or had friends die who have never seen rows and rows of blasted bone and mutilated flesh in veterans hospitals, those like Bush or Cheney who posture and blather about things like patriotism and sacrifice, have no concept of the ugliness, the stupidity or the real shock and awe of suddenly being hit and down and the bleeding out into the ground of a foreign country far away. It is always us, it is never them.
And it only comes to you later by painful degrees if you have survived with the rest of the wretched wounded in a slow sickening epiphany, that this is no John Wayne movie or Iwo Jima battle but a senseless murdering for reasons that are more and more unclear.
To all those who make these decisions about war, who seem suddenly appalled like our President and the rest of the rich who run this country, or the outraged officers who always serve in the rear, to all those faux warrior architects, or political pundits who have no idea what it is like to be thousands of miles away with a rifle in a foreign country where the enemy does not wear uniforms and there are no real fronts. Where life is cheap and always at risk, these pictures, these rapes, these tortures, these murders are what happen in such places. And they happen in every war. It is the ugly nature of the thing that I thought we had learned 30 years ago.
Report of the International Committe of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the Treatment by the Coalition Forces of Prisoners of War And Other Protected Persons, Feb. 2004God forbid an innocent is deemed a "person of interest" by the interrogators. The ICRC report plainly asserts the treatment seen in the recently released photos was, and still is, routine standard practice in CF prison facilities when the subject is labeled a person of interest.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'Cooks and drivers were working as interrogators'
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday May 7, 2004
The Guardian
Many of the prisoners abused at the Abu Ghraib prison were innocent Iraqis picked up at random by US troops, and incarcerated by under-qualified intelligence officers, a former US interrogator from the notorious jail told the Guardian.
Torin Nelson, who served as a military intelligence officer at Guantánamo Bay before moving to Abu Ghraib as a private contractor last year, blamed the abuses on a failure of command in US military intelligence and an over-reliance on private firms. He alleged that those companies were so anxious to meet the demand for their services that they sent "cooks and truck drivers" to work as interrogators.
"Military intelligence operations need to drastically change in order for something like this not to happen again," Mr Nelson said. He spoke to the Guardian in a series of interviews by phone and email.
He claimed that "many of the detainees at the prison are actually innocent of any acts against the coalition and are being held until the bureaucracy there can go through their cases and verify their need to be released."
Gallup Poll Results: May 11th, 2004Bush Job Approval Drops to Record Low. Prison Abuse Scandal Polling Results. Rumsfeld Job Approval Nose Dives.
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall provides an balanced assessment of the ICRC Report on prison conditions in Iraq.
Monday, May 10, 2004
The Price of Arrogance
In a war that could go on for decades, you cannot simply detain people indefinitely on the sole authority of the secretary of Defense> By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek May 17 issue -
America is ushering in a new responsibility era," says President Bush as part of his standard stump speech, "where each of us understands we're responsible for the decisions we make in life." When speaking about bad CEOs he's even clearer as to what it entails: "You're beginning to see the consequences of people making irresponsible decisions. They need to pay a price for their irresponsibility."
"I take full responsibility," said Donald Rumsfeld in his congressional testimony last week. But what does this mean? Secretary Rumsfeld hastened to add that he did not plan to resign and was not going to ask anyone else who might have been "responsible" to resign. As far as I can tell, taking responsibility these days means nothing more than saying the magic words "I take responsibility."
After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn't even want to launch a serious investigation into it. The 9/11 Commission was created after months of refusals because some of the victims' families pursued it aggressively and simply didn't give up. After the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, not one person was even reassigned. The only people who have been fired or cashiered in this administration are men like Gen. Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill and Larry Lindsey, who spoke inconvenient truths.
Rumsfeld went on in his testimony to explain that "these terrible acts were perpetrated by a small number." That's correct, except the small number who are truly responsible are not the handful of uniformed personnel currently being charged for the prison abuse scandal. The events at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger breakdown in American policy over the past two years. And it has been perpetrated by a small number of people at the highest levels of government.
