Observations on current events

Official Corruption:

The Raw Story: Whistleblowers allege influence peddling by members of Congress, VP in Mexico wastewater project
"An explosive report, obtained in part by RAW STORY, and soon to be released by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), fingers high-level officials both on the federal and local California level in allegations of influence-peddling ensnaring members of both parties.
According to documents and whistleblowers concerning a San Diego wastewater treatment plant to be built in Tijuana, Mexico, Vice President Dick Cheney, Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Bob Filner (D-CA) and Brian Bilbray (R-CA) have allegedly advanced the project despite serious concerns from those involved.
The proposed Bajagua Project is a secondary wastewater treatment plant for San Diego, named after the company, Bajagua Project, LLC, which was founded solely to get the no-bid contract for water treatment. The agreement is a private-public fee-for-service proposition that will charge the federal government billions. The estimated profit forecast for the project is upwards of $600 million dollars over a twenty-year span..."

Iraq:

Democratic elections apparently are too...democratic?

NY Times: Bush Wants Another Regime Change in Iraq
"Senior Shiite politicians said today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the Iraqi prime minister that President Bush does not want him to remain the country's leader in the next government.
It is the first time the Americans have directly intervened in the furious debate over the country's top job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans and some Shiite leaders.
The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the head of the main Shiite political bloc at a meeting last Saturday to pass a 'personal message from President Bush' on to the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who the Shiites insist should stay in his post for four more years, said Redha Jowad Taki, a Shiite politician and member of Parliament who was at the meeting.
Ambassador Khalilzad said that President Bush 'doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept' Mr. Jaafari to be the next prime minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc. It was the first 'clear and direct message' from the Americans on the issue of the candidate for prime minister, Mr. Taki said..."

From The Karl Rove Book Of Dirty Tricks

The Boston Globe: Fourth man charged in GOP phone-jamming scam
"The former co-owner of a telemarketing firm pleaded not guilty Monday to participating in a Republican scheme to jam Democrats' get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.
Shaun Hansen, 34, of Spokane, Wash., was indicted by a federal grand jury on March 8, but the charges were not made public until his arraignment Monday.
Hansen is charged with conspiring to commit and aiding the commission of telephone harassment. Prosecutors say he was paid $2,500 to have employees at Idaho-based Mylo Enterprises place hundreds of hang-up calls to phone lines installed to help voters get rides to the polls on Nov. 5, 2002. Among the contests decided that day was the close U.S. Senate race in which Republican Rep. John Sununu beat outgoing Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.
Three others have been convicted for their roles in the scheme...
...Hansen had faced similar accusations last April but he never was indicted, said his lawyer Jeffrey Levin, who declined to comment further on the case Monday. In July 2004, Hansen told the Idaho State Journal that GOP Marketplace hired his company to call six phone lines installed by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and a firefighters union but he didn't know the purpose of the calls. He added he and the company's other owner thought their instructions were odd, so they met with GOP Marketplace attorneys, who told them not to worry..."

IRAQ: "Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning"

NY Times: British Memo: "Bush Was Set on Path to War"
"In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.
But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.
'Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,' David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.
'The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March,' Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. 'This was when the bombing would begin.'
The timetable came at an important diplomatic moment. Five days after the Bush-Blair meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to appear before the United
Nations to present the American evidence that Iraq posed a threat to world security by hiding unconventional weapons.
Although the United States and Britain aggressively sought a second United Nations resolution against Iraq - which they failed to obtain - the president said repeatedly that he did not believe he needed it for an invasion.
Stamped 'extremely sensitive,' the five-page memorandum, which was circulated among a handful of Mr. Blair's most senior aides, had not been made public. Several highlights were first published in January in the book 'Lawless World,' which was written by a British lawyer and international law professor, Philippe Sands. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo.
Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president's sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.
The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was 'unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.' Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment..."

NY Times Editorial: The Joy of Being Blameless
"The contrast could not have been more stark, nor the message more clear. On the day that a court-martial imposed justice on a 24-year-old Army sergeant for tormenting detainees at Abu Ghraib with his dog, President Bush said once again that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose benighted policies and managerial incompetence led to the prisoner abuse scandal, was doing a 'fine job' and should stay at his post.
We've seen this sorry pattern for nearly two years now, since the Abu Ghraib horrors first shocked the world: President Bush has clung to the fiction that the abuse of prisoners was just the work of a few rotten apples, despite report after report after report demonstrating that it was organized and systematic, and flowed from policies written by top officials in his administration.
Just this week, Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall provided a bloodcurdling account in the Times of how a Special Operations unit converted an Iraqi military base into a torture chamber, even using prisoners as paintball targets, in its frenzy to counter a widely predicted insurgency for which Mr. Rumsfeld had refused to prepare...
...Mr. Bush has refused to hold himself or any of his top political appointees accountable for those catastrophic errors. Indeed, he has promoted many of them. And this is not an isolated problem. It's just one example, among many, of how this president's men run no risk of being blamed for anything that happens, not matter how egregious."

The Sunday Times (UK) - Iraqis killed by US troops ‘on rampage’
"...Abu Sifa was about to join a lengthening list of Iraqi communities claiming to have suffered from American atrocities.
According to Iraqi police, 11 bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the house, among them four women and five children aged between six months and five years. An official police report obtained by a US reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers said: 'The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people.'
The Abu Sifa deaths on March 15 were first reported last weekend on the day that Time magazine published the results of a 10-week investigation into an incident last November when US marines killed 15 civilians in their homes in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.
The two incidents are being investigated by US authorities, but persistent eyewitness accounts of rampaging attacks by American troops are fuelling human rights activists’ concerns that Pentagon commanders are failing to curb military excesses in Iraq..."


Detainee Rights?

Newsweek Periscope: Should Scalia Recuse Himself From Gitmo Case?
"...The Supreme Court this week will hear arguments in a big case: whether to allow the Bush administration to try Guantánamo detainees in special military tribunals with limited rights for the accused. But Justice Antonin Scalia has already spoken his mind about some of the issues in the matter. During an unpublicized March 8 talk at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, Scalia dismissed the idea that the detainees have rights under the U.S. Constitution or international conventions, adding he was 'astounded' at the 'hypocritical' reaction in Europe to Gitmo..."


Illegal Immigration:

Who benefits when illegals are given work illegally?
The employer saves money on labor.
That means s/he can produce goods/services more cheaply. In essence, their goods/servcies are then illegally subsidized. I'm all for legal immigration and employers being responsible for authenticating identity documents for employment.

What I wonder, though, is if America realizes the extent of the illegal subsidies enabled by the millions of illegals working in the US. Are most Americans ready to pay the additional costs for all the things they already buy? Are most Americans ready to pay a lot more for produce from the Central Valley, or for citrus from Florida, or for any other commodity handled (currently) by illegal workers?

The lie that no reasonable person should accept is that illegals do the jobs that no American will do. Were these jobs to pay a decent wage, plenty of Americans would do them. But of course, the minimum wage has stayed static while Congress votes itself a pay-raise on occaision after occaision. The two should be linked, if we were actually interested in fairness or social justice.

The Imperial Presidency:

John W. Dean: Bush's Defiance of the Law
"President George Bush continues to openly and defiantly ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) - the 1978 statute prohibiting electronic inspection of Americans' telephone and email communications with people outside the United States without a court-authorized warrant. (According to US News & World Report, the President may also have authorized warrantless break-ins and other physical surveillance, such as opening regular mail, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.)
Bush's position is that he does not need Congressional approval for his measures. Even he does not claim that Congress gave him express power to undertake them, but he does claim that Congress indirectly approved such measures when it authorized the use of force to go after those involved in the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States. He also argues that, in any event, approval was not necessary - for he argues that he has such authority under Article II of the Constitution, as the chief executive, and Commander in Chief, charged with faithfully executing the laws of the land and protecting the Constitution.
These arguments are hauntingly familiar to this observer..."

