Who Lost Iraq?
By PAUL KRUGMAN

The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong.

The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start — but we'll never know for sure because the Bush administration made such a mess of the occupation. Future historians will view it as a case study of how not to run a country.

Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will.

What the figures don't describe is the toxic mix of ideological obsession and cronyism that lie behind that dismal performance.

The insurgency took root during the occupation's first few months, when the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed oddly disengaged from the problems of postwar anarchy. But what was Paul Bremer III, the head of the C.P.A., focused on? According to a Washington Post reporter who shared a flight with him last June, "Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold."

Plans for privatization were eventually put on hold. But as he prepared to leave Iraq, Mr. Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time — but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.

If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the C.P.A. went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections — people like Simone Ledeen, whose father, Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative, told a forum that "the level of casualties is secondary" because "we are a warlike people" and "we love war."

Still, given Mr. Bremer's economic focus, you might at least have expected his top aide for private-sector development to be an expert on privatization and liberalization in such countries as Russia or Argentina. But the job initially went to Thomas Foley, a Connecticut businessman and Republican fund-raiser with no obviously relevant expertise. In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he's Ari Fleischer's brother. Mr. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: "The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review."

Checks and review? Yesterday a leading British charity, Christian Aid, released a scathing report, "Fueling Suspicion," on the use of Iraqi oil revenue. It points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolution giving the C.P.A. the right to spend that revenue required the creation of an international oversight board, which would appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi people.

Instead, the U.S. stalled, and the auditor didn't begin work until April 2004. Even then, according to an interim report, it faced "resistance from C.P.A. staff." And now, with the audit still unpublished, the C.P.A. has been dissolved.

Defenders of the administration will no doubt say that Christian Aid and other critics have no proof that the unaccounted-for billions were ill spent. But think of it this way: given the Arab world's suspicion that we came to steal Iraq's oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true.

Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor.

"Fueling Suspicion": Christian Aid's Indictment of the CPA and it's failure to account for up to $20 billion of Iraqi oil money which was supposed to have been audited by the CPA in keeping with the UN resolution authorizing income from the sale of Iraqi oil to be used for the reconstruction of the country.

Center for American Progress: June 29th, 2004

CIVIL LIBERTIES
No Blank Check

In a series of decisions that largely transcended political ideology, the Supreme Court ruled that citizens and non-citizens detained by the government – even those deemed "enemy combatants" by the Bush administration – have the right to challenge their detention in front of a neutral arbiter. The court sharply rejected President Bush's position that, as commander-in-chief during a time of war, he has the unilateral power to detain individuals indefinitely without due process of law. Justice Sandra Day O'Conner wrote: "A state of war is not a blank check for the president."

RULINGS AFFIRM BEDROCK PRINCIPLES OF LAW: The rulings – which give 600 detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and U.S. citizen Yaser Hamdi the right to argue for their innocence – indicate that the Bush administration's legal policy has been nothing less than a broad assault against the fundamental principles of the rule of law that have existed for centuries. Justice John Paul Stevens traced the rationale for his decision in the Guantanamo case all the way back to King John's promise in the Magna Carta of 1215 that, "no free man should be imprisoned...save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." The analysis "traced the limits on executive power through English common law, on through the Federalist Papers and down a long line of precedents forged in some of the darkest hours of the nation, including the Civil War and World War II."

THE PADILLA PUNT: The most disappointing aspect of yesterday's decisions was the Supreme Court's failure to grant Jose Padilla – a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil who has been held incommunicado for months on a South Carolina naval brig – access to the courts. Instead, the court refused to rule on the merits of the case and, on a technicality, sent Padilla's case back to a lower court. But, in all likelihood, the Padilla case will eventually be another setback for the administration. Four justices are already on the record as supporting due process rights for Padilla. And Justice Scalia – who refused to rule on the merits this time – wrote in the Hamdi case that "Absent suspension [of traditional legal rights by Congress]...the Executive's assertion of military exigency has not been thought sufficient to permit detention without charge." In other words, Scalia does not think designating someone an "enemy combatant" – as Bush did with Padilla – enables the executive branch to block access to the court system.

THE ABU GHRAIB CONNECTION: The Supreme Court's decisions were an implicit rejection of the Bush administration's legal justifications for the harsh treatment of prisoners. In an 8/1/02 memo, the Bush administration argued that the president had authority, pursuant to his commander-in-chief power, to authorize torture and other harsh interrogation tactics for the purpose of extracting information from detainees. But Justice O'Connor wrote in the Hamdi case that "history and common sense teach us that an unchecked system of detention carries the potential to become a means for oppression and abuse of others." Justice Stevens, in his dissent in the Padilla case, wrote that the executive detention of subversives may not be justified "by the naked interest in using unlawful procedures to extract information...For if this nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny." Read the Center for American Progress statement on the decisions.

RoHS Problems on the Horizon

This is the Recycling Policy NewsBriefs Email Bulletin for Raymond Communications, Inc. College Park MD, publishers of State Recycling Laws Update and Recycling Laws International.

All material copyright 2004, Raymond Communications; permission to reprint or forward with credit.
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June 28, 2004
RoHS Implementation Called a 'Disaster'

While it could cost the electronics industry $1 billion to re-design products to comply with the heavy metals ban in Europe (RoHS), the effect could be even more devastating for many smaller suppliers, according to a new article in the June online edition of Recycling Laws International online. (http://www.raymond.com ).

RLI Publisher Raymond Communications is holding a teleconference July 14, to provide a status report on RoHS implementation, and give suppliers an opportunity to question a UK regulator on the issues. (http://www.raymond.com/conference ) The teleconference is co-sponsored by RETROBOX (http://www.retrobox.com/rbwww/home/Asset_Retirement_Services/index.html ) *

"This is the biggest compliance issue the industry has ever faced.," says Harvey Stone, a consultant with the GoodBye Chain Group, which specializes in RoHS compliance issues. "However, the vast majority of the smaller suppliers are not aware of the directive."

Component suppliers that cannot provide heavy metal-free product will not be able to sell to their international OEMs, he says. He predicts a shakeout. "Out of compliance may mean out of business in the future," he warns.

Meanwhile, compliance managers from a number of top electronics firms are discouraged that the Technical Adaptation Committee at the European Commission seems no closer to making any decisions on clarifying exactly which products and components have to be heavy metal-free by July 2006 under RoHS.

The European Commission has not reached a consensus on the definition of "homogenous materials." This issue is critical to circuit board designers, because the definition will tell them if, for example, they have to reduce the lead to 1000 ppm in the entire circuit board assembly, in components of the board, or in all materials, including the coatings.

"This is a disaster," comments Kris Pollet, a lobbyist with White and Case who represents Japanese electronics makers. "Distressing," comments Paul Quickert, a compliance manager with Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, CA. "The EC has abrogated its responsibility to establish RoHS as an Article 95 Directive!" This is the Article which harmonizes the standards across the EU. In the absence of clarity, the 25 member states are left to their own interpretation , and Quickert fears an impossible patchwork of country-level requirements.

He also expressed concern that in the absence of clarity from the EC, other countries -- including China -- will move forward with various RoHS definitions that are more stringent. (See full story online.) The UK Department of Trade & Industry plans on issuing some guidance by early July.

Steven Andrews, the RoHS expert at DTI, will provide new information on how the DTI is proceeding to implement RoHS by at the July 14 teleconference. Compliance experts at Dell Computer will provide a summary on the status of industry's efforts to phase out the heavy metals, including NEMI initiatives, as well. To register, go to http://www.raymond.com/conference or call 301-345-4237

Issue Background:
A Brief Summary of some of the RoHS issues that remain unclear:

1. Whether the six heavy metals (lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium VI, Octa- & Penta-BDEs) need to be phased out (no more than 1000 ppm) in:

a. The assembly (eg: a circuit board)

b. The component (eg: each part of a board that can be disassembled eg: each chip; the plastic board ,etc.)

c. In materials - each material used in the board

2. Whether deca-BDEs will be banned, or whether the EC will accept new recommendations from its own study.

3. Definition of a "server," (it could mean all manner of PCs)

4. Testing: Exactly how far companies must go to test their components -- grind them up? Some say yes, but the ARA study implies the environmental benefits does not merit grinding up all parts!

5. Testing standards - not set - Quickert says they cannot have testing standards until the EC clarifies the other issues.

6. Forms - will companies have to use the long forms drafted by EIA/EICTA and Japanese companies? This involves 40 substances delcarations, and many pages. Will different countries require different declarations?

7. Labeling: Will countries start requiring different labels to show compliance?

8. Enforcement: Numerous experts have told RLI the member states are not prepared to enforce RoHS. In fact, one board maker says its not possible to test for chromium, because the directive only bans Chromium VI, but not the others * the breakdown is not readily checkable. Moreover, there is a concern over 'free riders' and Internet sales.

* RetroBox is the leading provider of IT disposal and recycling services that helps companies lower their TCO and mitigate privacy and environmental risk associated with e-waste.

Special Thanks to our regular sponsor - Foresite Systems Ltd. (http://www.foresite.org ) Foresite's extensive software system now includes modules to help you manage your waste electronics fees, and RoHS material declarations as well.
Sincerely,
Michele Raymond
Publisher
michele@raymond.com
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Ralph Nader?

Pat Buchanan's Interview with Ralph Nader..

There is a whole Web page devoted to Nader's dark side.

From the New Republic:
THE MYTH OF THE 'GOOD' NADER
Make You Ralph
by Jonathan Chait
Post date 02.29.04 | Issue date 03.08.04

As Ralph Nader prepares for another spoiler run at the presidency, liberals are again wringing their hands at the damage he may do not only to Democrats' chances of retaking the White House but to his own reputation as well.

"The most regrettable thing about Mr. Nader's new candidacy is not how it is likely to affect the election, but how it will affect Mr. Nader's own legacy," editorialized The New York Times this week. "Ralph Nader has been one of the giants of the American reform movement. ... [I]t would be a tragedy if Mr. Nader allowed [his anger] to give the story of his career a sad and bitter ending." The same theme was sounded in November of 2000. "Bernie Sanders is right. Ralph Nader is 'one of the heroes of contemporary American society,'" argued Eric Alterman in The Nation. "How sad, therefore, that he is helping to undo so much of his life's work in a misguided fit of political pique and ideological purity."

As Robert Scheer lamented in the Los Angeles Times, "What Nader did was to impulsively betray a lifetime of painstaking, frustrating, but most often effective, efforts on his part to make a better world. He is a good man who went very wrong."...

Or Mr. Levine's "RALPH NADER AS MAD BOMBER"
_______________________________________________
A Few Thoughts for the Green Party from Ralph Nader
June 28th, 2004
Dear members of the Green Party –

Since 1996 we have carried the banner for free elections, clean elections, and the ten key values for a just nation and world all over our beloved country. But the corporate supremacists and their Two Party monopoly have sent the American people their own message—exclusive, rigged elections, sold elections, no other choices and more and concentration of power and wealth, against workers, consumers, small taxpayers, environment, community, and a sane foreign policy. In fact—the Republican and Democratic Parties have left most voters with only one incumbent party through redistricting and carving up the country into one-party domination. This is not even a semblance of democracy.

We have to break up this political plutocracy of the corporate government with a combination of our efforts that strengthen our efforts rather than subtract from them. There are too many good people in our country who know how to build the good society who have solutions—technical, social and economic—but who have no political voice. We strive to be their voice. Our voice and your voice must find a unison this weekend to range our mutual call for action throughout our land.

In this spirit I had the privilege of selecting Peter Miguel Camejo as my Vice President. He brings so much to our candidacy—knowledge, experience, commitment, precision, civic courage for over 40 years of struggle for justice. He brings bilingual eloquence that for the first time can communicate Green values to thirty-nine million Latinos as a Vice Presidential candidate on a ticket already polling 6 to 7% and 12% among younger voters in their teens and twenties. And as you recall he has run twice on the Green ballot for Governor of California, distinguishing himself in the rerun debates last year before a worldwide television audience.

As you know, what is already in place for our candidacy is important for local, state and national Green Party efforts this year. You can make a decision tomorrow that can amplify your resources, visibility, lasting ballot presence and impact at the state and local level where building the Green Party is so critical. With the Republicans and Democrats supporting the War, the Patriot Act and endless military and corporate welfare budgets, less and less is left for the people, their children and their future, especially the tens of millions of poor people. And this corporate political duopoly is making American people pay for their own oppression, their own deprivation, their own disrespect. Enough of the Politics of Fear. It is time to shift the power. It is time for the Solution Revolution. It is time to choose between fear and fortitude.

On the exercise of free accessible elections at all levels, we are working to bring together Third Parties and Independents.

I find Peter Camejo’s Unity Resolution as being in the interests of state Green Parties and as the best way to keep the Green Party together and advance common pursuits of justice. This resolution will make it possible for the Nader-Camejo campaign to support candidates, help preserve your ballot lines and expand the resources of the Green Party. I have had some experience since 2001 in participating at 43 fundraisers and other activities for Greens in 31 states and the disenfranchised District of Columbia. I felt that this effort was both my duty and pleasure.

Many of you have urged my attendance. In my letters to Greens a few months ago I indicated that the Greens should make their decision by themselves, absorbing all well-intentioned advice, on the merits. There is no role for any dramatic arrivals from this quarter. If you decide on nominations, you will achieve different results than if you decide on endorsements. Some want you to lie low this election and not receive many national votes in the close states. This is a peculiar way to expand your Party and establish a poor precedent that the Democrats will seek to exploit. In any event, it is your decision as delegates to make a deliberative choice. May your conscience be your guide.

Thank you for reading these words. Best wishes for your convention.

Ralph Nader

P.S. I am on my way to our Oregon convention this Saturday, but will try to call your gathering this evening in the spirit of further solidarity.
<------------------------------------->
An Open Letter to Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader replies, in "Whither The Nation?"
Dear Ralph,

According to the latest news reports, you've pushed up your self-imposed deadline for announcing your decision about an independent 2004 presidential campaign from the end of January to mid-February. We're glad to hear that, because maybe it means you're still not sure about the best path to follow. For the good of the country, the many causes you've championed and for your own good name--don't run for President this year.

Ralph, you've been part of the Nation family for a long time, from the day in 1959 we published one of your first articles, the exposé of "The Safe Car You Can't Buy." Since then, you've been a consistent advocate for active citizenship, investigative scholarship and environmental stewardship. It wasn't hype when we called you Public Citizen Number One.

We know you've never been one to back down from a fight. When people tell you you can't do something, if you think it's the right thing to do, you do it anyway. That stubborn devotion to principle is one of your greatest strengths. It inspired a generation of Nader's Raiders in the 1960s and '70s, it helped produce notable victories like the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, and it inspired a new generation of young people who flocked to your "super rallies" in 2000.

The issues you raise on your website, NaderExplore04.org--full public financing of elections, new tools to help citizens band together, ending poverty, universal healthcare, a living wage, a crackdown on corporate crime--are vital to the long-term health of our country. When those issues are given scant attention by major-party candidates and ignored or trivialized by the sham joint candidate appearances known as presidential debates, we join in your outrage.

But when devotion to principle collides with electoral politics, hard truths must be faced. Ralph, this is the wrong year for you to run: 2004 is not 2000. George W. Bush has led us into an illegal pre-emptive war, and his defeat is critical. Moreover, the odds of this becoming a race between Bush and Bush Lite are almost nil. For a variety of reasons--opposition to the war, Bush's assault on the Constitution, his crony capitalism, frustration with the overcautious and indentured approach of inside-the-Beltway Democrats--there is a level of passionate volunteerism at the grassroots of the Democratic Party not seen since 1968.

The context for an independent presidential bid is completely altered from 2000, when there was a real base for a protest candidate. The overwhelming mass of voters with progressive values--who are essential to all efforts to build a force that can change the direction of the country--have only one focus this year: to beat Bush. Any candidacy seen as distracting from that goal will be excoriated by the entire spectrum of potentially progressive voters. If you run, you will separate yourself, probably irrevocably, from any ongoing relationship with this energized mass of activists. Look around: Almost no one, including former strong supporters, is calling for you to run, compared with past years when many veteran organizers urged you on.

If you run, your efforts to raise neglected issues will hit a deafening headwind. The media will frame you as The Spoiler. It's also safe to predict that you will get far fewer votes than the 2.8 million you garnered in 2000, and not only because your rejection of the Green Party raises expensive new hurdles to getting your name on state ballots. A recent online survey by the progressive news site AlterNet.org found that only one in nine respondents said they'd vote for you if you run this year, a 60 percent drop-off from the number who said they voted for you in 2000. If you run and get a million votes or fewer, the media will say it means your issues were not important. This can only hurt those causes, not to mention the tangible costs another run may impose on the many public-interest groups tied to you.

You have said your candidacy could actually help Democrats by raising issues against Bush that a Democratic candidate would avoid and by boosting turnout for good candidates for the House and Senate, where the slender bulwarks against Bushism must be reinforced. But these arguments do not compel a candidacy by you. As a public citizen fighting for open debates and rallying voters to support progressive Democrats for Congress, or good independents or Greens for that matter, you can have a far more productive impact than as a candidate dealing with recriminations about being a spoiler or, worse, an egotist. And the very progressives distressed by the prospect of your candidacy would contribute eagerly to have that voice amplified.

And if you think that this year you can help the anti-Bush cause by running and peeling off disgruntled Republicans, McCainiacs, Perotistas and the like while not disrupting the Democratic charge, please be honest with yourself. Once upon a time, maybe as late as 1992, when you dallied with a "none of the above" campaign and got 2 percent of the vote in New Hampshire from write-ins in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, your appeal stretched across the political spectrum. No longer, alas. Your nephew, Tarek Milleron, wrote recently that if you run in 2004 it will be "the year of the Elks clubs, the garden clubs, meetings with former Enron employees, the veterans groups, Wal-Mart employees," not progressive super rallies. But how many Elks club presidents are inviting you to speak? How many veterans groups? Such relationships take time to build and can't be conjured out of thin air in the midst of a presidential campaign.

You once told us you play chess at many levels at once. For all we know, you're thinking of running hard and then, if the race is close, throwing your support to the Democrat in the final days. While such a tactic might make for a satisfying conclusion to an otherwise futile quest, we don't think it justifies the risks, antagonism, confusion and contortions that such a run would entail.

Ralph, please think of the long term. Don't run.
Sincerely,
The Nation Editors
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Ralph Nader Replies: Whither The Nation?
The following letter is a response to "An Open Letter to Ralph Nader," which appeared in the February 16 issue.

Washington, DC

As I reread slowly your open letter, which kindly started and closed with your demand "Don't run," memories of past Nation magazine writing, going back to the days of Carey McWilliams and earlier, came to mind. I share them with you.

Long ago the The Nation stood steadfastly for more voices and choices inside the electoral arenas, which today are more dominated than ever by the two-party duopoly trending toward one-party districts:

"Don't run."

The Nation's pages embrace large areas of agreement with the undersigned on policy matters and political reforms, especially the abusive power of Big Business over elections, the government and the economy:

"Don't run."

The Nation has been sharply critical of the Democratic Party's stagnation, the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council and its domination by Big Money. This is the same party that has just ganged up on its insurgents and reasserted its established forces:

"Don't run."

The Nation has urgently reported on a tawdry electoral system--ridden with fraud and manipulation--that discourages earnest people from running clean campaigns about authentic necessities of the American people and the rest of the world:

"Don't run."

The Nation first informed me as a young man about the deliberate barriers--statutory, monetary, media and others--to third parties and independent candidates for a chance to compete, bring out more votes and generate more civic and political energies. This led me to write my first article on these exclusions against smaller candidacies in the late 1950s:

"Don't run."

The Nation has often encouraged the longer- run effect of small candidacies (civil rights, economic populism, women's suffrage, labor and farmer parties), which have pushed the agendas of the major parties and sown the seeds for future adoption:

"Don't run."

The Nation has dutifully recorded the hapless state of the Democratic Party, which for the past ten years has registered more and more losses at the federal, state and local levels. The party even managed to "lose" the presidency in 2000, which it actually won, even with all other "what ifs" considered, both before (Katherine Harris's voter purge), during (the deceptive ballots) and afterward (recount blunders by the party):

"Don't run."

The Nation has editorialized about the spineless Democrats who could have stopped the two giant tax cuts for the wealthy, the unconstitutional war resolution, the Patriot(less) Act and John Ashcroft's nomination (to mention a few surrenders). Yet you have not pointed to any external ways to stiffen the resolve or jolt the passivity of Jefferson's party, which lately has become very good at electing very bad Republicans all by itself:

"Don't run."

The Nation believes this cycle is different and that the Democrats have aroused themselves. This view is not the reality we experience regularly in Washington. Witness the latest collapse of the party's opposition to the subsidy-ridden, wrongheaded energy and Medicare drug-benefit legislation--two core party issues:

"Don't run."

