Observations on current events

Team Bush Still Shamelessly Tries To Manage Public Perception By Disseminating Falsehoods:

Jason Leopold: Report: US Still Manipulating Iraq Intelligence
"The Department of Defense has exaggerated the readiness of Iraqi army and police forces, claiming 312,400 men have been 'trained and equipped,' a figure that is so wildly off the mark that the country will likely require the support of the US military well into 2010, according to two new reports.
The reports were drafted by Anthony Cordesman, a member of the bipartisan think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies and a renowned expert in Middle East issues and military affairs.
Cordesman, who also served in a senior capacity at the Pentagon during the Reagan administration, recently returned from a fact-finding mission in Iraq, where he was briefed by military and civilians about the realities on the ground that have left the country in a state of civil war. His lengthy reports are a damning indictment of the US military leadership at the Pentagon and senior Bush administration officials, who he says launched the Iraq invasion without having 'implemented a realistic, self-critical or forward looking approach to any aspect of its policy in Iraq.'
One of the Bush administration's 'most critical failures has been to consistently deny the fact it was pursuing a high effort in nation building and stability operations that could easily fail,' Cordesman wrote in a report published Tuesday, 'Iraqi Force Development and the Challenge of Civil War.'
'The strategy the to stabilize Iraq that the US announced in the fall of 2005 was deeply flawed in timing and resources,' Cordesman's report says. 'It was based on a grossly exaggerated estimate of political success, an almost deliberately false exaggeration of the success of the economic aid effort and progress in developing the [Iraqi Security Forces], inadequate efforts to develop effective governance, and a rule of law, and has not succeeded.'
The criticisms come on the heels of a draft report by the Iraq Study Group, headed by President Bush's close confidante James A. Baker III, which calls for the United States to enter into diplomatic talks with neighboring countries Iran and Syria in order to tame the violence between Shiites and Sunnis that has destabilized Iraq and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands innocent Iraqi civilians and nearly 3,000 American soldiers.
Yet despite the carnage, Cordesman says in one of the reports, the Defense Department has continually put a positive face on the escalating violence and has established unrealistic timetables for when Iraqi forces will be prepared to defend the country..."

Energy Markets:

AP: Big Energy Firms Crimping Oil Supplies
"...Even in Bakersfield, which lives off oil, many suspect that the industry goes easy on supply for its own reasons. 'They ain't trying: that's more money for them,' snorted JaRayle Madden, a construction worker filling up his little sedan recently at a local Shell station.
This fast-growing city of 300,000 shuddered in November 2003, when Shell confirmed it would soon close its local refinery. Plant workers, consumer activists and public officials rose up in resistance, firing off letters and demanding meetings.
The 70-year-old refinery only produced 2 percent of California's gasoline and 6 percent of its diesel fuel. Yet opponents feared its demise would push up prices in the tight markets all along the West Coast.
In these circumstances, surely the plant was worth something to someone, if not to Shell. After losing $57 million mostly in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the refinery was making money again, Shell acknowledged.
Though set back temporarily by the attacks, the oil business has profited handsomely since then. For example, the biggest six refiners - Shell is only No. 12 nationally but powerful in California - rang up $400 billion in profits since 2001, according to the consumer group Public Citizen and corporate reports. Even compliance with complex clean-air rules hasn't spoiled business.
The industry also protected profits by not building any new refineries, instead expanding existing ones when it could..."


Free Society?

HOA President Kearns sounds like a spectacularly uneducated man with fascist tendencies. Don't like what other Board members say on the matter? Just fire them.

AP: Woman Faces Fines for Wreath Peace Sign
"A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.
Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said...
...The association in this 200-home subdivision 270 miles southwest of Denver has sent a letter to her saying that residents were offended by the sign and the board 'will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive.'
The subdivision's rules say no signs, billboards or advertising are permitted without the consent of the architectural control committee.
Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members."


Food Safety:

If this doesn't scream out for more regulation of businesses that serve the public food, what does?

Scripps Howard News Service: Rocky Mountain News: Nation
"More than 50,000 people got sick or died from something they ate in a hidden epidemic that went undiagnosed by the nation's public health departments during a five-year period.
Americans play a sort of food-poisoning Russian roulette depending on where they live, a study by Scripps Howard News Service found.
Slovenly restaurants, disease-infested food-processing plants and other sources of infectious illness go undetected all over the country, but much more frequently in some states than others.
Scripps studied 6,374 food-related disease outbreaks reported by every state to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 31, 2004. The causes of nearly two- thirds of the outbreaks in that period were listed as 'unknown.'
The findings translate into an alarming potential for tragedy. If health officials are unable to connect illness to food, victims who might eat from the same poisoned source cannot be warned. If food is known as the culprit, but the specific disease lurking within is not diagnosed, the victims may get even sicker or die without proper treatment..."

Iraq:

John Brown and Ray McGovern: Washington's Iraq Chimeras
"The war in Iraq began as a war based largely on illusions. But now most Americans realize that the always-illusory option of 'staying the course' in Iraq will never work. This was the main message of the recent Congressional elections. Still, there is a great danger that we will fall victim to additional Iraq-related illusions - illusions fostered by the administration, Congress, the Pentagon and the mainstream media.
Three persistent illusions - which, intentionally or not, serve to cover up or minimize the mess President George W. Bush has created in Iraq - stand out...
The Baker/Hamilton Commission is our way out.
...
Training Iraqis will save the day.
...
We Will Keep Some Kind of Control No Matter What.
...
In sum, at a time when the American public has said 'no' to what passes for administration policy on Iraq, we must be on the alert for shimmering chimeras - illusions about what the U.S. can still accomplish in that troubled country. Only then can we safely sort out and choose among the best approaches - ranging from talking with 'enemies' like Syria, Iran and the 'insurgents' themselves, to international conferences.
Our aim must be the quickest possible withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, letting Iraqis themselves decide the fate of their country. The urgency of achieving this becomes even more acute in light of the heavy-handed demagoguery already in evidence from prospective presidential candidates in 2008. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for example, has chosen to play fast and loose with the lives of Americans and Iraqis alike, in calling for sending substantially more troops to Iraq.
If McCain really thinks the situation can be rescued by more troops he needs a tutorial on counterinsurgency. Rather, his appeals seem motivated primarily by a wish to escape responsibility for 'losing Iraq' when electoral politics heat up again. If that is his calculation, what he will not escape is responsibility for any delay this crass political tactic causes in getting our country out of this misbegotten adventure and bringing our troops home, as soon as this can be done in an orderly way."

Data Privacy In The So-Called War On Terror:

It is high time that U.S. personal data privacy laws catch up to those in the EU. U.S. data privacy laws were written to protect the interests of businesses, rather than consumers. Were they for the benefit of consumers, we would have to 'opt in' to every data-sharing activity a business that holds our data wishes to engage in, rather than having to actively 'opt out' to prevent it. The business is the holder of this information, and that is where the burden for protection and proper use belongs.

AP: Report: Data Agency Broke Privacy Laws
"A report by an EU panel released Thursday said the bank data transfer agency SWIFT broke European privacy laws by handing over personal data to U.S. authorities for use in anti-terror investigations.
The Belgian-based company, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, 'committed violations of data protection laws' by secretly transferring data to the United States, without properly informing Belgian authorities, the EU's data protection panel said.
The panel's report calls on SWIFT, financial institutions and EU authorities to 'take the necessary measures' to end the transfer, which it said contradicts Belgian and EU data protection rules. SWIFT is still transferring data under U.S. subpoenas.
EU spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen said the report was adopted unanimously by the 25-member panel which also chided the role of the European Central Bank in the affair. It demanded clarification from the ECB over its role in the affair. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet has acknowledged his bank knew of the transfers but could not prevent them..."