AP: Justice Department Allows Monitoring of Lawyers' Calls
"The National Security Agency could have legally monitored ordinarily confidential communications between doctors and patients or attorneys and their clients, the Justice Department said Friday of its controversial warrantless surveillance program.
Responding to questions from Congress, the department also said that it sees no prohibition to using information collected under the NSA's program in court.
'Because collecting foreign intelligence information without a warrant does not violate the Fourth Amendment and because the Terrorist Surveillance Program is lawful, there appears to be no legal barrier against introducing this evidence in a criminal prosecution,' the department said in responses to questions from lawmakers released Friday evening.
The department said that considerations, including whether classified information could be disclosed, must be weighed.
In classified court filings, the Justice Department has responded to questions about whether information from the government's warrantless surveillance program was used to prosecute terror suspects. Defense attorneys are hoping to use that information to challenge the cases against their clients.
Since the program was disclosed in December, some skeptical lawmakers have investigated the Bush administration's legal footing, raising questions including whether the program could capture doctor-patient and attorney-client communications. Such communications normally receive special legal protections..."


Targeting Iran:

Marjorie Cohn: Israel, al Qaeda and Iran
"Since George W. Bush gave his 'axis of evil' speech, he invaded Iraq, changed its regime, and created a quagmire reminiscent of Vietnam. His administration is now sending clear signals that Iran is next in line for regime change. The raison d'être: Iran's nuclear program, an al Qaeda connection, and protecting Israel..."


Right-Wing Media:

The New Yorker: FEAR FACTOR
On Bill O’Reilly’s 'baroque period.'

The Big Lie?

Unanswered Questions About 9/11: 911 Loose Change
This 1 hour and 20 min. video tells the story of the "post-911 world", starting in 1962. If you don't have broadband, you can visit a website that has a transcript and still photos.
911 Loose Change (under "Evidence")

Bush's PATRIOT Act Signing Statement Thumbs The Executive's Nose At Lawmakers

In effect, he's saying "I do not care that the Constitution gives Congress the right to write laws that I need to obey. I'll ignore what I please."

Boston Globe: Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement
"When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.
The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.
Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it 'a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people.' But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a 'signing statement,' an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.
In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would 'impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties.'
Bush wrote: 'The executive branch shall construe the provisions...that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch...in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information...'
The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law..."

Always Looking Out For Sonny Boy:

Let's remember that this chap was on the board of the Silverado Bank in Denver, during the 1980's. When Silverado imploded as part of the Savings & Loan scandal, the cost to the U.S. taxpayer (for that bank alone) accounted for roughly $1 billion.

The Houston Chronicle: Katrina funds earmarked to pay for Neil Bush's software program
"Former first lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil.
Since then, the Ignite Learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
'Mrs. Bush wanted to do something specifically for education and specifically for the thousands of students flooding into the Houston schools,' said Jean Becker, former President Bush's chief of staff. 'She knew that HISD was using this software program, and she's very excited about this program, so she wanted to make it possible for them to expand the use of this program,'..."


In Other News:

Democracy Now! - Headlines for March 23, 2006
"...IRS Audited Greenpeace At Request of ExxonMobil-Funded Group

In environmental news - the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a fake watchdog group, largely subsidized by ExxonMobil, was responsible for getting the IRS to audit the environmental organization Greenpeace. Two years ago the little known Public Interest Watch challenged Greenpeace's tax exempt status and accused the group of money laundering and other crimes. According to the Journal, tax records show ExxonMobil provided more than 95 percent of the funding of Public Interest Watch. John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA said 'I believe organizations should be scrutinized and audited, but I just don't believe you should get targeted because you're a critic of Exxon Mobil,'...

...NYPD Caught Lying About RNC Arrests in 2004

In New York, the police response to the Republican National Convention protests is continuing to come under criticism. For the first time a high-ranking police supervisor has admitted that police arrested about 400 people around Union Square even though the police never gave an order to disperse. The disclosure was made in a deposition made by Deputy Inspector James Essig. On Wednesday the New York Civil Liberties Union accused the police of lying about the circumstances surrounding the arrests of hundreds of protesters during the Republican National Convention."

Iraq:

The item below includes a transcript of Helen Thomas asking W about why he went to war. The worst of his deceptive answers has to be 'No President wants war,' when it is clear as day that his colleagues at the Project For the New American Century (many of whom joined the Administration) were intent on precisely the aim of invading Iraq.

Scott Galindez: Someone Should Tell Bush Why We Went to War
"After yesterday's presidential news conference, I am beginning to wonder if George W. Bush knows why we went to war with Iraq. He should just come clean and admit that we went to war because Dick, Wolfie, and Rummy told him to.
Three years into the war and the President still can't answer the question of why we went to war in the first place. It is perfectly clear now why he can't meet with Cindy Sheehan. Imagine him saying to Cindy, 'after September 11th, we realized killers could destroy innocent life.' Hmmmm, we have a president who didn't know that prior to 9/11?
Imagine him telling Cindy that we invaded Iraq because 'the Taliban provided safe haven for al Qaeda. That's where al Qaeda trained....' Someone also needs to tell George that the Taliban probably wanted Saddam out of power too; bin Laden did. Of course he knows the Taliban were in Afghanistan, doesn't he?
When he finally got to Iraq, he rewrote history again. 'We worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it' said Bush.
The world didn't agree, that's why there was no vote at the UN authorizing the war. I seem to remember inspectors in Iraq until we warned them that it wouldn't be safe for them to remain. I also want to know what Iraq was supposed to disclose if they had no WMD?
Please, one of you neo-cons, brief the President on the real reason for the war in Iraq, so the next time a reporter asks him a real question he doesn't embarrass us again..."

The Guardian (UK) - 'Iraq was awash in cash. We played football with bricks of $100 bills'
"At the beginning of the Iraq war, the UN entrusted $23bn of Iraqi money to the US-led coalition to redevelop the country. With the infrastructure of the country still in ruins, where has all that money gone? Callum Macrae and Ali Fadhil on one of the greatest financial scandals of all time..."


Government, W-Style:

Washington Post: Federal Grants Flow to Bush Allies
"For years, conservatives have complained about what they saw as the liberal tilt of federal grant money. Taxpayer funds went to abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood to promote birth control, and groups closely aligned with the AFL-CIO got Labor Department grants to run worker-training programs.
In the Bush administration, conservatives are discovering that turnabout is fair play: Millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have flowed to groups that support President Bush's agenda on abortion and other social issues.
Under the auspices of its religion-based initiatives and other federal programs, the administration has funneled at least $157 million in grants to organizations run by political and ideological allies, according to federal grant documents and interviews..."

Energy Politics:

Greg Palast: Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED
"...'It's about oil,' Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for 'liberating' Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.
And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will 'enhance its relationship with OPEC.'
Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.
Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.
There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get more of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it..."


W's Approval Rating:

This animated .GIF image shows the progression of the approval rating of the self-proclaimed 'War-President' from the beginning of 2005 to March 2006. Looks like he desperately needs to give the American people another dose of THE FEAR, as that's the only thing that seems to work.


Has The IRS Never Heard Of Privacy?

