Observations on current events

Ray McGovern: More Troops To Iraq...After the Election
"It's not an 'if.' It's a 'when.' Pentagon officials have indicated that they plan to send as many as 15,000 additional troops during the first four months of 2005, and the President George W. Bush continues to insist 'we will stay the course' until Iraq is stabilized. (I do wish his advisers would provide a different vocabulary so that those of us steeped in the mistakes regarding Vietnam could be spared painful flashbacks.)
Where will the additional troops come from? The Bush administration insists there will be no draft, but its credibility has been badly tarnished. The 'backdoor draft' that has kept so many from the Reserve and National Guard on active duty has backfired, as quotas for new enlistments have not been met. So plans are already advanced for fully mobilizing the Reserve and National Guard.
Senator John Kerry states the obvious in calling such steps 'temporary measures' that have increased the burden on our troops and their families without addressing the basic reality that the active duty Army is too small. He proposes adding 40,000 troops to the Army and offsetting the cost by reducing expenditures on highly expensive projects like National Missile Defense. (Kerry might have added that the WMD boondoggle, for which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and defense contractors have pushed so hard and so long, is now actually being deployed without having been adequately tested-not to mention its dubious utility in the priority struggle against terrorism.)

Let's Be Honest...Finally
But how many troops would be needed to stabilize Iraq? The well respected International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, before which the president spoke last November, says 500,000. Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress publicly before the war that 'several hundred thousand' troops would be needed. It turns out he was asking for 400,000, fully aware that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was planning to attack and occupy Iraq with just a fraction of that. Rumsfeld gave him the back of his hand.
At this point, to be unaware of the requirement for additional troops while watching the burgeoning chaos in Iraq, requires a PhD in denial and a child-like, faith-based trust in the administration's PR rhetoric. Indeed, cracks can be seen within the president's own camp regarding what is happening in Iraq and what to do about it. And some truth is now peeking through those cracks..."

Paul Krugman: Swagger vs. Substance
"Let's face it: whatever happens in Thursday's debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.
But what will the print media do? Let's hope they don't do what they did four years ago..."

William Rivers Pitt: A Proper Debate

Jimmy Certer: Still Seeking a Fair Florida Vote: " After the debacle in Florida four years ago, former president Gerald Ford and I were asked to lead a blue-ribbon commission to recommend changes in the American electoral process. After months of concerted effort by a dedicated and bipartisan group of experts, we presented unanimous recommendations to the president and Congress. The government responded with the Help America Vote Act of October 2002. Unfortunately, however, many of the act's key provisions have not been implemented because of inadequate funding or political disputes.
The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair.
The Carter Center has monitored more than 50 elections, all of them held under contentious, troubled or dangerous conditions. When I describe these activities, either in the United States or in foreign forums, the almost inevitable questions are: 'Why don't you observe the election in Florida?' and 'How do you explain the serious problems with elections there?'
The answer to the first question is that we can monitor only about five elections each year, and meeting crucial needs in other nations is our top priority. (Our most recent ones were in Venezuela and Indonesia, and the next will be in Mozambique.) A partial answer to the other question is that some basic international requirements for a fair election are missing in Florida.
The most significant of these requirements are..."

Howard Dean: The Myth of Corporate Accountability


The War on Dissent:

NY Times Editorial: A Leak Probe Gone Awry


Iraq:

LA Times: Iraqi Aid Lost to Corporate Costs
"Less than half of the aid in the Bush administration's reconstruction package for Iraq is being spent in ways that will benefit Iraqis, U.S. government officials and independent experts said.
Nearly a year after Congress set aside $18.4 billion for the rebuilding, costs related to the insurgency in Iraq - such as security services, insurance and property losses - are consuming an increasing share of the money, analysts said. Another large chunk of the aid - contractors' profits and American and other foreign workers' salaries - winds up outside Iraq and doesn't help the Iraqi economy, they said.
U.S. officials, pointing to 'unusually difficult' conditions in Iraq, acknowledged last week that security and other overhead in Iraq were a large expense. Some government analysts said those costs might eat up half or more of the rebuilding aid. However, private analysts estimated that the 'Iraq premium' meant that up to 75% of U.S. spending in the country provided no direct benefit for Iraqis.
'The central point is this money is not reaching the Iraqis,' said Frederick Barton, co-director of the reconstruction studies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, and a former Clinton administration official in the U.S. Agency for International Development. 'We're spending a lot of money we believe is helping people and converting Iraq to a new kind of economy. That's where I think we're kidding ourselves.'
The issue of the special costs is drawing attention at a time when the administration is facing congressional criticism for spending only about $1 billion of the $18.4-billion package. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, complained last week that the slow pace of spending reflected 'the incompetence of the administration.'..."

US Offering Bribes to Afghan President Karzai's Opponents to Drop Out of Election?

LA Times: U.S. Hand Seen in Afghan Election
"Mohammed Mohaqiq says he was getting ready to make his run for the Afghan presidency when U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad dropped by his campaign office and proposed a deal.
'He told me to drop out of the elections, but not in a way to put pressure,' Mohaqiq said. 'It was like a request.'
After the hourlong meeting last month, the ethnic Hazara warlord said in an interview Tuesday, he wasn't satisfied with the rewards offered for quitting, which he did not detail. Mohaqiq was still determined to run for president - though, he said, the U.S. ambassador wouldn't give up trying to elbow him out of the race.
'He left, and then called my most loyal men, and the most educated people in my party or campaign, to the presidential palace and told them to make me - or request me - to resign the nomination. And he told my men to ask me what I need in return.'
Mohaqiq, who is running in the Oct. 9 election, is one of several candidates who maintain that the U.S. ambassador and his aides are pushing behind the scenes to ensure a convincing victory by the pro-American incumbent, President Hamid Karzai. The Americans deny doing so..."


The So-Called War on Terror:

Financial Times: US 'must increase troop numbers' to fulfil commitments
"A Pentagon-appointed panel has found that the US military will not be able to maintain its current peacekeeping commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan without a significant increase in the size of the armed forces or scaling back the objectives of the stabilisation missions.
A report by the respected Defence Science Board was presented to Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, late last month.
Mr Rumsfeld found the study compelling and ordered it to be presented earlier this month to all the uniformed chiefs of the four armed services as well as the military's combatant commanders, who oversee each of the Pentagon's six regional commands.
Although the report, first disclosed in the newsletter Inside the Pentagon, has not been made public, pages from the study reviewed by the Financial Times state that while some of the stresses on the US military could be mitigated by private contractors and improved technologies, such measures are unlikely to be sufficient..."


Africa's Petroleum:

Newsweek: Trouble on Oily Waters
"The International Peace Operations Association has a lot more clout at the Pentagon than the name might suggest. Calling itself an 'association of military-service provider companies,' it's the closest thing in Washington to a lobbying group for soldiers of fortune. At the outfit's annual dinner last November, the guest speaker was Theresa Whelan, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for African affairs, from the policy directorate headed by Douglas Feith, the controversial under secretary of Defense. Whelan's topic: the U.S. government's increasing use of private military contractors, especially in Africa..."

Bush Flexing American Muscle in Asia:

MSNBC: U.S. destroyers deploying off N. Korea
"In the first step toward erecting a multibillion-dollar shield to protect the United States from foreign missiles, the U.S. Navy will begin deploying state-of-the-art destroyers to patrol the waters off North Korea as early as next week.
The mission, to be conducted in the Sea of Japan by ships assigned to the Navy's 7th fleet, will help lay the foundation for a system to detect and intercept ballistic missiles launched by 'rogue nations.'
Washington hopes to complete the network over the next several years..."


Iraq:

Michael Moore: Bush on Iraq: A Flip and Now Just a Flop
"Dear Mr. Bush,
I am so confused. Where exactly do you stand on the issue of Iraq? You, your Dad, Rummy, Condi, Colin, and Wolfie -- you have all changed your minds so many times, I am out of breath just trying to keep up with you!
Which of these 10 positions that you, your family and your cabinet have taken over the years represents your current thinking..."