On Torture:

Reuters: Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general
"Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison's former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.
Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.
Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.
'The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: 'Make sure this is accomplished',' she told Saturday's El Pais.
'The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques,'..."


BBC News: Russia police 'regularly torture'
"Russian security officials are regularly subjecting detainees to beatings, rape and torture, a report by Amnesty International says..."

Only Profits Matters:

...and when this view infects journalism, the public looses the diversity of opinion that allows a free society to remain so. This drives home the point that this country needs a taxpayer-funded, non-commercial editorially independent news agency, like the CBC or BBC.

PBS and NPR still have to resort to corporate funding that inevitably restricts their ability to speak the truth when the news involves the hand that feeds them.

Thomas D. Williams: The Decline of Journalism
"...Paul Marks, 53, spent 30 years of his life as a reporter in more than one newspaper before he became discouraged by the lock on his development and talent, and left the ever-declining staff of the Hartford Courant this year. He said he once again feels professionally energetic and less creatively constrained as an aerospace and speechwriter for the president of Pratt & Whitney, a manufacturer of aircraft engines, gas turbines and space propulsion systems.
As an eventual result of declining staff, Marks said, Courant editors cut back on reporter training, workshops, fellowships and conferences. Reporters were sometimes trapped collecting and writing a workaday 10-inch story instead of attending a rare all-day, local seminar on an assigned specialty - in his case the energy industry.
When he and other reporters wanted to be reassigned to expand their careers, Marks said, they frequently were blocked because cutbacks made it difficult for editors to transfer them to better assignments with so few replacements. And, as time and cuts wore on, said Marks, reporters had difficulty suggesting time-consuming, in-depth stories because they were needed instead for day-to-day routine coverage. 'The people who had good local or deep sources and thorough understanding of the political landscape the Courant lost to attrition,' said Marks. 'As a result, the Hartford Courant just became another parachute in news organization, like TV stations or the Associated Press.'
'Every time a newspaper loses staff, it forces those remaining to take on more duties in the effort to continue the paper's core mission ... to create a strong local report,' Les Gura, metro editor of the Winston-Salem Journal, told the Poynter Online journalism site. 'The problem?' he asked. 'If you reduce staff, you are going to have to either cut local coverage, or add duties to those remaining to maintain local coverage.'
As reporters were being pulled out of some towns that supplied prime circulation, said Marks, local readers were pelting the paper with e-mails, phone calls and letters complaining about the loss of published news in their towns. Still other readers are being fed a steady diet of news features, initiated from such superficial inspirations as eunuchs collecting taxes in India. Such oddities can be easily collected by a reporter from the Internet and rewritten, a task that saves the reporter the time it takes to explore on the street for a more fascinating, readable local feature, said Marks.
However, the Courant's newly appointed top editor, Cliff Teusch, has said the cuts are merely a challenge for editors and reporters to reinvent ways to cover news for a 'thriving' newspaper. 'We all know very well the grander reinvention agenda that faces us today,' Teutsch told the staff recently. 'We need to make the smartest, boldest moves we can as we confront challenges in circulation and advertising and changes in how people get their news and information. As a staff, you have shown great enthusiasm for this in the numerous innovative ideas you have submitted in recent days.'
Bob Greene was a longtime investigative reporter and editor for Newsday and the founder of the journalism program at Hofstra University. He is perhaps one of the foremost experts in the country on investigative journalism. Greene suggests the innovation Teutsch mentioned has disappeared. 'Reduced news staffs lead to gradual abdication of responsibility for comprehensive and insightful news coverage,' he said.
'The quarterly report drives public corporations, including those holding and publishing newspapers,' says Greene. 'When many of our great newspapers were owned by individual persons or families, they were willing to reduce their profit margins in any given quarter or year if it came to maintaining reporting staff or devoting much time and money to investigative and other forms of public service reporting. This was in tacit acknowledgment that their businesses also had a unique Constitutional responsibility to fully inform,'..."


Heavens! What A Threat!

Democracy Now! - Headlines for November 22, 2006
"Pentagon Spying Targeted Church Meetings, Veterans Group

Here in the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union has released new documents from a Pentagon database used to spy on groups opposed to military recruitment and the war in Iraq. In one case, defense department officials notified two California recruiting stations after learning activists were planning anti-recruitment protests. A database report also included information on anti-war meetings and non-violence training sessions planned for churches around New York City. Another report warned the group Veterans for Peace: 'should be viewed as a possible threat to Army and DoD personnel.' In a statement, Veterans for Peace Executive Director Michael McPhearson said: 'It is appalling that the Pentagon would label peace activists – including those of us who put our lives at risk defending this country -- as potential threats. The federal government should not be wasting valuable resources gathering files on peaceful protesters who disagree with the Bush administration’s policies,'..."


Data Security:

Star-Ledger (NJ): With ID swipe, Big Brother bellies up to the bar
"It's College Night at KatManDu, a popular Trenton nightclub, and the late-arriving crowd is predictably young.
Bouncers pat down male patrons and politely ask for IDs. They swipe everyone's driver's license through a small, yellow electronic box that reads a bar code and instantly displays the customer's age.
Club managers love the gadget, and it's rapidly becoming standard issue at the bigger clubs in Manhattan, New Jersey and elsewhere.
But the box does more than just check birth dates. It also retains the customer's name, address, license number -- even height, weight and eye color. All that information then can easily be downloaded into a computer system.
Most patrons have no idea their information is being electronically stored -- nor are they asked if they mind..."

41 Takes Heat For 43:

Ex-Economic Hitman John Perkins would surely disagree with the elder Bush's denials. Perkins would, however, argue that war is not subtle enough a method of gaining access to markets. Bribes of leaders and their assassination if they refuse, is more the style of the 'jackals' at the CIA.

The Raw Story: 'More popular' President Bush defends son from 'hostile audience'
"After delivering a speech at a leadership conference in Abu Dhabi, former President George Herbert Walker Bush was forced to defend his son from verbal attacks by the 'hostile audience,' on the same day that a new poll reveals that more Americans preferred the first Bush president...
...According to the AP, a student implied that 'U.S. wars were aimed at opening markets for American companies,' and that 'globalization was contrived for America's benefit at the expense of the rest of the world,' but 'Bush was having none of it.'
'I think that's weird and it's nuts,' Bush said. 'To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money, I think that's crazy,'..."

Making A Mockery Of Human Rights:

Stephen Grey: Missing presumed tortured
"More than 7,000 prisoners have been captured in America's war on terror. Just 700 ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Between extraordinary rendition to foreign jails and disappearance into the CIA's 'black sites', what happened to the rest...?"


Washington D.C.:

Frank Rich: It's Not the Democrats Who Are Divided
"Elections may come and go, but Washington remains incorrigible. Not even voters delivering a clear message can topple the town's conventional wisdom once it has been set in the stone of punditry.
Right now the capital is entranced by a fictional story line about the Democrats. As this narrative goes, the party's sweep of Congress was more or less an accident. The victory had little to do with the Democrats' actual beliefs and was instead solely the result of President Bush's unpopularity and a cunning backroom stunt by the campaign Machiavellis, Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, to enlist a smattering of 'conservative' candidates to run in red states. In this retelling of the 2006 election, the signature race took place in Montana, where the victor was a gun-toting farmer with a flattop haircut: i.e., a Democrat in Republican drag. And now the party is deeply divided as its old liberals and new conservatives converge on Capitol Hill to slug it out.
The only problem with this version of events is that it's not true..."