The Detroit Free Press: IRS plan would allow sale of tax data to marketers
"Service is quietly moving to loosen the once-inviolable privacy of federal income-tax returns.
If it succeeds, accountants and other tax-return preparers for the first time would be able to sell information from individual returns -- or even entire returns -- to marketers and data brokers.
The change is in a set of proposed rules the Treasury Department and the IRS published in the Dec. 8 Federal Register, where the official notice labeled them 'not a significant regulatory action.'
IRS officials portray the changes as housecleaning needed to update outmoded regulations adopted before it began accepting returns electronically. The proposed rules, which would become effective 30 days after a final version is published, would require a tax preparer to obtain written consent before selling tax information..."


White House Staffers Impersonating the Secret Service:

Why doesn't the phrase 'abuse of power' not echo from every moutainside when this occurs?

Denver Post: Bush staffers ejected 3 at speech
"A White House staff member was responsible for asking three people to leave President Bush's town-hall meeting in Denver a year ago, a U.S. Secret Service agent said during an internal investigation of the event.
The Secret Service was investigating the complaints of the three people, who said they were ousted from the Bush event last March because their car's bumper sticker criticized his foreign policy.
According to a Secret Service report obtained by the Denver Post under a Freedom of Information Act request, the agents present said it was 'staff' who asked the individuals to leave, not them. When the trio - Les lie Weise, Alex Young and Karen Bauer - asked the agents why they had to leave, the agents said they had no control over the situation.
A Secret Service agent told them 'there was nothing they could do because the event was hosted by the staff and was a private event,'..."

...or journalists, if the situation presents itself...

The Sun Herald: Who were those guys?
"There was a whirlwind of activity in the days prior to President Bush's arrival at a home on the beach in Gautier last week, with government officials and Secret Service scouting a location and checking the neighborhood where Bush would stop.
The reason for all the fuss was kept a secret even from the family that received Bush. They didn't know it was prelude to a presidential visit until the day Bush arrived.
But one part of the preparation for the President's arrival involved two government agents posing as journalists.
Recounting the pre-visit days for WLOX and the Sun Herald, Jerry Akins, who received Bush, mentioned that on the Friday before Bush arrived, two men approached him identifying themselves as members of the media.
He said the men told him they were with Fox News out of Houston, Texas, and were on a 'scouting mission' for a story on new construction. They took pictures inside Akins' house, which is under construction and looked up and down the road in the neighborhood.
Akins said he didn't think anything more about them partly because visits from strangers increased exponentially as government agents and Secret Service arrived that Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before the March 8 visit.
But after the president left Akins' home, the two men again approached Akins and let him know they were not media after all, but were with the governmental entourage.
Akins said the two showed him blue porcelain lapel pins that contained the Presidential seal and another government official confirmed the two were with the government entourage and not the media. Akins assumed they were Secret Service agents.
But a spokesman for Secret Service, under Homeland Security, said posing as a journalist is not something the agents typically do. He did suggest they might have been with the White House staff or a branch of the military, based on the description of the pins..."

Scathing Criticism of Bush From Conservatives?

Phillips hits the nail on the head. How much more will it take to convince those holding GOP-posts today?

The New York Times Book Review: 'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips
"...Phillips has remained a prolific and important political commentator in the decades since, but he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build. His latest book (his 13th) looks broadly and historically at the political world the conservative coalition has painstakingly constructed over the last several decades. No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness...
...Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration, he does not spend much time examining the ideas and behavior of the president and his advisers. Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends -— none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies -— that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt -— current and prospective -— that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future...
...Phillips fully supports an explanation of the Iraq war that the Bush administration dismisses as conspiracy theory -— that its principal purpose was to secure vast oil reserves that would enable the United States to control production and to lower prices. ('Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath,' an oil analyst said a couple of years ago. 'You can't ask for better than that.') Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, democracy and other public rationales were, Phillips says, simply ruses to disguise the real motivation for the invasion.
And while this argument may be somewhat too simplistic to explain the complicated mix of motives behind the war, it is hard to dismiss Phillips's larger argument: that the pursuit of oil has for at least 30 years been one of the defining elements of American policy in the world; and that the Bush administration -— unusually dominated by oilmen Â- has taken what the president deplored recently as the nation's addiction to oil to new and terrifying levels. The United States has embraced a kind of 'petro-imperialism,' Phillips writes, 'the key aspect of which is the U.S. military's transformation into a global oil-protection force,' and which 'puts up a democratic facade, emphasizes freedom of the seas (or pipeline routes) and seeks to secure, protect, drill and ship oil, not administer everyday affairs,'..."

Three Years In Iraq:

Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton (Ret.) was charged with training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004. His criticism is one of the first to come (publicly) from commanders who have served in Iraq. It is only a shame that it comes so late.
His recommednation of replacing Rumsfeld with Lieberman is, however, a very poor one.

Paul D. Eaton: A Top-Down Review for the Pentagon
"In sum, [Rumsfeld] has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.
In the five years Mr. Rumsfeld has presided over the Pentagon, I have seen a climate of groupthink become dominant and a growing reluctance by experienced military men and civilians to challenge the notions of the senior leadership...
...Donald Rumsfeld demands more than loyalty. He wants fealty. And he has hired men who give it. Consider the new secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, who when faced with the compelling need to increase the service's size has refused to do so. He is instead relying on the shell game of hiring civilians to do jobs that had previously been done by soldiers, and thus keeping the force strength static on paper. This tactic may help for a bit, but it will likely fall apart in the next budget cycle, with those positions swiftly eliminated.
So, what to do?
First, President Bush should accept the offer to resign that Mr. Rumsfeld says he has tendered more than once, and hire a man who will listen to and support the magnificent soldiers on the ground...
...More vital in the longer term, Congress must assert itself. Too much power has shifted to the executive branch, not just in terms of waging war but also in planning the military of the future. Congress should remember it still has the power of the purse; it should call our generals, colonels, captains and sergeants to testify frequently, so that their opinions and needs are known to the men they lead..."

The Congresswoman's amendment gets very much to the heart of the matter in Iraq. It forces a debate on US intentions in the region. So far, the US occupation has assumed a great degree of permanence. The ability exert control over Iraq's oil is the focus, and always has been, for this White House. Why else would the VP's 2001 Energy Task Force discussions have employed maps of Iraqi oil fields?

Rep. Barbara Lee: Lee Bill Attempts to Block Permanent Iraq Bases
"[Thursday, 16 March 2006], during debate on the to an emergency spending bill for the War in Iraq, the House approved an amendment introduced by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) that will prohibit the use of funds to enter in to basing agreements that would lead to a permanent military presence in Iraq.
The amendment to H.R.4939, the administration's $91 billion supplemental request for Iraq, Afghanistan and Katrina relief, was approved by a voice vote. Lee, who last year introduced H.Con.Res. 197, to make it 'the policy of the United States not to enter into any base agreement with the Government of Iraq that would lead to a permanent United States military presence in Iraq,' gave the following statement on the House floor:
'This amendment is not about the war, though I offered an alternative to keep us out of Iraq. This amendment is not about bringing our troops home, though I believe we should. This amendment is not about holding the President accountable for misleading us into an unjust and unnecessary war, though we should.
'Mr. Chairman, the amendment we are offering is very simple: it would provide that no funds be used under this bill to enter into military base agreements between the US and Iraq. Stating this will clearly indicate that the US has no intention of making military bases permanent,'..."


The absurdity of the claim that the torture at Abu Ghraib was carried out by 'just a few bad apples' is reinforced unequivically here...

NY Times: Torture Before and After Abu Ghraib
"As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.
In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.
The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.
Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, 'NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.' The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: 'If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it.' According to Pentagon specialist who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. 'The reality is, there were no rules there,' another Pentagon official said.
The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.
It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world..."