The Nation's venerable reputation has been anything but conceding the practical politics of servility, which brings us worse servility and weaker democracy every four years:

"Don't run."

The Nation has intensely disliked being held hostage to antiquated electoral rules, from the Electoral College to the winner-take-all system that discounts tens of millions of votes. Such a stand would seem to call for candidates on the inside to highlight and help build the public constituency for change over time:

"Don't run."

It doesn't seem that The Nation would disagree with the conclusions of George Scialabba, who wrote last year in The Boston Review, "Two-party dominance allows disproportionate influence to swing voters, single-issue constituencies, and campaign contributors; it promotes negative, contentless campaigns; it rewards grossly inequitable redistricting schemes, and it penalizes those who disagree with both parties but fear to 'waste' their votes (which is why Nader probably lost many more voters to Gore than Gore lost to Nader)":

"Don't run."

The Nation's open letter does not go far enough in predicting where my votes would come from, beyond correctly inferring that there would be few liberal Democratic supporters. The out-of-power party always returns to the fold, while the in-power party sees its edges looking for alternatives. Much more than New Hampshire in 2000, where I received more Republican than Democratic votes, any candidacy would be directed toward Independents, Greens, third-party supporters, true progressives and conservative and liberal Republicans, who are becoming furious with George W. Bush's policies, such as massive deficits, publicized corporate crimes, subsidies and pornography, civil liberties encroachments, sovereignty-suppressing trade agreements and outsourcing. And, of course, any candidacy would seek to do what we all must strive for--getting out more nonvoters, who are now almost the majority of eligible voters:

"Don't run."

The Nation wants badly to defeat the selected President Bush but thinks there is only one pathway to doing so. This approach excludes a second front of voters against the regime, which could raise fresh subjects, motivating language and the vulnerabilities of corporate scandals and blocked reforms that the Democrats are too cautious, too indentured to their paymasters to launch--but are free to adopt if they see these succeed:

"Don't run."

The Nation has rarely been a hostage to prevailing dogma and electoral straitjackets. Its pages have articulated many "minorities of one" over its wondrous tenure and has watched many of its viewpoints today become the commonplace of tomorrow.

I have not known The Nation to so walk away from those engaging in a difficult struggle it champions on the merits, in a climate of conventional groupthink--much less with a precipitous prognosis of a distant outcome governed by a multitude of variables. Discussions and critiques from a distance, after all, are a dime a dozen in an election year. O apotheosis of the exercise of dissent inside and outside the electoral commons since 1865:

"Don't walk."

RALPH NADER
www.naderexplore04.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE EDITORS REPLY

Dear Ralph,

We agree with your characterization of The Nation and what it stands for--and has stood for since 1865. But we disagree with your characterization of why we appealed to you not to run for President this year.

Please don't run. --The Editors
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Reuters
Justices Affirm Legal Rights of 'Enemy Combatants'
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: June 29, 2004

WASHINGTON, June 28 — Declaring that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president," the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that those deemed enemy combatants by the Bush administration, both in the United States and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, must be given the ability to challenge their detention before a judge or other "neutral decision-maker."

Although divided in its rationale, the court was decisive in rejecting the administration's core legal argument that the executive branch has the last word in imposing open-ended detention on citizens and noncitizens alike. The justices' language was occasionally passionate, reflecting their awareness of the historic nature of this confrontation between executive and judicial authority.

Eight justices, all but Justice Clarence Thomas, said the two-year-long detention of an American citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, had either been invalid from the beginning or had become so, for constitutional or statutory reasons. The controlling opinion, by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, said that Mr. Hamdi's detention was permissible if designation as an enemy combatant proved to be correct, but that his inability so far to appear before a judge, challenge the government's evidence, and tell his side of the story had deprived him of his constitutional right to due process.

The opinion said that a citizen held as an enemy combatant was entitled to "notice of the factual basis for his classification" and a "fair opportunity to rebut the government's factual assertions before a neutral decision-maker." Writing for herself, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer, Justice O'Connor said, "These essential constitutional promises may not be eroded." [Excerpts, Page A16.]

She added that "we necessarily reject the government's assertion that separation of powers principles mandate a heavily circumscribed role for the courts in such circumstances." She said that the administration's position that the courts could not examine individual detainees' cases "serves only to condense power into a single branch of government." []

Mr. Hamdi, ostensibly picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan, has sought to contest his designation as an enemy combatant. The federal appeals court that heard his case ruled last year that a nine-paragraph statement filed by a Pentagon official, Michael Mobbs, was a sufficient basis for Mr. Hamdi's continued detention and that no further inquiry into his case was required.

In a second case Monday, concerning the hundreds of noncitizens confined at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, the court ruled 6 to 3 that federal judges have jurisdiction to consider petitions for writs of habeas corpus from detainees who argue that they are being unlawfully held.

The administration's position on the Guantánamo detainees was that under a World War II-era Supreme Court precedent, no federal court had jurisdiction to hear their cases because the base is outside the sovereign territory of the United States. But for a variety of reasons, the precedents the administration relied on did not govern the analysis, Justice John Paul Stevens said for the majority. A main factor was the nature of Guantánamo bay, "territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control" under a 101-year-old lease, Justice Stevens said.

The majority's analysis suggested, in fact, that federal courts might have jurisdiction to hear claims of illegal detention from those held in other foreign locations as well. While Justice Stevens was not explicit on this point, his suggestion was enough to provoke Justice Antonin Scalia to complain in dissent that "the court boldly extends the scope of the habeas statute to the four corners of the earth." Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas joined the dissent.

Josh Marshall's take on VP Cheney's Cursing Remark to Sen. Lahey

(June 28, 2004 -- 01:21 PM EDT)

We are all up in arms right now, it seems, about Vice President Dick Cheney, and the fact that Cheney told one of the more irenic of Democratic senators to "f--k off" in a brief exchange on the Senate floor last Tuesday because the senator in question, Pat Leahy (Democrat of Vermont) had earlier had the temerity to raise questions about lucrative no-bid Iraqi contracts secured by his former employer Halliburton.

Certainly, Cheney and his partisans deserve the knuckle-rapping they're now getting. And it's entertaining to watch avatars of dignity, good order and responsibility like Bill Frist and the folks over at the White House call Cheney's antics good clean fun and politics as usual.

But for those who have few good things to say about the vice-president, I think, the correct response is less outrage than the sort of grim (or perhaps not so grim) satisfaction one feels when a malign character unwittingly reveals himself to a larger audience. Because even if Cheney "felt better" after his outburst, this wasn't a show of strength but one of desperation or, perhaps, impatient impotence.

I think Joe Klein has it right in the title of his new column in Time -- ("Plenty More to Swear About: Bush's security team faces a barrage of criticism as the facts about Iraq come to light"). As Klein writes, last week's "assorted temper tantrums appeared to be a leading indicator of a gathering summer storm confronting this presidency."

Consider for a moment. Who is Dick Cheney? What do we know of him? None of us like being questioned or critized. But in him the disinclination runs particularly deep. He prefers to act in secrecy and is a man to whom government transparency has all the allure that a shaft of sunlight has to a vampire. When challenged, violence seems always to be his preferred method of response, that of first resort --- often a literal sort on the world stage, but with bureaucratic (viz. Plame) and what we might call verbal violence at home. By verbal violence I mean specifically tough talk and threats meant to frighten people away from challenging him further, to knock them on their heels. Even this new case -- saying Leahy et al. had it coming -- is but another example. When that doesn't work, he gets sloppy.

Cheney et al. can see all sorts of bad business coming down the pike in the next few months -- much of it already on the public radar screen, some of it still clogged up no doubt in back channels, newsrooms and new rounds of dirty-tricksterism. It seems clearly to be getting to them.

Supreme Court to Hear Medical Marijuana Case
Alcoholism / Substance Abuse Blog
June 28, 2004
Supreme Court to Hear Medical Marijuana Case

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that would determine if people who have been advised by the doctors to use medical marijuana to ease their symptoms can be prosecuted under federal drug laws.
The case is an appeal of a California case in which an appeals court ruled that two women who use marijuana to reduce their chronic pain and other medical problems were exempt from federal prosecution because they were acting on the advice of their physicians. The U.S. Department of Justice appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court in Ashcroft vs. Raich.

Raich is Angel Raich, 38, of Oakland, who reportedly suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic fatigue, pain and nausea and one of the plaintiffs in the original case. "I'm real excited and I'm real nervous and real afraid because my life is on the line here," she told reporters.

The case could affect laws in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state, all of which have medical marijuana laws similar to California. There are 35 states that have passed some form of legislation recognizing marijuana's medical value.

"The Supreme Court has a chance to protect the rights of patients everywhere who need medical cannabis to treat their afflictions," said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access.

The federal Controlled Substances Act says marijuana has no medical benefits and cannot be dispensed or prescribed by doctors.

Mr. Bush: "Can You Hear The Footsteps ??"

Kerry's Campaign Has Soared From Poorhouse to Penthouse
By GLEN JUSTICE
NY Times
Published: June 27, 2004

WASHINGTON, June 26 - John Kerry may be only a candidate for president, but he and his entourage travel like kings. A month ago, his campaign began chartering a gleaming 757, packed with first-class seats, fine food, sleeping accommodations - even a stand-up bar. They hardly shy away from fancy hotels, like the Four Seasons in Palm Beach and the St. Regis in Los Angeles.

Late last year, Mr. Kerry's campaign was so broke that the senator had to mortgage his own home to keep the presidential effort in motion. Now its finances are soaring, the result of a surge of more than $100 million in contributions after the Super Tuesday primaries in March. That has given Mr. Kerry the distinction of being the best-financed challenger in presidential campaign history.

The swelled coffers, spurred by money raised over the Internet, has allowed Mr. Kerry to pour money into the race at a pace that rivals spending by President Bush's campaign. In fact, he spent more than the president in both April and May.

``At our Monday morning meetings, our fund-raising people give their reports and there is a lot of cheering,'' Mary Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager, said Friday.

Mr. Kerry's financial success has significant implications for how he mounts his campaign. Aides say they no longer worry so much about having the money to compete against President Bush's vast political fortune, which has grown to a record $213 million. However, the president still held a 2-to-1 advantage in money in the bank last month.

More than anything else, the money has allowed the Kerry campaign to sharply increase its television advertising. The campaign has spent $43 million on commercials since May, aides said. That is less than the $85 million Mr. Bush has spent since March but enough to reduce the Kerry campaign's dependence on advocacy groups that provided television support for the campaign in leaner days.

The campaign has also been able to expand the size of its paid staff, adding on-the-ground organizers in swing states. Ms. Cahill said the infusion of money has helped her recruit talent like J. Terry Edmonds, who directed Bill Clinton's speechwriters at the White House. The campaign's travel budget has also vastly increased.

There were also smaller expenditures. In May alone, the campaign spent $10,500 for photographers at its events; more than $200,000 to dispense Kerry hats and T-shirts and other promotional material, and at least $6,500 for parking.

``We are narrowing the gap,'' said Peter Maroney, a longtime Kerry fund-raiser now working at the Democratic National Committee. ``They are hearing our footsteps.''

Presidential campaigns are inherently expensive, costing millions to move the candidate around the country, advertise on television and otherwise get the message out.

Yet lavish spending does not always guarantee success. In 1980, John B. Connally famously spent $12 million to capture one delegate to the 1980 Republican convention. In the Democratic race earlier this year, Howard Dean set fund-raising records over the Internet, only to exhaust roughly $50 million on a spending spree that helped him win only his home state of Vermont.

``Any campaign has to worry about financial discipline,'' said David Magleby, an authority on campaign finance at Brigham Young University.

It is only natural that Mr. Kerry would raise - and spend - far more now that he is the expected nominee. But the transformation in his spending patterns is striking.

President Bush spent almost $50 million in March, primarily on a barrage of advertisements designed to attack Mr. Kerry as he emerged from the primaries; Mr. Kerry spent $14.6 million. But by April, the competition was more even: President Bush spent about $31 million and Mr. Kerry about $35 million. By May, Mr. Kerry was far surpassing President Bush in spending, $32 million to $22 million, as the president cut back.

Mr. Kerry is benefiting not simply from his operation's fund-raising prowess but from the outpouring that would flow to any Democrat who emerged as the party's nominee. Fund-raisers nationwide point to the powerful anti-Bush sentiment running through the party that is manifesting itself through money.

``The money is not just money,'' said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who is raising money for Mr. Kerry. ``It's a proxy for enthusiasm.''

Economic Growth Estimates Revised
First-Quarter Figures Show That Recovery Lost Some Momentum
By Nell Henderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page E01

The U.S. economy's growth slowed slightly in the first three months of this year, the government reported yesterday, reversing earlier estimates that the recovery had gained momentum during that period.

The economy grew at a 3.9 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate in the first quarter, a slowdown from the 4.1 percent pace of the previous quarter, the Commerce Department said.

That contrasted with the department's earlier estimates that the nation's output of goods and services, or gross domestic product, had jumped in the first quarter. Commerce initially said in April that first-quarter GDP had increased at a 4.2 percent annual rate, and then in May raised the estimate to 4.4 percent.

Those rosier numbers had earlier led economists and investors to believe that economic growth had picked up speed, in part because tax cuts and low interest rates gave consumers more cash to spend.

Instead, the new numbers show that the economy lost a little momentum as it began the year. This was primarily because more of that additional cash was used to pay for imports, rather than American-provided goods and services, than was earlier thought. So while overall demand was still relatively high, it translated into less business for U.S. companies.

US -Islamic World Forum Closing Address by Former President Clinton, Dohar, Quatar, January 12, 2004

Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" Speech, Aug. 23rd, 1963

I Have a Dream.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.
August 28, 1963

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro still languishes in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men--yes, black men as well as white men--would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we've come to cash this check--a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of "now." This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixth-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But that is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream!

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your crest--quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former salve owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers....I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day...this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning. "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring," and if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

So let freedom ring! From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring, from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California! But not only that.

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and mole hill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring, and when this happens...when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Gallup vs Fox Polling Data: June 2004

The new Gallup poll is chock full of interesting data.

Perhaps the most interesting finding is this: For the first time in this poll, a majority of Americans,(54 percent to 44 percent) now say that US made a mistake sending troops to Iraq. Less than three weeks ago, the public was still saying, by 58-41, that sending troops was not a mistake.

Note that these data were collected before the wave of violence that was unleashed Thursday in Iraq.

Another turnaround is on whether the war with Iraq has made the US safer from terrorism. Just 37 percent now say the war has made us safer, compared to 55 percent who say it has not; when Gallup last asked this question in mid-December it was 56-33 the other way.

The poll also finds a majority (51-46) saying it was not worth going to war with Iraq, pretty much where this measure has been since late May.

Bush's overall approval rating, compared to Gallup's last measurement three weeks ago, is down a point to 48 percent. His rating on Iraq is up a point to 42 percent, while his rating on terrorism is down 2 points to 54 percent.

By far the biggest change is his rating on the economy: up 6 points to 47 percent with 50 percent disapproval. This is close to his mid-April rating in this poll (46/52), though still substantially below his 54/43 rating in early January.

Note that the latest Washington Post poll, conducted right before the Gallup poll, registered only a slight improvement in Bush's economic approval rating (just 2 points) and had his disapproval rating dropping only a point, compared to Gallup, which has his disapproval rating declining by 8 points.

Despite Bush's improved economy rating in the Gallup poll, voters still favor Kerry over Bush (53-40) on which candidate can better handle the economy. That Kerry advantage is essentially unchanged since early May.

On the situation in Iraq, Kerry and Bush are nearly tied (47-46 in Bush's favor), a slightly improvement for Kerry over his 3 point deficit in early May. This tie is notable, of course, because sentiment is now so strikingly negative about the Iraq war. Perhaps Kerry's failure to gain an advantage reflects the public's view, captured in other polls, that Kerry does not have a clear plan himself for dealing with the Iraq situation.

Another interesting finding is that, while Bush has a modest lead (51-43) over Kerry in terms of who the public trusts more to handle the responsibilities of commander-in-chief, the public expresses an identical degree of confidence in the ability of Bush and Kerry to handle the responsibilities of commander-in-chief (61 percent in each case).

In terms of favorability ratings, it seems significant that Kerry's net favorability rating (favorable minus unfavorable) is now substantially higher than Bush's. Kerry is +23 on this measure (58 percent favorable/35 percent unfavorable), up from +17 in Gallup's last measurement in April. In contrast, Bush is just +8 (53/45), down from +14 in April. These data are consistent with the recent New York Times story that suggested the GOP's frontal assault on Kerry has not had much success creating an unfavorable image of him.

Turning to the horse race, as ever we must, Kerry leads Bush by 4 points (49-45) among registered voters (RVs). That approximates Gallup's early June result when Kerry led 49-44.

Of course, there's bound to be confusion about this, since Gallup and its clients tend to highlight the likely voter (LV) rather than RV results, which, in this case, actually show Bush ahead by a point (49-48) . And then some media outlets tend to report the Kerry-Bush-Nader results, rather than the Kerry-Bush results, which further clouds the issue.

Let me reproduce, as a public service, my thinking about why you are well-advised, at this stage of the race, to pay more attention to RV than LV results, especially when both are reported. As for why it is preferable to look at Kerry-Bush matchup results, rather than Kerry-Bush-Nader results, I will refer you to a recent analysis I did on the issue.

There's been considerable confusion about which trial heat results to pay the most attention to at this point in the race. Here's my take, which should help clarify why I choose to focus on certain results over others.

One issue is likely voters (LVs) vs. registered voters (RVs). At this point, most polls are surveying only RVs and I believe that's appropriate and, in fact, preferable. It is way too early to put much faith in likely voter screens/models as representing very accurately the voters who will actually show up on election day. There is reasonable evidence that careful likely voter methodologies work well close to the election and do fairly accurately capture that pool of voters. But there is no such evidence for LV samples drawn this far out.

Indeed, my understanding is that Gallup does LVs this early not so much because they believe they are capturing election day voters this early, but more so that they can avoid having to explain sudden shifts in the horse race question as LV data replaces RV data in the fall (the traditional time to switch from RVs to LVs). There have apparently been some problems with this in the past, so reporting both from the very beginning of the campaign eliminates any potential embarrassments along these lines. But that doesn't mean the LV data is any better at this point in time--it merely means they're providing it.

In fact, since the sample size for LVs is smaller and since the composition of the LV sample will shift depending on how political developments are affecting interest and intensity levels among different groups of voters, additional volatility is built into the LV samples that is not there with the RV samples.

And then there are the comparability problems. LV samples are difficult even to compare to one another, since methodologies differ, and clearly can't be compared very well to RV samples, which are the bulk of polls at this time. That's another strike against paying much attention to LV results this early.

So, RVs and Kerry-Bush it is! Looking further at this match-up, Gallup shows Bush ahead by 8 points in the solid red states (won by Bush by 5 points or more in 2000), but Kerry ahead by 14 in the solid blue states (won by Gore by more than 5 points) and ahead by 9 in the purple states (decided by less than 5 points in 2000). And Kerry is carrying independents nationwide by 10 points and moderates by 24 points.

Pretty good news for Mr. Kerry. Some of you may have heard, though, that the latest Fox News poll has wildly different results from the ones just summarized. A bit later in the day I'll offer some comments on the Fox News "findings".

Another Virus for you to worry about

Web site virus attack blunted
Last modified: June 25, 2004, 12:58 PM PDT
By Robert Lemos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Web surfers are no longer playing Russian roulette each time they visit a Web site, security researchers say, now that a far-reaching Internet attack has been disarmed.

The attack, which had turned some Web sites into points of digital infection, was nipped in the bud Friday, when Internet engineers managed to shut down a Russian server that had been the source of malicious code. Compromised Web sites are still attempting to infect Web surfers' PCs by referring them to the server in Russia, but that computer can no longer be reached.

Still, Web surfers should take precautions, as the Internet underground is increasingly using this type of attack as a way to get by network defenses and infect officer workers' and home users' computers.

"This stops the problem for the short term," said Alfred Huger, senior director of engineering for security company Symantec. "However, it just takes a new culprit to come along and do the same thing all over again."

The attack worked by infecting some Web sites so that when Net surfers visited those sites, they were redirected to the Russian server, which downloaded software onto surfers' PCs. That software could be used by a remote attacker to control those computers. It's unclear what the attackers' motivation may have been. Some have speculated that the purpose could have been spam distribution.

"It is a tremendously powerful way to get into a corporation," Huger said of this sort of attack. "It is significantly easier to lure a number of employees to a compromised Web site than to get through a company's perimeter, which they may have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure."

The tactic is not new. Earlier this month, an independent security researcher found an aggressive piece of advertising software, known as adware, that had installed itself on victims' computers. A large financial client called in Symantec in late April after an employee used Internet Explorer to browse an infected Web site and his system became infected. Additionally, last fall, a similar attack may have been facilitated through a mass intrusion at Interland, sources familiar with that case said.