Educating One Whose Position Ought To Require This Knowledge:

Keith Olbermann: Special Comment Educating Bush on Vietnam
"Keith gives us another great special comment, this time explaining to Bush the lessons he should have learned in his recent trip to Vietnam..."

Racial Profiling At Passenger Request:

If there is truly a need to 'secure' flights in the U.S., then the solution is to do what the Israelis do - interview each and every passenger about their travel plans, etc.. Singling out people who do not 'look right,' based on the subjective opinion of a passenger, is not only inappropriate, but likely a civil rights violation.
I doubt the airlines wish to incur such a cost, and 'inconvenience' people who 'look right.'

AP: 6 Imams Removed From Twin Cities Flight
"Six Muslim imams were removed from a US Airways flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Monday and questioned by police for several hours before being released, a leader of the group said.
The six were among passengers who boarded Flight 300, bound for Phoenix, around 6:30 p.m., airport spokesman Pat Hogan said.
A passenger initially raised concerns about the group through a note passed to a flight attendant, according to Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for US Airways..."

Bush's Next Target: Iran

AFP: Hersh: CIA Analysis Finds Iran Not Developing Nuclear Weapons
"A classifed draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter has said.
Seymour Hersh, writing in an article
for the November 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week.
A month before the November 7 legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy.
If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran,' Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.
Cheney said the White House would circumvent any legislative restrictions 'and thus stop Congress from getting in its way,' he said.
The Democratic victory unleashed a surge of calls for the Bush administration to begin direct talks with Iran.
But the administration's planning of a military option was made 'far more complicated' in recent months by a highly classified draft assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency 'challenging the White House's assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb,' he wrote.
'The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running paallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency,' Hersh wrote, adding the CIA had declined to comment on that story.
A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis and said the White House had been hostile to it, he wrote.
Cheney and his aides had discounted the assessment, the official said..."


Electronic Voting:

Election Defense Alliance: Major Miscount in 2006 Election: Were 4% of Votes "Misplaced"?
"Election Defense Alliance, a national election integrity organization, issued an urgent call today for an investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic voting equipment after analysis of national exit polling data indicated a major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in congressional races across the country. These findings are an alarming indictment of the American election system in which 80% of voters used electronic voting equipment.
As in 2004, the Exit Poll and the reported election results do not add up. But this time there is an objective yardstick in the methodology that establishes the validity of the Exit Poll and exposes the inaccuracy of the election returns. These findings are detailed in a paper published today on the EDA website..."


Bush's (Already Rejected) Judicial Nominees:

NY Times Editorial: Still Waiting for Bipartisanship
"The voters sent a clear message last week that they do not want the far right of the Republican Party calling the shots in Washington. But President Bush has ignored the message, resubmitting a group of archconservative, underqualified judicial nominees that Senate Democrats have already said are unacceptable. With the Democrats about to take control of the Senate, it is highly unlikely that these men will be confirmed. But the renominations suggest that when it comes to filling judgeships, Mr. Bush is still not looking for either excellence or common ground..."

'Enemy Combatants'

AP: AP Gets Shocking New Report on Gitmo
"The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from detainees and usually reached a decision within a day as it determined that hundreds of men detained at Guantanamo Bay were 'enemy combatants,' according to a new report.
The analysis of transcripts and records by two lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, aided by more than two dozen law students, found that hearings that determined whether a prisoner should remain in custody gave the accused little opportunity to contest allegations against him.
'These were not hearings. These were shams,' said Mark Denbeaux, an attorney and Seton Hall University law professor who along with his son, Joshua, is the author of the report. They provided an advance copy of the report to The Associated Press late Thursday and planned to release it Friday on the Internet.
Their report, based on an analysis of records of military hearings of 393 detainees, comes as the U.S. government seeks to severely restrict detainee access to civilian courts, arguing that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals should be their main legal recourse...
...Twenty-one first-year law students at Seton Hall University in Newark, N.J., analyzed the documents to create a database analyzed by eight second- and third-year students.
Among their findings:

* The government did not produce any witnesses in any hearing.

* The military denied all detainee requests to inspect the classified evidence against them.

* The military refused all requests for defense witnesses who were not detained at Guantanamo..."


The NPT:

AP: Bush's India US Nuclear Deal Seen as "Horrible Mistake"
"...Critics argued that the plan would ruin the world's nonproliferation regime and boost India's nuclear arsenal. The extra civilian nuclear fuel that the deal would provide, they say, could free India's domestic uranium for use in its weapons program. Pakistan and China could respond by increasing their nuclear stockpiles, sparking a regional arms race.
Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan called the agreement 'a horrible mistake' that 'provides a green light' for India to produce more nuclear weapons. 'I believe one day we will look back at this with great regret,' he said.
During debate Thursday, supporters beat back changes they said would have killed the proposal by making it unacceptable to India. Critics said the changes were necessary to guard against nuclear proliferation.
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer unsuccessfully proposed a condition that would have required India to cut off military-to-military ties with Iran before allowing civil nuclear cooperation.
Rep. Ed Markey, a Democratic critic in the House, said the Senate's endorsement of the proposal 'sends the wrong signal at a time when the world is trying to prevent Iran from getting' a nuclear bomb. The plan, he said, would set 'a precedent that other nations can invoke when they seek nuclear cooperation with countries that also refuse to abide by nonproliferation rules.'
The bill carves out an exemption in American law to allow U.S. civilian nuclear trade with India in exchange for Indian safeguards and inspections at its 14 civilian nuclear plants; eight military plants would be off-limits..."

Not-So-Secure State-Issued Identity Documents:

The Guardian (UK) - Cracked it!
"Three million Britons have been issued with the new hi-tech passport, designed to frustrate terrorists and fraudsters. So why did Steve Boggan and a friendly computer expert find it so easy to break the security codes?..."

Corporate Media's Love Affair With War and Warmongering:

Norman Solomon: The New Media Offensive for the Iraq War
"The American media establishment has launched a major offensive against the option of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
In the latest media assault, right-wing outfits like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are secondary. The heaviest firepower is now coming from the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA -- the front page of the New York Times.
The present situation is grimly instructive for anyone who might wonder how the Vietnam War could continue for years while opinion polls showed that most Americans were against it. Now, in the wake of midterm elections widely seen as a rebuke to the Iraq war, powerful media institutions are feverishly spinning against a pullout of U.S. troops.
Under the headline 'Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say,' the Nov. 15 front page of the New York Times prominently featured a 'Military Analysis' by Michael Gordon. The piece reported that -- while some congressional Democrats are saying withdrawal of U.S. troops 'should begin within four to six months' -- 'this argument is being challenged by a number of military officers, experts and former generals, including some who have been among the most vehement critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policies.'
Reporter Gordon appeared hours later on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, fully morphing into an an unabashed pundit as he declared that withdrawal is 'simply not realistic.' Sounding much like a Pentagon spokesman, Gordon went on to state in no uncertain terms that he opposes a pullout.
If a New York Times military-affairs reporter went on television to advocate for withdrawal of U.S. troops as unequivocally as Gordon advocated against any such withdrawal during his Nov. 15 appearance on CNN, he or she would be quickly reprimanded -- and probably would be taken off the beat -- by the Times hierarchy. But the paper's news department eagerly fosters reporting that internalizes and promotes the basic worldviews of the country's national security state.
That's how and why the Times front page was so hospitable to the work of Judith Miller during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. That's how and why the Times is now so hospitable to the work of Michael Gordon..."