And now for White House PR purposes, we are offered this show of force on the third anniversary of the illegal invasion...

Christopher Allbritton: On Scene: How Operation Swarmer Fizzled
"Operation Swarmer is turning out to be much less than meets the eye, or the television camera, for that matter.
Iraqi and Coalition forces launched Operation Iraqi Freedom's largest air assault operation in southern Salah Ad Din province March 16. Named Operation Swarmer, the joint operation's mission was to clear a suspected insurgent operating area northeast of Samarra.
Operation Swarmer included more than 1,500 troops from the Iraqi Army's 4th Division, the US 101st Airborne Division and 101st Combat Aviation Brigade. The Soldiers isolated the objective area in a combined air and ground assault.
More than 50 Attack and assault aircraft and 200 tactical vehicles participated in the operation. Troops from the Iraqi Army's 4th Division, the 'Rakkasans' from the 187th Infantry Regiment and the 'Hunters' from the 9th Cavalry Regiment assaulted multiple objectives. Forces from the Iraqi 2nd Commando Brigade then completed a ground infiltration to secure numerous structures in the area.
Initial reports indicate a number of weapons caches were captured, containing artillery shells, IED-making materials and military uniforms. Iraqi and Coalition troops also detained 41 suspected insurgents.
That sounds exciting! But according to a colleague of mine from TIME who traveled up there today on a US embassy-sponsored trip, there are no insurgents, no fighting and 17 of the 41 prisoners taken have already been released after just one day. The 'number of weapons caches' equals six, which isn't unusual when you travel around Iraq. They're literally everywhere..."


Our (Fleeting) Civil Liberties

How could this be interpreted other than the White House really preferring the United States to become a police state?

US News & World Report: Are Warrentless Searches Next?
"In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval. Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects - also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell US News. 'There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue,' says a former senior FBI official. 'Discussions about - if [the searches] happened - where would the information go, and would it taint cases.'
FBI Director Robert Mueller was alarmed by the proposal, the two officials said, and pushed back hard against it. 'Mueller was personally very concerned,' one official says, 'not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised by warrantless physical searches.' FBI spokesman John Miller said none of the FBI's senior staff are aware of any such discussions and added that the bureau has not conducted 'physical searches of any location without consent or a judicial order,'..."


The Environment:

Kelpie Wilson: From Teapot Dome to Gale Norton
"As the Teapot Dome scandal of Warren G. Harding's presidency was one milestone in the history of American resource piracy, the tenure of Gale Norton as Secretary of the Interior is surely another.
Harding's Interior Secretary, Albert Fall, failed in his scheme to sell off the Teapot Dome oil reserves and pocket the money. He was prosecuted and sentenced to a year in prison. Gale Norton's timely exit on the heels of the Abramoff scandal that implicates top Interior Department officials could mean that she is worried, but it is not likely that she will face any prosecution for her giveaways to industry...
...Today our new reality is that the tycoons and the officials are actually the same persons, or at least part of the same hive. Like insects that go through a complex life cycle from larva to pupa tof egg-laying adult, people like Gale Norton and her deputy secretary Stephen J. Griles will go from lobbyist to regulator to corporate board member. At every stage of the life cycle they have one purpose: to direct the flow of resources back to the corporate nest.
And so, when Norton claims she is leaving the Interior Department to set 'new goals to achieve in the private sector,' you know that she will be well supplied with hogs, heifers and whatever lucrative lawyering job she wants.
Gale Norton's number one tool, which she used like a common thief slips a credit card up a door jamb to spring a cheap lock, is the ideology known as 'Wise Use.' The 'Wise Use' doctrine is founded on anti-government rhetoric that advocates eliminating any environmental regulations that might restrict economic development. Because she was so well known as a 'Wise Use' ideologue, only John Ashcroft was a more controversial cabinet appointment in Bush's first term..."

The Environment:

When a judge has to tell the agency charged with enforcing the law to actually do its job, the agency is broken, or clearly serving the wrong master.

New York Times: Judges Overturn Bush Bid to Ease Pollution Rules
"A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a clean-air regulation issued by the Bush administration that would have let many power plants, refineries and factories avoid installing costly new pollution controls to help offset any increased emissions caused by repairs and replacements of equipment.
Ruling in favor of a coalition of states and environmental advocacy groups, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the 'plain language' of the law required a stricter approach. The court has primary jurisdiction in challenges to federal regulations.
The ruling by a three-judge panel was the court's second decision in less than a year in a pair of closely related cases involving the administration's interpretations of a complex section of the Clean Air Act. Unlike its ruling last summer, when the court largely upheld the E.P.A.'s approach against challenges from industry, state governments and environmental groups, the new ruling was a defeat for the agency and for industry, and a victory for the states and their environmentalist allies..."

The NRC is another broken agency.

New York Times: Nuclear Reactors Found to Be Leaking Radioactive Water
"With power cleaner than coal and cheaper than natural gas, the nuclear industry, 20 years past its last meltdown, thinks it is ready for its second act: its first new reactor orders since the 1970's.
But there is a catch. The public's acceptance of new reactors depends in part on the performance of the old ones, and lately several of those have been discovered to be leaking radioactive water into the ground.
Near Braceville, Ill., the Braidwood Generating Station, owned by the Exelon Corporation, has leaked tritium into underground water that has shown up in the well of a family nearby. The company, which has bought out one property owner and is negotiating with others, has offered to help pay for a municipal water system for houses near the plant that have private wells.
In a survey of all 10 of its nuclear plants, Exelon found tritium in the ground at two others. On Tuesday, it said it had had another spill at Braidwood, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, and on Thursday, the attorney general of Illinois announced she was filing a lawsuit against the company over that leak and five earlier ones, dating to 1996. The suit demands among other things that the utility provide substitute water supplies to residents..."


The So-Called War on Terror:

The essence of Bush policy, of course, is to spend nearly half a trillion dollars without asking the rich to pay their fair share. The goal, it seems, is to borrow and spend until the costs are capable of eclipsing everything else the government spends money on. Ultimately, war spending will be the excuse given to discontinue the New Deal and Great Society programs the GOP has never viewed as legitimate.

Bloomberg: US War Spending to Rise 44% to $9.8 Billion a Month
"US military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan will average 44 percent more in the current fiscal year than in fiscal 2005, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said.
Spending will rise to $9.8 billion a month from the $6.8 billion a month the Pentagon said it spent last year, the research service said. The group's March 10 report cites 'substantial' expenses to replace or repair damaged weapons, aircraft, vehicles, radios and spare parts.
It also figures in costs for health care, fuel, national intelligence and the training of Iraqi and Afghan security forces - 'now a substantial expense,' it said.
The research service said it considers 'all war and occupation costs,' while the Pentagon counts just the cost of personnel, maintenance and operations.
The House approved emergency funding that includes the military spending last night by a vote of 348-71. The measure authorizes $72 billion for war costs and almost $20 billion for hurricane relief. The Senate is expected to pass it next month.
Congress already has approved $50 billion in supplemental war funding for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, after spending $100 billion last year. To date, Congress has approved about $337 billion for the wars since Sept. 11, 2001..."

