Observations on current events

The Retaliatory Leak:

Frank Rich: One Step Closer to the Big Enchilada
"To believe that the Bush-Cheney scandals will be behind us anytime soon you'd have to believe that the Nixon-Agnew scandals peaked when G. Gordon Liddy and his bumbling band were nailed for the Watergate break-in. But Watergate played out for nearly two years after the gang that burglarized Democratic headquarters was indicted by a federal grand jury; it even dragged on for more than a year after Nixon took 'responsibility' for the scandal, sacrificed his two top aides and weathered the indictments of two first-term cabinet members. In those ensuing months, America would come to see that the original petty crime was merely the leading edge of thematically related but wildly disparate abuses of power that Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, would name 'the White House horrors,'...
...The 601-page report from the special presidential commission led by Laurence Silberman and Charles Robb, hailed at its March release as a 'sharp critique' by Mr. Bush, contains only a passing mention of Dick Cheney. It has no mention whatsoever of Mr. Libby or Karl Rove or their semicovert propaganda operation (the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG) created to push all that dead-wrong intel. Nor does it mention Douglas Feith, the first-term under secretary of defense for policy, whose rogue intelligence operation in the Pentagon supplied the vice president with the disinformation that bamboozled the nation.
The other investigation into prewar intelligence, by the Senate Intelligence Committee, is a scandal in its own right. After the release of its initial findings in July 2004, the committee's Republican chairman, Pat Roberts, promised that a Phase 2 to determine whether the White House had misled the public would arrive after the presidential election. It still hasn't, and no wonder: Murray Waas reported Thursday in The National Journal that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby had refused to provide the committee with 'crucial documents," including the Libby-written passages in early drafts of Colin Powell's notorious presentation of W.M.D. 'evidence' to the U.N. on the eve of war.
Along the way, Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation has prompted the revelation of much of what these previous investigations left out. But even so, the trigger for the Wilson affair - the administration's fierce effort to protect its hype of Saddam's uranium - is only one piece of the larger puzzle of post- and pre-9/11 White House subterfuge. We're a long way from putting together the full history of a self-described 'war presidency' that bungled the war in Iraq and, in doing so, may be losing the war against radical Islamic terrorism as well..."

The Retaliatory Leak:

The San Francisco Chronicle: Seeds of Leak Scandal Sown in Italian Intelligence Agency
"Behind the CIA leak scandal lies a bizarre trail of forged documents, an embassy break-in and international deception that helped propel the United States to war in Iraq.
While American public attention focuses on special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak, U.S. and Italian lawmakers are probing a series of bogus claims of Iraqi uranium purchases in Africa that were the opening chapters in a saga that resulted in the disclosure of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
In the past week, the respected, left-of-center Italian daily La Repubblica published a three-part series of investigative articles claiming that documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein was seeking yellowcake uranium in Niger had been forged by an Italian freelance spy and then were fed by the Italian intelligence agency to eager officials in Washington and London.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate Democratic leader, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., are asking for public hearings into the forgeries and their role in Bush administration claims that Hussein was developing nuclear weapons.
The Italian Parliament is scheduled to hold hearings about the La Repubblica allegations on Thursday, with intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari expected to come under heavy grilling.
The articles relied heavily on sources in the Italian spy agency, the Military Information and Security Service, known as SISMI. They provide a tantalizing account -- credible to some observers, baseless speculation to others -- of how President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were snookered by fabricated intelligence about Hussein's alleged nuclear program.
The allegations in La Repubblica's articles lead far into the murky depths of Italy's intelligence agencies, a realm of conspiracy claims and counterclaims. In Italy this netherworld is called dietrologia -- a word that loosely translates as the widespread belief that political, security and criminal forces are constantly engaged in secret plots and maneuvers, noted Henry Farrell, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University in Washington and a blogger on the Crooked Timber Web log, which has dissected the Italian angle to Plamegate...
...According to La Repubblica, the forged documents were originally produced in 2000 by Rocco Martino, a former member of the Carabinieri paramilitary police who then became a freelance agent for both SISMI and French intelligence. SISMI combined these fakes with real documents from the 1980s showing Hussein's yellowcake purchases from Niger during that period -- in the process, conducting a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome to steal letterhead and seals.
Soon afterward, La Repubblica reported, Italian operatives passed news of their scoop to the CIA and the British intelligence agency, MI6. When the CIA expressed doubt about the veracity of the claims, SISMI began seeking to peddle it directly to the most pro-war faction of the Bush administration.
SISMI chief Pollari met in Rome with Michael Ledeen, an influential Washington neoconservative who has long been reputed to play a back-channel role between U.S. and Italian spy agencies. Pollari also met in Washington with Stephen Hadley, deputy national security adviser, to discuss the new information, La Repubblica reported. On Thursday, a National Security Council spokesman confirmed that the Hadley-Pollari meeting had taken place but was only 'a courtesy call' with no documents exchanged... "

Knight-Ridder: Indictment doesn't clear up mystery at heart of CIA leak probe
"At the heart of Friday's indictment of a top White House aide remain two unsolved mysteries.
Who forged the documents that claimed Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons in the African country of Niger?
How did a version of the tale get into President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, even though U.S. intelligence agencies never confirmed it and some intelligence analysts doubted it?
Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who found no substance to the alleged deal during a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, accused Bush in July 2003 of twisting the intelligence.
Shortly thereafter, the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer, was leaked to journalists, igniting special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's probe.
The FBI has been investigating the clumsy forgeries, which first surfaced in Rome in October 2002, for two years, but has made little progress, four U.S. government officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation continues. Those officials blame a lack of cooperation from Italy. A spokesman for the Italian Embassy in Washington denied that.
But a weeks-long review by Knight Ridder has established..."


What A Mess!

The Daily Press: The Deadliness Below
"In the summer of 2004, a clam-dredging operation off New Jersey pulled up an old artillery shell.
The long-submerged World War I-era explosive was filled with a black tarlike substance.
Bomb disposal technicians from Dover Air Force Base, Del., were brought in to dismantle it. Three of them were injured - one hospitalized with large pus-filled blisters on an arm and hand.
The shell was filled with mustard gas in solid form.
What was long feared by the few military officials in the know had come to pass: Chemical weapons that the Army dumped at sea decades ago finally ended up on shore in the United States.
It's long been known that some chemical weapons went into the ocean, but records obtained by the Daily Press show that the previously classified weapons-dumping program was far more extensive than ever suspected.
The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels..."

The Lies That Took A Country To War:

Murray Waas: Cheney, Libby Blocked Papers to Senate Intelligence Panel
"Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.
Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney's office - and Libby in particular - pushed to be included in Powell's speech, the sources said.
The new information that Cheney and Libby blocked information to the Senate Intelligence Committee further underscores the central role played by the vice president's office in trying to blunt criticism that the Bush administration exaggerated intelligence data to make the case to go to war...
... Had the withheld information been turned over, according to administration and congressional sources, it likely would have shifted a portion of the blame away from the intelligence agencies to the Bush administration as to who was responsible for the erroneous information being presented to the American public, Congress, and the international community.
In April 2004, the Intelligence Committee released a report that concluded that 'much of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency for inclusion in Secretary Powell's [United Nation's] speech was overstated, misleading, or incorrect.'
Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee say that their investigation was hampered by the refusal of the White House to turn over key documents, although Republicans said the documents were not as central to the investigation...
...One congressional source said, for example, that senators wanted to review the PDBs to determine whether dissenting views from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Department of Energy, and other agencies that often disagreed with the CIA on the question of Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction were being presented to the president.
An administration spokesperson said that the White House was justified in turning down the document demand from the Senate, saying that the papers reflected 'deliberative discussions' among 'executive branch principals' and were thus covered under longstanding precedent and executive privilege rules. Throughout the president's five years in office, the Bush administration has been consistently adamant about not turning internal documents over to Congress and other outside bodies..."

