Observations on current events

Can you imagine any major U.S. book publisher having the stones to advertise in Time or Newsweek using an ad like this?

Crisis Response & Priorities:

Democracy Now! -The Cost of War vs. Relief
"While the Bush administration has pledged to play a major role in the relief effort, it is already coming under criticism for its handling of the crisis.
On Monday, the Bush administration pledged an initial $15 million for the effort. After a top UN official described the donation as 'stingy', the US pledged another $20 million bringing the total offering to $35 million.
To put the figure in perspective, President Bush plans to spend between $30 and $40 million for his upcoming inauguration celebration.
And the amount pledged to victims of the tsunami is dwarfed by the Bush administration's war effort in Iraq.
The U.S. has spent an average of $9.5 million every hour on the war and occupation of Iraq. With a current price tag of $147 billion, the U.S. has spent an average of about $228 million a day in Iraq. In other words, the U.S. spends what it promised on the tsunami relief effort in less than four hours in Iraq."

An Administration of Willful War Criminals:

Are the majority of Amercians comfortable ignoring these disturbing revalations? In a nation where any and all dissent is decried as unpatriotic, I do not expect the answer to be encouraging.

Washington Post Editorial: War Crimes
"Thanks to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other human rights groups, thousands of pages of government documents released this month have confirmed some of the painful truths about the abuse of foreign detainees by the U.S. military and the CIA -- truths the Bush administration implacably has refused to acknowledge. Since the publication of photographs of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in the spring the administration's whitewashers -- led by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- have contended that the crimes were carried out by a few low-ranking reservists, that they were limited to the night shift during a few chaotic months at Abu Ghraib in 2003, that they were unrelated to the interrogation of prisoners and that no torture occurred at the Guantanamo Bay prison where hundreds of terrorism suspects are held. The new documents establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false.
Though they represent only part of the record that lies in government files, the documents show that the abuse of prisoners was already occurring at Guantanamo in 2002 and continued in Iraq even after the outcry over the Abu Ghraib photographs. FBI agents reported in internal e-mails and memos about systematic abuses by military interrogators at the base in Cuba, including beatings, chokings, prolonged sleep deprivation and humiliations such as being wrapped in an Israeli flag. 'On a couple of occasions I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water,' an unidentified FBI agent wrote on Aug. 2, 2004. 'Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more.' Two defense intelligence officials reported seeing prisoners severely beaten in Baghdad by members of a special operations unit, Task Force 6-26, in June. When they protested they were threatened and pictures they took were confiscated.
Other documents detail abuses by Marines in Iraq, including mock executions and the torture of detainees by burning and electric shock. Several dozen detainees have died in U.S. custody. In many cases, Army investigations of these crimes were shockingly shoddy: Officials lost records, failed to conduct autopsies after suspicious deaths and allowed evidence to be contaminated. Soldiers found to have committed war crimes were excused with noncriminal punishments. The summary of one suspicious death of a detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison reads: 'No crime scene exam was conducted, no autopsy conducted, no copy of medical file obtained for investigation because copy machine broken in medical office.'
Some of the abuses can be attributed to lack of discipline in some military units -- though the broad extent of the problem suggests, at best, that senior commanders made little effort to prevent or control wrongdoing. But the documents also confirm that interrogators at Guantanamo believed they were following orders from Mr. Rumsfeld. One FBI agent reported on May 10 about a conversation he had with Guantanamo's commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who defended the use of interrogation techniques the FBI regarded as illegal on the grounds that the military "has their marching orders from the Sec Def." Gen. Miller has testified under oath that dogs were never used to intimidate prisoners at Guantanamo, as authorized by Mr. Rumsfeld in December 2002; the FBI papers show otherwise.
The Bush administration refused to release these records to the human rights groups under the Freedom of Information Act until it was ordered to do so by a judge. Now it has responded to their publication with bland promises by spokesmen that any wrongdoing will be investigated. The record of the past few months suggests that the administration will neither hold any senior official accountable nor change the policies that have produced this shameful record. Congress, too, has abdicated its responsibility under its Republican leadership: It has been nearly four months since the last hearing on prisoner abuse. Perhaps intervention by the courts will eventually stem the violations of human rights that appear to be ongoing in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan. For now the appalling truth is that there has been no remedy for the documented torture and killing of foreign prisoners by this American government."

Helen Thomas: The buck never stops at the top
"The FBI has blown the whistle on the Defense Department's military investigators by accusing them of abusive treatment of prisoners of war in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The FBI was especially outraged that the interrogators of suspected terrorists had posed as FBI agents.
Administration officials usually are pretty clubby folks who close ranks in times of trouble. But apparently, the FBI was not ready to take the fall for the Pentagon's atrocious treatment of some prisoners of war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has labeled the Pentagon's behavior as 'tantamount to torture.'
The big question is why President Bush has tolerated inhumane treatment of detainees and why he has not ordered a full stop to this shaming of the United States..."

Groceries As Big Business:

The New York Times: Survival of the Biggest: Supermarket Giants Crush Central American Farmers
"...Across Latin America, supermarket chains partly or wholly owned by global corporate goliaths like Ahold, Wal-Mart and Carrefour have revolutionized food distribution in the short span of a decade and have now begun to transform food growing, too.
The megastores are popular with customers for their lower prices, choice and convenience. But their sudden appearance has brought unanticipated and daunting challenges to millions of struggling, small farmers.
The stark danger is that increasing numbers of them will go bust and join streams of desperate migrants to America and the urban slums of their own countries. Their declining fortunes, economists and agronomists fear, could worsen inequality in a region where the gap between rich and poor already yawns cavernously and the concentration of land in the hands of an elite has historically fueled cycles of rebellion and violent repression..."

The Environment:

The New York Times: Pentagon Is Pressing to Bypass Environmental Laws for War Games and Arms Testing
"The Defense Department, which controls 28 million acres of land across the nation that it uses for combat exercises and weapons testing, has been moving on a variety of fronts to reduce requirements that it safeguard the environment on that land.
In Congress, the Pentagon has won exemptions in the last two years from parts of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. It has sought in recent years to exempt military activities, for three years, from compliance with parts of the Clean Air Act.
Also, the Pentagon, which controls about 140 of the 1,240 toxic Superfund sites around the country, is seeking partial exemptions from two laws governing toxic waste. And two months ago, it drafted revisions to a 1996 directive built on a pledge 'to display environmental security leadership within Department of Defense activities worldwide.'
The draft revisions eliminate the reference to environmental security, and emphasize instead that it is the Pentagon's role to sustain the national defense mission. Potential risks to the environment and worker safety, it says, should be addressed as part of a larger effort to manage risks, save money and preserve readiness.
The Pentagon's enthusiasm for the environmental ethos has waxed and waned over the past 15 years, as it has grappled with its roles as one of the country's longest-standing industrial polluters and conservator of some of the nation's most ecologically sensitive land..."


Exploiting Influence In Washington:

The New York Times: Through the Revolving Door, a Pot of Gold Still Awaits
"For a man who spent much of his childhood in public housing, Tom Ridge has done pretty well for himself. His salary as secretary of homeland security, $175,700, is more than five times what the average American earns.
But he is about to do a whole lot better.
After a long career in government service as a congressman, Pennsylvania governor and cabinet member, Mr. Ridge is stepping down but staying in Washington. His job prospects are stratospheric, say executive hiring experts and old Washington hands...
...With at least 9 of 15 cabinet members stepping down, and scores of lower-level appointees and retiring members of Congress following them, the quadrennial job shuffle is proving an axiom of high-level government service: There's a pot of gold at the end of the Washington rainbow.
This season's pay-raise champion may turn out to be Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican who has styled himself the Cajun ambassador to Congress. Mr. Tauzin will become, in effect, the drug industry's ambassador, stepping down from his $158,100 legislative post and stepping up to become president of the Pharmaceutical and Research Manufacturers of America for an estimated $2 million a year.
The connections and expertise gained from government service are so valued by industry that the temptation to stick around Washington and collect a big paycheck can be overwhelming. Some appointees come to view government service as an investment, counting on the eventual payoff..."