The Internet Explorer flaws that enabled the Russian attack, however, affect every user of the Web browser, because Microsoft has not yet released a patch. Microsoft advised users to set their browsers' security to the highest settings, even though doing so could break some Web functionality. The company also promised a patch for the flaws soon.

"We are not seeing that this threat is widespread, but we believe the threat to be real," said Stephen Toulouse, security program manager for Microsoft's security response center.

Researchers believe that attackers seed the Web sites with malicious code by breaking into unsecured servers or by using a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft's Web software, Internet Information Server, or IIS.

After that code redirected them to one of two sites, most often to the server in Russia, that server used the pair of Microsoft Internet Explorer vulnerabilities to upload and execute a remote access Trojan horse, also simply called a RAT, to the victim's PC. The software records the victim's keystrokes and opens a back door in the system's security, in that way allowing the attacker to access the computer.

It's unknown how many Web sites were compromised by attackers and whether any high-traffic sites were affected. But it's believed that the number of infected sites is relatively small, given the total number of sites that exist.

Still, the network of compromised sites used in the attack is far larger than any before, said Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer of the Internet Storm Center, a Net threat-monitoring site.

"This is the first time that this many Web sites got hit," he said. "The only other widespread use of this attack was Nimda, and that didn't work very well, because the exploit wasn't as effective."

Most antivirus companies issued updates overnight to allow their programs to detect the program when it is uploaded from the Internet to a victim's PC, so computer users should update their virus definitions as soon as possible, Ullrich said.
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Powys, John Cowper: The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996

QUOTATION:
Of the three forms of pride, that is to say pride proper, vanity, and conceit, vanity is by far the most harmless, and conceit by far the most dangerous. The meaning of vanity is to think too much of our bodily advantages, whether real or unreal, over others; while the meaning of conceit is to believe we are cleverer, wiser, grander, and more important than we really are.
ATTRIBUTION:John Cowper Powys (1872�1963), British novelist, poet. �In Spite of Pride,� In Spite Of, Philosophical Library (1953)."
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Mahatma Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins: "Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins

Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi, one of the most influential figures in modern social and political activism, considered these traits to be the most spiritually perilous to humanity.

Wealth without Work

Pleasure without Conscience

Science without Humanity

Knowledge without Character

Politics without Principle

Commerce without Morality

Worship without Sacrifice

Fahrenheit 9/11: Call and Response

Analyzing Fahrenheit 9/11
From Center for American Progress Report: 25 June 2004

Today is the nationwide premiere of Michael Moore's new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" – an analysis of how the president misled the country to war in Iraq and how the Bush-Saudi relationship has compromised America's national security. Even before the movie was public, the White House and its right-wing allies sought to smear both the film and Moore personally.

Last month, White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the movie "was so outrageously false it's not even worth comment," even though he had not yet seen the film. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter discovered that "big-time conservative donors" are funding a slew of anti-Moore activities. Following the White House's tactic of attacking critics' patriotism, the right-wing is also apparently bankrolling a movie called "Michael Moore Hates America." But despite conservatives' best efforts to discredit the film, the NY Times notes, "central assertions of fact in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' are supported by the public record." When the movie was aired at the Cannes Film Festival, it won top prize from a panel made up of mostly American and British judges.

ACCURATE – NEW REPORT SAYS SAUDI FLIGHTS OCCURRED ON 9/13: Critics have accused Moore of wrongly claiming a group of Saudis were allowed to fly out of the United States on September 13, when much of American airspace was still closed. In fact, the movie accurately reports that 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave after September 13 – a fact well documented by the 9/11 Commission. Additionally, new reports prove that Saudi flights did occur on 9/13, despite three years of Bush administration denials. As the St. Petersburg Times reports, on September 13,"with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left" for Lexington, KY. The Saudis "then took another flight out of the country." Because the information is so new, it was not in the 9/11 Commission's preliminary report. Subsequently, however, the commission has asked the Tampa airport "for any information about 'a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001.'"

ACCURATE – BUSH WAS NOT FOCUSED ON TERRORISM: In the movie, Moore charges that President Bush did not pay enough attention to pre-9/11 warnings that al Qaeda was about to attack. Instead of focusing on terrorism, charges the movie, the president spent 42 percent of his first eight months in office on vacation. That figure "came not from a conspiracy-hungry Web site but from a calculation by The Washington Post." Read American Progress's report "Truth & Consequences: The Bush Administration and 9/11" for a comprehensive history of how the White House underfunded counter-terrorism and downgraded terrorism as a priority before 9/11. See American Progress's new "Complete Saudi Primer" - a guide to everything you always wanted to know about the Bush-Saudi connection but were afraid to ask.

DISNEY'S EFFORT TO CENSOR MICHAEL MOORE: At the direction of CEO Michael Eisner (who is a Bush campaign contributor), the Walt Disney Company prohibited its Miramax division from distributing "Fahrenheit 911." The company enjoys a cozy relationship with President Bush's brother, Jeb. As governor of Florida, Jeb Bush serves as a trustee for the state employees' pension fund. That fund owns approximately 7.3 million shares of Disney stock. Eisner told reporters he was refusing to distribute the film because Disney is "such a nonpartisan company, do not look for us to take sides."

RIGHT-WING EFFORTS TO CENSOR MICHAEL MOORE: The campaign to silence Moore was taken up by the right-wing group with the ironic name Move America Forward. The group is headed by right-winger Howard Kaloogian, who also spearheaded the partisan campaign to quash a miniseries about Ronald Reagan and led the partisan fight to recall California Gov. Gray Davis. Kaloogian also "credits himself with helping elect President Bush because he was No. 4 of 25 elected officials who signed a letter asking him to run in January 1999." The group, without having seen the film, "launched a preemptive attack against" the movie "by requesting movie theaters across the country not to show the film."

DAVID BOSSIE'S HYPOCRISY: The conservative front group "Citizens United," which is headed by Clinton attacker David Bossie, is trying to get the Federal Election Commission to intervene and censor advertising for "Fahrenheit 9/11". Just two years ago, however, it was Bossie who led the charge against FEC interventions. On 6/12/02, The Hill newspaper reported him saying his group feels "FEC rules and regulations are abhorrent…they restrict the American people's ability to have an influence in politics."

RATED R FOR REALITY: The Motion Picture Association of America saddled the movie with an R rating. Tom Ortenberg, president of the company releasing the film, "argued that 15- and 16-year-olds, who might end up fighting in the war on terrorism," should be able to see the film, which shows the true cost of war - gravely wounded Iraqi citizens and U.S. troops.

Much of that cost has been hidden by the Bush administration, which has banned photos of flag-draped coffins coming home (even though the Bush campaign uses flag draped corpses at Ground Zero in its political commercials). President Bush has also refused to attend funerals of the fallen in Iraq. Moore argues that the movie needs to be seen by the widest possible audience to give the public a glimpse of the reality of war. All told, between the start of war on March 19, 2003 and June 16, 2004, 952 coalition forces were killed, including 836 U.S. military. For more on the hidden cost of war, read this summary by the Institute for Policy Studies.

Clinton's Sexcapade is like Bush's Iraqi War? Dowd Says They Are The Same

Because They Could
By MAUREEN DOWD
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: June 20, 2004
WASHINGTON

In his "60 Minutes" interview, Bill Clinton calls his intern idyll "a terrible moral error," illuminating "the darkest part of his inner life." Not to mention the hardest part on his back since, astonishingly, he says he spent months sleeping on the couch. (Was the Lincoln bedroom always occupied by donors?)

"I did something for the worst possible reason," he told Dan Rather about his march of folly with Monica. "Just because I could. I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything."

Just because he could. What a world of meaning is packed into that simple phrase. His "could" reflects a selfish "Who's gonna stop me?" power move, stemming from a droit du seigneur attitude, as opposed to "should," signifying obligation, or "must," indicating compulsion. The former president engaged in a relationship of choice, not necessity.

The Clinton alpha instinct on Monica, fueled by a heady cocktail of testosterone and opportunism, was the same one that led W. into his march of folly with Iraq. After 9/11, the president, vice president and secretary of defense wanted to go to the Middle East and knock the stuffing out of somebody bad — because it would feel good, because it would put our enemies on notice, and because it would make the president look strong.

The folks at 1600 Pennsylvania didn't have Osama's address. They couldn't go after Iran or North Korea because those countries could defend themselves and retaliate, maybe with nukes. They couldn't invade Pakistan or Saudi Arabia because they're our "allies." But the Bush team knew that it wouldn't be hard to get rid of the second-rate dictator and romance novelist who posed no real threat.

They went after Saddam just because they could. Last week, the 9/11 commission debunked the White House attempt to suggest an axis of evil between Saddam and Osama.

Like Mr. Clinton, the president engaged in an enterprise of choice, not necessity. John Kerry's biggest applause line now is: "The United States should never go to war because we want to. We should only go to war because we have to."

Huffing and puffing Dick Cheney comes across as barking mad when he keeps lassoing Saddam and Al Qaeda. Tricky Dick may actually believe in his concocted connection, but he must also realize that the administration can't lose the terrorist-linkage argument for war, having already lost the W.M.D. argument.

If our leaders didn't lead us there, why did 69 percent of Americans, in a Washington Post poll last September, believe that Saddam was involved in the attacks? And a University of Maryland study last October showed that 80 percent of those who mostly watched Fox believed at least one of three misconceptions: that W.M.D. had been found; that Al Qaeda and Iraq were tied; or that the world had approved of U.S. intervention in Iraq.

Osama, suffering from what one C.I.A. shrink termed "a narcissistic explosion," also struck America because he could. It was a jihad of choice, not necessity.

Thursday's 9/11 commission report cited the dissent among Al Qaeda leaders who were worried about Pakistan's reaction or U.S. retaliation. Osama overruled the doubters, arguing that it would reap a bonanza in Al Qaeda fund-raising and recruiting.

So far, partly because of the Bush crowd's solipsistic fixation on Saddam, Osama has gotten away with his heinous power play — and reaped a bonanza in recruiting.

Mr. Clinton, though he was vilified by the right, tittered at by the world and dolled up in pink-and-black suede shoes as a toddler by his mom, is selling a zillion books.

As Republicans keep saying, with fingers crossed, W. has stayed even with John Kerry despite the litany on Iraq, terrorism and domestic affairs that has turned out quite differently than promised.

But one thing you can say for Bill Clinton: His "Who's gonna stop me?" Oval Office power surge produced a much lower body count.
<------------------------------------->
Note: Has Ms. Dowd completely lost any semblance of rational thought? Is she seriously saying Pres. Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinski, his "alpha instinct", (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean), is the same "alpha instinct" used by Pres. Bush in his march to War with Iraq?

Clinton engaged a willing partner in private sexual acts, and lied to prevent others from finding out about it; while Bush took a country to War with lies, engaged in overt manipulations of several government agencies, the expenditure of over half a trillion dollars thus far, and has dragged America into a morass that will take a generation to ameorate.

The two samples are not in any way comparable, let alone arise from the same "alpha instinct", and to state they are reveals a fundamental misunderstanding between the alpha male's orientation shown in "9 and 1/2 Weeks" compared with that in "All The President's Men".

Ms. Dowd obviously doesn't like philandering husbands; but to equate that character flaw to Pres. Bush's Iraqi actions is nonsense.

A Crowning at the Capital Creates a Stir

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon donned a crown in a Senate office building and declared himself the Messiah while members of Congress watched.

Note: What's with this character? and why is he such a favorite of the Christian Right? I mean besides the money he brings to their tables.

Illigitimi non carborundum...what's with the sudden resurgence of Latin phrases by political pundits? An attempt to project gravitas?Yuck!

More Idiocy from our Neighbors to the South...and you thought Georgia had the dumbest politicos. No, there's competition for that title.

Florida to Tax Home Networks
By Michelle Delio | Wired News
02:00 AM Jun. 24, 2004 PT

Florida state officials are considering taxing home networks that have more than one computer, under a modified 1985 state law that was intended to tax the few businesses that used internal communication networks instead of the local telephone company.

Officials from Florida's Department of Revenue held a meeting on Tuesday to see whether the law would apply to wired households, and exactly who would be taxed. About 200 people attended, including community and business representatives. In 1985 the state passed a law to tax businesses using their own communications networks, because otherwise the state could not collect tax revenue on the businesses' local telephone service. In 2001, that law was expanded to make "any system that is used for voice or data that connects multiple users with the use of switching or routing technology" taxable up to 16 percent.

The law is so broad that it would apply to networked computers, wireless services, two-way radios and even fax machines -- or "substitute communications systems," as the state calls them. The tax would be applicable (PDF) to the costs of operating such a substitute communications system, not to the purchase of the system's components.

Failing to Draw Big Players, Computer Show is Cancelled

This year's Comdex, the fall computer event that was once the nation's largest trade show, was canceled as its owners cited the failure of the industry's largest companies to participate.

RIAA tries another track to close down P2P networks

Bill to Curb Online Piracy Is Challenged as Too Broad
By MATT RICHTEL and TOM ZELLER Jr.
NY Times
Published: June 24, 2004

A copyright bill introduced in the Senate this week is facing criticism from groups including representatives of the telecommunications and electronics industries, who contend it could make computer companies, Internet providers and other technology businesses liable for online piracy.

But supporters of the bill, including its bipartisan sponsors, say it would provide a powerful tool to curb illegal copying of music files and other media, and would protect children from the lure of a technology that is intended to help them break the law.

The legislation, introduced late Tuesday, is the so-called induce bill, which would make liable anyone who "intentionally aids, abets, induces or procures" a copyright violation. It is aimed primarily at the makers of file sharing software, which is used to trade copies of digital files over the Internet.

But critics say that the bill's language is overly broad, and that it amounts to a fundamental unraveling of a 1984 Supreme Court decision that has protected companies developing otherwise legal technologies that could be abused by users.

"It's a very powerful blunt instrument that can be used to threaten and intimidate industries that copyright owners disagree with," said Sarah Deutsch, associate general counsel for Verizon Communications.

Echoing the concerns of other critics, Ms. Deutsch added that the Senate Judiciary Committee appeared intent on passing along the bill to the full Senate without holding hearings first. "What's disturbing is that this is a dramatic sea change to copyright law, but there have been no discussions or hearings," Ms. Deutsch said.

Sponsors of the bill, however, insisted that such concerns were overblown. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who is a co-sponsor of the bill with the committee's ranking Democrat, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, said the law would simply cut off a revenue stream for companies that are knowingly providing the tools to commit crimes.

"These corporations know better than to break the law themselves, so they profit from infringement by inducing users of their software to do the dirty work of actually breaking the law," Mr. Hatch said in a statement.

Mr. Hatch also said the induce bill - the name is short for "inducement devolves into unlawful child exploitation" - was intended to defend children, who he said make up about half of the users of file sharing software. "This for-profit piracy scheme mostly endangers children, who are ill equipped to appreciate the illegality or risks of their acts," he said.

The legislation is the latest development in the battle between copyright holders and the makers of computers and digital recording devices that can be used to violate intellectual property laws. The file sharing network Napster, which effectively shut down in 2002, was one of the first to be aggressively challenged in court.

More recently, the record industry began suing people, including children, who use file sharing networks to trade copyrighted files, and a suit brought by MGM against three peer-to-peer software products - Grokster, Morpheus and Kazaa - is pending in federal court.

One issue in the current debate is what effect the measure would have on the precedent set in 1984 by the Supreme Court in a suit originally brought by Universal Studios against the Sony Corporation and its fledgling videocassette recording technology.

In that ruling, often referred to as the Betamax decision, the court found that "one may search the copyright act in vain for any sign that the elected representatives of the millions of people who watch television every day have made it unlawful to copy a program for later viewing at home, or have enacted a flat prohibition against the sale of machines that make such copying possible."

Critics of the induce bill say that it amounts to just such a "flat prohibition" and that technological innovation will be stifled.

But Mitch Bainwol, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, a recording industry lobbying group, said the legislation was meant to be narrowly tailored to address companies that build technology focused on illegal file sharing.

He said he did not envision the legislation's enabling lawsuits against "neutral" technologies, like computer makers.

"This is not about going after the device makers," Mr. Bainwol said, though he stopped short of guaranteeing that the recording industry would never use the measure to sue them.

Wolfowitz Offers Apology to Journalists Covering Iraq
By THOM SHANKER
NY Times
Published: June 25, 2004

WASHINGTON, June 24 — Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, issued an unusual apology on Thursday addressed "to journalists covering Iraq," in which he expressed "deep regret" for saying correspondents in Baghdad were afraid to travel and, therefore, published rumors.

"I know that many journalists continue to go out each day — in the most dangerous circumstances — to bring us coverage of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan," Mr. Wolfowitz wrote in the letter of apology, dated Thursday. "Since the beginning of hostilities in Iraq, 34 journalists have given their lives; many others have been injured while bringing us that story."

Mr. Wolfowitz expressed "sincerest thanks" to correspondents who report on these issues, and "admiration for their courage." "But, most of all, I want to extend an apology," Mr. Wolfowitz wrote.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Wolfowitz criticized what he described as a partial picture presented to America and the world on the mission to rebuild, stabilize and install new political institutions in Iraq, and he cast blame on the news media.

"Frankly, part of our problem is a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors," Mr. Wolfowitz said in his House testimony. "And rumors are plentiful."

In his letter, Mr. Wolfowitz retracted that part of his testimony, writing:

"Unfortunately, in meaning to convey my frustration about the erroneous coverage of one particular news story, the statement I made came out much differently than I intended. And while I know reporters understand better than most that sometimes the best of intentions and the most elaborate of preparations can't prevent error, that doesn't for a moment change the seriousness of my mistake or the deep regret I feel that I did not instantly correct the record."

After his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz's comments were rejected by reporters who have covered Iraq, and he was the subject of critical media commentary, including that from Aaron Brown, a CNN anchor, and Maureen Dowd, a columnist for The New York Times.

Michael Moore terrorizes the Bushies!
The right wing is going all out to stop "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- but it's not working.
Salon.com Online
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John Gorenfeld

June 23, 2004 | They're back! OK, the "vast right-wing conspiracy" Hillary Clinton warned about never really went away. But they've found new purpose in the campaign to stop the distribution of "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore's latest documentary. And just as the energetic conservative elves succeeded in making Bill Clinton ever more popular with the American public, so do they seem to be driving up public interest in Moore's film, which is expected to have the biggest opening for a documentary film ever, in a scheduled 888 theaters.

The convergence between the anti-Clinton and anti-Moore movements is personified by the tireless David Bossie, whose Citizens United made headlines savaging the president in the late 1990s. It's been a big week for Bossie and Citizens United. First they were busy producing anti-Clinton ads to run during the former president's star turn Sunday night on "60 Minutes," while Bossie was scurrying to cable studios to denounce the memoir "My Life" and promote his new book, "Intelligence Failure: How Clinton's National Security Policy Set the Stage for 9/11." Then Bossie scheduled a Wednesday press event in front of the Federal Election Commission, where he will demand that the commission take some sort of unspecified action to regulate the screening of "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- presumably because of the anti-Bush documentary's power to influence the coming presidential election. "Documents will be hand delivered to several government agencies immediately following the media briefing," the group's press release soberly states.

Anyone still wondering whether "Fahrenheit 9/11" has the far right squirming about the documentary's possible effect on the November presidential election?

Over the past week, attacks on the film reached fever pitch. They involved right-wing-conspiracy veterans like Bossie, but also some relative newcomers. (And Moore felt obliged to hire a war room led by Democratic political consultants Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani.) So far the campaign doesn't seem to have hurt Moore. The real question is whether "Fahrenheit 9/11" can be anywhere as entertaining as the sometimes surreal campaign to derail it.

The Moore bashers include former California assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, whose Move America Forward launched a letter-writing campaign last week against a select number of theaters that planned to show "Fahrenheit." Kaloogian was part of a cabal that takes credit for recalling Gov. Gray Davis. Now they've set their sights on Moore.

"We've sent out probably well over 200,000 e-mails," says Melanie Morgan, a talk radio host, of the MAF campaign. With no small dose of glee, Morgan says of the cinemas targeted by MAF's letter-writing campaign: "We've been causing them an enormous amount of aggravation."

Such aggravation is hard to measure. No theaters have canceled showings of "Fahrenheit" at this point. And the MAF group doesn't seem to have had the most useful intelligence in its campaign. A lowly theater payroll employee inexplicably listed on MAF's e-mail list of "leading movie executives" is confused about how he became a central front in the War on Moore (he did not wish to be identified). As he sat in his office Friday, messages pinged into his in box. Dryly, he read aloud his favorites: "'I will never see a movie again' ... 'I will not support a business that aids a piece of crap sub-human like Moore in spreading his anti-american bullshit ...'"