The Story of Manipulated Intelligence That Took A Fear-ridden Nation To War

Democracy Now! - Headlines for October 26, 2005
"Bush Official Met With Italians Shortly Before Fake Niger Docs Appeared

In related news, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica has revealed new information on the background behind the forged documents that indicated Iraq was trying purchase uranium from Niger. According to the paper President Bush’s then Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley met with Italian intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari in September 2002. This came just weeks before the Bush administration began claiming Italian intelligence had obtained documents proving Iraqi attempts to buy the uranium from Niger. The claim played a key role in the White House's massive effort to convince the public of the need for war on Iraq. The documents turned out to be fakes. The paper notes further the meeting took place three days before a story in a weekly owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, claimed Iraq had purchased 500 tons of uranium from Nigeria. A month later, the forged documents used by the Bush administration - also first obtained by the same paper - made the same claim, but about Niger..."


Conflict of Interest?

New York Times: Ex-Head of F.D.A. or Wife Sold Stock in Regulated Area
"Dr. Lester M. Crawford, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, or his wife sold shares in companies regulated by the agency in 2004, according to financial disclosure forms..."


Privacy vs Security:

The US government is pushing ahead with RFID chips for passports. The chips will contain the passport holder's personal information (name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitial photograph). The government wants to add digitized data such as fingerprints or iris scans.

The question becomes, what format do these chips transmit this information? Is it secure from hackers attempting to harvest this information?

BBC: Doubts over biometric passports
"Barry Kefauver of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) told a conference in London that new so-called e-passports need to be linked to databases held by police and other agencies.
He added that countries must take measures to ensure criminals and terrorists cannot get hold of fake travel documents.
The UK Passport Service plans to introduce biometric passports, which contain chips with data from a facial scan, in early 2006..."


Taxation:

If this nation were taxing corporate profits the way it used to in the 1950's, the public coffers would not be in the shape they are now.
The pro-business lobby has seen to the demolition of this policy.

Reuters: Exxon Mobil Profit Soars on Oil Prices
"Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, on Thursday reported quarterly profit surged 75 percent, pushed up by record crude oil and natural gas prices..."

On Torture:

NY Times Editorial: Legalized Torture, Reloaded
"Amid all the natural and political disasters it faces, the White House is certainly tireless in its effort to legalize torture. This week, Vice President Dick Cheney proposed a novel solution for the moral and legal problems raised by the use of American soldiers to abuse prisoners and the practice of turning captives over to governments willing to act as proxies in doing the torturing. Mr. Cheney wants to make it legal for the Central Intelligence Agency to do this wet work...
...President Bush's threat to veto the entire military budget over this issue was bizarre enough by itself, considering that the amendment has the support of more than two dozen former military leaders, including Colin Powell. They know that torture doesn't produce reliable intelligence and endangers Americans' lives.
But Mr. Cheney's proposal was even more ludicrous. It would give the president the power to allow government agencies outside the Defense Department (the administration has in mind the C.I.A.) to mistreat and torture prisoners as long as that behavior was part of 'counterterrorism operations conducted abroad' and they were not American citizens. That would neatly legalize the illegal prisons the C.I.A. is said to be operating around the world and obviate the need for the torture outsourcing known as extraordinary rendition. It also raises disturbing questions about Iraq, which the Bush administration has falsely labeled a counterterrorism operation.
Mr. McCain was right to reject this absurd proposal. The House should reject it as well."


The Economic Race To The Bottom:

Detroit Free Press: Delphi's demand: Take $9 an hour
"If Delphi Corp. has its way, workers for the nation's largest auto parts supplier would be paid as little as $9 per hour under 65% wage cuts, and be hit with a tenfold increase in health-care costs, no dental and vision care and other sharp reductions in benefits, according to a proposal revealed on the Web site of a UAW local.
The document shows for the first time the severity of the cuts the bankrupt company has told the union it needs to survive.
The cuts are even stiffer than the company's final proposal to the union before it filed for Chapter 11 on Oct. 8, further infuriating workers already angered by the threats to their livelihood.
'How in the hell do they expect anybody to live?' asked Andy Loughran, a 54-year-old Delphi worker from Dayton, Ohio. 'You think you're going to get a good quality product at $9 an hour?'..."

Have a good look at the memo. It presents a perfect picture of how corporations engage in spin of the facts. They claim their employees are satisfied with the benefits package. If they asked at all, they could only have asked their middle-managers. They state the problem as not one of actual benefit inadequacies, but one of failing to paint a pretty-enough picture for the public. Above all, the authors of the memo do not lay blame for rising benefit costs where it belongs: with for-profit health-care providers.

NY Times: Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs
"An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart..."


The Retaliatory Leak:

Gary Hart: D
"...The political irony of all this is that conservative elements in America have always proclaimed themselves more concerned than anyone else with national security, the sanctity of classified information, protection of sources, support for our intelligence and military services, and so on. At radical times in our past, irresponsible leftist groups thought it was their duty to try to reveal the names of CIA agents. Now, under a conservative administration, it is these conservative national security champions who are saying, with regard to the 'outing' of a CIA undercover officer, 'Where's the crime?'...
...To casually and willfully endanger the life of an undercover CIA agent is a felony. You either believe in taking the laws of the United States seriously or you do not. Citizens - even highly placed ones - do not get to pick and choose which laws they will obey and which they will not. Miller and her publisher may think she's a hero, but I don't. It is well established that there is no First Amendment protection for a journalist or anyone else to withhold evidence of a crime.
There is one final irony to this story. On Christmas Eve in 1975, I got a call at my home from the director of the CIA, William Colby. He asked if I would intervene with the White House to obtain presidential approval to have Welch buried at Arlington National Cemetery, a hero fallen in service to his country. I quickly called President Ford's chief of staff on Colby's behalf and made the request. Within two hours, the president had agreed to sign the order permitting Welch to be buried at Arlington.
The chief of staff's name was Richard Cheney."

The Retaliatory Leak:

Will Team Bush make another mistake from the Nixon playbook?

Michael Scherer: Plame Games
"Long ago, Washington's political attack dogs resigned themselves to the fact that they have nothing on special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The man is so squeaky clean that just about the only dirt besmirching his public record concerns long work hours that made him ineligible to adopt a cat. Later this week, the most powerful men and women in the country will sit helplessly on the sidelines as Fitzgerald decides whether to indict White House officials in the case of Valerie Plame, a clandestine CIA agent whose identity was leaked to the press by the Bush administration..."

Democracy Now! - NYT Exposes Cheney's Role in CIA Leak: Cheney Identifies Wilson's Wife as CIA Operative
"[DN!] speak(s) to former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman on the latest development in the CIA leak case. The New York Times is reporting today that Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Scooter Libby first learned the identity of the CIA operative from his boss – Dick Cheney. [includes rush transcript]"


Our Tax Dollars:

Knight-Ridder: Pentagon Purchases: Millions in Markups
"The Pentagon paid $20 each for plastic ice-cube trays that once cost 85 cents. A supplier was paid more than $81 each for coffee makers that for years were purchased from the manufacturer for $29.
That's because instead of receiving competitive bids or buying directly from manufacturers as it once did, the Pentagon now uses middlemen who set prices. It's the equivalent of shopping for weekly groceries at a convenience store.
And the practice is costing taxpayers 20 percent more than the old system, an investigation found..."