Marjorie Cohn: Bush at the U.N.: Sugarcoating Failure
" In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday, Bush spoke of spreading 'freedom' and 'human dignity' in Iraq and Afghanistan. He decried dictators who 'believe that suicide and torture and murder are fully justified to serve any goal they declare.' He accused the terrorists of seeking to destroy the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But he failed to say that the UDHR declares: 'No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.' And he forgot to mention the torture and murder of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Bush claimed 'the people of Iraq have regained sovereignty.' But he omitted any reference to the 150,000 U.S. troops on the ground there, who enjoy immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for any crimes they might commit.
Bush maintained that the interim Iraqi government 'has earned the support of every nation that believes in self-determination and desires peace.' But he didn't say that the countries in the 'coalition-of-the-willing' are becoming increasingly unwilling to support his failed Iraq policy, and no new countries are jumping on the occupation bandwagon.
Bush painted a rosy picture of an Iraq moving inexorably toward democratic elections in January. He didn't acknowledge, however, the admonition of former President Jimmy Carter that free elections cannot occur when people are unable to safely walk down the street, or U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's warning that there can be no 'credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now.'
Bush didn't state that well over 1,000 Americans and as many as 30,000 Iraqis have died and continue to die in a war that his administration single-handedly fashioned from whole cloth.
Bush's speech did not refer to the utter absence of any weapons-of-mass-destruction, his rasion d'être for invading a sovereign country.
Bush overlooked the highly classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared by the government's senior analysts that paints a pessimistic assessment of the prospects for a secure and stable Iraq. He said the CIA was 'just guessing' when it predicted Iraq was in danger of civil war..."

Paul Krugman: Let's Get Real
"Never mind the inevitable claims that John Kerry is soft on terrorism. What he must address is the question of how his policy in Iraq would differ from President Bush's. And his answer should be that unlike Mr. Bush, whose decisions have been dictated at every stage by grandiose visions and wishful thinking, he will get real - focusing on what is really possible in Iraq, and what needs to be done to protect American security.
Mr. Bush claims that Mr. Kerry's plan to secure and rebuild Iraq is 'exactly what we're currently doing.' No, it isn't. It's only what Mr. Bush is currently saying. And we have 18 months of his administration's deeds to contrast with his words.
The actual record is one of officials who have refused to admit that their fantasies about how the war would go were wrong, and who have continued to push us ever deeper into the quagmire because of their insistence that everything is going according to plan..."

LA Times: Iraq Violence Belies Bush Spin
"Large swaths of Iraq remain outside the control of the interim government, major highways are fraught with attackers, and interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi - along with the U.S. Embassy and much of the international community - must conduct business in fortified compounds guarded by tanks, blast walls and barbed wire.
In Washington, Allawi gave Congress an upbeat assessment Thursday, but the situation in Iraq is more complicated.
Allawi said the Iraqi people were making steady progress in taking control of the nation's affairs. His interim government had assumed sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation. It had reopened schools and hospitals damaged in the war. Despite attacks, hundreds of Iraqis were still volunteering to join the police and army. And he pledged that the country would hold elections in January.
Widespread anxiety engulfed much of Iraq this month as a wave of car bombings, kidnappings and gun battles killed scores of American soldiers, Iraqi civilians and hostages.
The continuing violence has overshadowed signs of progress and put a damper on the prospect of democratic elections.
'How can we hold elections when they will bomb every polling booth?' asked Husham Mahdi, a 29-year-old communications engineer in Baghdad, echoing a common sentiment.
In a question and answer session after his speech to Congress, Allawi described Baghdad as 'very good and safe,'..."

NY Times: European Press Criticizes Bush Address to U.N. as a Denial of a Worsening Situation in Iraq
"The editorial cartoon in The Times of London on Wednesday was derisive: the first panel showed President Bush telling the United Nations General Assembly, 'Friends, our policy in Iraq is directed solely towards a successful election.'
The second panel had him saying which election: 'Mine.'
European newspapers, including some that supported the American military campaign in Iraq, were largely critical of Mr. Bush's address on Tuesday to the United Nations, accusing him of being unrealistic about the worsening situation in Iraq.
The Financial Times contended in its lead editorial that the Bush administration 'systematically refused to engage with what actually has happened in Iraq' - namely, in the newspaper's view, that American policy 'mistakes' had 'handed the initiative to jihadi terrorists' who 'now have a new base from which to challenge the West and moderate Islam.'
The newspaper said that Mr. Bush's Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, 'after being evasive, long-winded and sometimes contradictory,' was beginning to speak more realistically than Mr. Bush about the deterioration of security in Iraq. And, the newspaper asserted, Mr. Bush's 'disengagement from the reality of a sinking Iraq is alarming,'..."


Bush's Deplorable Environmental Record:

The Capital Times (Madison, WI) - EPA's chief under Nixon rips Bush on environment
"Russell Train is so disappointed in President Bush's environmental record that the staunch Republican, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's second leader 30 years ago, is casting his vote in November for Democrat John Kerry.
Train, 84, EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford from 1973 to 77, was in Madison Tuesday in support of Environment2004, an organization trying to end what it calls the anti-environmental agenda of the Bush administration.
A Washington insider for more than half a century, Train said the Bush administration's performance is a radical rollback of environmental rules to benefit special interests.
The administration's reversal of a finding that mercury is a hazardous pollutant is one of 400 rollbacks of environmental protections cited by Enviroment2004, and Train said the reversal is the reason he's switched parties this presidential election.
'Almost anybody's policy would be better than George Bush,' Train said in an interview with The Capital Times Wednesday..."

The Bush Environmental Policy:

Denver Post Editorial: Cynical move on roadless rule
"The Bush administration has placed an unpopular rollback of national forest roadless rules on hold - but only until after the election. No matter what face the U.S. Forest Service puts on the maneuver, the timetable amounts to a cynical attempt to defuse a widespread controversy until after the polls are closed. Voters shouldn't be fooled.
Late in his second term, President Clinton approved a plan to prevent new roads from being built into 58 million acres of pristine national forests, mostly in the West. But this past July, President Bush's advisers announced new rules that would toss out the Clinton-era roadless area protections and hand crucial decisions about federal land management to state governors.
The maneuver simply calls attention to President Bush's overall record on environmental issues. During other conservation controversies, the Bush administration has plowed ahead with environmental rollbacks no matter how strongly public opinion and scientific evidence opposed the new policies. But this time, the Bush team says implementation of the new forest roadless rules has been postponed to give the public more time to comment. Oh, sure..."

Iraq:

Sidney Blumenthal: The Bubble Boy
"The news is grim, but the president is 'optimistic.' The intelligence is sobering, but he tosses aside 'pessimistic predictions.' His opponent says he has 'no credibility,' but the president replies that it is his rival who is 'twisting in the wind.' The secretary general of the United Nations speaks of the 'rule of law,' but Bush talks before a mute General Assembly of 'a new definition of security.' Between the rhetoric and the reality lies the campaign.
A reliable source who has just returned after assessing the facts on the ground for U.S. intelligence services told me that in Iraq, U.S. commanders have plans for this week and the next, but that there is 'no overarching strategy.' The New York Times reports an offensive is in the works to capture the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah - after the election. In the meantime, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al-Qaida-linked terrorists operate from there at will, as they have for more than a year. The president speaks of new Iraqi security forces, but not even half of the U.S. personnel have been assigned to the headquarters of the Multinational Security Transition Command.
Bush's vision of the liberation of Iraq as the restaging of the liberation of France - justified by his unearthing of Saddam Hussein's fearful weapons of mass destruction; paid for by the flow of cheap oil; and leading to the establishment of democracy, regime change in Iran and Syria, and the quiescence of stunned Palestinians - has melted before harsh facts. But reality cannot be permitted to obscure the image. The liberation is 'succeeding,' he insists, and only pessimists cannot see it..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

NY Times: Opponents Say Republicans Plan Sequel to Patriot Act
"House Democratic leaders and civil liberties advocates said Wednesday that a Republican bill responding to the findings of the Sept. 11 commission would go well beyond the panel's recommendations. It would call for broad new powers for law enforcement agencies, they said, and include new authority to conduct electronic surveillance in terrorism investigations.
House Republican officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the bill would incorporate new law enforcement authority that was not specifically requested by the commission, which called for an overhaul of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and other federal agencies responsible for intelligence and counterterrorism..."