The So-Called War on Terror: A War The Right Of Freedom From Torture:

The Washington Post: Further Torture Alleged in F.B.I. Memos
"At least 10 current and former detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have lodged allegations of abuse similar to the incidents described by F.B.I. agents in newly released documents, claims that were denied by the government but gained credibility with the reports from the agents, their attorneys say.
In public statements after their release and in documents filed with federal courts, the detainees have said they were beaten before and during interrogations, 'short-shackled' to the floor and otherwise mistreated as part of the effort to get them to confess to being members of al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Even some of the detainees' attorneys acknowledged that they were initially skeptical, mainly because there has been little evidence that captors at Guantanamo Bay engaged in the kind of abuse discovered at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. But last Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union released F.B.I. memos, which it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, in which agents described witnessing or learning of serious mistreatment of detainees..."

The Washington Post: C.I.A. Torture Flights Authorized by Executive Order
"...Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the C.I.A.'s arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to congressional testimony by C.I.A. officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.
According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to whisk detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden, usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling stops.
As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the United States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on Torture.
The C.I.A. has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush administration has reviewed and renewed..."

Iraq:

Democracy Now! - Military Contractors Target Latin America For New Recruits
"Halliburton and other private military contractors have begun advertising campaigns in El Salvador, Colombia and Nicaragua to recruit ex-soldiers to work in Iraq..."

Johann Hari: Why Inflict Discredited Market Fundamentalism on Iraq?
"The most important reason for the failure of the occupation has been the coalition's economic strategy..."


U.S. Democracy:

t r u t h o u t - Video Supporting Ohio Vote Fraud Claim Revealed
"Truthout has come into possession of video from Hocking County, Ohio. The video was recorded by a documentary film crew that was reporting on the Ohio election. The crew interviewed a technician from Triad Systems. In a report released by truthout on December 15, 2004, we reported on an affidavit filed by Sherole Eaton, Hocking County deputy director of elections..."

NY Times: Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul


The GOP Agenda:

Robert Scheer: The GOP's Sabotage of Social Security
"...The conservative mantra, whether it comes to energy policy, war in Iraq or education, is to siphon public money into the private sector whenever and wherever possible, through such gimmicks as agribusiness subsidies, school vouchers and the hiring of private mercenaries.
Greed perfectly meshes with ideology in the Republican Party, and the attempted sabotage of Social Security is just another example. While the followers of Milton Friedman talk about the free market in religious terms, Wall Street is slavering at the possibility of one of the biggest potential windfalls in human history if the Social Security spigot is turned its way. The attendant investment fees alone would be enormous - certainly higher than the minimal 1% overhead costs the current Social Security system consumes..."


U.S. Foreign Policy:

Steve Weissman: How Uncle Santa Diddles Dems from Ukraine to Venezuela


The Environment:

BBC: Cleaning products 'wheezing link'
"Exposure to cleaning products while in the womb could be linked to persistent wheezing in young children, University of Bristol research suggests..."

When A High-Profit Industry Influences The Regulatory Agency Charged With Policing It:

Washington Post: Many FDA Scientists Had Drug Concerns, 2002 Survey Shows
"Almost one-fifth of the Food and Drug Administration scientists surveyed two years ago as part of an official review said they had been pressured to recommend approval of a new drug despite reservations about its safety, effectiveness or quality.
The survey of almost 400 scientists also found that a majority had significant doubts about the adequacy of federal programs to monitor prescription drugs once they are on the market, and that more than a third were not particularly confident of the agency's ability to assess the safety of a drug.
The results of the survey, conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general, appear to support some portions of the controversial Senate testimony last month by FDA safety officer David J. Graham. The 20-year agency veteran told senators that the FDA was unable to keep some unsafe drugs off the market, and that scientists who dissented about drug safety and effectiveness were sometimes pressured and intimidated.
Graham's testimony, at a hearing into the sudden withdrawal from the market of the arthritis drug Vioxx, put a spotlight on the FDA's safety and management record. Top FDA officials later criticized Graham's testimony as inaccurate and unscientific, but the survey results indicate that some other agency scientists share similar views.
'I think this provides evidence that among the reviewing scientists at FDA, their experiences mirror the testimony I gave before Congress,' Graham said yesterday. 'It also shows the unfortunate experience of many mirrors what happened to me when I tried to bring safety issues to my managers and the American public.'
The complete survey will be made public today by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, two public interest groups that received the documents through the Freedom of Information Act process. The Washington Post obtained a copy yesterday..."

Frontline did an excellent episode on precisely this issue not long ago: transcript.

Democracy Now! interview with Dr. Sidney Wolfe, Director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group Can the FDA Protect the Public? Agency Accused Of Approving Unsafe Drugs Under Pressure From Pharmaceutical Industry
"Wolfe: ...the pain reliever story actually goes back about four years, when a study showed that Vioxx, now off the market a couple of months or so, was five times more dangerous than Naproxen, this drug that might cause problems but probably doesn't anywhere as near as Vioxx. So four years ago, a study showed that the rate of heart attacks in people taking Vioxx was five times higher than people taking Naproxen. We asked the FDA back then to put a black box warning, warning people about this. If they had, the number of people using Vioxx would have gone way down. At the same time, another study caused concern about FDA documents about Celebrex. It didn't cause a five times increased risk, but there were more blood clots in people using Celebrex. It goes back then and then fast forward to more recently, another study on Vioxx comparing it to a sugar pill, a placebo, shows a doubling of heart attacks and strokes, and another study on Celebrex comparing it to a placebo shows a two to three-fold increase in heart attacks. During the four years, instead of having a box warning deterring most, if not all people from using the drug, the FDA sort of sided with the industry, didn't do anything, Vioxx is now off the market, Celebrex should be off the market.
We are concerned that some nefarious deal has been cut between the FDA and Pfizer who makes Celebrex to say, okay, you ban direct to consumer advertising and we won't ban your drug. We're talking about a couple of billions of dollars of sales. A lot of this goes back 12 years when Congress foolishly passed a law called the Prescription Drug User Fee Act which allows or requires direct cash funding from the drug industry to the FDA. Since that law went into effect, something like 700 to 800 million of cash have gone directly from the industry to the FDA, for the drug review process. If people don't think this affects the attitude that the FDA has toward the industry, they are delusional. And there's no question that during the same period of time, there's been a much kinder and gentler FDA towards the industry, but during the same period of time, there have been an unprecedented number of drugs that shouldn't have come on the market that did, or in the case of Vioxx and Celebrex which looked okay when they came on the market, but a few months later, looked quite dangerous, weren't taken off the market or weren't the subject of black box warnings. There's a whole culture shift at the FDA, and one of the reasons as I mentioned is that the direct funding from the industry. The other is up until the hearing by Senator Grassley a few weeks ago, there's been almost no congressional oversight. The purpose of having tri-part system of government with the judicial, legislative and the executive is for the branches to oversee each other. And in the 1970's and 1980's, not a month went by without a significant Senate or House hearing saying why did you put the drug on the market, why didn’t you take it off the market more quickly. Senator Grassley’s hearing is noteworthy, because it's the first hearing of that kind in 15 years. Direct cash from the industry and almost no congressional oversight has driven the FDA literally into bed with the industry..."


Democracy Now! - New York City is Using Children to Test Experimental AIDS Drugs
"A new BBC documentary exposes how the city of New York has been forcing HIV positive children under its supervision to be used as human guinea pigs in tests for experimental AIDS drug trials.
All of the children in the program were under the legal guidance of the city's child welfare department, the Administration for Children's Services. Most live in foster care or independent homes run on behalf of the local authorities and almost all the children are believed to be African-American or Latino.
The BBC identified pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline as one of the companies that provided the experimental drugs for the tests. In an email to Democracy Now! GlaxoSmithKline stated 'pharmaceutical companies are not directly involved in the recruitment, enrolment or participation of patients in such trials.' GSK went on to say 'the FDA encourages studies in pediatric patients. Clinical trials involving children and orphans are therefore legal and not unusual.'
In the documentary, parents or guardians who refused to consent to the trials claim that children were removed by ACS and placed in foster families or children's homes. Then, acting over their objections, ACS authorized the drug trials..."