On Torture:

Washington Post: Cheney Plan Exempts CIA from Bill Barring Abuse of Detainees
" The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody.
The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by 'an element of the United States government' other than the Defense Department..."


Speaking Out, Even When Your Boss Remains Silent:

Lawrence B. Wilkerson: The White House Cabal
"In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security - including vital decisions about postwar Iraq - were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.
But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal..."


Opposed Bush's War Then, Opposes It Still Today:

Senator Patrick Leahy: Bring Them Home
"Following is Sen. Patrick Leahy's address on Iraq, delivered Tuesday morning on the Senate floor. Leahy (D-Vt.) is the ranking member of the Appropriations panel that handles the Senate's work in funding the State Department and US foreign operations and aid, and he also is a senior member of the Appropriations panel with jurisdiction over the annual defense budget bill. Leahy was one of 23 senators who voted against the resolution that authorized the invasion of Iraq..."

Father, Not Like Son:

The New Yorker:The Republican Rift
"This week in the magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg writes about Brent Scowcroft, the national-security adviser under President George H. W. Bush—and the former President’s best friend—who has been at odds with the current Administration. Here, with Amy Davidson, Goldberg discusses Scowcroft and the divide within the Republican party over Iraq..."


A Conflict of Interest:

Washington Post: Letters Show Frist Notified Of Stocks in 'Blind' Trusts
"Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family's hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings.
Managers of the trusts that Frist once described as 'totally blind,' regularly informed him when they added new shares of HCA Inc. or other assets to his holdings, according to the documents..."

The Retaliatory Leak:

Newsweek: The Case against the Cheney Cabal
"Gang fight: How Cheney and his tight-knit team launched the Iraq war, chased their critics - and set the stage for a special prosecutor's dramatic probe..."

Slate: Secretive Cheney Aid at Heart of CIA Leak Case
"...Libby is a neocon's neocon. He studied political science at Yale under former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and began working with his former teacher under Cheney at the Defense Department during the George H.W. Bush administration, thinking about grand national security strategy in the post-Cold War era. When a document outlining their thinking leaked to the New York Times, the foreign policy establishment, including many of the more moderate voices in the first Bush administration, howled at its call for pre-emptive action against nations developing weapons of mass destruction. After 9/11, what was once considered loony became the Bush Doctrine.
Libby is not political in the glad-handing way-he looks as lost as Cheney at Republican Lincoln Day dinners. But he plays internal politics with force and lack of emotion. If the State Department under Colin Powell hated Dick Cheney, it hated Scooter almost as much, viewing him accurately as a pre-eminent member of the cabal hellbent for war with Iraq. It was Libby who sat with Powell in the final session before Powell's U.N. speech, eyeing every detail to make sure that the Secretary of State didn't water down the case. When Libby talked privately to friends about his rivals at State during the Powell era, it often sounded like the head of one political party speaking about the other, ascribing the worst motives and rarely giving Powell's team the benefit of the doubt...
...Was this a hint to Miller about staying on the same page-either with her journalistic colleagues who seem to have backed Libby's story to the grand jury, or with her fellow former believer in Saddam's WMD stockpiles? Patrick Fitzgerald certainly wanted to know if Libby was trying to coach the reluctant witness to bolster his own case. Libby helpfully pointed out earlier in the letter that 'every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me, or knew about her before our call.'
Or, Scooter may have been playing with coded meanings that most of us are too dull to see. This suspicion arises naturally because of Libby's connection with Straussianism. Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish political philosopher, is seen by many as one of the intellectual fathers of neconservatism. Wolfowitz, Libby's teacher at Yale, was a graduate student at the University of Chicago during Strauss' ascendancy, and Libby won membership into that conservative club via Wolfowitz. Part of Strauss' teaching is that ancient philosophers wrote on two levels: for the mumbling masses, but also, and often in contradiction of the literal message, on an 'esoteric' level that only initiates could make out. Some Straussians have adopted this code themselves. So, where Homer Simpson would interpret Libby's note as ham-handed fawning over Judy, a Straussian close reader might discern something more devious: a literary file in the cake for both of them..."


On Torture:

Human Rights Watch: Torture in Iraq
"The following article is an excerpt, in somewhat modified form, from 'Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division,' a report issued by Human Rights Watch on September 25, 2005..."


Our (Fleeting) Rights:

Washington Post: Report: Papers show FBI probes misused
"Previously classified documents being released Monday show numerous misuses of FBI surveillance, including improper searches and seizures of e-mails and bank records, The Washington Post reported in Monday's editions.
The documents, which were turned over under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, show that FBI auditors have investigated hundreds of potential violations related to the agency's domestic surveillance since Sept. 11, 2001, the Post said.
Some of the violations found in the documents included:
-FBI agents failing to file annual updates on ongoing surveillance, as required by Justice Department guidelines.

-A violation of bank privacy statutes.

-An improper physical search.

-Improper collection of e-mails after warrants had expired.

David Sobel, EPIC's general counsel, told the Post: 'We're seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community. It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied.'
But FBI officials told the Post that most of the violations were simply administrative errors..."

...and this track record is not insignificant, given the government's desire to know more and more of what people say/write to each other.

NY Times: Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems
"The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.
The action, which the government says is intended to help catch terrorists and other criminals, has unleashed protests and the threat of lawsuits from universities, which argue that it will cost them at least $7 billion while doing little to apprehend lawbreakers. Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues.
The order, issued by the Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial Internet access providers.
It also applies to municipalities that provide Internet access to residents, be they rural towns or cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco, which have plans to build their own Net access networks.
So far, however, universities have been most vocal in their opposition..."

Iraq and The 2004 Election:

Frank Rich: Karl and Scooter's Excellent Adventure
"...For Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush to get what they wanted most, slam-dunk midterm election victories, and for Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney to get what they wanted most, a war in Iraq for reasons predating 9/11, their real whys for going to war had to be replaced by fictional, more salable ones. We wouldn't be invading Iraq to further Rovian domestic politics or neocon ideology; we'd be doing so instead because there was a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda and because Saddam was on the verge of attacking America with nuclear weapons. The facts and intelligence had to be fixed to create these whys; any contradictory evidence had to be dismissed or suppressed.
Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney were in the boiler room of the disinformation factory. The vice president's repetitive hyping of Saddam's nuclear ambitions in the summer and fall of 2002 as well as his persistence in advertising bogus Saddam-Qaeda ties were fed by the rogue intelligence operation set up in his own office. As we know from many journalistic accounts, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby built their 'case' by often making an end run around the C.I.A., State Department intelligence and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Their ally in cherry-picking intelligence was a similar cadre of neocon zealots led by Douglas Feith at the Pentagon.
This is what Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's wartime chief of staff, was talking about last week when he publicly chastised the 'Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal' for sowing potential disaster in Iraq, North Korea and Iran. It's this cabal that in 2002 pushed for much of the bogus W.M.D. evidence that ended up in Mr. Powell's now infamous February 2003 presentation to the U.N. It's this cabal whose propaganda was sold by the war's unannounced marketing arm, the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, in which both Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove served in the second half of 2002. One of WHIG's goals, successfully realized, was to turn up the heat on Congress so it would rush to pass a resolution authorizing war in the politically advantageous month just before the midterm election.
Joseph Wilson wasn't a player in these exalted circles; he was a footnote who began to speak out loudly only after Saddam had been toppled and the mission in Iraq had been 'accomplished.' He challenged just one element of the W.M.D. 'evidence,' the uranium that Saddam's government had supposedly been seeking in Africa to fuel its ominous mushroom clouds.
But based on what we know about Mr. Libby's and Mr. Rove's hysterical over-response to Mr. Wilson's accusation, he scared them silly. He did so because they had something to hide. Should Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove have lied to investigators or a grand jury in their panic, Mr. Fitzgerald will bring charges. But that crime would seem a misdemeanor next to the fables that they and their bosses fed the nation and the world as the whys for invading Iraq."