More important, though, after the grass-roots political group MoveOn launched a counteroffensive, letters of support for the film's release began outpacing negative letters (according to an unscientific survey of five theater owners) at roughly 3-to-1. Jennifer Caleshu of the Little Theatre, in Rochester, N.Y., says she's received on the order of 3,000 e-mails. For every letter accusing her of soothing terrorists by showing the film, she says, seven are encouraging. Caleshu says that to every negative e-mail she's received she replies by quoting the First Amendment. "I've gotten some real personal hate mail back about that," she says.

MAF vice-chair Morgan blames the deep pockets and international tentacles of financier George Soros for backing MoveOn to support the movie. (The group says it has secured pledges from 109,000 people to see the movie when it opens.) But MAF itself has been dogged by reporting on its ties to conservative power brokers. An investigation by the Web site Whatreallyhappened.com, which snooped around MAF's domain registration info, revealed that it is no ordinary citizen's movement.

The webmasters were careless enough to leave the contact information for the Sacramento public relations firm Russo, Marsh and Rogers. That gave away the fact that the supposedly grass-roots Web site was the creation of one Douglas Lorenz. A Russo employee, Lorenz was the information-technology guy for Bill Simon, the candidate too conservative to beat ultra-unpopular then-Gov. Gray Davis in 2000. He's listed on the DefendReagan.org Web site (which rallied the fight against CBS's Reagan movie last year) as the "grassroots coordinator," apparently foreshadowing his role in creating the faux-grass-roots Move America Forward Web site. "Doug has been very active in developing volunteer political organizations," his bio says, "and utilizing advanced technologies to extend their reach." (Lorenz did not reply to Salon's request for an interview.) The P.R. firm's namesake, Sal Russo, was chief strategist of the Recall Gray Davis committee, and the firm itself has Republican ties that run far and deep.

For Kaloogian (who did not return calls from Salon for this story) the failure of Move America Forward represents a reversal. Seven months ago, Kaloogian spearheaded a nationwide campaign to have CBS's movie "The Reagans" yanked, calling for advertiser and audience boycotts. The movie was eventually ghettoized on the network's sister channel, Showtime (though CBS executives insisted, unconvincingly, they were unaffected by boycott threats). But other Kaloogian stunts have fizzled. His threatened recall of California's moderate attorney general over gay marriage went nowhere, and an accusation that Asian-American state assemblymen were violating their oaths of office for supporting Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist falsely accused of being a spy, was widely dismissed. ("He's a mosquito on an elephant's back," says longtime California Democratic Party strategist Bob Mulholland of Kaloogian.)

It now seems that MAF is doing little more than providing free publicity for "Fahrenheit 9/11," whose tag line now smirks, "Controversy? What controversy?" But there have been a few bad breaks this week for "Fahrenheit." Moore wanted a PG-13 rating for the movie; the Motion Picture Association of America claims that certain "bad words" require it receive an R-rating. For one thing the word "motherfucker" is used more than once in the film, in the context of troops quoting the Bloodhound Gang radio single "The Roof Is on Fire." On Monday, writing on behalf of backers IFC Films and Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Fellowship Adventure Group, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo released a letter questioning the MPAA's reasoning. Asked Cuomo: "[Why] should the film not be rated a PG-13 as was 'The Lord of the Rings,' a film that is saturated with slaughter, butchery and corpses -- human and extraterrestrial?" On Tuesday, the MPAA denied the appeal.

Then this week Newsweek published a report by reporter Michael Isikoff that accuses Moore, and author Craig Unger (author of "House of Bush, House of Saud," which was excerpted in Salon), of something close to "fanaticism" in a portion of the movie discussing how Osama bin Laden's family members were mysteriously spirited out of the country in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Unger, writes Isikoff, "appears, claiming that bin Laden family members were never interviewed by the FBI. Not true, according to a recent report from the 9/11 panel," and the Newsweek author points out that the FBI found "[n]one had any links to terrorism."

But Unger says the article missed the point. "As I made clear to Isikoff on the phone, and should be clear in the movie, and is clear in my book," Unger says, "what did not take place was a serious criminal investigation into the murder of 3,000 people ... if you have a criminal investigation, you talk to innocent people." And there's no evidence, he says, that the FBI checked its own terror watch list before letting the bin Ladens depart.

Still, the film's opponents haven't given up. Most recently the MAF is promoting a report reprinted in the Guardian that the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah has endorsed "Fahrenheit." Gianluca Chacra, the managing director of Front Row Entertainment, the movie's distributor in the United Arab Emirates, confirms that Lebanese student members of Hezbollah "have asked us if there's any way they could support the film." While Hezbollah is considered a legitimate political party in many parts of the world, the U.S. State Department classifies the group as a terrorist organization. Chacra was unfazed, even excited, about their offer. "Having the support of such an entity in Lebanon is quite significant for that market and not at all controversial. I think it's quite natural." (Lions Gate did not return calls asking for comment.) Adam Rubin, a spokesman for MoveOn, calls it "an utterly ridiculous distraction from the actual substance of the film."

Of course, you can always find an unpopular leader in the Middle East to fuel buzz about a movie someone doesn't want you to see. After all, Yasser Arafat loved Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which was so popular with right-wing Arafat haters and so unpopular among many Jews (Arafat's blurb-ready review of Gibson's movie: "Moving"). In the end, Moore's movie will be judged by how many Americans turn out to see his film. And after the attacks and counterattacks of the last week, that number only grew.

Republic is formed from two Latin words res (thing) and publica (public); it literally means 'the public thing(s)'. In the Latin context, it means 'affairs affecting the state', 'the state' itself, or 'the constitution' of the state".(1) The Latin word republic is similiar in meaning to the Greek word politea.

Both words constitute the meaning of state; the state being one that is made up of different classes of people and all involved in the governing of the polity. Simply stated: a republic is a "mixed government". A republic, in the classical form, is a form of government that has mixed the best elements of the classes together.

It marks out the duties and responsibilities of the different bodies. It includes all citizens in government and excludes none. It provides checks and balances on all so that all live in harmony. This is not to be confused as a separation of powers; a republic is a co-operation of classes without anyone of them being dominant. A Republic is an harmony of the state under the rule of law.

It depends what the definition of relationship is

Iraq, Al Qaeda, and what constitutes a 'relationship'
Christian Science Monitor Commentary
By Dante Chinni

WASHINGTON – For the past few days, the dialogue in this town has sounded more like "Sex and the City" than "The McLaughlin Group." Suddenly the question of what constitutes a relationship has come to the fore. We're not talking J. Lo here, we're talking about the Bush administration and whether its definition of "relationship" fits with everyone else's.

Last week, the 9/11 Commission released a report saying, among other things, that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The press jumped on the story, saying the Bush administration has been proven wrong. The White House, however, quickly countered that it had never said that Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; it had simply argued that there was a connection.

"There was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," President Bush said. "The evidence is overwhelming" that there was a relationship, Vice President Cheney said.

What kind of relationship? Well, that's not clear. The commission reported that, beyond the Sept. 11 attacks, there were indeed contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq but that Iraq rebuffed Al Qaeda's entreaties. Late last week, however, the vice president hinted that might not be the whole story.

When asked if he knew things the panel didn't, Mr. Cheney said, "probably," leaving some to wonder whether the administration has shared all it knew with the panel. Just as quickly, however, a spokesman also said the administration "cooperated fully with the commission," and "the president wants the commission to have the information it needs to do its job."

It may still turn out that there is some bit of bombshell evidence showing a "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Iraq. It's not really clear though, why the White House would keep such information secret. This administration, like many others, has not been shy about leaking sensitive information that helps its cause.

All of which means, what we probably have here is an issue of semantics. What exactly qualifies as a relationship in the early 21st century? Is it chatter that doesn't lead to anything, or something more? Where are Carrie Bradshaw and her friends when you need them?

These questions may be wonderful for conversation around the campfire. They may even enable you to say you dated the homecoming queen, but they aren't exactly on point. The point, as it so often is in politics, isn't what those in the administration actually said with all their link talk; it's what they implied.

Since it began talking about invading Iraq, this administration pushed two main lines of argument as justification. First, Iraq needed regime change because the government there was amassing or had amassed weapons of mass destruction. Second, Iraq was likely to use those weapons against the US or sell them to someone who would because it was part of the Al Qaeda-led jihad against the United States.

With the first argument largely discredited, the White House is holding on tenaciously to the second - tenaciously, but carefully. For the past year members of this administration have been dancing along the line of connecting, but not completely connecting, Al Qaeda and Iraq.

There are numerous examples, but one of the best is Cheney's comment on "Meet the Press" last September. "If we're successful in Iraq," he said, "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

Parse that carefully and you'll see he is 100 percent correct. If the US brings a stable democracy to Iraq, it will strike a blow at "the heart" of "the geographic base" of Islamic terrorism: the Middle East. But the wording, if you will, leads the reader or listener to more dramatic conclusions, particularly when the "9/11" is added in there. They are led toward the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda are working together.

Of course, members of the administration are generally pretty careful not to cross that line. They're careful not to say it explicitly; they just let the public infer it.

That's not exactly unprecedented. Semantics and careful lawyerly phrasing are all too common here. But straightforward talking is supposed to be this administration's strong point. And for all the talk of restoring honor and integrity to the White House, here we are again arguing over how to define "relationship."

Wal-Mart Sex-Bias Suit Given Class-Action Status
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
and CONSTANCE L. HAYS

Published: June 23, 2004

A federal judge ruled yesterday that a lawsuit that accuses Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of discriminating against women can proceed as a class action covering about 1.6 million current and former employees, making it by far the largest workplace-bias lawsuit in United States history."

Unfortunately It's A Familiar Story

Tobacco Buyout Favors Big Growers
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 22, 2004; Page A02

More than two-thirds of the $9.6 billion tobacco-grower buyout approved by the House would go to only 10 percent of the people and companies eligible for any compensation, according to a study by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

The buyout of tobacco growers and holders of government "quota" rights to market tobacco would give at least $1 million to 463 companies, individuals or estates, the report found, and would provide more than $8 million to one North Carolina company.

The study, based on information from the Department of Agriculture obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and scheduled to be released today, showed that the overwhelming majority of recipients -- 354,000 of the 437,000 eligible, (81%), -- would collect only $1,000 a year over five years.

"The House buyout plan is an incredible rip-off of the taxpayer, mostly to benefit a handful of large tobacco interests and tobacco companies," said Ken Cook, president of the research and advocacy group.

"I really didn't think the control of tobacco quotas would be so concentrated because I had heard and half-swallowed the rhetoric of this being about small farmers," he said. "But this is no different than with commodities like cotton and rice, where the big players control a huge part of the industry."

The sponsor of the House buyout bill, Rep. Ron Lewis (R-Ky.), said in a statement that the buyout is not a large-grower issue and would help the 8,000 tobacco growers in his district.

"Recipient payments are a simple case of economics: Those who have invested more also have had more to lose; those less, less," Lewis said. "Kentucky farmers have been very supportive of the buyout measure because they understand that any reform to the current program will allow them to be more competitive."

The tobacco buyout legislation, which was attached to a corporate tax relief bill by House Republican leaders last week, has been a central goal of growers and quota holders for several years. They argue that the quota system, established by the federal government in the 1930s to regulate tobacco prices, has over time reduced their ability to compete and, many say, has led them to near bankruptcy.

The buyout has become a hot political issue in tobacco states such as North Carolina and Kentucky, where candidates have debated who is most likely to deliver on the long-discussed relief. Democrats such as Erskine B. Bowles, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina, have argued for a buyout bill that would be paid for by the tobacco companies and would be tied to a bill giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco. Bowles's opponent, Rep. Richard Burr (R), has argued instead for a taxpayer-funded bill that would not take up the FDA regulatory issue.

Cook said the Environmental Working Group released the information now about who would benefit from a quota buyout because the bill that passed the House was never debated, and will go into conference with a Senate bill that has no buyout provision. "This is a huge taxpayer-funded buyout, and so far it hasn't been debated," he said. "Before this goes any further, people need to know what the taxpayers will be paying for."

Tobacco is grown in 21 states, but the USDA information showed that holders of a quota to market tobacco -- which has been bought and sold for decades -- live in all 50 states. More than 700 quota holders were listed in the District, and they would receive almost $4 million over five years under the buyout.

Waste and Fraud Besiege U.S. Program to Link Poor Schools to Internet
By SAM DILLON
NY Times
Published: June 17, 2004

WASHINGTON, June 16 - When the El Paso school system wanted to upgrade its Internet connections three years ago, it tapped into a federal program that offers assistance for such projects.

The program paid the International Business Machines Corporation $35 million to build a network powerful enough to serve a small city. But the network would be so sophisticated that the 90-school district could not run it without help.

Foreseeing the problem, I.B.M. charged the district an additional $27 million, paid by the federal program, to build a lavish maintenance call-in center to keep the network running. The center operated for nine months. Then, with no more money to support it, I.B.M. dismantled it and left town.

The federal effort to help poor schools connect to the Internet, the E-rate program, which collects a fee from all American phone users to distribute $2.25 billion a year to such schools and libraries, wasted enormous sums as El Paso built its extravagant network in the 2001-2 school year, according to documents and federal lawmakers.

But the problems have not been there alone. In Brevard County, Fla., school officials used E-rate money to install a $1 million network server, a powerful device more suited to the needs of a multinational corporation, in a 650-pupil elementary school. And just three weeks ago in San Francisco, a subsidiary of the computer giant NEC agreed to plead guilty to two federal felony counts related to the program.

Across the nation in recent months - in El Paso and in New York and Pennsylvania, in Puerto Rico and Atlanta, in Milwaukee and Chicago - investigations or audits of the program have turned up not only waste but also bid-rigging and other fraud, according to lawmakers and investigators. A report issued last week by the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the E-rate program, said 42 criminal investigations were under way.

On Thursday, Congress is to open hearings on all that has gone wrong. The hearings will be held by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, whose chairman, Representative James C. Greenwood of Pennsylvania, says the F.C.C.'s supervision was weak.

Mr. Greenwood said that since schools often must pay only 10 percent of the cost of equipment and services while E-rate picks up the rest, "contractors have mastered the art of coming into these districts, recommending gold-plated architecture, and school officials, buying at 10 cents on the dollar, take everything they recommend.''

"You couldn't invent a way to throw money down the drain that would work any better than this," he added.

The Universal Service Administrative Company, a nonprofit government corporation overseen by the communications commission and known to school administrators as USAC (pronounced YOU- sack), is in charge of the E-rate program, which has many enthusiastic backers.

"Every mammoth government program has problems," said Gregg Downey, editor of eSchool News, a paper that covers educational technology. "The sloth, the waste and the cases of outright fraud shouldn't be a reason to get rid of a program that's doing a lot of good. This is a program that helps schools serve students better through technology."

Michael Balmoris, a spokesman for the communications commission, said that E-rate was not "waste- and fraud-free" but that abuses were not "endemic."

Narda M. Jones, an acting chief in the F.C.C. division that oversees the program, said it was designed to give schools "maximum flexibility" to build technology systems that suited their needs.

"But as the system has grown, we've seen that that design has given people an opportunity to push at the margins of the program," Ms. Jones said.

In the last year, she said, the commission has adopted rules that "significantly tighten" the wiggle room for abuse. One such rule bars people found guilty of crimes from participation, she said.

But Thomas D. Bennett, an assistant inspector general at the commission, remains concerned about oversight. He pointed to evaluations of 122 E-rate beneficiaries carried out or overseen by F.C.C. and USAC auditors in the last year or so. The auditors characterized 62 beneficiaries as "compliant" with E-rate rules, 21 as "generally compliant," and 39 - nearly a third of the total - as "not compliant," Mr. Bennett said.

"That doesn't give us much comfort that beneficiaries are complying with our rules," he said.
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Divorce vs Homosexuality in nathannewman.org

And... "So Rush just dumped wife number three.

I honestly don't get how conservatives sit around talking about the sanctity of marriage under the Bible, while electing and listening to crass hypocrites like Reagan and Rush who engaged in what the Bible labels a sin and equivalent to adultery.

The bible discusses homosexuality in passing, and usually in ambiguous ways, with not a mention of the topic by Jesus himself, yet Jesus relentlessly condemned divorce. See all these examples of condemning divorce from the bible.

Conservatives don't have to stone Rush or Reagan for their biblical sins, but if they make heroes out of people who violate major biblical commandments, they can't expect us to take them seriously when they quote the bible on issues of more passing concern such as homosexuality."

Questioning Nearly Every Aspect of the Responses to Sept. 11
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NY Times
WASHINGTON, June 17 - For most of 2002, President Bush argued that a commission created to look into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would only distract from the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism.

Now, in 17 preliminary staff reports, that panel has called into question nearly every aspect of the administration's response to terror, including the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda were somehow the same foe.

Far from a bolt from the blue, the commission has demonstrated over the last 19 months that the Sept. 11 attacks were foreseen, at least in general terms, and might well have been prevented, had it not been for misjudgments, mistakes and glitches, some within the White House.

In the face of those findings, Mr. Bush stood firm, disputing the particular finding in a staff report that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization. "There was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush declared.

Such assertions, attributed by the White House until now to "intelligence reports," may now be perceived by Americans as having less credibility than they did before the commission's staff began in January to rewrite the history of Sept. 11, in one extraordinarily detailed report after another.

With its historic access to government secrets, the panel was able to shed new light on old accountings, demonstrating, for example, that Mr. Bush himself, in the weeks before the attack, had received more detailed warnings about Al Qaeda's intentions than the White House had acknowledged.

For now, the panel is casting its work in tentative terms. Its final report is due next month, on the eve of the Democratic convention. In this election year, its contribution has already been to portray Sept. 11 not just as a starting point in the war on terrorism, but also as a point on a continuum, one preceded and followed by other treacheries and failures.

At a briefing, a senior White House official sought again to turn away attention from the past. "The real issue is how do we move forward," the official said. "We've made a lot of changes since Sept. 11, because this country was simply not on war footing at the time of the attacks."

In the studies, Mr. Bush in particular has come off as less certain and decisive than he has portrayed himself. The final report, issued on Wednesday, reminded Americans that Mr. Bush remained in a classroom in Florida for at least five minutes after the second jet struck the World Trade Center, in what he told the panel was an effort "to project calm" for a worried nation.

Initially it was Henry A. Kissinger, the pillar of Republican foreign policy, whom Mr. Bush selected as the panel chairman, with George J. Mitchell, a former Democratic leader in the Senate, as vice chairman.

But those two appointees quickly fell by the wayside, to be replaced by former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, a Republican, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana , whose milder manners undoubtedly gave the panel a less partisan demeanor.

Notably, the two men joined forces successfully to persuade the White House to allow the panel access to crucial documents, including copies of the Presidential Daily Brief, and to pivotal figures, including Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who testified under oath in March, and to Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who appeared jointly in a closed session.

Whether the two leaders and the other panel members, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, can join forces in presenting final conclusions remains to be seen. Among the issues to be decided, and which the White House is closely watching, is the position on how and whether to reorganize United States intelligence agencies, in hopes of closing gaps that might have contributed to the Sept. 11 failures.

The Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation bore the particular brunt of the staff reports, for missteps in communication, intelligence gathering and analysis that contributed to failures in anticipating the attack and in intercepting the hijackers.

So too, the Justice Department and the Pentagon came under fire, the Justice Department for doing too little to speed information sharing among law enforcement and intelligence agencies and the Pentagon for being ill prepared to combat the peril posed by aircraft hijacked by suicide pilots.

The staff has been critical of the Clinton administration, too, pointing out missed opportunities in the late 1990's, when that White House shied from what might have been opportunities to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, leader of Al Qaeda.

But it was Mr. Bush and his top aides, particularly Mr. Cheney and Ms. Rice, who were most in the spotlight, particularly in this final week of the public hearings. On Thursday, it was Mr. Bush's self-image of being calm under fire that came under scrutiny, with a portrayal of a White House that was slow to respond as the attacks unfolded.

Starker still were preliminary staff conclusions on Wednesday that took aim at the assertions made by Mr. Cheney, in particular, of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda in connection to Sept. 11, including what the White House has repeatedly said might well have been a meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, the chief hijacker, and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer.

Much of the support for the American invasion of Iraq last year was based, polls have suggested, on a perception that Mr. Hussein and his government were behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Bush acknowledged last fall that there was no evidence of such ties, but it was a perception that the White House never actively sought to squelch.

With the commission staff's saying it did not believe that the Prague meeting had occurred and that there was no evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq in connection with the attacks, Mr. Bush on Thursday sounded very much on the defensive.

"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda," he said.

The sole example he cited of "numerous contacts" between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda was a meeting between a senior Iraq intelligence agent and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan in 1994, one that the commission said appeared to have gone nowhere.