William Rivers Pitt: Deranged, Disconnected, and Dangerous
"There was an article in the Washington Post ten days ago that was, in no uncertain terms, the most frightening and disturbing report I have seen in months. It wasn't about mass casualties in Iraq, or about a looming civil war there, or about terrorism, or the bursting budget, or spying on Americans. It was about a rug...
...The article, to be sure, was meant to be lighthearted. It left me, however, in a state of deep disturbance. All he can talk about is his rug? With everything that is going on these days, he wants to focus on the rug. Dead soldiers? Rug. Civil war? Rug. Complete and total failure? Complete and total rug.
The man is deranged, disconnected, dangerous. It appears, finally, that a significant portion of the country now sees this clearly. Only 33% of Americans, according to the latest Pew poll, approve of Mr. Bush and the job he is doing..."


Domestic Surveillance:

Washington Post: GOP Legislation Would OK Bush Spying
"The Bush administration could continue its policy of spying on targeted Americans without obtaining warrants, but only if it justifies the action to a small group of lawmakers, under legislation introduced yesterday by key Republican senators.
The four senators hope to settle the debate over National Security Agency eavesdropping on international communications involving Americans when one of the parties is suspected of terrorist ties...
...The bill would allow the NSA to eavesdrop, without a warrant, for up to 45 days per case, at which point the Justice Department would have three options. It could drop the surveillance, seek a warrant from FISA's court, or convince a handful of House and Senate members that although there is insufficient evidence for a warrant, continued surveillance 'is necessary to protect the United States,' according to a summary the four sponsors provided yesterday. They are Mike DeWine (Ohio), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Olympia J. Snowe (Maine)..."

Elizabeth de la Vega: The NSA Spying Debate
"...If you have any doubt that the NSA spying 'debate' is trapped in an infinite loop, you need only review two pieces of evidence. The first, which we'll call 'Exhibit A,' is an article, dated March 8, 2006, entitled 'Gonzales: NSA Program Doesn't Need a Law.' Aha, you say, a mere headline. But this is what the article says: 'The Attorney General made clear Wednesday, March 8, that the White House is not seeking congressional action to inscribe the National Security Agency's monitoring into US law.'
How, you wonder, could that be true? Since December, the President, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, have said that FISA is outdated, not sufficiently agile, ineffective against terrorists, and too paper-intensive. Perhaps the AP reporter misinterpreted Gonzales' remarks..."


Work and Family:

Barbara Ehrenreich: Corporate Home Wreckers
"I was in the Atlanta airport recently, cruising a bookstore, when this catchy title leaped out at me: Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. Since the author is National Review Washington editor and Fox News pundit Kate O'Beirne, I indulged my vanity and looked up my own name in the index. There I was, right up front on page four, credited with ruining our families.
If O'Beirne had done a little more research, she might have found me responsible for wrecking our military and schools, as well. But I can't complain: Destroying the family is a hefty accomplishment all by itself...
... If anyone is 'ruining' the American family, it's all the employers who refuse to recognize that their employees have family responsibilities, as well as jobs. I'm thinking of two categories of employers, which often overlap: 1) Those who don't pay enough for their employees to live on, thus forcing them to work second jobs, and 2) those who abuse their salaried employees with expectations of ten or more hours of work per day. Apparently there are more and more such anti-family employers, as Americans now surpass even the famously workaholic Japanese in annual hours on the job. From 1979 to 2000, Japan reduced the average annual hours worked by 305, whereas the United States reduced its annual hours by a whopping total of four, according to The State of Working America, 2004-2005..."

The Three-Year Anniversary of The Invasion of Iraq:

Norman Solomon; War-Loving Pundits
"The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion is bound to attract a lot of media coverage, but scant recognition will go to the pundits who helped to make it all possible..."

FAIR.org - "The Final Word Is Hooray!"
"Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.
'The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong,' Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). 'They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong.'
Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars..."


Preparing For Tax-Time:

Reuters: H&R Block Charged With Fraud
"H&R Block Inc. (HRB.N) the largest U.S. tax preparer, fraudulently marketed retirement savings plans that caused hundreds of thousands of mostly low-income clients to lose money, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charged in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
The suit seeks $250 million in fines plus refunds after H&R Block steered roughly 500,000 tax return customers to invest in individual retirement accounts, but failed to disclose high hidden fees that actually outpaced interest earned on the accounts, the attorney general said.
As a result, about 85 percent of these customers lost money, Spitzer said.
The suit is the latest in a line of legal and accounting issues faced by H&R Block and comes at a crucial time for the tax preparer as millions of Americans get ready to file taxes before the April 17 deadline. Its shares fell more than 4 percent.
H&R Block used the retirement accounts, with an minimum initial deposit of $300, to try to make sure tax customers returned every year, the suit charges..."

The Quotable Sen. Allard

Denver Post: Allard's linking of senator, terror "out of bounds"
"...In an interview first broadcast Monday, Allard told Denver radio station KOA-AM reporter Roger Hudson that Sen. Russ Fein gold, D-Wis., 'has time and time again taken on the side of the terrorists that we're dealing with in this conflict,'...
...Allard declined to answer other questions about the matter, saying he was late for a hearing and would talk later. He could not be reached later in the day, but his office re-released a statement it had given Tuesday to a liberal radio program...
[which]
...did not address the statement he made about Feingold siding with terrorists.
'Senator Allard's comments were unfortunate,' Feingold said in a statement Wednesday. 'Supporters of the illegal domestic- spying program know they don't have a legal leg to stand on, so they are reduced to questioning the patriotism of those who point out the simple truth that the president is breaking the law,'."

Yet Another Point From The PNAC Agenda:

...is being implemented.

The Boston Globe: Pentagon eyeing weapons in space
"The Pentagon is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to test weapons in space, marking the biggest step toward creating a space battlefield since President Reagan's long-defunct ''star wars' project during the Cold War, according to federal budget documents.
The Defense Department's budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes money for a variety of tests on offensive and defensive weapons, including a missile launched at a small satellite in orbit, testing a small space vehicle that could disperse weapons while traveling at 20 times the speed of sound, and determining whether high-powered ground-based lasers can effectively destroy enemy satellites.
The military says that its aerospace technology, which has advanced exponentially during the last two decades, is worth the nine-figure investment because it will have civilian applications as well, such as refueling or retrieving disabled satellites. But arms-control specialists fear the tests will push the military closer to basing weapons in space than during Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s -- without a public debate of the potential consequences.
'Some of these things are going to be put up and tested and that is where you have the potential to cross the line' into creating actual space-based weapons systems, said Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington and coauthor of a new analysis on space weapons spending..."


Another Reason To Love Your TelCo:

New York Times: Many Utilities Collect for Taxes They Never Pay
"Many electric utility companies across the nation are collecting billions of dollars from their customers for corporate income taxes, then keeping the money rather than sending it to the government..."


Will This Also Stand?

The Raw Story: Congressman writes White House: Did President knowingly sign law that didn't pass?"Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) has alleged in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card that President Bush signed a version of the Budget Reconciliation Act that, in effect, did not pass the House of Representatives.
Further, Waxman says there is reason to believe that the Speaker of the House called President Bush before he signed the law, and alerted him that the version he was about to sign differed from the one that actually passed the House. If true, this would put the President in willful violation of the U.S. Constitution..."

The Quotable Senator Wayne Allard (R), CO

Colorado Senator Wayne Allard made a comment that Senator Russ Feingold (D), WI 'has time and time again taken on the side of the terrorists.' It is not only highly offensive but also makes me ashamed that he represents Colorado.

He should publicly apologize to the Senator, especially in light of the fact that Sen. Feingold is taking his oath to defend the Constitution against all threats foreign and domestic more seriously than Sen. Allard. Allard seems to be upset that Feingold would choose to point out the obvious: that the Executive has broken the law and needs, at minimum, to be censured.