Torture and the So-Called War on Terror:

Notably absent from this story is the memo cited in the Salon.com story I posted a link to on December 20 [Rumsfeld Gave Torture 'Marching Orders' in Memo]. It seems some in the media are reluctant to point a finger where it belongs: squarely at the SecDef, who should be held to account.

The NY Times: New F.B.I. Files Describe Abuse of Iraq Inmates
"F.B.I. memorandums portray abuse of prisoners by American military personnel in Iraq that included detainees' being beaten and choked and having lit cigarettes placed in their ears, according to newly released government documents.
The documents, released Monday in connection with a lawsuit accusing the government of being complicit in torture, also include accounts by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who said they had seen detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, being chained in uncomfortable positions for up to 24 hours and left to urinate and defecate on themselves. An agent wrote that in one case a detainee who was nearly unconscious had pulled out much of his hair during the night.
One of the memorandums released Monday was addressed to Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and other senior bureau officials, and it provided the account of someone 'who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees' in Iraq. The memorandum, dated June 24 this year, was an 'Urgent Report,' meaning that the sender regarded it as a priority. It said the witness 'described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings and unauthorized interrogations,'..."

Corporate Welfare in the Guise of National Defense: Billions Spent With Little to Show, Except Profits for Raytheon and Boeing:

Los Angeles Times: Ill-Starred 'Star Wars' Tests
"It should surprise no one that the first test in two years of the 'Star Wars' missile defense system fizzled Wednesday when a 'kill vehicle' never left its silo in the Marshall Islands. The startling thing would have been if the $85-million test had succeeded.
Ever since President Reagan called for this ill-conceived system in March 1983, his conservative acolytes - including President Bush - have been determined to make it a reality despite widespread evidence of its impracticality. Two decades later, it has still gone nowhere despite Bush's rash promise that he would have a limited system in place by the end of 2004.
The government has spent about $130 billion on the program and is slated to invest $50 billion more over the next five years. Yet the only tests that have succeeded were rigged; the missiles being intercepted were equipped with homing devices, something a real attacker probably wouldn't be considerate enough to include. The most recent test before Wednesday's, on Dec. 11, 2002, failed when a warhead didn't detach from its booster rocket.
In the wake of the latest fiasco, Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, claimed the test didn't represent a failure of the system, simply a glitch. This is like a repairman telling you there's nothing wrong with your car just because it won't start, that it simply has a mechanical problem..."

For some background information on the Missile Defense System, please see this Frontline transcript.


The 1997 Story of Media Burying A Reagan Administration Outrage:

Georg Hodel: Hung Out to Dry

The So-Called War on Terror:

Newsweek: 2001 Memo Reveals Push for Broader Presidential Powers
"Just two weeks after the September 11 attacks, a secret memo to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales' office concluded that President Bush had the power to deploy military force 'preemptively' against any terrorist groups or countries that supported them - regardless of whether they had any connection to the attacks on the World Trade Towers or the Pentagon.
The memo, written by Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, argues that there are effectively 'no limits' on the president's authority to wage war - a sweeping assertion of executive power that some constitutional scholars say goes considerably beyond any that had previously been articulated by the department.
Although it makes no reference to Saddam Hussein's government, the 15-page memo also seems to lay a legal groundwork for the president to invade Iraq - without approval of Congress - long before the White House had publicly expressed any intent to do so. 'The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of Sept. 11,' the memo states..."


All of W's Really Good Friends:

AP: Energy Firms Lavish Funds on Inauguration
"More than $4.5 million from the corporate world has flowed to President Bush's inauguration fund, much of it from the energy industry and some of its executives in contributions of $250,000 each..."


Mr. Bush's Priorities: First War, Then Everything Else. And Guess Who Won't Be Paying Their Fair Share?

AP: Bush looking at freezing domestic spending
"The White House is telling federal agencies to expect lean budgets next year, with congressional aides and lobbyists saying President Bush appears ready to propose freezing or even slightly cutting overall domestic spending.
Targeted would be all annually approved programs except for defense and domestic security.
Excluding those two would leave a part of the budget the administration estimates will total $388 billion for the fiscal year that began October 1. Also excluded are automatically made payments like Social Security and interest on the federal debt.
Bush's stringent approach comes as record federal deficits that hit $413 billion last year hinder his ability to pay for overhauling Social Security and extending his tax cuts. He also has tied the budget shortfalls to the weakening dollar, and pledged to reduce red ink to help prop up the currency..."


Bush On Global Warming: America will not have its right to pollute as much as it damn well pleases restricted by any international agreements

NY Times: U.S. Waters Down Global Commitment to Curb Greenhouse Gases
"Two weeks of negotiations at a United Nations conference here on climate change ended early Saturday with a weak pledge to start limited, informal talks on ways to slow down global warming, after the United States blocked efforts to begin more substantive discussions..."


AP: EPA Says 225 Counties Fail Air Standards
"The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday identified 225 counties in 20 states that don't meet new clean air standards designed to protect against one of the tiniest but most harmful pollutants - microscopic soot.
The counties and the District of Columbia will have to move quickly to come into compliance. They have three years to devise a pollution-reduction plan for fine particles and then must meet federal standards by 2010.
Failure to comply could mean a county will have to limit development and its state could lose federal highway dollars.
EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt announced the list, which included 18 fewer counties than the agency identified in a preliminary report in June. He emphasized the agency was for the first time specifically regulating for fine particles, or soot, that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter - 1/30th the width of a human hair. Such pollution comes from power plants, car exhaust, diesel-burning trucks, wood-burning stoves and other sources."

The caveat that needs to be inserted here, but wasn't, is that diesel emissions are in their current state only as a result of the EPA's cowing to the petroleum industry's wishes to delay the implemetation of Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel until 2006, which allows for the use of particulate filters that are capable of removing 95% of particulate emissions. Coal-burning powerplants that are grandfathered out of the regulations that require the use of smoke-stack scrubbers are an additional example of industry pressure influencing public policy at the expense of public health.

Sino-Soviet, no wait... Sino-Russian Rapprochement?

Ray McGovern: Hu's Not on First


U.S. Corporate Media:

The Toronto Star: U.S. media still hiding bad news from Americans
"And now the good news from America's accomplished mission in Iraq ...
The other night on ABC News Nightline, Ted Koppel asked National Public Radio war correspondent Anne Garrels, who has been in Iraq throughout the war, 'When you hear people in this country, Anne, say, look, the media is only giving the negative side of what's going on there, why don't they ever show the good side, what do you tell 'em?'
'I tell them that there isn't much good to show,' she replied, describing how even military commanders have only bad news to share.
Two weeks ago on CNN, Time's Michael Ware, who has been covering Iraq for two years, gave an alarming account of being trapped in his Baghdad compound, which is regularly bombed and encircled by 'kidnap teams.'
He reported that the U.S. military has 'lost control' and that Americans are 'the midwives of the next generation of jihad, of the next Al Qaeda.'
At the end of the exchange, anchor Aaron Brown warned, '(O)ther people see the situation there differently than Michael. We talk to them as well.'
The next day, when the interview was repeated, anchor Carol Lin closed with, 'And of course there are others who disagree with that.'
Never mind that those others never had Iraqi sand in their shoes, let alone been under fire there.
'Freedom is on the march!' 'We're making progress!' 'The terrorists will do all they can to disrupt free elections in Iraq, and they will fail.'
These are just some of the slogans that U.S. President George W. Bush now spouts, while the American cable channels duly carry his speeches live and the American print media give them front-page play..."


Civil Liberties and the So-Called War on Terror:

Washington Post: British 'PATRIOT Act' Reined In by High Court
"Britain's highest court of appeal struck a blow against the government's anti-terrorism policy Thursday by ruling it cannot detain suspected foreign terrorists indefinitely without trial.
In a stinging rebuke to Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, the panel ruled by 8 to 1 that the anti-terrorism act that authorized the detentions violated European human rights laws and were discriminatory because they applied only to foreign nationals and not to British citizens.
'The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these,' wrote Leonard Hoffmann, one of the eight Law Lords in the majority, referring to the anti-terrorism provision. 'That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory,'..."