The Right To Vote:

GAO: Report Finds Flaws in Electronic Voting
"Rep. Waxman led twelve members of Congress today in releasing a new GAO report that found security and reliability flaws in the electronic voting process.

In a joint press release, Rep. Waxman said, 'The GAO report indicates that we need to get serious and act quickly to improve the security of electronic voting machines. The report makes clear that there is a lack of transparency and accountability in electronic voting systems - from the day that contracts are signed with manufacturers to the counting of electronic votes on Election Day. State and local officials are spending a great deal of money on machines without concrete proof that they are secure and reliable.'

The GAO report found flaws in security, access, and hardware controls, as well as weak security management practices by voting machine vendors. The report identified multiple examples of actual operational failures in real elections and found that while national initiatives to improve the security and reliability of electronic voting systems are underway, 'it is unclear when these initiatives will be available to assist state and local election authorities.'
Rep. Waxman also released a fact sheet summarizing the report's key findings..."


Iraq's Oil For Food Program:

The Telegraph (UK) - How the Oil for Food scandal unfolded: "Around four days after the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the UN imposed economic sanctions prohibiting member states from trading in Iraqi commodities or products. These remained in place until 2003.
In April 1995, the UN agreed to let the Iraq government sell oil, with all funds to be deposited into an escrow bank account monitored by the UN to be used for buying humanitarian goods - dubbed Oil for Food.
In seven years, the programme dealt with more than $100billion (£56billion) in transactions, with more than $64billion in oil sales and around $37billion for food.
US journalist Claudia Rosett has been investigating Oil for Food for the past three years. She said the ensuing scandal was like folding open the layers of an onion, but 'the more you peel, the bigger it gets,'..."

Reuters: Texas Oil Tycoon Charged in Oil-for-Food Scandal
"US prosecutors have charged a Texas oil tycoon and two Swiss executives and their companies with paying secret kickbacks to Iraq in the UN oil-for-food program.
Tycoon Oscar Wyatt, the former Coastal Corp. chairman, was arrested in Houston, Texas, on Friday, prosecutors said, becoming one of the highest profile figures ensnared so far in the scandal. The two Swiss nationals are being sought for extradition.
The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York charged Wyatt along with Catalina del Socorro Miguel Fuentes, alias Cathy Miguel, and Mohammed Saidji. All three face up to 62 years in prison and heavy fines if convicted..."


Economic Opportunity?

Barbara Ehrenreich: - Working Hard or Hardly Working
"Barbara Ehrenreich talks about the thin line between the middle class and the working poor and why she wants to slap the next person who insists on the power of positive thinking..."

The Fouth Estate: The Free Press/Media:

Interview with Robert Fisk: War is the "Total Failure of the Human Spirit"
"...AMY GOODMAN: We've just returned from New Orleans. Something that is most stunning about what has happened with the media, aside from the horror that has taken place, is that because the national guard were in Iraq, because president Bush did not get the resources there immediately there were no troops for the reporters to embed with. And so what happened is you had reporters who were the victims, in the street, reporting the facts on the ground like we have never seen a reporter with a body that floats by behind them. And then when government officials say this isn't true, the reporters actually challenge the government officials because they are experiencing this themselves. One of the first things president Bush did when he started getting involved was say that the bodies of corpses, the corpses were not to be photographed. I think what has turned this country around right now is that people have truly seen the real images of New Orleans in a way that we have not seen in Iraq. Can you talk about the whole embedding process and the control of the media?

ROBERT FISK: It's not about embedding. It's not about embedding, Amy. It's about television’s refusal to show the truth of war. Let me give an example. In 1991 I was driving up the main road towards Basra, the so the-called highway of death, further up, with a crew from ITV, British commercial channel. And we stopped at a place where there were large numbers of Iraqi soldiers dead in the desert. And hoards of desert dogs had appeared. And they were ripping the soldiers to pieces and eating them. Dragging off an arm here with its hand cruelly going along through the desert, eating through stomachs, gnawing away at cheekbones of dead soldiers. The ITV crew got out and started filming. I said, 'What are you filming this for? You'll never get it on air.' He said, 'No, it's just for the archives.'

This, you see, was the problem. The war was over then. We're talking about the 1991 Gulf War, the liberation of Kuwait. When journalists had been put in pools, which was then the equivalent of embedding. And they chaffed that they wanted to report real war, weren't being allowed to, that they were being censored. But when the war ended and they were allowed to drive up the highway and film anything they wanted, they censored themselves. Far too sensitive. Can't receive this sort of thing at breakfast what about the children? And in London, and in Washington, and in New York, and everywhere else, Paris, the television directors and the editors said, 'We can't show that.' Impossible. Many of the worst pictures taken in the invasion of Iraq in 2003: a man holding a kid out like a piece of pancake. A beautiful girl in the arms of a man, we have to lop it off here because we didn't want to see the bones of the foot sticking out. She was dead, wounded in many captions. Never saw the light of day. They couldn't be shown. They could-- but they were not. Because sensitivities. Mustn't show this at breakfast time. It's irresponsible to show the dead like this, it's disrespectful.

I tell you, if you saw what I saw when I go to wars when I’m on the front line with or without soldiers or with civilians or wounded in hospitals, if you saw what I saw, you would never, ever dream of supporting a war again. Ever in your life. It's a remarkable thing that the cinema, the commercial cinema, feature films can now show the bloodiest, goriest themes which are quite similar to what we see in real life, 'Saving Private Ryan,' the guts spilling out. And yet real war cannot be shown without censoring pictures which in many cases are exactly the same as what you see when you go to the cinema. Or when you watch a war movie on television. It's remarkable. And only when you're there do you realize -- and I have an editor in London who shakes his head in disbelief and when I say this over and over again. If you go to war, you realize it is not primarily about victory or defeat, it is about death and the infliction of death and suffering on as large a scale as you can make it. It is about the total failure of the human spirit. We don't show that because we don't want to. And in this sense journalists, television reporting, television cameras are lethal. They cloud with governments to allow to you have more wars because if they showed you the truth, you wouldn't allow any more wars...

...ROBERT FISK: Look. What Bush did in 2003 and what our own Lord Blair did, our prime minister whom we deeply love, what they both did is they made a terrible mistake which history should have taught them not to make. They went to war for ideological reasons. They dressed it up in military reasons, weapons of mass destruction, saving the poor Shiites, or the poor Sunnis, or the poor Kurds, or whatever you like, destruction of Saddam Hussein, giving democracy to the Middle East. There will be some more, come up soon, before we tell the Iraqi that they're ungrateful and they should be more grateful than they are. We are already beginning to tell them in the letters columns, I noticed.

But they went to war for ideological reasons. If you do that you will always fail. You see, everything goes wrong in a war based on ideology. Whether it be right-wing Christian ideology, fundamentalist ideology, whether it be the ideology of American western democracy has to plow up the dictatorships of the Middle East. I won't go into that because we'll all fall asleep. But what happens is that everything about your military purpose gets perverted. For example, look at American intelligence. It's hopeless in Iraq. Absolutely hopeless. All they do is arrest the wrong people. People get beaten up, people get tortured. Yes, they do by the way.

And yet, America has this extraordinary intelligence gathering apparatus. Massive super computers sucking in telephone calls. Millions from all over the middle east. Translators going through page after page, not fast enough as we know it before September 11, 2001. But doing it. And they amass this huge volume after volume of intelligence of what's going on in the Middle East. Now, if you are able to understand injustice, which is what the Middle East is partly and principally about, you can make sense of it. But if you're going to go ideologically at this intelligence and try to make it fit what you believe or what you want to believe, then the whole C.I.A. is eliminated. It's worthless.