In 2002, Mr. Bush did finally sign off on the plan to form the commission, bowing to Congressional pressure. Until now, he has resisted other proposals being pushed by Congress, including a major overhaul of intelligence agencies.

A plan for such an overhaul is expected to be among the commission's final recommendations next month, presenting Mr. Bush and the White House with yet another challenge.
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� News � Out of Thin Air - Hacker tool allows Wi-Fi password grabs

As Wi-Fi users anticipate better wireless security, a new tool allows a hacker to yank you from the web and grab your login information before you've even sipped your latte.

'Airsnarf' is the latest utility to annoy wireless enthusiasts. The tool is the focus of attention this morning at both Computer User and DailyWireless.org. The tool, developed by a group that dubs themselves 'the Shmoo Group', allows an individual to yank connectivity from an unsuspecting user. Then the tool broadcasts a powerful signal, mimics the network logon, and tricks the user into providing the hacker with their login data when they think they're logging back on to the wireless network. "

Daily Wireless: "Welcome to Daily Wireless
Here are some ideas from the DailyWireless archives that could also be fun.

Note: This is a great site for Wireless Info

Former US officials say 'Bush must be defeated in November'
The Daily Star
By Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Friday, June 18, 2004

A group of former senior diplomatic officials and retired military commanders - several of whom are the kind who "have never spoken out before" on such matters - has just issued a bracing statement arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged US national security and calling on Americans to defeat him in November. It's too early to tell if the statement will have an impact on this fall's campaign. But the group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, reveals (again) how dangerously isolated the Bush administration is not just around the world but even within America's own bipartisan foreign policy and military establishments.

This latest missive was sent by Democratic and Republican former officials who refuse to stay silent in the face of Bush's extremist and ideological foreign policy which, they say, is squandering America's moral standing. The signatories aren't exactly a "who's who" of the American left.

Jack Matlock, who served as an ambassador to the Soviet Union under the former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, has signed the statement, as has Retired Admiral William Crowe, who served as Reagan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Retired Marine General Joseph Hoar, a Marine who commanded US forces in the Middle East under former President Bush, has added his name to the list, as has Phyllis Oakley, who served as a State Department spokesperson under Reagan. The vast majority of signatories are, in fact, either conservative Republicans who served in the previous Reagan or Bush administrations, or they are bipartisan, consensus-driven ex-diplomats who believe in America's leadership role around the world.

Now they feel so enraged by Bush's extremist foreign policies that they can no longer stand by as the current Bush administration makes America less secure by upending alliances and alienating much of the world. Against the metastasizing scandal of Abu Ghraib, the botched post-war occupation of Iraq and the administration's lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the run-up to the war, these old hands are now taking an uncompromising, intelligent stand against what they see as an arrogant, unilateral and incompetent foreign policy.

The signatories join a large and growing chorus of former officials who were so enraged by Bush's conduct in Iraq that sitting on the sidelines wasn't an option. John Brady Kiesling, now a retired diplomat, led the charge in February 2003, when he courageously quit his Foreign Service job with the American Embassy in Athens and wrote a stinging rebuke of Bush's headlong rush to war in Iraq. Then another career diplomat, Gregory Thielmann, went public, telling Bill Moyers that Iraq didn't pose an "imminent security threat" to America. Thielmann attacked Bush for hyping intelligence reports and for misleading the American people about the need to go to war. The administration, he said, "has had a faith-based intelligence attitude: 'We know the answers - give us the intelligence to support those answers.'"

Around the same time, retired military commanders were growing aghast at Bush's inept lack of planning for the occupation of Iraq. That's why, for example, a former US Central Command commander, General Anthony Zinni, went on "60 Minutes" last month and argued that if Bush stuck to the current course in Iraq, America was "headed over Niagara Falls." Hoar, the retired Marine general, has publicly declared that the United States is "absolutely on the brink of failure" in Iraq.

Meanwhile, other former ambassadors and career Foreign Service officers began speaking up, on their own timetables. Republican Party strategists with ties to the White House were quick and shameless in denigrating the critics. Ronald Spiers, a former ambassador to Turkey and Pakistan and someone well versed in Middle Eastern politics, argued that Bush administration policies had unraveled America's most important global alliances. Spiers faulted Bush for causing the US to lose "a lot of our international partnerships. We've lost a lot of lives. We've lost a lot of money for something that wasn't justified."

George Harrop, a former ambassador to Kenya and Israel, spoke for many in the diplomatic corps and, I suspect, for onetime Republican administration officials, when he said: "I really am essentially a Republican. I voted for George Bush's father, and I voted for George Bush. But what we got was not the George Bush we voted for." And former Ambassador Joseph Wilson has reminded Americans of just how many lies the present administration was willing to tell in its quest to convince people that Iraq posed a nuclear threat to the US.

Then, of course, there are the former National Security Council officials who, after getting a ringside seat watching Bush's bungling national security strategies, decided that now was the time to take a stand. Rand Beers left the White House after serving under Reagan and the former President Bush, and is now running foreign policy operations for John Kerry's presidential campaign. Richard Clarke is one of the most experienced counter-terrorism officials America has produced in the last three decades; he, too, could no longer stand idly by as the Bush administration pursued a fool's errand by starting a war against Iraq.

Just last month a separate group of 53 former diplomats and other former high-level national security officials wrote a letter to Bush in which they excoriated the president for sacrificing America's credibility in the Arab world and squandering America's status as honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The statement just issued marks the high-water point of dissent among diplomats and military commanders who cannot stomach Bush any longer. But there is still time, and a need, for more officials to come forward and voice their opposition to policies that are undermining US security. The latest letter was a profound wake-up call to all Americans: George W. Bush must be defeated next November.

Fantastic News !!!

Novell v. SCO: The Telling Blow?
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, eWEEK
June 11, 2004

Opinion: In an eventful week for SCO, Linux & Open Source columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols thinks the biggest event by far is that SCO now must face Novell in federal court to battle for Unix's copyright. It's a battle, he thinks, that SCO is likely to lose.

It's been a busy time for SCO watchers. First, the company—somehow, some way—managed to twist its way out of its deal with BayStar Capital with the lion's share of the cash, and BayStar was left holding millions of shares of underwater stock.

Then, in this week alone, we've seen SCO report an absolutely awful second quarter, and a U.S. District Court granted it more time to get its ducks in line for its IBM case.

And last, but by no means least, the same judge told SCO that its case over who really owns Unix's copyright, Novell or SCO, would be fought out in federal court instead of in state court.

Now, if you didn't have a scorecard, you might think the last point was the smallest one. But if you've been playing along at home, or at Groklaw anyway, you'll know that the seemingly small change in venue is all-important.

That's because it completely changes the rules by which SCO will have to show that it, and not Novell, owns Unix's copyright. And without that copyright, all of those other cases SCO is pursuing against AutoZone, DaimlerChrysler, IBM and Red Hat fall apart like a house of cards in a summer thunderstorm.

I'm no lawyer; I'm just a working journalist who's been following SCO since the late 1980s. But heck, you don't have to take my word that SCO may now be in serious legal hot water. Let me introduce you to Michael R. Graham, intellectual property attorney and partner with the Chicago-based law firm Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP.

Graham tells me, "Judge Kimball's decision is a serious loss for SCO. Not only in its slander of title case against Novell, but in SCO's case against IBM. The threshold issue in both cases is whether SCO owns copyright in the Unix software code."

"SCO wanted the case remanded so that the only issue would be contractual: whether the APA [Asset Purchase Agreement] and Amendment No. 2 transferred ownership of the Unix code," Graham says.

"But Judge Kimball concluded that a more fundamental issue is whether the APA and Amendment No. 2 constitute the type of 'writing' required under the federal copyright law to effect a transfer of copyright. This federal analysis could prove fatal to SCO's claim."
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Travesty of Justice
NY Times Op-Ed
By PAUL KRUGMAN

No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history.

For this column, let's just focus on Mr. Ashcroft's role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn't even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure.

We can't tell directly whether Mr. Ashcroft's post-9/11 policies are protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. But a number of pieces of evidence suggest otherwise.

First, there's the absence of any major successful prosecutions. The one set of convictions that seemed fairly significant — that of the "Detroit 3" — appears to be collapsing over accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. (The lead prosecutor has filed a whistle-blower suit against Mr. Ashcroft, accusing him of botching the case. The Justice Department, in turn, has opened investigations against the prosecutor. Payback? I report; you decide.)

Then there is the lack of any major captures. Somewhere, the anthrax terrorist is laughing. But the Justice Department, you'll be happy to know, is trying to determine whether it can file bioterrorism charges against a Buffalo art professor whose work includes harmless bacteria in petri dishes.

Perhaps most telling is the way Mr. Ashcroft responds to criticism of his performance. His first move is always to withhold the evidence. Then he tries to change the subject by making a dramatic announcement of a terrorist threat.

For an example of how Mr. Ashcroft shuts down public examination, consider the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former F.B.I. translator who says that the agency's language division is riddled with incompetence and corruption, and that the bureau missed critical terrorist warnings. In 2002 she gave closed-door Congressional testimony; Senator Charles Grassley described her as "very credible . . . because people within the F.B.I. have corroborated a lot of her story."

But the Justice Department has invoked the rarely used "state secrets privilege" to prevent Ms. Edmonds from providing evidence. And last month the department retroactively classified two-year-old testimony by F.B.I. officials, which was presumably what Mr. Grassley referred to.

For an example of changing the subject, consider the origins of the Jose Padilla case. There was no publicity when Mr. Padilla was arrested in May 2002. But on June 6, 2002, Coleen Rowley gave devastating Congressional testimony about failures at the F.B.I. (which reports to Mr. Ashcroft) before 9/11. Four days later, Mr. Ashcroft held a dramatic press conference and announced that Mr. Padilla was involved in a terrifying plot. Instead of featuring Ms. Rowley, news magazine covers ended up featuring the "dirty bomber" who Mr. Ashcroft said was plotting to kill thousands with deadly radiation.

Since then Mr. Padilla has been held as an "enemy combatant" with no legal rights. But Newsweek reports that "administration officials now concede that the principal claim they have been making about Padilla ever since his detention — that he was dispatched to the United States for the specific purpose of setting off a radiological `dirty bomb' — has turned out to be wrong and most likely can never be used in court."

But most important is the memo. Last week Mr. Ashcroft, apparently in contempt of Congress, refused to release a memo on torture his department prepared for the White House almost two years ago. Fortunately, his stonewalling didn't work: The Washington Post has acquired a copy of the memo and put it on its Web site.

Much of the memo is concerned with defining torture down: if the pain inflicted on a prisoner is less than the pain that accompanies "serious physical injury, such as organ failure," it's not torture. Anyway, the memo declares that the federal law against torture doesn't apply to interrogations of enemy combatants "pursuant to [the president's] commander-in-chief authority." In other words, the president is above the law.

The memo came out late Sunday. Mr. Ashcroft called a press conference yesterday — to announce an indictment against a man accused of plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio. The timing was, I'm sure, purely coincidental.

U.S. Baptists Split from World Group

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Reuters) - The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, voted on Tuesday to cut its links with the Baptist World Alliance, saying the global group is too liberal on gay rights and other issues.

Note: From the Southern Baptist Convention's "Abstract of Principles" it is clear the SBC has a different worldview than the World Council of Churches, when the latter wrote: in their "Statement of Faith":

"The National Council of Churches is a community of Christian communions, which, in response to the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord. These communions covenant with one another to manifest ever more fully the unity of the Church. Relying upon the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, the communions come together as the Council in common mission, serving in all creation to the glory of God." --from the Preamble to the NCC Constitution.

The SBC offers it's adherents an exclusive Church with an autocratic God; the WCC offers an inclusive Church with a benevolent God. The SBC spiritual homebase is in Texas, the WCC's is in New York. The SBC claims 15 million members, the WCC claims over fifty million.

The SBC split from BWA as seen by the SBC is here. And then we have the linkage from the SBC to President Bush, shown below.


Bush speaks to Southern Baptists, reiterates stances on life issues, same-sex 'marriage'
Jun 15, 2004
By Erin Curry

President Bush addresses SBC messengers via satellite
President George W. Bush speaks live via satellite from the Oval Office of the White House June 15 to messengers assembled for the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in the Indiana Convention Center June 15-16 for the 147th session of the SBC, in its 159th year. Photo Kent Harville

INDIANAPOLIS (BP)--President Bush spoke directly to Southern Baptists June 15, upholding a "culture of life" and the sanctity of marriage. Bush, speaking live from the White House via satellite, also addressed issues relating to faith-based organizations, the judicial system and the war on terror.

The president told messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Indianapolis he and his wife are thankful for their prayers, which he has felt "at crucial hours." The president said he will keep working to build a culture of life in America, adding to the progress he has made by signing the Born Alive Infants Protection Act and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

"Common sense and conscience tell us that when an expectant mother is killed, two lives are ended, and the criminal should answer for both crimes," he said in his 12-minute speech. Also, Bush signed a law last November to end the practice of partial-birth abortion.

"This law is not only valid and constitutional, it is compassionate and urgently needed, and my administration will fight to uphold it," he said. Bush said his administration also will continue its support for crisis pregnancy centers, incentives for adoption and parental notification laws.

"I propose to double federal funding for abstinence programs in schools and community-based programs," Bush told the standing-room-only crowd. "And I will work with Congress to pass a comprehensive and effective ban on human cloning. Life is a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man."

The president then said his administration is defending the sanctity of marriage against activist courts and local officials who seek to redefine marriage.

"The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. And government, by strengthening and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all. So I am calling for funding for healthy marriage programs, and I support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage as a union of a man and a woman," he said to messengers' applause.

Bush said he also will continue working to defend the liberty of faith-based organizations, which have the right to provide publicly funded social services just like any other group. He said he has called on Congress to codify his faith-based initiative into law "so that people of faith can know government will never discriminate against them again."

Turning to the judicial system, Bush noted that some senators are resorting to unprecedented tactics to block votes on his judicial nominees, and he urged them to stop.

"Every nominee deserves a fair hearing and a timely vote on the Senate floor. It is time for those senators to stop playing politics with American justice," he said.

Speaking of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush again said freedom is not America's gift to the world but is Almighty God's gift to every man and woman who lives in this world.

"In Afghanistan and Iraq, we will finish the job," Bush said, thanking Southern Baptists for their strong support of the war.

In closing, Bush offered hope in the future of America.

"These years have brought trials we did not ask for and challenges we never expected to face," he said. "We have worked together, and we are rising to meet the duties of our time. Now we look forward with confidence and faith toward greater security and wider prosperity and a stronger culture of life. We pray always for God's guidance and strength in our lives and for this great nation."

Just before Bush spoke, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson led the messengers in prayer for the president and the nation, asking God to give him "wisdom beyond Solomon."

SBC President Jack Graham, speaking to the Executive Committee June 14, said Southern Baptists are not looking to endorse candidates, but instead to have candidates endorse Southern Baptist values.

"One of the reasons we loved Ronald Reagan so much is because he endorsed so many of our values and helped us in our country and our culture," Graham said. "That's the way I feel about any candidate, whether it's this president or any other president. We're seeking that candidate to endorse us. ... We're thankful that George W. Bush has endorsed many of the values that we hold dear."

Bush has now addressed the Southern Baptist Convention three times. In 2002, he spoke via satellite, and in 2003 he sent a taped message.

Note: Nothing else needs to be said on the stark differences between the orientation of the SBC as compared to the WBA and the WCC.
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Number of Americans with no formal religion increasing, survey finds
Signs of religious 'reawakening' hard to find, researchers say
by Chris Herlinger
Ecumenical News International
January 11,2002

NEW YORK - Though the United States remains a strongly religious nation, the percentage of Americans saying they have no formal religious identity is growing, the authors of a recent survey have concluded.

A national survey of U.S. religious affiliation suggests the existence of a "wide and possibly growing swath of secularism" in the American population.

The American Religious Identification Survey 2001, released by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), also suggests that the proportion of Christians in the U.S. has dropped - from 86 percent in 1990, when the study was first conducted, to 77 percent in 2001.

The survey was based on random telephone interviews from February to June 2001 of more than 50,000 adults. Researchers estimated the responses to be representative of the entire U.S. adult population.

The study was released late in 2001 after the Sept. 11terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC - events that, by nearly all accounts, swelled the numbers of people attending religious services.

But Egon Mayer, one of the co-authors of the study, said Sept. 11 had not permanently altered the US religious landscape. Increased attendance at religious services immediately after the attacks did not change the basic religious affiliations that he and co-author Barry Kosmin studied, Mayer said.

"People didn't attend church or synagogue just for religious reasons. They wanted to be around other people," Mayer told ENI. "People probably feel more religious, but whether they have changed behavior is another question."

(Ed. The idea that religion, particularly Christianity, has as its main goal to "change behavior" is a cultic heresy among both Catholics and Protestants. Orthodox Christianity's main goal is to expose sinners to the Savior through the message of Law and Gospel so that the Holy Spirit will turn them to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit God for His grace in Jesus. A change of behavior will result from that "turning" as one learns the expressed will of the true God from His revelation, the Bible.)

Another survey, conducted by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and released last month, confirmed part of Mayer's contention.

In the Pew study, 78 percent of those surveyed in November 2001 said the influence of religion in the United States was growing - an increase over an earlier, March survey, in which only 37 percent of those questioned had felt the influence of religion on the rise.

And yet the November Pew survey found no evidence that religion was suddenly playing a larger role in Americans' personal lives. The proportion of those surveyed post-Sept. 11 who said that religion was important in their own lives - 61 percent - was virtually unchanged from what it had been in the March study.

Other findings of the CUNY American Religious Identification Survey for 2001, based on extrapolations:

* Fifty-two per cent of adults were Protestant, 24.5 percent were Catholic, and 14.1 percent adhered to no religion. Jews and Muslims remained relatively small groups in the U.S., the study concluded, Jews representing 1.3 percent of the population, and Muslims, 0.5 percent.

* Some 33 million American adults - about 16 percent of the total adult population - had changed their religious identification at some point.

* The groups making the largest gains since 1990 included Evangelical Christians, non-denominational Christians and those who professed no religion. The latter group accounted for the largest single increase since the previous, 1990 study. "One of the most striking 1990-2001 comparisons is the more than doubling of the adult population identifying with no religion, from 14.3 million (8 percent) in 1990 to the current 29.4 million (14.1percent)," the study said.

Those who claimed no formal religious affiliation were not, however, atheists: only 0.4 percent of the people surveyed identified themselves as atheists.

Despite a strong sentiment in the United States that the country has undergone something of a "religious re-awakening" in recent years, the study concluded that the population's large secular segment should not be ignored.

The finding was "completely consistent with similar secularizing trends in other Western, democratic societies," the authors concluded. "The magnitude and role of this large secular segment of the American population is frequently ignored by scholars and politicians alike."
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Halliburton Under Fire on Capitol Hill for Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pentagon auditors criticized Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm Halliburton on Tuesday for its Iraq contracts as questions lingered over White House influence in giving work to the company.

CIA Restricts One-Third of U.S. Senate WMD Report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has decided that about one-third of a U.S. Senate report criticizing prewar intelligence on Iraq contains secret information that should not be released to the public, intelligence sources said on Tuesday.

Sharon Wins a Crucial Victory as His Bribery Case Is Dropped
The decision is expected to lend new momentum to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plans to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from Gaza.

Smart-phone worm has a hang-up
World's First Cell Phone Virus
By Robert Lemos
CNET News.com
June 15, 2004, 2:40 PM PT

A recently created "concept virus" designed to show that a worm could spread between smart phones won't get very far in the real world, antivirus companies said Tuesday.

As previously reported, the so-called Cabir worm is written for the Symbian operating system, the OS used in a majority of smart phones--devices that combine the features of a cell phone and a personal digital assistant. The worm's creators sent a copy of it to antivirus researchers Monday, and it's not yet known if the program has made its way to the general public.

Some researchers initially thought Cabir would automatically run on phones based on the Symbian OS, but an analysis of the program has changed that assessment. In order for the worm to spread, said Kevin Hogan, senior manager for security company Symantec, the user of a targeted phone has to approve of a download from an unknown source.

"The way in which (this worm) replicates itself will severely limit its spread, even if (the worm) was to be made public," Hogan said. "It is not relying on a vulnerability in the operating system; it is relying on the underlying vulnerability of the person who is using" the OS.

To propagate, the worm has to clear three hurdles, Hogan said. First, the target device's user must allow the infected phone to connect to the target device through the Bluetooth wireless protocol. Then, the potential victim must accept the data for download. Finally, the user has to agree to install the application.

"We still haven't seen this thing in the wild," Hogan said. "So far, it is what we call a 'zoo virus'--it is only in the hands of researchers and the person that wrote it."