Since 9/11, a handful of officials at the top of the Defense Department and the vice president's office have commandeered American foreign and defense policy. In the name of fighting terror they have systematically weakened the traditional restraints that have made this country respected around the world. Alliances, international institutions, norms and ethical conventions have all been deemed expensive indulgences at a time of crisis.
Within weeks after September 11, senior officials at the Pentagon and the White House began the drive to maximize American freedom of action. They attacked specifically the Geneva Conventions, which govern behavior during wartime. Donald Rumsfeld explained that the conventions did not apply to today's "set of facts." He and his top aides have tried persistently to keep prisoners out of the reach of either American courts or international law, presumably so that they can be handled without those pettifogging rules as barriers. Rumsfeld initially fought both the uniformed military and Colin Powell, who urged that prisoners in Guantanamo be accorded rights under the conventions. Eventually he gave in on the matter but continued to suggest that the protocols were antiquated. Last week he said again that the Geneva Conventions did not "precisely apply" and were simply basic rules.
The conventions are not exactly optional. They are the law of the land, signed by the president and ratified by Congress. Rumsfeld's concern—that Al Qaeda members do not wear uniforms and are thus "unlawful combatants"—is understandable, but that is a determination that a military court would have to make. In a war that could go on for decades, you cannot simply arrest and detain people indefinitely on the say-so of the secretary of Defense.
The basic attitude taken by Rumsfeld, Cheney and their top aides has been "We're at war; all these niceties will have to wait." As a result, we have waged pre-emptive war unilaterally, spurned international cooperation, rejected United Nations participation, humiliated allies, discounted the need for local support in Iraq and incurred massive costs in blood and treasure. If the world is not to be trusted in these dangerous times, key agencies of the American government, like the State Department, are to be trusted even less. Congress is barely informed, even on issues on which its "advise and consent" are constitutionally mandated.
Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.
Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he takes full responsibility.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
Just Trust Us
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: May 11, 2004
Didn't you know, in your gut, that something like Abu Ghraib would eventually come to light?
When the world first learned about the abuse of prisoners, President Bush said that it "does not reflect the nature of the American people." He's right, of course: a great majority of Americans are decent and good. But so are a great majority of people everywhere. If America's record is better than that of most countries — and it is — it's because of our system: our tradition of openness, and checks and balances.
Yet Mr. Bush, despite all his talk of good and evil, doesn't believe in that system. From the day his administration took office, its slogan has been "just trust us." No administration since Nixon has been so insistent that it has the right to operate without oversight or accountability, and no administration since Nixon has shown itself to be so little deserving of that trust. Out of a misplaced sense of patriotism, Congress has deferred to the administration's demands. Sooner or later, a moral catastrophe was inevitable.
Just trust us, John Ashcroft said, as he demanded that Congress pass the Patriot Act, no questions asked. After two and a half years, during which he arrested and secretly detained more than a thousand people, Mr. Ashcroft has yet to convict any actual terrorists. (Look at the actual trials of what Dahlia Lithwick of Slate calls "disaffected bozos who watch cheesy training videos," and you'll see what I mean.)
Just trust us, George Bush said, as he insisted that Iraq, which hadn't attacked us and posed no obvious threat, was the place to go in the war on terror. When we got there, we found no weapons of mass destruction and no new evidence of links to Al Qaeda.
Just trust us, Paul Bremer said, as he took over in Iraq. What is the legal basis for Mr. Bremer's authority? You may imagine that the Coalition Provisional Authority is an arm of the government, subject to U.S. law. But it turns out that no law or presidential directive has ever established the authority's status. Mr. Bremer, as far as we can tell, answers to nobody except Mr. Bush, which makes Iraq a sort of personal fief. In that fief, there has been nothing that Americans would recognize as the rule of law. For example, Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's erstwhile favorite, was allowed to gain control of Saddam's files — the better to blackmail his potential rivals.
And finally: Just trust us, Donald Rumsfeld said early in 2002, when he declared that "enemy combatants" — a term that turned out to mean anyone, including American citizens, the administration chose to so designate — don't have rights under the Geneva Convention. Now people around the world talk of an "American gulag," and Seymour Hersh is exposing My Lai all over again.