That's why, for example, the background, the foundation of the Iraq war is built on sand because it was an ideological war. It wasn't based on what do Iraqis want what would really happen. It was also based on oil, I know that. Because if the chief exported Iraq with asparagus, we wouldn't be there, would we? When you base a war ideology, that’s what happens? You lose. And when you lie about the basis of it, you lose. And the war in Iraq has been lost already. It's only prison journalism or hotel journalism and the lies of the State Department and the Pentagon and the White House and the Downing Street and the Defense Ministry in London and so on that keep this spin rolling. At some point there's going to be an explosion the like of which will be inexplicable by those in power. I don't know what it's going to be, but it will come.

How do we deal with it? I don't know. You see, those readers who write to me and still do. I've got a bunch of mail outside the studio in my bag. What can we do? There seems to have been a complete breakdown in Britain. Between the electors and the elected. One of the reasons, of course, the Tory party supporting the Labor party, the press have become the opposition. You have a bigger problem in the United States in that, as I understand it -- well, I'll quote a U.S. Marine who said to me in San Diego a few months ago, 'Our problem is we have this kind of false democracy,' he said, 'We vote for our senators and congressman for what they say they'll give us and they give us something and say something completely different.

I think you have a big problem with the lobby groups. I don’t mean just the Israeli lobby, I mean the gun lobby and so on. I think you have a major problem with lobby groups in Washington and every president comes along saying he's going to clean that out but he never does. Actually, Bush didn't say that, not George W., anyway. But I think you have a much bigger problem in the United States where on issues like the Middle East, for example, your voice is simply not heard unless it is pro- Israeli, pro-American policy in the Middle East, etcetera, up on the hill. You'll get a few brave souls, Paul Finley. Look what happened to him. But basically you won't get represented on these critical issues.

American policy in the Middle East is the critical issue in all our lives at the moment. I hinted -- I go at much greater length in my new book on the issue why after September 11, 2001, I remember having this terrible argument with that Boston professor, Dershowitz, who called me 'a dangerous man. He's anti-American. It's the same as being anti-Semitic.' Which is rubbish of course, I’m neither. But anyone who asked the question why did it happened was seen as being unpatriotic, potential enemy therefore anti-American, anti-people, anti-democracy. Because, of course to ask the question why, we have to say: well, hold on a second, the 19 hijackers came from the Arabs. They came from the Middle East. Is there a problem out there? We can't go into that.

It's strange because if you have a crime in Santa Fe, the cops come along. First thing they do is look for the motive. When you have an international crime against humanity on the scale of September 11, 2001. The one thing you're not allowed to do is look for the motive for the crime. And I think that by and large for many months Americans were prevented from looking for the motive. By the time they could look for the motive, we were bombing Afghanistan and saying there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And then defeating Saddam Hussein. And so it goes on and on. And it seems somehow that modern-day politicians with, in many cases, the help, I’m afraid, of journalists, are able to continue to bamboozle people. 'We'll explain it tomorrow, that's too secret to tell you,' secret intelligence officials insist. Look at The New York Times’s first paragraphs over and over again, 'According to American intelligence officials.' 'American officials say.' I think sometimes The New York Times should be called “American Officials Say. Just look at it tomorrow or the day after. Or the L.A. Times, or the, not the San Francisco Chronicle, it's not much of a paper anymore unfortunately, but The Washington Post.

It's almost as if—you know the cozy relationship between American journalists and power is very dangerous. You want to look and see what that relationship is like. The osmotic, the host and the parasite together. You only have to look at a White House press conference, 'Mr. President, Mr. President?' 'Yes, Bob. Yes, John? Yes, Nancy,' that's the relationship. Journalists like to be close to power. They know that if they want to be close to power, they mustn't challenge power. And that goes back to the Amira Haas definition of journalism, which I am a total devote of: you must challenge power all the time, all the time, all the time even if the politicians and the prime minister, even if your readers hate you. You must challenge power. And that includes Bin Laden power..."

Bad Leadership:

The Financial Times (UK) - Cheney 'Cabal' Hijacked Foreign Policy
"Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.
In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: 'What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
'Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.'
Mr Wilkerson said such secret decision-making was responsible for mistakes such as the long refusal to engage with North Korea or to back European efforts on Iran.
It also resulted in bitter battles in the administration among those excluded from the decisions...

...Among his other charges:
The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was 'a concrete example' of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. 'You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.'
Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was 'part of the problem'. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, 'she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president'.
The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, 'start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel'.
Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush 'one of the finest presidents we have ever had' understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was 'not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either'.
'There's a vast difference between the way George H.W. Bush dealt with major challenges, some of the greatest challenges at the end of the 20th century, and effected positive results in my view, and the way we conduct diplomacy today,'."

Journalists In War:

BBC: Spain orders arrest of US troops
"Judge Santiago Pedraz issued the warrant for Sgt Shawn Gibson, Capt Philip Wolford and Lt Col Philip de Camp, of the US 3rd Infantry Division.
Jose Couso, of Spanish TV network Telecinco, died in April 2003 when a US tank fired on the Palestine Hotel.
Reuters news agency cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian, was also killed.
The National Court agreed to consider filing criminal charges against three members of the tank crew two years ago, acting on a request from Mr Couso's family.
Speaking on Wednesday, the judge said he had issued the arrest order because of a lack of judicial co-operation from the US in the case..."


Bird Flu:

Democracy Now! - Mike Davis on Avian Flu
"...MIKE DAVIS: Well, avian flu is just like ordinary influenza, except that it has the ability to penetrate deep into the lung tissue, the ability to cause viral pneumonia, the ability to reproduce at an incredibly higher rate than normal flus. The 1918 flu, which was recently resurrected in a breathtaking but dangerous experiment by the Centers for Disease Control – They literally sent this on. It’s the 1918 flu. And they discovered to its horror that in four days in mice it was producing 39,000 times more flu particles than an ordinary flu.

So the point is that an avian flu, a pandemic flu, would spread in the same way as a normal flu, which is approximately the same way as a cold. And the problem here is that you can be spreading viruses 24 hours or more before you're sick, before you show any symptoms. Also with flu, very often they are asymptomatic cases, people who have the virus but never get sick. This has also been the case, apparently, with the current circulating avian flu. This makes quarantines almost impossible. SARS was much easier to defeat because with SARS you weren't contagious until you had the symptoms. So it was obvious who was contagious. This would not be the case with the avian influenza, pandemic influenza.

You would get it as a normal flu. Some people would not experience symptoms probably any worse than the seasonal flu. Other people, in much larger numbers than normal, would develop secondary infections, bacterial pneumonia, something which we're much better prepared to treat with antibiotics today than we were in 1918. But a minority of people, but potential large minority, would get a devastating viral pneumonia. This is what has killed many of the people in Southeast Asia. And this is just a catastrophic illness and perhaps fewer than half the people who got viral pneumonia would be able to be saved. So even in a rich country like the United States, but a country with devastated public health infrastructures with shortages of hospital beds and intensive care facilities would be overwhelmed with the huge number of cases of pneumonia, both bacterial and viral pneumonia. And even more important than possessing stocks of anti-virals or potential flu vaccine really is the basic health of our local hospital system and our public health responders...