The Federal Budget:

The L.A. Times: Bush's Cut-and-Spend Plan Is Math-Challenged
"To hear President Bush talk about his plans for a second term, voters might think that the era of big government spending is back.
From his proposal to overhaul Social Security to his commitment to fighting terrorism and his initiatives on health, education and job training, the agenda Bush is spelling out in speeches and campaign documents calls for the robust use of government money.
All this comes from the same candidate who promises to cut the federal budget deficit in half by 2009 and whose Cabinet agencies are preparing for some serious belt-tightening of domestic programs if he is reelected.
That mixed message - a smaller deficit, but costly new initiatives - may have more appeal to swing voters than the simpler message of old-fashioned conservatism, which calls for smaller government and less spending.
But many analysts say Bush's second-term promises may be a poor predictor of what he could actually accomplish. Even some administration allies say it would be nearly impossible for Bush to achieve all his ambitious objectives and still halve the deficit by 2009.
'Can it be done?' said G. William Hoagland, top budget aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). 'Sure. On paper. But politically it's very difficult.'
To do it all, Hoagland said, 'lots of other things would have to be eliminated, terminated.'
The result: Unlike Bush's 2000 campaign platform - whose major elements of tax cuts, school accountability and prescription drug subsidies for the elderly were enacted - his 2004 promises may have to be sharply scaled back or abandoned if he wins a second term.
Bush has made a big issue of arguing that Sen. John F. Kerry's health and education campaign promises do not square with his promise to reduce the deficit. Bush argues that his Democratic rival would have to raise taxes or add to the deficit to enact his spending plans.
But if he wins reelection, Bush will have tough choices of his own. Some analysts predict that much of his agenda would wither if he achieved what seemed to be his top priority: making permanent the tax cuts enacted in his first term. Doing so would cut government revenue by more than $1 trillion between 2005 and 2014..."

Media:

Ted Turner: My Beef With Big Media
"Today, media companies are more concentrated than at any time over the past 40 years, thanks to a continual loosening of ownership rules by Washington. The media giants now own not only broadcast networks and local stations; they also own the cable companies that pipe in the signals of their competitors and the studios that produce most of the programming. To get a flavor of how consolidated the industry has become, consider this: In 1990, the major broadcast networks--ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox--fully or partially owned just 12.5 percent of the new series they aired. By 2000, it was 56.3 percent. Just two years later, it had surged to 77.5 percent.
In this environment, most independent media firms either get gobbled up by one of the big companies or driven out of business altogether. Yet instead of balancing the rules to give independent broadcasters a fair chance in the market, Washington continues to tilt the playing field to favor the biggest players. Last summer, the FCC passed another round of sweeping pro-consolidation rules that, among other things, further raised the cap on the number of TV stations a company can own.
In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can't compete by imitating the big guys--they have to innovate, so they're less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It's called capitalism.
But without the proper rules, healthy capitalist markets turn into sluggish oligopolies, and that is what's happening in media today. Large corporations are more profit-focused and risk-averse. They often kill local programming because it's expensive, and they push national programming because it's cheap--even if their decisions run counter to local interests and community values. Their managers are more averse to innovation because they're afraid of being fired for an idea that fails. They prefer to sit on the sidelines, waiting to buy the businesses of the risk-takers who succeed.
Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage of what we see--and what we don't see--will be shaped by the profit motives and political interests of large, publicly traded conglomerates. The economy will suffer, and so will the quality of our public life. Let me be clear: As a business proposition, consolidation makes sense. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just shouldn't have those rules. They make sense for a corporation. But for a society, it's like over-fishing the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more than keep media giants from growing larger; they're already too big. We need a new set of rules that will break these huge companies to pieces..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

Marjorie Cohn: Bush & Co.: War Crimes and Cover-Up
"As the election approaches, we are bombarded with stories about swift boats, dereliction of duty, and who's the most macho leader. Missing from the discourse is a critical examination of why George W. Bush failed to heed warnings before September 11, why he sat paralyzed for 7 minutes after being informed of the attacks, how he subsequently turned Iraq into a deadly cauldron, and committed - then covered up - war crimes in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Iraq.
The central theme of the Republican Convention was Bush's bona fides as a tough president who will save us from another terrorist attack. Instead of examining why we went to war with a country that posed no threat to us, the agenda was replete with rhetoric about fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we wouldn't have to fight them here.
Significantly absent from the patriotic speeches was the 't' word. Not even a brief acknowledgement that prisoners in American custody were mistreated. Torture is on the back burner. Every so often, another official report comes out, with more disturbing revelations, but never directly implicates Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld.
Even the release of Seymour Hersh's new book, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, has garnered scant attention in the daily fare of television staples, where most Americans get their news. But Rumsfeld noticed. Four days before the book's release, without having read it, the Department of Defense issued a rare but characteristically preemptive attack on the book.
Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that his department was alerted to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in January 2004. Rumsfeld told Bush in February about an 'issue" involving mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, according to a Senior White House aide.
These claims are disingenuous. The roots of Abu Ghraib, writes Hersh, lie in the creation of the 'unacknowledged' special-access program (SAP) established by a top-secret order Bush signed in late 2001 or early 2002. The presidential order authorized the Defense Department to set up a clandestine team of Special Forces operatives to defy international law and snatch, or assassinate, anyone considered a "high-value" Al Qaeda operative, anywhere in the world.
Rumsfeld expanded SAP into Iraq in August 2003. It was Rumsfeld who approved the use of physical coercion and sexual humiliation to extract information from prisoners. Rumsfeld and Bush set this system in motion long before January 2004. The mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was part of the ongoing operation.
Hersch quotes a CIA analyst who was sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo in late summer of 2002, to find out why so little useful intelligence had been gathered. After interviewing 30 prisoners, 'he came back convinced that we were committing war crimes in Guantánamo,'..."

Reuters:Eyeing Iran Reactors, Israel Seeks U.S. Bunker Bombs

"The United States plans to sell Israel $319 million worth of air-launched bombs, including 500 'bunker busters' that could be effective against Iran's underground nuclear facilities, Israeli security sources said on Tuesday.
The Pentagon said in June it was considering the sale to Israel of 500 BLU-109 warheads, which can penetrate 15 feet of fortifications, in a package meant to 'contribute significantly to U.S. strategic and tactical objectives.' U.S. and Israeli officials had no immediate comment.
Israeli security sources said the procurement would go through. 'This is not the sort of ordnance needed for the Palestinian front. Bunker busters could serve Israel against Iran, or possibly Syria,' an Israeli source said.
Haaretz daily, citing Israeli government sources, said the sale would take place after the U.S. elections in November..."

American Justice:

Norman Solomon: Missing: A Media Focus on the Supreme Court

Reuters: Millions Blocked from Voting in U.S. Election
"Millions of U.S. citizens, including a disproportionate number of black voters, will be blocked from voting in the Nov. 2 presidential election because of legal barriers, faulty procedures or dirty tricks, according to civil rights and legal experts.
The largest category of those legally disenfranchised consists of almost 5 million former felons who have served prison sentences and been deprived of the right to vote under laws that have roots in the post-Civil War 19th century and were aimed at preventing black Americans from voting.
But millions of other votes in the 2000 presidential election were lost due to clerical and administrative errors while civil rights organizations have cataloged numerous tactics aimed at suppressing black voter turnout. Polls consistently find that black Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats..."

Campaign Finance:

Star-Telegram: 32 Felony Indictments Returned in Tom DeLay Case
"A Travis County grand jury returned 32 indictments in the 2002 Republican fund-raising investigation Tuesday, alleging felony election code violations against a top aide to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, the head of a political group DeLay founded and eight corporations that provided money for their activities.
Among the companies indicted on grounds that corporate money was illegally funneled into the 2002 legislative elections were Sears and Roebuck, Westar Energy Inc., Cracker Barrel Old Country Store and Bacardi USA.
Three people were indicted: John Colyandro, former executive director of Texans for a Republican Majority, a group DeLay founded; Warren RoBold, a DeLay fund-raiser; and Jim Ellis, a top DeLay political aide..."

Media & Democracy:

William Rivers Pitt: Your Media is Killing You
"The American mainstream television news media, in whole and in part, has catastrophically failed the American people and is singularly responsible for the untimely deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people.
The trajectory of this plunge is easy to chart. The 1980s saw unprecedented deregulation of the rules pertaining to the ownership of media outlets. Thus began the combination and consolidation of dozens of differing viewpoints under the iron control of a few massive corporations. The many voices became one voice, and a dullard's voice at that.
The opening year of the 1990s saw the push towards our first war in Iraq. Rather than hold to basic standards set by Edward R. Murrow and the other giants of journalism - see it for yourself, do the legwork, because the American people deserve to know what is happening - the mainstream television news media decided their best course was to allow themselves to be hand-fed by the Pentagon. No footage, no reports, no news whatsoever would be released to the public without first passing through Defense Department screeners. The American people learned from this that war looks like a video game, that death is remote, that victory is a simple matter of pushing a button..."