Did top officials order the use of torture? It depends on the meaning of the words "order" and "torture." Last August Mr. Rumsfeld's top intelligence official sent Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the Guantánamo prison, to Iraq. General Miller recommended that the guards help interrogators, including private contractors, by handling prisoners in a way that "sets the conditions" for "successful interrogation and exploitation." What did he and his superiors think would happen?
To their credit, some supporters of the administration are speaking out. "This is about system failure," said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. But do Mr. Graham, John McCain and other appalled lawmakers understand their own role in that failure? By deferring to the administration at every step, by blocking every effort to make officials accountable, they set the nation up for this disaster. You can't prevent any serious inquiry into why George Bush led us to war to eliminate W.M.D. that didn't exist and to punish Saddam for imaginary ties to Al Qaeda, then express shock when Mr. Bush's administration fails to follow the rules on other matters.
Meanwhile, Abu Ghraib will remain in use, under its new commander: General Miller of Guantánamo. Donald Rumsfeld has "accepted responsibility" — an action that apparently does not mean paying any price at all. And Dick Cheney says, "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had. . . . People should get off his case and let him do his job." In other words: Just trust us.
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Independent Judiciary?
Gannett, AP Sue U.S. Marshals for Erased Scalia TapesMon May 10, 2004 03:34 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) -
Two media companies and two of their reporters accused the U.S. Marshals Service in a lawsuit on Monday of violating their constitutional rights by confiscating recording devices during a speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and erasing his remarks.
Antoinette Konz, who works with the Gannett newspaper the Hattiesburg American, and Denise Grones, who works with the Associated Press, were covering Scalia's appearance at a high school in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on April 7 for a talk on the U.S. Constitution. U.S. Deputy Marshal Melanie Rube demanded they turn over their tape recorder and digital recorder, Gannett said in a statement. The reporters received their equipment back after Scalia's comments were erased.
Gannett said the federal suit seeks nominal damages and an injunction prohibiting the Marshals Service from seizing and erasing reporters' recordings. The suit names Rube, other marshals and the service as a whole and was filed in U.S. District Court for the southern district of Mississippi. A Marshals Service spokesman said the service could not comment on any pending litigation.
"It is ironic this seizure took place while Justice Scalia was making a speech about preserving the Constitution," said Gary Watson, president of Gannett's newspaper division. "We're taking this unusual action because the justice system must step in and bring these illegal actions to an immediate halt."
Scalia, who did not play a role in the marshals' action, last month issued a rare written apology calling the incident "upsetting and indeed enraging," according to the Hattiesburg American.
The Supreme Court Justice said in a letter to the newspaper that the marshals were enforcing his general practice of not allowing the recording of his public appearances for broadcast, which had not been communicated to reporters at the event. Scalia said in the future he would not object to print media recording his comments to ensure accuracy, according to the newspaper.
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Self-Censorship by the Media
Eye on F.C.C., TV and Radio Watch WordsBy JACQUES STEINBERG
NY Times Business
Published: May 10, 2004
The reverberations from this year's fiasco of a Super Bowl half-time show are reaching every corner of the broadcasting world, and not even the viewers of "Masterpiece Theater" are immune.
The producers of "Masterpiece Theater," intent on staying in the good graces of a Federal Communications Commission increasingly vigilant for instances of indecency, took a step last month they never had before. They chose not to make available to PBS member stations an unexpurgated version of the critically acclaimed British series "Prime Suspect," and instead sent out two edited versions: one with all of the salty language edited, and another with only some of the possibly offending words excised.
Television and radio broadcasters say they have little choice but to practice a form of self-censorship, swinging the pendulum of what they consider acceptable in the direction of extreme caution. A series of recent decisions by the F.C.C., as well as bills passed in Congress, have put them on notice that even the unintentional broadcast of something that could be considered indecent or obscene could result in stiffer fines or even the revocation of their licenses.