...MIKE DAVIS: Well, some questions have been raised whether Tamiflu works, and this is largely based on the fact that it's effective only if given within the first 24-36 hours of symptoms. Laboratory studies have shown that Tamiflu has been effective against H5N1 and has also shown that it even works on the 1918 flu. But the current avian flu is evolving and changing very rapidly. Whole numbers, dozens of different strains, have existed at one time or another. And now there's laboratory evidence of the emergence of resistant strains. And this is only to be expected.

Right now, Tamiflu is the major frontline weapon of choice. There's another anti-viral which works on the same principles as Tamiflu called Relenza, which might even be better, but it's a flu, and it’s very difficult to store and use. But we can expect that Tamiflu will work forever. Right now, it is a sensible investment to build strategic stockpiles of it, but somehow the illusion has been created that Tamiflu is really the difference of life and death in case of a pandemic. And the far more important variable here is local public health, is hospital surge capacity, the ability to cope with large numbers of cases of pneumonia.

And here's where the United States really joins the third world, rather than Europe, because we have lost that capacity. And in city after city simulations or the experience with just even normal seasonable heights and influenza or other respiratory diseases has shown that that capacity doesn't exist. We don't have the hospital beds. We don't have the intensive care facilities. And in large part this is the byproduct, not only of federal and state neglect, but the H.M.O. revolution which works on the principle of increasing bottom lines by reducing the number of hospitals, reducing the number of hospital beds, leaving Americans incredibly vulnerable in the face of any kind of epidemic or pandemic disease.

AMY GOODMAN: Mike Davis, let's pursue this point, that the idea that the best way to fortify national security would be overall better health care system. What would that look like from health insurance to the entire hospital clinic structure in this country?

MIKE DAVIS: Well, I mean, we should begin with the 40 or 50 million Americans who lack health coverage, per se. And my believe is, of course, that there is no fix for this problem within the current market economy and depending on the private provision of medicine, particularly when you read in today’s paper about how yesterday's most powerful unionized workers in America, the auto workers, are now forced to suffer swinging cutbacks in medical coverage. The whole system of workplace-provided, contractually provided medicine and healthcare in America has broken down. We must have some kind of national health system.

Secondly, we must have adequate, proactive preventative public health, a priority that's consistently neglected despite the fact that administrations, including the Bush administration, has actually thrown billions of dollars in infectious disease but in the wrong places -- hypothetical or imaginary diseases -- and a lot of the money going to big corporate contractors or large labs, big pharma, and not enough of it percolating down to where it's absolutely essential at the local level.

And thirdly we must increase the surge capacity of medicine at the local levels. We need more hospital beds, more intensive care facilities. This is the only wealthy country I know of where during a pregnancy a woman is sent home within 24 hours of delivering a baby. And we will pay a terrible price for this in the event of a pandemic or an epidemic. What will happen in many American cities, will look more like what's happening in the third world than, for instance, to our neighbor north of us, Canada, which probably has right now the best planning, the most adequate preparation to deal with avian influenza or, for that matter, almost any pandemic..."

[Mike Davis is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, renown urban theorist, and social historian.]

The So-Called War On Terror:

The Independent (UK) - Bush to Blair: First Iraq, Then Saudi Arabia ...
"George Bush told the Prime Minister two months before the invasion of Iraq that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea may also be dealt with over weapons of mass destruction, a top secret Downing Street memo shows.
The US President told Tony Blair, in a secret telephone conversation in January 2003 that he 'wanted to go beyond Iraq'.
He implied that the military action against Saddam Hussein was only a first step in the battle against WMD proliferation in a series of countries.
Mr Bush said he 'wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation', says the letter on Downing Street paper, marked secret and personal.
No 10 said yesterday it would 'not comment on leaked documents'. But the revelation that Mr Bush was considering tackling other countries over WMD before the Iraq war has shocked MPs. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have been close allies of the US in the war against terror and have not been considered targets in relation to WMD.
The confidential memo recording the President's explosive remarks was written by Michael Rycroft, then the Prime Minister's private secretary and foreign policy adviser. He sent the two-page letter recording the conversation between the two leaders on 30 January 2003 to Simon McDonald, who was then private secretary to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary.
Mr Rycroft said it 'must only be shown to those with a real need to know,'..."


The Retalliatory Leak:

Frank Rich: It's Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby
"There hasn't been anything like it since Martha Stewart fended off questions about her stock-trading scandal by manically chopping cabbage on 'The Early Show' on CBS. Last week the setting was 'Today' on NBC, where the image of President Bush manically hammering nails at a Habitat for Humanity construction site on the Gulf Coast was juggled with the sight of him trying to duck Matt Lauer's questions about Karl Rove.
As with Ms. Stewart, Mr. Bush's paroxysm of panic was must-see TV. 'The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts,' Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post. Asked repeatedly about Mr. Rove's serial appearances before a Washington grand jury, the jittery Mr. Bush, for once bereft of a script, improvised a passable impersonation of Norman Bates being quizzed by the detective in 'Psycho.' Like Norman and Ms. Stewart, he stonewalled.
That stonewall may start to crumble in a Washington courtroom this week or next. In a sense it already has. Now, as always, what matters most in this case is not whether Mr. Rove and Lewis Libby engaged in a petty conspiracy to seek revenge on a whistle-blower, Joseph Wilson, by unmasking his wife, Valerie, a covert C.I.A. officer. What makes Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is its illumination of a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq. That conspiracy was instigated by Mr. Rove's boss, George W. Bush, and Mr. Libby's boss, Dick Cheney..."

Times Online (UK) - Paper reveals role in CIA leak
"The New York Times reporter at the centre of a criminal investigation into the alleged leaking of a CIA agent’s name by the White House said that a senior Bush Administration official gave her details about the agent and then tried to stop her co-operating in the criminal inquiry into the leak.
Judith Miller, the reporter who spent three months in jail this summer for refusing to reveal what she knew about the leak, finally gave her version of events yesterday in a detailed analysis by the paper of its own role in the episode that could yet result in the indictment of some senior White House staff.
She said that Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, the chief of staff to Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, had spoken with her on three occasions early in summer 2003 about Valerie Plame, a CIA official who worked in the agency on weapons of mass destruction. It is an offence to reveal knowingly the identity of an undercover CIA operative.
Ms Miller stopped short of directly accusing Mr Libby of naming Ms Plame. In her account of what she recently told the grand jury investigating the allegations, the reporter said that her notes of the meetings with Mr Libby contained references to 'Valerie Flame' and 'Victoria Wilson', but she could not say for sure who was the source of these oddly inaccurate renditions..."

The Washington Post: Jailed reporter, Times thrashed over missteps
"Media analysts assailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller and her editors yesterday for what they called a series of missteps and questionable decisions revealed in two lengthy articles about the problems of covering the CIA leak investigation while defending the embattled journalist.
Alex Jones, a former Times reporter who heads the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, noted the paper's disclosure that Executive Editor Bill Keller had told Miller in 2003 she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons of mass destruction after some of her stories turned out to be wrong.
'If the New York Times does not trust Judy Miller to do stories in her area of expertise, what do they trust her to do, and why should we trust what she does?' Jones asked. 'She's a great, energetic talent, but investigative reporters need to be managed very closely, and her characterization of herself as Miss Run Amok is something an institution like the New York Times can't afford,'..."


The Right To Petition Congress:

The Washington Post: How the Abramoff-DeLay Machine Worked
"Lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his team were beginning to panic.
An anti-gambling bill had cleared the Senate and appeared on its way to passage by an overwhelming margin in the House of Representatives. If that happened, Abramoff's client, a company that wanted to sell state lottery tickets online, would be out of business.
But on July 17, 2000, the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act went down to defeat, to the astonishment of supporters who included many anti-gambling groups and Christian conservatives..."