Iran, In the Crosshairs:

Newsweek: War-Gaming the Mullahs
"Unprepared as anyone is for a showdown with Iran, the threat seems to keep growing. Many defense experts in Israel, the United States and elsewhere believe that Tehran has been taking advantage of loopholes in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is now within a year of mastering key weapons-production technology. They can't prove it, of course, and Iran's leaders deny any intention of developing the bomb. Nevertheless, last week U.S. and Israeli officials were talking of possible military action-even though some believe it's already too late to keep Iran from going nuclear (if it chooses)..."

Avoiding Responsibility For The Environment:

Newsday: U.S. blocking Arctic report: "The Bush administration is trying to bury an international report that contains recommendations on the impact of global warming on the people of the Arctic, an Arctic leader told a Senate panel yesterday..."

The Bush Preemption Doctrine:

Noam Chomsky: The Resort to Force
"As Colin Powell explained the National Security Strategy (NSS) of September 2002 to a hostile audience at the World Economic Forum, Washington has a 'sovereign right to use force to defend ourselves' from nations that possess WMD and cooperate with terrorists, the official pretexts for invading Iraq. The collapse of the pretexts is well known, but there has been insufficient attention to its most important consequence: the NSS was effectively revised to lower the bars to aggression. The need to establish ties to terror was quietly dropped. More significant, Bush and colleagues declared the right to resort to force even if a country does not have WMD or even programs to develop them. It is sufficient that it have the 'intent and ability' to do so. Just about every country has the ability, and intent is in the eye of the beholder. The official doctrine, then, is that anyone is subject to overwhelming attack. Colin Powell carried the revision even a step further. The president was right to attack Iraq because Saddam not only had 'intent and capability' but had 'actually used such horrible weapons against his enemies in Iran and against his own people' -- with continuing support from Powell and his associates, he failed to add, following the usual convention. Condoleezza Rice gave a similar version. With such reasoning as this, who is exempt from attack?..."

Implementing the 9/11 Commission's Recommendations:

NY Times Editorial: In Defense of Civil Liberties
"The debate over intelligence reform, as important as it is, has been obscuring a vital discussion about another recommendation by the bipartisan commission on the 9/11 attacks. The panel's report noted that no one in the government has the job of safeguarding civil liberties as the government seeks expanded powers to combat terrorism. It proposed assigning that critical task to a special board.
President Bush has already staked out his position by creating, by executive decree, a caricature of the 9/11 commission's proposed board. The Senate is considering a much better, bipartisan measure. The issue needs serious debate before the election..."

Ethics in Washington:

NY Times Editorial: The House's Fear of Tom DeLay
"The House ethics committee, ever the Capitol's hibernating watchdog, has been dithering for months about allegations that the majority leader, Tom DeLay, abused his office when he engineered the gerrymander of Texas House seats to cushion his Republican edge in Congress. The committee should have at least approved a formal inquiry by now, but the latest reports indicate that the issue will soon be deep-sixed as the Republican Congress shows no appetite for investigating Mr. DeLay, one of Washington's most feared and bare-knuckled partisans..."

The November Election:

Washington Post: Halliburton's Secret Deals Haunt Cheney

Iraq - Anything But A Cakewalk:

The Independent (UK) - Bush failed to plan for after war, National Intelligence Estimate says


You may need to remind yourself of the publication you're reading ...
The Economist: Is the Neo-Conservative Moment Over?


The Economist: Iraq's continuing insurgency
"...While President George Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, argued over whether Iraq's security situation is getting better or worse, the Bush administration this week announced plans to shift a large chunk of funding for Iraqi reconstruction towards measures to boost security. Last year, America created an $18.4 billion Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, much of which was intended to improve the country's devastated infrastructure-in particular, water, sewerage and electricity supplies. But the continued insurgency and a spate of kidnappings and executions have halted many such projects. Thus, so far, America has been able to spend only a little over $1 billion of the fund. So, on Tuesday, the State Department announced a plan to divert around $3 billion of the money towards reinforcing Iraq's security, including measures to reduce the high unemployment that has encouraged many young Iraqis to take up arms..."


Intelligence Rerform:

Ray McGovern: Gossing Over The Record

The November Election:

Russ Baker: Why Bush Left Texas


Iraq:

Editer & Publisher: Press Reports on U.S. Casualties: About 17,000 Short, UPI Says
"Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports commonly cited by newspapers, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. Most don't fit the definition of casualties, according to the Pentagon, but a veterans' advocate said they should all be counted.
The Pentagon has reported 1,019 dead and 7,245 wounded from Iraq.
The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according to the U.S. Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations. Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Pentagon's public casualty reports, available at www.defenselink.mil, list only service members who died or were wounded in action. The Pentagon's own definition of a war casualty provided to UPI in December describes a casualty as, 'Any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status/whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured.'
The casualty reports do list soldiers who died in non-combat-related incidents or died from illness. But service members injured or ailing from the same non-combat causes (the majority that appear to be 'lost to the organization')are not reflected in those Pentagon reports.
In a statement Wednesday, the Pentagon gave a different definition that included casualty descriptions by severity and type and said most medical evacuations did not count. 'The great majority of service members medically evacuated from Operation Iraqi Freedom are not casualties, by either Department of Defense definitions or the common understanding of the average newspaper reader,'..."

AP: U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD
"...According to people familiar with the 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.
Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.
As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.
After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction — its chief argument for going to war and overthrowing the regime.
An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month, but noted it may take time to declassify it. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government did so Thursday on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed..."

Steve Weissman: Don't Count on Europe in Iraq
"For all the talk of American democracy, voters will have little say in making the choice. Caught up in what they see as the electoral imperative of a can-do spirit, neither major party has even raised the question, while a vote for Ralph Nader, who has, will only help Mr. Bush. Nor have many major media or opinion leaders shown the courage to face the enormity of Mr. Bush's blunder. That will come, though not soon enough to save far too much useless slaughter, as U.S. troops continue to make a bad situation even worse.
Still, our votes can make a huge difference throughout the Middle East. Bush seems all-too-ready to escalate his gung-ho crusade, with his neo-conservative advisors - 'those f---ing crazies,' as Secretary of State of State Colin Powell reportedly called them - publicly urging attacks on neighboring Iran. What a joy it would be in November to send the neo-cons back to their private lives, where they have only themselves to abuse..."


Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

Chalmers Johnson: The Military-Industrial Man:
"It is hardly news to anyone who pays the slightest attention to American politics that Congress is no longer responsive to the people. Incumbency is so well institutionalized that elections generally mean virtually nothing. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay approves the private ownership of assault weapons and machine guns despite complaints from police around the country that they're outgunned by criminals, despite the 65% of the public who want them banned, despite pleas from the relatives of murdered Americans. On this issue, the National Rifle Association seems to own the Congress..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

William Rivers Pitt: When the Rabbits Get a Gun
"Osama bin Laden becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he is not unique, not singular, not an invention of the universe. He becomes truly scary when the realization comes that there are millions of people who have seen what he has seen, who feel what he feels, and why. He becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he is a creation of the last fifty years of American foreign and economic policy, and that he has an army behind him created by the same influences. Simply, Osama bin Laden becomes truly scary when the realization comes that he can be, and has been, and continues to be, replicated...

...We created Osama bin Laden. We taught him to kill, we showed him how to destroy a superpower, and we gave him a face-first lesson in American interventionism in his back yard. Whatever predispositions towards violence and murder existed in him when he was born became honed, refined and perfected as he watched our government storm the policies, rulers and innocent people of the Middle East like so many rabbits. We have created millions more like him.
We are learning now that the game isn't much fun when the rabbits get a gun."


The November Election:

Georgie Anne Geyer: How to turn opponents into terrorists
"Curious, isn't it, that after three years of George W.'s grandiose 'war against terrorism,' we as a nation of thinkers, voters and activists are just getting around to defining exactly what terrorism is?
To the Bush administration, terrorism is like a fearsome Minotaur or dragon, a creature infused with evil so pure there can be no qualifying (and, thus, resolve-weakening) characteristics.
But there was another important element that distanced one from critical thought: The terrorists, the Bush war party repeated ad nauseum, hate us not for anything we have done, but because of all the liberty-loving, truth-trumpeting things we are. These rationales have led the Manicheans and Hobbesians among the Bushies to attack John Kerry as (in terms I've heard recently among them) 'Senator Complexity' and 'Senor Sensitive' and 'Mr. Morose.' When you recover from such cleverness, you find that these attacks on the Massachusetts senator are being deliberately orchestrated because he strives to see terrorism and terrorists as the complicated, contradictory phenomena they really are..."