The NY Times: Ex-Military Lawyers Object to Bush Cabinet Nominee
"Several former high-ranking military lawyers say they are discussing ways to oppose President Bush's nomination of Alberto R. Gonzales to be attorney general, asserting that Mr. Gonzales's supervision of legal memorandums that appeared to sanction harsh treatment of detainees, even torture, showed unsound legal judgment.
Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination are expected to begin next month. While Mr. Gonzales is expected to be confirmed, objections from former generals and admirals would be a setback and an embarrassment for him and the White House.
Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, who served as the Navy's judge advocate general from 1997 to 2000 before he retired, said that while Mr. Gonzales might be a lawyer of some stature, 'I think the role that he played in the one thing that I am familiar with is tremendously shortsighted.'
Mr. Gonzales, as White House counsel, oversaw the drafting of several confidential legal memorandums that critics said sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and opened the door to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq..."

Salon.com - Rumsfeld Gave Torture 'Marching Orders' in Memo

The Washington Post: The Secret C.I.A. Prison in Cuba
"Within the heavily guarded perimeters of the Defense Department's much-discussed Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the CIA has maintained a detention facility for valuable al Qaeda captives that has never been mentioned in public, according to military officials and several current and former intelligence officers.
The buildings used by the CIA are shrouded by high fences covered with thick green mesh plastic and ringed with floodlights, officials said. They sit within the larger Camp Echo complex, which was erected to house the Defense Department's high-value detainees and those awaiting military trials on terrorism charges.
The facility has housed detainees from Pakistan, West Africa, Yemen and other countries under the strictest secrecy, the sources said. 'People are constantly leaving and coming,' said one U.S. official who visited the base in recent months. It is unclear whether the facility is still in operation today. The CIA and the Defense Department declined to comment.
Most international terrorism suspects in U.S. custody are held not by the CIA but by the Defense Department at the Guantanamo Bay prison. They are guaranteed access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and, as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this year, have the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal courts..."


The Cost of War:

The Boston Globe: War funding request may hit $100 billion
"The Bush administration plans to ask for between $80 billion and $100 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, rather than the $70 billion to $75 billion the White House privately told members of Congress before the election, according to Pentagon and White House officials..."


The Revolving Door in DC, Or The Shameless Misuse of Influence:

The NY Times: House's Author of Drug Benefit Joins Lobbyists
"Representative Billy Tauzin, a principal author of the new Medicare drug law, will become president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the chief lobby for brand-name drug companies, the trade group announced Wednesday.
'This industry understands that it's got a problem,' Mr. Tauzin, a Louisiana lawmaker who is retiring from Congress, said in an interview. 'It has to earn the trust and confidence of consumers again.'
Miles D. White, chairman of Abbott Laboratories and of the trade association, sitting next to Mr. Tauzin, said he agreed that the industry had lost the trust of millions of Americans.
Mr. Tauzin, a onetime Democrat who became a Republican in 1995, has a wealth of connections in Congress, where he has served for 24 years.
Drug makers said that the job was not a reward for Mr. Tauzin's work on the Medicare bill, which followed the industry's specifications in many respects. The law was signed by President Bush on Dec. 8, 2003, a few weeks before a lawyer for Mr. Tauzin began talks with the drug trade group..."

Iraq:

IPS: U.S. Military Obstructing Medical Care
"Iraqi doctors at many hospitals have reported raids by coalition forces. Some of the more recent raids have been in Amiriyat al-Fallujah, about 10km to the east of Fallujah, the town to which U.S. forces have laid bloody siege. Amiriyat al-Fallujah has been the source of several reported resistance attacks on U.S. forces.
The main hospital in Amiriyat al-Fallujah was raided twice recently by U.S. soldiers and members of the Iraqi National Guard, doctors say. 'The first time was November 29 at 5:40am, and the second time was the following day,' said a doctor at the hospital who did not want to give his real name for fear of U.S. reprisals.
In the first raid about 150 U.S. soldiers and at least 40 members of the Iraqi National Guard stormed the small hospital, he said.
'They were yelling loudly at everyone, both doctors and patients alike,' the young doctor said. 'They divided into groups and were all over the hospital. They broke the gates outside, they broke the doors of the garage, and they raided our supply room where our food and supplies are. They broke all the interior doors of the hospital, as well as every exterior door,'..."


Why People Votes Against Their Interests:

Ira Chernus: The Electoral Fear Factor
"...The economy and Iraq were indeed named by many voters as the most critical issues in this election. But that hardly explains Bush's success. Those should have been his weak spots. Kerry counted on strong support from middle-income voters, who saw jobs disappearing all around them and little real wage growth for those who kept their jobs. Yet the Bush vote in the $30,000 to $75,000 bracket was no lower than his overall vote, perhaps even a tad higher. Those folks were not voting their economic self-interest..."


...Or Did They?

William Rivers Pitt: Proof of Ohio Election Fraud Exposed


Star-Wars-Lite: The Multi-Billion Project That Continues to Fail:

NY Times: Test of U.S. shield fizzles: printer friendly version
"An important test of the United States' emerging missile-defense system ended in an $85-million failure on Wednesday as an interceptor rocket failed to launch as scheduled from the Marshall Islands, the Pentagon said.
A target rocket carrying a mock warhead was successfully launched from Kodiak, Alaska.
But as the interceptor rocket was preparing to launch from the Marshalls 16 minutes later it automatically shut down because of 'an unknown anomaly,' the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said...
...Before the test Wednesday, the Pentagon agency had conducted eight tests with interceptor vehicles, scoring hits in five. Some critics of the Missile Defense Agency, which has spent more than $80 billion since 1985, say the entire program is unrealistic, and that the tests have been scripted. On the contrary, the agency says. It says the tests are designed to answer specific questions and 'to build confidence in the system that we are working to design,'..."


The Environment:

Pentagon to Jettison Environmental Responsibilities


Official Lies:

NY Times: Rumsfeld Revives Covert Propaganda, Critics Charge
"The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say.
Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations.
Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say - a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War.
The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches - whose charters call for giving truthful information to the media and the public - and the world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations.
The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets..."


The So-Called War on Terror as a War on Civil and Human Rights:

Le Nouvel Observateur: Were Detainees Guinea Pigs at Guantanamo?
"Jacques Debray is the lawyer for Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, two of the four French citizens released from Guantánamo in July 2004 and imprisoned in France since then. After the sworn declaration of an Australian detainee detailing abuses, he goes back over the conditions of detention on the American base in Cuba and asserts that his clients, who were forced to take suspicious medicines, wonder whether they were not the victims of experimentation..."

The Sunday Herald (UK) - Victim of Latin American torture claims Abu Ghraib abuse was official US policy

Undoing the New Deal is a Bad Deal for America:

Adam Cohen: What's New in the Legal World? A Growing Campaign to Undo the New Deal
"...In pre-1937 America, workers were exploited, factories were free to pollute, and old people were generally poor when they retired. This is not an agenda the public would be likely to sign onto today if it were debated in an election. But conservatives, who like to complain about activist liberal judges, could achieve their anti-New Deal agenda through judicial activism on the right. Judges could use the so-called Constitution-in-Exile to declare laws on workplace safety, environmental protection and civil rights unconstitutional..."

Civil Rights in America:

NY Times Editorial: A Watchdog Muted
"...Watchdogs occasionally bite, of course. While some presidents have tolerated this, others have not - including President Bush, who has now appointed Gerald Reynolds, a conservative African-American lawyer, to succeed Ms. Berry as commissioner.
An equal-opportunity critic, Ms. Berry has harangued presidents of both parties for nearly 25 years. What finally did her in, apparently, was a 166-page report criticizing Mr. Bush's leadership on civil rights that appeared in draft form on the commission's Web site before the election. It was ultimately rejected by the commission's conservative majority, but Ms. Berry sent it to the White House anyway with a plea to Mr. Bush to 'embrace the core freedoms and values enshrined in our civil rights laws.'
Mr. Bush is unlikely to get such lectures from Mr. Reynolds, an energy company lawyer who briefly ran the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department. Mr. Reynolds has described affirmative action as a 'big lie,' is generally opposed to preferential treatment for members of minorities and has said the civil rights groups overstate the problem of discrimination. This approach may make for warmer relations with the White House, but it hardly seems likely to keep the commission on the leading edge of the struggle for civil rights."