Feingold's Senate Censure resolution is nothing more than a reflection of his duty as member of Congress to hold accountable an Executive that has broken the FISA law. The Administration's weak legal arguments to the contrary have been repeated by Allard and his leader Sen. Frist ad nauseum. Repeating a falsehood over and over does not make it true. This is America, not Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, or some other authoritarian state, at least not yet.

The law is clear, and no 'Authorization for Use of Military Force' renders the rule of law or the Constitution ineffective. It is even more clear, considering Senator Daschle's revelation that "Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words 'in the United States and' after 'appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text." Such an addition might have allowed the law to allow for domestic surveillance, but its omission makes the Administration's actions a clear violation of FISA. If a law needs to be changed, Congress should enact such a change, but failing to hold the Executive to account for violating the law shows not only disrespect, but contempt for the Constitution.

If Sen. Allard cannot fathom the need to defend the Constitution of the United States against illegal actions of the Executive, he should resign his post and allow the people of Colorado to elect a suitable replacement.


Why We Do The Right Thing:

Slavoj Zizek: Defenders of the Faith
"...Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward. David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way, when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence.
Two years ago, Europeans were debating whether the preamble of the European Constitution should mention Christianity as a key component of the European legacy. As usual, a compromise was worked out, a reference in general terms to the 'religious inheritance' of Europe. But where was modern Europe's most precious legacy, that of atheism? What makes modern Europe unique is that it is the first and only civilization in which atheism is a fully legitimate option, not an obstacle to any public post.
Atheism is a European legacy worth fighting for, not least because it creates a safe public space for believers......While a true atheist has no need to boost his own stance by provoking believers with blasphemy, he also refuses to reduce the problem of the Muhammad caricatures to one of respect for other's beliefs. Respect for other's beliefs as the highest value can mean only one of two things: either we treat the other in a patronizing way and avoid hurting him in order not to ruin his illusions, or we adopt the relativist stance of multiple 'regimes of truth,' disqualifying as violent imposition any clear insistence on truth.
What, however, about submitting Islam — together with all other religions — to a respectful, but for that reason no less ruthless, critical analysis? This, and only this, is the way to show a true respect for Muslims: to treat them as serious adults responsible for their beliefs."


Iraq:

Dahr Jamail: Iraq: Permanent US Colony
"Why does the Bush Administration refuse to discuss withdrawing occupation forces from Iraq? Why is Halliburton, who landed the no-bid contracts to construct and maintain US military bases in Iraq, posting higher profits than ever before in its 86-year history?
Why do these bases in Iraq resemble self-contained cities as much as military outposts?..."

The Independent (UK) The War Dividend: The British companies making a fortune out of conflict-riven Iraq
"British businesses have profited by at least £1.1bn since coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein three years ago, the first comprehensive investigation into UK corporate investment in Iraq has found.
The company roll-call of post-war profiteers includes some of the best known names in Britain's boardrooms as well many who would prefer to remain anonymous. They come from private security services, banks, PR consultancies, urban planning consortiums, oil companies, architects offices and energy advisory bodies.
Among the top earners is the construction firm Amec, which has made an estimated £500m from a series of contracts restoring electrical systems and maintaining power generation facilities during the past two years. Aegis, which provides private security has earned more than £246m from a three-year contract with the Pentagon to co-ordinate military and security companies in Iraq. Erinys, which specialises in the same area, has made more than £86m, a substantial portion from the protection of oilfields.
The evidence of massive investments and the promise of more multimillion-pound profits to come was discovered in a joint investigation by Corporate Watch, an independent watchdog, and The Independent..."

The Fourth Estate:

LA Times: More News Outlets, Fewer Stories: New Media 'Paradox'
"A 'new paradox of journalism' has emerged in which the number of news outlets continues to grow, yet the number of stories covered and the depth of many reports is decreasing, according to an annual review of the news business being released today by a watchdog group.
Many television, radio and newspaper newsrooms are cutting their staffs as advertising revenue stagnates, but blogs and other online ventures lack the size or inclination to generate information, reports the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research institute affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
The study depicts the media in an interregnum — with the reach of print, radio and television reduced, but the promise of an egalitarian online 'citizen journalism' unfulfilled.
'It's probably glib and even naive to say simply that more platforms equal more choices,' project Director Tom Rosenstiel said. 'The content has to come from somewhere, and as older news-gathering media decline, some of the strengths they offer in monitoring the powerful and verifying the facts may be weakening as well,'..."

Meaningful Journalism Is About Asking Tough Questions of Those In Authority:

Helen Thomas: Lap Dogs of the Press
"Of all the unhappy trends I have witnessed--conservative swings on television networks, dwindling newspaper circulation, the jailing of reporters and 'spin'--nothing is more troubling to me than the obsequious press during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. They lapped up everything the Pentagon and White House could dish out--no questions asked.
Reporters and editors like to think of themselves as watchdogs for the public good. But in recent years both individual reporters and their ever-growing corporate ownership have defaulted on that role. Ted Stannard, an academic and former UPI correspondent, put it this way: 'When watchdogs, bird dogs, and bull dogs morph into lap dogs, lazy dogs, or yellow dogs, the nation is in trouble.'
The naïve complicity of the press and the government was never more pronounced than in the prelude to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The media became an echo chamber for White House pronouncements. One example: At President Bush's March 6, 2003, news conference, in which he made it eminently clear that the United States was going to war, one reporter pleased the 'born again' Bush when she asked him if he prayed about going to war. And so it went...
...I honestly believe that if reporters had put the spotlight on the flaws in the Bush Administration's war policies, they could have saved the country the heartache and the losses of American and Iraqi lives.
It is past time for reporters to forget the party line, ask the tough questions and let the chips fall where they may."


Washington D.C.:

Molly Ivins: Enough of the D.C. Dems
"Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.
I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight...
...As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:
1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.
2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.
3) Single-payer health insurance..."


Electronic Voting:

Robert C. Koehler: Whistling Diebold


Iraq:

Gen. William Odom (Ret.) - Iraq Through the Prism of Vietnam
"The Vietnam War experience can’t tell us anything about the war in Iraq – or so it is said. If you believe that, trying looking through this lens, and you may change your mind.
The Vietnam War had three phases. The War in Iraq has already completed an analogous first phase, is approaching the end of the second phase, and shows signs of entering the third..."

A Chilling Effect On Free Speech?

Washington Post: Reporters Exempt From Eavesdropping Bill
"Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration's eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in U.S. law..."


Bush's Next Target - Iran:

Washington Post: U.S. Campaign Is Aimed at Iran's Leaders
"As the dispute over its nuclear program arrives at the U.N. Security Council today, Iran has vaulted to the front of the U.S. national security agenda amid Bush administration plans for a sustained campaign against the ayatollahs of Tehran.
President Bush and his team have been huddling in closed-door meetings on Iran, summoning scholars for advice, investing in opposition activities, creating an Iran office in Washington and opening listening posts abroad dedicated to the efforts against Tehran.
The internal administration debate that raged in the first term between those who advocated more engagement with Iran and those who preferred more confrontation appears in the second term to be largely settled in favor of the latter. Although administration officials do not use the term 'regime change' in public, that in effect is the goal they outline as they aim to build resistance to the theocracy..."


Putting The Best Face Forward (That Lobbying Can Buy):

The Telegraph (India) - Pakistan weekly spills 9/11 beans
"The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed.
The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday.
It claimed that some of the commission members were also bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about Pakistan.
The magazine said the PAC grilled officials in the presence of foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and special secretary Sher Afghan on the money paid to lobbyists..."