Paul Krugman: Taking On the Myth

AP: Senator backs voting machine bill after firsthand experience with glitch
"Sen. Barbara Mikulski added her name Monday to a bill that would require electronic voting machines to produce a paper record of ballots, just one day after a machine she tested at a local festival produced an erroneous result.
The Maryland Democrat signed on as a co-sponsor to legislation filed by Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, Mikulski aide Michael Morrill said. Graham's bill was introduced in April in response to fears that electronic voting machines used nationwide are subject to human error, could fail or be tampered with..."

Media:

Editor & Publisher: Robert Novak Believes in Revealing Confidential Sources, After All: "Syndicated columnist Robert Novak apparently believes that the principle of not revealing confidential sources is rather flexible.
The man who has stood on this principle for months, in deflecting calls for him to identify who in the Bush administration 'outed' CIA operative Valerie Plame, said this weekend on national television that CBS should release the name of its source for the documents at the center of the dispute over its recent program on President Bush's National Guard service..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

Rocky Mountain News: GIs claim threat by Army
"Soldiers from a Fort Carson combat unit say they have been issued an ultimatum - re-enlist for three more years or be transferred to other units expected to deploy to Iraq.
Hundreds of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were presented with that message and a re-enlistment form in a series of assemblies last Thursday, said two soldiers who spoke on condition of anonymity..."

Naomi Klein: The Likud doctrine
"Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is so fed-up with being grilled over his handling of the Beslan catastrophe that he lashed out at foreign journalists on Monday. 'Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or the White House and engage in talks?' he demanded, adding that: 'No one has a moral right to tell us to talk to child-killers.'
Fortunately for Putin, there is still one place where he is shielded from the critics: Israel. On Monday, Ariel Sharon welcomed the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, for a meeting about strengthening ties in the fight against terror. 'Terror has no justification, and it is time for the free, decent, humanistic world to unite and fight this terrible epidemic,' Sharon said.
There is little to argue with there. The essence of terrorism is the deliberate targeting of innocents to further political goals. Any claims its perpetrators make to fighting for justice are morally bankrupt, and lead directly to the barbarity of Beslan: a carefully laid plan to slaughter hundreds of children.
Yet sympathy alone does not explain the outpourings of solidarity for Russia coming from Israeli politicians this week. An unnamed Israeli official was quoted as saying that Russians 'understand now that what they have is not a local terror problem but part of the global Islamic terror threat'. The underlying message is unequivocal: Russia and Israel are engaged in the very same war, one not against Palestinians demanding their right to statehood, or against Chechens demanding their independence, but against 'the global Islamic terror threat'. Israel, as the elder statesman, is claiming the right to set the rules of war..."

Guardian (UK) - Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan
"The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.
Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service broadcast last night, he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: 'Yes, if you wish.'
He then added unequivocally: 'I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal,'... "

This must be what the CIA calls 'full deniability...'

BBC: US vigilantes convicted in Kabul
"Three Americans have been jailed for up to 10 years for torturing Afghans and running a private jail in Kabul..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

The Guardian (UK) - Colin Powell in four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row
"A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq.
Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two became close friends during the intense negotiations in the summer of 2002 to build an international coalition for intervention via the United Nations. The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz..."

NY Times: New Book Says Bush Officials Were Told of Detainee Abuse
"Senior military and national security officials in the Bush administration were repeatedly warned by subordinates in 2002 and 2003 that prisoners in military custody were being abused, according to a new book by a prominent journalist.
Seymour M. Hersh, a writer for The New Yorker who earlier this year was among the first to disclose details of the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, makes the charges in his book 'Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib' (HarperCollins), which is being released Monday. The book draws on the articles he wrote about the campaign against terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mr. Hersh asserts that a Central Intelligence Agency analyst who visited the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in the late summer of 2002 filed a report of abuses there that drew the attention of Gen. John A. Gordon, a deputy to Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser..."

James Ridgeway: Ex-Feds Blast 9-11 Panel and Bush
"A group of 25 former federal employees directly involved in the government's counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs held a press conference here this morning to lambaste both the 9-11 Commission and the Bush administration for failing to hold government officials accountable for failures leading up to 9-11.
The ex-employees, from the FBI, CIA, FAA, Customs, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, had firsthand knowledge of their agencies' activities in counterintelligence and counterterrorism. Bogdan Dzakovic, a former special agent at the FAA, said he repeatedly sought to warn his superiors of mismanagement and the dangers of terrorism, but to no avail. He was a leader of a 'Red Team' at FAA, engaged in preparing for terrorist attacks. But he said the security measures in his agency were 'little more than window dressing,' and quoted one frustrated colleague as saying, 'The FAA is so screwed up I don't know where to begin,'..."

Newsweek: It's Worse Than You Think
"Iraqis don't shock easily these days, but eyewitnesses could only blink in disbelief as they recounted last Tuesday's broad-daylight kidnappings in central Baghdad. At about 5 in the afternoon, on a quiet side street outside the Ibn Haitham hospital, a gang armed with pistols, AK-47s and pump-action shotguns raided a small house used by three Italian aid groups. The gunmen, none of them wearing masks, took orders from a smooth-shaven man in a gray suit; they called him 'sir.' When they drove off, the gunmen had four hostages: two local NGO employees - one of them a woman who was dragged out of the house by her headscarf - and two 29-year-old Italians, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both members of the antiwar group A Bridge to Baghdad. The whole job took less than 10 minutes. Not a shot was fired. About 15 minutes afterward, an American Humvee convoy passed hardly a block away - headed in the opposite direction.
Sixteen months after the war's supposed end, Iraq's insurgency is spreading. Each successful demand by kidnappers has spawned more hostage-takings - to make Philippine troops go home, to stop Turkish truckers from hauling supplies into Iraq, to extort fat ransom payments from Kuwaitis. The few relief groups that remain in Iraq are talking seriously about leaving. U.S. forces have effectively ceded entire cities to the insurgents, and much of the country elsewhere is a battleground..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

Boston Globe: Tribunal orders that Guantanamo detainee be freed
"The US military admitted for the first time yesterday that one of the prisoners whom the Bush administration has held without charges for more than two years at Guantanamo Bay was never an Al Qaeda or Taliban fighter and should be immediately released from the interrogation camp in Cuba.
The man, who was captured in Afghanistan and taken to the base in May 2002, was ordered set free by the military's new 'combatant status review tribunal,'..."

Robert Fisk: 19 Murderers Shouldn't Have Changed our World

The Independent (UK) - 9/11 pollution 'could cause more deaths than attack'
"Up to 400,000 New Yorkers breathed in the most toxic polluting cloud ever recorded after the twin towers were brought down three years ago, but no proper effort has been made to find out how their health has been affected, according to an official report.
The US government study provides the latest evidence of a systematic cover-up of the health toll from pollution after the 9/11 disaster, which doctors fear will cause more deaths than the attacks themselves.
The Bush administration suppressed evidence of increasing danger and officially announced that the air around the felled buildings was 'safe to breathe'. Another report reveals that it has since failed at least a dozen times to correct its assurances, even when it became clear that people were becoming sick.
The official report - sent to Congress last week by the US Government Accountability Office - says that between 250,000 and 400,000 people in lower Manhattan were exposed to the pollution on 11 September 2001. But it shows that the government has yet to make a comprehensive effort to study the effects on their health.
And it reveals that there is no systematic effort to adequately monitor the well-being of those affected, give them physical examinations or provide treatment.
Scientific studies have shown that the cloud of pulverised debris from the skyscrapers was uniquely dangerous. The US government's own figures show that it contained the highest levels of deadly dioxins ever recorded - about 1,500 times normal levels. Unprecedented levels of acids, sulphur, fine particles, heavy metals and other dangerous materials were also measured..."

More Politics of Fear From the VP

Boston Globe EditorialCheney's threat
"When Vice President Cheney said Tuesday that voters would increase the chances of another terrorist attack on America if they vote for John Kerry, he crossed what should be an impermeable line separating democratic decency from the sort of demagoguery that disfigures politics in places like Belarus, Burma, or Iran.
Cheney said of the voters' choice in the coming presidential election: 'If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.' This assertion was not only false and defamatory; it was irrational..."


