Observations on current events

60 Minutes II (CBS) - Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs Probed
"Last month, the U.S. Army announced 17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general, had been removed from duty after charges of mistreating Iraqi prisoners. But the details of what happened have been kept secret, until now. It turns out photographs surfaced showing American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis being held at a prison near Baghdad. The Army investigated, and issued a scathing report."

NY Times: [Joseph Wilson] Talks in Book About Source of C.I.A. Leak
"Mr. Wilson writes that a White House effort to damage him began at a March 2003 meeting called to develop a critique of him for the vice president's office. Citing an unnamed source 'close to the House Judiciary Committee,' Mr. Wilson writes that 'either the vice president himself or, more likely, his chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby chaired a meeting at which a decision was made to do a work-up on me.' "

Paul Krugman: In Front of Your Nose

AP: More Agents Track Castro Than Bin Laden

David R. Obey & Robert C. Byrd: Show Us The Money

NY Times Editorial: The President's Testimony

NY Times: Support for War Is Down Sharply, Poll Concludes

Jack A. Smith: The question the 9/11 commission won't ask

NY Times: How Pair's Finding on Terror Led to Clash on Shaping Intelligence

NY Times: Bush-Cheney 9/11 Interview Won't Be Formally Recorded

The Progressive: Noam Chomsky Interview, by David Barsamian

The Independent (UK) - Lawyers try to gag FBI worker over 9/11

San Francisco Chronicle: FBI to pay $2 million in Earth First suit / Activists were arrested, called eco-terrorists after bomb exploded in their car

The NY Times Editorial: Mr. Cheney's Day in Court

Paul Krugman: A Vision of Power
"What Mr. Cheney is defending, in other words, is a doctrine that makes the United States a sort of elected dictatorship: a system in which the president, once in office, can do whatever he likes, and isn't obliged to consult or inform either Congress or the public.
Not long ago I would have thought it inconceivable that the Supreme Court would endorse that doctrine. But I would also have thought it inconceivable that a president would propound such a vision in the first place."

William Rivers Pitt: Falluja, Najaf and the First Law of Holes

KnightRidder: Iraqi exile group may have violated rules barring it from lobbying
"An Iraqi exile group may have violated restrictions against using taxpayer funds to lobby when it campaigned for U.S. action to oust Saddam Hussein, according to documents and U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter. If the charge - which is the subject of an upcoming probe by Congress' General Accounting Office - is borne out, it means that U.S. taxpayers paid to have themselves persuaded that it was necessary to invade Iraq."

Eric Schlosser: Make Peace With Pot

George Monbiot: Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power
"The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85% of the US electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to."

Richard Clarke: The Wrong Debate on Terrorism

James Ridgeway: The Royal Business

Wired: Diebold May Face Criminal Charges

AP: California GOP Faces Election Forgery/Fraud in it's Ranks

NY Times: Administration Says a `Zone of Autonomy' Justifies Its Secrecy on Energy Task Force

NY Times: 9/11 Panel Set to Detail Flaws in Air Defenses

Sidney Blumenthal: What Colin Powell saw but didn't say
"...Bush ordered the use of $700m to prepare for the invasion of Iraq, funds that had not been specifically appropriated by Congress, which alone holds that constitutional authority. No adequate explanation has been offered for what, strictly speaking, might well be an impeachable offence.
...Powell was appalled by the mangling of intelligence as Cheney and the neocons made their case to an eager Bush and manipulated public opinion. But Powell had put on his uniform for his commander-in-chief. In the White House, his capitulation was greeted with a combination of glee and scorn. Powell would make the case before the world at the United Nations. Cheney's chief of staff, I Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, gives him a 60-page brief that Powell dismisses as filled with 'murky' intelligence. Powell goes to CIA headquarters himself, where he discovers that "he could no longer trace anything because it had been 'masticated over in the White House so that the exhibits didn't match the words'." He hastily constructs his own case, which turned out to be replete with falsehood."