Iraq:

Robert Fisk: U.S. Tanks Will Roll out of Iraq on a Road Paved with Excuses
"...I must say Richard Perle's version of a mea culpa did take my breath away. Here was the ex-chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee -- he who once said, 'Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform' -- admitting he 'underestimated the depravity' in Iraq. He holds the president responsible, of course, acknowledging only that -- and here, dear reader, swallow hard -- 'I think if I had been Delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said: 'Should we go into Iraq?' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies ... ' '
Maybe I find this self-righteous, odious mea culpa all the more objectionable because the same miserable man was shouting abuse down a radio line to me in Baghdad a couple of years ago, condemning me for claiming that the U.S. was losing its war in Iraq and claiming that I was 'a supporter of the maintenance of the Baathist regime.' That lie, I might add, was particularly malicious as I was reporting Saddam's mass rapes and mass hangings at Abu Ghraib prison when Perle and his cohorts were silent about Saddam's wickedness and when their chum Donald Rumsfeld was cheerfully shaking the monster's hand in Baghdad in an attempt to reopen the U.S. embassy there.
Not that Perle isn't in good company. Kenneth Adelman, the Pentagon neocon who also beat the drums for war, has been telling Vanity Fair that 'the idea of using our power for moral good in the world' is dead. As for Adelman's mate David Frumm, well he's decided that President Bush just 'did not absorb the ideas' behind the speeches Frumm wrote for him. But this, I'm afraid, is not the worst to come from those who encouraged us to invade Iraq and start a war that has cost the lives of 600,000 civilians.
For a new phenomenon is creeping into the pages of The New York Times and those other great organs of state in the U.S. For those journalists who supported the war, it's not enough to bash Bush. No, they've got a new flag to fly: The Iraqis don't deserve us. David Brooks -- he who once told us that neocons such as Perle had nothing to do with the president's decision to invade Iraq -- has been ransacking his way through Elie Kedourie's 1970 essay on the British occupation of Mesopotamia in the 1920s. And what has he discovered? That 'the British tried to encourage responsible leadership to no avail,' quoting a British officer at the time as concluding that Iraqi Shiites 'have no motive for refraining from sacrificing the interests of Iraq to those which they conceive to be their own.'
But the Brooks article in The New York Times was also frightening. Iraq, he now informs us, is suffering 'a complete social integration' and 'American blunders' were exacerbated 'by the same old Iraqi demons: greed, blood lust and a mind-boggling unwillingness to compromise, even in the face of self-immolation.' Iraq, Brooks has decided, is 'teetering on the edge of futility' and if U.S. troops cannot restore order, 'it will be time to effectively end Iraq,' diffusing authority down to 'the clan, the tribe or sect' which -- wait for it -- are 'the only communities which are viable,'..."


Ray McGovern: Don’t Look for Much From the “Bipartisan” Iraq Study Group
"President George W. Bush conferred yesterday with members of the James Baker-led Iraq Study Group came against a background of chaos in Baghdad, a quisling government demonstrably incapable of stemming the violence, and an Iraqi resistance emboldened by the vote of no confidence given to the president’s Iraq policy. As expected, yesterday’s meeting was primarily photo-op.
The important question is: Can the Iran Study Group be expected to come up with constructive suggestions for alternative policy on Iraq. The answer is no..."


Sidney Blumenthal: The Neocons' Last Stand
"...The neocon logic in favour of the Iraq war was that the road to Jerusalem led through Baghdad: an invasion would install an Iraqi democracy that would force the Palestinians to submit to the Israelis. Now near-unanimity exists on Baker's commission to reverse that formula. The central part of a new policy must be, they believe, that the road to Baghdad leads through Jerusalem.
In an article in the Washington Post in July, Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security adviser, who is very close to Baker, spelled out the notion that security and stability in the region, including Iraq, can only be achieved by re-establishing the Middle East peace process. Scowcroft's piece is a precis of Baker's views as well. On September 15, Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice's legal adviser and a former Scowcroft protege, echoed Scowcroft's ideas in a speech at Washington's Middle East Institute. Afterwards, Cheney pressured Rice and she rebuked her closest deputy, underlining her own weakness.
Then the electoral catastrophe intervened, giving Baker leeway (and sidelining Rice). Baker even summoned Tony Blair to testify on Tuesday in order to support a restart of the Middle East peace process. If Baker were to propose that, he knows - although he will not explicitly say so - that its enactment would require the firing of neocons on the national security council and Cheney's staff, in particular Elliott Abrams, the NSC's near-east affairs director.
If Baker actually advocates what he thinks, Bush will have to either admit the errors of his ways and the wisdom of his father and his father's men - or cast them and caution aside once again."

The Environment:

Kelpie Wilson: First, Re-Open the Libraries
"It never got down to actual book-burning, but the Republican choke-hold on government would clearly have taken us there. In August, under the guise of fiscal responsibility, the Bush Environmental Protection Agency began closing most of its research libraries, both to the public and to its own staff.
The EPA's professional staff objected strongly, insisting that closing the libraries would hamstring them in their jobs. In a letter to Congress protesting the closures, public employees said, 'We believe that this budget cut is just one of many Bush administration initiatives to reduce the effectiveness of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and to continue to demoralize its employees.'
The EPA's precipitous move to close the libraries was based on a $2 million cut in Bush's proposed $8 billion EPA budget for 2007. EPA bureaucrats did not wait to see if Congress might restore the funds or shift budget priorities in order to save the libraries; it acted immediately to box up documents for deep storage, and shut the doors.
While the official EPA line is that all of the documents will be eventually be digitized and made available online, this will cost money that the agency does not have, so for practical purposes, all of the thousands of reports and maps that now exist only on paper or microfiche will be lost to the public and to agency scientists. They might as well just burn them.
Closing the EPA libraries is the perfect symbol to characterize the methods of the Bush administration. Since 2000, the Republicans have cemented their reputation as ushers of a new dark age. They have sought to shroud the light of science by closing libraries and by suppressing scientific reports. They have gagged their own scientists and persecuted whistleblowers. They have cloaked government in secrecy, a prime example being Dick Cheney's secret meetings with oil companies to draft an industry-friendly national energy policy..."


Indefinate Detention:

AP: Bush: Immigrants May Be Held Indefinitely
"Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.
In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.
Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, was arrested in 2001 while studying in the United States. He has been labeled an 'enemy combatant,' a designation that, under a law signed last month, strips foreigners of the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.
That law is being used to argue the Guantanamo Bay cases, but Al-Marri represents the first detainee inside the United States to come under the new law. Aliens normally have the right to contest their imprisonment, such as when they are arrested on immigration violations or for other crimes..."