Intelligence Reform:

NY Times Editorial: Buying Intelligence Blind
"It is good to see four Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee taking the rare step of publicly objecting to a major program in the secret intelligence budget, believed to be about $40 billion. Under the current excessive rules, they are not able to identify the program specifically, but they describe it as being wasteful, unnecessary and dangerous. Outside experts believe that they are probably referring to a stealth satellite system whose ballooning costs have made it perhaps the single largest item in the intelligence budget, while its justification has grown increasingly dubious.
For two successive years, according to the Democratic senators, bipartisan majorities of the intelligence committee have tried to kill the program. Both times the committee's informed judgment was overridden by appropriators who have been only too eager to give the Bush administration any high-tech intelligence spending it seeks, even at the cost of taking money away from more pressing but more prosaic intelligence needs. Unable to make the debate public, Senator John Rockefeller IV, the intelligence committee's ranking Democrat, wants the full Senate to sit in closed session to educate itself.
There are plenty of details about intelligence operations that need to be kept secret. But the size and broad outlines of the budget are not among them. It is deeply embedded in the culture of intelligence bureaucracies to want to keep cutting-edge concepts like stealth satellites secret. But it is hard for the rest of us to understand. This administration endlessly boasts about an unproven future capacity to shoot down enemy missiles. Why turn shy about stealth satellite technologies that experts have assumed America has been experimenting with for years? The first stealth satellite was reportedly launched in 1990, and another in the late 1990's.
Intelligence spending is deadly serious. America's future depends on it. Yet the two great intelligence failures of recent times - inadequate monitoring of Al Qaeda before 9/11 and misinterpreting the data on Iraqi weapons - were not caused by a shortage of stealth satellites. The hundreds of millions of dollars going into this program every year - projected to total $9.5 billion before it reaches fruition - should instead be devoted to rebuilding human intelligence networks and beefing up translation skills. Cheaper, nonstealthy satellites can monitor hard-to-reach locations more cost-effectively.
While we can only speculate, the Senate must critically debate this issue next year if it is asked again to rubber-stamp what seems to be a badly misdirected budget."


Bush Showers Praise on His Henchmen:

Let's remember that Bremer had the CPA enact Order 39, privatizing the 200 Iraqi state companies; decreeing that foreign companies can own 100% of Iraqi banks, mines and factories; and allowing them to export 100% of their profits.
Would Americans tolerate foreign firms exporting 100% of their profits out of the U.S.?
Of course not, but Mr. Bush thinks it's just fine for those who win the war to make the rules.
Again, it's a case of 'Do as we say, not as we do.'

NY Times: Bush Honors 3 Ex-Officials Instrumental to Iraq Policy
"President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom today to three men who he said had 'made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty': Gen. Tommy R. Franks, George J. Tenet and L. Paul Bremer III...
...Mr. Bremer 'will be remembered for his superb work in laying the foundations of a new democracy in the Middle East,' Mr. Bush said. The president said Mr. Bremer had 'worked day and night, in difficult, dangerous conditions' to lead Iraq into a new era..."

...the lengths some within the administration are willing to go to replace a top international diplomat who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq:

Washington Post: U.S. Caught Spying on U.N. Nuclear Chief
"The Bush administration has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei's phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to three U.S. government officials.
But the diplomatic offensive will not be easy. The administration has failed to come up with a candidate willing to oppose ElBaradei, who has run the agency since 1997, and there is disagreement among some senior officials over how hard to push for his removal, and what the diplomatic costs of a public campaign against him could be.
Although eavesdropping, even on allies, is considered a well-worn tool of national security and diplomacy, the efforts against ElBaradei demonstrate the lengths some within the administration are willing to go to replace a top international diplomat who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq and is now taking a cautious approach on Iran..."


The CIA and the Contras Didn't 'Just Say No':

Robert Parry: America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb
"In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy - the Reagan-Bush administration's protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s...
...Even after the CIA’s inspector general issued his findings in 1998, the major newspapers could not muster the talent or the courage to explain those extraordinary government admissions to the American people. Nor did the big newspapers apologize for their unfair treatment of Gary Webb. Foreshadowing the media incompetence that would fail to challenge George W. Bush’s case for war with Iraq five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the CIA’s confession from the American people..."

Pushing The Ukraine Westward:

AP: U.S. money has helped opposition in Ukraine
"The Bush administration has spent more than $65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite an exit poll indicating he won last month's disputed runoff election.
U.S. officials say the activities don't amount to interference in Ukraine's election, as Russian President Vladimir Putin alleges, but are part of the $1 billion the State Department spends each year trying to build democracy worldwide.
No U.S. money was sent directly to Ukrainian political parties, the officials say. In most cases, it was funneled through organizations such as the Eurasia Foundation or through groups aligned with Republicans and Democrats that organized election training, with human rights forums or with independent news outlets..."


Iraq & Reconstruction:

CBS: Deserters: We Won't Go To Iraq
"The Pentagon says more than 5,500 servicemen have deserted since the war started in Iraq..."

LA Times: Pentagon Ousts Official under F.B.I. Investigation

Rep. Henry A. Waxman: Halliburton Iraq Contracts Pass $10 Billion Mark
"The value of Halliburton's Iraq contracts has crossed the $10 billion threshold. Halliburton has now received $8.3 billion in Iraq work under its LOGCAP troop support contract and $2.5 billion under its no-bid Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) contract, a total of $10.8 billion.
The mounting value of the contracts has been accompanied by a growing list of concerns about Halliburton's performance. Over the last year, government auditors have issued at least nine reports criticizing Halliburton's Iraq work, and there are multiple criminal investigations into overcharging and kickbacks involving Halliburton's contracts. Former Halliburton employees have testified before Congress about egregious instances of over billing. Despite these concerns, the Bush Administration continues to reject the recommendations of its auditors that 15% of Halliburton's LOGCAP reimbursements be withheld until the company can provide better substantiation for its charges..."

Newsweek: You're Voting for Whom?
"There was a stunning inclusion in the list, as well - Ahmad Chalabi and his exile-based Iraqi National Congress party. Chalabi, initially supported by the American government as a potential replacement for Saddam, has fallen into disfavor with the United States after a series of scandals and even allegations that he was working with Iranian intelligence. The State Department had long butted heads with the Pentagon over Chalabi, and INC figures have been accused in Congress of fabricating evidence on weapons of mass destruction to provoke the United States into invading Iraq. Chalabi's fall from grace culminated in a raid by U.S. troops on his homes and offices in Baghdad seven months ago, and Allawi's government briefly brought corruption charges against him. In addition, he has negligible support among non-exile Iraqis. But Chalabi has close ties with Iran, and recently has forged a relationship with both Sistani, an Iranian-born cleric, and with Sadr..."


Bush's Miserable Choice To Replace Ashcroft Headed for the Supreme Court?:

James Schamus: Blocking Mr. Torture
"...George Bush is grooming Alberto Gonzales, White House legal counsel and a long-time political ally from Texas, for the Supreme Court. The first step in this process is to install him as attorney general. As White House sources told the New York Times, his Senate confirmation process for attorney general will be a dry run for a future Supreme Court nomination.
In addition to serving as the president's lawyer, Gonzales is, in fact, Mr. Torture himself: the man who laid out for the Bush administration the arguments for voiding the Geneva Conventions and end-running the War Crimes Act, thereby providing legal cover for the horrors inflicted on those unfortunate enough to disappear into the new American global gulag.
Gonzales' January 25, 2002 memorandum sanctioning the Bush administration's torturing ways has become an infamous addition to the post-Orwellian canon. In it, he argues that President Bush runs the risk of being prosecuted as a war criminal - unless he decrees through an executive order that what Gonzales termed the 'quaint' Geneva Conventions don't apply to his own behavior. To put it another way, Bush doesn't break the law if he decides that he's above the law..."