So much for freedom and democracy in the new Iraq...
White House Says Iraq Sovereignty Could Be Limited
The NY Times reports that Marc Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs told a Senate foreign relations panel that "the [proposed National Conference of Iraqis]...is not expected to pass new laws or revise the laws adopted under the American occupation."
Especially laws that were illegally imposed on Iraq by the CPA, of which Order 39 is a prime example?

Sean Gonsalves: Shifty Tax Cuts

BBC: 'Mass execution' in western Sudan

LA Times: Kerry Opens Records on Lobbyists, War Days

Joe Wezorak's picture mosaic: American Leftist: "War President"

Independent (UK) - US heading for another election fiasco as reforms fail

Independent (UK) - Former generals of Saddams regime reinstated to new US-trained army

Independent (UK) - Pharmaceutical companies accused of manipulating drug trials for profit

NY Times Editorial: The Real War

NY Times: Saudis Support a Jihad in Iraq, Not Back Home

NY Times: Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken

Paul Krugman: What Went Wrong?

CNET News.com - California votes against Diebold
"California election officials on Thursday recommended banning some Diebold Election Systems voting machines and referred an investigation into the company to the attorney general for possible civil and criminal sanctions."

CNET News.com - Shhh! The FBI's listening to your keystrokes

Center for Constitutional Rights: Rasul v. Bush

Jason Vest: Fables of the Reconstruction
"A Coalition memo reveals that even true believers see the seeds of civil war in the occupation of Iraq"

The Guardian (UK) - Vanunu released after 18 years

Matthew Yglesias: The Full Negroponte - From top to bottom, John Negroponte is the wrong ambassador to Iraq.

Mary Lynn F. Jones: Repeat Offender - Bob Woodward caught Bush lying to Congress. It wasn't the first time

Danny Postel: Realistpolitik - Finally, some foreign-policy conservatives get fed up with Bush

NY Times Editorial: Privatizing Warfare
"It's one thing for the military to outsource food and laundry services to private firms, as it started doing aggressively in the 1990's, but it's quite another to outsource the actual fighting. That is what the Pentagon is perilously close to doing in Iraq."

NY Times Editorial: Politics and the Patriot Act
"The Patriot Act sailed through Congress just weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, in a climate, and bearing a name, that made it difficult to raise questions. Instead of conducting a serious investigation of the law enforcement flaws that made the nation vulnerable, its drafters came up with a rushed checklist of increased police powers, many of dubious value in fighting terrorism."

Robert Fisk: George Bush Has Legitimised Terrorism

Richard Cohen: America's Ayatollah

Paul Krugman: The Vietnam Analogy

Steven Hill and Rob Richie: Fixing The Election

CNN - Commissioner Jamie Gorelick: "I've received threats"

USA Today: NORAD had drills of jets as weapons

AP: Cynthia McKinney: 9/11 Probe to Justify Comments

The Australian: Danes charged over leaked WMD reports

San Francisco Chronicle: Plan to junk oil, add jobs / New coalition pushes renewables

60 Minutes: Woodward Shares War Secrets:
"Woodward told 60 Minutes that Saudi Prince Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day."
... "Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,” says Woodward. They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney - who has said nothing - says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.’"

With John Ashcroft and others using their testimony before the 9/11 Commission as an opportunity to stump for a renewal of the Patriot Act as the panacea tool of the state in conducting terror investigations, it is useful to remember what factors, beyond the 'wall between the FBI & CIA,' prohibited the FBI from adequately investigating terror before 9/11.

Politics and bureaucratic infighting were behind FBI Agent John O'Neil's failure to get the message to the top. It was not based in an inability to shred the Bill of Rights while conducting his investigation. The transcript of the recently rebroadcast Frontline episode sheds some light on the issue: the man who knew


NY Times: Airing of Powell's Misgivings Tests Ties in the Cabinet

Bob Herbert: The Wrong War

Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts: Theologian Charges White House
Complicity in 9/11 Attack


NY Times: A Fuel-Saving Proposal From Your Automaker: Tax the Gas

Norman Solomon: How the "NewsHour" Changed History
[NOTE: The NewsHour issued a correction on April 26, 2004 on this issue. I can only assume this was due to great pressure from the public. Bravo!]