On Torture:

Washington Post: CIA Acknowledges 2 Interrogation Memos
"After years of denials, the CIA has formally acknowledged the existence of two classified documents governing aggressive interrogation and detention policies for terrorism suspects, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
But CIA lawyers say the documents -- memos from President Bush and the Justice Department -- are still so sensitive that no portion can be released to the public.
The disclosures by the CIA general counsel's office came in a letter Friday to attorneys for the ACLU. The group had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York two years ago under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking records related to U.S. interrogation and detention policies.
The lawsuit has resulted in the release of more than 100,000 pages of documents, including some that revealed internal debates over the policies governing prisoners held at the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Many other records have not been released and, in some cases, their existence has been revealed only in media reports.
Friday's letter from John L. McPherson, the CIA's associate general counsel, lists two documents that pertain to the ACLU's records request.
The ACLU describes the first as a 'directive' signed by Bush governing CIA interrogation methods or allowing the agency to set up detention facilities outside the United States. McPherson describes it as a 'memorandum.' In September, Bush confirmed the existence of secret CIA prisons and transferred 14 remaining terrorism suspects from them to Guantanamo Bay.
The second document is an August 2002 legal memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to the CIA general counsel. The ACLU describes it as 'specifying interrogation methods that the CIA may use against top al-Qaeda members.' (This document is separate from another widely publicized Justice memo, also issued in August 2002, that narrowed the definition of torture. The Justice Department has since rescinded the latter.)
The ACLU relied on media reports to identify and describe the two documents, but the CIA and other agencies had not previously confirmed their existence. McPherson wrote that neither document can be released to the public for reasons of security and attorney-client privilege..."


Money, Power, and Politics:

William Rivers Pitt: The Carlyle White House
"It was bad enough when the Carlyle Group bought Dunkin' Donuts last year, forcing millions of conscientious caffeine addicts to look elsewhere for their daily fix. Now, it appears Carlyle has added 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to its formidable portfolio of acquisitions.
The Carlyle Group achieved national attention in the early days of the Iraq occupation, especially after Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' exposed the firm's umbilical ties to the Bush family and the House of Saud. For the uninitiated, Carlyle is a privately-owned equity firm organized and run by former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations...
...Gates's nomination to the post of secretary of defense was field-generaled behind the scenes by James Baker III, who has suddenly taken on a muscular role within the Bush White House since the spectacular Republican wipeout during the midterm elections last Tuesday. Baker's return, along with the new prominence of Bush Sr., has been hailed in the mainstream press as a healthy step toward stability and sanity.
One is forced to wonder, however, which masters Mr. Baker is actually serving. Baker's Carlyle Group has profited wildly from the conflict in Iraq, which begs the question: will the bottom line, augmented by Carlyle's defense contracts, trump any attempts to establish a just and lasting peace? It must also be noted that Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, is currently serving as defense counsel for Saudi Arabia against a suit brought by the families of 9/11 victims. The connections between the Bush family and the Saudi royals have been discussed ad nauseam, and Mr. Baker is so closely entwined with the Bush clan that he might as well be a blood relative.
The weakening of George W. Bush, in short, has opened the door for an alumnus of the Iran/Contra scandal, Robert Gates, to gain control of the Pentagon - his nomination, as yet, has met with little Congressional resistance. This process was managed by James Baker, whose Carlyle Group made billions off the Iraq occupation and whose fealty to the American people has all too often taken a back seat to the needs and desires of the royal family of Saudi Arabia. These two, along with Hamilton, have been instrumental in crafting, by way of the Iraq Study Group, what by all accounts will soon be America's foreign policy lynchpin in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole.
Behind it all is George H.W. Bush, former employee of Carlyle, who has somehow managed to refashion his reputation into that of a grandfatherly, level-headed, steady hand, a foreign policy 'realist' whose mere presence will soothe and calm the troubled waters we sail in. Unfortunately, his 'realism' is a significant reason the United States finds itself in its current mess - until the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was a boon confederate of both the Reagan and Bush administrations in their fight against Iran - and the team of experts he has brought with him have done more to undermine the national security of the country than any other three people one could name.
The winner in all this, of course, is the Carlyle Group. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."


Corporate Media Still Passing Off VNR's As 'News'

Democracy Now! - Corporate Propaganda Still On the News: Study Finds Local Stations Overwhelmingly Fail to Disclose VNRs
"A new study by the Center for Media and Democracy says Americans are still being shown corporate public relations videos disguised as news reports on newscasts across the country. In April, the Center identified 77 stations using Video News Releases in their newscasts. The findings led to an investigation by the FCC. A followp-up study has found 10 of those stations are still airing VNRs today for a total of 46 stations in 22 states..."


Blinded By Faith:

NY Times: For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is 'God’s Foreign Policy'
"...Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming. Many on the left, in turn, fear that such theology may influence decisions the administration makes toward Israel and the Middle East..."

On Torture:

Washington Post: In Letter, Radical Cleric Details CIA Abduction, Egyptian Torture
"In an account smuggled out of prison, a radical Muslim cleric has detailed how he was kidnapped by the CIA from this northern Italian city and flown to Cairo, where he was tortured for months with electric shocks and shackled to an iron rack known as 'the Bride.'
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, wrote an 11-page letter describing his 2003 abduction at the hands of the CIA and Italian secret service agents. He somehow transferred the document out of Egypt -- where he remains in custody -- and into the hands of Italian prosecutors who are investigating his disappearance.
The Milan public prosecutor's office on Thursday confirmed the authenticity of the letter, the existence of which was first reported by the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The document has been submitted as evidence to defense attorneys representing 25 CIA officers, a U.S. Air Force officer and nine Italian agents who have been charged with organizing the kidnapping of Nasr, an Egyptian national, in February 2003.
A copy of the document, handwritten in Arabic, was obtained by The Washington Post. Undated, it reads like a homemade legal affidavit, outlining how Nasr was seized as he was walking to a mosque in Milan, stuffed into a van and rushed to Egypt in a covert operation involving spies from three countries.
'I didn't understand anything about what was going on,' Nasr wrote. 'They began to punch me in the stomach and all over my body. They wrapped my entire head and face with wide tape, and cut holes over my nose and face so I could breathe.'
Upon his arrival in Egypt hours later, he said, he was taken into a room by an Egyptian security official who told him that 'two pashas' wanted to speak with him.
'Only one spoke, an Egyptian,' he recalled. 'And all he said was, 'Do you want to collaborate with us?' ' Nasr said the other 'pasha' appeared to be an American. His captors offered a deal: They would allow him to return to Italy if he agreed to become an informant. Nasr said he refused. As a result, he said, he was interrogated and physically abused for the next 14 months in two Cairo prisons..."


The New Congress:

Truthout.org Truthout: Impeachment and the Table
"A compelling argument can certainly be made that, given all that the country now faces, an impeachment of George W. Bush by the new Democratic Congress would do more to further divide the nation than heal it. Ironically, many of Mr. Bush's critics have dubbed Mr. Bush himself 'the great divider.' Whether you blame Mr. Bush for the social divisions in America or not, deep and abiding social divisions, particularly over the morass in Iraq, are undeniable, and healing those divisions should be of paramount importance to the new Congress. Equally undeniable are the political risks for a new Democratic Congress that would pursue impeachment shortly after taking back the gavel for the first time in over a decade.
However, in stating flatly that 'impeachment is off the table,' incoming Speaker Pelosi and incoming Chairman Conyers appear to have erred rather substantially. Impeachment, of course, is a matter of Constitutional law, not personal discretion on the part of individual lawmakers. The pre-emptive nature of the decision by Pelosi and Conyers stands in sharp contrast to every principal of law enforcement. Congress - whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans - has a solemn duty to uphold and when necessary enforce the law.
If there is some reason that impeachment is not warranted in a given circumstance, it should be stated in that context. But for an individual lawmaker, any individual lawmaker, to presume to preclude impeachment regardless of the circumstances scoffs at the Constitution. The great danger is that individuals in official positions might choose to assume unto themselves the power of the law at their personal discretion. If the last six years have taught us anything, it is that such hubris leads to ruin..."