Nukes:

AP: Nuclear Plant Has Flaw Undetected for 19 Years
"A potential problem with the emergency reactor core cooling system at the nation's largest nuclear power plant went undetected from 1986, when the plant began producing electricity, until last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the plant operator confirmed Thursday.
The issue, a design flaw, was identified when engineers at the plant, the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, did an analysis after commission overseers raised questions at a detailed inspection early last week. The analysis showed that the emergency cooling system might not operate as expected to provide water to reactor cores after a small leak in the reactor cooling lines, said a commission spokesman, Victor Dricks.
The worst-case result of an emergency cooling system failure is a meltdown of the reactor core and release of radioactivity into the atmosphere. Plants have redundant systems, however, and many other failures would have to occur before that happened, nuclear experts say...
... The emergency cooling system in each of the three units is designed to replace, in unusual circumstances, water that cools the reactor core. Earlier this year, the commission fined Arizona Public Service, a subsidiary of the Pinnacle West Capital Corporation, $50,000 because of a problem in a different part of the same cooling system. In the more recent case, pumps that provide emergency cooling water may not sense that a storage tank is getting low on water, and so may not switch to another source, Mr. Dricks said.
That the problem took so long to be discovered should prompt the commission to look at other plants and procedures, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear watchdog group.
'It's a fairly subtle problem, and it was a good catch by the N.R.C.,' Mr. Lochbaum said. 'It just would have been a great catch sooner,'."

Governing:

Gary Hart: The Art of Caring for Souls
"Belief in the ineffectiveness of government, as we have seen in recent weeks, is self-fulfilling. For some, it is also deadly. It is a cause for wonder that those most critical of government are among those most eager to secure its power. Not believing in government, however, a conservative either does not know or care to know how to make it effective.
Response to hurricane Katrina is not proof of government’s failure; it is proof of George W. Bush’s failure to govern effectively..."


Stage-Management, Bush-Style

Oct. 13th White House Press Briefing: Press Briefing by Scott McClellan
"Q: Scott, why did the administration feel it was necessary to coach the soldiers that the President talked to this morning in Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, I don't know what you're suggesting.

Q: Well, they discussed the questions ahead of time. They were told exactly what the President would ask, and they were coached, in terms of who would answer what question, and how they would pass the microphone.

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, are you suggesting that what our troops were saying was not sincere, or what they said was not their own thoughts?

Q: Nothing at all. I'm just asking why it was necessary to coach them..."

ABC News: Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged
"...Paul Rieckhoff, director of the New York-based Operation Truth, an advocacy group for U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, denounced the event as a 'carefully scripted publicity stunt.' Five of the 10 U.S. troops involved were officers, he said.
'If he wants the real opinions of the troops, he can't do it in a nationally televised teleconference,' Rieckhoff said. 'He needs to be talking to the boots on the ground and that's not a bunch of captains,'."

The Rule of Law:

John Dean: The Case Against Tom DeLay - What Has Happened To Grand Jury Secrecy In Texas?


The (Fleeting) Right To Privacy:

The Boston Globe: You need not be paranoid to fear RFID
"...If you use a Mobil Speedpass to pay for gasoline, you're already using RFID. Your Speedpass contains a microchip and a small antenna that allows it to broadcast information to a receiver. The chip has no power source of its own. Instead, it picks up radio signals from an RFID chip reader, turns these radio waves into electricity, and uses the power to broadcast data to the reader.
Because they need no batteries, RFID chips can be made small enough to attach invisibly to practically anything. One company is even working on a way to print RFID chips onto newspapers, using electrically conductive ink.
Why is this so scary? Because so many of us pay for our purchases with credit or debit cards, which contain our names, addresses, and other sensitive information. Now imagine a store with RFID chips embedded in every product. At checkout time, the digital code in each item is associated with our credit card data. From now on, that particular pair of shoes or carton of cigarettes is associated with you. Even if you throw them away, the RFID chips will survive. Indeed, Albrecht and McIntyre learned that the phone company BellSouth Corp. had applied for a patent on a system for scanning RFID tags in trash, and using the data to study the shopping patterns of individual consumers.
[Albrecht & McIntyre's] 'Spychips' reveals a US government plan to order RFID chips embedded in all cars sold in America. No big deal -- until you realize the police could then track your comings and goings by putting inexpensive RFID readers at key intersections..."


White House Nominations:

The Washington Post: Bush Justice Nominee Withdraws
"The Bush administration's choice for deputy attorney general has withdrawn his nomination amid mounting questions from Senate Democrats over his dealings with indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and over his role in shaping controversial interrogation policies.
Timothy E. Flanigan wrote President Bush on Thursday that he was dropping out as a candidate because of 'uncertainty concerning the timing of my confirmation,' which has been delayed several times since Bush nominated him in May..."

On A Mission:

Oddly, Bin Laden thinks the same thing...

The Guardian (UK) - George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'
"George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month..."


So Resourceful, But They're Breaking The Law:

The Village Voice: Marines: Looking for a Few Good Aliens?
"On Wednesday, a general court martial is to begin at Parris Island, South Carolina, for a U.S. Marine recruiter accused of selling and delivering counterfeit documents to illegal aliens in order for them to join the service.
Gunnery Sergeant Hubert A. Lucas, 35, is one of four suspects named in a report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, part of which was obtained by the Voice.
The report says an investigation began on August 11, 2004, after an intelligence report by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency revealed that a Marine at Camp Pendleton in California, who had admitted to entering the United States illegally and enlisting with a counterfeit green card and stolen Social Security number, identified Lucas as the individual who charged her $250 for the documents for the purpose of effecting her fraudulent enlistment in the Marine Corps..."


The Rule of Law:

NY Times: Abramoff Inquiry Extends to DOJ
"The ranking Democrats on three House committees called Thursday for an outside investigator to determine why a prosecutor in Guam was demoted in 2002 after opening a criminal investigation of Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist now at the center of a federal corruption investigation.
The Democrats said in a letter to the Justice Department that an outside investigator was needed to determine if the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, the acting United States attorney on Guam, was demoted as a result of 'political manipulation of Justice Department officials' by Mr. Abramoff, a major Republican fund-raiser.
Colleagues said Mr. Black's reassignment in November 2002 resulted in the collapse of the investigation in Guam, where Mr. Abramoff had a lucrative lobbying practice. Law-enforcement officials have confirmed that the Justice Department's inspector general, the department's independent watchdog, opened an investigation in recent weeks into the circumstances of Mr. Black's demotion..."


On The State of Media:

Al Gore: The Threat to American Democracy

Mr. Abramoff's Friends:

NY Times: White House's Former Purchasing Chief Is Indicted
"The Bush administration's former chief procurement official was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements and obstructing investigations into high-powered Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The five felony counts in the indictment charge David H. Safavian with obstructing Senate and executive branch investigations into whether he aided Abramoff in efforts to acquire property controlled by the General Services Administration around the nation's capital.
Both probes looked into an August 2002 golf outing that Safavian took to Scotland with Abramoff, former Christian Coalition executive Ralph Reed, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and others.
Safavian, a former lobbying associate of Abramoff, is the first person beyond Abramoff himself to face charges arising out of the probe of the lobbyist, who is a major Republican fundraiser with close ties to GOP leaders in Congress..."


Energy Policy And Using Disaster As An Economic Opportunity:

The key point here is that the petroleum refiners never wanted to pay to build new refineries as set forth in our EPA regulations. Now they get their chance to do it on the cheap.