Sidney Blumenthal: Hear no evil, read no evil, speak drivel

Ralph Nader: Spinning Wheels - Our Continual Refusal to Raise CAFE Standards

San Francisco Chronicle: FDA was urged to limit kids' antidepressants / Advice citing risk of suicide rejected

Would the Mehr News Agency (Tehran) have an agenda to deceive anyone with this story? Or could it be true? U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq

The Star (South Africa): Star - Deaths of scores of mercenaries hidden from view

William Rivers Pitt: George and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamtie

NY Times Editorial: The Price of Incuriosity
"Americans knew George W. Bush was an incurious man when they elected him, but the hearings of the 9/11 investigating commission, which turned yesterday from the F.B.I.'s fecklessness to the C.I.A.'s blurred vision, have brought that fact home in a startling way. " Did they, really?

The AP reports U.S. Jobless Claims Climb to 360,000 This wipes out the 'substantial' job growth the Bush team was bleeting about just last week, doesn't it?

Martin Sieff : When Puppets Pull the Strings
"Ahmed Chalabi, the neocons' choice to run Iraq, appears to have been responsible for the disastrous decision to move against Muqtada al-Sadr."

The Telegraph (UK) - US tactics condemned by British officers

Even Mr. Bush's most conservative supporters do not give his press conference (if you can even call it that) performance high marks, as reported by the LA Times: Looking Past Means, Focusing on Ends in Iraq:
"Long on goals and short on means, his performance left even some supporters wondering whether he had found a formula to reassure the growing number of Americans expressing doubt in polls about his course. 'I was depressed,' said conservative strategist William Kristol, one of the war's most vocal proponents. 'I am obviously a supporter of the war, so I don't need to be convinced. But among people who were doubtful or worried, I don't think he made arguments that would convince them. He didn't explain how we are going to win there.' "

UCS: Life in the Slow Lane: Tracking Decades of Automaker Roadblocks to Fuel Economy

Salon.com - 10 Questions for John Ashcroft

Larry C. Johnson: Decoding The PDB

Bob Kerrey, 9/11 Commissioner and former Senator (NE - D): Fighting the Wrong War

The Guardian: Australian defence adviser 'sacked for refusing to sex up WMD reports'

The Guardian: Thirsty California starts to drink the Pacific

NY Times Editorial: Corporate Tax Holidays: "Almost two-thirds of America's corporations paid no federal income taxes during the late 1990's, when corporate profits were soaring. Nine out of 10 companies paid less than the equivalent of 5 percent of their total income."

Paul Krugman: Snares and Delusions

William Rivers Pitt: A Perfectly Good Train Wreck

Newsweek: The 9/11 Commission: Justice's Blind Spot

When I read the NY Times piece Pre-9/11 Secret Briefing Said That Qaeda Was Active in U.S. a few things struck me:

'The White House said that the surveillance of Federal Plaza in May 2001, which has previously been publicized, was of concern as late as August 2001 because the site was home to the courthouse where Mr. Rahman had been convicted.' :
Law enforcement is in a precarious situation here. Do they deal with these people harshly as intelligence gatherers for terrorists, or do they tell them to leave, citing 'secret evidence,' so as not to have to reveal what they do know? In the first instance, they are under intense pressure to produce a bullet-proof case. It must rely on a flawless investigation having been conducted to build it.

'Among other information presented in the Aug. 6 briefing, Mr. Bush was told that the F.B.I. was "conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related," according to the document. Ms. Rice disclosed that information in her testimony last week, as evidence that the government was on guard against the possibility of terrorist attacks. It is not clear how the F.B.I. came to that number, and some officials have said in recent days that it may have overstated their activity.'
If you were told that the FBI was "conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers bin Laden-related," you should have every reason to believe that people charged with the responsibility were doing their best. Strictly speaking, that could be where the White House's job ends and that of the FBI begins. If, however, the ineptness of the FBI was calculated, so as to allow the type of 'cataclysmic event' that could advance an agenda of greater interest to Mr. Bush, then we have a far more sinister situation, the facts of which are difficult to prove.