The So-Called War on Terror:

LA Times: CIA May Have Held 100 'Ghost Prisoners'
"Pentagon investigators believe the CIA has held as many as 100 'ghost' detainees in Iraq without revealing their identities or locations, a much greater number than previously disclosed, a senior Defense Department official told Congress on Thursday.
However, the precise number of undisclosed prisoners and the conditions in which they have been held remain a mystery, said Army Gen. Paul Kern, because CIA officials have refused to cooperate with Pentagon investigators, denying repeated requests for documents and information on the detainees.
The CIA apparently has held between a dozen and three dozen unregistered prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad since the war in Iraq began in March 2003, and others elsewhere in the country, said Kern, who is overseeing the investigations of prisoner abuse. Pentagon officials had previously cited only eight cases of failure to account for prisoners, which is an apparent violation of international law under the Geneva Convention.
'If they fall under the category of ghost detainees, there are no records,' Kern told reporters after addressing members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Members of the panel expressed surprise over the number of detainees and disbelief and outrage over the lack of CIA cooperation.
'The situation with CIA and ghost [detainees] is beginning to look like a bad movie,' Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) said..."


The Federal Budget:

Paul Krugman: The Dishonesty Thing
"It's the dishonesty, stupid. The real issue in the National Guard story isn't what George W. Bush did three decades ago. It's the recent pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't, the White House's repeated claims that it had released all of the relevant documents when it hadn't.
It's the same pattern of dishonesty, this time involving personal matters that the public can easily understand, that some of us have long seen on policy issues, from global warming to the war in Iraq. On budget matters, which is where I came in, serious analysts now take administration dishonesty for granted.
It wasn't always that way. Three years ago, those of us who accused the administration of cooking the budget books were ourselves accused, by moderates as well as by Bush loyalists, of being 'shrill.' These days the coalition of the shrill has widened to include almost every independent budget expert.
For example, back in February the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities accused the Bush administration of, in effect, playing three-card monte with budget forecasts. It pointed out that the administration's deficit forecast was far above those of independent analysts, and suggested that this exaggeration was deliberate.
'Overstating the 2004 deficit,' the center wrote, 'could allow the president to announce significant 'progress' on the deficit in late October - shortly before Election Day - when the Treasury Department announces the final figures,'... "


William Rivers Pitt: Dumbest. Election. Ever.
"Marvin Minsky once said, 'Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know.' Let's spool that thought out a bit. If TV was good, three of the major news networks (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC) wouldn't be owned by a defense contractor that profits from war. If TV was good, another major news network (CNN) wouldn't be wedded to the outsourcing of technological workers to cheap-labor nations because its parent company lives and dies by paying pennies on the dollar for geeks. If TV was good, another major news network (Fox) would require its anchors to say, 'We are an auxiliary wing of the Republican Party, deal with it' every fifteen minutes.
In other words, if TV was good, that would mean TV news would actually be informative, and not a commercial platform for the handful of corporations that own and distribute all the information we the people need to intelligently run the show. If such a thing were to exist, it would indeed be the end of everything we know. It would be the end of non-issues. It would certainly be the end of this amazingly stupid election.
Issues we are not hearing about because we have spent so much time talking about television advertisements:
- Millions of jobs lost in the last four years;
- Unbearably expensive health care;
- A total loss of confidence within the international community in our moral leadership;
- The underfunded farce that is the Department of Homeland Security;
- The underfunded farce that is the No Child Left Behind bill;
- The fact that military assault weapons will soon be making a perfectly legal return to a neighborhood near you;
-The deeply illegal outing of a deep-cover CIA agent by Bush administration officials, who did it because they wanted to silence a critic;
-The rape and torture of men, women and children in the Abu Ghraib prison, horrors that were sanctioned in writing by Bush's own lawyer and the Secretary of Defense;
-The allegation by Senator Bob Graham of Florida that Bush torpedoed any aspect of the 9/11 investigation that came within spitting distance of his friends in the Saudi royal family;
-The allegations by several generals that Bush's people started stripping necessary troops and resources from Afghanistan to bolster their ill-conceived charge into Iraq;
-The myriad accusations by a dozen insiders that Bush and his people ignored the terror threat until the Towers fell, and then used the attacks to scare the American people into an unnecessary war in Iraq and a mammoth payday for their friends in the weapons and oil business;
-The fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq;
-The fact that no connections between Hussein, bin Laden and 9/11 have been established beyond the bloviating hyperbole of a few senior Bush officials who haven't yet gotten the memo;
-Does anyone even remember Enron?..."

The November Election:

NY Times Editorial: Voter ID Problems in Florida
"There is no excuse for turning away eligible voters at the polls, but that is what apparently happened in Florida's primary elections last week. Under Florida law, registered voters can vote without showing identification. But election officials at some polling places misstated the law and tried to keep eligible voters from voting. In one county, the official sample ballot got the law wrong. Officials in Florida, and nationwide, must improve their poll workers' training and written materials to ensure that this does not happen in the November election.
Florida's voter-identification law is inartfully written. It says photo identification is required at the polls, but it goes on to give voters without such identification an alternative: signing affidavits swearing to their identities. By that reasoning, Florida voters who show up without identification should be told that they can vote as long as they fill out affidavits. But that did not always happen last week.
In Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, poll watchers from People for the American Way saw voters being turned away after being told about half the law - the photo-identification requirement - but not the other half, the affidavit option. In some cases, said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way, poll workers insisted on identification even when they were shown voting-rights leaflets citing the state election law. Some people may never have cast ballots because they were not informed that they had the option to file affidavits.
The misstatement of the law goes beyond a few bad poll workers. Osceola County's sample ballot, mailed out before last week's election, said 'Photo and Signature ID Required at Polls,' and it did not tell voters they could in fact vote without identification..."

The Economy:

NY Times: An Elder Challenges Outsourcing's Orthodoxy
"...Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve; N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers; and Jagdish N. Bhagwati, a leading international economist and professor at Columbia University...
...are perpetrators of what Mr. Samuelson terms 'the popular polemical untruth.'
Popular among economists, that is. That untruth, Mr. Samuelson asserts in an article for the Journal of Economic Perspectives, is the assumption that the laws of economics dictate that the American economy will benefit in the long run from all forms of international trade, including the outsourcing abroad of call-center and software programming jobs.
Sure, Mr. Samuelson writes, the mainstream economists acknowledge that some people will gain and others will suffer in the short term, but they quickly add that 'the gains of the American winners are big enough to more than compensate for the losers.'
That assumption, so widely shared by economists, is 'only an innuendo,' Mr. Samuelson writes. 'For it is dead wrong about necessary surplus of winnings over losings.'..."

The Saudi-9/11 Connection:

Greg Palast: September 11: What You 'Ought Not to Know' - Document 199-I and the FBI's Words to Chill the Soul
"...when a failed Texas oil man took over the White House in January 2001, demands on the Saudis to cut off terror funding simply stopped..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

Salon.com - Sen. Graham: Bush Covered Up Saudi Involvement in 9/11
"...In his book, Graham asserts that the White House blocked investigations into Saudi Arabian government support for the 9/11 plot, in part because of the Bush family's close ties to the Saudi royal family and wealthy Saudis like the bin Ladens. Behind the White House's insistence on classifying 27 pages detailing the Saudi links in a report issued by a joint House-Senate intelligence panel co-chaired by Graham in 2002 lay the desire to hide the administration's deficiencies and protect its Saudi allies, according to Graham.
Graham's allegations - supported by the Republican vice chairman of the House-Senate 9/11 investigation, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, but not his co-chairman, Rep. Porter Goss, Bush's nominee to become director of the CIA - are not new. But his book states them more forcefully than before, even as Graham adds new insight into Bush's decision to invade Iraq, made apparently well before the president asserted he had exhausted all options.
In February 2002, Graham writes, Gen. Tommy Franks, then conducting the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan (and later to speak in prime time on behalf of Bush's candidacy at the Republican National Convention in New York), pulled the senator aside to explain that important resources in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, such as Predator drones, were being quietly redeployed to Iraq. 'He told me that the decision to go to war in Iraq had been made at least 14 months before we actually went into Iraq, long before there was authorization from Congress and long before the United Nations was sought out for a resolution of support,' Graham tells Salon..."

The November Election:

Reuters: Calif. to Sue Diebold Over False Claims
"California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Tuesday he would sue electronic voting machine maker Diebold Inc. on charges it defrauded the state with false claims about its products.
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has said Diebold deceived California with aggressive marketing that led to the installation of touch-screen voting systems that were not tested or approved nationally or in California..."