Military Strategy For Invading Iraq:

New York Times: Dash to Baghdad Left Top U.S. Generals Divided
"The war was barely a week old when Gen. Tommy R. Franks threatened to fire the Army's field commander. From the first days of the invasion in March 2003, American forces had tangled with fanatical Saddam Fedayeen paramilitary fighters. Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, who was leading the Army's V Corps toward Baghdad, had told two reporters that his soldiers needed to delay their advance on the Iraqi capital to suppress the Fedayeen threat in the rear.
Soon after, General Franks phoned Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of allied land forces, to warn that he might relieve General Wallace.
The firing was averted after General McKiernan flew to meet General Franks. But the episode revealed the deep disagreements within the United States high command about the Iraqi military threat and what would be required to defeat it..."

Iraq:

Sunday Telegraph (UK) - SAS soldier quits Army in disgust at 'illegal' American tactics in Iraq
"An SAS soldier has refused to fight in Iraq and has left the Army over the 'illegal' tactics of United States troops and the policies of coalition forces.
After three months in Baghdad, Ben Griffin told his commander that he was no longer prepared to fight alongside American forces.
He said he had witnessed 'dozens of illegal acts' by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as 'untermenschen' - the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.
The decision marks the first time an SAS soldier has refused to go into combat and quit the Army on moral grounds.
It immediately brought to an end Mr Griffin's exemplary, eight-year career in which he also served with the Parachute Regiment, taking part in operations in Northern Ireland, Macedonia and Afghanistan..."


Sunshine Week:

AP: Analysis: States steadily restricting info
"States have steadily limited the public's access to government information since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new Associated Press analysis of laws in all 50 states has found. Legislatures have passed more than 1,000 laws changing access to information, approving more than twice as many measures that restrict information as laws that open government books.
Some things your government doesn't have to tell you about:
- The safety plan at your child's school, if you live in Iowa.
- Medication errors at your grandparent's nursing home in North Carolina.
- Disciplinary actions against Indiana state employees..."

The Environment:

AP: Senate Urged to Safeguard Species Act
"As a Senate committee prepares to take up revisions to the Endangered Species Act, nearly 6,000 biologists from around the country signed a letter Wednesday urging senators to preserve scientific protections in the landmark law.
The House passed an Endangered Species Act rewrite last year that many scientists and environmentalists viewed as extreme. Interest groups are lobbying to ensure that legislation expected soon from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be an improvement.
'Unfortunately, recent legislative proposals would critically weaken' the law's scientific foundation, said the letter organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The 5,738 signers included six National Medal of Science recipients.
'For species conservation to continue, it is imperative both that the scientific principles embodied in the act are maintained, and that the act is strengthened, fully implemented, and adequately funded.'
The House bill, written by Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., would require the government to compensate property owners if steps needed to protect species thwart development plans. It also would stop the government from designating 'critical habitat' where development is limited..."

ES&T Online News: Hidden ties: Big environmental changes backed by big industry
"Since President Bush took office, Republicans have successfully pushed through major reforms that target regulations for power-plant emissions and the management of federal forests. During his 2004 campaign for reelection, the president praised his Healthy Forests initiative as 'a good, common-sense policy.' This year, the Republican-led Congress is gearing up for yet another 'common-sense' reform to a major piece of environmental legislation—the Endangered Species Act (ESA)..."

The New Standard: Alaska Oil Spill Exposes ‘Gentle Drilling’ Problems
"A disastrous crude-oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope over the weekend has environmental groups renewing calls to stop the expansion of oil exploitation in the state.
The spill was first noticed last Thursday by an employee of British Petroleum. Workers did not find the source of the spill until early Sunday morning, but the amount released into the Alaskan wilderness is unknown. Estimates are expected from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) today.
So far, clean-up crews working around the clock have collected over 58,000 gallons of spilled oil and oil-tainted water, according to ADEC.The agency also reported that theleak started at a caribou crossing and that the affected area is about two acres of tundra hundreds of miles north of Anchorage and includes the edge a frozen-over lake.
BP operates the site where the leak spouted, a station at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope that pumps oil from the surrounding area into the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, which carries the toxic fossil fuel across about 800 miles of the state..."


Bush Out Of Touch:

Sidney Blumenthal: A deaf man spouting
"...For the first time, last week, the public has seen the spontaneous Bush behind closed doors, in a leaked videotape that recorded his briefing the day before Hurricane Katrina struck. Teleconferenced in from his Crawford ranch, Texas, Bush listens to disaster officials inform him that the storm will be unprecedented in its severity and consequences. 'This is, to put it mildly, the big one,' says Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Centre, warns: 'This hurricane is much larger than Hurricane Andrew ever was.' Bush asks not a single question, says, 'We are fully prepared', and departs.
The Katrina videotape is defining for Bush's presidency. It exposes a deaf man spouting talking points. After the hurricane hit, he stayed on vacation, went to a birthday party, strummed a guitar with a country and western singer, and on September 1 said: 'I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.' On his flight back to Washington, four days after landfall, his aides gave him a DVD of television news reports of the hurricane's impact about which he had done nothing to learn on his own..."


Food Safety:

This sounds like a States Rights issue.

Jason Mark: Big Food's Bad Idea
"Some people called it a folly of know-nothing Luddites. Others praised it as an important blow against technological hubris. But no matter where you stood on the 2004 ballot measure in California's Mendocino County that banned the cultivation of GMO crops, it's generally agreed that the initiative represented all that is best about local democracy - citizens coming together to address an issue that's important to them. And in the Mendocino case, it was an issue that is well-made for local governance, given how intimate food is, how uniquely attached to our sense of place.
The idea of food as a local resource is now under assault [PDF]
from a congressional measure that would sharply restrict the ability of states and cities to establish their own food safety standards. If the proposal becomes law, nearly all of the decisions about the quality of our food will be made in Washington. For anyone who values a measure of local control over the food we eat, this is bad news.
For 100 years - since the 1906 establishment of the Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act - the federal government has set most of the safety standards for the food that ends up in grocery stores and restaurants. States and cities, however, can also make rules governing food safety, and as health consciousness has increased, many local governments have passed food rules in areas that federal regulations overlook.
For example, grocery stores in California are required to post information warning pregnant women to avoid certain fish, such as swordfish, that have high levels of mercury. Minnesota candy bars must disclose if alcohol is an ingredient, and Michigan bulk foods made with sulfites have to carry an allergy warning. In Rhode Island, shellfish is required to carry a sign saying whether it's been frozen..."


The [Other] Ports Deal:

Time Magazine: The Dubai Deal You Don't Know About
"...while one Dubai company may be giving up on US ports, another one shows no signs of quitting the US-or of giving up a contract with the Navy to provide shore services for vessels in the Middle East. The firm, Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS), is an old British company that last January was sold to a Dubai government investment vehicle for $285 million. ISS has more than 200 offices around the world and provides services to clients ranging from cruise ship operators to oil tankers to commercial cargo vessels. In the US, the company operates out of more than a dozen port cities, including Houston, Miami and New Orleans, arranging pilots, tugs, linesmen and stevedores, among other things. The firm is also a defense contractor which has long worked for Britain's Royal Navy. And last June, the US Navy signed on too, awarding ISS a $50 million contract to be the 'husbanding agent' for vessels in most Southwest Asia ports, including those in the Middle East, according to an unclassified Navy logistics manual for the Fifth Fleet and a press release from ISS.
Why is a Dubai shipping services company doing business with the Pentagon when handing over US port operations to the emirate would supposedly compromise national security? Because it makes sense. Call it the reality of living in a globally connected business world. Your IBM laptop is now manufactured by a Chinese company that may outsource customer support to an Indian firm and the logistics to FedEx. Dubai companies aren't just buying overseas assets like hotels in New York and wax museums in London; they're providing jobs and business for US companies. Boeing, for one, can only hope it doesn't receive a frosty reception the next time it wants to sell airplanes to Dubai's booming airline, Emirates. Rival Airbus would be more than happy to take advantage of Washington's creeping protectionism..."