The FBI overstated its activities? They were likely afraid of being told they're not doing enough, and made their bin Laden-related operations sound more robust. FBI might say that they did not have the resources to perform the scope of investigations they might have well deemed necessary. This is bureaucratic problem as much as it is a fiscal problem. When government spends a lot of money on something where the 'negative cannot be proven,' as in the lack of an attack, it becomes an easy target for smaller government criticism. Real security isn't cheap, which means higher taxes.

But if one is going to spend huge amounts on security, one has to be very clear about why the threat exists. Simplistic statements like 'they hate freedom' don't begin to show an interest in what causes people to want to terrorize others. That would require an honest national debate about the nature of US action in favor of its 'interests' in the powderkegs of the Middle East and Central Asia. Considering how much oil we import from the region, the direction of US policy there should be of great interest to every voter who uses anything made of petroleum (fuel, plastic, fertilizer and other petrochemicals).

Slate.com : Dealing With Defective Defectors - 60 Minutes shows Vanity Fair and the New York Times how it's done.

The San Francisco Chronicle: Another Energy Giant Indicted in California Fraud

NY Times: When U.S. Aided Insurgents, Did It Breed Future Terrorists?

NY Times: Inquiry Into Attack on the Cole in 2000 Missed 9/11 Clues

LA Times: U.S. Losing Support of Key Iraqis

ABC News: Disturbing Revelations About Quality of Care at Some U.S. Veterans’ Hospitals

The declassification of the PDB comes, notably, after Ms. Rice's testimony, when the 9/11 Commission can no longer question her publicly about it.
Presdential Daily Brieifing On bin Laden, August 6, 2001

BBC: US allies call for truce in Iraq

NY Times: Bush Was Warned of Possible Attack in U.S., Official Says

Grist Magazine: USDA's Mark Rey drags feet on releasing info about forest policymaking
Rey "seems to be pulling some moves out of the Dick Cheney playbook -- the very same tricks of evasion and secrecy that have jeopardized the vice president's reputation in the fiasco surrounding his energy task force."

BBC: File-sharing to bypass censorship

Naomi Klein: The battle the US wants to provoke

William Rivers Pitt: 20 Questions for Condi


Ms. Rice's testimony before the commission on April 8, 2004 begs three questions:

First, Ms. Rice spoke of going after the cause of terrorism. She failed to even mention the primary issue that inflames the world's billion Mulsims: US
unquestioning support of Israel since it's creation, irrespective of that nation's violations of international law and UN Sec. Council resolutions.
The perception of fundamental injustice on this question is what fuels strong anti-US feelings amongs a majority of Muslims, and to such a dregree that some will use violence to strike at the US. To gloss over this issue is highly disingenuous if one claims to want to address the cause of terrorism.

Second, she mentions that there were no military plans to go after the Taliban before 9/11.
On 15 March 2001 Jane's, in an article by Rahul Bedi titled 'India joins anti-Taliban coalition' reported that "Intelligence sources in Delhi said that while
India, Russia and Iran were leading the anti-Taliban campaign on the ground, Washington was giving the Northern Alliance information and logistic support." If this does not sound like planning, what does?

Third, Ms. Rice mentioned the lack of specific threats against civil aviation prior to 9/11. How is it that AG Ashcroft stopped flying commercially in summer 2001 in the absence of such a threat?

AFP: White House vetting could delay 9/11 report until after election

Walter Cronkite: Secrecy and lies

Robert Fisk: Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy

NY Times: Account of Broad Shiite Revolt Contradicts White House Stand

The Independent (UK) - Hans Blix: Costs of invasion outweigh the gains

AP: Two Reporters Told to Erase Scalia Tapes If the tapes were to be sold commercially, he might have a point, but otherwise the man is abusing his power.

Rethinking Occupation

Seymour Hersh: The Other War:
Why Bush’s Afghanistan problem won’t go away.

Helen Thomas: Iraq war becoming a quagmire

NY Times: White House Minimized the Risks of Mercury in Proposed Rules, Scientists Say

Thomas Oliphant: Blatant Bush Tilt Toward Big Oil

The Guardian (UK) - Google is watching you

AP: Voters in California Reject Wal-Mart
"Voters in this Los Angeles suburb rejected a ballot measure Tuesday that would have allowed Wal-Mart to build a warehouse-sized store while skirting zoning, traffic and environmental reviews."