Jimmy Carter: Letter to Zell Miller: 'You Have Betrayed Our Trust'

The November Election:

NY Times Editorial: Working Your Way Down
"As they so often do, economic reality and political expediency parted ways with the release of August's employment report on Friday. The reality is that unless President Bush pulls nearly one million jobs out of a hat in the next four months, he will indeed become the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in employment in a single term in the White House. But Mr. Bush is determined to act as if nothing bad is happening on, as he likes to put it, 'my watch.' And so in his first appearance after the Republican National Convention - in a corner of the sliver of undecided America - he declared that the numbers showed that the economy is 'spreading prosperity and opportunity and nothing will hold us back.'
Nothing, perhaps, except the actual state of the job market. The United States gained 144,000 jobs last month, which is just barely enough to keep up with the number of people entering the work force. True, the job numbers for June and July were revised upward, but they were still weak, and much lower than August's. There was a tiny reduction in the unemployment rate - because the work force became smaller, not because of job creation. Eight million people were unemployed in August, all told, the same as in the month before.
Dig beyond the numbers, and the situation is even worse. Even with a slight acceleration in August, average hourly wages for the month are not likely to keep up with inflation (that number comes out in mid-September). As has been the case throughout the current economic recovery, wages are held down by the slow pace of job creation and, to a lesser extent, by the mainly service-oriented jobs available..."

John Cassidy: Tax Code
"...The President’s ownership initiative hasn’t featured prominently in the media coverage of the campaign, which, strictly from a news perspective, is understandable: he hasn’t announced many specific proposals to back up his talk. But in downplaying the Bush Administration’s economic agenda the media is missing one of the biggest domestic stories of the 2004 campaign..."

Paul Krugman: A Mythic Reality
"The best book I've read about America after 9/11 isn't about either America or 9/11. It's 'War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,' an essay on the psychology of war by Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent. Better than any poll analysis or focus group, it explains why President Bush, despite policy failures at home and abroad, is ahead in the polls.
War, Mr. Hedges says, plays to some fundamental urges. 'Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours,' he says, 'is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver.' When war psychology takes hold, the public believes, temporarily, in a 'mythic reality' in which our nation is purely good, our enemies are purely evil, and anyone who isn't our ally is our enemy.
This state of mind works greatly to the benefit of those in power..."

Robert Scheer: GOP Convention's Looney Tunes
"...In this Looney Tunes matinee, the loudest voices are those of the blustering schoolyard bully who crudely masks his own inadequacies by calling others sissies and punks. The GOP faithful ate up Cheney's barroom riff on Kerry's alleged 'sensitive' side just as they did earlier when Bush's shill, TV talk-show host Dennis Miller, made the crack that Kerry and running mate John Edwards should 'get a room.'
But, in a more sober mood, can any reasonable person really disagree with Kerry's call for a 'more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side'? The fact is, the money hustlers and Beltway power brokers know in their gut that Bush is in way over his head and Cheney is a loose cannon - and that together they have alienated U.S. allies and enflamed the Islamic world while making only marginal gains against Al Qaeda.
But these people don't care, because the fix is in. See, Bush promised at the convention that in a second term he would continue to ensure that the rich get richer, no matter how many unfair tax breaks, wasteful military contracts or union-busting laws it takes..."

Greg Palast: Don't look at the flash! - Ground Zero as Profit Center for ChoicePoint
"...As the towers fell, ChoicePoint's stock rose; and from Ground Zero, contracts gushed forth from War on Terror fever. Why? Because this outfit is holding no less 16 billion records on every living and dying being in the USA. They're the Little Brother with the filing system when Big Brother calls.
ChoicePoint's quick route to no-bid spy contracts was not impeded by the fact that the company did something for George W. Bush that the voters would not: select him as our president..."

North Ossetia:

The Independent (UK) - Russian media condemns siege 'cover-up'
"Three days after the bloodbath at Beslan, Russian newspapers unleashed a barrage of criticism of the government's handling of the siege and accused officials of concealing the truth from the public.
One of the country's biggest newspapers, Izvestia, printed a devastating point-by-point rebuttal of the official version of events yesterday, despite the sacking of its editor over the paper's coverage. The more fixed the official story has become, the more suspicious some journalists have become.
In a front-page article, headed 'What may have happened to those who are missing', Izvestia tried to answer the question of how 200 people appear to have vanished. It challenged almost every point of the official version. Compiled from eyewitness accounts, including the reports of its correspondents, the account said:
• The carnage was triggered not, as officials said, by an explosion detonated by the militants, but by shots fired by one of the vigilantes who had flocked to the school to prevent the authorities storming it. The militants fired back, killing the first two stretcher-bearers allowed after negotiations to enter to bring out bodies. A frantic exchange of shots followed, culminating in the explosion that brought down a wall through which some 40 hostages escaped.
• The crack Spetsnaz troops were not on the spot at the time; they were rehearsing the storming of the school in a nearby school.
• The militants were not averse to negotiation; they agreed to the release of nursing mothers and babies.
• They did not select School Number 1 at Beslan by chance. They chose it because it was 8km from an airport (from where they could be flown out) and because two children of members of North Ossetia's regional parliament attended. Hostages told Izvestia they were separated from the others at an early stage. The paper does not say what happened to them.
• The authorities have not produced the bodies of the 10 Arabs and one black they say were among the militants. Izvestia suggests one of the bodies was mistaken for that of a black man because it was charred..."

Labor Day:

Howard Dean: Labor Day
"...Republicans, who seem to run most everything these days, are hostile to organized labor and to working people in general. President Reagan fired the first shot when he decertified the air traffic controllers union 23 years ago, and organized labor has yet to recover. The most recent hostile action was Gov. George Pataki's (R-NY) veto of a minimum wage bill which would have raised the minimum wage to the same level we have here in Vermont as of January 1, 2004 - $7.00/hour.
Organized labor used to get plenty of bad press. From the Central States Pension Fund scandals that revealed union leaders stealing members' money, to the proven connections between labor leaders and organized crime, to unions at war with the progress being made on race relations. Not to mention, the labor movement has weathered its fair share of corruption.
But, we should all be grateful that labor unions don't give up easily. For example, in June, the nation's largest labor union sponsored a day of marches all over the country in support of universal health insurance, even though most members of unions already have that benefit under their contracts. And, the AFL-CIO has been leading the fight for years for a higher minimum wage. Taking a role in these issues proves that organized labor is now one of the leading progressive forces in America, fighting not only for its own members, but for millions of Americans who are not union members and do not pay any union dues.
The success of American capitalism depends on most Americans believing that the system works for all of us, not just those who have a lot of money. In the 1980s, Republicans believed that labor unions were too powerful. Today they are too weak, and those who work for a living are rapidly being deprived of a fair reward for their work..."


The November Election:

John Cory: It's Kerry's Fault
"...This is the GOP smear machine logic of John Kerry's patriotic service to America. If John Kerry had just not shown up and been heroic, well, there would be no issue. Just look at George Bush.
You see, the GOP doesn't mind sending Americans to war; they just don't want to hear about it afterwards: especially if you survive, and become a force for truth and peace.
This is the level of political discourse and media coverage today. Pretty ugly.
But you have to understand - it is John Kerry's fault - he keeps showing up for his country."

Michael Moore: Why Democrats shouldn't be scared

Labor Day, Which the Rest of the World Celebrates on May 1st:

Greg Palast: The Grinch That Stole Labor Day From Veterans
"In celebration of the working person's holiday, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has announced the Bush Administration's plan to end the 60-year-old law which requires employers to pay time-and-a-half for overtime.
I'm sure you already knew that -- if you happened to have run across page 15,576 of last year's Federal Register.
According to the Register, where the Bush Administration likes to place its little gifts to major campaign donors, 2.7 million workers will lose their overtime pay for a 'benefit' of $1.53 billion. I put 'benefit' in quotes because, in the official cost-benefit analysis issued by Bush's Labor Department, the amount employers will now be able to slice out of workers' pockets is tallied on the plus side of the rules change.
President Bush announced in his convention acceptance speech this week that he was changing overtime rules to give workers 'comp time' off instead of pay. He forgot to mention that a couple of days before, on August 23, his Labor Department had already put in half the plan -- eliminating overtime pay for millions -- while failing to put into the regs one word about comp time. In the pre-September 11 days, we used to call that, 'lying.'..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

LA Times Editorial: Guantanamo Farce
"The Bush administration is ignoring, if not defying outright, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that all terror suspects must be able to challenge their imprisonment. The opening round of detainee military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay last week resembled something between a Mel Brooks farce and the kangaroo courts of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Maybe Captain Kangaroo courts. The proceedings didn't look anything like justice, military or otherwise. Meanwhile, two U.S. citizens still sit in military brigs, isolated from their lawyers and months if not years away from the hearings the high court says they deserve..."