Iraq:

Molly Ivins; The Progress Myth in Iraq
"It was such a relief to me to learn we are making 'very, very good progress' in Iraq. As the third anniversary of our invasion approaches, I could not have been more thrilled by the news reported by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a Sunday chat show. Vice President Dick Cheney's take was equally reassuring: Things are 'improving steadily' in Iraq.
I was thrilled - very, very good progress and steady improvement, isn't that grand? Wake me if anything starts to go wrong. Like someone bombing the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra and touching off a lot of sectarian violence.
I was also relieved to learn - via Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so noted for his consistently accurate assessment of this war - that the whole picture is hunky-dory to tickety-boo. Since the bombing of the mosque, lots of alarmists have reported that Iraq is devolving or might be collapsing into civil war. They're sort of jumping over the civil war line and back again - yep, it's started; nope, it hasn't - like a bunch of false starts at the beginning of a football play.
I'm sure glad to get the straight skinny from Ol' Rumsfeld, who has been in Iraq many times himself for the typical in-country experience. Like many foreign correspondents, Rumsfeld roams the streets alone, talking to any chance-met Iraqi in his fluent Arabic, so of course he knows best..."

International Law:

Gershom Gorenberg: Israel's Tragedy Foretolds
"...In early September 1967, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was considering granting the first approval for settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights, conquered three months earlier in the Six-Day War. An Arab summit meeting in Khartoum had rejected peacemaking. The prime minister believed that the Golan and the strip of land along the Jordan River would make Israel more defensible. He also wanted to re-establish the kibbutz of Kfar Etzion near Bethlehem, which had been lost in Israel's 1948 war of independence.
The legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, was asked whether international law allowed settlement in the newly conquered land. In a memo marked 'Top Secret,' Mr. Meron wrote unequivocally, 'My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.'
In the detailed opinion that accompanied that note, Mr. Meron explained that the Convention — to which Israel was a signatory — forbade an occupying power from moving part of its population to occupied territory..."


Economics:

Fred Block: A Moral Economy
"Starting in the 1930s, the Democrats employed a narrative in which an activist government overcomes the weaknesses of an unregulated market economy to achieve stability and renewed economic growth. This story would not ordinarily have been an easy sell, but the severity of the Depression made people receptive. Roosevelt and the Democrats seized the opportunity, and the narrative of an activist government reinforced by the New Deal's concrete successes gave credibility to Democratic stories about the rot, the mob and the triumphant individuals living in benevolent communities.
That powerful Democratic narrative dominated US politics for more than thirty years. But the combination of disillusionment over the Vietnam War, the stagflation of the 1970s and growing conflicts over gender, race and the environment began to undermine its effectiveness. As Republicans started to mobilize resentment against Democratic policies, Democratic politicians stopped telling the old stories.
This opened the way for the Republicans to invoke Adam Smith's mysterious mechanism of the 'invisible hand' as the critical element that binds the other Republican stories together. Since the market can be relied on to coordinate all economic activity, the triumphant individual can be set free of government restrictions and liberal elites can be dismantled..."


Nuclear Proliferation:

Democracy Now! - Former Labour MP Tony Benn on how Britain Secretly Helped Israel Build Its Nuclear Arsenal
"BBC News revealed Thursday the British government secretly supplied Israel with hundreds of chemical shipments in the 1960’s, despite fears the chemicals could be used to develop nuclear weapons. Analysts say the shipments, which included plutonium, helped speed up Israel’s acquisition of an atomic bomb. All told, the BBC reported the British chemicals could have been used to produce bombs 20 times as powerful as those dropped on Hiroshima.
The deals were made in violation of strict government policy. According to de-classified government documents, a British government official named Michael Michaels oversaw the shipments behind the backs of his superiors. One of these superiors is our guest today. Tony Benn was Britain’s Minister of Technology at the time. That post was one of many that have come in the career of one of Britain’s most distinguished politicians..."

Iraq:

This is almost too perfectly Orwellian. It's as if they are saying: "If we don't publicize it perhaps people won't know it occured..."

Why is the truth so offensive?

Washington Post: Official Says Shiite Party Suppressed Body Count
"Days after the bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed a wave of retaliatory killings of Sunnis, the leading Shiite party in Iraq's governing coalition directed the Health Ministry to stop tabulating execution-style shootings, according to a ministry official familiar with the recording of deaths.
The official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because he feared for his safety, said a representative of the Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, ordered that government hospitals and morgues catalogue deaths caused by bombings or clashes with insurgents, but not by execution-style shootings..."

Apparently, extra-legal detentions will have to take place somewhere less notorious from now on.

Reuters: US says to close Abu Ghraib prison
"The U.S. military will close Abu Ghraib prison, probably within three months, and transfer some 4,500 prisoners to other jails in Iraq, a military spokesman said on Thursday.
The prison in western Baghdad was a torture center under
Saddam Hussein before photographs of American soldiers abusing Iraqis there in 2003 gave it a new notoriety."


The So-Called War On Terror:

Isn't this just a way of sugar-coating the deployment of death squads and torture-specialists to U.S. Embassies?

NY Times: Special Operations Troops and Intelligence: Elite Troops Get Expanded Role On Intelligence
"The military is placing small teams of Special Operations troops in a growing number of American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists in unstable parts of the world and to prepare for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them.
Senior Pentagon officials and military officers say the effort is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's two-year drive to give the military a more active intelligence role in the campaign against terrorism. But it has drawn opposition from traditional intelligence agencies like the C.I.A., where some officials have viewed it as a provocative expansion into what has been their turf.
Officials said small groups of Special Operations personnel, sometimes just one or two at a time, have been sent to more than a dozen embassies in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America. These are regions where terrorists are thought to be operating, planning attacks, raising money or seeking safe haven.
Their assignment is to gather information to assist in planning counterterrorism missions, and to help local militaries conduct counterterrorism missions of their own, officials said..."


Fair Wages:

Thom Hartmann: Illegal Workers - the Con's Secret Weapon
"Conservatives are all atwitter about illegal immigrants. Some want to give them amnesty. Others want to reinstitute the old Bracero program. Others want to build a wall around America, like the communists did around East Berlin. Some advocate all of the above.
But none will tell Americans the truth about why we have eleven million illegal aliens in this nation now (when it was fewer than 2 million when Reagan came into office), why they're staying, or why they keep coming. In a word, it's 'jobs.' In conservative lexicon, it's 'cheap labor to increase corporate profits.'
Recently George W. Bush insulted working Americans by saying that we need eleven million illegal immigrants here in the United States because (in a slightly cleaned-up version of the more blatantly racist comments of Vicente Fox) there are some jobs that 'American's won't do.' As the modern-day Sago miners, and the 1950s Ed Norton character Art Carney played on the old Jackie Gleason show (who worked in the sewers of NYC) prove, the reality is that there are virtually no jobs Americans won't do - for an appropriate paycheck.
It's really all about breaking the back of the most democratic (and Democratic) of American institutions - the American middle class.
One of the tools conservatives have used very successfully over the past 25 years to drive down wages, bust unions, and increase CEO salaries has been to encourage illegal immigrant labor in the US. Their technique is transparently simple..."