"If you're asking if there has been overcaution on the part of broadcasters today, I think the answer is yes," said Jeff Smulyan, the chairman and chief executive of Emmis Communications, which owns 16 television stations and 27 radio stations in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and other cities. "Everyone is going to err on the side of caution. There is too much at stake. People are just not sure what the standards really are."
The uncertainty over standards, Mr. Smulyan said, has convinced station executives to hire at least two paralegals whose responsibilities will include deleting potentially offensive material on live broadcasts before those words can be heard by the audience, using technology that delays the airing of those programs by an interval of several seconds.
Among those who will be subject to that legal backstop is the Chicago radio host known as "Mancow," who mixes celebrity interviews with racier fare. Michael J. Copps, an F.C.C. commissioner who has been one of the strongest critics of media companies, acknowledged that some broadcasters appeared to be overreacting. But, he said, "I applaud the effort at self policing."
He also disputed the notion that the commission's standards on indecency were too vague. "I think most of the things we're dealing with right now are pretty clear, from the standpoint of being indecent," he said. "There's enough stuff out there that shouldn't be on." Still, Mr. Copps said that the broadcasters themselves could resolve any ambiguities they perceive by drafting and adopting what he described as a "voluntary code of broadcaster conduct."
James P. Steyer, founder and chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonpartisan organization that advocates better programming aimed at children and families, said that "a few extreme, silly examples" of media companies being perhaps too cautious were far preferable to what he considers the "completely unregulated environment" of the recent past.
Complaints about indecency on the airwaves are not uncommon in election years, although they often grow fainter once the first Tuesday in November goes by. This year, the exposure of Janet Jackson's right breast during a Super Bowl halftime show seen by tens of millions of viewers provided something of a gift to a Republican administration seeking to shore up its standing with conservatives, as well as with those who complain that media companies have grown large in recent years while facing little government scrutiny.
Two recent rulings by the F.C.C. have had a particularly chilling effect on broadcasters. Last month, the agency proposed levying nearly $500,000 in fines on six radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications for broadcasting a 20-minute snippet of Howard Stern's program dealing mostly with sexual talk. (Clear Channel has since stopped carrying Mr. Stern's program.)
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Stocks Close Below 10,000 for 1st Time Since December
Business News: Stock Prices
The stock market fell to new 2004 year lows as the prospect of higher interest rates, high oil prices, Iraq, and the presidential election all unnerved investors.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
The Supreme Court Asks: Who Will Guard the Guardians?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/weekinreview/09word.html?ex=1399435200&en=0a3b8e18411c75e8&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
In arguments before the Supreme Court, the question of whether the courts must give the executive branch a free hand on how to treat detainees takes on a chilling tone.
Crisis of Confidence
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/opinion/08BROO.html?ex=1399348800&en=e8d90209f1253497&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
The cause is still just, but to keep it moving forward, we have to reboot.
Big Gap Found in Taxation of Wages and Investments
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/08/business/08tax.html?ex=1399348800&en=bca0fbf4f58fc7ec&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
Americans are being taxed more than twice as heavily on earnings from work as on they are on investment income.
Has the Romance Gone? Was It the Drug?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/04/health/psychology/04PSYC.html?ex=1399003200&en=46920dd959dd9ebb&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
Experts are beginning to ask whether antidepressants impair not only sexual desire in some people, but also the ability to experience romance.
National Science Panel Warns of Far Too Few New Scientists
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/science/05RESE.html?ex=1399176000&en=75c9ca4543761b35&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
Too few Americans are entering technical fields and international competition is heating up for bright foreigners who once filled the gap.
For seniors, Medicare's new card isn't a cinch
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0507/p03s01-ussc.html
The rollout of discount cards for prescription drugs creates confusion.
What an Old Sears Catalog Could Teach eBay Today
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/business/yourmoney/09digi.html?ex=1399435200&en=91b473794feed6b4&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
If someone coined an eBay rule, it might be this: "Satisfaction most emphatically not guaranteed. All sales final."