While the worm is not likely to spread, antivirus companies warned that other virus writers may use it as a departure point for their own development, placing the digital code at the beginning of a chain of evolution that could result in an actual threat to users of smart phones.

"We see it as a pretty significant step forward," said Vincent Gullotto, vice president of Network Associates' antivirus emergency response team. Two other minor variants of the program, which remove extraneous code, have appeared already, he said.

"The saving grace is that you have to accept the program, it just doesn't show up on your machine," Gullotto said.

Cabir uses components of Nokia's Series 60 development platform, a platform used not only by Nokia but also by other major smart phone manufacturers, including Siemens, Samsung, Sendo and Panasonic. Symantec and other antivirus companies confirmed that, theoretically, the worm could spread between Nokia Series 60 phones running Symbian 6.1 or higher. Security company Network Associates found that the program could infect a Nokia 6600 phone.

Representatives of Symbian and Nokia were not immediately available for comment.

Even if Cabir could spread quickly, it might not gain much traction because smart phones still have not taken off, especially in the United States. Symbian's operating system currently dominates the smart-phone market, which remains small, representing only a thin slice of the more than 1 billion cell phones in circulation. The Symbian OS is expected to battle a similar product from Microsoft for the lead in the operating system market through the end of the decade.

Threats like the Cabir worm could be further stymied by Symbian Signed, a new campaign that will require all applications for the Symbian platform to be digitally signed, attesting that the company has looked at the code. Users could refuse to install any unsigned applications.

Cabir doesn't have a destructive payload, but it constantly scans for other Bluetooth devices it can target, severely shortening the battery life of any system it's already infected, according to Symantec's analysis.
<------------------------------------->

Southern Baptists May Leave World Body
By REUTERS

Published: June 14, 2004

CHICAGO, June 13 (Reuters) - A dispute between the Southern Baptist Convention and a global Baptist group may result in a split this week.

At issue is the Southern Baptist Convention's continuing membership in the Baptist World Alliance, an umbrella organization for the faith that it sees as too liberal. The convention's financial support of the world group is also at stake. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is based in Nashville and has 16 million members, are holding their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Indianapolis. They have said the Baptist World Alliance espouses a "liberal theology" that threatens to infect the church in the United States.

The convention's leadership has been dominated since 1979 by conservatives who maintain, among other things, that the Bible as written is without error.

Another issue that may surface this week involves a call for Baptists to boycott United States public schools. A resolution circulated before the meeting says children in public schools are taught that "God is irrelevant" and that a homosexual lifestyle is acceptable. It suggests that home schooling or private religious schools are proper alternatives.

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention say the Baptist World Alliance has taken an increasingly anti-American tone. They have criticized it for supporting gay rights and the ordination of women, and for consorting with "socialist" figures, including President Fidel Castro of Cuba and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

The convention's executive committee approved the move to split from the alliance at a meeting in February, leaving a final decision to delegates at this week's meeting.

The committee's report said the alliance "no longer efficiently communicates to the unsaved a crystal clear gospel message that our Lord Jesus Christ is solely sufficient for salvation."

Southern Baptists May Leave World Body
By REUTERS

Published: June 14, 2004

CHICAGO, June 13 (Reuters) - A dispute between the Southern Baptist Convention and a global Baptist group may result in a split this week.

At issue is the Southern Baptist Convention's continuing membership in the Baptist World Alliance, an umbrella organization for the faith that it sees as too liberal. The convention's financial support of the world group is also at stake. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is based in Nashville and has 16 million members, are holding their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Indianapolis. They have said the Baptist World Alliance espouses a "liberal theology" that threatens to infect the church in the United States.

The convention's leadership has been dominated since 1979 by conservatives who maintain, among other things, that the Bible as written is without error.

Another issue that may surface this week involves a call for Baptists to boycott United States public schools. A resolution circulated before the meeting says children in public schools are taught that "God is irrelevant" and that a homosexual lifestyle is acceptable. It suggests that home schooling or private religious schools are proper alternatives.

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention say the Baptist World Alliance has taken an increasingly anti-American tone. They have criticized it for supporting gay rights and the ordination of women, and for consorting with "socialist" figures, including President Fidel Castro of Cuba and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

The convention's executive committee approved the move to split from the alliance at a meeting in February, leaving a final decision to delegates at this week's meeting.

The committee's report said the alliance "no longer efficiently communicates to the unsaved a crystal clear gospel message that our Lord Jesus Christ is solely sufficient for salvation."

Southern Baptists May Leave World Body
By REUTERS

Published: June 14, 2004

CHICAGO, June 13 (Reuters) - A dispute between the Southern Baptist Convention and a global Baptist group may result in a split this week.

At issue is the Southern Baptist Convention's continuing membership in the Baptist World Alliance, an umbrella organization for the faith that it sees as too liberal. The convention's financial support of the world group is also at stake. Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is based in Nashville and has 16 million members, are holding their annual meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Indianapolis. They have said the Baptist World Alliance espouses a "liberal theology" that threatens to infect the church in the United States.

The convention's leadership has been dominated since 1979 by conservatives who maintain, among other things, that the Bible as written is without error.

Another issue that may surface this week involves a call for Baptists to boycott United States public schools. A resolution circulated before the meeting says children in public schools are taught that "God is irrelevant" and that a homosexual lifestyle is acceptable. It suggests that home schooling or private religious schools are proper alternatives.

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention say the Baptist World Alliance has taken an increasingly anti-American tone. They have criticized it for supporting gay rights and the ordination of women, and for consorting with "socialist" figures, including President Fidel Castro of Cuba and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

The convention's executive committee approved the move to split from the alliance at a meeting in February, leaving a final decision to delegates at this week's meeting.

The committee's report said the alliance "no longer efficiently communicates to the unsaved a crystal clear gospel message that our Lord Jesus Christ is solely sufficient for salvation."

Friedman's low road to the high ground

Taking the High Ground
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: June 13, 2004

At a time when the Israeli rightist parties are going through a wrenching debate over whether to approve Ariel Sharon's proposal for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, it's worth recalling Israel's previous experience in this regard — its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. Although that withdrawal is remembered as a failure, it deserves to be rehabilitated. Israel's Lebanon withdrawal was a great strategic success — for reasons that Israel should be studying now.

First, a few facts: After years of bloody guerrilla warfare that cost Israel dearly in lives and treasure, on May 22, 2000, Israel unilaterally withdrew from south Lebanon to the internationally recognized border. On July 27, 2000, the U.N. passed Resolution 1310, confirming that Israel had "withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with Resolution 425."

With that U.N.-approved pullout, Israel completely reversed its situation: It went from holding the strategic and moral low ground, to holding the strategic and moral high ground. When Israel was occupying south Lebanon it was embroiled in a guerrilla war in which it could never use its vast military superiority. It was going mano a mano with Hezbollah. Worse, any Hezbollah attack on Israel was seen by the world as legitimate resistance. Once Israel was out, it could use its superior air power to retaliate for Hezbollah attacks — and the world didn't care.

"Sure," say the critics, "But the Palestinians saw the Israeli withdrawal as a sign of weakness and it triggered their Intifada II." Well, maybe the Palestinians did watch too much Hezbollah TV. Their mistake. But I'll tell you who didn't misread Israel's withdrawal: the people it was directed at — Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria.

Hezbollah knows it can't launch any serious attack on Israel from Lebanon now without triggering a massive retaliation in which Israel's air force would destroy all the power plants of Beirut. This would bring down the wrath of all of Lebanon on Hezbollah — because the Lebanese public would not consider an unprovoked Hezbollah attack on Israel as legitimate, or worth sacrificing for, now that Israel is out of Lebanon and Lebanon's sovereignty is restored.

"In every conflict, the extent to which a party can muster domestic support and international support, and the extent to which its public will withstand higher thresholds of pain, is very much a function of the degree of international legitimacy for that cause," argues Shibley Telhami, Middle East studies professor at the University of Maryland. "As soon as Israel withdrew from Lebanon to the internationally recognized border, the legitimacy factor shifted from Hezbollah to Israel. This may seem abstract, but it's not."

When you have legitimacy on your side, your people, and the world, support you more, and the other side's people, and the world, support them less. Yes, the Israel-Lebanon border is still tense, but very few Israelis have been killed there in four years. That's my idea of peace. There is no total victory to be had by Israel over Hezbollah or the Palestinians, without total genocide. There is, though, the possibility of long cease-fires, with Israel holding the moral and strategic high ground, so it can lead its life. In north Israel today, Israelis can focus on what they want, which is making microchips, leaving the unlucky south Lebanese — who are trapped under the brain-dead Syrian and Hezbollah regimes — to make potato chips.

The lesson for Israel is clear: If you are going to get out of Gaza unilaterally, get out all the way to the U.N.-blessed international border. Do not do it halfway; otherwise you end up with the worst of all worlds: still embroiled in a guerrilla war, still taking casualties, unable to use your superior firepower and getting blamed for everything. Gaza may be easier than Lebanon, too, because unlike Syria and Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt would not have an interest — after an Israeli pullout — in keeping Gaza boiling. Because that would empower Hamas.

The Israeli right insists that Israel is surrounded by implacable foes. That may be true. It may be that Israel can only hope for different models of insecurity with its neighbors. If so, I'd choose the Lebanon model: Get out all the way to an internationally legitimized, U.N. border and deal with enemies from the moral and strategic high ground. The view is better — and it's much safer up there.

The New York Times > International > Israel Pushes Deeper Into West Bank for Barrier
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 14, 2004

Filed at 7:26 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM (AP) -- An Israeli air strike in the West Bank late Monday killed two Palestinian militants, including a local leader, as Israel started building the most controversial section of its separation barrier, confiscating Palestinian land."

Talkingpointsmemo Post
(June 10, 2004 -- 02:21 PM EDT // link // print)
Even back home they're starting to wonder. This from an editorial in yesterday's Houston Chronicle ...

The United States' moral authority to call for the rule of law and respect for human rights has been undermined by legal machinations the Bush administration undertook to justify torturing prisoners taken in the war on terror.
Administration officials have attempted to downplay the significance of a March 6, 2003, Justice Department memorandum that concluded that, as commander in chief in time of war, President George W. Bush is bound neither by federal law nor the tenets of the Geneva Conventions that ban torture as a means of extracting information from detainees.

The March memo asserts that interrogators could inflict severe pain on a detainee with impunity as long as the intent was something other than to torture. An interrogator would be culpable only if he knew his actions would inflict suffering that is severe enough to induce "prolonged" physical or mental effects. An interrogator would be immune from punishment if he believed he acted to prevent a larger harm, the lawyers determined.

The memos were obviously concocted to defend acts that are clearly beyond the bounds of a civilized nation.

The memos support the view that the prisoner abuses uncovered at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not merely the grave mistakes of a few soldiers, but resulted from policies formed at the highest levels of government. They strengthen concerns about how detainees at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan are being treated.

As I suggest today in The Hill, I think we're actually pretty far past that point.

We're like contestants on Wheel of Fortune with a long phrase spelled out in front of us with maybe one or two letters missing. We know what the letters spell. It's obvious. We just don't have the heart to say it out loud.

-- Josh Marshall
<------------------------------------->

Living in Suburbia, Married to a Machine
By A. O. SCOTT
NY Times Review
Published: June 11, 2004

The Stepford Wives," Frank Oz's madcap re-engineering of a dusty, second-rate thriller from 1975, opens with a montage of happy housewives and their household gadgets. Making fun of images like these — smiling women in Eisenhower-era perms and evening gowns swooning over their automated kitchen cabinets — has become such a tiresome pop-culture staple that you may wonder if the movie, which opens today nationwide, has anything new to say about feminism, suburbia or consumer society. The answer is not really, but it does manage to fire off a handful of decent jokes and a few sneaky insights before losing its nerve and collapsing into incoherence.

The source for both this film and the earlier one, which starred Katharine Ross and Paula Prentiss, is a slim, efficient novel by Ira Levin that uses the conventions of suspense fiction as a vehicle for allegory and social satire. Mr. Levin's Stepford, Conn., was a pleasant middle-class suburb whose menfolk, threatened by the rather mild feminism of their wives, killed them off and replaced them with subservient, sexually compliant robots.

The first "Stepford Wives" exploited the horror-movie implications of this premise, rather than its comic possibilities. Mr. Oz and Paul Rudnick, the screenwriter, swerve maniacally in the opposite direction, whipping up a gaudy, noisy farce that perpetually threatens to spin out of control and eventually does. The music, by David Arnold, is full of overdone, campy melodrama, like an Elmer Bernstein score for a Three Stooges picture. The performances — in particular that of Glenn Close as Stepford's robot matriarch — are both sly and overstated, giving Mr. Rudnick's sneaky one-liners a chance to be heard amid the cacophonous silliness.

Needless to say, a lot has changed in 30 years: now, Stepford is a gated subdivision full of late-model S.U.V.'s and sprawling stone McMansions, where a gay couple is welcomed and where everyone is white. (In Mr. Levin's novel a black family had just come to town, but I guess they've moved away.) Sexual politics have also come a long way. Joanna Eberhart, who dabbled in photography when she was played by Ms. Ross, is now, in the person of Nicole Kidman, the ruthless, ambitious head of a television network. Fired in the wake of a reality-show disaster, Joanna has a quick nervous breakdown and is then spirited off to Stepford by her nebbishy, beta-male husband, Walter (Matthew Broderick).

In the earlier "Stepford," the flight from New York was implicitly motivated by fear of urban chaos and social collapse. This time, though, the Eberharts are fleeing from the soul-emptying consequences of their own ambition, seeking out the cozy simplicity of an affluent world in which no one seems to have, or to need, a job. The husbands, a collection of lumpy, khaki-wearing dweebs (with the exception of Christopher Walken, their guru of old-school masculinity), congregate in the clubby headquarters of the Men's Association, which is also where their robot workshop is housed. The wives, meanwhile, cheerfully perform their household and bedroom duties, steered by personalized brass remote-control devices wielded by their owners — er, mates.

Though Joanna is repelled by the empty-headed obedience of the Stepford wives, she also wants to repair the damage that her career has inflicted on her husband and children. This damage is mentioned rather than shown, and the repair work is highly theoretical, since children in Stepford are only slightly more visible than black people. There is, however, a schticky pair of token Jews, played by Jon Lovitz and Bette Midler, whose character, until she is robotized, is a slovenly, loud-mouthed novelist and one of Joanna's few friends.

Mr. Rudnick is best at forging tiny verbal darts that tickle more than they sting. (Late in the game, Joanna discovers that one of the robot-designers once worked for AOL. "Is that why the women are so slow?" she asks.) Occasionally, as in the film's clever, cautionary view of gay marriage, you might intuit a crackle of genuine satire, but for the most part "The Stepford Wives" is as cheerful and inoffensive as its title characters. Every time you think it might be venturing toward social criticism, it pulls back into homily and reassurance, refusing to tell anyone in the audience anything she — or he — might not want to hear.

There are, of course, some real tensions and resentments embedded in this story — the hard choices facing ambitious women, the immaturity and misogyny that surge through so much popular culture, a rampaging materialism that makes the Stepford of 1975 look like a kibbutz — but the movie, especially in its disastrous and nonsensical final act, works as hard as it can to suppress them.

"The Stepford Wives" is, in other words, the opposite of satire. It is intended not to provoke but to soothe, to tell us, once again, that we can have it all, that nobody's perfect, and that if there is trouble in the world, or in our own homes, it's nothing we need to worry our pretty little heads about.

"The Stepford Wives" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has some strong language and sexual references.

THE STEPFORD WIVES

Directed by Frank Oz; written by Paul Rudnick, based on the book by Ira Levin; director of photography, Rob Hahn; edited by Jay Rabinowitz; music by David Arnold; production designer, Jackson Degovia; produced by Scott Rudin, Donald De Line, Edgar J. Scherick and Gabriel Grunfeld; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 110 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

WITH: Nicole Kidman (Joanna Eberhart), Matthew Broderick (Walter Kresby), Bette Midler (Bobbie Markowitz), Jon Lovitz (Dave Markowitz), Christopher Walken (Mike Wellington), Faith Hill (Sarah Sunderson) and Glenn Close (Claire Wellington).
<------------------------------------->

U.S. Wrongly Reported Drop in World Terrorism in 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 11, 2004

WASHINGTON, June 10 - The State Department acknowledged Thursday that it was wrong in reporting that terrorism declined worldwide last year, a finding the Bush administration had pointed to as evidence of its success in countering terror.

Instead, the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said. Statements by senior administration officials claiming success were based "on the facts as we had them at the time; the facts that we had were wrong," Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said.

When the report was issued April 29, senior administration officials used it as evidence that the war was being won. J. Cofer Black, coordinator of the State Department's Counterterrorism Office, cited the 190 acts of terrorism in 2003, down from 198 in 2002, as "good news" and predicted the trend would continue. Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, said at the time, "You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight." His office did not respond Thursday to a request for a statement on disclosures that some of the findings were inaccurate. The erroneous report, titled "Patterns of Global Terrorism," said that attacks declined last year to the lowest level in 34 years and dropped 45 percent since 2001, Mr. Bush's first year as president, when 346 attacks occurred.

Among the mistakes, Mr. Boucher said, was that only part of 2003 was taken into account.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Thursday that the errors were partly the result of new procedures for collecting data. "I can assure you it had nothing to do with putting out anything but the most honest, accurate information we can," Mr. Powell said said.

"Errors crept in that, frankly, we did not catch here," he said of the report, which showed a decline in the number of attacks worldwide in 2003.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said this week that the administration had refused to address his contention that the findings were manipulated for political purposes. Mr. Waxman wrote to Mr. Powell in May asking for an explanation.

Mr. Boucher said the department was preparing a reply. "We wanted to make sure that we give the congressman the best and most accurate picture of what we know and what's going on as we can," he said.

"When we are sure we have the new facts, the right facts, we will prepare an appropriate analysis and give you our assessment at that moment," Mr. Boucher said.

He said the errors began to become apparent in early May. "We got phone calls from people who were going through our report and who said to themselves, as we should have said to ourselves: 'This doesn't feel right. This doesn't look right.' And who started asking us questions," he said.

Zo vats rong mit dat?

Catskills Casino Advances in Deal Between Tribe and State
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
NY Times
Published: June 11, 2004

A $500 million Las Vegas-style casino in the Catskills moved significantly closer to reality yesterday when the Pataki administration signed an agreement with the Cayuga Indian Nation, settling the tribe's 200-year-old claim to 64,000 acres in upstate New York in exchange for casino revenues.

If it is built, the casino in Monticello in Sullivan County will be the closest one to New York City, only 90 miles away, and will dwarf the four Indian gambling halls already operating in the state. With analysts estimating that it could pull in $1 billion a year in revenues, the casino would most likely pose significant competition to the Atlantic City gambling resort and the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut.

The agreement is a major step forward in a 30-year effort to use gambling to revive the Catskill Mountains resort area once known as the borscht belt.

"The agreement would allow us to move forward with plans to establish the first of three new casinos in the Catskills, which would create thousands of new jobs and provide a tremendous boost to the region's economy," Gov. George E. Pataki said in a statement released yesterday afternoon.

Ban on Subway Photography Prompts Underground Protest
By ALAN FEUER
Published: June 7, 2004

At a protest by photographers, you see things like a guy taking pictures of a guy taking pictures of a few more guys taking pictures of one another. There was such a protest yesterday, but it might take hundreds of pages to describe it, given all the pictures that were taken, each one worth at least a thousand words.

The photographers - about 100 of them - gathered to express their outrage at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's proposed ban on taking pictures in the subway system. Meeting at Grand Central Terminal, they rode the trains for upward of an hour, shutters clicking, flashes popping, in a filmed rebuke to the idea that photography is somehow a national security threat.

"The point is really to make everyday people wake up and realize that photographers are not terrorists," said Joe Anastasio, who organized the event. "In the last few years, photographers near anything vaguely important have been getting harassed."

Mr. Anastasio went on to tell the story of a friend who took his wife's picture near the Whitestone Bridge, only to be called in for questioning by the police. He told another of a man caught snapping pictures at a Metro-North station who was interrogated for nearly two hours by authorities at the scene.

"The paranoia," he said, "has gone a little too far."

The transit authority's proposal, posted on its Web site, says the agency is planning to adopt "a general prohibition against photography and videotaping in the system." The agency is soliciting public comment on the ban and plans to vote on the proposal in the next few months.

"It's a security measure," said a spokeswoman for the agency, Deirdre Parker. "It was suggested by the N.Y.P.D."

Mr. Anastasio and his fellow photographers said it was ridiculous that pictures of the subway might somehow make the trains unsafe. After all, they said, there are thousands of subway photographs already on the Internet.

"The subway is so well documented that what's the point?" asked Jean Miele, a fine art and commercial photographer. "This sort of thing makes us less free, not safer."

Presidential Power: Above the Law?