Twisting Intelligence:

Ray McGovern: An Open Letter to Carl Levin: No Free Pass to Gates
"...In 1991, you joined 30 other senators in voting against Gates's confirmation as CIA director because Gates was a good deal less than candid about his role in Iran-Contra and unconvincing in his denials that he had politicized intelligence. A few days ago you said that you wanted to give Gates a 'fair and fresh look; a lot of time has passed.'
Fair enough. If you want to know what has happened in the interim, you can start with the fresh, documentary evidence adduced in award-winning investigative reporter Robert Parry's recent article, 'The Secret World of Robert Gates'. Parry's article contains unique and highly damaging information on Gates's role in the original 'October Surprise' - the unconscionable but successful Republican effort to prevent the release of the 52 American hostages imprisoned for 14 months in the US embassy in Tehran until Ronald Reagan had won the election in 1980. Parry also provides fresh detail on Gates's involvement in the illegal sale of weapons, including cluster bombs, to Iraq in the early eighties.
Another excellent source on Gates's involvement in the secret arming of Saddam Hussein (yes, the same Saddam) and the Iran-Contra scandal is Amy Goodman's interview of Parry and former CIA analyst Mel Goodman on Democracy Now, November 9th.
As you suspected when you voted against his nomination in 1991, Gates knew about many of Oliver North's illegal activities but, under oath, he just couldn't remember. Gates has been able to escape close scrutiny of his own involvement in extralegal and illegal activities largely because there are far too few journalists with the enterprise, talent, and courage of Robert Parry.
All the above-mentioned escapades are enough to derail Gates's nomination, but the corruption of intelligence should be given priority attention, given the huge role this played in 2002 in deceiving Congress into voting for an unnecessary war. The record shows that Gates is the archetypal intelligence fixer, employing all the tricks of that dishonorable trade - including memory loss, when caught. Indeed, it was the malleable managers who prospered at CIA during Gates's tenure there who caved in to White House pressure to 'lean forward' on the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq..."

SecDef Nominee Gates:

Democracy Now! - Defense Secretary Nominee Robert Gates Tied to Iran-Contra Scandal and the Secret Arming of Saddam Hussein
"...Today we are joined by two guests in Washington who have closely followed the career of Robert Gates.
* Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and director of the Center's National Security Project. From 1966-1986 he was a senior CIA soviet analyst. In 1991 he was one of three former CIA officials to testify before the Senate against the nomination of Robert Gates as director of central intelligence. Goodman is co-author of the book, 'Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk.'
* Robert Parry, veteran investigative journalist and editor of ConsortiumNews.com. For years he worked as an investigative reporter for both the Associated Press and Newsweek magazine. His reporting led to the exposure of the 'Iran-Contra' scandal. His books include 'Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'' and 'Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq,'..."

Bush's Questionable Choice For SecDef:

Did anyone expect him not to recycle an old Reagan/Bush-era criminal, as he has shown a propensity to do?

Jason Leopold: Gates Has History of Manipulating Intelligence
"Robert Gates, the former director of the CIA during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, and who was tapped Tuesday by the president to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, is part of Texas's good ol' boy network. He may be best known for playing a role in arming Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein with American made weapons in the country's war against Iran in the 1980's...
...During contentious Senate confirmation hearings in October 1991 - that are bound to come up again - Gates's role in cooking intelligence information during the Iran-contra scandal was revealed. It was during those hearings that senators found out about a December 2, 1986, 10-page classified memo written by Thomas Barksdale, the CIA analyst for Iran. That memo claimed that covert arms sales to the country demonstrated 'a perversion of the intelligence process' that is staggering in its proportions.
The Barksdale memo was used by Gates's detractors to prove he played an active role in slanting intelligence information during his tenure at the agency under Reagan. Eerily reminiscent of the way CIA analysts were treated by Vice President Dick Cheney during the run-up to the Iraq war three years ago, when agents were forced to provide the Bush administration with intelligence showing Iraq being a nuclear threat, Barksdale said he and other Iran analysts 'were never consulted or asked to provide an intelligence input to the covert actions and secret contacts that have occurred.'
Barksdale added that Gates was the pipeline for providing 'exclusive reports to the White House' intelligence that was 'at odds with the overwhelming bulk of intelligence reporting, both from U.S. sources and foreign intelligence services.'
In testimony before the Senate on October 1, 1991, Harold P. Ford, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, described an aspect of Gates's personality that mirrors many of the top officials in the Bush administration today.
'Bob Gates has often depended too much on his own individual analytic judgments and has ignored or scorned the views of others whose assessments did not accord with his own. This would be okay if he were uniquely all-seeing. He has not been ...,' Ford said.
At the hearing, other CIA analysts said Gates forced them to twist intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by the former Soviet Union. Analysts alleged a report approved by Gates overstated Soviet influence in Iran that specifically led the late President Ronald Reagan into making policy decisions that turned into the Iran-contra scandal..."


Iraq:

New York Times Editorial: Blinding the Taxpayers on Iraq
"...The deadline for ending the work of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was included in the conference report on a huge military authorization bill — inserted at the last minute in the back room by the staff of Duncan Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. It should be promptly lifted by the new Congress to be elected next week.
That ought to be possible even if the Republicans stay in charge, since neither the House nor the Senate included such a deadline in its original legislation. But if the Republicans do lose their House majority, Mr. Hunter will no longer be able carry out such mischief.
The special inspector general’s office, run by Stuart Bowen, a Republican lawyer who had worked for George W. Bush both in Texas and in Washington, is widely respected by Democrats and Republicans for the quality of its investigations and reports.
As a result of its work, contracting and supervision failures in the Pentagon were brought to Congressional and public attention, unsatisfactory performance was uncovered on the part of contractors like Halliburton and Parsons, and corrupt American occupation officials were sent to jail.
That is exactly the way a democracy is supposed to hold the people who work for it accountable. The special inspector general enjoys a sweeping authority and institutional independence that the investigative branches of the Defense and State Departments do not. Yet it is those in-house investigators who are now set to take over the job next fall.
Mr. Hunter, who is exploring a 2008 presidential run, insists that neither the Bush administration nor the huge defense contractors who have been criticized in the inspector general’s reports played any role in inspiring him to cut off the office’s work. If this is only the bad judgment of one ambitious lawmaker, it should be easy enough to reverse it."

Secret, Extrajudicial Detentions:

The Bush WHite House wants to shut people up who have been in U.S. extrajudicial detention. Why? Because they might accuse the U.S. of torture?
Because these accusations might fly in the face of the President's categorical pronouncement that 'We do not torture'?
Whose standards define 'torture,' Mr. President? Yours? Your Attorney General's?