Kelpie Wilson: Energy Hog Lessons
"...Several years ago, Senator Ron Wyden's office started looking into the issue of US refinery capacity and found documents - oil industry internal memos - that show that oil companies deliberately shut down refineries all through the 1990s in order to keep supply throttled and profit margins high.
Wyden stated: 'Information I have received during my ongoing investigation raises serious concerns that the nation's major oil suppliers have set out in a strategic effort to orchestrate a financial triple play, a coordinated effort that would reduce supply, raise prices at the pump and relax environmental regulations.'
Between 1995 and 2001, 24 refinery closings took offline nearly 830,000 barrels of oil per day. At the same time, oil industry profits rose hugely. Taking the example of Texaco, the report found that while the company's production steadily decreased from 1998 to 2000, its net income more than quadrupled during the same period. Texaco gets high marks as an energy hog. You can read Wyden's report here (pdf document).
Now that they've got the reduced supply and high prices they wanted, the oil industry is working on the relaxing-environmental-rules part of their triple play, and that's what the refinery bill is really about..."


The Net:

The Guardian (UK) - Breaking America's grip on the net
"After troubled negotiations in Geneva, the US may be forced to relinquish control of the internet to a coalition of governments..."


Voting Technology As An Essential Tool of Democracy:

The lack of national standards for, and public oversight of the security aspects of voting machine software is a problem that the public may not fully appreciate until it is far too late.

SecurityFocus: E-voting experts call for revised security guidelines
"A federally funded group of voting system experts called on the United States' Election Assistance Commission, which oversees the nation's state-run elections, to revamp its recommended process for evaluating the security of electronic voting devices..."

Italy To US: All You Had To Do Was Ask:

But since you refused to do so...

BBC News: Italy orders further CIA warrants
"An Italian court has issued three more arrest warrants for suspected CIA agents accused of helping to kidnap a Muslim cleric in 2003.
The authorities have already ordered the arrest of 19 people suspected of being involved in the abduction of Egyptian Osama Mustafa Hassan.
The suspects are accused of abducting Mr Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, and flying him to Egypt for interrogation.
Correspondents say the case has soured relations between Washington and Rome.
Italy says the alleged operation hindered Italian terrorism investigations..."

'Democracy' in Iraq:

Democracy Now! - Headlines for October 4, 2005
"Sunnis Accuses Shiites Of Fixing Vote on Constitution

Meanwhile Sunni leaders are threatening to boycott the October 15th vote on the constitution after Iraqi leaders changed the rules for ratification that will make it almost impossible for the constitution to be rejected. Under the new rules, the constitution will fail only if two-thirds of all registered voters reject it in at least three of the 18 provinces. Originally the constitution could have been defeated if two-thirds of all those actually casting ballots rejected it in three provinces. Sunni leaders are accusing the Shiite leadership of fixing the vote on the constitution. One secular Sunni lawmaker - Adnan al-Janabi - said, 'This is a mockery of democracy, a mockery of law. Many Sunnis have been telling me they didn't believe in this democratic process, and now I believe they are vindicated.' The rules were changed on Sunday during an unannounced vote in Parliament..."

NY Times: New Rules on Iraqi Vote May Violate Standards, U.N. Says
"The United Nations said today that newly adopted rules for the coming Iraqi constitutional referendum appeared to violate accepted international standards for elections.
United Nations officials met in Baghdad with Iraq's Kurdish and Shiite political legislators who had quietly adopted the new rules on Sunday. The rule change would make it virtually impossible for the constitution to fail and has infuriated many Sunni Arab political leaders who oppose the document.
Hussein al-Shahristani, the acting speaker of the National Assembly, said political leaders hoped to reach a resolution on the referendum rules and present it to legislators by Wednesday.
In the new rules, the legislators designated two different meanings for the word 'voters' in a single passage where the word appears to mean the same thing. That set off accusations by Sunni Arab leaders and independent political figures that Shiite and Kurdish legislators were using an unfair double standard to achieve their goal of seeing the constitution passed..."

Justics O'Connor's Replacement:

Ms. Miers' characterization of this president as 'brilliant' makes one wonder if her loyalty is only outstripped by her lack of judgenment.

David Frum: David Frum's Diary on National Review Online
"...Harriet Miers is a capable lawyer, a hard worker, and a kind and generous person. She would be an reasonable choice for a generalist attorney, which is indeed how George W. Bush first met her. She would make an excellent trial judge: She is a careful and fair-minded listener. But US Supreme Court?

In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. She served Bush well, but she is not the person to lead the court in new directions - or to stand up under the criticism that a conservative justice must expect.

The harsh truth is, at this 5 year mark in the administration's life, that its domestic achievements are very few. The most important, the tax cut, will likely prove temporary, undermined by the administration's overspending. The education bill, the faith-based initiative, and the rest do not amount to much. Social Security reform will not happen; work on tax reform has not even begun; the immigration proposals are disasters that will never become law.

Civil justice reform should be credited to Congress, not the White House. After that, what is there other than the Patriot Act and of course judicial nominations? But even on judicial nominations, thus far the president has only preserved the old balance on the court. If he is actually to advance his principles, he will need a real conservative leader: a Luttig, for example, a Michael McConnell - or perhaps Senator Mitch McConnell if the president is concerned about confirmability. The Senate will always confirm a fellow-senator, and McConnell is one of the body's outstanding conservative intellects. This is no time for the president to indulge his loyalty to his friends. All this year, the president has been testing the limits of his support. Well we are at the limit now, and anything less than a superb choice for the O'Connor vacancy will overstep it."


On Torture:

Reuters: Bush Moves to Block Torture Probe
"The White House on Friday threatened to veto a $440.2 billion defense spending bill in the Senate because it wasn't enough money for the Pentagon and also warned lawmakers not to add any amendments to regulate the treatment of detainees or set up a commission to probe abuse."

U.S. Government Propaganda:

NY Times: Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal
"Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.
In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated 'covert propaganda' in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.
The contract with Mr. Williams and the general contours of the public relations campaign had been known for months. The report Friday provided the first definitive ruling on the legality of the activities..."


On Torture:

Ray McGovern: Rogue Soldiers or Rogue President?: "...After seeing the photos from Abu Ghraib last year, Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia took a strong rhetorical stand against torture. But then he quickly succumbed to White House pressure to postpone Senate hearings on the subject until after the November 2004 election.
In July, Warner joined two other Republican Senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, in attempts to introduce amendments against torture to the defense authorization bill. The amendments would require that US forces revert to the standards set forth in Army Field Manual (FM 34-52) for interrogating detainees held by the Defense Department. The manual prohibits the use of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Another amendment that has been discussed would require that all foreign nationals 'be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross.' This would prohibit sequestering unregistered 'ghost detainees' at prisons like Abu Ghraib and secret CIA interrogation centers.

Inured as I thought I had become to the gall of top Bush administration officials, I found the White House reaction shocking. On the evening of July 21, Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill to dissuade the three Senators from proceeding with the amendments. But the Senators were not cowed - not then, at least.
Four days later on the floor of the Senate, John McCain - who knows something of torture - made a poignant appeal to his colleagues to hold our country to humane standards in treating captives, 'no matter how evil or terrible' they may be. 'This is not about who they are. This is about who we are,' said McCain.
The following day Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pulled the Pentagon spending bill off the floor, sparing Bush the political risk of vetoing the much needed defense authorization bill simply because it included amendments requiring the protections for detainees - protections already required not only by international law but also by US criminal statute.
Yesterday, the White House again warned lawmakers not to add any amendments on the treatment of detainees. It will be interesting to see if, in the end, the Senators cave in to White House pressure. For if they do, they will be providing yet another congressional nihil obstat for the general approach so succinctly voiced by the president to then-terrorism czar Richard Clarke and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in the White House on the evening of 9/11. According to Clarke, the president yelled, 'I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass,'."