(June 07, 2004 -- 01:25 PM EDT)

The Wall Street Journal has an extraordinary article in today's edition. The Journal has taken to making an article a day open to the public for bloggers and others to link to. The article describes a confidential Pentagon report providing legal rationales and interpretations by which US personnel could use torture and methods of near-torture in contravention of various international treaties and US laws. The bulk of the arguments rest on arguments of 'necessity' and the powers of the president as commander-in-chief. They also go into some depth about how people acting at the president's order could avoid prosecution for demonstrably criminal acts.

The article is well worth reading for this alone.

But that whole discussion is different in kind from one passage in the report. I quote from the piece ...

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

So the right to set aside law is "inherent in the president". That claim alone should stop everyone in their tracks and prompt a serious consideration of the safety of the American republic under this president. It is the very definition of a constitutional monarchy, let alone a constitutional republic, that the law is superior to the executive, not the other way around. This is the essence of what the rule of law means -- a government of laws, not men, and all that.

Now, we know that presidents sometimes break laws and they frequently bend them, if only in cases where the laws don't seem to anticipate a situation the president finds himself confronting. There is even an argument that the president can refuse to enforce laws he deems unconstitutional.

But there is no power inherent in the president simply to set aside the law. Richard Nixon famously argued that "when the president does it that means that it is not illegal." But the constitutional rulings emerging out of Watergate said otherwise. And history has been equally unkind to his claim.

Now, there are some possible exceptions -- ones of an extra-constitutional nature. If memory serves, Thomas Jefferson -- when he was later thinking over the implications of his arguably unconstitutional Louisiana Purchase (and again this is from memory -- so perhaps someone can check for me) -- argued that the president might find himself in a position in which he might have the right or even the duty to disregard the law or some stricture of the constitution in the higher interests of the Republic.

Jefferson's argument, however, wasn't that the president had the prerogative to set aside the law. It was that the president might find himself in a position of extremity in which there was simply no time to canvass the people or a situation in which there was no practicable way to bring the relevant information before them. In such a case the president might have an extra-constitutional right (if there can be such a thing) or even an obligation to act in what he understands to be the best interests of the Republic.

The clearest instance of this would be a case where the president faced a choice between letting the Republic be destroyed or violating one of its laws.

But that wasn't the end of his point. Having taken such a step, it would then be the obligation of the president to throw himself on the mercy of the public, letting them know the full scope of the facts and circumstances he had faced and leave it to them -- or rather their representatives or the courts -- to impeach him or indict those who had taken it upon themselves to act outside the law.

As I recall Jefferson's argument there was never any thought that the president had the power to prevent future prosecutions of himself or those acting at his behest. Indeed, such a follow-on claim would explode whatever sense there is in Jefferson's argument.

If you see the logic of Jefferson's argument it is not that the president is above the law or that he can set aside laws, it is that the president may have a moral authority or obligation to break the law in the interests of the Republic itself -- subject to submitting himself for punishment for breaking its laws, even in its own defense. Jefferson's argument was very much one of executive self-sacrifice rather than prerogative.

Somehow I don't think that's what this White House has in mind.
-- Josh Marshall

Krugman on Reagan vs Bush Tax Policy

The Great Taxer
NY Times Op-Ed
By PAUL KRUGMAN
June 8, 2004

Over the course of this week we'll be hearing a lot about Ronald Reagan, much of it false. A number of news sources have already proclaimed Mr. Reagan the most popular president of modern times. In fact, though Mr. Reagan was very popular in 1984 and 1985, he spent the latter part of his presidency under the shadow of the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton had a slightly higher average Gallup approval rating, and a much higher rating during his last two years in office.

We're also sure to hear that Mr. Reagan presided over an unmatched economic boom. Again, not true: the economy grew slightly faster under President Clinton, and, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, the after-tax income of a typical family, adjusted for inflation, rose more than twice as much from 1992 to 2000 as it did from 1980 to 1988.

But Ronald Reagan does hold a special place in the annals of tax policy, and not just as the patron saint of tax cuts. To his credit, he was more pragmatic and responsible than that; he followed his huge 1981 tax cut with two large tax increases. In fact, no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people. This is not a criticism: the tale of those increases tells you a lot about what was right with President Reagan's leadership, and what's wrong with the leadership of George W. Bush.

The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.

The contrast with President Bush is obvious. President Reagan, confronted with evidence that his tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible, changed course. President Bush, confronted with similar evidence, has pushed for even more tax cuts.

Mr. Reagan's second tax increase was also motivated by a sense of responsibility — or at least that's the way it seemed at the time. I'm referring to the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance.

For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2 percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6 percent — but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent, and the combined burden was up, not down.

Nonetheless, there was broad bipartisan support for the payroll tax increase because it was part of a deal. The public was told that the extra revenue would be used to build up a trust fund dedicated to the preservation of Social Security benefits, securing the system's future. Thanks to the 1983 act, current projections show that under current rules, Social Security is good for at least 38 more years.

But George W. Bush has made it clear that he intends to renege on the deal. His officials insist that the trust fund is meaningless — which means that they don't feel bound to honor the implied contract that dedicated the revenue generated by President Reagan's payroll tax increase to paying for future Social Security benefits. Indeed, it's clear from the arithmetic that the only way to sustain President Bush's tax cuts in the long run will be with sharp cuts in both Social Security and Medicare benefits.

I did not and do not approve of President Reagan's economic policies, which saddled the nation with trillions of dollars in debt. And as others will surely point out, some of the foreign policy shenanigans that took place on his watch, notably the Iran-contra scandal, foreshadowed the current debacle in Iraq (which, not coincidentally, involves some of the same actors).

Still, on both foreign and domestic policy Mr. Reagan showed both some pragmatism and some sense of responsibility. These are attributes sorely lacking in the man who claims to be his political successor.

Remembering Pres. Reagan: by The Center for American Progress

RONALD REAGAN
A Nation Remembers

Flags are being flown at half mast today, as President Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, died Saturday after a decade-long battle with Alzheimer's disease. His death brought the expected outpouring of editorials and obituaries, running the gamut from Peggy Noonan's reverent "Thanks from a Grateful Country," to the more critical piece by Slate's Timothy Noah. The prevailing view championed the man's complicated legacy, as seen in three major pieces in the NYT, LAT and WP.

He was lauded for his role in ending the Cold War and for projecting a never-failing sense of optimism which restored faith in the American presidency in a nation still scarred by Vietnam and Watergate. The papers also noted some of the darker sides of his presidency, like record deficits and unemployment, the scandal of Iran-Contra, his poor record on civil rights and the environment and the debacle in Lebanon. Positive and negative, one overall theme to Reagan's success as a president emerges. While Ronald Reagan had deeply held commitments, he was also able to see when a policy was not working and shift course. America's current leaders would be well served to learn this valuable lesson from the Gipper.

ETERNAL OPTIMIST: Perhaps Ronald Reagan's greatest legacy may be his never-failing optimism. The LAT writes, "His sunny self-assurance, his insistence that there really were simple answers to difficult problems, his knack for actually making things happen -- all were soothing changes for a country that had endured Vietnam, Watergate, a presidential resignation, an energy crisis, double-digit inflation and the seizing of American hostages in Iran in the course of one tumultuous decade."

ADAPTING ON TAXES: President Reagan presided over a massive tax cut, on the theory that tax cuts "would unleash such a wave of economic growth" that government income would actually rise. However, when the deficit exploded and money was tight, the "1981 tax cut was followed by Reagan-blessed tax increases in almost every ensuing year of his presidency."

Contrast this with the current administration: In February, William Gale and Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution wrote, "This year's US budget proves that George W. Bush is no Ronald Reagan." Even in light of skyrocketing deficits, "Bush has steadfastly kept to his tax-cutting agenda and resists any suggestion that the costs of defending the nation against terrorism or fighting the war in Iraq are a reason to raise taxes."

ADAPTING ON THE ENVIRONMENT: Reagan was not known as an environmental president; he disastrously appointed anti-environmentalist James Watt as Secretary of the Interior. "After Watt was purged, however," writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Reagan signed into law bills protecting 1.9 million acres of wilderness in Washington and Oregon. He signed legislation creating the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument."

ADAPTING TO THE COLD WAR: President Reagan was known for his hard line against communism, calling the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. However, in his second term, Reagan combined diplomatic and military strength to create a relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev which ultimately led to nuclear weapon limits and the end of the Cold War. While President Bush adopted similar language by coining the phrase "Axis of Evil," he has failed to adequately address the threats posed by Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

EUROPE THEN AND NOW: The WP reports, according to commentators and historians, although his lack of foreign policy credentials made much of Europe nervous after he ascended to the presidency, President Reagan was able to win the respect of Europeans through his "commitment to winning the Cold War and his willingness to work peacefully to bring about the demise of the Soviet Union," ultimately convincing the global community the United States had their best interests at heart. The go-it-alone policy of President George W. Bush has "inspired a similar mixture of fear, concern and, at times, contempt among Europeans."

FUTURE LEGACY OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Following the Marine barracks in Lebanon and the Iran Contra scandal, President Reagan took responsibility, saying, "this happened on my watch" and "If there is to be blame...it properly rests here in this office and with this president. And I accept responsibility for the bad as well as the good."

Why don't we arrest Chalabi?

Josh Marshall and Brad DeLong are wondering why Chalabi hasn't been arrested in connection with his apparent gift to the Iranians of one of our most precious secrets: that we'd broken the Iranians' codes.

It's a good question, but it has a simple answer: Chalabi didn't break any of our laws.

He's not an American. He didn't have a security clearance. He's a Shi'a Iraqi and the head of a political party the INC, and he owes loyalty to (in some order) his country, his sect, and his party. If he persuaded some of the neocons that he was "one of us," that was a sharp move on his part and a mistake on theirs, but, as Lincoln would have noticed, calling an Iraqi an American doesn't make him one.

Since Chalabi owes no loyalty to the United States, he is, as purely logical matter, incapable of betraying the United States. And it's not a crime for a foreign national who has never signed a security agreement to do whatever he likes with information someone hands him. (If there were evidence Chalabi had paid for the information of stolen it, that would be a different matter; then he would arguably be a spy, and criminally chargeable as such. But so far there's no evidence of that.)

So it was neither disloyal nor illegal for him to take information some American official gave him and use it as seemed best to him for the good of his country, his party, his sect, and himself. If he acted contrary to the interests or laws of Iraq, that's for the Iraqis to decide.

But it was illegal (though not, I'm sure, subjectively disloyal) for the American official, whoever he was, to share such a sensitive secret with a foreigner. And that's why it was illegal: foreigners aren't to be trusted with such secrets.

Similarly, if Chalabi did in fact help con the United States into liberating his country from a tyrant that's something he can legitimately brag about. (Though it was somewhat impolitic of him to do so as volubly as he did.) Deception is, after all, a legitimate tool of diplomacy. If Franklin deceived the court of Louis XVI into providing help to the American Revolution, would anyone call that misconduct on Franklin's part?

What seems to have happened here is that Chalabi remembered where his loyalties lay, while his neocon sponsors forgot. He conned them. Their bad, not his.

Langston Hughes - Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Let's Not Get All Mushy Now About This...

The Reagan Years

How Soon We Forget Real Corruption

Gleeful charges by Republicans that Whitewater is comparable to Watergate and that the Clinton Administration is more corrupt than any recent administration are ludicrous when compared to the actual record of corruption in the Reagan-Bush administration and when it is noted that the charges against Clinton result from goings-on in Arkansas long before he became President.

With Reagan, scandals occured while he was President. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Haynes Johnson's book, 'Sleep-Walking Through History: America in the Reagan Years' (1991, Doubleday), chronicles the U.S.'s fall from dominant world power to struggling debtor nation during the Reagan years. Johnson says 'two types of problems typified the ethical misconduct cases of the Reagan years, and both had heavy consequences to citizens everywhere.

One stemmed from ideology and deregulatory impulses run amok; the other, from classic corruption on a grand scale.' 'By the end of his term, 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of number of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever.' (P. 184).

'Reagan's customary response to instances of wrongdoing by aides was to criticize those who brought the charges or to blame the media that reported them.' 'Three great scandals stained the Reagan record," and they all involved the age-old form of corruption formed by the connection between money and politics. What distinguished them in the Reagan years was the number of buyers and sellers involved, and the amount of money there was to be made. The sheer volume of both had multiplied beyond any previous measure.

Presidential Legacy: "Using a far looser standard that included resignations, David R. Simon and D. Stanley Eitzen in Elite Deviance, say that 138 appointees of the Reagan administration either resigned under an ethical cloud or were criminally indicted. Curiously Haynes Johnson uses the same figure but with a different standard in 'Sleep-Walking Through History: America in the Reagan Years: 'By the end of his term, 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of number of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever.'"

Handhelds personality test - CNET reviews: "

By CNET staff
(May 14, 2003; updated May 28, 2004)

Shopping for a new handheld can be a daunting task, considering the different kinds with their various capabilities and broad range of prices. Each manufacturer wants you to buy its flagship model, but you want the right PDA for you.

Fortunately, we're here to help. We've assembled an assortment of handhelds to fit different personality types. Read through the lists to see which go with each type of personality. Our descriptions may not fit you to a T, but they should give you a decent idea of the variety of PDAs available and which one might be a good fit for you. "

"The most dishonest president since Nixon"
Former Vice President Al Gore blasts George W. Bush for dangerously inept leadership and a foreign policy that has "brought deep dishonor" to the country.

Editor's note: Following is the full text of a speech by former Vice President Al Gore at New York University on May 26.


George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world. He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon.

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

How did we get from September 12th, 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the goodwill and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat -- and the assertion need be made by only one person, the president.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as dominance does.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all. It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens -- sooner or later -- to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded. We also know -- and not just from De Sade and Freud -- the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq. But in order to understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation -- especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our Constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by Specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a grown man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.

He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all of it done in our name. President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.]

The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict "has arguably focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said that in the wake of the war in Iraq al-Qaida now has more than 18,000 potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is swelling its ranks.

The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military professionals, and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell doctrine of overwhelming force.

There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.

Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor.

And the worst still lies ahead. Gen. Joseph Hoar, the former head of the Marine Corps, said, "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss."

When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word "abyss," then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means: more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence, no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."

The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are." Army Col. Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from happening again." Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence in our policy, we will lose strategically."

The White House spokesman Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about these scathing condemnations by generals involved in the highest levels of Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our advice from active duty officers."

But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior general at the Pentagon as saying, "the current OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice." Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled to challenge their commander in chief in public.

The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they care."

In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."

Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his service in Iraq, and his former domestic advisor on faith-based organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then forced out.

And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example, young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to "break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.

To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the chain of command was crisscrossed between intelligence gathering and prison administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military and civilian contractor authority.

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.

Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even -- we must use the word -- tortured -- to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.

These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the president's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel departures from historic American standards over the objections of the uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is concerned.

Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors.

President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our allies."

George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent death, there were no autopsies.

How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another by the policies of George W. Bush.

How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.

David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the famous verdict: "We were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between reality and all of the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building support for his policy of going to war.

Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him $340,000 per month. Thirty-three million dollars, and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling $70 million in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors to the Bush administration on planning and promoting the war against Iraq.

And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control over Saddam's secret papers.

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the president of the United States for all these years.

One of the generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the U.S. is in a holy war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same Gen. Boykin was the person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in Guantánamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners ... The testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their religion. Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks later he used it again.

"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world," Zinni said.

What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees seeking religious freedom -- coming to America to escape domineering leaders who tried to get them to renounce their religion -- would now be responsible for this kind of abuse.

Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and ordered to denounce Islam, and after his leg was broken one of his torturers started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, "they ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.

In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit ... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

The president convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. But in truth he had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The president convinced the country with a mixture of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with al-Qaida, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.

He asked the nation, in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating prisoners.

In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of the time the reins of power are finally wrested from the group of incompetents that created this catastrophe.

Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's, options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national nightmare is over.

Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.

When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of General Zinni, 'Headed over Niagara Falls.'"

One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and 25 days remaining in this president's current term of office and that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current administration.

It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.

We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers and sharply increasing the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already near the boiling point.

We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as secretary of defense.

Condoleezza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy, should also resign immediately.

George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.

As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a better life to our global neighbors.

During Ronald Reagan's presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the indictment was thrown out by the judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name back?

The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We, as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights ...

Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit. It is also crucial for our nation to recognize -- and to recognize quickly -- that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon assured us, "a few bad apples."

But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan "show a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known."

Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in our name, by our leaders.

These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America -- it is also an illusory goal in its own right.

Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates enemies for the would-be dominator.

A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for al-Qaida, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our military, even without their commander in chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."

Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size of the needed force -- but also because President Bush's contempt for traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the United States -- and only if the United States restores and maintains its moral authority to lead.

Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of conscience wagered with history by this willful president.

Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength."

The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862:

"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history ... the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation ... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose the last best hope of earth ... The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.

The same dark spirit of domination has led them to -- for the first time in American history -- imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush administration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request -- or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.

They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.

The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power. Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led them to attack as unpatriotic, Sen. Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in combat during the Vietnam War.

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn Rush Limbaugh -- perhaps his strongest political supporter -- who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."

This new political viciousness by the president and his supporters is found not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.

The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.

Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others, although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.

But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and fear generated by the attack of Sept. 11.

The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."

We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it; it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about torture. Stop it? Yes, of course.

But that means demanding all of the facts, not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing. One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am being punished for being honest."

The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate U.S. values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see -- and criticize -- in places like China and Cuba.

Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard for any of us as Americans -- at least for a very long time -- to effectively stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously.

This administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to the world. President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world -- but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions.

He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders.

Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about justice under a rule of law in their own lands.

Of course, the problem with all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold people accountable.

And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and mistakes in the history of the United States of America.

He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few low-ranking enlisted people, whom he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.

In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as president.

I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every turn to frustrate accountability ...

So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo and secret locations as-yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.

I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable -- and I believe we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility."

"The most dishonest president since Nixon"
Former Vice President Al Gore blasts George W. Bush for dangerously inept leadership and a foreign policy that has "brought deep dishonor" to the country.
Editor's note: Following is the full text of a speech by former Vice President Al Gore at New York University on May 26, 2004.


George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world. He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon.

Former Vice President Al Gore
Remarks to MoveOn.org
New York University
August 7, 2003

-AS PREPARED-

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Thank you for your investment of time and energy in gathering here today. I would especially like to thank Moveon.org for sponsoring this event, and the NYU College Democrats for co-sponsoring the speech and for hosting us.

Some of you may remember that my last formal public address on these topics was delivered in San Francisco, a little less than a year ago, when I argued that the President's case for urgent, unilateral, pre-emptive war in Iraq was less than convincing and needed to be challenged more effectively by the Congress.

In light of developments since then, you might assume that my purpose today is to revisit the manner in which we were led into war. To some extent, that will be the case - but only as part of a larger theme that I feel should now be explored on an urgent basis.

The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me -- not only in Iraq but also here at home on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy.

Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right.

The way we went to war in Iraq illustrates this larger problem. Normally, we Americans lay the facts on the table, talk through the choices before us and make a decision. But that didn't really happen with this war -- not the way it should have. And as a result, too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price, for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments, and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way.

I'm convinced that one of the reasons that we didn't have a better public debate before the Iraq War started is because so many of the impressions that the majority of the country had back then turn out to have been completely wrong. Leaving aside for the moment the question of how these false impressions got into the public's mind, it might be healthy to take a hard look at the ones we now know were wrong and clear the air so that we can better see exactly where we are now and what changes might need to be made.

In any case, what we now know to have been false impressions include the following:

(1) Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the attack against us on September 11th, 2001, so a good way to respond to that attack would be to invade his country and forcibly remove him from power.

(2) Saddam was working closely with Osama Bin Laden and was actively supporting members of the Al Qaeda terrorist group, giving them weapons and money and bases and training, so launching a war against Iraq would be a good way to stop Al Qaeda from attacking us again.

(3) Saddam was about to give the terrorists poison gas and deadly germs that he had made into weapons which they could use to kill millions of Americans. Therefore common sense alone dictated that we should send our military into Iraq in order to protect our loved ones and ourselves against a grave threat.

(4) Saddam was on the verge of building nuclear bombs and giving them to the terrorists. And since the only thing preventing Saddam from acquiring a nuclear arsenal was access to enriched uranium, once our spies found out that he had bought the enrichment technology he needed and was actively trying to buy uranium from Africa, we had very little time left. Therefore it seemed imperative during last Fall's election campaign to set aside less urgent issues like the economy and instead focus on the congressional resolution approving war against Iraq.

(5) Our GI's would be welcomed with open arms by cheering Iraqis who would help them quickly establish public safety, free markets and Representative Democracy, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US soldiers would get bogged down in a guerrilla war.