Washington Post: U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons
"The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the 'alternative interrogation methods' that their captors used to get them to talk.
The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- 'could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.' Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.
The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, a 26-year-old former Catonsville resident who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the 'black' sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantanamo, is seeking emergency access to him.
The government, in trying to block lawyers' access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees' experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public.
Because Khan 'was detained by CIA in this program, he may have come into possession of information, including locations of detention, conditions of detention, and alternative interrogation techniques that is classified at the TOP SECRET//SCI level,' an affidavit from CIA Information Review Officer Marilyn A. Dorn states, using the acronym for 'sensitive compartmented information.'
Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney for Khan's family, responded in a court document yesterday that there is no evidence that Khan had top-secret information. 'Rather,' she said, 'the executive is attempting to misuse its classification authority...to conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct.'
Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, said the prisoners 'can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is 'Alice in Wonderland,'..."

Iraq: Bush's War Of Choice As A Drain On The U.S. Treasury:

Let's remember that Bush's economic adviser Larry Lindsey was fired in 2002 after telling papers that the Iraq war could cost $200 billion. Fired for telling the truth. The truth matters not one bit to Team Bush, only power and control over all public matters, especially the management of public perception. An honest forecast of a trillion-dollar-war is clearly something that would have raised eyebrows amongst even the most hawkish conservatives.

Linda Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz: Iraq War Will Cost More Than $2 Trillion
"In January, we estimated that the true cost of the Iraq war could reach $2 trillion, a figure that seemed shockingly high. But since that time, the cost of the war - in both blood and money - has risen even faster than our projections anticipated. More than 2,500 American troops have died and close to 20,000 have been wounded since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. And the $2 trillion number - the sum of the current and future budgetary costs along with the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher by political uncertainty in the Middle East - now seems low.
One source of difficulty in getting an accurate picture of the direct cost of prosecuting the war is the way the government does its accounting. With 'cash accounting,' income and expenses are recorded when payments are actually made - for example, what you pay off on your credit card today - not the amount outstanding. By contrast, with 'accrual accounting,' income and expenses are recorded when the commitment is made. But, as Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, notes, 'The budget of the United States uses cash accounting, and only the tiniest businesses in America are even allowed to use cash accounting. Why? Because it gives you a very distorted picture.'
The distortion is particularly acute in the case of the Iraq war. The cash costs of feeding, housing, transporting and equipping U.S. troops, paying for reconstruction costs, repairs and replacement parts and training Iraqi forces are just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Costs incurred, but not yet paid, dwarf what is being spent now - even when future anticipated outlays are converted back into 2006 dollars..."

The Environment:

AP: US Pesticide Stockpile Under Scrutiny at World Ozone Meeting in India
"President George W. Bush's administration is seeking world permission to produce thousands of tons of a pesticide that an international treaty banned nearly two years ago, even though US companies already have huge stockpiles of the chemical.
Methyl bromide has been used for decades by farmers to help grow plump, sweet strawberries, robust peppers and other crops, but it also depletes the Earth's protective ozone layer. The United States and other countries signed a 1987 treaty promising to end its use by 2005.
Americans failed to meet the Montreal Protocol deadline and since have been getting annual exemptions allowing methyl bromide's continued use on certain crops in specific states. Other nations have sought far smaller exemptions.
The latest exemption requests are being considered this week at an international meeting in New Delhi, India.
Though smaller than previous years, the amount of methyl bromide the United States wants approved for 2008 worries some allies, especially given the existing stockpiles..."

NY Times Editorial: Avoiding Calamity on the Cheap
"...A detailed examination by The Times’s Andrew Revkin pointed out that Washington spends only $3 billion a year for all energy research and development. Of this, only a fraction — $416 million, according to the Energy Department — was spent last year on climate-friendly, renewable technologies like wind, solar power, cellulosic ethanol and hydrogen. By contrast, Washington spends $28 billion on medical research and $75 billion on military research.
The administration claims that it is in fact doing more, especially if various tax incentives for cleaner fuels like ethanol are included in the mix. Even so, in an age when people are worried not only about warming but also about the country’s growing dependence on imported oil, the federal effort on alternative energy sources is pathetically small.
The Bush administration’s lack of commitment to research might not be quite so lamentable if it had been prodding the private sector into investing in cleaner energy. Private capital is not likely to emerge in big enough quantities unless a significant cost is attached to carbon emissions — either in the form of a carbon tax or a mandatory cap on emissions. But the administration has refused to ask Congress to impose either.
Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, the atmosphere has served as a free dumping ground for carbon gases. If people and industries are made to pay heavily for the privilege, they will inevitably be driven to develop cleaner fuels, cars and factories. Most of the industrialized world has accepted the need for either carbon taxes or strict regulation, and Europe has already imposed a cap on emissions from its cars and factories.
Mr. Bush and many in Congress remain steadfastly opposed — still convinced, it appears, that calamity can be avoided on the cheap."

Willfully Complicit In Disseminating Nuclear Bomb-Making Knowledge:

William Rivers Pitt: You're Kidding Me, Right?
"...So, to recap: the administration and its Congressional allies published directions for the development of nuclear weapons, said directions including 'charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums.' They did this to try to manufacture some political cover, period. Much of the published material is in Arabic. All that is required to put these directions to practical use is the fissionable material, a great deal of which is sitting unsecured all across Russia ... and the administration has slashed the budgets aimed at nailing this stuff down."

Willfully Ignoring Separation of Church & State:

Garry Wills: A Country Ruled by Faith
"The right wing in America likes to think that the United States government was, at its inception, highly religious, specifically highly Christian, and even more specifically highly biblical. That was not true of that government or any later government—until 2000, when the fiction of the past became the reality of the present. George W. Bush was not only born-again, like Jimmy Carter. His religious conversion came late, and took place in the political setting of Billy Graham's ministry to the powerful. He was converted during a stroll with Graham on his father's Kennebunkport compound. It is true that Dwight Eisenhower was guided to baptism by Graham. But Eisenhower was a famous and formed man, the principal military figure of World War II, the leader of NATO, the president of Columbia University—his change in religious orientation was just an addition to many prior achievements. Bush's conversion at a comparatively young stage in his life was a wrenching away from mainly wasted years. He joined a Bible study culture in Texas that was unlike anything Eisenhower bought into.
Bush was a saved alcoholic—and here, too, he had no predecessor in the White House. Ulysses Grant conquered the bottle, but not with the help of Jesus...
...Bush promised his evangelical followers faith-based social services, which he called 'compassionate conservatism.' He went beyond that to give them a faith-based war, faith-based law enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based medicine, and faith-based science...
...It is common knowledge that the Republican White House and Congress let 'K Street' lobbyists have a say in the drafting of economic legislation, and on the personnel assigned to carry it out, in matters like oil production, pharmaceutical regulation, medical insurance, and corporate taxes. It is less known that for social services, evangelical organizations were given the same right to draft bills and install the officials who implement them. Karl Rove had cultivated the extensive network of religious right organizations, and they were consulted at every step of the way as the administration set up its policies on gays, AIDS, condoms, abstinence programs, creationism, and other matters that concerned the evangelicals. All the evangelicals' resentments under previous presidents, including Republicans like Reagan and the first Bush, were now being addressed...
...There is a particular danger with a war that God commands. What if God should lose? That is unthinkable to the evangelicals. They cannot accept the idea of second-guessing God, and he was the one who led them into war. Thus, in 2006, when two thirds of the American people told pollsters that the war in Iraq was a mistake, the third of those still standing behind it were mainly evangelicals (who make up about one third of the population). It was a faith-based certitude."

Electronic Voting:

Mother Jones: Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America's Worst Places to Cast a Ballot (or Try)
"Machines that count backward, slice-and-dice districts, felon baiting, phone jamming, and plenty of dirty tricks..."