More Blatantly Criminal Bush Environmental Policy:

Stewing in Filth: EPA to Allow Massive Dumping of Sewage
"Millions of Americans will face an increased threat of bacteria, viruses and parasites in their water thanks to a new federal policy allowing sewer operators to dump inadequately treated sewage into the nation's waterways. The Environmental Protection Agency's new plan, which reverses a current rule requiring sewer operators to fully treat their waste in all but the most extreme circumstances, will allow operators to routinely dump sewage anytime it rains. The EPA is expected to issue the policy sometime in the next few weeks...
...For the last 50 years standard sewage treatment has involved a two-step process: solids removal, and biological treatment to kill bacteria, viruses and parasites. The new policy allows facilities to routinely bypass the second step and 'blend' partially treated sewage with fully treated wastewater before discharging it into waterways. (Some treatment facilities include a third step in which they use chlorine to disinfect sewage, but disinfection does not kill viruses and many other pathogens.)
Currently sewer operators are allowed to blend partially treated sewage only in extreme cases, such as hurricanes and tropical storms, and when there is no feasible alternative, such as adding more capacity to handle sewage or storing it until it can be fully treated. The new policy will allow plants to dump partially treated sewage anytime it rains or snows...
...The Bush administration's fiscal year 2005 budget called for cutting $492 million from the Clean Water Act State Revolving Fund, which loans money to states to help pay for sewage treatment. Congress ultimately cut $250 million from the fund..."


The GOP-controlled Capitol:

LA Times: Deeper into Debt to Privatize Social Security, Bush Decrees

Newsweek: DeLay: More Cash - And More Questions
"Faced with mounting lawyers' bills to fend off ethics complaints and a grand-jury probe in Texas, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is increasing efforts to raise money for his legal-defense fund. But DeLay, who has raked in more than $400,000 for the fund since last July, could face new questions over how he's raised the cash in the past. A study to be released this week by Public Citizen, a watchdog group frequently critical of DeLay, finds the Texas congressman has received seven checks for the defense fund totaling $9,500 from lobbyists or members of law firms registered to lobby the Congress. House rules in effect since 1996 prohibit members from accepting contributions for legal-defense funds from lobbyists. 'It's a clear-cut violation of House rules,' says Conor Kenny of Public Citizen..."

The Washington Post: Intelligence Bill Greatly Expands Police Powers
"The intelligence package that Congress approved this week includes a series of little-noticed measures that would broaden the government's power to conduct terrorism investigations, including provisions to loosen standards for FBI surveillance warrants and allow the Justice Department to more easily detain suspects without bail.
Other law-enforcement-related measures in the bill - expected to be signed by President Bush next week - include an expansion of the criteria that constitute 'material support' to terrorist groups and the ability to share U.S. grand jury information with foreign governments in urgent terrorism cases.
These and other changes designed to strengthen federal counterterrorism programs have long been sought by the Bush administration and the Justice Department but have languished in Congress, in part because of opposition from civil liberties advocates.
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo characterized the measures as 'common-sense reforms aimed at preventing terrorist attacks,'..."

The So-Called War on Terror:

Democracy Now! - Intel Agent Strapped to Gurney and Flown Out of Iraq by U.S. Army After Reporting Torture of Detainees
"...On June 15, 2003, Sgt. Frank 'Greg' Ford, a counterintelligence agent in the National Guard stationed in Samarra told his commanding officer, Capt. Victor Artiga, that he had witnessed five incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at his base, and requested a formal investigation.
Thirty-six hours later, Ford, a 49-year-old with over 30 years of military service in the Coast Guard, Army and Navy, was ordered by U.S. Army medical personnel to lie down on a gurney. He was then strapped down, loaded onto a military plane and medevac'd to a military medical center outside the country - even though there was nothing wrong with him..."

Steve Weissman: Nukes, Neo-Cons, and the Bush Who Cried Wolf Again

Washington Post: Officer Alleges CIA Retaliation
"A senior CIA operative who handled sensitive informants in Iraq asserts that CIA managers asked him to falsify his reporting on weapons of mass destruction and retaliated against him after he refused.
The operative, who remains under cover, asserts in a lawsuit made public yesterday that a co-worker warned him in 2001 'that CIA management planned to 'get him' for his role in reporting intelligence contrary to official CIA dogma.'
The subject of that reporting has been blacked out by the CIA, and the word 'Iraq' does not appear in the heavily redacted version of the legal complaint, but the remaining language and context make clear that the officer's work related to prewar intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
In the lawsuit, the officer asserts that CIA managers retaliated against him for refusing their demands by beginning a counterintelligence investigation of allegations that he had sex with a female asset and by initiating an inspector general's investigation into allegations that he stole money meant to be used to pay human assets.
Those investigations, the lawsuit asserts, were 'initiated for the sole purpose of discrediting him and retaliating against him for questioning the integrity of the WMD reporting . . . and for refusing to falsify his intelligence reporting to support the politically mandated conclusion' of matters that are redacted in the lawsuit..."

Tax Policy:

Paul Krugman: Inventing a Crisis
"Privatizing Social Security - replacing the current system, in whole or in part, with personal investment accounts - won't do anything to strengthen the system's finances. If anything, it will make things worse. Nonetheless, the politics of privatization depend crucially on convincing the public that the system is in imminent danger of collapse, that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it..."


Iraq:

Naomi Klein: You asked for my evidence, Mr Ambassador. Here it is
"...The first major operation by US marines and Iraqi soldiers was to storm Falluja general hospital, arresting doctors and placing the facility under military control. The New York Times reported that 'the hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumours about heavy casual ties', noting that 'this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons'. The Los Angeles Times quoted a doctor as saying that the soldiers 'stole the mobile phones' at the hospital - preventing doctors from communicating with the outside world.
But this was not the worst of the attacks on health workers. Two days earlier, a crucial emergency health clinic was bombed to rubble, as well as a medical supplies dispensary next door. Dr Sami al-Jumaili, who was working in the clinic, says the bombs took the lives of 15 medics, four nurses and 35 patients. The Los Angeles Times reported that the manager of Falluja general hospital 'had told a US general the location of the downtown makeshift medical centre' before it was hit.
Whether the clinic was targeted or destroyed accidentally, the effect was the same: to eliminate many of Falluja's doctors from the war zone. As Dr Jumaili told the Independent on November 14: 'There is not a single surgeon in Falluja.' When fighting moved to Mosul, a similar tactic was used: on entering the city, US and Iraqi forces immediately seized control of the al-Zaharawi hospital..."

NY Times: 2 C.I.A. Reports Offer Warnings on Iraq's Path
"A classified cable sent by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon, according to government officials.
The cable, sent late last month as the officer ended a yearlong tour, presented a bleak assessment on matters of politics, economics and security, the officials said. They said its basic conclusions had been echoed in briefings presented by a senior C.I.A. official who recently visited Iraq..."


The So-Called U.S. Ally, Pakistan

Robert Scheer: Pakistan and the True WMD Threat


When Regulation Fails:

NY Times: At F.D.A., Strong Drug Ties and Less Monitoring
"When federal drug officials suspected in 1992 that a popular allergy pill might cause heart problems, they turned to their own scientists. Their trial confirmed the danger, and the drug was pulled from the market.
Eight years later, similar worries surrounded the arthritis pill Vioxx. But by then, the Food and Drug Administration had shifted gears, slashing its laboratories and network of independent drug safety experts in favor of hiring more people to approve drugs, changes that arose under an unusual agreement that has left the agency increasingly reliant on and bound by drug company money. Discovering Vioxx's dangers would take four more years.
That delay has led to a firestorm of criticism. Members of Congress, an internal F.D.A. whistleblower and prominent medical journals have said the agency is incapable of uncovering the perils of drugs that have been approved and are in wide distribution. Some have accused it of being cozy with drug makers..."


Energy Policy:

Thomas Friedman: 21st Century Fuel

The So-Called War on Terror and Your (Fleeting?) Constitutional Rights:

AP: U.S. OKs Evidence Gained Through Torture
"Evidence gained by torture can be used by the U.S. military in deciding whether to imprison a foreigner indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an enemy combatant, the government says.
Statements produced under torture have been inadmissible in U.S. courts for about 70 years. But the U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of 550 foreigners as enemy combatants at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are allowed to use such evidence, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle acknowledged at a U.S. District Court hearing Thursday.
Some of the prisoners have filed lawsuits challenging their detention without charges for up to three years so far. At the hearing, Boyle urged District Judge Richard J. Leon to throw their cases out.
Attorneys for the prisoners argued that some were held solely on evidence gained by torture, which they said violated fundamental fairness and U.S. due process standards. But Boyle argued in a similar hearing Wednesday that the detainees 'have no constitutional rights enforceable in this court,'..."