(6) Even though the rest of the world was mostly opposed to the war, they would quickly fall in line after we won and then contribute lots of money and soldiers to help out, so there wouldn't be that much risk that US taxpayers would get stuck with a huge bill.

Now, of course, everybody knows that every single one of these impressions was just dead wrong.

For example, according to the just-released Congressional investigation, Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of Sept. 11. Therefore, whatever other goals it served -- and it did serve some other goals -- the decision to invade Iraq made no sense as a way of exacting revenge for 9/11. To the contrary, the US pulled significant intelligence resources out of Pakistan and Afghanistan in order to get ready for the rushed invasion of Iraq and that disrupted the search for Osama at a critical time. And the indifference we showed to the rest of the world's opinion in the process undermined the global cooperation we need to win the war against terrorism.

In the same way, the evidence now shows clearly that Saddam did not want to work with Osama Bin Laden at all, much less give him weapons of mass destruction. So our invasion of Iraq had no effect on Al Qaeda, other than to boost their recruiting efforts.

And on the nuclear issue of course, it turned out that those documents were actually forged by somebody -- though we don't know who.

As for the cheering Iraqi crowds we anticipated, unfortunately, that didn't pan out either, so now our troops are in an ugly and dangerous situation.

Moreover, the rest of the world certainly isn't jumping in to help out very much the way we expected, so US taxpayers are now having to spend a billion dollars a week.

In other words, when you put it all together, it was just one mistaken impression after another. Lots of them.

And it's not just in foreign policy. The same thing has been happening in economic policy, where we've also got another huge and threatening mess on our hands. I'm convinced that one reason we've had so many nasty surprises in our economy is that the country somehow got lots of false impressions about what we could expect from the big tax cuts that were enacted, including:

(1) The tax cuts would unleash a lot of new investment that would create lots of new jobs.

(2) We wouldn't have to worry about a return to big budget deficits -- because all the new growth in the economy caused by the tax cuts would lead to a lot of new revenue.

(3) Most of the benefits would go to average middle-income families, not to the wealthy, as some partisans claimed.

Unfortunately, here too, every single one of these impressions turned out to be wrong. Instead of creating jobs, for example, we are losing millions of jobs -- net losses for three years in a row. That hasn't happened since the Great Depression. As I've noted before, I was the first one laid off.

And it turns out that most of the benefits actually are going to the highest income Americans, who unfortunately are the least likely group to spend money in ways that create jobs during times when the economy is weak and unemployment is rising.

And of course the budget deficits are already the biggest ever - with the worst still due to hit us. As a percentage of our economy, we've had bigger ones -- but these are by far the most dangerous we've ever had for two reasons: first, they're not temporary; they're structural and long-term; second, they are going to get even bigger just at the time when the big baby-boomer retirement surge starts.

Moreover, the global capital markets have begun to recognize the unprecedented size of this emerging fiscal catastrophe. In truth, the current Executive Branch of the U.S. Government is radically different from any since the McKinley Administration 100 years ago.

The 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, George Akerlof, went even further last week in Germany when he told Der Spiegel, "This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy." In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerloff added, "What we have here is a form of looting."

Ominously, the capital markets have just pushed U.S. long-term mortgage rates higher soon after the Federal Reserve Board once again reduced discount rates. Monetary policy loses some of its potency when fiscal policy comes unglued. And after three years of rate cuts in a row, Alan Greenspan and his colleagues simply don't have much room left for further reductions.

This situation is particularly dangerous right now for several reasons: first because home-buying fueled by low rates (along with car-buying, also a rate-sensitive industry) have been just about the only reliable engines pulling the economy forward; second, because so many Americans now have Variable Rate Mortgages; and third, because average personal debt is now at an all-time high -- a lot of Americans are living on the edge.

It seems obvious that big and important issues like the Bush economic policy and the first Pre-emptive War in U.S. history should have been debated more thoroughly in the Congress, covered more extensively in the news media, and better presented to the American people before our nation made such fateful choices. But that didn't happen, and in both cases, reality is turning out to be very different from the impression that was given when the votes -- and the die -- were cast.

Since this curious mismatch between myth and reality has suddenly become commonplace and is causing such extreme difficulty for the nation's ability to make good choices about our future, maybe it is time to focus on how in the world we could have gotten so many false impressions in such a short period of time.

At first, I thought maybe the President's advisers were a big part of the problem. Last fall, in a speech on economic policy at the Brookings Institution, I called on the President to get rid of his whole economic team and pick a new group. And a few weeks later, damned if he didn't do just that - and at least one of the new advisers had written eloquently about the very problems in the Bush economic policy that I was calling upon the President to fix.

But now, a year later, we still have the same bad economic policies and the problems have, if anything, gotten worse. So obviously I was wrong: changing all the president's advisers didn't work as a way of changing the policy.

I remembered all that last month when everybody was looking for who ought to be held responsible for the false statements in the President's State of the Union Address. And I've just about concluded that the real problem may be the President himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one.

But whether you agree with that conclusion or not, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican -- or an Independent, a Libertarian, a Green or a Mugwump -- you've got a big stake in making sure that Representative Democracy works the way it is supposed to. And today, it just isn't working very well. We all need to figure out how to fix it because we simply cannot keep on making such bad decisions on the basis of false impressions and mistaken assumptions.

Earlier, I mentioned the feeling many have that something basic has gone wrong. Whatever it is, I think it has a lot to do with the way we seek the truth and try in good faith to use facts as the basis for debates about our future -- allowing for the unavoidable tendency we all have to get swept up in our enthusiasms.

That last point is worth highlighting. Robust debate in a democracy will almost always involve occasional rhetorical excesses and leaps of faith, and we're all used to that. I've even been guilty of it myself on occasion. But there is a big difference between that and a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that is felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty.

Unfortunately, I think it is no longer possible to avoid the conclusion that what the country is dealing with in the Bush Presidency is the latter. That is really the nub of the problem -- the common source for most of the false impressions that have been frustrating the normal and healthy workings of our democracy.

Americans have always believed that we the people have a right to know the truth and that the truth will set us free. The very idea of self-government depends upon honest and open debate as the preferred method for pursuing the truth -- and a shared respect for the Rule of Reason as the best way to establish the truth.

The Bush Administration routinely shows disrespect for that whole basic process, and I think it's partly because they feel as if they already know the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it. They and the members of groups that belong to their ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas.

There are at least a couple of problems with this approach:

First, powerful and wealthy groups and individuals who work their way into the inner circle -- with political support or large campaign contributions -- are able to add their own narrow special interests to the list of favored goals without having them weighed against the public interest or subjected to the rule of reason. And the greater the conflict between what they want and what's good for the rest of us, the greater incentive they have to bypass the normal procedures and keep it secret.

That's what happened, for example, when Vice President Cheney invited all of those oil and gas industry executives to meet in secret sessions with him and his staff to put their wish lists into the administration's legislative package in early 2001.

That group wanted to get rid of the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming, of course, and the Administration pulled out of it first thing. The list of people who helped write our nation's new environmental and energy policies is still secret, and the Vice President won't say whether or not his former company, Halliburton, was included. But of course, as practically everybody in the world knows, Halliburton was given a huge open-ended contract to take over and run the Iraqi oil fields-- without having to bid against any other companies.

Secondly, when leaders make up their minds on a policy without ever having to answer hard questions about whether or not it's good or bad for the American people as a whole, they can pretty quickly get into situations where it's really uncomfortable for them to defend what they've done with simple and truthful explanations. That's when they're tempted to fuzz up the facts and create false impressions. And when other facts start to come out that undermine the impression they're trying to maintain, they have a big incentive to try to keep the truth bottled up if -- they can -- or distort it.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, the White House ordered its own EPA to strip important scientific information about the dangers of global warming out of a public report. Instead, the White House substituted information that was partly paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. This week, analysts at the Treasury Department told a reporter that they're now being routinely ordered to change their best analysis of what the consequences of the Bush tax laws are likely to be for the average person.

Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals.

In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our system of checks and balances.

The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on, which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have won their way into the inner circle.

For the same reasons they push the impression that government is bad, they also promote the myth that there really is no such thing as the public interest. What's important to them is private interests. And what they really mean is that those who have a lot of wealth should be left alone, rather than be called upon to reinvest in society through taxes.

Perhaps the biggest false impression of all lies in the hidden social objectives of this Administration that are advertised with the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- which they claim is a new departure with substantive meaning. But in reality, to be compassionate is meaningless, if compassion is limited to the mere awareness of the suffering of others. The test of compassion is action. What the administration offers with one hand is the rhetoric of compassion; what it takes away with the other hand are the financial resources necessary to make compassion something more than an empty and fading impression.

Maybe one reason that false impressions have a played a bigger role than they should is that both Congress and the news media have been less vigilant and exacting than they should have been in the way they have tried to hold the Administration accountable.

Whenever both houses of Congress are controlled by the President's party, there is a danger of passivity and a temptation for the legislative branch to abdicate its constitutional role. If the party in question is unusually fierce in demanding ideological uniformity and obedience, then this problem can become even worse and prevent the Congress from properly exercising oversight. Under these circumstances, the majority party in the Congress has a special obligation to the people to permit full Congressional inquiry and oversight rather than to constantly frustrate and prevent it.

Whatever the reasons for the recent failures to hold the President properly accountable, America has a compelling need to quickly breathe new life into our founders' system of checks and balances -- because some extremely important choices about our future are going to be made shortly, and it is imperative that we avoid basing them on more false impressions.

One thing the President could do to facilitate the restoration of checks and balances is to stop blocking reasonable efforts from the Congress to play its rightful role. For example, he could order his appointees to cooperate fully with the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, headed by former Republican Governor Tom Kean. And he should let them examine how the White House handled the warnings that are said to have been given to the President by the intelligence community.

Two years ago yesterday, for example, according to the Wall Street Journal, the President was apparently advised in specific language that Al Qaeda was going to hijack some airplanes to conduct a terrorist strike inside the U.S.

I understand his concern about people knowing exactly what he read in the privacy of the Oval Office, and there is a legitimate reason for treating such memos to the President with care. But that concern has to be balanced against the national interest in improving the way America deals with such information. And the apparently chaotic procedures that were used to handle the forged nuclear documents from Niger certainly show evidence that there is room for improvement in the way the White House is dealing with intelligence memos. Along with other members of the previous administration, I certainly want the commission to have access to any and all documents sent to the White House while we were there that have any bearing on this issue. And President Bush should let the commission see the ones that he read too.

After all, this President has claimed the right for his executive branch to send his assistants into every public library in America and secretly monitor what the rest of us are reading. That's been the law ever since the Patriot Act was enacted. If we have to put up with such a broad and extreme invasion of our privacy rights in the name of terrorism prevention, surely he can find a way to let this National Commission know how he and his staff handled a highly specific warning of terrorism just 36 days before 9/11.

And speaking of the Patriot Act, the president ought to reign in John Ashcroft and stop the gross abuses of civil rights that twice have been documented by his own Inspector General. And while he's at it, he needs to reign in Donald Rumsfeld and get rid of that DoD "Total Information Awareness" program that's right out of George Orwell's 1984.

The administration hastened from the beginning to persuade us that defending America against terror cannot be done without seriously abridging the protections of the Constitution for American citizens, up to and including an asserted right to place them in a form of limbo totally beyond the authority of our courts. And that view is both wrong and fundamentally un-American.

But the most urgent need for new oversight of the Executive Branch and the restoration of checks and balances is in the realm of our security, where the Administration is asking that we accept a whole cluster of new myths:

For example, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was an effort to strike a bargain between states possessing nuclear weapons and all others who had pledged to refrain from developing them. This administration has rejected it and now, incredibly, wants to embark on a new program to build a brand new generation of smaller (and it hopes, more usable) nuclear bombs. In my opinion, this would be true madness -- and the point of no return to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- even as we and our allies are trying to prevent a nuclear testing breakout by North Korea and Iran.

Similarly, the Kyoto treaty is an historic effort to strike a grand bargain between free-market capitalism and the protection of the global environment, now gravely threatened by rapidly accelerating warming of the Earth's atmosphere and the consequent disruption of climate patterns that have persisted throughout the entire history of civilization as we know it. This administration has tried to protect the oil and coal industries from any restrictions at all -- though Kyoto may become legally effective for global relations even without U.S. participation.

Ironically, the principal cause of global warming is our civilization's addiction to burning massive quantities carbon-based fuels, including principally oil -- the most important source of which is the Persian Gulf, where our soldiers have been sent for the second war in a dozen years -- at least partly to ensure our continued access to oil.

We need to face the fact that our dangerous and unsustainable consumption of oil from a highly unstable part of the world is similar in its consequences to all other addictions. As it becomes worse, the consequences get more severe and you have to pay the dealer more.

And by now, it is obvious to most Americans that we have had one too many wars in the Persian Gulf and that we need an urgent effort to develop environmentally sustainable substitutes for fossil fuels and a truly international effort to stabilize the Persian Gulf and rebuild Iraq.

The removal of Saddam from power is a positive accomplishment in its own right for which the President deserves credit, just as he deserves credit for removing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. But in the case of Iraq, we have suffered enormous collateral damage because of the manner in which the Administration went about the invasion. And in both cases, the aftermath has been badly mishandled.

The administration is now trying to give the impression that it is in favor of NATO and UN participation in such an effort. But it is not willing to pay the necessary price, which is support of a new UN Resolution and genuine sharing of control inside Iraq.

If the 21st century is to be well started, we need a national agenda that is worked out in concert with the people, a healing agenda that is built on a true national consensus. Millions of Americans got the impression that George W. Bush wanted to be a "healer, not a divider", a president devoted first and foremost to "honor and integrity." Yet far from uniting the people, the president's ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America. His most partisan supporters have launched a kind of 'civil cold war' against those with whom they disagree.

And as for honor and integrity, let me say this: we know what that was all about, but hear me well, not as a candidate for any office, but as an American citizen who loves my country:

For eight years, the Clinton-Gore Administration gave this nation honest budget numbers; an economic plan with integrity that rescued the nation from debt and stagnation; honest advocacy for the environment; real compassion for the poor; a strengthening of our military -- as recently proven -- and a foreign policy whose purposes were elevated, candidly presented and courageously pursued, in the face of scorched-earth tactics by the opposition. That is also a form of honor and integrity, and not every administration in recent memory has displayed it.

So I would say to those who have found the issue of honor and integrity so useful as a political tool, that the people are also looking for these virtues in the execution of public policy on their behalf, and will judge whether they are present or absent.

I am proud that my party has candidates for president committed to those values. I admire the effort and skill they are putting into their campaigns. I am not going to join them, but later in the political cycle I will endorse one of them, because I believe that we must stand for a future in which the United States will again be feared only by its enemies; in which our country will again lead the effort to create an international order based on the rule of law; a nation which upholds fundamental rights even for those it believes to be its captured enemies; a nation whose financial house is in order; a nation where the market place is kept healthy by effective government scrutiny; a country which does what is necessary to provide for the health, education, and welfare of our people; a society in which citizens of all faiths enjoy equal standing; a republic once again comfortable that its chief executive knows the limits as well as the powers of the presidency; a nation that places the highest value on facts, not ideology, as the basis for all its great debates and decisions.

Dooh Nibor Economics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: June 1, 2004

Last week The Washington Post got hold of an Office of Management and Budget memo that directed federal agencies to prepare for post-election cuts in programs that George Bush has been touting on the campaign trail. These include nutrition for women, infants and children; Head Start; and homeland security. The numbers match those on a computer printout leaked earlier this year — one that administration officials claimed did not reflect policy.

Beyond the routine mendacity, the case of the leaked memo points us to a larger truth: whatever they may say in public, administration officials know that sustaining Mr. Bush's tax cuts will require large cuts in popular government programs. And for the vast majority of Americans, the losses from these cuts will outweigh any gains from lower taxes.

It has long been clear that the Bush administration's claim that it can simultaneously pursue war, large tax cuts and a "compassionate" agenda doesn't add up. Now we have direct confirmation that the White House is engaged in bait and switch, that it intends to pursue a not at all compassionate agenda after this year's election.

That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year.

I can't back that assertion with official numbers, because under Mr. Bush the Treasury Department has stopped releasing information on the distribution of tax cuts by income level. Estimates by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which now provides the numbers the administration doesn't want you to know, reveal why. This year, the average tax reduction per family due to Bush-era cuts was $1,448. But this average reflects huge cuts for a few affluent families, with most families receiving much less (which helps explain why most people, according to polls, don't believe their taxes have been cut). In fact, the 257,000 taxpayers with incomes of more than $1 million received a bigger combined tax cut than the 85 million taxpayers who make up the bottom 60 percent of the population.

Still, won't most families gain something? No — because the tax cuts must eventually be offset with spending cuts.

Three years ago George Bush claimed that he was cutting taxes to return a budget surplus to the public. Instead, he presided over a move to huge deficits. As a result, the modest tax cuts received by the great majority of Americans are, in a fundamental sense, fraudulent. It's as if someone expected gratitude for giving you a gift, when he actually bought it using your credit card.

The administration has not, of course, explained how it intends to pay the bill. But unless taxes are increased again, the answer will have to be severe program cuts, which will fall mainly on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — because that's where the bulk of the money is.

For most families, the losses from these cuts will far outweigh any gain from lower taxes. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that 80 percent of all families will end up worse off; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will soon come out with a more careful, detailed analysis that arrives at a similar conclusion. And the only really big beneficiaries will be the wealthiest few percent of the population.

Does Mr. Bush understand that the end result of his policies will be to make most Americans worse off, while enriching the already affluent? Who knows? But the ideologues and political operatives behind his agenda know exactly what they're doing.

Of course, voters would never support this agenda if they understood it. That's why dishonesty — as illustrated by the administration's consistent reliance on phony accounting, and now by the business with the budget cut memo — is such a central feature of the White House political strategy.

Right now, it seems that the 2004 election will be a referendum on Mr. Bush's calamitous foreign policy. But something else is at stake: whether he and his party can lock in the unassailable political position they need to proceed with their pro-rich, anti-middle-class economic strategy. And no, I'm not engaging in class warfare. They are.

US judge rules disputed anti-abortion law unconstitutional

SAN FRANCISCO : A US judge Tuesday ruled a disputed law banning late-term abortions unconstitutional, dealing a blow to President George W. Bush just six months after he signed it into law.

The White House deplored the ruling made in San Francisco, with spokesman Scott McClellan saying late-term abortion was "an abhorrent procedure that must be ended once and for all." In her ruling, the first of three cases contesting the law to be decided, US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton permanently barred US Attorney General John Ashcroft from enforcing the law against Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a family planning group that performs around half of all US abortions.

The judge said the law infringed too much on the US Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe versus Wade decision allowing abortion. "This court concludes that the act is unconstitutional because it poses an undue burden on a woman's ability to choose a second-trimester abortion; is unconstitutionally vague; and requires a health exception," Hamilton wrote.

"Accordingly, defendant John Ashcroft, in his official capacity as attorney general of the United States, and his employees, officers, agents, attorneys, and successors in office are permanently enjoined from enforcing" the law in the group's more than 900 clinics nationwide.

The law would ban an abortion method that is usually used in the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy but can be used as early as the 12th to 15th weeks. The method is defined by law as a "partial-birth abortion" in which the fetus, or its head, is taken outside the mother's body before being killed.

Bush and the US Justice Department had described partial-birth abortions as inhumane and said they are never justified by medical reasons. The law would have outlawed such abortions, including those approved by doctors. Hamilton found that ban unconstitutional.

The decision dealt a blow to Bush, who signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act into law in November after a similar law was twice vetoed by ex-president Bill Clinton.

The White House spokesman said Bush "strongly disagrees with today's California court ruling, which overturns the overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress that voted to pass this important legislation," and promised an appeal.

Bush "is committed to building a culture of life in America and the administration will take every necessary step to defend this law in the courts," McClellan said. The ruling came just days after another court in San Francisco struck down another law barring doctor-assisted euthanasia in the state of Oregon.

It marked the first court decision to be handed down in three similar cases contesting the partial-birth abortion act. Other challenges are pending decision in the states of New York and Nebraska. Other Republican politicians were also outraged, while Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein welcomed the ruling, saying she hoped it heralded similar outcomes in the two remaining cases.

"It is a barbaric procedure, and it should be banned," said US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. "I'm very disappointed in the decision today, and I think that ultimately that decision will be overturned."

Abortion has been one of the most politically and socially divisive issues in the United States since the Roe v. Wade ruling, frequently splitting the country along party and religious lines.

Pro-choice advocates immediately hailed the decision.

"Today's ruling is a landmark victory for medical privacy rights and women's health," said Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood of America, the group which brought the case against Ashcroft.

"Decisions involving pregnancy are personal decisions for a woman and her family. Medical decisions are for her doctor to make, based on his or her professional judgment. These decisions should not be made by politicians," she said.