Paul Krugman: The Mercury Scandal
"If you want a single example that captures why so many people no longer believe in the good intentions of the Bush administration, look at the case of mercury pollution."

The Guardian (UK) - Russian found guilty of treason

The Independent (UK) - Blair told US was targeting Saddam 'just days after 9/11'

The Independent (UK) - US may send more troops as deaths rise

Democracy Now! - U.S. Soldiers Contaminated With Depleted Uranium Speak Out
"A special investigation by Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News has found four of nine soldiers of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York Army National Guard returning from Iraq tested positive for depleted uranium contamination. They are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict."

The Guardian (UK) - Broken US troops face bigger enemy at home

Bob Herbert: We're More Productive. Who Gets the Money?

The Independent (UK) - Whistleblower the White House wants to silence speaks
"A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened."

NY Times: Inquiry at Bank Looks at Accounts of Diplomats
"Investigators have been examining cash transactions in foreign accounts at the bank, Riggs National, especially those for Saudi Arabia, for possible connections to terrorist groups or money-laundering activities."

NY Times: White House Undermined Chemical Tests, Report Says
"the Bush administration worked with the United States chemical industry to undermine a European plan that would require all manufacturers to test industrial chemicals for their effect on public health before they were sold in Europe."

NY Times: Bush Aides Block Clinton's Papers From 9/11 Panel
"the Bush administration had blocked thousands of pages of classified foreign policy and counterterrorism documents from former President Bill Clinton's White House files from being turned over to the [9/11] panel's investigators."

Federal Judge Orders Release of Documents of White House

Prosecutors Are Said to Have Expanded Inquiry Into Leak of C.I.A. Officer's Name

House of Bush, House of Saud

"Previously unpublished documents about the Saudi evacuation after 9/11:
Even though the White House asserted that flights evacuating the Saudis from the United States just after 9/11 never took place, a list drawn up by the Saudi embassy and obtained by Craig Unger shows the passengers on the White House-sanctioned flight out of Lexington, Kentucky, en route to London on September 15."

The following NY Times Editorial is interesting not only for what it says, but for what it leaves unsaid: Dream-Filled Missile Silos
The Bush Administration desire to push for 'missile defense' is revealed in a speech Ms. Rice was set to deliver on 9/11, as reported by the Washington Post: Top Focus Before 9/11 Wasn't on Terrorism
"On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address 'the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday' -- but the focus was largely on missile defense, not terrorism from Islamic radicals. The speech provides telling insight into the administration's thinking on the very day that the United States suffered the most devastating attack since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The address was designed to promote missile defense as the cornerstone of a new national security strategy, and contained no mention of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or Islamic extremist groups, according to former U.S. officials who have seen the text."

Not long ago, PBS's 'Frontline' offerred an interesting analysis of the project, its backers, such as Mr. Rumsfeld, the systems manufacturers who stand to profit, and those who wish to diverge from the Pentagon's own protocol to deploy the system "years before [it] would ever be ready for realistic operational tests." What makes it all the more troublesome is that there is little agreement that it actually works, let alone that the "Pentagon has thrown a veil of secrecy over future tests. 'The devil is in the details,' complains one member of Congress, 'and the details are now classified.' "


Three interesting articles from Mother Jones:

Soldiers of Good Fortune
"The four Americans horrifically killed on Wednesday by a mob in Fallujah, Iraq, worked for Blackwater USA, one of a growing number of for-profit companies hired by the U.S. military to to do work traditionally performed by soldiers."

Friend of My Enemy
"A series of suicide bombings and shoot-outs between the police and the Islamist opponents of Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan's authoritarian President, have put the U.S. in a quandary over how to respond to the crackdown that's sure to follow. The U.S. makes use of Uzbek military installations for its operations in Afghanistan, but human rights groups say that Karimov has used his allegiance to President Bush's 'war on terror' as a cover for political repression."

Oil: Well?

Maureen Dowd: Charlie McCarthy Hearings