Business Ethics, or the Stunning Lack Thereof

NY Times: Hollinger Files Stinging Report on Ex-Officials, Accusing them of 'Corporate Kleptocracy'
"In a 513-page report shot through with sarcasm and disgust, a special committee of the publishing company Hollinger International Inc. concluded that the former officials Conrad M. Black and F. David Radler ran a 'corporate kleptocracy,' diverting to themselves virtually all the company's $400 million in earnings over seven years.
The report, which was filed as part of a Hollinger lawsuit seeking to recover $1.25 billion from Lord Black and others, also criticized certain directors as being 'ineffective and careless' in stopping the 'systematic looting' of the company. And it reserved some of its harshest criticism for Richard N. Perle, the former Reagan administration official and current board member, calling on him to return $5.4 million in pay after 'putting his own interests above those of Hollinger's shareholders,'..."


Corporate Media Consolidation's Incompatability With Democracy:

San Francisco Bay Guardian News: Censored!
The 10 big stories the national news media ignore
"In late July more than 600 people showed up in Monterey to speak at a Federal Communications Commission hearing on ownership concentration in the news media. The participants were a diverse group, young and old, activists and workers, but they had a single consistent message: the mainstream news media have been doing a deplorable job of covering the day's most important stories.
That's no surprise: consolidation of the media in the hands of a few corporate Goliaths has resulted in fewer people creating more of the content we see, hear, and read. One impact has been a narrower range of perspectives. Another is the virtual disappearance of hard-hitting, original, investigative reporting.
'Corporate media has abdicated their responsibility to the First Amendment to keep the American electorate informed about important issues in society and instead serves up a pabulum of junk-food news,' says Peter Phillips, head of Sonoma State University's Project Censored.
Every year researchers at Project Censored pick through volumes of print and broadcast news to see which of the past year's most important stories aren't receiving the kind of attention they deserve. Phillips and his team acknowledge that many of these stories weren't 'censored' in the traditional sense of the word: No government agency blocked their publication. And some even appeared - briefly and without follow-up - in mainstream journals.
But every one of this year's picks merited prominent placement on the evening news and the dailies' front pages. Instead they went virtually ignored.
This list speaks directly to the point FCC critics have raised: stories that address fundamental issues of wealth concentration and big-business dominance of the political agenda are almost entirely missing from the national debate. From the dramatic increase in wealth inequality in the United States, to the wholesale giveaway of the nation's natural resources, to the Bush administration's attack on corporate and political accountability, events and trends that ought to be dominating the presidential campaign and the national dialogue are missing from the front pages.
Here are Project Censored's 10 biggest examples of major stories that have been relegated to the most obscure corners of the media world..."


Now Let's See if Mr. Leavitt Puts His Concerns into Action...

Saul Landau: Mercury in U.S. lakes; cyanide in India – trust the CEOs!
"On August 24, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared that more than 'one-third of the nation's lakes and nearly one-fourth of its rivers contain fish that may be contaminated with mercury, dioxin, PCB and pesticide pollution.'
'It's about trout, not tuna. It's about what you catch on the shore, not what you buy on the shelf,' said EPA administrator Mike Leavitt. 'I want to make clear that this agency views mercury as a toxin,' he said. 'This is about the health of pregnant mothers and small children, that's the primary focus of our concern.'..."

Washington:

The Hill: Soros blasts Hastert over drug allegation
"George Soros, the billionaire financier who has given millions of dollars to liberal and Democratic-leaning advocacy groups, launched a blistering counterattack on Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) yesterday, saying he should be 'ashamed' of allegations he made Sunday.
Hastert had suggested that Soros's wealth came from criminals, and in a letter Soros challenged the Speaker to substantiate his claims or publicly apologize..."

The November Election:

Mary Jacoby: George W. Bush's Missing Year
"...Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton 'Red' Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. 'I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him,' Linda Allison said.
After more than three decades of silence, Allison spoke with Salon over several days before and during the Republican National Convention this week - motivated, as she acknowledged, by a complex mixture of emotions. They include pride in her late husband's accomplishments, a desire to see him remembered, and concern about the apparent double standard in Bush surrogates attacking John Kerry's Vietnam War record while ignoring the president's irresponsible conduct during the war. She also admits to bewilderment and hurt over the rupture her husband experienced in his friendship with George and Barbara Bush. To this day, Allison is unsure what caused the break, though she suspects it had something to do with her husband's opposition to the elder Bush becoming chairman of the Republican National Committee under President Nixon..."

Spies With A Direct Interest in the Invasion of Iraq:

Washington Post: Wider FBI Probe Of Pentagon Leaks Includes Chalabi
"FBI counterintelligence agents are investigating whether several Pentagon officials leaked classified information to Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to a law enforcement official and other people familiar with the case...
...Initially, news reports revealed that the FBI was investigating whether Lawrence A. Franklin -- a mid-level analyst specializing in Middle East issues in the Pentagon office of Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy -- had passed a draft presidential directive on Iran to AIPAC, and whether the group had passed the information to Israel. AIPAC is an influential lobbying group with close ties to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
The FBI probe is actually much broader, according to senior U.S. officials, and has been underway for at least two years. Several sources familiar with the case say the probe now extends to other Pentagon personnel who have a particular interest in assisting both Israel and Chalabi, the former Iraqi dissident who was long a Pentagon favorite but who has fallen out of favor with the U.S. government..."


The November Election:

John Cory: Band-Aids, Bullets, and Broken Hearts

The So-Called War on Terror:

AP: Federal judge drops Detroit terrorism charges
"Acting at the request of prosecutors, a federal judge on Thursday threw out the terrorism charges against two men convicted last year.
But U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen said the two, as well as a third man, must stand trial again on charges of document fraud.
The judge’s decision came after the Justice Department admitted widespread prosecutorial misconduct in the case and asked the judge to dismiss the charges against two men accused of being part of a Detroit terrorist cell.
In a case the government once hailed as a victory against terrorism, Karim Koubriti, 26, and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 38, were convicted in June 2003 of conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism and to engage in fraud and misuse of visas and other documents.
A third man, Ahmed Hannan, 36, was convicted of only the fraud charge, and Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 24, was acquitted.
The government’s change of heart, outlined in court papers Tuesday, came after a monthslong court-ordered review of documents connected to the case. The Justice Department uncovered several pieces of potentially exculpatory evidence that should have been given to the defense before trial.
The reversal comes during the buildup to President Bush’s nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, where he and his allies have been touting their success in the war on terrorism..."

Knight-Ridder: Young Republicans support Iraq war, but not all are willing to join the fight
"Young Republicans gathered here for their party's national convention are united in applauding the war in Iraq, supporting the U.S. troops there and calling the U.S. mission a noble cause.
But there's no such unanimity when they're asked a more personal question: Would you be willing to put on the uniform and go to fight in Iraq?
In more than a dozen interviews, Republicans in their teens and 20s offered a range of answers. Some have friends in the military in Iraq and are considering enlisting; others said they can better support the war by working politically in the United States; and still others said they think the military doesn't need them because the U.S. presence in Iraq is sufficient.
'Frankly, I want to be a politician. I'd like to survive to see that,' said Vivian Lee, 17, a war supporter visiting the convention from Los Angeles,
Lee said she supports the war but would volunteer only if the United States faced a dire troop shortage or 'if there's another Sept. 11.'..."

Bush's War on The New Deal:

Greg Palast: President Declares "Ownership Society" - Tells Convention He's Ordered Invasion of Social Security Trust Fund
"Here's what the President has in mind. Social Security is an insurance plan. You pay in, you get back. But it's hard to get your money back when there's a war where the Clinton surplus used to be. It's not the war on terror, or the war in Iraq, though Lord knows those have cost us a bundle with nothing to show for all the lost loot. I'm talking about the class war that Dubya and his Dick Cheney have waged on the average working person.
We're talking an economic Pearl Harbor here. While firemen and policemen went running into falling buildings, the Bushmen were preparing to relieve some gazillionaires, such as say, the Bush family, of the need to pay the taxes that the rest of us pay. Work as a teacher, you pay Social Security and income taxes on every darn penny. Sit on your yacht and speculate in the stock market casino and you are off the hook on taxes on the 'capital gains.'
Bill Clinton proposed putting his big surpluses into a Social Security 'lock-box' for that predictable rainy day. But tonight, Bush instead proposes to give the stock-options class a boost by lopping off a chunk of Social Security insurance revenue for gambling in the stock market. He had this same idea in 2000. If he'd had his way on his inauguration day, the average 'owner' in America, investing in the stock market, would be 7% poorer, many flat busted. Some 'security.' Happy elderly 'owners' would be hunting for lunch in the garbage cans under Madison Square Garden..."

Not the tune he sang at the RNC...

Zell Miller on John Kerry, March 2001