U.S. Mass-Media:

Norman Solomon: Media in the Winter of Our "Disremorse"
"...Many millions of Americans would tell a suitably inquiring journalist that they don't really regret John Kerry's loss -- that what they find horrific is the new four-year lease on the White House for an administration with an unrepentant track record of mendacity and extreme ideological zeal.
With two federal branches under the control of those zealots, the final arbiter of the third branch -- the Supreme Court -- is now under severe threat of wink-and-nod judicial fundamentalism. More than ever, in this context, journalism is a thin yet vital reed. Protection of civil liberties and abortion rights is at imminent risk. Yet the news media keep giving enormous deference to the USA's bastions of consolidated economic and electoral power.
Absent from daily news coverage is remorse.
So, the major media outlets of the United States are entering this winter in a resolute state of 'disremorse' -- about 180 degrees from any sense of national apology or expressed regret. In the aftermath of a 51 percent victory for the Rove-Cheney-Bush regime on Election Day, the breast-beating and halo-preening exercises have intensified. And while a cast of characters -- Ashcroft, Powell, Ridge, etc. -- heads toward the exits, virtually interchangeable players step into their roles.
With all the comings and goings, remorse is still light-years away as top officials speak and news media report. No need to mention people who don't have a home; no need to focus on the children and adults with paltry health care, or on the overall human impacts of so much scarcity in the midst of great wealth. These profound concerns really matter in people's lives. Yet it's as though the reigning politicians and media have found ways to take our minds off our minds.
The nerve-blocking anesthetics of mass media impede the flow of feeling in unauthorized directions. Cause and effect are disconnected, so that it seems unavoidable and natural for children to live in poverty across town or for U.S. troops to be killing and dying in Iraq. Right now, it's a struggle to disrupt the numbing media chatter about miscalculations and mistakes -- to insist on acknowledgment of moral culpability. America's winter of disremorse is not about nature, it's about a lack of nurture for what remains frozen: our capacity to innovate and cooperate sufficiently to stop the 'leaders' who destroy life in our names."


Bush's Cabinet Reshuffle:

Newsday: Kerik nomination is a ticking time bomb
"...'He couldn't run the Rikers commissary without getting greedy and making a mess, in a jam,' one correction veteran said. 'Now he's gonna be in charge of the Department of Homeland Security? Let's just hope the terrorists don't decide to come back.'
This former subordinate was referring to just one of many petty scandals that have hung over Kerik's career. When he ran Correction, nearly $1 million of tobacco-company rebates were diverted into an obscure foundation Kerik was president of. This was for cigarettes bought with taxpayer money and then sold at inflated prices to jail inmates. But this rebate money - would kickbacks be a better word? - got spent entirely outside the normal rules for public funds..."


Intelligence Reform:

Thomas Powers: Secret Intelligence and the 'War on Terror'

Ray McGovern: All Mosquitos, No Swamp; No Elephants Either

Michael Scheuer: Why I Resigned from the CIA

'Just Don't Have Sex' is not Sex Education

Neither is lying to children about the facts, because the facts are do not fit conveniently into your ideology...

Washington Post: Some Abstinence Programs Mislead Teens, Report Says
"Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals 'can result in pregnancy,' a congressional staff analysis has found.
Those and other assertions are examples of the 'false, misleading, or distorted information' in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex. But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a critic of the administration who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.
Several million children ages 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since the efforts began in 1999. Waxman's staff reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula -- those used by at least five programs apiece.
The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact.

Among the misconceptions cited by Waxman's investigators:
• A 43-day-old fetus is a 'thinking person.'
• HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can be spread via sweat and tears.
• Condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse.

One curriculum, called 'Me, My World, My Future,' teaches that women who have an abortion 'are more prone to suicide' and that as many as 10 percent of them become sterile. This contradicts the 2001 edition of a standard obstetrics textbook that says fertility is not affected by elective abortion, the Waxman report said..."


Bad Translations Lead To Bad Intelligence?

James Ridgeway: At a Loss for Words
"Among the unanswered questions of 9-11 is the part played by the FBI in handling the various tips and information pouring through its translation section at the Washington, D.C., field office. It is in this division that certified language specialists with top secret security clearances handle the most sensitive information, from wiretaps to face-to-face interview translations between an investigating agent and a suspect. The translators often have inordinate power. Because of their expertise (or rather, the limited number of languages spoken by their bosses), translators often make the decisions on which cases to fully translate and which not to bother with. Errors can creep in: Translators may misunderstand a dialect and thus lose the meaning or context of information. On occasion, some translators' grasp of English is so poor that they cannot convey nuances of the speakers.
This division is already under fire from the Justice Department's inspector general and whistle-blowers, most notably Sibel Edmonds, who was fired from her job as a Farsi translator when she protested the way the work was being handled. Since Edmonds began speaking out, others have come forward.
A November 8 letter to the Justice Department from Senate Judiciary chair Charles Grassley and ranking minority member Patrick Leahy told of one such case: 'A current member of the staff of Senator Grassley has continued to have discussions over the past year with a current contract linguist for the FBI. The allegations made by this current employee are very troubling. Specifically, this employee articulated that translators are often deficient in their abilities to translate into English. The employee noted that some translators who are presently employed by the FBI or who are employed by contractors may in fact fail the English test, but still be provided a passing grade surreptitiously because of personal contacts among the translator staff. This employee also noted that supervisors charged with ensuring that materials are translated accurately are often deficient in their own translating abilities.'
Edmonds, whose previous letters to the two senators were marked 'classified' by John Ashcroft's Justice Department, purportedly in the interests of national security, is readying a federal court appeal to the gag order. She complained to her superiors that translators were unable to handle the languages in which they had been certified. For example, in one case, a man did not have proficiency in basic English, but was hired under pressure from family members who also had worked for the FBI. This man, according to Edmonds, not only was 'placed in sole charge of translating for some of the most important/sensitive intelligence investigations, he was also sent to Guantánamo Bay to translate information collected from the detainees,'..."


Isn't Lying An Offense Punishable By Court Martial Under the Military Code of Conduct?

LA Times: PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror
"On the evening of Oct. 14, a young Marine spokesman near Fallouja appeared on CNN and made a dramatic announcement.
'Troops crossed the line of departure,' 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert declared, using a common military expression signaling the start of a major campaign. 'It's going to be a long night.' CNN, which had been alerted to expect a major news development, reported that the long-awaited offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Fallouja had begun.
In fact, the Fallouja offensive would not kick off for another three weeks. Gilbert's carefully worded announcement was an elaborate psychological operation - or 'psy-op' - intended to dupe insurgents in Fallouja and allow U.S. commanders to see how guerrillas would react if they believed U.S. troops were entering the city, according to several Pentagon officials.
In the hours after the initial report, CNN's Pentagon reporters were able to determine that the Fallouja operation had not, in fact, begun.
'As the story developed, we quickly made it clear to our viewers exactly what was going on in and around Fallouja,' CNN spokesman Matthew Furman said.
Officials at the Pentagon and other U.S. national security agencies said the CNN incident was not an isolated feint - the type used throughout history by armies to deceive their enemies - but part of a broad effort underway within the Bush administration to use information to its advantage in the war on terrorism..."