Miami Herald: Glitches cited in early voting
"After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors -- and a caution against the careless casting of ballots..."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Diebold demands that HBO cancel documentary on voting machines
"Diebold Inc. insisted that cable network HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair.
The program, 'Hacking Democracy,' is scheduled to debut Thursday, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results.
'Hacking Democracy' is 'replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,' Diebold Election System President David Byrd said in a letter to HBO President and Chief Executive Chris Albrecht posted on Diebold's Web site. Short of pulling the film, Monday's letter asks for disclaimers to be aired and for HBO to post Diebold's response on its Web site..."


Iraq:

Greg Palast: I Want To Hurt Somebody
"It was pure war-nography. The front page of the New York Times yesterday splashed a four-column-wide close-up of a blood-covered bullet in the blood-soaked hands of an army medic who’d retrieved it from the brain of Lance Cpl. Colin Smith.
There was a 40 column-inch profile of the medic. There were photos of the platoon, guns over shoulders, praying for the fallen buddy. The Times is careful not to ruin the heroic mood, so there is no photograph of pieces of corporal Smith’s shattered head. Instead, there’s an old, smiling photo of the wounded soldier.
The reporter, undoubtedly wearing the Kevlar armor of the troop in which he’s 'embedded,' quotes at length the thoughts of the military medic: 'I would like to say that I am a good man. But seeing this now, what happened to Smith, I want to hurt people. You know what I mean?'
The reporter does not bother — or dare — to record a single word from any Iraqi in the town of Karma where Smith’s platoon was, 'performing a hard hit on a house.'
I don’t know what a 'hard hit' is. But I don’t think I’d want one 'performed' on my home. Maybe Iraqis feel the way I do..."

Jason Leopold: Rumsfeld's Lethal Denial
"As the Iraq war continues to claim the lives of American troops on a near-daily basis and the country inches closer toward civil war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wants the public to know that the carnage really isn't as bad as it seems.
'Progress is being made everywhere across the country,' Rumsfeld said during a radio interview Wednesday, a transcript of which is posted on the Defense Department's web-site. 'We're doing a great job of training and equipping their forces and passing over responsibility to them.'
That's the visual Rumsfeld and other senior members want to indelibly etch into the minds of the American people when the public goes to the polls next week.
Five days before the hotly contested midterm elections, Rumsfeld, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and senior members of the administration are crisscrossing the country, using far-right media outlets to send a distorted message to the American people about the reality on the ground in Iraq, where 103 US troops were killed in October - the fourth highest monthly figure since the start of the war more than three years ago.
But it's not just the public the White House is duping..."

Iraq:

The problem, as seen from the cynical perspective of the DoD, is not that the situation is horrifically bad, but rather that public perception of the horror that is Iraq is not properly managed.

BBC News: Pentagon gears up for new media war
"The Pentagon's new effort to influence media coverage of the war in Iraq is an example of how governments react when a war is not going too well.
They begin to think it is not the war that is the problem, but the presentation of it.
The media, being the messengers, get the blame, not the message itself.
The plan, detailed in a memo seen by the Associated Press news agency, is for a rapid response unit that would 'correct the record' in the 24/7 news cycle that exists today - including, crucially, on the internet. One aim, AP says, seems to be to deflect criticism of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself.
It is on the internet that blogs and other sites rapidly spread information, sometimes as fact and sometimes as rumour, and build up pressure points of opinion. These are then reflected in the mainstream media.
There would also be a list of favourite speakers or 'surrogates' who would be offered to broadcast media, especially to the US talk shows, where fast appearances and faster opinions matter..."

On Torture:

...and one who made the ultimate choice not to participate. It is difficult to imagine how horrific what she witnessed must have been.

Democracy Now! - Headlines for November 2, 2006
"Army Spc. Took Own Life After Objecting to Interrogations

An Arizona public radio station has uncovered new details on the death of one of the first female US soldiers to die in the Iraq war. KNAU Radio reports Army Specialist Alyssa Peterson took her on own life after objecting to interrogation techniques used on Iraqi prisoners. Peterson was assigned to a US air base in Tal-Afar. She died on September 15, 2003 from what the military called a 'non-hostile weapons discharge.' But newly uncovered documents say investigators actually concluded Peterson shot and killed herself with her service rifle. The documents also show Peterson’s death came after she refused to take part in further interrogations after just two days. Military officials refused to describe what techniques Peterson had objected to and said all records of them had been destroyed. Specialist Peterson was twenty-seven years old...

And Enforcing Being 'On Message'

(also from the DN! link above)

State Dept. Vetted Speakers for Bush Views

McClatchy Newspapers is reporting the State Department has been screening the views of individuals for criticism of the Bush administration before sending them on foreign speaking assignments. The State Department Inspector General says the practice amounts to: 'virtual censorship.' In one case, a conflict resolution expert was excluded from a video conference in Jerusalem after it was discovered he wrote a book critical of the US-led reconstruction of Iraq. The screenings could violate federal guidelines that mandate the State Department to provide a broad range of speakers abroad that are: 'not limited to the expression of US government policies,'..."

Hypocrisy?

Reuters: Evangelical Leader Resigns Over Sex Scandal
"The president of the U.S. National Association of Evangelicals, who has had regular talks with the White House and vocally opposes gay marriage, resigned on Thursday after being accused of having a sexual relationship with a male escort...
...Mike Jones, who said he was a male escort, told KUSA on Wednesday he had had a three-year sexual 'business relationship' with Haggard.
Haggard, who is often credited with rallying conservative Christians behind President George W. Bush for his 2004 re-election, talks to Bush or his advisors every Monday, Harper's Magazine reported last year.
Haggard supports a proposed amendment to the Colorado constitution that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Colorado voters will decide on that issue next week when they vote in the congressional elections.
Such ballot initiatives also help the Republican Party which polls say is in danger of losing control of Congress in Tuesday's midterm vote.
Evangelical Christians have been a key base of support for Bush and the Republican Party.
A father of five, Haggard has long been a leading figure among conservative U.S. evangelical Christians..."

Advertising Dollars Running From Political Points Of View:

Is it really possible for these advertisers (the list is a long one) to be so afraid of being associated with a 'liberal' voice that they choose this course of action?

Media Matters: ABC memo reveals Air America advertiser blacklist
"An internal ABC Radio Networks memo obtained by Media Matters for America, originally from a listener to The Peter B. Collins Show, indicates that nearly 100 ABC advertisers insist that their commercials be blacked out on Air America Radio affiliates. According to the memo, the advertisers insist that 'NONE of their commercials air during AIR AMERICA programming.' Among the advertisers listed are Bank of America, Exxon Mobil, Federal Express, General Electric, McDonald's, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the U.S. Navy.
The memo appears below, and an enlarged version can be viewed here."


Iraq:

The familiar Team Bush refrains of 'making progress' and 'we're winning' seem to be missing from this less-than-rosy scenario...

NY Times: Classified Briefing Illustrates Growing Chaos in Iraq
"A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.
A one-page slide shown at the Oct. 18 briefing provides a rare glimpse into how the military command that oversees the war is trying to track its trajectory, particularly in terms of sectarian fighting.
The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an 'Index of Civil Conflict.' It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.
In fashioning the index, the military is weighing factors like the ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the enemy's fighting strength and the control of territory.
The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from 'peace,' an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked 'chaos.' As depicted in the command's chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart..."