Iran In Bush's Sights:

Steve Weissman: Part II: Nukes, Neo-Cons, and the Bush Who Cried Wolf
"What are Iran's nuclear aims? Do the oil-rich Ayatollahs simply want to use atomic energy to generate electricity, as they insist? Or do they seek to join Pakistan, India, and Israel as a regional nuclear power?
As far as anyone on the outside can tell, the intelligence looks iffy, as it usually does when the questions count. If Bush, the CIA, or the Neo-Con Michael Ledeen and his amen corner had a smoking gun, they would hardly shy away from letting the rest of us know.
Even worse, the spooks are sending mixed messages. The CIA has just warned Congress that Tehran is 'vigorously' pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program, while intelligence officers, past and present, tell reporters at the Los Angeles Times that 'the U.S. intelligence community has few sources of reliable information on any illicit arms activities by the Islamic republic.'
The best the CIA can do is to recycle 'intelligence reports' from an Iraqi opposition group - the Mujihadeen Khalq - which has a vested interested in sucking the United States into war with Iran, much as Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress did in Iraq. The MK's reports could be true or complete rubbish. We have no way to know, and every reason to disbelieve them.
Once bit, twice shy.
A similar caution applies to journalistic reports like the recent story in Germany's leading weekly Der Spiegel, which claimed that Iran was digging a tunnel near the historic city of Isfahan to house a secret uranium enrichment facility. The magazine, which is something like Time, cited secret intelligence files, which could be either authentic or what the KGB liked to call disinformatzya.
Good journalists, which Der Spiegel has, know the dilemma, and generally seek outside sources to confirm whatever they get from their intelligence contacts, who often speak with forked tongues..."


Bush's Miserable Choice for AG:

Nat Hentoff: Worse Than Ashcroft
"As the February 11 Financial Times reports, Gonzales, as counsel to the president, worked 'to bar top White House officials from testifying before the commission that investigated the September 11 attacks.' Nor has Gonzales shown any interest in an investigation of the accountability of leading administration officials, including their compliant lawyers, for the egregious abuses of the Abu Ghraib prisoners, to which Gonzales contributed.
Bluntly, an editorial in Financial Times (not a notably radical newspaper) says of Gonzales: 'As well as being a longtime personal friend of the president, he is publicly associated with discussion within the administration of how to sidestep national as well as international constraints on the use of torture in interrogation in the prison camp at Guantánamo.'
If there ever is an honest investigation of who is ultimately responsible for what happened there and at Abu Ghraib, Mr. Gonzales might well be in the dock, along with Donald Rumsfeld and a number of the defense secretary's closest aides..."


Paul Wolfowitz to Congress on Iraq: [the] "oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years… We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." Well, maybe not, Paul:

NBC: What happened to Iraq's oil money?
"After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the United States took control of all of the Iraqi government's bank accounts, including the income from oil sales. The United Nations approved the financial takeover, and President Bush vowed to spend Iraq's money wisely. But now critics are raising serious questions about how well the United States handled billions of dollars in Iraqi oil funds.
Iraq's oil resources generate billions of dollars — money the United States promised to protect after overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
Now, Frank Willis, a former senior American official in Iraq, tells NBC News the United States failed to safeguard the oil money known as the Development Fund for Iraq.
'There was, in my mind, pervasive leakage in assets of Iraq, and to some extent, those assets were squandered,' says Willis..."


The Environment:

Greenwatch Today: EPA Tests Find Rocket Fuel in Nation's Milk, Lettuce
"Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tests released this week have confirmed the presence of perchlorate - an explosive additive in solid rocket fuel - in almost every sample of lettuce and milk taken in a nationwide investigation. Perchlorate, leaking from military bases and defense contrator's facilities, is known to cause regional water pollution, resulting in serious health effects.
The FDA investigation found the toxic additive in 217 of 232 samples of lettuce and milk from 15 states, including areas not previously known for perchlorate contamination. According to the Environmental Protection Agency's perchlorate coordinator for the southwest and Pacific region, Kevin Mayer, the FDA results show that this regional pollution problem is now exposing people across the entire U.S. to the toxin..."

In A Land Where Money Equals Speech:

CBS: Top Corporate PACs Favored GOP
"The top-giving corporate political action committees didn't hedge their bets in the fall elections despite the narrow division between the GOP and Democrats in Congress.
They favored Republican candidates 10-to-1.
Of 268 corporate PACs that donated $100,000 or more to presidential and congressional candidates from January 2003 through the middle of last month, 245 gave the majority of their contributions to GOP hopefuls, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Political Money Line campaign finance tracking service..."

Media in A Nuclear Democracy:

Norman Solomon: News Media in the 60th Year of the Nuclear Age
"Top officials in Washington are now promoting jitters about Iran's nuclear activities, while media outlets amplify the message. A confrontation with Tehran is on the second-term Bush agenda. So, we're encouraged to obliquely think about the unthinkable.
But no one can get very far trying to comprehend the enormity of nuclear weapons. They've shadowed human consciousness for six decades. From the outset, deception has been key...
...Current alarms, wailing about an alleged Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons, are being set off by the same Bush administration officials who declared that an invasion of Iraq was imperative because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As we now know, he didn't. But that hasn't stopped the Bush team from launching the same kind of media campaign against Iran - based on unverified claims by Iranian exiles with a track record of inaccuracy and a clear motive to pull Washington into military action. Sound familiar?
We ought to be able to recognize what's wrong with U.S. officials who lecture Iran about the evils of nuclear-arms proliferation while winking at Israel's arsenal, estimated to include 200 nuclear weapons.
When Einstein called for 'the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world,' he was describing a need that news media ought to help fill. But instead, mostly we get the official stories: dumbed-down, simplistic, and - yes - narrowly nationalistic. The themes are those of Washington's powerful: our nukes good, our allies' nukes pretty good, unauthorized nukes very bad.
That sort of propaganda drumbeat won't be convincing to people who doubt that a Christian Bomb is good and a Jewish Bomb is good but an Islamic Bomb is bad. You don't have to be an Einstein to understand that people are rarely persuaded by hypocritical messages along the lines of 'Do as we say, not as we do,'..."


Remaking The Judicial Branch, When It Suits The Congressional Majority:

Fox News: Future of 9th Circuit Under Review
"For many conservatives, the words '9th Circuit' mean more than just a federal appeals court in California. The words embody everything they think is wrong with liberal activism, West Coast politics and the judges who tried to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Those same conservatives think their new clout following President Bush's re-election may help put some weight behind a movement to split up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, leaving the 9th in California, creating a new 12th Circuit for neighboring Idaho, Arizona, Montana and Nevada; and a new 13th Circuit for Washington, Alaska and Oregon..."


In the Ukraine:

The Guardian (UK) - US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev
"...Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.
Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.
Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko..."


Will More Poor Intelligence Lead To Another Preemptive Attack?

LA Times: U.S. Lacks Reliable Data on Iran Arms
"Although convinced that Iran is 'vigorously' pursuing programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the U.S. intelligence community has few sources of reliable information on any illicit arms activities by the Islamic republic, current and former intelligence officials and Middle East experts say.
The United States has struggled to get more than glimpses and incomplete accounts of Tehran's weapons programs, they say, despite the fact that American spy agencies are in a better position to collect information on Iran since U.S.-led invasions and occupations of two of the country's neighbors in the last three years.
The dearth of quality intelligence has complicated American efforts to convince other nations to more aggressively confront Iran, and accounts for the caution expressed by some U.S. intelligence officials last week when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he had seen important new evidence that Iran was pursuing ways to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.
'There are parts of the Iranian world that are not impenetrable,' said a former senior CIA official who left the agency several months ago. The CIA and other U.S. spy services have been able to get a steady stream of reports on political developments inside the regime, he said, and have had some success tracking Iran's support of terrorist networks, including Hezbollah..."

Iraq:

Naomi Klein: Smoking while Iraq burns

AP: Audit: Halliburton lost track of U.S. property in Iraq
"A third or more of the government property Halliburton Co. was paid to manage for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq could not be located by auditors, investigative reports to Congress show.
Halliburton's KBR subsidiary 'did not effectively manage government property' and auditors could not locate hundreds of CPA items worth millions of dollars in Iraq and Kuwait this summer and fall, Inspector General Stuart Bowen reported to Congress in two reports.
Bowen's findings mark the latest bad news for Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, which is the focus of both a criminal investigation into alleged fuel price gouging and an FBI inquiry into possible favoritism from the Bush administration.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that FBI agents have extensively interviewed an Army contracting officer who last month went public with allegations that the Bush administration was improperly awarding contracts to Halliburton without competitive bidding..."